News Story not available This story has been published on: 2022-10-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. This story is no longer available on our site. ABC News(NEW YORK) -- While campaigning in New York, Ted Cruz traded his mic for a rolling pin as he toured Chabad Neshama Center, a Jewish Community Center in Brooklyn, and made matzo bread from scratch at the center's Model Matzah Bakery. Despite being a rookie matzo baker, the Texas senator was impressed with the final product, admitting, "fresh baked is better than the box, as he took a bite. At the Model Matzah Bakery, Cruz joined Rabbi Moishe and his wife, Leah Winner, and led the 15 or so children in making the matzo and singing roll, roll, roll the matzo dough. Cruz asked the children their age, if they like matzo, and their favorite thing about Passover. I like the morar, one boy said, referring the bitter herbs eaten during Passover. Lots of holes, a little girl interjected, fascinated by the holes in her dough. That is a lot of holes! Cruz joked. Holy matzo! As the children sang "Dayenu," a Passover song, Cruz clapped and sang along, repeating the word Dayenu. The Texas senator, who is Christian and attends Houstons First Baptist Church, told Rabbi Moishe he once had the privilege of joining a Holocaust survivor at the Seder table for Passover. He actually survived the Holocaust by being in a Gulag in Russia and he spent nine years in the Gulag, Cruz shared. When asked if he was interested in sporting a matzo hat as he rolled the dough, Cruz politely declined. Im going to pass on the hat, Cruz said. Its one of the basic rules of politics -- be careful with hats. (He also turned down wearing a Wisconsin cheese head hat on Monday ahead of the primary there.) Cruz has ramped up the amount of the time hes spending in the Empire State ahead of its primary on April 19. Wednesday, Cruz held a meet-and-greet with voters at a Chinese-Latino restaurant in the Bronx. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. News / Local by Tendai Gukutikwa BUSINESS was brought to a halt at the Mutare Civil Courts last Thursday as two women quarreled after it had been revealed in court that one of them had tried to seduce the other's husband.Manica Post reported that the fight erupted after Samuel Choga Newengo had dragged his neighbour, Jocelyn Musiyazviriyo to court praying for a protection order and claiming that she badmouthed his wife. He also claimed that Musiyazviriyo had threatened to shoot him with her gun if he did not restrain his wife from having an affair with her husband.They appeared before Yeukai Chigodora.Musiyazviriyo, however, told the court that she was up in arms with Newengo's wife since she had cheated with her husband.Said Musiyazviriyo: "I am a rich person, Your Worship. I have five gold claims in my name and the car that is being used by my husband is mine, yet she wants to snatch him from me. I wanted to kill her, but she apologized."Tables turned as Musiyazviriyo's husband raised his hand from the gallery and told the court that Newengo's wife was the one who seduced him whenever he gave her a lift."Mai ava vanokwira mota yangu kasingaperi, vachigara vakavhura makumbo, skirt iri kumusoro asi handisati ndambovapfimba. Vabvunzei kuti ndakambovabata gumbo ravo here, nyangwe vachindivhurira hembe yavo kuti ndione makumbo avo? (She always asks for a ride in my car and tries to seduce me by opening her legs, while with a short skirt, but I have never touched her or proposed love to her)," he said. Upon hearing this, his wife, Jocelyn shouted and pointed at Newengo's wife claiming that she was a lady of loose morals who was not content with her own husband and wanted to take her husband from her. "I wonder why I am just hearing of your skirt antics in my car for the first time in this court? I want to know why you were trying to entice my husband. Did you want him to have sex with you? Did you get what you wanted?" she shouted.The matter had to be adjourned by Chigodora after Musiyazviriyo suffered a diabetic attack.About 30 minutes later the matter resumed and a binding protection order was granted.However, it was not over yet as a fight erupted between the two women as they waited to enter the Clerk of Court's office.Both had to be restrained by police officers."Mai Musiyazviriyo ndazonyanya kumunyararirai muchindijairira, ndaakuchizokurovai manje. (Mrs Musiyazviriyo, I have respected you for a long time, but it is high time that I discipline you)," said Newengo's wife as she put down her bag getting ready to fight Jocelyn."Buy your own car Newengo and do not be used by your loose wife who wants to snatch my hubby from me," she shouted, but was, however, ordered to stop by the police officers who told her that she was risking incarceration. Lewes, DE -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/08/2016 -- The Cards and Payments Industry in the Philippines: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into the Philippine cards and payments industry, including: - Current and forecast values for each market in the Philippine cards and payments industry, including debit card, credit and charge cards. It also includes detailed analysis of the prepaid card market. - Detailed insights into payment instruments including cash transactions, checks and payment cards. It also, includes an overview of the country's key alternative payment instruments. - E-commerce market analysis and online payment types. - Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing the Philippine cards and payments industry. - Detailed analysis of strategies adopted by banks and other institutions to market debit, credit and charge cards. - Comprehensive analysis of consumer attitudes and buying preferences for cards. - The competitive landscape of the Philippine cards and payments industry. The Cards and Payments Industry in the Philippines: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides detailed analysis of market trends in the Philippine cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including check payments, payment cards and cash transactions during the review period (20102014). The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, and transaction values and volumes during the review period and over the forecast period (20152019). It also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including market shares of issuers and schemes. The report brings together Publisher's research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers detailed regulatory policies and recent changes in regulatory structure. Scope - This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Philippines cards and payments industry. - It provides current values for the Philippine cards and payments industry for 2014, and forecast figures to 2019. - It details the different demographic, economic, infrastructural and business drivers affecting the Philippine cards and payments industry. - It outlines the current regulatory framework in the industry. - It details marketing strategies used by various banks and other institutions. Reasons To Buy - Make strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to the Philippine cards and payments industry and each market within it. - Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in the Philippine cards and payments industry. - Assess the competitive dynamics in the Philippine cards and payments industry. - Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in the Philippines. - Gain insights into key regulations governing the Philippine cards and payments industry. Key Highlights - To capitalize on the increasing uptake of mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solutions among small and medium merchants such as insurance agents and food-delivery businesses, solution providers are offering low-cost mPOS services. For instance, Swiff, a mobile payment technology provider signed an agreement with G-Xchange, a mobile payment and remittance service provider in March 2014 to introduce Globe Charge, an mPOS service in the Philippines. Globe Charge is an Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (EMV) Level 2-certified service offering merchants different payment acceptance options including chip and PIN, chip and sign, and swipe and sign. Similarly, car-booking company GrabTaxi expanded its cashless payment service by entering into a partnership with Visa in May 2015. This agreement allows GrabTaxi vehicles to carry a Globe Charge terminal enabling passengers to make payments via a Visa debit, credit or prepaid card. The introduction of low-cost terminals is anticipated to encourage merchants to accept card-based payments, further driving payment card transaction volume and values. - To provide enhanced card security, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) the central bank of the Philippines, in November 2014, made it mandatory for banks to shift from the traditional magnetic stripe to more secure EMV chip cards by January 2017. Following this announcement, BancNet signed an agreement with Visa in February 2015 to accelerate the migration to EMV chip cards for all domestic transactions. In addition to cards, the migration process ensures that ATMs and POS terminals are compliant with the EMV standards. The increasing adoption of security measures is expected to encourage consumers to carry out more card-based transactions. - Banks in the Philippines are offering bank accounts and debit cards enabling beneficiaries at home to receive funds to capitalize on the rising inflow of remittances from Filipinos residing abroad. A number of banks, including Banco de Oro, the Land Bank of the Philippines and the Philippines National Bank, have started offering remittance debit cards. More recently in September 2015, the Land Bank of the Philippines formed a partnership with Trans-Fast Remittance LLC, a provider of multi-currency cross-border payments solutions to enable Trans-Fast customers worldwide to make real-time instant money transfers into Land Bank accounts in the Philippines. The rising inflow of remittances is expected to increase demand for bank accounts and remittance debit cards. Spanning over 56 pages "The Cards and Payments Industry in the Philippines: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019" report covers Definitions and Methodology, Key Facts and Events, Executive Summary, Payment Instruments, E-Commerce, Alternative Payments, Regulations in the Cards and Payments Industry, Analysis of Cards and Payments Industry Drivers, Market Segmentation and New Product Launches, Payment Cards, Debit Cards, Credit Cards, Charge Cards, Commercial Cards, Prepaid Cards, Appendix. The report covered companies are - Land Bank of the Philippines, Metrobank, BPI, RCBC, MegaLink, BancNet, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB For more information Visit at: http://www.marketresearchreports.com/timetric/cards-and-payments-industry-philippines-emerging-trends-and-opportunities-2019 Find all Banking and Finance Reports at: http://www.marketresearchreports.com/banking-finance About Market Research Reports, Inc. Market Research Reports, Inc. is the world's leading source for market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest market research reports on global markets, key industries, leading companies, new products and latest industry analysis & trends. Yearly/Quarterly Report Subscription: http://www.marketresearchreports.com/subscriptions Utrecht, Netherlands -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/08/2016 -- The web has a big influence on the small business sector and so does the currency fluctuation. It is a huge boon when there is a good Exchange Rate online resource that is ready to serve the needs of the general public. A site that would support this sector can bring an increase in exports and can give a better insight for those that usually make the math of exchanging goods and resources with the overseas countries. Many companies in the United States of America refrain from doing business with the countries from abroad because they are not sure whether they will be winning profits or bleeding resources because of this. A currency conversion professional can give an extra insight for those that are not sure but hiring one costs a fortune. To abstain from such costs would mean to take an unsure path and that's not usually how business is done in the US. An online Currency Converter can cut the costs of the small businesses and allow them to calculate their profits much easier. It is a premium way of doing business and also not taking unnecessary risks. Such is the way of the smart businessperson that is usually on the spot in the nick of time. The Exchange Rate has a huge impact when predicting the sales from overseas and when planning the general strategy for the next few years. Many companies had to lose a fortune from the wrong exchange rate calculations but many had also to make a lot of cash on that as well. It truly depends who is handling the Money exchange calculations and how professional is he. About Currency Rate Today Richard Darwin has launched the CRT site hoping that it would be of good use to the small to medium business sector and that it can make the real difference between a good export strategy and a failed decision to deal with Europe and Asia. It is by far easier to use such a Currency Converter online than paying thousands of dollars to shady experts that cannot be sure of the success of the operation. The Netherlands based site is a huge help to all those wanting to get a clarity of calculation. Contact: Richard Darwin Company: Currency Rate Today Address: Lombokstraat 2, 3554 VW Utrecht, Netherlands Phone: +31-30-5467709 Email: info@currencyrate.today Website: http://currencyrate.today/ Clinton, OK -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/08/2016 -- Appropriate visa is essential to enter Vietnam. However, there are exemptions for a few days for specific passport holders. Belarus passport holders are exempted from visas for not more than 15 days from the entry to the country. Obtaining Vietnam visa from the embassy can be a long process which is tedious and expensive. Vietnam Visa on arrival is one of the most preferred options to obtain visa while visiting Vietnam as it is quick, hassle free and inexpensive. It is one of the easiest and quickest methods to get visa to Vietnam. Vietnam visa exemption policies are clearly mentioned on the website. Overseas Vietnamese are also exempted from visas. Visa exemption policies are different for people from different countries and passport holders. According to the website, "Belarus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italia, Japan, Korea, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden and UK passport holders who enters Vietnam as unilateral visa-exempted: the entry date must be at least 30 days from the previous exit as unilateral visa-exempted person. Otherwise that person is required to have appropriate visa to enter Vietnam. ASEAN Citizens of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia and Laos holding valid ordinary passports are exempt from visa requirements and are allowed to stay for not more than 30 days; Philippines is allowed to stay for not more than 21 days; Brunei and Myanmar citizens are allowed to stay for not more than 14 days and vice versa." Vietnamese holding foreign passports, residing in Phu Quoc Island are exempted from visas. There are also visa exemption policies for APEC business travel card holders. These business travel card holders need not obtain visas to facilitate travel to conduct business operations. Vietnam has now bilateral agreement with 81 countries for visa exemption for holders of diplomatic and official passports. However, there is a specific limitation period in which the government official or diplomat can stay in Vietnam. To know more about visa exemptions and policies or visa free Vietnam, please log on to: http://www.ivisa.vn/who-need-vietnam-visa About Visa -Vietnam Visa-Vietnam.Org is an online website founded in the year 2007. It is a reliable and authentic site that assists tourist from around the world to procure visa on arrival to Vietnam in a hassle free manner. Media Contact: Nam Thang Travel Co., LTD Company Registration- 0309115020 http://www.ivisa.vn/who-need-vietnam-visa [NAIROBI] The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) will convene in Kenya next month (23-27 May) to discuss the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the environmental challenges facing todays world. In preparation for the global meeting, representatives to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) attended a meeting in Kenya on 15-19 February this year, focusing on the environment, sustainability and health and discussed the link between conflicts and an increasingly over-exploited natural world. Strong political leadership is essential to create the legislative and regulatory environment to address the environmental dimension of the worlds current humanitarian crises. Judy Wakhungu, Kenya According to UNEP executive director Achim Steiner, who outlined the agenda for next months meeting, experts will emphasise the importance of a healthy environment to human health and security. Living or working in unhealthy environment contributed to 12.6 million deaths worldwide in 2012 almost a quarter of total global deaths says the WHO. A healthy, well-managed environment is crucial to wellbeing and the security of the people and the planet, Steiner adds, noting that the environment can influence health through exposure to physical, chemical and biological risk factors or by triggering behavioural changes. The UNEP head says that there is a growing awareness that humans, through their intervention in the environment, play a vital role in worsening or mitigating health risks. Childhood exposure to lead creates economic losses of US$977 billion a year through the lowering of intellectual ability in low- and middle-income countries, says Steiner, adding that 23 per cent of all premature deaths around the world are associated with environmental factors. Among children, that figure rises to 36 per cent. To tackle premature deaths and chronic diseases associated with poor air quality in cities, we need to detoxify [the environment]; improve housing; establish green public spaces; ensure that vulnerable communities have access to essential services including education, health, public transport and clean fuels and strengthen networks, Steiner explains. Judy Wakhungu, Kenyas cabinet secretary for environment, water and natural resources, says keeping the global environment under review through science and policy dialogue will help governments create international agreements that could improve the environment and boost human development. Wakhungu adds: Strong political leadership is essential to create the legislative and regulatory environment to address the environmental dimension of the worlds current humanitarian crises, including the root causes of conflict and displacement and the damage done to the environment through the illegal exploitation and trade of natural resources in conflict-affected areas. Dorcas Otieno, a lecturer in the Department of Environment Studies and Community Development at Kenyas Kenyatta University, tells SciDev.Net that there are opportunities for transforming todays world into a low-carbon economy.The opportunities range from renewable sources of energy , resources efficiency, reduced emission technologies, green chemistry and new carbon sequestering building materials.The global community should come together to find collective solutions to the challenges affecting the whole planet. The measurement and monitoring of air, water , soil and exposure to chemicals also needs to be systematised, Otieno adds.This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk. Scotland had set a goal for renewable energy consumption. Some thought it was very ambitious to have such goal reports have shown that 57.7 percent of the country's electricity came from renewable energy sources last year. Fifty percent ahead of the target set by ministers. Well, being ambitious is certainly paying off for them. According to the numbers released by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, Scotland is now believed to be more than halfway to realizing its most challenging goal to produce the entire annual electricity needs from renewable energy sources by the year 2020. Just last November, it gave a go to the construction of the world's largest floating wind farm. The finding certainly suits the renewable trend directed by the current Scottish government, iflscience.com reported. Jenny Hogan, director of policy for Scottish Renewables said in an interview that this is another important step in creating a fossil-free country and also to show that renewables is now the main part of the country's power sector. "There is still a huge amount of potential for future growth, if the industry is given the right backing by government," she added. It's great news to know that Scotland has continued to grow despite the difficulty they have faced. The issue of support for the industry came into question after the British government signaled to cut down on renewable energy subsidies. After that many doubted if Scotland would still be able to reach its goal of going fully renewable by 2020, and said that they should push the goal back to another decade. Science Alert reported Lang Banks told the Herald that all political parties need to continue to prioritize renewables before May's election and really commit in making sure that Scotland secures the benefits of becoming the EU's first fully renewable electricity nation by 2030. This is every Scottish environmentalist's vision that they are eager to push through. Considering the announcement of the new figures as an opportunity to attract as much opposition as possible with British PM David Cameron's agenda. Researchers discovered that Stone Age humans crowded the Scottish islands with red deer shipped by boat. The team was surprised at the seafaring prowess of the prehistoric ancestors. David Stanton of Cardiff University, the co-author of the study said that the results of their study showed that Neolithic humans were shipping deer by sea about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, according to a report of News Discovery. The study printed in the Royal Society journal Proceedings of the Royal Society stated that the DNA analysis showed that deer in the northernmost islands of Scotland were unlikely to have come from Norway, Ireland and mainland Scotland. Stone Age humans used to transport pigs, sheep and cattle by boat, but not big wild animals such as deer, and not by such extensive distances. "Perhaps humans managed deer, having long-term relationships with herds that allowed them to plan, capture and transport deer on longer voyages," said Stanton. The researchers said that the Scottish islands were masked in ice during the latter "glacial maximum," this is the period of deep Earth freeze. The place has been divided from each other by widths of the ocean that was too wide for the red deer to swim. Therefore, it was figured out that the deer was transported nearby through boat-hopping from one island to another island. Meanwhile, the researcher also found out that the DNA analysis of the Neolithic deer bones that were found on northern islands was genetically not the same to deer from Scandinavia, Ireland and Britain. Stanton said that the hunt is just started to look for the ancestors of the deer. The red deer comprise of large species that inhabit the Asia Minor, most of the Europe, the Caucasus Mountain regions, central Asia, parts of western Asia and Iran. Red deer is not extinct and its population is increasing due to conservation efforts and reintroduction. However, the population of red deer declines in North Africa. Pool frog (Pelophylax lessonae) is capable of growing at various rates depending on the changes of temperature. The new study reveals that this species have speedy growth in the warmest time of the year in Sweden. This enables the pool frog to survive the cold temperature. Phys states that pool frog wants warm atmosphere for reproduction so its tadpoles can be fully developed. "Since Sweden has briefer periods of high temperatures than Poland and Latvia do, this increased growth capacity under warmest conditions allow this frog to take full advantage of the short periods of high temperatures," said German Orizaola, a Spanish scientist and a researcher for the department of Ecology and Genetics at Uppsala University and the co-author of the study. He also said that the frog completed its life cycle that depends deeply on warm climates like Scandinavia. According to researchers, the pool frog begins breeding in Sweden when the pond water temperature reaches 16 degrees Celsius-probably in May, which is the breeding period of the pool frog. The scientists visited the place that inhabited by pool frogs in the Baltic Sea in May 2006. Then, they gathered a sample of frog spawn in Poland. They also collected samples of pool frog from three Swedish areas as early as in June. This is the month wherein the species begin reproduction. The researchers conducted their experiment in temperature-controlled rooms--that are set to 19 degrees Celsius, which is a low temperature for the pool frog and one to 26 degrees Celsius, which is a high temperature. Then, they bred the tadpoles from the various samples of frog spawn. They also studied the degree of plasticity of the tadpoles bred at various temperatures. There is a greater difference in the development of the pool frogs. They found out that there is an increased plasticity of the pool frog tadpoles that were taken in the Swedish areas. The Swedish tadpoles are capable of growing faster than those taken from Latvia or Polish regions when displayed to high temperature, the researcher concluded. Pool frog is also termed as European frog. It is the only amphibian species that is recognized by the UK government and protected by the Biodiversity Action Plan. The White House has apparently refused to publicly back a law that would deem it necessary for tech companies to obey decryption requests, according a report by Reuters. The move will be a setback for law enforcement that is already facing stumbling blocks in criminal investigation, due to data inaccessibility policies on phones and mobile apps. Reuters spoke to unnamed sources within the White House who claimed there to be a division in opinions regarding violation of individual privacy. The administration doesn't want to push a bill that necessitates Apple and other tech firms to comply with decryption requests. The bill was proposed by senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr in the wake of the San Bernardino iPhone case. The sources further said that the White house is reading the document carefully and will offer feedback; however no public announcements will be made, even if it backs the law. According to Reuters, the move comes across as a political one due to the impending elections. The non cooperation will relegate the issue to the back, spelling further obstacles in the path of law enforcement. According to recent data collected by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and USA TODAY, it was found that law enforcement could not access the content over 100 mobile phones and apps. The stringent encryption on smartphones comes in the way of successfully resolving impending cases by the investigative authorities. Earlier this week, Whatsapp introduced end-to-end encryption on messages, which will make it tougher for third party access to information. In February this year, Apple was ordered by a federal judge to comply with the FBI to release a special mobile operating system that would enable access to data present on the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone. Apple turned down the decryption request. There is an ongoing debate about the unavailability of crucial data needed by law enforcement, due to strict encryption and privacy rules. Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the flourishing microbial communities around shipwrecks significantly transformed, wreaking havoc not only to the historic vessels under the sea, but also to ocean life itself. In February this year, leading scientists presented the results of their research during the 2016 Ocean Sciences in New Orleans. Their experiment involved metal disks exposed to oil spill-like conditions, showing that bacteria could flourish as well as speed up corrosion in the presence of oil as cited in an article on Scientific American. This potentially jeopardizes the 2,000 known shipwrecks which have been on the ocean floor over five hundred years. This also endangers the ecosystems in the region according to the scientists. "The first time I saw a chart showing the abundance of shipwrecks along our coasts, my jaw dropped," said Jennifer Salerno, a marine microbial ecologist at George Mason University in Virginia as cited on Live Science. "You can't look at an image like that and not question whether or not they are impacting the environment in some way," she added further. Finding oil-eating microbes in the said region is no longer astonishing considering that the Mexican Gulf encompasses an abundant natural oil leaks. For Leila Hamdan, a co-leader of the research and a marine microbial ecologist at George Mason University, what is really astonishing is the presence of a myriad of the species in the same place at the same time. Hamdan told Live Science that the chemicals present in the oil snow material let these microorganisms dominate these sediments. "It seems that the chemicals in this oil snow material allow a handful of microorganisms to dominate these sediments. Imagine a party invitation goes out to 400 people, and one-third of them show up wearing exactly the same dress," she said. "You would wonder why and how that happened. What cue in the invitation caused them to all go choose that same outfit from their closets? It's an exciting task to find out why it happened," Hamdan added. Above all, the scientists have urged further studies into this historic shipwreck ecosystem, which could definitely help in safeguarding and conserving the unique vessels themselves as well as the marine lives. The South African government's stance on rhino horn trade can be a decisive factor for the fate and survival of the species in the region,as per reports. The country will reveal its position on the global ban related to purchasing or selling rhino horn later this month. Rhino horn trade can be a $2 billion industry, a fact that may have a bearing on the decision made. The demand for rhino horn is high in Asia owing to its curative properties and use in traditional remedies. The increasing need to balance supply and demand ratio has led to higher rates of poaching, and 1,305 rhinos were killed last year in Africa alone. Incidentally, rhino horn trading has been globally banned since the 1970s. According to those arguing against the ban, the horn of rhinos grows back if the animal is alive during the cut. Rhino horn trade is dangerous only when animals are killed to facilitate it. The opponents to the ban proposed that legalizing the trade won't have an adverse impact if it is regulated, which would ensure that rhinos are not killed to procure horns. Consequently, it has been suggested, that the move will bring down poaching levels and the resultant decrease in rhino population, which could also save them from future extinction. The government of South Africa has still not disclosed any details about its rhino horn inventory, created by seizing horns from smugglers as well as procuring them from animals that died of natural causes. According to estimations by the Private Rhino Owners Association, the size of the stockpile could be close to 25 tons. Supporters in favor of rhino horn trade legalizing say that the money obtained through it could, in fact, be used for conservation purposes by the government. Those in favor of the ban agree otherwise. "Legalizing rhino horn trade would remove the stigma associated with consumption of endangered species, stimulate the insatiable demand for rhino horn, and fuel further rhino poaching," the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said on its website. South Africa is yet to take a decisive stance on rhino horn trade, though it is contemplating lifting the ban. An overturn of the ban can only be possible if the government gets two-thirds support from the countries that will attend the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Johannesburg, later this year. News / National by Stephen Jakes The Zimbabwe People First members in South Africa will on April 14 march to the Zimbabwean Embassy to petition for the people in the diaspora to be allowed to vote.The party indicated that its members in SA will conduct a march to the Zimbabwean Embassy on the 14th of April , to Petition for the Diaspora Right to Vote.According to research done by the Zimbabwe Elections Support Network , the SADC Principles and Guidelines require all citizens to be given the right to participate in the political process and equal opportunity to vote.The Electoral Act requires people to be resident in a constituency to be able to vote there, since postal voting is not permitted for anyone except State employees."This means that Zimbabweans in the Diaspora will not be able to vote in the forthcoming 2018 elections and we now all know who stands to "benefit" from such an undemocratic situation," reads the ZimPF statement."In the so called 2013 'harmonized' elections a total of 3,4 million votes were cast for the presidential vote. However by contrast the current estimates on Zimbabwe Diaspora population project that approximately 4 million Zimbabweans are resident in the SADC diaspora alone , while the majority of this number is based in South Africa."The party said it is therefore fact , that there are more Zimbabweans who are disenfranchised from voting than those that are allowed to vote."All Citizens are therefore not be able to participate in the political process as prescribed by our Constitution , and as such any person or government elected by such a exclusionist process can not claim legitimacy or democratic mandate of governance on behalf of all Citizens of Zimbabwe,'' reads the statement."As democrats and builders of the country our first procedural port of call is to submit , a million signature backed petition to our Embassy in Pretoria , for delivery to the Parliament of Zimbabwe and Government."The [party said the march will take members from Church Square in Pretoria CBD , to the Zimbabwean Embassy and back to Union Buildings , were they will have various speakers from civic organizations,sister politicsl parties, the People First Leadership, and representatives of the South African government's leadership who will address the crowd and share messages of solidarity."Our request is simple ! We require alignment of the Electoral Laws to recognize the Constitutional rights of Zimbabwean Citizens in the Diaspora. Should we not receive a favorable response within 3 months from the 14th we will approach the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe on behalf of all Diasporans , to challenge the constitutionality of the current Electoral Law in as far as the Postal Vote is concerned! It is our hope that our Parliament will be forced to debate in pursuit of democratic acknowledgment of the supreme law and our constitutional right to vote thereof by order of the Constitutional Court," reads the statement."If all else fails then let me make this emphatic promise that we will shut down all Zimbabwean Government operations that are located here in South Africa. You can not operate an embassy or consulate in country and fail to recognize the presence of the very Citizen you are meant to serve!"The party said if the Government of Zimbabwe is indeed a genuine signatory to the SADC and AU electoral protocol and guidelines , then our request should be food for the delight of genuine Democrats."If the Government of Zimbabwe , can allow and facilitate Malawians and Mozambicans, residing in Zimbabwe to cast postal votes for elections to choose leadership in Malawi and Mozambique , then surely our Government must know that "charity must begin at home. Enough is Enough Zimbabweans," reads the statement."We are not going to abstain from voting and abdicate our hard fought right to vote! Our fathers , mothers , brother and sisters sacrificed their lives and some died for this right !It is our right to vote ! Let us not waste it, with apathy and fear! We can't as Diasporans contribute 55% of Zimbabwe's income receivables as we sustain our families back home and by so doing keeping Zimbabwe alive with our hard earned monies but only to be disallowed from partaking in the voting process.""We say to our Government ,You are happy to accept our money but not our votes ..No !! that we will not accept !"The party said its Power is in Numbers and urged members to come together as Zimbabweans and March for our freedom ! We have been victims for too long a time ,let us stand and fight."My parting question to all my fellow Zimbabweans who long for change and a new lease of life is the following "What would be the result of our elections be if all Zimbabweans at home and in the Diaspora can vote in 2018 " reads the statement. News / National by Stephen Jakes An MDC-T senior member Job Sikhala has challenged supporters of t6he party to join the Mass Demonstration slated for April 14 in Harare in numbers so as to have their concerns registered to the Zanu PF failing government."Once again the MDC-T has chosen Harare as its preferred venue for the staging of a peaceful demonstration against poverty and corruption on the 14th of April 2016," he said. "This is an opportunity for the Harare MDC-T family to show cause why the party has kept its confidence with the province.It is within the same vein that the MDC-T Harare Province through its Information and Publicity Department is calling upon all Hararians to come in their thousands on the 14th in support of the worth cause where as a people we demand the whereabouts of the $15bn that was stolen by the government officials,the 2 million jobs that Zimbabweans were promised by the government of Mr Robert Mugabe."He said the time has come now for all progressive Zimbabweans to join hands and fight together as a people."This is no longer an MDC-T issue but for all peace loving Zimbabweans to play a role and not just watch idly as the country is going down the drain. It is time to stand up against poverty and misery that the people have been plunged into by the illegitimate and insensitive regime," Sikhala said. "The march will start at the Freedom Square(Show grounds) down Robert Mugabe Avenue into Julias Nyerere then turn into Nelson Mandela and end up at the African Unity Square."He said the law enforcement agencies have already been informed and their cooperation so far has been good."Please let this information spread like veld fire to all the corners not only of Harare but indeed Zimbabwe at large.Together as Zimbabweans we can complete the change," he said. News / National by Walter Muchinguri Some banks are taking advantage of the cash shortages by maintaining high charges for withdrawals from banking halls despite the unavailability of cash in their automated teller machines.Ordinarily most depositors withdraw money from ATMs due to lower charges levied by banks on such transactions than in the banking halls where charges are a slightly higher.A survey of most banks show that ATM withdrawals are charged at between 0,5 to 1 percent of money being withdrawn, which translates to a minimum charge of $2,50 to $3 while charges for withdrawals within the banking halls range from 1 percent to about 3 percent of the money being withdrawn, which translates to a minimum charge of $3 to $6.ATMs normally dispense a minimum of $2, $5 and $10 up to a maximum of $500, $1 000 and $2 000.Since the re-emergence of cash shortages most ATMs have not been dispensing money while other cheap methods of withdrawals such as Zimswitch have been disabled resulting in depositors remaining with one option of withdrawing money from banking halls.Some depositors who spoke to The Herald Business said banks were now taking advantage of the situation to increase their bottom line."This is not a normal situation because there is only one option that is available to us and that is withdrawing our money from the banking halls so why are the charges not being lowered."This is not a situation of our own making so why are the banks punishing us? The difference between the ATM and banking hall charges might appear to be minute at face value but because every depositor who wants to withdraw their money is going into the banking halls to do so the banks are making a killing," said Mr Menard Ben.Another depositor said that the banks are giving them frivolous excuses to explain their conduct."We are told that there is a fixed system of deducting charges for withdrawals within the banking halls but my question is who set up the system? Is it cast in stone?"To my knowledge these systems are designed by people and can be tweaked to suit different conditions. Banks should be flexible especially if they are serious about building confidence in the banking system."They should only revert to levying different charges for ATM and banking hall withdraws once the situation normalises and people have an option to use one of the two," said Mr Leroy Makona.There has been widespread concern on the charges levied by banks on deposits and loans which most depositor's feel are high.The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has on several occasions engaged banks to lower their charges as part of rebuilding confidence in the banking sector. News / National by Stephen Jakes Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) has condemns in the strongest terms possible, the formation of a shadowy terror group being dubbed "Al Shabaab" in Midlands and the subsequent violence it meted out on fellow Zanu-PF members in Kwekwe at the weekend.In a statement ZPP said the violent youth group, which in recent weeks has been operating openly in the province, is understood to have attacked fellow members of the ruling party."The attacked members had gone to Harare to participate in an airport welcome for President Robert Mugabe, and Al Shabaab accused them of "selling out" the province. This obviously demonstrates differing opinions and varying allegiances," ZPP said."ZPP is concerned that terror elements elsewhere on the continent and in the world at large (in this case the East Africa-originated Al Shabaab) are allowed to be emulated, and violence unleashed at the altar of factional fights and in the name of political expediency for real or imagined factional leaders."ZPP urged known and unknown leaders of factions within the ruling party at cell, district, provincial and indeed at national level to desist from using and fanning violence to address their differences; and to find ways to resolve their conflict peacefully and find each other as fellow party members, and indeed as compatriots."Where are the leaders when such violence is meted out? May leaders demonstrate their commitment to peace in deeds and in instruction. May leaders also desist from using speech which fans violence and hate across the factional/political divides," said ZPP."Most importantly ZPP implores Zanu-PF party leadership to rein in internecine factional fights, which have gone on for far too long with increasing social cost. Additionally, ZPP also calls on the youths not to allow themselves to be used in factional fights but to be aware that the violent road ultimately leads to nowhere but regret." News / National by Vince Musewe Vince Musewe is an economist and author based in Harare. He is also the Secretary for Finance and Economic Affairs of PDP. You may contact him on vtmusewe@gmail.com. These are his personal views. The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value) in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948. The initiative is named after the then Secretary of State George Marshall.The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous again, and prevent the spread of communism. The Marshall Plan required a lessening of interstate barriers, a dropping of many petty regulations constraining business, and encouraged an increase in productivity, labour union membership, as well as the adoption of modern business procedures. (Wikipedia)In my opinion Zimbabwe needs its own Marshall plan in order to restore democracy, modernize industry, rebuild physical and social infrastructure, revive agriculture and ensure food security, provide an emergency social safety nets, support and formalise grassroots commerce, transform state enterprises, unlock small to medium enterprise potential, increase productivity and competitiveness and re-build new democratic institutions.There is no doubt that under President Mugabe's stewardship, Zimbabwe has become a failed state where a failed state is defined as a country in which state structures lack political will and/or capacity to provide the basic functions needed for poverty reduction, development and to safeguard the security and human rights of their populations'. For any reconstruction plan such as the Marshall Plan to work in Zimbabwe, we will therefore need a new governance architecture, but more important, we will need fresh brains at State House. President Mugabe cannot create the future we want and I wish ZANU (PF) youths would just get this fact into their heads.The key success factor we will therefore have to consider first, before we implement any such reconstruction plan is the political will to want to do the right things. I think that ZANU (PF), including the President has proven to us that despite the evidence of their failure, they are still unwilling, unable and incompetent to be architects of a new economy. We need to re-invent our country with a with a new vision and new energy.Second, a strong democratic and accountable government will also one of the key success factors. We have seen how, for example, the dissonance within our current government has led to lack of informed policy consistency and effective implementation. We cannot expect any better until we have a new democratic government in place which puts national interests at the top of its priorities.Third we will need an alignment and congruence of intent between the political establishment and social and labour movements. We would need a social contract to be in place where all key stakeholders are included in coming up with a robust reconstruction strategy where everyone can contribute. The idea of a strong centre of power which makes all the key decisions is archaic and does not work as we have experienced.Macro-economic reforms will also be critical. These must seek to create a stable macro-economic environment where we can effectively and continuously anticipate, plan and manage the economy so that we avoid or minimise the negative impact of unanticipated economic shocks and crises, whether they be internal or exogenous. A stable economy also arises out of well-regulated but non stifling financial services sector and a consistent and effective monetary policy. The central bank and the financial services sector as a whole therefore, have a key role to play in ensuring macro-economic stability and growth.We will also require an aggressive industrialisation policy that is integrated to agricultural revival. Agriculture revival which is linked to industrial revival is key if we are to create jobs and create sustainable incomes particularly in the rural areas where poverty has become common. This of course has to be also linked to the rehabilitation and development of new private and public infrastructure both urban and rural.Our approach should be the establishment of industrial hubs based on value add of agricultural products and the rebuilding of our manufacturing capabilities. We will have to reduce imports and we may have to put in the necessary protection measures so that we can reduce competition from Chinese imports.The private sector will have an important role to play and we will need a constructive partnership between government and the private sector. There is no doubt that any reconstruction effort must primarily be driven by the private sector. However, we cannot effectively implement anything meaningful as long as we have patronage mentality and we do not effectively deal with corruption. For our country to be able to effectively spend billions of developmental funds effectively we definitely cannot rely on ZANU (PF) as the key player because we all know where the money will end up.Finally a Marshall plan for Zimbabwe must be a five year plan which has support of all stakeholders. Part of the plan must include the establishment of an independent and empowered technical authority responsible for management and implementation. A technical reconstruction or transitional authority will have to be established. Such a body must be inclusive and accountable only to parliament.In conclusion, any reconstruction plan needs to be inclusive and include all our provinces. Our approach should be to come up with a provincial development blueprints to ensure that we spread reconstruction throughout the country and all Zimbabweans can benefit regardless of where they may reside within the country. We cannot afford to repeat a skewed approach to development which excludes others.In my opinion, if we can secure $100 billion for a reconstruction plan such as the Marshall Plan, Zimbabwe has an opportunity to change the course of history once we have established a democratic legitimate government post 2018. We have the necessary skills and the required knowledge to turn around our country onto a better growth trajectory but what will continue to be an albatross on our necks is ZANU (PF) and its culture of patronage, corruption and inability to effectively plan and implement developmental projects.I truly believe that another Zimbabwe is indeed possible but only when we have new political leadership and government in place which is accountable and which puts Zimbabwe first. News / National by Staff reporter Jacob Mudenda Speaker of the National Assembly yesterday ruled that MPs should stop using language that shows "disrespect" to President Robert Mugabe when debating in Parliament.Binga North MP Prince Dubeko Sibanda (MDC-T) in February argued that since Parliament had an oversight role over Mugabe's office, MPs can even ridicule him during contributions to debate.But Mudenda, in his ruling, said Mugabe's name could not be used "willy-nilly" and in disrespect. He said it was impermissible to use Mugabe's name irrelevantly and for the purpose of influencing the House in deliberations.He cited the British system where the use of the Queen's name in debate was unconstitutional and inconsistent with the independence of Parliament. News / National by Staff reporter Constantine Chiwenga Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) commander General's employment contract is about to expire or has already expired amid indications President Robert Mugabe will not renew it.The expiry of the contract would give Mugabe a golden opportunity to remove Chiwenga, a strong ally of VP Emerson Mnangagwa who is battling First Lady Grace Mugabe over the veteran's succession.Meanwhile, Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa has commended the security sector for remaining resilient despite the economic challenges.He said Zimbabwe had remained a peaceful country despite the current economic challenges such as unemployment, sanctions, liquidity crisis and food security among others.Chinamasa said Government had made policy interventions and reforms to address the challenges and ensure peace and security in the country.Chinamasa said economic development was key to the maintenance of national peace and security hence the efforts being made by Government to normalise the business environment and ensure people have access to basics. Sure, CCS students receive first-hand experience in working for and learning from an industry-leading shopper marketing agency. But Mars Agency also obtains immediate insights from the minds of the latest generation of college students. And all involved have gained an appreciation for the power of casual conversation. Internships are an opportunity for students to learn about their field and make connections in exchange for free labor. Right? Not according to the Detroit-based marketing agency Mars Agency , which has teamed up with the College for Creative Studies (CCS) in creating unique apprenticeship and class called Cross Stitch Creative.Sure, CCS students receive first-hand experience in working for and learning from an industry-leading shopper marketing agency. But Mars Agency also obtains immediate insights from the minds of the latest generation of college students. And all involved have gained an appreciation for the power of casual conversation. The five-year partnership between the college and firm has students working on real projects for real Mars clients while getting paid for their work. The part-academic, part-professional program operates out the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education , an educational complex and office building owned by CCS. The school's advertising department renovated parts of their floor, outfitting it to resemble a modern corporate office instead of a classroom. Couches and coffee tables now complement the student workstations in a more fluid work environment. Mars has also provided each of the program's ten students with notebooks, backpacks, and even laptops. The look on their faces when Mars walked in with laptops was quite a moment, says CCS advertising department chair Mark Zapico. For Mars, Cross Stitch Creative is a veritable millennial think tank for answering questions about young professionals. What are the students' opinions on the latest trends? What are their pop culture interests? How can the Michigan-based firm keep top talent in the community and not lose graduates to bigger markets like Chicago and New York? Mars is a major firms in shopper marketing whose clients include Colgate, Palmolive, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, and T-Mobile. It's only the first semester of the five-year long commitment and Mars clients are already excited about their partnership with one of the top five design schools in the nation, says Rob Rivenburgh, CEO of the Mars agency. This creates a buzz on a national level, he says. I travel quite a lot. When I tell people I'm from Detroit, the feedback isn't what it's historically been -- we're now getting a reputation as a creative hub. We're getting a buzz and we hope to accelerate it. Cross Stitch Creative got its start from a simple casual conversation in May of 2015. Rivenburgh and other Mars leaders attended an open house at CCS to take in students' work. That's when Rivenburgh and Zapico started a dialogue. Zapico says that he has a lot of conversations with potential partners and received his fair share of empty promises. This time was different. Casual conversations sometimes result in some pretty amazing things, says Zapico. We can use this to teach students to never underestimate the power of talking to people, building contacts, and networking. It's a long-term project, which isn't the norm -- Zapico assumed that maybe the offer would be for a semester or two. Instead, Rivenburgh envisioned something more ambitious. While the initial commitment is for five years, Rivenburgh hopes it lasts 25. With it being the first semester, the department and agency are still adapting the program to fit the needs of the students. While it functions as a paid internship, it's also a class -- just one in a full semester's worth for the students. Cross Stitch Creative might be a challenge, but it's an exciting one. This is the very beginnings of a unique way to use our department, says Zapico. We're pushing the boundaries of what we can do. This story is a part of a series of features on the impact of Detroit's anchor institutions. Support for this series is provided by a coalition of organizations, including Henry Ford Health System, Detroit Medical Center, Hudson-Webber Foundation, Wayne State University, College for Creative Studies, and Midtown Detroit Inc.MJ Galbraith is Model D's development news editor. Follow him on Twitter @mikegalbraith A small sampling from Motor City Guitar A customer tests amplifiers Anyone who played an instrument as a child remembers his or her first trip to the music store. Maybe it was a Guitar Center, the national chain that has become synonymous with music equipment. Or maybe it was a locally-owned store that pays more attention to customer service than making sales quotas. And maybe that store was Motor City Guitar in Waterford, a nondescript store -- aside from the two 30-foot Les Paul guitars flanking the entrance -- that is home to one of the most robust guitar and effects pedals inventories in the Midwest.Long-term devotion is the cornerstone of Motor City Guitar's longevity. Even at a time when the music business as a whole is flagging and other stores are closing left and right, people still support Motor City Guitar and its owners, Marty and Mellisa Minuis."Motor City Guitar is an anomaly in that it has been able to withstand every genre," says Sean Lynch, guitarist of local dream-pop outfit 800beloved who also mans the effects pedals counter at Motor City Guitar. "From late '80s metal to '90s grunge and alternative rock, to all the other offshoots in the break of the early 2000s. It doesn't really cater just to one genre or style of musician."Part of this stems from the Minuis' unique understanding of musicians' needs."I've played guitar since I was 10 years old, and Melissa played piano and clarinet since she was a kid as well, and guitar after we started dating in high school," says Minui. "I was one of those kids who lived, ate, and breathed guitar. I spent about 10 hours a day figuring out Jimmy Page and Randy Rhoads licks using a record player, old-school style."Marty and Melissa opened Motor City Guitar in 1988, around the time they got married. Both were going to school while working multiple part-time jobs. They wanted something steady, so they opened their own tiny store in the strip mall across the street from Waterford Mott High School. About half of the inventory was Minui's own personal collection."Things have changed a lot in the small business world since the 1980s," he says. "Back then we were able to open the store based on a $700 investment. That and years of long hours and hard work, of course. There are plenty of nights where we don't eat dinner until midnight and go to sleep at 4:00 a.m., but when you love what you do it makes that a lot easier."Passion is the foundation on which Motor City Guitar stands -- his enthusiasm for the instrument is irrepressible. "Like many guitar players, I remember how excited I was when I first learned 'Smoke on the Water' at my first lesson that was the greatest feeling in the world."And one he loves to see happen for new guitar players, again and again. Lynch says the Minuis regularly make concessions for customers as part of their good business practice."I'm able to help a young person get a guitar and use my own discretion if they dont have enough money or need to get the price a certain way," he says. "That's the experience right there, when you see some kid who thinks he doesn't have enough money then his or her eyes light up and you see the wheels spinning that is the big thing Marty and Melissa are interested in. That joy is what has kept them in this for this long."Lynch adds, "This is a good, honest place where you can get good, solid equipment, and you dont have to go through the ballet of commissioned salespeople who have quotas to make."Motor City Guitar carries tens of thousands of different items, everything from major brands that offer hundreds of models like Fender and Gibson to tiny independent manufacturers that make just one style of guitar pick. They also carry products that have only a handful of dealers in the United States -- some are small, independent American manufacturers, others are difficult to find imports.Inside the store you'll find guitars, basses, drums, P.A. and recording equipment, as well as more niche items like ukuleles, banjos, mandolins, and resonators. Lately, they've dabbled into synths and sound modules, and plan to open a vintage guitar department in the near future.But if you really want your mind blown at the proverbial 11 , the most impressive collections are the guitars and effects pedals. Motor City Guitar stocks several hundreds styles of guitars, and guitar pedals are one of their specialties. They stock at least 1,400 different models from over 100 different manufacturers. And you can sample these pedals to nail the exact sound you're searching for."People come in and are shocked by the volume of gear," says Lynch, whose domain is the effects pedals. "The pedal counter is an eye catcher to those who have never been to the store; it's like candy for musicians. It looks like a sea of effects pedals.""We try to stock lots of choices of anything you might be looking for," says Minui. "We've always made it our goal to offer a wide variety of products at our store, to cater to the individual tastes and preferences of all different kinds of players, because music is a really personal thing. It's definitely not a 'one-size-fits-all' kind of business."They're also very competitive and very customer-focused. They'll beat Internet and competitors' prices; they take trade-ins and offer layaway."We work with people however we can, and it's our goal to give people more than they expect when they come to Motor City," says Minui.Motor City Guitar is so much more than just a music store, both to the Minuis and to their loyal clientele. The Minuis treat everyone like family because they actually view everyone as family."The majority of our customers are regular people, like ourselves," says Minui. "We all love listening to music, playing music, and dreaming about the gear that helps us makes music. It's a very personal thing, and so is the music business, and it's really rewarding helping people express themselves in a way that only music can."In addition to all of this, the store also offers repair services and lessons for all levels of ability. They also recently launched their online store , where you can check out the inventory (though the online inventory is not yet complete), then come in and test out whatever you want.Order it online, if you must, but where is the fun in that?When asked what he and his wife are most proud of with their long-running independent music store, Minui says, "When we see someone leaving the store with a big smile on their face. Or when they stop and say that someone at our store helped them find just what they were hoping for -- that makes us feel really proud. Or when somebody plays us a song that they wrote, or hands us a recording of their music and says that we helped them with it somehow. That is a really great feeling."All photos by Doug Coombe. Googling teaching girls about bias" might ruin your day. The top results are not encouraging. When I was in school, I was encouraged to keep up with my math and science for two reasons. First, I was reminded that I was good at it. No brainer. I had test scores to back that up -- so it made sense. Second, I was told that a smart black girl like me should set herself up for success by choosing fields where bias would not hold me back. After all, when a math problem is right, its right. Right? Apparently not. Last fall there was a lot of But still we march on! We know better and were doing better. Sort of. A recent These are the calm seas and tyrannical typhoons I have been swimming in as we prepare to launch the Michigan Science Centers From now on, Im taking Step one. This will be the hardest part: Tell the girls bias against them exists. Thats why I titled my google search the way I did. I was looking for strategies to help with teaching girls about bias, but what I got was a kazillion hits on the different ways bias exists in the classroom. This is a tough conversation to have with our girls Step two. This is the head banger: Do not be distracted by thoughtfully crafted assertions of womens role in the bias against them -- or the suggestion that the issues are exaggerated. There are exceptions to every rule. Youre talking to one right now. But Im a bigger fan of trends than I am of exceptions and I wanna be a trend. This strategy takes practice. Try a quick scan of Step three. This is the funniest: Its not about the girlerization of STEM. Lets consider the science of tampons. (As a former P&G intern, I can tell you there is a lot of science and engineering in a tampon.) The top three producers of tampons worldwide are companies run by men and the patent of the modern tampon was held by a man. I think tampons are pretty darn girly. But is the science behind tampons girly? Its true that different innovations and different realms of STEM will appeal to different people, and there are some interesting gender trends in those appeals. And, yes, Im for a by any means necessary approach to move the dial on gender inequality in STEM. If that means I need a pink logo and a STEM day camp dedicated to the science of lipstick, fashion technology, or pediatrics, so be it. However, the assertion that STEM itself -- any aspect of it -- has a gender gets you right back to step one. These three things -- reality checks, deep thoughts, and a sense of humor -- are ingredients in the recipe for resilience. STEM is hard. On top of that, we have done a poor job of welcoming girls or people of color or 1st generation this or 3rd generation that into STEM careers and industries. Even so, I still believe every person can engage with and use STEM at a meaningful level. Weve been approaching the elements of resilience as assets in the journey toward a career in STEM, but, under these conditions, those characteristics are requirements, not simply assets. The good news: Resilience is not a personality type. Its a learned skill, a world-view, and a self-actualization tool. It can be taught. It can be practiced. It can be nurtured. I do not know if bias can ever be eliminated. But I am confident that, with strategic tools of resilience in our back pocket, it can be marginalized. Armune BioScience closed on a newly expanded Series A worth $4 million last week, and the life sciences firms has its eyes on even bigger things this year."We're on hunt for a $25 million Series B round," says David Esposito, president & CEO of Armune BioScience . "We have brought on Mavericks Capital out of Palo Alto to help us land it."The Kalamazoo-based company, it also has a laboratory in Ann Arbor, is developing an innovative, non-PSA blood test to aid in the early detection of prostate cancer. Apifiny went to market last year with Armune BioScience hope to sell 1,500 tests."We have done a little more than 5,000 billable tests," Esposito says. "That exceeded our expectations for the test for our first year on the market."That growth allowed Armune BioScience to expand its Series A by $1.5 million. It also prompted the company to hire another three people, all of them medical techs, for the Ann Arbor lab. The company now employs 10 salaried employees and another 10 consultants. The new infusion of seed capital is expected to add more staff this year."We'll probably go another five people in the laboratory by the end of the year," Esposito says. "Those will probably be medical techs and PhDs."Source: David Esposito, president & CEO of Armune BioScienceWriter: Jon Zemke News / Press Release by Vince Musewe - Secretary for Finance and Economic Affairs As the People's Democratic Party (PDP), we are rather surprised that Parliament has once more approved a further $98, 6 million loan from the Export Import Bank of China to fund TelOne's backbone network expansion.This comes as a closely related state enterprise, NetOne, is mired in corruption scams whose full extent we are still to learn.The argument that NetOne and TelOne are different organisations is trite and uninspiring. They have the same shareholder, the same patronage culture and fall under the same minister.This approach of treating state enterprises as separate entities is a silo mentality which continues to cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars due to duplication and the failure to look at the economy holistically.In our understanding, an infrastructure sharing agreement was being considered between these two companies in order to minimize inefficiency, avoid duplication and cut infrastructure development costs, which certainly makes business sense.The fact that finance minister, Patrick Chianamasa has given undertakings to manage the loan proceeds does not remove the fact that the ZANU(PF) looting machine which feeds of state loans will not come into effect to fuel the ZANU(PF) patronage cabal especially now as the economy titters on the brink of collapse.State enterprise loans continue to feed the secret economy of patronage and political favours.As PDP, our approach would be first to complete fixed asset audit of the two parastatals, determine to what extent the infrastructure can be shared and only then consider any further expansion and loans if necessary.The latest reports on the efficient use of infrastructure within Net One have indicated that the equipment there still has a significant shelf life anyway which could be shared with TelOne. But of course this has been over looked as inconvenient.Our other problem is that our parliamentarians are not doing enough investigations and research before they approve things and ZANU (PF) bulldozes issues while lying that this time they will behave differently.They will not because accountability and transparency are not in their DNA.The saddest reality is that this loan is a twenty year loan. Given the acceleration of technological changes, especially in telecommunications, we are likely to still be paying for equipment which will most likely be obsolete in the next five years or so.As PDP, our view is that all state enterprises must all first be subject to forensic audits before getting any new loans are approved. In addition, we will need to change the management culture and the continuing fraud that is happening within them. We also need fresh nonpartisan professionals to run them in the best interests of the country.Only until we have dismantled this ZANU (PF) looting machine can we begin to see real development which benefits ordinary citizens. Exxodus Pictures made a name for itself when it premiered its first feature-length film, " Jinn ," a couple years ago. Since then, the 6-year old firm has expanded into several other areas, including developing television commercials and handling 3D modeling and animation work for the auto industry."A lot of our business comes from the commercial side," says Ajmal Zaher, co-founder & owner of Exxodus Pictures The downtown Detroit-based firm, whose offices are in [email protected] Building, has done a lot of regional commercial work. Its largest customer for television commercials, however, is One Reverse Mortgage , for which Exxodus Pictures handles all of its national spots.Exxodus Pictures has also taken on work creating computer graphics for industrial clients. That includes General Motors, which hired Exxodus Pictures to do 3D modeling and animation work.Even though Exxodus Pictures has diversified its revenue streams, it still hasnt stopped making movies. The firm received $1.3 million in tax incentives from the state of Michigan to film three made-in-Michigan movies last year. One such film is "My Soul to Keep," which follows 9-year old Eli Braverman, who is terrified of his basement and the evil that might lurk there."Remember when you were little and thought there was something living in your basement?" Zaher says. "This movie explores that."Exxodus Pictures and its core team of five people -- which staffs much more when a film is in production -- has finished shooting "My Soul to Keep" and is in the process of editing it. Zaher expects to release the movie in late 2016 or early 2017. For the fourth straight year, the Knight Foundation will be awarding up to $3 million in grants to Detroit artists. The submission period begins today, April 4, and runs through May 2. The Knight Arts Challenge has a broad concept, and is "open to anyone with an idea for engaging and enriching Detroit through the arts." The application is also simple. All you need to do is distill your project idea into 150 words and follow these three guidelines: 1) The idea must be about the arts. 2) The project must take place in or benefit Detroit. 3) The grant recipients must find funds to match Knights commitment.Two of the 170 prior winners include Hardcore Detroit, which explored the 70s Detroit dance craze in a documentary, and Detroit Fiber Works , a gallery and learning space that claims to be the only fiber arts studio in Detroit.Almost everywhere you go in Detroit, you see Knight Arts Challenge winners inspiring and engaging our city, said Katy Locker, Detroit program director for Knight Foundation, in a press release. Whats next? We cant wait to see what Detroit comes up with.The Knight Foundation will host two free community events on April 11 at the MOCAD and April 15 at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. The events are meant to support potential applicants, with past challenge winners and Knight Foundation arts program director Bahia Ramos in attendance.To submit your application to the challenge, click here The team at PreDxion Bio isn't just trying to come up with new technology to help sick people. It's trying to help really really sick people. The University of Michigan spinoff is in the early stages of developing a diagnostic device to help create custom diagnosis. The technology is coming from U-M's Pediatric Critical Care Precision Laboratory."One of the main thrusts of our lab is to develop new diagnostic tools to treat these really sick patients," says Walker McHugh, co-founder of PreDxion Bio and a biomedical engineering graduate student at the University of Michigan. He is launching the startup with Dr. Timothy Cornell, a physician at U-M, and Caroline Landau, an MBA student at U-M's Ross School of Business PreDxion Bio's technology is a patent-pending diagnostic device that gives doctors the information they need to precisely tailor treatments to a specific patient's immune response. The idea is to make precision care more available to people in intensive care.The team has created a prototype and is currently entering it into a variety of high-profile business plan competitions. It is one of two U-M startups to make it to the Rice Business Plan Competition next week where it will compete for $1 million in prizes.The company plans to use any winnings from business plan competitions and any seed capital it can raise to develop a next generation version of its technology that will be manufacturing grade. It hopes to then submit it for clinical trials that will eventually lead to FDA approval in 3-5 years. In the meantime PreDxion Bio's team is looking for interested parties to help it get to the next step."We're talking with strategic partners," McHugh says.Source: Walker McHugh and Caroline Landau, co-founders of PreDxion BioWriter: Jon Zemke News / Press Release by Staff Reporter ZAPU notes with sadness the level of unprofessional journalism that was displayed by the Chronicle edition of Wednesday 06 April 2016, in which its reporter Nduduzo Tshuma openly and unashamedly displayed gross disregard of ethical journalism practice both by himself and the Chronicle.It was shocking to us as ZAPU that after the President Dr Dabengwa gave a commemoration lecture on the late ZPRA General Lookout Masuku on Tuesday 05 April 2016, Tshuma only chose to hear of a name that was never mentioned in the whole lecture and coming up with a story seeking to buttress Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko's war credentials and history.It is however necessary at this juncture for ZAPU to set the record straight about this whole issue and Vice President Mphoko's status according to ZAPU.To begin with, the President Dr Dabengwa, without giving any names, mentioned that two people were left behind in Mozambique when ZIPA collapsed. One was responsible for Logistics while the other was responsible for Reconnaissance in the Gonarezhou and Malipati areas.Phelekezela Mphoko, whose nom-de-guerre was Report and Tommy Ndebele, were the two ZPRA fighters who were left behind in Mozambique, with each given assignments according to their deployment.Mphokos assignment, as Chief of Logistics at that time, was to await the delivery of arms from East Germany, arms and equipment which had been given to ZIPA to be split between the two armed forces.He was supposed to get the ZPRA Forces allocation of the weapons and ensure their safe passage for deployment in the Gonarezhou Park through to Malipati.It is hereby categorically stated that Mphoko was supposed and expected to return to Zambia at the end of his one assignment and make a report to his superiors, which he never did.ZPRA has no idea what became of the weapons and equipment he was assigned to take care of when he was left behind in Mozambique.ZPRA and ZAPU never saw or heard from him since then only for him to resurface in 1980 after the country attained independence, having been last with ZPRA in 1976.It might be of interest to the reporter to note that Mphoko remained in Mozambique for only one assignment and a sane person will know it doesn't take over four years to only receive a single consignment of weapons during a war of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia proportions.Tommy Ndebele, responsible for Reconnaissance did not see much of his assignment as he disappeared in combat and ZAPU believes he was killed in his line of duty, suspectedly by ZANLA Forces who did not want him to penetrate the areas he was assigned to, especially the Malipati front.It then becomes interesting as to how a trained journalist decides to reduce a memorial lecture of a decorated cadre and national hero of Mafela's statue into one story that is depictive of the circus currently obtaining in ZANU PF.Instead of reporting on the event the reporter sought to drag the nation into filthy succession dogfights in fractured ZANU PF and seek to use Dr Dabengwa's name to clean the uncleanable and improve Mphoko's image and dubious war credentials.The only correct and factual part of Nduduzo Tshuma's story is when he mentions that Dr Dabengwa was speaking at the memorial lecture to commemorate the death of General Lookout Masuku.The nation was interested in the Lookout Masuku Legacy and contribution to the country's freedom yet Tshuma and the Chronicle decided to turn the whole event into some bootlicking frenzy.It must be clearly understood that Dr Dabengwa was highly diplomatic and avoided the Mphoko issue on the day as he concentrated on the important business of the day. It then boggles the mind as to where this reporter and Chronicle got Mphoko's name as it was never mentioned by The President Dr Dabengwa.ZAPU therefore urges the reporter and the Chronicle to go back to journalism basics and uphold ethical practice as their role is to inform, not misinform.While it is public knowledge that the Chronicle is deeply involved in the current succession wars in the fractured ZANU PF, it is also important for the Chronicle to revert to its constitutional mandate of informing the public.It goes without saying that the information they give out must always be factual all the time irrespective of who is being covered. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The California Democratic primary is up for grabs, as Hillary Clinton has watched her onetime 63-point lead in the polls shrink to six points over Sen. Bernie Sanders, according to a Field Poll released Friday. Clinton leads Sanders 47 percent to 41 percent among likely voters in the June 7 primary, with 12 percent undecided. Voters who do not state a party preference are allowed to vote in the Democratic primary, which is good news for Sanders, as unaffiliated voters in other states have been supportive. In California, nonpartisans support Sanders 49 percent to 39 percent for Clinton. John Blanchard / The Chronicle The survey was brimming with red flags for Clinton, who has lost six of the last seven Democratic primary and caucus contests and has raised less money than Sanders the past three months. While Clinton has a large lead in the number of delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination, Sanders has enough money to continue running a robust campaign through the California primary. Not only has Clintons lead shrunk dramatically among voters, her personal image is viewed unfavorably by a majority of all voters in deep-blue California. According to Field, 47 percent of registered California voters view Clinton positively, 48 percent negatively. Among those who do not state a party preference, 50 percent view her negatively. Sanders seen favorably Meanwhile, 55 percent of all California voters view Sanders favorably, 35 percent unfavorably. Among those without a party preference, 63 percent view the Vermont senator favorably. John Blanchard / The Chronicle The opinion of nonpartisan voters is interesting because it tells you which way the wind is blowing, devoid of partisan politics, said Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo. Contrast (Clintons favorability rating) with Sanders, who is off the charts. It is unusual for a high-profile Democrat, particularly one who has raised millions of dollars in the state like Clinton has, to have an unfavorable image rating in left-leaning California, where there are no statewide elected Republicans, the Legislature is firmly in Democratic control and her husband won the state in the general presidential election twice. Plus, Clinton won the 2008 California Democratic primary over then-Sen. Barack Obama by nine points. Clintons big haul in state Plus, Clinton has raised nearly $24 million in California through February, according to InsideGov.com more than any other candidate. For perspective, 49 percent of registered voters saw former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in a negative light in May 2001 two years before he was recalled while 44 percent had a positive view of him. Six months before the recall, 67 percent of all California likely voters had a negative impression of Davis, according to Field polls taken at the time. Fridays Field Poll contained other ominous signs for Clinton: Latino voters are leaving Clinton: In October, 52 percent of Latino voters supported Clinton, compared with 22 percent for Sanders. Now that margin has shrunk to 49 percent to 42 percent. The difference cuts along generational lines. Latinos younger than 40 overwhelmingly back Sanders, while those over 40 are in Clintons camp. Something unusual is going on in the Latino community, DiCamillo said. Youre seeing a reappraisal of Clinton vis-a-vis Sanders. Now it is up for grabs. Clintons support isnt growing: Much like a well-known incumbent, Clintons 47 percent support level has been virtually unchanged in Fields readings since October, while Sanders has increased six points over that time. Its not that shes reached a ceiling, DiCamillo said, pointing out that 12 percent of the respondents were still undecided. They will eventually come home somewhere. Its about making the final sale now. Its not about the money: While Sanders has centered his candidacy on income disparity, Clinton holds a slight lead (46 percent to 45 percent) among voters who make less than $60,000 and those who earn between $60,000 and $100,000 (46 percent to 45 percent). She holds a wide lead (51 percent to 39 percent) among those pulling down more than $100,000. Southern California likes Clinton better, but elsewhere? More than half (51 percent) of Los Angeles Democratic primary voters prefer Clinton, but the race is a dead heat in Northern California (49 percent to 46 percent in Clintons favor), which Field defines as turf stretching from the Oregon border south through Monterey County. Clinton dominates in the Central Valley. Younger voters are still feeling the Bern: Field found that 77 percent of voters younger than 30 preferred the Vermont senator, 56 percent of those 31 to 39 years old. Clinton dominated among those 40 and over. This pattern has been consistent nationwide. Men are for Bernie, women are for Hillary. Sort of: While men overall preferred Sanders (48 to 40 percent) and women backed Clinton (53 to 36 percent), those numbers varied strongly by age group. Women under 40 supported Sanders, while a majority of men over 40 were in Clintons camp. The results were based on a survey of 1,400 registered California voters, including 584 who are considered likely to vote in the June 7 presidential primary. The margin of error is 3.5 percentage points. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A 37-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to starting the 2014 King Fire, which burned a dozen homes and nearly 100,000 acres east of Placerville in the central Sierra. The case against Wayne Allen Huntsman of Pollock Pines (El Dorado County) was nailed down in part because of a selfie video that Huntsman made at the fires origin, the El Dorado County district attorneys office said Friday. In the video, recorded Sept. 13, 2014, Huntsman is standing in a forested area between two separately lit blazes, which prosecutors construed as a sign that the fire was intentionally set. Although Huntsman says on his video, Im stuck in the middle, he smiles and does not appear to be fearing for his safety. A retired firefighter picked up Huntsman after the blaze began. He saw Huntsmans selfie and recorded it on his own phone, then turned over his video to law enforcement officials, who arrested Huntsman four days later. Huntsman was also caught on surveillance video, after starting the fire, stealing liquor from a local grocery store, prosecutors said. The fast-moving inferno burned for nearly a month across 97,717 acres of mostly mountainous terrain along Highway 50 in the El Dorado National Forest. Thousands were forced to evacuate. Damages were estimated in the tens of millions. Huntsman is originally from the Santa Cruz area, but he moved to Pollock Pines in June 2013 for work, family members told The Chronicle. He was doing odd jobs, mostly home remodeling and landscaping, and living with his girlfriend. Huntsman has a criminal record that includes convictions for assault with a deadly weapon and grand theft in Santa Cruz County in 1997, public records show. None of his earlier crimes related to arson. Superior Court Judge Daniel Proud sentenced Huntsman to the maximum allowed for three counts of arson with multiple enhancements for causing injury to firefighters and destroying structures, according to the district attorneys office. Huntsman was also ordered to pay $60 million in restitution. Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press Be prepared for traffic snarls in San Francisco on Friday and Saturday as President Obama comes to town for fundraisers. Much as has been the case in the past, only those able to write a huge check will be able to see the president he wont be making any public appearances. The beverage industry challenged San Franciscos proposed warning label on ads for sugary drinks that they increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and tooth decay in federal court Thursday, arguing that the city is unfairly and illegally implying that sodas are more health-damaging than cheeseburgers or pizzas. By singling out one product, the city is telling consumers that theres something special about beverages with added sugar, something more dangerous, Richard Bress, a lawyer for the American Beverage Association, told a federal judge. Its like having an ad (warning) on Toyotas, saying Toyotas contribute to fatal crashes. The only scientific consensus, Bress said, is that the dangers are enhanced by consuming too many calories, whether through sodas, cheeseburgers or apple juice. Requiring companies to devote 20 percent of their ad space to the citys misleading message violates their free-speech rights and would force them to limit their advertising in San Francisco, he said. More for you Can Chipotle Drink Its Way to a Turnaround? The beverage association, joined by the California Retailers Association and the California State Outdoor Advertising Association, is seeking an injunction to block enforcement of the label requirement, which was unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors in June and is scheduled to take effect July 25. It would be the first such law in the nation. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen asked probing questions of both sides during an 80-minute hearing and did not say how he would rule. But he seemed skeptical of some of Bress argument, asking the lawyer why the warnings were any different than those the federal government requires for cigarettes, or for medications with dangerous side effects. Theres no dispute that cigarettes increase the risk of lung cancer, Bress replied, but no reliable evidence that sugared beverages are more hazardous than other sources of calories. But Chen said the government might be entitled to single out high-calorie products like sodas that people are more susceptible to, are more enticing, are more easily available. Deputy City Attorney Jeremy Goldman told Chen the city isnt suggesting that sugary drinks are uniquely dangerous, but has good reasons for singling them out a single 20-ounce can of soda, he said, contains more sugar than the Food and Drug Administration recommends consuming in a day. Pressed by Chen, Goldman denied that the city would be chilling advertisers free speech. The hearing comes as supporters of a one-cent-per-ounce tax on sugared drinks are gathering signatures to place the measure on the November ballot in San Francisco. An earlier two-cent tax to fund health programs won 55.6 percent of the vote in 2014 but fell short of the needed two-thirds majority. The new measure would need only a majority vote because the money would go to the citys general fund. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko The auto theft suspect who was beaten in a San Francisco alley by two Alameda County sheriffs deputies was arrested earlier this year after federal agents seized methamphetamine and a gun during a raid on his Visitacion Valley residence, court records show. In court documents unsealed Friday, the FBI agents said Stanislav Petrov was arrested on March 8 after a court-ordered search of his residence on Teddy Avenue was conducted in connection with a cyber crime investigation unrelated to Petrov. During the search, the agents seized 4 ounces of methamphetamine, a small amount of heroin along with other drugs, and a semiautomatic pistol in a room where they found Petrov naked and in bed with a woman, the documents show. He was arrested on suspicion of drug possession, drug trafficking and being a felon in possession of a gun. The documents were released a week after Petrov was taken into custody again during another FBI raid on the Teddy Avenue home hours after a man, Christopher Perez-Melo, 27, was shot multiple times while standing in front of the residence. Perez-Melo later died. In the unsealed complaint, FBI agents described Petrov as a convicted felon and career criminal ... convicted of 5 felonies and 3 misdemeanors. The agents listed his police record and said he is also associated with the Norteno gang and has a continuous disregard for the law and public safety (that) makes him a danger. Petrov pleaded not guilty Friday in federal court in San Francisco at a brief appearance during which he was led into the courtroom by deputies and exchanged smiles with his mother, Olga, who was watching from the second row. Asked how her son was holding up, she shrugged and said: Hes in jail. On Nov. 12, Petrov was arrested and beaten with batons by two Alameda County sheriffs deputies in a San Francisco alley. The deputies chased Petrov to San Francisco from Castro Valley after he allegedly used a stolen Mercedes-Benz to ram two deputies patrol cars before leading the deputies on a chase over the Bay Bridge that ended with Petrov crashing the car. Petrov got out of the stolen car and ran, but Deputies Luis Santamaria and Paul Wieber chased him down on Stevenson Street in the Mission District and beat him with their batons, breaking his hand and arm and causing head injuries. The incident was captured on a surveillance camera and widely viewed on social media. Santamaria and Wieber have been placed on administrative leave while the incident is investigated by the San Francisco Police Department and the San Francisco district attorney. Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern, who launched an internal probe of the incident, later said that Wieber and Santamaria were allowed to revise their original reports alongside their attorneys after watching the video footage. Petrovs court-appointed attorney, William Osterhoudt, said Friday that Petrovs beating caused him great pain and distress but did not comment on whether the arrests on March 8 and last week were attempts to discredit his client. Petrovs most recent arrest came just days after his civil attorney, Michael Haddad, filed a claim against Alameda County, alleging the deputies who beat him used excessive force. The claim, a legal precursor to a lawsuit, also contends that a third deputy stole a gold chain and medallion and cash from Petrov and gave it to some homeless witnesses to buy their silence. Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sfubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF More than a quarter of San Francisco homes listed as vacation getaways on Airbnb violate the citys 90-day annual limit on such rentals, while the vast majority of Airbnb hosts have yet to register their properties, flouting a law enacted last year, according to a report released late Thursday by the San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analysts Office. About 1,055 homes, or 26 percent of all entire-home listings, are rented for more than than 90 days a year, exceeding a cap on such unhosted rentals designed to prevent turning houses into full-time hotels, the report says. Those homes, controlled by 969 unique hosts, average an occupancy rate of 200 nights a year, it said. The report also looked at the well-known issue that the vast majority of Airbnb hosts have ignored: a city registration requirement that took effect in February 2014. Airbnb says it had 7,046 unique hosts as of mid-March. San Francisco has received 1,647 registration applications and some of those may be from hosts on other sites like FlipKey or HomeAway/VRBO. This damning report makes it clear that it would be irrational to rely on Airbnb and the industry to self-regulate, said Supervisor David Campos, who asked city analysts to crunch the numbers. We need to amend the law to make sure there is proper implementatio n. Possible remedies He declined to detail how the Board of Supervisors might modify the law, but its new progressive majority is likely to pass stricter rules than its predecessors. The report offered some suggestions on tougher laws, such as requiring Airbnb and other platforms to ban listings unless they have a registration number, and requiring them to provide more information to the city about possible violat ors. Last week Airbnb said it would start to investigate and remove people running illegal hotels in San Francisco homes. The probes initial focus, Airbnb said, is people with multiple whole-home listings a sign that they may not be legal residents of the home being rented. Its report said that about 1,149 whole-home listings are controlled by hosts who rent more than one home, with about 671 of those homes appearing particularly suspicious. People with multiple listings are just one sliver of the bad actors, a small part of a much larger problem, Campos said. Airbnb said the new report mischaracterizes some information, noting that some listings billed as entire homes may be master-bedroom suites with private entrances, which are legal to rent. Others may be entire homes rented for spans of 30 or more days at a time, which is also legal. Airbnb is already working to help meet the citys goal of fighting illegal hotels and we are taking action by removing unwelcome listings from our platform, releasing data and cracking down on commercial operators, the company said in a statement. Airbnbs report last week omitted the red-flag issue of how many whole homes are rented for more than 90 days a year. Since it controls calendars and payments for all listings, it could easily produce the data. How city got its figures The San Francisco city report relied on a roundabout way to deduce how often homes were rented. First, it used automated tools to extract listings data from Airbnbs website on Nov. 1, 2015. Then it used the number of reviews per property to estimate how often each property was rented. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has said that 72 percent of guests leave reviews, while San Francisco Travel says home-stay guests average 5.1 nights. City analysts applied these two factors to the number of reviews to estimate how many nights each listing was rented. While San Francisco startup Airbnb, now worth some $25.5 billion with 2 million listings worldwide, is the most popular venue for vacation rentals, its not the only one. Expedias HomeAway/VRBO has about 1,774 San Francisco listings while TripAdvisors FlipKey has 896, the report said, without delving into behavior on those platforms. It did suggest that the city should try to get those sites to remit San Franciscos 14 percent hotel tax, something Airbnb has been doing since mid-2014. San Franciscos new Office of Short Term Rentals is hamstrung in enforcing the law because Airbnb and other platforms dont share information or sufficiently police their websites, the report said. The (city enforcers) dont know the location of the businesses they are in charge of regulating or the names of the people running them, said the reports main author, Fred Brousseau, director of policy analysis in the Budget and Legislative Analysts Office. That puts them at a real disadvantage in terms of enforcement. The report illuminates enforcements limitations, he said. The fact that there are that many hosts exceeding the 90-day cap (on whole-home rentals) and the city cant identify them in any systematic way or get them to stop is an indication that the office doesnt have all the tools at its disposal that it needs, he said. Airbnb, hosts and even the report all said the current registration process is flawed. San Francisco is asking hosts to apply for multiple permits, fill out dozens of pages of paperwork and tell the city how many spoons they have in their home, said Airbnb, referring to a recent requirement that San Francisco vacation-rental hosts report and pay taxes on all the furnishings in their homes. Simplify process The report suggested streamlining registrations and letting hosts register online without having to appear in person. Airbnb and its ilk stir controversy because of concerns that lucrative vacation rentals siphon off badly needed housing. The company argues that many other factors are in play, such as long-standing city policies that limited new construction. Both sides of the debate say they want to help middle-income people. Most San Francisco hosts are middle-class people who rent to travelers 48 days a year for supplemental income that helps them afford spiraling costs, Airbnb said. Airbnb and short-term rentals did not create the housing crisis, but they are definitely exacerbating it, Campos said. When you have housing that could go to middle-income or working-class people but is taken off the market, things are made much worse. Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate California Sen. Dianne Feinstein confirmed Friday she is seeking new legislation to compel technology companies to assist government agencies in gaining access to encrypted technology, opening a new front in a continuing battle over the issue. A leaked draft of the legislation co-sponsored by Feinstein appeared online as the Department of Justice renewed its efforts to obtain access to an iPhone in a Brooklyn drug-dealing case and an Apple executive accused the government of attempting to expand its powers beyond what the law allows. The rapid-fire series of events shows how the debate over encryption the technology that safeguards government secrets, online bank transactions, medical records, and an increasing swath of personal communications is moving to a new stage, with battle lines more clearly drawn than before. Feinstein represents a faction in the government and law enforcement who are seeking to limit the use of encryption and force companies to build products with back doors that law enforcement agents can access. Technology companies, alarmed by revelations of government spying and concerned that consumers will distrust them and stop using their products, want to include encryption tools that even company officials and engineers cant break. That way, even if served with a court order, they would not be able to decode and turn over user data. Bill draft gets leaked Feinsteins office confirmed to The Chronicle Friday that the senator was working with Sen. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, on legislation to address encryption. The leaked draft called the bill the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016. All providers of communications services and products (including software) should protect the privacy of United States persons through implementation of appropriate data security and still respect the rules of law and comply with all legal requirements and court orders, reads the draft, which was posted online Thursday by The Hill reporter Cory Bennett. In a joint statement, Burr and Feinstein said the bill remains a discussion draft, and would not comment on the specific language of the leaked document. However, the underlying goal is simple: when there's a court order to render technical assistance to law enforcement or provide decrypted information, that court order is carried out, the senators said. No individual or company is above the law. Soliciting input now Feinstein and Burr said they were still soliciting input from stakeholders and hope to have final language ready soon. Such controversial legislation is highly unlikely to pass the Senate during an election year. Reuters reported Thursday that White House sources said the legislation would also lack administration support. Reuters pointed to President Obamas remarks last month suggesting the government should have access to encrypted information, but also to White House press secretary Josh Earnests remarks saying he was skeptical of legislative attempts to solve the problem. The American Civil Liberties Union called the Feinstein-Burr bill a clear threat to everyones privacy and security ... that ignores economic, security, and technical reality. Easy prey for bad actors Linda Moore, president and CEO of TechNet, a group representing industry executives, said the bill could establish standards that force companies to eliminate security features that may be exploited by others who do not share law enforcements good intentions. Moore warned that should it pass, common transactions will become easy prey for bad actors and cause customers everywhere to lose faith in the trustworthiness of American products and choose alternatives that dont have the same vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, on Friday morning, Department of Justice lawyers sent a letter to Eastern District of New York Judge Margo K. Brodie stating that the FBI continued to be unable to break into a drug dealers iPhone. In late February, U.S. Magistrate James Orenstein of Brooklyn denied the Justice Departments original request to compel Apple to assist the FBI in accessing data on the phone, saying that the government lacked legal authority to do so. The wording of the leaked legislation suggests that its authors are trying to find a way to give law-enforcement agencies legal room to maneuver in such cases. In March, after the FBI announced it had found a way to unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, Apple asked the Brooklyn court to postpone a hearing on the order. Company lawyers argued that the outcome of that case would affect the Brooklyn case. In this case, we still need Apples help in accessing the data, which they have done with little effort in at least 70 other cases when presented with court orders for comparable phones, Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said. This week, FBI Director James Comey made a speech at Kenyon College where he said that the scope of the technique used on the San Bernardino shooters iPhone was limited. Various iPhone models have different hardware features and run different versions of Apples mobile operating system. Techniques used to defeat Apples protections often depend on a devices specific configurations and cant be applied across the board. In the San Bernardino case, for example, the iPhone was a 5C and the Brooklyn phone was a 5S, a newer model. Yet the Brooklyn phone was running an older operating system. For law-enforcement agents, dealing with all these complexities is just part of the challenge. As Comey put it, the San Bernardino phone was a bit of a technological corner case. The world is moving on to (iPhone) 6s. This (technique) doesn't work in 6s, it doesn't work in a 5S, and so we have a tool that works on a narrow slice of phones. Setting a precedent An Apple executive who spoke to reporters on a conference call Friday morning on the condition that he not be named, said the Department of Justice was trying to set a precedent in the Brooklyn case. There reportedly are hundreds of iPhones as well as other models of smartphones held as evidence in cases where law-enforcement officials have said they cant access data on the devices. Apple is expected to file a brief in the Brooklyn case on Thursday. Sean Sposito and Carolyn Lochhead are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: ssposito@sfchronicle.com clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @seansposito @carolynlochhead A former Bay Area investment adviser has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for using a sham hedge fund to defraud investors and banks out of millions of dollars. James Murray, 47, of Larkspur was convicted by a San Francisco jury in October of 23 felony charges of wire fraud, money laundering and identity theft, as well as criminal contempt of court. Murray established a company called Market Neutral Trading as a purported hedge fund. Prosecutors said he promoted himself to investors with a falsified resume, then issued fake reports about the funds performance and a nonexistent audit by an accounting firm. Prosecutors assessed the loss at $2.5 million and said the victims included his ex-wife and a longtime friend. Murray also was convicted of obtaining 50,000 shares of Netflix stock for a transaction in 2012 by falsely telling a bank that Market Neutral Trading had $5 million to invest. In another incident, he used credit cards to process a series of sham transactions that he then reversed and pocketed the money, costing credit card companies more than $540,000, prosecutors said. The contempt charge was based on Murrays violations of pretrial orders by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen that prohibited him from accessing the Internet or contacting witnesses. Prosecutors said Murray obtained a computer, used it to go online and communicate with a witness, then hid the computer above ceiling tiles in the office of his former lawyer, where officers found it in a search. Prosecutors said the total losses amounted to $7 million. Defense lawyer Alan Dressler said in a court filing that the actual losses were far less and that the government had recovered $1.8 million from an account of Market Neutral Trading. Murrays motive was not enriching himself, but making money for both himself and his investors, said Dressler, who argued for a prison sentence of three years and five months. Prosecutors called for a sentence of more than 25 years, describing Murray as an itinerant fraudster and unrepentant liar who had shown a willingness to victimize anyone and everyone he encounters. Chen imposed the 15-year sentence on Wednesday. San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy said Thursday that city jail officials should be allowed to turn over some serious criminal offenders to federal immigration agents a proposal she put forth at a public hearing during which Supervisor John Avalos introduced legislation seeking to make sure there is almost no such cooperation. Avalos measure, which was forwarded by the supervisors public safety committee to the full board, would further tighten the citys sanctuary-city laws, which are cherished by advocates for immigrants but have drawn controversy nationally. The measure would prohibit the jail from telling immigration agents who want to deport a person when he or she will be released from local custody, except in very limited circumstances. But Hennessy set up the parameters of a coming debate, saying, A blanket policy of no notification is not consistent with my responsibility to provide public safety. San Franciscos Sanctuary City and Due Process for All ordinance now bars the city from holding jail inmates flagged by immigration agents for hours or days past their release date, but it does not specifically outlaw prerelease notifications which have been embraced by some other counties. Avalos legislation would forbid Hennessys agency from making such notifications. Under Hennessys proposal, her department would still not work with immigration agents in most cases, but would make an exception if a person has a violent or serious felony conviction in the past seven years or three or more lesser felonies arising from different events in the past five years. The citys sanctuary-city law drew attention last year after a man wanted for deportation by federal authorities was instead released from San Francisco jail and was then accused of killing a woman on Pier 14 on the Embarcadero. Then-Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said the sanctuary law restricted his office from turning the inmate over, but his critics, including Mayor Ed Lee, said he could have simply picked up the phone, called immigration agents and told them to pick up the accused killer, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, before his release. However, a month earlier, Mirkarimi had issued a department memo banning all communication with immigration agents seeking to deport jailed suspects absent a warrant or court order. I was elected by the people of San Francisco, and one of the reasons I was elected was a little bit because of this issue, Hennessy said during Thursdays committee hearing. I think I am within my rights as a state constitutional officer to use my discretion in these areas and do this in a way that is respectful and responsible. Supervisor David Campos, a committee member, assailed the comment. San Franciscans did not vote for you because they are against sanctuary, Campos said. If you believe that, you are going to have a very interesting time in City Hall. The reason you won was because you were running against Ross Mirkarimi, and Ross Mirkarimi was his own worst enemy. Christine Falvey, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said in a statement that he supports San Franciscos sanctuary law, as well as Hennessys thoughtful approach to it, as she develops a plan. The mayor believes that state law, common sense and the voters of San Francisco have empowered this sheriff to exercise her discretion on when to notify (immigration) of a person with a criminal record in custody and that this limited discretion is beneficial and still supports our Sanctuary City status, Falvey said. Immigration advocates at Thursdays hearing expressed dismay over Hennessys plan, which they saw as a slippery slope to more deportations. The purpose of the law, they said, was to foster trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement. Among those testifying at the hearing was Pedro Figueroa-Zarceno, a San Francisco car-theft victim who was jailed by federal immigration authorities for two months after he sought help from city police and was turned over. During the hearing, Hennessy and San Francisco police Capt. Jack Hart apologized to Figueroa-Zarceno for his ordeal, which they said had been mishandled. Hennessy said after the hearing that her proposal is a work in progress. After conducting a review of 50 recent federal requests for notifications, she said, she found that not a single one fit her proposals criteria. Let me be clear: the vast majority of the undocumented immigrants and immigrants in our community are law-abiding, she said. Theres no doubt about that. The fact is what Im trying to do is target the few violent criminals that may not be a part of the community, may not be working toward rehabilitation, who come to our attention through a request for notification. Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo Buster Posey has a one-issue platform in this election year: He wants to get Hunter Pence into the All-Star Game Home Run Derby. Ive watched his batting practice and he hits balls as far as anybody, Posey said after Pence blasted an eighth-inning grand slam in Thursdays 12-6 win against the Dodgers. How would the right fielder feel about a Draft Pence movement? Hes on board, Posey said. Pences attack on a hanging Pedro Baez slider was a good sign for the Giants, as Pence has looked the most off among the regulars over the first four games. He hit his fifth career slam after pinch-hitter Gregor Blanco, Angel Pagan, Denard Span and Joe Panik all singled against lefty J.P. Howell, who departed without retiring a hitter. The grand slam was nice, Pence said, but these things dont happen without a lot of good at-bats in front of you. Remembering 2: The Giants remembered the late Jim Davenport and Monte Irvin in a pregame ceremony, starting with tributes to each on the video board. The Davenport family, joined by all four homegrown starting infielders, unveiled a third-base bag emblazoned with Davenports No. 12. Minutes later, Matt Duffy made a nifty backhand stop near that bag on a Yasiel Puig hopper to start a double play that ended the first inning. Irvins daughters, Patricia and Pamela, threw ceremonial first pitches. Cain next: Matt Cain said he feels his arm is ready for his 2016 debut Friday night despite a two-week setback in spring training after surgery to remove a cyst. Its going to be a packed house against the Dodgers. That makes it even more fun, Cain said. Briefly: Pences grand slam trumped a two-run Joc Pederson homer off Sergio Romo in the eighth. ... Adrian Gonzalez doubled twice off Jake Peavy. One hit the top of the wall in center, the other barely eluded Pagans leap near the wall in left. ... The Giants 12 runs were their most in a home opener since 1999 against San Diego. ... The Giants are 13-4 in home openers at AT&T Park. Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. On deck Friday vs. Dodgers 7:15 p.m. Channel: 11 Stripling (0-0) vs. Cain (2-4) Saturday vs. Dodgers 1:05 p.m. CSNBA, FS1 Kershaw (1-0 in 2016) vs. Bumgarner (1-0) Sunday vs. Dodgers 1:05 p.m. CSNBA Kazmir (1-0) vs. Cueto (1-0) Leading off Cain arrives: Matt Cain makes his 2016 AT&T Park and season debut Friday night. Last year, Cain did not pitch at AT&T until July 7, when he blanked the Mets for six innings in a 3-0 victory. Henry Schulman Opinion / Blogs Qn. ANSWERS ON WAYS USED BY YAHWEH TO COMMUNICATE WITH HIS PROPHETS HOW ISRAEL PROPHETS DELIVERED THEIR MESSAGES ZIMBABWEAN CONTEXT N.B HOW DO ZIMBABWEAN PROPHETS DELIVER THEIR MESSAGES Conclusion Examine ways which yahweh used to communicate with his prophets and how prophets delivered their messages in relation to Zimbabwean context?(25)- The above question requires one to understand the Key words before attempting it. Firstly, let's break the question.- We break the question by attempting to answer the following fundamental questions.- What is a prophet?- Who is Yahweh?- What is to communicate?- What are the ways?-Prophet is someone who communicate the will of Yahweh ~U S A English dictionary define "communicate" as to share,whilst ,ways as method- In other words this question requires one to examine the methods which Yahweh/God used to share the message to his prophets- We all know that in Israel they were so many prophets ,starting from Moses ,Up to the time of Jeremiah~A Level Zimsec syllabus will guide us .- Yahweh communicated with, Moses who is regarded as a the father all prophets through a vision (Moses saw a vision of burning bush at Mt Horeb first ,then thus when he started to talk to Yahweh) Exodus 3 v 1- It also recorded that Moses talked to Yahweh face to face like someone speaking to his friend (Numbers 12 v 4-8).- One will be tempted to ask the following Questions, Does this mean that Moses saw the face of Yahweh?|- Why Moses Speaking to Yahweh face to face ?- Is this the reason why Moses is regarded as the par excellence.- Numbers 12 v 4-8,Proves to us that Yahweh communicated with other prophets in a dream or visions.This is valid to our answer.- Yahweh communicated with Samuel in a voice ,this is the reason why Samuel thought that it was Eli who was calling him ,this is well supported by Dr Thomas Constable 2016 Edition relying on 1 Samuel 3 v1. - Yahweh communicated with Amos in a voice ,this is the reason why Amos says ,The Lord roars from Zion ,it also the reason why some scholars have submitted that Amos was influenced by the voice of the Lord instead of his back ground. In other words it means that God communicated with Amos through a voice ( Amos 1 v 2-5,Amos 3 v 8).- Amos in chapter 7v 1 delivers visions of doom .In other words it means that God communicated with Amos in a vision "The lord showed me.- Israel prophets used various ways to deliver their messages. Moses used messenger style of speech "thus says the Lord",this is indicated in Exodus 5 v 1- Moses went on to use a song to deliver his message, this,is indicated in Exodus 32 .- Nathan used a parable to condemn David for injustice ,this is supported by 2 Samuel 12.- Amos used the following things to deliver the message of doom ~song ,Amos 5 v 2 ~wordplays "visions of doom ", Amos 7 v 1 ~similes and metaphors, Amos 2 v 11-13 &3 v 12- Prophets like Hosea ,Jeremiah ,Isaiah used symbolic actions to deliver their messages ,I won't waste much time in writing them ;Read the bible you will understand everything.Most of the Zimbabwean prophets claims to have been communicating with Yahweh .Johane Masowe claimed that Yahweh in a vision talked to him at Mt Marimba, He further says that Yahweh instructed him to change his name from Shoniwa Masedza to Johane Masowe(John of the wilderness). Ubert Angel according to Miracle TV undated claimed that Yahweh had shown him two visions (My vision to hell and My vision to heaven ). Makandiwa according to his article Volume 11 undated he delivered 18 parables and visions .He said the lord talked to him .In other words this means that Yahweh communicated with him in a voice just like Amos and other prophets which the writer highlighted above.- There are so many prophets which can be added for instance W.Magaya,Blessing Chiza,Paul Mwazha .Zimbabwean prophets uses the following ways to deliver their messages. According to an article of Makandiwa Volume 11 undated Makandiwa says another way of delivering a message is to use parables ,and soon after that he delivered more than 15 parables .Some of the Zimbabwean prophets uses Books ,Pamphlets, Banners to deliver their messages ,this include Magaya ,Makandiwa to mention but few only.Zimbabwean prophets have went on to extent of using TV stations, Websites, Facebook, Twitter. We all know the examples of prophets who uses the above ways.It has been suggested that Magaya and Angel uses symbolic actions to deliver their messages e.g Magaya usually wear sandals during the church service,thus,symbolising humbleness whilst Angel lives flamboyant life,thus,symbolising gospel of prosperity.- You can draw out the similarities and differences between Zimbabwean prophets and Israel prophets- Teachers have done justice and taught you how to conclude,therefore ,I won't waste much time in concluding .Contacts +263777896159(Whatsapp) Witness Dingani (Facebook page) French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin has a gift for pairing unexpected genres to produce something new and strange. In his new movie, My Golden Days, we learn the stories of a youngsters troubled family life and his later, complicated first love, separated by an episode in which, as a student abroad, he carries out a secret, potentially dangerous mission. But the element of spy story isnt about stimulating your pulse the point is the characters depth of commitment and what he values. Its a story about the happiness and despair that passionate young love can bring, an ancient theme that gets vivid new life in the hands of an exceptional director. If you know Desplechins work, youll recall the name Paul Dedalus, a character played by the inimitable Mathieu Amalric in the filmmakers highly regarded 1996 work, My Sex Life or How I Got Into an Argument. (Amalric has appeared in a number of other Desplechin productions, including A Christmas Tale, 2008). The young Paul engagingly portrayed by newcomer Quentin Dolmaire is the main figure in My Golden Days, but Amalric turns up in a modest role as the adult. Most of this new film consists of his memories. I wont spoil the details of Pauls childhood, except to say that his mother is troubled enough to bring great grief to her husband and three children, and Paul winds up making his own way. And as for his high school trip to Russia, which winks an eye at conventions of espionage thrillers, he winds up getting involved in efforts to aid Russian Jews (at a time when the Berlin Wall was still standing). But the movies real heart is Pauls relationship with Esther, a very appealing and idiosyncratic schoolmate of his younger sister. As finely played by Lou Roy-Lecollinet, she is acutely aware of her intoxicating effect on the opposite sex, telling Paul, with perfect accuracy, You cant forget me, and you never will. It will be an on-and-off affair, marked by numerous interludes with other lovers. Desplechin is a highly intelligent, energetic sort who loves to fill his movies with both classical and pop culture references its a style that might put you in mind of the French New Wave. In fact, he tries to accomplish so much here that the film goes off on a few tangents that perhaps dont quite fit. Still, the details some funny, some intensely painful of Paul and Esthers relationship over the years have a cumulative power that isnt diminished by a few loose ends. That power partly results from the performances Desplechin extracts from these two talented young actors. Its a pleasure to watch them. Paul often says that he feels nothing, but he is mistaken. He does, and so do we. This is a film that steadily deepens putting the epilogue aside, the story ends on a somber note thats unexpected in light of the movies nostalgic title. Remember, these are memories of youth recollected in later life. The adult Paul seems to think that something extraordinary happened in his past, and this time hes right. Walter Addiego is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: waddiego@sfchronicle.com My Golden Days Drama. With Quentin Dolmaire, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Mathieu Amalric. In French with English subtitles. Directed by Arnaud Desplechin. (R. 123 minutes.) To see a trailer: http://imdb.to/22Wty4z. DALLAS An airman shot his commander in an apparent murder-suicide Friday at a U.S. Air Force base in San Antonio, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasnt authorized to publicly discuss the shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Two handguns were found near the bodies of the men, which were inside a building that is used for classrooms and offices, according to Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, who oversees Joint Base San Antonio. He stressed that the shooting was not an act of terrorism, and declined to identify the two, saying their families must be notified first. The Air Forces Office of Special Investigations is leading the investigation, and the FBI is assisting. Military-issued and personal firearms are heavily restricted on the base and its not clear whether the gunman was authorized to have a weapon, according to Dan Hawkins, a spokesman for the base. Weapons are used for training purposes and carried by base security personnel, Hawkins said, but personal firearms cannot be freely carried on the base. He also said security officers must be notified if a personal weapon is being brought onto the installation and the firearm also must be registered, in addition to other requirements. The fatal shootings are the latest to occur at a military facility in Texas in the past several years. In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist, then killed himself. About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan Lopez, who also killed himself. And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting. Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland is the home of Air Force basic training. The Armys Fort Sam Houston and Air Forces Lackland and Randolph bases were combined during base realignment several years ago to become the militarys largest joint base. Several law enforcement agencies, including the sheriff, FBI and Texas Rangers responded to the base, which has a population of about 10,000. The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report. LAS VEGAS Ted Cruz will have hundreds of influential Republican donors and Jewish leaders all to himself this weekend in Las Vegas as he addresses the Republican Jewish Coalition. Cruzs rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump and John Kasich, declined invitations to attend a puzzling move in particular for Trump as he tries to project himself as a party unifier who deserves the Republican nomination even if he falls short of winning enough delegates in the primaries to clinch it outright. Its a missed opportunity for Trump to build on a well-received recent speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said Abbie Friedman, an RJC board member who introduced Trump when he spoke to the Republican group in December. With Cruz coming in, hell have the entire platform to himself to win support from an incredibly powerful and important group. The RJC is funded by the top political donor of 2012, Sheldon Adelson, and meets at the billionaires Venetian casino resort on the Strip. Trump declined an invitation to attend a private dinner at Adelsons home Thursday night with the Republican Jewish Coalitions board, according to people with direct knowledge of the invitation who werent authorized to share the details about the event. Trump decided not to attend the dinner even before he canceled a West Coast trip that he had planned for Thursday and Friday. The Republican front-runner does not appear to be sending surrogates to Las Vegas, either, as onetime presidential candidate Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker did last year. That, to me, is a real revelation into the weakness of his campaign, said Ari Fleischer, another RJC board member who has said he would back any GOP nominee in the general election. There should be someone here on the ground. Thats what good campaigns do. In addition to speaking Saturday to more than 500 attendees, Cruz has a separate, smaller event planned with RJC members. His chief Jewish liaison, Nick Muzin, will be there throughout the conference. And pro-Cruz outside groups that can take unlimited contributions are setting up shop in the Venetian this weekend, ready to land donations. Theres a lot of interest in hearing from Ted Cruz in light of his win in Wisconsin and the impact that has on reshaping the race, said Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks. Its all coming together at a crucial juncture. Brooks said some of his organizations members no longer see Trump as the overwhelming front-runner and predict a contested convention this summer. The RJCs gatherings have become cant-miss for GOP candidates in recent years. Part of the reason: Adelson, a key member, poured $90 million of family money into the last presidential campaign. SEATTLE A violent felon who escaped from a Washington state psychiatric hospital that is under federal scrutiny over safety violations remained missing Friday, a Spokane County sheriffs deputy said. Anthony Garver was charged in 2013 with tying a 20-year-old woman to her bed with electrical cords, stabbing her 24 times in the chest and slashing her throat. He was found too mentally ill for trial and was being held at Western State Hospital after a judge found that he was a danger to himself or others. Garver, 28, escaped Wednesday night with Mark Adams, 58, a patient who had been accused of domestic assault in 2014. The two crawled out a window in a locked, lower-security unit of the hospital. Adams was captured the next morning. Spokane County Sheriffs Deputy Mark Gregory said Friday that there were no additional sightings of Garver since reports on Thursday and they are not sure whether he left the area or is hiding in the woods. Hes comfortable being out in the wilderness and adapts pretty easily, Gregory said. He has hidden in the woods before. Garvers father, who lives in the Spokane Valley area, called authorities Thursday to report that Garver had stopped by, Gregory said. The father said he was there for a very short time, got spooked and left, Gregory said. Garver was moved to a less-secure unit at the psychiatric hospital after the murder charge was dismissed, and he was placed under a civil commitment. Garver has been convicted of multiple charges and twice fled from authorities. He has a history of running from law enforcement and of not doing what hes supposed to do, so I hope when he is caught, hell be placed in a facility that has better security, Gregory said. The escape is the latest in a litany of problems at the 800-bed hospital south of Tacoma, where assaults on both staff and patients have occurred. U.S. regulators have repeatedly cited Western State Hospital over safety concerns and threatened to cut millions in federal funding. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently extended the hospitals deadline for fixing the problems from April 1 to May 3. But the escapes and two recent violent attacks had brought new scrutiny, said Steven Chickering, the associate regional administrator of the Western Division of Survey and Certification for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS was aware of all three of these situations, and cannot comment on how they will affect Western State Hospitals Federal funding, he said in an email. CMS is currently following its procedures and processes for these situations. A federal judge also has said the hospital has failed to provide timely competency services to mentally ill people charged with crimes. Garvers lawyer, Jon Scott, said he hopes Garver is found quickly and safely. Adams got on a bus and asked the driver how to get to the airport. Someone recognized Adams, and officers picked him up without incident in a town just south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, police Lt. Chris Lawler said. SACRAMENTO Wayne Allen Huntsman pleaded guilty Friday to setting the devastating King fire in 2014 that torched nearly 100,000 acres in El Dorado County, a plea that came about in part because the suspect videotaped himself near the ignition point. Huntsman, who has been housed in the El Dorado County Jail since his arrest several days after the fire began Sept. 13, 2014, faces 20 years for starting the fire and was ordered to pay $60 million in restitution. 1 Texting suicide: The highest court in Massachusetts has been asked to dismiss a manslaughter case against a teenager accused of sending her boyfriend dozens of text messages encouraging him to kill himself. Michelle Carter is awaiting trial in the 2014 death of Conrad Roy III. Carters lawyers are appealing a juvenile judges decision denying their motion to dismiss the charge. The Supreme Judicial Court heard arguments Thursday. Carter could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. A prosecutor argued that Carter committed manslaughter when she urged Roy to just do it. Carters lawyer told the court her actions do not meet the legal definition of manslaughter. 2 Hospital escape: One of two men who escaped from a troubled psychiatric facility in Washington state was caught Thursday, but the second fugitive, who was accused of murder but found mentally incompetent to stand trial, is still on the loose. Officers picked up Mark Alexander Adams without incident in Des Moines, Wash., about 20 minutes away from Washington states largest psychiatric hospital, Lakewood police said. Anthony Garver, 28, is still at large. The escapes are the latest in a litany of problems at the 800-bed facility. U.S. regulators have repeatedly cited the facility over safety concerns for both staff and patients, including violent assaults, leading to threats to cut millions in federal funds to the facility. BOSTON Once a rarity on campuses, semiautomatic rifles are becoming a standard part of the arsenal for college police forces firepower they say could make a difference the next time a gunman goes on a rampage. The weapons are rarely seen in public and are often kept stashed in cruisers or department headquarters, and many schools wont talk about them. But federal data and Associated Press interviews and requests for records reveal that at least 100 U.S. college police forces, and probably many more, have added rifles over the past decade. The arms buildup has raised tensions on campuses, with debates over the need for such weaponry flaring at schools like Bostons Northeastern University, the University of Maryland and Florida State. A similar outcry over police use of military-style gear erupted in 2014 after the violence that broke out in Ferguson, Mo. Police say rifles offer more firepower, longer range and greater accuracy than handguns. A bad shot with a rifle is better than a good shot with a handgun, said Skip Frost, who until February was deputy chief of police at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which offers a semiautomatic rifle to every officer. Some colleges have made the weapons available to SWAT-type units of officers who respond to risky situations; some have issued the guns to patrol officers. Either way, police are authorized to take up their rifles only in extreme cases, such as a shooting or reports of an armed person. Most states also require police officers to undergo weapons-proficiency training at least once a year. Many campuses receive training from the FBI and U.S. Justice Department, which teach officers how to move quickly through buildings to take down a shooter. The reality is that these are not always handgun situations, said FBI agent Katherine Schweit, the bureaus senior executive in charge of active-shooter matters. We cant tell a university realistically whats acceptable in their community thats up to them but we recognize the struggle that every community faces because many of these shooters come to the scene with a long gun. Bill Taylor, president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, said he hasnt heard of any case in which a campus officer fired a rifle on the job. But police have broken out the weapons several times. In December, for example, police at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill responded with rifles after a false report of a gunman on campus. At least one Florida State officer responded to a 2014 shooting with a rifle but didnt shoot the gunman because other officers were in the way. Police killed the shooter with handguns. Opinion / Columnist In the village where I grew up we had a mischievous old man, vaChomugore. He would ready to concede to any request but on condition that he be allowed to fulfil the promise tomorrow, next week, next month, next year etc. the more distant into the future the better. When the agreed day finally arrive the individual will turn up eager to receive whatever it is that the old man had promised.Chomugore would ask the expectant recipient what he had said. "You said come tomorrow!""Well, come tomorrow then!" Chomugore would reply with finality. After this has happened two or three time one would finally learn that Chomugore has no problem promising anyone anything as long as he is expected to honour his promise in the future. He will never have to honour his promise since his tomorrow is always a day away!For the last 36 years President Mugabe has played the role of the mischievous Chomugore; he has promised his fellow liberation war comrades and the nation at large mass prosperity "tomorrow", his tomorrow was Chomugore's tomorrow - always a day away.For the lucky few post independence Zimbabwe has been a land of milk and honey, the country has a few filthy rich individual. However for the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans the economic well being has been a downward decline with an ever increasing angle of decline. The facts speak for themselves.Life expectancy in Zimbabwe, the universally accepted qualitative and quantitative measure of a nation's economic well being, has declined from 68 years in 1980 to a misery 34 years in 2004 when the last reliable figures were available.What is truly remarkable is how our modern day Chomugore has managed to fool the nation and kept their hopes high of mass prosperity even in the face of growing mass poverty. When the war vets became increasingly restless in the late 1990s President Mugabe paid them the one-off Z$50 000 plus an equally generous disability allowance (the ruling elite were the main beneficiaries but worse still this an ill advised expenditure as accelerated the economic decline). So instead of the war vets opening their eyes and see the reality that one-party dictatorship Mugabe had imposed on the nation was not working the bribed renewed the faith in the corrupt and oppressive political system.For the last 16 years Mugabe has used the war vets as his storm-troopers imposing Zanu PF on an increasingly restive populous demanding democratic change, free and fair elections and an end to the failed, corrupt and oppressive Mugabe rule. After years of doing Mugabe's dirty work the war vets have found they are no nearer the mass prosperity, if anything the mass poverty has become a permanent fixture. But instead of finally accepting that the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship will never deliver economic prosperity the war vets and demand meaningful democratic change the war vet have brought yet another list of demands., The war vets assured Mugabe they still believe in his gutsa ruzhinji (they are clearly lying because their shopping list tells of their economic hardships and desperation.) They are failing to generate enough income to pay their bills. The number of surviving war vets is probably 2% of the total population and yet they are asking for 20% Presidential scholarship (they clearly do not know the scheme is as good as dead due to lack of funds). They want 20% of the seized farms (do not tell them that 90%, at least, of the farms have already been seized and dished out).The war vets want 20% of the shares of all the indigenized foreign owned businesses. Since the passing of the indigenisation law in 2008 Zimbabwe has lost billions of dollars in potential investment because no foreign investor would want 51% of their investment taken away. Some one MUST tell these people that 20% of nothing is nothing!"Why do you want to be given 20 percent? Who is going to own the other 80 percent?" was Mugabe's reply. "The land is ours, why don't you start your own mines?" The war vets are chalked to meet Mugabe again in a year's time. No doubt many of them will be living in abject poverty, with no farms, no mines, etc. given that the regime is still in denial about the country's worsening economic situation."We have sanctions which have led to shortages. Shortages of money in the banks. Shortages of this and that. Let us work hard." The meeting would have been incomplete without Mugabe blaming others for his own decades of misrule."We are in a difficult position due to sanctions..but things are easing up," he reassuringly. The important thing is the war vets left the meeting reassured.It took a while for me and my fellow seven year old boys to understand that vaChomugore's tomorrow is a mirage that is always going to be a day away. It is most disheartening when full grown men and women are too easily conned into believing in a illusionary mass prosperity. Worse still, the conned adults are not just a small group but hundreds of thousands from every corner of the country. But worst of all, it is sickening to know they have been conned for the last 36 years!Zimbabwe is in a real serious political and economic mess, a man-made mess. For all their liberation war heroics the war vets have turned out to be some of the most naive and gullible individuals; Mugabe has twisted and manipulative them turning them into murderous thugs to serve his own selfish agenda. He promised them a share of the looted wealth and although the country's economic decline is evident the war vets still dream of mass prosperity!Marange diamonds should be a blessing for the nation but have become a curse instead because it is the looted wealth from Marange that is financing the Mugabe vote rigging machinery and dictatorship. Similarly the war vet should have been a blessing to the nation as champions of freedom, justice and human dignity but they have become a curse as they are now been brainwashed to be the defenders of the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship! San Jose police have identified a suspect in an unsolved 2012 homicide a 22-year-old already in custody for another murder in the city, authorities announced Thursday. The Santa Clara County district attorneys office filed murder charges on Monday against Balam Gonzalez of San Jose. He is suspected of killing 18-year-old Armondo Heredia near King Road and Burdette Drive on August 23, 2012, according to a statement from Sgt. Enrique Garcia, a San Jose police spokesman. Opinion / Columnist The book written by David Coltart titled, The Struggle Continues: 50 years of tyranny, is revealing itself to be a work of a spiteful politician who has failed to have his way in the jungle of politics.From the reviews so far published about the book, Coltart is surely seeking to denigrate his political nemesis by publishing falsehoods about them, while depicting himself as the knight in shining armour.It is clear that Coltart has positioned himself as the resident advocate of the evicted commercial farmers.His job is to continue projecting the progenitor of the Land Reform Programme, who is President Robert Mugabe, as a tyrannical and undemocratic leader.By continuing to besmirch President Mugabe, Coltart hopes that by association, all programmes instituted by the President, including the Land Reform Programme, would be similarly tainted, with a possibility of being reversed if there was to be a change of regime.So after trying all political tricks during his short stint as a legislator and a Cabinet Minister, Coltart eventually decided to fabricate events that he compiled into a book.In sync with the opposition anti-Mugabe chorus, he decided to continue questioning the electoral legitimacy of President Robert Mugabe, hence in some parts of his fictional book, he wrote about an instance where President Robert Mugabe was supposedly offered asylum by the former Senegalese President, Abdulaye Wade after the 2008 harmonised elections.When one reads this part of the book, its unsubstantiated nature becomes clearer.Coltart talks of a private meeting held after the first round of the 2008 harmonised elections in which he, together with Tendai Biti, met with Wade, who reportedly excoriated President Mugabe for his purported deficiency in handling human rights matters in the country.This part of the book dovetails with the pervasive western-led crusade to cast aspersions at President Robert Mugabe's leadership and continuously project him as leading the country without the people's electoral mandate.The President is cast as supposedly unwanted in his own country, a leader with no popular support and a candidate for asylum.Sadly, this is in stark contrast to results of several elections and public surveys that have consistently demonstrated that the President is ever-popular and the people's choice.In the case, it will be trite to mention that their credibility has been vouched for by several observer missions, including the AU and the SADC missions.It is therefore pure mischief for people like Coltart to keep on questioning the legitimacy of President Mugabe's leadership by concocting some far-fetched events in Senegal.If this Senegal figment had truly happened as cited by Coltart, it should have made headline news in the ever-critical private press.The question then is why the event remained a secret for so long, waiting only to be conveniently divulged by Coltart when it could have long-back re-enforced the opposition's weak and depleted propaganda arsenal?For all we know, Coltart is simply seeking to resuscitate his evanescing political career after facing electoral defeat at the hands of Thabitha Khumalo of the MDC-T in 2013.He is also an anti-Land Reform Programme activist, who still dreams of the reversal of the agrarian programme.Due to all these shortcomings, Coltart's book should be dismissed as a compilation of unsubstantiated falsehoods and personal opinions of the writer.In fact, it is a work of fiction. Opinion / Columnist Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo is an independent political and social analyst based in Gwanda and these are his personal views extracted from his personal Facebook page. He can be contacted at bekezelamaduma@yahoo.co.uk For the last two weeks I have been studying the Zimbabwe National Peace and Reconciliation Bill.Its so sad to see how some people we put in positions of authority can sit down and spend hours and hours and claim dollars and dollars of sitting allowances while they allow personal egos and emotions to control them through a matter of national importance.Since the Unity Accord of 1987, people from Matabeleland and the South Western parts of the Midlands regions have been calling for a commission to look into the issues of national healing following the madness of the Gukurahundi atrocities. Other regions in the country remained quiet on the whole matter even going to the extent of calling the people of this region some names for demanding for this process. It only had to wait until most recent when the chicken had turned around and started eating its own eggs that sporadic cries for this commission could be heard from the other regions.When Joshua Nkomo went around the region consulting or reporting back on the unity accord deliberations and the subsequent disappearance of PF ZAPU into ZANU PF, people in the regions asked one simple question, "kanti manje ukubulawa kwethu ke? (how about the killings?). He could not answer but only made promises and appeals, and the question remains unanswered even up today.Through out the years just to be in solidarity with Nkomo the people of this region have opened up and said they are willing to compromise and try to seek reconciliation for the sake of nation building BUT on one condition, that is, to have a round table where the WHY, BY WHO and WHAT FOR of the Gukurahundi issues can be answered.This has proven extremely difficult on the part of the perpetrators who find it better to just buy time and hope to escape the issues. This arrogance has inevitably allowed anger to develop among the people of this part of the country and the anger passed on to the next generations. It s not surprising then that some have developed this anger to an extent of demanding for the complete cessation of the region from the mainstream Zimbabwe.Some over zealous political opportunists have come down to the region (possibly sent and not out of their own will) dangling promises of financial compensation for the atrocities, perhaps because of their nature where bribery or financial reward closes off everything. Our people have remained adamant all they want is a simple round the table discussion on the issues of Gukurahundi failure to which the terms of the new generation demanding the cessation of the region only but gain ground.A good opportunity to let the people freely talk on the way forward on the issues of our post independence government brutality came in the constitution making process. As highlighted in the National Statistical Report of the constitution making process, the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces spoke strongly for a TRUTH and Reconciliation commission to bring some truce into the country.However for some reason weird reasons, the ZANU PF side of the constitution makers deliberately pushed that the commission be a PEACE and Reconciliation Commission and worse forced to have the commission limited to a ten year period as highlighted in the notes on coming up with the final out put of the constitution. This they did deliberately so that they down play this very important nation building commission simply to by time and protect those of their own who led in the brutal killings, torture, rape and all sorts of inhuman treatment of citizens just to retain power.There is a vast difference between what we wanted as a TRUTH and Reconciliation Commission to the PEACE and Reconciliation Commission that was finally given out. Reading the notes of the constitution making principals their weak argument was that there is no need for a TRUTH commission as it was "bound to open up some old wounds", and I am like what??? Then they argue that the commission can not be a permanent commission as it will address the issues of concern and set up a permanent way forward for the country.I don't understand how these people could come up with such an argument. There is no way the brutalities and human rights abuses of this government from the Gukurahundi era to the current political violence can ever be just let off without being talked about. Do these people really understand the anger that lies within the people of Zimbabwe? Do they realise or care at all about the anger and hatred that lies between the Ndebele speaking people and the Shona speaking people? Do they realise the potential damage to the country that this anger and hatred may bring to future generations? Is theirs an attitude of just saying we will no longer be there, they will see what to do?As if this is not enough, the National Peace and Reconciliation Bill is crafted to govern the operations of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission. The Bill right from its inception is totally against the provisions of the constitution and feelings of the people. The commission is expected to be and independent commission which will sit down and under no influence listen to all the stories of the victims of our brutality on each other and seek redress and reconciliation. BUT, the commission is through the Bill put to be under the full control of The Minister of National Healing who serves under the very government that is directly charged for the brutality.In our current set up, the Minister responsible for that is our Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko who has already shocked many by disassociating the Gukurahundi killings from the hands of the known perpetrators and blamed it on the Western Countries. He has also never admitted that his patty ZANU PF is a violent party responsible for violent campaigns for votes and authority. Then really how do we hope to make any progress under the circumstance.The Minister is expected, through the bill, to decide what issues are to be discussed, who to be interviewed, what parts of the findings to be published and all sorts of other crazy nonsense. Provisions of the United Nations Charter on such commissions is clear that whenever they are carried out they must be completely be independent of any influence more so government influence which in real terms is just basic logic too needing no United Nations emphasis, but in Zimbabwe we don't seem to see that logic.The Bill further governs the financing of the commission to be limited to the discretion of Treasury and the Minister concerned. I mean really, how do we hope to achieve anything under such circumstances? If government has no money, which they will obviously claim not to have, the commission must be allowed to go out and source funding for its operations. This government has never spoken to the commission at all and outrightly lacks the political will to see the commission put into function then it is expected to put its money where its mouth is not found? There is plenty of people out there who will want to come in and contribute to the smooth function of this commission, myself included I can afford to throw in a dollar to the cause and buy a box of pens to write with.The Bill is ready, it must now be brought to the attention of members of the public to debate. Parliament deliberately decides to limit contributions to the bill by avoiding the very people who matter on the issue. Matabeleland consultations are set for Victoria Falls, Hwange, Lupane, Bulawayo and Plumtree, with Bulawayo coming in at the very last minute after people had complained. Midlands they are set for Gweru and Kwekwe urban only. I questioned this arrangement with the Clerk of Parliament today particularly why Gwanda is not included and the answer I got was that those in areas not listed are invited to make submissions to the Clerk of Parliament by email, clerk@parlzim.gov.zw and guess what, you will never get a response from this email address no matter what issue you table through.You can not talk about Gukurahundi and not talk about Silobela, Vungu, Tsholotsho, Kezi - Maphisa, Gwanda, Nyamayendlovu and Gwayi areas. Non of the areas set for consultations really experienced the brutality of Gukurahundi nor much of the recent political violence. It is the direct victims in the excluded areas who will best contribute to how they want their issues to be heard and at least get some confidence that their issue is finally being attended to. Is it a question that the areas concerned do not have five star hotels for the consulting MPs to drink at and sleep in? Come election time these are the very people we see forcing to squat in little mud houses pretending to be caring and concerned.I really wish Zimbabweans from all walks of life would come on board and kick out this nothing of a Bill and get Parliament to take us serious on a matter of such importance to nation building. We cant continue to be taken for granted in such a manner. Zimbabweans need to live peacefully and in harmony with each other not under this divide and rule set up we are exposed to by the current regime. Opinion / Letters The Zanu-PF and the War Veterans have put forward several demands to the President of Zimbabwe, Mr. Robert Mugabe concerning their Welfare.Some of the issues raised in a meeting in Harare was the removal of Cecil John Rhodes remains from the National Heritage in Matopo Hills.The Self-righteous Colonialists need to be repatriated back to England, the grave perceived by many citizens as a constant reminder of the atrocities perpetrated against the Black People to gain control of the Resources produced by the African land.In the last few months several incidents have occurred in some institutions for the removal of the statue of the man perceived as a hero by few elites in South Africa.It seems we have reached a point were the Colonialist's should take back their belongings and give back what is owed to the African People.The Rhodesian Regime destroyed many lives and changed the whole history of this Black continent to serve their greedy appetites.Rhodes kaNjube kaLobengula has suffered such fate to be denied a place among his people, hence it should be more appropriate at this juncture to repatriate and replace the colonialist's with our brother who was against his will separated from his Clan.It is the heir birthright to be buried with his forefathers, a suitable site for a person of his statue whether in Entumbane near King Mzilikazi or in Matopo Hills. It is time that the African People should be stand "united" in all efforts to rewrite our History and maintain our Heritage.Our Socio-Economic Dynamics are entwined with our past Culture and Heritage, hence it is imperative that we do not separate one from the other as we demand our Rights as Public Citizens.The SADC States share common sentiments against the White Supremacy that have alienated us from our culture and liberty to Self-preservation and made us slaves of Western dogma.The African People, including those in the Diaspora have the power to change our Socio-Economic imbalance through unity, as One African Nation, Sizwe Sethu.We have all the Resources that we need to succeed in this economic uncertainty without the constant dependency to Western civilasation.Sizwe MdaKing Lobengula Foundation This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Robbie O'Keeffe still remembers that one move, five years ago, that involved moving someone into a two-bedroom house in the middle of the curviest part of Lombard Street. "It started as a three man job and then it ended up with seven of us," says the owner of Big Leprechaun Moving & Storage. "It was probably the worst job I've ever done" Jacob Sanderson recalls one particularly bad job during Pride Weekend. The co-owner of In and Out Movers says it was a relatively simple job that involved moving someone half a mile, in the Mission District. Needless to say, the typical 10-minute drive took them an hour, thanks to the detours, traffic and pedestrians. Moving in and out of various neighborhoods in San Francisco can be challenging for so many reasons: lack of parking, steep roads, no elevator, tight turns, narrow roads. The list goes on. Wolfgang Matt, vice president at One Big Man & One Big Truck Moving Company, says the crew jokes that moves on and off Telegraph Hill are "leg days" due to the amount of climbing up and down stairs and steep streets. Sanderson adds that in addition to all of the climbing, navigating a 24 to 26-foot box truck around the streets of San Francisco can be a challenge. They've had to slowly back the large truck down a one-way street before. There's one hill in Potrero Hill he says they reserve only with experienced drivers given how curvy and steep it is. "You can't send an unexperienced driver down those hills ... It is more curvy and treacherous than Lombard Street. Most people don't even know about that street," he says. Determining how many men they will need for a job often means factoring in whether they will need traffic control, Matt says, adding when they move anyone from around the ballpark, they always have a flagman. Jobs that normally take two to three hours can end up taking 10 to 12 hours (in extreme cases). O'Keeffe said the job on Lombard involved one man staying with the double-parked truck at the top of the street (to avoid the $600 parking ticket), and several men walking furniture down to the middle of the block. "Moving in San Francisco is not easy, for anybody," O'Keeffe says. Check out our gallery of the toughest streets, as named by local moving companies. Did you experience a particularly tough move? Let us know in comments. HOLLYWOOD, Calif.This Friday, adult performer Cindy Starfall will serve as the guest host of Vivid Virgins on VividRadio.com. An AVN Award-nominated performer, Starfall has been featured in more than a hundred videos in which she has demonstrated her skill at dirty talkingand fans can listen to her live on April 8. Its going to be a wild show, Starfall said. If you have seen any of my movies, you've heard some of my dirty talk. On Vivid Virgins, Im looking forward to fans getting in on the hot talk with me. So Im tweeting, blogging and posting to let everyone know to join me this Friday on Vivid Radio. Vivid Virgins airs at 5 p.m. (PT) on VividRadio.com and the SiriusXM app channel 791. Fans are encouraged to call in to the live broadcast by dialing (855)-998-4843 (855-99-VIVID). Fleshbot recently featured Five Things You Should Hire a Sexy Asian Maid to Do, a lighthearted blog post by Starfall. Having played the part of an oversexed housekeeper in some of her videos, Starfall easily concocted some sexy situations (with happy endings, naturally) in which a fantasy maid would come in handy. The Five Things You Should Hire a Sexy Asian Maid to Do post can be found on Fleshbot here. Cindy Starfall is represented by OC Modeling. Email [email protected] or call (818) 298-6939. To book Cindy Starfall for a feature dance appearance, visit AListFeatures.com or TheLeeNetwork.com. SAN FRANCISCO, CA Falcon Studios Group has released the latest in the Falcon Studios Tahoe series, Tahoe Snowbound. The snow flies and the cum falls as 11 men hit the slopes in Tahoe and turn up the heat with each other. Award-winning director Tony Dimarco keeps the action on maximum temperature, delivering six scenes. Tahoe Snowbound DVD and scene downloads are now available on the Falcon Studios Group Store. In Tahoe - Snowbound, its cold outside, but inside the sexual fire burns hotter than ever. What better way to escape the chill than warming up with intense, connected sex. With a gorgeous house nestled in the snowy mountains all to themselves, they turn to each other for fiery, passionate exchanges! Hunky, uncut top Jimmy Durano turns up the heat on blond bottom Scott Riley. All-American hunk Ryan Rose gets and gives oral pleasure with blond cocksucker Kevin Blake. Jason Styles strips down after hitting the slopes and has an intense flip fuck with Dylan Knight. Sean Zevran and Jordan boss share a spontaneous encounter in he hallway, trading blowjobs and blowing huge loads. JJ Knight helps Andrea Suarez relieve his morning wood right in the kitchen with a flip fuck. Pumped from his workout, Jordan Boss gives Jacob Peterson one hell of a ride, resulting in an explosive finish. It was great working with 11 hot studs while snowed in for a week in beautiful Lake Tahoe, states director Dimarco. We assembled such a great crew of guys, including the stunning new A-Team Exclusive JJ Knight, and his scene partner Andrea Suarez. Its such a pleasure working with all of these great performers. There was no need to start a fire, because these performances are scorching hot! With a beautiful setting and a cast of some of the hottest men on the planet, were excited to offer up the latest in the series of Falcon Tahoe movies, Tahoe Snowbound, states Tim Valenti, Falcon Studios Group President. Tony Dimarco delivers another spectacular movie that celebrates Falcons legacy of snow titles all the way back to original The Other Side of Aspen. With pairings like new A-Team Exclusive JJ Knight with Andrea Suarez, and A-Team Exclusive Jacob Peterson with newcomer Jordan Boss, fans are in for a scorching hot treat! For DVD wholesale purchasing, contact Jose Mineros at [email protected] NEW YORKTranny Strip NYC and T-Girl Events are teaming up for a special event, the Trans All Star Party, on Friday. Taking place at Little Darlings Baltimore from 6pm-2am, the evening features big-name TS stars, including Foxxy, Jessy Dubai and Morgan Bailey. I am very excited to do this party in the city where I grew up in as a child, said Tranny Strip NYC promoter John Ed. There are no transgender parties in Baltimore, DC, Virginia, or Delaware, so we have gotten an overwhelming amount of excited responses and are expecting a great turnout. This is a one night event but we are hoping to do many more events in the future in these areas. Don't be shy ... come and reach out and touch a sexy trans girl on Friday! In addition to appearances by Foxxy, Jessy Dubai and Morgan Bailey, there will be shows by Ebonee Excell and host Jaemy Paris, music by NYC trans DJ Ciyn, and 20 dancers from Tranny Strip NYC. Private couch dances and private VIP rooms are also available for guests with featured entertainers. The Trans All Star Party is a celebratory kickoff for Foxxy and Morgan Baileys birthday weekend. The two award-winning performers will also be officially celebrating in New York City this Sunday at Tranny Strip, held at Headquarters Club located at 552 West 38th Street, NYC. Little Darlings is located at 403 East Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD, 21202. The April 8 event runs from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. with admission for $40 available at the door. Special thanks to sponsors Eros.com, Trans500.com and Grooby.com. For more information, visit TrannyStrip.com or email [email protected] Table reservations and bottle service can be made via email or by calling the party hotline at (917) 426-7121. Follow on Twitter (@TrannyStrip) and Instagram (@TGirlEvents). This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN A homeless teenager was arrested in the killing of University of Texas student Haruka Weiser, Austin police announced Friday morning. RELATED: Video shows 'person of interest' in 'brutal murder' of University of Texas at Austin student Meechaiel Khlalil Criner, 17, was booked into the Travis County Jail on a charge of murder, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said during a press conference Friday. Its important for folks to realize that this investigation is absolutely very active, were nowhere near complete," he said. "But its also very important for this community to realize we are very certain that the subject we have in custody... is the suspect responsible for the death of this beautiful young woman. The Austin Police Department released surveillance video Thursday showing a "person of interest" in the case: a black male standing at about 6 feet tall with a bike walking near the stadium. Police said they were able to tie Criner to the slaying through a separate incident involving Criner and backpack possibly belonging to Weiser on Monday. That incident was a day after the 18-year-old Portland, Oregon native was reported missing and a day before her body was found on campus near a creek. RELATED: San Antonio middle school girl suspended after being thrown to ground by officer Homicide detectives reviewed dashcam footage from the fire incident and determined the suspect, Criner, was wearing similar pants and fit the general description of the suspect in the Weiser case, Acevedo said. The person who reported the Monday fire also told police that the fire suspect and Weiser killing suspect had similar descriptions, Acevedo said. Homicide detectives later found some of Weiser's belongings at the scene of the fire, including a backpack similar to one belonging to Weiser, Acevedo said. Upon responding to the fire, Austin firefighters took Criner, who was homeless, to LifeWorks, an Austin nonprofit that offers counseling and housing for the homeless. APD then responded to the suspects last known location of Lifeworks and we were able to detain him for tampering of evidence and questioned him regarding this incident, Acevedo said. David Carter said that he does not believe UT has a large number of homeless people on campus, though there have been instances of members of the homeless community on campus. RELATED: 12-year-old girl struck, killed while walking to school on North Side There have been times when weve had members of the homeless community come on campus that didnt have a need to be here, or any business interest. If we identify people such as that we respond immediately. Well actually escort them off campus if thats required," he said. "In terms of is there a large population of homeless on campus, no we do not believe that. However we are in close proximity. Were in the middle of a major metropolitan area, with a somewhat significant homeless populations, especially just to our west off campus. Acevedo ended the press conference by emphasizing that homelessness is an issue thats not unique to Austin," adding that homelessness is not a crime." Police said they have not found a weapon in the case, but said Weiser had been assaulted. jfechter@mySA.com Twitter: @JFreports Bernie is doing well, but he cant possibly win the nomination, a friend wrote to me in an email for what seemed like the thousandth time. My friend attached an article from one of the nations leading newspapers showing how far behind Bernie Sanders remains in delegates. But the article failed to distinguish between superdelegates, the vast majority of whom are party insiders supporting Hillary Clinton, and pledged delegates. As of now, Clinton has about 24 percent more pledged delegates than Sanders. Thats still a sizable gap, but it hardly makes Sanders candidacy an impossibility. Clintons lead in superdelegates could vanish if Bernie gains a majority of pledged delegates. Thats what happened in 2008, when many of the superdelegates who initially supported her later flipped to then-Sen. Barack Obama. Since mid-March, Sanders has been on a roll. He has won six out of the seven Democratic primary contests, and hes won them big, beating Clinton by 40 percentage points or more in Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington. On Tuesday, he took Wisconsin. The enthusiasm for Sanders isnt waning. If anything, its growing. In Idaho and Alaska, he inspired record-breaking primary turnouts, attracting thousands of new voters. He did the same thing in Colorado, Kansas, Maine and Michigan. In March, Sanders raised $44 million, a new monthly high for his White House bid. The campaigns previous fundraising record was set in February, when it raised $43.5 million, compared with Clintons $30 million. And most of Sanders money has been in small donations so far, more than 6.5 million contributions from 2 million individual donors. Sanders is still drawing huge crowds. Just over a week ago, 18,500 showed up to hear him speak in the South Bronx. Young people continue to flock to the Sanders campaign. Yet if you read the Washington Post or the New York Times, or watch CNN or even MSNBC, or listen to the major pollsters and pundits, youd come to the same conclusion as my friend. Every success by Sanders is met with a story or column or talking head whose message is but he cant possibly win. Or the media simply dont report on his campaign. Early on, the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review noted that Sanders candidacy had been ignored by the mainstream media as nearly as they could a sitting U.S. senator who entered the presidential race. Some Sanders supporters speak in dark tones about a media conspiracy against him. I doubt one exists. The mainstream media are incapable of conspiring with anyone or anything. They wouldnt dare try. Their reputations are on the line. If the public stops trusting them, their brands are worth nothing. The real reason the major national media cant see whats happening is they exist inside the bubble of establishment politics, centered in Washington, and the bubble of establishment power, centered in New York. So theyre most interested in the personalities of the candidates, and in the people and resources backing them. Within this frame of reference, it seems nonsensical that Sanders could possibly win the nomination. Hes a 74-year-old Jew from Vermont, originally from Brooklyn, who calls himself a democratic socialist. He wasnt even a member of the Democratic Party until recently, has never been a fixture in the Washington or Manhattan circles of power and influence, and has no major backers among the political, corporate or Wall Street elites of America. Because the major media are habituated to personalities and power, they havent been attending to Sanders message or to its resonance among Democratic and independent voters (as well as many Republicans). The media dont know how to report on political movements. Yet a big part of Sanders candidacy is less about him than about the political revolution his followers want to bring about. The major media havent noticed how determined Americans are to reverse the increasing concentration of wealth and political power that have been eroding our economy and democracy. So its understandable the media continue to marginalize Bernie Sanders, and all he represents. But its way too early to count Sanders out. And even if he loses the nomination, the movement hes spawned isnt going away. Its one of the biggest stories of our time. Robert Reich Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is Chancellors Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at www.sfgate.com/submissions. Larry Campbell, a former cop and mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia, was appalled as he came to San Francisco to advocate in favor of a bill that would allow California cities to open safe injection centers for intravenous drug users, like the one in his city. Ive never seen the number of people sleeping on the street, he told The Chronicle editorial board, that he saw as he walked a few blocks from his Market Street hotel. He saw open drug dealing. Theres nobody hiding here. I asked Campbell if he thought he should have seen some arrests. Yes, he responded. I think you need to get control. Campbell says he saw only two police officers. In Vancouver, youd see many more police, and theyd direct addicts to Insite, he said. No other North American city has opened a supervised injection site since Insite opened its doors in 2003, but that may be about to change. Ottawa is looking at opening similar facilities. Ditto Ithaca, N.Y. Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, has introduced a bill to allow California cities to open up such facilities, even though drugs such as heroin and other injected controlled substances will remain illegal under federal law. I can tell you bluntly, there is no downside, Campbell, now a Canadian senator, told The Chronicle. Crime did not rise in the blocks closest to Insite. Needle litter is down. Users enter the clinic with their own illegally obtained drugs, avail themselves of clean syringes and other paraphernalia, then shoot up in a safe, clean environment away from the streets. Users have access to a detox center and treatment referrals. There have been 2 million injections since Insite opened, but not a single overdose death. Why should San Francisco follow suit, as Supervisor David Campos proposes? (Mayor Ed Lee is opposed.) Campbell asked rhetorically, Can it get any worse? Over the phone, Campos said the same thing: Can things get worse? If theres one thing Ive learned, its that when you think things cannot get worse, they can. And do. Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore (Riverside County), opposes the Eggman bill for a host of reasons. She sees the notion as enabling and cant believe anyone wants to use tax dollars to pay medical personnel to watch people shoot up. Surely there are better uses of tax dollars such as rehabilitation programs. I worry about how programs keep moving the bar to accommodate increasingly self-destructive behavior. In 1997, I visited a San Francisco needle-exchange center in the Mission and was impressed with what I saw. Users brought carefully bundled used needles 1,615 of them and thus showed they cared enough to take care of themselves. The mantra of social workers, which Eggman repeated to me over the phone, is essential: Every life matters. In exchange for showing up and responsibly disposing of their needles, users received clean syringes, and the chance to have a volunteer treat an abscess, give them vitamins and perhaps a medical or treatment referral. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation credited the program for helping to prevent pediatric AIDS cases in the city in 1995 and 1996. Over time, San Franciscos needle-exchange program morphed into a needle-access program, as users no longer had to produce a dirty syringe to get the first 20 clean needles. With heroin use up across the nation, these days you see dirty needles everywhere. They are a public safety hazard for the nonusing public. Campbell lauded Insite for providing clean paraphernalia and access to treatment and medical care. The needle-exchange centers of the 1990s provided all that. Needle exchange became needle access not to improve care, but to accommodate users who couldnt get it together to return their used needles. The needle, if you will, has kept moving to make dysfunction easier for self-destructive people. If it doesnt work, shut her down, Campbell said, when questioned about the probable success of a proposed San Francisco injection center. Nice try, but hitting the brakes is not a skill in which City Hall is practiced. Debra J. Saunders is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: dsaunders@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DebraJSaunders No safety in heroin addiction Harm Reduction refers to strategies designed to reduce the negative consequences of drug use. I fear they also can create a false sense of security for drug users. The DOPE Project produced naloxone, which can save lives when a user overdoses. An addict identified as Kai Adame talks in a project video about how he stopped breathing 13 times. He complains that too often he hears about one of my friends dying because someone wasnt being taught what they needed to be taught. He means, they overdosed because they didnt have naloxone. No, they overdosed because they were heroin addicts. Naloxone has given me a reason to stay positive, Adame said. He shouldnt have been. During the closing credits, you learn that he died of an overdose. Tragic. Watch the video at http://bit.ly/23cTqZW. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate San Francisco Examiner reporter Joe Fitz Rodriguez tweeted an image of a "hair-raising" billboard he spotted on Ocean Avenue advertising new homes in San Francisco from the low $1,000,000s. Many found the combination of "low" and "million" to be an amusing, nonsensical oxymoron indicative of San Francisco's crazy real estate market, and Fitz's photo was liked over 1,400 times. A Reddit user shared the image, referring to the advertised opportunity as "San Francisco affordable housing." The post caused a stir, racking up more than 1.8 million page views on the site's homepage. Many Redditers from other parts of the country found the California price outrageous and bragged about the low cost of housing in their state (or country). "Here in Maine you can buy a village in fair condition for that," wrote one. "Here in Oregon you can get a nice 4 bed 2 bath for 200K," shared another. "Haha here in Vancouver you can get a nice 1970s era house for an average of only 1.3 million dollars!" chimed in another. The billboard is for the Summit 800, a new 7.7-acre housing development of 182 town homes and condos built on a hillside on Brotherhood Way, just below San Francisco State University and Park Merced. Long Beach-based marketing firm Gunn Jerkins designed the Summit 800 billboards posted around the city, and the statement on them was intended to present the availability of the housing opportunity in simple terms and provide a general price point. "It wasn't supposed to say anything except we have homes available for sale," said David Aluetta, the CEO of Comstock Homes that developed the property. "Like with any other home building project, you have to be careful to not quote an exact price. The average price of a home out there [at Summit 800] is $1.1 million." Aluetta added that when advertising a housing development, it's common to pluralize numbers to communicate an average price. "We're always using this verbiage," he explained. "We might advertise homes as being 'from the 700s' or 'from the 500s.' Here in San Francisco it just happens to be 'from the millions.' I understand that this price might seem high to some but in the past five to 10 years there's been a dramatic increase in home prices in the city of San Francisco. And it's all been driven by a phenomenal economy and job growth." The first Summit 800 homes hit the market in spring 2014 and and 142 (78 percent) of the units have already sold, and SFCurbed reported in 2014 that some of these sold for below their originally listed price. There are still 40 two- and three-bedrooms available; some of these are still being built as construction on the project is slated to continue into early 2017. The average price of a Summit 800 home is $1.1 million and Aluetta says the average price per square foot comes out to about $740. Anyone living in San Francisco knows this is fair (possibly even a great deal) considering the soaring real estate market with the average price per square foot in S.F. at $920. But then again, you also have to consider the location. While Brotherhood Way is a pretty, pastoral and quiet location close to Lake Merced, you're tucked away in an isolated area lacking a lively commercial district with historic buildings housing cafes, shops and theaters as well as public transit to whisk you downtown. Don't we choose to live in the city for easy access to the vibrancy and uniqueness of city life? That of course comes at a price. One of these town homes would go for several hundred thousand more in Hayes Valley. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BERLIN A European Union official threatened Thursday to sanction Panama and other nations if they dont cooperate fully to fight money laundering and tax evasion, after a leak of data showed the small country remains a key destination for people who want to hide money. The 11.5 million documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca showed it helped thousands of individuals and companies from around the world set up shell companies and offshore accounts in low-tax havens. Because such accounts often hide the ultimate owner of assets, they are a favored tool to evade taxes, launder money or pay bribes. So far, the Panama Papers has brought down the leader of Iceland and raised questions about the dealings of the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, famous actors, athletes and the circle of friends of Russian Vladimir Putin, who some allege has profited indirectly from such accounts. On Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged he profited from his fathers investments in an offshore tax haven before being elected. People are fed up with these outrages, said Pierre Moscovici, who heads financial affairs for the 28-nation EU. He took to task countries like Panama that facilitate such secretive, low-tax accounts. The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking, he said. Panama is listed by the EU as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, and Moscovici urged the country to rethink its position in this regard. The EU has to be ready to hit them with appropriate sanctions if they refuse to change, he said. The Central American countrys government is offering to cooperate more. On Wednesday, President Juan Carlos Varela announced the creation of an international committee of experts to recommend ways to boost transparency in Panamas offshore financial industry. But Varela defended his country against what he called a media attack by wealthy nations that he says are ignoring their own deficiencies and unfairly stigmatizing Panama. Ramon Fonseca, a co-founder of the law firm at the center of the scandal and until recently a top adviser to Varela, said Thursday that the only law that has been broken so far is the right to his clients privacy. He said the biggest source of secretive shell companies is Europe and the U.S. If a company in England has problems nobody says anything against England, but when it happens to a firm in Panama its a big problem and the entire world beats up on poor Panama, Fonseca said. He said his firm creates about 20,000 shell companies annually but also rejects about 70 to 80 clients every year due to conflicts that crop up during due diligence. Also on Thursday, an Argentine prosecutor asked a judge to authorize an investigation into President Mauricio Macris role in offshore companies. Putin denied having any links to offshore accounts and described the document leaks scandal as part of a U.S.-led plot to weaken Russia. DIKILI, Turkey Greece on Friday resumed deportations of refugees to Turkey after a four-day pause, despite mounting desperation among refugees and attempts by activists to stop the two boats from leaving Lesbos with 124 people on board. Before the first boat left the island, four activists jumped into the sea to try to obstruct the operation swimming to the front of the chartered ferry and grabbing the anchor chain and were detained by the coast guard. The second boat made the journey without incident. One of the refugees, however, was refused by Turkey and sent back to Lesbos, Europes Frontex border agency said. It did not elaborate on the reason. The EU-Turkey deal, which aims to deter illegal migration, has faced several setbacks and sharp criticism in its first week of implementation and has left many would-be refugees in limbo along the coast of Turkey. There is no legal or adequate way for us to go to Europe, so people are either waiting for the boats or turning back to Syria, says Mohammed, a Syrian who is stranded in the Turkish coastal town of Izmir. People are shocked and scared. Mohammed, who only gave his first name because he might decide to go back to his hometown which is under the control of the Islamic State group, says he told his family to stay put. If any Syrian asked me today, Should I make the journey? Id say go back and die in your land with honor, said the scrawny young man. Europe wants you dead. Turkey wants you dead. The deportations on Friday followed the return of 202 refugees earlier this week under the EU-Turkey deal which aims to return refugees who dont apply for asylum from Greece to Turkey. In exchange, the EU will take in some Syrians directly from Turkey, provide funds for Ankara, visa-free travel for Turks and accelerated EU membership talks. Officers from the European Unions border protection agency escorted the refugees to the boats on Lesbos. In the Turkish port of Dikili, health and migration officials checked the passengers amid heavy security before they were whisked onto police-escorted buses heading to a deportation center in Kirklareli province, near the border with Bulgaria. Turkeys coast guard rescued more than 500 refugees in the Aegean Sea during the first week of April, according to a written statement by the governors office of the western province of Izmir. In total, 23,147 have been rescued since the beginning of the year. 1 Vietnam premier: Vietnams rubber-stamp parliament on Thursday elected Nguyen Xuan Phuc as prime minister. In a formal vote, 446 of the 490 members in the National Assembly voted to install Phuc, 61, as the head of government. The appointment of Phuc, who rose from governor of the central province of Quang Nam to deputy prime minister five years ago, was a mere formality after he was picked at the Communist Partys congress in January as the sole candidate to replace Nguyen Tan Dung, who was removed from office Wednesday. Phuc takes office at a time when the country is crippled with soaring public debt, a serious budget deficit, Chinas territorial assertiveness in the South China Sea, as well as an unprecedented drought and salt intrusion in the countrys main rice-growing region of the southern Mekong Delta. 2 Political prisoners: Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Thursday that her government plans to release all political prisoners as quickly as possible, making the declaration her first act in her newly created job as state counselor. The statement, posted on the Facebook page of the office of President Htin Kyaw, declared the release a priority, suggesting it might begin by next week, which is Myanmars traditional New Year festival and has in the past been the occasion for prisoner releases. DUBLIN British Prime Minister David Cameron faced mounting pressure Friday over his involvement in offshore investments after he finally admitted he benefited from his fathers Panama-registered trust, an entity exposed by this weeks massive data leak of the so-called Panama Papers at a law firm specializing in global tax avoidance. Lawmakers from opposition parties demanded that Cameron tell the House of Commons whether he holds, or held, other similar investments in trusts beyond the reach of the British tax system. The issue which has ensnared scores of leaders, celebrities and others since Sundays unprecedented leak of 11.5 million documents from clients of law firm Mossack Fonseca is causing particular damage to Cameron, who for years has campaigned prominently for a crackdown on global tax avoidance. After three days of obfuscating statements, Cameron admitted Thursday night he had sold more than 30,000 pounds (about $48,450 at the time) in shares in his late fathers Blairmore Holdings, an investment vehicle that Mossack Fonseca helped organize in the Bahamas. Cameron said he bought the shares in 1997, the year his Conservative Party was ousted from power, and sold them in 2010 shortly before his party returned to office with him in the top post. Tom Watson, deputy leader of Britains opposition Labor Party, said nobody believed this was Camerons only involvement in profiting from offshore investments. He and many other lawmakers called on Cameron to publish not merely his recent annual tax returns something Cameron has pledged to do but also details of his investment portfolio since 2005, when he became Conservative Party leader. This is the man who is making the rules and living his life to a different set of rules, said Watson, who recalled Camerons 2013 speech denouncing offshore tax evasion. He heralded the new age of transparency. ... Why doesnt he just step out of the shadows, into the sunlight, and reveal his investment portfolio since 2005? Two candidates for Public Regulation Commission seats won't be getting public money for their campaigns, due to violations of New Mexico election law, the secretary of state has ruled. Commissioner Valerie Espinoza, who is running for re-election, has no opponent in the June primary for her District 3 seat, which covers Northern New Mexico's central core, including Santa Fe. Yet, she still applied under the Voter Action Act to get cash for one of New Mexico's few offices where public campaign financing is even an option. As an uncontested candidate, Espinoza was eligible for half the amount made available to candidates with opponentstotaling $17,679. Cynthia B Hall is taking on Karen Montoya, the incumbent for PRC's District 1, which mostly covers Albuquerque. Hall could have received $31,544. Yet contributions the two candidates accepted during early fundraising for what's called "seed money," adding up to $250, have disqualified them from receiving public funds, according to secretary of state letters obtained by SFR. Now, if they want to spend money for the campaign, they'll need to seek more private contributions. Reached on the phone, Espinoza, a Democrat, denied any wrongdoing. "We disagree with this decision. It reeks of political partisanship on behalf of the secretary," she says. She appealed the decision, but a hearing officer agreed with the secretary of state, who makes the final call as to whether the candidates get the money. Hall also appealed but decided to withdraw her appeal. She tells SFR the appeal is "just not worth the effort. I feel like this race is too important. I don't want it to be delayed by political manipulation." She added that she will fund her campaign through private donations. "The secretary is considering the hearing officer's recommendations and will issue his findings to the candidates as soon as possible," says Kenneth Ortiz, spokesman for Secretary of State Brad Winter. While candidates who intend to seek public campaign financing can collect $5,000 to get started, New Mexico law prohibits candidates from accepting seed money donated by corporate entities. Records show that Espinoza accepted $100 from Picuris Pueblo in October 2015. She also accepted $50 in December 2015 from JRA Equity, LLC, which lists Robert Anaya as its agent. Hall received $150 in seed money from a single contributor named Richard Rodriguez, violating the $100 limit. Rodriguez, a clinical psychologist, tells SFR he wrote two separate checks about three months apart and didn't realize that broke the rules. "It was my mistake," he says. Montoya, who was approved for public funds, says she supports the secretary of state's decision to deny money to her primary opponent. "When you're dealing with taxpayer money and public funds, there is a high threshold for what is appropriate, and as public officials, it is incumbent on us to be diligent," she tells SFR. "It didn't come through my office. This is the first time I'm hearing about this," says Picuris tribal administrator Jeff Atencio. Picuris Gov. Gary Pyne was not available for comment at the time of this article's publication. "It's so very unintentional. I have a full-time, 24/7 job," Espinoza says. "I trusted my treasurer to deposit the money. We're speaking about $150 total. I think that this is just such an extreme price to pay." Espinoza is running unopposed to keep her commission seat, which she has held since 2012. She previously served as Santa Fe County clerk for eight years and before that worked as a supervisor in the secretary of state's office. The Voter Action Act provides campaign funds for a small number of offices in New Mexico. Only candidates for statewide judicial elections and Districts 1 and 3 of the Public Regulatory Commission are eligible to apply. Officials discovered the violations when they reviewed the candidates' applications for public campaign funds. "Failure to comply with the provisions set in the Voter Action Act prohibit [sic] our office from certifying you to receive a disbursement from the Public Election Fund," both letters state. "As such, we are unable to qualify you for certification for public financing under the Voter Action Act for the 2016 election cycle." Santa Fe Reporter Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce says more migration is the only way to bridge the current skills gap for ICT companies in New Zealand. Joyce was asked at a Trans-Tasman Business Circle lunch in Auckland today what the answer was to the thousands of unfilled jobs advertised by New Zealand tech companies annually. The rapidly growing industry is generating an estimated 3,000 new jobs each year which cant be met by existing training initiatives underway, he said. A survey last year by industry organisation NZTech found tech companies want to recruit an estimated 10,000 employees in the next three years. The problem remains where to find them. Joyce said ICT graduates coming through the traditional tertiary system have grown from around 1,000 in 2008 to around 1,500 in 2015 along with around 350 through the three government-funded ICT Graduate School programmes in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, which closely link students with industry. But there was still a significant gap which could only be filled by skilled migrants, he said. Thats one of the reasons Im leery of calls to halt immigration apart from the fact theres not much reason to because of the economic gains, he said. Annual net migration reached a new record high of 67,390 in February, the 19th straight month of record increases and exceeding Treasurys forecast for a peak of 62,500 for the March quarter. Some commentators expect annual net migration to surpass 70,000 by June. Joyce said most of New Zealand's fast-growing high-tech firms theyre already a veritable United Nations of talent. The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment and Immigration NZ were working together to ensure skilled migrants in the ICT area were gaining access to work here. Its a work in progress but were doing what we can, he said. Increasing the countrys available pool of skills, including arresting a decline in secondary school students studying STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and maths), was one of five key areas Joyce outlined to maintain the economic progress of the past five years. The other four include: international connectivity through trade deals like the TTP; innovation, including focusing more on discovery-led science; improving resource allocation, including steady and measured reform of water allocation; and investment from offshore, particularly into New Zealands provincial areas to create more jobs. 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 New Zealand-based investors are selling out of Diligent Corp before the company's acquired by venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners out of fear they'll have to pay tax, analysts say. Under the terms of the agreement, Diligent shareholders will receive $7.39 (US$4.90) in cash per share. The shares will go into a trading halt on Monday after the market closes before a special meeting of stockholders on Wednesday morning. If the sale goes ahead, Diligent will be delisted and money will be paid to shareholders. In a statement filed to the stock exchange on March 7, Diligent said New Zealand holders of the stock may be liable for tax if the merger proceeds because Diligent is a foreign company for the purposes of the foreign investment fund (FIF) tax rules. A tax liability will arise if a New Zealand investor applies the FIF rules to their foreign company investments. However, that can be avoided if a New Zealand shareholder sells before the merger is approved. The New Zealand Shareholders Association drew attention to the potential tax liability for New Zealand shareholders of the NZX-listed, New York-based company. The stock has seen a sharp lift in volume since it announced the intended takeover in February, with 6.42 million shares sold in yesterday's session, beating the previous record of 880,357 shares traded in a single day. JBWere's New Zealand equity manager Rickey Ward said questions about whether the merger would be a taxable event have spurred selling. "There was a paragraph in the booklet that indicated it could be a taxable event because it would be deemed to be a merger, which creates a problem. We recommend individuals seek personal tax advice because we're not tax experts, but it came about through a comment in their booklet," Ward said. "If it ends up being a taxable event, you get taxed on the price over the last financial year compared to the takeover, which is significantly higher - so you could be liable for a large bill for a company which doesn't pay any income; it doesn't pay a dividend," he said. "People have become a bit wary of that and have made an investment decision based around the gap in the price and the potential taxation issue. "I think that's why you've seen the volume steadily increase from the sell side, predominantly going into US buyers or global hedge fund or absolute funds just buying it for a short-dated positive return." Maurice Greenough from Equity Investment Advisers says "Investors who wish to sell their shares can do so easily through us and to contact Equity Investment Advisers to effect a sale." 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 Career Skills You Need For Success Every Employer Will Want To Hire You If You Master These Skills This article was originally published by AskMen UK. With summer and the end of university academic years in sight, soon-to-be graduates are starting to focus on getting jobs or internships and moving into their own places. If you're a final year student, we can help you with the former; on the latter we'd just caution: If it's $350/month, it's probably a cardboard box in someone's garage. Enter Rajeeb Dey, the founder and CEO of Enternships, a company that specialises in placing graduates in jobs or internships. You could say he knows what skills a candidate needs for success (and no, they don't involve chugging a pint in 0.3 seconds). These are the skills the UK needs today from its grads and, in turn, what you need to know in order to land a job. Sales Experience Whether you like it or not, you're selling yourself on a daily basis. Whether it's meeting new people on a friendship level, on social media, or actually at an interview, the process is still technically a sale. And being able to do it well is invaluable. "Its a fundamental skill in any business of any kind, whether it be a startup or large corporation, to have that kind of commercial awareness," says Dey. "For anyone looking at getting their foot in the door with an employer, being able to fall back on sales skills will always be valuable. If you can develop that skill set while youre studying thats always going to be a valuable skill set to put on your CV no matter what job function you go into later down the line." RELATED: Get Ahead In Your Career By Learning How To Sell - Even If You Aren't In Sales Entrepreneurial Attitude If you haven't seen it on a meme lately, you've heard it from your mum. Attitude is everything. Regardless of how great you are at a certain hard skill, an employer is still going to choose to hire the candidate who has the personality and attitude they'll want to work with day in and day out. "We work with thousands of startups and fast growing businesses helping them find great talent, but what we find is that with entry level first time roles, a lot of the time an employer is looking for an attitude rather than a functional skill," says Dey. "Pernod Ricard and Chivas look for entrepreneurial spirit, for example. Whether it be a startup environment [you're looking for] or starting your own venture, whether it be a commercial enterprise or a social enterprise, the ability to demonstrate entrepreneurial skills to an employer is very attractive." RELATED: 6 Jobs Any Budding Entrepreneur Should Do At Least Once Tech & Data Analysis The tech and information sector in London, Southeast and East England including Oxford and Cambridge is growing faster than that of California, according to research by Oxford Economics. It's expected to create an additional 12 billion of economic activity and 46,000 new jobs in the capital over the next decade. And there's a massive shortage of talent. "Theres certainly a massive shortage of tech talent in the UK and particularly in London, so theres this rise of Tech City and tech startups that are looking for developers or designers or product managers. What Id recommend for people entering the job market is to really get an understanding of the opportunities within tech and the digital world because its one of the fastest growing sectors, its where salaries are very high and its very dynamic," says Dey. Even if you didn't go to school for it, you can train to become a coder or developer. Dey suggests looking at courses at places like Makers Academy (where you can learn to code in 12 weeks, according to their website) and General Assembly, or online platforms like Coursera and Mooc. If coding isn't your dream job, you should still learn data analysis. Tools like Google Analytics or Excel are particularly usefu. "Tools where you can see what impact marketing is having on the bottom line, or what the customer retention rate is, are all valuable to employers." Time Management Time management is a really important one. A study of 757 small and medium UK businesses found that only those who manage their time well are 20% more likely to grow. If you can demonstrate that you're able to prioritise and add value to a business, it can only be a good thing. "So if youve been able to balance a job and a good degree, thats a great thing to put on your CV," notes Dey. Communication Skills "Communication skills is what [employers] are really looking for: can you communicate with customers and do they feel comfortable putting you in front of a client?" says Dey. Even if youre sitting in front of a PC all day coding, that's not enough in today's collaborative workspaces. "You still need to have the ability to communicate what youre working on to other team members." So make sure you gain experience in a customer facing role whether it be in a retail shop or the service industry. Happy hunting! Letters Make A Difference With Teen Alcoholism This April is Alcohol Awareness Month. Founded and sponsored by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc. (NCADD) since 1987, this year's theme is: "Talk Early, Talk Often: Parents Can Make a Difference in Teen Alcohol Use." No other substance is more widely used and abused by America's youth than alcohol, making alcoholism and alcohol-related problems the number one public health problem in the United States. It is important to know that parents play a significant role in preventing and reducing the incidence of underage alcohol and drug use. Fostering healthy and responsible attitudes, talking openly and honestly, encouraging supportive relationships and showing children that their opinions and decisions matter, are all ways to help prevent the use of alcohol and drugs. In fact, research has shown that kids who have conversations with their parents and learn a lot about the dangers of alcohol and drug use are 50 percent less likely to use alcohol and drugs than those who don't have such conversations. It can be challenging to develop the communication skills needed to talk with your children about drinking and drugs, but it will be well worth the effort you put into it, as you get to know your children a little better and help them build the coping skills they need to handle the anger, stress, peer pressure, loneliness and disappointment that are part of being an adolescent. Lynn Baron, Community Educator Monticello Don't Make Patterns Out Of Bad Individuals The recent FBI raids in Brooklyn, Monsey and locally in Kiryas Joel bring to light the element of crime in this closeknit triangle of communities which affects law-abiding taxpayers in Orange County and New York State. But we must stop thinking of the attempts by the unscrupulous players perpetuating this fraud as being a Hasidic problem. That is as inaccurate as is saying that the Mafia being a Catholic problem or an Italian problem. The same is true of other groups that have criminal people within them, which we often call "mobs" or "gangs," who scare and take over entire communities, and think themselves above the law. The problem is that there are evil people who exist in close-knit groups, and some decide to create and run criminal organizations. Racketeering and other high-finance crime must not be tolerated, and must be prosecuted for the benefit of everyone living in Orange County and in New York State. Mark Levy Salisbury Mills Obama Should Swear Garland In As Justice President Obama should have Merrick Garland immediately sworn in to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. While our Constitution doesn't allow a president to appoint a nominee without Senate approval, the Constitution doesn't prohibit such executive actions when the Senate declines to hold hearings and to vote on such nominations. I doubt our founding fathers envisioned the shenanigans Senate leaders are resorting to regarding Garland's nomination. If necessary, let's make this a test case for the courts to resolve. If Garland continues to be left in limbo, and Obama is unable or unwilling to fill the vacancy because the Senate won't do what it is supposed to do, a precedent will be set for obstructing a president's legitimate authority whenever the Senate is controlled by a political power other than the president's. Let's restore common sense and fair play to our political process. Joel D. Freedman Canandaigua Believes Christianity Needs More Militancy... It has been said that seminaries are where vocations go to die. Are our pastors supposed to be babysitters or generals; are our churches and hospitals training fortresses or resting homes and mausoleums? It is easy to sit idly by while the lost fall into hell and society follows. But is this the church's mission? Do your tithes do an ounce of good for the Kingdom, or are they wasted away on meaningless purchases and programs? A busy church is not necessarily an obedient one. Love isn't being silent and doing nothing while Rome burns. It is time for the church to awake. We sing and dance on Sunday mornings and even call down the Holy Spirit, then do nothing while our children are murdered in abortion mills, our schools become moral cesspools, and the Gospel goes un-preached. What are you paying your pastors for? What are you going to church for? Nice sermons? To be coddled in your apathy and indifference? If your pastor isn't actively seeking the lost, if he is not training Christian soldiers and leading the fight against society's ills, if he is so little spent at the end of the week that his own strength is sufficient, fire him. Better an empty pulpit that one occupied by one who who either leads his flock astray or doesn't lead at all. The time is too short to waste on McClellans. Nothing is so sad as a risen Christ served by a dead church. Jeffrey Mahoney Hyde Park Why Most The Democratic Primary Be Closed? We want to vote for Senator Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary taking place in New York on April 19, 2016. But we cannot. New York State election laws violate our voting rights by not allowing us to do so. We are two of nearly one million Independent New York City voters and taxpayers who will be denied voting rights in this critical stage of the national election process. Let us introduce ourselves. My name is Alvaader Frazier, a lifelong African-American community organizer and independent political leader living here in New York City. I was active in the civil rights movement in my youth. I worked in the history making 1988 Independent Presidential Fair Elections Campaign of Dr. Lenora B. Fulani. I worked hard in 2003 attempt to pass nonpartisan elections for the City of New York. Since those times, voting rights have seen system wide setbacks, like the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This opened the door again for suppression of voter's rights unseen in the USA since the late 1800s and early 1900s in nearly every state. New York's continued use of closed primaries in every election is another leading form of voter suppression. My name is David Belmont, a second-generation Jewish-American progressive activist. My father was an activist and union organizer, alongside Paul Robeson and others, in the 1950s. I was a marcher in the peace movement of the 1960s, and joined with Alvaader and others in the 1980s in fighting for the rights of independent voters. In 2005, I was a member of a multi-racial, left/right coalition that supported Mayor Michael Bloomberg. We won 47 percent of the African-American vote in that election and 65 percent of the independent vote. Bernie Sanders' call for addressing the widening economic inequality in our country resonates with me. However, I also cannot vote for Sanders in the primary. My voice, along with 2.5 million other independents, will not be heard in New York State's closed presidential primary. We are locked out. Senator Sanders is leading a campaign for a Political Revolution. Citizen voters should not have to join a political party to vote. And taxpaying citizen voters should not have to pay for elections that we cannot vote in. We join every New Yorker (Democrats and otherwise) supporting Senator Sanders' campaign for Political Revolution. Independents are on the front lines for him. He needs to include independents in his Political Revolution. Tell the leaders of the parties here in New York to let us vote too! Senator Sanders, Independent turned Democrat, has the courage of his convictions to challenge the almighty Democratic Party Clinton machine. We salute and raise him up for giving Hillary Clinton a hard fought primary. If you or someone you know are supporting and feeling the Bern for Senator Sanders, join forces with us. We should get together and talk together regarding how we can further Bernie's Political Revolution! Alvaader Frazier David Belmont New York A Modest Proposal For Helping Bernie Out If you see Bernie as the only sane way for our countries future, then I am going to ask you to help him win the New York State Primary. What I'm proposing is that all creative artists, musicians and retired people from the advertising business, like myself, volunteer our talents and donate our ideas to Bernie's campaign. The one I am suggesting here is using the following visual: The one of the sparrow sitting on Bernie's podium and staring at him for 19 seconds, until Bernie raised his hand and smiled at him as if to say: "OK, got your message back to business". And then, the other visual of the Donald being bitten and snapped at by the only significant symbol of our country, other than the flag. If you haven't seen the pix of the Donald trying to get a pic of himself with a bald eagle, who snaps at him causing the Donald to ask: "how's my hair looking?" and then: "This bird is seriously dangerous," do look it up online. When I looked up the symbolic meaning of sparrows, I saw that sparrows derive power and protection from their numbers. Always in a clan, they move in clusters, and eat in clusters. This can be quite intimidating to some would-be predators. Safety in numbers is a lesson the sparrow has to share with us. Fastidious and productive, the sparrow is a reminder that idle hands (and idle minds) should be avoided in order to live a full, healthy life. Let's donate our creativity to Bernie, and get cartoons and even You- Tubes out, using this "message that surely came from above." Jill Paperno Glenford Suggests We All Listen To Rush Limbaugh The Republican show is in the big ring right now. And we are fortunate enough to have a clear view of it. From noon to three, weekdays, on WKIP, the moves are being analyzed by a polite, affable host, with a tremendous research team, who will inform, amuse, and entertain you. Listen to Rush Limbaugh for a week. You may not always like his point of view, but his view is wide, and his vision is clear. Our form of government only works with an informed citizenry. Rush is a pleasant way to be informed, and he gives you a lot to think about. Hank Harwood Montela Another Defense For Donald J. Trump We the people are fed up with the lies and deceit of the greedy politicians who think more of themselves than the people they represent. They are a group of self-righteous individuals who capitalize on every opportunity to benefit themselves. Our voice is being heard loud and clear. Politicians, you will mistreat us no more. We will elect a person who is not a politician and cannot be bought. One who is on a mission to take this country back and restore the greatness that it once had. We will elect one Donald J. Trump. And so it shall be. George Devine Kokomo, IN Become What Comes Of Nature's Fit All I walked my routine on a late afternoon. I went thinking the election through eyes of Trump. Gangdom style I saw on trial. The Donald slid the Whitemen down their paystacks. I struck my pace and took my place to lead Myself through thunder and lightning with chill wind blowing down and throwing down Giant icy pellets of hail. Cold became my being conquered By nature returning red-centered snowflakes Where blood came warm from startled moment aggregated my open sense to follow. The white-working men confounded by centuries sat upon responses of dire responsibilities, Mythically waving tribes away. Now swells an open sky to fit all souls. Trump sees one by one, a bridge and others see a bridge between self images of ethnics dissolving in humanity. The elites of America early arranged their working whites to manage a lower class culture. The moment of cultural inequalities is abiding wealth and flocking to social tribes from oligarchic misery. Unite culture and understand the efforts of needy humanity burdened by elites in their bubble (their bathroom mirror.) Tom Gale Will Bill Clinton's BLM Comments Hurt Hillary? Trending News: Bill Clinton Just Gave Bernie Sanders A Major Boost. Here's Why Why Is This Important? Because alienating a huge part of your wifes political base is no way to win the White House. Long Story Short Bill Clinton, whos been called Americas first black president due to his popularity among African-Americans, had a very public confrontation with a Black Lives Matter activist on Thursday, and didnt come off well. He accused the movement of sheltering drug dealers and murderers, and defended the crime bill passed during his administration from charges that it led to the mass incarceration of black Americans. This may wind up being a big help to the Sanders campaign. Long Story The video of Bill Clinton losing it with a BLM protester in Philadelphia may very well come back to haunt Hillary. Despite being immensely popular with black voters, the Clinton brand is facing some very serious criticism from African-American corners over the legacy of the first Clinton presidency: namely, a huge jump in the number of black Americans behind bars and limiting millions of poor American families access to government assistance. But instead of acknowledging the problems in his crime and welfare reform bills, Clinton went on the offensive, conjuring up the image of the so-called superpredator, and boasting about getting countless families out of poverty. But there are problems with both of those claims, and the Sanders campaign is ready to pounce on them. First, the superpredator, a term used by Hillary in the mid-90s. The racially-charged term refers to young, urban men who have no feelings of guilt, conscience or empathy. But they dont exist, and never have: the research behind it has been debunked, but not before hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of families were devastated. The 1994 crime bill today is considered far too harsh, and disproportionately targeting black Americans. As for the welfare reform law of 1996, thats been criticized for impoverishing hundreds of thousands of poor families. Critics charge that Clintons defense of it now skates over fact that it was passed during a boom economy, one that imploded by end of his presidency. Bernie Sanders, who voted against the law, tried to capitalize on that ahead of the South Carolina primaries in February and failed. But now Sanders has a golden opportunity to bite deep into the Clinton campaign. By linking two signature laws passed by the 42nd President with the current situation millions of African-Americans find themselves in, by stating that those laws directly contributed to their impoverishment and incarceration, Sanders can steal some important votes away from his rival at the New York primary on April 19th. Own The Conversation Ask The Big Question: Will Bills meltdown blow over in a couple of weeks? Disrupt Your Feed: At this point, Hillary may want to start limiting Bills exposure to the public. Drop This Fact: According to the NAACP, African-Americans account for almost a million of the USs 2.3 million incarcerated population. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- With so many Asian eateries populating the New Dorp neighborhood, a restaurant's got to stand out. That's one reason why Jade Asian Bistro kicked off a few new dishes Thursday evening at a ceremonial ribbon-cutting. With DJ music in the backdrop plus food and drink compliments of owner Ming Lam, patron Diane Signorile was completely impressed with the restaurant's "first birthday" party. She came to the place this evening because of an invitation courtesy of Jade Asian's manager, Angela Chow, who Signorile credits with making the restaurant as special as it has become over the last year. "She's going to make a go of it -- she's got something on New Dorp Lane that nobody has," said Signorile, who also was thrilled to win a $50 gift certificate in a raffle at the fete. With Rock Shrimp Tempura, Yakitori Bacon and Sausage along with fried Thai Calamari rings, about 50 guests congregated in the restaurant following the ribbon snip and photographs. The spot, located at 331 New Dorp Lane (718-980-6880), played home to the former King Chef, a long-running Chinese restaurant. Renovated now with a curving bar and woodwork throughout, the bistro is handsome place that features sushi and assorted duck dishes. It has developed a clubby feel. At the inaugural New Dorp Lane Restaurant stroll last spring, Ms. Chow hired a promoter to amp up the party atmosphere to the place. And the new vibe took hold. Lam, by the way, is no stranger to restaurants. He and his family run Jing Fong in Manhattan's Chinatown as well as Jade Asian Restaurant Catering in Flushing, Queens. Why come to Staten Island? Chow explained, "They wanted to do fusion." As a 26-year resident of the borough, she felt her knowledge of the borough would anchor Jade Asian Bistro in the restaurant fibers of Staten Island. So last year, she began to broaden the menu options. "I changed the menu to include Malaysian, Thai food, It makes the menu more popular," she said. Chamber members and affiliated Business Guilds turned out to celebrate Thursday. "It's nice to see the business thriving after a year," said Linda Baran, Staten Island Chamber of Commerce president. "And we wish them much success going forward." STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- For a borough of nearly half a million residents, Staten Island is underrepresented in at least one very important area: locally crafted beer. While cities of Staten Island's size sip on local beer from as many as a dozen breweries, ours is still behind in the beer-per-capita ratio -- a ratio of growing intrigue and economic potential. This fall, that could change. Kills Boro Brewing Company, the passion project of three Staten Island home brewers and a restaurant owner, is currently looking for investors to help them open up their craft brewery, making them the second brewery in a place that once had many. "The need is here, we've basically just become vessels for this idea," said Sean Torres, the brewery's marketing manager and one of the founders of Staten Island's homebrew club, Pour Standards. If they meet all their fundraising deadlines, Kill Boro will open this November next to Craft House on 60 Van Duzer St. in Stapleton. The brewery will be attached to the restaurant, with a glass wall that will give diners a view of the brewery's operations. They'll start with four beers: a coconut cream ale, a white IPA, a foreign extra stout and a pale ale with Galaxy hops. Their schtick? They'll have a variety of unconventional but crafty beers for brew lovers and beer virgins alike. Three of the brewery's four founders -- Torres, Phil Gardner and Patrick Wade -- are longtime homebrewers. They've already been making award-winning brews like their Figeddaboudit Belgian Dubble with Fig, which won first place in the 2015 Homebrew Alley; and their Jolly Ol' Extra Special Bitter, which won first place in the 2014 New York State Fair. They'll also release some limited edition and seasonal beers throughout the year. The fourth founder, Vincent Lima, is the owner of Craft House, which will expand its restaurant to accommodate the Kills Boro equipment. The brewery's name is a nod to Staten Island's rich beer history dating back to the influx of German immigrants in the mid-1800s. It was said that beer from Staten Island was the best because of its water, which flowed from springs to the various "kills" around the Island. It comes in the spirit of those early breweries -- to introduce new tastes to residents and be a part of the community. One of the most prominent breweries of the time, the Bechtel Brewery, created a cave to store and ferment its beer -- that cave was located on Van Duzer Street, where Kills Boro will set up shop. So what do Staten Island's current craft beer kings, Flagship Brewing Co., have to say about the impending competition? "Hate those guys. Just kidding," said Jay Sykes, Flagship's co-owner. "There's so much more room for people to be brewing great beer on Staten Island. They're helping to convert people over to great locally made beer. It's fantastic." Kills Boro has to raise $490,000 in startup costs before it can complete the necessary permitting to officially open -- it's possible this will take longer than seven months. But they're pushing forward with the help of recent legislative efforts designed to encourage breweries to open. For example, last year Gov. Cuomo signed a law authorizing retail stores to conduct tastings of liquor, beer and cider. The law also exempts micro-breweries from redundant tax filing requirements. "In every corner of the state, New York's craft beverage industry is thriving and we're committed to helping it further grow to create more jobs and more economic activity," Cuomo said at the time. He's right about that. In 2015, American craft brewers' retail dollar value was estimated at $22.3 billion, according to the Brewers Association. Torres believes Staten Island is thirsty enough to support two breweries. Kills Boro will be pitching to investors around the borough over the next couple months. "We're targeting Staten Island first because we want our community to be a part of establishing our brewery," Torres said. "We're confident that Staten Islanders could fully fund this." Voting machine.jpg The head of the Staten Island office of the Board of Elections was fined $3,500 for accepting rides from employees who she called friends. (Advance file photo) Sheila Del Giorno runs the Staten Island office of the Board of Elections. (Advance file photo) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Who knew carpooling was illegal for some city employees? The city Conflicts of Interest Board found a Staten Island Board of Elections official guilty of violating the city charter by hitching rides with a neighbor to and from work and getting rides during the workday, and fined the employee $3,500. Sheila Del Giorno, chief clerk of the Island's Board of Elections office, was fined $3,500 for having employees drive her around without paying them. She said she wasn't aware she was violating any laws but paid the fine. Del Giorno, according to her deposition, is personal friends and neighbors with the two people who gave her rides. She explained that she doesn't drive, and a friend, who used to drive her to the job they shared in the past, now drives her to their job together at the BOE. Del Giorno also explained that because of a medical condition, she goes to doctors' appointments regularly during the workday. Another person who works at the Board of Elections and who is also a neighbor and friend offered to drive her, using his annual leave to do so. She said the employees have not accepted her offers to reimburse them for the costs associated with driving her. The city charter prohibits its employees from obtaining free rides to and from work and personal appointment from a subordinate public servant without first obtaining a waiver to do so. Charter SS 2604(b)(3) states: No public servant shall use or attempt to use his position as a public servant to obtain any financial gain, contract, license, privilege or other private or personal advantage, direct or indirect, for the public servant or any person or firm associated with the public servant. While Del Giorno maintains that the drivers are personal friends who offered to drive her, the law is there to prevent abuse. What do you think of the law? Should some city employees have to get a waiver? Should they face fines of thousands of dollars if they don't? Borelli Trump.jpg Councilman Joe Borelli, then an assemblyman, meets Donald Trump in 2013 when Trump was mulling a run for governor. (Photo courtesy of Joe Borelli) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - An enthusiastic Donald Trump supporter, Councilman Joe Borelli has been named one of 14 co-chairs of Trump's campaign leadership team in New York. Borelli (R-South Shore) endorsed the GOP front-runner last month after having been one of several Staten Islanders to try to persuade Trump to run for governor in 2013. Borelli attended Trump's Long Island rally on Wednesday evening, and discussed the event on AM970 The Answer with Joe Piscopo Thursday morning. His role as a co-chair is to "try to generate a high turnout in the congressional district for Donald Trump and to be visible in the media and use social media to try to help generate a buzz," he said. Island Republican Chairman John Antoniello also endorsed Trump last month and is among the 33 county chairpersons across the state whose support the Trump campaign announced Wednesday. Borelli said he became involved with Trump's campaign in New York after establishing a rapport when Trump was considering a run for governor. He said many of the other co-chairs fall into the same category. NOAA CLOUDS This NOAA satellite image taken Friday, April 8, 2016 at 12:45 AM EDT shows a large area of scattered snow showers moving across the Ohio River Valley and the northern Mid-Atlantic in the wake of a complex spring storm system that is currently over eastern Canada. Another shield of precipitation is also covering parts of northeastern Maine. Some trailing rain showers spread over parts of Georgia and the Carolinas are also forming along a frontal boundary that extends from New York into the Lower Mississippi River Valley. (Weather Underground via AP) (Associated Press) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Forecasters are hedging their bets about whether Staten Island will be soaked with rain or up to 1 inch of snow Saturday. With a high of 41 degrees and a low of 28 degrees, it's anyone's guess as to what form the precipitation will take. AccuWeather is warning that a coating to one inch of rain-drenched snow could dampen Staten Island. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service is predicting rain during a day and less than a half-inch of snowfall from Saturday night into early Sunday morning. A freeze watch with temperatures in the high 20s and low 30s is in effect from midnight through 10 a.m. Sunday; the high is expected to be 46 degrees, according to the National Weather Service and AccuWeather. AccuWeather is warning of rain mixed with snow starting Saturday morning and lasting into the evening. The National Weather Service forecast is: Saturday: Rain, mainly after 8 a.m. High near 43 degrees. East wind 13 to 18 miles per hour. Chance of precipitation is 80 percent. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. Saturday night: Rain likely before 9 p.m., then a slight chance of snow between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. Cloudy, then gradually becoming partly cloudy, with a low around 29 degrees. Wind chill values between 20 and 25. Blustery, with a north wind 16 to 22 miles per hour. Chance of precipitation is 60 percent. New snow accumulation of less than a half-inch possible. Hula group creates global connection When the pandemic ushered everyone indoors, Moorpark resident and longtime dancer Lisa Rauschenberger decided to get people back outsidesocially distanced, of course. She began to hold weekly hula lessons at... Hospital offers safe option to dispose of meds, narcotics Los Robles Health System is working to crush the opioid drug crisis by raising awareness about the dangers of opioid misuse and the importance of safe and proper disposal of... Rotary works to promote worldwide peace, goodwill The Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise recently invited administrators and principals from the Simi Valley Unified School District to attend a meeting and receive the book The Nonviolence Handbook: A... Free books and Halloween treats Big fun awaits kids at local little libraries Simi Valley has about 20 registered Little Free Libraries that offer free books for children, teens and adults. In addition to providing free books to the community, the Little Free... 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 Thank you for visiting the Daily Journal. Please purchase an Enhanced Subscription to continue reading. 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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(0x5612f04d2388)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f04681a0)', '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(0x5612f04d2388)') 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(0x5612f04681a0)') 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(0x5612f0468050)') 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(0x5612f04681a0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f04681a0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee50c4e0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f043ebf8)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f043ebf8)') 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(0x5612f049cbc8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01cc888)', '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(0x5612f049cbc8)') 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(0x5612f01cc888)') 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(0x5612f021ae20)') 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(0x5612f01cc888)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01cc888)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee50b9e8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f048e730)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f048e730)') 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(0x5612f0169ec8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f03bfc18)', '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(0x5612f0169ec8)') 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(0x5612f03bfc18)') 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(0x5612f0264bc0)') 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(0x5612f03bfc18)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f03bfc18)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612efbfefb8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0114d60)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0114d60)') 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(0x5612f01e8920)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f00f2008)', '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(0x5612f01e8920)') 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(0x5612f00f2008)') 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(0x5612f01b7ce8)') 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(0x5612f00f2008)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f00f2008)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee50c4e0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f007eee8)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f007eee8)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 Investors remain unperturbed by damning reports of toxic bank cultures, instead focusing on whether or not banks will be able to sustain their current generous dividends. The market has punished the banks so far in 2016, with the big four trading about 10 per cent lower across the board, prompting some investors to describe the stocks as "screaming cheap". "Over the last 30 years they've rarely been as cheap as they are today," said Julian Babarczy, head of Australian equities at Regal Funds Management. "And people are worried about lots of things, it's hard to see a defining event or catalyst that will give people confidence, but the big question is how sustainable the current dividend payouts are." Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce chartered a helicopter to visit an area less than an hour and a half by road from his ministerial office in Armidale. The flight to Copeton Dam places a question mark over a key plank of the National leader's defence of his helicopter usage, supported on Friday by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, that choppers were used as an alternative to unreasonably long drives. The 120 kilometre flight from Armidale to Copeton Dam cost $2211 return. The vibrant produce markets in Fiji's capital city, Suva, spill out of the busting warehouse and on to the surrounding pavements. It is most often the women and children that travel from remote areas with all manner of goods coconut, cassava, shellfish, kava root to make a little money at Fiji's produce mecca. For these women, Suva is not home and they must try to find somewhere safe to rest for the evening before returning home. It was during an internship at the UN Women office in Suva that photographer, and winner of the Clique Summer Herald Photography Competition, Eva Schroeder, observed these women making do with simple shelter in the shadows of the market. After hours: a grandmother and grandchild shelter in a temporary dwelling after spending the day selling produce at Suva markets, Fiji. Credit:UNWomen/ Eva Schroeder "Hidden at the back of the Suva markets in Fiji are several free-standing one-room dwellings that provide a little night time security for the large groups of female rural market vendors that seek shelter there," Schroeder said. "They sleep on pieces of cardboard on the floor and eat sparingly, trying to save any money they make, suffering the pressures of economic survival ... their current toilet is some distance away and a nightly visit often results in robbery and assault." "It's very difficult to shoot [photos] while under fire," photographer Kate Geraghty says bluntly as she recalls the time she hid under a bridge during a gunfight near Donetsk airport in Ukraine. Shelling in Ukraine was continuous as she travelled through, but it wasn't new to her. She had witnessed suicide bombings and IED blasts in Iraq. No stranger to trauma and war, Geraghty's first overseas assignment for The Sydney Morning Herald was to cover the gruesome aftermath of the Bali bombings in 2002. Ismail Abdul Hassan, 17, a volunteer fighter, recovers in hospital in Baghdad after battling Islamic State militants. Credit:Kate Geraghty For the Press Council's 40th-anniversary conference, the renowned Fairfax photojournalist will be delivering the keynote address, "Words fail me", showing photographs and recalling stories from her career documenting war zones. The five-time Walkley Award winner has reported from throughout the globe Iran, South Sudan, Crimea, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Congo to name a few and will be running a Q&A at the end of her address. The number of temporary staff employed by the Australian public service jumped dramatically last year while permanent positions continued to decline. The Australian Public Service Commission's latest statistical bulletin, designed to give policy makers a snapshot of the workforce, reveals a distinct trend in recruitment practices. "Profound changes": Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd. Credit:Jay Cronan Last year, 16,273 temporary staff were on the books. That's a 27.2 per cent increase on the 12,792 permanent staff employed in 2014 when the bureaucracy was in the grip of a recruitment freeze. Non-ongoing workers now account for 10.7 per cent of the entire federal bureaucracy, a 3.1 per cent jump on figures released by the commission mid-last year. Christopher Anderson has been jailed for the manslaughter of his pregnant girlfriend Allira Green. Credit:Facebook On July 27, 2013, Ms Green wrote: "You've pushed me too far now I've got 20 weeks to go and U start this shit. You shouldn't have touched me." Minutes later, on her way to the hospital in an ambulance, she wrote: "I hope I've lost this kid I really do bekoz that's the only way im gonna get U out of my life for good." Hundreds of text messages over the next few days oscillate between proclamations of love, name-calling, accusations of cheating, drug taking and claims the relationship was over. On July 29 Ms Green told Anderson she loved him: "1 love U so much babe. Im always gonna be here tho, jail or not. Me n your boy ain't going anywhere . 1 promise you id rather cut ny legs off then not have U in OUR life. Just try be more positive about court ok. 1 know you dont wanna leave me but if it comes to it we gotta be strong. For our babys sake." On the afternoon of August 2, 2013, Ms Green visited a friend Louise Bodeker at a unit in Maroubra where she took ice and cannabis. After midnight on August 3, Ms Green's friend Allira Holt drove to the unit to pick her up. On arrival, she saw Anderson standing on a landing outside. When he was asked to leave, he became angry and aggressive and said, "I'm going to get you." A scuffle followed in which Ms Green, Ms Holt and Ms Bodeker fell to the floor. Ms Green went to the kitchen and retrieved a knife, held it above her head and moved towards Anderson. A brief struggle ensued and Anderson grabbed the knife from Ms Green and stabbed her in the chest. The wound was 15 centimetres deep. "The offender did this believing his conduct was necessary to defend himself but accepts that it was not a reasonable response in the circumstances," the document states. Anderson left the unit and spoke to a friend, admitting he had consumed ice and anti-anxiety medication Xanax. Ms Green was 20 weeks pregnant with a baby boy. A post-mortem report found high levels of methylamphetamine, amphetamine, alprazolam (Xanax), diazepam (Valium) and the sedative nordazepam in her system. Outside the court, Ms Green's mother Nadia Green-Simms said fear of her daughter being blamed was partly behind her acceptance of the plea of guilty to manslaughter. "We're just hoping now justice prevails, you know, with domestic violence so rife out there now," she said. "This was a case of domestic violence to me - I've been in this field a long time and I just want the justice that my daughter and my grandson deserves. "I'm just glad now that, yes, we have accepted this plea. We're not happy but at least we know he's admitted to something and my daughter can rest in peace now." Ms Green-Simms described her daughter as "an amazing girl" who "lit up the room". Hundreds of residents left homeless after a storm ripped off the roof of their Lidcombe apartment block have suffered another blow, with their insurer rejecting their multi-million dollar claim. Insurance giant AIG has denied payouts to repair the building - developed by controversial Auburn councillor Ronney Oueik - because its expert found it did not comply with the Building Code of Australia. Structural engineer Roderick Broune concluded the roof was riddled with defects and that, had it met basic standards, it would have withstood the violent weather on Saturday, January 30. "The roof contained latent structural defects, that were due to poor design and/or workmanship during the initial construction ... and if the roof had not contained these structural defects then no loss and damage would have occurred during the storm," AIG said in a letter. "A good example of what a tonne of 11KW transformer does to a pole in subsiding footings," he said. Jonathan Mandl, who has relatives who live in the street, said jokes aside, residents are concerned about it and have made numerous complaints to ActewAGL. Jonathan Mandl on Hicks Street in Red Hill with a power pole he is concerned could fall over. Credit:Rohan Thomson Red Hill is known for its premier real estate so locals reckon there is only one bad listing in the suburb - this power pole with a more than a bit of a lean in Hicks Street. "A collapse would see live power lines brought down in three neighbouring backyards and heaven help whoever is walking or driving up Hicks St when it happens. ActewAGL assure customers on both sides of street it is perfectly okay." And ActewAGL has assured us of that, too, via a statement from ActewAGL manager works delivery Clinton McAlister. "ActewAGL would like to reassure the public that there is no safety concern with the pole in question at Hicks Street, Red Hill," a statement from them read. "ActewAGL has only received one customer enquiry about this pole, which was in 2012. Following this enquiry, ActewAGL organised an inspection by an independent auditor, which was carried out in 2012. The inspection found the pole was well supported and goes at least two metres into the ground. "As part of ActewAGL's asset inspection program we inspect every pole in Canberra every four to five years. The pole in question is due to be inspected by July, 2017. However, in response to the customer's enquiry, we will send a pole inspector out to conduct a further inspection on the pole as soon as possible." A convicted murderer who stashed drugs in his underwear inside Canberra's jail told a court he was determined to kick his drug habit and get freed from behind bars. Daniel Scott Williams, 40, told ACT Corrections officers a female visitor handed him a plastic packet of cannabis when he pulled it out of his pants before a strip-search at the Alexander Maconochie Centre on December 17 last year. The man took the drugs out of his pants prior to a strip-search at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. Credit:Jay Cronan But Williams later told police he had found the drugs on the footpath outside the jail's visiting area and put it in his underwear because he thought it might have belonged to another inmate, the ACT Magistrates Court heard on Friday. In an interview with police, he said he'd known the package likely contained "pot". A Canberra criminal who racked up more than 200 offences across three jurisdictions and spent most of his adult life locked up has been told he showed a "continuing disobedience towards the law". Zdravko Antonovic, 42, will spend more time behind bars after a judge sentenced him to seven years jail for burglary and theft in the ACT Supreme Court. Police charged Antonovic after DNA evidence linked him to the scene of two drug-fuelled burglaries on one night in early 2014. The court heard he broke into a cafe at the Minter Ellison office building in Forrest, stealing $2250 from the till, about 1.30am. He then went to in Fyshwick, where he smashed the windows of Architectural Reflections in Wollongong Street and stole several items. Lawyers for the Brumbies have accused embattled chief executive Michael Jones of trying to entrench his position while putting the board at peril. The legal stoush engulfing the club returned to the ACT Supreme Court on Friday afternoon, with parties seeking clarification on the gag orders relating to a supposedly explosive KPMG report said to make "highly inflammatory" accusations. The Brumbies are about to start the search for Michael Jones' replacement as CEO. Credit:Graham Tidy That report concerns irregularities in transactions at the club between 2009 and 2013, relating to the sale of the Brumbies' Griffith headquarters and their subsequent move to the University of Canberra. Police continue to investigate issues relating to the sale. Two women have been arrested in connection to a drive-by shooting at a home in Canberra's south last year. A 32-year-old Richardson woman and a 20-year-old Jerrabomberra woman will face ACT Magistrates Court on multiple charges including concealing evidence. Police Police were called to a residence in Gowrie on February 2 last year after shots were fired at the home. Three people escaped injury. A burnt out gold Subaru WRX, believed to have been involved in the shooting, was recovered at Uriarra later that day. A 22-year-old man was charged with arson in February. The AFL will look to step up negotiations over a new contract with the Northern Territory government when the two parties meet next week. Melbourne are keen to continue playing matches in the region, and the AFL and the government also want a deal brokered. Melbourne v Port Adelaide at Alice Springs last year. Credit:Getty Images AFL game and market development manager Simon Lethlean will head up the discussions with the NT minister for sport and recreation, Nathan Barrett. Treasurer Scott Morrison has given the clearest signal yet his election year budget will place spending restraint front and centre, with the prospect of "big bang" tax reform rapidly receding. The Turnbull government is whittling down the number of tax changes that could be adopted in the May 3 budget, with a rise in the GST already off the table and a plan to offer simplified tax returns - which would have raised as much as $6 billion in revenue to pay for tax cuts - now apparently off the table. Tweaks to superannuation tax concessions are still expected to feature in the budget but major cuts to personal or company tax are now considered unlikely - leaving the government little room to move as it attempts to plot a course back to surplus in the medium term while simultaneously seeking to support economic growth. And Mr Morrison, in an interview with the ABC's Radio National on Friday, confirmed his focus would be on expenditure restraint rather than revenue raising, setting up a clear contrast in economic management with Labor heading into an expected July 2 poll. The private equity group that made hundreds of millions of dollars from the public float of Dick Smith has distanced itself from the rapid decline of the electronics chain in its submission to the Senate Inquiry into the causes and consequences of the collapse of listed retailers in Australia. Dismissing criticism that it used acquisition accounting to bolster sales in the year following the float, Anchorage Capital Partners claims Dick Smith was in a "strong financial position" with no borrowings and strong earnings momentum when it ended its formal involvement. Anchorage Capital Partners claims Dick Smith was in a "strong financial position" with no borrowings and strong earnings momentum when it ended its formal involvement. Credit:Jessica Hromas The private equity group's managing director, Phil Cave, said the retailer had a strong balance sheet when he resigned as chairman in February 2015 and its share price continued to trade around the float price until August 2015. "We await the release of the administrators' report, which we hope will provide clarity on how a company with such a strong balance sheet and operating momentum has ended up in this regrettable situation so suddenly," Mr Cave said. Last week I came across an online picture of two train passengers: an elderly woman perched on an aisle seat and a young man sitting on the floor nearby. They were not making eye contact, but they were holding hands. According to the photographer, Ehab Taha, the man had been shouting, swearing and moving about erratically. On his Facebook page Taha wrote: "While everyone was scared, this one ... woman reached out her hand, tightly gripping his hand until he calmed down ... I spoke to the woman after this incident and she simply said, 'I'm a mother and he needed someone to touch'." My viewing of this photograph should have induced a renewed sense of human compassion. Instead, I felt a wave of despondency crash on my emotional shore. I knew I would not have reached out a hand to that man. Treating people suffering from mental illness with compassion is a huge step towards a kinder world. In 1998, as a first-year university student, I was walking along a busy Melbourne street. It was lunchtime; the city was filled with people. Suddenly a man came rushing at me. His face was hard, his fists clenched. As he came closer he grabbed the neck of his T-shirt with both hands and ripped the fabric apart, right down the front. Then he looked me in the eye and screamed, "I'll fight you, you c---!" I didn't feel empathy or pity for this man. I didn't sense loneliness in his contorted features. It didn't occur to me that he might just need somebody to touch. I was terrified. My response had nothing to do with compassion. In that moment I only cared about my own safety, so I ran up the street and dodged around a bin. Made of paper, Benja Harney's chapel appears to exist only by the grace of God. But Harney, an artist and "paper engineer", says his paper chapel can stand on its own and does not use glue or tape. "The outside has an ecclesiastical pitch to it," artist Benja Harney says of his paper chapel. Credit:Hugo Sharp Inspired by traditional church architecture, the chapel consists of conical shapes made from sugarcane pulp covered in recycled white paper that interlock to form a woven pattern. The paper chapel is portable and made of small sections that can be assembled in about an hour into any shape and height, inside or outside. 2. I, Rebel It's a long list of charges to her name: forgery of imperial documents, possession of stolen property, aggravated assault, resisting arrest. Welcome to the Rebel Alliance, Jyn Erso, you're our kind of people. In the olden days of the Star Wars saga those spiffy Death Star generals used to refer to "rebel scum" and now we're getting to see it properly: the infancy of the Rebel Alliance wasn't all medal ceremonies and tiara-wielding princesses, it was rough and desperate, and they recruited who they could. In this case, a kid who has been on her own since she was 15 and is described as "reckless, aggressive and undisciplined." 3. Meet the dashing sidekick ... His name we don't know yet, but meet the dashing sidekick played by Diego Luna. Perhaps the most brilliant thing about the post-Lucas Star Wars universe is that this is no universe for old men. Star War, Episode VII: The Force Awakens brought us in Daisy Ridley's Rey a proper female lead. Which is not to deny Princess Leia was anything less than awesome, but prior to that there was a tendency for men to lead the Star Wars narrative. In Rogue One we have another strong female lead and, curiously, a guy who has a wee echo of Oscar Isaac playing another of those broody, handsome, rebel guy-types. 4. The time for our attack has come ... Now here's a big reveal for Star Wars fans: the supreme commander of the Rebel Alliance, Mon Mothma. In the original Star Wars story cycle we didn't meet her until the third story, Return of the Jedi. Rogue One places her now on Yavin IV around the time of the original film (or at least just prior to it). It's a fantastic piece of story continuity and a genuinely unexpected one - by this time, most of the Star Wars cognoscenti were expecting to see either Grand Moff Tarkin or Darth Vader. This scene plays with a noticeable echo of an earlier (actually later) one, with words to the effect of: the Empire has made a critical error, and the time for our attack has come. 5. Star Destroyers and (6) stormtroopers and (7) Death Stars, oh my! There it is: a sequence of Star Wars money shots to flutter the hearts of any diehard Star Wars fan. The majestic and terrifying Star Destroyers, the main line of the Imperial fleet back in 1977's Star Wars, the white-armoured Imperial stormtroopers, and, of course, the star of the film, the formidable and infamous Death Star. Here we see the funnel-shaped superweapon of the station - the planet-destroying laser - being fitted into its final position before the station is sent off to blow up planets like a schoolyard bully demanding lunch money. These are stirring images and make no mistake, every element in the trailer is here for a reason. These three moments anchor us back in 1977's Star Wars. 8. Game on! And herewith is the heart of the film's plot: Jyn Erso and As Yet Unnamed Hot Guy must infiltrate the Empire and retrieve the data plans for the Death Star in the hope that the Rebel Alliance can find a weakness. (Yeah, yeah, we all know how that goes.) In this scene, we see them power-striding across the Yavin IV landing bay, surrounded by little touches that will have Star Wars fans weeing their pants: X-Wing pilots (and an old-style X-Wing fighter), ground crew in uniforms which are similar to the Hoth ground crew uniforms and, of course, our old friend the boxy Power Droid. Hands up who had that Kenner action figure as a kid? (Hand goes up.) 9. New bad guys ... 10. new good guys ... and 11. this guy ... First guy looks very General Hux, so we're thinking Imperial general, overseer of the Death Star project, a kind of pre-Tarkin underling who, to the tune of that creepy Death Star klaxon, is about to be schooled in a whole lot of Rebel Alliance plan-stealing drama. He also appears to be played by Ben Mendelsohn. Great. First awesome Aussie actor in a Star Wars lead role and he's killing people. We'll be popular. Our second guy is played by Forest Whitaker, and he's full of Jedi-like wisdom. Could this be this film's answer to the Yoda/Maz Kanata trope, guiding, prodding and teaching the young heroes. And last guy is badass: it's Donnie Yen wielding a polearm better than most Jedi wield their lightsabers. 12. Oh, and this shuttle. Which is a little perplexing, actually. The Imperial shuttle of the original Star Wars era was the Lambda class shuttle, which we met several times, but most noticeably when one carried Darth Vader to the Death Star Mark II in Return of the Jedi and a slightly more battered one took the Rebel strike team down to the planet Endor. This shuttle is actually more in the style of Kylo Ren's shuttle from The Force Awakens, though his was (of course) jet black - because he's a bad guy, geddit? - and this looks more like your factory floor, no-extras model. It also doesn't appear to be holding up well against laser fire. 13. I have a bad feeling ... ... and well you should, because nothing going on in this scene can be good for the good guys. First, the little red chappies are known as the Emperor's Royal Guard, the personal bodyguards of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). Which means he must be lurking about here somewhere. The figure in the foreground is your typical black-cloaked type but before everyone goes all "Oh my Yoda, it's Darth Vader!" it looks, perhaps, like a mid-ranked Imperial functionary, one of those creepy Palpatine sidekicks, rather than our much loved Dark Lord of the Sith himself. Which is not to say we're not going to get Darth Vader in Rogue One - smart money says we will - it just means that it's unlikely they blew that reveal in the first trailer. 14. ... and Walkers! It is not clear what motivated her to turn herself into police, however her staying on the run with the children may have had major legal implications for the 60 Minutes crew and the CARI employees. A grainy video from a shop CCTV camera was circulated on local television showing the moment the men snatched the children from Mr Elamine's mother, the children's grandmother, near a Beirut bus stop. The video shows two large men manhandling the children away from the grandmother and her female companion. A third man appears to be filming the event using a distinctive hand-held camera. One of the women appears to be flung to the ground in the scuffle and another is violently pushed away when she tries to grab the children. Following the snatch the grandmother, Ibtissam Berri, gave interviews to local media alleging she had been pistol-whipped in the struggle. "One hit me with his pistol on my head and I fainted and there were bruises on my body," the ABC has reported her as saying in the interview. The ABC also interviewed Mr Elamine, who said the snatch endangered the children. "What if someone armed passed by and saw the scene and started to fire? We are in Lebanon here. If they started to shoot, they could have hit one of the children. They could have shot my mother." In what may have been part of the plan to snatch the children, Mr Elamine had left his grandmother with the children while he went to deal with a booking at his surf business for four people to go windsurfing. But the four people never showed up. Channel Nine has reported that Mr Elamine has said he would not be pressing charges. On Thursday 60 Minutes executive producer Kirsty Thomson rejected allegations about any guns. "Our crew were not at the snatch. My understanding is no guns," texted Ms Thomson who took over the executive producer job at Nine's flagship high budget current affairs program in February. 60 Minutes has declined to comment on claims made in by the Daily Mail that Channel Nine paid $120,000 to CARI to undertake the child recovery. CARI has regularly been embroiled in a number of failed child abductions, some of which have left its employees in jail. The agency has been advertised as being run by former Australian soldier Adam Whittington. Mr Whittington's LinkedIn profile lists him as having served in the Australian Army from January 1991 to January 1998 before stints in the London Metropolitan police. The profile describes Mr Whittington as the CEO and founder of CARI, which he started in 2000. A blurb on the page states: "All operatives at CARI are from elite military and police units who have joined together for one purpose, to recover children from situations they do not deserve to be in. "Over the last 13 years since we carried out our first recovery, we now assist government and non-government organises in recovering children being dealt with in sex trafficking." An emergency telephone number on the CARI website did not appear to be working yesterday. It is thought Mr Whittington has a British passport and resides in Europe. It is not clear whether he has been caught up in the Lebanon arrests. Local police reported arresting a UK national associated with the operation who was found and detained on a boat that was moored of the coast. Mr Whittington was previously jailed in Singapore for 18 months over a child abduction case. An Australian mother at the centre of a botched child recovery in Lebanon that led to the detention of a 60 Minutes reporter and crew, has been arrested and her children handed over to her husband. Lebanese media are reporting that Beirut police detained Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner and returned her children Lahela, 6, and Noah, 4, to their biological father, Beirut surf shop owner Ali Elamine, early on Friday, Australian time. Mr Elamine had taken the children to Lebanon for a holiday. Despite promising the holiday would last for only a short period of time Mr Elamine is alleged to have refused to return the children to Australia. Ms Faulkner had contact with the Australian embassy shortly before her detention, but it not been revealed whether she surrendered to police voluntarily. Even as publicity for her new film The Boss ramps up, McCarthy shifted focus to make the announcement on The Ellen Show. It comes after months of concern that McCarthy would not be included, fuelled by creator Amy Sherman Palladino's comment that McCarthy's "fucking busy" schedule made it difficult to include the comic character. Gilmore Girls fans have celebrated the news that beloved best friend character Sookie, played by Melissa McCarthy, will star in an upcoming Netflix revival of the show. "There is something that I have been asked about so many times and it hasn't worked out. They're making four new movies of the Gilmore Girls shows and we could not get those schedules to work," she said. Norman Mailer as himself is told off by Sookie for not ordering. Credit:Danny Feld "Literally about an hour and a half ago we figured out that I'm going to go back and do it and I'm so excited. I'm very happy to go back to Stars Hollow." For many fans, McCarthy's absence was the final piece in the puzzle required for the revival to go ahead. The star of Spy and Bridesmaids upset many when she responded to Sherman-Palladino's "fucking busy" comments by tweeting "Sadly no one asked me or Sookie to come back to Stars Hollow. Wish them all the best!!". Bronwyn Bishop is trying to turn her perceived weakness into a strength, telling Liberal Party preselectors that she understands the "significance of seniors" and can deliver for older Australians if she stays in Parliament. Amid gathering talk inside the party that her support in Mackellar is collapsing, Mrs Bishop, 73, has posted out a glossy pamphlet to the 96 preselectors who will decide her fate. Bronwyn Bishop, 73, has posted out a glossy pamphlet to the 96 preselectors who will decide her fate. Credit:Andrew Meares "It is a fact, without support of the over 65 demographic, we cannot retain government," according to the brochure passed to Fairfax Media. It warns that the federal election could be "only a matter of weeks away" and Mrs Bishop's "experience and track record" is more important than ever. Senator David Leyonhjelm has been branded "foolish" and "desperate" after making a grab for the dwindling smokers' vote by sharing a video of himself puffing on a cigar. The crossbench senator posted the short clip to Twitter on Friday, along with the comment: "My message to Australia's smokers the Liberal Democrats are the only party on your side." David Leyonhjelm says he will fight tobacco taxes in the video. Smouldering cigar in hand, Senator Leyonhjelm declares his party supports "your right to choose to smoke and will fight tobacco taxes". The post was criticised by social media users, one of whom replied with an image of a smoker's lungs. Another wrote: "I was going to start smoking but then he persuaded me not to, what a public health legend." There's not many things you can keep under wraps in this day and age, but Anne Hathaway managed to keep the birth of her firstborn on the DL for almost two weeks. The actor, 33, and her husband, Adam Shulman, 35, welcomed a baby boy into the world on March 24 and the news of his birth only came to light a fortnight later. Anne Hathaway welcomed her first child, a baby boy, with husband Adam Shulman almost two weeks ago on March 24. Credit:Jon Kopaloff According to E!, they shunned typical unusual celebrity baby names, keeping it classic with Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman (no North or Saint around here). The Les Miserables star's spokesperson confirmed the good news, while the notoriously private star has yet to post anything on her social media accounts, although she has been on Instagram since the birth. The sexist gender pay gap not just in Hollywood but all walks of life is a contentious issue, and one that needs to be openly discussed to highlight the discrimination to help bring about change. Those in the spotlight are fortunate that their voices are listened to above others and many use that for the good of others for example, Jennifer Lawrence, Patricia Arquette, Sandra Bullock, but just don't ask Scarlett Johansson as she finds the topic "icky" and "obnoxious". Scarlett Johansson said she doesn't feel the need to speak about the sexist pay gap because she doesn't think it applies to her. Credit:Getty The Avengers star, 31, told Cosmopolitan that she feels like she is being paid just as much as her male counterparts, so it's not her issue to discuss, despite there still being a $37 million discrepancy between the highest-paid actress and the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. There were many versions of nirvana within the walls of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, close to where the Silk Road began, said archaeologist Professor Sarah Kenderdine. Now one rich family's hopes for the afterlife created more than 1000 years ago in one of these caves has been transported using augmented 3D technology to the Art Gallery of NSW for its new exhibition on the Tang Dynasty, opening on Saturday. Professor Sarah Kenderdine demonstrates the augmented technology that reveals details of the Tang Dynasty cave wall mural. Credit:Janie Barrett While Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, the Tang Empire (618-907) was the richest and most powerful realm in the world with a new openness that was reflected in its art. The Silk Road brought in foreigners; Wu Zetian, a long-reigning female emperor (the only one in China's history) helped elevate the position of women; and wealth fostered new and more colourful art, some of it displaying a striking sense of humour. A discarded bank card, pools of blood and women's shoes pointed police to where a grisly death may have began in Sydney's inner-west. The death of Miming Listiyiani, 27, whose naked body was found floating in the shallows of Parramatta River, was allegedly at the hands of Bali nine drug ring "lieutenant" Khanh Thanh Ly. A nude Ly was allegedly found standing over Ms Listiyiani's body near Cabarita Wharf just before midnight on Thursday. As detectives attempted to retrace the Indonesian national's final steps on Friday, they tracked her demise through at least three suburbs. Almost three years ago James Packer memorably declared his proposed new casino resort at Barangaroo would be "the most iconic building constructed in this city since the Opera House". The comment was made at the unveiling of the designs for the tower submitted to a competition run by the billionaire's company Crown Resorts. It was a bold statement and one that was promptly ridiculed. NSW president of the Australian Institute of Architects Joe Agius described the comparison as "ludicrous and offensive". Agius slammed the designs as "so unconscious of their context they may as well be in Dubai". A Queensland police sergeant praised by colleagues for his usually calm temperament has been ordered to pay $400 to a prisoner after hurling a stapler at him. John Lloyd-Jones, 51, appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Friday and pleaded guilty to one count of assault occasioning bodily harm. A cop has been handed a $700 good behaviour bond for throwing a stapler. Credit:Quentin Jones He had been charged by the Crime and Corruption Commission last year over the incident, in which he threw the office item at the arrested man in the Richlands Watch House in August 2015. But Queensland Police Union lawyer Calvin Gnech said the incident was out of character for Lloyd-Jones, who, the court heard, had a reputation among colleagues as the officer usually responsible for calming tense situations. Lettie Ennis and Coco at a photo shoot for LeCocoArchie Credit:Lettie Ennis, LeCocoArchie Ennis now runs a successful Instagram business called LeCocoArchie, selling play mats "that fit in with the style of your home and don't look all kiddie and garish". Late in 2015, she started the Instagram page, which she kept a secret from friends and family even her husband because she "wanted to grow followers organically, not only have all my family follow me". In her first month selling the mats, she sold about 20. She has since tripled her Instagram followers and sells more than 60 mats a month. "I almost have more orders than I can handle now," she says. "But I sew pretty much whenever I can, until late at night every day, to keep on top of them. "I don't like keeping customers waiting." Ennis says she was hoping the profits from selling the mats would help cover grocery bills and daycare cost for her children, but her rapid success has far exceeded her expectations. "I was really surprised by the success," she says. Lettie Ennis' mats have been sent all over Australia, Europe and North America. Credit:LeCocoArchie Ennis says her Instagram business has become a considerable source of income. "It would be hard for me with the kids to increase my hours in the flower shop, but now I don't have to do that any more, and the sewing fits in with my lifestyle. I can do it from home, whenever I want." Ennis says it was easy to start, as her business required few overheads and she used only her Instagram knowledge to market her business. "In the beginning, it was all about the hashtags. Then I contacted very successful 'Instamum' pages, and sent them samples of my mat. One of those mums with a heap of followers now regularly features my mat in her posts and tags me that's when my orders really took off." Ennis is cautious about the future of LeCocoArchie, but she is overwhelmed by how much has happened in three short months. "I'm not sure where this will end," she says, but she acknowledges she has reached the point where she could take steps to start growing her business. 'Who wants to fork out hundreds of dollars for a maternity dress?' Nicole Cox Bertoldo, 37, a freelance writer and media consultant, was pregnant with her second son when she stumbled over the idea for her maternity dress hire business, Belle of the Bump. She was annoyed at the prospect of "forking out hundreds of dollars for a dress I would only wear once" when she was invited to a friend's wedding. "Paying $300, $400 or $500 for a maternity dress can be restrictive for any expanding family, let alone when you will only get limited wear out of it," she says. "There seems to be dozens of dress hire businesses in Perth that stock designer frocks, but I couldn't find anything that catered for expectant women who might have a need to dress up during pregnancy." Nicole Cox-Bertoldo, founder of Belle of the Bump. Credit:Kate Ferguson Media She launched her business in September 2015 and she has been busy ever since. "I just can't believe such a simple concept has actually struck a chord with mums in Perth. The response has been beyond anything I imagined for a fledgling start-up business." In the beginning, she would rent out about one dress a week, and only six months later that number has increased to five or six. Cox Bertoldo thought Belle of the Bump was easily set-up and could serve her as a sideline business, giving her the option to be home with her children and manage her own work time. There are plenty of designer dress hire places in Perth - but none for expectant mums. Until Belle of the Bump. Credit: Kate Ferguson Media Transforming her second lounge room at her Victoria Park home into a change room, Cox Bertoldo has built a considerable collection of dresses. She tried traditional ways of marketing her start-up by sending out posters to playgroups and maternity hospitals, but soon realised social media gave her the most success getting in touch with her target audience. "Social media really is the key," she says. "I've relied a lot on social media, particularly Facebook, to market Belle of the Bump, as I thought this had the best reach for mums. "I've just launched an Instagram page, too, which is starting to gain traction. I ask every person who walks through our door how they found out about us and more than 80 per cent of the time it's through social media." 'I often was faced with the question: what do I feed the kids now?' Julia Lambo, 36, has proven that the power of social media can catapult a good idea into a thriving business. The Claremont mother of three children, aged eight, seven and four, saw a gap in the market born from her own frustration, being a busy mum. Julia Lambo started off cooking all the meals for Little Feast herself. Credit:Julia Lambo, Little Feast "I would come home after a whole day of running around from after-school activities thinking 'what do I give the kids now to eat?'" she says. Two years ago, her business, Little Feast, delivering healthy, wholesome and convenient kids' meals around Perth, was born. "It started out delivering some meals to friends and to the local school." What started out with her cooking and delivering about 30 meals a week has now grown into a business that services 60 Perth suburbs and is stocked in 14 IGAs around town. Lambo worked in corporate communications before she had her first child and she knew the demands of time commitment and travel requirements of that job were too great to be able to return to work after having her three children. "I would have not considered going back to work where I was not in control of my own time, picking up my children from school," she says. "I was naive as to how big my current business would become, and it has become a full-time job, but it works on my terms." Julia Lambo started off with 30 meals a week - now she is delivering to 60 Perth suburbs. Credit:Julia Lambo, Little Feast Lambo was astonished at how she managed to grow her small home business to the operation she runs now in the short span of two years, only using the power of social media. "Facebook made my business," she says. "I haven't ever done any other advertising. It enabled people to endorse my product without me advertising it. People comment, put photos up and share my posts," she says. She has since created a website for Little Feast, but says the bulk of her sales are happening through Facebook. Lambo also recently launched an Instagram page, saying she is just in the process of discovering how the photo-sharing network can help her with branding her product. New research has highlighted a species of spider that could have the fastest jaws in the world, with strikes so fast that high-speed cameras struggle to capture it. Researchers in the United States studied trap-jaw spiders, which live in New Zealand and South America, and found the Kiwi species struck prey with lightning speed. One of the tiny species of trap-door spider in New Zealand may have the fastest jaw strike. But don't worry about spotting one across the ditch, Kiwi members of the species Mecysmaucheniidae are tiny, with some less than a millimetre long. He claimed to have so much: a successful career, a hold on a home in Brighton, overseas bank accounts and ambitions to buy a John Deere machinery business and even Melbourne's historic Block Arcade. But the reality was Graeme Effrett was a fraudster who told others that big money was coming his way, so long as they could lend to him in the meantime. Graeme Effrett lodged paperwork with a real estate agency handling the sale of the Block Arcade. Credit:Vince Caligiuri When his deceptions and more than $100,000 of owed money caught up with him in June 2014, he was arrested in a Melbourne backpackers hostel. In 2012 and 2013 Effrett fleeced his then girlfriend of more than $25,000 by persuading her to lend him a series of advancements which would hold him over until a major loan from overseas was finalised, the County Court heard on Friday. The advancements included having the woman pay for his children's Christmas presents. What is Victoria's most neglected form of transport yet the most accessible and common? I'll give you a clue: look down. Melbourne Walking Festival organiser Stephen Ingrouille (centre) with walkers in Melbourne CBD. Credit:Luis Ascui While debate rages around public transport, roads and cycling safety, little attention is given to walking. But that's changing. Police have used capsicum spray on protesters outside a Liberal Party dinner to mark the 20th anniversary of the election of John Howard's government. However, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is suspected to have avoided the skirmish in Melbourne's Docklands by arriving by boat and entering the back of Shed 14 behind a police line. About 150 people gathered outside the Central Pier function venue about 6pm on Friday to protest the federal government's changes to higher education and the treatment of asylum seekers. Students, unionists and refugee activists held placards and chanted slogans such as "No ifs, no buts, no education cuts." "Oshin is absolutely distraught and frightened. He wakes up saying he's frightened in hospital. He found it so difficult being in there, the procedures, he screamed and kicked and scratched. At a certain point they had to have six people hold him down." PMH has been unable to comment on the situation - which WAtoday understands is the first of its kind in the state - but New South Wales medical anthropologist Helen Hayward-Brown said such circumstances often arose behind closed doors, and doctors were not held publicly accountable for their decisions. She said parents faced with unclear or constantly changing prognoses often got anxious and begin researching treatments but this angered their doctors. "Their position is that they are 'saving' the child from the parents, who are placing the child at risk," Dr Hayward-Brown said. Clinicians were rarely required to present hard and fast evidence Dr Hayward-Brown said, and child protection caseworkers and other authorities tended to bow to their judgement. She said parents, often unable to obtain or afford expert advice, had little capacity to fight such prestigious, powerful opponents and it was hard to get a second opinion, especially in smaller cities. Australian Medical Association WA president Michael Gannon said the oncology unit at PMH was an outstanding one in a global context and he said no doctor would move to see such a treatment enforced without significant consultation. "This is rare, extremely unusual and would weigh heavily on the individual clinicians involved," he told Radio 6PR. "It is something they would almost certainly discuss with their colleagues." A senior oncology nurse familiar with the Perth system also pointed to communication breakdown. Oshin with his sisters Amitiel (12) and Shilah (8), who are confused and frightened by their brother's situation. Credit:Elle Borgward She said paediatric oncology had progressed in improving survival rates and side effects were often well managed, but treatment needed to start quickly and this gave families little chance to absorb information. She said the treatment team could have taken a step back. "If the family were given this time, and with the knowledge that delaying treatment may change the statistical survival rate, the story may have been different," she said. Country New South Wales couple Mark and Dianne Westley were another set of parents who asked "too many questions" about treatment for their daughter's ovarian cancer. The case is public knowledge because nurse Eve Hillary, concerned for the family, decided to breach a gag order. In 2002, the Westleys took 11-year-old Sarah to hospital with a swollen belly and doctors thought she was pregnant and notified the child protection system. Sarah was then diagnosed with cancer, but the family was already being watched. Oshin is a fun-loving boy, but is frightened of hospitals. Credit:Elle Borgward The Westleys did extensive research into the chemotherapy regime their oncologist proposed, but he refused to answer their questions. They consulted widely for another treatment but authorities seized Sarah and forced her into chemotherapy. "As far as healing practice, or delivering any quality of life, it failed miserably not only failed, but had the opposite effect," said Ms Hillary. She described what happened to Sarah as "torture". "She was physically, mentally and emotionally destroyed, and her tumour markers started increasing," she said. "It was disturbing to see a child incarcerated in a hospital and have painful procedures forced on her on a daily basis, dragged from place to place, overpowered." Ms Hillary made the difficult decision to go public and write an article that went viral. She was then summonsed to court. "I had to argue the case, despite the gag order, as to why it was in the public interest and fortunately the judge allowed it in the end," she said. "It was a turning point. Sarah was allowed to go home not long after. But of course after all those treatments, forced over a long period, the child was completely traumatised. "The Westley family were then denied palliative care. In Sarah's case, they ended up having to take their dying child on a commercial aircraft to another state." Angela Kiszko makes her children a 'birthday table' each year. Oshin went into chemotherapy the day after his sixth birthday party. Credit:Elle Borgward Loading A man driving under suspension has been charged by police after he allegedly buckled up cartons of beer while children in the car were unrestrained. Broome police say they discovered the serious traffic offence after they stopped the 27-year-old man on Great Northern Highway on Wednesday. Cartons of beer were buckled into position while unrestrained children were in the car. Credit:Broome Police Police claim the driver had children laying on adult laps and seated in foot wells, while cartons of Emu Export and Victoria Bitter were buckled in. Kimberley District Superintendent Allan Adam told the ABC police were "surprised" by the incident. New York: Islamic State is more often associated with images of antiquities being destroyed in Palmyra and Nimrud, than with cultural heritage preservation. But previous reports of the group selling looted artefacts in the Middle East are now understood to be part of a multimillion-dollar revenue stream managed with the help of the internet. According to Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, IS is making up to $265 million a year by smuggling and selling looted jewellery, coins and other precious archaeological items through auction sites and specialist online stores. Jihad Abu Kahrlah, an archaeologist at Syria's National Museum, holds an artefact rescued from the Daraa Museum in Damascus before Islamic State looters could get it. Credit:AP Mr Churkin made the claims in a letter to the UN Security Council released on Wednesday. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has sidestepped blame for a multibillion-dollar financial scandal after a parliamentary inquiry confirmed media reports that billions of dollars went missing from a state development fund that he set up and oversees. Mr Najib said he would act on any evidence and acknowledged the inquiry "identified weaknesses" in 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) that has left his government liable to billions of dollars of guarantees for the fund that is struggling to pay its debts. Scandal-ridden: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Credit:AP But as the directors of the fund resigned en masse, Mr Najib issued a statement accusing his arch-enemy, former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, of making false claims about the fund while "motivated by personal interest, not the national interest, and a desire to unseat the government". Mr Najib, the 62-year-old son of a former prime minister and close ally of Australia, has for months shrugged off allegations swirling around his financial affairs with the support of powerful division chiefs in his ruling United Malays National Organisation. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters the measures were necessary to deter attempts to attack his regime with distorted information in the name of human rights and democracy. Ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, front, and his wife Pojaman arrive at criminal court for a verdict in Bangkok in 2008. Credit:AP "It's important to warn them more," he said. Atiya Achakulwisut, a contributing editor for the Bangkok Post, wrote in her column that it is alarming that few Thais seem upset by what she called a deepening of the military state, as a climate of fear expands. Thai soldiers march on a street in Bangkok. Thailand's junta chief has given the military broad new police-like powers to arrest and detain criminal suspects, in an unannounced move that rights groups criticised as a recipe for human rights violations. Credit:AP "Unless the public starts to see the outrageous acts for what they are and stand up to them, the political ennui will enable the military regime to push the country further towards the far right ... as authoritarianism deepens, efforts to resist it will inevitably become more radicalised," she wrote. Thailand has entered an anxious time as a transition looms in the monarchy, which under the 69-year reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej became the country's most important institution. Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. Credit:AP The 88-year-old king is frail and in hospital. The stakes are also high for the referendum which will be seen as not just a vote on the proposed constitution but also a vote on military rule. Thai soldiers guard an overpass to prevent an anti-coup demonstration in Bangkok in 2014. Credit:AP Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a prominent political commentator and an associate professor at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, warns that tensions are likely to rise ahead of the vote, marked by the regime's escalating repression. The military has warned that anyone criticising the proposed charter risks being hauled in for "attitude adjustment" or put on trial in military courts, although there will be some television debates, and a grassroots information campaign run mostly by the army. A Thai soldier checks the physical health of a Thai man during military conscription in Bangkok on Friday. Credit:AP Professor Thitinan says the draft charter, which vests enormous power and authority in a 250-member military-controlled Senate, is designed to allow the military to share power with elected politicians, after stacking the rules overwhelmingly in its favour. "The Thai state is going through a spectacularly chilling militarisation that is supposed to usher in reforms that the Thai people ostensibly need because they are not informed enough to come up with on their own and their elected representatives are too corrupt to do it for them," Professor Thitinan wrote in the Bangkok Post. "Thailand's interim period after the May 2014 coup has thus become indefinite. What is indefinite may soon be structurally embedded and entrenched for the long term," he wrote. "Much of what will happen depends on whether the charter is rejected in the referendum." Voters wanting to see Thailand become a democratic nation face an unenviable choice. They can vote yes to legitimise electoral authoritarianism and the military's longstanding version of democracy controlled by military-backed elites, or they can vote no, which would allow the generals to continue to wield enormous power and to push back further a general election that was initially promised for early 2016. Both sides of Thailand's deep political divide have criticised the charter which if passed would make it difficult for any one party to rule without the support of minor parties in a coalition. Thaksin's Pheu Thai Party objected on the grounds it was undemocratic and contains many provisions likely to cause more problems for the country. Chaturon Chaisang, the education minister in Pheu Thai's toppled government, warned that if the charter passes Thai society will become rigid and conservative, not able to adjust to changes, and going against democracy. "In short, everyone would lose. Such a rigid society would only increase conflicts and in the end we all will fall into crisis again." Abhisit Vejjajiva, leader of the second-largest Democrat Party, which is aligned with the conservative establishment and largely supported the coup, said, "the 250 appointed senators should not have the right to overrule the people's will", adding that the regime has failed to carry necessary economic reforms, especially in the agricultural and industrial sector. "Despite two years of relative calm and also initiatives being taken by the current government when it came to power, there has been too little progress even on this front and now it's almost in panic mode," he said. And Chuan Leekpai, the Democrats' chief adviser, told the military not to run away from elections. "If there are problems, fix them. But we should not move backwards because we have already come a long way," he said. The generals insist they have the good of the nation at heart by governing with the arbitrary rule of law and closing off public expression. Soldiers now encroach into many aspects of people's daily lives, taking over jobs traditionally done by police, and vetting any gatherings of more than a handful of people. The generals plan to set up "public service" checkpoints during the New Year holidays. Last week they banned journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk from attending a press freedom event in Finland. They have given soldiers from the rank of sub-lieutenant and higher broad police-like powers with immunity to arrest and detain, prompting a joint statement by six human rights groups describing the move as a contravention of human rights and rule of law. "We have observed a steady erosion of human rights protections in Thailand since the military coup of 22 May 2014 and this order signifies another, jarring, movement in the same direction," Wilder Tayler, secretary-general of the International Commission of Jurists, said. The US also criticised the move and urged the regime to allow civilian authorities and police to carry out their duties, and for prosecutions to be returned to civilian courts. The Bangkok Post warned in an editorial on Wednesday that the regime's disregard for citizens' opinions is creating a dangerous atmosphere. "Thin-skinned men at the top have now begun to alienate citizens, rather than inform them. The military must open its ears to public opinion. To continue escalating oppressive acts is to risk a bad ending, with rifts that never heal," the newspaper said. Anand Panyarachun, a former appointed prime minister and, at 83, an elder statesman, told the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Thailand that a semblance of calm and stability belies tensions beneath the surface in Thailand. He said that despite Thais previously following procedures and going through the motions of elections, little attention has been paid to developing institutions that are critical to sustaining democracy, or to dig deep enough to uncover the true underlying causes of the current divisions in Thai society. Mandalay: Aung San Suu Kyi, in her first act as Myanmar's state counsellor, has declared she would seek to free political prisoners, including students, describing the issue as the top priority of her party's new government. Myanmar is holding more than 500 people who are considered political prisoners, most of whom have not faced trial. It was unclear how many students Ms Suu Kyi was referring to, but dozens of students are facing trial for participating in protests. A National League for Democracy supporter takes photos with a billboard featuring Myanmar's new president Htin Kyaw and vice president Henry Van Hti Yu, left, in Mandalay. Credit:AP On Thursday Ms Suu Kyi said that next week, when the country celebrates the start of the Burmese New Year, would be an appropriate time to release political prisoners. She did not say how many she hopes to free. Tian Shuo, 28, wants to launch a matchmaking app with a twist. Credit:Sanghee Liu While Chinese youngsters have arguably long had the talent, they are now immersed in an environment where they can see what is possible. The more ambitious among them might have once sought to make it in Silicon Valley; now angel investor cash is pouring in on the mainland. Don't worry about Google or Facebook, they dream of being the next Alibaba (online e-commerce giant) or Xiaomi (fourth-largest smartphone maker in the world and growing). Like most things in China, the country's startup and innovation scene is exploding because the government actively wants it to. The country's government-backed venture funds raised a staggering 1.5 trillion yuan ($300 billion) last year, tripling the country's total amount under management in the space of a single year. It is five times the sum raised by other venture firms around the world combined Silicon Valley included. Startup Salad. Credit:Sanghee Liu The huge cash influx is part of the government's effort to bolster the Chinese economy through innovation as it transitions away from its traditional dependence on heavy industry and cheap exports. Premier Li Keqiang, in particular, has backed a far-reaching campaign to lift internet-based innovation and support entrepreneurship. "This program is far more aggressive than any other countries in the world," says Xu Hongbo, the founder of Guangzhou-headquartered InnoHub, which has ambitions to become the biggest startup accelerator network in the world. "They are putting a lot of emphasis nationwide, from top-down to push this transformation and innovation. Participants of an event organised by accelerator Startup Salad gather at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Credit:Sanghee Liu Like most things in China, the country's startup and innovation scene is exploding because the government actively wants it to. "And this has actually been made very clear [by] the leaders of this country. The way China's economy worked during the last 30 years, it's not going to work in the next 10 years." On this issue at least, Premier Li could well strike up an instant bond with Malcolm Turnbull, who is travelling to China next week in his first official visit as prime minister. Exploring avenues of collaboration in the innovation space is expected to feature prominently in their discussions, as Turnbull too seeks to adapt the Australian economy to meet the shifting needs of China, away from reliance on iron ore and coal to a more diversified trade mix of tourism, education and services. Entrepreneurs brainstorm. Credit:Sanghee Liu Turnbull's visit coincides with Australia Week in China, comprising a trade mission of 1000 delegates led by Trade Minister Steven Ciobo and Trade Envoy Andrew Robb spread across 10 Chinese cities. Innovation is one of the business streams for the first time. "Australia is great at generating intellectual property, [but] perhaps we lack some of the capital depth required," Ciobo says. "In that respect, China will present a wide and deep pool of potential capital." A mentor gives a lecture to potential startups at tech incubator Innohub in Beijing. Credit:Sanghee Liu InnoHub's Xu is planning to launch a $10 million to $15 million fund in Australia targeting promising local startups and helping them open doors in China's massive market. One under advanced consideration is Australian-developed underwater drones which can survey dam leakages. "China accounts for 80 per cent of total dams all over the world. That's why they should come to China because in Sydney you only have one or two reservoirs but in China we have 8000 dams," Xu says. Innoway in Beijing's Zhongguancun, a pedestrian street lined up with tech incubators. Credit:Sanghee Liu Xu's ambitions extend to convincing Australian startups and tech entrepreneurs to think beyond Silicon Valley as the holy grail. "China is certainly going to be the largest market and my goal is to bring the best innovation to this biggest market. I won't say China is the centre of innovation but that it is the centre for innovation to become commercialised. That is the best place." Participants of an event organised by accelerator Startup Salad. Credit:Sanghee Liu But the huge influx of cash in such a short space of time has raised natural concerns over whether, like the country's property industry and stockmarkets before it, the hot tech boom is yet another government cash-fuelled bubble primed to pop. This is especially given the government wants to attract money for riskier startups shunned by private investors who generally only back surer returns. Gary Rieschel, founder of Qiming Venture Partners, says the Chinese government has a "fantasy that if they give everyone money they'll create entrepreneurs". But in reality, with so much cash in the system, inexperienced or corrupt managers would likely make poor investment choices. Lei Jun, founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi (seated) with his seven co-founders. Credit:Xiaomi Those in the industry have already watched valuations skyrocket compared with international standards, and freely admit bubbles have formed where even marginal projects can often attract large valuations. China's construction of a "great wall of sand" with artificial islands in the South China Sea has sparked a stoush in Washington, with claims the White House has gagged US navy commanders criticising Beijing. US Pacific commander Harry Harris has been most prominent amid repeated warnings by US military leaders that China's ambitions in the disputed waters are destabilising the region. Admiral Harry Harris, US Navy Commander, testifies in Washington last year. Credit:AP He warned an audience in Canberra last year that China's artificial islands with deep ports, airstrips and military facilities on former coral atolls amounted to "creating a great wall of sand with dredges and bulldozers". But an article in the military publication Navy Times this week reported the White House had sought to muzzle commanders ahead of a recent meeting between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. Maiduguri, Nigeria: For months, they were kept in tiny thatched huts in the middle of the forest, waiting with dread each evening for their rapists to return. During the almost intolerable violence, the young women's minds drifted to escape or death. The victims were as young as eight. At the heart of Boko Haram's self-proclaimed caliphate in north-eastern Nigeria was a savage campaign of rape and sexual slavery that has only recently been uncovered. Thousands of girls and women were held against their will, subject to forced marriages and relentless indoctrination. Those who resisted were often shot. Halima, 15, holds one-year-old Hauwa, while Hamsatu, 25, sews a traditional prayer cap at Dalori Internally Displaced Persons Camp in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Credit:Washington Post Now, many of the women are suddenly free rescued in a series of Nigerian military operations over the past year that dislodged the extremist Islamist group from most of the territory it controlled. But there have been few joyous family reunions for the victims. It doesn't mean that Trump won't circle back in the coming weeks, to brand Cruz with a new attack that might have the same lethal voodoo psychology as his assaults on Bush and Rubio. Trump says he's working on similar shots to fire at the presumptive Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton and for all her steeliness, she too will have to prove that she has the body armor to withstand a ''skuzzidoo'' attack. Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz during a campaign event in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday. Credit:AP Now that we've dispensed with that caveat, that wind you hear is the Republicans' collective sigh of relief in the aftermath of the Wisconsin vote, in which Trump stalled, his second placement to Cruz and his win of just six of 42 convention delegates, creating a near certainty that the GOP presidential nominee will be decided by a series of votes and much wheeling and dealing on the floor of the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in the week beginning July 18. In their desperation to block Trump, the Republican leadership is lunging for Cruz with a fervour that would have you believe they have long admired and respected the Texas senator who, if truth be told, they hate. Yup Cruz is hated only slightly less than Trump. Security guards escort a protester from the start of a campaign event for Donald Trump in Bethpage, New York, on Wednesday. Credit:Bloomberg There's a huge political irony here. In marshalling its resources to ensure that Cruz won in Wisconsin, the GOP machine defeated Trump. But at the same time Cruz defeated the machine, because he is the only not-Trump candidate still in a race. If Trump's policies, to the extent that they can be understood, are a liberal-conservative mash-up in a candidate driven more by a belief in his own ability as a deal-maker than by his adherence to a body of beliefs that might be described as Republican orthodoxy, everything about Cruz is way out on the right of the political spectrum. John Kasich, governor of Ohio and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, in the Bronx, New York, on Thursday. Credit:Bloomberg Cruz would be the most conservative presidential candidate ever wheeled out by the GOP. Trump wants to build a 1600km-long wall on the Mexican border. So does Cruz and to the extent that he's happy to make Americans pay for it, as opposed to Trump claiming he'll make Mexico pay for it, Cruz is more determined than Trump. And in the course of the campaign, Cruz has taken virtually all of Trump's immigration policy as his own. Trump wants to stop Muslims entering the country; Cruz wants to ''patrol and secure'' the communities where they live. People protesting against Donald Trump shout at Trump supporters in Bethpage, New York. Credit:AP Cruz wants a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's approval of same-sex marriage; Cruz had been a champion of the most extreme anti-abortion lobby; whereas Trump, it can safely be said, has given little thought to where he stands on the issue. Trump wants to abandon NATO and leave the rest of the world to defend itself; Cruz wants to ''carpet bomb [the so-called Islamic State] into oblivion.'' Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about the growing divide between the rich and the poor in the US and the damage it does to social cohesion. There is no mould-breaking politician like him in Australia. Credit:AP His own congressional colleagues dislike Cruz because he is a lone wolf. As a freshman senator he has mounted five major assaults on the policies of President Barack Obama, most notably shutting down government in 2013 for which the Republicans were roundly condemned. Acknowledging Cruz's edge over Trump in terms of political sophistication this week, Bloomberg commentator Francis Wilkinson was full of negativity "[Cruz's] core voters may hate slightly different things than Trump voters hate, but Cruz could prove politically skillful enough to build a bridge of loathing between them". Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Bronx Borough president Ruben Diaz jnr ride the subway in the Bronx , New York, on Thursday. Credit:AP There is an emerging consensus among analysts that Cruz will not overtake Trump in the race for convention delegates, but that he will act as a brake to stop Trump reaching the magic 1237 delegates needed to lock in the nomination ahead of the convention. The primaries race has shifted to the New York State, where Republicans and Democrats vote on April 19. In the interim the Trump and Clinton defeats in Wisconsin will see their campaigns cast in a different, less invincible light. Commentators will tut-tut about team failings instead of breathlessly oohing and ahhing at amazing successes. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders shakes hands with supporters after speaking at Temple University, Philadelphia, on Wednesday. Credit:Philadelphia Inquirer/AP And despite Trump's popularity in his home state this week he was polling at 52 points, more than three times Cruz's 17 per cent the allocation of delegates in New York and in several other up-coming primaries, becomes more complicated, with delegates being assigned according to support for the candidates in each congressional district, instead of statewide. As the real prospect of a brokered convention looms, a second, behind-the-scenes round of elections is taking place that has huge implications for the eventual winner this is for the selection of the individual delegates. People wait in line to see Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders at Temple University in Philadelphia. Credit:Philadelphia Inquirer/AP In this, Cruz reportedly is way more agile, with agents on the ground in every state that has voted, locking in the support of unpledged delegates and lobbying/cajoling/stroking to ensure that would-be delegates are predisposed to him, so that after the first convention ballot, when delegates no longer are obliged to vote in line with the outcome of their state primary, they will vote for Cruz. Trump is forever talking about his performance in polls, to the point of wildly misrepresenting them as a measure of his performance. GREAT BAY(DCOMM):--- Ministry of Public Housing, Environment, Spatial Development and Infrastructure (Ministry VROMI), announces that the Ring Road will be closed on Saturday, April 9 to Sunday, April 10. The closure will take place from 5.00am on April 9 through Sunday 7.00pm. Motorists are advised to remove all vehicles from the Ring Road by Friday, April 8 at 8.00pm. Vehicles found will be towed in order for the Ministry to be able to carry out the required works. The closure is in connection with repairs to the section from the Police Round-a-bout up to the yellow boulders. Ministry VROMI apologizes for any inconveniences this may cause. Ingram Micro Awarded Three VMware Partner Innovation Awards IRVINE, CA (Marketwired) 04/08/16 (NYSE: IM) today announced that it has received three prestigious including Global Distributor Partner of the Year, Americas Distributor Partner of the Year and Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) Emerging Markets Distributor Partner of the Year in Malaysia. VMware unveiled the winners during its inaugural 2016 Partner Leadership Summit which was held March 6 9, 2016 in Scottsdale, Ariz. Earning awards in three distinct categories illustrates Ingram Micros successful global and regional engagement with VMware, as well as our growing expertise in advanced technologies, services and solutions, said John Soumbasakis, executive vice president, Business Development and Strategy at Ingram Micro. Its an honor to be recognized as one of VMwares industry-leading, go-to-market partners and see the positive impact our relationship is having on our channel partners success. Recipients of a Global VMware Partner Innovation Award, VMware Partner Innovation Award in the Americas and VMware Partner Innovation Award in APJ were acknowledged in over 15 categories, respectively, for their excellence in performance and distinctive achievements during 2015. I am pleased to recognize a select group of partners who have received a Global VMware Partner Innovation Award. These honorees have distinguished themselves through demonstrated excellence and achievements in 2015, said Ross Brown, senior vice president, Worldwide Partners and Alliances, VMware. VMware congratulates Ingram Micro on winning the Global VMware Partner Innovation Award, Americas Distributor Partner of the Year Award and APJ Emerging Markets Distributor Partner of the Year Award in Malaysia. We look forward to building on our success and continued collaboration in 2016. Ingram Micros Advanced Solutions Organization and VMware Business Units provide the training, education and resources needed to help channel partners aid enterprises with increasing demands and business needs for virtualization and cloud technologies. Ingram Micro has a proven track record of innovation and systematic excellence with VMware across the globe and was previously named VMwares Australia Distributor Partner of the Year in 2014 and Americas Distributor Partner of the Year in 2013. More information about Ingram Micro is available at . VMware Partner Leadership Summit 2016 offers VMware partners the opportunity to engage with VMware executives and industry peers as to explore business opportunities, customer use cases, solution practices and partnering best practices. An invitation-only event, VMware Partner Leadership Summit 2016 provides partners with the resources they need to develop and execute a comprehensive go-to-market plan in 2016 and beyond. Ingram Micro helps businesses Realize the Promise of Technology. It delivers a full spectrum of global technology and supply chain services to businesses around the world. Deep expertise in technology solutions, mobility, cloud, and supply chain solutions enables its business partners to operate efficiently and successfully in the markets they serve. Unrivaled agility, deep market insights and the trust and dependability that come from decades of proven relationships, set Ingram Micro apart and ahead. More at . VMware, VMware NSX, vCloud, and vCloud Air are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. Marie Rourke WhiteFox Marketing 714-292-2199 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 Isaiah Foskey's heroics on defense, special teams lead Notre Dame No player in program Notre Dame history had ever blocked two punts in a game, much less a quarter, before Isaiah Foskey 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 The possible internal structure of Planet Nine, a large world hypothesized to exist far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Astronomers are trying to take the measure of Planet Nine before the hypothesized world has even been discovered. Earlier this year, astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, both of whom are based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, proposed that a large planet lurks undetected in the outer solar system, far beyond Pluto's orbit. Batygin and Brown didn't spot this prospective Planet Nine; rather, they inferred its existence based on the orbits of a half-dozen objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune. [Planet Nine: The Evidence for a New Giant Planet in Pictures] These objects' orbits suggest that Planet Nine may be about 10 times more massive than Earth, and may circle the sun at an average distance of 600 astronomical units (AU) or so, Batygin and Brown said. (One AU is the average distance from Earth to the sun about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.) Now, a new study models what Planet Nine which, contrary to the claims of a recent New York Post video, will not destroy the Earth might look like if those parameters are on the money. Astrophysics professor Christoph Mordasini and his Ph.D. student Esther Linder, both of the University of Bern in Switzerland, assumed that Planet Nine if it exists is basically a smaller version of the "ice giants" Uranus and Neptune, with an atmosphere dominated by hydrogen and helium. Researchers say an anomaly in the orbits of distant Kuiper Belt objects points to the existence of an unknown planet orbiting the sun. Here's what we know of this potential "Planet Nine." (Image credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics artist) The duo then calculated that such a 10-Earth-mass Planet Nine would be about 3.7 times wider than our planet, with a temperature of minus 375 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 226 degrees Celsius; 47 degrees Kelvin). "This means that the planets emission is dominated by the cooling of its core; otherwise, the temperature would only be 10 Kelvin," Linder said in a statement. Since reflected sunlight would contribute very little to the total radiation emitted by Planet Nine, it would be much brighter in infrared light than in visual wavelengths, Mordasini and Linder said. "With our study, candidate Planet Nine is now more than a simple point mass; it takes shape, having physical properties," Mordasini said in the same statement. Mini-Neptunes like "Planet Nine" outnumber other types of planets found by astronomers. See our full infographic here (Image credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics artist) The researchers also used the results of their modeling work to investigate just how detectable Planet Nine might be. They determined that the various sky surveys that astronomers have already performed were likely incapable of spotting a Planet Nine that's less than 20 Earth masses, especially if the mysterious world were close to aphelion (the planet's farthest point from the sun during its highly elliptical orbit). But NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite likely would have spotted a Planet Nine harboring more than 50 Earth masses. "This puts an interesting upper mass limit for the planet," Linder said. Further surveys and future instruments such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is currently being built in Chile should be able to confirm or rule out the existence of Planet Nine, the researchers said. The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Artist's illustration of Planet Nine, a hypothesized world about 10 times more massive than Earth that may orbit in the far outer solar system. Doomsayers fears about the putative planet are unfounded, experts stress. Don't believe the doomsday hype about the putative Planet Nine. Yesterday (April 7), the New York Post published a video claiming that Planet Nine a hypothesized world in the solar system's far outer reaches could send asteroids and comets hurtling into Earth soon, with potentially devastating consequences. "A newly discovered planet could destroy Earth as soon as this month," the New York Post said yesterday via its Twitter account, @nypost, by way of advertising the new video. [The Evidence for Planet Nine in Pictures] There is so much wrong here. First of all, the Post's tweet, and the new 30-second video, describe Planet Nine as an officially discovered and confirmed world. This is not the case; astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, both of whom are based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, inferred the planet's existence based on the strange orbits of a half dozen small objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune. Astronomers are now actively hunting for Planet Nine which Batygin and Brown think is about 10 times more massive than Earth, and orbits about 600 times farther from the sun than our planet does but to date, it has not been detected. Second, we have nothing to fear from Planet Nine, even if it does exist, according to Brown. See more "Hey, so fun fact? Planet Nine is not going to cause the Earth's destruction. If you read that it will, you have discovered idiotic writing!" Brown said yesterday via his Twitter account, @plutokiller. (Brown's Twitter handle references the fact that his discoveries of objects in the outer solar system helped demote Pluto to "dwarf planet" status back in 2006.) The New York Post's misleading video may result from a conflation of Planet Nine with other hypothesized, undiscovered objects in Earth's neck of the cosmic woods namely, Nibiru and Nemesis. Nibiru is a proposed large planet that conspiracy theorists have predicted will crash into and destroy Earth. Many prognostications had the cataclysm occurring in 2012, to coincide with the supposed "Mayan apocalypse." There is no evidence that Nibiru exists, or that such an impact is imminent. (Some variations of the Nibiru myth call it Planet X, but this latter moniker can also refer to a large world whose existence was first postulated by astronomer Percival Lowell in the early 20th century, to explain perceived oddities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. So it can get a bit confusing.) Nemesis is a small star or brown dwarf (a "failed star" that's considerably larger than a planet) hypothesized to zoom through space not far from the sun. Nemesis' gravitational pull regularly jostles the faraway comet repository known as the Oort Cloud, the idea goes, sending comets barreling toward Earth and thus explaining the perceived cycle of mass extinctions on our planet, which seem to occur every 26 million years or so. See more The Nemesis hypothesis is more scientifically respectable than the Nibiru fairy tale. Again, however, astronomers have found no solid evidence that the supposed star/brown dwarf actually exists. The New York Post wouldn't be the first outlet to lump Planet Nine in with Planet X, Nibiru and Nemesis. On Wednesday (April 6), Brown, motivated by what he read in a different Planet Nine news story, offered the following helpful hint via Twitter: "PSA: Planet Nine is not Planet X or Nibiru or Nemesis. All theories of 'a planet out there' are not the same theory!" In other Planet Nine news: A new modeling study suggests that, if the putative world actually exists, it's likely about 3.7 times wider than Earth and is downright frosty, with a temperature of about minus 375 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 226 degrees Celsius). Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. 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. Things will get more difficult when Greece soon begins rejecting Syrian refugees as planned and sending them back to Turkey. At that point, a complicated legal dispute is expected to ensue. First, it remains questionable whether Greece will be capable of carrying out the asylum procedures within only a matter of days as planned. The country lacks both money and the necessary personnel. The Greek asylum agency currently has only 295 employees at its disposal across the entire country. It often takes months if not years before decisions are made. A Massive Logistical Challenge The European Commission has announced it will send 2,300 experts to provide support, including police, asylum case officers, judges and interpreters. But few believe that Europe will succeed in changing the Greek asylum system overnight. So far, the EU hasn't even succeeded in sending enough officials. More than anything, the EU-Turkey deal represents a massive logistical challenge. The situation was so chaotic the night before the first deportations took place that a senior official at one of the responsible EU agencies had to spend the night in a car because all the hotel rooms had been booked up. There were no lack of reports about the problems, either. Britain's The Guardian reported on Tuesday that 13 Afghan and Congolese refugees had been deported after police "forgot" to process their asylum claims, according to the director of UNHCR's Europe bureau. Athens has denied the charge. Sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Athens is Heiko Werner, 44, team leader for Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, a man who has little patience for the accusations of chaos. Werner has spent the past decade working in crisis regions, and he has seen a thing or two in his life: refugee camps in Sudan, malnourished children. He's a man capable of assessing a mission, and one who knows how quickly rumors can travel in refugee camps. But he also knows how to transform a blueprint into a concrete asylum system. "I am confident that things will work in Greece," he says. Werner is also fond of peppering his explanations with terms straight out of the consultancy firm cookbook. He says Monday's operation, at least in principle, were symbolic, aimed at testing the new system. He speaks of a "soft start." The next step, he says, is to fill a new structure with the necessary staff and to determine whether it is working and to then "go live" with it. The workers who participate in the test would remain and would be complemented by additional trained personnel. "We have many people who must be processed," says Werner. "Our teams have to be able to achieve a high level of productivity very quickly." He says the pilot process should then be populated with more employees who would be working in the service of the Greek officials. He says he's certain the deal will work. "For us, the burning question is what will happen when word gets around about the repatriations in the camps in Turkey," says Werner. He compares it with the decision to declare Albania and Kosovo to be safe countries of origin. Once that happened, the number of asylum-seekers from those countries dropped dramatically. Is Turkey Really a Safe Country of Origin? But even if the EU does succeed in getting the upper hand on the logistical aspects, the deal could soon face legal challenges. In order to reduce refugee numbers on the long term, sending only Pakistanis and Moroccans back to Turkey won't be enough. The authorities would also have to begin deporting significant numbers of Syrians, who had a nearly 100 percent rate of being granted asylum protection in Europe last year. The deal is an indication that the EU views Turkey as a safe country of origin. That means that applications of refugees who travel to Greece via Turkey may be rejected. But it is questionable whether this line of argumentation will stand in court. Experts argue that Turkey fails to meet a series of minimum standards required by European asylum law. When it signed the Geneva Convention on Refugees, Ankara retained a geographic limitation stipulating that only those fleeing as a consequence of "events occurring in Europe" must be given refugee status. The government has created exceptions for Syrians, but all others are forced to get by without any state aid. "The deal will not be allowed to stand by the European Court of Justice," predicts Luise Amtsberg, the refugee policy spokesperson for the Green Party group in the Bundestag, Germany's federal parliament. She visited Lesbos this week. Even members of the Greek government view the deal skeptically. "If we find that the criteria we have set for Turkey for securing refugee rights are not being fulfilled, then we won't be able to send any more people back," Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumblis told SPIEGEL. Human rights organizations like Germany's Pro Asyl have already announced their intention to provide support to refugees seeking to sue in European courts. If judges were to then suspend deportations, the deterrent effect would immediately fall flat and the deal would be over. Sham Mohammed, the Pakistani, explains that his family back in Pakistan is being persecuted by a criminal gang. He says they have shot his father in the leg and injured his uncle. He, too, believes he is in danger. He claims that while making his journey to Lesbos, he was kidnapped and tortured in Iran. He even shows what he says are traces of that torture on his elbow. In order to review Mohammed's asylum application, he would have to be posed a multitude of detailed questions. "An asylum official with a medium level of experience could spend an entire day with an interview like that," says American attorney Kavita Kapur, 30, who has worked in the past for government agencies as well as for the UN Refugee Agency (UNFCR). Kapur is here out of concern for the refugees' rights. She is one of the few independent monitors who is allowed to move freely inside Camp Moria. She also speaks Urdu, the lingua franca of Pakistan. She says that the police officers who are the only ones authorized to take the migrants to the asylum registration centers cannot even understand the men. She claims that other migrants stood outside the office for days and never managed to make it inside during opening hours. "I think the government is doing its best, but Greece has always had a very weak asylum system," Kapur says. "Before an orderly system has been set up, no one should be deported." MONDAY, APRIL 25Succession (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14, SC) (HDTV)MARY, ELIZABETH AND CATHERINE MUST DECIDE WHO THEY CAN TRUST Mary (Adelaide Kane) must find a powerful suitor to align herself with as Charles (guest star Spencer MacPherson) impending Coronation looms. Lola (Anna Popplewell) stumbles upon the identity of Elizabeths (Rachel Skarsten) poisoner, while Catherine (Megan Follows) becomes a new kind of victim for the castles serial killer. Craig Parker, Rose Williams, Celina Sinden, Ben Geurens, Torrance Coombs, Charlie Carrick and Jonathan Keltz also star. Charles Biname directed the episode written by April Blair (#311). Original airdate 4/25/2016.Chapter Forty-One (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)DIFFERENT ARRANGMENTS Jane (Gina Rodriguez) takes on additional shifts at the Marbella to make some extra money, but it starts cutting into her time with Mateo. Jane and Rafael (Justin Baldoni) agree that they need a formal custody agreement and decide to use a mediator to help make it more amicable. Xo (Andrea Navedo) takes an acting role on Rogelios (Jaime Camil) telenovela and they are both surprised with her performance. Michael (Brett Dier) gets called into his boss office after a newspaper runs a story on him and Sin Rostro. Meanwhile, Petra (Yael Grobglas) confronts Rafael when she learns that the twins trust fund is different from Janes arrangement. Ivonne Coll also stars. Gina Lamar directed the episode written by Joe Lawson (#219). Original airdate 4/25/2016.TUESDAY, APRIL 26Back to Normal (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (TV-PG, V) (HDTV)WELLS IS ATTACKED BY DC COMICS CHARACTER GRIFFIN GREY A meta-human with super strength named Griffin Grey (guest star Haig Sutherland) mistakes Harry (Tom Cavanagh) for Earth-1 Harrison Wells and kidnaps him, demanding that Wells cure him from his current condition. Realizing another brilliant Wells could help track Griffins location, Barry asks Jesse (guest star Violett Beane) to help. Meanwhile, Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) corners Joe (Jesse L. Martin) about The Flash. John Showalter directed the episode written by Brooke Roberts & Katherine Walczak (#219). Original airdate 4/26/2016.I to Die, You to Live (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14) (HDTV)48 HOURS While Lex (David Gyasi) attempts to maintain control outside the cordon, he learns that a young woman, who had close contact with an infected patient, is unaccounted for. With limited resources available, Lex is forced to enlist help from Jake (Chris Wood), whose growing resentment towards Lex for getting him trapped inside is causing him to spiral. Elsewhere, Katie (Kristen Gutoskie) attempts to keep it together as she keeps a watchful eye over her students, while Teresa (Hanna Mangan Lawrence) is devastated to learn that her friends may have been exposed to the virus. Finally, Jana (Christina Moses), who has learned that her best friend Suzy (guest star Nadine Lewington) is also trapped inside the cordon, rations out their limited food as they wait out the 48-hour quarantine. Claudia Black, Trevor St. John and George Young also star. Charles Beeson directed the episode written by Julie Plec (#102). Original airdate 4/26/2016.WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27Canary Cry (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14, LV) (HDTV)OLIVER, LANCE AND TEAM DEAL WITH LAURELS DEATH Oliver (Stephen Amell) and the team struggle to come to terms with Laurels (Katie Cassidy) death, especially Diggle (David Ramsey) who is overwhelmed with guilt for choosing to believe Andy (guest star Eugene Byrd) had changed. Meanwhile, Lance (Paul Blackthorne) refuses to believe his daughter is really gone and asks Nyssa (guest star Katrina Law) to help bring her back. A recent Black Canary sighting in Star City only seems to prove his theory that Laurel isnt actually dead. Laura Belsey directed the episode written by Wendy Mericle & Beth Schwartz (#419). Original airdate 4/27/2016.The Chitters (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14, DLSV) (HDTV)SAM AND DEAN MEET A NEW PAIR OF HUNTERS In a small town in Colorado, mysterious disappearances happen every 27 years. Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) head to the town to investigate and meet two hunters who have a personal vendetta against these once-in-a-generation monsters. Eduardo Sanchez directed the episode written by Nancy Won (#1119). Original airdate 4/27/2016.THURSDAY, APRIL 28Leviathan (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (TV-PG, LV) (HDTV)LONDON 2166 Rip (Arthur Darvill) takes the team to London in the year 2166, three months before his family is killed. He believes this to be their final opportunity to take out Savage (Casper Crump) who is, unfortunately, at the height of his power. However, the team discovers two key elements to defeating him Savages daughter (guest star Jessica Sipos) and the means to kill Savage once and for all. Gregory Smith directed the episode written by Sarah Nicole Jones & Ray Utarnachitt (#113). Original airdate 4/28/2016.Join or Die (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14, LV) (HDTV)KANE REACHES A BREAKING POINT Clarke (Eliza Taylor) is on a mission that could change everything. Meanwhile, Murphy (Richard Harmon) gains insight that might prove useful in ensuring his survival. Lastly, Kane (Henry Ian Cusick) reaches a breaking point. Paige Turco, Bob Morley, Marie Avgeropoulos, Devon Bostick, and Christopher Larkin also star. Dean White directed the episode written by Julie Benson & Shawna Benson (#313). Original airdate 4/28/2016.FRIDAY, APRIL 29Kill Em All (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL With Bonnies (Kat Graham) life at stake and an uphill battle ahead of them, Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Enzo (Michael Malarkey) lead the charge to save Bonnie before her condition worsens. Stefan (Paul Wesley) reluctantly teams up with Matt (Zach Roerig) for the sake of Bonnie and uncovers the truth behind Matts anger towards him. Elsewhere, determined to help her best friend, Caroline (Candice King) joins Alaric (Matt Davis) on a mission and quickly realizes how much shes missed her former supernatural lifestyle. Finally, after their plan takes an unexpected turn, Damon makes a fateful decision that will forever change his relationship with Bonnie. Kellie Cyrus directed the episode written by Chad Fiveash & James Stoteraux (#720). Original airdate 4/29/2016.No More Heartbreaks (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV)THE RACE TO SAVE CAMI Following a violent encounter that has left Camis (Leah Pipes) life hanging in the balance, Klaus (Joseph Morgan) is forced to rely on his family and allies to find a cure as he keeps a watchful eye over Cami at the compound. With time running out, Freya (Riley Voelkel) turns to her arsenal of spells, while Vincent (Yusuf Gatewood) and Marcel (Charles Michael Davis) head to Camis apartment to gather a crucial ingredient. Elsewhere, Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) and Elijah (Daniel Gillies) travel to the bayou in hopes of bringing back a potential antidote that could save Camis life. Finally, Davina (Danielle Campbell) confronts Lucien (guest star Andrew Lees) and learns some heartbreaking information that will change her future with Kol (guest star Nathaniel Buzolic) forever. Millicent Shelton directed the episode written by Celeste Vasquez & Michael Narducci (#319). Original airdate 4/29/2016. Working with our customers at these challenging times for dairy farmers, there has never been a bigger need to ensure that the genetics used today promote the type of cow built for the future. Leading this group of Cogent sires set to make a significant stamp on UK herds is the exciting, new release, Prismagen King George. Bred from the superb De-Su Georgia cow family that has brought genomic legends such as De-Su Oman 6121, King George is perhaps one of the most complete sires for use in the modern, UK dairy herd. A genomic giant and future sire of sons, King George offers a great combination of milk, (+580kgs) type (+2.3), fertility (8.9) and positive components; while his thoroughly desirable pedigree (Kingboy x Shotglass x Frank), provides an opportunity to bring specialist genetics into realistic, everyday use. In a proof run that shows strength and depth to the Cogent programme, King George is not alone in his claim for the studs proof run star. DG Brody *RC has similar credentials and as one of the highest red carrier bulls globally brings a wide range of benefits to UK farmers and breeders alike. Brody combines the great Rainyridge Tony Beauty cow family with a modern sire stack (Olympian x Supersire x Superstition) and adds to it with exceptional type (+3.21) and outstanding health traits. This makes Brody a strong candidate for breeding excellence both commercially and for pedigree breeders. He also offers an exciting boost of production (+469 Kgs milk) and exceptional health and management traits (+11.7 fertility and +0.6 lifespan) for those interested in red/red carrier breeding. Never one to be overshadowed, the UKs very own Wintersell Mila family has played a significant part in the latest proof run. Cogents proven portfolio now boasts three high flyers in brothers, Wintersell Millet, a bull who will appeal to any breeder, with daughters continually scoring high with the classifier, as well as Cogents number one PLI proven bull Wintersell Milo and number two PLI proven sire Curtismill Wintery. Chattanooga Police Officer John Collins told members of the City Beer Board on Thursday that, acting on numerous complaints, the Police Department, the Hamilton County Sheriffs Department, the Hamilton County Health Department and the Tennessee ABC Board did a series of compliance checks on May 11 with a concentration on hookah bars. The complaints centered on these establishments allowing customers under the age of 21 inside. A Tennessee state law specifies that if a bar allows smoking, anyone under 21 is prohibited from being inside. An exception can be made for private clubs. To qualify as a private club, a business must have a charter, must register with the state and pay for a license. Other requirements include advertising only to members of the club and the members having the ability to control the salary of employees. During the compliance checks, Lit Hookah Lounge, 311 Sommerville Ave.,was inspected and seven-eight underage customers were inside smoking. Sujal Patel, the owner of the business, told the beer board that they were guests of members. To be a member, a person must pay $1 and sign a list. Because of the heavy smoke inside the building, Officer Collins said police could not observe any of the underage customers drinking. Mr. Patel told the board that he had a marking system for age before anyone could be served, and he thought he was in compliance with the law of allowing in the guests. Assistant City Attorney Keith Reisman said that Lit does not meet the state requirements of being a club. Because no minors were served beer, however, the board voted to put a letter of reprimand in the companys file. Since the compliance check, the business has been restricted to the age of 21 and up. Cloud Nine Hookah Lounge, 1101 Hixson Pike, was also inspected the night of March 11 and multiple violations were discovered. When police entered at 10:40 p.m. out of the 45 customers present, 23 were under the age of 21. There was no system in place for proof of age. Due to the heavy smoke, again, police could not see people drinking. They did find bottles of liquor, both opened and sealed as well as many empty bottles that were stored in the kitchen area. There were also bottles of wine and one of moonshine. The bar does not have a liquor license and is not allowed to store, serve or sell liquor or wine. The cordless land line telephone was found to be not working. Having a working land line phone is a requirement to have a beer license. Because Cloud Nine has no liquor license, the ABC Board could only bring criminal charges against the business. The beer board, however, could issue penalties and voted five to two to revoke the beer permit. Board member Andre Harriman said, in addition to the violations, the fact that no representative came to the beer board meeting to answer the charges, showed blatant disregard and disrespect. If the business wishes to sell beer, it must reapply for a new license. Michael Wood, the owner of Ziggys Bar and Grill, 607 Cherokee Blvd., told the board that things got out of hand the night of March 12 when a bar check was made. Occupancy of the building is 49, yet Officer Collins told the board that he observed over 80 people inside. He said when police showed up, so did taxis to take people away. He said the layout of the business is unusual with a front and back entrance. A karaoke bar occupies the front of the building and that night a heavy metal band was performing in the back room. There had been a doorman with a counter at the back entrance, but the bands were changing when the compliance check began and people were leaving the back and moving to the front of the building creating a fire hazard. Mr. Wood said he tries to have start-up bands every weekend and they usually do not draw that many people - this was an exception. He said the fire marshal will not allow the back door to stay locked to help control the number of customers. A letter of reprimand will be put in the file for Ziggys with the warning that there must be a doorman with a counter at both the front and back doors. Mr. Wood was also cautioned to monitor over-serving customers. new gas and convenience store, Citgo Food Mark, 3410 Campbell St. was approved for a beer permit. Three special events received beer licenses at the beer board meeting. Laughing, Living and Giving on the Northshore will take place on April 22 from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. It will be held at a new event hall, 2 On the Roof, at 313 Manufacturers Road. This event will raise funds to support the park and recreations summer programs, as well as for an outgoing picnic at the end of the summer. Food will be by Lamars Catering, with around 200 expected to attend. If Trees Could Sing, taking place April 22 at Coolidge Park from 6-8 p.m., is being organized by an environmental organization to raise awareness for Earth Day. Beer sales will be handled by Melanie Krautstrunk from the craft brewery Hutton & Smith. Ride our Steel IV, put on by the Head Hunters Club, raises money for various community causes. Every year the club puts on a party for themselves. This year the party will be named Ride for Peace and will be held at Utopia Event Hall, 2110 Dodson Ave., from 9 p.m. 2 a.m. C hancellor George Osborne suffered a double blow from poor economic data today, including much worse than expected news on manufacturing on the eve of the start of the sale process for Tata Steel. Industrial output recorded its biggest fall for two and half years in February, according to official figures, which confirmed increasingly gloomy surveys that have shown a sharp economic slowdown since the start of the year. The UK also saw a much bigger than expected trade gap with the country sucking in record imports from the European Union. Industrial output dived 0.3% month on month in February to give a 0.5% fall on the year, its biggest drop since August 2013, the Office for National Statistics said. The figures confirm anecdotal evidence that large companies have put investment plans on hold until the referendum on EU membership in June, while global sentiment has been hit by the slowdown in China. Howard Archer of IHS said the numbers were a double whammy of very disappointing news for the UK economy that bodes ill for first-quarter growth prospects. Economists were shocked by the 1.1% fall in manufacturing in February, which took the annual rate of decline to 1.8%, the biggest fall since 2013. That will not boost prospects for Tata Steel UKs sale, on which thousands of jobs depend. A deal has reportedly been lined up by private-equity firm Greybull to buy its Scunthorpe works and invest 400 million, which could be announced on Monday. That is the day the Indian firm Tata will formally open the sale process for the rest of the business, including the massive Port Talbot works in South Wales. So far Business Secretary Sajid Javid has only named Liberty Steel as a potential buyer. Dennis de Jong, managing director of forex broker UFX.com, said: A wealth of cheap steel on the market has seen global prices plummet and, without raising import tariffs or government intervention, many believe the British steel industry will be forced to shutter completely. The trade deficit for February came in at 12 billion, far higher than the average 10.2 billion predicted by economists. Januarys figure was also revised upwards to 12.2 billion, another blow for Osborne (pictured). Ruth Miller of Capital Economics said: Februarys trade figures showed that the economy is still struggling to rebalance towards exports. The recent falls in sterling will take some time to support exporters, due to the time lags involved in renegotiating contracts. So the odds remain stacked against a material narrowing in the trade deficit in the near term at least. W e knew manufacturing wasnt in a happy place but we didnt think it was as bad as this. Todays figures show Britains factories slumping at their fastest rate since 2013, giving the lie yet again to ministers claims to be rebalancing the economy away from services. And thats despite the Brexit-battered pounds weakness making our exports cheaper. Its easy to put this down to the decline in output from our crippled steelmakers but the problems surely worse than that. What it indicates is that the customers who might buy their steel are running so slowly now that theyre less likely to need it. Hardly the best conditions for Tata to be trying to sell its UK operations. Discounters dwindle? Phoenix Asset Management gets in touch to throw its hapennyworth into the debate around whether the discount supermarkets are really doing as well as all that. It has pumped a stonking 12% of its 600 million fund into Tesco shares and 6% into Morrisons, based largely on the bet that the discounters appeal will soon fade. Heres the argument: 25 years ago, discount supermarkets such as Kwiksave and Netto together had well over 10% of the market. But they retrenched dramatically and their share slumped to less than 5% in the mid-Noughties. Tesco, Asda and Morrisons made hay in their absence. Spotting the departure of the cheapo players in cities up and down the country, in the past five years the Germans moved into the gap, executing a rapid and successful expansion campaign leaving Tesco and co reeling. But, as the data are now starting to indicate, the momentum is slowing. In the meantime, mainstream supermarkets have improved their game, learning from the discounters about reducing ranges, cutting prices and ditching confusing promotions. As market researcher Kantars figures showed this week, Aldis easter sales may have been down like-for-like against a year ago. Phoenix is betting discounters market share will only now rise at a modest pace, from the current 12% to perhaps 18% before coming to a juddering halt. So fears about Tescos slice of the pie declining will soon abate. Phoenix is right up to a point. But it should be wary of comparing the budget shoppers of the Noughties to todays. Netto and Kwiksave never appealed to mainstream supermarket customers as Aldi and Lidl do. The trend of shoppers in the shires nipping in to buy 10 bottles of bubbly and parma ham from Lidl will only grow. Meanwhile, Amazon waits in the wings to satisfy our hunger for online. Tesco, whose figures next week will show more flattish sales growth, is still a risky share to buy. F amilies who use large amounts of gas and electricity should be hit with a higher level of VAT on their energy bills, according to a senior adviser at industry regulator Ofgem. Economist David Osmon, writing in a personal rather than official capacity, said the progressive system of tax would yield spectacular benefits by reducing energy consumption and raising more tax. In a paper for the Economics Lab think-tank, Osmon proposed dropping VAT altogether for standing charges, keeping the current 5% rate for consumption up to average levels but raising it to 20% for above average usage. He has calculated that the system would reduce overall energy demand by 2%, cut energy bills on all but the biggest users of by an average of 7 and increase Treasury revenues by around 1.1 billion. He said: The beauty of progressive VAT lies in its simplicity. You gain all these benefits by just altering slightly the prices that consumers face. Its also likely to be more widely accepted than most taxes because it enables people to choose how much tax to pay. It progressively taxes what they decide is their disposable income and those who arent price sensitive pay more. The proposal comes after Britains big six energy companies British Gas owner Centrica, EDF, nPower, Eon, Scottish Power and SSE were last month accused of taking their customers for granted in an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority. It calculated that customers were paying 1.7 billion more than they should have done in a fully competitive market. A uSwitch.com survey this week found six out of 10 consumers still do not understand their energy bill. This is two years after the introduction of reforms designed to make the information simpler and clearer. T oo much Panama Papers space has been wasted attempting to make links between Russian funny money and Vladimir Putin. I have no drum to bang for the Russian President or anyone else, but from what weve seen so far the supposed links between him and mystery money being filtered out of the country seem rather tenuous. The way the leaks have been sewn together and presented make it look obvious that Putin must be spiriting billions of dollars out of the country. Look closer at the documented evidence and you see the case is actually nowhere near made. Read the press coverage yourself and youll see what I mean; the journalists have found certain banks and individuals in the files who have previously been branded Putins bankers or Putins friends by the US government and leapt to the idea that it must therefore be Putins ill-gotten cash theyre ferretting away. But they place too much unquestioning faith in Washingtons information. The Kremlin makes spurious claims about the US at fraught geopolitical times like these and journalists are rightly sceptical, so surely theyre naive to conclude that the White House doesnt do the same about the Kremlin. That vast quantities of cash are being moved around and out of Russia in suspicious circumstances is not in doubt. The country is controlled by a small group of oligarchs, many of whom behave badly and, sad to say, some of them are close to Putin. Public and private funds have been stolen from the Russian people on an industrial scale. But having spent years funding journalistic investigations into Russian corruption myself, I very much doubt that Putin is behind the looting, or that it is his money thats moving around Panama, Cyprus and other offshore locales with the help of Mossack Fonseca and its peers. What is most troubling about sensationally (and wrongly) placing Putin at the heart of a corrupt web is that we lose sight of the main issue these wonderful leaks expose so well: that the money-laundering and theft that is now so rife in countries such as Russia, China and Nigeria is only made possible by a huge machine operated by highly paid bankers, lawyers and accountants from the West. Officials and businessmen in developing countries may be bleeding their countries dry but it is the West that is teaching them how. UBS, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Commerzbank, Coutts: all are all named in the Panama files (though this is not to say they did anything wrong), but they are just the start of it. I myself was a victim of wide-scale fraud on my businesses while they were placed in trust during my days as a politician in the Duma. The legal actions Im now taking to recover the funds have uncovered, without exception, that the executives who stole from me did so with the help of blue-chip banks and law firms in London, Switzerland and New York. Highly paid, professional British, American and Swiss bankers and lawyers not just dodgy Russians assisted in suspicious, and in many cases, absurdly bogus transactions. Now, chasing the money from one offshore jurisdiction to another is like finding a needle in a prairie full of haystacks thanks to the work of international firms like Mossack Fonseca. Meanwhile, the likes of Andrey Borodin, wanted in Russia for allegedly stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from his bank, sets himself up as a dissident and is granted asylum in the UK, where he lives in the mansion he was allowed to buy for 140 million. He denies the charges and says they are all politically motivated. His two alleged accomplices have just been jailed by a Moscow court. Georgy Bedzhamov, who moved from Russia to Monaco, presumably with local professional help, stands accused of fraud committed by a group of persons on a massive scale from the collapsed Vneshprombank. He disputes the charges and also says they are politically motivated. His sister has been arrested for the same fraud. She too denies the charges. Sergei Pugachev, accused of using a web of companies in Cyprus, London and New Zealand to hide the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars from his Mezhprombank, fled Britain last year and says he was the subject of a witch-hunt by the Russian authorities. He has a two-year UK jail sentence for contempt of court hanging over his head. 'Leaks like the Panama Papers are breathing much-needed fresh air into the system and exposing enablers such as Mossack Fonseca' These characters have been able to buy vast properties in places like London and the South of France, plus dizzying arrays of offshore shell companies and trusts to move their money around. How? With the paid expertise and assistance of local real-estate agents, brokers, lawyers and accountants. The stench is bad but leaks such as the Panama Papers, the HSBC Falciani list and hopefully many more to come are breathing much-needed fresh air into the system and exposing just how problematic enablers such as Mossack Fonseca are. As for the costs being run up by my home country trying to chase our fraudsters through the courts in London and New York, Im not sure its worth it. The Western money-laundering machine is so sophisticated that prosecutions cost more than our government can afford. When I was a politician in the Duma, I was instrumental in bringing in new plea-bargaining laws. Im proud to say theyve helped speed up Russias legal system (sclerotic and deeply flawed though it remains). I cant take all the credit; we got the idea from the US. Surely now it would be better for Russia and other countries with endemic fraud problems to copy America again when it comes to chasing our kleptocratic oligarchs. The US authorities have extracted about $260 billion in fines from badly behaving corporates over the past nine years. Nearly all came as a result of various types of plea-bargaining. We should learn from them and do the same. It may not result in people getting locked up but at least wed get more of our money back from exotic bolt holes such as Panama. The Lebedev family are owners of the London Evening Standard. A mong the better ideas proposed by mayoral candidates this week was one by Prince John Zylinski, the Polish aristocrat who once challenged Nigel Farage to a duel and who wants to build 400,000 homes in the capital. It wont happen. Despite housing being the critical issue of the race, no one can figure out the big stumbling block how to overcome local opposition. Nimby is a derogatory term but many people have reasonable and rational objections, and while its widely assumed Nimbys dislike new housing, its actually heavily determined by scale and style. Ultimately much of our housing crisis could be alleviated if we offered local residents more consent and eased rules. The social enterprise Create Streets, which campaigns for more terraced houses to be built in London, has conducted research showing local objections to new housing falls dramatically when people get architecture they like. Most prefer traditional buildings, reflected in the fact that pre-1919 homes have increased in value at double the rate of modern buildings since 1983, according to data from Halifax. Create Streets found this crossed all boundaries of classes, age and ethnicity. In Oval, 92 per cent of 147 residents preferred Kennington-style Victorian architecture over Vauxhall-style tower blocks; a similar figure was found in Kingston and Southwark. There is also a strong sentiment against buildings above eight storeys, with 91 per cent in one poll supporting buildings this height, but only nine per cent supporting those any higher. Half of those who oppose development nearby changed their minds when presented with traditional buildings. And this opposition to high-rise would not decrease the supply of homes, since traditional Kensington and Chelsea-style mansion blocks can house larger numbers of people. In fact, the proliferation of high-rise blocks in London in the Sixties and Seventies actually accelerated the population exodus, according to the groups manifesto. So why does London not have more beautiful Islington squares? Partly it is to do with architectural, artistic fashion; in 1987 a young psychologist called David Halpern asked students to rate buildings by attractiveness. Almost everyone had similar tastes, except the architecture students, whose favourite was everyone elses least favourite and vice-versa. In its report, Create Streets recalls the director of housing and regeneration at one London borough speaking of the horrid Edwardian streets that most of us live in and complaining of dreary terraces. Imagine, living in an Edwardian London street the horror! However, the bigger problem is that, thanks to planning regulations, no one can build the most desired type of building any more. Create Streets cited one of Londons most prestigious buildings, dating from 1825, which fails todays rules on at least 13 points. It will get worse, with proposed changes afoot to increase the number of regulations, while current Mayor Boris Johnson has said he can do nothing about it. Can Sadiq, Zac or indeed Prince John do any better? Blue bloods are conquering the arts Kit Harington and Rose Leslie, who play Jon Snow and Ygritte in Game of Thrones, are now going out in real life. Life imitates art, as one magazine declared: lets hope not too closely. Even for the standards of the profession, Harington and Leslie are well-bred, both being descended from illegitimate children of Charles II. Through him they also derive from Edward IV, the 15th-century inspiration for Thrones Robert Baratheon, the eldest of three brothers who gorged himself to death on wine, women and food. Among Edwards other descendants are Benedict Cumberbatch, Hugh Grant, Rupert Everett and the Fiennes brothers. I sometimes think acting gets unfairly picked on when it comes to elitism, as most art forms being prestigious but largely badly paid get taken over by the aristocracy eventually. Its the same with rock stars, DJs and, indeed, journalists. Comedy feeds off its ditherers Its a shame Fox didnt use the Simpsons episode about Smithers coming out to end the programme, which has deteriorated since its Series 4-11 heyday. The Simpsons began in 1989 and comes from an era when moral issues were uncertain, which is partly why it was so funny. Uncertainty is a great basis for comedy, especially political and moral confusion, with the acceptance that life is imperfect and were all hypocrites and failures. In its golden age Simpsons creator Matt Groening insisted on having one Republican on the writing team, to stop the moral certainty one gets when around people like us. As it became unfunny the Simpsons also became more politically predictable. Younger Americans are more level-headed these days but moral certainty does not make for great comedy. * This week French winemakers hijacked Spanish tankers, pouring 90,000 bottles down the drain. Wine-makers in south-west France even have an armed wing called Le Crav, the Comite Regional dAction Viticole, which has even laid explosives for rival distributors. The French really do take this seriously. In his memoirs, BBC war journalist Wynford Vaughan-Thomas wrote about a battle in 1944 when, he recall, the French army slowed to a halt. I looked at the map, and realised we were at the start of Burgundy vineyard country. They were studying it because it would be tragic if they fought through the great vineyards of Burgundy France would never forgive them and they paused. Then a young sous-lieutenant arrived and said, Courage, my generals Ive found the weak spots of the German defences: every one is in a vineyard of inferior quality. The general made up his mind, jattaque! T he Prime Minister is a former PR man but youd never think it from the way he has mishandled his own story about his family finances. If, as soon as the publication of the Panama Papers showed his late father had used an offshore haven for business purposes, he had admitted he himself had benefited from such a fund, the fuss might by now have blown over. It was his Commons statement, apparently denying any association with tax havens or indeed ownership of shares, that made his subsequent admission so damaging. That, and the clarifications issued by Downing Street. These statements, which were plainly intended to suggest that the Prime Minister was unconnected to his fathers legal use of offshore financial arrangements, did as much damage as his belated admission that he did have funds invested offshore and disposed of them prior to the 2010 election. The impression left is disagreeable, even if Mr Cameron did absolutely nothing illegal. He has managed very effectively to distract attention from his efforts to swing public opinion behind remaining in the EU, a far more important matter. But good may well come of this. Mr Cameron will, or should, be even more committed to his efforts to make the global movement of funds more transparent, especially offshore havens that launder dirty money from criminal individuals and corrupt regimes as well as facilitate tax-evasion and aggressive tax-avoidance. He has already promoted efforts by the G20 and OECD to address global tax-evasion and aggressive tax-avoidance; now he will, or should, go even further. This episode has been salutary; it has highlighted the problem of the offshore tax havens and has shed light on dark places in the sun. Usefully, the Tory mayoral candidate, Zac Goldsmith, who has been asked about his own family investments, has committed himself, if elected, to a crackdown on offshore companies that run illegal activities through the City of London. Top Tories are now keenly aware that the issue is toxic; the good news is that they will now be even more keen to be seen to do away with bad practice. Turkeys migrants A second boatload of migrants, mostly Pakistanis, has been returned to Turkey from Greece as a result of the deal struck between Turkey and the EU. Protesters, concerned that Turkey is not a fit country to take them in, dived into the water in front of the boats. These were all migrants who did not claim asylum; we can expect future deportees to exploit the appeals process to the full. The deal is well intentioned for it is intended to stop migrants being rewarded for making the crossing to Europe and instead gives priority to Syrians fleeing war. But the price is heavy. Turkeys President Erdogan makes clear he expects not just billions of euros but visa-free travel for Turks to the EU and the speeding up of Turkeys entry to the EU. These concessions, bringing the prospect of allowing millions of Turks access to Europe, could be as fraught in their results as the migrant problem itself. More points please Hundreds more motorists in London are buying electric cars, including hybrids, according to new figures. But electric cars need charging, and there remains a dearth of power points in the capital, notwithstanding the efforts of the Source London scheme, which is installing many more of them. Itll be only when it becomes as easy to charge an electric car as to buy petrol for a conventional one that the trend will really take off. Review at a glance W inning a Palme dOr doesnt guarantee a film an audience but director Jacques Audiards track record (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) will hopefully puts bums on seats. And once word spreads that this mostly Paris-set drama is a knock-out, its got the potential to become a crossover hit. An ex-Tamil Tiger (the convincing Jesuthasan Antonythasan, who fought with the Tamils as a teen) leaves Sri Lanka with a random woman and child (Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Claudine Vinasithamby, both excellent). Tentatively, the immigrants try to make a life for themselves on a rough estate but their gentle smiles are mostly met with contempt. Whats special about Audiards approach is that he drags us behind those gentle smiles. At one point a crane shot moves from the trios cramped quarters into a night sky full of fireworks. The film is seeking a fresh perspective on what propels people to leave home. And what it suggests is that the need for heat, bright lights and explosions unites us all. Audiard has definitely been influenced by Scorsese. Luckily, Dheepan boasts none of the cheesy machismo, say, of Gangs of New York. The final scene, which concerns London, is what you might call playful. Audiard is teasing his viewers, even as he makes clear that the business of where we put down roots is anything but a game. Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout The Tennessee Supreme Court has denied a request by a death row inmate to have a hearing to determine whether he is eligible to be executed because he is intellectually disabled, concluding that the procedural avenues he sought to use in this case do not entitle him to such a hearing. Pervis Tyrone Payne was convicted by a Shelby County jury in 1988 of two counts of first degree murder and one count of assault with intent to commit first-degree murder. Payne was sentenced to death for each of the two murders. The convictions and sentences were upheld by the Tennessee Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court in the early 1990s. Since then, Payne has pursued numerous secondary reviews of the case in the state and federal courts, all of which were unsuccessful. In 2001, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that the federal and state constitutions prohibit the execution of individuals who are intellectually disabled. In this case, Payne asserted that he is entitled to a hearing to determine whether he meets the legal definition of intellectually disabled. The Court determined that the many theories advanced by Payne do not create a right to a hearing on his claim of intellectual disability. One of the theories considered by the Court included Paynes reliance on a recent United States Supreme Court decision from Florida, Hall v. Florida, regarding the use of IQ scores and other factors in determining intellectual disability. The Tennessee Supreme Court held that Hall did not apply retroactively and thus did not provide an avenue for the hearing that Payne was seeking in this case. To read the unanimous opinion in Pervis Tyrone Payne v. State of Tennessee, authored by Justice Jeffrey S. Bivins, go to the opinions section of TNCourts.gov. Review at a glance W e're in the middle of things. We hear a breaking story on Fort Worth local radio. An eight-year-old boy has been abducted. Were in a darkened motel room with two ominous-looking men with guns, Roy (the amazingly expressive and powerful Michael Shannon) and Lucas (Joel Edgerton, a rock). And theres a frail-looking boy there, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher, previously seen in St Vincent with Bill Murray), in bed, shrouded in sunglasses and headphones. Its time, are you ready? Roy asks. Yep, says Alton. And Roy picks him up and holds him close to his chest, as a father does his child, Alton embracing him in return. Whatever this is, its no abduction, you realise. Theres a big backstory here, we know already, even though we havent heard it yet. They leave the room and set off in the dark in a rumblingly powerful old car, Lucas driving, Alton in the back, looking at superhero comics by torchlight. But the motel receptionist sees them and, having heard the news, calls it in. They hear that on the radio and immediately drive off the highway on to a country road, switching off the lights, Lucas, a real trooper, driving fast by night-vision goggles. This is a film about darkness and light, about going forward without being able to see just where youre going and how it is going to end. Its a road movie that sweeps across the southern states, through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Back in New Mexico, we see the leader of what we soon realise is a religious cult, the Ranch. Calvin (played with granitic authority by Sam Shepard) is tasking one of his acolytes with recovering the boy: What you do will decide our whole way of life you have four days to get the boy back here. The Lord has placed a heavy burden on you. And then, in a featureless hall, packed with earnest people in pious homespun clothes, he leads a weird religious service in which the congregation recite meaningless groups of numbers, and he tells them: To know the source of such things is to know our place in the world. And then the Ranch is raided by heavily armed FBI agents and the whole community is taken away for questioning about Alton. An engagingly geeky NSA agent Sevier (another brilliant, unexpected performance from Adam Driver, persuasively intelligent and sympathetic) leads the investigation. It seems these numbers are top secret, highly encrypted government information. They came from the boy, its all from the boy, Calvin says. Sevier asks him if hes his son and Calvin says: Adopted. Do you know the birth father? Yes, I do Roy Tomlinson, says Calvin. And then threateningly: You have no clue what youre dealing with, do you? Michael Shannons face holds so much integrity, such pained love, you cant look away. Through interviews with passive members of the Ranchs congregation, we learn that Alton has weird powers. He needs to be kept in the dark or they erupt, breaking things. He speaks in tongues. A visible spectrum of light comes from his eyes it gives a feeling of comfort, says one. Judgment Day is coming imminently and only if Alton is with them will they be saved, they believe. And so now the fugitives are being pursued both by government agencies and by the Ranchs men. And we start to see for ourselves what Alton can do, inexplicably hearing broadcasts, making the very ground shake. The brightest light flares from his eyes. At a service station he wanders out of the car and glances up at a government satellite monitoring nuclear events and it smashes violently down on them. Roy and Lucas have faith in him, without knowing everything. They are committed to taking him to where he wants, mysteriously, to be, in four days time, even though he seems to be becoming rapidly sicker and weaker. They succeed in reaching his mother Sarah (Kirsten Dunst), very sad and gentle but immediately bonding again with her long-lost son. We learn that she and Roy were both Ranch members when their leader Calvin took control over their miraculous boy and they have been waiting for this moment to get him back. But they both know too that Alton is so different, so special, that taking him to where he wants to go might mean losing him forever. Alton himself is beginning to understand more. In a very moving scene, he tries to reassure his father. Dad, are you scared? Yes. You dont have to worry about me. I like worrying about you. You dont have to any more. Ill always worry about you, Alton, thats the deal. Michael Shannons face holds so much integrity, such pained love, you cant look away. Midnight Special is the fourth film to have been written and directed by 37-year-old Arkansas native Jeff Nichols. When I first saw it earlier this year the only other film by him I knew was his second, Take Shelter of 2011, in which Shannon plays a young father tormented by dreams and visions of apocalyptic disaster coming for his family (his deaf daughter and sympathetic wife, Jessica Chastain, a casting directly inherited from Terrence Malicks The Tree of Life). Although he is uncertain whether to believe them or admit they are symptoms of the mental illness that runs in his family, he opts anyway to build an underground shelter, losing his job in the process. The film valuably leaves the outcome slightly ambiguous... Since then I have caught up with his low-budget debut, Shotgun Stories of 2007, about deadly feuding between two families of half-brothers in redneck Arkansas, and his marvellous Mark Twain-inspired movie, Mud, of 2012, set on the river in Arkansas, credited with re-launching the career of Matthew McConaughey. He plays the eponymous man on the run, living in the wild, who forms an alliance with two local 14-year-old boys, just discovering for themselves the pains of love that have driven Mud into losing everything. Nichols openly explains that, although his films may seem genre-pieces, B movies even, they come straight from the heart for him and seeing them, being completely gripped by them and by the acting he elicits from Shannon and McConaughey and his child actors too, you feel the truth of that. Shotgun Stories came out of his closeness with his own brothers; Take Shelter was written by a man about to become a father with all of the anxiety that brings. Directly behind Midnight Special is an experience when his year-old son nearly died from a febrile fit. I realised that having a child means giving up a part of yourself to the universe. Its like a wound has opened up that will never heal and will always be open to injury. If something happens to that child you will feel it because you love him so much. Its a helpless feeling, too, knowing that there is now this person in your life that you would do anything for, but in some ways you have no control over. That was the basis for Midnight Special. Not many directors speak like that. Thats not a pitch. However, Nichols is also determined to make his films into epics and, backed this time by Warner Bros, exploiting CGI, Midnight Special blossoms finally into a full-blown Spielbergian other-worldly spectacle, another kind of film entirely, one far away from his deeply Southern sensibility and his Malickian immersement in nature, despite some improbably placed trees. It seems to me unnecessary and an artistic mistake, a fantasy vision thats oddly banal, as if derived from some Ville Radieuse sketches by a modernist hack. So: an unsatisfying end but an extraordinary ride towards it. That Jeff Nichols should already have made four such distinctive, heartfelt films in his own way, at a time when the blockbusters are so formulaic, so industry-driven, is heartening. They have moved me greatly. Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout I n 2015, it featured in countless Instagram shots, arrived on the McDonalds breakfast menu and was spread amid controversy on toast by Nigella. But the many food writers and critics who declared that peak avocado was reached last year may have to reappraise the situation. A pop-up restaurant where the 55 five-course brunch menu includes avocado macaroons, avocado ice cream and even avocado margaritas opens in Farringdon on Sunday. The Avo-Brunch pop-up, a collaboration between events planner Meredith OShaughnessy and home appliance brand Whirlpool, is based at The Printworks Kitchen and takes place on various dates from this Sunday to June 12. Previous London pop-ups from Ms OShaughnessys Meredith Collective include Dirty Laundry in Fitzrovia, where cocktails were mixed in washing machines, and Nordic Yulefest, a winter dinner party in Shoreditch. Of her latest dining experience, she said: Its been quite divisive. Some people have really taken against it online. I just thought you could have a lot of fun with the avocado and it is still very popular as a brunch item. Its like Marmite, people love it or hate it. But there is no avocado on toast on the menu. In November, Nigella Lawson was mocked online for giving viewers a recipe for avo on toast in her BBC2 series Simply Nigella although Waitrose later reported a 30 per cent spike in sales. The fruits soaring popularity reached such an extent last year that Tesco started selling packs of them ready-peeled and de-stoned. In Japan, McDonalds added the avocado muffin to its menu after trials in Australia. 30 must-try dishes in London restaurants 1 /41 30 must-try dishes in London restaurants Bone marrow on toast with parsley salad at St John Not only has this dish kicked off countless wonderful meals over the course of St Johns 25 years, but it also gets credit for putting British cooking back on the global culinary map. Roasted bone marrow, coaxed out onto toast, cut perfectly with salad of parsley, shallots and capers. A nose-to-tail revolution, and utterly divine. Whole turbot at Brat Tomos Parrys talents with a turbot first came to feverish acclaim at Mayfair restaurant Kitty Fishers, but they are now the star attraction at his Michelin-starred solo spot. This whole fish grilled Basque-style, over hot coals and in a specially designed cage softens as if it has melted, and is basted at the table in an emulsion made with its own juices. Benjamin McMahon Marinara at 50 Kalo di Ciro Salvo Superlatives should be used in moderation but heck it, this might just be Londons best pizza. This under-the-radar London iteration of a Naples pizzeria serves an unrivalled marinara: just tomato sauce, oil, garlic and oregano. No need for any more with a sauce this good and a base so fine and perfectly charred, you can stop mourning your cancelled Italian holiday at first bite. Luciano Furia Clay pot baked pork and crab glass noodles at Kiln When we say Kiln is one of the hottest spots in town, we mean it hang over the counter at the Thai barbecue and youre not far out of range for the odd flame. Baking in the heart of the swirling heat is this must order: shimmering glass noodles, coated with a silky sauce enriched with fatty slicks of Tamworth pork belly and improbably unctuous crab meat. Lamb chops, Melabes Perhaps because its quietly tucked in among its unassuming neighbours down on the wrong end of High Street Kensington, Melabes is often overlooked by Londons food lovers. An unwarranted shame, as this partly Middle Eastern, partly Mediterranean set-up is really very good; it is somewhere to pick and choose from bits and pieces, and put a meal together yourself. The lamb chops, which come all smokey and burnished from the grill, are perfect; pink as a Vegas sign inside, but the fat all soft and dripping and delicious. A must, whatever the order. Steak tartare imperial at Bob Bob Ricard Theres Press For Champagne buttons, lobster in your mac and cheese and anything that stays still long enough gets gilded there is no point in going small at Bob Bob Ricard. Steak tartare is a luxurious pick at the best of times, but the Imperial upgrade here comes with a dollop of caviar even without the finishing touch, the tartare itself is one of the best in the capital. Bacon naan at Dishoom Londoners spent decades believing bacon in a bap with some ketchup (or brown sauce, but lets not have that argument now) couldnt be beaten and then Dishoom came along. This breakfast sandwich fills a fresh naan with bacon, a slathering of cream cheese, a luxurious tomato and chilli chutney, coriander and an oozing fried egg if you feel so inclined. Hangover be gone. Cacio e pepe at Padella Five years ago, you would have thought anyone queuing for pasta in London to have lost their minds this dish changed that. The starlet of Padellas much coveted is this plate of pici hand-rolled fat worms of eggless pasta with a mirror-shine sauce of parmesan cheese and pasta. Simple but unrivalled and itll set you back just 6. Jamon croquetas at Barrafina A dish like this should be elusive it is far too easy to eat seven portions of croquetas in a single sitting, which is why we presume Barrafina makes you queue. Very sensible. As the crunchy coating gives way to the oozing centre, enriched with the flavour of Spanish jamon (the best ham in the business), were already planning our next visit. Biang biang noodles at Xi'an Biang Biang Noodles There are oodles of noodles in the capital, but Guirong Weis triumphant take is one of the finest. First finding followers at her north London restaurant Xian Impression (soon to reopen for dine-in, but not yet), the dish of has inspired a whole spin-off restaurant in Spitalfields. Thick, hand-pulled, chewy noodles soak up all the spice and zing of the special sauce they swim in very special indeed. Souffle Suissesse, Le Gavroche Le Gavroche the street urchin is perhaps not for everyone. It is a Mayfair time machine, a reminder of how things were done once upon a time. Fortunately, it happens that how things were once done was very well indeed, and lunch or supper here is a masterclass in traditional French luxury (and often, happily, includes very large glasses of wine). Staff make the place, anyone who has been gently teased by the twins pretending to be each other will know. A tendency towards the old ways does mean the cooking offers little in the way of evolution or revolution, but new, after all, isnt always better. Michel Roux Jrs cheese souffle, baked on double cream, stuns, so overwhelmingly tasty, utter decadence that clings to the taste buds. Buttermilk Jamaican Jerk Chicken, Around the Cluck / 12:51 James Cochran found his signature dish early on, but its good it should stay with him for the rest of his career. While he has chops, and can do more beyond, theres something special in the way he works with his chicken; hotly spiced, gorgeously crispy, beautifully soft on the inside. A long-standing favourite and, though 12:51 cant operate as it did before, there are tables at his new project Around the Cluck, which is operating out of the same site. Breakfast at Hawksmoor Guildhall Your Full English is not full in comparison to the Hawksmoor breakfast at the steak connoisseurs Guildhall restaurant. The mind-boggling two-person spread swaps bacon rashers for an entire smoked chop, serves its bubble and squeak with short rib, puts trotter meat into its baked beans, and adds grilled bone marrow to all the usual trimmings. Cauliflower shawarma at Berber & Q Its not often that the main event at a barbecue restaurant is the veg, but Berber & Q have achieved just that. The cauliflower shawarma here is cooked on their flaming grill until softened and charred, before being doused liberally in tahini, pomegranate molasses, coriander, pomegranate seeds and a scattering of dried rose petals. BBQ Butter Chicken Wings at Brigadiers Brigadiers is a bold, boisterous sort of place: a labyrinthine City dining room, packed to the rafters with beer and Indian food that is indisputably gutsy. But arguably its finest moment comes in one of its smallest packages these chicken wings may be diminutive, but are mightily spiced, deftly charred and dripping with ghee-fuelled succulence. Beef brisket bun at Smokestak David Carters Shoreditch restaurant occupies itself by giving the entirety of Kansas City a run for its money on a daily basis. The star turn at this lauded barbecue restaurant is its beef brisket bun the meat is soft and juicy, riddled with its fats in the centre, while charred and treacle-like on the outside, paired perfectly with pickled chillies. To remember it is to salivate, we assure you. Snails, LEscargot LEscargot is one of Sohos old aristocrats and in its grand, beret red dining room there is always a mischievous sense of fun perhaps because it is still such a smart, suited, chandeliered place, and people are often drinking themselves rather silly. The clue to good eating is in the name; the snails come still clinging to their shells and submerged in their butter and parsley sauce. Dive in; you will emerge stinking gloriously of garlic. It wont matter a jot; roll on the red wine and settle in for a long, comforting night. Confit potatoes at Quality Chop House Yes, there are some high quality chops on offer at this 150-year-old Clerkenwell restaurant but blimey, leave room for the chips. Fine slices of potato are stacked into architecturally sound wedges, and confited until shatteringly crispy on the outside and devastatingly soft in the centre. They have been much imitated in recent years, but never bettered. Smoked eel sandwich at Quo Vadis Jeremy Lee cooks many things to a legendary level at Quo Vadis his pies could so easily have also made this list but he gets the nod here for his unrivalled take on the fancy sandwich. Smoked eel, horseradish cream and Dijon mustard, served with red onion pickle a combination so popular Lee says he nearly ran out of eel on post-lockdown reopening. Classic bao at Bao London has buns in abundance, but we still bow down to the fluffy superiority of Bao. The Taiwanese restaurant has become a cross-town favourite, thanks to its pleasingly pert rice buns (they are genuinely very pert, no crassness intended) and carefully considered fillings. The classic order comes filled with braised pork, fermented veg, coriander and a dusting of peanut powder. Carol Sachs Potato and roe, Core by Clare Smyth Clare Smyth has a knack that must infuriate other chefs; she is able to take the simplest of ingredients say, a single carrot and a smattering of lamb mince do something devilish with it and charge rather a lot for it; so good are the results, though, that few mind. Smyths sorcery is perhaps best witnessed with her signature, the potato and roe. It is simply a potato on a plate in a little sauce, but then it is also perhaps the best potato dish in the world; it has this wonderful salty richness, a certain seaside intenseness. It is glorious; so too is the smoked chicken that tends to come as an amuse bouche. Youll be treated here. Omelette Arnold Bennett Dont worry, no Arnolds were harmed in the making of this dish. Alongside impeccable service and an arguably perfect dining room, you could add another highlight to your breakfast at The Wolseley by ordering this creamy, haddock-filled dish, named for the writer who inspired its creation while staying at the Savoy. Fish pie, J Sheekey Long an actors favourite, J Sheekeys glamour has never lost its lustre. Its kept its regulars and charmed newcomers with a menu that plays the greatest hits of fine dining favourites. Seafood is Sheekeys thing; simply done sole is beautiful here, crab comes three ways, brill brushed in butter has a meatiness thats beyond satisfying. The fish pie is famous though, and rightly so; beneath the flaking pastry is a sea of cream, mustard and white wine, in it bobbing cod, haddock and salmon. It is simple but never fails; it does on its own for lunch, but is a failsafe at supper, too. John Carey The Ari Gold at Patty & Bun Theres a cheeseburger on every high street in the capital but not all of them are created equal. Patty & Bun has got the classic combination down to a tee with its curiously named Ari Gold burger: a fat, 35-day aged patty is served medium rare, and topped with gooey American cheese, smokey house mayo and tangy pickled red onions. Xiao long bao at Din Tai Fung Few dishes in the capital have been known to cause queues of four hours. Thats exactly what the world-famous xiao long bao dumplings did when top Taiwanese restaurant group Din Tai Fung first opened in Covent Garden. An intricately folded out layer (made by chefs trained for at least 18 months) gives way to succulent meat and a broth you could take on by the bowlful. Pig's trotter, the French House Upstairs in the Soho local, Neil Borthwick is quietly running one of the areas best kitchens. He orders in particularly good oysters, does brilliant things with brill and with his pigs trotter, has a dish that is rich and fatty, but with a beautiful salty cut that makes it madly moreish. The menu tends to change often upstairs in the French, but have this if its on. That little dining room is somewhere to go in early for lunch and stay until late, eventually spilling down into the pub below, to drink pints they do pints now, not just halfs all while merrily reliving the joys upstairs. Peter Clark Dover sole with crab butter at Bentley's Oyster Bar and Grill There are so many delights at Bentleys, its tricky to pick a single one. This could so easily have been a plate of rigorously sourced oysters, the fish pie, the decadent Royal seafood platter (pictured). It is however, the Dover sole that wins. A sublime piece of fish always, expertly cooked without fail choose it either filleted with beautiful crab butter, or grilled and whole for a simple pleasure. Over in the City, Corrigan does similarly brilliant things with lobster at Daffodil Mulligan. Ragu, Lina Stores Sohos Lina Stores the pasta bar, not the longstanding Italian deli it comes from is the sort of restaurant one longs for; small, fun, friendly, not too pricey. They do small plates of near perfect pasta; their ragu, whether lamb or veal, is a gem. A good ragu is hard to find too often theres too little meat, or meat not cooked for long enough but here, they spend the time over it, cooking slowly, carefully. No restaurant can compare with a Nonna, but Lina gets gratifyingly close. Porterhouse steak, the Guinea Grill London is not short of steakhouses, but the Guinea does not number among them. A pub a proper one it is tucked down a Mayfair sidestreet, away from everything and yet still perpetually busy. Besides the small bar is a dining room that looks much as it must have done when the likes of Sinatra was in (or Bette Midler, or Kylie, or Regan, or, or, or), where theyve served prime Aberdeen Angus cooked on a smoking hot grill. The Guinea is all about having a good time pints, red wine, brandies, the lot but they cook beautifully, and their handling of a good piece of beef is second to none. Puree de pommes de terre, Le Comptoir Robuchon The late Joel Robuchon may have been the most decorated chef of his and perhaps any other era, but his signature stayed humble mashed potato. Until youve had it, it is hard to believe it could be quite so good; mash, after all, is mash. No matter the scepticism, it will always surprise; it is almost silly that so little could taste of so much. A side, it will match almost everything on the menu; of which, the lamb with aubergine on the menu of classics is extraordinarily good. Journalist and food writer Josh Barrie today still hopes the trend will pass. I would like to think we have gone past peak avocado and its now on the decline, he said. I know avocado is nutritious and good for you and that is great. But it is so boring to see the same thing done over and over again. Instagram is littered with avo on toast. Other Londoners, however, were sold on the idea of the pop-up. Emily Gibson tweeted: FIVE COURSE AVOCADO TASTING MENU. Yes yes yes yes yes. Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout P aul Torday was the author of the bestselling novel and subsequent film Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. His death from cancer in 2013 at the age of 67 left The Death of an Owl without a denouement. Step forward son Piers himself an author anointed by his pa as the man for the job. Which is why the opening description of Charles, the protagonist, watching a bead of dew on his polished shoes as he sits in church at a family funeral, seems particularly poignant. Set initially during the time when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher ran the free world, The Death Of An Owl is a perfect town and country read. Paul Torday was a keen countryman, shot, fisherman and dog-owner. One can only assume he had an equally sound knowledge of Westminster, as he convincingly tells the tale of the gilded Andrew Langford Oxford graduate, smooth political operator with party leader potential and Tory, naturally. Of course one doesnt need first-hand knowledge of politicians to realise that theyre quite often self-serving moral cowards but The Death of an Owl is, nonetheless, skeweringly accurate in its description of how Langford recruits Charles into his inner coterie after, erm, the death of an owl. Said bird had the bad luck to be hit by Langfords Range Rover as the two men plus their wives (Langford has slept with both women; how very Alan BStard of him) are making their way to the MPs Cumbria pile. Langfords problem, aside from a tell-tale chip in his windscreen, is that hes on the select committee dealing with the Wildlife and Countryside Act. The lies and deceit as the MP tries to swerve around the issue of how he battered to death the hapless owl inconveniently it didnt die outright after being clobbered by the car will resonate with any reader who considers it a fact that most politicians would sell their children to save their career. Charless relationship with Langford is not the backbone of the novel, however. His marriage to Caroline, Langfords former girlfriend, is a subtle study in the doom and gloom of an obviously dead-from-the-neck- down union. When the slightly thick-set Caroline mentions to her husband that a weekend in the country with the MP and his willowy wife would be frankly dull, Charles cant stop himself pointing out: Its no more boring than being at home. Ouch. More book reviews 1 /24 More book reviews Recovery by Russell Brand Will Russells brand of self-help prove quite so addictive? By Nicholas Lezard. Read review A Life in Questions by Jeremy Paxman Paxo refuses to answer all the really good questions, says David Sexton. Read review Politics: Between: The Extremes by Nick Clegg The basis of this book makes it impossible not to warm to Clegg, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review Serious Sweet by A L Kennedy Thank heavens for London in this tale of self-obsessed lovers. Read review The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth by Anna Keay Born a kings b****** and destined for a traitors death. Read review Man Up: Boys, Men and Breaking the Male Rules by Rebecca Asher Getting to the bottom of why boys will be boys. Read review The Course of Love by Alain de Botton A philosophical novel that does run smooth, says Johanna Thomas-Corr. Read review The Tree Climbers Guide: Adventures in the Urban Canopy by Jack Cooke How I gave this book a proper test and ended up with a broken ankle. Read review Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre Brontes classic tale in the imaginations of other writers, says Claire Harman. Read review Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran Caitlin comes clean about politics the world according to our funniest feminist. By Rosamund Urwin. Read review Spark Joy An Illustrated Guide to the Japanese Art of Tidying by Marie Kondo Theres no messing wih Marie, says Katie Law. Read review Cockfosters Stories by Helen Simpson After 50, a womans life gets better not worse. By Katie Law. Read review Stalins Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess by Andrew Lownie Joker in the spying pack. By Richard Bassett. Read review Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin The darkness that lies at the heart of the novel is offset by a lightness of touch, says Mark Sanderson. Read review Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello Elvis proves not quite so lyrical on the page, says Nick Curtis. Read review The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkins Photographs by Richard Bradford His poetry paints better pictures than any camera, says David Sexton. Read review Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith Morality wins out over macabre murders, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review The Grownup by Gillian Flynn Calling all Flynnies: the con girl whos like gone girl. Read review With the death of the owl comes calamity, damaged relationships and thwarted ambition. Not to mention a touch of Hitchcocks The Birds. Its tempting to look for the join where Piers takes up the reins from Paul but to do so is to be unnecessarily distracted. While not an intellectual challenge, The Death of an Owl will ring true with anyone who has ever hated politicians, fallen out of love, drank more than is sensible, suffered dull weekends in the country, lied to the police, fancied someone elses girlfriend. Or run over some wildlife. T he world is speeding up. Almost everything keeps getting faster, from the pace at which we walk or news spreads to the time it takes to rule someone out of your dating line-up. This is the premise of Robert Colviles book, a transformation he believes has been under-explored. This acceleration is a positive force, he thinks, but also something that we have actively chosen. Colvile, a former Daily Telegraph journalist and the man who gave us the Jeremy Corbyn: sex symbol scoop, argues that feedback loops mean the world is getting quicker, quicker. So a magnet that draws people to cities is their speed, but urban living then makes us more innovative, generating new technology that further accelerates everything. This speeding up can have the effect of promoting the flashy and the superficial but it also makes us search out slow escapes hence the popularity of boxsets and A Little Life-esque long novels. Colvile is mostly optimistic about acceleration. Our neural circuitry is plastic, he writes, thus our minds adapt. But there are problems too. We are becoming butterfly brains, our attention spans truncating. We risk information overload, stripped of the time to think. And when we do have that time, it becomes an alien, unnerving experience. Colvile quotes a study in which people were asked to spend 15 minutes alone in a room with their thoughts. Many found it so awful that they chose to experience an electric shock to relieve the tedium second time around. The books best chapters are on technology, where the need for speed is an all-consuming battle: Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Jeff Bezos ... are not just messianic but petrified. Petrified that something faster will come along and lure away their customers. Googles unofficial motto, Colvile says, is If youre not fast, youre fucked (though the search engine denied this when I asked, disappointingly) and it now starts finding results while users are still typing. Interestingly, he argues the war over piracy wasnt one about morality but speed: People downloaded music illegally because it was the simplest and speediest way to do it. Once iTunes came along it became far easier to play by the rules. And, on artificial intelligence, he thinks Wall Street may beat Google because theyll make so much money. In his final chapter, he then issues a rather terrifying warning about AI. More book reviews 1 /24 More book reviews Recovery by Russell Brand Will Russells brand of self-help prove quite so addictive? By Nicholas Lezard. Read review A Life in Questions by Jeremy Paxman Paxo refuses to answer all the really good questions, says David Sexton. Read review Politics: Between: The Extremes by Nick Clegg The basis of this book makes it impossible not to warm to Clegg, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review Serious Sweet by A L Kennedy Thank heavens for London in this tale of self-obsessed lovers. Read review The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth by Anna Keay Born a kings b****** and destined for a traitors death. Read review Man Up: Boys, Men and Breaking the Male Rules by Rebecca Asher Getting to the bottom of why boys will be boys. Read review The Course of Love by Alain de Botton A philosophical novel that does run smooth, says Johanna Thomas-Corr. Read review The Tree Climbers Guide: Adventures in the Urban Canopy by Jack Cooke How I gave this book a proper test and ended up with a broken ankle. Read review Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre Brontes classic tale in the imaginations of other writers, says Claire Harman. Read review Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran Caitlin comes clean about politics the world according to our funniest feminist. By Rosamund Urwin. Read review Spark Joy An Illustrated Guide to the Japanese Art of Tidying by Marie Kondo Theres no messing wih Marie, says Katie Law. Read review Cockfosters Stories by Helen Simpson After 50, a womans life gets better not worse. By Katie Law. Read review Stalins Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess by Andrew Lownie Joker in the spying pack. By Richard Bassett. Read review Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin The darkness that lies at the heart of the novel is offset by a lightness of touch, says Mark Sanderson. Read review Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello Elvis proves not quite so lyrical on the page, says Nick Curtis. Read review The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkins Photographs by Richard Bradford His poetry paints better pictures than any camera, says David Sexton. Read review Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith Morality wins out over macabre murders, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review The Grownup by Gillian Flynn Calling all Flynnies: the con girl whos like gone girl. Read review This is not a perfect book, though. On its first page Colvile mentions the phenomenon of entrainment in which living creatures natural rhythms unconsciously adjust to each other. He gives the example of women living together whose menstrual cycles fall into sync. Sure, the McClintock effect. Which is probably a myth. Some studies have found no evidence for it and the ones that have, have been heavily criticised. Certainly, it shouldnt be quoted without question. Later he claims that we are apparently so stressed that the very gender of our society has shifted, with more girls being born than boys. A normal sex ratio at birth is around 105:100. A Department of Health document from May 2013 states that in Britain there were 105.1 male births to 100 female well within the normal range. Incidentally, there is support for the thesis that species alter the sex of their offspring (at population level) in response to environmental conditions: during Chinas Great Leap Forward famine, the proportion of boys born dropped but even then fewer girls were still born overall. Colvile is an entertaining writer and his subject is a fascinating one. But I didnt quite love this book, because little errors can start to jar. Perhaps what The Great Acceleration needed was a little less haste? 11.89, Amazon, Buy it now T he death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in March 1953 was a seismic event. All Russia wept, wrote poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. And so did I. We wept sincerely, tears of grief and perhaps also of fear for the future. Two generations had been brainwashed to think of Stalin as their saviour; now he was gone. For his successors, however, Stalins death provided an opportunity: to reverse his more draconian domestic policies; to introduce political and economic reforms across the Eastern Bloc; and to offer an olive branch to the West that, had it been accepted, might have reduced East/West tensions, relaxed the arms race, reunited Germany and even ended the Cold War. A lot was at stake. The most chilling revelation in this excellent book is that, before his death, Stalin was considering the mass deportation of Russias 2.5 million Jews to Siberia. While acknowledging there is no documentary proof, Rubenstein argues that Stalins anti-semitic campaign was gathering such momentum in the press and in the mood of the population that it could well have been intended to reach some kind of monstrous development. What is not in doubt is that Stalins demise saved Jewish lives. Similarly fortunate were out-of-favour cronies such as Molotov and Voroshilov, who would almost certainly have been executed had Stalin lived longer. But not all senior Russian leaders prospered: Lavrenti Beria, Stalins blood-soaked security chief, was arrested and executed after false accusations by Nikita Khrushchev that he favoured the unification of a neutral Germany. In reality he was a dangerous political rival and had to be removed. The Communist Party, writes Rubenstein, offered up Beria as a sacrificial lamb to atone for sins it refused to acknowledge. The olive branch offered to the West was in the form of a statement by Georgy Malenkov, Stalins nominal successor, that there was no reason why the capitalist and socialist systems could not co-exist peacefully. Recognising this historic opportunity, Winston Churchill urged the Americans to hold a summit with the Soviet leaders. But US President Dwight D Eisenhower would go no further than his famous Chance for Peace speech that advocated an end to the arms race and a war on poverty. It offered, notes Rubenstein, no substantial concessions and instead asked Moscow to capitulate, to accept Western terms for a peaceful settlement of their differences. Such an approach was doomed to fail. Did Eisenhower err in not meeting the Soviets? Probably. But as Rubenstein concedes, the window of opportunity was narrow and, even with the best of intentions in Washington and Moscow, there was probably not enough time for either side to successfully enter into open-ended negotiations. It will remain one of the great what ifs of history. More book reviews 1 /24 More book reviews Recovery by Russell Brand Will Russells brand of self-help prove quite so addictive? By Nicholas Lezard. Read review A Life in Questions by Jeremy Paxman Paxo refuses to answer all the really good questions, says David Sexton. Read review Politics: Between: The Extremes by Nick Clegg The basis of this book makes it impossible not to warm to Clegg, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review Serious Sweet by A L Kennedy Thank heavens for London in this tale of self-obsessed lovers. Read review The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth by Anna Keay Born a kings b****** and destined for a traitors death. Read review Man Up: Boys, Men and Breaking the Male Rules by Rebecca Asher Getting to the bottom of why boys will be boys. Read review The Course of Love by Alain de Botton A philosophical novel that does run smooth, says Johanna Thomas-Corr. Read review The Tree Climbers Guide: Adventures in the Urban Canopy by Jack Cooke How I gave this book a proper test and ended up with a broken ankle. Read review Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre Brontes classic tale in the imaginations of other writers, says Claire Harman. Read review Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran Caitlin comes clean about politics the world according to our funniest feminist. By Rosamund Urwin. Read review Spark Joy An Illustrated Guide to the Japanese Art of Tidying by Marie Kondo Theres no messing wih Marie, says Katie Law. Read review Cockfosters Stories by Helen Simpson After 50, a womans life gets better not worse. By Katie Law. Read review Stalins Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess by Andrew Lownie Joker in the spying pack. By Richard Bassett. Read review Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin The darkness that lies at the heart of the novel is offset by a lightness of touch, says Mark Sanderson. Read review Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello Elvis proves not quite so lyrical on the page, says Nick Curtis. Read review The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkins Photographs by Richard Bradford His poetry paints better pictures than any camera, says David Sexton. Read review Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith Morality wins out over macabre murders, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review The Grownup by Gillian Flynn Calling all Flynnies: the con girl whos like gone girl. Read review The changes initiated by Stalins heirs were, on the whole, a good thing. Soviet culture became more receptive to Western books, music and works of art. The regime tried to improve standards of living and guarantee a measure of personal security. Yet it was still intolerant of bourgeois liberties and enforced its ideological presumptions with arrests, prisons, labor camps, even deportation abroad. Such restrictions were necessary. When Mikhail Gorbachov did away with arbitrary arrest, released political prisoners and relaxed censorship in the late Eighties, the fall of the Iron Curtain and collapse of the Soviet Union was the inevitable consequence. Securely based on multilingual primary sources, The Last Days of Stalin is a fascinating and often chilling reconstruction of the months surrounding the Soviet dictators death and the opportunities that arose for meaningful change not all of them taken. A major shake-up of Britains law enforcement agencies is to be carried out by ministers in a new attempt to stop dirty money flowing into London through money laundering, corruption and tax evasion. One key reform will see the National Crime Agency given the power to order the Serious Fraud Office to investigate white-collar criminals. It follows a public outcry over disclosures in the Panama Papers about the secretive financial transactions of wealthy London property owners, and concern that City professionals are facilitating tax dodging and the concealment of illicit funds. The reform is intended to pave the way for the NCA to take over the SFO which has come under fire over high-profile prosecution failures in a landmark change to the way financial crime is tackled. It aims to improve law enforcement coordination and make it easier to track illicit money. Officials are also examining whether to give the NCA which has been dubbed Britains FBI a role co-ordinating tax investigators, in response to fears that HM Revenue and Customs officials are failing to pass on important intelligence about illicit activity. Sources say there is serious concern in Whitehall that Revenue staff are ignoring evidence of organised crime and money laundering. Efforts to identify sanction dodging are also believed to be inadequate. The overhaul is being prepared by Home Secretary Theresa May and the first stage is due to be announced by David Cameron at an anti-corruption summit in London in May. He will say the NCAs new power to direct SFO investigations will strengthen law enforcement as part of a series of changes to tackle financial crime, including increased transparency on company ownership. Confirming the shake-up, an official said Mrs May had long believed the NCA should be put in control of the SFO and the source said similar changes were being considered over tax probes. An SFO investigation into allegations of price-rigging in the 3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market was closed last month despite the Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Citigroup, UBS, JP Morgan and HSBC paying billions of pounds in fines on both sides of the Atlantic for manipulating markets. Critics have complained that the SFO takes on a fraction of the cases referred to it, despite a budget of 60 million. It says its remit limits it to investigating only the top level of serious or complex fraud, bribery and corruption. However, officials in Whitehall believe this creates a gap which helps to allow other significant offending to go unpunished.@martinbentham A murder inquiry was launched today after the dismembered body of a police officer was found in a flat near the Tate Modern. Scotland Yard said the remains of missing PC Gordon Semple, 59, were found at an address in Southwark close to where he was last seen a week ago. Detectives said the condition of the body meant it would take time to formally identify the officer and establish the cause of death. Neighbours told how earlier they knocked on the door of the flat where the body was found to complain about the smell and were met by a man in speedos who said he was cooking for a friend. Police at the scene where the find was made yesterday / Nigel Howard A huge search was launched acrosss London after PC Semple was reported missing by his partner after he failed to come home from work last Friday night. The Westminster-based anti-social behaviour officer vanished shortly after leaving the five-star Shangri-La hotel in The Shard following a meeting with a friend at 12.30pm on Friday. He had been on duty in plain clothes. TODO: define component type brightcove He was filmed on CCTV three hours later in Southwark Street, a few hundred yards from the flat on the Peabody estate where his remains were found. A neighbour at the housing association block in Southwark raised the alarm yesterday afternoon after detecting a strong smell coming from an apartment. Commander Alison Newcomb, in a statement, said: Due to the condition of those human remains it will take some time for cause of death to be established and for formal identification to take place. At this point I do not wish to speculate on what has happened. 'High risk': Gordon Semple / Metropolitan Police She added: My thoughts are with Gordons family and friends at this time of personal tragedy. I would ask that they are given the space and privacy they need to come to terms with this development. This is a very sad day for Gordons colleagues. There are many officers who have served London alongside Gordon during his 30 year career who will acutely feel his loss. Police on the estate last night / Nigel Howard Commander Newcomb said a forensic search of the property was ongoing and would take time to complete. She appealed for anyone who could help wih the inquiry to come forward. The five-storey block where the remains were found has undergone a complete refurbishment in the past few years with several flats now rented to private tenants, mostly City workers, at market rents. There were also reports of late night parties in the block where the body was found. The devastated family of the police officer today paid tribute to a loved partner, brother, uncle and friend to many. Thousands of people joined a Facebook group set up by Mr Semples niece Kerry Nicholas to share news of the ongoing search. Last night she posted a short message telling of the familys devastation with a link to the police report of his death. She wrote: Its with great sadness that we post the following link. Gordons family would like to thank everyone for their support throughout this difficult time. "Your support and help to find Gordon was overwhelming. He was a loved partner, brother, uncle and friend to many. Mr Semple, who was gay, was described as a happy-go-lucky old school copper. He was born in Scotland and lived in Greenhithe, Kent, with his partner Gary Meeks who reported him missing when he failed to return home from work. A 49-year-old man was being questioned today on suspicion of Mr Semples murder. F our men have been arrested on suspicion of shouting anti-Semitic abuse at a Jewish motorist and pelting his car with eggs in south London. The suspects were detained by police after racist chants were allegedly yelled at the 28-year-old man as he drove through the Blackwall Tunnel with his baby in the car. Police said four occupants travelling in a vehicle alongside the victim shouted anti-Semitic abuse before hurling eggs at his car at around 1.30am this morning. The words Kill the Jews were allegedly shouted at the victim, neighbourhood watch group Shomrim said. A spokesman for the group said: Four suspects were arrested shortly after the incident. The victim had a young baby with him in the car and was terrified. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: Detectives in Tower Hamlets are investigating an allegation of anti-Semitic abuse reported on Friday, April 8. Four men, aged 20 to 22 years, have been arrested in connection with the incident. They remain in custody at an east London police station. Anyone with information is asked to call Tower Hamlets CID on 020 8217 3701, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. A Muslim woman has told of her anger at passers-by who failed to help her after she was allegedly racially abused on the Tube. The woman took to Twitter to tell how she had been left "scared and vulnerable" after she was subjected to an alleged racist attack at Piccadilly Circus station. The woman claimed she was harassed by a man on a platform at the central London station on Thursday. The woman, named only as Yazmyn, went on to criticise fellow Londoners for not stepping in to help her. The alleged victim, Yazmyn, said she was left feeling "scared and vulnerable" after being confronted by this man She also called on Transport for London to deploy more staff on the platforms as a deterrent. She uploaded pictures of a tall bearded man who she claims was behind the alleged racist incident. Yazmyn tweeted: Racially abused/harassed at Piccadilly Circus @TfL,Please retweet!! Mixed emotions. Scared, vulnerable, angry that no one bothered to help. British Transport Police said an investigation had been launched. The woman, Yazmyn, posted an account of the alleged incident online / Twitter A British Transport Police spokesman said: "We have received a report of a woman being racially abused by a man at Piccadilly Circus Underground station shortly after 6am on Thursday, 7 April. "This incident has been reported to us and officers are now making enquiries to establish the full circumstances of the incident. Steve Griffiths, Chief Operating Officer for London Underground, said: We do not tolerate racist behaviour on our network and will work with the British Transport Police to investigate this incident. "Our station staff are now out in ticket halls, on gate lines and on platforms to help our customers make their journeys and keep them safe. "Crime across the Tube network is at an all-time low and we continue to work hard to ensure our customers are able to travel with confidence. Earlier this month, the Standard revealed police investigate four racist incidents on London's trains and Tubes every week. Anyone with any information is asked to contact British Transport Police on 0800 40 50 40, or text 61016, quoting reference 288 of 07/04/2016 A n airman shot his commander in an apparent murder-suicide at an air force base in Texas today, police say. Bexar County sheriff's spokesman James Keith said officers had initially responded to reports of an "active shooter" at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Two handguns were found near the bodies of the men inside a building that's used for classrooms and offices, according to Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, who oversees the base. He stressed the shooting was not an act of terrorism and declined to identify the two men, saying their families must be notified first. Police were continuing to search the building and nearby facilities this afternoon. The Senate on Thursday passed the Older Americans Act Reauthorization Act of 2016, bipartisan legislation sponsored by the chairman and top Democrat on the Senate health committee to support social and nutrition services from home-delivered meals to senior centers for nearly 12 million older Americans. Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said: This bipartisan legislation will continue services for the nearly 150,000 Tennesseans who rely on programs like Meals on Wheels, or on programs that provide rides to their doctors appointments or the grocery store. For the last 50 years, the Older Americans Act has provided grants to states so they can help seniors live more comfortably at home or ensure high-quality care at a nursing home. Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said: In America, every senior should be able to retire with the health, dignity, and independence theyve earned through a lifetime of hard work. With the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act, we reaffirm our obligation to our seniors by enforcing protections to prevent elder abuse and by expanding crucial programs such as the National Family Caregiver Support Program and the Senior Community Service and Employment Program. This bill also sustains investments in vital programs like Meals on Wheels, which supports food security for seniors. Todays reauthorization is a significant step forward, and I will continue working with all of my colleagues in Congress to live up to our responsibility to our seniors. Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said: I am proud to have worked with my colleagues to ensure a reauthorization of the Older Americans Act that will greatly benefit North Carolinas seniors. This legislation provides access to critical services and programs that help to meet some of North Carolinas most vulnerable seniors needs, such as providing meals and caregiver assistance, so they can remain in the comfort of their homes and communities longer. I am pleased that this bipartisan legislation will not only continue these programs, but increase the resources North Carolinas seniors receive through them. This will better serve North Carolinas seniors today and in the coming years as more and more seniors choose to call North Carolina home. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said: A nation is judged by how it cares for its most vulnerable. The shocking truth is that millions of seniors are choosing each day whether to pay their rent, put food on the table or buy the medicine they need. Seniors in Vermont and around the country deserve to live with dignity and with a sense of security. The Older Americans Act helps to provide that. Aging Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) said: For over 50 years, the Older Americans Act has provided funding for critical services that have helped keep our older adults in Maine and across our country healthy and independent. This bipartisan legislation will ensure funding continues for some of the most vital and successful programs, such as meals on wheels and caregiver support, that are currently used by nearly 12 million older Americans and their loved ones. The Older Americans Act has been due for reauthorization since 2011 and: A teenager has been stabbed following a fight between a group of youths in north London. London's Air Ambulance landed in a Wood Green park this afternoon after the 16-year-old boy was left injured in Glynne Road. He was taken by ambulance to an east London hospital but the stab wound he received is not thought to be life-threatening, police say. Local officers, who closed off Lymington Avenue at the High Road junction this afternoon, advised people to avoid the area while they carried out their investigations. Police said they were called to the road 3.25pm but no arrests have been made so far. Anyone with information should call police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. A grant of 500,000 is being handed to Enfield council to run a project that will help schools across Britain improve the teaching of English to children who cannot speak the language. Ten schools in the London borough have already begun using a new method of teaching it as an additional language in a bid to raise pupils attainment. The scheme will now be rolled out to 100 schools, funded by the award announced today from the Education Endowment Fund. Under the Enfield-managed project, known as Integrating English, primary school teachers will be trained in a method that focuses on the structure of language breaking grammar and words down into basic components. The EEF said the training can also help to improve the results of pupils who are native speakers of English. Its chief executive Sir Kevan Collins said: Some groups with English as an additional language go on to do well in GCSEs but there are some that dont and whose outcomes are very poor. We need to make sure that all pupils who have English as an additional language go on to gain fluency in it so that they achieve well in school and have good career prospects and a bright future here in the UK. T he family of a beautiful and free-spirited girl who died after collapsing at school have vowed to complete her bucket list to raise funds for the hospital that tried to save her. Vaishali Bance Suhayr, 15, inspired others with her motto YOLO (you only live once) despite being at risk of falling ill at any time from serious allergies and asthma. Her mother, Srija, from East Ham, said: Vaishali showed us how to live. Her allergies and asthma meant she had to be so careful all the time. Even lying in the grass or breathing in dust from fireworks could land her in hospital but she always said if she enjoyed herself it was worth going to hospital for. She made everyone believe she was invincible. To do Marieta Islands, off Mexico Devils Pool, Victoria Falls Swim with dolphins and sharks Cliff-jumping Milk a cow Scuba dive Write name in concrete Go to Tokyo and hold sign saying free hugs Mud wrestle La Tomatina Tomato Throwing Festival Hug a lion Walk Great Wall of China Ride motorbike Crowd-surf Food fight Drink flaming shots of alcohol Visit Alaska Pay for a strangers groceries. Give a homeless person a Christmas present Ride in a helicopter Skydive Save a life Vaishali, one of three sisters and nine brothers, began feeling unwell at Plashet School on October 13. She was given her usual medication but deteriorated quickly and went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics twice resuscitated her before taking her to the paediatric intensive care unit at St Marys Hospital in Paddington. Doctors were able to keep her alive for four days, allowing her family to say goodbye. Her father, Harish, said: Everybody wanted to see Vaishali and they let us do that. Theres nowhere else that has a team like St Marys, theyre amazing. Losing Vaishali was the hardest thing to ever go through but we never could have done it without them. It was only after her death that her family discovered she had written a list of adventures she wanted to fulfil. Her friends and family will complete the list to raise money for the 2 million More Smiles Appeal, by Imperial College Healthcare Charity and Cosmic (Children of St Marys Intensive Care), towards a 10 million expansion of the unit. The family has raised 4,300 already. There were so many things swim with dolphins, go cliff-jumping, milk a cow, write her name in concrete, her mother said. When it was the funeral we were collecting photos and we realised how much she had done. Its because of her that we lived so much. Her aunty has been swimming with dolphins and I have written her name in concrete outside my mums house. She had so many dreams and wanted to go out and do all these things. We are so proud of her. Her eldest sister Shalu plans to skydive and crowdsurf. An aunt scuba dived, another aunt will walk the Great Wall of China and her father will milk a cow. Plashet School will each year hold a non-uniform day on Vaishalis birthday, January 15, to boost the 2,144 raised already. Pupils fulfilled another of her dreams releasing balloons with messages attached on what would have been her 16th birthday. www.justgiving.com/VAISHALI-YOLO/ P olice cordoned off the roads surrounding Scotland Yard this morning as bomb disposal officers investigated a suspect package found nearby. St James's Park station, just yards from the police headquarters, was evacuated just before 9.55am after the suspicious item was discovered. Pictures emerged on Twitter of a huge police cordon and bomb disposal unit at the scene. Andrew Neather tweeted: "Holy cow - police have closed off Broadway and sent this bomb disposal robot towards PO opposite New Scotland Yard." He later added: "Panic over: some idiot left their rucksack at the taxi rank on Caxton Street. Police have given all clear now." Another Twitter user, Gminus, who posted a picture of the black rucksack abandoned on the pavement, said: "Suspect backpack found outside Scotland Yard." The abandoned rucksack found near to Scotland Yard and St James's Park station / Twitter / @GaryW2015 Liam R tweeted: "Bomb scare in #London #ScotlandYard, thankfully false alarm. Ordered to stay indoors though." Transport for Londons Twitter accounts for the Circle and District line said: St Jamess Park station is closed while we respond to a security alert." A Metropolitan Police spokesman said officers were investigating a suspect package found near to St James's Park station. Police confirmed the incident was stood down shortly before the Tube station reopened at around 10.20am. A haircut, a haircut my mayoralty for a haircut. So, the Londoner imagines, came the cry from Boris Johnson last year as the world found out about 15 snips at The Bay Room in Angel. In light of such unexpected stinginess, The Londoner sent a round-robin email to the mayoral candidates. Haircuts: how much, how often and where? From George Galloway, a simple response: Harlesden. 8. Shave every week, haircut every month. Its not worth splashing the cash when the goods are hidden under a fedora. The BNPs David Furness had an even more frugal alternative, as he cuts his own hair every three months, adding: Each appointment costs 0.00. Indeed, failing to contribute to Londons economy seems to be of a trend, with the Greens Sian Berry declaring: Im low maintenance. The last person who cut my hair was my sister. She did it for nothing. New to the scene, the Womens Equality Partys Sophie Walker said: My last haircut was a quick trim late at night [...] done by my very kind and accommodating friend. As for the frontrunners, an aide came clean: Sadiqs hair is cut by his friend Paul, who has cut his hair for more than 20 years at HeadQuarterz in Clapham. He visits a couple of times a month, and pays 25 a pop, plus a tip. A couple of times a month? What cheer, though, of Zac Goldsmith? Despite repeated attempts there was no word from Richmonds Prince Charming. The Londoner wonders if this contests giant is a touch embarrassed: a ringaround of barbers in his local Barnes hood suggests that locks like his dont come cheap, with an average asking price in the mid-30s. ----- An exciting evening ahead for the sixth Asian Awards, taking place this evening at the Grosvenor House hotel with Mother Theresa being awarded the prestigious Founders Award. The reason for including a European Mother Theresa was born in Albania and raised in Macedonia is for diversity, say the awards organisers. The Londoner will be in attendance to see if by some miracle the late saint will attend to collect her award. When Nordic Noir meets Aga Saga Antipodean author Kathy Lettes latest target is the Nordic saga. Complaining about stereotypes of female authors, she notes that male critics, many of whom have been at Oxford for so long theyre growing ivy up their back of their legs and who clearly graduated in Advanced Smugness, too often dismiss these topics as frivolous. Except, says Lette in The Oldie, when addressed by a male author. The latest bloke to be honoured with the Proustian crown is Norwegian bestseller Karl Ove Knausgaard. His novels, more of a Nordic-noir memoir, describe in forensic detail the daily drudgery of domesticity and caring for relatives. If a woman had written such a book shed no doubt be given a pastel cover with a cupcake on it and catalogued under Aga Saga. Brit abroad backs the Teutonic way Hes only recently abandoned us for a German institution but already former British Museum director Neil MacGregor is back, preaching the wonders of the Teutonic way. MacGregor, pictured, now artistic director of the Humboldt Forum, Berlins new museum complex, suggested Britain take a leaf out of Germanys book when it comes to worshipping forests and welcoming refugees. MacGregor reminded his audience at the 5x15-hosted evening at the Royal Geographical Society that when, after the Second World War, Russia expelled Germans living in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania, more than 10 million arrived to a Germany devastated by war. That is the equivalent of the whole of Canada being forcibly repatriated to Britain in 1945, he noted. It is a story that the British largely have no knowledge of. Its the greatest refugee crisis of European history. That goes some way to explaining Germanys generosity towards the Syrians, added MacGregor. He also spoke poetically of the myth of Hermann retreating into the Teutoburg Forest before defeating the Romans, one reason for the strength of the Green Party in Germany. The myth is you emerge from the forest somehow having overcome the forces of darkness ready for a different world: there is salvation in the forest. German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have found a brilliant PR man for her country. ------ The new battle in the Brexit war is being fought by Michael Gove, who is taking a stand against a child-friendly book on the EU, The Mystery of the Golden Stars, being sent to schools. He called it propaganda designed to indoctrinate children but in 2012, as Education Secretary, he decided to send a copy of the bible to every state school in the country. Were saying nothing. Petsys literary genius As we await the next instalment of personal observations of political figures from Petronella Wyatt in the Mail on Sunday, The Londoner has enjoyed revisiting the previous instalments. Wed already noticed Wyatts description of her camaraderie with Boris Johnson was similar to a passage from Thomas Hardys Far From The Madding Crowd but a re-read of last weekends Cameron expose also caught our eye. His fingers were warm, Wyatt writes of Cameron, with whom she had a date or two, with an applewhiteness. We checked Hardys canon for applewhiteness to no avail before finding it online in the sixth in the series of Gossip Girl, a saga for young adults in which the applewhiteness of Vanessas inner arm made him [Dan] forget what he was talking about. Good reading range from Petsy. ----- Awkward translation of the day: German magazine Der Spiegel published a special edition dedicated to Elizabeth II, called The Queen. Or, in German, DIE QUEEN. L ondon will miss out on nearly 800 million a year generated by European students if Britain leaves the EU, universities warned. European students create 7,580 jobs in London and generate 789 million for the economy, according to figures released by Universities UK, the body that represents all universities. London has more than 40 universities and more students live here than any other city. Universities UK said any drop in European students would hit the capital harder than any other area. The organisation calculated the money generated for Londons economy by students both on and off campus, from the money they spend buying food and using taxis to the cash their families pay when coming to visit. Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, said: EU students make an enormously important contribution to university life across London. Not only does this benefit Londons universities and home students, their presence also boosts the London economy by almost 800 million, supporting nearly 8,000 jobs. Were the UK outside the EU, it would present an obvious barrier to EU students coming to London. If EU students choose to study elsewhere, it would be a loss to the city generally. Universities believe that students and researchers from Europe would be more likely to choose to study at other European universities if barriers were put up to their entry to the UK. A spokesman said nobody knows exactly what would happen to student fees or visas. Currently EU students pay the same as home students and do not need visas, unlike international students from outside the EU who pay higher fees and need visas to study here. He added that if fewer European students came to British universities it would not make it easier for British students to get places. He added: There are only a certain number of people coming through our school education system. There would be holes in university places. Universities UK also said that EU students generate 3.7 billion for the whole UK economy, and support more than 34,000 jobs. Currently, there are around 125,000 students from EU countries studying at all UK universities, representing five per cent of the total UK student population. Most of them are from Germany, France, Ireland, Italy and Greece. The analysis is based on 2011-2012 student number figures. Universities and science minister Jo Johnson said: Our success as a knowledge economy hinges on our ability to collaborate with the best minds from across Europe and the world. It would be reckless to cut ourselves off from the rich sources of EU funding, the access to valuable shared research facilities and the close institutional ties that provide so many opportunities to British students and academics. T he deputy leader of the Labour party today called on Londoners to stand up and be counted in the EU referendum or risk the country sleepwalking out of Europe. Tom Watson said people in the capital, who are more likely to back EU membership, could not be complacent about the result and had to ensure they voted on June 23. A poll for the Standard by Opinium found a majority of adults in London backing the UKs EU membership. Mr Watsons intervention follows fears by others that a low turnout could see Brexiteers triumph in the referendum. The deputy Labour leader described the capital as an international city that has always looked outwards. But they have to stand up and be counted on June 23, he went on. Im calling on all Londoners who believe we should continue to play a full part in Europe and the world to get out and vote to remain in June. We cant sleepwalk out of Europe. The Opinium poll published today asked how more than 1,000 Londoners would vote if a referendum were held tomorrow. It found 51 per cent backed staying in the European Union while 35 per cent said the country should leave. Opinium conducted 1,015 online interviews with London adults from March 30 to April 3. Data are weighted. TODO: define component type apester F acebook users could be missing out on hundreds of messages they didn't know existed because of a secret inbox. The folder, designed to catch spam and unwanted messages, is part of the social media site's Messenger app and desktop filtering system. But many people discovering the Filtered Message Requests inbox have found messages they may have wanted to read, but never knew about. One man claimed he had missed out on news an old friend had died, only discovering the message two months later, while another user missed out on condolences after her father's death. Others say they have missed out on paid work, while Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy said she had found "thousands" of messages from people trying to contact her. To open up the inbox using the Messenger app, go to Settings, click the People option, select Message Requests and enable the option to see filtered requests. Alternatively, go to facebook.com/messages/other from a desktop. G athered on a rooftop, overlooking the small port of Malindi in Zanzibar, Tanzania, a group of Chinese businessmen observe the loading of a container onto a cargo ship. Watching through binoculars, the men clutch plane tickets to China for a rapid escape should the container be searched. There is no search. Port staff are bribed, the contents are listed as sea shells and yet another cache of illegal ivory begins its long journey to the markets of Asia. This scene was described to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) by an insider with links to a major ivory-smuggling syndicate operating out of Zanzibar. He claimed that in 2013 alone, 20 containers were sent to China, each containing between two and three tonnes of illegally poached ivory. In recent years, Tanzania has lost more elephants to poaching than anywhere else in Africa. In 2009, the countrys elephant population was 110,000. By 2014, it was 43,500. Hardest hit have been the herds in the wilderness areas of the Selous Reserve in the south of the country, where populations collapsed from 70,000 in 2006 to just 13,000 by 2014. Having investigated the ivory trade since the late 1980s, the EIA has built a detailed picture of the gangs involved. Supply chains are dominated by a relatively small group of criminal syndicates, numbering tens rather than hundreds. Raw ivory shipments typically weigh between one and four tonnes and travel concealed among legal goods in shipping containers. Gang leaders usually hail from Asia, says Mary Rice, EIAs executive director. They operate through a series of agents at every stage of the chain, avoiding any physical contact with ivory. Shipment is arranged through proxies, so when seizures are made, underlings usually take the fall. In late 2013, a surveillance operation led police to a house in the upmarket area of Mikocheni in the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam. They discovered three Chinese nationals packing ivory into sacks topped with seashells and garlic. The raid netted 706 tusks, weighing 1.8 tonnes, and large amounts of cash. Mary Rice: Gang leaders avoid any physical contact with ivory. When seizures are made, underlings take the fall A company importing garlic and food additives from mainland China functioned as a front for the ivory-smuggling operation. Shipping documents at the property indicated previous suspicious shipments to China and revealed another consignment was about to leave the country. The suspect container was tracked down to the port of Zanzibar, where it was about to be loaded onto a vessel bound for the Far East. Inside officials discovered 1,023 raw tusks weighing 2.9 tonnes concealed in sacks of seashells. Two of the three men arrested at the Mikocheni house received 35-year jail sentences, but they were only hired labourers. The suspected ringleaders, Chinese nationals Deng Jiyun and Zhang Mingzhi, left on a flight bound for southern China as soon as the container was seized. Interpol issued Red Notices for their arrest but pair remain at large. Even after major seizures, authorities often fail to shut down syndicates. Criminals use legitimate banking systems to shift money, and its difficult for under-resourced legal systems to secure convictions for financial crimes like money laundering. In the Mikocheni house case, accounts in Tanzania and China linked to the main suspects recorded two transactions totalling $500,000 on a single day, yet an investigation never materialised. Another stumbling block is cross-border co-operation, says Rice. While ivory smuggling gangs operate globally, using communications technology, finance and transport systems to move ivory halfway around the world, government agencies are still hindered by national boundaries. Cross-border syndicates constantly probe for weak spots in the system. In April 2015, customs authorities in Bangkok seized 3.1 tonnes of tusks in a tea shipment originating from Mombasa, Kenya. The ivory was sourced from neighbouring Tanzania and smuggled across the land border under fruit. The use of tea was no accident; at that time all exports of tea leaves from Mombasa were exempt from scanning. The cost of non-intervention is high. As long as conviction rates remain low, and profits remain high, there is little to deter kingpins from making a killing. Only when those at the top of the trade are prosecuted as vigorously as those at the bottom will we begin to get a grip on the poaching crisis decimating Africas elephants. T he remaining key suspect in the Paris attacks has been arrested in Brussels, according to reports in Belgium. Mohamed Abrini, 31, was being hunted over the massacre which killed 130 in the French capital in November. He is also thought to have played a major role in the Brussels bombings according to Belgian broadcaster VRT, which announced his arrest on Friday. The broadcaster said he was "more than likely" the so-called "man in white" seen on security camera footage at Brussels airport on March 22 with two suicide bombers. Hunted: Mohamed Abrini was on Europe's most wanted list / Belgian Federal Police via AP He was reportedly among several people arrested by Belgian authorities on Friday in connection with the Brussels bombings. Abrini has been on Europe's most wanted list since being identified as the man pictured in CCTV images with Salah Abdeslam at a petrol station in Ressons, on the highway to Paris, two days before the November 13 attacks. Spotted: Mohamed Abrini seen at a petrol station in Ressons, France, on November 11 / EPA/Belgian Federal Police Abdeslam, one of the prime suspects in the Paris attacks, was arrested in Brussels on March 18. Islamic State suicide bombers struck in the city four days later, on March 22, killing 32 people in bomb attacks at the airport and a metro station. This page is being updated. A Criminal Court jury on Friday found Rodney Jennings guilty as charged of second-degree murder in a Jan. 28, 2014, slaying at East Lake Courts. He faces 15-25 years served at 100 percent. Jennings, 29, said the victim, Raphael White, threatened him with a gun with a black bandana wrapped around it. A black bandana was found at the shooting scene. Three people who were at the public housing unit said the victim was unarmed and made no threats. No gun was found at the residence at 6th Avenue. Jennings, 29, said the mother of his children, Chesley Thompson, and two of her relatives wanted to get back at him for an earlier incident in which he was charged with breaking into her residence and assaulting her. After the Jennings testimony, the prosecution recalled Ms. Thompson, who again said there was no gun on the victim and no threats. She went into details about the prior incident with Jennings and her 911 call was played to the jury. She said, after she locked her doors, that Jennings broke a window and was trying to climb inside. Ms. Thompson said she tried to push him back. She said her arm was badly cut by the broken window, and she said Jennings hit her in the face. Jennings said he tossed the gun he used shortly after the incident. He said he got rid of the gun because he was afraid he would be confronted by police and they would shoot him. He said he fled to Memphis out of fear and was there for some two months. Jennings was questioned by prosecutor Cameron Williams about gang affiliations. He denied being a member of the Traveling Vice Lords. He said a tattoo he has and letters found in his cell are about Islam, not gangs. Officer Curtis Penney, called by the defense, said bandanas are sometimes used to denote gang affiliation. The state on Friday morning called a TBI Crime Lab witness who said the bandana was analyzed and there was no evidence that it had been in contact with a gun. Kristen Spires also prosecuted the case. A merican Idol went out with a bang as the original judges made a surprise appearance on the last ever show. Instead of being in the UK for the Britains Got Talent launch on Thursday, Simon Cowell was on set of the show that made him a household name in the US. Alongside fellow original judges Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul, Cowell joined the final episode of the last series of the popular singing contest. Speaking to the audience, he said: Thank you America for inviting us into your homes. And to you guys for actually being my best friends now. Now, I'm going to miss you. It was also an emotional goodbye for current judges Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick Jr. Lopez, who has appeared as a judge on the show since 2010, shed a tear as they bid farewell to their audience for the last time. At the end of the show, Trent Harmon beat La'Porsha Renae to be named the final ever winner of American Idol. Previous winners and stars including Kelly Clarkson and Jennifer Hudson also performed on the night to celebrate 15 seasons of the hit show. UK fans can catch the final episode of American Idol in full on 4Music, next Monday (April 11) at 8pm. J ennifer Lawrence is urging the film industry to redefine what they see as a normal body shape. The outspoken A-lister, who says that she is seen as being curvy in Hollywood, thinks that people are too used to seeing underweight stars. In a new interview with Harpers Bazaar, Lawrence said: I would like us to make a new normal body type. Everybody says: We love that there is somebody with a normal body! And Im like: I dont feel like I have a normal body. I do Pilates every day. I eat, but I work out a lot more than a normal person. Jennifer Lawrence - style file 1 /65 Jennifer Lawrence - style file July 11, 2008 At the 2008 Summer TCA Tour Turner Party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel Stephen Shugerman/Getty August 29, 2008 At the 'The Burning Plain' photocall during the 65th Venice Film Festival Pascal Le Segretain/Getty August 29, 2008 At the 'The Burning Plain' premiere during the 65th Venice Film Festival Pascal Le Segretain/Getty August 31, 2008 Arriving by boat during the 65th Venice Film Festival Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty September 18, 2008 At the 6th Annual Teen Vogue Young Hollywood Party at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Michael Buckner/Getty September 14, 2009 At the 'The Burning Plain' film premiere at Bond Street Thompson Beverly Hills Frederick M. Brown/Getty March 11, 2010 At the premiere of Apparition's 'The Runaways' held in Los Angeles Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty June 8, 2010 At the launch of MARKTBeauty.com Stephen Lovekin/Getty January 8, 2011 At the 22nd Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala Alexandra Wyman/Getty January 14, 2011 At the Eleventh Annual AFI Awards at the Four Seasons Hotel Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty January 14, 2011 At the 16th annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards in Los Angeles Christopher Polk/Getty January 16, 2011 At the Golden Globes Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty January 30, 2011 At the 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards held in Los Angeles Frazer Harrison/Getty February 13, 2011 At the BAFTAs at The Royal Opera House Chris Jackson/Getty February 25, 2011 At QVC Red Carpet Style Party in Los Angeles Valerie Macon/Getty February 27, 2011 At the 83rd Annual Academy Awards held in Hollywood Kevork Djansezian/Getty March 12, 2012 At the premiere of 'The Hunger Games' in Los Angeles Jason Merritt/Getty September 8, 2012 At the 'Silver Linings Playbook' premiere during the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival Terry Rice/Getty November 19, 2012 At the Screening of 'Silver Linings Playbook' in Beverly Hills Frederick M. Brown/Getty January 12, 2013 At the 38th Annual Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards Paul A. Hebert/Getty January 13, 2013 At the 70th Annual Golden Globes Jason Merritt/Getty February 24, 2013 At the Oscars Jason Merritt/Getty July 1, 2013 At the Christian Dior show during Paris Fashion Week Haute-Couture AW13 Pascal Le Segretain/Getty November 11, 2013 At the world premier of 'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire' in Leicester Square Andrew Cowie/AFP/Getty November 18, 2013 At the premiere of 'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire' in Los Angeles Getty Images January 12, 2014 At the Golden Globes Getty Images March 2, 2014 At the Oscars Getty Images July 7, 2014 At the Christian Dior show during Paris Fashion Week Haute Couture AW14 Pascal Le Segretain/Getty September 19, 2014 At the 2014 iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas Mark Davis/Getty November 10, 2014 At the World Premiere of 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1' at Leicester Square Dave J Hogan/Getty November 17, 2014 At the premiere of 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1' in Los Angeles Kevin Winter/Getty May 4, 2015 At the 'China: Through The Looking Glass' Met Gala Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty November 5, 2015 At the UK Premiere of 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2' in central London Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty November 9, 2015 At 'The Hunger Games' photocall in Paris Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty November 16, 2015 At the premiere of 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2' in Los Angeles Mark Davis/Getty November 18, 2015 At the "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2" New York Premiere Getty Images December 13, 2015 At the "Joy" New York premiere in New York Getty Images January 10, 2016 At the Golden Globes Getty Images February 25, 2016 At the Dinner For Equality co-hosted by Patricia Arquette and Marc Benioff Getty Images for Weinstein Carne February 26, 2016 At the Ninth Annual Women In Film Pre-Oscar Cocktail Party Getty Images for Perrier-Jouet February 28, 2016 At the Oscars Getty Images February 28, 2016 At the Oscars AFP/Getty Images April 16, 2016 At the the New York premiere of "A Beautiful Planet" Getty Images May 23, 2016 On the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Getty Images September 30, 2016 At the Christian Dior 2017 Spring/Summer show AFP/Getty Images October 28, 2016 At the AMD British Academy Britannia Awards Getty Images November 29, 2016 At the photocall for her lastest film "Passengers" in Paris AFP/Getty Images December 1, 2016 At the photocall for the film "Passengers" at Claridge's Hotel Getty Images December 2, 2016 At the photocall for "Passengers" in Berlin Getty Images for Sony Pictures The Oscar-winner added: I think weve gotten so used to underweight, that when you are a normal weight, its like: Oh, my God, shes curvy. Which is crazy. The bare minimum would be to up the ante. At least so I dont feel like the fattest one. Lawrence, 25, also discussed the furore around the essay she penned last year about gender pay equality. I had no idea it was going to blow up like that, she said. And I obviously only absorbed the negative. I didnt pay any attention to the positive feedback. But, really, people who criticised it are people who think women should not be paid the same as men. So I dont really care what those people think. K evin Costner says people tried to warn him off Croydon before he began filming his latest movie there, but he ignored them because he liked the sound of its name. The Oscar-winner, 61, stars alongside Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones and Ryan Reynolds in action thriller Criminal, much of which was shot around Croydon College as well as in Kingston, Surrey Quays and Shoreditch. At the Curzon Mayfair for the premiere last night, he said: I was comfortable down there [in Croydon]. People kind of gave it a weird rep and I thought, No, were going to Croydon, I kind of like the name! So thats the way I feel about it. London is one of the great cities of the world without a doubt. Every morning when I woke up I was like a child almost, I wouldnt know where we would be and whether it was upscale or whatever you want to say it was. Kevin Costner Criminal Premiere 1 /5 Kevin Costner Criminal Premiere Kevin Costner attends the UK Premiere of 'Criminal' at The Curzon Mayfair Dave Benett Kevin Costner and Gal Gadot attend the UK Premiere of 'Criminal' at The Curzon Mayfair Dave Benett Gal Gadot attends the UK Premiere of 'Criminal' at The Curzon Mayfair Dave Benett Kevin Costner and Gal Gadot attend the UK Premiere of 'Criminal' at The Curzon Mayfair Dave Benett "The neighbourhoods spoke for themselves. I grew up in the country, so city life is not something I have really experienced except when I make a movie. In the film Costner plays a criminal who has the memories of a dead CIA agent implanted into his mind. He said: I have played dodgy characters before Ive played a serial killer, somebody who thought he was Elvis and was kind of a mean guy but on paper I had to ask them, What movie did you see that made you think I could do this? And they said they had seen [2014 American Football movie] Draft Day, which is about as all-American as you can get. I was the head of a sports team it would be like being head coach of Manchester or Arsenal. But then there was a moment in time where I thought, I think I can do this. I think I can do this in a way that I dont think people will expect. Criminal opens in cinemas on April 15. L ove it, hate it, or so totally apathetic to it that you glaze over at the mention of either Star or Wars: the latest instalment in the intergalactic franchise (a spin-off film) IS coming and it WILL be splattered all over social media for the next eight months until its release in December. God knows how many millions of work hours were lost globally after the first trailer for Rogue One was released at 12.50pm yesterday; at time of press it had been viewed more than 13.2 million times, and no Thursday-night pub session was complete without intense dissection of the fascinating insights those two minutes and 37 seconds gave us. Here are nine key talking points. 1) Felicity Jones is categorically brilliant Rey who? Jyn Erso is the new kickass/badass etc female heroine to take the reins of the originally macho movies, and Felicity Jones looks to be a pretty excellent choice to play her. Yes, she was superb in The Theory of Everything, but way more importantly she played Emma Grundy in The Archers as a teenager. Casting another female lead, after Daisy Ridley absolutely killed it in The Force Awakens, suggests that even if Star Wars is set a long time ago, its gender politics are now bang up to date. 2) Daddy, is that you? Even if you cant bring yourself to watch the whole trailer, at least skip to 1.17 so you can join in the speculation about the identity of the dark figure in the long cloak. Is it Darth Vader? Almost definitely, of course but the fact that we dont know for sure means the end to all awkward pub silences until the next trailer confirms it. Theres also a bloke in a white cloak, but that might just be Madonna. 3) Spot the odd one out: Barclays, HSBC, Death Star Next time youre smelling the armpit of an investment banker in the crush at Canary Wharf station, remember: at least youve not got a load of Stormtroopers up your backside trying to kill you. Although it might be preferable. City workers, who may remember the commuter hellholes closure on August 15/16, presumably for filming, will fondly recognise the scene as Jyn is chased through, as one Twitter user commented: Best part of the Rogue One trailer was the people running to grab the last Tube home from Canary Wharf. 4) There is absolutely no sign of Jar Jar Binks Or rather, THERE IS NO SIGN OF JAR JAR BINKS. The prequel character who was so universally loathed that he became Hollywood shorthand for a franchise-killing trope is quite blatantly absent from the trailer, as he was from The Force Awakens, as the franchise attempts to put as much distance between itself and the misbegotten Episodes I, II and III. Lucasfilm 5) Guess what? Star Wars fans cant splel Whats a shiny new film without a shiny new hashtag to make sure no ones left out of the all-encompassing hype? Unfortunately for many, excitement made them forget their Os and Us when it came to writing #RogueOne. So suddenly we were being faced with either a premier blusher brand, or Jezza Corbyns Franglais nickname, as #RougeOne started trending. 6) Cheeky references abound For every step the new films take away from that prequel trilogy, the closer they try to match the original Episodes IV-VI. Rogue One concerns the mission to steal the Death Star plans, the success of which opens the original 1977 film. As such, weve been expecting characters from the original trilogy to crop up, and the first so far is Mon Mothma. The leader of the Rebellion in Return of the Jedi was played by Caroline Blakiston; now, Genevieve OReilly takes on the role, looking eerily identical to her predecessor. And in case that wasnt enough, look! Theres ATs-ATs! Last seen in action in the snow-smothered Battle of Hoth, the evil combat walkers are now stomping all over a beach, with rebels scampering at their feet, Jurassic Park-style. Lucasfilm 7) Gareth Edwards is totally going in his own direction After the diabolical mess of the prequel trilogy, it was up to JJ Abrams to make the galaxy great again in The Force Awakens. Abrams was a safe bet after all he won two Emmys as co-creator of Lost, and his Star Trek prequel was universally acclaimed and the highest grossing in the franchise. Hes also brilliant at imitating the greats and working in the style of early George Lucas. Gareth Edwards, on the other hand, is a bit of a novel choice. His filmography is tiny: coming out of nowhere with his breakthrough film Monsters in 2010, Edwards then proved his massive franchise blockbuster credentials with Godzilla two years ago. This is only the fourth film hes ever directed including one TV movie so whatever happens, its going to be damn original. 8) Four limbs good, one stick bad As the seconds of the trailer ticked by, fans grew twitchier where in the name of Harrison Ford were the lightsabers? Could it be that one of old maverick Edwardss quirks has been to deny the merchandise-hoarders a new plastic light-up toy to add to their pristine stash? Instead, its all much more hands-on with Jyn punching Stormtroopers with a baton and shooting bad guys at close range. Lightsaber panic plagued The Force Awakens, when the traditional lightsaber was replaced by Kylo Rens hilted version. Seems like getting rid of the hilt has made the Jedi sticks disappear altogether... Star Wars theme park teaser - in pictures 1 /14 Star Wars theme park teaser - in pictures Disney/Lucas Film Disney/Lucas Film Disney/Lucas Film Disney/Lucas Film Disney/Lucas Film Disney/Lucas Film Disney/Lucas Film Disney/Lucas Film Disney/Lucas Film Disney/Lucas Film 9) Speaking of Jedi... ... Where are they? With no sign of their weapon of choice, it was hard to spot any character who we could label Jedi. And if theres no Jedi, does that mean theres no Force? And if theres no Force, what in Gods name are we all going to pointlessly celebrate on May 4? Follow Frankie McCoy on Twitter: @franklymccoy Here is the weekly road construction report for Hamilton County: U.S. 27 (I-124) widening from I-24/U.S. 27 interchange to north of the Olgiati Bridge over the Tennessee River, including widening the Olgiati Bridge: Work on this project continues. The speed limit on U.S. 27 in the construction zone has been lowered to 45 MPH. The contractor may have temporary lane closures on U.S. 27 between 7 p.m.-6 a.m On Thursday the contractor will implement temporary lane closures on U.S. 27 South from just north of Manufacturers Road to MLK Blvd. between 7 p.m.-6 a.m. to work on the tie-in of the temporary southbound 4th Street on-ramp. This work will require a double right lane closure on the Olgiati Bridge. All exit and entrance ramps will remain open. The contractor will implement temporary lane closures Wednesday on U.S. 27 South from just north of Manufacturers Road to the 12th Street Bridge between 7 p.m.-6 a.m. for repairing asphalt and restriping travel lanes. This work will require multiple lane shifts and traffic will be moved around throughout the night to facilitate the paving. All exit and entrance ramps will remain open. As the project progresses, there may be short term temporary lane closures for the safety of the traveling public on city streets within the project area. Flaggers will assist with these closures and they will be properly signed in accordance with the Federal Highway Administrations Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. During Phase 1 of the U.S. 27 project, the contractor will be working on the northbound side of U.S. 27 on the bridges. Work will consist of demolishing and reconstructing the outside sections of the bridges along U.S. 27 North. Also on U.S. 27 South, they will be constructing a large retaining wall between the Olgiati Bridge and 6th Street. At least one lane will remain open in each direction on U.S. 27. THP will assist with traffic control on the project as necessary. Estimated project completion date is July 2019. For more info, visit the project website http://www.tn.gov/tdot/topic/US27-reconstruction-chattanooga . [Dement Construction Co., LLC/JM/CNP230] SR 317 (Apison Pike) the grading, drainage and paving on from Old Lee Highway (LM 5.58) to SR-321 (Ooltewah-Ringgold Road) (LM 7.84): Work on this project continues. The contractor may have short term lane closures to perform various operations on an as-needed basis. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion date is May 2017. [Wright Brothers Const. Co. /Pruett/CNN279] SR-320 (East Brainerd Road) grading, drainage, installation of signals, construction of seven retaining walls and paving from east of Graysville Road to east of Bel-Air Road: Work on this project continues. The contractor will have intermittent lane closures during this report period between 9 a.m.-2 p.m. This work may affect either direction of East Brainerd Road or side streets from Graysville Road to Hamlett Drive as the contractor installs road crossings and borings. The contractor may have short-term lane closures to perform various operations on an as-needed basis. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion is June 2017. [Mountain State Contractors, LLC /Pruett/CNN383] Shepherd Road over SR-153 construction of a rolled steel girder bridge from West Shepherd Road to Shaw Avenue in Chattanooga, including grading, drainage and paving: Work on this project continues. The bridge has returned to two lanes of traffic. During this report period, the contractor will continue retaining wall and widening work on the Airport Connector Road west of the Shepherd Road Bridge. This work will require that the shoulder and right travel lane heading to the airport on Shepherd Road be closed. This change should only affect those turning right at the top of the ramp from SR-153 South, as they will not have a designated lane to the airport during this work. The through lane from the bridge will remain unobstructed except for the occasional flagging for equipment to move in and out. During the project, there may be intermittent nighttime lane closures as necessary in both directions on SR-153 between 8 p.m.-6 a.m. THP will assist with traffic control as necessary on the project. Estimated project completion is October. [Jones Brothers Contractors, Inc./Micka/CNP105] SR-317 (Bonny Oaks Drive) improvement of the intersection with Volkswagen Drive (LM 3.85) serving Volkswagen Group of America, including grading, drainage and paving: Work on this project continues. The contractor will have intermittent lane closures on Bonny Oaks Drive at Volkswagen Drive to perform milling and paving operations between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Monday through Friday. The contractor may have short term lane closures on eastbound Bonny Oaks Drive at Volkswagen Drive to perform various operations on as-needed basis. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion date is April. [Talley Construction Company, Inc. /Pruett/CNN304] The tunnel cleaning of the McCallie Tunnel on U.S. 11 (US 64, SR-2), the Stringers Ridge Tunnel on U.S. 127 (SR-8), and the Bachman Tubes on U.S. 41 (U.S. 76, SR-8): The nighttime cleaning operation of McCallie Tunnels, Stringers Ridge Tunnel, and Bachman Tubes occurs normally on Wednesday and Thursday nights during the week with the 3rd Tuesday of the month. There will be no tunnel cleaning this week. Work hours are between 8 p.m.-6 a.m. Tunnels will be closed during cleaning, and detours will be marked accordingly as each tunnel is cleaned. Contract completion date is June. [Diamond Specialized, Inc./Micka/CNP212] Lee University will present guest musicians Duo-B, along with faculty members Dr. Megan Chisom Peyton on viola and Dr. Cahill Smith on piano, to perform a chamber music recital on Wednesday, at 8 p.m. in Squires Recital Hall. The program will feature works by Beethoven, Schumann, Martinu, and Rochberg. Duo-B is unique in the music world due to their dedication to works for violin and cello duo, said Dr. Smith, assistant professor of piano. Duo-B members violinist Hirono Sugimoto Borter and cellist Philip Lawrence Borter met at the Hochschule fur Musik-Freiburg in Germany in 2009. Since then, they have dedicated their careers to promoting the wealth of music for violin and cello duos. As winners of the Eastman Concerto Competition, they have performed across three continents including landmark performances in Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theatre, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Universitat der Kunste in Berlin, and Minatomirai Hall in Yokohama, Japan. At a young age, Ms. Borter received multiple awards through competitions in Japan and has since appeared regularly as a soloist with professional chamber orchestras. She has traveled throughout Europe presenting masterclasses and festivals in Austria, France, Germany, Holland, and Italy. Mr. Borter has appeared on stage with different artists including Andrea Bocelli, Joshua Bell, and Michael Tilson, among others. He also performs frequently with the Rochester Philharmonic, Richmond Symphony, and Naples Philharmonic. Most recently, he won the American String Teachers Association Competition and has been recognized at other national and international competitions as well. Individually they are consummate artists, but together they deliver performances at a level which few ensembles can attain, said Mikhail Kopelman of the Kopelman Quartet. Duo-B has a repertoire representing music from a great variety of genres and cultures. In addition to performing this repertoire, the two musicians place an emphasis on the communicative power and intimacy found in the string duo. A native of Dallas, Texas, Dr. Peyton began playing viola at age 12. Since then, she has performed across the United States as a chamber and orchestral musician. Currently, she is a member of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, where she also serves as music librarian. She is a Suzuki-trained teacher and maintains a studio where she works with private students and chamber music groups of all ages. Dr. Peyton is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy. She holds doctorate and masters degrees in viola performance from the University of Georgia with a doctoral minor in music theory and a bachelor of music in viola performance from the University of Texas at Austin. Born and raised in Alabama, Dr. Smith began playing at age 10. He has given recitals at venues in the U.S. and abroad, including three programs at Carnegie Halls Weill Recital Hall, the PolyTheater in Chongqing, China, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museums Calderwood Hall in Boston, Cleveland Museum of Art, the Royal Dublin Societys Concert Hall, and Kodak Hall. He has also been featured as a concerto soloist with the National Ukrainian Symphony Orchestra in Kiev, the Eastman Philharmonia, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and more. Dr. Smith earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts at the Eastman School of Music. There, he won the Eastman Concerto Competition and was awarded the Prize in Excellence for Teaching as a graduate assistant. He earned his masters degree at the University of Michigan and his bachelors degree at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is a festival artist for Lees International Piano Festival and Competition in the summer. Duo-B will also present a masterclass with Lee chamber music students on Monday from 2-4 p.m. in Squires Recital Hall. Both events are free and open to the public. For more information about the recital or the masterclass, call 614-8240 or email music@leeuniversity.edu. Lee Universitys Dr. Kimberly Moffett, associate professor of special education, was elected to the Council for Exceptional Children Board of Directors in its member-wide election. Dr. Moffett is an 11-year member of CEC who has held multiple volunteer leadership positions for Tennessee CEC, including serving on the National Standing Committee, the Local Arrangements Chair for the CEC convention in Nashville, and her past role as president and her current roles as immediate past president and representative to the representative assembly. She also serves as the Lee University faculty sponsor for Tennessee CEC. Dr. Moffett earned her doctorate in applied behavior and learning and her bachelors degree in early childhood special education from Tennessee Technological University. The Council for Exceptional Children is a professional association of educators dedicated to advancing the success of children with exceptionalities. Its mission is accomplished through advocacy, standards, and professional development. For more information on the CEC, visit www.cec.sped.org. OMAHA, Neb. (AP) A federal appeals panel on Thursday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against Nebraska and various state officials that had faulted them for releasing a prisoner who killed an Omaha woman and three others shortly after he got out. But one judge left the door open for the woman's husband to try again an invitation his attorney said he'll accept. The three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed a district court's dismissal last year of the lawsuit brought by the husband of 33-year-old Andrea Kruger. The appeals panel agreed that the state and its officials are immune from liability because the release of Nikko Jenkins was discretionary and protected by law. Kruger was pulled from her car on Aug. 21, 2013, in northwest Omaha and shot four times by Jenkins. In the days before that, Jenkins killed three other people in two separate attacks. He had been released from prison on July 30, 2013, after serving nearly 11 years for various crimes. Jenkins pleaded no contest in 2014 and was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder. His sentencing has been delayed because of concerns about his competency. The lawsuit by Michael-Ryan Kruger said state prison officials "showed no common sense" in releasing Jenkins and thus placed his wife at "great risk of harm" because the state knew Jenkins intended to kill people at random after his release. A state ombudsman's report had faulted the prisons department, saying officials failed to get Jenkins the mental health treatment he needed and kept him in an isolation cell for most of the last two years of his sentence because of behavior problems. Jenkins had begged corrections officials to commit him to a mental health institution and told prison officials he would kill people if released. In Thursday's opinion, Judge Jane Kelly agreed with the two other judges in affirming the dismissal of the appeal, but said she would "accept an invitation to revisit" Kruger's state-created danger argument. That doctrine argues that a tragedy could have been prevented if the government and its officials had intervened. To succeed under current precedent, plaintiffs must show that government officials were aware of a specific, named victim or place to be targeted, Kelly said. "I harbor some doubt as to the logic of our state-created-danger theory as it currently stands in the face of highly unusual circumstances such as are presented by this case," she wrote. Kruger's attorney, Vince Powers of Lincoln, said Thursday he will ask the full 8th Circuit to hear the appeal, focused on the state-created danger argument. The Nebraska Attorney General's Office, which has defended the state against the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a message Thursday. This page is archived. Data published after 5 April 2022 can be found on the renewed website. Go to the new statistics page Published: 8 April 2016 New orders in manufacturing fell by 1.4 per cent year-on-year in February According to Statistics Finland, the value of new orders in manufacturing was 1.4 per cent lower in February 2016 than twelve months earlier. Orders have declined continuously for six months. Annual change in new orders in manufacturing (orginal series), % (TOL2008) Enterprises received more orders than twelve months ago in February in the textile and the chemical industry. In the textile industry, new orders increased by 11.3 per cent and in the chemical industry by 4.2 per cent year-on-year. In the metal industry, orders declined by 2.1 per cent and in the industry of the manufacture of paper and paper board products by 4.0 per cent from one year ago. When interpreting these statistics, it should be borne in mind that they typically show strong fluctuations by month. Even new orders of substantial value are not examined over extended time periods but for the statistical reference month only. Change in new orders in manufacturing 2/2015 2/2016 (TOL2008) The index of new orders in manufacturing describes development in the value of new orders received by enterprises for commodities and services that are meant to be produced by establishments located in Finland. These statistics are based on non-probability sampling, in which the basic observation unit is an enterprise or a kind-of-activity unit. The sample comprises monthly 400 to 450 enterprises or their kind-of-activity units. Index point figures and annual change percentages are published monthly for five industry categories. The time series start from January 2005 and their base year is 2010 (2010=100). The index figures may become slightly revised as new data accumulate and enterprises report changes to their data. Due to supplementations, the latest 12 months are revised in the releases. A detailed description of the statistics and the calculation method are included in the quality description on the home page of the statistics. Source: New orders in manufacturing 2016, February. Statistics Finland Inquiries: Maarit Makela 029 551 3324, Kari Rautio 029 551 2479, volyymi.indeksi@stat.fi Director in charge: Mari Yla-Jarkko Publication in pdf-format (228.2 kB) Updated 8.4.2016 Referencing instructions: Statistics: New orders in manufacturing [e-publication]. ISSN=1798-6737. February 2016. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 23.10.2022]. Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/teul/2016/02/teul_2016_02_2016-04-08_tie_001_en.html This page may have been moved, deleted, or is otherwise unavailable. To help you find what you are looking for: Enter Search Term(s): Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL. Thank you for visiting state.gov. 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DeVonne Gardner, vocalist, and A. Bruce Frazier, jazz trumpeter and band leader, will appear at UTC, the Center for Creative Arts High School, and First-Centenary United Methodist Church. Review for DeVonne Gardner: Ms. Gardner was chosen through an audition at age 16 by the great Duke Ellington to be a soloist with his orchestra in his second Sacred Concert. She then sang with Mr. Ellington until his death, touring world-wide with the Duke for eight years, and continued to sing with his band after his son Mercer Ellington assumed leadership. Ms. Gardner, a remarkable soprano, has also sung with orchestras in Israel and the US under the leadership of famed conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Eugene Ormandy, and Bobby McFerrin. She has also enjoyed a distinguished career as a teacher of voice. She has sung in Chattanooga twice before, in 2006 and 2009 in presentations of the Ellington Sacred Concerts. Review for A. Bruce Frazier: Mr. Frazier is a noted trumpeter, arranger, and bandleader whose lyrical tone quality and melodic phrasing have created a demand for his music at venues from solo concerts to conventions. He is featured in several recordings, and has contributed his talents to large national church organizations as well. He is an advocate for the arts, and has taught mathematics for 25 years, in addition to serving as a school administrator. Mr. Frazier played in the Ellington Sacred Concert in Chattanooga in 2009. Ms. Gardner and Mr. Frazier will appear in a master-class at UTC, in Cadek Recital Hall, on Thursday, April 14, at 3 p.m. They will visit the Center for Creative Arts High School on April 15. They will be featured musicians at First-Centenary United Methodist Church (McCallie at Houston) in two services on Sunday, April 17, at 8:30 and 10:45 a.m., accompanied by the local jazz pianist Dave Walters. All are welcome. This opportunity to hear from Ms. Gardner and Mr. Frazier is supported by First-Centenary United Methodist Church, UTC Prof. Emeritus Roland Carter, and the Ruth S. Holmberg Professor of American Music at UTC, Jonathan McNair. Friday, 08 April 2016 17:41:48 (GMT+3) | Shanghai During the week ending April 8, pre-painted galvanized iron (PPGI) quotations in the Chinese domestic market have moved on a stable trend, while transaction activity has been at decent levels. Average PPGI prices in the local Chinese market are presented in the following table. During the given week, PPGI supplies arriving in the market from steelmakers have been insufficient, resulting in low inventory levels held by most PPGI traders. The low inventories have provided support for the firm stable trend of PPGI prices. It is expected that PPGI prices in the Chinese domestic market will likely continue their stable movement in the coming week, though some slight fluctuations may also be possible depending on changes in supply volumes. Product name Spec. Category City Steel plant/origin Price (RMB/mt) Price ($/mt) Weekly change (RMB/mt) Thick color coated coils 0.476 mm x 1,000 x C CGCC Shanghai NewDaZhong 5,500 850 0 Guangzhou Huamei 4,900 757 0 Boxing Guanzhou 4,000 618 0 Average - 4,800 742 0 Thin color coated coils 0.426 mm x 1,000 x C CGCC Shanghai NewDaZhong 5,750 889 0 Guangzhou Huamei 5,000 773 0 Average - 5,375 831 0 17 percent VAT is included in all prices and all prices are ex-warehouse. $1 = RMB 6.47 Friday, 08 April 2016 17:11:30 (GMT+3) | Istanbul During the past week, Turkish merchant bar export prices have increased by $20/mt week on week to the following levels: Product Price ($/mt) Angle 450-460 IPN-UPN 460-470 Flat bar 460-480 IPE 460-470 All prices are on FOB basis and for April shipment. The Theatre Union of Romania (UNITER) is mourning the death of stage and film actor Mircea Albulescu, calling him an emblem of Romanian drama. UNITER says Albulescu was "one of the biggest Romanian actors, a beloved professor that shaped tens of generations of artists, as well as a doctor in arts, publicist, poet and prose writer." "A serious, unique, unmistakable voice, one of the last aristocrats of Romanian drama, a total artist that for 60 years performed hundreds of parts on the stages of the Bucharest Municipal Theatre, the Comedy Theatre and the National Theatre of Bucharest, as well as unforgettable parts in more than 70 films and 300 parts in remarkable radio dramas," UNITER said in a press statement on Friday. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the UNITER prize for his activity in 2005; the Romanian Ministry of Culture's prize for his entire artistic activity in 2003, and the excellence prize of the Radio Romania Cultural Gala in 2015, reads the statement. Agerpres Palate 2 Palette (P2P) an annual fundraising event for the Craniofacial Foundation of America will take place on April 15 and 16. This will be the 8th year for the CFA to feature a Youth Gallery. "This gallery has become a favorite among the guests," organizers said. Invitations are sent out to all local high school art departments, inviting them to submit up to 15 pieces of work to be juried by three local judges. Over 650 guests attended the Youth Gallery in 2015 to view artwork from 20 area high schools. The 2016 Youth Gallery will feature live music, cuisine provided by Impressions Catering and floral arrangements from Divine Designs by Amanda Williams. Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union has sponsored the Youth Gallery for the past 8 years. There are two opportunities to view the Youth Gallery, Friday, April 15 from 7-9 p.m. and Saturday, April 16 from 5-8 p.m. as part of the P2P stroll. Friday night is the opening of the Youth Gallery for students, friends and family to visit the gallery for a minimum charge of $2/student and $5/adults. Saturday night the Youth Gallery will be open as a part of the P2P Stroll. Tickets for Friday nights reception are available at the door and tickets for P2P are available online. "You can learn more about the CFA by visiting the Foundation Gallery during this years stroll," officials said. WASHINGTON The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is proposing to reform the estimated $25 billion a year market for high-capacity data and voice connections, known as special access lines, to businesses. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler on Friday said he was proposing a new "regulatory framework" barring some contractual practices by circuit-based systems that make it harder for businesses to switch to other data carriers like Internet-based services. Wheeler said he wants "a new, technology-neutral" approach. "If we want to maximize the benefits of business data services for U.S. consumers and businesses, we need a fresh start," Wheeler said in a blog post Friday, noting that despite cable companies entering the market, competitive carriers reach "less than 45 percent of locations where there is demand." Many businesses rely on the little-special-access lines to transmit large amounts of data quickly, for instance connecting banks to ATM machines or gas pump credit card readers. The lines are used by offices, retailers, banks, manufacturers, schools, hospitals and universities to move large amounts of data. Mobile networks also rely on the lines for the backhaul of mobile traffic. The services are profitable for large carriers, such as Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc. Smaller carriers, such as Sprint Corp, have argued the special-access market is uncompetitive. One issue is many businesses signed long-term contracts that impose high penalties for opting out of using the services, FCC officials said, making it difficult to switch to another service. A coalition of groups including Sprint praised Wheeler saying the "forward-looking rules will ensure that competition governs the health and sustainability of this critical input, that ensure consumer benefit, technological neutrality, education and health benefits, and a platform for innovation for the future." The FCC, which has been studying the issue since 2012, said special access lines are worth about $25 billion of the $40 billion annual market for business data services. The FCC will vote on the proposal on April 28 and will take public comments before it aims to finalize the rules later this year. Israeli tech company NRGene plans to open an office in the Cortex innovation district that will serve as its U.S. base of operations. The analytics company develops computational tools and algorithmic models for trait discovery used by seed companies, animal breeders, and academia. Its office, which will open this spring at the CIC@CET in the Central West End, will initially have one employee and ultimately grow to about six employees, said Paul Chomet, NRGenes strategic consultant. It makes a lot of sense to be in the heartland of the country with companies such as Monsanto and academic groups like the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Chomet said. St. Louis is really a cultural hub for this advanced ag genomics work. NRGene is the fourth Israeli agritech business that has set up operations locally in the past 18 months. All four were recruited by GlobalSTL, an initiative of BioSTL to attract high growth international companies to St. Louis. The other three companies are Kaiima Agro-Biotech, Evogene and Forrest Innovations. The nonprofit BioSTL focuses on nurturing St. Louis biotechnology startups. GlobalSTL was formed in May 2014 to identify and attract more mature international companies that are looking to establish a U.S. presence. The idea is that these companies, if they establish their U.S. base in St. Louis, as they continue to have success and grow, our hope is that growth is in St. Louis, said BioSTLs president and CEO Donn Rubin. NRGene has been offered $118,644 in state incentives through the Missouri Works program if it meets job creation goals. Missouri is a world renowned hub of bioscience innovation and ... todays announcement builds on this strong economic momentum, Gov. Jay Nixon said in a statement. QUITO Delegations from Latin American oil exporters Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela met in Quito on Friday to discuss a proposed output freeze and other methods to bolster international crude prices. Ecuador's Energy Ministry said the purpose of the meeting, which began around 1:00 p.m. CT, was to define the region's position ahead of a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producers in Doha on April 17. "We want to give a strong message to the market and support the decision to be taken in Qatar," Ecuador's Oil Minister Carlos Pareja told reporters. The Ecuador meeting is the first significant sign non-OPEC producers Colombia and Mexico may be involved in an effort to bolster prices amid the global glut. But Mexico's government stressed it was only participating as an "observer" to share information. Its energy ministry emphasized in a statement that crude output has already declined by more than a million barrels per day in the last 12 years. Mexican officials have said the country cannot freeze or cut output in any kind of coordinated strategy among producers to support prices. Mexico's oil output has been falling for over a decade due to its aging fields and under-investment. Suffering more than most producers from the 60-percent plummet in oil prices since mid-2014, leftist-ruled Venezuela and Ecuador have pushed hard for the meeting in Doha. Venezuela's Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino told the Quito meeting 18 countries had confirmed their assistance in Doha, with two or three others committing verbally. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Friday he hoped producers will agree to freeze output in Doha. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Qatar agreed in February to freeze production at January levels, but said at the time the deal was contingent on other producers joining in. Melody Shekari announced on Thursday her campaign to run for Tennessees Third Congressional District against incumbent Republican Chuck Fleischmann. Ms. Shekari filed her paperwork last week and thus far is the only announced Democrat. Ms. Shekari cited Mr. Fleischmanns record as a primary motivator for running. This district has not had a congressman working hard for it since Fleischmann took office. He may be a nice man, but we need leadership and not someone who merely takes marching orders from Washington insiders, said Ms. Shekari. Ms. Shekari is the daughter of immigrants and is a first generation American. She was born near Houston but spent most of her childhood in Chattanooga where she graduated high school. She has a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Washington and a law degree from the University of Southern California. Her undergraduate degree is in business and economics from Bentley University. Our congressman has not authored a single substantive piece of legislation nor has he taken an interest in facilitating the growth and development of our communities. We deserve better. I will guarantee you that if I am elected I will work hard every day for our families, Ms. Shekari said. Tennessees Third Congressional district is anchored by the city of Chattanooga and stretches nearly to Knoxville. It is the home of the Oak Ridge laboratory and thousands of TVA jobs. It contains the entirety of Anderson, Hamilton, Polk, Morgan, McMinn, Monroe, Union, Scott, and Roane counties, and parts of Bradley and Campbell counties. Im looking forward to a spirited campaign and debate about how best to represent the great people of Tennessee, said Ms. Shekari. The primary election is Aug. 4, and the general election is Nov. 7. Republican Party leaders want John Kasich to exit the GOP primary race. The governor of Ohio is drawing too many votes away from Ted Cruz and weakening the Texas senators chances of stopping Donald Trump from winning the partys nomination for president. Whatever happens to the Kasich candidacy, his approach to presidential politics has been a breath of fresh air amid an ugly, cantankerous and divisive GOP race. This is especially the case in the way that he applies his Christian faith to matters of public policy. Trump is winning evangelicals in large numbers by appealing to their fears. A recent report by the Public Religion Research Institute suggests that white evangelicals, more than any other religious group in the country, believe that immigration is threatening American customs and values. Cruzs religious approach to politics is not too far removed from Trump. Cruz also plays on the anxieties of American evangelicals. Religious liberty is under attack. The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia means abortion and same-sex marriage may never be exterminated from the republic. Muslims are at the gate. The culture war for the soul of America continues to rage and Cruz is the evangelical knight in shining armor. Kasich offers a different approach. His campaign focuses on the idea that human beings are created and called for community. He likes to say that people are special, a belief that reflects the Judeo-Christian idea that men and women have dignity and worth because they are created in Gods image. When Americans realize that all men and women are exceptional, the natural result, in Kasichs view, will be the renewal of neighborhoods and communities. Kasich seldom talks specifically about the thinkers who have influenced him, but if I had to guess I would say his campaign is driven by a healthy dose of Wendell Berry localism, the so-called Front Porch conservatism, Catholic social teaching and the agenda for changing the world made popular by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter. Berrys Port William novels instill in readers a longing to return to a world that no longer exists. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It taps into some of our deepest longings for the good life. And it is a very effective political tool. Berry is a favorite among a group of conservative thinkers who promote the idea of America as a front porch republic. These conservatives defend traditional values. They oppose abortion and same-sex marriage. They are capitalists but also believe that consumerism, with its glorification of individualism, materialism and selfishness, undermines the kinds of communities where real human flourishing can take place. As Cruz and Trump frame their campaigns in terms of defending individual rights and liberties, Kasich worries about what self-interest is doing to American neighborhoods. He certainly defends the religious and political rights that naturally flow from his belief in human dignity, but he seems to have little use for men and women who do not take seriously their duties to each other. Of all the candidates competing for the presidency both Democrats and Republicans Kasich is the closest to embodying the social teachings of the Catholic Church. Ironically, Kasichs spiritual journey has led him away from the church of his western Pennsylvania childhood. When his parents died in a car accident in 1987, he had a conversion experience that ultimately led him to a fellowship of evangelical Anglicans who separated from the theologically liberal-minded Episcopal Church. But apparently something from Kasichs Catholic upbringing perhaps it was all those homilies he heard as an altar boy has stayed with him. Like Pope Francis, he is opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage but does not use these beliefs as political wedge issues. Kasich would rather talk about the care of the poor and the vulnerable. He believes that the federal government has a role to play in American life, but many of his statements about healing neighborhoods sound a lot like the principle of subsidiarity, the Catholic belief that social problems are best dealt with at the local level. Kasich or someone in his campaign must have read Hunters book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Hunter argues that to change the world, Christians need to practice what he calls faithful presence. Like Berry, the Front Porchers and the Catholic Church, Hunter calls for Americans to give priority to what is right in front of us, for it is here, through the joys, sufferings, hopes, disappointments, concerns, desires, and worries of the people with whom we are in long-term and close relationships family, neighbors, and co-workers that we learn virtues such as forgiveness, humility, kindness, hospitality, and charity. These are the kinds of virtues Kasich believes will strengthen America. Hunter is skeptical that the world can be changed through politics. We will see if Kasich can prove him wrong. Whether he can pull off a political miracle is yet to be seen, but American evangelicals can learn a lot from his message. Fea teaches American history at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pa. He is the author of The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society. VATICAN CITY Pope Francis insisted that individual conscience be the guiding principle for Catholics negotiating the complexities of sex, marriage and family life in a major document released Friday that rejects the emphasis on black and white rules for the faithful. In the 256-page document "The Joy of Love," Francis makes no change in church doctrine and strongly upholds that marriage is a lifelong commitment. But in selectively citing his predecessors and emphasizing his own teachings, Francis makes clear that he wants nothing short of a revolution in the way priests accompany Catholics, saying the church must no longer sit in judgment and "throw stones" against those who fail to live up to the Gospel's ideals of marriage and family life. "I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion," he wrote. "But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness." On thorny issues such as contraception, Francis stressed that a couple's individual conscience not dogmatic rules imposed across the board must guide their decisions and the church's pastoral practice. "We have been called to form consciences, not replace to them," he said. He insisted the church's aim is to reintegrate and welcome all its members. He called for a new language to help Catholic families cope with today's problems. And he said pastors must take into account mitigating factors fear, ignorance, habits and duress in counseling Catholics who simply aren't perfect. "It can no longer simply be said that all those in any irregular situations are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace," he wrote. Even those in an "objective situation of sin" can be in a state of grace, and can even be more pleasing to God by trying to improve, he said. The document's release marks the culmination of a divisive two-year consultation of ordinary Catholics and the church hierarchy that Francis initiated in hopes of understanding the problems facing Catholic families today and providing them with better pastoral care. The most divisive issue that arose during two meetings of bishops, or synods, was whether Francis would loosen the Vatican's strict position on whether Catholics who divorce and remarry can receive Communion. Church teaching holds that unless these Catholics receive an annulment, or a church decree that their first marriage was invalid, they are committing adultery and cannot receive Communion. Conservatives had insisted that the rules were fixed and that there was no way around Christ's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. Progressives had sought wiggle room to balance doctrine with mercy and look at each couple on a case-by-case basis, accompanying them on a path of reconciliation that could lead to them eventually receiving the sacraments. Francis took a unilateral step last year in changing church law to make it easier to get an annulment. On Friday, he said the rigorous response proposed by the conservatives was inconsistent with Jesus' message of mercy. "By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God," he said. "Let us remember that a small step in the midst of great human limitations can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties." Francis didn't explicitly endorse the "penitential path" of bringing such civilly remarried Catholics to Communion that was advocated by leading progressives such as Cardinal Walter Kasper. But he repeated what the synod had endorsed of the need for pastors to help individual Catholics over the course of spiritual direction to ascertain what God is asking of them. And he went further by explicitly linking such discussions of conscience with access to the sacraments. In footnotes, Francis cited his previous document "The Joy of the Gospel" in saying that the Eucharist "is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak." The Rev. James Bretzke, a Boston College theologian, said the document will give cover to and empower those priests and bishops who want to apply a broader understanding of the confidential discussions between a priest and divorced and civilly remarried Catholics a concept known as the "internal forum solution." "He does not outlaw that, whereas John Paul II specifically outlawed (it)," he said. But Mark Brumley, president of Ignatius Press, a major English-language publisher of the writings of retired Pope Benedict XVI, said Francis' emphasis on conscience "doesn't mean this is a free pass to do whatever you want." He said the document tries to navigate the difficult path of upholding church teaching while allowing the civilly remarried to participate in the life of the church. "It's a very tricky thing," Brumley said. In many ways the document is significant for what it doesn't say. While Francis frequently cited John Paul, whose papacy was characterized by a hardline insistence on doctrine and sexual morals, he did so selectively. Francis referenced certain parts of John Paul's 1981 "Familius Consortio," the guiding Vatican document on family life until Friday, but he omitted any reference to its most divisive paragraph 83, which explicitly forbids the sacraments for the divorced and civilly remarried. In fact, Francis went further than mere omission and effectively rejected John Paul's call in that document for people in civil second marriages to live as brother and sister, abstaining from sex so they can still receive the sacraments. In a footnote, Francis said that many people offered such a solution by the church "point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are lacking it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of children suffer." Similarly, in discussing the need for "responsible parenthood" and regulating the number of children, Francis made no mention of the church's opposition to artificial contraception. He squarely rejected abortion as "horrendous" and he cited the 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae," which deals with the issue. But Francis made no mention of the "unlawful birth control methods" rejected in "Humanae Vitae." Instead he focused on the need for couples in their conscience to make decisions about their family size. Citing the Vatican II document "Gaudium et Spes" Francis said: "Let them thoughtfully take into account both their own welfare and that of their children, those already born and those which the future may bring. ... The parents themselves and no one else should ultimately make this judgment in the sight of God." Francis made a single reference to church-sanctioned family planning method of abstaining from sex during a woman's fertile time. He said only that such practices are to be "promoted" not that other methods are forbidden and he insisted on the need for children to receive sex education, albeit without focusing on "safe sex." Gays will likely be disappointed by the documents' failure to offer anything significant beyond existing church teaching that gays are not to be discriminated against and are to be welcomed into the church with respect and dignity. It resoundingly rejects gay marriage and repeats the church's position that same-sex unions can in no way be equivalent to marriage between man and wife. But women will find much to appreciate in the document. Francis condemns at length the "verbal, physical and sexual violence" many women endure in marriages, rejects "sexual submission" and the "reprehensible" practice of genital mutilation. And he says the belief that feminism is to blame for the crisis in families today is completely invalid. ___ Zoll reported from New York. ___ As masstige beauty product prices continue climbing steadily toward the three-digit range, theres a lot of pomp and circumstance to justify high percentage increases. A common technique is to include a laundry list of anti-ingredients. Instead of prominently promoting a products actual ingredients, a box might proclaim: NO parabens, NO sulfates, NO fragrance, NO colorants, NO alcohol, NO preservatives, NO animal products, NO mineral oil or NO petrochemicals. The implicit conclusion is that everything on the no list must be bad and therefore the product is full of goodness. Some of the nos are philosophical (animal products). Some of the nos are superfluous and therefore suspect (fragrance). Some of the nos are dubious by their absence (preservatives). But none of them is conclusively bad, except perhaps animal testing (which is, however, common in medical testing and different than containing animal products). Still, there are thousands upon thousands of products that contain said no ingredients, and theres rarely a recall of a beauty product from a national beauty brand. Just check fda.gov/recalls. Even a new federal law signed in December banning microbeads in facial scrubs, cleansers and other grooming products didnt include a recall. The ban was instigated by environmental not health concerns, and brands still have until 2018 to remove microbead products from store shelves. So youre left to your own human testing and intuition. Very scientific-looking evidence exists to deride a plethora of common everyday ingredients, even as foreign or new-to-us ingredients continue being developed or redesigned. Products ultimately strive to introduce new lab discoveries, highly refined natural substances, rare exotic flowers and herb essences and all manner of magic potions in order to justify new price highs. Target now sells a $75 radiance revealing fluid, Walgreens sells a $95 neck firming treatment and Walmart offers a $40 eye makeup remover. You can also get products in the same categories for around $10 at those places, but shoppers looking to experiment are continually being enticed to spend just a bit more. And when the top potions costs more than $50, suddenly shoppers wonder if the $8 cream is too cheap to be any good. It can be really confusing to look at two products side-by-side, separated by a steep price difference and not feel that youre cheating yourself. So just to put things into perspective, we decided to take a look at a simple humble product that gets a lot of criticism yet remains a top dermatologist-recommended staple. Petroleum jelly. You can buy it for less than $1 an ounce, so it beats out almost any beauty potion. You can also buy it anywhere from Dollar Stores and gas stations mini-marts to masstige havens like Bed Bath and Beyond and grocery stores. The gold standard is Vaseline Petroleum Jelly, but generics abound. The product has been around since 1865 with relatively few improvements on the 100 percent petroleum jelly, one ingredient, original formula. Refinement of the product and industrialization have surely had great impact on purity, but the cheap lowly residue found in oil rigs still proudly claims to heal and protect dry, chapped or bruised skin and to reduce the appearance of fine lines. Proponents of natural skin care products say that there are too many healthy alternatives to petroleum for us to settle for oil rig cast-offs. Various oils such as coconut, pomegranate and tamanu contain nutrients that can arguably better speed healing and provide protection, but even oils are processed. Such oils are also much more expensive. Dermatologists love petrolatum because despite its origins, it contains no irritants (essential oils cant say the same) and petrolatum continues to lay claim to being hypoallergenic and noncomedogenic, even though thats still difficult for many nonusers to believe. Its thick, unctuous and greasy and every impulse says that its going to clog your pores and sprout a field of pimples. But science says that assumption is incorrect. Noncomedogenic means a product will not clog pores. However, for every naysayer who screams that goop discovered at an oil refinery doesnt belong on human skin, theres a rational medical expert quietly stating that petroleum jelly might be one of the safest and most well-tested beauty products in history. The results are irrefutable. Its a great skin protectant recommended for delicate skin on babies and the fragile epidermis of the elderly. The only serious argument it loses (and this is a not-so-inconsequential one) is the ecological debate about the fact that crude oil itself is unsustainable and damaging to the environment, making petroleum jelly guilty by association. But that doesnt make it bad for your skin no matter how many DIY beauty bloggers object. So if youre opposed to the politics of petroleum jelly, then you should shop with your conscience, but if youre worried that its ineffective or counterproductive to skin health, well, well let you hear from a professional. We asked Dr. Jeffrey Benabio, the physician director of Healthcare Transformation Group at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, to address some of the most common queries, complaints and arguments against petroleum jelly (which is further distilled into mineral oil or lumped under the moniker of petrochemical). He provided the simple assertions that youll hear from most doctors and dermatologists who continue to highly recommend petroleum jelly to patients. Is the fact that petroleum jelly is a crude oil byproduct irrelevant? Benabio: Yes. Crude oil sounds like it would be harmful to your skin, but petroleum jelly is derived and treated such that it is perfectly safe. Its refined into a skin care product, but why arent products that occur naturally, like beeswax, cocoa butter or coconut oil preferable? Benabio: It is easy to see how people make the mistake that natural means it is better. Lots of natural products are in fact harmful. Lots of unnatural products are safe. In fact, the vast majority of products that are safest and most effective are in fact manufactured. Even natural products like coconut oil are usually treated to be converted into skin care products. Some argue that petroleum jelly isnt refined enough (especially off-brands) and note that components like hydrocarbons can be harmful. Does this argument hold any weight? Benabio: No, not that Im aware. If readers have any concern, then they should use a known, branded product such as Vaseline, which has no harmful ingredients. Is it a misconception that petroleum jelly smothers your pores and causes blockages that lock in residue and bacteria and makes it difficult for the skin to breathe? Benabio: Good questions. Vaseline in particular has been shown to be noncomedogenic. This means it has been shown to not clog pores. It does not lock in bacteria or prevent skin from breathing (there is no such thing as skin breathing). Petrolatum is greasy and oily, which is why some people might reach this conclusion. It works very well to lock moisture in our skin, keeping it healthy and hydrated. Thats the primary reason for using it. Some go to the extreme of saying that it cant be safe to put anything on your body that you wouldnt want to ingest, obviously that would take a lot of great products off the shelves, what would you say to that? Benabio: It is a myth. Its easy to see why people might come to that conclusion; however, applying things to you skin is completely different than ingesting them. Only very specific products (like hormone patches) have any appreciable absorption through our skin. The vast majority of products applied to your skin, stay only on your skin. This is exactly what skin is designed to do, keep things out! By this argument, you would never wear sunscreen. Youd also never use soap or hair products or go for a swim, etc. Ive also heard that applying it to lips is addictive and causes more problems than it solves. Benabio: There is nothing about petroleum jelly that would be addictive or cause people to lick or eat the product. I have heard of this with flavored lip balms but not unflavored. I do not know of any real harm in either case. I wouldnt encourage people to lick it off or eat it any more than any lip product or toothpaste for that matter. CHESTERFIELD Bonhomme Presbyterian Church will be able to hold on to its extensive Chesterfield grounds after reaching an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by the churchs former governing body. The church settled this week with the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy for $1.1 million. Even though the churchs leaders thought they had a strong case, they thought losing their land and property wasnt worth the risk at trial, they said. The trial was supposed to start in St. Louis County Circuit Court on Monday. We have never believed that the presbyterys claim to the property was valid, the churchs pastor, the Rev. Tom Pfizenmaier, said Thursday night. We think we made the right spiritual decision. The church, which is the second-oldest Presbyterian church west of the Mississippi River, broke away from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 2014, opting to join the newer, more conservative denomination of the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians, sometimes called ECO. Soon after, the local governing body of the Presbyterian Church, the Giddings-Lovejoy Presbytery, sued for the property. The church sits on more than eight acres between Conway Road and Highway 40 (Interstate 64) and includes two worship spaces. Though the property is tax-exempt, county records say the appraised value is $10.3 million. There are about 1,400 members. In a statement, the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy cited the trust clause of the church Book of Order: "Whenever property of, or held for, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ceases to be used by that congregation as a congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in accordance with this constitution such property shall be held, used, applied, transferred or sold as provided by the presbytery." "We are relieved by the resolution of this situation," the Rev. Terry Epling of the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy said in a statement. "The provisions of the trust clause, which are an integral part of our constitution, have been affirmed through this process. We believe the settlement serves to reinforce the connectional nature of the Church which is reflected by our Book of Order and in the scriptures." Bonhomme Presbyterian had the money to pay for the settlement from an estate gift, and explained to members that the church may have to defer some building projects in the short term. It is a bitter pill to secure this peace by giving Giddings-Lovejoy an undeserved windfall, said an e-mail from church leaders to its members on Thursday. Please know that this decision was taken with the utmost gravity and deep consideration as we carefully weighed issues of justice, love, reconciliation, and sacrificial discipleship. The letter continued: While Gods Church was never in any jeopardy, the building it meets in is now secured. For this we should all be thankful to God. The board that regulates Missouri physicians has denied a medical license to a St. Louis-area doctor who has twice been sentenced to federal prison. The Missouri Board of Registration for the Healing Arts found that Rajitha Johnson, 56, formerly Rajitha Goli, did not present satisfactory evidence of good moral character. In 2002, a federal judge sent Johnson to prison for one year and made her pay back nearly $650,000 from a kickback and fraudulent billing scheme involving a hospital in Nebraska. The healing arts board revoked her license and gave her the maximum time she would have to wait to reapply: seven years. Johnson was featured in a 2010 Post-Dispatch investigation into how doctors with felonies can move to other states to practice. After her revocation in Missouri, Johnson worked at a clinic in Illinois, where she was still licensed. But she also worked for a doctor in De Soto who paid her illegally because she was banned from receiving payments from Medicare. In that case, she was charged with lying to a federal agent and sentenced to more than three years in a federal prison. In an interview in 2010, Johnsons husband said she planned to return to medicine when she was released from prison. The Missouri board found that Johnson had also made untruthful statements about her certification in internal medicine to the Hawaii Medical Board in 2014 when applying for a license there. Johnson could not be reached for comment. She can appeal the license denial to the state Administrative Hearing Commission by the end of April. ST. LOUIS A St. Louis jury on Friday found Joseph Bowens guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of a night manager at the Drury Inn & Suites hotel on Jan. 15, 2015. Scott Knopfel, 50, of St. Louis, was shot in the chest and face during a robbery just before 3 a.m. at the hotel, on Hampton Avenue at Interstate 44. Bowens, 45, of Poplar Bluff, Mo., was captured a few days after the murder in the area where he lived, after surveillance images from the hotel were shared widely by the media. Video depicted the robber approaching the front desk and talking to Knopfel for about a minute before pointing a revolver at Knopfel and vaulting over the front desk. Two of three shots fired were captured by the cameras. A car similar to Bowens was also caught on camera, and a security guard identified Bowens in court as the person she saw enter and leave the hotel at the time of the murder. Prosecutors said Knopfels DNA was found on a leather jacket found at Bowens home a jacket that matched the one the robber was seen wearing. Also, they said, an autopsy revealed Bowens DNA on Knopfels left hand. Cell tower data also put Bowens near the scene that night, prosecutors said. Bowens attorney, Celestine Dotson, had argued the DNA evidence was flawed and that her client had been mistakenly identified as the robber. Bowens first-degree murder conviction will mean an automatic sentence of life without parole. The St. Louis jury, which deliberated only a couple hours after a three-day trial, also found him guilty of first-degree robbery and two counts of armed criminal action. His sentencing, before Judge David Dowd, has not yet been scheduled. Bowens had a conviction history including drug, robbery, assault, DWI and gun cases. Court and prison records showed he had repeatedly violated the terms of his probation or parole. Knopfel was a lifelong resident of south St. Louis. He graduated from Southwest High School in 1983 and was single. He had worked at the hotel about three years, his brother, Mike Knopfel, told the Post-Dispatch at the time. ST. LOUIS The owner of a St. Louis pizzeria and martial arts studio was arrested Thursday on a federal charge of production of child pornography. Loren Copp, owner of DoJo Pizza, recorded sex acts with an underage girl twice, once when she was 12 and again three to four years later, according to FBI Special Agent Jennifer Lynch in an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint. DoJo Pizza, 4601 Morganford Road, had been raided by state and federal authorities multiple times last fall, starting after a tipster told police that minors were working for Copp and were not being properly fed, cared for or paid, Lynch wrote. The minors were living with Copp because their parents were either homeless or behind bars, the tipster claimed. The tipster claimed that the girls had untreated lice, bed bug bites and sprains and were being touched inappropriately by Copp, Lynch wrote. Searches of Copps computer hard drive last month uncovered images containing sex acts between an adult and a young girl, Lynch wrote. On Wednesday, investigators spoke with a girl who said that she was in the pictures and was 12 in the first video, Lynch wrote. Lawyer Justin Meehan said that Copp was lured to St. Louis City Hall on Thursday afternoon with a ruse a building inspector called Copp and said he was needed. St. Louis police and agents of the FBI and Homeland Security were waiting, Meehan said. Meehan said that he had offered to have Copp turn himself in, but was not contacted. Meehan said Thursday afternoon, before the charges were announced, that he did not know the details of the claims against Copp. DoJos website said that the restaurant supported free karate classes. The building once doubled as a sort of community center. But the former church was condemned by the St. Louis Building Division on Oct. 16 after inspectors found rodent and bug infestations, damage to the building, missing smoke detectors and electrical work done without a permit. They also said that the building was being used as a rooming house without the proper permits. The building is owned by the Ma-ji Ryu Christian Karate Association Inc., incorporated by Copp in 2007. WASHINGTON The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency said Friday it has extended its public comment period on its decision to locate its new facility in north St. Louis until May 2. The extension from 15 to 30 days came after St. Louis-area members of the Illinois congressional delegation earlier this week asked for it. They favor a site near Scott Air Force Base in St. Clair County and want more time to make their case. NGA last week released an environmental study saying it preferred the site in North St. Louis for the new $1.75 billion complex, which will house 3,100 NGA employees, who are part of the nation's global security and intelligence infrastructure. NGA Friday said it was extending the comment period to May 2 to allow for "additional public input before the signing of the final Record of Decision." The NGA said in a news release that that final decision is expected by early June. Sens. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.; and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; and Reps. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro; John Shimkus, R-Collinsville; and Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville on Wednesday wrote NGA Director Robert Cardillo asking for an extension beyond 15 days. In that letter to Cardillo, the Illinois politicians said that "it remains our contention that the St. Clair County site adjacent to Scott Air Force Base is the superior choice in every respect to include mission security, force protection, workforce recruitment, and fiscal responsibility to the federal taxpayer. " Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said earlier this week she was "disappointed by the tenor of some remarks" from Illinois counterparts raising questions about security at the north St. Louis site. McCaskill and Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., both lauded the decision this week and said they expected any challenges to be unsuccessful. "I understand the disappointment, I understand the process, I understand that they are going to fight as hard as they know how for their community," McCaskill said of her Illinois counterparts. "...But this has been a long process and a very thorough process." Chris Patten, noted by some as Lord Patten of Barnes, is easily one of the worlds smartest human beings. He is the chancellor of Oxford University and, in the most delightful letter youll ever read on Why Oxford University Will Not Rewrite History, the term Autres temps, autres moeurs was used. The letter has been attributed to Lord Patten but not confirmed. When I hurried to find out what those words mean, which is other times, other customs, it was an answer I have been seeking since South Carolina changed its flag and New Orleans removed four statues of Confederate heroes. Thank God the crazies were unsuccessful in an attempt to obliterate Nathan Bedford Forrest, who died in 1877, from Tennessees history. Other times, other customs, is exactly what it was and still is. My forefathers owned slaves in Mississippi and fought in the Civil War two things that we today would never do. I am certainly not proud of that, nor am I embarrassed by it. As Lord Patten pointed out in a recent interview on the BBC, Education is not indoctrination. Our history is not a blank page on which we can write our own version of what it should have been according to our contemporary views and prejudice. All of this has come about after a sampling of about a third of Oxfords 22,000 students mostly BAME (black and minority ethnic) students raised all manner of hell that the statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) be removed from the building of Oriel College, which is part of Oxford. At the time of his death, Rhodes bequeathed Oxford University with roughly $8.5 million. In todays money that would be about $15,000 shy of $1 billion (with a b) and to be a Rhodes Scholar is considered the most prestigious academic award in the world. (Chattanooga physician Cliff Cleaveland is a Rhodes Scholar, as is Lookout Mountain and McCallie product Justin Mutter. Robert A. Fisher, a dazzling guy who graduated from UTC, is in his first year of the Rhodes Scholar program.) They claim Rhodes helped form the policy of enforced racial segregation in South Africa. After all, Harvard just sanctimoniously removed the crest of the law school because it was also the coat-of-arms of former slave owner Isaac Royall. Forget the fact a huge bequest in Royalls will (the man died in 1781!) actually built Harvards law school. Once again, Other times, other customs. Earlier this school year some of the BAME students at Oxford heard that a different statue of Cecil Rhodes, who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in South Africa from 1890 to 1896, was just removed from Cape Town due to his racial beliefs at the end of the 18th century, so they started a Rhodes Must Fall effort at Oxford. Two months ago there appeared a letter that was sent to Oxford students and it was first believed Lord Patten may have written it. Then again, it wasnt signed. So while it has been neither confirmed or disavowed, it is a fact the statue of Cecil Rhodes isnt going anywhere. Oxford is firm on that. Heres the letter that has the Isle of Britain all astir and whoever is the author, this one is a classic! * * * Dear Scrotty Students, Cecil Rhodess generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort and well being of many generations of Oxford students a good many of them, dare we say it, better, brighter and more deserving than you. This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his lifetime but then we dont have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you dont understand what this means and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case then we really think you should ask yourself the question: Why am I at Oxford? Oxford, let us remind you, is the worlds second oldest extant university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th century. Weve played a major part in the invention of Western civilization (British spelling), from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through the Enlightenment and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman, Julie Cocks. Were a big deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater their dear mother and they respect and revere her accordingly. And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly. Sure, well concede you the short-lived Southern African civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. But lets be brutally honest here. The contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as near as damn it to zilch. Youll probably say thats racist. But its what we here at Oxford prefer to call true. Perhaps the rules are different at other universities. In fact, we know things are different at other universities. Weve watched with horror at what has been happening across the pond from the University of Missouri to the University of Virginia and even to revered institutions like Harvard and Yale: the safe spaces; the #blacklivesmatter; the creeping cultural relativism; the stifling political correctness; what Allan Bloom rightly called the closing of the American mind. At Oxford however, we will always prefer facts and free, open debate to petty grievance-mongering, identity politics and empty sloganeering. The day we cease to do so is the day we lose the right to call ourselves the worlds greatest university. Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time at Oxford on silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns. (Though it does make us wonder how stringent the vetting procedure is these days for Rhodes scholarships and even more so, for Mandela Rhodes scholarships) We are well used to seeing undergraduates or, in your case postgraduates, making idiots of themselves. Just dont expect us to indulge your idiocy, let alone genuflect before it. You may be black BME as the grisly modern terminology has it but we are colour blind. We have been educating gifted undergraduates from our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth and beyond for many generations. We do not discriminate over sex, race, colour or creed. We do, however, discriminate according to intellect. That means, inter alia (Latin for among other things), that when our undergrads or postgrads come up with fatuous ideas, we dont pat them on the back, give them a red rosette and say: Ooh, youre black and you come from South Africa. What a clever chap you are! No. We prefer to see the quality of those ideas tested in the crucible of public debate. Thats another key part of the Oxford intellectual tradition you see: you can argue any damn thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with facts and logic otherwise your idea is worthless. This ludicrous notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes should be removed from Oriel College, because its symbolic of institutional racism and white slavery. Well even if it is which we dispute so bloody what? Any undergraduate so feeble-minded that they cant pass a bronze statue without having their safe space violated really does not deserve to be here. And besides, if we were to remove Rhodess statue on the premise that his life wasnt blemish-free, where would we stop? As one of our alumni Dan Hannan has pointed out, Oriels other benefactors include two kings so awful Edward II and Charles I that their subjects had them killed. The college opposite Christ Church was built by a murderous, thieving bully who bumped off two of his wives. Thomas Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US Constitution? Winston Churchill had unenlightened views about Muslims and India. Was he then the wrong man to lead Britain in the war? Actually, well go further than that. Your Rhodes Must Fall campaign is not merely fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous. We agree with Oxford historian RW Johnson that what you are trying to do here is no different from what ISIS and the Al-Qaeda have been doing to artefacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering history. And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University on how it should order its affairs? Your #rhodesmustfall campaign, we understand, originates in South Africa and was initiated by a black activist who told one of his lecturers whites have to be killed. One of you Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh is the privileged son of a rich politician and a member of a party whose slogan is Kill the Boer; Kill the Farmer; another of you, Ntokozo Qwabe, who is only in Oxford as a beneficiary of a Rhodes scholarship, has boasted about the need for socially conscious black students to dominate white universities, and do so ruthlessly and decisively! Great. Thats just what Oxford University needs. Some cultural enrichment from the land of Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an AIDS epidemic almost entirely the result of government indifference and ignorance, one of the worlds highest per capita murder rates, institutionalised corruption, tribal politics, anti-white racism and a collapsing economy. Please name which of the above items you think will enhance the lives of the 22,000 students studying here at Oxford. And then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent, more deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of those 22,000 students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they clearly dont merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to ruin the life and fabric of our beloved university. Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you. Yours, Oriel College, Oxford * * * Now consider this: What could we possibly do to entice Chris Patten, A.K.A. Lord Patten of Barnes, to run against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as our next President, provided we could get around the citizenship requirement? It is apparent we have everything to learn from him, yet he has nothing to learn from us. royexum@aol.com JEFFERSON CITY The Missouri Senate signed off on the major pieces of a $27.2 billion state budget Thursday, setting in motion a final push by Republican lawmakers to get the spending blueprint to Gov. Jay Nixons desk. The plan, which would go into effect July 1, restores funding cuts made in the House that had been targeted at the University of Missouri system after last years protests on the Columbia campus. And, it attempts to address rising costs of providing health care to poor Missourians, includes funds to give small raises to state workers and eliminates state funding for Planned Parenthood. Cooler heads prevailed, Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard said of restoring cuts to Mizzou. I think some of the things that MU has done has helped defuse the situation. The Republican-crafted proposal, spread across 13 separate budget bills, is based on a projected 4.1 percent increase in state revenue for the coming year. It calls for no tax increases. For the embattled University of Missouri system, senators erased most of the $8.7 million in cuts the House had inserted in its budget. Senators said those reductions would be punitive and more time should be given to the university system to improve itself after last years racially charged protests at its Columbia campus and the resignation of its system president. The proposal includes an additional $56 million in funding for universities, which amounts to an increase for the schools of about 6 percent. That could be enough to allow schools to freeze tuition. Nixon, during a visit to Crowder College in Neosho on Thursday, thanked the Senate and expressed hope that the added money is not cut during final negotiations between the House and Senate. Missouri leads the nation in holding down tuition increases at public universities, helping to put a college education within reach for more students and their families, the Democratic governor said. Both the House and the Senate must agree on the final budget before it is sent to the governor. The deadline for final passage is May 6. Problems at Mizzou have been a focal point of the 2016 legislative session, with lawmakers calling for audits, budget cuts and the ouster of former communications assistant professor Melissa Click. It has overshadowed some of our other education issues in the state, said Sen. David Pearce, R-Warrensburg. The higher education budget wasnt universally supported. The Senate version would again bar universities from granting in-state tuition rates to an estimated 1,200 students in the country illegally. I think were penalizing some of our brightest students, said Sen. Gina Walsh, D-Bellefontaine Neighbors. I think its the wrong decision, added Pearce. It has tremendous impact. Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, said he doesnt believe granting in-state tuition to students who are not in the U.S. legally is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars. I know there are passionate feelings on both sides of this issue, said Schaefer, who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The budget plan also attempts to address rising health care costs for the states poorest residents. Medicaid costs, for example, are projected to increase 34 percent in the coming year. We are trying to slow this train down, Schaefer said. With prescription drug costs rising above $1.8 billion, the Senate version reduces projected spending by $56 million. Senators also asked the administration to find ways to pare an estimated $22 million by negotiating better drug prices and potentially limiting the amount of drugs prescribed to recipients. Republicans also used the budget to target Planned Parenthood., which has resisted a Senate subpoena in the aftermath of last years investigation into the use of fetal body tissue. The plan bars Medicaid money from going to abortion service providers. State money already is prohibited from being spent on funding abortions. The net result: Missouri will lose $8 million in federal funds. Its pouring salt into an already really, really bad decision, said Sen. Jason Holsman, D-Kansas City. Sen. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, said it was wrong for Republicans to sneak the provision into the budget without having a full debate. The budget also calls for a $71 million increase for the education foundation formula, which funds K-12 public schools. Nixon recommended an $85 million increase. The formula, however, is still underfunded by about $490 million. Schaefer said the growth in Medicaid is keeping the state from paying more. I would like to see it fully funded, but I understand thats not going to happen, said Schupp, a former school board member. Were still breaking our promise to our kids. The bills are House Bills 1-12. CLAYTON Secretary of State Jason Kander said Friday his office is continuing to work with the St. Louis County Board of Elections to determine the cause of an Election Day breakdown that may have disenfranchised hundreds if not thousands of county voters during Tuesdays municipal elections. The county in combination with the Secretary of States Election Integrity Unit is seeking to identify the steps necessary for them to implement to ensure that they do not allow this to happen again, Kander said in a statement. Kander and election officials say the problems primarily surfaced in 63 precincts that serve multiple voting jurisdictions a combination, for example of municipal and school board elections. The problem was exacerbated by a decision not to recalibrate electronic voting machines used two weeks earlier in Missouris presidential primary March 15. Kander has said he expects to disclose complete findings of the Election Integrity Unit next week. County election officials, he reiterated, have taken full responsibility for the situation and cooperated in this review. Election Directors Eric Fey and Gary Fuhr have been summoned to Jefferson City for a joint hearing Wednesday morning by the Missouri House Task Force on Election Procedures and Accountability and the Special Committee on Urban Affairs. Urban Affairs Committee Chair Courtney Allen Curtis, D-Ferguson, said Wednesday he feared the fiasco could further misgivings about a system many North County residents already distrust. We, as a body, need to discuss (what occurred), Curtis said. How many voters did we lose because of missing or wrong ballots? It doesnt restore faith in the electoral system, thats for sure. CLAYTON Ballot shortages, delayed vote tabulations and faulty polling equipment resulted in a botched municipal election Tuesday that has everyone from Gov. Jay Nixon to the voting public denouncing the agency responsible for the fiasco: the St. Louis County Board of Elections. The polls had yet to close before Nixon, Secretary of State Jason Kander, County Executive Steve Stenger and countless voters delivered a verdict on the performance of an agency that managed to deliver incorrect ballots or no ballots at all to more than 60 precincts spread across the county. Stenger said Tuesday during the voting problems, That board really needs to get its act together. He said the situation is completely unacceptable because it affects every resident in St. Louis County. Nixon, who appoints the members of the board, was notably aggressive, promising that Democrat Eric Fey and Republican Gary Fuhr, the officials heading the election agency, be held accountable for this unacceptable failure. The governors spokesman deferred questions on Wednesday about the fate of Fey and Fuhr to the findings of an inquiry by the Secretary of States Election Integrity Unit. Kander, who commissioned the investigation, said the process of debriefing election officials began Wednesday. Reeling from events that turned him into a target of abuse on social media and in polling places countywide, Fey acknowledged that job security could not be a priority. Its kind of out of my hands, said Fey, the lead director of an agency with a staff of 90 full- and part-time employees. My focus has to be on correcting the issues here. Chief among those issues is how some precincts on Tuesday wound up with too many ballots, not enough ballots or ballots listing candidates and issues from other jurisdictions. Fey said it appeared that the disconnect was rooted in a database glitch coupled with a breakdown of systemic checks and double checks before the start of voting at 6 a.m. Tuesday. Were going to get to the bottom of what went wrong, Fey pledged. And were going to address the problems and put new controls in place. An inexcusable debacle In an interview, Kander credited Fuhr and Fey for taking full responsibility for a situation that spiraled out of control. The secretary of state said he expected to disclose next week the results of the Integrity Unit investigation. We will try to determine what went wrong, said Kander, calling the chaos at as many as 50 county polling places inexcusable. The concern in Clayton in the aftermath of an Election Day that included orders issued by two separate state courts focused in part on how the irregularities might affect county finances. It could lead to some contested races by people who feel they were disenfranchised, said County Councilman Mark Harder, a Republican, who successfully pressed Tuesday night for the council to hold a public hearing or Committee of the Whole on the marred election. The county court system will absorb the cost of challenges to Tuesdays results. Meanwhile, in Jefferson City, State Rep. Courtney Allen Curtis, D-Ferguson, responded to the debacle by summoning Fuhr and Fey to a hearing Thursday morning. Curtis later postponed the proceedings to provide the officials with additional time to gather more information about what went wrong. Curtis said he fully intended to pursue the matter at a later date. What happened Tuesday, he said, doesnt restore faith in the electoral system, thats for sure. Bad planning The overarching question in both Clayton and Jefferson City on Wednesday centered on how to best rectify a pattern of Election Day irregularities in St. Louis County. The chair of the Senate Financial, Governmental and Elections Committee, Sen. Jay Wasson, R-Nixa, acknowledged that something has to be changed. But Wasson wasnt sure a remedy lay with state lawmakers. I cant legislate bad planning, the senator noted. Nor is it clear what powers, if any, Nixon might have to reverse what many characterize as a systemic electoral breakdown. In Missouri, the responsibility of appointing the six election board commissioners three from each party falls to the governor. The commissioners then select two directors, one from each party, to essentially run the electoral apparatus. Each commissioner serves for four years. But, as former Elections Director Rita Days learned, the length of tenure is not set in stone. The commissioners dismissed Days, a political ally of former County Executive Charlie Dooley, in mid-January 2015 from the directorship she had held since 2011. State statutes give the governor authority to hire or appoint members of election boards and other commissions. But the law allows the removal of a sitting commissioner or board member only for misconduct in office. Kander, for his part, contends the electoral dysfunction should be addressed at the local level. The folks in St. Louis County are the only ones who can take care of it, he said. David Kimball, a University of Missouri-St. Louis professor of political science with an expertise in elections, said the process could start with a thorough review of the election headquarters staff. Kimball said he believed Fey and Fuhr had been unfairly castigated by Nixon and other critics. You have to hold an election with the staff youve been handed, he said. Firing the two of them wont solve the problem. You have to clean house with what you have. Searching for solutions, state Sen. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, wondered on Wednesday why the task of voting in the county had regressed given the availability of technology that helps get things right. Youd think this would get easier, not harder, said Schupp, a member of the Senate Financial, Governmental and Elections Committee. The county is in fact poised to bring up-to-date technology to the electoral process. In a request for proposals posted last month, the county began soliciting bids from vendors interested in supplying an election management system that will introduce poll books (a hand-held computer such as an iPad) to county precincts. Given the track record in recent elections, Harder is wary of that solution. The introduction of poll books, he notes, will require intensive training of officials both in the field and at election headquarters. And we cant have that if we cant even get the paper ballots right, Harder said. Donald Trumps supporters call it theft. Ted Cruzs supporters call it politics. Backers of Trump, the national front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and winner of Missouris March 15 primary, allege that backers of rival Cruz plan to steal Trumps Missouri delegates by packing the states delegation-selection process with as many Cruz supporters as possible. That process starts Saturday. Ted Cruz is trying to overturn the vote of St. Louis residents, Gary Wiegert, St. Louis city coordinator for Trumps campaign, warned in an email to supporters Thursday. He urges those supporters to show up at caucuses this weekend to help prevent Donald Trump delegates from being stolen by Cruz supporters. But Cruz supporters, along with Missouri GOP officials, counter that what Cruzs people are doing isnt theft. Rather, they say, its just a logical strategy going into a presidential nomination that could be unlike any in generations. Theres a very concerted effort because the battle is not over, said Carl Bearden, a Cruz supporter in St. Charles County who acknowledges the Cruz campaign is trying to get its people elected as local-level delegates from caucuses in Trump-won areas of the state. It isnt over until someone gets to 1,237. That number, 1,237, is the number of delegates that Trump will have to win nationally to become the Republican presidential nominee when the GOP convenes its national convention in Cleveland in July. But with Trumps loss in Wisconsin this week, most analysts say his chances of hitting that number before the convention are now slim. If no one shows up at the convention with 1,237 delegates, it means the nominee wont be chosen on the first ballot among the delegates. That means there will be a second and possibly subsequent ballots. And thats when it starts to matter who Missouri has sent to Cleveland as delegates. Heres how it works: Missouri sends 52 delegates to the convention. Based on the March 15 primary results, Trump will get the votes of 37 of those delegates on the first ballot, and Cruz will get the votes of 15 of them. The delegates themselves the people who will physically go to Cleveland and actually decide on a GOP presidential nominee havent been chosen yet. That will happen in meetings all over Missouri, in a multistep process that starts with local caucuses Saturday. No matter who the chosen delegates personally support as the presidential nominee, they have to vote for the candidate to whom they are bound on the first ballot meaning, 37 votes for Trump and 15 for Cruz. Normally, thats the end of it which is why, for purposes of choosing a presidential nominee, the actual identity of the delegates doesnt usually matter. But if the convention fails to pick a nominee on the first ballot, then the convention will move to subsequent ballots. At that point, the delegates are no longer bound. They can then vote for any candidate they want. In other words, someone sent to Cleveland as a Trump delegate could, on the second or subsequent ballots, decide to vote instead for Cruz. Thats why Cruzs campaign, here and around the country, is trying to get its supporters installed as delegates. And its why Trumps supporters are trying to stop them. The voters of St. Louis voted for Donald Trump, and the people who will be chosen as delegates should be Trump supporters, Wiegert, the St. Louis Trump organizer, said in an interview. We want to guarantee that these delegates arent going to switch after the first ballot. This weekends caucuses will choose people to attend local conventions in each of the Missouris eight congressional districts in late April, and the statewide party convention in May. Those conventions will choose the actual delegates, through a process that strongly favors those who show up, as Missouri Republican Party Chairman John Hancock put it Thursday. The caucuses are open to any registered voter, said state GOP spokesman Jonathon Prouty, so any campaign would be smart to be mobilizing their supporters. The bound delegates will include 40 from Missouris eight congressional districts, with five delegates from each district going to the candidate who won that district. Trump won the First, Second, Third, Sixth and Eighth districts, which includes the entire St. Louis region and most of the eastern and northern portion of the state. Cruz won the Fourth, Fifth and Seventh districts, in the western portion of the state. Trump gets an additional 12 delegates for winning the popular vote over Cruz statewide. The initial Saturday caucuses all over the state include one for St. Louis city at the Casa Loma Ballroom, 3354 Iowa Avenue. The St. Charles County meeting will be at Francis Howell High School, 7001 Highway 94 South. St. Louis County caucuses will be conducted Saturday at various township locations. Almost all of the meetings will start at 10 a.m., with doors opening earlier. But anyone who isnt in line by the meeting start time wont be allowed to participate, Prouty said. Additional information on the caucuses is available at: www.missouri.gop/election-2016/ There are parallel processes that could theoretically come into play in the Democratic convention as well, with one important difference: Theres virtually no chance that the Democrats will fail to nominate a candidate on the first ballot, so the issue is likely moot. The Democrats held local caucuses Thursday. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Governor Bill Haslam announced Dr. Wendy Long will become the director of TennCare and deputy commissioner of Health Care Finance and Administration (HCFA). She will replace Darin Gordon, who is leaving at the end of June after 10 years as TennCare director. She has served as deputy director and chief of staff of the Health Care Finance and Administration division of the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration since 2013. Dr. Long served as chief medical officer for TennCare from 2004-2012. We are fortunate to have someone with such a depth of experience working in TennCare to take on this assignment, Governor Haslam said. TennCare is among the best managed Medicaid programs in the nation, and this move will help us maintain that performance. Tennesseans can have great confidence in Dr. Long in this important position. Started in 1994, TennCare is the states Medicaid program, a $10.5 billion health care enterprise that provides services to nearly 1.5 million Tennesseans. In her role as deputy director of HCFA, Dr. Long has provided leadership to all areas of its operation including oversight of contracts with TennCares network of managed care companies. I am honored that Gov. Haslam asked me to serve in this role, Dr. Long said. My tenure as TennCares deputy director has provided invaluable experience and I am grateful for this leadership opportunity. The dedicated staff at Health Care Finance and Administration are an exceptional group of public servants and I look forward to our continued efforts to promote the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective care for the citizens of Tennessee. Prior to becoming TennCares chief medical officer in 2004, Dr. Long held a variety of positions of increasing responsibility at the Tennessee Department of Health including assistant commissioner and medical director for the Bureau of Health Services. Long also has previous TennCare experience having served as medical director from 1997-1999 and as interim director from March 1998-January 1999. Dr. Long received her undergraduate and medical degrees from Ohio State University and completed a preventive medicine residency and master of public health program at the University of South Carolina. She and her husband, Rick, have two grown children, Brian and Lindsey. 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. Governor Bill Haslam announced that 81 percent of the 2015-16 class of Tennessee Promise students returned for the spring semester after beginning classes last fall. He said, "This high retention rate for Tennessee Promise students is a significant indicator they are on pathways to success in higher education. When we launched Tennessee Promise, our goal was not only to get more students to enroll in a technical or community college but also to see the students succeed and graduate. Students must receive post-secondary credentials if were going to achieve the goal of Drive to 55, and we will continue to work with our campus leaders to ensure these students have the highest possible chances of attaining their certificate or degree. In fall 2015 there was a 24.7 percent enrollment increase at community colleges and a 20 percent enrollment increase at colleges of applied technology (TCATs). Data provided by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission indicates that Tennessee Promise students enrolled at a TCAT had a retention rate of almost 95 percent while community college students were retained at a rate of 78.5 percent. The community college data also includes Austin Peay State University, the single public university with associate degree students. The retention rates for Tennessee Promise students by college are: Austin Peay 88.7% Chattanooga State 78.4% Cleveland State 74.5% Columbia State 74.9% Dyersburg State 81.1% Jackson State 81.9% Motlow State 84.8% Nashville State 81.2% Northeast State 77.1% Pellissippi State 77.2% Roane State 72.1% Southwest 84.8% Volunteer State 73.4% Walters State 75.5% All 27 TCATS 94.7% Total Average 80.6% Historic homes in Music City are returned to their former glory in DIY Networks new series, Nashville Flipped. Premiering Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET/PT, the series stars Troy Dean Shafer, a contractor who rebuilds rundown homes in the citys historic communities. The nine-episode series follows Troy and his team, including designer Julie Couch, as they peel back layers of previous renovations, such as wood-paneled walls, bad paint and worn carpeting to reveal the original beauty of these forgotten homes. "Everybody knows Nashville has a rich music history, but just like every great song, every historic house has a story to tell, said Mr. Shafer. I love to get to the heart of these homes and bring them back to life. I update them with modern materials, but I always stay true to the original design and character. In the premiere episode, Mr. Shafer purchases a 1904 Victorian-style home in Springfield, Tenn., a small town just outside of Nashville. Mr. Shafer and his crew waste no time on the demothe team breaks down walls, tears out the ceilings and alters the floorplan to maximize the 1,300-square foot space. The team finds century-old wallpaper hidden by a previous renovation. Once Mr. Shafers team completes the full demo, Ms. Couch arrives to help him restore the homes early 20th century design, including the cathedral ceiling and an oak mantle in the living room. The revived home, which features new landscaping, fresh siding in a new color, and touches such as vintage chandeliers and stained glass windows rejuvenates the old house into a beautiful new historic home. Since moving to Tennessee from Erie, Pa. in 2005, Mr. Shafer has experienced many transitions. After college he initially moved to Nashville, partially due to his deep admiration for Elvis Presley as a child growing up, while also desiring a music career of his own. A few years of writing and performing around at local nightly hot spots and Mr. Shafer landed a gig with Billy and Rose Falcon for their weekly show. He then took on the role of musician/manager while on tour with Billy to various places such as Asbury Park, Memphis, Norway, and was eventually even given the opportunity to help open for Jon Bon Jovi several times during his Have a Nice Day U.S. tour. In 2008, while still continuing his performance in the music scene, Mr. Shafer decided to start a small renovation company, putting his primary focus on kitchen and bathroom remodels. Although his music career was starting to take off, he continued to be enticed by his ever so growing renovation business as well. This was especially the case when he began to encounter gorgeous (albeit run down) historic homes in the Nashville area. Mr. Shafer said he has such a strong desire to bring these homes back to life. After completing his very first flip, he decided to focus his talents on creating new historic homes in various Tennessee towns, and it was then that Mr. Shafer's company Nashville Flipped was born. Prince Charles and Camilla will be in Stratford-upon-Avon on Saturday, 23rd April, 2016, for the Shakespeare 400 Celebrations. Photo: Clarence House. CHARLES and Camilla will be in Stratford-upon-Avon for the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations later this month, it has been confirmed today, Friday. Clarence House has released details this morning of the Royal visit on Saturday, 23rd April, to mark the 400th anniversary commemorations of Shakespeare's death. As revealed earlier on www.stratford-herald.com, Prince Charles will visit the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's New Place and the newly-restored Tudor Nash's House next door, before touring Holy Trinity Church which houses Shakespeare's grave. Later in the day, he and Camilla will be in the audience for Shakespeare Live!, a special show at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre that will be presented by David Tennant and shown live on BBC Two. In keeping with previous years, throughout the weekend there will be a wide range of activities planned for the town, including the traditional Shakespeare Birthday Parade at 10.15am. A comprehensive 48-page special Herald supplement celebrating all things Shakespeare and a list of activities for Stratfords big weekend is available in this weeks paper, on sale now. Diana Brownhill A MUCH-LOVED and respected Stratfordian, Diana Brownhill, died unexpectedly at her home on Easter Sunday. Diana spent all her working life in Stratford-upon-Avon, and embedded herself in the community. In 1970, she took up a geography post at Stratford Girls Grammar School. Later she was awarded a Teaching Fellowship at St Hildas College, in Oxford. She found this experience both stimulating and rewarding, and it fed very positively into her teaching. In 1990, she was made head of sixth form and subsequently assistant headteacher. This was the most rewarding part of her career. Over the years, Diana found time to run 20 school trips to the Netherlands and 12 to Italy, inspiring girls with her love of both countries. In 2008, on the occasion of the schools 50th anniversary, Diana was presented with a Lifetimes Achievement Award, in recognition of the dedicated professional and caring guidance she had given the girls. She was recognised as Educator of the Year at the Pride of Stratford Awards in 2012. Diana retired reluctantly in 2012, but continued to give advice to individual students, when asked, and in a consultative capacity at St Benedicts High School, in Alcester. Her interest and involvement with the grammar school continued, as an active member of friends of the school and as chairman of the Alumnae Association. Most of Dianas energies were given to the school, but she also involved herself fully in the town. Her love of music was shown in her active membership of the Stratford Choral Society and Stratford Chamber Music Society. Retirement gave Diana an opportunity to pursue her cultural interests further, as a member of Stratford-upon-Avon Decorative and Fine Arts Society (Stradfas) and a friend of the Orchestra of the Swan. Diana had a full and rewarding life. The respect and affection in which she was held by former students was shown when her death was announced on Facebook, receiving more than 90 hits in the first hour, with many glowing tributes. Tributes included Goodness knows how many lives she touched in her time. She was a truly wonderful lady, as well as Di was the embodiment of Shottery Shottery was her life and her care and thoughtfulness were immense. Kate Barnett, head of the grammar school, said Diana had a huge impact on the school over her 42 years of dedicated service, helping to shape its caring ethos - and not least its close family sense of community. Ms Barnett said: Unfailingly warm-spirited, she gave generously and selflessly to the school and all the individuals within it. She oversaw the passage of thousands of girls through the senior part of the school, and her wisdom and guidance were invaluable in forging the career paths and futures of all of them. Generations of girls remember her with enormous affection, and the whole school, including parents, recognise the fantastic contribution she made over so many years. Diana leaves a loving family, who live in Sweden, and many grieving friends. A private family funeral, and a memorial service and celebration of life will be held. Details are set to be announced. George Huxley. THE George Huxley Jazz Men will return to Tysoe Village Hall, by popular demand, to celebrate St Georges Day on Saturday, 23rd April. George Huxley is much in demand in the UK, Europe and the USA, and his soaring soprano evokes memories of the legendary Sidney Bechet, with whom he has often been compared. He is a busy and popular musician who is well-known for many years as a fine clarinettist, soprano and alto saxophonist. George will be joined by Jamie Brownfield on trumpet, Ron Hills on trombone, John Fellowes on bass, and Ken Freeman on piano. Jamie, 23, won the Rising Star award in the 2012 British Jazz Awards. 1460025106_tmp_ARTSJamie_Brownfield The traditional jazz concert starts at 7.30pm, in Tysoe Village Hall, in aid of the much-needed village hall refurbishment. The hall has recently installed disabled toilets, widened doorways, new storage, a new stage, new chairs and table, as well as new heating, lighting and re-wiring. The next phase will be sound insulation, new stage curtains, window blinds and redecoration. Tickets cost 10. A raffle and a licensed bar will also be held. Tickets are available from Tysoe Village Stores or from Sue Baxter on 01295 691011 or baxtersue@btconnect.com The concert was a sell-out in August last year, so those who would like to attend have been advised to book tickets early to avoid disappointment. Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE: CCI) announced today that it acquired Tower Development Corporation (TDC) for approximately $461 million in cash on April 8, 2016. TDC, a portfolio company of Berkshire Partners, owns and operates 336 towers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico with an average tenancy of approximately two tenants per tower. The transaction is expected to contribute approximately $25 to $27 million to site rental gross margin in the first full year of Crown Castles ownership and be immediately accretive to Adjusted Funds from Operations per share. Crown Castle funded the acquisition with available cash, including cash on hand, cash from borrowings under its revolving credit facility and cash from the sale of approximately 3.5 million net shares of common stock at an average price of $85.52 per share year-to-date. Our acquisition of TDC is another successful milestone in our long-term relationship with Berkshire Partners, stated Ben Moreland, Crown Castles President and Chief Executive Officer. The TDC acquisition represents an attractive and accretive investment opportunity that further enhances Crown Castles portfolio of wireless infrastructure. Barbados Government Embraces Transparency Use of Barbados associated with job creation BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - In response to the global outcry against offshore financial jurisdictions caused by the "Panama Papers" leak, the Government of Barbados issued a statement intended to provide the public with a balanced and rational perspective. The leak has led to the propagation of two highly erroneous stereotypes that all offshore financial jurisdictions are used to hide money and that they all erode the proper functioning of the global economy. In stark contrast to a widely held label, Barbados is an example of an ethical, fully transparent jurisdiction that enhances the functioning of the global economy. "We understand that government-to-government secrecy undermines the proper functioning of our global economy given that it can be used as a cover for illicit and illegal activity. Such secrecy creates a flash point for an emotional reaction that is helping to fuel an anti-offshore sentiment in many G20 nations. However, that emotion is leading to the "country profiling" of all offshore financial centers (OFCs) a practice that negatively stereotypes legitimate jurisdictions," said, Donville Inniss Barbados' Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development, and Vice Chair of the Steering Group of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Minister Inniss noted that Barbados has long embraced transparency and the exchange of tax information between governments. As evidence, Barbados has officially and publicly endorsed the OECD's Global Standard for the Automatic Exchange of Information and has agreed to facilitate compliance with the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. "Additionally, beyond being highly cooperative and transparent, Barbados' position as a preeminent low tax jurisdiction attracts business of substance and ethical business structures that provide significant benefits to both domestic markets and the global economy, continued Minister Inniss. Barbados contributes meaningfully to the international economy and does so because of its network of double taxation and bilateral investment treaties - agreements that effectively act as stimulus structures and enable global trade. Studies1 conducted by Dr. Walid Hejazi (published in 2015), Professor of International Business, Rotman School of Management, have analyzed the unique and mutually beneficial economic relationship between Canada and Barbados. According to Dr. Walid Hejazi's most recent study, the evidence concludes that the use of Barbados by "Canadian companies has delivered significant trade, employment and tax benefits to the Canadian economy." More specifically, "the use of Barbados by Canadian companies generates between 26,000 and 31,000 additional jobs in Canada." Dr. Hejazi concluded by saying "governments should work to deepen relationships with OFCs that have enhanced transparency and exchange of information agreements, with Barbados serving as the model jurisdiction." About Barbados' Ministry of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development The Ministry of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development has responsibility for the business sector in Barbados. The International Business Unit (IBU) within the Ministry regulates and licenses international business companies and societies with restricted liability. Additionally, the IBU oversees policy development for the international business sector, facilitates the introduction of new and updated legislation and spearheads the negotiation of tax and investment treaties, as well as exchange of information agreements, on behalf of the Government of Barbados. About Barbados' international business sector Barbados' international business sector contributes approximately 10% of the nation's GDP and is comprised of approximately 4,000 entities. Significant vertical markets within the international business sector include financial services, niche manufacturing as well as information and communications technologies. 1) Barbados: Vital to Canada's Global Competitiveness, by Dr. Walid Hejazi, published in Transnational Corporations Review Volume 7 Number 1 March 2015, pages 22-43. www.tnc-online.net [email protected] SOURCE Barbados Ministry of Industry RICHMOND, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/08/16 -- Catalyst Paper (TSX: CYT) will hold a conference call on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at 8:00 a.m. PDT / 11:00 a.m. EDT to review the Company's 2016 first quarter results. Joe Nemeth, President & Chief Executive Officer and Frank De Costanzo, Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, will host the call. The first quarter report will be released on Monday, May 9th after market close and will be available on the Reports page of Catalyst Paper's website at www.catalystpaper.com/investors. To participate in the conference call, please dial: 877-291-4570 (North America Toll Free) or 647-788-4919 (Greater Toronto Area and International) Following the call, the earnings presentation and webcast will be archived on the Events and Presentations page of Catalyst Paper's website at www.catalystpaper.com/investors. About Catalyst Paper Corporation Catalyst Paper manufactures diverse printing papers such as coated freesheet, C1S, coated and uncoated groundwood, newsprint, directory, as well as market pulp. Customers include retailers, publishers and commercial printers in North America, Latin America, the Pacific Rim and Europe. With five mills across North America, Catalyst has annual production capacity of 2.3 million tonnes. Catalyst is headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, and is ranked by Corporate Knights magazine as one of the 50 Best Corporate Citizens in Canada. Contacts: Catalyst Paper Corporation Eduarda Hodgins Director, Organization Development & Communications 604-247-4369 [email protected] www.catalystpaper.com Source: Catalyst Paper Corporation WASHINGTON, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Professor Alan M. Dershowitz released the following statement regarding resolution of the case styled Bradley Edwards, et al. v. Alan M. Dershowitz, Case No. CACE 15-000072 (Cir. Ct., Broward Cnty., Fla.). STATEMENT OF ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ I am pleased that the litigation has concluded and I am gratified by the Joint Statement issued today by Jeffrey E. Streitfeld on behalf of the parties, in which "Edwards and Cassell acknowledge that it was a mistake to have filed sexual misconduct accusations against Dershowitz and the sexual misconduct accusations made in all public filings (including all exhibits) are hereby withdrawn." Mr. Streitfeld's announcement and the Joint Statement are copied below. ANNOUNCEMENT BY JEFFREY E. STREITFELD, FLORIDA SUPREME COURT CERTIFIED CIRCUIT CIVIL MEDIATOR (Streitfeldlaw.com) It is my pleasure to report that Bradley J. Edwards, Paul G. Cassell, and Alan M. Dershowitz have resolved their disputes and have agreed to settle the claims raised in an action pending in the Broward County, Florida Circuit Court. Since being appointed by Circuit Court Judge Thomas Lynch IV last fall, it has been a privilege to act as the mediator and assist the parties and their counsel toward this agreed resolution. I want to extend my appreciation for the professionalism exhibited by the parties and their counsel with whom I worked directly: Jack Scarola, Rick Simpson, Tom Scott, and Ken Sweder. As part of their agreement, the parties have issued the attached Joint Statement. JOINT STATEMENT OF BRAD EDWARDS, PAUL CASSELL AND ALAN DERSHOWITZ REGARDING SETTLEMENT Brad Edwards, Paul Cassell and Alan Dershowitz have today settled their pending defamation claims in which Edwards and Cassell sued Dershowitz and Dershowitz counterclaimed against Edwards and Cassell. The case was about Dershowitz's public claims that Edwards and Cassell, as the attorneys for Virginia Roberts, had failed to perform the necessary due diligence before filing the allegations of their client, not whether the acts of alleged misconduct in fact occurred. Edwards and Cassell vigorously denied the contention that they had acted improperly and asserted that it defamed them. Dershowitz countersued Edwards and Cassell, alleging they had falsely accused him of sexual contact with Robertsa claim he vigorously denied and that Dershowitz asserted defamed him. Edwards and Cassell maintain that they filed their client's allegations in good faith and performed the necessary due diligence to do so, and have produced documents detailing those efforts. Dershowitz completely denies any such misconduct, while not disputing Roberts's statements that the underlying alleged misconduct may have occurred with someone else. Dershowitz has produced travel and other records for the relevant times which he relies on to establish that he could not have been present when the alleged misconduct occurred. He has also produced other evidence that he relies upon to refute the credibility of the allegations against him. The parties believe it is time to take advantage of the new information that has come to light on both sides during the litigation and put these matters behind them. Given the events that have transpired since the filing of the documents in the federal court and in this action in which Dershowitz was accused of sexual misconduct, including the court order striking the allegations in the federal court filings, and the records and other documents produced by the parties, Edwards and Cassell acknowledge that it was a mistake to have filed sexual misconduct accusations against Dershowitz; and the sexual misconduct accusations made in all public filings (including all exhibits) are hereby withdrawn. Dershowitz also withdraws his accusations that Edwards and Cassell acted unethically. Neither Edwards, Cassell, nor Dershowitz have any intention of repeating the allegations against one another. Editor's note: Wiley Rein LLP represents Alan M. Dershowitz in this matter. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lawyers-acknowledge-mistake-in-filing-sexual-misconduct-charges-against-professor-dershowitz-300248832.html SOURCE Wiley Rein LLP Southern Lit Alliance and UTC College of Arts & Sciences will congratulate over 300 winners of the 17th annual Young Southern Student Writers contest. The winners and their families will gather at the historic Tivoli Theater for an awards ceremony on Tuesday. Each year, So Lit and UTC invite students in grades K-12 to submit original creations in poetry and prose. This year, the review panel saw upwards of 4,000 submissions from Chattanoogas students. The writing contest, which began in 1999, is hailed by teachers for encouraging creativity outside of the classroom, and remains a staple in Chattanooga curriculum, said officials. UC Foundation Professor of English Joe Wilferth at UTC said, I would especially like to thank our regions dedicated teachers, K-12, who encouraged their students to submit entries. More than that, I am grateful for their efforts as they teach young authors to enjoy the craft and lifelong skill of writing. Without our elementary, middle grade and high school teachers and parents, we would not have such fine work from these young people. Darcy Welch, executive director of Southern Lit Alliance, said, So Lit is grateful for the 17 year partnership with the English department of UTC in facilitating the Young Southern Student Writers contest. We are thrilled that this contest continues to grow and reach a diverse audience of public and private school students and nurtures them as writers and innovative thinkers. Since 1952, Southern Lit Alliance has brought literary arts experiences and educational enrichment programs to the Chattanooga community. To learn more about Young Southern Student Writers and other offerings, visit www.SouthernLitAlliance.org. By Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - A Bangladeshi company has suspended work on a planned Chinese-backed coal-fired power plant after four demonstrators opposing its construction were killed earlier this week, a senior company official said on Thursday. Villagers for and against the power plant clashed on Monday before riot police fired their weapons after coming under attack. Three protesters died that day and a fourth died later in the hospital. S Alam Group, a Bangladeshi conglomerate responsible for building construction at the site, has halted the work because of safety concerns, said the official. "The development work is suspended for now and hopefully the situation will be improved soon to start our work again," he said, asking not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The $2.4-billion, 1,320-megawatt project in the coastal district of Chittagong would help Bangladesh end electricity shortages. The plant, located 265 km (165 miles) southeast of the capital Dhaka, is a major source of foreign investment into Bangladesh, and one of a series of plans Beijing is pushing to cultivate closer ties with Dhaka. China's SEPCOIII Electric Power Construction Corp, which signed a deal to build the plant with S Alam on Monday, wants the government to intervene to end the violence before it restarts work, the S Alam official said. "They wanted to know how many days will it take to settle the issue and how it will be solved," he said. A leading protester told Reuters on Thursday that he had given the government a deadline of Friday to cancel the plant or opponents would continue their demonstrations. "If necessary, the people will sacrifice their lives to save their forefathers home and land," Liakot Ali said. The protesters say villagers around the project will lose their homes and it will disturb the graveyards of relatives as well as cause environmental damage. The plant aims to produce electricity by 2019 but it might miss the target, Ajharul Islam, chief engineer of the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board in Chittagong said. S Alam project coordinator Bahadur Alam said 360 acres (146 hectares) of land has been purchased for the project. He said the site lies in an isolated area and accused protest leaders of provoking neighboring communities after their demand for money was rejected. Liakot Ali denied demanding any money from S Alam. Bangladesh's government would provide assistance in moving the site of the plant if asked, Nasrul Hamid, a junior minister for power, energy and mineral resources, said Thursday. Electricity "is a top priority sector," he said. (Reporting by Serajul Quadir; additional reporting by Nazimuddin Shyamol from Chittagong; Editing by Tommy Wilkes and Christian Schmollinger) By Teis Jensen COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish police said they had arrested four people on Thursday suspected of having been recruited by Islamic State (IS) to commit terrorist violence, and two others of breaking Danish weapons law. Police said in a statement the four had been indicted for "having violated the penal code ... by allowing themselves to be recruited by IS in Syria to commit terrorist acts". Later on Thursday police arrested two people they believe could be linked to ammunition and weapons found during a search carried out in connection with the earlier detention of the four. The two will be indicted for breaking Danish weapons law, Copenhagen Police said in a statement. Neighboring Sweden on Thursday charged a 20-year-old man with terrorism for allegedly building a suicide bomb with the intent of staging an attack in Sweden. The Danish arrests were part of a joint effort by police and the intelligence service PET to combat the enlisting of people by terrorist groups in war-torn areas of Syria and northern Iraq, police said. The police would not provide more details on the identities of the six, or the charges against them. They will appear before a judge for preliminary hearings on Friday. The prosecution had requested that Friday's hearing for the four suspected IS recruits be closed to the public, police said. More than 125 people are believed to have joined IS after going to Syria and Iraq from Denmark, PET said in October, adding that at least 27 had died there. "We know that people who have fought for IS in Syria or Iraq may pose a specific security threat against Denmark," Justice Minister Soren Pind said in statement shortly after the arrests. Only one person, a 23-year-old, has previously been charged under the same section of the Danish penal code with being recruited for terrorist acts. He was charged in December and his trial is expected to begin in May. Danish authorities have been on high alert since two people were killed in shooting attacks at a free speech event and a synagogue in Copenhagen in February last year. Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks that killed 32 people in Brussels last month and attacks in Paris in November that killed 130 people. (Additional reporting by Nikolaj Studsgaard; Editing by Andrew Roche) By Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi ZURICH (Reuters) - A school's decision to allow two Muslim pupils not to shake their teachers' hands has added fresh fuel to an ongoing debate in Switzerland about integration of immigrants. When the 14- and 15-year-old brothers refused to shake female teachers' hands last November, citing their religious beliefs, the school in Therwil near Basel replaced the customary greeting with a verbal one from the boys to both male and female teachers. The compromise solved the issue at the school, but when the public broadcaster SRF reported on it last week, it tapped into a groundswell of concern about immigration that is being felt all over Europe. The Egerkinger Committee, a lobby group that succeeded through a referendum in 2009 in banning minarets, and wants to do the same for Muslim face veils, has called for immigrants shunning Swiss customs to be shown the door. "Those refusing integration should not have their residence permits renewed," the committee wrote. Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga told SRF the schoolboys' action was not how she imagined integration. "We cannot accept this, even in the name of religious freedom," she said. "The handshake is part of our culture." Sommaruga, who has championed migrants' rights and pushed through legislation to handle asylum requests better, stands with other liberals who say women's rights are at stake along with Swiss customs. Muslim community representatives have so far taken a conciliatory line. Montassar Benmrad, president of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Switzerland, cited the Islamic principle of respecting others and avoiding unnecessary embarrassment. "It's important that the Muslim students concerned show respect towards the teachers that educate them year-round," Benmrad said on the organization's website. Some rights groups also note that an increasing number of Israeli El Al flights have been delayed by ultra-Orthodox Jewish male passengers asking not to have women seated next to them - an issue that has led one female 81-year-old Holocaust survivor to sue the airline for discrimination after being asked to move to another seat. Benmrad warned against responding too hastily to cultural differences. "From experience, it's more efficient and productive to solve such issues through constructive dialogue rather than in confrontation," he said. (Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi; Editing by Kevin Liffey) A marijuana leaf is displayed at Canna Pi medical marijuana dispensary in Seattle, Washington, in this November 27, 2012 file photo. REUTERS/Anthony Bolante By Scott Malone (Reuters) - An effort to allow Maine residents to vote to legalize recreational marijuana use advanced on Friday when a judge overruled a state official's decision invalidating some of the signatures needed to get the initiative on the ballot. The ruling came a month after Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap's office disqualified almost half of the 99,229 voter signatures gathered by marijuana activists, leaving the initiative without enough certified supporters to land a spot on the ballot. The Secretary of State's office said it had invalidated the petitions over concerns that the signatures of notaries public on various forms submitted did not match up with versions on file in official state records. The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol, a national group advocating for the referendum, appealed the state's decision last month, saying that officials had disenfranchised tens of thousands of Maine voters based on a "handwriting technicality." Maine Business and Consumer Court Justice Michaela Murphy on Friday ruled the state used an "incorrect and improper standard" to invalidate the signatures. The referendum would allow adults 21 and older to legally possess marijuana, while levying a 10 percent tax on recreational sales. Marijuana use in public would remain illegal. David Boyer, campaign manager for Maine's legalization initiative, said the decision would allow the group to focus on reaching out to voters, rather than on a court fight. "We're excited and look forward to educating Mainers," Boyer said. "This is the easy part now." Dunlap said in a statement that his office was reviewing the decision and considering its options. Voters in four U.S. states plus the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational use of the drug in similar ballot initiatives. Advocates have pushed for similar referendums this year in a half-dozen other states, including Massachusetts and California. Nearby Vermont could become the first state to legalize recreational marijuana use by legislative act if lawmakers in its House of Representatives approve a bill already passed by the Senate and supported by Governor Peter Shumlin. Maine Republican Governor Paul LePage has long opposed efforts to legalize marijuana for recreational, calling it a "gateway" to more serious drugs. The state legalized medical marijuana in 1999. Voters in Ohio last year voted down a measure that would have legalized recreational marijuana use there. (Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Additional reporting by Dave Sherwood in Portland, Maine; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - More than 30,000 people displaced by fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have been cut off from aid because of ongoing insecurity, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Thursday. Tens of thousands of people were forced to flee Mpati in North Kivu province after fighting erupted there at the end of March between government forces and armed groups, the NRC said. "There are more than 30,000 people displaced all over the place without support because we are for now unable to reach them because of the potential risk," Mickael Amar, NRC's head of mission in Congo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "This is something common here in Congo, we are used to (stopping) activities because of insecurity and we go back after 10 or 15 days, but 10 or 15 days for a displaced person without any support is a lot," he said in a phone interview from Congo. Amar said that although NRC has not yet been able to assess the exact needs of the displaced, they lacked food and shelter. In a statement, he urged the warring parties to give aid agencies access to the people in need. "If this does not happen we will see an already critical situation turning drastically worse," he said. In January, the United Nations said a surge in kidnappings and general insecurity in North Kivu province in recent months had made delivering life-saving humanitarian aid a "Herculean task". Congo's east has been plagued by instability since regional wars between 1996 and 2003 killed millions, most from hunger and disease. Dozens of armed groups continue to prey on the local population and exploit the region's rich mineral deposits. Amar said that last week unknown people entered an NRC compound in Mpati and stole some of their assets, including phones and radio equipment. "It shows that humanitarian access starts to be a bit complicated," he said. "Today we've been informed that shooting took place in the same area ... No one has been injured because it was shooting in the sky (but) it creates a lot of confusion." In January, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) closed one of its projects in Congo following a December attack on one of their convoys and abduction of two of their staff. Amar said NRC was trying to negotiate with the Congolese government safe access to the displaced people through other partners, including the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). (Reporting by Magdalena Mis, editing by Alex Whiting; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org) UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 Form 6-K REPORT OF FOREIGN PRIVATE ISSUER PURSUANT TO RULE 13a-16 OR 15d-16 UNDER THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 For the month of April, 2016. Commission File Number 001-13422 AGNICO EAGLE MINES LIMITED (Translation of registrants name into English) 145 King Street East, Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario M5C 2Y7 (Address of principal executive office) Indicate by check mark whether the registrant files or will file annual reports under cover of Form 20-F or Form 40-F. Form 20-F o Form 40-F x Indicate by check mark if the registrant is submitting the Form 6-K in paper as permitted by Regulation S-T Rule 101 (b)( 1): o Note: Regulation S-T Rule 101 (b)( 1) only permits the submission in paper of a Form 6-K if submitted solely to provide an attached annual report to security holders. Indicate by check mark if the registrant is submitting the Form 6-K in paper as permitted by Regulation S-T Rule 101 (b)(7): o Note: Regulation S-T Rule 101(b)(7) only permits the submission in paper of a Form 6-K if submitted to furnish a report or other document that the registrant foreign private issuer must furnish and make public under the laws of the jurisdiction in which the registrant is incorporated, domiciled or legally organized (the registrants home country), or under the rules of the home country exchange on which the registrants securities are traded, as long as the report or other document is not a press release, is not required to be and has not been distributed to the registrants security holders, and, if discussing a material event, has already been the subject of a Form 6-K submission or other Commission filing on EDGAR. Indicate by check mark whether the registrant by furnishing the information contained in this Form is also thereby furnishing the information to the Commission pursuant to Rule 12g3-2(b) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Yes o No x The property on 20 Fraser Street is a tidy 1702 square metre section, surrounded on all sides by state houses. It's been called a "diamond in the rough" but this Auckland section of land is also being tipped as the key to revamping a state house enclave on the city's North Shore. The privately-owned 1702 square metre section in Northcote Basin is being touted as ideal for development into terraced housing or apartments as part of an area allowing subdivision subject to council approval. The agents selling the block says it "has quickly drawn the attention of a number of property developers and speculators" already. Bayleys The expansive section is currently occupied solely by a four-bedroom one storey house. The land, along with a dated four-bedroom family home, is one of few private land-holdings in the area which is dominated by Housing New Zealand dwellings. Bayleys salespeople Jo Glancy and Sam Yeung said the value of the property was in the land, and what it could be used for in years to come. READ MORE: * Auckland's controversial new residential zoning maps released * Auckland Council abandons controversial Unitary Plan zoning proposals * Development plan for Northcote and Takapuna Glancy said the most likely buyer of the Fraser Avenue address would be a property developer or a calculated "gambler" looking at securing the ultimate "diamond in the rough" land-banking investment. "Should Housing New Zealand decide to sell off its neighbouring stock into private ownership, then this property becomes highly strategic," she said. If Housing New Zealand was to sell the surrounding properties down the track, the Fraser Street property could become part of a large scale development. "The location of number 20 Fraser Street being at the very centre of what could be a major gentrification redevelopment makes it the most strategic piece in the jigsaw," she said. The single story home has been in the same family for around 50 years, and has held a place in the Northcote community for much of that time. A bounty of fruit and vegetables gathered from the once-abundant back lawn was distributed to children attending local schools. Back in the day, a free-standing swimming pool located in a corner of the section was used to teach underprivileged Northcote children to swim. Protesters are calling on Countdown supermarkets to stop selling caged eggs after new footage revealed hens living in poor conditions. A small but committed band of demonstrators gathered on Friday outside a Countdown supermarket on Victoria Street West in Auckland. Another protest was organised outside a supermarket in Newtown, Wellington. The Auckland group was led by Farmwatch investigator John Darroch, who was involved in filming the revealing footage. Jack van Beynen/FAIRFAX NZ Protesters with placards outside a Countdown supermarket on Victoria St West in Auckland. They are gathered to call on Countdown to stop selling caged eggs. He shot the video last month at Heyden Farms in Waikato, which uses "colony cages" instead of smaller battery cages. READ MORE: * MPI decides not to prosecute Heyden Farms despite shocking hen video * Animal rights group SAFE calls on Countdown to dump cage-farmed eggs It showed hens with large patches of missing feathers crowding perches and eggs lying beside dead chickens stuck in the bars of the cages. The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) said the conditions the footage showed were "not acceptable practice", but it would not prosecute the farm. In response to the clip, Countdown said it would stop stocking Heyden Farms eggs until it was confident the farm was meeting animal welfare standards. At the protest on Friday, Darroch said Countdown and other supermarkets needed to do more. "We've seen this before, when we expose an industry it's just that particular supplier gets told their products won't be accepted for a few weeks, and then it goes back to normal." He said the problem was not with Heyden Farms, but with the colony cage system generally. The farm, which had modern facilities, was an example of "absolutely stock-standard colony cage farming". The egg production industry has committed to phasing out battery cages by 2022, and colony cages are touted as a more humane replacement. Darroch said that in reality there was very little difference between the types of cages, and it was important consumers realised phasing out battery cages didn't mean cages were gone altogether. "These colony cages, when you put them side-by-side with battery cages, they look identical. And in fact the hens I found inside these colony cages were in far worse condition than any of the hens I've seen inside a battery cage." On Thursday, Egg Producers Federation executive director Michael Brooks said colony cages were better for chickens "Colony farming maintains low disease rates, low mortality and higher hygiene standards than current cage farming, which is why the industry is well underway with the transition to this model." Darroch hoped the protest would encourage shoppers to pressure supermarkets to stop selling all caged eggs. "It's really going to be consumer pressure which is going to make Countdown bow," he said. Countdown's Facebook page has been flooded with dozens of public posts from customers asking the chain to stop selling caged eggs. In response to the protesters' demands, Countdown on Friday would not commit to removing caged eggs from its shelves. "An entire move away from the new colony cages would require a commitment from both the egg industry and Government," spokesperson James Walker said. Walker said there was also a "balance to be reached" with food affordability. "There is continued demand for affordable eggs and more pressure than ever before to lower the cost of food. Eggs are a good source of protein and it's important to us that we continue to provide affordable eggs to meet this demand." However, the supermarket expected all its suppliers to comply with the Animal Welfare (Layer Hens) Code of Welfare 2012, which approves colony cages. Concerns about Heyden Farms' compliance with this code had caused Countdown to take Heyden Farms' eggs off the shelves in the 14 stores they were sold in. Countdown sells around 18 per cent of New Zealand's eggs, according to its own estimates. Of that 18 per cent, 40 per cent are non-caged. Walker said the chain was working to increase the supply of cage-free eggs in its stores. "As one example, we have been working with Otaika Valley eggs to improve availability of free range eggs in our stores." The other major supermarket company in New Zealand, Foodstuffs, said on Thursday that the Independent Egg Producers Co-op, of which Heyden Farms is a member, did supply some of its house brand eggs. But it did not announce that it was removing the eggs from its shelves. "As a business we follow the direction of MPI and we have not received any evidence to date to support the removal of the products from shelf," Foodstuffs spokeswoman Antoinette Laird said. Henry Van der Heyden is both a director of Foodstuffs and a shareholder in Heyden Farms. Asked whether there was a conflict of interest, the company said it was the co-op's responsibility to manage its suppliers. "Like any large company we have very clear and proven conflict avoidance management processes for any of our directors' personal interests," Laird said. "Directors declare their personal interests when they take on a directorship position and processes are in place that clearly define the steps required to avoid conflict, this is standard business practice." Fairfax is attempting to contact Van der Heyden for comment. Marlborough cray and commercial fishers stakeholders group spokesman Larnce Wichman says the proposed marine recreational fishing park will create conflict and over-fishing in other areas. The proposed Marine Protection Areas Act has been hastily conceived and includes little structure on how the proposals will work, a fishing group says. Public submissions on the proposed legislation, which will include zoning off the Marlborough Sounds for recreational fishers, close on Friday. New Zealand Rock Lobster director Larnce Wichman said a submission had been presented on behalf of the Cramac5 commercial fishing stakeholders group. Wichman expected up to 50 submissions would come from the Marlborough area, many opposing the recreational marine park reforms. READ MORE: *Marlborough Sounds recreational fishing park 'rushed' *Marine parks necessary to correct mankind's abuses *Marlborough people must make submissions on proposed fish park The Cramac5 group represented all commercial fishermen, including cray fishermen, in the Cra5 quota area from Farewell Spit to the Waitaki River mouth. The group's submission supported a review of marine protected areas but did not support the process being used to achieve the legislative changes, Wichman said. Wichman said the group believed the proposed changes would create over-fishing and unnecessary conflict among commercial fishermen. He described the process since the review changes were first mooted as "hasty and unstructured". "The process should have been developed over one to two years, instead it is being pushed forward for political motives to be completed by late 2017 before the next election," he said. "We support commercial inshore fishermen and protecting significant areas and environmental habitats but we are not in support of marine fishing parks. "There is too much of the unknown within the proposals, such as who will manage the recreational fishery, how they will be managed and how big the proposed marine park for the Marlborough Sounds will be." Creating a marine recreational park in the Marlborough Sounds along the proposed boundary from Stephens Island to Cape Koamaru would cause a big displacement of commercial fishermen to other areas. These areas would become over-fished and create conflict from fishers already in the area, he said. "If the commercial harvest is cut in the Marlborough Sounds these people will have to go elsewhere, and elsewhere is already occupied by other fishers." Wichman said the group's submission did not agree with the offer to compensate loss of quota. "Many of the fishers are ACE holders, or 'annual catch entitlement' fishers, who lease quota from larger companies. "It is the large quota holders who will get the compensation. "ACE holders won't get a single penny." Wichman said fishing would become unaffordable to many small scale fishers forced to travel further distances to catch fish. "It's a very bad situation and we are really concerned with the flow on effect for many of these local businesses." Wichman said there were already systems in place to manage recreational catch limits and area closures. "We don't need a marine park to achieve this." Marlborough Marine Futures spokesman Eric Jorgensen said all stakeholder groups had similar concerns with the speed at which the review was being conducted, and the number of government agencies involved. "We all need to stop and take a deep breath and discuss this over the next two to three years to get it right," he said. Jorgensen said the review aimed for integrated management of protected areas like the Marlborough Sounds but failed to mention how it would be achieved. "We need to discuss the process of how it will work," he said. Jorgensen said the proposed legislation did not address resource management, or national coastal and freshwater policies in the Sounds. The General Officer In Command building in Taranaki St, with new pedestrian-protecting footpaths. A historic building in Wellington's Taranaki St isn't yet at risk from humans - but humans could be at risk from it. The NZ Defence Force has confirmed a military building is safe - for now - from demolition, and works installing containers around it are to protect passersby. The General Officer In Command building in Taranaki St has had containers placed near it in the past week, sparking concerns a sneaky demolition was about to begin. CAMERON BURNELL/FAIRFAX NZ Mt Cook Mobilised spokesman Peter Cooke and Wellington City councillor Iona Pannett last year in front of the 1911 building. Last year the NZDF gained consent to demolish the building, along with the neighbouring HMNZS Olphert after they were found to meet less than 10 per cent of current building standards, READ MORE: * Wrecking ball looms for building On Friday Wellington City councillor Iona Pannett said she understood the building was not about to be demolished, and the containers were for pedestrian safety. Since the containers had arrived Pannett had been contacted by community members concerned the building was being demolished. The council would be discussing the building's future with the NZDF and the containers were a "safety measure" while any decisions were made. Pannett said the building had not been red-stickered so the move was a voluntary one on the part of the NZDF. "We're not encouraging all buildings with a yellow sticker to take the same measures. We've got over 700 of them." The building is beside the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park and is listed by Heritage New Zealand as a Category 2 historic building. "We think it's got quite a lot of merit, and it's got some public support behind keeping it as part of the memorial park." An NZDF spokesman confirmed the containers were to keep passersby safe from the building, which was about 9 per cent of building standards. "The building is vacant but given its location on a busy thoroughfare, the NZDF is placing containers on the footpaths nearby to shelter the public from falling masonry in a significant earthquake." No decisions have been made about the site in the long-term, he said. Last year supporters of keeping the building staged a silent gathering outside the site on Armistice Day. They said in relative terms, given New Zealand's brief post-European history, it would be like ripping down The Tower of London in Britain. Sandy Thomson explains back in October why he went to court after being told he could not keep Callum in his Oriental Parade apartment. A court has confirmed a devoted dog-owner and his pet could be forced to take permanent "walkies" from a Wellington beachfront penthouse. Sandy Thomson, of Oriental Bay, bought Callum, a dandie dinmont terrier, without first getting the permission of directors of the company-share Dorchester Apartments, where he lives. The directors refused to give retrospective approval for Thomson to make an exception to the "no pets" rule in the building. And Thomson declined to get rid of Callum, who is now just over a year old. MAARTEN HOLL/ FAIRFAX NZ Callum the dandie dinmont terrier is not welcome at Dorchester Apartments and now neither is his owner Sandy Thomson. The directors then went to the High Court in Wellington to get its tick on the process it can follow to get rid of not just the dog, but Thomson too, if necessary, because he broke the rules. READ MORE: * Callum the dandie dinmont wins first round of city apartment battle * Lawyers reveal secrets of apartment disputes after court battle over dog Justice Simon France found the directors were within their powers to move against both man and man's best friend, but the parties have been given time to try to agree a resolution. Thomson said naturally he was disappointed, but not dismayed by the decision. "We still have a couple of promising avenues open to us. "We'll still attempt to extract fairness and see if we can get just a wee bit of evidence of a human condition." Speaking from Australia, where he is on business, he said when he contacted an Australian breeder about getting a dog, buying one of the apartments was not something he had considered. By the time he was considering buying an apartment, he had no thought of getting a puppy. But when he had been in his new home for only a short time, he was told a puppy would be on its way to him in 10 weeks. "Prior to Callum's arrival, my lawyer gave me the news that the Dorchester was a no-pet building. But then Callum, who was a 12-week-old bundle of fluff, arrived. "I advised my contact on the board that I was in breach, but I had an overriding responsibility to look after a 12-week-old puppy." The apartments are owned via shares in a company. Buying shares entitles the owner to an "occupation licence" for a particular apartment. If an owner breaks the rules, the directors of the company can terminate the licence to occupy and sell the rule-breaker's shares. Thomson argued three-quarters of the shareholders would have to vote to end his occupation licence, but the judge agreed with the directors that they can issue a termination notice. Other rules in the Dorchester constitution include bans on hanging washing on balconies, or holding any auctions in the building. The judge said Thomson was not just breaking a rule, he was breaking the terms of the occupation licence itself, which he signed as a shareholder, promising to "faithfully and punctually" comply. Dorchester directors have been approached for comment. A velvetleaf plant amongst fodder crop. The weed came through in imported seed. New Zealand import standards have failed by letting one of the world's worst cropping weeds into the country, a farmer says. Velvetleaf, considered one of the world's most damaging cropping weeds was found on a farm in Matamata earlier this month, sparking a nationwide search initiated by the Ministry for Primary Industries. Federated Farmers grain and seed North Island vice chairman Hew Dalrymple said a big deal should be made about the breach. "New Zealand has import standards systems to protect us from this stuff - they have failed. At the end of the day they have failed. They haven't worked," he said. READ MORE: * Velvetleaf found in 125 hectares of Manawatu-Whanganui farmland * Manawatu farmers urged to watch out for one of the world's worst cropping weeds "We need to have a very close look at that and why they've got through." Velvetleaf was discovered in fodder beet seeds imported from Europe. MPI spokesman Mark Bullians said they had imposed tough new border restrictions to stop contaminated seed from entering New Zealand. However, Dalrymple said the horse had bolted. "We'd like to stop it before it gets here and have to spend mega dollars. We'd rather be at the top of the cliff not the bottom." There needed to be a "thorough look" and changes would need to be made. He said MPI were frantically trying to deal with it. "They will not - categorically - will not get all the plants. "It's not too late if we can isolate it and then go back and crank into it next year." He would want to see prosecution carried out if someone had done something deliberately. He hoped it would be able to be contained, but noted it had spread quite far. "It's in Southland, it's in Waikato, it's in Manawatu. It's not pretty." Bullians said they were still investigating. "As part of the investigation, MPI will visit fodder beet growing regions in Europe during the coming growing season to review the certification systems that countries use to assure New Zealand that imported seed is free of contaminants." There have been 13 sites confirmed with velvet leaf in the Horizons region to date and 132 nationwide most in Southland, Otago and Canterbury. St Kentigern College was told not to use a real "cut throat" razor blade weeks before the school's opening night Sweeney Todd production, according to a prop supplier. Amusement turned to horror for the school's production when two actor/pupils were hurt, one seriously, while performing a throat-slitting scene. The supplier, who does not wish to be named, said members of the show's production visited his company "weeks before" the musical opened. SUPPLIED Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd in the 2007 film adaptation by Tim Burton. "We had those guys through here, they were looking at the real razor blades, we've got some rusty ones here, it's crazy . . . we don't let school productions have those." READ MORE: Razor wrapped in duct tape used in school play accident Penny Fitt, Associate Director at Toi Whakaari said it was not normal practice in productions to use real knives and if so, they were usually made to be very blunt. The prop supply company followed industry "standard procedure" with the St Kentigern production members and suggested to them they use cardboard or rubber knives, not real ones, the prop supervisor said. "That's the thing that's so surprising for a school play, you could use a painted piece of wood or something like that, that's what people do. "With a school you're thinking safety comes first, right?" The supplier doesn't stock fake rubber or plastic cut throat razor blades, but the supervisor said they were available for purchase online. St Kentigern College principal Steve Cole said the school's Sweeney Todd production used a real razor wrapped in duct tape and paper. The razor had been used throughout rehearsals without incident, he said. St Kentigern College has been approached for comment on the prop supplier's statement. Actors Equity president Jennifer Ward-Lealand told RNZ she was surprised the Auckland school used a real razor blade when a good fake blade and good acting would have been convincing. In some versions of the musical, adapted from a Victorian penny dreadful, Sweeney Todd (a barber) slits his victims' throats before disposing of them through a trapdoor. An eyewitness said the audience on the show's Wednesday night opening had no idea an accident had happened and that blood spilt was real blood, not all fake blood. "No announcements were made to the audience that the throat slitting was not all just 'fake blood', the show went on, we never knew anything about the real blood being spilt until later," the audience member said. The injured students, who were rushed to Auckland Hospital, have since been discharged. Worksafe New Zealand is investigating the incident. Under health and safety laws enacted two days before the Sweeney Todd incident, the college could face a fine of up to $600,000 if it has been found to have had knowledge the school drama presented a serious risk of harm. Counties-Manukau police visited the school on Thursday and made "initial inquiries" about the incident, a police spokeswoman said. The exclusive east Auckland school has also launched its own investigation into how the students suffered injuries. Principal Cole said he was "very concerned" about the accident. "Our priority is to continue to support the boys and their families, and we would appreciate if their privacy is respected. "We are also very focused on helping other cast and crew members, along with the wider school community and have offered all students counselling." Three of the four official speakers at the launch of Waikato's ultra fast broadband rollout can't get fibre at their rural homes. It illustrates the gaping hole in New Zealand's internet connectivity. While Minister of Communications Amy Adams heralded UFB as "the future" and "the number one economic enabler", she agreed that New Zealand's rural properties are not necessarily going to see fibre any time soon. "I only have $210 million to work with. I have to work out how I can get fibre to the most number of people possible with the money I have available," Adams explained. It could take a lot of money to get fibre to a small number of people, she said, and she is focused on getting bang for her buck. But Adams argued there were other ways to get faster internet speeds to farmers, including having cell towers supporting wireless connections with 100megabit connections. Hamilton's phase one rollout was completed in January, six months ahead of schedule. And before too long, phase two would start to roll out, which communities could put a case forward for getting, she said. The possibilities with UFB were limitless and communities should get on board, Adams said. "UFB will do for New Zealand what the railways did for transport." Hamilton is the 16th urban area to have UFB completed, but the largest urban area. According to Ultra Fast Fibre chief executive William Hamilton 170 homes a day are signing up to the fast fibre in Hamilton City, which also has one of the biggest uptakes in New Zealand at 20 per cent. "I love fibre. I'm really proud that everyone else seems to be getting on board," Hamilton said. He did not know where phase two would begin, but believed the Government would make the right choices. Whether that was penetrating the rural areas or getting fibre into the poorer socioeconomic places like Ngaruawahia, he did not know. Rob Galloway and Marie de Jong are selling up The Silos on Raglan's waterfront, with the aim of sailing the world for six months a year. A Raglan couple plan to sail off into the sunset in a hand-crafted sloop. Rob Galloway and Marie de Jong, who own The Silos, luxury holiday apartments on the waterfront in the tourist town, are selling up. They also own Soul Shoes, which they plan to keep. "It's so we can hopefully go sailing for six months a year," Galloway said. MARK TAYLOR/FAIRFAX NZ Rob Galloway and Marie de Jong are selling up The Silos on Raglan's waterfront, freeing the couple up to sail the world six months a year. They plan to head for warm weather on the 50-footer named Fuse, which Galloway built. "They always say sailing is about 90 per cent boredom and 10 per cent terror. I don't know if I agree with that." But during the moments of boredom, they plan to fill in their time swimming, surfing, fishing and kite-boarding along the way. They'll travel light. "It's not about what you take with you, it's what you leave behind - everything," he said with a laugh. "It's like caravanning in a yacht." If The Silos sell quickly, they'll set out this winter for some Pacific Island cruising. Then they'll park the Fuse in Brisbane and charter it out while they come back to Raglan and sell shoes and handbags. Then, next year, they will go to Indonesia. After that, who knows? "It's not that easy to sail around the world any more, with all the piracy going on in the Indian Ocean and Yemen. You have to go around South Africa now ... "We will start and see where we get to." It took him five years - 18,000 hours - to build the yacht, which has three double cabins. It is the second he has built. He also converted The Silos into apartments. And he's built a house. He even makes the shoes and bags at Soul. Galloway started Soul because he was living in Whangamata at the time and the shoe selection there was limited. "Yeah, so I made a pair. That's what you did in those days. I guess we were all a bit of hippies at the time." The Silos were initially bought with the idea of a shoe workshop in mind. But Galloway and de Jong realised the concrete structures were prime real estate and would allow for 360-degree views of the harbour. There are five apartments in the complex. The couple live in one and rent the other four. "Yeah we have views of the ocean from every room in our place. "Can you see the corporate Auckland types wanting to escape here?" Selling up will bring its own challenges. The couple recently bought a property with a 1957 bach on it, fully furnished in retro gear. "We might keep it as it is and go baching for a while, or we might build again. "I always have a new project I want to get started on, it's just the finishing I find hard to do." Sign up to receive our new evening newsletter Two Minutes of Stuff - the news, but different 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. 64 Arrested In Day Of Raids Targeting South Side Gangs By Mae Rice in News on Apr 8, 2016 9:15PM Milosh Kosanovich Thursday and early Friday morning, Chicago Police made a series of raids targeting South Side gangs that resulted in 64 arrests. Police also recovered four guns during the raids, which took place in the Englewood, Deering, and Chicago Lawn police districts, according to WGN. Fifty of the arrests were for felony narcotics charges, WGN reports. Three people arrested were also charged with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, four with prostitution, and 14 with misdemeanors. Ordered by Interim Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson, the all-day "mission was aimed at reducing the crime and violence in our communities, Johnson said in a statement. This is likely an allusion to the recent spike in homicides in Chicago. In the first quarter of 2016, as we recently reported, Chicago's homicide count was higher than it had been since 1999. Mayor Rahm Emanuel named Johnson interim chief of the Chicago Police Department in late March, after turning all three finalists the Chicago Police Board selected for the role. Chance The Rapper Played The Chicago Theatre Friday. Here's How He Got There. By Austin Brown in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 8, 2016 8:22PM Chance the Rapper Chancelor Bennett, a.k.a. Chance The Rapper, will headline Power 92's 15th anniversary concert Friday night. He'll be playing at the historic, century-old Chicago Theatrequite a feat for someone who recorded his first tape in a studio at Harold Washington Public Library. In tribute to his rise, Chicagoist has put together a timeline of Chance's solo career, from his high school days to tonight's performance. Early 2011: Chancelor Bennett is suspended for 10 days from school for on-campus marijuana possession. Over the next year, he uses the incident as inspiration for his first full-length solo mixtape, 10 Day. December 7, 2011: The first single from 10 Day, "Windows," is released, and the project is officially announced. February 2012: Chance is named one of Complex's "10 New Chicago Rappers to Watch Out For." April 3, 2012: 10 Day is released for free on DatPiff, a top source for hip-hop mixtapes and unofficial rap releases. It lands on Forbess Cheap Tunes column. (Currently, the mixtape has been downloaded more than 400,000 times off of DatPiff.) April 29, 2013: Chance appears on the cover of RedEye, flashing a peace sign, on the eve of the release of Acid Rap, his second mixtape. April 30, 2013: Chance releases Acid Rap for free on DatPiff. It goes on to be one of the sites most popular mixtapes; currently, its been downloaded more than a million times. Rap critics and indie critics alike fall head over heels for the tape. December 6, 2013: Chance appears on rising star Childish Gambinos Because the Internet, with a feature spot on the song The Worst Guys. (Comedy fans know Childish Gambino as stand-up comedian Donald Glover and Troy on Community.) December 2013: As the end of 2013 approaches, Acid Rap makes numerous Best Of lists, including those of Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Complex, and Stereogum. December 23, 2013: Justin Bieber releases his sophomore album, Journals, and Chance appears on one track, Confident. The song receives little-to-no critical acclaim, but does help continue bringing Chance into the mainstream. May 2014: XXL releases their Freshman 2014 cover, starring the rappers they view as the year's up-and-comers: Chance (wearing overalls, sans shirt) alongside rapper Vic Mensa (who, like Chance, is a member of Chicagos tight-knit SaveMoney rap collective) and rising Chicago drill rapper Lil Durk. Prior to this cover, only one Chicago rapper, Lupe Fiasco, had ever been placed on an XXL Freshman cover. November 9, 2014: Chance receives the Outstanding Youth of the Year award from Mayor Rahm Emanuel. At the time, Chance says that it is the most important award I will ever win, which now seems somewhat unlikely. March 6, 2015: Chance is featured on Madonnas Rebel Heart album, with a verse on the song Iconic. May 28, 2015: Donnie Trumpet, a jazz performer and another member of Chances SaveMoney crew, releases the nationally-acclaimed album Surf for free on iTunes, with Chance as primary vocalist. For Chance, it's an unofficial graduation from the mixtape realm into that of official albums. July 19, 2015: Chance headlines Pitchfork Music Festival. He is the first unsigned artist to do so. Also July 19, 2015: Chance takes the time while in Chicago to make a mixtape with Lil B, which they call the Free Based Freestyles Mixtape and release (you guessed it) for free. October 21, 2015: Electronic producers Snakehips release All My Friends, a track featuring verses from both rising R&B star Tinashe and Chance. The track becomes a Top 10 hit in the UK, and racks up more than 100 million plays on Spotify. October 26, 2015: Chance releases Angels, a track featuring West Side rapper Saba, to considerable hype and acclaim. December 12, 2015: Chance becomes the first unsigned artist to play Saturday Night Live, debuting new track Somewhere In Paradise with fellow Chicagoan Jeremih and performing Sunday Candy, a beloved single from Surf. February 2016: Kanye West reveals Chances involvement with his latest album with the livestream of Ultra Light Beam. Chance has a central verse in the song, even after Kanyes repeated fiddling with the album post-release date. Chance also later mentions on Twitter that he was primarily responsible for getting much-feted track Waves onto the album, after outcry that it was originally left off. March 31, 2016: Chance announces that his next mixtape will be released this month while performing at a surprise show in New York. April 6, 2016: Chance debuts a new White Sox ad and new ballcaps he designed for the team. He's also scheduled to throw the first pitch at the White Sox's home opening at Cellular Field. April 7, 2016: Chance releases the music video for his song Angels, featuring Saba. In the clip, Chance flies like a superhero and rides on top of an El car. April 8, 2016: Chance performs tonight at the Power 92 showcase at the Chicago Theatre, along with other Chicago rising stars BJ The Chicago Kid, Dreezy and a special guest we at Chicagoist have done some recent speculating about. John Keys government defence of the foreign trusts tax havens issue shows the extent the Government is prepared to go to defend something that has no benefit to New Zealand. This is the opinion expressed by Labour leader Andrew Little, when he visited Tauranga yesterday. Zespri should know within 24 hours the nature of the lubricant found on some of its kiwifruit tray liners, which has caused 1.7 million trays of fruit to be put on hold, says Zespris chief operating officer Simon Limmer. The bulk of that fruit is still in New Zealand with relatively small volumes on the water heading for markets in China, Taiwan and Japan. Tauranga city councils current system of city council ward seats will remain for the 2016 local body elections, says the Local Government Commission. The decision is in response to an appeal against the current number of wards by Mount Maunganui resident Rob Paterson. Tauranga and Yantai marked this milestone by sending a small Tauranga party to Yantai on Wednesday. During this visit, the two cities will participate in city celebrations and also progress initiatives related to education and marine science. The party includes Tauranga mayor Stuart Crosby, Greg Simmonds from Priority One, Anne Young from Education Tauranga, Professor Chris Battershill from the University of Waikato Coastal Marine Field Station, and Rachel Yoo and Inhey Kim from Takara Restaurant. [We had a lunch on Wednesday] to acknowledge the 30-year relationship and to present gifts says Stuart. Seven students from Tauranga Intermediate have also been selected to accompany the delegation, along with deputy principal Kathryn Colville and international director Annemieke Hart. These students will participate in some of the sister city celebrations, but will also undertake study at the Yantai No 2 Middle School for a week. This will enable them to participate in Chinese language and culture classes, says regional manager of Education Tauranga Anne Young. The middle school will then reciprocate by sending a group of their students to study at Tauranga Intermediate later this year. On the way to Yantai the delegation also visited their friendship city in Ansan, Korea, to discuss opportunities for business, education and cultural collaboration. The group will also visit Suzhou in China to meet with the Education Bureau and the schools who will be sending students to Tauranga in July 2016. Chicago's Water Commissioner Resigns Ahead Of Lead Contamination Testing By Sophie Lucido Johnson in News on Apr 8, 2016 4:03PM Glass of water (photo via [cipher] on Flickr Following Monday's announcement that Chicago is preparing a water testing program to determine whether the city's pipes are partly responsible for problems with lead poisoning, Water Management commissioner Tom Powers has announced his resignation. Powers has so far served as Mayor Rahm Emanuel's sole Water Management commissioner, and he will be replaced by Barrett Murphya deputy who has worked for the city since his appointment by former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Over the last five years, Tom has overseen an historic investment in Chicagos infrastructure that has helped to build a better Chicago and I thank him for his service to the city, Emanuel said in a statement. The Sun-Times reported that Powers was Emanuel's frequent choice to head infrastructure projects because of his emphasis on working efficiently. It's possible that this emphasis on efficiency over scrutiny may have cost the city: Emanuel ambitiously tasked Powers with doubling water and sewer rebuilding rates over a four-year period. Powers followed through, overseeing the replacement of 320 miles of water main, 77 miles of sewer main, and the lining of 198 miles of existing sewers. Emanuel is close friends with Murphy's wife, Lynn Lockwood. Lockwood once chaired a political fund-raising committee for the mayor; the Sun-Times also reported that she had a one-year $160,000 consulting contract with Choose Chicago in 2014. Mayor Dayley hired Murphy in 1999. In a statement Emanuel said, "Moving forward, Barrett Murphys vast knowledge of and experience within the Department make him the best choice for the job as we continue to implement our 10-year Capital Improvement Program." The Chicago Department of Public Health revealed the tap water testing program Monday during a presentation to lawyers, physicians, researchers and advocates. In the wake of the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan, researchers hope that the tap water testing will begin to address Chicago's ongoing problems with lead poisoning, which disproportionately affects children in South and West side neighborhoods that are low-income and predominantly African-American. Murphys appointment is subject to City Council approval. He will begin in an interim capacity on May 1. Roberta G. Aaron and Jose Galvez Anguita present the portrait. :: SUR A replica of the portrait of Bernardo de Galvez (born in the Axarquia village of Macharaviaya) that hangs in the US Congress building, was officially presented to the city of Pensacola in Florida last Friday at CAC Mijas. The copy of the original portrait was painted by young Malaga artist, Francisco Jesus Rodriguez Ruiz. Attending the ceremony were members of the historic association Granaderos y Damas de Galvez de Macharaviaya, who all wore period costume. Their president Jose Galvez Anguita, a descendent of the Galvez family, dressed as Bernardo de Galvez himself. CAC Mijas director Javier Fructoso Medina, who commissioned the portrait, the American consul in Malaga, Roberta G. Aaron, and Diputacion president Elias Bendodo, also attended. A Skype connection was made from CAC Mijas to the Mayor of Penascola, Ashton Hayward ,and the presentation made. The portrait will now be sent to Penascola, via the American air base in Rota. The idea for the portrait came about when representatives from Pensacola visited Macharaviaya in 2012; the portrait was originally planned for auction to raise money for a statue for the city. However, Pensacolas mayor decided that its rightful home was the mayors office. Since then, enough money has been raised for a bronze statue, which should be erected in 2017. Carol on the beach in Mijas, a world apart from Senegal. :: SUR Contact Carol Ann on 693468225 or curlann@hotmail.com Meeting Carol Ann Routon is like meeting a breath of fresh, sweet air. Born in St Louis, Missouri in 1936, she has lived in Mijas for over 45 years. She is dedicated to improving the lives of the less fortunate in Senegal, Africa, a tough task for a one-woman band, especially one in her 80s. Yes, that read correctly - Carol is in her early 80s and her story is anything but dull. During the telling of it her recollections were emotional and poignant and more than once, she wiped a tear from her eyes. How Carols relationship evolved with both Spain and Senegal is a fascinating story, suggesting that she is anything but conventional. In a much condensed version, she first travelled to Europe in 1959 and 60 when she spent time in the UK, France, Italy and Switzerland before returning to the US where she met her first husband with whom she had two daughters. In 1969 she returned to Europe with her family, en route to Greece. However the country was going through a difficult time so, to stay safe, they decided to head for Spain. This marked a turning point in Carols life as, driving out of Barcelona, she saw a newly-mown field and a man sitting outside his smallholding admiring his handiwork. Wow, she thought. Why have I never been to this place before? She fell in love with the language and found the Spanish to be more free-spirited than elsewhere, a characteristic that fitted her personality. The family arrived in Mijas on the last day of 1969 and that night, in a local bar, she met the love of her life. However, it was was complicated as he was married and at that time, divorce wasnt an option in rural Spain. On her return to the US, Carol didnt settle. She got divorced and returned to Spain and the love of her life. Settled back in Mijas, she bore her lover a son, living in Mijas Pueblo for five years where she had to endure being not quite in favour with a part of the village population before she moved out to the campo. A woman with two daughters and an illegitimate son, she was not one to settle down to a quiet life in the Mijas countryside. For some time she had been struggling with the Catholic Church and its totalitarian approach. She wanted to find God as in all her years of staunch church-going, she had never felt truly touched in the heart by her faith. She wanted a sign. Her story of how she received that sign is somewhat unusual. On her way home one day her car suddenly stopped for no logical reason. She wondered if this was it so she asked the Lord if he was trying to talk to her, could he please make the car start at 6 oclock. She explains that each time she tried to start the car it remained dead until, right on cue, at 6 oclock, it just started again. That night, she says, she found her faith: It came in the form of a vision so intense I felt I could fall into the Lord and never hit bottom. Truly touched for the first time, she was baptised and began to follow a path carved out by her faith, each decision she made governed by the signs she received. The love of her life let her go, recognising that she had an unfulfilled hunger. Carol says, It was the hardest decision of my life but the Bible says that if you give up something for the Lord, you will be rewarded 100-fold. It was at the age of 70 that she received one of her spiritual signs that told her that it was time to travel again to fields anew. She met a neighbour, a traveller, who took her with him to Senegal, a country she had visited on her previous travels. For Carol, it was a country with no language barrier as she was a fluent French speaker. There, she made friends, staying three months at a time before returning to Mijas for pension purposes. She married a Sengalese man, continuing to travel back and forth, sending money to him while she was in Mijas. Much of the money that she sent was stolen and Carol found herself stuck in a resort in Senegal. She moved into her husbands familys home in the village of Palmarin Facao, about 100 miles from Dakar. It is a place where she still has a room and considers it home in Senegal. It was here, in 2007 that she started to see to the needs of the local people. Half the population of Senegal lives in the capital city, Dakar. Progress made outside of the city is slow and the global economic downturn made things even more difficult. Carol wanted to help. She realised that she wasnt gifted in the art of fundraising but she was a very good intermediary. So in between trips, she set about looking for patrons to provide for some of the needs of the local children. Some children lose their mothers and need help, she says. Senegal doesnt have a system that looks after them. If I can secure 100 euros a year from a patron, it means that at least their education is covered. Mosquito solution About five years ago Carol learned that a science-based university in Iowa had discovered that the common catnip plant was toxic to mosquitos, known disease carriers and a problem in Senegal. She bought some catnip oil and mixed it with alcohol to create her own anti-mosquito repellent but found it was too expensive for most households. She then found that household vinegar, used all the time, was just as effective and made the mix affordable for the common family. Her idea was that the village could make up the repellent and sell it to other villages, thereby providing a means for people to earn a living. She decided to call the repellent Dani A Pax, a traditional saying in Senegal that means sleep in peace. I use it constantly when I am out there and while not perfect, it is 90 per cent effective, she said. Carol has shared it with others locally and they too have found that Dani A Pax helps enormously - so much so that it is now the name she is known by in Senegal. The problem is that the spray bottles needed to dispense the repellent arent available in Senegal, nor is catnip which grows mainly in the northern hemisphere so each visit, Carol has taken over as many bottles as she can manage. The bottles come from China and cost next to nothing but you have to buy several thousand at a time and I just cant afford it. If I can find patrons who can, then the village will have the means to produce and sell Dani A Pax, she says. Carols practical work in Senegal gives her access into peoples lives. It is the means by which they get to know and trust me, and me them, she says. My calling is to share my faith in whatever situation I find myself in. Its a privilege for me to be there and I am very happy for it. The childrens education project is going very well. They are doing well in school and some are excelling. The mosquito repellent is becoming quite well known. Carol explains how much of the time she is the only white person actually living in the village. Most others are tourists or visitors. I go for long periods without seeing another white person and have become almost unaware of colour. I suppose thats normal when a person spends time living in another culture, she adds For years she has been doing this all by herself and now, in her hinter years, she says she would welcome some support, whether it be in creating a website, helping with administration, air fares or raising funds. She is not a legal or registered charity. All of her work is done from the goodness of her heart. She has no vision other than what she can see, do and oversee. As long as I can stand and walk, I will keep going, she says. Carol gives up a lot for her calling yet she never complains - its not her style. Living on a small pension, she often goes without in order to afford her flights. Any money I get is directed to specific things. I get receipts for everything and I ensure that the patrons who give generously get tangible, visible proof of the difference their donations make to peoples lives, she explains. Any funds she manages to get are sent to Senegal in September and she follows each December to oversee any work and to ensure money is spent as intended. State Bill Calls For The Waiving Of The $125 GED Fee For Homeless Youth By Sophie Lucido Johnson in News on Apr 8, 2016 7:11PM via Shutterstock State Senator Ira Silverstein (D) is calling for legislation that would exempt homeless youth from paying for their GED exams, CBS Chicago reported. The legislation wouldn't be unique to Illinois: California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a similar bill into law last September, prohibiting the Department of Education and testing companies from charging exam fees to homeless people younger than 25. According to the most recent data, almost 90 percent of jobs require at least a high school diploma. Homeless youth have dropped out of high school will have to pay, on average, $120 to $150 to take a GED test. An analysis by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless conducted last year found that 20,205 in the Chicago Public School system were homeless last year. The study found that 98.1 percent of homeless students 98.1 were children of color, and another 18.3 percent were students diagnosed with disabilities or developmental delays. Overall, children and teens comprise 35 percent, and unaccompanied youth (ages 14 to 17) comprised 3.5 percent of the Chicago's total homeless population. Unfortunately, the way the economy is going, we have more homeless people, and they have kids who are going to go to school, theyre barely making ends meet, and these tests are important for these young men and women, Silverstein told CBS. The announcement of this legislation comes at the heels of the announcement of a recent citywide task force dedicated to fighting homelessness in Chicago. While the task forceinitiated by Mayor Rahm Emanuel last weekwould aim at improving efficiency among city departments serving the homeless, it notably overlooks reinstating drastically cut mental health services. If passed, the legislation would allow regional school superintendents to waive the fee for the GED test for young people who are homeless. The proposal was advanced by the Senate Education Committee on an 11-0 vote, will move to the full Senate for consideration. Music has been discovered to be an effective therapy in improving the symptoms of autistic children, Li Huayu, a music therapist at Beijing Bo'ai Hospital, said in a recent interview with China.org.cn. Li Huayu, a music therapist for autistic children, sings a song with her guitar to an autistic child. [Photo by Wu Jin / China.org.cn] In a recent publication focusing on a single autistic boy who made progress after receiving music therapy, Li wrote that music is a tool that can be used to improve the social defects of autistic children. Jun Jun, the boy in Li's paper, is a five-year old who received music therapy more than two years ago. Upon first arriving at the music room in the hospital's rehabilitation center, he didn't pay any attention to the instructions from the therapists and refused to communicate. But after receiving music therapy in 30-minute sessions three to five times per week, the boy eventually began to interact with others and to sing a number of songs. "Interdisciplinary treatment consisting of medical intervention and music therapy can offer an approach to build a connection between children and the external world," Li said. "They'll choose to listen, to be creative, and to sing with the music," Li said. "When using music therapy, we inspire the children to touch, listen, see, and recognize their surroundings." Li has a master's degree in music therapy from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. "I feel so happy to find that my skills are useful to a group of people," Li said. "We shouldn't ask too much of patients. On contrary, we should be satisfied with every step of progress they make." Workers sort parcels at a delivery company in Fuyang, Anhui Province. [China Daily] The tax free era for cross-border e-commerce came to an end today as China's new taxation policy took effect. The new policy, announced by the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs and the State Administration of Taxation on March 24, combines an import value-added tax with a consumption tax. Retail goods bought online will no longer be classed as "parcels," which enjoy a "personal postal articles tax" rate below that of other imported goods. Instead, online purchases from overseas will be charged in the same way as any other imported goods, the Ministry of Finance has said. China levies a personal postal articles tax on cross-border e-commce goods worth less than 1,000 yuan (US$150), and the rate is mostly 10 percent. Taxes under 50 yuan (US$7) are waived. As the demand for overseas goods grows, online purchasing agents have taken advantage of parcel tax and used new methods such as repackaging and mailing products separately to avoid taxes. The new policy only allows a maximum of 2,000 yuan (US$309) per single cross-border transaction and a maximum of 20,000 yuan (US$3090) per person per year. Goods that exceed these limits will be levied the full tax for general trade. A shopping spree had spread across the internet in wake of the annunciation of the new policy while online retailers persuaded customers to grasp the last chance to click for more cross-border purchases until April 8. It is true that the cross-border websites are going to see their costs rise substantially. But is this really bad news for shoppers? Not necessarily. Tech.sina.com.cn reported that only cosmetics worth less than 100 yuan (US$15) will see a surge in prices, but body care products and cosmetics worth more than 100 yuan may see a plunge in prices. "Customers' shopping enthusiasm may be impacted temporarily, but it is a blessing for the whole cross-border e-commerce industry, and sales will see an increase in the long run," said Qiu Huang, who is in charge of the cross-border purchase affairs of JD.com, an online retail giant in China. The prices of many products on the cross-border shopping websites are still lower than those offered by traditional retailers and importers despite possible changes, giving a good reason for optimism, he added. As the Chinese people's views on consumption change, many customers have become more sensitive to quality and service rather than price, echoed Zeng Bibo, the CEO of cross-border e-commerce platform Ymatou.com. Under the new policy, customs officials are expected to examine more undeclared parcels than they used to. "Individuals who shop online overseas may find it more time consuming for custom clearance and may be more likely to be taxed than they were before, which gives an edge for companies that manage their business through stocking imported goods in bonded zones," said Liu Nan, the founder and CEO of cross-border e-commerce platform Mia.com. But Tech.sina.com.cn has learned that a large part of commodities stocked in bonded zones are in great demand and are relatively cheap. As cosmetics and body care products worth less than 100 yuan will be taxed, sales from the bonded zones is set to decline, at least for some time. Li Pengbo, deputy secretary general of the China Cross-Border E-Commerce Forum, pointed out that the new taxation policy may somehow be good news for private overseas shopping representatives, whose space was squeezed due to the boost of cross-border e-commerce companies. Zhang Li, another expert in e-commerce, believes that the new policy will put an end to unfair competition and promote the sound development of the industry. More cross-border e-commerce pilot zones will be set up to lure businesses, create jobs and nurture new business models that will boost foreign trade and stimulate the economy, the State Council said in January. The Ministry of Commerce also predicts that the country's cross-border e-commerce trade will reach 6.5 trillion yuan (about US$1 trillion) in 2016 despite the complexity brought by policy changes. Bahri signs VLCC financing deal The National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri) has signed a Murabaha Facility Agreement, an Islamic financing using Murabaha Structure, with Riyad Bank. This facility will be used to finance the construction costs of five VLCCs ordered in May, 2015. The value of the Murabaha Facility is equivalent to SAR1.4 bill ($380 mill) and the facility has been agreed for 10 years and six months, including a maximum of two years grace period. Under the arrangement, the five vessels will be mortgaged to Riyad Bank as the collateral for the financing. Bahri ordered the quintet from Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries on 21st May, 2015 and the company has an option to order another five VLCCs. Eng Ibrahim Abdulrahman Al-Omar, Bahris CEO said that the order is in line with its plans to renew and expand its fleet to meet the requirements of both local and international markets. The five VLCCs are due for delivery during 2017. Markets - VLCC rates ease following a spike The VLCC market took most players by surprise, as a massive rise and fall was seen over the last seven days. Rates rapidly increased during the latter part of last week to very healthy levels reaching WS95 for a MEG/South Korea voyage, Fearnleys said in its weekly report. Then it all came to a halt and subsequently eased off in very light trading. The main reason for the increase was the fear of a limited supply, as several charterers entered the market at the same time. When they all had covered their cargoes, the position list became fairly balanced and with limited demand, rates eased off again with no signs of any turnaround soon. Suezmax rates in West Africa were mainly supported by strong sentiment in the East last week and rates more or less remained unchanged. However, at time of writing (Wednesday) activity and rates in the East was on a downward spiral with the mood also spreading to the Western hemisphere. In the Med/Black Sea, rates for Suezmaxes also remained stable until now. We are also now seeing a weaker sentiment arising from the ashes after the dust has settled from a hyped market in the East. The North Sea and Baltic Aframax markets both softened after another short-lived spike. This occurred after a few quiet days at the end of last week, with a combination of vessels being declared short and coming back into position. On the other hand, the outlook for the third week is looking brighter as the Baltic April crude programme is the busiest in a long time. Med and Black Sea took a big hit this week with rates plummeting from WS115 ex-Med last week, to WS75 this week. The number of prompt ships is staggering and Turkish strait delays are down to two to three days. As a result, charterers seized the window of opportunity and pushed out cargoes left, right, and centre. Unfortunately, for the owners, it will take some time and a lot of cargoes to tighten the position list and eventually the rate levels, Fearnleys concluded. Reports were also circulating of severe bottlenecks at the BOT loading facility and the Chinese discharge terminal at Qingdao, which could affect the market going forward. The latter was reportedly caused by an increase in Chinese teapot refineries import programmes. In other chartering news, ST Shipping was believed to have fixed the 2001-built VLCC Sea Horizon for two years at $40,000 per day, while Shell reportedly extended the two LR3s SKS Saluda and SKS Spey for 12 months at $26,500 per day each, slightly down on the original rate of $27,500 and $28,500 per day, respectively. Shell also booked two Handysize tankers -Acamar and Adara- owned by Frances Socatra on 12 month timecharters period charters for $16,750 daily, according to brokers reports. At least four Aframaxes were said to have been fixed for between one and two years at rates varying between $23,000 and $26,250 per day. The LR1 Jag Aanchai was also said to have been taken by CCI for 12 months at $19,750 per day. In the S&P market, brokers reported that the LR1 sisters Navig8 Precision and Navig8 Prestige both due to be delivered this year, were sold to banking interests for $48 mill each in a deal, which included a bareboat charter back to Navig8 for seven years with a purchase option kicking in after three years. In addition, Navig8 Chemical Tankers was reported to have agreed a sale and leaseback agreement with Chinas Bank of Communications Financial Leasing (BCFL) for four 49,000 dwt MRs under construction at STX Offshore & Shipbuilding. The four MRs are due for delivery from the end of March to end of June next year. Reports suggest that under the agreement, BCFL will provide funding for pre-delivery, as well as the delivery instalments for the vessels. The net proceeds from the transaction were said to be $140,025,600. Navig8 Chemical was thought to have signed 10-year bareboat charters with purchase options with BCFL. According to local reports, the Bangladesh Government is to build two Aframaxes in China for $100 mill in total. They will be procured on government-to-government (G2G) basis and will be delivered in the next two years. Bangladesh Shipping Corp (BSC) and China Petroleum Technology and Development Corp (CPTDC) reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Thursday. The 2004-built Handysize Simoa was said to have been committed to unknown interests for $13.9 mill, while another Handy - the 2004-built Amalienborg was believed sold to Chinese interests for $16 mill, which included a five year timecharter at $14,000 per day. In the newbuilding sector, K Line was said to have ordered two Aframaxes at Kawasaki for 2018/19 deliveries, while according to local reports, the Bangladesh Government is to order two Aframaxes in China for $100 mill in total. They will be procured on government-to-government (G2G) basis and will be delivered in the next two years. Bangladesh Shipping Corp (BSC) and China Petroleum Technology and Development Corp (CPTDC) reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Thursday. JACCAR was believed to have declared options for three more 85,000 cu m VLECs for $130 mill each at Dalian on the back of 10-year charters to Oriental Energy. Meanwhile, the sixth IMOIIMAX chemical and product tanker was recently delivered from the Chinese shipyard CSSC Offshore & Marine Engineering in Guangzhou. Stena Weco Impulse, which is jointly owned on a 50:50 basis by Stena Bulk and the Danish Weco Group is the sixth in a series of 13 vessels ordered by Stena Bulk. She is now en route to several Indonesian ports where she will load vegetable oils after which she will sail to Barcelona and Rotterdam to discharge her cargo. The naming ceremony will take place in Copenhagen in June, 2016. All 13 IMOIIMAX tankers will sail in Stena Wecos global logistics pool, which currently employs more than 60 vessels. We are very pleased with this addition to our IMOIIMAX fleet. The Stena Weco Impulse is the first of two vessels, which we will jointly own with the Weco Group, and this will strengthen still further our very successful collaboration,said Erik Hanell, president and CEO Stena Bulk/CEO Stena Weco. Together with Stena Bulk, we have built up a fleet of more than 60 vessels, all of which sail in our advanced logistic system. The fact that we are now focusing on joint ownership is yet another step towards more far-reaching collaboration, said Johan Wedell Wedellsborg, chairman Weco Group. The first five IMOIIMAX tankers were delivered by January of this year. Delivery of the remaining eight vessels will be completed by the end of 2017. In addition, there is an option on a further two vessels. The man at the center of recent online fury was arrested by police on Thursday in Henan Province. He was seen in a video that has gone viral assaulting a female guest in a Beijing hotel. A CCTV footage shows that a woman was attacked by a man in Yitel Hotel in Beijing. Beijing police said they attached great importance to finding the suspect in the video clip, which has caused the widespread controversy and attention, and had set up a special unit to solve the case, according to a statement posted on "Ping'an Beijing," or "Safe Beijing," the microblog account representing the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. "At 9 p.m. on April 7, a special police team arrested a suspect, surnamed Li, in Xuchang City, Henan Province, with help from the Henan police," the statement went on to say. The horrifying video uploaded on Tuesday shows a man trying to drag a woman along a corridor after she gets out of an elevator at around 11 p.m. on April 3 at the Yitel Hotel in Beijing's Chaoyang District. The woman said on social media that she believed it was an attempted rape, although some Internet commentators have said that the man may have mistaken her for a prostitute. The Chinese public is outraged about the video, which has garnered 2.35 billion views and millions of comments and reweets thus far on Sina's Weibo microblog site. Executives from Yitel, a hotel run by Home Inns & Hotels Management Inc, bowed at a press conference on Wednesday as they apologized for the problems that had led to the incident, including poor service, a delayed response, and faulty security management. The alleged victim, surnamed Meng and going by the name "Wanwan_2016" on the microblog website Weibo, was disappointed at the response from both the police and the Yitel hotel. Sun Jian, CEO of Home Inns & Hotels Management Inc, also pulished an open letter on Friday morning and apologized again: "We have an undeniable responsibility for what happened." Meng published another post on her Weibo account yesterday afternoon, saying that she'd had further communication with Home Inns & Hotels representatives. "My original intention in publishing the video and Weibo post was to resolve the problem and protect my rights. I will not accept any kind of economic compensation. My only hope is that Home Inns & Hotels will resolve the problems that led to the incident. I invite all Internet users and media members to keep a close eye on this. " MEPC 69 urged to address GHG emissions The Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI), a coalition of companies from across the global shipping industry, has called on the IMO to show its true intent to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from shipping at the forthcoming Marine Environmental Protection Committee meeting (MEPC 69), which begins on 18th April, 2016. SSI said that it believed that an ambitious but realistic plan must be set that will see the shipping industry take responsibility and contribute to reducing GHG emissions in line with the UNFCCC target of less than 2 deg C warming agreed at the COP 21 meeting in Paris in December, 2015. To achieve this requires global GHG emissions to be at least 50% below 1990 levels by 2050, however, the shipping industrys current rate of emissions growth is incompatible with this target. The newly appointed IMO Secretary General, Kitack Lim has publicly said that contributing to the fight against climate change is a top priority for the IMO, said Alastair Fischbacher, SSI CEO. The IMOs latest figures show that if left unchecked, GHG emissions from shipping will increase by up to 250% by 2050, representing 17% of global emissions. This is simply unacceptable and it is critical that the IMO urgently sets out a robust and ambitious plan and framework that sees the industry take responsibility for reducing its emissions output. The time for business as usual is over, and the time for action is now; MEPC 69 is the platform to demonstrate this. The agreed agenda for MEPC 69 will see debate around a number of areas in relation to GHG emissions, including the development of a global data collection scheme and an emissions reduction target, as well as market-based measures to achieve such a target. As a minimum, the SSI believes that MEPC 69 must agree a fast-tracked plan that will see the formal agreement and implementation of significant and early emissions reductions for shipping. Fischbacher continued: A number of member states and industry bodies have submitted papers for the development of a work plan that defines the industrys fair share of efforts to reduce GHG emissions. This must be the minimum outcome from MEPC 69, which will set the foundation for shipping to contribute to the less than 2 deg warming target set at COP 21. It is critical that the IMO now drives this this forward. Right now the opportunity for change is in the industrys hands and inaction will increase calls for regulatory and legislative influence from outside shipping. And crucially, any further delays will only increase the scale of the GHG challenge that the industry faces, he warned. The SSI recently launched its roadmap, a set of key milestones and priorities, which must be met in order to create a sustainable shipping industry by 2040. Set across six core areas, one is the requirement to reduce GHG emissions by changing to a diverse range of energy sources, as well using resources more efficiently, which can be achieved through a number of factors, including regulation, governance, infrastructure development, and emerging energy sources. Fischbacher concluded: Our roadmap clearly shows that numerous and significant steps are required to reduce GHG emissions from shipping and that effective regulation is a key element of achieving this. It is vital that at MEPC 69 the IMO takes the actions called for to ensure that this industry is recognised as taking responsibility for the reduction of its local and global emissions. New software releases aid builders and designers DNV GLs latest releases of its integrated calculation tools Nauticus Hull and Sesam GeniE offer designers and yards increased calculation speed and efficiency in design, IACS Common Structural Rules for Bulk Carriers and Oil Tankers (CSR BC & OT) rule calculations and the approval process, the class society claimed. DNV GL said that the introduction of the CSR BC & OT makes support from advanced rule calculation tools more important than ever. We were one of the first classification societies to integrate support for the common structural rules into our tools, said Vebjrn Guttormsen, head of section calculation tools at DNV GL Maritime. Since then, our tools have been used successfully in many newbuilding projects by yards and designers, especially in (South) Korea, China and Japan, and the new versions build on this experience. As we were developing the new DNV GL rules, we invested heavily in updating and expanding Nauticus Hull and Sesam GeniE, giving them better modelling and FE meshing capabilities, as well as improving how they interface with yard design and FE systems. The IACS CSR has meant a shift towards more computerisation of rule formulations and structural assessment. These more advanced methods of determining loads and structural strength will give a better picture of how a design will perform in reality, DNV GL said. The changes in Nauticus Hull and Sesam GeniE address the needs of designers, who will be working with an increased number of models and load cases, and will gain from a streamlined and efficient design iteration process. CSR BC & OT involve working with large FE cargo hold models with a huge number of load cases. In order to ensure excellent modelling performance on such large models, we have introduced a new database file format for Sesam GeniE. This new file format ensures significantly less CPU time needed on large modelling operations and meshing, said Erik Ian von Hall, head of product centre at DNV GL - Software. With CSR, fine mesh modelling of local details and fatigue assessment is extensive and time-consuming without the use of advanced rule calculation tools. DNV GL said that it provides improved modelling support for FE fatigue models and fatigue assessment. The newly developed FE fatigue tool in Nauticus Hull also includes methods for adjusting the stress components for element sizes differing from the net thickness, allowing mesh consistency while updating plate thickness in design iterations. In the new version of Sesam GeniE, load application has been improved by integrating the adjustment of hull girder loads. In addition, the graphical display and reporting of loads have been further improved to support model verification and the large number of load cases. Sesam GeniE also has powerful capabilities for yield and buckling check of the model according to CSR BC & OT. The latest release comes with several updates to the code check to further automate this process. Advanced software tools will continue to grow in importance in the future, with the increasing emphasis on making more realistic determinations of loads and structural strength. At DNV GL we have a large and dedicated software team and we are committed to ensuring that our tools provide the efficient engineering support our customers need, both today and in the future, said von Hall. Sea IT signs up Maersk Tankers Adding to its recent success with Swedish tanker owners, Sea IT has signed a long term ICT contract with Maersk Tankers covering all vessels operated within its fleet - around 100 tankers. The four-year ICT contract includes a unique modification of the patented BlueCORE, which has been customised to fit Maersk Tankers global business operations and high security standards. Sea IT will install a customised solution of BlueCORE, a complete IT system, including Wi-Fi on the Maersk Tankers fleet. With the solution on board, Maersk Tankers will be able to regard its fleet as a remote office location, Sea IT claimed. Sea IT is an independent system integrator specialised in the marine sector and has proven to offer second-to-none reliable ICT solutions. Together with a successful proof-of-concept and a strong proposal they have convinced us that they are the best solution in the market for Maersk Tankers, said Henning Madsen, vessel IT manager at Copenhagen-based Maersk Tankers. The customised solution is built to optimise business processes, reduce operational costs and to ensure maximum efficiency by utilising all available IT resources on board. It enables a seamless integration between the crew on board and the office, Sea IT said. With our version of BlueCORE on board, we can regard our fleet as remote office locations with real-time, on-line access to our internal applications. It is a cost efficient, modular platform which supports Maersk Tankers business objectives, said Thomas Landwehr, IT governance and project portfolio manager at Maersk Tankers. Now Maersk Tankers can integrate and structure all programs from various departments from technical and operations, chartering, HSEQ to HR and third parties for fuel consumption, sea chart updates and more. The installations will begin this year and are expected to be finalised in the beginning of 2017. Besides the installations, Sea IT will serve as a second line of support in close collaboration with the Maersk Tankers own support team in Manila. Sea IT carries key components for both hard and software and provides emergency support 24/7 to Maersk Tankers around the globe. US Court gets tough on illegal discharge at sea A US Federal judge based in Hawaii has fined a South Korean shipping company $950,000 for its tankers failure to maintain an accurate oil record book, in violation of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships and making false statements to the US Coast Guard about dumping oil contaminated bilge water. On Tuesday this week, US District of Hawaii Judge Leslie Kobayashi accepted the guilty plea of Doorae Shipping and sentenced the company to pay a fine of $750,000, a community service payment of $200,000, and put the company on two years probation. Doorae Shipping is the operator of the 2009-built 5,702 dwt chemical/product tanker B. Sky. According to information provided in court, instead of running bilge water through an oil water separator, the B. Skys Chief Engineer discharged over 500 gallons of oily machinery space bilge water into the sea and failed to record the discharge in the oil record book. The Court approved the payment of the $200,000 community service payment, as a result of an agreement between the Government and Doorae to be donated to the National Fish and Wildlife Service Foundation to fund projects that preserve and enhance coral reefs and reef ecosystems around Hawaii. The Court also took the guilty plea of the Chief Engineer, Jeung Mun, to one charge of causing the maintenance of a faulty oil record book in violation of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships. He was scheduled to be sentenced on 27th July, 2016. All maritime companies, including those that provide refuelling services on the open seas, must respect the laws and the obligations of their trade, which exist to prevent the spoiling of oceans and marine habitat, said Florence Nakakuni, US Attorney for the District of Hawaii. This office will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who violate our nations laws enacted to protect our oceans and environment. The oceans and marine wildlife must be protected from shipping companies that look to cut corners by dumping untreated waste, said Jay Green, special agent in charge of the Environmental Protection Agencys (EPA) criminal enforcement program in Hawaii. The defendants in this case falsified their log books in an attempt to conceal their crimes, but thanks to the thoroughness of Coast Guard and EPA investigators and the persistence of the US Attorneys Office, the defendants got caught. Todays guilty pleas demonstrate that the American people will not tolerate the flagrant violation of US laws. The case was investigated by US Coast Guard Sector Honolulu, the US Coast Guard Investigative Service and the EPA. This Page Is Under Construction - Coming Soon! Why am I seeing this 'Under Construction' page? A new drainage system in Yangpu District will be completed soon, a water bureau official said yesterday. The Big Dinghai Drainage System, as it is known in official circles, will cover 4.25 square kilometers, and comprise a pumping station and assorted pipelines. It will serve about 220,000 households, the official said. More than 8,000 households in low-lying areas, including several old communities in the Dinghai area, were inundated last June when the local drainage system, which was built in the 1950s, failed to cope with the heavy rains. The new system will improve that situation, the official said, adding that it will be operational before the start of this years flood season. The water project is part of a 6 billion yuan (US$927 million) infrastructure development program for Yangpu, which also includes new roads, bridges, tunnels, Metro lines and utility upgrades. Yangpu Party Secretary Zhuge Yujie said the work was much needed. The district government aims to make up for the infrastructure shortage, and assure the well-being of residents, he said. Sixteen of the 20 projects planned are related to transport, said Mou Juan, deputy director with the districts transport commission. Among them will be the construction of Metro Line 18. Once completed in 2020 the 36-kilometer line will connect Baoshan and Yangpu districts to the Pudong New Area. Nurse Nicole Leonard and Doctor Frank Lillo sympathize with Slade Walter who is trapped in the "Donut Hole" in a scene from A.C.T. Studio Theatre's "Pharmaceutical." (PHOTO PROVIDED BY A.C.T. STUDIO THEATRE) SHARE Johnny Waitt as elder choreographer Tobi; Megan Pollak as Lisa; Steve Cabral as Mike in A.C.T. Studio Theatre's "Match". (PHOTO PROVIDED BY A.C.T. STUDIO THEATRE) The cast of the Barn Theatre's "Send Me No Flowers." (PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE BARN THEATRE) By Angela Smith, Special to Treasure Coast Newspapers Spring is here and as temperatures continue to rise along the Treasure Coast, there's a new crop of local theater shows opening this month. There's a play about a family dealing with secrets and ulterior motives, an unusual "revusical" on prescription medications and a comedy of errors involving a husband and wife. A.C.T. STUDIO THEATRE "Match" For Dennis O'Donovan, co-owner of the A.C.T. Studio Theatre in Stuart, putting together their newest production, "Match," is kind of a big deal. Known for their dramas at the black-box venue, the small theater is taking a risk and hoping to win over audiences with a comedy. "This show is a bit lighter than some of the other things we've done this season," said O'Donovan, who is directing the 2004 play by Stephen Belber, that was later turned into a movie. "It's a bit funnier and it's a very heartwarming story about family and we want audiences to see that we can do comedy as well as we do our dramas and that it's not all about being serious," O'Donovan said. The three-character production centers around Tobi Powell (Johnny Waitt), a renowned former dancer and Juilliard teacher, who welcomes the opportunity to tell old stories when a graduate student, Lisa, (Megan Pollak) and her husband, Mike (Steve Cabral), a police officer with a troubled past, interview him for a dissertation on contemporary-dance history. But soon it becomes increasingly clear that the couple has ulterior motives and soon they all trick each other into owning up to long-buried transgressions. "It starts out with a deception and the questioning starts to veer off in different directions and the audience then begins to suspect something and then the characters begins to suspect something," O'Donovan said. "A lot of healing takes place and a lot of bonding takes places and it's a very sweet experience with some laughs." When: 8 p.m., April 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, 23 and 3 p.m., April 10 & 17 Where: A.C.T. Studio Theatre, Cedar Pointe Plaza, 2399 SE Ocean Blvd., Stuart Tickets: $24 Information: 772-210-5373 or www.actstudiotheatre.com "Pharmaceutical the Revusical" Another production taking a risk on the A.C.T. Studio Theatre stage this month is "Pharmaceutical the Revusical," an original work by local writer, Gale Baker. Unlike other pieces Baker has debuted on other local stages, this one is a cross between a comedy and musical and she hopes the show will not only get laughs, but make people think. "Theatre is all about trying to give information to people in a way that they can accept," Baker said. "That's what we did with this one." Baker uses all those television commercials about the latest prescription medications promising to heal this or that ailment and gives the production a comical spin with music. "It's just a whimsical look at the pharmaceutical business and our desire for drugs," said Baker, who wrote everything from the lyrics to the informational tidbits. And with songs titles like "Pain," "The Small Print," "Hormones," "High Cholesterol" and "Tick Tock Waiting for the Doctor," it seems like Baker is onto something. "When I first had actors read and sing it, it elicited a lot of dialogue afterwards because in everything that's comedy, there's a lot of truth," Baker said. "I want to see people leaving the theater laughing but then start talking about it in the car." When: 8 p.m., April 29 and 30 Where: A.C.T. Studio Theatre, Cedar Pointe Plaza, 2399 SE Ocean Blvd., Stuart Tickets: $24 Information: 772-210-5373 or www.actstudiotheatre.com THE BARN THEATRE "Send Me No Flowers" Hypochondria takes center stage at the Barn Theatre this month when they open the 1960 comedy, "Send Me No Flowers." The plot centers around George Kimball (Steve Cohen), who already believes every medical malady in the world is out to get him, but when he overhears his doctor discussing the inevitable demise of another patient, Kimball becomes convinced his days are numbered and starts getting his affairs in order, including secretly selecting a new husband for his soon-to-be widow, Judy (Debbie Arthur). "This man thinks he's dying and decides to prove his love to his wife and the comedy ensues from that point on," said director, John Procino. Unlike the 1964 movie version, the play is much more concise and simple, Procino said. "Whenever Hollywood makes a movie out of a play, they always tend to make it bigger, the sets, the plots and it doesn't need to be," Procino said. "It's a lot of good fun and it's good American humor and a good diversion in this world." Although the story takes place in the mid-1960s, theatergoers will easily connect with the characters and their dilemmas, Procino said. "Sure the values were a little different back in the 1960s, but it's relatable because when a couple is in love and one of them thinks they're dying, guess what, something is going to happen," Procino said. "It's all done in a light hearted fashion and I think audiences are going to enjoy it." When: 8 p.m. Wed.-Sat.; 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun.; April 15-May 1 Where: The Barn Theatre, 2400 S.E. Ocean Blvd., Stuart Tickets: $20 Information: 772-287-4884; www.barn-theatre.com The Colby Jack Pub ButterBurger is a seasonal item at Culver's but fried cheese curds are always available. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BY CULVER'S) SHARE This is a Culver's in Naples, which was one of the first to open in Florida. (FILE PHOTO) By Kelly Tyko of TCPalm UPDATE: The Tradition Culver's is proposed to be built near the southwest corner of Tradition Parkway and Village Parkway, near the future Wawa gas station and convenience store, according to new documents filed with the city of Port St. Lucie. A Midwest favorite is bringing its butter burgers, fried cheese curds and frozen custard to the Treasure Coast. Three locations of Wisconsin-based Culver's will open next year with two planned for Martin County and a third in the Tradition area of Port St. Lucie. A Jupiter restaurant is expected to open by the end of 2016 and will be the first in southeast Florida. The first Culver's opened in 1984 in Sauk City, Wisconsin. There are more than 560 independently owned and operated restaurants in 23 states, including 23 Florida locations, which are mostly on the west coast. "Our bread and butter is our ButterBurger, which is our signature burger that we butter the top of the bun," said Tony Milazzo, of Wales, Wisconsin, the franchise owner of the proposed Stuart and Jensen Beach locations. "Our frozen custard is our No. 2 specialty. It's basically a premium ice cream with a richer, smoother texture." The fast-casual chain's menu also includes chicken and fish sandwiches, salads, soups and sides. The Stuart restaurant will be built near the intersection of Kanner Highway and Monterey Road near the Wawa gas station and convenience store, which is under construction. The Jensen Beach restaurant will be at the site of the former Seacoast Bank on U.S. 1 in the Town Center Shops plaza. Milazzo said it hasn't been decided if the old bank building will be renovated or demolished for new construction. "We're in process of getting permits and submitting all the approvals to the county and the city," said Milazzo, 41, who owns eight franchises in Wisconsin and Illinois and has worked for the company since he was 16. "We should be opening (both) around the first of the year or early spring at the latest." Gerald and Susan Smith are moving to Port St. Lucie from Chesterton, Indiana, to open a Culver's in the Tradition area, but wouldn't disclose the exact location. "We'd like to open next year in March or April," Gerald Smith said. "Our long-term plan is to have four stores within the next five to six years but it depends on how the first one does." Culver's corporate spokesman Paul Pitas said while there might be some interest for restaurants in Indian River County nothing was definite yet. "You're going to see a lot more restaurants in Florida," Pitas said, adding that the first Florida Culver's opened in 2013. "We've seen a lot of growth in three years and I think we'll continue to see more." SHARE By Andrew Atterbury of TCPalm INDIAN RIVER COUNTY Four years after declining a virtual-school partnership with area districts, Indian River County is launching its own. School officials are optimistic the web-based program can boost enrollment by offering face-to-face guidance from local teachers. "We're trying to give (students) the best of a virtual world and a real classroom setting," said Micheal Arnett, director of career and technical education with Indian River County School District. Indian River's "IR Virtual" school will offer a free online education for county high school students. It debuts this summer as a franchise of Florida Virtual School, the state's public online school. The agreement will allow Indian River County to use Florida Virtual School's curriculum and course catalog while giving students support from district teachers and counselors whom they can visit on local campuses during office hours and by appointment, Anett said. IR Virtual students also will be invited to events such as homecoming and prom, Arnett said. The state provides school districts an average of $5,230 per virtual student compared to $7,107 for traditional students, according to the Department of Education. Florida Virtual School will receive $50 for each IR Virtual student. Superintendent Mark Rendell pushed for Indian River County to have its own virtual school when he came to the district in 2015, Arnett said. School officials believe IR Virtual will increase the district's reach as more people move into the county, he said. Arnett said his goal for the 2016-17 school year is to have 200 full-time enrollments. Every six course enrollments count as a full-time student equivalent, which add up for every six courses taken by students. "This is going to provide a great service for a large population out there," Arnett said. Some Treasure Coast students already take Florida Virtual School classes, since at least one online course is required for graduation. Many districts partnered with Florida Virtual School in 2009 when they were required by law to provide more online options. Last year, more than 1,600 of Indian River County's approximately 18,000 students took Florida Virtual School courses, according to Tania Clow, a spokeswoman for Florida Virtual School. Fifty-one of those students were enrolled full-time online. Yet those students have no access to local teachers and counselors unless they enroll through IR Virtual in the future. Mosaic Digital Academy in Port St. Lucie provides a K-12 virtual option for students from Martin, St. Lucie and Okeechobee counties. Indian River County was included in the talks to open a joint virtual school, but it decided not to participate when Mosaic opened in 2012. School officials sought to open a local virtual school instead of having students regularly travel to Port St. Lucie, Arnett said. Mosaic, also franchised through Florida Virtual School, enrolls 169 full-time and about 200 part-time students, said Jeanne Ziemba, school administrator at Mosaic. Students are on campus up to three days a week for tutoring and instruction and participate in events such as field trips, Ziemba said. "That has been a winning combination for us," Ziemba said. "Students enjoy that culture." IR Virtual will bring those benefits to Indian River County students, Arnett said. FLORIDA VIRTUAL SCHOOL Florida Virtual School has 34 franchise campuses throughout the state, according to Tania Clow, a spokeswoman for Florida Virtual School. The school served 200,844 part-time and 5,595 full-time students in 2014-15, according to a district enrollment summary. Last year the school served 1,617 students in Indian River County, 2,300 in St. Lucie County and 1,577 in Martin County, according to the summary. Florida Virtual School offers more than 150 courses and staffed 1,347 full-time teachers in 2014-15, according to the summary. Visit FLVS.net for more information and registration. Source: Florida Virtual School The Herbert Hoover Dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee. (FILE PHOTO) SHARE By Bartholomew Sullivan, bartholomew.sullivan@tcpalm.com WASHINGTON U.S. Rep. Curt Clawson is working with House leaders to expedite repairs to the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee through a water bill expected to move this year. The impending water bill is why the Bonita Springs Republican is focused on his dike bill before another bill he introduced last month to task the Interior Department with buying land south of the lake for water storage, he said Friday. The former likely won't decrease lake discharges into the St. Lucie River, whereas the latter could. Clawson said getting his dike bill passed won't be necessary if it was authorized in the last water bill the House and Senate are working on reauthorizing, formally called the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, or WRDA. "We're trying to ascertain that right now," Clawson said, speaking from Florida while Congress is in recess. "If it can be part of WRDA because it's already been authorized, that would be a big help for us. We don't want to go back and do it a second time if this bill can, technically and honestly, be considered part of a previous WRDA authorization." Clawson said he met with Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, and his chief of staff, Patrick C. Cauley, is in "constant communication" with the committee's senior staff to get it done. Clawson wants the committee's support before asking for co-sponsors because securing them "tends to be a lot easier if they know that the leadership of the party and the leadership of the committee is on board." Success with his dike bill could help him pass his land-buy bill, which currently has no-cosponsors. He wants to keep them separate since, "with the land-buy bill, I can't make the case it's already been authorized." CEPP bill The two Florida members of the transportation subcommittee with jurisdiction over the proposal to expedite dike repairs were noncommittal about Clawson's bill this week. "Restoring the natural flow of water in the Everglades is critical to both our local ecosystem and our local economy," said U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, who serves on the Water Resources and Environment subcommittee that will be first to consider Clawson's bill. "The Florida delegation has historically worked together to advance Everglades restoration, and I look forward to reviewing Rep. Clawson's proposals with my bipartisan colleagues." U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Orlando, applauded Clawson's efforts, but said he hopes the Central Everglades Planning Project is included in the new water bill too. The $2 billion CEPP is a series of engineering projects to collect and channel water into the central Everglades and reduce discharges east to the St. Lucie River and west to the Caloosahatchee River. "The freshwater discharge above the Everglades needs our attention," he said Friday. "Although the issue may be addressed in the next WRDA bill, the Central Everglades Planning Project is an important topic to discuss." The dike bill has been referred to the same subcommittee considering a bill to include CEPP in the water bill, introduced last year by U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Jupiter. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, said he was committed to CEPP, according to an op-ed in The Miami Herald last month. At the time, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, applauded Inhofe's decision. Murphy's CEPP bill has 16 bipartisan co-sponsors, including Clawson, Frankel and Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge. Yet it has only an 11 percent chance of clearing the committee and a 2 percent chance of passing, according to the independent analysis group GovTrack. Priorities Everglades Foundation CEO Eric Eikenberg said during Thursday's Everglades Day festivities that passing the water bill is his "No. 1 priority" because "it literally removes barriers that keep the water from moving south." He noted that on April 22 there will be a ceremony to mark the beginning of a project to raise another 2.6-mile stretch of the Tamiami Trail, allowing more water to flow under the roadway and into Everglades National Park. Treasure Coast advocates of the river and Indian River Lagoon put more stock in CEPP reducing discharges than dike repairs. Mark Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society in Stuart, has said dike repairs, though needed, will have no immediate effect on lake levels because the Army Corps of Engineers won't adjust the 2008 regulation schedule until the repairs are completed. Even when completed, CEPP is estimated to reduce discharges east and west by no more than 14 percent. Of even greater interest is Clawson's bill seeking $500 million to buy land south of the lake, a heavy lift in an election year and for a Republican-run Congress leery of major, new spending for a project with limited national appeal. GovTrack gives it a 25 percent chance of clearing the committee and a 12 percent chance of becoming law. Clawson said his proposal to buy land in the Everglades Agriculture Area is "not vilifying sugar or any other industry. ... In all of these bills particularly in the land-buy bill we need them at the table. Vilifying them does not help the situation." While not specifically endorsing either of Clawson's bills, Sen. Bill Nelson said: "Bottom line is: We need to send more water south into the Everglades and it needs to be clean. One way to do that is by getting the state to use Amendment 1 money to acquire more land south of the lake. We also need to complete work on the long-standing rehab of the Herbert Hoover Dike, and I have urged the Army Corps to dedicate additional funding to get those repairs done as soon as possible." Bartholomew Sullivan, a veteran Washington reporter, heads Treasure Coast Newspapers' D.C. news bureau. Treasure Coast Newspapers staff writer Tyler Treadway contributed to this report. SHARE By News Release MARTIN COUNTY Free STD/HIV testing offered In recognition of STD Awareness Month, the Florida Department of Health in Martin County is hosting a series of free testing events for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. Free testing, education and counseling is available at the Health Department, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 11 and April 27 at 3441 S.E. Willoughby Blvd., Stuart, and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 14 at 16401 S.W. Farm Road, Indiantown. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 20 million new sexually transmitted infections occur each year in the United States. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., left, and Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., right, speak together as State Department Under Secretary for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon, Jr., testifies at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 5, 2016, on recent Iranian actions and implementation of the nuclear deal. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) SHARE By Bartholomew Sullivan, bartholomew.sullivan@tcpalm.com WASHINGTON Marco Rubio has gone back to his day job. Two days after dropping out of the race for president March 15, Florida's junior senator voted with 95 others to adjust ambulance fees under the Medicare program. Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, still in the race, missed that vote. This week, Rubio was part of a unanimous 87-0 vote Monday dealing with the theft of trade secrets; he voted Wednesday to amend the Internal Revenue Code; and he voted Thursday on two amendments to a small business relief bill. So Rubio, whose missed-vote record increased from 12 percent in 2014 to 53 percent during his presidential campaign, is 5 for 5 since those have been the only roll-call votes the Senate has taken since billionaire Donald Trump trounced him in the Florida primary. Rubio has been re-engaging in other ways too, now that he's back in the saddle in Washington. "Among other priorities, Sen. Rubio will continue working on national security issues and oversight of the Obama administration's disastrous foreign policy, pushing for greater accountability at the VA, stopping the Obamacare bailout again and getting the Central Everglades Planning Project finally approved in the Senate's water resources bill," spokeswoman Kristen J. Morrell said Tuesday. "Sen. Rubio also looks forward to seeing the Ten Mile Creek Preserve de-authorization law he authored take effect as this reservoir is handed over from the federal government to the state by June 15 ... This will capture and treat stormwater flows and will help address some of the Indian River Lagoon's problems." Rubio this week also joined 42 other Senate Republicans in a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court alleging President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration "supplant Congress' constitutional power to establish immigration laws. The senators said an executive order deferring the deportation of the parents of American citizens or legal immigrants is "an explicit effort to circumvent the legislative process." Oral arguments in the Texas case are April 18. MISSED VOTES Rubio's missed votes became a campaign issue in October when the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel highlighted it in an editorial that suggested he resign his Senate seat. His 53 percent missed-vote record exceeded other candidates', such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's, which is currently at 40 percent. In the last weeks of his presidential campaign, Rubio voted on three of the 33 Senate actions from Jan. 11, when the 114th Congress' second session resumed, until March 15. He voted yes on all three measures: Jan. 12: To end debate on the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which would have called for an audit of the central bank. Jan. 20: To end debate on the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, which would have required additional certifications for admission of certain aliens immigrants as refugees. Feb. 10: A bill to extend sanctions against North Korea. Also on his calendar, just five days before his disastrous Sunshine State primary loss, Rubio took the time to commend Energy and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe for pledging to keep the Central Everglades Project in a forthcoming water resources bill. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in October, when he himself was still in the presidential race, chided Rubio for not showing up for work, especially for a job he joked had a "French work week" typically just three days long. "I'm a constituent of the senator and I helped him and expected he would show up to work," Bush said on the CNBC debate stage. "But Marco, when you signed up for this, this was a six-year term. ... You can campaign, or just resign and let someone else take the job." Rubio countered Bush hadn't been so critical of John McCain missing 51 percent of the votes during his 2008 campaign. But Rubio's "no-show" reputation caught on. Rubio could seek re-election to his Senate seat, but he has said he doesn't like the pace of the upper chamber, as exemplified by the number of floor votes so far this year, and plans to become a private citizen come January. Longtime Fort Pierce resident Bob Burdge talks with Fort Pierce Chief of Police Diane Hobley-Burney on June 1, 2015, during her swearing-in ceremony at City Hall in Fort Pierce. After nearly a year in office, Hobley-Burney sees three top issues: low pay that continues to cause uncomfortably high officer turnover rates; the high cost of employee health insurance contributions; and having to work with outdated equipment. (FILE PHOTO) Is the honeymoon over? Maybe it's getting close. Diane Hobley-Burney is rapidly approaching her first anniversary as police chief in Fort Pierce. She's the city's first female chief and so far has been welcomed in the community as someone with a different approach to making the city a safer place in which to live. Two weeks ago Hobley-Burney presented to the city commission her first assessment of the future needs of the police department. It makes for interesting reading. The chief sees three top issues: low pay that continues to cause uncomfortably high officer turnover rates; the high cost of employee health insurance contributions; and having to work with outdated equipment including computer systems and high-mileage patrol cars. Fort Pierce has never been a rich city, and it's having to compete with wealthier jurisdictions for police officers. It's not a new problem. Deputy Chief Frank Amandro wrote a detailed report two years ago on the same topic. The current starting salary for Fort Pierce police officers is $38,000, compared to $41,995 in Port St. Lucie and $48,000 for Palm Beach County sheriffs deputies. Yet there may be some progress on the horizon, Hobley-Burney told me Thursday. Although the offer has yet to be formally ratified by one of two police unions and the city commission, the city hopes by May to offer a 4 percent raise plus another 4 percent increase taken out of the department's overtime budget. That would put starting officers at $41,040, or within a few hundred dollars of what peer cities offer. A city committee is working on easing the burden of the health insurance contributions, and Hobley-Burney has gotten the city commission's blessing to buy 11 new vehicles. Hobley-Burney has been welcomed with plenty of open arms in the community, not least in the northwest section of the city. She has made herself more accessible by walking the streets of Lincoln Park regularly. She's also taken daily roll call out of the office and into people's homes or businesses. "(That) gives an opportunity to residents to know what's going on in their area," she explained. There also are signs of progress in getting residents to come forward with information about criminal activity, Hobley-Burney said. That would be a big step in breaking down the "no snitching" code that's long thwarted many investigations, including homicides. Hobley-Burney said residents now are better informed about pending arrest warrants and the results of police investigations. Tony Barnes is the president of the St. Lucie County chapter of the NAACP. He's a Hobley-Burney fan. "She's more approachable," Barnes said. "People I've spoken to are thrilled because she's willing to spend time with them. We believe that's important because it's breaking down walls. The community is beginning to understand they are part of any solution and making sure the crime rate continues to fall. She brings smiles to people's faces." Barnes believes the chief's attitude is percolating down to younger officers in her department. "They seem full of energy and ready to be an asset to the community; they want to help rather than just arrest people." City Commissioner Reggie Sessions is more reserved in his praise. Sessions said he has serious concerns about the turnover rate for officers, especially veterans who are leaving. Salary increases may help, Sessions argued, but "I don't think it's all about dollars and cents. (When) those with more experience are being pulled away, that's dangerous for us. We're going to have people with two years experience trying to train new officers soon. If we were Boca or Vero (with low crime rates), that might not be a problem. It is here." Hobley-Burney stressed to me she's rebuilding a police department, not just tweaking operations. She said she's also rebranding the department as a friendlier, more accessible organization from adding kids' furniture in the main lobby to using Segways to get officers physically closer to those they serve and protect. "I continue to walk the streets alone, asking people what they think of the PD and the city," Hobley-Burney said. "I learn so much and whether things are working or not. I'm not just sitting behind my desk. I want people to feel safe today and tomorrow, for them and their grandchildren. And that's going to be accomplished." I wish her all the success in the world; maybe that honeymoon's not quite over yet. Sewall's Point resident Jerry Rappaport (right) speaks with Cuban leader Fidel Castro during a 1977 trip to Cuba. (JERRY RAPPAPORT/CONTRIBUTED PHOTO) Gil Smart Columnist SHARE Sewell's Point resident Jerry Rappaport (left) and Boston architect Lee Cott (fourth from left) are shown with Cuban laborers who were building their own homes during a 1977 trip to Cuba. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO FROM JERRY RAPPAPORT) It was October 1977, and a Cuban police officer was poking his pistol into Jerry Rappaport's chest, asking him in Spanish, of course just what he thought he was doing. Rappaport then a high-powered Boston developer, now a Sewall's Point philanthropist had been poking around a construction site on the outskirts of Havana at the invitation of none other than Fidel Castro himself. But he didn't speak Spanish and had a hard time conveying that to the Cuban cop. "All we could do was tell him to call Castro," said Rappaport, now 88. Try that next time you get stopped for a traffic violation. "Call Obama!" MORE | Visiting Cuba meant cutting the cord Time is now to lift the Cuban embargo Finally, after some tense moments, the Cuban officer got word that Rappaport and his companions were on the up-and-up. Even though their trip to Cuba itself was on the Q.T. On March 20, President Obama became the first U.S. president to set foot on Cuban soil in 88 years, and a thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations after more than a half-century that included some of the biggest crises of the Cold War is underway. Yet Obama is not the first president to reach out to Cuba. As chronicled in the 2014 book "Back Channel to Cuba," clandestine talks between Washington and Havana began as early as 1962, often involving informal delegations that met in restaurants and hotels, intermediaries seeking common ground as the basis for further discussions. In early 1977, as President Jimmy Carter took office, Rappaport was approached by Thomas O'Neill then Massachusetts lieutenant governor and the son of U.S. House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill, a friend of Rappaport's to be part of a group. "The expectation was we would meet with Castro and try to open a dialogue on trade and how to help Cuba become more democratized," said Rappaport in an interview last week. Rappaport had met Castro in 1959, when the Cuban leader spoke at the Harvard Law Forum, which Rappaport had founded a decade before. "He talked of democracy and of overthrowing dictatorship," Rappaport recalled of Castro's heralded visit to America. But within a year, Castro seized American property and pivoted toward the Soviet Union. "The romance disappeared," said Rappaport. Yet in March 1977, just weeks after taking office, President Carter issued a directive stating the U.S. should seek to normalize relations with Cuba, and begin "direct and confidential talks." So there was a general atmosphere of hope as Rappaport and the rest of his group stepped off the plane in Havana on Oct. 24, 1977 and stepped back in time. "On the streets were old Chevrolets like I drove in college," Rappaport said. "It's hard to imagine how depressed and worn out everything was." Over the next five days there were "indoctrinating visits" with Cuban functionaries. The group, which included Rappaport's wife, Phyllis, toured schools and dined at a restaurant outside Havana, where they scrambled to come up with enough local currency to pay the bill. ("There were no charge cards," Rappaport explained, and most of the group had declined to convert their dollars to Cuban pesos because of the ridiculously low official exchange rate.) Then, one afternoon, they were told to get dressed. Fidel would see them. "He was an impressive guy," tall and in full military uniform, said Rappaport. Rappaport reminded him they'd met at Harvard years before. The two men spoke for 10-12 minutes; Castro learned Rappaport was a developer and peppered him with technical questions. Then Castro told Rappaport he should visit Alamar, Cuba's biggest housing project, touted as a model socialist city. "You won a lottery, which gave you the right to build your own house," said Rappaport. The next day, intrigued, Rappaport and architect Lee Cott, also part of the delegation, took a taxi to the site and began snapping pictures. Soon they heard a siren, and up screeched the police officer, weapon drawn. It was, Rappaport said, a frightening moment in an otherwise encouraging trip. Ultimately, though, nothing would come of it. Carter never put Cuban relations on the front burner and "Back Channel to Cuba" reports that Castro's refusal to cease Cuba's military involvement in Angola became a major stumbling block. "About the only benefit to me was that I was able to legally bring back two boxes of Cuban cigars for my father," said Rappaport. Nearly 40 years later, as he watched Obama's trip, he grew wistful. "There was the possibility of a beginning there for tourism, trade and cultural events," he said. "Cuba would be in a much better place. "I can't help but look at what's happening now and say: What if?" Marine 86, Brevard County Fire Rescue's boat, is based at Sebastian Inlet Marina in Micco. Brian Burkeen, assistant chief for Indian River County Fire Rescue, said he was unaware the boat was there until Wednesday, when a Press Journal columnist contacted him. Burkeen said he would talk with his county's fire chief about making arrangements to get Brevard's help when needed in north Indian River County. (T.P. KENNEDY/CONTRIBUTED PHOTO) Thankfully, boating mishaps and serious medical issues along the Indian River Lagoon are relatively few and far between. But when seconds matter in north Indian River County, emergency response is inadequate. Case in point: What if Sunday's pontoon boat capsizing near the St. Sebastian River and Sebastian Inlet was worse than it was? Stephen Graga, 70, a snowbird from New Jersey, died when he was trapped underneath the boat. Three passengers clung to the side of the pontoon boat until they could be helped onto a vessel operated by recreational boater Shane Styron of Sebastian. The other day I wrote about Styron's efforts to help Graga and the others, and Styron's unsuccessful efforts to get help or directives from U.S. Coast Guard and Indian River County Sheriff's Office dispatchers. Someone reported the capsizing to the Sheriff's Office at 11:10 a.m., but a sheriff's marine boat and the county's fire-rescue boat based in Vero Beach did not arrive at the capsized vessel until 11:33 a.m. and 11:46 a.m., respectively, according to Eric Flowers, a sheriff's spokesman. MORE | Grant Farm Island's tranquility draws simplicity seekers By that time, Styron, worried about the condition of the survivors, was racing to the Outrigger, a marina and restaurant along the St. Sebastian River in Micco. When he got there, an ambulance from Brevard County Fire Rescue was summoned by an Indian River County sheriff's deputy who met Styron there in a patrol car. The ambulance arrived in minutes. Luckily, only one patient was transported with minor injuries. But what if it had been a serious medical issue? Paramedics getting there in 36 minutes wouldn't cut it. It turns out help on the water was only minutes away. Unfortunately, Indian River County emergency officials had no idea Brevard County Fire Rescue has a boat based at Sebastian Inlet Marina, on U.S. 1 just north of the St. Sebastian River Bridge. The only reason I learned about Brevard's boat was because T.P. Kennedy, owner of the marina, called me after reading my Tuesday column on the capsizing. "Every two years or so, something serious seems to happen going into the (Sebastian) inlet," Kennedy said, noting he offered to provide Brevard County Fire Rescue a free slot at the marina. Kennedy paid to build them a $7,000 lift about 18 months ago. Scott Gold, assistant chief of Brevard fire rescue, said the boat, the county's only one, is there primarily to handle calls to Grant Farm (also known as VIP) Island. The 50-acre island with 105 lots in the lagoon is accessible only by boat. Rescue workers from the Micco and Grant-Valkaria fire stations are trained to respond to the marina and handle calls. Gold said he'd be happy to discuss with his counterparts in Indian River County agreements that would send his boat to water emergencies just south of the Brevard County line. Brian Burkeen, Indian River County's deputy chief, said he'd talk about a possible agreement with his chief, John King. Such an agreement is a no-brainer. King and Sheriff Deryl Loar, who have boats only in Vero Beach, should talk to Sebastian police about having them respond to north county emergencies. Better collaboration can only make our waterways safer. It's unlikely anything could have been done to save Graga. But if his death spurs emergency officials to collaborate better, perhaps lives can be saved in the future. Rendering of All Aboard Florida's brightline train. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/ALL ABOARD FLORIDA) "Do the people fighting the high-speed rail really know who they are fighting?" The rhetorical question, posed by Port St. Lucie resident Karen Herold, was a valuable insight amid the profanity-laced voice mails and nasty emails I received in response to my previous column, "Candidates should tell the truth about All Aboard Florida" (April 3). No, Ms. Herold. I don't believe they do. Herold and I have different views on the rail project. I oppose it; she supports it. But we agree on one point: The fight is unwinnable. MORE | Rich Campbell: Candidates should tell the truth about All Aboard Florida Investigation: Is All Aboard Florida lining pockets of lobbyists, lawmakers to ensure state permit approval? The opponents of All Aboard Florida talk and act as if they are fighting a passenger rail company. However, their foe is so much bigger. It includes state and federal agencies that are predisposed, for philosophical and political reasons, to approve All Aboard's design plans and funding requests. The give-and-take that occurs between Treasure Coast residents and these government entities such as the Federal Railroad Administration and the Florida Development Finance Corp. fosters the illusion the agencies are fair and objective, taking into consideration the public's concerns before rendering their decisions. Folks, it's largely for show. The powers-that-be go through the charade of soliciting our opinions. But do any of us on the Treasure Coast really feel our concerns have been heard and addressed? All Aboard Florida opponents can stand on street corners and rally in parks to denounce the project. But who is listening? The only audience with open ears are Treasure Coast officials and they already are committed to fighting the project. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Transportation drafted the National Rail Plan. One of the goals is "to connect communities with high-speed and intercity passenger rail where population densities and competitive trip times create markets for success." Ten potential high-speed corridors received special designation. The Miami-Orlando-Tampa route is one of them. The establishment has laid the groundwork to bring All Aboard Florida to fruition. Whether it succeeds will be determined by the marketplace. To help ensure approval of the project, All Aboard Florida and its affiliates have greased the skids by hiring lobbyists and donating money to politicians. As Treasure Coast Newspapers' investigative reporter George Andreassi pointed out in a recent article, All Aboard Florida companies have poured $1.2 million into lobbying fees and campaign contributions since Jan. 1, 2015. This money can only be viewed as an "investment" by the rail company to secure 17 permits and approvals from six state agencies. At first blush, hope stirs at the notion All Aboard Florida could be derailed by the denial of even one permit. However, the heads of these agencies report to Gov. Rick Scott, who has been a passive proponent of the rail project. Deny even one permit? It ain't gonna happen. Readers vent their frustration at me for saying All Aboard Florida is a done deal and our efforts at this point should be redirected to mitigate the negative impacts of the Miami-to-Orlando passenger rail project. Rage at me if you must. However, train opponents should be directing their rage at a political and governmental system that appears to be all too willing to facilitate completion of the project. Say what you will about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. To their credit, both men have tapped into the visceral hatred voters feel toward an establishment system fueled by political donations and beholden to special interests. In other words, the kind of system that makes a project such as All Aboard Florida a fait accompli. Herold, who worked in planning and zoning in Crete Township, Illinois, has seen how money and political connections bring projects to fruition. "I hate to see our local governments waste money on things they can't change," Herold told me. I agree. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) holds talks with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Beijing, China, April 7, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe is paying a visit to China on April 6-9. He has met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and some other senior officials for talks on a variety of subjects including security matters, economic cooperation and the Maritime Silk Road project. It is Wickremasinghe's first visit as prime minister to China, since the new Sri Lankan government was formed in January of last year. In 2015, bilateral trade between the two countries amounted to over US$4.5 billion. The background to this visit is especially positive for the Chinese side. When the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena took office in January 2015, relations with China were overshadowed by suspicion. A plan, inaugurated in September 2014 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, to establish a new port city project in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo was put on ice by the new Sri Lankan government, even though China was providing the funds. The prime minister's visit took place in the context of a Sri Lankan decision to reverse the suspension and give the green light to the project. The Chinese-backed consortium CHEC Port City Colombo has welcomed the "positive step," and Wickremasinghe's visit to China will serve to nail it down. It is hoped that the meeting between the Chinese and Sri Lankan premiers will also give a boost to the proposals for a special economic zone (SEZ) in Hambantota, southern Sri Lanka, where a US$1.7 billion Chinese-built seaport and airport has as yet failed to fulfil their potential; new Chinese investment would be most welcome. Sino-Sri Lankan relations are thus clearly back on course after a temporary setback. This rapprochement clearly benefits both sides. Sri Lanka's finances are in a parlous situation, as their central bank has announced that a major loan, US$1.5 billion, is being sought from the International Monetary Fund. The newly unblocked Chinese investment would be on a similar scale, so it may alleviate the necessity. The Port City project aims to build offices, hotels and shopping centres on 233 hectares of reclaimed land. Further Chinese investments in ports, airports and industrial zones may follow. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. Designers Olin McKenzie (left) and Bernard Zyscovich speak during the unveiling of the renderings for the new 60,000-square-foot All Aboard Florida train station in downtown West Palm Beach in July 2014. (ALEX SLITZ/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS) By Anne Scott We can all see and feel the tangible threat to our communities posed by the deterioration of our waterways. It will do little good to survive the environmental disaster if we are still standing in the path of high-speed passenger trains. I refer, of course, to the boondoggle known as All Aboard Florida, which is doing business as Brightline. There are many unjust and irregular aspects to this proposal, not the least of which is AAF's casual and utter disregard for the safety of the communities it plans to bisect. Running hazardous materials side by side with bullet trains should leave us very concerned about our future. We should not be distracted by a debate about whether we should make sure the trains don't blow their horns as they barrel through. Investigation | Is All Aboard Florida lining pockets of lobbyists, lawmakers to ensure state permit approval? All Aboard Florida has spent massive amounts of money on public relations and lobbying to disseminate confusing and conflicting information about safety measures and "quiet zones." The chambers of commerce of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Palm Beach have scoffed at our efforts to demand safety and compliance with applicable laws and regulations. Don't be fooled. Urging us to focus on "quiet zones" is not about safety. It is a strategy to distract. The difference between "quiet zones" and "sealed corridors" Let's be clear. "Quiet zones" are not about safety. Furthermore, AAF has conceded that maximum safety is not its highest concern. "Quiet zones" are about noise and warnings. "Sealed corridors," on the other hand are about barriers and prevention. The Federal Railroad Administration requires "sealed corridors" at crossings where train speeds exceed 80 mph. AAF proposes trains reaching speeds of 110 mph traveling through our area. Federal law will therefore mandate "sealed corridors." All Aboard Florida has claimed it will install them at its expense. Remember, AAF may build the sealed corridor improvements, but local taxpayers will have to pay the bill to maintain them in perpetuity. When Martin County asked AAF to pay the increased maintenance costs, the company refused to even consider it. Will FRA require AAF to build sealed corridors in Martin County? We do not know. Nor do we know what commitments or understandings have been made between AAF and FRA. We have little reason to believe state and federal regulators will follow laws and apply them equally. From the outset of this ill-conceived project, state and federal agencies continue to lower the bar for AAF and other subsidiaries of its parent company, Fortress Investment Group. Working with, not against, AAF? The various chambers of commerce to the south and north have one mission advancing the interests of their member businesses. We have no quarrel with that. There is profit to be made from development activity and freight business that will follow. We do, however, object to their patronizing and disingenuous statements about the passion and dedication of tens of thousands of local residents who are trying to protect our communities and our way of life. AAF does not, as they would have you believe, provide a solution to a real and demonstrable statewide transportation problem. This is really about a hedge fund, Fortress Investment Group, that manages tens of billions of dollars, has a poor investment on its hands and is looking for a government bailout. The sleight of hand regarding "quiet zones" is just one of many troubling behaviors on the part of AAF. We will continue to fight on every legal, regulatory and procedural front we can. We will not be bullied into submission by the corporate behemoths whose high-risk venture will put our citizens' lives at risk and destroy our communities. Anne Scott is chairwoman of the Martin County Commission. SHARE By Jeffrey Berger When writing about climate change, the boiled frog analogy serves a useful purpose, and it goes like this: If you place a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out. However, if you place a frog in slowly heated water, it will adjust to rising temperatures and stay put until it boils to death. No frogs were harmed in the writing of this column. Nevertheless, the boiled frog analogy describes how some people ignore a looming threat that unfolds gradually over time. Climate change cannot be watched on cable TV with the dramatic impact of a tsunami. Climate change may not be felt for several years. Yet climate scientists predict a grim future of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, coastal flooding, drought, crop failures, disruptions in global food supplies, famine, crises and wars. In short, climate change represents an existential threat to future generations. Despite these warnings, there are skeptics, doubters and boiled frogs. We understand why the concept of climate change is so troubling to people. The economic, political and moral challenges are profound. There are deep historical and cultural roots to overcome. Yet we can no longer afford to dither. The climate bomb is ticking and time is running out. Climate change scientists study greenhouse gas emissions, heat retention models and the complex relationship between variables on a global scale. Decades of careful monitoring lead to an overwhelming conclusion: Increases in greenhouse gas emissions coincide precisely with rising global temperatures. As we burn energy in our cars, homes and factories, we release greenhouses gases into the atmosphere. "So what," croaks the frog. "Everything in nature is flatulent." Yet, when we examine all sources of atmospheric greenhouse gases from natural to man-made, fossil-fuel combustion is literally the smoking gun. How do we know? Man-made pollutants have a unique molecular signature, unlike natural emissions. Imagine two world maps, one superimposed over another. One map shows areas of human population density; another map shows sources of greenhouse gas emissions. With uncanny precision, satellite images from space confirm the relationship between human activity and greenhouse gas emissions. How extensive, we ask? Seventy-eight percent since 1970, and 96 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Hence, the term 'anthropogenic,' meaning 'caused by human beings.' Despite record-high global temperatures, unseasonable cold spells bring out the boiled frogs among us. "So what," croaks the frog. "Mother Earth has mood swings." Here is a statistical concept to keep in mind. Even the most compelling evidence is interspersed with some degree of random noise, called "statistical outliers." Climate change deniers peddle bogus claims based on random noise and false attributions. In other words, statistical outliers turn boiled frogs into consummate liars. The definitive scam came to light last year when InsideClimate News interviewed former scientists of Exxon Corp. and released hundreds of pages of internal documents. Decades ago, Exxon's own research confirmed the consensus of climate scientists. In 1978, Exxon Senior Scientist James Black wrote: "Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions become critical." In the 1980s, Exxon suspended publication of its findings and embarked upon a campaign to mislead the public. Exxon Mobil is currently under investigation in California and New York for fraud and alleged violations of environmental, public health and shareholder protection laws. Following the fraudulent practices of asbestos and tobacco producers, Exxon Mobil used deceptive tactics to protect its horde of filthy lucre. Admittedly, the boiling frog story employs a fanciful metaphor. The definitive experiment was performed in 1869 by Friedrich Goltz, a German physiologist who searched for the location of the soul. His experiment confirmed a fundamental truth: Frogs whose brains have been removed will remain in slowly heated water until they boil to death. Thus, I end my commentary on this note: Unlike their intact amphibian counterparts, the hard-boiled skeptics of climate change have neither brains nor souls. Jeffrey Berger is a documentary filmmaker and journalist who has written extensively on energy and environmental topics. He is retired and living in Vero Beach. Reporters gather on the steps of the Florida Supreme Court Building in Tallahassee. (AP Photo/Dave Martin) SHARE By Paula Dockery The Florida Supreme Court failed twice last week to do what was in the best interest of Floridians. Coincidentally, both decisions involved constitutional amendments one by putting a deceptive amendment on the ballot and the other by not holding the Florida Legislature accountable for ignoring a ballot measure that passed. Both were decided on 4-3 splits. Let's start with the high court's decision to deny plaintiffs who prevailed in challenges to congressional and Florida Senate redistricting the ability to recoup legal fees from the state. In 2010, Florida voters overwhelmingly supported two "Fair District" constitutional amendments with 63 percent of the vote. Voters wanted the Legislature to stop gerrymandering legislative and congressional districts to unfairly benefit one party or incumbents. Little changed in the following redistricting process. The only way to hold those drawing the maps accountable was through the courts a difficult, costly and time-consuming endeavor. A coalition of voter rights groups led by the League of Women Voters became the plaintiff in court challenges to both the congressional and Florida Senate redistricting maps. The Fair Districts litigation spanning four years included discovery, depositions, trials, appeals, failed special sessions and ultimately Supreme Court rulings. The lower court threw out the Legislature's congressional map after finding Republican lawmakers had colluded with political operatives to produce districts that favored their party. The state Supreme Court also sided with voter rights groups in a strong 5-2 decision rebuking the Legislature and approving the new congressional maps. The legal costs to defend the Legislature have topped $8 million with taxpayers picking up the tab. The plaintiffs petitioned the court to have their legal fees reimbursed. Justice Barbara Pariente supported their request, arguing the court should apply the private attorney general exception, which allows private parties to collect legal fees in public-interest lawsuits when the government chooses not to litigate. The court didn't agree and denied the plaintiffs' request for legal fees on a 4-3 split. In her dissent Pariente joined by Justices Peggy Quince and James Perry stressed it couldn't be overstated how important the efforts of the plaintiffs were in forcing the Legislature to comply with the state Constitution. This decision will surely have the chilling effect on future court challenges that those who violated the Constitution were hoping for. There was another disappointing Florida Supreme Court ruling. This one involved ballot access for a utility-backed constitutional amendment disguised as a consumer-friendly, pro-solar effort. Contrary to its name, Consumers for Smart Solar has received 95 contributions totaling $7.5 million, with very few coming from consumers. According to its latest report filed with the Division of Elections, all but 12 of the contributions totaling $405 came from power companies or political action committees (PACs). This was a devious ploy to stop the true pro-solar amendment sponsored by Floridians for Solar Choice. The solar choice initiative failed to collect the 683,149 petition signatures needed in time to make the 2016 ballot so they are now shooting for 2018. The utility-backed, anti-consumer, protectionist amendment is moving forward. The language is carefully crafted to appear pro-solar and pro-consumer. It is neither. It actually hurts the efforts for true consumer solar choice. Florida newspapers have run numerous articles attempting to explain the difference between the solar amendments and exposing who is behind each. Readers are still confused. The Florida Supreme Court can prevent confusing constitutional amendments from reaching the voters. In fact, the court is required to review proposed amendments to determine if the language is misleading. This one should have been a no-brainer. If voters believe it does something it doesn't, clearly it's misleading. Incredibly, four of the seven justices didn't see it that way. In a logic-defying 4-3 decision, the court allowed the deceptive amendment to appear on the November ballot. Why bother having them review it? Paula Dockery is a syndicated columnist who served in the Florida Legislature for 16 years as a Republican from Lakeland. She can be reached at PBDockery@gmail.com. It appears that the Obama administration will refrain from giving its outspoken support to any legislation that aims to compel high-tech companies to help law enforcement agencies crack mobile phone encryption. On the other hand, it wont level any outspoken opposition either. Introduction of such a bill sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected soon. Although the White House has reviewed a draft of the measure and offered feedback, it is expected to provide minimal public input, Reuters reported Thursday. The bill gives federal judges broad authority to compel tech companies to assist government agencies, but it doesnt prescribe what the businesses have to do or the circumstances under which they could be ordered to help. Penalties for not complying with the law also appear absent from the draft measure. The White House did not respond to our request for comment for this story, but earlier this month at a press gaggle on Air Force One, Press Secretary Josh Earnest shed doubt on the ability of Congress to tackle the encryption issue. I continue to be a little skeptical of Congress ability to handle such a complicated policy area, given Congress recent inability to handle even simple things, he told reporters. Lack of Understanding More public discussion is needed before Congress starts to act on encryption, maintained Jonathan Katz, director of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center. We need to see where the public stands on how much they value privacy of their communications versus the ability to track terrorists. The public hasnt been given chance to think through the issues and understand whats going on, he told TechNewsWorld. Nor, for that matter, have a lot of the politicians who have come out with opinions about this. I think they dont fully understand the technical issues either, Katz added. Its worthwhile for them to really understand these issues before they start passing laws that relate to them. White House Unclear If the White House opposes what Feinstein and Burr are cooking up, its not being very clear about it. It seems that theyre not actively backing the legislation, but theyre not opposing it either, Katz said. Congress isnt alone in trying to grapple with the encryption issue. The states are taking action, too, and while Feinstein and Burr seem to be stopping short of forcing tech companies to weaken their encryption to accommodate government agencies, proposed laws in states like California and New York do not. I predict that one side will always be unhappy, and well eventually see the U.S. Supreme Court weigh in on the issue, vThreat CTO Marcus Carey told TechNewsWorld. Weak Encryption, Weak Solution If theres a solution to the conflict between law enforcement and the tech companies, it doesnt lie in weaker encryption, maintained Steve Kelly, president of Intego. A tech companys first responsibility is to the consumer, so its correct to make products as impenetrable as we possibly can, he told TechNewsWorld. When you create any backdoor to your encryption, you ultimately open it up to attackers who will exploit it, Kelly explained, and compromise the security and personal information of consumers. While tech companies shouldnt weaken their encryption, they shouldnt refuse to help law enforcement when they can, he added. Its in the tech companies best interest to do everything they can to help the government, because public sentiment could turn against them very quickly in the wake of a large-scale terrorist attack. FBI Show and Tell Meanwhile, the FBI visited Capitol Hill to brief Feinstein on how it gained access to the data in the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino killers, Syed Farook. Since the agency has not shared the technique with Apple, the move could be interpreted as a slight to the Cupertino company, which refused to help the FBI crack the phones password. However, that may not be the case. The move to brief Congress wasnt an ego stroke, maintained Mark Longworth, CEO of Shevirah. There are legislators who are sympathetic and have proposed amendments and bills to give the FBI greater technical access to modern, encrypted communications like they have with CALEA (the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act ), he told TechNewsWorld. The FBI is simply supplying those legislators with ammunition on how difficult and costly the methods they have are, said Longworth, as well as how important it is to get to the data in cases like San Bernardino. Weeks after backing down from its litigation demanding Apples help to access encrypted data on the San Bernardino terrorists iPhone, the FBI appears to be taking full advantage of its newly discovered forensic prowess by offering assistance to law enforcement agencies across the country. The agency has sent out letters letting local officials know that it has gained access to the encrypted data on the iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter, and it has offered to help officials use the technique, which it did not disclose, to assist their investigations. FBI Assistant Director Kerry Sleeper on Friday reminded local law enforcement operations that the agency was available for assistance, according to Buzzfeed, which obtained a copy of the memo. The Going Dark problem, which allows criminals to operate in an environment where evidence is largely untraceable, is a substantial challenge for federal and local agencies, Sleeper noted. The memo gave no indication that the agency was willing to share the actual technique used, which the FBI acquired through consultation with a third-party entity. iPhone Deconstruction Method One technique that may have been employed is a simple deconstruction of the iPhone, which involves physically copying the memory content and then restoring it when the phone tries to erase, suggested Joseph Bonneau, a technology fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That technique came to light as the case was about to go to a court hearing last month, when ACLU Technology Fellow Daniel Kahn Gillmour referenced it in a blog post. It involves desoldering the phones NAND flash, reading out the flash, and then doing in-loop passcode testing of the device. To be clear, the FBI has not disclosed how it accessed the data nor has it disclosed the name of the third party that brought the technique to its attention. Assuming some version of this method was used, this is not fixable by Apple, the EFFs Bonneau told the E-Commerce Times. More recent versions of the iPhone, including the iPhone 6, may be more secure against this type of breach, he said, as they contain tamper-resistant memory to store the number after too any unsuccessful PIN breaches. If the FBI should manage to help other law enforcement agencies hack into encrypted devices, the technique used will not stay secret for too much longer, said Alan Butler, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Defense attorneys eventually get access to any method used to generate evidence against their clients in a criminal case, and this should be no different in phone decryption methods, he told the E-Commerce Times. The reason for this is that every evidence-gathering technique needs to meet baseline standards for reliability and accuracy. EPIC filed an amicus brief in a case that tested the ability to cross examine enhanced techniques used to gather forensic evidence, according to Butler. The case, Florida v. Harris, involves the use of drug-detection dogs to conduct a search without a warrant. In that particular case, a dog was used to detect pseudoephedrine, which allegedly was being used to create meth, in a search of a suspects truck. The dog was not trained to detect pseudoephedrine, however, and EPIC filed a brief arguing that investigative techniques must be based on research, testing and reliability. No End in Sight Its likely that the FBI will be forced to employ different strategies in future encryption cases, according to Butler. The Apple case made it clear that device manufacturers, public interest groups and former security advisors all support the rights of Apple and their users to have strong encryption, he said. Apple is more likely to be able to create an update for the iPhone hack, and install a more secure patch or updated operating system that the FBI or any other outside entity would not be able to penetrate, suggested Eli Dourado, the director of the Technology Policy Project at George Mason Universitys Mercatus Center. Apple will almost certainly be able to figure out what vulnerability the FBI is using and be able to fix it, he told the E-Commerce Times. The challenge will be in ensuring that new vulnerabilities do not arise in the future. However, given the ubiquity of software bugs in all projects, Dourado added, it is more likely than not that in the future, law enforcement will hack into smartphones as a rule rather than an exception. An Apple spokesperson was not immediately available to comment for this story. Move over Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Google Now - there's a new digital assistant in town with a laser focus. Amy is the brainchild of X.ai, a New York City startup that recently announced a $23 million round of funding. Dennis Mortensen, founder and CEO of X.ai, tells The Verge that there is a paradigm shift about to happen in how software is being delivered, adding that he doesn't' believe apps are the future. As the publication points out, there's data to back up that belief as consumers are experiencing what's known as app fatigue. As far back as 2014, most smartphone users in the US were downloading zero apps per month and spending 80 percent of their time with mobile devices in just three apps. Unsurprisingly, it's leading many developers to try and come up with new ways to reach mobile users that doesn't involve app stores. Last month, Microsoft spent a significant amount of time during its Build conference discussing a future involving bots (and quickly brushing aside Tay, its social chat bot that was corrupted by the Internet in less than a day). Next week, Facebook is expected to unveil a bot store for its Messenger platform. Oh, and don't forget about Echo, Amazon's surprise hit product driven by a personal assistant named Alexa. It's not by accident or coincidence that these tech giants are turning their attention to bots, especially considering all of them failed to jump on the mobile boat. At X.ai, they're keeping a laser focus on one goal; that is, for Amy not only to excel, but be "world class" at a single task - scheduling meetings. Some things in life are simply impossible to believe, comprehend or be sold on without first-hand experience. I've been told that desktop-grade virtual reality falls into this category. Convincing someone to pay a minimum of $600 for something that seems gimmicky at best is a tough sell. HTC wants to make you a believer and it aims to do so by deploying Vive demo stations across the country. Microsoft Stores in New York City, Bellevue and Salt Lake City already have demos set up with plans to expand to a dozen more stores later this month. GameStop, meanwhile, will host HTC Vive demo locations at the following 10 stores across the US starting April 16: Plano, TX: Preston Road, New York, NY: Broadway at 85th Latham, NY: Latham Farms Bellvue, WA: Bellevue Square Hillsboro, OR: Tanasbourne Town Center Chicago, IL: The Brickyard Shopping Center Orlando, FL: Hunters Creek Brandon, FL: Lake Brandon Shoppes West Hollywood, CA: West Hollywood Gateway Gulfport, MS: Gulfport Plaza According to Fortune, HTC has partnered with Dell and will use Alienware 51 PCs to drive the experience at each store. Dan O'Brien, a vice president at HTC, said they've created a 10-minute demo featuring four experiences: theBlue, Space Pirate Trainer, Job Simulator and Tilt Brush. The executive said they wanted to give people a variety of experiences but also needed to plan for lots of people wanting to try the demo. Global military expenditure increased for the first time since 2011. The military forces around the world spent almost $1.7 trillion in 2015, report says. According Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the global military spending increased by one percent from 2014. The total expenditure was 2.3 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP). Military expenditure largely decreased in North America, Africa, Latin America, and in the Caribbean. On the other hand, spending increased in Asia, Oceania, Central and Eastern Europe. Middle East countries had a substantial increase on expenditure, based on available data. The decrease in the price of oil also caused countries dependent on oil revenue to decrease their military spending. However, Saudi Arabia and Russia still have increased expenditures. On the other hand, Venezuela's 64 percent cut in its military budget greatly contributed in the spending dip of the South American region. Top 15 Spenders The United States remains to be the world's top spender with $596 billion total expenditure. The U.S. started to decrease its spending when it withdrew troops from Afghanistan and Iraq in 2010. Even after the five-year downward trend of U.S. military spending, it is still projected to remain constant at the end of 2016. Second on the list is China for spending $215 billion in 2015, which is 7.4 percent more. Its military spending was spurred by arms purchases because of the heightened tension in South China Sea, which involves Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. "Saudi Arabia overtook Russia to become the third-largest spender, mainly due to the fall in the value of the ruble." said the SIPRI report (PDF). Saudi Arabia increased its spending on military operations in Yemen. Despite the sharp fall in the price of oil, Saudi Arabia still had, albeit slow, growth in its annual rate. Russia is the fourth highest military spender, having an expenditure of $66.4 billion in 2015. The hike in Russia's defense spending, which also spiked the rate of Eastern Europe's, is because of possible invasion in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) territory. United Kingdom ranked fifth due to the drop in the value of euro as compared to France in the seventh position. While, India ranked sixth with $51.3 billion spent in 2015. Japan overtook Germany to rank eighth, cutting its long-time record of decline in the past years, caused by the heightened tension between nearby countries. A small increase in military spending ranked Germany in the ninth place, while South Korea remained on the tenth. Even though Italy decreased its spending by -9.9 percent, the biggest on the list, it still earned the 12th spot. In the 13th place is Australia, which also had the highest increase at 7.8 percent. While Brazil and Israel had a modest fall, taking the 11th and 15th spots, respectively. Photo: The U.S. Army | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The terrorist attacks that took place on March 22 in Brussels, the heart of Europe, killed over 30 people and injured more than 200. Barely half a year after the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, Europe was suffering another round of major terrorist attacks. If what happened in Paris seemed merely an isolated incident, then the Brussels attacks fully testified to the fact that Europe is now facing a new wave of terrorist attacks. [By Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn] Since 9/11, Europe has actively participated in the US-led global fight against terrorism. As a result, many places in Europe were targeted by international terrorist organizations led by Al-Qaida and their followers and imitators. The Madrid train bombings in Spain on March 11, 2004, the London underground attacks on July 7, 2005, and the plot to attack six large passenger airplanes that was foiled on August 10, 2006 by the British police are just a few examples. In recent years, however, as the Al-Qaida network shrinks, its capacity to launch attacks in Europe has also diminished. In the current wave of terrorist attacks, the Islamic State (IS) has replaced Al-Qaida as the new key player. With limited information available so far, it is still too early to conclude whether the Brussels attacks were revenge for the arrest of Salah Abdeslam on March 18, a desperate act of terrorists to bring their planned attacks forward due to the arrest, or a revenge against Belgium for its counter-terrorism policy. But the link between the Brussels attacks and the Paris attacks is obvious. Most media outlets and politicians reacted to the attacks by deploring the brutality of the terrorists. Very few people reflect on the underlying cause of the tragedy and wonder why Europe becomes the victim of the latest wave of terrorist attacks. If we look a bit further into the past, it is fair to say that what happened in Europe is the collateral damage of the 2003 Iraq war. Though France, Germany and a few other Old Europe countries were fiercely opposed to the US invasion of Iraq, they failed to stop the American and British troops from invading Baghdad. While overthrowing the autocratic regime of Saddam Hussein, the war also released the genie of Sunni-Shiite rivalry in the Middle East, and provided a breeding ground for the IS. A review of the near past shows that the new wave of terrorist attacks in Europe is the bitter result of its irresponsible policies during the Arab Spring. After the outbreak of the Arab Spring, European countries used labels like democracy, autocracy, progressive and backward in an irresponsible manner and went out of their way to support the opposition parties in the Arab world. In Libya, they even employed military means to directly overthrow the Gaddafi regime. In Syria, they have supported various opposition factions in an attempt to remove the Assad regime. To their disappointment, things have not turned out as they had wished. Regime changes in Egypt, Yemen and Libya all triggered, to different degrees, social unrest that has provided breathing space for international terrorist forces and allowed some new jihadist organizations to germinate and grow. The civil war in Syria in particular has given rise to a two-way flow of people. On the one hand, large numbers of Syrian refugees flock to European countries via Turkey and Greece. The number has exceeded 1.3 million so far. On the other hand, numerous European extremists, inspired and incited by the IS, have moved from Europe to Syria to participate in the war. It is estimated that by December 2015, more than 5,000 European extremists had arrived in Syria for the war, and over 70% of these people were from France, the UK, Germany and Belgium. Compared with the US and other countries, Europe remains a weak link in the international fight against terrorism. First, there are many Muslim communities in Europe that have yet to integrate into Western society, and these Muslim communities offer extremists convenient places to hide and to and enlist sympathizers and supporters. Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested by the Belgian police on March 18, had hidden in such neighborhood for four months, for instance. Second, European countries are separated from the turbulent areas in the Middle East only by the Mediterranean. Geography makes it easy for jihadists to infiltrate into Europe by travel, smuggling or other channels. Moreover, after 9/11, though European countries are on heightened alert against terrorism, they lag far behind the US, Israel and many others in terms of overall input in combating terrorism. When it comes to terrorist forces who are so near and so desperate, European countries fragility is self-evident. To European countries that have suffered a setback in the integration process, experienced sluggish economic growth and are plagued by the refugee problem, the Brussels attacks no doubt meant a heavy blow. Nevertheless, if European countries fail to reflect on the root cause of the terrorist activities, or fall into the vicious cycle of violence and xenophobia, they face even more tragedies in the days to come. Let us pray for Europe and hope that the European leaders and people will emerge from the current crisis stronger, wiser and more sensible. Dr. Wang Zhen, associate professor of international studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), is currently director of the Security Studies Program at the SASS Institute of China Studies. This post was first published at Chinausfocus.com To see the original version please visit: http://www.chinausfocus.com/peace-security/europe-may-face-a-new-wave-of-terrorist-attacks/ An almost record-breaking, supermassive black hole located in a cosmic backwater has left scientists astonished, prompting them to rethink their existing black hole models. Recent discoveries of monster black holes tend to be located in dense galaxy clusters, so imagine the surprise of astronomers from University of California, Berkeley when they located the supermassive black hole in a "relative desert." Out Of Place? The newly-detected gigantic black hole sits at the center of Galaxy NGC 1600 like a lofty skyscraper in a small town -- a massive distinction that experts never thought would occur. The black hole contains 17 billion solar masses, only faintly smaller than the current record-holder which weighs in at 21 billion times the mass of the sun and lies in the Coma Cluster. The study's lead scientist Chung-Pei Ma said the supermassive black hole they found is much bigger than the expected size for its galaxy. "That's the puzzling part -- or the intriguing part -- of the result," Ma told Space.com. The black hole's home, NGC 1600, is a galaxy 200 million light years away from our planet. It was unusual to find the supermassive black hole in this galaxy because NGC 1600 belongs to an average-size galaxy group. Ma said rich galaxy clusters such as the Coma Cluster are very rare, but average-size galaxy groups such as NGC 1600 are not. Although initial observations of the 17-million-solar-mass black hole were not detailed enough to see clearly the spectrum of light from the galaxy's center, Ma and her team could immediately tell that it was extraordinary. Ma said looking at the black hole was like looking at a hurricane from far away. "We couldn't quite tell how big this hurricane was, this black hole was," said Ma. "But the hurricane was so big that we already started to feel the wind using this coarser data." What's more interesting is the fact that the surrounding stars in NGC 1600 are moving as if the black hole were a binary black hole, which is expected to be more common in large galaxies. It is more common because galaxies are thought to grow by merging with other galaxies. Each would theoretically bring a central black hole with it. The black holes would possibly sink to the new galaxy's core, and after an orbital dance, would merge with the gravitational wave emissions. Monster Black Holes in Unlikely Places With their discovery, scientists may have to reconsider their ideas about the location of black holes and their population in the known universe. "The question now is, 'Is this the tip of an iceberg?" said Ma, who is head of a multitelescope effort called MASSIVE survey that began in 2014 which aims to catalogue and identify the most massive nearby black holes and galaxies. Ma believes that perhaps there are further monster black holes out there that do not reside like "a skyscraper in Manhattan," but like "a tall silo" found in cosmic small towns. She and her colleagues will then help refine the MASSIVE survey and find more supermassive black holes in the vicinity of Earth. The team's findings are featured in the journal Nature. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Obama Administration announced that it will redirect $589 million in preparation to fight the Zika virus, the dreaded virus that has been linked to microcephaly and other complications in Latin American and the Caribbean. The move is after the Congress hasn't acted on the White House's request for emergency funding to prepare in case the mosquito-borne disease emerges in the United States. Officials from the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Health Human Services and the State Department said they would move the budget that was originally intended to protect against Ebola virus in 2014. According to Sylvia Mathews Burwell, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Sciences, aside from the funds moved from the Ebola outbreak budget, another $79 million would also be extracted from other accounts such as the money allocated to the strategic national stockpile of vaccines and other emergency resources. One year after the Ebola virus ravaged West Africa and some parts of the globe, the Zika virus emerged in the Americas. Though the disease was deemed non-fatal because most patients recover completely, the virus has been linked to microcephaly among developing babies. This congenital disease that causes smaller heads than usual and brain defect surged in numbers in Brazil. The urgency of getting funds from the Ebola account emerged because of the upcoming summer weather that can harbor increasing mosquito populations and broader spread of the virus. "I told the White House I'd be supportive of a supplemental if they could show me where the money goes and what it could do," said Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate subcommittee responsible for foreign aid. There are 672 confirmed cases of Zika virus infections in the United States, including 64 pregnant women. Health officials confirmed one case of Zika-related microcephaly in Hawaii. Republicans on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee said they would monitor the changing needs that will result from this unpredictable crisis. This is to make sure funds are always available in case the need arises. "Republicans are going to look back on this time that they've had to act on the Zika virus and deeply regret it," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Photo: John Tann | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Those of us who have always dreamed of traveling to space will get the chance to read about former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly's historic year in space in an upcoming memoir. Publishing powerhouse Alfred A. Knopf announced Wednesday that the space memoir, entitled "Endurance: My Year in Space and Our Journey to Mars", is a collaboration between Kelly and "Leaving Orbit" author Margaret Lazarus Dean. During his recent mission, Kelly spent 340 consecutive days aboard the International Space Station, amounting to a total of 522 days in space. He and his Russian colleague Mikhail Kornienko were blasted off into space for the year-long mission beginning late March 2015 and returned home on March 1 this year. The U.S. Senate honored Kelly's record-breaking stay at the ISS with a resolution passed in early March. Kelly has since then retired from NASA after 20 years of service, effective April 1. His 20-year career in space exploration had been marked with many firsts and incredible milestones. On his Twitter account, Kelly expressed his excitement to chronicle his journey in space. Kelly's mission aboard the ISS was designed to observe how long-term spaceflights affected the human body, as part of the goal to send manned missions to Mars. In an excerpt provided by Knopf, Kelly described the difficulties he encountered and endured during his year in space. His memoir will further detail the effects of the space mission on his body, as well as explain his belief in the importance of space exploration. "If we're ever going to go to Mars someday," Kelly said in a March 2015 report, "the International Space Station is really a great platform to learn much more about having people live and work in space for longer durations." Kelly and his twin brother Mark, who was on Earth during Scott's ISS mission, underwent several medical experiments to help researchers study the impact of living in space, with Mark as the control subject. The twins had their visual acuity and cardiovascular function tested, among many aspects. Scott also took urine and blood samples aboard the ISS, which were brought back to Earth for comparison. Additionally, Scott Kelly will recount the obstacles he encountered before and during his stint as a Navy test pilot and the work required to become an astronaut. Kelly, who has more than a million followers on his Twitter account, will also publish a book of photographs of his year in space. Random House Children's Books plans to publish books about Kelly's time in space for young readers, too. His twin Mark has already written several children's books such as "Astrotwins: Project Rescue" and "Mousetronaut", and two non-fiction books co-written with Mark's wife Gabrielle Giffords. Meanwhile, "Endurance" will be published sometime in November 2017. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Federal law enforcers from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on April 5 handed back several dinosaur bones to the Mongolian government, all of which were smuggled out of the East Asian country and were seized by agents from Utah and New York. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with the help of its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) team, recovered six species of dinosaur fossils as a result of investigations in New York and Wyoming. Mongolia is a home to the world's biggest reserve of dinosaur fossils. Patrimony laws in Mongolia prohibit the export of dinosaur remains from the country, as well as private ownership of these objects. The Mongolian government had also identified the fossils as national property in 1924. The largest fossil they obtained was the skull of an extremely rare dinosaur called Alioramus. Bolortsetseg Minjin, a Mongolian paleontologist, said only two specimens of the Alioramus has been reported in scientific literature. Both specimens are from Mongolia, Minjin said. This rare dinosaur, which was a relative of the famous Tyrannosaruus Rex, was thought to have wandered the Gobi Desert during the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago. The ICE described the Alioramus fossil as the most complete skull of the dinosaur ever found. Aside from the Alioramus skull, other returned dinosaur bones included an almost whole skeleton of Protoceratops, Psittcosaurus, and Bactrosaurus; a nest of Protoceratops eggs; and the skull of a Psittcosaurus. The ICE's Tuesday ceremony attended by U.S. Attorney for Brooklyn Robert L. Capers, Mongolian ambassador to the U.S. Altangerel Bulgaa, and Customs NY Field Operations Director Robert Perez is the latest in a series of fossil returns to Mongolia in previous years. Capers said the U.S. stands with the Mongolian government by stopping the international trade in trafficked fossils and sending the items back to the country where they will be treasured and studied. Meanwhile, Perez said the agency is glad to have sent back the fossils to the rightful owners. Before the repatriation on April 5, 23 dino remains had been sent back to Mongolia from the U.S. in the last three years, Bulgaa said. "I take this opportunity, on behalf of the Government and people of Mongolia, to express our profound gratitude for the hard work and dedication of American law enforcement agencies," said Bulgaa. One of the recent returns included a Tarbosaurus bataar about 70 million years old, which was returned to Mongolia in 2013. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A new report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on the status of United Nations World Heritage sites has found that many of these declared sanctuaries are under threat because of various human activities, not least of which involves the development of industries such as mining, construction and oil and gas exploration. One of the main goals of creating World Heritage sites is to help ensure that the environment is healthy, which the WWF believes can significantly benefit local communities. In fact, about 90 percent of these declared sanctuaries help provide livelihoods for the millions of people who lived within their surrounding area. About two-thirds of World Heritage sites serve as sources of fresh water for these people as well. However, various industrial activities within these sites have caused significant degradation of the environment, placing the economic and non-economic benefits gained from such sanctuaries at great risk. In its report, the WWF said that out of the 229 natural and mixed heritage sites declared by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 96 different countries, about 114 of them are under threat from human developments made for economic growth. "Despite the obvious benefits of these natural areas, we still haven't managed to decouple economic development from environmental degradation," Marco Lambertini, director general of the WWF, wrote in the foreword of the report. "Instead, too often, we grant concessions for exploration of oil, gas or minerals, and plan large-scale industrial projects without considering social and environmental risks." Among those facing imminent danger is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which is considered to be the largest coral reef ecosystem in the world. The WWF said that the Great Barrier Reef is threatened by both shipping and mining activities in the region. In Peru, Machu Picchu, the world famous Inca citadel from the 15th century, is under threat because of illegal logging. Meanwhile, the Grand Canyon Natural Park in the United States is facing widespread degradation because of the creation of dams in the area and unsustainable water usage. UNESCO also maintains a list of endangered World Heritage sites in the world based on Article 11 of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Among those included in the list are: 1. The cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley and the minaret and archaeological remains of Jam in Afghanistan 2. The Barrier Reef Reserve System in Belize 3. The city of Potosi in Bolivia 4. The Manovo-Gounda St Floris National Park in the Central African Republic 5. The old city of Jerusalem as well as its surrounding walls 6. The rainforests of the Atsinanana in Madagascar 7. The birthplace of Jesus in Palestine, which includes the Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route in Bethlehem 8. The ancient cities of Damascus, Bosra and Aleppo in Syria 9. The maritime mercantile city of Liverpool in the United Kingdom 10. The Everglades National Park in the United States 11. Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works in Chile 12. The Comoe National Park and the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve in Cote d'Ivoire 13. The Garamba National Park, the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, the Salonga National Park and the Virunga National Park in Congo 14. The Abu Mena in Egypt 15. The Simien National Park in Ethiopia 16. The Bagrati Cathedral, the Gelati Monastery and the historical monuments of Mtskheta in Georgia 17. Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve in Guinea 18. Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras 19. The Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra in Indonesia 20. The Niokolo-Koba National Park in Senegal 21. The medieval monuments in Kosovo in Serbia 22. East Rennell in the Solomon Islands Lambertini reiterated that efforts to preserve natural areas and ecosystems do not run counter with development but rather they help promote long-term and sustainable development that can benefit both people and natural systems alike. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. IKEA recalled its children's novelty clothing as it causes risk of strangulation to children wearing it. IKEA's Batman-Style Cape LATTJO was recalled by the company due to injury it could pose to children. The company had received reports of three children who had scratches and marks on their neck while they are using the cape. "The cape got stuck and the fastening did not detach easily enough from the neck of the children," said IKEA. None of the cases that were reported to the company needed medical treatment, but the company still recalled the novelty items. "Due to the risk of strangulation or injuries to the neck, IKEA takes precautionary measures and recalls the product," IKEA added. The company is advising the parents not to let their children use and play with it; instead, they can bring the capes to any IKEA stores and have a full refund. There is no need for a proof of purchase or receipt of the item in getting a refund. "At IKEA, we have a zero tolerance regarding child safety and we cannot accept that there is a risk of injury while playing," said Cindy Andersen, the Business Area Manager of Children's IKEA. Andersen added that the company will improve its future products especially for children by placing new requirements, though she did not explain what the requirements are. The LATTJO capes are distributed since November in all of its branches across the globe except for Indonesia and Russia. The novelty item cost 10 ($14.12), which is on sale in Great Britain. "IKEA apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause." Photo: Seth Werkheiser | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Expectant parents no longer have to worry about taking care of their child financially and emotionally, as San Francisco now allows the parents to have a fully paid leave. The city of San Francisco is the first city in the U.S. to pass a measure that requires employers to fully pay workers for six weeks of leave. The ruling applies to both mother and father, including same-sex couples who either bore or adopted their child. The law was unanimously passed by the city's Board of Supervisors and mandates that employees must be fully paid, with 45 percent paid for by the employer. Prior to the vote, an amendment to the proposal included an eligibility clause stating that employees who worked for the company for 180 days would be the ones qualified for the paid leave. For companies with more than 50 workers, the city ordinance would take effect on Jan. 1, 2017, while smaller companies with 20 or more, the law will take effect after a year. The law is well received in San Francisco except for owners of small business who feel that the ordinance would cause financial detriments to their company. Small business owners believe that the issue on parental leave is better discussed on a national or federal level. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce remains "neutral" on the mandate. Scott Wiener who introduced the law expressed that the city took it upon them to decide on the matter because waiting for a mandate from the national level is futile. "Whether it's paid parental leave, infrastructure investment, minimum wage, paid sick leave or addressing carbon emissions, we know the states have to act," said Wiener. Many see the decision as heavily influenced by the city's proximity to Silicon Valley, which is rife with startups such as Google, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix that offer its employees long and fully paid parental leaves. Just recently, Twitter Vice President inclusion and diversity Jeffrey Siminoff said that starting May 1, the company would provide 20 weeks of paid leaves for its full-time employees. "The goal of this change was to expand how we think about parental leave," said the newly appointed VP. Facebook is also one of the generous companies to offer its employees paid paternal leave of up to four months. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg caused quite a stir when he announced that he will go on a parental leave following the birth of their firstborn. Advocates acknowledge that San Francisco must be commended for the efforts but they still feel that the mandate only benefits low-income employees. Globally, the city ordinance is way behind. In the International Labor Organization list of 185 countries, the United States is one of the two countries that do not have a national law that offers paid parental leave. San Francisco's mandate for new parents is much broader than that of New York, which also expanded its parental leave when Mayor Bill de Blasio required that 20,000 nonunionized employees receive six weeks of fully paid parental leave. New York is the fourth state in the U.S. to offer its residents a paid parental leave. As soon it is implemented, parents can receive compensation for up to 12 weeks of leave. Photo: Jerry Lai | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. At a time when Earth was going through massive environmental changes and most species were wiped out by Siberian volcanic eruptions, some animals actually managed to survive the chaos. During this extreme period, which was known as the Permo-Triassic extinction, billions of tons of carbon were spewed into the atmosphere, forever changing the climate of the planet. One of the species that survived the aftermath of the Permo-Triassic extinction were the therapsids, the ancient animals that soon gave rise to mammals. Scientists were able to study one particular genus of the therapsids - the Lystrosaurus. Drastic Physical Changes Paleontologists from the Field Museum and other experts said that the therapsid Lystrosaurus had become suited to the drastic climate change by adapting shorter life expectancies. Combining results from survivorship models, this observation allowed researchers to suggest that the Lystrosaurus changed their breeding behavior: they began to breed at a younger age than their predecessors. Study author Ken Angielczyk said that based on the growth record preserved on bones, the Lystrosaurus had a typical life span of 13 to 14 years before the extinction event. And yet, almost all of the Lystrosaurus bones that scientists found from after the extinction were completely young, at 2 to 3 years old, he said. "This implies that they must have been breeding when they were still juveniles themselves," said Angielczyk. The drastic adjustment equated to a physical change for the Lystrosaurus. Prior to the massive extinction event, the Lystrosaurus would have been about the size of a pygmy hippo, a couple of meters long and hundreds of pounds heavy. However, after the extinction event, the creature's size dropped to that of a large dog, somehow due to its changed lifespan. Still, scientists said the alterations actually did well for the Lystrosaurus. Simulations revealed that by breeding much earlier, the Lystrosaurus could have upped its survival chances by 40 percent, especially in the erratic environments that existed 252 million years ago. The limitation of the study, however, is that it does not provide physical evidence of early breeding. Rather, the findings are an inference based on size distributions and expectations of survivorship models. Implications Of The Study Meanwhile, this fascinating transformation in breeding behavior is not sequestered to ancient animals. Researchers found that in the past 100 years, the Atlantic cod -- a fish consumed by humans -- has went through a similar change due to human interference. In fact, scientists said industrial fishing removed majority of the large Atlantic cods from the population, causing the average size of the fish to shrink. Likewise, the remaining Atlantic cods are forced to breed as early as possible. The same changes has also occurred among African monitor lizards, researchers said. With that, Angielyczyk said paleontological studies help scientists understand the world today, especially as we are facing the sixth mass extinction. He said studying how species such as the Lystrosaurus adapted in the face of disaster would aid us in predicting how looming changes in our environment may affect modern animals. The findings of the study are featured in the journal Scientific Reports. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Andrew J. McKenna, the Chairman of McDonald's Corporation, who has spent over three and half decades with the company including over a decade as chairman is poised to retire after a long tenure in the fast-food industry. On April 6, McDonald's confirmed that its long-time chairman McKenna would be stepping down from the fast-food company's board post the annual shareholder meeting in May. The election of a new company chairman will occur after the annual shareholder meeting, which is slated for May 26. The chairman will be elected from the current board itself. McKenna will not be standing for re-election and will go on to become Chairman Emeritus for the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company. For the unfamiliar, 86-year-old McKenna was an independent director on McDonald's board for 25 years and undertook the mantle of the company's chairman for the last 12 years. It was in 1991 that McKenna joined McDonald's board at a time when the fast-food chain was channeling its attention on international growth. The company had just opened its first international joint in Moscow, Russia, and went on to open another one in 1992 in Warsaw, Poland. Since then, McDonald's has come a long way and grown to become the biggest restaurant company on the basis of sales. The company now has operations in more than 100 countries and encompasses 36,000 locations. A well-known figure in the elitist business circles of Chicago, McKenna has often been lauded with the moniker "the power behind the throne." In 2014, he was named in Chicago Magazine's list of 100 Most Powerful Chicagoans. Such was McKenna's clout that he has been described as "a bigwig other bigwigs seek out for advice." McKenna is also on the board of Chicago Bears and has the distinction of chairing White Sox and Cubs. Miles White, Chairman of the Governance Committee of the Company's Board of Directors, noted that "Andy's" leadership skills were instrumental in guiding McDonald's through "some noteworthy highs and some challenging times." He also thanked McKenna for his "unwavering commitment." Steve Easterbrook, McDonald's CEO, was all praises for the retiring chairman and took to Twitter to share his thoughts. Leadership, integrity & cmtmt to excellence exemplify Andy McKenna. Thanks for 25 yrs of unwavering service to $MCD https://t.co/UsJU6rnrMO Steve Easterbrook (@SteveEasterbrk) April 6, 2016 "It has been a privilege and honor to be part of McDonald's growth and expansion throughout the years. I am confident that the Board will continue to deliver on our progress to enhance long-term shareholder value," said McKenna in the parting note. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Uber just launched its cash payment system in Singapore, in a move that aims to expand the user base of the cab hailing company. Warren Tseng, the recently-appointed Singapore general manager, notes that Uber wants to encourage its users to utilize cash for payment, even in "developed" markets such as the Asian island city-state. Customers from Singapore widely use credit cards for their everyday payments. A global report from MasterCard indicates that about 69 percent of consumer goods are purchased without cash in the country. However, Uber aims to tap into the spending habits of those who prefer to use cash in their transactions. The company thinks that by eliminating the need for a credit card, it can attract more first-time riders to the app. For example, students who do not yet own a credit card or seniors who are reluctant to offer their credit card info to strangers could find value in Uber Cash. Most clients who prefer paying via credit card come from the urban, traditionally wealthy regions of cities. Market research from developing countries showed that Uber Cash can help the company engage those who live a bit further from the inner city. According to Warren, adoption rate can get a boost of 45 percent by including cash as an accepted payment method. Uber is testing the waters and could see its app installed on many handsets, even in places where cash payments are less popular. The company is determined to maintain a high quality of service, regardless if it operates downtown or in the suburbs. Users will start seeing the cash payment option soon, and availability will extend to UberX and Uber Black options. A number of global markets already have access to the cash payment method. In places such as Bali, Bandung and Surabaya in Indonesia, Manila in the Philippines, Bangkok in Thailand and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, users already use cash to pay for Uber rides. The cash payment option landed outside of Asia, as well. Car-pooling users from Lima, Cairo and Riyadh can pay for their ride with cash upfront instead of using credit cards. The changes in Uber's policies come after the company went through a major worldwide restructuring. The company will continue to adapt and fit proper services to each distinct market, with Singapore remaining a core area that the ride-sharing enterprise operates in. This new cash payments option in Singapore is a first for Uber riders in a developed market, but the scheme could extend to other major cities in the future. Regardless of the payment method, some might be wary of using car-sharing services, as some reports suggest that sexual assaults are not uncommon. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Flash The ongoing US-Philippines military drill, which apparently targets China, and the predicted passage of US Navy vessels near China's Nansha Islands are designed to serve US interests at the cost of China's, observers said. This photo taken on Dec. 11, 2015 shows uniquely beautiful winter scenery of the Zhaoshu Island in the South China Sea. [Xinhua file photo] Manila is eager to expand its territory to China's Meiji Reef in the South China Sea, said Yang Xiyu, a research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, and the US "might use its joint drill with the Philippines to show support for the expansion." "It's highly possible that US forces will choose Meiji Reef for their passage," he added. Reuters cited an unnamed source on April 2 as saying that the US Navy plans to send ships through a passage near Meiji Reef this month, the third in a series of such challenges that have drawn sharp criticism from China. The US has conducted so-called freedom of navigation exercises in recent months, sailing near Zhubi Reef, part of the Nansha Islands, and Zhongjian Island, part of the Xisha Islands. The scale and number of vessels sailing near the reef are not likely to be lower than the previous two challenges undertaken by US destroyers, Yang said. Yin Zhuo, director of the People's Liberation Army Navy's Expert Consultation Committee, said Washington is using the South China Sea issue to endanger Beijing's ties with its neighbors and to draw Japan, the Philippines and Australia into a collective containment of China. The move will lead to escalated tensions in the region, he said. A small contingent of Australian troops will join the exercises, while Vietnam and Japan have sent officers in an observer capacity. "Eager to undercut China's mounting regional influence, some specific nations take delight in sowing seeds of discord between China and rival claimants, and boosting their military presence and patrols to thwart China in the name of safeguarding freedom of navigation," Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary. About 8,000 US and Filipino troops have been engaged in the annual, 11-day military exercise since April 4. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter will observe the drill after arriving next week, the first US defense chief to do so, Reuters said. Manila played down any suggestion that the Balikatan ("Shoulder-to-Shoulder") exercise, which will simulate retaking an oil-and-gas platform and practice an amphibious landing, targeted any specific country. Asked if the drill's scenarios include a potential security crisis in the South China Sea, Lieutenant-General John Toolan, commander of US Marine forces in the Pacific, said, "It does, absolutely," according to Reuters. Toolan said a mobile rocket system that has been deployed in various areas, including Afghanistan, will be used during the exercise for the first time. "We can move this stuff anywhere we need to." Rene de Castro, an international studies professor at De La Salle University in Manila, told Agence France-Presse that the drills appeared to have China's presence in the South China Sea in mind. "Looking at the features of Balikatan the mobile missile-launchers, the fighter planes that is an indication that the alliance is being geared for territorial defense," he said. President Xi Jinping told US President Barack Obama on March 31 during their meeting on the sidelines of the nuclear summit in Washington that China would not accept any behavior under the guise of freedom of navigation that violates its sovereignty. Blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, have been around for at least 2 billion years, making them one of the oldest forms of life on Earth. Researchers have discovered that a unique compound derived from the algae holds promise in treating two of the most aggressive types of cancer: brain tumors and triple negative breast cancer. Discovered eight years ago by Kerry McPhail, Ph.D., coibamide A was derived from a mashup of at least three species of algae growing together in areas characterized by fast-moving waters. The specific sample that McPhail gathered was from a dive in the Coiba National Park in Panama. Aside from Panama, however, off the South African Coast and the Red Sea are other locations that similar algal communities can be found. According to Jane Ishmael, Ph.D., lead author of the study presented at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Annual Meeting held April 6 at the Experimental Biology 2016 conference, chemical diversity in nature has been known to be a source of inspiration for designing and developing drugs. Medicinal properties in plants have been widely recognized but those in the marine environment have been largely untapped. "We think that with this compound, nature has already found a way to target some of the specific proteins that are relevant to the growth of tumors," Ishmael said. After McPhail was able to isolate coibamide A from the original specimen, the compound was assessed using a National Cancer Institute screening system designed to detect possible anti-cancer activity in 60 different types of the disease. Coibamide A was shown to have an activity pattern that doesn't match any other known compounds, which suggests its potential in fighting cancer via a mechanism of action that has not been used before. The screening showed that coibamide A has the ability to kill a lot of cancer cell types but the researchers focused instead on brain tumors, or glioblastomas, and triple negative breast cancer. Based on experiments, coibamide A works by cutting off communication between cancer cells and other cells and blood vessels, which leads to cancer cells eventually starving and dying. The researchers' next challenge is to determine if the compound will be able to cross the blood-brain barrier, a special filtering system that only lets in certain substances into the brain, to specifically target brain tumors. If coibamide A turns out to be incapable of crossing the blood-brain barrier or results in adverse side effects, its mechanism of action and structure can still be used to guide further research into developing cancer treatments. Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Google is sending its self-driving cars to the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Arizona, to test the autonomous vehicles against extremely arid conditions. Phoenix is the fourth urban area where Google's cars will pass through trials. The first was Mountain View, California, the second was Austin, Texas, and Kirkland, Washington ranked third in the company's testing grounds. In opposition with Phoenix, Kirkland got on the testing ground list thanks to its significant wet weather. Global carmakers are pooling their efforts to release driverless vehicles, but safety regulations usually impede them from testing the cars in real-life conditions. A strong majority of Google's 1.5 million miles of autonomous driving took place in California, but the local regulations got tougher. In December 2015, the American state ruled that a steering wheel, brake pedals and a licensed driver should be present in every robot test vehicle that hits the open road. "Arizona is known as a place where research and development is welcome," notes Jennifer Haroon, the leader of business operations for the Google Self-Driving Car project. She adds that Phoenix's desert conditions will offer good feedback for the way in which the autonomous vehicle handles extreme temperatures and dusty atmospheric conditions. Before launching the testing in Phoenix, Google deployed four Lexus RX450h SUVs that must craft a thorough map of streets, traffic signals, curb heights and lane markers. The testing of self-driving vehicles, however, does not happen without incidents. On February 14, an autonomous car from Google collided with a municipal bus in Mountain View, in what was revealed to be a minor crash. The company pointed out that it updated the software, promising that the modifications will avoid the repetition of such scenarios. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration affirms that it is working on a new set of policies addressing self-driving vehicles, and the rules will apply to authorities and manufacturers alike. The NHTSA says that it will draft the final version of the document by July. Back in February, the NHTSA decided that the AI behind the Google's autonomous cars may be considered a valid "driver" for the vehicle. The decision is a significant victory for Google, and it also provides an encouraging signal to the self-driving industry as a whole. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set to reveal the true events that would eventually lead to the destruction of the Death Star. Fans got their first look at the film with a recently revealed teaser trailer, but those who have been paying close attention to Star Wars over the years will know that Rogue One definitely won't be the first story about how the Death Star plans were stolen. There are, in fact, a couple of different versions of how the plans were stolen in the old Star Wars expanded universe. The first came way back in 1981 in an NPR radio drama version of the original Star Wars film. This retelling of A New Hope broke the movie down into 13 half-hour episodes, with the first two episodes actually taking place entirely before the events of the film. In this version of the heist, a rebel spy simply steals the plans on the planet of Toprawa. Princess Leia arrives on the planet aboard the Tantive IV to pick up the plans, but had accidentally tipped of the Empire in the process. After receiving the plans, the Tantive IV makes a hasty retreat while being followed by an Imperial Star Destroyer, which should sound familiar to Star Wars fans. Later versions of that story told in books like Jedi Dawn and Rebel Dawn (released in the early 1990s) would expand upon the tale, with Princess Leia's trip to Toprawa turning into a massive ground and space battle. This time around, the plans were acquired from a raid on an Imperial convoy in space as well as the capture of data from various Imperial outposts on the ground. In orbit above the planet, Rebels ambushed Imperial forces and captured a portion of the plans, resulting in the Rebellion's first victorious space battle. Once the information was acquired on the ground, the Toprawa rebels needed a way to transmit the plans to the wider Rebellion above. They captured a transmitting facility and held it off from Imperial forces just long enough to transmit the data to Leia. The rest plays out mostly the same, with a Star Destroyer chasing the Tantive IV to Tatooine, where A New Hope begins. That was the canon version of the story for a long time, but fans of the Lucasart video games may remember the theft of the Death Star plans playing out much differently. That's because the theft of the plans was also the first mission in the Doom-esque Star Wars first-person shooter Dark Forces, released in 1995. Players took on the role of former Stormtrooper and mercenary for hire Kyle Katarn, who infiltrates an Imperial base for the Rebellion and steals the plans singlehandedly. Katarn would go on to become a major figure in both Star Wars video games and the wider expanded universe, eventually becoming a Jedi Knight. It's all a little confusing, which is precisely one of the reasons Disney disbanded the expanded universe in the first place upon acquiring the rights to the franchise in 2013. That being said, we would be lying if we didn't wish some portions of the old EU tales would make their way back into the existing Star Wars canon. It wouldn't exactly be difficult to do either. For example, why not have Kyle Katarn be a member of the band of Rebels in Rogue One stealing the Death Star plans? If there's a major battle revolving around the theft of the plans in the movie, why not name it the Battle of Toprawa in reference to the original story? These little things would go a long way toward helping ease the sense of betrayal some die-hard fans of the expanded universe still feel toward Disney. As it is now, it remains to be seen what, if anything, Rogue One will borrow from the now-defunct expanded universe. For years these early tales about the stolen Death Star plans filled an important void in Star Wars canon. Hopefully director Gareth Edwards can deliver one version of the event, lest even more fans wish they could return to the time when the Battle of Toprawa wasn't relegated to the realm of glorified fan fiction. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Toyota has already been actively developing autonomous driving technology. Within that, the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced Thursday that it's forming a 50-person research lab in Ann Arbor, Mich. to further fuel ways to produce autonomous vehicles. TRI CEO Dr. Gill Pratt said the autonomous vehicles could help to save the 1.2 million people killed annually in car accidents. "We want constructive coopetition here," Pratt said during a keynote speech in San Jose, Calif. on Thursday, as reported by VentureBeat.com. "The fact that we tolerate 1.2 million people killed per year is astounding, and it's a shame. It far exceeds the number of people killed in war." That's why part of TRI's approach is having its researchers in locations such as Cambridge, Mass., Palo Alto, Calif., Japan and now Ann Arbor, Mich. collaborate. "Because 1.2 million people per year demand nothing less," Pratt said of Toyota's thorough development of autonomous technology. "The future is incredibly bright for all of us working on this." As part of his keynote speech, Pratt rattled off three ways to make self-driving cars safer, including immediately sensing an emergency and when a human has to take the wheel. Within that, there could also be a built-in 30-second warning for when a driver needs to taker over. Then, there's a fully-autonomous vehicle, which would be equipped to handle any and every emergency without any human interjection. He also discussed a parallel self-driving system, in which human drivers would essentially teach a car how to drive, paving the way for the vehicle to drive itself if and when the driver has a need for it. Pratt called that the "guardian angel" approach. "The parallel autonomy has tremendous promise, and techniques like deep learning can be brought to bear on this problem," he said. Part of the challenge in working toward saving those 1.2 million lives is continuously working to get chips used in autonomous vehicles to be as efficient as possible. "The human brain can drive a car on very little power, but the computer requires a lot of power," he said. "We are doing machine learning that can take a minimal amount of power." During the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016 in Las Vegas this past January, Pratt told us that, despite 2020 being targeted by automakers as the year self-driving cars will impact roads, he's skeptical about fully-autonomous vehicles being ready by that time. "I am skeptical that we will be done with both in four years," Pratt said at the time. "That's a very short time and we have a long way to go [with the full development of autonomous cars]. And again, just because we are 90, 95 percent of the way there doesn't mean if you've been climbing a mountain and you've been walking through the foothills and that's 95 percent of the miles you have to go that the last five percent when you have to climb up to the peak ... that's the hard part. It's going to take us a lot longer to get up the rest of the way of the peak than it has been the easy part." 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Planet nine may exist on the far reaches of the solar system, frigid and dark, as it orbits well beyond the rounded path of Neptune. Although the world has not yet been observed, astronomers are starting to theorize what conditions may be like on the mysterious planet. Gravitational forces from the distant planet could explain some observations made of objects in the depths of the solar system. Researchers speculate the world would have a diameter roughly 3.7 times that of our own home world, and a mass equal to 10 times here on Earth. The planet should, theoretically, orbit in an egg-shaped orbit, between 200 and 1,200 times further away from the sun than does our home world. Planet nine would likely be a smaller version of a gas giant, looking much like Uranus or Neptune. This model would suggest an icy core, surrounded by a thick atmosphere containing the two most abundant elements in the Universe, hydrogen and helium. If planet nine exists, temperatures on the world could dive down to 375 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. This is significantly warmer than would be expected if the main energy released by the planet were reflected from the distant sun. "This means that the planet's emission is dominated by the cooling of its core, otherwise the temperature would only be 10 Kelvin. Its intrinsic power is about 1000 times bigger than its absorbed power," said Esther Linder of the University of Bern. Calculations seem to suggest the mystery world may be at its apogee, or greatest distance from the sun, making it particularly hard to find at this time. However, there have been a few tantalizing clues from various observatories which seem to show some bizarre objects beyond Neptune. The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer may have found a body possessing 50 times the mass of Earth at the outskirts of the solar system. In January 2016, a pair of astronomers from Caltech, Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin, reported their discovery that some Kuiper Belt objects (KBO's) were following strange orbits that could be explained by the presence of an unseen world beyond Neptune. In 1846, the eighth planet, Neptune, was discovered after astronomers found gravitational evidence of its existence. Today, astronomers are even studying the movement of the New Horizons spacecraft, traveling beyond the orbit of Pluto, to see if the distant world might exist. Analysis of the potential physical properties of a planet nine are due to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A gene-editing attack technique called CRISPR/Cas9 may need to be reworked as experts found that HIV can resist it. In a new study, the method was able to stop viral replication, but it also resulted in unanticipated resistance. CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a natural defensive mechanism of the body, which involves having spurts of odd-patterned configuration in between DNA that matches that of some viruses. This means CRISPR carries pieces of dangerous viruses that attacked earlier on, so that the next time they attempt to harm, the body will recognize them and defend accordingly. Cas9 (CRISPR-associated proteins) is a group of enzymes that efficiently cuts DNA and rips apart invading viruses. The genes that encode for Cas are situated near CRISPR patterns, making their combination a promising process for viral death. Many experts were delighted when they found out about the CRISPR/Cas9 mechanism. Some even looked at its feasibility to fight off human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which has crippled a large number of people all over the world. The recent study was able to yield good results initially, with viruses being killed by the approach. However, HIV seemed not to go down without a fight because those that escaped the CRISPR/Cas9 therapy came out even stronger. The Mechanism Of HIV And How Experts Plan To Use Gene-Editing For Counterattack HIV is so clever that it targets the immune system at once. The virus specifically invades immune system cells called T cells, which are the core of adaptive immunity. HIV infects by inserting its genome to the DNA of the host cell and manipulating its machinery to create more copies of the virus. One approach to counter this is to equip the T cells with gene-editing abilities so they can identify and destroy HIV when it occurs. That's where the use of the CRISPR/Cas9 mechanism comes in. The Big Surprise The researchers did use CRISPR/Cas9 to HIV in an experiment. At first, they were able to cripple the virus, but that success appeared to be short-lived. After two weeks, the team observed that the T cells started releasing copies of the virus that had survived the CRISPR/Cas9 attack. Turns out the virus has created mutations near areas where Cas9 had been programmed to slice. Senior study author Chen Liang from McGill University in Canada describes some of the mutations as tiny, however they were able to alter the sequence, leaving Cas9 unable to recognize it. "Such mutations do no harm to the virus, so these resistant viruses can still replicate," says Liang. Staying Positive The results of the study should serve as a guide, maybe a caution, for those who are looking to use CRISPR/Cas9 as part of an antiviral therapy. Liang does not think that the situation is hopeless, but he believes there are some techniques that can be done to overcome the letdown. For example, experts may try to target multiple sites with the CRISPR/Cas9 therapy or use other enzymes apart from Cas9. Liang says CRISPR/Cas9 provides new hope that one day a cure may surface not only for HIV, but also for many other viruses as well. He acknowledges that the journey toward the goal is still long. There may be barricades and limitations that need to be solved, but they are confident they will be successful. The study was published in the journal Cell Reports on April 7. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The possibility of rescheduling marijuana could ease research on the medical uses of weed. The current picture of medical marijuana research in the U.S. is bleak, and with the wide range of weed's potential medical uses, experts cannot help but be inspired by the reclassification news. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has announced its plans of changing the category of marijuana from Schedule I drug to Schedule II drug. Schedule I drugs are those considered to have high potential for abuse. Examples of these drugs include heroin and LSD. Schedule II drugs, examples of which as morphine and cocaine, are recognized as having acceptable medical uses. However, administration must be strictly regulated. The Dire Situation Of Medical Marijuana Research The road sure is bumpy for researchers attempting to study Schedule I drugs such as marijuana. The process typically involves seven arduous steps and consultations with three federal agencies such as the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and DEA. Igor Grant from the University of California, San Diego has experienced first hand how to undergo the challenges of gaining approval just to study marijuana. He says a study that looks to determine marijuana's medical benefits entails about six to 18 months just to be approved. Researchers have to wait for so long before the experimentation and research part can even begin. The heart and enthusiasm they have at that start may have practically dwindled by the time they get that sweet approval. With the constraints, some experts opt to just study the only two FDA-approved cannabinoids called dronabinol and nabilone. These are just the active components of marijuana, and not marijuana itself. "Marijuana is made up of over 60 cannabinoids, and cannabinoids have tremendous promise," says addiction specialist and marijuana expert Dr. Kevin Hill. Possible Medical Uses Of Marijuana The most popular use of medical marijuana is pain relief. However, there is more to weed than alleviating pain that cannot be relieved by conventional treatments anymore. In 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics called for the reclassification of marijuana to help clinical studies investigate its possible benefits in children. The group particularly hoped to enrich research on the effects of marijuana in adolescents suffering from treatment-resistant long-term seizures. The Epilepsy Foundation of America has also showed support for reclassification to better explore the effects of marijuana on patients with epilepsy. Medical marijuana is already legal in 23 U.S. states and in the District of Columbia. More states are looking to follow suit, hence Hill says it's time to move forward and have more research on weed's other medical uses, best standards of use and long-term outcomes. Rescheduling Sparks New Hope Rescheduling marijuana to a less tighter classification may mean approval for studies would be much easier to obtain and transactions with federal agencies, lesser in frequency. Having more states approve marijuana for medical use may soon be a reality. However, this does not change the possibility that people may be using weed for medical ailments that have not yet been studied. With this, caution and regulation is still of utmost importance. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The World Bank vows to boost its funding for climate change initiatives, according to its statement released Thursday. The biggest public finance provider in the world has previously attracted criticism for backing the construction of high-carbon infrastructure, mostly in the form of coal-fired power stations. This new move is deemed a fundamental shift in the global poverty alleviation program it pursues. The World Bank said it will allot 28 percent of its own investments on climate change projects, with future spendings taking global warming into account. Last year at COP21 in Paris, development banks like the World Bank whose ambitious targets are laid out in a Climate Change Action Plan also revealed Thursday were deemed instrumental in financing poor countries to help enable them to cut their carbon emissions as well as adapt to climate change effects. Following the Paris climate agreement, we must now take bold action to protect our planet for future generations, says its president Jim Yong Kim, harping on the need to help nations transition to renewable sources of energy, produce green transport, and build livable, sustainable urban cities. The World Bank will assist countries in implementing their national climate plans, he adds in the statement. Speaking to journalists, John Roome, World Bank senior director for climate change, dubbed the move a fundamental shift for the organization. He also warned against the threat of climate change to push 100 million more individuals into poverty in the next 15 years. The World Bank aims to reserve $25 billion in the next five years for commercial financing of clean energy, while its member International Finance Corporation (IFC) will raise its climate investments from $2.2 billion to $3.5 billion a year as well as leverage an added $13 billion annually in private financing by 2020. The bank will help fund 30 gigawatts of renewable energy to power 150 million homes in developing nations, and provide early warning systems to 100 million individuals. It will also craft programs for climate-smart agricultural systems which consume less energy and water while retaining soil fertility for at least 40 nations. Other measures include designing sustainable forest management for 50 nations and investing at least $1 billion for energy efficiency and resilient infrastructure building by 2020. The pipeline of projects includes areas such as rooftop solar and increased solar distribution in Sub-Saharan Africa. All candidate projects for funding will be evaluated for climate vulnerability, including in education, health, and other development segments. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Elon Musk's aerospace company SpaceX will resume its delivery of cargo supplies to the International Space Station on Friday, April 8, after an almost 10-month pause due to rocket failure. Just more than a week ago, SpaceX announced its plans to send a one-of-a-kind inflatable space module to the space station aboard the Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket, which carries a Dragon cargo vehicle, will hold special scientific equipment crucial to the overall ISS research program, as well as to the astronauts living on the ISS. The Dragon cargo will carry 7,000 pounds of supplies, experiments and equipment, including seeds that will be grown on the ISS. "It's really important to have a very regular supply chain," said NASA ISS program manager Kirk Shireman during a press conference. On Twitter, the company confirmed that the latest launch of freight is a go at 4:43 p.m. ET from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Falcon 9 and Dragon targeting launch this Friday afternoon at 4:43pm ET. Updates & webcast https://t.co/tdni53IviI pic.twitter.com/tAWKYY6qns SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 7, 2016 NASA TV will broadcast coverage of the launch beginning 03:30 p.m. EST. Friday's forecasts call for a 90 percent chance of favorable weather, the agency said. SpaceX's previous cargo delivery in June last year did not go well, with the Falcon 9 rocket exploding just 2 minutes and 19 seconds after the launch. The first stage of the rocket was about to separate from the upper stage when the explosion occurred. Musk said there was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank that caused the disintegration, in which a strut holding helium in the second stage snapped and resulted to a chain reaction. About 4,000 pounds of cargo intended to resupply the ISS were lost in the launch failure. Since then, SpaceX has revamped the manufacturing process of the rocket, as well as the design of the strut. The company now individually tests each strut to make sure that it meets strength requirements. After Friday's launch, SpaceX will once again try to successfully land Falcon 9 on a floating drone ship for the fifth time. A month ago, the Falcon 9 rocket perfectly delivered a commercial satellite into orbit, but the landing did not go smooth as planned. Falcon 9 landed hard on the drone ship, Musk tweeted. He said they did not expect it to work because of a very hot re-entry. So far, the company has only been able to successfully land Falcon 9 on solid ground post-launch, which was demonstrated in December last year. If Friday's landing is executed without any flaw, it will be a crucial step for the aerospace company, proving that it can land its rockets both on solid ground and on drone ships. "I certainly hope we will nail the landing this time," said SpaceX flight reliability vice president Hans Koenigsmann. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Harry Potter's Nicolas Flamel - who, by the way, had existed in real life during the 14th century - was an alchemist believed to have discovered the "philosopher's stone." The Philosopher's stone is an alchemical substance that is said to be capable of turning base metals into silver or gold. Some also believe that it is an elixir of life. Fast-forward to the 17th century, another curious mind in Europe dabbles in alchemy and studies a recipe that is supposedly an essential precursor to the philosopher's stone. This is something that would change the way we view the man today. A Fervent Interest In Alchemy Sir Isaac Newton, a renowned physicist and mathematician whose work laid the foundations for classical mechanics, was actually quite a fan of alchemy. A 17th-century manuscript handwritten by Newton detailing a recipe for "sophick mercury" is now in the safe hands of the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) in Philadelphia. One of the foundation's curators, James Voelkel, said Newton was strongly engrossed in alchemy during his lifetime. He said Newton's manuscripts contain a million handwritten words. Sophick mercury is a substance considered as the main ingredient for creating the philosopher's stone. The recipe to create sophick mercury involved repeatedly distilling mercury and then heating it with gold. With this process, the substance eventually becomes an alloy with delicate growths. Newton copied the recipe from a text by Harvard-educated alchemist George Starkey. Experts said this occurred long before Starkey printed his take on the process. Here comes the interesting part: alchemists like Starkey typically used cryptic language to obscure their work, a kind of thinking that suggested that only those who are worthy would comprehend. Such is the case for the sophick mercury recipe. Although there is no evidence that Newton himself decoded the sophick mercury recipe, Voelkel said Newton scribbled his own notes on the back of his copied text - a natural habit of his. He had then decided to compile giant concordances that classified those coded terms. They Say Alchemy Is A Pseudoscience Why is this discovery so important? Indiana University's William Newman, an expert in the history of science, said the ancient manuscript will help modern scholars understand how Newton interpreted alchemy's often deeply complex recipes. Newman said the manuscript also highlights the fact that Newton - a father of classical physics and co-discoverer of calculus - was strongly influenced by alchemy and his work with other alchemists. Voelkel said Newton is a fascinating alchemist because of the systematic process in which he worked. He said Newton would reference to an individual alchemist, which page they had used the term, and then do a data-driven analysis. Some say that Newton's interest in alchemy was driven by the hope to use ancient knowledge to better explain the nature of matter, but other scholars have dismissed alchemy as a mystical pseudoscience filled with fanciful and discredited processes. Even Newton's biographer in 1855 questioned how such a mind like Newton's could seriously take the "obvious production of a fool and a knave." What's more, the sophick mercury recipe that is in the CHF's possession only resurfaced now in part because Newton's alma mater Cambridge University turned down the chance to archive the alchemy recipes. The recipes were then sold at a 1936 auction, and have remained in private hands. But the discovery of this manuscript is truly important because this meant that Newton did "magic" the same way he studied science. As far as Newton was concerned, alchemy was a science. Although some scholars do not believe alchemy is practical or empirical, Newman said alchemists were the first ones to grasp the idea that compounds could be deconstructed into parts and then recombined - a principle recognized today. This is something that Newton applied into white light, which he broke down into basic colors and recombined, said Newman. It is safe to say that without Newton the alchemist, Newton the physicist wouldn't have formed his breakthroughs. Meanwhile, Voelkel said something that was left out of the narrative was how chemistry developed in the 16th and 17th century, unlike physics. He said that just like other academics during the 17th century, Newton was struggling with chemistry. "In some ways," he added, "it's so difficult that even Newton couldn't solve it." 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Flash China and Southeast Asian countries decided to improve their cooperation in security and anti-terrorism, said senior Chinese official Meng Jianzhu, while addressing the opening ceremony of the China-Southeast Asian security services counter-terrorism dialogue on Thursday. Meng Jianzhu, head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and officials from Southeast Asian countries attend the China-Southeast Asian security services counter-terrorism dialogue in Beijing, China, April 7, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] The two sides will take action to improve multilateral and bilateral cooperation against terrorism. Meng, head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said China and Southeast Asian nations share close geographical and cultural links as well as common interests and future. The two sides have witnessed increasing mutual trust and cooperation in security. He thanked Southeast Asian nations for their support to China in the fight against terrorism. Meng said China is ready to work with Southeast Asian countries to put into action the common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security strategy for Asia, which was proposed by President Xi Jinping at the fourth summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in May 2014. He also called on all the countries to improve multilateral and bilateral cooperation, increase information exchange, expand cooperation areas, and strengthen counter-terrorism collaborative capacity, so as to establish a multilateral anti-terrorism cooperation platform with regional characteristics to protect people in the region and help maintain regional security and stability. Officials from Southeast Asian countries agreed with Meng and pledged to further strengthen information exchange and take pragmatic actions in counter-terrorism with China. China's State Councilor and Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun met with Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sar Kheng, who attended the dialogue on Thursday morning. Guo said China is willing to work with Cambodia to strengthen law enforcement cooperation in such areas as telecommunications fraud, human trafficking and cyber crimes, so as to serve the development of bilateral relations. Sar Kheng said Cambodia will strengthen cooperation with the ministry and push forward Cambodia-China ties. Expectant mothers who are either obese or diabetic have a higher likelihood to give birth to babies that are excessively large, according to a new study featured in the journal Diabetes Care. Researchers at the University of Cambridge examined the impact of a condition known as gestational diabetes on the health of pregnant women and their babies. They analyzed medical data collected from more than 4,000 first time mothers who took part in a study known as the Pregnancy Outcome Prediction. The team discovered that infants who were born to obese or diabetic mothers are five times more likely to become overly large during the sixth month of pregnancy. This not only exposes mothers to greater health risk during childbirth, but it also increases the risk for children to develop obesity or diabetes of their own later in their lives. The findings of the study bring to light the importance of having expectant mothers routinely tested for pregnancy-related diabetes. While doctors administer regular diabetes screening on pregnant women, the test is only conducted when mothers reach the 24th week (6th month) of their pregnancy. The researchers propose to have pregnant women, especially those who are obese or at a high risk of diabetes, to undergo screening at an earlier period. This is because the development of their baby could suffer from complications by the time they reach their 20th week. Early diabetes testing can give doctors enough time to carry out ways to lower the risk overgrowth in the babies of these mothers. Lead investigator Gordon Smith pointed out that even though doctors have identified an increased risk of childhood obesity in the babies of mothers with gestational diabetes, no clinical trial has ever proven that testing and intervention during pregnancy were able to help reduce this risk. Smith and his team believe that this could be because by the time the mother undergoes testing and intervention, the impacts of her gestational diabetes may have already manifested in her unborn child. "The evidence from our study indicates that there is an urgent need for trials to assess the effect of earlier screening, both on the outcome of the pregnancy and the long term health for the offspring," Smith said. Photo: Raul Hernandez Gonzalez | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Toyota is developing a special copilot it calls the "Guardian Angel," which aims to help human drivers by taking over to prevent a crash. Self-driving cars are increasingly gaining momentum and fully autonomous vehicles continue to stir mixed reactions. While some commend the advancements of technology and the great potential of AI and robotics, others worry that machines are increasingly taking over and will soon deem the human race useless. Toyota seems to have a solution in mind to ease such woes. Its Guardian Angel would not replace the driver, but would serve as a skilled copilot ready to take over should the driver be in trouble. As Tech Times previously reported, Toyota is investing in a new research facility in Ann Arbor, at the University of Michigan, and this Guardian Angel copilot will be part of that effort. "In the same way that antilock braking and emergency braking work, there is a virtual driver that is trying to make sure you don't have an accident by temporarily taking control from you," says Gill Pratt, CEO of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), as cited by MIT Technology Review. As a reminder, Toyota created TRI last year, betting $1 billion in funding for researching artificial intelligence, automated driving and robotics. The intelligent copilot feature is definitely intriguing, but not entirely new, as we've had driver assistance for a good while now. Anti-lock braking or traction control, for instance, are such aids that have been adjusting the driver's behavior for decades. Future cars, meanwhile, will have automatic braking in case of emergency. Automatic braking will become the standard by 2022. Toyota's Guardian Angel, however, aims to take it to the next level. It would not just brake automatically, but it would also prompt the car to accelerate, swerve or not swerve, depending on the tricky situation it's in. It might sound less ambitious than other endeavors involving fully autonomous vehicles, but it sounds more realistic and achievable in the near future. Fully self-driving cars have come a long way, but they still have plenty of hurdles to overcome and it will take a while before they actually hit the commercial state. Moreover, the world's infrastructure is not designed for AI drivers, but for human ones. To achieve its full potential, autonomous driving technology would need a new infrastructure with special speed limits, cross walks, intersections and such, which is far from an easy task. Toyota's Guardian Angel could pave the way to fully autonomous driving technology, easing the transition. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Adobe Systems recently rolled out an emergency update to Adobe Flash, following the discovery of a security flaw that targets PCs running on Windows. North of 1 million users have Flash on their machines, and the company is asking them to urgently update the product to avoid being targets of a "drive-by" attack. The malicious infection hits computers with so-called ransomware when users visit tainted webpages. Ransomware works by encrypting the data from users' computers, followed up by demanding payments in order to unlock the locked-away data. According to a report from Trend Micro's security researchers, the attacks on Adobe that used ransomware dubbed "Cerber" started in March 2016. This crypto-ransomware utilizes a voice tactic that reads a ransom note aloud to pressure users into paying. With the latest safety patch, Adobe fills the gap in a previously undiscovered security liability. These types of exploits are known as "zero days" and represent one of the most sought-after elements for hackers. The reason for this is that neither coders, nor digital security companies were able to resolve the issues, leaving computers vulnerable. In general, these bugs are targeted by state-backed hackers who are involved in acts of sabotage and espionage. The trend for "common" cyber criminals is to make use of commonly known bugs during attacks. Digital security experts warn that a surging ransomware tendency exists in both Europe and the United States. Organizations such as police stations, school districts and even hospitals were targeted and blackmailed via ransomware attacks. The malevolent actions gained depth as well as scale in the last few months. "The deployment of a zero day highlights potential advancement by cyber criminals," Kyrk Storer, a spokesman for FireEye Inc, notes. According to FireEye, digital criminals are using the Magnitude Exploit Kit or MEK for delivering ransomware to selected targets. The MEK is a set of tools that users can purchase on specialized forums that are usually more prevalent in the so-called "dark Web." What we gather from the recurrent stories about cybersecurity flaws is that keeping the system up-to-date is paramount to defending against exploit kits that deliver the ransomware payload, alongside other bugs and nasty exploits. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A top lawyer with the European Court notes that posting a link to a website that publishes copyrighted photos without their owners' approval does not set itself for infringement. The legal advisor affirms that having a hyperlink to copyrighted content on your webpage does not qualify the third-party page that hosts the link as infringing upon copyright law. Although the EU states that distribution of copyrighted work must take place only with the consent of the work's author, the advocate general clarified that the Internet would suffer greatly, should the hyperlinks follow the same rules as real-life advertising of copyrighting content. The case originated in the Netherlands, after the GeenStijl webpage offered its readers a link to an Australian site which showed photos of a Dutch celebrity. The images were captured by the Playboy magazine, and the Australian website did not ask Playboy's consent to publish the photos. The EU Court decision is pending as the legal issue between GeenStijl and Playboy's publisher is underway. The next step that the EU Court of Justice must take is to decide if these hyperlinks qualify as "communication to the public" or not, and the decision will impact the copyright infringement charges. The Dutch site made the leaked photos available via links to file-sharing service FileFactory. As Sanoma, the publishing company of Playboy found out and took down the FileFactory hyperlinks, GeenStijl simply replaced them by linking to a different source. "The posting of the hyperlinks in the main proceedings does not, in my view, constitute a 'communication to the public'," Advocate General Melchior Wathelet points out in his advisory. He went on to add that a different interpretation "would significantly impair the functioning of the Internet." Wathelet further affirms that one of the main objectives of EU's Directive 2001/29, which regards the development of a European society based on information and transparency, would have to suffer from a different interpretation of the copyright law. It should be noted that Wathelet's decision does not bind the court, and there are still proceedings in place until the lawsuit reaches its end. However, European courts tend to pay heed to the Advocate General's opinion on these matters. Europe has seen legal hassles over copyright laws regarding visual content before, and you can read all about it in our coverage. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Although this week's PlayStation 4 update brought a variety of features to the console previously announced by Sony, a few Reddit users discovered that the system software update also added a few other things, too. One of the big focuses of the update was on adding new social functions to the PlayStation 4. Now, players can get notifications when certain friends get online and can create events to invite those friends and others to specific gaming sessions. A new "Play Together" feature also surfaced that lets players see what their friends are playing and join in if they feel like it. However, for those gamers feeling like they need some alone time, they can also now hide their online status from others. Reddit users noticed that these new PlayStation 4 social features had other benefits, too, though. Now, users can also set a limit to how many people join up for play sessions, from two to eight people. Another unannounced feature that comes with the update includes several improvements to Live on the PlayStation menu: users can now easily search for videos, live streams and screen shots on their system and can pin up to three games to stay at the top of the list. Sony also fixed an issue with on-screen notifications turning up while taking a screen shot. Now, users can disable those notifications, allowing players to take multiple screen shots in a row without the annoying pop-up. One huge announced feature with the 3.50 update included Remote Play support for computers running at least Windows 8.1 and OS X 10.10. That allows PlayStation owners to play games from their PCs and even use their DualShock controllers to do so. The PlayStation app also received updates this week, too, including the ability to schedule gameplay sessions with friends, the addition of Dailymotion to Live from PlayStation and the ability to see other players' shared activities. Reddit users also reported several problems with the new update, including issues with certain mics and headphones, problems connecting to Remote Play on PCs, serious lag with Remote Play and menus loading incorrectly. Sony encourages players to inform them of any bugs they come across, as well as leave feedback about the latest update on the official PlayStation blog. Photo: Farley Santos | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The automotive industry has been very vocal about delivering greener technology, with several countries even offering government incentives for plug-in electric vehicles, including the United States. Well, one country is taking the process a step further. CNET Roadshow spotted a Digital Trends report revealing that Dutch politicians want to ramp up the transition to eco-friendly vehicles to the point that they're aiming to ban gas- and diesel-powered models in Holland beginning by 2025. According to the website, Holland's labor party, PvdA, proposed the bill and had it agreed upon by a majority of the country's parliament lower house, Tweede Kamer. If the bill gets passed into law, which is expected, automakers will be prohibited from even selling hybrids and plug-in hybrids, as any new vehicle sold in Holland will be either all electric or powered by hydrogen. While the goal is definitely an ambitious and admirable one, it's being met with its fair share of detractors. Digital Trends points to the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VDD) calling PvdA's bill being "overambitious and unrealistic," with VDD minister of economic affairs Henk Kamp estimating that only about 15 percent of new vehicles sold in Holland in less than 10 years' time will be all electric. Another VDD official, Barbara Visser, took that a step even further, sparing no mercy for the PvdA, calling its bill "the wishful thinking of a headless chicken." Ouch. To that end, PvdA parliament rep Jan Vos said the proposed bill is an outlined vision for a future free of emissions and that, obviously, it will be a work in progress to meet fruition. While it's definitely an ambitious bill, we'd like to think it's an aggressively conscious one as well. With the world witnessing the trudge that Volkswagen is continuing to have to deal with as a result of its emissions scandal, why not push for an all-electric or hydrogen-powered society? The greener, cleaner way of commuting on roads would be a giant plus to the environment and climate. Additionally, if the plan is successful in 2025, other countries around the world could use Holland as a benchmark and platform to emulate and go green themselves. These Dutch politicians' hearts and will are in the right place. It's just a matter of clearing up regulatory red tape, which always seems to accompany these kinds of ambitious goals. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. California is the center of technological innovation. Our state is home to tech companies that are changing peoples lives all over the world. But there is still a small sliver of Californians, about 1.3 percent of the population, who live in areas where there isnt access to the Internet, according to a recent study.And about one in five people who have access dont use the Internet. There are many different reasons why people dont go online. According to a study by the Pew Research Center , 34 percent of adults who dont use the Internet say they dont find it relevant to their lives. Another 32 percent say they find the Internet too difficult to use.This points to a real problem. The Internet today is about so much more than cat videos and social media. Dont get me wrong those things are great. But people can now use the Web to apply for jobs, sign up for health care and stay in touch with loved ones. People who believe the Internet is irrelevant, or too difficult to use, are increasingly isolating themselves from their communities and society as a whole.This is the modern digital divide or as we call it, Digital Divide 2.0. Almost everyone has access to the Internet. Even people who may not have a broadband line to their house can access the Internet through their schools and libraries. According to a recent study by James E. Prieger, an associate professor of economics and public policy at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, access isnt the biggest problem. He writes: ... the main barrier to increased adoption is not access but the value proposition for consumers.So what can be done to improve the value proposition of the Internet for the select few who are abstaining? One good fix would be to modernize our communications policies to focus on closing the Digital Divide 2.0. Californias communications laws actually encourage people to stay isolated on phone lines, which keeps them shut away from a wide world of information. We have to re-imagine the goal of communications policy, which in the 1950s began and ended with making sure people had access to a phone.Now, we need to all admit thats not nearly enough. Californias policies need to encourage consumers and companies to all make the leap from dumb phones hooked up to copper wires to smart devices connected to broadband networks.Its no wonder that people say they find the Internet irrelevant if theyre not connected. The minute they start Skyping with their grandchildren ... or save themselves a drive across town to the doctors office ... or take their first class online their opinion may change.Theres no question that we need to make sure everyone can have Internet access to their home. Programs like the federal Lifeline program, which now offers government subsidies to pay for broadband connections, and the California Advanced Services Fund can help bring the Web to Californias remaining people who dont have access or havent yet gotten online.Priegers study shows that we can do this by first eliminating barriers to deploying and upgrading broadband. On price, most service providers already offer a low-cost broadband option for those that qualify and the state could alter voice line subsidies to apply to broadband to make Internet access more affordable. Local communities can continue to do the work of making sure people know how to use the Internet and that they are digitally savvy enough to do the basics and perhaps far more.In this way, we will truly close the digital divide and give all of Californias residents access to the greatest generator of prosperity in our lifetime. On phones, people can talk. Thats not enough. Online, people can build businesses, find work in the personal enterprise economy and participate in their communities. Its the future that California should be striving for. Anonymous Hackers Infiltrate Philippines Election Website, 55 Million Philippine Voters PII Leaked Data of more than 55 million registered voters in the Philippines is at potential risk, as hackers have reportedly managed to infiltrate the Philippines Commission on Elections (COMELEC) entire database. Anonymous Philippines, a branch of the online hacktivist group, hacked into the COMELEC website on March 27, and left a defacement message on the site warning of a possible fraud during next months election before removing the defacement message two days later. The hackers also posted a video on social media, warning officials not to tamper with the publics vote and claim they only want fair elections. Speaking in the video, Anonymous said: COMELEC, it is your mandate to protect the integrity of our votes. The people want an honest election. We demand legitimate election results. We hope for encouraging changes in the electoral system, the hackers said in their video. On the same day as the hack, n3far1ous, one of the groups members, hinted that the group could do more damage if their warning was not heeded. Dear COMELEC, do you think it is impossible to dump the whole database? Well, think again.. the hacker wrote in a Facebook post. However, their forewarning became a reality on April 6, when security firm Trend Micro discovered that a second hacking group, LulzSec Philippines, also hacked the website and is behind the leak on information of 55 million people. This incident puts pressure on the COMELEC and their Automated Voting System (AVS). In a statement in the Trend Micro report, COMELEC spokesperson James Jimenez confirmed that the security of the website is not high but he pointed out that the AVS ran on a different, more secure network and that the recent hack will not affect the voting machines. Jimenez is confident of the security features of the AVS and reassured the public that things will go smoothly during the elections. While COMELEC officials claim that no sensitive information was stored in the database, Trend Micro research showed that the data dumps includes 1.3 million records of overseas Filipino voters, which included names, addresses, birth dates, ID cards, passports, data on candidates, parties, overseas voters, 15.8 million record of voter fingerprints and list of people running for office since the 2010 elections. This leak may turn out as the biggest government related data breach in history, surpassing the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack last 2015 that leaked PII, including fingerprints and social security numbers (SSN) of 20 million US citizens. Also, this leak comes after an unknown hacker leaked the details of nearly 50 million Turkish citizens. Presidential elections in the Philippines are scheduled for May 9. Google Looking To Adopt Apples Swift Programming Language For Android According to the reports from The Next Web, Google is reportedly considering making Apples Swift programming language a first class language for Android ecosystem, while Facebook and Uber are looking to better incorporate the programming language in their services and operations. Sources say that representatives from Google, Facebook, and Uber had recently met in London to discuss Swift. As The Next Web reports: Googles Android operating system currently supports Java as its first-class language, and sources say Swift is not meant to replace Java, at least initially. While the ongoing litigation with Oracle is likely cause for concern, sources say Google considers Swift to have a broader upside than Java. As noted by The Next Web, switching over to Swift would be a long process for Google that could span multiple months or years. If Google were to support Swift for Android, it would need to create a runtime for the language. Additionally, its whole library would need to be made Swift ready. Some low level Android APIs are C++ which Swift cant bridge to. They would have to be rewritten. Also, some higher level APIs in Java would need to be rewritten. A change to support Swift for Android isnt impossible, as Android support is integral, for the deep integration that Facebook and Uber want to adopt. So, it is not likely to be adopted in the near future. However, Google is also reportedly considering another language, Kotlin, as a first-class language. But Googles current mindset is that Kotlin is a bit too slow when compiling. Swift was first announced by Apple in June 2014 and later expanded on it with Swift 2 in June 2015. In December last year, the programming language was made open source. After a High-Speed Chase in Los Angeles, Suspected Burglars Have Time to Pose for Selfies Before Cops Arrive Two burglary suspects who led authorities on a long, bizarre chase through the streets of Los Angeles in a convertible navy blue Ford Mustang surrendered to the police but not before nearly T-boning a TMZ tour bus, performing doughnuts on Hollywood Boulevard and taking selfies with onlookers. Officers had previously tried and failed to stop the car, as they had apparently been travelling at high speeds prior to the beginning of the chase before they took off through the heart of Los Angeles. According to local news station KTLA, they were hampered by dangerous conditions due to heavy rain, with the chase lasting more than an hour. The chase began in San Gabriel Valley and spanned South Los Angeles and the northbound freeway, the station said. OMG THE TMZ BUS JUST TRIED TO CUT THEM OFF pic.twitter.com/xTuFzfiwLX Matt Novak (@paleofuture) April 7, 2016 The end of this police chase just ended with a 10 minute long selfie sessionI've seen it all pic.twitter.com/ce2opMSYO8 Jack Dunlop (@CouRageJD) April 7, 2016 Once the suspects reached Hollywood Boulevard, they did donuts with the convertibles top down and then headed for the Hollywood Hills. However, more than an hour later, the car lost one of its tyres, possibly from a spike strip, and began to slow down to speeds of 32km/hr before pulling over in a residential area. https://youtu.be/Rqj58a3DRG4 Live footage of the the entire chase was taken from news helicopters above. After the pair exited the vehicle, they were seen shaking hands and high-fiving with people on the street, which was later followed by selfies. Initially, it was the driver and passenger taking a selfie of themselves. However, later other people started approaching the duo requesting that they pose for selfies with them. It is understood the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) arrived around 10 minutes later to arrest the duo. The two men calmly surrendered and were handcuffed as onlookers took videos of the scene with their smartphones. According to the police, the suspects had earlier fled the scene of a home burglary in Cerritos. The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department said the men were to be booked for burglary, among many other charges. Flash Commander of U.S. Africa Command said on Thursday the Islamic State (IS) had doubled its presence inside Libya in the past 12 to 18 months. "In Libya, the U.S. intelligence community has said it's around 4 (thousand) to 6,000. It is probably about doubled in the last 12 to 18 months based on what their assessments were last year," said Army Gen. David Rodriguez here at a Pentagon briefing. Though the IS' stronghold in Libya was in Sirte, a city on Libya's Mediterranean coast, the extremist group also had a presence in the east in Benghazi and Darna, as well as in Sabratha in the west, said Rodriguez. Apart from recruits from within north Africa and from Iraq and Syria, some militants already inside Libya had also pledged allegiance to IS, he added. Despite the expansion of IS' influence in Libya, the U.S. military had so far publicly admitted to have conducted only two airstrikes against IS targets inside Libya, compared to its daily air raids against the group in Syria and Iraq, according to examinations of the Pentagon's previous statements. Pentagon's first ever target-killing of IS operatives happened last November. The target was Abu Nabil, also known as Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al Zubaydi, an Iraqi national who was a longtime al-Qaida operative and the senior IS leader in Libya. The Pentagon carried out its second airstrike in Libya in February, killing about 40 IS recruits in a training camp near Sabratha. Asked by reporters about the reason for so far limited airstrikes inside Libya, Rodriguez said the Pentagon had only planed to target IS fighters in Libya who were posing "imminent threat." "(What) We're going after, and continue to go after, is the ones that have imminent threat to U.S. personnel and facilities. Not the intent to do that, (but) the ones that do that," said Rodriguez. NASA cant explain or deny the Millennium Falcon UFO that appeared in live feed This may fall into the category of conspiracy theory but it has some resonance of truth in it which the US space agency, NASA is finding it hard to explain. UFO hunters monitoring NASAs ISS live stream channel reportedly spotted a giant alien UFO spacecraft approaching the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit. The discovery set the conspiracy theorists and the online UFO community abuzz agog with many of them challenging NASA to explain away the latest glaring evidence of alien UFO traffic around the ISS. One such space enthusiast, Jadon Beeson has demanded NASA explain a UFO after an unexplained patch of light in the shape of a Star Wars spacecraft appeared above the earth during a live feed. Beeson was watching a stream of the International Space Station on his iPhone on Tuesday when a strange object appeared in the background. The 20-year-old Brit said NASA cut the live feed for an hour after it showed up. He says he has asked NASA explain the clearly defined UFO, which was broadcast on NASAs official app, but they have not responded. UFO conspiracy theorists have long claimed that NASA edits its clips, sniping the controversial parts before releasing the space footages on public domain. They say that Millennium Falcon UFO is yet another example of ongoing top-secret exopolitical activity in space involving Earth governments and extraterrestrial races that has implications to Earths security. The alien UFO spacecraft was spotted flying close to the ISS on the live ISS stream on April 5, 2016, by several eagle-eyed UFO hunters, including UFOvni2012. It was unquestionably real and present. It looked like the Millennium Falcon, Beeson told The Mirror, referring to Han Solos spaceship in Star Wars. It is the second time in a month NASA has been accused of covering up UFO activity. According to the YouTube UFO hunter UFOvni2012, while observing the live ISS stream on April 5, 2016, he spotted at about 1:21 p.m. central European time a glaring anomaly, undeniably a UFO, lurking on the horizon but close to the space station. https://youtu.be/_leqtk1miZ4 Other UFO researchers who also spotted the massive object hovering mysteriously in the background with a distinct blue-glow-infused metallic glint have described it as a Millennium Falcon-type UFO, a reference to a type of starship from the popular Star Wars series. It was a metallic object, it looks like a Millennium Falcon from Star Wars or something from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. UFOvni2012 snapped four screenshots of the UFO before it disappeared from sight. The UFO hunter, however, expressed regret that the screenshots were not comparable in clarity and sharpness to the original high-resolution images from NASAs HD cameras. While two screenshots show the UFO, the sighting on NASAs original live feed gave a much more impressive view of the UFO, according to UFOvni2012. A 40 anos de Malvinas "Revisar el pasado es pensar el futuro". La frase de la presidenta de Telam, Bernarda Llorente, resume el espiritu del documental coproducido entre la agencia de noticias y el canal publico de TV sobre la cobertura que los medios de comunicacion hicieron del conflicto, plagada de censura y mentiras. Una autocritica necesaria para mirar hacia adelante en un (ya viejo) contexto de fake news y negocio informativo. 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 Flash The transition of the Karabakh conflict "in the hot phase" may have the most serious consequences for whole South Caucasus region, visiting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday. Russia is ready to continue to play a major role in the OSCE Minsk Group and to make every effort to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Medvedev said at a joint press conference with his Armenian counterpart Hovik Abrahamyan. He also noted that this issue was discussed in detail in the framework of extended talks with Hovik Abrahamyan and stressed that he will also discuss it with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. The Russian prime minister expressed hope that the mutual ceasefire agreement will continue to be respected by Armenia and Azerbaijian. "The settlement must engage in diplomacy rather than the military to prevent loss of life and destruction of infrastructure," he said. The Armenian Prime Minister noted that Armenia would continue to act as the guarantor of security of Nagorno-Karabakh population. "We are interested in maintaining the ceasefire." Flash Pakistan's top foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz, said on Thursday that a four-nation group on peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan will meet this month to review the situation after the refusal of the Taliban to join the reconciliation. The quadrilateral group of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States had invited the Taliban groups and Hizb-e-Islami to take part in direct talks with Kabul by the first week of March. However, they rejected the offer. Pakistan was to host the talks. The Pakistani adviser told a discussion in Islamabad that efforts are continuing for peace talks in Afghanistan and that it is responsibility of the four-way group to encourage the Taliban to come to the negotiation table. Afghan reconciliation process is very important. This is a long process and cannot be achieved in one or two meetings, Aziz said. Dialogue is the only way forward to the Afghan issue and Pakistan is making efforts for dialogue between Afghan Taliban and the Afghan Government, he said. The Pakistani adviser called for reduction in violence in Afghanistan as it would have a positive impact on the situation. However, he said it is not a precondition for the talks. Speaking at the gathering Afghan ambassador in Islamabad, Omar Zakhilwal, called for action against those who have refused to take part in the peace negotiations. The ambassador was referring to an understanding in the quadrilateral process that action would be taken against the irreconcilable elements. He called for quick progress on peace talks and embark on consequences for those who dont accept to join peace and instead opt for war. Peace in Afghanistan (for us and our partners) should not be a seasonal objective but rather a consistent, persistent, long-term aim of us all, the Afghan envoy insisted. Telangana will soon be free from drought: KCR Hyderabad, April 8 (INN): Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao expressed confidence that Telangana State would soon become free from drought. Participating in the official celebrations of Ugadi festival at Ravindra Bharathi here on Friday, the Chief Minister prayed that the Telugu New Year bring happiness, growth and prosperity among all the citizens of Telangana State. He said that the State has already overcome the issues of funds and employment. He said soon the government would completely eradicate the problem of drinking water and drought across the Telangana State. He said incidents of farmers' suicides could be prevented only by overcoming drought situation. Stating that the Telangana was growing at a rate of 15%, the Chief Minister said that the State Government has now got a complete picture of State's revenues and they would be spent judiciously for the welfare of all section. He also hoped that Telangana would emerge as the top IT destination in the country. Speaking on the occasion, Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatraya appreciated the programme 'Mission Bhagiratha' and hoped that it would help in resolving the water crisis in Telangana State. The celebrations were also attended by Assembly Speaker S. Madhusudan Chary, Council Chairman Swamy Goud, Deputy CMs Kadiyam Srihari and Mohammed Mahmood Ali, Ministers Eatala Rajender, Ajmeera Chandulal and Nayani Narasimha Reddy and other legislators. News Posted: 8 April, 2016 Queensland's Environment Minister has warned of the need to "reduce as many pressures" on the Great Barrier Reef as possible, and the danger climate change presented to the World Heritage-listed site, less than a week after Queensland approved mining leases for the nation's largest coal mine. Steven Miles said the latest update on the coral bleaching event impacting the reef was "deeply concerning" with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Chair Russell Reichelt confirming "many of the corals from the central region to the north were extremely bleached". Bleaching of coral on the Great Barrier Reef has been called a "climate change wake-up call" by the Queensland Environment Minister. Credit:Eddie Jim "It is difficult to see our precious Great Barrier Reef under such pressure from bleaching this year, particularly in the far north, which has been generally considered one of the most pristine areas of the reef," Dr Miles said in a statement. "It is still too early to tell what the full impacts will be in terms of how many bleached coral will actually die. A diver checking out the bleaching at Heron Island in February 2016. Credit:XL Catlin Seaview Survey "This event, I would say with 99 per cent certainty, is being driven by anthropogenic climate change," he says. Heron Island sits towards the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef's 2300-kilometre reach. It takes a stomach-turning two-hour boat ride from Gladstone to get there. Bleached coral at Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. Credit:Eddie Jim When you arrive though the plentiful corals surrounding the island look like the Reef" we all imagine bathed in turquoise water, colourful and littered with endless fish, rays, sharks and turtles. Dr Selina Ward, a coral reef ecologist at the University of Queensland, says Heron's biodiversity is a stark reminder there is still much to lose if the Great Barrier Reef is not looked after. Looking dead flat at Heron Island. Credit:Eddie Jim Bleaching does not necessarily lead to death. If water temperatures drop in time corals can start rebuilding their algae and recover within months. "We've lost 50 per cent of coral cover on the reef in 27 years, mostly due to cyclones, crown of thorns and bleaching," she says. There is still enough coral left to turn the reef around, she says, but only if we do right by it. Bleached Coral at Heron Island. Credit:Eddie Jim Across the planet ocean temperatures have risen as a result of global warming. In Australia, average sea surface temperatures are a degree higher than in 1910. These elevated temperatures have driven corals closer to thresholds where bleaching conditions occur. When a weather event like El Nino emerges that threshold is often exceeded. Coral off Heron Island. Credit:Eddie Jim "The mass bleaching is a result of climate change and a strong El Nino exacerbating high sea surface temperatures that usually occur at this time of year," says Dr Russell Reichelt, chairman of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. "This temperature trifecta has created heat stress and pushed corals beyond their ability to cope." Bleached coral off Heron Island. Credit:Eddie Jim Coral animals, called polyps, have a crucial symbiotic relationship with algae that live in their cells and provide them with energy. When hard corals are stressed they expel this algae, which turns their tissue translucent, and exposes their white skeletons. This leaves them vulnerable to starvation, disease, and potentially death. Dr Selina Ward, senior lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, checking out the acropora aspera coral at Heron Island. Credit:Eddie Jim Dr Paul Marshall, the former head of the climate change program at the marine park authority and now an adjunct professor at The University of Queensland, says the link between coral stress, bleaching and warming oceans is not in dispute. "It is simple equation, you heat up the atmosphere, you heat up the oceans. You heat up the oceans, the corals get stressed. All of the causal links are absolutely robust," he says. Beyond warming seas, climate change poses other problems for the reef, including increased ocean acidity, turbocharged storms and sea-level rise. Ward says rising ocean acidification is particularly troubling for corals because it undercuts their ability to lay skeleton, which forms the basis of reefs, and makes them more brittle and vulnerable to erosion. These climate pressures interact with each other, multiplying the risks. And they present problems not just for coral, but also for fish, other marine life and the overall ability of the ecosystem to function. They also come against a backdrop of other environmental problems hampering the reef's overall resilience. Water pollution from farming runoff is chief among them. Marshall says of the climate threats, bleaching can do the most immediate damage. When it is severe enough, corals hundreds of years old can die. "That's something that has been really depressing for me," Marshall says. "There are corals that were here when Captain Cook sailed by, and they're dying under our watch and they're not coming back in anyone's lifetime." Bleaching does not necessarily lead to death. If water temperatures drop in time corals can start rebuilding their algae and recover within months. Some coral species there are over 600 on the reef are also naturally hardier than others, so rather than total die-off bleaching can lead to species switching instead. According to the Australian Institute of Marine Science about 55 per cent of the reef was bleached during the 2002 event. About 5 per cent died. Given the right conditions new corals can also rebuild on dead reefs in about a decade. One study of 21 reefs in the Seychelles, on which 90 per cent of corals died during a 1998 global bleaching event, found that 12 were eventually restored. Ultimately it will take weeks for the full extent of the current bleaching event to emerge. The levels of coral mortality may not be known for longer still. Reichelt says: "experience tells us that corals can recover from major disturbances, but they need to be given time and the right conditions to do so." The concern is that if coral bleaching occurs more frequently, as it is projected to do, reefs won't have sufficient time to recover. Back in 1999 Hoegh-Guldberg forecast that rising greenhouse gas emissions would see most oceans become too hot for corals on a yearly basis by the 2040s and 2050s. In the most recent major assessment of the reef's health by the marine park authority reported that under moderate future emissions, bleaching conditions could be expected about once every five years for most parts of the reef by 2018. By 2052 to 2067 it could occur every year. It means some changes to the reef because of climate change appear inevitable (though there is some scientific inquiry into whether corals may be able to adapt somewhat to warmer and more acidic oceans). Marshall says by 2050 the reef will ultimately be a different place and he paints four possible scenarios: Good water quality, lower emissions Under this future some areas escape the worst damage and big and old corals survive on some sites. Corals are able to grow and maintain themselves, but will be in a recovery phase more regularly. The reef can support diverse fish communities and habitat for other marine life. Overall there is less coral cover, more algae, more open space. But it is still beautiful. Good water quality, high emissions Here not much of the old corals remain, with smaller, faster growing ones surviving instead. There is more open space and a lot of seaweed in it. The big "architecture" of the reef no longer exists, reducing its ability to support other marine life, especially the larger fish. This is akin to moving from an old growth forest to scrubby regrowth next to a farm field. Poor water quality, lower emissions A "dynamic tension" is established between seaweed and corals. Smaller corals grow among the seaweed, both competing for the same space. The seaweed increasingly gans the advantage as coral bleaching becomes more frequent. This environment still supports some marine life, such as smaller fish. But it is not beautiful. Poor water quality, high emissions An effective wipeout. Only a fairly flat reef structure remains with very few corals growing and a lot of seaweed. Constant stress from coral bleaching and high levels of fertiliser and sediments entering from the land means corals are largely replaced by seaweeds, and the reef is unable to provide habitat for much fish life at all. None of these futures are ideal. Marshall says the sad reality is that future generations will inherit a coral reef that doesn't match the travel brochures of the 20th century. But he adds smart decisions today "can still secure a beautiful, productive reef for future generations." Here is where it gets tricky. The federal and Queensland governments are already attempting, with mixed success, to address water pollution problems through multibillion-dollar commitments to tackle pesticide runoff from farms and damaging crown of thorns infestations. But what will largely decide the reef's fate is how fast the world cuts emissions and how high global temperatures are allowed to rise. Reichelt points to a consensus statement by the International Society for Reef Studies released last year which argues the average global temperature increase must be kept below two degrees in the short term, and below 1.5 degrees in the long term, to allow coral reefs to survive in perpetuity. It is in that light green groups are trying to link the fate of the Great Barrier Reef with new coal mine development. In their sights is the $21 billion Carmichael project in Queensland's Galilee Basin, which is backed by Indian company Adani and if built, would be Australia's largest coal mine. Last Sunday the Queensland government signed off on mining licences for Adani, which still needs to attract finance for the Carmichael project. Green groups argued this was a moment of enormous cognitive dissonance given the mass bleaching on the reef. The Australia Conservation Foundation, which flew media to Heron Island this week to press its arguments, is also trying to make the link legally. It has launched court action to try overturn environmental approvals for Carmichael, arguing the federal government should have taken into account the damage that would be inflicted on the reef from the emissions from burning the mined coal once it was shipped to India The Queensland Resources Council rejects this connection. A spokeswoman says the emissions associated with the coal would be lower than other energy sources like "burning dung for cooking, which is one of the many high-emitting fuels that 300 million Indians without power are using." To say Carmichael coal would not have any impact on the reef requires some rejection of the well-established link between burning fossil fuels and global warming. But nor is it in isolation enough to push the planet beyond two degrees of warming. A 2014 expert study into the pollution associated with Carmichael coal found it would use up 0.53-0.56 per cent of the remaining global emissions that can occur and still see the world still avoid exceeding two degrees. Emotions ran high as about 150 protesters clashed outside the Azerbaijan Embassy in Canberra on Friday afternoon. After four days of intense fighting in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, demonstrators from both sides of the conflict congregated outside the O'Malley embassy as rows of Australia Federal Police officers stood between them and the embassy gates. Azerbaijan supporters with flags outside the Azerbaijan Embassy in O'Malley. Credit:Rohan Thomson Transport and Municipal Services confirmed ACTION buses were temporarily diverted from O'Malley while the protest took place. Hajar Koch, chair of the Azerbaijani Cultural Association, said it was a tense situation. The ACT Government will continue to provide $400,000 in annual funding to the embattled school, education minister Shane Rattenbury confirmed. The school in Weston looks set to remain open in Term 2, despite the withdrawal of $1.1 million in federal government funding at the end of Term 1. Students are expected to return to the Islamic School of Canberra next term, despite the loss of Commonwealth funding from Friday. "The Islamic School of Canberra provides a valuable education option for many in the community and it is understandable that there is significant concern within the community about its long term future," Mr Rattenbury said. "I have committed to work with the school to assist them as much as possible, so that the school can remain open." But the school must demonstrate it can remain financially viable in order for the funding to carry on, Mr Rattenbury said. "In the unfortunate event that we are unable to resolve these issues, all current students would be catered for across the ACT Public School system," he said. "The Directorate would work with the school community, including parents, carers and students to support them in accessing another suitable school." Adelaide have suffered a blow on the eve of their match against Richmond with talented midfielder Brad Crouch pulling out due to a hamstring injury. Jarryd Lyons will replace Crouch and Cam Ellis-Yolmen has been added to the Crows' emergencies. Brad Crouch has been ruled out again, this time with a hamstring injury. Credit:Getty Images Crouch has been a standout performer for Adelaide over the first two rounds, ranking fifth at the club for disposals, equal first for tackles, third for clearances and third for contested possessions. However, Crows high performance manager Brett Burton said the club would take a no-risk approach with Crouch. Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda and Somalia all have one up on Australia. Along with Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, these third world countries have taken a stand on the harmful environmental impacts of single use plastic bags and banned them completely. In Australia, plastic bag bans exist in South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the ACT, while NSW, Queensland and Victoria remain in a deadlock over the issue, committed to the cause, but not yet ready to act. Outgoing Target boss Stuart Machin has resigned ahead of the results of an investigation into whether Target bolstered earnings through deals with suppliers. Wesfarmers managing director Richard Goyder has accepted his resignation, which takes effect immediately. Former Target managing director Stuart Machin resigned last week from Wesfarmers. Credit:Wayne Taylor Mr Machin, who is understood to be in Britain, said in a statement that he was "dismayed to learn of the accounting issues at the half year". That's particularly the case when the state improves infrastructure in an area. Stick in a new train line and those owning land reasonably close to the station win a lottery without buying a ticket. The state gets no share of that win to help pay for the infrastructure improvements we need. Ditto providing a good school, hospital and parklands. Conversely, the closest house not resumed for a new freeway is unfairly penalised by a loss of value. Similarly, when the heritage commissars damage an individual's property rights by imposing an heritage order, the society that wants such things should be up for a share of the costs. If we started to take the "value capture" buzzword seriously, there should be avenues to compensate as well as to share the value uplift that helps provide the infrastructure that increases value in a virtuous cycle. A sensible land tax, as proposed in the Henry Review last decade, would be part of that value capture mechanism. Yes, we would feel it, we would see it and it would hurt but that's not necessarily a bad thing compared with the status quo of the community being unaware of the less obvious but more damaging tax. It's worth repeating: the NSWBC/NCOSS study is revenue neutral, we are already collectively paying those amounts but on a less equitable basis. The land tax already levied on commercial properties is eventually paid by consumers the prices charged in a shop include the cost of the shopping centre's land tax but the punters baulking at a more visible land tax don't realise that. Introducing a no-exemptions land tax would be complicated, the issues complex and beyond this space to begin to canvas, but Henry had it pretty much right. It makes more sense as part of a total reform package, but with that being beyond our politicians, it would still be an improvement. Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James identified a concerning culture affecting 7-Eleven workers who felt they had to accept a lower rate of pay and unlawful work conditions. Credit:Jesse Marlow The 7-Eleven wage fraud scandal was exposed in a joint media investigation by Fairfax Media and Four Corners in August 2015. It found systemic wage abuse and falsification of payroll records across the network of 620 stores. An insider at head office said wage fraud was rampant and senior management covered it up. In response to the media investigation, 7-Eleven set up an independent compensation scheme headed by former ACCC chairman Allan Fels. It also changed its business model after revelations that at least 138 of the 620 stores made $300,000 or less in income in 2015, which was not enough to pay full freight wages and other costs. Could have done more However, the FWO inquiry said while it welcomed recent changes to its business model and planned changes to its payroll system, its view was that 7-Eleven could have acted earlier and done much more. It criticised 7-Eleven's lack of commitment to make any major changes to its payroll systems or store review processes despite being told by the FWO that it had found payroll compliance issues, including wage fraud and falsification of payroll records. It said after an audit of 56 stores that showed 30 per cent of stores were non compliant, the FWO invited 7-Eleven to participate in a pilot program aimed at assisting franchisors and franchisees to address compliance issues in their business. In 2013 7-Eleven declined that invitation. Over the past eight years the FWO and its predecessor had conducted a number of raids and audits and found serious payroll compliance issues. "What is clear is that since our auditing in 2009, 7-Eleven had information that some stores within its network had engaged in deliberate attempts to underpay workers, including relying on inaccurate records and/or inputting false information about working hours into the head office payroll system," the report says. "It is our opinion that 7-Eleven had a reasonable basis on which to inquire and to act." For its part, 7-Eleven says it intends to enter into the compliance partnership with FWO but is still negotiating some points with the ombudsman. However, when asked whether it would set up a guarantee fund, a spokesman for the company would only say: "7-Eleven will ensure that franchisee employees will receive their full entitlements." Facing up The company says it has already brought in a special investigations unit to monitor payroll issues as recommended by FWO to assess and it will start to roll out biometric systems in its stores in the second half of 2016. "7-Eleven is facing up to what has happened and accepts responsibility for eradicating inappropriate practices from its business," the spokesman said. "The company is committing vast resources in terms of rectification and applying the lessons that we have learned from the recent past to improve our systems, processes and culture into the future," the spokesman added. 7-Eleven also again repeated its claim the Franchise Code did not allow it to terminate a franchisee for wage fraud if the franchisee rectified the situation. However, FWO says its view is that 7-Eleven has the right to terminate contracts and the ACCC's answers to questions on notice state a franchisee's agreement can be terminated immediately if the franchisee has acted fraudulently. FWO's 7-Eleven report underscores the weakened position of FWO compared to other regulators in Australia which have the power to compel employers and other witnesses to participate in an interview. FWO has also urged 7-Eleven and the government to consider whether the current penalties for franchisees who breach employment law are strong enough. "The consequences of this type of behaviour must be more serious than the benefits that flow from underpaying employees if we are to impact behaviour," the report says. "Financial penalties that are significantly lower than the savings to be made from underpaying wages have minimal deterrence impact. The real threat to a franchisee of losing their business due to breaches of the franchise agreement is a strong deterrent," the report says. Considering report The Minister for Employment, Michaelia Cash, did not respond to a series questions regarding whether the government planned to give the Fair Work Ombudsman coercive powers or increase funding to the FWO in the upcoming budget. She also did not respond to questions about whether the government was considering increasing the penalties for rogue bosses. Instead Ms Cash said she was considering the report and would not respond "prematurely or partially to this complex issue". "Without exception, it is the responsibility of every employer in the country to abide by workplace laws and ensure their employees receive the correct pay and entitlements. The government has zero tolerance for those who seek to exploit workers in Australia." Loading Every second month a new scandal emanates from within the Australian financial sector. Each scandal has its unique set of victims, accompanied by devastating consequences. Few of these victims have achieved justice or adequate compensation. Not merely incompetence, but corruption is rampant in the sector. The cracks in the current regulatory apparatus are seismic. Credit:James Davies These developments have spawned a string of recent parliamentary inquiries into the finance sector. Some reports have been powerful (the 2014 Senate Economics Committee ASIC inquiry) whereas others have been vapid (the 2012 Senate Economics Committee Post-GFC Banking inquiry). Following bipartisan government indifference, the overall impact has been negligible. The Abbott government established a designated Financial System Inquiry, under ex-Commonwealth Bank CEO David Murray. Given the original claim to comprehensiveness, the report was narrowly focused. Its dominant emphasis was on the refining of the sector's prudential capital adequacy requirements. The inquiry steered clear of the dimension of corruption. As members of the fractured extended family sit on the back porch of their sprawling country homestead, airing their never-ending grievances, a blue wren chirps lazily in the background. The steep, eucalypt covered hills of the Brisbane Ranges rise up behind the group assembled around an old table as they snipe at each other over a pot of tea that has long gone cold. La Mama Theatre's Liz Jones (Nanny) and Richard Bligh (Telegin) in Uncle Vanya, on the verandah of the former Steiglitz hotel, which looks out over the Brisbane Ranges. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer Yet sitting among them, observing their tense exchanges, is much more entertaining and far less vexing than your average fraught family gathering, because these are all actors rehearsing the Chekhov classic Uncle Vanya. The cast and crew of the play co-produced by Melbourne's La Mama Theatre and director Bagryana Popov, have taken over a sprawling 1850s home in the tiny village of Steiglitz 90 kilometres west of Melbourne for a performance that spans the entire weekend. Senior ABC broadcasters have attacked a plan by the national broadcaster to introduce another level of management, including new titles such as "Capital Local Head" and "Head, Spoken" as part of a restructure that will merge the ABC's five radio networks. Geraldine Doogue, Fran Kelly and Norman Swan are among more than a dozen Radio National broadcasters expressing "profound concern" over the plan, which comes ahead of managing director Mark Scott's replacement next month by former Google executive Michelle Guthrie. Geraldine Doogue Credit:Wayne Taylor "We find it difficult to believe that an expensive new restructure will do anything but leach more money away from content-making and the very audiences we seek to serve," the broadcasters told chairman Jim Spigelman. Liberal MP Rowan Ramsay has warned the big four banks that if Arrium's Whyalla steelworks close, local housing and business markets may follow, devastating the town. He also warns that a clean-up bill approaching a billion dollars could also be left behind. The Whyalla steel works are based in Mr Ramsay's seat of Grey and he told Fairfax Media the social and economic costs to the town of the plant closing would be enormous as he urged the banks to give administrator Grant Thornton time while stressing taxpayers should not "foot the bill" to keep the plant open. "This plant is putting out 950 thousand tonnes of steel, it can do 1.2 million a year. The best way for the banks to minimise their losses is to keep the steel plant running," he said. "It it closes, it would be a rolled gold disaster for Whyalla. This city is almost totally dependent on iron ore and steel. The social and economic costs would be enormous. And the clean-up bill would at least be in the hundreds of millions." Mohammad Eisa Poya and Mohib Qasimi, family of Qurban Ali, have been fighting to have the situation resolved. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui "The stress on that poor girl left in Pakistan with four small children ... it's a terrible thing," she said. "If Australian citizens have someone die overseas they immediately get on a plane and go to investigate what happened, and bring back or bury the body of the deceased person." Qurban Ali with wife Saliha and children Eftikhar, Zulfugar, Bareen and Mahreen. Ms Le said Mrs Ali, 39, should also be allowed into Australia to attend court proceedings against the truck driver, who has been charged with dangerous driving, amphetamine possession and other offences. "[The widow] could not travel here to bury her husband and see him for one last time and go to court, to sit there and have some understanding as to how this man was suddenly taken away." Qurban Ali with daughter Mahreen. The whole world became dark, I didn't know what was happening, I couldn't believe it She said Mr Ali's body could not be returned to Afghanistan because the couple fled that country; nor to Pakistan because they were not citizens, and the widow lives in hiding there. Fairfax Media has sighted a United Nations refugee agency document dated January this year, stating Ms Ali is a registered asylum seeker and a "person of concern" who claims to face threats to her life and freedom in Afghanistan. Mrs Ali spoke of how she escaped from an angry, abusive fiance in Afghanistan, and a soon-to-be marriage arranged by her father, to marry Qurban, the man she loved. The Hazara couple fled to Pakistan after a family dispute, however Mr Ali also faced danger there and sought safety in Australia. It is understood he arrived by boat and was granted permanent protection, then sought to obtain permanent visas for his family. Mrs Ali sobbed when recalling the moment she learnt her husband was dead. "The whole world fell apart and I couldn't believe it. What was I going to do with the children, where was I going to go?" she said. "The world became dark, I didn't know what was happening." Compounding the torment faced by Ms Ali and her four children, aged between 5 and 12, are threats to their safety in Islamabad, where they fear for their lives. Mrs Ali said she and her children had been hunted by her former fiance and his family. She said the face of her eldest son still bears injuries from a bashing inflicted by her fiance's brother, and her daughter was beaten on a trip to buy bread. "My life is hell. I am locked in a house, I can't go outside because I know my former fiance is stalking me and he's probably going to kill me," she said. Mrs Ali applied for an Australian visitor visa following her husband's death. A letter of refusal sighted by Fairfax Media, details of which the department did not verify, said while Mrs Ali's application had "strong compelling circumstances this in itself does not demonstrate that you only intend a genuine temporary stay". It said Afghanistan was experiencing war, lawlessness and political upheaval, and this combined with social and political problems in Pakistan meant there was a "strong incentive for you to remain in Australia". Mrs Ali indicated to Fairfax Media she did not intend to seek a permanent stay in Australia. Ms Le said "she has every right to apply [to stay permanently], but that is not the issue". Mrs Ali's brother Mohib Qasimi lives in Melbourne, and has been fighting to bring his sister to Australia. He urged Mr Dutton to intervene. "She is very upset, she looks like she has lost half of her body [weight]. I'm frightened soon she will get crazy and lose her mind," he said. Mr Ali's cousin Mohammad Eisa Poya also lives in Melbourne, and described the situation as "heartbreaking". "It's such an emotional thing. [Saliha] is crying whenever I talk to her. I try to tell her to calm down but it doesn't work," he said. Tying HECS repayments to family income would "substantially reduce" Australia's spiralling university student debt problem, says a leading education policy expert. Andrew Norton, the education program director at think tank the Grattan Institute said that "the radical change" of measuring HECS-HELP repayments against the income of an entire household would go to the heart of the nation's university debt crisis. "It is the part-time workers in families who are, long term, earning below the threshold who can and should pay to alleviate the problem," he said. The Grattan Institute's research found that nearly half the students with HECS debts and income below the current threshold of $54,000 live in households with disposable income exceeding $80,000 a year, including 30 per cent with disposable incomes over $100,000 a year. Fourteen per cent of people who would start repayments at the Grattan Institutes proposed $42,000 threshold live with their parents. The development includes a swimming pool, shallow pool, water polo and diving facilities, as well as an orchestral pit and a fly tower for state-of-the-art theatre productions where 120 events are expected to be hosted each year. St Catherine's girls' school in Waverley has won approval to build a 500-seat "world-class auditorium", aquatic centre, research facility and multi-purpose hall but has been denied the right to expand its student numbers by 25 per cent by the NSW Department of Planning and Environment. Local residents are outraged that a Sydney private school has been granted approval to build a $63 million complex despite concerns from NSW police, the local council and more than 200 submissions condemning the development. The school, which charges students more than $27,000 per year, is one of four schools across Sydney, including Wenona, Redlands and St Ignatius' College, that are spending more than $200 million on facilities combined over the next year in a bid to attract lucrative student dollars. Each receives between $5 million and $10 million a year in federal and state government funding. St Catherine's girls' school in Waverley has won approval to build a 500-seat "world-class auditorium", aquatic centre, research facility and multi-purpose hall. Credit:St Catherines Residents said the school had been "arrogant" in its consultations with the community and had failed to consult widely with the community on the environmental impact of the build. "We are extremely disappointed [in] the Planning Assessment Commission," said residents spokeswoman Cathy Davitt. "We had expected that our concerns would be adequately addressed by the PAC and the state government given that when the Liberals came to power they promised to return planning powers to the local community. They continue to fail to do so". The approval has been granted despite a submission from Waverley Council last year that the development "substantially breaches height and development standards" of the local environment plan. The union made its claim while trying to outflank government attempts to shut down strike action at the nation's airports by public servants from other departments. Earlier this year, Department of Defence secretary Dennis Richardson said public servants would inevitably be disappointed. He was right. Negotiations between senior management and staff representatives have continued this week although the Community and Public Sector Union, which is waging an industrial action campaign across the country, believe little if any progress has been made. A new pay and conditions deal for 20,000 public servants is the same same as the previous offer, but with spelling mistakes corrected, unions claim. In an internal memo, CPSU deputy national secretary Melissa Donnelly accused the Defence Department of showing "an arrogant disregard for the majority of employees who voted to reject the previous deal". The criticism comes one month after a majority of public servants rejected a 2 per cent a year wage increase, which was described by department secretary Dennis Richardson as the best possible offer within the structures of bargaining policy. The existing agreement nominally expired more than 18 months ago and the new one was unlikely to take effect until the second half of 2016. "The department and government are only interested in achieving an agreement supported by a bare majority of employees; and are not interested in negotiating an agreement that the vast majority of staff can support," Ms Donnelly said. Defence has indicated a vote on the revised agreement will be held next month after the federal budget, with further negotiation meetings to be held in Melbourne on Friday. Drivers heading north of Sydney for the start of school holidays can expect hefty delays, with heavy traffic in North Ryde and Lane Cove. Bumper-to-bumper traffic on the M2 at Ryde, as well as clogged up lanes at Ryde Bridge and Lane Cove Road are making this rainy Friday even more dreary for those trying to escape the city. Live Traffic reported one of two westbound lanes were closed on the M5 East in the Cooks River Tunnel at Mascot due to a car breakdown. Motorists can expect long delays in the area. An accident earlier Friday afternoon in the Sydney Harbour Tunnel led to heavy traffic for southbound commuters, and westbound traffic on Parramatta Road is also slow earlier breakdown. In good news, drivers can expect a smooth run on the Pacific Highway once they get out of Sydney. Searchers off the north Queensland coast have spotted debris that probably belongs to a helicopter that crashed into the ocean, as navy divers join the search for the missing pilot. The helicopter's only passenger was discharged from the Cairns Base Hospital on Friday morning following treatment for chest and abdomen injuries. The 43-year-old man raised the alarm about 7.45pm on Thursday, after he managed to swim 800 metres to shore. Rescue teams are still holding out hope the 50-year-old pilot will be found alive. A man has been charged over the murder of Pakenham mother Kylie Blackwood. Homicide squad detectives arrested 38-year-old Morwell man Scott Alan Murdoch in Rowville on Friday morning. He has been charged with one count of murder over the death of the 42-year-old woman. Ms Blackwood, 42, was killed in her home in Melbourne's south-east on August 1, 2013 in what is believed to be a bungled burglary. Mr Murdoch appeared before an out-of-sessions court hearing on Friday evening. He walked into the hearing barefoot and wearing a green T-shirt and jeans. "Children with medulloblastoma go through years of what I see as torture, medical treatments, relapses, just to get this maybe five years. Oshin was forced into chemotherapy on Easter Sunday, the day after his sixth birthday. Credit:Elle Borgward "This original prognosis of 50-60 per cent may sound good but ... as the oncologist said, 'you're either in that 50 per cent or you're in the zero, and we can't tell who will be who'. "Being Oshin's mum, I know that I don't want to put him through all of that for a possibility of living a torturous five years." Colin Strachan says what happened to his family has made him feel powerless. Credit:Elle Borgward Doctors on December 1 diagnosed Oshin with medulloblastoma, a condition from which most survivors suffer lifelong, radiation-induced brain damage if they survive at all. His parents say doctors at first told them the prescribed chemotherapy and radiotherapy would give Oshin about a 50 per cent of surviving another five years. After discussion of their worries about the side effects of treatment and further testing, Oshin was estimated to have a 10-30 per cent chance of surviving that timeframe. Doctors then offered a chemotherapy-only treatment directly injected into the brain and spine but could not estimate success or clarify the risks. Oshin's parents, desperate for him have some quality of life, made the heartbreaking decision against it. But Ms Kizsko, who has watched both her mother and stepmother die of cancer, was forced to submit Oshin for chemotherapy on Easter Sunday, the day after his sixth birthday party. Oshin was distraught at being returned to hospital as an inpatient for his first week of chemotherapy and continually pleaded to be taken home. "He wakes up saying he's frightened," his mother said. "He found it so difficult being in there, the procedures, he screamed and kicked and scratched. At a certain point they had to have six people hold him down and tie him with a sheet and have someone hold his head. "He won't lift up his shirt to see his [chemotherapy] port because it scares him. "All I ask for is palliative care for our beautiful boy. "I would like to offer Oshin peace, love and some fun times while we still can." Ms Kiszko said she had felt pressured by hospital staff to accept their recommendations for Oshin's treatment. She said when she raised legitimate questions prompted by literature given to her by PMH she was told not to worry as the books she had been given were 'probably out of date.' Twice, Ms Kiszko says, she pleaded with the PMH ethics board to be allowed to prioritise Oshin's quality of life over treatment. But instead she claims she got a mixture of changing prognoses and aggressive behaviour from hospital staff. Ms Kiszko said that ultimately she had no choice as to her son's treatment. Meanwhile, she and Mr Strachan, who has had to take unpaid leave since December, are struggling to help their daughters Amitiel, 12, and Shilah, eight, process their shock, sadness and confusion. Mr Strachan said he believed treatment was not in his son's best interests, as he was already struggling. "There is nothing safe about this treatment, they kill everything in that little body and then have to try to repair a lot of damage. It becomes a life of survival rather than a childhood full of joy," he said. "They say [children] don't remember what it was like for them after radiation but of course he will. "There are a lot of emotions involved here, Oshin's sisters, ours as well, and a lot of pressure, they fire a lot of stuff at you while you are feeling the fear. "Knowing this could happen has been on our backs the whole time. "I feel like I have failed him because I can't protect him." The chemotherapy is expected to last six months. Forced radiation therapy, under general anaesthetic, five days a week for six weeks, may follow. Princess Margaret Hospital said it was unable to comment on the situation. A major childhood cancer survivor study in America coordinated by St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee a world leader in brain tumour research and where Oshin's tumour sample was sent has analysed long-term outcomes of 380 people who survived medulloblastoma for five or more years. By 30 years post-diagnosis, one-third of that group had died, eight per cent got a secondary malignant tumour and 18 per cent a recurrence of their original cancer. Nearly 40 per cent had hearing loss, one-third had seizures and three-quarters balance problems. Significant brain damage and lower levels of educational attainment existed and they were less likely to live independently or have children of their own. A 2006 Oxford Journal of Pediatric Psychology report, with a St Jude researcher the lead author, raised similar issues. Authors said the severity of neurocognitive deficits in survivors appeared mainly radiation-related. Despite steps to reduce radiation exposure, changes in brain tissue following chemotherapy and radiation meant an overwhelming majority of medulloblastoma survivors continued to experience 'academic failure' and deficits in intellectual function, memory, attention and thought processing. "Current treatment plans are constrained by the unsatisfactory balance between successful disease control and serious impact on cognitive abilities," it said. University of Western Australia Professor of Medicine and adult neuro-oncologist Anna Nowak said these points were correct, though lower educational outcomes could partly be due to childhood stress and loss of schooling. Brussels: Belgian police detained two key suspects on Friday in relation to the Islamic State attacks on Paris and Brussels. Mohamed Abrini, a Belgian thought to have helped prepare the November 13 attacks that killed 130 people in the French capital, was held with two others, prosecutors said. They were trying to confirm that he was also the "man in the hat" seen with the Brussels airport suicide bombers on March 22. Aged 31, Abrini was seized close to the Brussels borough of Molenbeek, where he was long known to police for petty crimes. Moscow: Pilot error likely contributed to the fatal crash of a flydubai plane in southern Russia last month, an initial report by investigators indicated. Amid windshear warnings and severe turbulence, the crew aborted an attempted landing at Rostov-on-Don Airport. But as they revved the engines to regain altitude, the plane was inexplicably put into a "nose-down" position, leading to a sudden descent of the Boeing 737-800 that doomed all 62 people on board, the Interstate Aviation Committee said in a statement on Friday after a preliminary review of flight data. "The initial report suggests that this wasn't a problem with the aircraft, but an action by the crew that resulted in changing the plane from a climb into a descent," said Paul Hayes, safety specialist at London-based aviation consultancy Ascend Worldwide. "I was fearful," Easter said. "I didn't know if I was going to come out of the surgery, so I just wanted my family to know if something went on." The surreptitious recording, parts of which she shared with the media, became the most traumatic part of the experience. It began with the surgeon asking Easter about what happens to her when she takes penicillin. "When I was a baby, they said I swelled up," Easter can be heard responding in the recording. An anaesthetist then arrived, and Easter grew silent as she was instructed to just "keep breathing. You're doing perfect." After Easter was sedated, the surgeon recounted their dispute to the other doctors. "She's a handful," he said in the recording. "She had some choice words for us in the clinic when we didn't book her case in two weeks. "She said: 'I'm going to call a lawyer and file a complaint,'" he recalled with a laugh. (Easter said she never mentioned a lawyer.) "That doesn't seem like the thing to say to the person who's going to do your surgery," another male voice retorted. The comments afterwards became personal. The surgeon and the anaesthetist repeatedly referred to her belly button in jest. "Did you see her belly button?" one doctor said, followed by peals of laughter. At another point in the procedure, the anaesthetist appeared to refer to Easter as "always the queen", to which the surgeon responded, "I feel sorry for her husband". The surgeon also used the name "Precious" several times in a manner that Easter interpreted as racial. "Precious, yes, this is Precious over here, saying hi to Precious over there," he can be heard saying in the recording, though it is unclear whom he is addressing. Moments later, he asked: "What do her eyes look like? You know the eyes are the windows to the soul." After the doctors concurred that there had been many "teaching moments" that day, the anaesthetist asked, "Do you want me to touch her?" "I can touch her," the surgeon is heard saying. "That's a Bill Cosby suggestion," someone interjected. "Everybody's got things on phones these days. Everybody's got a camera." "Do you have photos?" the surgeon asked a couple times. "[indiscernible] thought about it, but I didn't do it." While much of the exact dialogue is difficult to discern from the recording, Easter was distressed by what she believed to be its subject matter. She thought "Precious" might be an allusion to the 2009 movie of the same name, chronicling the life of an illiterate African-American teenager who suffers childhood abuse. "He called me Precious, an African-American obese woman who was raped by her father," Easter said. She also thought the comments about "touching" and Bill Cosby were suggestive, and according to her, the surgeon said: "I thought about touching her. I could take pictures." "To think that I'm lying there," Easter said, "and they're talking about touching me inappropriately. Sexually." What bothered Easter the most were moments in the recording when, in her view, the doctors acted flippantly about her health and wellbeing. She was disturbed that the surgeon talked on his cellphone at one point during the surgery, and even more so that he seemed unbothered by her penicillin allergy. He said in the recording that swelling and rashes were not severe enough reactions to preclude Easter from receiving Ancef, an antibiotic injection that causes side effects in a small percentage of penicillin-allergic patients. The surgeon suggested first giving Easter a small dose as a trial. This would prove an unfortunate decision. At the end of the recording, a groggy Easter can be heard telling a doctor that she was "itchy". Shortly after the surgery, Easter said, her arms swelled up and started getting rashes, though her hernia was successfully repaired. Her husband brought her back to the hospital this time to the emergency room, where she was treated for an allergic reaction. For several days, Easter said, she had trouble breathing. These symptoms prompted Easter to listen to the recording. She was angered by what she found. "He jeopardised my life," Easter said. "It's just by the grace of God that I'm even alive right now. It was an unnecessary risk that he took with me." Last northern autumn, Easter sent the hospital a letter with her complaints with the recording attached. Stacey Mitchell, the administrative director of risk management and patient safety for the Harris Health System, responded by thanking her for providing them a copy of the recording "to better analyse your concerns". "With regards to the recording, as I explained in my prior correspondence, we reminded the OR staff and physicians to be mindful of their comments at all times," Mitchell said in a letter dated December. "After carefully listening to the recording that you provided, Harris Health does not believe further action is warranted at this time." Mitchell also noted that the doctors in the recording are employees of the University of Texas Health Science Centre at Houston, not of the Harris Health System. The UT Health system likewise told ABC News that it could not comment on the case because of patient confidentiality laws. Easter has not decided whether to initiate legal action against the doctors and hospital. She said she now just wants to "let everybody know what was going on make people aware of what was happening". The experienced has changed Easter emotionally and psychologically, she said, and she now struggles with "trust issues". "Even my husband has said that I'm not the same person he married," Easter said. If you're reading this, you probably know the story. The musical comedy Nerds was announced to open on Broadway, the show was cast, designers feverishly started designing and creating, and rehearsals began with gusto. Things were happening quickly, everything was last-minute, but it was a heck of a lot of fun for a lot of people. And then, our tech bubble was burst. Just two weeks into rehearsal, our lead producer informed us that we no longer had the money to continue, and not only would our show not be opening, but everyone was unemployed as of that very moment. Just a few minutes after we got the news, press releases went out and that was that. Done. Canceled. Finito. Forever. But what people didn't see was what was happening inside that rehearsal room, moment by moment. Yes, we tweeted out a selfie with wine and pizza and teary smiles, but that didn't even scratch the surface of what was really happening. So I'm going to give a quick recap: (Note: This is not a word-for-word dictation. Honestly I was in shock for most of this, so if none of it actually happened I wouldn't be surprised.) Cast: (singing and bouncing around energetically) Liiiiiiiive yoooooour dream! Producer and director walk in. Director's face says either someone died or our show got canceled. Producer: Guys, I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but unfortunately an investor dropped out and we no longer have the money to continue with the show. We will not be opening on Broadway this season. Director: Our show will not be opening, and we are done rehearsing as of right now. I can't even believe I'm saying this. Everyone make your phone calls, and then we are going to drink a lot because I'm not going home yet. MONTAGE: Shock. Tears. Panic. Some maniacal laughter. People sliding down walls to sit like you see in teen movies, but I swear it really happens when you're upset. Everyone texting, calling agents and significant others. Nothing really to say. Our amazing production assistants go out and return with a case of wine, half red and half white. Someone orders pizza. Drinking ensues at 1:45pm. All the while, next door there is an open call for the Royal Caribbean cruise line. We contemplate hopping on the end of that line. Decide it would be too painful if we didn't get the job. Our Broadway show got cancelled but we are in love. Nerds forever. A photo posted by Pattimurin (@pattimurin) on Mar 8, 2016 at 11:29am PST So sometime during this, our director, the force of nature that is Casey Hushion, suggests that we get together the next day and do our show. Just one run-through for friends and family, right there in the studio. We had just finished blocking it that morning, literally. And we agreed this show that we had poured so much love and energy and creativity into should not end on such a low note. The next morning, we gathered at 10:30, most of us hungover (some probably still drunk) to release our baby into the universe. Jennifer Ashley Tepper, our esteemed Broadway historian, was on hand. Friendly Broadway faces like Christian Borle, Ann Harada, and Gavin Creel beamed up at us as we somehow managed to get through the show in one piece-ish. Casey's husband, father, and children got to see the incredible work that their girl had created. Our writers got to see their work of 10-plus years get as close as it will ever get to a Broadway stage: a rehearsal studio on the fourth floor of Pearl, 500 8th Avenue, with folding chairs and in street clothes. And it was awesome. Tracee Beazer, Rob Morrison, Rory O'Malley, Benny Elledge, Katie Lee Hill, and Patti Murin take part in a run-through of Nerds on the show's final day of rehearsal. (photo provided by Patti Murin) Because only about 50 people know how truly magical and wonderful Nerds on Broadway was going to be, here's a list for everyone else of some things you won't get to see: 1. Casey. Freaking. Hushion. Remember that name. She is one of my role models, she is my friend, and she is one of the best directors you will ever work with/meet/cheer for as she wins 89 Tony Awards. 2. Lindsay Mendez in headgear, dressed up as a giant chess piece, making us pee our pants with laughter, and then making us cry just a second later as she opens her mouth and that magnificent voice comes out. 3. Rory O'Malley and Bryan Fenkart actually making us believe that they are Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Once the glasses went on, it was all over. We should be especially sad that we don't get to experience these two in these roles. 4. Benny Elledge, the only man alive who was actually born to play Steve Wozniak in a musical. There also may have been a Segway involved. If he doesn't end up in Book of Mormon like, yesterday, I'm gonna be so pissed. This guy is the real deal. 5. Rob Morrison making his Broadway debut and breaking our hearts with his hilarious and sensitive portrayal of Paul Allen. 6. Our swings and standbys at the ready, jumping in seamlessly whenever necessary and usually knowing the blocking and choreography better than we did. 7. Our writers. Erik Weiner, Jordan Allen-Dutton, and Hal Goldberg. They will be back, and we will love their work. 8. The design of the show! Light-up costumes, some serious projection-mapping, the blending of high-tech and low-tech elements to make it seem fancy, but very down-to-earth at the same time. And that's just a few general, very basic elements of our show that the public will never get to experience. But at least you can imagine them for yourself now, and smile as you do so. And that's better than nothing, right? NASHVILLE, Tenn. April 7, 2016 -- Bridgestone Americas (Bridgestone) today announced the release of the all-new Firestone Champion with Fuel Fighter Technology tire for cars and minivans. Built to last, the Firestone Champion tire is backed by a 70,000 mile limited treadwear warranty* and is engineered with fuel-efficient technology that gives drivers more miles per fill-up. The Champion tire from Firestone provides dependable, all season performance in dry, wet and winter driving conditions. "Drivers today want to get the most out of their vehicle, and that starts with buying the right set of tires," said Philip Dobbs, chief marketing officer, Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations. "The Firestone Champion with Fuel Fighter Technology is dependable and backed by the best treadwear warranty available from Firestone. Complemented by its fuel fighting technology, the Firestone Champion tire is a great choice for drivers who are on the go and expect their tires to go the extra mile, too." The Champion name represents a legacy of trusted performance for the Firestone brand. Firestone launched its first Champion passenger tire in the 1930s and the Deluxe Champion name adorned Firestone race tires during the 1940s and 1950s. Today's reintroduction of the Champion name for Firestone passenger tires coincides with another important milestone on the 115-year old brand's journey. Firestone is the Official Tire of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race and will celebrate its 67th victory at the 100th running of "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing" on May 29. Firestone earned its first Indy 500 victory at the inaugural running in 1911. The Firestone Champion tire will replace the Firestone Affinity and Precision touring tires. The Firestone Champion is engineered with a 30 percent improvement in rolling resistance** over the Firestone Affinity and Firestone Precision tires. Rolling resistance is friction or the force resisting a tire as it rolls across the road surface. When rolling resistance is reduced, the tire rolls more easily, improving fuel economy. The Champion tire is the latest Firestone brand product offering from Bridgestone, the world's largest tire and rubber company. Backed by a 30-Day Buy & Try Guarantee***, the Firestone Champion tire now is available in the United States and Canada, in 48 sizes, 14" to 18" rim diameters. To find out more about the Firestone Champion with Fuel Fighter Technology or to find a retailer, visit: www.FirestoneTire.com. *Limitations and restrictions apply. Ask a Firestone retailer for details. **Offers 30% improvement in rolling resistance (which helps increase fuel economy) in lab testing vs. Firestone Affinity Touring. ***U.S. & Canada Original proof of purchase required to take advantage of the Buy & Try, 30-Day Guarantee. Applies only to the purchase of a set of 4 or more tires. Tires must be returned to the original dealer within 30 days of purchase. Buy & Try, 30-Day Guarantee does not apply to tires supplied as original equipment on new vehicles. Does not cover damage due to road hazard, collision or other specified types of damage. About Bridgestone Americas, Inc.: Nashville, Tennessee-based Bridgestone Americas, Inc. (BSAM) is the U.S. subsidiary of Bridgestone Corporation, the world's largest tire and rubber company. BSAM and its subsidiaries develop, manufacture and market a wide range of Bridgestone, Firestone and associate brand tires to address the needs of a broad range of customers, including consumers, automotive and commercial vehicle original equipment manufacturers, and those in the agricultural, forestry and mining industries. The companies are also engaged in retreading operations throughout the Western Hemisphere and produce air springs, roofing materials, and industrial fibers and textiles. The BSAM family of companies also operates the world's largest chain of automotive tire and service centers. Guided by its One Team, One Planet message, the company is dedicated to achieving a positive environmental impact in all of the communities it calls home. LONDON, April 7, 2016 -- ABI Research, the leader in transformative technology innovation market intelligence, finds that highly accurate, real-time maps are an essential next step as the automotive industry steers toward the future of fully driverless cars. All autonomous and driverless vehicle maps will need to combine accuracy, environmental models, and real-time attributes allowing positional and temporal awareness. "Crowdsourcing is crucial," says Dominique Bonte, Managing Director and Vice President at ABI Research. "As connected vehicles include more low-cost, high-resolution sensors, cars will capture and upload this data to a central, cloud-based repository so that automotive companies, such as HERE, can crowdsource the information to build highly accurate, real-time precision maps. This is fueled by the rapid adoption of a wide range of active safety systems with more than 94 million longitudinal assistance ADAS systems expected to ship in 2026." The new 3D, dynamic maps will provide a complementary data set to ADAS sensors for an overall smoother driving experience. Whereas sensors provide real-time visibility on a vehicle's immediate vicinity for last-minute obstacle detection and collision avoidance, maps extend this visibility to allow vehicles to anticipate those situations long before the sensors would even have to detect them. "Humans managed to learn how to drive without maps, which leaves many wondering why driverless vehicles can't do the same," continues Bonte. "The short answer is: they can. But there is still an inherent need for reliability and robustness, which can only be achieved by building redundancy into autonomous vehicle technology. Maps will work in harmony with ADAS sensors to dramatically improve overall accuracy and predictability." The battle for controlling crowdsourced driverless HD map technology is heating up. Daimler, jointly owning HERE with BMW and Audi, confirmed talks with Amazon and Microsoft to join the consortium. Mobileye signed agreements with GM, VW, and Nissan to use its Road Experience Management (REM) mapping platform. And at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC), NVIDIA announced its new HD mapping approach based on its DRIVE PX machine vision hardware platform. Car OEM Toyota also announced its own mapping platform, working with mapping supplier Zenrin in Japan. ABI Research argues that the biggest challenge for the new mapping paradigm is the lack of standards coupled with high levels of fragmentation in the automotive industry. Despite HERE's efforts to assemble the industry around its Sensor Integration Standard for real-time map attributes, many players, like ADAS vendor Mobileye, are vying to play a role in map data crowdsourcing and proposing and/or imposing their own proprietary approaches. "The industry needs to set standards, if only for the fact that standards readily allow vehicles to exchange real-time map attributes between each other," concludes Bonte. "In the early stages, new players introducing their own solutions might actually fuel innovation and accelerate adoption of crowdsourced map technology. But in the long term, economies of scale and a maturing market environment will require the adoption of standards and open platform approaches." These findings are part of ABI Research's Automotive Safety and Autonomous Driving Service (https://www.abiresearch.com/market-research/service/safety-and-security-telematics/), which includes research reports, market data, insights, and competitive assessments. About ABI Research For more than 25 years, ABI Research has stood at the forefront of technology market intelligence, partnering with innovative business leaders to implement informed, transformative technology decisions. The company employs a global team of senior analysts to provide comprehensive research and consulting services through deep quantitative forecasts, qualitative analyses and teardown services. An industry pioneer, ABI Research is proactive in its approach, frequently uncovering ground-breaking business cycles ahead of the curve and publishing research 18 to 36 months in advance of other organizations. In all, the company covers more than 60 services, spanning 11 technology sectors. For more information, visit www.abiresearch.com. PORTLAND, Ore., April 7, 2016 -- Roger Krone, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Leidos , a national security, health and infrastructure solutions company, joined senior officials from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and the Department of Defense today to christen the prototype vehicle from DARPA's Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program. Leidos led the team that designed and built the vessel, named Sea Hunter, which embodies the program's goals to develop a highly autonomous unmanned vessel capable of operating over thousands of kilometers on the open seas for months at a time under only sparse remote supervisory control. "ACTUV could enable future capabilities that would greatly extend our customers' ability to cost-effectively monitor the maritime environment while keeping our servicemen and women safe," Krone said. "This event showcases exciting advances in autonomous technology, and highlights our open architecture approach and extensive testing that has made ACTUV a reality." Leveraging decades of naval architecture experience, Leidos began construction of Sea Hunter in 2014. With its modular trimaran design, the vessel is designed for enhanced stability in all kinds of weather. It incorporates a diverse sensor suite, including sonar, electro-optical, and short- and long-range radars. Through at-sea testing on a surrogate vessel, Leidos has proved ACTUV's autonomy suite capable of operating the ship in compliance with maritime laws and conventions for safe navigationincluding International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, or COLREGS. In addition to Krone, scheduled speakers at today's dockside ceremony included DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar; the Honorable Robert Work, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Rear Admiral Robert Girrier, Director, Unmanned Warfare Systems (OPNAV N99); and Rear Admiral Mathias Winter, Chief of Naval Research, Innovation Technology Requirements and Test & Evaluation (OPNAV N84). Following the christening, the Sea Hunter is scheduled to embark on a two-year test program jointly run by DARPA and the Office of Naval Research in the Southern California operating area. About Leidos Leidos is a science and technology solutions leader working to address some of the world's toughest challenges in national security, health and infrastructure. The Company's 18,000 employees support vital missions for government and the commercial sector, develop innovative solutions to drive better outcomes and defend our digital and physical infrastructure from 'new world' threats. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $5.09 billion for the twelve months ended January 1, 2016. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com. Statements in this announcement, other than historical data and information, constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause our actual results, performance, achievements, or industry results to be very different from the results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Some of these factors include, but are not limited to, the risk factors set forth in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended January 1, 2016, and other such filings that Leidos makes with the SEC from time to time. Due to such uncertainties and risks, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Contact: Melissa Koskovich Jennifer Moffett (571) 526-6850 (571) 526-6852 Koskovichm@Leidos.com Jennifer.a.moffett@leidos.com Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131120/PH20896LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/leidos-participates-in-christening-of-darpas-innovative-highly-autonomous-prototype-unmanned-vessel-300247996.html SOURCE Leidos RELATED LINKShttp://www.leidos.com Cox Automotive Reinforces Commitment to NIADA, Independent Dealers Relationship Expands as Seven Cox Brands Earn Association's National Corporate Partnership Designation Arlington, Texas (April 7, 2016) -- Demonstrating industry leadership and its commitment to independent used vehicle dealers, Cox Automotive, a provider of products and services spanning the automotive ecosystem, has expanded its partnership with the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association through NIADA's National Corporate Partner program. Seven Cox Automotive brands including, for the first time, Manheim, the nation's largest wholesale vehicle auction provider have been designated as National Corporate Partners for 2016. Six of the brands are Diamond-level NCPs, the highest partnership level. "NIADA is beyond thrilled about expanding our relationship with Cox Automotive and strengthening our ongoing efforts to better serve the independent automotive industry through the several Cox Automotive brands," NIADA CEO Steve Jordan said. "NIADA dealers and members are committed to providing a better buying experience for their customers and offering top-tier service, much like the Cox Automotive philosophy. This evolving partnership gives our members and the industry strategic access to the world-class suite of Cox Automotive products, services and brands and will allow our dealers to continue to lead their communities as best-in-class business operators. And that is really exciting." Autotrader, NextGear Capital and vAuto renewed as Diamond-level partners and have been joined by new Diamond partners Manheim, Alliance Inspection Management and Dealertrack. In addition, Go Financial has teamed with NIADA for the first time as a Bronze-level NCP. "Independent dealers represent the backbone of the used vehicle industry," Manheim North America president Janet Barnard said. "Through this partnership, Cox Automotive will broaden its support of independent dealers through training, education and consulting services, helping to further their business success." About Cox Automotive Cox Automotive, Inc. is transforming the way the world buys, sells and owns cars with industry-leading digital marketing, software, financial, wholesale and e-commerce solutions for consumers, dealers, manufacturers and the overall automotive ecosystem worldwide. Committed to open choice and dedicated to strong partnerships, the Cox Automotive family includes Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, NextGear Capital, vAuto, Xtime and a host of other brands. The global company has nearly 30,000 team members in more than 200 locations and is partner to more than 40,000 auto dealers, as well as most major automobile manufacturers, while engaging U.S. consumer car buyers with the most recognized media brands in the industry. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, Inc., an Atlanta-based company with revenues of $18 billion and approximately 55,000 employees. Cox Enterprises' other major operating subsidiaries include Cox Communications and Cox Media Group. For more information about Cox Automotive, visit www.coxautoinc.com. About NIADA The National Independent Automobile Dealers Association (NIADA) is among the nation's largest trade associations, representing the used motor vehicle industry comprised of more than 38,000 licensed used car dealers. Since 1946, NIADA has represented the voice and interests of used car dealers at the federal level in Washington D.C. Coupled with its state association network across the country, NIADA's grass-roots framework provides a dual layer of advocacy unmatched in the used motor vehicle industry. For 70 years, NIADA has engineered programs and leveraged technology to fulfill its mission to advance, educate and promote the independent used car dealer. NIADA members subscribe to a strict Code of Ethics of duty, honor and integrity, and believe in the advancement of small business in support of the free-market system. More information about NIADA programs and educational opportunities is available at www.niada.com, and www.niada.tv. SAN FRANCISCO, April 7, 2016 -- Today, a federal judge denied preliminary approval of a proposed Lyft class-action settlement that would continue to misclassify Lyft employees in California as independent contractors. The decision comes after the Teamsters Union and Lyft drivers filed legal objections to the settlement. In his decision, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria cited strong reservations over the proposed $12.25 million settlement, stating that in assessing Lyft's liability, the plaintiffs' attorneys grossly undervalued the drivers' claims, and "shortchanged" drivers by half in assessing the reimbursement claims alone. The court sided with the Teamsters in finding that there are serious defects in the economic aspects of the settlement, which would not be made up for by the modest nonmonetary improvements that have been proposed. While the court disapproved of the settlement without regard to employee classification, Chhabria said the Teamsters made "good arguments" that are "best directed to the legislative or executive branches" as it concerns employee classification. In addition to filing objections with the court, the Teamsters Union and Lyft drivers have also filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit. "We are pleased with today's ruling. We are hopeful that Lyft drivers will get more of the money that they deserve thanks to our objections in this case, and we proudly continue to stand with Lyft workers who have been misclassified and are seeking justice," said Rome Aloise, Teamsters International Vice President and President of Teamsters Joint Council 7. "We are heartened that the Court took seriously our objections and looked closely at this settlement. We intend to continue to press for improvements for Lyft drivers and work toward securing the rights guaranteed them under California and federal law," said Teague Paterson, attorney with Beeson, Tayer and Bodine. The Teamsters have filed an unfair labor practice charge with Region 20 of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in San Francisco, alleging Lyft's business practice of misclassifying drivers and its one-sided "terms of use" imposed on its drivers deprives them of rights guaranteed under federal labor law, including the right to join a union. In its decision, the Court recognized that Lyft's arbitration provision violates the National Labor Relations Act. The proposed settlement would have locked-in Lyft's unfair contractual terms, including terms that deprive drivers of a voice on the job; permit Lyft's retaliation against drivers who seek to advance their rights; and prohibit drivers from filing class-action claims against Lyft in the future. In the past year, hundreds of drivers at tech companies, including Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, eBay and others in Silicon Valley, have organized with Teamsters Local 853 in San Leandro, Calif. The union has negotiated strong contracts for the drivers, including good wages, benefits and workplace protections. The Teamsters Union is part of a growing movement of labor, faith and community-based organizations and workers challenging income inequality in Silicon Valley through an innovative partnership called Silicon Valley Rising. For more information, visit http://siliconvalleyrising.org. For more information on tech worker organizing with the Teamsters, visit http://teamster.org/tech-drivers-deserve-union. Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women in the United States and Canada. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters. Auto Lab Live April 9, 2016: Car Question or Concern? Call Toll Free 888-692-7234 April 9, 2016 Car Question or Concern? Call Toll Free 888-692-7234 Auto Lab is a 27 year old interactive automotive-focused New York area radio call-in show hosted by Professor Harold Wolchok. Each week a cadre of experienced hands-on automotive experts are in-studio with advice for the New York area's 12 million people, providing listeners with honest, practical and street-smart car repair and buying advice. Auto Lab is also about the automotive industry, its history, and its culture, presenting the ideas and advice of leading college faculty, authors, and automotive practitioners in a relaxed, conversational interactive format. http://www.theautochannel.com/cybercast/theautolab/autolab_live.asx 8 to 9 am on WMCA Radio Listen Live on WMCA Radio 9 to 10 am on WNYM Radio Listen Live on WNYM Radio New programs air Saturday mornings. After listening to the first hour on WMCA, you will need to close that window and click the link to listen to the second hour on WNYM. After listening to the first hour on WMCA, you will need to close that window and click the link to listen to the second hour on WNYM. Listeners can hear the past 18 years of archived Auto Lab shows as simulcast on www.theautochannel.com. Listen - Auto Lab Page (Includes Audio-on-Demand Archives, Auto Programs at Community College Database, Guests Pictures April 9, 2016 - Car Question? Straight Answers From These In-Studio Auto Lab Experts Harold Bendell- Major Auto Fred Bordoff-Bronx Community College, CUNY Tim Cacace-Master Mechanix Jerry Pastore-D & J Diagnostic Johanna Pastore-D & J Diagnostic Joanne Porcelli, Esq Michael Porcelli - Central Avenue Auto Repairs & I-CAR Nicholas Prague- MTA and Rockland Community College, SUNY Jose Ramirez - Ramirez and Sons AAA Auto Repair April 9, 2016 - Correspondent Reports - Car Reviews, Opinion and Other Automotive News and Information Robert Erskine, Senior European Correspondent, Suffolk England A COOL ACT - VW'S ACT SYSTEM A COOL ACT- VW'S BLUE POLO GT Sharon Sudol & John Russell Senior Correspondents 2016 HYUNDAI TUCSON LIMITED REVIEW Russ Rader, Vice President Insurance Institute for Highway Safety IN THE DARK - NEW RATINGS SHOW HEADLIGHTS NEED IMPROVEMENT Sharon Sudol & John Russell, Senior Correspondents 2016 DODGE GRAND CARAVAN Fred Bordoff- Bronx Community College-CUNY Automotive Technology Department BRONX COMMUNITY COLLEGE PARTNERS WITH NYC FLEET Authorities warn about rainbow fentanyl Victims often arent aware theyre taking it The Ventura County Office of Education and state health officials have issued a warning to schools and families about rainbow fentanyl, a form of the potentially fatal synthetic opioid that comes in bright colors. Rainbow fentanyl can be found in... Cancer support community to host remembrance event Cancer Support Community Valley/Ventura/Santa Barbara invites family members and friends of those who have died from cancer to attend the second annual Evening of Remembrance from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thurs., Nov. 3 at Cancer Support Communitys Garden of Hope,... Grant advances CSUCI research Cal State Channel Islands assistant professor of computer science Scott Feister and assistant professor of mathematics Alona Kryshchenko recently received $112,480 from the National Science Foundation to continue a grant to support their research project, Enhancing Laser Based Ion Sources... Healthcare agency recommends flu shots The Ventura County Health Care Agency offers options for the community to receive flu shots through its Ambulatory Care Clinic system, public health clinics and pop-up clinics. Although seasonal influenza viruses are detected year-round in the United States, they are... Its official: Muslims in New York are feelin the Bern! Everywhere I look my Muslim friends are urging the 400,000-plus Muslim Americans in the Big Apple to vote Bernie. The Muslim love fest for Bernie may surprise some, but I saw it building. First, Sanders handily won Dearborn, Michigan last month, a city with a very sizable Muslim population. (Its the type of place Ted Cruz would want patrolled.) Then I saw an explosion of support on social media by Muslims for Sanders. And recently I have spoken at Muslim events across the country, from professional organizations to colleges, and the crowds there cheered wildly when I asked if they liked Sanders. By the way, if you ever want to hear 500 Muslim Americans in a room go eerily silent, ask if any support Cruz. And if you want to hear that same room burst into laughter, ask if any support Trump. (Although stunningly there are a few Muslim Trump-lovers.) But now with New Yorks April 19 primary looming, the Muslims in Gotham City have really sprung into action. There are countless pleas on social media by New York Muslims urging others in the community to feel the Bern come primary day. And just yesterday I received an email from a Muslim American doctor imploring people to please join the revolution. Typically a Muslim emailing people to join the revolution could result in a visit by the FBI. But the doctors email invited people to volunteer in New York on the Sanders campaign. So why are Muslims in New York (and beyond) feeling the Bern? Overall, its the same reasons hes attracting people in other communities, although theres one unique issue noted by many Muslims. Haroon Moghul, a writer based in the Big Apple, explained that hes feeling the Bern because of Sanderss progressive stands on issues like race, the economy, and social justice. Linda Sarsour, a well-known New York City Muslim American activist and a big Bernie supporter, chalks up Sanderss appeal to the fact that he has intentionally reached out to Muslim communities in many cities. She added, We went from Muslim women in hijabis being removed from camera view at rallies to introducing competitive candidates in front of thousands of voters. Sarsour, who introduced Sanders at a packed campaign rally last week in Wisconsin, was referring to the 2008 incident when then-candidate Barack Obamas campaign removed two Muslim women wearing hijabs from sitting behind the podium apparently because they didnt want Obama to appear to be too cozy with Muslims. Even a New York Imam, Shamsi Ali, is touting Sanders. (Cue Trump and Cruz supporters freaking out that a Muslim cleric would endorse a political candidateto them, only right-wing Christian ministers can do that.) Ali, who leads a mosque in Queens and is known for his interfaith work with Russell Simmons and Rabbi Marc Schneier, commented, I support Bernie because his personality is based on truth, honesty, and inclusiveness. Ali continued, Sanders is a unifier who can bring Americans of all backgrounds together in a time that hate and divisiveness are so high. And apart from the feel-good reasons, Muslim Americans cite Sanderss stands on key issues. Sarsour summed it up well, noting that Sanders has been fighting to reduce income equality for decades, opposed the Iraq War, and supports a balanced approach to Palestine-Israel. That last issue is the one cited more frequently by Muslims than typically raised by people outside our community. (But the Muslim community is far from monolithic, so its not a major concern to all.) Many Muslim friends noted Sanderss statement on the Middle East conflict that he released in lieu of speaking at AIPAC in March. In that speech, Sanders expressed his strong commitment to Israel, noting that our nation has been and will always be committed to the principle that Israelis have a right to live in peace and security. But then Sanders added something rarely seen in American politics. He spoke of the Palestinians as human beings, acknowledging their suffering and aspirations. Sanders poignantly noted, You cant have good policy that results in peace if you ignore one side. And beyond New York, Muslims are feeling the Bern in key upcoming primary states with sizable Muslim populations such as Pennsylvania and Maryland, as Ahmed Bedier, a longtime grass roots activist and founder of Muslim Americans for Bernie Sanders, explained. Bedier, who has been volunteering on behalf of Sanders on the ground in various primary states, shared that Muslims consistently cite Sanderss embrace of Muslim Americans as being a key to his success, along with his progressive stands on issues from the economy to foreign policy. Now the bright side for Hillary Clinton is that she does have some very solid support in the Muslim community, including the endorsement of one of the two Muslim American members of Congress, Rep. Andre Carson. (D-Ind.) (The other representative, Keith Ellison (D-MN), is feeling the Bern big time.) And perhaps more importantly, the Muslims who arent supporting Clinton in the primary (with a few exceptions), will very likely vote for her over any of the GOP frontrunners if she is the Democratic nominee. After all, 70 percent of Muslims American now identify as Democrats, and only 11 percent as Republicans. (I know a few Muslim Republicans and they could use a hug.) No one knows if Sanders will pull out the Democratic nomination. But he has already achieved a massive victory by inspiring so many Muslim Americans to get involved in politics by his embracing our community, as opposed to the GOP frontrunner, who uses every opportunity to fear-monger at our expense. Its the inclusive words of Sanders, not the divisive words of Trump, that represents what makes America truly great. When a few bad scientists have caused years of setbacks with faulty data on things like global warming and vaccines, its easy to demonize incorrect science and bad hypotheses as bad for humanity. And in some cases thats true. But sometimes a little bad data and bad science can lead to great thingsjust as Isaac Newton did. Newton, it was announced this year, had a secret obsession with the lowest of the pseudosciences: alchemy, or the pursuit of a magic substance that will change one element into another. To think that one of humanitys best minds would have written over a million words on something out of bad fantasy adventure writing is concerningbut maybe it shouldnt be, because his research eventually led to something earth-shattering in another field. In this case then, its not so much that pseudoscience can become science, so much as great scientific minds can benefit from experimenting with junk science. National Geographic published a piece this week outlining the newfound documents content, and suggesting that the reason theyve been virtually unknown until now is the stigma attached to alchemy: Newton wrote more than one million words about alchemy throughout his life, in the hope of using ancient knowledge to better explain the nature of matterand possibly strike it rich. But academics have long tiptoed around this connection, since alchemy is usually dismissed as mystical pseudoscience full of fanciful, discredited processes. But its wrong to demonize sciences of the past, especially if theyre a building block of what eventually became groundbreaking discoveries. Though Newtowns alleged desire to gain wealth by turning lead to gold with a bit of magic dust sounds ridiculous, perhaps even for his age, his larger desire to find truths in older texts and existing research is not only understandablebut noteworthy. In hindsight, alchemy was a necessary framework for Newton to get to a greater truth. By realizing the core concept of alchemythat compounds could be broken down into their constituent parts and then recombinedhe was able to apply the same consideration to something else, according to science historian William Newman of Indiana University: the visible light spectrum. Please read the piece in its entiretyits utterly fascinating. And its most fascinating because Newtons alchemy obsession is a perfect case study for why science requires bad ideas and ill-informed hypotheses to succeed. The history of the scientific communityand of innovation in generalis filled to the rafters with accidental discoveries. Everyone knows the story of Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming coming back from vacation to find a strange fungus had killed bacteria in a petri dish, and rather than throwing it out, he examined it, discovering penicillin. But a similarly ill-fated experiment found that an experimental drug meant to relieve chest pain actually stiffened something else entirely, giving birth to Viagra. Sweet N Low, microwave ovens, corn flakes, safety glass, and super glue were all products of people stumbling upon value by accident and having the intelligence and creativity to let those accidents lead to discovery. But perhaps the closest cousin to Newtons own revelation comes from more than a millennium ago, during the Tang Dynasty in China. Back then, when alchemy was still very much a real profession and not a derogatory term for pseudoscience, chemists were trying to combine different products to make, you guessed it, an elixir for immortality. Instead, when they combined saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur, they got gunpowder. There are dozens of lists on the Internet of accidental discoveries that changed the world: a combination of fate and a brilliant mind in the right place at the right time. Newton is, after all, the man who allegedly came to groundbreaking understandings about gravity after being struck in the head with an apple. Whether its true or not, the man has a track record of accidental epiphanies. If anything, more scientists should sit under fruit trees while reading mystical texts: It could lead to something great. An anonymous group of conservative billionaires is ready to place their bets on a man dubbed Mad Dog, hoping to draft him into the presidential race to confront Donald Trump. Think of it as a Plan B should Trump be nominated by the Republican Party in Cleveland: swing behind retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis and press him into service yet again as a third-party candidate. Mattis is the former commander of Central Command, which includes the strife-afflicted conflict zones of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, and has developed a reputation among troops as a general officer who cares about the little guy. This reputation blossomed into the political realm during the 2012 presidential contest, when a Marine Corps veteran started an online campaign to write-in Mattis on presidential ballotsit ultimately lacked the backing to take off. But this situation involves far bigger players: Close to a dozen influential donorsinvolving politically-involved billionaires with deep pockets and conservative leaningsare ready to put their resources behind Mattis. At their request, a small group of political operatives have taken the first steps in the strategic legwork needed for a bid: a package of six strategic memos outlining how Mattis could win the race, in hopes of coaxing him in. The general has received the package of memos, according to two individuals involved with the project. Mattis, who is also nicknamed the warrior monk for his contemplative devotion to the military arts, would be a fallback option for anti-Trump forces. But since the next series of GOP nomination contests heavily favor Trump, this is not exactly a fantasy scenario. Everyone is hoping that Ted Cruz pulls it out, but I think a great deal of Republicans would rally behind an American hero if the choice is between Mattis and Trump, said John Noonan, a former Jeb Bush aide now involved in the project to draft Mattis. Hes a man of character and integrity. Hes given his life to his country. How do you ask someone like that to leap headfirst into this toxic mud puddle of a race? Its damn hard. But Trump is a fascist lunatic and Hillary has one foot in a jail cell. That means the lunatic can win. Id be first in line to plead with the general to come save America, Noonan added. The strategy would not be for Mattis to win, at least at firstthe operatives behind this potential bid would only be seeking to deny Trump and Clinton the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the general election outright. And there is also the incredible logistical challenge of getting Mattis on the ballot in a large number of states. The process is actually quite simple, but its difficult, one of the strategists concedes in a memo, and the chances of Mattis winning the White House outright as a third-party candidate are very low. But if the retired military officer could win several states won by President Obama in 2012, they might be able to block Clinton, thus forcing the incoming House of Representatives to make a decision on the next president of the United States. With the House split, the strategists reason, Mattis could be the consensus choice. The theme of 2016 is all bets are off and this is a cycle where the unexpected has become the defining characteristic of this election, said strategist Rick Wilson, who is also involved in the project. In a moment when American politics on the left and right has been upended, and where the frontrunners of both parties are compromised, the time may be upon us where a uniquely qualified, and uniquely credible third-party alternative like General Mattis can take the stage. Another limiting factor is Mattis himself, who is disinclined to run. These strategists hope he could change his mind if he were to feel compelled to serve his country. Those close to him are skeptical that his mind could be changed. It is difficultif not impossibleto see him accepting being drafted, said a source close to Mattis. Still, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol poured fuel onto the fire Feb. 22, after Trump victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Speaking at a fundraiser for the Hoover Institute, where Mattis is a visiting fellow, Kristol suggestedperhaps jokinglythat the former four-star general might be conscripted into the race. No way! shouted back a jocular Mattis, from the audience. Mattis, who declined to speak with The Daily Beast, has previously suggested that he could not endure the political correctness required to be a contender for the White House. But given Trumps myriad controversies, this may not be a problem this year. Ive lived a very colorful life and Ive said some things, Mattis told an audience last year, according to the Marine Corps Times. But not once have I taken them back, and Ive never apologized for themand I wont. I like the enemy knowing there are a few guys like me around. The pro-Mattis donors, who want to stay anonymous for the time being, have assembled a core group of seven political operatives, led by Joel Searby, a Republican consultant based in Florida. The group of strategists also includes lead attorney Mohammad Jazil; ballot access specialist Matthew Sawyer; and former George W. Bush pollster Jan Lohuizen, along with a finance team and a top firm that has been secured to lead the ballot access petition gathering, members of the team tell The Daily Beast. Wilson and Noonan co-authored a memo on how Mattis might capitalize on the current media environment, arguing that Trumps fake-macho act falls apart before a bona fide American hero like Mattis. The generals overall bearing immediately blows a hole into the central narrative of Trump: his toughness, they argue in a memo obtained by The Daily Beast. [A]nd the drama of watching it fall apart under fire would be amazing television. Comparing him to President Dwight Eisenhower, the memo concludes that Mattis has all the iconoclastic, authentic style of non-politician Trumpand all the serious government service credibility of Hillary Clinton. Some conservatives, disgusted with Trumps candidacy, have already warmed to the idea of a run by Mattisincluding conservative commentators Erick Erickson and Kristol. Kristol told The Daily Beast that he had huge respect and admiration for Mattisand Gen. John Kelly, another high-ranking general. I dont know whether theyre ideally suited for the presidency, he said. But I do know theyre a hell of a lot more suited for it than Donald Trump. KIEV A pile of car tires is a strong symbol in post-revolutionary Ukraine. It is associated with unrest, crowds on the streets, clashes between riot police and protesters and eventually lots of black smoke. This week, piles of tires appeared in front of the Prosecutors Office in Odessa and outside the Presidential Administration building in Kiev. On Friday, at about 1 p.m., groups of protesters organized by Automaidan, a civic movement, set the car tires on fire in the center of Kiev. When the pile burnt down, activists brought new tires. Surrounded by police, protesters, some covered with white powder of a fire extinguisher, demanded that President Petro Poroshenko come out to explain why in spite of all the promises to reform political institutions, the countrys leading positions were still occupied by corrupt bureaucrats. The activists also called for the president to fire a host of unpopular officials. These include Vitaliy Malikov, head of anti-terrorist center at the SBU (Ukraines security service), National Guards commanders in Chernivtsy and Vinnitsa regions, as well as all men of old system, prosecutors in Odessa, Kharkiv, Zhitomir, Khmelnitskiy, Zaporozhye, and the Nikolayev regions of Ukraine. The president did not show up. Instead, two rows of policemen in shiny black helmets lined up to push the protesters with their burning tires away from the administration building. There were plenty of reasons for Ukrainians to run out of patience. President Poroshenkos pre-election promise to wipe the country clean of corruption now looked like a sad joke. While the majority of the population lives on less than $500 a month, Poroshenko grew richer by $100 million in the last couple years and is now worth about $858 million, according to Forbes. People believe that during the months when Ukrainian soldiers were dying on the Donbas front lines, the president was more concerned about his own welfare. The Panama Papers investigation drew a lot of public attention on Poroshenkos personal income. He not only owned shipping and automobile-building companies, a candy production empire (which he promised to sell before elections but did not), radio and television stationsit turned out that Poroshenko had also set up an offshore holding company in the British Virgin Islands to save millions of dollars on tax payments in Ukraine, a country badly suffering from economic crises and the war. Its also painful for Ukrainians to see the results of a Dutch referendum this week: around 61 percent voted against the EUs association agreement with Ukraine. Even Poroshenkos closest allies, former Euromaidan revolution leaders, were now criticizing the president, whose approval rating had dropped down to 17 percent since May, 2014, when the 48-year-old chocolate king won about 55 percent of the vote at the presidential elections. The Dutch referendum result was President Petro Poroshenkos personal verdict, parliamentary deputy Mustafa Nayem, once the presidents closest ally, wrote on Facebook this week. For the president of this country, who, having all the authority, gave preference to the elite and oligarchs and not the civil society, the new generation, Nayem, who was the inspiration of the Euromaidan revolution, said in his post. In Kiev and other Ukrainian cities protesters are determined to stay on the streets until they see real changes. In Odessa activists spent days by the pile of tires, ready to make a big fire, if Kiev did not dismiss the regional prosecutor Nikolai Stoyanov. More seriously, activists installed a gallows and hanged a big doll of the president in effigy in front of the newly appointed prosecutors office. President Poroshenkos reputation is spoilt, he allowed mafia, officials with both Ukrainian and Russian passports to run this place, so people lose their patience, their hope that he would ever manage to fight corruption, Odessa city hall official Sasha Borovik told The Daily Beast on Monday. The previous prosecutor, David Sarvarelidze, was pushing for wiping this place, he had everything ready to investigate one of the main corrupt figures in town, Sergei Kivalov, but the citys corrupt lobby won and fired Sakvarelidze, Borovik explained. Protesters also gathered in the center of Kharkiv to call for the resignation of the regional prosecutor. In Zaporozhye, demonstrators tore Poroshenkos portrait into pieces. Clashes between activists and police continued on Friday. The gallows installed by the protesters in front of the presidential administration collapsed and injured a photographer from Reuters. On the video published by Ukrainian Independent Information agency a woman protester can be heard screaming at the top of her lungs: Betrayers! Betrayers! On Thursday night, somebody threw Molotov cocktails and burnt Judge Nikolai Didyks office. Dadyk was the judge on the case of captured Russian officers accused of fighting in the separatist war. At the recent hearing, Didyks court decided to invite five rebels from the Donbas region to testify in defense of the accused Russian servicemen, Alexander Alexadrov and Yevgeniy Yerofeyev. The court also expected to hear testimonies by two officers from the center controlling the ceasefire in Donbas. The thought of rebel officers visiting Kiev is too much for radical activists. But a fair and transparent court hearing is especially important for the Ukrainian legal community now, after the violent murder of the Russian servicemens defense attorney. Justice is in high demand in Ukraine. Its time for Poroshenko to make popular decisions. BEER SHEVA, Israel Nineteen Yemeni Jews are adjusting to life in Israel after a covert airlift brought them here in March, marking the end of their struggle to survive as a tiny minority in the crosshairs of hate amid the fighting in Yemens brutal sectarian civil war. Most brought almost nothing with them for the long journey, but Sulaiman Dahari, a rabbi from northern Yemen, had proudly carried a duffel bag containing his communitys 800-year-old leather Torah scroll. As he showed it to The Daily Beast, he recited the Shehecheyanu prayer, which marks blessed and unexpected events. We have nothing left from our homes in Yemen, said Dahari, speaking, like many of his Yemeni Jewish countrymen, in an ancient Hebrew dialect. The 2,000-year-old community had maintained its religious identity by reciting and memorizing religious Hebrew and Aramaic texts, and classes were held even in recent years, when only a handful of children attended. Dahari said that when he met with representatives from the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, which reportedly worked with the U.S. State Department to arrange the groups travel out of Yemen, Dahari asked that Israel provide the help that we need in order to hold onto our traditions and also to reunite with our brothers. The 17 Yemeni Jews who arrived on March 20 joined two other Yemeni Jews who had been flown in previously, according to the Jewish Agency. In Israel, Dahari is joining family members who are among the 200 Yemeni Jews who have trickled in over recent years, but Israel is also home to an older Yemeni population of roughly 350,000. They are the descendants of the 50,000 Jews brought in during Israels Operation Magic Carpet in 1949 and 1950, when riots in the Yemeni port city of Aden after the creation of the state of Israel left more than 80 Jews dead and Jewish-owned shops destroyed. Violence against the Jews erupted again after the Arab Spring ouster of Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2012. He was an autocrat who had ruled Yemen for 33 years, but he had also served as a special guardian to the Jewish community, appearing frequently on state TV with rabbis. In 2007, he facilitated the relocation of the Jews of Saada to the gated enclave near the American Embassy known as Tourist City in the capital after they were expelled by Houthis. The group of recent arrivals who are being put up in an immigrant absorption center here in the southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva said that life had become unbearably frightening in the shadow of radical Islamic terrorism spreading through Yemen. For more than a year, the countrys civil war brought chaos and strengthened groups who may be fighting each other but also find time to turn on the Jews. Iranian-backed Houthis rebels operate under the slogan, Death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam. The so-called Islamic State as well as the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have also benefited from the power vacuum in Yemen. The 19 Yemeni Jews who arrived in the past month include 14 from the northern town of Raydah, once home to Souq al-Yahud, a thriving Jewish market, and a family of five from the capital of Sanaa. Both cities currently are under Houthi control. Yemens Jewish community was once vibrant and well organized, and prided itself on being the largest and oldest in the Arab world, consisting of religious scholars, teachers, and community leaders who celebrated Jewish life publicly. But today, the handful of Jews left in the country pull back their side locks so as not to be recognized on the streets as Jews. There were many cases of kidnappings of Jews, and many people ended up staying within the small, low-rise houses of the Jewish quarter, afraid to go outside, said Natan Roee, a historian and representative from the Jewish Agency. He added that the countrys Jews have for many years been subject to discriminatory laws that forbade them from wearing new or good clothes or from carrying the traditional daggers which they are famed for carving. Some 40 or 50 Jews remain in Yemen who have refused the Jewish Agencys offer to move. The newly arrived group was not allowed to speak of the details of their own journey lest they endanger those who stayed behind. Nonetheless, on March 24, the Jewish Chronicle reported that a Jewish Yemeni man and a Yemeni airport employee were arrested by authorities due to the publicity surrounding the 800-year-old Torah scroll, which Yemeni authorities said had been illegally smuggled out of the country. Those who stayed wanted to tend to their families, or to see if they could wait to sell their homes or properties at a better price, said Dov Levitan, an expert on Yemeni Jewry and professor at Bar Ilan University. He said that the Jews of Yemen have for decades met animosity from their Muslim neighbors, But when people ask why the Yemeni Jews didnt come earlier, it could also be connected to the Jewish syndromethe hope that better times could still come. In retrospect, that does sound like cockeyed optimism. In 2008, militants detonated a car bomb outside the U.S. Embassy in Yemens capital of Sanaa, killing 16 people, and three months later, a lone gunman shot a Jewish teacher in Raydah. In 2012, Yehiya Zindani and his 53-year-old father Aharon visited the nearby market to buy vegetables, when they were approached by a Yemeni Muslim who accused Aharon Zindani of practicing witchcraft. The man stabbed him from behind in the neck and stomach and four hours later Aharon Zindani succumbed to his wounds in hospital. The killer said that he was going to go to the Garden of Eden because he had killed a Jew, said Yehiya Zindani, one of the new arrivals. He added that although the killer was imprisoned after the attack, it is unclear if he is still locked up or roaming free, since the war has turned everything upside down. Like many of his fellow travelers, Yehiya Zindani said he was thrilled to be in Israel and see families publicly celebrate Jewish holidays. We only celebrated our holidays there quietly; there we were prisoners, he said. Beyond the anxieties and security problems, however, 18-year-old Zion Dahari, said that he made the choice to leave for Israel four years ago, after many of his friends had made the trip, because of economic reasons. I want to study, find the right job, and build a life, he said. But coming here has also required a cultural adjustment, he said, explaining that Yemeni families often marry off their children as teenagers, and Yemeni women are expected to maintain their modesty by covering their hair in a headscarf, or, sometimes, their whole faces except the eyes, in a full niqab. While the Jewish Agency has announced that it would continue to help any individuals who would choose to come to Israel, it also said that this was likely the last group. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who welcomed the group in Jerusalem, said, For many years we have thought about bringing you, and with Gods help it is over. The airport project faced vocal opposition from within the state government. Former Speaker Femi Bamisile described pursuit of the project as a "misplaced priority" and a "criminal act", saying that the state government had inaugurated it without following due process and querying the tender for the project and where it was advertised. The All Progressive Congress (APC) of Ekiti state criticised state funding for the airport, which would benefit the elite, at the expense of initiatives to support the growth of the local economy to support impoverished residents. The estimated project cost is $85.4 million, allocated for the airport in spite of Fayose's claim that the state has no money. A former Senator, Gbenga Aluko, declared Ekiti Airport a waste of public funds, describing it as "economically unviable, unsustainable, unnecessary and ill-advised." An APC spokesperson described the airport project as a "drain pipe to siphon money from Ekiti State treasury", and questioned the economic sense when an established airport, Akure, is underutilized, less than an hour's drive away, and located in a highly industrialized sate, whereas Ekiti is predominantly agrarian. But the rationale for the airport is to open up Ekiti for development. Ironically, farmland was being destroyed for an airport that planners envisage will be utilized to export farm produce. The Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Kola Oluwawole, stated his support for a cargo airport, to open up resources to exploration and to "ensure seamless exportation of agricultural products." Farmers' resistance continued Farmers continued their resistance to displacement for the airport. In December a group of affected farmers and landowners filed a suit, on behalf of themselves and others in the four affected communities, seeking damages for "unlawful and forcible acquisition" of their land, displacement, destruction of farm buildings and removal of their crops. Their legal action also sought an injunction barring officials from further removal of or damage to their crops and buildings, and for the revocation of their rights to the land to be declared "unconstitutional, illegal, null and void". Farmers stepped up their opposition to the airport with a protest. On 20th January 2016 a group of farmers stormed the project site and demanded that work cease immediately, in respect of the suit that they had filed. They held placards with slogans reading: "Gov Fayose, Please Leave Us Alone, Don't Damage Our Life", "This Land Is The Major Cocoa Plantation, Please No Trespass", "Please Relocate Your Airport to Government Forest", "We All Say No To Illegal Airport Project", "Iwajo, Aso Say No To Illegal Airport", and "Igbogun Cries Over Illegal Destruction of Our Property". Farmers said that government officials had entered their land and stolen produce including cocoa, yams and bananas. They also stated that at least ten farmers, including three women, had 'died of shock' caused by the destruction of their farms and ensuing economic loss. 'Mad rush for state airports' All over Nigeria, similar plans for major new airports are vigorously opposed. On the day of the Ekiti protest an editorial on the AllAfrica news website, entitled Nigeria: No to New Airports, reported that governors of the states of Osun, Bayelsa, Abia, Ogun, Anambra, and Nasarawa were also building new airports, at enormous cost to citizens who suffered economic hardship and "against a wave of public discontent". The article urged governors to redirect the funds lavished on new airports to infrastructure that would benefit ordinary people, to repair roads and bridges, and to invest in cottage industries rather than ill-conceived schemes to boost farmers' incomes by building cargo airports to export agricultural produce. Punch magazine also slammed a "Mad rush for state airports", criticising state governments for embarking on wildly ambitious airport projects, while they neglect citizens' basic needs and fail to pay salaries and pensions, the country's dire economic situation rapidly worsening due to tumbling oil prices. Claims that new airports will create jobs and generate revenue for government coffers are dubious in the light of waste of taxpayers' money to build and maintain several existing white elephants'. Punch states that "the country's entire landscape is now dotted with odd assortments of abandoned and unviable airport projects." All the states in which new airports are planned neighbour a state in which an airport already exists, in some cases as little as an hour's drive away from the site for the new airport. The Nation newspaper also reports that many of Nigeria's established airports are seriously underutilized: Delta, Akwa Ibom, Yola, Dutse, Birnin Kebbi, Bauchi and Katsina. Expenditure on new airports is even more nonsensical when some existing airports lack vital infrastructure such as landing lights and fire and ambulance services. Bauchi Airport, inactive apart from charter flights, became an object of ridicule when passengers arriving on one aircraft had to disembark using a wooden ladder. Farmers vindicated by court victory In Ekiti, Governor Fayose appeared to be impervious to the rising chorus of criticism of his pet airport project. In February he continued to insist that the airport plan was both timely and meeting people's needs and pushed the project, vowing that the first plane would land on the tarmac by 2018. But last month, on 22nd March, the farmers secured a major court victory. Their suit was successful and all their claims - against Governor Fayose, the state Commissioner for Works, Commissioner for Lands and Housing, and Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice - have been fully vindicated. The high court in Ado-Ekiti ruled that forcible takeover of land for the airport project, revocation of farmers' rights to their parcels of land, forcible entry into farmsteads, and destruction of crops, trees and buildings on this land, were all - just as the farmers had petitioned - "unconstitutional, illegal, null and void". Justice Dele Omotso also ordered that over $25,000 be paid to the farmers in damages and an injunction was granted restraining the defendants from forcibly entering the farmland and from harassing or intimidating the claimants. Ten Ekiti farmers have died due to a terrible trauma of injustice perpetrated by the state. But the survivors have achieved a monumental legal victory, which serves as a beacon of hope for rural communities resisting land grabs for airports and other megaprojects. Rose Bridger is a founder member of the Global Anti-Aerotropolis Movement (GAAM) and the author of Plane Truth: Aviation's Real Impact on People and the Environment, published by Pluto Press. Tweets at @RoseKBridger. Facebook: Global Anti-Aerotropolis Movement. The French energy minister, Segolene Royal, has said that a postponement of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project was still a possibility. She also stated that the project must not be allowed to drain funds away from planned investments in renewable energy to bring France towards its 40% green power target. The comments came in a French television interview on Thursday on the BMFTV channel, in which she was asked whether Hinkley Point would be postponed. (See 9.35 in video) "It's still under discussion", Royal replied. "There's an agreement between France and Britain, so things should go ahead. But the trade unions are right to ask for the stakes to be re-examined." Asked if she was in favour of a postponing the 18 billion project, Royal ducked the question and said she would not make rash comments. However, she did not want to "decisively throw the project into question just like that." Royal continued: "I think the project should bring supplementary proof that it is well founded and provide assurances that investment in this project is not going to turn aside or dry out investments that need to be made in renewable energy." She then spoke at length of France's ambitions to generate 40% of its electricity from renewable sources, wind in particular, and France's broader ambitions to establish itself as an environmental super-power with global expertise across the gamut of green technologies - all without mentioning nuclear power once. Her comments fit in with EDF's broader strategy to become a global player in renewable energy. It is already the US's largest wind power developer and is on track to be producing more wind power in the US every year by 2025 than would Hinkley Point C. A further delay in EDF's 'final investment decision'? EDF, the energy company controlled by the French government, has still not made a firm commitment to build the new nuclear power station. Its board had been expected to make a final investment decision on the project at its next meeting on 11 May, however this is now looking less likely following Royal's pointed intervention. Also weighing against an immediate decision, EDF's Force Ouvriere (FO) union this week threatened strike action if the company was to hold a meeting to decide on the project before its Annual General Meeting on 12th May. "If a board meeting is scheduled, we will launch a strike to demand that the Hinkley Point project is delayed", FO union leader Jacky Chorin told Reuters. "Once the strike is on, I could see CGT and CFE-CGC follow, as they are also against the project." Ply Gem Windows will invest $1.98 million to expand its manufacturing operation in the Town of Rocky Mount in Franklin County. A subsidiary of leading North American exterior building products manufacturer Ply Gem Holdings Inc., the company will increase capacity for its vinyl window lines, creating 76 new jobs. Virginia successfully competed against Florida and Georgia for the project, according to Gov. Terry McAuliffe. The Commonwealth of Virginia, Franklin County and Town of Rocky Mount have done a great deal to make us feel at home and encourage Ply Gem Windows growth and success for this strategic location in our supply chain, said Art Steinhafel, president of Ply Gem Windows. Its an honor to be recognized for the long-standing tradition of this facility in Rocky Mount and the dedicated associates who take pride in their work, producing a quality product day in and day out. We look forward to expanding our team and facility in this community. Franklin County is honored to be home to one of the nations leading building materials manufacturers in Ply Gem, said Franklin County Board of Supervisors Chairman Cline Brubaker. We know that Franklin Countys pro-business environment and elite workforce will allow the company to continue its trajectory of growth here in our community. Ply Gem and its employees are a key part of Rocky Mounts economy and its growth, and the Town of Rocky Mount is glad to support the development of additional jobs for our residents, said Rocky Mount Mayor Steve Angle. We are grateful that Ply Gem, our other industries and our economic development partners continue to see the importance of investing in Rocky Mount and its future. Ply Gem produces a comprehensive product line of windows and patio doors, vinyl and aluminum siding and accessories, designer accents, cellular PVC trim and mouldings, vinyl fencing and railing, stone veneer and gutterware, used in both new construction and home repair and remodeling in the United States and Canada. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Franklin County and the Town of Rocky Mount to secure the project for Virginia. McAuliffe approved a $100,000 grant from the Commonwealths Opportunity Fund to assist the town and county with the project. The Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission approved $160,000 in Tobacco Region Opportunity Funds. Funding and services to support the companys employee training activities will also be provided through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program. "Ply Gem has been an incredible partner with the citizens of Franklin County over the past years and has proven that high-quality American-made products, like Ply Gem Windows, can once again be manufactured successfully in Southside Virginia, said state Sen. William Stanley, a member of the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission. With this announcement of plans to expand its Rocky Mount operations, Ply Gem has made a firm commitment to the people of our region. Likewise, the commonwealth, by its investment of Tobacco Commission dollars, remains committed to Ply Gem and its employees, both now and in the future." Ply Gem has been a foundational industry in Rocky Mount and Franklin County for decades, said Del. Charles Poindexter. This latest expansion is a great example of creating new jobs by growing an existing successful business, which has a long history of contributing to our great community." SHARE Brad Schneider Bill Rhodes By Laura Acchiardo, laura.acchiardo@thegleaner.com Brad Schneider is looking to keep his position as judge-executive this November. Schneider was selected as his party's nominee on Thursday night at the Henderson County Republican party's executive committee meeting. He will face Democrat Tina McCormick in the general election in November. According to a news release from the Henderson Republican Party, the executive committee voted unanimously for Schneider. "We are 100 percent behind our nominee Brad Schneider, and we are confident he will be the winner in November," said Richard Shoulders, the party chairman. "We believe he will be an excellent judge-executive." Schneider, a graduate of the University of Evansville, served as president of the Henderson Chamber of Commerce in 2009. He became interim president and CEO of Northwest Kentucky Forward, a regional economic development organization, in March 2013 and then became CEO and president of Kyndle. "I'm very humbled and appreciative of their faith in me," Schneider said. "I can't wait to run and serve as judge. It's a great opportunity for me. My mantra has been before party, before politics, what's best for Henderson County. And that's how we're going to run." In March, Gov. Matt Bevin appointed Schneider to fill the position of judge-executive until November. The position was left vacant when former Judge-executive Hugh McCormick died Feb. 18 after surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from one of his lungs. He was 58. McCormick, executive director of the Kentucky Rural Health Association, is the wife of the late Hugh McCormick and was selected as the nominee by the Henderson County Democratic Party's executive committee. The winner of the election will serve out the remaining two years of Hugh McCormick's term. Faster loading time (lower bounce rates from) A faster loading ensures that your site visitors don't leave your site when it starts to load for too long. 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But the costs arent much higher, and if youve outgrown your shared account, or want the value of the advantages listed above, then its time to upgrade. Another reason might be a lack of technical knowledge, making VPS servers harder to set up, manage, and secure. But thats why managed VPS hosting is such a good choice. BOSTON (AP) -- Dozens of text messages that a teenage girl sent to her boyfriend that encouraged him to kill himself were just words and do not constitute a crime, her lawyer told the state's highest court Thursday. But a prosecutor argued that Michelle Carter pressured Conrad Roy III for weeks to end his life and engaged in "emotional manipulation" of a vulnerable teen who had struggled with depression and previously attempted suicide. The Supreme Judicial Court heard arguments in Carter's appeal of a juvenile court judge's refusal to dismiss the manslaughter charge stemming from Roy's 2014 death. The justices made it clear they were struggling with whether Carter's actions met the definition of manslaughter, peppering both side with questions about exactly what she did to encourage or assist Roy's suicide. Justice Robert Cordy questioned Assistant District Attorney Shoshana Stern about what he called the "$100,000 question" in the case: "When did this cross the line -- when did these words cross the line?" In addition to the many text messages encouraging Roy to kill himself, Stern said, Carter also spoke on the phone with him while he was in his truck inhaling carbon monoxide fumes. When Roy got out of his truck, she told him to "get back in," Stern said. "I think what we can say that we know is that she was way over the line when she told him to get back in the truck," Stern said. But Carter's attorney Dana Curhan said Roy was determined to take his own life. He said Carter repeatedly tried to talk him out of it but finally gave up about two weeks before his death. "Even when she said, 'get back in the truck,' that was not the proximate event that resulted in his death," Curhan said. Roy got back in his truck and waited until the fumes overcame him, Curhan said. "The undisputed evidence is that Mr. Roy inflicted the harm," Curhan said. Carter was 17 and Roy was 18 when he died in 2014. They had met in Florida two years earlier while visiting relatives. They kept in touch mostly through texts and emails when they both returned to their homes in Massachusetts -- about 50 miles apart. They hadn't seen each other in more than a year before Roy's death. "You can't think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don't get why you aren't," Carter wrote to Roy the day of his death. Roy's body was found in his pickup truck in Fairhaven. Police found a gasoline-operated water pump in the back seat. Carter was charged as a youthful offender, which makes her eligible for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter. Attorney Joseph Cataldo, who also represents Carter, said after the hearing that prosecutors are attempting to criminalize Carter's free speech in the case when there is no law against encouraging or assisting suicide in Massachusetts. Thirty-nine states have such laws. "It's not a case that should have even been brought," Cataldo said. The court gave no indication on when it would rule. A letter recently appeared on this page, Feb. 18 to be exact, concerning the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, titled, "Think Twice About Bernie." A reference was posed concerning Mr. Sanders' supporters thinking him an "outsider candidate." The Green Mountain State senator is hardly the outsider many make him out to be. For Mr. Sanders is affiliated with the Establishment. For if he was not, he would have been ostracized from Congress years ago. And this is readily apparent by his committee and subcommittee memberships: The Senate Committee on the Budget; Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources -- Subcommittee memberships: Energy, National Parks and Power; Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs; Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension -- Subcommittee memberships: Primary Health and Retirement Security, followed by Children and Families; Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works--subcommittee memberships on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, Fisheries, Water and Wildlife, Transportation and Infrastructure. The above is hardly the brief of a low-profile politician; rather a name senator with years standing in the Nation's Capital, which translates into $$$ for the state he represents. Too, he is hardly a Utopian Socialist along the lines of a Louis Blanc; or a hardened revolutionary like Vladimir Lenin. He caucuses with Democrats; votes mostly with Democrats. For despite his reputed left-of-center approach, he has tied his presidential fortunes to an Established Denomination controlled -- for the most part -- by such Monied Interests as Wall Street, Big Pharma, Defense Companies. And while Mr. Sanders' message includes such redeeming qualities as more leave time from work for women who have had a child; reduction of student loan debt; single-payer health insurance; reduction in the size and power of monolithic financial institutions, neither is he attacking, with any degree of authority -- and neither are any of the other competitors in the bid for the presidential sweepstakes -- the American Empire and the Military-Industrial Complex. For if he or any of the other contenders did so, they would eventually be bounced from the Beltway. Dennis Kucinich should come to mind here. Sanders is running as a Democratic candidate so as to be able to appear on the debates; plus have exposure on popular media; most of which is controlled by six corporations. In addition, he has to support the Democratic nominee if it is not himself. For as he admits, failure to do so will see him reduced in stature like Ralph Nader. But of greater personal consequence will be his stature as a high-profile senator. By not catering to the Democratic National Committee "guidelines," it would be interesting to see how long he would retain his committee memberships; which in turn, would mean less $$$ for Vermont. However like Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders represents a growing disenchantment with Establishment Democrats and Republicans. And while it remains to be seen whether either will capture the nomination he is seeking, it is thus far their staying power that is intriguing; upon which one can only hope that they inflict irreparable damage to those denominations whose banners they are seeking to represent in November. The author of "Think Twice About Bernie," references the young who are "Feeling the Berne." Those of the under 30 set who are throwing their lot with Sanders see in him references to the political and economic future that is noticeably absent with other so-called Establishment candidates. Mr. Trump, as well, has tapped into similar discord. Half of his followers are in the 45-64 year old age group; many of whom have high school educations or less, with one-third of his supporters making less than $50,000 per annum. Hence the popularity with a message that is as simplistic as it is bombastic. On either side of the line, though, voters supporting Sanders and Trump seem to understand that they have no future with established Democrats and Republicans ... an assumption which has much in the way of merit. The writer also refers to this nation as a Democracy. This nation was founded on the principles of Republican government. (This pertains to governmental form and not the political association of the same name.) Read the Constitution, that blueprint for limited government in which the word Democracy is mentioned not at all. Read the Federalist; read the Notes on the Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Democracy was not acceptable with many of the Founders, who considered this form of government as having the potential of descending into a tyranny of the majority over the minority. Of course, today, due in part to the lack of citizen participation and war, our Grand Republic -- which no longer exists -- has been evolving into a tyranny of the minority over the majority. Another point offered by the writer is that a Sanders' presidency will result in a Socialist America. A Socialist America already exists ... and has for years; however it is a Socialist system that is not of the popular variety. For decades America has been evolving into a Corporate Socialist State. Socialism for the privileged at the expense of the Middle, Working and Poor classes. Again, those beneficiaries of the Military-Industrial Complex providing an example. Makes no difference whether America wins or loses these undeclared wars; the arms merchants still make money. The Affordable Care Act is another. A bank bail out of sorts for the Insurance Companies to the tune of $400 to $500 billion, courtesy of Mr. Obama, who is little better than a corporate employee. Again, helps to explain those seeking alternative forms of leadership in the names of Messers Sanders and Trump. There is an up-swell in the electorate that is beginning to realize that government is not working for them; but, of overriding significance, that government does not belong to them. Hence those who believe that Sanders or Trump are the answers to their concerns. Of course, in time they will find these alternatives deficient as well. For not enough Americans seem to grasp the concept that their responsibility for the political, economic, social and cultural fortunes of this Nation extends beyond the parochial confines of the voting booth; and considering the turn outs in many of our elections, small wonder that America's Royalty has filled the resulting void with initiatives such as the Lewis Powell Memo, demise of the Glass-Steagall Act, Citizens United. Translation, elections are becoming increasingly irrelevant. And as this ominous trend continues, those ostracized from the levers of power will gravitate to other avenues for obtaining power ... such as the streets. Mark Albertson is a historian, professor at Norwalk Community College and a Norwalk resident. Phillies bash Padres in wild Game 4 to move to brink of World Series Philadelphia hit four home runs in the win, overcoming a 4-0 deficit before they even came to bat against San Diego. As a child growing up in Edwardsville, there were so many books in Megan Prueters home that you could almost say she had her own childrens library. Now she really does. The 30-year-old EHS grad is the Edwardsville Public Librarys new Youth Services Librarian, replacing Anne Low, who is a youth librarian now in the Columbus, Ohio area. That she now spends her days compiling collections of books and kits that kids will love to check out is a tribute to her mother. Robin Carlson, a long-time English and Language Arts teacher at Highland Middle School. Carlson had a deal with her own mother that she could forgo chores if she read to her younger siblings. My mom basically created that environment in our home, so I grew up with literature my whole life, Prueter said during an interview at her new office at the Childrens Library. I just think its important for all children to have that access. Thats what I love about the library: children are able to come in and get any book that might strike some interest, or maybe something they already love. Low said her goal was to build on the groundwork laid by her predecessor, Barb Driesner, by offering an environment and space that children and teens want to visit, with hopes that they will become lifelong readers and be able to look back at the time they spent in our library with happy memories. Low also established an American Girl doll collection, a Science Discovery Kit collection, and a Special Needs resource collection. All of that will be continued, Prueter said. Edwardsville is really great about providing all kinds of different resources, she said. Anne started the kits, and those are very popular. Its fun having unique things for patrons to check out. Prueter grew up in Edwardsville, attending Leclaire and Columbus schools, Edwardsville Middle School, and finally Edwardsville High School. After graduating from EHS in 2004, she went to Monmouth College where she received a BS in English. Her Master of Library Science comes from Clarion University of Pennsylvania. She came back to Edwardsville after having served as the Youth Services Director at Rochester (Illinois) Public Library. She was the Youth Librarian Assistant at the Edwardsville Public Library before getting the nod as Youth Services Librarian. Director Susan Carr says Prueters experience and enthusiasm are welcome. Her ideas and influence within the department will be exciting to see. Prueter took over on March 19. Her first big task is to organize the Summer Reading Program. Sign up for that begins on May 31. A kick-off party is planned for June 1. In this weeks segment of Segue, SIUE Interim Chancellor Stephen Hansen, PhD, welcomes SIUE alumnus Alan Dunstan, chairman of the Madison County Board of Directors. Dunstan holds two bachelors from SIUE: in government with a specialization in state and local government, and in business administration with a specialization in economics. Having served on the Madison County Board of Directors for nearly 36 years, Dunstan has been chairman since 2002. He has been elected to three-consecutive terms, and is currently running for a fourth. Overseeing a board of 29 members, who each service districts of approximately 9,800 residents, can be quite complex. Dunstan oversees 24 departments and collaborates with nine other county-wide, elected officials. While he wears many hats, Dunstans primary responsibility as chairman is setting Madison Countys budget. The budget is presented to the board for approval and is used to run the Countys operations. Dunstan has made Illinois political history throughout his career. As a student at SIUE, Dunstan considered running for office in the Student Senate, but instead ran for an alderman seat for the City of Troy (Ill.). At the ripe age of 21, he won the election to become the youngest elected official in the state of Illinois, at the time. Just two years later, he ran for a position on the Madison County Board of Directors - against the 16-year mayor of Troy, Ill. - and beat him to become the youngest Madison County Board of Directors member ever, still to this day, at 23. Much like SIUE, the Madison County Board of Directors is currently facing financial hardships as a direct result of the State of Illinois budget crisis. With our County budget being appropriated for everything from the Madison County Sheriffs Department to the Madison County Health Department, weve had our hardships while working with very tight budgets as well, but I think we do a pretty good job, explains Dunstan. Unfortunately, the State of Illinois owes Madison County money, and we are at a point that we are starting to get a little bit nervous about when its coming. To combat the impact of lacking State of Illinois funds, Dunstan is working to establish a task force to serve as a conduit between SIUE and various Madison County groups. SIUE has become such an important part of not just Madison County, but the region, explains Dunstan. I look at SIUE today, and Im amazed by the growth. Because we are concerned about what is happening in the state, we want to do what we can to bring the community and business leaders together, in an effort to support SIUE. We are going to put more light on SIUE, and we are glad to work with the SIUE community as best as we can. Hansen further shares, Its important that we build more bridges and stronger ties between the University and the community. How we enrich each other - through student internship opportunities, faculty and staff services, faculty research, Madison County Board of Directors work, community services and resources, etc. - keeps us anchored to the needs of the people whom we serve. Each expressing great pride for the University that has blazed their career paths, Dunstan shares, This University has a national reputation and makes you proud to say you have a degree from SIUE. So much has been done in the past and the present that I expect nothing but great things for the future of this campus. Hansen responds, It has been a great partnership with both the community and the people who live or have lived here. We have between 2,100 and 2,400 employees at the University, and we annually make more than a $500 million impact on the economy. Higher education is important, and SIUE is important to this community for us! Im speaking as a member of the community, not on behalf of the University. Its sad to see it being squandered by lack of support from state government. Dunstan shares that the Madison County Board of Directors has not operated without difficulties. Our county has had balanced budgets since Ive been chairman of the Madison County Board of Directors, he says. We are probably in the best financial state of any county in Illinois, but we have made tough decisions. I have 300 fewer employees today than I did when I took office. Thats not something that Im proud of, but its something that had to be done to balance the budgets. He further explains that he feels the growing problems in state and national government decision-making is the presence of unfaltering polarization among parties and their members. For some reason, compromise has become a nasty word at the state and national level, but thats exactly what democracy is! he says. You bring together people with different ideas and come to a compromise. You try to come out with something that might not be perfect, but its a compromise and is something that works. Polarization is ending peoples willingness to compromise, and its really sad to see that. I can see it starting to head down to the county level, and it scares me a little bit. There are complex problems in our country. People need to work together instead of being polarized. Dunstan believes this is the direct result of intense exposure to politically-motivated, 24-7 news coverage. Its hard to get people together now and just talk about the issues, he explains. When we enter a primary season, candidates tend to go further and further to the left and to the right to achieve nomination. I believe that about 75 percent of people are like me and fit in the middle, but both parties are going to the extremes. For future planning, Dunstan hopes that his newly-appointed task force can create jobs and begin attracting the talents of SIUE graduates who seek local career opportunities. Hansen shares, The Illinois Department of Labor Statistics indicates that 80 percent of jobs created since 2008 require a baccalaureate degree. The richer labor force that we have and the better-educated citizenry we have enriches the community, and allows it to grow. Both men agree that the biggest issue the University and the County face today is the State of Illinois government. This area was hit harder by the 2008 recession than most, Dunstan shares. The Madison County budget today is just now reaching the level that it was in 2008. Usually, it takes about two years after a recession for a government to catch up - we went through a six-year period. Hansen furthers his statement by saying, When you are trying to attract businesses to Madison County, nobody wants to come to a state thats dysfunctional. Dunstan speaks quite passionately on the disservices the States lack of funding is causing to the higher education system. To me, its literally a crime - because education is so important, he says. In earlier days, you could probably have a high school diploma and make a good living. Today, if you dont go to a trade school or college - and most of the time you have to go for more than a four-year degree - you cant be as successful. Times have changed, and we need to be putting more money into education, because its growingly important. To conclude the show, Dunstan reveals a special talent in the kitchen that is sure to excite your sweet tooth. Tune in to WSIE 88.7 FM every Sunday at 9 a.m. as weekly guests discuss issues on SIUEs campus. By Logan Cameron, SIUE Marketing & Communications Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Hammam (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 Nonviolent jihad, and the related discourse, is considered the most relevant strategy for solving the humanitarian crises arising from the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. One of the strong points of this strategy is that its a civilian approach rather than a military approach. Civilian approaches assume that every human being has the right to live peacefully as well as the right to establish harmonious coexistence. Even though many people question the chance of reconciliation between Palestine and Israel, many civilians as peacemakers are still confident that any conflict is able to be solved and its two sides reconciled, including in Palestine-Israel crisis. Regarding this issue, I would personally like to appreciate Mr. Joko Widodo, the President of Republic of Indonesia, who had initiated an agenda of peaceful and harmonious cohabitation at the international level last month. There were at least two initiatives put forward by him, aimed at promoting peace and nonviolent discourses as an international topic of discussion. First, in a meeting with the director of Facebook during his visit to the US, President Jokowi requested that social media be employed for promoting amity among civilians. This is coherent with the findings of research by Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of Sciences), which concluded that the internet had played a significant role in the spread of radicalism, including violence. Second, Jokowi hosted the fifth extraordinary summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jakarta in March. I think the conference was crucial for Muslims living in Palestine and other countries in the Middle East where Islam not only has a majority following, but where most countries are experiencing conflict and an unnecessary war among Muslims. This conference was held not only for Palestine but also for other humanitarian conflicts. For Mr. Joko Widodo, this conference was part of a personal commitment and a vision of helping Palestine to become an independent country through peaceful means. He promised to pursue this goal in the last round of presidential campaigning in 2014. After becoming President, Mr. Joko Widodo has become even more aware of Indonesias role as the largest Muslim population in the world so he should be even more active in support of Palestine. Furthermore, the conference provided motivation for Palestinians who have been struggling for freedom through nonviolent means, as well as for all people who love peace and harmony. For Palestinian people, nonviolent jihad has been used as a main strategy against the Israeli military. They believe that religious teachings and customs enable them to attain the essence of humanity. Gullen (2004) suggests that there are two kinds of jihad: external struggle (lesser jihad) and internal struggle (greater jihad). Lesser jihad is the process of enabling someone else to attain his or her essence. This also means going to the battlefront and dealing with human material. Greater jihad is the attainment of ones own essence. If the lesser jihad involves human material, the greater jihad is a spiritual journey, a struggle with ones inner world and carnal soul (nafs). For Nomani (2011), finding ones essence and helping others to reach their essence is called a form of nonviolent jihad. This is because of the purpose of jihad, which is not only to defend the life and property of Muslim communities but also to gain Gods acceptance; to protect His faith; to guide humanity (all human beings and other creatures); promote welfare for all; and save humanity from oppression and strife. Thus, the OIC summit is a form of nonviolent jihad, aimed at engaging human souls in the fight against all forms of war and violence in the world. The summit was also an effective method of focusing leaders hearts on the wellbeing of their people. This summit is similar to what Mahatma Gandhi did for Palestine many years ago, called Satyagraha, an organised campaign of pure soul force, to convince the hearts of their Arab sisters and brothers (and the world) of the legitimacy of their aspirations. Above all, if the OIC summit succeeds at focusing the worlds attention, including Indonesian societys attention, on the endorsement of peaceful and harmonious coexistence, I believe that Mr. Joko Widodo will have proven himself to be a peacemaker, as Nelson Mandela was in Africa. As president, has done his dharma (duty) by calling for nonviolent jihad for the sake of Palestine and humanity. *** The writer is a PhD research scholar looking at nonviolent discourses in the religious context of Indonesia at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. He is also a lecturer at IAIN Salatiga, Central Java. --------------- We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Devina Heriyanto (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 The name Santoso has dominated the news in recent weeks. This post aims to help if you are still confused about who he is, or if you have missed it in the news. Who is Santoso? Santoso, aka Abu Wardah, is a former religious book seller. His inspiration and role model is Jamaah Islamiyah leader Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, who he knows from recorded preachings. Santoso received military training in 2001 and participated in amaliyah (jihad during interreligious conflict) between Christians and Muslims in Poso from 1998 to 2001. The Poso conflict ended with the Malino Accords in 2001 and 2002 but the lingering tension and motive for revenge made the area vulnerable to terrorists and extremist activities. (An interview with Andi Baso Tahir, Santosos old friend, can be found here.) Is it a new group? Why havent I heard about him? His group, the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT), has been around since 2012. August 2012, MIT kills two police officers September 2012, bomb attack targets police station November 2012, shooting of a police chief December 2012, MIT shoots four National Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) personnel November 2014, claims responsibility for death of 50-year-old resident M. Fadli in Tangkura village September 2015, reportedly involved in beheading of Nyoman Astika, Hengky and another unidentified victim April 2015, MIT beheads father-in-law of Daeng Koro (one of Santosos allies who died in a gunfight with police) for leaking information to counterterrorism squad Densus 88 Is the MIT related to the Islamic State (IS) movement? Santoso is a supporter of IS. In June 2014, Santoso referred to himself as the commander of Islamic States army in Indonesia after IS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi stated that he intended to establish a worldwide caliphate. In January 2016, the police found evidence of money flowing from IS to the MIT, averaging Rp 2 million per transaction (the total sum is classified). Who are the main targets? Surprisingly, not civilians. The first victims of the MIT were two police officers, and the group later carried out a bomb attack on a police station. In July 2015, Santoso declared war on Densus 88. Civilians victims were those suspected of helping the police regarding the groups whereabouts. How does the group continue to operate? The group spreads warnings using flyers and text messages, telling local residents not to cooperate with the police. The MIT has displayed brutality toward those suspected of leaking information to the police. What has been done to counter Santoso? The hunt for the MIT and Santoso has been intensified with two operations from the National Police, who were later joined by the Indonesian Military (TNI). Operation Camar Maleo was held in 2015, starting with the police who were later joined by elite forces such as Densus 88 and Brimob. The operation was extended multiple times and had four stages. At least 1,000 personnel from Brimob and Densus 88 were deployed, and the TNI also assisted in the manhunt. Densus 88 arrested 28 terrorist suspects in 2015, including Chinese Uighurs and women. was held in 2015, starting with the police who were later joined by elite forces such as Densus 88 and Brimob. The operation was extended multiple times and had four stages. At least 1,000 personnel from Brimob and Densus 88 were deployed, and the TNI also assisted in the manhunt. Densus 88 arrested 28 terrorist suspects in 2015, including Chinese Uighurs and women. Operation Tinombala replaced Operation Camar Maleo, beginning in January 2016. Operation Tinombala was extended in March for another six months, as MIT members continue to hide in Poso's forests. The operation involves more than 2,000 police and TNI elite troops. What is taking so long? The group is operating with guerrilla warfare, hiding in forests and constantly moving to avoid the police. One of the members is a former illegal logger, who knows the forests well. Poso is located in Central Sulawesi, an area with 64 percent forest coverage. (Not-so) fun fact: Santoso and his followers had to eat anoa, maleo and cuscus, all of which are endangered species. A story about Operation Tinombala can be found here, in the new article format on the #newjakpost. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Seth Borenstein (Associated Press) Washington Fri, April 8, 2016 Most computer simulations of climate change are underestimating by at least one degree Fahrenheit how warm the world will get this century, a new study suggests. It all comes down to clouds and how much heat they are trapping. According to the study published Thursday in the journal Science, computer model simulations say there is more ice and less liquid water in clouds than a decade of satellite observations show. The more water and less ice in clouds, the more heat is trapped and less the light is reflected, said study co-author Trude Storelvmo, a Yale atmospheric scientist. She said even though it is below freezing, the clouds still have lots of liquid water because they don't have enough particles that help the water turn to ice crystals. As the climate changes, there will be more clouds with far more liquid, and global warming will be higher than previously thought, Storelvmo said. This is just the latest in a series of studies that have found that mainstream science may be too conservative in estimating the pace and effects of warming, including melting ice sheets in Antarctica. "None of this is good news," Storelvmo said. "You always hope that climate isn't as sensitive to carbon dioxide as we fear, same with the ice sheets, but we're calling it as we see it. Several studies have come out and show that we've been too conservative up until now." Uncertainties in mainstream climate science are more "on the bad side" than on the side of less harm, said climate and glacier scientist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University, who wasn't part of the study. "Climate science thus is probably more open to criticism of being too conservative than being too alarmist." How much warming is predicted for the next 80 or so years depends a lot on whether society cuts back on carbon dioxide emissions. In the worst-case scenario, with no carbon reduction, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sees temperatures rising by about 6.7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.7 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century, and Storelvmo said the liquid cloud factor would add another degree or more. While the study is "well-reasoned" and "sobering," there are uncertainties with the satellite observations that raise questions for Chris Bretherton at the University of Washington, who wasn't part of the study. If the Yale team is right and there's a bigger cloud feedback, he asked, why hasn't warming so far been even higher? That's a legitimate question, Storelvmo said, but computer simulations may also be underestimating the cooling effect of aerosols that mask the warming but are diminishing in the atmosphere. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Genevieve Tan Shu Thung (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 Having a child in a family is a gift. While many families have children, some struggle in their journey to get one. Many who are unable to bear a child the natural way often turn to medical science, using a popular process called in vitro fertilization (IVF) that increases their chances of pregnancy. According to studies, yoga can affect one's fertility rate. Not only will it release stress, which can lead to poor fertility rates, some experts also believe that certain asanas (postures) can promote pregnancy chances due to increased blood flow to the pelvis that stimulates hormone-producing glands, which also releases muscle tension. Rahul Sachde, M.D., a specialist in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, said that combining the benefits of traditional yoga with innovative medical intervention could relieve stress associated with infertility and thus increase the probability of conception. "Women who are infertile, especially in the long term, are extremely stressed out. One study has shown that the stress levels of an infertile woman are actually similar to those of someone just told that they have HIV, he said. A study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology strongly supports Dr. Sachdev's claims. The study reported that infertile women's anxiety and depression levels equaled those of women with conditions such as cancer, HIV and chronic pain. A research program conducted by Dr. Sachdev found that by incorporating yoga and meditation, couples had a 50 percent fertility rate within a year of finishing the program. Other studies also demonstrated strong support that yoga can help with infertility. Harvard Medical School published a report in Fertility and Sterility showing that women are 3 times more likely to conceive by practicing yoga and other relaxation exercises than women who do not. An astounding 55 percent of the participants in the group who were taught yoga, meditation, negative emotional releasing techniques, imagery exercises and nutrition conceived within one year. Alice Domar, PhD, from Harvard Medical School, encourages infertile women to practice yoga to develop a conscious love-connection between themselves and their bodies that they may be frustrated with for having failed to conceive a child. She also recommends infertile couples do yoga together because, although both are physically together, the exercise allows them to develop a non-sexual bond since sex, according to her, is often linked with failure when it becomes emotionally charged. For those who have opted for the IVF procedure, yoga can also play a major role in increasing one's success. Researchers at the Fertility Center of Illinois discovered that couples who practice yoga tend to be more determined and can overcome the stress related to the strenuous IVF procedure. As relaxation is a key factor in improving the likelihood of conceiving, relaxing the muscles, lower abdomen and the mind can greatly aid the IVF procedure. Fertility centers around the world are now widely adopting yoga. Dr. Jennifer Hirschfeld-Cytron says that "we have seen a decrease in anxiety in patients who utilize the yoga program. In the US, cost remains a top reason why couples stop infertility treatment, but close behind is emotional distress [and] yoga can help alleviate this stress and allow couples to stay in treatment." *** Genevieve Tan Shu Thung runs an online holistic living magazine, which publishes articles related to holistic living at http://www.holisticlivingannex.com. --------------- Interested to write for thejakartapost.com? We are looking for information and opinions from experts in a variety of fields or others with appropriate writing skills. The content must be original on the following topics: lifestyle (beauty, fashion, food), entertainment, science & technology, health, parenting, social media, and sports. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 The immigration office has slapped a travel ban on Sunny Tanuwidjaja, who is reportedly expert staff to Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, in connection with a Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) investigation into a bribery case centering on the deliberation of two bylaws on reclamation. The Law and Human Rights Ministrys immigration directorate general spokesperson, Heru Santoso Ananta, said on Thursday that Sunny and Richard Halim Kusuma, an APL executive, had been banned from traveling abroad for six months starting on April 6. Sunny and Richard are to be questioned as witnesses in the KPKs investigation into APL CEO Ariesman Widjaja, who has been named a suspect on allegations of bribing a Jakarta city councillor, Mohamad Sanusi, who was arrested by KPK investigators last week, Heru added. Ahok denied on Wednesday that Sunny had special employment status in his administration, clarifying that Sunny was a student in Illinois, US who had been observing his political life for his doctorate dissertation since 2010, when the governor was then a member of the House of Representatives. The governor said that Sunny helped arrange his schedule in 2012 when he was paired with then gubernatorial candidate Joko Jokowi Widodo in the Jakarta gubernatorial election. "He does not have a formal title, like the other interns. Everyone is free in my house, he said, adding that Sunny is the nephew of the wife of Franky Oesman Widjaja, the son of Sinar Mas Group owner Eka Tjipta Widjaja. Sunnys name was mentioned by Krishna Murti, the lawyer of Sanusi, who allegedly claimed that Sunny met Ariesman with Sanusi. Ahok did not deny Sunnys alleged meeting with Sanusi, saying that he met with many people, including members of the City Council, businesspeople and officials for his research. Ahok says he has spoken with Sunny about the lawyers statement. "Sunny told me that he did nothing. He said, 'how could I do such a thing? " Ahok said.(bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Elly Burhaini Faizal (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 Widespread panic over the fate of 10 Indonesian sailors taken hostage by the Abu Sayyaf terror group in Sulu Island, the Philippines, has upset Umar Patek, a convicted terrorist currently serving time at the Surabaya Class 1 Penitentiary in Porong, Sidoarjo, East Java. Umar says he is ready to help the Indonesian government negotiate with Abu Sayyaf militants, Kompas.com reported. The convicted terrorist claims he is acquainted with the leaders of the Abu Sayyaf militant group. At the peak of his career, Umar was elected a council member of Abu Sayyaf under the leadership of Khadaffy Janjalani for the period 2005-2006. Council leadership positions were held by senior leaders in Abu Sayyaf. The council determined the policy of the group. The leaders of the Abu Sayyaf faction currently holding the 10 Indonesians hostage are Al-Habsi Misaya and Jim Dragon, alias Junior Lahab. Umar claims that when he was still a member of the Abu Sayyaf group, Jim was considered a senior figure. Meanwhile, Al-Habsi was considered a junior member. At that time, he elaborated, Al-Habsis duties were focused more on handling the documentation of hostage executions such as the execution of seven workers from the Philippines in 2007. I knew them well. Based on a sense of humanity, I offer myself to help the government. This is because the Indonesian governments calls to the group, with support from the Philippine government, will not be effective. Abu Sayyaf considers the Philippines an enemy, says Umar. The terror convict further said that Indonesia had significant leverage in its bargaining position for the release of the 10 crewmen. This was because the hostages were from Indonesia, a Muslim country. Moreover, Umar says Al-Habsi and Jim have soft personalities and are open to communicating with anyone. They are not affiliated with the Islamic State movement. The chance for success in the negotiation process is about 80 percent. It is likely that they dont know the 10 hostages are from Indonesia, says Umar, who once fought in 2005 against a joint Philippine and US task force in Talayan, Sulu Island, the Philippines. In 2003, an Indonesian citizen, identified only as Zulkifli, was taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf and released shortly after the militant group learned that he was from Indonesia. It was Umar that persuaded Abu Sayyaf leaders to release Mary Jean Lacaba, a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross. He asked Albader Parad, an Abu Sayyaf leader, to release Lacaba, saying that torturing women is forbidden under sharia. Lacaba was released in April 2009. Umar was arrested in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on Jan. 25, 2011, four months before Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a security operation conducted by US Special Forces in the same city. Umar is serving a 20 year sentence due to his involvement in the first Bali bombing in 2002. After the Bali bombing, he flew to the Philippines to join with Abu Sayyaf. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 The government has urged foreign over-the-top (OTT) digital companies providing services in the country to comply with local legal and fiscal regulations following an investigation into four giant tech companies accused of evading taxes. Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said his ministry had urged foreign OTT digital companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo to form legal business entities in Indonesia. "The form of the business entities is still being discussed. They can establish a permanent establishment, joint venture or cooperation with local operators," Rudiantara said in Jakarta on Thursday. Twitter and Facebook currently only have representative offices in the country, while Google and Yahoo are registered as limited companies. However, the four companies act as dependent agents of their Southeast headquarters in Singapore. As a result, the companies' earnings from Indonesia, such as from advertising services, serve as income for their headquarters in Singapore. "Googles business structure is somewhat different. The local office doesnt handle the digital advertising, its headquarters does. We will discuss with them whether the digital advertising will be handled by their office in Indonesia or whether they will establish another form," he explained. According to ministry data, digital advertising in the country stood at more than US$800 million last year, 70 percent of which was enjoyed by Facebook and Google. The ministry also urged OTT providers to implement content filtering, use the national payment gateway and provide access for legal tapping. A week after the warning, Rudiantara said several foreign content providers such as messaging services, social media, games, video streaming sites and data cloud services had consulted with the ministry on cooperating with local providers, including LINE, which has 60 million customers in Indonesia. "In addition, the government will allow for a transition period. We have to be realistic. We also have to accommodate their concerns about licensing and permits," he went on. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 Activists have urged the government to cancel the tax amnesty program and focus on law enforcement instead, citing that such a program had already been implemented in 1984 and failed. The activists argued that the tax amnesty would only satisfy big tax evaders, whom are to be offered a rate of six to eight percent. The penalty for tax avoidance is 48 percent while the normal corporate tax rate is 25 percent. "It will only decrease tax obedience. The government's authority will deteriorate in the eyes of super rich people while those whom obediently pay their taxes, the salary men, will suffer," Fair Tax Forum Coordinator Ah Maftuhchan told thejakartapost.com on Friday. The government has submitted the tax amnesty bill to the House of Representatives for deliberation but many lawmakers are yet to agree with its content. During a House Steering Committee (Bamus) meeting on Wednesday, House Deputy Speaker Agus Hermanto said that several factions had not yet agreed to proceed further with the draft bill. Several House political factions have requested that the draft bill be discussed with President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, a decision that would temporarily halt deliberations. Agus did not say how long deliberations would be postponed. The government needs to focus on law enforcement, setting up a joint team whose members come from the tax office, Financial Service Authority (OJK), Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the National Police, said Maftuhchan. Indonesia currently holds seventh position among the list of countries with highest quantities of black money. During 2003 to 2012, Rp 1,699 trillion or Rp 167 trillion per year is reported to have been transferred. "In 2014 the total transfer reached Rp 227.75 trillion or 11.7 percent of revised state budget," said Publish What You Pay Indonesia Coalition National Coordinator Maryati Abdullah. In 2014, in the mining sector the transfer reached Rp 23.89 trillion, with Rp 21.33 trillion coming from illegal trade and the remaining Rp 2.56 trillion from hot money. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 Asian liquidity stress measured by Moody's Investors Service has shown a worsening trend as most Chinese companies, especially oil and gas companies, have had their ratings downgraded. However, the ratings of most Indonesian companies under Moody's review are steady. Indonesian companies assessed by Moody's included Alam Sutra Realty, Gajah Tunggal and Tower Bersama Infrastructure. The rating agency has maintained their ratings and liquidity status. "The Asian liquidity stress index is at elevated levels because of the weakening trends in corporate liquidity across Asia," Moody's vice president Brian Greiser said in a press statement in Jakarta on Thursday. In China, companies operating in the mining, oil and gas sectors experienced disrupted cash flows while real estate and property companies faced hard sales. Stricter refinancing requirements led to the downgrade of the companies ratings. Indonesian oil and gas company Energi Mega Persada was among Asian companies whose rating outlook is likely to be downgraded by Moody's in 2016. On March 18, Energi Mega was under review for a rating downgrade due to its reliance on short-term funding despite stable gas production and a solid long-term market. The company also depends on a concentrated group of oil and gas producing blocks. In general, liquidity in Asia was weaker compared to other regions as the debt capital markets lacked maturity, causing Asian companies to rely on local banks for uncommitted funding. The bank loans in Asia were rather short termed and less committed, according to Moodys. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 An environmental group and residents are intensifying their efforts to pressure the government into canceling a US$4 billion coal power plant project in Batang, Central Java as they fear the plant will cause pollution, spur human rights violations and threaten locals livelihoods. The project managements failure to meet its fifth deadline for financial closures that fell on April 6, unsettled land acquisition and continuing rights violations may help push the scheme to be scrapped, says Greenpeace Indonesia. We demand that President Jokowi cancel the project, given the persisting human rights violations and threat to locals livelihood in the last five years, Greenpeace energy campaigner Desriko Malayu Putra told the media in Jakarta on Thursday. The power plant, touted as the largest in Southeast Asia, is part of President Joko Jokowi Widodo ' s ambitious plan to add 35,000 MW to the electricity grid by building multiple power plants. Desriko said the project breached Indonesias commitment to tackling climate change. Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) research head Pius Ginting said the power plant project would produce air pollution in its surrounding areas. The project will release about 10.8 million tons of carbon emissions per year. It will adversely impact the climate, human health and cause environmental damage he said. The power plant is the first project to be developed under a public-private partnership scheme involving the government and Bhimasena Power Indonesia (BPI) a consortium consisting of Jakarta-listed PT Adaro Energy, J-Power Electric Power Development Co. Ltd. and Itochu Corp., which won the tender for the Batang project in 2011. The project has been met with strong resistance from Batang residents. Many have refused to sell their property to make way for it. Farmers who refused to give up their land have reported cases of intimidation and blocked access to their homes. Karomat, among farmers who claim to having fallen victim to the project, said the blockade to his property had threatened his livelihood. We feel unprotected and left out after access to our farm was blocked. When can we cultivate our land again? The government and businesses should not do this [to us], he said. With support from local and international environmental organizations, academicians and activists, the locals have appealed to the Japanese government to use its authority and ask Japans Bank for International Cooperation as the main investor to cancel its involvement in the project. (sha/bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 The Financial Services Authority (OJK) wants to increase the ratio of bank assets to gross domestic product (GDP) by five percent per year through financial market expansion. In the next five years, the ratio is expected to reach 75 percent. OJK chairman Muliaman Hadad said the OJK and the central bank would increase the variety of long-term securities. He predicted that financial expansion would help the ratio grow by five percent a year. "So, it will be 75 percent within the next five years. We are still coordinating with Bank Indonesia [BI] to create securities with various tenors such as a year, two years or three years," he said in Jakarta on Friday. Compared to neighboring countries in Asia, whose ratios of banking assets to GDP are above 100 percent, Indonesia has a low ratio of only 55 percent, Muliaman continued. Supporting the effort, BI will develop derivatives in financial markets, namely repurchased agreement (repo) transactions. A repo transaction is a securities sale-and-purchase contract with a pledge to repurchase the securities at an agreed time and price. "The repo transactions can rely on BI certificates and government bonds or other instruments under the OJK," BI governor Agus Martowadjojo said, adding that sharia instruments would also be developed to diversify Islamic finance in Indonesia. Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said Indonesia's current third party funds (DPK) to GDP ratio was relatively low at 40.7 percent. Singapores DPK to GDP ratio is 137 percent, Malaysias is 94 percent, and the Philippines has a DPK to GDP ratio of 55 percent. "These conditions result in a lack of finance propelling development," he said. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Elly Burhaini Faizal (The Jakarta Post) Manado, North Sulawesi Fri, April 8, 2016 The family of Indonesian Peter Tonsen Barahama, who was taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants, hopes the government takes all and any necessary measures to see that he is released safely. Peters family members are becoming increasingly worried as the deadline for negotiations given by the militants, who have taken hostage 10 Indonesian crew members of tugboat Brahma 12 owned by shipping company PT Patria Maritim Line, falls on Friday. Peters parents, Charlos Barahama, 64, and Sopitje Salemburung, 60, are worried because the Indonesian government has until now not been able to bring their son, the vessels captain, back home safely. It is our hope that the vessels owner company can strive to fulfill what has been demanded by the hostage takers. We also hope that the government, the National Police and the Indonesian Military[TNI] can make sure that our son is released safely, said Sopitje, as quoted by kompas.com in Manado on Friday. She said that her family could only pray to God that their son returned home safely. God is still protecting our children [Brahma crewmen] and He is still extending His hands to guard them from the hostage takers, said Sopitje. The militant group has demanded a ransom of Rp 15 billion (US$1.14 million) for the hostages release. Meanwhile, the Indonesian government is in talks with the Philippines in regard to the hostage situation. Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said the owner of the Brahma 12 had agreed to pay 50 million pesos or Rp 14.3 billion to the Abu Sayyaf group. The company is ready to pay [the ransom], said Luhut as quoted by kompas.com at his office on Monday. He did not give details on when the money would be handed over to the hostage takers. Luhut said the government was in continuous communications with the Philippines to monitor the progress of the hostage situation. Based on the communication, the safety of the crewmen has been guaranteed. The Philippines, however, denied the TNI from entering its territory in its efforts to rescue the hostages. However, an option is still open for the two parties to deploy their best special force command personnel to participate in an operation to rescue the hostages. The best option is to deploy our special force personnel to give assistance, said Luhut. He said Indonesia still had several options to consider but could not provide details on them. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Andi Hajramurni (The Jakarta Post) Makassar, South Sulawesi Fri, April 8, 2016 Police officers in Parepare, South Sulawesi, have foiled an attempt to smuggle 1 kilogram of crystal methamphetamine from Tarakan, North Kalimantan, into the regency. The police confiscated the illegal substance from Baharuddin, 37, as he was disembarking a motor boat that had docked at Nusantara Parepare Port. The suspect was hiding a package of crystal meth underneath a jacket he was wearing, Parepare Police chief Adj.Sr.Comr.Alan Gerrit Abast said on Thursday. Alan said the police confiscated the crystal meth during an operation on Monday but they only made the information public on Thursday as they were still pursuing six suspects in the case. He said the police arrested five out of the six suspects while one remained at large. Four suspects, identified as Akbar, 23, Andis, 45, Andi Ukkas, 42, and Amiruddin, 45, were arrested in Pinrang, South Sulawesi. Another suspect identified as Kasman alias Cammang, 20, was apprehended in Makassar. Kasman was assigned the operator of the drug-smuggling operation, in which he prepared transportation and pick-up services. We are still pursuing another man, suspected to be the owner of the crystal meth. Actually, he was traveling with Baharuddin from Tarakan to Parepare; but, he managed to flee, said Alan. Baharuddin and the five others have been named suspects and charged under the Narcotics Law. Alan said that based on information provided by the suspects during interrogation, the illegal drugs were obtained from the Philippines. The crystal meth package was sent to Tarakan via Tawau, Malaysia. It was then picked up in Tarakan and brought to South Sulawesi with sea transportation. Alan acknowledged that the port had become the main entrance of illegal drugs in South Sulawesi. As of April, three crystal meth smuggling attempts have been thwarted at the port. Police officers foiled an attempt to smuggle 10 kg and 1 kg of crystal meth in February and March respectively. The crystal meth was from Malaysia. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Seoul Fri, April 8, 2016 Thirteen North Koreans working at the same restaurant in a foreign country have defected to South Korea, Seoul officials said Friday. People working in North Korean-operated restaurants overseas have previously defected, but this is the first time multiple workers have escaped from the same restaurant, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee told reporters in Seoul. North Korean defections are a bitter point of contention between the rival Koreas. Pyongyang usually accuses Seoul of enticing North Korean citizens to defect, something Seoul denies. Overseas North Korean workers are usually thought to be chosen largely because of their loyalty. Jeong said one male and 12 female North Korean workers arrived in the South on Thursday. He didn't reveal the country where they were working or the route they took to avoid diplomatic problems and possibly endanger North Koreans still working in the country. The Associated Press called a number of North Korean restaurants in Asia, and all were open except one located in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Danang, Vietnam. A person who answered the telephone at the hotel said the Pyongyang Restaurant had closed two weeks ago and all the Korean staff had left the country. She declined to provide more details or identify herself. It was unclear whether the restaurant was connected to the defections. The North Korean defectors told South Korean officials that they learned about the South and began to distrust North Korean propaganda by watching South Korean TV dramas and movies and from searching the Internet while living overseas, Jeong said. South Korean officials believe overseas North Korean restaurants have been suffering economically since stronger international sanctions were applied against North Korea over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. Jeong said the defectors told South Korean officials that their restaurant was struggling to meet demands from North Korean authorities at home for foreign currency. South Korea recently advised its citizens not to patronize North Korean restaurants, although such visits are not illegal. South Korea's spy agency estimates that North Korea runs about 130 restaurants in other countries about 100 in China and the others in Russia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. In a report to the UN General Assembly in October last year, Marzuki Darusman, a UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said more than 50,000 North Koreans are working in foreign countries, mostly in China and Russia, providing a source of money for Pyongyang. He cited various studies, including a 2012 report by the International Network for the Human Rights of North Korean Overseas Labor that estimated North Korea was earning as much as $2.3 billion annually from the workers it sent abroad. The Unification Ministry's website says more than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea as of March. But there have been only a few incidents in which large groups of North Korean defectors entered South Korea at once. North Korea in 2004 accused South Korea of kidnapping its citizens after the South airlifted 468 North Koreans from Vietnam. Seoul said the North Koreans fled their country into China and then traveled overland to Vietnam. In 2011, nine North Koreans used a small boat to defect to South Korea by sea. ___ Associated Press writer Tran Van Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 On account of the higher costs of sukuk issuance compared to conventional bonds, tax incentives are needed to boost sukuk sales, the Financial Services Authority (OJK) has said. "For a country, the higher costs associated with issuing sukuk is not much of a problem but corporations are more sensitive to this matter. Unfortunately, the OJK does not have the right to issue tax incentives," OJK sharia capital market director Fadillah Kartikasasi told thejakartapost.com, recently. Fadillah urged the government, particularly the directorate general of taxation, to amend the tax law to help boost sukuk issuance. According to Fadillah, sukuks structure is relatively more complicated than conventional bonds, which made rating sukuk more expensive. Because of this, many corporations are not considering sukuk as a financial instrument, she said, adding that only a few rating agencies understood the rating process. The OJK has been pushing for incentives for the last three years but progress has been slow, Fadillah added. She also claimed that sukuk could be a supporting instrument for infrastructure development, which is being intensified by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. "But they are again and again choosing [conventional] bonds over sukuk. In Malaysia, when they first started developing Islamic finance, a percentage of sukuk had to go to state-owned enterprises [SOEs] debt," She said. The sovereign (state) sukuk has flourished with higher issuances every year, from 2013 to 2015 there was average issuance growth of 21.65 percent each year. In 2013, 2014 and 2015 issuance amounted to Rp 53.18, 75.54, and 97.92 trillion. Meanwhile, corporate sukuk grew 6.68 percent per year on average, with 2 percent lower value than sovereign. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, the issuance value stood at Rp 2.20, 0.96 and 1.53 trillion, respectively. In 2008, the issuance value of sovereign and corporate sukuk was not significantly different, with Rp 4.69 and 2.32 trillion respectively. But in 2009 when sovereign sukuk issuance skyrocketed 252 percent to Rp 16.55 trillion, corporate sukuk issuance dropped 47.37 percent to just Rp 1.52 trillion. It reached the lowest point in 2010 and 2011 with Rp 0.8 and 0.1 trillion in issuance, before bouncing back. "Global corporate sukuk was affected by the 2008 AAOIFI (Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions) statement that some sukuk did not comply with sharia principles, but it bounced back," University of East London professor in Islamic finance Siraj Sait said. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 8, 2016 The United Kingdom and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) on Friday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to cooperate on promoting religious tolerance and countering extremism. In the modern world, all countries had to deal with extremism, UK Ambassador to Indonesia Moazzam Malik said, adding that in doing so, the countries could learn from each other. Indonesia had firsthand experience in promoting pluralism and moderation in religious practice, Malik said, adding that countering growing extremism required a concrete international program. Islam Nusantara, the tolerant concept of Islam with an Indonesian spirit promoted by NU, is a strong platform to counter the radical interpretation of Islam that had become the roots of terrorism around the world, Malik said. Through the cooperation, the UK did not only want to learn about the concept of progressive Islam Nusantara, but also wanted to encourage NU to spread its moderate and Islamic values to the world. As the largest Islamic organization in the most populous country in Southeast Asia, NU introduced the concept of Islam Nusantara in 2015, aiming to create a genuine identity for Indonesian moderate Muslims that is different from that of Muslim societies in the Middle East. NU chairman Said Aqil Siroj said through Islam Nusantara, the organization wanted to disseminate Islamic values combined with nationalism, since both concepts, when applied together, would make each other stronger. "In conclusion, NU bases its values also on Pancasila, which is a form of tolerance," Said said. Ulema (Muslim scholars) contributed more to society in Indonesia than in the Middle East, even though Indonesian ulema did not have high proficiency about Islam as a religious teaching compared to those in the Middle East, Said explained. Aside from signing the MoU, the UK Foreign Ministry in cooperation with NU also started an exchange student program to enhance personal cooperation between Islamic universities in Indonesia and Islamic institutions in the UK. "It is very important for people in the UK to see Islam in Indonesia," Malik asserted. During the signing of the MoU, Malik was awarded honorary NU membership for being a foreign Muslim who promotes moderate Islamic values. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam Sat, April 9, 2016 Riau Islands Governor Muhammad Sani passed away on Friday after undergoing several days of medical treatment at Abdi Waluyo Hospital in Jakarta. The Riau Islands administrations head of public relations and protocol bureau Hero Mokhrizal told thejakartapost.com that Sani had passed away during a medical procedure at the hospital at 3:08 p.m. local time on Friday. I dont know what illness he suffered from, said Heri. Born on May 11, 1942, Sani was inaugurated as Riau Islands governor by President Joko Jokowi Widodo on Feb.12. Reportedly, Sani had previously received medical treatment at a hospital in Singapore before being treated at Abdi Waluyo Hospital in Jakarta. Several years ago, Sani underwent a surgery on his back in a hospital in a Germany. Sani is widely known as a career civil servant. He was the deputy of former Riau Islands governor Ismeth Abdullah between 2005 and 2010. Sani was then elected as Riau Islands governor with Soeryo Respationo as his deputy for the 2010-2015 period. Competing for a second term as governor in the 2015 election, Sani chose Nurdin Basirun as his running mate. He faced Soeryo, his former deputy governor, who was then running for the gubernatorial position. Sani won the election, supported by the Democratic Party, the NasDem Party and several other small parties. Sanis victory shocked many people as several surveys prior to the election showed that Soerya was in the lead. Soerya was also supported by President Jokowi as he was Jokowis campaign team leader for Sumatra during the 2014 presidential election. After he was installed as governor, Sani prioritized developments in a number of fields, namely education, transportation, infrastructure, tourism and investment. He also promised that he would improve coordination between the central government and local administrations during his leadership. Riau Islands Legislative Council Speaker Jumaga Nadeak said the governors body was flown to Batam on Friday afternoon. [...] He will be laid to rest in Tanjung Pinang, said Jumaga. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Cato, Philippines/Tanmen, China/Donggang, Taiwan/Jakarta/Danang, Vietnam Fri, April 8, 2016 As Asian countries jostle for territory in the South China Sea, one Filipino fisherman is taking a stand. He has faced down Chinese coast guard rifles, and even engaged in a stone-throwing duel with the Chinese last month that shattered two windows on his outrigger. "They'll say, 'Out, out of Scarborough,'" Renato Etac says, referring to Scarborough Shoal, a rocky outcropping claimed by both the Philippines and China. He yells back, "Where is the document that shows Scarborough is Chinese property?" At one level, the territorial disputes in the South China Sea are a battle of wills between American and Chinese battleships and planes. At another level, they are cat-and-mouse chases between the coast guards of several countries and foreign fishermen, and among the fishing boats themselves. Indonesia seized a Chinese fishing boat last month and arrested eight fishermen, only to have a Chinese coast guard vessel ram the fishing boat as it was being towed, allowing it to escape. Vietnam's coast guard chased away more than 100 Chinese boats over a two-week period, its state media reported this week, and made a rare seizure of a Chinese ship carrying 100,000 liters (26,400 gallons) of diesel oil, reportedly for sale to fishing boats in the area. The South China Sea, a hodgepodge of overlapping territorial claims in the Pacific, is both strategically important and a vital shipping route for international trade. It may also contain valuable oil and natural gas reserves. As tensions ratchet up, though, it is perhaps those who make a living at sea who feel it the most. Here are some stories from fishermen around the region: PHILIPPINES: THE GUARDIAN OF SCARBOROUGH SHOAL Renato Etac has had dozens of encounters with Chinese ships. More than once, a small team of Chinese coast guardsmen on a rubber boat approached his boat and pointed their rifles at him, but he says he knew they would not fire and risk starting a war. At other times, the Chinese will surge as if to hit his boat, but the 37-year-old fisherman uses his keen knowledge of Scarborough Shoal where he has fished for Spanish mackerel, trevally and grouper since he was a teenager to outmaneuver them. Etac says he just wants to defend his livelihood in waters that used to be open to all. China took control of Scarborough Shoal in 2012 after a two-month standoff with Philippine government ships. It sits about 230 kilometers (145 miles) west of the Philippines, and 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the Chinese coast. "It's like quarreling, like playing games," he says. "Yelling, dirty finger, everything's there. Sometimes I use expletives in different dialects and I get to laugh when I see them, because they don't understand what I'm saying." He enjoys what he calls the territorial "debates" in the high seas, though his earnings from a weeklong fishing expedition have dropped by more than half to 3,000 pesos (US$63), because of both the Chinese disruptions and competition. "He's like the guardian of Scarborough, sir," said Greggy Etac, a relative and a fellow fisherman. "I used to sail with him, but now, I'm scared." Jim Gomez in Cato, Philippines. CHINA: COAST GUARD TO THE RESCUE Chinese fishermen working out of the Hainan island port of Tanmen say they now enjoy much greater support from their country's beefed-up coast guard. They have been forced to range further out to sea because of the heavy depletion of coastal fisheries, says Li Xianchuan, a 64-year-old crew member who has been fishing in and around Scarborough, the Spratly islands and the closer-in Paracels claimed also by Vietnam for 40 years. "There are many more fish in the Nansha islands, particularly Huangyan island," he says, using the Chinese terms for the contested Spratly group and Scarborough Shoal. In previous years, Chinese government ships would issue radio warnings about the presence of Philippine patrol ships around Scarborough Shoal. "It was very dangerous and scary," he says, as his 90-ton vessel takes on fresh water in preparation for a foray into the South China Sea. "We had to run around the reefs to get away from big [Philippine] boats. Thanks to the shallow water and submerged reefs, their big boats could not enter the reefs. We played hide-and-seek inside the reef until their boats gave up and left." Conditions for Chinese fishermen have vastly improved with the addition of new and larger Chinese coast guard vessels and a more proactive approach, Li says. A call to the coast guard will bring help within two to three hours, he says. Fishing in the South China Sea remains perilous, Li says. Fishermen must contend with rogue sailors from Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia who might try to rob them of their catches and fishing equipment. Li says he has been fired on once, and knows of several fishermen killed in encounters with Philippine boats. Zhang Weiqun in Tanmen, China Fishermen and buyers gather at a tuna auction at Donggang fishery port in Taiwan, March 31.(AP/Johnson Lai) TAIWAN: FEAR OF BANDITRY AT SEA Heightened competition, and even banditry, is making it ever-harder to make a living, says Taiwanese fishing boat owner Hong Huai-jen. "Now, they are not only fishing in the South China Sea, but have also broken into our territorial waters," Hong says, standing by his boat in the southern Taiwan port of Donggang, which looks out on the Taiwan Strait. His boat was surrounded last November by a group of Vietnamese fishing boats in waters off Taiwan, presumably for the purpose of robbing him. He managed to give them the slip and called the Taiwanese coast guard for help. The Vietnamese boats had dispersed by the time help arrived. "Taiwanese fishermen don't have any weapons," Hong says. "Once they board our boats, there's nothing we can do. We would be detained and we have to pay for our release." He has been fishing for 14 years from his home port on Xiaoliuqiu, an island in the Taiwan Strait. "There's a big difference compared with the business we had before," he says. "My father has worked as a fisherman for about 40 years. The fishery resources were rich, and there were fewer fishing boats before. But now, the resources are thin and there are lots of boats." Johnson Lai in Donggang, Taiwan Secretary-General of Indonesian Fishermens Association Anton Leonard speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Jakarta, April 6. (AP/Tatan Syuflana) INDONESIA: ANCESTRAL DISPUTES Fish-rich waters around Indonesia's Natuna Islands have a long history of being contested, says Anton Leonard, a fisherman and exporter who is secretary-general of the Indonesian Fishermen's Association representing traditional fishermen. "Fishermen that come from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and China have told native fishermen that Natuna waters are their traditional fishing grounds since the time of their ancestors," says Leonard. "Local fishermen in Natuna could not resist their presence because some of them believe the claims, others because such vessels are much bigger, more advanced and sometimes also carrying weapons." Native fisherman haven't been directly affected by South China Sea incidents that involve Chinese patrol boats, likely because they don't venture far out into Indonesia's exclusive economic zone, he says. But Indonesia's crackdown on foreign fishing vessels in its waters and a policy against "transshipment" of fish between boats at sea has affected the livelihood of traditional fisherman because they have fewer opportunities to sell their catch. At the same time, the government lacks a comprehensive strategy to empower the fishermen and improve their industry, Leonard says. "We are not afraid to face foreign boats coming into our territory," Leonard said. "We're eager to help the government and waiting to be involved in the defense of the country, even if only to be able to inform the local authorities about their presence within our waters." Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia VIETNAM: FEARING CHINA For five generations, Tran Lan's family has been fishing in the South China Sea. He was 17 when he started going out in a small boat with his father. The family did well enough to buy two wooden trawlers for US$90,000 each. His four sons, now aged 19 to 30, joined him. The decades-old routine changed in the early 2000s when their boat was threatened and nearly rammed by Chinese maritime police four times near the Paracel Islands in South China Sea. They switched their fishing grounds to the less bountiful Tonkin Gulf, but still work in constant fear of being attacked by the Chinese. "We have equipped GPS and navigation to identify Chinese boats so we can avoid them," Lan says. "The last thing I want is to get too close to Chinese boats. They have bigger boats and definitely would outrun us." His boats were among about 1,000 anchored at Tho Quang terminal, the biggest in the central port city of Danang. He and others were busily readying their boats to go back to sea. Each expedition lasts up to 30 days, punctuated by two to three weeks in port to rest and repair boats and gear. Vietnam, China and Taiwan all claim the Paracel Islands, which have been controlled by China since 1974. Vietnam has accused China of harassing and attacking its fishermen in what it says are traditional fishing grounds near the Paracels that they have been working for generations. "I was fishing near the Paracel Islands for a long time, but the Chinese have sealed it off," Lan says, whose family earns about $27,000 a year catching squid. "It was a good area for fishing." Hau Dinh in Danang, Vietnam Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Rod McGuirk (Associated Press) Canberra Fri, April 8, 2016 Former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Friday accused the United States and Australia of lacking transparency over US President Barack Obama's decision five years ago to rotate US Marines through the Australian city of Darwin as part of the US pivot to Asia. Obama announced during a visit to Australia in 2011 that he would send military aircraft and up to 2,500 Marines to northern Australia for a training hub to help allies and protect American interests across Asia. Yudhoyono, who was Indonesia's president at the time, told a security conference in the Australian capital Canberra on Friday that he first heard about the decision from a journalist days earlier while attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Hawaii. "It was a surprise to me. Eventually things cleared up, but communication is important to avoid misunderstanding and build confidence and trust," Yudhoyono said. Both Obama and the then Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard attended the same APEC summit. Yudhoyono, who led Australia's second-nearest neighbor for a decade ending in 2014, said it was important for countries in the Asia-Pacific region to maintain strategic transparency. "In any situation where Australia or her allies decide to deploy larger forces, especially in the northern part of Australia, with weapons systems and equipment, it is critical to communicate with Indonesia and other countries," he said. Yudhoyono, who was an army general before entering politics, said he was worried that a military build-up by China and other countries in the region had been coupled with a "reduction of strategic trust" among governments. Countries with competing territorial claims in the South China Sea need to "refrain from provocative acts" and to constantly reaffirm their commitment to a peaceful solution through consultation, he said. He said strategic unknowns facing the region's future include the outcome of the US presidential elections which he described as "arguably the most consequential elections, in terms of impact on international affairs." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) Denpasar, Bali Sun, May 15, 2016 Balinese community leaders have called on the government to implement policies that encourage sustainable tourism on the island. "We urgently need government policies to seriously take control of the rapid development of Bali tourism," said Bali Community Leaders Alliance (ATMB) coordinator Agung Suryawan Wiranatha. Established last year, many Balinese community leaders have joined in the alliance, including tourism practitioners. Agung said ATMB had given several recommendations to government institutions, including the Tourism Ministry and Bali Tourism Agency regarding the suggested policies. Among the alliances recommendations is a moratorium on new hotel construction in southern Bali. It said that Bali needed to stop developing new tourist accommodation for at least the next five to 10 years. "The increasing number of tourist accommodation in Bali has caused unfair business competition, which led to a hotel price war," Agung said. The Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) Bali chapter recorded a total of 120,000 hotel rooms across Bali at the end of 2015, most of which were located in southern Bali. The agency alleged that many people offering rooms had not obtained the necessary permits to do so. PHRI Bali chairman Tjokorda Oka Artha Ardhana Sukawati said the price war had hit Balis tourist sector, as many new hotels were offering low prices. An oversupply of hotel rooms has also caused low occupancy. "The average hotel occupancy rate is now around 60-70 percent. If this situation persists, many hotels will cease operations," said Ardhana, who is also a member of the alliance. The increasing number of tourists to the island in the last decade has boosted tourism-related investment. Bali has seen 15 percent foreign tourist arrival growth each year. Last year, more than 4 million foreign tourists visited the destination, excluding foreign tourists traveling to Bali indirectly via domestic flights and sea transportation. The island also welcomed at least 7 million domestic tourists in 2015. "Unfortunately, the development of Bali tourism is not being controlled. We allege that there are many hotels operating without legal permits. The development of new facilities also tends to damage the surrounding environment," Agung said. Besides a moratorium on new hotel construction, the alliance also urged the government to consistently enforce Bali's spatial planning and culture tourism bylaws, which were aimed to protect the regions culture and nature from uncontrolled development. Bali's 2009 spatial planning bylaw offers stronger protection for the islands ecological integrity by strictly regulating development plans at vulnerable sites such as the construction of tourist and business facilities near sacred sites, on cliffs, riverbanks, lakeshores and coastlines. The alliance also urged the government to implement the one island management principle for Bali. "Bali is a small island with limited natural resources. It should be managed properly as one island," Agung said. "Priorities should be given to tourism development in the northern, eastern and western part of Bali. We urge the government to improve transportation infrastructure to ease access to other parts of Bali," he added. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Keshie Hernitaningtyas (The Jakarta Post) Spain Fri, April 8, 2016 In this second part of "What to do in southern Spain", discover other things to do while exploring the region. You could spend memorable nights in a 16th century Andalusian Renaissance hotel and marvel at Pablo Picasso's artworks. 4. Stay in Renaissance-style accommodation Those interested in spend several memorable nights in an upscale heritage establishment can opt to stay at the five-star Palacio de Ubeda in Ubeda. Located in a 16th century Andalusian Renaissance property and opened last year, the building formally belonged to one of the most important families in the country's kingdom. A Romanesque-style church, said to been built at the site of a former mosque, is connected to the hotel and regularly hosts special events. In addition to exceptional service, the sumptuous rooms are one of the hotel's highlights, which led to our group of guests enthusiastically checking out each other's room to compare. Set on a 16th century Andalusian Renaissance property, Palacio de Ubeda belonged to the most important families of the country's kingdom for centuries.(thejakartapost.com/Keshie Hernitaningtyas) 5. Enjoy kid-friendly attractions Conveniently situated inside the city of Valencia, Bioparc is home to more than 4,000 African animals from 250 different species. According to our tour guide Martha, you should spare at least two to three hours to explore the entire place, which includes four recreated African ecosystems Savannah, Madagascar Island, Equatorial Forest and Wetlands. Dubbed the biggest recreational and cultural center in Europe, Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences features notable architectural design which looks particularly picturesque at night as well as other interesting attractions. The latter includes the continents largest aquarium, called Oceanografic, which hosts 45,000 marine creatures from some 500 different species. The marine mammal belugas also known as sea canaries because they love to sing, are one of the main attractions, said Oceanografics marketing officer, Carmen. Conveniently situated in the inner city, the Bioparc is home to more than 4,000 African animals from 250 different species. (thejakartapost.com/Keshie Hernitaningtyas) 6. Go museum hopping In Malaga, prepare to explore and marvel at the artsy life and notable artwork of Pablo Picasso. Born on October 25, 1881, at the citys number 36 Plaza de la Merced (now number 15), the home in which Picasso was born has been the head office of the Fundacion Picasso, also known as the Pablo Ruiz Picasso Foundation, since 1988. Several rooms and objects are exhibited on the first floor, offering insight into the painters origins and early years in Malaga. One of the most notable works of art there is a drawing book containing Picassos rough sketches of Las senoritas de Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon), which was made in 1907. The Museo Picasso Malaga is also a must-see for fans of Picasso since it hosts pieces that he never wanted to sell, including a painting he produced when he was 16 years old. Compared to similar museums in Paris and Barcelona, the Malaga museum is said to offer a more personal collection, including those belonging to his family. Almost 300 pieces of artwork are available, although only 120 are on display. For those visiting Valencia outside of March 15 to 19, when the Fallas Festival takes place, the Fallas Museum offers a glimpse of the festivities. Said to be a celebration of carpentry in commemoration of Saint Joseph, the festival centers on the expression of art using hundreds of large wooden structures covered with painted papier-mache and other materials. The event climaxes with lighting Falla monuments on fire. Since it is also a satirical look at various issues and themes, you can have fun by trying to guess the meaning behind the ninots indultats, or mini monuments that have been saved from the flames and showcased at the museum. Nestled in a 15th century Baroque-style palace, Valencia's National Ceramics Museum is a favorite holiday snap spot among tourists due to its unusual alabaster entrance. Inside, you can find a vast collection of ceramics, from prehistoric, Roman, Greek and Arab eras to contemporary works such as those by Picasso, all displayed in an appropriately elegant setting. In Ubeda, Museo de Alfareria Paco Tito offers an interesting excursion as the town is one of the most important and oldest pottery centers in Spain. The origins of earthenware production in Ubeda date back thousands of years to prehistoric times, but it was the Andalusians who encouraged the art of pottery. In addition to marveling at the vast collection of earthenware used during the old days and shopping, visitors can also learn to make pottery and explore the museums workshop. Pablo Tito, the third generation of the family that currently runs the Museo de Alfareria Paco Tito, shows how the art of pottery is done, accompanied by his already talented little daughter.(thejakartapost.com/Keshie Hernitaningtyas) Explore other recommended adventures in southern Spain in the first and third articles. Things to do in southern Spain: Explore heritage sites, tour olive oil farms Things to do in southern Spain: Wine tasting, explore picturesque village of Mijas Enjoy the video here. French MPs approve contested ban on paying for sex PARIS: French lawmakers on Wednesday (Apr 6) passed a controversial law that makes it illegal to pay for sex and imposes fines of up to 3,750 euros (B149,951) on prostitutes clients. economicssex By AFP Friday 8 April 2016, 03:22PM All European countries penalise pimping, but France will become only the fifth to punish the clients of prostitutes, along with Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Britain. Photo: Fabrice Randoux/AFP Around 60 sex workers staged a noisy protest outside parliament during the final debate on the bill that will affect the livelihoods of at least 30,000 prostitutes in France, four in five of whom are foreign. Some carried a banner reading Dont liberate me, Ill take care of myself!, while another poster read, in English, Sex work is work. Backed by the Socialist government, the legislation has been nearly two and a half years in the making. All European countries penalise pimping, but France will become only the fifth to punish the clients of prostitutes, along with Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Britain. Sweden in 1999 became the first country in the world to make it illegal to pay for sex, in a bid to lower demand. In France, predominantly right-wing senators have opposed the ban on paying for sex, which will be punishable by a 1,500-euro (B59,980) fine for first offenders, increasing to 3,750 euros for repeat offenders. But after previous debates in both chambers of parliament ended in deadlock, the lower house, dominated by the left, had the final say. The proposal introduced in October 2013 has divided public opinion in France, prompting a group of 343 public figures to issue what they called a scumbags manifesto asserting the right to use prostitutes. The signatories, who included journalists, writers and actors, said they resented being depicted as perverts or psychopaths and refused to allow deputies (to) legislate norms on our desires and our pleasures. Socialist lawmaker Maud Olivier, the architect of the bill, has argued repeatedly that prostitutes should be seen as victims and no longer as delinquents. The new law will supersede a little enforced 2003 measure penalising the solicitation of clients for sex. This law is essential to ending the idea that it is normal to buy someones body, Olivier said. We will succeed in changing the mentality, but new efforts are needed to raise awareness, to train police officers and magistrates. The new law will also require offenders to take a course to learn about the conditions faced by sex workers. The bill calls for measures backed by an annual budget of 4.8 million euros (B192m) to help prostitutes find other jobs and a six-month residency permit for foreign sex workers. The bulk of sex workers in France are from eastern Europe, Africa, China and Latin America. The law will increase police repression (and) degrade working conditions a member of the Strass sex workers union said at Wednesdays protest. Around 20 people held a counter-demonstration nearby waving a banner reading Prostitution, Just One Option, Abolition. On Tuesday, 13 associations that support prostitutes joined forces to condemn the law which they said threatened the livelihoods of sex workers and was essentially repressive. We already see the consequences. Those who can afford to have left for neighbouring countries, while others are looking for... procurers to put them in contact with clients, said Morgane Merteuil, another Strass member said earlier. Critics also point to the difficulty of proving payment for sex, since the money usually changes hands in private. And those who buy sex over the Internet are unlikely to be caught by the new law, experts say. Dating websites are one of the main ways to connect prostitutes and clients, said sociologist Laurent Melito. Then people call each other. How are you going to control that? The kinds of algorithms used to block child pornography and jihadist recruitment cannot be used to combat prostitution because the "risk of error" is too great, communications researcher Olivier Ertzscheid said. Phuket Naka Noi land probe given May 6 deadline PHUKET: The investigative committee tasked with deciding which claims to land on Naka Noi Island are legitimate has been given until May 6 to announce its ruling. landpropertycrimeconstructioneconomicsenvironmenttourism By Darawan Naknakhon Friday 8 April 2016, 11:17AM Phuket Vice Governor Chokdee Amornwat (left) no found no guns and no heavy equipment for clearing forest, as alleged by famous Thai actor Puri Hiranprueck. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon Naka Noi Island comprises 100 rai, of which the Hiranprueck family owns 53 rai and Phukhaohokluk Co Ltd claiming 24 rai. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon Phuket Vice Governor Chokdee Amornwat announced the deadline after his inspection of the island yesterday (April 7), in his failed search for evidence to support claims by Thai actor Puri Hiranpreuck that more than 10 men armed with guns had moved in with heavy machinery to start cutting down trees on what Mr Puri claims is public land. (See story here.) More than 30 officials joined V/Gov Chokdee in his inspection, including Capt Sathaporn Wajrat of the Royal Thai Navy, who also serves as Deputy Director of Phuket Provincial Office of Internal Security Operations Command (Isoc) and Lt Sompop Kamkhana also of the Royal Thai Navy. We saw no signs of forest being cleared and discovered only a few cement steps were made to go up the hill into the forest, V/Gov Chokdee said We talked with three workers who were camping in the area. We found no guns on them or any heavy machinery in the area, only a kitchen knife, dried food, cooking supplies and water, he confirmed. The alarmist Facebook post, in which Mr Puri said that he and his family felt threatened by the armed men, is the latest episode in an ongoing battle between the Hiranprueck family and Phukhaohokluk Co Ltd (Six Mountains Co Ltd), which claims to own 24 rai on Naka Noi, said V/Gov Chokdee. The feud spilled into the public domain in December, when Mr Puri invited Department of Special Investigation (DSI) and the press to inspect the island as the DSI were investigating his claims that the land titles held by Phukhaohokluk Co Ltd were illegally issued, and that the land claimed was state property. (See story here.) Chanwit Kitlerdsiriwattana and the two other main investors of Phukhaohokluk Co Ltd have a NorSor 3 land document which they say proves their legal claim to the land, V/Gov Chokdee said. But Mr Puri in December filed a complaint with the DSI, and since then that land deed has been under investigation. In December both parties were granted three months up until April 24 to file their complaints against each other and since then both parties have been filing complaints to the Phuket Provincial Office (headed by the Phuket Governor) and the Thalang Police. But on April 28 the committee set up to investigate these land claims on Naka Noi will meet to decide whether the land documents for Phukhaohokluk Co Ltd are legal. We have set May 6 as our deadline to conclude this issue, he said. The claims and counter-claims between the two parties has forced officials to rule on what seems to be a battle for a private island, a battle that the Hiranprueck family seems to be winning. Pol Lt Col Prawut Wongsinil, chief of the DSIs Consumer and Environment Protection Division, in December revealed his suspicions that a land title from another island was used to create the NorSor 3 that Phukhaohokluk Co Ltd holds, using the notorious Flying SorKor 1 scam. Meanwhile, Phuket Land Office Chief Watcharin Jetanawanich, who along with Krabi Forestry officials accompanied V/Gov Chokdee for the inspection yesterday, said he believed the Hiranprueck familys land deeds were genuine. The entire area on Koh Naka Noi is about 100 rai and no areas were marked for land reform use (SorPorKor) or declared protected forest, so before 1994 people could claim plots and apply for SorKor 1 land deeds,Mr Watcharin explained. Our office investigated the Hiranprueck familys land document covering 53 rai and it is clear they obtained the land document legally, but officials will re-examine it while the land claimed by Phukhaohokluk is under investigation, he said. In defence of his claim, Mr Charnwit, Managing Director of Phukhaohokluk Co Ltd, told The Phuket News that he bought the land from the Thawthip family in 2014 and had the land surveyed and obtained legal documents from government officials. Government officials checked all the paperwork related to the land that was sold to me, he said. And before we went into the area (on April 5), we told police what we were going to do. I insisted that the workers did not bring weapons or backhoes to the area. We do not want to clear the forest, and we will wait for officials to investigate the legal rights of the land for us and them (the Hiranprueck family), Mr Charnwit said. Regarding complaints that people arriving from the mainland being ordered off the beach on the Hiranprueck land, V/Gov Chokdee said, The land title itself shows that the beach area in front of the Hiranprueck property is public land. Some residents from Phuket have complained that they cannot access the beach. The Thalang District Chief and Phuket Land Office will look in to this and organize the beach area just like any other beaches on Phuket so people can access them. This includes the rules and regulations of beach chairs and umbrellas, he said. 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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 How to watch and what to know about South Dakota State at North Dakota Your digital subscription includes access to all content on our agricultural websites across the nation. Access unlimited content and the digital versions of our print editions - This Week's Paper. The following editorial appeared in The Orange County Register on Monday, April 4: ___ We find it troubling that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton proposes new SWAT teams of government experts to address problems with schools, veterans care and businesses. The acronym derives from Special Weapons and Tactics units. According to the website of the Los Angeles Police Department, the teams first were formed in the late 1960s as a result of several sniping incidents against civilians and police officers around the country, including the 1965 Watts riots. Unfortunately, SWAT teams have proliferated even to small police departments and commonly are used for arresting people on minor offenses, such as drug possession or gambling. Cato Institute scholar Radley Balko provided numerous disturbing incidents in his recent book, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America. Trying to get an edge on opponent Bernie Sanders in their debate last month in Detroit, Clinton proposed, I want to set up inside the Department of Education, for want of a better term, kind of an education SWAT team, if you will. The team would swoop into underperforming schools and supposedly fix them. The proposal doesnt take into account that a major contributor to public educations problems is the vast increase in federal meddling in education since the late 1950s, precluding local control. Moreover, as we are seeing with the increase in charter schools and use of the parent trigger law, which enables parents to replace the administration at their childrens school, the solution to underperforming schools is competition or new management under parents, not more bureaucrats from distant Washington, D.C. Discussing last October the problems in the Veterans Administration, Clinton noted, I have said I would like to literally appoint a SWAT team to bring in people and just tackle the disability of a veteran forced to wait for treatment. And, in December, she said companies that close should bring a kind of SWAT team response, to be able to help communities invest in something new. In such instances, whats needed is not new, heavy-handed government involvement, but private alternatives to the VA for veterans and lower taxes and regulations for businesses. Nora Coghlan, News Editor coghlann17@grinnell.edu This April the Artists@Grinnell residency program is hosting choreographer Daniel Singh. Singh holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Maryland, College Park and has been choreographing and performing in the Washington D.C. area for 14 years. On Saturday, April 9, Singhs Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company will perform Mortal Tongues, Immortal Stories, a multimedia dance performance at 7:30 p.m. in Roberts Theatre. The inspiration for Mortal Tongues, Immortal Stories came from poets and writers who lost their lives to AIDS. To make the piece multimedia, Singh incorporates the work of these artists into the performance through the use of projections and spoken word. The performance is inspired by poems by writers who were lost to AIDS. So the spoken word aspect comes from that, but rather than just have the poems recited, we wanted to look at how we could make the words a part of the feel of the dance, Singh said. While company members perform modern dance choreography, the stage will light up with abstract projections of poems and the image of a deteriorating human cell infected with HIV. Two slam poets will also be reciting work during the show and dancers will interact with the projections to highlight the power and influence of the words. The stage is covered with those projections and we wanted to use the projections as metaphorical bridges or isolating rooms because words can connect but words can also isolate, Singh said. Faulconer Gallery Director and Artists@Grinnell Committee Member Lesley Wright believes that the performance will combine aspects of art and activism. His performance, which connects to the LGBTQ community, humanizes the ongoing AIDS crisis through dance, Wright wrote in an email to the S&B. In addition to Saturdays performance, Singhs residency includes several other events that involve interaction with the Grinnell community. Throughout the week Singh taught master classes and technique classes for Grinnell students, held a panel talk on Friday with members of his company and is working on choreographing a piece for Grinnell students to be performed later this month. Wright insisted that Singhs willingness to host these events played a role in the decision to bring him to campus. We hope the artists can work with our students as well as perform or exhibit their work. One advantage of Daniel was his willingness to work with and involve students, she wrote. Daniels international influences and his involvement in social justice and gender issues added to the attractiveness of his candidacy as a visiting artist. Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company performs classical Indian dance, modern and fusion styles. Although the performance on Saturday will be primarily modern, Singh insisted that he tries to focus on interdisciplinary and multicultural approaches in his work. We try to work in interdisciplinary ways as much as possible. We present classical Indian dance, modern dance and fusion in most of the shows. This is actually unusual in that we are doing mostly a modern dance show [in Grinnell], he said. So I think I am interested in looking at what happens when their intersections are crossed in poetry and dance, or media and dance, or cross-culturally when you put different things together and [see] what sticks together and whats a mess. The piece that Singh is choreographing for Grinnell students will draw from the idea of the circle prevalent in Asian mythology. [Circles are] an important theme in Asian mythology. Everything that rises comes down, the circle of life, all those kinds of things are very strongly built into mythology and in Indian stories, so I wanted to use the idea to create a dance, he said. Singhs cross-cultural choreography, multimedia approach and social justice-minded performances are bound to connect with students and community members alike. It should be an exciting month, Wright wrote. Sam Curry currysam@grinnell.edu Warm Welcomes, a small local business that offers gift bags to residents moving to towns in central Iowa, has recently expanded its operations to Grinnell. The company has offered gifts bags for newcomers to Grinnell full of gift certificates for free and reduced services from local businesses since January 2016, and, so far, about 20 businesses have signed on. These include Prairie Canary, Bikes to You, Pizza Ranch and Grinnell College itself, among others. The Grinnell division of Warm Welcomes is helmed by Heidi Knobloch, who also works in the Off-Campus Study department at the College. She meets residents who are new to town, points them towards the helpful services of local businesses and answers questions they have about the community. Although Warm Welcomes now operates in Grinnell, it originally began in the nearby town of Pella about 17 years ago. Lori Morgan, the current owner, started the company there in 1999 after a previous company, the Welcome Wagon, dissolved. Morgan was motivated by a desire to make new people feel welcome in small towns, as it can sometimes to be difficult to integrate into smaller communities. [Morgan] wanted to make sure that residents in small communities felt welcomed and had a way to make connections with locals, wrote Knoblach in an email to the S&B. According to Knobloch, the work that Warm Welcomes does is quite rewarding, as it help connects members of the community together in ways that are beneficial to both individuals and businesses. Knobloch also personally benefits from the experience of meeting new people through her work, many of whom she has connections with in other towns in central Iowa. My favorite part is getting to meet new people, and helping them get connected with businesses, organizations and other community members. Its pretty amazing some of the connections Ive made with newcomers, from mutual people we know or previous communities in which weve both had experiences. Its also great to see how excited new residents get when they see all of the great discounted and free services they receive through Warm Welcomes, wrote Knobloch. The company also plays a role in supporting the buy local movement, as most of the gift cards are for local companies and organizations, such as the Grinnell Chamber of Commerce, Grinnell Investment Center and Acupuncture Grinnell. These discounts encourage new residents to keep their dollars within the town, and develop and preserve the community of which they have recently become a part. Warm Welcomes provides [new residents] with opportunities to keep their business local and to make new connections with not only business owners and employees but also community members, wrote Knobloch. Warm Welcomes is always looking to expand its friendly reach to new customers, towns and businesses. In previous stops, such as in Newton, the company has offered internships to local students, and the same option may be available in the future in Grinnell. Previously [Morgan] has hired college interns at the Pella location [and] interns have designed Spiritual Resource Directories and Community Organizational Directories this has the potential to give students confidence to work with business owners, and it exposes them to other business contacts, which can open doors to future job opportunities. This internship opportunity could be something that I look into for Grinnell in the near future, wrote Knobloch. The Grinnell Area Chamber of Commerce welcomed Warm Welcomes to town with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Louis Sullivan Jewel Box Bank. Warm Welcomes hopes to continue have a positive impact on the Grinnell community. Eva Lilienfeld, News Editor lilienfe17@grinnell.edu What do Golda Meir and Professor Katya Gibel Mevorach, Anthropology, have in common? Both the Israeli politician and Grinnells own Anthropology professor have spent time at Cafe Taamon, the subject of Michael Teutschs documentary, Cafe Taamon, King-George-Street, Jerusalem. The documentary was shown at Grinnell on Wednesday, April 6, and was followed up with a Q&A with the director. The cafe is one of the oldest in Jerusalem and has long since been a hotbed of activism and social movements. In its near-100 year history, Cafe Taamon has been a spot for political minds, radical thinkers and artists to congregate in one of the worlds most famous cities. Teutsch followed several activists and the people frequenting the cafe and created a documentary both about the role activists play in a movement and the shop itself. [The documentary] is in-depth interviews with several people who were activists back in the day and who continue to be involved in the roles they did at the time, said Gibel Mevorach, who will chair the Multicultural Films Committee next year. Some of the activists featured in the film include an attorney who at the time was one of two lawyers in Israel willing to defend Palestinians and the then-leader of the Black Panther movement. The people that we see continue to act even when theres no one behind them, Mevorach said. With the momentum, its easy to be in a situation where youre all together and it feels good. Theres a feel good aspect to it. When that has died down, theres something else movements on the left disappear. That really is where I hope the focus of attention can be sparked. Unlike other films that chronicle political and social movements, Teutschs documentary tells a story partially through character flashbacks. Teutsch features the activists both today and in the 1960s when they were pioneering the movements that they would spend the rest of their lives leading, which some screening attendees felt had profound effects. I thought it was pretty sad how there was this very vibrant movement going on and in the end nothing really happens, said Nina Galanter 18, who attended the screening. To me [the lesson] of the film was unclear. Though the documentary follows several very different movements and raises questions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as domestic Israeli politics, Mevorach said that she hopes students watching take note of the underlying issues and consider the importance of continuing to do activist work even when it becomes unpopular or some of the movement slows. I would like the campus to focus on what is it to be an activist, Mevorach said. At the end of the day, around the world right now, there is lots of activism. There are movements that [were] headed toward major transformation and then they petered out for lots of different reasons. So the key question is, for young people, where do you see yourself 25 years from now? And I want that to be the focus of the film. Sam Curry currysam@grinnell.edu Throughout the entirety of April, the Asian American Association (AAA) is hosting a series of events to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Formally, this takes place in May. However, because Grinnell commences before the end of the month, the AAA opted to have the events take place in April. This year marks the second year that AAA has organized a month of events in recognition of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Beginning with a screening of the documentary Hafu on Thursday, April 7, scheduled events will range from speakers to film showings to performances by Grinnell students. Planned festivities will conclude on April 29 with a potluck. Among the numerous activities, AAA cabinet members Jennifer Joy 16 and Matt Kartanata 17 stated that they are most looking forward to author Jenny Zhangs speech and Q&A session on April 11. Zhang will discuss her experiences writing as a person of color and the presumptions that come with being a writer in that space. She felt that her breadth of creativity was limited in that writers of color are frequently assigned roles of only writing on their struggles, of only writing on their race [and] their work as being autobiography or sociology, rather than being a piece of art, Joy said. The month of events will also feature a returnee to campus, in the form of Mira Yusef, the executive director of Monsoon United Asian Women of Iowa. Members of AAA developed an interest in contacting Yusef after seeing her speak at a panel during Sexual Assault Awareness Week in March. For this months event, Yusef will discuss sexuality and sexual violence within the lens of culture heritage. Kartanata believes Yusefs visit will help widen the scope of understanding of sexual and mental health on campus. When we think about the expanding conversation about mental health on campus or sexuality or sexual assault awareness, people think of it in a very Westernized type of waywe must sit down and have therapy and talk one-on-one with this person and thats how youre going to get through but maybe [this talk will help] thinking about what alternative ways can we help address these issues on a diverse campus, Kartanata said. A number of the events will also feature student work and performance, such as an Open Mic at Bobs on April 14, karaoke in Lyles on April 22 and the capstone potluck on the 29th. The Open Mic will occur in partnership with the Multicultural Leadership Council (MLC), and Kartanata said that he hopes it will attract performances from people who do not typically perform at open mics. This open mic is pointed, in collaboration with MLC, to voice those [underrepresented] students of course, everyone is still welcome to perform, its an open mic, he said. For the future, Joy stated that the group will expand the range of voices and communities represented in their programming, as they have had problems finding people to speak for the experiences of Pacific Islanders. Part of that is logistical, because of a lot of them live in Hawaii [but] for the future Id love to see that, Joy noted. The AAA is also working with other Asian student groups and through other mediums to attract not only the usual cohort, but also students who may not normally attend such events, a primary focus for the group seeking to expand its appeal. What I would love to see the most is for people who seem unrelated to the issue to show up When you have someone who shows up who is not so directly invested its encouraging, Joy added. Members of AAA agreed that this potential for inclusivity should be a strength of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month this semester. I think in years past weve had speakers that maybe seemed niche or hard to access or were not as endearing to people who are not part of the Asian-American community, but this year, the people weve brought have wide appeal for legitimate reasons, Kartanata said. Lily Bohlke, Copy Editor bohlkeli@grinnell.edu From April 1 to 3, Lawrence University hosted the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) Film Festival and Conference to allow students from ACM colleges to present their work and learn from each other as well as other professionals. At this years Conference, Michelle Risacher 17 won first prize for her paper, Simone Downs 17 won third prize for her paper and Saw Min Maw 16 won second place for his short film. The conference was judged by esteemed film industry professionals: television agent Alan Berger; executive series developer, producer and casting director Phyllis Berger; actor, writer and producer-director Garrett Brown and documentary filmmaker, MacArthur Foundation Fellow and Scribe Video Center founder Louis Massiah. Risachers paper examined Julia Kristevas theory of womens timetime in a more cyclical fashion as opposed to the western linear conception of timethrough an incomplete film, Witchs Cradle, made by Maya Deren, a surrealist avant-garde filmmaker. Downs paper is a semester-long study on the 1958 Anna Lucasta that examines how the film renders a cinematic representation of the ideal Black American subject as assimilative and that of an immigrants experience in the United States. Saw Min Maw made a short film with two students from Johns Hopkins while abroad at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. It was shot on a 35-millimeter camera and is about a mother and daughter reconnecting as the mother is brought to a nursing home. The three Grinnellians who were recognized for their excellent work managed to create their respective pieces despite a disadvantage in comparison with other ACM colleges: the lack of a film department. Professor Theresa Geller, English, who specializes in film theory, said that Grinnell students who opt for an independent Film Studies major have done incredibly well at national conferences for years. Ive been promoting my students successes for eight years, and we still dont even have a minor, Geller said. Although Grinnell does offer some film theory classes, the College does not offer any film production classes. Saw Min Maw said that he had to learn everything he knows about making films through other outlets. Before Grinnell, I worked for two years at a social enterprise called Proximity Designs. Thats where I started learning everything I know about film and photography and editing and the basics of filmmaking, he said. I had an inkling I wanted to do film studies. I came to Grinnell and started doing an independent major. Geller hopes to bring more film classes and ultimately a film program to Grinnell. A few years ago, Geller brought a filmmaker from the University of Iowa to the College to teach a short course on film production. Im hoping that [a film program] will come by talking about my students successes, Geller said. Its amazing that the majority of paper presenters were Grinnell students. Of all those Midwestern colleges part of the ACM, our filmmaker was runner up and our writer was the first prize. Thats huge for students who dont have many classes offered to them. Even though Grinnellians interested in film must do independent majors, according to Geller, conferences like this one demonstrate interest and ability and are evidence that Grinnell should more strongly consider a film program. Saw Min Maw said that he found the conference encouraging and Risacher found it affirming to find out that her film education at Grinnell is going well even without a dedicated program. Saw Min Maw added that he felt spurred to continue his filmmaking after graduation. The judges talked to me and the film professors at Lawrence talked to me and recognized my film, he said. Im encouraged to do more projects on my own. MIRA BRANECK, Staff Writer braneckm@grinnell.edu The Class of 2016 saw two Grinnellians, Chase Booth 16 and Lane Atmore 16, win the prestigious Watson Fellowship, which provides each student with 30,000 dollars to travel the world for a year. The fellow is not allowed to return to the United States during this year and is required by the program to pursue an area of academic interest in some way. The application process was very intensive and competitive. In order to win the fellowship, applicants proposed themes to study for the full year as well as a detailed travel plan. After being narrowed down from around 20 Grinnell applicants, four Grinnellians were chosen and considered at the national level. Atmore and Booth were then selected from 150 other students. They are two of the 40 applicants that were ultimately awarded the fellowship. Atmore, an Anthropology and Chinese major, is going to travel to various small islands to examine how being surrounded by water influences identity. Atmore sees it as an expanded version of place-based identity who you are is defined by where you grew up but as Atmore sees it, the surrounding ocean contributes to that definition on islands. The idea came to Atmore when she saw common identity themes between Madeline Island in Lake Superior, where she spent half of every year growing up, and the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania, where she traveled. What Ive noticed from being there, and other small islands around the world, is that theres a coming thread that runs through these island places, even when theyre super far apart, Atmore said. For me, the physical manifestation of this is the way that they make boats, and how these boats play a role in their culture, Atmore said. These boats are going to tell you their relationship to the water, which is going to tell you a lot about who they are as people. The common threads of their relationship to the water would be like the common identity between all these places. Atmore will record things people say, the sounds of the sea and the sounds of people harnessing the sea with their boats. She plans to incorporate art or photos into her presentation to help bring those who view it closer to her experience. Atmore will be leaving the day after graduation to go to Guam (for which she had to get special permission, as it is a U.S. territory), where she will be attending the Pacific Arts Festival in which island nations come together to display their culture. She will have the opportunity to sail down the coast of Guam with a fleet of international handmade canoes. She will then travel to Greenland, Greece, Micronesia and Thailand. Then she will fly to Moscow and from Moscow to Siberia. Atmore plans to end her year in Japan. After her year abroad, Atmore plans to move to New Zealand to work and travel for a year. Booth, a Classics major, will be looking at mental health organizations in various communities. He plans to look specifically at institutions that have tailored their support in response to specific communal experiences of trauma. He is interested in looking at holistic approaches to mental health and group therapy settings. Booths interest in mental health communities was born out of his participation in Grinnell Monologues, of which he is co-leader. He wanted to look at mental health communities that have models more similar to the Grinnell Monologues group, rather than instances of one-on-one therapy. While Booth initially planned to do more one-on-one interviews with people that participate in these institutions, he now plans to examine entire institutions, rather than individual experiences. Ill be working with the people who give support and who created the institutions, he said. How does mental health manifest itself in everyday forms of living? Booth proposed. The way I wanted to approach that [question] was through organizations that offer support, and hopefully with working with these organizations I can see what they lack and how thats made up by the community writ large and how they interact with those institutions. Booth will be travelling to Australia, South Africa, Ireland, Greece and potentially Rwanda. He plans to eventually go to law school and would like to do something that intersects law and mental health policy. Column by Chase Booth boothcha@grinnell.edu Middlesex is one of those novels that everyone has heard of and has shelved on their Goodreads to-read lists (at least, this is the case in my friends list) but for some reason has not gotten around to starting. Whatever is causing your hesitation to finally pick up this moving story, Im here to tell you that there is a reason why Oprah selected this novel for her book club (yes, I do think Oprah has great taste) and, more importantly, why it won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl and then again, as a teenage boy, asserts the narrator in the opening lines of Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides intergenerational, coming-of-age tale about a mutated gene, an extended family history and the narrator Cals childhood and realization about his gender identity. Diagnosed with five-alpha reductase deficiency, Cal, formerly Calliope, takes the reader on a journey through his familys past to explain the origins of his diagnosis and later, affirmation of his male identity after being raised as female. He begins by narrating his Greek grandparents immigration from Bursa in Asia Minor to Detroit, Mich. in order to escape the Greco-Turkish conflict. The kicker: his grandparents are siblings. By charting the course of his family history, Cal unfolds a chain of events that eventually leads to his childhood growing up on Middlesex street in Detroit (not coincidentally a metaphoric allusion to Cals own gender identity) and under what circumstances he arrived at his diagnosis and his journey to accepting his authentic identity. The greatest quality of Middlesex is probably the character of Cal himself. His numerous interpolations throughout the family saga are witty, illuminating and revealing of Eugenides ability to craft a complex and dynamic character. Indeed, I was so drawn to Cals character that I thought it was such a shame that the reader did not come to his story until the last half of the book. I did enjoy the family history but at times I was aching for more of Cal and less of his family history. That said, one cannot help but nod to Eugenides fabulous command of the English language and especially his insights into human psychology. A major theme in Middlesex is that of hybridity in all aspects of life, exemplified especially by this insight of Cals: Emotions, in my experience, arent covered by single words. I dont believe in sadness, joy, or regret. Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. The novel masterfully elucidates this theme of blending polar opposites in such a way that the reader takes away far more than just the saga of one individual and his family but a more complex picture of human emotion and experience. The novel also offers a refreshing commentary on social constructions of gender and, in particular, the nature vs. nurture debate through the coming-of-age of Cal as an intersex individual. Cal frequently reflects on his upbringing as a female and spends much of the novel on his budding attraction to women. These themes are not so disguised as to require a literary-minded analysis of the text nor too obvious that I feel I am being bashed over the head by metaphors. Eugenides succinctly weaves the theme of hybridity as embodied by the narrator Cal on multiple levels throughout the novelgrowing up on Middlesex road, Greek-American identity, family connections, metamorphoses and, of course, gender identity. However, some critics have pointed out Eugenides sometimes controversial depiction of intersex lives. Eugenides began writing Middlesex after his dissatisfaction with Herculine Barbins, a 19th century French intersex individual, memoir, believing it evaded an adequate emotional discussion of Herculines experience growing up as intersex. The project took him nine years to complete and, despite plenty of opportunity to do so, he did not consult, let alone meet, an intersex individual, an interesting choice on his part given that the goal of his novel was to elucidate the emotional capacity of an intersex person. However, despite Eugenides problematic approach to writing Middlesex, the novel ultimately proves to be a masterfully written tale about the emotional and physical maturation of an incredibly enthralling character. And its message is adequately summarized by this realization of Cals: Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind. A certain lassitude seems to have gripped the NDP for this weekends leadership review in Edmonton. Donald Trump might call them low energy, like Jeb! Hey, they could try changing their name to NDP! Too many party people say theyre on the fence about Thomas Mulcair, dont know whod replace him, so maybe he should get another two years; they can dump him then if they feel peppier. Besides, theyre not sure who they are, maybe they should focus on that. These arent good omens politically. Tory leadership aspirants were already clawing to get over each other, days after the last election. The left has managed to resuscitate elsewhere, with Jeremy Corbyn in the UK or Bernie. Why not the NDP? Id say its problem is cultural. Its still stuck in a political culture 20 or 30 years back. The Soviet version of socialism had imploded, capitalism crowed over its corpse, and putative leftists like Tony Blair in the UK and Bill Clinton in the U.S. hailed a third way which was really Thatcher or Reaganism plus some niceness. When NDP lifers like Brad Lavigne and Janice MacKinnon demand pragmatic approaches, they mean this pasty imitation; its a way of dissing dreamers whod rather not continue all the way down the neo-con road with them. Jack Layton embodied this third way culture; Mulcair even more so. Hes an overt Thatcherite (Up until Thatchers time the government stuck its nose everywhere.). The trouble with the third way though, is it ran out of ramp. Take the Panama Papers. The noble pursuit of wealth is revealed as mere passion to avoid taxes and social obligation. Those inevitable free trade deals destroyed not just whole economic sectors but ways of life. Bailing out banks only encouraged them to recreate the messes that led to 2008. It took decades for these lessons to sink in but people now want more than an imitative leftism. Bernie Sanders has seized on these lessons in the U.S. to press his case. Poor Mulcair cant adjust to the change of culture, you can see him flail. He insists Justin Trudeau call Trump a fascist, for all the good thatd do, or attacks the Ghomeshi verdict. Then he reverses course by saying the NDP shouldnt be a mere conscience, it must contend credibly for power. Its sad and irritating. So whats the answer? I confess Im not very good at positive thinking, but could the solution be the Leap Manifesto, put together by NDPish leftists? Maybe it will get discussed in Edmonton and chart a new course for the party. My problem with the LM, though, aside from its turgid, soul-wearying prose (As an alternative to the profit-gouging of private companies and the remote bureaucracy of some centralized state ones), is that it basically reproduces an old NDP pose. This was, long before Third Wayism, that we NDPers are evolved, we know what everyone else and the country needs, so well tell you, you vote for us and well give it to you. Listen to former MP Megan Leslie, reflecting on the election: I think maybe Canadians werent ready for us, didnt understand some of the differences between the NDP and the Liberals. Content aside, which is a big aside since the Leap Manifesto is a serious updating of the laundry list the talking down remains. Bernies genius is that hes voicing what vast numbers have come to already feel themselves. Theres a happy coincidence between what they now think and what hes long advocated so they respond heartily, as if they knew it in advance. The NDP, including the Leap Manifesto, is still telling people what they should feel versus reflecting back to them what theyve come to know. The trouble with manifestos is that they manifest or reveal something from on high; its a kindred word to revelation. The alternative is to simply state a view and see what others make of it. The NDP, whose historical roots are in the Christian social gospel, has been prone to revelations. In fact much of 20th century politics had a proto-religious, revealed quality. Today it would be comforting to think all that is reverting to the arena of religion proper. What I think we should hope for in 21st century politics, is not people saying, Thank you for giving us the truth; but something closer to: Thats what I was thinking! Rick Salutins column appears Friday. ricksalutin@ca.inter.net Read more about: SHARE: Planned Parenthood Waste Disposal Firm Sues Life Advocacy Group Thomas More Society Defends Created Equal Against Stericycle's Corporate "Bullying" Contact: Tom Ciesielka, 312-422-1333, tc@tcpr.net WAUKEGAN, Ill., April 8, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- An escalating dispute between the proponents of an ethics awareness campaign and a waste management company hits a Lake County courtroom on Monday, April 11. Arguments will be presented in a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood business partner Stericycle against pro-life advocacy group Created Equal. The Thomas More Society, a national non-profit law firm, will represent Created Equal and its Executive Director Mark Harrington, against a temporary restraining order intended to stifle their message that Stericycle is "enabling" abortion giant Planned Parenthood to continue profiting by taking advantage of women and their preborn children. WHAT: Arguments in the case of Stericycle, Inc., et al. v. Created Equal PAC, et al. WHEN: Monday, April 11, 2016, 9 a.m. (CENTRAL) WHERE: Lake County Courthouse, Courtroom C302, 18 North County Street, Waukegan, Illinois MAP: goo.gl/wM7bJk WHO: Thomas More Society Special Counsel Peter Breen in defense of Created Equal, Mark Harrington, et al, before Judge Margaret Marcoullier of the Circuit Court for the 19th Judicial Circuit, Lake County, Chancery Division Stericycle has taken objection to Created Equal's Project Weak Link initiative, which takes its cue from an abortionist's published statement that they are "one incineration company away from being closed." The Ohio Attorney General investigation of Planned Parenthood confirmed that the nation's largest abortion provider depends on Stericycle for disposal of aborted fetuses. Created Equal distributes informational literature that encourages the public to express their objections to Stericycle for its role enabling Planned Parenthood to continue performing abortions. Thomas More Society Special Counsel Peter Breen will argue that Stericycle's attempt to censor the speech of Created Equal's leader and participants is a violation of the group's First Amendment right to free speech. Additionally, he will demonstrate that Stericycle's request for a temporary restraining order fails to satisfy any of the justifiable requirements necessary to issue one. "The Supreme Court of the United States, in a case strikingly similar to this one, said that nobody has the right to be 'free from public criticism of his business practices in pamphlets or leaflets,'" explained Breen. He added that, "The irreparable harm of losing the ability to practice free speech for even minimal periods of time outweighs Stericycle's theoretical potential business reputational harm, both in the immediacy of a temporary restraining order and in the future." Click on the links below to read the following documents: About the Thomas More Society The Thomas More Society is a national not-for-profit law firm dedicated to restoring respect in law for life, family, and religious liberty. Headquartered in Chicago, the society fosters support for these causes by providing high quality pro bono legal services from local trial courts all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. Visit thomasmoresociety.org. World Congress of Families Caribbean Conference in Barbados Opens to Protect the Natural Family and Human Rights for All Persons Elites and Sexual Radicals Protest and Demand Special Sexual Rights That Endanger Women and Children WCF Leaders are in Barbados Sharing Solutions to Help Make a Better World by Reducing Poverty, Violence, Homelessness, AIDS, Sex Trafficking, Pornography, and Divorce Contact: Rebekah Ali-Gouveia, World Congress of Families, 815-997-7106, media@worldcongress.org BARBADOS, April 8, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- World Congress of Families began its third Caribbean Conference at the Accra Beach Hotel in Barbados, April 8-9, 2016. The conference is organized by Veronica Evelyn of Barbados and Rebekah Ali-Gouveia, WCF Caribbean Representative, of Trinidad. WCF held previous Caribbean conferences in 2012 and 2013, both in Trinidad. The year's World Congress of Families (WCF) conference is once again focused on providing solutions to help families in Caribbean and the world by fighting against poverty, violence, homelessness, AIDS, sex trafficking, pornography and divorce. The WCF Barbados Conference has been attacked with lies by the usual groups of sexual radicals and extremists, who are funded by Wall Street Republican donors and liberal elites. In fact one of the organizations, the mis-named "Human Rights Campaign," actually contributes to violence against women and children by promoting sex outside of marriage, pornography, prostitution, and abortion. World Congress of Families Is Not A Hate Group The World Congress of Families (WCF) is NOT a hate group but in fact an international network that promotes peace, kindness, and love that unites pro-family people of goodwill from more than 80 countries around the world that affirm the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) and the natural family. UNDHR, Article 16(3) that declares that, "The family is the fundamental social unit and entitled to protection by society and the State." WCF also has an officially recognized role at the United Nations as an NGO with Special Consultative Status. WCF supports the protection of human rights for all persons from conception to natural death and the natural family as the fundamental and only sustainable unit of society as found in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. World Congress of Families Is A Recipient of the International Peace Prize, "The Pax Urbis Award." Unlike the protest groups that target the WCF with threats and violence, the World Congress of Families is the recipient of the International Peace Award, "The Pax Urbis Award," from "100 Cities for Peace." The prestigious award is given to institutions and cities that promote peace and values supporting the United Nations Development Goals. Sexual Radicals and Elites DENY Human Rights for All Persons and DEMAND Special Sexual Rights Sexual radicals and extremist groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) have labelled pro-family and pro-life groups like WCF as hate groups solely as an effort to raise money and bully and scare freedom-loving people of Faith into conformance with their radical sexual views. Unlike the modest World Congress of Families budget, HRC spends more every business day than the WCF spends in an entire year. HRC's annual $40 million fortune also includes an extravagant headquarters building in Washington, DC. Their partner-in-crime, the Southern Poverty Law Center (supposedly a poverty-fighting non-profit group itself) has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, a Cayman Islands Bank Account (of undisclosed value), and pays for chartered flights for its founders and executives. Veronica Evelyn noted: "Dysfunctional family structures are a legacy of the Caribbean's colonial past. Strong nations are built on strong families and the WCF conference will provide a platform for equipping leaders across the Caribbean to firmly define and passionately pursue core values and virtues regarding marriage, family and human sexuality." Rebekah Ali Gouveia commented: "As the World Congress of Families Caribbean Representative, I'm looking forward to our Barbados conference, the third WCF Caribbean conference in the last 4 years. The people of the Caribbean are facing a crisis in the family and we need to remind citizens of the critical role the family plays in developing healthy and prosperous societies. I am thrilled to be a part of a burgeoning movement that will uphold the family as the bedrock of our Countries." For more information or to register for the conference please visit the World Congress of Families Caribbean website at www.wcfcaribbean.org. World Congress of Families has held past regional conferences in Canada, Trinidad, Bolivia, London,, Kenya, Nigeria, Serbia, Moldova, Latvia, Ukraine, Russia, and Georgia. There will also be a regional conference in Salta, Argentina (June 14-15). World Congress of Families X Civilization at The Crossroads: The Natural Family as the Bulwark of Freedom and Human Values - will take place in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia (May 15-18, 2016). This is the premier gathering of the world's largest network of pro-family leaders, parents, youth, lawmakers, scholars, religious leaders, and advocates united to support the natural family. WCF X will work toward uniting global leaders to defend family and faith and to developing a pro-family agenda for Europe and the World. To register and reserve your tickets for World Congress of Families X go to: www.eventbrite.com/e/world-congress-of-families-x-tbilisi-republic-of-georgia-may-15-18-2016-tickets-22669828066?aff=es2 . For more information on World Congress of Families X, visit the Congress website: www.worldcongress.ge. World Congress of Families is dedicated to uniting and empowering global leaders and pro-family and pro-life groups at the local, national and international levels to protect family, faith, and freedom. Visit our website at www.worldcongress.org. For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser Trade-Ideas LLC identified Illinois Tool Works ( ITW ) as a new lifetime high candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Illinois Tool Works as such a stock due to the following factors: ITW has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $152.0 million. ITW has traded 36,090 shares today. ITW is trading at a new lifetime high. EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Get the inside scoop on opportunities in ITW with the Ticky from Trade-Ideas. See the FREE profile for ITW NOW at Trade-Ideas More details on ITW: Illinois Tool Works Inc. manufactures and sells industrial products and equipment worldwide. It operates through seven segments: Automotive OEM; Test & Measurement and Electronics; Food Equipment; Polymers & Fluids; Welding; Construction Products; and Specialty Products. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 2.2%. ITW has a PE ratio of 2. Currently there are 7 analysts that rate Illinois Tool Works a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 5 rate it a hold. The average volume for Illinois Tool Works has been 2.0 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Illinois Tool Works has a market cap of $37.0 billion and is part of the industrial goods sector and industrial industry. The stock has a beta of 1.14 and a short float of 2.3% with 5.13 days to cover. Shares are up 10.8% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Wednesday. EXCLUSIVE OFFER: See inside Jim Cramer's multi-million dollar charitable trust portfolio to see the stocks he thinks could be potential winners. Click here to see his holdings for 14-days FREE. TheStreetRatings.com Analysis: TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Illinois Tool Works as a buy . The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, notable return on equity, expanding profit margins, good cash flow from operations and growth in earnings per share. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that we evaluated. Highlights from the ratings report include: The stock has not only risen over the past year, it has done so at a faster pace than the S&P 500, reflecting the earnings growth and other positive factors similar to those we have cited here. Looking ahead, unless broad bear market conditions prevail, we still see more upside potential for this stock, despite the fact that it has already risen over the past year. Current return on equity exceeded its ROE from the same quarter one year prior. This is a clear sign of strength within the company. Compared to other companies in the Machinery industry and the overall market, ILLINOIS TOOL WORKS's return on equity significantly exceeds that of both the industry average and the S&P 500. 42.69% is the gross profit margin for ILLINOIS TOOL WORKS which we consider to be strong. It has increased from the same quarter the previous year. Along with this, the net profit margin of 13.74% is above that of the industry average. Net operating cash flow has significantly increased by 53.49% to $703.00 million when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, ILLINOIS TOOL WORKS has also vastly surpassed the industry average cash flow growth rate of -2.22%. ILLINOIS TOOL WORKS's earnings per share improvement from the most recent quarter was slightly positive. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, ILLINOIS TOOL WORKS increased its bottom line by earning $5.13 versus $4.68 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($5.46 versus $5.13). You can view the full Illinois Tool Works Ratings Report. EXCLUSIVE OFFER: See inside Jim Cramer's multi-million dollar charitable trust portfolio to see the stocks he thinks could be potential winners. Click here to see his holdings for 14-days FREE. Oil prices gained steam on Friday after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen downplayed chances of a U.S. recession in a speech on Thursday, but the market is still oversupplied, according to one analyst. "There is still a risk that the price may fall a little bit before a sustained recovery happens," said Spencer Welch, an oil analyst with IHS, based in London. Yellen said the economy is "on a solid course" and that December's historic rate hike was not a mistake. Prices for West Texas Intermediate crude oil have fallen 2.2% so far this year, but remain lower by roughly 33% over the past 12 months. Investors now await a key meeting on April 17 between members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC members. Oil has been fluctuating lately on hopes that these oil producers will agree to a production freeze following the talks. Reports suggest Iran isn't willing to freeze production until its oil output reaches pre-sanctions levels. "That's going to take quite a few more months," Welch said. Plus, Saudi Arabia said it won't agree to a freeze unless Iran plays ball. Spencer said even if a production freeze is agreed upon, it will do little for prices. "They'll probably stay around the $40-a-barrel mark, where they are right now," he said. No agreement could push oil to the mid-$30 range, Welch said. "If there's no agreement, there's a risk prices will fall because there's a lack of confidence that [oil producers] can coordinate their actions," he said. Welch commented that there are signs the market is coming back into supply and demand balance. "U.S. production is starting to decline and demand is picking up globally,' he said. 'We expect the price to stay around $40 through the second half of this year." For 2017, he expects prices to average in the high $40s. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Itau Unibanco (ITUB) are jumping by 7.92% to $8.65 on Friday morning, as Brazil's stocks lead a global equity rally, Bloomberg reports. The Ibovespa, which advanced the most in three weeks, was also lifted by speculation that President Dilma Rousseff is moving closer to becoming impeached, which helped boost Brazilian lenders such as Itau Unibanco and Banco Bradesco (BBD). The market sees a government change as the South American country's top chance at pulling out of its worst recession in 100 years, Bloomberg noted. "There are many reasons for the Ibovespa to rise today, investors are pretty optimistic," Raphael Figueredo, an analyst at brokerage Clear Corretora, told Bloomberg, "Prospects for Brazilian companies that sell abroad and domestically seem encouraging." Additionally, advances in commodities such as metals and crude oil also boosted Brazilian raw material stocks, such as Rio De Janeiro-based steelmaker Gerdau (GGB). The Ibovespa is rising by 3.45% to 50,185.64 this morning. Earlier on Friday, TheStreet's Jim Cramer highlighted the top growth stock in the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio. Now Cramer, the co-manager of the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio, and Research Director Jack Mohr are taking a closer look at their second favorite: Starbucks (SBUX) . Starbucks is the " growth stalwart in retail," Mohr said, explaining that they like the stock for its best-in-class management team, industry leadership and pricing power. The company's international expansion -- most notably in China -- and the growth spurred from its mobile app and Mobile Order & Pay system also make Starbucks attractive going forward. The stock was down momentarily, but has snapped right back up, Cramer said. Starbucks is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells SBUX? Learn more now. While Starbucks has been a great performer over the past 18-months, the duo is waiting patiently for another pullback, hoping to scoop up more shares at a discount, Cramer concluded. At the time of publication, Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS had a long position in SBUX. Foreign debt is the world's biggest asset class, but most U.S. investors still don't allocate enough to it, said Meb Faber, chief investment officer of Cambria Investment Management. Faber said home country bias remains a powerful force. "Most U.S. investors want to buy U.S. stocks and bonds because it feels safe," said Faber. "The problem is that it creates a lot of concentration risk in a single country, even if it is the U.S." In February, Faber launched the Cambria Sovereign High Yield Bond ETF (SOVB) . The SOVB is 85% invested in local bonds from emerging markets like Brazil, Chile, Peru and China. He labels himself a value investor in global bonds, because his style gravitates away from the bigger issuers and more toward the higher-yielding plays. Currently Faber is bullish on Brazilian sovereign bonds, despite the political corruption scandals involving Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, which are now ensnaring the country's former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as well. "Brazilian bonds are currently offering double-digit yields, which is far greater than anything the U.S. or Europe has to offer," said Faber. "You get a basket of high-yielding countries like Brazil and we think there is a margin of safety there." Elsewhere in South America, Faber said countries like Colombia, Peru and Chile currently offer value, and will make up for their underperformance in recent years. He said he cannot own Argentinian bonds yet because he is limited to foreign developed and emerging markets, even though the country has made positive economic strides under its new president, Mauricio Macri. Faber said the SOVB ETF has a 9% position in Chinese debt. And he also likes Russian sovereign bonds and equities despite the fact that oil prices have collapsed and Russian president Vladimir Putin remains antagonistic to the West. "It's one of the cheapest equity markets in the world, along with Brazil. And those Russian sovereign bonds and stocks are just ripping," said Faber. "When things go from really terrible to slightly less bad, that's when you can make really strong returns," said Faber. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Vanguard Natural Resources (VNR) are higher by 11.84% to $1.68 in early afternoon trading on Friday, as the surge in oil prices gives the energy sector a boost today. Crude oil (WTI) is up by 5.77% to $39.41 and Brent crude is soaring by 5.53% to $41.61 per barrel this afternoon. Vanguard Natural Resources is a limited liability company focused on the acquisition and development of oil and natural gas properties in the U.S. Oil is popping by more than 5% this morning on new hopes that oil producers will freeze production output and strong economic indicators out of the U.S. and Germany that show potential for fuel growth demand, Reuters reports. It is possible that Russia's oil production will fall in April, sources told Reuters. Russia's energy minister is hopeful that nations producing oil will be able to agree on an output freeze when the meet in Doha later this month. "You have declining supply in the United States and a declining rig rate," Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst with SEB Bank told Reuters. "You mix that with outages in Nigeria ... and put Doha on top of it, and your eyes are looking towards the tightening of the market." Separately, TheStreet Ratings has set a "sell" rating and a score of D on Vanguard Natural Resources. This is driven by several weaknesses, which TheStreet Ratings believes 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 it covers. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its feeble growth in its earnings per share, deteriorating net income, generally high debt management risk, disappointing return on equity and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself. 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. T You can view the full analysis from the report here: VNR Investors in copper were licking their wounds on Friday as the metal finished another down week, its worst since early January. A big culprit in the weakness of copper prices has been the slowing Chinese economy and fears that the People's Republic of China will accelerate exports of the metal to alleviate its own rising stockpiles. Another event, half a world away, could be a harbinger of much better news for bullish copper investors. That was the 325,000 (and counting) $1,000 deposits taken by Tesla (TSLA) from potential buyers of the company's Model 3 mass-market battery-powered car, slated to go on sale late next year. Skeptics of battery-powered vehicles, who point to numerous overly optimistic forecasts for sales of Nissan's (NSANY) Leaf and General Motors' (GM) extended-range Volt, are being forced to reconsider, based on budding interest in Model 3, a mainstream car that could sell for as little as $35,000 and travel more than 200 miles on a charge. "Despite its many accomplishments, Tesla had not yet truly disrupted the auto industry," wrote Adam Jonas, a Morgan Stanley analyst. "We are now getting the feeling that this may be starting to change." Among copper's properties is its excellence as a conductor of electricity. A boom in battery-powered vehicles would create demand for lots more of the metal than currently used in conventionally powered vehicles. Robert Friedland, the billionaire founder of Ivanhoe Mines (IVPAF) , showed a picture of Tesla's Model 3 at the World Copper Conference this week in Santiago, Chile, to illustrate the role copper will play in battery-powered vehicles. Friedland, who said his company is working closely with Tesla, also said the average electric car will consume more than 140 pounds of copper, roughly four times the amount used in a conventional car -- not counting copper that would be needed to expand a charging infrastructure. According to a forecast by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, batteries in electric vehicles will consume more than 900,000 tons of copper by 2030, which amounts to about 5% of 2014 global production. In 2010 the metal was trading at about $10,000 a ton, a price that has dropped recently to about $4,700. Notwithstanding the stir created by the flood of $1,000 deposits, which are fully refundable, questions and doubts about the future of electric cars remain. Many young potential buyers of the Model 3 could regard their deposits as a no-risk investment in a futuristic vision of cars without tailpipe emissions, a Kickstarter payment benefitting Tesla and its charismatic CEO Elon Musk. But actual sales of electric vehicles remain slow, due in part to moderating gasoline prices and inadequate charging infrastructure, not to mention the availability of gas-electric hybrids that ameliorate tailpipe emissions, an acceptable choice for many environmentally concerned consumers. Should popular demand for electric cars suddenly perk up -- and it may after GM's Chevrolet Bolt battery-powered car goes on sale later this year -- watch for a possible price impact for a key metallic commodity used to manufacture it. Doron Levin is the host of "In the Driver Seat," broadcast on SiriusXM Insight 121, Saturday at noon, encore Sunday at 9 a.m. This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of BHP Billiton (BHP) are climbing by 3.72% to $24.80 on Friday afternoon as Australia, the world's top iron ore shipper, is bullish on the commodity's prices for the next five years, Bloomberg reports. The Melbourne, Australia-based mining company is engaged in the exploration, development, production, processing and marketing of minerals, such as iron ore, copper, aluminum and silver. Iron ore will average $45 per metric ton in 2016, according to a quarterly forecast from Australia's Department of Industry, Innovation and Science issued today. In December, the department had projected iron ore prices would be $41.30 per metric ton, Bloomberg noted. Australian producers will increase shipments as high-cost mining companies close and prices will rise to $56 next year, $61.40 in 2018 and $64.70 in 2021, the department expects. "The increased exports is a result of continued closures in the Chinese domestic industry," Daniel Hynes, senior commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, told Bloomberg, "This is a fair assessment of the market over the medium-to-longer term." The outlook refers to spot ore with 62% content free-on-board Australia. Iron ore has unexpectedly rebounded in 2016, as China's policymakers indicated they are ready to support growth in the biggest user, Bloomberg noted. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF) stock is higher by 7.39% to $3.05 in late-afternoon trading on Friday, after Australia's Department of Industry, Innovation & Science updated its iron ore outlook for 2016 to $45 per metric ton from $41.30 per ton. Looking ahead, prices will rise to $56 in 2017, $61.40 in 2018 and $64.70 in 2021, according to the department, Bloomberg reports. The commodity has unexpectedly rallied this year after China's policy makers indicated they would support economic growth in the country, which is the largest iron ore importer. "The increased exports is a result of continued closures in the Chinese domestic industry," Daniel Hynes, senior commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, told Bloomberg. "This is a fair assessment of the market over the medium-to-longer term," he said of the price outlook. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, Cliffs Natural Resources supplies iron ore pellets to the North American steel industry. Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates the stock as a "sell" with a ratings score of D. Cliffs Natural Resources's weaknesses include its feeble growth in its earnings per share, weak operating cash flow, generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself and poor profit margins. You can view the full analysis from the report here: CLF 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. 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. Demonstrators protest against President Mauricio Macri outside the government in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, April 7, 2016. An Argentine prosecutor on Thursday asked for an investigation into President Macri's role in offshore companies, adding to the global fallout from a massive leak of documents from a Panama law firm. The signs held by the protesters read in Spanish from left, "They said they were a team... It turned out they were an illicit association." "Let justice weigh them with the same scales." (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) Officials stop vehicles as they search in Spokane Valley, Wash, Thursday, April 7, 2016, for escaped mental patient Anthony Garver. Garver, 28, escaped Wednesday night with Mark Alexander Adams, 58, a patient who had been accused of domestic assault in 2014 and was captured Thursday morning, officials said. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review via AP) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan, left foreground, review honor guard during a welcome ceremony on Medvedev's arrival in Yerevan, Armenia, Thursday, April 7, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) The National Officers and Vaad Hanhala of Agudath Israel of America convened at the organizations headquarters in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday April 6, with the subject of mental health services in the Orthodox Jewish community topping the evenings agenda. New York City Deputy Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives Richard Buery joined the discussion to brief the participants on Thrive NYC, the new city initiative to improve mental health care. Introduced by Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Agudath Israels Executive Vice President, Deputy Mayor Buery eloquently described a number of components of the initiative including a dedicated mental health phone line, the certification and placement of mental health professionals in schools, and mental health first aid training for 250,000 New Yorkers. Thrive NYC represents an investment of $850 million over the next four years. After the Deputy Mayor concluded his remarks, a number of prominent mental health experts from the Jewish community described the array of mental health services in the Orthodox Jewish Community and ways to improve. The panel included Rabbi Binyomin Babad of Relief Resources, Rabbi Simcha Feuerman of Ohel Childrens Home and Family Services, and noted psychologist Dr. Benzion Twerski. The session was chaired by Rabbi Labish Becker, Agudath Israels Executive Director. Rabbi Becker discussed Agudath Israels long-time involvement in fostering a new generation of stable, healthy and resilient children through its Bnos and Pirchei Youth Programs, which impact the lives of more than 20,000 children. He also pointed to Agudath Israels key role in the United Task Force on Families and Children which brings together 40 Orthodox Jewish mental health agencies serving the community. Deputy Mayor Buery said, Our commitment is to change the face of mental health in our city. I want you to know you have a real partner in making sure that the members of this community, the people that you serve and support, can live lives of dignity and health, and Im so happy to serve you all. The Agudath Israel lay leaders also covered the organizations upcoming annual dinner, outcomes of its recent Mission to Albany, and its role in this years presidential elections. Rabbi Zwiebel expressed great satisfaction at the tenor of the meeting. We thank Deputy Mayor Buery for taking the time to visit us and make such a beautiful presentation. This was the start of a dialogue that has the potential to lead to significant benefits for the well-being of the Orthodox Jewish community in New York City. (YWN Desk NYC) [By Margie Pensak] The Walter E. Washington Convention Center, famous for hosting the official inaugural balls for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, earned its newest claim to fame, March 20-22, when it hosted the largest Kosher event everthe 2016 AIPAC Conference. Actually, the 2,300,000-square-foot facility in Washington, D.C., was not large enough for the event which was addressed by Vice President Joe Biden, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential hopefuls Senator Ted Cruz, Governor John Kasich, and Donald Trump. The 1,020,000 square foot field Verizon Center and the 105,000 square foot Marriott Marquis, were utilized, as well. Here are just some of the stats so you can try to fathom what it took for the The Vaad Harabanim of Greater Washington (the Capitol K) to ensure the event was kosher: 18,700 attendees; 55 mashgichim; 10 kitchens; 4 caterers; 12,000 lamb chops; 5 actual days of catering; 14 carriers of Kosher certified Dunkin Donuts; and, Kosher room service around the clock at the Marriott Marquis for 2.5 days! STAR-K certified Foremost Ram Caterers started its Kosher prep in December. As site manager of the Washington Convention Centers operation, Capitol Ks 5-year-veteran lead mashgiach for the conference, Rabbi Binyomin Steinmetz, said his attention was required for 36 hours straight. With the conferences expansion, last year, to the adjacent Marriott Marquis, more administrative staff was needed. Marriott site manager, David Lapin, oversaw the kashering of two hotel kitchens, three restaurants, and scheduling up to 15 mashgichim for the 79 kosher events, ranging in size from 15-1,500 guests. Early March, the Redskins kitchen at FedEx Field was kashered in preparation for the Verizon Centers upscale events. Next, a week of intense food production took place. The kitchen was manned by a team of four mashgichim led by STAR-K Kashrus Administrator Rabbi Tzvi Shaul Goldberg. The week prior to the event, 10 experienced mashgichim kashered and marked hundreds of pieces of equipment. The actual process of cleaning the kitchen equipment began days before and continued up until the kashering process. How each piece of equipment was to be kashered had been determined at meetings and walk-throughs that took place months before. Kashering continued all day Wednesday and Thursday; production began at 3:00 a.m. Friday morning. During full production, in each location five mashgichim were required in the main kitchen areas, between the convention centers three main kitchen areas and the Marquiss massive production kitchen which housed six ovens, (two just for fish) three braziers, two soup kettles, a flat top griddle (for meat only), a six burner stove top, and a 7-grate grill (for fish only) and more modest Dairy kitchen which only needed one mashgiach. All equipment and areas were carefully labeled with color coded signs. Almost all of the events had their vegetables checked offsite; the Marriott vegetable checking operated almost non stop from Friday to Monday night (with the exception on Shabbos). Led by insect checking specialist, Mordecai Levy, hundreds of pounds of salad mixes, berries, and assorted produce were carefully washed and inspected for use throughout the event. On Motzei Shabbos, Rabbi Steinmetz, Rabbi Goldberg and Capitol Ks Director of Field Operations and STAR-K Kashrus Administrator Rabbi Zvi Holland, and their crew, kashered and prepared four Verizon Center kitchens and dozens of concessions and pantries servicing the facilitys four levels. Their team of 20 mashgichim prepared the Verizon Center in time for the Sunday 3 p.m. opening, the first General Session, until the last session on Monday night. In total, 11 kitchens, over 500 speed racks, almost 100 hot boxes, and innumerable pieces of equipment were kashered, marked, and dedicated for the 18,700 AIPAC Policy delegates who enjoyed kosher lmehadrin food during the 3-1/2 day event! As Rabbi Holland, quipped, It was, possibly, the largest single kosher event since the destruction of the second Temple! (YWN World Headquarters NYC) The contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders grew increasingly nasty with a series of testy exchanges that have prompted widespread concern among Democrats that their rivalry is doing lasting damage to the party and the eventual nominee. With both candidates launching 10-day sprints here ahead of New Yorks April 19 primary, the strain and resentment of a hard-fought and unexpectedly long contest boiled over repeatedly in interviews, speeches and other public appearances. The senator from Vermont refused to retract his assertion that Clinton is not qualified to be president. Clinton dismissed that claim as silly and countered that Sanders has repeatedly made promises he cant keep. In an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday, Sanders stood by his view that Clinton is not qualified but he also pledged to support her if she is the nominee. Look, as Ive said before, on her worst day, she is 100 times better than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or the other candidates, he said. To me, that is not a very hard choice. Sanders continued to blame Clinton for going on the attack and said he has simply been defending himself. And while he expressed regret for the tenor of the campaign over the previous 24 hours and said the acrimony will make it harder for Democrats to unite in the fall, he also said he does not regret his own statements. When somebody says that I am unqualified to be president and gives her reasoning, Sanders said, I think it is totally appropriate for me to respond as to why I think she may not be qualified as well. And that has to do with her views and her actions on a number of the major issues facing this country, and the way shes run this campaign in terms of how shes raised her money. Clinton had raised questions in a television interview about whether Sanders was prepared to be president, but she repeatedly stopped short of saying he was unqualified. Some Democrats are worried about potentially longer-term fallout of an increasingly personal conflict between Sanders and Clinton. Most of those Democrats are Clinton supporters who view her eventual nomination as inevitable despite the drawn-out nomination battle with Sanders. And most blame him for the ugliness. President Obama, who has sought to stay out his partys nominating contest, weighed in Thursday though a spokesman. Traveling with Obama on Air Force One, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Obama believes that Clinton comes to the race with more experience than any non-vice president in recent campaign history. Schultz emphasized that Obama feels fortunate that Clinton, whom he defeated in a sometimes nasty battle for the 2008 nomination, served as his secretary of state. Sanders based his assertion about Clintons lack of qualifications on claims that she is too closely tied to Wall Street, a charge he has been repeating for months. He also said her candidacy was undermined by her support of the Iraq War and her backing of what he termed a series of disastrous trade deals. There are policy disagreements he may have with her on some things lets stick to those, lets not say that the most qualified candidate for president is simply unqualified, said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri. Weve got to refrain from ad hominem attacks . . . weve got to stay focused on what weve got to do in November. It concerns me deeply, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. What he does is divide the Democratic faithful, and why would he want to do that? Some Democrats said they found Sanderss words particularly troubling because, outside the heat of the campaign trail, they dont really think he means them. I really dont think he believes that, said Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Virginia, another Clinton supporter. Nothing hes ever said to us had conveyed that sentiment. Competitions tough. I hope that they might back off it a little bit. Others were more sympathetic to Sanders. I think in both cases, you saw over the last day frustration and fatigue in the rough-and-tumble world of New York politics, said former Wisconsin lieutenant governor Barbara Lawton, a Sanders supporter. I think the fatigue and frustration will give way to the dignity they both have. I have every confidence well settle into something we can be more proud of. Clinton said in an NBC interview: I think its kind of a silly statement. But hes free to say whatever he chooses. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and a large cast of other supporters make public and sometimes indignant defenses of her credentials. Her campaign produced a cheeky online true-or-false quiz to bolster the argument that her long resume and practical experience make her eminently qualified. Thursday was a busy day for both candidates. Sanders addressed the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO in Philadelphia in the morning before heading to New York, where he taped an appearance on NBCs Late Night With Seth Meyers. Clinton held a brief news conference in the Bronx and took a made-for-the-cameras subway ride before attending fundraising parties the rest of the day. Her campaign made sure to note that she knew how to operate an automated fare card for her one-stop ride a poke at Sanders and his reference in a tabloid interview this week to subway tokens, which the system are no longer uses. Clinton noted, laughing, that the system switched to fare cards years ago during her first term as a senator representing New York. Her campaign also sought to take advantage of the unqualified flap by using it to solicit donations. This is a ridiculous and irresponsible attack for someone to make not just against the person who is almost certainly going to be the nominee of their party this November, but against someone who is one of the most qualified people to run for the presidency in the HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, Clinton spokeswoman Christina Reynolds wrote in a fundraising email to supporters Thursday. The Clinton campaign has been eager to knock Sanderss halo off by emphasizing what it has described as the increasingly negative and political nature of his campaign. Trying to convince Democrats that Sanders is more of a typical politician than a principled crusader has been an ongoing and largely unsuccessful effort. But the latest skirmish provided a new chance to try. Sanders may have given his rival a boost by attacking Clinton in a way that seems to cut against his issues-only ethos, said Dan Pfeiffer, a former top aide to President Obama. Sanders made a strategic mistake by going down this road, because its off-brand. And you can convince voters of lots of things, but you cant convince them Hillary Clinton is unqualified to be president, Pfeiffer said. Pfeiffer and former Obama aides have long said that contrary to the Clinton campaigns insistence the tone of the 2016 campaign has been tame. But Pfeiffer added that how and when Democrats unify is ultimately up to Sanders. The prospect of a Trump or Cruz presidency will be so scary to Democrats that it may heal all wounds, he added. The Clinton campaign released two new ads Thursday, both highlighting her efforts to boost small businesses, manufacturing and high-tech jobs in western New York as senator. Both 30-second spots one called Norma and the other Every Corner focus on her efforts to bring new industry to such cities as Buffalo, Albany, and Rochester. Hillary Clinton made a difference in every corner of New York, and thats what shell do in every corner of America, the narrator says. On Friday, Clinton is expected to campaign in Buffalo and Rochester two of the media markets where these ads will air. Sanders had to put out a separate fire Thursday to avoid alienating another important Democratic constituency. Sanders has drawn criticism for blaming Israel for much higher Palestinian casualties than the country admits during the 2014 conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. But on Thursday afternoon, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, said that it had been in contact with Sanders and he had explained that he had misstated the numbers. Despite Sanderss recent streak of caucus and primary wins, Clinton has kept a steady lead in terms of delegates, even discounting the hundreds of super delegates who have thrown their support behind her. Many question whether its even possible for Sanders to win the nomination at this point. And while no one is calling for him to drop out, some are increasingly worried that this seemingly never-ending nominating contest is doing increasing damage to Clinton. Congressional Democrats, in particular, said they hope this spat serves as a warning to the candidates to tone things down for the good of keeping the party more cohesive than the Republicans. We are nowhere near the playground name-calling of the Republican Party, McCaskill said. The vitriol and nonsense on the Republican side is a standard that we could never reach. Its really important that everybody take a pause, that everybody calm down, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, said. At this point in campaigns, people get tired, say things they dont mean to, emotions get raw. I think a lot of this will dissipate with a couple good nights sleep. (c) 2016, The Washington Post Abby Phillip, John Wagner, Anne Gearan Following seven weeks of study, a group of 30 chareidim completed their course to become patrol policemen. Many family members were on hand to escort them during graduation as they prepared to become members of Israel Police. The graduates will be assigned to different areas and hopefully, they will succeed in improving the ties between police and the chareidi community. Some of the new recruits are married and have children, and for them the new position also opens a door to a career and earning a livelihood. Just this week Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich announced he wishes to bring more minorities into the department including chareidim, for he feels this is how the department will be able to improve its connection with the chareidi tzibur and address certain issues in that community including cases of family abuse that are all too often covered up. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Ted Cruz will have hundreds of influential Republican donors and Jewish leaders all to himself this weekend in Las Vegas as he addresses the Republican Jewish Coalition. Cruzs rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump and John Kasich, declined invitations to attend a puzzling move in particular for Trump as he tries to project himself as a party unifier who deserves the Republican nomination even if he falls short of winning enough delegates in the primaries to clinch it outright. Trump as of late Thursday did not have any public events scheduled through the weekend. Its a missed opportunity for Trump to build on a well-received recent speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said Abbie Friedman, an RJC board member who introduced Trump when he spoke to the Republican group in December. With Cruz coming in, hell have the entire platform to himself to win support from an incredibly powerful and important group. The RJC is funded by the top political donor of 2012, Sheldon Adelson, and meets at the billionaires Venetian casino resort on the Strip. Trump declined an invitation to attend a private dinner at Adelsons home Thursday night with the Republican Jewish Coalitions board, according to people with direct knowledge of the invitation who werent authorized to share the details about the event. Trump decided not to attend the dinner even before he canceled a West Coast trip that hed planned for Thursday and Friday. Trumps spokeswoman and his campaign manager did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday. The Republican front-runner does not appear to be sending surrogates to Las Vegas, either, as onetime presidential candidate Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker did last year. That, to me, is a real revelation into the weakness of his campaign, said Ari Fleischer, another RJC board member who has said he would back any GOP nominee in the general election. There should be someone here on the ground. Thats what good campaigns do. In addition to speaking Saturday to more than 500 attendees, Cruz has a separate, smaller event planned with RJC members. His chief Jewish liaison, Nick Muzin, will be there throughout the conference. And pro-Cruz outside groups that can take unlimited contributions are setting up shop in the Venetian this weekend, ready to land donations. Theres a lot of interest in hearing from Ted Cruz in light of his win in Wisconsin and the impact that has on re-shaping the race, said Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks. Its all coming together at a crucial juncture. Brooks said some of his organizations members no longer see Trump as the overwhelming front-runner and predict a contested convention this summer. Among the recent converts to Cruz are Fred and Jay Zeidman of Houston. Both signed on last week as fundraisers for the Texas senator, following their work for Jeb Bush, who ended his campaign in February. Fred Zeidman, an RJC board member, said he doesnt agree with Cruzs position about deporting the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally. But with the safety and security of Israel being our priority, no one in this whole campaign is more outspoken on this issue than Ted Cruz, he said. And wed be remiss if we didnt show him our support. Jay Zeidman said the Trump campaigns decision to skip RJC ignores the groups influence among Republican Jewish voters. At this point in the campaign, you want to be making as many friends as possible, I would think, he said. The groups gatherings have become cant-miss for GOP candidates in recent years. Part of the reason: Adelson, a key member, was the top political spender in the last presidential race, pouring $90 million of family money into that campaign. Yet the gambling mogul hasnt been willing to place a bet in this years unpredictable Republican presidential contest, sending mixed signals about his candidate preference. His newly acquired Las Vegas newspaper backed Marco Rubio, who has since dropped out, his wife has been a Cruz fan, and he himself recently said of a Trump nomination, Why not? In November, Adelson wrote a pair of $2,700 checks to Cruz and Bush a steep drop-off from the previous race. Aside from the Thursday dinner at his house, Adelson wasnt expected to be at any of the RJC conference events. Likewise, he did not attend the RJCs December presidential forum in Washington. All the GOP candidates at the time, including Trump, spoke there. (AP) Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty (Met Council) and the Orthodox Union (OU) joined together this year, to ensure that the poor and near-poor kosher homes are empowered to celebrate Passover with joy and dignity. Met Councils Kosher Food Network will provide kosher for Passover food to over 240,000 hungry New Yorkers at 120 citywide sites. OU staff members will pitch in as volunteers to assist with distribution. The high cost of kosher food presents a unique challenge for many New Yorkers: on average, a kosher meal is 15% more expensive. To enable poor and near-poor New Yorkers to celebrate the upcoming holiday, Met Council distributes an increased amount of food. We understand the unique challenge of affording kosher food, said Met Council CEO Alan Schoor. We are grateful to the OU and their volunteers who are joining our Kosher Food Network in the mitzvah of feeding the hungry. In New York City, with more than half a million poor and near-poor Jewish New Yorkers, it is not only our mission, but our obligation to ensure that the most vulnerable New Yorkers have access to kosher and nutritious food year-round and especially during the holidays. Thanks to our partners in government, private donors and local Jewish Community Councils we are able to work towards meeting this need. Passover is a time when Jews around the world participate in the mitzvah of maot chitim providing funds for Passover to those in need, noted Allen Fagin, Executive Vice President of the OU. This partnership with Met Council provides our organization and our staff members the opportunity to give back to our communities by lending our help to those who need it most. Were privileged to be a part of it. To empower poor and near-poor Jewish New Yorkers to celebrate Passover, volunteers will assist local pantries by stocking pantry shelves and organizing food. To ensure that families in need are assisted year-round, volunteers will screen clients for all available government benefits, including, SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) and Met Councils free handyman services for low income seniors, Project Metropair. Volunteers will assist in all five boroughs. Passover begins at sunset on Friday, April 22. If you or someone you know needs food or other assistance during this holiday, please call 212-453-9539. For more than four decades, Met Council has supported and championed families, seniors and adults living in poverty and near-poverty. Met Council provides immediate assistance to New Yorkers in crisis and creates pathways to self sufficiency through the following programs: Americas largest kosher food pantry system, emergency social services, family violence services, home repairs, homecare services, benefits enrollment and outreach, job readiness training and affordable housing. Our grassroots Jewish Community Council network provides support to families in their neighborhoodsright where they live. www.Metcouncil.org (YWN World Headquarters NYC) On the night of Monday, 25 Adar-II, policemen from the Unit of Nationalist Crime in the Central Unit of the Yehuda and Shomron Police and ISA forces detained three Jewish men who were then taken for interrogation to an ISA facility. A gag order was placed on details of the case and the detainees have not been allowed to meet with an attorney. The following day Rishon LTzion Magistrate Court Judge Avraham Hyman rejected a police demand for a 10-day remand extension and extended the detainees remand by only six days. Honenu filed an appeal on the extension. Dozens of the detainees relatives and friends protested opposite the residence of the head of the ISA, Yoram Cohen, in Jerusalem on Wednesday, 27 Adar-II. The protesters called on the head of the ISA to allow the detainees to meet with an attorney and demanded that the ISA refrain from torturing the detainees held in the ISA facilities. On Thursday morningZ the Central District Court in Lod rejected the appeal filed by Honenu on the remand extension of the three ISA detainees. Thus the decision by the Rishon LTzion Magistrate Court to extend their remand until Monday, 3 Nissan still stands. Honenu Attorney Adi Kedar filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of Israel on the the District Courts decision. Several months ago a number of Jewish youths were detained and served with orders prohibiting them from meeting with an attorney. Then also a gag order was placed on publicizing details of the investigation. After the youths were interrogated in ISA facilities, without meeting with an attorney, it was revealed that during their interrogations, unusual means including torture, were used on them. Some of the youths were released after it turned out that they had no connection to the incident for which they were interrogated. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) United Hatzalah for the past two weeks has found itself at the heart of heated online discussions between anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. Tens of anti-Israel websites and blogs are blaming the EMS organization for the deadly terror attacks that occurred in Paris and Brussels. Social abounds with false accusations, according to which, United Hatzalah is affiliated with the Mossad and that the organizations personnel were found at the scenes of the terror attacks that took place two weeks ago in Brussels and at the attack of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November last year. According to the slandering conspiracy theorists, members of United Hatzalah were the first ones to provide video footage of passengers who were waylaid at the Brussels airport and that the organization has a direct connection with the Mossad. According to the websites United Hatzalah published the very first picture of the carnage at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris last November. So for the second time in less than 6 months, this group is at the right place and at the right time when Europe is hit by jihadists (or is it jewhadists) terror attacks. Coincidence? The reason for the conspiracy is the appearance of United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Yisrael Yeret, who was a passenger transferring planes at the Brussels airport when the attack occurred. Yeret took a video of himself at the airport explaining how passengers were being kept in an adjacent hanger for a number of hours without food or water while security services cleared the airport. Yeret likewise helped a number of passengers who had fainted during the wait. The images and videos made it into the Israeli as well as worldwide press. Anti-Semitic and anti-Israel organizations saw the footage and weaved conspiracy theories that would implicate Israel around what they saw. Seemingly the connection between United Hatzalah and the recently deceased former director of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, is providing added content for the conspiracy theorists. Dagan served as a member of the board of directors of the organization and helped the organization develop both in Israel and around the world. Spokesperson for United Hatzalah, Moti Elmaliach, addressed the wave of anti-Semitic conspiracy-theory-attacks being leveled at the organization on social media. According to Elmaliach volunteers of United Hatzalah hurry to help anyone who is in need of medical help no matter where they are located. The claims that there is a connection between our organization and the murderous acts that were carried out by ISIS terrorists, are figments of the imagination of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic people whose only goal is to delegitimize Israel and United Hatzalah, whose sole purpose is to save the lives of all people, without regard for religion or race. Yisrael Yeret also commented on the trending inflammatory attacks. I was shocked to learn that we are supposed agents of the Mossad. I was in the middle of a flight, that I took for personal reasons, coming back from New York to Israel and I had a stopover in Brussels. As a volunteer who is used to helping people I attempted to help wherever I could. Nothing more than that. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) MK (Kulanu) Dr. Michael Oren, a former Israeli Ambassador to Washington, proposes a peace plan that he feels will also defuse the ongoing and increasing efforts of BDS (Boycott Divest Sanctions). In his address at the Yediot Achronot Conference, Oren explained the current administration has stagnated and placed its head in the sand and failed to come up with new diplomatic initiatives vis-a-vis the PA (Palestinian Authority). Labeling himself a centrist, pragmatic and realistic person, Dr. Oren feels part of todays problem is that Israel is no longer able to explain itself politically to the international community because it does not have an active policy concerning the PA. Oren believes construction throughout Yehuda and Shomron outside the so-called settlement blocs must be frozen. The governments failure to do this he feels has significantly contributed to Israels isolation today in the international community. He blames this erroneous policy with causing harm and as a result, Israel today cannot build in the Gilo neighborhood of the capital or at Hebrew University. Instead of the building freeze outside settlement blocs, Israel has now lost all support for all construction in Yerushalayim and is becoming increasingly isolated on the international diplomatic scene. Israel must increase efforts to strengthen the PA economy including more work permits for PA residents to enter Green Line Israel and additional freedom of movement for PA residents. From Orens perspective, it is essential for Israel to continue supporting the two-state solution and this along with other measures will take the air out of BDS because the international community will see Jerusalem is quite serious regarding peace-making efforts with the PA. When asked how this can be accomplished in a right-wing coalition, Oren admits that it is difficult, reminding listeners that any time a building freeze in areas of Yehuda and Shomron is discussed, the Bayit Yehudi party threatens a coalition crisis. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) It was a stormy session at the Degel Hatorah Convention in Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim on Wednesday, 27 Adar-II. Data was presented to participants documenting a historical injustice pertaining to the division of Yahadut Hatorah as Degel, the litvish stream, now maintains it is larger than Agudas yisrael, the chassidish stream despite the fact the latter has always maintained it is larger and it therefore deserves a larger portion of the pie. What is clear is that after the convention, there will be more machlokes between the Degel Hatorah and Agudas Yisrael factions of Yahadut Hatorah and it will remain to be determined if that machlokes gets bad enough to cause the parties to split as they were in the past. There were also personal assaults leveled by speakers at the assembly at Agudas Yisrael members, which YWN-ISRAEL will not be reporting. Much attention was paid to litvish verses the chassidish at this forum rather than discussing the troubling issues facing chareidi Jewry in Eretz Yisrael. Degel announced it is going to hold a census to determine just how many litvish voters it has. The head of the partys municipality unit, Menachem Shapira, showed participants a number of slides in which he explained shows Degel is clearly larger than Agudas Yisrael. The graphs showed the voting breakdown for chareidim in Jerusalem, Modiin Illit and Bnei Brak. He showed in those cities, among Yahadut Hatorah voters, there are more Degel voters than Agudah. Degel is calling on Agudah to take part in the census, announcing if the chassidim are unwilling to cooperate, Degel will go it alone. It was added that in the last Knesset elections, there were 32,434 litvish voters in Jerusalem as compared to 19,231 chassidim and in the database of potential voters there are 34,189 litvish voters and 24,816 chassidish voters listed. Bnei Brak 28,354 litvish votes 18,624 chassidish votes Database of potential voters shows 32,819 litvish and 23,630 chassidish. Modiin Illit 12,336 litvish votes 2,798 chassidish votes Database of potential voters shows 13,108 litvish and 3,241 chassidish. Clearly slides of Betar Illit and many other areas that are strong chassidish strongholds were not presented by Shapira. It is explained the data is presented this way because the Yerushalmi faction of the litvish, Bnei Torah, ran in those communities in the elections and those potential voters come from the Degel (litvish) tzibur. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Apples fight over privacy with the U.S. government isnt over yet, even after the government dropped a demand for the companys help in accessing a California shooters iPhone because someone else found a way to crack it. The U.S. said itll keep fighting to get the companys help in accessing the phone of a drug dealer in the New York borough of Brooklyn, because it provided assistance in accessing such devices in earlier cases. In a court filing Friday, the government said its going ahead with an appeal of a judges order denying its request for Apples help. The battle between the worlds most valuable tech company and the U.S. government over encryption and data privacy has sparked a national debate, with dozens of companies and organizations siding with Apple, while law enforcement has generally taken the governments side. FBI Director James Comey has called it the most difficult issue he has faced in government. Politicians in Washington have also divided on the issue and are attempting to craft legislation addressing data privacy. Donald J. Trump, the leading contender for the Republican nomination for president, had called for an Apple boycott over its refusal to help. Its far from certain that the Justice Department will prevail on appeal, said Timothy Edgar, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies and Public Affairs at Brown University. After U.S. investigators managed to crack the California phone, a Brooklyn judge will likely be skeptical that they dont have a way to break into this phone either, he said in a phone interview. Nor will public opinion be on the governments side in Brooklyn, with the U.S. seeking data from a drug dealers phone instead of a terrorists, he said. The government risks locking in an unfavorable ruling from the Brooklyn magistrate if his findings are upheld on appeal to a higher court. Magistrate judges rulings dont have value as precedent, but U.S. appeals court rulings do, Edgar said. The two phones were different models and the tool which the FBI used to break into the California phone last month likely wouldnt work on the handset at the center of the Brooklyn case. Comey suggested on Thursday that the method used to access the California phone is only effective on the iPhone 5C and earlier models. Since the Brooklyn handset runs an earlier version of Apples mobile operating system iOS 7 it may be easier to hack the phones software. However, mobile forensics companies advertise that they are able to break into iPhones which run earlier versions than iOS 8.4. In the pivotal clash over privacy rights, the Brooklyn judge called a U.S. argument that the company is required to cooperate under a 1789 law called the All Writs Act obnoxious to the law. Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet didnt immediately respond to a request for comment on the governments appeal. After helping prosecutors unlock at least 70 iPhones, Apple last year stopped cooperating and said the company would no longer serve as the governments helper. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in February that U.S. demands for iPhone access are a chilling attack on privacy. The government disagreed, saying Apple is more concerned about its marketing and brand identity than about the safety of the public. The government has sought Apples help because self-destruct features on newer iPhones wipe out data if prosecutors try brute force techniques to hack in. The contents of the drug dealers phone were not backed up to remote cloud storage, leaving the physical device as the only source of data, the U.S. said. The U.S. said on March 28 that it had successfully decrypted iPhone used by a man who with his wife carried out a December attack in San Bernardino in which 14 people were killed. That ended a standoff in California between Apple and the Justice Department there. Apple has already conceded that it could get into the iPhone in the Brooklyn case within a matter of hours or minutes, a law enforcement official told reporters Friday. In court papers, the Justice Department has said Apple had previously helped the government unlock phones of people accused of drugging and sexually abusing children, a defendant who was later convicted of selling drugs in Florida, and a child pornographer. In each instance, the government said it won an All Writs Act order and Apple readily complied. The company extracted the data in child sex abuse case immediately, the U.S. said. The hacking tool used in the San Bernardino case was tested to determine if it would work on other phone models, the official said. The Justice Department official declined to discuss the results of the tests. The official also declined to discuss any details about talks the Justice Department has had with outside entities about hacking into the iPhone in the Brooklyn case. The official also said it is premature to say whether the U.S. will disclose the hacking tool to Apple. If theres a master strategy at work for the Justice Department, it might be that its seeking to appeal and lose, Edgar said. Then, they could go to Congress and get legislation that would impose more requirements on companies to help with investigations, he said. But that would be a cynical view, Edgar noted. (c) 2016, Bloomberg Christie Smythe, Chris Strohm [PHOTOS BY JDN IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] It was a modest, yet impressive affair not far from the city of Zhitomir in Western Ukraine. On Tuesday, the cornerstone was laid for the new and spacious Ohr Avner Educational Village. The new campus will include special guest houses for the many visitors who arrive throughout the year. The Ohr Avner Educational Village of Western Ukraine is home to various Jewish educational institutions; including an orphanage, a central shul, mikvahs, as well as many Jewish families who live in the area. The village is located between the famous cities of Mezhibush and Berditchev, whose names are so familiar to Jews from all walks of life. Centrally situated among the many holy kvarim in Western Ukraine, it services the throngs of visitors with transportation, catering and lodging of the highest caliber, all in an inimitable, Chassidic atmosphere. Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm, Shliach of the Rebbe and Chief Rabbi to Zhitomir and Western Ukraine spoke emotionally about the great zchus of having received a special stone from the wall of the Alter Rebbes Ohel in Haditch to use for the groundbreaking of this new village. Rabbi Wilhelm, as well as the institutions administrator Rabbi Zalman Bukiet, were honored with casting of the stone, followed by lchaims and warm wishes from the crowd. May this building be completed with lots of hatzlocha! (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Jes Staley is a chief executive in a hurry as he seeks to simplify the Barclays model and restore a languishing share price. The key is disposing of unwanted international operations, such as its Hong Kong and Singapore wealth management offshoots just sold for $320million to Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation. The Barclays boss believes the lender can still be a world-beating global bank by focusing on the key financial centres of London and New York. In Britain the bank is buoyed by the strong consumer and a powerful credit card franchise. In the US it benefits from the investment banking operation inherited from the post-crisis purchase of Lehmans operations. Turnaround plan: Barclays boss Jes Staley believes the lender can still be a world beating global bank by focusing on the key financial centres of London and New York This gave it access to a desirable American domestic and global client list. The contention is that when investment banking and corporate banking do fully recover, the clients want to buy the services in New York or London. Branch offices in Asia, Europe or elsewhere are an unnecessary luxury. Among the most contentious decisions that Staley has taken is to quit Africa, where the bank has such a long tradition. It holds a 62 per cent stake in Absa in South Africa and has some 1,267 branches across 12 countries on the continent. There has been speculation former chief executive Bob Diamond, who has his own African venture Atlas Mara, might be interested. But with a 3billion price tag this looks to be beyond his reach. A difficulty in either holding on to the South African bit of the enterprise, despite strong growth and profitability, is the current requirement that a sizeable stake remains in local hands. There are still big uncertainties around Barclays. Misconduct costs for payment protection insurance and US mortgage securities still hang over the bank. Moreover, it is still embroiled in the long-running Serious Fraud Office investigation into alleged commissions paid to secure new Middle East capital in the aftermath of the crisis. Putting a timeframe on clearing all of this up is tough and 2018 looks as good as any date. And there could be fresh onslaughts to come. Banks are not flavour of the moment and Barclays is being tarred with those other serial sinners Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank. The companys shares currently sell for half book value. Restoring confidence is a mammoth task but with every asset sale, such as those in Asia and Italy, Barclays becomes a simpler, less cost heavy and easier to control bank. How simple it will be to repair its reputation and cultural damage of the past is the much bigger unknown. Ladies first Fixing M&S is a huge challenge too. The main issue for new boss Steve Rowe is can he succeed where others have failed? He is making it his mission to fix clothing sales with style for women still the biggest problem. Final quarter sales numbers were a little better than expected, down 2.7 per cent on a same stores basis, hence a modest rise in the share price. Rowe is being brave by taking full control of clothing, so his period as chief executive will be judged on delivery. It is not all entirely hopeless. The Autograph range, focused on younger, more fashion-conscious shoppers, saw sales shoot ahead 10 per cent. Rowe also recognises the need for smarter pricing. Not all the business is stuck. Food income may be flat on a same store basis but overall sales are up 4 per cent as the programme of opening stand-alone food stores pays off. M&S food halls have opened a real gap over the other grocers in terms of quality and innovation. Online continues to expand and the revival of the groups international ambitions, one of the legacies of the Marc Bolland era, must be sensible. M&S is among the best recognised British brands globally. International conditions from the slowdown in China to stagnation in the eurozone are not ideal and repatriated profits will be affected by the fall in sterling. It would nevertheless be a mistake for Rowe to focus solely on the home front which he knows best. Burberry at the luxury end, Topshop in fast fashion and Primark in the no-frills space demonstrate that British retailing can compete overseas. Once again M&S is a company in transition. There will be those who think it needed a totally fresh face to turn the company around. Caroline McCall of EasyJet might have been that person. But it is lifer Rowe who has been given the opportunity to show his mettle. Green mail Cultural and sporting institutions have no divine right to corporate sponsorship. No one would blame BP if it decided to give up on the British Museum after coming under attack from climate change activists like Emma Thompson. The company is going through hard times as a result of the Deepwater Horizon pay-outs and the slump in oil prices. The last thing it needs is green luvvies telling it how to spend shareholders money. Shame: HSBC Chief executive Stuart Gulliver himself used Panama to hide 5m of bonuses Pressure is mounting on the bosses of HSBC as the tainted banking giant is engulfed in yet another scandal. Leaked files from law firm Mossack Fonseca dubbed the Panama Papers reveal the bank and its affiliates set up 2,300 shell companies in tax havens across the world to enable wealthy clients to avoid taxes. Chief executive Stuart Gulliver used Panama to hide 5million of bonuses while the bank had ties to a billionaire cousin of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. The leaked documents suggest HSBC lobbied on behalf of Rami Makhlouf, a long-standing client and cousin of the Syrian president, so he could continue to hide money in a Swiss bank account. The decision appears to have been driven by executives at the banks headquarters in London who vouched for Makhlouf after sanctions were imposed by the United States in 2008. US diplomats had described Makhlouf as the poster boy for corruption in Syria. HSBC boss Gulliver and his chairman Douglas Flint now face questions over their future, having already outlines plans to find their successors. John Mann, a Labour MP on the Treasury Select Committee, said: Anyone whos followed HSBC over the years wont be surprised at all by these revelations. 'Someone needs to be held responsible at the top of the bank, the chairman or chief executive, and one of them should be resigning. Until one or both of the top two people go, we cant trust anything they say. The links to Panama mark the latest revelation in a long line of scandals involving HSBC. Current chief executive Gulliver rose to the top job in 2011 and promised to transform its reputation. He stressed his high standards of ethics, his determination to bring in a culture of courageous integrity and a high set of personal values. But since then the bank has rarely been out of the news. In 2012, HSBC was slammed by US senators, who said drug money had flowed into its accounts. The bank accepted more than 10.6billion in cash from subsidiaries in Mexico, Russia and other countries at high risk of money laundering, they said, with no monitoring conducted from 2006 to 2009. The Americans said top staff knew what was going on but allowed this deceptive conduct to continue. It led to the resignation of head of compliance David Bagley and a 1.2billion fine. The bank said it had an absolute commitment to fixing what went wrong. But another storm was already brewing. Former HSBC IT expert Herve Falciani had fled to France with a dossier of files from the banks Swiss operation. The details of about 30,000 secret holders of bank accounts were seized by the French, with clients revealed to include the super-rich, arms dealers, blood diamond smugglers and corrupt businessmen. Gulliver and Flint blamed management in Switzerland, saying that governance was very much stronger than it was in the past. The bank escaped sanctions, but at a stormy hearing in front of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in March 2015, Gulliver admitted he himself had a complex arrangement involving money offshore, with 5million in an HSBC account in Switzerland under the name of a Panamanian company called Worcester Equities. Gulliver told MPs this was all about stopping colleagues finding out how much he was being paid. The move offered no tax advantage, he said. Former PAC chairman Margaret Hodge said: The more we learn, the more questions HSBC and Mr Gulliver have to answer. There is a small elite that seem to think its all right to do wrong. Co-Op boss Richard Pennycook, a gentle, softly spoken figure despite his uncanny likeness for villainous tycoon Mr Burns from The Simpsons TV cartoon, claimed the once-ailing group was back on track after their so-so results yesterday. His path to recovery has not always run smooth. Upon arriving at the Co-Op in 2013, Pennycook, 51, came up with an initiative to fix the groups struggling bank which he called Project Charlie. Weeks later, the travails of its roly-poly, cocaine-sniffing chairman Paul Flowers hit the headlines. Perhaps not the best name with hindsight, Pennycook now muses. Doppelgangers: Co-Op boss Richard Pennycook is a gentle, softly-spoken figure despite his uncanny likeness for villanous tycoon Mr Burns from The Simpsons TV cartoon (left) Citigroups prop forward-built head of corporate banking, Mark Tweedie, 38, says there are drawbacks to his well-renumerated job. He says: Im a proud banker. But I go to numerous dinner parties and social events and get pilloried for my calling. There, there dear. Oakley Capitals barrel-chested founder and serial entrepreneur Peter Dubens, 48, whose firm owns listing magazine Time Out, faces a potential headache. The energetic hedge fund managers opulent, 6,000-a-year gym, KX, which he set up 15 years ago for well-heeled Chelsea types, could be temporarily booted out of its swish Sloane Avenue location. KX (pronounced Kicks) is currently housed in the old Harrods depository, whose owners are about to submit plans for extensive redevelopment. If successful, members such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Pippa Middleton will be forced to tone their well-defined posteriors elsewhere. Property tycoon Gerald Ronson, who started out by pioneering Britains first self-service petrol pumps, gathered 180 family, friends, and loyal henchmen for a party at Claridges this week. He told guests that his customers in 1966 were offered a refund if a forecourt attendant failed to wash their windscreen, or check their tyres and wipers. What they didnt know was the refund came out of the petrol pump attendants wages, chuntered Gerry, 74. Not for nothing is the old rascal now sitting pretty on a 500m fortune. Stockbroker-turned catalogue clothing mogul Johnnie Boden has amassed 300million from supplying colourful togs to yummy mummies and their apple-cheeked tots. Does the carrot-topped Old Etonian, 54, worry his vast success might dilute his childrens hunger to go out and make their own cash? Divvying up the world of investment into neat categories can be both limiting and dangerous, but generally speaking investors tend to choose from two main investment styles: value and growth. A growth investor will typically look for high quality companies with the potential to grow earnings over time. Value investors, on the other hand, look for stocks that are unloved and undervalued by the marketplace. You can typically tell which companies are being underpriced by the market by looking at factors such as dividend yield or the relationship between a companys tangible assets and the value the market assigns to them. The more out of favour a company is - the more attractive these metrics will look. Swimming against the tide: Value investors look for stocks that are unloved and undervalued With the wrath of the financial crisis burnt into memory, many investors have preferred to play it safe, choosing to invest in high quality, ports in the storm type companies while steering clear of out of favour sectors and stocks. Proof that investments carrying the quality label are in vogue can be found in low yields offered by these type of investments, as investors chase up the price of so-called bond proxies. (Remember price and yield move in opposite directions.) Value investors meanwhile have been left holding the bag just have a look at the dividends on companies like Royal Dutch Shell and Sainsburys. But trends can, and do, reverse and astute investors shouldnt ignore the possibility of a change in market leadership this year. Growth stocks: Following the financial crisis, many investors have preferred to play it safe Here are four reasons why we could see the largely ignored, cheaper value stocks swing back into favour: Quality: pricing in a crisis The main way in which growth and value shares differ is not in how these companies are bought and sold, but rather, in the way they are perceived by the market and, ultimately, the investor. Turn to the history books and you will see that quality investments tend to come into favour during times of extreme economic uncertainty, reflecting investors desire for reliability and their willingness to pay up for perceived security. The Nifty Fifty buy-and-hold stocks popular in the 1960s and 1970s are a good example of this and often cited as an example of unrealistic investor expectations for growth stocks. Its worth noting that the outperformance of quality stocks over the past two years assumes the market is pricing in a crisis on par with some of the most extreme times of economic stress, rather than the modest recovery were in fact experiencing. Many investors seem to be positioned for this trend to continue indefinitely. While it can be easy (and tempting) to take comfort from a successful period of outperformance, complacency can leave you dangerously exposed if patterns of market leadership evolve. Cycles: This graph shows the long-term relative performance of 'quality' investments Contrarian radars are twitching Sir John Templeton was right up there with Warren Buffett as a hugely successful investor. He knew that you have to do something different if you want to stand out from the crowd. This approach is called contrarian investing its about doing the opposite of what most investors are doing. Closer to home those brave enough to swim against the tide have ended up as some of Britains most successful investors names like Neil Woodford and Anthony Bolton. With many investors holding tight to quality stocks, contrarian investors cant help but be attracted to those parts of the market that dont fit into the quality box and have been oversold by the market. Banks have taken a beating along with commodity and oil stocks, both sectors feature heavily in the portfolios of seasoned contrarians Alex Wright of the Fidelity Special Situations Fund and Fidelity Special Values Investment Trust and Alistair Mundy of the Investec UK Special Situations Fund. Wright points out that prices here are reminiscent of a recession and while theres a good deal to be worried about in the global economy (when isnt there?) he believes a muddle-through scenario is much more likely than the market expects. If such a scenario endures, we could see the market take another look at those companies in the reject bin. Contrarian investors: Neil Woodford and Anthony Bolton are some of Britains most successful investors Theres value in value Intuitively it makes sense to pay for quality, not least when the economic outlook is cloudy, but the golden rule of investment is never to overpay for any investment. Safe haven consumer staples companies with strong brands and pricing power are looking increasingly expensive, with investors paying a premium for safety, which is a risk in itself. The prices being paid for these companies today leave little room for things to go wrong. In contrast, it could be argued that the price you are being asked to pay for value stocks more than compensates for the uncertainty of outcome. Getting the balance right On the other side of the fence in the growth versus value debate, sit the so-called quality investors like Terry Smith of the Fundsmith Equity Fund and Nick Train of the CF Lindsell Train UK Equity Fund who argue that the underlying principles of investing in quality companies remain. These are companies that produce consistent performance and have the ability to grow in a world where there has been little or no economic growth. If you hold quality companies, chances are you probably view these as the jewel in your portfolio crown. Theres no reason why you should ditch these for a solely value-based approach. After all, companies that boast strong cash flows, steer clear of debt and have pricing power should be able to increase prices regardless of whats happening in markets or the broader economy. That said it will be remiss to ignore the glaring dislocation between growth and value. Make sure your portfolio is well balanced between the two. Most importantly, dont overpay - as Warren Buffett puts it: Price is what you pay, value is what you get. Maike Currie is Investment Director at Fidelity International and the author of The Search for Income an investors guide to income-paying investments. The views expressed are her own. @MaikeCurrie British tourists looking for a week in the sun will have to fork out more money than they did last year as the recent slump in the pound against the euro has resulted in prices rising in 80 per cent of the most popular European beach resorts. The pound fell to 1.23 yesterday, its weakest since June 2014, amid growing uncertainty in the run-up to Junes referendum over the UKs membership in the European Union. This means that having a meal, a drink or buying a tub of suncream in many European destinations has become more expensive for British holidaymakers, according to the Post Office Travel Moneys latest holiday costs barometer. Portuguese view: Despite the weak pound, Algarve is still 28 per cent cheaper than in 2011 for Britons Majorca, in Spain, has seen the biggest rise in the cost of 10 tourist staples - among them a cup of coffee, evening meal, a beer and mineral water - which are 23 per cent more expensive than this time last year for those paying in pounds. Prices have also risen in the Greek islands of Crete and Corfu, up by 9 and 14 per cent respectively, in the Southern Portuguese resort of Algarve, by 5 per cent, and by 11 per cent in Zadar in Croatia. However, the Post Office said that British holidaymakers were still getting a good deal compared to two years ago and that the negative impact of the weak pound was being tempered by some resorts lowering their prices. Andrew Brown of Post Office Travel Money said: There is no escaping the fact that sterling is weaker this year than last, resulting in price rises in 80 per cent of resorts surveyed. However, looking back to previous years, European resort costs have still fallen quite significantly in the longer term. Third cheapest: Limassol in Cyprus is one of the few European resorts to actually have seen prices falling The cheapest options: Sunny Beach in Bulgaria is the cheapest destination for the thrid year running The cheapest beach resort in Europe for those paying in pounds was still Sunny Beach in Bulgaria for the thrid year running, primarily because of low meal prices: less than 7 for a two-course lunch for two and under 22 for a three-course evening meal with wine. A weekend there would cost you just over 41, and thats despite a 9.3 per cent rise in prices compared to last year, according to the report. The second cheapest destination is Algarve, in Portugal, at 47, despite costs going up by 5 per cent in the last year, followed by Limassol in Cyprus, which is one of the only three European resorts to actually have seen prices falling. Like Cyprus, Portuguese prices have plummeted since 2014 and UK tourists visiting the Algarve for the first time in five years will find them 28 per cent cheaper than in 2011, the Post office said. Party island: Ibiza is the most expensive beach resort, with a weekend there costing 113 Most expensive sunny break: Sorrento in Italy and Nice in France are among the most costly beach resorts In fourth-placed, Spains Costa del Sol local prices remain at 2015 levels and the 8 per cent rise in costs relates purely to the weaker exchange rate, according to the report. The Greek island of Crete is the cheapest among other Greek destinations, making it to seventh place with the cost of a weekend there at just above 63. Zante and Kefalonia are also among the top ten cheapest beach holiday destitnations in Europe, cheaper than Corfu, where higher resort costs have combined with the weak pound to make tourist staples over 14 per cent pricier this year. Facing the bay of Naples, Sorrento has also seen prices fall, although it remains one of the most expensive resorts surveyed by the Post Office, second only to Nice and party island Ibiza, which is the most expensive at 113.69. Andrew Brown added: The pound may be worth less in Europe than a year ago but our research suggests UK tourists who choose destinations carefully could find resort prices lower than expected. Hands full: New M&S boss Steve Rowe believes that the retailer has a habit of over-complicating things The scale of the challenge facing Marks and Spencers new boss was laid bare yesterday after yet another fall in clothing sales. The troubled High Street retailer said sales of clothing and other merchandise apart from food fell 2.7 per cent in the first three months of the year. Steve Rowe, who took over as chief executive on Saturday following the departure of Marc Bolland, admitted that the performance was not good enough as he pledged to revive the chains flagging fortunes. Our performance remains unsatisfactory and there is still more we need to do, he said as he unveiled his maiden set of results. Turning around our clothing and home business by improving our customer offer is our number one priority. The all-important fashion business has been an ongoing problem for the company as clothing sales have fallen in almost every quarter of the past five years. Rowe, who has worked at M&S for more than 26 years, said that he had identified the biggest problems at the retailer and added: We are not leaving a stone unturned. The 48-year-old, who has put everything up for review from the number of ranges to the price of each product will outline his new strategy in May when M&S reports its full-year results. The company has been criticised for having too many brands as well as its quality and pricing. Rowe admitted: We have not been as stylish and we need to make sure we have the right product in the right place. The decline in clothing was not as bad as the 3 per cent fall analysts were expecting. But Rowe said it was not good enough and we are working hard as a team to improve. Clive Black, head of research at broker Shore Capital, said that while M&S clothing problems were not necessarily insurmountable the turnaround will not be an easy or quick process. He added: We do not believe that it is an impossible task and Steve Rowe may be particularly, nay distinctively, positioned to make the necessary changes to see things through as an M&S lifer. Rowe has been in charge of clothing since July and has retained direct control of the business in an unusual move for a chief executive of the 132-year old retailer. He is putting his faith in designer Queralt Ferrer, who he has promoted to lead design across womenswear, lingerie and beauty. The Spanish fashion expert previously worked at Zara-owner Inditex. Last year she was head of design for the Autograph and Limited ranges at M&S and Rowe pointed out that Autograph had seen sales increase 10 per cent in the quarter, highlighting her talent. M&S is also hoping for a good reception to the new collection designed by model Alexa Chung that will hit the shops next week. Rocky: M&S said sales of clothing and other merchandise apart from food fell 2.7 per cent in the first three months of the year Prior to clothing, Rowe was in charge of its food business. Food is usually a bright spot for M&S but sales were flat compared with the same period a year ago. However, the M&S food business is growing market share and 1 out of every 25 spent on food is spent at M&S. Food sales now account for more than half of total sales and Rowe had committed to opening more of its M&S Simply Food shops Overall sales were down 1.1 per cent. Rowe said his approach will be straightforward, robust and honest and he wants to make the business simpler. Investors appeared hopeful he has what it takes and the shares rose 3 per centor 12.6p to 433p. Many analysts are still to be convinced. City veteran David Buik, market commentator at broker Panmure Gordon, said the trading update was purely dreadful. He added: The performance of this darling of the High Street in the past six years has been totally unacceptable. Apart from great food, M&S have delivered nothing of any consequence. Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: Clothing continues to be a rather large millstone around Marks and Spencers neck. With a lot of news out in the small cap world this week, Cyan Holdings managed to catch the eye as the smart metering firm landed a 10million order win in Iran. It is ten times larger than any purchase order the company has received to date, which is why the share was one of the biggest gainers over the past five days. The otherwise underwhelming AIM share sparked into life, marking an impressive 70 per cent rise for the week. Executive chairman John Cronin called it 'a transformational point in Cyan's development.' Smart meters demand: Cyan Holdings landed a 10million order win in Iran Cyan wasnt the biggest winner this week, however, as, after a barnstorming end to the week, oil and gas junior Oilex took home the honours. The India focussed gas junior announced the start of production from the Bhandut field, with a well flowing gas at a stabilised rate of 700,000 cubic feet per day, which is equates to about 120 barrels of oil per day. Oilex - which was recently in the markets bad books - rallied to double in value on Friday morning, and was some 160 per cent higher for the week. Aminex was another in focus oil and gas stock, and like Oilex it was achieved first gas. After several months of anticipation the company and its AIM quoted partner Solo Oil has finally turned on the taps at the Kiliwani North gas field, in Tanzania. Both shares slipped back this week despite the news. Meanwhile, more broadly, the AIM All-Share benchmark notched up a healthy 6.3 per cent gain. Crashing down: Drone-maker Strat Aero has filed legal action against its former boss for fraud REACT Energy shares doubled to 6.15p on the news that the Clay Cross project has been recommended for approval by a planning official. The project is for a proposed energy recovery facility in Derbyshire, and the next milestone for investors to keep an eye out for is a council committee meeting on April 11. Moving to the healthcare sector, there was some good news for Deltex Medical shareholders, after it signed up two more US hospitals for its bloodflow monitoring systems including its first major account in a veterans hospital. Ewan Phillips, chief executive, said he sees opportunities to roll-out its oesophageal Doppler monitoring probes across the entire 150 medical centre VA system in the next two to three years. Shares were 20 per cent higher to 4.28p. It wasnt all good this week though, with Strat Aero headlining the fallers, down some 40 per cent to 1.62p. The drone-maker has been seen more often than not on the high-flyers list, but, hopefully unlike one of its drones, came crashing back down to earth. The firm reported it has filed a legal action against former chairman and chief executive of its subsidiary Aero Kinetics, alleging fraud and breach of contract through misrepresentations made before it agreed to buy the subsidiary. Another at the wrong end of the AIM table was Chinese herbal medicines group Taihua, which saw sales fall 34 per cent to RMB35.1million in 2015. It also revealed that its harvest of Chinese herb Forsythia was also well down. Shining a silver lining the group said the renewal of a Chinese GMP certificate would help sales recover. Finally, to the most bizarre story of the week, and Jersey-based Flying Brands revealed 78,000 has gone missing from the investment companys bank account. By Association of Mature Citizens North Carolinas so-called bathroom bill is causing quite a stirpitting defenders of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities against folks who think only ladies should be allowed in the Ladies Room and only men should be allowed in the Mens Room. The law supposedly violates the rights of individuals with alternative sexual preferences, particularly anatomically correct men who see themselves as women and women who wish they were men. But what about the rights of the rest of us? Americans overwhelmingly seek a modicum of privacy when we need to use the toilet or take a shower or use the locker room to change into gym clothes. The way a person thinks of himself or herself sexually is not an issue. Their thoughts are theirs aloneas are the thoughts of traditionalists who find it intrusive and offensive to be forced to use communal bathrooms, shower rooms and locker rooms. It was sad to see the amusement with which the issue was greeted when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo banned state travel to North Carolina in protest of the bathroom bill. Challenging an individuals right to privacy when using a bathroom, as Mr. Cuomo is doing, is no laughing matter. North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory insists that the law is not discriminatory. It does not take away or infringe on anyones rights, he said. However, he added: Would you want a man to walk into your daughters shower, and legally be able to do that? I happen to disagree with that. Meanwhile, McCrorys office distributed a fact sheet pointing out, among other things, that the law does prohibit private sector companies from adopting their own bathroom rules. Nor does it leave the LGBT community without protections. In addition, private businesses have the right to allow mixed-use bathroom, shower and locker facilities. Them versus us politics is behind the fuss. After all, why have the CEOs of major companies doing business in North Carolina banded together to challenge the law? In fact, 80 companies including Charlotte, NC-based Bank of America, Apple, Google, Facebook and PayPal signed a somewhat threatening letter hoping to put economic pressure on the state. Why would they take such a high-profile stance since the law does not impose any new rules on their businesses? They are free to set their own bathroom policies as they see fit. So, why was the law passed in the first place? According to the governors fact sheet: The bill was passed after the Charlotte City Council voted to impose a regulation requiring businesses to allow a man into a womens restroom, shower, or locker room if they choose. This ordinance would have eliminated the basic expectations of privacy people have when using the restroom by allowing people to use the restroom of their choice. This new local regulation brought up serious privacy concerns by parents, businesses and others across the state, as well as safety concerns that this new local rule could be used by people who would take advantage of this to do harm to others. The Association of Mature American Citizens Washington, D.C. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Bill Parry A 45-year-old man was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver as he tried to cross 21st Street near 30th Road in Astoria Wednesday night, according to the NYPD. Police were searching for the driver of a dark colored sedan who sped away from the scene. First responders arrived on the scene just before 11 p.m. and discovered the victim lying in the roadway with severe trauma to the body. He was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead, authorities said. Officials have not identified the victim pending notification of his family. There have been no arrests and the investigation was continuing. I am saddened to learn of the fatal hit-and-run on 21st Street and 30th Road last night, City Councilman Costa Constantinides (D-Astoria) said. We urge anyone who has information about the perpetrator to contact the 114th Precinct immediately. On Thursday morning there was still shattered glass at the intersection where the collision occurred. A woman raced across, pushing her cart ahead on oncoming traffic. This intersection has long been a danger in our community, Constantinides said. Since 2014, we have been speaking with DOT about traffic safety measures on this corner. The lack of a traffic light here is exacerbated by the surroundings, including the Variety Boys & Girls Club where children attend programs and classes every day. The city Department of Transportation will begin installing additional traffic lights on 21st Avenue this spring but at 21st, 24th and Crescent streets, not 30th Road where there is no crosswalk or stop sign. This fatality punctuates the great need for traffic safety measures at this intersection, one that our community has known for years, Constantinides said. I call on the DOT to conduct a traffic study and install a traffic light at this corner to prevent further tragedies like this one. We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the victim of this crime. A spokesman said the DOT stands with the community regarding last nights hit-and-run. We have studied this specific location for a traffic signal in the past, he said. Although it did not meet the criteria at the time, we are taking another look at the intersection for potential safety enhancements. Activists from the Coalition for Traffic Calming on 21st Street will set out flowers for the victim at the intersection around 5:45 p.m. 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. A group calling itself Clay County Against Wind Farms met Tuesday evening to share information about the many negative effects of wind turbines and to voice growing public opposition to additional wind farms in Clay County. The wind turbines pictured are in far southwest Clay County. By Christopher Collins of the Times Record News The Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce & Industry sent a newsletter this week reminding recipients of Sheppard Air Force Base's economic impact on the area, saying we shouldn't "shoot ourselves in the foot" regarding possible wind energy developments in Clay County. Henry Florsheim, president and CEO of the chamber, wrote in the newsletter Wednesday that "SAFB plays a vital role in our economy and in our everyday lives," and that residents need to be "protecting what you have." The development of wind turbines in the county could threaten Sheppard's ability to operate in he area, he asserted. Recently, base officials have butted heads with the developer of wind farm projects in the county, going so far as to tell attendees of a town hall meeting that if two proposed wind projects are completed, the Department of Defense might consider moving Sheppard's flight training missions to another base. If Sheppard left Wichita Falls, the financial impact would be massive the base generates about $750 million in revenue annually for Wichita Falls and the surrounding area. Florsheim's email placed that figure even higher, at about $1 billion. "When something pops up that may threaten such a huge asset, careful consideration needs to be taken to make sure we don't shoot ourselves in the foot," Florsheim wrote. "Possible development of wind farms in neighboring counties is exciting, but it could also threaten Sheppard's operations." At a town hall meeting in Henrietta last week, Sheppard Col. Gregory Keeton and another high-ranking base official gave attendees a detailed rundown of how wind turbine operations could affect flight training missions and radar operations. "In the past, there have been Navy and Air Force bases that have been impacted so much (by wind farms) that the government moved operations to a place where they're more feasible." Keeton said at the meeting. "Can we adjust our mission? It's a possibility. But it's a possibility we can't." Keeton also said that "eventually the government is probably going to have to do something." A representative of Horn Wind PM LLC, the company developing the wind projects, has previously told the Times Record News that the Sheppard is "prematurely going on the offensive" against the projects. More than 20 Clay County landowners have signed leases with Alterra Power Corp. for turbines to be installed on their property. Times Record News file A domesticated turkey hangs out at Turkey Fest in 2015. The event started earlier this week with celebrity turkey hunts and culminates Saturday on the Henrietta Courthouse Square with carnival-type games, vendors, a scholarship barrel race, pie-eating contest and plenty of food. SHARE Times Record News file Josey Cleveland (left) dons gobbler-themed duds for the scholarship barrel race during Turkey Fest on the Henrietta Courthouse Square in 2015. Turkey Fest returns to Henrietta Saturday. By Richard Carter, Special to the Times Record News It's been 10 years of turkey trotting. Pure poultry in motion. Gobbler glossology. And the Henrietta and Clay County Chamber of Commerce Turkey Fest is celebrating by bringing this fair-feathered celebration back to town. Since 2006, celebrity teams have traveled to Clay County to hunt for three days, hoping to nab the top-scoring turkey. Judges score entries by weight, length of spur and length of beard. Celebrity teams, which are required to have a syndicated outdoors show on television to participate, have been in Clay County since Thursday. Area ranches are supplying teams with digs for the weekend. These celebrity hunting teams, made up of a cameraman, hunter and assistant, will culminate their hunts on turn-in day Saturday. Saturday is when the nonhunting festivities fly in, beginning at 10 a.m. on the Henrietta Courthouse Square and running through 4 p.m. The day closes with the $50-a-ticket Full-Strut Banquet at 6:30 p.m. at Pioneer Hall and a free dance party, also beginning at 6:30 p.m. "It's our 10th anniversary, and we are having 10 teams," chamber Executive Director B.J. Dunn said. "We had between 5,000 and 6,000 people come in 2015. The Saturday Turkey Fest is for all ages, and there will be plenty of free things for the family to do. We'll have free rides, as well as some rides that people will have to pay for. There will be bounce houses, face painting and numerous activities for kids." A pie-eating contest begins at 10:30 a.m. Saturday. For a $5 entry fee, contestants down as many pies as they can in five minutes. The Turkey Barrel Scholarship Race starts at noon. It's when teams of three Clay County high school seniors any combination of boys and girls make "a turkeylike contraption that can be pushed, pulled, dragged around a barrel pattern," Dunn said. Teams are judged according to time and creativity, and each winning team member will receive a $500 scholarship. This year, she said, the festival won't have live turkey races for the children. In addition to the professional celebrity hunting teams, Turkey Fest will include an amateur hunting contest, dubbed the Battle of the Beards, which is open to Texas and Oklahoma hunters in younger-than-17 and 17-and-older divisions. "We have more food vendors this year," she said. "Right now, we have 15 just doing food, not including the rest of the vendors. Jefe's Mexican Restaurant will be at the square and at the banquet, and they will have a beer tent." Nonfood vendors will sell items like clothes and jewelry on the square. "We will also have new merchandise for sale that will reflect our 10th anniversary," Dunn said. Live music will be provided by Pat Waters and the Chainlink Band from Copperas Cove. The silent auction kicks off at Pioneer Hall at 5:30 p.m. with appetizers and a cash bar, followed by the Full Strut Banquet at 6:30 p.m. Professional and amateur hunting teams will weigh their catch on the square at noon and 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday. The final Saturday weigh-in will be at 1 p.m. The public is invited to watch as birds are scored. Proceeds go to the Henrietta and Clay County Chamber of Commerce, which in turn promotes the community and its business members. The chamber will continue its 1-year-old project to develop gateway signs to welcome visitors to Henrietta. The chamber also has provided funds for such causes as the Boys & Girls Clubs, Clay County Christmas and the area Easter egg hunt. Melissa McCarthy, left, and Kristen Bell star in "The Boss," opening in theaters this week. SHARE NEW IN THEATERS "THE BOSS" Melissa McCarthy plays the richest woman in the world until she's caught for insider trading. Now she's out of prison and ready to rebrand herself, but all the little people she stepped on to get to the top are not so eager to welcome her back. Co-starring Kristen Bell, Peter Dinklage. Rated R for sexual content, language and brief drug use. "HARDCORE HENRY" Henry is resurrected from the dead by his wife and has no memory. Five minutes later, his wife is kidnapped and he's being shot at. All he knows is he must try to remember his identity and save his wife from a warlord. With Sharlto Copley and Tim Roth. Rated R for nonstop bloody brutal violence and mayhem, language throughout, sexual content/nudity and drug use. "SARDAAR GABBAR SINGH" The sequel to Pawan Kalyan's 2012 blockbuster "Gabbar Singh." The film follows cop Gabbar Singh, who is back for guns, guts and love. This is a Teluga-language film. It stars Pawan Kalyan, Kajal Aggarwal, Sharad Kelkar and Kabir Duhan Singh. ALSO SHOWING "BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE" Ben Affleck plays Batman and Henry Cavill is Superman. The superheroes are at odds and fighting each other while Lex Luthor and Doomsday move to destroy Metropolis. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action throughout, and some sensuality. "DEADPOOL" The Green Lantern didn't quite work out for Ryan Reynolds, so he has taken on another superhero gig. This time he plays Deadpool, a former Special Forces operative turned mercenary who acquires superpowers after a rogue experiment. Also part of the cast is action star Gina Carano. Rated R for strong violence and language throughout, sexual content and graphic nudity. "THE DIVERGENT SERIES: ALLEGIANT" Beatrice (Shailene Woodley) and Four (Theo James) leave the confines of the world they have known and are taken into the custody of the Bureau of Genetic Warfare. Rated PG-13 for intense violence and action, thematic elements and some partial nudity. "EYE IN THE SKY" Helen Mirren plays Col. Katherine Powell, who is in command of an operation to capture Kenyan terrorists. When a girl enters the kill zone, so begins the conflict about the rights and wrongs of modern warfare. Rated R for some violent images and language. "GODS NOT DEAD 2" Melissa Joan Hart plays a junior high school teacher thrown into a legal case over her right to discuss Jesus in the classroom. Rated PG for some thematic elements. "GODS OF EGYPT" Set (Gerard Butler), the god of darkness, takes the throne of the Egyptian empire. Now it's up to Bek (Brenton Thwaites), a mortal hero, and the Egyptian god Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) to save the world. Rated PG-13 for fantasy violence and action, and some sexuality. "I SAW THE LIGHT" The story of country star Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston), whose music is influential even today. The film follows his meteoric rise and the tragedies of his hard living. Rated R for some language and brief sexuality/nudity. "LONDON HAS FALLEN" Gerard Butler reprises his role from "Olympus Has Fallen." This time Mike Banning is in London for the prime minister's funeral and discovers a plot to assassinate the world leaders who are there. Co-starring Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Melissa Leo and Radha Mitchell. Rated R for strong violence and language throughout. "MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN" A young girl with a rare disorder is miraculously healed after an accident. Starring Jennifer Garner and Queen Latifah. Rated PG for thematic material, including accident and medical images. "MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2" Toula (Nia Vardalos) and Ian (John Corbett) struggle with marital problems and a teenage daughter while another wedding approaches. The film is part two to the highest-grossing romantic comedy. Rated PG-13 for some suggestive material. "THE REVENANT" A frontiersman in the 1820s (Leonardo DiCaprio) struggles for survival in the harsh winter after being mauled by a bear, then goes on a quest for revenge. Also starring Tom Hardy. Rated R for strong frontier combat and violence, including gory images, a sexual assault, language and brief nudity. "RIDE ALONG 2" Ben (Kevin Hart) heads to Miami with his future brother-in-law (Ice Cube) to bring down a drug dealer. Co-starring Ken Jeong. Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, sexual content, language and some drug material. "RISEN" Follows the epic biblical story of the Resurrection, as told through the eyes of a nonbeliever. Clavius, a powerful Roman military tribune, and his aide, Lucius, are tasked with solving the mystery of what happened to Jesus in the weeks following the crucifixion, to disprove the rumors of a risen Messiah and prevent an uprising in Jerusalem. With Joseph Fiennes. Rated PG-13 for biblical violence, including some disturbing images. "10 CLOVERFIELD LANE" A young woman who wakes up from a car accident finds herself in the basement of a man who says he's saved her life from a chemical attack that has left the outside uninhabitable. Starring John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Rated PG-13 for thematic material, including frightening sequences of threat with some violence and brief language. "WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT" A journalist (Tina Fey) recalls her wartime coverage in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Also starring Martin Freeman. Rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content, drug use and violent war images. "ZOOTOPIA" In this animated feature, a fugitive con artist fox and rookie bunny cop work together to uncover a conspiracy. Featuring the voice talents of Idris Elba and Ginnifer Goodwin. Rated PG for some thematic elements, rude humor and action. This image taken in Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015 posted on the Twitter account of Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, a volunteer search and rescue group, shows the aftermath of an airstrike in Talbiseh, Syria. Russia on Wednesday carried out its first airstrikes in Syria in what President Vladimir Putin called a pre-emptive strike against the militants. (Syria Civil Defence via AP) SHARE By The Washington Post The cease-fire in Syria has now nominally lasted more than five weeks, at least in the sense that its death has not been declared by its international sponsors. It arguably has saved hundreds of lives: The Syrian Network for Human Rights counted 623 civilian deaths in the month of March, compared with previous monthly tolls well above 1,000. It's important to point out, however, what the accord brokered by the Obama administration with Russia has not accomplished. So far, it has not stopped the regime of Bashar Assad from continuing offensives against strategic territory held by rebel forces that joined the truce. It also has not opened corridors for humanitarian aid into those areas, which are occupied by hundreds of thousands of people. Much of the regime's military activity has been aimed at the suburbs of Damascus, including an area known as Eastern Ghouta. According to reports by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, the government has continued to block aid to at least six areas in the region, populated by 250,000 people, since the cessation of hostilities began on Feb. 27. Even where humanitarian convoys have gotten through, aid workers say Syrian government forces have stripped them of vital medical supplies, including surgical equipment and antibiotics. Meanwhile, the bombing continues. Last Thursday, a government airstrike hit the Damascus suburb of Deir al-Asafir,killing 33 people, including at least a dozen children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Last weekend, a government plane bombed a hospital in the rebel-held town of Azaz, near the border with Turkey. By the end of last week, anti-Assad forces had launched their own offensives south of the city of Aleppo, and in an area north of Latakia. The attacks, aimed at retaking ground that the government gained when it was supported by Russian bombing, were led by the al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra, which is not a party to the truce, but some elements of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army joined in. Commanders also said they were responding to the regime's violations. With the truce threatening to break down entirely, a task force set up by Russia and the United States to monitor violations looks virtually useless. With no enforcement mechanism, there has been no response to the attacks or to the blockage of aid. On Monday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that "what we have seen is that the Assad regime continues to be the biggest quote-unquote violator." But as for consequences, he conceded: "That has not happened." As throughout the Syrian conflict, the Obama administration lacks the leverage to force compliance by the regime because of its refusal to take steps such as creating a no-fly zone or providing more military support to rebel forces. It can only hope that sheer jawboning by Secretary of State John F. Kerry with his Russian and Iranian counterparts will persuade them to bring Assad into line. Kerry will have to talk fast: At the rate events are moving, what's left of the cease-fire doesn't appear likely to last much longer. SHARE BELFAST, Northern Ireland In a recent interview for the BBC2 series "Inside Obama's White House," President Obama sounded somewhat wistful as he spoke to an interviewer about how he has tried to use his voice "to move things toward a more ethical and moral outcome." The question of morals and ethics has been debated since the dawn of humanity. It won't be settled by the shifting winds of politics, because not everyone can agree on what is moral and what is not. Dictionary.com defines morality: "Conformity to the rules of right conduct." Ah, but here's the rub. That definition fits a different era. Morality today is personal. It is not a standard to which one is encouraged to conform for one's own, or society's benefit. Rather, it is about what makes one feel good. By this nonstandard standard, one can easily change one's sense of what is moral as they might a suit of clothes or a pair of shoes and suffer no societal condemnation because that "moral code," such as it is, exists only for the individual. When President Obama speaks of ethics and morality, the follow-up question should be, "Whose ethics and whose morality? Who, or what, established that standard?" To take one example, if you say there is no God and then turn around and tell me I should not be a racist, or that I should help someone in need, and I say, "why should I?" how do you respond? If we are all evolutionary accidents, why can't I believe and practice anything I wish? Perhaps you respond that there are laws prohibiting discrimination. To that I answer, "Suppose the laws are changed, is it then OK to discriminate?" It was once legal to own slaves, but did that law make slavery moral? There is the Constitution, but the courts are busy renovating that great document to fit the spirit of the age, as reflected in opinion polls, which now determine almost everything. Moral relativism has contributed to a host of societal and relational problems few wish to acknowledge. To do so would force people to admit their "standard," which in reality is no standard at all, isn't working. And such an acknowledgment could lead to what theologians call repentance, a turning away from the old and embracing the new, which is not new, but old, tried and proven best. President Obama may be the most pro-abortion president America has ever had. He has done little to reduce their number, which near 60 million in the U.S. since 1973. By what standard is his position "moral"? The president used to be against same-sex marriage, now he's for it. Was he moral when he opposed it, or is he moral now that he supports it? And what is his standard, because these positions are contradictory? Is the president being moral when he allows mostly Muslim refugees from Syria into the country, but permits few Syrian Christians to enter? He says he's a Christian. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to protect Christians first, since they are the ones being targeted by Islamic fundamentalists for death, forced marriages and sexual slavery? Mark Twain is quoted as saying: "Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other." That's funny, but Twain didn't tell us what he thought was right. What is the new standard for "right" and "moral"? Who established it and why should anyone follow your standard when mine might be the antithesis of yours? The inability or unwillingness to answer these questions and to enforce a moral code that mostly served humanity well until the self-indulgent '60s began to destroy its foundations is responsible for the confusion and moral chaos we witness today. Who will rescue us from this moral quagmire? It won't be anyone running for president. These things bubble up from the human heart; they do not trickle down from Washington. Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Due to information provided, the date of the Sheridan Hollow cleanup was incorrect in a previous story. The corrected date is below. ALBANY The city is looking for help in spring neighborhood cleanups targeting streets, sidewalks and parks starting Saturday. The Department of General Services will provide tools, bags, and garbage pick-up for events whenever possible. Organizers can contact the Community Relations Coordinator at DGS by calling 434-5822. Cleanups are: Delaware Area, 10 a.m. Saturday, April 9. Meet in front of St. Francis. Pine Hills Meet at the parking lot of Ridgefield Park on Partridge Street, 11:30 to 3 p.m., Sunday, April 10. Contact: Daniel Healy, 527-2168. Spring Street from Lark to Henry Johnson Boulevard: 10 a.m. Sunday, April 10. Contact: Shadi Khadivi, (401) 741-3811. West Hill Neighborhood Association. Meet at Third Street Park. Saturday, April 16. Contact: Rich Polec, 424-1558. Brighter Choice Charter School Earth Day Cleanup of Elk, North Lake and Sherman streets. Meet at the school at 395 Elk St., 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, April 16. Contact: Paul Stallings, 694-1622. Buckingham Pond Association Buckingham Pond: Meet at parking lot of pond, 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday, April 17. Contact: Harry J. Ermides, 573-7003. Downtown Albany Business Improvement District Madison Avenue and South Pearl Street, 10 a.m., Saturday, April 23. Contact: Don Wilson, 465-2143 ext 12. Nine Pin Cider Warehouse District. 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, April 24. Contact: Emily Harris, 449-9999. Joint Hudson/Park and Center Square Meet at Hudson-Jay Park, 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 30. Barbecue at 1 p.m. Contact: Darryl McGrath, 813-2822. Sheridan Hollow Meet at 255 Orange St., 10 a.m. to noon, Saturday, April 30. Contact: Louise McNeilly, 434-1730, ext. 405. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate ALBANY It was part of the 2016-17 budget that passed last week, but lawmakers and unions alike on Thursday were trying to throw cold water on a deal in which the perpetually money-losing Canal Corp., which operates the Erie and Champlain canals, is transferred from the Thruway Authority to the Power Authority. The state's Utilities Workers of America, Local 1-2, is warning canal employees that "NYPA is not your friend.'' And Republican state Sen. Joe Griffo, the Utica-area lawmaker who chairs the Energy Committee, said the transfer "is not a done deal'' because details of how the changeover would occur haven't been finalized. Griffo on Thursday issued a press release stressing that lawmakers still need to strike an agreement by July 1 with Gov. Andrew Cuomo about how transfer will take place. "My preference was to take it outside the budget, to have thorough vetting and discussion,'' Griffo said. Among the items he said needs to be finalized are protections for programs like Recharge NY, which gives upstate industries low-cost electricity, and potential guidelines or controls about how much money the Power Authority can spare to subsidize the canal, which runs at a cost of $87 million each year. Remarks by Griffo and labor representatives like Utilities Workers spokesman John Melia are emblematic of how controversial the move is turning out to be. Throughout the budget talks, the shift was said to be off the table, but it was put in the budget in the middle of the night. The union is upset because its members have been without a contract with the Power Authority for seven years, Melia said. The union says the Power Authority has exploited its quasi-government status to avoid reaching a contract with about 50 unionized workers who operate some of the massive hydroelectric plants in western and northern New York. "We've been trying to take action for years,'' said Melia. And Griffo, like members of the Business Council of New York State and other upstate lawmakers, expressed fear that taking on the money-losing Canal Corp. could hinder the Power Authority's ability to keep generating low-cost electricity. The added responsibility for the canal is coming as the Power Authority has struggled with its own finances, due in part to low-cost natural gas, which makes hydropower comparatively more expensive, Griffo said. Under the budget language approved by lawmakers the Canal Corp. is "reconstituted'' as a ''subsidiary corporation of the Power Authority.'' That could presumably occur regardless of whether lawmakers reach a deal on the details. But with lawmakers upset in the first place, the transfer could remain as a hot-button political issue, especially if upstate Senate Republicans decide to hold back something the governor wants as part of a bargaining process. Canal Corp. spokesman Shane Mahar said the corporation looks forward to working with lawmakers on a transition plan. The transfer can be laid out either through a separate chapter of law by July 1 or if the legislature doesn't enact a chapter by Oct. 1. The transfer would take place Jan. 1. Visit the Capitol Confidential blog for more. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate New York With accusations of lying, hustling for money and failed leadership, the race for the Democratic nomination took a decidedly negative turn, with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders exchanging a series of barbs over qualifications for the presidency. The testy exchanges underscored the heightened stakes for both sides as the race turns to New York, where Sanders hopes to turn his recent winning streak into concrete momentum toward the nomination. Clinton, meanwhile, is looking to the April 19 contest to take command of a primary race that many in her campaign worry will only amplify her weaknesses heading into the general election. Lagging in delegates and under fire from a frustrated Clinton, Sanders is shifting away from his pledge to avoid negative attacks and stinging her with direct accusations. "I will not leave here this morning and go to a Wall Street fundraiser," he told union members at an AFL-CIO conference in Philadelphia on Thursday. "I will not be hustling money from the wealthy and the powerful." The comment was a direct dig at Clinton, who was headed to Ohio and Colorado for fundraising after a campaign stop in New York City. "This is not the type of politics that I wanna get in," he told journalists in Philadelphia. "But we'll get used to it fast. I'm not gonna get beat up. I'm not gonna get lied about." Clinton has spent much of the past few weeks focused on Trump and Cruz, hoping to rally her party behind her by warning that a Republican president would roll back President Barack Obama's achievements. But since Sanders logged a big win in Wisconsin on Tuesday night she's been forced to pivot back to her primary opponent. A former New York senator, she's been touting her work in Congress for the state, highlighting her economic record in visits to struggling upstate cities. On Thursday, she took a quick jaunt on the New York City subway, riding the train two stops in the Bronx. Walking along East 170th Street afterward, she stopped to shake hands and greet a baby in a stroller. "I need your vote!" she told one man. The photo op was aimed at Sanders, who told the New York Daily News in an interview earlier this week that New Yorkers still used tokens to pay for the train. The system switched over to MetroCards in 2003. A Brooklyn native, Sanders left New York for Vermont in 1968. Still, he's cast himself as a native son of the state. Beirut Islamic State fighters abducted at least 170 workers from a cement factory northeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus, when the militant group attacked the area this week, activists and the Syrian government said Thursday. If confirmed, the kidnapping would punctuate the Islamic State's penchant for brazen acts even in the face of recent defeats that have forced it to relinquish some territory seized in the Syrian war. It remained unclear precisely how many people had been taken and where they were. The official Syrian Arab News Agency gave the highest number, saying more than 300 people were abducted from Al-Badia Cement near the town of Dumair, 25 miles northeast of the capital, by militants of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. It said the Ministry of Industry had made contact with the management of the cement company and had been "informed that more than 300 workers and contractors were held by ISIS." The news agency also quoted a local official as saying that he had seen roughly 125 of the company's workers aboard Islamic State vehicles headed toward Ghouta, a Damascus suburb. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a nongovernment group that monitors the Syria conflict from abroad through a network of contacts inside Syria, gave a similar account but lower numbers. It said that at least 170 workers were abducted by the Islamic State and taken to territory the group controls. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Schenectady The Price Chopper supermarket chain, in the midst of a $300 million rebranding campaign with the rollout of its Market 32 stores, has quietly unveiled a house brand called Pics. Mentions of the new Pics line of foods has been made in the past week in newspaper circulars, in stores and on the company's Facebook page and web site. The name stands for "hand picked" items and is designed to conjure up the idea of healthy and wholesome foods, an emphasis of the new Market 32 brand. The company first filed to trademark the Pics name back in October. Price Chopper spokeswoman Mona Golub declined to explain exactly how the Pics brand would be used or if the company's popular Central Market upscale brand would remain. She said the company would issue a news release next week that would include "substantive detail" about the changes. On its Facebook page, Price Chopper said that Pics "represents the quality items that we've sourced especially for you and your family. It's about offering a range of items that are healthy and wholesome to those that are more indulgent. Be sure to keep an eye on the shelves for more exciting PICS products and promotions coming over the next few months!" The Pics name may help Price Chopper smooth the transition to the Market 32 name so that the company can offer the store brand products in both stores as well as its flagship Market Bistro store in Latham. And like other parts of the company's recent rebranding efforts, the Pics name appears to contain a reference to the company's legacy. When the Pics name is put on food labels, the "p" and the "c" stand out presumably to stand for Price Chopper. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. Price Chopper, owned by the Golub Corp. in Schenectady, has more than 130 stores in New York, New England and Pennsylvania. So far, three Price Chopper stores have been converted to Market 32 stores, with one built from scratch. Other supermarkets are switching up its in-house brand. On Monday, Albertsons, which operates Safeway, Shaw's, Star Market and other chains across the country, introduced a much more traditional sounding private label called Signature that will be used on 4,000 items across the different stores. It's been a busy week for Price Chopper. The company laid off 47 administrative staff at its headquarters in Schenectady earlier this week as part of a corporate restructuring that does not impact stores or distribution centers. The layoffs included plans to outsource some departments within the corporate offices. lrulison@timesunion.com 518-454-5504 @larryrulison This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate An Amtrak plan to temporarily suspend one of the four daily round-trips west of Rensselaer for track maintenance has drawn criticism from the Empire State Passengers Association. One of the four round trips would not run Sundays to Wednesdays beginning April 24 and continuing until July 13. The cutbacks were requested by track owner CSX so it can perform track maintenance. Amtrak, with the approval of the state Department of Transportation, agreed to the temporary service reductions, the passengers association said. "This is an outrageous service reduction just as the busy spring and summer travel season gets under way to and from upstate cities and tourist destinations," the association said on its Facebook page. Service on the busiest section of the Empire Corridor, between Rensselaer and New York City, wouldn't be affected. Amtrak and the state Department of Transportation are in the midst of $300 million in improvements to the passenger rail infrastructure in and around the Capital Region. Projects include the lengthening of platforms at the Rensselaer rail station, a fourth track there, a second track to alleviate the bottleneck between Albany and Schenectady, and signal and crossing improvements from Rensselaer south to Poughkeepsie. CSX is performing its maintenance work on tracks west of Schenectady, where the bulk of the rail traffic is freight. A CSX spokesman wasn't immediately available for comment, so it wasn't clear whether the freight service also would be affected and what the maintenance work would entail. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. The line is believed to carry more than 60 freight trains a day. Last Sunday, two Amtrak workers were killed in Chester, Pa., when an Amtrak train struck the track maintenance machine they were on. Federal agencies are investigating the cause of that accident. eanderson@timesunion.com 518-454-5323 Albany Superintendent Joseph A. D'Amico, a former New York Police Department deputy chief named by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to head the State Police in 2011, abruptly announced his retirement Friday and is expected to leave within 60 days. In a news release, D'Amico did not give a reason for leaving except to say he would "pursue other opportunities." Two people briefed on the matter, but not authorized to comment publicly, said State Police sources indicated that D'Amico, 56, wants to spend more time with his family and also grew tired of a governor's administration that meddled in the agency's decision-making. First Deputy Superintendent Patricia M. Groeber, who in November became the first female appointed to that job in the history of the 99-year-old agency, is considered a top candidate to succeed D'Amico. Thomas Mungeer, president of the state troopers PBA, said D'Amico had a good working relationship with the labor union and was diplomatic in his dealings with personnel issues. "We had a great relationship and he had a good relationship with the union," Mungeer said. "He made the division a better place than when he found it and I wish him the best of luck in the future." People familiar with D'Amico's leadership said he built a reputation for standing up to some of the influences from the governor's office, including personnel appointments and tactical decisions, such as whether to keep a high level of State Police presence in New York City, which the governor wanted and D'Amico questioned. One such appointment involved Kevin Gagan, a civilian attorney whose appointment by Cuomo to the first deputy superintendent position six years ago rankled an agency whose members are not fond of non-police officers filling uniformed positions. Gagan, who worked with Cuomo in the state attorney general's office before Cuomo became governor, drew more controversy last July when he was named chief of staff and general counsel for the Joint Commission on Public Ethics. Gagan's tenure in JCOPE drew sharp criticism, including from commissioners on the panel, and was short-lived. Recently, in a move that sources said was sanctioned by the governor's office, Gagan returned to the State Police as a $169,000-a-year civilian employee tasked with overseeing "special programs and internal controls." A State Police spokesman Friday did not immediately respond to questions about Gagan's specific duties. D'Amico lives in Rockland County with his wife and four children. The two people briefed on his decision to step down said his superintendent position kept him in Albany often and limited the time he could spend at home. D'Amico was a chief investigator with the attorney general's office for three years when Cuomo was at the helm. He was nominated superintendent by Cuomo in December 2010 and confirmed by the state Senate a month later. The governor, in a prepared statement issued Friday, called him "an outstanding public servant." "He has led the State Police through hurricanes, snow storms, anti-terrorism actions, prison breaks, and manhunts," Cuomo said. "There is no doubt he has led the State Police to a higher level. I am going to miss him both professionally and personally and I thank him for the kindness he has shown to me, as well as to the people of the state of New York. I understand he has other needs to fulfill after nine years of service, and I wish him and his family well on this next chapter." Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. In the same statement, issued by the State Police, D'Amico said it was a "tremendous honor" to head the State Police for six years. "I thank Governor Cuomo and his administration for the opportunity to serve and lead the State Police through numerous challenges," he said. "I also want to thank the brave men and women of the State Police for their professionalism and service to the people of this great state. I look forward to pursuing other opportunities, but I will truly miss all of those I met along the way, including the members of the public who have always been supportive. I believe the past six years have seen the State Police grow in stature and capacity and I thank the Governor for his unwavering support." Groeber, 53, who lives in Albany County, is a 1984 graduate of the University at Albany and joined the agency in 1986. She oversees daily operations including field command, administration, employee relations and internal affairs. Mungeer said D'Amico "was one of the better bosses I ever worked with" but also has high praise for Groeber. "I believe Patty Groeber would be a very good superintendent if the governor so chooses and it would be a historic appointment," Mungeer said. blyons@timesunion.com 518-454-5547 @brendan_lyonstu Here is a typical day for millions of Americans: First the alarm goes off and we wake up to a warm room, and electricity, thanks to government-regulated companies like National Grid. Then we head to the bathroom. The water that comes into the house is brought to us by our local government. The water that we use for showers and toilets goes down pipes into sewers brought in by our local government. The younger children are taken to public schools, which by the way were the first mandated "socialist" program that was started in 1850, another government institution. The oldest child heads out to the local State University of New York, a government institution. And we head to work. First, we get on our local street put in and maintained by our local village, or town or city government. Then we go to the county road put in and maintained by the county government. Next we pull onto the Northway, which was built and maintained by New York state government. On our way home we stop at the grocery store and buy food that has been inspected by government inspectors. We also stop at the gas station for gasoline, and we note that a gallon is a gallon thanks to government inspectors. This is 2016, not 1816, and government is needed to maintain our very way of life. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. Edward F. Wagner Clifton Park Great Taste will judge Irish food and drink products on home soil this year at the Hotel Minella in Clonmel, Tipperary from Tuesday 26 Friday 29 April 2016. Irish producers had a remarkable year in 2015, with over 300 Great Taste award-winning products from Ireland and the Supreme Champion award going to Clonmels own James Whelan Butchers for its Beef Dripping. Tipperary Food Producers, which showcases the best food and drink in Tipperary, has invited the Guild of Fine Food to host the judging process in the Irish county for the first time. Other Tipperary winners from last year include Cashel Blue Cheese, Crossuge Preserves (Holycross) and Ribworld (Fethard). With a whole host of experts lined up to blind taste the Irish entries, including esteemed food critic, Charles Campion, BBC Radio 2s Nigel Barden and many chefs, buyers, restaurateurs and writers, the Great Taste roadshow will put the spotlight firmly on Irelands diverse and innovative food and drink producers. Pat Whelan, owner of Great Taste Supreme Champion 2015, James Whelan Butchers and member of Tipperary Food Producers, adds; Were absolutely delighted to be welcoming Great Taste to Clonmel this year and Im really looking forward to seeing which Irish products wow the judges. Great Taste gives artisan producers such a valuable platform to grow their businesses. This year has seen an uplift in Great Taste entries from Ireland, with 215 companies entering products in 2016 compared to 157 in 2015. The judging process draws to a close in July and the award-winning products will be announced in August. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Morocco's VoIP Ban a Step Back for Economy By Michelle Amodio , Business VoIP Contributor Internet users throughout Morocco might have had some difficulty in making mobile calls through free apps such as Whatsapp, Viber and Skype using 3G and 4G Internet, regardless of whether they are subscribers of Maroc Telecom, Meditel, or Inwi. The reason why? All three telecom service providers have decided to block VoIP calls that are made through 3G and 4G. Back in January, Maroc Telecom, Meditel, and Inwi cut VoIP services without any notice in what has been described by one Moroccan columnist as a legal but irrational and backward step. Moroccos Telecommunications Regulatory National Agency (ANRT) said that none of the products providing VoIP or other free internet calls had the required licenses. In addition of the losses for the telecoms national market, the free internet voice calls do not respond to the required legal gateway, said ANRT in a statement at the time of the news break. Their suspension (VoIP) came in conformity with the operators obligations that were underlined in their licenses. Some would argue that blocking services is troubling as it is an affront to technological advancement and free speech, and it does more than affect resident users. Expats who rely on free services to keep in touch with families have found this to be an unnecessary roadblock in an era of modern communications. Beyond the technological obstacle, banning VoIP overall is terrible for the economy. For one, canceling VoIP services affects Moroccos ability to compete as a small to medium business destination. For many SMBs, VoIP is an affordable way to do business and communicate with their satellite and virtual offices who might be located in Morocco. Many U.S. and European SMBs have opened subsidiaries in Morocco and rely on services like FaceTime, Skype, Viber and WhatsApp to run their operations. This decision has a direct impact on overhead, and can deter future businesses from investing in the local economy. Of course, business aside, free apps provide a method of communication to those with lower income. Many people who work lower income jobs cannot afford costly phone bills, thus have come to rely on free applications to make and receive calls. The decision to block VoIP services in Morocco highlights the financial benefit to the telecom providers, but it sends a negative message to the global business community. Please enable JavaScript to view the Edited by Maurice Nagle 5 Call Center Security Tips For Protecting Customer Data and Preventing Breaches The competitive landscape in the business realm has many organizations managing highly sophisticated call center operations for reaching sales goals and meeting customer service demands. However, even though call center operations are highly effective, the platform has evolved significantly over the years, opening the doors to a number of security risks -- some of which can considerably undermine the propriety data and business information of an organization. In fact, one such evolution that has greatly impacted call center data is the digital document transformation. In this new digital era companies are now using a variety of software solutions and technology platforms to gather, collect and share customer information. And, while many of these technologies significantly improve service efficiency and customer care, they do present a number of data exposure concerns as service agents share documents containing sensitive and confidential personal information. This is why it is important for companies to deploy the right security measures and data protection technologies in order to mitigate the risk of breaches from hackers. Another dynamic impacting call center data safety is the ongoing outsourcing of center operations which now has customer data being managed in numerous locations across the globe. Outsourcing risks include call center agents that arent always aware or trained of the potential customer data exposure, as well as service reps who may want to take advantage of accessing very valuable consumer information. In fact, just last year AT&T was fined $25 million for a customer data breach in their Mexico call center after two employees confessed to accessing customer information and reselling it to strangers. An added challenge with outsourcing is the fact that third parties responsible for IT system development or maintenance of call centers do not always deploy the right security technologies, which introduces a number of network deficiencies that could easily be exploited by hackers. This is why its important for companies to not only focus on cost savings in their outsourcing decisions, but to also focus on the security solutions that will protect their customer data over the long-haul. This is especially important since data breaches can cost companies up to millions of dollars to recover. The good news is...outsourcing operations and managing digital documentation should not pose an automatic risk of breaching information. Electronic documents need to be protected at all points whether being handled locally or around the globe, or whether being stored in a repository, accessed in a call center, or sitting on the customers own computer. This can be achieved using a combination of encryption technologies, password protection, access control solutions and of course, through education. With this in mind, below are 5 tips to consider for protecting customer documents: Tip 1. Have strong Q&A security protocols in place When a customer calls a call center, service representatives should be equipped with asking security questions that only an authorized customer has the ability to answer. This is why its important to have questions that allow customers to provide responses that are unique and specific to them, and that are strong enough to enforce the protection of their data. In addition to asking questions that are personal and distinct. Finally, only provide account information to customers who successfully pass through all of the Q&A security protocols. Tip 2. Control access at document level A digital document management solution should offer multiple layers of access control that enable call centers to compartmentalize and restrict access to different documents. Agent seniority or clearance should dictate what functions he/she can perform on a document: view, download or share. As an example, certain private records can be password protected so that the only access within a call center is the ability to send the document to the customer when requested, rather than the agent being able to view the details of that document. Tip 3. Provide ongoing agent education The easiest way for criminals to breach security and access a repository of confidential documents is by tricking or compromising an employee. In a call center environment, which suffers from high employee turnover, this risk is compounded. Be sure that all agents understand and operate by the security guidelines when it comes to accessing and sharing customer documents. Constantly reinforce that one should never click on links or open documents from an unknown source as this is a common method used to install malicious software that effectively puts the hackers inside the secure network. Tip 4. Use multiple layers of protection As cybercriminals continue to get smarter, traditional network and database security is not sufficient. To truly secure a customers document, multiple security layers are required, to the point of encrypting and protecting each individual document even if it resides on a secure network. This also ensures that information sent via email between a call center agent and customer cannot be compromised if intercepted or sent to the wrong recipient. It also protects the document 1) against unauthorized access from someone inside the network; 2) if a call center agent doesnt have sufficient rights to view customer information; 3) if a compromised employee or a hacker is using stolen, but valid credentials. Tip 5. Enforce a strong password policy In order to secure documents from all vulnerabilities, a strong password approach is essential. This applies to the password an agent uses to access internal systems, the one a customer uses to log onto a self-service portal, or even the password used to open an individual document. If the password is weak, all other security is bypassed, especially since one study showed that 28% of breaches resulted from weak passwords. Educate both agents and customers on the value of using only strong passwords and the risks of using easily cracked passwords such as 123456, abc123 or password. By taking advantage of these simple security tips, call centers will not only be able to deliver a strong customer service experience, but also provide the technologies needed to safeguard their information. There are numerous solutions in the marketplace that can assist organizations with strengthening their call center data protection today, while also better fortifying their data protection for the future. Mia Papanicolaou is Chief Operations Officer for document security specialist, Striata Inc. Mia joined Striata in 2006 and having worked in Africa and the UK, now heads up North, Central and South American operations. Papanicolaou is a regular speaker on her areas of expertise secure electronic document delivery and email marketing. Striata provides strategy, software and professional services that enable digital communication across multiple channels and devices. Striata technology is used to secure, send and store confidential documents for the worlds largest financial services, utility, insurance, retail and telecommunications companies; who trust Striata to achieve unrivaled results in digital transition, adoption and transformation. To learn more visit www.striata.com Edited by Stefania Viscusi April 08, 2016 By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor Once upon a time, unwanted telemarketing calls were rather localized: businesses in town called the citizens of that town to drum up business. By the time Americans got tired of having their dinner interrupted by telemarketing phone calls and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was signed into law in the early 1990s, telemarketing had gone more widespread, and calls often came from businesses across the U.S. Today, thanks to a globalized business culture and easy-to-use computer telephony equipment, telemarketing calls are likely to originate from anywhere on Earth. In most cases, local telemarketing restrictions are laughably old-world. Increasingly, theyre being ignored. Today, of course, the U.S. isnt the only country where telemarketing is widespread and the rules keep running to catch up with technology. Nations such as Canada, the U.K., India and Australia have their own regulations, and theres evidence that theyre working about as well as they are in the U.S. In Australia, tens of thousands of households are being swamped by phone sales calls that violate the countrys do-not-call registry and other telemarketing rules. According to Australias Herald Sun, annoyed consumers lodged almost 40,000 unsolicited call complaints with the countrys national regulator in the last two years alone. The frustration comes as the Australian Communications and Media Authority has for the first time taken Federal Court action over alleged contraventions of the telemarketing and research industry standard, wrote the Herald Suns Karen Collier. Travel company Getaway Escapes Pty Ltd and its director Joanne Margaret Day, 54, are accused of blocking caller identity when contacting potential customers, in breach of the industry rule. Caller ID was allegedly switched off when almost 144,000 telemarketing calls nationwide were made or attempted in March, 2014. In Australia, about 10.5 million landline and mobile numbers subscribe to the do-not-call registry, and as in the U.S. its against the law to block caller ID information. Also, in a similar manner, charities, educational institutions, registered political parties and research calls are exempt. The Australian Communications and Media Authority [ACMA] is responsible for legislation, regulations, standards and codes of practice across telecommunications, broadcasting, radio communications and the Internet. Last year, the number of complaints regarding illegal telemarketing by the solar industry reached critical levels. In response to the complaints, the ACMA worked with the Clean Energy (News - Alert) Council and contacted more than 4,000 businesses to reiterate their legal obligations and the need to properly supervise any third party call centers. Ultimately, the ACMA issued formal warnings to two companies -- Green Engineering (Vic) Pty Ltd and RDBD Infotech Private Limited -- for their roles in making telemarketing calls to numbers on the do-not-call registry. Like many companies, some organizations that engage third party organizations to make telemarketing calls are not checking to ensure that those outsourcers are following the rules. In the U.S., legal cases have often found in favor of the plaintiffs and determined that businesses can be held responsible for violations by third parties calling on their behalf. 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 Lemurs are small, spry primates native to the island-nation of Madagascar, and are fairly harmless. Don't confuse them with the Lemur Vehicle Monitors BlueDriver, which, according to a U.S. government advisory issued yesterday (April 7) could cause you to crash your car. This unassuming Bluetooth dongle is supposed to provide drivers with useful information about their automobiles, but apparently lax authentication might make it a potential security disaster. At best, you could be handing over your vehicle statistics to any interested party. At worst (although it's highly unlikely), you could die. (Image credit: Root Four Imagination Inc.) The Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, described both the vulnerability present in the BlueDriver and its potential effects. At the crux of the issue is a simple security oversight: the BlueDriver requires no PIN to pair with a mobile device. MORE: How Car Wi-Fi Dongles Could Lead to Disaster The BlueDriver is a dongle that plugs into a car's OBD-II diagnostic port. This electronic data port, present in almost every car manufactured after 1996, rests under the dashboard (or sometimes in the glove compartment or in the center console) and can help mechanics gather information about gas mileage, component maintenance and overall car efficiency. Drivers can also access this port, and self-reporting devices like the BlueDriver have been common for 20 years. The only difference is that this one uses Bluetooth to beam data to a mobile device, and that mobile device doesn't necessarily have to be yours. Bluetooth pairing is incredibly simple sometimes too simple for its own good. Without a four-digit PIN to offer a bare minimum of protection, anyone within a 30-foot range could connect to BlueDriver dongle. If the dongle is not currently connected to a phone, the process will be trivial, and even if the dongle is connected, it's sometimes possible to prioritize a new connection over an existing one. If you use a BlueDriver dongle, there is at the moment nothing you can do to prevent someone else from connecting to it. For most people, this won't be a big issue, since the absolute worst a malefactor could do with OBD-II access would be to gain access to statistics about how far your car has traveled, and how much fuel it's consumed. But unless you know exactly what your vehicle's internal networks look like, you won't know for sure. That's because some vehicles may provide two-way networking between the OBD-II port and systems like steering and braking. In an absolute worst-case scenario, someone could hijack your OBD-II dongle and crash your car. And right now, we don't know which cars those might be. While this is an unlikely outcome due to the proximity required and the difficulty of controlling commands through an OBD-II port it's not impossible. A smartphone planted in a target's car would be sufficient, since an attacker could then control the hidden phone remotely, and it would always be within 30 feet of the BlueDriver. For the time being, CERT recommends that BlueDriver owners disconnect the device and stop using it. It's possible that the company could issue a firmware update and solve the problem. We've reached out to Lemur for comment and will update this story when the company responds. The CERT advisory implies that Lemur was notified of this flaw two months ago. If you decide to get an OBD-II dongle for your car, remember that it can be attacked, just like anything else. Before you buy any device that connects to your car's internal networks, make sure that the device meets basic security protocols such as requiring a PIN for Bluetooth pairing. By now you know the spiel about Tame Impala. You know they had one of the biggest albums of the year in 2015s Currents, which the Kevin Parker-led project have since followed-up with a string of sold-out tour dates and an endless stream of awards. You know all this, but youve never quite heard Tame Impalas music sound this heavy. Melbourne talent Ali Barter hit the triple j studios this morning and laid down a grungy, distorted, rousing performance of Tame Impalas Currents cut Cause Im A Man. Barter got some help from her pal and frequent collaborator Oscar Dawson, whom you may know as a member of globetrotting Melbourne duo HOLY HOLY. Dawson contributed some killer axe work to the performance, which is about the heaviest weve ever heard a Tame Impala song. As weve previously mentioned, this years Like A Version series has gotten off to an interesting start weve seen a heart-wrenching David Bowie cover, an ambitious mash-up from this years Hottest 100 winners, a deeply divisive cover of a huge hit from 2015, and maybe the most un-triple j Like A Version ever. Sydneys most exciting garage pop/post-punk revivalists Prints Familiar are today unveiling the brand new clip for their hooky single Recently Searched. Taken from the bands eponymous sophomore EP, which came out earlier this year, Recently Searched is a brutally familiar commentary on social media stalking, or more specifically a look into an infatuation thats being supplemented and reinforced by social media. Captured in a very Australiana early 80s RSL/Bowlo, the clip for Recently Searched Directed by Aaron Diaz, with camera and edits by Angelo Lara is a visually delicious single shot journey into the psyche of Prints Familiar frontman Oliver Badman. Check it tout below and if you like what youre hearing/ seeing pop by the bands Facebook page for more info. Dave Graney and Clare Moore started playing music together when they were teenagers in Adelaide. It was the late-70s and a post punk scene was ripening in the city. When they formed their first band, Moore was already an accomplished drummer, Graney was an introspective kid freshly-arrived from Mount Gambier. A long musical union was to follow. The couple have since played together in The Moodists, White Buffaloes, The Coral Snakes, The Lurid Yellow Mist, as rhythm section for Harry Howards NDE. Current outfit dave graney and the mistLY are rehearsing ahead of an upcoming European tour, including a coveted slot at this years All Tomorrows Parties in Wales. Graney has always cut a strange figure across the Australian cultural landscape a mysterious musical cowboy with a sonorous drawl and pencil-thin moustache the majority of the nation has tended to regard him with a sense of tickled confusion. This is just the way Graney seems to like it, of course, or at least the only way he knows. I am a bit confusing for people, yeah. But thats just the kind of person that I am, I think, he says over the phone, killing time before his bands rehearsal, I try not to carry a lot of baggage about things I can and cant do. There were dalliances with fame in the 90s. Dressed in platform shoes and a powder pink suit, Graney accepted an ARIA for Best Male Artist, leaning slowly into the microphone to declare himself King of Pop. There was a cameo on Neighbours (featuring a kidnapping plot instigated by DJ Jared Rebecchi) and talk show interviews relished Graneys deliberate eccentricity. Musically, the output has been ever-changing. The Moodists sat comfortably within the brooding early-80s post punk milieu; the White Buffaloes made a psych-country gambit; The Coral Snakes broached absurdist lounge territory and reached a level of commercial success. The Night of the Wolverine, the bands third album, is often lauded as an Australian independent classic. This constant evolution has prompted an illusiveness in the collective consciousness, as a figure, Graney is conceptually difficult to grasp on to. An upcoming film aims to simultaneously demystify and perpetuate this confusion. Director, Nick Cowan, says the film, Im Not Afraid to be Heavy, will aim to be as much about Moore as it is about Graney. Its definitely going to be about the trajectory of the two of them, Cowan says, Theyre kind of an inseparable forceone requires the other. Cowan met Graney and Moore several years ago whilst he was a student and has maintained a close friendship with the couple. He says the straight-talking Moore, who spent a childhood playing music and growing up in Adelaide pubs, was integral to Graneys musical evolution. Everything changed from then on, Cowan says of the pairs meeting. It took [Graney] a long time to become this outlandish, ego-tripping kind of persona. Graney agrees: Clare was a very good musician and she was always the most competent out of the pathetic bunch that we were. Shed been playing music and performing from her mid-teens, so it wasnt a big deal to her and she knew about having good gear and she knew about being prepared and that sort of stuff. The rest of us were just hicks, especially me. In keeping with the experimental inclinations of its subject, the film will be part documentary, part biographical fiction. Unfolding over five acts, the narrative will trace the musicians respective beginnings in Mount Gambier and Adelaide, then follow the pair to the UK (an almost obligatory rite of passage for Australian post punk musicians at the time) and onwards throughout Europe. Cowan says it wont be a histrionic punk rock tragedy. [It]isnt a Sid & Nancy story, thats what people like and glorify, but I think this will be a refreshing point of difference theyve got such a warm relationship, theyre really kind to each other. Beneath the outward theatre of the strange there is an underpinning normalcy to Graney, says Cowan. Hes a contrariantheres total pretension in his performance, but then as a person, theres a lack of it. There should be no shortage of celebrity proselytising either. In a teaser trailer for the film, Gareth Liddiard of The Drones offers his two cents: If [Graney] was an American or an Englishman he would be celebratedthe lyrics are insane. A Pozible campaign is currently up and running, collecting funds to send the filmmakers to Europe with the band, to document their tour and interview significant fans and figures from their past: Noah Taylor, Stewart Lee, Barry Adamson. Cowan says there has been an overwhelming response to the crowd-funding campaign so far, evidence of the deep affection for the musicians, and the desire for the story to be told. It is easy to draw parallels to another recent Australian documentary, Richard Lowensteins Autoluminescent, which details the life of Rowland S Howard. That film looked through the long shadow cast over the Australian post punk scene by Nick Cave to solidify Howards status as a musical icon in his own rightindeed, one worthy of his own laneway. Following the films release, Howards records were reissued, anthologies releasedit helped usher an introduction to a new generation of fans. Cowan says the tone of his film will be very different to Lowensteins, but his aim is also to pay tribute to Australian musical talent deserving of wider recognition. People have little moments of Dave that they might like or be aware of, but the totality of his work will speak for itself when its presented in the film. Graney seems relatively nonchalant about the whole affair. Im flattered that someone thinks theres an interesting narrative or story there. He says hes waiting for Moore to drive in to town to meet for their rehearsal. Often people are portrayed as heroic individuals, he muses, but musics a really great thing if youve got someone who understands you. The Pozible campaign raising funds for the films production is online now. Irony is a powerful thing, anyone on the internet can tell you that. As we once noted, it basically resurrected the career of British entertainer Rick Astley, but more often it seems as though whats fun as an internet joke isnt something we actually want to spend money on. Sure, we love poking fun at Darude and his immortal dance floor filler Sandstorm, but adding him to the lineup of Future Music Festival didnt exactly secure the future of that festival. Just because we like to laugh at something doesnt mean well fork out for it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the precarious world of touring. Promoters and bookers will often book acts based on kitsch value alone because they just so happened to become the butt of an internet joke on 4Chan. Artists from the 80s and 90s usually get it the worst. One prominent example is Shannon Noll, whos become the in-joke of our proud Commonwealth. Everybody loves a Shannon Noll meme and we even have campaigns to get him on the lineup of Groovin The Moo and Splendour. But its doubtful the thousands who click Going as soon as he puts up a new Facebook event page are genuine fans. Would a Shannon Noll headline tour actually move some tickets? It well could, but for other ironic lol lets go see X acts, its unlikely. Enter The Vengaboys. Best known for cheesy 90s Eurodance hits like Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!, Were Going to Ibiza, and We Like to Party, The Vengaboys are on the cusp of selling out their upcoming Australian tour. No, really. You can write them off as a nostalgia act, but people are buying up tickets to the groups October/November tour in droves. Tickets went on sale earlier this week and already the group have sold out their two Melbourne shows and a gig in Sydney. Due to the overwhelming (and frankly unexpected) demand, promoters have added a third date in Melbourne and a second date in Sydney. These arent small rooms, either. The Sydney gig takes place at Luna Parks Big Top and the Melbourne show is at 170 Russell in the CBD. As FasterLouder notes, people are even forking out $209 for VIP meet-and-greet passes to the shows. VIP packages for the Vengaboys first two Melbourne shows, as well as dates in Sydney, Brisbane, and Adelaide have already sold out. The VIP packages include a show pass, a poster, the chance to get two items signed by the band, a photo with the group, and of course, a VIP lanyard yeah, we dont get it either. Australia gets a constant barrage of failed kitsch tours, so why is this one doing so well? One possible explanation is the lineup. In addition to reliving your 90s club days (or school disco days, depending on how old you were) with The Vengaboys, youll get to do likewise with a support roster that includes Tina Cousins, Crystal Waters, DJ Sammy, Whigfield, Sonique, and Joanne. Theyre cheesy, theyre out of style, you could even argue that some of these acts have largely been forgotten about, but they still enjoy one shining moment in the sun in the memories of Australias punters. The Vengaboys Australian Tour Dates Sunday, 30th October 2016 SOLD OUT 170 Russell, Melbourne Monday, 31st October 2016 SOLD OUT 170 Russell, Melbourne Thursday, 3rd November 2016 Wrest Point, Hobart Friday, 4th November 2016 Eatons Hill, Brisbane Saturday, 5th November 2016 SOLD OUT Big Top, Sydney Sunday, 6th November 2016 Big Top, Sydney Wednesday, 9th November 2016 170 Russell, Melbourne Friday, 11th November 2016 The Gov, Adelaide Saturday, 12th November 2016 Metro City, Perth Matt Black is the latest singing-songwriting talent to come out of Sydneys inner-west and if his debut single, Riot, is anything to go by, hell soon be counted among the vanguard of Australias neo-R&B sound with names like Chet Faker and Jarryd James. Black is a recent signing to the Myriad Management stable, placing him on a roster that also includes superstar Canberra duo Peking Duk and Benson. At just 24 years old, Blacks songwriting is sophisticated and ready for the charts as well as the dance floor. In addition to his work with Myriad, Black is racking up some considerable collaborator credits. Riot was produced by Miracle and mixed by Andrei Eremin, whos worked on some of the hottest releases to come out of Australia in recent memory. Kansas City restaurant owner pleads guilty in tax case: Roger Geisler's unpaid taxes add up to $566K Not exactly a fresh catch here . . . The presser went out earlier today and we finally got a bit of time to post about this guy's misfortune . . .Here's another chapter in border war reality and a JoCo dude taking local profits and then some over to Kansas.Checkit:Prosecutors say Geisler has owned Domo Sushi and Japanese Grill as well as Matsu.Geisler admitted that in the tax years 2007 through 2009, he submitted corporate tax returns under-reporting his restaurants' gross receipts. He also acknowledged he didn't report and pay employment taxes from 2007 to 2010.Court documents show Geisler spent roughly $157,000 in business funds on such things as a Lenexa home and a Lexus SUV, and that he gambled more than $400,000 at area casinos.####### THE EARNINGS TAX LOST SUPPORT FROM THOUSANDS OF VOTERS WHO STAYED AT HOME AND FAILED TO SUPPORT THE CITY HALL E-TAX SLUSH FUND!!! The number of votes in favor of the tax dropped significantly since the last vote. In 2011, nearly 57,000 Kansas Citians cast ballots in favor of the earnings tax; in 2016, that figure dropped by nearly a third to just over 39,000 votes in favor, with turnout down significantly overall. And let's not forget that the Kansas City effort to repeal the earnings tax was supported only by four lousy mailers and some radio ads with no TV commercials, no ground game, no yard signs and only a few low-rent billboards. Meanwhile, Mayor Sly has spent most of this year pitching the E-Tax backed up by millions from a coalition of corporate welfare enthusiasts from the Greater KC Chamber of Commerce along with support from all three international law firms located in Kansas City and engineering giant Burns & Mac. SHOULD VOTERS GET ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO TAKE ON THE E-TAX GIVEN THAT IT'S SLOWLY LOSING SUPPORT?!?! The results of the Kansas City earnings tax renewal are more complex than what has been reported by the mainstream media and signal growing taxpayer frustration among local residents.To wit . . .Here's thewhich confirms previousand analysis . . .On the other side of Missouri, STL numbers were much stronger amid a more heated contest . . .Billionaireis kind of a red herring when compared with the cadre of crony capitalists pitching in their cash to take on the e-tax.And all of this begs the question . . .The current wave of corporate welfare seems to have turned off a great many voters and now local leaders want to deny the electorate their voice for at least a decade based on a faulty premise that a low turnout election has given them a mandate.You decide . . . Alexis Tsipras said that the flow of migrants had reduced substantially, and expressed gratitude for the British contribution of personnel and expertise to help implement the agreement David Cameron and Alexis Tsipras discussed over phone the implementation of the recent EU-Turkey agreement on migrants with Britain offering personnel support. British PM David Cameron in a phone call welcomed the start the Greek authorities had made to returning migrants to Turkey under the agreement, a Downing Street spokesperson saiannounced d after the call. He also reiterated the significance of "breaking the link between people making the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean and securing settlement in Europe." Alexis Tsipras said that the flow of migrants had reduced substantially, and expressed gratitude for the British contribution of personnel and expertise to help implement the agreement, according to Downing Street. Cameron confirmed that additional British personnel would be offered to Greece over the coming weeks as extra support. The two leaders also touched on the continuing negotiations between Greece, the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the review of Greece's program. They agreed that "it was in the interests of all parties to bring this to a timely conclusion," disclosed the Downing Street spokesperson. Source: Xinhua 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 Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil: Greece has sea borders, and it is even harder to protect them...Greece should be thanked for that issue. What it is doing, it is doing it for the whole of Europe The Greek-Austrian relations at Defence Ministers' level are excellent, Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil said in an exclusive interview with ANA-MPA. He also said that he agreed on many issues with his Greek counterpart Panos Kammenos. The Social Democrat politician clearly distance itself from the Christian Democrat Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner and her positions on the guarding of the sea borders. "I have to defend Greece on the issue. Hungary has land borders, it has built a fence and around 200-300 people cross the borders every day ... Greece has sea borders, and it is even harder to protect them. On the issue of protection of external borders, Greece can't be accused of." During his visit to the refugee camp at Schisto, Doskozil found that the refugees are satisfied and underlined: "Greece should be thanked for that issue. What it is doing, it is doing it for the whole of Europe," he said. Asked if the Syrian refugees will stay in Greece, the Austrian minister said: "I think we have to assess the situation at a European level and ask who will be granted asylum and then consider the issue of distribution." RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Tourexpi, turizm haberleri, Reiseburos, tourism news, noticias de turismo, Tourismus Nachrichten, , travel tourism news, international tourism news, Urlaub, urlaub in der turkei, , holidays in Turkey, , global tourism news, dunya turizm, dunya turizm haberleri, Seyahat Acentas, This site is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+, at a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768. Articles Hedge funds' assets under management and their appetite for investments, including equities, is expected to grow this year. When a veteran like Robert Shapiro says he isn't sure exactly how high-frequency traders operate and how they impact institutional orders, then it's safe to say that he is not alone. When a veteran like Robert Shapiro says he isn't sure exactly how high-frequency traders operate and how they impact institutional orders, then it's safe to say that he is not alone. When a veteran like Robert Shapiro says he isn't sure exactly how high-frequency traders operate and how they impact institutional orders, then it's safe to say that he is not alone. Fresh-faced yet experienced graduates are entering investment firms in strong numbers. And this crop of bright young things is bringing new skills and placing new demands on the buyside. Portfolio managers at Boston Private Bank & Trust lean on Keith Gentile for more than trading. 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. Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 8 The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a PIL seeking a CBI/SIT probe into the alleged scam in the allocation of 4G spectrum to Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) of Mukesh Ambani. The petitioner had contended that the government had allowed the back-door entry of the company into voice telephony without any auction and in violation of the Supreme Court verdict in 2012 cancelling the 2G licenses given in 2008 at 2001 prices. Arguing for the petitioner, CPIL, advocate Prashant Bhushan had pleaded for quashing the government decision of March 2013 offering voice telephonic services to the company. The Centre should be directed to levy spectrum usage charges (SUC) for 4G/BWA spectrum at par with other operators providing voice telephony, the petition had pleaded. While other service providers were paying SUC at 3-5 per cent of their revenue depending on the quantum of spectrum they held, Reliance would pay just one per cent. This has not only disturbed the level-playing field and provided undue advantage to Reliance, but has also caused a huge loss of revenue to the government over the 20-year license period. The petitioner had placed the loss at Rs 40,000 crore. S Nihal Singh THE Trump phenomenon in the US, which started as a joke, has reached alarming proportions even as the Republication establishment and the country at large are scratching their heads about what it portends. On the Democratic side although Hillary Clinton is the likely presidential nominee, the surprising competition Bernie Sanders has given her is an indication of a protest against political correctness. US presidential elections are traditionally loud and partake of a cartoon-like quality. But after the flamboyant candidates have had their early say, they drop off and the serious ones take on the roles of tribunes of the people. This wisdom has been contradicted by Mr Donald Trump growing from strength to strength as the Republican establishment wrings it hands and his outlandish statements surprise and often frighten the world. American pundits are trying to divine the causes that are working behind the new electoral geography. There is consensus on Mr Trumps primary supporters being white blue-collar workers out of place in the technological world and on stagnating middle class earnings even as the super rich amass greater wealth, accentuating inequality that is the hallmark of the American form of capitalism. Beyond these factors is a revolt against political correctness. Mrs Clintons disadvantage has been that she often comes across as the establishment candidate, with her rival winning delegate votes espousing a variety of socialism in capitalist America. The new turn in US politics would be entertaining and worrying by itself, but the US is the only remaining superpower and its gyrations and theatricals affect the rest of the world. Imagine Mexican feelings in the face of Mr Trump promising to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. Or ban all Muslims entering the US until they are proved innocent. Or deport all illegal immigrants, mostly Latin American, estimated at some 11 million. Or asking South Korea and Japan to build their own nuclear weapons freeing the US from protecting them. All sane Americans hope that Mr Trumps presidency never comes to pass. At the same time, they remain troubled by the feeling that beyond the level of populism lie deeper causes of disquiet. Of course, the level of antagonism between the two main parties is exceptional, with President Barack Obama and much of the Republican leadership hardly on talking terms. Although few are saying it openly, is there a problem with how the American form of democracy, with a few billionaires setting the agenda and dragging the country to the right, functioning? In foreign policy, the Israeli lobby has traditionally prevailed, to the detriment of Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world and even to Washingtons own interests. More importantly, social policies are being increasingly determined by financiers predilections while the less well-off continue to suffer. These questions will remain to haunt the US after this unique presidential campaign is over. A nation known for its capacity to change is facing formidable problems partly caused by internal dynamics and partly by its changing status in an evolving world. Mr Trumps slogan of making the US great again appeals to the frustration of his countrymen to discover that although they are still No 1 in the world, they can no longer enforce their writ everywhere unaided. The most difficult changes the US will have to make will be at home. It will need a drastic change in electoral law to ensure that a handful of the rich and their lobbies do not tip the balance against the candidates they oppose. And if Washington seeks to free itself of the stain of indulging the Israelis in perpetuating the only large coloniser of the 21st century, it must find the strength to be fair. Historically, the US has shown that it has the vitality and capacity for change. Imagine electing a black President in a country where large parts of the nation have been racist and some remain so. Equally, the US has undergone bouts of isolationism, a strain Mr Trump is seeking to exploit in asking allies to look after their own defence. Indeed, the strain of isolationism led to the failure of the League of Nations experiment during the Woodrow Wilson era. After two foolish wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US mood has soured on the Middle East. It was President Obamas task to end them. Thanks to the Syrian civil war, he has had to return to the old theatre although largely through air combat, earning much criticism for refusing to bomb the Syrian regime when it had crossed his red line of chemical warfare. There is thus angst among US policymakers in shunning the Middle East (but for Israel) while seeking to retain the No 1 position in the world. But the upheaval that is roiling American society can be gauged from Mr Sanders relative success in gathering delegates while loudly proclaiming himself a socialist, not so long ago a cardinal sin in the American political lexicon. Something is changing in the American psyche perhaps influenced by the rising levels of inequality, with even conservative economic periodicals of the genre of The Economist highlighting the problem. The two strains thrown up by the election campaign are seemingly contradictory one taking the country to the right and the other to the very roots of American democracy in seeking prosperity for all. How can the US reconcile these two strains? The new President, whoever he or she is, will have a massive task to govern equitably. One way out of this dilemma will be to revive the spirit of early US history although it took a civil war to knit the warring North and South into one nation. On the other hand, the decibel level of todays political rhetoric amplified by technology would militate against compromise. One would hope that for Americas, and the worlds, sake, the countrys people would have the resilience to reform their creaking system of democracy in keeping with the ideals of the founders. The 21st century deserves an America more in tune with its ideals, rather than a caricature of democracy of the Trump variety. Dinesh Kumar The fighter squadron strength of the Indian Air Force (IAF), the worlds fourth largest, has fallen to 33, nine short of the sanctioned strength of 42.Translated in numbers, the shortfall works out to 144 aircraft; 162 if the trainer version is included. This declining strength has understandably led the IAF to publicly acknowledge that fighting a two-front collusive war (with China and Pakistan) has resultantly become difficult. Ideally, the IAF would like to expand its fighter fleet to 45 squadrons to be able to fight a two-front war. Instead, the worst is yet to come with the projected decline expected to touch a low of 25 squadrons by 2022, which is just six years away. Reason: the retirement pace of the IAFs ageing aircraft fleet is fast exceeding the replacement rate. And yet ironically, at the same time, the IAFs fighter pilot-to-cockpit ratio has declined to less than one pilot per aircraft (0.84) against a sanctioned strength of 1.25 in contrast to 2.5 of the Pakistani Air Force. Thus the IAF is afflicted by both lesser fighter aircraft and a pilot shortfall. But the story does not end here. The IAF remains plagued by a long list of ailments reflective mainly of bad planning and mismanagement. The IAFs most modern aircraft is the Russian-origin Sukhoi-30 multi-role fighter first inducted almost 20 years ago in June, 1997 with all other fighter aircraft being 26 to over 40 years old. Of the 272 Su-30s contracted for raising 13 squadrons, the IAF until March 2015 had inducted 204 of these aircraft. Despite it being the most recent induction, the current 10 squadrons continue to be hit by low serviceability, shortfalls in performance and deficiency in manpower. For example, for over two years between 2007 and November 2009, 31 Su-30s remained grounded due to frequent snags in its fly-by-wire system. The serviceability record ranged between 55 and 60 per cent and the shortfall in flying effort between 31 and 43 per cent from 2005 to 2010. Earlier, in January 1995, following delays in the development of the Tejas, the light combat aircraft (LCA) under indigenous development since 1983, India contracted upgrading 125 Soviet-origin MiG-21 Bis fighters. Although these were upgraded and re-inducted between 1998-99 and 2007-08, the harsh reality is that the upgrade is neither completely successful nor comprehensive. Serviceability remains low with a high percentage of aircraft grounded due to non-serviceability of spares. Even the on board radars performance remains unsatisfactory. Only 43 per cent of the aircraft have self-protection jammers, leaving the remainder aircraft vulnerable to enemy radars and electronic warfare threats. Between 2004-05 and 2008-09, the serviceability ranged between 41 and 51 per cent, while 23 and 37 per cent aircraft remained grounded. A bizarre example of bad planning and carelessness pertains to the highly sophisticated and expensive airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft bought at a cost of Rs 5,042 crore and inducted between September 2009 and February 2012. Shockingly, for two years these aircraft were parked in the open despite the risk of degradation of radar performance and an adverse impact on the radomes surface smoothness. Reason: the hangars had not been built in time despite the contract being signed almost six years earlier in March 2004. And so, in May 2010 disaster struck with all four engines of one of the AWACS getting damaged in a gale storm rendering it unserviceable for almost four months (May 7 to August 25, 2010). Miraculously, the sophisticated Israeli radome did not get damaged. The AWACS, which functions as an eye in the sky, is a major force multiplier and strategic asset. Seven years since its induction, the AWACS continue to have a record of low serviceability and under-utilisation due to restrictions on take-off weight due to limited runway length, unavailability of fighter aircraft to accompany it, periodic unserviceability of sub systems and a 50 per cent pilot shortage who in turn are untrained for air-to-air refuelling (AAR) despite specially fitted AAR pods costing Rs 654 crore to enhance the aircrafts range and flying endurance. In 2013, 61 of the current 103 Soviet-origin vintage An-32 transport aircraft were grounded because facilities for extending the technical life and overhauling of the aircraft could not be established in time. Serviceability of the seven types of Soviet-origin Mi helicopters that constitute 60 per cent of the helicopter fleet fluctuated between 45 and 75 per cent, while shortfalls in achievement of flying tasks ranged between 47 and 67 per cent between 2003 and 2009. About 80 percent of the IAFs two Mi-25/35 attack helicopter squadrons have already completed their prescribed life. The IAF hopes to make up for the shortfall by inducting the indigenous Tejas, purchasing 126 multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) and co-developing a fifth generation fighter (FGFA) with Russia. But once again, the reality is hardly encouraging. The Tejas, running over a decade behind schedule, is still awaiting final operational clearance even though it is already heavily compromised following as many as 53 permanent waivers and concessions that have markedly reduced its operational capability. There are serious deficiencies in its electronic warfare capability and, as such, the Tejas in its current form does not meet the IAFs requirements. As for the MRCA, the government for now has decided to settle for just 36 French Rafale fighters which is 90 short of the IAFs requirement, while the FGFA still remains in the discussion stage. Unless the government takes serious notice, it is evident a reversal of the grim situation is unlikely in the near future. Shortfalls in squadrons apart, the government is unable to efficiently manage even what it has. Indias air power remains compromised. dkumar@tribunemail.com Tribune News Service Jammu, April 8 Health and Medical Education Minister Bali Bhagat today said the PDP-BJP government was contemplating a new mechanism to check pilferage of medicines in the government health institutions. Chairing a meeting of officials of the Health and Medical Education Department, Bhagat was informed that a specific colour strip would be embossed on all medicines supplied to the government hospitals to distinguish them from the similar medicines available in the market. The minister called upon the medical fraternity to set new benchmarks by improving the quality of healthcare in the state so that a change was visible on the ground. He stressed the need for ensuring transparency and accountability at all levels. He directed the authorities to focus on the welfare of the patients by creating a neat and clean environment in the hospitals. The Health Minister issued instructions for starting a cleanliness drive under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in all health institutions across the state from April 10 to 17 to ensure complete sanitation in and around the hospitals. Bhagat called for upgrade of the medical facilities at the Government Medical Colleges and associated hospitals. He instructed the Executive Engineer, Mechanical Wing, Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Jammu, to undertake all essential works and ensure plugging of leaks in the bathrooms, particularly in Ward No 9 and 11. The minister enquired about the supply position and shortfall of the medicines in the hospital and instructed the Principal, GMCH, Jammu, to ensure all medicines were available in the hospital. He said the people of the state had pinned their hopes on the present government and it was imperative for the government to provide better facilities, particularly in the health sector. Milan/New Delhi, April 8 Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanicas former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption over the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for Rs 3,600 crore. In the ruling, which overturned a previous court order of 2014, Bruno Spagnolini, the former CEO of Finmeccanicas helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, was also handed a four-year prison term by the court yesterday. The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively, it said. The ruling has come as a severe blow to the Italian company which had just managed to leave the corruption saga behind that marred its image across the world. Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials told PTI that the firm has changed completely. The company has undergone deep changes and it has changed completely from the time when the allegations came up first. Finmeccanica is a different company now, an official said. Both Orsi and Spagnolini were accused of international corruption and false invoicing in relation to bribes exchanged for a 560-million-euro (approximately Rs 4,250 crore) contract with India. Both were cleared on charges of committing international corruption at the first-instance trial in 2014 but convicted of false invoicing and sentenced to two years in prison. In Italy, criminal sentences are not usually considered definitive until the appeals process has been exhausted, the report said. In October, 2014, a lower court had convicted Orsi and Spagnolini of falsifying invoices but acquitted them of corruption. Both appealed against the conviction, while the prosecution appealed against the acquittal on the corruption charge. On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with Finmeccanicas British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of paying kickbacks to the tune of Rs 360 crore by it for securing the deal. The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) are still probing the case in which former IAF chief S P Tyagi and his cousins are alleged to be the beneficiaries. The ED has booked Tyagi, his family members, European nationals - Carlo Gerosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschke, four firms - Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland and Chandigarh- based IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, two companies based in Mauritius and Tunisia, few other firms and unknown persons in CBIs criminal complaint. In view of the corruption charges, India has also barred Finmeccanica and its group companies from participating in any new programme of the Defence Ministry. PTI Washington, April 8 The US has said it is considering granting refuge to a select number of bloggers who are under imminent danger in Bangladesh following a series of murders of secular writers and activists in the country. State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said humanitarian parole to a select number of bloggers who continue to be under imminent danger is one option under consideration but referred to Homeland Security Department for further details. The remarks by the US official come following the barbaric murder of a law student who was killed in Bangladesh on Wednesday night for speaking out against violent Islamist extremism. Nazimuddin Samad, 28, a masters student of the state-run Jagannath Universitys law department who posted comments against radical Islamists on Facebook, was killed by suspected militants in Dhakas Sutrapur area. Toner condemned the attack and expressed support to Bangladesh. We offer our condolences to Nazimuddin Samads family and our unwavering support to the Bangladeshi people in their struggle against violent extremism, State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh over the past six months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers and foreigners. Last month, a 65-year-old Christian convert was hacked to death in the northern Bangladeshi town of Kurigram by three motorbike-borne unidentified assailants. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. Nazimuddin knew and Bangladeshs history has shown that violence will not defeat the countrys proud tradition of free and independent discourse. So we stand with the Bangladeshi people in rejecting this vicious act, and uniting to preserve a tolerant and inclusive society that protects freedom of expression, Toner said. PTI Oklahoma recorded the second-largest earthquake in a 30-day period after a magnitude 4.0 quake shook about 30 minutes north of Oklahoma City on Thursday evening. The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the temblor about 2 miles northeast of Luther at 5:27 p.m. The quake was one of seven earthquakes above magnitude 2.5 that shook the state Thursday. The shaking could be felt around a 40-plus mile radius and even in parts of Tulsa. The National Weather Service in Tulsa tweeted that they could feel it at their office. A far less intense quick rumbled in the same area at 6:59 p.m. It registered as a 2.5-magnitude quake. Previously, the U.S. Geological Survey recorded a 3.7 magnitude earthquake Wednesday night in Oklahoma. The temblor recorded 6:24 p.m. about 15 miles west-southwest of Perry. The USGS also recorded two 3.4 magnitude earthquakes in Oklahoma before then: - 12:58 a.m. Thursday about 1 mile east-northeast of Luther - 3:29 a.m. Thursday about 10 miles southeast of Helena During the past seven days, the USGS recorded 38 earthquakes in Oklahoma. During the past 30 days, the USGS recorded 118 earthquakes of at least 2.5 magnitude. Thursday's 4.0 was the second-largest during that time frame, behind a 4.2-magnitude quake March 28 near Crescent, according to the USGS. Two 3.8s hit on March 30 and 31 near Medford and Luther before Wednesday's 3.7-magnitude earthquake. World Staff Writer Stacy Ryburn contributed to this story. OKLAHOMA CITY The Board of Corrections on Thursday indicated it will study the possible acquisition of additional space to accommodate a growing number of offenders. The panel gave Department of Corrections Interim Director Joe M. Allbaugh permission to begin the process of obtaining additional space by a lease, a lease purchase or a purchase. Two empty private facilities will be under consideration, Allbaugh said, among other options. Oklahoma leases private prison beds at three facilities but does not use the remaining two, which are empty. It spends $92.2 million annually on the three private prisons, said Alex Gerszewski, a DOC spokesman. The two empty facilities are the North Fork Correctional Center in Sayre, which has 2,400 beds, and the Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, which has a capacity of 2,160. Both are owned by Corrections Corporation of America. The director has been involved in some discussions with private prison operators in the state about the possibility of us leasing or buying or leasing to purchase one or more facilities, said Kevin Gross, Board of Corrections chairman. Gross said DOC would operate the new facility with its own people if something is leased as opposed to paying a per diem rate to a private prison. If you are looking at beds, obviously those two facilities are standing open and unoccupied right now, Allbaugh said. That is a place to start. But there are other facilities in the state that we dont know about yet that may have beds. And that is the purpose of talking to as many people as we possibility can. Allbaugh said private prison operator GEO Group has commented many times that the company wanted to expand at its Lawton Correctional Facility. The state has a contract for 2,548 medium-security beds and 78-maximum security beds at the Lawton facility, according to the DOC website. I want to hear what GEO has to say, Allbaugh said. At the end of the day, if the numbers dont work, regardless of who has the beds, then the numbers dont work, and we will have to do something else. He expects to have an update to provide to the board in the next 30 days, Allbaugh said. Allbaugh said he was uncertain how the agency would pay for the additional beds. He said he didnt know if the agency would have to close existing facilities to pay for additional beds. It is one of the unknowns, he said. Many of the states facilities were not designed as prisons, and others have serious problems with aging infrastructure. The DOC needs to be proactive in efforts to solve the population problem, Allbaugh said. The agency is operating at about 120 percent of capacity. Meanwhile, the agency has seen an offender growth of about 1,200 in the past year, which includes offenders backed up in county jails, said Laura Pitman, DOCs division manager for field services. It recently received a supplemental appropriation of $27.5 million to finish the current fiscal year in which the state has experienced a deepening revenue failure requiring cuts to state-appropriated agencies. Responding to a high failure rate on the Oklahoma bar exam last year, the state has thrown out a scoring model some believe may have failed prospective lawyers whose performance on the test should have allowed them to pass. After seeing the lowest statewide pass rate in more than a decade, some believe the 3-year-old scoring model dropped applicants results to a failing score when their performance was good enough to pass. One Oklahoma law school dean told the Tulsa World that many students would have passed if it werent for the changed scoring model, which she believes elevated the multiple choice portion of the exam to hold more weight in the overall score than the essay portion. Responding to last years drop in state exam scores, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled March 7 to vacate a scoring model that scaled scores on the essay portion graded by Oklahoma lawyers based on results from the multiple-choice section, which is standard across multiple states. Effective June 1, the scaling system implemented in 2013 will no longer be used to score the state exam, though the Oklahoma Board of Bar Examiners maintains scaling shouldnt affect pass rates. In an opinion dissenting from the courts 5-4 decision, Justice Steve W. Taylor wrote: The fact that there was a greater failure rate on the most recent bar examination is not a reason to change the examinations grading or scaling. Compared to the year before the grading change, Oklahomas 2015 bar exam passage rate dropped 12 points to 68 percent the lowest its been in more than a decade, according to National Conference of Bar Examiners statistics. Whats to blame for dropping scores? Oklahoma Supreme Court Chief Justice John F. Reif says the courts decision came after meeting with examiners and educators and learning that several individuals who took the bar exam in July 2015 may have passed if it werent for the scaling system. Once the scaling and adjustment took place, they no longer had a passing grade, Reif said in a phone interview March 29. And it didnt have anything to do with what they had demonstrated in the way of knowledge on the essay portion. It happened to be the scaling of that score brought it below the passing grade. The Oklahoma Board of Bar Examiners unanimously supports the scaling system, which is supposed to maintain consistency as the essay questions are state-specific and couldnt be standardized, board member Donna Smith told the Tulsa World. Scaling was meant to take out the bumps in the road when the difficulty of essay questions or skill level of test-takers vary, Smith said. If you have 10 really good papers and then a paper thats more average, generally that average paper will get a lower score if its graded among really good papers, and vice-versa, Smith said. When asked about the drop in bar exam scores last year, Smith pointed out disparities between the states three law schools University of Oklahoma, University of Tulsa and Oklahoma City University. Smith said that while the change in 2013 didnt appear to greatly affect OU or TU, OCU on the other hand had a poor performance in 2015. Data provided by the board shows that the bar exam pass rates at each school fluctuated between 2012 and 2015. OU had consistently higher pass rates, but OCU and TU saw declines after the 2013 change. OCUs pass rate in 2015 was 21 points, or 39 percent, lower than in 2012. TUs pass rate was down 12 points, or 17 percent. Smith referenced the national conversation regarding implications that the decline in bar exam pass rates has resulted from law schools lowering admission standards to boost enrollment as they receive fewer qualified applicants. Prior to admission, law schools review applicants LSAT scores and GPAs as indicators of their likelihood of passing the bar after graduation. Since 2010, each law school in Oklahoma has seen either a decline or stagnancy in the LSAT scores of entering classes placing at the 25th percentile besides a slight increase at OCU in 2015 and at TU in 2012, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners. OCU maintained lower scores than the other two schools each year during that time period until last year, when it was surpassed by TU. While acknowledging that she doesnt know if theres a direct correlation, Smith said the data indicates that there at least appears to be some connection between how law schools are admitting students, the standards that they are using, and the pass rates. In response to concerns that law schools have lowered their standards, OCU School of Law Dean Valerie Couch said the schools entering credentials have been stable for more than 10 years. Rather than lowering the standards to boost enrollment, Couch said the school has shrunk the entering class size to maintain credentials. OCUs law school used to have entering classes as large as 240 to 250, and last year it was 160, Couch said. TU College of Law Dean Lyn Entzeroth said TU has also kept its standards high and consistent. The objective that we have, and that all law schools should have, is that we let in students that we believe can pass the bar, Entzeroth said. We did not lower our standards and let in students that we didnt think could pass the bar. After seeing OCU graduates bar exam results, which Couch called totally out of line with what our history has been, she said the school looked carefully for factors that could have contributed to the drop. Bar applicants working full time and not devoting adequate time to studying, as well as relying on online resources rather than those provided by the school, may have resulted in lower scores, Couch said. Does the change dumb down the test? Addressing criticism that Oklahomas change to the exam would effectively dumb down the test, Reif said: Nothing could be further from the truth. We didnt change anything about the testing procedure itself. Smith agrees, emphasizing the Oklahoma Board of Bar Examiners view that scaling doesnt affect the pass rate. Couch believes the change rather shifts more weight to the essay portion, which she said better exhibits knowledge of skills needed to be a lawyer. Vacating the scaling system also restores more authority to the Oklahoma lawyers grading the essay portion, Entzeroth said. I dont think we should be giving that authority to a national group of bar examiners, Entzeroth said. I think that thats something that we should decide that we should control. And I think thats what (the Oklahoma Supreme Court) made sure was happening. Entzeroth emphasized that the bar remains high for hopeful lawyers. We are certainly maintaining high standards for our students, and I am looking forward to seeing students do well in the future, Entzeroth said. For law students, it is obviously concerning to see fewer people passing the bar considering the financial risk of failing the exam after paying for law school, says second-year TU law student Komron Takmil. But it ultimately falls on the students to adequately prepare, said Takmil, president-elect of TUs Student Bar Association. Because its a huge investment, and to make it worthwhile you have to pass, Takmil said. Bar exam pass rate by Oklahoma law school This chart shows the percentage of bar applicants who passed Oklahoma's July exam by year and law school. The figures include both first-time and repeat test-takers. OCU OU TU 2015 53 87 71 2014 75 88 80 2013 79 86 84 2012 74 87 83 2011 83 86 83 2010 87 93 82 Data from the Oklahoma Board of Bar Examiners. LSAT scores vs. first-year enrollment by Oklahoma law school LSAT scores of entering classes scoring at the 25th percentile: OCU OU TU 2015 146 154 151 2014 145 155 151 2013 145 155 152 2012 147 155 153 2011 149 155 152 2010 149 157 152 Total first-year enrollment: OCU OU TU 2015 159 156 86 2014 156 157 86 2013 162 143 83 2012 172 155 110 2011 201 153 108 2010 224 174 146 Data from the National Conference of Bar Examiners Before his show at Tulsas BOK Center on Thursday, pop star Justin Bieber made one very important stop. He popped by during choir practice at Central High School and visited with about 25 very lucky students, Tulsa Public Schools spokesman Chris Payne said. (The) students didnt know he was coming, so they were totally shocked, Payne said. Bieber vaguely hinted at his appearance on Twitter earlier in the day, simply stating, Something special in Tulsa today. #giveback The pop icon played a song, listened to a performance from the choir and, of course, took photos with the students, Payne said. The impromptu appearance will surely serve as a lasting memory for the students, but the school also greatly benefited. Bieber made a $10,000 donation to the music program at Central, Payne said. Not only did the students get to meet Bieber, but a film crew was there to capture the moment for a segment to air during the Radio Disney Music Awards on May 1. Radio Disney had reached out to school officials a few weeks ago but even those officials didnt know it was going to be Bieber, Payne said. (We) just knew it was a high profile artist, he said. We had a pretty good idea given that he was scheduled to perform (Thursday). Before leaving, Bieber made sure the choir and orchestra students, adult chaperones, teachers and staff who were there got free tickets to the show. Despite the limited audience, photos and videos from the brief appearance made the rounds on the Internet. The many dedicated Bieber fan Twitter handles shared photos from the Central High School appearance, including one with the star playing an acoustic guitar in front of the group and another with him posing with some students and an administrative assistant. For the kids who were there, it took a few minutes for it to register that it was Justin Bieber, Payne said. Then, once they began to realize who it was, there were some excited shrieks. One of those Bieber-induced shrieks may even have come from Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist, who tweeted at Tulsa World Scene reporter Jerry Wofford, Im now one of the #Beliebers! Bieber has repeatedly said that Tulsa is among his favorite places to play. He played one of his first U.S. gigs at Big Splash Water Park in July 2009 and claims that Tulsa was the first place to play his music on the radio. More than 19,000 people packed into downtown Tulsa on Thursday night to see Bieber during his Purpose World Tour. It is a sad political irony that, should legislators approve of a Ten Commandments monument, the very act of doing so will violate one of those 10: Thou shalt not bear false witness. Oklahomas legislators are manipulating public support for the monument as part of a back-door ruse, the goal of which is to change the Constitution and therefore ease our terrible budget problems by gutting public education. The constitutional issue has its origins with something called the Blaine Amendment. In the late 1800s, James Blaine at various times a member of the House of Representatives, speaker of the House, U.S. senator, and U.S. secretary of state proposed an amendment prohibiting public funding for schools with religious affiliations. Although the amendment was not approved, 38 of the 50 state constitutions, including Oklahomas, contain some variation of Blaines proposal either in the form of an amendment or a clause to the Constitution. The separation clause in Oklahomas Constitution essentially states: No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such. Today, our legislators widespread support for school vouchers bumps up against the separation clause. School vouchers, also called Education Spending Accounts, provide enticement for parents to take their kids out of public schools in favor of private schools many of which have religious affiliations by affording parents what typically will amount to $3,000 to $6,000 for private school or home school expenses based upon calculations from House Bill 2949. This money theoretically provides a choice that students somehow are missing in the public schools. There is, however, a bigger incentive at stake than choice. It costs the state about $8,000 to educate a child in an Oklahoma public school the national average is about $12,000, according to Edweek.org. Thats $2,000 to $5,000 the state saves or at least seems to for every child who uses a voucher. Whether vouchers would really provide meaningful choice, an education better or equal to that of the public schools, and/or a quality education at less than half the regular cost, are all hotly contested issues. The point here is not to debate those issues but rather to examine the somewhat glaring obstruction to vouchers: the Constitutions separation clause. This is where the Ten Commandments monument comes in. Many Oklahomans, and many Americans, feel that their beliefs are being threatened, and they consider vocal activism an effective answer to that threat. This passion and activism are not only rights, but they are also admirable. However, cynical politicians have seized the opportunity to manipulate this passion to serve a political agenda. While support for school vouchers exists, it is not likely widespread enough to instigate changing the Constitution. Support for the Ten Commandments monument, though, is much broader. If legislators can exploit that support, then they can leverage it to pass their amendment, which in turn will open the door for their real objective: privatizing education. Although I consider privatization a terrible idea, if Oklahomans want it, then so be it. But lets stop blatantly bearing false witness. Otherwise, Im throwing my support behind the Nine Commandments monument. Bryan France lives in Broken Arrow. Tomorrow on 60 Minutes, nothing formal from Lebanon, but there is a story on Angela and Colin Kiszko, whose son was ordered to have chemotherapy, against their wishes. Tough Treatment For any parent, a sick child is always a concern. So imagine the devastation of Perth parents Angela and Colin Kiszko when they were told their six-year-old son had an aggressive brain tumour. They put their trust in the doctors and were relieved when he came through gruelling surgery. But when Angela and Colin were told their boy would need chemo and radiotherapy, they refused to give consent. What followed was a bruising and protracted battle over a doctors duty of care and a parents right to choose. And all the while a little boys life was left hanging in the balance. Reporter: Liz Hayes Producer: Mary Ann Jolley, Alice Dalley The Write Stuff Heres a terrible statistic: there are one million schoolkids in this country who cant read properly. As a nation we should be ashamed. But if were serious about fixing the problem, maybe we need to pay attention to a former punk-rocking anarchist whose formula for the write stuff is to be very wrong. Childrens author Andy Griffiths is happily and defiantly disgusting. In his page-turners, no bodily function is too repulsive: pooing, farting and vomiting rule. Its guaranteed that kids will be revolted. Theyll probably laugh a lot too. But best of all, without even realising it, theyll be reading. Reporter: Ross Coulthart Producer: Rebecca Le Tourneau Out of this World Charles Wooley is not usually lost for words, but when he met the star of this story for the first time he was speechless. Shes a complete diva, mysterious and unpredictable. She makes visitors travel to the end of the earth to see her, and then more often than not snubs them by not even bothering to show up. Wooley was one of the fortunate ones though when the Northern Lights the Aurora Borealis deigned to greet him in all her heavenly splendour. And when he did manage to speak, all he could say was aaaahhhhh. Reporter: Charles Wooley Producer: Nick Greenaway 8:15pm Sunday on Nine. Bill Steamshovel, Mr Squiggle and Jane Fennell, 1975 The National Archives of Australia in Canberra has launched a new exhibition Tuning In: ABC TV 196476. It highlights much-loved ABC shows from Play School to Countdown, from Bellbird to Alvin Purple. Its a perfect reminder of the days when television viewing was a family ritual and we all juggled life around unmissable programs, said curator Dr Sara King. So many people have fond memories of characters such as Charlie Cousens from Bellbird and Mr Squiggle. And of course the stalwarts of the industry such as James Dibble, Bill Peach and Molly Meldrum. Lynette Curran on the set of Bellbird, 1975 Prince Charles with Molly Meldrum on the set of Countdown, 1977 This exhibition promises a whiff of nostalgia for everyone who loves the ABC as well as some fun and giggles along the way. The exhibition also reflects the enormous social upheaval of the time, with current affairs programs covering topics such as draft dodging, Nazis in Australia, and even women protesting their right to drink in public bars. Jackie Weaver and Graeme Blundell on the set of Alvin Purple, 1976 Ronnie Burns and Graeme Blundell on the set of the 1000th episode of Adventure Island The Sleeping Beauty, 1972 The cast from Basically Black, 1973 Weve taken a look at productions that caused political upheaval and moral outrage, as well as those that won popular success and wide acclaim, said Dr King. This Day Tonight (TDT) for example was variously described as chirpy, irreverent, critical, intrusive and rude. From current affairs to dramas, comedies, teen music and childrens programs, the exhibition brings to life some of the memorable moments, forgotten gems, and much loved programming of Australias national broadcaster. Visitors can see not just famous and well-remembered programs, but also those that have not been seen since their original broadcast. Were also providing a look into some of the correspondence, publicity material, photographic collections and ephemera held in the National Archives collection. The exhibition is open until 15 May. Benita Collings and John Waters on the set of Play School, c.1972 Caroline Jones on the set of This Day Tonight (TDT), 1970 Jon English and Bobbi Sykes on the set of GTK, 1973 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown, producer Stephen Rice and sound man David Ballment are said to be in good health as they spend a second night behind bars in Lebanon, after being arrested in Beirut. They have met with members of the Australian consulate and a lawyer. They were detained on suspicion they were involved in the abduction of two children, daughters of Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner. A British citizen has also been detained suspected of planning to smuggle the children out, after they were taken to Lebanon by their father. Video released on Lebanese television yesterday showed two young children being taken off the streets, whisked into a car which left two women behind, believed to be the childrens paternal grandmother and nanny. The man came down and hit me on the head with something and I was a little dizzy, the childrens grandmother Ibtissam Berri told local broadcasters. They pulled the child from me, they hit the nanny and took the little girl. According to a police official the journalists said during questioning they were on a humanitarian mission and their aim was not to kidnap the children. Michael Usher earlier told Nine News the events had obviously been very concerning for all of us here, but it is a relief to know that at least Australian officials are about to speak to them directly. In Beirut Nines Tom Steinfort gave an interview in which he claimed the father was declining to press charges in connection with the snatching of his children. The Nine Network said efforts are underway to secure Brown and the crews safe return to Australia. We are working with authorities to get them released and home as soon as possible, Nine said in a statement. Source: Nine, Fairfax, News Corp Updated. Protecting the skies of the continental United States is an enormous task. The organization responsible for that job has almost a bigger name: 1st Air Force, Air Forces Northern and Continental United States North American Aerospace Defense Command. From the outside, AFNORTH may look like just another Air Force facility at Tyndall AFB, when in fact its much more than that. Its actually several facilities and has several missions important to national security. Its primary mission is to ensure the air sovereignty and air defense of the continental United States, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. It protects America from 9/11 style terrorist attacks. It does this with a full-spectrum of air defense and surveillance resources across the continent. The organization also responds to non-military threats as well. It assists civilian agencies during emergencies and natural and man-made disasters. It provides inter-agency and joint military support to local, state, regional, and federal emergency service agencies; and protects the American people and their way of life. Here at Tyndall AFNORTH is comprised of several assets, all of which are spread across the Tyndall installation. The 601st Air Operations Center is one of those assets. Their mission is to provide aerospace warning and control for North American Aerospace Defense Command defensive counter air activities. Additionally, it directs Air Force air and space capabilities in support of U.S. Northern Command homeland security and civil support missions. Within the 601st is the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, where they play a part in preventing loss of life with other rescue agencies. "The AFRCC works within the continental United States by coordinating federal resources in support of local and state-run search and rescue missions when their resources have been exhausted, said Maj. Evan Gardner, AFRCC director of operations. Missions range from lost hikers to overdue aircraft." The facility is staffed by military officers, enlisted personnel and civilians on a 24/7 rotation. Master Sgt. Martha Dunning, AFNORTH standards and evaluations manager, expressed her thoughts of working within the air operations center. In the past, I was the NCO in charge of operational training for the 601st AOC and had a chance to work very closely with the standards and evaluations shop, Dunning said. They go hand-in-hand, but are very different. It is interesting to see more facets of the air defense mission. Also on the spectrum of AFNORTH is the Continental U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command Region. Its also known as the CONUS NORAD Region. As its name would imply, this component of NORAD provides airspace surveillance and control, as well as direct aerospace control activities for the continental United States. NORAD is the bi-national Canadian and American command that employs a network of space, aerial and ground-based sensors, air-to-air refueling tankers and fighter aircraft, controlled by a sophisticated command and control network to deter, detect and defend against aerial threats that originate outside or within North American airspace. Since Sept. 11, 2001, First Air Force has been the lead agency in Operation Noble Eagle. Operation Noble Eagle is the U.S. operation that protects the American people from further airborne aggression from inside and outside the U.S. borders. 8:40 a.m., April 8, 2016--The University of Delaware ADVANCE Institute will conduct the biennial faculty climate survey from April 8 until May 9. The UD ADVANCE Institute will distribute the survey by email to all full-time tenured, tenure-track, and continuing track faculty members. The survey covers a wide range of topics including: the tenure and promotion processes, workload and career development opportunities, departmental climate and culture, mentoring, work-life, the climate for diversity and overall job satisfaction. Survey results will help guide current and future ADVANCE efforts to support faculty across UD, as well as inform university administrators about factors affecting faculty satisfaction. The survey will also allow for collaboration with various groups on campus, particularly those interested in faculty diversity and campus climate. The ADVANCE team will provide summary data to the Faculty Senate and American Association of University Professors (AAUP) UD chapter to support their related efforts. Results from the 2014 survey provided substantial evidence to inform a range of ADVANCE efforts to support faculty, including improved communication of family friendly policies and ongoing work to enhance department chair mentoring programs and strengthen dual-career policies. After finding that underrepresented faculty report lower levels of job satisfaction and more negative perceptions of their departmental climate, the ADVANCE team sponsored a range of programs to effect change. These efforts include a faculty of color roundtable for the administration to generate strategies to recruit and retain faculty of color and are anticipated to support networking groups for faculty of color, with a focus on women. The ADVANCE team also used survey results to guide ongoing research on faculty careers, including a qualitative project on faculty retention at UD. The UD ADVANCE Institute and the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness (IRE) will work together to administer and analyze the survey and its results. The survey is confidential and results will be aggregated so that no individual respondents can be identified. Questions about the survey can be directed to Shawna Vican, senior research analyst for UD ADVANCE and Institutional Research and Effectiveness at svican@udel.edu or 302-831-2936. 9:54 a.m., April 8, 2016--For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni. Recent books, documentary films, exhibitions, graduate student achievements, performances, presentations and service include the following: Books A new book by James C. Curtis, professor emeritus of history, focuses on photographers hired by the federal War Relocation Authority (WRA) and shows how their images were shaped by the governments need to explain and justify the evacuation, confinement and eventual resettlement of over 110,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Discriminating Views: Documentary Photography and Japanese American Internment was the subject of a recent article in the Wilmington News Journal. Curtis, also a former director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, was instrumental in the creation of UDs History Media Center in 1970 and establishing a curriculum in visual history. Documentary films James Corbett, professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy, appeared in the recently released documentary Freightened: The Real Price of Shipping, produced by Polar Star Films. The documentary investigates the many faces of worldwide freight shipping and sheds light on the functioning, regulation and hidden costs associated with this nearly invisible industry. An expert in the environmental impacts of shipping, Corbett has conducted groundbreaking research on the air pollution generated by maritime transport. His research focuses also extends to assessing technological and policy strategies to improve freight transportation. Exhibitions University of Delaware alumnus Dennis Carr is the curator of a new exhibition at Winterthur Museum, Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia, which runs through Jan. 8. Carr, who earned his masters degree in 1999 from UDs Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, is the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at Bostons Museum of Fine Arts. Made in the Americas is the first large-scale, Pan-American exhibition to examine the profound influence of Asia on the arts of the colonial Americas. It includes more than 80 works, including fine furniture, textiles, ceramics, silverwork and paintings. Graduate student achievements Kristin Yoshimura, a graduate student studying marine biosciences in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, received an honorable mention from the 2016 National Science Foundations Graduate Research Fellowship Program. This distinction provides Yoshimura enhanced access to cyberinfrastructure resources, including supercomputing time, in support of research toward completion of the graduate program of study. Sarmistha Chatterjee, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography, received the best research presentation award at the doctoral-level at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, held in San Francisco from March 29-April 2. The award was given by the AAGs Water Resources Specialty Group. Chatterjees presentation was titled "Modeling Small Dam Fragmentation and Climate Change Impacts on the Hydrology of the Smoky-Hill River Basin, Kansas." Performances James Keegan, associate professor of English in UDs Associate in Arts Program in Georgetown, Delaware, is directing The Winter's Tale at the Baltimore Shakespeare Factory until April 24. His production uses original pronunciation, or OP, in which the actors adopt historically accurate accents and pronunciation; in this case, their pronunciation and speech patterns are as close as possible to the Elizabethan English used in Shakespeare's original productions. The opening night performance of the play received rave reviews in DC Metro Theater Arts and in TheatreBloom. Keegan, who also teaches acting and film and is a member of the resident troupe at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia, is hosting a pre-show lecture series and question-and-answer session before each Saturday performance of The Winters Tale. Presentations Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, and Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow at the University of Delaware Library, gave invited lectures in Liverpool, U.K., at the Walker Art Gallery. Their talks were part of the public events scheduled by the Walker's education office in conjunction with the museum's current exhibition, Pre-Raphaelites: Beauty and Rebellion, which explores the connections between an important Victorian art movement and the city of Liverpool. On March 30, Samuels Lasner spoke about "Collecting the Pre-Raphaelites," in a talk that focused on Liverpool-based collectors of Pre-Raphaelite painting in the 19th century, but also highlighted some relevant Pre-Raphaelite works with Liverpool links in his own collection (which is on loan to the UD Library). On March 31, Stetz gave a talk titled "Dante's Dream and a Poet in 1880s Liverpool," about the inspirational role that a particular Pre-Raphaelite painting by D.G. Rossetti (owned since the 19th century by the Walker) played in the literary career of Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947). Later this year, Stetz and Samuels Lasner will be co-curators of the exhibition Richard Le Gallienne: Liverpool's Wild(e) Poet, Aug. 5 to Oct. 31 at the Central Library in Liverpool, which commemorates the 150th anniversary of the birth of this writer, who began as a disciple of Oscar Wilde, but also became an influential figure in his own right, especially in the Aesthetic and Decadent movements. Theodore E. D. Braun, professor emeritus, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Culture, presented "Lies, Slanders, Prevarications, Calumnies: Voltaire and his Fictive Le Franc de Pompignan" at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Pittsburgh, March 31-April 3. Service David Wunsch, director of the Delaware Geological Survey, presented Anne J. Castle, former Assistant Secretary for Water and Science in the Department of Interior under President Obama, with the Pick and Gavel Award at the historic Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. The Pick and Gavel Award is presented by the Association of American State Geologists (AASG) to a national public policy official or other leader who has demonstrated support, leadership, and advancement of the geosciences in the public policy arena. Previous winners include U.S. senators, congressmen and executive agency leaders. Wunsch, who nominated Castle for the award, cited her strong support of cooperative efforts between the AASG and the U.S. Geological Survey, and her implementation of the SECURE Water Act, including the National Ground Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) effort within the Interior Department. Wunsch is a member of the federal Subcommittee on Ground Water, which advises the Interior Department on groundwater issues within the U.S., and a past-president of the AASG. He has worked closely with Secretary Castle in the past. Delaware Geological Survey is a state agency based at UD and housed in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. To submit information to be included in For the Record, write to publicaffairs@udel.edu. 8:42 a.m., April 8, 2016--The University community is invited to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the University of Delaware Librarys new Graduate Student Research Room. The event will take place in the new study space, which is located on the first floor of Morris Library in the Reading Room, at 4:30 p.m., Thursday, April 14. Light refreshments will be served. The Graduate Student Research Room has seats for 32 graduate students, with a mix of furniture: tables, counter space and wing back lounge chairs. The University Library worked closely with the Graduate Student Government to inform the design of the space and the choice of furniture. Graduate students are especially encouraged to attend the ribbon cutting if they have not yet seen the space, which has been open for use since February. The Graduate Student Research Room is accessible via card access, meaning that graduate students tap their UD ONEcard on the reader to the left of the door to gain entry. Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it. I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends. More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it. The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity. About me: I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS. Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line). Age: 42 Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed. I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it). The future of an EU-Ukraine Association Agreement should not be decided only by 20% of citizens of one of the EU countries at a consultative referendum. This is said in a statement by the head of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee Elmar Brok, Co-Chairman of the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee Andriy Plenkovych and rapporteur on the Ukrainian issue in the European Parliament Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, which is cited by the Yevropeiska Pravda. "The Association Agreement has been ratified by 27 EU member states, the European Parliament and the Verkhovna Rada and approved by the two chambers of the Dutch Parliament and Government. We believe that the EU together with all 28 member states should decide [on the fate of the agreement], but not 20 % of voters of one of the member states, which represents 0.6% of the whole EU population, at a referendum that is an advisory one", the MEPs noted. They also called on the Dutch government to inform about its position as soon as possible so that the European Commission can submit its proposals. iy UW Student Poetry Slam Set April 13 University of Wyoming students can participate in a poetry slam Wednesday, April 13, at 8 p.m. in the lower level of the Wyoming Union. The event is free and open to the public, but participants must be UW students. Students can register for the poetry slam beginning Monday, April 11, in the Campus Activities Center, located in the lower level of the Wyoming Union. Participants also can register at the event, but spots are limited. A panel of poetry experts will judge the event. Prizes will be awarded to those who place in the top three spots. First place will receive $200, second place will be given $100, and third place will receive $50. Student Activities Council (SAC) hosts the event. If interested in joining SAC, contact sac@uwyo.edu. SAC meetings are Mondays at 5 p.m. in the Campus Activities Center, located in Room 012 of the Wyoming Union. For more information about SAC events, visit www.uwyo.edu/sac, like the Wyoming Union on Facebook, or follow the Campus Activities Center on Twitter and Instagram @UWYOCAC. To receive information about future events, text CAC to 71441. Individuals needing assistance to attend events should contact the Campus Activities Center at (307) 766-6340. Wyoming Business Tips for April 17-23 A weekly look at Wyoming business questions from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC), part of WyomingEntrepreneur.Biz, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming. By Alyssa Lozier, WY PTAC procurement specialist With a recession upon our economy, Ive expanded my businesss customer base and incorporated the federal government into my market. What are the benefits of considering a set-aside program when going after federal contracts? Levi, Jackson We all know that, when a recession is upon us, owning a small business can be difficult. But, did you know contracting with small businesses is an obligation of all federal agencies? Last year alone, $218 billion in government contracting dollars were awarded in Wyoming. With many small businesses capable of providing products and services to the government, therefore allowing these opportunities to be set aside exclusively for small business concerns, there definitely are opportunities to differentiate your business with a set-aside program. The Woman-Owned Small Businesses (WOSB) Set-Aside Program provides significant opportunities for women entrepreneurs. The program goal is to expand the number of industries where WOSBs are able to compete for and win federal contracts. It enables economically disadvantaged WOSBs to compete for contracts in industries where WOSBs are underrepresented. The 8(a) business development program offers a broad scope of assistance to firms that are owned and controlled at least 51 percent by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. The overall focus is to provide small businesses with nine years of mentoring, procurement assistance, business counseling, training, financial assistance, surety bonding, and other technical and management assistance. The Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Businesses (SDVOSB) Set-Aside Program allows contracting officers to restrict competition to SDVOSBs for sole-source or set-aside procurement opportunities where business ownership and control can be met. This does not provide preference to SDVOSBs, but rather allows contracting officers to create the set-aside or sole-source awards if they choose to do so. The Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans First Contracting Program gives first priority to veterans and provides preference for veteran business owners who are not service disabled. HUBZones, or historically underutilized business zones, are the only geographic place-based certification program. Intended for companies located in a high unemployment rate and low median income location, this provides the opportunity to pursue HUBZone set-aside contracts with a goal of increasing employment opportunities, stimulating capital investment and empowering communities through economic leveraging. Set-aside programs do not guarantee sales, but rather reduce competition for contracts. Eligibility requirements for each set-aside program can be located on the Small Business Administrations website. A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments are available at http://wyen.biz/blog1/. The WSBDC is a partnership of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Wyoming Business Council and the University of Wyoming. To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922. UWyo Magazine January 2016 | Vol. 17, No. 2 Historical Narratives Special collections librarian Tamsen Hert ensures that Wyomings historical and cultural publications are accessible to the public. By Jeff Tatay Every place and culture has a story to be tolda historical and cultural narrative that informs our understanding of place, its inviting yet austere landscapes, and its people who once set the stage as actors in place and time. These are the historical memories, the fragments and pieces that shape our history and allow us to continue forward with our own narratives. The efforts of UW librarian Tamsen Hert, head of the Emmett D. Chisum Special Collections, ensure that these fragments and pieces of history are collected, archived and made accessible to scholars around the world. Uncovering forgotten history: While Hert was working on University of Wyoming, a book she co-wrote with Rick Ewig, she found a fragment of history in Special Collections that caught her interest: a forgotten dinosaur hunter and UW alumnus named Charles Whitney Gilmore. Gilmore was a key figure in the golden age of dinosaur paleontology who went on to work for the Smithsonian Institution. As you get to work with these materials, you find some of the pieces that havent been told, some of the stories that havent been highlighted in Wyomings history, and so its kind of fun to discover those and try to share that story, Hert says. The story of Gilmore titled The Forgotten Dinosaur Cowboy was one of the recent Wyoming history exhibitions put together and told by Hert with the help of UW students and faculty. Shaping the narrative: Because many stories are forgottenand personal values and political interests shape our historyHert emphasizes the importance of making sure Wyomings historical and cultural publications are collected and made accessible to the public. The role of Special Collections is to collect all of those stories, whether fiction, history, scientific, geologic, so that somebody can come in and look at those resources and either create a new story or understand and move forward pulling up new information on a topic. Hert also is president of the Wyoming State Historical Society, a recipient of UWs Agnes Milstead Distinguished Librarianship Award, and a recognized Yellowstone National Park historian. Haptik, an Indian-based mobile concierge service provider, has raised $11.2 million from Times Internet through a Series B funding round. The funding round marks the second investment on start-ups for Times Internet. Hapitk raised $1 million in a seed round in 2014 when it was created. The service is more similar to Magic, a buzzy start-up in the US, and it can be used to avail any service and solve any type of problem. However, Magic utilizes SMS for its services, Haptik uses its personal app for chatting purposes in order to filter and manage requests. Haptik allows users to concentrate more on important matters in their life and outsource their petty works to Haptik service. The service finishes their work in a matter of time. The service has won nearly one million downloads on Android and iOS. Haptik has also teamed with Samsung, which uses the service to boost it's "My Assistant" service that is pre-mounted on the Galaxy S7 Edge and Galaxy S7 in India. The service satisfies nearly half a million requests every month. The requests are mainly related to food supply, travel, mobile plan expenses, bargain hunting and restaurant reservation, as reported by TechCrunch. Haptik has promised a volume of interest from clients to strike a deal with online service providers like Dineout, Flipkart, Urbanclap, Via.com and Cleartrip. Currently, the service is carried by a group of workers, but Haptik is looking for non-natural intelligence to carry on it service, similar to 'M' service that Facebook is examining in the US. Al best suits Haptik's need as it works more rapidly than a human brain. Nearly one-quarter of users' requests are satisfied by Al. According to THE ECONOMIC TIMES, Haptik will use the fund to develop its business portfolio, boost non-natural workforce abilities as well as improve business policies. Kalaari Capital that has invested $1 million into Haptik in 2014 will quit from the company. Aakrit Vaish, chief executive director of Haptik, said, "We started Haptik so that consumers could get the most out of their phones, without the huge learning curve of navigating hundreds of different apps. The partnership with Times Internet will allow Haptik to enrich its customer base in the Indian market. Gautam Sinha, Times Internet's CEO, said that Haptik is a growing chat-based business, creating an appetite among its users. Times Internet will aid the service firm to improve its service portfolio and at the same time boost its client base, he added. Similarly, Hungama, a content provider, has raised $25 million from Xiaomi, a Chine-based electronics firm. Housing.com, an online real estate media, has raised an undisclosed sum from Vineet Singh, a previous chief of 99Acres.com, Gadgets 360 said. Gear6.in, a wired bike service provider said to have raised nearly $500,000 through a seed funding round from Ninestarter. While Servify, a tech start-up, has raised an undisclosed sum from Blume Ventures. The start-up economy seems to be growing despite the sluggish global economy. Chat-based apps are gaining their popularity, particularly in Indian markets. Monsanto, a US-based agrochemical firm, reported its earnings results for the second quarter that ended February 29, 2016. The company reported a 25% drop in its quarterly earnings as farmers try to reduce their expenditure. The biotechnology company posted a net income of $1.06 billion for the second quarter of 2016, down from $1.42 billion in the same period in 2015. Income from operations for the quarter declined to $1.66 billion from $2.02 billion in the previous year period. Quarterly earnings per share fell to $2.41 from $2.92 in the year-ago period. Earnings from ongoing business totaled $2.42 per share, down from $2.90 per share in the corresponding period in 2015. Gross profit for the period decreased to $2.6 billion from $3.04 billion in the previous year period. Monsanto's net sales decelerated to $4.5 billion from $5.2 billion in the prior year quarter. For the year 2016, the company updated earnings per share outlook in the range of $3.72 to $4.48. On an ongoing basis, Monsanto estimates earnings between $4.40 and $5.10 per share for 2016. The company reaffirmed its 2016 cash flow guidance between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion. According to abcNEWS, the company's earnings missed Wall Street analysts' view. Analysts polled by Zacks Investment Research expected Monsanto to register earnings of $2.45 a share on revenues of $4.78 billion. The shares of the firm were up 29 cents at $86.39 during the morning trading session on Wednesday but has declined 26% since the past 12 months. Sonoran Weekly Review quoted Hugh Grant, CEO of Monsanto, who said that the company will concentrate more on research and development rather than be investing in merger and acquisition deals for growth. "We believe the industry will continue to rationalize, focusing investment on the highest return options," he said. The decision by the company comes after its failure to purchase Syngenta for $46 billion. For the six-month period, net income available to Monsanto Company amounted to $810 million, down from $1.67 billion in the same period in 2015. Net income for the period declined to $803 million from $1.66 billion in the previous year period. Income from operations decreased to $1.4 billion from $2.4 billion in the six-month period that ended February 28, 2015. Earnings per share dropped to $1.80 from $3.41 in the prior year period. On an ongoing basis, earnings fell to $2.25 per share from $3.36 per share in the year-ago period. Net income attributable to Monsanto Company from ongoing business was $1.02 billion for the period, down from $1.64 billion in the previous year period. Gross profit for the six-month period declined to $3.5 billion from $4.45 billion in the prior year period. Net sales totaled $6.75 billion, compared to $8.07 billion in the previous year period. The company's earnings were hurt by poor demand from farmers, trying to lower their expenses. Monsanto is attempting to recover its financial position from the global crisis. Angola is the second largest oil producer in Africa. As the oil price is in turbulence, its economy was hit severely. Next week the county will start negotiation with IMF for a three-year bailout program. Angola has experienced a healthy economuc growth since ending its long civil war in 2002. Its growth was mainly supported by its oil and diamond. With a more than 10% annual GDP growth, Angola has maintained a steady growth. However as the oil price continue to plunge, Angola was hit quite severly. As oil is accounted 40% of its GDP with more than 95% of the country's foreign exchange revenue. Therefore a high reliance on oil economy exposes its vulnerability in the economic growth, which hit the country as the oil price continue to sink. In a statement as quoted by Reuters, Angola Finance Ministry admit the dependency on oil has made its economy vulnerable, as the country has exhausted its dollar inflows. The ministry admit to ask IMF to support in a three-year loan facility, although last month Finance Minister Armando Manuel told Reuters that he had no plan to ask for loans from IMF. "The government of Angola is aware that the high dependence of the oil sector represents vulnerability for the public finances and the economy in an extensive way," the Finance Ministry said. "The government requested the support of the IMF for a supplementary programme ... taking account of the decline in the price of petroleum." IMF Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu said in Washington that next week IMF and Angola will meet and discuss the term. IMF has prepared a three-year Extended Fund Facility for Angola, which according to Daily Mail, is a program designed for countries with balance of payments issues and slow growth or structural impediments. The program allow IMF members to borrow up to 145 %of its quota share in the Fund annually. "The IMF stands ready to help Angola address the economic challenges it is currently facing by supporting a comprehensive policy package to accelerate the diversification of the economy, while safeguarding macroeconomic and financial stability," Zhu said. Under the IMF's Extended Fund Facility program, Voice of America reported that Angola entitled to borrow about $1.5 billion a year. That amount is based on its share and current exchange rates, with a cumulative total capped at just over $4.5 billion, net of repayments. Finance Ministry assured that Angola is ready to work with IMF to reform its fiscal discipline, simplify tax system. Angola is also ready to increase public finance transparency and the banking sector. As the second largest oil producer in Africa,Angola was hit severely by by continuous drop of oil price. Angola will begin negotiation with IMF next week for a three-year bailout program. Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the Google developed operating system, has doubled its market share compared to that in March. Data compiled on April 4 after gathering in a seven-day period, suggests that its market stake has grown from 2.3% to 4.6% within span of a month. The compiled data also suggests a decline in the number of devices powered by Android Lollypop and Android Kitkat. Though eroding, but still Android Lollipop leads the market with 35.8% market staked followed by Android Kitkat occupying 33.4%, reports International Business Times citing latest statistics furnished in the Google dashboard as the source. Lollipop has skidded from market share of 36.1% while Kitkat from 34.3% recorded in March. Usage of Jelly Bean has been reduced from 22.3% in March to 21.3% and Ice Cream Sandwich from 2.3% to 2.2%. Meanwhile Gingerbread and Froyo maintain their market chunks in place at 2.6% and 0.1% respectively, reports Android Central also citing Google dashboard as the source. Volkswagen AG (VW), the German automobile manufacturer, has been sued in an Illinois Federal court on Wednesday by three of its dealerships owned by Napleton Automotive Group. The plaintiffs have accused the automaker for intentionally defrauding through installing software on diesel-run vehicles capable of duping Federal emission tests. Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, a Seattle based law firm representing Napleton has sought class status in its 111 page case filing. Hagens Berman is also familiar for representing thousands of VW diesel owners with lawsuits against the automaker following the 6-month-old scandal. However, through filing the suit, Napleton has defied a VW dealer council effort to refrain retailers from seeking court intervention against the grievances caused by the automaker's diesel-emissions crisis, reports Automotive News. The suit accuses VW for alluring dealerships investing in showrooms for selling so-called environment friendly vehicles while deceiving the UUS regulators. It seeks compensation for losses the plaintiffs have incurred following stuck up of VW inventory in their showrooms. The lawsuit also accuses VW for improperly favoring selective dealers while forcing retailers into financing arrangements with a company-lending affiliate, according to a report published in The Wall Street Journal. In Diesel-gate scandal, VW has admitted installing an illegal defeat device in more than 550,000 US diesel vehicles. However, the US affiliate in-charge of VW's dealer network has intentionally withheld all information on the scandal from the current and potential dealers. Though it may be assumed that the US in-charge has been aware of the issue since at least as early as 2014, reports Business Wire. Sprint Corp., the Kansas based major global internet carrier has announced on Wednesday raising $2.2 billion through selling and leasing-back certain network assets. The fund will be used for repayment of matured debt while continuing its turnaround efforts. The American telecommunication holding company has agreed selling network gear worth around $3 billion to a new entity, Network LeaseCo, backed by Sprint's parent company SoftBank Group Corp. Network LeaseCo will pay $2.2 billion for the equipment and immediately lease the gear back to the internet carrier. Sprint will repay the fund in less than two years and the deal is expected get closed next week, reports The Wall Street Journal. SoftBank owns 83% stake in Sprint which has reported holding $6 billion liquidity during the end of 2015. The wireless service provider is scheduled either to repay or refinance this year and around $12 billion during the next five years. Analysts presume, more such deals may take place, according to a report published in Bloomberg. Chinese online payment platform, Alipay, has expressed its aim to expand its services to Europe. The company, owned by the Alibaba Group, officially announced its biggest move outside Asia at the Money 2020 conference in Copenhagen. The company stated that the push into Europe will make it easier for Chinese tourists' interface and interaction with Western merchants when doing transaction overseas. The move is based on the statistics on Chinese tourists spending abroad. According to Finextra, 177 million Chinese tourists spent $165 billion while travelling abroad in 2014. The spending amount had a 53 percent rise to $215 billion in 2015. The number of tourists is expected to grow to 234 million by 2020. With the new extended service, Alipay users can continue to use the app abroad, specifically in Europe. President of Alipay International Sabrina Peng told CNBC about the company's perspective in the new service, "The vision is targeting two billion people within next five to ten years, not only in China but other countries too." As part of the expansion to European markets, Alipay will launch a new feature within the app, called "Local Services Platform." The platform, which is due to be launched in May, will provide users with description and reviews of shops and restaurants around them using geolocation. It's also equipped with a bilingual interactive map to help users navigate. In addition to the Local Services Platform, Alipay's European launch program will also include services that enable Chinese tourists to do purchase transaction through the app. The service will be in partnership with Europe's financial services company Wirecard, as reported by Business Insider. The company will launch a software for processing Alipay payments that can be integrated with Wirecard point-of-sale (POS) infrastructure in merchants. The European expansion is one of Alipay's recent efforts to push outside its origin in China. The company is reportedly looking for more partners in Asia. The move to make partnerships in Europe is the company's first biggest push outside Asia. As for now, Alipay has a total of 450 million active users, according to the company's report. The service was used by 120 million users abroad last year. Also, in terms of global use, Alipay processes about 170 million transactions per day. Chinese tourists will soon be able to make transactions with Alipay with merchants in Europe. The company plans to launch a partnership with European processor, Wirecard, as well as a new feature to make it easier for Chinese tourists to explore and make transactions abroad. The service is expected to be ready this summer. A multinational gas pipeline project connecting Turkmenistan and South Asia secured a $200 million investment fund from its shareholders. The fund will be allocated to carry out preliminary studies to support the project. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Pipeline (TAPI) project will connect the four countries, allowing to transport natural gas, mainly from Turkmenistan. On Thursday, the shareholders of the TAPI Pipeline Company Limited (TPCL) signed an investment agreement to provide $200 million to fund the next phase of the project. Turkmenistan's Deputy Prime Minister, Yagshygeldy Kakayev, explained the allocation of the new funds. "We will use funds to carry out various studies, preliminary engineering, environmental design and various research of the route," Mr. Kakayev stated. Furthermore, he elaborated that the studies would provide a comprehensive estimate of the project's total cost. Mr. Kakayev also acknowledged the importance of the signing of the investment, as it "opens the way for the consortium for further work," as quoted by ABC News. Other than determining costs, the team will also conduct studies to determine the detailed pipeline route and other environmental and social investigations. The project's shareholders consist of energy firms from the four countries involved. According to Reuters, Turkmen state firm Turkmengas is the main shareholder of the joint venture that carries out the project. Other investors are Afghan Gas Enterprise, Pakistan's Inter State Gas Systems Ltd and GAIL (India) Ltd. Once completed, the TAPI pipeline will have the capacity to transport 33 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas annually for the next 30 years. The pipeline will tranship natural gas from Turkmenistan, the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, 1,600 kilometers along to the Pakistan/Indian border. The pipeline project is being developed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The bank considers the TAPI project as an impressive regional cooperation and integration put together by ADB. The bank's Central and West Asia Department Director General Sean O'Sullivan stated the project's importance, as quoted by Trend News Agency. "It will unlock economic opportunities, transform infrastructure, diversify the energy market for Turkmenistan, and enhance energy security for the region," he said. The natural gas pipeline project that will connect Turkmenistan to India through Afghanistan and Pakistan will now begin studies to determine the detailed engineering, budgeting, and route, as well as environmental and social investigations, after securing an investment of $200 million from its shareholders. The project's shareholders consist of energy companies from the four countries. They expect the project to be completed by 2019. Didi Kuaidi, Uber's largest competitor is about to raise its latest round of funding to more than $1.5 billion to compete with Uber Technologies Inc. China's largest hailing service will be valued at more than $20 billion in the round. It's a battle between China's largest hailing service Didi Kuaidi and Uber Technologies Inc. as both companies provide large subsidies to drivers and passengers to sign up for their services. Didi received robust demand from new and present investors and is expecting the round will be completed at the end of April. Several global startups which include some in Silicon Valley have difficulty raising money during the economic slowdown, but now Didi Kuaidi. Its value surged from just $6 billion in February last year when it was established from the partnership of two competing taxi-hailing companies. Investors wager that the company will be able to generate a profit after drawing more Chinese passengers to its service, reports The Wall Street Journal. Didi is backed up by largest investors including social-network company Tencent Holdings Ltd. and online shopping titan Alibaba Group Holding which lately surpassed Wal-Mart as the world's biggest retail company. Uber however, is not a couch potato. It is valued at more than $60 billion and has overthrown rivals in Europe and the U.S. has its own resources to draw from and has its ceaseless ways to find new strategies in battling its rival. Its backers include the country's largest insurer China Life Insurance and Baidu Inc. which is its major internet provider. It is producing $1 billion in annual profit from its 30 largest cities worldwide, money that puts it in a position to fund its Chinese investment. Didi Kuaidi on the other hand, has the home court advantage, according to a Bloomberg report. "We will be the last one standing," Vice President of Strategy Stephen Zhu told the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong. "Why is our competitor consistently 20 to 30 percent cheaper but still failing to gain market share? It's because the customer experience is not as good, their network is much less than ours." In China, it will be between Uber and Didi. One of the more distinguishable and possible obstacles these ride-hailing companies will face are local regulations, according to Livemint. It's a battle for drivers and passengers for Uber and Didi as they try to ousts one another by giving large subsidies and raise billions of dollars for expansion and competition in the market. SHARE CAMARILLO Center for Spiritual Living plans talk The Center for Spiritual Living Pleasant Valley will present a talk by Jim Lockard 10-11 a.m. April 17 from at 221 E. Daily Drive, Suite 1. The topic is taken from Ernest Holmes' quote, "We believe that the manifest universe is the body of God." Lockard is a retired Religious Science minister and spiritual leader of the Centers for Spiritual Living, Simi Valley, and Westlake Village, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Baltimore, Maryland. He has written "Sacred Thinking" and texts in other publications. Centers for Spiritual Living has a global vision for 2016: A World that Works for Everyone. April's theme is "Kindship with All Life." There is no cost to attend but donations will be welcome. For more information, call the Rev. Pam Geagan at 482-4300 or visit http://www.csl-pleasantvalley.org. All welcome at community Seder Temple Ner Ami will host its annual Community Passover Seder on April 23 at 4:30 p.m. at 515 Temple Ave. Led by Rabbi Dalia Samansky and Cantor Karen Dworsky, the Seder commemorates the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. The traditional Seder will feature reading of the Haggada and singing followed by a catered meal. The cost is $18 for children 13 and younger and $36 for adults. All are welcome. Seating is limited. Call for reservations by April 18 at 388-3824. Chabad presents Seders, ceremonies Community members are invited to Chabad Jewish Center of Camarillo's community Seders on April 22 at 7:30 p.m. and April 23 at 7:30 p.m. Both Seders will feature discussion about Passover, food and singing. Rabbis Aryeh Lang and Yosef Muchnik of the center will facilitate the intergenerational program. Call 383-7882 for Seder location. The suggested donation is $36 per adult and $25 per child. Family plans are available upon request. No one will be turned away for lack of ability to pay. Reservations are required at the Chabad office at 383-7882, ext. 3, or at http://www.ChabadCamarillo.com/seder. The community also is invited to attend the annual Bread Burning Ceremony on April 22 from 10:30-11:30 a.m. at Firehouse #52, 5353 Santa Rosa Road. Community members may pick up a complimentary handmade round shmura matzah (while supplies last) on Wednesday or Thursday between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Chabad Jewish Center, 5800 Santa Rosa Road, #112. For more information on Passover, contact Lang at 383-7882 or rabbiari@chabadcamarillo.com or visit http://www.ChabadCamarillo.com/passover. OXNARD Lutheran church celebrates 55 years Our Saviour's Evangelical Lutheran Church will celebrate its 55th anniversary April 17 at 9:30 a.m. at 905 Redwood St. Light refreshments will be served after the service. Pastor Jennifer Chrien welcomes everyone to attend. For more information, call the church at 486-5383. Passover events set to run two nights The Chabad of Oxnard Jewish Center invites the community to a Passover Seder. Rabbi Dov and Racheli Muchnik will lead the Community Passover Seder on both the first and second nights of the Passover April 22 and April 23 at 7:30 p.m. The Seder will be held at a private home in Oxnard Shores. Relive the Exodus, discover the eternal meaning of the Haggada and enjoy a communal Passover Seder complete with handmade matzah, wine and a catered dinner with traditional customs. There is a suggested donation of $45 for adults and $25 for children. No one will be turned away because of lack of funds. RSVP by Friday and get directions at 382-4770 or visit http://www.ChabadofOxnard.com. THOUSAND OAKS Temple hosts week of Passover services Temple Etz Chaim invites the community to participate in Passover services and a Community Passover Seder at the temple, 1080 E. Janss Road. The temple will hold multiple holiday prayer services during the weeklong spring festival. The temple also will host a catered community Seder held the second night of Passover on April 23 at 6:30 p.m. Siyum B'chorim (Service of the Firstborn) will take place April 22 at 6:45 a.m. in the Winer Chapel. Rabbi Richard Spiegel and Hazzan Pablo Duek of Temple Etz Chaim will lead the Community Passover Seder on April 23 at 6:30 p.m. The interactive Seder tells the story of Passover through song. Nana's Kosher Catering will provide the holiday meal. Prices are $55 for adults, $32 for children ages 6-12, and $20 for children ages 3-5: $20. For reservations, call the temple office at 497-6891. For a full listing of information about Passover services, visit http://www.templeetzchaim.org. Reserve your space at the Community Seder at the temple office at 497.6891 or info@templeetzchaim.org. Star file photo SHARE By Staff Reports The Fillmore Unified School District has received a $2.6 million federal preschool grant from the State Department of Education. The grant will allow the district to fund full-day preschool classes at its four elementary schools and two additional district sites. The district serves about 3,500 students from lower-income families. Currently, it has just one half-day preschool program at the Sespe district office. The grant will fund two additional classes at the Sespe site, as well as the elementary schools. The full-day classes will serve about 24 students at each location and will be free to students ages 3 to 5. "Fillmore Unified recognizes the long-term educational benefits for students who have completed a high-quality preschool program," Superintendent Adrian Palazuelos said in a news release Friday. "The California State Preschool Program funding will enable our district to increase access to preschool for our youngest learners and also continue to forge strong connections with our families." The award will be funded over two years. Classes will open in time for the start of the 2016-17 school year. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Reyna Grande is the author of "The Distance Between Us," the centerpiece of the fifth Camarillo Reads One City, One Book monthlong event. SHARE By Anne Kallas, Special to The Star It's a common story around the world, even if it's not so familiar to Americans. It's the story of a girl growing up with grandparents in an overcrowded house while her parents leave to get jobs somewhere else, and it's the topic of "The Distance Between Us" by Reyna Grande, the centerpiece of the fifth Camarillo Reads One City, One Book monthlong event. "Mine is a very common experience," Grande said in an interview this week. "It's not just in Mexico, it's common around the world in India, Asia and Africa, wherever there's poverty. You don't have to emigrate. It happens inside of countries. In China there are all these children who live with their grandparents. It's an experience that's universal. A lot of Americans are not aware that these things happen." The Camarillo Public Library is sponsoring a monthlong program of events revolving around Grande's book. The author, who lives in Davis, will visit Camarillo for a talk and book-signing on April 24. "We're a library and we have a bit of a stake in getting folks excited about reading," explained Justin Formanek, the adult services librarian. "But really, it's more than that. Not only does Camarillo Reads bring the community together around the same book, but it encourages contribution to a larger, communal discourse about the book's topics and what they and the experience of reading mean to each individual." "The Distance Between Us" is Grande's third book and has been published in English and Spanish. The author said she was especially pleased that it is being promoted in Camarillo. "This is a controversial issue," Grande said. "I want to educate people using my story, which reflects the story of many immigrant families. Camarillo has a lot of immigrant families working in fields, hotels and restaurants. If people know those stories, they can start understanding their neighbors and have more compassion and understanding and appreciate the hard work they do recognizing the sacrifices immigrants made to be there." Formanek said the book, which is being promoted at the library and sold at Mrs. Fig's Bookworm in Camarillo, was selected by a panel that included librarians, members of Friends of the Library and others interested in reading, including a teacher from Rancho Campana High School. Formanek said the book was selected before immigration became such a hot topic during this election year. "The presidential race hadn't quite reached its current pitch," he said. "While things that have been said by some of the candidates certainly make this all the more appropriate, I believe Grande's book was chosen primarily on its merit as a portrait of the immigrant experience." Grande said that as the first college graduate in her family, she feels a strong sense of responsibility to the Latino community. "I'm one of the lucky ones who made it," she said. "I've been able to achieve what some immigrants are not able to. Because of successes I've had, I feel I need to look back and help people who haven't been able to do what I do. And to speak for them and lend my voice and speak about these issues in a way that benefits the immigrant community." She noted that her two children a son in seventh grade and a daughter in second grade will be expected to go to college. "It's not a matter of if they go to college, but when they go to college," Grande said. CAMARILLO READS Where: All events are at the Camarillo Library, 4101 E. Las Posas Road, Camarillo Saturday: Kickoff event from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. featuring music, a Latino business mini-expo, a Mexican food truck and crafts Tuesday: Gonzalo Fernandez will speak from 6-7:20 p.m. about his experiences as an immigrant during a presentation in Spanish April 19: "Researching Family History in Mexico," from 6:30-7:30 p.m., presented by Ventura County Genealogical Society member Denise Quigley April 21: "Under the Same Moon," a family story that focuses on illegal immigration and is rated PG-13, will be presented from 6:30-8:30 p.m. April 24: Author talk and book signing with Reyna Grande from 2-4 p.m. Information: 388-5222 SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Sasson "Sassy" Reuven, who lives in Calabasas, will speak Sunday in Moorpark about his experience as a 21-year-old member of the Israel Defense Forces taking part in the 1976 rescue of hostages at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Sasson "Sassy" Reuven, shown here during his time with the Israel Defense Forces, will talk Sunday about his role in the 1976 rescue of hostages at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. By Alicia Doyle, Special to The Star While Americans celebrated their country's bicentennial on July 4, 1976, about 200 Israeli commandos were undertaking what is considered one of the most daring missions in the history of the Israel Defense Forces: Operation Thunderbolt, a counterterrorism hostage rescue at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Sasson "Sassy" Reuven was there. "I was 21 and a half years old when I took part in this operation," recalled Reuven, of Calabasas, a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces who served in the elite Red Beret unit of the Paratroop Brigade. IF YOU GO What: Operation Thunderbolt, a firsthand account When: 10:30 a.m. to noon Sunday Where: Moorpark Chabad Jewish Center, 4219 Tierra Rejada Road. Cost: $10 for adults, $8 for children and $30 per family with advance reservations; or at the door, $15 for adults, $10 per child, $40 per family Reservations: Call 242-2232 or visit http://www.jewishmoorpark.com/JED On Sunday, Reuven will offer a glimpse of his personal experience, from the time he was called to duty to his landing in Uganda and completion of the mission. His talk will take place from 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Moorpark Chabad Jewish Center. "Terrorists, in many cases, try to single out Jews to kill Jews or Israelites," Reuven said. "In addition, the most important thing for them is to hijack an aircraft; for them, it's considered to be the highest level of defeating Israel." In this case, it was a French airliner. A week prior to July 4, an Air France plane on its way from Tel Aviv to Paris had been hijacked by two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two members of the German Revolutionary CZ Cell. After a stopover in Athens, the plane was diverted to Libya and then to Uganda, where the hijackers and additional terrorists held the Israeli and Jewish passengers hostage at the airport along with the 12-member crew. "In Athens, the terrorists bribed the security guards with money to let them on the flight," Reuven said. "At the beginning, there were 248 passengers and crew members, and the terrorists demanded the release of 53 hostages from several countries around the world. In return, they would release the Jewish and Israeli hostages from that aircraft." The Israeli government sent 212 commandos on a 2,500-mile journey to complete a nighttime rescue operation that freed 106 hostages in 90 minutes. "We flew all the way to Uganda, and I was among the first to jump out of the first Hercules C-130 aircraft that landed in Entebbe seven minutes ahead of three additional transport planes," Reuven said. What happened next, he said, is a story he reserves for live audiences. "It wasn't the first mission I did," Reuven said. "It's what we do in the Israeli army. That's why I joined that unit." Still, Operation Thunderbolt was unlike any other mission, he said. "It was the first mission I ever thought was a very high responsibility ... not to protect Jews but to rescue Jewish hostages," Reuven said. "I felt very privileged to be there." After his military service, Reuven studied civil engineering at Ben-Gurion University and later graduated from New York University with an engineering degree. In 1985, he became the cargo security director for El Al Israel Airlines at Los Angeles International Airport, where he met his future wife, Susan. They married in 1987 and have two daughters and one son, ages 27, 23 and 16. Reuven now owns a residential and commercial construction company, AMD Development Inc., in Calabasas. "I run the company and I also go all over the world and talk about Operation Thunderbolt," he said. "People are very excited about the idea of not giving up to terrorism especially this year, which is the 40th anniversary of this operation." The story of Entebbe is Israel's story: a story of courage, endurance, optimism and a willingness to sacrifice it all for the right to live in freedom, said Devorah Heidingsfeld, co-director of the Moorpark Chabad Jewish Center. "It is not often that we have a commander from the IDF who fought in the elite paratrooper unit speaking locally," Heidingsfeld said. "The victory at Entebbe was a miracle and a message to the world about the Israeli army and its mission to protect those in need." STAR FILE PHOTO SHARE By Megan Diskin of the Ventura County Star Oxnard police warned residents Thursday of an increase in reported stolen vehicles this month. More than 30 vehicles have been reported stolen in the city since April 1, police said. Honda Civics and Accords from 1990s are primarily being targeted, authorities said. Police said residents are reminded to lock their vehicles and not leave their keys inside them even if they are trying to warm up the car. People also should not leave valuables inside their vehicle or enter their vehicle if it has been burglarized, police said. Police are offering free steering wheel locks to those who own the type of vehicle being targeted. Authorities said the supply is limited, but anyone interested should contact Detective Crystal Walker at 385-7668 or crystal.walker@oxnardpd.org. In one of the latest cases, police said a stolen vehicle crashed into a city building on Thursday. Police said they began pursuing the vehicle after a license plate check revealed it had been reported stolen. They tried to stop the vehicle, but the driver instead led them on a short pursuit, which ended when the vehicle crashed into a city building near Third and B streets, police said. The driver got out of the car and ran away but was arrested a short time later at about 3:45 p.m., police said. SHARE CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR Emmet S. Cullen, a social studies teacher at Buena High School who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan when he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, wears the Bronze Star with Valor that he received Thursday. CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR Emmet S. Cullen, a social studies teacher at Buena High School who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan when he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, speaks at the school ceremony Thursday where he received the Bronze Star with Valor. CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR Emmet S. Cullen, a social studies teacher at Buena High School who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan when he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, holds his son Kendall during the school ceremony Thursday where he received the Bronze Star with Valor. CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR A ceremony takes place Thursday to present the Bronze Star with Valor to Emmet S. Cullen, a social studies teacher at Buena High School who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan when he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army. By Anne Kallas, Special to The Star With hundreds of students looking on, Buena High School social studies teacher Emmet S. Cullen received a Bronze Star with Valor on Thursday for his heroic actions 10 years ago during the Iraq War, when he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army. U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley came to the short midday ceremony in the school's grassy quad area to personally thank Cullen for what her office described in a press release as "protecting his platoon and saving the lives of 20 Americans during his service in Mosul, Iraq." "I'm humbled and honored to be able to be at the awarding of this Bronze Star," Brownley said during the ceremony. "This is an extraordinarily fearless soldier who risked his life to save other Americans. This should have been given to him many years ago." According to Brownley's office, the Bronze Star is the fourth highest military award and has been given to 2,460 U.S. Army soldiers for their service in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The high school students cheered and clapped as they heard the details of Cullen's heroism 10 years ago. According to the narrative (read the narrative) that accompanies the award, then-Sgt. Cullen was patrolling in Mosul as a U.S. Army sniper team leader in October 2006. While the soldiers were moving to a position where they could incapacitate enemy snipers shooting mortars at a hospital, the road under their Stryker vehicle started to give way, endangering the lives of the two soldiers inside. Cullen was able to attach a tow line to the vehicle, even though he was under fire, and another vehicle was able to pull the men out of danger. Later, while clearing nearby buildings during the same skirmish, Cullen engaged in hand-to-hand combat and subdued an Iraqi who had attacked a fellow soldier. After hearing the details that led to Cullen's Bronze Star, the Buena students erupted with a roar of approval. "He's a hero," said senior Kai O'Sullivan. Principal Bobbi Powers said the award ceremony was a great teaching tool for the students. "This highlights people who are defending our country," she said. "We have a teacher right here on campus who defended our rights. It's good for the students to know that it's not just people out in the field who are doing these things. There is someone close to home who has defended us." She added that she wasn't surprised Cullen was honored. "He's passionate, yet humble," she said. "He quietly goes about his business and fights for the kids." Cullen's wife, Cristina, cradled their 1-month-old daughter Marlo as she watched her husband receive the award while he held his 2-year-old son, Kendell, in his arms. "I'm so proud of him," Cristina Cullen said. "He's an amazing man, and we are all very lucky to have him." Cullen confessed to the high schoolers that despite his bravery in battle, students had him quaking on his first day of teaching. "When I started teaching eighth graders at Balboa (Middle School) I was terrified," he said. "I've led men in combat, but it takes a special person to stand in front of you teaching." Cullen thanked Brownley for her efforts to make sure he got the Bronze Star, and he equated military service with teaching. "I owe a debt of gratitude to the military, not the other way around," Cullen said. "Teachers serve, and I'd like to extend my gratitude to teachers. Thank you for your service." SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Ventura Community Development Director Jeffrey Lambert had a heart attack Tuesday while working out, and bystanders are credited with saving his life. By Anne Kallas, Special to The Star Quick action on the part of bystanders is credited with saving the life of Ventura Community Development Director Jeffrey Lambert, who suffered a heart attack Tuesday. Lambert, who is at home recovering, said Thursday that the last thing he remembers is being on the elliptical machine at the Pierpont Racquet Club in Ventura. "I remember I felt lightheaded. And then I wasn't on the machine," said Lambert, who noted that his father had heart problems. "I was in the right place with the right people. I eat well and take care of myself. There were no warning signs." Among the people who rushed to help Lambert early Tuesday were community activist Suz Montgomery and attorney Matt LaVere. According to LaVere, he, Montgomery and another friend were on treadmills when they heard a loud crash and saw Lambert lying at an odd angle by the machine. LaVere said he ran to the front desk at the club to grab a defibrillator, while Pierpont Fitness Director Jon Osumi and Montgomery rushed over to Lambert. "He was not breathing," Montgomery said. "He was struggling to breathe. His color was horrible it was purple-red. I kept yelling, 'Jeffrey, don't leave me.' " LaVere echoed that. "He was bright purple, and he was gone," LaVere said. "He was dead." But after Osumi used the defibrillator, Lambert's condition appeared to improve, Montgomery said. So Osumi started CPR compressions, and Lambert was sitting and breathing by the time firefighters and paramedics arrived. Montgomery said firefighters told them that without their immediate intervention, Lambert likely would have died. Reflecting on the event, Montgomery, who is in remission from breast cancer, couldn't help but wax philosophic. "Maybe I didn't die of cancer for this," she said. "And maybe this is opportunity for people to get up on CPR be prepared for this." She said it's well-known that she and Lambert disagree on many issues. "Jeff and I politically did not agree on a lot of developments in town," she said. "But on a personal level, I think we can agree to disagree and still remain friends." Lambert said he is meeting with doctors to come up with a plan to bring him back to health. He said he has been moved by the response he's received. "It's been very heartwarming," he said. "I've been getting emails, texts, calls and visits. It's overwhelming and wonderful and makes me feel part of Ventura for sure." SHARE Yes, the big Wisconsin story is Ted Cruz's crushing 13-point victory. And yes, it greatly improves his chances of denying Donald Trump a first-ballot convention victory, which may turn out to be Trump's only path to the nomination. Nonetheless, the most stunning result of Wisconsin is the solidity of Trump's core constituency. Fundamentalist Trumpism remains resistant to every cosmic disturbance. He managed to get a full 35 percent in a state in which: He was opposed by a popular GOP governor (80 percent approval among Republicans) with a powerful state organization honed by winning three campaigns within four years (two gubernatorial, one recall). He was opposed by popular, local, well-informed radio talk show hosts whose tough interviews left him in shambles. Tons of money was dumped into negative ads not just from the Cruz campaign and the pro-Cruz super PACs but from two anti-Trump super PACs as well. And if that doesn't leave a candidate flattened, consider that Trump was coming off two weeks of grievous self-inflicted wounds and still got more than a third of the vote. Which definitively vindicated Trump's boast that if he ever went out in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot someone (most likely because his Twitter went down he'd be apprehended in his pajamas), he wouldn't lose any voters. The question for Trump has always been how far he could reach beyond his solid core. His problem is that those who reject him are equally immovable. In Wisconsin, 58 percent of Republican voters said the prospect of a Trump presidency left them concerned or even scared. Cruz scares a lot of people, too. But his fear number was 21 points lower. Moreover, 36 percent of Wisconsin Republicans, facing a general-election choice between Hillary Clinton and Trump, would either vote Clinton, go third party or stay home. Trump did not exactly advance his needed outreach with his reaction to the Wisconsin result: a nuclear strike on "Lyin' Ted" as "a puppet" and "a Trojan horse" illegally coordinating with his super PACs (evidence?) "who totally control him." Not quite the kind of thing that gets you from 35 percent to 50 percent. Not needed, say the Trumpites. If we come to Cleveland with a mere plurality of delegates, fairness demands that our man be nominated. This is nonsense. If you cannot command or cobble together a majority, you haven't earned the party leadership. John Kasich makes the opposite case. He's hanging on in case a deadlocked convention eventually turns to him, possessor of the best polling numbers against Clinton. After all, didn't Lincoln come to the 1860 convention trailing? Yes, and so what? The post-1968 reforms abolished the system whereby governors, bosses and other party pooh-bahs decided things. In the modern era, to reach down to the No. 3 candidate a distant third who loses 55 of 56 contests or to parachute in a party unicorn who never entered the race in the first place would be a radical affront to the democratic spirit of the contemporary nominating process. A parachute maneuver might be legal, but it would be perceived as illegitimate and, coming amid the most intense anti-establishment sentiment in memory, imprudent to the point of suicide. Yet even without this eventuality, party suicide is a very real possibility. The nominee will be either Trump or Cruz. How do they reconcile in the end? It's no longer business; it's personal. Cruz has essentially declared he couldn't support someone who did what Trump did to Heidi Cruz. He might try to patch relations with some Trump supporters is Chris Christie's soul still for sale? but how many could he peel away? Remember: Wisconsin has just demonstrated Trump's unbreakable core. And if Trump loses out, a split is guaranteed. In Trump's mind, he is a winner. Always. If he loses, it can only be because he was cheated. He constantly contends he's being treated unfairly. He is certain to declare any convention process that leaves him without the nomination irredeemably unfair. No need to go third party. A simple walkout with perhaps a thousand followers behind will doom the party in November. In a country where only 25 percent feel we're on the right track and where the leading Democrat cannot shake the challenge of a once-obscure dairy-state socialist, you'd think the Republicans cannot lose. You'd be underestimating how hard they are trying. Charles Krauthammer's email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com. He writes for The Washington Post Writers Group. SHARE To prepare residents for the 21st century, California's leaders lack vision. Instead of championing full funding of its public higher education systems, University of California President Janet Napolitano and California State University Chancellor Timothy White scoff at this notion. In late January, in a conversation to recruit more underrepresented students and inform them how to pay for ever-increasing tuition, White said, "Nobody likes the word that begins with a T (taxes) ... I'm an idealist and want to maintain costs as low as possible for students, but I'm also a realist." Shortly afterward, when asked about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' tuition-free public college promise, Napolitano responded, "I don't think it's feasible ... I appreciate the sentiment ... but you've got to ask, who pays?" I don't know what to make of the myopia of White and Napolitano. To answer her question, the following can pay a squarer share: Commercial property owners, disproportionate beneficiaries under Proposition 13. Like in Texas and Alaska, fossil fuel corporations that reap huge profits from California's reserves. Corporations that enjoy tax subsidies. Wall Street speculators, by way of a fraction-of-a-percent tax on trading. as proposed by Sanders. But the vapidity of White and Napolitano echoes the pusillanimous character of the state's political establishment. This abandonment is particularly frustrating as Hispanic politicians are not only increasingly elected to the Legislature, but also enjoy posts that could make such policies a reality. Kevin de Leon is Senate president pro tem, and Anthony Rendon recently became Assembly speaker. Assemblyman Jose Medina chairs the Higher Education Committee. But only Bernie Sanders champions a tuition-free education. Meanwhile, Hispanic students are enrolling in CSU and UC in historic numbers, and campuses throughout the state including CSU Channel Islands are winning the coveted Hispanic Serving Institution designation. Such campuses are eligible for sorely needed federal grants. So while CSU and UC lure millions of these federal dollars, they are financially sticking it to all students who, on average, assume over $20,000 of debt. That may not be much for a UC president with a salary package approaching $600,000, plus a $10,000 monthly housing allowance and $9,000 annually for car expenses. (White's annual salary is $430,000). But for a twenty-something, first-generation college student, this is huge. Why don't Sacramento legislators and university executives direct the cause for a tuition-free public higher education? Could it be that they dread to offend the real estate moguls, utility companies, financiers and other corporate interests that bankroll their political campaigns and donate to their university foundations? So what's the solution? Every college student, parent and grandparent who cares must contact Gov. Jerry Brown and their state representatives to demand a tuition-free CSU and UC. Vote Smart at http://votesmart.org can tell you who represents you. Frank P. Barajas is a professor of history at CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo. The stylish reality star was surrounded by Mayweathers team and sported a Mayweather Promotions zip up jacket at the popular Mexican eatery. Ray J and his posse dined at the bar and enjoyed an array of appetizers prepared by Corporate Executive Chef Saul Ortiz. Ray J enjoyed a chicken burrito and sipped on signature margaritas at Tacos & Tequila. Tacos & Tequila, a highly-stylized Mexican restaurant and bar with a fun, high-energy vibe and flavorful menu recently opened its second location at Morongo Casino, Resort and Spa. The 7,000-square-foot venue is open daily from 11 a.m. until 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday for lunch and dinner, every Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. until 1 a.m. for lunch, dinner and late-night dining with a DJ. T&T offers its famous Mariachi brunch every Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The design embodies cool modernism of Mexico City with traditional elements of Mexican beach style from the talents of Executive Chef Saul Ortiz. Guests may call T&T at (951)755-5373, visit the website, follow T&T on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Customers inspect products inside a grocery boat on the Da River An ethnic minority woman stands near a grocery boat. The boat docks near a market in Pa Na Village in Tua Khan Commune, Tua Chua District in Dien Bien Province to sell goods to local consumers. There are market sessions in the village on the 10th, 20th and 30th of every month. Vendors sit inside a grocery boat. Those boats are usually full of goods, leaving little living space for the owners and their members on board - Photos: Nguyen Hue Nghi A Saigonbank branch in southern Binh Duong Province. Late last year, the central bank said the number of credit institutions would be cut from the current 34 to between 17 and 19. Late last year, the central bank said that the number of credit institutions would be cut from the current 34 to roughly 17 to 19. Therefore, it is possible that more M&As will be announced. According to Dau tu (Vietnam Investment Review) newspaper, the most likely targets are banks with overlapping ownerships, small or financially weak financial institutions, and those that have seen their bad debt ratio rising over the past few years. Some banks have been asked by the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) to raise their registered capital. However, in case they cannot raise it by issuing more shares, they will have to explore M&As. Saigonbank, for example, was allowed to raise its capital from VND3.08 trillion (US$136 million) to VND4.08 trillion, but it has failed to carry out the increase. There are currently at least four other commercial banks that have the charter capital roughly around the level of Saigonbank's VND3 trillion. Those are Kienlongbank, Viet Capital Bank, Nam A Bank, and VietBank. They will have to increase their capital in order to meet new international standards. According to banking expert Nguyen Tri Hieu, there remain some ailing banks that would probably fall in the central bank's special supervision list. These banks will have to undertake M&As with others if they do not want to be acquired at zero dong by the central bank. However, experts said that M&As should not be seen as the last resort to help ailing banks avoid intervention from the central bank. Hieu said that M&As must help banks increase their competitive edge and financial status as well as contribute to the sustained growth of the whole banking system. Ailing credit institutions must be unearthed and given a boost through an increase in capital or M&As with strong credit institutions the next time, Hieu said, adding "if that is not possible, it is advisable to allow ailing institutions to go bankrupt". Besides ailing banks, experts from the Vietcombank Securities said that as the competition in the banking system becomes fierce, small- and medium-sized banks must explore M&As to be able to compete against larger ones if they want to survive. Photo by Associated Press Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speaks during a campaign stop Thursday at the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Convention in Philadelphia. Photo by ASSOCIATED PRESS Protesters call for Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant to veto House Bill 1523, which they say will allow discrimination against LGBT people, during a rally outside the Governors Mansion in Jackson, Miss., Monday. The bill is now law. In this Thursday March 10, 2016 photo released by the Saudi Press Agency, SPA, Saudi King Salman watches the North Thunder military exercises in Hafr Al-Baten, Saudi Arabia. Heads of state from across the Muslim world gathered in Saudi Arabia on Thursday for the conclusion of a nearly three-week-long counter-terrorism military exercise that included 20 participating countries. (Saudi Press Agency via AP) Sometimes parents of other gender nonconforming kids ask C.J.s mom, Lori, what the future holds. You may not have answers for a very long time, she says. We still dont have answers. Most moviegoers know Don Cheadle from his work in blockbusters like Captain America, Avengers, Iron Man, Ocean's Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen. Those more eclectic fans will know him from his Oscar-nominated role in the harrowing drama Hotel Rwanda, from Oscar-winning Crash and his award-winning role in the film noir Devil in a Blue Dress. He is a well-known and well-respected face in Hollywood, and he has moved seamlessly between various movie genres. But he is breaking ground in his new film drama, Miles Ahead, which looks at the tumultuous life of iconic trumpeter Miles Davis. Cheadle has moved behind the camera in his first effort at directing and, like his eclectic filmography, his range shows up in the directorial debut. Unlike linear biopics, Cheadle focuses on the musician's visceral talent, inner demons and sense of humor in a film noir type of thriller of car chases, shootouts and drug addiction. My interview with Cheadle was his first of the day. Lucky me as he was still fresh, and our conversation was a more leisurely affair than the normal whirlwind conversations that are part and parcel of most film tour interviews. Nearly decade in making Cheadle talked about the struggles he went through just to get the film made. The idea for the film came during Davis' 2006 induction ceremony into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where Davis' nephew suggested a biopic and pitched Cheadle as Davis. But Cheadle says he didn't want to just play the role, but to direct the film as well, and to make a nonlinear biopic reflecting the soul of the man through his music compositions and wild character. The film exudes attitude. "If I am going to do a movie on Miles Davis I want it to be gangster, I want it to be wild, I want it to be impressionistic, Cheadle said. Feel like its free form and it can go anywhere, really feel what its music feels like. Not trying to tackle everything from cradle to grave." But the cameras wouldn't start rolling for nearly ten years. Labor of love When they did, it was a labor of love. Cheadle's love for Davis went way back. As a kid, Cheadle played the sax, which came in handy during filming of him playing the tumpet as the iconic Davis. The film opens in the late 70s, during a fallow period for Davis. He is a recluse with a limp and a cocaine addiction. Ewan McGregor costars as a Rolling Stone freelancer a fictional white, charming loopy wannabee named Dave Braden, who knocks at Davis' door asking him to do a story on "his comeback." Davis, is a fraying, leathery, surly addict who doesn't take kindly to the comment and punches the reporter in the face. Then, he invites him in. The film chronicles one frenzied day in the life of Davis with the reporter in tow. The two set out to recover a set of Davis' unreleased music reels stolen from the musician's home by a couple of studio gangsters. "It's based on a lot of incidents," Cheadle said. "Like any biopic, characters are composites and amalgams. Miles made a secret recording that went missing. He was shot in a drive-by. He had many reporters coming to him during this period of time trying to get the story." The film gets into Miles background through flashbacks. It juxtaposes the older, paranoid Davis with his younger, confident albeit arrogant self, at the top of his game. With Miles on the cusp between realism and remembrance, we learn of his emotional dependence on his former wife talented dancer Frances Taylor and his abusive behavior toward her both physically and emotionally. Cheadle does not sugarcoat Davis' transgressions he loves the music icon, for who he was and what he created. "HIs approach to creativity which was: Do it different, don't do the same thing, be on the edge of your creativity, don't be safe. All of that stuff was what Miles did," Cheadle said. Cheadle portrays him as soft spoken, yet intense. Through his hushed voice, Davis commands attention. As a reporter and as a fan, Dave Braden played by McGregor will go the extra mile to get to know Davis. He becomes the confidant, the cocaine provider, the sleuth and Davis' anchor to present-day reality. The white factor Cheadle says his teaming with McGregor was a great artistic experience, but also a necessary pairing with a white star to get the film made. "I'd have more difficulty financing it unless the actor that I picked had international appeal. And having Ewan McGregor and selling to the UK was a huge piece of the pie that we needed in order to get the ball rolling," Cheadle said. On the heels of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, Cheadle neither defends nor chastises the industry. A pragmatist and a celebrity, he sees Hollywood as a big business, "averse to risk and fear-based." That does not mean he defends its typecasting stereotypes. Hollywood, he says, doesn't take purposeful aim against blacks and other minorities; however, its decisions can lead to racism and bias all the same. Captain America My conversation with Cheadle switches gears onto his upcoming superhero flick, Captain America: Civil War, with a superstar cast that includes Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans and Elizabeth Olsen. I ask him if this is his last one of the series. "We never know," he said. "Marvel keeps all that under lock and key and I just get a call one day, 'Hey, show up.' And then I guess I am in the next one. You never know." "But, I understand you are not having a good end on this one ..." I said. He feigned surprise. "What happens?" "I don't know," I smirked. "I don't either," he shrugged, and left it under wraps. "You do not expect me to tell you, right?" His Miles Davis biopic is visceral, honest and creative. His performance as Davis is maybe his best so far. But I sure hope he gets a Marvel call for the next superhero extravaganza. Vietnam demanded Friday that China remove an oil exploration rig from an area of the South China Sea where their border is still being demarcated, and said Beijing's unilateral actions were complicating the situation. The oil rig was at the center of standoff between the countries in 2014 when China parked it near the Paracel islands, which Vietnam claims as its exclusive economic zone. The incident sparked deadly riots in Vietnam. Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said China has moved the oil rig into an area in the Gulf of Tonkin where the countries are negotiating the demarcation of their sea border. Vietnam resolutely opposes and demands that China abandon drilling plans and immediately withdraw the Hai Duong 981 oil rig from this area, and that it not take additional unilateral actions that further complicate the situation in the South China Sea, Binh said in a statement, referring to the oil rig by its Vietnamese name. He said Vietnam had lodged a protest with the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi. Binh also said China's operation of a new lighthouse on one of the seven artificial islands it has recently constructed in the South China Sea was illegal and invalid. Rejecting Vietnam's demands, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the oil rig is conducting standard exploratory activities within waters under China's undisputed jurisdiction. We hope the parties concerned can see this objectively and rationally, Hong told reporters at a regularly scheduled news briefing. Hong also said the operation of the lighthouse on Subi Reef is a matter falling within China's sovereignty. The lighthouse is intended to better fulfill China's international responsibilities and obligations and provide more public facilities to the regional countries, so as to maintain freedom and safety of navigation in the South China Sea, Hong said. The relocation of the Chinese oil rig last Sunday came just days before Vietnam's legislature swore in new Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who has vowed to defend Vietnamese sovereignty. Two Armenian soldiers were killed in fighting with Azerbaijani forces around Nagorno-Karabakh Friday, with each country blaming the other for violating the cease-fire. Apart from the latest violence, the truce is generally holding. Armenian and Azerbaijani forces have reached a temporary deal to search for and evacuate their dead, with help from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The recent fighting has drawn condemnations as well as calls for resuming efforts toward an ultimate settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The United States, France and Russia, as part of the so-called OSCE Minsk Group, have tried to act as mediators for peace talks, but without visible results. Russia has taken its own actions outside the Minsk Group, with senior envoys shuttling between Baku and Yerevan. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Azerbaijan's capital Friday for talks with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev. Medvedev met with Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian in Yerevan on Thursday. Medvedev said in Baku that Russias relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan are equally important. He voiced hope they could resume negotiations under OSCE auspices. Armenia has acknowledged the loss of 44 troops since fighting broke out a week ago. Azerbaijan has said that 31 of its soldiers died, and several civilians also have been killed. The recent fighting has been the most intense in more than 20 years. An undeclared war between Armenia and Azerbaijan that began in the late 1980s was eventually brought to a halt by a Russian-brokered cease-fire in 1994, and the OSCE Minsk Group has been trying since then to resolve the underlying ethnic and territorial dispute between the two sides. Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave entirely within Azerbaijan's borders, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since the end of the war. U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has accepted an invitation to visit the Vatican next week, he announced Friday. Sanders will deliver a speech on how to create a moral economy at a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on April 15, just four days ahead of the New York primary. The academy is a kind of research institution set up by Pope John Paul II in 1994. On economic issues, on issues of poverty and income and wealth inequality, the issues of making sure we address the needs of the poorest people on this planet, this is something that the pope and I are very much on the same page," Sanders told the Associated Press in a phone interview. Pope Francis has made clear that we must overcome the globalization of indifference in order to reduce economic inequalities, stop financial corruption and protect the natural environment. That is our challenge in the United States and in the world, Sanders said in a statement. The Jewish presidential candidate is a long-time admirer of Pope Francis and the pontiff's attention to wealth inequality and social justice. Sanders spokesperson Michael Briggs said if the opportunity arises, the candidate "would be delighted to meet with the pope." The pending visit to the Vatican ahead of the New York primary may increase Sanders appeal to a broader Catholic audience. The Reverend Thomas Reese, an analyst with the National Catholic Reporter, told AP that the invitation should not be misconstrued as an endorsement from the pope. Certainly the last thing Pope Francis wants to do is get involved in American presidential politics, Reese said. Most members in Brazils lower house favor impeaching Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff but there might not be enough votes in parliament to bring charges against her. The Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported that a poll of lawmakers taken between March 21 and April 7 showed 60 percent of the country's parliament supports impeachment. That would not be enough to proceed with impeachment. According to Datafolha, a leading pollster, 308 representatives from both the lower house and Senate favor impeachment, but 342 votes are needed to bring impeachment charges against Rousseff. The poll showed that 21 percent of lawmakers were against impeachment, representing 108 votes in favor of Rousseff staying in her role. Brazil's lower house is due to vote on April 17 to send the case to the Senate. If the Senate agrees to put her on trial, Rousseff would be suspended from office. Opposition lawmakers say that Rousseff illegally borrowed money to boost public spending and mask the severity of the country's economic downturn from voters during her 2014 re-election campaign. Rousseff denies wrongdoing and dismisses the impeachment effort as baseless. British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted Thursday that he profited from an offshore fund set up by his late father, as named in the so-called Panama Papers, but he denies doing anything wrong. Cameron spoke to Britain's ITV television Thursday after his office issued several statements that neither seemed to confirm nor deny whether Cameron's family owned offshore funds. "I want to be as clear as I can about the past, about the present, about the future because, frankly, I don't have anything to hide," Cameron said. The Conservative prime minister told ITV that his family owned shares in the Bahamas-based Blairmore Holdings that were worth about $42,000. He said he sold them in 2010, just months before becoming prime minister. "Because if I was going to become prime minister, I didn't want anyone to say 'you have other agendas, vested interests,'" Cameron said. The prime minister told ITV that he paid all the "normal" income taxes on the profits from the sale. He said he is upset about the "unfair" treatment his father has been getting in the media, as well as other stories saying he grew up rich and privileged, which led to his becoming prime minister. Cameron has not apologized for his wealthy childhood and says he has never pretended to be anything he is not. Cameron's father, Ian, was a stockbroker who died just after his son became prime minister. Ian Cameron's name is among the long list of the rich and famous in the more than 11 million documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Twelve current and former political leaders are included in the papers detailing hidden offshore bank accounts which, in some cases, may have been set up to hide assets and avoid paying taxes. Publication of the Panama Papers already has cost one nation's leader his job. Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned this week after the documents showed that his wife owns a company in the British Virgin Islands that has $4 million in claims against Iceland's collapsed banks. Poaching and environmental degradation are threatening the gorilla population in southern Cameroon. One young woman, Anougue France, is trying to change the trend. "It is easy to meet a gorilla," she says as she approaches gorillas fighting over food. "When we have contacts with them, we do certain sounds with our tongue like [this - she makes the noise with her mouth], clapping our hands so that they should respond to us. When we do those signs they will be curious towards us, they will come closer to us and they will start barking and they would shout, vocalizing like huhuhuhu, just to defend their territory." The 28-year-old has been living in the camp since early 2015. She sees herself as a diplomat of sorts between humans and gorillas, a relationship that has grown strained in recent years to say the least. In Cameroon, gorillas and monkeys are hunted mainly for bush meat. Baby primates are captured and sold as pets. There is also a growing black market trade in primate parts believed to have therapeutic and mystical values. "When you come towards them, you must respect all the methods," she said. "You must not turn your back on the gorilla. You must look at the gorilla into the eye, make him know that you are not afraid of him. You should not run. If you run that is when it can be risky. No matter the movement that it is doing, you should just be static. It will turn, it will charge and it will leave." France studied environmental science at the University of Maroua. She now works for a World Wildlife Fund project launched in 2011 to protect the mammals here. Teaching the locals Campo Maan is vast. The preserve stretches over 700,000 hectares on the border with Equatorial Guinea. But park officials say there are only about 300 Cross River gorillas left here. And gorillas are not just a tourist attraction. They graze widely and play a role in maintaining the natural balance of the ecosystem. France tries to convince the locals to stop poaching and protect the natural habitat of the animals, which are the main causes of the animals disappearing. She's talked to local leaders like Eric Fotso of the Bamileke ethnic group. "I understand your message, that gorillas are very important for the conservation of nature. But I will not stop buying and selling them because I have no other means of economic survival. The government needs to help find alternative sources of income," said Fotso. France argues that protecting the gorilla population will drive tourism to the park. She says that revenue could fund conservation efforts and help develop the area, improving living standards for the local population. This years G-20 summit is about economics and not politics such as territorials disputes, Chinas Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday. Speaking with reporters, Yi said China will suggest proposals for global economic growth during the summit that is scheduled to take place in early September in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. We hope that the G-7 can be like the G-20 and concentrate on economic and development topics countries of the world are the most focused on, Yi said. Major world leaders, including President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, are expected to attend. Before the G-20 meeting, Japan is set to host the summit of Group of Seven nations (G-7) in May. That meeting is expected to focus on Ukraine, the threat posed by North Koreas nuclear ambitions, and Russia. China is not a member of the G-7. If certain countries, because of political aims, insert concrete issues like problems left over from history or disputes over territory or sovereignty into the G20, not only will this not benefit the issues resolution, it could impact upon the regional situation and stability and is inadvisable, Yi said. Yi did not explain further or name any country. China and Japan disagree about the ownership of a group of small islands in the East China Sea. China is also involved in a dispute over territory in the South China Sea with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. Cuba's former president Fidel Castro made a rare public appearance Thursday to discuss a Cuban revolutionary leader with schoolchildren, his first such appearance in nine months. State television aired video of Castro, who is 89, discussing revolutionary leader Vilma Espin with schoolchildren and teachers. He praised Espin's contributions at a school named for her. Until her death in 2007, Espin was married to Fidel Castro's brother Raul, took over the presidency from Fidel a year later, in 2008. Fidel Castro's appearance Thursday came a week after he published a letter critical of U.S. President Barack Obama in Cuba's official Communist Party newspaper, Granma, after Obama's historic visit to Cuba - the first such visit by a U.S. president in nearly nine decades. Castro said Cuba does not need anything from "the empire," meaning the United States. His position is at odds with that of President Raul Castro who welcomed Obama's visit and agreed to the restoration of diplomatic ties between Cuba and the United States last year. Fidel Castro's appearance comes as Cuba's Communist Party prepares for a convention April 16 in which it is expected to lay out its economic and political plans for the next five years. The meeting could include discussion of who will take over the presidency after Raul Castro retires in the next few years. Djibouti's minister of the interior has announced that President Ismail Omar Guelleh has won Friday's presidential election with nearly 87 percent of the vote. Interior Minister Hassan Omar Mohamed told VOA (Somali service) the vote count is complete and President Guelleh has won outright in the first round of the election, giving him another five-year term in office - his fourth consecutive term since 1999. His nearest rival was Omar Elmi Khaire of the Union for National Salvation, who got just over 7 percent of the votes. Some opposition parties boycotted the election after Guelleh, who was always the clear front-runner, went back on his earlier decision not to run. Opposition supporters dispute the vote, saying some voters were turned away from polling stations. Opposition leaders have complained of police brutality in the weeks leading up to the election, and say the media covers them unfairly. Djibouti is very small, but it carries influence internationally because of its location as a port on the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping routes. The U.S. military has its only permanent base in Africa in Djibouti. ((rest optional)) Complaints surfaced about election irregularities when polls opened early Friday. Two opposition politicians accused the government of removing their representatives from polling stations. They also accused soldiers of voting in stations where they are not supposed to. The irregularities have started after 9 a.m. There are 4,000 soldiers brought deployed in Ali Sabeih to vote at polling stations, our delegates were removed from the polling stations, said Omar Elmi Khaire of the Union for National Salvation (USN) opposition umbrella. In Obolley (village) there are only 55 people who are registered to vote but there are now 500 soldiers who are voting, our delegates were ejected, he said. Another opposition politician, Mohamed Muse Tourtour, an independent candidate, repeated similar accusations. He told VOA (Somali) that he reported the issue to the Interior Ministry, which he says assured him the claims be will investigated. The main opposition coalition is being further hampered by fractures in leadership. Guellehs two main opponents, Mohamed Daoud Chehem and Omar Elmi Khaireh, both claim to represent the USN opposition coalition. The seven-party opposition coalition has also experienced a split in its ranks, with three of its member parties breaking from the planned election boycott. Opposition leaders are particularly concerned about the legitimacy of the election oversight agency, which they say is rife with fraud. In 2013, following the parliamentary elections that saw Guellehs party win with 49 percent of the vote, his rivals demanded that an independent election commission be established. The commission has not been created. Guelleh won his last election in 2011 with 80 percent of the vote. In order for Guelleh to win that election parliament had to change the countrys constitution because presidents were limited to two terms. VOA Somali service contributed to this report. International law prohibits torture under all circumstances, yet it remains a widespread practice. Doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers and other experts met Friday at the United Nations in Geneva to exchange views on how to stop torture and how to tackle the long-lasting suffering of victims. The occasion for the gathering was the 35th anniversary of the U.N. Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture, which assists about 50,000 victims and their family members every year. Fund officials say the victims it helps include an increasing number of children and adolescents. Figures show that organizations supported by the fund this year have helped 5,279 child and adolescent victims of torture, up more than 25 percent from the figure for 2015. The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, said Friday that he was shocked by these numbers and by the unspeakable pain and suffering even very young children are forced to endure. 'Unbearable reality' The torture of children is an unbearable reality, particularly in countries in conflicts such as Syria. ... Indeed, children are often targeted because they are children, as a way of intimidating entire communities, or to leverage additional pain onto their parents, he said. Sana Hamzeh, founder of RESTART, a center for rehabilitation of victims of torture and violence in Lebanon, works with refugee children from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries in conflict and said she had intimate knowledge of the scars of abuse and pain they bear from torture. Is it acceptable to allow a child to see his mother be raped or his father be beaten up?" she said through an interpreter. "Is it acceptable to allow a child to hear the screams of pain of his brothers and sisters in a neighboring cell? ... Is it acceptable that the whole world looks on and does not act, although they know perfectly well what is happening to these children? 'Bruises on my soul' Hamzeh said these young victims come to therapy sessions gripped by huge physical and mental suffering. She said her role is to help them to speak out. As a therapist, she said, she tries to get these youths to break their silence, but it's hard to do. We hear descriptions of untold brutality, psychological violence of unfathomable cruelty," she said. "Let it be known, ladies and gentlemen, that I do not walk away unscathed from my interviews that the bruises on my soul are increasingly numerous. The type of torture seen in the Middle East is repeated throughout the world. The U.S.-based Center for Victims of Torture assists victims in the Middle East but also helps vast numbers in African countries. These include Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda and South Sudan. Paul Orieny, a clinical mental health adviser for the center, said torture is complex and multilayered. Taking on parents' roles If you look across these places where we work," Orieny said, "the issues range from, say, Iraqi and Syrian children who are primary and secondary torture survivors in Jordan, to Great Lakes teenagers in Nairobi, who are themselves torture survivors but have to take parental roles from their parents, who are sometimes more adversely affected by the torture and are no longer functional. The U.N. victims fund and global networks of physicians, psychologists, social workers and lawyers work tirelessly and with some success in rehabilitating children and adult victims of torture. They help many of the survivors heal and reclaim their lives and rights. The experts said nations have an obligation to help child victims of torture recover and to be compensated for their suffering. They agreed that rehabilitation is important, but so is justice. They said torturers must be prosecuted and held accountable for their crimes. An employment court in France ruled that a hair salon manager is not guilty of homophobia after she called a gay employee using what is often considered a homophobic slur in a text message before firing him the following day. A male employee in a Paris hair salon was working on a probationary basis when he did not show up for work one day because he was sick. His boss, a woman, accidentally sent him a text message about him that said: I am not keeping [the employee] on, Ill tell him tomorrow I dont like this guy, hes a faggot, theyre all up to no good. After being let go, the man took his case to the Prudhommes, the French court that handles disputes between employers and employees, arguing that he had been discriminated against because of his sexual orientation. He said he was deeply offended by what the salon boss said in the text message. The manager of the salon said the man was fired for being slow. He had trouble fitting in, she said, and he refused to do certain tasks. In a court ruling that sparked outrage among gay rights activists, the Paris court ruled that it was not out of line for the salon boss to call the man a faggot, because it is well known that a lot of gay people work at hair salons. The court acknowledged the inappropriate nature and context of the text message, but said the actual term used by the salon boss "pede," (PD) short for the French term "pederaste," was not homophobic because it has entered into day-to-day language, and no longer carried a pejorative meaning in the managers mind. In the December 16 ruling, the tribunal remarked that when put into context, the term 'PD' used by the manager cannot be construed as homophobic because it is known that hairdressing salons regularly employ homosexual people, notably in women's hairdressing salons, without encountering problems." Despite ruling that the employee was not discriminated against, the court awarded him nearly $6,000 for moral prejudice, because injurious words were used. The employee is expected to appeal the ruling. In the face of protests, Greece has resumed deporting migrants to Turkey as part of a controversial European Union-Turkey deal which seeks to stem the flood of migrants in Europe. The deportations come as human rights groups voice alarm. Two vessels carrying more than 100 deportees arrived in the Turkish Aegean port of Dikili Friday, after making the short journey from the Greek island of Lesbos. Most of those deported were Pakistanis. Upon arrival, they were fingerprinted, underwent a health check, and sent to detention centers, where they face the prospect of being sent back to their home countries. On Thursday night, the Turkish parliament ratified a readmission agreement with Pakistan. Rights group condemns deportations Human Rights Watch condemned the deportations. The group's Andrew Stroehlein says Turkey is not an appropriate country for returning refugees. "Turkey cannot even be regarded for refugees. It does not provide effective protection for refugees and has repeatedly pushed asylum seekers back to Syria," he said. In a recent report, London-based Amnesty International accused Turkish authorities of deporting more than 100 refugees to Syria on a daily basis, a charge Ankara strongly denies. On Monday, nearly 200 refugees were deported to Turkey. The move prompted a surge in asylum requests by migrants, delaying further deportations until now. The European Union has said it hopes the deportations will discourage future migrants from seeking to illegally enter Greece from Turkey, by way of the perilous Aegean Sea. Erdogan's warning The number of people arriving on the Greek islands this week was reportedly down. The Turkish Coast Guard has stepped up its efforts, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent a warning to the EU Thursday over the future of the deal. "There are precise conditions," he says. "If the European Union does not take the necessary steps, then Turkey will not implement the agreement. Everything that has been promised under the accord must be put into action by the EU." The EU has committed itself to give more than $6.8 billion in assistance, along with the commitment to accept one refugee from a Turkish Syrian refugee camp in exchange for every deportee sent to Turkey. The regional grouping also is committed to providing visa-free travel to most EU countries for Turks by as early as June. Observers warn such commitments are likely to prove difficult to deliver. Meanwhile, Germany has announced that the number of new asylum applications it has received dropped severely from February to March, totaling only 20,000 compared to 60,000 a month earlier. Germany has led the movement to accommodate a near-unprecedented number of refugees flooding in from the east as people try to escape violence and economic insecurity in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. Pope to visit Lesbos On Thursday, the Holy See announced that Pope Francis will make a short trip to Lesbos on April 16 to meet with refugees accommodated there. The Vatican said the pope accepted the invitation from the leader of the Christian Orthodox Church, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and Greek president Prokopis Pavlopoulos. Bartholomew, as well as Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Jerome II will join the pope in Lesbos. The visit is seen as a symbolic gesture to draw international attention to the plight of refugees, most of them trying to escape the war and poverty in Syria. Hopes for resumption of Afghan peace talks ahead of the so-called Taliban spring offensive seem to have diminished, prompting Afghanistan to increasingly blame neighboring Pakistan for the lack of progress. Afghanistan and Pakistan have been trying to arrange direct peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban to seek a settlement to the Afghan war. The United States and China have supervised the effort but the so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) has failed to initiate the peace process. The group is likely to meet again later this month. The Talibans refusal to engage with the Kabul government in any talks is blamed for the setback. It has also fueled fears of a bloody upcoming Afghan fighting season. Afghanistans ambassador to Pakistan, Hazrat Khalil Zakhilwal, believes tensions the two countries are to be blamed for preventing progress in the peace process. Addressing a seminar in Islamabad on Thursday with Pakistani foreign policy adviser Sartaj Aziz, the Afghan diplomat insisted it is widely believed back in his country that Taliban commanders are using Pakistan for insurgent activities with the knowledge and help of the countrys security institutions. I need to be very frank and undiplomatic. I think the main hurdle to peace, the biggest obstacle to peace is Afghan-Pakistan relationship. It is the environment of mistrust it is the environment that we suspect each other, it is the environment of practical disengagement, he said. Mistrust Afghan officials insist that Pakistan through the QCG committed itself to put pressure on Taliban leaders to come to the negotiating table and to take military action against those on its soil who refuse to end violence. Zakhilwal stopped short of questioning successes Pakistani security forces have made in their campaign to uproot militant bases in volatile tribal areas border near the Afghan border. A consequence of your armys operation in the border area, in North Waziristan, in South Waziristan and others, has not been a total elimination of those individuals or arrest of those individuals," he said. "A lot of those have been pushed, not intentionally [and] certainly we must be clear about this, but they have taken refuge on the other side. Pakistan advisor Aziz, however, insisted that member nations in the four-way group have agreed to collectively decide how to deal with Taliban groups who refuse to join the peace process. While Pakistan will continue to play a positive role in the process it is important to recognize that we cannot dictate terms to either the Afghan government or the Afghan Taliban. It is they who have to come to terms and reach a basis on which negotiations can be successful, he said. Pakistan military blamed Afghan officials in recent days have again started accusing the Pakistan military and its spy agency of being behind the Talibans resurgence in their country. Aziz rejected them as the work of detractors and spoilers to derail the Afghan peace process. We are concerned of course at the continued negative propaganda in Afghanistan about Pakistan despite our concreted efforts for peace and stability in Afghanistan, he said. The Pakistani advisor also agreed that the key issue is restoring the trust between the two countries, saying Islamabad looks forward to strengthening cooperation with Kabul to address the challenge. Aziz retreated that there is a pressing need to implement an effective framework for border management to check cross-border movements of terrorists and other criminal elements threatening security and stability of their two nations. A group affiliated with al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for the killing this week of a secular blogger in Bangladesh, according to a U.S. terrorist monitoring group. The SITE Intelligence Group said Ansar-al-Islam, a Bangladesh branch of al-Qaida in the Indian subcontinent, released a statement claiming responsibility for Wednesday's killing of blogger and postgraduate law student Nazimuddin Samad. According to SITE, the al-Qaida-linked group said its members carried out the attack in the capital, Dhaka, because Samad had "abused God." The Reuters news agency said it was not able to verify the authenticity of the message but cited the monitoring group as saying it had provided a link to its digital signature as verification. Samad was hacked with machetes and shot by motorcycle-riding assailants as he was returning from class at Jagannath University. Police say no one has been arrested, but that people heard the attackers shouting Allahu Akbar ("God is great") as they fled the scene. The United States condemned the attack as "barbaric." Dhaka police believe Samad was targeted for his outspoken views, which often criticized radical Islam and promoted secularism in the Muslim-majority country. String of attacks International defenders of freedom of expression have denounced Samad's killing, which followed a string of attacks and death threats against secular bloggers. Rights groups accuse the Bangladesh government of not doing enough to stop the attacks. At least six bloggers and a secular publisher have been killed since 2013. In an interview with VOAs Bangla service, Sumit Galhotra of the Committee to Protect Journalists said, One by one, the critical voices are being silenced forever, at a time that the country needs these voices more than ever. He said Bangladesh is polarized over the debate about the place of Islam as state religion and having Islam featured prominently in the Constitution, plus other issues. With every passing death, the government continues to watch on, and we are not seeing any indication that government is taking any steps to address this violence, Galhotra said. Bloggers Bappaditya Basu and Vaskar Abedin in Dhaka told VOA's Bangla service that they believe the government has the power to stop these killings but is not willing to address the situation and punish those responsible. Following previous killings, some police and law enforcement authorities have suggested that the bloggers are responsible for the violence. Basu and Abedin said this sends the wrong signal to the perpetrators. Hundreds of students at the university where Samad studied protested his slaying, demanding the prompt arrest of the killers. He was on a hit list of 84 atheist bloggers that a radical Islamist group compiled and sent to Bangladeshs Interior Ministry. Some U.S. and Western officials say Islamic State is having trouble entrenching itself in Libya despite a concerted effort over the past year, but they warn that the terror group's persistence will pay off if left unchecked. The most recent defense and intelligence estimates put the number of IS fighters in Libya at 5,000, roughly twice what it was a year and a half ago. The number is expected to grow as IS officials in Syria and Iraq continue to encourage foreign fighters to head to Libya, many trickling in from across the Middle East and Africa. But while Libya has become perhaps the most dangerous place outside Syria and Iraq in ISs self-declared caliphate, skepticism is growing that the group will be able to replicate the surge that propelled it across large swaths of Syria and Iraq. The presence of ISIS in Libya is almost exaggerated, a European diplomat told VOA on condition of anonymity, using an acronym for the terror group. Its really a base of operations. More difficult in Libya There are key differences between Libya and IS's core territory in Iraq and Syria, and those, officials contend, are helping to hold back the groups progress. It is "significantly harder" for IS to operate inside Libya, "because they don't have the homegrown people that know as much about Libya like they did in Iraq and Syria, General David Rodriguez, the head of U.S. Africa Command, told Pentagon reporters Thursday. Rodriguez said another factor is that the Libyan military and several Libyan militias have been able to pressure IS, making it more difficult for the terror organization to operate in places like Benghazi, Derna and Sabratha. For now, some feel the pressure may be enough to force IS leaders to view Libya essentially as a launching pad for attacks against the West, a capability Rodriguez described as aspirational. They have not to this point been able to project that power toward Europe, the AFRICOM commander said. Fearing IS Still, there is ample concern IS's status in Libya will change, especially if the countrys political struggles continue. While the U.S., France, Italy and several other European nations already have some forces on the ground in Libya, all have said they will not take action against IS until they get an official request from the Government of National Accord a government that is still not in full control of the country. We are still very cautious about Libya, the European diplomat said. "They [IS] are increasing their means there," the diplomat added. "In one year, we can expect their base will be much bigger, and then it can be used for something else. Libyans themselves fear ISs potential. We do not know the exact numbers of those fighters, Wafa Bugaighis, the charge d'affaires at the Embassy of Libya in Washington, warned an audience at the National Press Club late last month. Intelligence assessments say they are between 5,000 and 7,000, but the number is on the increase, especially after what Daesh has suffered in Syria and Iraq, she said, using the terror groups Arabic acronym. Expanding the caliphate The intelligence community believes that IS views Libya as much more than a base of operations for attacks on the West. I think that train has already left the station. Those cells are already in play, said Patrick Skinner, a former U.S. intelligence officer now with the Soufan Group, a strategic security intelligence consultancy. I think ISIS senior leadership sees Libya as their best shot of continuing the self-proclaimed caliphate, he said. Fighters and families need a physical place to go to. And intelligence officials believe that despite the obstacles IS has encountered as it tries to expand, its operation in and around the groups stronghold in Sirte is advanced, with consistent communication with IS leaders in Raqqa and Mosul. It is the most important holding for ISIS outside of Syria and Iraq, said Jason Pack, founder of EyeOnISISinLibya.com. They don't need more cannon fodder of disgruntled youth in the region, Pack said. They need Western-educated dual citizens. Libya is a place to train such people and then have them attract more Tunisians and sub-Saharan Africans and build a political entity, he added. Expansion possibilities If IS is even somewhat successful in that endeavor, it could open up other possibilities for expansion. The real threat might not be from Libya but from the menace and instability it radiates into Tunisia and other North African countries, according to the Soufan Groups Skinner. A serious concern, it is already on Washingtons radar. I think the biggest and worst threat they are providing to the neighbors is really to Tunisia, AFRICOM's Rodriguez told reporters. That's the biggest one. The International Criminal Court dismissed its case against Kenyas deputy president, William Ruto, and a local radio director this week for their alleged roles in 2007-2008 post-election violence. Ruto told reporters in Nairobi Friday that the ruling was proof of his innocence. Flanked by his wife, mother, and children, Kenyas Deputy President William Ruto addressed journalists. I can confirm to you that I know of nobody or group of people or network of individuals who planned violence against anyone. I can also confirm to you that I attended no fundraising or any form of raising money to buy anything to harm anybody, he said. The ICC charged Ruto in 2012 with three counts of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in orchestrating violence that followed the 2007 election. More than 1,100 people were killed and 600,000 displaced. Case dismissed On Tuesday, the judges dismissed the case against Ruto and a local radio director, Joshua Arap Sang, for lack of evidence. In a written statement Wednesday, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said there had been deliberate and concerted efforts to derail this case through witness interference. She said 17 witnesses withdrew their cooperation after intimidation, social isolation and threats. Ruto took no questions from reporters Friday but he maintains his innocence. I have searched my conscience and my soul and I have chosen that all those who gave false testimony against me I have chosen to forgive them. And it is my prayer that the same God who has vindicated me will help them come to terms with their acts, he said. Ruto pledged support from the government for victims of the 2007-2008 post-election violence. The ICC terminated a separate case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta last year for his alleged role in the post-election violence. Prosecutors alleged witness tampering and intimidation in that case as well. Islamic State extremists are losing ground in Iraq, their leaders and fighters are being eliminated and the group's rank-and-file members are losing hope, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday. Kerry made a quick visit to Baghdad Friday for talks with Iraqi leaders. He promised the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State "will work with Iraq to turn up the pressure even further during the coming weeks and months. The top U.S. diplomat underscored continued American support for the Iraqi government in its efforts to strengthen security and work toward stability in politics and economic development. Kerry flew to Baghdad from Bahrain for his first visit to the Iraqi capital since 2014. He met with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the Kurdistan regional government's prime minister, Nechrivan Barzani, before appearing before reporters at a news conference. Listing recent gains against extremists in Iraq, Kerry said Islamic State fighters have not been on the offensive in months, and have lost more than 40 percent of the territory they once controlled. U.S-led coalition airstrikes have targeted IS leaders and disrupted the jihadist groups cash flow, Kerry said, adding that IS is losing ground, losing fighters and losing cash." Kerry said Iraqi forces are laying the groundwork for a major effort to retake Mosul, in northern Iraq, which fell to Islamic State militants in 2014. There are indications the United States is lending additional support to the Iraqis' assault on the strategically important city. Kerry said the Mosul operation is underway and still evolving. Pentagon officials said earlier this week that a coalition airstrike destroyed an IS headquarters complex in Mosul that formerly had been a Turkish consulate. There are currently about 3,870 U.S. forces in Iraq. Kerry said there were no specific Iraqi requests for additional American troops, although reports in the United States say such a proposal may soon be put forward by the Pentagon. U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford and Defense Secretary Ash Carter are expected to request more U.S. troops to fight Islamic State militants, and White House spokesman Josh Earnest has said President Barack Obama would give such a recommendation "careful consideration." U.S. military officials have said only that they are establishing an additional military outpost in the area around Mosul. Rear Admiral Andrew Lewis, vice director of joint staff operations at the Pentagon, has said "there may be a situation in which there is another base that is opened or reopened from years past that would be used ... as a fire support base behind the front lines." Kerry also announced the U.S. will provide nearly $155 million in additional humanitarian assistance to help displaced Iraqis, bringing total U.S. spending on the humanitarian effort in Iraq to nearly $780 million since late in 2013. Kerry's trip to Baghdad came at a time when Prime Minister Abadi has been grappling with political turmoil. He proposed a Cabinet reshuffle last month as an anti-corruption move, following weeks of protests by supporters of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "This is obviously a very critical time here in Iraq," Kerry commented before beginning a meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Eshaiker al-Jaafari. The U.S. secretary said Washington has no role in Iraq's internal politics, but what we did indicate [to Abadi] is, it is important to have political stability." It is important to have a functioning government so that all of these operations are not affected, so that we give confidence to the coalition and the communities that have been liberated, he added. Kerry is on a weeklong tour of the Middle East and Asia that will include a visit to Hiroshima, Japan, for a Group of Seven (G-7) summit. WATCH: Related U.S.-led coalition strike on Islamic State militants near Hit, Iraq Kurdish health officials say civilians and fighters wounded in this weeks shelling of Kurdish forces by Syrian rebels are showing signs of chemical weapons injuries. We received four people yesterday who had serious wounds, Welat Memo, a physician with the Kurdish Red Crescent told VOA from Aleppo. We cant tell whats been used against them, but theyre vomiting and having difficulty in breathing." The symptoms are consistent with the use of chlorine gases, the Red Crescent said. More than 100 civilians were killed and 650 people were wounded in attacks from Islamist rebel groups against a Kurdish district in Syrias Aleppo. Despite a nationwide ceasefire that was brokered by the U.S. and Russia at the end of February, the rebels have unleashed attacks in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo. They say they are targeting Kurdish forces in the area. Unlawful weapon use A rebel spokesman reached in Syria declined to comment to VOA. But in a statement released Thursday by the rebel Army of Islam, the main group involved in the fighting said that an unauthorized weapon was used against civilians. One of our commanders has unlawfully used a type of weapon that is not included in our list, a statement posted on the groups Twitter account read. The Islamist group didnt say what type of weapon was used but it said the commander has been referred to an internal martial court. A spokesperson for the rebel group, Islam Alloush, posted a tweet on his official account saying modified Russian-made Grad rockets used by the rebels are not prohibited internationally. Allegations of chemical weapons use in Syrias civil war indicate their increasing use. Syrian government forces, Islamic State militants and rebels have been accused of using them, international groups say. The U.S.-led Western coalition and international monitoring groups are investigating at least a half-dozen reports of chemical weapons use in recent months. The United Nations says it is working with Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to investigate reports. Long seen as an enclave for free speech in the region, Lebanons bustling and influential media landscape is facing an uncertain future. Amid widespread reports of media outlets failing to pay their journalists, leading daily newspaper As-Safir announced it was closing at the end of last month. Despite the decision being reversed shortly after, the news spawned editorials signaling the inexorable decline of the countrys newspaper industry. It also sparked warnings of a black day for Lebanon should the countrys flagship titles go under from the countrys information minister, who reacted with a raft of proposals to prop up the tottering industry. But amid the gloom, new voices are being heard and arguing that Lebanons relative freedoms deserve a better kind of journalism. Not helped by heritage Lebanese journalists helped establish much of the Arab media, and in the Gulf region most papers hosted Lebanese writers who helped spread the profession, claimed Ahmad Salman, deputy general manager of As-Safir. Salman spoke to VOA from an office decorated with headlines from the 42-year history of the paper. We were the only newspaper that published that day, he said, pointing proudly to a front page from 1982, when Israeli forces attacked Beirut. But history is not helping As Safirs present-day finances. In attempting to successfully respond to news consumption shifting online, As-Safirs struggle is one faced by journalists across the world. In Lebanon, however, strictly local problems are further stirring troubles. Party power Salman blames the papers decline on the countrys corruption and continual political stalemate, which he said had bred growing apathy and disinterest from readers. But Ayman Mhanna, director of regional press freedom group SKeyes, told VOA that the main issue lies with who controls much of the country's press. Lebanon is a beacon is free speech, not free press, he said. To say we have journalistic freedom is to imply a level of accountability and independence that doesnt exist here. While meddling owners with political interests is a universal phenomenon, Mhanna said, in Lebanon press are often either fully owned by political parties or kept afloat by political money. As well as driving divisive sectarian discourse and stifling criticism, this has stifled innovation. Money was always coming from political pockets, he added, so the need to be better was weak. As conflict rages in Syria and Yemen, that money appears to have diminished as the priorities of regional superpowers shift elsewhere. Last week, for example, a Saudi-owned news station closed its Beirut office in what is being seen as the latest fallout from a recent stoking in Saudi-Iranian tensions. Setting the agenda But others feel that change is in the air change for the good. The civil war paused media development, said investigative reporter Habib Battah, referring to the series of conflicts from 1975 to 1990. People didnt want to be confrontational afterwards. But thats changing now. Theres growing willingness to confront power. Battah, who runs an independent news blog called The Beirut Report, pointed to the development in recent years of a vibrant grassroots activist movement prepared to ask the right questions. Some mainstream outlets are now following their lead in challenging government decisions that would formerly have passed uncontested, he added. The start of the countrys rubbish crisis last summer provided a crystallizing moment for activists in leading the news agenda, as the "You Stink" movement which now has nearly 200,000 likes on Facebook - played a major role in feeding the slew of videos and reports bubbling up through social media. The audience of old-school papers owned by parties is dwindling, and some of these blogs are getting greater reach than mainstream TV channels, Battah added. As Kareem Chehayeb, the young co-founder of website Beirut Syndrome, puts it: Me and many of the youth are no longer buying into the rhetoric where other sects are being scapegoated. Fighting the odds The jury remains out on whether such online communities and sites are financially viable in the long term and able to reach a genuinely diverse readership. Meanwhile, there are suggestions aplenty for Information Minister Ramzi Joreige. Some point to a French model, in which a Google-bankrolled fund offers cash to subsidize innovative media ideas, or call for the state-led consolidation of an oversaturated market. Chehayeb believes outdated laws must be changed to embrace the work of independent journalist who he says currently have no legal protection from harassment and the security forces. Back at the offices of As-Safir, which is not owned by a political party but is seen to be largely pro-Hezbollah, Salman struggles to muster hope for help from a government barely able to deal with a raft of other problems blighting the country. Instead, the best he can do is try to fight the odds. Staying open is a gamble, he said. We might lose it all. But we might also find a way. Former U.S. senator Carl Levin says public anger over the Panama Papers offers an opportunity to "make real progress" in ending financial abuses. The retired Democratic senator from Michigan says Washington should harness this anger and not let the scandal "go to waste." For a decade, Levin pushed Washington to require collection of accurate information on the true owners of offshore shell companies and similar firms incorporated by foreigners in the United States. As the Panama Papers show, in some cases these opaque shell companies may have been used to hide wealth from tax collectors, or evade financial sanctions. In an opinion article Levin wrote for The Guardian newspaper, he calls on Washington to outlaw corporations with hidden owners. Levin says Britain and the European Union have begun moving in this direction, while, the United States "is far behind." Levin says "we require more information to get a library card than to form a U.S corporation." WATCH: Panama Tax Haven Revelations Show How Neediest Nations Are Harmed He says state governments that earn revenue from incorporating companies, including some with unsavory goals, should "wake up" to the damage they are doing and stop forming corporations with hidden owners. Levin also urged tax authorities to do more with existing tax information exchange agreements, including one between the United States and Panama, to go after tax cheats and determine whether the law firm whose leaked documents prompted the scandal facilitated illegal conduct. He also urges authorities to "get tough" on lawyers promoting misconduct. When 14 Islamic State militants stormed his home, 22-year-old Mohammed was hiding. His father and brother, both police officers under the Iraqi government, had already been killed. They asked my mom, Where is Mohammed?' " he tells me a year and a half later in Europe. She said I was at the gym. Collecting all the money he could find, Mohammed fled Mosul, disguised as an Islamic State fighter, blasting Quran readings on the car radio for authenticity. Noticeably nervous in a city park, Mohammed asks me not to disclose his location or full name. His relatives are still in Iraq and risk death if he speaks out against the militant group. They have a catalog of killing in the ugliest ways ever, he says. Beheading, fires, drowning. Conditions deteriorating Islamic State militants ban all contact with the outside world, but people sneak Internet usage to connect with loved ones on the outside. Besides the harsh rule of the extremist group, he says, life in Mosul is rapidly declining. People are hungry and have no more than three hours of water or electricity a day. U.S.-led coalition bombs continue to fall on Mosul, and Mohammed's relatives say that while they are supposed to be aimed at Islamic State militants, they are hitting civilian targets. As we speak, he gets messages from relatives saying the university had been hit by a bomb and hundreds of people were thought to be dead, including cafeteria workers and students. For every Islamic State target they hit, he explains, They hit 10 civilian targets. The U.S. Defense Department has confirmed a limited number of civilian deaths under 20 but several activist groups, including AirWars, estimate the number could be closer to 2,000. Harsh rules Executions in Mosul occur every few days, says Mohammed, an exercise that keeps people following IS rules publicly. Strict dress codes include loose, long pants for men and full veils for women covering the eyes, hands and feet. If a man wears pants like these, he says, tugging his fitted but not skin-tight jeans, he is beaten. What happens if you wore shorts? I ask. It is cut, he says, gesturing as if to chop off a head. If a woman shows her face, or really any part of her body, her father or husband who ever is in charge of her is executed. Other people are killed for their previous jobs teachers, doctors, soldiers, police officers, writers and intellectuals. They have already killed anyone who had any power in the city, he explains. Also punishable by death is speaking any words against IS militants, who come from the U.S., Britain, Japan, Iraq, Syria and other countries. When they first swept into Mosul in 2014, some of the Islamic State fighters spoke only English, as far as Mohammed could tell. Who's to blame? Like many other Iraqis, Mohammed partly blames the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq for todays troubles. When dictator Saddam Hussein fell, so, too, did the centrally controlled army. And when Islamic State soldiers invaded Mosul more than a decade after the initial U.S. invasion, the Iraqi army fled, leaving their weapons behind. Mohammed and many other people in the Arab world see the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State as deeply suspicious. They want to know why, with all of its might and money, the U.S. cant seem to win. America could stop the war in four days, he says, repeating an oft-said refrain in the Middle East. The whole world knows its all about politics. The U.S. and its allies have said from the beginning of the anti-IS campaign that defeating the group will take years, and its success is contingent on the help of regional governments. But now living as a refugee, and with Iraqi and U.S. forces saying they are stepping up efforts to take back Mosul, hopefully by the end of the year, Mohammed can start thinking about his future. He can, he says, but he wont. They destroyed my dreams, he explains. We get up to leave the park. Mohammed bursts into laughter. He recalls he once dreamed of going to college to study the oil industry, an idea that seems to him now as ridiculously ambitious. I ask him whom he blames. Islamic State, the U.S., the Iraqi army? He shrugs. Any person who touched blood, he says. In central Malawi, a mother woke to find that her baby daughter had been snatched from her side during the night. The girl was the latest victim in a wave of abductions and attacks targeting albinos, whose body parts are highly sought after on the regional black market. The mother shouted for help, said Edna Mzingwitsa, the police spokesperson for Kasungu district, but when neighbors came, they tried to search for the baby but could not trace her." 2 suspects arrested The spokeswoman told VOA that two suspects have been arrested, including the baby's father. She said investigations continue and the baby is still missing. The abduction came a month after a 9-year-old albino boy was found beheaded in eastern Malawi. The danger has become so acute that Malawi's president gave a national address this month pledging action. "This is evil and a threat to the most fundamental human rights in our constitution, President Peter Mutharika told the nation. Let me assure you that government is taking serious steps against this criminal behavior, and will overcome this. We have intensified surveillance and investigations in affected districts and the country as a whole." Mutharika called specifically on the judiciary to issue "stiffer penalties to the culprits." Black market potions People with albinism an absence of pigment in their skin, hair and eyes are targeted in Malawi and other parts of Africa because of a false belief that potions made from their body parts will bring good luck and wealth. Those involved are rarely found and, when they are, the penalties are often criticized as too lenient. Last year, a court in southern Malawi ordered a man found with albino body parts to pay a fine of $30. He was charged with "possessing human tissue," which carries a maximum sentence of three years in jail. Police have recorded at least 50 attacks on albinos in the past three years. The attacks have sparked both outrage and fear. "When I am working late, I always think of my life and when I go out, I always think of what will I do if I face such [a] situation, said Ian Simbota, a journalist with albinism working for the state-run Malawi Broadcasting Corporation. The majority of attacks on albinos have been in Machinga district near the border with Mozambique, where the body parts are reportedly sold to witch doctors. Past efforts In 2015, the government created a task force of police, traditional and religious leaders and a local albino association to address the attacks. The strategy was to identify the homes and schools of people with albinism and check on them regularly. However, the task force no longer functions because of a lack of funding, according to Boniface Massa, the president of the Association of People with Albinism in Malawi. "And as a result of the task force being dormant, this is what has led to the restart of the attacks on persons with albinism, Massa said. All we are saying is that the political will and the effort by the police must really translate into actual ending of the attacks." Malawi should begin by following Tanzania's lead, Massa says, and banning witch doctors as a way to cut off demand for human body parts. Two men who were detained in Germany on suspicion of having links with Islamic State and of planning a "serious act of violence" have been released, Bavaria's office of criminal investigation said on Friday. German police held the 46-year-old Iraqi and a 29-year-old Nigerian on Thursday after receiving a tip off. Security sources had provided information that both could have been in contact with members of the Islamic State militant group. "During the course of comprehensive investigations, the criminal charge of planning a serious act of violent subversion could not yet be further corroborated or confirmed," Bavaria's criminal investigation office said in a statement. It added that neither searches of the men's homes or rooms nor questioning had given any such clues. It did not mention the possible Islamic State links in its statement. Security in European countries has been intensified since attacks claimed by Islamic state that killed 31 people in Brussels in March and 130 in Paris in November. Islamic State released a video on Tuesday suggesting it might carry out further attacks in the West, naming London, Berlin and Rome as possible targets. A key ingredient for life on Earth may have come thanks to a comet, according to a new study. French researchers say its possible that a simple sugar known as ribose arrived on Earth via a comet. Ribose is a key ingredient in RNA, which is necessary for life. To see if their theory could in fact have happened, the researchers recreated the solar systems early conditions in a lab by making ices out of water, methanol and ammonia, all of which are believed to have been common during the formation of the solar system. In fact, they were found to be present on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko when the Philae Lander landed there in late 2014. Then, the ices were exposed to UV radiation similar to what the sun might have emitted. The ices were then left at room temperature, and when they evaporated, they left substantial amounts of ribose and other organic molecules behind. "At a certain point in prebiotic evolution, the availability of ribose would have been, therefore, necessary for life to have started," said Cornelia Meinert from the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis in France, in an interview with Space. "Ice simulation is a very general process that can occur in molecular clouds as well as in protoplanetary disks, Meinert told the Los Angeles Times. It shows that the molecular building blocks of the potentially first genetic material are abundant in interstellar environments." The organic molecules the researchers created could also be dissolved in water, according to the BBC. Without that, life would not have likely formed. Belgian authorities arrested a fugitive suspect wanted in connection with the November Paris attacks; the suspect is also linked to the deadly bombings in Brussels last month. Mohamed Abrini, 31, a Belgian of Moroccan descent arrested Friday, is believed to be the mysterious man in the hat who escaped the explosion at Brussels Zaventem airport. If true, that would mean Abrini had a key role in both attacks carried out by an Islamic State cell that left a total of 162 people dead, 130 in Paris and 32 in Brussels, and scores of wounded. Abrini was caught on film at a motorway service station en route to Paris shortly before the November 13 attacks in the company of another suspect, Salah Abdeslam, who is already in detention in Belgium. He was the last identified suspect still at large from the November 13 attacks in Paris. Belgian police arrested a second person, possibly linked to the deadly Brussels Maelbeek subway bombing during rush hour in the morning of March 22. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office confirmed that several arrests were made Friday, but did not provide further information. Myanmar has released more than 100 political detainees under an amnesty that was the first official act by Aung San Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner herself and now the most significant figure in the new civilian government. The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said Saturday that 113 political detainees were released across the country. Human-rights groups estimate that Myanmar has had about 500 "prisoners of conscience" in detention. Families and friends of the detainees began gathering at prisons after Aung San Suu Kyi announced Thursday that prisoners would be released in conjunction with Buddhist new year celebrations in the coming days. Supporters greeted prisoners who were freed Friday with flowers, cheers and hugs. Peace activists convicted In the midst of the celebrations, however, a court in the central city of Mandalay convicted two peace activists of association with the Kachin Independence Army, an outlawed guerrilla group in far northern Myanmar. The two Buddhists - 28-year-old Zaw Zaw Latt and 34-year-old Pyint Phyu Latt, members of an interfaith organization - say they were on a charity mission. They are already serving time for violations of immigration law for crossing the Myanmar border with India on a 2013 visit to the city of Laiza, which is under control of the guerilla group. They had been arrested after posting pictures of their visit on social media, and were convicted in February. The nonprofit Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) says Myanmar has some 500 political prisoners, either convicted or awaiting trial. Aung San Suu Kyi Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi announced the prisoner release in her role as state counselor to the government, a new position established this week that essentially makes her Myanmar's top leader. A constitutional change instituted by the former military government, evidently written with Aung San Suu Kyi in mind, bars anyone with a foreign-born spouse or children from serving as president. Included in the new government sworn in last week are many democratic activists who spent years in jail under the previous regime. Aung San Suu Kyi herself was placed under house arrest in 1989, and spent 15 of the next 21 years in custody. Her National League of Democracy party came to power following a landslide election victory in November that produced Myanmar's first civilian-led government in more than five decades. NLD representatives hold a clear majority in parliament, but the military still retains 25 percent of all seats. The democracy leader, who has said that her role will be above the president, also serves as foreign minister and minister of the president's office. Her childhood friend Htin Kyaw was elected head of state by parliament. Relations between the European Union and the NATO alliance have rarely been closer, a senior NATO official says, and never as important as they are now, as the West confronts complex challenges ranging from the Middle East and North Africa to Russia and the Kremlin's aggressive foreign and defense policies. NATOs deputy secretary general, Alexander Vershbow of the United States, said the war in Syria and growing instability across the Middle East and North Africa pose a serious threat to the alliance's security, stability and cohesion. Separately, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced Friday that the NATO-Russia Council, will meet in Brussels in about two weeks on Ukraine and other issues. Underscoring his deputy's comments, however, Stoltenberg said there will be no return to business as usual until Russia again respects international law. Vershbow addressed the European Union Inter-Parliamentary Committee in The Hague Friday. He said the EU and NATO are working together to manage the humanitarian migrant and refugee crisis in Europe and control the spread of violent extremism. While NATO and the EU have significant roles in building a post-Cold War Europe, a revisionist Russia is directly challenging those efforts, the veteran U.S. diplomat said Friday. He cited Moscow's aggression against Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, its occupation of territory in Georgia and Moldova and military maneuvers along NATO's borders. Vershbow said Moscow has literally torn up the international rulebook, and evidently rejects the values, principles and structures jointly agreed in Europe in the Helsinki Final Act and numerous post-Cold War agreements. Russia wants to re-establish spheres of influence, Vershbow said, and is prepared to redraw borders, by force if necessary, toward that end. Russia justifies its words and deeds, he added, with a false narrative alleging that the West has sought deliberately to weaken, humiliate and take advantage of Moscow for the past 25 to 30 years. Noting U.S. plans to quadruple military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion in 2017, Vershbow said that huge contribution will help NATO increase its troop strength, stockpile military hardware and arms, and form a rapid reaction force under the European Reassurance Initiative. Stoltenberg said consultations with Russia produced the agreement to convene a NATO-Russia Council meeting. He gave no specific date for the upcoming talks in Brussels. NATO heads of state and government established the council to continue and expand NATO's long-standing political dialogue with Russia. One day you may go to a movie theater where instead of watching a film on a screen, you enter the scene and watch the action unfold all around you. That is the promise of new technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and 360-degree video. Online streaming sites like YouTube and Vimeo already offer short VR films made by amateurs as well as professionals. You can watch them with expensive headsets, but many people use their smart phones tucked into a cardboard viewer that can be purchased from Google for only $15. So far, most of the films are either computer animations or scenes featuring experiences like a roller coaster ride. At South by Southwest (SWSX) in Austin, Texas, last month, people donned headsets to see part of a VR comedic gangster film shot in Baltimore. The producers of Career Opportunities in Organized Crime claim it is the first full-length feature film made in 360-degree Virtual Reality. To cover for the crew being visible when a viewer turns around away from the main action, they made it a mockumentary, a fake documentary, in which the making of the film is part of the story. Virtual Reality Tourism YouVisit is a company that produces virtual-reality movies that allow people to travel to exotic places around the world without ever leaving home. Director of Marketing Suzanne Sanders says these films can be used to promote trips by giving people a sample of what it would be like or they can provide a virtual trip for those who are unable to physically travel. She said, It is an incredibly valuable tool for children or elderly or anyone who is not able to travel to a destination and experience it, whether it is a helicopter tour over Manhattan or a cruise, just to escape for a moment. The VR headsets used to take such escapes have been part of the computer gaming world for some time, but many people cannot use these devices without experiencing sea sickness or nausea. Theater of the future An alternative is offered by companies using special screens to dazzle audiences seated comfortably in front of them. At SXSW, the Japanese NHK Media Technology Company demonstrated an 8K resolution 3-D film utilizing 24 speakers set up all around the room. Images jumped out of the screen in sharp detail as music enveloped the audience. But company spokesmen said such an apparatus costs half a million dollars to set up, making it unrealistic for all but specialty theaters. Just down the hall from that demonstration was a much more accessible immersive experience provided by the Fulldome.pro company based in Salt Lake City, Utah. They had a dome set up at an angle to the floor with a film projected inside. Viewers lay back in comfortable seats inside the dome to watch the images float in front of them with a 180-degree view. The companys Chief Technology Officer, Nitai Flick, told VOA this offers a number of advantages over headsets. We can display content in a similar format, where we can fill your field of view even more than a headset, he said. We can also do 3-D, however, it is more of a guided experience than an interactive experience, so it works well for story telling. That, of course, could make it more interesting to filmmakers since it would allow them to direct audience attention with minimal distractions elsewhere on the screen. Flick says a number of production companies are already making content for the dome screens. We see this as sort of the theater of the future, he said, the way of displaying content in a more capturing, immersive way. No one knows how these technologies will change the movie business in the future, and theater owners will be reluctant to invest a lot of money in devices that may turn out to be a short-term fad. But the movie business is also facing competition from home theater systems, online streaming films and widespread piracy of their own products. If theaters can offer an amazing experience that is hard to duplicate at home, the future of the business could be much brighter. Finding an apartment in New York City has always been a daunting prospect for both newcomers and local residents, particularly if they're young and single. "New York City has so many single people. Almost half the population does not live with a spouse or partner. It's a very non-traditional city," said Sarah Watson, deputy director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council. For many singles whether recent grads, new arrivals to the city or locals with modest incomes the costs associated with finding and renting an affordable apartment have led to non-traditional methods of securing one. Scanning online Craigslist ads and moving in with strangers has practically become a rite of passage. "The Craigslist market of meeting strangers and creating a household instantly happens everywhere, but it's really often illegal," Watson said. "The person on the lease ends up taking all the money from the people who share; there are often subdivisions of legal spaces, often sometimes not even residential spaces." Sense of community Now, new co-living arrangements have entered the marketplace, minimizing the stresses associated with apartment hunting while simultaneously fostering a sense of community among residents. Brad Hargreaves founded Common co-living spaces housed within three residential properties in Brooklyn, New York. Members typically live in a suite with two to four others and have their own small bedroom between 30 and 45 square meters while sharing larger communal spaces like fully equipped kitchens, lounge areas and outdoor spaces. The proximity of residents to each other affords many opportunities for socializing, and residents are encouraged to mingle. "Many people coming from outside the U.S. want to make American friends. They want to get to know people and, unfortunately, many apartment buildings in New York are really anonymous and it's really hard to get to know your neighbors. So we really bridge that gap," Hargreaves said. "We do potluck dinners every Sunday night; there are regular meet-and-greets, and our members have set up events ranging from book clubs to movie nights." Members pay a monthly fee that includes weekly cleaning services, kitchen and bathroom supplies, WI-Fi and utilities. All furnishings are provided. "Someone can move into Common bringing only their clothes, Hargreaves said. They don't need to bring furniture; they don't need to bring bedding. We even supply a Common toothbrush." Roommates often end up fighting over a lot of basic things that are fairly easy to solve, like who cleans the dishes? Who goes out and buys the toilet paper, paper towels and the soap? he added. There are so many basic things that can actually be pretty easily solved by a management company and a developer that is thinking about the needs of roommates and the way people live in a major city like New York." Cost of convenience Convenience comes at a cost, however. Memberships start at $1,800 a month for a bedroom in Common. A similar co-living operation, WeLive, recently announced plans to launch spaces in New York and Washington, D.C., where beds in shared units start at $1,375 and $875 a month, respectively. Both Common and WeLive offer the option of renting month-to-month. While the need for living arrangements dedicated to singles is undeniable, housing advocates warn that these co-living spaces may be skirting housing laws and codes. "You're really coming up against legal and fire safety structures, because there is so much demand for single adults trying to find someplace that suits their needs in New York City," Watson said. "You can't have more than three people together who aren't related sharing an apartment, and a lot of the shared models do seem to be pushing the boundary of that occupancy rule." Watson points to developers like Stage 3 Properties, which has designed New York City's first micro-apartment units. By taking pains to comply with the city's current housing codes and regulations, Watson believes the likelihood of future micro-apartments being developed will be greater, as current housing codes are likely to be revisited and receive more political support. "The need is there. I think skirting the legal structure is not a positive way forward because it will annoy politicians rather than engaging a real dialogue about how we can move forward with these models, Watson said. I think it's very important to do it within the rules that exist, to showcase how important these models can be in the housing marketplace." Human rights organizations are supporting the new international sanctions imposed on North Korea to restrict its nuclear program, even though the economic measures could make life more difficult for many people in the country who already live on the margins of poverty. I think the whole idea of pressure on North Korea is something that is important because it actually makes the government recognize that it can no longer live outside of international law, said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, a non-profit civil rights advocacy organization. Sanctions and human rights The United Nations measures adopted in response to North Koreas fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch in February placed trade and financial restrictions on Pyongyang to cut off funding to its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The U.N. sanctions, however, did not mention the 2014 U.N. resolution to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, or the extensive U.N. human rights report that documented ongoing and systematic atrocities, including a network of political prisons, murder, enslavement, torture and rape. The human rights measure has still not been brought to a vote in the U.N. Security Council given the near certainty that North Korean allies China and Russia would veto it. The United States and China collaborated on developing the international sanctions, and Beijing most likely opposed any focus on human rights violations, given its own record of, according to critics, unlawful harassment, imprisonment and torture. But when the U.N. sanctions were adopted on March 2, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, did link the two issues and accused North Korea of caring more about expanding its nuclear weapons program than growing its children. The U.S. unilateral sanctions recently imposed also included North Korean human rights abuses as justification for the punitive measures. Humanitarian consequences Some human rights advocates argue that humanitarian hardships caused by the sanctions are unavoidable but necessary to pressure the Kim Jong Un leadership to end its repressive ways. The sanctions from the international community will have an economic impact on North Koreans, but on the other hand the North Korean regime will clearly feel the impact as well, said Choi Yong-sang, with the Network for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul. Workers in the mining industry will likely suffer from the U.N. ban on the export of North Korean minerals. Although humanitarian exceptions in the resolution that allow for the trade of coal and iron not connected to any government organizations could cushion the economic blow. Financial restrictions that ban North Korean banking transactions and blacklist a number of individuals and organizations linked to the Norths nuclear program could have a chilling effect on potential donors and investors. The U.S. unilateral sanctions could also target anyone connected to the North Korean labor export program that earns billions of dollars, most of which goes to the state. And South Korea in February closed the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex, putting over 54,000 North Korean employees out of work. Food shortage The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a February report that the North Korean people are already suffering a significant food shortage. The FAO said the North needs 440,000 tons of food from abroad this year, but so far international donors have only provided 17,600 tons. North Koreas state media recently warned that the sanctions may cause another arduous march, referring to the famine in the 1990s that killed over three million people. Most private South Korean aid programs to the North have been suspended in light of the recent provocations and sanctions. The Eugene Bell Foundation, which provides tuberculosis medications to North Korea, was blocked in early March due to new South Korean unilateral sanctions. Seoul, however, did later make exceptions for humanitarian aid, and the medications did get through. Human rights advocates support providing aid and assistance to innocent people in North Korea caught in the middle of this international standoff. In the past, however, Pyongyang had diverted aid for political purposes and many countries, including the United States and South Korea, suspended assistance programs years ago. Our view on humanitarian aid is that we dont agree to have restrictions on humanitarian aid and we do support for instance, support for food aid and other basic humanitarian materials for North Korea, but we believe also that these need to be strictly monitored, said Robertson. If the international community can closely inspect the distribution process, it can assist the people without helping the regime, but we are not sure if North Korea would accept such a condition, said Choi. The growth of private markets could mitigate the impact of the sanctions for many North Koreans. Since the famine years of the 1990s, the people have become less dependent on the Communist government in Pyongyang for their daily needs. But the tighter sanctions are enforced, the more likely it is that ordinary North Koreans will experience greater economic pain than will Kim Jong Un or the well-to-do elites in Pyongyang. But that is a risk that even some human rights advocates are willing to take to end repression in North Korea and to make its leaders accountable. North Korea is gathering information from foreigners, mostly South Koreans, through its global network of restaurants, a former worker of a North Korean restaurant abroad told VOA. North Korea reportedly runs about 130 restaurants around the world, mostly in China. They serve traditional North Korean dishes, employ North Korean staff and have long been seen as one of the countrys few instruments of soft power. But they also are suspected of serving as fronts for other activities. Some South Korean and Western news media outlets have speculated Pyongyang was using the restaurants for illicit activities such as money laundering. The former restaurant worker said North Korean waitresses at state-run restaurants overseas secretly collect information on customers and send it to their homeland. The worker asked to be identified only by the initial J because of safety concerns, although VOA did verify Js links to the overseas restaurant business. South Koreans targeted The waitresses should gather customers personal information and report it to their supervisors, J told VOA by hard copy mail. They pay particular attention to South Koreans. The information-gathering mission is supervised by officials dispatched from the State Security Ministry, North Koreas body that handles security and intelligence matters. Each official monitors 10 to 20 waitresses. The North Korean offshore business depends on affluent South Korean tourists and businessmen. Between 60 percent and 80 percent of the customers are South Koreans, J said. Without them, they cant survive. It is unclear how much money the restaurant enterprise generates. The bulk of the earnings, however, go to the government, leaving little money for the workers, according to J, who said waitresses are paid $10 to $15 a month for working more than 12 hours per day. They receive $2,500 and house appliances such as a television set or a washing machine upon returning home after a four-year assignment. Hard work for little pay The waitresses work under heavy supervision and enjoy little personal freedom. You see the world that is quite the opposite of what you are taught, J said. Then you begin to wonder if you will ever have a chance of living freely as a true human being. North Koreas overseas restaurant businesses have become an important source of hard currency for Pyongyang amid increased international sanctions over the countrys nuclear development. Recently, the restaurants faced financial trouble after South Korea asked its citizens to avoid them. The South Korean move followed a North Korean nuclear test and long-range-missile launch. 13 defectors On Friday, South Koreas Unification Ministry announced that 13 North Koreans working at the same restaurant overseas had defected to the South. Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman for the Unification Ministry, told reporters at The Atlantic Wire that the number was higher than usual for group defections. "Weve seen cases of one or a couple of employees working at North Korean restaurants coming here, but not this many," he told The Atlantic, refusing to divulge the country from which the defectors had come to South Korea, citing diplomatic sensitivities. "They said they had a chance to learn about the true aspects of South Korea through South Korean TV news, soap operas and movies as well as via the internet while living outside their country," the spokesman said. "They also realized the truth about Pyongyang's false propaganda." U.S. President Barack Obama kicked off Thursday's final episode of American Idol, the Fox reality television series that ended its 15-season run after helping dozens of singers launch their careers. Obama took the opportunity to encourage Americans to participate in the electoral process. In pre-taped remarks, the president praised American Idol for its longevity and noted it motivated millions of young Americans to vote. WATCH: President Obama Congratulates American Idol The president described voting as the most sacred and fundamental right of our democracy and said he believed voting should almost be as easy as voting on American Idol. Not all of us can sing like Kelly Clarkson (the first American Idol winner), Obama added, but all of our voices matter. The 15th and final American Idol winner was Trent Harmon, a 25-year-old waiter at his familys Mississippi restaurant. Harmon put on a stirring performance with his delivery of Chandelier, a song written by Australias Sia. The runner-up to Harmon was another Mississippian, LaPorsha Renae, a single mother who overcame domestic abuse to compete. American Idol was a highly-rated show but steadily lost viewers over the years before Fox decided to make this season its last. The massive cache of more than 11 million documents tied to a law firm in Panama, which revealed the business dealings of several of Chinas political elite, comes during a crackdown on corruption under Chinas President Xi Jinping. The crackdown has netted more than 30,000 people in China who have been punished for corruption. But critics of this crackdown say its a convenient way for political leaders to banish their enemies. Willy Lam, a China Scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the recent leaks give weight to their argument. The fact that so many members of the so-called 'red aristocracy,' the offspring of party members, ministers and politburo members, have been spared adds to peoples impression that Xi Jinping has master-minded the corruption campaign the past two or three years mainly to target his political enemies, Lam said. More leadership members implicated Thursday, it was revealed that two more members of Chinas ruling leadership were implicated in the papers. A daughter-in-law of Liu Yunshan, the Communist Partys current chief of propaganda, was a director of Ultra Time Investments, which was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 2009. The son-in-law of first-ranking Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli was revealed to be a shareholder of three companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands: Zennon Capital Management, Sino Reliance Networks Corporation and Glory Top Investments. Having an offshore company is not illegal, but such offshore businesses can be used to launder money and evade taxes. The trove of emails from the Panama law firm also names family members of five former members of Chinas Politburo, as well as the husband of one of Mao Zedongs granddaughters. President Xi Jinping's brother-in-law also used the firm to establish three companies offshore. No impact on crackdown expected Victor Gao, a director of the China National Association of International Studies, said the revelations, while important, are unlikely to impact Chinas corruption crackdown. The Chinese governments position is also very clear. They do not want to be budged one way or the other by such disclosures and revelations, or in any case by reports by The New York Times or other newspapers. What they want to do is their own homework, gather information and evidence through their own reliable sources, and deal with corruption as it is, in their own way, he said. In recent weeks China has stepped up censorship of any online coverage or conversation about the Panama Papers. Authorities are deleting discussions through social media about the leaks, and Panama is now one of the most censored words on the Chinese internet. WATCH: Panama Leak Sparks Global Investigations Not aware of leaks Ding Xueliang, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the documents revelations will likely have little impact on how politics and business are done in China, in large part because most people in the country are not aware of the leaks. Even some of the university professors, they have very, very limited knowledge of international reporting on such things. And if you go to ordinary people, sometimes theyve got something from somebody, and generally that would be very vague, without much knowledge of the source of information, he said. Web searches in China for the "panama papers" bring up a warning that the results may not accord with relevant laws and rules and so can't be shown. Earlier this week, China's state-run Global Times newspaper said that Western media use such leaks to damage non-Western countries. WATCH: Panama Tax Haven Revelations Show How Neediest Nations Are Harmed A parachute jump turned fatal for a Philippine parachutist taking part in a joint military exercise with the United States, the two allies said Friday. The soldier accidentally dropped into the sea" near Subic airport due to wind drag, a Philippine military statement said. Both the United States and Philippines are investigating the incident, which occurred Thursday. The safety of all the participants is a priority, Captain Alex Lim, U.S. spokesperson for the joint exercises, told AFP. Lim said he did not know if any deaths had occurred previously in the annual exercises. Five thousand U.S. troops and about 3,500 Philippine soldiers began the exercises throughout the Philippines Monday as part of an 11-day program amid rising tension in the region about territorial disputes over the South China Sea. Enhancing defense, security The United States has invested more than $120 million over the past year in military aid to the Philippines. We got the largest ever allocation from the U.S. government this year to enhance defense and security of our country, Manilas ambassador to Washington, Jose Cuisia, told members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Manila . He said Manila would receive an extra $42 million from a new maritime capacity-building program announced by U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who will visit the Philippines next week. Believed to house large deposits of oil and gas, the South China Sea is claimed in part by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Although China already claims the majority of the territory through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped yearly, it has recently become increasingly assertive in its control. The Philippines has sought international arbitration and anticipates a decision late this month or early May, but China has declined to take part. With a surname and history that spark fury among some Peruvians and adoration among others, center-right presidential contender Keiko Fujimori has managed to stay atop a turbulent field of candidates. But while the 40-year-old daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori has had the unswerving support of about a third of Peruvians for the past two years, she faces growing opposition that will most likely keep her short of the simple majority needed to win outright when Peruvians go to the polls on Sunday. The chance to face her in a second round in June has fueled a hotly disputed contest for runner-up, with two main rivals with radically different platforms jousting for the support of millions of undecided voters. "I change my mind every half hour," said Felix Castillo, 39, a security guard. He's part of what pollster Ipsos estimated on Sunday was a whopping 40 percent of the electorate that had not committed to any candidate. This year's race has been jolted by the unprecedented barring of two leading candidates, prompting the head of the Organization of American States to warn that elections would be "semi-democratic" and stoking suspicions that the move unfairly favored Fujimori. Another eight candidates have voluntarily dropped out of the initial lineup of 19. Fujimori's opponents, lacking a strong anti-Fujimori candidate to rally behind, have staged protests that upended her campaigning twice. Surge by Mendoza In a late surge, leftist lawmaker Veronika Mendoza, 35, has swept up the most support from undecided voters with promises of "radical change" to the free-market economic model of the past quarter century momentum that has sent shivers through the local currency and stock markets. Mendoza wants to ramp up spending, hike taxes and make Peru, set to become the world's second-biggest copper supplier this year, less dependent on the global mining companies that she says deserve tougher environmental policing. "We don't think we should keep being a mere warehouse of rocks and raw materials," Mendoza said. Mendoza edged up slightly in a Datum poll seen by a source Thursday, but remained statistically tied with septuagenarian former World Bank economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Peru's select stock index fell by more than 2 percent on the news. Kuczynski has defended mining and pledged to slash red tape while beefing up private investments in infrastructure to drive growth that has slowed at the end of a decade-long commodities boom. Solid opposition to Fujimori Despite repeated promises to avoid the authoritarian ways of her father now in prison for human rights abuses and corruption Fujimori has failed to soften opposition to her candidacy. "All I know is I'm going to vote against Keiko in the second round," said engineer Diego Cano, 23. Tens of thousands of Fujimori's opponents took to the streets Tuesday in the biggest political protest in Lima since rallies against Alberto Fujimori in 2000 as he tried to start a controversial third term after elections widely considered fraudulent. The race could become even more polarizing in a runoff. "Everyone has the right to express an position," Fujimori said afterward. She has remained upbeat throughout the campaign, leaving her rivals to duke it out as she brushes off their attacks. In general, people around the world are eating better and living longer, but they are also moving less. This is contributing to the rise of diabetes, a condition that affects 422 million people and is fast becoming a major problem, especially in poor countries. Two factors are critical for the successful treatment of diabetes patients. First is a correct diagnosis of the type of the disease, and second is the administration of the appropriate drugs. A misdiagnosis and, consequently, the wrong treatment can cause many problems. If you label someone who actually has type 2 diabetes as type 1, they'll be left on insulin for the rest of their life when they don't need it," said Dr. Richard Oram of the U.K. National Institute for Health Research. "Even worse, if someone with type 1 diabetes is mislabeled as having type 2 diabetes, then they may not be treated with the insulin they need, and they may suffer life-threatening complications. A new, less expensive test, developed at the University of Exeter Medical School, measures 30 genetic variants in the patients DNA and calculates the risk for type 1 or type 2. Individual diagnoses can be completed with a commonly used test for antibodies. Scientists are now trying to develop an even simpler DNA-based test that could be done with a smartphone app. No more injections? In the meantime, researchers in South Korea are developing a nanotechnology-based adhesive strip that takes away pain and stress of daily injections for diabetes patients. The device is a patch type that enables [diabetics] to monitor blood sugar levels via sweat without taking blood samples and injections, as well as to control glucose levels by injecting medication, said Kim Dae-hyeong, a professor in the School of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University. The patch is studded with microneedles that painlessly enter subcutaneous tissue. When the connected chip senses that the level of glucose has risen above normal, a small heating element dissolves medication and releases it into the bloodstream. Tests done on lab mice were promising, so scientists hope they will soon start testing the patch on humans. In this phase, experiments are still expensive, but scientists say the price will drop once it the patch is ready for mass production. Sri Lanka has agreed to resume work on a Chinese-funded $1.4 billion Colombo Port City project that had stalled a year ago. The decision to restart work on the project was announced Thursday during Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe's visit to Beijing. The move opens the door for additional Chinese investments, and helps China forward its goal of getting access to the Indian Ocean. The Sri Lankan leader signed several other deals during his trip for railway, road, port and airport projects that would be constructed by Chinese companies in his country. The project has been the main point of contention between the two countries since March of last year, when Wickremasinghe stalled the project soon after coming to power. "We welcome the resumption of the Colombo Port City project, and stand ready to work with Sri Lanka to push forward the construction steadily, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said, underlined the importance of the decision. Debt trap Analysts said the Sri Lankan leader's decision to resume work on the project is a desperate measure to stop his country from heading towards a debt trap. Sri Lanka is finding it extremely difficult to raise fresh funds from the world market after international ratings firms Fitch and Standard & Poors reduced the South Asian nation's credit rating in February and March. Sri Lanka wants China to reschedule past loans amounting to about $5 billion, and extend fresh loans. This includes Chinese finance for $1.6 billion to spend on a seaport and an airport in Hambantota, the home region of former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was known to be close to China. Financial problems and the need for infrastructure funding were the main reasons behind Wickremasinghes decision to restart the Colombo Port City project, according to Weerakoon Dushni, deputy director at the Institute of Public Policy in Colombo. Managing loan repayments is a major problem. Nearly half of Sri Lankas external debt has been raised on non-concessional and commercial terms, she said adding, We need to engage with China both in political and economic terms. Some experts believe Sri Lanka has approached China for help because India and the United States failed to provide assistance. The major task for Sri Lanka's current government is economic development. Yet after its attempt to reduce its reliance on Beijing, Colombo has realized that there is no alternative, Zhao Gancheng, director of South Asia Studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies told the Global Times newspaper. Over the past year, neither India nor the U.S. has provided it with attractive mega-projects that China did. It is therefore natural for Sri Lanka to turn around and embrace China again, Zhao said. Indian Ocean connectivity He also said Sri Lanka is trying to use its location on the Indian Ocean to attract Chinese investments. Apart from the already existing cooperation, including the construction of Hambantota Port, Sri Lanka is now expecting to use its own geographical position to ink more new joint programs with China, said Zhao. China needs Sri Lanka to get access to the Indian Ocean, which has an heavy presence of Indian and U.S. navies, for both military and commercial reasons. It is pouring $46 billion on a corridor project that would connect the Chinese border in Xinjiang to the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea in Pakistan, 1200 kilometers away. Sri Lanka is in the midst of important sea routes. China is engaging with Sri Lanka partly because of strategic reasons. Besides, it is focused on the 'One Belt, One Road program,' in which Sri Lanka can have an important role, said the Institute of Public Policy's Dushni. Important question An important question is whether Sri Lanka really needs the China backed projects. The Chinese funded airport in the Hambantota area has been used to store gains. The Hambantota seaport, which was also financed by China, has remained largely unused, Smruti Pattanaik, research fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis in New Delhi, said. Chinese backed projects, including the airport and sea port in Hambantota and the Colombo Port City plan, have been a matter of raging political controversies in Sri Lanka in recent years. During the 2014 elections, opposition leaders accused the associates of then-president Rajapaksha of taking bribes from Chinese companies. Those critics are now in power. "The Sri Lankan government is in a real dilemma. It is almost bankrupt and needs money to run the economy, Chaminda Hettiarachchi, lecturer and researcher at the Colombo University, said. Sri Lanka needs Chinese money at least in the short term. But Chinese projects are not useful to the Sri Lankan people. People who live in rapidly expanding urban areas of low income countries are at the greatest risk of intestinal parasitic infection, according to a new study. Contact with human and animal fecal matter in areas where safe management of wastewater and fecal waste is lacking causes infections such as hookworms and intestinal protozoa. The study was conducted by researchers from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and their colleagues in Uganda. They examined the prevalence and risk factors for intestinal parasitic infections in the growing suburbs of Kampala, where only a small proportion of wastewater is treated. The vast majority of the city's wastewater is discharged without treatment into open storm water channels, jeopardizing the health of people who come into contact with it. Dr. Samuel Fuhrimann, the study's lead author, says the findings call for increased protective public health measures for urban farmers and marginalized groups. The study also found that wastewater can be successfully recycled to boost food production. The study was conducted within the framework of the Resource Recovery and Reuse project with a clear focus on urban centers in low and middle income countries," said Fuhrimann. "There we had one major recourse, which was wastewater, and this generated a lot of livelihood when it is reused, especially in the urban settings. The high nutrient loads and the all-year-round availability has a lot of gains for agriculture and aquaculture in these settings. The study used a cross-sectional survey of five groups totaling about 950 people. The pool included people who would likely be at risk of contact with the wastewater, including workers at wastewater facilities, workers collecting fecal sludge from pits using vacuum trucks, urban farmers and slum dwellers. While the examination of only one stool sample was used per person, Fuhrimann says the results raise important issues concerning the proper treatment of fecal waste. As urbanization continues at a rapid pace, this poses special challenges for the safe management of the wastewater and also fecal sludge, which is actually collected from pit latrines," said Fuhrimann, adding that some 90 percent of Kampalans rely on pit latrines for toilets, causing a huge challenge for safe waste management. Reducing health risks Fuhrimann also says the goal now is to reduce the health risks of these people, especially urban farmers who show the highest risk for intestinal parasites from fecal contamination. For example, the sanitation workers who were exposed [on a daily basis] have actually the lowest risk and also the lowest prevalence of all worm infections, said Fuhrimann. But at the same time we found that 76 percent of urban farmers were infected with intestinal parasites. So this is what we normally expect in a rural setting, not in an urban setting where we have all the medical healthcare availableand especially for hookworms and schistosoma mansoni, which can both penetrate the skin," he said. "We could also determine that the level of education is one of the major factors which is linked to these infections. Fuhrimann stressed the critical importance that urban farmers and other workers who might be exposed to waste matter take the necessary precautions to protect themselves on a daily basis from exposure to human and animal waste. This includes wearing protective clothing and using clean water to wash equipment. The washing of all this equipment is very important," he said. "Many of the people there wash the equipment directly with wastewater, which of course re-contaminates the equipment again." Fuhrimann notes the importance of personal hygiene and emphasizes that handwashing after work is very important. He also notes that open defecation is still occurring at a high rate and people should use toilet facilities whenever possible. And last there is also the regular deworming, which is not happening," he said. "We would recommend that farmers deworm themselves every two-three months." Improved safety, he said, requires all stakeholders to become actively engaged in educating people about the importance of personal hygiene and implementing procedures and guidelines to ensure the proper disposal of waste. Policymakers, he added, should explore causes of water contamination through, for example, toilets or the illegal discharge of fecal matter. Fuhrimann also said another important aspect to consider with improper waste disposal is the impact it has on children, who are at the highest risk of contamination and parasitic worms. The State Department said on Friday that Russia played a role in facilitating the release of a U.S. citizen detained by Syrian authorities, and Washington has been in direct, periodic contact with Damascus about American citizens detained there. We are appreciative of efforts on the part of Russia, on the Russian government, that it took on behalf of this U.S. citizen in Syria, said Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner during the daily briefing. Kevin Patrick Dawes, a 33-year-old freelance photographer from San Diego, was abducted while traveling in Syria in 2012. His release following months of negotiations was confirmed to VOA by State Department Spokesman John Kirby. We can confirm and welcome the news that a U.S. citizen was released by Syrian authorities," Kirby said. "The United States continues to work through every possible means to ensure the safe release of U.S. citizens reported missing or taken in Syria." The State Department also said the freed American is no longer in Syria because he was released in the last few days. Austin Tice still detained Dawes was abducted after he crossed from Turkey into Syria. In recent months, Dawes has been allowed to speak with his family during phone calls and to receive care packages from home, which signaled to U.S. officials that Syria likely would release him. Another man, freelance journalist Austin Tice, is still missing in Syria. Tice went missing in northern Syria on August 12, 2012. The Syrian government has never admitted to imprisoning Tice, but it is widely believed the government or an affiliated group is holding him. Private security consultants who have been working on Tices case take Dawes' release as a good omen. Toner said the case of Tice is something we raise all the time, and the U.S. government is in direct contact with his family. We continue to work through the Czechs on the ground to get information on the welfare and whereabouts of Austin Tice, said Toner. The Syrian regime has never publicly acknowledged holding Tice, a former U.S. Marine, but in recent weeks negotiations have been underway for his release involving third parties and the Russians, a consultant told VOA. The consultant asked not to be named as the talks are highly confidential and are entering a critical stage. According to the consultant, proof that Tice remains alive was recently provided. VOA State Department Correspondent Pamela Dockins and Jamie Dettmer contributed to this report. More than 30,000 people displaced by fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo have been cut off from aid because of ongoing insecurity, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said Thursday. Tens of thousands of people were forced to flee Mpati in North Kivu province after fighting erupted there at the end of March between government forces and armed groups, the NRC said. "There are more than 30,000 people displaced all over the place without support because we are for now unable to reach them because of the potential risk," Mickael Amar, NRC's head of mission in Congo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "This is something common here in Congo. We are used to [stopping] activities because of insecurity and we go back after 10 or 15 days, but 10 or 15 days for a displaced person without any support is a lot," he said in a phone interview from Congo. Amar said that although NRC has not yet been able to assess the exact needs of the displaced, they lacked food and shelter. In a statement, he urged the warring parties to give aid agencies access to the people in need. "If this does not happen we will see an already critical situation turning drastically worse," he said. In January, the United Nations said a surge in kidnappings and general insecurity in North Kivu province in recent months had made delivering lifesaving humanitarian aid a "Herculean task." Regional wars, exploitation Congo's east has been plagued by instability since regional wars between 1996 and 2003 killed millions, most from hunger and disease. Dozens of armed groups continue to prey on the local population and exploit the region's rich mineral deposits. Amar said that last week unknown people entered an NRC compound in Mpati and stole some of the council's assets, including phones and radio equipment. "It shows that humanitarian access starts to be a bit complicated," he said. "Today we've been informed that shooting took place in the same area. ... No one has been injured because it was shooting in the sky, [but] it creates a lot of confusion." In January, medical charity Doctors Without Borders closed one of its projects in Congo following a December attack on one of its convoys and abduction of two staffers. Amar said NRC was trying to negotiate with the Congolese government safe access to the displaced people through other partners, including the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Turkey says its diplomatic officials have made progress with Israeli diplomats on an agreement to normalize ties. Ankara's Foreign Ministry said Friday that officials agreed in London Thursday to finalize the deal at their next meeting. A date was not specified; the Ministry said in a statement that it would be "very soon." Ties between the two countries broke down in 2010 over Israel's interception of a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza, which was under a blockade because of the Hamas militant group's leadership there. Ten Turkish activists were killed in the incident in 2010, and Turkey has demanded compensation as well as an end to the blockade of the Palestinian territory. The U.S. State Department says it is "profoundly disappointed" in the Republic of Congo's election, which allowed President Denis Sassou Nguesso to extend his 32 years in power. Spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement that widespread irregularities during the election and arrests of opposition supporters afterward marred what was otherwise a peaceful vote. He said the U.S. is also "deeply concerned about the welfare of thousands of Congolese who awoke on April 4 to the sound of gunfire and explosions and fled their homes" in the capital city, Brazzaville. The Congolese government says former members of a disbanded militia attacked government targets that day. It says three security officers, two civilians, and 12 assailants were killed in the clashes. Opposition candidates say the March 20 poll was rigged to favor Nguesso. One candidate, General Jean-Marie Mokoko, called for civil disobedience to protest the official results. Second-place candidate Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas conceded defeat Thursday, saying he wants to avoid further violence, but maintained the polling was unfair. He also blamed the government for the attacks, saying they were a set-up to avoid protests. Sassou Nguesso ran for re-election after pushing through constitutional changes to remove age and term limits. The 72-year-old president has ruled the Republic of Congo for all but five years since 1979. He won elections in 2002 and 2009 that were disputed by the opposition. Islamic State has doubled its fighters in Libya to between 4,000 and 6,000 in the last 12 to 18 months, but militias in the North African nation have limited the hard-line militants' growth, the commander of U.S. forces in Africa said Thursday. Islamic State's stronghold in Libya is the city of Sirte, but it also has a presence in Derna and Benghazi in the east and Sabratha in the west, General David M. Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command, told a news briefing. "In Benghazi and Derna, [Libyan armed groups] have fought back against the Islamic State and made it much tougher for them to operate, as well as in Sabratha," he said. "They are contesting the growth of ISIS in several areas across Libya," Rodriguez said, citing U.S. intelligence assessments for the growth of Islamic State, also known as ISIS. The group's growth in Libya has worried Western governments, which fear it will take advantage of persistent political chaos to emulate its success in seizing territory in Iraq and Syria. Since 2014, loose coalitions of armed brigades have backed rival governments in Tripoli and the east. Western governments back the Government of National Accord, in part as the best chance for uniting armed factions against Islamic State. "The challenge of the Government of National Accord is to bring them together, one for the future of Libya, but also to get rid of ISIS," Rodriguez said. He downplayed the possibility Islamic State could strike out from its base and take large portions of territory, as it did in Iraq and Syria. "They don't have the homegrown people that know as much about Libya like they did in Iraq and Syria," Rodriguez said. "The Libyan people are also different in the way they treat and respond to foreigners, so all that has an impact." U.S. airstrikes in Libya have targeted Islamic State, but those efforts are focused on targets posing an imminent threat to U.S. interests and personnel, Rodriguez said. Venezuela's socialist leader Nicolas Maduro threatened on Thursday to seek a constitutional amendment to slash the opposition-led legislature's term and vowed to lead a "revolution" should his foes wrest him from the presidency. The socialist leader's strong words deepened the already bitter political standoff in the OPEC member nation since the opposition coalition won control of the National Assembly in a December vote and vowed to seek Maduro's exit this year. During a rally, pro-government constitutional lawyer Hermann Escarra proposed that Maduro seek a constitutional amendment to reduce the assembly's term from five years to 60 days. "I'll look at it very seriously," Maduro said, to cheers from several thousand red-clad supporters demonstrating against an assembly law intended to free jailed opposition activists. "And if I see the possibility of clearing away coup-mongering and the use of the National Assembly, I myself would activate it if the people support me," he added. In an overt conflict of powers, the government-leaning Supreme Court has been shooting down assembly motions, while the national election board is dragging its feet over the opposition's desire to hold a recall referendum this year. Should Maduro propose a constitutional amendment to shorten legislators' term, that too would have to go to a national vote. Maduro, 53, who won election in 2013 to succeed his mentor Hugo Chavez, constantly accuses the opposition and the United States of seeking a coup. He also accuses his foes of an "economic war", though critics say failed socialist policies are at the root of Venezuela's deep recession and acute shortages. "I'm going to say something strong," Maduro added. "If they one day win power due to their non-conventional, economic war, due to violence, then the Bolivarian revolutionary movement and the Venezuelan people would take to the street in general insurrection... Another revolution would start, I tell the oligarchy. And I would lead it!" Earlier in the day, government supporters and opposition activists exchanged punches and kicks, and stones were thrown, when coalition leaders gathered at the election board to seek paperwork for requesting the recall referendum. The opposition said a journalist and legislator were injured, and blamed an "ambush" by Maduro supporters trying to derail a recall referendum. "The government is not illiterate, it can read the polls, it knows it wouldn't win any election - not even a carnival queen contest!" coalition head Jesus Torrealba said. Victoria Chitepo, the widow of the late national hero, Hebert Chitepo, has died. According to the state-controlled Herald newspaper, the late 89-year-old former minister, who was also a member of Zanu PFs supreme-decision making body, the Politburo, was found dead Friday at her home by a relative. The newspaper reports that the relative, who found her body, had visited the home to ferry Chitepo to a Zanu PF Central Committee meeting. The newspaper says her death was confirmed by her daughter, Thokozile. Zanu PF spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo was not available for comment. Herbert Chitepo, who was the chairman of Zanu, was assassinated during the liberation struggle. His death caused serious internal fights within the party with accusations that he was allegedly killed by some of his colleagues to pay the way for a new leadership of the party. A report produced by a commission of inquiry into Chitepos death has never been made public in Zimbabwe. Victoria Chitepo once claimed that her husband was murdered by Zanu activists and pressed the party to investigate his killers. In 1979 while nationalist leaders were locked in negotiations for Zimbabwes independence in England, ordinary people waited in anticipation for a breakthrough that would bring an end to years of war and destruction. With the countrys Independence Day just a week away, some Zimbabweans say the fond memories of 18th April 1980 are in stark contrast to the prevailing hardships in the country, rendering the meaning of independence worthless. Fifty-two year-old Annastacia Moyo, a Bulawayo resident, was a teenager at the height of the liberation war in the late 1970s. Mrs. Moyo had to abandon books after the mission school she was attending was closed in 1978 as the war was reaching its climax. Mrs. Moyo says she vividly remembers Independence Day in 1980 as she, along with her siblings and other locals, celebrated the birth of a new nation with excitement mixed with happiness and fervent hope for a brighter future. We were very very excited as a family because we believed Zimbabwe had come. It was my two sisters and my brother. My father had actually given in to our pressure we were teenagers at that time and we had wanted to go to Harare to meet Joshua Nkomo but had failed because of logistical problems in terms of transport. We went to Barbourfields and it was so full; people were singing and it was a hive of activity the air was filled with happiness. BETTER LIFE Mrs. Moyo draws a sharp contrast between the first independence commemoration and the ones in the recent past. She says the optimism for a better life, shared by the majority in 1980, has now turned into despair and frustration, as life has been getting increasingly tough over the years. She says many people her age feel that despite the racial discrimination, they were better off under white rule. Today it is disastrous in that there is no industry, people are not working, there is no food on the table, people are on the streets selling all sorts of things. And when they try to sell council police occasionally arrests these people who are trying to earn an honest living, so, its now painful in Zimbabwe. Our children, who are the youths just like we were at independence, are being forced to go out of the country because there is nothing for them in the motherland. I see independence as the source of all the problems that we are facing. HAPPINESS Mpho Mhlophe, another Bulawayo resident, says Zimbabwes independence brought with it a mixture of happiness and a sense of relief. Mhlophes parents had been heavily involved in the armed struggle and she along with her siblings, often had to stay with relatives, as their Pelandaba home was constantly under siege from Rhodesian security agents. For Mhlope, Independence Day was a family affair, with a number of people converging at her parents home for a get-together in honour of the day. Retired Colonel Patron Nketha Khutshwekhaya was a cadre in the Zimbabwe Peoples Revolutionary Army, or ZIPRA, the armed wing of Zapu then led by Joshua Nkomo. Khutshwekhaya operated in the northern part of the country. At the end of the war he was one of the people responsible for overseeing the movement of ZIPRA combatants into the assembly point at Rukomechi in the Zambezi valley. Khutshwekhaya spent Independence Day confined in the camp with other ex-combatants, but says there was an all-round feeling of happiness. Khutshwekhaya laments the prevailing hardships and says the fallen heroes who gave their lives for the independence of the country must be turning in their graves. There is one thing that you can feel around the country especially among the youths poverty is growing, the few who are rich are getting richer each day. People have got multiple farms and yet some people have nothing and things are not working for most people. Whilst we are celebrating, if the people who died during the war of liberation had a chance to come back, they would be very disappointed. VETERAN NATIONALIST Cephas Msipa, a veteran nationalist, who is one of the few senior former Zapu members remaining, also has a very clear recollection of independence day. Like most nationalist leaders and thousands of Zimbabweans, Msipa, who had participated in the Lancaster House negotiations in England, was at the Rufaro Stadium in the then Salisbury, where the main celebrations took place. Msipa agrees. I know speeches will be made, promises will be made but life is getting tougher for our people. Before independence we were giving people the hope that our country will be one full of milk and honey, meaning there would be enough to eat and people would be happy. But all that is not happening. The speeches we hear on independence day are just platitudes. Despite the current circumstances, there is no doubt that those who were old enough to be part of the first independence day celebrations have pleasant memories, which, most of those born after independence find hard to comprehend, owing to the problems that have been brought on by several years of economic decline. Zimbabwes central bank governor says the financial services sector imported $216 million between January and April this year in a bid to ease cash shortages but this has failed to improve the situation. John Mangudya told parliamentarians today, who was called by the parliaments finance committee to explain the current cash shortages in the country, that the central bank imported $145 million between January and April this year while six banks imported $118 million during the same period. Mangudya said only six banks down from 19 last year had imported money with Stanbic Bank accounting for the bulk of the money at $45 million. He said the central bank is taking a number of measures to improve cash problems in the country including the use of plastic money to reduce the pressure on cash supplies. Apart from importing cash, Mangudya, said there was need to boost production and craft policies that attract foreign direct investment. He added that the opening of the tobacco marketing season would improve the cash situation. He said the high cash demand was largely caused by the payment of civil servants bonuses, the importation of maize owing to the El Nino weather phenomenon and withdrawal of huge amounts for cash for speculative purposes due to lack of confidence in the banking sector. Mangudya noted that Zimbabweans are no longer keeping money in banks due to high bank charges and failure to pay meaningful interests on deposits. Current cash shortages have seen banks limiting cash withdrawals to as low as $50 as banks try to ration cash among their customers. Asked why the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe cannot revert to the use of the Zimbabwe dollar which it can easily control, Mangudya said that was out of question. Zimbabwes import bill stands at $7 billion against a $3 billion export bill and Mangudya said this could be rectified by boosting production and exports. The countrys major foreign currency earners are tobacco, gold, platinum, diamond and diaspora remittances. Clockwise from top left: Michael Caine in Jaws: The Revenge, Sally Field in The Amazing Spider-Man, Alec Guinness in Star Wars, Joan Crawford in Trog, and Bob Hoskins in Super Mario Bros. Photo: Lucasfilm, Herman Cohen Productions, Allied Filmmakers, Columbia Pictures, Universal Pictures When youre a young artist, its easy to be driven by your passion and ideals. When youre a bit older, eh, sometimes a job is a job. The kids are in college, the roof needs repairs, so why not take a gig in a genre project and pick up a few bucks? Sure, if you pick wrong you might have a miserable time, and if you pick really wrong you might appear in one of the worst movies ever, but either way, itll all be over in a few months. And after that, you can do as these 12 stars did and let everyone know what you really thought of it. Note, though, that these arent all bad performances far from it. After all, when youre an experienced thespian like the ones below, a paycheck performance doesnt necessarily have to mean low-effort. Alec Guinness, Star Wars The crowning example of this trend is Sir Alec Guinness, who apparently loathed every moment he spent as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. Though Guinnesss profit-sharing agreement meant that the film eventually made him a very rich man, he spent much of its production moaning and groaning about Obi-Wans ropy dialogue and unclear motivation. As he wrote in his diary, Apart from the money, I regret having embarked on the film. I like them well enough, but its not an acting job, the dialogue which is lamentable keeps being changed and only slightly improved, and I find myself old and out of touch with the young. A recently unearthed letter from the set reports the same sentiments. New rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper, Guinness told a friend. None of it makes my character clear or even bearable. Time did not make him more sentimental about the experience: In a memoir, Guinness told a jolly story about bringing a child to tears by asking him to never watch Star Wars again. As he summed up the incident: I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities. Ian McShane, Game of Thrones Ian McShane is bringing his swaggering charm to the upcoming season of Game of Thrones, playing a character whose identity has been kept officially under wraps. But in an interview with the BBC, the Deadwood star gave a few hints about his role, and ended up dropping a medium-size spoiler about events to come. Dont yell at him about it; he really didnt care. I was accused of giving the plot away, McShane told the Telegraph afterward. But I just think, get a fing life. Its only tits and dragons. Still, he seems to have taken the part on a lark: They said it would only be for one episode, so I said, So that means I must die at the end of it. Great, Im in. But will he be killed by a tit or a dragon? Stephen Dillane, Game of Thrones Part of McShanes initial interest in Game of Thrones came from what he thought was the opportunity to act alongside his old pal Stephen Dillane. Sadly, that was not to be, as Dillanes Stannis Baratheon was killed off at the end of season five. But what a coincidence! That same week, Dillane gave an interview to Radio Times, in which he admitted that he didnt watch the show too brutal and also revealed that he mostly took the gig for the money. Money is the main thing I got out of it, he explained. Its an odd situation. There is a kind of etiquette around these things. Still, Dillane was adamant that he didnt want to trash the fantasy series, which he called an amazing phenomenon. And besides, he had some good times on the set, praising the nice people, the craic [Irish for fun] hanging out in Belfast with [Liam] Cunningham and Carice [van Houten] and the guys from Castle Black. Learning that Stannis had a jolly good time filming GoT just makes you appreciate Dillanes acting even more, doesnt it? Sally Field, The Amazing Spider-Man Unlike most of the people on this list, Sally Field didnt take the role as Aunt May in the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man films for mercenary reasons; instead, she did it as a favor for her old producing partner, Laura Ziskin, who was dying of cancer. That didnt mean she thought it was good, mind you. As Field told Howard Stern, Its really hard to find a three-dimensional character in it, and you work it as much as you can, but you cant put ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. In other words: She didnt like it, she really didnt like it. Joan Crawford, Trog Joan Crawford appeared in nearly 100 films in her career, but of all those, only one was Trog, a terrible monster movie about a caveman rampaging around the British countryside. It would be the last film she ever did. She took the job as a favor to its producer, and negotiated a killer wardrobe budget besides, but that wasnt enough to get her to treasure the experience. Afterward, Crawford joked that only her Christian Scientist faith kept her from committing suicide after seeing her name on the marquee. I hate being asked to discuss those dreadful horror pictures I made the mistake of starring in, she said later. They were all just so disappointing to me Now you can understand why I retired from making motion pictures. Orson Welles, Transformers: The Movie Not to be outdone by Crawford, Orson Welless own final film was 1986s Transformers: The Movie, in which he voiced Unicron, a malevolent mechanical moon. Shortly before his death, Welles described the job to his biographer Barbara Leaming, his voice apparently dripping with contempt. I played the voice of a toy, he reported. Some terrible robot toys from Japan that change from one thing to another I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then Im destroyed. But if that quote gives you the impression he was bitter, well, Welless friends say thats the one word you shouldnt use. As Leaming recalled later, the director tried to have a healthy attitude about his late-in-life paycheck gigs: The thing he used to always say to me was, The one thing thats helped me to survive is that Im not bitter. This impression was seconded by Peter Bogdanovich, who told a Reddit AMA, Orson wasnt really bitter. He was very acerbic. He could be rather cutting. But I wouldnt say he was bitter. Laurence Olivier, Inchon How did Laurence Olivier, the finest actor of his generation, end up starring in Inchon, a war movie funded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon thats widely regarded as one of the worst films of all time? We dont have to guess, as Olivier gave a very candid answer in an interview on the films set. People ask me why Im playing in this picture, he explained. The answer is simple. Money, dear boy. The 73-year-old Olivier, who was paid $1 million (delivered by helicopter) to play Douglas MacArthur in the film, compared himself to a vintage wine: You have to drink me quickly before I turn sour. Im almost used up now and I can feel the end coming. With the void approaching, the only thing that mattered was making as much money for his family as possible. Nothing is beneath me if it pays well, he concluded. Ive earned the right to damn well grab whatever I can in the time Ive got left. Olivier would live another eight years, taking 15 more screen roles; his answer went on to inspire an entire TV Tropes page. Michael Caine, Jaws: The Revenge During his 50-year career, Michael Caine has been in dozens of films that, in his own diplomatic words, were not very well made. But only one of these required him to skip the Oscars: Jaws: The Revenge, which was filming in the Bahamas the day Caine won his Academy Award for Hannah and Her Sisters. He has no regrets about taking part in the Jaws sequel, in part because he famously never saw it. I have never seen it but by all accounts it is terrible, he wrote in a memoir. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific. Michael Madsen, Species II By his own reckoning, Michael Madsen has only made a handful of good films in his career. As of 2009, the count was up to six: Kill Bill, Species, Free Willy, Thelma & Louise, Reservoir Dogs, and Donnie Brasco. What about the rest? Ive made some crap, he admitted, but youve got to pay the bills. Chief among the trash is Species II, which Madsen calls a crock of st. The veteran character sees this shit-talking as part of his appeal. Im honest, he says. If Ive made a bad movie, I want my fans to know what theyre letting themselves in for. Billy Bob Thornton, Armageddon As Billy Bob Thornton recalled, he took the role of a NASA chief in Armageddon for two reasons: One, he was going through a divorce and needed a lot of money very quickly. Two, his manager told him, every actor even very serious ones should be on a bus stop every once in a while. Unlike some other actors on this list, Thornton thought it indelicate to criticize the film afterward. I got to wear a suit and tie and spout off a bunch of lingo that I didnt know what it meant, and it was great, you know? he remembered. The movie did a lot for me so I can never knock that movie Nobody should ever knock anything you get to do in your entire business because its not [like] workin in a saw mill. Charles Dance, Space Truckers, etc. Before becoming Tywin Lannister on Game of Thrones, Charles Dances patrician good looks gave him a profitable side career as the baddie in Hollywood dross like the leaden detective film China Moon, the erotic drama The Blood Oranges, and the Dennis Hopper sci-fi vehicle Space Truckers. Speaking to the Evening Standard in 1999, Dance agreed with his interviewer that his film career was full of junk. (Imagine accidentally insulting Charles Dance, and then having him agree with you.) Ive done some appalling films, he said. You do what you can with the stuff youre given. Its a misconception that actors make choices. For all but the most privileged few, the only choice is to work or not to work. Bob Hoskins, Super Mario Bros. When Bob Hoskins died in 2014, the world remembered something it had long forgotten about the beloved actor he absolutely hated being in the Super Mario Bros. movie. In an interview with the Guardian in 2007, Hoskins remembered the fucking nightmare that was the films troubled production. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent, he recalled. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fucking idiots. It was, he swore, the worst thing I ever did. Four years later, his opinion of the film remained unchanged. In a Guardian Q&A in 2011, Hoskins said the video-game adaptation was both his worst job and biggest disappointment. When asked what he would change about his past, he replied, I wouldnt do Super Mario Brothers. Catastrophe Episode One Season 2 Episode 1 Editors Rating 5 stars * * * * * Previous Next Previous Episode Next Episode Sarah Niles as Melissa, Marta Barrio as Mallandra, Daniel Lapaine as Dave, Rob Delaney as Rob, Sharon Horgan as Sharon, Gary Lilburn as Des, Frances Tomelty as Carol. Photo: Amazon When we last saw Catastrophe, Sharon (Sharon Horgan) and Rob (Rob Delaney) were having a blowout of a fight on their honeymoon, and the barbs got bad enough to raise serious doubts about their hours-old marriage. But those questions were immediately tabled with the sudden arrival of an even scarier unknown: Sharons water broke, and she was going into labor way too early. Would the baby, and by extension, their relationship, survive? The brilliant, hilarious first season of Catastrophe got a lot of mileage out of Sharon and Robs frequent passionate clashes (and even more frequent, even more passionate, um, reconciliations). Despite the appetite Horgan and Delaney (who co-write the series) have shown for finding humor and tenderness in the dark side of romance, I questioned whether theyd be able to apply such an acerbic strain of comedy to a plotline involving a premature baby. Luckily, we never have to see those scenarios play out, as Horgan and Delaney land on an ingenious workaround that allows Catastrophe to function in more or less its same comedic mode, while simultaneously pushing the series characters and narrative to the next level. Thats right! Its a time-jump, that trusty device that let us skip over Leslie Knopes pregnancy on Parks and Recreation, Nancy Botwins jail time on Weeds, and countless other jettisoned TV plotlines we never had to see. Catastrophe is a little sneaky about it, opening its second season on Rob and a tremendously pregnant Sharon together in bed, bickering about why theyre watching crappy TV (Mad Mens finished, and Game of Thrones isnt on yet, theres nothing else,) and whether Rob was threatening Sharon when he shoved her feet off of his legs. Their banter is of a slightly different caliber than what we saw in season one the sort of stuff old marrieds fight about and theres a brief mention of them living in a house Rob bought. Still, a casual viewer could be forgiven for assuming the show picks up where the pair left off, following a false labor scare. But then a toddler runs into Rob and Sharons bedroom as theyre reconciling, followed by a dog, and we realize whats happened: Years have passed, the premature child survived, and these crazy kids have somehow managed to make it work, to the point that theyre having a second child. And just like that, Catastrophe has morphed into a very different show. Not only did Sharon and Rob make it as a married couple, but they made it as parents. There will be no new baby story lines here, at least not as they apply to first-timers. No watching Rob and Sharon struggle to put on nappies, no hearing them complain about losing all of their childless friends, or any of the other million familiar beats of a new-parents-in-over-their-heads story. (We do get a labor scene, though, complete with Sharon demanding they push the baby back in and give her a Cesarean while Rob watches a little poop come out of her butt. Catastrophes back, everyone!) Rob and Sharons children are obviously going to play a major part in this season, but they will not be its raison detre and I, for one, am relieved. The first baby, whom, we learn is named Frankie, is why Rob and Sharon came together in the first place; he was both the reason for their relationship and the scariest thing about it. It was one thing for season one to mine humor from the panic and uncertainty of Frankies impending arrival, but stretching that vein of humor out over the new parent phase well, it just doesnt sound that interesting, to be honest. Instead, we get to see Rob and Sharon in a whole new context, one that would have scared them had they known it was coming when they first met: Theyre settled. Happily settled, even. (That sweet moment when Rob says good-bye to Sharon but cant kiss her over her giant belly, so he strokes her face instead, is so tender and familiar it borders on startling.) Theyre not back at square one, or even square seven, but they are back at a starting point of sorts a new normal, if you will. And the ways that new normal are upended by the appearance of baby Muireann Moron? Myron? will be very different than the ways their old normal were upended by baby Frankie. Though its only briefly hinted at here, with Robs comment about how Frankie was a dark-red, hairy-backed, four-pound monster when he arrived, it becomes clear later in this season that there was a lot of trauma surrounding his premature birth. Not the stuff comedy gold is typically spun from, so lets be glad the ordeal is far enough away for them to joke about it. At first, it seems like Rob and Sharons biggest problem following Muireanns birth will be the unwelcome, overlong presence of Robs mother, Mia (played by a thankfully returning Carrie Fisher). Mia has come to visit against Sharons wishes, and spends most of the party thrown in Muireanns honor terrorizing Sharon and her parents. (I would love to visit you in Dublin. Should I? I have an open-ended ticket ) But wacky mother-in-law high jinks are a cakewalk compared to the deep issues that surface during the party. Specifically, Sharon and Fergals father, Des (Gary Lilburn), is showing signs of dementia: He calls his daughter by the wrong name, then later wanders out of the house, leaving the door open for Frankie to slip out too. (Frankie turns out to be fine, but the family dog isnt so lucky Rob and Sharon, in their characteristically jerk-wad-y fashion, are actually a little relieved that the dog gets hit by a car, and treat it more like a hassle than a tragedy. Poor pup.) Even more alarming, Sharon seems unusually irritable throughout Muireanns party, which is saying something for someone as irritable as she is. The reason becomes clear during a shouting match with Mia. Turns out Sharons sour attitude and little comments throughout the party like whether she should pop over to Ikea while Rob handles a fussy Muireann might suggest more than her typical boorish behavior. This is the first time since Ive got here you havent slept until eleven! Mia screams. You treat Rob like a hired hand! Because its Mia doing the screaming, Sharon lashes back, calling her mother-in-law a hemorrhoid. But later on, back in bed with Rob, the truth comes out: She hasnt bonded with Muireann, and Rob wonders whether she has a touch of the ol postpartum depression. His suspicion is essentially confirmed when Sharon tells him she thinks their infant child seems manipulative, like shes plotting something. Whats interesting about this conversation is how calmly and rationally both Sharon and Rob process the revelation. (She still loves Muireann, of course more than Rob, even but doesnt feel an attachment to her.) Were they first-time parents and newlyweds, this could have been the sort of conversation that breaks them. But now that theyre experienced (and maybe even a little jaded), it doesnt seem like a world-ending thing. Its just yet another truth told, yet another problem to handle. Sharon and Rob have always been blunt with each other, but at this point in their relationship, theres a sense that theyve been through so damn much, and this is just the latest damn thing. They can handle it, and they can make each other laugh along the way. If this episode is any indication, Catastrophe will have us laughing along with them. Over the course of Catastrophe, Sharon and Rob have developed a deep, multifaceted relationship. But its important to remember that their relationship was born of casual sex, and nurtured by lots and lots (and lots) of increasingly less-casual sex. Even after a marriage, two kids, and who knows how many marital boinks, Sharon is still listed in Robs iPhone as Sharon London Sex. Just days (or hours?) before Muireanns birth, they were having a fairly vigorous and borderline-kinky quickie. Given that context, a two-and-a-half-month drought is a huge deal, and the dreaded postnatal dry spell informs most of what happens in this episode. Rob is much more outwardly bothered than Sharon by their drought, waiting only minutes after she emerges from therapy to ask if she might be ready to have sex soon. The answer Sharon gives the pills she got may make her more receptive to sex, but less able to enjoy it strikes him as a riddle, but also gets at how difficult it can be to reconcile sex with debilitating mental issues. To his credit, Rob seems understanding and accepting of Sharons needs (or lack thereof) as she struggles to achieve normalcy through the cloud of postnatal depression. For Sharon, a good day is one where she feels borderline nothing, but in a good way! Add her feelings about the state of her post-baby body she feels like a cow in a dressing gown as well as the general malaise that comes with caring for an infant, and its just as easy to understand Sharons reluctance as it is to understand Robs frustration. To be fair, these are not world-shattering insights. Many couples, both fictional and real, have gone through post-baby struggles very similar to the ones on Catastrophe. But the percentage of couples with a pre-baby sex life as robust as Rob and Sharons is well, a lot smaller. Not even wanting sex is a new experience for Sharon, and probably a scary one. Shes lost a bit of herself in motherhood, and that includes her sex drive. While Rob deals with his physical frustration in the face of Olivia (Emmanuelle Bouaziz), a hot new French temptation at work, Sharon is looking for a different sort of outside validation. Robs needs are purely physical, and he seems to recognize as much not that it makes it any easier to fend off Olivias blatant come-on. (Hey, she really liked the way he threw around that watercooler jug. I get it, Olivia.) Sharons physical disassociation seems to run deeper, and she winds up projecting her emotional needs onto her mum-group friend, Sam (Susannah Fielding). The psychology of Sharons obsession with Sam is fascinating, and rings true even as it emits a potent cloud of cringe-comedy. Sharon has a supportive and (sort of) understanding partner in Rob, but in her current state, hes not the support system she needs. Shes not only looking for someone whos been there, but who also isnt directly responsible for turning her into a black-nippled cow in a gown. (All we do is get me pregnant, she half-laughs, half-cries to Sam. What are we, farmers? What were we thinking?!) Its not much of a stretch to speculate that Sharon is projecting her dissatisfaction with motherhood onto Rob, and Sam represents an outside source of comfort without any sexual needs. (To be fair to Sharon, she does reach out to Fran and Milandra before she begins stalking Sam, so she at least tried to go the less-crazy route.) The thing is, Sams needs dont align with Sharons. Theres a low ceiling to how much Sam cares about Sharons life theyre only mum-group friends, after all and Sharon crashes through it right around the time she suggests a couples getaway to Cornwall over Easter. (Seriously, Sharon! Read the room.) Basic civility and a little bit of fear led Sam to indulge Sharon longer than is right or necessary, but shes eventually forced to break up with her would-be bestie. I dont have time for people in my life who need things, she tells her. Note the similarity between this excuse and Sharons reluctance to talk to Fergal about whats going on with their dad. If nothing else, motherhood provides a great excuse for being selfish. An incensed Sharon handles Sams rejection with much less grace than Rob had displayed in the face of her sex rejections, too. The two situations are different, of course, but they both serve to illustrate the pain that comes with not having your needs met. Its a smart juxtaposition on the part of Horgan and Delaney, who, as always, co-wrote this episode. They manage to keep the couples story lines thematically linked while also acknowledging the differences between each one, gendered and otherwise. Some needs are universal food, sleep, shelter but a persons emotional needs are specific and fluid. Just as Sharon is ready to explode, she gets something she didnt even realize she needed: a smile from Muireann. This sudden bonding between mother and daughter is exactly the sort of unexpected emotional beat Catastrophe does so well, and it winds up being the catalyst for Rob and Sharon to get back on the same page. And because this is Rob and Sharon, the way they get on that page is dark and weird and hilarious: Sharon gets turned on when Rob angrily imagines all the ways hed kill Sam and her family. (He may not have any care units left for Sharon at the end of his hard day, but hes still got plenty of hate units.) Sure, their eventual coupling probably falls in the bottom tenth percentile of all the sex theyve ever had, with Sharon basically functioning as a receptacle for a backed-up Rob. (Remember those pills shes taking ) Nevertheless, they got there because Sharon is finally able to recognize his needs and put them ahead of her own. She got something she needed from Muireann, and it allows her to be available for Rob in a way she wasnt able to before. And just like that, Sharon and Rob are a team again, albeit a team whose grounding principles are sex and contempt (mainly for the outside world, but occasionally for each other as well). That beautiful final scene, where Rob lays into Sam and her husband in the queue for the movies, showcases everything that makes these two such a strangely lovable couple. For all their performative disdain, they have a baseline love and respect for each other. The way they function may seem alien to other couples, but it works for them. Despite their history, its never been just about the sex. Lord knows it helps, though. Sookies back! Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images Melissa McCarthy may not have been asked to come back to Gilmore Girls when Netflix revived the series, but Sookie St. James sure is back now. According to TVLine, after some communication between creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and McCarthy, the Boss and Ghostbusters actress will return to Netflixs four-film spectacular. Given McCarthys busy schedule, this may just be for a cameo appearance. I know what the scene is. Ill pre-light it for her. She can drive up, run in, shoot it, and run out. I can get her in and out in two hours, Sherman-Palladino told EW about the Sookie scene shed film if given the chance. (Rumor has it that Sookie is heading to Britain soon, which is somehow less extreme than Rory becoming a teacher.) McCarthy will shoot her appearance in the coming days, TVLine writes, so now would be the time to sign up for one of those tours of the Warner Bros. lot, stage an elaborate distraction, and sneak onto the Gilmore set. Not that we condone that kind of behavior, of course. McCarthy also shared the news on Ellen. Hey, everyone! Im Rae Sanni and Im recapping this weeks crazy episode of Scandal while Phoebes away. Shell be back next week to drop gems like she always does. Lets get started! Abby has been having Fitzs former reporter bae Lillian Forrester tailed, even after the end of their affair. Smart move on Abbys part, who learns that Lillian is making suspicious hospital visits. Abby assumes that Lillian is pregnant, but is interrupted with even worse news during her admonishment of the president. Elsewhere, Mellie is celebrating her bump in the polls. Olivia tells Mellie that she thinks it would do well to pursue the Latino vote and an endorsement by Cardinal Suarez, despite the fact that Mellie is divorced and has views that dont align with the Catholic Church. Ignoring Mellies vocal concerns, Liv takes a call from a very agitated Abby. Quinn, who was staking out the hospital Lillian had visited, gives Olivia the clear to go inside and meet with a patient and its former Vice-President Andrew Nichols. Yeah, the dude who was Fitzs homeboy until he hooked up with his homeboy/bosss wife, slept with Elizabeth North, plotted a war with West Angola, staged a bombing, and kidnapped Olivia. That dude. Remember how Huck had Andrew injected him with a substance that caused a stroke and put him into a coma? Well, now he is awake, though in a wheelchair and verbally impaired, and he has some truths he wants to tell. Andrew is ready to tell the press (i.e., Lillian) that Fitz declared war solely to retrieve Olivia. Of course, Olivia is stunned; she had no idea that someone on her team had done this. Olivia threatens Andrew because she is good at that sort of stuff, then sets off to convene a meeting with Fitz, Cyrus, Mellie, Elizabeth, Abby, and David to discuss the Nichols problem. So, they all get together in some random basement kitchen. Cyrus is amused while Mellie, Elizabeth, and Fitz toss blame at one another. Its soon revealed that Cyrus has full immunity, which he negotiated into his contract when he was briefly brought back into the White House. Linda alludes to murdering Andrew, but Fitz is decent enough to say no, and Olivia lectures her as though she had nothing to do with Susan Rosss baby-daddys suicide. Abby takes control of the kitchen and decides that Mellie must use her feminine wiles to persuade Andrew. Before they leave, Abby also demands the group destroy any physical evidence that could corroborate Andrews version of events. Once hes alone with Olivia, Fitz thanks her for coming when I called. Olivia responds, You didnt call, Abby did! Its soaked in SUBTEXT the way Olitz conversations always are, but also, come on. Pretending to prioritize her friendship with Abby over her love/fascination for Fitz? LOL, no. We see a restless Olivia having a nightmare about her captivity, undoubtedly triggered by Andrews return. The next day, as she walks into work, she figures out that Huck must have been the one who poisoned Andrew. This means Huck will have to get dirty when Olivia tries to resolve the Andrew problem. Marcus, still pretty much that annoying freshman no one wants around, pops into the OPA office and is popped right back out by Olivia, who would rather commit conspiracy with Huck and Quinn. Later on, Elizabeth finds Huck and tries to get him to commit to giving Andrew another dose of whatever was in that needle. Huck refuses at first. But then he agrees, because duh. At Vargas campaign headquarters, Frank, Cyrus, and Alex watch a potential ad that features the governors heroics at the capitol shooting. Frank is uncomfortable with this depiction of himself, but Alex wants to focus on the incident. Cyrus shows up Alex by suggesting they put photos of the governors heroism out into the social-media space via grassroots means, without Frank having to tout his heroism. Frank is okay with this plan, and Alex very clearly does not like being upstaged. While Alex watches the footage from the shooting, he catches Cyruss secret bae agent Tom in the background, which piques his interest. Mellie visits Andrew at the hospital and he isnt buying what she is selling. She reminds him that he broke her heart by choosing Fitz over their relationship. He apologizes, and she wipes his spittle without gagging. Mellie, laying it on pretty thick, suggests that his recovery is a gift from God, and holds his hand affectionately. Andrew, seeing through the manipulation, demands she touch him where she used to if shes real. She aint, so he sends her on her way. Olivia visits her father, who is sharing a meal with Jake. Olivia gives them information on Lillian Forrester and asks them to tail her. Rowan hints at murdering Lillian, but Olivia opts for the keep Lillian alive choice. Rowan reminds Olivia that they arent as dissimilar as she likes to think. At the hospital, Huck sedates Andrew. Hes taken to a bunker under the White House with Abby, Huck, and Liv. Liv delivers her pitch to Andrew, and he counters with a demand of $10 million, adding that Olivia must represent him in his pursuit of a book deal. Olivia arrives at OPA, where Marcus tries to talk to her after several failed attempts to reach her by phone. Shes rude and dismissive as always, only this time, hes telling her that Cardinal Suarez has been waiting on her for 25 minutes. Jake and Rowan learn Lillian is dropping Andrews story in 48 hours, which allows Olivia to convene another basement kitchen meeting. Mellie refuses to help Fitz pay Andrews blackmail money. When Andrew is presented with a $10 million deal that includes a nondisclosure agreement and a promise to recant Lillians story, he demands the money first. Olivia agrees and instructs Huck to do his computer-hacking magic. Thats when Andrew suddenly refuses, taking pleasure at the power he holds. Once again, his voice triggers Olivias traumatic memories. In the Oval Office, Abby suggests giving Andrew a cabinet position. Fitz laments the stupidity and lack of thought he still very much displays, then proposes that he tell the American people about his Trojan War to fetch Olivia and about paying Andrew the money. Abby, reasonably worried about her own future if Fitz makes this grand gesture, goes to Liv to talk it out. Liv makes it about herself, then undermines and outright dismisses Abbys accomplishments in defense of the presidents dumb plan. She even condescendingly offers Abby a job at OPA. How sweet, friend. ABBY. IS. PISSED. She meets with Andrew and agrees to a deal that is not very smart, but her emotional desire to sabotage is entirely justified. While Mellie celebrates the news of Fitzs upcoming announcement, Jake, still listening in on Lillian, alerts Liv to a change in the story that ultimately slams Mellie. Upon hearing this, Liv bursts into Abbys office with a list of tasks, rambling on until she realizes that Abby struck a deal with Andrew. Abby finally unloads on Olivia, finishing with a big I DONT WORK FOR YOU, YOU WORK FOR ME! and then revokes Olivias access to the White House. Good for you, Abby. Youre totally wrong, but you needed this. Good for you. Back at OPA, Liv is experiencing more flashbacks when Marcus interrupts to say he sealed the cardinals endorsement. Although Olivia dismisses his work yet again, Marcus sees that she is troubled and asks how shes doing. Olivia breaks for just the tiniest flash of a second, then goes back to treating Marcus like a pest. Olivia calls Jake to get White House access, which destroys Abbys attempt at being taken seriously. Abby is elsewhere, telling Fitz that he doesnt need to confess anymore. She did her job to protect him, first and foremost. Silly Abby. Olivia visits Andrew once more and threatens him about the updated article. Andrew, vile man that he is, interrupts Olivia and asks if she is this talkative in bed. He then proceeds to slut-shame her, cruelly denigrating her worth as a woman. The rant triggers Olivias flashbacks until finally he says that he deserves revenge, a word that sends Olivia into a rage heretofore unseen. She grabs a steel chair and beats him with it, over and over. Blood splatters onto Olivias face. OH, OKAY. OLIVIA POPE DOES THIS NOW. Fitz comes down to the bunker to take care of a blood-stained Olivia because OMG subtext. After their too-long hug, Abby enters the bunker and sees the murder scene. She now understands who works for whom. Abby is told to announce the vice-presidents death and convince Lillian Forrester to kill her story. Looking deadly serious in her huge gray cape, Olivia then reminds her, Never cross me again. She sounds a lot like Rowan. Abby looks horrified. I am, too. We eventually see that Andrew Nicholss death is being reported as complications from a fall. Which isnt entirely untrue. He did fall when Olivia hit him. And then the chair kept falling on him. Quinn and Huck pick up Liv and drop her off at house, while we hear the presidents eulogy over a montage of reactions. Mellie offers condolences while standing next to the cardinal, who has just endorsed her. Cyrus watches Fitzs speech from a hotel bed with his secret agent. Troublemaking Alex, who has figured out who the man in the background of the capitol-shooting footage is, goes to Cyruss home to reveal his affair to his husband. Finally, we see Olivia greeted at the door of her fathers house by a smiling Rowan. Welcome home, he says. Olivia flashes back to the moment before her escape. In the present day, she is entering her fathers home. Thats freedom. Olivia cant fight it anymore: She is her fathers daughter. The Henry Downs Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution hosted an event honoring members of the U.S. military who were on duty during the Vietnam War. The Henry Downs Chapter is a partner with the U.S.A. Vietnam War Commemoration, which recognizes the 50th anniversary of the conflict. Veterans of that era were invited to attend the Welcome Home event on April 1 at Columbus Avenue Baptist Church. The meeting included a program by Joyce Donut Dolly Denke, followed by a presentation recognizing the veterans in attendance. Henry Downs Chapter Regent Natishua Brandt opened the ceremony with the Call to Order, an NSDAR ritual, and gave a brief statement. Chapter daughter Linda Pitzer and her husband, Vietnam veteran E. Scott Pitzer, sang the national anthem, accompanied by Lisa Robinson. Robbie Moody played Taps as members remembered those who gave their life in the conflict. Denke spoke of her service as a Red Cross Donut Dolly during the Vietnam War and recounted her days visiting the soldiers in many places in Vietnam and doing programs hosting the soldiers in talent shows, pool tournaments, jam sessions and anything to keep their morale up, she said. Henry Downs Chapter daughter and U.S. Vietnam veteran Ruth Brown presented Vietnam veterans in attendance with DAR certificates recognizing each veteran for their valor, service and sacrifice, commemorative lapel pins, and a CD of Welcome Home, Soldier by the Singing Men of North Texas. Special guests in attendance were U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, state Rep. Charles Doc Anderson, McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara, Waco Mayor Pro Tem Kyle Deaver and Dr. Stephen Sloan, director of the Institute for Oral History at Baylor. For membership information, contact Kay Wenzel at 772-0442 or gwenzel@hot.rr.com. The website is www.texasdar.org/chapters/ HenryDowns ----- Angela Granger photo Among the special guests at the Henry Downs Chapters Welcome Home event were (from left) U.S. Rep Bill Flores, retired U.S. Navy Capt. Scott Pitzer, Patricia Lee and McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara. Joyce Denke tells about her service as a Red Cross Donut Dolly during the Welcome Home event. McLennan County commissioners on Friday unanimously voted to challenge Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in an effort to continue to keep guns out of the courthouse and annex. Commissioners agreed to have attorneys take whatever action is necessary to protect the county from Paxtons command, which is backed by financial penalties. The action the county approved could include conferring with Paxton, defending litigation or filing litigation. The move comes in response to a letter from the Texas Attorney Generals Office on March 30 saying the county must remove signs at the entrances of the courthouse and annex because the weapons ban violates state law. The letter stated that the county cannot prohibit licensed handgun holders from entering an entire building simply because the courts, or the offices of the court, are located in a portion of a multipurpose building. The letter came to the county after Texas Carry Inc. informed the Attorney Generals Office that commissioners approved a new policy Dec. 23 to maintain the ban on guns in the county courthouse and annex by anyone but law enforcement. Six people spoke during the public hearing Friday prior to the vote. Half of them supported fighting to keep concealed handgun license holders from carrying in the courthouse and annex, and the other half said the county needs to follow state law and not enter litigation. Sheriff Parnell McNamara said there are places where law enforcement should be the only people to carry firearms, and that includes the courthouse and annex. McNamara said it would be dangerous to make guns and weapons available in close proximity to the dangerous criminals and violent gang members who enter the courthouse. McNamara said protecting people in the courthouse when there are individuals carrying weapons would be very, very difficult. On the other side, local attorney Wes Lloyd said he has no problem with concealed handgun licensees carrying in the courthouse because those are the least dangerous individuals. Individuals who carry must be over 21 years of age, be fingerprinted and pass a background check, he said. Lloyd said he understands the court is in a difficult position, but it would be inappropriate to litigate the issue with taxpayers money. Lloyd said the county simply needs to install a machine at the entrance of the courthouse to swipe handgun licenses as individuals enter. The order adopted by commissioners states there are myriad other legal authorities which show the attorney general to be acting well beyond the bounds of his jurisdiction and authority in violation of law and in violation of the Texas Constitution. Statutes must be interpreted to avoid unintended or absurd results, and the attorney generals interpretation would result in quite absurd and hopefully unintended results, according to the order. Judges, jurors, witnesses and others involved in the judicial process could not be adequately protected if someone is permitted to roam the same hallways, common areas, stairwells, elevators and restrooms with handguns, according to the countys order. Despite publicly opining that he does not actually know what premises of any government court or offices utilized by the court means, the Attorney General is seeking to impose against McLennan County very expensive financial penalties under a statutory scheme that provides no avenue for the County to appeal before such penalties are incurred, according to the county document. A simple reading of the clear legislative history of the actual provision at issue would inform the Attorney General of the meaning of this statutory provision and . . . the Attorney General has been repeatedly provided with this information but has refused to acknowledge or address this clear legislative intent. The order adopted by commissioners states that the legislative history shows lawmakers intended to allow weapons bans at a courthouse or any building housing a court. Kristi Stapp said shes the wife of a local attorney who practices family law and criminal law. Having seen some of the cases, Stapp asked the county fight to keep guns out of the courthouse, especially for loved ones and friends who spend so much time there. A bad decision Even the most level-headed person, when their buttons are pushed . . . can become irrational, she said. In just one split second, a bad decision can happen. CJ Grisham, Open Carry Texas president and CEO, said the law is clear. The county is holding itself to a different standard than its residents by banning licensed lawful citizens from entering the courthouse with a gun. If this court is admitting the law is confusing, well, then, the court is required to abide by the statute that is most liberating to the people, that abides by our rights, that respects our rights, Grisham said. Youre sitting here telling me that I am a potential threat? That I am a criminal? Im an Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran. I served 20 years in the Army. I worked on a counter terrorism, joint terrorism task force with all levels of law enforcement from federal to local trying to stop terrorism against the United States. Im a badged and credentialed special agent and yet you wont let me walk into this building. Grisham said the argument that violent felons walk the courthouse and might access a gun doesnt add up because those individuals should always be kept in a secure area. Local attorney Denny Lessman said allowing guns in the courthouse puts himself, his clients and their families at risk. I am one of about 100 criminal defense attorneys on a felony appointment list and I have been doing this for 12 years and, as such, I state on my own behalf that I am concerned about weapons being accessible to my clients and some of their families, Lessman said. Randall Scott Gates, of Moody, said by posting a sign banning residents from carrying where its legal, the county is breaking the law and infringing on Texas Second Amendment rights. The Constitution is not relying on having a competent sheriff who can actually provide security for the courthouse. The Constitution is not contingent on if you can make up a boogeyman so scary that weak-minded people will sacrifice their liberty for security. A wave of giggles floated up from Tennyson Middle School students Thursday as Texas Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla told a story about growing up bilingual. The group of about 300 students sat in rapt attention as Tafolla switched between English and Spanish, explaining how she would combine them as a child to create her own version of Tex-Mex. Tennyson is the 19th stop on a 20-school tour Tafolla is making statewide in a project titled Planting Poet Trees that promotes the value of literacy and writing in low-income areas. Each book you read is a new software program or game for this computer, Tafolla said, pointing to her head. Tafolla spoke about the process of writing and read excerpts of poems in the 45-minute presentation. She stressed the importance of writing honestly about your feelings. Each student has something to give, she said, and told them to find their own voices to share with the world. Im here today to encourage you to let those words out, she said. After the presentation, a group of teacher-nominated students attended a writing class taught by Tafolla. Tafolla is a native of San Antonio and has published more than 20 books. In 2012, she was named as the first poet laureate of the city of San Antonio and named state poet laureate in 2015. Tafolla grew up in the Barrio de la Tripa neighborhood, where there wasnt a library until she turned 11. I wanted books so much, she said. Tafolla said as a child, she thought she wouldnt succeed as a writer because she wasnt from New York but discovered how to reach the world when she wrote honestly about her life. Each person has a gift, she said. The right words define your life. Tennyson applied for Tafollas visit as part of a focused effort to replenish its library and promote literacy at the school, Tennyson librarian Mary McCaghren said. The school has raised about $10,000 through fundraising efforts this year to update and replenish the library, McCaghren said. Tafolla, along with speaking, gave the school $200 worth of books. Eighth-grader Ahnaya Cousin, 14, said she enjoyed the presentation, and it wasnt as boring as she thought it would be. She was really funny, Cousin said. Tennyson Principal Lisa Hall said she was thrilled with how well the students connected with Tafolla. About half the student population is Hispanic, and she hoped Tafollas life stories about growing up Latino made them feel special. Tafollas visit also exposed students to ways writing could be used as a career, Hall said. Many of the students who attended the presentation write in journals, and, Hall said, they probably dont understand the value of their writing. Those are their poems . . . and thats a beautiful thing, she said. Chapter 313 of the Texas tax code allows school districts to grant property tax relief for certain types of corporate locations and expansions. Under these agreements, schools can agree to forego taxes on a portion of the incremental value of a new facility for a certain period of time through a value limitation, thereby encouraging capital-intensive investments. First, a general note about incentives: In an ideal world, we might prefer that economic development incentives did not exist. However, in the real world they are a fact of life. Economic development is highly competitive, incentives are widely used and communities need such tools to level the playing field. I have studied economic development and related policy for about 35 years, and my firm has been involved in hundreds of studies from both the community and corporate perspectives. I have helped to shape economic development legislation on many occasions and seen the process at work, so I understand both sides of it. Companies are highly scrutinized by shareholders and investors and have a responsibility to try to control costs wherever possible, including taxes. Incentives can (and often do) spell the difference between locations or whether to go ahead with a project. Communities that want to see desirable economic growth and opportunities for residents need targeted strategies to encourage corporate locations and expansions. While incentives are only a piece of the decision process, they can be a crucial part. Texas has a comparatively high property tax burden, with much of the revenue going to school districts. Property tax agreements such as those allowed by Chapter 313 enable school districts to hold off on taxing a portion of the incremental property value associated with certain investments in new facilities for a set period of time (up to 10 years). After that time, the school taxes the full value. There are often other supplemental payments to schools by the companies during the value limitation term and the state of Texas compensates schools for foregone tax revenue. School districts always come out ahead given the way Chapter 313 works. Furthermore, to be approved, projects must be reasonably likely to generate tax revenue within 25 years which exceeds the tax revenue lost as a result of the agreement. Clearly, a well-structured decision process is needed to ensure that incentives offered are in the best interest of communities and the state. The Texas Legislature amended Chapter 313 in 2013 (effective Jan. 1, 2014) to enhance the role of the Texas comptrollers office in deciding whether to grant tax value limitations. As per the tax code, the comptroller can only approve such agreements if the limitation on appraised value is a determining factor in the applicants decision to invest capital and construct the project in this state. Schools end up with incremental revenue during the abatement period (some from the company and some from the state of Texas) and a larger tax base going forward. In addition, communities benefit from the economic activity during construction and operations, which generates tax effects irrespective of any value limitations. Like it or not, politically correct or not, Texas proactive economic development efforts over the past decade are a notable factor in the states current success. Although the oil surge has ended (at least for now), the Lone Star State is adding jobs and continuing to experience economic growth. For those of us who remember prior cycles in the oil and gas business (particularly the boom-and-bust cycle of the 1970s and 80s), the difference is notable. There are a variety of reasons for the successful diversification of the states business complex, but economic development policy has certainly played a large role. That said, there are almost certainly ways to improve on Chapter 313. Past legislative actions have amended the tax code to eliminate problems that have been identified and we can expect further tweaks in the future. However, the underlying rationale for allowing schools to agree to tax value limitations is sound and the need for such tax relief is an undeniable fact of todays competitive market for quality corporate locations and expansions. Moreover, because of the competitive landscape for desirable capital-intensive firms (which include many technology and high-end manufacturing sectors with good-paying jobs), a mechanism to reduce the property tax burden is essential. This program does not always garner the headlines of some other development initiatives but is absolutely critical to the long-term success of the Texas economy. Economist Ray Perryman is president and chief executive officer of the Waco-based Perryman Group. He received the 2013 Baylor University Distinguished Service Medal and was inducted into the Texas Leadership Hall of Fame in 2014. This week Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced his new book, Broken But Unbowed, part biography, part political tract, the latter about how we can apply the lessons Ive learned and the legal battles Ive fought to restore the Constitution and fix our countrys foundation. Some responses on his Facebook page reflect an erroneous assumption that the state of Texas was on the losing end of the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling this week on one person, one vote. The state of Texas was allied with other groups battling far-right Republicans who wanted election districts drawn based on eligible voters only. A sampling of comments: Dave Sanders: You mean the legal battles youve fought and mostly lost? Thanks for wasting our tax dollars on that. What else are we going to use it for? Infrastructure? We dont need no stinkin infrastructure. Education? We dont need no stinkin education. Seems you can even pass the bar exam without one. James Carter: You will never get a vote from me. I have been a Republican for more than 70 years. I think governors should stay out of national politics. You have or should have more important things to do and one of them is leading in the states business. Law and order would be a start. Beau Howard: And apparently youve been an idiot for over 70 years, James. Governors are supposed to be involved at the highest levels. Thats part of their job. The 10th Amendment makes it very clear. Leroy Alaniz: With all due respect, governor, Id request all proceeds made from your book be created into a fund program for displaced oil-field workers and their families. Im certain the governor of this great state of Texas is well compensated already. Whit Siever: A lot of oil-field workers are trained to rake in as much take-home pay while its there and are fully aware the job assignments are always temporary, even if it lasts for months or years. Plus their skill sets are transferable to several sectors (construction, telecom, assembly, roadwork, long-haul trucking, etc.) Theyre aware of that going in and theyll be fine in the event (oil-field work) ends abruptly. Lowell Henry: I see eight Syrians were captured trying to cross Texas border. Is this part of the fine border security Ted Cruz helped put in place? In Texas we have endured enough of non-doers. If borders do not get better soon, you, governor, will not be in office long. There is a call nationwide for better border security and Texas should have had their act together by now. Ben Lindsey: After the 8-0 Supreme Court spanking, how many reputable law schools will want this book in their library? Angie Turner: Gov. Abbott proposes amendments in his Texas Plan to Restore the Rule of Law by limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. He endorses an Article V Convention of States, a tool left to us by George Mason and the Framers for such a time. Craig Billingsley: There are reports residents of Clint, Texas, were rounded up by Jade Helm military to be microchipped or for RFID implantation. I pray this is not true. Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, a technology company, focuses in the areas of automation and digitalization in Europe, Commonwealth of Independent States, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. It operates through Digital Industries, Smart Infrastructure, Mobility, Siemens Healthineers, and Siemens Financial Services segments. The Digital Industries segment offers automation systems and software for factories, numerical control systems, motors, drives and inverters, and integrated automation systems for machine tools and production machines; process control systems, machine-to-machine communication products, sensors and radio frequency identification systems; software for production and product lifecycle management, and simulation and testing of mechatronic systems; and cloud-based industrial Internet of Things operating systems. The Smart Infrastructure segment offers products, systems, solutions, services, and software to support sustainable transition in energy generation from fossil and renewable sources; sustainable buildings and communities; and buildings, electrification, and electrical products. The Mobility segment provides passenger and freight transportation, such as vehicles, trams and light rail, and commuter trains, as well as trains and passenger coaches; locomotives for freight or passenger transport and solutions for automated transportation; products and solutions for rail automation; electrification products; and intermodal solutions. The Siemens Healthineers segment develops, manufactures, and sells various diagnostic and therapeutic products and services; and provides clinical consulting services. The Siemens Financial Services segment offers debt and equity investments; leasing, lending, and working capital financing solutions; and equipment, project, and structured financing solutions. Siemens Aktiengesellschaft was founded in 1847 and is headquartered in Munich, Germany. Your Ultimate Investing Toolkit Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools: Portfolio Monitoring Top Stock Lists Premium Reports Stock Screeners Live News Feed Premium Support Free for your first month. The worst of the commodity price collapse is probably already over for materials including metallurgical coal, aluminium, zinc, lead and gold, Credit Suisse analysts led by Matthew Hope wrote in note dated Friday. The outlook for steel demand in China is also improving on the prospects for additional government infrastructure spending, the analysts wrote. Export earnings will rise by almost a third to $208 billion by fiscal 2021, the government's Department of Industry, Innovation and Science estimated Friday in a quarterly report , after tumbling to a third straight annual decline in the current fiscal year. The commodity rout looks set to hit a bottom with Australia, a key bellwether for the global mining industry, forecasting the value of its commodities exports will resume rising from the second half of this year. Despite falling prices and slower growth in China, iron ore will continue to provide the largest share of export earnings, accounting for $71.6 billion in 2021, with revenue also boosted by a tripling of liquefied natural gas export volumes and a 71 per cent surge in uranium cargoes. Commodity demand will be underpinned by urbanisation and industrialisation in emerging economies, the department said. "There are some big volumes coming on line from this year," said Justin Smirk, a senior economist at Westpac. "If you think that this year will be as bad as it gets for prices, then it's quite reasonable to think that by 2017 there be a higher total value of exports." Five years Iron ore prices are set to rise for the next five years, increasing to $US56 a metric ton next year and $US64.70 in 2021, the department estimated. The commodity has staged a surprise rebound in 2016 as China's policy makers signalled they're prepared to support growth in their economy, which is the largest user of iron ore. Australia is the world's largest exporter of iron ore and coal and is projected to become the biggest exporter of LNG in the next five years. It holds the biggest known reserves of uranium and ranks among the world's top five owners of deposits of copper, gold, bauxite, lead, zinc, nickel and lithium. China accounts for about 54 per cent of its mining exports and the central bank has urged Australia to find new growth drivers. Australia, the world's top iron ore shipper, is bullish about prices for the next five years even as China produces less steel. Iron ore will average $US45 ($A60) a metric ton in 2016, the Department of Industry said in a quarterly outlook on Friday, raising its outlook from $US41.30 projected in December. As high-cost miners close, Australian producers will boost shipments, and prices will rise to $US56 next year, $US61.40 in 2018 and keep on rising to $US64.70 in 2021, the department estimated. The commodity has staged a surprise rebound in 2016 as China's policy makers signalled they are prepared to support growth in the largest user. While the advance has not swayed many sceptics, with banks including Goldman Sachs reiterating bearish forecasts, Australia projects that its giant low-cost producers, together with Brazil's Vale, will claim a greater share of global trade and prices will climb. "The increased exports is a result of continued closures in the Chinese domestic industry," said Daniel Hynes, senior commodity strategist at ANZ Banking Group in Sydney. "This is a fair assessment of the market over the medium to longer term," he said, citing the price outlook. Not all of us struggle. But I find myself in good company. Two-thirds of Australian adults today are overweight or obese. One in four Aussie kids, too. High body mass has overtaken smoking as a risk factor for ill health and premature death, according to the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare. As the world celebrated World Health Day on Thursday, the World Health Organisation released a report showing the number of people with diabetes has quadrupled since 1980 to 422 million. The only Australian contributor to the report, Professor Stephen Colagiuri, says government intervention such as a sugar tax is needed. He likened the problem to cigarette consumption or road safety. "Leaving the changes to be made on a voluntary basis simply doesn't work," Professor Colagiuri says. At its heart, obesity is the result of a simple imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure. We move less, we eat much more, and we put on weight. The science is simple. But the factors that drive people to eat more or move less are multifaceted and variable. So tackling our weight problem as a society will also require a multifaceted response. Economists are turning their mind to the battle. Economics is, after all, the study of optimal decision-making. Economists' usual dilemma is decision-making under conditions of scarcity. But their insights can apply just as well to conditions of abundance. If a resource is too freely abundant, its price will be low and there will tend to be overconsumption. The simplest solution is to raise the price. That is why governments, most recently in Britain, have introduced sugar taxes to discourage consumption and to raise some handy revenue. Sugar has joined tobacco and alcohol in the range of goods to which "sin" taxes apply. But such a tool has its limits. It is entirely possible to become overweight through excess consumption of burgers, chips and pizza, consumption of which is not altered by a sugar tax. Another way to change prices would be to lower the cost of good health behaviours and fresh foods. Perhaps, come tax time, you could earn a discount on the Medicare levy if you could show evidence of gym attendance three times a week. People identified as being at risk of diabetes could get free food vouchers to spend on fruit and vegetables. Prices, of course, are the outcome of the forces of supply and demand. On the supply side, there is not much that can be done without banning sweets and treat meals entirely. Basically the capitalists are out to profit from giving you love handles. They won't stop until consumers no longer desire their products. Of course, our ancestral brains are always going to crave sugar, fat and a little salt. But it is on this demand side of the equation where much work could still be done. Banning of advertising of junk foods and drinks could go much further. I suspect we will one day find advertisements for sodas as distasteful as cigarette advertising. But at a more fundamental level, many people remain remarkably ignorant of the energy content of the foods they eat, and, crucially, how this compares with their actual need. Schools should teach not just the food pyramid, but how to determine your daily energy needs and how this compares to the energy content of common foods. Economists call it a problem of "information asymmetry". Food producers know the content of their products, but consumers often know relatively little. This should be backed up by clear and concise calorie labelling. The Victorian government is to be praised this week for eventually deciding to introduce kilojoule labelling (I prefer calories, because they involve smaller figures) in fast food outlets, which already exists in NSW. Calorie labelling is controversial. First introduced in the US, initial evidence was sketchy that it drove lower overall consumption of calories. You might order less over the counter but make up for it with a chocolate bar at home. A study released last month in the US titled Who Benefits from Calorie Labelling? An Analysis of its Effects on Body Mass found the introduction of calorie labelling in different countries had no significant impact on the body mass of women, and resulted in only a small reduction for men. However, particular sub-groups were highly sensitive to calorie labels, leading to large body mass reductions for overweight women and overweight and obese men. "These results suggest that overweight and obese individuals are especially sensitive to relevant information," the researchers found. I'm not going to lie, friends: up until last night I thought technophobic hyperbole about the imminent rise of the machines was nothing more than the ranting of paranoid freaks. Sure, there have been huge strides in artificial intelligence in recent times, from natural language chatbots to Apple's phone robot Siri to Facebook's weirdly targeted ads. However, each of those systems have certain undeniable flaws. And artificial intelligence is a popular thing about which to irrationally panic, thanks to half a century of warnings about the robopocalypse. Films have been clear about this, whether it's HAL's strident anti-pod bay door agenda in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the time-travelling murderbots of the Terminator franchise or the dystopian nightmare of having Scarlett Johansson trapped inside your computer in Her (not to be confused with the genuinely terrifying Scarlett Johansson machine some Hong Kong roboticist recently built for reasons we should definitely not think about too deeply but all immediately assume). Noah Taylor with his untitled paintings at his new exhibition at Lindberg Galleries. Credit:Simon Schluter "Everyone in my family is a published author," he says. Best known as an actor, starring in the 1996 film Shine and more recently appearing in TV mega-hit Game of Thrones, he's also a musician who has toured with his band and, after exhibitions in London and Sydney, is gaining a reputation as an artist to watch. Noah Taylor, Untitled No. 2, 170 x 100cm. Credit:NOAH TAYLOR Now the Melbourne-raised Taylor, who has lived in the UK for two decades, is showing his art at Collingwood's Lindberg Galleries, his first exhibition in his home town. Gallery director David Moulday cold-called Taylor after seeing his paintings and was delighted he agreed to create new works specifically for the untitled show. The bulk of the paintings are small, colour portraits of characters who look like they could inhabit the pages of a graphic novel (a result, perhaps, of his interest in comics, an influence even more pronounced in an earlier large black and white work at the gallery). Praise has flowed thick and fast for West Australian's premier wine region in recent years but Margaret River has now been given an unmatched stamp of approval from the world's most powerful voice in wine. American Robert Parker has been the world's most powerful wine writer since the 1980s for his ability to influence wine purchases. A recent review of Cullen's top wines on his website has elevated them into the realms of Australia's greatest cabernets and chardonnays, ever. Virginia Willcock is making cabernet sexy again at Vasse Felix. It took some time for Australian wine writers to acknowledge that cabernet and chardonnay grown out of Margaret River was the best in the land but these wines have now achieved unparalleled ratings from the world's most influential wine source. It's enough to make the interstate wine clan spit it. 1. 60 Minutes crew detained in Lebanon over dramatic child-snatch operation Tara Brown and her television crew are in Lebanon to document Australian mother Sally Faulkner's operation to retrieve her two children from Beirut, where their father took them for a holiday last year. Lebanese media is reporting the two children were snatched at a bus stop by armed gunmen who assaulted the children's paternal grandmother in a dramatic operation that appears to have been caught on camera. Police tracked down the media crew, but not Ms Faulkner and her children. Beirut: Islamic State fighters have kidnapped scores of workers in an area northeast of Damascus after launching an attack on government forces there this week, Syrian state television and a monitoring group said on Thursday. State TV quoted the industry ministry as saying 300 workers and contractors of Al Badia Cement were taken from near the town of Dumeir and that the company had lost all contact with them. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights later gave a figure of around 170 workers who had been abducted from the cement factory and taken to undisclosed areas controlled by the militants in the Damascus suburbs. Caracas: Venezuela has declared Fridays a non-working day to help the country arrest a power crisis brought on by the weather. The South American country relies on hydroelectric power generation, with one dam alone supplying 75 per cent of the electricity consumed in the capital Caracas. But a prolonged drought has water levels reduced to a critical threshold. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gestures as he speaks during a march in Caracas, on Thursday. Credit:AP President Nicolas Maduro hopes that by reducing power consumption one day each week in the months of April and May, Venezuelans will reduce overall electricity consumption by 20 per cent. The leftist government's official gazette said the move applies to government workers and excludes the food sector, but Mr Maduro implied others should join the long weekends plan. Patrick Norman Pat Chapman is a 34-year-old, Caucasian male who was last known to be in Piedmont which is near the area of Greenville, Missouri on May 10, 2020. Pat had stayed the night with a friend and his wife at their home. In the early morning when the friend woke to go to work. Pat was gone in his own Burgundy color 1995 Ford Escort. That is the last anyone was known to have seen him. The vehicle was later recovered on May 29, 2020 in Mill Spring, Missouri. Bharani - Kodungallur Bharani festival dedicated to goddess Kali, is celebrated at Sree Kurumba Bhagavathy Temple located at Kodungallur, Trichur district, one of the grandest and ancient temples in Kerala. It is also one of the first temples in Kerala which removed the restrictions of caste and religion, and permitted devotees belonging to lower strata of the caste hierarchy entry to the temple premises, when other temples barred their entry round the year. The Bhagawati temple houses many peculiar beliefs and customs. The goddess presiding over the temple at Kodungallur is known as the Sri Kurumba Bhagavati. The word 'Kuruppa' in Malayalam denotes small-pox and it has some affinity with the name in which the goddess is known. The goddess is believed to preside over the disease small pox. The festival Bharani comes in the Malayalam month Meenam which corresponds to March-April. Bharani is the second asterism of the lunar month and that is the most important day of the festival. The festival observed in goddess Bhadrakali's honour is mostly celebrated by the low-caste Avarnas, to celebrate the goddess's victory over the demon Daarika. A large congregation of Velichappad (oracles), both men and women come to participate in this peculiar festival. The Godess as Kali and her dependants are supposed to revel in their greed for blood. The shedding of blood by the sacrifice of a large number of cocks form a distinguishing feature of this festival. The festival officially opens with the ritual 'Kozhikkallu moodal' on the Thiruvonam day of the month of Meenam. The ritual involves sacrificing a cock on a red silk cloth placed near two stones that stand covered with sand outside the line of circumambulation, in the northern precincts of the temple. The members of the Kodungallore Bhagavathy family has the right for performing the ritual. The first cock is offered by the Thacholi clan, the ancestors of the popular hero Thacholi Othenan from Vadakara in North Kerala. The ceremony symbolizes the beginning of the fight between the goddess and the demon. After the cock stone ceremony, Venad flags are hoisted on a peepal tree in the north eastern corner of the temple by Edamukku Moopan's symbolizing the relation between Venad and the temple. Pilgrims flock to Kodungallur from all parts of Kerala bringing with them offerings of rice, salt, chillies, betel leaves and nuts, turmeric, pepper and a number of cocks. It is believed that pilgrimages undertaken to the temple on this occasion is enough to safeguard the pilgrims and their friends and relatives from the perilous attacks of cholera and small-pox. Most of them make their offerings and return home before the Bharani day. 'Kavu Theendal', (the pollution ceremony) is the most important event of the Bharani festival and is celebrated on the Aswathy day of the month. It is overseen by the King of Kodungallur. Hordes of vellichappads (oracles) including women who have arrived from other parts of the state assemble at various spots in the temple compound. A red ceremonial umbrella is unfolded over the king's head. This is the signal to begin the ritual. The vellichappads in their red attire charge around the temple in a mad rush, waving their sabres in the air, while members of their retinue strike the temple roof beam with sticks and hurl objects including cocks over the roof on to the inner quadrangle. Their cry of nada- nada-a is varied by terms of unmeasured abuse leveled at the goddess of the shrine. This abusive language is supposed to be acceptable to her. The offerings by devotees include turmeric powder, kumkum, pepper etc and the cocks. A particular spot inside the temple is set apart for the distribution of Manjal Prasadam (turmeric powder on which divine blessings have been invoked). Some of the devotees anoint themselves with turmeric, some others dance and sing abusive songs while some of the oracles hit themselves with the sabre and start bleeding. The velichappads and their followers circle the temple three times in a frenzy and then fall before the king for his blessing. The temple is then closed to the public for a week. Its doors reopen after the 'purificatory' rituals are conducted to cleanse the shrine of the 'stain' of Kavu Theendal. The purificatory ceremony is conducted on Kartika day, the next day after the Bharani. The premises of the temple and its vicinity are swept clean and the wells purified. In the evening, the eastern door is opened and the inner precincts are swept clear. The Nampootiri priests go in and perform the 'punnyaham' or purificatory ceremony and give away Pasu Dhanam or gift of cows as an adjunct of the purificatory ceremony. The usual daily poojas are resumed from the next day onwards. A large number of devotees attend this pooja as it is esteemed a great merit to worship when the shrine is opened after the festival. The pilgrims take home the 'prasada' consisting of sandal paste mixed with turmeric and a black paint of burnt rice known as 'chantu'. Mohamed Abrini ist gefasst worden. Abrini soll im engen Kontakt zu den Drahtziehern der Anschlage von Paris gestanden haben. Es konnte sich bei ihm um den ominosen Mann mit Hut handeln. Der mutmaliche Paris-Attentater Mohamed Abrini ist gefasst. Das meldet die belgische Generalstaatsanwaltschaft. Es habe "mehrere Festnahmen" im Zusammenhang mit den Anschlagen in Brussel gegeben. Anzeige Bei den Ermittlungen zu den islamistischen Anschlagen von Brussel hat die belgische Polizei weitere Verdachtige festgenommen. Wie die Staatsanwaltschaft mitteilte, erfolgten die Zugriffe im Laufe des Freitags. Anzeige Nach unbestatigten Informationen handelt es sich bei einem der Festgenommenen um den den dritten Attentater vom Flughafen. Er wurde bis zuletzt als der Mann mit dem Hut gesucht. Mohamed Abrini ist in Belgien gefasst worden. Wie die Staatsanwaltschaft mitteilte, erfolgten die Zugriffe im Laufe des Freitags Quelle: AP Anzeige Der Mann soll nach Medienangaben ein Belgier namens Mohamed Abrini sein. Der 31-Jahrige wurde wegen seiner mutmalichen Beteiligung an den Anschlagen in Paris bereits vor langerem auf die Fahndungsliste von Interpol gesetzt. Abrini wurde im Stadtteil Anderlecht festgenommen, ebenso Osama Krayem, 24, der aus Malmo stammen soll und laut belgischen Medienberichten 2014 auf Facebook behauptet hatte, in Syrien gewesen zu sein. Osama Krayem konnte laut Sender VRT der Mann gewesen sein, der bei dem Anschlag in der Brusseler Metro mit dem Selbstmordattentater Khalid El Bakraoui gesehen wurde und entkommen konnte. Osama Krayem wurde aufgrund von Bildern gefasst, die ihn beim Kauf von Sporttaschen im Einkaufszentrum City 2 zeigen. Die Taschen wurden beim Anschlag verwendet. Abrinis DNA liefert moglicherweise entscheidenden Hinweis Anzeige Auch Abrini soll in Syrien gekampft haben. Er war kurz vor den Pariser Anschlagen mit Salah Abdeslam in der franzosischen Hauptstadt gefilmt worden. Letzterer ist der einzige Uberlebende des Kommandos vom 13. November. Abrini wurde vor 31 jahren als altestes von drei Kindern in Molenbeek-Sant Jans geboren. Sein Leben bewegte sich zwischen Gewalttaten und Gefangnisaufenthalten. Mit 18 Jahren wird er erstmals wegen eines Raububerfalls verurteilt: 1 Monat Gefangnis. 2004 dann ein schwerer Einbruchdiebstahl, 4 Monate Gefagnis. 2006 und 2007 geht seine kriminelle Karriere weiter: Einbruch, Diebstahl mit Gewaltanwendung , Bandenkriminalitat. 2008 geht er fur vier Jahre in den Bau. Bis zum Sommer 2012. Dann versucht er sein Leben zu andern. Anzeige Anzeige Er sucht sich Arbeit, er eroffnet eine Sandwicherie in Molenbeek. Aber er schafft es nicht. Er geht 2014 und 2015 wieder zweimal wegen verschiedener Delikte ins Gefangnis. Im Juni 2015 fahrt er in die Turkei, von wo er sich nach Syrien abgesetzt haben soll. Abrinis DNA ist offenbar in der Wohnung im Stadtteil Schaerbeek gefunden worden, in der die Anschlage vorbereitet wurden. Daher ruhren die Spekulationen bei Abrini konnte es sich um den Mann mit Hut handeln. Abrini ist ein wegen Diebstahls und Drogendelikten vorbestrafter Extremist und ein Freund Abdeslams aus Kindheitstagen in Molenbeek. Sein jungerer Bruder Souleymane wurde 2014 als Kampfer einer Gruppe der Dschihadistenmiliz IS unter Fuhrung des mutmalichen Paris-Drahtziehers Abdelhamid Abaaouds in Syrien getotet worden sein. By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 07, 2016 | 11:46 PM | MAYFIELD, KY National Library Week is April 10th through the 16th. The Graves County Public Library will celebrate by having an entire week without fines. Yes everything you return April 10th through the 16th will have zero fines. This does not include fines that have already been incurred. They will also give out free replacement cards for national library week. In addition there will be a giveaway for an Applebee's Gift card and a contest for guessing how much candy is in a jar. Stop by anytime that week and show your love for the library. If you have any questions call 270-247-2911. The Graves County Public library has a few very exciting new programs free for the public. Every first Monday of the month we will have a Lego program at 5:30 pm. We will also have mommy daughter date night every first Tuesday of the month at 5:30 pm. Make sure you call the library to find out what craft mommy daughter duos will create each month. If you have any questions call the library at 270-247-2911. The Graves County Public Library will host family movie night on Tuesday April 12th at 5 pm. Join organizers to watch a movie that is out of this world. See a film with the classic narrative of good vs. evil only it is amongst the stars. Free Drinks and Popcorn will be served. Children under the age of 10 should be with someone over the age of 15. If you have any questions call 270-247-2911. The Graves county public library will have a bird feeder craft on Saturday April 16th at 10:30 am. They will have a few different types of DIY bird feeders for you to create. All supplies will be provided and everyone is welcome. If you have any questions contact the library at 270-247-2911. The Graves County Public library will host the Kentucky author Angela Correll on April 18th at 1 pm. Correll has recently released her second book Guarded. It is a continuation of Annie Taylors story from her first book Grounded. The graves county public librarys book clubs will meet to discuss her new book, but the public is invited to attend as well. She will have books for purchase and a signing afterwards. Dont miss this special event which is free for the public. If you have any questions contact the library at 270-247-2911. Do you have a favorite book? Would you like to share that book with a new friend? If so, come on Monday April 18th starting at 5:30 pm to the Graves County Public Library for a special program called Book BFFs. Its like speed dating but to find friends who share your love of books and literature. Bring your favorite book with you and be prepared to tell someone in two minutes why you love it. Everyone is welcome so you wont want to miss it. If you have any questions call the library at 270-247-2911. Do you enjoy playing board games as a family? The Graves County public library will host Family Game night on Tuesday April 19th from 5 to 7 pm. Spend some time as a family playing games such as Uno, Monopoly, Blink, Apples to Apples Jr., and Clue. They will also have a Wii set up to play console games. Kids under the age of 10 should be with an adult. If you have any questions call 270-247-2911. The friends of the Graves County Public library invite you to their our semi-annual friends book sale. It will be Friday and Saturday April 22nd and 23rd as well as the following week from 9 am to 5 pm. It will be in the meeting room at the Graves County Public Library. Tell your friends and neighbors to stop by and stock up on great books at a bargain price. If you have any questions call 270-247-2911. A pair of bodies discovered in Kentucky Lake this week By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 07, 2016 | 06:19 PM | LA CENTER, KY The 2016 Emotions in Motion 5k run and walk is Saturday, April 9 in LaCenter, KY.This 5k will raise money for the organization Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE). For information about SAVE visit: www.save.org. Registration is available online until 5:00 pm on April 8, or beginning at 8:00 am on race day. Cost is $20 for adults in the 5k run or walk, or $10 for those 12 or under. Entry fee includes a t-shirt.Meagan Pickett organized the event and told the Greg Dunker Show she has been affected three times in her life by someone who attempted or committed suicide. The first was a teenage friend who thankfully survived, but told Pickett later that she didn't know how to be happy like Meagan was."It hurt me, too because I saw her every day, she appeared happy, we were good friends, and to think someone wouldn't come to you with that. And that's one of the reasons this event is so important - to learn that sometimes you have to approach them," Pickett said.The youth 1-mile run is at 8:45 am, the 5k begins at 9:00 am, and the walk begins at 9:15am.Lots of resources will also be available, including information on how to decrease the stigma of depression or mental illness, and help with suicide prevention.The course is a large loop of the city of La Center. It begins and ends in front of the Ballard County Preschool. At this location there will be a resource fair for mental health and suicide prevention. Top-notch timing will be provided by Rhythm Run, and awards will be given to the top finishers.Awards will be given to the top three boys and top three girls in the youth 1-mile run. Awards for the 5k run will be given to the top three males and top three females in the following age categories: 15 and under, 16-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50 and up. There will also be a special award for the first place overall male and female.For more information, email Meagan at m.3.pickett@gmail.com or click the link below. By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 06, 2016 | 03:56 PM | AURORA, KY After delaying opening of the New U.S. 68/KY 80 Eggners Ferry Bridge, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet engineers say moving 2-lane traffic to the new structure is back on for this afternoon.Transportation officials had expected the move to come this morning. However, last night they announced weather and a number of other factors combined to delay for what was expected to be a few days. Meanwhile, the contractor and bridge design engineers continued working through the night and into this morning to finish out a number of critical items, including tensioning of the bridge support cables.According to KYTC District 1 Public Information Officer Keith Todd, they concluded only two of the cables would require adjustments.Once engineers calculated the remaining cable adjustments, they concluded the work could be completed in a matter of hours instead of days. That put us back on track to get the new bridge open today, Todd said. Fairly calm winds in the forecast for this morning also made it possible for adjustments on the final 2 cables to be completed by about Noon, today.Todd says he now anticipates 2-lanes of traffic can be moved to the new bridge by mid-afternoon.A crew is cleaning the westbound lanes of the new bridge this morning. We fully expect traffic striping to be applied, and other final arrangements to be completed, today. That puts us on schedule to move 2-way traffic to the new structure sometime between about Noon and 3:00 p.m., today, Todd added.No formal ceremony is planned for this initial move to 2-way traffic. Officials are planning a public event when the bridge eventually opens to 4-lane traffic later this year.Rain and windy weather had hampered progress this week as the contractor focused on finishing concrete barriers, installing guardrail end treatments, diamond grinding the deck driving surface, completing a final inspection of paint, as well as checking tension on the deck support cables.The contractor expects to start removing the deck from the old bridge within about a week of established 2-way traffic on the new bridge. An explosives team plans to be at the site next week for initial survey work to help with the demolition planning on the old bridge.The existing U.S. 68/KY 80 Eggners Ferry Bridge initially opened to traffic in March 1932. Approximately 3,000 vehicles cross the existing Eggners Ferry Bridge daily.In January 2012, a 322 ft. span of the Eggners Ferry Bridge was struck and knocked into the Kentucky Lake by the Delta Mariner cargo ship. KYTC engineers developed plans to rebuild the missing span and restore traffic to the bridge in 17 weeks. The existing Eggners Ferry Bridge was reopened to traffic in 2012 prior to Memorial Day.Johnson Brothers Corporation of Ft. Worth, TX, a Southland Company, is the prime contractor on the $133 million Eggners Ferry Bridge project. Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 08, 2016 | MURRAY, KY By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 08, 2016 | 11:11 AM | MURRAY, KY While he awaits sentencing on three felony convictions from last week in McCracken County, Jerry Walker is now in Calloway County Jail. Commonwealth Attorney Mark Blankenship told West Kentucky Star that he filed a motion to set aside a diversion of Walker's 2012 10-year sentence on a tampering with evidence guilty plea related to a 1998 Murray State University dormitory fire, in which another student was killed. Blankenship also requested a warrant for Walker's arrest. Blankenship said when the arrest warrant was obtained, the Calloway and McCracken County Sheriff's Departments worked together as Walker turned himself in Thursday. He was transferred to Calloway County Jail, where he will wait until his April 19 hearing in Calloway Circuit Court. Since Walker was convicted Friday in McCracken County on perjury, tampering with a witness and tampering with evidence charges related to a Paducah City Schools dismissal hearing, his 2012 diversion can be revoked, forcing him to serve the upcoming sentence as well as the previous one. Walker will be sentenced on Friday's convictions in July. A jury recommended one year for each charge. Blankenship said that means Walker could now serve 13 consecutive years in prison. He would be eligible for parole after serving 15 percent of the sentence. Walker was acquitted twice for setting the 1998 Murray State fire that killed student Michael Minger, but pleaded guilty to six counts of tampering with evidence 14 years later. By The Associated Press Apr. 08, 2016 | 11:10 AM | FRANKFORT, KY A spokesman for Andy Beshear says the Democratic Attorney General will not file a lawsuit against Republican Gov. Matt Bevin before Monday. Last week Bevin ordered midyear budget cuts of 4.5 percent at all colleges and universities. That means those institutions will have $41 million less to spend than the legislature intended. Beshear says Bevin's action is illegal. He gave the governor seven days to rescind his order or face a lawsuit. Beshear spokesman Terry Sebastian says that timeline ends at close of business Friday. College funding is a key disagreement between House and Senate leaders in crafting a two-year state budget plan. Negotiations are continuing but Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo says the two sides are at an impasse. Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 08, 2016 | TOMPKINSVILLE, KY By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 08, 2016 | 01:29 PM | TOMPKINSVILLE, KY Former Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer announced today that the National Rifle Association has endorsed his campaign for Congress in Kentucky's First Congressional District. Comer is running to replace retiring Congressman Ed Whitfield in the May 17th Republican primary. In their letter of endorsement, Chris Cox, the chairman of the NRA's Political Victory Fund, said Comer is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, and is committed to defending the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens "by opposing the gun control agenda promoted by President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg." Cox also acknowledged Comer's co-sponsorship in 2012 as a Kentucky State Representative of the Right to Fish and Hunt Act and his support of immunity from prosecution in lawful use of force. "As an avid sportsman and strong defender of the Constitution, I'm honored to receive the NRA endorsement," Comer said. "The NRA endorsement is the single biggest and most coveted endorsement in the entire Congressional race, and it will ensure that my overwhelming campaign momentum continues through May 17th." Comer has received an A rating from the NRA. In a press release, one of Comer's opponents, Mike Pape, blasted the NRA for their endorsement during a primary instead of a general election. Pape said the establishment has been "twisting arms" to line up support for Comer, who he calls "a career politician without a job". Pape has not held office, but he has worked for Congressman Ed Whitfield for his entire 21-year term in office. Comer's other primary opponent, Jason Batts, has not commented on the NRA endorsement. 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. We understand the world by association. Our brains make connections, linking labels to experiences, and those connections shape our idea of the world. The process never stops, but it slows as we age. Our brains become hardwired. They can't keep up with the changing world. Eric (Stephen Rea) is an old Ulster loyalist, living in a Northern Ireland that's changed beyond all comprehension. Sat in a psychiatrist's office, blinking blankly and shrinking into his collar, he looks lost. It's not clear why he's there, but it's clear he should be. The sort of man who calls a spade, a spade (and a young, black woman, "a nigger"), Eric calls it as he sees it. He deals in definites, too. Presented with his newborn granddaughter, for example, he objects to his daughter's cooing, insisting that there's no way of knowing whether she really is "the best wee baby in the whole of Belfast." Catholics, to him, are still Fenians. For most of his life, they were the enemy: masked men that might burst into your house and shoot you dead in front of your family. It's hard to reconcile that with peace, as young Catholics and Protestants mix freely. So, when he takes a closer look at his granddaughter, he gets a shock. She's the spit of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. He draws on a black marker beard just to be sure one of the most deliciously wicked images in theatre of late then sets out to sort the situation out. There's a frazzled lunacy to David Ireland's black comedy. He writes with a McDonagh-ish mischief, toying with taboos and a violent absurdity. This is a play in which balaclava-wearing hitmen burst into Aswad's "Don't Turn Around" and old sectarian songs become lullabies. The play spins itself into a tizz getting a bit knotted in the middle until it pops with an altogether unexpected ending. The brilliance of Rea's performance is that he never lets on until it's too late. He's harmless and confused to start, squinting to make sense of the world, and he shares his suspicions with us like a gossipy fishwife, all conspiratorial relish. As Eric gets more mixed-up, Rea becomes volatile as a blender at full blast and, by the end, he manages to be meek and monstrous at once. That ambiguity is carefully controlled. Cyprus Avenue is an "avenue of trees" in East Belfast (as Van Morrison put it); so leafy it doubles as urban space and woodland. Ireland argues that contemporary Northern Ireland is similar both British and Irish at once. For Eric, who built his identity insisting one not the other, that's too much not least at an O'Neills pub in a London that's embraced all things Irish, despite the IRA bombs of the '80s, for the craic. ("Then came Riverdance" Eric sneers.) Rea drops to his knees, light-headed with his loss of identity, pained by the erosion of Ulster's culture. Vicky Featherstone's production plays up the tangy comedy, with Chris Corrigan superb as a gabbling gunman, but it lets the sadness of Eric's situation seep through in its own time with a tender sense of sympathy. Wunmi Mosaku picks her words with modulated calm as Eric's psychiatrist, but, as Lizzie Clachan's muddied cream carpet makes clear, nothing is as neat as it looks. "You have to make peace with the violence inside." Cyprus Avenue runs at the Royal Court until 7 May. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2016 (2390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. TORONTO Ontarios Liberals deflected calls for a public inquiry into their fundraising practices Thursday by accusing the Opposition of raising issues in the legislature on behalf of donors to the Progressive Conservative party. Deputy premier Deb Matthews called it pretty strange that the first bill introduced by PC Leader Patrick Brown after he was elected as an MPP was to lower estate taxes. The only people who would be advocating for that are the tax planners, and hes got substantial donations from those tax planners, she said. Brown also asked questions in the legislature about doctors pay after the Ontario Medical Association sponsored a PC convention, added Matthews. The OMA sponsors the party convention and the next thing you know, theyre standing up, demanding that doctors be paid more, she said. What Im saying is theyre asking what I consider questions that dont serve the public interest, but do serve the interests of their big donors. Brown called the Liberals desperate, and said theyre trying to dodge, deflect and deny instead of allowing a public look into fundraising quotas of up to $500,000 that were imposed on each Liberal cabinet minister. Theyre stunned by media reports that show they turned government business into a money-making machine for the Liberal party, he said. The reason that they dont want to answer the question on a public inquiry is because they are petrified of it. The Liberals made it clear they dont want an inquiry similar to Quebecs Charbonneau commission, which found corruption in the awarding of government contracts in that province. Matthews called the idea of an a big diversion. The Liberals have already cancelled all private fundraisers for Premier Kathleen Wynne and her cabinet ministers, and promised legislation this spring to ban corporate and union donations to political parties and lower contribution levels for individuals. Weve already made changes on our side in our fundraising practices, said Matthews. The Opposition has not. The Liberals fundraising changes dont mean there wasnt something wrong with cabinet ministers soliciting money from firms that were hoping to do business with their departments, said Brown. Just because this government brought in new rules for Ornge Air, it didnt stop the OPP from investigating a shady business deal, he said. Just because the government brought in new rules for saving emails, that didnt stop the OPP from charging senior Liberal staffers David Livingston and Laura Miller for wiping away evidence of a scandal. The New Democrats also raised the police investigations into Ornge, the charges laid against a Liberal organizer in connection with a 2015 byelection in Sudbury, and the charges laid in the deletion of emails on the Liberals 2011 decision to cancel two gas plants at a cost of up to $1.1 billion. After facing a criminal investigation for the Ornge scandal, a criminal investigation for the gas-plant scandal and a criminal investigation for the Sudbury bribery scandal, the same premier has now created a fundraising scandal thats shaking peoples faith in our democracy, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath told the legislature. People see a system here in Ontario where wealthy donors with deep pockets get one level of access to the decision makers, and everyone else gets shut out. Follow @CPnewsboy on Twitter Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. SASKATOON The candidate who beat NDP Leader Cam Broten in the Saskatchewan election this week is a 35-year truck driver who lives in a village about half an hour from the Saskatoon constituency where he now holds a seat. David Buckingham says he quit his job as mayor of Borden a year ago to focus full time on running for a spot in the legislature. He credits his win to old-fashioned, shoe-leather politics months of knocking on doors and talking to people. And, he concedes, Saskatchewan Party Leader Brad Walls popularity helped out. David Buckingham is shown in an 2015, handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ho-Saskatchewan Party Hard work really does pay off sometimes and I think in this case a lot of hard work on that doorstep was what helped me, Buckingham said a few days after Mondays vote. Obviously running under Premier Brad Walls name and the Saskatchewan Party, which are very popular, had a huge impact but hard work pays off, too. Buckingham said he first had designs on running for provincial office in 2013 when his community faced devastating flooding. Borden is home to about 250 people. Its not far from the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, about 50 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon on the Yellowhead Highway. Buckingham said he spent a lot of time dealing with the provincial government during the floods. I got to know a lot of the MLAs and really enjoyed it. Borden is in the middle of the rural constituency of Biggar-Sask Valley, where longtime Saskatchewan Party member of the legislature Randy Weekes was running again and won. Saskatoon Westview was created when the constituency map was redrawn ahead of the election. Brotens old riding of Saskatoon Massey Place was absorbed. Buckingham said he didnt know hed be running against the NDP leader when he sought the nomination for the Saskatchewan Party and won. He spent the months leading up to the vote hauling cars around Saskatchewan during the day and knocking on doors at night. He tried to get to 100 houses each day. He quit driving in early February and started campaigning full time. We just wanted to stay under the radar and stay on the doorstep, he said. The last few months, on the doorstep, I definitely thought I could win, but what it comes down to is, will the people go out to vote? Buckingham held the lead for most of the night as results came in, but it was tight. Pundits scrambled to find information on the man who might topple the NDP leader. He won by about 200 votes. The Saskatchewan Party took 51 of 61 seats. The NDP took the other 10. Broten issued a statement this week saying he is taking time with friends and family to consider his future. Buckingham and his wife now need to decide if they will move to be closer to the people he represents. There are family considerations. His mother-in-law is in a care home in Borden and his father-in-law lives by himself in the village. Its been such a whirlwind since we won that we havent really had any time to discuss it. I guess the No. 1 thing in my mind is I want to ensure that I represent the constituents of Saskatoon Westview. Thats what I said I would do and I am going to make sure I do that. By Tim Cook in Edmonton. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2016 (2390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Severe cases of flu, respiratory distress syndrome and a spike in the number of newborns needing intensive care prompted the Health Sciences Centre to declare a state of emergency this week at Childrens Hospital. By declaring an emergency, the hospital can invoke Article 10 of the nurses collective agreement to redeploy staff and change schedules to meet patient needs, said Lori Lamont, vice-president and chief of nursing for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. This flu season, there have been fewer cases but more people getting really sick from it and requiring intensive care, Lamont said. It prompted the WRHA to declare a state of emergency at St. Boniface General Hospital on March 18 to move staff around and change schedules. SUPPLIED PHOTO A screenshot of the letter from HSC to staff about state of emergency. The pressure was really in the intensive care units, said Lamont. We had high numbers of ventilated patients who were very, very sick, she said. Both adults and children were really sick and requiring intensive care. While the situation with adults has tapered off the emergency was lifted at St. Boniface hospital on Wednesday it hasnt at the Childrens Hospital intensive care unit. There a perfect storm has developed, said Lamont. More kids are still in intensive care with the flu, she added. At the same time, Childrens Hospitals ICU is dealing with respiratory distress syndrome, which is common at this time of year as well as a higher-than-usual number of newborns and premature babies requiring intensive care. The WRHA declared an emergency at Childrens Hospital on Tuesday to redeploy nurses with intensive care training and experience to work in its ICU. They havent had to impose mandatory overtime, she said. Our staff have worked very hard and stepped up to the plate, Lamont said. For six weeks, theyve been busy with the volume of patients ending up in the ICU, she said. Declaring an emergency at Childrens Hospital on the heels of the St. Boniface emergency was necessary, she said. Its really trying to take some of the pressure off staff whove been working above and beyond the call of duty for the last six weeks, said Lamont. Having to declare states of emergency at hospitals is a symptom of an unhealthy system, said Tory health critic Myrna Driedger. I cant recall a state of emergency being called at a hospital like this, said Driedger (PC-Charleswood). I can understand if there was a pandemic but we expect flus and respiratory conditions. We should be ready for things like this, Driedger said Thursday. The nursing shortage must be pretty bad to have to do this. The question is how did we get to this point? In order to fill gaps in a nursing shortage, the province over the last two years spent $50 million on nurses overtime and $52 million over the last five years hiring private agency nurses, Driedger said, citing information obtained through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. It speaks to a crisis in patient safety and concerns about potential staff burnout. The WHRA responded that Article 10 was, in fact, invoked earlier this year. During the adult flu outbreak, Article 10 was invoked in order to increase critical care capacity at St. Boniface Hospital, where we used space in our recovery room to accommodate patients, the WHRA said in a release Thursday. During that time, when there were high levels of surgical activity scheduled, we moved those cases to other hospitals in the region, rather than cancel the procedures. The need for intensive care beds this flu season really put a strain on the system, said Sandi Mowat, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union. Many of the sickest adults were in their 20s and 30s. Community hospitals opened up ICU beds that had been closed, she said. Many patients were taken to St. Boniface hospitals ICU, said Mowat. It came to the point where St. B was totally overrun and they needed to declare Article 10, she said. Article 10 of the nurses collective agreement allows the WRHA to adjust staffing and schedules when theres an emergency. You go along as much as you can with nurses voluntarily working extra hours and longer shifts, then you have to have the ability to move nurses from other areas, said Mowat. Intensive care requires a high level of skill and experience and more nurses to care for patients on ventilators and other machines in order to keep them alive, she said. The nurses, as usual, are going above and beyond to make sure patients get safe care but you come to the point where theyre exhausted and declare Article 10, Mowat said. Childrens Hospital began restricting visitors two weeks ago. It is asking people not to bring their children to visit and asking anyone who is not feeling well to stay away. carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2016 (2390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. NDP candidate Wab Kinew is using a flattering comment from one of Manitobas best known Liberals in his campaign literature in Fort Rouge. And he has Lloyd Axworthys permission to do it. A campaign card being distributed in the constituency features kind words for Kinew from the former foreign affairs minister, Manitoba MLA and University of Winnipeg president. JOE BRYKSA / FREE PRESS FILES Wab Kinew is currently on leave from his job as associate vice-president of indigenous affairs at the U of W. Axworthy said Thursday he is not formally endorsing any candidate in Fort Rouge where Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari is running but he stands behind the quotation gleaned from a Canadian Press article last month in which he predicted Kinew will be one of the important players in the country. The quote was published after Kinew came under criticism for past homophobic and misogynistic tweets and hip hop lyrics, but before the writ was dropped for the provincial election. Kinew is currently on leave from his job as associate vice-president of indigenous affairs at the U of W. Ive taken the basic position, aside from working for Jon Gerrard in River Heights, Im not endorsing any particular candidate, Axworthy said in an interview. But I certainly stand by the remarks. Wab did some incredible work for us at the university so that quote was made based on that experience. It was done before the election was called. Axworthy said NDP campaign manager Jeremy Read, with whom he also worked at U of W, asked his permission to use the remarks in Kinews campaign. The former federal cabinet minister and one-time Fort Rouge MLA acquiesced. Its all part of the public sphere, Axworthy said of the quote. The Liberal stalwart said Kinew has undergone quite a major change (and) transformation in the way he look(s) at things since he wrote his controversial tweets and song lyrics. That was then and he has a different point of view now and works on what he has become, not what he was. Kinews two main challengers in Fort Rouge are Bokhari and Progressive Conservative Audrey Gordon. The seat had been held by NDPer Jennifer Howard, who did not seek re-election. Asked straight out if he favours Kinew in Fort Rouge, Axworthy evaded the question, noting he does not live in the constituency. Ive had several requests for endorsements and stuff, and I said, Look Im a private citizen now. I make the choices of what I want to do and I certainly continue to have a high regard for Wab. But when it comes to the election thats up to the people of Fort Rouge. In addition to working on Gerrards re-election in River Heights, where he lives, Axworthy also co-chaired Jim Carrs successful bid for a seat in the House of Commons last fall. Axworthy said at this stage in his career, he has that wonderful freedom to choose where he wishes to volunteer and make the choices that I want to make. He refused to comment on the state of the Liberal campaign, which has taken quite a hit in the media in recent days. I do have some views, obviously, but I dont really want to talk about them publicly. Being a private citizen kind of gives me that privilege, if you like, he said. The Manitoba Liberals said Thursday they had no comment on the Kinew campaign pamphlet. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2016 (2390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Brian Pallister was a no-show at his own late afternoon event at the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre Thursday after more than a dozen protesting youth showed up. Pallister was to announce that a Progressive Conservative government would introduce a Protecting Children Act to make it easier for various government departments, law enforcement and child protection agencies to share information. But as the youth gathered at the centre, one sporting a sign reading, Pallister Served Harper, the Progressive Conservative leaders staff cancelled the news conference. PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Sadie-Pheonix Lavoie (centre) and other activists waited in vain to confront Brian Pallister about child care issues Thursday. When he didn't show they took over the Conservative leader's podium and sign. Pallister later said he was late arriving back in the city from events in Brandon and was concerned about a protest upsetting his hosts at Ma Mawi. The event on King Street was scheduled for 4:30 p.m. We were 10 minutes late and I had (another) meeting at five I had to get to, too. I really didnt think it was fair to them (Ma Mawi), frankly, the PC leader said. I dont know if I made the right call or not. But honestly I just didnt feel it was fair. The youths did not indicate whether they supported a particular political party. They simply referred to themselves as concerned citizens. They said they did not intend to disrupt the Tory event, but did want to engage Pallister and challenge some of his ideas. If this is an indication of what is to come from the Conservative government then were very, very worried, indeed, said Riley McMurray, one of the protesters. We expect our government to be accountable and engaging with its citizens. Pallister said earlier this week that his party could reduce the record number of children in care of Child and Family Services agencies by ensuring their parents have jobs. Protester Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie called that view simplistic. Hes not addressing the barriers for why a lot of families dont get jobs, she said. Describing herself as pro-social justice, Lavoie said the child welfare system is oppressive to indigenous people, something, she said, Pallister is not addressing. She said getting a minimum wage job is not going to pull someone out of poverty or allow them to get their kids back. I want to know what his stance is, and hes too scared to say it in front of us face to face, Lavoie said. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca Science can tell us lots about how voters will make their decisions in 2016. To appreciate those findings, first free yourself of the idea that humans are rational beings. Rationality has taken a hit in various domains of decision-making. Economics used to be thought of as a realm of pure rationality, something disproven, for starters, by the million-plus Pet Rocks sold around Christmas in 1975. Formal behavioral economics research comes to much the same conclusion more systematically. For example, people make radically different choices about an economic scenario depending on whether it is described in terms of risk or gain (you have a 50 percent chance of losing X number of dollars, versus you have a 50 percent chance of gaining X). Human decision-making is subject to implicit influences in other realms as well. In one study involving thousands of cases of parole-board decisions, a highly significant predictor of whether an inmate was granted parole was how long it had been since the judge had eaten. Justice may be blind, but dont expect to get a sympathetic hearing from someone whose stomach is gurgling. Other research shows our sensitivity to all sorts of unconscious cues. People think potato chips taste better if they hear crunching sounds in the background as they eat, rate a beverage as tasting better if its served in more expensive-looking surroundings. Ask people their favorite detergent; if theyve just read a paragraph containing the word ocean, theyre more likely to choose Tide and then concoct some supposedly rational reason why its the very best. Which brings us to how people go about voting for a political candidate. Its a rare voter who carefully reads a candidates position papers on every conceivable topic. Instead, we typically vote based on a candidates stance on a subset of topics, assuming there will be a certain consistency on other topics. Or we follow party lines, or choose based on endorsements if A agrees closely with Bs politics, and B is voting for C, A is on pretty safe ground voting for C even if C is a complete unknown. Another conscious component of political decision-making is voting for experience or competence, rather than a platform. This is so common that one study found that candidates judged to look more competent had won elections 68 percent of the time (perhaps we dont so much vote for competence as for the appearance of it). Competence at least seems like a pretty rational criterion after all, who wouldnt want competence in our leaders? until you wind up voting for someone who competently implements things you oppose. Even when judging competence isnt the goal, looks influence whom we vote for. This too isnt totally irrational, as studies in a number of countries show that people can identify liberals versus conservatives at above-chance levels merely by seeing their faces. But then rationality is completely left behind. In one well-studied phenomenon, when voters consider two candidates with identical positions, they tend to choose the one independently rated to be better looking. For male candidates this means tall, symmetrical features, high forehead, prominent brow ridges, jutting jaw. Its part of a larger pattern people judged to be attractive are typically rated as having better personalities, higher moral standards, as kinder and more honest. When job applicants present the same resume, the better looking is more likely to be hired. If miscreants are convicted of the same crime, the better looking tends to serve less time. The predilection for good looks seems to be connected to a remarkable finding: Some of the same parts of the frontal cortex are activated when assessing the beauty of a face as when assessing the moral goodness of an act. Other implicit factors come into play at election time. One study examined the campaign speeches of candidates in every prime minister election in Australian history. In 80 percent of those elections, the winner was the politician who used more collective pronouns (i.e., we and us). Then there are studies showing that raising the levels of the hormone oxytocin in peoples brains makes them more likely to perceive hypothetical candidates as believable and trustworthy; elevate testosterone levels, and the opposite occurs. There are also what researchers call contingent automatic preferences. For example, in scenarios concerning war, subjects tend to prefer (male) candidates with older, more masculine faces; during peace time, its younger, more feminine faces. Probably the most striking thing about any of these biases is that they are already in place long before we understand the first thing about economics or geopolitics. This was shown in a 2009 paper published in the prestigious journal Science, a paper that should be required reading just before election day each year. Show kids pairs of faces of candidates from various obscure elections. Tell them that they are about to take a long journey by boat; which of these two people would they want as their captain? And kids, ages 5 through 13, picked the winner a boggling 71 percent of the time. Think about that. The automatic biases we bring to voting are already falling into place in 5-year olds considering who should captain their boat on a voyage with the Teletubbies to stop the pirates menacing to Candyland. Subterranean, unconscious forces are constantly percolating up to influence our decision-making, and yet research also indicates that the more were aware of it, the more we can resist it. Try to remember that as you cast your ballot this year: You may be falling for the crunching sounds in the background. No matter our political beliefs, occupation or economic status, Im pretty sure we can all agree on one thing: Americans are as divided as they were before and during the Civil War. And there isnt much effort to quell the divisiveness. Why not? The first question to ask is, Who are the ones promoting and profiting from this division? The answer isnt hard to find. Look at any major television news program; listen to any conservative or liberal radio talk show or campaign ad. The more outrageous or horrific, the more coverage it gets and the more politicians use it to attack the other side. A story about one welfare queen gives all welfare recipients a bad name. A story about one bad cop out of 100 creates suspicion of the majority. A few religious extremists give good-hearted church-goers a nasty label. Responsible gun owners are lumped together with irresponsible or criminal gun owners. Peaceful Muslims are blamed for the terrorist activities of less than a fraction of one percent of their population. Fear sells and the profits go to the media and to certain politicians who benefit from tearing us apart. It doesnt have to be this way. When we look at basic human needs, were all the same. Plus, most of us have similar beliefs. We all want a fair break. None of us want to pay taxes that go toward pork barrel projects or propping up wasteful and useless government programs. None of us want criminals to get guns or to give only the wealthiest a say in who gets elected. We all want clean elections, fair compensation for hard work, lawmakers who believe in openness and transparency, and a justice system thats impartial. Were not nearly as divided as some want us to believe. Look at the stereotypical names were called: rednecks, liberal elites, baby killers, gun nuts, corporate whores, etc. I have an idea. Lets put representatives of all these groups in a room, lock the door and make them talk to one another. Then make them find things they agree on before they can come out. It can be done. I experienced similar situations twice in my lifetime. The first was during my first year living in a college dorm. Id come from a middle-class neighborhood and hadnt had any personal contacts with hippies, blacks, gays or lesbians. Although Id never heard any hate speech against them, Id been isolated from them my entire life. So it was an awakening when I realized I shared the hallway in my college dorm with black girls, atheists, the ultra-religious, rich girls, nerds, lesbians and a hippy. And guess what? All of us got along wonderfully. We crammed into each others rooms and laughed until we hurt. We partied and studied together, shared care packages and none of us had an argument or shunned anyone else. I learned more from getting to know people who were different than I was than from any book or in any classroom. The second experience I had was in the 80s when I was asked to help chaperone a three-day teen institute program for middle-school students that took place at a local camp. All of the 40 kids who attended had either applied or were chosen by teachers. Every stereotype was represented: straight-A students, juvenile delinquents, kids from wealthy families, shy kids, farm kids, disabled kids and everyone in between. The first day, they all gravitated to those who were most like themselves and didnt interact with those in the other groups. But then the sessions started. I wish I could remember what they all were, but I do know what they accomplished. At the end of the three days, there were no more isolated groups; they realized they all were one. Theyd shared their personal stories, expressed their common fear of rejection, talked about their values, laughed at the same jokes, cried over the different pain theyd all experienced in their lives. They hugged, cried and held one another before they all left on the last day. And Im sure, as adults, theyre all more understanding and open to differences than they were before that weekend. But thats not all. The same thing happened among the principals, teachers and parents who were chaperones. Pre-conceived impressions disappeared as we all got to know one another. Our differences are minor, folks. Wouldnt it be refreshing if the media concentrated on what we have in common rather than what tears us apart? Ah, but theres no money or political office to be gained by that. I guess its up to us. People interested in natural resources management in Wisconsin have an opportunity on Monday to provide their input by non-binding vote and testimony on proposed rule changes and advisory questions relating to fish and wildlife management at the 2016 spring wildlife and fisheries rules hearings. The hearings will be held in each county of the state beginning at 7 p.m. The Columbia County Conservation Congress will convene at the Portage High School auditorium at 301 E. Collins St. This year the Department of Natural Resources is only recommending a limited number of rule change proposals. There are eight statewide wildlife questions and two statewide fisheries questions, as well as advisory questions from the state Natural Resources Board and Wisconsin Conservation Congress. The complete 2016 spring rules hearings questionnaire is available for review on the DNR website (www.dnr.wi.gov) by searching keywords spring hearings and at local DNR service centers. Individuals without Internet access may be able to view the online questionnaire by visiting their local library. County residents also have the option to run for a seat on the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, or elect other delegates from their county to represent their county views regarding natural resources on the Conservation Congress. The Wisconsin Conservation Congress is officially recognized as the only advisory body in the state where citizens elect delegates to represent their interests on natural resources issues on a local and statewide level to the Natural Resources Board and the Department of Natural Resources. Individuals will also have the opportunity to bring forth new conservation ideas or issues to the attention of the Conservation Congress through the citizen resolution process. Two of the statewide wildlife questions relate to allowing the unattended, overnight placement of portable stands and blinds on department owned and managed lands located north of State Highway 64. Two questions relate to issuing antlerless deer hunting permits on a first-come, first-served basis as is currently done or through a random drawing, which would include an application deadline and preference categories for people who are unsuccessful in previous drawings. Two questions relate to the recently adopted Beaver Management Plan and whether the beaver and otter season should be shortened to meet management goals. Another question would establish that legal hours for taking game be referred to as shooting hours rather than hunting hours in regulations. The two statewide fisheries questions both relate to establishing a process separate from spring hearings that would allow for more quickly making changes to the most common or statewide regulation for a specific fish species on inland waters to more quickly respond to changing conditions or fish consumption advisories. Meeting results, along with written comments on the evenings questions and DNR recommendations are used to advise the state Natural Resources Board. Votes are non-binding and are presented to the Natural Resources Board as advisory. Way to go, Wisconsin: More than 2 million people voted in our state on Tuesday nearly half of those eligible to do so. Thats a massive turnout for a primary election, the best here since 1972 and second best nationwide this year. You did your duty, even if it meant standing in long lines. A voter waiting in line to cast her ballot at Cass Street Elementary School Tuesday evening told us she was behind 100 others, most of them like her under the age of 30 who had come to exercise the franchise. Way to go, Wisconsin: Younger voters, many of them Democratic supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, flocked to the polls on the states college campuses and elsewhere. Voters ages 18 to 29 made up 19 percent of the Democratic electorate, and Sanders got 82 percent of those votes. Way to go, Wisconsin: You told former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sanders rival for the nomination, that she has to work harder to win your support. Sanders won with 57 percent of the vote compared with 43 percent for Clinton. He won with liberals, men and the young and fought her to a draw with women voters. A third of Democratic voters said honesty was the most important quality in a candidate, and Sanders was supported by 83 percent of those who felt that way. Clintons disturbing record on open government, which we laid out in an editorial last week, is no doubt part of the problem. Way to go, Wisconsin: You sent the P.T. Barnum of American politics packing for New York. Businessman Donald Trump was so badly beaten in Wisconsin that he didnt bother to make an appearance on Tuesday night. His campaign issued a statement: Lyin Ted Cruz ... is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump. Which is nonsense and sells Wisconsin voters short. Cruz thrashed Trump on Tuesday from the bright red Milwaukee suburbs to the Fox Valley and beyond. He won with men and women, young and old, blue collar and white collar and with those disgusted by Trumps campaign. By a large margin, Republican voters said Trump ran the most unfair campaign, according to exit polls. Trump remains the least qualified candidate of our lifetimes, a man who has barely thought about the most important issues facing the nation let alone learned how to articulate a coherent position on them. Unfortunately, his horror show of a candidacy will go on. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, whom we recommended, finished a distant third, and the calls for him to quit the race will grow in advance of the New York primary on April 19. Hang in there, governor. With a contested convention more likely, there is no reason to quit. Kasich remains the best qualified and most independent of the three remaining GOP candidates. Through our editorials leading up to the election, our goal was to focus attention on ensuring honest, open, clean and effective government in Wisconsin and the nation. Citizens have a right to that, and, by voting in such numbers on Tuesday, citizens of our state made their voices heard nationwide. Way to go, Wisconsin! 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. Gerson talks politics, speechwriting during campus visit Andrews Fellow: Michael Gerson, the 2016 Hunter B. Andrews Distinguished Fellow in American Politics, speaks to a group of students and faculty at W&M Law School Monday. Photo by Katianna Tron '16 Discussion: Davison M. Douglas (right), dean of W&M Law School, participated in the discussion. Photo by Katianna Tron '16 Discussion: Students gathered in a room at W&M Law School to talk with Gerson. It was just one of the meetings that the 2016 Andrews Fellow had with faculty, staff and students during his two-day visit to W&M. Photo by Katianna Tron '16 Photo - of - Hide Caption At W&M Law School on Monday, Michael Gerson a Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter and policy advisor for President George W. Bush shared his thoughts on the present state of speechwriting, addressing the ability of powerfully charged speeches such as those given by current presidential candidate Donald Trump. Techniques that [Trump] honed in pro wrestling, that have no bearing, have been extremely successful, said Gerson, adding that many tend to mistake these speeches for authentic, reliable and realistic when, he believes, they are the opposite. The discussion was part of Gersons April 4-5 visit to campus as William & Marys 2016 Hunter B. Andrews Distinguished Fellow in American Politics. The fellowship was created in 1998 by friends of the former state senator and W&M alumnus who died in 2005. Andrews served on the W&M Board of Visitors from 2003 to 2005. During his time at the university, Gerson met with faculty, staff and students from across the campus to discuss his career, experiences and the countrys current political landscape. At W&M Law School, Gerson talked with a small group of students and professors as well as Dean Davison M. Douglas. Gerson shared some of his experiences with Bush, including the presidential campaign in which the then-Texas governor ran against Al Gore. While waiting for the results of that suspenseful election, Gerson took the opportunity to go see the latest Charlies Angels movie, he said. When asked about the influence of presidents on their speeches, Gerson shared the example of Bushs two speeches given upon his visit to Ground Zero. One speech, Gerson said, was pre-planned, written and practiced, while the other was given on the spur of the moment. This, Gerson said, is one of the more powerful skills of a president the ability to read a situation in the public and respond accordingly. Gerson added that unfortunate circumstances have led many well-written presidential speeches to be delivered at relatively unimportant moments and, as a result, have been forgotten. When asked about his favorite presidential speeches, Gerson reflected on the 1960s, which he referred to as the golden era of speechwriting. They were language-oriented, not image-oriented, stressed Gerson, as he highlighted the importance of rhetoric as opposed to idealized images. For students with speechwriting ambitions, Gerson gave some advice. I learned to write on Capitol Hill. I put myself in professional circumstances where I had to write all the time every day, he said. Gerson is the author of Heroic Conservatism and co-author of City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era. He appears regularly on PBS NewsHour, Face the Nation and other programs. In addition to his role as a nationally syndicated columnist with The Washington Post, Gerson currently serves as senior advisor at One, a bipartisan organization dedicated to the fight against preventable diseases and extreme poverty. Other recent Andrews Fellows have included PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill; former U.S. Sen. Richard G. Lugar; Larry Sabato, the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and director of its Center for Politics; and former Virginia Gov. Gerald L. Baliles. 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 Nuclear security agreement to enter into force 08 April 2016 Share A key security agreement, once described by IAEA director general Yukiya Amano as the single most important step to strengthen nuclear security, is set to become legally binding after Nicaragua became the 102nd state to adhere to the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials (CPPNM). Hernan Estrada Roman, Nicaragua's representative to the IAEA, deposits Nicaragua's instrument of acceptance of the amendment with Yukiya Amano at the IAEA headquarters.(Image: D Calma/IAEA) The amendment to the 1987 CPPNM was first adopted by states in 2005, but it has taken over a decade for it to secure the adherence of the two-thirds of those states needed for it to become legally binding. States adhere to the amendment when they submit their instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). There are currently 152 Parties to the convention, and with Nicaragua's submission of its Instrument of Acceptance today, that threshold has been reached. This means that the amendment will enter into force in 30 days' time, on 8 May. The 1987 CPPNM covers the physical protection of nuclear materials used for peaceful purposes during international transport. The amendment broadens its scope to cover the protection of nuclear facilities or nuclear material in domestic use, storage and transport and makes it legally binding for states to establish, implement and maintain an appropriate physical protection regime applicable to nuclear material and nuclear facilities under their jurisdiction. It provides for the criminalization of new and extended specified acts, and requires countries to put in place measures to protect nuclear material and nuclear facilities against sabotage. The amendment expands the existing offences identified in the CPPNM, including the theft and robbery of nuclear material, and establishes new ones, such as the smuggling of nuclear material and the actual or threatened sabotage of nuclear facilities. Some of those offences have also been expanded to include substantial damage to the environment. The amendment also provides for expanded cooperation and information sharing between states regarding rapid measures to locate and recover stolen or smuggled nuclear material, to mitigate any radiological consequences of sabotage and to prevent and combat related offences. Yukiya Amano said in a statement that the entry into force of the amendment will help reduce the risk of a terrorist attack involving nuclear material. "This is an important day for efforts to strengthen nuclear security around the world," he said. "Universal implementation of the amended Convention will help to ensure that nuclear material throughout the world is properly protected against malicious acts by terrorists," he added. Earlier this year, Amano told the IAEA's board of governors that bringing the amendment into force would be "the single most important step which the world can take to strengthen nuclear security." Although the responsibility for implementing the amendment will rest with individual states, the IAEA will provide legislative and technical assistance to its members, including help with the drafting of national implementing legislation and establishing, implementing, and maintaining a physical protection regime. The IAEA Director General will convene a conference of the parties five years after the amendment's entry into force to review its implementation and its adequacy. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Organizations call for positive EU leadership on nuclear 08 April 2016 Share European electricity association Eurelectric has welcomed the European Commission's recently published Nuclear Illustrative Program (PINC), but expressed regrets at its failure to address the issue of premature reactor closures due to market conditions. European nuclear industry association Foratom also called on the PINC to address the impact of market conditions on nuclear investments. Eurelectric described the PINC document, published on 4 April, as a "good basis" for discussions on the role of nuclear energy in achieving European Union (EU) energy objectives and praised it for recognising the significant investment required in the sector. "A continuing contribution of nuclear power will be needed as Europe undertakes the low-carbon energy transition, but a more positive EU policy framework is needed if this is to be achieved," the organization's secretary general, Hans ten Berge, said yesterday. "We however regret that the PINC document does not address the competitiveness of existing and technically well-functioning nuclear reactors, which, in some countries, are being forced to shut down due to the difficult market situation and distortive national policy measures," he added. The EC is mandated by the Euratom Treaty to issue periodically a new PINC report to indicate targets for nuclear production and the investments that will be needed to attain them. The latest report found that investment of between 350 billion ($399 billion) and 450 billion will be required over the next 35 years to maintain EU nuclear generating capacity at between 95 and 105 GWe. It is the first PINC to be published since the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan and includes investments related to post-Fukushima upgrades and the safe operation of existing nuclear facilities as well as new capacity. In September 2015, Eurelectric submitted a position paper in which it said that nuclear contributed to the EU's three major energy policy objectives of security of supply, decarbonisation of the electricity sector and competitive power prices. However, it noted the economic challenges faced by existing nuclear power plants: "In several European countries distortive national policy measures place economic burdens on nuclear units which are leading to the early shutdown of technically well-functioning nuclear reactors," it said, calling for "specific tax burdens" that distorted the economics of the wholesale electricity market and also the long-term operation of nuclear power plants to be avoided. Eurelectric's policy paper also called for an "improved regulatory framework" to help facilitate investment, and said Europe must find market-based solutions to reduce the investment risks associated with capital-intensive low-carbon energy projects including nuclear. Missed opportunity In its response to PINC, Foratom said that the EC's outlook that nuclear capacity in the EU would decrease to around 100 GWe by 2050 from 120 GWe today "does not seem consistent" with PINC's conclusion that nuclear energy is expected to remain an important component of the EU's energy mix. It pointed to the conclusion of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency's Technology Roadmap 2015, that global nuclear capacity needs to more than double by 2050 if targets of limiting global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius are to be met. "Foratom regrets that the PINC contains no ambitious nuclear energy production targets," it said. Foratom also called on PINC to address market failures which it said were hampering the investments needed for extensions to the operating periods of reactors as well as for the construction of new reactors across Europe. "Foratom is expecting the EC to take up a leadership position and propose concrete solutions to facilitate investments in nuclear alongside other low-carbon technologies," it said. It also called for better coordination of national licensing authorities and standardization across the EU to reduce barriers to deployment of nuclear technologies and enable nuclear vendors and supply chain companies to compete more effectively in the international market. Foratom director general, Jean-Pol Poncelet, described the PINC as a snapshot of nuclear energy in Europe. "What we now need is a vision and strong leadership in order to promote nuclear as part of the solution to climate change, in view of the recent agreement at the COP21 conference in Paris and the EC's important role in securing it. I believe the EC has missed an opportunity to underline nuclear energy as a reliable low-carbon technology and a major contributor to the goals of the Energy Union," he said. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics USA and Kazakhstan energy partnership extends cooperation 08 April 2016 Share The Kazakhstan-United States Energy Partnership Commission yesterday signed a joint statement at a meeting in Kazakhstan that was co-chaired by Kazakh energy minister K A Bosumbayev and US energy secretary Ernest Moniz. The meeting was held as a follow-up to the 11th session of the Special Commission on the Energy Partnership (SCEP), during which discussions were held on nuclear security and nuclear energy, alternative energy and electricity, energy conservation and increasing energy efficiency. The US Department of Energy (DOE) said: "Notably, within the framework of the SCEP, concrete targets have been reached in cooperation in the field of conversion of Kazakhstan's research reactors and enforcement of physical nuclear security." It added that, also during the past year, experts from the Kazakh energy ministry and the DOE had held bilateral talks on international carbon sequestration and the use of clean technologies. The Republic of Kazakhstan was represented at the session by officials from the Kazakh energy and foreign ministries, state-owned uranium producer KazAtomProm, the Kazenergy Association, KazMunaiGas, Samruk-Energy, EXPO-2017, the National Nuclear Centre, and the Nuclear Physics Institute. US delegates were from the DOE, the US embassy in Kazakhstan and the National Nuclear Security Administration. After the signing ceremony yesterday, the two ministers discussed the 2016 work plan, "which encourages the use of alternative energy sources in Kazakhstan, reduces emissions, and enhances nuclear safety", the DOE said. KazAtomProm and Centrus Energy signed a memorandum of cooperation last October that specifies the development of mutually beneficial relations on competitive supplies of Kazakhstan's uranium to the world market. Bethesda, Maryland-based Centrus Energy supplies enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants in the USA and around the world. Earlier this week, KazAtomProm and ConverDyn signed an agreement whereby the world's largest uranium producer and the "leading provider" of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) conversion services will jointly and immediately offer uranium in the form of natural UF6 to global utilities. UF6 is the natural uranium feedstock for the enrichment step in the nuclear fuel cycle. In 2014, Kazakhstan became the leading supplier of uranium to US nuclear power plants, overtaking Australia, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Of the uranium purchased by US reactor owners and operators, 23% was of Kazakh origin, while 20% came from Australia and 18% from Canada. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Email Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Newsletter Of total sales in January 2016, distressed sales accounted for 11.2 percent and real estate-owned (REO) sales accounted for 7.8 percent The REO sales share was 20.2 percentage points lower than it was at its peak of 27.9 percent in January 2009 Only two of the nation's largest 25 Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs) showed year-over-year increases in their distressed sales shares in January 2016 Sign Up Free | The WPJ Weekly Newsletter Relevant real estate news. Actionable market intelligence. Right to your inbox every week. Go Thank you for your interest! You will now be receiving our Weekly Real Estate Newsletter. Real Estate Listings Showcase Irvine, Ca based CoreLogic is now reporting that distressed home sales in the U.S., which include REOs and short sales, accounted for 11.2 percent of total home sales nationally in January 2016, down 3.3 percentage points from January 2015 and up 0.6 percentage points from December 2015.Within the distressed category, REO sales accounted for 7.8 percent and short sales accounted for 3.4 percent of total home sales in January 2016. The REO sales share was 2.9 percentage points below the January 2015 share and is the lowest for the month of January since 2007. The short sales share fell below 4 percent in mid-2014 and has remained in the 3-4 percent range since then. At its peak in January 2009, distressed sales totaled 32.4 percent of all sales, with REO sales representing 27.9 percent of that share. While distressed sales play an important role in clearing the housing market of foreclosed properties, they sell at a discount to non-distressed sales, and when the share of distressed sales is high, it can pull down the prices of non-distressed sales. There will always be some level of distress in the housing market, and by comparison, the pre-crisis share of distressed sales was traditionally about 2 percent. If the current year-over-year decrease in the distressed sales share continues, it will reach that "normal" 2-percent mark in mid-2018.All but eight states recorded lower distressed sales shares in January 2016 compared with a year earlier. Maryland had the largest share of distressed sales of any state at 19.9 percent in January 2016, followed by Connecticut (19.1 percent), Florida (18 percent), Michigan (18 percent) and Illinois (17.4 percent). North Dakota had the smallest distressed sales share at 2.5 percent. Nevada had a 5.1 percentage point drop in its distressed sales share from a year earlier, the largest decline of any state. California had the largest improvement of any state from its peak distressed sales share, falling 59.6 percentage points from its January 2009 peak of 67.4 percent. While some states stand out as having high distressed sales shares, only North Dakota and the District of Columbia are close to their pre-crisis levels (each within one percentage point).Of the 25 largest CBSAs based on mortgage loan count, Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Md. had the largest share of distressed sales at 20 percent, followed by Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights, Ill. (19.8 percent), Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Fla. (19.8 percent), Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla. (19.7 percent) and Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, Nev. (14.2 percent). Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colo. had the smallest distressed sales share among this group of the country's largest CBSAs at 2.8 percent. Only two of the largest 25 CBSAs had year-over-year increases in their distressed sales share: Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Md. was up by 1.1 percentage point, and Nassau County-Suffolk County, N.Y. was up by 0.7 percentage points. Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, Nev. had the largest year-over-year drop in its distressed sales share, falling by 5.4 percentage points from 19.5 percent in January 2015 to 14.2 percent in January 2016. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif. had the largest overall improvement in its distressed sales share from its peak value, dropping from 76.3 percent in February 2009 to 10.5 percent in January 2016. A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took North Wales Police And Crime Commissioner Election 2016 Candidates Confirmed This article is old - Published: Sunday, Apr 17th, 2016 The Police and Crime Commissioner candidates have been formally announced for North Wales. Other areas of the UK had candidate lists promptly available last night after the 4pm nomination deadline passed, however North Wales has had a delayed release. A list had been circulated yesterday by Flintshire Council who are facilitating the election with the note it was for information purposes only, and not the official notice. Late this afternoon Flintshire Council updated their site with the full formal notices. Below does have a deliberate typo on our part with the Welsh Conservative candidiate information copied from the formal release, where we expected the draft from last night to be corrected. CANDIDATE LIST There are five people hopeful to get your votes Owain Arfon Jones, Plaid Cymru Former Police Inspector Julian Bernard Sandham, Independent David James Taylor, Welsh Labour Simon Wall, UK Independence Party (UKIP) Matt Wright, Welsh Conservative Party Candidiate It is important to note that you will get to mark your first and second choice candidate on the ballot paper for this election, rather than the usual single choice. The election is being held at the same time as the Welsh Assembly elections (you can see the candidate lists for that here) so it is perhaps even more important to ensure you are registered to vote! The election will be held on Thursday 5th May 2016. Wrexham.com encourages everyone to register to vote, and to check that the relevant information is held for you you can do this online via https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote Appeal To Find Missing Man Last Seen In Wrexham This article is old - Published: Friday, Apr 8th, 2016 North Wales Police are appealing for help tracing a 48 year old man missing from the Corwen area of north Wales, who was last seen in Wrexham. Roy Hill has not been seen since 2.30pm on Sunday (3rd of April), near to the Maelor Hospital in Wrexham. Police say enquiries to trace him have thus far proved fruitless but local officers are focusing enquiries both locally and in the area of Wrexham Town Centre where he was last sighted. PC Dylan Jones of Bala Police station said Roy is described as white, approx 6 tall with short grey hair cut short. He is of medium build and was last seen was wearing dark jeans, blue Nike trainers and a brown / black hooded leather type jacket. I am appealing to anyone who has sighted Roy, or know of his whereabouts, to contact the Police as we are concerned for his welfare. Id also ask Roy himself to contact Police, family or friends to let them know that he is safe and well. If you can assist with this investigation please contact North Wales Police on 101 or via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 and quote Missing Person Ref 15252. Alternatively, contact the control room direct via the new web live chat http://www.north-wales.police.uk/contact/chat-support.aspx One of Australias two remaining steel manufacturers was placed in voluntary administration by its management yesterday, directly imperiling the jobs of nearly 7,000 workers across Australia, including almost 2,000 in the South Australian regional city of Whyalla. About 1,300 jobs are threatened in Arriums operation in 14 other countries, with many more endangered by flow-on effects. Arriums bankruptcy is part of a worldwide crisis in the steel and iron ore industries, in which hundreds of thousands of workers jobs are being destroyedhalf a million of them in China alone. The deepening impact of the 2008 global financial crash has produced a gathering world slump that has caused a dramatic decline in demand for steel. Since 2011, there has been a 60 percent fall in steel prices and a collapse in iron ore prices from $US190 a tonne to $US55. Workers in Australia, like those in China and around the world, are being made to pay for a colossal breakdown in the world capitalist economy. If Arrium is liquidated, or restructured, Whyalla, a city of 22,000 people, will be the hardest hit. Without Arriums steelworks, the citys only major employer, many residents fear Whyalla will become a ghost town. Nearby iron ore mines will also be affected. This will deepen the toll already being inflicted on South Australian workers by the shutdown of the General Motors Holden assembly plant in Adelaide by the end of 2017. The fallout extends further. The company, which also trades as OneSteel, employs 2,800 in New South Wales, 930 in Victoria, 900 in Queensland, 350 in Western Australia, 60 in Tasmania, 40 in the Northern Territory and 30 in the Australian Capital Territory. Globally, Arrium also has a mining consumables business, including Moly-Cop, the worlds largest supplier of grinding balls and rods, as well as Canada-based AltaSteel. Arriums implosion is a damning exposure of the operations of big business in Australia and globally. The company went into administration owing more than $A2.8 billion to banks and other creditors, $1 billion to suppliers and $500 million to workers. Much of the debt was incurred when the management borrowed heavily to acquire iron ore mines and overseas plants after the 2008 crash on the expectation that the mining boom, largely fuelled by Chinas rapid growth, would continue indefinitely. Arrium, which was spun out of Australian mining giant BHP in 2000 as OneSteel, was also saddled from birth by BHP with $1 billion in debt. BHP went on to merge with South African- and British-based Billiton to form the worlds biggest mining conglomerate. It offloaded OneSteel and other businesses that it no longer regarded as sufficiently profitable, after extracting massive profits from their workers for decades. These BHP Billiton discards included Queensland Nickel, which has now been liquidated, destroying more than 1,000 jobs in the northern Australian regional city of Townsville. Also spun-off was BlueScope Steel, Australias other remaining steel maker. BlueScope has slashed jobs, wages and conditions at its operations in the city of Wollongong and other sites, with the collaboration of the trade unions. Arrium was finally forced to go into administration after its bank creditors last week rejected a $1.2 billion recapitalisation proposal by vulture fund GSO Capital, the credit arm of US private equity giant Blackstone. This proposalessentially for Blackstone to carve-up Arrium for quick profitwould have meant a banking syndicate, including Australias big four banks, losing about 55 percent of the funds it lent Arrium. Arrium workers interviewed by the media have voiced intense anger. Plant operator Michael Jones, who works at the Whyalla steel plant for a contractor, told the Australian he was concerned about the future of his wife and two young children. Everyone is worried. Everyone is calling and asking me whether Im safe I put all our savings into Arrium shares, hoping to live the dream and make a bit of money. Both the Liberal-National Coalition government and the Labor Party opposition, together with the trade unions, are feigning sympathy for the workers. For decades, successive Labor and Coalition governments, assisted by the unions, have worked hand-in-glove with the banks and companies like BHP to eliminate jobs and conditions in order to shore up corporate profits. Rifts have appeared in Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulls government over how to deal with the Arrium disaster. Turnbull and other senior ministers rejected bailing out the company, saying that this would breach trade agreements. South Australian-based Industry Minister Christopher Pyne, however, backed the Labor Partys call for government infrastructure projects to purchase Australian steel to shore up Arrium. In part, Pynes stance reflects fears that the government will suffer heavy losses in South Australia in the looming federal election. He claimed that out of Arriums ashes could arise a phoenix that would generate jobs and growthone of the governments current slogans. Labor and the unions are trying to divert the anger of workers in a reactionary nationalist direction, and away from the root causes of Arriums collapse, which lie in the private profit system itself. Opposition leader Bill Shorten pledged a Labor government would compel federal, state and local government agencies to buy Australian steel. What is wrong with requiring Australian content in the steel? Shorten declared. He said he would not apologise for being nationalistic. The Australian Workers Union (AWU), which covers most of Arriums Australian workforce, is pushing a similar line, laced with denunciations of China. AWU national secretary Scott McDine stated: The first thing the federal government must do is introduce emergency safeguard tariffs on imported steel. Allowing anti-fair market distortions from foreign steel, especially from China, is no longer a luxury Australia can afford. At the same time, the union is working closely with Australias corporate establishment. The AWU today rushed into talks with the major banks and the liquidators to try to develop a so-called rescue package. Any such package will hinge on forcing workers to accept the destruction of hundreds of jobs, pay cuts and the elimination of hard-won conditions, as the AWU and other unions have imposed on BlueScope Steel workers at the Port Kembla steelworks in Wollongong. This partnership with big business underscores the class content of the nationalist sentiment that Labor and the unions are seeking to whip up. It serves to subordinate the working class to the cost-cutting dictates of Australian-based companies and finance houses, while pitting workers in Australia against their Chinese and other international brothers and sisters, who are facing the same onslaught. Because of the world slump and the resulting downturn in China, Chinese companies, which make just over half of the worlds steel, are currently producing 400 million tonnes more each year than they can sell domestically. In response to Chinese steel exports, governments around the world are starting to impose tariffs or other protectionist measures. More than eight million workers are employed in the steel industry globally. These workers and those in related industries are all threatened with job losses, attacks on wages and pension rights. By far the biggest assault is occurring in China, where firms are shedding 500,000 jobs in steel. Last week, one of the biggest global steel producers, Tata, announced it planned to hive off its entire British operation, threatening 15,000 jobs, along with another 25,000 jobs in the supply chain. Just like their Australian counterparts, the British Labour Party and union leaders have responded by demanding protectionist measures, supposedly to defend jobs. British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn called for a state buyout of Tata to protect our steel industry and not see it destroyed on the altar of global corporations. Far from opposing the rule of global corporations, this economic nationalism ties the working class to its own corporations and throws them into struggle against each other. A new series of charges of sexual violence against minors has been brought in recent days against UN forces soldiers in the Central African Republic (CAR), and especially against soldiers of the French operation Sangaris. This intervention of the French army had been endorsed in December 2013 by the United Nations Security Council following a resolution sponsored by France. France has mobilised up to 2,500 troops as part of this operation and still officially has 900 men in CAR. The other UN operation, Minusca, currently has about 12,600 military and police. The latest accusations were triggered by a report comprising the testimonies of victims of sexual violence by the NGO AIDS-Free World and transmitted to the UN, which said it would launch a formal investigation into recent allegations. According to a UN official in New York the latest charges against French soldiers involved forced sex with animals in exchange for money. AIDS-Free World reports that three girls told a UN official that they had been stripped naked and tied up in a camp by a Sangaris commander then forced to have sex with a dog. These are just the latest of persistent reports of abuse and sexual violence that have followed the intervention of French troops and UN peacekeeping operations for over two years. It has now reached the scale of a full-blown scandal. Press reports last year already pointed to the multiplication of the number of cases and the UN had relieved its Special Representative of his duties in Bangui, the CAR capital. Recently, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had described the sexual violence committed by the troops operating in CAR as a cancer. Six months after the start of the Sangaris operation, a UN humanitarian worker had already leaked to French authorities a United Nations report revealing that about 10 French soldiers in the Sangaris operation were accused of having sexually abused children between December 2013 and May-June 2014. Jeune Afrique magazine quoted the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, saying he takes these [latest] allegations, some of which are particularly odious, extremely seriously. And the French ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre, said, Cases of abuse and allegations of sexual exploitation are particularly shocking and heinous. Since the beginning of the year the cases of sexual violence against minors continue to multiply, according to the UN. In the last several months, demonstrations of hostility to the French troops on the part of the local population are on the increase. French military convoys were booed as they passed by hostile crowds who shouted slogans alluding to theft and sexual attacks. According to official statements, the Sangaris operation was intended to stop communalist slaughter. Hollande had claimed that the policy of his government was to disarm the warring groups and restore stability to avoid more bloodshed. The mission of France was necessary if we want to avoid massacres taking place here, he said. France is coming to defend human dignity with you, contended Hollande in Bangui a few days after the start of the operation. These scandals shockingly expose the pretext that the Socialist Party (PS) government sent its parachute regiments and the Foreign Legion to CAR for humanitarian reasons. The heinous acts the French troops are accused of are a true reflection in the psychology and behaviour of individual officers and soldiers of the oppressive imperialist relations of French capitalism with the oppressed masses in Africa. In agreement with the Obama administration, the French military intervention was intended to counteract the growing influence of China in Central Africa, which is rich in mineral and energy resources. Paris aims to control this country, strategically located at the centre of Africa, and destroy the influence of China. Under former President Francois Bozize the Chinese had concluded several key agreements with CAR, including oil contracts and military cooperation. Bozize himself accused French imperialism of trying to overthrow him because he had made oil deals with China before being overthrown by the Seleka militia encouraged by France. When the operation was launched, the French company Areva was in the process of preparing one of the largest investments in CAR, a proposed uranium mine in the south of the country. The recent elections held in the context of the Sangaris operation and the UN Minusca operation produced a new government backed by France in February. The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, and the defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, were present on March 30 for the inauguration of the new president, Bozizes former prime minister, Faustin-Archange Touadera. Le Drian announced the same day the withdrawal in 2016 of Sangaris forces, estimating that their mission had been accomplished. One of the first statements of Touadera was to say he was worried about the departure of French troops. Of course, there are the UN forces but these two entities complement each other in their actions, he said. Since the territory is large and the threats are still there, we still have concerns. The revelation of the behaviour of the French troops with regard to the African population exposes pseudo-left organisations such as the NPA (New Anti-capitalist Party), which, after greeting the attack on Libya by NATO on the basis of fraudulent claims of its humanitarian nature, has sought to cover the military intervention of the PS government in the Sahel and in Central Africa, claiming it sought to ensure security. In September 2014, Jean Batou, a member of the Swiss SolidariteS organisation affiliated to the NPA, expressly denied that the PS government had predatory aims in the English organ of the NPA, International Viewpoint, at the same time trying to recycle the discredited humanitarian grounds excuse with the claim of Defending the security of the population along with Hollande and the PS. He wrote that the economic ulterior motives of Nicolas Sarkozy in Libya and Ivory Coast seemed less clear when considering those of Francois Hollande in Mali, and very questionable in CAR. It seems clear, he wrote, that sending shock troops to avoid the final shipwreck of failed states, such as in Central Africa, obeys first the need to maintain security in its backyard. What seems clear, on the contrary, is that the shock troops of French imperialism became the refuge of fascist elements and pro-Nazis who reconnect with the traditions of those used by French imperialism in its colonial wars of the 1950s and 1960s, of which the National Fronts Jean-Marie Le Pen is an example. In December 2013 a photo appeared on the Facebook page of the French army. It was then removed. The photo showed a French sergeant from a paratrooper regiment in Castres in CAR. On his uniform he wore a badge with the SS motto Meine Ehre heisst Treue (My honour is loyalty). In November 2013 the French press published a photo of a legionnaire in the Serval operation in Mali wearing a scarf depicting a skull on his face, another SS symbol. In 2008, an engineering paratrooper regiment based in Montauban was rocked by a scandal exposed by the Canard enchaine, which showed photos of three of its soldiers, neo-Nazis, making the Hitler salute whilst wrapped in a swastika flag. The unbroken chain of revelations of sexual violence since the start of the French imperialist intervention in Central Africa shows that followers of these traditions, encouraged by the reactionary policies of the PS and the pseudo-left, and the rise of the National Front in France, now feel legitimised to practice all forms of oppression against the African population. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel last week announced the appointment of veteran officer Eddie Johnson as interim head of the Chicago Police Department. Emanuels endorsement of Johnson is part of an effort to make the police force a more effective instrument for suppressing political and social opposition. Johnsons chief accomplishment in the police department was the major role he played in the crackdown of anti-NATO protestors in 2012. Three protestors were arrested in the aftermath on trumped-up charges of terrorism. After entering the Chicago Police Department (CPD) more than 27 years ago, Johnson rose the ranks from a beat patrolman to become a deputy chief of patrol in 2012. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Johnson has been offered a $260,044 salary in his interim role as the police superintendent. Emanuel awarded the interim superintendent position to Johnson after the mayor rejected the Chicago Police Boards initial suggestions for candidates. Johnson, a veteran of the police force, was advanced to head the CPD partly as an effort to placate African-American aldermen. The appointment has also been used to appease civil rights establishment figures such as Jesse Jackson, layers of the pseudo-left, and groups like Black Lives Matter that have been leading the protests against police brutality. I believe Eddie Johnson has everything that the city needs, Emanuel said in a press conference at police headquarters. The mayor noted that Johnson would help rebuild officer morale and be uniquely positioned to help build a bridge to the community. Emanuel touted Johnson as leading an effort to reform the CPD in the public eye. Far from ushering in a new era of reform or an end to police brutality, Johnson has a record that entirely explodes Emanuels pretenses of reforming the police. According to a police department statement, Chief Johnson has significant experience managing large-scale special events and was instrumental in the operational planning and response of the 2012 NATO Summit that was held in Chicago. During those protests, the Chicago police, then headed by Garry McCarthy, injured over 25 people, including reporters, and arrested numerous others. The CPD engaged in widespread surveillance and infiltration of activist groups. Three young men were arrested and jailed on trumped-up charges of terrorism as part of the mobilization of state resources against protest and dissent. Brian Church, Brent Betterly and Jared Chase were arrested on domestic terrorism charges during the NATO protests. The three anarchists were accused of making crude Molotov cocktails in the lead-up to the NATO Summit. Cook County prosecutors sought to sentence the three protesters to 14 years in prison. The defense argued that they were entrapped by police officers working undercover. In April 2014, after a three-week trial, a jury acquitted all three of the terrorism charges, but they were convicted of felony counts of possessing incendiary devices and promoting mob action. Judge Thaddeus Williams sentenced them to between five to eight years in prison. The acquittal on terrorism charges was a blow to the former States Attorney Anita Alvarez, who alleged that the three men had plotted attacks on police stations, President Obamas campaign headquarters and the home of Mayor Emanuel. The crackdown on the NATO protests in Chicago was a significant attack on democratic rights. It marked a milestone in the utilization of enhanced police powers that were implemented after 9/11. By identifying the NATO protesters with terrorism, the ruling class took a major step in criminalizing political opposition to its policies in the name of the war on terror. Johnsons leading role in the crackdown of NATO protestors refutes any notion that his role will be to reform the police. Following his appointment as interim superintendent, Johnson told CBS News that hed never witnessed police brutality in his career with the CPD. Ive actually never encountered police misconduct, he said, because youve got to understand, officers that commit misconduct dont do it in front of people that they think are going to hold them accountable for it. Such a statement flies in the face of widespread revelations of police brutality by Chicago police spanning decades. Last fall, a court ordered that the Emanuel administration release the video of the police murder of Laquan McDonald by officer Jason Van Dyke. The video, suppressed by the Emanuel administration and the CPD for over a year, showed officer Van Dyke shooting the unarmed McDonald 16 times, including multiple shots as the youth lay on the ground. With the release of the video, Emanuel faced protests and widespread calls for his resignation. The murder of McDonald implicated all layers of the political establishment. Emails from 2014 to 2015 that were released by the Emanuel administration revealed the depth of collaboration between the mayors office, police officials, the Independent Police Review Association, political leaders in the city and others who were responsible for handling the information on McDonalds death. The first attempt at damage control by Emanuel was to fire Police Commissioner Garry McCarthy. He had played a leading role in the cover-up directed by the Emanuel administration, but ended up the fall guy. After firing McCarthy, Emanuel proclaimed that he would usher in an era of transparency and police reform with the aid of the federal Justice Department. In reality, the Justice Department and the Obama administration have shielded killer cops and have done nothing to stop the tide of police murders, from Ferguson to Baltimore and all over the country. Police killings in the United States continue unabated this year, on top of the approximately 1,200 killed by police in 2015. Far from ushering an era of transparency, the Emanuel administration has also been blocking further Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on cases of police brutality. The Better Government Association (BGA) has filed a lawsuit against the CPD for failing to turn over videos of fatal police shootings. In a press release, the BGA notes, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he supports a new policy requiring that videos of fatal shootings by Chicago police be publicly released relatively soon after the incidents. But the Emanuel administration is stonewalling a Better Government Association request for footage from the past five years, so the BGA is suing the Chicago Police Departmentagain. Under the Illinois Freedom of Information Actthe state law known as FOIA that guarantees public access to public records within no more than 10 business daysthe BGA asked the police department for copies of records and videos of officer-involved fatal shootings since 2011. The BGA states, the CPDs FOIA practices with regard to shooting videos have not materially changed following the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video. The mayors office and the CPD have repeatedly blocked FOIA requests by organizations like the BGA, the Chicago Tribune and independent journalists. According to an Associated Press report, the city of Chicago has racked up over $662 million in legal costs. Lawsuits include multiple claims by people who have been tortured or physically assaulted and made to give false confessions in homicide cases. Even as Emanuel claims to be ushering an era of police reform, the mayor and his police department continue to operate a secret black site at Homan Square where thousands have been illegally detained, interrogated, tortured and sexually assaulted. There has been near total silence by the entire political establishment and the media on the secret interrogation center. On March 30, the right-wing populist New Zealand First Party MP Darroch Ball announced a private members bill that would enable youth as young as 15 to go into the army for job training for three years. Ball, a former army officer, said in a statement that the Youth Employment, Training and Education (YETE) Bill would address the problem of over 70,000 young people aged between 15 and 24 who are unemployed and not in education or training. Although the scheme would be voluntary, New Zealand First envisages that thousands of youth would be enticed by the promise of free trades training. The proposal is cynically presented as a solution to youth unemployment, which officially stands at 15 percent. Its real aim is to subject working-class youth to military discipline and channel rising class tensions produced by social inequality in the most reactionary, nationalist direction. Sending thousands of young people into the army would militarise society and indoctrinate them to support overseas interventions. Such a scheme would be a step towards conscription, which would be imposed in the event of the outbreak of war. In the years leading up to World War I, New Zealands ruling elite prepared the younger generation to fight by introducing military training in schools. NZ Firsts proposal comes amid intense geo-political volatility produced by Washingtons strategic pivot to Asia, its aggressive and reckless military build-up and preparations for war against China. The world increasingly resembles the period prior to the outbreak of World War I and World War II, as the imperialist powers, led by the US, seek to offset their economic decline through the use of military methods. The Australian government is preparing a huge increase in defence spending in order to assist its integration into the pivot. In New Zealand, Labour and National Party governments have strengthened military and intelligence ties with the US by sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. The spy agency, the GCSB, carries out espionage against China on behalf of the US National Security Agency. New Zealand has increased its participation in US-led military exercises, such as last months drills in South Korea, and has invited US troops to train in New Zealand. NZ Firsts YETE Bill fits in with the pro-war atmosphere being cultivated by the entire political establishment. The National government, supported by Labour, is spending more than $100 million on events and exhibitions commemorating the centenary of World War I, in which 18,000 New Zealand soldiers were killed and 41,000 wounded. The purpose is to glorify NZs involvement in order to prepare the population for future wars. The YETE Bill has not yet been set down for debate in parliament and has received almost no media coverage. None of the parliamentary parties has condemned its proposal for thousands of youth to be trained by the armyan indication of the shift to the right by the entire spectrum of bourgeois politics. Signicantly, the only publication to report on the Bill was the Daily Blog, which is funded by five trade unionsUnite, the Dairy Workers Union, the Rail and Maritime Transport Union, the Maritime Union and the Meat Workers Union. It published an enthusiastic endorsement of the policy by Curwen Rolinson, a NZ First member who writes regularly for the blog, promoting his partys militarist and nationalist politics. Rolinson described the YETE Bill as a revolutionary concept that would teach the youths in question a trade and some skills, instill discipline through living in a controlled environment and turn lives around for thousands. NZ First is a right wing nationalistic party, founded in 1991 on a platform of opposition to Asian immigration. In response to the deepening social crisis, the party has attacked immigrants from China, India and the Pacific Islands, including low-paid seasonal workers and foreign students. It also calls for a major increase in spending on the armed forces and tougher law and order policies. NZ First been embraced by the opposition Labour Party, the Greens, the Maori nationalist Mana Party and the trade union bureaucracy. All three parties, along with the Daily Blog, supported NZ First leader Winston Peters by-election campaign last year in the Northland electorate. Labour leader Andrew Little is courting NZ First and the Greens as potential coalition partners in the 2017 election. He has echoed NZ Firsts attacks on immigrants, particularly those from China and India. Labour and Mana last year scapegoated Chinese people for the lack of affordable housing in Auckland. The Daily Blog s support for NZ First and its military training policy flows from the nationalism of the trade union bureaucracy. These organisations basically agree with the National governments austerity measures; their leaders have worked hand-in-hand with big business to sack thousands of workers following the financial crisis of 2008, in the name of national competitiveness. The unions represent an upper middle class layer whose privileged position derives, in the final analysis, from the strength of New Zealand capitalism. For more than a century the labour aristocracy has promoted militarism and xenophobia to divide the working class and assist the New Zealand ruling elites own imperialist ambitions. In World War I, leaders of the Social Democratic Party (which became the Labour Party in 1916) and the unionslike their counterparts in Australia and Europeloudly supported joining the war as a junior partner in the British Empire. When mass opposition to the war erupted in the working class, the Labour Party sought to contain it with a limited campaign against conscription. The first Labour government, supported by the unions and the Stalinist Communist Party, took the country into World War II, imposed conscription and imprisoned 700 conscientious objectors. After WWII, Labour and the union leadership whipped up anti-communist sentiment and backed New Zealands contribution to the Korean War and the ANZUS military alliance with Washington. In 1949 Labour reintroduced compulsory military training for youth, which was only ended in 1972 following mass protests against the Vietnam War. The union-funded Daily Blogs endorsement of NZ Firsts army training plan, and the alignment of Labour, Greens and Mana with this chauvinist party, must be taken as a sharp warning. These pro-capitalist organisations are locking the country into US imperialisms preparations for another world war. The author also recommends: The role of Australian and New Zealand schools in World War I [25 April 2015] Opposition celebrates New Zealand Firsts by-election victory [31 March 2015] Oppose the TPP and the drive to war against China! [13 November 2015] The fraudulent war on terrorutilised by both Coalition and Labor governments to justify Australias involvement in predatory US-led wars and attacks on domestic democratic rightshas been used to ban industrial action by workers fighting to defend their jobs, wages and working conditions. The Fair Work Commission (FWC) industrial tribunal, following a weekend hearing, issued an interim injunction to stop scheduled national strikes at air and sea ports by Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) workers. It is the first time the federal government has invoked the threat of terrorism to outlaw industrial action by any section of the Australian workforce. The DIBP rolling stoppages, which were due to begin on Monday, were part of limited national industrial action by about 100,000 federal public sector workers across 13 different government departments involved in a protracted dispute over new work agreements. Most federal public sector enterprise agreements expired two years ago, leaving 130,000 employees, or almost 85 percent of the federal public service workforce, without work contracts or a pay rise. Public sector workers have overwhelmingly rejected government enterprise offers during this period. The offers involve nominal annual 2 percent wage rises, conditional on the elimination of various hard-won working conditions. The governments urgent application to the FWC was made under Section 424 of Australias draconian industrial relations laws. The FWC legislation was introduced by the former Rudd Labor government with the full support of the unions. Section 424 allows the FWC, or the federal industrial relations minister, to terminate any industrial action deemed to threaten to endanger the life, the personal safety or health or the welfare of the population or part of it. Supporting the government FWC application, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection Force issued a statement on April 4 claiming the existence of an intolerable threat to national security. It insisted that drug traffickers, child sex offenders, and returning foreign fighters could enter the country undetected as a result of any ongoing industrial action. The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) immediately complied with the FWC interim order and directed DIBP workers to refrain from taking any action. It is the second time in less than two weeks that the CPSU has cancelled scheduled industrial action by DIBP staff in response to speculation about possible terror attacks. Late last month, the union called off 24-hour stoppages at airports around the country following a request from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. He made the appeal during a press conference after the terrorist bombings in Belgium. The CPSU union seized on last weeks FWC injunction in the hope that it would demoralise other public sector workers and allow the union to resume negotiations and broker cost-cutting enterprise deals acceptable to the government. From the outset, the CPSU has worked to limit the impact of any industrial action by DIBP staff, especially at airports and other key areas. In an April 2 media release, CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood admitted that the union had agreed to more than 50 exemptions for officers whose work relates to counter-terrorism and security since this industrial action began almost a year ago. While federal public sector workers have shown their determination to defend their wages and conditions, the CPSU has done everything possible to prevent a political struggle against the government and its social austerity demands. The CPSUs principal concern during the long-running dispute has been to convince the government that it can best achieve its ends through closer collaboration with the union. This is the content of CPSU secretary Nadine Floods continuous appeals for the government to discuss a more sensible bargaining policy with the union and fix this mess. The shutdown of the scheduled DIBP strikes is another signal from the CPSU to the Liberal-National coalition government that it will do everything it can to resolve the enterprise agreement dispute before the federal election. In her April 2 press release, Flood, voicing the entire union bureaucracys support for the war on terror, declared that the CPSU was absolutely committed to the safety of our community and Australias national security. Far from stopping terrorism, this US-led war has been used to unleash imperialist military aggression in the Middle East and internationally and unleash an assault on basic democratic rights. The FWC interim injunction banning strike action by Immigration and Border Protection employees on national security grounds and its acceptance by the CPSU establishes a new anti-democratic precedent and one that will increasingly be used against workers in other key industries. In a referendum held in the Netherlands on Wednesday, a clear majority of 62 percent of the voters rejected the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine. Just 38 percent of voters voted in favour. Voter participation was 32 percent, meaning the referendum result is valid; the law requires a minimum of 30 percent voter participation. The result deepened the political crisis in Europe and provoked extremely nervous responses from political and media circles. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who had called for a yes vote, felt compelled after the result to declare that the ratification of the EU agreement would have to be reconsidered. If the referendum is valid, we cant simply ratify the agreement as it is, he said on Dutch television. In January, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker warned in an interview with Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad that a no vote in the Netherlands on the Association Agreement could open the door to a major continental crisis. In early March, Juncker reiterated his warning in The Hague, saying a no vote would lead to a destabilisation of Europe. The day after the result, he announced through his spokesperson that he was deeply saddened. Herman Van Rompuy, who participated in the drafting of the agreement with Kiev as President of the European Council, declared in an interview with Dutch newspaper Trouv that a no vote would be a disgrace for The Hague. Van Rompuy referred to the fact that the Dutch government had already accepted the agreement and that a no would make the country a less reliable partner. The Netherlands was one of the EUs founding members and currently holds the rotating EU Council presidency. Top German European politician and leader of the conservative European Peoples Party, Manfred Weber, attacked the Dutch government claiming that Rutte had not done enough to promote support for the EU-Ukraine deal and had kept a low profile, just like many of the elites. According to Weber, the referendum was not just about the deal with Ukraine. It was anti-Rutte, it was anti-Europe, it was anti-migration, it was anti-everything. In its initial commentary, Spiegel Online spoke of a double rebuke for the EU. The referendum was not only about any free trade agreement, but rather that deal which in November 2013 triggered an uprising in Ukraine. That the Netherlands now rejected this agreement so clearly was of symbolic value. It was not only a victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also a victory for all of those who would prefer to see the EU break up today and not tomorrow. In addition, nobody should console themselves by assuming that the 70 percent of Netherlanders who did not take part in the referendum have a more friendly attitude towards the EU than the others. The legal basis for the referendum was a law passed in the Dutch parliament in July 2015 on the holding of so-called consultative referendums. This permits the holding of a plebiscite on already adopted laws if, within six months, 300,000 signatures from registered voters can be collected. The Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine was thus called into question. The activist group GeenPeil announced on July 10 it would gather the necessary signatures for the referendum, receiving, according to their own figures, 30,000 within the first 24 hours. In October 2015, it was officially announced that more than 427,000 valid signatures had been received and that the government had to call the referendum. GeenPeil is a partnership between the GeenStijl website and citizens initiatives Burgercomite-EU and Forum voor Democratie, which are supported behind the scenes by right-wing political forces. The founder of Forum voor Democratie, Thierry Baudet, is seeking to bring about a conservative revolution and the dissolution of the EU, according to his own proclamations. His dissertation published in 2012 carried the programmatic title The significance of borders, and it is a right-wing plea for the nation-state. GeenStijl (without style or civility) is a multi-media blog in existence since 2003 which describes itself as politically incorrect and has been repeatedly criticised due to xenophobic and extreme comments, according to Wikipedia. Since 2010, the website, which belongs to the conservative Telegraaf newspaper group, has produced its own television programme with their own reporters that above all targets politicians they portray as part of the left-liberal opinion-making elite. The referendum was also supported by Geert Wilders Islamophobic Party of Freedom (PVV) and the Socialist Party (SP). The SP was founded in 1972 as a Maoist group and is today a right-wing social democratic party which is almost as nationalist and xenophobic as the PVV. Already in the 1980s, the SP demanded in a pamphlet titled Foreign Labour and Capital that foreign workers adapt to the language and values of the country, or leave. The SP and its chairman, Emile Roemer, responded to the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels by demanding a massive strengthening of state security forces. The line-up of these elements against the Association Agreement does not mean that everyone who voted no in the referendum supports these right-wing forces. The video through which GeenPeil mobilised support for the referendum pointed to the connection between the Association Agreement with Ukraine, the right-wing coup in Kiev orchestrated by the western powers, and the subsequent civil war. At one point it states, The negotiations led to violent demonstrations on the Maidan and now ultra-nationalists with Nazi symbols have seats in parliament. The video also refers to the 198 Dutch victims of flight MH17 which was shot down over Ukraine and warns of the dangers of a geopolitical conflict between the EU and Russia. It states, The EU is coming ever closer to the Russian border. All three countries, [Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova], were formerly part of the Soviet Union and now the EU and NATO are trying to incorporate them. The forces behind the no campaign have, of course, nothing in common with an anti-imperialist movement against the EU and NATO from the standpoint of the working class. Instead, they represent a faction of the Dutch ruling elite which considers a conflict with Russia under current conditions to be undesirable and believes that the Netherlands could pursue its strategic interests more effectively outside of, or at least with greater national independence from, the EU. One telling point of criticism raised by the no camp was that the Netherlands influence on EU foreign policy is continually decreasing with EU enlargement. At one point in the video it states, Does that mean that we should leave these three countries [Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova] to the Russian bear? Of course not. But one has to ask the questions, how did these agreements come about and at what price? And why was the opinion of the majority of the population ignored? At the end of March, the chairpersons of the Burgercomite-EU group told NRC Handelsblad that they were not concerned with Ukraine, but to bring about a Nexit, an exit of the Netherlands from the EU. Arjan van Dixhoorn, who leads the alliance, said, Were not really bothered about the Ukraine, you have to understand that. And further, A Nexit referendum has not yet been possible. Therefore we are using all opportunities available to us to increase pressure on the relations between the Netherlands and the EU. The initiators celebrated the outcome of the referendum with Baudat boasting, The result cant just be ignored. Now, a discussion about another EU would begin. Wilders tweeted, Large majority of voters is against, that is fantastic, and prophesied, This is the beginning of the end of the EU. The chorus was joined by right-wing populists across Europe, including the chair of the right-wing UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, who is leading the campaign for a British exit from the EU in a referendum in June. Despite the gloating of these reactionary forces, the majority of the Dutch population was of the opinion that there was no lesser evil in this vote, and abstained. The Financial Times commented, But the numbers who stayed at home were so high, at least by the standards of Dutch national elections, that the safest conclusion is that abstention was the real choice of the Dutch people. For some voters, who correctly sensed that the referendum was in many respects not about Ukraine at all, abstention was a tactic designed to invalidate the entire exercise. This week, junior doctors in England held their fourth strike, walking out Wednesday for 48 hours. They are opposing the imposition of a new inferior contract by Conservative health secretary Jeremy Hunt. The new contract, due to come into effect August 1, will mean a reduction in pay for out-of-hours work and erode safeguards against working long hours. The strike led to the cancellation of around 5,000 operations. Socialist Equality Party members spoke to junior doctors on picket lines around the country. They distributed to strikers copies of the statement from NHS FightBack, UK Junior doctors dispute at a crossroads and showed strikers a prominent Conservative blog calling for junior doctors to be defeated as coal miners were during the yearlong miners strike. Junior doctors had to be given their 1984, it stated. At Londons Charing Cross Hospital, Henry, a junior doctor, expressed his frustration at the limiting of the dispute by the British Medical Association (BMA): The strike actions organised, led and controlled by the BMA have gone nowhere so far. The government does not care and is not impressed. I am for a general strike of all public sector workers and professions. Henry thought the trade unions are doing nothing towards rolling out such an action. Amy spoke of how just a few MPs, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, attended a recent parliamentary debate on the NHS [National Health Service] Reinstatement Bill, which called for the health service to remain in public ownership: It was ridiculous. It was a short session in Parliament, and there were only 17 MPs. They did not care. They were not serious about rolling back the 2012 Health Care Act. The act ended the compulsory responsibility of the health secretary to provide health care nationally. At Poole General Hospital in Dorset, Hugh, a junior doctor, said, There are twice as many people here than the last strike. Actually, momentum is gathering, especially with the announcement of the escalation of strike action to fully withdraw from all care in the next planned strike. Public opinion remains with us, as they know that we are doing this for them and for the benefit of the NHS. Initially among doctors, a lot more people were saying that this was a nonpolitical issue. It is intrinsically political. I have seen other comparisons of our strike to the 1984 miners strike. The Tory government is determined to shrink the public sector at any cost. We can see that this government is dismantling the NHS. The government is willing to bail out the financial services, but not to fund our public services. Asked his opinion of the BMA, Hugh said, Traditionally the BMA did not want to see itself as a trade union and do not necessarily want this to be a wider workers dispute. ... I think a lot of workers in the public sector are struggling as we are and we need to work together. If the unions want to fight, they should be throwing all their weight behind this struggle. It is the other health care workers who are going to be the governments next target. Why are they silent? They should be doing everything they can. These trade unions should be representing their members and should be standing for the doctors in the strongest way possible. Uniting behind this dispute is essential. This is an issue of the future of the NHS, and we should treat it as such. As well as the BMA, the Labour Party was also criticised by junior doctors on other picket lines. Anna, on the Salford Royal Hospital picket line in Greater Manchester, is doing a foundation course after five years in medical school. She said, Privatisation has been going on for a long time. Governments have been dismantling the NHS secretly, so they can say it is unsustainable and failing. Most of the European countries have semi-private health care, and that is what Labour and the Tories want. The last Labour government supported the Private Finance Initiative. The government is targeting doctors first, and next in line will be consultants and nurses. If Labour got voted in, it would be just the same for us. Youd think Corbyn would be really standing up for us, but he has never come out in support. Ahmed is in the second year of his Foundation course and said, Even if we win this dispute, I believe the privatisation of the NHS will go ahead, and I dont think a Labour government will stop it. On most issues, the differences between Labour and Tory are very small. We have to turn out to the public. No one else will save the NHS. Jayne, in the second year of a four-year training post in anaesthesia, said she had already seen the NHS FightBack statement on Facebook: The Labour Party is just as guilty as the Tories of attacking the NHS. As you said in one of your leaflets, didnt Labour sign off to PPI and they supported privatisation? They dont support our dispute publicly, so by proxy they support the Tories. I dont think pressure on the government will work. They are going to impose this contract. It would be much better to unite doctors, nurses, all staff to fight the attacks. The government are attacking us now and will be coming for everyone else next. I dont know if the BMA have handled this dispute as well as they could have. On the picket line at Leeds General Infirmary, West Yorkshire, John said, I think the government is looking to privatise the NHS. It is their long-term aim. Jeremy Hunt does see this as his miners strike and is looking to break the BMA. On the picket line at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary in West Yorkshire, Angela, a trainee anaesthetist, noted the proposal made in the Conservative Home blog to bring in volunteers working in the NHS along the lines of the Territorial Army. She replied, One of the key features of the NHS is to have people doing the same job day in day out and being on the shop floor every day. Having people coming and going as physicians assistants would not be beneficial. What worries health care professionals is that it seems to be an indirect attack on the NHS itself. I am very proud of the NHS as an institutiona national health service, free at the point of access, open to all. If you start to break that up, it would be against the very essence of what the NHS is. If you need a heart transplant or a liver transplant, you can get one for free. If you have a heart attack and go into accident and emergency, you dont have to worry about having to pay for your treatment. That is something you take for granted until you go to another system where you have to pay. For further information visit: www.nhsfightback.org In the run-up to this weekends federal New Democratic Party (NDP) convention, Canadas pseudo-left has stepped up its efforts to promote this discredited big business party as an instrument for opposing austerity and even fighting for socialism. The claim that the NDP can be a vehicle of working class struggle is preposterous. But that is no obstacle for the likes of Fightback, the International Socialists (IS), Socialist Action, and the NDPs moribund Socialist Caucus. However, it does require that they shamelessly distort, falsify and lie about the political record, social composition, and class orientation of the NDP. All these groups have sought to portray the NDPs Harper lite campaign in the 2015 federal election as a misstep at odds with NDP traditions and largely attributable to the politics of party leader, Tom Mulcair, an ex-Quebec Liberal cabinet minister and self-avowed admirer of Margaret Thatcher, and a small coterie of his advisors and party officials. On the role the unions have played in the NDPs lurch to the right over the past three decades, their suppression of the class struggle, longstanding promotion of the Liberals as a progressive ally, and support for the abortive 2008 NDP-Liberal coalitionall these groups are studiously silent. Pointing to the examples of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and the self-professed democratic socialist candidate for the US Democratic Party presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, the pseudo-left groups are urging the NDP to dump Mulcair and turn left. If the NDP patterns itself after Corbyn and Sanders, it will become, like them, a pole of attraction for workers and youth seeking an alternative to capitalist austerity, the electoral fortunes of Canadas social democrats will revive, and the NDP can fulfill its mission as a workers party, fundamentally opposed to the big business Liberal and Conservatives ... or so claim Fightback, Socialist Action and the other pseudo-left groups. The reality is that the NDP, ever since its founding in 1961, has been a pro-capitalist party closely tied to the right-wing trade union bureaucracy. Over the past three decades, like its social democratic counterparts internationally, the NDP has abandoned even its rhetorical commitment to reformist policies, embraced balanced budgets and capitalist austerity and helped revive militarism, supporting Canadas participation in one US-led war after another. One year ago, the pseudo-left groups that are now advocating workers and youth press the NDP to follow Corbyn and Sanders in turning left were lauding Syriza (the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left) as an instrument of mass struggle against the austerity diktats of international capital. This was a cruel hoax. A nationalist, bourgeois party, Syriza was utterly opposed to mobilizing the Greek and European working class against the European bourgeoisie and its European Union. Under pressure from international capital, Syriza quickly abandoned its anti-austerity promises, imposing a program of social deprivation that surpassed that of its right-wing predecessors. While their political histories differ, the function of Corbyn and Sanders is essentially the same: to serve as lightning rods to channel growing anger against social inequality and war in directions that do not threaten the capitalist social order. With their proposals for a left makeover of the NDP, the pseudo-left groups are working to uphold the authority of the social democrats and the trade unions, working to direct the growing anti-capitalist sentiment back toward organizations of Canadian capitalist rule that have for decades played an indispensable role in smothering social discontent. The fear of the pseudo-left is that the mounting anger produced by decades of wars, attacks on workers jobs and living standards, and hand-outs to the corporate elite could trigger the development of a mass upsurge of the working class that bypasses the NDP and trade union bureaucracy. In a recent poll, the NDP garnered the support of less than 12 percent of Canadians. Fightback, which is affiliated to the misnamed International Marxist Tendency (IMT) and functions as a faction within the NDP, has prominently featured an interview on its website with Cheri DiNovo, an NDP member of the Ontario legislature. DiNovo, whom Fightback applauds for standing up to the ruling establishment of the NDP by calling for Mulcairs ouster, commented, Don't give up on the party. I know it's been frustrating for those of us on the left of the party, but this is the vehicle we need to keep fighting through. For its part, the International Socialists (IS), the Canadian counterpart of the US-based ISO, is urging the NDP to join the leap, that is to endorse the Leap Manifesto, a document published last fall under the signatures of Naomi Klein, various ex-politiciansincluding former Ontario NDP leader and Canadian UN ambassador Stephen Lewis and Ontario Conservative Attorney General Roy McMurtryand prominent musicians and environmentalists. After a disastrous election result, declares the IS, the NDP has the opportunity of leaping back by embracing the Leap Manifesto. Far from being a challenge to capitalism or even the political establishment, the Leap Manifesto is directed at winning support from all parties for the transition to a non-carbon economy and for the expansion of the caring economy, financed through moderate increases in taxation on big business and the rich. Arguably the most brazen apologetics for the NDP are served up by Barry Weisleder and his Socialist Action group, which is allied with the French New Anti-Capitalist Party and the Pabloite International. Socialist Action operates within the NDP under the umbrella of the Socialist Caucus, an NDP ginger group it founded in the 1990s and continues to lead. Weisleder responded to the NDPs rout last fall by issuing a call for Mulcair to be removed as leader, while baldly proclaiming that the NDP the only mass, labour-based political party in North America remains viable as a potential leftist challenger to capitalist austerity, climate injustice, social inequality, racism, sexism and war. In early March, the Socialist Caucus announced it is running a slate of candidates for senior positions within the party, including Weisleder for party president. So as to underscore its eagerness to work with the partys right wing, the Socialist Caucus subsequently declared that it doesnt want to takeover the NDP, adding that it isnt contesting many party leadership positions. Weisleder and Socialist Caucuss specific role within the NDP is to provide the party and its trade union-backers with a desperately needed left cover. Showing that such services are highly valued in ruling circles, Weisleders call for Mulcair to be removed and the news he was running for party president were prominently featured in the corporate media, including the Globe and Mail . One of the Socialist Caucuss most outrageous claims is its equating of the pro-capitalist trade unions with the working class. At a Socialist Caucus convention held last December, members adopted a resolution hailing the NDP as a party of the working class: NDP links to labour unions including its receipt of their financial contributions, proudly distinguish the NDP like its Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) predecessor, from the parties of big business as the democratic political expression of the workers movement in this country. This is a barefaced lie. Weisleder and the Socialist Caucus, as well as other loyal pseudo-left groups within the NDP like Fightback, equate the trade unions with the working class, when in fact the relationship between them is antagonistic. The unions in Canada, as around world, have responded to the intensification of the class struggle by integrating themselves ever more completely into corporate management structures and the state, including through massive investment funds like the Quebec Federation of Labours Solidarity Fund, while acting as willing accomplices in the imposition of wage and job cuts. Weisleders reference to the unions alliance with the CCF is revealing for what it omits. This alliance was forged on the basis of Cold War anti-communism, with the social democrats and union bureaucrats collaborating to purge the labour movement of revolutionary-minded workers during the late 1940s and 1950s, and the explicit repudiation of any call for the abolition of capitalism. Socialist Caucus is conspicuously silent on the labour bureaucracys role in spearheading the rightward evolution of the NDP. Nor have they uttered a peep about the responsibility the pro-capitalist unions bear for rehabilitating the widely discredited Liberals as a progressive party over more than a decade. Terrified by the emergence of mass working class opposition in Ontario in the late 1990s to the Common Sense Revolution of Progressive Conservative Premier Mike Harris, the unions suppressed the protests. They then moved sharply to the right and formed an alliance with the provincial Liberals that has endured during 13 years of Liberal rule marked by massive social spending cuts, huge corporate tax cuts, and the criminalization of teacher strikes. The unions pro-Liberal anti-Tory Ontario election campaigns served as the model for their Anybody But Harper campaign in the 2015 federal election, which helped propel Trudeau to power. Weisleder and his Socialist Caucus are calling for a democratic revolution in the NDP to overcome the partys democratic deficit. This is a red herring. The NDP is a bourgeois party, which like its social democratic counterparts around the world is beholden to the capitalist profit system, has backed a series of imperialist interventions over the past two decades, including the bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Afghan War, and the air war against Libya in 2011, and fully accepts the reactionary fiscal framework in domestic politics established by decades of a sustained assault led by the ruling elite against the wages and living standards of the working classan assault which at every step was ably assisted by the trade unions. For all their denunciations of Mulcair, Weisleder and the Socialist Caucus whitewash his right-wing role. Their website says Mulcair was not sensitive to protest movements like the 2012 Quebec student strike and the native Idle No More campaign. Had he been sensitive, laments the Socialist Caucus, had he clearly supported those movements, inside and outside of the House of Commons, we might not have lost so many Quebec seats. This is a deliberate effort to cover up for the NDPs foul record. Far from not showing enough sensitivity towards the Quebec student strike, the NDP left no doubt about which side of the barricades it stood on. It refused to offer the striking students even nominal support; then joined with the Harper government in endorsing the Quebec Liberal governments draconian bill 78, which criminalized the strike and demonstrations on any issue throughout the province. With their campaign for a new NDP leader, Weisleder and the Socialist Caucus are hoping to pave the way for a figure capable of showing the requisite sensitivity to progressive politics, i.e., someone in the mold of British Labour Party leader Corbyn who, while spouting left rhetoric, upholds the partys pro-big business program and its ties to the union bureaucracy. Weisleder makes this explicit in an article explaining the reason behind Socialist Caucuss decision to stand a slate of candidates, stating, Socialism is marginalized in the party constitution and excluded from the election campaign, even while radical ideas are gaining a huge audience in Britain, the USA, and beyond. The experience of Jeremy Corbyns leadership refutes Weisleders pretensions to be organizing any kind of genuine struggle against the right wing of the NDP. Since winning the Labour Party leadership last September, in large measure because of his declared opposition to the reactionary legacy of the faction of the party associated with former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Corbyn has junked one promise after another in the name of party unity. Corbyn capitulated on the issue of a British military intervention in Syria, allowing Labour MPs to have a free vote in parliament and thereby providing the government with a strong majority in favour of sending warplanes to the Middle East. He also abandoned his declared opposition to nuclear weapons and the European Union, while embracing the need for austerity policies. In Britain, the role of Socialist Caucus was played by pseudo-left groups like Left Unity, the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party, who all hailed Corbyn as an expression of popular opposition to the ruling elite and capitalism, and claimed that this proved Labours viability as a workers party. Weisleder and the Socialist Caucuss democratic revolution in the NDP is a political fraud offering no way forward for the millions of workers and young people across the country seeking to take up a struggle against job cuts, wage reductions, anti-democratic police state measures and the drive to war. Such a struggle is only possible through a decisive political and organizational break with the big-business NDP and its pseudo-left defenders. After more than a million French workers and youth mobilized last week in strikes and protest against the labor reform of Socialist Party (PS) labor minister Myriam El Khomri, the media are heavily promoting the #NightOnOurFeet movement. It began as few hundred people set up tents on Republic Square in Paris over the weekend. They included members of parties long allied to the PS, like the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) and the Left Front; Christian self-help groups; and the Right to Housing (DAL) group of ex-Maoist activist Jean-Baptiste Eyraud. Besides Eyraud, speakers included nationalist economist Frederic Lordon, a supporter of Popular Unity, a split-off from the ruling Syriza party in Greece. #NightOnOurFeet camps have since been set up in other cities, including Toulouse, Lyon, and Nantes. The media and the protest organizers declare that #NightOnOurFeet models itself on the indignados protests of 2011 in Spain, when thousands of Spanish youth occupied Puerta del Sol square in Madrid and public squares in cities across Spain. The #NightOnOurFeet movement organized a visit to Republic Square by Miguel Urban, a leading member of the Podemos party in Spain that emerged from the indignados protest. These protests reflect the lifestyle politics and postmodernist and anti-Marxist conceptions popular in the affluent middle class that came to predominate also among the indignados, and in similar protests in 2011: the Aganaktismeni in Greece and Occupy Wall Street in the United States. Decisions are taken by consensus, with hand signs. #NightOnOurFeet members also take the name Camille, a gender-neutral name given to both girls and boys in France, when speaking the press. The experience of the indignados and the enthusiasm in pro-PS sections of the media for the protest are political warnings for workers and youth fighting the El Khomri Law. The #NightOnOurFeet movement is a dead end and a political trap. Its purpose is to keep youth radicalized by the struggle against El Khomri Law from turning to the working class and seeking to mobilize it in struggle against the PS and the austerity agenda of the EU. Instead of such a turn, #NightOnOurFeet uncritically promotes social protests of a diffuse class character, which in Spain and Greece not only failed to halt the European Unions (EUs) austerity drive, but reinforced bourgeois parties deeply hostile to the working class. To the extent that their moral appeals to ruling circles for a shift in policy had any oppositional content, it was to push for a change favorable to the social interests of the upper-middle-class layers in the top 10 percent of the population that dominated parties like Podemos and Syriza. These parties proved deeply hostile to the working class. While significant layers of Spanish urban youth participated in the indignados protests, there was no political perspective, no struggle for socialist consciousness, and no struggle to mobilize support among workers. As a result, no significant strike movement or workers struggles developed in the context of this movement. The political forces that dominatedlike the Anticapitalist Left (IA), the Spanish affiliate of the NPAwere able to rapidly wear down the movement and wind it up in a matter of a few months. Working with a cabal of Stalinist professors and media commentators drawn largely from Madrids Complutense University and led by media pundit Pablo Iglesias, they ultimately set up the Podemos party in 2014. This proved to be a reactionary, anti-working class party leaning closely on support in the armed forces and the business community. It is now in negotiations to support a pro-austerity coalition government between the Socialist Party and the right-wing Citizens party in Spain. As for the Aganaktismeni protests on Syntagma Square in Athens, they paved the way for Syrizas record performance in the 2012 Greek elections that established it as the main opposition to New Democracy (ND) and set it on track to win the January 2015 elections and come to power. This proved to be an even more searing experience in the reactionary role of these petty-bourgeois, pseudo-left parties. Once in power, Syriza betrayed its election promises to end austerity. Instead, it extended the EU austerity Memorandum only a few weeks after coming to power, then trampled an overwhelming no vote in a referendum on austerity to impose a savage new austerity package. Syriza is now working out plans to cut billions of euros in pensions, as well as supporting the mass deportation of Middle East refugees to Turkey by the EU. While newspapers are full of comparisons of #NightOnOurFeet with the indignados, no one is discussing the event that pushed tens of thousands of Spanish youth to begin protesting at the Puerta del Sol on May 15, 2011. That was the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo that launched mass revolutionary struggles of the working class and brought down hated, imperialist-backed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. The reasons for the silence of the press and petty-bourgeois groups like the NPA and DAL about Tahrir Square are not so hard to understand. First of all, the role of the NPA in Egypt is a stark exposure of its counterrevolutionary, anti-working class role: it first supported the right-wing Islamist candidate Mohamed Mursi in a presidential election, then the Tamarod (Rebel) movement through which the army prepared a coup that toppled Mursi. They were thus complicit in the coming to power of the military dictatorship of General Abdelfattah al-Sisi that emerged from Mursis ouster. Above all, however, they are silent on the events in Egypt because of the escalating fear of the working class in Europe. While the NPA and similar pseudo-left organizations in France would be eager to participate in some type of reactionary petty-bourgeois regroupment to create a French Syriza or a French Podemos, they are terrified of opposition in the working class at home. There is explosive discontent among workers with the PS policies of austerity, police repression, and war, and the evident fraudulence and bankruptcy of its claims to be a socialist party. PS president Francois Hollande could easily go the way of Mubarak, were there an organization with significant support in the working class calling for a struggle against him. As a result, the media and the pseudo-left allies of the PS like the NPA seek to promote the tattered banner of yet another petty-bourgeois movement, without any perspective. They are happy to promote an occupation of the squares by middle-class youth, because they are desperate to avoid the occupation of the factories by the workers. The forces promoting the movement are aware of opposition and mistrust among more politically aware sections of youth to an empty protest movement and to the political satellites of the PS. Even enthusiastic supporters of #NightOnOurFeet like the daily Liberation are forced to acknowledge from the outset the political incoherence of the movements demands, none of which are addressed to the basic social interests of the working class. It wrote, #NightOnOurFeet occupies Republic Square like the indignados did the Puerta del Sol. Its possible, says Lordon, the surprise Iglesias of 2016, that we are doing something. Obviously its possible also that no, the movement will just become a kitsch version of 1968, that barely born it will immediately succumb to its obvious paradoxes (we dont protest, but we meet on the street pavement, we want no leaders but the dynamic of the movement pushes me to take center stage, demand nothing but fight for our rights, etc.). But where we are, why not try it, right? The working class does not need a kitsch version of 1968 or another reactionary pseudo-left party like Syriza to continue the offensive against the social and democratic rights of the workers. Youth seeking to oppose social austerity and the PS in France must reject the #NightOnOurFeet movement as a political diversion and trap set by cynical maneuverers tied to the PS. The way forward is a fight to mobilize the working class on a socialist program in struggle against this entire swamp of reactionary pseudo-left defenders of the PS government. Behind the backs of the American people and excluded from discussion in the ongoing election campaign, the United States has in recent weeks sharply escalated its military standoff with China. On Thursday, the New York Times reported in an editorial that the United States will shortly conduct a third freedom of navigation exercise in the South China Sea, sailing warships within 12 nautical miles of territory claimed by China. In the first two such incidents, which took place in October 2015 and January 2016, the US Navy sent guided missile destroyers into Chinese territorial waters in nominal adherence to the rules of innocent passage, which prohibit any exercise or practice with weapons of any kind. According to a report in the Navy Times, Admiral Harry Harris, commander of US Pacific forces, is pushing for more aggressive action within 12-mile exclusion zone around Chinese-held territory. Bryan Clark, a former senior aide to retired Admiral Hon Greenert, the recently retired chief of naval operations, told the Navy Times that Harris wants to do real [freedom of navigation] operations. He wants to drive through an area and do military operationssuch as launching aircraft and firing weapons systems. As a result of escalating tensions, the New York Times editorial concluded, menacingly, that some sort of confrontation seems increasingly likely. In advancing its anti-China strategy, the US has recruited the leading powers in the Asia-Pacific, Japan and Australia, as well as countries such as the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, who are rapidly developing their naval forces and are themselves carrying out increasingly provocative operations against China. A report published this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute revealed a vast increase in military spending by US allies in the Asia-Pacific region. The Philippines increased spending by 25.5 percent in a single year, followed by Indonesia with 16.5 percent, while Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam each increased spending by more than five percent. This anti-China alliance has been increasingly assertive in its maritime claims. The Times noted: Last week, Vietnam seized a Chinese ship for illegally entering its territorial waters, and Indonesia threatened to defend its own claims with F-16 fighter jets. This week, the US Navy and Marines deployed 5,000 troops for an ongoing major military exercise with the Philippines. Foreign Affairs magazine noted: The drills, which got underway this week, include an amphibious landing on the Philippines coast and a mock assault on an oil rig, with a small contingent of Australian forces also participating. On Tuesday, Japan announced that it would send a helicopter destroyer through the South China Sea to take part in the exercises. Japan, which carried out some of the greatest war crimes in modern history against the people of China, is rapidly remilitarizing. Earlier this month, a reinterpretation of Japans pacifist constitution went into force, legitimizing the Japanese government to fight alongside the US on the pretext of collective self defense. Going even further, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said earlier this week that the countrys constitution allows Japan, a quarter of a million of whose people died in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in 1945, to possess and use nuclear weapons. The Chinese regime, meanwhile, is under increasing pressure to respond more strongly to US aggression. Hu Bo, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Ocean Research of Peking University, urged in an article published this month by the Diplomat: In the face of U.S. military operations in the South China Sea, China naturally should be prepared militarily. He added: China should adopt and apply all options to counter and expose the traps set by the U.S. through such military operations. With tensions escalating on both sides, a US freedom of navigation operation, or even one of the daily, and mostly unreported, conflicts between military and fishing vessels in the South China Sea, or even an accident such as a recent fly-over by a US nuclear-capable B-52 bomber over Chinese territory, could rapidly lead to a full-scale military exchange, possibly including nuclear weapons. The potential of military conflict between great powers has rapidly become the central preoccupation of the US military. In an extraordinary statement, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday that the US is at high risk from the potential for great power conflict... and the cost in terms of casualties. Despite these frank statements by leading military personnel and the New York Times of the danger of a great power military conflictthat is, world warthese issues have been totally excluded from the 2016 presidential elections. Based on what the candidates are saying, one would never know that the United States and China are coming ever-closer to an open military clash. There is a history in America of major military escalations immediately following elections. Woodrow Wilson, who won reelection in 1916 on the slogan that He kept us out of war, took the United States into World War I on April 2, 1917. Lyndon B. Johnson, who ran as the peace candidate in the 1964 election, carried out a vast escalation of the war in Vietnam within months of taking office. Regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican becomes president next year, there is a very real danger that in the immediate aftermath of the election, if not before, the US will be engaged in a major military confrontation with China, Russia, or in the Middle East. The Socialist Equality Party, in solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International, is determined to alert the working class and youth to the immense danger of war and place this issue at the center of the 2016 elections. The US Navys Seventh Fleet Flagship, USS Blue Ridge, arrived in Colombo on March 26 for a five-day visit, with 900 sailors on board. This is the first time in five years that a US navy vessel has docked in Colombo. Marking the event, the Seventh Fleet command said the visit aimed to build new ties and promote peace and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific. Part of the US Pacific command, the Seventh Fleet is the largest of the US Navy and conducts forward deployed naval operations in support of US national interests in the Indo-Asia Pacific area. US national interests is a reference to Washingtons quest to establish unchallenged domination in the Indo-Pacific as part of its global drive for hegemony. Far from promoting peace and stability in the region, the US represents the greatest threat to peace and stability. Washington is aggressively preparing war plans against China in order to subordinate it to US interests and building military ties and alliances throughout the region for that purpose. In a display of the Colombo governments willingness to align itself with the US, President Maithripala Sirisena visited the warship as part of the official welcome. Later, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and parliamentary speaker Karu Jayasuriya boarded the Blue Ridge and participated in a reception with the naval officers and the US Ambassador to Colombo, Atul Keshap. Sirisena was installed as president in the January 2015 election in what amounted to a regime-change operation orchestrated by Washington. The US had supported former President Mahinda Rajapakses intensified war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and ignored his attacks on democratic rights. However, as Rajapakse strengthened ties with Beijing, Washington hypocritically exploited the issue of his governments war crimes and human rights violations and backed his removal from the office. After Sirisena took office and appointed the United National Party (UNP) leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister, a steady stream of American officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, visited Colombo to deepen ties with the new government. During the reception with Seventh Fleet officials, Ambassador Keshap said: This [naval ship visit] will be the first of many to come. Blue Ridge commander Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin emphasised that we would like to come back and bring more of our Seventh Fleet ships to Colombo and to Sri Lanka. Far from being a symbolic gesture of goodwill between the two nations, the ships visit is part of the close integration of Sri Lanka into the Obama administrations pivot to Asia directed against China. On March 29, senior Seventh Fleet officers met with Sri Lanka Navy and Air Force officials to discuss operational topics. A news release said there were discussions about potential bilateral training between the US and Sri Lanka, in a Pacific Partnership, a joint effort between the United States, foreign militaries, and other organisations to conduct civil-military operations including humanitarian and civic assistance. The discussions are indicative of the increasing Sri Lankan collaboration with the US military. Sri Lankan Rear Admiral Dharmendra Wettewa, who attended the talks, said: I hope we can have something constructive so that we can follow up for months and years. Earlier, a US embassy statement announcing the warships visit noted that it sought to build upon the US-Sri Lanka Partnership Dialogue held in Washington during February, at which both nations pledged to strengthen maritime security cooperation efforts in the Indian Ocean Region in order to counter piracy, provide humanitarian assistance, and ensure free and safe navigation in the regions vital shipping lanes. Freedom of navigation is the pretext used by the US and its allies to denounce China for reclaiming land on islets and reefs it controls in the South China Sea and to deploy warships and planes to the area. A joint statement issued after Februarys Partnership Dialogue said the US had invited Sri Lanka to join the Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor (IPEC), which is a grouping of India and some ASEAN nations with America to strengthen economic, trade and transport linkages between Central Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. The statement declared that economic cooperation between the US and Sri Lanka would fully leverage Sri Lankas location and skilled workforce. This formulation further indicated that the relationship between the two countries primarily hinges on Sri Lankas geo-strategic position in the Indian Ocean. Speaking in Washington on March 28, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Nisha Desai Biswal, outlined Washingtons policy priorities in South and Central Asia. Reiterating the regions strategic importance, Biswal said: Geographically, the Indian Oceans sea routes connect Asia with the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, and the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca are two of the worlds most important strategic economic throughways. She also noted that Central Asia shares borders with Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Iranall states where we have complex and critical foreign policy interests. Biswal said Sri Lanka was rebalancing its foreign and economic policy as it emerges from its self-imposed isolation and benefitting from its strategic location as a maritime gateway to some of the largest markets in Asia. Washington is also seeking to build a close military and strategic alliance with India against China. Washington is discussing a Logistic Support Agreement with New Delhis Bharatiya Janatha Party-led government to give the US military access to Indian bases. India is still hesitant to strike such an agreement, but the discussion underscores the aggressive intent of the US. Behind the backs of the population, the Colombo government is increasingly entrenching the country in the US war plans against China, which carry the danger of a catastrophic nuclear conflagration. TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) A group of Word of South performers is using their show to get local kids interested in writing. How, you may ask? By performing their own words on stage. The Story Pirates is a performance group based out of New York and Los Angeles that takes stories written by kids and turns them into 3-6 minute live shows. Joanna Simmons is the Director of the groups Word of South performance and the Associate Artistic Director for the New York operation. The kinds of stories that I look for are stories that will translate well into a live show, said Simmons. So I look for stories where once they are on stage, it could be exciting for an audience of all ages. Simmons said they received over 100 stories from kids in the area and that she personally read every single story to get a sense of what kids in the area are writing about and what they might be interested in seeing on stage. They were really wonderful, the authors that submitted stories should be very proud of the work they shared with us Honestly, it was just such fun to read them, she said. But according to Simmons, the work her organization does is about more than just putting childrens writing on-stage. Self expression is just such an important core value for people of any age, said Simmons. Just the idea that you can sit down with your brain and your imagination and express yourself anytime, it so important. Creature Land by Kalesia Davis, The Dinosaurs Have Come by Zaraus Beard III, If I Were President by Jackson Evans, and The Best Horse by Lolley Bell are the four stories from local kids that will be performed at Word of South this weekend. WTXL spoke with some of those kids about their Story Pirates experience ahead of the event; you can read about them below. Kalesia Davis, Tallahassee Davis is a 3rd grader at Sable Palm Elementary School. She wrote and entered her story Creature Land after learning about the contest from her teacher. I was just writing something down and it just popped into my head, said Davis. This was her first story but Davis says she enjoyed it and hopes to keep writing. Jackson Evans, Tallahassee Evans is a kindergartner at Christ Classical Academy and submitted the story If I were President. He wrote the story after learning about the presidents and Martin Luther King, Jr. I remember when Martin Luther King died, so he was a really good person and I just wanted to write about him cause someday I want to be just like George Washington and Martin Luther King, said Evans. Lolley Bell, Quincy Bell is a 3rd grade home-school student who used her love of horses as inspiration when writing her story, The Best Horse. I used to love bunnies and then I just liked horses. At my nannys house there is like a picture of me touching their horse, one of their horses, Montana. And now Im starting to collect flying horses, Pegasuss, said Bell. This experience has left Bell wanting to continue to put her stories on paper, saying one day she may even want to be a professional writer. ---- You can see the Story Pirates perform their stories and more on Saturday at the Cascades Park Amphitheater from 2:15 until 4:00 p.m. And for those who also want to participate in the Story Pirate experience, you still have a chance. In addition to the local stories, the group will have a show called Creative Stories where they take suggestions from the audience and perform them in the moment. Word of South kicks off on Friday and runs through Sunday. You can learn more about the festival and see the full line-up by visiting WordofSouthFestival.com. PARIS, TN (WTXL) - An inmate who escaped a prison transport van headed to Tallahassee was captured in Tennessee. Michael Rotunno was found at a hotel Paris, Tennessee Thursday night, according to the Longview Police Department. Authorities say he was driving a stolen truck from Harrison County, Texas. The 30-year-old, along with inmate James Banks, escaped from a prison transport van in Walton County, Florida, on Monday while the van was heading to Tallahassee. Banks was captured in Mississippi on Wednesday. LONGVIEW, TX (WTXL) - The search is called off in Texas for an inmate who escaped a prison transport van in Walton County, Florida Monday morning -- fleeing to Mississippi, then to Texas. Michael Rotunno was spotted in the Longview, Texas area Tuesday. Another inmate, James Banks also took off, but was found Thursday near Jackson, Mississippi. Authorities also spotted Rotunno in Mississippi but he left in a black Ford F-350. Thursday night, police in Longview, Texas found a truck matching the license plate. This morning, Longview Police got a tip the 30-year-old man was still in the area. Residents in Texas told police a man was spotted knocking on doors asking for help. The mans description fit Rotunno's. Three agencies, emergency helicopters, and K9 crews were searching, but through all the efforts, no trace was found. Find voter resources and full coverage of the Nov. 8 election at the YHR Election Center. Women calling Indiana governor to tell him about their periods Submit An Obituary Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death. Go to form If you are sending a Letter To the Editor, please be sure to follow these rules: Letters have a firm 200-word limit and will be edited for grammar, clarity and accuracy. The person who signs the letter must be the author. Anonymous letters will not be considered. Letters must address the editor, not a third party. We will not print form letters, libelous letters, business promotions or personal disputes, poetry, open letters, letters espousing religious views without reference to a current issue, or letters considered in poor taste. Letters reflect the opinion of the writer. The Yakima Herald-Republic cannot verify the accuracy of all statements made in letters. Writers are limited to one published letter per calendar month. 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. Several employees of Israeli business intelligence company Black Cube have been arrested in Romania on suspicion of spying on the chief prosecutor of the country's National Anticorruption Directorate. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Among four suspects arrested there is one Israeli citizen - Ron Weiner. Another suspect, David Geclowicz, was identified by Romanian media as an Israeli national as well, but holds Belgian citizenship. Reports in Romanian media stated that the suspects "established an organized network to carry out serious crimes, including cyber crimes, attempts to steal information, and email hacking." Romanian press article about the arrested Israelis and the late Meir Dagan The company said in response, "Black Cube is an elite international group that numbers more than a hundred Israeli intelligence veterans. It operates in many parts of the world and receives professional legal counsel in every country it operates. In recent weeks, the company has been working with government agencies in Romania to collect evidence of serious corruption in the Romanian government system. As part of the project, two of the company's employees, who reached significant achievements, were arrested. The employees worked in accordance with the local law and the allegations against them are untrue. We are confident the truth will emerge in the coming days, and they will be released back to their homes." Black Cube, which began as a startup by several friends, has become a huge company that employs dozens of Israeli intelligence veterans from computer experts to secret agents. The company's personnel divide their time between Israel and Britain and make a fortune by collecting intelligence that is used to resolve legal disputes. "The idea behind this company is that everyone in the business world has skeletons in his or her closet, and they know how to get to these skeletons," says a client of Black Cube. "The faster people get rich, the more likely it is that they have something to hide. And there's always someone to reveal it: a mistress of one of the senior executives, a disgruntled employee, someone who was discriminated against. They just need to find someone who has an interest to reveal these secrets. That's their job." Black Cube's full client list is secret, and its analysts and investigators don't always know who they are working for. However, the company is reported to have provided services for the British Jewish billionaire Vincent Tchenguiz; large banks in Israel and abroad; various oligarchs; some of the largest law firms in the world; a huge trading company whose client received a $150 million credit line from it and then disappeared, leading Black Cube's personnel to cross the world from Pakistan to Europe in search of assets; and Nochi Dankner. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who died last month, had ties to the company and reportedly served as an honorary president of Black Cube. "In recent years, he helped us in building the company mainly with his connections around the world," a senior company official said of Dagan. The former Mossad chief helped Black Cube with obtaining intelligence and information and provided strategic advice to its clients. Another affair in Romania involving Israelis came to light last December when it was reported that billionaire Benny Steinmetz (the PMO's director-general during Yitzhak Rabin's tenure) and media advisor Tal Silberstein were suspected of trying to take over government-owned land in the country in exchange for gifts and bribes. Romania issued arrest warrants against the two Israelis, but these were cancelled by the Romanian Supreme Court. Zouheir Bahloul, the only Arab MK in the Zionist Union, caused a furor on Thursday when he claimed the Palestinian who stabbed an IDF soldier in Hebron and was later shot dead by another soldier despite having already been neutralized - was not a terrorist. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Speaking to Army Radio, Bahloul made the distinction between those who attack civilians and those who attack soldiers. "I agree the stabber is a murderer, but he is not a terrorist. My problem is when this word becomes too inclusive and turns every Palestinian into a terrorist," he said. MK Zouheir Bahloul (Photo: Knesset Spokesperson) His statement garnered condemnations from across the political spectrum. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Bahloul's comments were "disgraceful. IDF soldiers protect our lives from bloodthirsty murderers with their bodies. I expect all citizens of Israel, and particularly members of Knesset, to give them full backing." The Bayit Yehudi party was quick to issue a statement, saying "the Labor party is slowly turning from post-Zionist to pro-Palestinian. Yitzhak Rabin is turning in his grave." Rebukes also came from Bahloul's own party. Zionist Union chairman Isaac Herzog said he "clarified to MK Bahloul that I reject and strongly condemn his statements and that the Zionist Union's position stipulates that a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. It does not matter if he sets out to kill Arabs or Jews." Herzog also slammed Bayit Yeduhi: "The heads of the Bayit Yehudi party, who are leading a racist campaign and are pushing to release the suspect in the Duma murder, should stop preaching to us about morality and shut their mouths." Meanwhile, MK Itzik Shmuli from the Zionist Union said Bahloul's comments were "extreme and unacceptable for most Israelis, including supporters of the Zionist Union. The way to disengage from the Palestinians doesn't go through distortions of reality. A terrorist is a terrorist and that is how he should be treated. I have great respect for Zouheir, but I think in this case he is mistaken both in what he's saying and in the way he chose to say it, and he should backtrack on his comments." MK Robert Ilatov of Yisrael Beytenu was blunter. "It appears that encouraging and justifying terrorism have become a regular custom for the Arab MKs and it's a shame that Zouheir Bahloul choose to join the band of agitators that includes Ghattas, Zahalka and Zoabi. Condoning the bloodletting of Israeli soldiers and citizens by giving legitimacy to terrorists who kill soldiers while they defend Israeli civilians with their own bodies is abhorrent and criminal. We must not ignore such statements. It is time to put an end to the violent and dangerous incitement that these MKs foment." BEIRUT- Lebanese police have detained an Australian film crew and accused them of involvement in a kidnapping of two children from their Lebanese father on behalf of their Australian mother. "Four Australian nationals have been stopped on suspicion of kidnapping the two children," the Lebanese internal security services said on their Twitter account. CCTV footage broadcast on Lebanese TV appeared to show the two children, who the father said were aged five and three, being bundled into a car by several attackers on a busy street in southern Beirut. The children's grandmother told media she had been hit on the head with a pistol during the abduction. The father, Ali Zeid al-Amin, said by phone that he was scared for the children's safety but that they were with their mother. "It's their mum that kidnapped them, and that's what we know. She contacted me and told me she has the kids," he said. ISTANBUL- Turkish and Israeli teams made progress towards finalising an agreement to mend ties between them in talks in London and agreed a deal will be finalised in the next meeting to be convened very soon, the Turkish foreign ministry said on Friday. The ministry said in a statement its undersecretary, Feridun Sinirliolu, the Israeli prime minister's special envoy, Joseph Ciechanover, and acting chairman of the National Security Council, General Jacob Nagel, met in London on Thursday. Anyone who watches the annual Israeli ceremony in which 12 torches are lit on the eve of Independence Day , symbolizing the 12 ancient tribes of Israel, surely knows the legendary figure that Is Col. (res.) David Rokani. Rokani, 84, has been the commander of the traditional flag-bearer march at the ceremony for years, guiding proceedings with a firm, steady grip. This years ceremony will be his last, putting a bow on 33 straight years of loyal service. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Rokani has decided to end his traditional role and retire from the IDF. Im 84, so its time to pass the role, and the flag, to someone else, he said. Colonel Rokani during the ceremony. 33 years of service. (Photo: Amit Shabi) Indeed, Rokani has a stressful job. Hes normally recruited for reserve duty three weeks before the ceremony, and from that point on, he barely has a moment to rest. The rehearsals for the ceremony are intensive and demanding, both physically and mentally as the long hours and large amount of physical activity are compounded by the importance of the annual tradition, witnessed by millions of Israelis on live TV each year. When asked how he feels ahead of his final ceremony, Rokani said, (Im) not making any special preparations. As far as Im concerned, this will be a ceremony like it is every year. Ill be just as excited for it as I was for my first. Rokani will be replaced next year by Liutenant Colonel (res.) Shimon Deri. The two will be working side-by-side this year, with Rokani Deri taking over fully next time. Palestinian officials have begun circulating a draft resolution among members of the the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The resolution condemns Israeli construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and calls for its halt. It also condemns Israeli settler violence. In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that "(Mahmoud Abbas) is taking steps that will push negotiations farther away." Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The resolution says, "All Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of peace on the basis of the two-State solution." The Palestinians are planning to test the outgoing Obama administration with this draft, After the US vetoed a similarly-worded resolution in 2011. This draft resolution is moderate in comparison to the resolution put forth by the Palestinians five years ago, as it doesn't call for the establishment of a Palestinian state or for international protection. The UN Security Council. (Photo: AP) It is believed that this was done in order to make it harder for the US to use its veto power against this resolution. Adding to this is the fact that Washington has already intensified its rhetoric opposing construction in the West Bank recently. Despite this, a Palestinian political official noted that the final decision of whether or not to put the resolution to a vote at the UN Security Council hasn't been decided yet, although he said that as of now, it is very likely to happen. Abbas is expected to arrive in New York in two weeks for a three-day visit, in order to sign a climate change treaty According to this same Palestinian official, the feeling within the Palestinian Authority is that Abbas will in fact take advantage of his visit to New York in order to put forth the resolution at the Security Council and be present during the vote if it happens. Political officials say that the Palestinians are looking for ways to embarrass Israel, and jumped at this opportunity to do it while Abbas is in New York. The Israeli UN delegation were unaware that the Palestinians were planning on putting forward this draft, but did notice that in the past few days there has been a lot of activity coming from the Palestinian delegation, and that the Israeli delegation alerted both the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister's office. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon. "There are no shortcuts." (Photo: UN Photo/Cia Pak) Netanyahu's office itself published a strong response to the draft resolution, saying "(Mahmoud Abbas) is taking steps that will push negotiations farther away. The only way to push the peace process forward is through direct negotiations, something which (Abbas) is evading. The Palestinians teach their children every day that the settlements include Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Acre." Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said of the matter, "The Palestinians need to understand that there are no shortcuts. The only way to progress negotiations begins with condemning terror and stopping incitement, and ends in direct negotiations between the two sides. The Palestinians continue to try and deceive the international community by pushing forward initiatives which don't contribute anything to either side." BEIRUT - A Lebanese former minister convicted last year of smuggling explosives and planning attacks had his jail sentence increased to nine years and nine months in court on Friday after a retrial. Former information minister Michel Samaha, who has close ties to Bashar al-Assad, was detained in August 2012 and sentenced to four and a half years. He was freed on bail in January pending a retrial, confessed to the charges before the first sentence was handed down, and gave details of a plot allegedly devised with Syria's security chief Ali Malmuk. The court set the longer sentence at 13 years, but in Lebanon a prison year is equivalent to nine months. Then Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi had described the shorter sentence as a travesty of justice. Turkish and Israeli teams made progress towards finalizing an agreement to mend ties between the two countries in talks and agreed a deal will be finalized in the next meeting to be convened very soon, the Turkish foreign ministry said on Friday. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Turkey was once Israel's closest regional ally but ties collapsed in 2010 over the killing by Israeli commandos of 10 Turkish pro-Palestinian activists who tried to breach the Gaza blockade. The Israeli troops raided the Mavi Marmara ship, and met violent resistance . They were eventually thrown off board, suffering injuries. Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, the Israeli prime minister's special envoy, Joseph Ciechanover, and acting chairman of Israel's National Security Council, Brigadier General (ret.) Jacob Nagel, met in London on Thursday, the Turkish ministry said in a statement. PM Netanyahu and Turkish Presdent Erdogan. (Photo: AP, Kobi Gideon/GPO) "The teams made progress towards finalizing the agreement and closing the gaps, and agreed that the deal will be finalized in the next meeting which will be convened very soon," the ministry said. It did not say what form a deal might take but Ankara has always insisted there can be no normalization in ties with Israel unless its conditions for ending the Gaza blockade and compensation for the deaths of the activists are met. Israel allows commercial goods into Gaza daily but limits the transfer of certain items such as cement and building materials as it fears militants, such as Hamas, will use them to build fortifications and attack tunnels. Officials describe the blockade on Gaza, which is supported by neighboring Egypt, as a necessary means of preventing arms smuggling by Palestinian militants. Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said Friday he had no intention of changing his position condemning the Hebron shooting incident , even after inciting photos of him were posted on social media. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Ya'alon has been at the center of much contention in recent days in light of his comments backing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and many senior officials and officers in the defense establishment who came out against a Kfir Brigade soldier for shooting dead a terrorist who was already lying wounded on the ground. The photos, showing the defense minister's face framed by a rifle's target, were posted on social media and passed on WhatsApp groups of Likud activists, calling for an "assassination" of Ya'alon's political career. Inciting photo calling to end Ya'alon's political career. "After all kinds of fringe radical elements tried to portray me as the troubler of Israel, the next stage has come (that should not have surprised anyone) - the distribution of photos inciting against me," Ya'alon wrote on Facebook and Twitter. "This won't do them any good. I have no intention of caving in or conceding the fight for the nature of the State of Israel and Israeli society. I will continue fighting for a just, sane and moral State of Israel. One that fights with an iron fist and determination against those who mean to cause it harm, while at the same time doesn't lose sight of its values or becomes apathetic." Ya'alon went on to say that "this isn't about the right wing or the left wing - this is about our future and that of our children. This is about what country we aspire to live in: One that is part of the family of nations, Jewish and democratic, modern and tolerant, or a country that is declining towards dangerous and destructive paths. We must stand firm and uncompromising against the kind of harmful discourse that has taken over the country. This fight is more important and significant than anything else, and the sane forces in Israeli society must remain united to defeat it." The defense minister concluded his post by saying that "I am fighting for the sane majority of Israeli citizens. That is why I will not give up, and will not be deterred by any threat." The terrorist shot dead by the soldier despite the fact he had already been neutralized (Photo: AFP) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud party leader, condemned the photos, saying the distribution of such photos "is crossing a red line." "A public debate must be conducted in a respectable and topical manner and has no room for this kind of incitement," Netayahu said in a statement. Officials in the Likud party said Ya'alon's comments will come back to haunt him, adding that the defense minister will pay the price in the next party primary election for not backing the shooting soldier. Ya'alon drew fire when he slammed those who are defending the soldier, saying at a Knesset speech: "What do you want: a brutalized military that lost its moral spine?" He said the soldier is not a hero, but rather a soldier who transgressed. "This is a grave incident," he stressed. "It was important for us - the IDF chief, the defense minister and the prime minister - to immediately say how we view this incident. We're not like the other side. I'm proud of the fact the company commander pointed to this being an unusual incident." Earlier this week, Ya'alon also sent a message to politicians backing the soldier. "The IDF chief, and not gang leaders, will determine the rules of engagement," he said. The defense minister, who was speaking at an event in Herzliya, added: "I won't get into the criminal proceedings. I addressed the disciplinary proceedings that ended and were harsh because of the severity of the act, which is against the law, our values, and the rules of engagement. Not one of us has mentioned the word 'murder' and there's an attempt to use it for manipulation. The soldier was warned in the beginning of the investigation that the most serious charge he faces was murder, but later the suspicions changed to manslaughter." A Hasidic man was stabbed in his face and arms during a robbery at the Bleecker Street subway station in Manhattan early on Friday, the New York Daily News reported. The man, who is in his 50s and only speaks Yiddish, was on a south-bound train at 3:30am when an African American man attacked him and robbed him. The robber then ran off, leaving the bloody knife on the train platform. The lightly wounded victim was spotted by two tourists after leaving the station in search of the police. Police were investigating whether the attack was a hate crime, as the victim was dressed in traditional Hassidic clothes. COPENHAGEN - Four men have been jailed in pre-trial detention for four weeks, suspected of having claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group under Denmark's terror laws. The men in their 20s cannot be named under a court ban. Details remain undisclosed because Friday's hearing was held behind closed doors barring publication of details. All pleaded not guilty. If convicted, they face up to six years in jail. Danish media said at least three of the men have relations to criminal gangs but their cases otherwise seem unrelated although all have been in Syria at least once. The four were arrested Thursday in coordinated police raids in the Danish capital and suburbs. BRUSSELS - A UN envoy urged the European Union on Friday to raise political pressure on Israel over accelerating demolitions of Palestinians home in the West Bank , which he said run against international law and increasingly affect aid projects sponsored by the bloc. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Robert Piper, a United Nations assistant secretary general and the head of humanitarian affairs for the Palestinian territories, briefed EU officials in Brussels on that, noting there have been over 540 demolitions and confiscations so far this year. "We have entered a new and fairly disturbing phase in terms of the confrontation between international humanitarian law and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank," Piper told Reuters. An illegally built EU structure that was demolished. The IDF, which captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, says it carries out the demolitions because the structures are illegal : they were either built without a permit, in a closed military area or firing zone, or violate other planning and zoning restrictions. "The pace of demolitions has exceeded any previous records and we are only in the fourth month of the year. We are very worried about what the rest of the year holds," Piper said. Piper said around 140 aid projects by donors were destroyed, including more than 200,000 euros worth of EU investments , while some 600 people had lost their homes and about 2,000 their livelihoods. In doing so, he said, Israel was forcing Palestinians away from some parts of the West Bank as more Israeli settlements appeared there, even though building them on the disputed land was against the law. "The EU needs to reflect on its strategy and how it's going to respond ... This can't be left unaddressed. It's a provocation," Piper said. Piper challenged the IDF's justification for the demolitions, saying Israel did not give the Palestinians living there a real chance to obtain building permits. Piper said that, while there was much diplomacy going on behind closed doors, there was a need for more public statements on the matter, adding that the EU could also deploy diplomats to the sites affected to send a political message to Israel. "We also need to talk about forms of seeking financial compensation or restitution by the occupying power," he said. The 28-nation EU approved in March its first aid package for the Palestinian Authority in 2016, earmarking 252.5 million euros ($287.62 million) to help Palestinian refugees and develop health and education services, among others. CAIRO - Saudi Arabia's financial support for strategic ally Egypt will no longer involve "free money" and will increasingly take the form of loans that provide returns to help it grapple with low oil prices, a Saudi businessman familiar with the matter said. "This is a change in strategy. Return on investment is important to Saudi Arabia as it diversifies sources of revenue," the businessman told Reuters on Friday during what has been described as a "historic" visit to Cairo by Saudi King Salman. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait showered Egypt with billions of dollars after then-military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. But low oil prices and differences over regional issues have called into question whether such strong support is sustainable. BEIRUT - A senior Egyptian al-Qaeda figure fighting in Syria was killed in a US drone strike this week, the latest to be killed in such attacks in Syria, a Syrian opposition monitoring group and relatives said Friday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Rifai Ahmad Taha was killed in a strike Tuesday in the northwestern Idlib province. Before joining al-Qaeda, Taha was a top figure in Egypt's notorious militant group Gamaa Islamiya, which massacred 58 foreign tourists in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor in 1997. He was also allied with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said several al-Qaeda members, including Taha, were killed in Tuesday's strike. He said one of the dead was identified as Abu Omar al-Masri -- which is Arabic for Abu Omar the Egyptian -- but that it was not clear if Taha was using that name. Taha was believed to be in his 60s. In Egypt, a relative said that Taha's wife and brother have received confirmation about his death. Israel's Counter-Terrorism Unit once again upgraded its travel warning to Turkey on Friday, urging Israelis currently in the country "to leave Turkey as soon as possible." Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The upgraded and urgent warning, set at level two (indicating a high level, concrete threat) comes on the heels of a warning issued by Turkish authorities a week and a half ago of an ISIS plan to attack Jewish targets in the country, including synagogues, Jewish schools and kindergartens. Turkish police arrested six ISIS terrorists in the city of Gaziantep who reportedly planned an attack against the Great Synagogue in Istanbul's Beyoglu district, which is located alongside a Jewish community center and school. Turkish police outside synagogue in Istanbul (Photo: AFP) "We don't know when the attack was planned to occur. It could happen in the next 24 hours or in the next few days," he added. The Counter-Terrorism Unit decided to issue its call on Israelis to leave Turkey following a recent situation assessment. Turkish police outside synagogue in Istanbul (Photo: AFP) "There is an immediate threat of attacks in the country, which, we stress, applies to all tourist destinations in Turkey. The Counter-Terrorism Unit asks Israeli citizens to heed the warning and avoid traveling to Turkey." Israelis who are already in Turkey are asked avoid crowded tourist destinations, "follow instructions of local authorities, and leave the country as soon as possible," the unit said. Three weeks ago, three Israelis were murdered in a terrorist bombing in Istanbul: Yonatan Shor, 40, from Tel Aviv; Avi Goldman, 69, from Herzliya; and Simcha Damri, 60, from Dimona. The three were part of a culinary tour group. Eleven other Israelis were wounded. An Iranian national was also murdered, while tourists from Ireland, Germany, Iceland and the United Arab Emirates were also wounded. Developer Mirvac this week unveiled plans for stage one of its newest project The Finery, which when fully complete will bring in excess of another 200 apartments to the southern Sydney suburb of Waterloo. Made up one, two and three-bedroom apartments the project is just a stones throw from neighbouring suburbs Green Square and Zetland, both of which have seen a multitude of new high rise apartment towers in recent years. Both Warterloo and Zetland also feature on a blacklist compiled by AMP, which is made up of 140 suburbs the non-major lender wont provide finance to for the purchase of apartments. Mirvacs head of residential, John Carfi, said the developer is cognisant of the areas over supply issues but is still confident of the projects viability. Were always cautious about oversupply, but one of the ways to protect against that is to make sure you have the best site in the area and we think we have that, Carfi said. We think we have that have that here with this site, especially with the connectivity this site has. Were close to Green Square (station) as well as both the new Sydney Metro station and the new light rail system, he said. Carfi said the issue of lenders cutting of finance to certain areas could be the result of their loan books being over saturated by specific locations, rather than market concerns and he said the projected population density for Sydneys inner south requires more dwellings. The projected density for the area is somewhere between 19,000 and 21,000 people per square kilometre, which will be the densest in Australia. At the moment the densest area is Potts Point and thats the where real estate is the most expensive as well. People are drawn to high density areas, they want to live where other people are and we see that happening here as well. Carfi said Mirvac expects the project to draw attention from a range of buyers, including those from China. We see the level of Chinese interest in Australia staying stable around where it has been for the last four or five years and we expect interest from them for this project. One thing people should realise about a lot of Chinese buyers is that theyre not all billionaires. A lot of the buyers we have from China are mums and dads who are in the immigration queue and end up living in the properties they purchase. Locally we see strong interest from owner occupiers and from people who buy as an investment now with plans for it to be a home later in life. Were also expecting strong interest from downsizers who are looking for somewhere thats out of the city, but want easy access to transport. Broken Hill has 530 houses available for sale. The median property price for a house is currently $ 170,596 with annual capital growth of 26.37 % . There were 606 house sales in the past 12 months. On average, houses spend 62 days on market. If you're thinking about buying an investment property in Broken Hill, consider that rental yields for houses are currently 10.15 % with an average median rent of $ 300 weekly. Houses have seen 6.62 % growth in the past quarter, and 26.37 % growth in the past 12 months. The size of Broken Hill is approximately 13,004.9 square kilometres. It has 37 parks covering nearly 0.5% of total area. The population of Broken Hill in 2011 was 18,776 people. By 2016 the population was 17,837 showing a population decline of 5.0% in the area during that time. The predominant age group in Broken Hill is 50-59 years. Households in Broken Hill are primarily childless couples and are likely to be repaying $1000 - $1399 per month on mortgage repayments. In general, people in Broken Hill work in a professional occupation. In 2011, 74.2% of the homes in Broken Hill were owner-occupied compared with 71.9% in 2016. 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. Stiri pe aceeasi tema - President Klaus Iohannis is participating, Thursday through Friday, in Brussels, in the meeting of the European Council, among the topics of discussion being the necessary measures in the field of energy, following the package of proposals presented by the European Commission and the reaffirmation - President Klaus Iohannis will participate, on Thursday and Friday, in Brussels, in the meeting of the European Council, among the topics of discussion being the necessary measures in the field of energy, following the package of proposals presented by the European Commission and the reaffirmation - President Klaus Iohannis will participate, on Thursday and Friday, in the first meeting of the European Political Community and in the informal meeting of the European Council, which is taking place in Prague, in the Czech Republic, the Presidential Administration informed, told Agerpres. Fii - President Klaus Iohannis participated on Tuesday in a videoconference with European Council President Charles Michel and a group of European leaders as a preparation stage for the meetings to take place on Thursday and Friday in Prague. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri. Urmareste - President Klaus Iohannis signed, on Friday, the decree designating Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitalization Sebastian Burduja as Acting Minister of Education. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri. Urmareste stiripesurse.ro pe Facebook stiripesurse.ro Help your - On September 16-19, on the sidelines of the high-level segment of the 77th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Transforming Education Summit will take place, during which President Klaus Iohannis will moderate one of the sessions, presidential counselor Ligia Deca announces - President Klaus Iohannis on Friday signed the decree regarding the recall of Mihail Constantin Coman from his capacity as extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of Romania to the Saudi Arabia Kingdom. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri. Urmareste stiripesurse.ro pe Facebook - President Klaus Iohannis decorated on Friday several German personalities at a ceremony that took place at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri. Urmareste stiripesurse.ro pe Facebook stiripesurse.ro Help your friends know more about Romania! Ever heard of an OCD? It's not a COOL slang but a psychological disorder! OCD implies 'Obsessive Compulsive Disorder' which is an anxiety disorder pigeonholed by obsessive thoughts that eventually lead to compulsive behaviour. And if you're thinking it can't happen to you then you are completely wrong as according to the American Journal of Psychology "Every individual goes through a psychological stage similar to an OCD or purely an OCD in some cases; in the span of a lifetime." If it can happen to commoners like you and I, then think about the ever-so-popular celebrities.

It is a known fact that all of us are distinct individuals, but what actually makes us vary from each other is the way we behave. We as humans have always been curious about whatever is 'weird' but not many would want to know the reason behind this bizarrity. Many would agree if I say that popularity and insanity go hand in hand, though it is not true in all the cases because as they say "Exceptions maketh man". Barring a few sane exceptions, we can very well pull in a lot of famous celebs inside the circle of crazy obsessiveness and oddness.

Okay, for a moment if I leave these celebs to their privacy and talk about myself, I can feel, as I write, that I am weird! But every time these thoughts dog me, I get a reassurance from the fact that I am surrounded by a lot of people who are 'weirder'. I am a cleanliness freak of sorts, one to that extent that I wash my hands every time I eat something (now that is not abnormal, is it?). It is definitely normal but I must confess I had reached a level of abnormality long ago when I was in my paathshala days. It was as insane as it may sound, it started when one day I washed my hands, washed them again and again and kept on washing them for days until the skin of my hands gave up and started peeling off. My granny thought it was time for intervention- she pulled me next to her and gave me a piece of her mind.

I got over the habit as I was more obsessed with the welfare of my then-beautiful baby skin, than I was with washing hands. Guess I was young and smart to mend my ways and shrug off the supposed OCD but not everyone's that lucky, are they? There are people who have learnt to live with it (their obsessions) and are forcing others to put up with it as well.

End of flashback, back to present- My behaviour is now modified (at least that is what people say) and I don't wash my hands that often. But now I am obsessed about knowing of other people's obsessions and compulsions and guess where my obsession took me? It took me to the closets of the biggies of the world of glamour, to sieve into their privacy and get out some shocking revelations about the otherwise seemingly 'sane' celebs.

Ever wondered what Shah Rukh, the King Khan is obsessed with? Nah... It isn't Karan, Gauri or for that matter even his kids. The answer is chips (not gold ones but the ones made of POTATO). Yeah, the crispy, golden potato chips are giving SRK sleepless nights and quite literally, as when the ace actor starts munching them, he can't stop at one packet (remember the tagline "No one can eat just one") and ends up having lots of them (lots means lots as in he's had 20 packets of them in a row once). It is believed that Khan keeps away from the pack of golden crispies because he finds them irresistible. I am feeling sorry for his kids- Aryan and Suhana, wonder if they've ever got to taste a single one in daddy's absence!

Since SRK's my fav, here goes another one from the King Khan stable. According to Khan's biography 'Still Reading Khan', SRK avoids opening gift packs in public because he likes to tear them open (in an aggressive way) which obviously becomes an embarrassment for the star later on. Mushtaq Shiekh, the author, says that the actor has confessed he is obsessed with the idea of tearing off gift packs in a violent fashion and it is this obsession which compels him to act in a childlike manner.

Now let me give you something about Mary aka Cameron Diaz. The very likable actress has won notoriety for one of her obsessions. Diaz, for some strange reason, can't let herself touch door knobs and opens all the doors around her without putting her wrists on the knob as she feels that they carry germs and to avoid contact with invisible creepy-crawlies, she opens the doors with the help of her elbows. Apparently, the actress landed in some deep trouble when she rubbed off the metal polish of her hotel room's doors in order to clean them!

Actor Aftab Shivdasani has a habit of peeling off the skin of his wrists. According to reports, the actor used a safety pin to do the same when he was in school and is still not done with the habit, but tries to keep it undercover by saying that it is an allergy. Guess the actor has enough time at his hands with no movies around! I have been told since childhood that it is good to keep your surroundings clean and green, but whatever Ameesha Patel made out of that teaching is super-sonically weird. It kills me to even mention it, the actress (or shall I say former?) has a penchant for CLEAN toilets, so much so that she cleans her commode every damn day! And you ought to know this, when Amee is doing an outdoor shoot, she cleans the commode of her hotel/ restroom too (Aww... now I have a better understanding of why she has been losing out on so much of work, I mean who won't lose it after cleaning THAT?).

Let's move on from cleaning s*** pots to pinching bottoms, ahem... ahem... and who does it after all? It is none other than 'Ginger Spice' Geri Halliwel. The Mi Chico Latino singer is obsessed with pinching bottoms. Yep and she's had the likes of Madonna, Victoria Beckham and even Prince Charles as her guests of (bottom pinching) honour. When asked about this peculiar liking of hers, Ginger says "I have pinched everyone's bottom. Why am I going to stop at anyone? It is not bad". Well might not be that bad for some after all!

If that wasn't all, Demi Moore's babylicious hubby Ashton Kutcher likes to pee in his backyard with his pet doggies every morning and says he likes it that way and if this ain't a weird obsession what is it then?

Obsessions and compulsions that I have mentioned till now were funnily weird but there are some which are awfully weird, one of them being Drew Barrymore's obsession with vinegar. It is reported that the chirrupy actress started drinking vinegar after someone told her that it was a nice way to keep fat at bay but soon the dietic tip turned out to be a haphazard when she developed an addiction for vinegar and started getting cravings for the same even during the middle of her film shoots. So while her fellow actors used to have energy boosting drinks in between their shots, Ms Barrymore used to relish vinegar. Though the actress denies having anything to do with vinegar now, many believe she still hasn't left it completely. Cheers in that case.

The looniest of all the celebrities, Amy Winehouse, is obsessed with makeup. According to OK magazine, the 'not in her senses' singer sleeps with her make up on and had taken her makeup kit along when she went to the rehab for drug addiction.

The big bad world of glamour is a playground for such obsessions. Since all these disorders have co-relation with the past activities of an individual, these psychological troubles are come and go with changing scenarios in an individual's life. It is very hard to gauge the reasons behind these obsessions, all one can do perhaps is take notice of them, try and rectify them or else learn to live with them.

Moral of the story: Dig into your inner self and accept what (if existent ) is an obsession and just dont shrug it off or else you will keep on getting compelled to do weird stuff.

Now it is that time again when I am getting an itch in my hand, seems it is the time to wash hands and move to purity (if only it was that easy to put behind the grime). Guwahati: There has been a decline in the number of candidates with criminal records contesting Assam Assembly polls this year as compared to 2011 elections, an NGO said. It said that there has been a decline of three percent in the number of candidates with criminal records this year as compared to 2011 elections. Assam Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms, an NGO working in the area of electoral and political reforms, while analysing the self-sworn affidavits of 1,062 candidates contesting this year said 72 (seven per cent) of them had criminal records, whereas in 2011, 99 (10 per cent) of the 955 candidates had criminal records. The comparison has been done to understand the trend of engagement of money and muscle power along with other details of the candidates, an official release said. Another key finding of the analysis is that less number of candidates contested in the 2011 Assam Assembly election with serious criminal records compared to the election this year. Now 57 (5 per cent) candidates with serious criminal records are contesting, whereas in 2011, total 37 (4 per cent) candidates with serious criminal record had contested, it said. It was also found, the number of educated candidates has declined. In this Assembly election, 51 per cent of the contesting candidates are undergraduates, where as the number of undergraduates was 48 per cent in the 2011 election. (With agency inputs) Guwahati: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday offered prayers at Shakti Peeth Kamakhya Temple on the first day of spring season and New Year's Day of the traditional Hindu calendar based on the beginning of new moon. After offering prayers at the famous temple, the Prime Minsiter tweeted: After many years, on first day of Navratri, getting an opportunity to visit Kamakhya Temple & offer prayers to Maa Kamakhya. Feeling blessed. Earlier in the day, PM Modi tweeted his wishes saying, "greetings to people across India celebrating the advent of the New Year. May this new year bring joy & prosperity." Dedicated to Maa Kamakhya, the essence of female energy, is one of the most important ancient Indian temples and is situated about 8 kilometers towards the western side of the city of Guwahati on the Nilachal Hill. Campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam, the Prime Minister will address several election rallies in the state today, where polling will be held on Monday in the second and final phase of Assembly elections. He will campaign in Raha, Rangia, Sarbhog and Guwahati. Patna: An alcohol ban imposed in the Indian state of Bihar was supposed to clean up public life. But it has had the unintended effect of deterring worshippers from temples, where liquor is the traditional offering. Bihar`s Chief Minister Nitish Kumar this week fulfilled an election pledge to introduce prohibition -- a move popular among women voters in the poverty-stricken eastern state who were sick of seeing the family income blown on booze. But it has proved less popular in the state`s many Hindu temples, which have suffered a sharp drop in worshipper numbers after alcohol shops were forced to shut. Anant Marathe, a priest in Gaya district`s Bhairav Sthan temple, said the number of visitors had fallen by around 70 percent. "As the tradition goes, the devotees offer alcohol to the deity," he told AFP by phone. "They pour some of it on the idol and take the rest of it home or distribute it among other devotees." Offerings are often given on special occasions such as marriages or religious festivals, although some particularly devout worshippers give them on a daily basis. "I haven`t visited the temple this week because I can`t get liquor to offer," devotee Promodh Kumar told AFP, calling on the government to relax the ban to allow alcohol to be bought for religious purposes. But Satyendra Kumar Sinha, an excise officer, said the government had no plans to make any such concessions. "We will not allow liquor sales or consumption for any purpose. The devotees can offer anything except the banned item," Sinha told AFP. Raipur: Two security personnel who were deployed on a helipad were injured in a Naxal attack in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Bijapur district on Friday. According to police, a group of Maoists opened fire on jawans guarding the helipad in a restive pocket in Pamed police station area, located around 500 km from Raipur. Bijapur Superintendent of Police KL Dhruv confirmed the attack to new agency PTI. However, the rebels fled the spot as security forces launched a retaliatory attack on them, he said. "A Chhattisgarh Armed Force jawan and another of district force sustained injuries in the incident," the SP said, adding that they were identified as Baburam Markam and Dinesh Ogre. Soon after getting information, reinforcement was rushed to the spot and the injured were admitted to a local hospital, he said. Security forces have launched a combing operation in the region to trace the attackers, the SP said. Raipur: The Congress on Thursday trained its guns on Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh over his son's alleged ownership of assets in the British Virgin Islands. Amid a political row over the Panama Papers revelations, the Congress leader Jairam Ramesh cited a previous report of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to allege Singh was holding offshore assets. The opposition party also demanded a Supreme Court-monitored Special Investigation Team probe against all those whose names have cropped up in the 'Panama Papers' case till date. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that an ICIJ leak about two years back revealed Raman Singh's son Abhishek Singh name. The list spelled his name as 'Abhishak Singh', with an 'a'. A company -- Quest Heights Ltd -- was said to be registered in the name of 'Abhishak Singh'. Abhishek Singh is a Lok Sabha member from Rajanandgaon in Chhattisgarh. The Congress also shared a link which showed that 'Abhishak Singh' was one of the shareholders of Quest Heights Ltd. The connection between Abhishek Singh and 'Abhishak Singh' was brought out by the address provided: c/o Raman Medical Store New Bus Stand Vindhyavasini Ward, Ward no. 20, Kawardha. Kawardha. BJP MP Abhishek Singh rejected as "false, mischievous and politically motivated" the Congress charge against him. New Delhi: University student union leaders in the forefront of a standoff with the BJP government at the Centre on Friday stressed on a "united struggle" with JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar, dubbing the issue as one between "Sanghistan and Hindustan". The plea for a united front, "keeping differences alive" and the need to break out of "seminars" found resonance in the voices of Kanhaiya of AISF, JNU student leaders Shehla Rashid Shora of AISA, Umar Khalid, a former DSU leader, Allahabad University union president Richa Singh at an event here. A close friend of Rohit Vemula, Hyderabad University student D Prashanth of Ambedkar Students' Association was also present at the event "Pratirodh 2" that saw pro-Left student leaders ranging from moderate to radical camps sharing a common platform. Richa set the tone by pointing to the need to come together, despite "ideological differences", saying that the theme of resistance should be common across all universities. Addressing the leftist intellectuals in the gathering, Kanhaiya said that he has a "complaint" against the older generation for having "widened the differences" to an extent that "we are having a tough time" trying to bring unity. "If you would have done this, then uniting Gandhi and Ambedkar would not have been so tough for us. Why don't we stand together with both against RSS violence? We will have to take our fight out of seminar halls to our villages. We will have to reject binaries," he said. Condemning the violence in NIT Srinagar, Kanhaiya said a "war" unleashed inside campuses is against democracy and alleged that the campuses are being turned into "battlefields". "I condemn the violence in Srinagar and the violence in HCU because this is institutional violence and it is dangerous for democracy," he said. Shehla noted that the political groupings normally stress on the need for coming together while "keeping our differences aside". "Let's say keeping our differences alive, let's get together to defeat them. We celebrate this political diversity." New Delhi: The Delhi government is committed to bringing state-run schools on a par with private schools in the city so that parents put these on their priority list, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said on Friday. Unveiling the vision and plan for school education for the upcoming academic session, he said, "A lot of work has been done on infrastructure and quality at government schools. Still they are not on the priority list of parents. I wish that to be the case and we all are working towards it." At an interaction with school principals and education department officials, Sisodia, who is also the Delhi Education Minister, said there are three questions that need to be answered if the education system is to be improved. "The clearer the answers are in the mind of teachers, principals and education administrators about the need for education, how to impart it and what to provide as part of it, the more it will improve in Delhi," he said. Terming school teachers the "pilots" of the education system, he said everybody else, including principals and education officials, is there to assist them in ensuring quality education. Talking about the Delhi government's decision to reduce the school syllabus by 25 per cent, Sisodia said teachers are the "best experts" for obtaining feedback about education. "We were criticised for reducing the syllabus by 25 per cent. Some suggested that we do it with help from experts but we did it with the help of 50,000 teachers. "Based on their feedback, we accomplished the task as no one is a better expert in this regard than them," he said. Sharing details of his government's efforts to free up teachers and principals from non-academic work, he said that estate managers have been appointed for schools who will look after various infrastructure-related matters. A mobile App is also being developed through which estate managers will give a daily report to education officials. All the infrastructural requirements of schools will thus be met within hours, Sisodia said. New Delhi: BJP national president Amit Shah on Friday announced major organisational reshuffle in the party in a run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. According to ANI, while many old faces have been retained in the party, some new names have also been given important roles in the organisational structure. Former Karnataka chief minister and Lingayat leader BS Yeddyurappa was appointed chief of the party in Karnataka, BJP general secretary Arun Singh announced on Friday as the party decided on other state heads. Phoolpur MP Keshav Prasad Maurya will head the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh while Vijay Sampla will be the BJP unit chief in Punjab. Both states are set to go to polls next year. Importantly, all three are Lok Sabha members. In the youngest Indian state of Telangana, BJP legislator K Laxman has been named to head the party, and former Lok Sabha member Tapir Gao in Arunachal Pradesh. Yeddyurappa became the frontrunner to take up the post of the party's Karnataka unit chief after the Supreme Court last year declined to intervene and revoke a Karnataka High Court order putting on hold his prosecution in a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The former chief minister resigned from his post following charges of being involved in an illegal mining case that hit the state in 2011. In July 2012, he broke off from the BJP and formed his own party, but returned to the party fold in January 2014. He is a national vice president of the party. Maurya, who will head the party in Uttar Pradesh, is a first time MP from a humble background. He used to sell tea and newspapers for a living during his childhood. Sampla, the new Punjab BJP chief, is at present the Minister of State for Social Justice at the Centre. The name of former cricketer and BJP leader Navjot Singh Sidhu was also being considered for the post. However, he reportedly declined the offer. New Delhi: Considering that the current lawyers of convicts in Nirbhaya gang-rape case are unable to argue well, the Supreme Court on Friday appointed two senior lawyers to appear for the four rapists. A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra appointed senior advocates Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde as amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter. While Ramachandran would assist the court in appeals of the convicts --Mukesh and Pawan, Hegde would appear for convicts Vinay and Akshay in the case. "We must express our concern in the matter. We feel the gravity in the whole issue. Sometimes there are many perceptions and we don't want to miss anything. We would like to be assisted by the amicus curiae in the matter. We appoint two senior counsels Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde as amicus in the case," the bench, also comprising Justice V Gopala Gowda and Kurian Joseph, said. The matter is listed for next hearing on July 18. On April 4, the court had commenced arguments on the plea of Mukesh and Pawan. Besides Mukesh and Pawan, the other two convicts, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh, had approached the apex court against the Delhi High Court's March 13, 2014 verdict, which had termed that their offence fell in the rarest of rare category and upheld the death sentence awarded to them by the trial court. A 23-year-old paramedic was brutally assaulted and gangraped by six persons in a moving bus in South Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. She had died in a Singapore hospital on December 29. The prime accused, Ram Singh, had been found dead in a cell in Tihar Jail in March 2013 and proceedings against him were abated. On August 31, 2013, another accused, a juvenile at the time of the crime, was convicted and sentenced to three years in a reformation home. He was released from observation home in December last year. (With PTI inputs) Milan/New Delhi: Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption in the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for over Rs 3,600 crore. In the ruling, which overtured a previous court order of 2014 that had given Orsi reprieve in connection with the corruption angle, former CEO of Finmeccanica's helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, Bruno Spagnolini, was also handed a four-year prison term by the court yesterday. The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively, it said. The ruling has come as a severe blow to the Italian company which had just managed to leave the corruption saga behind that marred its image across the world. Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials told PTI that the firm "has changed completely". "The company has undergone deep changes and it has changed completely from the time when the allegations came up first. Finmeccanica is a different company now," an official said. "Finmeccanica since then has changed its top management and its organisation." The official added that Italian judicial system is made of three appeals and the trial is against two former executives. The lawyers of both the accused have said that they will go in for an appeal. The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) are still probing the case in India in which former Indian Air Force chief SP Tyagi and his cousins are alleged to be the beneficiaries. The ED has booked Tyagi, his family members, European nationals - Carlo Gerosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschke, four firms - Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland and Chandigarh- based IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, two companies based in Mauritius and Tunisia, few other firms and unknown persons as per CBI's criminal complaint. The ED had attached five expensive flats in and around New Delhi in the name of cousins of Tyagi in connection with its money laundering probe. The agency, in its order issued against the Tyagi brothers - Sanjeev, Sandeep and Rajeev - had said late last year that its investigations found that the "proceeds of crime" of this deal were allegedly used by them in the acquisition of these properties which have now been seized under law. Both Orsi and Spagnolini were accused of international corruption and false invoicing in relation to bribes exchanged for the contract with India. Both were cleared on charges of committing international corruption at the first-instance trial in 2014 but convicted of false invoicing and sentenced to two years in prison. In Italy, criminal sentences are not usually considered definitive until the appeals process has been exhausted. Both appealed against the conviction, while the prosecution appealed against the acquittal on the corruption charge. On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with Finmeccanica's British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of paying kickbacks to the tune of Rs 423 crore by it for securing the deal. In view of the corruption charges, India has also barred Finmeccanica and its group companies from participating in any new programme of the defence ministry. Washington: The US government is believed to have received about 250,000 petitions for H-1B visas - the most sought after American work visas - with a majority of them being from either Indian companies or having huge footprint in India. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services yesterday said it has reached the Congressional mandated cap for H-1B visas in the general category and also the 20,000 for those who completed higher education from inside the US in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects. USCIS did not give the number of H-1B petitions it received since April 1, when it started accepting applications for this most coveted visa for the fiscal year 2017 beginning October 1, this year. But, it says the successful petitions would be determined by a computerised draw of lots. "We had 230,000 H-1B visa petitions last year. I think, this year it is going to be higher. We think 250,000 H-1B petitions were filed this year," Bill Stock, incoming president of American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and a founding partner of Klasko Immigration Law Partners told PTI in an interview. Stock's estimates are based on his experience and interaction with lawyers and those groups who mostly file H-1B visas. This is fourth consecutive year that the Congressional mandated cap has been reached in the first five days of the filing. "Unless the economy changes again, we would continue to see it," he said. Majority of these estimated 250,000 H-1B visa applications are "certainly" either by companies that have Indian owner like TCS or companies that have substantial operations or development centres in India like IBM, Stock said in response to a question. The recent increase on certain category of H-1B visas, he said, "may have had a little impact" on Indian companies. "But I think their business so much depends on H-1B and being able to send people on projects, they (Indian companies) are going to pay fees on those petitions," Stock said. President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Victor Nieblas Pradis said the "avalanche" of petitions for H-1B visas mean that USCIS will once again randomly determine which of those petitions will actually be considered for one of the 85,000 available visas. Each petition not selected is a business need unfulfilled and a growth opportunity that is delayed or thwarted. "However, artificial limits established more than a generation ago are again hobbling the economic potential of this great nation," Pradis said, calling for lifting this visa cap. "Why do we continue to artificially limit this program? In a reasonable system, market demand should factor into how many business visas are granted, and indeed, demand for H-1B visas slowed when the economy took a downturn. But each year that we cap these visas when demand outweighs supply, all we're doing is creating obstacles to economic growth. We're losing out on shared prosperity for no good reason," he said in a statement. The US is one of the most important economies in the world, but its full potential is going unrealised, he said. "We live in a wireless world, but our visa system is a relic from the days of the dial-up modem. It's long past time for Congress to lead on this issue and reform the H-1B program in a way that addresses the needs of American businesses, US workers and our economy. Congress must bring our immigration system out of the last century and into this one," Pradis said. New Delhi: A day after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit indicated that Indian investigators would not be allowed to visit that country, government sources on Friday said Islamabad was making a "sudden turn around" on the Pathankot probe as the visiting Pakistani JIT was "taken aback" by the body of evidence provided by the NIA. Sources maintained that the "hard evidence" tabled by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to the visiting Joint Investigating Team (JIT) during their five-day stay in India has left then "surprised". The evidence was proof of the "Pakistani links of the terrorists" -- those who attacked the Pathankot airbase on January 2, the sources said, adding: "They realise that their game is up. The sudden turn around on allowing an NIA team to visit Pakistan could be the result of that." Indian intelligence agencies told IANS that Pakistan has suffered a diplomatic setback during last few weeks as even their friendly countries like Saudi Arabia have lately started tilting towards New Delhi. India-Saudi Arabia strategic ties got a boost during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Riyadh last week. On Friday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval took stock of the situation in what they called a "routine" meeting. Seeking to dismiss the meeting as "routine", the sources said: "The meeting between Home Minister Rajnath Singh and NSA Doval is nothing unusual. Top brass in Indian security establishment keep meeting." The meeting, attended by senior officials from related security agencies, discussed Pakistan's turn around among other issues. "The issue of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar also figured," the source said, referring to the current unrest at the institute. Pakistan High Commissioner Basit on Thursday told journalists here that the ongoing peace talks between both countries would remain "suspended" and that "the investigation (into the Pathankot attack) is not about reciprocity". Basit's remarks negate the NIA's claims made on March 30 that Islamabad will "reciprocate" India's gesture of allowing Pakistani investigators, including an ISI official, to visit the IAF base in Pathankot to probe the terror attack by Pakistani terrorists. Sources said NIA officials had names of the terrorists, evidence like transcript of telephonic conversations and other electronic and forensic proofs including against Jaish-e -Mohammed chief Masood Azhar's brother Abdul Rauf. On March 30, NIA spokesman Sanjeev Kumar had said that both sides had "agreed" that the kind of cooperation India had provided to the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team would be reciprocated. "This is the reciprocity agreed," Kumar had told reporters. The remarks indicated India's intention to get similar access in Pakistan to pursue the probe into the Pathankot terror attack. India has been maintaining that the attack was masterminded by JeM chief Azhar, against whom an arrest warrant was issued by a NIA court in Mohali on Friday. The terrorists who killed seven Indian security personnel at the base ended up getting killed after an 80-hour gun battle. Srinagar: Chairman of moderate Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Friday said the outstation students at NIT here are safe and asked them to concentrate on their studies rather than playing in the hands of "opportunists" and "divisive forces". "Whatever is happening in the NIT for the past few days is unfortunate. Some political parties and majority of Indian electronic media are exaggerating the situation and trying to portray it as an issue between Hindu and Muslims and state versus non-state subjects with an objective to seek shifting of the institute," he said, adding they would not succeed in their nefarious designs. Addressing a Friday congregation at Jamia Masjid in downtown Srinagar, the Mirwaiz said the outstation students are safe in the valley and asked them to concentrate on their studies rather than playing in the hands of "opportunists" and "divisive forces". "The traditional brotherhood of Kashmiris, their humanity and moral values are a glaring example for the entire world. Despite facing bloodshed and oppression over the past 25 years, the people of Kashmir have never compromised with their tradition. "During 2008 and 2010 agitations and again in 2014 when the devastating floods hit the region, the local populace risked their lives to ensure safety of thousands of tourists and saved their lives, making it amply clear that their fight is against the injustice and Indian oppression and not against the people of India," the separatist leader said. "Where were those people who are now playing petty politics when Kashmiri students were subjected to torture and forced out of their colleges in various parts of India," he questioned. Praising the local students for demonstrating patience and maintaining brotherhood during the recent events at NIT, Kashmir university and other institutes despite provocation, Mirwaiz appealed local business community to invest in education sector in the valley so that majority of the students are relieved from seeking education outside the valley. "It is the need of the hour as the emerging situation is not conducive for the local students to pursue education outside the valley. There always remains a concern for their safety," he said. Beijing: China on Friday said it was in "close communication" with India over its decision to block New Delhi's bid to have Pakistan-based terror group JeM chief Masood Azhar designated as terrorist by the UN. "China is opposed to all forms of terrorism and is willing to step up pragmatic cooperation with all countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters here. When asked about Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar's remarks that India has taken up Azhar's ban issue with China, Hong said, "on anti-terrorism we always act based on facts and in accordance with rules and regulations of UN to deal with the listing in the 1267 sanctions committee". "We always keep in close communication with all the countries including India on this issue," he said. Jaishankar this week said that India has taken up at a "fairly high level" with China the issue of Beijing blocking its bid to have Azhar designated as terrorist by the UN. Last week, China stopped UN sanctions committee from designating Azhar as terrorist, maintaining that the case "did not meet the requirements" of the Security Council. This is not the first time China has blocked India's bid to get Pakistan-based militant groups and leaders proscribed by the UN. The UN had banned the JeM in 2001 but India's efforts for slapping sanctions on Azhar after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack also did not fructify as China, that has veto powers, did not allow it apparently at the behest of Pakistan again. Last July, China had similarly halted India's move in the UN to take action against Pakistan for its release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, saying its stand was "based on facts and in the spirit of objectiveness and fairness" with Beijing again claiming at the time that it was in touch with New Delhi. Jammu: Hitting out at Jammu and Kashmir Police, BJP on Friday said FIR against non-local students of Srinagar NIT was "misconceived" and accused its personnel posted on the campus of executing "unprovoked" lathi-charge and tear-gas shelling on the students. "We strongly condemn the misconceived action of lodging FIR against non-local students of NIT, Srinagar," state BJP spokesperson Virender Gupta said in a statement. He alleged that policemen deployed on the campus "committed heinous crime by executing unprovoked lathi-charge and tear-gas shelling on the students, not sparing the girls and those in hostels, thus inflicting serious injuries on some of them". "What action has the state police, posted in the campus, initiated against the locals who raised anti-India, pro-Pak and pro-azadi slogans and who were threatening the non-locals, in particular the girls students?" he said and demanded a judicial inquiry into the whole episode. Gupta also criticised former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for his statement objecting to the deployment of central forces on the NIT campus. He accused Abdullah of playing "negative" politics. The statement shows his "insensitiveness" to the gravity of the situation, Gupta charged. In a counter to Abdullah's remarks that the Centre should stay away from the developments in Srinagar NIT, he said that NIT is a central institution, completely funded by the government of India, therefore, it is the ultimate responsibility of the HRD Ministry to ensure the smooth functioning of the institute. To restore the confidence of non-local students about their security and to defuse the situation prevailing, the decision of deployment of central forces inside the campus was a "wise step" on the part of the government, in particular looking at the conditions prevailing in the Valley, he said. New Delhi: With Pakistan envoy Abdul Basit ruling a visit by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India to Pakistan to probe the Pathankot airbase terror attack, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Intelligence Bureau Syed Asif Ibrahim on Friday met Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Pakistan on Thursday said the bilateral peace process stands 'suspended' and indicated that NIA team may not be allowed to visit Islamabad for the Pathankot attack probe. Countering the Pakistan High Commissioner's assertion that the visit by Pakistani JIT was not on reciprocity, India today said before the team's visit here, both sides had agreed that it would be on the basis of reciprocity. We have seen comments by the Pakistani high commissioner on the visit of the JIT team to investigate the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase that have reference to reciprocity, the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement. After a team of Pakistani officials visited Pathankot to probe Indian charges that Pakistani terrorists were to blame for the terror attack, New Delhi had expected Islamabad to allow a National Investigation Agency (NIA) team to visit that country to take the investigation forward. But, addressing a press conference here, Basit ruled out the possibility. Foreign secretary-level talks between the two countries scheduled for the middle of January this year, were derailed following the January 2 cross-border attack on the Pathankot Indian Air Force base in which seven Indian security personnel were killed. The Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for the attack in which the six attackers were also reportedly killed. New Delhi: University student union leaders in the forefront of a standoff with the BJP government at the Centre on Friday stressed on a "united struggle" with JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar, dubbing the issue as one between "Sanghistan and Hindustan". The plea for a united front, "keeping differences alive" and the need to break out of "seminars" found resonance in the voices of Kanhaiya of AISF, JNU student leaders Shehla Rashid Shora of AISA, Umar Khalid, a former DSU leader, Allahabad University union president Richa Singh at an event here. A close friend of Rohit Vemula, Hyderabad University student D Prashanth of Ambedkar Students' Association was also present at the event "Pratirodh 2" that saw pro-Left student leaders ranging from moderate to radical camps sharing a common platform. Richa set the tone by pointing to the need to come together, despite "ideological differences", saying that the theme of resistance should be common across all universities. Addressing the leftist intellectuals in the gathering, Kanhaiya said that he has a "complaint" against the older generation for having "widened the differences" to an extent that "we are having a tough time" trying to bring unity. "If you would have done this, then uniting Gandhi and Ambedkar would not have been so tough for us. Why don't we stand together with both against RSS violence? We will have to take our fight out of seminar halls to our villages. We will have to reject binaries," he said. Condemning the violence in NIT Srinagar, Kanhaiya said a "war" unleashed inside campuses is against democracy and alleged that the campuses are being turned into "battlefields". "I condemn the violence in Srinagar and the violence in HCU because this is institutional violence and it is dangerous for democracy," he said. Shehla noted that the political groupings normally stress on the need for coming together while "keeping our differences aside". "Let's say keeping our differences alive, let's get together to defeat them. We celebrate this political diversity." On the theme of unity, Umar said intellectuals should ponder whether universities are turning into "islands". In order to resist and "isolate RSS", the support of a cross section of people is needed, he said. Prashanth, who was expelled along with Rohith, said that Hyderabad Central University Vice Chancellor Appa Rao has turned the institution into a "jail". "We were sent to jail recently and even jail atmosphere was better than University of Hyderabad," he claimed. Kanhaiya used the occasion to respond to charges that he was overstaying in JNU as a student and was wasting tax-payers' money. "The tragedy of this country is that many people are unaware that doing Ph.D itself takes 28 years... Your money is being spent wisely. It's wrong in the case where a person remains perpetually on flight mode wearing a Rs 4 lakh suite. The fact that I am pursuing my Ph.D in JNU despite having a poor financial background itself proves that your subsidy money is being spent wisely," he said. New Delhi: Even as Pakistan's envoy Abdul Basit ruled out allowing a visit by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India to Pakistan to probe the Pathankot airbase terror attack, details emerged on Friday on how the Pakistani terrorists, who attacked the facility early on January 2 this year, were identified. As per a report in The Hindu, anonymous individuals from Pakistan had assisted in the identification of the slain Pakistani terrorists. The report said the Pakistani nationals provided the information after the NIA uploaded the photos of four Pathankot terrorists on its website in March. According to government officials, anonymous citizens from several countries, including Pakistan, contacted Indian officials and provided information about the four slain terrorists who were killed in the operation at the Pathankot Air Force base. This information, in addition to phone intercepts and technical intelligence, helped identify the four men. A senior government official said the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), sent by Pakistan to India recently to probe the Pathankot attack, was also convinced about the details. The four terrorists were identified by the NIA to be Hafiz Abu Bakar (resident of Gujranwala, Punjab), Umar Farooq (Sanghar, Sindh), Nasir Hussain (Vehari, Punjab), and Abdul Qayum (Sukkur, Sindh). The Pakistani JIT has also been given DNA samples of the slain terrorists to track their family members and match it with them. New Delhi: VHP on Friday came down hard on the government, alleging "confusion" in its policy towards Pakistan and demanded a White Paper on terrorism spelling out clearly what it intends to do to curb it. VHP joint general secretary Sunrender Jain said the audacity shown by Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit in declaring that the peace process between the two countries is suspended was a result of the "confusion" in the government's policy that "lacks homogeneity". "Government should bring clarity in its policy towards Pakistan and come out with a White Paper spelling out clearly what is the level of terrorism in the country, who is behind it and who are aiding it, besides spelling out the role of Pakistan in sponsoring it. "The White Paper should also spell out clearly what the government intends to do in curbing and tackling terrorism sponsored by Pakistan. The confusion regarding government's action and commitment with regard to terrorism and Pakistan should be made clear," he said. Demanding that Pakistan be dealt with "sternly", Jain said "when the present government came to power there was hope that Pakistan-sponsored terrorism will be checked and terrorism in the country would end. Unfortunately, due to its unstable policy there is a state of confusion in the country." "It is due to the lack of homogeneity in India's policy towards Pakistan that its High Commissioner had the audacity of saying unilaterally that peace process between two countries is suspended," he said. The VHP leader said that terrorism is at its "peak" in the country and not a single day passes when there is not a threat in some parts of the country. He said terrorism has no face, but there is no doubt on the role of Pakistan in it. "Weak policies of the previous government in dealing with terrorism helped in promoting terrorism," he said, adding that people had hope from this government. He said the Pakistan High Commissioner has tried to hide the role of Pakistan in promoting terrorism and it seems that Pakistan's "audacity" has increased after the Pathankot air base attack due to India's "unstable" policy towards it. Jain also lamented that the government allowed an ISI agent to get entry into Pathankot air base as part of a Joint Investigative Team due to "confusion" in the government's policy. Milan/New Delhi: Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption over the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for Rs 3,600 crore. In the ruling, which overturned a previous court order of 2014, Bruno Spagnolini, the former CEO of Finmeccanica's helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, was also handed a four-year prison term by the court on Thursday. The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively, it said. The ruling has come as a severe blow to the Italian company which had just managed to leave the corruption saga behind that marred its image across the world. Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials told PTI that the firm "has changed completely". "The company has undergone deep changes and it has changed completely from the time when the allegations came up first. Finmeccanica is a different company now," an official said. Both Orsi and Spagnolini were accused of international corruption and false invoicing in relation to bribes exchanged for a 560-million-euro (approx Rs 4,250 crore) contract with India. Both were cleared on charges of committing international corruption at the first-instance trial in 2014 but convicted of false invoicing and sentenced to two years in prison. In Italy, criminal sentences are not usually considered definitive until the appeals process has been exhausted, the report said. In October, 2014, a lower court had convicted Orsi and Spagnolini of falsifying invoices but acquitted them of corruption. Both appealed against the conviction, while the prosecution appealed against the acquittal on the corruption charge. On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with Finmeccanica's British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of paying kickbacks to the tune of Rs 360 crore by it for securing the deal. The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) are still probing the case in which former IAF chief S P Tyagi and his cousins are alleged to be the beneficiaries. The ED has booked Tyagi, his family members, European nationals - Carlo Gerosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschke, four firms - Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland and Chandigarh- based IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, two companies based in Mauritius and Tunisia, few other firms and unknown persons in CBI's criminal complaint. In view of the corruption charges, India has also barred Finmeccanica and its group companies from participating in any new programme of the defence ministry. Bengaluru: Students of the premier National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru are up in arms against a professor who had earlier this week chastised a girl student for wearing shorts to the class. As per reports, the girl student in question is a third-year BA, LLB (Hons) student. She was scorned before the entire class and asked to 'dress properly' by the professor when she wore a pair of shorts to his class on Monday. When the girl student objected to his objectionable remarks, the professor allegedly went a step further and cast aspersions on her character, before saying she could choose to come to class without a dress also. Taken aback by the professor's derogatory remarks, the entire class, while expressing solidarity with the girl student, turned up in shorts at the professor's class on Wednesday. They are also demanding that the college institute an independent fact-finding committee to probe the matter. We find such behaviour extremely unacceptable, especially from a professor, who students are expected to consider as a role model. The behaviour goes against the spirit of this institution. Therefore, we believe it is imperative that such aberrant actions be denounced by the university with immediate effect. We also demand that a public apology be issued by the teacher in question to the student and the institution as a whole, the students said in a statement. It is not our intention to colour the professor as sexist We leave it to an independent enquiry to pass judgment. Our point is that derogatory remarks were passed against our batchmate that no teacher should, and there is a patent lack of responsibility being displayed about the same, they added. Meanwhile, Vice-Chancellor R Venkata Rao has convened a faculty meeting on April 11 to discuss the issue, The Hindu reported. Kochi: Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Friday filed a criminal defamation case against solar panel scam accused Saritha S Nair at a court here, complaining that she hatched a conspiracy to defame him by airing a news item in the media to the effect that he raped her. Chandy has also filed defamation case against four senior editors of two Malayalam news channels alongwith Saritha for airing the news on April 3 and April 4, this year. The complaint filed before Chief Judicial Magistrate Court, Ernakulam, said they released a "truncated letter (allegedly written by her while she was in judicial incarceration) wherein it is stated that she was raped by the complainant in his official residence--Cliff House, Thiruvananthapuram." "Commonsense fails to comprehend as to how such an incident can occur in the Cliff House, where the complainant is residing with his family, and several security guards," the complaint said. Saritha had in a purported letter aired by TV channels alleged that she was sexually abused by Chandy, who had dismissed the charge as "totally baseless" and claimed it was a conspiracy. The local news channels had released the 25-page letter which Saritha had allegedly written in 2013 while she was in custody following her arrest in the solar scam. Saritha had told a TV channel that she had written the letter while she was in custody. In his complaint, the senior Congress leader said enquiries made by him thereafter revealed that the respective letter was a "newly drafted one made at the instance of the adversaries of the complainant" to tarnish his image and reputation and "to ensure that the political party represented by him meets with defeat" in the May 16 state assembly polls. The complaint said Saritha, who has a penchant for giving public interviews, has only referred to him (Chandy) as "a person with a fatherly affection" and she never had a case that the complainant had "behaved in an indecent manner to her on any occasion." Chandy urged the Court to take cognisance of the complaint and proceed against them as per IPC sections dealing with defamation and criminal conspiracy. Washington DC: To this day, individuals of European and Asian heritage retain Neanderthal DNA in their genomes and now, a new study suggests that we did not inherit male genes from them. The Stanford University researchers completed the first in-depth genetic analysis of a Neanderthal Y chromosome. The findings offer new insights into the relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans and some of the genetic factors that might have kept the two lineages apart. The Y chromosome was the main component remaining to be analyzed from the Neanderthal genome, the researchers said. Researcher Fernando Mendez explained that characterizing the Neanderthal Y chromosome helped them to better understand the population divergence that led to Neanderthals and modern humans. It also enabled them to explore possible genetic interactions between archaic and modern gene variants within hybrid offspring. Mendez and his colleagues, including Carlos Bustamante from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, analyzed the Y chromosome from a Neanderthal male found in El Sidron, Spain. Their analysis suggests that Neanderthals and modern humans diverged almost 590,000 years ago, consistent with earlier evidence. The researchers say that the Neanderthal Y chromosome they sequenced is distinct from any Y chromosome observed in modern humans, suggesting that the lineage in question is to be extinct. They also found some intriguing protein-coding differences between genes on the Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes. Mendez noted that the finding that most of the functional differences associate with these genes, rather than with genes involved in sperm production, came as a surprise. The researchers say additional research is required to confirm the role of those Y-chromosome mutations in discouraging the formation of a hybrid Neanderthal and human species. They are planning those experiments now. The study appears in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Washington: The United States government has warned its citizens against all non-essential travel to Pakistan in the wake of the ongoing `security concerns` in Pakistan. According to a statement by the US State Department, the American Embassy in Islamabad and the Consulate General in Karachi continue to provide consular services for all U.S. citizens in Pakistan. "Pakistan continues to experience significant terrorist violence, including sectarian attacks. Several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups continue to pose a danger to U.S. citizens throughout Pakistan. Across the country, terrorist attacks frequently occur against locations where U.S. citizens and Westerners congregate, as well as against local civilian and government targets. Terrorists and criminal groups regularly resort to kidnapping for ransom." the statement said. On April 16, 2015, an American educator was shot by two gunmen on motorbikes. Evidence suggests she was targeted, in part, because she was a U.S. Citizen. Asserting that the Government of Pakistan maintains heightened security measures, particularly in major cities, following attacks or in response to threats, the State Department added that sectarian violence remains a serious threat countrywide and the Government of Pakistan continues to enforce blasphemy laws. "Religious minority communities have been victims of targeted killings and accusations of blasphemy. Terrorists frequently target places of worship of various faiths," the statement said. The local government restricts access for non-Pakistanis to many areas, including the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Afghan border, the Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, the area adjacent to the Line of Control in the disputed territory of Kashmir and much of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and Balochistan. "The travel of U.S. government personnel within Pakistan is restricted based on security or other reasons. Movements by U.S. government personnel outside of Islamabad are severely restricted, and consulate staff cannot drive personally-owned vehicles," the statement added. According to the advisory, U.S. government personnel may not:- Attend services at places of worship without prior approval.- Use public transportation or stay overnight at hotels in Pakistan. If you choose to live or travel in Pakistan despite this warning, we recommend you:- Vary travel routes and timing, even for routine trips.- Minimize the duration of trips to public markets, restaurants, and other locations- Minimize the number of U.S./western nationals congregating in any one location at any time.- Avoid hotels that do not apply stringent security measures. Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police (DGP) Javeed Ahmed is set to visit Bijnor on Friday to review the murder case of National Investigation Agency (NIA) Deputy Superintendent of Police Mohammad Tanzil Ahmed. Tanzil was shot at from a close range on the night of April 2 was on his way back from the marriage ceremony of his niece, along with his wife and two children. The NIA officer died on the spot while his wife was rushed to the Fortis Hospital in Noida and remains critical. The Uttar Pradesh Police had on Wednesday said the investigations and analysis of evidences are pointing at some personal angle behind the murder. Additional Director General (Law and Order) Daljeet Chowdhary told the media that the slain officer had some personal as well as professional matters, adding separate teams of ATS, STF and U.P Police have been constituted to inquire into the same. Talking about the killers, he said there were two motorcycle-borne masked assailants - one was riding the motorcycle while another fired the shots. The DG (Law and Oder), however, refused to answer whether the police had identified the assailants or their gang. New York: Ahead of the crucial primary here later this month, some Indian-Americans have backed Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, saying they agree with his views on stopping illegal immigration and feel a Trump presidency could benefit India. A report in the New York Times on the sentiments of immigrants for Trump?said some small groups of immigrants have come forward to support him despite the fact that he has said "Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers, suggested a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US and called for the deportation of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country." The report quoted Indian-American lawyer Anand Ahuja, founder of political action committee Indian-Americans for Trump 2016, as saying that he supports Trump for wanting to stop immigrants from entering the country illegally. "You should not reward people who have broken the law," Ahuja was quoted as saying in the report ahead of the April 19 primary. "You follow the law, you get punished. That's why I like Donald Trump when he says, 'Let's build a wall'." He added, "I believe anybody who came in this country illegally should be deported." Adity Sharma, 30, a law student, and one of about 20 members of Facebook group Hindus for Trump said the business mogul is a "strong" and "different" candidate. She and the group's other members believe that current American policy is too friendly toward Pakistan and that Trump could change that to benefit India. They also approve of Trump's proposed ban on Muslim refugees, the NYT report said. "By him not being so politically correct, it does make people sit up and listen," she said in the report. Experts, however, feel that support groups for candidates, like the one launched by the Indian-American group for Trump, do not reflect the entire community's sentiments and choice. The report quoted Devesh Kapur, director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, as saying that Ahuja's group was an "outlier in an Indian diaspora that had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats." In the 2008 presidential race, 84 per cent of Indian-American voters chose Barack Obama, according to a Pew Research Centre survey. "It has no reflection of representativeness by a long, long shot," said Kapur. "Whether it's Sikhs for Trump, Hindus for Trump, in each of them you would say: 'Really? How can that be?' It's a really tiny fraction. They represent themselves, not all Sikhs." Ahuja, however, added that showing support for Trump also invites backlash and criticism. "You become a subject of mockery and fun and criticism," Ahuja said, adding that he faced a lot flak on social media for supporting Trump. New York: Former President Bill Clinton on Thursday faced down protesters angry at the impact his 1994 crime reforms have had on black Americans and defended the record of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who is relying on the support of black voters in her quest for the presidency. The former president spent more than 10 minutes confronting the protesters at a campaign rally in Philadelphia for his wife over criticisms that the crime bill he approved while president led to a surge in the imprisonment of black people. The Democratic race for the Nov. 8 election has become increasingly heated as Hillary Clinton, stung by a string of losses in state contests, has traded barbs with her rival for the party`s nomination, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, over who is better prepared for the White House. In Philadelphia, several protesters heckled the former president mid-speech and held up signs, including one that read: "CLINTON Crime Bill Destroyed Our Communities." Video footage of Hillary Clinton defending the reforms in 1994 has been widely circulated during the campaign by activists in the Black Lives Matter protest movement. In the footage, she calls young people in gangs "super-predators" who need to "be brought to heel." Hillary Clinton, 68, who also has faced protesters upset by her remarks, said in February she regretted her language. Bill Clinton, 69, who was president from 1993 to 2001, defended her 1994 remarks, which protesters say were racially insensitive, and suggested the protesters` anger was misplaced. "I don`t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," he said, shaking his finger at a heckler as Clinton supporters cheered, according to video of the event. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She (Hillary Clinton) didn`t." "You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter," he told a protester. "Tell the truth." Hillary Clinton promised to end "mass incarceration" in the first major speech of her campaign last year. She has won the support of the majority of black voters in every state nominating contest so far, often by a landslide. Spokesmen for the campaign and Bill Clinton did not immediately respond on Thursday to a request for comment. The United States has more people in prison than any other country. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.05 million prisoners were held in federal or state facilities in 1994. By 2014, it was 1.56 million. That year, 6 percent of all black men in their 30s were in prison, a rate six times higher than that of white men of the same age. Bill Clinton said last year that he regretted signing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law because it contributed to the high incarceration rate of black people for nonviolent crimes. On Thursday, he did not explicitly recant those regrets, but appeared to be angry at any suggestion the bill was wholly bad. The legislation imposed tougher sentences, put thousands more police on the streets and helped fund the building of extra prisons. It was known for its federal "three strikes" provision that sent violent offenders to prison for life. The bill was backed by congressional Republicans and hailed at the time as a success for Clinton. Although Clinton is popular among Democrats who view him as a gifted orator and crowd pleaser, he has in the past veered from the carefully calibrated message put out by his wife`s campaign, causing problems for her representatives. During Hillary Clintons failed 2008 presidential bid, civil rights leaders and high-ranking Democrats in Congress criticized the former president for statements he made during a heated campaign against then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama. Bill Clinton said Obama`s campaign had played the race card. Obama became the first U.S. black president in November that year. Bill Clinton`s remarks on Thursday drew criticism online. Some saw him as dismissive of the Black Lives Matter movement, a national outgrowth of anger over a string of encounters in which police officers killed unarmed black people. Johnetta Elzie, a civil rights activist, wrote online that Clinton "can`t handle being confronted by his own record." "This is like watching a robot malfunction," she wrote. Earlier in Philadelphia, Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, assailed Clinton as unqualified to be president as the two campaigns became increasingly testy less than two weeks before New York`s nominating contest. "Are you qualified to be president of the United States when you`re raising millions of dollars from Wall Street, an entity whose greed, recklessness and illegal behaviour helped destroy our economy?" Sanders said at a news conference. Clinton this week sharply questioned Sanders` credentials and ability to carry out a campaign pledge to break up the big banks. Spokesmen for Clinton noted she never said the word "unqualified" when she questioned his preparedness for the presidency, but they declined to say whether she believed in that characterization. Clinton aimed for a more magnanimous tone than her aides when speaking to reporters during a subway ride in New York City. "I don`t know why he`s saying that," she said of Sanders calling her unqualified. "But I will take Bernie Sanders over Ted Cruz or Donald Trump any time," she said of the two leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. Sanders returned the sentiment in an interview with the "CBS Evening News" later on Thursday. "I think the idea of a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for this country. I will do everything in my power and work as hard as I can to make sure that that does not happen, and if Secretary Clinton is the nominee, I will certainly support her," he said. Hong Kong: British foreign secretary Philip Hammond warned over threats to Hong Kong`s autonomy Friday as he visited the city where fears are growing that Beijing`s grip is tightening. It was the first visit by a British foreign secretary for five years and comes in the wake of the high-profile case of a group of booksellers who went missing from Hong Kong and surfaced in China. One of them was a British citizen. The city has been semi-autonomous since it was handed back to China by Britain in 1997 under an agreement that protects its freedoms for 50 years. However, there are concerns those freedoms are disappearing. "Although the `One Country, Two Systems` model is generally working well in Hong Kong, concerns have been raised over the recent booksellers` case," Hammond said in a statement on Friday. "Rule of law is the cornerstone of an open and fair society. Hong Kong`s success is underpinned by its independent judiciary and respect for rights and freedoms," he added. In a meeting with Hong Kong`s leader Leung Chun-ying, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said that Hammond would restate "support for Hong Kong`s high degree of autonomy, rights and freedoms", as well as commitment to the Sino-British joint declaration which protects Hong Kong`s liberties. The five booksellers worked for a Hong Kong publishing house famous for salacious titles about high-ranking Chinese politicians. They went missing at the end of last year. Four are under criminal investigation in the mainland -- the fifth, UK citizen Lee Bo, says he is "assisting" with the investigations and has come back to visit Hong Kong recently, insisting he is a free man. Britain has voiced anger over Lee -- the only bookseller who disappeared from Hong Kong -- saying it believed he was "involuntarily removed to the mainland" in what it called a "serious breach" of the handover agreement. China criticised the UK for interfering in its affairs. The other four men disappeared from Thailand and mainland China. The FCO added that Hammond would also "underline the importance of One Country, Two Systems and of restarting progress on political reform" in his meeting with Leung later Friday. The political reform process has stalled since mass pro-democracy protests in 2014 failed to win concessions from the Hong Kong authorities and Beijing. The rallies were calling for fully free leadership elections, after the government introduced a reform package that activists derided as fake democracy because it allowed Beijing to vet candidates. The package was eventually voted down in the legislature and the reform debate is now on ice. Hammond`s visit is the first stop on an east Asia tour, ahead of the G7 foreign ministers` meeting in Japan starting on April 10. He will also meet members of Scotland`s Rugby Sevens team as the Hong Kong Sevens tournament kicks off on Friday, as well as Hong Kong and British businesses "to discuss new ways of connecting the UK, Hong Kong and China markets", the FCO said. Beijing: China on Friday sentenced an activist who supported pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong to four and a half years in jail, his lawyer told AFP as President Xi Jinping oversees a wide-ranging crackdown on civil society and free expression. Wang Mo was convicted of "inciting subversion of state power" by the Guangzhou Intermediate People`s Court, his lawyer Chen Keyun said. He was among five people sentenced by Chinese courts for the offence on Friday, according to lawyers and activists. In 2014 mass rallies brought parts of the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong to a standstill for 79 days as residents called for fully free elections for future leaders, but failed to win any concessions from the Hong Kong or Chinese governments. Wang held banners in the streets of the southern city of Guangzhou in support of the protests, as did Xie Wenfei, who overseas activists said was given the same sentence by the court. Under President Xi, China`s ruling Communist Party has tightened controls over civil society, detaining or interrogating more than 200 human rights lawyers and activists in what analysts have called one of the biggest crackdowns on dissent in years. Three other activists were sentenced to jail terms, ranging from one to four years, for inciting subversion in other ways, lawyers told AFP. Liang Qinhui was jailed for 18 months according to his lawyer Wu Kuiming. Another of his attorneys previously told Radio Free Asia that Liang had posted images and messages critical of the Chinese leadership and political system online, adding: "I don`t think his actions amount to criminal behaviour". Xu Zhiqiang, a Buddhist monk also known as Master Shengguan, who has frequently advocated for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown and called on officials to disclose their assets, was separately given four years by a Wuhan court, lawyer Liu Hao told AFP. Huang Jingyi was sentenced to two years by the same court, Liu added. Athens: Greece expelled a second batch of migrants to Turkey on Friday under a controversial EU deal to cut the numbers reaching Europe and defuse the continent`s worst refugee crisis since World War II. A police source on the island of Lesbos said 45 Pakistani men had been put on a Turkish ferry despite efforts by activists to stop the operation. Three men jumped into the water and clung onto the ferry`s anchor but were removed by Greek coastguards, an AFP stringer said. Some 30 people also gathered at the port of Lesbos, chanting "Stop deportations", "EU, shame on you" and "Freedom for the refugees". A second group of around 80 migrants is expected to leave Lesbos later Friday. The first transfer of more than 200 people from the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios to Turkey took place on Monday but a last-minute flurry of asylum applications by migrants desperate to avoid expulsion has since stalled the process. The highly disputed March 18 EU accord with Ankara includes the shipping back to Turkish territory of migrants landing on the Greek islands, in a bid to dissuade people fleeing war and poverty from making the perilous crossing in flimsy boats. For every Syrian refugee sent back to Turkey, one Syrian is supposed to be resettled in Europe. In return for its cooperation, Turkey is to receive benefits including visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe, promised by June "at the latest". Ankara will also receive six billion euros ($6.8 billion) in financial aid up to the end of 2018 for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. But rights groups have sharply criticised the agreement, with Amnesty International claiming Turkey could not be considered a "safe country" for the return of refugees. A Spanish far-left party filed a court complaint Thursday against acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy for "crimes against humanity" over his support for the accord.And the combative Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday warned the EU that Ankara would drop the deal if Brussels failed to live up to its side of the bargain. "There are precise conditions. If the European Union does not take the necessary steps, then Turkey will not implement the agreement," Erdogan said in a speech at his presidential palace in Ankara. Turkey`s long-stalled accession process to join the EU is also supposed to be re-energised under the accord. But Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, said there were still a host of obstacles to be overcome before Ankara could join the 28-member bloc. "The worst reading of the EU-Turkey deal would be to imagine that Turkey is about to get a `discount` on EU membership conditions just because of the refugees," he said. Erdogan has argued Turkey deserves something in return for its commitment to Syrian refugees, on whom it has spent some $10 billion since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. "Some three million people are being fed on our budget," the president said. "There have been promises but nothing has come for the moment," he added.As the flow of migrants appears to be staunched, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country took in 1.1 million asylum seekers last year, voiced cautious optimism. "I am very happy today, however I know that we have not yet completed all the tasks before us," she told reporters during a meeting with French counterpart Francois Hollande. Germany is due to release data Friday that is expected to show a sharp decline in asylum requests in March, after several countries along the Balkan migrant route up from Greece closed their borders. Meanwhile, the Vatican confirmed that Pope Francis would next week make a brief, unprecedented trip to Lesbos where thousands of migrants are facing potential deportation to Turkey under the deal. Dikili: Greece deported a second batch of more than 200 migrants to Turkey on Friday under a controversial EU deal to stem mass migration as Germany announced a sharp drop in asylum claims. Greek officials said two boats carrying 124 migrants -- most of them Pakistani men -- had been sent back across the Aegean Sea where hundreds have lost their lives in a quest to reach Europe. A small group of activists leapt into the water, clutching onto the anchor of the first ferry in an unsuccessful bid to stop the deportation, while a group of protesters chanted "EU, shame on you" and "Freedom for the refugees". Hours later the boats arrived in the Turkish harbour town of Dikili where security officials escorted the downcast migrants, clutching blankets and with small backpacks on their shoulders, off the vessels. A Greek government statement said the migrants included 111 Pakistanis, four Iraqis, as well as citizens of Bangladesh, India, Morocco, Egypt, and a man claiming to be of Palestinian origin. One of the Pakistanis was not accepted by Turkish authorities at Dikili for undisclosed reasons and was returned to Lesbos, the statement said. In a separate operation, another 97 people -- mainly Pakistanis and Bangladeshis -- were returned to Turkey via the land border, Greek police said. The deportations are taking place under a deal between Turkey and the European Union, which is straining under the pressure from the unprecedented flow of migrants into its territory. Turkey has promised to take back all irregular migrants entering Greece since March 20 while Europe has agreed to resettle one Syrian refugee directly from camps in Turkey for each Syrian deported. The deported migrants arriving in Dikili underwent health checks and registration before they are due to be sent by bus to Kirklareli on the Bulgarian border, from where they are expected to be deported back to their home country. Late yesterday, Turkey's parliament approved a deal signed in 2010 allowing for the repatriation of Pakistani migrants, local media reported. The threat of deportation is aimed at discouraging people from making the often deadly crossing in flimsy boats. The transfers began Monday with some 200 migrants returned to Turkey, but then stalled after a last-minute flurry of asylum applications. Human rights watchdogs say the scheme is badly flawed, and have raised concerns that migrants may not have the chance to apply for asylum before being deported. Washington: US President Barack Obama hoped to have a formalised process of conducting drone strikes and releasing annual information on it to the public by the time he leaves office next January. "My hope is that by the time I leave office, there is a not only an internal structure in place that governs these standards (for drones) that we've set, but there's also a institutionalised process whereby the actions that the US government takes through drone technology are consistently reported on an annualised basis, so that people can look," Obama said in his remarks at the University of Chicago. He said this was really important to him as there is a lot of misinformation about the drone strikes. "There is no doubt that some innocent people have been killed by drone strikes. It is not true that it has been this sort of willy-nilly let's bomb a village, that is not how folks have operated," Obama said. "What I can say with great certainty is that the rate of civilian casualties in any drone operation are far lower than the rate of civilian casualties that occur in conventional war," the US President said in response to a question. Citing the example of the Osama Bin Laden raid, he said this was as precise, as effective an operation that anybody would dispute was in the national security interest of the US. "We put our best people in there who operate as precisely and as effectively as any group of individuals probably ever have in the history of the planet. They executed their mission flawlessly," he added. "But there were a number of people who were killed in that, who you might describe as not the targets of the mission -- members of Bin Laden's family for example. Now, that would be counted as a civilian casualty under the standards from which you drew your information," he said in response to a question that sought justification of drone strikes involving civilian casualties. If you calculated it as a percentage, there was actually a pretty high civilian casualty rate for this extraordinarily precise mission. "Now, imagine during the height of the Iraq war or when we were still actively fighting in Afghanistan, the number of civilians who were killed in normal military operations," he said. "We talk about the number of US troops that were killed in Iraq. The number of Iraqis that were killed, primarily by AQI and those we were righting, but also by US military that was trying to be as careful as possible in chaotic situations like Fallujah or Ramadi, were in the tens of thousands," he said. Obama said part of his job as president is to figure out how he can keep America safe doing the least damage possible in really tough, bad situations. "I don't have the luxury of just not doing anything and then being able to stand back and feel as if my conscience is completely clear. I have to make decisions because there are folks out there who are genuinely trying to kill us and would be happy to blow up this entire room, without any compunction, and are actively trying to find ways to do it," he said. New York: The defence relationship between India and the US has emerged as that of a "strategic handshake", Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said today on the eve of his second visit to India. "Over the course of my years at the Defence Department, I have seen a remarkable convergence of US and Indian interests ? what I call a strategic handshake," Carter said in his major policy speech on Asia Pacific on the eve of his nearly two-week overseas trip that will take him to India, the Philippines and the Middle East. Travelling to India at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Manohar Parrikar, Carter would be visiting the Defence Minister's home state of Goa, and New Delhi where he would be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Aptly reflecting the defence relationship between the two countries, Carter for the first time used the term "strategic handshake" from a public forum to describe defence ties between the two largest democracies in the world. "As the United States is reaching west in its rebalance, India is reaching east, in Prime Minister Modi's 'Act East' policy that will bring it farther into the Indian and Pacific Oceans," Carter said in his remarks before the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR), a top American think-tank. Carter said this handshake is reflected in the Joint Strategic Vision Statement that President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Modi released last January, and the 2015 Framework for the US-India Defence Relationship, which he signed with Parrikar last year in New Delhi. The Defence Framework is foundational and will guide the US-India defence relationship for the next 10 years. "There is another handshake between our countries as well ? a technological one. In 2012, the United States and India created the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative, or DTTI, to leverage the convergence between our industrial and technological abilities in an unprecedented way," Carter said. DTTI grasps hands with Modi's 'Make in India' campaign to expand the nation's industrial and defence base and will lead to greater co-production and co-development of defence capabilities. FRIDAY, April 8, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- A freezing technique may reduce the debilitating phantom limb pain that many amputees experience, according to a new, small study. Chronic pain that emanates from the site of a severed limb can be reduced in some cases when the remaining nerve and scar tissue is frozen in place, researchers said. The minimally invasive technique, known as cryoablation therapy, may offer hope to the roughly 200,000 Americans who undergo an amputation every year, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics. Many such patients, including military veterans and people with diabetes, experience a crippling form of nervous system disorientation after losing a limb. The study authors said the problem stems from inaccurate signaling among the remaining limb nerve endings and/or overactivity among neighboring nerves. The result is a distinct feeling of limb pain despite loss of the limb. The researchers said recent work with 20 patients suggests that targeted freezing may prove a vast improvement on inadequate phantom limb pain treatments. Typically, "many things are tried to see if it may or may not work," said study lead author Dr. J. David Prologo, an assistant professor in the division of interventional radiology at Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta. That can mean any combination of psychological counseling, mind-body relaxation techniques, narcotics, antidepressants and/or visual therapy. Surgery may also come into play, in an attempt to remove injured nerves, he said. Despite all of these varied approaches, "the rate and severity of phantom limb pain in patients today are equal to the rate and severity of patients from 50 years ago," Prologo said. But recent freezing therapy research -- which focused on the underlying nerve problems responsible for premature ejaculation -- suggested that cryoablation might help with phantom limb pain. The bottom line for both conditions, said Prologo, is the same: nerve freezing to stop nerve communication to improve quality of life. The new findings were presented Wednesday at a meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology, in Vancouver, Canada. For the study, 20 amputees diagnosed with phantom limb pain underwent image-guided cryoablation, which involved insertion of a probe needle under the skin at the point of limb loss. Local nerves were then exposed to 25 minutes of cold blasts, which are supposed to shut down localized nerve signaling. Forty-five days after treatment, average patient pain scores on a scale of 1 to 10 went from 6.4 pre-freezing to 2.4, the study found. Prologo said efforts are underway to get the process approved by the American Medical Association for phantom limb pain treatment. But, he remains cautious about the current preliminary findings until further research is completed. "It may not work for everyone," Prologo said. "Although the overall average change in pain scores and quality of life improved and reached statistical significance, not every single patient got better. How to identify the patient who will respond is the focus of our ongoing research." The effectiveness of the new approach will likely depend on each particular case, said Dustin Tyler, a biomedical engineer at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center. "Phantom pain is very complex," said Tyler, who is also an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland. For example, for patients whose pain stems from the brain's search for now-lost sensory input, the procedure will probably not prove helpful, he said. But for those whose pain has a neurological basis -- involving the abnormal firing of pain fibers surrounding the amputation site -- "guided cryoablation is an interesting alternative to surgical intervention," Tyler said. However, even for these patients, long-term follow-up would be needed to confirm the effectiveness of this approach, he said. More information There's more on phantom limb pain at the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Geneva: The Syrian conflict has set the stage globally for the Islamic State group to spread like cancer or Ebola, the UN chief and the top UN Syria envoy said Friday. The war raging in Syria has "provided the perfect breeding ground for extremists and terrorists to take root in the society," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Geneva. "Now (the Islamic State group) and all the extremists are spreading like a cancer around the world," he told reporters on the sidelines of a high-level conference on preventing violent extremism. In an address before some of the 700 participants, including around 30 ministers and deputy ministers, UN envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura meanwhile said IS and other violent extremists are "like Ebola. They are looking for a weak body" to infect. "Any conflict that we allow to be protracted... is now being infiltrated by the DNA of (IS) or international terrorism," he said. But both Ban and de Mistura insisted that, like disease, the extremist threat can be beaten with the right remedies. "Ebola has been treated and... I think (IS) and international terrorism can be treated, but with a series of different medicines used simultaneously," de Mistura said. Ban meanwhile urged a radical rethink of ways to counter the global terrorist threat, which he stressed was "not rooted or confined to any religion, region, nationality or ethnic group." "Evidence shows that security and military responses alone cannot defeat this scourge," he said, adding that heavy-handed responses have sometimes been "counter-productive" and can "end up further fuelling violent extremism". UN rights chief Zeid Ra`ad Al-Hussein agreed, telling the conference that "to fight violence, we must move beyond violence, lawful or otherwise." "If counter-terrorism operations compound fear and divisiveness... (they) do the extremists` work," he said. In January, Ban launched a global action plan, asking countries to come up with national plans to address the problem. His strategy encompasses 79 recommendations, from boosting education and promoting human rights to countering the recruitment drives of groups like IS and Boko Haram which prey on disaffected youth. It also calls for countries to try to appeal to fighters who have joined groups like IS to return home by offering education and job opportunities, and urges governments to engage with social media to find ways to challenge the jihadists` messages. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, whose country last month was rocked by terror attacks that killed 32 people, was among the many ministers who voiced support for Ban`s plan. "We must remain vigilant to ensure that our fight against terrorism respects freedom of expression, the freedom of citizens," he told delegates. "Respecting human rights is not only an efficient way to fight terrorism, but it is also a way to not give in to the terrorists," he said. Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter, whose country co-hosted the conference, agreed. "Preventing violent extremism means stepping up efforts to promote the rule of law, human rights and, in armed conflicts, international humanitarian law," he told the conference. Countries also need to "offer young people opportunities and render them unreceptive to the temptations of terrorism," through education and job opportunities, he said. Ban said Friday he aimed to create a high-level action group to review and help implement his plan to prevent violent extremism. Manila: A retired Italian priest abducted six months ago in the southern Philippines by suspected Islamic militants was released today, police and the Italian government said. Rolando Del Torchio was picked up at a port on the remote island of Jolo, a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group, national police spokesman Wilben Mayor, told AFP. The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of militants infamous for kidnapping foreigners and demanding huge ransoms. Its leaders have in recent years pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group that controls vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. It is believed to be currently holding nearly 20 other foreigners. Mayor said Del Torchio was in poor health when he was found in the early evening inside a boat at the port on Jolo, a mainly Muslim-populated island about 950 kilometres south of Manila. "The... Team decided to bring the kidnap victim to the Trauma Centre (a local military hospital) where he will be taken care of by a military doctor," Mayor said. Gunmen snatched Del Torchio, then 56, at gunpoint at his pizza restaurant on the city of Dipolog, about 400 kilometres northeast of Jolo, in October last year. Del Torchio had worked as a missionary for the international organisation PIME in the south from 1998 before retiring in 2000 to set up his restaurant, colleagues told AFP shortly after he was abducted. The identities of the kidnappers were never confirmed. But authorities said they suspected he was taken by boat to the Abu Sayyaf. California: A federal judge in California has ruled that including a small Christian cross on the official seal of Los Angeles County is unconstitutional, siding with civil liberties advocates. Thursday's decision, following a two-year legal battle, was handed down by US District Judge Christina Snyder, who said that including the religious emblem in the government symbol "places the county's power, prestige and purse behind a single religion, Christianity." The case erupted in 2014 when the county had the cross drawn on top of the San Gabriel Mission which appears in the logo. The move reversed a decision by officials a decade earlier to remove the cross from the seal, amid threats of legal action by various groups opposing the inclusion of the crucifix on the county symbol. The LA county seal appears on flags and official stationery and government buildings across Los Angeles County. Supporters of keeping the cross on the mission in the seal said it is a historically accurate symbol, given California's early settlement by Franciscan missionaries from Spain. They also noted that courts have upheld the constitutionality of the phrases "in God We Trust" on US currency and "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thursday's ruling is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought the suit. Hector Villagra, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California and attorney Linda Burrow who represented plaintiffs in the case said in a statement Thursday that they were "heartened" by the ruling. "It recognizes that Los Angeles is a diverse county comprised of adherents of hundreds of faiths as well as non-believers, all of whom are entitled to be treated with equal dignity by their government," they said. Baghdad: US Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Friday for talks with top Iraqi officials on the war against the Islamic State jihadist group. Kerry will meet Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of Iraq`s autonomous Kurdish region, State Department spokesman John Kirby said. He will "underscore our strong support for the Iraqi government as it addresses significant security, economic, and political challenges," Kirby said. Iraq is battling IS, which overran swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014, in a campaign that has been hit hard by plummeting world prices for oil, on which it relies for the vast majority of its revenues. Abadi is also seeking to replace the current cabinet with a government of technocrats, a move that has faced opposition from powerful parties and politicians that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds. Kerry, who is visiting Iraq for the first time since September 2014, will "discuss the (US-led) coalition`s continued support for Iraqi-led efforts against" IS, Kirby said. US-led strikes and training have helped Iraqi forces regain significant ground from the jihadists both north and west of Baghdad. The top US diplomat travelled to Iraq after visiting the small but strategic Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, where he held talks with Gulf Arab foreign ministers on the conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Kerry called on Iran to help end the wars raging in Yemen and Syria, where Tehran and its Gulf Arab rivals are backing opposing sides. Kuala Lumpur: A Malaysian parliament member was charged Friday with leaking state secrets over a financial scandal linked to the prime minister, drawing accusations that the government was abusing its power to silence whistle-blowers. Rafizi Ramli, vice-president of the opposition People`s Justice Party, was charged with violating Malaysia`s Official Secrets Act and defamation, members of his party said. Rafizi, who pleaded not guilty, last week revealed classified information that he said indicated an army pension fund was having difficulty making payments to veterans due to financial problems linked to a troubled state investment company. The investment company, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), has faced a cascade of allegations that billions were looted from it in a vast campaign of fraud and embezzlement stretching from the Middle East to the Caymans. Prime Minister Najib Razak, who founded 1MDB in 2009, has come under fire over the company`s woes and his own acceptance of a mysterious $681 million payment. Critics said the charges against Rafizi marked another example of Najib`s government -- which has moved to scuttle investigations and stifle media reporting of the scandal -- attempting to prevent more revelations from emerging. Human Rights Watch called the charges "shocking." "The Malaysia government is putting another nail in the coffin of government transparency and accountability, and clearly violating Rafizi`s rights," its deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said. 1MDB denies charges that billions of dollars of its funds were plundered, and Najib also steadfastly denies wrongdoing. But a parliamentary committee which presented its findings on an inquiry into 1MDB on Thursday said the company made more than $3 billion in unexplained overseas payments and called for its former CEO to be investigated. Rafizi, who had been arrested outside parliament`s gates on Tuesday, is a noted whistle-blower on graft by Malaysia`s longtime ruling coalition and has faced similar charges before. Beijing: Long before the Panama Papers leaks put law firm Mossack Fonseca on front pages around the world, the company was already well known among a certain class of Chinese investor -- and to the government. The tight-lipped firm says it has cooperated with authorities in Beijing and state-backed banks to help Chinese companies take their business international, according to information gleaned from transcripts of speeches by the company`s representatives and archived versions of its Chinese web site. On several occasions, it has recommended Chinese companies cloak themselves in offshore disguises to avoid foreign restrictions on and opposition to acquisitions. Since setting up its mainland China operation in 2000, Mossack Fonseca has had at least 11 offices in the country. It currently has eight, including one in Hong Kong. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which coordinated the Panama Papers reports, said that in 2015 Mossack Fonseca collected fees for more than 16,300 offshore companies incorporated in offices in China and Hong Kong, accounting for 29 percent of its "active companies worldwide". According to ICIJ, the semi-autonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong housed the greatest number of intermediaries, banks and law firms that set up offshore corporations on behalf of clients. The group said the data includes the names of relatives of at least eight current or former members of China`s Communist Party`s Politburo Standing Committee, the country`s most powerful body. Despite that, until the leaks began last weekend, Mossack Fonseca appears to have been largely unknown among international corporate lawyers in China. The number of offices the company had was "staggering", China-based attorney Edward Lehman told AFP, adding that in almost 29 years of doing business in the country, he had "never used them once, never been solicited by them once". But Mossack Fonseca was known in Beijing. It has arranged investment conferences with the commerce ministry and its official think tank, the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC), past versions of its website show. As recently as 2014, Chinese government agencies invited Mossack Fonseca representatives to address companies on how offshoring could be used by Chinese firms as part of the country`s strategy for domestic enterprises to seek markets and acquisitions abroad. "We are actively assisting Chinese private and state-owned firms` march into the international market," the company said.When it first entered the mainland, Mossack Fonseca offered free consulting services to law and accounting firms, government offices and others to educate them about the benefits of offshoring, Zhang Xiaodong told the China Economic Weekly in 2007. Zhang was described as a partner in the company`s Asia office by the magazine, which is owned by the People`s Daily group, whose flagship is the official newspaper of the Communist Party. He suggested that offshoring could be used by Chinese companies to evade restrictions imposed by foreign authorities on investment from the country. Zhang cited Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC`s takeover bid for US energy firm UNOCAL, which was withdrawn in the face of opposition from a US committee tasked with investigating proposed investments for national security implications. "These types of risks can actually all be avoided through the use of offshore companies," he said. "It`s very hard for the other party to determine whether the investors only came from China or the investments only represent Chinese interests." In other talks, company representatives discussed using offshoring to disguise Chinese investment in Africa and Europe. Without naming names, it said it had helped a client hide its acquisition of a European firm through a corporate structure that included an offshore company, a foundation, a company in Luxembourg, and another company in the target nation. Mossack Fonseca also said it had close ties with at least two prominent state-backed banks: Chinese Merchants Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. "For many years, our firm has maintained a good relationship with these two," the company said in a November 2008 letter posted on its website, adding that it had helped the banks conduct annual reviews of accounts held by their offshore clients. Between January 2007 and September 2009, on at least five occasions, the company`s representatives trained bank staff on offshoring or appeared at conferences sponsored by the banks on international trade and investment, the newsletters said.Offshore companies are not illegal in themselves and can be used for many legitimate purposes, and Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing. ICIJ said most of Mossack Fonseca`s offshore companies were set up in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a Caribbean jurisdiction renowned for the purpose. Chinese foreign investment flows to BVI have multiplied since Mossack Fonseca opened on the mainland, going from $1.88 billion in 2007 -- the earliest figure available from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) -- to $4.57 billion in 2014, the most recent. At least some of that money is likely to have been moved out of China by corrupt officials, who have sent more than $120 billion overseas, according to a 2011 report by the People`s Bank of China. Mossack Fonseca is not the only purveyor of offshore companies to Chinese clients, with other major players including OIL, Sovereign Trust and OCRA. But unlike those better-known firms, its dealings remain hazy. "This is not a law firm I`ve ever seen associated with real deals," said Paul Gillis, an expert on Chinese accounting practices at Peking University. That may have been the point. For Chinese clients, he said, the purposes of the offshore companies was probably "to get money out of China, and not in a form where it can be traced back to them". Tharrawaddy: A Myanmar court on Friday freed dozens of jailed students, in the first wave of detainee releases after Aung San Suu Kyi pledged that freeing activists and political prisoners would be the first priority of her new government. There were jubilant scenes at the sweltering central Myanmar courthouse in Tharrawaddy, as a judge told young activists that they could go home more than a year after they were arrested over their education protest that was crushed in a violent police crackdown in March 2015. "You 69 are all freed now (from this case) without charge," said township judge Chit Myat. Two other student protesters were deemed too young to be prosecuted, however three of the 69 face further hearings in other courts. Myanmar has scores of political prisoners languishing in its jails and hundreds of detained activists awaiting trial, despite reforms in recent years as the military loosened its grip on power after half a century of repressive junta rule. Suu Kyi said Thursday she would prioritise releasing activists -- an issue laden with significance for herself and scores of MPs in her party once jailed for democracy activism. The announcement did not specify a timeframe. Brussels: NATO will soon hold its first formal talks with Russia since 2014, its head said today, signalling a thaw in ties deeply strained by the Ukraine crisis. A meeting of NATO and Russian ambassadors will take place in the next two weeks at the US-led alliance's Brussels headquarters, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced in a statement. NATO envoys and their Russian counterparts had met regularly until the Ukraine crisis plunged relations with Moscow into a deep freeze reminiscent of the Cold War. They last convened in June 2014 amid mutual recriminations over who was to blame, with NATO incensed by Moscow's annexation of Crimea in March that year. Stoltenberg said the meeting would focus on the Ukraine crisis and "the need to fully implement" the Minsk ceasefire accords, which have produced a very tenuous calm in eastern Ukraine where Russia backs pro-Moscow rebels. The two sides will also look at military activities, "with particular focus on transparency and risk reduction," plus the situation in Afghanistan and "regional terrorist threats," he said. He said the meeting represented a continuation of a political dialogue as agreed by NATO leaders but warned "there will be no return to business as usual until Russia again respects international law." Stoltenberg has always insisted the NATO-Russia council remained open as a channel of communication despite the breakdown in relations sparked by Russia's intervention in Ukraine. A NATO official told AFP that "in difficult times it is good to talk. It shows we are committed to continue the political dialogue." The official, who asked not to be named, said Stoltenberg had discussed the issue with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov when they met in Munich in February. There will now be further consultations to fix a date for the meeting, the official added. The Ukraine crisis sparked a major re-think within NATO which was taken by surprise over how quickly events unfolded in early 2014. More worrying still, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to be way ahead of the curve in hybrid warfare, exploiting conventional military and social media assets to destabilise the Ukraine government as the rebels consolidated their position. Brussels: Mohamed Abrini, who was wanted for November`s Islamic State attacks in Paris, has been arrested in Brussels, Belgian public broadcasters said on Friday, adding that Abrini was probably involved in last month`s Brussels bombings. Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian, was "more than likely" the "man in the hat" seen on security camera footage at Brussels airport on March 22 with two suicide bombers, VRT and RTBF said on their websites, citing unidentified sources. Public prosecutors confirmed in a brief statement only that police had made several arrests related to the Brussels attacks. They scheduled a news conference for 9:30 p.m. (1930 GMT). If confirmed, the arrests would mark a success for Belgian security services, which have faced fierce criticism at home and abroad since Brussels-based militants organised the attacks that killed 130 in Paris on Nov. 13. The arrests came a day after police issued new images and detail on the "man in the hat". They follow the arrest in Brussels on March 18 of a key surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam. He was seen driving with Abrini towards Paris two days before the Paris attacks. Four days after Abdeslam was arrested, the brothers Brahim and Khalid El Bakraoui and a third local man, Najim Laachraoui, set off bombs that killed 32 people at Brussels airport and on a metro line running under European Union institutions. VRT and RTBF said Abrini was probably the man disguised in heavy glasses and a floppy hat who was pictured with Brahim Bakraoui and Laachraoui moments before the two men blew themselves up at the airport. A second suspect held on Friday was believed to be a man seen with Khalid Bakraoui at a metro station shortly before Bakraoui blew himself up on a train on the same line downtown. VRT named the second man as Osama Kraiem and said he was believed to be the same person as Naim al-Hamed, who was seen on a wanted poster released by French police. Broadcasters said he had also been caught on CCTV buying holdalls at a downtown mall that were later used in the Brussels bombings. Some media said he was a Swedish citizen based in Belgium. Abrini was arrested in the borough of Anderlecht, VRT said, next to the western district of Molenbeek, which has been at the heart of Belgium`s troubles with Islamist militants. He had been on Europe`s most wanted list since being seen on a motorway service station CCTV video driving with Abdeslam towards Paris from Belgium. The car they drove was used two days later in the attacks, in which Abdeslam`s elder brother was a suicide bomber. The man in the hat left the airport shortly after the twin suicide bombings and was tracked on CCTV for several miles into the city centre. On Thursday, investigators released new video footage of him and urged people to look for his discarded coat. Brussels: Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini was arrested on Friday, a police source said after a Belgian television station said he was detained in a Brussels district. At the same time prosecutors said police made several arrests in connection with the deadly Islamic State attacks on Brussels airport and metro last month. The police source gave AFP no details about the location or circumstances of Abrini's arrest but VRT television said it took place in the Anderlecht district of Brussels, home to several other suspects linked to the Paris attacks. Abrini, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, was seen at a petrol station north of Paris two days before the attacks with key suspect Salah Abdeslam, who drove one of the vehicles used in the November 13 assaults across Paris that killed 130 people. Abdeslam was supposed to have blown himself but did not do so, fleeing instead back to Brussels. He was arrested in Brussels on March 18 following a four-month manhunt and is being held in a high-security prison in the northern Belgian city of Bruges while awaiting his extradition to France. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office said they would provide more details later about the arrests in connection with the Brussels attacks. "The federal prosecutor confirms that there have been several arrests in the course of the day in connection with the attacks on the airport and metro," a statement said. The attacks killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more. Vatican City: Pope Francis will on Friday issue new guidelines on the Church`s approach to love, sex and marriage in what is being billed as one of the defining moments of his tenure. Is he gay-friendly and relaxed about divorce and cohabitation? Or is the pontiff a conservative who understands the need to sidestep issues that put the Church at odds with how many believers live in the 21st Century? The verdict on the 79-year-old Argentine`s legacy will in large part be framed by the contents of the document on the family that will be published on the stroke of noon. Officially referred to as an "apostolic exhortation", the 200-page text is effectively a letter to the world`s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics that lays down revised foundations for Church teaching and pastoral practice on a host of issues related to family life. The hopes of Catholic radicals for significant changes to official doctrine were quashed during the 2014 and 2015 synods of bishops, the conclusions of which will inform without dictating the content of Francis`s missive. But the document will also inevitably reflect the current pontiff`s instinctive tendency to try to make the Church seem a more merciful, less judgemental body in relation to those faithful who find themselves in "irregular" situations. Influential German cardinal Walter Kasper has predicted that the exhortation will mark a "turning of the page" for the Church."Who am I to judge?" Francis said early in his papacy when asked about how the Church should deal with gay believers who, some Catholic theologians now think, have no choice about their sexuality. That comment and the radical language contained in an early draft of conclusions from the first synod on the family raised progressive hopes of a great leap forward in Catholic teaching on vexed questions such as whether divorced and civilly remarried believers should be allowed to take communion. But the strength of conservative opposition -- led by bishops from the developing world -- to a substantial relaxation of the Church`s model of what the ideal family looks like has made it unlikely that will happen. Francis, say those who know him best, is nothing if not a pragmatist and the last thing he wants on his watch is a schism over what he once called "below the belt issues" which he regards as having assumed far too much importance in the life of the Church. The exhortation, entitled "Amoris Laetitia", is to be presented at the Vatican by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna who is seen as a moderniser and is himself the son of divorced parents. It will also be unveiled in dioceses around the world with local bishops having already been sent guidelines on how to explain the changes to their congregations. Lahore: Authorities in Pakistan's Punjab province on Friday launched a probe against Jamaat-ud-Dawah, led by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed, for running a parallel judicial system here. "A team of senior police officers today visited the JuD headquarters at Jamia Qadsia, Chauburji and discussed the matter with the high command of Dawah," a source in Punjab police told PTI. "The police team will send its findings to Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah over the matter after recording the statements of some people who sought justice from the JuD courts," the source said. He said the police team also discussed the matter of Khalid Saeed, who was summoned by a Sharia Court of JuD in a monetary case. Saeed had also complained to the police that he was threatened by the JUD court to appear before it or face serious consequences. The JuD office-bearers told the police team that it had established "the Arbitrary Council presided over by Ulema (clerics) merely to provide arbitration services to consenting parties in the light of Quran and Sunnah (Prophet's teachings)". The JuD said it is not parallel court and does not issue any kind of summons or seek money for arbitration. On the other hand, Sanaullah said the government would not allow anyone to run a parallel judicial system in Punjab. "We will take appropriate action (against the JuD) if it is found running a parallel judicial system in Lahore," he said, adding FIR would be registered against those involved in it. On the lines of the Taliban, Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led JuD has recently set up a 'Sharia Court' here to hand out "easy and swift justice", the first such parallel judicial system in Pakistan's Punjab Province. Earlier, the Sharia courts were established in Kyber Pakhtaunkhawa province by pro-Taliban groups. Meanwhile, Dawn Newspaper in its editorial today said "a broken judicial system is always likely to attract novel, even unconstitutional, quasi-fixes. With the superior judiciary and the legislative seemingly in denial about the need for root-and-branch overhaul of the judicial system, both state and society are finding alternatives that include parallel 'judicial' forums". JuD has established fledgling 'courts' in its headquarters in Lahore, from where summonses are being sent to citizens by self-appointed judges and their assistants. Of course, because this is JuD and perhaps because it is easier to do, the self-styled courts are operating under a religious veneer. The paper suggests that the JuD experiment needs to be shut down immediately, with no caveats and no possibility of quiet resurrection once the furore dies down. "In a preposterous world where such obvious principles need to be explained, it is easy enough to offer a straightforward refutation of the JuD's official defence/explanation." Belgrade: Serbia accused Croatia on Friday of obstructing its negotiations on European Union membership and said it would not submit to blackmail by its neighbour. Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said his government was "stunned by Croatia`s decision not to support Serbia`s European path" after Croatian officials in Brussels refused to give their assent to Serbia opening talks on a new chapter or policy area in the negotiations. "Serbia will not allow itself to be blackmailed, humiliated or disrespected by anyone," Vucic said in a statement. "Serbia will never be anyone`s punching bag." A row has been brewing since Croatia said this week that Serbia must change its law on prosecuting crimes committed during the 1990s Balkan wars as a condition for completing its EU membership negotiations. Croatia, which fought a 1991-95 war against Belgrade-backed Serb rebels to forge its independence from Yugoslavia, says it is unacceptable for Serbia to claim jurisdiction for war crimes committed on the entire territory of the former Yugoslavia. With Serbian elections set for April 24, the dispute could give ammunition to ultra-nationalists who loathe Vucic`s policies of integration with the EU and instead favour close ties with Russia. Croatia joined the EU in 2013 whereas Serbia only opened negotiations in December. Since all 28 EU governments must agree to the opening and closing of new chapters in negotiations with prospective members, that effectively gives Croatia a veto over Serbia`s membership. Officials in Serbia said Croatia was not saying "no" to opening talks on the judiciary and fundamental rights but was delaying taking a decision on the issue. Croatia wants the European Commission to accept its concerns over the war crimes law and several other issues as conditions for a successful outcome to Serbia`s EU negotiations, officials there say. "Croatia is now waiting for Brussels to voice how it plans to incorporate criteria that Serbia needs to meet into the negotiation benchmarks," Croatian Foreign Minister Miro Kovac said in Zagreb on Friday. "We want to have good neighbourly relations with Serbia and for that, healthy foundations are needed, which includes resolving war legacy issues," he said. Amman: Syrian rebel forces on Thursday took over a town near the Turkish border that had been the main stronghold of Islamic State in the northern Aleppo countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and rebel sources said. The monitor said factions fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), some supplied with arms by Turkey and other foreign backers, captured the town of al-Rai after fierce battles with the militants. "This is the beginning of the end of Daesh (Islamic State), those who have bet the FSA have been decimated are now proven wrong. It`s a victory for the Free Syrian Army," said Abu Abdullah from the Nour al Din al Zinki brigade that participated in the assault on the heavily defended border town. "We will continue our path to al Raqqa and all the towns occupied by Daesh," he said referring to Islamic State`s acronym in Arabic and its defacto capital. The rebels said their next step was advancing towards the Islamic State-held city of al Bab, south of al Rai and northeast of Aleppo. The recent gains by the mainly non-jihadist rebels is a boost to Turkey, which has sought to prevent Syrian Kurdish-led forces from expanding their stretch of territory along the border. It was the first retreat by the Islamic State militants since they made major advances in that area last May against rival insurgents and captured areas close to the Azaz border crossing with Turkey. Amaq news agency, which is linked to the militants, conceded that forces it described as "U.S.- and Turkish-backed opposition brigades" had taken the town after days of intense "U.S. bombing and Turkish artillery" fire. The news agency said al-Rai fell after heavy clashes and two suicide bombings that led to many casualties among Islamic State opponents. The Sunni militants have used suicide bombings to hold back offensives by the Syrian army and their allies by deploying small groups of fighters to disrupt supply lines. That is a change of tactics from ambushes and lightning attacks after the loss of significant territory, defence experts say. A sustained rebel advance by mainstream rebel groups near the Turkish border this week that allowed the moderate non-jihadist rebels to capture a string of villages eroded Islamic State`s last foothold in an area identified by the United States as a priority in the fight against the group. Rebels who previously struggled to make gains against Islamic State in the area and had been fending off advances in recent weeks by Kurdish-led fighters mobilised several thousand fighters for the attack, rebel sources said. An alliance of FSA rebel groups formed for the offensive includes the Turkish-backed Sultan Murad and Failaq al Sham groups. Islamic State`s foothold at the Turkish border was also significantly loosened last year by U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters of the YPG, which gained territory from the group farther east. Washington: The US Senate has unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the Maldives to rectify the "injustice" meted out to its former president Mohamed Nasheed and all other "political prisoners". The bipartisan resolution, adopted yesterday, expressed "profound concern over the prosecution and conviction of former President Mohamed Nasheed without due process" and urged the government to "take all necessary steps" to "redress this injustice" and "to release all political prisoners". The resolution was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, who is Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programmes, and Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In its resolution, Senate noted that increasing civil rights violations in Maldives fuel instability and pose a threat to regional security. "President Abdulla Yameen of the Maldives has increasingly cracked down on dissent within his own party and the political opposition, presided over the erosion of judicial impartiality, and put increasing pressure on civil society," it said. Nasheed was allowed to travel to the United Kingdom for medical leave in January under intense international pressure. At the time, Minister for Legal Affairs Aishath Azima Shakoor told reporters that he would be able to stay abroad for necessary medical treatment and "[i]f he requests extension of medical leave, he will certainly get it." Yet yesterday, the government of Maldives wrote to President Nasheed rejecting his request for an extension based on medical reports stating he required further treatment for his serious spinal cord issues, said a media release. "The government of Maldives should see this unanimous Senate resolution for what it is ? a direct rebuke not only to their wrongful prosecution, conviction and sentencing of President Nasheed but also to their arbitrary request for him to return to the country against medical advice," said Jared Genser, international counsel to president Nasheed and founder of Freedom Now. Washington: The US has warned its citizens against all non-essential travel to Pakistan given that the country continues to experience significant terrorist violence including sectarian attacks. "Pakistan continues to experience significant terrorist violence, including sectarian attacks. Several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups continue to pose a danger to the US citizens throughout the country," the State Department said yesterday in a latest travel warning on Pakistan which replaces that of the one issue on August 28 last year. While the US Embassy in Islamabad and its Consulate in Karachi continue to provide consular services for all its citizens, the two diplomatic posts are often limited in the services they can provide due to the security environment. The Peshawar Consulate no longer offers consular services, and the one in Lahore remains temporarily suspended. Noting that sectarian violence remains a serious threat countrywide and the Pakistan government continues to enforce blasphemy laws, the State Department said religious minority communities have been victims of targeted killings and accusations of blasphemy. Observing that attacks include armed assaults against heavily guarded facilities, such as military installations and airports, the State Department said terrorists have also struck universities, schools, rallies, places of worship, and large marketplaces in several Pakistani cities. Since the beginning of 2016, a suicide bomber killed at least 15 people and injured 25 others outside a health centre in Quetta, Balochistan; gunmen attacked Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killing 22 people; and a suicide bomber at a park in Lahore killed more than 70 people and injured more than 340. The Pakistan government maintains heightened security measures, particularly in major cities, following attacks or in response to threats, the State Department said. Caracas: Venezuela`s socialist leader Nicolas Maduro threatened on Thursday to seek a constitutional amendment to slash the opposition-led legislature`s term and vowed to lead a "revolution" should his foes wrest him from the presidency. The socialist leader`s strong words deepened the already bitter political standoff in the OPEC member nation since the opposition coalition won control of the National Assembly in a December vote and vowed to seek Maduro`s exit this year. During a rally, pro-government constitutional lawyer Hermann Escarra proposed that Maduro seek a constitutional amendment to reduce the assembly`s term from five years to 60 days. "I`ll look at it very seriously," Maduro said, to cheers from several thousand red-clad supporters demonstrating against an assembly law intended to free jailed opposition activists. "And if I see the possibility of clearing away coup-mongering and the use of the National Assembly, I myself would activate it if the people support me." In an overt conflict of powers, the government-leaning Supreme Court has been shooting down assembly motions, while the national election board is dragging its feet over the opposition`s desire to hold a recall referendum this year. Should Maduro propose a constitutional amendment to shorten legislators` term, that too would have to go to a national vote. Maduro, 53, who won election in 2013 to succeed his mentor Hugo Chavez, constantly accuses the opposition and the United States of seeking a coup. He also accuses his foes of an "economic war", though critics say failed socialist policies are at the root of Venezuela`s deep recession and acute shortages. "I`m going to say something strong," Maduro added. "If they one day win power due to their non-conventional, economic war, due to violence, then the Bolivarian revolutionary movement and the Venezuelan people would take to the street in general insurrection ... Another revolution would start, I tell the oligarchy. And I would lead it!" Earlier in the day, government supporters and opposition activists exchanged punches and kicks, and stones were thrown, when coalition leaders gathered at the election board to seek paperwork for requesting the recall referendum. The opposition said a journalist and legislator were injured, and blamed an "ambush" by Maduro supporters trying to derail a recall referendum. "The government is not illiterate, it can read the polls, it knows it wouldn`t win any election - not even a carnival queen contest!" coalition head Jesus Torrealba said. Dubai: A new ceasefire enters into effect in Yemen midnight Sunday, with the United Nations hoping it can be the cornerstone of a long-lasting peace deal at upcoming talks in Kuwait. Analysts are optimistic after mediation efforts have largely silenced the guns along the border with Saudi Arabia, which is leading a pro-government coalition that has bombed Huthi rebels and their allies since March 2015. "For the first time, the groups that can end major military operations, particularly the Saudis and the Huthis, appear to be more willing to do so," said April Longley Alley, a Yemen specialist at the International Crisis Group. The Iran-backed Huthis and Saudi Arabia exchanged prisoners in March after unprecedented talks mediated by tribes along the frontier, where dozens have been killed in cross-border shelling. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir confirmed Monday that a Huthi delegation was in Riyadh for talks. And Huthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam announced Tuesday "an agreement on the continuation of the lull at the border and on stopping military operations in some provinces of Yemen." This agreement may "lead to a total cessation of military actions in the country and open up clear prospects for inter-Yemeni dialogue in Kuwait," Abdulsalam said.The Saudi-led intervention against the rebels has drawn strong criticism over heavy civilian casualties and prompted discreet Western pressure on Riyadh to find an exit from the deadly conflict. The United States has even seen the intervention as limiting the participation of its Gulf partners in the US-led coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq. "We recognise that the focus on Yemen over these last months has detracted in some sense from the ability of the Gulf states to participate in the military components of the coalition," a US official said Wednesday, as US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Bahrain for a visit. A presidency statement on Tuesday expressed a "sincere desire to make peace", announcing the arrival in Kuwait of representatives in a "de-escalation committee" set up by the United Nations to oversee the ceasefire. The Saudi-led coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri had already announced in an interview with AFP in March that it was nearing the end of "major" military operations in Yemen. This was quickly welcomed by Washington, which like humanitarian organisations has been voicing concern over the human cost of a conflict that the UN says has killed about 6,300 people -- nearly half of them civilians.Despite bouts of fierce fighting and frequent air raids, neither the coalition-backed loyalists, nor the rebels allied with troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, appear to have made significant advances on the ground. Loyalists pushed the rebels out of five southern provinces including Aden last summer with air and ground support from the coalition, but have since failed to secure the port city and other parts of the south where jihadists have gained ground. Huthis, meanwhile, continue to control the capital Sanaa as well as large parts of the country`s north and west. "Strong international pressure has been put on parties in the Yemeni conflict and their regional allies to cease hostilities and move towards a political settlement," said Riad Kahwaji, director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA). Kerry on Thursday urged Iran to help end wars in Yemen and Syria. Kahwaji added that, in attending talks in Riyadh, the Huthis have opted for a "unilateral settlement," ignoring their ally Saleh. The marginalisation of Saleh, who was ousted in 2012 after 33 years in office following nationwide protests, is likely to please Yemen`s President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and his Saudi backers, but the veteran leader could still hinder a political process. Hadi himself is in an awkward position after his surprise sacking of deputy president and prime minister Khaled Bahah, who slammed the measure as a "coup d`etat" and accused the president of "abusing and obstructing the work of his government". Ongoing fighting and the cabinet reshuffle just before negotiations kick off on April 18 "are only a few obstacles that could undermine the Kuwait talks", said Alley. "Even if major combat ends, the road to peace in Yemen will be long and difficult and internal conflict is likely to continue for some time," she said. A senior Saudi officer acknowledged the challenges ahead. "Waging war is one thing. Stabilising a country is another. It doesn`t happen in a day. It`s not a football game," he said. We receive a lot of questions from real estate consumers who are either facing a dilemma before property investment or want to exit their investment to earn a good ROI. There are many more questions that both the real estate consumers and for which they need answers. Magicbricks, in our endeavour to help the real estate investor at their every step to property investment, provides you useful answers. Read on - Which documents to check before buying a property? Before buying the property a complete title search of the property must be done. Check all the chain deeds to the property and plan sanction approvals. You should also engage a lawyer to conduct searches in the registrars office and the courts. Property taxes, which are due to the government or municipality, are a first charge on the property and, therefore, enquiries must next be made in government and municipal offices to ascertain whether all taxes have been paid up to date. What are the legal documents needs to be checked before buying new house in Pune? Check the title deed of the property, this will tell you in whose name is the property. It should be in the name of the seller, the person selling you the property. It is always better to get hold of the original papers as in most cases people show copies of the originals. Besides this will help you ascertain the sort of usage allowed from the property i.e. is it commercial, residential, mixed etc. It is better not to make any payments before checking the legal position of the property. For instance, a property can be inherited in a number of ways on the death of a title holder. If there is a Will then it should be probated and only then do the beneficiaries get a right to transfer their respective shares. There are property taxes which are paid to our government, hence ensure that all taxes have been paid and the seller has all receipts of the paid taxes. Also keep a check for any notices or pending applications relating to the property in question. At times there are electricity bill/property tax dues etc which are pending and are left for the new buyer to pay. In some cases, people take loans from banks by pledging the property. You should ensure that the owner has paid back the entire amount and has no dues. It is important that the owner has a Release issued from the bank. Also check the following: An occupation certificate, which is issued once the building is ready for occupation, with permanent water, sewage and electrical connections. And the completion certificate handed out by the municipal corporation which the builder gets after he complies with the rules regarding the building's height, distance from the road and compound wall. Dont hesitate from making any inquiries as this involves investment of your hard earned money. Is R zone plot secure for purchasing? My advice would be to make sure there is no outstanding loan, taxes, mortgage, claims, court case generally 7/12 Extract will have these details- In case there are multiple owners on 7/12 Extract, make sure all of the owners sign on the sales deed/ agreement. This is most common cause of subsequent lawsuits. Hire a lawyer and verify ownership details and liability details of past 30 years. Even if you have full cash, try to borrow a small portion of the amount from the banks, because banks (more so nationalized banks) verify titles and other legal aspects before sanctioning the loan. It takes time but it is worth the wait. In case the land is owned by deceased person and name of his or her legal heir are not updated on the 7/12 Extract, avoid purchasing such plot until the names of the legal heir are updated in the 7/12 Extract. I am an NRI and I want to invest in Pune. I want rental returns. Which is the best destination? The preferred areas for rental accommodation are Wakad, Magarpatta and Pimple Saudagar. These are popular because of the presence of many IT parks in the vicinity. Rental values are in the broad category of Rs 11000 to Rs 20000. However, prices depend upon the size of the house and amenities. A foreigner is interested to buy a flat in Pune. He is currently working in the city. So, what are the legal procedures to follow? A foreign national of non-Indian origin, resident outside India cannot purchase any immovable property in India unless such property is acquired by way of inheritance from a person who was resident in India. However, he / she can acquire or transfer immovable property in India, on lease, not exceeding five years. In such cases, there is no requirement of taking any permission of /or reporting to the Reserve Bank. A foreign national who is a person resident in India within the meaning of Section 2(v) of FEMA, 1999 can purchase immovable property in India, but the person concerned would have to obtain the approvals and fulfill the requirements, if any, prescribed by other authorities, such as, the State Government concerned, etc. The onus to prove his/her residential status is on the individual as per the extant FEMA provisions, if required by any authority. However, a foreign national resident in India would require prior approval of Reserve Bank. Citizens of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, China, Iran, Nepal or Bhutan cannot acquire or transfer immovable property in India, (other than on lease not exceeding five years) without the prior permission of the Reserve Bank. Under the general permission available, the following categories can purchase immovable property in India: i) Non-Resident Indian (NRI) ii) Person of Indian Origin (PIO) The general permission, however, covers only purchase of residential and commercial property and is not for purchase of agricultural land / plantation property / farm house in India. An NRI / PIO who has purchased residential / commercial property under general permission, is not required to file any documents/reports with the Reserve Bank.There are no restrictions on the number of residential / commercial properties that can be purchased. We have purchased a flat in Narhe with NATP sanctioned up to third floor but builder have built six floors by telling that we have permission from Gram Panchyat for three extra floors. When we went to Gram Panchyat there is no entry of building. We are confused since we have to register property at Gram Panchyat to pay property tax. Please advice how to register property in Gram Panchayat. Looks like the additional constructions is illegal and unauthorised. Send a letter though a lawyer to the builder asking to examine the building permits. If no reply comes from them, send a letter to the authorities, copy the police and the gram panchayat. Regarding the registration, contact a local lawyer. Can I get home loan for purchasing a Gunthewari property? Banks and HFCs generally lend only against legal properties with a clear and marketable title, and that which has necessary approvals from local authorities. Though Gunthewari comes under the residential zone, construction on the plot may not be permitted yet and you will need to wait for requisite approvals before starting construction. Do we need to obtain NOC from society, if we wish to sale off our flat? The model bye-laws framed by the state government under the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act hold that a person does not require a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the society at the time of transfer of a flat. Is my land safe due to stoppage of 7/12? The state governments are in the process of digitizing all 7/12 extracts but that doesnt mean that they have abolished the practice of recording rights of properties. Ask your developer to make an application with supporting documents to the concerned authority for getting your name incorporated in such record of rights. Richard J. Wolitski, Ph.D., Acting Director, Office of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Disease Policy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services In March I had the honor of meeting with an inspirational group of advocates, leaders and researchers who had come to Washington to educate lawmakers about viral hepatitis and its impact on our nation. Their braveness and authenticity was moving. They told their personal stories about living with viral hepatitis, the frustrating experiences with healthcare providers, the challenges and costs of getting appropriate treatment, the stresses of waiting to receive a life-saving liver, the loss of loved ones, and other deeply personal issues. I was deeply moved by their experiences and their commitment to improving the health of people at-risk for and living with viral hepatitis. These leaders came not to get better care for themselves, but to make things better for their friends, their family members, for their communities, and for strangers that theyd never met. They came to stand up for the millions of Americans living with viral hepatitis. How Many People Are Living with Viral Hepatitis in the U.S.? Im not sure that most people appreciate how many people are affected by viral hepatitis. The CDC website currently states that an estimated 2.7 million to 3.9 million people in the United States are living with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Another 700,000 to 1.4 million people are living with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. If we add these together, ignoring the number of persons coinfected with HBV and HCV, this suggests that there are roughly 3.4 million to 5.3 million people living with viral hepatitis in the United States. Thats a lot of people. These women, men, and children are at risk for developing severe liver disease if they do not get effective treatment and potentially transmitting the infection to others. Some estimates are even higher. Its hard to appreciate just how many people this is. To get a better understanding of how many people this represents, I thought it would be useful to compare the number of people living with chronic viral hepatitis nationwide to the total number of people living in Washington, D.C., and other places. The Census Bureau estimates that there were 672,228 people living in Washington, DC, in 2015. If we compare this population number to the estimates on the CDC website, there are between 5 to 7 times more Americans living with viral hepatitis than there are people in the nations capital. Now, Washington, DC, is a big place, but most states are even larger. What if we compare the number of people living with viral hepatitis to the population of the 50 states and Puerto Rico? The results were surprising to me. There May Be More People Living with Viral Hepatitis in the U.S. than Live in Your State Lets start with the lowest estimate from the CDC website (3.4 million people). Twenty-one states and DC all have total populations that are smaller than the estimated number of people living with HCV or HBV in the United States. If we use the highest estimate from the CDC (5.3 million people), 28 states, DC, and Puerto Rico, each have populations that are smaller than the number of people living with viral hepatitis. Thats more than half of the states in the entire country. These states can be found all across the United States. In fact, if you add up the populations of DC and the 6 least populous states (Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming), the total (5,184,139) is less than the CDCs highest estimate of the number of people living with viral hepatitis in the United States. Download viral hepatitis population estimates map here . Tools Available to Reduce Viral Hepatitis Infections These numbers of people living with HBV and HCV are much too large. We have an effective vaccine to prevent HBV infection. We have tests to diagnose HBV and HCV infection that are recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and covered by most health insurances without extra cost to patients. We have effective treatments that cure HCV infection. And we have other effective strategies (including drug treatment and syringe services programs) that can prevent transmission of viral hepatitis. We have the ability to reduce the number of persons living with chronic viral hepatitis in the United States by vaccinating people for hepatitis B, preventing new HBV and HCV infections, and curing people with HCV. We have the tools to make this happen starting today, if we scale up the use of effective prevention and treatment strategies. The Viral Hepatitis Action Plan sets goals for the nation and provides a framework for what needs to be done. We need to do better as a nation. We owe it to the millions of people living with viral hepatitis, their families, and their communities. A four year old John Doe is the lead plaintiff in a class action suit against the US Government that alleges that his diapers were searched when he flew as a seven-month-old baby and the TSA designated him a terrorism risk. The case, Baby Doe v. Piehota, is being led by Council on American-Islamic Relations Michigan Chapter, which says that the US government racially profiles people of Arabic descent. "The terrorism watch lists are premised on the false notion that the government can somehow accurately predict whether an innocent American citizen will commit a crime in the future based on religious affiliation or First Amendment activities," Lena F. Masri, a CAIR-MI lawyer, said in a statement. "Our lawsuits challenge the wrongful designation of thousands upon thousands of American Muslims as known or suspected terrorists without due process." Parents of baby who had all of his diapers searched sue feds [Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica] Bill Clinton has said he "almost" regrets his shouting match with Black Lives Matter protesters at a campaign event. The former US President engaged in a shouting match with hecklers in Philadelphia on Thursday as he spoke at a rally for his wife, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton. Mr Clinton told supporters in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Friday he likes protests, but it "bothers" him when activists drown him out. "So I did something yesterday in Philadelphia," he said. "I almost wanted to apologise for it, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country." He said Americans need to be able to have conversations, even when they are angry, a standard he failed to meet with the protesters. "I realised, finally, I was talking past her in the way she was talking past me," he said. "We got to stop that in this country. We got to listen to each other." The handful of protesters at the Hillary Clinton presidential rally on Thursday were objecting to welfare reform and gun violence laws passed when Mr Clinton was in office 20 years ago. "I don't know how you would characterise the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," Mr Clinton told the crowd. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn't. You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter." Mr Clinton has previously said he regrets signing the 1994 legislation because it contributed to high incarceration rates of black people for non-violent crimes, like minor drug offences. As first lady, Mrs Clinton used the term "super-predators" to describe young people in gangs in a 1996 speech about her husband's signature crime bill. Some black people have found the term offensive, and she has said she regrets using the term. Mrs Clinton herself got into a heated encounter with Black Lives Matter activists last August in New Hampshire. By Nelson Acosta HAVANA (Reuters) - Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels said an increase in violence by paramilitary groups made it harder to reach a final peace accord with the government as the two sides met for a round of negotiations in Cuba on Wednesday. The FARC and the government reconvened after a two-week break, having made progress in more than three years of talks in Havana but missing a self-imposed March deadline over the issue of how to disarm the rebels. The rebels fear for their safety once an accord is signed, saying a show of force by a uniformed criminal gang made up of former paramilitary fighters was aimed at disrupting the peace process. The gang, known as the Urabenos, forced schools and businesses to close in a large swathe of Colombia for two days last week, killing five people. "With paramilitary groups, with crime and attacks, with terror and threats peace cannot materialize," Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander Pablo Catatumbo said, reading from a statement that demanded an agreement be quickly reached about safety guarantees. Violence in Colombia is at the lowest level in 50 years, partly thanks to a unilateral ceasefire in which FARC reduced attacks and kidnappings. But murders of social leaders, union members and political activists rose 35 percent last year, according to data from the CERAC research group, which tracks the conflict that has endured for half a century. In the 1980s hundreds of former FARC soldiers were killed by paramilitary groups when they laid down their weapons to join democratic politics. Fears of a repeat have hardened the guerrillas' resolve not to disarm until they feel sure of their safety, complicating the talks hosted by Cuba. In a newspaper interview, Colombia's defense minister last week said the rebels were using "the ghost of paramilitarism" as a delaying tactic. Colombia's right-wing armed groups were officially disbanded between 2003 and 2006 and the government does not recognize their heirs as paramilitary organizations. President Juan Manuel Santos has said that once peace is achieved, he will put all his resources into fighting gangs such as the Urabenos. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in March warned such "post-mobilization armed groups" were a threat to the implementation of peace and called the government to respond effectively. "Paramilitarism is no ghost invoked by the insurgency," the FARC said in its statement. (Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; editing by Grant McCool) Authorities in Thailand are cautiously hoping the growing number of wild tigers in one of the kingdom's national parks could one day be used to help repopulate tigers into other areas of the country. After 10 years of studies using hidden motion-triggered cameras to track individual animals, researchers at Huai Kha Khaeng national park found its population of wild Indo-Chinese tigers had increased from around 20 in 2006 to more than 50 today. The research, carried out in conjunction with the Wildlife Conservation Society, identified the intensification of anti-poaching patrols by rangers within the conservation area as the main reason for this rare improvement. It is the only place in South East Asia that growth of this endangered species has been recorded. The wider region contains the largest area of natural tiger habitat in the world, but due to poaching, deforestation, and fragmentation of forest areas, the remaining wild tigers are found in increasingly localised areas. Thailand's environment minister, General Surasak Karnjanarat, recently said he would carefully consider the potential to use a small number of tigers from Huai Kha Khaeng to repopulate other national parks, where wild tigers have not been seen for years. But the research team in Huai Kha Khaeng have said there is a long way to go, and have warned the threat posed by poaching remains very real. "Before anything, we have to be sure there will be security for the tigers. Firstly, that it won't negatively affect the tiger population here. Secondly, that there is an effective strategy in place to keep the tigers alive that protects not only the tiger, but their overall ecosystem", said research director Somphot Duangchantrasiri. There are nearly 200 anti-poaching rangers posted in the Huai Kha Khaeng area. They stalk hundreds of square miles of dense tropical forest for up to five days at a time, looking for poachers and monitoring the prevalence of other animals that tigers prey upon. Story continues While these 'smart patrols' have only been in place since 2006, Huai Kha Khaeng has been a protected conservation area since the 1970s, but former national park director Pong Leng-Ee remembers the time before that. He was a leading campaigner for the conservation of forests and wild tigers from the 1960s onwards. Now in his 80s, he is proud of the shift in public opinion that has transpired over his lifetime. "At my first proposal to protect the tigers, nobody agreed with me - not even the conservation board," he said. He hopes the next shift in public attitude will be towards captive tigers, thousands of which are held in farms and tourist attractions in Thailand, and have been the focus of numerous abuse and illegal export scandals. "It's not right to breed tigers in captivity, not at all. I want to see the tiger in the wild and live and breed in the wild," he said. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's rand, stocks and bonds all rallied on Friday, with investor confidence lifted by Pretoria's successful issuing of a foreign dollar bond in the face of political upheaval and the prospects of looming ratings downgrades. The Treasury said its $1.25 billion 10-year bond, with a coupon of 4.875 percent, had been more than two times oversubscribed, mostly by investors based in Europe and the United States. "It is a case of relief across local assets after what has been a relatively downbeat week. The successful placing of the 10-year bond also had a positive impact on sentiment toward South Africa," senior economist at NKC African Economics Bart Stemmet said. "It shows investors are not running to the hills yet." By 1504 GMT the rand had gained nearly 2 percent to 14.9500 per dollar, after reaching a peak of 14.9185 on the day. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has been anxious to reassure investors about continuity in fiscal policy after President Jacob Zuma changed finance ministers twice in less than a week in December, triggering a panic run on the rand. Zuma, who has been dogged by controversy over the past decade, is under mounting pressure to quit after the Constitutional Court found he breached the law by not heeding a directive to make payments for upgrades to his personal home. Government bond prices also rose, sending the yield on the benchmark bond due in 2026 down 8 basis points to 9.195 percent. Stocks snapped a three-day losing streak, led by Illovo Sugar, which surged over 15 percent to a 12-month high of 23.71 rand on news that Associated British Foods, its top shareholder, had clinched a deal to buy the rest of the sugar producer for 5.6 billion rand ($370 million). The benchmark Top-40 index rose 0.51 percent to 45,252.36. The wider All-share index added 0.54 percent to 51,424.48. Trade volumes were low with almost 208 million shares changing hands compared with last year's daily average of 290 million. (Reporting by Ed Stoddard and Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by James Macharia) By Paul Carrel and Andreas Rinke BERLIN (Reuters) - At an hour-long meeting in Moscow on March 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov irritated his German counterpart by raising the case of a German-Russian girl who said she was raped by migrants in Berlin earlier this year. After the girl's claims were reported by Russian media in January, Lavrov accused Germany of "sweeping problems under the rug." The Berlin public prosecutor's office, though, said a medical examination had found the girl had not been raped. That was why Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was so upset when Lavrov raised the issue again. "I can only hope that such incidents and difficulties, as we had in that case, aren't repeated," he told reporters afterwards. The rape case is indicative of the mutual suspicion that officials from both countries say extends to the highest levels of government. At the root of those tensions lie opposing visions for Europe and the Middle East. Those rival visions have led to clashes at diplomatic negotiating tables, in cyberspace and in the media. German and other European security officials accuse Russian media of launching what they call an "information war" against Germany. By twisting the truth in reports on Germany's migrant crisis, the officials say, Russia hopes to fuel popular angst, weaken voters' trust in Chancellor Angela Merkel, and feed divisions in the European Union so that it drops sanctions against Moscow. "Russian propaganda is a danger to the cohesion of our society," Ole Schroeder, German deputy interior minister and a member of Merkel's conservatives, told Reuters. Russian officials deny their country is mounting a campaign against Germany. "These accusations are atrocious," said one Russian official, who said Moscow is the victim of an "indiscriminate information war" being waged from Germany. In February, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, denied the Kremlin had exploited the rape case to stir up tensions around immigration in Germany. "We cannot agree with such accusations," Peskov said. "On the contrary, we were keen that our position be understood, we were talking about a citizen of the Russian Federation. Any country expresses its concerns (in such cases). It would be wrong to look for any hidden agenda." But officials in Berlin say Russia's aim is to muddy what is true and what is not and shake Germans' trust in Merkel. "The idea today is to get disinformation, which means you don't believe anything," Hans-Peter Hinrichsen, a Foreign Ministry official, told a recent meeting on Russia's role in Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). German and European officials say Russia's aim is two-fold: To exaggerate the problems the migrant crisis is causing Germany and to push Germany to relax its backing for European sanctions on Russia over Moscow's interference in Ukraine. While EU governments last month extended asset freezes and travel bans on Russians and Russian companies, there is less consensus on whether to prolong more far-reaching sanctions on Russia's banking, defence and energy sectors from July. Both sides agree on one point: relations between the two countries are at their lowest point since the early days of the Cold War. BIKINI TROLLS? Beginning in the late 1960s, the then West Germany pursued a policy of 'Ostpolitik', which encouraged warmer ties with Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the two countries grew even closer thanks to trade and cultural ties. But those ties began unraveling when Vladimir Putin returned as Russian president in 2012, and worsened further after the Ukraine crisis began in late 2013. "All the networks, all the personal ties they just don't work anymore," said Stefan Meister, at the DGAP. The accusations of disinformation have spawned a whole new vocabulary. Officials at NATO now talk about the 'weaponization of information' by Russia. Colonel Aivar Jaeski, deputy director at the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, says Russia's campaign against Europe uses "angry trolls" who produce online hate speech, and "bikini trolls" to lure followers and then sow discord and doubt about news events. Jaeski pointed to a NATO StratCom report on trolling, which says the Guardian newspaper's online edition was targeted "in a troll attack that is considered to have been ordered by the Kremlin" over its reporting on the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied funding or backing online trolls, and has specifically denied any connection with a company based in St Petersburg whose ex-employees have said they were paid to spread disinformation, praise Putin and criticize the West. A GERMAN CAMPAIGN? In the rape case, Russian media reported the German-Russian girl under German law she can only be identified as Lisa F. had been abducted by 'Arab-looking men' and raped repeatedly over a 30-hour period. Janis Sarts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, said Russian media continued to report that even after the Berlin authorities said the girl had not been raped. Europe's East StratCom Task Force has collected dozens of examples of Russian reporting on the migrant crisis that it says are clear cases of deliberate disinformation. German daily Bild reported in March that Germany's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies were warning of increasing Russian interference in German politics. Moscow rejects the idea of any coordinated campaign. One Russian official said there was a German media campaign to paint Russia in a bad light and "demonize" it. The official said that Russian media had formerly been too positive about Germany and were now more objective. "This ends the discrepancy that saw the German media be very critical of Russia and the Russian media paint a very favorable picture of Germany," he said. BLACK BOX At the March 23 meeting, the two countries reached an "academic cooperation accord." Both sides also continue to emphasize cultural ties. But repairing political ties may be harder. Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) junior members in Merkel's ruling coalition and the party behind "Ostpolitik" all those decades ago seems increasingly ready to compromise with Moscow. Sigmar Gabriel, an SDP member and Germany's Economy Minister, said recently that the EU should try to lift sanctions on Russia by this summer. Merkel, though, has refused to ease the sanctions, insisting that Russia first needs to comply with an agreement to enforce a ceasefire, pull back heavy weapons, exchange prisoners, and hold internationally monitored local elections in eastern Ukraine. German officials say Merkel speaks to Putin more than any other Western leader and recognizes better than most that the Russian leader respects firmness. But the governments still struggle to understand each other. "The Kremlin is like a Black Box: we have a rough idea of who sits in the Black Box but we have no idea what they are thinking, what they are worried about, what they are thinking for 5-10 years' time," a senior German official said. (Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin, Robin Emmott in Brussels and Andrew Osborne in Moscow; Edited by Simon Robinson) Charges will not be laid in a sexual assault investigation involving a University of Victoria student. The Crown has determined there is not enough evidence to move forward with the case. Police arrested the student in February after they said four women aged 19 and 20 came forward with allegations they were assaulted by a student they knew well. At the time, police said the allegations were related to incidents that occurred over a span of several months. Saanich Police recommended five counts of sexual assault in the case. The student was released with a promise to appear in court in April. But the crown said that appearance did not happen because no charges are going forward. "The Report to Crown Counsel prepared by police was reviewed by several senior prosecutors and they concluded that the Branch's charge assessment standard was not met," said Daniel McLaughlin, Communications Counsel for the Criminal Justice Branch, in a statement. "On the available evidence, there is no substantial likelihood of conviction." To proceed with a sexual assault charge the Crown must prove sexual contact beyond a reasonable doubt, McLaughlin said, adding there must also be an absence of consent. "In this case, after a thorough review of the available evidence, it has been decided that the Branch charge assessment standard is not met," he said. "As such, no charges have been approved." At the time of the arrest, the University of Victoria banned the student from campus. The university has not yet commented on his current status. In the marketplace in Anse-A-Galets, everyone knows the water is gone when the shiny metal taps at the public fountains dry up. It means for the second time in two weeks, the 10-centimetre wide pipe that supplies water to a town of thousands has been cut. And that means Robin Churchill rolls out of bed in the dim early morning, and goes with a team to help repair the line where it has been slashed with a machete or smashed with a rock. Until the repairs are finished, there will be no running water for his family or anyone in town. "I start between 6:30 and 7:00," says the former Nova Scotia RCMP officer of his new life in Haiti. "A lot of days it goes until 9 o'clock at night when you finally just sit down. But it's fun. It's rewarding. It's all those things." Churchill, his wife Beth, and their two children Peter, 15, and Gaelle, 10, moved to Haiti in September 2015. Robin and Beth left their work with the RCMP to become the new directors of West Indies Self Help, an interdenominational Christian development organization that provides water and electricity, fosters job development and feeds the hungry. "I guess it's that desire to want to help, and yet the reality is, it's really difficult to try to help everybody, or to try to help even one person effectively," says Beth. "But there's definitely a desire to help, to come alongside." Moving to Haiti Peter, 15, remembers the day his parents sat them down in the living room of their Middle Sackville, N.S., home and told them the family would be moving to Haiti. "I was really surprised," he says. "Because I didn't think my parents were the type of people that would go to a different country. I thought they would just stay in Canada, stay with their job." Gaelle, 10, says she had a lot of questions about the move. "I was like, when did this happen? And they were working on it before they told us," she says. But she quickly understood why her parents made the decision. Story continues "They felt like God was calling them to go minister," she says. The Churchills are members of Hillside Wesleyan Church in Dartmouth, and became inspired to find out how they could serve people in Haiti. "It goes back to our faith," says Robin. "We have a deep faith, and we feel that this is where God wants us at this time in our life." Lessons in life For Peter and Gaelle, the move is a return to their birth country. Both children were born in Haiti and lived in an orphanage there, before moving to Canada in January 2010 when the Churchills completed the international adoption process. Moving back to Haiti has taught the whole family many new things, and some of the discoveries were about themselves. "I like Canada, and I like Haiti, but I think I would rather be in Canada," says Peter. "All my friends are there, and it's a bit different. I guess I'm just used to Canada more than Haiti." One adjustment has been simply getting used to a new home inside a walled compound that uses a water tank, a UV purification filter, a diesel generator and solar panels for electricity. Gaelle says she was surprised to find out there is Wi-Fi in their new home, although it's limited and means no Skyping or Facetime with friends back home. For the first few months, Peter and Gaelle were being taught at home but now go to a Haitian-American-run school by ATV. 'We would eventually like to work ourselves out of a job' The Churchills will move back to Canada some day, but they don't know when. "Certainly the kids," says Beth. "They'll go back to school there, or to university, or to a university in the States. "But when we came here, we said we were in it for the long haul. We didn't come down saying this is just three years and then we're going to go back. But I mean, anything could happen. Right now, we don't see that happening, but who knows?" The Churchills have three adult children in their early 20s who still live in Canada, and they will travel back and forth to visit every summer. "It's one of those things where we would eventually like to work ourselves out of a job," says Robin. "Hopefully, several years down the road there would be no need for individuals to come in. This would all be run and managed by Haitian staff and that's really what my job is to kind of transition me out of a job." Do Current Crude Production Levels Bode Well for Doha Meeting? (Continued from Prior Part) Crude oil prices have been on a roller coaster ride in 2016 Crude oil prices have rallied almost 45% in the past two months. However, they are down by 13% since March 22 highs. They have also lost 65% since June 2014 due to long-term oversupply. The roller coaster ride in crude oil prices is expected to continue in 2016. Crude oil price forecasts The Wall Street Journal reported that many investment banks have raised their crude oil price forecast for 2016 for the first time since August 2015. Banks have raised their crude oil price forecast by $1 per barrel from their previous estimates. Brent crude oil prices are expected to average around $40 per barrel in 2016. West Texas Intermediate (or WTI) crude oil prices are expected to average $39 per barrel for the same period. The U.S. Energy Information and Administration forecast that West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude oil prices will average ~$34 per barrel in 2016 and ~$40 per barrel in 2017. Recently, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait decided to resume crude oil production at the jointly operated Khafji field, which produces 300,000 barrels per day. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are members of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) and will play a key role in the oil producers meeting to stabilize the oil market. The decision to resume production in the Khafji field suggests that these countries arent going to freeze crude oil production at January 2016 levels. The rise in production from Iran, Iraq, and Russia also suggests that the oil producers meeting will be unsuccessful in supporting crude oil prices. The National Bank of Abu Dhabi suggests that crude oil prices could test $20 per barrel in the short term if Middle East countries increase crude oil production due to fragile economic conditions in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Read How Are Oil Prices Squeezing OPEC Members Budgets to learn more. Story continues The ups and downs in crude oil prices affect oil producers like Cobalt International Energy (CIE), Comstock Resources (CRK), Triangle Petroleum (TPLM), and Sanchez Energy (SN). They also affect ETFs and ETNs like the iShares Global Energy ETF (IXC), the iShares U.S. Oil Equipment & Services ETF (IEZ), the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (SCO), and the VelocityShares 3x Inverse Crude Oil ETN (DWTI). Browse this series on Market Realist: By Gwladys Fouche and Ragnhildur Sigurdardottir OSLO/REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - A poet and former WikiLeaks supporter who says revolution is her favorite word, Birgitta Jonsdottir would probably become Iceland's next prime minister if elections were held tomorrow. She leads the Pirate Party, set up by a group of outsiders and activists in 2012 with the same name as protest parties in other countries, and it would get a record 43 percent of the vote, according to an opinion poll released on Wednesday. Consistently topping surveys in the past year, the Pirates' popularity surged after the release this week of the Panama Papers forced Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to quit over the disclosure his wife owned an offshore company with claims on Icelandic banks. This infuriated many Icelanders who said it was an undeclared conflict of interest. When he stepped aside on Tuesday, it provided another boost for the anti-establishment Pirate Party which campaigns for transparency. (Graphic: http://tmsnrt.rs/23hpXe5) Jonsdottir aims to turn those poll numbers into votes after the embattled government named Fisheries Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson as new prime minister on Wednesday and announced it would call early elections for the autumn. "The nation has decided that enough is enough. They have shown in great number they want something different. For some reason, that different thing seems to be my political party," Jonsdottir, 48, told Reuters in a phone interview from Reykjavik hours before the government announcement. It is a stunning rise for the Pirates who won 5.1 percent of votes in the 2013 election giving them three seats in parliament including one for Jonsdottir. Its policies include granting citizenship to former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden and looser copyright enforcement rules. She said her party belonged to the same global movement for change that includes U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his leftwing Syriza party, and others in Europe where mainstream political parties are fending off populists. "We are living in a time where we are seeing real big transformative forces, where the general public are expressing in a very affirmative way that they want a different type of governance: they want more engagement," she said. "In particular, I have seen it very clearly with Podemos in Spain and the Five-Star Movement in Italy." The Pirate Party had been pushing for a vote of confidence in the government and a snap election. It was unclear if the autumn election would make them call off the confidence vote. ANOTHER KIND OF POLITICS For voters, the Pirates' appeal is as an alternative to the coalition which came to power in 2013. Fed up with the financial and political elite after a 2008 banking crisis wrecked the economy, thousands of protesters pelted parliament with yoghurt and eggs at protests this week. "They (the Pirate Party) practise another kind of politics so I am quite keen on that," said Oskar Arni Oskarsson, a 64-year-old librarian in Reykjavik, who said the latest events were "totally absurd". "I want the government to resign and that there will be (early) elections," he told Reuters. However, now that there is a chance of the Pirates being in power, their perceived lack of political experience is facing scrutiny. "People are saying now that they don't have enough experience and can't be trusted," said Eva Heida Onnudottir, a political scientist at the University of Iceland. Jonsdottir, who published her first book of poetry when she was 22, became a grassroots campaigner after Iceland's financial collapse. She soon became involved with WikiLeaks and helped get a classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, released on the WikiLeaks site. Jonsdottir, who has had rough patches in her life with both her husband and father committing suicide, sees herself as a lawmaker who puts pressure on the politicians who are doing "unacceptable things". Although she is the party's longest-serving lawmaker, others may also be candidate for the top job. Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, another of the three Pirate Party members of parliament, is also a possibility, and the Pirate Party rotates its leadership. Jonsdottir says she is not angling for the top job. "That is not something I fantasize. Actually I had a nightmare about that a long time ago that I wrote down into a poem," she said. (Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo; Editing by Anna Willard and Howard Goller) AstraZeneca AND ELI LILLY AND COMPANY Announce Continuation of Pivotal Clinical Trial for People with Early Alzheimer's Disease Phase II/III trial of AZD3293, an oral potent small molecule BACE inhibitor, will continue to Phase III after positive interim safety data AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly and Company today announced that AMARANTH, a Phase II/III study of AZD3293, an oral beta secretase cleaving enzyme (BACE) inhibitor currently in development as a potential treatment for early Alzheimer's disease, will continue into Phase III of the Phase II/III seamless trial. The AMARANTH independent data monitoring committee recommended the study continue without modification after a scheduled interim safety analysis was conducted. The analysis was not designed to review efficacy. Menelas Pangalos, Executive Vice President, IMED Biotech Unit, AstraZeneca, said: "Alzheimer's disease remains one of the biggest challenges facing medical science today. BACE inhibitors have the potential to target one of the key drivers of disease progression and we are delighted that our combined efforts have resulted in the development of AZD3293 moving into the next phase of study. Disease modifying approaches, such as this, have the potential to transform the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and help patients in this area of large unmet medical need." AZD3293 has been shown in Phase I studies to reduce levels of amyloid beta in the cerebro-spinal fluid of people with Alzheimer's disease and healthy volunteers. The progression of Alzheimer's disease is characterised by the accumulation of amyloid plaque in the brain. BACE is an enzyme associated with the development of amyloid beta. Inhibiting BACE is expected to prevent the formation of amyloid plaque and eventually slow the progression of the disease. Phyllis Ferrell, vice president and global development leader for Alzheimer's disease at Lilly said: "This is an important and meaningful step forward on the path to better understand the Alzheimer's puzzle. We'd like to thank the AMARANTH participants and the trial investigators for taking part in this important study and thank our colleagues at AstraZeneca for their partnership." AstraZeneca and Lilly have also announced the planned initiation of a new Phase III trial for AZD3293. The trial, named DAYBREAK, will study the safety and efficacy of AZD3293 in people with mild Alzheimer's dementia. DAYBREAK will begin enrolling participants in the third quarter of 2016. AstraZeneca and Lilly announced an alliance in 2014 (https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2014/astrazeneca -lilly-bace-inhibitor-azd3293-alzheimers-disease-16092014.html) for the development and commercialisation of AZD3293/LY3314814. Under the agreement, Lilly leads clinical development, working with researchers from AstraZeneca's Neuroscience Research and Development Team, while AstraZeneca will be responsible for manufacturing. The companies will take joint responsibility for commercialisation of the molecule and will share all future costs equally for development and commercialisation, as well as net global revenues post-launch. Financial Considerations Under the terms of the agreement, AstraZeneca will receive a further milestone payment from Lilly now that AZD3293 will move into Phase III testing. The payment of $100 million will be reported as Externalisation Revenue in AstraZeneca's financial statements and does not change the financial guidance for 2016. About the AMARANTH study AMARANTH is a Phase II/III study that is investigating the safety and efficacy of AZD3293 and testing the hypothesis that it is a disease-modifying treatment for patients with early Alzheimer's disease. Early Alzheimer's disease is defined as the continuum of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to Alzheimer's disease and patients diagnosed with mild Alzheimer's dementia. The study, which has a two-year treatment period, aims to enroll more than 2200 patients in 14 countries. About Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease, a fatal illness, is the most common form of dementia, accounting for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. There are currently an estimated 46 million people living with dementia worldwide, and this number is expected to grow to more than 74 million in 2030 and 131 million in 2050. Only 50 percent of people with dementia ever receive a formal diagnosis, and Alzheimer's disease continues to be one of the most significant health challenges facing the world. The total estimated worldwide cost of dementia in 2015 was $818 billion. By 2018, dementia will become a trillion dollar disease, rising to $2 trillion by 2030. About Eli Lilly and Company Lilly is a global healthcare leader that unites caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We were founded more than a century ago by a man committed to creating high-quality medicines that meet real needs, and today we remain true to that mission in all our work. Across the globe, Lilly employees work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. To learn more about Lilly, please visit us at www.lilly.com and newsroom.lilly.com/social-channels. About AstraZeneca AstraZeneca is a global, innovation-driven biopharmaceutical business that focuses on the discovery, development and commercialisation of prescription medicines, primarily for the treatment of diseases in three main therapy areas - respiratory, inflammation, autoimmune disease (RIA), cardiovascular and metabolic disease (CVMD) and oncology - as well as in infection and neuroscience. AstraZeneca operates in over 100 countries and its innovative medicines are used by millions of patients worldwide. For more information please visit: www.astrazeneca.com CONTACTS Media Enquiries Neil Burrows UK/Global +44 20 7604 8032 Vanessa Rhodes UK/Global +44 20 7604 8037 Karen Birmingham UK/Global +44 20 7604 8120 Jacob Lund Sweden +46 8 553 260 20 Michele Meixell US +1 302 885 2677 Investor Enquiries UK Thomas Kudsk Larsen +44 7818 524185 Eugenia Litz RIA +44 7884 735627 Nick Stone CVMD +44 7717 618834 Craig Marks Finance +44 7881 615764 Christer Gruvris Consensus Forecasts +44 7827 836825 US Lindsey Trickett Oncology, ING +1 240 543 7970 Mitch Chan Oncology +1 240 477 3771 Dial / Toll-Free +1 866 381 7277 Key: RIA - Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity, CVMD - Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease, ING - Infection, Neuroscience and Gastrointestinal 08 April 2016 -ENDS- English Latvian Russian Riga, Latvia, 2016-04-08 08:46 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The ordinary meeting of ABLV Bank, AS shareholders was held on 7 April 2016. At the meeting, the banks annual report and the consolidated report for 2015 were approved. Decisions were made on distribution of the banks profit for 2015, on increase of the banks share capital and approval of the terms of share capital increase, and on amendments to the banks Articles of Association. In addition, other matters included in the agenda were considered and related documents were reviewed. ABLV Bank, AS profit for 2015 amounted to EUR 69.0 million. As at 31 December 2015, the banks assets equalled EUR 4.93 billion, and deposits EUR 3.79 billion. ROE reached 27.76%, and ROA 1.49%, as at 31 December 2015. The shareholders approved the Boards proposal on distribution of the profit for 2015, according to which EUR 68.8 million will be paid in the form of dividends, and the amount of dividends per share of the bank will be EUR 1.95. It was decided to increase ABLV Bank, AS share capital by issuing 2,700,000 registered voting shares. According to the approved terms of share capital increase, the sale price of one share will be EUR 14.15. The subscription to the new shares will start on 18 April 2016 and will last until 31 May 2016. Following the new issue, the banks equity will be increased by EUR 38.2 million. Due to increase of the share capital, the decision on respective amendments to the bank's Articles of Association was taken and the new edition of the Articles of Association was approved. Following the share capital increase, the banks new subscribed share capital will amount to EUR 38.0 million, and the same will consist of 34,470,000 registered voting shares and 3,530,000 employee non-voting shares. The shareholders also acknowledged the Statement of Corporate Governance 2015. The Statement, the banks annual report and the consolidated report for 2015 are available on the banks home page www.ablv.com. ABLV Bank, AS is the largest independent private bank in Latvia. The banks major shareholders Olegs Fils, Ernests Bernis and Nika Berne directly and indirectly hold 86.25% of the bank's voting share capital. ABLV Group includes ABLV Bank, AS; ABLV Bank Luxembourg, S.A.; ABLV Capital Markets, IBAS; ABLV Asset Management, IPAS; Pillar Holding Company, KS; ABLV Consulting Services, AS; ABLV Corporate Services, SIA; New Hanza City, SIA, and other companies. ABLV Group has representative offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Kiev, Odessa, Minsk, Almaty, Baku, Tashkent, Hong Kong and Limassol. Lithuanian English Alytus, Lithuania, 2016-04-08 10:32 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On 29 April 2016 the ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of Snaige AB, the address of head office Pramones str. 6, Alytus, the company code 249664610 (hereinafter, the Company) is convened the ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders (hereinafter, the Meeting). The place of the meeting at AB Snaige office, at the address Kareiviu str. 6, Vilnius, Lithuania. The Meeting commences at 10 a.m. (registration starts at 9.45 a.m.). The Meetings accounting day 22 April 2016 (the persons who are shareholders of the Company at the end of accounting day of the General Meeting of Shareholders or authorized persons by them, or the persons with whom shareholders concluded the agreements on the disposal of voting right, shall have the right to attend and vote at the General Meeting of Shareholders). The Board of directors of the Company initiates and convenes the meeting. Agenda of the Meeting: 1. Consolidated annual report of Snaige AB on the companys activity for 2015 2. Auditors conclusion on the companys financial statements for 2015. 3.Approval of the set of financial statements of the company for 2015. 4.Approval of distribution of profit (loss) of Snaige AB for 2015. 5. Revocation of the member of the Board and the new board member election for the term until the end of term of the Companys Board; 6.Election of the audit firm for auditing purposes of financial statements and establishment of terms regarding the payment for audit services; The Company shall not provide the possibility to participate and vote in the Meeting through electronic communication channels. Draft resolutions on agenda issues, documents be submitted to the General Meeting of Shareholders and other information related with the exercising of the shareholders rights are available on the website of the Company www.snaige.lt on menu item For investors. This information will be also available for the shareholders at the head office of the Company (Pramones street 6, Alytus) on business days from 9:00 am. till 16:00 pm. (on Fridays till 14:00), tel. +370 315 56206, +370 5 2361970. Shareholders holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes shall have the right of proposing to supplement the agenda of the Meeting by providing the Meeting draft resolution on each additionally proposed issue or in case no resolution is required - the explanation. The proposals to supplement the agenda shall be submitted in writing or by e-mail. The proposals shall be presented in writing to the Company on business days or by sending it by registered mail at the address Snaige AB, Pramones street 6, LT-62175 Alytus, Lithuania. The proposals submitted via the e-mail shall be sent on vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt. The proposals to supplement the agenda with the additional issues shall be submitted till the 14 April 2016, 4:00 p.m. In case the agenda of the Meeting is supplemented the Company will report on it no later than 10 days before the Meeting in the same ways as on convening of the Meeting. Shareholders holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes shall have the right of proposing new draft resolutions on the issues already included or to be included in the agenda of the Meeting, audit firms for auditing purposes of financial statements. The proposals shall be submitted in writing or by e-mail. The proposals shall be presented in writing to the Company on business days till 28 April 2016, 2 p.m. or by sending it by registered mail at the address Snaige AB, Pramones street 6, LT-62175 Alytus, Lithuania. During the Meeting the proposals shall be submitted to the Chairman of the Meeting after he announces the Meeting agenda and no later than the Meeting starts working on the issues of agenda. The proposals submitted via the electronic mail shall be sent on vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt. The proposals submitted on this e-mail till 28 April 2016, 2:00 p.m. will be discussed during the Meeting. The shareholders shall have the right to present questions related to the General Meeting of Shareholders' agenda issues to the Company in advance in writing. The shareholders shall present the questions not later than 3 business days before the Meeting via the electronic mail on vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt. The Company undertakes to respond to the submitted questions via the electronic mail till the Meeting day, except the questions related to the Companys commercial secret and confidential information. During the registration to attend the Meeting the shareholders or the persons authorized by them shall submit a document which is a proof of his identity. The shareholders' authorized persons shall submit the power of attorney confirmed by the established order. The power of attorney issued by the natural person shall be notarized. A power of attorney issued in a foreign state must be translated into Lithuanian and legalized in the manner prescribed by law. Representative can be authorized by more than one shareholder and shall have a right to vote differently under the orders of each shareholder. The shareholder holding shares of the Bank, where the shares have been acquired on his own behalf, but for the benefit of other persons, must disclose before voting at the General Meeting of Shareholders to the Company the identity of the final customer, the number of shares that are put to the vote and the content of the voting instructions submitted to him or any other explanation regarding the participation agreed upon with the customer and voting at the General Meeting of Shareholders. Shareholder shall also have the right to authorize through electronic communication channels another person (natural or legal) to participate and vote in the Meeting on shareholder's behalf. Such authorization shall not be confirmed by the notary officer. The power of attorney issued through electronic communication channels must be confirmed by the shareholder with a safe electronic signature developed by safe signature equipment and approved by a qualified certificate effective in the Republic of Lithuania. The shareholder shall inform the Company on the power of attorney issued through electronic communication channels by e-mail vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt no later than the last business day before the meeting at 2:00 p.m. The power of attorney and notification shall be issued in writing. The power of attorney and notification to the Company shall be signed with the Electronic Signature but not the letters sent via the e-mail. By submitting the notification to the Company the shareholder shall include the Internet address from which it would be possible to download free of charge software to verify an Electronic Signature of the shareholder. Each shareholder or representative thereof shall have the right to cast his/her vote in advance in writing by filling in a general ballot paper. The general ballot paper form is on the Company's website www.snaige.lt on menu item For Investors. Upon the written shareholders request, the Company no later than 10 days before the Meeting shall send a general ballot paper by registered mail or hand it in person against signature. The general ballot paper filled shall be signed by the shareholder or his/her representative. In case the ballot paper is signed by the shareholder's authorized representative, such person along with the filled ballot paper shall submit the document to confirm the voting right. The ballot paper filled and the document confirming the voting right (if required) shall be submitted in a written form to the Company by registered mail at the address Snaige AB, Pramones street 6, LT-62175, Alytus, Lithuania, or by submitting it to the Company. Validated will be dully filled-in ballot papers, received until the meeting. The following information and documents are available on the website of the Company www.snaige.lt on menu item For Investors: - report on the convening of the Meeting; - the total number of the Companys shares and the number of shares with voting rights on the convening day of the Meeting; - draft resolutions on each agenda issue (in general ballot paper) and other documents to be submitted to the Meeting; - general ballot paper form. Additional information on the stock event is provided by telephone: +370 5 2361970. Draft resolutions of the General Meeting of Shareholders are attached. 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 NOTICENOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that Letters of Administration in the Estate of MARY ELIZABETH WILSON late of Middlesex Township, Cumberland County, Carlisle, Pennsylvania (died October 30, 2019), having been granted to the undersigned, all persons indebted to said estate are required to make immediate payment, and those having all claims will present them without delay to: Lester Norwood Straub Jr. Executorc/o Mateya Law Firm, P.C.Mark A. Mateya, Esq.55 W. Church AvenueCarlisle, PA 17013(717) 241-6500 Our Divisions Copyright 2022-23 DB Corp ltd., All Rights Reserved This website follows the DNPA Code of Ethics. News Microsoft Rolls Out Cloud App Security Service Microsoft's Cloud App Security service became generally available on Wednesday, enabling customers to track the use of Software-as-as-Service (SaaS) applications within their organization. Organizations often don't know what services are being accessed by end users, exposing them to security risks. Microsoft's Cloud App Security service provides a SaaS-app discovery service, as well as a ranking system, to address the potential security hazards. The service is based on Microsoft's purchase of Adallom, a company that made security solutions for tracking services and data sharing using cloud infrastructure. Microsoft bought Adallom for about $250 million in September. "Cloud App Security is the Adallom technology," a Microsoft spokesperson clarified via e-mail. "It was renamed Cloud App Security after the acquisition." The service uses an organization's traffic logs to find out what SaaS apps are being used. It taps proxies and firewalls for the discovery process. It pulls information using the APIs of the SaaS apps. Microsoft then ranks the risks of using these SaaS apps via a scoring system based on "regulatory certifications, industry standards and best practices," per Microsoft's TechNet description of the Cloud App Security service. Microsoft claims there's data privacy during the inspection process. "Data is downloaded for purposes of inspection, but data privacy is enforced," the TechNet articles states. Organizations can act on the information obtained by the service, but the actions tend to vary per SaaS app. For instance, the ability to quarantine files is possible with Office 365 and Box, but not with Service Now, Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Service (AWS), per a table in this TechNet article. Microsoft and its partners currently sell the Cloud App Security service on a subscription basis. It's priced at $5 per user per month and available in U.S. and Canadian markets. An organization needs to meet Azure Rights Management Service (RMS) requirements to use it. Only Azure Active Directory or Office 365 global administrators can set it up, per the spokesperson: Organizations need a Microsoft Azure subscription that supports Microsoft Cloud App Security. For more information see Cloud subscriptions that support Azure RMS. Then, to set up Cloud App Security, you must be a Global Administrator in Azure Active Directory or Office 365. You can find more info here. The Cloud App Security service isn't the same thing as Microsoft's Azure Active Directory Cloud App Discovery service, although both services use the Azure cloud infrastructure. "They're different," the spokesperson indicated. "Cloud App Security provides visibility into employee login events and data usage, as well as governance policies and proactive protection. Cloud App Security does this for popular SaaS applications as well as for custom applications and IaaS environments." In contrast, the Azure Active Directory Cloud App Discovery service is "a feature of Azure Active Directory (AD) Premium," according to the spokesperson. It requires the use of agents that run in an organization's computing environment. 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 Ragnhildur Sigurdardottir REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Icelanders, not satisfied with the departure of the prime minister and a promise to hold elections this autumn, took to the streets again on Thursday to demand the government quit over the Panama Papers leaks. About 2,000 people showed up at parliament for another day of demonstrations, banging pots and pans and calling for immediate elections. Iceland fell into political crisis this week after documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm linked the then Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to an offshore company that held millions of dollars in debt from failed Icelandic banks. He stepped down on Tuesday. The centre-right coalition tried to appease Icelanders by naming Fisheries Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson as prime minister and calling for early elections in the autumn. But many Icelanders, who have a deep distrust in government following a 2008 banking crisis which wrecked the economy, are saying it is not enough that Gunnlaugsson step aside. Saga Stephensen, a 33-year-old multicultural adviser who showed up at Thursday's protest, said others should resign. "They act like nothing happened and don't bear responsibility and don't apologise. I am fed up with their arrogance," Stephensen said. Johann Bjornsson, a 50-year-old teacher, called for elections as soon as possible. "To appoint Sigurur Ingi as Prime Minister is no solution," he said. Earlier on Thursday, the head of Iceland's anti-establishment Pirate Party - which polls show would win an election if held today - filed a vote of no-confidence motion in parliament. The motion is seen however as largely symbolic since the coalition of the Progressive and Independence parties has a solid majority in the 63-seat parliament with 38 seats. "How are we going to reclaim our reputation if things just go back to normal?" Birgitta Jonsdottir, head of the Pirate Party, told Reuters. "We are the laughing stock in the international community because of the former PM. It's too little and too late." A poll by Icelandic media outlet Visir showed this week 43 percent of those polled would cast ballots for the Pirate Party if elections were held now, a stunning victory for a group set up by opponents of copyright enforcement rules. (Writing by Mia Shanley in Stockholm; Editing by Angus MacSwan) By Padraic Halpin DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's second-largest political party rejected a coalition offer from acting Prime Minister Enda Kenny on Thursday, less than 24 hours after he made the unprecedented proposal to try to break a prolonged post-election deadlock. The Fine Gael party's Kenny made the offer on Wednesday evening during his first meeting with the leader of historic rival Fianna Fail, almost six weeks after voters rejected his ruling coalition without choosing a clear alternative. The rejection leaves the country facing the prospect of an unstable and potentially short-lived minority government led by one party and facilitated by the other, or a new election. "The consensus view of the party was a reiterating of our consistent message that the best interests of the Irish people are not served by a government made up of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael," Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin told reporters after a second meeting with Kenny that lasted just 10 minutes. "We would support a Fine Gael-led minority government but Fine Gael need to also make it clear that they would facilitate a Fianna Fail-led government if the numbers added up." Kenny, who insists his party would not back a minority administration led by its smaller rival, said in a statement that Martin's decision was a serious mistake and "driven by narrow party interests rather than the national interest". The two centre-right parties differ little on policy but have been bitter foes for decades, tracing their rivalry back almost a century to Ireland's civil war. "It is a disappointing outcome that Fianna Fail haven't even given a day of consideration to a really significant and historic offer. I can only think that's for political, strategic reasons," senior Fine Gael minister Simon Coveney said. The impasse has so far had little effect on Europe's best-performing economy, which grew nearly 8 percent last year, but consumer sentiment posted its sharpest fall in 17 months last month. Ireland's 10-year bond yield [IE10YT=TWEB] rose 7 basis points on Thursday to 0.83 percent but is near record lows. Analysts say a weak minority government could potentially paralyse efforts to tackle bottlenecks in housing and infrastructure that threaten to choke the economic recovery. Bookmaker Paddy Power said on Thursday it had cut the odds of a second election taking place in 2016 to 6/4 from 4/1. "It now is starting to look seriously like we're going to walk into the next election if we're not too careful," said David Farrell, politics professor at University College Dublin. (Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Catherine Evans) US Secretary of State John Kerry vowed Friday to turn up the heat on the Islamic State jihadist group as he visited Baghdad to show support for Iraq's crisis-hit government. Kerry, on his first visit to Iraq since 2014, met with senior officials including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to discuss the fight against the extremist group. He told journalists that the US-led coalition and Baghdad would "turn up the pressure even further" on IS, which has suffered a string of territorial losses in recent months in both Iraq and Syria. The coalition is carrying out air strikes against IS, and is also providing training and arms to Iraqi forces. Kerry said that retaking Mosul -- the largest Iraqi city under the jihadists' control -- remained "at the top of the list in terms of priority". The Iraqi army said last month that its troops and allied paramilitaries had begun what was expected to be a long and difficult offensive to retake Iraq's second city. Iraq is battling IS, which overran swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014, while it grapples with a financial crisis caused by plummeting world prices for oil, on which it relies for the vast majority of its revenues. Abadi is seeking to replace his current cabinet with a government of technocrats, a move that has faced opposition from powerful parties and politicians that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds. "What we have signalled very clearly today... is we support Prime Minister Abadi and his government as it addresses these very complex security, economic and political challenges," Kerry said during his visit that lasted several hours. "We urge everybody to work together. We urge everybody to put the interests of Iraq, writ large, ahead of personal interests or sectarian interests," he said. Abadi has announced a series of reform measures aimed at curbing government waste and corruption, and improving abysmal public services. But he has faced significant opposition behind the scenes, and little in the way of real, lasting change has been accomplished. - 'Need to stay focused' - In February, the premier called for "fundamental" change to the cabinet so that it would include technocrats and academics, as opposed to the current lineup of party-affiliated ministers. Abadi presented the names of proposed candidates to parliament last week, but some of the nominees have faced significant pressure to withdraw, and at least one has already done so. "In terms of the political wrangling in Iraq, it's certainly an issue that concerns us," a US State Department official said. Kerry will "encourage the Iraqis, while they're dealing with the cabinet reshuffle, not to lose sight of the need to stay focused on the fight against (IS)," the official said. Iraqi forces have regained significant ground north and west of Baghdad, including the cities of Ramadi and Tikrit. Baghdad's forces are now fighting to retake the town of Heet from the jihadists, and have already regained control of some areas. Apart from the city of Fallujah, Heet was one of the largest population centres in Anbar province still held by IS, and losing it would be the latest in a string of setbacks for the jihadists. "Daesh is unequivocally losing ground, losing leaders, losing fighters, losing cash, and not surprisingly, members of its rank and file are also now losing hope," Kerry said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. But while IS is losing territory, it is still able to carry out frequent bombings in government-held areas against both civilians and security forces -- a fact referenced by Kerry on Friday. "Daesh is on the defensive, that is clear. But its capacity to inflict suffering regrettably still remains," he said. The jihadists still control much of Nineveh province in northern Iraq, parts of Anbar to the west of Baghdad, and swathes of territory in neighbouring Syria. Kerry travelled to Iraq after visiting the small but strategic Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, where he held talks with Gulf Arab foreign ministers on the conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. He called on Iran to help end the wars raging in Yemen and Syria, where Tehran and its Gulf Arab rivals are backing opposing sides. MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's government on Tuesday unexpectedly changed two of its top officials responsible for U.S. relations, citing concerns about an increasingly anti-Mexican climate across the border. Carlos Sada, previously the consul in Los Angeles, was named ambassador to the United States while Paulo Carreno, one of President Enrique Pena Nieto's communications chiefs, was appointed the deputy foreign minister for North America. The new ambassador must still be approved by the Senate. "We have been warning that our citizens have begun to feel a more hostile climate," Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu told local radio after the announcement. "This (anti-Mexican) rhetoric has made it clear that we have to act in a different way so that this tendency being generated doesn't damage the bilateral relationship," she added. Mexican government officials have expressed concern about the rise of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump due to his repeated verbal attacks on Mexico, and his insistence that Mexico should be made to pay for a border wall. Trump on Tuesday threatened to block remittances from undocumented Mexican migrants if elected president unless the country pays billions for his planned wall. Trump also called Ford's announcement that it would build more cars in Mexico "an absolute disgrace." (Reporting by Anahi Rama and Adriana Barrera; Editing by Sandra Maler) By Denis Dyomkin and Nailia Bagirova BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan and Armenian-backed separatists said on Friday they had struck a temporary deal to allow each side to safely search for the bodies of their soldiers killed in clashes over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The warring parties agreed a ceasefire on Tuesday - with Russian help - after four days of shelling and artillery strikes which killed dozens. The truce has largely held, though both sides have reported some violations. The violence prompted fears of an all out war in the strategically-important South Caucasus through which Caspian Sea oil and gas is exported to world markets bypassing Russia. On Friday, the Azeri defence ministry and the Nagorno-Karabakh defence ministry said they had sealed a deal to ensure there were no violations for a five-hour period later in the day to allow both sides to search for their dead. An official at the Armenian defence ministry used social media to post the names and photographs of 44 separatist soldiers who he said were killed in the clashes since April 2. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was on Friday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to hold talks with Ilham Aliyev, the Azeri president, aimed at resuming diplomatic efforts to resolve the territorial dispute. "Russia, no less than Azerbaijan and Armenia, has an interest in there being peace in this region, our region," Medvedev said. "The ceasefire agreement is the foundation for unfreezing talks between Baku and Yerevan." Any progress towards a permanent settlement of the dispute is likely to be halting. Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous enclave within Azerbaijan's borders, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians who reject Azerbaijan's rule. With support from Armenia they fought a war in the early 1990s to establish de facto control over the territory. The fighting this week was the most intense since a 1994 ceasefire that stopped the conflict but did not resolve the underlying dispute. Azerbaijan says the only outcome of negotiations it will accept is the restoration of its control over Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts that are held by the separatists, while the Armenians say they will never agree to Nagorno-Karabakh being under Baku's control. Medvedev's visit to Azerbaijan, a day after he was in the Armenian capital for talks, showed Moscow was staking out a lead role in mediating in the conflict. Russia's active diplomacy overshadowed the United States, which has extensive interests in the South Caucasus region that includes Azerbaijan and Armenia. (Reporting by Nailia Bagirova and Denis Dyomkin in BAKU and Hasmik Mkrtchyan; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe) TALYSH, Azerbaijan (Reuters) - Elmira Bagiryan was leaving his village, at the epicentre of four days of fighting between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces, even though the gunfire had stopped. "We are afraid that the shooting will begin again," she said as she prepared to get into a car laden with carpets, pillows, blankets and furniture from her home. The village of Talysh was briefly occupied by Azeri troops during four days of battles over Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region which subsided on Tuesday afternoon when both sides agreed a ceasefire. Russia said it had played a lead role in brokering a halt to the violence, hosting a meeting between military chiefs from Armenia and Azerbaijan. The fighting was the most intense since a war over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s, and raised fears of a return to all-out conflict in a region that serves as a corridor for pipelines taking oil and gas to world markets. The guns had fallen silent in Talysh, a few kilometres (miles) from the Azeri town of Barda on the northernmost edge of separatist-held territory, on Wednesday afternoon. Ethnic Armenian troops, firmly back in control, milled around, smiling. There were signs, though, of the ferocity of the fighting of previous days. Several houses had been destroyed by shell fire. The hulk of a burned out car lay by the road. Nearby were the carcasses of several dead cows. Bagiryan, a grey-haired ethnic Armenian in her early 60s, said three villagers had been killed. Close to tears, she said she had spent days and nights in the cellar of a neighbour's house, taking refuge from the shelling. Quiet had returned on Tuesday when the ceasefire was agreed, but she planned to leave all the same. Other residents also were using the lull as an opportunity to get out. Cars and trucks loaded with belongings were heading away from the front line. OLD TENSIONS ERUPT The previous war between the two ex-Soviet states killed thousands on both sides and displaced hundreds of thousands. It ended with a truce in 1994, although there have been sporadic flare-ups since. The ceasefire was shattered over the weekend, with Azerbaijan's army and the Armenian-backed separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh exchanging heavy fire using artillery, tanks, rocket systems and helicopters. Dozens of soldiers were killed. On the other side of the front line to the village of Talysh, in an area under the control of Azerbaijan's authorities, there was no fighting on Wednesday. But there too was destruction from the previous days' clashes. Amina Suleimanly, a 46-year-old teacher from the village of Akhmetagaly, said since Saturday residents had been cowering in the internal courtyards of their homes to shelter from shells coming from separatist positions a few kilometres away. "They were shooting without pause," she told a Reuters reporter who visited the village. A house next to hers was hit by artillery fire and destroyed, though it was unoccupied at the time. She said one local man was killed when some ordnance exploded. RUSSIAN ROLE Speaking at a meeting in Berlin with Armenia's president, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said urgent efforts were needed to make sure the ceasefire would last. "Above all, everything must be done such that more blood is not spilled and lives lost," Merkel said. Mediation in the conflict has for years been assigned jointly to envoys from France, Russia and the United States. But Moscow has stepped up its diplomatic role in the past few days. Officials from both sides said the truce was agreed at a meeting in Moscow between the chiefs of staff of the Azeri and Armenian militaries. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had telephoned the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia to urge them to agree a ceasefire. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were both heading to Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, in the next few days. Russia does not have the same direct interest in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as it does in other territorial disputes in the former Soviet Union. In Georgia and Ukraine, it provided direct support to separatists. However, its active diplomacy over the past few days is consistent with a push by the Kremlin to assert its influence, especially in places where the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has elected to take a more low-key role. (Additional reporting by Hasmik Mkrtchyan in YEREVAN, Naila Bagirova in AGDAM DISTRICT, Azerbaijan, Jack Stubbs and Dmitry Solovyov in MOSCOW and Joseph Nasr in BERLIN; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) - A new group has risen up to challenge the al-Shabaab terrorist group - Said to be a break away group, the Jahba East Africa terrorist group says it is already established in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Somalia A new terrorist group has announced its presence in East Africa, saying it has militants in Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The Jahba East Africa group announced its presence yesterday on Thursday, April 7 in a statement whereby they also pledged allegiance to Isis. The group also discredited al-Shabaab terrorist group and urged members of the group to leave and join their new organisation. READ ALSO: Death in Eastleigh as 'Super Power' gang claim another life The groups spokesperson said that their existence also served to give militants detained for pledging allegiance to Isis instead of al-Qaeda as al-Shabaab demands an opportunity to operate in new fronts in East Africa. According to the Independent, it is rumored the new group is made up of former al-Shabaab militants who broke away after internal disputes over whom to pledge allegiance to. The news site also said that a memo had reportedly circulated among al-Shabaab fighters in September 2015 saying that its allegiance to al-Qaeda would not change and warning of punishments under Islamic law for any dissenters. READ ALSO: Photos: The 10 worst terrorist attacks in Kenya's history The al-Shabaab have held fort in East Africa for over a decade and has been the force behind numerous terrorist attacks in the country and its neighbors. Attacks of note carried out by the al-Shabaab group in Kenya include the 2013 Westgate Seige, the Mpeketoni massacre and the Garissa University College massacre. Source: TUKO.co.ke One of the suicide bombers who attacked the Brussels airport had previously worked as a cleaner at the European Parliament. According to a parliamentary spokesman, Najim Laachraoui did not have a criminal record at the time of his employment. "As a student, he held a summer holiday job cleaning at the parliament for one month in 2009 and one month in 2010, the spokesman said in a statement. "Those were the only instances he worked at the parliament." Najim Laachraoui blew himself up at the Brussels airport, and is also suspected of making suicide vests for last Novembers Paris attack. The revelation came as Belgiums prime minister admitted the country had made mistakes in how it tackled violent extremism. "In the fight against terrorism, in all countries in the world and in Europe, there have been successes and there have been failures," Prime Minister Charles Michel said. But he rejected suggestions Belgium had become a "weak link" in Europes war on terrorism. "If we were weak, then we would not have been able to convict 100 persons," he said, arguing that Belgian authorities had prevented many attacks. He made the comments to an audience of largely foreign journalists following last months attack on the Brussels airport and metro. The attacks killed 32 people, along with the three bombers. Mr Michel says Belgium is determined to learn from its mistakes and improve information sharing between various security agencies. By Lovasoa Rabary ANTANANARIVO (Reuters) - Madagascar's presidential office said on Friday that Prime Minister Jean Ravelonarivo and his cabinet have resigned - only for Ravelonarivo to say he had done no such thing. The president's office gave no explanation for the reported resignations, while Ravelonarivo said that the president had asked him to quit but that he had yet to hand in a resignation letter. Ravelonarivo took office in January 2015 after public frustration with power cuts, rampant unemployment and a stagnant economy forced out the previous administration. He survived a bid to sack him in July after the opposition group Mapar filed a censure motion, saying it was frustrated by the slow pace of change in the Indian Ocean island nation. On Friday, secretary general of the presidency Roger Ralala said in a statement: "The president has accepted the resignation of (the) prime minister and all members of the government (...) The current members of the government are dealing with current business until the appointment of new members of the government." Ravelonarivo, an air force commander and businessman, expressed surprise that President Hery Rajaonarimampianina's office had announced his resignation. "I met the president and he asked me to resign. I told him that I would like to talk to my family about it. I was then surprised to learn that I had resigned. So far, I have not signed any letter of resignation," he told a news conference. He did not say why the president had asked him to resign and did not say if or when he will hand in a resignation letter. Madagascar has struggled to rebuild itself since a 2009 coup that scared off donors and foreign investors. Donors resumed lending to Madagascar after successful elections in 2013 ended the political crisis and Rajaonarimampianina took office in January 2014. (Reporting by Lovasoa Rabary; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Hugh Lawson) ATHENS (Reuters) - Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said on Thursday he did not expect Cyprus would need a new international bailout in the event of a peace agreement which would reunify the island, split by a war in 1974. Speaking at a news conference in the Cypriot capital Nicosia, Anastasiades said the potential benefits of a Cyprus settlement could be huge. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are now carrying out studies into the matter, he said. "I dont see how it would be possible for us to be led into to a new Memorandum of Understanding, if one takes into account there will be transitional periods and safeguards built in (to a solution) so there will be no economic oscillations," he said in response to a question. Cyprus exited a three-year bailout programme on March 31. "In any case, from the first day of a solution - and I hope that will be the soonest - the common currency will be the euro," Anastasiades said. Cyprus was divided after a Turkish invasion in 1974 following a brief Greek-inspired coup, and the island's Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities remain separated. The Greek Cypriot side, which represents the whole of Cyprus in the European Union, has been a member of the euro zone since 2008. North Cyprus, a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state, has as its official currency the Turkish lira. Anastasiades represents the Greek Cypriot community in peace talks with Mustafa Akinci, the Turkish Cypriot leader. Diplomats say the negotiations represent the best chance in years to settle the conflict. Cyprus received a 10 billion euro international bailout in 2013, but only used about 70 percent of the cash. The financial lifeline extended by the EU and the IMF was contingent on Nicosia imposing a bail-in on deposits -- a raid on peoples savings which were then converted to equity -- to recapitalise banks badly exposed to debt-stricken Greece. (Reporting By Michele Kambas; Editing by Angus MacSwan) By Toby Sterling AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch voters have overwhelmingly rejected a Ukraine-European Union treaty on closer political and economic ties, in a rebuke to their government and to the bloc's establishment. The broad political, trade and defence treaty, which had already been signed by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government and approved by all other EU nations as well as Ukraine, took effect provisionally in January. But that didn't stop Dutch voters on Wednesday rejecting it by a 64-36 margin in a referendum that drew only 32 percent of voters to the polls - barely enough for the result to be considered valid. Voters said they were voicing their opposition not only to the treaty itself but also to European policymakers on matters ranging from the migrant crisis to economic policy, not long before Britain's June vote on whether to stay in the EU. Although the referendum was non-binding, Rutte acknowledged late on Wednesday it was politically impossible for his unpopular government to ratify the treaty in its current form. However, as the Dutch currently hold the EU's rotating presidency, he will need time to figure out whether and how he can alter the treaty in a way that could satisfy all parties. Rutte said the government would consult with parliament and its European partners "step by step. That could take days or weeks." Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday his country will continue moving towards the European Union despite the Dutch vote. "Under any circumstances we will continue to implement the association agreement with the European Union including a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement," he told reporters in Tokyo. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the result was "an indication of European attitudes to the Ukrainian political system." Any proposed changes to the treaty will have to pass both houses of the Dutch parliament, including the Senate, where Rutte's shaky coalition lacks a majority. Some political commentators have predicted a coalition collapse over the issue, though new elections must be called no later than March 2017 anyway. If a compromise can be found, it must also be palatable to other European countries, as well as the European Union Commission and the Ukrainian government. Rutte's main political rival, the anti-EU, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, whose popularity has hit all-time highs amid Europe's refugee crisis, said the result was "the beginning of the end" for Rutte's government and the EU in its current form. "If two-thirds of the voters say no, that is a vote of no confidence by the people against the elite from Brussels and The Hague," he tweeted. The European Commission has said it will wait for the Dutch government to suggest a way forward. Options include leaving the Ukraine agreement in force provisionally, or drafting exemption clauses for the Netherlands as has happened in somewhat similar circumstances in the past. Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), the biggest bloc in the European Parliament, and an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said the referendum result was a "big defeat" for the Dutch government and should be taken seriously. "We need to make Europe more democratic and transparent," Weber told Deutschlandfunk radio, saying there was too much backroom politics going on in Brussels. He added that politicians needed to engage more with citizens, explain things to them and show that they take people's concerns seriously. He said that applied particularly to Britain ahead of the June referendum on the country's membership of the European Union. The United States, which has supported Kiev's efforts to move closer to the West, expressed disappointment at the outcome of the Dutch vote. "Clearly we're disappointed by the results, but we do respect the views of the Dutch people," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters, adding: "We respect the Dutch political process." Toner said it was too soon to know what implications the vote would have for Ukraine's ambitions of closer ties with the EU. "I don't think we know yet," Toner said. "President Poroshenko has said that they're going to continue to work towards an association agreement, take the steps they need to take in terms of reforms and other measures. We support them in those efforts." (Reporting by Toby Sterling; Additional reporting by Elaine Lies in Tokyo, Michelle Martin in Berlin, Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow and Lesley Wroughton in Washington; editing by Hugh Lawson and Alan Crosby) By Joseph Nasr BERLIN (Reuters) - Asylum applications in Germany jumped in the first quarter as authorities processed some of last year's huge backlog of migrant arrivals that has strained local communities and Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition alike. Syrians accounted for almost half of the 181,000 applications, more than double the total of a year earlier and more than 6 in 10 of which were approved, the Interior Ministry said on Friday. Most of the record 1.1 million migrants who arrived in Germany last year were registered at shelters where they wait for weeks or months before they can file asylum applications. Arrivals slowed to a trickle in March as countries along the Balkan route through southeastern Europe imposed tight border controls to stem the flow of refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond. The influx of migrants has tested Merkel's right-left coalition government and fueled the rise of a populist anti-immigrant party that took votes from her conservatives and their Social Democrat partners in three state elections last month. The arrivals of mostly Arab Muslims have also prompted a heated debate about integration as some Germans fear the influx could undermine their culture. The government has also introduced tighter asylum rules. The authorities recorded around 60,000 asylum applications in March, down 11.5 percent from February but up 87 percent on March 2015. Iraqis and Afghans were the second- and third-largest groups of asylum seekers in the first quarter. An overstretched Federal Office for Migration and Refugees made decisions on 150,233 applications in the first quarter, an almost 159 percent jump from a year earlier. The asylum approval rate was 61.6 percent, up from about 42 percent before the refugee crisis, the ministry said, as numbers of Syrians fleeing civil war increased disproportionately. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said there has also been a rise in the number of deportations of asylum seekers whose applications were rejected. At the same time, more and more migrants were leaving Germany of their own free will. About 4,500 rejected asylum applicants were deported in the first two months of the year, more than double the figure from 2015, he said. De Maiziere said 5,000 migrants had decided themselves to leave Germany in February, compared with 1,300 the same month last year. Some 144 migrants crossed the border from Austria each day on average in March, down from more than 1,300 daily arrivals in February and 2,000 daily in January. (Additional reporting by Thorsten Severin; Editing by John Stonestreet and Hugh Lawson) By Renee Maltezou and Lefteris Papadimas ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece hopes to agree this week with its foreign creditors the package of measures it needs to legislate to conclude a crucial bailout review, but differences among EU and IMF institutions remain, sources close to the talks said on Thursday. The review has dragged on for months mainly due to a rift among the lenders over Greece's fiscal shortfall by 2018 - initially seen at 3 percent by the EU, 1 percent by Athens and 4.5 percent by the IMF. Athens and its lenders - the Commission, the European Central Bank, European Stability Mechanism and the International Monetary Fund - have agreed to use 3 percent as the baseline scenario in the Athens-based talks. But the EU and the IMF are still at odds on whether Athens could achieve a 3.5 percent primary surplus - budget balance before debt service payments - in 2018, an official participating in the talks told Reuters. The IMF, which will decide whether to co-finance Greece's third bailout after the review and in light of how much debt relief Greece receives, believes Athens will miss its 2018 surplus target, even if it implements measures worth 3 percent of GDP, the official said. EU institutions believed the target was feasible. Faced with a huge refugee crisis - which has catapulted Greece to the forefront of a massive refugee influx into Europe in the past year, the EU is keen to resolve the financing logjam swiftly. Underlying differences among the lenders on the extent of fiscal consolidation Greece needs to pursue would be reflected in assessment documents compiled by the IMF, and the EU institutions possibly by Sunday, government officials and sources close to the talks said. "There will be a document from the side of the three European institutions - basically the ESM - and another document, drawn up with the IMF. These documents will look alike but won't be the same," Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said after meeting the four inspectors on Wednesday. "We hope to finish on Sunday by teatime," the British-educated economist said. If concluded, the review will pave the way for talks on debt relief with the EU and potentially unlock an estimated 5 billion euros in bailout funds. Athens needs the money to repay 3.5 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank in July, as well as unpaid domestic bills. Holding a fragile parliamentary majority, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras hopes a debt restructuring will convince Greeks that their sacrifices are paying off after six years of belt-tightening. But the delays have cast a shadow on his plans. Some of the measures discussed - the management of bad loans, pension cuts and tax hikes - were politically difficult for Tsipras' left-wing government, which was re-elected in September on promises to mitigate the impact of austerity. To achieve its targets, Athens aims to save one percentage point from cutting pension spending, another point from raising income tax and 1 percent of GDP from tax measures, which have not yet been agreed. It is also considering raising fuel tax and value-added tax on cigarettes, among other measures. Tsipras hopes for a compromise before April 22, when euro zone finance ministers assess its progress. Some euro zone ministers will attend the spring meetings of the IMF in Washington on April 15-17. (Additional reporting by Paul Taylor in Brussels; Editing by Mark Heinrich) A haul of guns and ammunition has been found in Denmark after the arrest of four suspected Islamic State terrorists. Danish police believe the group detained near Copenhagen had been recruited by the militant group in Syria to carry out attacks. The cache of weapons were recovered in a connected search. The police said in a statement: "The arrests took place as part of efforts to combat people enlisting in terrorist groups in the war-torn areas in Syria and northern Iraq." All four are due to appear at a hearing before a judge on Friday. In a statement issued a short time after the arrests, Justice Minister Soren Pind said: "We know that people who have fought for IS in Syria or Iraq may pose a specific security threat against Denmark." The Danish intelligence service PET said last October that more than 125 people from the country are thought to have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join IS. At least 27 of them have been killed there. The security forces in Denmark have been on high alert since two people were killed in gun attacks on a free speech event and a synagogue in Copenhagen in February last year. IS claimed responsibility for the suicide bomb attacks that killed 32 people in Brussels last month and the deadly rampage in Paris in November that left 130 dead. NEW DELHI (Reuters) - IPCA Laboratories Ltd said on Thursday that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, would no longer buy the company's anti-malarial treatments after a U.S. regulatory warning about quality lapses at its factories. IPCA said in February that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had issued it with a warning letter outlining manufacturing quality lapses observed at three of its Indian factories. Those plants had already been banned from supplying to the United States after earlier inspections. The Global Fund will no longer source Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACTs), an anti-malarial treatment, from IPCA following a "risk consideration exercise", the drugmaker said. The Global Fund "will not allocate any volume of ACTs to the company and ... will only source ACTs from other pre-qualified suppliers that have no outstanding issues with the regulators," IPCA in a statement to the Indian stock exchange. IPCA has 16 manufacturing plants in India from where it supplies to more than 120 countries. The three sites with U.S. bans also supply to India, UK and Canada. Several drug factories in India have been cited by the FDA over the last two years for violating manufacturing quality standards, as the regulator has increased its oversight of the industry, which is a key supplier to the United States. Geneva-based, the Global Fund is a public-private partnership set up in 2002 that has made considerable progress in tackling epidemics of deadly infectious diseases. No one at the organisation was immediately available for comment. ($1 = 66.6675 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Greg Mahlich) By Padraic Halpin DUBLIN (Reuters) - Acting Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has proposed entering an unprecedented coalition government with the country's second-largest party and historic rival Fianna Fail, his Fine Gael party said on Wednesday. Kenny made the proposal during his first meeting with Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin since inconclusive February elections after both failed for the second time to be elected prime minister. The two centre-right parties have few policy differences but have been bitter rivals for decades and senior members of both parties, particularly in Fianna Fail, had ruled out a formal coalition with their fierce rival before the meeting. "Taoiseach (prime minister) has formally offered Micheal Martin a full partnership govt with Independent TDs (lawmakers) - a historic change and good for Ireland," Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney, one of Fine Gael's negotiators, said on Twitter. Fine Gael said in a statement that such a government would have the "potential to provide a stable and lasting government" and that the two party leaders had agreed to meet again on Thursday for further discussions. A Fianna Fail spokesman said Kenny told Martin a minority government led by either party reliant on the other for support from opposition would not work. Martin will discuss the offer and other options with his party before meeting Kenny again. The offer was a good first move on Kenny's behalf, according to Eoin O'Malley, politics lecturer at Dublin City University, as he knows Martin cannot really accept it but it allows the Fine Gael leader to appear magnanimous and constructive. One Fianna Fail lawmaker, Lisa Chambers, told national broadcaster RTE that she would not be prepared to go back on the party's election promise not to enter a coalition with Fine Gael. The rivalry between the parties dates back almost a century to Ireland's civil war and senior members admit they deeply mistrust each other. Since the election the parties had separately been vying to win the support of 15 independent members of parliament to form a minority government before asking the other to back it from the opposition benches on a vote-by-vote basis. Martin, who would have to win approval of reluctant grassroots members of the party to enter coalition with its rival, has not ruled out backing a minority Fine Gael government. However, analysts have said a minority administration would be weak and short-lived, potentially paralysing policy needed to tackle bottlenecks in housing and infrastructure that threaten to choke a sharp economic recovery. Ireland's central bank has said the impasse has so far had little effect on Europe's fastest growing economy but warned it could have an adverse impact. Data on Wednesday showed consumer sentiment posted its sharpest fall in 17 months in March. If the parties cannot come to some sort of arrangement, as they did in the 1980s when Fine Gael indirectly backed a Fianna Fail minority government, Ireland faces a second election. (Additional reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Catherine Evans, Toni Reinhold) 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 Elaine Lies TOKYO (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday his country will continue moving towards the European Union despite a resounding rejection by Dutch voters of a treaty on closer ties between the European body and Ukraine. The broad political, trade and defence treaty is already provisionally in place but has to be ratified by all 28 EU member states for every part of it to have full legal force. The Netherlands was the only country that had not done so. Many Ukrainian politicians feel their country deserves the treaty and are keen to show they have made progress in aligning their country with EU standards since the 2014 uprising that toppled pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich. Dutch leaders campaigning for the treaty had said voting against it would also hand a symbolic victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Under any circumstances we will continue to implement the association agreement with the European Union including a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement," Poroshenko told reporters in Tokyo. "We will continue our movement towards the European Union." Poroshenko downplayed the importance of the referendum, which is non-binding, but said Ukraine should "take it into consideration" and added that they were awaiting a decision by the government and parliament of the Netherlands. The Dutch government said on Wednesday that it could not ignore the vote but that it may take weeks to decide how to respond. The referendum was seen as a test of sentiment towards Brussels ahead of Britain's June Brexit vote and could also be a boost for Russia. Poroshenko also repeated his denial that he put his assets in an offshore trust to minimise taxes, after the country's fiscal service said it was looking into documents relating to his offshore assets that were included in the "Panama Papers." (Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Nick Macfie) By Denis Dyomkin and Christian Lowe YEREVAN/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia staked out its claim on Thursday to be the lead player in brokering a settlement to the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, a role it hopes will enhance its clout in a region where it competes for influence with Washington. Dozens of people were killed this week in four days of shelling and rocket strikes between Azerbaijan's military and Armenian-backed separatists over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, prompting fears of an all-out war. A ceasefire was agreed on Tuesday at a behind-the-scenes meeting in Moscow between representatives of the warring sides. On a visit to Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasised Moscow's special role as mediator. "Beyond all doubt, we are interested - maybe more than the other foreign partners of these two countries - in this conflict being settled as soon as possible," Lavrov said after meeting his Azeri counterpart. Lavrov noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken to the Armenian and Azeri leaders to urge an end to the violence, and that Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was in Armenia and planned to visit Azerbaijan on Friday. Medvedev, after meeting his Armenian counterpart, said Russia was ready to continue to use its influence to mediate and there was no alternative to the dispute resolution mechanism. "The main thing is to avoid the conflict entering a hot phase because that could have the most tragic consequences for the region," Medvedev told reporters. The situation was a source of serious concern for Moscow, he said, adding that he hoped the ceasefire would be respected and nobody else would be killed or more infrastructure destroyed. If the truce held, he hoped talks to find a lasting solution to the dispute could be resumed. Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous enclave within Azerbaijan's borders, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians who reject Azerbaijan's rule. With support from Armenia they fought a war in the early 1990s to establish de facto control over the territory. The fighting this week was the most intense since a 1994 ceasefire that stopped the conflict but did not resolve the underlying dispute. On Thursday, each side alleged the other had violated the Moscow-brokered truce in skirmishes overnight. Each said one of their servicemen was killed. Those incidents aside, the ceasefire was broadly holding. A Reuters reporter in Nagorno-Karabakh's Martuni district, near the front line with Azerbaijan's forces, said there was no sign of fighting on Thursday. RESTORING INFLUENCE Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and Europe have been cultivating ties in the South Caucasus region, which includes Azerbaijan, Armenia and their common neighbour Georgia. Western powers see the region as a strategically-important corridor through which Caspian Sea oil and gas can be exported to world markets. The route bypasses Russia, so reducing Moscow's stranglehold on energy exports from the former Soviet Union. Russia, the former imperial master, has seen its influence decline. In the Minsk Group, the body set up in 1994 to mediate in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russia had equal status alongside the United States and France. According to Matthew Bryza, a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan and co-chair of the Minsk Group, Putin saw this week's outbreak of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh as an opportunity to re-assert Moscow's sway. Putin has already established a pattern of trying to restore Russia's clout beyond its borders, notably in Ukraine with his support for pro-Russian separatists and in Syria with a military campaign to help President Bashar al-Assad. Since the latest flare-up over Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia has acted separately from the rest of the Minsk Group, Bryza told Reuters. "Russias goal in its lone mediation mission appears to be twofold: firstly, to repair its international reputation in relation to its debacle in Ukraine, and secondly to strengthen the impression in Armenia and Azerbaijan that Russia calls the shots in the South Caucasus," he said. The fact that the U.S. administration is so absent and timid in its response has the impact of ceding the strategic field in the South Caucasus to Russia. This can have profound and dangerous consequences in Syria, Ukraine, and far beyond." (Additional reporting by Nailia Bagirova in AZERBAIJAN, Hasmik Mkrtchyan in YEREVAN, and Dmitry Solovyov in MOSCOW; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Andrew Roche) BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia accused Croatia on Friday of obstructing its negotiations on European Union membership and said it would not submit to blackmail by its neighbour. Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said his government was "stunned by Croatia's decision not to support Serbia's European path" after Croatian officials in Brussels refused to give their assent to Serbia opening talks on a new chapter or policy area in the negotiations. "Serbia will not allow itself to be blackmailed, humiliated or disrespected by anyone," Vucic said in a statement. "Serbia will never be anyone's punching bag." A row has been brewing since Croatia said this week that Serbia must change its law on prosecuting crimes committed during the 1990s Balkan wars as a condition for completing its EU membership negotiations. Croatia, which fought a 1991-95 war against Belgrade-backed Serb rebels to forge its independence from Yugoslavia, says it is unacceptable for Serbia to claim jurisdiction for war crimes committed on the entire territory of the former Yugoslavia. With Serbian elections set for April 24, the dispute could give ammunition to ultra-nationalists who loathe Vucic's policies of integration with the EU and instead favour close ties with Russia. Croatia joined the EU in 2013 whereas Serbia only opened negotiations in December. Since all 28 EU governments must agree to the opening and closing of new chapters in negotiations with prospective members, that effectively gives Croatia a veto over Serbia's membership. Officials in Serbia said Croatia was not saying "no" to opening talks on the judiciary and fundamental rights but was delaying taking a decision on the issue. Croatia wants the European Commission to accept its concerns over the war crimes law and several other issues as conditions for a successful outcome to Serbia's EU negotiations, officials there say. "Croatia is now waiting for Brussels to voice how it plans to incorporate criteria that Serbia needs to meet into the negotiation benchmarks," Croatian Foreign Minister Miro Kovac said in Zagreb on Friday. "We want to have good neighbourly relations with Serbia and for that, healthy foundations are needed, which includes resolving war legacy issues," he said. Other conditions Croatia wants the EU to set for Serbia include full compliance with a bilateral agreement on protecting minorities and full cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Serbia, which hopes to wrap up its EU membership talks by 2019, says it already cooperates with the U.N. tribunal. (Reporting by Ivana Sekularac and Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade and Igor Ilic in Zagreb; editing by Adrian Croft and Andrew Roche) By Tom Perry BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian army and its allies launched a major attack on insurgents south of Aleppo, described as the fiercest government assault in the area since an agreement to ease the fighting came into effect in February. Fighting south of Aleppo in recent days has put further strain on the already widely violated ceasefire deal brokered by the United States and Russia with the aim of launching a diplomatic process towards ending the five-year-long war. The indirect talks organised by the United Nations are struggling with no sign of compromise over the main issue dividing the sides: the future of President Bashar al-Assad. A second round of talks is due to begin on Monday in Geneva. Rebels described intense air strikes in the southern Aleppo area where the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front shot down a Syrian warplane on Tuesday and captured its pilot. Nusra Front, which along with Islamic State is not part of the ceasefire, last week attacked and captured a town in the area, killing dozens of Syrian soldiers and their allies, among them 11 members of the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah. A statement from the Syrian army and its allies said they were targeting armed groups in areas south of Aleppo, supported by "heavy and concentrated air strikes", the website of the Hezbollah-controlled al-Manar reported. The statement said the attack was a response to insurgent violations of the cessation of hostilities agreement. "This fire will continue until all the militants surrender", it said. Each side accuses the other of seeking to wreck the cessation of hostilities agreement that has slowed the war across many of the major frontlines of western Syria but not stopped it entirely. Though Nusra is not part of the deal, its fighters are deployed near rebel groups that are. Syria's crisis erupted five years ago with protests against Assad which were put down with force. It descended into a civil war which has killed more than 250,000, drawn in global military powers and helped Islamic State establish its self-declared caliphate. Nearly five million refugees have been driven abroad. Russia's six-month-old intervention in Syria has helped to swing military momentum in Assad's favour, reversing last summer's gains by insurgents including Western-backed rebels and helping government forces to drive Islamic State out of the ancient city of Palmyra. The recapture of Palmyra and its military airport, in the central Syrian desert, opened up the road further east to the Islamic State bastions of Deir al-Zor province and Raqqa. Any offensive on Deir al-Zor or Raqqa, however, would probably need significantly more firepower than the Palmyra assault. INSURGENTS FIGHT BACK A rebel said the government attack south of Aleppo was the heaviest in that area since the truce agreement came into effect. Hany al-Khaled of the Sham Revolutionary Brigades group, an affiliate of the Levant Front, said his group had taken part in repelling the attack, and Shi'ite militias fighting with the government had suffered heavy losses. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based organisation that tracks the war, said air strikes, artillery and rockets were being used in an attack aimed at recovering Telat al-Eis, the town seized in the Nusra Front-led assault. The statement reported by al-Manar accused insurgents of breaching the truce "in execution of foreign orders". Opposition official Asaad al-Zoubi, meanwhile, told Reuters the truce was "in danger of ending" due to government violations. "There are still hiccups in the ceasefire that are happening from day to day," the U.S. Pentagon said in a press briefing on Wednesday. In addition to the 11 Hezbollah fighters killed, 43 Syrian soldiers died in last week's Nusra attack, sources familiar with the details said. Hezbollah's support has been crucial to Assad in the conflict, together with backing from Shi'ite militias mobilised from Iran and Iraq and Russian air power. Russia last month withdrew some of its warplanes from Syria, where it has been bombing in support of Assad since Sept. 30. Indicating an expansion of Iranian support, an Iranian military official said on Monday that Tehran has sent commandos from the regular Iranian army to Syria as advisers. So far, Iran's military support to Damascus has mostly been supplied by its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. ESCALATION OF MILITARY OPS "Overall there is an escalation of military operations across Syria," said Rami Abdulrahman, Observatory director. With help from Hezbollah and the Russian air force, the Syrian military has turned some of its firepower towards the Islamic State group since the cessation agreement took hold. In an apparent response to setbacks including the loss of Palmyra to government forces last month, Islamic State launched attacks on government-held areas some 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Damascus overnight. The jihadist group said in a statement it had attacked the Tishrin power station 50 km (30 miles) northeast of the capital and a Syrian military source acknowledged the group had staged assaults, but said all those who took part had been killed. In the same area, Islamic State attackers, using five bomb-laden cars, also struck military positions near the Dumeir military airport 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Damascus, killing 12 soldiers, the Observatory said. Islamic State claimed the bombings in an online statement, saying it carried out a suicide attack on government forces. Syrian government forces have, meanwhile, advanced to within 20 km of the Islamic State-held town of Sukhna to the northeast of Palmyra, the Observatory said, edging closer to the eastern province of Deir al-Zor nearly entirely controlled by the group. Rebel factions backed by Turkey have also gained ground against the group near the Turkish border - an area where the Syrian army is also trying to make gains, and the U.S.-allied Syria Democratic Forces alliance is also planning an attack. (Reporting by Tom Perry and Angus McDowell in Beirut, and Idrees Ali in Washington.; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Peter Millership) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia played a role in the release of an American citizen held by Syrian authorities and the United States has had "periodic contact" with the Syrian government, the U.S. State Department said on Friday. In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the Russian military had taken a U.S. citizen from Syria to Moscow, after President Barack Obama personally asked President Vladimir Putin to help search for Americans in Syria. The man was handed over to the U.S. embassy in Moscow and has now left Russia, the ministry said on Friday. The Washington Post, citing two U.S. officials, reported that Syria's government had released Kevin Dawes, who was abducted after traveling to Syria in 2012. Dawes, described by the newspaper as a freelance photographer, was recently allowed to call family and receive care packages, signaling to officials that the Syrian government was moving toward his release, the Post reported. U.S. State Department Spokesman Mark Toner said the person was freed several days ago and had left Syria but did not identify the individual. "We are appreciative of efforts on the part of the Russian government that it undertook on behalf of this U.S. citizen in Syria," Toner told a news briefing. Toner did not elaborate on Moscow's involvement. Toner said U.S. authorities have been in touch with Syrian officials, an instance of rare cooperation between the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations. "We have also been in direct periodic contact with the Syrian government regarding consular issues in general and American citizens detained in Syria," Toner said. The United States has called repeatedly for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down since Syria's civil war broke out in 2011. The Washington Post said Dawes' release was seen as a positive sign for American reporter Austin Tice, who also went missing in Syria in 2012. The State Department is continuing to work through Czech officials in Syria to get information on Tice as well as on other U.S. citizens missing in Syria. Tice's family declined to comment. (Reporting by Megan Cassella and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Paul Simao and James Dalgleish) By Can Sezer ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey is investigating how hackers have posted online the identity data of some 50 million Turks, including what they said were details about the president and prime minister, after what is believed to be the biggest data breach seen in the country. While no group has taken credit for uploading the data to a website called the Turkish Citizenship Database, the comments posted suggest Turkey may be a target of political hackers. The 1.5 gigabyte compressed file contains the national identity number, date of birth and full address for 49.6 million Turks, according to the website, or around two thirds of the population. The website said it included the ID information of President Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and former president Abdullah Gul and taunted the president. "Who would have imagined that backward ideologies, cronyism and rising religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical infrastructure?" the website says. "Do something about Erdogan! He is destroying your country beyond recognition." An official at Ankara's chief prosecutor's office said on Wednesday it was investigating the breach, but declined to give further details. The number of Turkish citizens affected was roughly the same size as the entire electorate, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters. "How and from where this was leaked needs to be looked into," he said. "I believe the necessary investigations - both administrative and judicial - have been launched and whatever is necessary will be done." OFFICIAL FILES Tuncay Besikci, a computer forensics expert at auditing and consultancy firm PwC, confirmed to Reuters the file contained ID numbers and personally identifiable information of at least 46 million citizens. Transport and Communication Minister Binali Yildirim said on Tuesday the breach appeared to date back to at least 2010. It is not clear when the file was first uploaded, although reports of it surfaced in local media this week. He said the data was from electoral records that the state shares with political parties before elections. However, Besikci, the computer expert, said he believed the data was taken from the government's official Population Governance Central Database in or around 2009 and later illegally sold on to firms that dealt in asset foreclosures. In December, Turkish Internet servers suffered one of the most intense cyberattacks seen in the country, raising fears Ankara may have been a target of political hackers. The December hacking involved a flood of disruptive traffic, known as a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, where computers target specific Internet sites, resulting in web speeds plummeting. Under Erdogan, Turkey has a taken a tough stance on social media sites. Turkey has blocked access to sites such as Twitter, often due to images or other content being shared. Last month an Ankara court ordered a ban on access to both Twitter and Facebook after images from a car bombing in the capital were shared. (Refile fixing typo in first paragraph) (Additional reporting and writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by David Dolan and Alison Williams) We look at what the SFAT's ruling and the SFC's action says about the future of Hong Kong as a place in which freedom of debate and negative criticism is becoming increasingly difficult. SFAT's red flag on Moody's chills negative research On 31-Mar-2016, the Securities and Futures Appeals Tribunal (SFAT) handed down its Determination in the appeal of Moody's Investors Service Hong Kong Ltd against the SFC's decision to reprimand it and fine it HK$23m. The Tribunal partially upheld the SFC's findings and reduced the fine to HK$11m, as announced by the SFC on 5-Apr-2016. The findings relate to a Moody's media release titled "Accounting and governance warning signs for emerging market companies" and an accompanying report published on 11-Jul-2011 titled "Red Flags for Emerging-Market Companies: A Focus on China". Webb-site agrees with part of the judgment, that the SFC had jurisdiction as licensor, and that the licensing system imposes a constitutionally necessary restriction on free speech for a legitimate purpose. However, we find other parts, and the SFC and SFAT's general approach to exercising this restriction, deeply disturbing. It sets far too high a floor on the acceptable standards of critical research and will have a chilling effect on negative criticism of companies in Hong Kong, in a market in which there is little enough of that already. This approach is part of a pattern that indicates a regulatory bias against negative criticism and short-selling. That pattern includes a reporting threshold of 0.02% for any short position, on a weekly basis, versus a 5% disclosure threshold for long positions. If Moody's (or anyone) had published a "Green flags report" singling out those companies (positive outliers) which it thinks have exceptionally good accounting and governance, causing their share and bond prices to go up, would the SFC have clobbered them for minor errors in the flags? As we explain below, the SFAT also displays a lack of understanding of what drives credit ratings and what investors expect from licensed researchers. Perhaps this was to be expected: the SFAT was Chaired by a senior Judge, Michael John Hartmann, with 2 lay members, Dr Billy Mak Sui Choi (Dr Mak), an academic, and Ms Ding Chen (Ms Ding). Dr Mak also sits on the SFC's Academic and Accreditation Advisory Committee and several government bodies. Of the three, only Ms Ding might have market experience, as CEO of mainland-controlled CSOP Asset Management Ltd, which sells ETFs in and out of the mainland market. Here she is on CNBC on 16-Jun-2015 (Tuesday morning, HK time) at the top of the mainland bubble, promoting CSOP's newly-launched HK-listed (3147) ETF on the Shenzhen ChiNext market as the "future of China". She remarked that the PEG (P/E to earnings growth) ratio was "not that expensive - only 4.6". Perhaps the SFC should look into whether that was a false and misleading statement. Could any licensed professional, with due diligence, reasonably call a PEG ratio of 4.6 in a market trading at over 100 times historic earnings "not that expensive"? But then, the SFC has never acted against anyone who has been overly bullish in their opinions. The ETF is down 45.6% since then. Ms Ding also sits on the high-level SFC Advisory Committee (appointed by the Financial Secretary), the SFC Process Review Panel (appointed by the Chief Executive of HK) and the SFC Products Advisory Committee (appointed by the SFC), amongst other bodies. So what about the Moody's report? About 1.2% wrong Investors don't expect perfection in research, or anything close to it. They understand that any analyst whose buy or sell recommendations are correct more than about 51% of the time can out-perform the market and thereby add value to a portfolio. They understand that analysts can make mistakes. The Moody's report was an application of binary "red flag" framework to 61 companies across 20 separate binary tests - each of which produced a flag or no-flag result. Moody's did not claim to have done any multiple regression analysis, statistical significance tests or back-testing of flags as predictors of subsequent credit ratings or stock performance. It was a point-in-time study. Moody's did not attempt to weight the flags, and in our view that was sensible, because with only 61 companies in several groups, the sample sizes would be too small to produce statistically significant results. It was a fairly simple exercise and was presented as such, highlighting "risks that may warrant further investigation". That's 1220 tests and results, although the report only published the detailed flags for the 49 "high yield" (rated below Baa3) companies, of which 26 were property developers. And how many mistakes in this matrix did Moody's make? Just 12, as shown on page 67 of the report, including 4 mathematical errors, 6 input errors, and 2 cases where a newly created management role was mistaken as a change of senior management. Of course it would have been better to be perfect, but on the 49 companies with 980 tests, that is about a 1.2% error rate which any reasonable reader can live with. Reading through the 82 page ruling, we note that the SFC and the Tribunal repeatedly emphasised that Moody's had said that there was "limited correlation in China between lower credit ratings and larger numbers of red flags" and sought to conclude from this that the report should not have been issued, or that those companies with the most red flags should not have been singled out. The word "correlation" appears 18 times in the SFAT report. Moody's noted that: "In China, property companies with lower ratings do not tend to have a greater number of red flags. However, a degree of correlation exists for non-property firms..." But here's what the SFAT seems to have missed. Moody's was looking at "accounting and governance warning signs". A badly-run but well-capitalised company (or government) will naturally have a better credit rating than a badly-run under-capitalised company (or government), because what credit ratings are supposed to measure is the probability of default on the debt and interest obligations, not the governance or accounting quality. Put simply, it is the probability of running out of cash. So it is unsurprising that there was only a small correlation between current credit ratings and red flags. Of the 5 areas into which the flags were grouped, only 2 of them could be said to relate to credit worthiness, involving big capital investments or a mismatch between cashflows and accounting profits. Secondly, it is unsurprising that property companies had no visible correlation - because they have real assets (land and buildings) which tend to provide more comfort for creditors than say, a mineral exploration company or a retailer. For these reasons alone, it is obvious to an educated reader that the red flags were a very different exercise to then-current credit ratings and that the correlation between flags and credit ratings should be low, but it does not follow that the flags were meaningless and that the report was somehow misleading. Credit ratings are not static over time. A badly-run, well-capitalised company may eventually burn through its capital and find it harder to raise more equity to refill the coffers. Remember that debt ranks ahead of equity on a liquidation, so the red flags are of even greater concern to equity investors than creditors. How did they do? If the Moody's report was so shoddy, you would think that the red-flagged companies would have rebounded from the criticism by now, and that the market commentators who quickly disagreed with Moody's (as they were entitled to do) would have been proven right. Nearly 5 years later, let's take a look at whether the pudding was worth eating. Moody's identified 6 companies which were "negative outliers" with the greatest number of red flags, of which 5 were in the non-property group which, Moody's had noted, had some correlation between flags and credit ratings. Of the 6 companies, 5 were listed in HK (not 4 as the SFAT says): West China Cement Ltd (2233), Winsway Enterprises Holdings Ltd (1733, then "Winsway Coking Coal Holdings Ltd"), China Lumena New Materials Corp (0067), Hidili Industry International Development Ltd (1393) and Longfor Properties Co Ltd (0960). So how did they do - was there any predictive value? Click here to see the graphs, or look at this table of returns from 11-Jul-2011 to 7-Apr-2016: Stock code Name Webb-site Total Return 2233 West China Cement -38.24% 1733 Winsway -98.33%* 0067 China Lumena -55.02%* 1393 Hidili Industry -96.88%* 0960 Longfor Properties -10.07% 2800 The Tracker Fund of HK +5.14% The performance is actually worse than it looks. Did you spot the asterisks? That means the stock is suspended from trading. Winsway and Hidili were both suspended on 1-Apr-2016 for failing to publish their 2015 results on time. Winsway defaulted on its offshore bonds on 8-May-2015 and is now in the middle of a debt restructuring exercise. Hidili began defaulting on its onshore debts in Jun-2015, but didn't say so until 30-Oct-2015, and is now in negotiations for debt restructuring. China Lumena has been suspended since 10:56 on 25-Mar-2014 as it was unable to produce its 2013 results on time and to answer criticisms in two research reports. Webb-site warned readers about this company back on 25-May-2010, over a year before the Moody's report. On 4-Mar-2015, provisional liquidators were appointed, and on 2-Jul-2015, the INEDs all quit. The 2013 results are still not published, and the second stage of delisting has just expired, so it is one step away from delisting. And that just leaves US-listed LDK Solar Co Ltd, which began defaulting on its bonds in 2013 and filed for bankruptcy protection on 21-Oct-2014. So that's a pretty impressive hit-rate for Moody's with 4 of the 6 "negative outliers" defaulting on their debts within 4 years, and the other 2 having massively under-performed the stock market, even though one of them, West China Cement, is now under a takeover offer. Tell us again, what was wrong with the red flags report? Explanations Moody's chose to keep its report to a relatively brief 25 pages (including disclaimers). Except for the 6 outliers, it did not provide a detailed explanation or analysis for each of the 1220 tests performed or the 980 tests on the High Yield companies. The SFAT wrote: "the Tribunal has little difficulty in concluding that, in its failure to provide commentary on all of the red flags, Moody's not only made it impossible for readers to accurately assess the significance of the flags in context but, by that fact, created and unfair, unclear and misleading picture of creditworthiness of a material number of the companies allocated red flags. As such, its failure constitute a breach of General Principle 1 of the Code of Conduct..." In our view, that strays into micro-management of how a research firm chooses to present its work. The methodology of the 20 tests was adequately described in Appendix 1 of the Moody's report. It is unreasonable to say to researchers who compile such surveys of the corporate landscape that they must either publish all of their workings on each test, or no report at all. Having seen the flags, given that they were all based on public disclosures, it was possible for any reader who wished to dig further to do so on her own, and to verify the findings herself. Moody's had also made it clear that it was not ascribing weightings to the flags, and that they were only areas warranting further investigation. Jurisdiction and free speech We agree with the Tribunal's conclusion that Moody's was carrying out a licensed function by publishing the report under its name and in connection with its credit ratings. If a different unlicensed company (perhaps a fellow subsidiary) or a publication like Webb-site Reports, had published the report instead, making it clearer that the flags were not themselves credit ratings, then the SFC would not have had jurisdiction as licensor, but that was not the case. It was unfortunate that Moody's chose to attack the SFC's jurisdiction rather than just confronting the allegation head-on. We also agree that, if you are writing as a licensed entity, then you are held to higher standards than the general public in your comments. The freedom of speech is not absolute, and there is a legitimate purpose fulfilled by imposing minimum standards so that customers can rely on the licensing system as providing some basic level of informed and skilled research - otherwise there would be little point in a licensing system. So the licensing system, in itself, is not a constitutionally unnecessary restriction on Basic Law/Bill of Rights free speech. But that does not mean that research should be flawless or that standards should be set so high as to deter research for fear of minor errors causing regulatory sanctions. Conclusions Could the report have been better-written, and clearer in the limitations of its findings? Yes it could. Could the flag-tests have been better than 98.8% correct? Yes, they could. Was the report of a lower standard than all the other pieces of (mostly positive) research that the SFC has allowed to circulate without interference? Certainly not. That's what makes a market - and research firms rise and fall based on the quality of their output. We liked the Moody's report, and we want to see more of that kind of critical research - but what licensed firm will now dare to publish such a report if the regulator is going to pick it apart afterwards and then slam them with a fine and potential loss of licenses for the individuals involved? If listed companies disagree with research reports, they are of course entitled to respond with rebuttals, clarifications of their past disclosures or explanations, to ask for corrections, or even to sue for libel or defamation. As far as we know, none of the companies involved has sued - the criticism wasn't that far wrong. Not only has the SFC pursued a licensee's report, they have also gone after an unlicensed person in the Market Misconduct Tribunal for expressing his negative opinions about a company while putting his money where his mouth was and being short: Andrew Left, of Citron Research, writing about Evergrande Real Estate Group Ltd (3333). The verdict in that case (also Chaired by Justice Hartmann) is awaited. In our view, unless the SFC can show that Mr Left didn't believe what he was saying, then the statement of his opinion cannot be false - however wrong his opinion turned out to be. The SFC, and now the SFAT, has done Hong Kong a disservice by chilling negative criticism of companies, thereby skewing the market even further towards positive research. "Sell-side" investment banks world-wide tend to withdraw coverage of a stock or use euphemisms rather than issue a sell note on a potential client. They will say "reduce", "hold", or "buy on weakness" (when it goes down) rather than say "sell". Hong Kong sits on the doorstep of a country which stamps out all forms of criticism. We need to strengthen and encourage, not weaken, freedom of debate and criticism of companies. Webb-site.com, 2016 Organisations in this story People in this story Topics in this story Sign up for our free newsletter Recommend Webb-site to a friend Copyright & disclaimer, Privacy policy Back to top KKR has agreed to buy into seeds provider Advanta Enterprises in a deal which values the business at about $2.25bn. Nordic private equity firm Segulah has closed its fifth buyout fund at SEK2.4bn ($294m), making it less than half of it After a challenging few years, Cyprus has begun putting its house in order to encourage international buyers back to the marketplace - and it has worked. For despite memories of the country's banking crisis, the appeal of Cyprus remains strong, especially amongst British home hunters, and they have been returning to the market for some good deals, mainly around Paphos - the 2017 European City of Culture. Deep-rooted cultural ties of the British with the island remain a big part of the pull - English is widely spoken, the legal system is the same and the comforting familiarity of driving on the same side of the road - coupled with 330 days of sunshine a year at the end of a four-hour flight. It's a small, user-friendly and hospitable island where around 70,000 British ex-pats reside, many of them around the hot spots of Paphos and Lanarca. With the euro still hovering around an eight-year low against sterling, there's been an increase in UK property hunters keen to take "double" advantage of currency rates and low prices. Coastal properties fell around 20-35 per cent down after the global crisis - inland this figure is 40 to 50 per cent in the Paphos region - but they now seem to be stabilising. Market confidence is helped by the feeling that Cyprus is beginning a new chapter after an era muddied by corruption issues. New legislation has been passed enabling banks to seize foreclosed properties and then sell them as assets. Agents report that more properties are being sold with full title deeds as this process has been speeded up. The government has also reduced buying costs by 50 per cent to draw buyers - until 31 December 2016. Plus, any property purchased until that date will not be subject to Capital Gains Tax (levied at 20 per cent). Popular places in Cyprus on aplaceinthesun.com Paphos Nicosia Peyia Kapparis Kato Paphos Paralimni Protaras Larnaca Aphrodite Hills (resort) Pissouri search property in cyprus In recent years, companies like Zappos, Google, and USAA have done more than spark a conversation about company culture; they are thriving success stories that validate the importance of operating under authentic core values. According to The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), a values-based organization is a living, breathing culture of shared core values among all employees. To me, a values-based culture is more than a set of values listed on a companys intranet or written on the lobby wall. Yes, its important to share your values where employees can see them. But I firmly believe that for a values-based culture to work, these guiding principles must live within each employee from day one on the job. As credit union professionals, seek to operate under the same principles that drive the credit union movement. Let our philosophy of people helping people guide you. Staff from the Federal Reserve visited the Credit Union National Associations (CUNA) Washington, D.C., office Thursday to discuss its payments initiatives. CUNA, via its advocacy efforts and its Payments Subcommittee, is a consistent advocate for a modern, secure payments system. CUNA also is a member of both the Federal Reserves Faster Payments and Secure Payments task forces. The Fed recently released a progress report on its efforts to enhance the speed, efficiency and security of the U.S. payments system. CUNA was involved throughout the process of adopting the same-day automated clearinghouse (ACH) rule, both from NACHA-The Electronic Payments Association, and when the Fed proposed to adopt NACHAs standard. CUNAs payments efforts also include supporting cybersecurity efforts and legislative solutions to ensure a secure payments system. PORTLAND, Ore., April 7, 2016 The Environmental Protection Agencys first rigorous nationwide analysis of the effects of pesticides on endangered species finds that 97 percent of more than 1,700 animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act are likely to be hurt by malathion and chlorpyrifos. Another 79 percent are likely to be hurt by diazinon. The results released this week are the first in a series of biological evaluations the EPA must complete as part of a settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity examining impacts of pesticides on more than endangered species. For the first time in history, we finally have data showing just how catastrophically bad these pesticides are for endangered species from birds and frogs to fish and plants, said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center. These dangerous pesticides have been used without proper analysis for decades, and nows the time to take this new information and create common-sense measures to protect plants, animals and people from these chemicals.The three pesticides are all organophosphates, a dangerous old class of insecticides found in 87 percent of human umbilical-cord samples and widely used on crops such as corn, watermelon and wheat. The Center, along with allies from public-health, workers justice and child-advocacy groups, recently called for a ban on organophosphates, citing studies linking them to cognitive delays in children and a host of other human health effects. The World Health Organization last year announced that malathion and diazinon are probable carcinogens.The EPA has allowed chemical companies to register more than 16,000 pesticides without properly considering their impacts. That has to stop, said Burd. These evaluations are a huge step forward for the EPA. Now that we know the magnitude of danger these pesticides pose, its clear we need to take action. The EPA must move forward with analyses for other dangerous pesticides and also quickly implement on-the-ground efforts to prevent the extinction of rare and unique wildlife from these pesticides.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.Center for Biological Diversity According to HUD, as many as 100 million U.S. adults, or around one-third of the population have a criminal record of some sort that makes it difficult for many formerly incarcerated individuals to secure housing, including public and other federally-subsidized housing because of their criminal record The Dominican Republic National Committee to Combat Climate Change (CNLCC) has written to French Bank Societe Generale, among others, over their funding of the new Punta Catalina coal plant. A contract was signed by the bank on 23 December 2015, just 11 days after the Paris Agreement on climate change was concluded at COP21. The coal project is mired from corruption allegations in Brazil affecting the firm contracted to build the plant, plus transparency allegations in the Dominican Republic, and against the wishes and needs of the local population in Peravia Province (south). The letter (PDF)(en) to Societe Generale, dated 6 April 2016 and published on the Friends of the Earth France website, asks for clarification of contractual arrangements and states: "There are a number of significant risks involved in this project, including: 1. Allegations of corrupt practices connected with the tendering process for the project persist, as do growing concerns about the financial burden the project could represent for taxpayers. 2. Environmental and health impacts for the local population and the associated risk of social conflict. 3. The threat posed to the climate in general and to Societe Generales credibility as a supporter of urgent climate action." The 770 megawatt coal-fired Punta Catalina power station project is being promoted by the Dominican Corporation of State Electrical Companies (CDEEE). The project includes the construction of a coal terminal with a capacity of 80,000 tonnes, as well as related facilities such as conveyors, cooling water systems and water treatment, and a power substation. Total cost is calculated at USD$2 billion, although there are allegations this is an inflated estimate. On 31 December 2015 Societe Generale participated in the disbursement of $200 million, the first instalment of a total amount of financing from European lenders for the Punta Catalina project expected to reach $632.5 million. Other European banks funding the project include Deutsche Bank, ING, Santander and UniCredit. However, the contract was dependant on a related loan agreed with the National Bank for Economic and Social Development of Brazil (BNDES) to co-finance the project, and this money has not been received due to corruption allegations in Brazil. "You should be aware that BNDES is currently unable to execute this loan as it is being investigated by the Attorney General of the Federal Republic of Brazil for its role in a corruption scandal involving Petrobas and alleged influence peddling." advises the letter. Under the contract with the European Banks the initial payment received by the Government of the Dominican Republic should have been returned by 31 March 2016. The CEO of Dominican Republics State-owned Electric Utility (CDEEE), Ruben Jimenez Bichara, commented on the delay in the construction of the Punta Catalina coal-fired power plant, being built by Brazilian firm Odebrecht. He advised that it was 'an internal process in Brazil, which in his view, is politically-motivated, with distorted information' according to a report in Dominican Today. In February 2016 the The National Committee to Combat Climate Change (CNLCC) asked Justice minister Francisco Dominguez to immediately open an investigation into the ties between the allegedly ballooned costs of the coal-fired plants at Punta Catalina, the Brazilian contractor Odebrecht and political adviser Joao Santana since 2012, during the administration of Dominican Republics ruling party (PLD). During a human chain protest outside the State-owned electric utility (CDEEE), the organization urged Justice Minister Dominguez to seek collaboration with Brazilian authorities to gather evidence on the Punta Catalina contracts with the Brazilian transnational Odebrecht, the loan for the project by Brazils BANDES bank, as well as the contract with Santana. This is all part of an all-inclusive that benefits the existing public-private mafia in both countries, the group said, and called the scandal 'Joaogate." reported the Dominican Today website. Dominican president Danilo Medina met with Brazil's Foreign Minister last year and was warned that an investigation was underway into the links and malicious behavior of Odebrecht overvaluing the Punta Catalina coal plants by around one billion dollars and influence-peddling in the BANDES bank loan for the project. There are also allegations made in January 2016 by prominent Dominican attorney Namphi Rodriguez, a specialist in constitutional law, that the so-called "hidden contract" to build two coal-fired power plants violates the Constitution and the Public Procurement Law. He argues that it was an attempt to turn a power of attorney from president Danilo Medina into an authorization, ignoring the principles of transparency, objectivity, equality and publicity, reports Dominican Today. In March 2016 Energy and Mines minister Antonio Isa argued that the Punta Catalina coal-fired plants will lead to lower electricity costs and lower greenhouse gas emissions, but that coal generation wasn't the ideal model, for which renewable energies must be developed. "It will replace others that spew more (greenhouse gases), obsoletes, apart from improving the cost of the energy matrix, making it more feasible. But that is not the model we're going to copy, we will now wager on cleaner renewable energy," Isa said. He identified a need for renewable energy funding. "A funding mechanisms must be created to encourage investment in such to development." The argument for building new coal plants, or gas plants for that matter, is spurious as renewable energy generation systems continue to fall in price. Once built these coal plants will continue to emit Greenhouse Gases for their expected lifetime operation of 40 years. If closed early, they will be stranded assets costing the Dominican state, while the contract builders and banks pocket the profits from the loans to build the project. Local Community opposes coal plants The local community expressed their opposition in October 2014 at Bani city Hall. They articulated that the local population lacks drinking water and irrigation, despite increased dam levels. Instead of rationalizing water, it is all diverted to the city of Santo Domingo. The new coal plants are also likely to rely on this water supply to the detriment of local farmers. At Bani Town Hall people argued that under the pretext of solving the blackouts, the pollution from the coal-fired plants will pose a threat to peoples health, the environment, farming and livestock in the province. "Neither Bani nor other Peravia province communities have been given the opportunity to decide whether to suffer pollutions consequences caused by the plants being built at Punta Catalina. The authorities have made no effort to seek less-polluting fuels other than coal for these plants," they said reported Dominican Today. In a protest later in October 2014, hundreds of farmers, home-makers and community leaders gathered on a Wednesday in the main park of the town of Paya, with trucks and tractors, with empty pots and buckets, to demand water and the halt of the coal-fired plants being built in Peravia province (south). According to the report in Dominican Today , the rally halted traffic on the Southern Highway for more than three hours. The Riot police were deployed, but after some tense negotiations, protest leaders agreed to suspend their protest. In February 2015 the citizens of Paya township in Peravia Province (south), which would be the community most affected by the ash from the coal-fired plants being built at Punta Catalina, held a protest organised by the Paya Development and Defense Committee (CODEPA) and supported by the Peravia Province Health, Environment and Agriculture Defense Committee, the Marco A. Cabral Canal Rescue Committee, the Banilejos Farmers Federation (FECABA), the Popular Bloc and other Paya, Bani and Peravia Province organizations. They complain that some houses havent gotten a drop of water in their homes for more than one year. While the state spends hundreds of millions of dollars in a coal plant to crucify the people of Paya, various community sectors dont receive water for not having a few thousand pesos to repair Pays aqueduct and because the government has yet to finish the Provincial aqueduct where they have squandered more than five billion pesos and now turns out that not a single penny appears to conclude it, the organization said according to a Dominican Today Report. The National Committee to Combat Climate Change (CNLCC) urged in their letter to Societe Generale in April 2016 to reconsider involvement in the project. "We also urge Societe Generale to seriously reconsider its involvement in the Punta Catalina coal plant project, and ultimately end your support for it. This, we believe, should start with the provision of a public commitment stating that your institution will not participate in the forthcoming scheduled payments for the construction of the project. " says the letter. Coal out of synch with Dominican Republic 2030 vision The Dominican Republic submission (PDF) to the UNFCCC outlines a vision for 2030, but this sustainable development vision does not fit with building new coal plants for electricity. The INDC states a target Reduction of 25% of base year emissions (2010) by 2030. "This reduction is conditional upon favorable and predictable support, feasible climate finance mechanisms, and corrections to the failures of existing market mechanisms". The proposed level is ambitious. The Dominican Republic is a middle-income country, however, it faces a number of development challenges, such as: poverty, education, health, security, etc., that exacerbate the challenge of adaptation and decoupling emissions from the economy. In terms of emissions, the Dominican Republic represents less than 0.1% of global emissions. Per capita emissions are below the average for Latin America and the Caribbean region (4.9 tCO2e). However, the emissions trends of some economic sectors are important, especially transport, energy, manufacturing and construction, waste and agriculture. It is obvious Dominican Republic needs development assistance with renewable energy to help meet it's 2030 vision and supply electricity to meet demand and avoid the current blackouts that occur. Building coal plants does not help either the country and it's population, or the global community, in meeting emissions reduction targets. Clearly funding a coal plant in the circumstances of corruption surrounding the main Brazilian contract builder, the questionable transparency arrangements in the Dominican Republic, and against the local community needs should be heeded. Paris: Societe Generale occupied over #panamapapers tax haven disclosures Societe Generale has also come in for extensive criticism for their unconscionable financial behaviour using tax havens and setting up offshore shell companies in association with Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca for clients to avoid taxation liability and perhaps engage in taxation fraud. This is despite assurances to a French Senate committee that the bank wouldn't be doing business in any OECD "grey" listed states. In Paris, activists with Attac France occupied the private bank Societe Generale over disclosures in #panamapapers regarding tax haven administration of shell companies in helping hide money and avoid tax that could be spent to create jobs and on social and environmental programs. "The British banking giant HSBC and its subsidiaries alone account for more than 2,300 of the companies, and UBS accounts for more than 1,100. Other big banks doing business with Mossack Fonseca included Societe Generale (979 companies), the Royal Bank of Canada (378), Commerzbank (92), and Credit Suisse (1,105)." reports the ICIJ Panama Papers investigation. Attac France denounced the involvement of the bank in the "Panama Papers" scandal and called for the blocking of 103 private Societe Generale agencies throughout France in a media release (fr). "We call for these actions openly, in the spirit of nonviolent action and civil disobedience, respecting the people while showing our determination to change this injustice. We are committed to continue these actions until the government finally take the measures necessary to end tax evasion." the Attac statement says. They accused French banks of organizing tax evasion on an industrial scale. Each year there is a massive amount of euros missing from the state budget due to fraud and tax evasion, Attac says. This money could create hundreds of thousands of jobs in response to social and environmental emergencies. "How many scandals before Hollande holds to his promise in 2012: 'prohibit banks to operate in tax havens'" ? See 2012 tweet below by @fhollande: Aucune banque francaise ne pourra plus avoir d'activite dans les paradis fiscaux. #FH2012 Francois Hollande (@fhollande) February 15, 2012 Stephanie Lamy (@WCM_JustSocial) reports in a tweet that @SocieteGenerale CEO Frederic Oudea worked with Nicolas Sarkozy when the latter was Minister of Finance. Very cosy. In 2012 @SocieteGenerale CEO Frederic Oudea promised a senatorial commission that the bank wouldn't be doing business in OECD "grey" list states tweeted Lamy. You can read Societe General reaction to the Panama Papers in a media release (en). See my storify on the occupation of Societe Generale: Paris: Societe Generale occupied over #panamapapers tax haven disclosures We have a serious responsibility here to speak fair against the stealing of innocent life currently going on over at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Center in "Comfort Care". They openly, without apology, deprive vital medicines, while torturing the patient with poisons such as with my mom, Jennie Kinal, now dead as crime victim to first degree murder. Support a Public Inquest into the many continuingdeaths at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Center programtitled, "Comfort Care" - deprived needed medicationswhile being poisoned to die - Let's save livesSupport a Public Inquest into the many deaths at Winnipeg's Health Sciences CenterTo Those You Care For..Winnipeg's "Comfort Care" - They refuseto give antibiotics, or needed thyroidmedication claimed as useless, butnot Scopolamine together with Fentanyl,the deadliest poisons against anelderly women with some minor backpain, and congestion. So they in secretgave her the worst things possible thatthey said they wouldn't. Told me and mymother of the same day, where they wentahead and did so in contempt for all ourlives.If Chris, who works for our government,had simply done the job by enforcingManitoba's standing law, Jennie Kinalwould be alive today. Don't allow themto steal more innocent lives in Winnipeg.We, of CanadaWe, of Canada, need a Truth Commissionon the Winnipeg Health Sciences Center's"Comfort Care" program, of first degreemurder. An un-elected cruel sentence ofdeath they give to we of Canada, unluckyenough to still not have any effectivepolice protections. Deprived effectivemedicines, while purposefully doped outof our trees, non-stop to the bitter end.Without anyone to complain to in themedia of our peers? Let's save someinnocent lives still left forsakenas crime victims shall we?Let's Save Some Lives..We have a serious responsibility hereto speak fair against the stealing ofinnocent life currently going on overat Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centerin "Comfort Care". They openly,without apology, deprive vitalmedicines, while torturing thepatient with poisons such as withmy mom, Jennie Kinal, now dead ascrime victim to first degree murder."Comfort Care". Where your loved oneis sentenced to die victim to neglectas official public paid for policy.Evidence on the continuing murders at theWinnipeg Health Sciences Center under-Comfort Care- Please ShareJohn Kinal can be reached at 204 202 7384 withany questions you may have on how we get started..If no answer.. you can leave a message..This number is temporary for the month ofApril, 2016.. It may continue, as if my livebroadcasts are still happening..Winnipeg's HSC, the Health Sciences CenterTHEY ARE FREELY COMMITTING MURDER STILLThey first degree murdered Jennie Kinal,who had caught a chest infection, andwith such an infection, was refused allantibiotics, but promised, her new Doctorfor that week Dr. Laura Chisic did,no new concoctions would be introduced.But later that same day, her partner incrime Dr. Colister (who made the samepromise) secretly gave Scopolaminetogether with Fentanyl, when I hadleft the room briefly, causingparalysis then the un-natural deathof my mother. As planned before handby the sinister Dr. Colister withfellow conspirator Nurse Colette.All documented.. Call the RCMP.Please.They openly, without apology, deprivevital medicines, while torturing thevictims with poisons such as with mymom. Given through lies, Scopolamine"Devil's Breath", secretly in aconspiracy with nurse Colette, indeadly conjunction with Fentanyl,causing instant paralysis, thenunnatural death through FOR SURE,proven first degree murder.Save Lives in WinnipegHi everyone.. We have a seriousresponsibility here to speak fairagainst the stealing of innocent lifecurrently going on over at Winnipeg'sHealth Sciences Center in "Comfort Care".Justice for we guarantees freedom to be.The Public must be made to know.. thatWinnipeg's HSC is willingly committingmurder without misgivings. Support aPublic Inquest, Truth Commission, andPolice Investigation on HSC's "ComfortCare" program of murder, in the firstdegree. Where your loved one issentenced to die victim to neglectas official public paid for policy.My mother Jennie Kinal and I, at no timedid we freely decide, her life was to bestolen by the first degree murderers at..Winnipeg's HSC, the Health Sciences CenterTHEY ARE FREELY COMMITTING MURDER STILLThey kidnapped, tortured, and murdered myCanadian mother, Jennie Kinal.. as sadisticenemies of God and mankind. They continueto victimize citizens in Winnipeg leftwithout Justice granting a fair defensefor our lives, with what they call,"Comfort Care". They side officially notto care to provide the poisoned victim amedicinal path forward to a betterhealth. Refuse to give antibiotics, orneeded thyroid medication claimed asuseless, but not Scopolamine togetherwith Fentanyl, the deadliest poisonsagainst an elderly women with minorback pain and congestion.. for, the"multiple organ failure" was PROVEN ahoax on Feb. 3rd, 2016. While apposingJennie and me by openly refusing toresuscitate, when Nurse Charlenecalled about Jennie losing her lifewithout the proper care freely given.The police when called before, stated,go to the College of Physicians, whilethe College states, 'this is a highpriority police matter, of provenattempted murder [as earlier on] Goto the cops.' Four times I went to tellnear teenage cops always at the front desk,'no, the Police must investigate.. pickup a phone and call Dr. T how about?'- ..and they continued to refuse.. theytold me as a lawful citizen of Winnipeg,they didn't want any more information.Like on the Public's dime from MagicCBC TV did also refuse to defend ourlives as still falling victims. Whilethe whorish newspapers refused doingright for us whatsoever as typical.Now, ask yourself.. what honorableofficer, soldier, or as true loverof freedom, would hold such contemptfor the value of Your Canadian Life?,left still, jeopardized as the innocentwithout rights? This murderous crimethat continues, personally involves allCanadians.. Still cheating our lovedfamilies for murder, by what can safelybe described, as ungodly evil criminalsof the worst disorders. More thanthousands and thousands of complaintsnot granted the light of the public'sscrutiny.. Do right, forward this concernas your own included. We must demand apublic inquest to reveal all, of who weare.. the truly civilized.Mr.Kinal on the murder of his mother at the hospital.to churches, politicians, and policeWe, of Canada, need a truth commissionon the Winnipeg Health Sciences Center's"Comfort Care" program of first degreemurder.. Save some innocent lives whydon't we?Here's an idea..Down with murderers..who's with we? fairly speaking..Call the CopsThe Public must be made to know.. thatWinnipeg's HSC is willingly committingmurder without misgivings. Support aPublic Inquest on HSC's "Comfort Care"program of murder, in the first degree.Where your loved one is sentenced todie victim to neglect as officialpolicy.. This horror continues, sofar.. because of it's hideous sub-humanness that most want to findimpossible to believe exists massmurdering for real.. Not one personhas escaped in more than sevenyears.. of which many, can staybeing tortured for longer thaneight months.. to finally kickthe bucket. Never allowed toleave the dungeon.. With thousandsand thousands of complaints ignoredby two "newspapers", and three MagicTV news broadcasters.. The Publicmust be made to know we have aresponsibility to each other.. tobe thought safe, of entering ahospital seeking remedies, notun-elected death sentences. Me mustnot allow this to continue in ourstolen better names. It's unbecoming,and they murdered my mom. Justicemust be done if we will to be freeto dream of a bettering future.I will to work with everyonefairly to get this won.Something is Wrong..No police to arrest murderers? No newsagency to express a care for the elderlybeing tortured and murdered? No politicianto express indignation.. We all are somehowat a serious loss of our humanity. Speak out.Demand Truth Commission on Winnipeg's HSC"Comfort Care" murdering Jennie Kinal.Save innocent life in Winnipeg stillfalling crime victims..Again this "Comfort Care" mass murderprogram in Winnipeg is not made by thevictims as something agreed upon in OURnewspapers either. They just privatelyannounce your loved one is now sentencedto deprivation of caring completely,while openly being poisoned withthe most deadly of UNWARRANTED'medicine'. Justice for weguarantees freedom to be. Takecare to make others aware. Emailis cool.Demand Public Inquest on the Murder of Jennie KinalSave life in Winnipeg falling murder victims today..To whom this greatly concerns..My mother died murder victim at Winnipeg's HealthSciences Center. Dr. Colister approached the bedto ask, how about giving your mother Scopolamineto ease moisture.. Sound good? I state no.. Iexplained such poison would hamper my mother'sability to expel her current chest infection.It would be greatly better, to remove all youropiates, like Fentanyl, and let her heal how aboutinstead? my learned friend? He doesn't disagree..His side kick states, yeah.. sounds good in similarwords.. They leave.. Then, I pop out later for acoffee, and back when I return Nurse Colettehas administered the lethal shot.."Devil's Breath"Stating.. your mother asked for it.. being barelycapable of stating, ' get me out of here'.. 'bloodymurderers' 'no more pain killers'.. She had noproblem health wise any longer.. but for thosein "comfort care" succeeding finally in error atmurdering her.. Now the hospital states, theydon't allow toxicology studies in autopsies.. Well..that's why I implore for you to stand up likewiseas a fellow human being, to demand such aneasy test be carried out to determine truecause of death.. And a Public Inquest on howJustice has left us for no longer, on thiscritical crime scene involving all Canadianlives jeopardized.. left in self contempt byour newspapers and TV broadcasters.Sound good? It should. Justice for Jennie Kinal.Evidence on the continuing murders at theWinnipeg Health Sciences Center under-Comfort Care- Please ShareCare for our innocent lives stolen.Forward this information to everyone.Let's save some lives here people..Don't forget, this involves many morelives in Canada than just my mother,willfully poisoned to die crime victim,just like the rest officially. DeniedOUR Police protections, and vital carein needed medicines, while doped outof her wits to complain about who'sdriving down civilization. How dareWinnipeg's Health Sciences Centercommit lawless first degree massmurder openly, with the newspapers,in the light of understandingthis reality measured fair.TO OUR GOVERNMENT OF CANADAWhat they knew and chose nothing to doabout.. Still? Shouldn't someone be fired,if not arrested as complicit in murder?John Kinal - Protections of Persons in Care Act - Feb 24 2016"10,000 similar complaints in Manitoba."Ignored.. Still? Hello people.. we have aserious responsibility here to speak fairagainst mass murderers.If Chris, who works for our government,had simply done the job by enforcingManitoba's standing law, Jennie Kinalwould be alive today. Don't allow themto steal more innocent lives in Winnipeg.Take action. Personally forward this tothe media movers and shakers, to savelives, demanding Justice. I am availablefor interviews. Help ourselves.I beg you to do right.. Save an innocent life.Please, peoples of our world..defend innocentlife being mass murdered here in Winnipeg, atthe Health Sciences Center, under a programof the most heinous ungodly evil ever knownof titled, "Comfort Care". They openly deprivevital medicines, while torturing the victimswith poisons such as with my mom. Giventhrough lies, Scopolamine "Devil's Breath",secretly in a conspiracy with nurse Colette,in deadly conjunction with Fentanyl, causinginstant paralysis, then unnatural death throughFOR SURE, proven first degree murder. My motherJennie, who only several days earlier wasguilty of only minor back pain, as to whythese demons refused to stop doping her sinceher arrival two months earlier. Simultaneouslyclaimed though, she was by her murderer, Dr.Colister, to have had multiple organ failurecontinuously for more than a month. Provento be a lie on Feb 3rd, by myself told toWinnipeg Police.. Through too, the brokenorders of Law by Dr. T., Jennie's Doctor thatweek. The Winnipeg Police dishonorably, haverefused to do the simplest of preliminaryinvestigations..such as making a single phonecall to Dr. T.. to confirm the first attemptmade at murdering my mother by Nurse Delaney..using then, ILLEGAL hydromorophone. Youpersonally could save an innocent life, bysimply identifying a citizen of Winnipeg,to give them this post personally. Againthis "Comfort Care" mass murder program isnot made by the victims as something agreedupon in OUR newspapers either. They justprivately announce your loved one is nowsentenced to deprivation of caringcompletely, while openly being poisonedwith the most deadly of UNWARRANTED'medicine'. So confident in our madeilliterate police agencies never gettinginvolved here, that they believe they canescape sadistically mass murdering fordecades more perhaps.. if you continue totake no action for the world you can notescape my friend. It is truly all up toyou.. Do right. Care for your world.Forward go freely of Justice winningvictory. Justice for we guaranteesfreedom to be..Our Time is NowI have conclusively proven, withoutany officer of law disagreeing, thatthe Winnipeg Health Sciences Center'sDr. Colister, with conspiring NurseColette, first degree murdered mymother Jennie Kinal.. after I caughttheir "Comfort Care" demon team prior,attempting murder on Feb 2nd 2016,and begged the police to investigatethe crime scene four times.. But theyrefused cowardly as too did the Collegeof Manitoba Nurses, and Doctors refuseto demand the arrests be done for Justicemust come.. To not following the rulesof murder in Canada, as not applyingblindly in all hospital settings formore than a decade? Something must bedone in a love for moms, before yetagain, these cheats have more innocentCanadians first degree murdered, dueour self contempt. For what demonicgain? We are left to only speculate....though we know it is for sure goingon still by these enemy to all sadists.Murdering innocent Winnipeggers leftstill undefended with fair words, by'our' evil as ungodly newspapersand Magic TV CBC hosts. 'Go Jets Go!'Here's an idea..Down with murderers..who's with we? fairly speaking..justice for we guarantees freedom to beMy mother was murdered here in Winnipeg, atthe Health Sciences Center, under a programtitled, "Comfort Care", where these demonsdeprive life saving medicines, and undertorture, openly poison the victims to death,often by chemical suffocation. No oneescapes the death sentence program run formany years. It involves the old, itinvolves the young - and something surelymust be done.. Why is it that our humanitycan't find the strength to do good foranother? ..or for one's own mother orfather? I tried my best, and I'm as goodas it nearly gets as speaking reasonable..But without the public being supported byour made illiterate police agencies, orregulatory bodies that ONLY defend, inthis case, the continuing mass murderers..Hope seems bleak to save the innocentlives that fell yesterday, and of thosethat will tomorrow. So.. I must try to winfor Justice in this forsaken city namedWinnipeg.. Once holding the title, I willorder all police and military to assist inpublic arrests for public fair trial ofthese mass murderers that must notfreely steal the better of ourselvesfurther left undefended..Public Inquest..Support a Public Inquest We need an autopsyto include cause of death with the sciencesof toxicology - something forbidden thevictims of Winnipeg's Health SciencesCenter..URGENT - Support a Public Inquiry into Whysome Winnipeg autopsies don't allow toxicologyto determine cause of death in murder..- URGENT(they have cremated the body - all evidencegone?. we don't think so.)Justice for Jennie KinalI want a public inquest in how my mother died, so justice can be served. All the evidence is in, it's just that, because the death occurred at a hospital in Winnipeg, the Police's hands are tied.Jennie Kinal was murdered on March 8th, 2016, by the actions of Dr. Colister, at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Center.Facts: Dr. Colister told no new medications would be administered on March 8th, to myself and Jennie.. Dr. Laura Chisic, Jennie's other doctor, one of more than four others, told of Dr. Colister, doing just as he claimed he would not, ordering on the 8th of March, the deadly, Scopolamine "Devil's Breath", in conjunction with already administered Fentanyl, . Nurse Colette, sold that it was Jennie's idea to take the most lethal drug on the Canadian market that she gave Jennie, Scopolamine, to hamper her ability to expel an infection that had recently appeared, leading to paralysis and death. Nurse Colette, couldn't administer the poison while I was present however, and couldn't let on, it was ordered in by Dr. Colister. As Colette's crazy lie of my mom being willing, now makes more sense. No antibiotics are given in Winnipeg, for ANY Canadian patient in "comfort care", but poisons a plenty to first degree mass murder it disturbingly appears. You really should care.. Think of the next victims last night. Forward this concern to everyone who loves their mother. Do it.The TRUE disregard for a patient's wellness, made as policy at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Center, is like a hell on earth for real, when you hear them tell of such madness openly, denying all rights to do right for ourselves. 'End of Life' poisons to those we guess near, perfect health. Poisons to weaken clearing our bodies of new infections, with poisons to hamper breathing, and then, to top it off, heroin derivatives 80 times stronger than morphine, apposing better health.. is simply willful first degree murder.. Again, they officially deny all "Comfort Care" patients antibiotics, to die victim from neglect.. With too, refusing to resuscitate any patient as policy of evil.. So, say you were poisoned by Scopolamine with her Fentanyl. as my mom was against her will and my own.. they told me as such, over the phone.. they will make no attempt to save my mother's life as "doctors" on scene. Demand a Public Inquest.Don't forget, this involves many more livesin Canada than just my mother, willfullypoisoned to die crime victim, just like therest officially. Denied vital care inneeded medicines, while doped out of herwits to complain about who's driving theship. Different Nurses everyday, while theDoctor changes once every two weeks, withColister hanging around allthe beds going,"are you in any pain", then needles everyfour hours non-stop, till you die.. Nomatter whatever you say to the contrary.Who needs a witness? Some say JennieKinal was good to go, while Colisterstates her story can't live more thanweeks with him and Laura Chisic rulingover everyone here truly being tyrannized...while poisoning who knows how manyothers too, who dream of being released,as they go further unchecked as needlingpsychopaths. We desperately need a trueconcern expressed for ourselves as thecitizen measured correct in all fairness.We will to be civilized on the farmsand in the hospitals.Justice for Jennie KinalPublic Inquest.. ask for it here in Winnipeg pleasePlease Peoples.. support a Public Inquest herein Winnipeg on the mistreatment of Jennie Kinalin the Health Sciences Center, ward H4, and ofher subsequent final murder.. Done in by Dr.Colister with Scopolamine, in conjunction withFentanyl, to a 84 year old woman, who suffereda thyroid issue, that caused swelling, thenindicating inside that short time frame,confusion nearing the symptoms of dementia..But that all disappeared a month earlier..That's it.. she could walk talk and expressclearly, she did not want a nicotine patch..but they gave it to her, apposing me included.Public Inquest.. Hopefully, gaining anunderstanding too, for why our police thinkit none of our business still, while more arethrown through to fall crime victim to theseapparent psychopaths.. to be denied essentialmedications, and antibiotics for infections..but to just be poisoned to death with theirunneeded injections. It's called murder..and all stand on guard for thee of we fairlyspeaking. Justice is freedom to be all we canbe as of, the civilized worlds. Commandingourselves with self respect. Support a PublicInquest. .Save further lives left forsakennow, no longer. What do you say lover of life?Forward this post to someone in Winnipeg ifyou could.. Let's go save some lives..My mother was murdered on March 8th, 2016, bythe actions of Dr. Colister, at Winnipeg's HealthSciences Center.. Whereby, after consulting mymother Jennie and me, he told of no newmedications would be prescribed.. For a womanheavily drugged every which way, but initiallydenied her thyroid medication that I had to fightfor as reasonable.. Then denying all antibioticsapposing our wills to truly care.. as I explainedto Dr. Chisic of her madness on March 8th, 2016....since the recent speculative lead up to thisappearing of an air born infection, that willin some likelihood, take the healths of manyweakened others.. This house of hellish horror,of Winnipeg's Health Sciences Center, H4, is aplace of the wickedest evil ever witnessed byyours truly I must say. Anyway.. the hell of itis, Dr. Colister secretly told the day Nursefor Jennie, a named suspect labeled Colette..'that if it should warrant'.. use this neworder for Scopolamine, in conjunction with herfentanyl.. for Jennie's congestion. A concoction,substantiated together, paralyzed my mother to aposition of suffocation.Though, importantly, according to Dr. LauraChisic, (being Jennie's last stand in good fornobody though..) tells of the order, came fromColister, while she herself adamantly deniesall antibiotics for every infection, like Isaid, even penicillin... Don't be crazy..,.let's get to it.. "no.. we don't do thathere.." is what she spoke, in part, asclinically insane.. So less of two evils,is still two evils.. what say, we demandfair say.. I wonder where that could takeus commanding in self respect for the rightsof others, as if they were of us too included.."Fentanyl is estimated to be 80 times as potent as morphine ""Worlds most dangerous drug is not a myth: Scopolamine aka The Devils Breath"When Jennie was ever questioned, she spokeof no pain, and no interest of being dopedfurther out of her wits, without she was,the claimed multiple organ failure, butsuffering with dementia.. Medicine? Figureit out.. the police haven't had the publicinterest just yet.. despite the thousandsof similar complaints, and Night NurseCharlene telling, in the SEVEN YEARS sheworked there.. not a single person hasever been capable of escaping her horrorshow.. "Comfort Care" in H4 at the HealthSciences Center.. Winnipeg. Call the cops..Call the President. Save That Man!To those who this greatly concerns..Hello.. The newest revelations to this heart break of a story, is that Jennie Kinal's outgoing Dr, Dr. Semus, has advised me today, March 7th, 2016, that after reviewing Jennie's medical records, they do not contain the information of Doctor T's (Tazaramangzing..?) order to the Nurses at station, for the evenings of question, Feb 2nd, and Feb 3rd, 2016, to not administer hydromoophone to Jennie, without her son witnessing first hand some form of pain.. Jennie, at that time, an alleged sufferer, of "multiple organ failure" However, the Nurses involved certainly would concure, as too, most importantly, the head Nurse for the day of Feb 3rd, does confirm that such an order did transpire, of her quoting the Nurses report, where hydromoraphone was administered, to Jennie.. An action opposing Dr. T, by leastly, RN Delaney it appears.. Who too, like another Nurse that evening, state Jennie does suffer from "multiple organ failure". Dr. Semus, Jennie's Doctor for the last two weeks, and the prior Dr., Dr. Necozy, stated, and will state, Jennie does not, and could not have had multiple organ failure, going on now, more than a month later.. Big problem of course.. as you know... Here is the run down...Shortened synopsis..I wad told Jennie had multiple organfailure, and was on end of life medication.I said bullshit, she was great just hoursago.. The head Doctor, Dr. T, called a haltto the death meds.. Telling Nurses, ifJennie experiences any discomfort, I amto be phoned to okay the death meds oncemore.. I am phoned for such action the nextday, arrive in under 7 minutes, to findmy mother pronounced clinically dead byRN Delaney, due organ failure.. I revivemy mom to discover, she has no organfailure.. and breathes to this day.Being doped everyday under torture..ATTEMPTED MURDER THIS PROVES. Forwardthis information to everyone who lovestheir mother.. The Police most especially.They have been caught attempting firstdegree murder of made helpless innocentold folks at Winnipeg's Health SciencesCenter..Introduction to the Case:This following, is of the Winnipeg HealthSciences Center and the first attempt theymade at the murder of my mother, Jennie Kinal.Caught red handed on Jan 2nd, and 3rd of 2016.Call the cops. We live for Justice. No limitsagainst murderers.Introduction to the Case: back-from-the-deadThis was before they murdered Jennie KinalPlease help to save my mother's life..Hello.. I've got a story of a preciouslife, my mom.. and about clear abusetranspiring in real time over at theHealth Sciences Center in Winnipeg..I'm currently seeking for goodpoliticians, and some public exposure..Jennie Kinal's Doctor forbade theadministration of a dangerous narcotic,but the medical records indicate someonewent ahead and administered it anyway..causing her, to be pronounced clinicallydead.They claim my mom has organ failure, andhad clinically died Feb 3rd 2016, but..she lives until March 8th.. despite theirfailures still, to address what was mymother's true health concerns. Freelyurinating, and defecated near everyday,only because was feeding her, and tryingto protect her for as much time as Icould sacrifice.. Please, express yourhumanity by telling this story.. It'snot only about my mother, but manyothers, that are left to fall forsaken.For I am told, this form of complaintagainst some practicing health care inManitoba, numbers in the thousands..I am told, of such similar complaintsthe Government of Manitoba registers,but does remain hampered to remedy forthe Public interest of Canada. Largely,it seems, for failure to communicate thesesometimes complicated matters clearly tothe lay person.. and limited resources.Please help to save my mother's life.The Protection of Persons in Care office,that enacts the Provincial Act, contactedme today, March 1st, 2016, to inform thatthe Hospital did not provide them themedical records for the critical daysof question.. Feb 2nd, and 3rd.. Ofwhich they are obligated under Law.The Protection for Persons in Care ActThe Protection of Persons in Careoffice Senior Administrator, Chris,tells if the situation as it is,found wanting, without the HealthSciences Center obliging.. therewould most certainly be, a publicinquest..Though, that can't happenfor two more weeks, due the personresponsible is on vacation!. It isNOT only my mother's life on theline my honorable friends..I fear a misunderstanding of theseverity is witnessed here.. As too,with my first discussions on thismatter with the Winnipeg Police..For I argue by just simply makingone phone call to Dr. T - Dr. T =something like, Tazariamansing.. Orin the evidence I gave, of the headnurse CONFIRMING, that what wasforbidden, has been administered..As told too by the victim, mymother Jennie, for ten hours,gasping without a full breath..We would acknowledge, somethingof a very serious crime, of atleast gross negligence is stillunder way.. Of which those incharge refuse to remedy. Dependingon who you talk to individually..Some Doctors like Necozy, contendJennie is relatively stable, andsituated to go home under anarranged palliative care program..while others, with just as muchauthority, falsely claim she hasbut two weeks to live.. Hidingfrom the mistake, willing insteadto see my mom continued forsaken.Please, for the love of God, formercy, call Chris as a provinciallegislator, or city counselor, orthe greatly honorable Prime Minister,to demand the public inquest startimmediately..The Protection of Persons in Care Act's, SeniorAdministrator can be contacted at 204 --- ----I can only once again, use words todescribe, that this unresolved situation,is incredibly dire if left unfairlyattended.. There are other lives atrisk.. Solutions to not have such amistake happen once more seem easy..But delaying this process, simplybecause a Manitoba employee in onvacation.. to me, sounds kind of..crazy.. Right? It's like, 'yes Mr.Rockefeller, I understand, but Billis on Vacation right now, and he handlesall bank robberies... But as soon as heget's back, well get on track tofollowing the fleeing suspects..'In this action I take, I believeI help the administrator also, todraw attention to himself, not tonecessarily admonish, but to defend..Power is with the people.. These areserious charges.. involving more thanjust my mother. There is more to thiscase. I would recommend RCMPinvestigators also have a look overthe evidence at hand, most naturally.John Kinal can be reached at 204 202 7384 withany questions you may have on how we get started..If no answer.. you can leave a message..This number is temporary for the month ofApril, 2016.. It may continue, as if my livebroadcasts are still happening..'..thousands of similar complaints..'Please.. they are abusing my mom withlies as hiding from public accountability.Don't let an innocent Canadian pay fortheir continuing mistake.. Yes, thereare potentially 1000's of victims falling,treated for shortness of breath, toshorten their breaths to suffocation. Yes,I know too, extremely disturbingas to know such a thing appearshappening.. To see the video of mymother suffocating under the poisoning....and to care not for such a kind gentlewomen in her eighties? How can you notcare for your own mother? How can youlive without yourselves being human?All on board? That's what you'd figure..Right?. My expenses are great.. anyonewant to help chip in for the cab fares?INVESTIGATIONS NOT UNDERWAY - CRIME SOLVED THOUGH BUT..On Feb 2,, 2016 after discovering my mother to be on death meds, namely hydromorphone to hamper breathing for death, I demanded such madness stop immediately.. telling Dr. T of all the witnesses the day before, and the official record of Jennie up with several physiotherapists , Dr. T agreed to call a halt.. Then ordering, that if Jennie, woman with 'multiple organ failure' seems in dire need for such opiates, I will be called to witness such anguish..On Feb 3, RN Delaney phoned at 6pm to have me come to the hospital, to okay the death meds (hydromorphone) - I arrived in 7 minutes to witness my mother appearing dead, with all the moisture gone from her skin, not appearing to be breathing.. I talked to her of what I thought she was going through, as incapable of taking a breath, due the poisons RN Delanely used apposing Doctor's orders..How do we know this most certain? From Jennie herself, for ten hours, telling of how she can not take a full breath, just as such poison is designed.. Turns out, Delaney and Dr. T were wrong that mom had total organ failure..How's that? It's called attempted murder..There are apossible number of other victims..Save an innocent life.. What if it was your mother?Points of Fact:They claimed Jennie had multiple organfailure where clearly she does not. To 'justify'hydromoraphone, as a poisonous opiate tohamper breathing, that would have killed her,hadn't I stopped it.Nurse Delaney repeatedly encouraged me tostop speaking to the clinically dead, before Irevived my forsaken mother, left as dead inbed, looking seriously poisoned with adiuretic, and no doubt, hydromoraphone,Something I had banned her with theagreeing Doctor's admonishment fromdoing ever again the day before. Withoutmy implicit approval, it would not beallowed to happen again.Suspect Nurse #2.. She firstly reportedto a doctor that I was abusing what sheunderstood, to be the clinically dead. Thedoctor arrived to witness Jennies sittingup alive. Then, shortly later, shows backup to tell, I should get my mom back onthe hydromorophone.. Telling as recorded,I don't want to make Jennie suffer with hermultiple organ failures do I. Told to me noless than 7 times, by at least three nursestrying to control free thought through guilton the issue. Telling her I did, as recorded,Jennie is not in any pain, and certainly mostdoes not need something to stop her frombreathing. The suspect Nurse #2 thenleaves, and reportedly by her co-worker,to tell me later as recorded in evidencealso, that they decided together, I mustnot be allowed to wake the pronouncedlinically dead again.. Claiming such actionis not caring. Implicit in knowing, asecorded, she was left for dead bythemselves, until I had revived her..This is willful attempted murder oncemore, that she knows they are almostcaught for it clearly appears in the lightof fairly understanding the evidencebefore us.INVESTIGATIONS NOT UNDERWAY - CRIME SOLVED THOUGH BUTOn Feb 2,, 2016 after discovering mymother to be on death meds, namelyhydromorphone to hamper breathing fordeath, I demanded such madness stopimmediately.. telling Dr. T of allthe witnesses the day before, andthe official record of Jennie upwith several physiotherapists , Dr.T agreed to call a halt.. Thenordering, that if Jennie, womanwith 'multiple organ failure' seemsin dire need for such opiates, Iwill be called to witness suchanguish..On Feb 3, RN Delaney phoned at 6pmto have me come to the hospital, tookay the death meds (hydromorphone)- I arrived in 7 minutes to witnessmy mother appearing dead, with allthe moisture gone from her skin,not appearing to be breathing.. Italked to her of what I thoughtshe was going through, as incapableof taking a breath, due the poisonsRN Delanely used apposing Doctor'sorders..How do we know this mostcertain? From Jennie herself, forten hours, telling of how she cannot take a full breath, just assuch poison is designed.. Turnsout, Delaney and Dr. T were wrongthat mom had total organ failure..How's that? It's called attemptedmurder..There are a possible number of other murder victims..Save an innocent life.. What if it was your mother?Irene McDonald, as the ExecutiveAssistant to the InvestigationsCommittee of the College ofPhysicians and Surgeons inManitoba has recommended thisas an allegation of criminalinfraction, be handled directlyby the Police..It's about time..Police In. R16 9616NOTE TO POLICE - CRIME SOLVEDThis is what we witness here as recordedin evidence.. They said the crime victimhad organ failure, and would never recover..A LIE.. Left for done in with the poisonknown of as Hydromorphone. Raised from acertain death sentence, and found withoutthe reason given, to try and steal aninnocent Life of one so still, left injeopardy. This needs widespread criminalinvestigations for the public interest..for we the people will to be civilized..Fair say all the way means everyone wins.I want only the best for my mother in award of likewise care givers.. I thinkwe can work together, and getthat done as soon as possible..New in the Developing Case: of the Formal Complaint Against theNamed Nurses and Doctors of Winnipeg's Health Sciences CenterRegarding, 'With RN Delaney again, insisting that I was notfacing reality.. That I should be just thankful for thetime I had with mom.. Jennie then began to revive..'This after being put on 'end of life meds' to steal my mother'slife, without consultation.. Considering the day before she wasup and eating, and wanting to go home. Please, call the cops too.In conjunction with the 22 of January where I was told Jenniehad a heart attack, and I found what I disproved of, a nicotinepatch on her shoulder area..Apposing they did the wishes ofboth Mother and son.Everyday that goes by, while we wait for the College of Physiciansand Surgeons of Manitoba to act correctly in the defense of myinnocent mother's Life, is another day she is still left in mortaljeopardy.. These facts detail a need to have her immediatelymoved out of the HCS's 'comfort ward' and to be into intensivecare where not needed treatments, are no longer administered..Act now..Formal Complaint Against the Named Nursesand Doctors of Winnipeg's Health Sciences CenterOn the 21st of January, despite Jennie's expressed wishes upon intake, and my own, the Doctor not responsible for Jennie, but on "the Team", asked if she was a smoker, and would provide a nicotine patch, I told him no.. she didn't want it, nor did I..On the 22 of January, I was told Jennie had a heart attack, and I found what I disproved of, a nicotine patch on her shoulder area..To whom this concerns..My name in John Kinal, the son of Jennie Kinal, currently held against our will at 4H at the Health Science Center.My mother told the hospital upon admission, she did not want a nicotine patch, but two weeks in, when she's near a coma.. they appose her wishes and my own, giving her the POISONOUS nicotine, and she then has, a massive heart attack hours later..Then a week later, puts her on end of life medications.. To die of.. for sure for sure.. 100%.. every patient under such treatment DIES.. I fought to deny my mother had complete organ failure.. and over 20 hours in total, brought her back to life..From a position the hospital has decided to do nothing for.. because she was clinically dead.."Hydromorphone may cause serious or life-threatening breathing problems, especially during the first 72 hours of your treatment and any time "Think of this.. They poison patients so they can't take a breath, then when the patient struggles to breath due the muscles not working, they only answer, must need more pure oxygen, or Hydromorphone ..Another quick death they believe they will escape criminal charges over..When I learned they were giving my mother end of life medication, where only the day before she was at near the best she had been since arriving.. I demanded such madness stop immediately.. Of which two RNs on the floor argued with me for 30 minutes, to suggest I was being cruel to try such action. They argued I have not the right to deny death meds,and told I must speak to "Dr. T", of which I did.. Reminding her of all the witnesses to my mothers health, from the day before.. such as the physiotherapist.. sitting in bed, talking, and eating several yogurts, juice, and water.. She told she would then have the poising stopped... and if the seriously unqualified RN Ms. Delaney, decided it at a later time needed to continue, would have me called firstly, to get to the hospital to witness such need.. The next day, at approximately 6pm, Ms. Delanely called me to come and witness her condition, in need of death meds.. I get all the way to the distant HSC in approximately 7 minutes.. to witness her 'dead' in bed.. not breathing due the medication stopping the muscles of her lungs incapable of taking a breath..Ms. Delaney told me to stop talking to a corpse that can't hear, speak, or see.. All the fluids of her body had been removed due, what was likely an overdose of a diuretic.. her lips were near black. Ms. Delanely told I was not ever going to get a response talking to a body with complete organ failure..She can't pee, so her body is clinically dead..I remained, and in approximately an hour, her lips move in response to water.. and slowly I brought her back to life.. Delaney never returned to the attempted murder scene for the rest of her time at shift.. No 'miracle' claimed, but for by the several aids who witnessed, in part the 'miracle'.The evidence offered for fair public interest, tells Ms. Delany's plan was to tell she didn't give such medications as a lie.. Why? On video, of my mother recovering the assault states.. she can't take a breath (her lungs are poisoned on purpose, due the "medicine") it takes near 20 hours for the poison to be left absent her blood stream according to the videos..The medical record as quoted to me 24 hours later, when I'm leaving for home after resurrecting the dead.. I'm told indicates the last poisoning to stop muscle function occurred 24 hours prior..I need a formal investigation, following probable cause to arrive at the fair conclusion of decisions made to steal my mother's life..Contact me immediately on the fair actions already underway to gather the facts here,To College of Registered Nurses in Manitoba... (this may not have actually successfully been received.. Though I have been in contact with them earlier)Hello.It is John Kinal reporting in on recent disturbing developments on the Jennie Kinal matter at Winnipeg's Health Science Center in 4H. As you may already be aware, hopefully, I struggled in a meeting with five professional individuals on Wednesday, the 24 of February, 2016, to have Jennie Kinal taken off the hydromorophine, considering it appears as the primary cause for why it killed her, as according to RN Delaney, on February 3rd, 2016. They crazily, like unreasonable psychopaths on a mission of self destruction, argued against it.. claiming my reasoning they would at all costs refuse to tune into.. so mush so.. that Dr. Semus suggested, perhaps an alternative could be found to stop their naked exposure to the light of being.. and would get on that, quickly, as they had done.. as it was achieved, the next day. Despite Jennie and myself stating, we do not want to be doped.. we want our bodies to heal without the confusion created by opiates, and poisons that mess with the muscles of our lungs to stop one from breathing.. But who cares truly for the health as well being of person or persons truly, for they appear insisting, Jennie's life is not the concern here.. The concern is not allowing her to live, free of the lie, that she still has, "multiple organ failure" going on three weeks..pigging out.. (she wants yogurt, egg salad, salmon, blue berries, and some kind of specialty stews..) , Instead of facing the mistake, they've chosen still, to steal her life.. Her life loved by me.. As it has turned out however, the new opiate concoction administered by patch, exposed the reality, with the turn around.. That NO PAIN Jennie had, or has through the transformation to getting well.. But get this my learned friends.. prepare yourself.. Friday morning, February 27 2016.. Vanessa, head of all nurses for the Health Science Center, ward 4H and beyond, at approximately 9:14 am, informed me, that Jennie yelled throughout the night.. I spoke to state, that even so, the quantification she was making is still unknown.. See, it could mean, her screaming is a good thing.. because, now she can breath.. Then she said, challenging my great wisdom of all ages, she had been screaming, "help me".. I asked Vanessa firstly, "was she then sedated", she responded, "no, she wasn't." I then said, "so this is then in the official report? She said "yes..". "Oh", I said.. "I arrived here at approximately 6:18 am, and was approached by the night Nurse responsible for Jennie, knowing her well, over this life and death struggle.. and she's stated that Jennie was exceptional through the night.. rested comfortably.. as showing a good sign for progress." I then looked over to my left, and there she was.. six feet away, not gone home yet.. I stated, "Hi.. ..did you hear Jennie scream, 'help me, help me', through the night?" She only looked briefly in terror at the face of Vanessa, then turned quickly, without a word.. and took off out of there.. Oh oh.. This is very serious.. potentially deadly if you asked me to speak in all candor, knowing what I know.. as true, holds some jeopardy to the night Nurse's true professionalism for starters, as Vanessa is her blindly foolish superior .. Why so certain? I don't have to tell you, as the College of Registered Nurses here in Manitoba, but for those not familiar reading here. See.. That would mean, Vanessa has committed a crime, and should in all fairness, though PUBLIC fair trial, be challenged to lose her license for a lifetime.. and.. we most definitely need to call the cops about the attempted murder no doubt.. As I've stated since this madness of contempt for thousands of innocent lives started, by irrational constructs, of those who mostly only deceive themselves when Johnny enters the scene .. Do not now, in addition to holding Jennie's life in contempt, do so also, to the other wonderful woman who has done no harm alleged to anyone, being curtious, kind, and all around.. a really sweet gal.. I immediately explained this true horror occurring in real time to Dr. Semus, of which Vanessa, only feet away to hear me explain.. took the stage.. Time is pressing.. and this story is far from over.. though when telling of her twisting to tale a fib so ridiculous, Dr. Semus walked away while she was speaking... In short form, she claimed she spoke not of 'through the night', but of 'through the evening'.. defining such a term as between 3pm and 5:30 pm.. trouble is, I was there with Jennie through out near that entire frame.. as was the tricky Dr. Colister.. and three others from Palliative care.. No.. four.. I left at approximately, 5:12pm that day.. I kid not.. my life is bared to witness. So, of course.. I then expressed THE ONLY RIGHT I have in demanding the report of my mother's treatment from starting on this allegation against a honorable nurse to finish including the critical incident summaries of her death on February 3rd.. And in short form, Dr. Semus, responded, he had no knowledge of February 3rd, 2016.. Despite, Wednesday, the 24 of February, 2016 (Many Doctors lead busy busy lives I suppose..) WOW.. that means.. well.. you as the professionals should know without me telling.. I will my mother to be moved from 4H at our earliest convenience, and especially, not given opiates mixed with poisons to further steal her precious innocent life.. She does not deserve this.. nor should anyone else, ever again.. We need a public action to remedy this for the better good of everyone..With the newspaper or without..Thousands here in Winnipeg have fallen victim to die forsaken, according to my discussions with one Provincial investigator's aid. That of which, we together, don't yet, have the manpower, or the jurisdiction.. the Police do though, as lead by experienced practitioners.. I will to assist in any way possible to get to the core of what is important here.. My mother.. Let's let science prevail in determining what serves our healths best how about my friends?Addendum : when I stated that it could be a positive thing that Jennie can now freely breath instead of being suffocated, I also stated, that she is for this day, eating more than she has since entering the hospital.. a container of blue berries, three yogurts, egg salad.. Vanessa immediately responded, by stating "I don't know that." See? No care for Jennie's well being..Love John.or Johnny..or whatever..let's do this..Jennie Kinal was admitted into the Health Science Center January 7th 8:41amOn the 21st of January, despite Jennie's expressed wishes upon intake, and my own, the Doctor not responsible for Jennie, but on "the Team", asked if she was a smoker, and would provide a nicotine patch, I told him no.. she didn't want it, nor did I..On the 22 of January, I was told Jennie had a heat attack, and I found what I disproved of, a nicotine patch on her shoulder area.. I removed it, and told the doctor, being scientifically reasonable, she clearly was in no need of such poison.. considering her health issues.. and she apposed such poison from the day she entered.. and from that moment on.. it would not be continued..Risk of acute first myocardial infarction and use of nicotine patches .IT'S POISON... Hello... "harmless" .... you can't be serious when free men and women talk scientifically... and it's not burning with the additional many other ingredients people crave.. not as the deadly poison in it's purest stage. Besides, she had kicked the habit.On Feb 1st Mom is near the best she's been since arriving.. sitting up on the bed, eating yogurts, drinking water and juices.. and with the physiotherapist, was talking with me on how the plan is to bring about a hopeful position where she can walk across the room eventually.. hopefully soon..On February 2nd, upon witnessing my mother unresponsive to all stimuli, and witnessing a intravenous drip containing a concoction she had not received prior.. and given to her without me told of such a change.. discovered they were injecting her with an 'end of life' morphine derivative.. that stops humans from breathing..I called RN Delaney to stop this action immediately.. She apposed, claiming such actions would be cruel for at least ten minutes..defeating her irrational position I did effectively, she sided to go get her fellow senior RN to argue with me in the hallway, that again, such action would be cruel, in not allowing her to die comfortably.. I would therefore need to speak to the head physician Dr. T.. Of who I reminded the recorded history of Jennie, just the day before.. under no pain or duress in breathing.. and with plenty of witnesses to attest.. She finally capitulated to intelligent discourse, and sided such poisoning would be halted.. but if it needed to be re-introduced, I would be called before hand.. to witness a distress that would call for such poison.. I stayed with mom who remained near powerless to breath..."Hydromorphone may cause serious or life-threatening breathing problems, especially during the first 72 hours of your treatment and any time "Of which they told me, this poison will restrict Jennie's breathing, but too as an opiate, she'll feel great in this ending of her life by serious criminal negligence.On February 3rd, at 6 pm, I was phoned by RN Delaney.. and needed to come to the hospital to okay the death meds.. Conveniently, I arrived at the hospital in approximately 7 minutes to find her, in all appearances to be dead... All the water had been drained from her face, in what appeared to be a huge overdose of a diuretic.. (Urine tests that were expected to never happen with the 'deceased' would confirm this..) As I spoke to Jennie, RX Delaney continued to insist I not do such a thing.. Jennie had complete organ failure, and can not hear, speak, or see.. As claimed, how she died was kidney failure to process urine.. and so all the poisons overtook her will to live.. so stop talking to the clinically dead.. WITH WITNESSES.. But no.. I know better.. and over the course of approximately an hour and a half.. With Delaney again, insisting that I was not facing reality.. That I should be just thankful for the time I had with mom.. she started to revive.. upon then.. RN Delaney did not say, "..a miracle!" No she left the room, to never return for more than 24 hours, plus.. She did not come back to work the next day, nor did Dr. T approach her workstation.. Nor did any Doctor visit any other patient in the room as I recall thinking back.. Seeking a defense of plausible deniability, means they have to still insist, Mom's in a death coma..As time permits, I will improve upon this outline... I would appreciate the quickest response feasible, to inform me on further processes, to move towards defending my mother's life hanging on, held in jeopardy by those that deny my mother's wishes, and my own to be scientific on how these medicines are administered.. Not as quoted in the audio, at regular intervals without measure..Again, please phone me to co-operate in any respect of resolving this crisis, sooner than too much later.. Thanks before hand for being a professional about this matter..John Kinal can be reached at 204 202 7384 withany questions you may have on how we get started..If no answer.. you can leave a message..This number is temporary for the month ofApril, 2016.. It may continue, as if my livebroadcasts are still happening..--Some extras..Evidence - of the murder..bftdProtections of Persons..Mr.Kinal on the murder of his mother at the hospital.medical-care-main-cause-of-deathThey are willing to report that.. butwhat about this? This involves realCanadians lives being threatened todaywith further murders. It's bad news..sure.. but to fairly address, meansthe saving of innocent life.. Do rightby forwarding this to everyone inWinnipeg, left still forsaken withoutthe news.. The spirit of resistance has captured the imagination of a new generation in France, as youth-led opposition to neoliberal labour reforms has spiralled into full-on rejection of the whole capitalist system on the street and squares. [ Image: Protesters amidst the teargas in Nantes on April 5 otherwise known as March 36 ]The situation took on a new dimension after the general strike and day of action on Thursday March 31. There was a call for people not to go home afterwards but to stay on the streets, beginning a wave of overnight Nuit Debout occupations that has spread from Paris across France and into the Iberian peninsular, Belgium and Germany.The March 31 moment has also been symbolically extended by the renaming of the following days of the mobilisation as March 32, March 33 and so on.On Tuesday March 36 (April 5 in the old pre-revolutionary calendar) there was another massive turn-out on the streets all over France, with increased police violence and defiant resistance.In Paris police fired tear gas and charged the crowds of youngsters who countered with stones, glass bottles and eggs, chanting police everywhere, justice nowhere! and everybody hates the police!Police arrested a staggering 130 schoolchildren and students on the day, leading to an evening protest outside a police station involving hundreds of people and more clashes.It was a similar story in the Mediterranean city of Marseilles. A report on the Mars-info site said that if the initial demonstrations against the Loi Travail (labour law) had felt like the first breath of Spring, the events of March 36/April 5 showed that it had well and truly arrived.Police charges were resisted, a motorway blocked, traffic thrown into chaos, the offices of the ruling Socialist Party redecorated. And the promise of so much more to comeIn Brittany, the main railway line was blocked in Rennes city centre, while banks, chain stores and the Socialist Party offices were targeted in Nantes.Another hotspot was in Toulouse, where a wildcat protest and invasion of the citys railway station was followed by an overnight Nuit Debout occupation of between 500 and 1,000 people.When an authentic wave of revolt surges up from the collective heart of a population, there is little that can stand in its way.Like the waters of a mighty flood, it either sweeps away everything in its path or finds a different course that takes it past all obstacles.This is what we are seeing in France at the moment, where a rejection of the capitalist system has emerged from deep within society, most notably amongst the newest generation.As we have previously reported in The Acorn, this phenomenon has been growing for some time now and has taken many forms.The French state, frightened of a serious threat to its power, probably imagined it had found the solution in the wake of the November 13 terror attacks in Paris.The draconian state of emergency has been combined with increased police brutality and the usual anti-terrorist media paranoia to try to create a climate in which revolt can have no place.It worked to some extent with the COP21 protests in Paris, where the anticipated atmosphere of rebellion was significantly dampened.But when the state started making noises about evicting the ZAD protest camp to make way for a new Nantes airport, the huge response of solidarity and defiance showed that the underlying rebel spirit remained intact.And with the planned El Khomri labour laws, the socialist French government certainly overestimated its own power over the people.While obedient trade unions failed to make much of a fuss about this serious attack on workers rights, others were outraged and the very youthful grassroots campaign emerged out of nowhere to oppose it.The state has tried to crush it by the use of ugly police violence and general levels of repression which have been made possible by the state of emergency.But even this has not worked. Indeed, the flood waters of revolt have merely swept up the tools of the states repression and used them as battering rams against its legitimacy.As one statement from protesters explained: What is being born here has little to do with the labour law. This law is just the tipping point. The one attack too many. Too arrogant, too blatant, too humiliating. The surveillance laws, the Macron law, the state of emergency, the stripping of nationality measures, the anti-terrorist laws, the penal reform project and the labour law all add up to a system. Its one big project to bring the population to heel.Everyone knows that what makes a government retreat is not the number of people on the streets, but their determination. The only thing that will make a government retreat is the spectre of an uprising, the possibility of the loss of total control.Uncontrollability has proved a key element of the current revolt, with stewards from trade unions like the CGT being very obviously used by the authorities to try to hold back the energy of the youthful revolutionaries during protests.One eye-witness to the March 31 protests in Marseilles described how the CGT stewards stood between the young protesters and the police with their backs to the cops, showing clearly whose side they were on.As the protesters chanted All Marseilles hates the police!, the stewards were mocked and insulted, being called collaborators by the young crowd whose hatred for the system also embraces the false rebels of the comfortably conformist Left.One recent article sees the strength of the wave of revolt as lying in the fact that it is not a movement that lends itself to being easily manipulated and recuperated by the status quo.The behaviour of the union stewards and cops is a tell-tale sign that they are desperately trying to gain some kind of control over a phenomenon which is completely beyond their grasp.The response of the French state to recent rising levels of dissent has been predictable. It has emerged that at the end of last year it placed a 5 million euro order for hundreds of thousands of rubber bullets and seems determined to try and crush opposition by force.But resistance is spreading. There is an international call-out for a European Nuit Debout on Saturday April 9 March 40. A new generation is at war with the system. The tyrants are running scared. Vive la revolution!Original story with more photos and video links at: https://winteroak.org.uk/2016/04/08/the-acorn-23/#1 First Responders group forms in St. Louis by WeCopwatch The STL First Responders A project of the Canfield Watchmen and WeCopwatch. What do we do when the police shoot someone in our community? In Oakland California, a coalition under the Anti Police Terror Project have been deploying to the locations of shooting to conduct independent investigations. Here in St. Louis, we have begun to do the same. . . The Function First Responders are a coalition of people trained and dedicated to responding to police shootings and other high profile incidents involving police with the intentions of collecting evidence, identifying witness, and conducting independent investigations. Within 24 hours of a police shooting, official statements are almost always released to justify the officers use of force. These narratives are often disseminated to convey an officer in fear for their safety, and to demonize and criminalize the person shot. These official statements often change in the following months as more accurate information surfaces. But by then it is too little, too late. Deploying first responders after a police shooting allows concerned citizens to find witnesses, document evidence, and challenge and scrutinize the police narrative. First Responders also connect victims and witnesses to legal support, and conduct more honest and transparent investigations that can better inform the public what happened, and to support victims in criminal and civil cases. Our group recently had begun meeting when a shooting took place in the Central West End of the city and we deployed. Attached is our press release. . STL First Responderst Demands for Transparency! On March 31, 2016, an officer involved shooting occurred at the southeast corner of the intersection of Kingshighway and McPherson in front of the parking lot of Reliance Automotive. (490 N. Kingshighway) Multiple St. Louis First Responders were on site and we have questions and concerns. After completing a preliminary canvass of the neighborhood and interviewing witnesses, we have found discrepancies in the statements given by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department by Chief Sam Dotson. Our questions and demands are as follows: 1. There are several video cameras mounted along the Reliance Automotive building, yet there was no mention of these cameras in Chief Dotsons public statement. We want to know if the SLMPD has gained access to these videos. Additionally, we demand the unedited footage be released immediately. The release of the videos should not have any bearing on any past or future statements, so there is no reason why video footage cannot be released immediately. 2. According to Chief Dotsons statement there was audio recorded by the officer involved in the shooting. We demand the release of any audio recordings that may be on file in relation to this case, including any 9-1-1 calls that may be unknown at this time. These audio recordings will provide insight into the sequence of events leading up to the shooting. 3. All St. Louis Police Officers should be trained in crime scene preservation. What prompted Officer Rios to move the black Tahoe from its original position at the crime scene? The black Tahoe was later returned to its approximate location and additional pictures were taken however this move could have compromised the crime scene. Supporting groups and individuals. The Canfield Watchmen, We Copwatch, Lost Voices, @Ferguson Action Counsel, Palestinian Solidarity Committee, Faith for Justice, Peace Keepers, Attorney Jerryl Christmas, Rev Tatman, WITNESS, Photography Is Not A Crime! Blood on his hands Tedr77 [at] aol.com) by Ted Rudow III, MA Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has sparked backlash and controversy with his proposals to ban Muslims from entering the United Statesincluding refugees and asylum seekers. But deporting Muslim asylum seekers is nothing new. This week, the Obama administration deported 85 Muslim asylum seekers from Bangladesh, India and Nepal who were seeking asylum after fleeing repression and violence in their home countries. In history, India liberated Bangladesh from Pakistan, when Pakistan was using U.S. tanks and armour everything else to try to crush Bangladesh. Some of the men deported from Corrections Corporations of Americas Florence Correctional Center in Arizona on Sunday night had participated in a series of hunger strikes last year to protest their ongoing detention by ICE, the Immigration Customs and Enforcement agency, and demand their release from for-profit detention centers. Some of the men have been detained for years. Following the deportation, an ICE official, "All of those on last weekends flight had been provided the opportunity to present their cases in immigration court, were issued final orders of removal, and had no outstanding stays that would prohibit their removal." After the deportation, Ahmed said, "The Obama administration just deported nearly 100 South Asian detainees who crossed three continents seeking safety in the U.S. What happens to them next is blood on his hands." Ted Rudow III, MA The Relative Merits of a Task Force on Homelessness spleich [at] gmail.com) by Steve Pleich Scope, Composition and Duration Are Keys To Success At its April 26 session, the Santa Cruz City Council will consider a proposal to form a Task Force on Homelessness. This task force model has been used in the recent past to address pressing community issues such as public safety and water supply and this problem solving model will now be applied to our most challenging current issue, that of services and support for people experiencing homelessness. Prompted by community concern for this issue, the proposal by Council Members Comstock, Chase and Terrazas comes on the heels of the March 8 council rejection of the Lane Amendment which would have legalized "sleep", at least to some extent, within city limits. The scope, composition, appointment process and duration of the task force is yet to be determined but a discussion about the relative merits and substantive effect of a task force approach is both appropriate and arguably helpful at this time. As mentioned, recent task forces have addressed public safety and water supply with differing degrees of success. The recommendations of the public safety task force were widely viewed as either unwieldy or impractical and were virtually ignored by city staff. Although several of the recommendations may have worked some substantive good or needed change, the fact that very few, if any, were actually implemented rendered the overall effectiveness of that task force virtually nil. The water supply task force, on the other hand, has received wide support from both staff and the Water Department itself and may well lead to a workable and sustainable plan to insure our future water supply. So how effective will a task force on homelessness be? Several things need to happen to create the opportunity for even modest success. Firstly, the scope of the work must be broad enough to include both housing first" and "shelter now" strategies. Virtually all of the time, money and effort being applied to the issue of homelessness manifests itself in housing first models. While noble in an altruistic sense, these models remain presently impractical in view of our lack of available rentals and dearth of affordable housing. On any given night there are as many as 1,000 women, men and children unsheltered in Santa Cruz; as many as 2,500 in the county. These figures are about 25 percent above that reported in the 2015 Homeless Census and Survey which is believed by most observers to be underreported by about that percentage biannually. These numbers are not intended to inflate the problem but are simply offered to present a clear picture of its scope. Secondly, the composition on of the task force must reflect those segments of our community most profoundly impacted by this issue and include stakeholders whose participation can insure post task force success. These would include the faith community, neighborhood groups, local business leaders and retailers, representatives from nonprofits which primarily serve people experiencing homelessness, advocates for the homeless and, of course, members of our local homeless community. This is only a preliminary and suggested list and is not to be taken as complete or inclusive. There are surely other concerned groups and stakeholders whose input and participation will be key to the success of the task force. Lastly, it is crucial that the task force have an early "sunset" date. Although we don't want to rush to judgment on such an important issue, the plight of people experiencing homelessness is nothing if not emergent. We must strategize thoughtfully, but we must also act with all deliberate speed if we are to see substantive options generated and implemented in a time frame that reflects the importance and urgency of the situation. There should and must be much more discussion about the tasking force model itself and its history in Santa Cruz and comparisons to a similar effort more than a decade ago should be drawn and considered. But the efficacy of the current proposal will, as with all things, be most accurately assessed in hindsight. Let's hope of foresight is as prescient. PBS has over 200 cooking shows shilling for animal or fish flesh, eggs and dairy. It is causing human disease, animal agony, environmental destruction and energy waste. One of the worst is Bridget Lancaster's America's Test kitchen Bridget Lancaster of America's Test Kitchen teaches children that inflicting pain on sentient creatures is ok.She is programming children to be violent. WBUR gave her airtime on the 8th.Please object. http://www.wbur.org/contact Bridget Lancaster who tells millions to freeze alive lobsters before dropping them alive into boiling water.Over 99% of PBS' 200 or more cookingshows are promotions for cadaver food or food stolenfrom captive animals. Of these, few are worse than those of Bridget Lancaster of America's Test Kitchen who told millions tofreeze living lobsters before dropping them alive into boiling water.In April of 2006, WBUR Radio which has a contact with the NY Times, featured Bridget Lancaster and gave a promotion to Michael Pollan, the Times columnist who boughta baby bull (known as a heifer) and oversaw his slaughter a fewmonths later. Heifer International, which sends baby animals to lives of slavery and slaughter, promotes the writing of Michael Pollan.Please object to WBUR.Bridget Lancaster of the PBS carried show America's Test Kitchen advocated putting living lobsters in the freezer, because said Bridget, living lobsters put into boiling water put up a fight.. The show proceeded as Bridget after dropping the frozen alive lobster into boiling water let him be cooked, took him out, and proceeded to tear off his claws 'as casually as if she were tearing off pieces of a loaf of French bread'*. There are those who like to kill and eat lobsters. Why can't cooks chop off their heads rather than the screaming agony of the boiling water. Lobsters often try to jump or crawl out.. Pegeen Fitzgerald reported on WOR that her mother had plucked a turkey and put him live into the freezer. 20 minutes later he was still alive. They adopted him as a family pet but his fathers never grew back.Such disregard for the sentience of living beings and its effect on the audience makes PBS a major source of violence programming. Whether in the killing and cooking of diverse creatures, promotion of war on news shows, deforesatation shilling in the house reconstruction shows, propaganda for research on animals, zoo confinement, and farm animal slavery in the children's shows, violence to living beings is a theme of PBS.Lobster flesh more each day contain radiation from Fukushima and other nuclear power plants around the world. Their flesh is correlated to food poisoning fatalities because the creatures are coprophagous, eating the waste of humans and others. Their flesh causes stomach cancer, anaphylactic shock, etc. while the uric acid contributes to arthritis, the homocysteine to Alzheimer's etc. Ocean lobsters contain mercury, chromium, pcb's, insecticide runoff, fertilizer runoff, and thousands of other hazardous chemicals and metals.Bridget Lancaster, https://kpbs.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/croppedphotos/2014/01/31 Stuff reports: Green Party co-leader James Shaw said the move opened the door to partial privatisation. This deal makes it harder for the Government to use Kiwibank to drive competition in the banking sector, as the Green Party announced wed do, because the Government cant direct the Super and ACC funds in the way it could have directed Kiwibank, he said. The Greens announced last week they would inject $100m of capital into the bank, and allow it to keep more of its profits to foster a faster expansion. The fact is the Government forced Kiwibanks hand and todays announcement will make it easier than it was before to move Kiwibank into private ownership. But Cullen said Shaws argument, that the Government was able to direct Kiwibank, was completely incorrect Kiwibank is a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of New Zealand Post but in terms of the Companies Act and Reserve Bank requirements it must act independently in terms of its activities. The Government cannot direct New Zealand Post, nor through New Zealand Post can it direct Kiwibank. The Herald reports: The imams trained at the ancient Al-Azhar University, regarded as the foremost institution in the Islamic world for the study of Sunni theology and sharia law will spend up to three years working alongside local mosque leaders promoting moderate Islam and tolerance. Egypts Government is sending Cairo-educated imams to take control of New Zealand mosques and Islamic centres in a new drive to reduce radicalisation and counter jihadism. Good. The best way of reducing the extreme versions of Islam, is promoting moderate Islam. Despite what some think, there is a huge diversity of views within Islam. We dont want anything to happen here like what has happened in Belgium, Paris, Madrid or London so we are sending imams to explain Islam and to take control of Islamic centres and mosques here. Mr al-Wasimy said the imams were funded by the Egyptian Government and Al-Azhar, which dates back to 970 and in recent years has embarked on a global initiative to improve the image of Islam, promote tolerance, and battle radicalisation and recruitment of young Muslims by extremist groups. The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand said it welcomed the extremely positive move after checking out the authenticity of the offer. We decided to accept their offer, especially as Al-Azhar is a very well-known organisation promoting moderate Islam, said federation president Hazim Arafeh. Kentucky Oaks 2016 Contenders Update: For one more week, Land Over Sea tops the Kentucky Oaks Point Standings. Once Songbird wins this weekend in the Santa Anita Oaks, the leader will change. The official list for the Kentucky Oaks is extensive, but realistically, the dominance of Songbird and Cathryn Sophia may discourage a full field from happening. Note: Polar River owns 50 qualifying points, but the connections show no indication of making the trip overseas. Therefore, she does not appear on this list. 1. Land Over Sea (128): Doug ONeill and Reddam Racing hold a powerful hand for the first weekend in May. Their Kentucky Oaks hopeful galloped over Keeneland yesterday and reportedly wanted to do more. 2. Go Maggie Go (100): On whether she goes to the Oaks, trainer Dale Romans said in a press release, I would think so. Well train her and if shes training good and doing good like she was going into this, thats the key. 3. Songbird (90): Songbird will run in the Santa Anita Oaks on Saturday. In preparation, the star filly schooled in the paddock yesterday. 4. Cathryn Sophia (60): She worked four furlongs in 48.20 seconds at Keeneland last Sunday. The Ashland at Keeneland this weekend will be a major test from a competition and distance standpoint. 5. Venus Valentine (50): On Wednesday, the Rachel Alexandra Stakes winner worked four furlongs in 48.80 at Churchill Downs. Will trainer Tom Amoss take a shot at the Oaks? 6. Terra Promessa (50): The Steve Asmussen-trained filly will compete in the Fantasy Stakes tomorrow at Oaklawn Park. Last Sunday, she breezed four furlongs in 50.80. 7. Mo dAmour (50): She worked four furlongs in 48.75 last Saturday at Belmont Park for trainer Todd Pletcher and will compete in the Gazelle Stakes at Aqueduct tomorrow. 8. Wonderment (50): According to a Courier-Journal article, the Bourbonette Stakes winner is not certain to compete in the Kentucky Oaks. 9. Dream Dance (44): Little information exists about her online, but according to Equibase, there are no official workouts since her runner-up finish in the Fair Grounds. 10. Paola Queen (40): Not many writers are reporting about this filly as well. With such high-quality horses entering the Kentucky Oaks, the connections face a tough decision on whether the Oaks fits her. 11. Nickname (36): She worked five furlongs in a bullet 1:00.40 at Keeneland on Tuesday. Again, it will be a tough decision for the connections on whether she belongs in the Oaks. 12. Lewis Bay (30): The Chad Brown-trained filly worked four furlongs in 50.10 seconds last Saturday. She will compete in the Gazelle tomorrow. 13. Midnight On Oconee (24): The seventh-place finisher in the Fair Grounds Oaks shows no recorded workouts since then. If this one makes the Kentucky Oaks, she will need to start tuning up soon. 14. Dreams to Reality (21): After breezing four furlongs in 48.48 seconds at Belmont Park last Sunday, she looks set to compete in the Gazelle. The race should give the connections clues on whether the Oaks is the right fit. Related Links: Kentucky Derby 2016 Contenders Update Boston, MA Of all the potential data breaches that could lead to headache, heartbreak, identity theft and a Of all the potential data breaches that could lead to headache, heartbreak, identity theft and a data breach lawsuit , perhaps the most damning and potentially embarrassing breach is the unlawful access of medical records. With more hospitals and health care facilities archiving and making medical records available electronically, the risks for those records falling into the wrong hands increases exponentially with increased availability of data and heightened sophistication on the part of criminals. To that end, plaintiffs alleging a grievous data breach by Boston Medical Center (BMC) will see their data breach class action move forward after a Massachusetts Superior Court judge last month denied a petition by BMC to have the case dismissed.The class-action data breach lawsuit isCase No. 2015-1733-BLS-1, Massachusetts Superior Court Business Litigation Session. Defendants are Boston Medical Center Corp., MDF Transcriptions and MDF owner Richard J. Fagan.According to court documents, plaintiffs were notified by BMC about the breach. It was reported that sensitive medical records had been inadvertently made accessible to the public through an independent medical record transcription service. BMC, it has been reported, also noted in its communication to plaintiffs that BMC had no reason to believe that [the release] led to misuse of any patient information.Be that as it may, plaintiffs werent happy with that position and alleged in the data breach lawsuit no fewer than seven violations. Among those alleged violations were claims for invasion of privacy, breach of confidentiality and breach of fiduciary duty.The data breach lawsuit reflects a fear that is a common refrain whenever documents archived or maintained online are breached for any reason, and in any fashion: to wit, once data gets online, it remains online. Various breaches of data suffered by retail establishments, the health care industry and even the federal government have all occurred amidst claims that firewalls and encryptions have been more than sufficient.In reality, it has been found that protections to ensure the preservation of data and other security measures were totally lacking, not sufficiently updated or inferior to technology and expertise already available, and utilized by hackers.It has been reported that BMC moved to have the data breach lawsuit dismissed on grounds that, in the defendants view, no injuries had occurred and no misuse by unauthorized individuals had been found.In deference to the position taken by the defendant(s), Judge Edward Leibensperger held that plaintiffs had indeed sufficient reason - and had presented enough factual data - to infer that personal information had been potentially accessed during the breach.Further, the judge held that the communication itself to plaintiff(s) by BMC informing of the data breach was, in itself, sufficient cause to file a statement of claim.Thus the data breach lawsuit will go ahead. Top Class Action Lawsuits New Month, New Defective Auto Lawsuit This time, its a Hyundai and Kia defective automobile class action. The car companies are facing the wrath of consumers, who allege the paint on 2006-2016 Hyundai Santa Fe, Sonata, and Elantra vehicles contain an identical and inherent defect which causes the paint to bubble, peel and flake off the vehicle, which can lead to rusting and corrosion. Filed by Michelle Resnick, Shelby Cramer, Lauren Freed, Paul Sandlin, Patricia Reynolds, Christopher Baker, and Tara Mulrey, individually and for all others similarly situated, the lawsuit claims vehicle owners must either live with these problems or spend significant amounts of money to repair and repaint the vehicles. The plaintiffs allege breach of express and implied warranties, negligent misrepresentation, fraudulent concealment, unjust enrichment, violation of Californias Consumer Legal Remedies Act, violation of Californias Business and Professions Code, and violations of unfair and deceptive trade practices acts in several states. Go getem. The case is US District Court for the Central District of California Case number 8:16-CV-00593-BRO-PJW. Some Hurtin for HertzHeads up Hertz customersin yet another consumer fraud class action filing this week, Americas largest car rental company stands accused of not playing fair with its terms and conditions as stated on its website. The Hertz lawsuit, in fact, alleges violations of the New Jerseys Truth-in-Consumer Contract, Warranty and Notice Act (TCCWNA). Read on. The skinny is that named plaintiff, David Hecht, claims the terms and conditions states on the Hertz website violate TCCWNA because of a failure to state how they affect New Jersey residents. Heres what that looks like: Hechts allegations target Hertzs website for enrolling in the car rental companys Gold Plus Rewards Program. Hechts lawsuit specifically references a portion of the TCCWNA that states No consumer contract, notice or sign shall state that any of its provisions is or may be void, unenforceable or inapplicable without specifying which provisions are or are not void, unenforceable or inapplicable within the State of New Jersey. Hecht seeks to represent two classes in his lawsuit. The first would be those New Jersey residents enrolled in Hertz Gold Plus Rewards when the case was filed. This class also would include New Jersey residents enrolled in the program six years prior to whenever the websites Terms and Conditions stated in words or substance, that Gold Plus Rewards offers are void where prohibited, without specifying whether these provisions are or are not void, unenforceable or inapplicable within the State of New Jersey. The second proposed class would include New Jersey residents who rented a Hertz vehicle for personal, household or family purposes via companys website within six years of the date of the filing. That class would cover a period when Hertzs Terms of Use said that except as otherwise required by law, price, rate and availability of products or services are subject to change without notice and that the Hertz General Terms of Use are void where prohibited, without specifying whether these provisions are void, unenforceable, or inapplicable within the State of New Jersey. Top Settlements J&J $502M Hip Award. This should cause some serious thinking at J&J. The company was ordered to pay a whopping $502 million settlement this week, which was awarded by a jury in Dallas hearing the consolidated lawsuits of five plaintiffs who all allege that DePuy Orthopedics and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Ultamet hip implant is defective and caused them pain, injury and suffering. The plaintiffs who accused the company of hiding flaws in its Pinnacle artificial hips that caused the devices to prematurely fail and left them facing surgeries and pain. FYIthe DePuy Ultamet hip replacement devices are metal-on-metal. The problem with metal-on-metal devices is that metal debris can reportedly come loose, resulting in metals being absorbed by the patients surrounding tissue and causing excess levels of chromium and cobalt in the patients blood. Furthermore, patients may experience pain, inflammation and soft tissue damage in the area around the hip, making mobility difficult if not impossible. The jury awarded $142 million in actual damages and $360 million in punitive damages. You want to say congratulations, but really? Ok, thats a wrap folkssee you at the bar! En Espanol ANTICOAGULANTES FREE ANIT-COAGULATION MEDICINE LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Anit-Coagulation Medicine claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Anti-Coagulation Medications Newer-Generation Anticoagulation Medications Pradaxa (Dabigatran) Xarelto (Rivaroxaban) Eliquis (Apixaban) Lovenox (Enoxaparin Sodium) Arixtra (Fondaparinux) Savaysa (Edoxaban) Zontivity Alere INRatio and INRatio2 PT/INR Professional Monitoring System Anticoagulant Medical Malpractice Anti-Coagulation Medication Legal Help Jun-18-15 Anti-coagulation lawsuits have been filed against the makers of certain anti-coagulation medications alleging the makers of those medications did not carry adequate warnings about the risks of anti-coagulation side effects. Side effects associated with certain blood thinners include an increased risk of life-threatening uncontrolled bleeding.Anti-coagulation medications (also known as blood thinners) are used to prevent blood clots, which can result in deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and stroke. Because they prevent blood from clotting, however, patients may develop uncontrolled bleedingincluding internal bleedingfrom minor injuries. The longest-used blood thinner is Warfarin , known by the brand name Coumadin.Like newer-generation anticoagulation medications, warfarin has been associated with an increased risk of uncontrolled bleeding. Unlike newer anticoagulation drugs, however, warfarin has an antidote, so patients who develop bleeding problems and seek medical attention may have the effects of warfarin reversed.Among the medications that are included in the class of anticoagulation drugs are Pradaxa, Xarelto, Zontivity, Eliquis and Savaysa.Newer-generation anticoagulation medications may also be associated with an increased risk of uncontrolled bleeding. Unlike warfarin, they do not currently have an accepted antidote meaning patients who suffer a bleeding event may not be able to reverse the effects of the event, potentially creating a life-threatening situation. Some of these medications have been marketed as easier to use than warfarin because their makers claim patients do not require blood level monitoring.Lawsuits filed against the makers of some anticoagulant drugs allege either that the drug did not carry an adequate warning about the risks or that the drug was marketed as superior to warfarin when there was no antidote. Pradaxa's label does carry a warning about the increased of bleeding events in patients. Some concerns have been raised, however, that Pradaxa was marketed as being superior to warfarin, even without an antidote.The Pradaxa label does include a warning about the increased risk of bleeding events in patients. The concern, however, is that Pradaxa was allegedly marketed as being superior to warfarin even though there was no antidote to the uncontrolled bleeding.In May 2014, Boehringer Ingelheim announced a $650 million settlement to resolve around 4,000 lawsuits alleging patients were seriously harmed by the use of Pradaxa. Xarelto has also been reportedly linked to an increased risk of bleeding side effects. Lawsuits have been filed against the maker of Xarelto, but as of August 2014 fewer than 10 lawsuits have been filed.In 2014, Johnson & Johnson and Bayer announced that the FDA sent a complete response letter regarding Xarelto, rejecting the companies' application to expand the use of Xarelto to include new indications. The FDA had previously rejected other applications to expand the use of Xarelto as well.Attorneys expect that more Xarelto lawsuits will be filed alleging patients were not properly advised of the risks associated with the medication.Other newer-generation anti-coagulant medications include:Zontivity, known generically as vorapraxar, is a new drug approved for use in 2014. Early trials of the drug were reportedly changed and one trial was reportedly stopped prematurely because the trials suggested an increased risk of severe bleeding or intra-cranial hemorrhage (bleeding). According to the FDA, the drug will carry a boxed warning concerning the risk of intra-cranial hemorrhage.The Alere INRatio and INRatio2 PR/INR Professional Monitoring Systems are used by healthcare professionals to monitor the effects of warfarin on a patient's clotting time. The systems determine the International Normalized Ratio (INR) of the patient's fresh capillary whole blood, which shows how quickly the patient's blood clots.On December 8, 2014, Alere announced a class 1 recall in the form of a correction letter, warning that certain medical conditions should not be tested with the INRatio and INRatio2 systems. In its announcement , Alere noted that some medical conditions might result in incorrect results, specifically, inaccurately low INR results. Conditions include anemia with hematocrit less than 30 percent, conditions with elevated fibrinogen levels, chronic inflammatory conditions or severe infections. Inaccurate INR results could lead to a doctor not making necessary warfarin dosing changes, putting the patient at risk of a bleeding event.Patients on certain anticoagulant medications require regular testing to ensure their blood maintains its ability to clot in the case of injury. Doctors who do not provide adequate testing for patients who require it may be liable for medical malpractice if their patient suffers an uncontrolled bleeding event.If you or a loved one has suffered similar damages or injuries, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a lawyer who may evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation. FREE ASBESTOS MESOTHELIOMA LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Asbestos Mesothelioma claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Asbestos Health Threat Asbestos Remains in Use Despite the Health Warnings Primary Asbestos Exposure Boiler and furnace technicians Car mechanics (brake shoes) Construction workers Navy shipyard workers Pipe fitters Miners Railway workers Secondary or Passive Asbestos Exposure Asbestos Mesothelioma Warning Signs Asbestos Respirators Asbestosis Asbestos Mesothelioma Legal Help Mar-17-20 Asbestos mesothelioma is a fatal asbestos cancer involving the mesothelium, a protective lining that encloses most of the body's internal organs. The only known cause of mesothelioma seems to be exposure to asbestos particles in the air. The time between exposure and the appearance of symptoms can be as long as 20 to 50 years.Exposure to asbestos fibers has been linked to asbestos cancer, asbestosis (scarring of the lungs that restricts breathing), asbestos mesothelioma (cancer of the lining of the chest cavity), and silicosis . The chances of getting an asbestos-related illness increase as the level and duration of exposure to asbestos increases.If you suspect that you might have an asbestos mesothelioma case, it's best to first ensure you follow these steps in preparation for meeting with an asbestos mesothelioma attorney:which ideally includes a tissue biopsy; or get a copy of the medical records and diagnostic documents from your loved one' physicians.If you, yourself, are a victim of asbestos mesothelioma, it' best to prepare a will that stipulates which law firm is to represent your case. While no one likes to think of these things, the executor of your will may ultimately need to work with this law firm. Better to identify your law firm rather than risk having multiple lawyers getting involved in the case as a result of various family members seeking to find counsel on your behalf.you believe you or your loved one was exposed to asbestos.or companies you or your loved one worked for, even if you or your loved one worked as a contractor.that knew there may have been asbestos on the job site(s).If you have not already done so, you should meet with an asbestos lawyer and bring all supporting documentation with you.of critical facts for preserving your case.If you have been diagnosed with asbestos disease, there' a good chance that your colleagues will also have been exposed. They may even have contacted a lawyer already, and be familiar with the process. If possible, reach out to your former colleagues to find out how they are and what, if anything they may have done or be doing, and if they will support you in your claim.If you are a spouse of a mesothelioma victim who has recently died from the illness, you and your heirs could have between one to three years from the date of death to file a wrongful death action, which may result in the recovery of substantial monetary damages.Asbestos is not banned in the US and Canada and it is still in use in a wide variety of products. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that there are 3,000 different types of commercial products currently in use in the US today that contain asbestos, including building materials, brake pads, and fire retardant materials and products. Exposure can also come from unlikely sources. A weekend do-it-yourselfer may become exposed while undertaking home repair projects around the house. Asbestos fibers can also be transferred via clothing, skin or hair through contact with a household member who has worked around the deadly substance. People who suspect that they or someone they love might have been exposed to asbestos should always get a clear diagnosis to determine the severity of their illness.Asbestos can pose a serious health threat when disturbed or when it begins to deteriorate and asbestos fibers are released into the air and inhaled. To date, companies which have exposed their employees to asbestos have faced thousands of lawsuits and settled hundreds of millions in damages.Asbestos is mainly used as an insulating material it is a very effective fire retardant material, hence its use to insulate boilers, pipes, and fire doors; it's used in roofing and many construction materials, and in electrical fittings.The types of work environments where you are most likely to encounter asbestos include mines, shipyards, railroads, power plants, and construction sites.Workers who may be at risk for asbestos exposure include, but are not limited to:Asbestos mesothelioma doesn't just affect the people working with it directly. Recently the medical profession has started to recognize that people can be affected by asbestos-caused diseases through secondary or passive exposure.For example, cases of second-hand asbestos exposure were recently been reported by wives and children of men who worked in the shipyards in World War II. The workers were exposed to large amounts of damaged or "friable" asbestos while on the job, and their wives became came ill following exposure to asbestos fibers that had become lodged in the workers' clothing. Over the years, the constant inhalation of these fibers resulted in the development of asbestos-related diseases.Secondary asbestos exposure is also possible by living in a community or area located near an asbestos mine or a company that manufactures asbestos or products containing asbestos. Many older buildings may also contain asbestos insulation, including schools.Perhaps the most famous victims of community contamination in North America are the residents of Libby, Montana , an asbestos-mining town. Vermiculite, which naturally contains asbestos, was mined there between 1923 and 1991. Workers and families of workers who lived in the town sued W.R. Grace , the last company to own the mine. At one point the company reportedly faced 110,000 lawsuits for sickening hundreds of people and contributing to the deaths of 225allegedly with full knowledge.Other examples of community exposure include the World Trade Center site after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and areas prone to damage from natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.Early symptoms of asbestos mesothelioma can include chest pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, hoarseness, cough, fluid retention and abdominal swelling.Because mesothelioma affects the pleura, or the membranes that surround almost all of your internal organs, pain or swelling in the chest or the abdomen could be a symptom of mesothelioma.You are warned to contact your doctor if you experience any of these symptoms. If you have been exposed to asbestos fibers in the past you should make your doctor aware of that as well.For decades, thousands and thousands of workers were unaware of asbestos-related diseases and were not given respirators.Workers in the asbestos industry would have to be made aware of harmful asbestos exposure if they were given safety and protective gear, i.e., asbestos respirators. In many cases, the employer knew about asbestos exposure but failed to warn of the hazards, including asbestosis and mesothelioma.For example, a forklift driver who worked with asbestos was never issued a respirator . In another case, a drilling rig worker was constantly exposed to asbestos drilling mud without any safety gear except for a handkerchief. "Failure to warn"is a main contention of litigation against the asbestos industry.Other lawsuits pertain to defective respiratory protection. Countless lives could have been saved if asbestos respirators actually protected workers from breathing asbestos fibers. Some asbestos lawsuits have shown that employers failed to warn for economic reasons, such as the cost of asbestos respirators.Currently, defendants in asbestos litigation include manufacturers whose products contain no asbestos and did not affect a plaintiff' exposure to asbestos, such as 3M Company. For more than two decades the 3M Company has been the target of about 400,000 lawsuits over its dust mask, which was used as an asbestos respirator, alleging the product is defective. Other respirator manufacturers have also been accused of marketing defective masks, even though they were approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). American Optical has been named in more than140,000 lawsuits claiming their defective asbestos respirators contributed to, or were responsible for, asbestos-related diseases on workers who were unaware that they wore faulty protective masks.Faulty (e.g., leaks because it doesn't fit the user' face properly) asbestos respirators are worse than not having one at all because workers falsely believe they are safe from asbestos exposure and can thereby further put themselves in harm' way.Faulty equipment and/or not even given asbestos respirators are still an issue. In 2007, Maryland state officials ordered a 'halt to work' when a contractor licensed in asbestos removal had exposed up to 20 workers to asbestos without any protective gear. A Worker' Compensation Report in May 2009 found that firefighters may not be completely protected from hazardous substances such as asbestos due to inadequate protective equipment. Asbestosis is a chronic inflammatory lung disease that is caused only by inhaling asbestos fibers. Although it is not a type of cancer, asbestosis is a serious and life-threatening disease because it can lead to asbestos lung cancer and mesothelioma. The chances of getting asbestosis increase as the level and duration of exposure to asbestos increases, and anyone who has come in contact with asbestos is at risk for developing asbestosis. Symptoms of asbestosis rarely occur less than 10 years following first exposure to asbestos fibers and are more common after 20 years or more, therefore making it even more difficult to file a lawsuit by yourself.Many reports have proven that corporations, asbestos makers and industry members had knowledge of the dangers of asbestos and its link to asbestos-related illnesses since the 1930s. An asbestosis lawyer can bring about a suit against multiple asbestos employers and asbestos manufacturers.If you or a loved one is suffering from lung cancer, asbestosis, mesothelioma or other asbestos-related diseases caused by exposure to asbestos or asbestos containing products, you may qualify for damages or remedies that may be awarded in a possible class action lawsuit. Please click the link below to submit your complaint to an asbestos lawyer for a free case evaluation with no obligation. Santa Clara, CA 3M has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a review of the U.S. appeals court decision to reinstate close to 6,000 Bair Hugger lawsuits claiming the warming blanket used in surgery results in knee and hip infections. In August 2021, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit revived the lawsuits. READ MORE 3M has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a review of the U.S. appeals court decision to reinstate close to 6,000 Bair Hugger lawsuits claiming the warming blanket used in surgery results in knee and hip infections. In August 2021, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit revived the lawsuits. Washington, DC: 3Ms , Bair Hugger, the subject of some 2600 defective products lawsuits across the US, has received clearance for use from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to a spokesperson for the FDA, the agency has no conclusive evidence to establish an association between use of a forced air thermal regulating systems and an increased risk of surgical-site infections. READ MORE 3Ms , Bair Hugger, the subject of some 2600 defective products lawsuits across the US, has received clearance for use from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to a spokesperson for the FDA, the agency has no conclusive evidence to establish an association between use of a forced air thermal regulating systems and an increased risk of surgical-site infections. Benicar Lawsuit Benicar lawsuits have reportedly been filed, alleging patients suffered serious Benicar side effects linked to their use of the drug. Among the side effects reportedly linked to Benicar is sprue-like enteropathy. FREE BENICAR LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Benicar claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Benicar Benicar Side Effects Benicar and FDA Benicar Legal Help Oct-24-14 Benicar (known generically as olmesartan) is a hypertension drug used to lower high blood pressure. It is made by Daiichi Sankyo and marketed by Forest Laboratories. It is in a class of drugs known as angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARB). According to the FDA, sprue-like enteropathy has not been linked with other ARB medications.Other drugs that contain olmesartan , include Benicar HCT, Azor, Tribenzor and generics.Benicar has been linked to a condition called sprue-like enteropathy. Patients with sprue-like enteropathy experience chronic diarrhea, weight loss, and other gastrointestinal problems including colitis. Symptoms can reportedly take months to years to develop and may require hospitalization. Some patients may have developed sprue-like enteropathy while using Benicar but been diagnosed with celiac disease.A 2012 study published inexamined the link between olmesartan and sprue-like enteropathy. Researchers studied 22 patients who were seen at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota from August 1, 2008 to August 1, 2011. They found that symptoms improved in 18 patients who discontinued medication and concluded that olmesartan may be linked to a severe form of sprue-like enteropathy.On July 3, 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning that olmesartan can cause intestinal problems known as sprue-like enteropathy. The FDA noted that sprue-like enteropathy symptoms include severe, chronic diarrhea with substantial weight loss.When the FDA issued its warning it said it was continuing to evaluate the safety of products that contain olmesartan. The FDA made its announcement after it evaluated data from the FDA's Adverse Event Reporting System and other sources and discovered "clear evidence of an association between olmesartan and sprue-like enteropathy." As result of its evaluation, the FDA announced that olmesartan drugs would update their label to include the risk of sprue-like enteropathy.Patients who develop gastrointestinal problems while taking Benicar are advised to speak with their doctor to discuss their options. Patients should not discontinue medicine without speaking to a doctor.If you or a loved one has suffered injury from using Benicar, please click the link below to send your complaint to a lawyer specializing in Drug related lawsutis to evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation. FREE EXCESSIVE OVERDRAFT FEE LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Excessive Overdraft Fee claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Bank Overdraft Fees Regulations Overdraft Fees Excessive Bank Overdraft Fees Excessive Bank Overdraft Fees Lawsuits Reordering Transactions Authorization Holds Irregular Deposits Credit Union Excessive Overdraft Fees Lawsuits Bank Overdraft Fees Lawsuits Ally Financial Bank of Hawaii First Hawaiian People's United Union Bank Bank of the West Bank of Oklahoma Capital One Financial Corp. Commerce Bank Fifth Third HSBC UMB Bank (AZ, CO, IL, KS, MO, NE, OK, TX) Valley National Bank (NJ) New York Community Bank (NY) Community Bank, N.A. (NY) NBT Bank, N.A. (NY) First Niagara Bank, N.A. (NY) Umpqua (OR and CA) Citizens Bank (MI and OH) Bank Midwest (MO) Stillwater (OK) Vectra (CO) Santa Barbara Bank and Trust (CA) City National (CA) Sandy Spring (MD) Bank of the Ozarks (AR) EverBank (FL) Tri Counties Bank (CA) NBT Bank (NY and PA) Banco Popular Annual Pew Charitable Trusts Bank Evaluation TD Bank Overdraft Fee Lawsuit TCF National Bank Lawsuit Bank Excessive Overdraft Fees Settlements Capital One: $31.8 million to settle allegations of deceptive overdraft practices. American Savings Bank: to settle a class action lawsuit filed against it for $2 million HSBC Bank USA: to settle overdraft lawsuits. HSBC Bank USA's settlement will see the financial firm pay $30 million to settle claims. Bank of America: $410 million to settle claims of more than 13 million customers that the company used unethical overdraft practices. (Plaintiffs in the 2011 class action lawsuit alleged that Bank of America processed its debit card transactions in the order of highest to lowest dollar amount in order to maximize profit collection from overdraft fees, which were usually $35 each.) Excessive Bank Overdraft Fee Legal Help Nov-13-19 Several banks and credit unions have faced allegations that they used deceptive practices in charging customers excessive overdraft fees. Allegations have been made about excessive bank overdraft fees. Specifically, customers of some banks allege that they have been the victims of excessive overdraft fees and that banks have used misrepresentation of account balances and reordering of credits and debits to push customers into overdraft, allowing the banks to collect bank overdraft fees. Now, some customers have filed bank overdraft fees lawsuits to fight back against the banks. Some customers have filed bank overdraft fees lawsuits, claiming that the financial institutions used deceptive practices related to excessive overdraft fees.Under recent changes in the law, a bank cannot charge overdraft fees on debit purchases or ATM withdrawals unless the consumer specifically agrees. Federal rules that took effect in 2010 no longer allow banks and credit unions to charge overdraft fees on ATM or debit card transactions unless the bank customer agrees to "opt-in" to overdraft protection. However, banks and credit unions are still allowed to charge when checks or certain recurring electronic payments overdraw an account, even when the customer didn't opt-in to overdraft protection.There is no legislation regarding how much money can be charged for overdraft fees, meaning customers who opt into the program could still pay up to $35 for transactions that take them even $1 into overdraft.Overdraft fees are charged when customers attempt to conduct a transaction from their bank account that they do not have the financial means to cover.Bank accounts go into overdraft when more money has been taken out of the account than was actually in it. It can happen quite easily: a bank account has $100 in it, but the customer makes a debit card purchase for $110, pushing the account $10 into overdraft.Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported in 2013 that 61 percent of bank profits from consumers come from overdraft and insufficient fund fees.The problem is that some customers say they never asked their banks to provide overdraft protection they assumed that if they tried to make a purchase they could not afford the purchase would be declined. Instead, customers say more and more frequently, such purchases are being approved and the customers are left with hefty overdraft fees.Those fees can be as much as $35. That means that $10 into overdraftoverdraft the customer might not have asked foris costing that customer an extra $35. What's more, customers say they are charged overdraft fees for every overdraft transaction. So, they may be in overdraft without knowing it, continuing to spend on their accounts and being charged $35 every time they do sopushing them even further into overdraft. That can add up to hundreds of dollars in fees.According to a December 2016 Consumer Protection Report published by the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), 626 large banks reported collecting $8.4 billion in revenue from overdraft and insufficient fund (NSF) fees, an increase of 3.6 percent over the same period the previous year. Some of the nation's largest banks, along with some smaller institutions, accounted for 67 percent of the total reported overdraft revenue.According to the US PIRG report: "The 10 banks that collected the most overdraft revenue through the first three quarters of 2016, in order, were: Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, TD Bank, US Bank, PNC Bank, Suntrust Bank, Regions Bank, Branch Banking and Trust, and Woodforest National Bank."In 2015 the three largest banks collected $5.1 billion in overdraft fees alone. The average overdraft fee is $34 dollars, but according to a 2014 report from the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), the majority of debit card overdraft fees are handed out on transactions of $24 or less and are repaid within three days.Put in lending terms, if a consumer borrowed $24 for three days and paid the median overdraft fee of $34, such a loan would carry a 17,000 percent annual percentage rate (APR), the CFPB noted in 2014.Excessive bank overdraft fees lawsuits have been filed and/or settled against a variety of banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, M&T Bank, HSBC, UMB Bank and Wachovia. The lawsuits allege that banks charge excessive overdraft fees when customers' accounts go into overdraft. They further allege that the banks use a number of unethical practices to push their accounts into overdraft, such as misrepresenting customers' account balances and reordering debits and credits to accounts.One tactic that banks are accused of using to increase their profits from overdraft fees is reordering transactions on accounts. That means that regardless of what order transactions occurred in on a single day, some banks process the largest transactions first. That can lead to a lot in extra fees for a person to pay.For example, say a man spends $10, $20, $50 and $100 (in that order) in four transactions on one day, having $140 in his account. Either way, the account will likely still go into overdraft. But, if the account is debited in the order the purchases occurred, then only the final transaction will result in an overdraft fee of $35. However, if the transactions are processed from largest to smallest, then only the $100 purchase will be covered, leaving the customer to pay $35 for each of the final three transactionsfor a total of $105 in charges.Not all banks charge a flat $35 overdraft fee. Fees run from $19 up to $35. Some banks have tiered overdraft fees, so that the first overdraft transaction in a certain period costs one amount but any more overdraft transactions cost more.Another practice that banks are alleged to have used to push customers into overdraft is authorization holds. Authorization holds occur between the time a bank card purchase is made and the time the merchant settles the transaction. Prior to the merchant settling the transaction, the amount of the purchase is held, but it has not actually been withdrawn from the buyer's account yet. Once the merchant settles the account, which can occur a few days after the purchase is made, the funds are transferred to the merchant and the customer no longer has the money in his account.For example, a customer with a $100 in his account makes a purchase of $40. That $40 is held immediately for the merchant, but is not actually taken out of the account because the money has not yet been transferred to the merchant. The customer cannot access this money, but it is still, technically, in his account. When the merchant submits her batch of transactions, the money is then taken from the account and transferred to the merchant.This is all completely legitimate. However, some customers have complained that their banks back-date transactions to the date they occurred, not the date they were settled. They say this pushes their account into overdraft because they may not have had the funds necessary on the date the transaction occurred but did have the funds necessary by the day the transaction was settled.Another complaint is that banks have been irregularly posting debits and deposits on customers' accounts. For example, banks are required by law to make a check deposit available to a customer within a certain number of days. However, they can choose to make the deposits available sooner. Customers have complained that check posting is occurring inconsistently meaning that customers cannot predict when a deposit will be posted to their account. Sometimes, they say, the check is posted immediately while other times the check is not posted until after the account holder goes into overdraft.Credit unions, which are not-for-profit organizations run cooperatively by members, operate differently than banks but may still face similar legal issues as banks such as lawsuits claiming excessive overdraft fees. According to the, a wave of overdraft lawsuits has struck credit unions across the country."At least one dozen credit unions in nine states have been hit with class action lawsuits over their overdraft practices,reported in Jan. 2016. "Often, the dispute is over how credit unions disclose the methods under which they apply overdraft fees."In Nov. 2015, Tracy Fry, a Florida resident, filed a federal class action lawsuit in US District Court, Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, against MidFlorida Credit Union, alleging that the credit union abused overdraft policies, breached its contract with members and charged customers overdraft fees when they had sufficient money in their accounts to cover the transactions.The banks have said they are clarifying their overdraft policies and procedures to help customers manage their finances. Customers, for their part, have filed lawsuits against some of the financial institutions, claiming their overdraft policies are illegal, and that banks have used egregious tactics such as reordering of transactions to maximize profits from overdraft fees.Financial Institutions that could potentially face lawsuits regarding their overdraft procedures include:Since 2013 Pew Charitable Trusts has outlined its set of best and good practices for overdraft services in 2013 and has evaluated banks each year since to track the practices of the largest 50 banks that offer consumer checking accounts. According to Pew, since it began examining overdraft issues, the largest banks have adopted many of Pews good practices, but few meet all the best-practice standards, especially with regard to declining ATM and debit point-of-sale (POS) transactions.A recent study found that the largest percentage of bank overdraft fees are collected from bank customers who earn the lowest incomes. According to a 2016 issue brief from Pew Charitable Trusts, consumers often incur unexpected overdraft fees that exceed the original transaction amount.Consumer protection attorneys are investigating claims that TD Bank charges excessive overdraft fees through a trick called ordering. Anyone with a TD Bank checking account who has been charged multiple overdraft fees on the same day may have been charged these fees improperly and may have claims against TD Bank.TD Bank allegedly changes the ordering to cause the consumer to overdraft their account multiple times in the same day, when really they didnt overdraft.For example, say you have $50 in your checking account and make purchases of $10, $20, $15, and $100 in that order. You have only gone into overdraft on that last purchase. But TD bank has been accused of this ordering by processing the $100 charge first, and causing four overdraft fees.TD Bank has 1, 301 locations, including branches in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.In Jan. 2017, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) filed a lawsuit against TCF National Bank, accusing the bank of obscuring fees and adopting a loose definition of consent to preserve overdraft revenue. According to CFPB, TCF designed its application process to obscure the fees and make overdraft seem mandatory for new customers to open an account. Further, TCF allegedly adopted a loose definition of consent for existing customers in order to opt them into the service and pushed back on any customer who questioned the process. The CFPB lawsuit seeks redress for consumers, an injunction to prevent future violations, and a civil money penalty.In May 2017, a hearing was slated for final approval of a $7.8 million settlement in a class action, Case No. CJ-2015-00859,against BOK Financial (BOKF)with former bank customers who claimed the bank charged them excessive overdraft fees.In July 2011, Fifth Third Bank agreed to a settlement of $9.5 million in a class action lawsuit, Case No. 0:09-cv-6655,filed in November 2009.In the lawsuit, Fifth Third accountholders claimed that Fifth Third Bank improperly assessed overdraft fees for insufficient funds on debit card purchases and ATM withdrawals by "re-sequencing" the order of transactions to maximize the number of overdraft fees.Various banks have now settled lawsuits alleging they charged excessive overdraft fees or reordered transactions to push consumers into overdraft more quickly. The following banks reportedly agreed to pay:If you or a loved one has suffered damages by one of the banking institutions listed, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a lawyer who may evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation. En Espanol INVOKANA FREE INVOKANA LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Invokana claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Invokana Invokana Lawsuits Invokana Ketoacidosis Invokana Adverse Reactions SGLT2 Inhibitor FDA Warning Invokana Lawsuits Nov-4-20 Invokana lawsuits have been filed against Janssen Pharmaceuticals alleging Invokana side effects include an increased risk of kidney problems and cardiovascular problems. Additionally, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have issued warnings about kidney problems and diabetic ketoacidosisboth of which are serious conditionspotentially linked to Invokana use.Invokana (canagliflozin), is a type 2 diabetes medication and is in a class of drugs known as SGLT2 inhibitors. It works by causing the kidneys to remove sugar from the blood via urine and was first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2013. Some diabetes patients may be prescribed Invokamet, which is a diabetes medication combining Invokana with metformin hydrochloride (Glucophage).Other drugs in the SGLT2 class include dapagliflozin (Forxiga) and empagliflozin (Jardiance), Xigduo XR (dapagliflozin and metformin extended-release) and Glyxambi (empagliflozin and linagliptin).Invokana lawsuits have now been filed against Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, alleging patients suffered serious side effects as a result of the use of Invokana. One such lawsuit (Maddox v. Janssen Pharmaceuticals, et al, case number; 2:16-cv-01189) alleges patients who were prescribed Invokana "have suffered and may continue to suffer severe and permanent personal injuries, including diabetic ketoacidosis, stroke, heart attack, and severe kidney damage."Maddox's lawsuit alleges the defendants knew or should have known about the risks but failed to adequately warn patients, putting them at risk of diabetic ketoacidosis, cardiovascular problems and kidney damage. Specifically, Maddox argues he developed ketoacidosis and kidney damage less than a year after starting Invokana treatment.In May 2015, the FDA warned that Invokana was linked to ketoacidosis, a serious condition in which the body produces high levels of ketones. Patients were warned to watch for signs of ketoacidosis, including difficulty breathing, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, confusion and unusual fatigue or sleepiness and seek medical attention if any signs of ketoacidosis occur.According to the Mayo Clinic , DKA symptoms may also include excessive thirst, frequent urination and even fruity-scented breath. Diabetes patients can typically recognize signs of diabetic ketoacidosis via home blood and urine tests that indicate high blood sugar levels (hyperglycemia) and/or high ketone levels.The FDA's warning was based on its Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), which contained 20 cases of acidosis, ketoacidosis or ketosis in patients treated with SGLT2 inhibitors between March 2013 and June 2014. FDA notes that more Invokana FAERS reports have been received since June 2014. All patients reportedly required hospitalization.Diabetic ketoacidosis is a serious condition that occurs when insulin levels are too low resulting in excessively high blood sugar levels. The body then burns fat for fuel, resulting in ketones building up, which upsets the blood's chemical balance. A person experiencing DKA may require emergency care and hospitalization to treat the ketoacidosis.In March 2015, the FDA requested an update to Invokana's label to warn about the risk of genital mycotic infections (yeast infections) in both males and females. A study presented at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 2013 Scientific Sessions suggested 10 percent of women taking Invokana experienced a yeast infection compared with three percent of women who took a placebo.Invokana has reportedly been linked to an increased risk of kidney problems. In 2015, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices warned in its quarterly report that it had identified 457 serious adverse event reports, including kidney failure or impairment, dehydration and fluid imbalances, kidney stones, urinary tract infections and abnormal weight loss.On February 12, 2016, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) issued recommendations concerning SGLT2 Inhibitors. The agency warned that patients taking such medications should contact healthcare professionals immediately and treatment should be stopped if diabetic ketoacidosis is confirmed.In addition to Invokana and Invokamet, the FDA has also issued a warning about SGLT2 inhibitors potentially leading to DKA. The FDA is investigating type 2 diabetes medications including dapagliflozin (Forxiga) and empagliflozin (Jardiance). Additionally, two other SGLT2 inhibitors, Xigduo XR (dapagliflozin and metformin extended-release) and Glyxambi (empagliflozin and linagliptin) are also being investigated.Attorneys are investigating possible Invokana lawsuits. Patients who have suffered adverse events after using Invokanaor people whose loved ones died after suffering an adverse eventmay be eligible to file a lawsuit. If you or a loved one has suffered damages or injuries due to Invokana, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a Drug and Medical Device lawyer who will evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation. FREE TAXOTERE HAIR LOSS LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Taxotere Hair Loss claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Taxotere Usage and Side Effects Promotional materials are misleading if they contain a drug comparison that represents or suggests that a drug is safer or more effective than another drug, when this has not been demonstrated by substantial evidence or substantial clinical experience. Furthermore, promotional materials are misleading if they contain representations that the drug is better or more effective than has been demonstrated by substantial evidence or substantial clinical experience. Taxotere Studies Taxotere Lawsuit Allegations Taxotere Hair Loss Legal Help Apr-27-20 : Taxotere (generic name docetaxel) is a chemotherapy drug used in the treatment of certain cancers, including breast cancer. One drug side effect includes permanent hair loss, called alopecia. Taxotere lawsuits have been filed against Sanofi-Aventis, the manufacturer, claiming the drug company failed to warn of Taxotere hair loss.The FDA first approved Taxotere in 1996 to treat metastatic and adjuvant breast cancer. Of approximately 2.8 million American women with a history of breast cancer, about 75 percent (more than 2 million women) were prescribed Taxotere to treat their symptoms. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in American women, with 183,000 new cases diagnosed each year, and nearly 45,000 subjects die.The chemo drug can also be prescribed to treat prostate cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, advanced stomach cancer and head and neck cancer. Taxotere (other brand names are Docefrez, and Docetaxel Injection) works by interfering with the growth and spread of cancer cells in the body.In April 2009 the FDA issued a warning letter for a reprint carrier citing a study in thewhich compared the efficacy of Taxotere and Taxol (brand name for paclitaxel) in treating breast cancer. The agency warned Sanofi of the following:In a 2010 press release, Sanofi-Aventis reported that Taxotere has been used worldwide to treat more than 1.5 million patients, 100,000 of whom were participants in clinical trials. Five years later, the FDA issued another warning that "Cases of permanent alopecia have been reported". Before the FDA's update in 2015, the Taxotere label stated that hair generally grows back"after completing treatment. But Sanofi's studies indicated that 3 percent of patients experienced persistent or permanent hair loss.2006: A study by Dr. Scot Sedlacek at the Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers in Colorado found that 6.3 percent of breast cancer patients grew back less than 50 percent of their hair after they were given Taxotere in combination with Adriamycin (docorubicin) and Cytoxan (cyclophosphamide). The study concluded: "uch an emotionally devastating long-term toxicity from this combination must be taken into account when deciding on adjuvant chemotherapy programs in women who likely will be cured of their breast cancer."2010: A study by the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology warned about "an increasing number of reports of permanent chemotherapy-induced alopecia,"and blamed Taxotere for some of the cases.2013: A study published by the National Cancer Research Institute found permanent hair loss as a side effect in 10-15 percent of patients who took Taxotere.Taxotere chemotherapy patients claim that Sanofi-Aventis failed to warn about the risk of permanent baldness, and in doing so, patients were deprived of making an informed decision to choose other chemotherapy drugs, just as effective as Taxotere, without the risk of alopecia. Women in particular who are living with this avoidable condition feel like they are still having to fight cancer.According to the UK's Mirror.co (Nov 2015), Sanofi said the following: "Hair loss can affect some patients taking anti-cancer medications such as Taxotere. All clinicians are required to discuss the benefits and risks of any treatments with their patients. If any cancer patient has any concerns about hair loss they should discuss it with their clinician." One breast cancer survivor, whose hair didn't grow back six months after receiving Taxotere, toldthat she would "rather have lost my breast than lost my hair."A Taxotere lawsuit was filed against Sanofi-Aventis in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Hattie Carson, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 and underwent chemotherapy with Taxotere, claims that it caused her permanent baldness and the manufacturer failed to adequately warn female breast cancer patients and doctors about the risk of permanent baldness from Taxotere. Carson's lawsuit states that, "Although alopecia is a common side effect related to chemotherapy drugs, permanent alopecia is not. Defendants, through its publications and marketing material, misled Plaintiff, the public, and the medical community to believe that, as with other chemotherapy drugs that cause alopecia, patients' hair would grow back."Carson further claims that Sanofi-Aventis warned doctors and patients in Europe in 2005 and in Canada in 2012 about the risks of permanent hair loss from Taxotere side effects, but failed to provide such warnings to the U.S. patients and doctors until January 2016. (The FDA issued a warning in December 2015). Sanofi-Aventis is a French multinational pharmaceutical company based in France.If you or a loved one has suffered similar damages or injuries, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a personal injury lawyer who may evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation. FREE TESTOSTERONE TREATMENT LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Testosterone Treatment claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Low-T Testosterone Therapy Risks Testosterone Heart Attack Studies Androgel Testosterone Black Box Warning Testosterone Lawsuits Androgel Lawsuit Axiron Lawsuit Other Testosterone Treatments Failing to adequately research the risk of stroke or heart attack from testosterone therapy, especially among men with cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, blocked arteries, diabetes, obesity and other prior heart problems. Recklessly marketing testosterone treatments in direct-to-consumer advertisements that encourage otherwise health men to seek prescription medications for "Low T"if they are experiencing any number of general symptoms, such as lack of energy, weight gain, decreased sex drive and other natural issues experienced by men as they age. Testosterone Off-Label Marketing Lawsuit Testosterone Supplement Legal Help May-7-15 Men who take testosterone drugs are at increased risk of testosterone stroke and testosterone heart attack , according to recent studies. One testosterone drug, Androgel, warns on its label a number of testosterone side effects including high blood pressure, blood clots in the legs, and "serious problems"for people who have heart, kidney or liver disease. Other low-t treatment brand names include Androderm, Axirom, Bio-T-Gel, Delatestryl, Depo-Testosterone, Fortesta, Striant, Testim and Testope. Men who have suffered such side effects are filing testosterone lawsuits.The following studies have linked testosterone to testosterone heart risks.Men who have low testosterone and Type 2 diabetes face a greater risk of developing atherosclerosis a condition where plaque builds up in the arteries than men who have diabetes and normal testosterone levels, according to the Endocrine Society's. Authors of the study, titled "Low Testosterone Concentration and Atherosclerotic Disease Markers in Male Patients with Type 2 Diabetes," recommend that testosterone treatment should be reserved for men with clinical symptoms of hypogonadism and consistently low levels of testosterone. The Society also has called for large-scale, well-controlled trials to assess the long-term cardiovascular risks associated with testosterone therapy.A study titled Testosterone Therapy and Myocardial Infarction (January 2014) published by the Public Library of Science in conjunction with the University of Florida and the National Cancer Institute shows an association between testosterone therapy (TT) and cardiovascular disease. The researchers also noted that testosterone therapy is increasing despite the fact that in older men, and in younger men with pre-existing diagnosed heart disease, the risk of myocardial infarction shortly after they begin testosterone therapy is substantially increased.The PLOS ONE study reported that increased risk of heart attack among young men with prior heart disease is a "particular public health concern, as about 10 percent of the men in our study under age 65 years with a [testosterone therapy] prescription had a history of heart disease."Thealso associated cardiovascular risk with testosterone therapy. Researchers said the study warranted cautious testosterone prescribing and additional investigation. (See JAMA video While a number of studies have shown that treating low testosterone can improve men's sexual function, bone density, strength and lean muscle mass and at the same time lower cholesterol and insulin resistance, the recent JAMA study indicates that the risks outweigh the benefits. Researchers reported that men who used testosterone were 30 percent more likely to have a heart attack or stroke or to die during a three-year period than men with low hormone levels who didn't take the supplements. The study' 3,000 participants averaged 60 years of age and most of the men (hormone users and non-users) had other health problems including high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol and diabetes.Further, participants who began the study with clear, unobstructed coronary arteries were just as likely to have a heart attack, stroke, or die as men who entered the study with established coronary artery disease.Researchers in 2009 discontinued a trial of about 200 frail older men with a high prevalence of heart disease due to a high rate of heart attacks among those taking testosterone. The trial was funded by the National Institutes of Health. According to(Nov 5, 2013) another study sponsored by the Institute is studying the effects of testosterone on walking ability, fatigue, sexual function, verbal memory, hemoglobin and plaque buildup of nearly 800 men aged 65 and older with low testosterone. The results won't be available for at least a year.Interestingly, studies funded by pharmaceutical companies have concluded there is no increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events associated with testosterone drugs such as AndroGel.AndroGel 1% and AndroGel 1.62% are both prescription products used for daily testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). They are manufactured by AbbVie (formerly part of Abbott Labs). The gel is applied to the skin of the shoulders and upper arms.Secondary exposure to testosterone in children and women can occur with the use of testosterone gel in men. Cases of secondary exposure to testosterone have been reported in children. Consequently the FDA placed a black box warning about the risks of AndroGel 1% to children and women in September 2009.In June, 2014, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered the consolidation of all federal litigation over testosterone replacement therapies in the Northern District of Illinois.Five Androgel lawsuits were filed on February 4, 2014 in Illinois federal court against the manufacturers AbbVie Inc., and Abbott Laboratories, Inc., claiming the manufacturers concealed facts about the serious side effects associated with the drug.The first of what is expected to be many testosterone therapy treatment lawsuits. (1:14-cv-772), was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division by plaintiff Kenneth Aurecchia, who claims he suffered a heart attack due to the drug. He also alleges other physical and emotional damage after taking Androgel for what he believed were symptoms of low testosterone after watching commercials for the product.A testosterone lawsuit filed September 2014 in federal court in Newark claims Eli Lilly, the maker of Axiron, put users at risk by aggressively marketing its testosterone replacement drug while failing to adequately warn about the risk of heart attack and stroke.Plaintiff Patrick Miller, age 56, started taking Axiron in September of 2012 and suffered a heart attack about one month later. The Axiron lawsuit says that Miller's doctor would not have prescribed Axiron if he had been warned of the increased risks of heart problems caused by using the drug.The lawsuit further alleges that Lilly markets Axiron to men by describing "symptoms" of "Low T," such as decreased sexual desire, erectile dysfunction, fatigue and loss of energy, that are caused by a "non-existent and unrecognized medical condition called Low T," Rather, those symptoms naturally occur as a result of the aging process.Miller's lawsuit accuses Lilly of failure to warn, defective design, defective manufacturing, negligence, breach of implied warranty, breach of express warranty, fraud and negligent misrepresentation. The Axiron testosterone lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, and more.More than 5 million prescriptions for testosterone therapy were written in the US in 2011with sales of almost $2 billion. Treatment can be delivered as a gel (such as Androgel), cream, patch or pill, injection or implant. Along with Androgel, the following brand names designed to treat low-t also qualify for a potential class action lawsuit:: Generic name oxymetholone is an anabolic steroid, which is a man-made form of a hormone similar to testosterone. It is used to treat certain types of anemia by increasing red blood cells and used off-label as a muscle builder. It is also marketed as "helpful in reducing fatigue". It is ingested in pill form.A testosterone patch or transdermal film now made by Actavis, Inc. (formerly Watson Pharmaceuticals), Androderm is a transdermal system that delivers testosterone supplementation through skin in the back, abdomen, thighs, or arms. The product is available in two strengths that deliver 2 or 4 mg of testosterone to the user per day. Androderm was approved by the FDA in 1995.generic name Methyltestosterone, is a man-made form of testosterone. Each capsule contains 10 mg of MethylTESTOSTERone USP.generic name Fluoxymesterone, is an androgen. It is taken orally and is frequently misused for its muscle-enhancing effects.A topical solution to treat low-t that is made by Eli Lilly and was approved in 2010. Axiron is applied to the armpits in a manner similar to deodorant.A once-daily testosterone treatment gel made by GlaxoSmithKline was approved in February 2012, but is rarely prescribed.(Testosterone Enanthate, brand names Delatestryl, Tesamone) A testosterone injection treatment or intramuscular agent made by Savient Pharmaceuticals. Approved in 2003, it is injected into the buttock muscle usually every 1 to 4 weeks. Among a list of side effects it warns"Before using this medication, tell your doctor or pharmacist your medical history, especially of: heart disease (such as heart failure, chest pain, heart attack).(testosterone cypionate) is an intramuscular agent for low testosterone (low-t) introduced by Pfizer in 2003, and available in two strengths, 100 mg/mL and 200 mg/mL testosterone cypionate. On its website Pfizer states that Depo-Testosterone has been "used for more than 30 years in the treatment of males with low testosterone". Sun Pharmaceutical Industries received approval from the FDA in June 2103 for its Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) for generic version of depo-testosterone injection, testosterone cypionate injection USP, 100 mg/ml and 200mg/ml.(Dehydroepiandrosterone) is a hormone produced by the body' adrenal glands. DHEA is banned by the NCAA. Taken in tablet form, it is marketed to increase sexual function and build body mass.(testosterone topical) is sold in cream form andis sold as a gel, which is absorbed by the skin.A testosterone spray gel that is applied to front and inner thighs daily. Fortesta is made by Endo Pharmaceuticals and approved in December 2010 as a Class III product for topical use for men with low testosterone. Endo warns that "afety and efficacy of Fortesta Gel in males less than 18 years old have not been established."Endo also warns that its product "can transfer from your body to others Women and children should avoid contact with the unwashed or unclothed areas where Fortesta Gel has been applied."(Methyltestosterone) is an androgen. The 10mg tablet is taken orally, from 1-4 times per day. It is packaged by Global Pharmaceuticals, Division of Impax Laboratories Inc.(generic: testosterone buccal system), is a tablet containing 30 mg of testosterone that slowly releases testosterone into the mucous membranes of the mouth. Made by Columbia Laboratories Inc. and approved by the FDA in Jun 2003, it was purchased by Auxilium Pharmaceuticals in April 2011.: (generic name Testolactone) blocks the production of the hormone estrogen and is used to treat some types of breast cancer. It is no longer available in the US.A widely used gel treatment for testosterone replacement that is applied to the shoulders daily. It was approved in October 2002 and made by Auxilium.Made by Slate Pharamceuticals, a testosterone implant containing approximately 75mg of testosterone is placed under the skin, releasing the hormone over a period of 3 to 6 months after insertion. Testopel was developed in the early 1970s but not approved by the FDA until 2008.About the width of a dime, pellets are implanted subcutaneously under the skin in an approximately 15-minute procedure. Pellets typically last for 3 to 4 months and up to 6 months per dose.capsules, along with prescribed as testosterone therapy, is also be used in certain adolescent boys to trigger puberty in those with delayed puberty.comes in a soft gelatin capsule marked "ORG DV3" and contains 40 mg of testosterone undecanoate., the same brand name as Androderm in the US, is a testosterone transdermal patch.Manufacturers of the above testosterone treatments have been accused of placing profits before the safety and health of consumers by:Attorneys are seeing an increase in claims from men using low-T treatments or testosterone therapy. This increase is mainly due to aggressive direct-to-consumer advertising by the manufacturers of testosterone supplements and drugs. Doctors are prescribing testosterone treatment off-label to help men fight their natural decline in testosterone as they age and allegedly build muscle mass, strengthen bone density and improve sex drive. Off-labelof testosterone supplements and drugs is illegal.Testosterone manufacturers such as AbbVie aggressively market its testosterone drug by telling men the following: "If you're bored, stressed or aging normally, you probably have Low T symptoms: grumpiness, less energy, lower libido and "falling asleep after dinner." These "symptoms"are also associated with the natural process of aging.In 2000 the FDA told AbbVie that "claims and representation that suggest that AndroGel is indicated for men with 'age-associated' hypogonadism or 'andropause' are misleading."The agency said that AndroGel was only approved for men with hypogonadisma condition in which the body doesn't produce enough testosterone.In 2003 a lawsuit was filed against Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. (which was later bought by Abbott Laboratories) alleging False Claims Act violations, The whistleblower suitclaims that off-label promotion resulted in millions of dollars worth of false claims submitted to government health care plans by pharmacies who filled the prescriptions of the drugs.Further, in order to boost sales, Solvay allegedly conspired with doctors to prescribe off-label uses of the drugs and paid unlawful kickbacks to doctors who prescribed the drugs in the form of "bogus speaker and research fees, resort weekends, cash payments, or Harley-Davidson goods".The lawsuit includes a leaked document by Solvay discussing the need to expand the testosterone market by 36.5 percent, according to a McClatchy Newspapers article. According to the article, Solvay talked about pushing the drug to primary care physicians, described as "easily influenced."A 2004 memo on AndroGel sales strategies said the sales force was putting extra emphasis on rural areas, since "rural doctors are typically very accessible, give us plenty of time to teach them the right way to diagnose and treat, and they have the patients."A further document that was disclosed in a lawsuit against Solvay, then the maker of Androgel, discussed a need to expand the testosterone market by 36.5 percent, according to a McClatchy Newspapers article.AbbVie, Inc., in response to the study, said that testosterone treatments are approved by the FDA, and the risks are listed. As noted above, the FDA has only approved testosterone drugs to men who have been diagnosed with low testosterone levels.According to Abbott, AndroGel annual US sales are more than $600 million.Testosterone therapy studies raise concerns about testosterone supplements that men should discuss with their doctors. Health professionals advise that patients should not discontinue testosterone treatment without first consulting their physician.If you or a loved one has suffered similar damages or injuries, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a lawyer who may evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation. FREE TRANSVAGINAL MESH LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Transvaginal Mesh claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Transvaginal Mesh Complications Transvaginal Mesh Approval Transvaginal Mesh and FDA Timeline Transvaginal Mesh Lawsuits and Settlements misled the FDA, medical community and the public at large regarding the safety and efficacy of transvaginal products failed to conduct appropriate testing and research to determine risks of surgical mesh used for female pelvic disorders concealed knowledge that their products could cause permanent and debilitating injuries had a legal duty to insure the safety and effectiveness of their products but provided false and misleading information failed to establish methods that are safe and effective for removal of transvaginal mesh implants American Medical Systems/ Endo Health Solutions Boston Scientific Coloplast C.R. Bard Ethicon/Johnson & Johnson Medtronic/Covidien Mentor O.B. Tape Neomedic Tissue Fixation System (TFS) Transvaginal Mesh Legal Help Nov-10-21 Transvaginal mesh, also known as pelvic mesh or TVM bladder sling, has been implanted in tens of thousands of women to treat pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Many of those women have suffered severe transvaginal mesh complications, resulting in more than 100,000 defective device lawsuits filed and possibly making the vaginal mesh one of the largest medical device mass torts ever. Transvaginal mesh settlements are ongoing..Transvaginal mesh was first approved in 1996 to treat pelvic organ prolapse (POP) or stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Since that time the mesh has caused tens of thousands of women to suffer serious TVM side effects, including mesh erosion, organ perforations, and chronic infections. And severe pain. Sometimes the incontinence problem the mesh was supposed to treat worsened after implant.Some women have undergone multiple surgeries to remove the vaginal mesh, but in some cases the damage has allegedly been permanent. Sometimes the mesh has caused irreversible damage, such as nerve damage. Often the mesh cannot all be removed. In addition to surgery, treatment of complications associated with the mesh can include IV therapy, blood transfusions and drainage of hematomas or abscesses.Transvaginal mesh is typically made of polypropylene, a synthetic material that has caused chronic foreign body reaction in many patients. This reaction begins with inflammation causing degradation of mesh and further leads to chronic infections.The decision to implant mesh vaginally--such as a TVT sling procedure-- rather than inserting the mesh through abdominal incisions was never backed by clinical trials: the FDA did not require transvaginal mesh manufacturers to conduct studies on mesh products in humans before they were implanted.The 501K clearance process costs manufacturers a user fee of $4,049, payable to the FDA. The mesh was fast tracked and products allowed onto the market without any advance safety testing due to a 1976 law. It classified medical devices into three risk categories, with clinical data required only for devices in the highest-risk category, Class III. TVM was classified Class II.Surgeons use the mesh abdominallynot vaginally-- to repair POP and SUI.ProtoGen Sling, the first transvaginal mesh sling device - manufactured by Boston Scientific for the surgical treatment of SUIis approved through the 510(k) premarket program.: ProtoGen is recalled after the FDA found the device had a higher than expected rate of vaginal erosion and did not appear to function as intended.: Gynemesh PS, made by Johnson & Johnsons Ethicon unit, is the first mesh approved for POP repair.: The FDA approves transvaginal mesh "kits" to be implanted vaginally. The kits are marketed as risk-free solutions for SUI and POP.: In the Obstetrics & Gynecology Journal safety reviewers found that more than 15 percent of transvaginal mesh patients experienced mesh erosion, which often results in pain and infections. The study concluded that surgeons should be aware of the potential complications of synthetic meshes and Until data on the safety and efficacy of the intravaginal slingplasties are available, these procedures cannot be recommended.: FDA alerts the public that TVM mesh surgeries have resulted in serious complications and even death but that complications are rare.: FDA upgrades its warning after receiving reports of serious complications and injuries. It now says that complications are not rare and that TVM carried more risks than other surgical options.: Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen petitions the FDA to take transvaginal mesh off the market, called it a poster-child example of the fundamental failure ... to protect the publics health and welfare.: FDA Advisory Obstetrics-Gynecology Devices Panel suggests that TVM implants be reclassified from moderate risk to high risk (Class III), which would mean that manufacturers would have to conduct studies based on human testing.: FDA orders transvaginal mesh manufacturers to study and research the risks associated with their products safety and effectiveness.: FDA issues 95 post-market study orders to 34 manufacturers of POP mesh products and 14 orders to 7 manufacturers of SUI mesh.C.R. Bard is found negligent in its handling of TVM: it didnt properly test the products (Avaulta) before putting them on the market. Johnson & Johnsons Ethicon unit stops selling four lines of vaginal mesh devices and issues an Ethicon transvaginal mesh recall of its Gynecare line of TVM products, though the company maintains that the recall is not safety related.: FDA proposes two orders for transvaginal mesh POP repair to address the risks involved. Once final, manufacturers will be required to provide clinical data in a premarket approval (PMA) application to support the safety and effectiveness of surgical mesh for transvaginal POP. If the orders are finalized and the mesh reclassified as a high-risk device, manufacturers will be required to submit a PMA (510k) application.: FDA reclassifies transvaginal mesh products to treat POPas Class III High Risk Devices. The FDA requires manufacturers to submit a PMA application to support the safety and effectiveness of surgical mesh for the transvaginal repair of POP. Some advocacy groups, such as Public Citizens Health Research Group, criticize the FDA for allowing transvaginal mesh on the market. Based on the timeline for the new orders, devices that advocates say are potentially harmful will be able to stay on the market until at least 2018 - almost 10 years after serious complications with transvaginal mesh were first reported.: Boston Scientific adds new safety labels to its pelvic meshes and slings, saying they are considered permanent implants and that removal can be complicated or impossible.: Deadline for transvaginal mesh manufacturers to submit a PMA application for their devices.More than 100,000 lawsuits have been filed against the makers of transvaginal mesh devices alleging the medical devices were defectively designed and caused serious complications. Transvaginal mesh lawsuits claim that Manufacturers/Companies:Some lawsuits have been settled or resulted in awards to the plaintiffs, but many claims are still pending. Over 40,000 lawsuits (about 75 percent) have been filed in West Virginia federal court including seven federal multidistrict litigations (MDLs) overseen by Chief Judge Joseph R. Goodwin. The rest are in state courts. Companies involved in the MDLs include: C.R. Bard; Ethicon Inc. (Johnson & Johnson); American Medical Systems; Coloplast Corp.; Boston Scientific Group; and Cook Medical Inc.The majority of verdicts have found in favor of victims, some of which have led to multimillion-dollar settlements. Despite Judge Goodwin warning device makers to cut their losses and urging them to settle outstanding claims, avoid massive court costs and even more losses, a few mesh manufacturers such as J&J had been reluctant to settle. Other companies opted to settle cases before trial. American Medical Systems faces approximately 46,000 lawsuits in MDL 2325. AMS was the first transvaginal mesh manufacturer to resolve its product liability cases and closed its unit that sells the devices.To date, AMS is the only company to offer large-scale settlements to end transvaginal mesh litigation. In June 2013, American Medical Systems parent company, Endo Health Solutions, agreed to pay $54 million to settle an undisclosed number of mesh lawsuits, and an additional $830 million in 2014. Those settlements typically involve women who have undergone one revision surgery or no revision surgeries to repair damage allegedly caused by the mesh. Women who have undergone two or more revision surgeries have not been included in the settlements so far.Endo International acquired AMS in 2011. Endo has agreed to pay out roughly $1.5 billion to settle most of the cases claiming injuries from its vaginal mesh devices, which include the Perigee, Apogee and Elevate implants. The company has stopped making AMS transvaginal mesh.Some of 36,000 product liability cases against Boston Scientific have gone to trial. The first federal bellwether trial to go to court resulted in an $18.5 million award to four TVM victims in November 2014. The previous month saw an award of $26.7 million against Boston Scientific regarding its Pinnacle mesh device. Boston Scientific settlement in September 2014 totalled $73.4 million in its Obtryx transvaginal sling lawsuit, later reduced to $34 million. Three months later a jury awarded four women a total of $18.5 million and a jury in Florida awarded another four women $26.7 million. As a result of these huge jury verdicts, Boston Scientific has moved to settle remaining cases but still faces approximately 20,000 mesh lawsuits.The Danish medical device manufacturer Coloplast faces about 2,000 vaginal mesh lawsuits in a consolidated federal multidistrict litigation. In 2014 a $16 million settlement was reached between Coloplast and about 400 vaginal mesh plaintiffs.New Jersey-based C.R. Bard currently faces around 10,000 in MDL 2187. Lawsuits filed against Bard involve the Avaulta transvaginal mesh. Bard is the most recent of many transvaginal mesh settlements. The company agreed to pay more than $200 million to settle 3,000 cases by women injured by Avaulta. Experts predict that most women will take the money, which works out to about $67,000 per case, rather than wait for a trial date.A series of trials involving Bards Avaulta lawsuits began in mid-2013. In the first case, a jury awarded the plaintiff $2 million in damages, including punitive damages. During the first day of trial in the second case, an agreement to settle was reached, avoiding another potentially substantial jury award. The third case was also settled shortly before trial was set to begin. The company has moved to settle some of the vaginal mesh lawsuits that it faces, but more than 10,000 cases remain unresolved.In its second large-scale mesh settlement, Bard agreed to pay more than $200 million ($67,000 per case) in August 2015 to resolve an estimated 3,000 cases. Legal experts said that the payout was made to avoid a string of multi-million dollar verdicts that could lead to bankruptcy for Bard. In October 2014 Bard agreed to pay more than $21 million to settle over 500 mesh lawsuits, averaging $43,000 per claim.In April 2016 Judge Joseph Goodwin dismissed nearly 150 product liability lawsuits brought against Bard with prejudice, meaning they cannot be appealed, writing that all claims have been compromised and settled, according to court documents. Terms of the settlements were not disclosed.Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, Ethicon faces 33,000 lawsuits in MDL 2327. Ethicon makes the Gynecare mesh products. In early 2014, Ethicon came under fire for negligently destroying thousands of documents related to the development of some of its vaginal mesh products.In 2013, a jury ordered Ethicon to pay $11.11 million to Linda Gross for her injuriesshe underwent 18 revision surgeries. Unfortunately, revision surgery doesnt guarantee that all symptoms will disappear. In September 2014, a plaintiff was awarded more than $3 million in her lawsuit against Ethicon. In March 2015, Ethicon was ordered by pay $5.7 million to plaintiff Coleen Perry, who suffered severe complications after being implanted with its TVT Abbrevo vaginal sling By January 2016 and after a number of plaintiff awards, J&J agreed to pay $120 million to settle 2,000-3,000 mesh lawsuits. A regulatory filing at the time showed that J&J still faced more than 42,000 mesh cases. In April a $5 million settlement recently became public, divulging how much it could cost to resolve the claims.Medtronic Inc., bought Covidien Plc in 2014 in an effort to help it compete with Johnson & Johnson. In a June 2015 SEC filing the company said that its Covidien unit was involved in nearly 11,500 mesh lawsuits. Covidien supplied the mesh to Bard, and was also included in the dismissals with Bard in 2016 (above). Medtronic set aside $180 million in 2015 to settle an undisclosed number of mesh cases. Mentor O.B Tape vaginal sling was removed from the market in 2006 due to a design defect, just three years after its approval. After several years of litigation settlements have been reached in most Mentor OB Tape lawsuits, including a $4.4 million jury award to Florida resident Tessa Taylor in February 2016.Neomedic International, a Spanish medical device maker, faces around 130 mesh lawsuits as part of a federal mass tort centralized in West Virginia. The company in December 2015 paid $2.19 million to settle an undisclosed number of mesh lawsuits.Lawsuits have been filed against Tissue Fixation System (TFS), a pelvic mesh tape that is used to treat Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP). The lawsuits allege that TFS Manufacturing Pty and TFS Surgical (US) aggressively marketed their Tensioned Mini-Sling with Anchors while exaggerating the product's safety.The number of transvaginal mesh lawsuits has now increased to more than 100,000 in the United States, and more than 135,000 worldwide. Given the number of injured women and subsequent lawsuits, its likely a matter of time until these mesh devices are permanently taken off the market.If you or a loved one has suffered damages in a Transvaginal Mesh case, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a Medical Device lawyer who may evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation. FREE VICTOZA CANCER LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Victoza Cancer claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Victoza Pancreatic Cancer Victoza Thyroid Cancer Victoza Cancer Legal Help May-8-15 In March 2013 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced results of a study suggesting Victoza side effects could include an increased risk of Victoza pancreatitis. Victoza has already reportedly been linked in animal studies to an increased risk of a rare thyroid cancer, according to the FDA. So far, no Victoza lawsuits have been filed, although other drugs in the same medication class are the subject of lawsuits.On March 14, 2013, the FDA issued a Drug Safety Communication, alerting the public to a study that suggested Victoza and other type 2 diabetes medications were linked to an increased risk of pancreatitis and pre-cancerous cellular changes, called pancreatic duct metaplasia. These risks were reportedly found in a group of drugs known as incretin mimetics, which includes Byetta, Bydureon, Victoza, Januvia and other medications.At the time, the FDA said it was not changing the safety warnings of the drugs, but that it was reviewing data from the study, including requesting the methodology used so the agency could investigate the risk of pancreatic toxicity.Other drugs in the incretin mimetic class have been linked to an increased risk of acute pancreatitis, including fatal and nonfatal instances of the condition. When Victoza was approved, the FDA noted that in five clinical trials of Victoza, there were seven cases of pancreatitis in patients using Victoza, compared with one case of pancreatitis in a patient who used a different diabetes medicine.On April 19, 2012, the public advocacy group Public Citizen filed a petition with the FDA requesting the agency remove Victoza from the market. Public Citizen cited the risk of thyroid cancer, pancreatitis, serious allergic reactions and kidney failure as outweighing any possible benefits to the drug. In a news release, Public Citizen noted that two FDA pharmacologists and an FDA clinical safety reviewer advised against approving Victoza.Victoza, known generically as liraglutide, is used to treat type 2 diabetes and is made by Novo Nordisk. It was approved by the FDA in 2010 to treat bype 2 diabetes. When Victoza was approved, the FDA noted that animal data suggested a rare type of thyroid cancer, known as medullary thyroid cancer, was linked to the use of Victoza. According to the FDA, studies in mice and rats showed liraglutide was linked to the development of tumors in the thyroid gland, "especially at doses that were 8-times higher than what humans would receive."As a result, the FDA requested a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy for Victoza and further required a five-year epidemiological study of Victoza.If you or a loved one has suffered damages or injuries from Victoza, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a Drug/Medical Device lawyer who may evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation. Concerns have been raised about the possibility that Zofran side effects could include a risk of birth defects when mothers were prescribed Zofran to treat morning sickness. Although studies have produced conflicting results about the risk of Zofran birth defects, one news investigation has reportedly turned up reports of heart defects and kidney malformations in newborns who were exposed to Zofran prior to birth. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued warnings about the risk of serious Zofran adverse events. En Espanol ZOFRAN FREE ZOFRAN BIRTH DEFECT LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Zofran Birth Defect claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation. GET LEGAL HELP NOW Zofran Side Effects Zofran Birth Defects Zofran and Serotonin Syndrome Zofran Lawsuits Zofran Birth Defects Legal Help Feb-3-15 Zofran (known generically as ondansetron or ondansetron hydrocholoride) is approved by the FDA to prevent nausea and vomiting linked to cancer chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery. It is often prescribed off-label to treat morning sickness in pregnant women. Zofran is in a class of medications called 5-HT3 receptor antagonists and is given either orally or through an injection.In 2011, the FDA issued a warning that use of Zofran could result in an abnormal heart rhythm, including QT interval prolongation and Torsade de Pointes. The FDA advised patients with congenital long QT syndrome should not be treated with Zofran. Additionally, the agency required GlaxoSmithKline to conduct a thorough QT study to determine the degree of risk.Studies concerning Zofran and birth defects have returned conflicting results. One study, published in(2/28/13) found no link between the use of Zofran while pregnant and an increased risk of spontaneous abortion, still birth or major birth defects. A different study based on the same database used for, but covering a longer period reportedly suggested a two-fold risk of cardiac birth defects.That second study was presented at the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology in Montreal in 2013. Researchers found that women who took a different drug, metoclopramide, had no increased risk of having a baby with birth defects.In 2014 a Canadian newspaper,(6/25/14) undertook an investigation of Zofran. The investigation found that at least 20 Canadian women who used ondansetron while pregnant experienced fetal side effects, including infant death, low birth weight, and heart and kidney defects. The heart defects included heart murmur and atrial septal defect.Concerns have also been raised about the risk of serotonin syndrome in pregnant women who take a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) and Zofran or another 5-HT3 receptor antagonist at the same time. The concern is that both types of medication modify the amount of serotonin in the patient's brain, which could lead to serotonin syndrome, a potentially fatal condition. Symptoms of serotonin syndrome include confusion, agitation, lethargy, coma, hyperthermia, nausea, vomiting and tremors.According to a report from the FDA, as of February 13, 2013, the agency had received 39 reports of serotonin syndrome linked to ondansetron.In 2012, the US Department of Justice announced that GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Zofran, would pay more than $1 billion to settle claims that it illegally marketed Zofran and other medications for off-label, unapproved uses. Specifically, GlaxoSmithKline allegedly "promoted certain forms of Zofran, approved only for post-operative nausea, for the treatment of morning sickness in pregnant women." Although doctors are free to prescribe Zofran for off-label use, it is illegal for a drug company to market its medications for unapproved uses.If you or a loved one has suffered similar damages or injuries, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a Drug and Medical Device lawyer who may evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation. - Governor Shettima of Borno says Nigeria's presidents attained the position by chance - He hints he will not contest for residency - The governor of Borno says Boko Haram has been weakened Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno state has said that only fools aspire to be Nigerias president due to the dynamics and intricacy of the position and hints that he has no plan to contest for presidency. In an interview with vanguard, Shettima said the emergence of Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Musa YarAdua, Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari followed similar paths of chance rather than interest. He said: If I have to be brutally frank I will tell you that given our political dynamics that have been with us from time immemorial, only a fool aspires for the presidency of Nigeria. The presidency of this country is one that you dont aspire to become if you have regard for our history and if you know what you are doing. READ ALSO: Ex-president Jonathan ignored Chibok girls for 19 days President Muhammadu Buhari aspired to be president in 2003, 2007 and 2011, he didnt succeed because he was the one seeking the office. But ahead of the 2015 elections, Nigerians unanimously wanted him, not him seeking for the Presidency from onset that time around, he had to be convinced or perhaps begged to re-contest and those who begged him read the body language of Nigerians, majority of Nigerians were fed up with the PDP and because the main issue was about corruption the person Nigerians needed was one that his integrity was absolutely certain; Nigerians wanted a man with capacity to fight corrupt public officials with insanity for corruption and Buhari was that man. If you cast your mind back to previous years, President Shehu Shagari wanted to become a Senator, he didnt aspire for the Presidency, Nigerians choose him through evaluators in the NPN who made him the partys flag bearer; when we returned to democracy in 1999, President Obasanjo was in prison so the issue of aspiring for the Presidency didnt even arise, he was chosen to come and be President and Nigerians accepted him. When Obasanjo was leaving in 2007, we all know how some outgoing Governors scrambled for the Presidency. The late Umaru Musa YarAdua was not an aspirant; in fact, someone told me that when he was to be chosen, most Governors who were his colleagues didnt have his phone number because he was reserved. His Excellency, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was a deputy governor and didnt even aspire to be governor but he ended up becoming president of this country. So, Nigeria has its peculiar political dynamics. It is good that we get to a level people can aspire based on their convictions and readiness but the reality is that for now, you will be foolish to aspire for the Nigerian presidency. On the issue of Boko Haram, Governor Shettima said the insurgency has been decimated to a great extent. READ ALSO: Chibok girls: Shettima explains why he did not inform GEJ They have been defeated for now. We have won the battle but winning the war requires long term planning and execution. For now, they have been defeated as a fighting force, they dont have the capacity to hold on to territory in this country as they used to, they have been truly, truly degraded in their capability to inflict pain. It will not be accurate to say that there is no Boko Haram in Borno, but by and large, they have been sufficiently decimated that they no longer pose any serious threat to the territorial integrity of this country. But note that in November 2008, ten terrorists held, Mumbai, a city of 20 million for three days and these guys dwell on the oxygen of publicity because in their campaign to burn, maim, loot and what they are craving for is a higher ranking in the Jihadist world. You may read the full interview here. Source: Legit.ng New Delhi: The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), an industry body for automobile sector, on Friday nearly halved its growth forecast for passenger vehicle sales for 2016-17 to 6-8 percent, as it expects demand to weaken due to new measures to curb pollution and increase in taxes. This is for the second time in two months that SIAM revised downwards its growth forecast for passenger vehicle. The auto body in March had revised the growth forecast of passenger vehicles for 2016-17 to 11 per cent from 12 per cent after the imposition of infrastructure cess ranging between 1-4 per cent in the Budget. The industry is not confident of growing at 11 per cent. What is happening in the last few months does not promote or excite the industry, said SIAM deputy director General Sugato Sen. Mr Sen said that a consensus of analyst estimates showing growth was likely to be between 6-8 per cent now looked right. Parent companies of global car makers are not very optimistic. They are worried about the policies, he said. The Supreme Court had imposed ban on sale of large diesel cars in New Delhi, which was initially until March 31 but has now been extended. Centre also in February imposed a sales levy of up to 4 percent on new passenger vehicles depending on fuel type, to help fight air pollution and congestion. The two have put together a team of about 200 people to work on the project (Photo: Pixabay) Mumbai: European aerospace group Airbus has signed a deal with industrial group Siemens to work on hybrid electric propulsion systems with the aim of building small planes that could be partly powered by electricity by 2030. The two companies will aim to demonstrate the technical feasibility of various hybrid electric propulsion systems by 2020, they said in a statement on Thursday. The two have put together a team of about 200 people to work on developing electrically powered aircraft and will make "significant contributions" to the project. "We believe that by 2030 passenger aircraft below 100 seats could be propelled by hybrid propulsion systems and we are determined to explore this possibility together with world-class partners like Siemens," Airbus Group CEO Tom Enders said. Bhubaneswar: South Korean steelmaker Posco on Friday told the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that it would not be able to set up a $12 billion steel plant in Odisha by July 2017, as the construction is yet to begin. Regulatory hurdles have pushed back the project, billed as India's biggest foreign direct investment, for more than a decade. Poscos lawyer said after a hearing in the NGT that the company has not been able to obt-ain forest and other clearances while its environmental clearance is valid until July 2017. Posco could scrap plans for the Odisha project after a new law made it costlier to source iron ore for the plant. Steel prices have also dipped due to overcapacity. Meanwhile, after meeting Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, South Korean ambassador Cho Hyun said his country has many other things to offer, not just Posco. While stating that South Korea is in favour of more investment in India, Mr Hyun said the South Korean government will honour Pos-cos decision which will be on their commercial consideration. Brunswick Developments has completed the letting of four units at Marina Boardwalk, Phase One of the mixed use West Quay Development at Brighton Marina. TGI Fridays has taken a 25-year lease on the 4,986 sq ft (463 sq m) Unit 2, which will be its first restaurant in Brighton. In [] Tiger, Skechers and White Stuff have each signed ten-year leases at The Mall at Cribbs Causeway in Bristol, following other recent lettings to Kiko, Virgin Holidays and Smiggle . Danish homeware retailer Tiger will take a 2,400 square foot store and British fashion & lifestyle brand White Stuff will [] It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search? Search for: Search Atomic charges in chemical solutions are like Switzerland -- they strive for neutrality. The tendency to balance charges drives dynamics when charged atoms or molecules, called ions, are present in solutions. Recently, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have found new ways to influence selectivity for specific positively charged ions (cations) with the addition of simple receptors, not for cations but rather for negatively charged ions (anions). This discovery, which provides a new twist on selectivity, proves that adding an anion receptor can affect the selectivity of extractants used to separate metals. Better selectivity via the addition of anion receptors to enhance discrimination between metals, such as sodium and cesium, could improve future environmental cleanup efforts. "This is the first instance of using an anion receptor to enhance selectivity for a cation," said Neil Williams of ORNL's Chemical Separations Group. He presented this work in Honolulu in December at Pacifichem 2015 (which convenes chemists from Pacific Rim nations including Japan, China and Australia who might not normally attend a scientific meeting in the United States). "The basic research shows that you can modify the selectivity of an extractant using an anion receptor. This proof of principle could have future broader implications in removal of contaminants like cesium from ocean water, groundwater or nuclear waste in storage tanks." The project takes a novel approach conceived by principal investigator Bruce Moyer of ORNL. Moyer pioneered the use of host-guest chemistry in separations -- in which complexes of two or more molecules or ions are held together in structural relationships by forces other than those of full covalent bonds -- for cleaning up legacy radioactive waste at DOE sites. His fundamental research into trapping cesium was applied in a process that was engineered and scaled up by partners at Argonne, Idaho, Pacific Northwest, Oak Ridge and Savannah River national laboratories. It was deployed in a nuclear-waste treatment plant that since 2008 has processed more than 5.5 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste at the Savannah River Site. Such research relies on the fact that receptor molecules attract metals with complementary properties. The strength of the binding varies based on sterics and/or electronics. Certain extractants will bind to a specific metal atom strongly, whereas many other extractants show no such preference. The ORNL researchers explored ways to increase the selectivity of extractants for elements in the first column of the periodic table, which carry a positive charge and include cesium, potassium, sodium and lithium. They started with simple extractants based on phenol, which is a hydroxyl group (OH) attached to an aromatic ring, and added a long hydrocarbon chain to improve their solubility in organic solvents. Then they mixed an anion receptor -- calix[4]pyrrole (C4P), a cyclic molecule consisting of four linked pyrrole subunits (rings of four carbons and a nitrogen bearing a hydrogen) -- with the phenol in the organic solutions. When bound to an extractant with a negative charge (in this case the long-chain phenol that has lost its positively charged hydrogen by reaction with hydroxide in the aqueous phase), C4P will change its shape. When C4P is unbound, two pyrroles opposite to each other point up and two point down. When C4P associates with anions, however, the pyrroles flip to all aim toward a central point, forming a "cup" that aligns "pi" electrons in the pyrrole subunits. A large positively charged metal is attracted to the center of the cup like a bee to the pollen-rich chalice of a flower. Whereas phenol on its own showed little selectivity toward singly charged metals (e.g., cesium), mixtures of phenol and C4P were significantly more selective. Changing the nature of chemical interactions Oil and water are examples of mutually insoluble organic and aqueous solutions, respectively. After being shaken, much like oil-and-vinegar salad dressing, the phases separate back into two layers. During an extraction, the organic solution containing the phenol and C4P and the aqueous solutions containing dissolved salts are mixed well. As the phases separate back into two layers, some ions preferring the organic phase will be extracted while others remain in the aqueous phase. If phenol and C4P are mixed in the organic solvent and then mixed with an alkaline aqueous solution, the phenol's -OH group loses its hydrogen to the aqueous phase by reaction with hydroxide ions. When this occurs, the phenol is converted to its anionic form, which attracts a cation into the organic phase to maintain charge neutrality. "The nature of how C4P will bind to the cation changes greatly," said Williams, who with Campbell Reynolds, a summer intern from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, performed analytical radiochemistry experiments to assess the effectiveness of chemical separations. Lance Gill, a former ORNL employee, helped develop experimental protocols. ORNL's Radu Custelcean used X-ray diffraction to solve the crystal structures of the complex. "By combining phenol and C4P, where we had no selectivity, we now have selectivity," Williams said. "We've enhanced it or induced it." The extractant's new-found selectivity for, in this case, cesium is due to several factors, one of which is atomic charge density. In small cations like lithium and sodium, charge is densely confined, giving the cation a "harder" nature. In larger cations, like potassium and cesium, charge is more spread out; the diffuse nature of the charge gives these metals a "softer" nature. Cesium is positively charged and the receptor/phenol complex is negatively charged, so they are opposites in one sense. But in terms of electronic nature, they're alike, and similar charge densities want to come together. "Cesium likes interacting with the pi bonds of pyrroles," Williams said. "Pi bonds are similar to clouds or nebula where everything is spread out over a large area. In the pi bonds, the electron density of a molecule is spread out over the bonds or rings, giving them softer character similar to larger metal cations, so it is along the lines of like attracts like, where both the receptor and metal can interact with each other and spread the electron density out over an even greater area." The choice of solvent dramatically influences the effectiveness of the separation. Results from experiments that combined phenol with C4P in the organic solvent, and then mixed them with aqueous solutions containing both sodium and cesium, have shown marked enhancement in selectivity for cesium (40,000 times greater). These results hint at a basis for removing radioactive cesium from seawater at contaminated sites such as Fukushima. Williams and colleagues replaced phenol with organophosphate, an extractant that can lose its positively charged hydrogen at a pH close to that of seawater, and showed proof of the concept that organophosphate can work in place of phenols. "Next we plan to run more experiments to determine which environment the cesium cation is in in organic solutions, whether it's truly sitting in the cup like the solid-state crystal structure shows," said Williams. He would like to venture beyond simple, singly-charged cations to explore whether the phenol/C4P complex could also extract mercury and other environmental toxins. London: Prince William and wife Kate Middleton are expected to raise the plight of thousands of British steelworkers hit by the Tata Steel's decision of selling their loss-making plants in the UK during their upcoming maiden India tour, a media report said on April 8. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are due to meet Indian politicians and some Indian business leaders during their stay in Delhi and Mumbai beginning Sunday, and the subject of jobs uncertainty after Tata Steel announced its plans to exit the UK last month is likely to feature among the discussions, 'Daily Express' newspaper reported. "The future king and queen, who are in India at the request of the British Government, are aware of the need to represent the interests of British workers during their taxpayer-funded visit. "Under (Prime Minister) David Cameron, royal tours have reflected an emphasis on commercial diplomacy and the need to win jobs and orders for British firms," the newspaper said. It quoted royal sources as saying that the royal couple and their advisors are monitoring the situation unfolding in relation to the crisis in the British steel industry and could raise the issue with Indian officials and business leaders. The Duke and Duchess land in Mumbai on Sunday and the sale of Tata Steel owned steelworks across the UK is set to begin on Monday with around 15,000 jobs on the line. Even as 60 million people around the world face severe hunger because of El Nino and millions more because of climate change, top European and American media outlets are neglecting to cover the issues as a top news item, says a new research report funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) today. "It's incredible that in a year when we have had record temperatures, 32 major droughts, and historic crop losses that media are not positioning climate change on their front pages," said IFAD President, Kanayo F. Nwanze. "Climate change is the biggest threat facing our world today and how the media shape the narrative remains vitally important in pre-empting future crises." The report, "The Untold Story: Climate change sinks below the headlines" provides an analysis of the depth of media reporting around climate change in two distinct periods: two months before the 21st session of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, and two months after. Specifically, it explores whether issues connecting climate change, food security, agriculture and migration made headlines, and if so, how much prominence these stories were given. Among some of its key findings: Climate change stories were either completely absent or their numbers decreased in major media outlets in Europe and the United States before and after COP21. Coverage on the consequences of climate change, such as migration, fell by half in the months after COP21 and people directly impacted by climate change rarely had a voice in stories or were not mentioned at all. News consumers want climate change issues and solutions to be given more prominence in media outlets and, in particular, want more information on the connections between climate change, food insecurity, conflict and migration. The release of the report comes just days before world leaders gather at the United Nations in New York to sign off on the Paris Agreement coming out of COP21. In December, the agreement made headlines and led news bulletins across the globe. But leading up to COP21 and in the months following it, coverage on climate change significantly fell off the radar of major media outlets across Europe and the United States. "The research shows how the average news-consuming public want to hear constructive stories that highlight solutions to climate change, yet this is exactly what is missing from major news outlets," said Sam Dubberley, a former journalist and Director of Kishnish Media Ltd, and the author of the report. Building on initial research that was conducted on media in France and the United Kingdom in September 2015, the report is augmented by focus group surveys that look at what newsreaders understand about food and climate-related migration and their impression of media coverage provided. The report asks what expert voices were heard throughout the stories and whether farmers or migrants themselves had a voice. The research findings are drawn from an analysis of the content of news stories across influential and popular media outlets: TF1 and France 2 in France, RAI and LA7 in Italy, BBC and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and CBS and NBC in the United States, as well as the front pages of print editions of Le Monde and Liberation in France, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica in Italy, The Guardian and Daily Mail in the United Kingdom and the New York Times and USA Today in the United States. In 2014, IFAD funded a research report that looked at how 19 large global and regional news organizations covered issues related to migration and, in particular, food security and agriculture and how it impacted on migration. It focused on two stories that made headlines over the summer of 2014 -- the US/Mexico border crisis and the ongoing conflict in South Sudan, which created a large numbers of migrants. That report also found that the depth of coverage on the topics was lacking, and in particular that the voices of migrants were often left out of the stories. Download the report: https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/6173b0cf-3423-408c-aac6-e6da78f01239 Argentinian researchers from the Centro de Investigaciones de Plagas e Insecticidas have developed a new trap that can be used to effectively monitor and control the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is the primary transmitter of Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. The trap is described in the Journal of Medical Entomology. The plastic ovitrap is a small cup made of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) that has been infused with the larvicide pyriproxyfen. When the cup is filled with water, the larvicide is immediately released from the plastic. Female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes prefer to deposit eggs in small containers such as pots and tires that contain water, so the trap is an attractive egg-laying location. "This is a great idea," said Grayson Brown, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky, who was not involved in the research. "Pyriproxyfen likes to move around in the environment. Molding it into the plastic like that keeps it where you put it." Although ovitraps have been used for decades as a means of conducting mosquito surveillance, the use of plastic containing the larvicide pyriproxyfen is a new development in the effort to control mosquitoes. In their study, the researchers tested the trap on laboratory-raised Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and reported that the larvicide was 100 percent effective in preventing the larvae from developing into adults. Pyriproxyfen has gained notoriety through false reports by activists who claimed that it caused microcephaly. However, that claim was debunked by the Entomological Society of America. The Brazilian government has also stated that the association between the use of pyriproxyfen and microcephaly has no scientific basis. Pyriproxyfen is a juvenile hormone analog that prevents insect larvae from developing into adults. It is one of several pesticides recommended by the World Health Organization Pesticide Evaluation Scheme. Dr. Brown, who recently co-organized a meeting in Brazil called the Summit on the Aedes aegypti Crisis in the Americas, thinks that the cups would be most effective on a neighborhood basis, with perhaps one or two cups in the equivalent of a back yard. He also believes that the concept of pyriproxyfen embedded in plastic can go well-beyond the small cups used in the study. "When I read through the paper, I immediately started thinking of disposable liners for drain pans and outside potted plants, and disposable liners for bird baths," he said. However, Brown cautioned that it is hardly a "silver bullet." "This is another potential tool [to control mosquitoes], and we need all the tools we can get," he said. Dr. Laura Harburguer, one of the co-authors, said that the scientists are preparing to do field trials of the trap in the fall, and that they are testing attractants to preferentially lure the mosquitoes to the ovitraps. Development of a dynamic model for microbial populations in healthy lakes could help scientists understand what's wrong with sick lakes, prescribe cures and predict what may happen as environmental conditions change. Those are among the benefits expected from an ambitious project to model the interactions of some 18,000 species in a well-studied Wisconsin lake. The research produced what is believed to be largest dynamic model of microbial species interactions ever created. Analyzing long-term data from Lake Mendota near Madison, Wisconsin, a Georgia Tech research team identified and modeled interactions among 14 sub-communities, that is, collections of different species that become dominant at specific times of the year. Key environmental factors affecting these sub-communities included water temperature and the levels of two nutrient classes: ammonia/phosphorus and nitrates/nitrites. The effects of these factors on the individual species were, in general, more pronounced than those of species-species interactions. Beyond understanding what's happening in aquatic microbial environments, the model might also be used to study other microbial populations -- perhaps even human microbiomes. The research was reported on March 24 in the journal Systems Biology and Applications, a Nature partner journal. The work was sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Dimensions of Biodiversity program. "Ultimately, we want to understand why some microbial populations are declining and why some are increasing at certain times of the year," said Eberhard Voit, the paper's corresponding author and The David D. Flanagan Chair Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "We want to know why these populations are changing -- whether it is because of environmental conditions alone, or interactions between the different species. Importantly, we also look at the temporal development: how interactions change over time." Because of the large number of different microorganisms involved, creating such a model was a monumental task. To make it more manageable, the researchers segmented the most abundant species into groups that had significant interactions at specific times of the year. Georgia Tech Research Scientist Phuongan Dam created 14 such categories or sub-communities -- corresponding to roughly one per month -- and mapped the relationships between them during different times of the year. Two of the 14 groups had two population peaks per year. "The exciting part about this work is that we are now able to model hundreds of species," said Kostas Konstantinidis, a co-author on the paper and the Carlton S. Wilder associate professor in Georgia Tech's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "The ability to dynamically model microbial communities containing hundreds or even thousands of species as those interactions change over time or after environmental perturbations will have numerous implications and applications for other research areas." In the past, researchers have created static models of interactions between large numbers of microorganisms, but those provided only snapshots in time and couldn't be used to model interactions as they change throughout the year. Scientists might want to know, for example, what would happen if a community lost one species, if a flood of nutrients hit the lake or if the temperature rose. advertisement As with many communities, the lake includes organisms from different species and families that are highly interconnected, playing a variety of interrelated roles, such as fixing nitrogen, carrying out photosynthesis, degrading pollutants and providing metabolic services used by other organisms. Information about the microbes came from a long-term data set compiled by other scientists who study the lake on a regular basis. Voit, a bio-mathematician, said the model, although itself nonlinear, uses algorithms based on linear regression, which can be analyzed using standard computer clusters. Using their 14 sub-communities, the researchers found 196 interactions that could describe the species interactions -- a far easier task than analyzing the 300 million potential interactions between the full 18,642 species in the lake. Reducing the number of potential interactions was possible only due to the strategy of defining sub-communities and a clever modeling approach. The researchers initially tried to organize the microbes into genetically related organisms, but that strategy failed. "At any time of the year, the lake needs species that can do certain tasks," said Voit. "Closely-related species tend to play essentially the same roles, so that putting them all together into the same group results in having many organisms doing the same things -- but not executing other tasks that are needed at a specific time. By looking at the 14 sub-communities, we were able to get a smorgasbord of every task that needed to be done using different combinations of the microorganisms at each time." By looking at sub-communities present at specific times of the year, the research team was able to study interactions that occurred naturally -- and avoided having to study interactions that rarely took place. The model examines interactions at two levels: among the 14 sub-communities, and between the sub-communities and individual species. advertisement The research depended heavily on metagenomics, the use of genomic analysis to identify the microorganisms present. Only 1 percent of microbial species can be cultured in the laboratory, but metagenomics allows scientists to obtain the complete inventory of species present by identifying specific sections of their DNA. Because they are not fully characterized species, the components of genomic data are termed "operational taxonomic units" (OTUs), which the team used as a "proxy" for species. The next step in the research will be to complete a similar study of Lake Lanier, located north of Atlanta. In addition to the information studied for Lake Mendota, that study will gather data about the enzymatic and metabolic activities of the microorganism communities. Lake Lanier feeds the Chattahoochee River and a series of other lakes, and the researchers hope to study the entire river system to assess how different environments and human activities affect the microbial populations. The work could lead to a better understanding of what interactions are necessary for a healthy lake, which may help scientists determine what might be needed to address problems in sick lakes. The modeling technique might also help scientists with other complex microbial systems. "Our work right now is with the lake community, but the methods could be applicable to other microbial communities, including the human microbiome," said Konstantinidis. "As with sick lakes, understanding what is healthy might one day allow scientists to diagnose microbiome-related disease conditions and address them by adjusting the populations of different microorganism sub-communities." A new genetic clue discovered by a team co-led by a researcher at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is shedding light on the functions of the mysterious "long non-coding RNAs" (lncRNAs). These molecules are transcribed from genes and are often abundant in cells, yet they do not code for proteins. Their functions have been almost entirely unknown--and in recent years have attracted much research and debate. Reporting in the journal Molecular Cell, the scientists determined that one prominent lncRNA may be a "red herring," with no evident biological role to play--whereas the DNA from which it originates does perform an important function, as an "enhancer" that stimulates the expression of an important protein-coding gene nearby. "An implication of this finding is that many lncRNA-producing regions of DNA may not function through their lncRNA products at all, but only through the DNA itself," Vikram R. Paralkar, MD an instructor in the division of Hematology/Oncology at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, and first author of the study, said. The discovery underscores the importance of non-protein-coding DNA in biology, and the importance of exploring its functions. Although a popular view still has it that DNA is transcribed into RNA, and the RNA is usually translated into protein, scientists recently have learned that protein-coding DNA makes up less than two percent of the mammalian genome--and is vastly outnumbered by non-protein-coding DNA. Some non-protein-coding genes produce small RNA molecules, and many of these have known functions, often in regulating other genes or RNAs. But thousands of our genes produce lncRNAs--defined as being at least 200 nucleotides in length--and their functions remain poorly understood. In a study published in 2014, Paralkar and colleagues identified over a thousand distinct lncRNAs in mouse and human blood cells. Most had never been described before. But many turned out to originate from areas of the genome containing known or suspected enhancers--small regions of DNA where transcription factor molecules gather, to stimulate the transcription of nearby genes. advertisement In the new study, Paralkar and colleagues, including senior author Mitchell J. Weiss, MD, of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, and researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, examined the possible enhancer function associated with one of these mystery lncRNAs, a product of a mouse gene called Lockd. The Lockd RNA product is particularly abundant in mouse red blood cells and some other cell types. One possibility is that this lncRNA has some undiscovered function in cells. Another possibility is that the Lockd DNA itself has some function, while the RNA transcript is without function--a genomic "red herring." Lockd's transcription-starting "promoter" region contains binding sites for multiple transcription factors, and it lies immediately downstream, on the mouse genome, to Cdkn1b, a gene whose protein product plays a key role in regulating cell division. To investigate the functions of Lockd, Paralkar and colleagues used an advanced gene-editing technique to delete the Lockd DNA from a mouse blood cell line. "When we did this, the expression of Cdkn1b was reduced by 70 percent," Paralkar said. Next, the researchers used a different technique to block the transcription of Lockd RNA while leaving the Lockd DNA intact. The Cdkn1b expression was not affected. "In other words, getting rid of the RNA transcript doesn't make a difference, but getting rid of the DNA does make a difference," Paralkar said. advertisement The researchers found strong evidence that in the twisted, looping, double-helix structure of the genome, the promoter end of Lockd DNA comes into direct physical contact with the promoter end of its neighbor Cdkn1b, and in that way acts as an enhancer to stimulate Cdkn1b's transcription. Paralkar acknowledged that the Lockd RNA may one day be found to have some other function. "It's impossible to prove absolutely that it has no function--but it seems at least that it has no obvious function in regulating its neighbor Cdkn1b," he said. He emphasized, however, that in determining the function of non-coding DNA and RNA, both DNA-deletion and RNA-blocking experiments--as in this study--are needed to distinguish the function of DNA from its RNA product. "One has to decouple the transcript from the DNA," Paralkar said. "Future studies of lncRNA function should adhere to that requirement." He added that the discovery of this enhancer function for one example of a lncRNA gene points to the possibility that this is a broadly used mechanism in the genome, found in non-coding and perhaps even some protein-coding genes. Indeed, enhancers are theorized to be one of the key genomic features that distinguishes species such as mice and humans--which share nearly all their protein-coding genes, but relatively few of their enhancers and lncRNA-coding genes. "The fact that mice and humans are so different may be due largely to the fact that their genes are being regulated so differently by enhancers, some of which produce RNA molecules that we detect as lncRNAs," Paralkar said. New Zealand First MP Clayton Mitchell believes Tauranga is at the mercy of a housing crisis. Clayton has taken a swipe at Simon Bridges, saying the Tauranga MP has been silent on the issue for too long and needs to take immediate action to remedy this out of control situation. Meet Earl, a cute little squirrel who's ditched his species' normally fluffy look for one that's decidedly more revealing. Usually, squirrels go out of their way to hide their nuts - but not this guy. Note: It was not our decision to censor the photo above. Beginning last year, Earl in all his fleshy glory has been a regular visitor to Janice Brown's backyard in Brice's Creek, North Carolina. Despite the squirrel's immodest appearance - which leaves no doubt that he is, in fact, a male - Brown continues to welcome him into her backyard with tasty piles of food. Interestingly, Earl's furry companions don't seem to mind at all that there's a nudist in their midst. "He runs around and plays with the other squirrels in the yard," Brown's daughter, Rhonda Dennison, told the Sun-Journal. Snakes might not be as fluffy or as classically cute as your more conventional pets, but in the eyes of those who know them best, they're lovable all the same. Just ask Gian Carlo. For the last 18 years, 19-year-old Carlo has shared each day with a Burmese python named Lucky at home in the Philippines. In that time, the boy and his snake have forged an incredibly close bond, regardless of how "different" an animal companion Lucky might be. "We're just like brothers," Carlo told The Dodo. And like brothers, they have photos showing their happy lives growing up together. Reportedly, Deepika Padukone had also been approached for Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Sultan, however all didnt go as planned. Mumbai: Deepika Padukone had expressed her desire to work with Salman Khan on several occasions, but was waiting for 'something special' to bring them together on screen. Looks like, things have finally fallen into place as Kabir Khan has managed to bring the two together for his next film. Interestingly, Deepika gave a nod to Kabirs film before she started shooting for her Hollywood debut movie xXx with Vin Diesel. While she was shooting, her team took care of other formalities back home. Kabir will start shooting for the film once the two have wrapped up their respective films. Read: Salman and Kabir team up for the third time, block Eid 2017 for release There were rumours that Deepika had also been approached for Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Sultan, however all didnt go as planned. At an event last year, Deepika revealed that she had received an acting debut offer from Salman, which happened way before she was chosen by Farah Khan for Om Shanti Om. However, she declined it then as she felt she was not ready to face the camera. She had said, "He offered me my first film when I was too young and I was not ready to be in front of the camera. I will always be grateful to him. Just the fact that he offered me a film was a great thing. It is taking a long time for us to come together on screen, so I think there is something special waiting for us." Days before Prince William and Kate Middletons visit to Mumbai, Shah Rukh Khan is busy picking out his best suit for the charity gala that the British royalty will grace. He tells us that it comes from the same store that designed his wedding outfit. After all these years, he still goes back to the same store to get suits tailored for any important events, he adds. Yes, big night, I have to get my suit done. It will be nice, he says referring to the charity gala to be held at Taj Mahal Palace Hotel hosted by British High commission and British Asian trust on the evening of April 10. Will there be Bollywood style dancing with the star? No, no. It is an extremely formal event. I think there are some cultural performances, but its not by me. I am hardly cultural, he jokes. Giving a sneak peek he adds, We just attend the dinner and then there are a few performances. There is also a speech, I am told. I dont know about the other actors, but I am not performing. The world Christine McConnell creates is all her own, and it is fantastical. Cinnamon rolls rise as scary serpents, doughnuts pass for fried chicken drumsticks, and chocolate gelatin squids appear amid seas of whipped cream. It could take a proper education in pastry arts and years of understudy to produce the confections in this, the artists first book. But McConnell is self-taught, and until four years ago at age 30, she had never baked a cake from scratch. Going from that to the 12-layer Neapolitan Monster Cake on the books cover a 2 1/ 2 -day project is akin to time travel via flux capacitor. Even more impressive: McConnell shopped for the props, made the clothes shes wearing in the photos, designed the scenes and shot every one of the 55-plus images in Deceptive Desserts. A self-described introvert, she lives and works solo in the Twin Peaks, Calif., home she has retrofitted as a mid-century shrine. She shoots with a Nikon D600 digital camera and two lenses. Her lighting setup is DIY, built from trips to Home Depot. [2016 Peeps Diorama Contest] Not bad for a high-school dropout who decided at age 20 that her secretarial job wasnt going to cut it. She also happens to be stunning: a model-worthy 5-foot-11. Her muses are The Munsters, the campy television 60s sitcom, and Fanny Cradock, the campy cookery celebrity who reigned on British television from the mid-50s to the mid-70s. McConnells comfortable with the oeuvre. Christine McConnell's Neapolitan monster cake. (2016 by Christine McConnell) She learned about photography and cake decorating by watching YouTube videos and picked up baking techniques from Americas Test Kitchen. Several years ago, McConnells shots of her goofy gingerbread men drew fun comments on Facebook. The images she posted on Reddit gained more recognition, including that of noted editor Judith Regan, which netted a nice advance and a two-book deal. Making a cake look like a teapot or a birdcage or the deep-blue Earth is one thing; making them edible is quite another. The author admitted in a phone interview that she has white-trash taste buds loosely translated as a supermarket-birthday-cake-level sweet tooth. The starting point for McConnells basic white cake was a 150-year-old recipe she Googled. She ended up developing a butter-shortening formula thats rich with whole eggs and buttermilk. The result is definitely sweet, but not that far removed from, say, Martha Stewarts Perfect White Cake. McConnell now has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram. Things have unfolded for me. Its all alien, still, she said, just beginning a cross-country tour to promote Deceptive Desserts. Kitten cannoli or slice o red velvet reptilian cake, anyone? Bonnie S. Benwick is the deputy editor/recipes editor of The Washington Posts Food section. On May 15 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Christine McConnell will be at the Williams-Sonoma in Clarendon, Va. Christine McConnell's peppermint bark bonsai. (2016 by Christine McConnell) Judy Jashinsky, Columbus and Isabella in the Mosque in Cordoba, 1991, oil on linen. On view at CAOS on F Street. (Judy Jashinsky/Civilian Art Projects) Judy Jashinsky derives inspiration from the art of classical and Renaissance Europe, but she doesnt simply celebrate the past. She questions it, from both a feminist and a New World perspective. Jashinskys Ill Take You There, presented by Civilian Art Projects at CAOS on F, surveys her career from 1980 to 2015. The works, many of which depict historical Italy and Spain, include a painting of Columbus and Queen Isabella at the mosque at Cordoba. The explorer is headed, of course, for the Caribbean and encounters with its peoples. Both the region and its inhabitants are among Jashinskys recurring motifs, represented here by a painting of an indigenous man with four colors of corn. The pictures backdrop is not a blue sea or a green forest, but a field of sheer gold, the color of the prize the Spaniards sought. Such detours from traditional realism are characteristic. Jashinsky, for example, paints on wooden panels, as medieval artists did, but she emphasizes the grain and natural hues. The images are guided by the medium. The shows epic piece is a drawing, executed on multiple sheets of paper that fill an entire wall. The mixed-media picture depicts the crowd that turned out in 1599 to see the severed heads of Beatrice and Lucrezia Cenci, who became popular heroines after their execution for killing their abusive father. The scene was memorialized by many artists before Jashinsky, but never with her mix of the elevated and the irreverent. Cathy Cook, "Prehistoric Resurrection," 2016, 3-D animation & live action, sound, 3:40 minutes, dimensions variable. (Cathy Cook) Judy Jashinsky: Ill Take You There On view through April 19 at CAOS on F, 923 F St. NW. 202-607-3804. civilianartprojects.com. Cathy Cook Cranes in Motion looks at endangered Sandhill and whooping cranes from various angles and via assorted media. The VisArts at Rockville show even includes a crane that looks back. Cathy Cooks photographs and videos are based partly on research in Nebraska, the only state along the birdss central flyway that bans their hunting. (The Maryland artist also spent time in Wisconsin and at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel.) A video shows a conclave where dozens of the long-necked, spindly legged birds flock at a wetland hangout. In an extreme-close-up photo, an orange avian eye stares from a red face. In a nifty CGI piece, a crane skeleton comes to life, and even takes flight. Even more fanciful is Mimicking Whooper, designed with gaming software. People who walk into range of this video will encounter an animated crane that flies down to greet them. The slightly cartoonish bird then imitates as much as its physiology allows the viewers movements. This is not an accurate representation of crane behavior, of course, but the birds are known for being sociable with their own kind. Cooks simulation makes gallery-goers into honorary cranes, at least for a few flutters. Cathy Cook: Cranes in Motion On view through April 24 at Kaplan Gallery, VisArts at Rockville, 155 Gibbs St., Rockville. 301-315-8200. visartscenter.org. Georgia Nassikas. "Glow," on view at the Athenaeum. (Georgia Nassikas/Athenaeum) Lila Oliver Asher Veteran local printmaker Lila Oliver Asher has a classic style, which suits her often-classical subjects. Her show at Iona Senior Services, where shes artist in residence, includes scenes from Greek myths and the Old Testament. These are rendered in blocks of somber color and with clean lines, often reversed into black and occasionally accented by red: for fire, say, or an Edenic apple. Other favored subjects include lovers, children and the arts. Born in 1921, Asher taught at local colleges (mostly Howard University) from 1947 to 1991. Her areas of expertise include drawing and watercolor, both of which are included in this selection. But she remains best known for her linoleum-cut prints, a form whose technical limitations dont fetter her at all. The memorable images in this show range from everyday scenes to gently erotic reveries to moments of great literary drama. Asher knows how to frame a composition for maximum impact, and she sometimes twists conventions. Airport Mother and Child, for example, turns a traditionally serene subject into a frantic one. Most often, though, she makes a virtue of directness. Her arts power comes not from the unexpected, but from presenting familiar themes with exceptional craft and grace. Lila Oliver Asher On view through April 27 at Iona Senior Services, 4125 Albemarle St. NW. 202-895-9407. iona.org. Jessica Kallista In Jessica Kallistas self-styled biomythography, Northern Virginia is a realm of tract homes, voluminous 1950s-style skirts and the costumed ax-wielder known as the Bunnyman, who supposedly haunts a bridge in Clifton. But where does all the marine life come in? The Fairfax artists cheeky collages feature fish and mermaids, as well as the occasional octopus, including a red one posed with what seems to be a depiction of the artist herself. (The juxtaposition suggests the famed image of Patty Heart with the SLA logo, or maybe that 1975 Jefferson Starship album.) Aqua is one of the principal colors, although rather than the sea it could represent bygone interior-design tastes. In the largest piece, a Jetsons-style short-hop flying saucer hovers over what might be Burke or Annandale. Perhaps the most dated thing about the suburbs is how futuristic they were once thought to be. Jessica Kallista: Dear Suburbia On view through April 24 at Fisher Art Gallery, Northern Virginia Community College, 4915 E. Campus Dr., Alexandria. 703-323-3000. nvcc.edu. Georgia Nassikas The view can be mostly land or primarily sky, or an distillation of either, in Georgia Nassikass paintings. The McLean artists Athenaeum show features simple compositions, often little more than two areas of color separated by a hint of a rock fence or a row of trees. Yet the ground is densely heathered, and the sky richly streaked. The lush textures are created with brushwork, sometimes supplemented by scratches, and with pigment mixed with wax from Nassikass own beehives. The selection includes a few paintings in which the geometric forms turn explicit, and fields and air become clearly defined rectangles. The most immersive canvases, however, retain a sense of landscape. Such pictures as Still Looking Over shift from abstraction to realism as the loosely painted foreground leads toward a more solid sense of place. Georgia Nassikas On view through April 24 at the Athenaeum, 201 Prince St., Alexandria. 703-548-0035. nvfaa.org. Mossack Fonseca & Co. in Panama City is at the center of the Panama Papers scandal. The law firm maintains it has broken no laws and that all its operations were legal. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) For wealthy Americans trying to conceal their cash, stashing millions of dollars away in secret offshore shell companies is not as simple as it used to be. International laws, whistleblower bounties and embarrassing data breaches such as the one being dubbed the Panama Papers have made the lives of would-be U.S. tax cheats increasingly perilous, according to tax lawyers and former government prosecutors and investigators. If you are someone with serious money and you want to hide it from the government, you have a good reason to be nervous, said Daniel Reeves, who founded the offshore compliance division of the Internal Revenue Service and now works as a tax compliance consultant. Today, there are many different ways people can find out about your activities. Its not the same world of secrecy. Reeves and other offshore experts say they are not surprised by the paucity of Americans in the massive data leak of 11.5 million records that has unmasked accounts belonging to world leaders and a rogues gallery of international criminals. Panama, the base of operations for the law firm at the center of the unfolding financial scandal, has never been a favorite place for Americans to hide their money. The nations reputation for bank fraud and drug smuggling has prompted U.S. citizens to send their money to more stable shores and nations, including the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, according to the offshore experts. The Panama Papers consist of 11.5 million documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The papers apparently implicate a number of high-profile global figures in potentially illegal financial activities. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post) One of the founders of the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca & Co., had another explanation for the dearth of U.S. names in the data leak. He and his business partner have never courted U.S. clients. My partner is German, and I lived in Europe, and our focus has always been the European and Latin American market, Ramon Fonseca told the Daily Mail in London on Thursday. Mossack Fonseca said in a statement issued to The Washington Post that the firm has not violated the law. Nothing in this illegally obtained cache of documents suggests weve done anything wrong or illegal, and thats very much in keeping with the global reputation weve worked hard to build over the past 40 years of doing business the right way, the company said in its statement. The massive data leak from Mossack Fonseca has revealed the existence of 214,488 secret offshore entities, based on financial spreadsheets, copies of passports, emails and corporate records from 1977 to 2015. The leak to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has prompted the prime minister of Iceland to tender his resignation and forced British Prime Minister David Cameron to acknowledge that he financially benefited from shares in an offshore account set up by his father. [Iceland prime minister offers to resign amid Panama Papers fallout] The embarrassing revelations have not touched prominent U.S. citizens, corporate executives or politicians. The Washington Post does not have access to the documents, but the McClatchy group of newspapers and Fusion, a Miami-based cable station, have been poring over the records as the U.S. partners in the international reporting consortium. They have uncovered 211 scanned U.S. passports and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore accounts with U.S. addresses. The United States is now becoming one of the worlds largest tax and secrecy havens. Here's why. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post) On Thursday, McClatchy reported that a Hollywood mogul, a Hyatt hotel heiress and a relative of a family that founded the Campbell Soup Company appear in the Mossack Fonseca documents. The individuals denied wrongdoing and said the accounts were created in accordance with U.S. law. Offshore experts said they doubt that many prominent U.S. citizens and politicians will turn up in the data. U.S. politicians are smart enough not to get involved in this kind of thing because they know the exposure would be the end of their careers, said Jack Blum, a veteran U.S. Senate investigator who has spent his career examining the offshore world. If Americans are going to take their money offshore, theyre probably not going to use this firm and instead go to companies and countries that are far safer. [Hello. This is John Doe: The mysterious message that launched the Panama Papers] Reporters working for the news organizations said it was difficult to determine just how many Americans are in the data because of the complexity of the corporate shell structures set up by the Panamanian company and based in places such as the British Virgin Islands. They said they have identified 140 politicians or public officeholders from around the world with direct holdings in shell companies or connected to offshore financial transactions, including kings, presidents and current and former politicians. None of them are Americans. There might be more Americans, but there are companies that we just cant tell who the beneficial owners are, said Michael Hudson, one of the lead reporters for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. But Americans who want to hide their money have always felt more comfortable going to places like Switzerland, which have been far safer than Panama. Many people use the offshore world for legitimate purposes, to set up legal tax shelters, shield money from their spouses or business partners or clear the way for international business deals. U.S. citizens are allowed to move money offshore, but they must report the account information to the IRS. Mitt Romneys offshore accounts became an issue during the 2012 presidential campaign, but they were legal. Disclosure laws vary around the world. [Piercing the secrecy of offshore tax havens] In recent years, Americans have been slowly running out of places to conceal their cash from the federal government, offshore experts say. In 2007, the veil of secrecy was shattered by a whistleblower named Bradley Birkenfeld, who disclosed that 19,000 U.S. citizens were hiding an estimated $20 billion in Swiss accounts held by the bank, UBS. Through a federal whistleblower reward program, Birkenfeld received $104 million and UBS was fined $780 million in a tax-avoidance case brought by the U.S. Justice Department. That case sent a chill through the offshore world. Congress also passed legislation making it easier for whistleblowers to collect money by revealing tax-haven holdings by U.S. citizens. The IRS has offered an amnesty program to U.S. citizens with unreported offshore holdings. So far, more than 50,000 American citizens and companies have turned themselves in. Their identities have been kept secret, and they will not be prosecuted under the terms of the program. U.S. citizens who have engaged in illegal offshore banking have to rethink whether they want to stay in the business, said Stephen M. Kohn, one of the lawyers for Birkenfeld. Kohn now represents several offshore whistleblowers with information about accounts kept in 15 banks in Europe and Hong Kong belonging to 35,000 U.S. clients. Once the risk of detection became evident and once the banks started to discourage U.S. clients from opening accounts, Americans now have no other choice but to go deeper into obstruction or go into the amnesty program, he said. No one wants to open an account with a U.S. passport, because the person on the other end of the phone can call the IRS and make a million bucks. Whistleblowers who participate in the IRS program can receive between 15 and 30 percent of the amount of the fraud. The IRS says it has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars under the program and has tens of thousands of cases pending. In 2010, the U.S. government created another weapon to uncover U.S. money in offshore accounts. Under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, also known as FATCA, foreign financial institutions are required to report U.S. clients they suspect of trying to conceal assets. Offshore experts say Americans continue to hide vast sums of money in tax havens, but they are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Offshore entities, as well as onshore entities set up in places such as Wyoming and Nevada, can be created in ways that make it virtually impossible to figure out who is behind the structure because there are so many corporate layers. Investing in the offshore world has never been riskier, tax experts say. People are scared, for good reason, said Dean Zerbe, who helped to expand the IRS whistleblower law as senior counsel to the Senate Finance Committee and later represented Birkenfeld. Zerbe, a partner in the Arlington, Va., office of a Houston law firm that specializes in whistleblower cases and tax litigation, said he has more than a dozen clients who have come forward with information that could expose the existence of thousands of offshore accounts. He said the IRS could do more to track down cases and that the whistleblower office is understaffed and underfunded. But the existence of the whistleblower program, the creation of FATCA and the leaks of personal data might prompt potential tax cheats to think twice. It changes the calculation immeasurably, Zerbe said. And if you had an account in Panama as an American taxpayer, your digestion cannot be going smoothly right now. Correction: An earlier version of this report incorrectly said that the Panama Papers leak prompted Icelands president to tender his resignation. It was the prime minister who resigned. The latest restaurant from Tim Ma bridges his Chinese ancestry and his French training. Yet some of the most intriguing eating at the new Kyirisan in Shaw originates from the chefs cohorts, a group whose backgrounds are Burmese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean and American (South Carolinian, to be precise). The scrapple at Kyirisan in Shaw is based on a Filipino pork dish. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) Consider, for instance, a scrapple based on the sour Filipino pork dish called sisig, which Ma first tasted at a staff meal prepared by an employee at Water & Wall, his Arlington eatery. Kyirisans refined version of the entree brings together braised pig ear, pickled green papaya, Thai chilies and fingerling potatoes, all topped with a fried egg. The combination of tang, heat and runny yolk is a jungle of fun. Kyirisans selections fall under menu headings that share the source of their primary ingredients: In the Ground (fried tofu with black pepper sauce), On the Ground (beef heart tartare served with a mayonnaise spiked with the pungent Korean condiment gochujang) and Under the Water. That last category nets fine halibut propped up on fingers of seared kohlrabi. Beneath the duo: a swab of hoisin sauce that gets its effervescence from Sprite, another idea adopted from a kitchen colleague. Do the bowls and plates look familiar? Like every other hot dining destination of late, Kyirisan stages its food on pottery designed by Cloud Terre in Arlington. Nutty buckwheat pasta filled with roasted cauliflower, set on a creamy onion sauce and finished with cool ricotta practically disappears into its oyster-gray bowl. Kyirisans cauliflower-filled buckwheat tortellini arrive in bowls made by Cloud Terre, an Arlington company whose pottery is used by several local restaurants. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) The interior, on the other hand, wont be mistaken for any other in the neighborhood. We wanted something different, says Ma, whose wife, Joey Ma, might be the smile greeting you at the door. We didnt know what we wanted. GrizForm Design Architects in the District came to their rescue with yellow brass triangles protruding from the walls, woven denim-blue booths and a ceiling with multiple angles. We had the pleasure of eating at Tims other restaurants, including Chase the Submarine in Vienna, and enjoy how he folded ingredients and flavors together, explains designer Griz Dwight. Antique screens from a former Chinese restaurant owned by Mas uncle grace a hall near the restrooms. Chef Tim Ma and his wife, Joey Ma, in the kitchen at Kyirisan in Shaw. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) The restaurants unique interior was designed by GrizForm Design Architects. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) Stick around for the last course. Dessert features a luscious custard cheesecake, baked in a water bath and sure to satisfy a nut lover. It deploys hazelnuts in three ways: as butter, as a powder and as a ganache beneath the cheesecake. Kyirisan accepts reservations, but only if made on the date you hope to dine there. Asking customers to call during the day and talk to a live person, says Ma, personalizes the interaction. Take that, OpenTable. 1934 Eighth St. NW. 202-525-2942. kyirisandc.com. Dishes, $9 to $26. Chopping an onion is not worth crying over. Here's the simplest way to do it right. (Jayne Orenstein,Joe Yonan/The Washington Post) Its an onion day! Then again, every day is. You have at least one in your house right now, dont you? Versatile, dirt cheap, companions on the plate and star vehicles, they are the worlds most consumed vegetable for all but those who suffer the saddest food allergy. Catch a whiff of them cooking in a restaurant kitchen on a cool morning and your stomach responds with a happy grumble. We tend to let them hang around until they show signs of age, but in truth the ones grown in spring and summer are different from those grown through the fall. In warm months, the bulb onions you find at farmers markets have thinner, lighter skins and a higher water content; the latter will shorten their shelf life a bit and makes them easier to bruise. [More Weekend Kitchen: Steam eggs instead of hard-boiling them; how to get spring green on the plate.] Eighty-seven percent of the onions grown in the United States are yellow. Those are best for caramelizing that tantalizing cooking process in which flesh with a bite melts into dark, jammy deliciousness. (If youve ever wondered why the onions youve thrown in a pot are taking sooo long to turn golden, check the kind you started with.) Red onions account for 13 percent of whats grown here, and contain less water meaning, longer storage than yellow ones. White onions make up only 5 percent of the crop; they dont store quite as well as the yellows due to their compact cell structure, says the Onion Council. Fun fact to share at the upcoming Passover table: Some historians note that the Egyptians used onions to compensate slaves who built the pyramids. (Who knew they got paid? Discuss after that fourth cup of wine.) Speaking of, heres a quick link to our Passover recipes, most of which can be made in advance.) The accompanying video shows you how to chop an onion. Ever wonder why food professionals tend to reinforce that lesson? Because when you cut the onion into same-size pieces, theyll cook evenly. And cutting it the way Editor Joe demonstrates will reduce the effect of the irritant that brings tears to an onioniers eyes. (Refrigerate the onion for 20 minutes beforehand, and that will help, too.) Whatever youre cooking savory this week, itll be better with onion in it. What are your favorite ways to use them, or store them? Share in the comments below. Weve listed dishes from our Recipe Finder that might inspire you, but first . . . . Top recipes of the week Baking heats up the majority of our most-viewed online: 1. Old-Fashioned Cinnamon Babka. Marcy Goldmans recipe calls for a no-rise approach that results in the dense, chewy loaf 2. DIY Halloumi. Cathy Barrow shows us how to make a better cheese than store-bought. 3. Buttermilk Biscuits With Double Ginger Butter. From Kathy Gunst; they taste as good as they sound. 4. Chocolate Tart With Sea Salt and Toasted Coconut. Another baking-revelation recipe from Gunst; its filling is sugar-free. 5. Chocolate Babka. For those who like their loaf more like bread. Go onion: Onion Low Carb-o-Nara. (Mette Randem for The Washington Post) Red Onion Marmalade. (T.J. Kirkpatrick for The Washington Post) Onion Low-Carb-o-Nara Whole-Grain Spaghetti With Caramelized Onion Sauce Roasted Young Onions With Strawberry Gastrique, Bacon and Market Greens Onion Puree Red Onion Marmalade Sweet Onion Slaw Dear Heloise: Everyone should be aware that its important that if you are paying by check, credit or debit card, to guard against someone snapping a picture of your check or card. While writing a check, I cover my account number. If I pay by credit or debit card, I cover the front on the card until I am ready to use it. I then quickly return the card to my wallet. Judy in New Braunfels, Tex. Judy in New Braunfels, Tex.: Who would have thunk it, but here we are with the possibility of personal information being stolen by a camera phone. Cant be too careful these days, and while youre at it, password-protect your cellphone. Thanks for the hints. Dear Heloise: Since airlines charge for extra baggage, when I travel and plan to stay for an extended visit, Ill box my clothes and shoes and send it to the people Im visiting. Shipping services let me pay, insure and schedule a time for them to pick up my boxes. Its convenient, and I dont have to wait at baggage claim and then lug it around the airport. Teresa G., Tyler, Tex. Dear Heloise: My husbands grandmother used to make us kitchen scrubbies every year for Christmas, and they were the best. She has passed, and I wanted to make them for my 11 sisters-in-law. I cut out the instructions to make them, bought the net and then promptly lost the instructions. Could you please print them again? I guess Ill make them for next Christmas. Thank you. Connie E., Springfield, Mo. Connie E.: Of course I can reprint it. This is a great hint from my mother, the original Heloise (1919-1977), who started this column. To make the quick version, you will need 1/ 2 yard of nylon net (the 72-inch-wide kind), dental floss or strong nylon thread and a large needle. Cut three 6-inch-by-72-inch strips of nylon net and lay them on top of each other. Using a long basting stitch, sew them together down the middle. Once at the end, hold the thread and pull the netting so that it bunches up. Wrap the thread around the center of the bunch and tie a tight knot. Trim the thread ends. Separate the layers of netting so they make the shape of a ball. P.S.: You are right, they are very nice gifts make one for yourself! Dear Heloise: Did you know that if you have extra condiments on your table at a restaurant and leave them behind for other patrons, the workers just throw them away? So heres what I do: I take all extra condiments home and store them properly. Then when we go on a picnic or beach outing, we take them along. They take up less space in our food basket than whole jars of ketchup and mustard, shakers, etc. Darla R., via email 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. Rating: Directed by: Jon Favreau Cast: Neel Sethi, Scarlett Johansson, Lupita Nyong'o, Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Christopher Walken, Ben Kingsley The Jungle Book by Jon Favreau differs from the original text in its plot, roster of characters, and even in the characters of its characters. Its an exciting 3D experience, but I do not find the story to be an improvement upon the original. Kiplings Jungle Book was a collection of short stories and poems, rather whimsically put together, that featured the jungle boy Mowgli but also other characters in other stories. It was followed by The Second Jungle Book, which was similarly eclectic. The Mowgli stories are delightful stories that have sparked the imaginations of children and adults for over a century. There is in those stories the thrill of jungle adventures, the romance of freedom, the exotic made human, the dangerous understood. Kiplings narrative was layered. The stories could be read simply as adventures, and also as allegories. The Mowgli stories told the tale of a boy in the jungle, but also the tale of someone struggling to find where he truly belongs...and a reflection on British rule in India, with the natives cast in the unflattering role of the leaderless Bandar Log- the monkeys. It was Kipling who wrote the poem The White Mans Burden. Racism and imperialism were default settings in practically all people in his time, and unremarkable. He should be judged by the values of his times, just as our contemporaries should be judged by the values of ours. In his case we can forgive the implicit racism and cheerleading of imperialism. What remains is pure magic. Kiplings craft was effortless. The complex, layered narrative, of The Jungle Books is deceptively easy to read and light in tone, like the Jataka Tales and Aesop's Fables that probably inspired it. However, it is in this, that Favreau has failed spectacularly, in stunningly real 3D. There is an unmistakable darkness of tone that runs through his Jungle Book. This jungle is a place of dread and menace, a world that might be closer to the jungle, not of Joseph Rudyard Kipling, but of Joseph Conrad a jungle reminiscent of the Heart of Darkness. In this jungle, Mowgli the man-cub becomes Mowgli the poor little boy lost in the woods. Shere Khan, the tiger, becomes an irresistible despot whose terror runs through the jungle. Kaa, the wise old rock python of Kiplings book, is now a seductively dangerous and evil serpent voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Perhaps a friendly and reliable snake with a sense of humour went against Favreaus cultural sensibilities. Kipling, who was born in Mumbai, would have known of snakes as familiar animals that are even worshipped. Favreau, like Disney, is perhaps more familiar with a story where a serpent caused mankinds fall from Eden. The question of belonging, which is a difficult recurring issue in Kiplings stories, is seemingly resolved right at the outset in Favreaus telling. We see, along with Bagheera the panther and the grey wolves, that there is no doubt about where Mowgli belongs; Mowgli belongs with his own kind, the humans, and his own protestations to the contrary are just the silly tantrums of a child. Mowgli, for Favreau, is dangerously naive. He does not know the ways of the world and must be protected in the jungle where danger lurks in every branch. He cannot really look after himself. His heroic redemption is expected, but ultimately unconvincing. It comes only with his being liberated to be who he really is not wolf, but man. Be who you are is a familiar trope in Hollywood. Kung Fu Panda tells a similar story, with much more elan and humour. While the plot for Favreaus version of the Jungle Books is largely borrowed from Walt Disneys animated 1967 version, it differs completely in tone. Disney took great liberties with Kiplings version to produce a fun childrens cartoon with cutesy animals. He was the one who gave the Bandar Log an orangutan king named Louie, and turned Baloo, the bear who was teacher of the wolves in Kiplings original, into a lazy, lovable rogue who sings. When that version was being produced, Walt Disney was still alive and in charge of his studio. The first version that came out stuck closely to the text. Translating the lightness of Kiplings touch into visuals proved difficult, because the story is in fact a dark one, in a dark setting with characters that are various shades of dangerous. A writer can get away with blithely talking of tigers and snakes hunting and killing in the wild, and make it sound like good fun; a filmmaker must show them. So it was that the first version of Disneys Jungle Book, which had been created by artist Bill Peet, came to have a dark, sinister tone. Disney didnt like it. The ensuing arguments led to Peets exit from the company. Disney junked the whole thing, and did his own version, with ridiculous elephants, a mildly-threatening tiger, a singing bear and orangutan, and a general ambience that made the Indian jungle look like a Disneyland theme park. It was the last animation film he completed before his death. It is possible that Disney would have liked Favreaus version as little as he liked Peets if he were still around. The director has let the powers of CGI run away with the story. The realism is a tad sinister for children, but the film has shaved too much off the narrative layers to work as an adult story in the way another film with a Bengal tiger - Life of Pi - did. The characters, especially Mowgli himself, are not etched strongly enough. The visuals are spectacular, but the swings from default menacing to occasional goofy musical are as abrupt as the worst of Bollywood. Throwing in a King Kong lookalike, in the shape of an extinct species called the gigantopithecus, seems unnecessary to the plot. The song he sings is the same that the orangutan did in Disneys 1967 version. So is Bare Necessities, the song sung by Baloo the bear. It is in this segment that the friendly, charming jungle of Disneys version briefly returns. The film is very well produced. The effects are spectacular and the performances are good. It is entirely worth watching, but its implicit politics is as troubling as Kiplings was. Favreaus version is a story of man versus beast, and perhaps even of man versus nature. It is a story where apes want desperately to become humans an old colonial way of laughing at natives who want to become sahibs. It is a place where razing peoples home to the ground to win the fight is collateral damage that someone else can fix. It is, in other words, a recognizably real story that perpetuates the colonial and Orientalist worldviews in an unbroken tradition through the centuries from Kipling to Disney to now. "Confirmation" by Michelle Thompson based on Associated Press photos (Michelle Thompson) In 1991, George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas for a seat on the Supreme Court, just five days after civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall announced that he was retiring after 24 years. Thomas, despite an impressive resume, had served as a federal judge for only 19 months. None of the American Bar Associations Standing Committee for the Federal Judiciary members rated him well-qualified. Near the end of his hearing, a former employee of Thomass named Anita Hill came forward with sensational allegations of sexual harassment. The testimony took three days, with the hearing broadcast live. The nation was shocked, transfixed and deeply divided. On April 16, HBO will debut Confirmation, a movie starring Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas. Conservatives have already called the screenplay biased, portraying Hill as courageous, Thomas as disingenuous and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. as inept. The subject is still a raw wound for Thomas: Mere confirmation, even to the Supreme Court, seemed pitifully small compensation for what had been done to me, he writes in his 2007 memoir My Grandfathers Son. A look at the process, in the words of those who were there. The late Republican senator Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in his 2000 autobiography Passion for Truth: Bush announced that Thomas was the best qualified nominee he could find for the high court and that the fact he was black and a minority had nothing to do with this. Immediately I said publicly that Thomas was not the best-qualified nominee available and that race was a factor and properly so. I did not object to Thomass nomination because I thought he was entitled to a hearing and because on the record, with his degrees from Holy Cross and Yale Law School plus his tenure on the court of appeals, he appeared at least marginally qualified. The late Democratic senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.) in a 1992 C-SPAN interview about his book Advice & Consent: Gerald Ford followed the Constitution by consulting with senators. George Bush did not. Gerald Ford contacted people around the nation and said, Who would be the best possible person to put on the court? and then he submitted 20 names to the American Bar Association for their evaluation. George Bush submitted one. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas raises his right hand as he is sworn in on Sept. 10, 1991, during confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington. (J. David Ake/AFP/Getty Images) Given his short time on the federal bench, Thomas and his advisers settled on the Pin Point strategy: An emphasis on his roots in Pin Point, the poor town in Georgia where he grew up, and his personal story of hard work, family values and character. So Hills accusation was especially devastating for him. Thomass wife, Virginia, in 1994s Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas by former senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), who served as Thomass mentor during the hearings: The nature of his anxiety . . . was the humiliation factor. That seemed to be his major concern. Here was this charge that was so against everything he had done in his public life and everything he believes in his private and personal thoughts, a charge being exposed and discussed by what looked like rational people, and it was killing him. Somebody was trying to destroy him and that was the major concern. He kept saying why are they trying to destroy me? He kept asking that question over and over again. Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, as her husband gives his opening statement during confirmation hearings before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on September 10, 1991. (DAVID AKE/AFP/Getty Images) Anita Hill being sworn in prior to testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 11, 1991. (Greg Gibson/AP) Hill began her testimony on Friday, Oct. 11, 1991, and was aggressively questioned by the 14 men who made up the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thomas absolutely denied the allegations before her appearance and again the next day. \ Hill in her 1997 memoir, Speaking Truth to Power: My world has been forever changed by the events that culminated in the Hill-Thomas hearings. I am no longer an anonymous, private individual my name having become synonymous with sexual harassment. To my supporters I represent the courage to come forward and disclose a painful truth a courage that thousands of others have found since the hearing. To my detractors I represent the debasement of public forum, at best, a pawn, at worst, a perjurer. Living with these conflicting perceptions is difficult, sometimes overwhelming. Simon in the C-SPAN interview: After we were in the hearing for a while, it became apparent that we had something huge on our hands in terms of public attention. That played a role in the Thomas nomination, because on Friday, Anita Hill testified. Friday is a limited television audience. Saturday, Clarence Thomas testified a much larger audience. People who saw only one of the two believed the one they saw, whichever one that was. I think that was a factor in public opinion being on his side only one of the factors and the public opinion being on his side I think was clearly a factor in some of the votes in the Senate. George H.W. Bush in a 1991 letter published in All the Best, a collection of his writing: Whats happening to Clarence Thomas is just plain horrible. All the groups that tried to beat him on abortion or affirmative action have now come out of the woodwork. They are trying to destroy a decent man. I do not think they will succeed but they are in a frenzy around here. . . . I know nothing of Ms. Hill but I know a lot about Clarence Thomas, with whom I visited again yesterday and continue to have total confidence in his honor and decency. This is an ugly process and one can see clearly why so many good people elect to stay out of public life. Republicans turned the questioning to Hill and her credibility; Democrats were criticized for allowing that to happen. Biden (D-Del.), the committee chairman, was singled out by liberals for showing deference to Thomas and not calling any witnesses who could support Hills testimony. Anita Hill's 1991 testimony at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearing will breathe new life in the HBO movie "Confirmation." Considered by many as the sexual harassment tipping point, Hill's allegations paved the way for many modern gender discussions. (Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post) Former senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) in a 2014 interview on the Death, Sex & Money podcast: Id had a wife whod had much more harassment than Anita Hill. And thats when I lost my marbles. I thought, What is this? I mean, for Gods sake, what did he do? Well, nothing. Did he touch you? No. What is it? He wanted to talk about Long Dong Silver and pubic hair and coke cans. Is that it? Is that it? Yes, it is. I wanted you to be aware of his behavior. And so I was a monster. I was just pissed to the core. Biden in Specters Passion for Truth (he omitted any mention of the hearing from his own memoir): My role, I decided and I had great debates with my staff about it I was going to be a judge and I was going to apply rules that were not required to be applied. . . . Out of a sense of fairness, thats what I was going to do. And I wasnt about, with my view of civil liberties, to attack a guy I was already against. I was against him from day one. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), whose checkered personal history with women effectively silenced him during the hearings, in a speech at Harvard two weeks afterward:I am painfully aware that the criticism directed at me in recent months involves far more than honest disagreement with my positions, or the usual criticism from the far right. It also involves the disappointment of friends and many others who rely on me to fight the good fight. Republican Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) in a 2010 CNN interview: I can tell you Clarence Thomas was telling the truth. I believe that Anita Hill was an excellent witness. I think she actually believed and talked herself into believing what she said. There was a sexual harasser at that time, according to the sources I had, and he was her supervisor, he just wasnt Clarence Thomas. I think she transposed that to where she believed it because she was outed by the feminist women at that time and she couldnt change her mind after she couldnt change her tune. And thats what happened. [Does HBOs Confirmation favor Anita Hill? Kerry Washington and others say no way.] After Hills testimony, Thomas told the committee that he would not answer any further questions, angrily calling the hearing a high-tech lynching. Gary Wills, the New York Review of Books, 1995 : Whatever one thinks of the lynching trope, it worked. And one aspect of Thomass character was vindicated his audacity. The nerve of it is breathtaking. He had, in effect, ceded the areas of competence and constitutionalism: He was out to lunch when it came to subjects about which he was expected to be knowledgeable, and he gave up all his earlier comments on natural law, on ideas in general. He had staked everything on character and now he would not answer any questions about his character. He sat there on his last limb, and angrily started sawing it off, with this dare: Catch me before I fall, or you are all racist lynchers. And, to their shame, the senators, shamefacedly, caught him. But werent Hills charges false, or at least suspect? Even if they were, Thomass performance did not merit confirmation. It is also a mark of character of judicial temperament if you will to face criticism as a lawyer, with arguments, not with torrents of invective against the committee for asking questions one does not want to hear. Former Washington Post reporters Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher in their 2007 biography, Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas : The starkly different testimonies of Hill and Thomas left no possibility for misunderstanding. Wiggle room? There was none. Neither Hill nor Thomas offered a backstory about their involvement with each other that might have led the Senate indeed the nation to conclude something beyond the obvious: One of them was lying, period. Was lying to the committee, to the country, perhaps even to him or herself. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, who reported on the Hill story, in an introduction to the 2005 published transcript of the hearing: Despite the fact that Hill took and passed a lie detector test, the two sides were no match for each other. The Thomas forces, frantic but unified, marched together to a strategic tune composed by Thomas and Danforth and orchestrated by the White House. Hills forces, inexperienced, in disarray, and with little or no support from Senate Democrats, were left to flounder. When it was over, public opinion polls showed the people believed Clarence Thomas by a margin of two to one, a ratio that would reverse itself in less than two years. Anita Hill poses for a portrait during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 18, 2013, in Park City, Utah. (Victoria Will/Invision/AP) Although the Judiciary Committee voted not to approve Thomass nomination, the full Senate voted 52-48 to confirm. Danforth in a 2009 interview with NPRs Tell Me More: Its very hard for me to say that there is anything I could have done differently because it was like walking down the street and getting in a fight in an alley. I mean, it was just awful. It was just an absolutely terrible situation. And for the people that wanted to defeat him, there was no limit, just anything goes. And I thought it was awful. And I hope that doesnt happen to any other nominee. Its not worth it. Its not worth trying to destroy a human being to win a political point. . . . Its certainly not a fight I wanted to be in. It was absolutely the worst experience of my life. Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), in a recent interview: Across the country, the televised hearings opened the eyes of millions of people to the importance of public hearings for Supreme Court nominees. The hearings also sparked a national conversation about issues that had received scant congressional attention until then. There is also a poignant lesson from those hearings for this very moment. There was a Democratic majority in the Senate at the time and a Republican in the White House. In sharp contrast with what were seeing today with the [Merrick] Garland nomination, with a Republican majority calling the shots, no one back then blocked Clarence Thomas from a hearing, from a committee vote, or from a floor vote. After those revealing hearings, when the committee voted to disapprove the nomination, the committee still sent Justice Thomass nomination to the floor and the full Senate so that all senators could uphold their constitutional duty. We followed precedent, and we felt a responsibility to respect it. Danforth in Resurrection: Clarence Thomas, just confirmed as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was soaking in a bath, reading, when Ginni told him the result of the vote. He shrugged at the news. . . . Clarence describes how he felt when he learned of the vote: Not blase but not happy. I felt I had been abused. I just felt like I went through something that shouldnt have ever occurred. Hill in Speaking Truth to Power: What happened in October 1991 should not have happened to me or anyone else. Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly gave credit to NPRs Nina Totenberg for breaking the story of Anita Hills allegations against Clarence Thomas. A Newday story on the allegations by Timothy Phelps moved on the wire services the night before Totenbergs report aired. READ MORE: Does HBOs Confirmation favor Anita Hill? Kerry Washington and others say no way. A legendary journalist befriends a motel owner who spies on people in the rooms he rents to them. He even invites the journalist to watch him watch. The journalist says nothing about this sordid business for decades. But in the course of their relationship, the motel owner tells the journalist something even more shocking: that he has witnessed the murder of one of his guests. Its not the plot of a novel, but the actual experience of Gay Talese, the famed writer and one of the pioneers of a literary style called New Journalism. Talese, 84, recounts his long and bizarre friendship with Colorado motel owner Gerald Foos in a forthcoming book, The Voyeurs Motel, which is excerpted in a lengthy article in the New Yorker magazine this week. Taleses story about Foos isnt just lurid. It implicitly raises several ethical and even legal questions: Whats a journalists responsibility when he or she is an eyewitness to criminal activity? Should he report what he knows to the police, thereby exposing a source who has trusted him? Or should the journalist say nothing until he is ready to report what he has learned? In The Voyeurs Motel, Talese describes how Foos, a voyeur since childhood, soundproofed an attic walkway in his suburban Denver motel and positioned ventilation grates over guest rooms so that he could peer in on occupants without their knowledge. Over several decades, he recorded his observations of his guests sexual activities and other behavior in a journal, parts of which he sent to Talese after first contacting him in 1980. At one point, he invites Talese to the motel, and they both watch silently from the attic as a couple engage in oral sex. But the story takes an even darker turn when Foos reveals that he may have triggered a murder. After seeing a guest selling drugs to some local boys, Foos wrote in his journal that he secretly went into a guests room and flushed the drugs down the toilet. The missing drugs led to an argument between the man and his female companion, and Foos wrote that he watched from the attic as the man strangled the woman. Foos said he learned the next day from a hotel maid that the woman was dead in the room and that the man had fled. He said he called the police immediately and provided information about the couple but never revealed that he was an eyewitness. Nor did Talese, who wrote that he learned this information from Foos in the 1980s, nearly six years after Foos said the murder took place. He said he questioned Foos further: I wanted to find out whether he realized that, in addition to witnessing a murder, he might have, in some way, caused it by disposing of the mans drugs. But until his story was published this past week, Talese never disclosed what he knew about Fooss involvement. I spent a few sleepless nights, asking myself whether I ought to turn Foos in, he writes. But I reasoned that it was too late to save the drug dealers girlfriend. Also, since I had kept [Fooss] secret, I felt worrisomely like a co-conspirator. Journalists occasionally witness unsavory or even illegal behavior in the course of their reporting. This information is usually kept confidential until publication by an implied or explicit agreement that the reporter will merely observe and not act as an agent of law enforcement. A number of important stories have been produced under such circumstances; information from sources such as Edward Snowden who revealed widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency to The Washington Post and Guardian newspapers would probably have never become public if the source feared that journalists were cooperating with authorities. But Taleses story presents a variation on the theme: Does a reporter have any responsibility to protect a source when he knows the source isnt telling the police all he knows about a serious crime? Does his silence, as Talese himself acknowledged, make him complicit? In a brief exchange of emails on Thursday, Talese declined to comment directly. He cited a busy schedule and his concerns about being misunderstood again after an unrelated controversy erupted recently over remarks he made in a public appearance. I just wish youd quote what I wrote in the story the New Yorker published, he wrote. But in a separate email exchange, New Yorker editor David Remnick defended Talese. He wrote: As the piece makes clear, Gay Talese was not a witness to the murder. Not in essence, and not in fact. Rather, he read an account of the event in Fooss journal when he received it in the mid-1980s, some six years after entry dated 1977 (and almost 30 years before writing about it for The New Yorker). Also according to the journal, the murder had been reported to the police when the body was discovered, and they had investigated the crime scene, and pursued the leads that Foos had given them (the registration name and license plate number of the car) to no avail. He added, While the scene is certainly disturbing (Talese writes that he was shocked, and surprised to read the account in the journal), the New Yorker does not believe that Talese or it violated any legal or ethical boundaries in presenting Fooss account of it to the reader. But Andrew Seaman, chairman of the ethics committee of the Society of Professional Journalists, suggested it was more nuanced than that. I think the main lesson for journalists to take away from Taleses experience is to be careful when making promises, he said. I dont think any journalist should blindly promise to keep information off the record without some negotiation. Talese, he said, might have told Foos that he would not keep criminal information secret and could even have renegotiated his confidentiality agreement after making it. As a legal matter, Seaman said some states compel journalists to come forward when they are aware of a murder, which is why they should be careful when making promises. He added: There is no universal answer. What is legal is not always ethical, and what is ethical is not always legal. The upshot of the motel murder is that it may not even have taken place. In conducting further reporting in 2013, Talese contacted the police department in Fooss hometown, Aurora, Colo. As he reports in the New Yorker, the department could find no record of such a murder. Talese doesnt address the implications of this finding in his article: Did Foos make it all up? If so, how credible is the rest of his account? Neither Talese nor Remnick replied to that question. Dan Bolling, shown in 2008, is a Democratic candidate in Marylands 8th Congressional District. (Courtesy of Dan Bolling) Seventh in a series of profiles of candidates for the Democratic nomination in Marylands 8th Congressional District. The primary is April 26. Candidates usually deliver a prepared speech laying out an idealistic vision and lofty principles when asked why theyre seeking office. Not Dan Bolling, a Bethesda resident who wants to succeed Montgomery Countys Chris Van Hollen in the House of Representatives after a failed congressional bid in his Indiana home town. I dont know, said the 65-year-old former biotech executive. Why do people want to play the flute? I dont know. I just always wanted to run for office and always wanted to run for Congress. [Maryland candidates debate whether Congress is an entry level job] For a man who wants to represent Maryland, Bolling sure talks a lot about Nebraska. He sees the Midwestern states nonpartisan legislature as a model to cure a dysfunctional Congress. Doing away with party affiliation in the Nebraska statehouse, Bolling says, enabled overwhelmingly conservative lawmakers to repeal the death penalty, grant drivers licenses to people who had been brought to this country illegally as children and increase the minimum wage (though that was done by voters, after lawmakers rejected the measure). Congress, he argues, should follow suit: Make races nonpartisan and get rid of the whip and majority and minority leader posts designed to keep lawmakers from straying beyond the party line. I dont think people in Nebraska are better than us here on the East Coast, said Bolling. But they have a better system. [Five things to know about Dan Bolling] Bolling has never actually stepped foot in Nebraska and doesnt have personal connections there. The states model attracted him when he read about it in magazines after his first run for Congress in 2012 back in Indiana, where he grew up. Bolling jumped at that chance to run for an open seat, although he admits he was carpetbagging after having been away for decades. He finished fourth in the five-person Democratic field and considers that campaign more of a learning experience. Local Democratic officials in Indiana told him that they dont always vote the party line in the privacy of the voting booth, he says. That experience created the foundation for the anti-partisan politics platform that he believes can overcome his lack of experience and campaign cash in Marylands 8th District race. In recent years, Bolling has advocated for teaching transcendental meditation to returning veterans and has served on the Montgomery County Veterans Service. A Quaker, Bolling never served in the military. He spent most of his career working for a biotech company later acquired by General Electric, and he briefly struck out on his own with a start-up developing cancer immunotherapy treatment in the early 2000s. I worked in science my whole life, and I believe in the scientific method and evidence, he said. Democratic policy is more evidence-driven than Republican policy. Not always, but on balance. He concedes that it may seem contradictory to run on an anti-partisanship platform in a partisan primary. But he notes that Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) has been one of the few independents elected to Congress in the past 50 years. Those are terrible odds, said Bolling, who identifies as an independent Democrat and is backing Sanderss presidential bid. If you really want to get to Congress, you need to pick a party. When asked how he would defy the Houses Democratic leadership, the candidate could cite only one issue: his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which he believes is unfair to workers. Bolling is virulently opposed to Republicans on economic policy, saying the best way to grow the economy is to increase workers wages and their buying power. And although he is a Quaker, he says hes not a pacifist: He believes that the United States should deploy air forces to defeat the Islamic State. If he overcomes long odds to win the April 26 primary, Bolling says his first order of business would be to contact every congressional candidate in the country to start plotting a rule change to turn the House of Representatives nonpartisan. Next: Del. Kumar Barve Maryland Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller, Jr. left the Senate floor on Thursday to take a call from Valerie Jarrett. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) was presiding over a busy legislative session that included a heated debate about Gov. Larry Hogans nominee to a handgun permit review board and a multi-million-dollar tax credit to an aerospace company. Then the call came in. On the other end of the line: Valerie Jarrett, President Obamas senior adviser. Miller talked to Jarrett, who was calling from Air Force One, for several minutes. But what was the chat about? Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett will visit lawmakers in Annapolis on Monday, the White House said. (Kate Patterson/for The Washington Post) Miller, who is known for his gift of gab, was mum. On Thursday afternoon, a White House official said the call was to discuss Jarretts plan to visit Annapolis perhaps on Monday and speak to female Democratic lawmakers in the State House. Thursday evening, a different White House official said no visit was planned. Monday is the final day of the General Assemblys annual legislative session. This years session has focused on several topics important to both Jarrett and the White House: criminal justice reform, police reform and paid sick leave. Lawmakers have declined to vote on Hogans proposal for redistricting reform, a topic Obama has been pushing on the national level. Last week, the Republican governor wrote to the White House to urge the president to push the Democratic-controlled state legislature to act. Asked whether the call from Air Force One addressed redistricting at all, Miller said it did not. Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report. Maryland 8th Congressional District Democratic candidate Ana Sol Gutierrez. (Evelyn Hockstein/for The Washington Post) Sixth in a series of profiles of candidates for the Democratic nomination in Marylands 8th Congressional District. Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez says shes made history with each step of her political career: First Hispanic elected to a Maryland school board when she won a seat on the Montgomery County Board of Education in 1990. First Latina elected to the Maryland General Assembly, in 2002. The Chevy Chase Democrat faces her toughest challenge yet in her bid to become the first Salvadoran American elected to Congress and the first Hispanic member of Marylands congressional delegation. She is one of nine candidates running for the Democratic nomination to succeed Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who is running for the U.S. Senate. In a deeply blue district, the party nominee will be heavily favored to win the seat in November. Gutierrez is irked by the 8th Districts reputation as home to big-name politicos in the high-end Washington suburbs. That portrait, she says, omits the working-class people and 22,000 Latinos who live in some of the less tony parts of Montgomery County and whose lives she has championed in Annapolis. Its time for us to look at the change and reflect it in who represents us, said Gutierrez, 74. I really dont think we need to keep electing white establishment candidates. [In Montgomery, some high-earning candidates] While most of the candidates share Gutierrezs liberal positions, she distinguishes herself with her life story coming to this country from El Salvador as the 5-year-old child of diplomats and pursuing the American Dream as an engineer and an official in the Transportation Department in the Clinton administration. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who was arrested with her at a deportation protest outside the White House in 2010, has endorsed her bid for Congress. The two are not related. She is well known and well liked in her state legislative district, which includes heavily Latino Wheaton. But that appeal will go only so far in the much larger and less diverse congressional district. Gutierrez has lagged in polls and campaign spending compared with the races three front-runners: state Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (Montgomery) and first-time candidates Kathleen Matthews and David Trone, each of whom has blanketed the district with ads and mailings in advance of the April 26 primary. She says Matthews, a former Marriott executive and TV news anchor, and Trone, a wine retailer, are using cash to compensate for nonexistent voting records. In particular, she says Matthews doesnt deserve the label of woman candidate in the race while Gutierrez herself has fought for years for womens causes in the State House. They havent done anything, Gutierrez said of those rivals. [Five things to know about Ana Sol Gutierrez] In her 13 years in the House of Delegates, Gutierrez has been an unabashed progressive and voice for immigrants, although not a major negotiator or driving force behind the successful passage of sweeping legislation. She has taken on Democratic leadership over redistricting maps she believed diluted the voting power of minorities and over drivers licenses for immigrants living in the state illegally. When the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, prompted federal officials to boost identification requirements for boarding airplanes and entering federal buildings, Gutierrez made it a top priority to ensure that Maryland would continue providing drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants living in the state. She pushed for a legal opinion barring the state Motor Vehicle Administration from unilaterally cracking down. She then co-chaired a state task force that recommended allowing all undocumented immigrants to continue holding licenses. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), center, Casa de Maryland executive director Gustavo Torres, to his right, and Maryland state Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez, right, demonstrated in front of the White House in 2010 and were eventually arrested. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) In 2007, she says, she agreed to vote for a ballot referendum allowing casino-style gambling in the state in exchange for assurances from then-Gov. Martin OMalley that he would protect immigrant access to drivers licenses. But months later, OMalley (D) announced that the state would require proof of legal residence to renew their cards. You gotta stick to what you believe, Gutierrez says is what she learned from that experience. Even though politics is the art of negotiations, there are very strong lines in the sand that should not be crossed. It made me a stronger legislator. In the years-long battle that followed, she allied herself with immigration advocates and opposed some of her colleagues efforts as not going far enough to restore licenses for undocumented immigrants. She wasnt one of the lead authors of the 2013 state law that ultimately created a second-class license, but Casa de Maryland executive director Gustavo Torres credits Gutierrez with helping win votes. [Maryland lawmakers approve new licenses for immigrants] That has always been her role to go beyond the good legislation and improve it in the best way she can, said Torres, whose affiliated organization Casa in Action has endorsed Gutierrezs congressional bid. Gutierrez also voted for the law offering in-state tuition to students brought to the country illegally but was similarly disappointed by the hurdles it placed on students who want to qualify. In Congress, she says she would advocate against entitlement cuts and for more funding to educate children from low-income families. She says she would fight to protect President Obamas executive orders shielding millions of immigrants from deportation, while pursuing national immigration reform in a piecemeal rather than big enchilada approach. Next: Dan Bolling. U.S. Reps. Donna Edwards and Chris Van Hollen, both Democrats, are battling in a hotly contested primary race to succeed Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski. (Mark Gail/The Washington Post) The chief executives of Marylands two largest jurisdictions joined other top politicians and labor leaders Friday to denounce one of two candidates running Marylands closely contested Democratic Senate primary race. During a call with reporters Friday, two prominent African American Democrats Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett and Prince Georges County Executive Rushern L. Baker III emphasized their preference for Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who is white, over U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), who if elected, would become the first black female senator from the state. Diversity is important, Baker said. But whats more important is [electing] people that get things done. Van Hollens decision to gather the congresswomans detractors to criticize her record is a sign of how heated the race has become, with less than three weeks until the April 26 primary. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll this week shows a statistically insignificant lead for Edwards in a race that splits voters along racial lines. [Poll: Racial split defines Marylands Senate primary race] Edwardss spokesman, Benjamin Gerdes, declined to comment on the criticism levied by his bosss fellow Democrats, other than to say: With the exception of his proposal to raise property taxes by 15 percent, Donnas always enjoyed a productive relationship with County Executive Baker, and were sorry to see him stoop to personal attacks so close to an election. Baker called his administrations relationship with Edwards non-existent, and said she had shown a lack of leadership in early conversations with federal officials about the FBI headquarters moving to Prince Georges. He recalled that early in his administration, he arranged meetings on Capitol Hill to review county priorities. A meeting with Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) ran late, into the time Baker had scheduled with Edwards and Van Hollen. Both representatives had to leave their offices to vote on the House floor. But while Van Hollen later carved out a few minutes for the county executive, Edwards did not, Baker said. Chris has been there, said Baker, who is joined in backing Van Hollen by other senior Democrats from the county, including state Sens. Joanne C. Benson, Ulysses Currie and Victor R. Ramirez. Its become apparent that the people who know her best are not supporting her, Baker said. Leggett said he believes voters are still getting to know Van Hollen, whom he described as someone reluctant to boast about his accomplishments. Once they see and understand his record, those numbers will change, Leggett said. Former Maryland delegate Heather R. Mizeur (D) and representatives from two unions were also on the call. Ricarra Jones of the Service Employees International Union said Edwards betrayed labor organizers when she supported the notoriously anti-union Washington Adventist Hospital and its bid to relocate its facility a few miles from another hospital that is facing downsizing. As a result, several of the union members lost jobs, Jones said. Matt Biggs, of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said that when African American NASA workers brought Edwards allegations of racial bias in performance reviews, the congresswoman did nothing. Edwards defended her offices response to the NASA workers at a recent forum, saying she has been working on the issue and the group was simply dissatisfied with the result. Authorities charged D.C.-based rapper Fat Trel, whose given name is Martrel R. Reeves, with possession of counterfeit currency in March. (Anne Arundel County Police Department) D.C. rapper Fat Trel got arrested, again. This time, the rapper who is also known as Martrel R. Reeves was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated, narcotics distribution, speeding and other charges in Arlington County. Officials said he was arrested just before midnight Thursday near Interstate 395 and South Joyce Street. On Friday, officials with the Arlington County Sheriffs Office said Reeves was still in custody. Susie Doyel, a spokeswoman for the sheriffs office said, Reeves did not have a bond and is scheduled for a hearing Monday. Last month, Reeves was accused of having fake bills in a Maryland casino. Reeves, 25, of Bowie, was charged in Anne Arundel County with possession of counterfeit currency after he allegedly tried to exchange fake money for chips at the Maryland Live Casino in Hanover. In the Anne Arundel case, casino security called police to a craps table around 6:30 a.m. and told authorities that a man, who was later identified as Reeves, had given $450 of counterfeit currency to a table pit boss, according to a police report. [D.C. rapper Fat Trel charged with possession of counterfeit currency] The pit boss took the money to casino security where he figured out the cash was fake using a counterfeit marker, a cash counter and a scanning machine, the report said. The bills included nine $50 bills, and at least eight of the bills had the same serial number. Reeves told investigators he got the money from an ATM at a D.C. convenience store. He said he didnt know the money was counterfeit, officials said. A surveillance video at the casino showed Reeves holding the counterfeit money in his hands, police said. The report said he was exchanging it for casino chips. WJLA first reported of the charges against Reeves in Arlington. Victoria St. Martin contributed to this report. A Montgomery County man charged with kidnapping and raping a 12-year-old girl told his friend that she was fresh meat before the friend raped her as well, according to arrest records filed in court this week in a case that includes alleged crimes committed in the District. After the alleged attack in Montgomery, the 12-year-old spoke to detectives and participated in a texting sting in which one of the suspects made incriminating statements, according to the records. The two men were being held Friday in the Montgomery jail on $500,000 bonds, according to court records. Officials identified the suspects as Enrique Carbajal, 24, and Victor Tome, 19, both of the 11500 block of Elkin Street in Wheaton. Detectives said that at least one of the suspects knows the girls mother. According to the Montgomery court records, on March 26, Carbajal called the girls mother at her job and asked whether her daughter was at their D.C. address. The mother said the child was with her father, to which Carbajal said he wanted to go ring the doorbell and take the girl to lunch. The mother told him not to do that, according to the records. The same day, Carbajal rang the doorbell of the residence in Northwest Washington, the girl answered, and he told her that her mother had given them permission to go to lunch, according to court records. Authorities said the girl was sexually assaulted in her District residence between noon and 12:15 p.m. Carbajal is charged in a warrant with first-degree child sex offense, D.C. police said. Court documents say Carbajal then took the girl to a van and that she was driven to Carbajals apartment in Wheaton, where they had lunch, and where police said he forced her into a bedroom and raped her. The girl stated she then opened the door and Tome came into the room, court records say. Carbajal stated to Tome that fresh meat was there, referring to the girl. Tome then raped her, according to police. Federal immigration agents have filed jail detainers on Carbajal and Tome, a jail official said Friday. Such detainers indicate that immigration officials believe they have grounds to deport someone. Peter Hermann and Dana Hedgpeth contributed to this report. Authorities in the District and Montgomery County charged a 24-year-old man with raping a 12-year-old girl last month in Northwest Washington and Wheaton, Md. Maryland officials said also charged a 19-year-old man with raping the girl in Wheaton. Montgomery County police charged Enrique Carbajal, 24, and Victor Tome, 19, who both live in the 11500 block of Elkin Street in Wheaton, with kidnapping and rape for an attack investigators believe began in the District, continued to Wheaton and might have ended in Virginia. D.C. police said that a 12-year-old girl reported that a suspect forced her into sex inside a home in the 5100 block of 8th Street NW about midday on March 26, according to a D.C. police report. District authorities charged Carbajal with first-degree child sexual abuse in the case, police officials said in a written statement. Montgomery County detectives believe that after Carbajal raped the girl, he then drove her to his home in Wheaton, where he and Tome both sexually assaulted her, police said in a statement. Investigators think the victim was taken to Virginia, officials said. Maryland authorities charged the men with one count each of first-degree rape, second-degree rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment and second-degree assault. The men are being held in Montgomery County on $500,000 bond and await extradition to the District, police said. Rating: Cast: Pawan Kalyan, Kajal Agarwal, Sharath Kelkar, Mukesh Rishi, Thanikella Bharani and Brahmaji Director: KS Ravindra (Bobby) After months of speculation and hype, Pawan Kalyans Sardaar Gabbar Singh finally released on Friday. PK himself has provided the story and screenplay and his friend Sharat Marar is the producer. In the village of Ratanpur village lives the cruel mining lord Bhairav Singh (Sharad Kelkar), who rules with an iron fist. No one dares raise a voice against him. A royal family headed by Princess Harshi (Kajal Aggarwal) lives in the same village. Harshi wants to help the people and develop the village but cant do anything because of Bhairav Singh. She asks the government for help and daring cop Sardar Gabbar Singh (Pawan Kalyan) is transferred to the village to set things right. While Sardar is assessing the situation and formulating a plan of action, he falls in love with Harshi. Meanwhile, Bhairav Singh is trying to grab the princess palace and her lands. How Sardar solves the problems of the village and tackles Bhairav Singh is what the film is about. Pawan Kalyans earlier film Gabbar Singh was a huge blockbuster and he has gone with the same title this time. The film, however, is not a sequel. The story is not new, the one about a cop coming to a village and saving the day, winning his lady love on the side, has been done to death. The success of a film like this depends on the narration and the execution, and sadly it has gone horribly wrong in Sardar Gabbar Singh. Aside from a few drama elements, the story is not great; the narration and screenplay are askew as theres no connectivity between some scenes. Before the film starts, Pawan Kalyan says that the film is for his fans. And truth be told, only his die-hard fans will enjoy the film. This is K.S. Ravindras second film as a director but it seems he didnt have a clue what was going on. When it comes to the performance, everything is about Pawan Kalyan. His fans will definitely be impressed with his histrionics. It is delightful to see Pawan Kalyan dancing to the popular veena song from his brother Chiranjeevis film. But the antakshari scene in Gabbar Singh was much better than this one. And it is clear that to woo the Hindi audience, PK has chosen mostly Hindi songs in this antakshari. The climax meanwhile is quite uninteresting. Kajal Aggarwal plays the perfect princess and looks beautiful and elegant. And the chemistry between her and Pawan Kalyan is nice. In fact, she is a breath air in the film. The surprise element is Sharad Kelkar, who plays the villain. The young Marathi actor made his T-town debut with the film and has done a great job. He is good looking and also carries the negative role prominently. In other characters Mukesh Rishi, Thanikella Bharani, Brahmaji and Ali have done their job. But once again Brahmanandam has failed to evoke any laughs. The Brahmi-Pawan Kalyan scenes are unnecessary and irritating. Technically, the film has very good visuals thanks to cinematographer Arthur Wilson, and art director Brahma Kadali deserves a pat for creating the set of Ratanpur village set. The dialogues by Burra Sai Madhav too are nice. Some of the dialogues suit Pawan Kalyans real-life image as he is now focusing on his political career. While a few of Devi Sri Prasads songs are nice, his work in Gabbar Singh was better. The action scenes have been interestingly choreographed by Ram Laxman. Director K.S. Ravindra however hasnt concentrate much on editing as some scenes are disjointed and end abruptly. The film leaves one with the feeling that something was missing, perhaps the magic of Pawan Kalyan. Finally, Sardar Gabbar Singh is only for Pawan Kalyan fans, apart from a few entertaining moments, there is nothing to take away from it. The Alexandria City Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to adopt a code of ethics that would require the citys elected and appointed leaders to pledge to behave with integrity and would tighten financial disclosure rules, but it does not specify any enforcement or complaint-taking procedure. A companion resolution would also require an annual report detailing the number of executive sessions and the legal rationale for each one and also would ask the state for the authority to ban or enact stricter limits on gifts the mayor and council members can accept. The legislation, a limited version of Mayor Allison Silberbergs first mayoral initiative, is a strong beginning, and were going to continue to foster a culture of ethics and transparency in Alexandria, Silberberg (D) said Friday. [Mayor pushes for expanded ethics rules for council] Silberberg had originally proposed creating a standing ethics commission that would take complaints and audit the personal financial statements, required by the state, that each council member files twice a year, part of her plan to turn the city into a national leader in ethical governance. Other Northern Virginia jurisdictions primarily follow the state guidelines, although Loudoun County recently adopted a 14-point code of ethics. But Silberbergs effort was shot down by the councils other Democrats, who defended the city as already committed to openness. Vice Mayor Justin Wilson (D) pointed out that the city was the first in Virginia to put campaign finance reports online in 2003, and Wilson pushed for more timely disclosures of major donations. In 2008, the city began requiring developers seeking zoning changes to disclose the names of people who owned 10 percent or more of their company. That might be reduced to 3 percent under a provision of the new legislation. The council meetings and work sessions are broadcast and shown on the Web, its internal audits are published on the citys website, and the council, before it closes its doors for an executive session, routinely announces why the session is required. Others noted that Virginia already has a statewide conflict of interest and ethics advisory council that is supposed to offer advice to state and local elected officials. Council member Timothy B. Lovain (D) warned in January that Silberbergs proposal might end up creating a Committee on un-Alexandrian Activities. [Council agrees to study ethics its own way] The reception to the compromise appears more favorable. Wilson said he might seek to better define the code and the pledges meaning of appointed officials whether it would include the hundreds of citizen volunteers who serve on scores of city boards and commissions or whether it should be limited to the city manager, city clerk and city attorney. Council member John T. Chapman (D) said Friday that he is considering the idea of adding a city ombudsman to take complaints so there would bea professional at the helm. He wasnt sure whether he will be ready to propose that Tuesday. Republican Ed Gillespie, during his 2014 race for U.S. Senate. Gillespie has raised nearly $750,000 for his candidacy for Virginia governor in 2017. (Steve Helber/AP) Republican strategist Ed Gillespie raised $749,000 within five months for his 2017 bid for Virginia governor, bringing in money at a clip comparable to that set by the last two GOP contenders for the job. Gillespie, who confirmed that he was running for governor in early October and formed a political action committee in November, concluded the first quarter of 2016 with $616,000 on hand, according to financial information that his campaign released to The Washington Post on Friday. Although on par with that of recent Republican hopefuls, Gillespies early fundraising is well behind the $1.2 million that Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) brought in during the opening six-month stretch of his 2013 bid. But McAuliffe got his fundraising operation rolling much closer to the start of that election, in the latter half of 2012, with most of the money coming in at the end of the year. Gillespies sum represents money he started collecting in November, a full two years ahead of the 2017 election. Less clear is how Gillespies recent haul stacks up against that of Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D), currently the only Democrat running to succeed the term-limited McAuliffe. Northam is primarily raising money through a campaign account, which only has to report finances every six months in a non-election year. His next campaign finance report, covering the first six months of this year, is due in July. Gillespie is raising money through a political action committee, which must report quarterly. His next report is due next week. [Gillespie forms PAC next step in his bid for Virginia governor] Over 2015, Northam raised about $1 million, $661,000 of it through his campaign account and $344,000 through his Stronger Together PAC. Between the two accounts, he ended the year with $720,000 in the bank. Northam, a pediatric neurologist and former state senator, has been unable to add to the bottom line for most of this year. As an elected official who presides over the state Senate, Northam was prohibited from raising funds during the 60-day legislative session that concluded in March. Northams campaign manager, Brad Komar, provided a summary of the Democrats most recent campaign finance reports but declined to comment. Gillespie brought in $266,000 over the first quarter of this year, putting him on pace to reach the $1 million mark by July, said Chris Leavitt, executive director of Gillespies Lets Grow, Virginia! PAC. Gillespie, who nearly unseated U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) in 2014, is considered the leading contender for the GOP nomination. But he has competition. U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) joined the race in December, but he has not filed any fundraising reports. [GOPs Rep. Wittman says hes running for governor of Virginia in 2017] Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II (R), who narrowly lost the 2013 governors race to McAuliffe, has said he is considering another run. Traveling the country to stump for Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, Cuccinelli has said he will not make a decision until after the November election. [Cuccinelli leaves the door open for another run for Virginia governor] Gillespie raised an amount on par with what the last two Republican candidates pulled in over their first six months of fundraising. In the opening stretch of his successful 2009 campaign, former attorney general Robert F. McDonnell (R) raised $818,000. Cuccinelli raised $923,000 in his first six months, $477,000 of that through a transfer from his attorney general account. Unlike the past two Republican contenders, Gillespie has never held elective office. But he can tap a national network of donors built over a long career in Washington politics, as was the case for McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Gillespie is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and White House counselor to President George W. Bush. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe gestures as he delivers his State of the Commonwealth Address before a joint session of the 2016 Virginia Assembly at the Capitol in Richmond, Va (Steve Helber/AP) Go Virginia, a program at the heart of Gov. Terry McAuliffes economic development strategy, is on the ropes, after McAuliffe abruptly withdrew his support, and Attorney General Mark R. Herring said late Thursday that the $35 million program probably violates the state constitution. McAuliffe (D), who sought a ruling on the legality of Go Virginia from Herring (D), will try to amend the legislation that created it, giving lawmakers the option to accept or reject his changes when they return to Richmond this month. If the General Assembly refuses to go along with the governor, the legislation goes back to the governor, who then has 30 days to decide what to do. The fast unraveling of Go Virginia is a blow to some of the most powerful figures in Virginia education and business circles, who joined with McAuliffe to devise the strategy last year. The regional grant program would have shifted power to spend tax dollars from the administration to a board dominated by businesspeople and lawmakers. Herring said the state Supreme Court would probably find the program unconstitutional because it would create an executive-branch board that was not controlled by the executive branch. Go Virginia was designed to encourage cities and counties to work together to create state-funded programs such as job training and skills certification that will stimulate the local economy. Local residents would lead the effort based on their experiences in the private sector. McAuliffe gave a full-throated endorsement of the program last summer, pinning his hopes on Go Virginia as the best way to attract companies to the state and train workers dual challenges for a state still smarting from cuts in federal defense contracts and budget reductions associated with sequestration. By the time were done with this Im going to feel bad for those other 49 governors, McAuliffe said last July during the statewide rollout. Go Virginia I am all in. McAuliffe committed to the program long before details were finalized, but recently worried that it upended the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, said his spokesman, Brian Coy. Weve been negotiating with them about the structure of this thing the whole time, Coy said. The rubber met the road when the bill started working its way through the legislative process. Republicans balked at McAuliffes criticism of the program, which was easily authorized by the General Assembly with bipartisan support. McAuliffe has been making frequent use of the veto, nixing nearly 30 bills on GOP legislative priorities that would have defunded Planned Parenthood, eroded gay rights, extended coal tax credits, protected Civil War monuments and strengthened immigration detainers. [McAuliffes Cuba trip highlights his emphasis on foreign trade] McAuliffe has hopscotched the globe as governor, trying to boost Virginias reputation as a business-friendly state. He welcomed a job-creation plan conceived by John O. Dubby Wynne, former chief executive of Landmark Communications and a prolific donor to both parties, and other leading business figures in the state. Majority Leader M. Kirkland Cox (R-Colonial Heights) said he was blindsided by McAuliffes sudden criticism of Go Virginia. The legislation has been out there for months, he said. Its not like this is a surprise. If you have a serious concern this is not some low-profile piece of legislation why on Earth wouldnt you express it? The only dissent in the GOP-dominated House came from some Republicans who said the program meddled in the free market. Cox also called it puzzling that Democratic lawmakers would be in virtual lockstep on a program so troubling to McAuliffe. In the Senate, J. Chapman Chap Petersen (Fairfax) was the only Democrat to join a handful of Republicans in voting no. For better or for worse, taxpayer money needs to be spent by elected officials. Thats why we are elected, he said. Usually if the leadership is in favor of it, its a bad idea. The legislation that ultimately passed the legislature this year established a 22-member board made up of 12 businesspeople, seven lawmakers and three members of the governors Cabinet. Lawmakers would not only sit on the board but would also appoint eight of the businesspeople, compared with McAuliffes four appointees. The board would have authority to create eight to 10 regional councils made up of 11 to 21 members. Each council would receive $500,000 in start-up money to figure out the regions needs. Then they could apply for additional funding based on population as well as for awards made through a competitive grant process. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, speaking at the Executive Mansion in Richmond in February, recently vetoed a flurry of gun rights bills. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP) Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who struck a compromise on guns with Republicans this year, has gone on to veto a flurry of gun rights bills that were not part of that deal. In the past week alone, McAuliffe (D) vetoed bills that would have given domestic-violence victims under protective orders the temporary right to carry concealed weapons without applying for permits or getting training. He also nixed measures that would have allowed retired police officers working as private security guards at public schools to carry weapons on campus. Some Republicans said the governor is trying to win back some of the gun rights activists who broke with McAuliffe over the gun deal, which greatly expanded the right to carry concealed weapons in exchange for voluntary background checks at gun shows and tighter restrictions on domestic abusers. [Five things that (kind of) explain Terry McAuliffes gun deal with the GOP] Theyre as mad as a wet hen at the guy, and he just threw them a political bone, said Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter (R-Prince William), a leading gun rights lawmaker, who had two gun bills vetoed in the past week. McAuliffes spokesman, Brian Coy, said the governor based his decisions on what he thinks is best for citizens. Governor McAuliffe applies one standard to bills like these, Coy wrote in an email. If they make Virginia safer, he signs them. If they do not, he vetoes them. McAuliffe did approve a pair of Republican-sponsored bills to expand gun rights. But that move angered some GOP leaders because the new law covers only a very select group of Virginians. McAuliffe signed identical House and Senate bills to allow the states judges and prosecutors to carry concealed weapons without having to undergo the normal permit-application and training process. The new law also allows them to carry their weapons most anywhere with a few exceptions, such as in the secure areas of airports. The idea is to allow them to carry weapons at courthouses the gun-free zones where they work and at other locations, including places prosecutors might go in the course of an investigation, such as a school, said Sen. Stephen D. Newman (R-Lynchburg), who sponsored the Senate version. Some GOP leaders were infuriated that McAuliffe was willing to expand gun rights for judges but not for women in crisis or retired law enforcement. Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) criticized McAuliffe for what he called a callous level of elitist hypocrisy in determining which citizens have a right to defend themselves as they see fit. It is appalling to me that he is going to let a woman in danger fend for herself while giving extra, added protection to people who already have extra, added protection to begin with, he said, referring to courthouse security, which usually includes metal detectors and armed officers. Coy did not respond to Gilberts criticism. On Thursday, McAuliffe vetoed a pair of identical bills, sponsored by Gilbert and Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-Fauquier), to allow anyone who had obtained a protective order to carry a concealed weapon for 45 days without a permit or training. The person would have to be otherwise eligible to possess a firearm. McAuliffe called the legislation a very, very dangerous gamble that will lead to more tragedies. He said the bills may have been well intentioned but would make it easier for deadly firearms to be inserted into volatile situations where the gun could be turned against the person who sought it for protection. [McAuliffe signs gun control compromise into law] McAuliffe and Brian Moran, Virginias secretary of public safety and homeland security, said the bills would have undermined a law passed this year, which requires anyone subject to a protective order to sell or give away any weapons or face felony charges. Gilbert said his legislation would have helped women protect themselves when they tend to be most vulnerable right after a protective order has been issued. McAuliffe vetoed those bills at a public event at Alexandria City Hall, where he also vetoed a Lingamfelter bill related to brandishing firearms. Under that bill, people could have been convicted of brandishing a firearm only if they intended their conduct to cause fear or should have reasonably known that it would. Current law makes it unlawful to brandish a gun in a way that reasonably induces fear in a person of being shot or injured intent is not addressed. On April 1, McAuliffe vetoed another Lingamfelter measure, which would have allowed retired law enforcement officers to be armed while working as private security guards at schools. Supporters said hiring retired officers is a cheaper option than employing a current officer to serve as a resource officer. McAuliffe said the bill fails to distinguish between an individual who retired recently or 20 years ago. He also said there was a difference between private security guards and the armed school resource officers already assigned to some public schools. The latter are law enforcement officers detailed to schools, who receive ongoing training, he said. Allowing additional firearms in schools without appropriate training would create an environment that is less, rather than more, secure, he said. Hyderabad: The police Officers Association on Thursday sent a legal notice to film actor Srikanth for producing a movie called Mental Police. The associations president Mr. Y. Gopi Reddy told the press that the title of the movie was critical of the police department. We have sent the legal notices to the producer, director and hero of the movie. The police department has a responsibility in society and as we fight terrorists, extremists and anti-social elements... Our very lives are at stake. Telangana government made several reforms in the department to achieve the goal of New York policing standards, he said. He added that such titles of movies might spread a wrong message. Bertha Zuniga Caceres, the 26-year-old daughter of the slain environmental activist Berta Caceres Flores, reflects after testifying Tuesday at the Organization of American States in Washington. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) The wispy young woman with raven-black hair and expressive brown eyes was introduced to the small crowd as Bertha Zuniga Caceres, but hardly anyone in her tight circle calls her that. She is known by the Spanish diminutive Bertita, an homage to her internationally famous mother, environmental activist Berta Caceres Flores. On a windy afternoon in Washington this week, the 26-year-old Zuniga boldly continued the work that many think led to her mothers recent slaying by gunmen in Honduras. Zuniga faced the gathering at the red-brick entrance of the Organization of American States, lifted a bullhorn and denounced her government for creating a climate that makes Honduras one of the deadliest countries in the world for people trying to protect forests, rivers and other resources. At least 100 activists were murdered between 2010, a year after an elected president was ousted by a coup, and 2014, according to the international watchdog group Global Witness. Caceres, a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize who fought the governments removal of indigenous people from river communities to pave the way for a massive hydroelectric dam project, was shot March 3 after years of receiving death threats. [A lot of people wanted her dead. Before her slaying, threats followed Caceres] Though still in mourning, her daughter flew to Washington to testify before the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about deadly abuse in Honduras. She also joined the Center for Justice and International Law and other groups in asking the OAS to appoint a panel of independent experts to investigate the murder of her mother and other activists. There have been few arrests in the cases. Environmental activists gather in front of the Organization of American States in memory of Berta Caceres Flores, who was killed in rural Honduras on March 3. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) What we want to find out is who were these assassins, Zuniga said, her voice booming across two city blocks. Not the trigger men. We want to know who the intellectual assassins are meaning the others, possibly including government and military officials, who had a role in the planning. That call to action is reminiscent of her mothers fierce activism, and some worry that Bertita, who is suspending graduate studies to carry on her mothers work, might also suffer her fate. Were all very concerned for her safety, especially since the same security measures are in place for the rest of the family that were there for Berta, said her cousin, Silvio Carrillo. Zuniga is the second of four children, and all of them are speaking out. Theyre fearless, just like their mother. Zuniga hand-delivered a request to OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, asking him to convene an expert panel to investigate the murders. A similar panel probed the disappearance of protesters three years ago in Mexico and produced a stinging report that thoroughly contradicted the governments account of how the busload of students vanished. It also implicated police and military officials who were not mentioned in the original account. Environmental activists concerned about violence in Honduras gather outside the World Bank. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) Zunigas appearance at the OAS did not have the result she had hoped for. Neither did activists push for the U.S. State Department to pressure the Honduran government for an independent investigation by a panel of legal experts from other parts of the world. Almagro asked Honduras to submit to such action, but the government did not respond, according to OAS spokesman Sergio Jellinek. The OAS now plans to deploy international judges and technical experts as part of its newly created Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras. The purpose of the mission is to investigate corruption and put people in jail, Jellinek said. If there is an angle related to Bertas case, they will tackle it. [A rare conviction for the slaying of an environmental activist in Latin America] Mark Toner, deputy spokesman for the State Department, said the agency has strongly condemned Caceress murder and extended condolences to the family and people who have lost a dedicated defender of the environment and human rights. But, he said, department officials cannot tell the Honduran government how to proceed. The watchdog group Global Witness ranked Honduras, where Berta Caceres Flores was killed, as one of the most deadly countries for environmental activism in Latin America. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) The U.S. government has no jurisdiction to investigate a homicide in Honduras, Toner said in a statement Friday. Several U.S. advisors with extensive experience in criminal investigations and prosecutions are providing technical assistance to the Honduran investigators and prosecutors. We are not aware of any international organization that has the legal authority and technical capacity to conduct an independent homicide investigation in Honduras. The Honduran Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment, but sources at the OAS, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because discussions with Honduras are sensitive, said that the government there favored review by the new mission rather than any involvement by the human rights commission. Speaking through an interpreter, Zuniga called the responses by the OAS and State Department disappointing. That sentiment was echoed by family members and several activists groups that say they have little confidence in the Honduran prosecutors or the mission, which obviously has no investigative track record. Honduran officials vowed to protect Caceres, they said, but failed to keep her safe. Now the same government is promising to protect her elderly mother and four children while undertaking an investigation into a homicide that so far has yielded no arrests. Carrillo, a U.S. citizen who accompanied his cousin during her time in Washington, said the organization that Caceres led at the time of her death, the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), has stepped in to fill in the security gaps. The police? Why should we trust them? [Suspicions mount in slaying of noted Honduran environmentalist] Caceres won the Goldman Prize for the role she played in getting a Chinese company to abandon the dam in 2013, but a Costa Rican firm took over, and the work continues. A Dutch bank suspended its financing because of the recent violence, but that has not stopped construction, either. A completion date has not been set. Late in the week, Zuniga boarded a red-eye flight back to Honduras and a future, at least for now, as an activist. She said she knows violence often comes with the job. Were not going to deny that we are afraid, Zuniga said. But one of the biggest lessons my mom had was not to stop. My biggest fear was that they would kill her, and that has happened. This is an attack against everyone who stands against these actions. We feel a need to make this a calling. Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly named the international group Global Witness. We love to compare the intelligence of various animals to that of humans, Frans de Waal notes: This chimp can count like a person, that parrot can talk like one. But de Waal, a professor of primate behavior in the psychology department at Emory University, thinks this anthropomorphic point of view is outdated, and he makes an entertaining, convincing case for assessing each speciess intelligence on its own terms. His new book puts it this way: Its unfair to ask whether a squirrel can count to 10 if squirrel life doesnt require counting. It does, however, require remembering where hundreds of nuts were hidden, and the squirrel totally aces that while you probably forget where you parked your car. De Waal, author of several books on primates and one of Time magazines 100 most influential people in 2007, is full of anecdotes about animal intelligence. Heres how killer whales hunt off the Antarctic Peninsula: A group of orcas will spot a seal on a sizable ice floe near land. Several of them work together and its hard work, he notes to reposition the floe into open water. Then four or five line up side by side and rapidly swim in perfect unison toward the floe, creating a huge wave that washes off the unlucky seal. Impressive. But the punch lines even better: A lot of the time, the whales just release the seal and scientists have even seen them put one back on a different ice floe. Orca humor? Practical joke? Lots of animals can recognize photographs of specific faces in their own species, de Waal reports, and crows can recognize and develop opinions about individual humans. One biologist in Seattle has captured so many crows for research that crows divebomb him when they see him outdoors. (He had his aides wear Halloween masks, but the crows learned to recognized those, too.) And lets talk about dogs. De Waal knows some folks who own an Afghan hound and were outraged when the breed was ranked dead last in intelligence. My insulted friends argued that the only reason Afghans were considered dimwitted is that they are independent minded, stubborn. The ranking wasnt about brains, the newspaper said, but obedience. Owners of border collies (No. 1) may disagree. The book is not only full of information and thought-provoking, its also a lot of fun to read. Its title is Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? and the author certainly is. The question of precisely where Hannibal and his army crossed the Alps into Italy to defeat the Romans during the Second Punic War, which began in 218 B.C. has perplexed historians for nearly 2,000 years. Thanks to a new study, the first evidence pointing to an answer has been unearthed. Clues to Hannibals route were recently discovered not in maps or letters but in preserved poop deposits, from a churned-up stretch of boggy terrain that probably served as a watering hole and toilet for the armys animals. Even the ancient Romans couldnt agree on where Hannibals crossing had taken place, and scholars have debated the topic ever since. Some proposed that the general traced a route through a narrow mountain pass called Col de la Traversette, to the southwest of Turin, Italy, but they couldnt produce any archaeological proof. Chris Allen, of Queens University Belfast, and William Mahaney, of York University in Toronto, were conducting research near Col de la Traversette that was unrelated to Hannibal. Thats when the question about the generals Alps route confronted them in a waterlogged area along the mountain passage, Allen said. It occurred to them that Hannibals army which included 30,000 troops, 37 elephants and an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 horses would have needed to stop for water during their travels. When animals drink, they typically defecate, a colleague told Allen. Hannibal (247-182 BC) on 5 Dinars 2008 Banknote from Tunisia. (iStock) We realized if we were lucky enough in this mire to find a layer of sediment that was old enough and hadnt been disturbed, we might actually be able to find evidence of horse manure that would have been left by his army when they passed through, said Allen, an associate professor of environmental microbiology. The researchers excavated a cylindrical sample of soil and used carbon dating to establish that its layers dated back 8,000 years. The section from Hannibals time had been churned up, as though a number of animals had plodded through. Chemical analysis identified organic materials that typically inhabit a humans or a horses gut, while DNA analysis revealed the presence of microbes associated with horse manure. By combining all these methods, we were able to point strongly to the fact that there was an accumulation of fecal materials at the correct date, about 2,200 years ago, Allen said. The quantity of dung appearing at that point in time hints at an animal presence that was unusual for the region but was also likely to be associated with Hannibal, who was known to be on the move across the Alps during that time, the authors suggested. TEXAS Teen charged in death of dance student Police have arrested a 17-year-old suspect in the slaying of a University of Texas dance student, law enforcement officials said Friday. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said that Meechaiel Criner has been booked into the county jail on a first-degree murder charge in the slaying of Haruka Weiser, a first-year student from Portland, Ore. Weiser, 18, was last seen Sunday night leaving the universitys drama building en route to her dorm, police said. Roommates reported her missing the next morning. Weisers body was found on campus Tuesday in Waller Creek by the universitys alumni center, a short walk from the drama building. Acevedo said Criner was arrested Thursday without incident. He said Criner is not a student at the university. He described Criner as homeless. Acevedo said Weisers death was the first homicide on the University of Texas main campus since August 1966, when a sniper high up in a clock tower killed more than a dozen people and wounded many others. The slaying this week shocked the community as a manhunt for a man on a bicycle, captured in surveillance video, went on throughout the week. Nick Anderson University of Texas students gather for fellow student Haruka Weiser on campus April 7, 2016. Weiser, a first-year theater and dance student from Oregon, was found dead on campus after she was reporter missing two days earlier. (Eric Gay/AP) Springsteen cancels concert because of N.C. bias law: Bruce Springsteen announced Friday that he was canceling a weekend show in North Carolina in solidarity with those protesting the states law banning anti-discrimination ordinances. Springsteen and the E Street Band were scheduled to perform at the Greensboro Coliseum on Sunday night as part of their current U.S. tour. A host of businesses and organizations have criticized the law, which prohibits transgender people from using bathrooms that do not match the gender they were assigned at birth. It also bans local governments from extending civil rights protections to gay and transgender people. Mark Berman Navy SEAL who claims shooting Osama bin Laden charged with DUI: Robert James ONeill, the former member of SEAL Team 6 who claimed to have shot and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a 2011 raid, was charged with DUI on Friday in his home town of Butte, Mont. According to George Skuletich, the undersheriff of Butte-Silver Bow City and County, local officers found ONeill, 39, sleeping in the front seat of his car in the parking lot of a local convenience store and detained him after he failed a sobriety test. In an emailed statement, ONeill said he had taken a prescribed sleep aid before his arrest. Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Dan Lamothe YEMEN Saudi-led group will join Yemen cease-fire The Saudi-led coalition behind a year-long military campaign against Yemens Shiite rebels is ready to commit to a cease-fire as long as the rebels abide by a U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for their withdrawal from Yemeni cities, the alliances spokesman said Friday. Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri told the Associated Press that the Yemeni rebels known as Houthis should show commitment to the upcoming April 18 peace talks that could yield a political settlement. The rebels must also recognize the government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and hand over their heavy weapons, he said. If talks fail, al-Asiri said, the military option remains on the table. The two tracks are parallel: the political and the military. Whatever way leads to the restoration of the internationally recognized government, we will take, said al-Asiri, speaking in Cairo. Associated Press Burma Government releases jailed activists Burmas new government released scores of jailed activists Friday and said it was preparing to pardon 100 more people serving sentences for political offenses. The move by Aung San Suu Kyi, whose post as state counselor makes her the countrys de facto head of state, was welcomed by Washington and human rights groups. Many of Suu Kyis supporters and members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party were political prisoners under the junta that ceded power in 2011 after nearly 50 years of military rule. The new government was sworn in on March 30 after the NLD swept a general election in November. Suu Kyi, who spent years under house arrest in Myanmar, as the country is also known, said Thursday that releasing remaining political prisoners was a top priority. It was unclear whether the military, which controls key cabinet posts overseeing local government, law and order and security, supported the moves. Reuters ITALY Austria and Italy talk about border controls The interior ministers from Austria and Italy have met in Rome amid concerns that the Austrian government will enforce border controls on the nations shared border to limit the passage of migrants. Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfanos office said the meeting Friday yielded a commitment to intensify cooperation in monitoring and controlling the common border with the strategic aim of guaranteeing smoothness of passage at the Brenner [Pass] and to safeguard the free circulation foreseen by the Schengen accord, which opened up borders between European Union members. The ministry said the two sides agreed to strengthen investigative cooperation between border police forces, including greater exchange of information and entry of data into European databases. Many expect that the recent E.U.-Turkey deal tightening a Balkans route used by migrants from the Middle East will send them across the sea to Italy and then northwards. Associated Press Confusion about whos in charge in Madagascar: Madagascars presidential office said Friday that Prime Minister Jean Ravelonarivo and his cabinet have resigned only to have Ravelonarivo say he had done no such thing. The presidents office gave no explanation for the reported resignations, while Ravelonarivo said that the president had asked him to quit but that he had yet to hand in a resignation letter. Ravelonarivo took office in January 2015 after public frustration with power cuts, rampant unemployment and a stagnant economy forced out the previous administration. Brazils attorney general says Lula should be blocked from chief of staff job: Brazilian Attorney General Rodrigo Janot has recommended that the Supreme Court block former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from becoming chief of staff to President Dilma Rousseff, saying it would disrupt investigations into the corruption and kickback scheme at Petrobras, the state-owned oil company. Janot said a few weeks ago that Lulas appointment was legitimate. The attorney general said he changed his mind after another examination of the case. South African religious leaders say president should quit: A group of South African religious leaders said Friday that President Jacob Zuma should quit over a scandal involving millions of dollars in state spending on his private residence. Representatives of the National Religious Leaders Council say the president has lost the moral authority to lead the country. From news services New Yorkers have always believed that our state is the center of the universe. And now, for a shining two-week moment, it really is, at least as far as the political world is concerned. Thanks to this years unexpectedly long presidential nomination battles, New Yorks opinion about who should occupy the White House matters. As a result, candidates are actually wooing voters ahead of the April 19 contest rather than simply asking them for campaign cash. (Were not known as the ATM state for nothing.) When most people think of New York, they think of New York City, a liberal bastion where enrolled Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 5 to 1. But statewide, the Democrat-to-Republican ratio is more like 2 to 1, and, generally speaking, the farther you get from the city, the more conservative voters get, with the exception of urban centers such as Albany, Rochester and Buffalo. Candidates here fight hard, and they fight to win. As a top aide to the current governor once memorably told his counterpart in a neighboring state, We operate on two speeds here: Get along, and kill. To gain a more robust understanding of New York ahead of the upcoming primary, consider the following: Buffalo News columnist Bob McCarthy Politics in Buffalo is so factionalized that the city is referred to as Beirut on the Lake (Lake Erie, that is), a place where its not all that unusual for the states Conservative Party to endorse Democrats. No one explains the strange political goings-on here better than veteran columnist McCarthy, who has been covering the city for three decades. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert Caro Caros biography of master builder and manipulator Moses captures the tribalism, aggression and thirst for power that characterize New York politics more completely (though not necessarily more succinctly) than any other book out there. WNYCs The Brian Lehrer Show If you want to tap into the liberal hive mind of New York City, this is your best bet. Lehrers soft-spoken but probing interview style routinely elicits newsmaking comments from his guests, and he takes calls from a dedicated following across the five boroughs and beyond. Lehrers eclectic list of past guests includes notables from Sen. John McCain to DJ Spooky and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Bob Lonsberry, WHAM-AM in Rochester and WSYR-AM in Syracuse An outspoken, hard-line conservative, Lonsberry is the undisputed king of talk radio in central New York. He can be controversial racist, according to critics. Yet he has his finger on the pulse of right-leaning residents, a small but often vociferous minority in this Democrat-dominated state. Law & Order No, this iconic show is not technically about politics. But pretty much every major New York political scandal has been adapted as a storyline. And a main character prosecutor Adam Schiff was modeled after former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau (left), renowned as one of the nations top law enforcement officials over a nearly half-century career. Billions This Showtime drama is not about politics, either, per se. But one of its central characters is based on crusading U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara (left), who made a name for himself with his relentless pursuit of public-corruption cases, taking down some of New Yorks top elected officials in the process. If you need insight into the clout of the states financial industry and the outsize footprint of the most powerful non-elected man in politics, this is the show to watch. All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life, Andrew Cuomo The governors memoir had dismal sales (about 3,000 copies from its release in October 2014 through February of this year) and received lukewarm reviews. Its not terribly forthcoming or revealing, but it does offer some insight into the mind of the states most powerful elected official and an introduction to key characters operating in his orbit. Twitter: @CTLizB Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. They have photoshopped the classics like 'Rambo' to Peshwar America and they're quite hilarious. Just few days a go the Internet got furious when the head of Central Board of Film Certification of India (CBFC), Pahlaj Nihalani gave 'The Jungle Book' a U/A certificate. Nihalani said that it was scary for kids and the 3D effects are scary because the animals seem to jump right at you. The Twitter users were not very pleased about the reaction and mocked boards decision. And now All India Bakchod a.k.a AIB has come up with "Sanskaari Hollywood Posters". They have photoshopped the classics like 'Rambo' to Peshwar America and they're quite hilarious. (Photo: AIB/ Instagram) (Photo: AIB/ Instagram) (Photo: AIB/ Instagram) (Photo: AIB/ Instagram) (Photo: AIB/ Instagram) (Photo: AIB/ Instagram) (Photo: AIB/ Instagram) Timothy Snyder is the Housum Professor of European History at Yale University. His most recent book is Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. I was basically unemployable, Robert Kaplan writes of his younger self, and so naturally he made for communist Romania. The man and the country have changed a good deal since 1981: Kaplan is not a struggling journalist but one of Americas leading geopolitical thinkers, and Romania is not an impoverished society under the rule of the national Stalinist Nicolai Ceausescu but a pluralist democracy within the European Union. This unusual book is a work of biographical and geopolitical reflection, asking what in fact happened when the world seemed to turn after the revolutions of 1989, and reflecting on what Kaplan and other Americans learned, thought they learned or simply got wrong. His first appealing gesture is toward what he did back then, as a poorer and freer man: He bought and read academic works of history, followed them where they led and recorded what he saw in a notebook while eating dinner alone. It was a chance encounter with the work of an eminent historian of communism, Gordon Skilling, that led him toward Bucharest, on the first of several journeys to Romania, where, at least in the early days, nobody from any other place can contact you. Kaplan reveals enough of his life and thoughts as a younger man that the reader can inquire about the relationship between his psychic needs and his geopolitical conclusions. Despite his avowed search for solitude, he also seems to have wanted a new community, a pure nation to contrast with a tainted world. He flew to Romania on an impulse right after leaving the Israel Defense Forces, and it is hard not to see Romania, in his more naive portrayals, as a kind of second Zion, a home for a wanderer. For an American Jew such as Kaplan, the road to Israel is always open, but it is the road more traveled. To opt for Romania was to choose a nation of ones own, one without a prior claim on the self, one that could be watched from a safe cultural distance. As Kaplan presented his American rather than his Israeli passport to pass through the security checks of communist-era Bucharest, he was making an individual choice for an unfamiliar society. He did not speak Romanian, and so his perceptiveness and penmanship were pushed to (and sometimes past) their limits, as in bludgeoning generalizations such as: History is never so real as in the candlelit faces of Romanians at Easter. Kaplan found his own exotica in Europe and sought to master it by describing how it looked. His first aesthetic impulse, as a writer and thinker, is to fix the Romanian nation as timeless, a place whose historic territories have endured millennia of history despite regular violation by foreigners. "In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond" by Robert D. Kaplan (Random House) And yet he catches himself. Kaplan has learned, in the intervening decades, that the language of innocence violated is the language of ethnic nationalism. Of course we are right to be charmed by the beauty of distant cultures and to celebrate difference but just how should our intuitive reactions to other nations influence our sense of ourselves, of how history works and how (in Kaplans case) we recommend that superpowers behave in the world? Unlike almost every other strategist one reads, Kaplan makes no bones about learning from his own mistakes and from the scholarship of others. He discusses his readings of the Romanian fascists, an undeniably gifted group of writers, who celebrate the Romanian past as an unbroken and almost physical reality, and compares them with scholarly historians of nationalism (such as myself), who generally take a step back and ask how political activists of the 19th and 20th centuries had to channel and alter the more distant past to create a sense of continuity and solidarity that would appeal to larger publics. Kaplan correctly recognizes that understanding the nation involves two sensibilities, the sympathetic and the critical, and he now wishes to put his own aesthetic and romantic impulses into perspective. When he describes the history of the Romanian 20th century he recognizes, to his credit, that the conceit of an innocent nation violated by outsiders has moral implications. He writes, and writes well, about Romanian fascist excesses of the 1930s and the communist repressions of the postwar period, and after some slips early in the book (where, for example, he incorrectly speaks of wartime Romania as a Nazi puppet rather than a Nazi ally), he assigns these deeds to Romanians rather than outsiders. When he returns to the Jewish question, contemplating the site of a mass murder of Jews by Romanians in 1941, he has no trouble raising the issue of responsibility. Romanian fascists spoke of Jews as outsiders who violated the national community, and the mature Kaplan, the visitor who returns in 2014, understands the need for another language, a more pluralistic one, in which sympathy for an ethnic group must be part of a larger emotional and political range rather than the final stroke of a pen. Writing after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, during a time when the European Union itself is threatened, Kaplan considers a situation that might have seemed unthinkable back in 1981: that Romanian sovereignty might depend upon association with some larger and friendly institution, one that accepts multiple nationalities and binds them through free trade and travel and the support of certain universal values. The mature Kaplan makes a wise case for the politics of ink and compromise over the aesthetics of blood and innocence. Precisely because he traveled in recent years throughout Romania, he has a very robust sense of how European Union membership has transformed the country for the better. He also has come to see Romanians as a society with interests rather than only a culture with traditions. Exotic cultures are more conducive to travel writing than European bureaucracies, but the Romanian state (like all European states) has geographic, economic, and demographic limitations and needs Europe for security, trade and culture. The European Union, Kaplan says, is a tireless protector of the existing, compromising, pancontinental order. Just as a younger Kaplan might have needed to shift among identities that are more personal and more universal, so Romanians need a European sense of themselves. The threat to that order is Russia, which exploits the old idea of ethnicities against the new order of cooperative European states. Traveling in Romania during the Russian occupation of southeastern Ukraine, Kaplan recalls that Moscow used bogus ethnic arguments to justify its aggression, and he cannily points to similar risks in Romania and Moldova. Kaplan still takes an admirable pleasure in history, and the only mistakes he condemns are his own. He sees now that it was his misunderstanding of the revolutions of 1989, of the end of communism in Romania and Eastern Europe, that led him to support the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He might have pointed out that this error, like the underestimation of the importance of the European Union, was almost universal on the American right, but he takes no cover behind accepted opinions. Instead, almost alone among influential public figures, he tries seriously to diagnose his errors. He looked at Saddam Hussein and saw the Romanian dictator Ceausescu. He did not distinguish between social movements and foreign invasions, between the shelter the European Union could offer Romania and the naive faith that violence itself could bring democracy to Iraq. This book reveals the confident, poetical Kaplan, striving as ever in his writing for the proverbial, but also a reflective, political Kaplan, seeking at times to submerge his gift for romantic generalization in respectful attention to the ideas of others. That tension between an aesthetic sense of wholeness and the intellectual acceptance of complexity is the real subject of the book, both as autobiography and as geopolitics. Sharp and sudden intuition might be necessary for seeing the world, but it is not sufficient for policy recommendations. And while nations do feel subjectively necessary to the people who identify with them, nation-states are not objectively sufficient for political rectitude or even political survival. As Kaplan concludes, for a better century than the last one, a European Union in some form will be essential. Celeste Ward Gventer is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who consults on a variety of defense and security issues in Europe and the Middle East. On Dec. 19, 1971, Sir Geoffrey Arthur watched as HMS Achilles and HMS Intrepid pulled out of their berths at the port of Bahrain. The two ships carried off the last elements of Britains fighting forces remaining in the Persian Gulf in the post-World War II era. Arthur, the last political representative of the old British order, could still see the Intrepid on the horizon when two American destroyers hove up, escorted by Bahraini tugs, to occupy the vacated slips. Arthur rightly understood this event to be an augury of things to come. Indeed, the scene could hardly have been more aptly choreographed to signal a changing of the guard in the gulf and in the wider Middle East. Andrew Bacevich bluntly sums up this symbolic transfer of responsibility: That was not a baton that the Americans were grasping but a can of worms. In his new book, Americas War for the Greater Middle East, the historian and retired U.S. Army colonel provides a critical review of American policy and military involvement in what he calls the Greater Middle East over the past 35 years. Those familiar with Bacevichs work will recognize the clarity of expression, the devastating directness and the coruscating wit that characterize the writing of one of the most articulate and incisive living critics of American foreign policy. The central argument of the book is that the U.S. experience in the Middle East over the past 3 1/ 2 decades is not a disconnected series of largely unsuccessful military engagements but a virtually continuous war in the heart of the Islamic world that persists to this day. His opening note to readers previews what his nearly 400 pages ineluctably reveal about this ongoing war: We have not won it. We are not winning it. Simply trying harder is unlikely to produce a different outcome. For Bacevich, the turning point is not the departure of the British in 1971 but a proclamation by President Jimmy Carter in his January 1980 State of the Union address: Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. This Carter Doctrine, by the authors lights, was aimed primarily at ensuring the uninterrupted flow of cheap energy and ushered in a new era. A region that the U.S. armed forces had by and large steered clear of . . . leaving it in the hands of diplomats and spooks (or at least the British) became a core interest and area of operations for the military. "America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History" by Andrew J. Bacevich (Random House) This date makes sense. As Bacevich observes: From the end of World War II to 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that region. . . . Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere except in the Greater Middle East. He reminds readers that in the decade between the departure of the British military and Carters announcement, the U.S. governments solution to regional stability in the Greater Middle East was to outsource. After the shambles in Vietnam, the Nixon administration handed the task of keeping regional peace to local allies (an approach that earned its own moniker you guessed it the Nixon Doctrine). In the gulf, the United States supported its twin pillars, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Arms sales soared, and Carter feted the shahs Iran as an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas (a moment, Bacevich observes, that was destined for the blooper reel). But events in the region over the course of the 1970s gradually suggested to many that the challenges in the Persian Gulf required a U.S. military solution. In Bacevichs reading, the foremost rationale was a perceived need to protect American and allied access to oil. Both the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan convinced many of the undecided, Carter included, that it was crunch time. The vulnerability of Americas coronary artery, and that of its allies, had become intolerable. In ensuing years, the United States would seek further basing options in the region, develop contingency plans for a Soviet invasion of Iran and eventually establish Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters responsible for the planning and conduct of military operations in the region. A review of U.S. operations there makes it difficult to dispute Bacevichs central premise: that American military engagement in the Greater Middle East has not been crowned with success. From the disastrous attempted rescue of hostages in Iran in April 1980, in which eight Americans were killed, to the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, where 241 servicemen perished, to the tragic 1993 operation in Somalia, in which 18 Americans and countless Somalis lost their lives, all the way to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of more than 5,000 Americans, in almost every case American military intervention has brought disaster, failed to achieve its objectives or been strategically irrelevant. Some might point to the 1991 Persian Gulf War as a resounding triumph, but Bacevich cautions that victory served to foster illusions and underwrite folly. Despite the dazzling success of U.S. military forces, the strategic outcome was negligible and did little to address the deeper challenges facing the region. More pernicious was the self-congratulation and widespread belief that the United States now enjoyed unparalleled military supremacy. This fundamental misreading of Desert Storm, in Bacevichs view, would lead the United States to woe. Some readers will consider Bacevichs inclusion of the Balkans as part of the Greater Middle East an unconvincing contrivance to put the 1990s into the service of his argument. But there is a larger problem with Bacevichs pitch. What would he have had the United States do differently, and how could things have turned out better in the repeated cases of failure he describes? Many of the failures that are self-evident to us today were not, and often could not have been, foretold. U.S. policy at any given time may have been the least bad option, even if things did not turn up roses or there were unintended consequences no one predicted. Bacevich does not explain how different decisions by U.S. policymakers over time would have delivered a more satisfactory outcome to this war for the Greater Middle East. His critique would also have been strengthened by a greater empathy for decision-makers facing radical uncertainty and complexity, an unknown future, and few easy choices, and by allowing that smart, patriotic public servants sometimes get it right. Bacevich seems to concede that the Carter Doctrine had a coherent strategic rationale. His real beef is the steady expansion of the mission for reasons that have become less and less clear. In his view, Americas approach to the region has slipped its mooring to national interests. The original motivating forces behind U.S. policy have disappeared, yet the American military footprint in the region persists, seemingly as an end in itself. Like the war on drugs or the war on poverty, the War for the Greater Middle East has become a permanent fixture in American life and is accepted as such, he writes. Despite President Obamas advertised view that his administration has taken a substantially different approach to the region, the ineffective Afghanistan surge of 2009, the ill-fated Libya operation in 2011, the thousands of drone strikes, the steady increase in the number of U.S. trainers in Iraq and the expanded airstrikes against the Islamic State tell a different story. Why cant we seem to get out? Bacevich offers reasons that will be familiar to readers of his other works. He takes aim at Washington and the widely held assumptions that feed a collective naivete about the nature of American preponderance and the utility of military power. He notes that some simply have much to gain from continuing the status quo. Meanwhile, the lack of any meaningful opposition to military intervention abroad and comprehensive disinterest among the public ensure that a small elite in Washington will make the decisions about war and peace. As Bacevich has written extensively about, the all-volunteer U.S. military, in which less than 1 percent of the American population serves, puts the general public at a comfortable remove from any real consequences of policy. Most people remain, in Bacevichs view, unaware and fundamentally uninterested in the matter. If Americas military fortunes in the region have not changed the nations approach, Washington is apparently not alone in missing the plot. A December 2014 article in the British newspaper the Telegraph revealed that Britain would open a permanent naval base in the Persian Gulf, explicitly announcing a return to East of Suez. Britain plans to take on a greater role in the region as the United States allegedly pivots to Asia. British warships will be returning to Bahrain, headquartered not far from the berths they departed more than 44 years ago. Activists in Maryland are running, biking and boating 225 miles through the 3rd Congressional District to illustrate just how disjointed it has become. (Kate Patterson/For The Washington Post) Ellen Tauscher, a former Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California, is co-chair of YouDrawTheLines2021. John Tanner, a former Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee, is a member of the national steering committee of YouDrawTheLines2021. Congress has grown more polarized and paralyzed partly because of partisan redistricting in key states around the country. Gerrymandering by Democratic and Republican legislatures has made most congressional districts so red or blue that the campaigns are won or lost in the primaries. As a result, general elections have become irrelevant in all but a few dozen of the 435 House races. Members of Congress are accountable only to the partisan bases of their parties. The framers of the Constitution would be shocked that so few of those in the Peoples House are at risk in general elections. The answer is to take the redistricting process out of the hands of state legislatures and governors and put it in the hands of nonpartisan citizens redistricting commissions. The Maryland legislature has a chance to put an initiative on the ballot this fall to create a citizens redistricting commission, and we encourage it to do so before the 2016 legislative session ends Monday. Citizens redistricting commissions in Arizona and California created fair districts based on such common-sense criteria as contiguous geographical and municipal boundaries and communities of interest. Both of these commissions were created by ballot initiative. The people spoke and said they wanted fairer districts created by nonpartisan commissions, not partisan officeholders seeking to retain power. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) proposed a citizens redistricting commission. Unfortunately, the Democratic-controlled legislature has shown no enthusiasm for the measure. The Democratic leadership of the legislature has concerns about disarming in the redistricting wars. Some have suggested that they would be willing to put a citizens redistricting commission on the ballot if a Republican-dominated state, such as Virginia, did so. After all, they argue, that would only be fair. But what is fair to the American people about the current situation? As Republican legislatures have done, Marylands Democrats drew some of the most gerrymandered districts in the country. Manipulating the process for partisan reasons is not fair to voters, no matter which side does it. Although we understand the partisan concerns of our fellow Democrats, Congress and state legislatures will function better when the lines are drawn fairly, enabling the election of less partisan representatives who can work together to get things done for their constituents. In the 1990s and 2000s, there were upward of 60 to 80 competitive congressional districts. Members from those districts, both Republican and Democratic, were motivated to work together to pass important legislation, including a balanced budget. Today, there are at best 30 competitive districts in the country, not nearly enough members to serve as a locus of power for bipartisan compromise in the House. If Congress is ever to act on critical issues such as income inequality, campaign finance and climate change, the legislative solutions will come from those who are willing to work together. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a ruling last summer affirming the role of citizens through ballot initiatives to take line-drawing from state legislatures and governors and give it to nonpartisan redistricting commissions, voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around. Voters in Republican-led states Arizona, Florida and Ohio have voted to reform the redistricting process. Voters in blue states such as California have, too, and Illinois voters might this November. In doing so, voters have the opportunity to create fairer districts, elect members of Congress who answer to their constituents and who can work together to get things done. Our bipartisan organization, YouDrawTheLines2021, is dedicated to supporting ballot initiatives to establish nonpartisan citizens redistricting commissions. We urge our fellow Democrats in the Maryland legislature to do the right thing and let voters decide who should draw the lines in 2021. Correction: A previous version of this essay incorrectly identified the material Catholics apply to their foreheads on the first day of Lent. It is ash, not charcoal. Matthew Spence served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy from 2012 to 2015 and is a senior follow at Yale Universitys Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. The distance from my church to my office at the Pentagon was just over five miles. But for most of my time in government, it might as well have been 5,000. On Sunday mornings, I prayed for peace. Jesus was a homeless refugee from the Middle East, my minister reminded us once before announcing our Advent offering. I contributed to the collection basket and asked God to help the Syrians fleeing from their homes in the land of the Bible. And when services were done, I went back to planning for war. As deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy, my responsibilities included evaluating troop deployments and missile strikes in the very places where biblical scripture is set. My office, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon, was whats known in intelligence community parlance as a SCIF a sensitive compartmented information facility, cleared for the handling and discussion of the U.S. governments most closely guarded secrets. Before passing through two locked doors, I had to check all electronics that could be used as recording devices, including my iPhone and BlackBerry. I checked my religion, too. It felt inappropriate to broadcast my Christianity when considering hard-nosed questions of national security. Id landed my job first on the White Houses National Security Council staff and then at the Department of Defense because I understood the foreign-policy-making process, had a doctorate in international relations and enjoyed a fair amount of luck. There was no religious test, nor should there be. Power politics and personal faith have little in common. But perhaps even more than that, I feared how coming out as a practicing Christian would define me. I worried that my bosses, peers and subordinates might associate me with American officials who have spoken of U.S. military engagements in the Middle East as crusades or with the Islamic States declaration of holy war. I feared that talking about my faith would detract from the logic of my arguments. And, as a relatively young person in a senior position, I needed every scrap of credibility I could claim. So while I might pray for guidance, or forgiveness, on a particularly challenging day, I rarely spoke of my faith in the office. One Sunday, I ran into a colleague from the White House at church. But we acknowledged each other sheepishly, as if we were meeting at Alcoholics Anonymous, and never spoke of the encounter again. Another time, I asked if we could start a military planning session with senior Israeli officers at 1 p.m. instead of 10 a.m. on a Sunday, casually mentioning that I hoped to go to church. Church? You go to church? one of my American colleagues said, surprised. I thought you just wanted to sleep in or have some mimosas at brunch. It wasnt until early 2014, after five years in the Obama administration, that I began to question the boundaries Id drawn. I was intrigued to read that former White House press secretary Mike McCurry recently had gone to seminary and become a theology professor. So I invited him and a half-dozen friends over to talk about what it means to be a Christian working in Washington. My guests included Obama appointees, Hill staffers and journalists. As we sat around my glass dining table, eating fajitas and drinking margaritas, we reflected on how our faith inspired and constrained us. Usually we were too busy to wrestle with these questions. I barely had time to have lunch, much less think about what it meant to be a Christian in the White House, McCurry said. Only when he left government did he realize how his political beliefs in strengthening the social safety net or securing subsidies for the poor came from his Christian values. Faith, we all agreed, had led us to public service. Yet all of us had been quiet about our church attendance and our religious convictions even while Catholic White House officials wore ash on their foreheads on the first day of Lent, Jewish friends declined to work on the Sabbath, and President Obama spoke powerfully of his faith at the National Prayer Breakfast and at Passover seders. I was taught that Jesus called us to care about human suffering, wherever it occurred, one friend said. But when you say youre a Christian, people assume youre judging them, not that youre called to work for something larger than yourself. [Video: Pope Francis's new teaching on Catholic families, explained] We talked about the positive role religion can play in politics. Throughout American history, great awakenings have led people of faith to organize for the abolition of slavery, womens suffrage, the reform of labor laws and the civil rights movement. More recently, faith leaders were central in shaping and ensuring passage of the Affordable Care Act. Although some Catholic groups initially objected to its contraception-coverage mandate, many agreed that expanding access to health care was a moral imperative. They pressed the White House to allow further exemptions to the mandate, and the Catholic Health Associations eventual endorsement was key to the act moving forward. Last year, Obama celebrated the CHAs president, Sister Carol Keehan, saying: We would not have gotten the Affordable Care Act done had it not been for her. . . . I just love nuns. After that dinner, I determined that I was needlessly living a double life. I started thinking of myself as a Christian in the Pentagon. I didnt wear my faith on my sleeve, but I looked to my religious values to hold myself more accountable, make myself more thoughtful and help shine a light on suffering I might otherwise overlook. I thought back to my ministers sermon on Syrian refugees. There are national security reasons that the United States should care about them. Millions of refugees could have a destabilizing effect on Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq. With few opportunities for employment, they may be vulnerable to recruitment by the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. But U.S. foreign policy should also reflect broader American values. We should care about Syrian refugees because they are part of one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time. I realized I could do far more for those refugees, and others like them, from my position at the Pentagon than I could with my modest contributions to the offering basket at church. So I convened colleagues from the State Departments human rights bureau, the U.S. Agency for International Development and outside human rights groups, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to talk about how the Pentagon could better support their work. I visited refugees at a camp in Jordan and along the Syrian border and then discussed their needs education for their children, jobs for men in the camps with little to do with my counterparts in Israel, Jordan and Turkey. We talked about using military cargo planes to deliver food and other assistance. My religion didnt overwhelm other considerations, dictating which policies I should support. Nor did thinking about the obligations of my faith reveal clear answers to questions such as how to fight a two-front war against the barbarism of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State. But recognizing that theres a role for faith in a time of war made me a better policymaker. It forced me to confront tough moral questions. It encouraged me to take action in situations where it was tempting to throw my hands up and conclude that there were no good options. It kept me going when Washington bureaucracy and political infighting otherwise would have worn me down. Of course, finding the strength to speak up and take risks, and making time to reflect and think strategically, are universal principles. They can be practiced as much by Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and nonbelievers. But for me, my Christian faith gave me the discipline, courage and inspiration to question and do more. matthew.spence@yale.edu Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. MORE THAN anything else, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has based his campaign on attacking Wall Street the millionaires and billionaires who, by his telling, wrecked the U.S. economy, dominate the political system and must be brought to heel. Given his commitment to the message, you might expect he would have some familiarity with the policy details and implications. A New York Daily News editorial board interview with the candidate proved otherwise. The senator seemed to have no idea of what reformed banks should look like, or whether he would need new legislation, even though the government under his presidency would play a central role in tearing apart these complex financial institutions. Mr. Sanders followed the interview with what was meant to be a clarifying statement. The treasury secretary would draw up a list of too-big-to-fail banks, Mr. Sanders explained, and break them up under the authority of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. In an interview with us, Sanders policy adviser Warren Gunnels said that current regulators are not applying existing authorities aggressively enough and that Mr. Sanders would pick a strong treasury secretary with no Wall Street ties to fill in many of the details. Its astonishing that, on this of all issues, the campaign would need to issue a what-the-candidate-meant-to-say statement. Even then, the campaign has left a lot of essential questions unanswered. Heres one: What is breaking up the banks meant to accomplish? From what Mr. Sanders and his campaign have said, you could posit several possibilities: protecting taxpayers, safeguarding the financial system, making the financial sector less concentrated and reducing the financial sectors share of the total economy. Explaining that he wants to do all of these things is not sufficient, because policies differ depending on which goal you prioritize. Regulators working under Dodd-Frank, for example, have gone a long way to addressing the first two issues without breaking up banks, a step that many experts warn may not be worth the costs. If banking-sector concentration is Mr. Sanderss concern, then he should explain why addressing it would justify those costs; after all, countries such as Canada have more concentrated banking systems and yet weathered the financial crisis much better. If, on the other hand, Mr. Sanders wants to shrink the overall financial sector, he must explain how breaking up a few banks into a larger number of medium-size banks would contribute. Many voters share Mr. Sanderss disdain for high finance and his nostalgia for an economy based more on manufacturing. But such prejudices, whether sound or not, provide an insufficient basis for remaking the worlds largest economy. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has a banking-sector reform proposal designed to address the highest risks to the financial system that remain after the first round of reform. Mr. Sanders has yet to furnish anything of equivalent rigor. We hope he provides more clarity in next weeks Democratic debate. Jon Gertner is the author of The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation. In the spring of 1983, a young man named Steve Case was traveling around the United States and searching for the best pizzerias in every city. Case was not really a foodie; he was a recent graduate of Williams College who at the time worked for Pizza Hut and held the unlikely title of director of new pizza development. Essentially, his travels involved looking for new marketing ideas that could help his employer. There are worse ways to live, he recalls of the job in The Third Wave, a book that combines Cases insights into his career with insights into the future of technology. June 1983 was a pivotal moment for Case: It was the month when he made a short list of what he could do next. He was sure that some kind of digital revolution was about to sweep through the country, which meant there had to be more to the future than searching for pizza innovations. Should he take a job at a growing tech company such as Apple? Or should he take a gig with a consulting firm that advised Silicon Valley companies? He did neither. Following a tip from his brother, he went to Virginia to talk with a start-up called Control Video Corporation, or CVC. The company was trying to create a business in what might now be called online gaming at a time when online businesses didnt really exist. Case took a flier anyway and signed on. CVC had some painful ups and downs over the next few years. Yet eventually, Case and his co-founders transformed the firm into an Internet services company that took the name America Online. Its early days were difficult, but by the time America Online (or more colloquially, AOL) became a public company in 1992, it was a business phenomenon. For those who didnt live through America Onlines ascendancy that impossibly distant era when dial-up service meant you couldnt use your phone and the Internet at the same time it is difficult to describe the companys cultural significance: At one point, AOL had 22 million subscribers, and nearly half the traffic on the Web was coming through its portal. For most Americans, Case writes, AOL was, for its time, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube and Instagram combined. Theres a fair amount of truth to that. The companys growth, profits and technological dominance, moreover, made it the hottest stock of the 1990s. In short, AOL was the right company selling the right product at precisely the right moment. And Case the clean-cut, hyper-optimistic, marketing whiz kid was exactly the right leader. "The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future" by Steve Case (Simon & Schuster) It didnt end well. AOL bought Time Warner in a catastrophic merger, and Case was eventually forced out. And that, too, is part of the story he tells in this book, which is noteworthy in part because Case has never before offered his own perspective on his career. (Until now the AOL story has largely been left to business journalists Kara Swisher and Nina Munk, for instance who have penned deeply researched, book-length histories of the company.) And yet, Case has written only the slightest of memoirs in The Third Wave. He is more focused here on merging his recollections about coming of age as an Internet CEO with his views on the next era of technology. The future will resemble the past, Case believes. As he sees it, Internet giants such as AOL constituted the first wave of the digital revolution. These were companies that often had to overcome significant regulatory and technological obstacles created by the Federal Communications Commission, for instance, and by antiquated telecommunication systems to succeed. In this respect, the first-wave companies differed from the Internets more recent second wave companies feisty start-ups that have seamlessly utilized social media or smartphone apps to gain enormous influence. Think Facebook or Twitter. To expand, the second wavers havent required what Case calls the partnerships and perseverance of their predecessors. They set up shop, wrote some excellent code, exploited the new infrastructure of the Web and quickly changed the world. Case sees an approaching third wave of companies that will need more of the qualities of the first wave. The future, he asserts, will be shaped by innovative start-ups all over the country not just in Silicon Valley that will rely on data and computing to revolutionize established industries such as health care, education, finance and food production. This third wave, in other words, will transform highly regulated areas of the economy, which means entrepreneurs must work with government rather than around it. This might explain why Case has decided to write about his AOL experiences now. As he puts it, The lessons from the First Wave of the Internet will be integral to the Third. Some aspects of Cases thesis will seem unsurprising. If you follow the technology press, its hard not to notice that tech innovation is already infiltrating health care and education, and that an Internet of things promises to optimize a variety of industrial and commercial businesses (automobiles, airlines and energy, for example) with reams of data and analysis. Whats new and noteworthy here is Cases effort to draw a connection between his own history and an impending era of change. Moreover, hes particularly thoughtful on the subject of how digital innovation and existing regulatory regimes will need to work together in the coming decades. A seemingly dyed-in-the-wool centrist, Case has little patience with Silicon Valleys more extreme libertarians, such as Peter Thiel, whose views he singles out as inimical to third-wave thinking. The Valley is wrong to view government as the enemy, he declares. This isnt just posturing; it is Cases deep conviction. His current investment vehicle, Revolution Ventures, has its main office in Northwest D.C. rather than on Palo Altos Sand Hill Road. And the companies Revolution invests in are so closely aligned with Cases government-friendly arguments that readers may get the uneasy feeling that Case is not only sharing his business philosophy in this book but doing aggressive marketing work for his investments, too. Still, theres little doubt that Cases insights have value. Whether The Third Wave succeeds as a book is a different question. Case offers some vivid and absorbing character sketches here, especially his recollection of an early meeting with Bill Gates in which the Microsoft co-founder personally vowed to crush the upstart AOL. But some of the chapters about the later days of AOL are filled with score-settling jabs and self-justifying explanations especially when it comes to the failure of the Time Warner merger. Thats Cases right, of course. But when he laments that he had gone from being the CEO of one of the hottest companies in the world, leading a board and a management team, to being something of a pariah with waning influence, it still sounds self-pitying. There are bigger problems here, though. The books structure that mix of memoir and futurist tract prevents the narrative from ever fusing into an integrated whole. Even worse, Case seems never to have heard a tech cliche he didnt want to repeat, which means we get bombarded with jargon about fundamental change and key influencers. Toward the end, The Third Wave suddenly and unfortunately becomes a rousing call to arms that resembles a boilerplate college graduation speech. Among other things, Case exhorts the next generation of tech entrepreneurs to not just play defense, play offense. The least you can do is cover your ears and hope it ends very soon. And thus we arrive at a contradiction: What Case thinks about the future of American business is worthy of discussion and consideration and we can all be thankful he stopped selling pizza for a living. But do you really want to dial in here? Like those early days of AOL, The Third Wave crashes all too often. Lisa Zeidners most recent novel is Love Bomb. She teaches in the MFA Program at Rutgers University in Camden. W . B. Yeats famously declared that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mind: sex and the dead. Journalist Katie Roiphe has already said plenty about sex. In books like The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism, she has helped shape the discussion about current sexual mores and politics. In her meditative new book, The Violet Hour, she turns her attention to death in particular, to the deaths of six famous writers. As a child, Roiphe was obsessed with death. In fact, she argues that all writers share a mix of fear and fascination about the mystery of mortality. The Violet Hour asks whether writers fluency with language and their acuity of perception buy them more conscious, meaningful ends. With varying degrees of success, the writers chronicled here tried hard to shape their deaths in ways that accorded with their personal narratives. Roiphe begins with Susan Sontag, who, having lived through cancer once, was sure she could beat it again. Sontag seems to have been stuck in the denial stage of bargaining throughout her grueling and ultimately failed treatments. Roiphe documents how those around Sontag propped up her conviction about her specialness. Demanding, imperious, mercurial, Sontag is not particularly appealing in this portrait, although Roiphe clearly admires her ferocity about writing as long as she could. None of the writers Roiphe chooses for these tableaux is a failed one or an obscure one. They all enjoyed the privileges of success and fame. Their specialists came to their houses. Sontag was flown to Seattle for one set of experimental treatments in a private plane. When the poet Dylan Thomas, in the United States for a lucrative reading tour that produced adoring audiences of thousands, fell into a coma, his mistress politely vacated his hospital room so his wife, rushed there from London, could sit at the foot of his bed and rub his feet. "The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End" by Katie Roiphe (Dial Press) Thomass attitude toward death was the opposite of Sontags. She hoped to conquer it; he seemed to have chased it, embracing the picture of himself as a tortured poet racked by consumption. He harbored many romantic mythologies about the frailty of his constitution, Roiphe reports. He certainly liked the theater of sickness, the staginess, the attention it brought him, and later the excuses it provided. Whether he drank himself to death, with the 18 whiskeys he bragged that he downed on top of near-pneumonia, is subject to debate. But theres no doubt that the author of Do not go gentle into that good night had been rehearsing his dramatic end for many years, even clowning at dinner parties about his imminent suicide. The other writers whom Roiphe discusses Sigmund Freud, John Updike, Maurice Sendak and James Salter occupy different points on the spectrum from denial of death to courtship of it, from control to abandon. Freud, inventor of the controversial theory of the death wish, famously refused to give up smoking, even after brutal surgeries for mouth cancer. Roiphe theorizes that the smoking was the one anarchic thing he did in a life so staid and bourgeois that it embarrassed him, given how strongly his work focused on libido. Freud seemed intent on dying with dignity, fully aware. He pretty much managed it. So did Updike continuing to write with great intensity, remaining free of self-pity and cordial to his visitors. Updikes conviviality stood in direct contrast to the behavior of his second wife, who jealously guarded his time, even, heartbreakingly, limiting visits by his children and grandchildren from his first marriage in his final days. Some of the most riveting anecdotes here are about how these writers managed to inspire such dedication from their helpmates. Despite his wanton overspending and his many infidelities, Thomass wife would feed him in bed when he was hung over cubes of bread soaked in milk, just like his mother used to do. Sendak, suffering from depression and anxiety, had crippling panic attacks when his lifelong maid, cook, chauffeur and everything-else, Lynn, dared to stay out past 11 p.m. Roiphe provides no interviews with psychiatrists or hospice workers about methods of facing death. The Violet Hour doesnt really make an argument about ways to die (although most of us would probably choose to be Salter, with his clean, efficient heart attack shortly after his 90th birthday). Instead, the book is a series of impressions and observations, sometimes gossipy, sometimes gently ruminative. She doesnt even proceed chronologically from diagnosis to last breath. Indeed her stories dart all over the place, from the writers childhoods to the present. Except for some puzzling tense shifts, the episodic structure makes sense; if there is an overarching theme in The Violet Hour, its that death never comes in a straight line, no matter how hard the writers try to exit with a graceful bravura. Roiphe is moving and insightful about these artists late works. Sendak feverishly drew right until the end. When Updike ruefully told his wife that he thought he was done writing, she pushed him, Just one more book. And he did complete his rapturously elegiac collection of poetry, Endpoint. If Freud is right that every one of us is convinced of his own immortality, Roiphe proves to us that writers chase immortality the hardest of all. Ted Cruz, right, and Donald Trump at the Republican presidential debate in Detroit last month. (Jim Young/Reuters) Yes, the big Wisconsin story is Ted Cruzs crushing 13-point victory. And yes, it greatly improves his chances of denying Donald Trump a first-ballot convention victory, which may turn out to be Trumps only path to the nomination. Nonetheless, the most stunning result of Wisconsin is the solidity of Trumps core constituency. Fundamentalist Trumpism remains resistant to every cosmic disturbance. He managed to get a full 35 percent in a state in which: He was opposed by a very popular GOP governor (80 percent approval among Republicans) with a powerful state organization honed by winning three campaigns within four years (two gubernatorial, one recall). He was opposed by popular, local, well-informed radio talk show hosts whose tough interviews left him in shambles. Tons of money was dumped into negative ads not just from the Cruz campaign and the pro-Cruz super PACs but from two anti-Trump super PACs as well. Republican front-runner Donald Trump says he can't wait to take on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the fall, but here are three reasons why he could lose a general election. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) And if that doesnt leave a candidate flattened, consider that Trump was coming off two weeks of grievous self-inflicted wounds and still got more than a third of the vote. Which definitively vindicated Trumps boast that if he ever went out in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot someone (most likely because his Twitter went down hed be apprehended in his pajamas), he wouldnt lose any voters. The question for Trump has always been how far he could reach beyond his solid core. His problem is that those who reject him are equally immovable. In Wisconsin, 58 percent of Republican voters said that the prospect of a Trump presidency left them concerned or even scared. Cruz scares a lot of people, too. But his fear number was 21 points lower. Moreover, 36 percent of Wisconsin Republicans, facing a general-election choice between Hillary Clinton and Trump, would either vote Clinton, go third party or stay home. Trump did not exactly advance his needed outreach with his reaction to the Wisconsin result: a nuclear strike on Lyin Ted, as a puppet and a Trojan horse illegally coordinating with his super PACs (evidence?) who totally control him. Not quite the kind of thing that gets you from 35 percent to 50 percent. Not needed, say the Trumpites. If we come to Cleveland with a mere plurality of delegates, fairness demands that our man be nominated. This is nonsense. If you cannot command or cobble together a majority, you havent earned the party leadership. John Kasich makes the opposite case. Hes hanging on in case a deadlocked convention eventually turns to him, possessor of the best polling numbers against Clinton. After all, didnt Lincoln come to the 1860 convention trailing? 1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Trump captures the nations attention on the campaign trail View Photos The Republican candidate continues to dominate the presidential contest. Caption Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the partys convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue. Yes, and so what? The post-1968 reforms abolished the system whereby governors, bosses and other party poo-bahs decided things. In the modern era, to reach down to the No. 3 candidate a distant third who loses 55 of 56 contests or to parachute in a party unicorn who never entered the race in the first place would be a radical affront to the democratic spirit of the contemporary nominating process. A parachute maneuver might be legal, but it would be perceived as illegitimate and, coming amid the most intense anti-establishment sentiment in memory, imprudent to the point of suicide. Yet even without this eventuality, party suicide is a very real possibility. The nominee will be either Trump or Cruz. How do they reconcile in the end? Its no longer business; its personal. Cruz has essentially declared that he couldnt support someone who did what Trump did to Heidi Cruz. He might try to patch relations with some Trump supporters is Chris Christies soul still for sale? but how many could he peel away? Remember: Wisconsin has just demonstrated Trumps unbreakable core. And if Trump loses out, a split is guaranteed. In Trumps mind, he is a winner. Always. If he loses, it can only be because he was cheated. He constantly contends that hes being treated unfairly. He is certain to declare any convention process that leaves him without the nomination irredeemably unfair. No need to go third party. A simple walkout with perhaps a thousand followers behind will doom the party in November. In a country where only 25 percent feel were on the right track and where the leading Democrat cannot shake the challenge of a once-obscure dairy-state socialist, youd think the Republicans cannot lose. Youd be underestimating how hard they are trying. Read more from Charles Krauthammers archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Caitlin Flanagan is a contributing editor at the Atlantic and the author of Girl Land. When I was a teenager, I would always perk up when a talk-show host announced that he was about to introduce a woman who knew a lot about sex. This was back when information on the subject was still hard to come by, so the prospect of some ravishing, free-spirited, braless creature of the now coming on TV to explain it all was exciting. But, all too often, out would totter Helen Gurley Brown: Aged, skeletal, wrapped in Pucci and wearing several coats of Pan-Cake, she looked like someones foxy grandma on her way to the champagne brunch at Leisure World. She was always old, always out of date with the youth culture she helped create; she was dragged, kicking and screaming, from the helm of Cosmopolitan magazine at the age of 74. Crass, clever, miserly, fantastical and forever nursing herself through a thousand social snubs, Brown deserves the biography that Brooke Hauser has written, Enter Helen. It is entertaining, thoughtfully researched and the ultimate encomium where HGB was concerned fun. It was Browns contention vouched first in her 1962 bestseller Sex and the Single Girl and then in the pages of Cosmo, which she reinvented that the ideal single woman was part courtesan, part grifter. Sexual encounters should be opportunities to fulfill a mans secret desires and also to get a little something from him if not actual cash, then at the very least a hot tip on where to buy an electric blanket or a record album at wholesale prices. She located and helped create a vast market: single women who had been too busy waitressing or answering telephones or running adding machines to have gotten hep to the Summer of Love. While contemporary feminism might have been alienating to them, the various credos of Cosmo were not. It was explicitly feminine, fashion-focused, written in the baby simple prose Brown demanded and ever hopeful not of revolution, but of resolution to every womans marriage plot. Because while the immediate game plan was sex, the long-range goal was always to groom one of these sexual partners into a husband. How to do it? By taking lessons not from Mother or the ministers wife but from, among others, a Park Avenue prostitute, one of whom explained in the pages of the magazine, Thats the whole enchilada, darling the will to please. Needless to say, leaders of the burgeoning womens movement and in particular, Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan were vexed to no end by Brown and her will to please. At one point the movement called for a boycott of the magazine, but the two camps were addressing very different audiences, so the boycott was ineffective. Feminists were talking to women interested in overthrowing the patriarchal system; Brown was teaching women how to work within that system and come out a winner. In Hausers apt formulation, Brown was the powerful leader of the most insecure army in the world. It was an army desperately trying to turn one-night stands into romances and then into proposals, and its members were eager to learn how to maintain their looks during the crucial man-keeping years. The feminist leaders of the day considered femininity to be part of the great trap. Friedan large, unkempt, kittenish as a Greyhound bus was a one-woman repudiation of femininity. What the movement didnt understand, however, is something that third-wave feminists have come to champion: that an enduring female attraction to fashion, cosmetics and beauty does not preclude an even fiercer interest in liberation. When feminists dumped their woman-garbage bras, girdles, stockings in a Freedom Trash Can at the Miss America contest in 1968, Brown responded with a feature on how to choose a sensational bra. When the movement focused attention on how to lead a meaningful life as a person in your own right, Cosmo ran a profile of Joanne Woodward under the title, The Care and Feeding of Paul Newman. The movement also gave Brown scant credit for something that would have been highly regarded by todays feminists: her business acumen and her creation of a hugely successful international brand. Its true that she gathered power to herself in a stealthy and feline way, not by confronting male assumptions directly but by carving a path around them. She insisted, against all evidence, that she was just a scatterbrained little thing who would be lost without the guidance of her mastermind husband. When she was thinking of firing a male editor at her magazine, and David Brown counseled her to keep George. He is intellectual, high-dome. You are more plebian you know, girlish, she demurred to him and gratefully accepted the insult. Helen Gurley Brown nursed her wounds and rarely complained in public, just kept her head down and kept working. When Hearst, her publisher, celebrated its 50th anniversary with a grand bash featuring tributes from President Richard Nixon and the Duke of Windsor, men she would have loved to cultivate but didnt invite her because it was a stag affair, she didnt protest. She just pulled up her stockings and kept going. Her counter-attacks were half seething adolescent and half ball-buster. When the Wall Street Journal wrote a withering assessment of her professional accomplishments, she fired up the typewriter and pounded out a short letter to the writer: If it gives you any satisfaction. 1. i cried my eyes out for an hour today 2. i think you are a TOTAL [S---]! In the end, the values of the womens movement and Cosmo became one. The materialism, fashion obsession and man-craziness of Brown fused with feminisms demand for women to be treated as equals in the workplace. Browns values were callow, but they have endured. An article in an early issue of Ms. Magazine declared that a sexually liberated woman without a feminist consciousness is nothing more than a new variety of prostitute, but that didnt anticipate the appeal that Browns insistence on being girly would have for generations of women. Steinem maintained that womens obsession with romance is a displacement of their longing for success, but she was wrong. Many women want both, and they have shaped at great effort a world that allows them to have what they want. When you see a fearsomely educated young lawyer clipping down the corridors of her law firm in high heels and a miniskirt, showing off her cushion-cut diamond to her cooing (and pea green) friends well that, darling, is the whole enchilada. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, is on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association and the Parental Rights Organization. Democrats have approached the 2016 presidential election with great confidence, arguing that changing demographics will guarantee them victory. By this, they mean the growing number of African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans expected to vote in November. However, other dramatic changes in the electorate over the past 30 years give Republican candidates an advantage. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, has insulted and telegraphed her plans to damage the issues important to these groups of Americans. Clinton began her political life in the late 1970s, and her understanding of who votes and why predates the emergence of these voting constituencies in some cases by decades. Home-schoolers: Thirty years ago, home schooling was illegal in almost every state. Today, all 50 states allow home schooling, and about 2 million children nearly 4 percent of K-12 students are home-schooled. Ten million Americans have been home-schooled at some point in their lives. Home-schoolers and their families make a great sacrifice, usually taking one parent out of the job market. They self-identify as home-schoolers. Home-schoolers believe Clinton and the modern Democratic Party would like to regulate home schooling out of existence to please the teachers unions. Charter school supporters: There are nearly 3 million students in public charter schools, an educational choice not available before 1992. Clinton has been endorsed by teachers unions, which see as a top priority bringing unionized teachers and work rules into public charter classrooms, destroying the very educational environment that parents of charter school students fought to win for their children. Paraphrasing Al Shanker, the former president of the American Federation of Teachers, the kids cannot vote. Their parents can. These children and their parents live in cities, and often in swing states. Concealed-carry permit holders: When Bill and Hillary Clinton were promoting gun control in 1993, the gun lobby was imagined by liberal politicians as limited to hunters in rural areas. Easy to ignore, they thought. But now 42 states have enacted laws that grant any honest citizen the right to carry a gun. Nearly 13 million Americans have concealed-carry permits. Carrying a gun is a personal decision, a big part of many peoples lives. But in the March 6 Democratic presidential candidates debate, Hillary Clinton said, I think we have to try everything that works to try to limit the numbers of people and the kinds of people who are given access to firearms. This is an insult to the 13 million Americans who have decided to take upon themselves the task of protecting themselves and their families. Perhaps Clinton thinks she can ignore those whom some liberals consider rubes living in square states out west. But lets look at swing states in 2016: Florida has about 1.4 million concealed-carry permits, Pennsylvania 1 million, Michigan 600,000, Ohio 460,000 , and Colorado 160,000. Fracking workers: It has historically been an easy decision for Democrats to insult and belittle the oil and gas industry. Energy workers lived in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Alaska unlikely states for a Democratic presidential candidate to win. But the emergence of fracking has opened up oil and gas exploration in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado. Try winning 270 electoral votes while threatening to damage the nearly 186,000 energy jobs in Ohio, almost 73,000 jobs in Pennsylvania and more than 100,000 jobs in Colorado. Again at the March 6 debate, Clinton made this not-so-veiled threat: By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place. Users of e-cigarettes and vapor products: Vaping, an alternative to smoking cigarettes, was not around 10 years ago. Today, more than 9 million Americans vape. They have shifted from smoking cigarettes to a healthier lifestyle. They are proud of their transition. These voters defeated Elizabeth Thomson, a Democrat in the New Mexico House who pushed for tax increases and regulations on vaping. President Obamas Food and Drug Administration is moving to essentially kill the vaping industry through regulations, and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the Carrie Nation of the new prohibition movement, has said, The e-cigarette industry should be put out of business. If you doubt that this is a vote-moving issue, ask someone who vapes. Uber drivers and others in the sharing economy: There was no Uber before 2009. Today, there are 400,000 Uber drivers who take at least four trips a month. Clinton has announced that she wants to crack down on independent contractor laws that allow Uber and the entire sharing economy to exist. Why? Unions dont like laws that allow Americans to work independently. They dont pay dues. Clinton wants you to have a boss. Add to Uber drivers those Americans who know what Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Instacart and Postmates are. Clinton watched her husband run for the presidency and win in 1992 and 1996. But that was before vaping, fracking, Uber, concealed-carry, charter schools and home schooling became prevalent in the United States. The study included data gathered between 2002 and 2004 from about 175,000 people aged 18 to 44, across 51 countries. Toronto: Countries with higher male smoking rates such as India and Bangladesh may develop higher asthma and wheezing rates as a result of more exposure to second-hand smoke, scientists say. Underweight and obese women who also drink alcohol and smoke tobacco have a two-fold higher risk of being diagnosed with asthma than women with a healthy body mass index who do not drink or smoke, a new study has found. Women with low and high body mass indexes, or BMIs, who smoked and drank were also two to three times more likely to experience wheezing, the study found. Asthma is a respiratory condition where spasms in the air pathways of the lungs cause difficulty breathing; usually triggered by an allergy or sensitivity in the environment. Asthma is a global health priority due to the extent and duration of disability, affecting 334 million people worldwide, researchers said. The study, published in BMJ Open Respiratory Research, is the first to assess the combined effects of BMI, smoking, drinking alcohol and solid fuel use on asthma risk. The study included data gathered between 2002 and 2004 from about 175,000 people aged 18 to 44, across 51 countries. "Although individual physical and behavioural factors associated with asthma have been examined before, people are often exposed to multiple risk factors so it's important we understand the combined impact," said Dr Jayadeep Patra, lead author of the study and an epidemiologist at the Centre for Global Health Research of St Michael's Hospital in Canada. "Our research found overall increased risk for wheezing and asthma in both men and women, but the magnitude of the combined effects from low or high BMI, smoking and drinking was consistently higher among women than men," said Patra. Men showed higher prevalence of smoking and use of alcohol than women, but more women had unhealthy BMIs (underweight or obese) than men, highlighting the greater impact of female BMI as a risk factor. Patra also noted there are significant variations in diagnosed asthma between countries, with increasing rates found in low-income and middle-income countries, potentially because of higher exposure to multiple risk factors, including the use of solid fuel. In low and middle-income countries, solid fuels such as dung, charcoal or wood are used for cooking and are common in many households. These fuels are known to contribute to higher risk of developing respiratory and cardiovascular disease, compared to individuals who cook with gas or electric devices. Patra said the combined effects of identified risk factors have not been sufficiently studied as of yet, with many questions still unanswered. For example, exposure to air pollution or second-hand smoke in lower income countries could contribute to higher rates of asthma and respiratory issues. "Countries with higher male smoking rates such as India or Bangladesh could effect on higher asthma and wheezing rates as a result of more exposure to second-hand smoke," Patra said Donald Trump tests the limits of campaign speech. He makes false statements and refuses to correct them. He attacks other religions and ethnic groups, inflaming domestic tension and foreign terrorist rage. He pledges to overhaul long-standing U.S. commitments in ways that frighten allies. He cavalierly predicts a massive recession, undermining confidence in the U.S. economy. When criticized, Trump adopts the stance of one of his beloved WWE professional wrestlers caught in the act: He throws up his hands, protests his innocence and claims the other guy threw the first punch. Trumps comments are troubling because he isnt just a candidate, hes an alternative news source. The Posts Fact Checker may give him Four Pinocchios for falsely claiming that he saw TV clips of thousands and thousands of New Jersey Muslims celebrating the collapse of the twin towers on 9/11. But the absence of any confirming video footage is seen by some Trump supporters as evidence of a mainstream media conspiracy to conceal the truth. The Founding Fathers instructions were clear: The right to free speech includes bad speech; it means tolerance of ideas that many find obnoxious. First Amendment partisans (especially journalists, like me) avoid discussing hypothetical situations in which free speech becomes so recklessly defamatory that it no longer deserves protection. But we should recognize that in other countries suffering political decay and the popular rage that it engenders, free speech has indeed proved to be an instrument in the destruction of liberty. The Supreme Court has considered this problem on two recent occasions. Both times, the court ruled for protection of political speech, even when its false. In U.S. v. Alvarez, the court held in 2012 that making a false statement about having won a medal was protected speech, even though it might cheapen the heroism of those whod actually been decorated. The ruling overturned the Stolen Valor Act, finding that this 2005 law, which had criminalized false claims about military honors, was unconstitutional. In a 2014 case, Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, the court found that an Ohio law that banned dissemination of false information about political candidates also violated the First Amendment. The case grew out of a claim by an Ohio legislator who said he had been falsely accused of backing taxpayer-funded abortion when he had voted for the Affordable Care Act. Even though such a statement might have been false, it was still protected. The courts desire to safeguard political speech, despite the risks that its exercise may pose to democratic institutions, is perhaps clearest in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , the 2010 Supreme Court case that struck down limits on political contributions by companies and unions . Opponents argued that special-interest money was corrupting and obstructing the very process of democracy. But for the court, freedom of speech (and freedom to spend money to amplify that speech) outweighed such concerns. Constitutional scholars sometimes debate these issues by invoking a dissent by Justice Robert Jackson against the courts 1949 ruling that held that hateful speech was permissible even if it violated a Chicago breach of peace ordinance. This court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means the removal of all restraints, Jackson argued. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact. Garrett Epps, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Baltimore, noted that Jacksons idea of free speech was framed by his time as chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremburg war crime trials. Studying the rise of National Socialism, he began to argue that the framers had not foreseen the rise of mass media and scientific propaganda, Epps said. Although he doesnt endorse Jacksons view, Epps said that it shows how circumstance can shape our sense of whats permissible. Justice Stephen Breyer has suggested that the rise of the Internet may force a re-examination of First Amendment jurisprudence. In a provocative 2010 interview, he recalled Justice Oliver Wendell Holmess famous comment that free speech doesnt mean you can shout fire in a crowded theater, and then asked pointedly: What is the crowded theater today? The American experiment has always depended on a measure of tolerance and good sense. We havent usually had to face the extreme questions about liberty and order because were not a nation of extremists. We love freedom and good government, both. But this has been a testing year, and it may get worse. Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. High school seniors are making college decisions this month. And cost is a big factor in those decisions. Affordability is the biggest concern I hear about college these days from high school seniors and their parents and even working professionals. With college costs rising faster than just about any other product on the market, cost has become the barrier to higher education that race and gender once were. As president of Montgomery College, I have seen community colleges grow into bridges to opportunity for countless Americans who aspire to education but cant afford the price of a traditional four-year college. Consider this: When Solomon Adera chose Montgomery College to study his first two years of engineering, he saved himself at least $12,000 in tuition before transferring to the Georgia Institute of Technology for his last two years. Montgomery Colleges full-time tuition for county residents ($1,891 per semester) is less than half the cost of tuition at University of Maryland at College Park ($4,998 per semester for Maryland residents, including fees), where the largest portion of Montgomery College students transfer. Because the average student in Maryland graduates with $27,457 in student debt, according to the Project on Student Debt, this is no small consideration. Adera also got financial aid at Montgomery College and worked part time while studying, which allowed him to save money for graduate school. He is now a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, poised to graduate in June. Trinh Nguyen decided to start her engineering career at Montgomery College, primarily because of the cost. She is the first in her family to attend college in the United States, after emigrating from Vietnam. After her two years at Montgomery College with stellar grades, Nguyen was awarded a prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship, which, at that time, covered up to $30,000 per year. Nguyen used her scholarship to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is an undergraduate in biological/biomedical engineering with hopes of attending graduate school someday. Montgomery Colleges engineering transfer program helped Nguyen and Adera start strong financially and academically. Community colleges offer students faculty with expertise in their fields, and many of those faculty members hold doctoral degrees. In fact, because community colleges dont have graduate students to draft into teaching positions, as many four-year institutions do, community college students are more likely to be taught by a professor than by a graduate student. Community colleges enroll thousands of students who are mid-career and are looking to boost their expertise and earnings. Cybersecurity is one of the fastest-growing fields in Maryland, and advancing ones professional certifications can increase responsibilities and earnings considerably. One mid-career student reported that her salary went up by 75 percent as she progressed through a cybersecurity program that included Web-security courses as a part of the short-term, intensive training program. Cybersecurity is just one field in which community colleges respond rapidly to market demand. Community colleges enjoy partnerships with local industries, allowing the colleges to align curriculums with industry demands as they evolve. Choices include degree programs areas, certificate programs and noncredit career programs designed for students to obtain entry-level credentials. These programs allow students to step into middle-skills positions such as automotive technician, HVAC repair technician and diagnostic medical sonographer. When Abdel Sow came to Montgomery College, he needed two things desperately: a job and English language training. He got both. After a seven-week training program, Abdel, an Ivory Coast native, passed an apartment maintenance technician course and now works full time as a service technician for an apartment complex. Opportunity is at the essence of community colleges, which even the playing fields damaged by exclusion and poverty. Montgomery College takes pride in supporting students who are in the first generation of their families to attend college and has a number of programs specially designed to support students through academic planning, financial aid and transfers. None of these hurdles should stop someone from going to college. The writer is president of Montgomery College. Rich Leotta holds a photo of his son, Montgomery County Police officer Noah Leotta, while speaking at a MADD news conference to release a report showing that ignition interlock devices save lives, in Annapolis in February. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) The March 31 editorial Maryland gets serious about drunken driving accused the alcohol industry of fighting against stricter drunken-driving laws in Maryland. Distillers support Noahs Law, which now calls for mandatory ignition interlocks for all convicted drunken drivers. The Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility (Responsibility.org), a not-for-profit organization funded by top distillers, always has supported the passage of tougher drunken-driving laws in Maryland and has led the fight against drunken driving and underage drinking for 25 years. We applaud the progress Maryland has made recently and agree with the editorial board that it is crucial we keep drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel drunk again. Research clearly shows that when courts couple thorough alcohol assessment with ignition interlocks, offenders are significantly less likely to repeat the offense. It is time to bring an end to the senseless deaths caused by impaired driving. Ralph Blackman, Arlington The writer is president and chief executive of Responsibility.org. The editorial board criticized the leniency of punitive license suspensions and cited many drivers with suspended licenses keep driving as reason to support interlock ignition devices. But interlock penalties are subject to the same rampant circumvention as license supsensions: Nationally, only 15 to 20 percent of offenders comply with interlock orders, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The problem stems from the extensive (and expensive) follow-up necessary to ensure each offender installs the device and regularly submits to interlock maintenance, as required every 30 days in Maryland. Government statistics show roughly 70 percent of alcohol-related fatalities are caused by drivers with blood alcohol levels of 0.15 or higher, nearly twice the 0.08 legal limit for driving. One-size-fits-all interlock mandates pull limited state resources from providing the most dangerous drivers repeat offenders and those with very high blood alcohol content with constant supervision. In theory, universal ignition interlock requirements might seem like a no-nonsense approach to drunken driving. But in practice, real reform is in the details and on all-offender interlock mandates, the details just dont add up. Sarah Longwell, Washington The writer is managing director of the American Beverage Institute. President Obama redoubled his push Thursday to win the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, issuing dire warnings aimed at countering the growing certainty of GOP leaders that they will be able to block his confirmation. Republicans confidence in their blockade has risen to the point that some are floating high-court candidates of their own should the GOP win the White House in November, with a handful of conservative luminaries quietly touting Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. The chatter does not appear to be an organized part of the opposition to Garland, which has been led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in conjunction with outside groups agitating against an election-year confirmation. But it reflects the wide belief among Republicans that they will succeed in blocking Garland and move on to considering their own choices for the high court. Conservative resistance to Garland remains fierce: Two GOP senators who were open to hearings reversed themselves under pressure from activists; two others met with Garland and suggested action on his nomination, but their views are not widely reflected within the Republican conference. I think its safe to say that there will not be hearings or votes, McConnell (Ky.) said Tuesday. President Obama has nominated Merrick Garland to serve on the Supreme Court. Here is what you need to know about Garland. (Claritza Jimenez,Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) Obama refocused his attention on the Supreme Court battle Thursday at the University of Chicago Law School, the institution where he forged his academic expertise in constitutional law. Before an audience of students, faculty members and other dignitaries, he argued that a failure to confirm Garland would endanger the nations founding principles. If you start getting into a situation in which the process of appointing judges is so broken, so partisan that an eminently qualified jurist cannot even get a hearing, then we are going to see the kinds of sharp partisan polarization that have come to characterize our electoral politics seeping entirely into the judicial system, he said. Our democracy cant afford that. Obama said that while senators can reject anyone he nominates, they cannot simply stall the process to shift the selection to a president of their party. That, he said, would lead to the nuclear option where Senate rules are changed to allow the confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee by a simple majority without the possibility of a filibuster. If different parties control the White House and the Senate, during that period of time, youre not going to get any appointments done, which is a disaster for the court generally, he said. But there was little immediate sign his warnings made any impression on Republicans. Several conservative groups accused him of hypocrisy, with Obama having voted as a senator to filibuster the nomination of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in 2006. As Obama prepared to defend Garland in Chicago, McConnell argued on the Senate floor that his confirmation would create a far-left Supreme Court for decades to come. In a morning speech, McConnell said, Im sure hell gloss over the fact that the decision about filling this pivotal seat could impact our country for decades, and it could dramatically affect the most cherished constitutional rights, like those contained in the First and Second amendments. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) was included on an informal shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees drawn up by a Heritage Foundation legal expert. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters) The speculation over Lee comes as Republican front-runner Donald Trump, facing pressure from skeptical conservatives, has promised to release a list of potential Supreme Court picks based on input from right-wing advocacy groups. Lee has already been included on an informal shortlist of potential nominees drawn up by a Heritage Foundation legal expert. Lee is also one of two senators to have endorsed the presidential bid of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Lee also served as a clerk to Alito when he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia and is now a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Cruz has said Lee would look pretty good in a robe, and while Trump is not as close to Lee, embracing him could quell anxiety among those who are anxious about Trumps irreverence toward conservative orthodoxy. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Trumps only Senate backer, said Lee would be a very good choice, I think. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who halted his presidential bid last month, said of a potential Lee nomination, We should be so lucky. In an interview with MSNBC a year ago, Lee was open to the job, saying, If one of my friends running for president got elected president and asked me to consider that . . . the answer is yes. His spokesman said Thursday morning that Lee has the job he wants as senator. Democrats, meanwhile, remain committed to a strategy of trying to leverage courtesy meetings with Republican senators into a hearing and eventually into an up-or-down vote on Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. We feel confident in our argument, confident in the nominee, and we believe that more senators are going to come on board to have meetings, and obviously the next step after that will be a hearing, White House communications director Jen Psaki said Thursday. One additional GOP senator, Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, said Thursday that he would meet with Garland, but a spokesman characterized it strictly as a courtesy meeting. He continues to believe the next president should pick the next nominee for the Supreme Court, said the spokesman, Kevin Bishop. Next week, Garland will meet with three GOP senators up for reelection: Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rob Portman of Ohio and crucially Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who as Judiciary Committee chairman holds sole power to call hearings on Garlands confirmation. The most vulnerable Republicans are those who are up for reelection, and many of them are returning home now to a steady chorus of questions, said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the minority whip, who met with Garland on Wednesday and traveled to Chicago with Obama on Thursday. I dont think its going to end. This is a symbol of obstructionism that people loathe in Washington. [Merrick Garland is still tutoring elementary school students in Northeast D.C.] But in a signal that Democrats might already be thinking about an alternative plan, Durbin said there were other legislative maneuvers that we are actively considering. Democrats have thus far refrained from holding up legislation or other Senate business to gain leverage on the court fight. An ultimate step would be to force a floor vote on Garland without committee action a move that would almost certainly fail but would attract attention and put vulnerable Republican incumbents on the spot. A Democratic leadership aide said that is being considered as a last resort, one that would not be deployed for months. Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the No. 2 Republican leader, said Democrats are just trying to keep the buzz alive in the face of an unyielding GOP front: Theyre just trying to exhaust all possibilities, and that would represent the exhaustion of the last possibility. Eilperin reported from Chicago. Sen. Ted Cruz speaks with his wife, Heidi, by his side during a primary night campaign event in Indianapolis. Cruz ended his presidential campaign, eliminating the biggest impediment to Donald Trumps march to the Republican nomination. May 3, 2016 Sen. Ted Cruz speaks with his wife, Heidi, by his side during a primary night campaign event in Indianapolis. Cruz ended his presidential campaign, eliminating the biggest impediment to Donald Trumps march to the Republican nomination. Darron Cummings/AP The Texas Republican was the first major presidential candidate to formally declare a bid. The Texas Republican was the first major presidential candidate to formally declare a bid. Ted Cruz first uttered New York values with a sneer in January during an interview with a radio station in Boston a place where animus for New York, at least in the world of sports, runs deep. Cruz repeated it again, and again, and again, characterizing New York values as too socially liberal and focused on money. It was a way to knock Queens-born businessman Donald Trump in front of people who lived far from Manhattan. But now, with the delegate-rich New York primary looming, Cruz must campaign in the Empire State a place known for its bare-knuckles approach to all things political, a propensity to hit back when slighted, and residents who speak up when they disagree. Take the F U train, Ted, blared the cover of the New York Daily News on Thursday, the day after Cruz was greeted by hecklers at a campaign stop in the Bronx. Cruz was swarmed by media as he walked into a Dominican- Chinese restaurant, where he met with local and faith leaders. Two men were dragged out by police after they disrupted the gathering. Ted Cruz has no business being in the Bronx. This is an immigrant community, one of the men, who wore a Yankees hat, said in English. He then approached cameras and said in Spanish about Cruz, a Cuban American: Hes a racist who represents the white supremacy. Were not going to allow that in our neighborhood. Cruz was scheduled to visit a charter school but switched to the restaurant at the last minute; the Daily News reported that students threatened a walkout if he showed up. School and campaign officials did not respond to requests for comment. [Trump, pivoting from Wisconsin loss, hits Cruz on New York values] Despite the reception, Cruz refused to apologize for his remarks. Lets be clear. The people of New York know exactly what those values are, Cruz told reporters in the Bronx. Theyre the values of liberal Democratic politicians, like Andrew Cuomo, like Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, like Charlie Rangel, all of whom Donald Trump has supported financially. If you want to know what liberal Democratic values are, follow Donald Trumps checkbook, he added. When asked by CNN whether he regretted using the phrase, Cruz said, Not remotely. But Cruzs rivals on the campaign trail and the local officials here who have tangled with him pounced. Do you remember during the debate when he started lecturing me on New York values, like were no good? Trump said during a Wednesday rally on Long Island in front of more than 10,000 people. Trump recalled talking about the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center during a GOP debate in January when Cruz said New York values represented support of abortion rights and same-sex marriage. We all know people that died. And Ive got this guy standing over there, looking at me, talking about New York values with scorn, distaste, with hatred, with hatred. So, folks, I think you can forget about him, Trump said. Ohio Gov. John Kasich the third candidate in the GOP presidential race released a TV spot on Friday that plays audio of Cruz talking about New York values over footage of New York City, including the Statue of Liberty and lights shining from the Freedom Tower to commemorate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), who sharply criticized Cruzs suggestion that he would bring back a controversial and defunct New York police counterterrorism program that targeted Muslims, also skewered the candidate. [Trump, pivoting from Wis. loss, hits Cruz on New York values] Ted Cruz insulted the people of New York when it was politically convenient earlier in the primary season, de Blasio said on CNN. Ted Cruz thinks hes smart, but the people of New York City are going to see through him. But Cruz soldiers on in New York, because he has to the Republican race has turned into a hunt for delegates. New York awards them by congressional district, giving Cruz a chance to ferret out wins on friendly terrain. When he talks about New York values, Cruz often cites the more conservative, rural part of the state and how politicians banned fracking, which Cruz said took away thousands of good-paying jobs from the region. Cruz has also aggressively courted the Orthodox Jewish community throughout his campaign and visited Brighton Beach in Brooklyn on Thursday, where he made matzoh with 3- and 4-year-olds surrounded by adults. As he lifted the dough from the matzoh he made toward an oven, Cruz started talking about Passover, which begins April 22. Next year in Jerusalem, said Cruz, a Southern Baptist, using the phrase that comes at the conclusion of a Seder. He was told that because Passover had not yet come, the appropriate phrase would be this year in Jerusalem. Well, next year in Jerusalem, he said, hopefully Ill need a bigger plane to get there. Cruz also got a warm reception Thursday at a rally held at a Christian school in the upstate town of Scotia, about 20 miles northwest of Albany. A few hundred people cheered for Cruz, who was presented with a gift basket that included T-shirts and a growler of locally brewed beer. Yall dont mess around, he said of the beer. Someone held a sign that said, New York values Ted Cruz. But outside, the reception was icier. Signs referring to Cruz as Lyin Ted and sleaze hung on a fence. A woman walked a dog wearing a vote Trump towel. The home across the street displayed a Hillary in 2016 banner. Even some people inside the rally were not sure what to make of Cruzs interpretation of New York values. Erica Smith, a 31-year-old stay-at-home mother, who wore a T-shirt with the Republican elephant on it and a Hillary for prison button, came to see Cruz because she is unsure whom she will vote for in the April 19 primary. She said she likes Cruz far more than Trump but hasnt made up her mind. Smith said she understands part of where Cruz was coming from with the remark. The politics of New York are very corrupt, and our taxes are high, she said, adding that the voices of people in Upstate New York often are not heard. As far as the values of New York, she said, Im proud to be a New Yorker. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Bronx borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. rode the subway from 161st Street to 170th Street in the Bronx Thursday. (Yana Paskova for The Washington Post) The contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders grew increasingly nasty Thursday with a series of testy exchanges that have prompted widespread concern among Democrats that their rivalry is doing lasting damage to the party and the eventual nominee. With both candidates launching 10-day sprints here ahead of New Yorks April 19 primary, the strain and resentment of a hard-fought and unexpectedly long contest boiled over repeatedly in interviews, speeches and other public appearances. The senator from Vermont refused to retract his assertion that Clinton is not qualified to be president. Clinton dismissed that claim as silly and countered that Sanders has repeatedly made promises he cant keep. In an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday, Sanders stood by his view that Clinton is not qualified but he also pledged to support her if she is the nominee. [In his own words: Sanders on his spat with Clinton ] Look, as Ive said before, on her worst day, she is 100 times better than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or the other candidates, he said. To me, that is not a very hard choice. Bernie Sanders said Hillary Clinton is not "qualified" to be president because of the donations she accepts from the fossil fuel industry, while Clinton questioned whether Sanders's ideas are realistic. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Sanders continued to blame Clinton for going on the attack and said he has simply been defending himself. And while he expressed regret for the tenor of the campaign over the previous 24 hours and said the acrimony will make it harder for Democrats to unite in the fall, he also said he does not regret his own statements. When somebody says that I am unqualified to be president and gives her reasoning, Sanders said, I think it is totally appropriate for me to respond as to why I think she may not be qualified as well. And that has to do with her views and her actions on a number of the major issues facing this country, and the way shes run this campaign in terms of how shes raised her money. Clinton had raised questions in a television interview about whether Sanders was prepared to be president, but she repeatedly stopped short of saying he was unqualified. [Sanders, Clinton continue fierce feud over qualifications] Some Democrats are worried about potentially longer-term fallout of an increasingly personal conflict between Sanders and Clinton. Most of those Democrats are Clinton supporters who view her eventual nomination as inevitable despite the drawn-out nomination battle with Sanders. And most blame him for the ugliness. President Obama, who has sought to stay out his partys nominating contest, weighed in Thursday though a spokesman. Traveling with Obama on Air Force One, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Obama believes that Clinton comes to the race with more experience than any non-vice president in recent campaign history. Schultz emphasized that Obama feels fortunate that Clinton, whom he defeated in a sometimes nasty battle for the 2008 nomination, served as his secretary of state. Sanders based his assertion about Clintons lack of qualifications on claims that she is too closely tied to Wall Street, a charge he has been repeating for months. He also said her candidacy was undermined by her support of the Iraq War and her backing of what he termed a series of disastrous trade deals. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spoke at the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia Thursday morning. (Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters) There are policy disagreements he may have with her on some things lets stick to those, lets not say that the most qualified candidate for president is simply unqualified, said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). Weve got to refrain from ad hominem attacks . . . weve got to stay focused on what weve got to do in November. It concerns me deeply, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). What he does is divide the Democratic faithful, and why would he want to do that? Some Democrats said they found Sanderss words particularly troubling because, outside the heat of the campaign trail, they dont really think he means them. I really dont think he believes that, said Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.), another Clinton supporter. Nothing hes ever said to us had conveyed that sentiment. Competitions tough. I hope that they might back off it a little bit. Others were more sympathetic to Sanders. I think in both cases, you saw over the last day frustration and fatigue in the rough-and-tumble world of New York politics, said former Wisconsin lieutenant governor Barbara Lawton, a Sanders supporter. I think the fatigue and frustration will give way to the dignity they both have. I have every confidence well settle into something we can be more proud of. Clinton said in an NBC interview: I think its kind of a silly statement. But hes free to say whatever he chooses. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and a large cast of other supporters make public and sometimes indignant defenses of her credentials. Her campaign produced a cheeky online true-or-false quiz to bolster the argument that her long resume and practical experience make her eminently qualified. Thursday was a busy day for both candidates. Sanders addressed the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO in Philadelphia in the morning before heading to New York, where he taped an appearance on NBCs Late Night With Seth Meyers. Clinton held a brief news conference in the Bronx and took a made-for-the-cameras subway ride before attending fundraising parties the rest of the day. Her campaign made sure to note that she knew how to operate an automated fare card for her one-stop ride a poke at Sanders and his reference in a tabloid interview this week to subway tokens, which the system no longer uses. Clinton noted, laughing, that the system switched to fare cards years ago during her first term as a senator representing New York. [Hillary Clinton brings traveling press circus on a wild subway ride through the Bronx] Her campaign also sought to take advantage of the unqualified flap by using it to solicit donations. This is a ridiculous and irresponsible attack for someone to make not just against the person who is almost certainly going to be the nominee of their party this November, but against someone who is one of the most qualified people to run for the presidency in the HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, Clinton spokeswoman Christina Reynolds wrote in a fundraising email to supporters Thursday. The Clinton campaign has been eager to knock Sanderss halo off by emphasizing what it has described as the increasingly negative and political nature of his campaign. Trying to convince Democrats that Sanders is more of a typical politician than a principled crusader has been an ongoing and largely unsuccessful effort. But the latest skirmish provided a new chance to try. Sanders may have given his rival a boost by attacking Clinton in a way that seems to cut against his issues-only ethos, said Dan Pfeiffer, a former top aide to President Obama. Sanders made a strategic mistake by going down this road, because its off-brand. And you can convince voters of lots of things, but you cant convince them Hillary Clinton is unqualified to be president, Pfeiffer said. Pfeiffer and former Obama aides have long said that contrary to the Clinton campaigns insistence the tone of the 2016 campaign has been tame. But Pfeiffer added that how and when Democrats unify is ultimately up to Sanders. The prospect of a Trump or Cruz presidency will be so scary to Democrats that it may heal all wounds, he added. The Clinton campaign released two new ads Thursday, both highlighting her efforts to boost small businesses, manufacturing and high-tech jobs in western New York as senator. Both 30-second spots one called Norma and the other Every Corner focus on her efforts to bring new industry to such cities as Buffalo, Albany, and Rochester. Hillary Clinton made a difference in every corner of New York, and thats what shell do in every corner of America, the narrator says. On Friday, Clinton is expected to campaign in Buffalo and Rochester two of the media markets where these ads will air. Sanders had to put out a separate fire Thursday to avoid alienating another important Democratic constituency. Sanders has drawn criticism for blaming Israel for much higher Palestinian casualties than the country admits during the 2014 conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. But on Thursday afternoon, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, said that it had been in contact with Sanders and he had explained that he had misstated the numbers. Despite Sanderss recent streak of caucus and primary wins, Clinton has kept a steady lead in terms of delegates, even discounting the hundreds of superdelegates who have thrown their support behind her. Many question whether its even possible for Sanders to win the nomination at this point. And while no one is calling for him to drop out, some are increasingly worried that this seemingly never-ending nominating contest is doing increasing damage to Clinton. Congressional Democrats, in particular, said they hope this spat serves as a warning to the candidates to tone things down for the good of keeping the party more cohesive than the Republicans. We are nowhere near the playground name-calling of the Republican Party, McCaskill said. The vitriol and nonsense on the Republican side is a standard that we could never reach. Its really important that everybody take a pause, that everybody calm down, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) said. At this point in campaigns, people get tired, say things they dont mean to, emotions get raw. I think a lot of this will dissipate with a couple good nights sleep. Gearan reported from Washington. Karoun Demirjian, Mike DeBonis, Paul Kane and David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report. President Obama signs the Korea, Panama and Colombia free-trade agreements and the renewal of trade adjustment assistance for workers in the Oval Office in 2011. (Brendan Smialowski/Bloomberg News) The Panama Papers detailed revelations of a massive international tax-haven scheme have snowballed this week into a fierce debate among Democrats over President Obamas trade policies with the tiny Central American nation and again laid bare sharp divisions within the party over such agreements. Trade critics lambasted the administration as failing to heed their prior warnings and win sufficient financial reforms from Panama before signing a landmark free-trade deal in 2011, missing a chance to disrupt the elaborate financial arrangements disclosed in a massive leak of private data last weekend. But Obama aides and their allies responded forcefully Thursday, defending the U.S.-Panama trade pact as an instrument that the administration used to exert leverage and bring greater transparency to Panamas shadowy offshore banking system. Although trade deals do not typically address tax issues, U.S. officials said, the Obama administration won a separate agreement that gave financial regulators greater access to information on Panamanian bank accounts. We fought time and time again, said Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.), who supported the trade deal, and I was personally involved in making clear to the Panama government that no matter what else was in the free-trade agreement it would not win support from Congress without additional transparency rules. The Panama Papers consist of 11.5 million documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The papers apparently implicate a number of high-profile global figures in potentially illegal financial activities. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post) Consumer advocates who have fought U.S. trade policies said the administration and its allies are trying to claim credit for reforms in Panama without accepting responsibility for the revelations in the unfolding Panama Papers scandal about potentially widespread tax avoidance. High-ranking political leaders in a dozen countries have been implicated, and nearly 215,000 offshore shell companies and more than 14,000 people have been tied to the unfolding scandal. The Panama Papers just show once again how entirely cynical and meaningless are American presidents and corporate boosters lavish promises of economic benefits and policy reforms from trade agreements, said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch. The Panama free-trade deals investor protections and official U.S. stamp of approval made it safer to send dirty money to Panama, she said. The debate highlighted the depths of antipathy toward trade agreements on the 2016 campaign trail, where candidates in both parties have responded to the economic anxiety of voters who have come to doubt the benefits of globalization. The Obama administration has sought to use trade deals, including the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is awaiting congressional ratification, to win commitments from foreign partners on a host of issues including labor rights and environmental protections. But opponents have denounced the concessions as paltry and difficult to enforce. On Wednesday in Philadelphia, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted the Panama trade deal and accused rival Hillary Clinton of not being qualified for the White House. The Panama free-trade agreement was initially negotiated by the administration of President George W. Bush, but it stalled in Congress along with separate trade pacts with South Korea and Colombia amid concerns among lawmakers over various provisions. In 2010, the Obama administration moved to resurrect the deals by obtaining additional provisions in each to win congressional support. Critics of the Panama deal had warned the administration about entering into an economic arrangement with a nation with a history of shady offshore tax shelters where large corporations and powerful foreign leaders allegedly stashed hundreds of millions of dollars. Panama had refused since 2002 to sign a financial-transparency treaty known as a tax information exchange agreement (TIEA) with the United States. In a Senate floor speech on Oct. 12, 2011, ahead of a vote on the Panama trade deal, Sanders denounced the pact, highlighting Panamas tax-shelter system and arguing that the free-trade agreement would make a bad situation much worse by barring the United States from cracking down on illegal and abusive offshore tax havens. Later that day, Congress approved the Panama deal, along with the pacts with South Korea and Colombia, which also underwent changes negotiated by the Obama administration. Supporters of the Panama trade deal said Thursday that critics, including Sanders, had misstated several key facts. The Obama administration, with support from congressional Democrats, informed Panamanian negotiators that the deal would not move forward until they agreed to a separate provision binding them to sign and implement the unrelated TIEA treaty. Such a move, according to administration officials, was virtually unprecedented, because free-trade deals do not typically address tax issues or monetary policy, normally the province of the Treasury Department. Its a great sound bite, but the arguments dont hold up, said Miriam Sapiro, who served as deputy U.S. trade representative from 2009 to 2014. Trade advocates suggested that Sanders, whose campaign posted a video of his 2011 floor speech on its website, was politicizing the issue. In recent weeks, Clinton has tried to tie herself closer to Obamas policies on gun control and education, but she has attempted to move to the left on trade and announced her opposition to the Pacific Rim deal that she touted while serving as the nations top diplomat. Senator Sanders has it backwards, Levin and his brother, former Democratic senator Carl Levin (Mich.), said in a statement Thursday. We in Congress used the negotiations on the Panama [deal] as leverage. The agreement, they added, gives the Internal Revenue Service critical tools to go after U.S. tax cheats who use Panama. But Wallach, the consumer advocate, said the Obama administration did not push hard enough. The financial-transparency treaty, she said, requires someone in the U.S. to know what to ask for. Its not like in Canada, where a financial transaction is automatically reported. She said that the trade talks were a potential opportunity, and if Panama really wanted that opportunity, the administration should have said, These are the things you must do if you really want it and your government is interested enough to change some of this. But they didnt even ask those things. John Wagner in New York contributed to this report. If Bernie Sanders were someone other than a secular Jewish democratic socialist, it might be thought of as a Hail Mary moment for him. The senator from Vermont has decided to step off the campaign trail for two crucial days before what could be a do-or-die primary in New York to attend a conference on income inequality at the Vatican. Polls show him with a double-digit deficit against front-runner Hillary Clinton, and Sanders desperately needs a strong showing in the April 19 primary if he wants to chip away at her delegate lead. The Vatican gathering, hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, is an event that allows Sanders to showcase his commitment to the issue that is the cornerstone of his presidential campaign. And it may win points with Catholic voters, as well as Pope Franciss legions of liberal fans. However, it is difficult to imagine that any political benefits of the visit would outweigh those that Sanders might reap from spending those two days making his case directly to New York voters. And the Vatican is already showing some sensitivity to the prospect of giving a platform to a presidential candidate, given that Francis has already been drawn into the election fray once before, when he tangled with GOP front-runner Donald Trump on the issue of immigration. [Pope Francis offers hope to divorced Catholics, says no to gay marriage] Sanderss move came as a surprise even to his own chief strategist. I really havent been that involved in the decision, his political consultant Tad Devine said in an interview. There wasnt a big circle on this one. Sanders is a big fan of Francis who has himself been described as a socialist. But it is not certain whether Sanders will have an opportunity to meet the pontiff, much less be seen with him publicly. That is not yet clear. It is something I would very much like to do. The popes schedule is determined by the Vatican, but I would certainly be enthusiastic about it, Sanders said. I think there is a possibility, but that has not been scheduled. 1 of 42 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Highlights from Bernie Sanderss campaign, in pictures View Photos The senator from Vermont has become Hillary Clintons chief rival in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Caption The senator from Vermont is Hillary Clintons rival in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. June 14, 2016 Bernie Sanders arrives at the Capital Hilton to meet with Hillary Clinton in D.C. Matt McClain/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said: There really wasnt any discussion of the politics of this. Bernie felt it was very important to accept the invitation, given his affinity for the pope. As for the fact that the trip comes at a critical moment on the electoral calendar, Weaver said: The timing is what it is. He was very honored by the invitation and wanted to accept. Sanders expects to head for Rome shortly after Thursdays Democratic debate and return to New York the following Saturday. There also appears to be some confusion as to how Sanders finagled what he described as an invitation to talk about an issue that is very dear to my heart, which is how we create a moral economy that works for all of the people rather than just the top 1 percent. Shortly after the visit was announced, Bloomberg News quoted Margaret Archer, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, saying that Sanders had committed a monumental discourtesy by failing to contact her office in advance. However, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the academys chancellor, said that he had arranged the invitation and that Sanderss presence is welcome. The Sanders campaign produced a copy of the invitation, signed by Sanchez Sorondo. Sanders said he expects to speak at the conference for about 15 minutes about a quarter of the time he devotes to a typical stump speech. Sanders, who would be the nations first Jewish president, often refers to Francis on the campaign trail, praising his leadership on economic and environmental issues. Sanders said he thinks that he will be the only U.S. public official speaking at the gathering. In the meantime, he is keeping a busy schedule in New York. On Friday, Sanders held a pair of rallies in Brooklyn and made a string of media appearances. I have not forgotten where I was born, which is Brooklyn! he said at his second rally in a borough that also is the site of Clintons national campaign headquarters. Sanders has won six of the last seven states to hold primaries or caucuses, including Wisconsin on Tuesday. The Democratic race has grown more contentious in recent days, and Sanders has gone so far as to say that Clinton is not qualified to be president because of her views and her actions on a number of the major issues facing this country, and the way shes run this campaign in terms of how shes raised her money. [Is an increasingly nasty Clinton-Sanders race doing lasting damage to Democrats?] The outspoken pope, meanwhile, has already been part of the U.S. election story line. In February, while on a visit to Mexico, Francis criticized Trump, telling reporters aboard the papal plane that anybody who wants to build border walls is not Christian. Trump, a Presbyterian, fired back: For a religious leader to question a persons faith is disgraceful. The exchange made even Trump campaign officials queasy, but the celebrity billionaire nonetheless went on to win the South Carolina primary two days later by a comfortable margin. [Pope Francis joins a chorus of world leaders in condemning Donald Trump] Wagner reported from New York. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz speaks during a townhall at Mekeel Christian Academy in Scotia, N.Y. on April 7. (Cassi Alexandra for The Washington Post) Ted Cruz took the stage Thursday in the most traditional of campaign trail venues: a stuffy gym at a Christian school where hundreds of people listened to the stump speech Cruz recites at nearly every campaign event and cheered, snapped photos and held handmade signs. It was a far cry from an event the night before in a cavernous movie studio on Long Island, where Donald Trump roared in front of 10,000 people who had no idea what he would say because Trump always wings it. Its great to be home, the New York business mogul told the raucous crowd. I love these people! These are my people! [Trump, pivoting from Wisconsin loss, hits Cruz on New York values] Such is the difference between the two men at the top of the GOP race and the operations they helm. Cruz is the disciplined strategist who stays relentlessly on message and runs a by-the-book organization filled with aides and state chairs well versed in the nitty-gritty spadework of presidential campaigning. Trump, by contrast, runs what amounts to a DIY presidential campaign sharing the questionable tweets of others, spending next to nothing on a ground game and managing to garner millions of dollars in free media simply by being Trump. While the approach has left Trump with little established infrastructure as the race turns into a brawl for delegates, it has also allowed him to be nimble and to be leading Cruz in the overall delegate count. Trumps aides have said the essence of his on-the-fly approach will not change, although Trump signaled a partial shift Thursday by expanding the role of his delegate wrangler, Paul Manafort. [From Ukraine to Trump Tower, Paul Manafort unafraid to take on controversial jobs] Cruzs campaign, meanwhile, is banking on the discipline and attention to detail that it has focused on since the start of the race to push it over the edge in a close contest that may well come down to a convention floor fight over delegates. From the beginning we have been organizing from the grass roots. That was the strategy on day one, Cruz said after his speech here. That has meant recruiting local activists, many of them practiced political hands who know how each states delegate allocation process works. Some have served as delegates themselves in the past. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves goodbye after speaking during a campaign event at Grumman Studios in Bethpage, N.Y. on April 06. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) The campaign has been ramping up its delegate recruiting efforts, which have been building for a year, with former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II playing a large role. Because of the maneuvering, Cruz may pull out more delegates from Louisiana than Trump, who won the states primary. Last year, the Cruz campaign dispatched surrogates to the Pacific territories and U.S. Virgin Islands in an attempt to lock down early delegate support. The results were mixed: Cruz picked up Guams only pledged delegate, but Trump won the Northern Mariana Islands. [For some candidates, the path to the White House runs through paradise] Louie Hunter, a Cruz co-chair in Georgia, said the strategy has been Lets get the campaign up and going, lets win some states and lets focus on the delegates. Cruzs advance work will be on display this weekend in Colorado, one of five states that leave it up to party members to elect the states 37 delegates to the national convention. In the Centennial State, Cruz has relied on a team of volunteers and political professionals who have been working since last summer to track down thousands of potential supporters. Organizers said much of the work has been done with little input from Cruz national headquarters in Houston, aside from occasional conference calls. There are 50 different states with 50 different speeds, so the Cruz campaign has very little knowledge of how things work in Colorado probably until the last two or three weeks, said Ken Buck, the senators Colorado state chairman. My goal was to make this a low-maintenance, high-production campaign. Buck signed up with Cruzs campaign in December and immediately tapped his network of conservative supporters statewide, aligning with several conservative groups, including local antiabortion and gun rights organizations issues Cruz touts that put forth slates of potential delegates at the state convention to ensure their interests are accounted for at the national convention. The Cruz campaign also recruited like-minded Republicans who had run for delegate in the past. Cruz supporters have already won six of the states 37 delegates in contests held at the congressional-district level, and he is poised to win more delegates at congressional and statewide meetings this week. In Virginia, Cruz co-chair Shak Hill said he has been impressed with how meticulous and disciplined the campaign has been. While Cruz and Trump are in open warfare now, the senator initially buddied up to the businessman in an attempt to win his supporters something that was planned and calculated, Hill said. One of the most visible ways of strategizing the long game was not to criticize Mr. Trump in the beginning. This was intentional and it was deliberate, Hill said. [How Ted Cruz wooed and won Donald Trump] But while Cruzs organization served him well with his big victory Tuesday in Wisconsin, the Texan still lags behind Trump overall and is now entering hostile territory in a series of contests in the Northeast where Trump is leading in most polls. Cruz was heckled while campaigning in the Bronx on Wednesday, and here in Scotia there were signs reading Lyin Ted and Cruz = sleaze hung on a fence outside the school. A woman walked a St. Bernard named Samson that wore a towel reading Vote Trump. Because New York awards delegates to the winners of congressional districts, Cruz is trying to ferret out Republicans in unlikely places. He made a trip Thursday to make matzo with children in Brooklyn and meet with business leaders. Ahead of the visit, Cruzs Senate office announced he is co-sponsoring a bill to recover art stolen by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Corey Lewandowski, Trumps campaign manager, said in an interview that the strength of Cruzs ground game is a fallacy. Either Ted Cruzs ground game isnt living up to what the expectation is, or maybe the whole thing is a bunch of hype, he said. Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said Trumps campaign has problems with the facts. Were ready to compete and dominate, really, no matter what this race comes down to, she said. Jenna Johnson and Ed OKeefe in Washington and Jose A. DelReal in Bethpage, N.Y., contributed to this report. The study was presented at the annual Experimental Biology Congress in San Diego, US. London: Children born to mothers who consume salmon during pregnancy may have a lower risk of developing asthma compared to kids whose mothers do not eat it, a new study has claimed. Researchers led by Philip Calder from University of Southampton in the UK conducted the Salmon in Pregnancy Study, a randomised controlled trial in which a group of women ate salmon twice a week from week 19 of pregnancy. Allergy tests were then performed on the children at six months and then at two to three years of age. Results were compared to a control group whose mothers did not eat salmon during pregnancy. The findings showed that at six months there was no difference in allergy rate between the two groups of children. However, at age two and half years, children whose mothers ate salmon while pregnant were less likely to have asthma. Calder's previous research has shown that certain fatty acids - or a lack of them - are involved in a broad spectrum of common diseases ranging from diverse allergies through to atherosclerosis and inflammatory conditions such as Crohn's disease. The study was presented at the annual Experimental Biology Congress in San Diego, US. Supporters listen as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on Wednesday in Bethpage, N.Y. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) West Virginia looks perfect for Donald Trump: a struggling working-class state filled with the types of voters who have backed him elsewhere and could deliver one of his biggest victories. But a sweep there might not matter. Thats because as many as 34 delegates the entire contingent may be free to back whomever they want at the Republican National Convention. Much the same is true in Pennsylvania, home to a hotly contested April 26 primary, where there are 54 uncommitted delegates. Other states and territories, from Colorado to Wyoming to Guam, will also send squads of unbound representatives. These are the swing voters of the GOP nominating contest, nearly 200 activists and elected leaders beholden to nothing except their personal judgment and empowered to make or break candidacies. If Trump arrives at the July convention in Cleveland just shy of the 1,237 delegates required to secure the nomination outright, these unbound delegates could decide to push him over the top or force a contested convention with successive rounds of balloting. Donald Trump will almost certainly be the delegate leader heading into July's Republican National Convention but that doesn't mean he'll win the nomination outright. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Its the wildcatter of delegate selection, said Ed Brookover, a senior adviser to Trump, who drew an analogy to risk-taking oilmen who drill in unexplored land. The three remaining candidates are identifying these delegates, researching their proclivities and beginning to cajole them. The law surrounding them is so unclear that Trump could conceivably fly them to Florida for a weekend of luxuriating at Mar-a-Lago, his gold-adorned and palm-lined private club where, naturally, they could be subjected to personal lobbying to support Trump. Brookover did not rule out the Trump campaign entertaining delegates at one of Trumps properties or paying for their travel costs to Cleveland. But he added: You certainly cant offer anything which would be considered a bribe. We cant give them $100,000. Charlie Black, who is helping lead Ohio Gov. John Kasichs delegate strategy, recalled working on Ronald Reagans insurgent campaign in 1976 and struggling to court delegates as industriously as then-President Gerald Ford. People got to stay at the White House, fly on Air Force One and meet Queen Elizabeth, Black said. Federal rules do not provide clear guidance about whether delegates can accept items of value from a campaign, other than reimbursement for their travel expenses. Campaign finance lawyers are divided over whether federal or state anti-bribery statutes would apply to delegates who are not elected officials and if so, what kinds of perks or inducements could be illegal. [In chaotic GOP race, an intense battle for delegates plays out under the radar] 1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Trump captures the nations attention on the campaign trail View Photos The Republican candidate continues to dominate the presidential contest. Caption Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the partys convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue. After being outmaneuvered on several early delegate plays by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, his main rival, Trump is getting up to speed on the complicated process. On Thursday, he announced that power to oversee all activities related to the convention and delegates activities would be consolidated under Paul Manafort, a newly hired adviser. These unbound delegates are important because they could deny Trump any opportunity to get over the magic number on the first ballot or they could also push him over the top, said Jason Osborne, a GOP operative versed in convention procedures who advised Trumps campaign earlier this year but currently is unaffiliated. By contrast, Cruz has been preparing for this stage of the race for more than a year, his advisers said. The Cruz campaign has methodically recruited supporters to run as unbound delegates in places such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia and plans an intense push to persuade those who will have a vote on the convention floor. In Colorado, Cruz has picked up at least 18 delegates this week and could sweep the states total slate of 37 at its state convention on Saturday. Volunteers in Colorado have been organizing for Cruz since last summer. Were understanding every delegate in the country, tracking them, understanding where they came from, what their interests are, said Saul Anuzis, a former Republican National Committee member who is helping the Cruz campaign on delegate outreach. The arcane rules governing the nominating process mean that in Pennsylvania, a populous state that all three remaining candidates are targeting, the winner will automatically receive only 17 of the states 71 total delegates. The other 54 delegates, who are elected on the primary ballot in congressional districts, will be unbound. Even if you stood up and said, Im for Governor John Kasich and your district duly elected you based on your word, you can go to the convention and say, Nope, I changed my mind, Brookover said. Phil English, a past delegate from Pennsylvania and a former congressman, is among the 162 Republicans running to become delegates. He said he considers himself a free agent and is open to nominating someone not currently campaigning, such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). I intend to listen to people in my community, look at how they vote in the beauty contest, and then make my own assessment of what would be the strongest ticket for the Republican Party, English said. [From Ukraine to Trump Tower, Paul Manafort unafraid to take on controversial jobs] The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review recently surveyed Pennsylvanias delegate candidates and found that 61 of the 110 respondents said they would cast at least their first ballot for the presidential candidate who wins the states primary. Thirty-two of the respondents said they already are committed to a candidate, while the remainder were undecided. They, in effect, become the Republican Partys superdelegates, just like the Democrats have, Anuzis said, referring to the hundreds of delegate slots on the Democratic side not chosen by voters. They could do whatever they want to do. Many delegates have been active in their state parties for years, so the campaigns have tasked local surrogates such as former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge on Kasichs behalf to help make personal appeals. For instance, Brookover said, if a delegate cares about the issue of religious liberty, he or she may get a call from Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. vouching for Trump. Delegates could be persuaded more than regular voters by process-oriented political arguments. Primary voters dont care about electability, Black said. But delegates do care about it. . . . They want to elect a president, but they also want to save their senators, their congressmen and Republicans down the ballot. First, though, the delegates have to be selected. In West Virginia, that means winnowing a field of more than 300 to 31 open slots, which will happen during the May 10 primary. Some delegate hopefuls run aligned with a presidential candidate, meaning they must vote for that candidate in the first ballot at the convention, while others run as uncommitted. The Trump campaign recently opened an office in Charleston and is trying to persuade more delegate candidates to commit to Trump. Allies are arguing that Trump would be best to guide coal country out of its chronic economic despair. In the last 48 hours, some of our candidates for delegates to the national convention have been called by the Trump folks, said Kris Warner, an RNC member from West Virginia. Theyre leaning pretty heavily on folks. Matea Gold in Washington and Ed OKeefe in Colorado Springs, Colo., contributed to this report. Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of unbound delegates in Pennsylvania. 1 of 15 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Where We Live | Kent in Northwest Washington View Photos Residents of this enclave enjoy the parks, variety of homes and friendliness. Caption Residents of this enclave enjoy the parks, variety of homes and friendliness. Spring tulips line the yard of a home in the Northwest Washington neighborhood of Kent. Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. Thomas Lott recalls feeling overwhelmed by the friendliness of his neighbors soon after moving to Millwood Lane in the Northwest Washington neighborhood of Kent 25 years ago. Lott said he was searching for a welcoming neighborhood but wondered whether hed found too much of a good thing in Kent all those years ago. I thought to myself, I like them, but I dont know if I like them that much, Lott said about his new neighbors. Three months later I was fly-fishing with some of them in Montana, said Lott, who lives in a 5,800-square-foot Colonial with six bedrooms and five bathrooms. Whats unique about my street is that were about as close as friends as neighbors can be. Weve all been inside each others houses and we know one another well, said Lott, who enjoys a seven-minute commute to work at Morgan Stanley as a financial adviser. Maureen Bell Asterbadi, whos lived on Chain Bridge Road for 31 years, said that she enjoys incredible access to major attractions such as the White House, which is an eight-minute car ride away, she said. [River Towers, just south of Old Town Alexandria, is a hidden-away gem] Living in Kent feels like youre tucked away on the softer side of D.C., said Asterbadi, who lives in a 5,000-square-foot, five-bedroom, six-bathroom wooden Victorian. Potluck dinners: Kent is a wonderful neighborhood of Colonials interspersed with stunning contemporary homes in a variety of architectural styles on large lots that were built mostly in the 1930s and 1940s, said Margot Wilson, a real estate agent with Washington Fine Properties. Kents abundance of nearby attractions, including Battery Kemble Park, the Capital Crescent Trail and the Palisades Spray Park, as well as restaurants along MacArthur Boulevard, make it a much-sought-after neighborhood, Wilson said. When people find the home they like in Kent, they seldom relocate, said Wilson, whos sold real estate in Kent for more than 30 years. If they do, they want to find something within the neighborhood. If Lott and Asterbadi represent typical long-term residents, Anne Peterson, who over the years has hopscotched to several houses within Kent to Georgetown and back again, said that she has always been drawn to the community, but found herself especially missing the neighborhood during her most recent move away. About four years ago, Peterson and her husband, Gordon, packed up and left Georgetown for a five-bedroom, four-bathroom stone-and-brick Colonial on Macomb Street near the Potomac River the couples third move within Kent since the late 1990s, she said. I didnt realize how much I loved living in Kent until I came back, Peterson said. When I go out in the morning and take a walk along the river, I just gasp. You almost dont want to tell people about Kent because you dont want it to get too crowded. Donald F. McHenry, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Jimmy Carter administration, credits annual potluck dinners hosted among neighbors on Partridge Lane, where he bought a Georgian-style house in 2000, with helping to foster a sense of community among residents with fast-paced schedules. The dinners are enormously helpful for keeping people together, McHenry said. People dont miss them unless theyre out of town. [Glen Echo Heights in Bethesda is tall trees and friendly neighbors] Living there: Kent is bordered by Loughboro Road to the north, Battery Kemble Park and Chain Bridge Road to the southeast, and MacArthur Boulevard to the southwest. In the past 12 months, 42 properties have sold in Kent, ranging from a two-bedroom semi-detached house for $600,000 to a custom-built, six-bedroom, 5,200-square-foot home for $3,450,000, said Wilson, the agent with Washington Fine Properties. Kent is a wonderful neighborhood of Colonials interspersed with stunning contemporary homes in a variety of architectural styles, said Margot Wilson, a real estate agent with Washington Fine Properties. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post) There are 11 listings in Kent, ranging from a four-bedroom, two-bathroom Cape Cod for $1,049,000 to a seven-bedroom, eight-bath home for $7,895,000, according to Wilson. There are seven houses under contract, ranging from a five-bedroom, three-bath house for $1,095,000 to a six-bedroom, seven-bath house for $3,595,000. Schools: Key Elementary, Hardy Middle and Wilson High. Transit: Metrobuss D5, D6 and M4 routes serve the neighborhood. The nearest Metrorail station is the Red Lines Tenleytown stop, more than a mile away. Crime: Since January, there have been five burglaries, two robberies, two reports of stolen automobiles and one assault in the police area covering Kent, according to D.C. police. Paola, the mother of Giulio Regeni, center, flanked by lawyer Alessandra Ballerini, left, and by Sen. Luigi Manconiattend a news conference March 29 at the Senate in Rome. (Gregorio Borgia/AP) Italy recalled its ambassador to Egypt on Friday for urgent consultations, stepping up diplomatic pressure to seek the truth about the torture and slaying of an Italian graduate student that threatens to damage the close ties between the two countries. In a statement, Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said he was recalling Ambassador Maurizio Massari for an urgent evaluation to find ways to relaunch the commitment aimed at determining the truth about the barbarous murder of Giulio Regeni. Gentiloni also tweeted in Italian that his country wanted one thing only: the truth about Giulio. Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University doctoral student, was researching Egyptian trade unions when he disappeared in the Egyptian capital on Jan. 25, the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. On that day, Egyptian security forces and police were heavily present on the streets to stop any protests. Nine days later, Regenis mutilated body was found on the side of a highway. An autopsy conducted by Italy found that he been tortured over several days and appeared to have died Feb. 1 or 2. [Italian students remains reveal torture, slow death, Egypt prosecutor says] Fridays decision came a day after meetings between Italian authorities and a delegation of Egyptians handling the investigation of Regenis death. Ahmed Abu Zeid, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Friday that the ministry had not been officially notified of the recall of the Italian ambassador. He added that any official reaction would come after discussions were held with the Egyptian investigators upon their return. Accordingly, the situation will be assessed in a comprehensive manner, and the necessary contacts will be conducted at the appropriate level, Abu Zeid said. The recall was widely seen in Egypt and Italy as the latest sign of the Italian governments dissatisfaction with the pace of the Egyptian investigation. Human rights groups have suggested that Egypts security forces were behind Regenis killing. His body bore signs of torture, including cigarette burns and broken bones, similar to the type of abuses linked to the security forces in the past. [Why did Egyptian security see Giulio Regeni as a threat?] Last month, Egyptian authorities said they had killed members of a criminal gang who they said were behind Regenis murder. But that triggered more disbelief in Italy, fueling Italian accusations of a coverup. Ahead of the meetings with the Egyptians, Italian prosecutors were seeking Regenis cellphone records and footage from surveillance cameras near the metro station where he was last seen. [Italy doubts Egypts claim that gang is linked to students death] The high-profile case comes as Egypts economy is struggling and tourism is declining. Italy is a large trading partner, and the Italian oil company Eni has a long-standing relationship with Egypt. Regenis parents have demanded that Italy declare Egypt unsafe for Italians to visit, a move that could entail other Western nations to issue similar travel warnings. In Egypt, as well, there is growing dissatisfaction over how authorities have handled the investigation. On Sunday, the editor in chief of Al-Ahram, the countrys most well-known state newspaper, wrote in a front page article that Egyptian officials had little understanding of the value of truth and that teh situation places the Egyptian state in an embarrassing and extremely grave predicament. Heba Habib in Cairo contributed to this report. In fact, the preliminary report says that average speed of vehicles "decreased" by a small amount between 8 AM and 11 AM when the restrictions were in force across locations. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The odd-even car-rationing experiment in the national capital yielded little in terms of reducing air pollution or congestion on the city's roads, initial findings of an IIT-Delhi study has found. In fact, the preliminary report says that average speed of vehicles "decreased" by a small amount between 8 AM and 11 AM when the restrictions were in force across locations. The license-plate policy, which is set to make a comeback on April 15, managed to reduce car use by about 35 per cent and not "50 per cent", the report prepared by Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme of IIT-Delhi observes. It says the benefits of the programme on the day-time air quality were not immediately apparent in the ambient measurements, due to meteorological factors and suggests that at least 20 monitoring stations are required for a "reliable analysis" of its effectiveness. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) now has six such stations. The government, in its recent budget, has allocated money to build three more stations that monitor real-time air quality. More importantly, it suggests that the decrease in emissions from cars may be "offset" by an increase in flow of other vehicles such as buses, three-wheelers and motorised two-wheelers. "In the light of the fact that increase in flow of buses, three wheelers and motorised two-wheelers seems to be of a similar magnitude as the decrease in car flow, the effect of decrease in PM 2.5 emissions by cars would be even less," it notes. U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, left, and Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari sit in the library at the foreign ministers villa in Baghdad on April 8. (Jonathan Ernst/AP) Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Friday that Islamic State fighters are on the run in Iraq, and he vowed to amp up pressure on the group in coming weeks. Kerry, who made an unannounced day-long stop in the countrys capital, said Iraqi officials made no requests for additional U.S. troops beyond the 3,870 on the ground. He announced $155 million in U.S. aid, primarily for humanitarian projects aimed at Iraqis who are displaced and hungry. But Kerrys central message was that the Iraqi government, reeling from political and economic instability, needs to forge ahead in its offensive to wrest territory back from Islamist militants. [U.S.-led strikes putting a financial squeeze on the Islamic State] Daesh unequivocally is losing ground, Kerry told reporters, using an acronym for the Islamic State, after a series of meetings with Iraqi officials in the fortified Green Zone. Its losing leaders, its losing fighters, its losing cash. Now, some of its fighters are losing hope. During his stay of about seven hours, Kerry met with embattled Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari. He also met with Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and the Iraqi speaker of parliament, Salim al-Jubouri. His arrival was cloaked in secrecy. He left his blue-and-white official plane, emblazoned with the words United States of America, in Bahrain, where he had met with gulf officials on Thursday, and flew to Baghdad on a U.S. Air Force C-17. A military helicopter ferried him to the U.S. Embassy compound on the edge of the Green Zone, where many embassies and the prime ministers palace are located. Kerry never left the Green Zone. [2014: U.S. plan to fight Islamic State depends on new Iraq leadership, Kerry says during visit] Since Kerry last visited Iraq 19 months ago, shortly after Abadi took office, Iraqs travails have increased exponentially, and Abadis support has weakened. The country is practically bankrupt, thanks to the collapse of oil prices and rampant corruption that is said to have drained billions of dollars from state coffers. For months, the streets have often been filled with crowds of protesters unhappy over corruption and a lack of basic services, such as clean water and reliable electricity. [Weve had enough: Baghdad protests challenge Iraqs prime minister] The firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia once squared off against U.S. troops, has become a leader of the once-secular protests. Sadr pressured Abadi to announce a new cabinet of technocrats, and Jafari, who Kerry met with on Friday, would be one who would leave his post if the cabinet is approved by parliament. But many political factions have complained that they were not consulted and oppose the new cabinet appointments, so it is unclear whether it will be accepted. Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrives via military transport at Baghdad International Airport in Iraq on April 8. (Jonathan Ernst/AP) After a series of battlefield victories by the Iraqi army, the Islamic State has lost an estimated 40 percent of the area it once controlled in the country. But it still occupies a wide swath of territory. A long-anticipated offensive to take back the northern city of Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, had barely begun before it stalled. The host of problems has caused great concern in the State Department. Vice President Biden called Abadi recently, reaffirming U.S. support for the beleaguered prime minister. Kerry came to Baghdad to urge Abadi not to allow Baghdads domestic tribulations to sap the campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, which the Iraqi army already has ousted from Tikrit and Ramadi. We will not be complacent at any point in this campaign, Kerry said. In the coming weeks and months, we will work with Iraq to turn up the pressure further. A senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under State Department rules for briefing reporters, said the administration thinks the Iraqi military has grown more proficient since the Islamic State took Mosul in 2014. But falling prices for oil, the mainstay of the Iraqi budget, have made it difficult to maintain the military momentum. The official said a main part of Kerrys message was to encourage the Iraqis while theyre dealing with the cabinet reshuffle not to lose sight of the need to stay focused on the fight against ISIL. Read more: Kerry tells Iran to join efforts for peace in Yemen and Syria Kerry declares Islamic State has committed genocide Kerry arrives in Jordan to discuss Syrian civil war, battle with ISIS An undated photo posted by the FBI shows Kevin Patrick Dawes, a freelance photographer who traveled to Syria via Turkey in September 2012. (Federal Bureau of Investigation) The Syrian government has freed an American freelance photographer who was abducted after traveling to the country in 2012, according to two U.S. officials. Kevin Patrick Dawes, 33, from San Diego, was released following months of negotiations, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details of Dawess release have not yet been made public. In a separate case, Oman released a statement that another U.S. citizen this one held by Yemeni rebels in Sanaa had also been freed. Officials declined to identify the American. Secretary of State John F. Kerry was personally involved in winning Dawess release, which took place in the past few days, according to a State Department official. Another official said the Syrians handed Dawes over to Russian authorities, who then flew him out of Syria. Russia has been one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assads biggest backers. Officials said the Czech Republic, which represents U.S. interests in Syria, played a role in talks with the Syrians. The United States closed its embassy in Damascus in 2012 as the war intensified. Kevin Patrick Dawes, 33, from San Diego, was captured in 2012 after crossing into Syria from Turkey. (TWP) Dawes had been allowed in recent months to call his family and receive care packages, a signal that the Syrian government was moving toward releasing him, officials said. Dawess case drew little attention in the media, but his release is believed to be a positive sign in potentially securing the freedom of freelance journalist Austin Tice, another U.S. hostage and a former U.S. Marine who disappeared in Syria in 2012. Tice had been contributing articles to The Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers and other news outlets. The Syrian government has never acknowledged detaining Tice, but U.S. officials believe the government or a group affiliated with it is holding him. The [Daweses] private, painful ordeal is finally over. We are delighted for Kevin & his family, said a statement from a Twitter account associated with the Tice family. Dawess family did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State Department spokesman John Kirby on Friday confirmed that an American had been released. While privacy considerations prevent us from commenting further, we continue to work through our Czech protecting power in Syria to get information on the welfare and whereabouts of Austin Tice and other U.S. citizens missing and detained in Syria, Kirby said in a statement. We appreciate the efforts of the Czech mission on behalf of U.S. persons. 1 of 32 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Inside Syria View Photos As the conflict enters its fifth year, Aleppo, Syrias most populous city, has been sliced in two by the war and in the capital Damascus, there is little sign of the anniversary on the streets. Caption As the conflict enters its fifth year, Aleppo, Syrias most populous city, has been sliced in two by the war and in the capital Damascus, there is little sign of the anniversary on the streets. March 10, 2016 A souk, or open-air market, in the old city of Aleppo. Lorenzo Tugnoli/For The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. Dawes was taken after crossing into Syria from Turkey, according to the FBI. This wasnt the first time he had gone to a conflict zone. In June 2011, he traveled to Libya as a medical aid worker but then fought alongside forces battling Moammar Gaddafis government. Dawes said the Libyan government had been targeting medical workers. It was at that point we decided we had no choice, he told NPR in an interview in 2011 from Libya. It was either this or perish from here. Dawes told NPR that at one point in Libya he started carrying a rifle and began working as a counter-sniper. He said he was never in the U.S. military but had 10 years of experience as a trained marksman. In the interview, Dawes described his reasons for being in Libya. See the world, experience new things, get in way over my head, but, you know, ultimately survive, he said. Carol Morello contributed to this report. Read more: Parents of Austin Tice, journalist missing in Syria, launch ad campaign Freeing a reporter: Secret diplomatic talks and private back channels Woman accused of holding U.S. aid worker hostage in Syria is charged North Korea has more than 100 restaurants in about 25 countries, mostly in China and southeast Asia, but also in Russia and Dubai. The restaurants have become a major source of foreign currency for the cash-strapped Pyongyang regime. (Anna Fifield/The Washington Post) North Korea has more than 100 restaurants in about 25 countries, mostly in China and southeast Asia, but also in Russia and Dubai. The restaurants have become a major source of foreign currency for the cash-strapped Pyongyang regime. (Anna Fifield/The Washington Post) Thirteen North Koreans working at a state-run restaurant in an unidentified country defected to South Korea this week, the government in Seoul announced Friday. A male manager and 12 female employees arrived in South Korea on Thursday, a spokesman for the Souths unification ministry said, but he declined to say which country theyd been in or how they escaped. "It marked the first time that a group of North Koreans at the same restaurant has opted to come to South Korea at once," Jeong Joon-hee, the spokesman, told reporters Friday. "The government has decided to reveal this case because it is rare that a group of North Koreans would defect to South Korea in this way, he said, noting that it comes after broad international sanctions were imposed on North Korea after its nuclear test in January. [Just about the only way to escape North Korea is if a relative has already escaped] North Korean women perform and serve drinks in the Arirang restaurant in Yanji, northern China. (Anna Fifield/The Washington Post) The North Koreans defected because they had become disillusioned with their state after watching South Korean television shows and realizing how much better life was in the South, he said. The move is remarkable because it suggests a high degree of coordination. The North Koreans would have had to confide in each other a risky admission in a system where people are encouraged to snitch on one another. Plus, working in a state restaurant abroad is considered a relatively plum job for a North Korean. The work requires language and often musical skills, and offers much better pay than workers could earn at home. As such, it is usually reserved for those considered very loyal to the regime. [North Korea works around the clock to prepare for the 70-day campaign] North Korea has more than 100 restaurants in about 25 countries, mostly in China and southeast Asia, but also in Russia and Dubai. These restaurants are popular with South Korean tourists, offering them a chance to interact with their estranged compatriots. The restaurants have become a major source of foreign currency for the cash-strapped Pyongyang regime, so much so that as part of the sanctions imposed after the January nuclear test, the South Korean government advised its citizens not to visit the restaurants abroad. In the restaurants, multilingual and glamorous North Korean women serve drinks and food but also sing and play a variety of instruments, from electric guitars and drums to more traditional violins. They live in dorms under the watchful supervision of a minder from the state security services, and are allowed to go out only on specific days and only in groups so they can keep an eye on one another. There are 50,000 to 100,000 North Koreans working abroad earning foreign currency for the regime, from loggers in Siberia and seamstresses in China to construction workers in the Middle East and statue builders in Africa. Read more North Korea has new rocket system that could strike Seoul this year, South Korea warns What its like to be an American held in North Korea North Korea claims it could wipe out Manhattan with a hydrogen bomb A member of the Russian army works in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, which was recaptured from the Islamic State last week. (AFP/Getty Images) Turkish-backed rebels in northern Syria have been driving Islamic State militants out of vast areas along the frontier with Turkey, seizing a key border town from the extremist group in their latest gains. The capture overnight Thursday of Rai, about 40 miles northeast of Aleppo, by groups affiliated with the umbrella Free Syrian Army deprives the Islamic State of one of its last border crossings from Turkey into Syria. Rai had been a key conduit for the group to funnel fighters and weapons. The takeover confirmed by the rebel groups and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring organization represents a major setback for the Islamic State, which depends heavily on smuggling pathways through Turkey. The militant groups territory in Syria and Iraq has been shrinking substantially because of advances by U.S.-backed forces and pro-government fighters in Syria. Among the important gains was the recapture last week of the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria by forces supported by Russian warplanes allied with President Bashar al-Assads government. [Islamic State knocked back in Syria and Iraq] The rebels liberated al-Rai completely yesterday evening after intense clashes with ISIS, said Col. Haytham Afisi, a commander of the 51st Brigade, a rebel outfit involved in the operation. The Islamic State, a radical al-Qaeda offshoot, is also known as ISIS, ISIL and, in Arabic, Daesh. During their assault on the town, Afisi said, the rebel forces received support from Turkish artillery and from airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition that is fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The rebel advances appear to be a success for Turkish policy in Syria. U.S. officials hope Turkey will focus more on combating the militants along a border that, for much of the conflict, has been a porous gateway for Islamist fighters. Turkey, a fierce opponent of Assad, has provided the rebels with weapons and logistics as they have made their way east from Azaz, another border town about 30 miles north of Aleppo. The rebel fighters have reclaimed more than a dozen villages in the area. Video footage posted on social media purports to show the rebels hoisting assault weapons as the storm into Rai on trucks. Large explosions resulting from apparent air raids by the U.S.-led coalition reverberate in the background. In one video, a rebel fighter stands in front of a group of fatigue-clad militants, shouting that the Free Syrian Army has liberated al-Rai. The group chants, God is great! Turkey also seeks to use the rebels to blunt a separate push by Kurdish militants in Syria, who have U.S. support. Turkey claims that the Kurds have strong links with separatist Kurds in Turkey and has called for Washington to cut ties with the Syrian Kurds. With rebels in control of Rais border crossing, they have carved out more breathing room in Syrias northwest and appear poised to use the crossing to bring reinforcements to opposition-held areas in Aleppo. In February, a Syrian government assault, backed by Russian airstrikes and militia from Iran and Lebanon, dealt heavy blows to rebel fighters in the countryside north of Aleppo. Those assaults in turn threatened to vanquish rebels in their urban stronghold in the eastern part of Aleppo a scenario that could prove fatal to the five-year rebellion. A partial cease-fire backed by Russia and the United States has since led to a substantial reduction in hostilities, despite violations alleged by both sides. The agreement does not stop attacks against the Islamic State. There is conversation with the Turkish military and government to talk about opportunities to intensify support to those groups and to push Daesh east from the current line, Reuters quoted the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, John Bass, as saying. In Iraq, meanwhile, forces moved into the center of Hit, the military said. Hit is an important foothold that would put troops closer to the northern city of Mosul, the Islamic States main base in Iraq. Zakaria Zakaria in Istanbul and Liz Sly in Baghdad contributed to this report. The photo of Masih Alinejad that started the My Stealthy Freedom phenomenon. (Photo: Tina Browns Women in the World Summit) Masih Alinejad is an Iranian journalist, human-rights activist, social-media change-maker and owner of a glorious head of hair that would be criminal to cover, noted Tina Brown, who interviewed Alinejad in front of a packed audience Thursday at Browns seventh annual Women in the World Summit in New York City. And it was that last reference, to the covering of hair, thats been at the heart of the activists rise to prominence around the globe. Related: Women Transforms Into Stunning Disney Characters While Wearing Her Hijab From infancy into her early adulthood, Alinejad, along with all women and girls, was forced to wear a hijab (head scarf), as part of the laws put into place by the 1979 Iranian revolution with punishments for going scarf-free, to this day, including lashings. Despite growing up in a conservative, rural area, Alinejad grew up to become a rabble-rousing activist, moving to London in 2007 to study communications and work as a journalist. By 2009 she was letting her head be exposed in public, and began living in exile there, later moving to her current home, Brooklyn. In 2014 she kicked off My Stealthy Freedom, posting a moving photo of herself running through trees that were bursting with blossoms. Alinejad onstage with Brown in New York City on Thursday. (Photo: Tina Browns Women in the World Summit) I was enjoying the wind through my hair, she explained to the audience Thursday. Maybe its nonsense to you, but to us, it means a lot And every time I feel the wind through my hair it reminds me of the time my hair was a hostage at the hands of the Iranian government. That was the caption, Alinejad explained of the photo she posted which became a watershed moment for her online revolution. Related: Dolce & Gabbana Launches Abaya and Hajib Collection for the Arab World If you share it with me, then we are not going to be stealthy anymore. We are not going to be having our freedom in secret, she said was the idea behind the Facebook page. I was bombarded with pictures. There are a lot of brave women inside Iran, and they wanted to say no to compulsory hijab. Story continues In a matter of days, My Stealthy Freedom became a social-media phenomenon in Iran and around the world, drawing more than 970,000 fans to this date, when photos continued to pour in. All that exposure made Brown ask Alinejad, Do you fear sometimes these are going to get them into trouble when you post them on My Stealthy Freedom? But the activist said she only saw the empowering side of such moves. Some of the women inspired to share their scarf-free photos on My Stealthy Freedom. (Photos: Facebook) Being a woman in Iran means you live in a dangerous situation. You live with fear, every day, when you want to go out, she explained. According to the police of Iran, 3.6 million women were warned and stopped by morality police in the street within a year. And 40,000 cars were confiscated. Why? Because the women drivers did not have a proper hijab. So these women, who were in Iran and were putting themselves in danger by saying no to forced hijab, they didnt send their pictures to me, but they were at risk. For me, just giving them a voice means a lot. Going without your headscarf after a lifetime of indoctrination is a difficult move, psychologically, for women, Alinejad explained, and it took her three years outside of Iran to feel ready to go scarf-free full-time. I didnt want to break my fathers heart, she explained, adding, Hijab can be part of your identity and its not as easy as you think Its like taking part of your body and throwing it away. While her father was upset enough by her tossing aside of hijab to want to take me to heaven by force, she said, her mother, who is conservative and illiterate, is more understanding, and doesnt want to force me to be like her. Today, in large part because of Alinejads outspokenness, Brown said, things are slowly starting to change for women in Iran. Air France reinstated its Paris to Tehran route recently, and many of the female crew members said that they wouldnt work it if they had to wear a hijab, Brown noted. In solidarity, you launched a campaign urging tourists to share pictures. Again, Alinejad was bombarded, this time with supportive photos of international women freeing their hair and pledging their support while visiting her country. This is not an internal matter. This is the time for all women around the world who visit Iran to stand with us, said Alinejad who works from the U.S. with her Iran contacts to expose human-rights abuses, including the recent sexual harassment of an Iranian journalist and the death of activists killed during Arab spring protests. While I enjoy my freedom I still cannot forget about my people, she said, who thinks daily about the fact that Iranian women break law if they dont cover their heads as well as if they are caught singing, dancing, or holding the hand of lover. And in that case, Alinejad said, Im a master criminal The Iran government thinks I have too much hair, too much voice, and am too much of a woman. New Delhi: BJP on Friday appointed former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa as Karnataka unit president and its Phulpur MP and a prominent OBC face Keshav Prasad Maurya to head its Uttar Pradesh unit. By appointing Yeddyurappa, a prominent lingayat face, the party decided to bank on its old warhorse in Karnataka. He was earlier forced to resign as chief minister over graft allegations and quit the party to form his own outfit. Yeddyurappa, who is Lok Sabha member from Shimoga, returned to BJP ahead of 2014 general election. In Uttar Pradesh, the party decided to field an OBC face as the party gears up for the crucial polls next year. Maurya has been associated with RSS since early years. While Uttar Pradesh is slated to go to polls in early 2017, elections are due in Karnataka before May 2018. Announcing the appointments, BJP general secretary Arun Singh also named Union Minister Vijay Sampla, MLA K Laxman and former MP Tapir Gao as the new party chiefs for Punjab, Telangana and Arunachal Pradesh units. Bruce Springsteen is taking a stand over recently passed legislation in North Carolina that requires people in the state to use gendered public restrooms that match their birth certificate, specifically targeting transgender people. In a statement posted to Facebook on Friday, Springsteen canceled an upcoming show in Greensboro, N.C., over the law. Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry which is happening as I write is one of them, Springsteen wrote. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards. Bruce Springsteen, born in the non-bigoted USA. (Photo: Getty Images) North Carolinas bathroom bill, which is officially called the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, was signed into law by North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory in March. Never mind that North Carolina police have admitted that the law is essentially unenforcible, there is no factual evidence to support the pervasive theory behind this law, which is that sexual predators would exploit transgender nondiscrimination laws in order to enact assaults. Data compiled by Media Matters for America shows that states with laws preventing discrimination against trans people have no evidence of a rise in sexual assaults. Springsteen is not the first to speak out against North Carolinas HB2. Four states New York, Vermont, Washington, and Minnesota and at least eight cities Seattle, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, New York City, and Washington, D.C. have banned nonessential employee travel to North Carolina in reaction to the bills passing. PayPal also canceled plans to build a global operations center in Charlotte after the bills passing, costing the city 400 new jobs. In his statement, Springsteen notes that fans can get their tickets refunded for Sundays concert. You can read the full statement here: As you, my fans, know Im scheduled to play in Greensboro, North Carolina this Sunday. As we also know, North Carolina has just passed HB2, which the media are referring to as the bathroom law. HB2 known officially as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act dictates which bathrooms transgender people are permitted to use. Just as important, the law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace. No other group of North Carolinians faces such a burden. To my mind, its an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress. Right now, there are many groups, businesses, and individuals in North Carolina working to oppose and overcome these negative developments. Taking all of this into account, I feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters. As a result, and with deepest apologies to our dedicated fans in Greensboro, we have canceled our show scheduled for Sunday, April 10th. Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry which is happening as I write is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards. A toddler in Kansas was rushed to the hospital with an octopus lodged in his throat in a suspicious incident involving the mother's live-in boyfriend, PEOPLE confirms. Matthew Gallagher, 36, was arrested on suspicion of child abuse after doctors found the two-inch squid stuck in the 2-year-old boy's throat, a Wichita Police Department spokesperson tells PEOPLE. "The octopus appeared to have gotten there from a sushi dish," the spokesperson says. Police say boy's mother, 21, returned home on Tuesday at around 9:30 p.m. to find Gallagher giving her son CPR because he was not breathing. She contacted authorities and the boy was rushed to the hospital. Doctors extracted the octopus from the boy's throat and he was initially listed in critical but stable condition. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. The spokesperson says that the toddler also had bruises on his face. As of Thursday, the boy was listed in good condition, the spokesperson adds. Police questioned Gallagher about the toddler's injuries and arrested him, with the spokesperson noting that Gallagher's story was "inconsistent with the child's injuries." Gallagher was held at Sedgwick County Jail, but has since bonded out, per The Wichita Eagle. He has not been charged, police say. By Christine Murray and Enrique Pretel PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Aghast at the biggest offshore scandal in memory, lawyers, businessmen and politicians flock to one of their favorite haunts, a diner opened in the 1950s nestled between Panama City's financial and historic quarters, to swap notes. Given the reports from the "Panama Papers" jolting colleagues at shell company specialist Mossack Fonseca, Thursday's huddle over orange juice and sandwiches at Cafe Boulevard Balboa was a less pleasant get-together than usual. While that firm in particular stands in the eye of a storm that has buffeted world leaders from Russia to China, Britain to Iceland, its rivals in the offshore services industry were also picking up the pieces. "I was about to sign a contract on Monday with some Italian clients but they postponed it," said corporate lawyer Pablo Gonzalez, 39, who said he worked for various legal firms, but declined to name them. "They want us to check everything again 10 times, they are afraid and want to be sure it's all legal." Mossack Fonseca and others set up companies in Panama that could be used to avoid taxes and commit financial crimes, but lawyers said the vast majority are for legitimate businesses for foreigners and Panamanians themselves. The head of the Chamber of Commerce said although the offshore legal industry represented around 0.5 percent of gross domestic product, the reputational damage from the leaks could have an impact on the wider Panamanian economy. The release of four decades of documents through the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media on Sunday showed how the politically connected and rich stash their wealth, and has led to investigations around the world. Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing and said it was the victim of hacking. A cross-sampling of the Central American country's legal community of around 22,000 lawyers said in interviews that they are angry and worried that information taken from just one firm has unfairly tarnished Panama's reputation and will hurt business. The government said it is contacting all countries implicated in the scandal. On the defensive, the government also warned that it could retaliate in kind after France announced it would put Panama back on its blacklist of uncooperative tax jurisdictions. Jima Arauz, 58, who was eating a breakfast sandwich with her lawyer husband, said she had created hundreds of companies for clients over the years, and had heard of one lawyer who has lost two client deals since Sunday. "We're worried because its giving a bad image to our country... it doesn't reflect reality," she said. Gonzalez and most of the more than 20 lawyers interviewed by Reuters protested that the image of Panama cast by the scandal was unfair, and that a new anti-money laundering law passed last year was already very strict on his industry. Gonzalez said one client had wanted to put some aerobatic planes into an offshore company to sell them to an investor in Ethiopia. He turned it down as the new law would have made it too risky. On Tuesday evening at the National College of Lawyers, the center of Panamanian legal life, the mood was just as grim. Lawyers exchanged rumors, gossip and conspiracy theories about who could be behind the leak, ranging from the CIA to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). While there were just a few cases of clients postponing or canceling business so far, many believe there could be serious consequences for the legal industry. "There is ... collective hysteria among clients," said lawyer Maria Isabel Saravia, of Legal Engine Solutions. "We expect a gradual impact ... Our clients feel like criminals." Panama's dollarized economy has long been a center for international trade, thanks to its world famous canal, one of the world's most important maritime trade routes. In turn, legal business also boomed, partly based on a 1927 law, inspired by one in the U.S. state of Delaware, which established easy rules for creating companies. Gian Castillejo, a senior adviser to President Juan Carlos Varela's government, said the government does not intend to protect the industry. "If demand for the creation of companies in Panama falls, obviously the law firms that do this will have to reinvent themselves and practice other areas of law." (Additional reporting by Elida Moreno; Editing by Simon Gardner and Grant McCool) The millennial market has long been the toughest nut to crack in the financial advisory sector. A Merrill Lynch survey that polled 153 investors between ages 18 and 35 in 2013 found that millennials have been reluctant to start relationships with investment professionals, whom they tend to view as "salesmen." It doesn't help that the average millennial is low-income, low-net-worth and generally of low interest to wealth advisors in the first place. But that lack of participation could be changing with the advent of robo-advisors. Since 2008, these automated wealth management services have provided algorithm-based investment advice without human interaction -- perfect for a generation that often prefers digital interaction over face-to-face. [See: 10 Ways Millennials Are Changing Homebuying.] The services robo-advisors offer are also much less expensive than those of traditional financial advisors, which makes them a desirable option for young investors looking to build a nest egg. Here are three reasons millennials should consider robo-advisors. Robo-advisors have low minimum investments. Traditional financial advisors provide customized, personal advice -- but at a cost. Many will only take on clients with a net worth of $250,000 or more, which excludes most millennials just starting their careers. Robo-advisors, on the other hand, require low minimum balances to invest. Some, like online investment advisor Betterment, have no minimum balance requirement and tailor their services to beginning investors, and some lower their fees as investments grow. By providing a small barrier to entry, robo-advisors make investing more accessible to millennials. "When you don't have $1 million to invest, you don't need anything more fancy than what someone like Wealthfront or Betterment is offering," says certified financial planner Pamela Capalad of Brunch and Budget, a financial planning firm based in New York City. Story continues Robo-advisors charge smaller fees. Because robo-advisors use passive investing instead of the active investing used by many traditional financial advisors, they can afford to charge smaller fees than the big guys. Active investing is when an advisor or fund manager tries to choose investments that will beat the market. With passive investing, an advisor chooses a fund, such as an index fund that tracks the stocks of the S&P 500 index, as a benchmark for investing. [See: 12 Millennial-Inspired Ways to Spend Less.] While a traditional financial advisor may charge fees of 1 percent or higher, many popular robo-advisors charge 0.5 percent or less. That difference can save an investor a significant amount over the life of an investment. Robo-advisors automatically rebalance your investments. Robo-advisors offer a hands-off approach by automatically rebalancing their customers' portfolios so they stay diversified and don't hold too many assets in one investment category. This can be a draw for millennials who don't want to worry about rebalancing their investments manually or hiring a financial advisor to do it for them. For a busy young person still trying to wrap their head around the ins and outs of investing, this can be a lifesaver. Austin Lewis, a certified financial planner with Rooted Financial Planning in Fort Worth, Texas, says automation is one of his favorite things about robo-advisors. "Automated investment management is nice ... but automated savings is even better," he says. "The hardest part of accumulating wealth is saving money. When you link your bank account to a robo and choose your automatic savings schedule [which can be changed at any time], you just eliminated the hardest part to accumulating wealth. This single behavior will get you on the path to build wealth." Top robo-advisors for millennials. Due to the rapid proliferation of robo-advisors, there are many options for millennials looking for investing help. When choosing a firm, look at the fees it charges and the minimum balance required to invest. Remember that fees can take a big chunk out of your earnings, so examine how much you can contribute regularly and where you can find the lowest fees. "Robo-advisors are good for millennials ... given that there is not much of a choice out there for quality advice to young people, as most advisors focus on older, more-established clients that already have assets," says certified financial planner Jeremy E. Portnoff of Portnoff Financial LLC in Woodbridge, New Jersey. [See: 8 Tech Funds to Buy to Invest for the Future.] Here are five robo-advisors to consider: -- Betterment. This firm charges 0 .35 percent for accounts between $0 and $10,000 (if you have automatic deposits of $100 or more, $3 a month otherwise); 0.25 percent for accounts between $10,000 and $100,000; and 0.15 percent for accounts holding more than $10,000. There is no minimum deposit or balance and no fees for withdrawals. -- Wealthfront. A $500 minimum deposit is required. There is no advisory fee for accounts less than $10,000, but this firm charges 0.25 percent on any amount more than $10,000. There is an exchange-traded funds fee of 0.12 percent. -- FutureAdvisor. This firm offers three months of free management but charges a 0.5 percent annual fee. It has no minimum investment requirement. -- WiseBanyan. WiseBanyan has no annual fee and no minimum balance requirement. The average expense ratio for its accounts is 0.12 percent. -- Sigfig. A $2,000 minimum balance is required, but the firm charges no annual fee for accounts holding $10,000 or less. Any account balance of more than $10,000 is charged a 0.25 percent fee. By Jim Finkle BOSTON (Reuters) - Adobe Systems Inc issued an emergency update on Thursday to its widely used Flash software for Internet browsers after researchers discovered a security flaw that was being exploited to deliver ransomware to Windows PCs. The software maker urged the more than 1 billion users of Flash on Windows, Mac, Chrome and Linux computers to update the product as quickly as possible after security researchers said the bug was being exploited in "drive-by" attacks that infect computers with ransomware when tainted websites are visited. Ransomware encrypts data, locking up computers, then demands payments that often range from $200 to $600 to unlock each infected PC. Japanese security software maker Trend Micro Inc <4704.T> said that it had warned Adobe that it had seen attackers exploiting the flaw to infect computers with a type of ransomware known as 'Cerber' as early as March 31. Cerber "has a 'voice' tactic that reads aloud the ransom note to create a sense of urgency and stir users to pay," Trend Micro said on its blog. (http://bit.ly/1L9YYMP) Adobe's new patch fixes a previously unknown security flaw. Such bugs, known as "zero days," are highly prized because they are harder to defend against since software makers and security firms have not had time to figure out ways to block them. They are typically used by nation states for espionage and sabotage, not by cyber criminals who tend to use widely known bugs for their attacks. Use of a "zero day" to distribute ransomware highlights the severity of a growing ransomware epidemic, which has disrupted operations at a wide range of organizations across the United States and Europe, including hospitals, police stations and school districts. Ransomware schemes have boomed in recent months, with increasingly sophisticated techniques and tools used in such operations. "The deployment of a zero day highlights potential advancement by cyber criminals," said Kyrk Storer, a spokesman for FireEye Inc . "We have observed ransomware and crimeware deployed via 'zero-day' before; however, it is rare." FireEye said that the bug was being leveraged to deliver ransomware in what is known as the Magnitude Exploit Kit. This is an automated tool sold on underground forums that hackers use to infect PCs with viruses through tainted websites. Exploit kits are used for "drive-by" attacks that automatically seek to attack the computers of people who view an infected website. (Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Kenneth Maxwell) Oxygen A Tampa-area family's long wait for answers about the disappearance of their husband and father has come to an end. The Tallahassee Police Department announced this week that skeletal remains had been found in a wooded area off Apalachee Parkway, a commercial road dotted with strip malls and hotels on the east side of the city. Shortly thereafter, they announced that, with information received from the local medical examiner's office, they had identified the deceased as Jason Winoker, 52, of Lan By Nia Williams CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Alberta expects oil and gas royalty revenue to plunge almost 90 percent next year to around C$1 billion ($761.73 million) from 2014 levels, the Canadian oil-producing province's Premier Rachel Notley said on Thursday. "This is the royalty roller coaster we've all been talking about," Notley said in a televised address ahead of the release of the provincial budget next week. "There's no doubt that the oil price collapse is causing serious economic pain and anxiety," she added. Alberta depends on oil and gas royalties for one fifth of provincial revenues and the prolonged global oil price shock is the most serious in a generation, Notley said. Two years ago the province collected almost C$10 billion from royalties but the government forecasts that will tumble by nearly 90 percent next year. Since June 2014 the price of crude has plunged by around 65 percent to hover just below $40 a barrel, prompting oil producers in Alberta to cut tens of thousands of jobs and slash capital investment by around C$50 billion. The province is the No. 1 exporter of crude to the United States and the slump in its dominant industry has caused financial difficulties for Notley's left-leaning NDP government, elected last May after 44 years of Conservative rule. The government expects the budget deficit in the 2016/17 fiscal year will be more than C$10 billion as a result of lower royalties and reduced tax revenue. Last year Alberta posted a C$1.1 billion surplus. Notley said next week's budget will contain more detail on the government's five-year plans to spend C$34 billion on infrastructure investments and diversify the province's energy markets and industry. (Editing by James Dalgleish) The new software had to be introduced, bowing to pressure from the higher ups. Bengaluru: Upset citizens have been protesting over the technical glitches in the BBMP official website, which have been impeding the public from smooth payment of property tax. In response to the outcry, the BBMP on Thursday clarified that all the technical issues will be fixed within a week. BBMP Deputy Commissioner (Revenue) M. Venkatachalapathy said that meetings were held with National Informatics Centre (NIC) which has prepared the software and is assisting the BBMP in ironing out the problems. Asked why the BBMP was in a hurry to introduce online payment when they were not ready for it, he said that the BBMP wanted to minimize the harassment to the public by the revenue officials and to reduce the interaction between public and revenue officials. Since its a new software, he said, certain teething problems have surfaced which are being fixed. The new software had to be introduced, bowing to pressure from the higher ups, he said and admitted that the software should have ideally been tested and implemented at least at least two months ahead. However, about 75 per cent of the glitches have been fixed. On the positive side, about 3,800 applicants have paid the tax online and the BBMP has earned Rs 1.7 crore in two days, he informed. On the ineptitude of Canara Bank officials, he said that if there was a need, more nationalized banks like Axis, HDFC and IDBI will be roped in. Citizens will get the receipt on the spot if the payment of tax is made through cash and demand draft. However, they have to wait for a day or two if the payment is made through cheque, until it is realized, he said. Defending the revision of property tax, he said that the tax has not been revised since 2008 for various reasons. As per the KMC Act, the BBMP is bound to revise the tax for every block period of three years. The BBMP is calculating the tax based on the 2014 guidance value and not as per 2016. Major issues like tax calculator, zone issues and other PID issues have been fixed. DAKAR (Reuters) - Amnesty International called on Chad on Friday to release four political activists ahead of elections in which President Idriss Deby, a key ally of the West in the fight against Islamist militants, is tipped to extend his 26-year rule. Civil rights activists Mahamat Nour Ahmed Ibedou, Younous Mahadjir, Nadjo Kaina Palmer and Celine Namadji were arrested two weeks ago and charged with seeking to disturb the peace by calling for anti-government demonstrations. "The response of the security forces and the severe charge against the activists are likely to set alight an already tense situation" before the polls on Sunday, Amnesty's Central Africa researcher Ilaria Allegrozzi said in a statement. The activists' trial opened in the capital N'Djamena on Thursday amid tensions. At least two people were injured when clashes erupted between police and protesters who tried to block the path of the vehicle which was driving the activists back to jail, according to Amnesty. Chad has one of the region's most capable militaries and has played a central role in Western-backed efforts to take on Islamist militants, including al Qaeda affiliates and Nigeria's Islamic State-linked Boko Haram. N'Djamena also hosts the headquarters of a French military operation aimed at stamping out militants across the loosely policed, arid Sahel band. (Writing by Marine Pennetier; Editing by Joe Bavier/Jeremy Gaunt) There are timestoo many times, in truthwhen understanding and protecting the natural world demands that we band together to stop the killing: The macho practice of shooting wolves in the American West comes to mind as an example. So does the relentless slaughter of elephants and rhinos in Africa. But at other times, protecting the natural world requires us to kill, and this is the painful reality some animal rights activists refuse to understand. Its not a failure to communicate. Animal rights groups are often brilliant at communicating. Its a failure to reason in the face of scientific evidence, and it comes up almost endlessly for people who do the real work of protecting the natural world. The latest case happened in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The city wanted to cull a booming deer population that is destroying the forest understory, damaging local landscaping, and causing car accidents (88 last year, double what it was just five years ago). Then both the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the local chapter of the Humane Societytwo separate entitiesshowed up to cry, Cruelty! But, hang on, why should the rest of us care about Ann Arbor, a university town of 113,000 people 45 minutes west of Detroit? It matters, says Christopher Dick, a plant ecologist at the University of Michigan, because HSUS is pitting its huge resources and cherry-picked science against every small town in the eastern U.S. that is having deer overabundance issues and considering lethal options. RELATED: Everyone Loves Wild Animals in Their BackyardUntil They Dont Activists put on a reasonable face when they come into town to meet with local officials, typically proposing an experimental project with nonlethal methods, meaning sterilization or contraceptives. Among other things, that experiment requires catching and tranquilizing a large percent of the deer either for surgery or a contraceptive implant, and it has never succeeded anywhere else. But local politicians rarely know better. Then when it comes time to implement, HSUS imposes a condition that there can be no killing of deer for an extended period. Its all part of the strategy, said Dick: Start the experiment (destined to fail), stall the shooting, and meanwhile help to generate a political storm so that local governance will not want anything to do with deer management. Story continues And it matters, in fact, well beyond the eastern United States; because animal rights groups everywhere play on our emotions to protect a few favored species at the expense of entire ecosystems. HSUS, for instance, claims to be dedicated to creating a humane and sustainable world for all animals. But what this generally means is protecting warm, furry mammalsfor instance, outdoor cats. Upwards of 20 million of them now roam the American landscape, and they kill billions of birds. But rather than culling the cats to protect the birds and other innocent victims, HSUS supports the failed policy of trap-neuter-release. This effectively creates vast, permanent populations of community cats to do their killing, though mostly out of our sight. Likewise, 58,000 wild horses are now browsing the American West down to nubble, destroying ecosystems on which other species (and the horses themselves) depend for survival. But rather than culling the horses, HSUS advocates compassion and concern. That attitude does nothing to stop a developing ecological apocalypse, as the horses pound grasslands and the underlying soil to dust. Nor does it allow any sensible alternative to the current practice of housing 45,000 formerly wild horses in retirement facilities, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $77 million a year. But back to Ann Arbor, now home to somewhere between 500 and 1,500 deer. As the deer have multiplied, they have had a devastating effect on habitat. Almost nothing, even junipers, are spared during late winter when there has been snow cover and the deer are starving, said Larry D. Nooden, a retired biology professor from the University of Michigan. The beautiful spring flora gets devastatedand the orchids are the first to be hit even when there is plenty of deer food." The deer also like to browse down oak saplings, and they die out, changing the structure of the forest. Barberry shrubs often move in to replace them. Does it matter? Barberry, an invasive species, tends to grow in dense stands that are habitat mostly for deer mice and deer ticks, a recipe for Lyme disease. And heres the thing about oaks: They provide homes to caterpillars from 534 species of butterflies and moths. The butterflies and moths in turn are essential food for birds. So when you encourage overpopulation by deer, you end up driving out dozens of other species. The good news from Ann Arbor is that city officials saw through the HSUS smokescreen of nonsense and lawsuits. They went forward with their cull, taking out 63 deer earlier this year. The venison went to food shelters. It remains to be seen whether ecological commonsense will endure through another round of emotional assaults before next winters cull. Here is the bottom line, for when HSUS shows up in your own community. Because those two words Humane Society start the name, a lot of people donate to HSUS under the assumption that their gift supports local animal shelters. Thats how HSUS was able to collect donations of $135 million in 2014, and it's the reason even some University of Michigan faculty thought it was almost sacrilegious to criticize the group. In fact, HSUS has no direct connection to local animal shelters, and only a tiny fraction of its budget goes in direct grants to animal shelters. Its main function, according to its tax statement, is advocacy and public policythat is, lobbying. The people at HSUS are no doubt decent and well meaning, and compassion for animals is a good thing. But they parse out that compassion on extremely narrow lines and largely in ignorance of how the natural world works. That means your gift to HSUSand many other animal rights groupssupports a vision of a cute, cuddly America, when the desperate need is to stop the decline of a wild America that is already rapidly vanishing around us. Take the Pledge: Sign On to Stop Wildlife Crime Related stories on TakePart: Dont Put a Price Tag on Nature 8 Stunning Wildlife Photos That Capture Natures Patterns 5 Epic Animal Migrations Under Threat From Human Roadblocks Original article from TakePart Anne Hathaway has given birth to a baby boy, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. The actress and her producer-husband Adam Shulman welcomed their first child, son Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman, on March 24 in Los Angeles. E! News first reported the announcement. Hathaway, 32, debuted her growing baby bump in January while wearing a bikini in an Instagram photo. "Happy 2016 to my beautiful Instafriends! So, posting a bikini pic is a little out of character for me, but just now while I was at the beach I noticed I was being photographed," the Intern star captioned the photo, in which she confirmed her pregnancy. "I figure if this kind of photo is going to be out in the world it should at least be an image that makes me happy (and be one that was taken with my consent. And with a filter :) Wishing you all love, light and blessings for the year ahead!" she added. Hathaway and Shulman tied the knot in Big Sur, Calif., in 2012. A photo posted by Anne Hathaway (@annehathaway) on Jan 3, 2016 at 9:31pm PST Read More: Anne Hathaway's Baby Bump Makes Red-Carpet Debut in Marc Jacobs Patna: In an attempt to completely banish liquor, 14,108 litres of domestic liquor and 2,386 litres of foreign brands were seized from across Bihar in a raid on Thursday. Forty-four people were arrested in 655 raids under provisions of new Bihar Excise (Amendment) Act, 2016, Om Prakash Mandal, Assistant Commissioner Excise said. The operation against liquor yielded encouraging results here. A statement issued by Senior Superintendent of Police, Patna, Manu Maharaj said that 24 persons had been arrested in clampdown against alcohol in the district. Meanwhile, reports were pouring about habitual alcoholics brought to de-addiction centres in different districts in the wake of total prohibition. Although the iPhone SE is on track to be yet another massive hit for Apple, it's not what every potential buyer was looking for out of a new 4-inch device. The iPhone SE turned out to be little more than an iPhone 5s with upgraded internal components, lacking any distinct design alterations. It's hard to be overly enthusiastic about a new phone that looks like an old phone, but that's exactly why Computer Bild's iPhone 6 SE is such a fascinating project. DON'T MISS: The FBI cant hack the iPhone 6s Having noted the lukewarm critical response to the design of the iPhone SE, some Chinese manufacturers decided to build and sell iPhone SE casings stylized to look like miniaturized iPhone 6s casings. iPhone 6 SE Comparison The prospect of taking apart and rebuilding an iPhone might sound terrifying, but Computer Bild wanted to give the new iPhone a modern look, no matter the cost. So they proceeded to tear apart an iPhone SE, take out of the parts and put the phone back together in the knock-off iPhone 6s casing. Although the resulting Frankenphone does look like a mini-iPhone 6s at a glance, Computer Bild admits that the work required to make the iPhone 6 SE a reality and the risk of permanently destroying your phone (while voiding the warranty) make this project only for those who aren't concerned with the potential consequences. Related stories Apple Watch 2 with 20-40% thinner casing may be introduced in June New bill might force Apple to hack encrypted iPhones Why did Apple launch the iPhone SE with embarrassingly low supply? More from BGR: Elon Musk says Tesla will fix what critics call the Model 3s biggest design fail This article was originally published on BGR.com By Maximiliano Rizzi and Sarah Marsh BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine President Mauricio Macri said on Thursday he had nothing to hide regarding his links with an offshore company revealed by the "Panama Papers," after a federal prosecutor called for an investigation. Macri is among scores of politicians and business figures internationally named in documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies. The son of an Italian-born business tycoon, Macri has said he was not legally obliged to declare his connection with the offshore company named in the "Panama Papers" as he never had a stake in it. The president said he was simply director of the Bahamas-based company, Fleg Trading Ltd., now closed, which was created by his father to make investments in Brazil. Critics say he owes a more thorough explanation of this and his alleged connection with another offshore company, Kagemusha SA, registered in Panama, given that such firms are often used to launder money and evade taxes. "I have acted in accordance with the law and have nothing to hide," Macri said in a televised news conference. He said he would on Friday ask a court to certify his declaration of assets in order to clear up any doubts. Macri also said he would put all his assets in a blind trust while president, a measure designed to prevent conflict of interest and generate transparency in the administration of his business interests. State prosecutor Federico Delgado asked the judiciary earlier on Thursday to investigate if Macri's failure to declare his connection with the offshore company meant he had "maliciously failed to complete his tax declaration", a crime which carries a sentence of 15 days to two years. The case was assigned to Judge Sebastian Casanello, who must now decide if there is sufficient evidence to open a probe. Macri's appearance in the Panama Papers and the way his administration has handled the matter has cast some doubts over his 2015 campaign pledge to fight corruption. The head of the Argentine anti-corruption office, Laura Alonso, a member of Macri's party, swiftly defended Macri after the leak emerged, saying that creating a company in a tax haven was not a crime. Opposition lawmakers called for her resignation on grounds her job was to root out corruption, not defend the president. (Additional reporting by Nicolas Misculin; Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Andrew Hay) The 17-year-old charged in the on-campus slaying of a University of Texas student was seen on a security camera video trailing the victim with a shiny rigid object in his hands, according to a police arrest affidavit. The body of freshman dance major Haruka Weiser, 18, was found on Tuesday in a creek near the schools football stadium. Haruka Weiser (via Facebook) Meechaiel Khalil Criner, 17, was charged with murder Friday afternoon. He is in the Travis County Jail with bond set at $1,000,000. According to the affidavit, Criner had Weisers blue duffel bag and laptop when he was arrested Thursday evening at a shelter for homeless youths. Detectives also found an article of evidence that matched the same texture, age and appearance of an article seized on or near the victims body, police wrote in the affidavit. No other details are included about that evidence. Austin police Chief Art Acevedo said its difficult to comprehend what would drive a person to do what Criner allegedly did to Weiser. When you think about what connects us as human beings, to murder a young woman, is just not part of my DNA and thankfully is not part of most peoples DNA, the chief said. The court document, which was made public Friday afternoon, is the authorities first account of the events that transpired the night Weiser was killed while walking from dance practice back to her dormitory. Weiser was last known to be alive when she called her roommate about 9:30 p.m. Sunday to say she was on the way, the affidavit states. Surveillance video gathered during the murder investigation shows a black male matching Criners description trying to get into a locked van near the College of Liberal Arts building about 9:20 p.m. The man left on a small bicycle, but returned to the area 18 minutes later. Police say thats when Weiser, a ballerina attending UT on a dance scholarship, walked past Criner while looking down at her cellphone. Meechaiel Criner's mugshot, released Friday by the Austin Police Department. Police said Criner "[put] the kickstand down on the bike, reaches into the back of his pants with his left hand and pulled out what appeared to be a shiny rigid object. Criner then followed the 18-year-old ballerina across a bridge and onto a trail that runs along a creek where Weisers remains were discovered on Tuesday, police said. Story continues According to the affidavit, the suspect does not appear on video again until two hours later, when he is seen walking the same bicycle near the football stadium. This time, police said, Criner was carrying a small duffle bag he didnt have earlier and walking with a limp. From the footage, it appeared as if the suspect suffered from some type of injury to his left leg, the affadivit states. SLIDESHOW University of Texas homicide in Austin >>> Police got a break in the case late Thursday after they requested the publics help in identifying the man in the video. Austin firefighters quickly contacted police to say they had encountered someone similar to the suspect while responding to a fire at an abandoned building Monday morning. According to the affidavit, Criner was found inside the building setting items on fire. Police were called to the scene because Criner told firefighters that he was 17 and homeless. Julie Moody, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family Protective Services, told Yahoo News that Criner was a foster child and had been reported as a runaway before Monday. Officers took Criner to the youth shelter, where he stayed until detectives connected him to Weisers death. Jail records show Criner was booked into the Travis County Jail at 2:05 a.m. on Friday. According to public records, Criner was living in Texarkana, Texas, 375 miles northeast of Austin, last summer. Records dont indicate prior arrests for Criner, and Acevedo said detectives are still trying to piece together the suspects past. Meechaiel Criner, the suspect arrested in Haruka Weiser's killing, was featured in his high school newspaper in December 2014. (Screenshot) Criner was featured in the December 2014 edition of his high school newspaper, the Tiger Times. According to the story, titled Voice of hope, Criner was bullied as a child because of his thick, African-like accent. In elementary school, I would come home crying almost every day, he said in the story. It was because of my accent, you see. People couldnt understand me. A photo of Criner accompanies the article, located on page 12. In the story, Criner said he had been able to keep a positive outlook on life despite being rejected by his alcoholic birth mother and being abused in foster care. Every day, I feel people think Im not capable of much, Criner said. What I want to leave behind is my name I want them to know who Meechaiel Criner is. Weisers death is the universitys first on-campus homicide investigation since sniper Charles Whitman gunned down 14 people nearly 50 years ago from the UT Tower. UT police chief David Carter said the school will review campus security measures, but encouraged students and faculty to be conscious of their surroundings. Not necessarily walking at night alone or walking while texting or being distracted in an environment that youre not familiar with or comfortable with, Carter said. The point is we really believe we have a safe campus and a community, but it requires the community to step up and do its part as well. University president Gregory L. Fenves disclosed the development in the case in an email sent to the campus early Friday. I ask that we all continue to support Harukas parents, family and classmates as they grieve their beloved daughter and friend, Fenves wrote. Our mourning is ongoing. Even as we hear new announcements and reports, we must honor Harukas life. Details about how Weiser was murdered a crime the university president described as horrifying and incomprehensible have not been made public. The affidavit only states that the medical examiner noted obvious trauma to Weiser's body and ruled the death a homicide. The schools 50,000 students, one of the largest universities in the country, have been on heightened alert since the 18-year-olds body was discovered in the campus creek Tuesday morning. UT students have established an online fund to help Weisers family with expenses. In a statement released by the university, Weisers family expressed relief that an arrest had been made and thanked the officers who worked on the case. We remain steadfast in our desire to honor Harukas memory through kindness and love, not violence, the family said. To the police officers, the UT community and all who have been impacted by this, we just ask that you hug your children, hug your parents TWICE, one from you and one from us." (This story has been updated since it was originally published.) Jason Sickles is a national reporter for Yahoo News. Follow him on Twitter (@jasonsickles). SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia, a staunch ally of the United States and its battle against Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria, said on Friday it would strip dual nationals convicted of terror-related crimes of citizenship. French President Francois Hollande last month abandoned plans to strip French nationality from people convicted of terrorism, climbing down from a tough stance he took days after the November attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Dual nationals who were either involved in terror activities, members of a banned organization or convicted of terrorism offences could lose their Australian citizenship, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton told reporters in Melbourne. "There is a very significant penalty to pay if people are involved in terrorist activities and they're a dual national," said Dutton. Australia has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals. While nearly 200 people were suspected of being a domestic threat, Dutton said approximately 100 people had left Australia for Syria to fight alongside organizations such as Islamic State. In addition, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was working on 400 "high priority investigations" related to potential security threats, Dutton said. (Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Nick Macfie) Police and CRPF deployed at National Institute of Technology (NIT) following tension between local and non-local students in Srinagar. (Photo: PTI) Srinagar: Fresh protests rocked the National Institute of Technology (NIT) on Friday as the outstation students took out a march in the campus to press for their demands which includes shifting the institute out of Kashmir. A group of students tried to march towards the main gate but were stopped by the security force personnel on duty inside the campus, officials said. They said the students wanted to interact with the media personnel camping outside the main gate of the institute at Hazratbal. The students shouted slogans in favour of their demands but later went back inside the campus, the officials said. The NIT authorities yesterday allowed the students to skip the minor examinations scheduled to start from April 11, saying they would be given an opportunity to write these exams later. "Those (students) who choose to leave (for home) will be provided another opportunity to appear in the minor in lieu of the minor, which is scheduled from 11th to 14th of April," an order issued by the office of the Registrar said. The students are demanding that the NIT campus be shifted out of Kashmir, action be taken against police officials involved in lathicharge of the students last Tuesday and action against officials of the NIT who according to them are involved in anti-national activities. The state government has ordered a time-bound inquiry into the incidents of violence on April 1 and April 5, triggered by clashes between local and outstation students over India's loss to the West Indies in the World T20 Cup semifinals last week. "We have instituted an enquiry to go into the incidents at the NIT," Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh said yesterday. He said Additional District Magistrate Srinagar will conduct the inquiry and submit his report within 15 days. Police have also registered two separate FIRs regarding the incidents of student violence that took place on NIT Srinagar campus last Friday and Tuesday. The first FIR was registered against unknown persons for the clashes between outstation and local students on April 1, a day after India lost to West Indies in the semi-final of the World T20 Cup. The police has invoked sections 148 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 427 (mischief), 336 (endangering life of others) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) for the clashes between local and outstation students that took place last Friday. In the second FIR registered on April 5, the police, besides slapping the charges of the previous FIR, has added sections 353 (assault on public servant) and 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant). While no one has been named in the two FIRs yet, the official said police is investigating the video evidence of violence that took place on the days of incidents. Meanwhile, anxious parents are not able to contact their wards despite assurances from the newly-formed Jammu and Kashmir Government and the Centre. Kuldeep Rajan, the father of one of the NIT students, said that the children are stuck in the campus for the last ten days, adding that they are not feeling safe. "The FIRs lodged against the students are absolutely wrong. They are committing atrocities on our children. Neither the state government is doing anything nor the Centre. Our children are stuck there from the last ten days. There are no proper facilities of food and water," he said. "They are really scared. We want that their demands should be accepted. They have even cut down the internet connections. We are not even able to contact our children," he added. Parminder Kaur, the mother of one of the other students, said that she is so worried about the safety of her child that she is having sleepless nights. "We are very worried about the safety of our children. We just want the administration to ensure their safety. We want their demands should be met," she said. It is reported that around five companies of the central paramilitary forces numbering 600 soldiers are guarding about 1,500 students. Non-local students inside the campus are boycotting the classes in protest against the police and administration. BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian federal prosecutors confirmed on Friday they have arrested Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini along with four other people, including a man they believe may have helped the Brussels bombers. Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian, has been on Europe's most wanted list since being seen on a motorway service station CCTV video driving with another Paris attacks suspect, Salah Abdeslam, towards Paris from Belgium. The car they drove was used two days later in the Nov. 13 attacks, in which Abdeslam's elder brother was a suicide bomber. The prosecutors said they were looking into whether Abrini was also the person, dubbed the "man in the hat", seen at Brussels Airport with two suspected suicide bombers on March 22, the day of the Brussels attacks. (Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek, Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; editing by Philip Blenkinsop) Former President Bill Clinton traded barbs with Black Lives Matter protesters who repeatedly interrupted him during a campaign event for his wife, Hillary Clinton, in Philadelphia Thursday. I like protesters, but the ones who wont let you answer are afraid of the truth, Clinton said, before attempting to defend some of the more controversial policies of his own presidency, such as the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act, that have prompted activist criticism against Hillary Clintons White House bid. Despite having since denounced the legislation which, more than 20 years after its passage, is widely considered responsible for the problem of mass incarceration in the U.S. Hillary Clintons previous support for the bill has continued to haunt her presidential campaign, as has the comment she made referring to juvenile offenders as super predators during her husbands 1996 primary campaign for reelection. After an activist confronted Hillary Clinton about the 20-year-old remark at a fundraiser ahead of South Carolinas democratic primary, the candidate apologized, saying that she shouldnt have used those words, and insisting that she wouldnt use them today. Her husband, however, took a different approach when faced with the same criticism in Philadelphia on Thursday. I dont know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children, Bill Clinton told protesters, defending his wifes controversial super predators comment. Maybe you thought they were good citizens; she didnt. You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter, he added. Bill Clinton has also repudiated the 1994 crime bill, lamenting the results of some of the harsher provisions without which, he has argued, the otherwise good legislation would never have passed. President Bill Clinton signs the $30 billion crime bill at the White House on Sept. 13, 1994. (Photo: Denis Paquin/AP) Story continues Clinton doubled down on this stance during his speech in Philadelphia Thursday, insisting through interruptions that he had talked to a lot of African-American groups; they thought black lives mattered, and even with the addition of harsher sentencing provisions, they said take this bill because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. Pointing to a protester in the crowd, Clinton charged, She dont want to hear any of that. You know what else she dont want to hear? Because of that bill, we had a 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in the murder rate, and listen to this because of that and the background-check law, we had a 46-year low in the deaths of people by gun violence. Apparently unfazed by the disruptive crowd, Clinton actually managed to use the protesters slogan to continue making a case for Hillary. Ill tell you another story about a place where black lives matter: Africa, Clinton said, transitioning back into his regular stump speech with a story about the former secretary of states work in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A bizarre new state of matter has been discovered one in which electrons that usually are indivisible seem to break apart. The new state of matter, which had been predicted but never spotted in real life before, forms when the electrons in an exotic material enter into a type of "quantum dance," in which the spins of the electrons interact in a particular way, said Arnab Banerjee, a physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The findings could pave the way for better quantum computers, Banerjee said. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature] The dance of spins While most people encounter only the three ordinary states of matter in daily life solid, liquid and gas under special conditions, more exotic states of matter can emerge. For instance, about 40 years ago, physicists proposed the existence of a matter state called a quantum spin liquid, in which electrons interact to create bizarre effects. Electrons have an intrinsic property called spin, meaning they act like tiny bar magnets that orient in one direction or another. If all of these tiny magnets align in one direction, a material is referred to as ferromagnetic. A material with alternating spins is anti-ferromagnetic, and a material with disordered spins that do not interact are paramagnetic. As most materials cool down, these teensy bar magnets tend to align. But in a quantum spin liquid, the tiny bar magnets "talk" to each other, so they influence which way the others are spinning but still remain in disarray no matter how cold the material gets, Banerjee said. A quantum spin liquid could seem like a solid, meaning it could be a literal hunk of matter that could be held in the hand. However, if you were to zoom in and look just at the material's electrons in the outer rings of the atoms, the electrons in the material would have the disorderly interactions characteristic of a liquid, Banerjee said. "They still interact with one another; they form waves and form ripples. But they are not held together," Banerjee told Live Science. Story continues For instance, about a decade ago, physicist Alexei Kitaev predicted that a special form of quantum spin liquid could make it seem as though the electrons were breaking up into Majorana fermions, long-predicted particles that can act as their own antiparticle. If this new matter state existed, it would have some truly bizarre effects, because whereas protons and neutrons are made up of smaller particles called quarks, electrons are thought to be fundamental particles, with spin and charge that are indivisible. [7 Strange Facts About Quarks] Though the electrons in this case would not actually break into tiny parts, their spin interactions would make it look as if they had fragmented, which is why the Majorana fermions in this state of matter are called "quasiparticles," Banerjee said. Special material Banerjee and his colleagues set out to prove that Kitaev's predictions occurred in the real world. So they looked at a powder made of a flaky material called alpha ruthenium chloride. The atoms of alpha ruthenium chloride are aligned in two-dimensional sheets in a honeycomb pattern. The team used ruthenium because the element has just one electron in its outer shell, meaning the material is more prone to the type of quantum fluctuation that produces the necessary interactions between electrons, Banerjee said. Then, the team bombarded the material with neutrons, which excited the spins of its electrons, creating a kind of "splash" on the quantum level. Next, they observed the pattern of the neutrons bouncing off the material. Based on the pattern of scattered neutrons, the team deduced that the material had indeed caused the electrons to form pairs of Majorana fermions. In the material, "a group of electrons go into a dance," Banerjee said. "It's this team of electrons that gives this perception that, 'Ah! Now, you have a separation of the electron into smaller particles.'" These bizarre ripples look very different from what would be expected in an ordinary quantum spin liquid. What's more, the ripples had the characteristic signature of Majorana fermion formation, and exist even when exposed to small temperature changes. "To see them really in a material, in a hunk of material you can hold in [your] hand, is very special," Banerjee said. Quantum computing material The new material, which the scientists dubbed a Kitaev quantum spin liquid, could eventually pave the way for more robust quantum computing, Banerjee said. In quantum computing, instead of encoding information in the classical bits of "0" and "1," atoms or particles of a material exist in a superposition of all possible states between 0 and 1, meaning each quantum bit, or qubit, can process many bits simultaneously, and the quantum entanglement of the information allows calculations to be performed instantaneously, Banerjee said. But the materials traditionally used to produce qubits are finicky and pricey, requiring laborious "babysitting" to make sure there is absolutely no motion or thermal fluctuation, and no imperfections in the materials, Banerjee said. By contrast, if researchers could create qubits made from a Kitaev spin liquid, these qubits would be robust at higher temperatures and would occur independent of imperfections in the material properties, he said. The findings were published April 4 in the journal Nature Materials. Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Brasilia (AFP) - Brazil's chief prosecutor dealt a fresh blow to President Dilma Rousseff and predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, saying his cabinet appointment was an attempt to avoid arrest and disrupt investigations. The latest twist in a roiling political saga comes as Rousseff faces impeachment proceedings in Congress over accusations of manipulating the government's books to mask budget shortfalls during her 2014 re-election campaign. Lula's controversial appointment, which has been temporarily blocked by a Supreme Court judge, would give the former president ministerial immunity from trial in criminal court on separate charges related to a massive corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras. But Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot, in a report filed with the court, recommended it annul the appointment. The full court must now rule whether Lula -- a left-wing icon and founder of the ruling Workers' Party -- can take up the job. "There is sufficient evidence to state that there was a deviation of purpose in the presidential decree" naming Lula as chief of staff, Janot said in the report, which will come as a blow to both Rousseff and ally Lula. Lula is accused of accepting a luxury condo and a country home as bribes from construction companies caught up in the multi-billion-dollar graft scandal that has upended Brazilian politics. Janot said Lula's nomination was aimed at "disrupting the progress of the criminal investigations in the Car Wash case," the name of the Petrobras probe. It came hours after Rousseff called for a "grand pact" to unify the country. "Brazil has already overcome difficult moments by making pacts," she said in the capital Brasilia, promising to back "absolutely necessary political reforms" provided she were allowed to stay in power. "That is the pact I'm looking for." Although the embattled president did not give any detail about what she was proposing, her comments appeared more conciliatory than in recent days, when she has repeatedly accused the opposition of mounting a coup attempt. Story continues But Everaldo Moraes, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia, said Rousseff was grasping at straws. "Rousseff feels her situation is worse every day. Impeachment is taking shape and it's natural that she tries to raise the tone, but I think the moment of pacts as a way to seek support has passed," he said. - Scandals mounting up - The rapporteur for a parliamentary commission on Wednesday found that Rousseff's impeachment case -- based on allegations that she illegally masked budgetary shortfalls in 2014 -- should go ahead. That initial finding will be followed by a vote in the full commission on Monday. A week later, on April 18, the lower house of Congress will vote. A two-thirds majority there would send Rousseff to face an impeachment trial in the Senate, where another two-thirds vote would force her to step down. Rousseff, who says her accounting tricks were common practice in previous governments and not an impeachable offense, is battling to assemble a coalition able to defeat the impeachment vote. While the battle rages in Congress, another probe is under way at the country's electoral court into allegations that Rousseff's campaign was funded with money stolen in the Petrobras embezzlement scheme. If the court finds Rousseff guilty on this, then her 2014 reelection victory would be annulled, meaning both she and her vice president, Michel Temer, would have to step down, followed by new elections. Prosecutors say that for years under the Lula presidency a group of powerful companies and politicians conspired in a pay-to-play scheme where bribes were given to win inflated contracts. Bribes went to executives at Petrobras and other state companies, influential politicians and also allegedly to political campaigns, including those of Rousseff and her narrowly defeated rival in 2014 Aecio Neves. On Thursday, that scandal bubbled up again with the leaking of testimony from a former CEO who said his company had funneled bribe money into Rousseff's reelection coffers. BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's top prosecutor recommended on Thursday that the Supreme Court block the appointment of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as cabinet minister because it was intended to disrupt a corruption investigation. Lula's protegee and successor, President Dilma Rousseff, last month named him to be her cabinet chief, ostensibly to help her raise dwindling support among her coalition allies to fight off the threat of impeachment in Congress. The appointment would have given Lula some immunity from prosecution by crusading anti-corruption lower court Judge Sergio Moro because ministers and elected officials can only be tried by the Supreme Court in Brazil. A recording made public by Moro of a telephone conversation between Lula and Rousseff discussing the appointment appeared to confirm that they were seeking to shield the Workers' Party leader from prosecution and possible arrest in a graft probe. In his recommendation to the Supreme Court, Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot said the cabinet appointment was intended to remove the investigation from the lower court judge and "disrupt" the corruption probe known as "Operation Car Wash." Lula is under investigation for allegedly benefiting, in the form of payments and a luxury seaside penthouse, from a massive graft scheme uncovered at state-run oil company Petrobras. The widening investigation has caused a political storm that threatens to topple Rousseff, who is facing impeachment over an unrelated accusation of doctoring government budget accounts. A Supreme Court judge suspended Lula's appointment on March 18, arguing that it was an illegal move to shield him. The full court must rule on April 20 whether to uphold the injunction issued by Justice Gilmar Mendes. It must also decide whether to return the Lula investigation to the lower court. Lula, Brazil's first working class president from 2003 to 2010, is still the country's most influential politician, but the delay in his appointment limited his ability to help Rousseff weather the political crisis. (Reporting by Eduardo Simoes; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Sandra Maler) British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Britain had the "obligation and right" to safeguard Hong Kong's autonomy Friday as he visited the city where fears are growing that Beijing's grip is tightening. It was the first visit by a British foreign secretary for five years and comes in the wake of a high-profile case in which a group of Hong Kong booksellers went missing, only to surface in China. One of the booksellers was British citizen Lee Bo, whose case caused the greatest outcry as he was the only one to disappear from Hong Kong, prompting accusations Chinese law enforcement agents were operating in the semi-autonomous city, illegal under its constitution. "We believe that he was removed under duress to the mainland... now our principal concern is that he is returned to Hong Kong free of any duress and able to carry on his life here without any constraints or impositions on him," Hammond told reporters at the city's British consulate on Friday. He said there was "multiple source" evidence that he had been involuntarily removed, but refused to give further details. Lee has recently briefly visited Hong Kong insisting he is a free man, but has since returned to the mainland to "assist" investigations. Hammond said he would raise the issue with China's foreign minister Wang Yi in a Saturday meeting in Beijing, adding the case had had a negative impact on Hong Kong. "There are people in the business community who are unnerved by this incident and we need everybody to make very clear this is not going to happen again," said Hammond, who met with city leader Leung Chun-ying Friday afternoon. Britain has termed Lee's case a "serious breach" of the joint agreement made before Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, a deal which guaranteed its freedoms for 50 years. Hammond said Britain had an "obligation and a right to monitor the delivery of the commitments that were made" under the agreement. Story continues But when asked what action Britain would take if breaches were repeated, Hammond responded that he hoped Lee's case was "an isolated incident". Hammond said he wanted the One Country Two Systems to continue "way into the future" and dismissed growing calls for independence or a referendum, particularly among young activists. "We don't believe that any aspiration to independence is a realistic plan," he said. - Political reform - The five booksellers worked for a Hong Kong publishing house famous for salacious titles about high-ranking Chinese politicians. They went missing at the end of last year. Four are under criminal investigation in the mainland -- while Lee has said he is helping authorities. Britain had already earned the ire of China when it first said in February it believed Lee was "involuntarily removed", with Beijing accusing the UK of interfering in its domestic affairs. The other four men disappeared from Thailand and mainland China. As well as restating its commitment to the joint declaration in his meeting with Leung, the foreign ministry said Hammond would also underline the importance of restarting the political reform process. That process has stalled since mass pro-democracy protests in 2014 failed to win concessions from the Hong Kong authorities and Beijing. The rallies were calling for fully free leadership elections, after the government introduced a reform package that activists derided as fake democracy because it allowed Beijing to vet candidates. The package was eventually voted down in the legislature and the reform debate is now on ice. Hammond's visit is the first stop on an east Asia tour, ahead of the G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Japan starting on April 10. He will also meet members of Scotland's Rugby Sevens team as the Hong Kong Sevens tournament kicks off on Friday, as well as Hong Kong and British businesses "to discuss new ways of connecting the UK, Hong Kong and China markets", the foreign ministry said. J&K Deputy CM Nirmal Singh said that that troops of CRPF and senior officers from Jammu and Kashmir Police were deployed inside the campus and were constantly monitoring the situation. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: With the National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Srinagar becoming a focal point of controversy and furore following the lathicharge on students by the police, Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh on Friday assured that the students at the varsity are safe and will be unharmed, while asserting that those responsible for attacking the students will not be spared. Speaking to ANI, he said that the controversy surrounding the issue of 'Kashmiri versus non-Kashmiri students' was redundant as there was no such issue prevalent. "NIT is an institution and the BJP believes that there should not be any political interference there, that's why the HRD is dealing with their academic and other issues including their safety. A magisterial enquiry is underway into the lathicharge on students and report will come in 15 days, following which all those police officials responsible will be punished," Singh said. Assuring complete security, he added that troops of CRPF and senior officers from the Jammu and Kashmir Police were deployed inside the campus and were constantly monitoring the situation. "As a Deputy Chief Minister, I assure the complete safety of the students and I am taking a personal interest in the matter. I had gone to Srinagar yesterday and I will be going there today as well to take stick of the situation," he added. The BJP leader also said that the students must not be worried as the institution belongs to them and also appealed to other parties to not politicize the issue as the state was a sensitive area and that the issue must be contained solely to that of national interest. Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani had earlier said that her ministry officials are in the varsity campus to ensure that all of their issues are looked into while asserting that safety of students was her prime concern. A fact-finding team of the HRD Ministry arrived at the institute's campus on Wednesday for an on the spot assessment of the situation. The two-member team comprising a Director level and a Deputy Secretary level officer also spoke to the students to get their version of the events. Tension simmered at the NIT campus last week after India lost the World T20 semi-final to the West Indies. Some engineering students from outside the state claimed Kashmiri students had chanted anti-India slogans and burst firecrackers after India's defeat. By Aaron Ross KINSHASA (Reuters) - The Democratic Republic of Congo's foreign minister said on Friday the U.N. Security Council's call for the country to hold a presidential election this year would "sow the seeds of future violence". A council resolution last week urged the government to take the necessary steps to hold the election in November, as required by the constitution. If successful, it would mark the country's first peaceful transition of power. The Congolese government has suggested that logistical and budgetary constraints could force it to postpone the poll. Opposition leaders say President Joseph Kabila, who is required by the constitution to step down after the election following more than 15 years in office, is deliberately delaying the vote to cling to power. But Foreign Minister Raymond Tshibanda told reporters in the capital Kinshasa on Friday the insistence on meeting the constitutional timeline could lead to election-related violence. "Continuing to call for that six or seven months before (the deadline) when you know objectively that it is becoming difficult to do it in this time period - I think that borders on irresponsibility," said Tshibanda. "There is no better way to sow the seeds of violence than to proceed in this way," he added. "Do they want to contribute to pointlessly raising tensions in (Congo) so that things explode tomorrow, or do they want to create the conditions for acceptable elections?" Kabila won disputed elections in 2006 and 2011 that were both marred by violence. The government says that voter rolls must be updated before the next vote to avoid disputes and ensure millions of eligible voters are not disenfranchised. The electoral commission estimates that revising the registry will take 13 to 16 months but the opposition and some foreign countries, including the United States, say it can be done in as few as six. Dozens died in violent protests in January 2015 against a revision of the electoral code that critics said was a pretext to delay elections. Kabila has refused to comment publicly on whether he intends to run again and instead called for a national dialogue. On Wednesday, the African Union formally named former Togolese prime minister Edem Kodjo to facilitate the dialogue. Most major opposition parties refuse to participate, calling it a ploy to extend Kabila's rule. (Reporting by Aaron Ross; editing by Andrew Roche) (In this April 7 story, corrects the last paragraph to add per year.) By Julie Gordon and Elizabeth Dilts VANCOUVER/NEW YORK (Reuters) - An internal report prepared for Canada's anti-money laundering watchdog last year found that lawyers are the second most likely profession after entrepreneurs to face money laundering charges. Details of the 2015 research paper, released in draft form to Reuters under Access to Information laws, come as the leak of millions of documents from a Panamanian law firm has caused public outrage about the role lawyers play in helping clients hide their wealth. The paper was produced for the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) to consider in refining its anti-money laundering regime. The regulator said it uses this type of research to strengthen compliance and inform legislators of vulnerabilities. Lawyers in Canada, unlike financial institutions and other professionals, are exempt from the obligation to report suspicious transactions, allowing them to use trust accounts to move around money for clients without notifying regulators. The exemption, won after a Supreme Court of Canada ruling, irks law enforcement and regulators, who say that while many lawyers abide by ethical standards, the lack of transparency makes it easy for others to hide illicit funds. "In Canada, we are somewhat unique in that lawyers do not have to monitor or report suspicious transactions," said Christine Duhaime, a lawyer and money laundering expert. "That makes Canada more susceptible to being used for all types of financial crime." The FINTRAC paper, which looked at 40 money laundering cases in Canada from 2000 to 2014, found court documents showing "lawyers convicted of money laundering were willing to exploit reporting exemptions in order to launder funds." A companion intelligence report prepared by FINTRAC took a more damning tone, noting that in certain cases the lawyers "took advantage of their position" to knowingly circumvent regulations and aid in money laundering. The paper said lawyers charged with money laundering represented 15 percent of all cases they studied and 25 percent of all professional money laundering service providers. The average sentence in all convictions was 4.6 years, though the brief did not break it down by profession. Lawyers in Canada cannot accept cash transactions of more than C$7,500, though larger amounts can be wired, and must report suspicious activity by other lawyers to their law societies. The Law Society of British Columbia said it has taken steps to prevent money laundering, noting they "rarely, if ever, get information from lawyers about possible money laundering" and that cash rule breaches have numbered fewer than ten per year since 2009. (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) CBS is looking for its own Making a Murderer/American Crime Story. A day after NBC greenlighted a Law & Order true-crime scripted anthology and two days after FX's American Crime Story ended its run, CBS is in final negotiations for an untitled unscripted anthology focusing on a different case each season, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The first season will focus on the JonBenet Ramsey murder case and could premiere as soon as this fall - timed to the 20th anniversary of the death of the 6-year-old beauty pageant regular. Read More: Menendez Brothers Set as Focus of NBC's Dick Wolf 'Law & Order' Anthology Series Emmy winner Tom Forman (48 Hours, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition) and Critical Content are onboard to produce the series. While the subject will change every season, Forman and Critical Content will remain as producers. A title and episode count have not yet been determined, though sources say it will be a limited run similar to Netflix's 10-episode phenomenon Making a Murderer. CBS and Forman's camp declined comment. The untitled project will reunite the original investigators in the Ramsey case as well as new experts who all re-examine the unsolved case from 20 years ago. Ramsey was found slain in her Boulder, Colo., home in 1996. Police found her body in the basement of the family's home eight hours after she had been reported missing. The 6-year-old was found struck on the head and strangled. Colorado officials initially suspected JonBenet's parents and her older brother of being involved in her death; the family was partially exonerated in 2003 when DNA taken from the victim's clothing suggested they were not involved. Her parents were completely cleared in July 2008. A year later, the Boulder Police Department took the case back from the D.A. and reopened the investigation. After several grand jury hearings, JonBenet's slaying remains unsolved. The CBS unscripted series comes as true-crime fare has become the hottest trend on the small screen following the breakout success of HBO's The Jinx, Netflix's Murderer and podcast Serial. On Wednesday, NBC joined the fray when it announced it was teaming with prolific producer Dick Wolf for Law & Order: True Crime, with the first season of the anthology set to focus on the Menedez brothers, who were found guilty of murdering their parents in 1996. Story continues Read More: 'American Crime Story': 10 Things to Know About Season 2 FX has found critical and ratings success with Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's American Crime Story, with the recently wrapped first season focusing on the O.J. Simpson trial. Season two, which has not yet officially been greenlighted, will focus on Hurricane Katrina. The true-crime phenomenon can also be seen on the pilot side after the genre was one of the hottest trends this past development season. Among the projects are ABC's The Jury, a short-order series starring The Good Wife Emmy winner Archie Panjabi that will focus on a different jury and different case each season. Serial, meanwhile, is also being adapted for TV, though a network has yet to be announced. Forman is repped by WME. By Niu Shuping and David Stanway BEIJING (Reuters) - Around 400 Chinese citizens have signed a letter to protest the purchase of Swiss-based seeds and pesticides company Syngenta by state-owned ChemChina, saying the deal would eventually lead to genetically modified crops being sown across swathes of the country. Critics of genetically modified organisms argue the technology poses risks to public health and the environment, while advocates say such fears have not been scientifically proven and that high-yielding genetically altered crops would help ensure food security as the world's population grows. Although relatively few people signed the letter, it marks a rare example of open opposition to state-supported corporate strategy in a nation where the government often clamps down hard on any criticism. It also underscores fears among some of the public that the government is gearing up to gradually loosen laws that prevent the cultivation of any GM varieties of staple food crops, with Beijing already permitting the import of some GMO crops for use in animal feed. The $43 billion all-cash deal unveiled in February is the largest foreign acquisition ever by a Chinese firm as China is looking to secure food supplies for its population. Syngenta has a portfolio of top tier chemicals and patent-protected seeds, many of which are genetically modified. "The acquisition of Syngenta and the promotion of its genetically-modified and agro-chemical agriculture in the country would destroy the country's own agriculture and food security," the protesters said in the letter, seen by Reuters. They argue GMO strains would contaminate Chinese staple crops. "ChemChina must immediately stop the suicidal acquisition from causing a disaster to the Chinese nation." Syngenta did not respond to requests for comment. A ChemChina spokesman said he had heard about the letter and that the company was waiting to learn more about it. Story continues Yang Xiaolu, one of the protesters on the list, said the letter was handed over late last month to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), which overseas companies owned by the central government. A SASAC spokeswoman said her office had not yet seen the letter, but was looking into the matter. Yang, a long-time anti-GMO activist, is also among the three plaintiffs who were taking China's Ministry of Agriculture to court in April last year in a bid to make public a toxicology report supporting the approval of Monsanto's popular weed killer. Reuters was unable to verify other names listed on the anti-GMO letter. China's commerce ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said in February that the ministry supported the acquisition which would help secure global food supply. The protest comes amid worries that Beijing is losing control over the supervision of GMO technology. Last month, agriculture minister Han Changfu admitted that GMO corn was illegally grown in some parts of the country, but found "no large areas of illegal planting" after Greenpeace said a majority of samples taken from corn fields in 5 counties in Liaoning province, tested positive for GMO contamination. (Reporting by Niu Shuping and David Stanway; Editing by Joseph Radford) The varsity had in November last extended an invite to Modi, which triggered a controversy. (Representative photo: PTI) New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia has issued as how-cause notice to a professor, barely a week before his retirement, for making "derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi" in a letter sent to the Vice Chancellor last December. Mohammad Sultan Bhatt was against inviting Modi for the annual convocation and had written to the VC communicating the decision of the Jamia Teachers' Association in this regard in December last year. However, he received the notice three months after writing the letter and eight days before retirement. He superannuated on March 31. The notice from Registrar Shahid Ashraf accused Bhatt of "convening a meeting of extended executive council of Jamia Teachers' Association and making denigrating remarks against the Prime Minister." "You are required to explain why disciplinary action should not be initiated against you for indulging in misconduct which caused serious damage to interest, reputation and secular image of the university," the notice read. For his part, Bhatt said "I don't know what made the university to be wide awake on the issue three months later. It has been deliberately done prior to my retirement". Jamia spokesperson Mukesh Ranjan said "we have received his response and the matter is closed". The professor, however, maintained he has no information about the closure. The varsity had in November last extended an invite to Modi, which triggered a controversy as a number of alumni demanded withdrawal of the invitation in view of the comments made by Modi against the varsity in 2008. While the university had rejected the demand to withdraw the invite, the Prime Minister had expressed his inability to preside over the event due to time constraint. BEIJING (Reuters) - Companies from China's violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang signed deals worth about $2 billion with Pakistan this week during a visit to Pakistan by Xinjiang's top official, who sought to cement ties with an important security partner. Pakistan last year agreed energy and infrastructure projects worth $46 billion with China to set up a so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in a boost to Pakistan's crumbling infrastructure and energy sector. In return, China will get a free trade zone in Pakistan's Gwadar port and access to the Arabian Sea. New Pakistani roads will open up routes for Chinese goods into Europe and the Middle East from landlocked Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan. During a four-day visit to Pakistan, Xinjiang's Communist Party chief Zhang Chunxian met Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, visited Islamabad, Karachi and Gwadar, the official Xinjiang Daily said on Friday. "China and Pakistan have a deep friendship, are good neighbors, friends, brothers and partners," the newspaper cited Zhang as saying. "On this trip, I have deeply felt this friendship and the atmosphere surrounding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor." The $2 billion in agreements covered infrastructure, solar power and logistics, among other projects, signed by companies from Xinjiang with their Pakistan counterparts, the newspaper said, without giving details. China and Pakistan call each other "all-weather friends" and their ties have been underpinned by long-standing wariness of their common neighbor, India, and a desire to hedge against U.S. influence in the region. But China has also long urged Pakistan to weed out what it says are militants from Xinjiang, who are holed up in lawless ethnic Pashtun lands on the Pakistan-Afghan border, home to a mix of groups, including the Taliban and al Qaeda. While meeting Sharif, the two countries agreed to continue working together to fight terrorism, strengthen border controls, maintain regional peace and stability and ensure the economic corridor projects are protected, the newspaper said. Zhang also met Pakistan's military on the trip, it added, without elaborating. Hundreds of people have been killed in unrest in Xinjiang in the last few years. Exiles and rights groups say Chinese controls on the religion and culture of the Muslim Uighur people who call Xinjiang home is largely behind the violence, rather than any well-organized militant groups. China denies any rights abuses in Xinjiang and says its people are free to practice Islam. Zhang visited a mosque in Islamabad, where he "got a deep understanding of Pakistan's religious affairs management", the Xinjiang Daily added. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel) By Georgia Chambers LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Tens of thousands of Burundians are in need of humanitarian aid to help them cope with the consequences of civil unrest, flooding brought on by El Nino and a collapsing economy, an international aid agency said on Friday. The tiny central African country has been gripped by a political crisis since President Pierre Nkurunziza's bid for a third term in April last year, a move the opposition said violates the constitution. The unrest has forced some 250,000 Burundians to flee to Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo as well as neighboring Tanzania and Rwanda. Close to 80,000 people are displaced within Burundi, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Those who have remained in the country have had to endure a very strong El Nino, a warming of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific, which can result in wetter than average weather conditions. "The combination of these various emergencies has, understandably, made it difficult for families to cope, with the cumulative effect being that even small-scale hazards now have the potential to be disastrous," said Andreas Sandin, an IFRC operations coordinator, in a statement. "The humanitarian situation in Burundi is at a critical stage, and we need to step up our response to meet the needs of affected families." IFRC said torrential rains and flooding in 15 out of 18 provinces in Burundi have destroyed more than 5,000 homes and thousands of hectares of cultivated fields, which has increased the number of people in dire need of food. There has also been a spike in reported cases of malaria and cholera, IFRC said as it appealed for 1.5 million Swiss francs ($1.6 million) to help provide shelter, healthcare and household supplies to at least 100,000 people over the next six months. IFRC said Burundi's economy was slowly collapsing after several donors reduced their support to the Bujumbura government as a result of the unrest. It also warned there was a high chance the region would experience La Nina conditions later in the year. While a La Nina can be less damaging than El Nino, severe La Ninas are also linked to floods, droughts and hurricanes. IFRC, which had to scale back activities in southern Africa earlier this year due to a lack of funding, said early indications from donors suggested there would be some support for its emergency appeal. "Securing funding for any of our operations involves strong engagement with our partners, all of whom have limited budgets of their own," Katherine Mueller, the communications manager for IFRC Africa, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We have started discussions with our partners and early indications are that funding will follow," Mueller said. "We will then adjust our response based on the amount of funding received. To not try is not an option." (Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories) Sony Pictures has been trying to get its movie about the famous Egyptian queen off the ground since 2010, with the help of producer Scott Rudin. The recent arrival of a new screenwriter could now help get things moving again. Moviegoers aren't likely to see Angelina Jolie in the role of Cleopatra anytime soon, it seems. For the last six years, Sony Pictures and Scott Rudin -- the heavyweight Hollywood producer behind movies such as "Steve Jobs" and "The Social Network" -- have been trying to assemble all the right ingredients for success, with a famous actress for the lead role, a renowned director and a solid screenplay. As for the cast, Angelina Jolie has been linked to the project since its beginnings. The actress still seems to be tipped for the lead role, in spite of the heated emails between the producer and the studio revealed when Sony was hacked in late 2014. Called a "spoiled brat" by Scott Rudin in one of the leaked messages, the star delayed filming the Cleopatra movie twice -- once to direct her own feature film, "Unbroken," and a second time over problems with the script. In fact, the script is one of the movie's major stumbling blocks. After first being assigned to Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump"), screenwriting was then switched to Brian Helgeland ("Mystic River"). Their work -- based on the Stacy Schiff biography, "Cleopatra: A Life" -- didn't prove entirely satisfactory to the production crew or the actress. David Scarpa has now been drafted in to rework the script, after having penned the "Daredevil" big-screen reboot. But there's still one major unknown about this movie, as, for the time being, it has no director. Several big Hollywood names have been floated over the last six years. At first, the film seemed destined for James Cameron, but the director turned it down to focus on a follow-up for "Avatar." Paul Greengrass, David Fincher and Ang Lee have also been linked to the project, as well as Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Swedish director Tomas Alfredson ("Let The Right One In," "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"), as suggested in leaked emails between Scott Rudin, Angelina Jolie and Sony. New York (AFP) - Hillary Clinton has the biggest chance in US history of shattering the ultimate glass ceiling and becoming the first female commander-in-chief. But could men spoil it for her? On paper, few White House candidates have been more qualified: a two-time senator, a two-term first lady and a former secretary of state who was on the job when America killed most wanted man Osama bin Laden. All but guaranteed the Democratic nomination, she is nonetheless losing more white male voters to her leftist challenger Bernie Sanders than she did to Barack Obama in 2008. "I mean nobody's perfect but I don't trust her, she's too slick. I'd rather have her husband," said George Ruzzier, 81, a former independent and Democrat at a Donald Trump rally, who said he was voting Republican this year. He's not alone. Sixty-eight percent of white men have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. Clinton's vulnerabilities were on display as she lost seven out of the last eight primary elections and caucuses to Sanders, who cornered the male Democrat vote 64 to 35 percent in Wisconsin, according to CNN exit polls. Male voters gripe about Clinton's ability to revive the economy. They complain she is opportunistic, not honest and does not care about them as she champions minority rights and gun control. Other opposition has been attributed to latent sexism, white liberal disappointment in Obama and Sanders's economic populism. - Challenge - But strategists say it presents a serious, if not fatal weakness for Clinton going forward into a November election against any of the remaining Republican candidates -- even Trump, who polls poorly amongst women. "This is a challenge for her," says Jeanne Zaino, professor of political science at Iona College in New York. "She hasn't been able to appeal the way Bernie Sanders has to that constituency. "If you look back eight years, she was winning white male voters and then-candidate Obama was struggling. She's gone full circle." Story continues In a primary season that could elect the first female presidential nominee, Trump has made attitudes towards women a pivotal part of the campaign, suggesting that women who have abortions should be punished and using derogatory terms to insult women he doesn't like. Male commentators have called out Clinton for shouting and not smiling -- to the outrage of feminists and her supporters. While Clinton would beat Trump 46 to 40 percent according to a Quinnipiac poll, she would lose the white male vote 51-34 percent to the billionaire while Sanders would beat Trump overall and come neck-and-neck on the male vote. Ardent Clinton supporter Robert Lomangino, 23, from Long Island believes "100 percent" that she suffers in public perception for being a woman. "She gets a much rougher go at it," he told AFP after a Clinton rally in Harlem, New York. "Bernie Sanders can go up on stage and shout as loud as he wants and point his finger and look almost mean and taunting, and Hillary Clinton can never do that. If she even raises her voice, she gets criticized for being shrill, and it's a little unfair." To some, America's ongoing quest for its first female leader is strange in a country that arguably offers no better home to the pioneering woman. - Policy problem - Pakistan, for example, has one of the most abysmal records on women's rights anywhere in the world and yet it elected Benazir Bhutto head of government for the first time nearly 30 years ago. In contrast, Americans made up more than half Forbes's 100 most powerful women list in 2015, including seven of the top 10. Pop starlet Taylor Swift, 26, was the youngest and Americans led 12 of the 18 categories as diverse as finance, technology, media and manufacturing. Zaino says Clinton's disconnect with white men is primarily policy-oriented rather than sexism, given that she is still the leading candidate. Sanders has been stronger on issues of free trade and campaign finance reform, which resonate well with men, Zaino told AFP. "She is going to have to try very, very hard to capture that energy and that support of Sanders's voters," she said. Clinton supporter Sam Ackerberg, a 27-year-old law student originally from Minneapolis and now living in New York, says men should be the ones to adjust. "We all have mothers, sisters, friends, aunts, and women's issues should matter to us," he said. Bogota (AFP) - Colombia took a major step towards legalizing same-sex marriage when the constitutional court dismissed a petition that wanted to deny equal rights for heterosexual and homosexual couples. In a six to three vote hailed by the gay community, the court dismissed the petition, paving the way for the mostly Catholic country to join Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil in Latin America in blazing a trail for gay marriage. "The way is open for marriage between people of the same sex," said a source at the court, the highest in Colombia, after months of discussion. "It's almost a fact that equal marriage will be approved, but it is not accurate to say that it is valid from today." That will come when a court judge puts Thursday's decision in writing -- which appears merely a formality. A previous constitutional court ruling recognized same-sex couples as families and ordered Congress to pass a law that would afford gay couples the same rights as heterosexual married couples. But when a 2013 deadline for lawmakers passed, gay couples could by default formalize their unions before notaries and judges, although it was a gray area and the court's language was vague. Activists in the gay community gathered outside the court in Bogota's historic center to celebrate the announcement, waving flags. In July 2010, Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage, followed by Uruguay. Brazil has de facto authorized same-sex marriage since May 2013. By Sharon Bernstein (Reuters) - A Colorado lawmaker is trying to outlaw marijuana-laced gummy candies that resemble children's treats, the latest effort by a U.S. state to address the complexities and unintended consequences of pot legalization. In 2014 Colorado became the first state to allow the sale of marijuana for recreational use, and it has grown to be a billion dollar industry in the state. The measure by State Representative Dan Pabon, a Democrat from Denver, would prohibit edible marijuana to be sold in the form of an animal, human or fruit, common shapes for gummy candies favored by young children. "Right now in Colorado, there are no distinguishing characteristics between the gummy bear that contains marijuana and one that does not," Palon said. The appeal of edible marijuana products to children has become a concern in the few U.S. states that have legalized pot in recent years. In Washington state, where legal pot has been on sale for about 18 months, regulators recently tightened the rules on edible products made with cannabis, said Rick Garza, director of the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis board. The new restrictions outlawed brightly colored marijuana lollipops and other sweets deemed to be particularly attractive to children, Gar said. Numerous children in Colorado were hospitalized after becoming critically ill as a result of ingesting edible marijuana products after pot became legal there in 2014, and lawmakers have already moved once to toughen the rules. But Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper has urged the legislature to do more, saying in his State of the State address in January that pot-laced edibles look too much like "products kids can find in the candy aisle." "Back in the day, candy cigarettes desensitized kids to the dangers of tobacco - and today, pot-infused gummy bears send the wrong message to our kids about marijuana," Hickenlooper said. Pabon's bill, submitted on Thursday, directs the state's marijuana regulatory agency to develop more detailed guidelines on how enforcing the ban on marijuana candies shaped like humans, animals or fruit would work. Voters in four U.S. states and the District of Columbia approved ballot measures to legalize marijuana for recreational use by adults in recent years. Numerous others allow medicinal use. Advocates have pushed for similar referendums in a half-dozen other states, including California, Massachusetts and Maine. In Maine, a proposed legalization referendum advanced on Friday when a judge overruled a state official's decision invalidating some of the signatures needed to get the initiative on the ballot. (Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California; Additional reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Editing by Sara Catania and Dan Grebler) Mumbai: Welcoming the Shani Shingapur Temple Trust's decision of allowing women devotees into the sanctum sanctorum of the shrine, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said discrimination on the basis of caste and gender should be eliminated from the minds of people keeping with the modern times. "If we have to progress in this 21st century then it is important that we remove this concept of discrimination of caste and gender from the minds of the people completely, Fadnavis said here. The Temple Trust, on the auspicious occasion of Gudi Padwa --the traditional New Year in many parts of Indiaallowed female devotees entry inside the sanctum sanctorum of the shrine in Ahmednagar. This happened after around 250 men from Shingnapur village entered the temple's sanctum sanctorum and offered prayers to the deity (Lord Shani) on the occasion of 'Gudi Padwa', even as temple officials tried to prevent them. It has been a tradition for male devotees to climb up the sacred platform (chauthara) of the temple and offer water after performing a 'pooja' on Gudi Padwa every year. Fadnavis said the government had filed an affidavit in the High Court making its stand clear that it does not discriminate between men and women for worshipping any deity and we believe in equal rights to both the genders and the court has also acknowledged our stand. The Bombay High Court had on April 1 held that it is the women's fundamental right to go into places of worship and the government is duty-bound to protect it. "Even after the directives, there occurred certain incidents which should not have happened. I strongly feel that there should not be use of police force when it comes to taking darshan," he said. Fadnavis further said discrimination was never part of the Indian culture or Sanatan Dharma but was introduced later. "Though law will do away with such discrimination but mentality of the society needs to be changed if we really have to progress," he added. The debate over the issue escalated after a woman last year tried to enter and offer prayers at the Shani Shingnapur temple, in 'breach' of the age-old practise of prohibiting entry of women. After the agitation for women's entry gained momentum over the last few months, the temple authorities had barred men also from entering the sanctum sanctorum. Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - With the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff raising as many questions as it answers, some are urging new elections in Brazil to wipe the slate entirely clean. Rousseff on Thursday called for a "grand pact" to reunify the country and spark "absolutely necessary political reforms." She gave no details of what she was proposing. But elsewhere, there are already calls for a radical measure: new elections in October for president, vice president, all 27 state governors and both houses of Congress. The idea is a popular one among frustrated Brazilians as they discuss the crisis shaking Latin America's biggest country, which has become rudderless just as Brazil sinks deeper into its worst recession for a generation. It has also been floated by high-profile politicians, including Senate Speaker Renan Calheiros, from the centrist PMDB, and by Marina Silva, who made a surprisingly strong challenge against Rousseff in the 2014 elections. A constitutional amendment would be required to call snap elections but Calheiros says he could form a committee to explore the question and has aired the possibility of calling a referendum. "Any scenario must be taken into consideration that could provide an exit" from the crisis, he said Wednesday. "Listening to society would not be a bad idea." Other ideas being aired are changing the presidential system to one that is closer to a parliamentary one, or calling new presidential elections. - Tangled tale - Brazil's political and corruption imbroglio has become so complicated that it's not only unclear whether Rousseff will remain president, but whether the automatic successor, her vice-president-turned-enemy Michel Temer, would last long himself. She is being impeached on allegations of illegally cooking the government's books to mask the depth of budget shortfalls. But an impeachment request has now also been filed against Temer for the same reasons, even if it is not expected to go anywhere in the near term. Story continues In addition, both Rousseff and Temer face possible ouster in a separate case at the Brazilian electoral court where they are accused of winning re-election in 2014 partly with the help of money originating in a massive embezzlement scheme at state oil company Petrobras. Against that background, the idea of snap elections doesn't necessarily amount to a simple way out. "The situation is complex because there are three things happening at once," said Thomaz Pereira, a law professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. A constitutional amendment, he noted, requires a two-thirds majority in Congress -- just as impeachment does -- and the legislature shows little sign of such unity. Rousseff on Tuesday kept her cards close to her chest, saying "I won't accept it, and I won't reject it." But she laced her comment with sarcasm, taunting Congress members to first give up their own mandates "and then come to see me." - Not Rousseff or Temer - Rousseff, highly unpopular and unable to pass legislation in Congress, has also warned that changing the status quo in any form will not necessarily be the panacea the opposition claims. "They think that toppling a legitimately elected government will leave the country peaceful, calm, but that's not going to happen," she said. "When you break a contract of this size... which has given me 54 million votes, then you break all contracts, you break the democratic structure of the country." The lower house of Congress is due to vote on April 18. A two-thirds majority would send Rousseff for trial in the Senate, where another two-thirds vote would remove her from office. Even if a trial starts, she must step aside for a period of up to 180 days, during which she will already be replaced by Temer. The growing prospect of an unelected Temer presidency is hardly proving appetizing, even to those pushing hard for Rousseff to leave. Influential daily Folha de Sao Paulo echoed what many Brazilians are thinking when it ran an editorial Sunday, reading "Not Dilma or Temer." Keen to offer its subscribers more miniseries, the cable network is developing a drama about one of the most famous events of the Cold War era. The four-episode series will be based on letters exchanged during the Cuban Missile Crisis between JFK, Khrushchev and Castro. In October 1962, tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union reached their height after it was discovered that Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles based in Cuba were aimed at American shores. This well-known incident in American and world history is the subject of "The Armageddon Letters," a book by James Blight and Janet M. Lang that brings together letters exchanged at the time between three world leaders, John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro. Phil Alden Robinson ("The Sum of all Fears") has been signed up to write and direct the miniseries, with production by Albert S. Ruddy ("The Godfather," "Million Dollar Baby") and Mike Medavoy ("Black Swan," "Shutter Island"). The project is particularly well timed given the recent thaw in diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba. Showtime has, in fact, already made use of this recent rapprochement to film the fifth season of its "House of Lies" series in Havana. The episodes are set to air from April 10. By Jim Finkle BOSTON (Reuters) - Businesses have lost billions of dollars to fast-growing scams where fraudsters impersonate company executives in emails that order staff to transfer to accounts controlled by criminals, according to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Losses from these scams, which are known as "business email compromise," totaled more than $2.3 billion from October 2013 through February of this year, the FBI said in an alert issued this week, citing reports to law enforcement agencies around the globe. The cases involved some 17,642 businesses of all sizes scattered across at least 79 countries, according to the FBI alert posted on the website of the agency's Phoenix bureau. Law enforcement and cyber security experts have been warning that business email compromise was on the rise, but the extent of losses has not previously been disclosed. Cyber security experts say they expect losses to grow as the high profits will attract more criminals. "It's a low-risk, high-reward crime. It's going to continue to get worse before it gets better," said Tom Brown, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan. The FBI's alert said that fraudsters go to great lengths to spoof company email accounts and use other methods to trick employees into believing that they are receiving money-transfer requests from CEOs, corporate attorneys or trusted vendors. "They research employees who manage money and use language specific to the company they are targeting, then they request a wire fraud transfer using dollar amounts that lend legitimacy," the alert said. It said they often target businesses that work with foreign suppliers or regularly perform wire transfers. The size of the losses vary widely from case to case. Austrian aircraft parts FACC said in January that it lost about 50 million euros ($55 million) through such a scam. In Arizona, the average loss ranges from $25,000 to $75,000, according to the FBI. The FBI said in its alert, which was dated Monday, that it has seen a 270 percent increase in identified victims and exposed loss since January 2015. Brown, who now runs the cyber investigations unit with Berkeley Research Group, said that the potential consequences of the breach of an email account are sometimes not immediately apparent to victims. "This shows that even the hack of an email account can cause significant financial loss," Brown said. (Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Robert Birsel) ATHENS (Reuters) - Cyprus-based RCB Bank denied on Friday that a reported decision by Deutsche Bank to disengage from the Cypriot lender was connected to the Panama Papers affair. Bloomberg news agency reported earlier Friday that Deutsche Bank had decided to end ties with RCB and that disengagement would be expedited after last weekend's massive data leak from a Panama-based law firm prompted allegations that the Cyprus-based bank helped a person close to Vladimir Putin to amass fortunes. RCB has denied any wrongdoing and said the individual, named in Britain's Guardian newspaper as musician Sergei Roldugin, had never been a client either directly or as a beneficiary in any company maintaining an account with the bank. "RCB Bank categorically denies any connection between the Panama Papers affair and the choice of Deutsche Bank to disengage from its clearing business in some regions," RCB said in an emailed statement to Reuters. "We were informed about Deutsche Banks decision well before the Panama Papers affairs. More specifically, we were informed about this decision, which we understand forms part of Deutsches change in strategy, on March 21, 2016." RCB's cooperation with Deutsche Bank is still in force during a transition period, the bank said. Under new chief executive John Cryan, Deutsche Bank is embarking on a painful restructuring to cut costs and reduce its risk exposure, a strategy that includes cutting off relationships with non-core customers and reducing the number of services it offers. The Guardian newspaper on Sunday alleged that RCB and other banks had extended "enormous unsecured loans" to entities linked to close Putin acquaintances. RCB said the allegations were false. "The Bank never granted or grants unsecured loans," RCB said. Russian state-controlled VTB Bank holds 46.29 percent of RCB's share capital, according to the RCB website. (Reporting By Michele Kambas; Editing by David Goodman) A version of this story first appeared in the April 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. David Mamet is best known as a provocative, Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist and director, but it was his best friend, the late Shel Silverstein, who turned him on to cartooning. The Glengarry Glen Ross writer has released two books of his drawings. He's currently working on a new book - an illustrated field guide to "unfortunate animals." The Hollywood Reporter recently chatted with Mamet about cartooning, politics and life in "the People's Republic of Santa Monica." So, most people know you as a playwright, essayist and film director. But you're an avid cartoonist as well. I've actually done a vast amount of cartooning in my life, though I can't draw worth beans. My best friend in the world was Shel Silverstein. He got me started cartooning a long time ago. I did several cartoon books. One was called The Trials of Roderick Spode, "The Human Ant" and [another was] Tested on Orphans. I'm doing a couple of other cartoon books. What's the inspiration behind your THR contribution? I've been working on a book with the comedian Jonathan Katz. He's been my friend for 50 years. So we're working on a book together where he did the text, and I did the drawings. It's a book of "unfortunate animals." Things like the Good Dane and the Anti-Social Butterfly [and] the Yak of All Trades, Master of None. One is a Bottled-Water Spaniel. I came up with this extra cartoon, and it doesn't quite fit in that book; it's too specific to our racket. So I thought it should be seen. You're a fairly political guy. What do you make of the presidential election so far? What presidential election? Well, the campaigns on both sides. I did another cartoon. I sent it to The Wall Street Journal, and they said they like it, but they don't do cartoons. It's a picture of the outline of the United States. It's called "The China Shop." And under, it says, "Wanted: A Bull." Story continues Should I extrapolate from there what you think of them? As we used to say in England, "All of them are no better than they should be." Have you thrown your weight behind any single candidate? Do you plan to? I think I'll probably vote because I like to vote, being a citizen. I like Carly Fiorina, but apparently she's out of the race now. Are you a never-Trumper? My wife told me if I ever said anything ever again about politics, she's going to leave me, as much as I enjoy the subject. It's like watching a two-year-long car crash. You attended a fundraiser for Ted Cruz, didn't you? Did I? Yes, I did! I liked him very much. Read More: Ted Cruz Lifts Quote From Michael Douglas in 'American President' for Trump Comeback Line What did you guys talk about? He talked about Glengarry Glen Ross. I said, "Hi, Mr. Cruz, pleasure to meet you." He said, "Oh, I love your work. I've used a lot of the ideas in Glengarry Glen Ross in talking to people while I was governing. In talking about the Senate and politics and all of that stuff." You're kidding. No, not all all. Like which ideas? "Always Be Closing?" He mentioned that. He mentioned a lot of stuff from the play. The interesting thing to me about Ted Cruz is, everybody that one talks to, they say, "I don't like him," and you say, "Oh, well why?" And they can't tell you. I think we've found the secret blueprint to his campaign. The reason he's done so well. I spent a lot of time reading about politics and political theory. To me, it all comes down to the Constitution. It's so brilliant because the essence of the Constitution is: "Listen, they're a bunch of liars and thugs, and so are we." So, as a dramatist, it appeals to my thuggish side. What about Justice Antonin Scalia's death? Did that hit you hard? Did you side with a lot of his opinions? Are we doing an interview? Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. I can't do that. You're a nice Jewish boy, and so am I. We can sit down and have a couple beers and tell each other about our political opinions. Most are bullshit. Mark Twain once said, "I never lost a political argument ... and I never won one." You've been a good sport. I would take you up on it. Excellent. Superb. Well, if you ever get over to the Westside and the Socialist People's Republic of Santa Monica, make sure when you cross over into Brentwood you leave any kind of controversial opinions you might have at the door because they're going to be checking you. There's a little monument at Sixth Street that says "Entering Brentwood." I always thought they should add to the sign: "Entering Brentwood: Through these portals, past the stupidest f - ing Jews in the world." Well, if I were king, right? Yedyurappa said in his political career he has tasted many sweet and sour moments, but assuming charge as the party chief in the state is one the sweet moments. (Photo: PTI) Bengaluru: BJP on Friday appointed former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa as Karnataka unit president. By appointing Yeddyurappa, a prominent lingayat face, the party decided to bank on its old warhorse in Karnataka. He was earlier forced to resign as chief minister over graft allegations and quit the party to form his own outfit. Newly-appointed BJP Karnataka chief asserted that his main task would be to uproot the corrupt Congress regime from the state. The former state chief minister, who was till now discharging his duty as BJP Vice-President, became a frontrunner to assume the charge as the state party president, after the Supreme Court declined to intervene and lift a Karnataka High Court stay on his prosecution in a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The Lingayat leader will assume charge from Prahlad Joshi, whose term ended in October but was extended till today because of zilla panchayat elections. Joshi is a close aide of Union Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Ananth Kumar, considered Yeddyurappa's bete noire. Speaking to reporters in Delhi, Yedyurappa said his main task as state party president would be to uproot the "corrupt" Congress regime from Karnataka. "My task as the chief will be to throw out the corrupt Congress rule in Karnataka," he said after thanking National BJP President Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving him the responsibility. "I will discharge my duty as the state party president with honesty and sincerity. I thank Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and several other leaders to have bestowed faith in my leadership, and I would like to take all the leaders alongside in the state," he said. Yedyurappa said in his political career he has tasted many sweet and sour moments, but assuming charge as the party chief in the state is one the sweet moments. In January, the Karnataka High Court had quashed 15 FIRs filed against the senior BJP leader for alleged illegal denotification of lands based on a CAG report. The order came as yet another breather for Yeddyurappa, close on the heels of the High Court quashing former Governor H R Bhardwaj's sanction for prosecuting him when he was the chief minister and also the Lokayukta court striking down four FIRs against him for alleged illegal land denotification. By Sebastien Malo NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ever since Melina Laboucan-Massimo learned her sister was found dead after falling 31 stories from a Toronto building under suspicious circumstances, she has awakened every morning at 4:50 a.m., the time the death occurred. "It's something I can't stop," she said. "It's trauma. It just continues." The death of Bella Laboucan-McLean, which remains unsolved, has driven her sister to speak up for Canadians grieving and questioning the disproportionate number of aboriginal women murdered or missing. The spate of deaths and disappearances has received heightened attention since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau launched an inquiry, a measure opposed by his predecessor. It was the summer of 2013 when Laboucan's family, who are Lubicon Cree from Northern Alberta, sought answers from police. Investigators told them the 25-year-old's death must have involved drug abuse, a theory about the young college graduate the family rejected. "She was not a drug user," Laboucan-Massimo said. Drug use was only disproved, however, after the family insisted on full toxicology testing and had to wait some two years. For Laboucan-Massimo, the investigation captured persistent stereotypes about indigenous people. "Indigenous women's lives are undervalued in Canada," said Laboucan, who spoke this week at a panel entitled "Canada's Shame" at a Women in the World Summit held in New York. Canada's Minister of Indigenous Affairs Carolyn Bennett, also at the event, said the panel's title was fitting. "It's the truth," she said. Aboriginal people make up to 4 percent of Canada's population but accounted for 16 percent of female homicides between 1980 and 2012, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. An estimated 1,017 aboriginal women were murdered over that period. Advocates say the unsolved deaths and disappearances often involved marginalized women and reflect a lack of concern by Canadian authorities and leaders. Many deaths were wrongly classified as suicides or drug overdoses or blamed on natural causes, they say. Michele Pineault, whose 20-year-old daughter Stephanie Lane went missing in 1997, said she was shocked by the lack of interest by authorities in the case. Six years later, her daughter's partial skeletal remains were found on the property of a convicted serial killer named Robert Pickton, she said. Pickton had told police he had preyed upon prostitutes. Of the 33 women whose remains were found on Pickton's pig farm, a third were reported to be aboriginal women. Pickton killed for at least two decades before his arrest in 2002. "I do what I do to raise awareness," said Pineault, who regularly shares her story at public events. "If I can help save a life, then my daughter's death is not in vain," she said. (Reporting by Sebastien Malo, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org) Djibouti (AFP) - Djibouti's opposition lashed out at President Ismail Omar Guelleh on Saturday after he claimed a landslide victory in the strategic African nation's election, accusing him of stealing the ballot in an "electoral hold-up". Friday's vote, which activists complained was preceded by political repression and curbs on basic freedoms, saw Guelleh -- in power since 1999 -- winning 86.68 percent of ballots cast, according to the interior ministry. Facing a fractured opposition, Guelleh had been widely expected to extend his iron-fisted rule with a fourth term in the tiny Horn of Africa country that has attracted the US, France and China as a prime location for military bases. The closest opposition candidate won just over seven percent of the vote in a race where some 187,000 people -- around a fourth of the population -- were eligible to cast a ballot. Some opposition parties had called for a boycott, as they had done in previous votes, but turnout was reported to be 68 percent. "The people of Djibouti have again entrusted me with the state's highest office," the 68-year-old Guelleh said in a speech on national TV, vowing to get straight back to work. Mohamed Tourtour, one of the five candidates who ran against Guelleh, said the president's winning total was "far from reality". "It's an electoral hold-up. Mr Omar Guelleh has stolen this election -- it is not the expression of the people's will," Tourtour said. Guelleh's nearest rival, Omar Elmi Khaireh, said the official results were "a fantasy" but admitted that legal challenges had little chance of success. - Strategic importance - Several opposition candidates complained that their representatives had been turned away from a number of voting centres on polling day. "We demand that the government fix this and organise transparent, free, fair and just elections," independent candidate Jama Abderahaman Djama told AFP. Story continues With a population of 875,000 people, Djibouti is little more than a port with a country attached, but the former French colony has leveraged its position on one of the world's busiest shipping routes. It is home to Washington's only permanent base in Africa, which is used for operations in Yemen -- just across the Gulf of Aden -- as well as the fight against the Islamist Shebab in Somalia and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Guelleh won the previous election in 2011 with 80 percent of the vote, after parliament changed the constitution to clear the way for a third term. Following parliamentary elections in 2013 which Guelleh's UMP party won, sparking furious opposition claims of fraud, rival parties demanded the creation of an independent electoral commission -- which has never happened. Opposition groups complained of curbs on freedom of assembly ahead of the vote, while rights groups denounced political repression and crackdowns on basic freedoms. This week a BBC team was detained, interrogated and then expelled after interviewing an opposition leader. Djibouti has launched major infrastructure projects aimed at turning it into a regional hub for trade and services, using money largely borrowed from China, which is planning to build a military base there. Despite the investment and perky economic growth, four out of five people live in poverty. The Hague (AFP) - The Dutch government is in "uncharted waters" after voters rejected an EU deal with Ukraine in a non-binding poll, leaving its leaders to decide what to do next, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Friday. Lawmakers will meet next week after Dutch voters on Wednesday spurned a planned EU pact with Kiev for closer ties in referendum, a result quickly hailed by eurosceptics across the continent as well as in Russia. The Netherlands is now the only country in the 28-nation EU bloc still to ratify the accord, and Rutte has the unenviable task of finding a solution acceptable both to parliament, citizens and the Netherlands' EU partners. His coalition cabinet "will discuss the matter with parliament next Wednesday" a tight-lipped Rutte said at his usual post-cabinet press conference. "But it's a complex process. It's uncharted waters," he said, referring to the referendum triggered by a newly introduced law that allows citizens to retroactively voice opinions on legislative decisions. Asked why he thought that 32 percent of eligible Dutch voters -- enough to validate the referendum's results -- said "No" to the accord, the Liberal premier said "it's not up to me to make an interpretation." "What was exactly behind that, that's very difficult," said Rutte, who skilfully sidestepped reporters' questions. He said several issues were highlighted in public debates including that people may have been worried the agreement would lead to Ukranian integration into the EU or that Kiev may be allowed to join NATO. Although Rutte remained coy, Dutch media reports said he could now possibly argue in Brussels for a clause to be written into the accord, explicitly stating that Ukraine cannot join the EU. Another option could be to try and split the agreement into its trade and political components with the Dutch keeping the trade section and dumping the political side, the centre-left De Volkskrant suggested. Or Rutte could insist on scrapping a paragraph about closer military cooperation and demand a tougher stance on corruption in Ukraine, the paper said. "It's still going to take some time and that's all I can say about it," Rutte told reporters. PARIS (Reuters) - A group of some 100 EDF engineers and managers in its nuclear business said they were convinced the French utility could build the British Hinkley Point nuclear project on time. The engineers' letter - published on EDF's intranet and seen by Reuters - is a rare statement of support for EDF's 18 billion pound project to build two Areva-designed European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) in Hinkley Point, southwest Britain. EDF has said it plans to pour the first concrete for Hinkley Point in 2019. The project has an expected startup date of 2025. At the end of March, another group of EDF engineers wrote an anonymous letter, published by French investigative website Mediapart, which said Hinkley Point should be delayed and that the project put the survival of the company at risk. The 85 percent state-owned utility's unions have also argued that EDF should delay the project by a few years and EDF's former chief financial officer has resigned over worries that the firm will not be able to finance it. But the French government has said the project should go ahead and EDF Chief Executive Jean-Bernard Levy told parliament on Tuesday delaying it would be a mistake. "We are convinced that EDF is able to build and deliver the two Hinkley Point reactors on time," said the letter on EDF's intranet, which included the names of all the signatories. The engineers said the French-German team that designed the EPR 20 years ago had not made industrial efficiency a priority and added that not having built new reactors since the late 1990s, the French nuclear industry had lost some of its skills. This, they said, partly explains problems with the EPR that EDF is building in Flamanville, France, which is years behind schedule and billions over budget. One EPR under construction in Finland and two in China are also years behind schedule. "The situation today is different, as the Hinkley Point reactors will be the fifth and sixth ones built," they said, adding that EDF had learned a lot from the Flamanville troubles. They said that EDF cannot offer Britain the improved EPR New Model on which it is working, as it would be risky to build a new model outside France to a tight schedule. The group added that the Hinkley Point project is a key element in the relaunch of France's nuclear industry. "Like all projects of that magnitude, there are uncertainties, but it is our job to manage these. We are confident in our ability to succeed," the letter said. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq, editing by David Evans) SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - Authorities in El Salvador on Friday raided the local offices of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, seizing documents and equipment, the country's attorney general's office said. The Panama-based law firm is at the center of an international data leak scandal that has embarrassed several world leaders and shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of offshore companies. "A large quantity of computing equipment has been found in the office of Mossack Fonseca," the attorney general's office said on Twitter, adding that the company's staff had removed their sign from the entrance a day earlier. It cited an employee saying the company was moving. Attorney General Douglas Melendez personally oversaw the raid, his office said. Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak of more than 11.5 million documents, dubbed the "Panama Papers," from the law firm that span four decades. The papers have revealed financial arrangements of prominent figures, including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain and Pakistan and of China President Xi Jinping, and the president of Ukraine. Officials from Mossack Fonseca in Panama were not immediately available to comment. Founding partner Ramon Fonseca told Reuters in Panama this week that his firm, which specializes in setting up offshore companies, had broken no laws and that all its operations were legal. He also said his firm had never destroyed any documents or helped anyone evade taxes or launder money. (Reporting by Jose Cabezas, wWriting by David Alire Garcia; editing by Simon Gardner, G Crosse) Close to 100 men forced their way into the inner sanctum of the temple to worship Lord Shani. (Photo: ANI) Mumbai: Over 100 men stormed into the famous Shani Shingnapur temple in Maharashtras Ahmednagar on Friday, after the authorities barred their entry. The ban was put in place to strengthen the temple's stand against women offering prayers in the inner sanctum as activists have been accusing them of discrimination. Last week, the temple trust added the fresh caveat to the centuries old diktat that bars the entry of women and said that even men from now on will not be allowed inside in the shrine, which is dedicated to Lord Shani, who personifies the planet Saturn in Hindu belief. But several men defied the temples order and forced their way into the inner sanctum on the occasion of Gudi Padwa. #WATCH Male devotees break barricade and enter sanctum of Shani Shingnapur temple (Ahmednagar, Maharashtra)https://t.co/xzgk4xVAkm ANI (@ANI_news) April 8, 2016 Read: Women to be allowed in Shani temple, will follow HC order: Fadnavis Women devotees are not permitted on the platform as per tradition followed at the shrine, which has no walls or a roof. A five-foot-high black stone stands on a sacred platform (prohibited area) and is worshipped as Lord Shani. The debate over the issue of women entry into the sanctum sanctorum of temples in Maharashtra escalated last year after a woman tried to enter and offer prayers at the Shani Shingnapur temple in 'breach' of the age-old practice. Read: PIL seeks HC order to protect women at Maharashtras Shani temple This had prompted the temple committee to suspend seven security men and the villagers to perform purification rituals. Subsequently, the Bhumata Brigade led by Trupti Desai had on January 26 this year launched a high-voltage campaign to breach the ban at the Shani temple and vowed to carry on with its movement for gender justice. Only last week, women activists led by Desai stormed into the temples complex but were prevented from entering the inner sanctum by locals and temple authorities. The activists launched a scathing attack on Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, asking him why was Bombay High Courts order that women not be discriminated at places of worship being defied. Office workers in Singapores Central Business District. Photo: Reuters The process for Employment Pass (EP) applications required for foreign professionals to work in Singapore will be refined to strengthen the Singaporean core across industries, announced Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say in Parliament on Friday (8 April). On top of individual assessments - which look into qualifications, work experience and salary - the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) will also assess the companies which the applicants will be working for. The company-related assessment, which will be carried out by the Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment (TAFEP), will study three main aspects of each company, looking at: 1. Whether the company has a weak Singaporean core according to industrial norms; 2. Whether the company is strengthening its Singaporean core for the future; 3. Whether the company is relevant to Singapores economy, based on consultations with economic agencies. If a company fails to meet the three TAFEP expectations, it will be regarded as a triple weak company, and the applicant will not be granted an EP. Lim added that TAFEP has served notices to 100 firms with weak Singaporean cores. He also noted that the number of EPs granted in Singapore has fallen from 32,000 in 2011 to just 9,000 in 2015. Theres a perception among some Singaporeans that, Why am I a minority in my workplace, working here in Singapore? I think the answer is because of what I call, pockets of EP concentration. In some companies, in some segments of the industry this is highly undesirable. These pockets of EP concentration have led to the perception of liberal intake of EP (holders), which is not the case, said Lim. Strengthening the Singaporean core of businesses here is one of the themes of the labour policies that MOM will be implementing this year, with the other two being support for a manpower-lean industry and strengthening global competitiveness. Going sector by sector Story continues Lim said that the MOM will implement its sectoral manpower plan to identify skills needed to support transformations in the industry. The ministry will also extend is Professional Conversion Programme (PCP) to more sectors, including the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors, Lim said. A total of 600 PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) have applied for the PCP this year, an increase from the 370 applications received each year in the past, said the minister. Under the Place-and-Train Programme, which works with industrial players to match workers skills with the right job positions, it has helped to find jobs for 11,000 rank and file workers in the last year. BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders have rescheduled their regular mid-year summit so that they meet five days after Britain's referendum in June on whether to leave the bloc, the EU confirmed on Friday. The European Council will now meet on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 28 and 29, a spokesman for the summit chairman, Council President Donald Tusk, said in a statement. Since Prime Minister David Cameron fixed the referendum for Thursday, June 23, the first scheduled day of the mid-year European Council, officials had been looking at how to avoid the clash of dates and ensure leaders can respond to the result. An earlier plan to convene the two-day summit on June 27 was finally shifted by a further day due to a possible Spanish election on Sunday, June 26, diplomats said. If Britons, who opinion polls show are evenly split, do vote to leave the EU, negotiations on a separation from the bloc's second largest economy could drive the Union deeper into crisis and take up much of its agenda for years to come. (Reporting by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Mark Heinrich) By Benet Koleka TIRANA (Reuters) - The European Union will give financial aid to help Albania cope with any influx of migrants from Greece if they switched routes in an attempt to reach western Europe, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said on Friday. Macedonia and other states on the Western Balkans migration corridor between Greece and the west of the EU have sealed their borders, stranding around 43,000 refugees and other asylum seekers in Greece, some of them close to Albania. Avramopoulos said there were no signs so far that refugees were seeking alternative transit through Albania but the EU's Frontex border agency was monitoring matters on the ground and the Albanian government had drawn up a contingency plan. "Whatever comes as a request from the Albanian government, our reaction will be positive. If it happens, Albania will not be unprepared because we shall be here to help the Albanians address this issue," Avramopoulos told reporters in Tirana after talks with Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri. The EU will provide financial and political assistance in the event Albania faced a tide of migrants, said Avramopoulos, who visited the Idomeni camp of stranded migrants on Greece's border with Macedonia on Tuesday. In Brussels on Friday, EU leaders approved a deal with Turkey intended to halt a tide of mainly Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan migrants from that country into Europe in return for financial and political rewards for Ankara. Prime Minister Edi Rama told Avramopoulos that Albania stood ready to handle any arrival of migrants "within its possibilities and capacities as part of a joint European plan", a statement from his office said. Albania, a NATO member and a candidate for EU membership, is already getting help from Italy to reinforce security at its border with Greece to stop any Islamist militants from slipping in disguised as migrants and human smugglers from luring migrants to cross the Adriatic Sea to Italy in speedboats. Such sea journeys have often proved deadly. Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano is expected to finalize a cooperation agreement with Albania during a visit to Tirana next week. The deal would see Italy helping Albania record the biometric data of refugees entering the country and electronically sharing information on their identities and the route they had taken with Frontex and possibly Greece, an Albanian official said on Tuesday. Avramopoulos said EU member states were not well-prepared when the migrant influx began last year "to face such a very complex and difficult situation and we still do not know what will its implications in our larger neighborhood will be". Recalling the migration of Albanians to Italy and Avramopoulos's native Greece after communism crumbled in Albania in 1990, he pleaded for latter-day migrants be treated with "humanity and decency". (Reporting by Benet Koleka; Editing by Adrian Croft and Mark Heinrich) By Joshua Franklin and Stephanie Nebehay BERN/GENEVA (Reuters) - Banking watchdogs across Europe have begun checking whether lenders have ties to a massive document leak from Panama that showed how offshore companies are used to stash clients' wealth. Switzerland's financial watchdog FINMA said on Thursday that banks must clamp down on money laundering, as the Geneva prosecutor opened a criminal probe. Four decades of documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies and has offices in Zurich and Geneva, showed widespread use of those instruments by global banks and triggered investigations across the world. "Do I think we are where we should be in fighting misuse in the financial system? No," FINMA Chief Executive Mark Branson told Reuters following its annual news conference. "We think in some ways the risks in Switzerland have risen, not fallen, and that there is more that can be done. We don't want to see large scandals involving Swiss banks." Switzerland is the world's biggest international wealth management center with around $2.5 trillion in assets and has taken on more wealth of late from emerging markets, from which it is harder determine the origin of assets, Branson said. Britain's Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday it has written to 20 banks and other financial firms, giving them until April 15 to spell out any involvement they have with the "Panama Papers". HSBC, Britain's biggest bank and its affiliates created more than 2,300 shell companies with Mossack Fonseca, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. HSBC has dismissed suggestions it used offshore structures to help clients cheat on their taxes. Also on Thursday, France's ACPR financial regulator said it has told French banks to hand over extra information about their business ties with tax havens. German regulator BaFin is likewise probing the role of Germany's banks, a source told Reuters on Monday. Story continues Watchdogs in Sweden, Netherlands and Austria said earlier this week that they were looking into banks named in the papers. The chief executive of Austria's Hypo Landesbank Vorarlberg became one of the first top bankers to quit over reports based on the data leak on Thursday, though he denies his bank violated any laws or sanctions. SWISS BANKS The "Panama Papers" investigation has exposed financial arrangements of public figures including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain, Iceland and Pakistan, and the president of Ukraine. No U.S. banks are among the 10 banks named as the biggest creators of offshore companies for clients in the Panama Papers. But U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown on Thursday urged the Treasury Department to investigate whether any U.S. or U.S.-linked entity was involved with Mossack Fonseca. "As the primary agency charged with protecting the integrity of the U.S. financial system and enforcing our laws against money laundering and terrorist financing, we strongly urge the Treasury Department to conduct its own inquiry into Mossack Fonsecas activities and its clients, the senators, both Democrats, wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. The Treasury Department would not comment specifically on the findings in the documents but a spokeswoman said that "the U.S. government intently focuses on investigating possible illicit activity, including violations of U.S. tax laws or sanctions, using all sources of information, both public and non-public." "If there has been any violation of U.S. tax law or sanctions evasion, we will take appropriate action consistent with the national security and foreign policy of the United States," she said. The senators, both members of the Senate Banking Committee and both proponents of stronger financial regulation, said they were concerned "this firm may have facilitated money laundering or terrorist financing with sanctioned persons or entities." Branches of Swiss lenders including UBS and Credit Suisse were mentioned in the leaked documents as being among the main banks that requested offshore companies for clients. Both banks have denied wrongdoing in connection with the practice. Swiss financial institutions -- a focal point of efforts by European governments to crack down on tax avoidance -- trailed only Hong Kong in having used Mossack Fonseca, the reports have said. Branson said FINMA would first check for signs of illegal activity before deciding whether to launch an investigation linked to the Panama Papers. There were a few indications that they may be relevant in Switzerland, Branson said. Geneva's prosecutor also said on Thursday he had launched a criminal inquiry in connection with leaks that revealed many offshore companies set up by lawyers and institutions in the Swiss lakeside city and financial center. "Some information has been made public this week and the prosecutors office wanted to verify if this information showed anything that was against the law," a spokesman for the prosecutor said. One prominent Geneva lawyer helped set up 136 Panama offshore companies, Swiss television has reported. "Yes, it is an industry with a legal dimension. I have been in this business for 30 years and this activity was sought after by foreign nationals. There is nothing illegal, illicit or perception of criminality to it," another Geneva lawyer, Francois Canonica, said on Swiss television on Wednesday night. Canonica, a former head of the Geneva bar association, referred to a period after the 1981 election of French President Francois Mitterrand, which he said drove French fearful of nationalization to place their money in offshore Swiss accounts. Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam said on Tuesday his bank was after only lawful assets. UBS said on Monday it conducted its business in full compliance with applicable law and regulations and that it had no interest in funds that are not taxed or derived from unlawful activities. Branson said a number of Swiss banks were implicated in a corruption scandal surrounding Brazil's Petrobras and suspicious cash flows linked to the Malaysian sovereign fund 1MDB. FINMA has launched four enforcement proceedings against institutions in the 1MDB case and three over Petrobras. Branson said: "There are concrete indications that the measures those banks had in place to combat money laundering were inadequate." (Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Alistair Bell) An Interpol Red Corner notice is already pending against Azhar for being allegedly involved in the conspiracy behind attacks on Parliament and Jammu and Kashmir state assembly. (Photo: AFP) Chandigarh: NIA on Friday secured non-bailable arrest warrants against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf and two others for allegedly conspiring to carry out terror strike on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. A special NIA court based in Mohali issued the 'open-ended non-bailable warrant' against Azhar, his brother, main handlers Kashif Jaan and Shaid Latif for allegedly entering into a criminal conspiracy with JeM terrorists for carrying out a terror strike on the IAF base. Read: Masood Azhar was handler of Pathankot attackers: India tells UN The strategic base was attacked by terrorists of banned JeM during the intervening night of January one and two in which seven security personnel were killed. Four bodies of terrorists were recovered from the encounter site, which lasted for nearly 80 hours. The special court issued the arrest warrant after weighing the evidence presented by NIA before it, which included telephonic conversation between the terrorists and the Jaish handlers like Jaan and Latif. Read: Pathankot attack: NIA to seek access to JeM chief Masood Azhar, others The video of Rauf, brother of Azhar, was also presented before the court. In the video which was uploaded on a website being hosted from Pakistan, Rauf had claimed responsibility for the attack and complimented his boys for it. The video has since been removed and the website has also gone off the cyber world. NIA has already sought voice samples of Azhar and three others from Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which came to India for carrying out a probe in the Pathankot terror probe. Read: JeM chief conducted recruitment drive in UK: report The non-bailable warrant will be sent to Interpol. India had built a strong case for proscribing Azhar as terrorist at the UN but the move was vetoed by China. An Interpol Red Corner notice is already pending against Azhar for being allegedly involved in the conspiracy behind attacks on Parliament and Jammu and Kashmir state assembly. Similarly an Interpol Red Corner Notice is pending against Rauf in connection with the IC-814 hijacking case of 1999. India has complained to Pakistan about the slow pace of probe in the Parliament attack case and Azhar being given a free hand to continue with his anti-India rhetoric. Islamabad has not heeded to India's demands to bring to book Azhar and other JeM top brass. Read: In touch with India on JeM chief issue: China In the meantime, NIA said that after posting the pictures of the four dead terrorists on its official website, more information was coming from across the world which included many people from Pakistan who were eager to share details pertaining to the slain militants. The four terrorists were identified as Nasir Hussain (Punjab province), Abu Bakar, (Gujranwala), Umar Farooq and Abdul Qayum (both from Sindh). By Devidutta Tripathy and Euan Rocha MUMBAI/TORONTO (Reuters) - Fairfax India Holdings said on Friday it has agreed to acquire a minority stake in privately held Indian petrochemical company Sanmar Chemicals via a roughly $300 million investment. The Sanmar investment is the latest in a string of bets Fairfax India and its sister concern Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd have made in the country within the last year. The two entities are chaired by Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa. Indian-born Watsa, whose main investment vehicle is Fairfax Financial Holdings, set up Fairfax India in 2014 to hone in on investments in that country, where he expects strong long-term growth driven by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic reform agenda. "The economy in Canada is about $2 trillion with only 35 million people, while India by comparison with 1.2 billion people plus has an economy the same size. It's an unbelievable opportunity," said Watsa, in an interview. The investment in Sanmar that will give Fairfax a 30 percent equity stake in the company, is being made via a combination of equity and fixed income instruments, as Reuters had initially reported earlier on Friday. Sanmar, a family-owned firm chaired by N. Sankar, is one of India's largest producers of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The firm, which owns manufacturing facilities in India and Egypt, is also a manufacturer of other specialty chemicals. Sanmar is also in the process of expanding its PVC capacity in Egypt from 200,000 tons a year to 400,000 tons a year. Once completed, Sanmar will have a total PVC capacity exceeding 700,000 tons a year, making it one of the largest PVC makers globally. This investment, Watsa's latest bet in India, comes barely weeks after Fairfax agreed to buy a 33 percent equity interest in the Bangalore International Airport from GVK Power and Infrastructure Ltd for $321 million. "We just bought a 33 percent stake in the Bangalore airport, and we hope to add more over time, as that airport is going to expand," said Watsa. "The Indian economy is going to expand, it just stands to reason that as the economy expands there'll need to be more infrastructure investments." Back in February, Fairfax bought a 45 percent stake in ADI Finechem , a small Ahmedabad-based specialty chemical company, for $19 million. Last August, it acquired a majority stake in India's largest nongovernment grain-handling company, National Collateral Management Services Ltd, for $126 million. (Additional reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru and Krishna N. Das in Mumbai; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila) Congress wants to know the names of researchers who study fetal tissue, and what exactly they are doing: A House committee has subpoenaed a number of medical organizations for a list of people involved in this research. The committee says it wants "to find out what is going on?" at organizations that procure and use fetal tissue for research purposes. Use of the tissue is controversial because it usually comes from aborted human fetuses. (This tissue would otherwise be discarded.) But others who support the research have called the investigation an act of intimidation, and likened it to a witch hunt. "This is an invasion of academic freedom, a serious government overreach, and an effort to intimidate scientists who have devoted their careers to helping patients and improving lives," Dr. Mark DeFrancesco, president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a statement on March 30. Experts say that fetal tissue is important for many areas of research, including studies of brain diseases and human development, and treatments for spinal cord injuries. They say fetal tissue cells have properties such as an ability to divide and grow rapidly that make them particularly useful for certain lines of research. And fetal tissue allows scientists to investigate questions that can't be studied in any other way, for instance, what goes on in the early stages of human development, or what goes wrong in cases of miscarriage. Advocates for the research also say that discovering treatments and cures for diseases requires scientists to explore many avenues of research, including fetal tissue research. "We close the door in the research, we won't ever know what advances we might have attained," said Heather Pierce, senior director of science policy and regulatory counsel at the Association of American Medical Colleges, in a statement supporting fetal tissue research. "It's really only when we look back that we know what was effective," in yielding medical breakthroughs, Pierce told Live Science. [5 Discoveries in Stem Cell Science] Story continues Here are five ways that scientists are using fetal tissue in medical research. Alzheimer's disease In testimony before the congressional committee, Larry Goldstein, a professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego, described how he uses fetal tissue in his research on Alzheimer's disease. To make a model of the brain disease in a lab dish, researchers need a type of brain cell called an astrocyte, which helps support other brain cells, he explained. Astrocytes release growth factors and other substances that keep nerve cells healthy and allow brain cells to make connections, Goldstein said. Fetal astrocytes are the "gold standard" for this type of research, Goldstein said. Although scientists can "make" astrocytes from stem cells, these astrocytes don't have all the properties of fetal astrocytes, so for now, fetal astrocytes are irreplaceable, he said. "The fetal astrocytes are vital to these investigations, which I think will help conquer the terrible scourge of Alzheimer's disease," Goldstein said. Organ development Fetal tissue is also being used in research on how organs develop, with the ultimate goal of "growing" organs to replaced damaged ones. For example, some researchers are studying whether it's possible to "build" a human kidney from stem cells. They need to examine fetal tissue in order to determine "the earliest biochemical signals" that trigger cells to make kidneys," Goldstein said. "Fetal tissue is a window into the early stages of human development," he said. Fetal diseases Understanding conditions that start in the womb, or lead to miscarriage or stillbirth, is another avenue for fetal tissue research. For example, through fetal tissue studies, scientists investigating the Zika virus are learning more about the disease and its link to the congenital condition microcephaly. "The current Zika virus outbreak shows that we must use the full potential of science, including fetal tissue research, if we hope to develop a vaccine or a medicine that will allow us to prevent serious birth defects and even deaths in the future," DeFrancesco said. Vaccine research Fetal tissue research also played a role in the development of a number of vaccines we have today. Vaccines for chicken pox, hepatitis A, polio, rabies and rubella are all grown in human cells lines that were initially derived from fetal tissue in the 1960s, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. (Once a cell line is established, researchers can grow the cells in labs for decades without needing new tissue.) But researchers cannot always use old cell lines for vaccine research, and so new fetal tissue is sometimes needed. Researchers are currently using fetal cells to help develop vaccines against Ebola and HIV, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that advocates for reproductive health issues. Spinal cord injury treatments Finally, fetal tissue is used in human studies of treatments for spinal cord injuries, stroke and ALS. Fetal cells are particularly suitable for this type of treatment because they grow faster than mature cells. They also evoke less of an immune response, so they have a lower risk of rejection, according to the Guttmacher Institute. In one study of a treatment for spinal cord injury, fetal cells were implanted at the site of the injury in four people. Animal studies have suggested that fetal cells can develop into new neurons, and can "relay" information across the site of a nerve injury, allowing the animal to function better, Goldstein said. The new study in humans will follow the patients over the next few years to see if the treatment improves their paralysis, Goldstein said. Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Rome (AFP) - The former boss of Italian aerospace and defence group Finmeccanica, Giuseppe Orsi, was sentenced Thursday by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption, Italian media reported. Also handed a four-year jail term on the same charges was Bruno Spagnolini, former head of AgustaWestland, a subsidiary of Finmeccanica. The case against the two resulted from an investigation launched in 2012 into the sale of 12 luxury helicopters to India's government. Orsi was arrested in 2014 and resigned as chief executive of the aerospace group a short while later. India cancelled the deal with AgustaWestland in January 2014 amid allegations that the company paid bribes to win the 556-million-euro ($753 million) contract. The aborted deal was a severe setback for Finmeccanica, having already been hammered by the global financial crisis. In their first trial in October 2014, the two former executives were sentenced to two years in prison just on the false accounting charge. But the appeals court also ruled on corruption. "This sentence is inexplicable," said Ennio Amodio, Orsi's lawyer on Thursday, announcing that he will file another appeal to suspend the latest court's decision. The Milan appeals court also decided to confiscate belongings of the two men worth 7.5 milion euros ($8.5 million), RadioCor news agency reports. By Alisa Tang BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The Philippines this week launched the world's first public dengue immunisation programme, vaccinating 600 children at a school in the capital Manila with the goal of reaching 1 million students across the country this year. Dengue, also known as "breakbone fever", has spread rapidly around the world in recent decades, and about half the world's population is now at risk. Scientists have been working on a vaccine for decades, and the first one received market approval in December in Mexico. Several other vaccines are under development, while researchers are also looking at ways to control the mosquitoes that spread dengue and other viruses such as Zika. Here are some facts about dengue and prevention efforts. WHAT IS DENGUE? * Dengue, a mosquito-borne viral disease, often causes aflu-like illness, with symptoms including high fever, severeheadache, muscle and joint pain, nausea, vomiting and rash. * It can develop into the deadly severe dengue, or denguehaemorrhagic fever, characterised by severe abdominal pain,persistent vomiting, rapid breathing, bleeding gums and blood invomit. * There is no specific treatment for dengue. Patients aregenerally asked to rest, drink plenty of fluids and takemedication to reduce fever and joint pains. * Fatality rates can be below 1 percent with proper medicalcare, but without care, can be as high as 20 percent in patientswith severe dengue.WHO IS AFFECTED? * The annual number of dengue cases has increased 30-fold inthe last 50 years, and there are now an estimated 390 millioninfections per year. * The disease is now endemic in more than 100 countries inAfrica, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asiaand the Western Pacific. * Severe dengue was first recognised in the 1950s duringdengue epidemics in the Philippines and Thailand. Before 1970,only nine countries had experienced severe dengue epidemics. * Severe dengue has become a leading cause ofhospitalisation and death among children in Asia and LatinAmerica. Asia has the most cases, with 67 million peopleinfected per year.HOW CAN DENGUE BE PREVENTED? * Dengue transmission can be prevented by fighting themosquitoes which carry the disease, getting rid of places forthem to lay eggs by covering or emptying outdoor watercontainers, and disposing of solid waste properly. * Protection such as window screens for houses, long-sleevedclothes and insecticide are also used. * Health experts have called for an integrated approach tofight dengue and for vaccines to be part of the toolbox to fightthe virus.HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE VACCINE? * Sanofi studies of Dengvaxia, a three-dose vaccineadministered over the course of a year, said it prevented eightout of 10 dengue hospitalisations. * A new dengue vaccine developed by scientists from the U.S.National Institutes of Health (NIH) shows promise, with 100percent protection in a small group, according to a studypublished in March.WHERE IS THE VACCINE AVAILABLE? * Dengvaxia, which is approved for use in individuals aged 9to 45, is registered in the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil and ElSalvador, with regulatory review processes underway in othercountries. * In the Philippines, fourth grade students who are nine orolder will be vaccinated, with an injection in the upper arm. * The free vaccinations are taking place at public schoolsin the capital Manila and adjacent regions to the north andsouth, which have the highest number of dengue cases.Sources: World Health Organization, Philippines Department of Health, Sanofi Pasteur. (Reporting by Alisa Tang, editing by Alex Whiting. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories) We cant purchase our very own self-driving cars just yet. Regulatory hurdles are still in the way and car makers arent done testing autonomous vehicles to ensure that they're safe enough to mingle with regular traffic. However, truck manufacturers seem to be farther along, at least in Europe, where fleets of trucks drove themselves across the continent. DON'T MISS: AT&T just increased fees to upgrade to a new phone even if you bring your own Initiated by the Dutch government as one of the big events in its 2016 presidency of the European Union, the European Truck Platooning Challenge just ended. The trucks set off from bases in three European countries, completing their autonomous journeys on April 6th in Dutch city Rotterdam, Quartz reports. Made by Volvo, Daimler and Volkswagens Scania, about a dozen trucks completed a week of largely autonomous driving, with the Scania trucks having traveled more than 1,240 miles (2,000 km) across four European borders to get to the Netherlands. The project's aim is to highlight the benefits of platooning, or drafting. The trucks communicate with each other in real time and can position themselves closer to the truck in front of them to reduce wind resistance. That way, the formation cuts fuel use by 15%. Platooning can also improve road safety and reduce congestion. self-driving-trucks-european-truck-platooning-challenge-1 According to a study by research firm TNO, two trucks driving 100,000 miles in tight formation could save almost $7,000 on fuel. This is just the first phase of the project. Ultimately, the EU would want to expand the service so that companies can deliver products all over the region. There are various obstacles that need to be dealt with, such as the inability of trucks to communicate with vehicles from other brands, or the fact that European countries might have different standards that platooning trucks would have to respect. An example of a platooning autonomous convoy can be seen in the following video. Story continues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx9EFJ6qgZc Related stories You can already buy a car with self-driving features for just $22,000 Self-driving taxi service program already in testing in South Korea Making your car autonomous could be as simple as mounting your phone on the dashboard More from BGR: Elon Musk says Tesla will fix what critics call the Model 3s biggest design fail This article was originally published on BGR.com Srinagar: Day eight and the simmering tensions on the National Institute of Technology (NIT) campus here refuse to die down. Ignoring a fervent appeal from the faculty to help in restoration of normalcy on the campus, the outstation students on Friday took out a march to press for their demands, the foremost being shifting the institute out of Kashmir. Two companies of CRPF deployed on the campus on Wednesday, a day after outstation students clashed with local police leaving many of them injured, have been joined by three companies of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), taking the number of men in khaki guarding the picturesque grounds and the outstation students to 600. Read: Fresh protests rock Srinagar NIT, outstation students take out march The campus have been declared out of bounds for media. However, short videos and photographs on outstation students protests are being flashed on social media besides being sent to select group of journalists through Whatsapp and email. A twitter handle @SrinagarNIT has also been set up to communicate with the outside world. One of the tweets posted on it on Friday said, Day 8: Just because we are not shouting AZAADI AZAADI and creating drama like... You can't ignore us. Day 8: Just because we are not shouting AZAADI AZAADI and creating drama like... You can't ignore us #NITSrinagar #Media #shame #ChaloNIT NIT SRINAGAR (@SrinagarNit) April 8, 2016 A section of visiting reporters insisted on being allowed to go inside to meet the protesting students to know their viewpoint firsthand but the security force officials refused them entry. A Delhi-based TV journalist got in touch with one of the outstation students on his mobile phone and asked him if he and others could come outside the main gate of the NIT opening on Nigeen-Hazratbal road. But since the strong contingents of CRPF and SSB with a few officers and men from J&K had blocked the way and their bunker vehicles crisscrossing the passageway just behind the entrance, they could not move beyond. After being stopped at the CRPF barricade, the protesting students began yelling Bharat Mata Ki Jai and with that the Tricolour went up as could be seen by this correspondent from a small-framed window of a nearby overwhelming private house. After about 30-minute-long parade they went back chanting Were not safe here... Evacuate us...Shift NIT. Their other demands included stern action against the police officials involved in Tuesdays cane-charge, in addition to being allowed to interact with media. A note on their demands flashed on social media reads Our final demands: 1. Shift the NIT out of Kashmir. Were not safe here. The administration, locals and J&K police, all are against us. The administration is spreading false news to media and also not allowing us to directly interact with media. 2. Evacuation of all non-locals. We have been repeatedly requesting the administration to evacuate us. The administration is not allowing any students to go home. They are also not allowing any nonlocal parents/media to come inside the campus. Their yet another demand that the examinations be postponed has already been conceded. The NIT Registrar Dr. Fayaz Ahmed Mir said on Thursday said the students may skip the minor examinations scheduled to start from April 11 and that they would be given an opportunity to write these exams later. Jammu and Kashmir government on Thursday ordered a probe into the recent incidents of violence including Tuesdays police cane-charge at protesting outstation students at the institute. Police has registered two separate FIRs at the concerned Nigeen police station here in connection with the violent incidents that took place on the campus on April 1 and 5. The police has invoked sections 148 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 427 (mischief), 336 (endangering life of others) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) for the clashes between local and outstation students that took place on April 1. In the second FIR registered on April 5, the police, besides slapping the charges of the previous FIR, has added sections 353 (assault on public servant) and 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant). While no one has been named in the two FIRs yet, the official said police is investigating the video evidence of violence that took place on the days of incidents. The campus overlooking the Dal Lake had on April 1 witnessed clashes after Kashmiri students celebrated Indias defeat at the hands of West Indies in ICC Twenty-20 semi final by chanting pro-Pakistan slogans and lightening fireworks. Exasperated by it, the outstation students who outnumber the locals allegedly attacked them, leading to clashes and closure of the campus for students for four days. On Tuesday evening, the outstation students attempted to leave the campus but were confronted by local police which used force, leaving many students injured. The incident evoked outrage across the country and many people took to social networking sites to denounce police action. The Centre rushed a two-member team of Human Resources Development Ministry (HRD) to hold talks with outstation students and asses the overall situation on the campus. Also, CRPF was deployed on the campus. DETROIT (Reuters) - The drinking water in Flint, Michigan, where high lead levels led to a health crisis that drew national attention, is improving, but remains unstable, a top environmental official said Friday. "The drinking water system is recovering," Robert Kaplan, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's acting administrator for the region that includes Flint, told local and state officials meeting in the city to discuss the crisis. "You've got a dramatic decrease in the soluble lead. What we're seeing though is particulate lead, which indicates that the system is unstable," he told the meeting by phone. 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 state has been criticized for its initial poor handling of the issue. The corrosive river water leached lead, a toxic substance that can damage the nervous system, from the city's water pipes. Flint switched back to the Detroit system last October. Whenever we see a positive trend in Flints water quality, thats good news, but we still have much work to do to get people the quality of water they need and deserve, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said in a statement on Friday. Kaplan said while the addition of chemical phosphates to recoat the pipes to inhibit corrosion is working, the almost invisible lead particles remain a random and unpredictable problem. Kaplan said water filters reliably deal with the lead, but the best approach would be for residents to vigorously flush their home water systems by turning on all faucets and spigots and running the water to clean the sediment out and rebuild the protective phosphate coating. He said local and state officials need to have a simple message for residents in the city of 100,000 people to take that approach. "If we don't have an extremely simple message, as in free water, you will not be charged for the water that you use that is related to this flushing, I'm afraid we're not able to get that lead washed out of the system," he said. Story continues The state previously approved $30 million to help Flint residents pay their water bills dating back to when the switch to the Flint River was made. Kaplan said a full recovery of Flint's water system will take time, adding experts would not provide a time table at this point. (Reporting by Ben Klayman; Editing by Alistair Bell) Paris (AFP) - The number of foreign visitors to France grew in 2015 despite jihadist attacks in Paris thanks to a sharp rise in tourists from Asia, Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Friday. France retained its crown as the world's top tourist destination with a total of 84.5 million visitors last year, an increase of 0.9 percent on 2014. Ayrault said the attacks on November 13, in which 130 people were killed when Islamic State group gunmen and bombers attacked Paris, "limited this growth, especially in the capital". A "spectacular rise" of 22.7 percent in the number of tourists from Asia accounted for much of the increase. The lure of the Eiffel Tower, upmarket shopping in Paris and rustic Provence helped attract more then two million Chinese tourists to France for the first time. "The number of Chinese tourists passed the symbolic bar of two million for the first time, and reached 2.2 million," Ayrault said. More than half a million Indians also visited France. In 2014, France reduced the time for visas to be issued to 48 hours for visitors from China, India and Singapore. That helped to boost the number of visas issued to Chinese visitors by 38 percent in 2015 and requests for visas from Indian nationals surged up 48 percent. Visitors from the United States were also up, by more than 15 percent, but there was a dip of 1.5 percent in the number of tourists from Europe. "The fall in European visitors was mainly due to a decrease in German and Swiss tourists," Ayrault said. One in ten Germans stayed away compared with 2014, and Swiss visitors were down 6.5 percent. But visitors from Britain, up 3.3 percent, as well as Italy and Spain helped compensate for the decrease from other European countries. Official figures released Thursday showed the effect of the November attacks, with a sharp fall of 16.5 percent in overnight stays in December across all categories of accommodation. In August last year, then-foreign minister Laurent Fabius said he hoped France would break through the barrier of 85 million visitors in 2015. Story continues The figure did in fact reach 85 million if visitors to France's overseas territories are included. - Paris mayor in Tokyo - The annual study of visitor numbers "confirms that France remains the top tourist destination in the world." Ayrault said his aim "remains to attract 100 million foreign tourists a year to France by 2020". In a bid to woo Chinese visitors following the attacks, Paris welcomed 55 Chinese tour operators in February to reassure them over security in the city. And Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo travelled to Tokyo in February with the same mission. "Come to Paris," she said. "We have of course suffered but today people in Paris live, work, go out." Visitors from Japan were down 20 percent over the first 10 months of 2015 following the January attacks on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, and the numbers dipped further after the November attacks. STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) has widened its Panama Papers investigation to include all four of Sweden's major banks, a spokesman said on Friday. The watchdog initiated an investigation against Nordea earlier this week after media reported its involvement in the so called Panama Papers leak. According to the reports, Nordea is the most mentioned of the Swedish banks, but Swedbank, Handelsbanken and SEB also figure in the leaked documents. "Since the other banks are also mentioned, it is natural to include them in the investigation," FSA spokesman Peter Svensson said. A spokesman for SEB said it was natural the FSA include them in the investigation since the bank's name was mentioned in the documents. "We don't advise customers to hide money in order to avoid tax," SEB spokesman Laurence Westerlund added. Swedbank said they had launched an internal investigation into the matter while Handelsbanken could not be immediately reached for comment. The information on the banks appeared in a leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama. While setting up offshore accounts is not necessarily illegal it could be in breach of Swedish money laundering rules, rules both Nordea and Handelsbanken were found to have breached less than a year ago. (Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Mia Shanley; editing by Niklas Pollard) PARIS (Reuters) - France's labor minister on Friday criticized a labor court decision to dismiss a homophobia complaint lodged by a gay hairdresser who was dismissed a day after his boss described him as a "dirty faggot" in a misfired text message. The hairdresser was sacked during his trial period on the grounds that he was not sufficiently competent professionally. "I can only imagine that the person discriminated against will lodge an appeal. It's very shocking," Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri told RTL radio. She was reacting to a report in Metronews that the court had dismissed the plaintiff's claim and explained in its ruling that the text message, which was sent in error to his phone, was hurtful rather than homophobic and unlawful discriminatory. The text message contained the French term "sale PD", a slur that translates as "dirty faggot". In parts of the reported ruling, the court also said: "Putting this in the context of the hair-dressing business this council (court) considers that the term PD (faggot) cannot be judged homophobic". It was not known if the labor minister would take any action. (Reporting by Sophie Louet, Writing by Brian Love; Editing by Angus MacSwan) Raipur: Stirring a controversy, BJP leader and Chhattisgarh minister Brijmohan Agrawal has said his party workers are capable of breaking jaws of anti-national elements who raise slogans against the country and demanded that those who are born in India chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. "Even after 69 years of independence, anti-India slogans are being raised in the country. If anyone raises anti-country slogans in front of our workers, they (BJP workers) should reply them with full power," the Agriculture and Water Resources Minister purportedly said at a function, marking the BJP's 36th Foundation Year at the party office here yesterday. In a purported video clipping of the event, Agrawal said those who are born in India and consume the country's food and water should chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. In an apparent reference to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi over his visit to JNU in the wake of a row, he said, "It is unfortunate for the country that a leader of a big political party supported them. It is needed to tell those who raise anti-national slogans (that) we are capable of breaking their jaws." "It is needed to tell them, if they have taken birth in Hindustan, eat and drink Hindustan's food and after death cremated in this land only, then they have to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai (sic)," Agrawal said. The minister said that no religion or religious book prevents anyone from worshipping the land or country "where you take birth, have its food and water". When contacted, he said, "I had said while addressing the party's 36th foundation year ceremony that if someone raises anti-national slogans, we are capable of breaking their jaws. "No religion or any religious book (like) Quran, Bible, Geeta and Ramayan prevents anyone from worshipping one's own country". The function was also attended by the BJP state unit president Dharamlal Kaushik and MP Ramesh Bais. Slamming the minister, state unit Congress general secretary Shailesh Nitin Trivedi said, "BJP leaders are deliberately distorting peace and harmony in the country. Minister Agrawal's statement is provocative." By Dasha Afanasieva DIKILI, Turkey (Reuters) - Two ferries carrying more than 120 migrants returned to Turkey from the Greek island of Lesbos on Friday, in the second round of arrivals under an EU deal with Ankara to stem mass migration to Europe across the Aegean Sea. The accord, which came into force on Monday, aims to help end a chaotic influx into the European Union of migrants and refugees, most fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, after more than 1 million arrived last year. Around 325 people have now been sent back from the Greek islands under the accord, which the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) has condemned and rights advocates say may violate international law. They are to be sent to a camp near Turkey's border with Bulgaria, to which the UNHCR said it had yet to gain access. The first ferry on Friday carried a group of 44 Pakistani men, Turkey's interior ministry said. Around two dozen uniformed Turkish police officers lined the boarding plank after it docked in the Turkish town of Dikili, accompanied by two coast guard vessels. The second ferry, which arrived shortly after 12:30 p.m. (930 GMT), carried 79 people, including migrants from Egypt, Afghanistan and Iraq, a Turkish official told Reuters. There were no Syrians on either boat, the official said, and the second group appeared to be almost all men, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene. No boats are expected over the weekend, Turkish officials said. RIGHTS PROTESTS Before the boat left Lesbos, at least two rights activists plunged into the water close by, dangling from the anchor chain and flashing the 'V' for victory sign in an attempt to prevent the vessel from sailing. They were plucked from the water by the Greek coastguard, while more activists stood at the gates of the port of Mytilene blowing whistles and banging on metal barriers. From Dikili, the migrants were to be sent to the border town of Kirklareli. UNHCR spokeswoman Selin Unal said the agency was still negotiating for access to the camp there. A first group of 202 migrants, most from Pakistan and Afghanistan, arrived in Turkey on Monday. Turkey's parliament approved overnight an agreement enabling Ankara to repatriate Pakistani migrants. Meanwhile, other migrants continued to reach the Greek islands. Greek authorities said 149 had arrived in the past 24 hours on Lesbos, Samos and Chios, up from 76 the previous day. Under the EU-Turkey agreement, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who enter Greece through irregular routes. In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward Ankara with more money, early visa-free travel for its citizens and progress in negotiations to join the bloc. (Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker in Ankara and Orhan Coskun in Istanbul; Writing by Michele Kambas and Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and John Stonestreet) By Ayla Jean Yackley ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Best-selling Turkish crime writer Ahmet Umit may have set his latest novel in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, but he says its themes are very much of the present day: a drift towards authoritarianism and erosion of freedom of expression. As parts of the media and academia decry what they say is an unprecedented crackdown, Umit, 55, a former Communist activist who was tortured during military rule, offers a blistering critique of modern Turkey through a fictional lens. His latest historical mystery, "Farewell, My Beautiful Motherland," is told through the eyes of a revolutionary a century ago in the final years of Ottoman rule, when the Young Turk movement sought, in vain, to reform a crumbling caliphate. The reformists' slogans were "equality, freedom, brotherhood and justice," Umit told Reuters in an interview. Within a year "they became an oppressive regime, trampling on their promises. "While I remain faithful to these historical events, I seek to portray our problems now ... The reaction is always the same: 'It's so much like our times. Has nothing changed?'," he said. "Today the economy is deteriorating, rule of law is retreating, and we see a trend towards authoritarianism ... A movement that (promised) more freedom, conscience, compassion has regressed to something worse than what we had before." President Tayyip Erdogan swept to power 13 years ago as prime minister on a campaign of liberalization, his AK Party overseeing Turkey's transformation from an economic backwater. His grip on power has tightened, bolstered by victory in Turkey's first popular presidential ballot in 2014 and ambition to bestow his office with expansive executive powers. Several opposition newspapers have been confiscated or closed in recent months and broadcasters taken off the air, accused of terrorist activities, while critical academics have been detained under broad anti-terrorism laws. TWITTER THREATS Umit's 14 novels have been translated into 40 languages. Next week, his publisher promotes "Farewell" at the London Book Fair after selling a record 290,000 copies here since December. "Farewell" includes the harassment, even murder, of opposition journalists a century ago. "There has always been an intolerance (of criticism). The problem of jailing journalists, the pressure on newspapers, shutting newspapers has been around since the late Ottoman period," said Umit, who has begun work on his next book: a thriller set around the Syrian refugee crisis. "Amid the growing authoritarianism, we see great intolerance for those who do not share the same point of view," said Umit. "No government official has said to me yet, 'You cannot write this book.' But as an intellectual, I need to raise my voice when I see something wrong. Supporters of the government then take to Twitter or similar places to threaten me," he said. Umit, who thought he might work at a state bank, began writing by chance. In 1982, he was part of an underground group caught hanging posters decrying military rule. He evaded arrest and wrote a report picked up by a Marxist journal in Prague. It was translated into 40 languages and launched his career as a thriller writer. "I used to belittle mysteries ... but a writer writes what he knows. To become political at age 14 in Turkey in 1974 meant I had a 70 percent chance of death, prison or torture. So when I began writing, what came out was a suspense thriller." (Additional reporting by Hamdi Istanbullu; Editing by Nick Tattersall/Jeremy Gaunt) LONDON, April 8 (Reuters) - Twice Grand National-winning jockey Ruby Walsh will miss Saturday's race after fracturing his wrist, trainer Willie Mullins said on Friday. Walsh was set to ride the Mullins-trained Sir Des Champs in Saturday's race, but the 36-year-old Irishman injured his wrist in two falls at Aintree on Friday. "Unfortunately, Ruby does not ride tomorrow," Mullins said on Twitter, having earlier played down the severity of the jockey's injury. Walsh won the Grand National at his first attempt on Papillon in 2000 and again in 2005 on Hedgehunter. Nina Carberry will stand in for Walsh on Sir Des Champs. (Reporting by Toby Davis; editing by Ken Ferris) More than half of young workers with student loans would prefer to work for an employer that offers student loan assistance than one that offers a match in a 401(k) retirement plan, according to a new study from Student Loan Hero. A small but growing number of firms, including PwC, Fidelity and Natixis Global Asset Management, have begun offering this perk to workers. Related: The Court Ruling That Could End the Student Loan Crisis Healthcare still trumps all others, but a majority of workers under age 24 would choose student loan repayment assistance over a 401(k) match or additional vacation time. That group is also the least likely to make retirement contributions, often because theyre strapped after making their student loan payments. Historical Aggregate Student Loan Debt | StartClass Among workers who would like to see student loan repayment assistance at work, nearly two-thirds say that theyd use the money to make additional principal payments on their loans, rather than to offset their monthly payments. When used in that way, the benefit could help workers eliminate their debt much more quickly. Companies that contribute to the financial well-being of employees are going to stand out to the best and brightest college graduates, Student Loan Hero CEO Andrew Josuweit said in a statement. Considering what a burden student loans are on so many Americans, student loan payment assistance is an innovative benefit that will accomplish just that. Still, the benefits are far from common. Just 3 percent of companies currently offer student loan assistance to workers, and less than 1 percent planned to institute it this year, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Antarctica (Antarctica) (AFP) - Waddling over the rocks, legions of penguins hurl themselves into the icy waters of Antarctica, foraging to feed their young. Like seals and whales, they eat krill, an inch-long shrimp-like crustacean which forms the basis of the Southern Ocean food chain. But penguin-watchers say the krill are getting scarcer here around the western Antarctic peninsula, under threat from climate change and fishing. "Krill is the power lunch of the Antarctic. It's a keystone species for everybody," says Ron Naveen, leader of the US conservation group Oceanites, as penguins squawk on the rocks behind him. In a vast ocean whose water flows influence the whole planet, krill rely on the sea ice to protect them and provide algae to feed them while they grow. The ice is getting scarcer. The peninsula has warmed by three degrees Celsius over the past half-century, according to groups such as the World Wildlife Fund. Scientists suspect that shifting ice patterns are effecting penguin populations. "The interaction between warming temperatures, increasing ocean acidity and of course to some extent, although that's not clear yet, an interaction with the fishing industry fishing for krill, will put pressure on predator populations that are mostly krill feeders," such as penguins, says Steven Chown, a biologist at Monash University in Australia. - Trawling for supplements - On the rocky shores and blue icebergs of the peninsula and its islands, brown fur seals bark and jostle each other. Humpback whales flash their white bellies as they heave out of the depths. Among hordes of orange-beaked Gentoo penguins waddles the occasional Adelie penguin with white rings round its eyes, or the Chinstrap, with a fine black stripe at its throat. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says Adelies and krill are both potentially threatened by future climate change. Species such as Adelies are also threatened by krill-fishing, it says. Story continues The Antarctic creatures are having to share the krill with humans. "Krill fishing may be occurring too close to where the penguin breeding colonies are," says Naveen. "And perhaps more importantly, areas where the penguins are foraging." Fishing boats catch 300,000 tons of krill a year, the IUCN says, made into feed for farmed fish and "Omega 3" oil supplements, said to soothe sore joints and other complaints. Cilia Indahl, head of sustainability at Norwegian fishing company Aker BioMarine, says the total amount of krill caught is just 0.5 percent of the 60 million tons eaten each year by sea creatures. But the company has developed a method to minimize environmental harm, she says. The boats trawl slowly, using special filtered nets to avoid catching other creatures. "We will also have to consider where we fish for krill, making sure that there is minimum overlap with other animals like penguins and whales and where they feed," she says. - Penguins and politics - Fishing in Antarctica is monitored by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). Member countries must agree between them on catch limits and no-fish areas. Environmentalists insist that CCAMLR renew key regulations on krill fishing when it gathers for its annual meeting in October. "There's going to be a fight about whether or not the subdivision of the krill catch, that protects foraging predators like penguins, will be continued," says Andrea Kavanagh, head of the penguin conservation campaign of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a US non-government organization, referring to the system of restrictions on krill fishing in certain areas. "Some countries such as Russia and China indicated they did not see the need for it at last year's meeting. They want to be free to catch as much krill as possible near the Antarctic Peninsula, including right next to penguin colonies that have been in decline for the last three decades." Some countries have proposed setting aside a big protected zone in the Ross Sea, a remote, unspoiled Antarctic area of rare species. But campaigners and officials involved in the talks complain of resistance by China and Russia to that proposal too. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told AFP that China agreed to support the Ross Sea plan after it was modified to strike a better balance "between protection and the rational use of resources." But the Russian fisheries ministry told AFP in a statement that the system of fishing regulations overseen by various other world bodies "fully meets modern requirements in respect to the conservation of biodiversity and does not require any radical changes." Campaigners say agreement on conservation measures will be crucial for the future of the region, considered one of Earth's last wildernesses. "I feel when I'm here like I'm on the front lines of climate change," says Naveen, who has spent 22 years counting penguins. "It's happening right now and these penguins are trying to adapt. They're sending messages to us about how the planet is changing." By Ragnhildur Sigurdardottir REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Icelanders, not satisfied with the departure of the prime minister and a promise to hold elections this autumn, took to the streets again on Thursday to demand the government quit over the Panama Papers leaks. About 2,000 people showed up at parliament for another day of demonstrations, banging pots and pans and calling for immediate elections. Iceland fell into political crisis this week after documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm linked the then Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to an offshore company that held millions of dollars in debt from failed Icelandic banks. He stepped down on Tuesday. The center-right coalition tried to appease Icelanders by naming Fisheries Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson as prime minister and calling for early elections in the autumn. But many Icelanders, who have a deep distrust in government following a 2008 banking crisis which wrecked the economy, are saying it is not enough that Gunnlaugsson step aside. Saga Stephensen, a 33-year-old multicultural adviser who showed up at Thursday's protest, said others should resign. "They act like nothing happened and don't bear responsibility and don't apologize. I am fed up with their arrogance," Stephensen said. Johann Bjornsson, a 50-year-old teacher, called for elections as soon as possible. "To appoint Sigurur Ingi as Prime Minister is no solution," he said. Earlier on Thursday, the head of Iceland's anti-establishment Pirate Party - which polls show would win an election if held today - filed a vote of no-confidence motion in parliament. The motion is seen however as largely symbolic since the coalition of the Progressive and Independence parties has a solid majority in the 63-seat parliament with 38 seats. "How are we going to reclaim our reputation if things just go back to normal?" Birgitta Jonsdottir, head of the Pirate Party, told Reuters. "We are the laughing stock in the international community because of the former PM. It's too little and too late." A poll by Icelandic media outlet Visir showed this week 43 percent of those polled would cast ballots for the Pirate Party if elections were held now, a stunning victory for a group set up by opponents of copyright enforcement rules. (Writing by Mia Shanley in Stockholm; Editing by Angus MacSwan) Women devotees are not permitted on the platform as per tradition followed at the shrine, which has no walls or a roof. (Photo: PTI) Mumbai: In a major victory for women rights activists, the Shani Shingnapur temple trust in Maharashtra has decided to allow women into the sanctum sanctorum, reversing a centuries-old ban. "Anyone can enter the sanctum and the committee can't stop them. The rule was that men and women both can worship god (darshan) from the lower part of the temple, but when men entered the sanctum, it became our responsibility to also let women enter," Nana Sahib Bankar, vice-president of the Shani Shingnapur Trust, told the media. He said the temple had been following an ancient custom but added they had no objection in welcoming the Bombay High Court's order to allow entry to women. Read: Men storm into Shani Shingnapur temple after new ban on their entry In March this year, the Bombay High Court had observed that no law prevents women from entering any place. Underlining the need for giving equal access to women, the High Court stated any temple or person imposing such restrictions can face a six-month jail term under a Maharashtra law, and asked the government to make a statement if it was worried about the sanctity of a deity. The observations were made by a Division Bench of Chief Justice D.H. Waghela and Justice M.S. Sonak during the hearing of a PIL by senior advocate Nilima Vartak and activist Vidya Bal, challenging the bar on entry of women in the sanctum sanctorum of the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. Read: Women to be allowed in Shani temple, will follow HC order: Fadnavis The temple trust, however, had announced last week a ban on the entry of both men and women from the inner sanctum to offer prayers to Lord Shani. Earlier today, over hundred men defied the order and stormed into the temples premises to worship the Saturn god. Last Saturday, women activists led by Trupti Desai stormed into the temples complex but were prevented from entering the inner sanctum by locals and temple authorities. The activists launched a scathing attack on Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, asking him why the Bombay High Courts order was being defied. Fadnavis said he would follow court orders but at the same time made a veiled criticism of the activists for their actions. He said no one must disturb the law and order situation for mere publicity but also added there was no place for discrimination in Hindu culture. "There is no place for discrimination in Hindu culture. Our government has taken a clear stand before the Honorable High Court and we will implement their decision in true spirit," Fadnavis had said in a statement. "But it is my sincere request to everyone not to disturb the law and order situation for mere publicity," he added. Indian leader Narendra Modi said Thursday a fatal flyover collapse in Kolkata was "an act of fraud" and accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of corruption at a state election rally. Modi, campaigning for his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said the collapse was the result of corrupt practices under Banerjee's ruling Trinamool Congress state government. "A huge bridge collapsed and what did these people say -- an act of God. Didi (Banerjee), this is not an act of God but an act of fraud," Modi said at the rally in Birpara, a town in the state's far northeast. Twenty-six people were killed when a portion of a flyover that was under construction collapsed onto a busy street crushing scores of pedestrians and cars on March 31. A top official from the construction company IVRCL that was building the bridge drew ire for saying the collapse was "an act of God", although Banerjee herself is not known to have said this. Nine officials of the firm have been arrested on charges including murder as investigators probe negligence in the disaster, which came on the brink of a month-long state election expected to be closely fought. Modi said it was a divine message to voters in the state to reject the chief minister's party in the polls over what he alleged was rampant corruption. "This business of money and death led to the collapse of the Vivekananda bridge," Modi said. "In a sense it is an act of God that it fell on election eve to expose your (Banerjee's) misgovernance," he said. The BJP, which has failed to gain ground in West Bengal and won just one seat in the previous election, is trying to put the ruling party on the back foot over the incident. Derek O'Brien, a lawmaker and chief national spokesman for the Trinamool Congress, accused Modi in a social media post of "playing cheap politics over a tragedy". "These are not words befitting of the Prime Minister of India. They bring his high office to disrepute... The Trinamool Congress is far from being a corrupt party," he wrote on Facebook. Banerjee's party is facing a two-way challenge in the elections after previously ending the 34-year-rule of Leftist parties, which have entered into an alliance with the Indian National Congress. West Bengal is one of five Indian states holding elections this month and next and the results will be announced on May 19. India's censors have been criticized for giving Disney's The Jungle Book a UA rating, equivalent to a PG. Justifying the decision, censor board head Pahlaj Nihalani told the newspaper DNA that "the 3D effects are so scary that the animals seem to jump right at the audience. ... It's up to parents to decide how much of these effects are suited for their children." Speaking at a press conference, however, filmmaker and composer Vishal Bharadwaj, who composed a Hindi song especially for the local release, said that "there is nothing in the film which will scare the kids." The rating also sparked a satirical backlash on Twitter, mirroring an incident last year in which censors cut some offensive language from Spectre and halved some kissing scenes it considered "too excessive." Sorry guys. Jungle book got a U/A certificate. And they cut the Kaa and Baloo kiss. Also the Sher Khan and Col Hathi sex scene. - Vir Das (@thevirdas) April 6, 2016 Not surprised Pahlaj Nihalani found The Jungle Book 'scary'. He more or less watches every film with the maturity of a one-year-old. #censor - Sayantan Ghosh (@sayantansunnyg) April 6, 2016 Junglebook was scary for Censor Board?! What's next - Tom and Jerry being A? - Ra Ch Na (@raggedtag) April 7, 2016 Pahlaj Nihalani : The animals jump at you from the screen. Every other person : Its called 3D, you idiot!- Sid Mathur (@BhaiBahutBadiya) April 7, 2016 Pahlaj Nihalani has given Jungle Book a U/A certificate. So many naked animals in the jungle must have really upset him. - Ray Ban (@Purba_Ray) April 6, 2016 A Hindi-dubbed version of Jungle Book, which opens in India on Friday, a week ahead of its U.S. release, features the vocal talents of Bollywood stars including Priyanka Chopra (Quantico), Irrfan Khan (Jurassic World) and Om Puri (The Hundred Foot Journey). Read More: 'The Jungle Book': Film Review New Delhi (AFP) - A Hindu temple in western India on Friday lifted a centuries-old ban forbidding female devotees from entering, after a court said women had a fundamental right to worship. Activists have been campaigning to end Shani Shingnapur temple's traditional ban, after authorities last year blocked a woman who attempted to enter its inner sanctum. "We have followed the court order and allowed women devotees into the inner sanctum," Satish, a temple official, told AFP by phone from Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra state. Bombay High Court said last week women have a fundamental right to go into places of worship and asked authorities to ensure their safety. The court's directive followed a petition by the Bhoomata Brigade, a women's group who attempted to enter the temple in January along with dozens of other activists. Lead activist Trupti Desai said the ban constituted gender discrimination that should not be tolerated in the 21st century. But despite the court order, hundreds of angry villagers blocked her and about 30 other women from going inside the temple at the weekend before being detained by police. The skirmishes led the temple authorities to temporarily ban both men and women from entering the sanctum, in a bid to end the standoff. Many religious places in India traditionally bar women from entering the core area of temples and mausoleums. Kerala's famous Sabarimala temple bans all female worshippers aged between 10 and 50 years. Women have also been prevented from entering Mumbai's Haji Ali Dargah mausoleum since 2011, with its trust saying close female proximity to the tomb of a revered saint is "a grievous sin" in Islam. New Delhi (AFP) - An alcohol ban imposed in the Indian state of Bihar was supposed to clean up public life. But it has had the unintended effect of deterring worshippers from temples, where liquor is the traditional offering. Bihar's Chief Minister Nitish Kumar this week fulfilled an election pledge to introduce prohibition -- a move popular among women voters in the poverty-stricken eastern state who were sick of seeing the family income blown on booze. But it has proved less popular in the state's many Hindu temples, which have suffered a sharp drop in worshipper numbers after alcohol shops were forced to shut. Anant Marathe, a priest in Gaya district's Bhairav Sthan temple, said the number of visitors had fallen by around 70 percent. "As the tradition goes, the devotees offer alcohol to the deity," he told AFP by phone. "They pour some of it on the idol and take the rest of it home or distribute it among other devotees." Offerings are often given on special occasions such as marriages or religious festivals, although some particularly devout worshippers give them on a daily basis. "I haven't visited the temple this week because I can't get liquor to offer," devotee Promodh Kumar told AFP, calling on the government to relax the ban to allow alcohol to be bought for religious purposes. But Satyendra Kumar Sinha, an excise officer, said the government had no plans to make any such concessions. "We will not allow liquor sales or consumption for any purpose. The devotees can offer anything except the banned item," Sinha told AFP. The World Happiness Report, that annual-ish ranker of the worlds chillest, smiliest, most satisfied countries (a contest in which Scandinavia regularly kicks the rest of the worlds teeth in), this year added a new dimension to its analysis: Inequality. Normally we talk about inequality in terms of economics, disparities in income, the wealth of the 1 percent versus the wealth of the remaining 99, etc. But in this case inequality was a measure of the distribution of peoples answers to this question: Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time? The normal world happiness ranking is based on each countrys average answer to that question. The top country by that measure was Denmark, with an average answer of 7.526, followed by Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Finland. (No surprise). The bottom five were Benin, Afghanistan, Togo, Syria, and Burundi in last place with an average answer of 2.905. The United States clocked in at number 13, with an average answer of 7.104. Recommended: The Brain That Wasnt Supposed to Heal But when the researchers looked at how peoples answers were spread out, a different picture emerged. Here is the distribution of answers across the whole world: Population-Weighted Distributions of Happiness, 2012-2015 World Happiness Report The most common answer is five, dead in the middle. In different regions however, answers are distributed differently. Population-Weighted Distributions of Happiness, by Region World Happiness Report The top five most equal countries when it comes to happiness are Bhutan, Comoros, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Iceland. (Iceland being the only one in the top 5 for both average happiness and equality.) The five most unequal countries are Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan. The United States is in 85th place. Story continues The researchers also found that most countries are getting more unequal. Comparing the period between 2005and 2011 to the period between 2012 and 2015, about a tenth [of countries] had significant reductions in happiness inequality, while more than half had significant increases, the report reads. The remaining one-third of countries showed no significant change. This isnt a perfect measurement of a countrys well-being. For example, Afghanistan is the ninth most equal country, but the fourth-lowest in terms of overall happiness. The Afghans, it seems, are pretty equally unhappy. Looking at the regional charts above, John Helliwell, a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia and one of the editors of the World Happiness Report, observed a couple different kind of inequalities. Recommended: How to Get Your Kid to Do What You Say, Without Punishing In Latin America and the Caribbean, well, everybodys happy, but theyre not equally happy, theres quite a spread among positive answers, he says. But you look on the other hand at the other region thats very unequal, thats the Middle East and North Africa, and you can see its got a whole lot of people down at the zero and a quite a lot of people up at the ten. So there are some very happy people and very unhappy people there. So happiness inequality, at least as measured here, is not a tell-all measure, Helliwell says. You have to look a little further to find out what is the nature of the inequalities. This is one of the first times that anyone has attempted to measure happiness inequality or well-being inequality. One previous study, published in 2008, found that happiness inequality went down overall in the United States between 1972 and 2006. But it used a slightly different measure than the World Happiness Report, instead asking participants whether they were very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy, so its hard to directly compare the two. Its also notable that the time period of this study ends just before the Great Recession. There are a lot of remaining questionsfor example, how closely does happiness inequality correlate with income inequality? Helliwell thinks income is one part of life satisfaction, but that there are many other factors that likely go into happiness inequality. In a separate paper on well-being inequality, Helliwell and his colleagues write, A high inequality society is one in which there are many people who achieve a life they rate very highly, and many others who are stuck in a life they are very much dissatisfied with. This could be because the former are rich, and the latter poor, but it could also be for any number of other reasons. Recommended: The Tesla Model 3 Is Still a Rich Person's Car Future attempts to measure happiness inequality could possibly use some tweaks to tease out variables beyond income. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, the science director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the World Happiness Reports inequality measure, because it looks at satisfaction with life, is a little bit more tightly tied to access to resources," than if they'd phrased the question in terms of "happiness" specifically. A fuller picture, she thinks, would include more information about peoples capacity to experience positive emotions and to recover from negative emotions. The reason well-being falls into this space of equality is because it is about our ability to exist in collectives without harming one another. But the measure still illuminates an important thing to consider when thinking about the well-being of populations. If all were focusing our policy on is achieving income equality, were losing an opportunity to focus on other aspects of life that are important to well-being, Simon-Thomas saysthings like community, and connection, and kindness The reason [well-being] is falling into this space of equality is because it is about our ability to exist in collectives without harming one another, without having extreme differences in opportunity or access to resources. Another unanswered question: What does it mean for a country to be unequal when it comes to happiness? What does that kind of society look like? Refining the measures and including more variables could tell us more in the future, but for now we have to speculate. Shigehiro Oishi, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia who studies well-being and culture, sent me some thoughts over email. I guess the society where some are really happy and others are really unhappy would look like the winner-take-all society (high-income inequality), he wrote, but also highly corrupted and unfair (i.e., not just economically unequal, but politically unequal; some elites are protected, others are not; fundamentally non-meritocratic, unfair society). Though it didnt necessarily play out for all countries, the World Happiness Report researchers found that generally, lower happiness inequality was correlated with a higher average happiness score, suggesting that more equal societies are happier, on the whole. Humans evolved in a social context that makes us prefer fairness, Simon-Thomas says. When we exist within a context where unfairness is prevalent, that is inherently stressful. Related Video Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. A small injection could lead to decreased feelings of hunger as well as major weight loss, a small new study finds. The procedure, known as bariatric arterial embolization, has only been tested in seven patients, and much more research will be needed in order to confirm its safety and effectiveness. However, the doctors who completed the study are "excited about the possibility of adding [the procedure] as another tool for health care providers to offer patients in the effort to curb" the obesity epidemic, said Dr. Clifford Weiss, the director of interventional radiology research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the leader of the study, in a statement. [The Science of Hunger: How to Control It and Fight Cravings] The procedure involves injecting microscopic beads into the blood through a tiny nick in the wrist or groin. These beads travel to a part of the stomach called the fundus, where they decrease the amount of blood flow to the area. (The fundus is located toward the top of the stomach, near the part where the esophagus adjoins it.) Scientists suspect that the fundus may play an important role in weight loss because it produces most of the body's ghrelin, also known as the hunger hormone. By decreasing blood flow to the fundus, the procedure may limit the amount of ghrelin that the fundus secretes, which could minimize hunger and help patients lose weight, the researchers hypothesized. Compared to weight loss surgery (also called bariatric surgery), "bariatric arterial embolization is significantly less invasive and has a much shorter recovery time," Weiss said. Six women and one man were included in the study. All of the patients had a BMI that was between 40 and 50 which is considered "severely obese" but otherwise, they did not have other health problems, according to the researchers. All of the patients lost a significant amount of weight after the procedure, the researchers said. After one month, the patients lost, on average, 5.9 percent of their excess body weight, according to the study. At the end of three months, the patients had lost an average of 9.5 percent of their excess weight, and by six months, an average of 13.3 percent of their excess weight. Story continues In comparison, six months after surgery, patients who have had bariatric surgery may lose about 30 percent to 40 percent of their excess body weight, according to the Mayo Clinic. In addition, the patients also reported dramatic reductions in their hunger levels, according to the researchers. To measure hunger, for several days before and after their follow-up visits, the researchers asked the participants to fill out a questionnaire about appetite and satiety (the feeling of fullness). Two weeks after the procedure, the patients reported, on average, an 81 percent average decrease in hunger; at one month, they reported an average decrease of 59 percent; and at three months, an average 26 percent decrease, according to the study. The researchers also found that patients' ghrelin levels decreased by an average of 17.5 percent at three months after the procedure. While the results of the study are promising, the "research is still in its early stages," Weiss said. The study demonstrated that the procedure is safe. Now, researchers can carry out more clinical trials with larger numbers of patients in order to test how effective the procedure may be, and how long-lasting its effects may be, he said. The results of the study were presented on April 3 at the Society of Interventional Radiology's annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. The findings have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Follow Sara G. Miller on Twitter @SaraGMiller. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters began releasing late on Friday some of the scores of cement plant workers they kidnapped northeast of Damascus this week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. Local municipality officials in two nearby towns managed to secure an agreement for IS to release 170 workers it had been holding since Wednesday, the Britain-based Observatory said. IS seized the workers after launching an attack on Syrian government forces in the area where the cement plant is located, near the town of Dumeir. Syrian state television said IS had kidnapped 300 workers and contractors. The Observatory said 140 workers had fled before the fighters arrived. IS's Amaq news agency said on Friday the group freed nearly 300 workers, but had executed four of them for being from the Druze minority. (Reporting by John Davison and Ali Abdelatti in Cairo; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) Hyderabad: The worlds tallest statue of the chief architect of Indias Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar is all set to be installed in the city. A decision to this effect was taken by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday. Mr Rao decided to install a 125-feet tall statue to celebrate the 125th birth anniversary of Ambedkar this year. He will lay the foundation stone for the statue on April 14, coinciding with the 125th birth anniversary of Ambedkar. Mr Rao directed officials to complete the statue within a year so that it can be unveiled on April 14, 2017. He also asked them to develop Ambedkar Square in the city. The CM conducted a meeting with ministers and officials at his camp office to review arrangements to be made for the event. He directed them to ensure celebrations on a grand scale throughout the year. The officials were told to plan special programmes every month in all the districts. The CM constituted a committee headed by deputy CM Kadiam Srihari to identify the suitable location in the city for the statue. Sources said the project is expected to cost around Rs 25 crore. Mr Rao also asked ministers and officials to take up distribution of free three-acre farm land for Dalits as part of the celebrations. Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel Friday reissued and accentuated a warning to its citizens to avoid Turkey over the "immediate risks" of attacks, weeks after three Israelis were killed in an Istanbul suicide bombing. "Following a situational assessment, we are reiterating and sharpening the high level of threat in Turkey," the counter terrorism bureau said. Its warning comes hours after the Turkish foreign ministry announced "progress towards finalising the agreement" on restoring ties with Israel, a day after both sides held talks in London. "There are immediate risks of attacks being carried out in the country, and we stress the threat applies to all tourism sites in Turkey," Israel's counter terrorism bureau said in a statement. It called on all Israelis to avoid visiting Turkey and urged Israeli tourists there to leave "as soon as possible", defining the threat as level 2 -- "concrete and high" -- the same as in its previous warning from March 28. Three Israelis and an Iranian were killed and 39 people wounded when a man blew himself up on Istiklal Caddesi, a famous shopping street in the heart of Turkey's largest city, on March 19. Turkey said the bomber had links to the Islamic State group, and on Tuesday Israel's defence ministry said he had most likely targeted the Israelis deliberately. Tens of thousands of Israelis visit nearby Turkey each year despite strained diplomatic relations between the two countries. On March 29, President Reuven Rivlin expressed deep concern over a report that IS was planning to attack Jewish schoolchildren in Turkey. NATO member Turkey was a key regional ally of Israel until the two cut ties in 2010 over the deadly storming by Israeli commandos of a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza, which left 10 Turkish activists dead. After years of bitter accusations and rhetoric the two sides held secret talks in December on a rapprochement, with another round taking place in February in Geneva. Rome (AFP) - Italy on Friday recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations in protest over the lack of progress in a probe into the fate of murdered Cambridge student Giulio Regeni. The move came after two days of talks between Egyptian and Italian investigators in Rome ended without a resolution of tensions between the two countries over the fate of 28-year-old Regeni, whose tortured and mutilated body was discovered outside Cairo on February 3. "Italy has undertaken a commitment with the Regeni family... that we would stop only once we get the truth," Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said. Egypt's foreign ministry released a statement saying it had "not been officially notified" about the recall, adding that it "awaits the return of the investigative team to hear its evaluation of the meetings". It would then assess the situation and "there will be the necessary communications at the appropriate level," foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid was quoted as saying. A statement by the Rome prosecutor in charge of the case said that the Egyptians had handed over phone records of two of Regeni's Italian friends who were in Cairo at the time of his disappearance, as well as photos taken on the day his body was discovered. The statement made no mention of CCTV footage of the neighbourhood from which Regeni disappeared on January 25, which the Italians had asked to see, or whether Regeni was under surveillance prior to his abduction. The Egyptian team indicated that they were still considering the possibility Regeni was abducted by an anti-foreigner criminal gang whose members all died in a police shootout last month. The Italian prosecutor stressed his "conviction that there are no elements to directly link the gang to the torture and death of Giulio Regeni," the statement said. Egypt's presentation of a theory that a criminal gang carried out the murder has been greeted with outraged scepticism in Italy and has helped fuel public anger over the case, putting intense pressure on Renzi to be seen to be getting tough with Cairo. Story continues Italian officials suspect the student was killed by rogue elements in the Egyptian security services. Their Egyptian counterparts have so far maintained there is no basis for such claims. - Business deals - With the case threatening to derail relations between two countries with major economic and strategic ties, the Egyptian team of two prosecutors and three senior police figures had flown to Rome in a bid to reassure their Italian counterparts that everything was being down to bring Regeni's killers to justice. Italy had warned this week of diplomatic retaliation if the perceived foot-dragging of the Egyptians continued. Before the criminal gang theory was aired, Italian officials were variously told that Regeni had died in a car accident and that his death was linked to his personal life. The withdrawal of the ambassador is unlikely to satisfy those who are demanding that Renzi send a strong signal of Italy's anger over the case to Egypt's military-backed president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Renzi has a close relationship with Sisi which has helped generate hugely valuable business contracts for Italian companies, particularly in the energy sector. Italy is also counting on Egyptian cooperation if and when it leads an international peacekeeping force into Libya to try and stabilise its former north African colony. Media coverage of the Regeni case has served as a focus for other disappearances and rights abuses in Egypt. In terms of action, Italy's options are limited. Moves under consideration include a warning to its citizens against travel to Egypt but the Regeni case has already caused a slump in visitor numbers from Italy. Italy is also considering asking for support from its EU partners to try and put pressure on the Egyptian government over the case. By Steve Scherer ROME (Reuters) - Italy recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations on Friday after Egyptian investigators in Rome failed to provide evidence needed to solve the mystery of the murder of an Italian student in Cairo. Ambassador Maurizio Massari was called to the capital for "an urgent evaluation" of what steps to take to "ascertain the truth about the barbaric murder of Giulio Regeni", the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Egyptian authorities met with Rome prosecutors on Thursday and Friday, handing over some, but not all, of the evidence Italy had requested. The prosecutors said in a statement Egyptian investigators had still not handed over such evidence as details from Cairo cell towers that had connected to Regeni's mobile phone. Regeni, 28, vanished from the streets of Cairo on Jan. 25. His body was discovered in a ditch on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital on Feb. 3, showing signs of extensive torture. Regeni's mother said last week that her son's body had been so disfigured that she had only been able to recognise him by the tip of his nose. Human rights groups have said the torture indicates he was killed by Egyptian security forces, an allegation Cairo has repeatedly denied. "Recalling the ambassador for talks means that Italy confirms its commitment with itself and the Regeni family: We will stop only before the truth, the real truth," Renzi told reporters on Friday, adding that Italian prosecutors said this week's meetings had been "disappointing". Italian officials have openly ridiculed different versions of Regeni's death put forward by Egyptian investigators, including an initial suggestion that he had died in a traffic accident. Last month, Egyptian police said Regeni's belongings, including his passport, had been found in the possession of a band of thieves that were killed in a shootout with Egyptian police. Investigators in Italy quickly dismissed that story. Italy's move to escalate the diplomatic dispute is likely to further strain relations between the two countries, and it is a setback for Renzi's diplomatic efforts to make Italy the main European partner for Egypt. Egypt will "assess in a comprehensive manner" the situation when its investigative team returns home, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said in a statement. Egypt had not yet been officially notified of Italy's move to recall its ambassador, nor for "the reasons behind this decision", he said. Renzi had offered to be "a bridge" to Europe when Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi visited Rome in 2014, saying the two countries were strategic partners in the Mediterranean for fighting Islamist militants and combating people smuggling. Apart from common political aims, Italy has significant economic interests in Egypt, including the giant offshore Zohr gas field, which is being developed by Italy's state energy producer Eni . A delegation of Italian businessmen led by then-Industry Minister Federica Guidi cut short a visit to Cairo and returned home when Regeni's body was recovered in February. (Additional reporting by Michael Georgy in Cairo, editing by Larry King) NIAMEY (Reuters) - Niger opposition leader Hama Amadou, jailed since November on baby trafficking charges, was granted a provisional release by a court on Tuesday a week after losing a presidential run-off election, his lawyer said. Amadou, a former speaker of parliament, has denied the charges, saying they were part of a strategy to sideline him politically. He is currently in France, where he was flown for medical reasons just days before the March 20 second-round vote. "Niamey's court of appeals agreed to our request and today it ordered Hama Amadou's provisional release," said lawyer Mossi Boubacar. President Mahamadou Issoufou won a second term with 92.5 percent of the vote, according to official results announced last week. Held in a prison several hours from the capital Niamey and suffering from poor health, Amadou was unable to campaign and an opposition coalition backing him called for a boycott, easing the way for Issoufou's victory. "The court should have freed him so that he could be on equal footing with Issoufou during the elections. It didn't. Hama is innocent and this case is a plot to push him out of political life," said opposition spokesman Ousseini Salatou. Police began making arrests in June 2014 in an investigation into the alleged trafficking of newborn babies into the West African uranium-producing country from neighbouring Nigeria. A number of members of Niger's political elite, including Amadou's wife, were charged but later granted provisional release after spending up to six months in detention. Amadou fled Niger amid the wave of arrests. He returned in November and was arrested. Issoufou has positioned himself as an ally of Western nations in the fight against Islamist insurgents in the arid Sahel region. Critics, however, say he has become increasingly authoritarian and clamped down on dissent. (Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalaki; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Mark Heinrich) Los Angeles (AFP) - A federal judge in California has ruled that including a small Christian cross on the official seal of Los Angeles County is unconstitutional, siding with civil liberties advocates. Thursday's decision, following a two-year legal battle, was handed down by US District Judge Christina Snyder, who said that including the religious emblem in the government symbol "places the county's power, prestige and purse behind a single religion, Christianity." The case erupted in 2014 when the county had the cross drawn on top of the San Gabriel Mission which appears in the logo. The move reversed a decision by officials a decade earlier to remove the cross from the seal, amid threats of legal action by various groups opposing the inclusion of the crucifix on the county symbol. The LA county seal appears on flags and official stationery and government buildings across Los Angeles County. Supporters of keeping the cross on the mission in the seal said it is a historically accurate symbol, given California's early settlement by Franciscan missionaries from Spain. They also noted that courts have upheld the constitutionality of the phrases "in God We Trust" on US currency and "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thursday's ruling is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought the suit. Hector Villagra, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California and attorney Linda Burrow who represented plaintiffs in the case said in a statement Thursday that they were "heartened" by the ruling. "It recognizes that Los Angeles is a diverse county comprised of adherents of hundreds of faiths as well as non-believers, all of whom are entitled to be treated with equal dignity by their government," they said. Nashik: In a historic decision that broke a 400-year-old tradition, the Shri Shani Shingnapur Devasthan Trust (SSSDT) on Friday decided to open up the chauthara (platform) of the temple to all, including women. The decision was taken after 200 Kawadis, groups of devotees who bring gangajal (water of river Ganga) on foot, from Shingnapur trampled barricades, climbed the chauthara and conducted abhishek (offering prayers). Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said that discrimination on the basis of caste and gender should be eliminated from the minds of the people in keeping with the modern times. Kawadis entered the sanctum sanctorum of the temple and offered prayers to the deity on the occasion of Gudi Padwa, even as the temple officials tried to prevent them. The Trust had also made arrangements to collect the water in a vessel on the ground and then pump it over the deity. However, Kawadis rejected the proposal and forced their entry into the sanctum sanctorum. As the trust members objected to their entry, resulting in tension, the police rushed to the spot. A decision was taken to allow entry to all in a joint meeting of the trustees, villagers, Kawadi group and some government and police officers, CEO Gorakhshnath Darandale told The Asian Age. CEO Darandale said that the trust then decided to open up the chauthara to all, including women for darshan (veneration). In the evening, Pushpak Kewadkar, who is estranged from Trupti Desais Bhumata Brigade, became the first woman to venerate the chauthara. Temple trust spokesman Haridas Gaywale said, At the meeting, the Trust decided there wont be any discrimination and today all parts of Shani temple have been opened for all. The Bombay high court had on April 1 held that it is the fundamental right of women to go into places of worship and the government is duty-bound to protect it. The debate over the issue escalated last year after a woman tried to enter and offer prayers at the Shani Shingnapur temple, in breach of the age-old practice of prohibiting entry of women. The agitation for womens entry gained momentum over the last few months. Temple authorities had recently barred men also from entering the sanctum sanctorum. Local men had brought sacred water of the Godavari and Mulay rivers from the Pravara Sangam, about 40 km from Shani Shingnapur and offered prayers. It has been a tradition for male devotees to climb up the platform of the temple and offer the water after performing a pooja on Gudi Padwa every year. The villagers said that its a local custom and a matter of faith as they forcefully reached the prohibited area of the temple. Welcoming the decision, Bhumata Brigade leader Trupti Desai said, We are happy that the temple trustees have taken a wise decision eventually. If a single man enters the sanctum other than the pujari, the court orders have to be followed, everyone has to follow the order. The day has come today (when) we will enter the shani platform. This is our victory. If we have to progress in the 21st century, then it is important that we do away with this concept of discrimination of caste and gender from the minds of the people completely, Maharashtra CM Mr Fadnavis said, reacting to the development. Lima (AFP) - Peruvians say you either love or hate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of their jailed former leader Alberto. Despite his dark legacy she too is now tipped to become president. Smiling broadly in a white shirt, she dances for the crowds at election rallies. But it is her name that most grabs the attention in this South American nation. She came of age during the violent period of her father's rule in the 1990s which destroyed his marriage to her mother and landed him in jail for crimes against humanity. Keiko took over as first lady of the nation aged 19. She was elected to congress in 2006. Now 40, the US-educated Keiko is, like her father, a divisive conservative figure. She leads the polls for the first round of presidential elections on Sunday. Alberto Fujimori's dark decade in power from 1990-2000 lives in the memory of many Peruvians, but Keiko proudly wielded the family name as she launched herself into politics. She misjudged voters' sensibilities when she pledged during the last election campaign in 2011 to pardon her father. That made her lose the election to leftist Ollanta Humala. This time she appeared on television making a solemn "pledge of honor" to safeguard human rights. "I will not use political power to benefit my family," she said in an interview, with a cross hanging from a necklace at her chest. She promised to ensure that "never again" would there be a repeat of the internal coup mounted by her father as president in 1992, when he dissolved congress. "We want to put violence aside and start to look forward," she said, turning occasionally from the interviewer to speak directly to the camera. "I want to be the president of all Peruvians." - Family name - Keiko's mother Susana Higuchi accused Alberto's men of torturing her during his rule. She fled the presidential palace and filed for divorce in 1994. Keiko sided with her father and has rejected her mother's claims as "myths." Story continues Alberto Fujimori, now 77, is in jail for crimes against humanity for ordering the massacre of people he said were terrorists in 1991 and 1992. Twenty five years on, some say his record means you can't trust a Fujimori. "You either love Keiko or you hate her," said one voter in Lima, Diego Ramirez, 25, who works in a bank. "I find it incredible that she could be president. Her father was corrupt and a killer. She didn't do anything as a congresswoman. All she has is her family name." But Fujimori senior won the love of many for stamping out the Shining Path, a communist guerrilla group that carried out attacks and kidnappings. Even though he was convicted for massacres and corruption, many voters harbor nostalgia for his rule and want Keiko to follow in his footsteps. Humala has overseen a strong economic performance, but under him growth has only reached half the level it was at the height of the Fujimori boom. "If Fujimori had continued as president the country would be in a better state now," said Felizardo Mogollon, a 58-year-old taxi driver in Lima. "Keiko is a woman who will work for security, improve the economy even more and work more to get international companies to come to Peru." - First female president? - Recent opinion polls have indicated Keiko could top Sunday's first-round ballot with about a third of the vote. That would send it to a run-off in June. Opponents tried to get her excluded from the election for alleged vote-buying, but the electoral board last week dismissed the case against her. Her rival in a run-off could be business-friendly candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski or left-wing congresswoman Veronika Mendoza. Kuczynski, a foreign-educated former prime minister and businessman, is polling in second place with Mendoza close behind. Kuczynski has appeared on the campaign trail playing folk music on his flute and wearing a multicolored woolly hat to greet rural villagers. Mendoza has promised to strengthen state control over the country's energy reserves and reform the tax system in favor of small companies. If Mendoza wins through to a run-off against Fujimori, Peru would be certain to have its first female president. By Duncan Miriri NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan police ordered the arrests of eight bank executives on Friday, a day after the latest in a series of troubled banks was put into receivership, but the country's finance minister insisted the financial system was "very sound". Mid-sized Chase Bank Kenya was the third lender to be taken over by the central bank in nine months, fuelling worries over the health of the sector, whose gross non-performing loans rose sharply in volume last year. Central bank Governor Patrick Njoroge said authorities would deal firmly with bankers who put depositors' money at risk, as the police issued arrest warrants for six executives of National Bank and two from Chase Bank. "We want to take this opportunity to assure the members of the public that Kenyas financial system is very sound," Finance Minister Henry Rotich told a news conference on Friday, flanked by Njoroge and other officials. Rotich said the ministry was working closely with the central bank to isolate and contain the impact of the troubled banks on the financial system. Mid-sized Imperial Bank was taken over in October, two months after the smaller lender Dubai Bank. "The government is very supportive of the actions the central bank took," Rotich said. "We are continuing to enhance banking supervision." The central bank on Thursday put Chase Bank under a 12-month receivership following a run on deposits sparked by fears over the health of the lender's finances. Njoroge said authorities would be tough with bankers who flouted rules. "We cannot tolerate rogue bankers, those who in effect steal from depositors," he said. Last week the chief executive of National Bank, Munir Ahmed, was put on compulsory leave pending an internal audit, as loan loss provisions pushed the lender into a loss. Police Inspector General Joseph Boinnet said in a statement that National Bank's CEO, Chase Bank's former managing director, its former chairman, and the five other National Bank executives would be arrested unless they presented themselves. Kenyan lenders' gross non-performing loans jumped to 6.8 percent of the total loans in February, from 5.7 percent in the same month last year, amid increased defaults. Njoroge said that did not pose a systemic risk as banks had made higher provisions for the rising bad debts, which led to an erosion of their earnings for last year. (Editing by Andrew Roche) Lucky for fashion history buffs, there are no shortages of style exhibits this spring. But unlike the ones taking place across the U.S., LACMA's new exhibition, cheekily called, "Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear," dives in depth into the rich history of menswear. The exhibit - curated by Sharon S. Takeda, Kaye D. Spilker and Clarissa M. Esguerra - features 200 looks, mostly coming from LACMA's permanent collection of costumes and textiles, and explores menswear from 1715 to 2015. "I think we were all surprised at how deep and rich the history with menswear is, it's just as fascinating as womenswear," Takeda, senior curator and head of the costume and textiles department at LACMA, told Pret-a-Reporter of what the team learned during the five years that it took to complete the massive project. "I think, in many ways, menswear is eclipsing womenswear. The creative juices are really going and any small changes are seismic." Instead of organizing the ensembles in chronological order, the exhibit is organized into five themes: Revolution/Evolution, East/West, Uniformity, Body Consciousness and The Splendid Man. Designed by L.A.-based studio Commune, the exhibit's first thematic room welcomes visitors to the Revolution/Evolution of men's fashions, which explores the apparel that sparked how men chose to express their individuality. Among the pieces that are shown include the extravagant Macaroni suits that were worn in 1770s Britain, refined Dandy fashions (such as the tail coats of the early 1800s and today's slim suits), zoot suits and punk leather jackets. The second space examines the cultural intersection of East/West influences, including the Eastern-inspired robes (think Japanese kimonos or Middle Eastern caftan) that upper-class Western men wore during the 17th and 18th century and the avant-garde Western ensembles brought forth by Japanese designers. Uniformity in menswear dives into military uniforms, utilitarian workwear and activewear, while the Body Consciousness section proves that ladies haven't always been the only ones to embrace waist-cinching, figure-enhancing items. Story continues The exhibition wraps up with The Splendid Man, and just as the theme suggests, this section is all about the garments designed with an abundance of details - think embroidery, sequins, animal furs and floral patterns. Here, you'll be able to check out a mid-1990s wool pinstripe suit adorned with plastic sequins by Franco Moschino and a floral embroidered Gucci ensemble by Frida Giannini from spring 2014. And just as you make your exit, there's a display of men's shoes (Jeremy Scott's gilded high-top sneakers designed for Adidas, included) that you don't want to miss. Held in conjunction with the exhibit, which opens this Sunday, curator Takeda will also be holding a discussion with The Business of Fashion editor-at-large Tim Blanks and former Los Angeles Times fashion critic Booth Moore to talk fashion journalism and the history and culture of runway shows at LACMA's Bing Theater on Friday at 7:30 p.m. (You can find more info here.) "Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear" is open from April 10 to Aug. 21 at LACMA (5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, 323-857-6000; lacma.org). LONDON (Reuters) - A rare, pear-shaped, vivid pink diamond will go under the hammer in Geneva next month, where auctioneers expect it to fetch some $38 million. The "Unique Pink", described by Sotheby's as "supremely rare and exceptional", weighs 15.38 carats. "The Gemological Institute of America, the highest body for grading diamonds, have given this stone their highest possible grading, which is vivid pink," David Bennett, worldwide chairman of Sotheby's international jewelry division, told Reuters. "It's so strong the color. That makes it a very rare stone indeed, in fact it's the largest pear-shaped fancy vivid pink diamond ever to be offered at auction." The discovery of gem-quality pink diamonds is rare, according to Sotheby's, which will auction this one as part of its "Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels" sale in Geneva on May 17. "We're estimating between $28-38 million," Bennett said of pre-sale estimates during a preview of the diamond in London. "There have been a couple ... of stones that have sold for around $2 million per carat or a little more historically so it seems to be perfectly correctly estimated ... We will see." Earlier this week, a 10.10 carat oval, internally flawless, fancy vivid blue diamond sold for $31.8 million at an auction held by Sotheby's in Hong Kong. (Reporting By Alex Fraser; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) Hyderabad: The TS government will sign the final agreement with neighbouring Maharashtra state over construction of irrigation projects in a week or 10 days. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao revealed this at the official Ugadi celebrations held at the Ravindra Bharati here on Friday. We will sign the final agreement and take up construction of pending irrigation projects with the blessings of God and peoples cooperation, the CM said. Mr Rao said it took a year for an in depth study of water issues and sign the MoU with Maharashtra. Even if there is drought in some parts, there is no drought in Godavari. 1,500 TMC of water had gone waste into sea. If we had tapped it, there would not have drought, he said, adding that the government was trying to ensure a solid foundation for irrigation sector. We are laying the foundation of the new State. If the foundation is weak, it will be dangerous and affect the future of TS, he said. Stating that it was proved that TS is revenue surplus and its funds had been looted in the past, he said the state achieved unprecedented growth of 15 per cent which no state in India could achieve. Dark days are over. You will have 24x7 power supply. We are moving ahead in all sectors. In IT sector we will be No 1 in country soon. We are growing very fast in industrial area, he said. Mr Rao said in achieving Telangana, the state got two boons own funds to use for development and jobs for locals. Referring to panchangakarta Santosh Kumar Sashtris prediction that education and health department would face problems of high fees, corruption, the CM said, According to Panchangam, its good for everyone barring Kadiam Srihari and Laxma Reddy. By Ellen Wulfhorst UNITED NATIONS (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The fight to abolish human trafficking, which claims nearly 21 million victims worldwide, is so far a failure, a top leader in the field said on Thursday, calling for an immediate international effort to coordinate strategic efforts. Modern slavery generates some $150 billion dollars a year in illegal profits, yet anti-trafficking spending came to just 0.08 percent of that amount by nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said Kevin Hyland, Britain's Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. Further, merely 0.2 percent of slavery cases are investigated and prosecuted each year, he told a meeting on ending human trafficking hosted at the United Nations by the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See. "The sad and simple truth is that the anti-slavery movement has so far failed," Hyland said. "Modern slavery continues to boom as an industry, and criminals continue to view it as a low risk and high reward crime." Globally, nearly 21 million people are victims of human trafficking, according to the U.N.'s International Labour Organization (ILO). An estimated 4.5 million of them are forced into sex work. Hyland and a chorus of others called in no uncertain terms for a greater, better-coordinated fight. "Multilateral efforts against slavery are siloed and fragmented, with little effort made at strategic coordination," he said. And nations that are major sources and destinations of trafficking schemes and victims are "more often than not unwilling to share data and coordination of activity", he said. Echoing that view, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, said: "The core proposal of this day is that this goal cannot be achieved without effective, international cooperation at many levels." "That there are over 20 million people callously held in modern slavery in our world today is a mark of deep shame on the face of our human family," he said. He heads the Santa Marta Group, an alliance of police and bishops working to eradicate slavery. But James Cockayne, Head of Office at U.N. University, cautioned that collaboration is insufficient without a concerted plan. "If we don't have a global road map or a strategy, we simply won't succeed," he said. "Piecemeal is not a plan. No state can effectively achieve any of these goals on its own." For example, he said, a nation that moves first to improve labor standards at a point in a supply chain simply risks displacing trafficking and slavery onto other parts of the chain. He called upon the U.N. Secretary-General to designate an advocate or representative to work with member states and outside groups to develop a global anti-trafficking plan. (Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, land rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org) By Angus McDowall BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Lebanese military court on Friday increased to nearly 10 years the jail term for a former minister convicted last year of smuggling explosives and planning attacks, in a case that has underscored the country's sharp political divisions. Former information minister Michel Samaha, who has close ties to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was detained in August 2012 and confessed to involvement in a plot for which Damascus' security chief Ali Mamluk was also indicted. Syrian officials have denied Damascus was involved, but the allegations exposed rifts in Lebanon, which often break along sectarian lines, over Syria's long-standing involvement in the country. Samaha's initial four-year sentence and later release on bail prompted bitter protests from opponents of Assad, who saw the decisions as unduly lenient and evidence that Damascus and its ally Hezbollah held sway over the justice system. The case also gained wider regional significance when Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir suggested it was part of the reason Riyadh was withdrawing billions of dollars in aid from Lebanon's army and security forces. He said the military court's granting of bail to Samaha raised questions over the army's independence from the Shi'ite Hezbollah movement, Lebanon's main powerbroker and a principle ally of Riyadh's top regional rival Iran. On Friday the court set Samaha's new sentence at 13 years, but in Lebanon a prison year is equivalent to nine months. "The issuance of the verdict on the terrorist Michel Samaha corrects the former lenient verdict, which we had rejected and declared we would not tolerate," said former prime minister Saad al-Hariri, a leading critic of Damascus. Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, a member of Hariri's Future Movement, said the new sentence confirmed "the correctness of our trust in the president and members of the court". Ashraf Rifi, another Sunni Muslim politician, had resigned his post as justice minister over his granting of bail in January after describing the trial last year as a travesty of justice. Syria is Lebanon's largest neighbor and dominated the country from the end of its civil war in 1990 until 2005, when U.S.-led pressure helped force Syrian troops to leave. Its ally Hezbollah remains Lebanon's main power broker and has fought alongside government forces in Syria's civil war. Hezbollah and its leading members made no immediate comment on Friday's sentence. (Reporting By Laila Bassam and Angus McDowall; editing by John Stonestreet) FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The German state of Lower Saxony on Friday criticized Volkswagen's plans to pay bonuses to top managers when the carmaker is dealing with the diesel emissions crisis and set to cut costs. Bonuses for senior managers have become a flashpoint in an escalating dispute with the powerful labor leaders at Europe's biggest carmaker as it prepares to finalize a new strategy. "The state of Lower Saxony is keenly aware of the problematic nature of flexible bonuses," a spokeswoman for Lower Saxony, a major Volkswagen shareholder, said on Friday. Lower Saxony has clout at VW thanks to a 20 percent stake and its two seats on the 20-member supervisory board, the body which signs off on executive pay. "It is ultimately a decision for the supervisory board. Opinions on the matter have not yet been finalised," the spokeswoman added. Lower Saxony is home to over 100,000 jobs at VW and the carmaker's largest factory. German magazine Der Spiegel cited company sources as saying management board members were refusing to voluntarily give up bonus payments, agreeing instead to cuts. A Volkswagen spokesman said giving up bonuses was currently not up for discussion. "There is no decision, the supervisory board is set to meet in the second half of the month. The management board stands by its statement that belts need to be tightened. But nobody has talked about giving up bonuses entirely," the spokesman said. "MORAL QUESTION" Pressure has mounted to make cuts at VW's core operations in Germany since the emissions scandal broke in September when U.S. and California environmental regulators said they were investigating VW for violating clean air rules. Insisting on bonus payments may complicate efforts to win concessions from VW's powerful labor representatives, who also have seats on the supervisory board. A supervisory board member told Reuters that although it was difficult to alter legally binding contracts for managers it would be the right thing to waive bonuses. "It could be argued that manipulation of diesel emissions helped increase profits in prior years, making it all the more urgent that the supervisory board advise the management board to forgo bonus payments," said a supervisory board member, who declined to be named. Ulrich Hocker from Germany's association for private investors agreed. "It would be appropriate that the management board members send a clear signal in this crisis. The contractual obligations are a given, but its a moral question." VW is working on a compromise after tensions this week when labor leaders accused VW brand chief Herbert Diess of using the diesel cheating scandal as a pretext for job cuts. It may now alter compensation rules for top managers to scale back variable remuneration and, in turn, increase fixed pay, two sources at the carmaker said on Friday. Executives are aiming to finalize the proposals in time for the supervisory board meeting on April 20 which is due to ratify 2015 results and executives' compensation, the sources said. A VW spokesman declined to comment on plans to reform remuneration, dismissing it as speculation, referring instead to April 28 when the company is scheduled to publish its annual report. The supervisory board's steering committee will meet on Monday to discuss the investigation into the emissions scandal and the carmaker's financial situation ahead of the planned publication of VW's annual report on April 28, two people familiar with the matter said, adding that bonuses and the dispute between management and labor will also be discussed. (Reporting by Andreas Cremer and Sabine Wollrab; writing by Edward Taylor; Editing by Keith Weir and David Evans) London (AFP) - Anthony Martial is preparing himself to face a top player in Harry Kane ahead of Manchester United's Premier League match away to title-chasing Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday. Kane leads the English top-flight's goal chart with 22 goals in the league so far this season and the England striker's prowess has been instrumental in Spurs' rise to second in the table, seven points adrift of shock leaders Leicester with six games left to play. United forward Martial, who arrived at Old Trafford from Monaco on transfer deadline day in September, was in no doubt of the 22-year-old Kane's quality. "He's a top player and he's also still only young," said Martial of Kane. "He had a great season last year and he's underlined just how good he is this time around. He's a quality player who is very entertaining to watch," added the France international, who has 13 goals to his credit this season across all competitions. "Spurs are a team who defend well with a lot of aggression and stay compact as a unit. They have a lot of ability up top and that's why they find themselves currently in second place in the table." As Tottenham eye a first English title since they did the league and FA Cup double back in 1961, United are looking to put a poor season behind them by claiming the fourth and final Champions League place on offer to English clubs. Louis van Gaal's side are now just a point behind fourth-placed local rivals Manchester City, with both of the Manchester clubs having seven league games to play. Martial, who scored United's winner in their 1-0 victory against Everton last time out, said: "It was certainly very important that we picked up a win in that game (Everton) and it has put us back on track in the hunt for fourth place. It's now down to us to do the rest." By Lisa Lambert WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal regulators' decision to designate insurer MetLife Inc as "too big to fail" was "arbitrary and capricious," the U.S. judge who struck down the determination last month wrote in an opinion that was unsealed on Thursday. The U.S. government plans to appeal the court decision, a Treasury spokesman said in a statement late on Thursday. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said he strongly disagreed with the decision and the government would vigorously defend the work of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), made up of several U.S. regulatory agency chiefs, which designated MetLife as a systemically important financial institution in 2014. The label has been given to four nonbank companies that the government considers would pose a risk to the financial system if they collapsed. MetLife, the largest U.S. life insurer, has said it was considering breaking up its business to shed the designation, which triggers more regulation. "This decision leaves one of the largest and most highly interconnected financial companies in the world subject to even less oversight than before the financial crisis," Lew said in a statement earlier on Thursday. "I am confident that we will prevail." MetLife sued the U.S. government last year, saying FSOC used a secretive, flawed process in determining that it could hurt the U.S. financial system if it faces financial distress. On March 30, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer rescinded the designation, but her opinion was put under seal until Thursday. FSOC said in its designation that the insurer could cause significant damage to the U.S. economy "but never explained how it would result," Collyer wrote. "That assumption reflected a change in policy, one that was neither acknowledged nor explained in the final determination, and which was therefore arbitrary and capricious," she wrote. She added that during the designation process, FSOC ignored two of its own definitions of "material financial distress" and "threat to the financial stability of the United States." "FSOC also focused exclusively on the presumed benefits of its designation and ignored the attendant costs, which is itself unreasonable," Collyer wrote. "FSOC's unacknowledged departure from its guidance and express refusal to consider cost require the court to rescind the final determination." Authority to designate U.S. nonbank companies as "too big to fail" is part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law passed after the 2008 financial crisis. Last week lender GE Capital, a unit of General Electric Co , asked to have its designation removed, saying it had shrunk to the point where it would not pose a threat to the financial system if it experiences distress. Prudential Financial Inc , another insurer, said it was "evaluating what is in the best interests of the company and our stakeholders." American International Group Inc , which also has the label, received a $182 billion U.S. government bailout to avoid collapse in the thick of the financial crisis. AIG declined to comment on Collyer's decision. Lew said FSOC takes "a deliberative and data-driven approach, relying on a careful analysis of available information, including intensive engagement with each company" it designates. "In overturning the conclusions of experienced financial regulators, the court imposed new requirements that Congress never enacted, and contradicted key policy lessons from the financial crisis," he added. (Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Eric Walsh in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Richard Chang and Diane Craft) Mexico City (AFP) - Four gunmen riding in a fake police car have been arrested in Mexico after the real authorities noticed a spelling mistake on their otherwise identical vehicle. The car was painted and outfitted to look exactly like the ones used by the federal police, but spelled the word "division" with a "c" instead of an "s." That aroused the suspicion of a military patrol in the western state of Michoacan, which stopped the vehicle and arrested the four men with guns and ammunition. "The detained suspects do not belong to any security force," the Michoacan authorities said in a statement Tuesday. The state is the scene of frequent violence between drug cartels fighting each other for control of trafficking routes. KOCHI: Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan on Monday said that the Congress High Command should deny an Assembly seat to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy over solar scan accused Sarithas fresh allegations. He added that there was no reason to disbelieve Saritha and an FIR should be registered and the case investigated. Addressing mediapersons at Aluva, Achuthanandan said that Oommen Chandy had faced similar kinds of allegations previously too and used his wife to cover it up following a controversial train journey with a woman. The Opposition leader also said that the allegations against the Ministers and the Chief Minister had taken the image of Kerala to a new low. Oommen Chandy has pressurized the high command by saying that he will stay away from polls. Now it has become clear why he had argued for the tainted ministers. By using his official residence for immoral activities, the Chief Minister has become a liability for the high command, he said. The Opposition leader also said that the women in the state should react strongly to the deeds of the Chief Minister and his fellow ministers in the coming elections. To a question, he said that the people (of Pathanapuaram constituency) would decide the fate of LDF candidate K B Ganesh Kumar by judging his past deeds. MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico aims to deploy a "comprehensive strategy" to promote its image in the United States more vigorously, the government said on Thursday, days after fresh criticism of the country by Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Trump, who has attacked Mexico over trade, illegal immigration and crime, on Tuesday threatened to block remittances from undocumented Mexican migrants if elected, and also slammed the announcement of a new Ford plant in Mexico. Opposition lawmakers and diplomats have accused the Mexican government of failing to counter such rhetoric, and on Tuesday Mexico said it was replacing its U.S. ambassador and the deputy foreign minister responsible for North American relations. Carlos Sada's nomination as ambassador and the appointment of Paulo Carreno as deputy minister are part of a "comprehensive strategy" to ensure Mexico's contribution across the border is better understood, a senior foreign ministry official said. "This is just the most visible element of a strategy that will involve not just the foreign ministry, but also other ministries," Ana Paola Barbosa, the chief of staff to Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu, told a news conference. Barbosa did not provide details of the plan. Mexican-U.S. bilateral trade between is worth around $500 billion annually and more than 30 million people north of the border are estimated to be of Mexican descent. The fact the United States is about to elect a new government provided a good moment for Mexico to review its priorities with its southern neighbor and ensure that they are being promoted "much more vigorously" in future, Barbosa said. "We want an ambassador who promotes more forcefully and with facts and deeds and objective data, what the Mexican community does," she added. Trump has pledged to build a border wall to keep out illegal immigrants, and to make Mexico pay for it. He has also accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners to the United States. Democrats and many Republicans have repeatedly condemned his more strident comments, but they have been enthusiastically received by many of his supporters. (Reporting by Dave Graham and Ana Isabel Martinez; Editing by Alan Crosby) Germany is Europe's biggest television market and its largest producer of TV series, but those shows rarely get seen outside the country. Or, at least, they rarely did. Deutschland '83, a smart spy drama set at the height of the Cold War, and Generation War, a brutal account of WWII purged of both sentiment and cliche, broke the mold for German series. Both were critically acclaimed and sold widely abroad - Deutschland '83 premiered on Sundance TV, the first German series to air on a U.S. network, while Generation War went out on Netflix stateside. Their success, and growing pressures within the German market to produce drama series to compete with the best coming out of the U.S. and Europe, is driven a production revolution in German TV. Never have there been so many ambitious series getting commissioned from German networks. And never have international buyers, who crowded into Cannes this week for the MIPTV market, been so eager to see them. MIPTV put the focus on German programming for this year's market, highlighting some of the hottest new shows from the country, including Ku'damm 56 - Rebel With a Cause, a female-focused period drama set in Berlin at the start of Germany's post-WWII economic boom; and the bleak NSU German History X, a American Crime Story-like dramatization of the neo-Nazi terror cell that killed at least 10 people between 2000-2007. Speaking at MIPTV, Benjamin Benedict, CEO of UFA Fiction, the Berlin-based production house that produced Ku'damm, Generation War and Deutschland '83, said new German drama is a radical break from the past, with younger, sexy protagonists; smarter, more complex characters; and a slicker production style adapted from U.S. shows. "The Germans are able to sit beautifully in the middle [between local and American content]," added Guido Pugnetti, the head of marketing and TV product management at Italy's RAI Cinema, noting how successful recent German shows have been on Italian TV. "They're taking the best from the U.S. way - rhythm, pace, storytelling, subjects - and at the same time giving it a European flavor." Story continues It's helped as well that the global TV market has become more diverse. The explosion of niche, digital and online networks has meant more room for foreign-language series, such as Channel 4's Walter Presents, an online streaming service from the British network, which screens only non-English-language series. Deutschland '83 had its U.K. premiere on Channel 4 before streaming as a box set on Walter Presents. "Many countries were very reluctant [in the past to] take German programs because of the language," said Susanne Muller, executive director of feature films at German public broadcaster ZDF. "Now in this fragmented market, our German product is broadcast in the U.K. on BBC Four with subtitles. This was not possible many years ago. We have a new way of bringing things to the market." Another market pressure driving the German TV renaissance is Netflix. The SVOD giant has moved aggressively into Germany, commissioning its first series, Dark, from the production company behind German foreign-language Oscar winner The Lives of Others. Amazon is also betting on German TV, ordering up the drama Wanted from Matthias Schweighofer, one of the country's biggest film stars. "Netflix and Amazon don't have a huge subscriber base yet in Germany, but they're having a big impact on the industry because everyone is moving in reaction to them," says Jorg Winger, a producer and co-writer on Deutschland '83. "The networks are ordering the edgy stuff because they're worried they'll get left behind." That pressure explains ZDF, an often stodgy German public broadcaster, commissioning Morgen hor ich auf (I'll Stop Tomorrow), a Breaking Bad-style drama about a family man who takes to counterfeiting to pay down his mounting debts. Or Weinberg, a Twin Peaks-esque surreal mystery, set in German wine country, which ran on German pay-TV network TNT last fall. Or Babylon Berlin, a $45 million crime drama set in 1920s Berlin, which public broadcaster ARD and pay-TV network Sky Deutschland are co-financing and Cloud Atlas director Tom Tykwer is showrunning, together with directors Hendrik Handloegten and Achim von Borries. Babylon Berlin, which is set to begin shooting later this year, is certain to be a hot title at MIPTV 2017. "We've been knocking at the door for sometime now, but a lot of the big broadcasters, particularly in the U.S., didn't taking us seriously," says Jan Mojto, head of Beta Film, which is backing and handling international sales on shows such as Babylon Berlin and NSU. "That's changed. Now, at least, we have a seat at the table. We have to see what we do with it." The final lumps of coal were burned last week at the last remaining coal-fired power plant in Belgium, signaling an end to the coal power era in yet another European country. Just last month, Scotlands 115-year-long dependence on the dirty, carbon emission-spewing power source came to an end as the Langonnet power stationonce the largest coal plant in Europewas switched off March 24. With plants idled all over the continent, now more than a quarter of European Union nations have quit coal, with Belgium and Scotlands shutdowns bringing them in line with coal power-free countries Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. They will be joined by larger EU nations come 2025, when Portugal, Austria, Finland, and the rest of the U.K. have promised to rid their power grids of one of the dirtiest forms of energy production. While fossil fuels such as natural gas are still part of these nations energy equations, clean renewable power from wind and solar farms are meeting record levels of their electricity needs. Belgium going coal free is yet another proof that the golden days of the coal industry are over, Joanna Flisowska, policy coordinator at Climate Action Network Europe, said in a statement. This is good news for the climate. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the EU has to ensure that carbon emissions from its coal power plants are cut down much faster than their current rate. Now for the first time, the argument for cutting carbon emissions in favor of the environmentbut at the expense of economic growthisnt holding up. Annual global C02 emissions stayed flatat 32.1 billion tonsfor the second year in a row despite the global economy growing by more than 3 percent in back to back years, according to the latest data from the International Energy Agency. In the 40 years the agency has been providing C02 emissions data, there have been four times when emissions stood still or dropped, three of which were associated with global economic weakness; the 1970s oil crisis, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the Recession in 2009. Story continues But for 2014 and 2015, the economy didnt take the hit that typically comes in tandem with stagnating emissions. We now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement March 16. Coming just a few months after the landmark COP21 agreement in Paris, this is yet another boost to the global fight against climate change. Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer at energy company Scottish Power, said carbon taxes and a government-wide push to cleaner, and now cost competitive renewable energy sources is what drove the ouster of Scotlands Longannet plant, stating that keeping it in operation would be uneconomic. Now, the company banking heavily in renewable energy systems, having already invested nearly $1 billion on six onshore wind farms under construction. For the first time in more than a century no power produced in Scotland will come from burning coal, said Hugh Finlay, Scottish Power energy director said in a statement. Although Scottish Power is at the forefront of renewable energy development, we will be reflecting today on the important contribution that Longannet has made in keeping the lights on for millions of homes and businesses for nearly half a century. Sign the Petition: Ensure Renewable Energy Development Gives Back to the Environment Related stories on TakePart: Scotland to Build Worlds Largest Floating Wind Farm U.S. Turns to SolarNot Coalto Meet Power Needs U.S. Coal Production Falls to 30-Year Low as Solar Powers Up Original article from TakePart LONDON, April 7 (Reuters) - Formula One teams have called for a return to last year's qualifying format after rejecting a proposal backed by the governing FIA to switch to an aggregate format, team sources said on Thursday. The teams stated their united position in a letter to commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone and International Automobile Federation (FIA) head Jean Todt who have both said there can be no going back. The impasse is likely to mean a new elimination format introduced this season, widely condemned by fans and teams as a failure, will remain in place for at least next week's Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai. Any change to the 2016 regulations requires the unanimous approval of the FIA's F1 commission which groups the teams and governing body as well as other stakeholders. Teams agreed at last weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix to vote by Thursday on the compromise solution which would see each driver do at least two laps in each of the three phases of qualifying with the times aggregated. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Tony Jimenez) News reporters can be as professional as they come, but sometimes life has a funny way of turning what should otherwise be a serious segment into a comedic blooper. While we've covered news bloopers before (this compilation of 2015 missteps is certainly worth taking a look at), News Be Funny recently came out with an entirely fresh batch of bloopers that should be good for more than a few laughs ahead of the weekend. DON'T MISS: 5 free tools that will change the way you watch Netflix The beginning of the clip is actually quite harrowing and features a news reporter almost getting clipped by an out of control car. Following that, things become a little bit more lighthearted. From an Irishman bemoaning how Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day to a weatherman making a crude joke about his coworkers, the video below is a great way to relax and head into the weekend. One particularly interesting segment worth checking out starts at about the 3:45 mark and features a weather reporter making an endless stream of Batman v Superman puns. Another great clip, and one we highlighted a few weeks ago, involves a news team paying tribute to Phife Dawg from A Tribe Called Quest by casually dropping a number of Tribe lyrics into the daily traffic report. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_IrozsK1qA Related stories 10 great movie bloopers that made it to the final cut How to stream every episode of Game of Thrones season 6 for free Amazon is having a big one-day sale on flash drives and memory cards More from BGR: Meet the first web browser with real potential to be better than Chrome This article was originally published on BGR.com Tharrawaddy (Myanmar) (AFP) - A Myanmar court on Friday freed dozens of jailed students, in the first wave of detainee releases after Aung San Suu Kyi pledged that the release of activists and political prisoners would be the first priority of her new government. "You 69 are all freed now without charges," said Chit Myat, township judge at the Tharrawaddy court, ending the prosecution of those students over an education protest that was crushed in a violent police crackdown in March 2015. North Korea on Friday launched the latest in a series of vicious personal attacks on South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, describing her as a "matchless evil woman" intent on war. The verbal assault from the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) followed Park's participation last week in a nuclear security summit hosted by US President Barack Obama in Washington that condemned Pyongyang's continued nuclear weapons push. A CPRK spokesman said Park's behaviour and comments at the summit resembled "the epileptic fit of a despicable confrontational maniac." Military tensions on the divided Korean peninsula have been rising since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, and a long-range rocket launch a month later that was seen as a disguised ballistic missile test. The North's state media had carried a number of similar verbal attacks on Park, employing coarse and often highly sexist language in condemning her uncompromising stance towards Pyongyang and the South's alliance with the United States. Friday's statement, published by the official KCNA news agency, said Park's insistence on the North abandoning its nuclear weapons programme proved she was "the worst blockhead, ignorant of how the world goes around." "The matchless evil woman pushed North-South relations to a total stalemate and increased the danger of a war," it said, criticising her "dirty existence" and "rabid dog" behaviour. The statement came a few days after an official North Korean website released a new propaganda video portraying a multiple rocket attack on the presidential Blue House in Seoul. "She cannot find shelter, even in the US," the CPRK spokesman warned. The Korean-language version of the same statement used even stronger language, calling Park "Obama's prostitute" who sold Korea's national interests to foreign forces. Story continues The South Korean government responded angrily to the abusive tone. "The government strongly warns North Korea against slandering our leader with unspeakable vulgar language ... and issuing physical threats," said Park Soo-Jin, deputy spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry in Seoul. President Park has taken a hardline with Pyongyang since the January nuclear test, leading calls for tough international sanctions and vowing a strong military response to any direct provocations from the North. Raipur: As many as 297 couples hailing from extremely poor families in Chhattisgarhs north Bastar district of Kanker have been forced into live-in relationships for a year after having failed to enter into wedlock, thanks to official apathy. The local women and child welfare department could not furnish details about these couples to the state government to enable them to attend the mass marriage programme at Koyilibeda in Kanker district on Thursday, thus postponing their official union for at least one year, a senior state government officer disclosed this newspaper. The couples who could not marry will have to observe the local tradition of paithu, in which they will live together, till they tie the knot officially, he added. We could conduct marriages of only 20 couples and had to return the remaining 297 couples owing to failure of submission of required information on them to the state government, a senior district officer told this newspaper. According to him, the state government had set a target for the district women and child welfare department to arrange 317 couples from extremely poor families to conduct their marriage under the Mukhya Mantri Kanyadan Yojana in the outgoing financial year 2015-16. Under the scheme, each couple attending the mass marriage programme is provided a financial aid of Rs 15,000 to start their conjugal life. The funds earmarked for the purpose to the district for 2015-16 has lapsed as the authorities concerned have failed to furnish details of the other eligible 297 couples, forcing them to wait for the next such programme to marry. By Denis Dyomkin and Nailia Bagirova BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan and Armenian-backed separatists said on Friday they had struck a temporary deal to allow each side to safely search for the bodies of their soldiers killed in clashes over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The warring parties agreed a ceasefire on Tuesday - with Russian help - after four days of shelling and artillery strikes which killed dozens. The truce has largely held, though both sides have reported some violations. The violence prompted fears of an all out war in the strategically-important South Caucasus through which Caspian Sea oil and gas is exported to world markets bypassing Russia. On Friday, the Azeri defense ministry and the Nagorno-Karabakh defense ministry said they had sealed a deal to ensure there were no violations for a five-hour period later in the day to allow both sides to search for their dead. An official at the Armenian defense ministry used social media to post the names and photographs of 44 separatist soldiers who he said were killed in the clashes since April 2. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was on Friday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to hold talks with Ilham Aliyev, the Azeri president, aimed at resuming diplomatic efforts to resolve the territorial dispute. "Russia, no less than Azerbaijan and Armenia, has an interest in there being peace in this region, our region," Medvedev said. "The ceasefire agreement is the foundation for unfreezing talks between Baku and Yerevan." Any progress towards a permanent settlement of the dispute is likely to be halting. Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous enclave within Azerbaijan's borders, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians who reject Azerbaijan's rule. With support from Armenia they fought a war in the early 1990s to establish de facto control over the territory. The fighting this week was the most intense since a 1994 ceasefire that stopped the conflict but did not resolve the underlying dispute. Azerbaijan says the only outcome of negotiations it will accept is the restoration of its control over Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts that are held by the separatists, while the Armenians say they will never agree to Nagorno-Karabakh being under Baku's control. Medvedev's visit to Azerbaijan, a day after he was in the Armenian capital for talks, showed Moscow was staking out a lead role in mediating in the conflict. Russia's active diplomacy overshadowed the United States, which has extensive interests in the South Caucasus region that includes Azerbaijan and Armenia. (Reporting by Nailia Bagirova and Denis Dyomkin in BAKU and Hasmik Mkrtchyan; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe) By Asma Alsharif CAIRO (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's financial support for strategic ally Egypt will no longer involve "free money" and will increasingly take the form of loans that provide returns to help it grapple with low oil prices, a Saudi businessman familiar with the matter said. "This is a change in strategy. Return on investment is important to Saudi Arabia as it diversifies sources of revenue," the businessman told Reuters on Friday during what has been described as a "historic" visit to Cairo by Saudi King Salman. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait showered Egypt with billions of dollars after then-military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. But low oil prices and differences over regional issues have called into question whether such strong support is sustainable. Egypt is struggling to revive an economy hit by years of political upheaval since the 2011 uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, as well as an Islamist insurgency based in the Sinai Peninsula. The more measured Saudi approach could increase pressure on Sisi to deliver on promises of an economic turnaround and job creation in the most populous Arab nation through infrastructure mega-projects. "Saudi Arabia will be making investments and soft loans. No more free money," said the businessman. Gulf monarchies applauded Sisi after he seized power in 2013, removing the Muslim Brotherhood -- seen as an existential threat to their wealthy nations -- and mounting the fiercest crackdown on dissent in Egypt's modern history. Sisi went on to become elected president on promises of stability but cracks are beginning to appear in what was once the cult-like adulation he enjoyed among many Egyptians, with television talk show hosts increasingly critical of government officials. The Gulf Arab allies have grown increasingly disillusioned at what they see as Sisi's inability to address entrenched corruption and inefficiency in the economy, and at Cairo's reduced role on the regional stage. Riyadh's new approach does not mean the Gulf States will abandon Egypt financially or politically. With Iraq, Syria and Yemen immersed in civil war, and Saudi Arabia preoccupied by its region-wide rivalry with Iran, Riyadh is determined to stop the Egyptian state from failing. It will maintain some aid despite its own tighter budgets from falling global oil prices, analysts say. Saudi Arabia is expected to sign a $20 billion deal to finance Egypt's oil needs for the next five years and a $1.5 billion deal to develop its Sinai region, two Egyptian government sources told Reuters. Saudi businessmen are investing $4 billion in projects including the Suez Canal, energy and agriculture, and have already deposited 10 percent of that sum in Egyptian banks, the deputy head of the Saudi-Egyptian Business Council said this week. (Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) The imagery is obvious: President Obama returning to the very place where he taught the Constitution, asking Senate Republicans to live up to it. The presidents town hall Thursday afternoon at the University of Chicago Law School represented the latest Democratic push for Senate hearings and a vote on Merrick Garland, the presidents Supreme Court nominee, whom he tapped last month. Senate Republicans have argued they already fulfilled their legal obligation to advise and consent on Garlandby advising Obama they wont consent to moving forward with his nomination. In a discussion with his former law-school colleague David Strauss, the president framed the Supreme Court fight as a possible source of further division between the parties and an unwelcome transformation of U.S. courts. If you start getting into a situation where the process of appointing judges is so broken, so partisan, that an eminently qualified jurist cannot even get a hearing, Obama said, then we are going to see the kinds of sharp, partisan polarization that have come to characterize our electoral politics seeping entirely into the judicial system. And the courts will be just an extension of our legislatures, and our elections, and our politics. If Republicans keep their promise, Garland, a Chicago-area native whos now chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, may end up not being considered at all by the Senate. Obama chose him deliberately: The president digs his values, personal history, and jurisprudence, but also wanted a candidate who is well respected on both sides of the aisle in the hopes that hed be hard for Republicans to ignore. Obama said Thursday that Garland may be as good of a judge as we have in this country right now. Recommended: Five Ways the Republican Race Could End No one has plausibly made an argument that this is not the kind of person wed want on the Supreme Court, he said. The question then becomes, why is it so hard for the guy just to get a hearing and a vote? Story continues It has to do with how we as a democracy operate. The inter-party battle over an Obama nominee began in February when Justice Antonin Scalia died on a hunting trip at a Texas ranch. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sent out a statement that day that established the party line: The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice, he said. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president. His memo was sent roughly an hour after Scalias death was confirmed, shortly before the president announced his own intention to fill the seat. Republicans across the country immediately got on board, citing input from voters, Obamas liberal agenda, and the timing of the vacancy as justifications for delaying the appointment. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that its been standard practice over the last nearly 80 years that Supreme Court nominees are not nominated and confirmed during a presidential election year. (The New York Times has a helpful graphic that suggests the timeline isnt so simple.) Now, more than two months since Scalias death, Republicans and Democrats are waging mirroring PR campaigns about the nomination (with the slogans #BidenRule and #DoYourJob, respectively). Most Republicans, though not all, have refused to meet with Garland. Fired-up Senate-floor speeches from both parties have become routine. In swing-state primary races, Democrats and liberal interest groups are pushing incumbent Republicans to ignore their partys position. Recommended: The Obama Doctrine In Chicago on Thursday, Obama elevated the stakes: He suggested this kind of polarization would effectively break the judicial branch. If the courts are more politicized, citizens will lose confidence in judges ability to be fair and to issue legitimate rulings. Its not just a matter of whos occupying that ninth seat in the Supreme Court, he said. It has to do with how we as a democracy operate. He suggested Republican inaction could precede Democratic inaction years from now, when a conservative is in the White House looking to fill a seat. It is inconceivable, he said, to expect Democrats to agree to hearings and a vote in the future if Republicans dont hold them now. Although he didnt let Democrats totally off the hooknoting they, too, have used filibustering to block Republican nomineeshe blamed Republicans for creating a harmful precedent. They have decided that placating [their] base is more important, he said than upholding their constitutional and institutional roles in our democracy. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Foreign buyers own one in every 10 condos built in downtown Toronto since 2010, according to a study by Canada's national housing agency, which looked at the share of offshore ownership in condominiums across the country. The report, from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), found that international buyers were most likely to invest in newer condos in two key markets, Vancouver and Toronto, and that interest in those markets was growing. "In the Toronto and Vancouver CMAs, the shares of foreign ownership also showed a statistically significant increase from 2014 to 2015," the report stated, noting that the high number of new completions in 2015 merited further analysis. The study is the latest by the agency as it looks to help quantify the role foreign buyers are playing in the two red hot real estate markets, where sky-rocketing prices are pushing housing out of the grasp of local residents. Foreign investment, particularly from Mainland China, in the luxury segment of the market is increasingly being blamed for driving up prices across the two metropolitan regions. In the Greater Toronto metropolitan area, 7.4 percent of newer condos are held by offshore owners, while in the city center the number was 10.1 percent, according to the study. In metro Vancouver, 6 percent of condos built in 2010 or later were owned by foreign buyers. The report did not break out downtown Vancouver ownership figures. When factoring in older buildings, the CMHC found that 3.3 percent of all condos in metro Toronto were held by offshore owners and 3.5 percent in metro Vancouver. (Reporting by Julie Gordon in Vancouver; Editing by Andrew Hay) Bengaluru: An improper remark by a professor of the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru has kicked off a furore. According reports, the professor scorned a girl for wearing shorts to class. In protest against this public shaming, all girl students wore shorts to the professors class the next day. The professor not only rebuked the student for wearing shorts, but also questioned her integrity. The argument put forth by the professor was uncalled for and was emphatically protested by other students. Not deterred of consequences, the girl student tried to discuss the issue with the professor, but in vain; the professor went on lambasting her, said a student of the law college. The outraged students took to social media platforms to put forth their views. The Vice Chancellor has taken cognisance of the situation; however we demand that a special committee be formulated to look into the situation and immediate action be taken against the professor. The professor is open to any such inquiry, a student said. By Elizabeth Piper LONDON (Reuters) - David Cameron had hoped to focus on campaigning to keep Britain in the EU before a referendum in June, but questions about his wealth, government spending and a steel crisis have blurred the prime minister's message. After four days and four different statements over his late father's inclusion in the "Panama Papers", Cameron said on Thursday he once had a stake in his father's offshore trust and had profited from it, spurring calls for the leader to resign. It is unlikely Cameron will follow Iceland's prime minister and leave office over the documents, which show how the world's rich and powerful stash their wealth, but the blow to his image could hurt his campaign to persuade Britons to stay in the European Union. On Thursday, Cameron used a television interview to admit he had a holding in his late father's Panamanian trust, Blairmore, but had sold it in 2010 before becoming prime minister. "Of course I did own stocks and shares in the past - quite naturally because my father was a stockbroker. I sold them all in 2010, because if I was going to become prime minister I didn't want anyone to say you have other agendas, vested interests," he told ITV television. "We owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000 pounds." ($42,000) He underlined that he had paid tax on the dividends and on the profits, and said his father had left him 300,000 pounds on his death. He also suggested he had not immediately detailed his affairs because he had struggled with the critical coverage of his father, "a man I love and admire and miss every day". Cameron said the unit trust was not set up to avoid tax but to invest in dollar-denominated shares and he also promised to publish his tax returns. RICH There is no indication that he or his father had done anything illegal, but by casting a spotlight on the Eton-educated Cameron's wealth, the admission has fueled a public perception that his Conservative Party rules to protect the rich while punishing the poorest with its austerity push. Opposition politicians said his initial reluctance to describe his financial connections with his late father after the Panama Papers were leaked on Sunday begged more questions of the leader, who has championed policies to reduce tax avoidance. "Far from being the end of the matter, the questions keep coming," said Tom Watson, deputy leader of the opposition Labour Party. "Did the prime minister know that this fund was linked to tax avoidance? If so, when, and if not, why not? Given that he claimed that "sunlight is the best disinfectant", why has it taken six years for this to come to light?" Calls for Cameron to resign trended on Twitter, with one user saying that if "Iceland can do it, I'm bloody sure the UK can too". Others accused him of hypocrisy for having used an offshore unit while calling for an end to tax avoidance. Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson quit his position on Tuesday after the leaked files showed his wife owned an offshore firm with big claims on Iceland's collapsed banks. Government ministers played down any chance of Cameron's removal from power, but the revelations will only fuel growing discontent in his ruling Conservative Party over the leading role he is playing in the campaign to keep Britain in the EU. The June 23 referendum on Britain's EU membership has split the party, with many accusing the prime minister of breaking his promise not to undermine the "Out" campaign by spending 9 million pounds of government money on pamphlets they say are biased in favor of remaining in. Accusations that his government has allowed Britain's steel industry to all but collapse, leaving thousands out of work, have further eroded his public appeal as the leader of the "In" campaign. At a campaign outing on Thursday to rally youngsters to his cause, Cameron was ambushed by students, fielding questions touching on his "personal experience of tax avoidance", his refusal to bail out the steel industry and whether he felt government pamphlets gave the "In" campaign an unfair advantage. Asked whether Cameron was now tarnished, Nick Boles, the skills minister, said that perhaps with hindsight, Cameron should have detailed his financial affairs earlier. "I don't think it has (done damage)," he told BBC radio. "I think people are fair-minded." (Additional reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) Cutting through the countryside of southern New Zealand: The braided Rakaia River carries glacial runoff from #NewZealands Southern Alps to the Pacific Ocean. A photo posted by Planet Labs (@planetlabs) on Apr 5, 2016 at 9:36am PDT A similar view of the braided Rakaia was voted the most popular satellite image among DigitalGlobe fans. So whats a braided river exactly? It has a channel that consists of a network of small channels separated by small and often temporary islands called braid bars or, in British usage, aits or eyots. Braided streams occur in rivers with high slope and/or large sediment load. Braided channels are also typical of environments that dramatically decrease channel depth, and consequently channel velocity, such as river deltas, alluvial fans and peneplains. Braided rivers, as distinct from meandering rivers, occur when a threshold level of sediment load or slope is reached. (See all Orbital Views here) Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. On an autumn afternoon in 2014, Elijah Pontoon was riding in the passenger seat of a Honda Accord driven by a female companion, Lakeya Hicks, when they were stopped by an Aiken, South Carolina, police officer on a busy thoroughfare near downtown. What happened next is in dispute. A lawsuit filed in federal court and dashcam video footage of the traffic stop suggest it was an egregious civil-rights violation of black motorists, conducted on the pretense of a drug search. The city of Aiken claims that its cops acted lawfully and unobjectionably. Video footage of the stop is the easiest place to begin. In the footage above, Officer Chris Medlin of the Aiken Department of Public Safety tells the motorists that he stopped them because of the paper tags on their newly purchased car. But theres no law against having temporary tags in the state. The passenger was asked for his identification, although he was under no obligation to provide it, regardless of whether the tags were expired. At that point, the tags checked out, and the traffic stop ought to have been over. Recommended: The Obama Doctrine Instead, Medlin called for a drug dog. Because of your history, Ive got a dog coming in here, the police officer declared, referencing the passengers decade-old narcotics conviction. Gonna walk a dog around the car. Four police officers conducted a thorough search. When they came up empty-handed, the stop still didnt end. Radley Balko analyzes the next part of the video at the Washington Post: After the search of the car comes up empty, Medlin tells the female officer to search her real good, referring to Hicks. The personal search of Hicks is conducted off camera, but according to the complaint filed by Phillips, it allegedly involved exposing Hickss breasts on the side of the road in a populated area. The complaint also alleges that this was all done in direct view of the three male officers. That search, too, produced no contraband. The officers then turn their attention to Pontoon. Medlin asks Pontoon to get out of the car. He cuffs him and begins to pat him down he tells Pontoon: Youve got something here right between your legs. Theres something hard right there between your legs. Medlin says that hes going to put some gloves on. The anal probe happens out of direct view of the camera, but the audio leaves little doubt about whats happening. Pontoon at one point says that one of the officers is grabbing his hemorrhoids. Medlin appears to reply, Ive had hemorrhoids, and they aint that hard. ...the audio actually suggests that two officers may have inserted fingers into Pontoons rectum, as one asks, What are you talking about, right here? The other replies, Right straight up in there. Pontoon then again tells the officers that theyre pushing on a hemorrhoid. One officer responds, If thats a hemorrhoid, thats a hemorrhoid, all right? But that dont feel like no hemorrhoid to me. The officers apparently continue to search Pontoons rectum for another three minutes. They found no contraband. At 12:50:25, Medlin tells Pontoon to turn around and explains that he suspects him because he recognized him from when he worked narcotics. Now I know you from before, from when I worked dope. I seen you. Thats why I put a dog on the car. That was Medlins reasonable suspicion to call for a drug dog he thought he recognized Pontoon from a drug case. Medlin could well have been correct about recognizing Pontoon. He has a lengthy criminal history that includes drug charges, although his record appears to be clean since 2006, save for one arrest for failure to comply. Of course, even if Medlin did recognize Pontoon, that in itself isnt cause to even stop him, much less search his car, or to subject him to a roadside cavity search. With no contraband and no traffic violation to justify the stop in the first place, Medlin concluded the stop by giving Hicks a courtesy warning, although according to the complaint, theres no indication of what the warning was actually for. Story continues Summing up, the video appears to show an illegal stop followed by a series of illegal searches, culminating in an intrusive cavity search, all with no evidence of any criminal behaviorafter all that, no drugs were found. Recommended: Why Trump Is Doomed With Black Voters How can the city of Aiken defend that behavior? In the citys telling, the video gives a misleading impression of events. The traffic stop was a legal stop conducted as part of an ongoing narcotics investigation based on information received from a documented, reliable informant, city officials declared in a statement. A local newspaper adds that the statement also denies that officers conducted a cavity search or exposed anyones private body parts to public view. This strikes me as a highly suspicious excuse. Even if it were true, its a claim that all a cop needs is one compliant informant to serve up a tip to justify any illegal stop. But lets say that there was a legitimate tip. In the citys telling, an informant, likely a criminal, told police, as part of an ongoing investigation, that this particular car, or one of the people in it, was carrying drugs. A single cop pulled them over, lying about the reason for the stop in order to hide the existence of the informant. A drug dog was summoned, and a thorough search of the car and pat downs of both passengers turned up neither drugs nor paraphernalia nor lots of cash. At that point, the cops couldve concluded that their informant was lying or mistaken. Instead, they decided that the best course of action was to put on gloves and probe a mans anus closely enough that an argument ensued about hemorrhoids. Now, people do hide drugs in their bodily cavities. In theory, anyone at anytime could have a balloon full of heroin tucked into their most intimate parts. Recommended: The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet Must the public accept cops probing individuals to check just in case? Even in Aikens narrative, the behavior of the cops strikes me as ludicrous as a matter of law and common sense. With regard to the Fourth Amendment, Balko explains: The Supreme Court has laid out a series of balancing tests to evaluate the legitimacy of these sorts of searches. The factors to consider are the scope of the intrusion, the manner in which the search is conducted, the justification for the search and the place where the search is conducted. The search of Pontoon seems extreme by all four measurements. The scope of the intrusion couldnt be much more severe. It appears that two officers stuck fingers into his rectum. The manner? Well, it was done by two cops, not doctors. And it was done as Pontoon lay on the street, not in an examination room. The justification? Officer Medlin might have remembered Pontoons face from doing drug cases years ago. The place? On the side of the road, in public, near downtown Aiken. The cops appear to be in clear violation of the law. Stepping back, there's the question of what the law ought to be. And it seems to me that theres a choice before Americans. Do they want to be the sort of society where armed agents of the state occasionally probe the rectums or vaginas of innocents in search of drugs, or the sort of society where actual drug dealers can, with forethought, occasionally conceal a tiny amount of illegal narcotics from police officers? The right choice in a civilized society seems clear to me. Yet it is not the choice that Americans have made. I am constantly astonished that a nation of people who are too libertarian for national ID cards or strict gun control permit a status quo in which agents of the state routinely penetrate the most private of parts. And it happens all the time! The logical end of the states position? If I described it, you wouldnt believe me, so Ill conclude with some other cases that illustrate what citizens of this country allow to happen. David Eckert was pulled over for rolling a stop sign. A police K-9 that wasnt certified to do drug searches alerted to the presence of marijuana, but the cops couldnt find any, so they went to a judge, who granted a body-cavity search warrant. The cops wanted the search carried out by medical professionals, but they had to go to two hospitals before they found doctors who were willing to cooperate. Tim Lynch has the rest of the story. First, the doctors took an x-ray of Eckerts abdomen, which showed no hidden drugs, he explained. Next, they forcibly probed Eckerts anus with their fingers, which again uncovered no drugs. Undeterred, the doctors inserted an enema and forced Eckert to defecate in front of the officers: again, no drugs. The enema search was repeated twice, and still no drugs were found. Another x-ray was taken: no drugs. To cap off Eckerts nightmare ordeal, the officers had the doctors sedate him and perform a colonoscopy, probing his anus, colon, rectum, and large intestines. No drugs found. All of this was done against Eckerts protest, in a county not covered by the search warrant, with part of the search done after the warrant had expired. That was a response to suspicion of possessing a tiny amount of marijuana! My blood would boil at even a single case like that, especially if the police officers involved kept their jobs. What I cant fathom is why Americans tolerate this when it happens so frequently that multiple examples have now made their way onto YouTube. Heres one: Heres another: Here's a news story about a cavity search scandal in Atlanta: Here's another example from Chicago: The ubiquity of cavity searches allows sadistic cops to get away, for awhile, with behavior like this: Four Milwaukee police officers were charged Tuesday with felonies related to illegal rectal searches of suspects on the street and in police district stations over the past two years. In one case, an officer held a gun to a man's head as two others held his arms and a third put him in a choke hold while jamming a hand into his anus, purportedly searching for evidence, according to the criminal complaint. Another man bled from his rectum for several days after his encounter with police, the complaint says. The complaint lays out in graphic detail how the primary suspect, Officer Michael Vagnini, conducted searches of men's anal and scrotal areas, often inserting his fingers into their rectums. Vagnini acknowledged performing one of the searches. At least one suspect said Vagnini planted drugs on him. There are many more examples. And for what? Every year, authorities seize literal tons of illegal narcotics. Even that doesnt make a dent in the drug supply. And Americans are expected to accept that the War on Drugs is going to be won, lost, or even significantly affected by whatever petty amounts of crack or heroin or marijuana can be concealed within a rectum or vagina? U.S. drug policy is a daily parade of insanity. And nearly every American lives reasonably close to scheduled meetings of city officials who are empowered to order their local police forces to eschew cavity searches. Its time to end the violations. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. (Reuters) - The 17-year-old daughter of late actor Paul Walker has reached a $10.1 million settlement with the estate of the man driving the car that crashed and killed them both in 2013, her attorney said on Friday. Walker was a passenger in a 2005 Porsche Carrera GT driven by Roger Rodas when the car, traveling at speeds of 80 to 93 miles per hour (129 to 150 kilometers per hour), careened into trees and a utility pole in Santa Clarita, northwest of Los Angeles. Meadow Walker's attorney, Jeff Milam, said in a statement that the settlement would go into a trust for the teen. The settlement, reached in November 2014, went unnoticed for nearly a year and half because it was filed under "Meadow W.", according to celebrity news website TMZ, which first reported the story. According to Milam's statement, Rodas was only partially responsible for the crash, and the settlement covers a "fraction of what her father would have earned as an international movie star had his life not been tragically cut short." Attorneys for Rodas' estate could not immediately be reached for comment. Walker's death at age 40 led to a lull in production of "Furious 7," the latest movie in the mega-hit action series about illegal street racing that propelled his career. The 2015 film grossed more than $1.5 billion worldwide, making it among the highest-earning films of all time. Milam said the actor's daughter was continuing her lawsuit against Porsche AG and that she "intends to hold the company responsible for producing a vehicle that was defective and caused Paul Walker's death." Meadow Walker, the actor's only child and sole heir, filed the complaint against the German automaker last September, accusing it of skimping on safety features that could have prevented the crash or at least kept him alive. Porsche has maintained that the actor was responsible for his own death. After a four-month investigation, Los Angeles officials said the crash was caused by excessive speed, not mechanical failure. Milam said Paul Walker survived the impact of the crash, but "burned to death because of Porsche's defective design." A federal judge presiding over a similar lawsuit filed by Rodas' estate against Porsche in Los Angeles ruled in favor of the car company on Monday, saying: "Plaintiff has provided no competent evidence that Rodas' death occurred as a result of any wrongdoing on the part of Defendant." (Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Sara Catania and Matthew Lewis) NEW YORK - Stars from the FX network series "The People v. O.J. Simpson" took to the red carpet to celebrate the show's final episode. The 10-episode drama series depicts American sportsman O.J. Simpson's 1994 court trial and acquittal of the murder of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman. It stars Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simpson, John Travolta as his attorney Robert Shapiro and David Schwimmer as family friend Robert Kardashian. "I think it's more of a dissection of the judicial system in Los Angeles in that time period in history, 1994-95, and the connection that we still have and are dealing with today and not just Los Angeles, but all across America," Gooding said of the show. The series also reflects an unwavering obsession with the so-called "trial of the century" that was broadcast on U.S. television throughout its duration. The series final installment will air on the U.S. cable channel next Tuesday. (Reuters) - A jury in St. Louis, Missouri on Thursday rejected a request for about $1.8 billion in damages against Philip Morris USA in a class-action lawsuit that claimed the company misled smokers about the health risks of "light" cigarettes. The lawsuit was filed in 2000 after plaintiffs alleged the Altria Group Inc unit violated Missouri's Merchandising Practices Act in marketing Marlboro Lights. "The jury correctly rejected plaintiffs' allegations of misrepresentation and damages," Murray Garnick said on behalf of Philip Morris USA in a statement. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prohibits the use of "lights" and certain other descriptions unless the manufacturer receives permission to use them. In November, the Illinois Supreme Court also threw out a $10.1 billion verdict against Philip Morris USA in a long-running lawsuit accusing the company of misleading smokers about the health risks of "light" cigarettes. (Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Hay) Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Friday refused to stay the further investigation ordered against former finance minister K.M. Mani in the bar bribery case by the Thiruvananthapuram Vigilance Court. Prima facie no material was produced before the court to grant stay of further investigation, Justice P.D. Rajan observed. Counsel for Mr Mani argued that he was trapped in a fabricated case. The court observed, How can your own police register a false case against a minister of the state? The submission by Mr Mani was not sufficient to grant an interim stay. Hence the petitioner was directed to approach the Vigilance Court and take his contention before it. The court rapped the Vigilance and Crime Branch for their double standard in the case of Mr R. Sukesan, Vigilance SP and the investigating officer in the case. The court was considering a plea filed by Mr Mani seeking to suspend the proceedings till the Crime Branch filed an inquiry report against Mr Sukesan. Mr Mani also sought a directive to the Vigilance Court to accept the final report clearing him of all charges in the bribery case. Observing that there was no urgency in this matter, it posted the case to May 19 for further hearing. The court also asked the Crime Branch to file a detailed counter-affidavit. During the course of arguments, the court asked ADGP Abdul Rasheed appearing for the Crime Branch about the details of the probe being conducted against Mr Sukesan. There should be an order by the state or state police chief barring Sukesan from the investigating duties. It seems VACB does not want to lose the officer, but at the same time they want to take action too, it said. The court also asked whether the probe against Mr Sukesan was a smokescreen created to hide the bar scam. If Mr Sukesan had acted against the minister, why he is yet to be suspended, the court observed. To this the ADGP submitted that unless there was concrete evidence they cannot proceed against Mr Sukesan. The court then asked That means no evidence? The ADGP replied that at this stage they cannot divulge the details. The court criticised the Crime Branch for opting for Thiruvananthapuram Forensic Science Laboratory for the scientific analysis of the call records of Mr Sukesan. The judge added that lab in Kerala was ineffective and that they should seek other labs in India. The further investigation report by VACB giving a clean chit to Mr Mani is pending before the special judge and it will consider it on April 16. MANILA (Reuters) - The United States has allocated more than $120 million in military aid to the Philippines this year, the biggest in about 15 years, a senior Filipino diplomat said on Friday, amid rising tension with China over the disputed South China Sea. Jose Cuisia, Manila's ambassador to Washington, said Manila was also in talks with the United States to acquire a fourth Hamilton-class cutter to strengthen the Philippine capability to patrol the waters. "We got the largest-ever allocation from the U.S. government this year to enhance defense and security of our country," he told members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Manila. Cuisia said Manila received $79 million in annual military aid this year compared to about $50 million in 2015. He said Manila would get an additional $42 million from the new U.S. Southeast Asia Maritime Initiative, a maritime capacity-building program announced by U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who is visiting Manila next week. The two amounts represent the biggest amount of military aid since 2000 when the U.S. military returned to its former colony after the American bases closed in 1992. China claims almost the entire South China Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the waters, through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped every year. Beijing's more assertive pursuit of its claims over the past year or so has included land reclamation and the construction of air and port facilities on some isles and reefs. The Philippines has sought international arbitration on the dispute and a decision is expected late this month or in early May. China has declined to take part. (Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Nick Macfie) By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Friday called for a Church that was less strict and more compassionate towards "imperfect" Catholics, such as those who divorced and remarried, saying "no one can be condemned forever". Francis said gays should be respected but firmly re-stated the Church's position that there are "absolutely no grounds" to equate gay unions to heterosexual marriage. In a 260-page treatise called "Amoris Laetitia," (The Joy of Love), one of the most eagerly awaited pronouncements of his pontificate, Francis quoted Martin Luther King, Argentine Poet Jorge Luis Borges and even the 1987 Danish cult film Babette's Feast to make his case for a more merciful and loving Church. The keenest anticipation centered on what he would say about the full re-integration into the Church of Catholics who divorce and remarry in civil ceremonies. Under current Church teaching they cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sex with their new partner, because their first marriage is still valid in the eyes of the Church and they are seen to be living in an adulterous state of sin. The number of divorces has risen markedly in recent decades in most of the leading economies grouped in the OECD. About 42 percent of marriages in England and Wales ended in divorce in 2013, according to an estimate by the UK Office for National Statistics. "No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves," the pope said. Presenting the document at a packed Vatican news conference, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna, called it "a classic case of the organic development of doctrine," which he described as being a continuation of theological thought without rupture with the past. Progressives have proposed the use of an "internal forum" in which a priest or bishop work with a Catholic who has divorced and remarried to decide jointly, privately and on a case-by-case basis if he or she can be fully re-integrated and receive communion. DISCERNMENT, NOT RIGID RULES Francis seemed to embrace this view, saying he could "not provide a new set of general rules ... applicable to all cases", but he called for "responsible, personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases". Father James Bretzke, professor of moral theology at Boston College, said while Francis did not explicitly give a green light for remarried Catholics to return to communion, "the dots are pretty close together, you can connect them reasonably easily and conclude that he is saying this is a possibility. "If he's not opening the door, he is at least showing you where the key under the mat is." The document appeared to be partly aimed at the pope's own bishops, saying while basic tenets of the faith remain, there had to be more consultation and debate within the Church about how they are applied locally in the type of decentralized institution Francis has called for. Francis said he understood those conservatives who "prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion" but the Church should be more attentive to the good that can be found "in the midst of human weakness". "The Church turns with love to those who participate in her life in an imperfect manner," he said, including in this category those Catholics who are cohabiting, married civilly or are divorced and remarried. Conservative American Catholic author George Weigel said he did not see an opening to the divorced and remarried but rather "a call for the Church to be creative in integrating people in difficult situations". The document, formally known as an Apostolic Exhortation, followed two gatherings of Catholic bishops, or synods, that discussed family issued in 2014 and 2015. In other sections, Francis said young people had to be better prepared for a life-long commitment, praised the "erotic dimension" of love within marriage and said the Church needed a "healthy dose of self-criticism" for in the past preaching that procreation was the "almost exclusive" reason for marriage. (Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Janet Lawrence) Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced on Friday that he had accepted an invitation from the Vatican to attend a conference next week hosted by the pope himself that will focus on social, economic and environmental issues. Related: Sanderss Great Society Plan Could Add $15 Trillion to the Debt The topics are tailor-made for the Democratic presidential contender who has pinned his White House hopes on a message of economic fairness and other pocket-book issues. I am a big, big fan of the pope, Sanders said Friday during an interview MSNBCs Morning Joe. Hes trying to inject this sense of morality into how we do economics ... and we need that absolutely desperately. Specifically, Sanders will attend the Catholic Churchs annual Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences conferences and deliver a speech on April 15. The 74-year-old said he would he would talk about how to create a moral economy during his overseas visit. Related: Heres the Big Risk Sanders and Clinton Are Taking as They Trade Insults Sanders will give his address just four days before the crucial New York primary on April 19. The democratic-socialist, who has beat frontrunner Hillary Clinton in seven of the last eight contests, is hoping to use his recent momentum to pull off a stunning upset in Clintons adopted home state and keep his campaign competitive in the race for delegates. What had been a mostly civil competition has taken a nasty turn in the last few days, with each candidate questioning the others qualifications for the presidency. Sanders seems to be backing down in that argument, for now, but the fracas could be a sign of more personal, bruising attacks to come between the two rivals before the Democratic National Convention this summer. Related: How Voter Anger Finally Erupted and Gave Us Trump and Sanders The news of Sanders invitation came the same day Pope Francis called for a church that was less strict and more compassionate toward imperfect Catholics, including those who are divorced or been remarried. Story continues Its doubtful His Holiness is worried about injecting the papacy into the 2016 presidential election. In February he suggested Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is not Christian for his idea to build a wall along the U.S. southern border to keep out illegal immigrants. The real estate mogul responded in kind, saying: For a religious leader to question a persons faith is disgraceful. No leader, especially a religious leader, has the right to question another mans religion or faith, he said at a campaign event. Trump then accused the Mexican government of using the pope as a pawn. At a brief press conference in New York on Friday Sanders said he hoped to meet the pontiff during his visit. However, such a meeting wouldnt be without its tensions, according to Sanders. He said the two disagree on a host of topics, including gay rights. Still, Sanders said he admires the pope for talking about the worship of money, the greed thats out there. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis on Friday opened doors for divorced and cohabiting Catholics but slammed one shut for gay believers in new Church guidelines on family life. In his 260-page "apostolic exhortation", an update of Church teaching and practice likely to disappoint some Catholic modernisers, Francis strongly reiterates the Church's opposition to the legal recognition of gay relationships. In the most keenly-awaited section of the document, the pontiff urges priests to do more to embrace divorced believers who have remarried in civil ceremonies, implicitly indicating that, in certain cases, the Church's ban on them receiving communion could be lifted. Francis also signals a significant departure from the Church's long-established and often severe condemnation of those "living in sin", emphasising the many barriers, including poverty, that exist to couples marrying before a priest. The exhortation generally reflects Francis's desire to create a more welcoming Church. In a text written in unusually clear, everyday language, he acknowledges that the institution he heads needs "a healthy dose of self-criticism." And the contents are not all about complex theological issues which will have little relevance for non-Catholics. - Sexuality a gift from God - One section urges parents to ensure their children remember to say please, thank you and sorry. Another paragraph, entitled the "erotic dimension of love", describes sexuality as a marvellous gift from God. Another unlikely passage recommends breaking the humdrum of married life with an occasional party. And brides-to-be are given some practical advice: don't spend so much time planning the big day that you arrive exhausted at the altar. "The text reflects the personal experience of Pope Francis who has often shared the path of families in difficulty," said Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who presented the document to the media at the Vatican. Story continues Francis notes that bishops who reviewed Catholic teaching on same sex couples at synods in 2014 and 2015 had observed that "there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family." While the exhortation also expresses opposition to "every sign of unjust discrimination" based on sexual orientation, it includes no positive language about gay relationships. While not unexpected, that will come as a disappointment for gay Catholics who had been encouraged to hope for real change by Francis's famous "Who am I to judge?" remark about homosexuality early in his papacy and a more positive document presented to the first synod, which was shot down by conservatives. In the absence of any new language on gay believers, official Church teaching defaults to the controversial formula that same-sex relationships are "intrinsically disordered." - Divorced not excommunicated - The area in which the missive arguably signals the biggest change to the Church's 1.2 billion followers around the world is in its recognition of the value of the relationships of many cohabiting couples. The text stresses that some couples do not marry because of the expense involved: "Material poverty drives people into de facto unions," it states. In light of such circumstances, "these couples need to be welcomed and guided patiently and discreetly." On believers who have divorced and remarried, the text says it is important they are made to feel part of the Church and encouraged to participate in parish life. "They are not excommunicated and they should not be treated as such," it states. Commentators were divided on how to interpret this. Although the text stresses that the situations of divorced and remarried believers "require careful discernment" it does not explicitly authorise communion for the divorced and remarried. "Francis makes no new law that would be applicable in all cases; he does not establish any kind of 'pathway' back to the sacraments," Catholic commentator Austen Ivereigh wrote for the Crux website. Others emphasised a passage which stated that since responsibility for divorces was not always shared equally, "the consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the same." Conservatives in the Church are fiercely opposed to divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion as they see such a step as a threat to the principle that marriages are indissoluble. Reformers however argue for a more understanding approach to cases where, for example, one partner has been abandoned or where a woman has left a violent partner to protect their children. Francis has already moved to make it easier for Catholics to have their marriages annulled, which may help some people in such cases. By Alastair Sharp TORONTO (Reuters) - Postmedia Network Canada Corp , the country's biggest newspaper publisher, said on Thursday it had initiated a review to consider asset sales and debt and equity restructuring as its losses widened. The publisher said it lost C$225.1 million ($170.96 million) in the three months to the end of February, including a C$187 million impairment charge, in what Chief Executive Officer Paul Godfrey called "an unrelentingly challenging environment." That compared with a loss of C$58.2 million a year earlier. Canadian newsrooms are shrinking in increasing numbers as an oil shock rocks the economy and curtails the appetite of advertisers already distracted by digital outlets. The media retreat is touching small-city newspapers thousands of kilometers apart. Godfrey and Chief Financial Officer Doug Lamb said on a conference call that a decline in automotive advertising was a particular weight as carmakers move more of their ad spend online to digital outlets such as Google search and Facebook. Postmedia said it had formed a special committee to consider non-core asset sales, cost reductions, initiatives to boost sales, and refinancing or repayment of debt and the issuance of new debt or equity. The executives declined to offer further details. Postmedia said it has just under C$650 million of debt outstanding. The value of Postmedia's bonds has plummeted as investors brace for a restructuring. Its shares have fallen to around 6 Canadian cents a share from about C$2 a share in 2014. Volume of shares trading are typically thin, although there has been a spike in activity this month. The company also said that Ted Lodge, a partner at its largest shareholder, hedge fund manager GoldenTree Asset Management LP, had resigned from its board to "focus on GoldenTree's investment in Postmedia." GoldenTree is looking to sell its stake in the company, the Wall Street Journal reported in March, citing unnamed sources. Postmedia's stable of newspapers includes the National Post, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen and Sun tabloids in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Winnipeg. The company said revenue, excluding the contribution of the Sun newspaper chain acquired in April 2015, fell 13.1 percent to C$126.4 million. Including the Sun titles, revenue was C$209.1 million. The company said in January it planned to cut C$80 million in operating costs by the end of fiscal 2017, up from a C$50 million target in July last year. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Alan Crosby) Guwahati: Backwardness of Muslims in India in education and employment is a part of secular political conspiracy, said Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi who accused Congress of exploiting the minority community by keeping them poor and illiterate. Addressing election meetings at Bilasipara, Mankachar and Golakganj in Assam, the BJP leader said the increase in percentage of Muslims living below poverty line during last few decades in states like Assam and West Bengal proves that vote bank politics of secularism has severely affected poor Muslims. The Minister of State for Minority Affairs asked people of Assam to vote for BJP this time and see the change in fortunes of the state and its poor people. "Votes given to BJP will prove to be a blow to the political termite of corruption," he said. He said some political parties, including Congress, think they can politically exploit Muslims by keeping them illiterate and poor and by creating a feeling of insecurity among them. He said the walls of secularism and communalism and fabricated political issues were raised to prevent the light of development from reaching the poor among Muslim community. Had the amount spent on the papers in the name of socio-economic-educational empowerment of minorities, been spent honestly at the ground, there should not have been a single person of these sections living below poverty line, the Union Minister said. "But the money meant for development of poor, reached to the vaults of power-brokers, middlemen and corrupt," he said. Naqvi said the Modi government took steps to ensure the blockade of power-brokers and locked out the 'loot-lobby' from the corridors of power in Delhi. "Our Government has established a system to monitor that every penny meant for development of poor is spent honestly," he said. He said those who allowed the loot of the rights of poor during the last 15 years in Assam will not be spared. "Those who hold the development of the poor as 'hostage', will be punished strictly," he said. Naqvi assured people of Assam that BJP is the guarantee of security, safety and prosperity of all sections of society including Minorities. By Jill Serjeant and Sara Catania NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Celebrity website RadarOnline.com and the National Enquirer on Thursday refused to hand over material sought by authorities investigating threats that the two related media outlets reported actor Charlie Sheen made against a former girlfriend. Sheen's admittedly raucous lifestyle, substance abuse, stints in rehab and fondness for dating porn stars have overshadowed for years the career of the former TV star of "Two and a Half Men." The latest commotion has crossed from celebrity gossip to a battle over press freedom and a possible criminal case. Los Angeles police have opened a criminal investigation of Sheen, and on Tuesday served a search warrant on the New York headquarters of American Media Inc, the parent company of both RadarOnline and the Enquirer. The police probe follows published reports by RadarOnline and the Enquirer about audio in which a man, said to be Sheen, is heard saying he would like to see a former fiancee "have her head kicked in." Neither publication has published the audio. Sheen's attorney and agent did not respond to requests for comment. Dylan Howard, editor-in-chief of the Enquirer and editorial director of RadarOnline, told Reuters the two outlets had no plans to turn over documents or identify their sources. He said the search warrant, signed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, was illegal under both state and federal law that prevents the use of such warrants against media organizations relating to "newsworthy" information. "We do believe that a judge did issue this order against the law, and that's why we will not be complying with its order," Howard said in an interview. The LAPD should emulate the two publications and "uncover the evidence" themselves, he added. There were conflicting views on the legality of warrant. Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware, a non-profit journalists' rights advocacy group, said the Los Angeles Police Department warrant was "flatly illegal" under California law. Jonathan Kotler, journalism professor at the University of Southern California, said there has been little clarity on the issue. The courts "have been all over the place through the years" on so-called shield laws protecting journalists, he said. "Courts dont like shield laws much," Kotler added. The two publications first reported on the audio in late March, saying it was recorded by an unnamed former lover of Sheen. They have reported quotes but have not made the audio available online. Reuters could not verify the voice is Sheen's. According to a copy of the search warrant and an affidavit provided on Thursday by RadarOnline, the Los Angeles police investigation was triggered by Scottine Ross, a former porn actress and onetime fiancee of Sheen, who accused Sheen in a December lawsuit of assault and of having sex with her without revealing he was HIV positive. The affidavit says Ross went to police fearing for her life on March 31 after reading the RadarOnline and Enquirer accounts of threatening statements Sheen allegedly made about her in calls to another unidentified woman. Sheen announced in a November interview that he had been diagnosed with HIV about four years earlier, but said it was "impossible" that he had transmitted the virus to anyone else. (This story has been corrected in 15th paragraph to delete erroneous reference to origin of audio tape) (Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein and Roselle Chen; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Andrew Hay and Leslie Adler) Within the Cuban population, if you have the option you dont live in Little Havana. The Hispanic culture is about pride. Moving up and on is the goal, Frank Rodriguez Melo, a real-estate broker in Miami. For the most part, whatever white men do is viewed to be normal, legitimate, and expected. So if I as a white man advance diversity, people look at me weird, but they pretty much let me keep on doing it, David Hekman, who studies diversity and bias in the workplace. Its like when a friend gives you a great recipe at a dinner party, and when you try to follow it, you say: Wait, theres a lot thats vague here, David Broockman, a business professor, on uncovering a fraudulent study. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. LONDON (Reuters) - British actor Dev Patel tackles numbers and formulas in "The Man Who Knew Infinity", a biopic looking at the life of Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. The drama follows the journey of the Indian accounting clerk, who was brought to England before World War One by Cambridge University professor Godfrey Harold Hardy (Jeremy Irons), as he seeks to prove himself and his theorems. Patel, who admits he is "terrible" at maths, said in an interview the role was both challenging and emotional. "It's daunting but actually when you read the script, it was a very emotional read ... It was actually a very triumphant story for me, a very enlightening film and I wanted more people to know about it, because I didn't know about this incredible man," he said. "If I could help breathe life into his legacy, then I was happy to do so and that's what we did." In the movie, which also stars British actor Toby Jones and writer and comedian Stephen Fry, Patel's character faces challenges such as racism, rejection and serious illness. The 25-year old, known also for "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", said he was able to base his portrayal on photographs of the mathematician and his notebooks. "There was no real physical material that we could mimic, there was no found footage or anything of how he spoke. You know, the cliche is a picture says a thousand words, but it really is true," he said. "We tried to capture the essence of this man and his resilience that you could see in the pictures, you could read in the book. He's fiercely passionate and that's something I could really dial into." "The Man Who Knew Infinity" hits UK cinemas on Friday and U.S. theaters from April 29. (Reporting By Saskia O'Donoghue; Editing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian and Raissa Kasolowsky) Lagos (AFP) - A rehabilitation camp for hundreds of Boko Haram Islamists who have surrendered to the Nigerian military is set to open later in April, a military spokesman told AFP on Friday. More than 800 fighters are expected to receive rehabilitation and skills training in the camp, Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar said. "It is going to be a huge exercise," he added. "The establishment of the camp is in line with best global practices, to rehabilitate those fighters who surrendered or are captured in a war situation." The camp will "empower, deradicalise, retrain and reintegrate" Boko Haram fighters who have laid down their arms, Abubakar told AFP. He did not say where the camp will be located, but said the military will hold a press conference Tuesday to give more details. The general launched a fresh appeal to Boko Haram militants still fighting to lay down their arms and rejoin society. Nigeria's military has in the past been criticised for extensive human rights abuses in the fight against Boko Haram. Human rights group Amnesty International said in a report in February that torture and other ill-treatment by the police and security forces were widespread. An estimated 20,000 people have been killed since Boko Haram began its campaign of violence in 2009 to carve out a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria. More than 2.6 million people have fled their homes since, but some of the internally displaced have recently begun returning after the Nigerian military captured swathes of territory back from the insurgents. The second group of ferries left Greece for Turkey Friday with migrants to be returned across the Aegean Sea as part of a deal between the European Union and Ankara. The boats left the islands of Samos, Kos, and Lesbos with 120 migrants for the Turkish town of Dikili. Many were Pakistani, Turkeys interior minister said, and others were from Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The deportations began Monday as part of a deal to slow the influx of migrants to Europe, and also reduce the human-smuggling business. Under the controversial deal, any migrant who arrived after March 20and who had not filed for asylumwould be deported to Turkey. In exchange, the EU would take an equal number of Syrian refugees. One challenge the EU has faced amid the worst migrant crisis on the continent since World War II is differentiating between those it considers genuine asylum-seekers, typically Syrians, from those it doesnt. The deal is meant to address those concerns. The agreement also would give Turkey around $3.2 billion to help with the millions of Syrians whove fled there since the start of their civil war five years ago. Recommended: Pope Francis Argues That the Church Has Been Too Judgmental About Marriage and Kids After Monday, the first day that boats ferried migrants back to Turkey, protests on the Greek islands shut down further deportations. Some migrants sat in the middle of roads and refused to move. One man, inside the Moria registration camp, climbed to the top of a utility pole Wednesday and threatened to hang himself. Even Friday, as the boats readied to depart, local Greek protesters swam in front of a boat, hoping to stop it. Eventually, the coast guard pulled them from the water and took the protestors to a police station, The Guardian reported. Protesters dive into sea as ferry carrying #migrants prepares to leave #Lesbos returning them to turkey pic.twitter.com/q1Gz608HAG Sophie Long (@S0Long) April 8, 2016 European countries had at first allowed migrants to cross the borders freely. But in early March, Macedonia, Croatia, and Slovenia closed their borders, creating a bottleneck on the migrant route and backlogs in Greece. Story continues About 325 migrants have now been expelled from Greecewith Fridays second round of deportations. Meanwhile, Greek authorities said that in the past 24 hours about 150 more migrants had crossed the Aegean Sea. Many arrived on the same islands from which the others had just been deported. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Mr Yeddyurappa had left the BJP after he was removed as chief minister on corruption charges, floated his own party but later returned to the BJP. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: With an eye on the ensuing Assembly polls in politically-crucial Uttar Pradesh and Punjab next year, the BJP on Friday named an OBC, Keshav Prasad Maurya, and a Dalit, Vijay Sampla, to head the two state units. Former chief minister and Lingayat strongman B.S. Yeddyurappa was also named state unit chief in Karnataka. In addition, the party announced Tapir Gao as its new chief Arunachal Pradesh. Mr Maurya, also a first-time MP from Phulpur, was seen as close to late VHP stalwart Ashok Singhal and had also taken part in the Ram Janambhoomi movement. An OBC, Mr Maurya is also an accused in some criminal cases. In both Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, where the caste factor plays a critical role, naming an OBC and a Dalit to head its state units ahead of next years Assembly elections, the BJP has sent out a strong political message. In Karnataka, where the BJP named Mr Yeddyurappa as state unit chief, his Lingayat caste (OBC) have significant numbers. Assembly elections in this southern state are due in 2018 and the BJP hopes to come back to power by sending out a positive message to the numerically strong and powerful Lingayat community. Mr Yeddyurappa had left the BJP after he was removed as chief minister on corruption charges, floated his own party but later returned to the BJP. He is now Shimoga MP. BSY returned to the BJP ahead of the 2014 elections, helping the party win 17 seats. Moscow (AFP) - Russia's justice ministry on Friday said it was taking preliminary steps to hand over to Kiev four Ukrainian prisoners including film-maker Oleg Sentsov. If it goes ahead as part of an exchange, it would be the first prisoner swap between Kiev and Moscow since relations soured following the 2014 annexation of Crimea and subsequent pro-Kremlin insurgency in east Ukraine. The justice ministry said in a statement it had asked the federal prison service "to prepare the necessary papers to resolve the question of handing over the prisoners", according to the RIA Novosti news agency. The ministry said it asked the prison service to check whether there were any grounds to prevent a handover, while stressing the final decision must be taken by courts. The prison service confirmed it had received the request. Film director Sentsov, 39, was convicted of terrorism in August 2015 over arson attacks on pro-Russia political party offices in Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula annexed by Moscow in March 2014, and sentenced to 20 years in a prison camp. His alleged accomplice, environmental activist Alexander Kolchenko, who was sentenced to 10 years, is also on the list of the prisoners who could be handed to Kiev. Ties between Moscow and Kiev are in tatters over Crimea's annexation and the insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The conflict has killed more than 9,000 since April 2014 and left the rebels in control of a region roughly the size and population of Wales. Ukrainian justice minister Pavlo Petrenko said on March 10 he had asked Moscow to hand over Sentsov, Kolchenko and another man convicted of acting with them, Gennady Afanasyev, as well as Yury Soloshenko, the former director of a defence factory who was convicted of espionage in a secret trial. Russia on Friday did not name jailed Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who was convicted late March, as among those who could be handed over to Kiev. Unless Kiev agrees a swap with Moscow, Savchenko is set to be transferred to a prison colony within the next few days to serve her 22-year sentence over the 2014 deaths of two Russian journalists in east Ukraine. Story continues The jailing of Sentsov, who hails from Crimea and opposes its 2014 annexation by Moscow, prompted protests from international filmmakers including Pedro Almodovar, while Washington called it a "clear miscarriage of justice." Russian senator Igor Morozov, who previously served in the foreign intelligence service, told RIA Novosti: "It's obvious that an exchange is being prepared." He suggested Ukraine would "most likely" hand Russia two suspected Russian soldiers currently on trial in Kiev for fighting with separatist rebels in war-torn east, Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov. New York (AFP) - Democratic White House hopeful Bernie Sanders said Friday he hopes to meet Pope Francis while attending a conference on social and environmental issues at the Vatican next week. The Vermont senator said he was "very moved" by an invitation to join the April 15 Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences meeting, which will see him take a break from a bruising US presidential campaign. But while Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Sanders had been invited to the conference, he told AFP that "has nothing to do with the pope" and that no meeting with Francis is planned. In New York, Sanders told MSNBC that he was "a big, big fan of the pope." "Obviously there are areas where we disagree, on women's rights or gay rights, but he has played an unbelievable role, an unbelievable role of injecting a moral consequence into the economy," Sanders told the channel. He later told reporters that it was "a possibility" that he would meet Francis, but confirmed that nothing was currently scheduled. "It's something that I very much would like to do. The pope's schedule is determined by the Vatican, but I would certainly be enthusiastic about that." Sanders, who is Jewish but whose wife is Catholic, has frequently expressed respect for Francis, who was treated to a rock-star reception on an inaugural tour of the United States last year. The longest-serving independent member of Congress and self-declared democratic socialist is a champion of the struggling working class, and rails against the influence of big banks and billionaires. "We can not, as the pope often tells us, simply be worshippers of greed and money," he told reporters Friday. "We've got to create an economy that works for all people and not just the few." The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences was established by Pope John Paul II in 1994 to promote the study and progress of economics, sociology, law and political science. Story continues Other conference invited attendees include Ecuador's President Rafael Correa and Bolivian President Evo Morales, the organizers said. According to the RealClearPolitics poll average, Sanders trails Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton 42.5 to 53.5 percent in the April 19 New York primary, the next key battleground in the US presidential race. Sanders, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, needs a win in Clinton's adopted home state to help keep alive his dreams of the White House. Catholics are the largest single religious group in New York state. By Eric Auchard and Harro Ten Wolde FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Europe's largest software company, SAP , warned late on Friday that first-quarter results would be weaker than expected due to slower sales of software licenses to corporate customers, particularly in Brazil and the United States. Software license revenues fell 13 percent while the company's newer, but lower-margin cloud software business grew 33 percent. Business customers are shifting to cloud-based software delivered over the Internet instead of relying on older software packages they install and run on in-house computers. "America was a little more lumpy in terms of the signing of contracts," Chief Executive Bill McDermott told reporters on a conference call, noting that U.S. revenue from its classic on-premise software business grew more slowly than expected. First-quarter operating profit, excluding special items, rose 5 percent to 1.10 billion euros ($1.25 billion). Analysts, on average, had been looking for a first-quarter operating profit, excluding special items, of 1.15 billion euros, with 12 estimates ranging from 1.09 billion to 1.25 billion euros, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data. The company also reported revenue of 4.73 billion euros, shy of the I/B/E/S average forecast of 4.83 billion euros. SAP, whose customers include many of the world's biggest multinational corporations, specializes in business applications ranging from accounting to human resources to supply-chain management. The company, and established rivals such as Oracle and IBM , are racing to fend off pure cloud software rivals like Salesforce.com and Workday Inc in the market for running complex business operations. COMEBACK SEEN McDermott said he has "perfect, clear confidence" that SAP can meet the full-year profit targets it had set out in January. He said some software licensing deals the company had expected to close last quarter spilled into the current second quarter. Ongoing political and macroeconomic instability in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, hurt first-quarter results. North America, coming off a very strong fourth quarter, had a slower start to the year, SAP said in a statement. Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa turned in solid software revenues, the company said, while adding that its sales pipeline for 2016 remains strong in all regions. It reiterated that it expects 2016 operating profit, excluding items, to range between 6.4 billion and 6.7 billion euros ($7.0 billion to $7.3 billion) at constant currencies. That represents roughly flat growth to an increase of 6 percent. Analysts, on average, project operating profit of 6.69 billion euros for the current year, according to 27 estimates compiled by Vara Research. SAP plans to publish its full quarterly results on April 20, but pre-announced selected figures because they were materially lower than expected. The first quarter is historically SAP's weakest period of the year and comes after a surge in results late last year, typically its strongest seasonal period. SAP shares closed down 1 percent at 67.37 euros in Frankfurt on Friday. The stock is 11 percent below record high levels set in December when SAP's cloud transition was running smoothly. ($1 = 0.8774 euro) (Reporting by Eric Auchard, Harro ten Wolde and Ilona Wissenbach; editing by James Dalgleish, G Crosse) A.S. Dulat, former Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) chief, known for Track II diplomacy under successive governments, speaks to Namrata Biji Ahuja about the recent arrest of an alleged R&AW officer in Balochistan and says that India does not encourage terrorism like the Pakistanis do. Pakistan has claimed to have arrested a R&AW spy in Balochistan. Do you think the alleged R&AW role in Balochistan, as claimed by Islamabad, stands exposed? Pakistan has a Balochistan obsession. It is not recent; its an old thing. They have a serious problem in Balochistan. I do a lot of Track II dialogue and I met some of these Baloch boys and they are very critical of Pakistan. They openly talk about disappearances and other things. So Pakistan is having a rough time in Balochistan. When you are having a rough time, you want to blame somebody else for it. The easiest thing is to blame the R&AW and India. It is all a figment of their imagination. That we would be in contact with Baloch leaders is a legitimate part of diplomacy, leave alone whatever the R&AW does. There is nothing wrong with that. As far as spies go or espionage goes, that is also an acknowledged part of statecraft. There is nothing new in that. What do you think the arrested Indian was doing there? A senior officer of R&AW, of the level of a naval commander, would never be caught wandering about in Pakistan. How he got there we do not know, and we might not ever know because the only ones who know it are the Pakistanis themselves. And they may never tell us even if they send him back. So the whole truth might never be known. Every time we raise the Kashmir issue to talk of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, Pakistan can use this episode to embarrass us They have always been raising the Balochistan issue. But let us remember what is happening in Kashmir and when we talk of Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), there are international dossiers on those people. Now if Kulbhushan Jadhav (the alleged Indian spy) has an international dossier or if the Americans say this guy is your man, then it will have more credibility. How big is this incident? Do you think it can have an impact on India-Pakistan relations? This is a unique case, it has never happened before. I dont know of any case of an R&AW officer being caught. Small spies are caught and exchanged. There was a Pakistani Brigadier, Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi, the military attache at the Pakistani embassy in New Delhi, who was caught here spying nearly 25 years ago and declared persona non grata. He went back home. That was the most conspicuous case of a high-profile Pakistani officer caught spying and declared persona non grata. I do not think Pakistan should make a big deal out of this issue and it should not affect India-Pakistan relations. I am not too sure how long they would want to continue with the spy story. Pakistan managed to give legitimacy to its Balochistan concern with India at Sharm el-Sheikh by getting it included in the joint statement. This case has given them added ammunition. You are right, Pakistan had also raised the Baloch issue at Sharm el-Sheikh with then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. And Dr Singh being Dr Singh said we dont do these things, but since you are saying, we will have it looked into. Now that they have found an Indian in Pakistan, the best place for them to plonk him was Balochistan to give legitimacy to whatever they have been saying. Do you think the ministry of external affairs response has been wanting in certain aspects? We have been asking for consular access, but we have not got it. And their line is that if he is a spy, we do not need to give you consular access. I dont think there is anything lacking from our side. I feel sorry for our high commissioner and he happens to be a new high commissioner. We know about the severe conditions in Pakistani jails, amongst the worst in the world. The confession video of the Indian appears fabricated. Dont you think we need to take up the issue more forcefully for Pakistan to come clean on the issue? The video could be fabricated, but it is surely tutored. He has been tutored to say whatever they wanted him to say. To concoct stuff becomes necessary only if the guy is not cooperating. I think in this case he would cooperate. Just imagine the plight of an Indian stuck in Pakistan and to be told that you are an Indian spy, you are a R&AW agent, spill the beans. He would say whatever he knows. And this man says he knows some Anil Gupta in R&AW, but there is no Anil Gupta in R&AW at the joint secretary level. What happens next? What should India be doing? The good part about India-Pakistan relations today is that the Prime Ministers have developed a very good chemistry. I think the national security advisers are also getting along well. So I think this should be an NSA to NSA thing where you can say, Ok, an Indian has got into trouble and you have got whatever mileage you wanted out of it and you guys are obsessed with Balochistan. Now lets devise some way of returning him. I think thats how it should be done and Im sure we are working on it. Has it been a regular practice of the R&AW and ISI chiefs being in touch? It has happened from time to time, but it has not been institutionalised, which it should be. Vienna (AFP) - A homeless Austrian man who vandalised dozens of memorials to victims of the Nazis in Salzburg was on Friday sentenced to five years in jail. The 40-year-old serial vandal, who was not named, was accused of 53 acts of vandalism including destroying a monument to euthanasia victims and of daubing black paint five times on a memorial to members of the resistance. In addition he was accused of defacing 10 "stumbling blocks", small brass plaques in honour of people murdered by the Nazis inserted into pavements in front of their old homes. Prosecutors said the Austrian man also painted Nazi symbols on schools, student halls and offices of political parties between 2013 and 2015, causing damage worth 90,000 euros ($103,000). The court in the western Austrian city found him guilty in the overwhelming majority of the incidents, court spokesman Martin Pfarrkirchner told the Austria Press Agency. Prosecutors said they would appeal the ruling. They said he was motived by Nazi ideology but defence lawyers said he was frustrated by his general situation and at being refused access to homeless shelters. "He had a grudge against the state," defence lawyer Joerg Dostal told the court. (Reuters) - UK's Serious Fraud Office has initiated a criminal investigation into Tata Steel's operations, the Telegraph reported on Thursday. Police officers are investigating charges that Tata Steel's staff in and around its Yorkshire's site, may have faked certificates on the composition of the products before its sale, the newspaper said. (http://bit.ly/25Obf0i) Examined documents have affected 500 customers, including BAE and Rolls-Royce, Telegraph said, citing a source. Tata, the biggest steel producer in Britain, has put its British businesses up for sale due to high costs, weak demand and a flood of cheap supplies from top producer China. The British government, under fire for the way it has responded to the crisis, opened talks with potential buyers for Tata Steel's UK operations, including Gupta's Liberty House, earlier this week. (Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler) Unless you are a ballet dancer or in the military occupations where poor posture is readily noticed you probably don't pay much attention to your posture. But if parts of your body such as the neck, shoulders or lower back start to cry out in pain, you may find out that your posture is out of whack. Posture refers to the preferred biomechanical alignment of the body, said Eric Robertson, director of graduate physical therapy education at Kaiser Permanente of Northern California and a spokesperson for the American Physical Therapy Association. Good posture is important because it minimizes the excessive force that muscles and joints need to absorb, he said. Posture is more than just a function of the way someone stands or sits. For example, it also impacts how much pressure these positions place on the lower back and other muscles and joints. What's more, posture can be a reflection of a person's overall health, fitness, and the body's strength and weaknesses, Robertson told Live Science. Health effects of posture There are plenty of reasons to maintain good posture, and doing so can benefit a person's body and mind. [Posture Pointers: 7 Tips for Breaking Bad Habits] The main health risks of poor posture are aches and pains, which can occur right away or down the road, said Jill Henderzahs-Mason, a wellness physical therapist at the Mayo Clinic's Healthy Living Program in Rochester, Minnesota. This discomfort may start in the neck or back, but ultimately, it may affect the hips or knees, she said. People who exhibit bad posture also may be less efficient when they move, Henderzahs-Mason said. "They don't move as well or as fast, and are predisposed to injury," she said. Posture in which the shoulders are hunched forward can even impact breathing, because the diaphragm and the lungs have less room to expand, and this narrows the airways, Henderzahs-Mason told Live Science. There are many other benefits of standing or sitting up straight. For one, it can help people appear taller and feel better about themselves. Psychology studies have suggested that slouchier postures make people look less confident to others, and even feel less competent, Henderzahs-Mason said. There's also some evidence showing that people who walk with a slouched posture have a higher predisposition to depression than those who walk more upright, she noted. Story continues Research also has shown that slumping and slouching may influence a person's thoughts and feelings, and that improving posture could help to boost mood and energy levels. Common posture mistakes There are many factors in people's daily lives that can sabotage posture and throw the body off-balance, such as sitting at a desk for long periods, frequently cradling a phone between the ear and the shoulder, hunching over a laptop, or continually looking down at a smartphone. The body was not physiologically designed to stay in one position, and if you go a long time without changing your position, it can start to stress your body's tissues, Robertson said. To remedy this common posture mistake, he recommended switching positions about every 20 minutes. For example, you can take a break from your desk work to get up and stretch. When women wear high heels, their posture can be shifted forward, causing the lower back to arch too much, Robertson said. Another common problem is when people carry heavy backpacks or bags on one side of the body, which can lead to muscle imbalances, such as muscle tightness or weakness, Henderzahs-Mason pointed out. [5 Surprising Facts About Pain] People who are concerned about having poor posture can get it assessed, Robertson said. A physical therapist can evaluate someone's posture to identify what is out of balance and what might be the cause, he said. A physical therapist may closely watch the way a person walks across a room, to look for any physical imbalances, Henderzahs-Mason said. Sometimes, therapists also take a picture of each patient in front of a posture grid. That photo may offer clues about where treatment needs to focus. For example, it may illustrate that one hip or shoulder is higher than another. It also provides people with important visual feedback about what their posture looks like and what they can do to improve it. To improve posture, a physical therapist may need to manually correct someone's posture so that a person knows what position his or her body needs to be in, or demonstrate how to do certain exercises that could improve tight muscles or help strengthen them. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. By Andrei Khalip LISBON (Reuters) - Portuguese Culture Minister Joao Soares resigned on Friday, a day after threatening to slap critics who had called him incompetent and rude. A post on his Facebook page saying he wanted to slap two newspaper columnists, followed by what was seen as a half-hearted apology, provoked a flurry of calls for him to be sacked. Soares, a Socialist and the son of former president and prime minister Mario Soares, is the first minister to leave the new left-leaning government of Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa, which took over in November. Costa issued a public apology on behalf of his cabinet late on Thursday, saying that the episode "does not reflect how the government wants to relate to people" and that he told his ministers "to be reserved and ... never forget that they are government members." He said on Friday he accepted Soares' resignation. "I respect his decision and I thank him for his efforts and dedication in his job," Costa told reporters. After being called "incompetent" and promoting a "work style of cronyism, domineering and rudeness", Soares said it was time to slap two columnists at influential daily newspaper Publico. "I see that I do have to find him (columnist Augusto Seabra), and now also Vasco Pulido Valente, to give them some sound slapping. It will be good for them. And for me," Soares, 66, wrote on Facebook. After the columnists, media, hundreds of Facebook users and opposition politicians said his remarks were incompatible with a ministerial job, especially in charge of culture, Soares said he "reacted to insults and not opinions" and said: "I am a peaceful man ... I'm sorry if I scared them." The apology was again criticized in the media as tongue-in-cheek and oblivious of the seriousness of the situation. Before the resignation, the main opposition Social Democratic Party attacked the ruling Socialists as a whole, saying Soares represented their "general lack of respect for criticism and freedom of expression". (Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Southern California Gas Co aims to partially restore operations at its crippled Aliso Canyon storage field by late summer, but the facility, scene of the worst-ever U.S. methane leak, will probably take a year to reopen fully, utility officials said on Thursday. The time frame for bringing the facility back on line will unlikely be soon enough to avert natural gas shortages that could disrupt power generation across greater Los Angeles as warm-weather demand for electricity peaks, a top SoCal Gas executive said. "I'm very concerned about the summer, as far as trying to provide gas service to help on that electrical reliability side," Chief Operating Officer Brett Lane told Reuters in a telephone interview. State energy regulators warned on Tuesday that the region faced up to 14 days of blackouts this summer as gas-fired power plants are forced to largely do without supplies normally furnished by Aliso Canyon at times of peak demand. Lane said he had no quibble with that analysis, adding that a residual supply of gas still held at Aliso Canyon could become harder to withdraw as many of the site's 114 individual wells are temporarily plugged for inspection. The company on Thursday outlined its plan for continued testing of injection wells by the utility and state regulators, saying it hopes to "partially restore operations at the field by the end of the summer." SoCal Gas, a division of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, remains barred from refilling the underground storage reservoir until the facility as a whole is deemed safe. "As far as full normal operations, I think it's more likely a year from now, for getting to that point," Lane said. His comments left in doubt how well the utility could expect to meet the needs of its core customers, homes and businesses that rely on natural gas for heating in winter. Aliso Canyon, the fourth-largest gas reserve of its kind in the United States, has essentially been idled in the aftermath of a ruptured pipeline that spewed more than 97,000 tons of methane - the main component of natural gas - into the air. The stench of odorized gas fumes from the leak, first detected Oct. 23, forced thousands from their homes in the nearby Los Angeles community of Porter Ranch, many complaining of headaches, respiratory problems, dizziness and nosebleeds. The leak was plugged in mid-February. (Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Leslie Adler) Nairobi (AFP) - The pirates who once ruled the seas off Somalia are little more than a memory now, but while they are forgotten they are not gone. The trial in Paris of seven men accused of killing a French sailor and kidnapping his wife during the height of Somali piracy in 2011 is a reminder of the deadly terror the pirates once spread. However, experts and former pirates alike warn the scourge may yet return. "There hasn't been a proper pirate attack on a commercial vessel in over two years," said John Steed, Horn of Africa manager for the US-based non-profit Oceans Beyond Piracy. "But the guys haven't gone away and nothing's changed on the ground." Anti-piracy patrols by international warships and armed guards aboard commercial vessels which continue to chug fast and far past the Somali coast, have suppressed piracy, not stopped it. The last wave of piracy began in 2005 and reached its peak six years later when Somali pirate gangs attacked 237 vessels and, at year's end, held 11 vessels and 216 hostages, earning on average more than $2 million (1.8 million euros) for every ship ransomed. Back then the total economic cost of Somali piracy was estimated at $6.9 billion (6.1 billion euros). Much of that cost was down to counter-piracy actions including the deployment of warships, the extra fuel burned by vessels racing through the pirate ranges and the hiring of private armed security teams aboard ships. These costly measures worked and Somali piracy dropped off dramatically so that by 2013 no commercial vessels were successfully boarded. Now some Somali pirates have turned to a new activity, fishing, and are finding themselves up against a new enemy: foreign trawlers. The anti-piracy navies have no mandate to stop illegal fishing and private guards have no interest in it, while Somalia, making an unsteady recovery from decades of war, lacks either a coastguard or a navy. "There's now no risk to illegal trawlers who can fish at will," said Steed. Story continues - Pirates turned fishermen - Somali pirates turned fishermen grumble about the foreign trawlers and have threatened to take up arms again. "Now we are fishermen but where is the fish?" asked Abdulahi Abas, a former pirate in the coastal town of Garacad. "Foreign trawlers are taking all the fish." "I joined the pirates in the first place because of those illegal fishing vessels, and now we have left the piracy business, we cannot fish in our own waters," Abas said. Some of those illegal vessels have been attacked. Last year the Iranian fishing boat Siraj was hijacked while its partner vessel, Jaber, escaped after a gunfight with pirates. On any given day there are scores of foreign trawlers illegally pulling fish out of Somalia's territorial waters. Among the worst offenders are Iranian, Spanish and Taiwanese vessels, according to Oceans Beyond Piracy. "Illegal fishing is giving pirates the excuse they had in the beginning," said Steed, "But it is just an excuse. These are criminals whether they are kidnapping at sea or on land." Today there are around 46 pirate hostages left in Somalia. Twenty-six are the crew of the Taiwanese trawler the Naham 3 accounts who have been held for over four years, while 15 others were captured aboard the Siraj last year. The others are Kenyan soldiers and citizens seized on land and held by pirate gangs not drawn to the seaborne element of their kidnapping trade. - Forgotten hostages - These are, said Steed, the forgotten hostages. The crew of the Naham 3 come from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam but a crew's value to shipowners and insurance companies disappears with the vessel which is now wrecked. Middle-aged French couple Christian and Evelyne Colombo were attacked in September 2011. Seven Somali men on trial in Paris for Christian's murder and Evelyne's abduction deny attacking the couple's catamaran yacht as it sailed from Yemen to Oman, killing the husband and dumping his body in the sea. Evelyne was rescued 48-hours later by Spanish commandos who killed two of the suspected pirates and arrested the other seven. Steed points out that piracy remains attractive when there are few other options. Along Somalia's coast basic government services are absent, jobs scarce and options limited. "Take the navies away and stop hiring armed guards and the whole thing starts again," he said. Instead of fishing equipment, ice-making factories, storage facilities and access to markets, Somalia got warships ghosting along the horizon. Former pirate Ahmed Yare can sometimes see the warships and the foreign trawlers from the shoreline at his home close to Eyl, a onetime pirate stronghold. "The situation is not helping me here, I don't have a job and I cannot go to fish freely in my own waters because of those foreign trawlers," he said. "They are taking all the fish and I say it will bring back the piracy business, and this time it'll be even worse." Washington: Surprising the Internet with her diligence and dexterity, nine-year-old Hilde Kate Lysiak from Pennsylvania, US, had recently hogged headlines for being the first one to break a murder story in her neighbourhood. Hilde, who runs Orange Street News devoted to neighbourhood reporting since 2014, was at home on April 2, when she noticed police presence and commotion a couple of blocks down her lane. On probing neighbours and police, she was informed that the case involved a suspected murder. And like any other journalist, she immediately set to work. But the internet did not take kindly to her efforts. People wondered if it was a proper vocation for her age, and Hilde soon found herself at the receiving end of an online backlash. While some suggested that she play with dolls or host tea parties, others wondered why her parents encouraged such behaviour. Many even called it sensationalist trash. Hilde's news report But Hilde, in a follow-up video, has come out with a fitting response to her detractors. Defending her work, Hidle said, I worked very hard. Because of my work, I was able to inform people about a terrible murder. I was able to beat local competition. Some of them even reported the wrong news, or no news at all. I know this made some of you uncomfortable, and I know some of you want me to just sit down and be quiet. But if you want me to stop covering news, then you get off your computer and do something about news. There, is that cute enough for you? she said. According to reports, Hilde, who describes herself as a multimedia journalist, is no alien to journalism. Her father is an author and a former reporter for New York Daily News, and used to take Hilde on his assignments. Speaking to the media, he said I am worried for my daughter, but what is more worrying for me than her being at a crime scene is stifling her passion. Reports put her subscription figures to over 200. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's government will appeal at the constitutional court a ruling that the state made an error in letting Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir leave the country, the justice ministry said on Friday. Bashir, who was in South Africa for an African Union summit last June, was allowed to go even though a court had issued an order banning him from leaving until the end of a hearing on whether he should be detained under a global arrest warrant. The court said he should have been arrested to face genocide charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) because as an ICC signatory, Pretoria is obliged to implement arrest warrants. The government says diplomatic immunity was granted to all delegates at the summit. South Africa's government lost an appeal against the ruling at the Supreme Court (SCA) in March. [nL5N16N21N] The Constitutional Court offers the state its last chance of overturning the ruling. "Government has today filed for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court against the judgment delivered by Supreme Court," the justice ministry said in a statement. "We believe that the legal uncertainties ... can be properly pronounced on by the Constitutional Court. Government therefore believes that there is a reasonable possibility that the Court will arrive at a different conclusion." In the aftermath of the initial court ruling, the governing African National Congress party said South Africa should withdraw from the ICC, which African states have accused of bias against the continent. (Writing by Joe Brock Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) On July 10, the South Carolina Secessionist Party which seeks to return "honor, integrity and tradition to South Carolina" will be hosting the first annual Confederate flag raising rally at the South Carolina State House, according to a Facebook event. As of Friday morning, more than 670 people were "attending" on Facebook. The date is the anniversary of last year's much debated removal of the flag by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, which was in reaction to the Charleston Shooting. "Our treacherous state Legislature voted to remove it without the consent of the people in our state," the event's invitation read, according to the State. "We, however, owe this opportunity to them. Without their poor judgment and lack of integrity, we would not have this cause." James Bessenger, the Secessionist Party founder, wants the controversial rally to become an annual event, honoring the soldiers of the Civil War. "We do it to honor those who left their homes, left their families, stood on bloody battlefields and sacrificed their lives for the sake of the people of South Carolina," he told the State. Read more: Watch the Exact Moment the Confederate Flag Came Down in South Carolina The flag will fly off of a 25-foot aluminum pole with a plastic base during the four-hour event, according to the State. Up to 300 people are expected to attend, but Bessenger will also invite Haley, the state Legislature's 131 members and some neighboring states' secessionist groups. On June 22, Haley announced the flag was coming down after flying since 1962. Five days earlier, an armed white man committed what authorities deemed a "hate crime" by entering the South's longest-standing African-American congregation, the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and shot nine members. Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article69355892.html#storylink=cpy Although expressing disapproval of the rally, lawmakers claimed there are no grounds to stop Bessenger and his approximately 2,000-member group. "I wish they wouldn't, but that's the country that we live in," state Sen. Chip Campsen, who voted for the flag's 2015 removal, told the State. "They have the right of free expression." Haley had reinstated the group's lost ability to celebrate the anniversary of the state's secession from the Union on the State House's grounds in December, according to the State. By Yara Bayoumy, Noah Browning and Mohammed Ghobari DUBAI/CAIRO (Reuters) - Once driven to near irrelevance by the rise of Islamic State abroad and security crackdowns at home, al Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated $100 million in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the country's third largest port. If Islamic State's capital is the Syrian city of Raqqa, then al Qaeda's is Mukalla, a southeastern Yemeni port city of 500,000 people. Al Qaeda fighters there have abolished taxes for local residents, operate speedboats manned by RPG-wielding fighters who impose fees on ship traffic, and make propaganda videos in which they boast about paving local roads and stocking hospitals. The economic empire was described by more than a dozen diplomats, Yemeni security officials, tribal leaders and residents of Mukalla. Its emergence is the most striking unintended consequence of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The campaign, backed by the United States, has helped Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago. Yemeni government officials and local traders estimated the group, as well as seizing the bank deposits, has extorted $1.4 million from the national oil company and earns up to $2 million every day in taxes on goods and fuel coming into the port. AQAP boasts 1,000 fighters in Mukalla alone, controls 600 km (373 miles) of coastline and is ingratiating itself with southern Yemenis, who have felt marginalised by the country's northern elite for years. By adopting many of the tactics Islamic State uses to control its territory in Syria and Iraq, AQAP has expanded its own fiefdom. The danger is that the group, which organised the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year and has repeatedly tried to down U.S. airliners, may slowly indoctrinate the local population with its hardline ideology. "I prefer that al Qaeda stay here, not for Al Mukalla to be liberated," said one 47-year-old resident. "The situation is stable, more than any 'free' part of Yemen. The alternative to al Qaeda is much worse." Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is struggling to extricate itself from the Yemeni quagmire a year after intervening in the country's civil war. Riyadh is determined to deny bitter rival Iran sway over another Arab capital. It has focused on attacking the Houthis who have seized parts of northern Yemen and who are allied to Iran. But despite thousands of aerial bombings, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have failed to push the Houthis from the capital Sanaa. An estimated 6,000 people, half of them civilians, have been killed. A temporary ceasefire between the internationally recognised government, which is backed by the Saudis, and the Houthis is due to begin on April 10. In a recent statement issued by the Saudi embassy in Washington, Saudi officials said that their campaign had "denied terrorists a safe haven in Yemen." And yet, AQAP's strength is growing. A U.S. counter-terrorism official said AQAP remained one of al Qaeda's "most potent affiliates." The United States launched its deadliest air strike yet on the group on March 22nd, killing around 50 of its fighters at a military base outside Mukalla. "The group's bomb-making expertise and long-standing ambitions to carry out attacks using novel or complex tactics underscore (the) threat," the official said. A senior Yemeni government official said the war against the Houthis "provided a suitable environment for the ... expansion of al Qaeda." The withdrawal of government army units from their bases in the south, allowed al Qaeda to acquire "very large quantities of sophisticated and advanced weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and armed vehicles." As well, the coalition's preoccupation with fighting the Houthis "made it easier for al Qaeda elements to expand in more than one area," he said. "And this is why al Qaeda has today become stronger and more dangerous and we are working with the coalition now to go after elements of the group ... and will continue until they are destroyed." ANATOMY OF AN ECONOMIC EMPIRE Barely a week after Saudi Arabia launched "Operation Decisive Storm" against the Houthis in March last year, Yemeni army forces vanished from Mukalla's streets and moved westward to combat zones, security officials and residents said. The city's residents were left defenceless, allowing a few dozen AQAP fighters to seize government buildings and free 150 of their comrades from the central jail. The freed included Khaled Batarfi, a senior al Qaeda leader. Pictures appeared online of Batarfi sitting inside the local presidential palace, looking happy and in control as he held a telephone to his ear. Tribal leaders in neighbouring provinces told Reuters that, in the security vacuum, army bases were looted and Yemen's south became awash with advanced weaponry. C4 explosive and even anti-aircraft missiles were available to the highest bidder. And just as Islamic State seized the central bank in Mosul in northern Iraq, AQAP looted Mukalla's central bank branch, netting an estimated $100 million, according to two senior Yemeni security officials. "That represents their biggest financial gain to date," one of the officials said. "That's enough to fund them at the level they had been operating for at least another 10 years." In a sign that AQAP not only wants to get rich but also seeks official recognition as a quasi-state, it unsuccessfully sought permission from the Yemeni government to export crude oil in October and collect a share of the profits, according to a tribal leader and two senior officials. Yemen's government refused, fearing the deal would give de facto recognition to the internationally blacklisted group. "Al Qaeda sent a mediator to the government to get them agree to listen to this deal," the tribal leader, who is in southern Yemen, told Reuters. "Their offer was they need the official documents from the government to sell crude oil, and they would get 25 percent of the profit, and 75 percent for the government." The government rejected the offer, said both the tribal leader and Badr Basalmah, a former transport minister in Yemen's government. "Yes, that happened," Basalmah said, speaking by telephone from the Saudi capital of Riyadh. "The government refused completely to have anything to do with this deal because it would give authority and legitimacy to al Qaeda." ON THE WATERFRONT In Mukalla port, a thriving fuel smuggling network enriches AQAP daily. Tribal sources, residents and diplomats told Reuters the militants gained control of the ports in Mukalla and Ash Shihr when they first stormed the cities in April last year. The militants began imposing tax and custom tariffs on shippers and traders. "The group is experiencing a period of obscene, unprecedented wealth and luxury," one resident of Mukalla told Reuters. A current official in the transport ministry estimate AQAP's daily revenue at $2 million a day. Some local traders put it as high as $5 million a day from customs duties and smuggled fuel, according to Basalmah, Yemen's former transport minister. "You will find hundreds of oil trucks there smuggling fuel from one area to another where they are selling it," said Basalmah. Abdallah al-Nasi, governor of neighbouring Shabwa province, where AQAP controls some territory, said the group has become the de facto fuel supplier. "They sell the fuel to whoever buys it," Nasi told Reuters by phone "The government-run petrol stations buy from them and sell it on to the citizens." Tribes who work with al Qaeda now control much of the country's oil infrastructure. Six white oil tanks on a beach between Mukalla and Ash Shihr are linked by pipeline to the Masila oilfields which are estimated to hold more than 80 percent of Yemen's total reserves. After army forces withdrew from the area last year, armed local tribes linked to al Qaeda took charge. That prompted major companies operating there state-owned PetroMasila, Canada's Nexen Energy and France's Total to shut production and end exports. A PetroMasila official said that small amounts of oil are still being extracted for use in provincial power generators. Total said it has not restarted operations. Nexen did not respond to a request for comment. ROBIN HOOD It is a dramatic change of fortune for a group that was founded in the late 1990s and merged with al Qaeda's Saudi branch in 2009. After a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks against the Yemeni government, and two foiled bomb plots on U.S.-bound airliners, AQAP was forced into retreat by assaults from Yemeni tribes and troops as well as persistent U.S. drone strikes. Now the group has embarked on a brazen campaign to shake down state-owned firms, including the national oil and mobile phone companies. AQAP uses the money it extorts to win favour among its subjects. Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen scholar at Oxford University, calls it a "Robin Hood" strategy. In January, a copy of a demand issued by AQAP circulated on local media. The notice, on AQAP letterhead, demanded $4.7 million from the national oil company's bank account in Mukalla. "May God grant that all serve the country and the faithful," the note said. A top government security official said the oil company paid the full $4.7 million. A source at the bank said it had paid only $1.4 million. A representative of the oil company declined to comment. Officials at the three biggest national mobile phone companies, MTN, Sabafone and Y Telecom, said AQAP had also demanded payments of $4.7 million each from them. The firms all said they refused to pay. Late last year, AQAP cancelled payroll taxes in areas it controls because it deemed the practice un-Islamic. In a video posted on YouTube in November, the chief of al Qaeda's Sharia court in Hadramout the coastal region where Mukalla is capital announced it would repay government workers taxes they had paid. In the video, a bureaucrat is shown counting out wages for a worker from a bulging wad of Yemeni currency. "The poor have been paying alms to the rich and the rich don't pay, and it's the tyrants and oppressors who are the ones getting this money," AQAP fighter Ali bin Talib al-Kathiri said in another video. "Because those oppressors have not implemented God's law, they've eaten up the people's money in sin." Kathiri died in January in a gun battle with southern tribesmen. But AQAP's populist strategy is paying off, said Oxford University's Kendall. The group regularly posts pictures of its fighters repairing damaged bridges and paving streets in Hadramout and other cities under its control. It says the money for the repairs comes from groups such as Guardians of Sharia or Sons of Hadramout, names AQAP has taken on as part of a rebranding effort to emphasise its local origins. In one video posted on Feb. 28, AQAP members deliver free medical supplies and equipment to the kidney dialysis and cancer wings of a local hospital. The boxes of supplies are sealed with the tape of a Western pharmaceutical company. "These are some medicines from your brothers, the Guardians of Sharia, to al-Jamii hospital which was going to be closed ... because of no money," says one fighter whose face is blurred out. The video also shows a hospital official saying he had received money from al Qaeda to pay workers' salaries. A POPULAR HAVEN? The group has exploited sectarian grievances to brand their state-building project as a liberation movement. "So many areas fell to us after the Houthis left because we are the entity that people trust," AQAP leader Batarfi said. In the five coastal provinces stretching from the government's temporary seat in Aden to Mukalla, a familiar pattern has recurred in recent months. Al Qaeda forces storm a town, plant their flags, and then watch as local leaders acquiesce. Citizens say they are tired of moving and would rather live with al Qaeda's control. "With al Qaeda, if you resist, you never know when they could come and assassinate you," one Yemeni sheikh said. AQAP has also learned to be less cruel than its rival, Islamic State, which has struggled to gain a foothold in a population repelled by its brutality. While AQAP has resorted to killing suspected "sorcerers," and carried out stonings of at least one man and woman accused of adultery, residents and the group's online media suggest such incidents are rare. And even when AQAP publicises punishments, their videos and photographs never show the level of gratuitous gore that Islamic State revels in. Rather than resorting to mass beheadings, AQAP has detained or put under house arrest several dozen army officers and other figures they see as a threat, activists said. One Mukalla resident said her life had changed little since AQAP swept through the city. "We carry out our lives normally, they walk among the people," she told Reuters by phone. "Of course they're trying to create a popular haven." A regional diplomat who follows Yemen says that if al Qaeda manages to successfully root itself as a political and economic organisation, it could become a more resilient threat, much like al Shabaab in nearby Somalia. "We may be facing a more complicated al Qaeda," the diplomat said, "not just a terrorist organisation but a movement controlling territory with happy people inside it." <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WEB VERSION: Al Qaeda emerges stronger and richer from Yemen war (with map and video) http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/yemen-aqap/ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi in Dubai, Tom Miles in Geneva, Jonathan Landay in Washington, Jonathan Saul in London, and Ali Abdelaty in Cairo.; Edited by Simon Robinson and David Rohde) CASTRIES, April 7 (Reuters) - A man and a woman in the Caribbean country of St. Lucia have locally contracted the Zika virus, which has been linked to hundreds of cases of a rare birth defect in Brazil, the first infections by the mosquito-borne virus in the island nation. The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) confirmed the two cases, St. Lucia's health ministry said at a news conference, adding that the individuals did not have a history of recent travel to a Zika affected country. (Reporting by Sarah Peter; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Richard Chang) (Reuters) - Activist investor Starboard Value LP, which has an economic stake of 9.8 percent in Depomed Inc , in a letter criticized the drugmaker's board over corporate governance deficiencies and other matters and urged it to explore a potential sale. Depomed's shares were up 11.6 percent at $16.71 in morning trading on Friday. In the letter addressed to the Depomed board, Starboard raised concerns regarding the company's "corporate governance deficiencies, questionable capital allocation decisions, and egregious actions taken by the Board to stymie strategic interest in acquiring Depomed". Starboard has taken aggressive actions at other companies in which it has invested, including engineering the ouster of the board of Darden Restaurants Inc in 2014. Depomed on Friday recommended that shareholders take no action at this time. It noted Starboard had not communicated with the company before disclosing its stake in a regulatory filing and had not attempted to hold any discussions with it. Starboard disclosed a voting rights stake of 6.8 percent in Depomed in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Including other financial agreements, its exposure rises to 9.8 percent. Starboard pointed out that the drugmaker's move to reincorporate itself in Delaware would limit shareholders rights, including a provision to call for special meetings. The hedge fund said it intended to immediately nominate its chief executive, Jeffrey Smith, to Depomed's board along with five other nominees. Starboard said Depomed had taken a "series of shareholder-unfriendly steps," referring to the company's decision to reject takeover offers made by drugmaker Horizon Pharma Plc last year. "We believe that Starboard sees potential for multiple bidders on Depomed, but is most focused on Horizon revisiting last year's bid," Mizuho Securities analyst Irina Koffler wrote in a note. Horizon Pharma said on Friday it was not interested in revisiting its previous interest in Depomed. (Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Anupama Dwivedi) Washington (AFP) - The first examination of a long-extinct Neanderthal's Y chromosome suggests that fertility problems may have prevented Neanderthal men from successfully mating with modern human females, researchers said. The study in the American Journal of Human Genetics is based on a male Neanderthal whose 49,000-year-old remains were found in El Sidron, Spain. Until now, researchers have only sequenced the DNA of female Neanderthal fossils, and have found that one to four percent of European and Asian people's DNA can be traced to Neanderthals. But researchers at Stanford University found that the Neanderthal's Y chromosome is completely lacking in males today. The Y chromosome is one of two human sex chromosomes (X and Y) and is passed on exclusively from father to son. The findings suggest that Neanderthal Y chromosomes may never have been passed along when Neanderthals and humans mingled and mated some 50,000 years ago. That could be because women may have miscarried male fetuses sired by Neanderthals, or produced very few healthy male babies that could pass on this Y-chromosome lineage. Researchers are probing the hypothesis that modern women's immune systems might have attacked male fetuses carrying certain Neanderthal mutations. The scientists say they found mutations in certain immune system genes from the El Sidron Neanderthal that have been blamed for transplant rejection when modern males donate organs to women. "The functional nature of the mutations we found suggests to us that Neanderthal Y chromosome sequences may have played a role in barriers to gene flow, but we need to do experiments to demonstrate this and are working to plan these now," said senior author Carlos Bustamante, professor of biomedical data science and genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "We've never observed the Neanderthal Y chromosome DNA in any human sample ever tested," Bustamante added. Story continues "That doesn't prove it's totally extinct, but it likely is." Previous studies have shown that modern human and Neanderthal lineages diverged between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago. The Neanderthals died out some 30,000 years ago. Officials confirms that one person has died in the shooting and says that we could have more. (Photo: Twitter) San Antonio: Two people were killed in an apparent murder-suicide at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio on Friday that triggered a lockdown at the facility, the Bexar County Sheriff's Office said. "It's over," Bexar County Sheriff's office spokesman James Keith said, adding that deputies were still on the scene. The commanding officer of the 331st K-9 Training Squadron at the base was shot by an airman, according to the Air Force Times, an independent news outlet, citing on internal Pentagon communications. Neither person was immediately identified. The incident took place at the Medina annex at the facility, where dog training takes place. Keith said the sheriff's office did not believe there were other victims but deputies were searching buildings "out of an abundance of caution." The sheriff's office had responded to reports of a shooter at the base. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had been called to assist. Parts of the base were locked down as a result of the incident, including nearby schools, the sheriff's office said. Authorities also ordered people at a nearby industrial complex to stay in their buildings. By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebel forces on Thursday took over a town near the Turkish border that had been the main stronghold of Islamic State in the northern Aleppo countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and rebel sources said. The monitor said factions fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), some supplied with arms by Turkey and other foreign backers, captured the town of al-Rai after fierce battles with the militants. "This is the beginning of the end of Daesh (Islamic State), those who have bet the FSA have been decimated are now proven wrong. It's a victory for the Free Syrian Army," said Abu Abdullah from the Nour al Din al Zinki brigade that participated in the assault on the heavily defended border town. "We will continue our path to al Raqqa and all the towns occupied by Daesh," he said referring to Islamic State's acronym in Arabic and its defacto capital. The rebels said their next step was advancing towards the Islamic State-held city of al Bab, south of al Rai and northeast of Aleppo. The recent gains by the mainly non-jihadist rebels is a boost to Turkey, which has sought to prevent Syrian Kurdish-led forces from expanding their stretch of territory along the border. It was the first retreat by the Islamic State militants since they made major advances in that area last May against rival insurgents and captured areas close to the Azaz border crossing with Turkey. Amaq news agency, which is linked to the militants, conceded that forces it described as "U.S.- and Turkish-backed opposition brigades" had taken the town after days of intense "U.S. bombing and Turkish artillery" fire. The news agency said al-Rai fell after heavy clashes and two suicide bombings that led to many casualties among Islamic State opponents. The Sunni militants have used suicide bombings to hold back offensives by the Syrian army and their allies by deploying small groups of fighters to disrupt supply lines. That is a change of tactics from ambushes and lightning attacks after the loss of significant territory, defence experts say. A sustained rebel advance by mainstream rebel groups near the Turkish border this week that allowed the moderate non-jihadist rebels to capture a string of villages eroded Islamic State's last foothold in an area identified by the United States as a priority in the fight against the group. Rebels who previously struggled to make gains against Islamic State in the area and had been fending off advances in recent weeks by Kurdish-led fighters mobilised several thousand fighters for the attack, rebel sources said. An alliance of FSA rebel groups formed for the offensive includes the Turkish-backed Sultan Murad and Failaq al Sham groups. Islamic State's foothold at the Turkish border was also significantly loosened last year by U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters of the YPG, which gained territory from the group farther east. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Ali Abdellatti in Cairo; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Peter Cooney) By Samia Nakhoul CAIRO (Reuters)- - As the Syria peace talks resume next week, President Bashar al-Assad, backed militarily by Iran and Russia, shows no willingness to compromise, much less step aside to allow a transition Western powers claim is the solution to the conflict. Threatened by rebel advances last year, Assad is now pumped up with confidence after Russian air strikes reversed the tide and enabled his army to recover lost ground from Sunni insurgents as well as the jihadis of Islamic State. While Syria experts doubt he can recapture the whole country without an unlikely full-scale ground intervention by Russia and Iran, they also doubt President Vladimir Putin will force him out - unless there is a clear path to stability, which could take years. Instead, Russias dramatic military intervention last September -- after five years of inconclusive fighting between Assad and fragmented rebel groups mostly from Syrias Sunni majority -- has tilted the balance of power in his favour and given him the upper hand at the talks in Geneva. The main target of the Russian air force bombardment was mainstream and Islamist forces that launched an offensive last summer. Only recently have Russia and Syrian forces taken the fight to Islamic State, notably by recapturing Palmyra, the Graeco-Roman city the jihadis overran last year. The Russian campaign, backed by Irans Revolutionary Guards and Shiite militia such as Lebanons Hezbollah, has for now outmatched the rebels, including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and units supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States. REBELS LOSE MOMENTUM Dealing with those groups rather than Islamic State seemed the main aim of Moscow's intervention, analysts say. "The Russian intervention fundamentally reshaped the Syrian conflict," says Kheder Khaddour from the Carnegie Middle East Center. "The momentum of the rebels does not exist any more." Putin, diplomats say, weakened the opposition to coax it into accepting a settlement on Russian and Syrian terms. That does not mean the "transitional authority" sought by the U.S. and its allies, but a government expanded to include elements of the opposition, with Assad at its head for the immediate future. Russia still wants Assad to lead the transition to the elections, while the opposition and its regional allies, including the United States and Europe, insist he should step down. So far no compromises are in sight. "We need things to advance in the coming weeks. If the political process is just about putting a few opposition people in nominal cabinet posts then this isn't going to go very far," said a European diplomat close to the talks.. "If there isn't a political transition the civil war will continue and Islamic State will benefit from it," he said. Fawaz Gerges, author of ISIS: A History, said: "At this point the Russians have the upper hand in dictating a solution. The Americans are playing on Russias playing field." UNCERTAINTY His judgment is underlined by Sergei Lavrov, Russias foreign minister, who boasted in a recent interview that "the Americans understand they can do nothing without Russia. They can no longer solve serious problems on their own". Yet uncertainty surrounds Moscows intentions, after Putin suddenly withdrew part of his forces from Syria last month. That led to speculation among Assad's enemies that Russia was contemplating whether to ditch Assad an outcome many Syria watchers find highly improbable. "The key issue remains when and if the Russians will act to facilitate this transition. It's unclear, and we get the feeling that the recent talks didn't change much in the Russian position," the European diplomat said. "I don't think the upcoming round will reach any real decisions on the political process, he added. Gerges says the partial pull-back sent a message to the Americans that Russia is a rational and credible force that is interested in a diplomatic settlement. It was also intended as a jolt to Assad, by then so emboldened at the way Russia and Iran had transformed his weak position that he was announcing plans to recapture all of Syria. "The message to the Assad regime was that Russia doesnt play by Assads playbook, it doesnt want to get down in Syrias quagmire (but) wants to cut its losses," Gerges believes. But it is far from clear that Assad interprets these messages the same way. Last month, he dismissed any notion of a transition from the current structure, as agreed by international powers, calling instead for "national unity" solution with some elements of the opposition joining the present government. "The transition period must be under the current constitution, and we will move on to the new constitution after the Syrian people vote for it," Assad told Russia's Sputnik news agency. ASSAD "WILL NOT GO QUIETLY" Faisal al-Yafai, a leading commentator from the United Arab Emirates, says Russia "played its cards in Syria very cleverly, but miscalculated in one aspect". "They assumed that once the (Assad) regime felt secure, it would be more willing to negotiate. In fact, the opposite has happened. "Theres a limit to the pressure that Russia can exert on Assad. Assad absolutely will not go quietly -- and certainly not when there is no real alternative to him, even within the regime," says al-Yafai. Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria and now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, agrees that Russia may not be able to compel Assad to go. The secret police backbone of Assads rule remains intact, he says, and "Assad seems confident again, after his much more sober tone last summer. The Russians may have helped him too much, such that Assad can maintain control of key cities and roads for a long time". Ford also drew attention to the competition over Syria between Russia and Iran, Assads two main allies. Moscows emphasis is on its traditional relations with the Syrian military establishment, while Tehran focusses on the militia network it built with Hezbollah to shore up the regime. Assad is plenty smart to know how to play one country off against the other. I am not even sure Russia would test its heavy pressure capacity against that of Iran in Damascus. The Russians know they might lose", Ford said. Russias involvement in Syria has given it greater insight into the structure of the Assad rule, constructed to intermesh the Assad family and allies from its minority Alawite community with the security services and military command. ASSAD BUOYANT Khaddour from Carnegie says Russia now realises the circumstances for a transition do not yet exist, because removing Assad might unravel the whole power structure. "There is a problem within the regime. It is not capable of producing an alternative to itself internally," says Khaddour, adding the only concession it has made simply to turn up in Geneva was the result of Russian pressure. With limits to Russian and Iranian influence on a newly buoyant Assad, few believe the Geneva talks will bring peace. "If the Russians felt it was time for a solution they would have reached an understanding with the Americans to give up on Assad without giving up on the Alawites. The circumstances are not ripe yet for a solution," says Sarkis Naoum, a leading commentator on Syria. The diplomat added: "The fundamental question is still whether the Russians are serious and want this to happen." "Nobody knows what's in their mind and I'm not sure they even know." (Additional reporting by John Irish; Editing by Giles Elgood) Conspiracy theorists keep finding proof of alien life on Earth, but if youre going to be worried about deadly aliens causing a commotion on our planet then youd have to look elsewhere if only you could see that far. A huge alien force is believed to be so far out in our solar system that its presence cant be confirmed yet. But a new theory suggests it regularly kills life on our beloved planet and the dinosaur extinction may have been its best work yet. DONT MISS: 12 paid iPhone apps on sale for free right now Recent reports suggested theres more and more evidence that a giant planet is orbiting our solar system. Beyond it, there may be an even bigger threat. Planet X, unseen by scientists, exerts a tremendous gravitational pull on other objects in space, changing the course of comets and sending them towards Earth. Not all of these flying space objects hit our planet, but those that do might kill off almost all life. Apparently, it all happens every 27 million years, or at least, thats what a new study suggests that was published by astrophysicist Daniel Whitmire in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Whitmire, now a math teacher at the University of Arkansas, revised a study he co-wrote in 1985. Together with John Matese, he penned an article in Time magazine titled "Did Comets Kill the Dinosaurs? A Bold New Theory About Mass Extinctions." Since 1985, he has found more evidence to support his theory. He now says that Earth has been impacted by comets for over 500 million years, at a 27 million year interval. Scientists have long proposed a theory that a Planet Nine could exist around the Kuiper Belt. Much larger than Earth, the planet would circle the sun once every 15,000 years. But Whitmires research would indicate that a Planet X with an orbit of nearly 27 million years would exist beyond Planet Nine. Given that we cant even prove Planet Nine exists because we cant see it with any current tech, its even more difficult to find evidence of a Planet X thats supposedly wreaking havoc on Earth with regularity. Story continues Related stories Project Apollo 17 might be the most impressive interactive experience on the Internet NASA releases stunning Mars gravity map Stunning NASA photo shows moon cut in half by Saturn's rings More from BGR: Elon Musk says Tesla will fix what critics call the Model 3s biggest design fail This article was originally published on BGR.com Every time you browse the web on a public Wi-Fi hotspot, you're taking a risk that someone may be able to intercept your traffic and steal sensitive information such as passwords. There's a pretty simple way to keep your devices secure and make sure your traffic is encrypted even when you're using a public Wi-Fi hotspot, however: Use a VPN that's hosted by your home router. MUST READ: How to access the secret Facebook inbox full of messages you didnt know you received Writing over at The Mac Security Blog, Kirk McElhearn offers a comprehensive guide to using your router at home as your own VPN when you're on the go. First, and most obviously, you'll need to buy a router that has VPN software built into it. There are plenty of routers that offer these capabilities and they'll save you money in the long run since you won't be paying a subscription fee to use a third-party VPN service. Some basic pointers you'll need to set up your VPN-enabled router: Be sure to use a dynamic DNS service to make sure that the device you're using can locate your router's VPN server. This is particularly important if your ISP uses dynamic IP addresses that change every time you reset your router. Some examples of DDNS services in the guide include www.no-ip.com and DynDNS. You'll want to use an app called OpenVPN connect to connect to the VPN through your smartphone -- here is the link for the iOS version and here is the link for the Android version. To set up OpenVPN on your Mac, you can download an app called Tunnelblick that will help you create an OpenVPN configuration. This is only a small portion of the knowledge you'll need to protect your devices with a VPN-enabled router, of course. Be sure to read McElhearn's full piece at this link. Related stories Netflix wants to force you to become a paying customer The ultimate cheat sheet for finding the best VPN As VPN bans spread, Netflix users may have reached a breaking point More from BGR: Legendary car designer discusses Teslas Model 3 and the future of electric cars This article was originally published on BGR.com (Reuters) - Tennessee law enforcement officials released video on Thursday of a white policeman fatally shooting a black woman who threatened him with a medieval-style ax as sheriff's deputies and public housing officials were serving her an eviction notice. Footage from the body camera of officer James Spray and a patrol car dashboard camera showed the woman, Loronda Sweatt, 40, who was reported to suffer from bipolar disorder, backing the policeman into a vehicle as she brandished the ax at him. Spray shot Sweatt twice "as she continued advancing and making aggressive movement," police said in a statement released with the video. Sweatt was pronounced dead at Sumner Regional Medical Center in Gallatin, about 30 miles northeast of Nashville. Spray arrived on the scene with two other Gallatin police officers after a sheriff's deputy accompanying housing officials to Sweatt's home was himself attacked by Sweatt, who slashed him with the ax, according to police. The deputy, Gary Pickard, retreated to his squad car and called for back-up. It was moments after Spray and others arrived that the shooting occurred, according to the police account. The shooting comes amid heightened national attention and increased scrutiny of the use of lethal force by law enforcement against minorities and the mentally ill, following a string of high-profile fatal shootings of unarmed black people by white police officers. Spray is white and Sweatt was black. Her mother, Ella Sweatt, declined to comment. But media reported that she said her daughter was bipolar and that the housing authority was aware of her condition. Spray has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Spray, 45, has been on the Gallatin force for at least three years, the Tennessean newspaper reported, citing Gallatin Police Chief Don Bandy. (This story has been corrected to say wielding, not yielding, an ax in headline) (Reporting by Justin Madden in Chicago; Editing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles, Robert Birsel) By Bernie Woodall and David Shepardson (Reuters) - The brother of a Texas teenager killed by shrapnel from an exploding Takata Corp air bag said on Thursday that his family never received a recall notice about the defective vehicle safety device. The brother's comments came as federal safety regulators called current methods of alerting consumers about vehicle safety recalls inadequate. They also contradicted a statement from Honda Motor Co that said notices to replace the air bag were sent to the owners of the 2002 Honda Civic involved in the accident in which Huma Hanif, a high school senior, was killed. Hanif's death was the 10th in the United States linked to defective air bags made by Takata. Automakers have repaired or replaced about a quarter of the estimated 29 million defective Takata air bags recalled, according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Hanif, of Richmond, Texas, died on March 31 after the 14-year-old Civic she was driving hit the rear of another vehicle at an intersection, causing the air bag to deploy. Texas officials released new details about the accident on Thursday. Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy E. Nehls and other officials told a news conference that Hanif, 17, should have survived the relatively minor accident that crumpled the car's hood. However, an autopsy showed that her jugular vein and carotid artery were cut by metal shrapnel from the air bag's inflator. In a video, a sheriff's department official was shown holding a blood stained air bag. Another official displayed a jagged piece of metal identified as the object found in Hanif's neck. Faizan Hanif, the victim's brother, said the family had not received a recall notice from Honda. "I wish we had received a notice from Honda so we could have avoided this tragedy," he told reporters. He urged others to get cars with defective air bags fixed "before you lose a loved one." Story continues Honda said owners of the Civic, including the current owner, had been mailed multiple notices since 2011 about air bag-related recalls. Pictures released by the Sheriff's office on Thursday showed the vehicle with deployed air bags but little other apparent damage to the passenger compartment. Nehls reiterated earlier comments that everyone involved in the accident should have walked away from it. Separately, a NHTSA spokesman told Reuters the agency plans to be louder and more public about requiring manufacturers to do a better job reaching out to vehicle owners and making sure recalls are completed. Traditional methods to reach consumers, such as mailings, are inadequate, spokesman Bryan Thomas said. "More must be done," he said. A Honda spokesman said on Wednesday the automaker has more than doubled the size of its customer relations team working to get owners to respond to requests to get recalled cars with Takata air bags fixed at no cost. On April 14, NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind will testify before a congressional subcommittee chaired by Michael C. Burgess of Texas, who signaled in a statement on Thursday the Takata air bag issue will be on his agenda. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Detroit and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Tom Brown) BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand banned imports and sales of a six-month-old edition of women's magazine Marie Claire on Friday over an article it said carried content insulting to its royal family and offensive to its people. Criticism of Thailand's monarchy is outlawed by draconian lese majeste laws that can bring jail sentences of up to 15 years for each perceived insult. An announcement in the Royal Gazette, signed by Thailand's police chief, said an article in the November 2015 edition of Marie Claire in France was defamatory and malicious to the royal family, affecting "national security, peace and order and the morale of the people". The order said any copies found would be confiscated and destroyed. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 88, is revered among Thais and concerns over his health and succession have formed the backdrop to more than a decade of political crisis in the country. The king has been staying at a Bangkok hospital since May 2015 and news about his health is tightly controlled by the palace. Thailand's government is highly sensitive about discussion of its paramount institution and self-censorship is prevalent, including by local distributors and printers of international publications. Distributors of the Economist have several times refused to deliver some editions with content about the palace to subscribers in the country. In December, the International New York Times appeared in Thailand with a blank space instead of a story about the royal family's wealth. Prosecutions for insults to the monarchy have risen rapidly and sentences have become increasingly harsh under a royalist military government that seized power in a 2014 coup. Thai police were on Thursday investigating stickers lampooning the royal family which appeared briefly on the popular Japan-based Line instant messaging service. Line apologized for the set of cartoon stickers and said it was no longer available to purchase. (Reporting by Pairat Temphairojana; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Hugh Lawson) Three decades later, DNA tests have revealed that the rape and murder were carried out by a different sailor, who has since died in prison serving a sentence for another crime. (Photo: AFP) Washington: A former US sailor has been acquitted with the help of DNA evidence after spending 33 years in prison, erroneously convicted of raping a woman and killing her husband in 1982. Keith Harward was convicted on expert testimony that a bite mark on the wife matched his teeth imprint. He was sentenced to life in prison. Three decades later, DNA tests have revealed that the rape and murder were carried out by a different sailor, who has since died in prison serving a sentence for another crime. The Virginia Supreme Court yesterday wrote in its decision that it "vacates Harward's convictions for murder, rape, forcible sodomy and robbery." In 2015, the United States exonerated 149 people, a record number that represents only a "drop in the bucket" of tens of thousands of wrongly convicted people, according to a February report by the University of Michigan Law School. The 149 prisoners had served 14.5 years each on average. By Amy Sawitta Lefevre BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand is investigating 16 people, including current and former politicians and well-known business people, whose names appeared in the "Panama Papers", a top official at the country's Anti Money Laundering Office (AMLO) said on Friday. The individuals are among scores of politicians and business figures worldwide who feature in the massive document leak from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in establishing offshore companies. The investigation into possible money laundering is at an early stage and Thai authorities have so far found no evidence of wrongdoing, AMLO acting Secretary-General Seehanat Prayoonrat told reporters on Friday. Thailand has sought cooperation from Panama's anti-money laundering agency, he said, and would not release the names of the individuals on the list until authorities had verified the leaked information. Seehanat said he did not know if any members of the Thai military government were on the list. "We are doing preliminary checks," he said. (Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Sam Holmes) VIENNA (Reuters) - More than 100 countries will have to meet higher standards on the protection of nuclear facilities and materials from next month, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday. Nicaragua on Friday formally completed ratification of an amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, meaning enough states have ratified it for it to go into force, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. "(The amendment) will help reduce the risk of a terrorist attack involving nuclear material, which could have catastrophic consequences," IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said in a statement. The convention was adopted by 152 countries a decade ago, and had to be ratified by two thirds of them to go into effect. The amendment, intended to guarding against threats such as smuggling and sabotage, makes it legally binding for countries to protect nuclear facilities as well as the domestic use, storage and transportation of nuclear material. It also provides for broader cooperation among countries on finding and recovering stolen or smuggled nuclear material. The convention and amendment are only binding on countries that have ratified them, an IAEA spokesman said. Amano said last month more work was needed to make the requirement universal. The United States, Russia, India, Pakistan and former Soviet republics including Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan are among the countries that have ratified the amendment, according to the IAEA. Those that have not include Iran and North Korea. (Reporting by Francois Murphy; editing by Andrew Roche) On the Sunday after the attacks in Paris, which months later I still simply think of as les evenements, I went to the citys main memorial plaza with a group of Parisian friends. It was brilliantly sunny and mourners were crowded around the central statue at Place de la Republique, standing silently in front of the piles of candles, flowers and signs that were ringed around the massive figure of the Marianne. And squeezed into every corner, pushing silent and sad Parisians out of the way, there were cameras. Huge TV cameras trained on stony faces and small burning votives. Tourist-size flash cameras of freelance photographers roaming through the crowd. Tripod video cameras capturing a parade of Parisians who were trotted in front of the camera to answer Where were you Friday night? Why are you here now? Arent you afraid? Heres a thought: Lets knock it off. This is not the way to cover the aftermath of terrorist attacks. Badgering survivors who lived through horror and loss to talk about their experiences to a camera can be bad for them. This kind of reexperiencing may really hurt people, says Edward Wasserman, dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He adds that the saturation presence of media people and cameras may destroy the space that people might need in order to talk their way through it. Families of survivors, asked the same questions again and again by journalist after journalist, are unlikely to find the talking as therapeutic as a counselors couch. As it turns out, journalism already has an established way to deal with the problem of too many damn cameras, and its called pool reporting. Sometimes authorities like the president will allow only one or two journalists, maybe one TV camera, into an event. There may not be enough space for more, and five networks dont want to pay to capture the same talking head at a press conference. In these cases, the news organizations share the load of footage gathering, each contributing manpower to the pool by turns, and they share the footage and intelligence gathered by the pool reporter. Story continues So lets make a pool for tragedy reporting. Not for covering terrorist attacks in progress, when breaking-news reporting becomes a particularly courageous act, but in the aftermath when 20 massive cameras are all capturing the same burning candles at the same memorial, all camped out on the street in front of the same nightclub filming the same people who are just trying to mourn and process their grief in peace. Pooling may be one way to mitigate the harm routinely done to sources, says Wasserman, noting that it could be done easily by a handful of reporters. To be sure, the media business is a cutthroat one, with editors and reporters hungry for any details others may not have. Under a pooling system, for instance, this video from Le Petit Journal wouldnt have been an exclusive. But it didnt wind up exclusive anyway it went viral and ended up everywhere. Anyway, there is a good argument that public tragedies such as these shouldnt be rendered into opportunities for eyeballs and clicks. In an age when reporters feel free to go tromping through the homes of suspected killers, contaminating a crime scene and learning exactly zero valuable news, isnt it time for a little restraint in the name of ethics? Related Articles New York (AFP) - A top aide to Donald Trump said Friday he was confident that the billionaire can win the Republican nomination for the White House outright and avoid a contested convention in July. "We have a clear path forward. It's difficult. We have to win. We have to win consistently," Paul Manafort, a veteran political strategist, told CNN one day after Trump put him in charge of the nomination process. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who crushed Trump in the Wisconsin primary this week and who has galvanized Republican leaders determined to stop Trump at all costs, had "seen his best day," Manafort said. By June 7, "it will be apparent" that Trump has the 1,237 Republican delegates needed to win the nomination without having his mantle contested at the party convention in Cleveland, Manafort told CNN. June 7 marks the last state elections in the White House nomination process with votes in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Democratic party votes in North Dakota and the District of Columbia. Trump leads the polls in the New York state primary on April 19, when 95 Republican delegates are up for grabs. Manafort also expects the tycoon to do well in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut. "By the time we get to California the momentum will be very clear. Ted Cruz's path to victory will be in shambles," he said. "I'm inheriting a great situation. I have to steer the ship in a little bit different direction." Trump's brash, insult-heavy campaign has had a polarizing effect on Republicans as well as the nation at large, but Manafort said he believed the party would unite behind Trump. The party frontrunner announced Thursday that he was putting Manafort in charge of managing the delegate count and the Cleveland Convention. Last week, Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was charged with battery for allegedly roughly grabbing a reporter. Manafort told CNN that while he would be listening to everyone, "I work directly with the boss." Utah: A teacher who was jailed after she conceded to her illicit affair with three of her students has defended her relationship with one of them, according to a report in the Independent. The 36-year-old Utah-based teacher, Brianne Altice, defended her relationship with the concerned student on grounds that she helped him improve his grades and it wasn't an illicit one. She was sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment for sexually abusing her students. Earlier, Altice was booked on a range of charges and a lawsuit was also filed against her and her employer David High School by one of the victims parents. However, in her defence Altice said, My intentions werent malicious and my relationship with the boy wasnt felonious. The boy approached me to share his personal problems and in the process I helped him improve his grades." Owing to lack of resources, Altice didnt hire a lawyer; however, she said in her defence, I have never been reprimanded by the school authorities for my conduct in the classroom. By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Abhirup Roy (Reuters) - Twitter Inc named PepsiCo Inc Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston and Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of travel website lastminute.com, to its board on Friday in its latest management shakeup. The appointments, which take effect immediately, came as board members Peter Currie and Peter Chernin decided not to stand for re-election, Twitter said in a regulatory filing. The terms of Currie, the president of a private investment firm, and Chernin, a Hollywood executive, are set to expire at the company's annual meeting in May. Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey tweeted that other directors would be appointed soon, "ones that will bring diversity and represent the strong communities on Twitter. This matters & is a must." (http://bit.ly/1YiUiFK) Twitter has tried to freshen its board since January as it has been criticized for lacking diversity and innovative ideas. Many of its 10 board members have served for several years. "You need greater turnover than just these two and ideally bring in some media figures," said Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co analyst James Cakmak. "Almost everybody needs to turn over, and these two are just a start." Shares of Twitter were down 2.5 percent in early afternoon trading. The microblogging site has faced myriad problems over the past year, including a prolonged CEO search before it appointed Dorsey permanently in October. In January, four top executives left the company shortly before it reported quarterly earnings in February, when it said it had no growth in users for the first time since it went public. Johnston, 54, has been the CFO at PepsiCo since March 2010, while Lane Fox, 43, is chairwoman of doteveryone.org.uk, an organization she founded that promotes the understanding and use of Internet-enabled technologies. She is also a member of the UK House of Lords. (Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb in San Francisco and Abhirup Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr and Lisa Von Ahn) By Gina Cherelus NEW YORK (Reuters) - When retired New York City teacher Rosalie Frangella's marriage ended in the 1980s, she might one day have hoped to wed again - except for the big money that her local Catholic church wanted in order to issue her with an annulment. Getting hitched at her church, Our Lady of Angels in Brooklyn, had cost just $150 two years earlier. She was shocked to learn that they were asking for a $1,500 annulment fee, which was too expensive for her modest income. It still rankles with the 60-year-old. "I resent the fact that they want such a large donation. I can afford it now, but I feel that to ask for more money from me is not fair," Frangella told Reuters after she and others in a group toured St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. She never got the annulment. "It's on hold because I'm waiting to hear what Pope Francis says about the finances." Going to the heart of how divorced adherents are treated, Pope Francis called in a lengthy document on Friday for a more compassionate approach toward "imperfect" Catholics, saying "no one can be condemned forever." The pontiff's eagerly-anticipated work was broadly welcomed by those U.S. followers who have been made to feel alienated by the Church's rules on divorce, although the treatise lacked details of how that would work in practice and did not touch on Church funding. Currently, Catholics who divorce and then remarry in civil ceremonies cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sex with their new partner, since their first marriage is still valid in the eyes of the Church. Frangella - who has not remarried, in part because she could not wed in church - said she appreciated the Pope's comments, and that a local member of the clergy had offered to pay for the annulment. "I refused to take it," she said. "I had too much pride but that did restore my faith in the Church. It kept me around." 'ORGANIC DEVELOPMENT' Progressives have suggested that these instances be dealt with individually by a priest or bishop to see if the person can be re-integrated and receive communion. Francis seemed to back that stance in his letter, calling for there to be "responsible, personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases." Vatican officials portrayed his treatise as a classic case of the "organic development of doctrine," while U.S. Church officials welcomed it as wise and realistic. "I was ... touched by our Holy Father's call for all of us in the Church to reach out with compassion to wounded families and persons living in difficult situations," the Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose H. Gomez, wrote in a statement. A 2015 Pew Research Center survey found that U.S. Catholics want the church to be welcoming to people living in a variety of non-traditional arrangements. Archbishop Blase J. Cupich of Chicago called the treatise a very radical change in how the Church deals with people who live "everyday lives" and struggle to be faithful to the gospel. He told reporters he would not exclude anyone who divorces and remarries, and that he hoped pastors would use discretion when dealing with individual marital circumstances. "There is no situation that can be replicated," Cupich said. "Every instance has its own variables that are a part of it." At St. Patrick's Cathedral, Deanna Elliott, who works as director of operations at an Atlanta-based Protestant church, said her whole family history might have been different if the Catholic stance on divorce had not been so strict. Her mother-in-law was a practicing Catholic until she married a man who had been divorced and the Church denounced her, said Elliott, who was visiting New York City with her adolescent daughter for spring break. "And our whole entire family would have probably been Catholic if it wasn't for that one instance. That happened in the '60s. That changed our whole entire family." (Additional reporting by Justin Madden in Chicago; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Alistair Bell) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Friday handed over more than 1,100 pages of records to the committee investigating the deaths of U.S. citizens in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, the chairman of the House of Representatives panel said. The records included files from senior employees during the time Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, according to a statement by Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy. "It is deplorable that it took over a year for these records to be produced to our committee, and that our Democrat colleagues never lifted a finger to help us get them," Gowdy, a Republican, said in the statement. Democrats have complained since the investigation began that the panel is a partisan project bent on hurting Clinton's candidacy. (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Chris Reese and Diane Craft) By Scott Malone BOSTON (Reuters) - A U.S. magistrate judge in Boston in February ordered Apple Inc to assist law enforcement officers in examining the iPhone of an alleged gang member, according to a court filing unsealed on Friday. "Reasonable technical assistance consists of, to the extent possible, extracting data from the device, copying the data from the device onto an external hard drive or other storage medium and returning the aforementioned storage medium to law enforcement," U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler wrote. Apple has been under pressure in recent months to assist law enforcement agencies in searching its iPhones after the U.S. Justice Department sought access to a phone used by a gunman who fatally shot 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December. The FBI has since said it has figured out a secret method for unlocking iPhones. Apple objected to the Boston order on the same grounds as it did in the San Bernardino case, an Apple employee briefed on the matter said, and the government did not pursue the matter in this case. (Additional reporting by Joseph Ax in New York and Joseph Menn in San Francisco) By Paul Carsten and Michael Martina BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States has labeled China's internet censorship a trade barrier in a report for the first time since 2013, saying worsening online restrictions are damaging the business of U.S. companies. Since Xi Jinping became China's president that year, the U.S. had not listed China's so-called Great Firewall as a trade impediment despite widespread outcry that the online blocks limit access to crucial information, email and search services such as those found on Google's platform. "Outright blocking of websites appears to have worsened over the past year, with eight of the top 25 most trafficked global sites now blocked in China," the U.S. Trade Representative wrote in its annual report on foreign trader barriers. "Over the past decade, China's filtering of cross-border internet traffic has posed a significant burden to foreign suppliers, hurting both internet sites themselves, and users who often depend on them for their business," the USTR said in the report, released last week. The move could push the issue beyond a sticking point in bilateral ties over human rights and security, though with a litany of trade disputes already on the table, the degree to which it will feature in talks remains to be seen. China has long operated the world's most sophisticated online censorship mechanism known as the Great Firewall. The websites for Google's services, Facebook and Twitter are all inaccessible in China. Officials say web controls help maintain social stability and national security in the face of threats such as terrorism. Under Xi, the government has implemented an unprecedented tightening of internet controls, and sought to codify the policy within the law. According to data from the anti-censorship group GreatFire.org, almost a quarter of the hundreds of thousands of web pages, domains, encrypted sites, online searches and IP addresses that it monitors in China were blocked as of early April. That was up from 14 percent at the time Xi assumed the presidency. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular briefing on Friday that a country's independent choice for internet governance should be respected. "China's internet is vigorously expanding and providing vast space for companies from other countries to grow," Hong said. "China's policy to attract foreign investment will not change." The Cyberspace Administration of China did not immediately respond to faxed questions, while the Ministry of Commerce declined to comment. Foreign business lobbies have long complained that Chinese internet restrictions go beyond inconvenience and actually limit business competitiveness. The American Chamber of Commerce in China said in its most recent report on China's business environment that its members faced "severe challenges competing in China's telecommunications and internet sectors due to investment restrictions, security controls and a range of protectionist measures". The lobby's 2016 business climate survey showed 79 percent of its members reported a negative impact on business due to internet censorship. The USTR report said much of what China blocked online did not seem to fall within the realm of what was necessary to maintain social stability and national security. "Much of the blocking appears arbitrary. For example, a major home improvement site in the United States, which would appear wholly innocuous, is typical of sites likely swept up by the Great Firewall," it said. (Additional reporting by Jessica Macy Yu and Beijing Newsroom; Editing by John Ruwitch and Ryan Woo) By Elias Biryabarema KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Thursday he had ordered security forces into the Rwenzori region near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to stem a descent into lawlessness there since February's elections. The Rwenzori area overwhelmingly voted for the opposition in the Feb. 18 presidential and parliamentary elections. Museveni won the presidential election with 60 percent of the vote. His main rivals rejected the results with Kizza Besigye, who came second with 35 percent of the vote, describing the election as a sham because of what he called a biased official electoral body, widespread rigging and intimidation by security personnel. Deadly clashes between locals in the Rwenzori area and security personnel broke out in the days following the announcement of results. "I have directed the army and the police to deploy heavily and ensure peace and security returns," Museveni said in a statement issued by his office. At least 26 people have been killed and 10 others injured in the clashes that officials say are between supporters of rival candidates in the elections. But the opposition has said the insecurity was likely being stoked by the government to punish the region for shunning Museveni and other ruling party candidates. The statement said Museveni visited the area on Wednesday and met local people as he tried to assess the scale of the instability in the region and weigh a government response. "We cant entertain banditry and we cant negotiate with bandits. They either come out or we shall get them, he said. According to the statement, area residents told Museveni that "criminals and bandits" were coming down from nearby mountains to terrorize villages in low-lying areas. Some villagers had abandoned their homes due fear of being attacked, fleeing to towns which have a greater presence of security personnel, the statement said. The Rwenzoris have a history of unrest. The Allied Democratic Forces (EDF), an Islamist rebel group with links to al Qaeda operated from the area in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The ADF was eventually driven out and forced into the jungles of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where they still have bases. (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by George Obulutsa and Mark Heinrich) Pakistani migrant looks back as he gets on a ferry for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos. (Photo: AP) Dikili: Greece deported a second batch of more than a hundred migrants to Turkey on Friday under a controversial deal to stem mass migration as Germany announced a sharp drop in asylum claims. Police sources said a first boat left the Greek island of Lesbos carrying 45 Pakistani men, while a second carried 79 migrants, also mainly Pakistanis, back across the Aegean Sea where hundreds have lost their lives in a quest to reach Europe. A small group of activists leapt into the water, clutching onto the anchor of the first ferry in an unsuccessful bid to stop a deportation effort, which rights groups have harshly criticised. Some 30 protesters also gathered at Lesbos' port, chanting "Stop deportations", "EU, shame on you" and "Freedom for the refugees". Hours later the boats arrived in the Turkish harbour town of Dikili where the downcast migrants, clutching blankets and with small backpacks on their shoulders, were escorted off the vessels by security officials. Meanwhile, several European foreign ministers were heading on Friday to Greece and Turkey to discuss the latest developments in the migrant crisis, Dutch officials said. The deportations are taking place under a deal between Turkey and the European Union, which is straining under the pressure from the unprecedented flow of migrants into its territory. Turkey is a main launching pad for the migrants fleeing war and poverty in North Africa and the Middle East many of whom are from Syria for a better life in Europe. Turkey has promised to take back all irregular migrants landing on the Greek islands since March 20, a figure which currently stands at about 6,000 while Europe has agreed to resettle one Syrian refugee directly from camps in Turkey for each Syrian deported. The threat of deportation is aimed at discouraging people from making the often deadly crossing in flimsy boats. The transfers began Monday with some 200 migrants returned to Turkey, but then stalled after a last-minute flurry of asylum applications by those desperate to avoid expulsion. Human rights watchdogs say the scheme is badly flawed, and have raised concerns that migrants may not have the chance to apply for asylum before being deported. Off to good start While concerns remain over the deal, Germany, Europe's top destination for refugees said it had "got off to a good start". Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere announced that asylum applications had dropped 66 percent in March. "In December 2015, it was 120,000 people, in January 90,000, in February 60,000 and in March 20,000," he said. De Maiziere has warned that the shutdown of the Turkey-Greece route may encourage more migrants to attempt the even more dangerous Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country took in 1.1 million asylum seekers last year, said Thursday she was "very happy" with the way the migrant crisis was being tackled. The drop in migrant numbers appears largely due to much-criticised border closures in the Balkans, as well as an increased clampdown by Turkey on people smugglers. Turkish state media said this week that 400 smuggling suspects had been arrested so far in 2016, and more than 65,000 migrants intercepted at sea and on land. Nothing for nothing While Europe appears to be getting its side of the bargain, Turkey warned the EU Thursday against breaking the promises it made in return. "There are precise conditions. If the European Union does not take the necessary steps, then Turkey will not implement the agreement," Turkey's President Recip Tayyip Erdogan said. Turkey is slated to receive benefits including visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe, promised "at the latest" by June 2016. Turkey is also to receive a total of six billion euros ($6.8 billion) in financial aid up to the end of 2018 for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. Turkey's long-stalled accession process to join the EU is also supposed to be re-energised under the accord. Rights groups have criticised these concessions as a "dirty deal", with the EU accused of turning a blind eye to Erdogan's slide into authoritarianism and crackdown on press freedom. Amnesty International has said Turkey could not be considered a "safe country" for the return of refugees. Erdogan argued Turkey deserved something in return for its commitment to Syrian refugees, on whom it has spent some $10 billion since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. "We have received lots of thanks for our action on the refugees and in the fight against terrorism. But we are not doing this for thanks. Everything should happen in line with what has been promised, what has been set out in the text." LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Financial Conduct Authority has asked 20 banks and other financial firms to check if they have any ties to Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, the regulator said on Thursday. A massive leak of documents from the firm released this week detailed how the world's rich skipped through loopholes to park cash in low-tax jurisdictions. "We have written to the firms earlier this week," an FCA spokeswoman said. Recipients of the letter have been given until April 15 to respond to the disclosure request.More than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and branches registered nearly 15,600 shell companies with Mossack Fonseca, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). HSBC, Britain's biggest bank, and its affiliates created more than 2,300 in total, the ICIJ says. HSBC has dismissed suggestions it actively used offshore structures to help clients cheat on their taxes. The bank has said the documents from Panama pre-dated a thorough reform of its business model. Spokespeople for HSBC and Barclays declined to comment on the FCA correspondence. RBS and Standard Chartered both said they were reviewing their operations and co-operating fully with regulators on the issue. News of the FCA's letter follows calls from Conservative lawmaker and chairman of Britain's Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie, for a thorough investigation of the trove and prosecutions "wherever possible". "The government's, and HMRC's (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs), objectives - to collect the correct amount of tax and clamp down on illegality require a great deal of transparency. The government will need to press for more," Tyrie said on Wednesday. (Reporting by Huw Jones, Sinead Cruise, Lawrence White and Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Jason Neely and Susan Fenton) CERNOBBIO, Italy (Reuters) - The head of Italian bank UniCredit on Friday confirmed talks took place between Fortress Investment Group and Banca Popolare di Vicenza , following reports that the U.S. firm had offered to invest in the cooperative lender. UniCredit is guaranteeing the bulk of a 1.76 billion euro ($2 billion) share issue Popolare Vicenza is carrying out as it lists its shares on the Milan bourse this month in an effort to boost capital. "I know they spoke but we can't interfere," UniCredit CEO Federico Ghizzoni told reporters on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti conference when asked about a Fortress proposal for Popolare Vicenza. Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper reported on Friday that Fortress had offered to invest around 500 million euros in Popolare Vicenza's share issue. It would also buy the bank's stock of troubled loans, the paper said, adding Popolare Vicenza was not enthusiastic about the proposal. ($1 = 0.8804 euros) (Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro, writing by Valentina Za,) Los Angeles (AFP) - US actress Anne Hathaway has become a first-time mother after giving birth to a baby boy, her spokesman told AFP. The Oscar-winning star delivered her first child, Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman, on March 24 in Los Angeles, according to celebrity news outlet E! Hathaway confirmed earlier this year that she and her husband, actor Adam Shulman, were expecting a baby by posting a photo on Instagram that revealed her expanding stomach. US media, however, had already leaked the news in November. Hathaway, 33, earned an Oscar in 2013 for her performance as Fantine in "Les Miserables." Some of her other best-known films include the family-friendly comedy-drama "The Princess Diaries" in 2001 and the hit 2006 comedy "The Devil Wears Prada." Hathaway married Shulman, 35, in 2012. Washington (AFP) - Russia secured the release of a US citizen detained in war-torn Syria and has handed him over to American authorities, Moscow's foreign ministry said Friday. In Washington, the US State Department thanked Russia for its assistance in the case of a man who was abducted in 2012 after crossing the border from Turkey. "Kevin Dawes was transferred to Moscow in a military plane and handed over to US embassy representatives," the Russian foreign ministry said. "Shortly afterwards he left Russia. We hope he doesn't put himself in a similar situation again and that Washington will appreciate Damascus' gesture." According to an FBI missing persons report that was taken offline Friday, Dawes is a 33-year-old "freelance photographer" from California. But reports in US media since his disappearance in October 2012 in northern Syria have portrayed him as an adventurer and would-be guerrilla who once took up arms in Libya. The Russian statement said Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime had detained him for "entering Syria illegally" and that he had arrived in Moscow on April 1. A US spokesman would not confirm the identity of the released captive but did not dispute media reports that named him as Dawes. "This individual was released in the last few days. He is no longer in Syria," spokesman Mark Toner said, refusing to say where he is now. Citing US privacy law, the spokesman said he could give no further information about the former detainee's identity nor the manner of his release. But he thanked Assad's ally Moscow for assisting in the case. "We are appreciative of efforts on the behalf of the Russian government that it undertook on behalf of this US citizen," he said. A number of US citizens, including but not limited to 31-year-old photojournalist Austin Tice, are still reported as missing in war-torn Syria, Toner said. He would not be drawn on the full number of missing Americans. Story continues A detailed profile published in GQ Magazine portrayed Dawes as an adventurer and "have-a-go guerrilla." He appears in photographs in body armor and carrying a rifle. Prior to disappearing in Syria, Dawes had taken up arms with a militia fighting Moamer Kadhafi's regime in Libya, according to an interview he gave to NPR radio in 2011. Despite Dawes' somewhat different profile, the unexpected release has given hope to campaigners seeking the better known freelance journalist Tice's freedom. The United States has no diplomatic relations with Syria, believing that Assad lost legitimacy after his crackdown on opposition protests triggered a civil war. - Missing Americans - Nevertheless, Toner confirmed that US officials had direct contact with Syrian officials to lobby for information on the missing Americans. And he thanked the Czech republic, whose embassy in Damascus represents the interests of Americans in Syria for their assistance in the matter. "We continue to work through the Czechs on the ground to get information on the whereabouts of Austin Tice," Toner said. Tice is an American freelance journalist who worked for the Washington Post, McClatchy and other US media outlets until he went missing in Syria in August 2012. According to the Post report, officials seeking Tice's freedom see Dawes' release as a positive sign. Tice's family had no immediate comment. Press watchdog Reporters Without Borders said it was "delighted that US citizen Kevin Dawes was released and hopeful that US journalist Austin Tice will be free soon." There have been reports that Washington has been leaning on the Russians to pressure Assad into giving up undeclared US hostages. "We welcome Russia's support wherever we can get it in terms of getting the release of any Americans who were detained in Syria," Toner said. US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Moscow last month and held closed-door talks with President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. New York (AFP) - The US government is keeping its encryption battle with Apple alive, pressing the high-tech giant to help crack an iPhone in a drug case in New York. The Justice Department filed a letter in a US District Court on Friday telling a judge that it still wants Apple to extract pictures, text messages and other digital data from an iPhone used by someone accused of trafficking in methamphetamines. Also on Friday, court documents were unsealed showing that Apple rebuffed an order to help break into a locked iPhone for police investigating criminal gang activity in Boston. The news came after a high-stakes showdown between Apple and the FBI over access to the iPhone of a California gunman ended with investigators saying they had extracted the data on their own. Timing in the Massachusetts case lent support to Apple's ongoing argument that the US government was out to set legal precedent that would essentially open a back door into all iPhones. A judge in Boston on February 1 ordered Apple to help police extract data from an iPhone confiscated last year from an alleged gang member, according to documents posted online Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Apple told AFP it immediately challenged the order on legal grounds, and advised the court it could not unlock the handset because it was powered by iOS 9 software with updated security features. The deadline passed for the US government to respond to Apple's stance on the order, indicating the effort was dropped. Meanwhile, on February 16, Apple received the legal demand to help the FBI in the San Bernardino case, which grabbed headlines as a terror attack and promised to win public support for the government. - Key questions remain - Key questions remain about how much access law enforcement should have to encrypted devices and how to balance security issues with user privacy rights. In the New York case, Justice Department lawyers told US District Court Judge Margo Brodie in a written filing that "the government continues to require Apple's assistance in accessing the data that it is authorized to search by warrant." Story continues Apple lawyers said they were disappointed by what amounted to an appeal by the government, arguing anew that it was an attempt to set a troubling legal precedent and not really a pursuit of vital information for fighting crime. In the New York case, the accused drug trafficker confessed and is set to be sentenced, Apple attorneys said. Apple is being asked to extract data from an iPhone for sentencing purposes. In the San Bernardino case, in contrast, the government called on Apple to create a new tool to bypass iPhone security systems to crack into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a December rampage that left 14 dead. - Apple holds its ground - Apple attorneys said they planned to oppose the government's effort in the New York case by pressing in court to find out whether it has done everything possible without the company's help to get the data it seeks and by continuing to argue that the request is not backed by law. The US Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI went to court in New York to compel Apple to help it break into an iPhone confiscated in June 2014 from a suspected methamphetamine trafficker, according to court documents. The US government sought to get Apple to help break into the iPhone under the auspices of the All Writs Act -- a 1789 law that gives wide latitude to law enforcement, the same one cited in the San Bernardino case. Earlier this year, a lower court judge in New York sided with Apple, saying law enforcement lacked the authority to compel the company to comply. Apple on Friday maintained its position that the government is overreaching its authority, saying elected lawmakers should decide the degree to which third parties can be compelled to work for the government. Congress is indeed expected to consider legislation that would require technology firms to retain "keys" that could retrieve data under court orders in criminal investigations. A broad coalition of technology companies and activists have argued against any encryption rules that would allow "special access" for law enforcement, claiming they would create vulnerabilities that hackers or repressive governments could exploit, threatening the security of banking, electronic commerce, trade secrets and more. Washington (AFP) - A former US sailor was acquitted Thursday with the help of DNA evidence after spending 33 years in prison, erroneously convicted of raping a woman and killing her husband in 1982. Keith Harward was convicted on expert testimony that a bite mark on the wife matched his teeth imprint. He was sentenced to life in prison. Three decades later, DNA tests have revealed that the rape and murder were carried out by a different sailor, who has since died in prison serving a sentence for another crime. Harward, now 59, was convicted of entering a home in the city of Newport News, killing the husband with a crowbar and raping his wife while their three children slept nearby. The Virginia Supreme Court wrote in its decision that it "vacates Harward's convictions for murder, rape, forcible sodomy and robbery." In 2015, the United States exonerated 149 people, a record number that represents only a "drop in the bucket" of tens of thousands of wrongly convicted people, according to a February report by the University of Michigan Law School. The 149 prisoners had served 14.5 years each on average. By Trevor Hunnicutt (Reuters) - Vanguard Group Chief Executive Bill McNabb said on Thursday he was encouraged by the U.S. Department of Labor's steps to make new rules on the advice brokers provide on retirement savings "more workable." "We are encouraged that the DOL has taken important steps to establish meaningful protections for retirement investors while making the final rule more workable," McNabb said in a statement posted online. The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled its final version of a retirement advice rule aimed at ensuring that broker-dealers put their clients' interests ahead of their own profits, though it was softened in response to industry complaints. Vanguard, a major manager of retirement investments that oversees more than $3 trillion in assets, had criticized an earlier version of the proposal as being applied too broadly to its activities and to situations in which investors would not reasonably expect that they were receiving investment advice. Yet Vanguard said the new rule makes disclosure and contract requirements "more practical and easier to follow." "All of the effort within the industry to improve the DOL proposal appears to have produced positive results," according to John Schadl, a member of the company's legal department, according to a statement also posted online. The company praised the government's efforts to align its rules better with existing standards laid out by other regulatory bodies, although Vanguard said "the DOL could have done more to harmonize these standards." The Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based company said it has not fully reviewed the 1,023 pages of rules the department released. "It is almost certain that we will find provisions of the new rule that will adversely affect some within the industry," Schadl said in the statement. (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Dan Grebler) Its a mixed bag kind of day for Victorias Secret. On Thursday the lingerie companys owner L Brands (LB) reported a 3% increase in same-store sales for the month of March but also laid off around 200 employees in both its Columbus, Ohio, headquarters and New York office. The company also announced its streamlining the business into three distinct units: lingerie, its Pink line and beauty. It will be shuttering its catalog, merchandise lines like its swimwear collection, including third-party retailers like Kenneth Cole, Vix, and Carmen Marc Valvo. The news comes two months after Victorias Secret CEO Sharen Turney resigned and L Brands founder and CEO Lex Wexner would take on the top role at the company. The heads of each of the three departments will report to Wexner. Bullish on beauty? Though Victorias Secret same-store sales grew 2% in March, the companys gross merchandise margin fell because it has been restructuring its beauty segment. The company has actively decided to focus on this area; it has 373 Victorias Secret Beauty locations, and opened 88 new stores last quarter alone. Victorias Secret Beauty appears to be replicating the physical format of Bath and Body Works, also owned by L Brands. With an affordable price point and aisles lined with colorful lotions and scents, Victorias Secret Beauty stores have a distinct presence from its lingerie and apparel brands. Products include body mists, perfume, hair mousse, and a variety of gift sets. Prices range from $5 to $58. An employee who was recently laid off said Wexner often emphasized the importance of building the beauty brand. And hes not the only one. Other big-name retailers are hoping their beauty bets pay off. During Walgreens Boots Alliances (WBA) earnings call this week, global CFO George Fairweather noted that it will be aggressively expanding its beauty department, which he considers a key destination category. Were on track to roll out our differentiated beauty offering to an additional 1,600 stores beginning this summer. Our beauty product brands such as No7 and Soap & Glory are our key drivers, Fairweather said. This will boost the total number of stores with this offering to 2,000. Macys (M) acquired luxury beauty chain BlueMercury last year for $210 million, while LVMHs Sephora chain saw double-digit revenue growth and global market share gains in 2015. Buying beauty products is a highly interactive and tactile experience, and expanding both its capital and physical footprint looks to be a core component for the future of Victorias Secret. Evidence shows that security and military responses alone cannot defeat this scourge, says UN chief. (Photo: AFP) Geneva: The Syrian conflict has acted like a greenhouse for extremist groups which are now spreading "like a cancer", the UN chief said on Friday, urging greater cooperation to prevent radicalisation. The war raging in Syria has "provided the perfect breeding ground for extremist and terrorists to take root in the society," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Geneva. "Now (the Islamic State group) and all the extremists are spreading like a cancer around the world," he warned in remarks on the sidelines of a high-level conference on preventing violent extremism. In an earlier address to some of the 700 delegates among them around 30 ministers and deputy ministers Ban urged a radical rethink of ways to counter the threat from IS and other groups. "Evidence shows that security and military responses alone cannot defeat this scourge," he said, stressing that heavy-handed responses have sometimes "proven to be counter-productive" and can "end up further fuelling violent extremism". In January, Ban launched a global action plan, asking countries to come up with national plans to address the problem. Ban's plan encompasses 79 recommendations, from boosting education to promoting human rights to counter the recruitment drives of groups like IS and Boko Haram which prey on disaffected youth. It also calls for countries to try to appeal to fighters who have joined groups like IS to return home by offering education and job opportunities, and urges governments to engage with social media to find ways to challenge the jihadists' messages. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, whose country last month was rocked by terror attacks that killed 32 people, was among the many ministers who voiced support for Ban's plan. Respecting rights is key "We must remain vigilant to ensure that our fight against terrorism respects freedom of expression, the freedom of citizens," he told delegates. "Respecting human right is not only an efficient way to fight terrorism, but it is also a way to not give in to the terrorists," he said. Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter, whose country co-hosted the conference, agreed. "Preventing violent extremism means stepping up efforts to promote the rule of law, human rights and, in armed conflicts, international humanitarian law," he told the conference. Countries also need to "offer young people opportunities and render them unreceptive to the temptations of terrorism," through education and job opportunities, he said. Ban said Friday he aimed to create a high-level action group to review and help implement his plan to prevent violent extremism. New York (AFP) - Wells Fargo will pay $1.2 billion to refund US agencies for wrongly certifying bad loans for federal home insurance ahead of the 2008 housing bust, the Department of Justice announced Friday. The settlement resolves charges that Wells Fargo, a giant in the US mortgage lending, employed shoddy underwriting practices to drive up loan volume, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill when mortgages failed. The government faulted Wells Fargo's actions under the federal direct endorsement lender program, which lets mortgage lenders originate, underwrite and certify mortgages for federal loan insurance in return for adequate oversight of the loans. But Wells Fargo "engaged in a regular practice of reckless origination and underwriting of its FHA retail loans, all the while knowing that it would not be responsible when the defective loans went into default," Justice said. The bank identified thousands of problematic loans, but failed to report them to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, said US Attorney Preet Bharara. "As a result, while Wells Fargo enjoyed huge profits from its FHA loan business, the government was left holding the bag when the bad loans went bust," Bharara said. "With today's settlement, Wells Fargo has finally resolved the years-long litigation, adding to the list of large financial institutions against which this office has successfully pursued civil fraud prosecutions." Wells Fargo said the agreement "allows us to put the legal process behind us, and to focus our resources and energy on what we do bestserving the needs of the nations homeowners." (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co has formally reached a $1.2 billion settlement to end a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit accusing it of knowingly deceiving the federal government into insuring thousands of risky mortgages. The accord was filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court. It also resolves claims against Kurt Lofrano, a former Wells Fargo vice president. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler) Rights to When Audrey Met Alice (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2014) have been picked up by producing partners Jodie Markell and Emily Shapiro. The YA coming-of-age novel by Rebecca Behrens imagines what happens when 13-year-old first daughter Audrey Rhodes finds the diary of Teddy Roosevelt's daughter Alice, who was 17 when her father became president in 1901. Audrey begins emulating Alice's misadventures (Alice once famously jumped into a cruise ship's pool fully clothed when she was accompanying Secretary of War William Howard Taft on an official visit to Japan). Markell is an actor and director, most notably of the 2008 Bryce Dallas Howard/Chris Evans film The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond. Shapiro is the founder of the New York International Children's Film Festival. Behrens' latest novel, The Summer of Lost and Found, is scheduled for publication in May from Simon & Schuster. She was repped by Suzie Townsend and Pouya Shahbazian of New Leaf Literary & Media on the deal. The latest designer to partner with Target on a high-low collection for the masses didn't come about by accident. Former reality star Whitney Port targeted the retailer quite intentionally, reaching out with a phone call to pitch her label Whitney Eve as its next activewear collaborator. Considering her long, lean dancer's body, it's no surprise Port has an affinity for ballet, fitness and wellness. She danced in high school, and looked back to that time for her inspiration: "ballet touches" and "soft pinks," according to WWD. Also set to appear in the activewear line are the "feminine and funky prints" that Port's label is known for. The collaboration is timed to be released around the back-to-school season, and will be the first U.S. collab for Whitney Eve, which has previously partnered with Cooper Street and Sportsgirl in Australia. Although Port's label is already sold at Nordstrom (among other shops), with Target, the line has the chance to take center stage nationwide - and during barre class. Read More: Ivanka Trump's Made-in-China Scarves Recalled Over "Burn Risk" PANAMA CITY (AP) Rich and influential people around the globe have found themselves under siege since a major data leak revealed their ties to secretive financial accounts and shell companies in low-tax havens used to hide wealth. The uproar has brought down the prime minister of Iceland and raised questions about the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, and the circle of friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron became the latest politician ensnared when he acknowledged having profited from his father's investments in an offshore tax haven before being elected. Yet few American names have cropped up in the "Panama Papers," a trove of 11.5 million confidential records detailing such accounts. That's because the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm at the center of the scandal doesn't like taking on American clients, one of its founders says. Ramon Fonseca, who started the firm with Jurgen Mossack, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that their law firm has only a handful of American clients, most of them members of Panama's burgeoning expat retirement community. It's not out of any anti-Americanism or fear of the Internal Revenue Service. "My partner is German, and I lived in Europe, and our focus has always been the European and Latin American market," Fonseca said at his law office. "He loves the U.S. a lot, and I do, too. My kids were educated there," Fonseca added. But "as a policy we prefer not to have American clients." Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that first obtained the documents, said the records include copies of the passports of 200 Americans and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore companies have listed addresses in the U.S. That's a tiny fraction of the more than 250,000 companies Mossack Fonseca has set up for clients in four decades of business. Story continues One reason for the dearth of American clients may be because such companies can be easily created in U.S. states such as Wyoming, Delaware and Nevada, attracting less attention than they might in Panama, a country with a reputation for shady financial deals and money laundering. Europe is also home to countries that provide banking secrecy that could provide haven from taxes, such as Luxembourg, Switzerland and Andorra. Many Panamanians point to those activities in wealthy countries and say they are angry over what they consider a double standard behind criticism of Panama. On Thursday, a European Union official threatened sanctions on Panama and other nations if they don't cooperate fully to fight money laundering and tax evasion. "People are fed up with these outrages," said Pierre Moscovici, who heads financial affairs for the 28-nation EU. "The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking." Panama is listed by the EU as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, and Moscovici urged the country to "rethink its position in this regard." Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela has said his government will cooperate more and announced plans for an international committee of experts to recommend ways to boost transparency. But he also vows to defend his country against what he says are media attacks that unfairly stigmatize Panama. In Britain, the prime minister could become the next European politician to find himself under attack. After four days fending off headlines about his family's finances, he acknowledged Thursday that he and his wife, Samantha, sold shares worth 31,500 pounds (currently $44,300) in an offshore fund named Blairmore Holdings in January 2010 five months before Cameron became prime minister. They had paid 12,497 pounds for the shares in 1997. Cameron's father, Ian Cameron, an affluent stockbroker who died in 2010, was a client of Mossack Fonseca. There's no indication the offshore fund was set up to avoid taxes but the revelation reinforced the prime minister's image as a scion of wealth and undermined calls to boost transparency at a time many British overseas territories act as tax havens. Also on Thursday, an Argentine prosecutor asked a judge to authorize an investigation into President Mauricio Macri's role in two offshore companies. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, denied having any links to offshore accounts and described the document leaks as part of a U.S.-led plot to weaken Russia even though his name doesn't appear in any of the leaked records. "They are trying to destabilize us from within in order to make us more compliant," he said Thursday at a forum in St. Petersburg. The Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped coordinate reporting on the leak, said the documents indicate Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin acted as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists and, perhaps, the president himself. Fonseca said his firm creates about 20,000 shell companies annually but also rejects about 70 to 80 clients every year due to conflicts that arise during due diligence. "We're not perfect and some surely escape by," he said. "But so far the only crime that has been proven is the hack." ___ Associated Press writer Juan Zamorano reported this story in Panama City and AP writer Joshua Goodman reported from Bogota, Colombia. Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials said the firm has changed completely. (Representational Image) Milan/New Delhi: Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanicas former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption in the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for over Rs 3,600 crore. In the ruling, which overturned a previous court order of 2014 that had given Orsi reprieve in connection with the corruption angle, former CEO of Finmeccanicas helicopter subsidiary AgustaWest-land, Bruno Spagnolini, was also handed a four-year prison term by the court on Thursday. The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively. Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials said the firm has changed completely. The CBI and the ED are still probing the case in India in which former Indian Air Force chief S.P. Tyagi and his cousins are alleged to be the beneficiaries. The ED had attached five expensive flats in and around New Delhi in the name of cousins of Tyagi in connection with its money laundering probe. What do Donald Trump supporters like most about the billionaire businessman? A new PRRI / The Atlantic poll illuminates some broad trends about Trump backers, showing that many of them want a candidate willing to break the rules to create change and are most likely to be concerned about shifts in cultural and gender norms. Several of the more than 275 Trump supporters who participated in the national survey agreed to speak in more detail about the 2016 presidential election. The interviews offer a closer look at how Trump has been able to attract such a devoted following in the Republican primary. The interviewees vary in age, economic status, and political ideology. Not all of them hated Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for example, and each of them voiced concerns with some of the things Trump has said or the policies he has proposed. But a couple themes became clear: All of the supporters interviewed said Trump was unlikely to be beholden to Wall Street or the political class, and nearly all of them said they liked his willingness to say things that other politicians wont. What in particular? For these Trump fans, its all about immigration. All of them cited his call to secure the border, although they differed on how best to do it. David Osterkamp, 62, West Virginia He tells it like it is, Osterkamp said when asked to explain his support from Donald Trump. A retired railroad worker, Osterkamp described himself as a somewhat conservative politician. He voted for John McCain in 2008 and Obama in 2012, and he said the president had done as good as everybody else. Recommended: Five Ways the Republican Race Could End As for Trump, Osterkamp said he particularly liked what the candidate has been saying about controlling the Mexican border. Not deport everybody, but put a wall up, he said. Hes just saying things that other people would say but they dont got the guts to. Osterkamp had more concerns about Trumps handle on foreign affairs. I dont know how good of a president hed be on that, but he seems to know what direction to take the country in otherwise, he said. Story continues Who is Osterkamps second choice? That would be Hillary Clinton. She seems to know more about stuff than most of the candidates do, he said, citing her tenure as first lady, senator, and secretary of state. Hes not a fan of Ted Cruz. I dont like him, Osterkamp said. Hes an old buzzard as far as Im concerned. Donald Hoskin, 77, Missouri Hoskin has done well financially running a 700-acre farm after retiring from his job as a math teacher. One thing he said he likes about Trump is that hes financing his own campaign. In truth, Trump has taken millions in campaign contributions in addition to using his own money, but his repeated boast that he is self-funding has resonated with voters like Hoskin. Hes out of the Washington clique, if you please, he said. Policy-wise, Hoskin said he agrees with Trumps views on immigration even though he believes his call to deport millions of undocumented immigrants is impractical. Thats impossible. It sounds good, but its not practical, he said. Hoskin said he likes the idea of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Well, I dont know whos going to pay for it, but somewhere along the line weve got to stop the damn drugs and slave labor, he said. All the illegal immigrants are coming over, and they say theyre doing a job no one else will do. Well, when theyre here, nobody else will do them. Recommended: The Obama Doctrine A Republican, Hoskin didnt vote for Obama and said he would definitely not vote for Hillary Clinton. I dont believe she has any integrity whatsoever, he said. (As for Ted Cruz, Hoskin called the Texas senator a true politician: Sneaky.) He complained about the nuclear deal with Iranasinine, he called itand he worried about the amount of money the United States was spending overseas. Why do we have to be the worlds policeman? Why are we taking care of Saudi Arabia? Hoskin asked. They have all the money and were spending all the money and letting our infrastructure go downhill. At least I agree with Trump on that. Jack Bibiano, 20, Tennessee Bibiano isnt actually a Trump supporter: He voted for Rand Paul in the Tennessee primary and plans to vote for the Libertarian Party nominee in the fall. But he responded honestly in the poll by saying that of the current Republicans running, he hoped Trump would win the nomination. The thing I do like is hes not controlled by Wall Street, Bibiano said. Bibiano said he didnt like that Trump is scapegoating Muslims, and he said he wasnt committed to small-government conservatism. Thats what we so desperately needthe government off of our backs, out of house, out of our bedrooms, stop telling us what to do, Bibiano said. Compared to Trump, he said, Paul had detailed plans for how he would cut government and restrain the Federal Reserve. Donald Trumps just saying what everybody is feeling. But he doesnt have an actual plan, he said. Recommended: Why the Vatican Invited Bernie Sanders to Come Speak An aspiring musician, Bibiano was a devotee both of Rand Paul and his father, Ron. He said he gave up hope with the Republican Party after seeing the way Ron Paul was treated in 2012. But he could never vote for Hillary ClintonYou just know shes a criminal, he saidand he said he couldnt trust Ted Cruz. He says good stuff, but I dont think hes a conservative, Bibiano said. Out of everyone in the Republican Party, if someone from that party had to win, Id want it to be Trump, just because we dont know what hes going to do. We know Ted Cruz is going to sell us out. And Hillary Clinton. Maybe Donald Trump will stand up and be the best president ever, he added. I doubt it, but Pam Rice, 46, Kentucky What does Pam Rice like about Donald Trump? He dont sugarcoat anything, she said. There are things in America that are happening that shouldnt be happening, and hes the only one willing to address it. Those things are a reference to illegal immigration, and the people coming into the United States now that get a free pass. Rice said she doesnt necessarily support mass deportation, but undocumented immigrants need to get right with the law. If they can get legal status here and conform to the laws of America, I dont see a problem, she said. A stay-at-home mom, Rice cares for a special-needs child, and their family relies on the income of her husband, who earns $1,600 a month working at Walmart. Were poor. We cannot get any help, she said. Although the couple identifies as Native American, she said she has been told by welfare officials that they arent eligible for benefits that are available to minorities. I cant get anything because my husband makes too much money, Rice said. And if you think that $1,600 a month is too much to gross, then somethings wrong. Hes just blunt, and I think America has done without the bluntness. Perhaps the policy that most angers Rice is Obamacare and its requirement that individuals buy health insurance. How can you penalize someone when you cant afford to buy insurance? she asked. Her family is covered by Wellcare, a Medicaid provider, but she said the cost of medicine had gone up under the law. Interestingly, its one of the reasons shes supporting Trump over Ted Cruz. Trump is not a career politician like Cruz is, Rice said. As a Texas senator, Cruz has made his name opposing the health-care law, even orchestrating the government shutdown over its funding in 2013. But Rice said he didnt do enough. He could have fought harder. He could have done something else, she said. More broadly, she lamented what she said had seen a shift in American culture over her lifetime, from a society that rewards work to one that doesnt. Theres just too many whiny people out there, Rice said. They dont know how to work hard. They want everything for free, and the people that actually work and need help cant get it. But the people who dont want to work can get everything they want. Unlike the other interviewees, there wasnt anything at all about Trump that troubled her. He might be brash. He might lack tact, but he just spits out what he thinks, Rice said. Hes just blunt, and I think America has done without the bluntness. Everythings been sugarcoated for so long they cant handle somebody who is willing to speak the truth. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. The World Bank on Thursday said it would increase funding for renewable energy and other projects aimed at reducing the effects of climate change in developing countries. The plan -- which follows the landmark UN climate conference that yielded the Paris Agreement in December -- calls for funding projects that would add 30 gigawatts of renewable energy to the global grid, which would power 150 million homes with renewable energy by 2020, the bank said in a statement. It also proposes "climate-smart" agriculture investment for at least 40 countries, and bringing early warning systems to 100 million people. "Following the Paris climate agreement, we must now take bold action to protect our planet for future generations," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement. "We are moving urgently to help countries make major transitions to increase sources of renewable energy, decrease high-carbon energy sources, develop green transport systems, and build sustainable, livable cities for growing urban populations." Among its other proposals, the plan calls for quadrupling funding over five years to make transport systems more resilient to climate change. The International Finance Corporation -- a branch of the World Bank Group that serves the private sector -- plans to expand its climate investments from the current $2.2 billion a year to a goal of $3.5 billion a year to help finance the plan. In addition to its own financing, the World Bank also plans to direct $25 billion in commercial financing for clean energy over the next five years, the statement said. NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York man was arrested on Friday on allegations he had threatened to kill President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and some of the candidates from both parties vying for the White House in November's election, U.S. authorities said. Joseph Goode, 21, of Cheektowaga, New York, vowed to use a high-powered rifle to kill Obama, according to the office of U.S. Attorney William Hochul in Buffalo, New York. He also threatened to kill both Clinton and his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, along with Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Goode said he "is the kind of person ready to snap and shoot up a public place" and said he wanted to "see the world burn," according to prosecutors. It was not immediately clear to whom he had made the threats. The candidates are campaigning across New York in advance of the state primary elections on April 19. Goode was scheduled for an initial court appearance on Friday in federal court in Buffalo and faces a maximum of five years in prison if convicted. (Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by David Gregorio) New York (AFP) - New York's Lincoln Center will celebrate late rock legend Lou Reed with a full day of free events including a concert and immersive sound installation. Laurie Anderson, the widow of the Velvet Underground songwriter who died in 2013, will organize the July 30 event at Lincoln Center, the institution announced Friday. Lincoln Center, the arts complex that is home to the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic, said the day would begin at its plaza with a public tai chi session led by Reed's teacher, Master Ren Guangyi. The day-long event, called "The Bells" after one of Reed's songs, will also feature an installation of six of the artist's guitars and amplifiers that will produce a loop of feedback to surround visitors in sound. "The Bells" will also include film screenings and readings and culminate in an evening concert by "a raft of artists across a range of music genres," said a statement by Lincoln Center, which did not immediately reveal the performers. Reed and Anderson, herself an avant-garde artist, frequented Lincoln Center which held the only public memorial service for Reed -- a session of his music played on loudspeakers with no eulogies or other commentary. The Velvet Underground revolutionized music starting in the late 1960s, setting the stage for later alternative and indie movements, and Reed produced a series of critically acclaimed solo albums. The band brought to music an aesthetic edge from the art world, with pop artist Andy Warhol working on the 1967 debut album "The Velvet Underground & Nico," and unabashedly took up dark subject matter such as drug use and sexual pleasure. The event comes amid an related retrospective on the Velvet Underground at the Philharmonie de Paris, the year-old music hall in the French capital. Reed's former bandmate John Cale opened the retrospective with a rare concert in which he played the debut album from start to finish in a collaboration with younger artists. IS attacked the town of Dmeir, east of Damascus, after suffering a series of territorial losses at the hands of regime troops in recent weeks. (Photo: AFP) Damascus: The Islamic State group has executed 175 of the 344 cement factory workers kidnapped Thursday, according to new agency reports. The group was accused of kidnapping more than 300 employees of a cement factory in Syria, in the latest mass abduction by the jihadists. IS attacked the town of Dmeir, east of Damascus, after suffering a series of territorial losses at the hands of regime troops in recent weeks, including in the ancient city of Palmyra. The Reuters news agency quoted Syrian military sources reporting the killings on Friday, days after officials reported the factory workers missing from the Al Badia Cement Company. But the agency later said the source had been "misattributed" and warned that the report was unconfirmed. In another setback for the jihadists, anti-government rebels were reported to have seized their main supply route to Turkey on Thursday. Syria's official news agency SANA said the 300 people seized by IS were employees of Al-Badia cement factory. "The company has informed the industry ministry that it hasn't been able to make contact with the kidnapped individuals," SANA said. The extremist group, which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq, has a history of mass abductions and killings. Residents of Dmeir, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Damascus, earlier reported that at least 250 workers at the plant had been missing since Monday. The town is divided between IS control in the east and rebel control in the west, but several key positions around it, including a military airport and a power plant, are still in government hands. The fresh fighting came ahead of a new round of peace talks due next week in Geneva, following a ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels that has allowed Syrian forces to focus on fighting IS. The talks are now due to begin on April 13, the same day as the regime is holding legislative elections, UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said Thursday, delaying them by two days. "I will be very much insisting and pushing for... a serious discussion on political transition" at the upcoming round, de Mistura told reporters in Geneva. He said that before then he would complete a diplomatic tour, including stops in Damascus and Tehran, to "verify the international and regional stakeholders' position" in order to have "concrete results in the next round of talks". The key stumbling block in the peace talks in Geneva is the fate of President Bashar al-Assad. Syria's opposition has clung to its years-long demand that he leave power immediately, but the government has refused. - 'Violent clashes' - Britain-based monitor, said the fighting in and around Dmeir was heavy but the jihadists had not managed to gain significant ground. "The most violent clashes are near the airport and the power plant, but IS has not entered either yet," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said. He said 20 members of regime forces and 35 IS fighters had been killed in the clashes. A Dmeir resident told AFP on Thursday she could hear heavy shelling around the city and that residents were not daring to leave their homes. "We have no electricity, we have no water. There are people fleeing from the eastern districts to the west," she said, asking not to be named out of fear for her safety. Further north on the border with Turkey, rebel factions and Islamists took control of a border crossing as well as the town of Al-Rai after clashes with IS, according to the Observatory. "This is the main and one of the last crossing points with Turkey," the monitor said. Residents of battle-scarred Palmyra were meanwhile preparing to start returning to the city on Saturday after its recapture from the jihadists, officials said. Most of Palmyra's pre-war population of 70,000 people fled west towards the city of Homs when the extremist group advanced on the city in May 2015. Authorities this week began restoring power lines in the city and repairs to housing began on Wednesday, provincial governor Talal Barazi told the state news agency. More than 270,000 people have been killed and millions have fled their homes since Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011. The United Nations said Thursday it was aiming to begin a large-scale evacuation of wounded and sick people from four besieged Syrian towns within the next week. Jan Egeland, who heads a UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, said "a very major" medical evacuation was planned for Madaya and Zabadani, two towns near Damascus blockaded by the regime and their allies, and Fuaa and Kafraya, besieged by rebels in Syria's northwest. "All together it could be up to 500 people," he told reporters in Geneva. The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity said the situation in Syria's besieged areas remained critical. "The catalogue of horror continues virtually unabated in many besieged areas," said MSF Director of Operations Dr Bart Janssens. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are heading to India and Bhutan on a diplomatic trip in the coming days, and while the tour is being carried out at the behest of Her Majestys Government to expand personal ties with the countries, its unofficially an opportunity for Kate Middleton to show off some new styles. With the duchess in a new environment and outside of Kensington Palaces comfortable grounds, fashion fans are crossing their fingers that the 34-year-old will experiment with local designers and silhouettes. No one wants this more than Deep Kailey, a stylist whose resume includes the prestiges fashion editor job at Vogue India, fashion director at Tatler UK and who is currently launching a publication focusing on the vibrant cultural scene in India. In short: Kate should consider giving her a call. The biggest mistake she could make is looking like a cliche, Kailey tells Yahoo Style about Kates wardrobe. I know she can pull off all these Indian designers, but all will depend on her choice and knowing how to wear these silhouettes. Lets be honest, the duchess is pretty sartorially unimaginative, but shes nothing if not proper: She always take into account the appropriateness of her hem and necklines, the height of her heels for maximum comfort, and how much money should be spent on a particular ensemble in order not to anger taxpayers. As Kailey points out, theres a lot more at stake overseas, and Kates style advisers have their work cut out for them. Will the duchess wear a sari? What should she wear to visit the Taj Mahal? This is an especially difficult decision considering her mother-in-law Princess Dianas iconic visit to the monument in 1992, in which she is pictured alone wearing a red blazer and purple shoes, has been embedded in the publics memory for so long. Other stops on the royal couples itinerary include Mumbai, New Delhi, Gandhi Smriti, attending a Bollywood gala, visiting a slum, and hiking a mountain. For all of these affairs, will she choose Indian designers? And if so, whom? To answer these questions, Kailey told us seven Indian designers Kate should consider wearing. And if she does heed this advice, remember that you heard it here first! Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. By Sanjeev Miglani NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is in talks with the United States to purchase 40 Predator surveillance drones, officials said, a possible first step towards acquiring the armed version of the aircraft and a development likely to annoy Pakistan. India is trying to equip the military with more unmanned technologies to gather intelligence as well as boost its firepower along the vast land borders with Pakistan and China. It also wants a closer eye on the Indian Ocean. New Delhi has already acquired surveillance drones from Israel to monitor the mountains of Kashmir, a region disputed by the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals and the cause of two of their three wars. As defence ties deepen with the United States, which sees India as a counterweight to China in the region, New Delhi has asked Washington for the Predator series of unmanned planes built by privately-held General Atomics, military officials said. "We are aware of Predator interest from the Indian Navy. However, it is a government-to-government discussion," Vivek Lall, chief executive of U.S. and International Strategic Development at San Diego-based General Atomics, told Reuters. The U.S. government late last year cleared General Atomics' proposal to market the unarmed Predator XP in India. It was not clear when the delivery of the drones would take place. The navy wants them for surveillance in the Indian Ocean, where the pilotless aircraft can remain airborne for 35 hours at a stretch, at a time when the Chinese navy is expanding ship and submarine patrols in the region. Moves by India to enhance its defence capabilities have in the past provoked sharp reactions from Islamabad, where the government and military are worried about falling further behind their bigger rival in the arms race. Pakistan's foreign ministry could not be reached for comment on Friday, the start of the weekend there, while the military had no immediate comment. CARTER VISIT India's air force has also asked Washington about acquiring around 100 armed Predator C Avenger aircraft, which the United States has used to carry out strikes against Islamist militants in Pakistan's northwest and neighbouring Afghanistan. But it would need clearance from the Missile Technology Control Regime group of 34 nations as well as approval from U.S. Congress before any transfer of lethal Predators could happen, officials said. The push for the drones comes as U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter heads to India this weekend for talks to cement military collaboration in the final months of the Obama administration. Indian military officials said they expected the request for the armed aircraft to figure in Carter's talks with his Indian counterpart, Manohar Parrikar. Washington wants India to sign a set of agreements including on the use of each other's military bases that would help them operate together. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has signalled its willingness to move forward with the proposed pacts after the previous administration did not act for more than a decade. Retired air vice marshal Manmohan Bahadur said the proposed acquisition of armed Predators would give the military the ability to carry out cross-border strikes, or even attack targets lying deeper inside a neighbouring country. "But at the end of the day, it's a political decision. It's one thing to lob artillery shells, its another to use air power, that's an escalation," he said. India has not moved against Pakistan militarily despite blaming militant groups based there for orchestrating attacks on its soil including one on Mumbai in 2008, in part out of fear it would spiral into a broader conflict. But a drone strike might be a less risky option, experts said. Ejaz Haider, a Pakistani security analyst, said Islamabad would object to the transfer of such drones in the region. But he questioned their effectiveness if they entered Pakistani air space, since it would probably try to shoot them down, something it did not do with U.S. drones. "There is obviously going to be push-back from Pakistan, because if it (the drone) does get through in some way or other it enhances Indian capability," he said. (Additional reporting by Doug Busvine in NEW DELHI and Hashim Asad in ISLAMABAD; Editing by Mike Collett-White) (Reuters) - NXP Semiconductors NV is considering a sale of its standard products business and has received interest from Chinese buyers, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. NXP, whose shares were up about 3 percent in early U.S. trading, may seek at least $2 billion for the unit, which makes semiconductor parts used in consumer electronics, Bloomberg reported. Faltering demand in computer and phone markets, once semiconductor industry mainstays, have fueled a year-long merger wave as firms look to higher margin areas like automotive electronics for sales growth. NXP signaled its commitment to such a strategy in December when it completed a near $12 billion deal to buy Freescale Semiconductor Inc and became the world's top maker of automotive electronics. The standard products business has drawn interest from suitors including Jianguang Asset Management Co, the Beijing-based investment firm known as JAC Capital, according to Bloomberg. NXP, which grew out of Dutch consumer electronics giant Philips, sold its RF Power business to Jianguang Asset Management last year for $1.8 billion. China has shown particular interest in investing in foreign technology companies as Beijing seeks to become a global semiconductor powerhouse. Joon Knapen, a spokesman for NXP, said the company did not comment on rumors or speculation. JAC Capital did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. The standard products unit is expected to contribute about 13 percent to NXP's first quarter revenue, estimated to be $2.17 billion, the company said in February. Up to Thursday's close of $81.26, NXP's shares had fallen more than 3 percent this year. (Reporting by Narottam Medhora and Richa Naidu in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta) Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi recently signed into law state bill HB 1523, which allows religious organizations and private business to refuse services to people on the grounds that it would violate their religious beliefs. Ellen DeGeneres used her opening monologue to address Mississippis new law one that, in general, targets members of the LGBT community. That is the definition of discrimination, said DeGeneres. It is also something that the Supreme Court already ruled on when they made marriage a right for everyone. Everyone. Under the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act, gay and transexual individuals can be denied housing and even fired. These steps backwards for equal rights strike a chord with DeGeneres, who has dealt with her fair share of discrimination in the past for her sexual orientation. So if youre in Mississippi or North Carolina or anywhere, and are saddened by the fact that people are judging you based on who you love, dont lose hope, pleaded DeGeneres. I was fired for being gay and I know what it feels like. I lost everything, but look at me now. Watch: Hillary Clinton on Possible Trump Presidency: Lets Make Sure That Doesnt Happen Tell us what you think. Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or leave your comments below. University of Georgia alum and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Tituss Burgess dropped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and had a lot of shade to throw at his home state. Colbert asked Burgess if he was from Georgia, and without hesitation Burgess said yes begrudgingly. When Colbert asked the visibly upset Broadway actor why he was so quick to denounce the great state of Georgia, Burgess piped up that it was because the state was shady. The political activist was then handed a graduation cap and given an opportunity to address his fellow classmates on the importance of voting. Burgess said to the Georgia graduates, I think you need to come out of the bars and go vote in these primaries and the elections, and get these terrorists out of office. Because you are literally your inactivity, your inability to protect human beings is killing us. Regardless of whether hell get the opportunity to speak, its safe to say that Burgesss speech put everyone listening in formation. The Late Show With Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS. Watch Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcones disgusting food challenge: 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. Jacobabad: In a shocking incident, a husband allegedly killed his teenage wife on the wedding night, after he found that she was not a virgin. The incident happened in Jacobabad district of Pakistan's Sindh province, according to a report in the Daily Mail. 19-year-old newly wed bride Khanzadi Lasharis dead body was found lying on the bed. Her husband, 28-year-old Qalandar Baksh Khokhar, who was also her cousin, strangled her with the cotton twine of a salwar suit. The deceaseds father became suspicious after he didnt hear from his daughter and son-in-law. The girls family notified the police of the untoward incident. "The wedding went well, the couple enjoyed the ceremony; but suspicion drew in as the couple left the venue," said the father of the deceased. The family registered an FIR with the police against Khokhar and his four brothers. He was of a sceptic nature and everybody in our family was aware of it; however, we never expected that he could be so dangerous, said the deceaseds brother. The police traced his mobile number and location. He conceded to the wrongdoing when the police interrogated him. Khokhar has been arrested on charges of murder, under section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code. I dont think total dollars spent in any form indicate any absolute in defense. It does not take into any human factors. Iran will push as far as it can push or thinks it can. Also when you look at the United States military budget it is huge. I get that. Unlike most nations the United States defense budget is spread all over the world literally. So, you take Iran for instance. Yes, the amount of money they spend on their defense is very small compared to the United States. But what they spent is only on Iran. Where as the United States spends it maintaining military all over the world. Factor that in with the human factor of willingness, to borrow a favorite liberal phrase, the playing starts getting leveled. Several months ago in China, I met an Iranian woman in a bar, and glory to Allah this woman was GORGEOUS from the top of her head to the bottom of those beautiful, little brown feet. I would start with her toes and move north. Has an *** designed by God himself. Nice girl, gave me a goodbye kiss on the side of my face. She is on my (Chinese version of) Snapchat. I am already married to an Oriental Princess, and love her, so maybe I will hook up with a Persian goddess in my next life. EVEN if I pursued a relationship with this girl (who is about 20-25 years younger than me), and married her, where would we live? I could not live in Iran, and the American government wouldn't easily let her at all into the USA. Probably a lot of Persian women with foreign men probably have the same problems. Dunno. The United States could easily beat Iran in a war if it were one on one, but a war with Iran would drag in everyone else and might start WWIII. Two things might resolve these issues. 1.) The Jews leave the Middle East and turn in back to the Arabs. Move the Jews to Florida, California or New York City or wherever the hell they want to go. 2.) The Iranian government needs to be overthrown for something different, and just about anything different would be better than the **** they have now, including Communism. At least under Communism, I can drink alcohol and talk to the ladies and would not have to deal with religious nutjobs. 3.) The USA government apologizes for overthrowing their democratically elected government in the 1950's and installed a horrible, two bit, repressive, greedy **** dictator in its place, all for oil and greed. The USA will make amends by bringing over 10 million Persian women to be educated by public universities. No Iranian men, just women, because the men are smelly, dirty, and treat their women like dogs. George Soros - The Most Evil Man in America Branding someone the most "anything" is a risky endeavor; superlatives will always be suspect. But I cannot find words strong enough to condemn George Soros. If you haven't heard of him, you're not alone. Outside of politics wonks and special-interest-group gravy-train riders, he is not well known. But he should be. There is no doubt in my mind that George Soros is the most dangerous man in America. Pick most any attack upon our culture you please -- that on Christianity, the push to legalize recreational drugs, the drive to grant amnesty to invaders, the trampling of our constitution, the metastasizing of the nanny state, and many others -- and Soros' fingerprints are all over them. He funds leftist causes to the tune of 400 million dollars a year. This article partially exposes the machinations of this creature, and here is an excerpt: Didn't the mainstream media report that 2006's vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer? Turns out that wasn't what happened, either. Soros' OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases. Soros is the invisible hand behind much of the manipulation of our culture. He reminds me of the evil emperor in Star Wars; his minions are all about bedeviling us, but you don't see him much. He stays behind the scenes, scheming, calculating, making his deals with the Devil and pulling strings. He is the miasma beneath the demon wings of the foot soldiers who do his bidding, the dirtiest of dirty work. What is truly disgusting about this man is that he tirelessly tries to destroy the very civilization that gave him the opportunity to make billions. Of course, he has made his money through noble pursuits such as breaking currencies, so I'm sure he sold his soul long ago. Even more shameful, though, is the media's abdication of its responsibility. The author of the piece I cite bemoans the lack of transparency with respect to Soros' schemes, but the media can render something transparent as easily as invisible. Barack Obama is a "rising political star" because the media decided that he fit their favored profile; Michael Savage is ignored perhaps because they know that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. If the media did its job and spotlighted Soros to a degree commensurate with his endeavors, they would be transparent. Then, the American people could make their decisions with open eyes. Don't misunderstand me, I don't say that the media have to score Soros as I do. However, movers and shakers should be scrutinized based on how much they move and shake, not based on which way they move and who they shake. The truth is that the media is one of the greatest enemies our country could have. So the cancer metastasizes, steadily, inexorably, perhaps irrevocably, as we die a death by a thousand cuts. The 50 Most Murderous Cities In The WorldBrazil has been in crisis for some time now.The countrys economy shrunk -3.8% last year, and its President, Dilma Rousseff, is holding on for dear life. Once chairman of Petrobras, the state-run oil giant currently engulfed in a colossal political scandal, she is now being threatened with impeachment just 15 months into her second four-year yerm.Her approval remains at an all-time low of just 11%. The currency has halved in value since 2011, and the countrys credit has been downgraded to junk status.However, as VisualCapitalist's Jeff Desjardins explains, its not only the economic and political spheres that are troubling in Brazil. The country also has the dubious distinction of being the world center for homicides. Todays chart, from The Economist, shows the 50 most murderous cities in the world and Brazil is home to a mind-boggling 32 of them.The good news is that key cities, such as Rio de Janeiro, are on the lower side of the spectrum. That said, the host of the 2016 Olympic Games is barely safer than Compton, with a murder rate of 18.6 per 100,000 people each year.The bad news is that Brazil now has more than 10% of all the worlds murders. While the murder rate has fallen in the largest cities around the country, it has picked up in many of the smaller ones. Cities such as Fortaleza or Natal are among the most violent in the world, with rates above 60 murders per 100,000. The Lebanon Police Department, in partnership with the Lebanon Blue Angels, will hold the event Walk a Mile for A Child, at 10 a.m., Saturday, April 9, at the Lebanon Justice Center. The event is geared to raise awareness to prevent child abuse and neglect. Registration begins at 8 a.m. The cost is $25 for adults and $15 for children 6 to 12 years. Children under 5 walk for free. All proceeds benefit the ABC House in Albany. To learn more, contact Community Policing Officer Dala Johnson at 541-258-4339. Dec. 28, 1921 March 29, 2016 Mary Elizabeth Inselman, 94, of Sweet Home passed away on Tuesday, March 29. She was born Dec. 28, 1921, in Portland. Her parents were James and Sarah Faye Wilkerson. At the age of 71 she discovered that her parents had actually adopted her at birth. This discovery set into motion a 10-year search for her biological family. The search was successful when she was reunited with the family of her biological sister with whom she developed a loving relationship. Her younger years were spent mostly in Portland. In 1934, when she was 12 years old, her father was killed. This was in the midst of the Great Depression and there were few resources to help widows and children. Their lives as they had known it fell apart. For the next five years they went through many difficult situations and moves until finally, in 1939, she and her mother and brothers arrived at Snooseville, a logging camp north of Hillsboro. Here she met and fell in love with the good looking young man next door, John Inselman, and they were married in Vancouver, Washington, on Oct. 21, 1939. They spent 57 years together before his death in February 1997. They left Snooseville in 1940 living in Idaho briefly before moving to Sweet Home in 1942 where she lived the rest of her life. She worked off and on over the years at several different places in Sweet Home including waitressing at restaurants in the 1940s, clerking at Central Super Market and Economy Drug in the 1950s and 60s, and Whites Electronics from which she retired in 1984. She is a past member of the Sweet Home Elkettes and the Sweet Home Genealogical Society. In 1998, Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 58 which gave adult adoptees the right to see their original birth certificates. Mary was instrumental in getting this passed. She helped gather some of the 86,000 signatures that were turned into the state to get the initiative on the ballot. She was interviewed by newspapers and television stations including The Oregonian, Boston Globe, and Good Morning America. On Oct. 15, 1999, she went to Portland and got her original birth certificate. On May 6, 2003, she met her biological family. It was one of the happiest days of her life. She was a friendly, fun loving person who loved playing games, especially card games and Bingo. She would play cards all day long (and all night) if she had willing partners, which she frequently did. She was driving to Lebanon to play Bingo into her 90s. She also liked to dance in her younger years and she liked to camp, always having a great time on their annual hunting trips with a big group of family and friends. After she and John retired they liked to travel around the country with their travel trailer. Trips to the casinos to play bingo and slot machines were a real treat right up until the time she died. The common link in all of these activities was family and friends. Over the years they opened their home to many family members who needed a place to stay for a short while, including her mother who lived with them for over 30 years. She just loved being with them all and they loved being with her. Her home was very important to her. It was always neat and tidy and ready for company to drop by at a moment notice. She was determined to stay in her home, and to continue driving, and was successful in that until the last two months of her life. She is survived by her sons, Glen and wife Sharon of Phoenix, Arizona, and Bruce and wife Barbara of Albany; daughter Alice Burnett and husband Rick of Sweet Home; grandchildren Lisa Inselman and husband Steve Fischlin, Gary Inselman and wife Kristy, Kristi Keller, John Inselman and wife Mandy, Shaina Burnett, and McKenna Olsen and husband Jerad; nine great-grandchildren; one great-great-grandchild; sister-in-law Ila Inselman; brother-in-law Ken Lundstrom; several nieces and nephews including Monica LaClair and Janeen White, with whom she had a very special bond. She was preceded in death by her husband, John; brothers Ed Wilkerson and James Wilkerson; sister Pat Lundstrom; granddaughter Carrie Inselman; grandson Keegan Burnett; and nephew Steve Lundstrom. Burial will be at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 16, at Gilliland Cemetery, and a memorial service will be at 1 p.m. at Sweet Home Funeral Chapel, 1443 Long St., Sweet Home. Donations in her memory can be made to Little Promises Childrens Program in care of Sweet Home Funeral Chapel. Sweet Home Funeral Chapel is handling arrangements (www.sweethomefuneral.com). Oregon state officials say they want to wait another few months before they roll out the rules for marijuana-infused edibles and other products, such as candies. The delay is fine. The questions surrounding edible marijuana products are among the trickier issues in Oregons continuing experiment in legalized marijuana. Waiting a couple of additional months to make sure that we get the rules right is the correct call. Heres the background: Gov. Kate Brown last week signed a bill that allows people 21 and older to purchase marijuana extracts and pot-infused edibles from Oregon dispensaries, and some edible products are available to medical marijuana cardholders. (The bill Brown signed, Senate Bill 1511, was among a number of generally useful bills regarding recreational marijuana that legislators approved during this years short session. Another useful pot bill, House Bill 4094, removes from state statutes criminal liability from banks and credit unions that do business with legal pot enterprises. Of course, thats an issue that really needs to be tackled on the federal level, so that legitimate businesses can access banking services and dont have to proceed on a cash-only basis.) But we digress from the edibles issue. This is an instance in which weve apparently learned a lesson from the experiences in Washington state and Colorado, two states that legalized recreational marijuana before Oregon. Officials in Colorado were surprised by the popularity of edibles there; one analysis suggested that edibles accounted for roughly a third of recreational marijuana sales there. That went hand-in-hand with a surge in the number of calls to poison hotlines and visits to hospital emergency rooms prompted in part by people who had unknowingly ingested considerably more THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, than they had thought. So, before the state moves ahead with sales of these edibles and other products to recreational users, it needs to create the rules governing them, and that includes important issues such as defining what we mean by a low dose. Its important that we get all of this right. If waiting a little bit longer helps with that, so be it. (mm) Remembering Merle Country music legend Merle Haggard died Tuesday, on his 79th birthday, but you can be sure that people will be listening to Haggards songs for as long as American music still matters. Haggards remarkable six-decade career will continue to be a major influence among musicians. In fact, one could argue that the rise of countrys new traditionalists musicians such as Chris Stapleton owes a major debt to Haggard. Haggards untimely death leaves a big hole in the lineup for this years Oregon Jamboree country music festival in Sweet Home; he was scheduled to be the festivals headliner on Saturday, July 30. As we learned last year when REO Speedwagon unexpectedly canceled its performance at the Northwest Art & Air Festival, it can be very difficult to find a replacement headliner on what amounts to very short notice on the concert circuit. And it will be difficult indeed to find someone who speaks with the sort of plainspoken and distinctively American voice, the working persons poet, as Haggard was known. That plainspoken approach to songwriting made it easy to sometimes discount the level of skill Haggard brought to his craft. Robert Hilburn, a longtime music writer for the Los Angeles Times, may have put it best: When he started out, he said he wanted to sing as good as Lefty Frizzell and write as good as Hank Williams. That dream pretty much came true. (mm) VinaCapitals Vietnam Opportunity Fund made its debut on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) on Thursday, its ticker symbol VOF.L appearing on LSE screens after 12 years on the Alternative Investment Market. Upgrading from AIM to LSE is an important stage for the fund, which holds $710.5 million in net asset value (as of March 31, 2016). It also marks the comprehensive development of the VOF and provides another choice for global financial investors. VinaCapital's VOF has stepped up to the LSE's main board. Photo by NLD Managing Director and Chief Investment Executive of VinaCapital Andy Ho said that after many attempts to meet strict requirements of growth, operational efficiency, management quality and technical criteria, the VOF has been listed on one of the largest and most important stock markets in the world. This increased reputation will help the VOF raise liquidity and benefit stakeholders while attracting more big investors. Through the VOF and other stocks on the LSE, global investors can decide where they want to invest in Vietnam. Ho added that VinaCapital will continue to focus on Vietnams market in 2016 with the target of maintaining and developing asset portfolios. Originally launched in 2003, closed-ended VOF is one of the largest and most successful funds in Vietnam. It invests in capital markets, private equity, undervalued/distressed assets, privatization of state owned enterprises and real estate. The LSE is the largest stock market in Europe and in the top five global markets in terms of size. The Main Market has more than 1,500 codes while the Alternative Investment Market has over 1,000 tickers of developing and smaller companies. Nestle, in cooperation with Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation, has launched a two million euro (S2.3 million) project to change the irrigation methods used by farmers in the world's second largest coffee exporter. Most Vietnamese growers use up to 60 percent more water than is required for their coffee plantations, said Truong Hong, deputy director of the Western Highland Agriculture and Forestry Science Institute. For each plant, they often use 700-1000 liters of water, while they should only need 340-400 liters. In the context of the prolonged drought, this has a severe impact on the region's coffee output, Hong added. Coffee plant Nestle started implementing the project in five Central Highland provinces at the heart of Vietnams coffee region in April 2015. The project is scheduled to run until 2019. In the last year, the project has supported 50,000 families in the Central Highlands. Each family has received financial as well as technical support from Nestle to invest in VND60 million automated sprinkler systems. Hoang Manh Thu, a coffee grower in Dak Lak province, said his coffee output has jumped by 10 to 12 percent since he started using Nestles sprinkler system. In addition, he has saved a third on fertilizer that used to be washed away and halved costs for labor, electricity and fuel. Pham Phu Ngoc, head of Nestle Vietnam's Central Highland branch, said that along with irrigation systems, Nestle has introduced new methods for coffee farmers to control the amount of water they use. For example, by placing a simple plastic bottle upside down on the ground and observing the water level, farmers are able to decide the amount of water they should use and when they should irrigate their crops. Nestle has also been running another project called NESCAFE Plan since 2015 to support coffee recultivation activities by providing farmers in the region with coffee seeds and training. J.K. Rowling's chair that she wrote two 'Harry Potter' books in sells for bewitching $394,000 A wooden chair used by J.K. Rowling when she wrote her first two "Harry Potter" books has sold for $394,000 (USD) at a New York auction - more than eight times its opening bid. The chair, on which the British novelist painted the words "I wrote Harry Potter while sitting on this chair," came from a dining set that Rowling was given when she was a struggling single mother living in Scotland. It was put on the block by businessman Gerald Gray, who bought the chair in 2009, and auctioned in New York by Heritage Auctions on Wednesday. The buyer wished to remain anonymous, Heritage said. James Gannon, director of rare books at Heritage Auctions, said the chair itself had little value but its literary association made it prized. "She (Rowling) said at the time that it was something you would pick up at a junk shop," he said. "But it's really just the fact that she took the time to decorate it and the fact she actually wrote the books on it that is important." Rowling's seven Harry Potter books about a boy wizard and his friends have become a worldwide phenomenon selling more than 450 million copies. The books also spawned eight blockbuster movies and theme park attractions in Florida and California. A few years after the publication in 2000 of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Rowling donated the chair to an auction benefiting a British children's charity. Gray, a native of England and CEO of the vehicle speed control company AutoKontrol USA, bought it in 2009 for about $29,000 at another auction. Gray said he hoped the chair would now go on display in a museum or one of the Harry Potter attractions. He also said he would donate 10 percentof Wednesday's auction profits to Rowling's children's charity Lumos. The Thai navy said it has detained another five Vietnamese vessels for illegally fishing in Thailands exclusive economic zone. Illustrative image (Source: bangkokpost.com) Speaking at a press conference at the Sattahip military port in Chonburi province on April 7, Rear Admiral Watson Booneung, Deputy Commander of Royal Thai Navy Region I, said that ships carrying 37 fishermen were seized at a latitude of 10 degrees 45 minutes north and a longitude of 102 degrees 8 minutes east off Thailands coastal province of Trat on the border with Cambodia. The ships, coded CM 95848 TS, CM 91050, CM 99110 TS, CM 95828 TS and one without a number, were taken to the Sattahip military port. Crewmembers said they were fishermen from the southern province of Ca Mau who left their hometown on March 27 before being arrested on April 5. The area they were arrested in is very close to the location where five other Vietnamese boats with 47 fishermen onboard were captured on April 3. The Vietnamese fishermen are being temporarily detained at a Royal Thai Navy Region I base to await trial. Watson Booneung revealed that the Thai navy seized a total of 11 boats with 102 Vietnamese fishermen onboard for illegally fishing in Thai waters from April 3-7. Thailand is increasing its crackdown on ships that infringe its territorial waters as part of its strategy to defend its sea and island sovereignty, he said. Representatives of the Vietnamese Embassy in Thailand have arrived in the province to support the fishermen. They have asked Thai authorities to handle the matter in a humanitarian spirit in line with national and international law. On April 8, the National Assembly (NA) will elect the successors of Vice State President Nguyen Thi Doan and a number of vice prime ministers. This morning, the Standing Committee will report to the NA on the nominees to replace vice state president Nguyen Thi Doan, chief judge of the Supreme People's Court Truong Hoa Binh and prosecutor general of the Vietnam Supreme People's Procuracy Nguyen Hoa Binh. Once the list of nominees is approved, the NA will hold a secret ballot to elect the successors. This would be followed by the newly elected chief judge of the Supreme People's Court taking an oath of office before the NA. Deputies voting to elect state officials. Also this morning, prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will submit to the NA for approval the list of vice prime ministers, ministers and other members of the government to step down. The final resolution is expected to be issued by the NA this afternoon following a secret ballot. Yesterday, in a majority vote, the NA passed a resolution allowing Vice State President Nguyen Thi Doan, Chief Judge of the Supreme People's Court Truong Hoa Binh and Prosecutor General of the Vietnam Supreme People's Procuracy Nguyen Hoa Binh to step down. Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh, deputy chairwoman of the Office of the Central Party Committee, was recommended for vice state president; Nguyen Hoa Binh, former prosecutor general of the Vietnam Supreme People's Procuracy, for chief judge of the Supreme People's Court; and Le Minh Tri, deputy head of the Party Central Committee Commission for Internal Affairs, for prosecutor general of the Vietnam Supreme People's Procuracy. Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh, 57, is from Quang Nam province. She holds a masters degree in Party development, B.Sc. in history and a B.A. in law. Prior to her current role, she served as provincial secretary of Vinh Long. Le Minh Tri, 56, is from Ho Chi Minh City. He is the Central Committee member, deputy director of the Party Central Committee's Internal Affairs Commission. Tri was deputy secretary, chairman of District 1 and deputy chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee. Nguyen Hoa Binh, 58, is from Quang Ngai province and an assistant professor in law. He is major general of public security. Since May 2008, he was deputy secretary and then secretary of Quang Ngai People's Committee. April 7, 2016 | 07:32 pm PT Vietnams National Assembly on Friday appointed a new vice state president, chief judge and prosecutor general. Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh, deputy chairwoman of the Office of the Central Party Committee, was named vice state president; Nguyen Hoa Binh, former prosecutor general of the Vietnam Supreme People's Procuracy, was appointed chief judge of the Supreme People's Court; and Le Minh Tri, deputy head of the Party Central Committee Commission for Internal Affairs, was voted new prosecutor general of the Vietnam Supreme People's Procuracy. Deputy Chair of Central Partys Office Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh has become the next vice state president of Vietnam after the majority of National Assembly deputies gave their approval for her to replace Nguyen Thi Doan. Following Thinhs election, Deputy Chair of Central Internal Affairs Le Minh Tri (56) was selected for prosecutor general of the Vietnam Supreme People's Procuracy and former prosecutor general Nguyen Hoa Binh was elected to the post of chief judge of the Supreme People's Court, replacing Truong Hoa Binh. Thinh (57) was born in the central province of Quang Nam. She has an MA in Party Construction and a BA in History and Law. Prior to being elected vice state president, Thinh held a number of positions, including standing deputy chair of Vietnams Women's Union and secretary of the Vinh Long provincial Party Committee. She is a deputy of the National Assembly (XI, XIII). Tri (56) was born in Ho Chi Minh City. He is member of the Party Central Committee. He used to be deputy chair of the Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee. Nguyen Hoa Binh was born in 1958 in the south-central province of Quang Ngai. He is an associated professor with a PhD in Law. He started his career in public security sector and was a member of the Party Central Committee (XI, XII). He is also a deputy of the NA (XIII). Coast guard forces from Quang Binh province chased away six Chinese fishing boats that were operating illegally in Vietnams waters on April 7, about 19 nautical miles to the west of the common fishing zone. Coast guards in Quang Binh province issued warnings to Chinese fishing vessels operating illegally in Vietnam's waters. Photo: Duc Tri Quang Binh's border defense force responded to information about a group of Chinese boats trespassing in Vietnam's territory by ordering two ships carrying 17 Vietnamese officers to stop the illegal fishing operation. In the afternoon, Quang Binh authorities reported that all six Chinese boats and 28 crew members did not have any registered IDs. The coast guard made a record, issued warnings and released the six boats. The boats are among hundreds of Chinese vessels that Vietnamese border defense forces have caught while overseeing the country's territorial waters. Last week, they seized a Chinese oil tanker disguised as fishing boat in the Gulf of Tonkin near the northern port of Hai Phong. The local border defense force also said it had driven away 112 Chinese fishing boats and issued warnings to 22 others on just one recent patrol. Vietnam and Timor Leste will intensify their cooperation across politics, economics, investment, trade, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy and communications. At a meeting in Hanoi on April 7, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Uong Chu Luu asked Timor Leste to complete internal procedures to validate the 2013 Vietnam Timor Leste free trade agreement as soon as possible. Both sides need to accelerate rice trade and finalize the agreement for the 2015-2017 period, said Luu, adding that negotiations and agreements on fighting crime, legal assistance in criminal matters and extradition should be considered. Timor Leste Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Hermani Coelho da Silva vowed that the trade agreement with Vietnam will be signed soon. In a meeting on the same day with Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh, Silva pledged to push forward agreements on investment protection and promotion, agriculture cooperation, trans-national crime prevention and judicial assistance in criminal matters and extradition. Silva was delighted with the two countries rice trade and suggested they organize the first meeting of the foreign minister-level joint committee. Timor Leste also wished to learn from Vietnams development experience. Minh said that Vietnams policy is to boost the friendship with Timor Leste bilaterally and multilaterally. He vowed that Vietnam is ready to support Timor Leste in agriculture, rural development, poverty reduction and aquaculture while asking the country to support Vietnamese investors operating there. Vietnam values Timor Lestes determination and efforts to join ASEAN and will work with other bloc members to support the country in this matter, he said. Both countries agree on the need to ensure maritime and aviation security and safety in the East Sea. Disputes at sea should be addressed by peaceful means on the basis of international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982. Silva is on a visit to Vietnam from April 6 to 8. A 490-hectare safari park worth VND1 trillion ($44.6 million) will be built inside a protected forest in the popular Central Highland tourist destination of Da Lat. The Ministry of Planning and Investment has agreed to part-finance the project. According to park director Le Van Huong, the government will fund 35 percent of the total cost ($15.6 million). Highland Safari is a joint project between the Bidoup-Nui Ba National Park and Dalat Tourism. It will be situated in Lac Duong district, Da Lat, Lam Dong province. Scheduled for completion in 2020, it will be located inside a protected forest and developed as a semi-wildlife park where animals can live under the care of humans, Huong said. Once open, Highland Safari is expected to receive 1.2 million visitors a year and earn VND300 billion (13.4 million USD) in revenue. Consultants from Austria and Singapore have been hired to study the terrain, environment and the status of rare animals in Lam Dong. They will also collect recommendations from major safari parks around the world. Doan Van Viet, chairman of the Lam Dong Peoples Committee, expressed support for the project. He said safaris appeal to tourists in many places, and Highland Safari would benefit the local ecosystem. Lam Dong received 1.32 million tourists in the first quarter of this year, up 10.9 percent from the same period last year. Of them, 66,000 were foreign visitors, a year-on-year increase of 25 percent. Once the prosperity indicator under Vietnam's subsidy period, chicken is among the most versatile ingredients used in Vietnamese cooking, pleasing the taste buds whether steamed, boiled or lending a meaty taste to salad. But it seems chicken shines brightest when accompanied by rice. Different cooking methods and different spices lead to different tastes, smells and textures. Throughout Vietnam, chicken rice has evolved to meet the tastes of different regions. Fried rice with sauteed chicken of the north In the northern part of Vietnam, chicken is served as a separate dish instead of being torn and mixed with rice. Fried rice with sauteed chicken. Photo by Hoang Nhi The dish is a combination of chopped chicken sauteed with ginger and fish sauce, and rice fried in a big pan over an open fire. Some restaurants add egg to the rice to give it an attractive yellow colour and crispy texture. With this much oil and and sauce, a pickled side dish is a must to help balance the fatty taste of both the rice and chicken. The chunky all-in-one dish can be easily found along the likes of Tong Duy Tan street, Hang Buom street, Ma May street, Dao Duy Tu street Quang Nam chicken rice Famous for its free-range chickens, Quang Nam boasts not one but two famous chicken rice dishes: one in Hoi An and the other in Tam Ky. In Hoi An, the chicken is prepared and boiled until well-done. The meat and bones are then separated and the bones are returned to the broth to add more flavor. The rice is coated with turmeric until yellow, then it is rinsed thoroughly and cooked in the chicken broth with chicken fat. The must-try chicken rice of Hoi An. Photo by Tuan Dao Served with Vietnamese vegetables rau ram and hung que, the sparkling yellow rice topped with torn chicken will definitely catch your attention. Hoi An chicken rice is no stranger to both locals and foreign tourists, and together with the town's world-renowned banh mi, the city has earned its place on the global food map. Tam Ky chicken rice, originating not far from Hoi An, shares the same method of preparing both the rice and chicken. The chicken is chopped into bite-sized pieces that makes the dish different from its neighbor, and side dishes are also a big bonus that make it differ from Hoi An. A tray of Tam Ky chicken rice with side dishes. Photo by Hong Lien Saigon's Hainan chicken rice with 'fat-rinsed' chicken Originating in Hainan, China, this dish has a number of versions under its wing, including Singaporean, Malaysian, Indonesian and Saigonese. Not that different from in Hoi An, Hainan chicken rice tastes more like fried rice thanks to the dry onions and garlic sauteed in chicken fat before they are added to the rice. Saigon's Hainan chicken rice. Photo by Amthucsaigon After the chicken is boiled through, it is rinsed with chilled water so the just-out-of-the-pot skin shrinks under the sudden change in temperature and gets sticky in texture. Served with rice and garlic/onion sauteed soy sauce, Hainan chicken leaves diners stunned with its rich flavors and texture. The fat rinsed chicken is more like a slow-cooked version of KFC without the crispy batter. The skin gets super transparent and sheer, cracking between your teeth like thin hard candy. Just like the famous com tam, Saigon's chicken rice is to be found everywhere, with the smell enticing diners to immerse themselves in the search for the best one-course experience. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who last month criticized Chinese military deployments in the South China Sea, leads 1,000 business leaders to China next week, hoping to build on a free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries. Turnbull will hold talks with both President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing, hoping to capitalize on China's transition from an export-based economy to a major consumer spender, his office said on Friday. It did not say if the South China Sea (Vietnam's East Sea) would be on the agenda, but China's assertiveness in its claims to most of the waters has raised concerns in the West and among China's neighbors. Western capitals have criticized China for militarizing the South China Sea with the deployment of advanced weaponry there. China says the United States is militarizing the region with its frequent patrols. Turnbull last month called China's military deployments "counterproductive", an unusually forceful rebuke. China claims most of the South China Sea, where about $5 trillion of ship-borne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims. The trade visit - the largest ever by an Australian leader - comes amid a slowing of growth in the Chinese economy, which is crucial for Australian jobs. The FTA came into effect in December, cutting tariffs across many economic sectors. "The China-Australia FTA has opened up even more opportunities for trade and engagement between our two countries," Turnbull's office said in a statement. "As China continues its transition towards a more consumer-led and services-based economy, more and more Australian businesses are finding new markets and new opportunities in China." A delegation of 15 corporate chief executives from each country will join a round table headed by the Business Council of Australia and the China Development Bank. The prime minister's office declined to name the companies taking part. As Chinese visitors to Australia rise, Turnbull will also launch a new Tourism Australia promotion in Shanghai. Former President Bill Clinton on Thursday faced down protesters angry at the impact his 1994 crime reforms have had on black Americans and defended the record of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who is relying on the support of black voters in her quest for the presidency. The former president spent more than 10 minutes confronting the protesters at a campaign rally in Philadelphia for his wife over criticisms that the crime bill he approved while president led to a surge in the imprisonment of black people. The Democratic race for the Nov. 8 election has become increasingly heated as Hillary Clinton, stung by a string of losses in state contests, has traded barbs with her rival for the party's nomination, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, over who is better prepared for the White House. In Philadelphia, several protesters heckled the former president mid-speech and held up signs, including one that read: "CLINTON Crime Bill Destroyed Our Communities." Video footage of Hillary Clinton defending the reforms in 1994 has been widely circulated during the campaign by activists in the Black Lives Matter protest movement. In the footage, she calls young people in gangs "super-predators" who need to "be brought to heel." Hillary Clinton, 68, who also has faced protesters upset by her remarks, said in February she regretted her language. Bill Clinton, 69, who was president from 1993 to 2001, defended her 1994 remarks, which protesters say were racially insensitive, and suggested the protesters' anger was misplaced. "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," he said, shaking his finger at a heckler as Clinton supporters cheered, according to video of the event. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She (Hillary Clinton) didn't." "You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter," he told a protester. "Tell the truth." Hillary Clinton promised to end "mass incarceration" in the first major speech of her campaign last year. She has won the support of the majority of black voters in every state nominating contest so far, often by a landslide. Spokesmen for the campaign and Bill Clinton did not immediately respond on Thursday to a request for comment. A SURGE IN PRISONERS The United States has more people in prison than any other country. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.05 million prisoners were held in federal or state facilities in 1994. By 2014, it was 1.56 million. That year, 6 percent of all black men in their 30s were in prison, a rate six times higher than that of white men of the same age. Bill Clinton said last year that he regretted signing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law because it contributed to the high incarceration rate of black people for nonviolent crimes. On Thursday, he did not explicitly recant those regrets, but appeared to be angry at any suggestion the bill was wholly bad. The legislation imposed tougher sentences, put thousands more police on the streets and helped fund the building of extra prisons. It was known for its federal "three strikes" provision that sent violent offenders to prison for life. The bill was backed by congressional Republicans and hailed at the time as a success for Clinton. Although Clinton is popular among Democrats who view him as a gifted orator and crowd pleaser, he has in the past veered from the carefully calibrated message put out by his wife's campaign, causing problems for her representatives. During Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 presidential bid, civil rights leaders and high-ranking Democrats in Congress criticized the former president for statements he made during a heated campaign against then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama. Bill Clinton said Obama's campaign had "played the race card." Obama became the first U.S. black president in November that year. Bill Clinton's remarks on Thursday drew criticism online. Some saw him as dismissive of the Black Lives Matter movement, a national outgrowth of anger over a string of encounters in which police officers killed unarmed black people. Johnetta Elzie, a civil rights activist, wrote online that Clinton "can't handle being confronted by his own record." "This is like watching a robot malfunction," she wrote. Earlier in Philadelphia, Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, assailed Clinton as unqualified to be president as the two campaigns became increasingly testy less than two weeks before New York's nominating contest. "Are you qualified to be president of the United States when you're raising millions of dollars from Wall Street, an entity whose greed, recklessness and illegal behavior helped destroy our economy?" Sanders said at a news conference. Clinton this week sharply questioned Sanders' credentials and ability to carry out a campaign pledge to break up the big banks. Spokesmen for Clinton noted she never said the word "unqualified" when she questioned his preparedness for the presidency, but they declined to say whether she believed in that characterization. Clinton aimed for a more magnanimous tone than her aides when speaking to reporters during a subway ride in New York City. "I don't know why he's saying that," she said of Sanders calling her unqualified. "But I will take Bernie Sanders over Ted Cruz or Donald Trump any time," she said of the two leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. Sanders returned the sentiment in an interview with the "CBS Evening News" later on Thursday. "I think the idea of a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for this country. I will do everything in my power and work as hard as I can to make sure that that does not happen, and if Secretary Clinton is the nominee, I will certainly support her," he said. Tourists take pictures inside a state run market where a picture of Cuba's former president Fidel Castro is seen on the wall which reads Former Cuban President Fidel Castro made a rare appearance outside of his home on Thursday, visiting a school in Havana to mark the birthday of his sister-in-law, a revolutionary heroine who fought alongside him nearly 60 years ago. State television broadcast images of Castro sitting at a desk and conversing with students and teachers at the school, named after Vilma Espin, who died in 2007 aged 77. "I'm sure that on a day like today, Vilma would be happy," said the leader of Cuba's 1959 revolution. "Everybody who dies fighting for the revolution leaves their energy on the way, they leave their effort and struggle," Castro said. Castro, whose 90th birthday is in August, handed over the presidency of Cuba in 2008 to his younger brother Raul Castro after a serious illness. He often meets foreign dignitaries at his home and writes occasional newspaper columns, but is rarely seen in public. Raul Castro is the widower of Espin, who left a comfortable life to join the brothers fighting in the Cuban mountains against a pro-U.S. regime. She became one of the most powerful women in Cuba's political leadership. North Korea on Friday launched the latest in a series of vicious personal attacks on South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, describing her as a "matchless evil woman" intent on war. The verbal assault from the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) followed Park's participation last week in a nuclear security summit hosted by US President Barack Obama in Washington that condemned Pyongyang's continued nuclear weapons push. A CPRK spokesman said Park's behaviour and comments at the summit resembled "the epileptic fit of a despicable confrontational maniac". Military tensions on the divided Korean peninsula have been rising since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, and a long-range rocket launch a month later that was seen as a disguised ballistic missile test. The North's state media had carried a number of similar verbal attacks on Park, employing coarse and often highly sexist language in condemning her uncompromising stance towards Pyongyang and the South's alliance with the United States. Friday's statement, published by the official KCNA news agency, said Park's insistence on the North abandoning its nuclear weapons programme proved she was "the worst blockhead, ignorant of how the world goes around." "The matchless evil woman pushed North-South relations to a total stalemate and increased the danger of a war," it said, criticising her "dirty existence" and "rabid dog" behaviour. The statement came a few days after an official North Korean website released a new propaganda video portraying a multiple rocket attack on the presidential Blue House in Seoul. "She cannot find shelter, even in the US," the CPRK spokesman warned. The Korean-language version of the same statement used even stronger language, calling Park "Obama's prostitute" who sold Korea's national interests to foreign forces. The South Korean government responded angrily to the abusive tone. "The government strongly warns North Korea against slandering our leader with unspeakable vulgar language ... and issuing physical threats," said Park Soo-Jin, deputy spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry in Seoul. President Park has taken a hardline with Pyongyang since the January nuclear test, leading calls for tough international sanctions and vowing a strong military response to any direct provocations from the North.ody The European Commission and the International Energy Agency will address the impact of the energy crisis on SMEs in an online event on 21 October. US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Madison, Mississippi March 7, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] As a close observer of several US presidential elections, I have found the 2016 race bemusing in both predictable and unpredictable ways. The most baffling is that so many Americans say they support Hillary Clinton when various polls show that the majority think she is less honest and trust worthy compared with her rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Honesty was everything for Americans when I travel led across the United States in the summer and fall of 1998 when the only topic was the lie President Bill Clinton told about Monica Lewinsky. What was also unforeseen was billionaire candidate Donald Trump, who seemed no more than a comedian just months ago, is still one of the Republic an front runners. But that is perhaps not that surprising given the US news media's obsession with Trump over the past months and the amount of cover age he's received. What is entirely predictable is that China continues to be the bogeyman. With former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's 2012 vow about naming China a currency manipulator from "Day One" still ringing in my ears, Clinton and Trump have both railed against China as a currency manipulator despite the fact this is less an issue than in 2012. Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers noted recently that it was a mistake for the US to push for China's exchange rate liberalization in a hope for the yuan's appreciation while market forces are pushing down the currency. Nevertheless, US politicians like to fool average American voters, many of whom have little knowledge of the world, especially when their prime source for information is cable news networks. Clinton and Trump talked about how the US has been ripped off by its growing economic relations with China. They are willing to say anything to please voters who lost manufacturing jobs due to globalization, and more to automation. Clinton's back tracking on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, whose standards she called "golden" as secretary of state but which she now opposes so as not to offend powerful trade unions, reflects that motivation. Yes, globalization has helped achieve the China economic miracle in the past three-plus decades, including lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. But this can mostly be credited to the Chinese government's policy of reform and opening-up to the world. Former US ambassador to China Stapleton Roy, whose wisdom I often admire, reminds people that trade is a form of cooperation. And few US consumers are willing to pay much more in department stores or Walmart just because something is made in USA. It's against the basic economic principles of comparative advantage. Besides consumers, US corporations have benefitted enormously from trading with and investing in China. If US politicians are bothered by made in China, they should come to China to see the numerous US brands from GM and Ford cars to Coca-Cola and KFC. Many Chinese would probably like the US to take back some of their investments relocated to China to take advantage of the lax environmental regime. I hope Clinton and Trump are ready to roll out red carpets for them when they return or adopt measures to make it more difficult for them to leave the US for developing nations. In various TV ads, Clinton has boasted of her record in criticizing China's human rights, especially women's rights, but she did not mention the women's rights situation in many of the US' allies. A Newsweek/Daily Beast study in 2011 found that China ranked 23 among 165 countries and regions for women's rights, an impressive record for a developing nation. In the categories of justice, health and education, Chinas cored higher than the US. The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com Nigeria is a diverse country with a large and assertive civil society, a rich culture and huge potential. It is a country with an almost boundless capacity for economic growth. And the United States wants Nigeria to succeed. That is why the United States and Nigeria just re-launched the U.S.-Nigeria Bi-National Commission, with a high-level strategic dialogue in Washington designed to expand mutual cooperation across a broad range of shared interests. The United States, said Secretary of State John Kerry at the Commissions most recent meeting in late March, is encouraged that under new President, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria has made a commitment to diversify its economy. Secretary Kerry then announced that this year, U.S. aid to Nigeria will top $600 million. A significant portion of this money will go toward halting the misery that is spread by HIV/AIDS, by malaria, and by TB. More funding will go toward strengthening Nigerias energy sector through President Obamas Power Africa Initiative, and the Feed the Future program will help improve agricultural efficiency and raise rural incomes. Together, said Secretary of State Kerry, we will work to address humanitarian and development needs especially in the countrys north, where the lack of opportunity has been holding people back, and where the terrorist organization, Boko Haram, has murdered thousands and disrupted the lives of millions. Thus, the United States will support Nigerias efforts to once and for all defeat Boko Haram, and to eliminate the conditions that have seen the genesis of this terrorist group, and that aid its recruitment and operations. These include effective governance, the creation of good jobs and the elimination of corruption. Our purpose, said Secretary of State Kerry, is to map out the next steps for cooperation in all of those areas where we need it. This doesnt transform things overnight. But, he said, it moves us steadily forward, it creates momentum in the right direction, and that is good for Nigeria, its good for the United States, and frankly, if we can get this right that will really make a difference to the world. ELKO The Rotary Club and Desert Sunrise Rotary Club of Elko held their annual students speech contest Wednesday. This years theme was What it means to Be a Gift to the World, personally, and in my own words. The winner advances to the district contest in Reno on May 14. This years contestants were Molly Hodges from Elko High School and Stormy Lewis from Spring Creek High School. Hodges will be advancing to the district contest. Barrick Gold of North America is a supporter of this contest. Alejandro Talavante, Jose Maria Manzanares and Morante de la Puebla during a bullfight on Easter Sunday in Seville. Paco Puentes Opponents and supporters of bullfighting are increasingly resorting to economic data to defend their respective positions. Devotees of the activity, who complain about what they call the bullying tactics of the animal rights lobby, have now produced a report claiming the sector contributed some 1.6 billion to the Spanish economy in 2013, the year the study was carried out. Commissioned by the National Association of Bullfighting Events Organizers (ANOET), the report rebuffs claims by opponents that regional and local governments throughout Spain have subsidized bullfights to the tune of 600 million, putting the nationwide figure for 2013 instead at 25.5 million. The ANOET report accuses bullfightings detractors of taking advantage of the economic crisis to base their opposition on financial arguments The report also accuses bullfightings detractors of taking advantage of the economic crisis to base their opposition on financial arguments. They are insinuating that bullfighting is entirely dependent on multi-million euro subsidies to survive, says Mar Gutierrez, ANOETs secretary, who contributed to the report. Using statistics gathered from regional and local administrations, the ANOET report describes bullfighting as a cultural activity, insisting it receives fewer subsidies than other such events, despite generating so much money for the public purse. Their claims are supported by a mass of data, noting that in 2013 bullfighting attracted 24.8 million spectators, generating 43.86 million euros in sales tax for the government. It created three times as much sales tax as Spanish cinema (14.5 million) and more than the theater (35.42 million euros), the report argues. It also claims that bullfighting has generated as many as 57,000 directly related jobs, along with 142,000 indirect positions. Tackling the animal rights lobbys misleading campaign The ANOET report, known as The Bulls In Spain, aims to: "tackle once and for all the misleading and biased campaign" of the anti-bullfighting lobby. Following the banning of bullfighting in Catalonia, the sector blamed itself for losing the fight against the animal rights lobby and decided to retaliate using the media and demonstrations. "This is a sector that has always kept quiet," says Mar Gutierrez. The ANOETA report comes at a time when the number of bullfights are down by almost two-thirds on 2007 from 953 to 398, according to the Ministry of Culture. Bull runs are, however, on the rise, with 15,848 events in 2014, 2,000 more than the previous year, thanks to the support of Popular Party regional and local administrations across Spain. It is, they say, an activity that injects 1.6 billion into the Spanish economy in total: 422 million directly; 361 million in transport, hotels and catering; and 820 million in knock-on effects. Nevertheless, regional and local governments are continuing to reduce subsidies for bullfighting, the report says, noting that bullfights receive 30,000 from the national government via the National Bullfighting Awards, along with 25.47 million from local governments. Needless to say, these figures have little in common with those wheeled out by the animal rights lobby. In 2013, a number of Spanish European Parliament deputies, along with Alfred Bosch of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) party, released a report claiming that bullfighting received as much as 571 million from Spains public coffers, along with another 129.6 million from the EU figures that coincide with those compiled by the animal rights lobby. The vastly different figures each side has produced have triggered mutual cries of foul play. Bullfighting aficionados claim that its detractors are using dodgy data to estimate the size of the subsidies: The Bosch report claims, without any supporting evidence, that the subsidies make up 33% of the total cost, says a spokesman for the bullfighting lobby. Meanwhile, animal rights groups accuse their adversaries of coming up with figures that have nothing to do with the impact of bullfighting on local economies, throwing into the equation, for example, stays at hotels, as though everyone staying in them had come to see the bulls. English version by Heather Galloway. The view from atop Monte Chico, site of the crime-ridden neighborhood of El Principe in Ceuta. The Spanish Civil Guard have found a weapons cache and an Islamic State flag in Ceuta, an exclave city located on the northern coast of Africa. The discovery was made near the neighborhood of El Principe, a crime-ridden slum that has been described as Spains most dangerous neighborhood. Sign up for our newsletter! EL PAIS English Edition is launching a weekly newsletter. Sign up today to receive a selection of our best stories in your inbox every Saturday morning. For full details about how to subscribe, click here. The armament included four handguns, two submachine guns and several knives. Sources familiar with the investigation said that the submachine guns are similar to Israeli-made weapons found on other occasions in Ceuta. The find was made as part of an investigation into an organized gang with ties to the drug trade. As such, investigators were reluctant to link it directly to Islamic terrorism, although they are not ruling it out because of the flag that was found nearby. The operation was conducted by the Civil Guards information services in Ceuta in cooperation with the authorities in Madrid. English version by Susana Urra. An opinion piece that you describe, praises or criticizes, on the whole or partly, to cultural or entertainment work. It must be written by an expert on the matter A scene from Pedro Almodovars new movie, Julieta. Manolo Pavon They say that the original title of Julieta was going to be Silencio (nothing emphatic or recherche, as is usually the case with the highly meaningful work of its creator), but when he found out that Martin Scorsese had decided that his latest creation would also bear that title, Almodovar switched to the name of the unhappy lover from Verona of Shakespearean fame. After watching this movie or cultural event or whatever it is; after witnessing its lavish marketing campaign and hearing over and over, to the point of tears, that here is a shining example of the most contained and profound Almodovar, I am left wondering about the sublime merits of self-containment. In fact I wonder what the hell thats even supposed to mean. I am also trying to figure out what the hell the deer and the suicidal guy on the train have to do with anything I consumed with noteworthy indifference a movie with allegedly intense subject matter, which I was forced to watch due to the cultivated and exuberant personality of its creator even though for a long time now Ive been wondering why I am always forced to watch this mans films, yet nobody asks me why I ignore so many other movies made to be endured, despised and discarded. And I reached the conclusion that the only thing this movie suggests to me is silence not the kind of lyricism that Paul Simon found in the sounds of silence, but silence plain and simple. I am silent before a storyline that aims to speak in a stylized and contained language about devastating feelings, about the lifelong depression of a woman who is rejected and abandoned by her only daughter. Hey, I even grasped the artistic reasons for the long shot: the very cultivated, very deep Almodovar is comparing the devastation of this broken woman with the self-portrait of Lucian Freud, Sigmunds permanently tormented grandson. Yet the film conveys nothing to me, either emotionally or artistically. Thats the trouble with not believing anything you are seeing: neither the transparent feelings nor the underlying ones; neither whats being said nor whats being kept under wraps; neither the main characters nor the supporting ones; neither the presumably natural tone employed in the dialogue nor the hopeful past of the sweet professor of classic philosophy nor the half-anguished, half-desolate present of someone unable to comprehend the reasons why her main lifeline with existence has disappeared. Almodovar with the two main actresses in the movie, Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte. The ending to this tragic story is supposed to be moving. Since I never had children, I am unfamiliar with the feelings of parental love, yet I might have felt moved by the final conclusion, had it been presented to me with a powerful language. But I found it impossible to feel anything for the psychological descriptions, for the rambling story, for that final sentimental eruption meant to grab spectators by their guts, or for the musical touch featuring Chavela Vargas singing about the sorrows of the heart. Nor was I impressed with the unexpected, sober shot that ends Julieta, and which reminds me excessively of the final scene in Los exiliados romanticos. Everyone seems to agree that Emma Suarez has turned in a prodigious performance. I consider her to be an excellent actress and a very attractive woman, but in this case I dont find her provoking at all, even if she keeps showing us how she is bleeding on the inside. There is no character in this movie that I find realistic, and some of them involuntarily make me laugh like Rossy de Palma wearing a metal scouring pad on her head in a bid to symbolize the sinister housekeeper in Rebecca. Or the cancer-ridden ceramics artist, whose adulterous husband describes her with the embarrassing line: Theres never been anything between us. We just fuck. Sign up for our newsletter! EL PAIS English Edition is launching a weekly newsletter. Sign up today to receive a selection of our best stories in your inbox every Saturday morning. For full details about how to subscribe, click here. I also find myself blushing when a lady recalls her breakup with her girlfriend: I went to New York to study design and she sought spiritual refuge in the Pyrenees. We met again years later in Como. Or when the farmer explains to his daughter how they found the Moroccan woman who looks after her mother: We met her at the sacred music festival in Fez. And I am also trying to figure out what the hell the deer and the suicidal guy on the train have to do with anything. And in the middle of my tedium, I am trying to imagine what Julieta might have been like if it had been intense or wild rather than contained. But theres no need to punish oneself by choosing between bad and worse. English version by Susana Urra. Guzman, photographed after his arrest in January. AFP More information El Chapo se resiste a su extradicion con una catarata de recursos Few things strike fear into the heart of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman more than the prospect of spending the rest of his life locked away in a maximum security facility in the United States, and the drug kingpin is prepared to go to any lengths to prevent that from happening. In the three months following his arrest in Mexico, he has already presented seven appeals for protection against extradition. Over the same period he has lodged another 14 appeals aimed at improving the conditions he is being held under in prison, all of which have been dismissed by the Mexican authorities as delaying tactics. All he needs to do is to accept extradition and the next day wed send him to the United States, says a source at the attorney generals office. Guzman has been indicted in Brooklyn as well as Chicago, Manhattan, Miami and other cities where his cocaine ring is said to have operated in the United States. A 2014 indictment filed in a Brooklyn federal district court accuses Guzman who was recaptured in January after an audacious escape from prison last summer that deeply embarrassed the Mexican authorities of helping to run the worlds largest drug-trafficking organization, the Sinaloa cartel. All he needs to do is to accept extradition and the next day wed send him to the United States Mexico's attorney generals office New York would likely be the location for Guzmans trial because this is where Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who helped bring him to justice, had previously served as the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, which is based in Brooklyn. Under treaty agreements, the US can decide where the prisoner will go, says a source at the Mexican public prosecutors office. But without El Chapos agreement, it could take years before the US authorities get their hands on him. That said, the Mexican authorities, beginning with President Enrique Pena, have made it clear that El Chapos extradition is a priority. Analysts say that even in the best-case scenario, he is unlikely to be shipped north before the year is out. Political pressure Guzman has already managed to escape twice from jail in Mexico, and his continued presence in the country puts the government under pressure to prevent a third prison break. In response, the authorities have effectively created a prison within a prison at the El Altiplano high-security facility, within which he is constantly moved from one cell to another and is watched over round the clock by a team of 35 guards, who use specially trained dogs to check his food for poison. Under such conditions, it seems unlikely he will be able to repeat the feat of escaping via another tunnel, as he did last summer, but his capacity for intimidation and corruption is a factor that the authorities will have to take into account if they want to hold on to him. At the first prison where he was held, Puente Grande, he bought off some 62 prison guards. An investigation is underway as to how many prison officials knew of the 1,500-meter tunnel 30 meters below El Altiplano. The question of El Chapos extradition has also created political problems for President Pena Nieto The question of El Chapos extradition has also created political problems for President Pena Nieto. During the first two years of his mandate, extraditions of drugs traffickers fell sharply, with Pena Nieto insisting in the case of Guzman that he would first have to face Mexican justice before the United States could try him: El Chapo has to stay here and finish his sentence; then I will extradite him, in around 300 or 400 years, boasted former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam in 2014. But El Chapos escape put an end to this policy, and Mexico is now keen to hand the prisoner over to the US authorities. What was initially interpreted as recognition of the failure of the countrys institutions and the countrys ability to keep a prisoner behind bars has now become a show of strength in the face of a powerful drugs trade and a skeptical public. El Chapo is aware of this and will do everything in his power to prevent his extradition. Sign up for our newsletter! EL PAIS English Edition is launching a weekly newsletter. Sign up today to receive a selection of our best stories in your inbox every Saturday morning. For full details about how to subscribe, click here. English version by Nick Lyne. Venezuela's President Maduro at a rally against the opposition's amnesty law in Caracas. CARLOS GARCIA RAWLINS (REUTERS) Spain recalled its ambassador to Venezuela on Friday in protest over President Nicolas Maduros latest insults aimed at the Spanish prime minister. A racist I call you, Rajoy; a colonialist I call you Rajoy; corrupt trash I call you Rajoy; Venezuela needs to be respected, proclaimed Maduro during a Thursday march in Caracas to protest the amnesty law recently passed by the Venezuelan parliament, which is controlled by the opposition. Over in Spain they are scared because of the rise of an organization with a leadership of its own, he added, in an apparent reference to the anti-austerity party Podemos, whose founders once worked for the Venezuelan regime under previous leader Hugo Chavez. Despite the verbal attacks, the Caracas government has never gone through with its threat to target Spanish interests in the country The Spanish Foreign Ministry has recalled Ambassador Antonio Perez Hernandez and expressed its displeasure to his Venezuelan counterpart in Madrid, Mario Isea. This is not the first time that Spain has recalled its ambassador. It did so a year ago after Maduro accused Rajoy of supporting terrorism in Venezuela. And the countrys ambassador remained absent from Madrid for four months between October 2014 and February 2015. In a release by the Diplomatic Information Office, the Spanish government laments that this attitude, improper to the relations of respect due between governments, has become a habitual practice of the Venezuelan head of state. The release expresses concern for the situation in Venezuela, which is home to more than 200,000 Spaniards, and reiterates its offer to help relieve the serious economic and humanitarian crisis being endured by the people of Venezuela. It is unclear what caused this latest verbal tirade against Rajoy. The last time that the Spanish leader mentioned Venezuela was on March 30, during the 80th birthday celebration of writer Mario Vargas Llosa, when he said that change in Latin America will not be complete without freedom in Venezuela. Sign up for our newsletter! EL PAIS English Edition is launching a weekly newsletter. Sign up today to receive a selection of our best stories in your inbox every Saturday morning. For full details about how to subscribe, click here. This is the fifth time that the Venezuelan ambassador to Spain has been called in to hear complaints about Maduros broadsides. On July 27, the Venezuelan president called Rajoy a hitman of the people. On January 22, Spain asked for explanations regarding a trip made by members of Podemos, of the Catalan fringe party CUP and by relatives of ETA convicts on a Venezuelan air force plane. Despite the verbal attacks, the Caracas government has never gone through with its threat to target Spanish interests in the country. English version by Susana Urra. Karabakh: Two Armenian soldiers killed in overnight shooting The Ministry of Defense of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic reports that on the night of April 8 Azerbaijani continued to violate the truce along the entire length of the Contact Line with Karabakh, firing more than 2000 rounds at Armenian positions. The Ministry reports that Private Hrach Muradyan (born 1983) was killed by an Azerbaijani bullet in the southern direction of the frontline (in the Talish area of Martakert), where more intensive violations were recorded at night. Another Armenian soldier, Gevorg Mghdesyan (b. in 1996) was killed under yet unknown circumstances in the northeaster section of the Line of Contact. Investigation is underway into both incidents, the Ministry said. On April 5, Azerbaijani and Armenian forces signed an agreement on ceasefire to halt four days of clashes which claimed scores of lives in the worst outbreak of violence in decades over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The ceasefire was largely observed in the past three days with both sides reporting about sporadic shooting which they said was not as intensive as between April 2 and 5. As many as 36 Armenian servicemen were killed and 122 wounded in the course of skirmishes. twenty-one Armenian soldiers are reported missing. Resolution of Heritage Party: Heritage calls on all Armenians to unite around Armenian statehood RESOLUTION OF THE ZHARANGUTYUN (HERITAGE) POLITICAL PARTY ON ARMENIAN NATIONHOOD AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST OF THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE IN THE REGION The developments (Ukraine, Syria, Iraq) taking place in the region over the last 25 years following the collapse of the Soviet Union disclose the issues inherited from the beginning of the 20th century (fall of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Turkish Republic at the expense of the Armenian patrimony). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 20th century, Armenia regained its independence in the form of two republics on a 42,000 sq. km. (about 10%) territory of its historic homeland. The Armenian patrimony had been compromised as a result of the Bolshevik-Kemalist deal: Artsakh and Nakhijevan were ceded to Azerbaijan in the USSR, while Cilicia, Western Armenia and a substantial part of Eastern Armenia were handed over to the Turkish Republic. Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Artsakh declared their independence (to date, the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, or Artsakh, is not internationally recognized) after the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of the 20th century. Azerbaijan, with Turkish support, declared a war against Armenia and Artsakh in response to the latters natural right to self-determination. In 1994 an open-ended truce was reached among the republics of Armenia, Artsakh (Mountainous Karabagh) and Azerbaijan, which was later repeatedly broken by Azerbaijan. On April 2, 2016, Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, moved from breaching the ceasefire to large-scale hostilities. The last 25 year record of the Republic of Armenia and Artsakh (Mountainous Karabagh) have proved that the parties are the guarantors of peace and stability in the region, in spite of being in a blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey. It is time for the international community to fully recognize the important role of its civilized partners, the two Armenian statehoods, who ensure peace and stability in the region and connect the East to the West. Based on the aforementioned, the Zharangutyun (Heritage) Party calls for: The Republic of Armenia: to recognize the Republic of Artsakh, ruling out any negotiations or the signing of any documents regarding Artsakh without its participation, to withdraw the Republic of Armenias signature from the Armenia-Turkey Protocol, to exclude the presence of any foreign force at the Artsakh frontier, to start a process terminating the membership of Azerbaijan in the Council of Europe and to call that country to accountability in front of the various international bodies. The Unites States of America: to recognize the Republic of Artsakh, to take measures to assist in restoring the Artsakh economy and infrastructure, damaged as a result of the new armed aggression of Azerbaijan, and to initiate the implementation of Wilsons Arbitral Award. The European Union: to recognize the Republic of Artsakh and start negotiations with Artsakh on signing the European Union Association Agreement. The Russian Federation: to recognize the Republic of Artsakh, to condemn Azerbaijan in unleashing a war against Artsakh through selling its offensive arms to Azerbaijan, to cancel all further agreements with Azerbaijan on selling arms, to refrain from hindering the sovereign right of Iran and Armenia to a gas pipeline, an oil pipeline and a railway. The People's Republic of China: to recognize the Republic of Artsakh and to consider Armenia as a full member in projects of reopening the Silk Road. The Islamic Republic of Iran: to recognize the Republic of Artsakh, to bring to life the construction of an oil pipeline, a gas pipeline and a railway line between Iran and Armenia, and to consider Armenia as a transit country to Europe. The Republic of Georgia: to recognize the Republic of Artsakh, to make Javakhk a mutually vital bridge between the two countries, to achieve a comprehensive settlement of the Armenian cultural heritage issues and to participate in the implementation of the projects of Iran-Armenia-Georgia-Europe gas pipeline, oil pipeline and railway construction. The citizen and peoples of all ethnic groups in the Republic of Azerbaijan: to overthrow the misanthropic and the criminal regime of the Aliev clan, to demand from the new authorities to recognize the independence of the Republic of Artsakh and the right to self-determination of other national units, to contribute to peace in the region and to facilitate the peaceful co-existence of nations. The Republic of Turkey: to recognize the Republic of Artsakh and to condemn the Armenian Genocide and its attendant the Great National Dispossession, to compensate and to eliminate its consequences (moral, material and territorial). All States of the World: to recognize the Republic of Artsakh and to support the restoration of the Republic of Artsakhs war-torn economy and infrastructure. The Zharangutyun (Heritage) Party calls on all Armenians to unite around the Armenian statehood, the imperative of serving the national interest. Larisa Alaverdyan: Armenian side does not keep Azerbaijani captive (video) The Armenian side does not keep Azerbaijani captives, Executive Director of the Foundation against the Violation of Law (FAVL) told media on April 8. Larisa Alaverdyan says during the clashes of the past several days, the Armenian side did not want to take hostages: our soldiers were protecting our borders and preventing the enemy from penetrating into our territory. The relevant bodies dealing with the search for missing persons and prisoners of war are doing their work on the highest possible level, she said. Azerbaijan must be interested in cooperation with the Red Cross, because it has dead soldiers left in our territory, Mrs Alaverdyan said adding that they do not know yet whether there are Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan or not. Should we have such data, we would not announce that we have 25 missing soldiers. Larisa Alaverdyan, who has just returned from Artsakh, says what she saw there is beyond description. What we saw there cannot be compared with the events of 1992 because this time the enemy tried to solve several problems at once. , at the same time, the enemy wanted to cause panic among our population, she said. Larisa Alaverdyan added that t the atrocities carried out by Azerbaijani soldiers against the peaceful population of Artsakh are not only crimes against humanity, but also crimes that contradict the provisions of Geneva Conventions. Azerbaijan behaves as a terrorist group that can be compared with the Islamic State. We must raise the issue on an international level applying to all international bodies, she said in conclusion. March of Silence to be held in Yerevan in memory of fallen Armenian soldiers A March of Silence will be held in Yerevan on the evening of April 10 to commemorate the Armenian soldiers killed in recent clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh. The situation on the Line of Contact between Karabakh and Azerbaijan armed forces escalated on the night of April 1-2. Some of our soldiers were killed, others wounded during the hostilities unleashed by Azerbaijan. We wish to bid our last farewell to our soldiers and bow our heads to their families, but these martyrs lived in different marzes of Armenia. Thus, to pay respects to all our heroes, we have decided to gather in Yerevan at 7p.m. on April 10 and hold a March of Silence in memory of our fallen soldiers, the initiative group said in a statement. The march will start from Shahumyan square and will head to Yerablur, where people will light candles symbolically The March of Silence will begin at Shahumyan Square and move to Yerablur, where people will light candles symbolically. The initiators ask the participants to bring candles and flowers with them. Why Is Armenia Member of the EAEU and the CSTO "After restart of Karabagh war (commonly referred to as the 4-day war), Armenian peoples perception on many issues suffered a drastic change. After being attacked by new cutting edge tanks of Russian production, the TOS-1A Solntsepyok system that burns the infantry alive, and the Smerch multiple rocket launchers prohibited by Dublin Convention, people began to raise their concerns about a number of issues which had previously seemed to be taboos. In particular, it refers to Russian-Armenian relations, the EAEU and the CSTO. The EAEUs Last Argument In the recent years, it became obvious that Armenias membership in the EAEU causes more economic damage rather than economic benefit. It should be noted that in 2013 the Armenian side mentioned for several times that its membership in that union is aimed more at security of Armenia, rather than economy. However, the 4-day war in Artsakh (Armenian name for Nagorno Karabagh) showed that the EAEU does not solve any security issue. First of all, it is worth reminding you that two of the members of EAEU, namely Belarus and Kazakhstan, had an obviously anti-Armenian position on the issue in question and supported Baku. Moreover, the Armenian Foreign Ministry even invited the ambassador of Belarus to Armenia to the ministry to demand explanation for Minsks statement on the conflict escalation. In the meantime, Kazakhstan announced that the meeting of EAEU prime ministers in Armenia is undesirable because of the war and that it would be more expedient to move the venue of the meeting to Moscow in order for the meeting not to be viewed as support to one of the conflict sides. Thus, this was simply a diplomatic step showing that the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan will not come to Armenia when military actions are being carried out against its friend Azerbaijan. The Death of the CSTO Apparently, the prime minister of Kazakhstan has forgotten that his country is member of the CSTO. And if he considers that Armenia is a military conflict side, then Kazakhstan should support Armenia by any means. While Armenias de-jure military ally Kazakhstans prime minister decided not to come to Armenia because of the conflict, not less worrying was the behavior of Armenias military and strategic ally Russias prime minister. In particular, Dmitri Medvedev decided to cut short his two-day visit to Yerevan, and spend the second day of his visit in Baku. This step, which significantly contradicts the diplomatic ethics, must have been very insulting for the Armenian authorities even if Russia was not Armenias ally. But in this case, we deal not only with disrespectful attitude, but also with factual betrayal by the ally because it is obvious that Medvedev cuts short his visit to Yerevan for the same reason as the prime minister of Kazakhstan decides not to come to Armenia in order not to insult Azerbaijan. To put it differently, the Russian prime minister did not hesitate to violate the diplomatic ethics so that his visit is not viewed as any kind of support to Armenia. Ironically, our main strategic ally does not spare any effort in NOT supporting Armenia Even politically. P.S. After all the aforementioned reflection, an important question comes to mind. Why should Armenia continue its membership in the CSTO and the EAEU?" Daniel Ioannisyan, Anna Pambukhchyan, Union of Informed Citizens Komandos: Aliyev heard about Ani's intention to go to the frontline and signed a truce (video) A large and versatile game is being played over Nagorno-Karabakh, says Major-General Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan, a prominent Karabakh war veteran known as Komandos. If we ever agree to cede any area, it will mean we allow the enemy to come nearer and kill us easily. This is the ideology of Pan-Turkism and we all know about it, he said. Russia announces that Armenia is its strategic ally while Azerbaijan is a strategic partner. Now you can realize yourselves which of the parties Russia supports. Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan said. He is delighted and encouraged to see the readiness of our people, especially when he saw girls willing to go to the frontline. The Karabakh war veteran known then recalled an incident: after her father had gone to fight on the border Ani came to me and asked me to take her to the frontline. I called all female representatives and asked them to applaud to Ani. I said Aliyev was scared after hearing about Anis decision to go to the Artsakh frontline and hurried to sign a ceasefire agreement with us, Mr Ter-Tadevosyan said. Speaking about the sale of Russian weapons to Azerbaijan, Komandos said when clinching a deal with Russia Azerbaijani cheated its strategic partner promising not to use the firearms against Karabakh. Political analyst: We should impose new conditions for ceasefire with Azerbaijan (video) Statements about the presence of peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone are shallow talks, says political analyst Manvel Sargsyan. Peacekeeping missions are deployed whenever there is a political decision. There is not such a decision, the Director of the Armenian Centre for National and International Studies said to A1+. Serzh Sargsyan told leading German broadcaster Deutsche Welle that Armenia never speak against the presence of peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, but he added that the conflict should get a final settlement. He [Sargsyan] says we expressed our readiness to sign a relevant document, but Azerbaijan refused this. Why should Azerbaijan agree to the deployment of peacekeepers in Karabakh. Azerbaijan has weapons and can fire whenever it wants. I see no sense here, Manvel Sargsyan said. The political analyst says all those who support the presence of peacekeepers in Karabakh should explain their opinion. He thinks it is time we imposed new conditions for a ceasefire with Azerbaijan. Yes, we should force Azerbaijani to sign an armistice with the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. This is politics and it can claim lives. It is the way diplomacy is done. We should have a political line and understand that everything changes over time. If we force Azerbaijan to sign an agreement with the NKR, there will be an entirely different situation with different guarantees. That will be the recognition of the NKR by Azerbaijan, he said. SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Google Ad Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully Google Ad The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully Google Ad The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression Visitors at the exhibition (Photo: VNA) The event, co-organised by Ho Chi Minh citys Department of Information and Communications and Le Bros Company, hopes to contribute to strongly promoting the unity between Overseas Vietnamese and the country. The exhibition also gives the public a close-up view of the Vietnamese community in France. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh, Deputy Chairwoman of Overseas Vietnamese Committee in Ho Chi Minh city, said the Committee would receive all the documents and photos presented by Le Tan Xuan for preserving and exploiting at the Museum of Ho Chi Minh city and Ho Chi Minh Museum in Ho Chi Minh city. Besides, all the photos by Le Tan Xuan will be published in books to introduce widely to the public. Xuan, born in 1939 in Cambodia, went to France in 1964 to study film and photography. In 1968, he became a member of a union which is now the Association of Vietnamese People in France, and has been taking photos of the organisations activities since then./. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc takes an oath at the NA. (Photo: VNA) In his message, Lao Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong wrote that the election affirmed the belief and appreciation of the Vietnamese Party, Government and people of his Vietnamese counterparts leadership and management over the past years. He expressed his strong belief that Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phucs capacity and rich experience will help Vietnam maintain its stability, develop its economy, improve peoples lives, and raise the countrys position and role in the international arena. The PMs experience in steering Vietnam-Laos cooperation will also contribute to intensifying the two countries traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation, the Lao leader wrote. Meanwhile, in his letter of congratulations, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang confirmed that China is willing to work with Vietnam to spur strategic connectivity and intensify results-orientated cooperation in all fields in order to make the bilateral ties develop sustainably and healthily. The two countries need to strengthen their solidarity and deepen their cooperation for mutual development in the current fierce international competition, the Chinese Premier said./. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi (Photo: Xinhua/VNA) Her appointment is in accordance with the state counsellor bill signed by President U Htin Kyaw. U Zaw Htay, who is Deputy Director-General of the President's Office, told the press that the President's signed bill document has been sent to the Union Parliament. It was approved by both the House of Nationalities (Upper House) and House of Representatives (Lower House). The bill, which includes five chapters and eight articles, gives the NLDs leader the right to contact government ministries, departments, organisation, and individuals for counsel. She is responsible for her duty to the Union Parliament. Aung San Suu Kyi's first two portfolios are as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the President's Office. In addition, she is also as chairperson of the Joint Coordination Committee for Development of Parliamentary Affairs. Aung San Suu Kyi was born on June 19th, 1945 in Yangon, Myanmar, a country traditionally known as Burma./. 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 Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Valeriya Gontareva has denied rumors appeared in social networks that she intends to resign and they she is involved in settling personal interests of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in the period when she governs the central bank. "NBU Head Valeriya Gontareva did not resign and was not involved in settling private issues of the president on the post of the NBU head," the NBU press service said. Earlier information that Gontareva signed a letter of resignation appeared in social networks. A source said that the NBU head resigned because she had a personal conflict with Poroshenko, as she was allegedly involved in agreements with Rotschild and the registration of an offshore company by the president. The source also said that Gontareva could resign, as there is an agreement between the government and president. The operation of the Vojany-Uzhgorod interconnector between Ukraine and Slovakia in two modes will be ensured thanks to physical switching of compressors and thanks to 'virtual reverse supplies' (backhaul)," Development Director at national joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy Yuriy Vitrenko told reporters in Kyiv on Thursday. "Earlier it was one flow from Slovakia to Ukraine. Now the interconnector operates in two modes. This means that if there is a flow from Slovakia to Ukraine, the 'virtual reverse mode can be used for this amount [of gas]," he said. Vitrenko said that the option with the virtual reverse mode implies that there are two companies, one of which seeks to ship a certain amount of gas from the EU to Ukraine and another one the same amount from Ukraine to the EU. In this case the operators of gas transport systems clear the payments and gas is not moved across the border. He said that physical switching can be used for the interconnector. "If there is no incoming flow to Ukraine, they [operators] change the mode of compressors and ensure physical supplies from Ukraine," he said. The start of the two-mode operation of the interconnector would help increasing the attractiveness of Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities. European companies will be able to freely pump it to Ukraine and then pump it back from Ukraine. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has obliged banks to bring their charter capitals to at least UAH 200 million by the middle of next year, refusing to demand an increase to UAH 300 million by the end of this year. The new relaxed additional capitalization schedule is approved in NBU order No. 242 dated April 7, 2016, the regulator reported. "After the long discussions with bankers, the Independent Association of Banks of Ukraine and the profile committee the regulator decided to relax the capital increase schedule for banks," the NBU said, citing Deputy NBU Governor Yekateryna Rozhkova. She said that the NBU heard some strong arguments: the impossibility of using 2016 profit for additional capitalization, the period for changing legislation to mitigate the procedure for merging banks or rejecting bank licenses, as well as issues relating to attracting investors under the current conditions. Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers has asked the Verkhovna Rada to ratify amendments to the convention with Cyprus on avoiding double taxation and preventing tax evasion. The proposal is outlined in cabinet resolution No. 243 of March 30 posted on its website. According to the explanation to the resolution, the protocol amending the convention between Ukraine and Cyprus was signed on December 11, 2015. Taxpayers who seek to apply 5% tax on dividends are to hold at least 20% of shares in a company and invest no less than EUR 100,000 in its charter capital. The 10% tax rate will apply in other cases. The tax rate for dividends will be increased from 2% to 5%. The protocol envisages amendments to taxation of income from selling shares in companies which cost exceeds 50% of the cost of entire property of these companies. Ukraine and Cyprus agreed that the protocol will take effect no earlier than January 1, 2019. Former deputy prime minister and former finance minister of Slovakia Ivan Miklos could decide not to run the post of finance minister in the government of Volodymyr Groysman due to ignorance of language. "This is, by the way, the reason why I may decide not to run the post of finance minister," he said in an interview with the Novoye Vremia magazine published on Friday. Miklos said that communication with society is very important for conducting reforms: participation in television debates and bringing of own position. He said that understands almost everything what is written and said in Russian, but his oral speech is not good enough. "It is hard to take part in debates with n interpreter," he said. BEIJING -- Chinese President Xi Jinping met with visiting Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Beijing on Friday. Xi spoke highly of the long-term friendship between the two countries, and their support to each other on issues of core interests and major concern. China is willing to work with Sri Lanka to consolidate traditional friendship, expand reciprocal cooperation, and push forward strategic partnership of cooperation to a new high, Xi said. He urged the two countries to integrate development strategies, maintain high-level exchanges, strengthen strategic communication, handle bilateral relations from a long-term and strategic perspective, and map out top-level designs for bilateral ties and cooperation in various fields. Wickremesinghe echoed Xi saying the strategic partnership of cooperation featuring sincere mutual support and long-lasting friendship is in the interests of both Sri Lanka and China. It is also a consensus of all political parties in Sri Lanka. He appreciated the positive role played by China in promoting global economic stability and growth, and thanked China for its long-term assistance to Sri Lanka. With regard to bilateral cooperation, Xi said the two countries should take the Belt and Road Initiative as an opportunity to deepen cooperation in terms of trade, infrastructure, industrial parks, manufacturing, production capacity, technology, and ocean. China will positively consider helping Sri Lanka build health projects and is ready for more cooperation in areas such as tourism, education and culture, Xi said. He also vowed to strengthen communication and coordination with Sri Lanka under the frameworks including the United Nations, the ASEAN Regional Forum and the South Asian Association Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Wickremesinghe said Sri Lanka will actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, strengthen cooperation with China in port and airport construction, trade, investment, transportation and technology, and increase cultural and people-to-people exchanges. He said Sri Lanka is willing to strengthen cooperation with China within the SAARC. Arriving in Beijing on Wednesday night, Wickremesinghe will conclude his official visit to China on Saturday. The European Union since the entry into force of the economic part of a free trade area with Ukraine (since January 1, 2016) has fully used a duty-free quota for exports to Ukraine of poultry and semi-finished poultry products in the amount of 8,000 tonnes. According to a report on the website of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club association, the main supplier countries of this product to Ukraine became Britain, Germany and Poland. The use of an additional duty-free quota for poultry has not started. In addition, within the quota 20,100 tonnes of sugar were supplied within a 30,000 quota issued to the EU. The quota for pork in the amount of 10,000 tonnes was 11% used. The main suppliers of this product were the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. The use of an additional quota has not begun. The association said the EU has duty-free quotas for supplies to Ukraine only on three positions. The U.S. government has issued $4 million for consulting services to reform the Ukrainian customs, the press service of the Ukrainian Finance Ministry has reported. "We believe that the involvement of international advisers with impeccable reputation and extensive experience in managing and reforming customs offices in other countries will help us dramatically increase the level of honesty of customs staff in Ukraine," the press service said citing Minister of Finance Natalie Jaresko. As reported, on April 6 Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk ordered accelerating the holding of a tender to select consulting companies for an experiment to reform four Ukrainian customs offices. Jaresko reported that the ministry attracts two donors, one of whom is from the United States, to finance the experiment of Ukrainian customs management. The minister also said that contracts with these companies would be signed in May, and she hopes that consultant companies would appear at customs offices in a month or a month and a half. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has invited Japanese specialists to Ukraine to exchange experience and introduce effective solutions. The president's press service reported on Thursday that Poroshenko visited the Isogo Thermal Power Plant (TPP) in Yokohama, which is the most efficient and environmentally safe thermal power station in the world. "In the course of the meeting with the companys leaders, the President invited Japanese experts to visit Ukraine in order to exchange experience and implement such technologies in our country," the press service said. "We are planning to modernize our thermal power stations in order to become independent from Russian gas and coal and receive it from other markets," Poroshenko said. According to the president, Ukraine-Japan cooperation in the sphere of energy efficiency is the most promising one and the experience of Japanese companies is highly valuable. Isogo TPP is one of the first thermal power stations in the world that started using efficient technologies for cleaning of emissions. For today, Isogo is the global leader in terms of environmental safety - emissions of carbon monoxide and sulfur have been brought to almost zero. Ukraine must continue internal reforms, including in the economy, despite the outcome of a Dutch referendum on the Association Agreement between Ukraine and European Union, Polish Ambassador to Ukraine Henryk Litwin has said. "This [the results of the referendum] is not your concern This is our concern. This is concern of the European Union and the Netherlands how to continue working with Ukraine in this situation. We will resolve it somehow. Ukraine must do its part, change the country, change the economy and the relation to Ukraine will change as it changed towards Poland, Slovakia and Hungary," Litwin said at the third business forum "Ukraine 2016: Challenges and Opportunities in Kharkiv on Thursday. He said that when the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement was signed, Western Europe was also skeptical about Ukraine's European prospects. He said that the successful reforms in Ukraine would change relation to the country in the EU for the better. "This is the matter of changes, reforms and transformation that will be conducted in Ukraine. If there were changes, the attitude of people in Western Europe will change more. The presence of the Ukrainian economy on the European market, for sure, will change this situation," he said. The United States is disappointed at the results of the nonbinding referendum in the Netherlands, which rejected on the EU-Ukraine association agreement, U.S. State Department's Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner has said. "We are disappointed by the results, but we do respect the views of the Dutch people and we respect the Dutch political process," he said at a briefing in Washington on Thursday. He said that it was now up to the Dutch government to decide on its next steps taking into account the results of the nonbinding referendum. Toner reiterated that Washington believes this association agreement is in the best interests of Ukraine, the U.S., and the European Union. Arson at Kyiv court building may be linked with work of judge presiding over Russian citizens' trial Unknown persons threw bottles filled with a flammable liquid into the premises of Kyiv's Holosiyivsky District Court last night, causing a fire at the office of the judge who is presiding over the trial of Russian intelligence officers Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov. The case files have not been damaged. The press service of the Ukrainian National Police department for Kyiv reported on Friday that at around 3:00 a.m. police received an alert that a group of young people had climbed over the fence around the Holosiyivsky Court building and had thrown bottles filled with a flammable liquid, one of which smashed a window on the third floor. The office of the judge presiding over the Russian citizens' trial was partially damaged in the fire. "According to the judge, the documents as part of these criminal cases were not damaged. Law enforcement agencies are considering several theories behind the offense. The main one of them is the judge's professional activities," the deputy chief of the National Police department in Kyiv, Oleksandr Pyvovar, said. A local security guard called the police and State Emergency Situations Service rescuers immediately after the incident. Investigators from the National Police central and district departments examined the scene and confiscated fragments of the bottles containing an unknown liquid. They were sent for examination. However, the fire damaged office equipment and furniture. The investigative unit of the Holosiyivsky district police department entered information into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations under Part 2 of Article 378 of Ukraine's Penal Code (intentional destruction or damage of property owned by a judge, a people's assessor or a juror). Search and investigative measures are being taken as part of the inquiry in order to identify and detain the suspects. Police officers are again examining the scene. For his part, Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor General and Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios told reporters that the office into which a bottle with a flammable liquid was thrown was destroyed by fire completely along with the documents kept there. However, security measures were taken with regard to the files as part of the Russian citizens' case, and these documents were not damaged. Matios also stressed that a session in the case of Yerofeyev and Alexandrov, set for Friday, will go ahead. He described the recent incident as a factor of "both pressure and intimidation." "The series of controversial and tragic events linked with this case continues," he added. Militants have conducted 70 attacks on Ukrainian army positions by use of various types of weapons over the past day, the anti-terrorist operation press center wrote on Facebook on Friday morning. According to the staff, the truce was breached near Avdiyivka, Luhanske, Pisky, Opytne, Nevelske, Verkhnotoretske, Artemivsk, Kamyanka, Svitlodarsk and Bohuslavske in Donetsk sector. Militants were using 120mm and 82mm mortars, grenade launchers, machineguns and small arms. In addition to the use of banned mortars in the Pavlopil area, howitzers were firing on Novotroitske in the Mariupol area, the staff said. Various types of grenade launchers were used near Triokhizbenka in Luhansk region, and small arms were fired in Stanytsia Luhanska. In the aforesaid period, the Ukrainian army opened fire 19 times, exclusively by use of small-caliber weapons, the report said. Recognition of the results of the referendum on the association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union by the government of the Netherlands will mean that the provisional application of the association agreement will continue, Ambassador-at-Large of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Dmytro Kuleba has said. "The recognition of the results of the referendum by the government of the Netherlands and, therefore, non-completion of the ratification of the agreement at this stage means for Ukraine the incomplete process of ratification of the agreement in the Netherlands and, therefore, the continuation of its provisional application. This step will also cause the wave of criticism of the authorities, and Russia will get an additional argument that Ukraine is not welcome in the EU and will use it to destabilize the internal situation in Ukraine," Kuleba wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday. He also said that the recognition of the referendum results by the Netherlands means an expression of distrust in the Dutch government, which had been actively encouraging its citizens to support the agreement on the association between Ukraine and the EU. Another consequence of the Dutch referendum will be the emergence of a powerful impulse for Eurosceptics, the right and left-wing forces in other EU countries, which seek to destroy the EU and the solidarity of its members. This will also create a precedent for questioning the EU's legal and political system. "There is no doubt that a) the association agreement will be effective b) the Dutch government's task is to search for the most acceptable solution of the 'Dutch case', c) strategically, the most negative consequences of the referendum will be felt by the EU, but it will survive this, the only question is at what price," the diplomat wrote. At the same time, he said that they should not forget that the corruption in Ukraine must be fought, and politicians, officials, journalists must learn to see how solving domestic issues is also a priority for successful foreign policy. As reported, with all ballots counted at the Dutch referendum, 61.1% voted against the ratification of the agreement on the association between Ukraine and the EU, and 38.1% voted for it, with the minimum required turnout. A Ukrainian soldier was killed and 12 more were wounded in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone on Thursday, the Ukrainian presidential administration's spokesman for ATO, Andriy Lysenko, has said. "Last day, one soldier was killed and twelve injured in hostilities," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday. In particular, the soldier was killed in Opytne, Donetsk region. The injured soldiers were fighting in Horikhove, Svitlodarsk, Avdiyivka, and Maryinka in Donetsk region. The armed conflict in Donbas became the reason for the fact that 1.5 million Ukrainians faced the threat of hunger, according to the UN News Centre, with reference to information of the World Food Program (WFP). "Two years of conflict in eastern Ukraine led to the fact that 1.5 million Ukrainians faced the threat of hunger. Some 300,000 people are experiencing severe food shortages and are in need of urgent assistance," the UN News Centre reported. The report notes that the WFP intends in the first half of this year on a monthly basis to provide help to 270,000 people from the most vulnerable categories of the population. A WFP representative, according to the report, also called on all the parties to the conflict to ensure a full and unhindered humanitarian access to people being in need of food. According to the report, the residents of the territories of Luhansk region uncontrolled by the government of Ukraine and certain areas along the demarcation line suffer the most serious food shortages. The United States and NATO continue to support Ukraine in the conflict with Russia and will assist in the development of Ukrainian military defense capabilities, U.S. President Barack Obama has said. According to Voice of America, on April 4 U.S. President Barack Obama held a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the White House, during which the parties discussed the Eastern direction of the alliance's activities. "We continue to be united in supporting Ukraine, in the wake of Russian incursions into the Ukrainian territory. We continue to work in the training and assist fashion in helping support Ukraine develop its military capabilities, defensively," the U.S. president said. The president said the United States continues to provide reassurance to frontline NATO allies that "Article 5 means something," while working with Russia to try to find a resolution to the Ukrainian conflict and "reduce tensions and the dangers of potential escalation." Some 22 people have disappeared in Crimea and over 200 searches were carried on in homes of Crimean Tatars and in cultural institutions, said President's Commissioner for the Rights of the Crimean Tatars, Petro Poroshenko Bloc MP, Mustafa Jemilev. "22 of our people are missing ... Most of them are Crimean Tatars, but there are three Ukrainians among them," Jemilev said at a press conference on Wednesday in Kyiv. Four of those missing were found dead later, Jemilev said, noting that local authorities have not taken any steps to search for the missing. "During two years of Crimean occupation by Russia over two hundred searches were carried on in homes of Crimean Tatars, schools and mosques," Jemilev said. The reasons given for the searches were dubious. The included alleged possession of weapons and so-called forbidden literature, the latter being any non-Russian publications, Jemilev added. Yerofeyev's lawyer does not rule out judge presiding in trial against Russians is under pressure Russian citizen Yevgeny Yerofeyev's lawyer Oksana Sokolovska views a fire at an office of presiding trial judge Mykola Didyk as a provocation. "This is another provocation, I can hardly imagine even now, by whom exactly, because, principally, the case is being tried quite productively and reactively, a court session takes place every day now, therefore, this hearing of the case stands in someone's way," Sokolovska told reporters in Kyiv on Friday during a break in the Kyiv Holosiyivsky District Court session addressing the case of Alexander Alexandrov and Yevegeny Yerofeyev, commenting on the overnight fire which occurred at the office of the judge presiding in the trial. Additionally, she said that she did not believe in any accidents. "There are so many events connected to this case. And I do not believe that the 'Molotov [incendiary] cocktail' was hurled into Didyk's office by chance," the lawyer said. In response to a question as to whether this will affect the progress of the court hearings, Sokolovska said that all the materials, which are evidence in this case, had not been stored at Didyk's office; therefore, this fact will in no way impact the progress of the trial. Speaking about whether it is possible to view this as pressure on the presiding judge, the lawyer said: "It is quite probable." Overnight into Friday, unidentified offenders hurled a bottle containing a highly flammable mixture at an office of the Holosiyivsky District Court. Fire broke out in the office of Judge Didyk. The documents in the case against the Russians were not damaged. On May 16, 2015, Russian security officers A. Alexandrov and Ye. Yerofeyev were detained near the town of Schastia, Luhansk region of Ukrainein an attempt to seize a strategic bridge. On May 19, Ukrainian detectives told the Russians that they were suspected of crimes stipulated under Article 258-3 of the Ukrainian Penal Code for involvement in terrorist activities. The Kyiv Shevchenkivsky District Court ordered their arrest on May 22. U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt has said it is unacceptable that OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) faces impediments during its work. "Unacceptable that Russia supported separatists continue to impede and threaten unarmed OSCE observers," the ambassador wrote on Twitter. Spokeswoman of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Maryana Betsa also criticized Russia. "We condemn the prevention of SMM activities by the Russian authorized persons. Full freedom of movements needed to carry out monitoring and check ups," she wrote on Twitter. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko will soon have a talk with Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, Deputy Head of President's Administration Kostiantyn Yeliseyev said. "I don't rule out that in next few days President of Ukraine will get in touch with Prime Minister of the Netherlands," Yeliseyev said at a press conference in Kyiv on Friday. He made t clear that the matter will concern the recent Dutch consultative referendum on Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. The Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, as well as visa-free travel regime agreement cannot be amended as a result of the plebiscite. Yeliseyev said "the ball is in the court" of the Dutch. "We expect them to make respective offers in the nearest future," he added. On Tuesday, April 12, at 14.00 the Interfax-Ukraine news agency's press center will host a press conference entitled "Situation Surrounding Holosiyivsky National Nature Park: Environmental Challenges and Ways to Solve Current Problems by NGOs." The participants include NGO Chairman of the 'All-Ukrainian Right of the People' Serhiy Shevchenko and Assistant Professor at the Department of Zoology of the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, PhD Vadym Alekseyenko (8/5A Reitarska Street). Accreditation is required by phone: (067) 509 1727. DHAKA -- The Chinese government will provide Bangladesh grant assistance of 300 million RMB (about $50 million) for construction of the 8th Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge. In this connection an agreement was signed between Bangladesh and China on Thursday in capital Dhaka. Bangladesh's Economic Relations Department (ERD) Secretary Mezbah Uddin and Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ma Mingqiang signed the agreement on behalf of their respective sides. According to an ERD statement, the 8th friendship bridge will be constructed on Kocha River in southern Bangladesh. The length of the bridge will be 1400 meters and Bangladesh Roads and Highway department will carry out the project, it said. The bridge will play an important role in accelerating movement of people and goods of Barisal and Khulna divisions, said the ERD. Presently, it said, a ferry is operated on the river which requires more than 1 hour to cross it. The construction of the first Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge, with a span of more than 917 meters in length, began in October 1986, and was completed in February 1989. (Global Times) 07:40, April 08, 2016 Despite Hanois stance, bilateral ties may improve: expert Vietnam Thursday urged China to move an oil rig in the South China Sea and give up plans to drill in disputed waters off China's Xisha Islands, a day after the pro-US Vietnamese prime minister stepped down. But observers said they believe that in spite of Hanoi's tougher stance on the South China Sea issue, the bilateral ties might improve. "Vietnam resolutely demands that China cancel its plan to drill and immediately remove the rig Haiyang Shiyou 981 out of this area," Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesperson Le Hai Binh said Thursday, Reuters reported. China should take "no further unilateral action that further complicates the situation and make practical contributions to peace and stability," the spokesperson said. On the same day, Nguyen Xuan Phuc was elected Vietnam's new prime minister at the 11th session of the 13th National Assembly of Vietnam, winning 446 of 490 valid votes, following the removal of the pro-US predecessor Nguyen Tan Dung from office on Wednesday, the Xinhua News Agency reported. However, Nguyen Tan Dung will not be the last Vietnamese leader to show a tough stance against China, experts said. "Vietnam has been taking a tough stance on the South China Sea issue and the new government is unlikely to compromise with China," Gu Xiaosong, an expert on Southeast Asian studies at the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times. After the country's rig began operating in the Xisha islands, Nguyen Phu Trong, re-elected general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, said Vietnam will deal with China's drilling rig at any cost, Zhuang Guotu, head of the Center of Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University, told the Global Times, noting that Vietnam's maritime law also makes it impossible for Hanoi to change its stance. Located 17 nautical miles from China's Zhongjian Island in the Xisha Islands but 150 nautical miles away from Vietnam's coastline, the rig Haiyang Shiyou 981 has faced opposition and disturbance from the Vietnamese side since it started operating in May 2014. Vietnam's maritime law, which took effect in 2013, includes China's Xisha Islands and Nansha Islands in Vietnam's sovereignty and jurisdiction, a move Beijing said would "complicate and escalate issues between the two countries," Xinhua reported. "Even if Vietnam does not relax its stance on the disputed area, the new leadership will try to avoid conflicts with China," Gu said. Zhuang said that the change in Vietnam's political balance may better China-Vietnam relations, as the influence of radical and pro-US leaders from the southern Vietnam is declining, making it possible for Hanoi to keep its distance from the US. US has no right to meddle in establishment of ADIZ over South China Sea, military expert says A warship sails in South China Sea during a Chinese navy drill in South China Sea, July 28, 2015. It is not the business of the U.S. whether China establishes an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea, said military expert Luo Yuan in an article published by China Youth Daily. Luo's comments came after a report on Reuters citing the words of U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work on Wednesday. Work said that the U.S. told China it will not recognize an exclusion zone in the South China Sea, and would view such a move as "destabilizing" the area. The country will also not recognize the established ADIZ over the East China Sea. Luo said that the South China Sea issue should be solved through negotiation between all relevant countries according to The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Declaration of Conduct for the South China Sea. It is meaningless for unaffected countries like the U.S. to intervene. Luo also said that the South China Sea issue was never so heated before the U.S. proposed its strategy of returning to Asia; he believes that the U.S. actually affected strategic unbalancing under the guise of strategic rebalancing. In addition, Luo said that the U.S. is a troublemaker on this issue, despite the fact that the country promotes freedom of navigation and demilitarization of the South China Sea. He claimed that the U.S. is intentionally driving a wedge between China and its surrounding countries. Luo writes in his article that the U.S has little ground to stand on given that the country has not signed the UNCLOS agreement. The U.S. urges China not to militarize the area, while simultaneously sending military aircraft and warships to conduct reconnaissance. When it comes to the role of the Philippines in this issue, Luo said that the territory of the Philippines was confirmed by the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris (1898), the Treaty of Washington (1900), and the Convention Between the United States and Great Britain (1930). Luo believes it is ridiculous for the U.S to help the Philippines claim additional islands in the South China Sea. Luo also raised several questions in his article. First, he wonders whether the Philippines is provoking the situation by calling the South China Sea the "West Philippines Sea." He also asks whether the Philippines is changing its geographical appearance by constructing military runways on Zhongye Island. Furthermore, why is the U.S. paying selective attention to this region? Why did the U.S. not take issue when other countries dug nearly 1,000 oil and gas wells within Chinas traditional sea boundaries, yet now the country takes issue with China digging a single well near Zhongjian Island? Luo said that Work has no right to his stance as far as ADIZ is concerned. The purpose of ADIZ is to identify military and civilian aircraft and to maintain international aviation security. Why does the U.S. allow itself and other countries to set ADIZ but not allow China to do so? Luo said that whether or not China chooses to set ADIZ is China's own business, and the final decision will be made according to the demands of national defense and stability in the South China Sea. A 29-year-old woman from Shanghai, who started posting humorous videos online six months ago, has already attracted more than eight million followers. Nicknamed Papi Jiang, the graduate student at Beijings Central Academy of Drama has just secured 12 million yuan (US$1.86 million) in funding, which triggered a heated discussion online, pushing people to reevaluate the web-celeb economy. This is largest funding of its kind to date for a young Chinese web celebrity. Four investors, including big-name venture capital firm Zhenfund and popular social media talk show Logic Thinking, put up 12 million yuan for a 12 percent share in Papi Jiangs business, according to Tencent. (Screeshot/ Papi Jiang's self-made video) Some fans are worrying that Jiangs videos will change now that she has received such a big sum of money. Up until now, Jiang doesnt appear to have been making much money from her work. Her only revenue was obtained through WeChats tip function a like button through which viewers can give the writer of a given post anywhere from 2 yuan to 200 yuan as a tip. Jiang says she produces all her videos by herself. So far they are simple: a talking head chattering for less than five minutes, with some easy cuts and subtitles. In her videos, she mocks everyday life, relationships, movies and social issues by talking in a mixture of Shanghai dialect, English and Japanese. Unlike many female Internet celebrities who cash in on their beauty and pose for sexy photos, Jiang always wears light makeup, dresses in casual clothes, and never hides the clutter in her apartment from an empty plastic bottle to sneakers on the table. She ends every video by saying: Im Papi Jiang, a woman who combines beauty and talent. (File Photo) Alipay, a major Chinese payment platform, will enter the European market this summer, according to news released at the Money 2020 event in Copenhagen on April 6. Starting from this summer, Chinese tourists will be able to enjoy the services of Alipay in Britain, Germany, France and Italy. Besides payment support, Alipay will also provide Chinese outbound tourists with all-around mobile life services. Through its mobile technology, Alipay is able to collect the location of its users and provide information like nearby restaurants, stores and tourist sites. User can also see comments on the businesses or tourist sites made by other users. When it comes time to pay, vendors can simply scan a bar code on the user's phone. These services will certainly improve the travel experience for many Chinese tourists and bring more business to European tourist sites. In recent years, science and technology giants like Google, Apple and Facebook have all developed mobile payment services. However, Alipay is one step ahead with its general mobile life services. When delivering his speech at Money 2020, Peng Yijie, president of the business division of Ant Financial, Alipay's parent company, emphasized that Alipay is going to continue expanding its life services support. Ant Financial is actively negotiating with potential partners including financial institutes, restaurants, theaters and so on. After entering the Alipay network, vendors can even access data about the habits of their Chinese customers. After six and a half years in prison, a man named Gao Yanlong received a compensation of 660,000 yuan ($101,904) for an unsubstantiated conviction, Beijing Times reported on Thursday. Gao said he will also petition a higher court for more compensation, explaining that the court officials didn't bow to him to express their apologies. Gao was detained by police in Lingbao County, Henan province on charges of homicide on Jan. 21, 1992. He was then convicted of robbery and sentenced to death with reprieve by the Sanmenxia Intermediate People's Court. But Gao rejected that decision and appealed to the high court, claiming that he was tortured until he delivered a confession. Henan High People's Court later ordered a retrial, citing a lack of evidence for his conviction. On Aug. 21, 1998, Gao was granted bail, but the case was never re-investigated in the following 18 years. Early this year, Gao applied for national compensation, and his charge was dropped due to insufficient evidence. Based on the decision by the Sanmenxia Intermediate People's Court, Gao was compensated with 531,382.96 yuan for an imprisonment of 2,418 days. Added together with compensation for mental damages, the total compensation comes to 660,000 yuan. Even so, Gao is angry that there was no official apology when his court decision was announced. The court explained that a formal apology was included in the decision published on their official website. Gao asked the court to publish an apology on provincial media. Gao also wants additional compensation for his mental damages and financial losses, including the loss of his business, his family's living expenses, and his medical charges during imprisonment. Gao believes that his experience behind bars did him great mental and physical damage. The total amount Gao is claiming is 2.03 million yuan, including 529,000 yuan for his time in custody, 500,000 yuan for the loss of his business, and 1 million yuan for mental damages. A college in Wuhan recently held a workplace etiquette contest for female students. Over 100 college girls battled for the crown, and 10 were finally chosen. The aim of the contest was to train the students in grace, help them to better understand social etiquette, and improve their ability to deal with setbacks on the job. During the event, contestants displayed their workplace etiquette and special talents. There was also an evening gown section, as well as a round for the girls to wear traditional Chinese qipao. File photo: Piraeus port in Greece Greece has inked an agreement to sell 67 percent of stake in Piraeus, the countrys largest port, to Chinese shipping company China Cosco Holding Co. at 368.5 million euros (419.7 million USD) on April 8, 2016. According to the agreement, Cosco currently has acquired 51 percent of Piraeus stake and will acquire the remaining 16 percent after five years, on condition that it concludes mandatory investments of 88 million euros (100.34 million USD) within the period. The signing of the deal has actually come along way of twists and turns, due to the change Greek political landscape, dockworkers job settlement, and complicated relationship among international creditors. Now that the port has been acquired by Cosco, it is expected that it will serve as a critical juncture where China exports goods to Europe. Over 400 boats gathered for the national intangible cultural heritage of Qintong Boat Fair in east China's Jiangsu province on Friday. This century-old fair has attracted nearly 100,000 tourists from both across the country and around the world. Over thousands of participants and hundreds of boats showcased a variety of marvelous performances. This grandeurs event is a must-see for tourists visiting in the province in this time of the year. If you typed the URL yourself, please make sure that the spelling is correct. If you clicked on a link to get here, there may be a problem with the link. Try using your browser's "Back" button to choose a different link on that page. The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: A joint railway network project with Iran was discussed at the negotiations between Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Baku Apr. 8, according to the Russian official. "It is a large and rather complex project, but if we succeed, it may give a serious overall effect on our economies," RIA Novosti quoted Medvedev as saying while speaking to reporters. He noted that Azerbaijan and Russia are the major players on the energy market and they have been cooperating on a number of projects for a long time. The Russian PM said the cooperation between the two countries includes the Shah Deniz project, a new project with the participation of Rosneft and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), as well as a number of other ideas, such as those related to cooperation in the energy sector. Medvedev added that there are also new projects related to the energy industry, as well as those related to the infrastructure sector. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: There is no military solution for Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said a statement of the Club de Madrid in line with the death of innocent civilians as a result of shelling of the Azerbaijani villages by Armenian armed forces on the line of contact of the two countries' troops. The Club de Madrid is an independent non-profit organization created to promote democracy and change in the international community. The Club de Madrid expressed concern about events in Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh and offered condolences to the families of the Azerbaijani citizens, who were killed and injured as a result of Armenian armed forces' military provocation, according to the statement. The Club de Madrid called on the conflict parties to strictly respect the ceasefire regime and avoid any actions that could lead to the conflict's further escalation. "As the US Secretary of State has said the unstable situation on the ground demonstrates why the sides must enter into an immediate negotiation under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs on a comprehensive settlement of the conflict," said the statement. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday offered Armenia's President Serzh Sargsyan to discuss Russia's proposals on the measures that might be implemented over the shortest possible term, TASS reported. He spoke about the proposals during talks with Sargsyan. Medvedev said in response there was no alternative to peaceful talks and discussions as instruments of solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh. The Foreign Ministers agreed to join efforts as the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs in order to normalize the situation in the conflict area as soon as possible. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.8 Trend: Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry has dismissed the information spread by Armenian Defense Ministry that allegedly Armenian armed forces have captured Azerbaijani army's vehicle full of military equipment. Only Armenian Defense Ministry representatives could carry out an operation involving special forces to destroy a non-combat vehicle which poses no threat, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry told Trend Apr.8. Armenia's military leadership, defeated on the battlefield, tries to calm down its people by making up various laughable "events", said the Defense Ministry. "It is not a secret that during the military operations, various types of equipment were shot down or destroyed from both sides," said the ministry. "Presumably, after the active military clashes, Armenian Defense Ministry has decided to credit itself with another 'imaginary victory'." Such information spread by Armenia's Defense Ministry about 'carrying out a special operation on Azerbaijan's territory' is a proof of their irresponsibility, it shows that they ignore the agreements and violate the ceasefire, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry added. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Details added (first version posted on 09:50) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.8 Trend: Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry has dismissed the information spread by Armenian Defense Ministry that allegedly Armenian armed forces have captured Azerbaijani army's vehicle full of military equipment. Only Armenian Defense Ministry representatives could carry out an operation involving special forces to destroy a non-combat vehicle which poses no threat, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry told Trend Apr.8. Armenia's military leadership, defeated on the battlefield, tries to calm down its people by making up various laughable "events", said the Defense Ministry. "It is not a secret that during the military operations, various types of equipment were shot down or destroyed from both sides," said the ministry. "Presumably, after the active military clashes, Armenian Defense Ministry has decided to credit itself with another 'imaginary victory'." Such information spread by Armenia's Defense Ministry about 'carrying out a special operation on Azerbaijan's territory' is a proof of their irresponsibility, it shows that they ignore the agreements and violate the ceasefire, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry added. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: An agreement was reached on restoration of ceasefire regime since 15:00 (GMT+4) Apr.8 on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, said Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry. It is planned to recover the bodies of dead soldiers from both sides from 15:00 to 20:00 Apr.8 through the mediation of the OSCE and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Additional information will be disseminated later. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: The OSCE Minsk Group's co-chairs on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement will return from the region to make a report to Berlin and then to the OSCE in a few weeks, RIA Novosti reported Apr. 8 citing Lamberto Zannier, the OSCE secretary general. "They [the co-chairs] are in the [Nagorno-Karabakh] region now and will stay there as long as necessary to define the next steps and review the actions to be done," he said. "The co-chairs must report about everything to the OSCE chairman-in-office [Andrzej Kasprzyk]," added Zannier. "So, I think they will go to Berlin. Then they will decide themselves when to arrive in Vienna." Zannier also said the co-chairs' mission has no time limits. "The co-chairs will have to come for a report," he said. "I think this issue will take several weeks." On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Moscow, Russia, Apr. 8 Orkhan Yolchuyev - Trend: The issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was discussed at the meeting of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Council of Foreign Ministers, Sergey Lebedev, executive secretary of the CIS, said Apr.8. He made the remarks at a press conference on results of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers' meeting in Moscow Apr.8. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke out about the meetings in the South Caucasus, said Lebedev. Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Armenia's Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandyan also presented their positions, he added. All of them expressed satisfaction with the cessation of hostilities, said Lebedev adding that during the meeting the CIS foreign ministers expressed their hope that the parties of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will return to the negotiating table in order to finally solve this difficult conflict. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: The settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE's sole responsibility, other organizations can only help, RIA Novosti agency quoted Russia's Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich as saying Apr.8. "There is a full, 100-percent responsibility of the OSCE as a mediating party for what happens in the conflict zone," he said during the Moscow-Vienna video conference. The truce on the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops has been achieved thanks to Russia's efforts, according to him. "We emphasized respect and full support for the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and used all our opportunities to influence the conflict parties, with which we have strategic relations," said Lukashevich. Russia's large-scale and high interference has allowed reaching truce, he added. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed the escalation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh by phone, said a statement issued by Kremlin. President Putin informed President Nazarbayev about the mediation measures taken by the Russian side, said the statement. Meanwhile, the sides discussed several issues of bilateral cooperation, as well as the schedule of upcoming meetings at high and top levels within the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Details added (first version posted on 16:20) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: Russian President Vladimir Putin held an operative meeting with the permanent members of Russia's Security Council, TASS quoted the Russian president's spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Apr. 8. "Participating in the meeting were the Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko, Chairman of the State Duma Sergei Naryshkin, Chief of the Kremlin's administration Sergei Ivanov, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, the FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov, and Head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service Mikhail Fradkov," said Peskov. The meeting discussed the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's settlement within the context of the efforts recently taken by the Russian side, he added. Current pressing domestic and international issues were also touched upon and a detailed discussion was held on the process of forming Russia's National Guard, noted Peskov. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: The OSCE Minsk Group's US Co-chair James Warlick has called for a negotiated settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "After many recent casualties, it's time for conflict to stop and work for a negotiated settlement," Warlick tweeted Apr. 8. He added that it is time for peace in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The remarks come after the recent escalation of tension along the line of contact between the troops of Armenia and Azerbaijan. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 8 Trend: The foreign ministers of Russia and Armenia Sergey Lavrov and Edward Nalbandian discussed on Friday the escalation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Russian minister said about the unacceptability of the use of force in the region, RIA Novosti reported April 8. Lavrov pointed out that from the very beginning of deterioration of the situation Russia is making efforts to ceasefire. He called unacceptable the use of force in the conflict zone, noting the importance of respecting the ceasefire and excluding recurrence of such a situation, the creation of appropriate conditions for the continuation of talks in OSCE MG format. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 9 Trend: Congressman from New Jersey (USA) Donald Payne on Friday issued a statement condemning the military actions of Armenia against Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan's embassy in USA told Trend. Payne welcomed Azerbaijan's proposal of an unilaterall ceasefire. He noted that despite the proposal of Azerbaijan, the Armenian side has continued military operations. The congressman also called upon the Armenian side to comply with the ceasefire and not to start military aggression again. At the end Payne said that the time to resolve the conflict that generates tragedy is long overdue, noting the importance of withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.8 Trend: Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva attended and reviewed the AITF 2016 -15th Azerbaijan International Travel and Tourism Fair and HOREX 2016 - 10th Caucasus International Hospitality Exhibition at the Baku Expo Center on April 8. Informing the president and his spouse, Minister of Culture and Tourism Abulfas Garayev said that 2016 marks the 15th anniversary of the AITF fair, founded in 2002. Then the bus and minibus, which will be used for city tours for tourists in Baku were showcased to the president. President Aliyev wished success in holding the exhibitions. The OSCE is ready to hold a new special session on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict if the situation there deteriorates, OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier said, RIA Novosti reported. He said the OSCE held a special session Apr. 4, adding that the organization's Permanent Council meets and discusses all issues every week. On Apr.7, the OSCE Permanent Council discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and it will also discuss this conflict the next week, Zannier said. Zannier stressed that the new special meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council with the participation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs will be held when they come back from the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Of course, if the situation in the region deteriorates, the OSCE Permanent Council will have to hold a special meeting, he said. Otherwise, the organization hasn't planned anything yet until the Co-Chairs return, the OSCE secretary general said. Earlier, Zannier said that the OSCE Minsk Group won't leave the region until further steps for the conflict's settlement are defined. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.8 Trend: Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev greeted Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who arrived in Baku on Apr. 8, and said there is an extensive agenda between Azerbaijan and Russia. "Your visit will contribute to strengthening the friendly and good neighborly relations between Russia and Azerbaijan," the president told Medvedev. "There is a very extensive agenda to discuss our relations which are developing very dynamically and have reached the strategic partnership level." The president noted that Medvedev has paid the visit to Azerbaijan during the period of escalation of the situation around the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "Regrettably, the conflict hasn't been resolved throughout many years. We periodically face armed provocations by Armenians," said President Aliyev, adding that another such attempt was made in early April. "Azerbaijani settlements were shelled, over 400 houses were destroyed," said the president, adding that there are victims among the civilians as well. Ilham Aliyev said that Azerbaijan had to retaliate to prevent the military provocations and restore ceasefire. "I would like to express gratitude to Russian leadership for the timely efforts and activities for de-escalation of the situation," he said. "Russia's President Vladimir Putin made a phone call to me and Armenian president. Moreover, Russia's chief of general staff contacted to the two countries' chiefs of general staffs. A truce was established as a result of the mediation efforts," said the president, adding that nevertheless, the opposing side doesn't always respect the ceasefire. "I should note that Azerbaijan is committed to the peaceful and political settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on the international law and relevant decisions of the UN Security Council and other international organizations," said President Aliyev. He added that Dmitry Medvedev's visit is also a good opportunity to discuss other issues on the agenda such as the relations in trade, economic, energy, transportation and humanitarian spheres. He emphasized that the Russian-Azerbaijani relations have a very good dynamics and stand out with friendliness and sincerity. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 By Seymur Aliyev - Trend: Azerbaijan and Russia are strategic partners in a number of spheres, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in Baku Apr. 8 at the expanded meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. "Fortunately, our range of relations isn't only confined to problems, there is a huge variety of relations where we have a very advanced cooperation and strategic partnership," he said. Medvedev went on to add that Azerbaijan and Russia have the opportunity to make additional efforts for the economies of the two countries to function more in line with one another, for good effect. He said that last year, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia declined. However, the reduction mainly occurred regarding cost indexes due to the changes in prices for goods the countries supply to each other, Medvedev said. But, nevertheless, this shows that a number of projects can be revived, said Medvedev. The Russian prime minister suggested President Ilham Aliyev to discuss this issue, and humanitarian issues as well. Details added (first version posted on 13:59) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 By Seymur Aliyev - Trend: Azerbaijan and Russia are strategic partners in a number of spheres, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in Baku Apr. 8 at the expanded meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. "Fortunately, our range of relations isn't only confined to problems, there is a huge variety of relations where we have a very advanced cooperation and strategic partnership," he said. Medvedev went on to add that Azerbaijan and Russia have the opportunity to make additional efforts for the economies of the two countries to function more in line with one another, for good effect. He said that last year, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia declined. However, the reduction mainly occurred regarding cost indexes due to the changes in prices for goods the countries supply to each other, Medvedev said. But, nevertheless, this shows that a number of projects can be revived, said Medvedev. The Russian prime minister suggested President Ilham Aliyev to discuss this issue, and humanitarian issues as well. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 8 Trend: Russia will continue supplying weapons to Azerbaijan as to its strategic partner in accordance with the contracts, Dmitry Rogozin, Russian deputy prime minister said at the press-conference in Baku April 8, TASS news agency reported. Rogozin further commented on a journalist's question regarding Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan's statement that Russia supplied a lot of weapons to Azerbaijan, as well as clarify whether Russia plans to continue these supplies. "Everything is carried out in accordance with the contracts," Rogozin said. "Both countries are our strategic partners." Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 By Seymur Aliyev - Trend: Russia appreciates the high level of relations with Azerbaijan, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in his statement for the press following the meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku Apr. 8. We really appreciate such level of relations with Azerbaijan, traditions of friendship and mutual understanding, which have formed throughout the centuries and which now bear good fruit, said Medvedev. Medvedev said that currently, both Russia and Azerbaijan undergo not quite the easiest phase of economic development. "The macroeconomic situation, the influence of foreign markets, as well as the oil and gas market and currency rate fluctuations in one way or another affect the economic agenda," said the prime minister. Medvedev said that for this reason, the trade turnover between the countries, which was always developed and quite significant, has recently declined. "But the decline is not dramatic, it is small," he said, adding that the trade turnover decreased only by a few percent. "The decline is bigger in cost terms, but we can compensate for it, if efforts to develop trade and economic, as well as investment cooperation are taken." "It's necessary to seek new projects," Medvedev said. "It is necessary to intensify activity of the intergovernmental commission, though the colleagues work well. On behalf of the Russian government I would like to thank for what is being done." Medvedev said that during the talks it was agreed to intensify activity of the Russian-Azerbaijani Business Council, because the countries should be not only state but also business partners. "We have a number of very large energy and transport projects," said Medvedev. "We would like to intensify the work in all these spheres in order to accelerate the development of our economies." Details added (first version posted on 13:36) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.8 Trend: Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev greeted Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who arrived in Baku on Apr. 8, and said there is an extensive agenda between Azerbaijan and Russia. "Your visit will contribute to strengthening the friendly and good neighborly relations between Russia and Azerbaijan," the president told Medvedev. "There is a very extensive agenda to discuss our relations which are developing very dynamically and have reached the strategic partnership level." The president noted that Medvedev has paid the visit to Azerbaijan during the period of escalation of the situation around the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "Regrettably, the conflict hasn't been resolved throughout many years. We periodically face armed provocations by Armenians," said President Aliyev, adding that another such attempt was made in early April. "Azerbaijani settlements were shelled, over 400 houses were destroyed," said the president, adding that there are victims among the civilians as well. Ilham Aliyev said that Azerbaijan had to retaliate to prevent the military provocations and restore ceasefire. "I would like to express gratitude to Russian leadership for the timely efforts and activities for de-escalation of the situation," he said. "Russia's President Vladimir Putin made a phone call to me and Armenian president. Moreover, Russia's chief of general staff contacted to the two countries' chiefs of general staffs. A truce was established as a result of the mediation efforts," said the president, adding that nevertheless, the opposing side doesn't always respect the ceasefire. "I should note that Azerbaijan is committed to the peaceful and political settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on the international law and relevant decisions of the UN Security Council and other international organizations," said President Aliyev. He added that Dmitry Medvedev's visit is also a good opportunity to discuss other issues on the agenda such as the relations in trade, economic, energy, transportation and humanitarian spheres. He emphasized that the Russian-Azerbaijani relations have a very good dynamics and stand out with friendliness and sincerity. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: Azerbaijan considers today's visit of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to Baku as another proof of friendly and partner attitude towards the country, said the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The president made the remarks Apr. 8 in a joint statement for the media following an expanded meeting with the Russian PM. "We attach great importance to your visit," President Aliyev told Medvedev. "Today, during the talks in the expanded and one-on-one formats, we discussed the important issues of bilateral cooperation and regional problems." President Aliyev added that, especially taking into account the recent escalation, they also had detailed discussions on the issues related to the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He said Azerbaijan appreciates that Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is on an official visit to Baku today. "I invited Medvedev to visit Azerbaijan and I know that he was planning to pay this visit. But the fact that this visit was paid today is considered by us as another proof of friendly and partner attitude towards Azerbaijan," added Ilham Aliyev. "We all know that Prime Minister Medvedev was planning to pay an official visit to Armenia on Apr.7. Given the current situation on the conflict zone, we appreciate the decision to visit Azerbaijan on Apr.8," said the president. It once again shows that the relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan are of great importance for Russia, he added. President Aliyev pointed out that Azerbaijan also attaches great importance to the relations with Russia, adding that Baku values these relations and tries to boost and strengthen them. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict hasn't been resolved throughout many years and not only Nagorno-Karabakh, but also seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan have been under occupation for over 20 years, said the president. The entire Azerbaijani population was expelled from those lands, all houses and historical monuments were destroyed there, he added. "We have over 700,000 IDPs from the conflict zone alone," the president said, noting that with over 250,000 refugees from Armenia added to this number, Azerbaijan had one of the highest rates of refugees and IDPs per capita in 1994 when the ceasefire was achieved. There is a mechanism for the conflict's settlement, there are four resolutions of the UN Security Council, demanding the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from Azerbaijani territories, President Aliyev said, adding that regrettably, they are not fulfilled. Further, Azerbaijan's president said that as the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing country, Russia plays an important role in the conflict's settlement. "We appreciate this role," said Ilham Aliyev, adding that this especially proved itself against the background of another armed provocation by Armenia, when Azerbaijan's positions, including the settlements, were subjected to an attack. "Over 400 houses located near the line of contact were damaged, a few dozens of them were completely destroyed," he said. "We have victims among the civilians as well," The president pointed out that under these conditions, Russia put forward an initiative to de-escalate the conflict. "Russia's President Vladimir Putin made a phone call to me and Armenia's president, expressed concern and desire to help the parties de-escalate the situation," said Ilham Aliyev. "We positively took these signals." President Aliyev added that chiefs of Azerbaijani and Armenian general staffs met in Moscow with participation of Russian chief of general staff and adopted a decision on suspending the military operations. "We strictly comply with this decision," he said. "We hope that Armenia will also adhere to it." President Aliyev said Azerbaijan is committed to the process of negotiation for the conflict's settlement. Negotiations have been going on for 20 years and all the accusations by Armenia that allegedly Azerbaijan is the initiator of the escalation are absolutely groundless, added Ilham Aliyev. "The nature of the clashes that took place in early April shows that we didn't and don't intend to start large-scale military operations," he noted. "We were simply protecting our positions and the peaceful life of our citizens." "Therefore, the conflict's settlement is in Azerbaijan's interests, I am sure it is in the interests of Armenia," said the president, adding Russia, as a neighbor and a friend of the both countries is also interested in the speedy settlement. "We will continue the negotiation process," added President Aliyev. "We welcome the initiative of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, who have recently visited the region, and hope that their calls for changing the status quo will be heard in Armenia as well." The president also noted that changing the status quo, Armenia's withdrawal from Azerbaijan's occupied lands are the main conditions for a comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "Once this happens, peace, harmony and cooperation will be restored in the region and this will benefit all the countries in the region," the president added. Details added (first version posted on 15:44) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: Azerbaijan considers today's visit of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to Baku as another proof of friendly and partner attitude towards the country, said the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The president made the remarks Apr. 8 in a joint statement for the media following an expanded meeting with the Russian PM. "We attach great importance to your visit," President Aliyev told Medvedev. "Today, during the talks in the expanded and one-on-one formats, we discussed the important issues of bilateral cooperation and regional problems." President Aliyev added that, especially taking into account the recent escalation, they also had detailed discussions on the issues related to the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He said Azerbaijan appreciates that Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is on an official visit to Baku today. "I invited Medvedev to visit Azerbaijan and I know that he was planning to pay this visit. But the fact that this visit was paid today is considered by us as another proof of friendly and partner attitude towards Azerbaijan," added Ilham Aliyev. "We all know that Prime Minister Medvedev was planning to pay an official visit to Armenia on Apr.7. Given the current situation on the conflict zone, we appreciate the decision to visit Azerbaijan on Apr.8," said the president. It once again shows that the relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan are of great importance for Russia, he added. President Aliyev pointed out that Azerbaijan also attaches great importance to the relations with Russia, adding that Baku values these relations and tries to boost and strengthen them. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict hasn't been resolved throughout many years and not only Nagorno-Karabakh, but also seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan have been under occupation for over 20 years, said the president. The entire Azerbaijani population was expelled from those lands, all houses and historical monuments were destroyed there, he added. "We have over 700,000 IDPs from the conflict zone alone," the president said, noting that with over 250,000 refugees from Armenia added to this number, Azerbaijan had one of the highest rates of refugees and IDPs per capita in 1994 when the ceasefire was achieved. There is a mechanism for the conflict's settlement, there are four resolutions of the UN Security Council, demanding the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from Azerbaijani territories, President Aliyev said, adding that regrettably, they are not fulfilled. Further, Azerbaijan's president said that as the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing country, Russia plays an important role in the conflict's settlement. "We appreciate this role," said Ilham Aliyev, adding that this especially proved itself against the background of another armed provocation by Armenia, when Azerbaijan's positions, including the settlements, were subjected to an attack. "Over 400 houses located near the line of contact were damaged, a few dozens of them were completely destroyed," he said. "We have victims among the civilians as well," The president pointed out that under these conditions, Russia put forward an initiative to de-escalate the conflict. "Russia's President Vladimir Putin made a phone call to me and Armenia's president, expressed concern and desire to help the parties de-escalate the situation," said Ilham Aliyev. "We positively took these signals." President Aliyev added that chiefs of Azerbaijani and Armenian general staffs met in Moscow with participation of Russian chief of general staff and adopted a decision on suspending the military operations. "We strictly comply with this decision," he said. "We hope that Armenia will also adhere to it." Details added (first version posted on 13:38) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 By Seymur Aliyev - Trend: Russia plays an important role in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in Baku Apr. 8 at the meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Medvedev also stressed his participation in the process of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He said he had spent a lot of efforts on the conflict's settlement and wouldn't like them to be in vain. Azerbaijan can be sure that Russia will do its best for the conflict to be resolved, he said. Azerbaijan and Russia have a lot of different joint projects, which will also be discussed during the visit, he said. "As you said, there are relations of strategic partnership between our countries, as well as a lot of projects in the economic, humanitarian sphere, a variety of joint political issues that we discussed," said Medvedev. Of course, the current situation, the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, is not quite that simple, the Russian prime minister said. "Frankly speaking, this topic is of great concern to Russia," said Medvedev, adding that relations with Azerbaijan and Armenia are extremely important for the country. Moscow, as a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, as a responsible state, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council is committed to the approaches within the framework of the UN procedures and other ones, he said. "We hope that the currently established peace will be long-lasting, and the sides will be able to continue discussion of issues of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's peaceful settlement," Medvedev said. "I convey to you the best wishes of Vladimir Putin," he said to Azerbaijani president, adding that the relations between the two countries are very versatile, and there is always something to discuss. Details added (first version posted on 15:44) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: Azerbaijan considers today's visit of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to Baku as another proof of friendly and partner attitude towards the country, said the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The president made the remarks Apr. 8 in a joint statement for the media following an expanded meeting with the Russian PM. "We attach great importance to your visit," President Aliyev told Medvedev. "Today, during the talks in the expanded and one-on-one formats, we discussed the important issues of bilateral cooperation and regional problems." President Aliyev added that, especially taking into account the recent escalation, they also had detailed discussions on the issues related to the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He said Azerbaijan appreciates that Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is on an official visit to Baku today. "I invited Medvedev to visit Azerbaijan and I know that he was planning to pay this visit. But the fact that this visit was paid today is considered by us as another proof of friendly and partner attitude towards Azerbaijan," added Ilham Aliyev. "We all know that Prime Minister Medvedev was planning to pay an official visit to Armenia on Apr.7. Given the current situation on the conflict zone, we appreciate the decision to visit Azerbaijan on Apr.8," said the president. It once again shows that the relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan are of great importance for Russia, he added. President Aliyev pointed out that Azerbaijan also attaches great importance to the relations with Russia, adding that Baku values these relations and tries to boost and strengthen them. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict hasn't been resolved throughout many years and not only Nagorno-Karabakh, but also seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan have been under occupation for over 20 years, said the president. The entire Azerbaijani population was expelled from those lands, all houses and historical monuments were destroyed there, he added. "We have over 700,000 IDPs from the conflict zone alone," the president said, noting that with over 250,000 refugees from Armenia added to this number, Azerbaijan had one of the highest rates of refugees and IDPs per capita in 1994 when the ceasefire was achieved. There is a mechanism for the conflict's settlement, there are four resolutions of the UN Security Council, demanding the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from Azerbaijani territories, President Aliyev said, adding that regrettably, they are not fulfilled. Further, Azerbaijan's president said that as the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing country, Russia plays an important role in the conflict's settlement. "We appreciate this role," said Ilham Aliyev, adding that this especially proved itself against the background of another armed provocation by Armenia, when Azerbaijan's positions, including the settlements, were subjected to an attack. "Over 400 houses located near the line of contact were damaged, a few dozens of them were completely destroyed," he said. "We have victims among the civilians as well," The president pointed out that under these conditions, Russia put forward an initiative to de-escalate the conflict. "Russia's President Vladimir Putin made a phone call to me and Armenia's president, expressed concern and desire to help the parties de-escalate the situation," said Ilham Aliyev. "We positively took these signals." President Aliyev added that chiefs of Azerbaijani and Armenian general staffs met in Moscow with participation of Russian chief of general staff and adopted a decision on suspending the military operations. "We strictly comply with this decision," he said. "We hope that Armenia will also adhere to it." President Aliyev said Azerbaijan is committed to the process of negotiation for the conflict's settlement. Negotiations have been going on for 20 years and all the accusations by Armenia that allegedly Azerbaijan is the initiator of the escalation are absolutely groundless, added Ilham Aliyev. "The nature of the clashes that took place in early April shows that we didn't and don't intend to start large-scale military operations," he noted. "We were simply protecting our positions and the peaceful life of our citizens." "Therefore, the conflict's settlement is in Azerbaijan's interests, I am sure it is in the interests of Armenia," said the president, adding Russia, as a neighbor and a friend of the both countries is also interested in the speedy settlement. "We will continue the negotiation process," added President Aliyev. "We welcome the initiative of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, who have recently visited the region, and hope that their calls for changing the status quo will be heard in Armenia as well." The president also noted that changing the status quo, Armenia's withdrawal from Azerbaijan's occupied lands are the main conditions for a comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "Once this happens, peace, harmony and cooperation will be restored in the region and this will benefit all the countries in the region," the president added. Iran hopes that ceasefire in Azerbaijan's occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region will allow to start negotiations aimed at resolving the conflict, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an interview with Russian news agency TASS. "We are very happy to see an end to hostilities right now and cessation of hostilities or a ceasefire," Zarif said. "We hope this would be the prelude to serious negotiations in order to resolve this issue. Our region requires cooperation between everybody." "We believe Armenia as a neighbor and Azerbaijan as a close friend of Iran need to have good relations and we support all efforts aimed at resolving this problem," the foreign minister noted. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: Armenia exactly is the side in negotiations on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that bears and will further bear the responsibility as an occupying country, said Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry, speaking to Trend Apr. 8. He was commenting on statements of the Armenian officials who claimed that the unrecognized regime in Nagorno-Karabakh is allegedly a party to the negotiations. "It is Armenia that occupied Azerbaijan's territories by force in contravention of the UN Charter and the principles of international law," he said. "Armenian armed forces are illegally present in the occupied Azerbaijani territories." "Just like in other international documents on the conflict, Armenia's responsibility as an occupying side was once again confirmed in a judgment passed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the case titled 'Chiragov and others versus Armenia'," said Hajiyev. "The judgment stated that Armenia, through its military presence, has been involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from the very first days; Armenia's military support has been and remains a crucial factor in the occupation of territories and control over them," he said. "Thus, Armenia has control over Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts, including the Lachin district." Hajiyev further said Armenia has established the so-called regime in the occupied lands to cover up the aggression and occupation against Azerbaijan and to mislead the international community. "There are Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region and Baku has always supported the establishment of contacts between these communities," said Hajiyev. He noted that the April 5 ceasefire agreement was reached by the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 Trend: Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry has dismissed the recent Armenian media reports, which said that allegedly an Azerbaijani unmanned aerial vehicle was downed over the city of Khankendi, located in the Azerbaijani lands occupied by Armenia. "The Armenians are so scared and panicked that they see a threat to themselves everywhere," said the Defense Ministry in a statement Apr. 8. "The Armenians, haunted by Azerbaijan's special forces and combat aircraft everywhere, are now reporting about Azerbaijani drones flying over the occupied lands." The ministry added that every time an international delegation arrives in Khankendi, the Armenian side resorts to frauds by presenting a drone, which allegedly belongs to the Azerbaijani side and was downed by their forces, and asks for help. "Disseminating such false and unfounded information, the Armenian side is seeking to mislead representatives of international organizations and community to pave a way for future provocations," added the Defense Ministry. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.8 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ratified the agreement with Georgia on cooperation in energy sphere, 'Resmi Gazete' online newspaper reported. The two countries signed the agreement on cooperation in energy sphere on Apr.9 of 2015. Georgian State Electrosystem (GSE) has started to carry out the functions of a transit corridor from Azerbaijan to Turkey since February. The electricity export from Georgia to Turkey stood at 420 million kilowatt hours in 2015. No electricity was imported from Turkey during the reporting period. Edited by SI --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 6 By Farhad Daneshvar - Trend: Deputy foreign ministers of the Caspian Sea littoral states have discussed expansion of economic cooperation at a meeting in Baku, an Iranian deputy foreign minister said. The Islamic Republic of Iran believes in the Caspian Sea to be the Sea of peace and friendship and stability, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia-Pacific Affairs Ebrahim Rahimpour told Trend in Baku Apr. 5. He also added that the participants have agreed to hold the next round of the meeting of the Caspian Sea littoral states in Tehran in late May. Rahimpour further said that the Caspian states have agreed on several issues regarding the environment, security and convention on Caspian Sea status. Deputy foreign ministers of the five littoral states - Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan - have gathered at the 39th meeting of the working group on determining the legal status of the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan on March. The Caspian Sea plays an important role in transportation corridors and is an important part of international and regional projects. The Caspian Sea states (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran) signed a Framework Convention for the Protection of Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November of 2003. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Apr. 8 By Huseyn Hasanov- Trend: The planned loan program of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for Turkmenistan for 2016-2017 is estimated at $1 billion and will be directed to the projects on development of railway corridors, production and supply of electricity. The ADB supports the country's national development program since the beginning of its cooperation with Turkmenistan in 2000, Director General of ADB's Central and West Asia Department Sean O'Sullivan told in his interview with Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper. Considering the enormous energy resources and advantageous geopolitical location of Turkmenistan, the ADB's activities focus on the areas of transport and energy, private sector's development, knowledge and technology transfer, capacity-building, said O'Sullivan. "The current project supported by the ADB on the North-South railway is a good example for our partnership with Turkmenistan," he added. This project supports expansion and improvement of the railway system, which links Turkmenistan with Kazakhstan and Iran, improves the movement of passengers and goods and helps to expand regional trade. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 By Anvar Mammadov - Trend: The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) sold $50 million to 20 banks through the auction held by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA), SOFAZ said Apr.8. SOFAZ said that the banks bought the entire foreign currency amount put up for sale. SOFAZ will continue selling foreign currency through auctions in 2016. The foreign currency is sold as part of SOFAZ's transfers to the Azerbaijani state budget, which are envisaged to stand at 7.615 billion Azerbaijani manats in 2016. SOFAZ was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million. As of January 1, 2016, SOFAZ assets reduced by 9.5 percent compared to 2014 ($37.1 billion) and were estimated at $33.57 billion. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Anvar_Mammadov Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 By Elena Kosolapova - Trend: Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev will visit Iran, Turkey and Uzbekistan from Apr.11 to Apr.15, the president's press service said Apr.8. Nazarbayev will visit Iran Apr. 11-12 at the invitation of Iran's President Hassan Rouhani. The two presidents will discuss the implementation of agreements reached during Rouhani's state visit to Astana in September 2014. Meanwhile, the ways to strengthen cooperation in trade and economic, investment, agriculture, transit and transport spheres and cooperation in the sphere of international and regional security will also be discussed during Nazarbayev's visit. The Kazakh president will visit Turkey to attend the 13th Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) titled "Unity and Solidarity for Justice and Peace." A meeting of Nazarbayev with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planned to be held during which the main directions of cooperation between Astana and Ankara will be discussed. Meanwhile, negotiations with the heads of delegations and meeting with representatives of Turkey's business community are expected on the sidelines of the summit. Nazarbayev will visit Uzbekistan Apr.15, where he will meet with his Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov. The two presidents will discuss key aspects of the two countries' relations. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8 By Umid Niayesh - Trend: Banning tankers that transport Iranian oil from entering Saudi Arabia's waters can't affect the Islamic Republic's oil exports, Parviz Mina, former member of OPEC Long-Term Strategy Committee, told Trend. Financial Times quoted traders and shipbrokers Apr. 4 that Riyadh had banned tankers carrying Iranian oil from entering Saudi waters. The move comes as the Kingdom attempts to curb Iran's efforts to boost crude exports in the post-sanctions era. Tehran and Riyadh have long been geopolitical antagonists, and this move is but the latest expression of a series of proxy wars being fought between the two countries. Commenting on the issue, Mina said that tankers, which load oil from Iran's Kharg and Lavan - the main two Iranian oil terminals, do not need to enter the Saudi territorial waters to sail to other countries, and Saudi territorial waters are hardly a major factor in Persian Gulf shipping lines. He further said a problem may occur only if a tanker loads oil from both Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is mostly unlikely. "Very rarely a tanker would load two types of crude oil," added Mina, who served as director of International Affairs of the NIOC(National Iranian Oil Company). "So, this will not impose any negative effect on Iran's crude export and should be considered as a new rhetoric between the two rival countries," he said. A source in Iran's oil ministry also told Trend April 6 that the Iranian foreign ministry will pursue the issue. Iran's tanker arm - the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) has around 70 tankers, but many of them are ageing and require valid insurance, testing, inspection and certification, known as ship classification, to be able to ply international waters again. The NITC has a fleet carrying capacity of over 76 million barrels of oil, however the estimates by end of 2015 suggests that the main part of the capacity was busy storing 30-50 million barrels of Iran's oil on sea. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @UmidNiayesh Tehran, Iran, April 8 By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend: There is no problem in Saqand uranium mine and none of the activities going on at the site have been halted, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrooz Kamalvandi said. He dismissed the recent reports about a partial shutdown of the mine as exaggeration of minor changes, IRIB news agency reported April 8. Vatan Emrooz newspaper recently claimed that the management of the mine had started downsizing the workforce and cancelling extraction contracts, stating that the mine was virtually shut down. Kamalvandi explained that a partial slowdown in mining activities at Saqand which are limited to the tunnels are a tactical procedure to prepare for future activities. "By tapping the tunnels we have met the country's three years' need. After uranium is extracted, the remaining stones have to be returned to fill the tunnels because they cannot be left just as they are," he said. "Now that a lot of ore has been extracted, the activities at the tunnels have to slow down a bit so that further steps could be taken. The open section of the mine, however, is working in full force," the official underlined. Tehran, Iran, Apr. 8 By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend: Following the recent escalation of tensions around the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, some Iranian clerics have voiced protests over the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan and called for bringing peace to the region. "We wish to be there, at the Karabakh front, to fight against the Armenian soldiers," Hassan Ameli, Iranian Ardabil's Friday prayers leader, said to his audience on April 8. "Personally, I am ready to pay my debt at the Karabakh front," ISNA quoted Ameli as saying. Razi Mousavi Shakouri, a Friday prayers leader in the city of Khoy, pointed out that the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the early 1990s left tens of thousands of killed, IRNA reported. He said the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh will benefit the powers outside the region, adding that regional countries should help bring peace. The Bileh Savar city's Friday prayers leader Karim Qiasi also pointed to the necessity of bringing peace to the region. "The soil and national dignity of Azerbaijan should be defended and foreign powers should be prevented from creating a conflict and a face-to-face war," Fars news agency quoted Qiasi as saying Apr. 8. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. The 11 crew members of Iranian fishing vessel Barooki, who were arrested last year by the Coast Guard off the Apappuzha coast, India, will be returning to their homeland on April 8. The Consulate General of Iran in Hyderabad has issued travel documents of the Iranian nationals. The cost of their tickets will be borne by the Indian Government, The New India Express reported. "Tickets have been arranged for Emirates flight from the Nedumbassery airport on Friday morning. Through ten out of the 11 crew members were acquitted a few weeks ago, they wanted to travel along with captain of the vessel who was facing trial in the NIA Court. They will first travel to Dubai, and from there board another flight to Tehran," said an official of the Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO). Meanwhile, the Pakistan national who was part of the Barooki crew will have to wait until the Pakistan Embassy responds, before leaving for his country. "Though we have informed the matter to the Pakistan Embassy, the officials have not responded yet," said an NIA official. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 8 By Emil Ilgar - Trend: Iran confirms the release of 11 crew members of Iranian fishing vessel which entered the Indian waters illegally, and got detained. "Iran and India have negotiated the issue since the arrest of fishermen last summer and they were released, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia-Pacific Affairs Ebrahim Rahimpour told State TV IRINN on April 8. The Consulate General of Iran in Hyderabad has issued travel documents for the fishermen. They will be paid for by the Indian government, The New India Express reported previously. The official with the Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO) said that while the 10 crew members have been freed several weeks ago, they decided to travel along with the vessel's captain, who was facing the court trial. The official added that the crew will first fly to Dubai, then board another plane to Tehran. Meanwhile, the Pakistani crew member will have to wait until the Pakistan Embassy responds regarding him leaving for his country. One police officer was killed in an armed clash with drug smuggling thugs in central Iran on Friday during with the band was smashed and 527 kilograms of narcotics were seized, said a police commander. Isfahan Province Police Commander Abdolreza Aqakhani told IRNA that his forces also seized three Kalashnikov machine guns, three cars, and communication equipment from smugglers. Two police officers were also wounded in the operation in desert city of Naein, he added. Two smugglers were killed and five were arrested in the exchange of fire which lasted for several hours, said the commander. At least five Turkish police officers have been killed and as many injured when Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants carried out three separate attacks in Turkey's southeastern province of Mardin, Press TV reported. A police chief, identified as Dogan Sakarya, was critically wounded when PKK militants opened fire during a counter-terrorism operation in the Dicle neighborhood of Nusaybin, situated 792 kilometers (492 miles) east of the capital, Ankara, at around 11:40 a.m. (0840 GMT) on Thursday. The wounded officer later succumbed to his injuries at Nusaybin State Hospital. Two other policemen, identified as Police Chief Zafer Kurt and Major Ahmet Karaman, lost their lives when PKK militants detonated an improvised explosive device in the same city two hours later. Additionally, two members of security personnel were killed and five others wounded during a joint operation by gendarmes and special police forces in Nusaybin. Earlier on Thursday, the Turkish General Staff announced in a statement that Turkish fighter jets had struck PKK positions in the Zap region of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region the previous day. There were no immediate reports of possible casualties and the extent of damage in the Turkish operation. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.8 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: Ankara regards any threat against Azerbaijan as a threat against itself, 'Turkiyegazetesi' newspaper quoted Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as saying Apr.8. He noted that there is an Armenian lobby in the OSCE Minsk Group member states. Unfortunately, although Turkey is a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, other co-chairs such as Russia oppose Ankara's participation in the settlement of Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, according to Davutoglu. The prime minister believes that the OSCE Minsk Group member states should more actively participate in this conflict's settlement. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu A logo sits illuminated outside the ZTE pavilion on the opening day of the World Mobile Congress at the Fira Gran Via Complex on February 22, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo : Getty Images/David Ramos) ZTE Corp. declared no changes in its global strategy despite the reshuffle among their ranks just weeks after the U.S. handed down trade sanctions on the company. Advertisement This week, the Chinese telecom company's chairman and president Shi Lirong, who led the company's expansion since he came to office in 2010, has officially stepped down from office along with other senior executives. According to ZTE's statement cited China Daily, he will be replaced by the firm's chief technology officer, Zhao Xianming, who will be joined by seven new senior executives. Capacity Media noticed how the company did not appoint any new chief executive officer, leaving some to question if Shi maintains that post. But ZTE spokesperson Dai Shu denied this speculation, saying, "From ZTE's perspective, president equals CEO." While the company denied any link to the two events, the reshuffling of top executives is seen as part of ZTE's cooperation in "resolving the matter" of the U.S. trade sanctions imposed on the company after it allegedly underwent prohibited exportation of materials to Iran. Talking about the new line of bosses, ZTE said: "The experienced, energetic and professional team is committed to driving technological innovations and expanding ZTE's global business developments. The new leadership will strive to comply with the highest business standards." Among the newly appointed executives are ZTE's Chief Financial Officer Wei Zaisheng; Fan Qingfeng, who will oversee legal matters and public relations; and Zeng Xuezhong, who is in charge of the terminals division and handset business. Many believe that ZTE's global shares and overall performance was shaken since the U.S. trade ban was applied to them, particularly after the company changed leadership. However, Counterpoint Technology Market Research director James Yan believes that the company made the right decision in changing their ranks. "The core management team in the U.S. is intact, which is a good thing for ZTE because they still have the know-how to handle everyday operations," Yan explained. Furthermore, analyst Milly Xiang of the International Data Corp. explained that the reshuffling will have little effect on the company's global expansion. "I don't think [the reshuffle] will slow down ZTE's global expansion, especially when the company is seeking to outshine its competitors by migrating to post-4G telecom technology and the Internet of Things market," Xiang stated. Disney's "Zootopia" has "invisible propaganda," says PLA Daily. (Photo : Getty Images) Disneys Zootopia is an invisible propaganda that promotes U.S. values that could encroach upon Chinas cultural territory, according to the Asian countrys military newspaper, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Daily. Advertisement On Wednesday, news broke about the strong commentary from the country's army newspaper written in Chinese-language, describing how the seemingly wholesome animated flick from Disney is being used to promote U.S. values. Cited by the GB Times, the PLA Daily noticed how the film lacked adequate hostility that would make it more realistic. Because of this, the newspaper urged the Chinese audience to keep a sharp eye out for "invisible infiltration." What "Zootopia" Is Supposed to Be About Created by Walt Disney Animation Studios, "Zootopia" is a film that brings viewers into a modern mammalian metropolis of the same name where animals live like humans. "Comprised of habitat neighborhoods like ritzy Sahara Square and frigid Tundratown, it's a melting pot where animals from every environment live together--a place where no matter what you are, from the biggest elephant to the smallest shrew, you can be anything," an official synopsis from Disney stated. It follows the story of Officer Judy Hopps, the first bunny to be on the police force, who seeks to prove her worth by jumping into the first opportunity to crack a case even if it means teaming up with Nick Wilde, a trickster fox. A post from Reddit user AlexReynard spoiled the rest of the story which shows how Assistant Mayor Bellwether, a meek sheep, masterminds the kidnapping of Predator citizens and framing the Mayor, a lion, who was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. The Plot "Twist" After knowing what the movie is about, some might agree with PLA Daily considering how the plot twist showcased an unrealistic demonstration of relation between prey and predator. "In a world of cruel reality, it is always a wolf that eats a sheep instead of the other way round. Such a fundamental concept that even a child could understand was easily turned around by Hollywood," the PLA Daily commentary explained as translated by the South China Morning Post. However, people like Reddit user AlexReynard believed that the movie was more of a "take that" kind of film which highlighted societal issues such as racism and sexism. "There's a dozen more scenes in the film using animals as metaphors to explore moments of racism and sexism, and it's astonishing how balanced the film is, trying to see things from every side. The good guys have bad traits and the bad guys have good traits. No one's perfectly wrong or right. No one's a strawman," he noted. Furthermore, the opinion article from PLA Daily focused more on how Hollywood movies in general were being used as "invisible propaganda" and just used the Disney flick to make its point. Hotel Inns Assault Video (Photo : Weibo) A day after the video of a women being attacked at the hallway of a Beijing hotel went viral, the operator of the hotel apologized to the victim. CRIEnglish reported on Thursday that Homeinns, which runs the Heyi Hotel located at the Chaoyang District of Beijing, held a press conference to issue a formal apology to the victim. The hotel said sorry for the insufficient management of the incident because no employee of the establishment bothered to help the woman in trouble. Advertisement Footage of the incident showed a man hold the woman, who used the handle Wanwan_2016 on Weibo where she posted the clip, on the throat and then dragged the victim out of the hotel lobby. Fortunately, another female guest at the hotel intervened and prevented the man from abducting the victim. Homeinns said it would thoroughly probe the incident, together with Beijing police. The incident, which happened on Sunday at about 11 p.m., raised questions about the safety of women in the capital city. It also brought to fore the attitude of many Chinese, who often refuse to intervene when a man beats a woman or child because of the thinking that it is a domestic problem they have no right to butt in. The video was shared more than one million times on Weibo within 48 hours after Wanwan posted it. However, some netizens doubt Wanwans version of the story because her Weibo account is newly opened and the only post on it is the video of the incident. Asiaone reported that the hashtag #Woman has been attacked in Heyi hotel# in the most heated topic in Weibo where the post has more than 600 million reads so far. CES Asia is limited to only to types of companies: well-known brands and those with innovative technologies. (Photo : Reuters) Consumer Technology Association (CTA), owner and producer of the International Consumer Electronics Show (International CES), will partner with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to present the second CES Asia in Shanghai next month, according to a CTA announcement on Tuesday, April 5, China Daily reported. Advertisement Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the CTA, said that unlike the International CES, which has been held in the United States since 1967 and open to all types of technology companies, the CES Asia "is limited to two types of companies: a company with a well-known brand name or a company with innovative technologies." The report said that last May, the inaugural Asian version of the U.S.-based CES was held at the Shanghai New International Expo Center, while this year's event will be held on May 11-13 in Shanghai. Shapiro said that this year's event will be larger as it would double the scale of last year's event. "Spanning up to 40,000 gross square meters (20,000 net square meters) of exhibit space, CES Asia 2016 will feature more than 300 exhibiting companies highlighting breakthrough technologies across 15 product categories--from 3D printing and smart home technology to robotics, wearables, vehicle technology and more," the CTA officials said in a statement. "Three focuses for the event are the Internet of Things, connectivity and innovation," Shapiro added. "For the first time, a special area that focuses on startups, the same as the 'Eureka Park' that was shown in the Las Vegas International CES, will be built in the venue . . . more than 20 French startups will also set up booths in the area." A separate demonstration area for drones will also be held during the event, the CTA said. While noting the distinction between auto shows and CES, Shapiro said that they will also showcase the latest tech in the auto industry such as self-driving cars. "CES is more focused on the future technology and the ecosystems behind the cars, while auto shows are about what products that consumers can purchase today," the CTA CEO said. John Kelly, senior director of International Programs and show director of CES Asia, said that automobile companies like BMW, Maserati, Volvo and General Motors will participate in the event. According to Yin Jing, president of Tmall 3C & Home Appliance Business Unit of Alibaba Group, the collaboration between Alibaba and the CTA in the CES Asia 2016 will further be extended to the upcoming International CES 2017 that will be held in Las Vegas. Yin said that using Alibaba's marketing resources and user base, they would like to help foreign tech companies expand to Chinese market through CES, which is recognized as the world's incubator of the latest technology breakthroughs. "Consumer technology industry professionals from China and across Asia, including 5,022 senior level executives and 7,987 representatives from buying organizations, will see the power of CES Asia that fosters innovation and serves as the place for brands to position themselves to new and existing audiences," the CTA said in a statement. "In a time of rapid change of innovation, a technology show is very important to gather everyone in the industry, including the press, investors, buyers and others to talk about the trends and technologies to see where they should be going and inspire new ideas," Shapiro said. Shapiro noted that the growing number of companies developing partnerships is one of the biggest changes in business, as some of the largest companies in the world are interested to invest in startups or partner with smaller ones. Buying a New Rice Cooker? Xiaomis High-tech Version Now Available Retailing for 999 yuan, Xiaomi's rice cooker is a part of its Mi Ecosystem. (Photo : Xiaomi/Facebook) Perhaps Xiaomi was smart enough to think that the Chinese would need a smart rice cooker to help them improve the quality of cooking a staple food in the country. How smart then can its rice cooker get? For starters, it can identify 200 brands of rice through the Mi Home app. Owners can use their smartphone to control this kitchen appliance, said Xiaomi on its Facebook account. Advertisement The Wi-Fi-compatible Mi Induction Heating Pressure Rice Cooker can connect to ones smartphone through the Mi Home app. The app supports a remarkable 2,450 heating methods. The one-of-a-kind rice cooker can also generate the desired boiling point, which, according to Xiaomi, results in more flavorful rice. How can it do that? The company equipped it with a magnetic relief valve responsible for controlling the pressure inside it. For even cooking, Xiaomi said, its rice cooker uses electromagnetic heating technology to achieve higher thermal efficiency. As for those who dont like the rice sticking at the bottom, the company coated it with PFA powder for that non-stick effect. This smartphone-controlled rice cooker is the latest product under Xiaomis Mi Ecosystem brand. This sub-brand includes the companys home products, reported GSMArena. Xiaomi partnered with a company named Chun Mi, which manufactures the rice cooker, according to Tech Juice. China tech reporter Eva Dou, writing for The Wall Street Journals China Real Time Report, said that she tested the capability of the Mi rice cooker. The Xiaomi cooker did produce rice with a firmer, springier texture, said Dou. She asked her colleague Josh Chin to taste the rice. The smart cooker definitely imparted a pleasing extra pearliness, the politics reporter said. The Mi Induction Heating Pressure Rice Cooker was one of the new products introduced during the sixth edition of the Mi Fan Festival in China, according to Android Headlines. The other five latest products to debut at the companys nationwide sale were the Mi Water Purifier, the Mi Wi-Fi 3, the Redmi 3 Pro, the Mi TV 3s and the Mi 5 Pro. Xiaomi announced on Facebook on April 7 the top 10 Mi Ecosystem products sold during the much awaited festival. It listed the following: 1. Yi Smart Web Cam (Night Vision) 2. Mi Air Purifier 2 3. Ninebot Mini 4. Mi Water Purifier 5. Mi Power Bank Pro (10,000mAh) 6. Mi In-Ear Headphones Pro 7. Mi Power Bank (16,000mAh) 8. Mi Band Pulse 9. Mi Smart Scale 10. Yeelight Bedside Lamp Interested consumers can have the Mi rice cooker for 999 yuan. In the middle of it all: The southern gate of South Koreas Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, lights up at night. (Photo : Getty Images) Residents in the northeastern provinces wanting to take a dip at Jeju Island or visit the traditional Buddhist temples in Seoul or explore other sights in the Land of the Morning Calm may opt to consider vacationing somewhere else. A total of 52 travel agencies in Northeast China can no longer file for visa applications for their clients who wish to visit South Korea, reported Yonhap News. Advertisement Eight travel agencies in Heilongjiang Province, 23 in Jilin and 21 in Liaoning were given until April 15 only to entertain requests for visa applications. These agencies will temporarily cease filing applications starting April 16. South Korean authorities did not give any specific reasons behind the cessation. It is alleged that its enforcement relates to Chinas ongoing selling of tour packages in North Korea in the light of the U.N. sanctions the latter faces. The U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 2270 on March 2, which condemns in the strongest terms the nuclear test conducted by DPRK on 6 January 2016 and its ballistic missile launch of 7 February 2016, and demanding that it comply immediately with its international obligations, according to a Security Council Report. North Korea reportedly receives some 100,000 Chinese tourists every year, according to Yonhap News. Its closest neighbor, South Korea also seems to be a favorite vacation destination by the Chinese. The number of Chinese who visited South Korea in February alone totaled 546,408, according to Korea Tourism Organization. Some 6,000 of them were locals from 24 cities who toured Incheon, according to JKNUS. In 2015, about 6.11 million Chinese traveled to South Korea, contributing 1.6 percent to its gross domestic product, reported China Daily. The South Korean government particularly widens its doors for Chinas intellectuals. According to South Koreas Ministry of Justice, the country will grant a 10-year multiple-entry visa to Chinas resident professors, lawyers and other similar specialized professionals, reported China Daily. The future is here: Visionaries, entrepreneurs and innovators gathered together for Asia Beat 2016 in Xiamen, Fujian Province. (Photo : Chandashi) When it comes to creativity, the human mind appears to know no boundaries. The 2016 Asia Beat Xiamen saw the gathering of 80 teams from 15 countries, each with their own innovative ideas, proposals and pitches, according to the Asia Beats website. Some of the participants came all over from Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Israel and the U.S.A. Advertisement An impressive 3,000 people attended the event held at the Tan KahKee Theater in Jimei District, Xiamen, on March 17-18. Asia Beat said that it intends to use Xiamens advantageous location in Chinas southeast coast to the fullest, connecting Asia to a world audience in the exchange of innovation and entrepreneurship. Xiamen likely proved to the organizers and attendees that its the right place for Asia Beat. The city attracted domestic and overseas entrepreneurs thanks to its unique geographic advantage and entrepreneurial environment, said Yao Jincheng, co-founder and chief executive officer of Atwork, reported China Daily. According to the events website, 80 startups graced the event and 120 booths filled the venue. From program directors to chief operating officers to CEOs, 50 speakers imparted their knowledge and shared their experiences and insights. A total of 92 startups were pitched to 100 investors. The top projects in the events, according to China Daily, were divided into the following: 1. business-to-business (B2B) 2. cross-border commerce 3. artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) 4. financial technology or FinTech, blockchain Chandashi, a team from China, won the $10,000 prize at the final round, reported Xiamen China. Li Zhu, a co-founder of the Innovation Angel Funds and served as one of the judges of the road show, said that groups should have a big data analysis and meet users requirements, which are two key requirements. Chandashi happens to possess both of these two points, Li said. During the first Asia Beat in 2014 in Taipei, 77 institutional investors, 185 angel investors, 73 entrepreneurial teams and 42 domestic and foreign media took part, according to the events website. Zhang Daqians Peach Blossom Spring came from the Mactaggart Art Collection. (Photo : Sothebys) He did it again. For $34.7 million, Liu Yiqian purchased this month Peach Blossom Spring, a 1982 hanging scroll from Chinese painter and collector Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), reported The New York Times. Liu, owner of Long Museums, posted on WeChat: Nothing beats a painting by Zhang Daqian! Advertisement Two meters long, Zhangs painting portrays tranquility, according to China Daily. The Neijiang-born artist painted the Peach Blossom Spring at his house called the Abode of Maya. On its website, the countrys National Palace Museum hailed Zhang as one of the greatest painters in the history of modern art. Now perhaps one of the greatest art collectors in the country, Lius purchases most likely never fails to create a buzz. The Chinese taxi driver turned billionaire, as NY Times wrote, bought Amedeo Modiglianis (1884-1920) Nu Couche for a whopping $170.4 million at Christies New York in Nov. 2015. Art historian Laura Mattioli-Rossi sold the Italian-Jewish painters creation, according to NY Times. Italian cotton merchant Gianni Mattioli (1903-1977) from Milan was regarded by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as one of the historic collectors of cubism, according to the Mets website. Laura inherited his fathers impressive collection. The shocking sum of money paid by Liu for Nu Couche made history by becoming the second-highest auction price for any artwork, according to The Telegraph. In July 2014, Liu poured some tea into a cup measuring 3.1 inches in diameter, reported The Washington Post, and based from the photo taken, delightfully sipped the tea. Seems nothing extraordinary about it, except that the cup dates back from the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644) and that he purchased it for a staggering $36.3 million. Nicholas Chow, Sothebys deputy chairman for Asia, said that the tiny cup was the holy grail when it comes to Chinese art, reported Daily Mail. In November of that same year, he acquired a 15th-century thangka for $45 million. Encyclopaedia Britannica defines thangka as a Tibetan religious painting or drawing on woven material. China acts on a looming financial crisis brought about by the debt explosion. (Photo : Getty Images) The Chinese government is pumping up efforts to impede the looming financial crisis amid a growing debt problem fueled by bad loans in its banks. According to Bloomberg, China's regulators are finally taking the problem on debts seriously with new steps to regulate financial outflows, including imposing restrictions on buying insurance outside the country and allowing banks to cut the mandatory minimum mortgage down payment from 25 percent to 20 percent for first-home purchases. Advertisement However, a commentary from Bloomberg posted in the Sydney Morning Herald highly doubts the effectiveness of the country's approach, which the outlet believes might even make matters worse. The Debt Dilemma On Wednesday, Telegraph UK predicted that China's debt problem will weigh on the country's development in just five years. According to the Bloomberg report on SMH, China's debt dilemma which began in 2008 was fueled by low credit offers to build airports, new apartments for urban migrants, and roads to accommodate the increasing number of vehicles in the country. These led to the record-high loans that were twice the rate of gross domestic product as of 2009, with most of the projects mentioned above not turning profit or becoming "ghost" projects. The outlet believes that this is a result of the country's "addiction" to debt, which it should get over with if it wants to rise up and achieve financial stability again. Fitch Ratings deemed this problem to pose a risk to the country's economy if China maintains its current course. "The longer the economy's indebtedness goes on rising, the greater the difficulty of unwinding it, and the higher the risk of a shock to economic and financial stability," Fitch explained, calling the country's annual growth targets for 2016 to 2020 "extremely challenging." The Remedy Bloomberg's opinion posted in SMH described the debt crisis as a sort of cycle. "Another problem is that Chinese industry exists in a deflationary debt spiral: prices have been falling for years, raising the real cost of repaying loans," it explained. "If companies are relieved of their debt, they'll have an incentive to reduce prices to gain market share, thus worsening one of the primary causes of the current malaise." Because of this, a possible resolution should be to stop using loan rollovers and debt-for-equity swaps to aid failing companies since these are merely first-aid to the disease. Solving the problem while looking at the big picture requires recapitalizing the banks and not allowing ailing firms to continue in the industry if they cannot grow or even maintain a revolving capital without needing loans. "Until firms are allowed to fail, they'll keep coming back, hats in hand, asking for more bailouts--thus increasing the debt and ultimately the cost of restructuring," the outlet explained. A splash of colors: (L) Kremlin and (R) the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed or St. Basil's Cathedral sit at the Red Square in Moscow, Russia. (Photo : Getty Images) How colorful can traveling be? More and more Chinese tourists travel to Russia and the U.K., strengthening the emergence of a new kind of niche in the business of travel: red tourism. There were almost 410,000 Chinese who toured Russia in 2014, according to The Japan Times. In Russia, Chinese travelers normally list Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Ulyanovsk and Kazan in their itineraries. Advertisement If St. Petersburg is Russias window on Europe, Moscow is Russias heart, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. The capital city of Moscow offers the following UNESCO World Heritage sites: the Kremlin (fortress) and Red Square (an open square), the Church of the Ascension, the city of Novgorod, the Novodevichy Convent (a 15th-century cloister) and the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius (home to monks). Named Saint Petersburg in 1703, renamed Petrograd in 1914 and Leningrad in 1924 and back to Saint Petersburg in 1991, Russias second biggest city is another UNESCO World Heritage site. Viktoria Borgacheva, the head of the association of Chinese interpreters and guides in St. Petersburg, said that their workload already received a 30 percent increase starting in 2013, according to The Japan Times. The historic city accommodated 26,000 Chinese tourists in 2014. The region of Ulyanovsk serves as the birthplace of revolutionist Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924). In Kazan, Lenin and prominent author Leo Tolstoy (1828- 1910), known for the classics War and Peace and Anna Karenina, received their education at the Kazan State University, founded in 1804. Lenin founded the Russian Communist Party and served as the first prime minister of the Soviet state. It is estimated that the expenditure of Chinese tourists in Russia in 2014 amounted to $1 billion, reported Sputnik News. In the U.K., Chinese tourists would likely lay flowers at the grave of sociologist and economist Karl Marx (1818-1883) in Highgate Cemetery in North London, England. Marxs writings on economy and politics paved way for the belief known as Marxism. In the local scene, according to the countrys National Red Tourism Coordination Executive Team, China has been financing red tourism-related projects worth more than 9 billion yuan for the past years, reported the Global Times. For this year, it can be anticipated that more travel packages to Russia will be sold by local travel agencies. The largest country in the planet, Russia, will certainly have enough space for the worlds most populous country, China. Italy's coast guard said on Thursday it had rescued more than 300 migrants from a packed boat in which they had travelled hundreds of kilometres (miles) from Egypt to the Strait of Sicily. People fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East have been arriving in southern Italian waters for years, usually from Libya, where they pay smugglers for the passage. A spokeswoman for the Italian coast guard said migrants had arrived from Egypt in the past, but much less frequently than from Libya, which is about half as far away by boat. Italy's coast guard and a Spanish aircraft working for European Union border agency Frontex went on Wednesday to the aid of the boat, rescuing 156 men, 51 women and 107 minors. The migrants were from Syria, Egypt, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Palestinian territory, Libya, Sudan and the Comoros Islands, the coast guard said in a statement. A massive influx of boat migrants that began last year has been mainly channelled from Turkey to the Greek islands, prompting the EU to strike a deal with Ankara to send back newcomers. The rescued migrants are due to arrive in the southern Italian port of Crotone, about 770 nautical miles from the coast of northern Egypt. Search Keywords: Short link: On 8 April 1970, Bahr Al-Baqar lost 34 children when Israel bombed its primary school. 44 years later, families of the martyrs and survivors continue to complain of neglect. This article was first published in 2013. ---------------------------------------------------- As the sun rose on Bahr Al-Baqar, a small village on the outskirts of Egypts Sharqiya governorate, Nabila Aly was scared and almost certain that something bad was going to happen. Her eight-year-old son, Mamdouh, had just told her that he wanted his sandwich early because he was leaving and not coming back. "His words were foreboding, I screamed at him. He told me not to be upset, that he meant he wouldnt be returning during the school break," Nabila or Om Emad (mother of Emad) said, retelling a story to which she has returned hundreds of times over the years. Om Emad headed to her oven to bake for her five children. Before she had baked her tenth bread the village has turned dark, fogged with smoke, and the windows and doors of her humble house came crashing down. The Israeli Air Force has bombed the school nearby. "Help, mama, the school has collapsed over my brother!" Om Emads daughter said as she delivered the news. This was 8 April 1970, or "The Black Day," as the villagers of Bahr Al-Baqar call it. Israel claimed that the bombing was an accident and that it mistakenly thought the school was a military base. War of Attrition The incident took place after the 1967 war, when Egypt was defeated by Israel. 1967 was followed by six years of on and off battles, known as the "War of Attrition." Eight years old Mamdouh was killed along with 33 other children at Bahr Al-Baqar Primary School when the US-made F4 Phantom II bombed the site. More than 50 children were injured as well. The corpse of Mamdouh was delivered to his mother in two pieces. "My children and I sat on remains of bodies on the back of a truck. We took Mamdouh to bury him next to his father in a village nearby," said the old widow. Following that day, life was never the same again for Om Emad. The sounds of Israeli planes continued to haunt the village and fears of another attack never abandoned her. "We have witnessed a lot of agony since the Black Day (8 April 1970). It wasnt until 1973 that we finally took our breath," says Om Emad, referring to the end of the Arab-Israeli war in October 1973. Om Emads loss of her son was never compensated. Until now, 43 years later, she complains of being neglected, left in poverty, and promises unfulfilled. "The injured and families of Bahr Al-Baqars martyrs are all of low income. Even the LE100 that we used to receive from the government has been cut for me for almost six years because I refused to bribe the cashier," she said, adding that she has been seeking land for her and her children since 1984. The governor of Zagazig promised her the land, but the promise was never met. Left with nothing Several survivors and families in Bahr Al-Baqar echo Om Emads sentiments. "Weve been complaining, demanding compensation. We got nothing from the old regime, nor the new one. They promised us pilgrimage and work but gave us nothing," lamented Al-Sayed Hassan, one of the survivors of the massacre. Another survivor refused to speak to Ahram Online, screaming, saying he is tired of speaking to the media every single year and yet nothing changes. "Bahr Al-Baqar has been long forgotten. Every year, journalists and media speak to us. They ask us what we need and promise to help, and nothing; we get nothing," Ahmed El-Dmeeri, one of the survivors, told Ahram Online. Fifty-year-old El-Dmeeri said it agonised him that the martyrs of the January 25 Revolution, who he says were killed during a face-off between Egyptians and other Egyptians, have received financial compensation and honour while Bahr Al-Baqar bombed by Israel is ignored. "We were the ones humiliated by Israel. It (Israel) crippled many of us, yet the government never asked about us, not by money or with Umra (the smaller pilgrimage)," added El-Dmeeri. Lost childhoods El-Dmeeri was only eight when his school was bombed and he was badly injured in the head and feet, injuries that left him unable to work in anything that requires a lot of physical or mental effort. "I was sitting in my math class Wednesday morning, next to my dear friend Ahmed, when the Israelis attacked our school." "My pencil had fell under the desk. The moment I went underneath to pick it up, the school was bombed. My father later told me that the desk broke on my head, leading to concussion," El-Dmeeri went on. After 25 days without consciousness, El-Dmeeri was told that Ahmed, his best friend, had been killed in the attack. "Ahmed, my friend, was his fathers only boy among five girls. His father is now old and jobless and does nothing but wait for aid from people. Maybe if Ahmed was still here he would have been something and shared the burden of his father," said El-Dmeeri. It is not only the memory of the young martyrs or their families that has been forgotten. The village of Bahr Al-Baqar itself speaks of neglect and isolation. Unpaved roads, undrinkable water, lack of healthcare and poor education is what marks a village that paid a high price for Arab resistance to Israel. Seeking justice According to El-Dmeeri, many residents of Bahr Al-Baqar are suffering from renal failure and hepatitis from the water. He adds that while the government has been spending lots of money on building a huge and well-equipped hospital, now they want to just make it a clinic. "All services are deteriorating in Bahr Al-Baqar. This village must be a model, for those children who died and the blood that has been shed," adds El-Dmeeri. Without hope of securing his rights from the Egyptian government, El-Dmeeri decided in 2009, after being advised by lawyer Essam El-Islamboli, to file a lawsuit against Israel. "Our lawyer affirmed to us that such cases never becomes void by time, because it is a war crime," said El-Dameeri. On 7 January, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tweeted an Egyptian nationalist song that was originally written to mourn the death of children in the Bahr Al-Baqar massacre, to express Israels appreciation of Egyptian nationalist songs. The tweet was met with a storm of outrage among Egyptians online, who reminded Israel of the crimes it has committed against Egyptians and Arabs. "All we want is for Egypt to live in peace, but at the same time for Egypt to take care of us," said El-Dmeeri, underlining that he has no wish for war and destruction to return. Search Keywords: Short link: Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi bestowed the Order of the Nile medal, Egypt's highest state honour, on King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia in Cairo on Friday. The medal is granted for exceptional services to the nation, and is often awarded to heads of friendly foreign states. Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel-Aziz received the honour during his visit to Cairo last week. King Salman, who is currently in the second day of his five-day visit to Egypt, met with El-Sisi on Saturday in the Ittihadeya presidential palace to the receive the honour, amid heavy media and presence. The king has signed a number of economic accords, including the framework for a number of loans signed in March, worth over $20 billion. On Friday, the king was greeted on arrival at Cairo International Airport by El-Sisi. Security was tight in the capital. 'Historic' visit According to Saudi ambassador to Cairo Ahmed Qattan, the delegation accompanying the Salman includes 18 ministers and 25 Saudi princes. The ambassador described it as the biggest such delegation to a foreign country in the history of the Saudi kingdom. Salman is expected to receive the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II, and Al-Azhar's top cleric, Ahmed El-Tayeb, at his residence in Cairo on Friday. The visit will be the first such in the history of the Coptic Orthodox Church, according to spokesperson Father Boules Halim. On Saturday, the king expected to visit Al-Azhar and then place a foundation stone for the residential area for expatriate students. Qattan also said that more investment deals between Saudi businessmen and Egypt will be announced on Saturday. The Saudi king is also expected to visit Egypt's parliament on Sunday. Deputy head of the parliament Soliman Wahdan added that Salman may give a speech during his what he described as a "historic visit" to parliament. The Egyptian presidency described Salman's visit to Cairo as "crowning the close brotherly ties between the two countries." Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir also described the visit as "historic." Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt says it hadn't been notified officially about the recall Italy recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations on Friday after two days of meetings between Italian and Egyptian investigators over the murder of an Italian PhD student whose body was found in Cairo in February. Egyptian foreign ministry's spokesman, Ahmed Abu Zeid, said the ministry hadn't been notified officially about the recall, and did not know the reasons for the decision, "particularly as no statement has been issued yet regarding the results of the meeting between the Egyptian and Italian investigation teams looking into the case of the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni." An Egyptian delegation headed to Rome on Wednesday to submit a 2000-page report to chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone on Cairo's investigation into the killing of Regeni. Abu Zeid added the ministry is awaiting the return of the Egyptian team to Cairo to hear their evaluation about the results of the meetings, and what the Italian side would announce on the aftermath of the meetings being conducted in Rome for the last couple of days. Following the recalling of ambassador Maurizio Massari, the Italian foreign ministry said the decision was made to allow for "an urgent evaluation" of what steps to take to "ascertain the truth about the barbaric murder of Giulio Regeni", according to a statement. "Italy will stop only when it has the truth," Italian Prime Minister Renzi said on Facebook after the ambassador was recalled. The 28-year-old Regeni vanished from the streets of Cairo on 25 January. His body was discovered in a ditch on the outskirts of the Cairo nine days later, showing signs of extensive torture. Given the sensitive topic of Regeni's research independent trade unions his disappearance was quickly considered by some to be an instance of abduction by government agents, who human rights advocates blame for other cases of forced disappearance. However, the interior ministry strongly denied any link with Regeni's death. Last month Egyptian police said they had found the Italian's passport and other belongings in the possession of one of the families of a member of an alleged gang of kidnappers who robbed foreigners. Police killed all four members of the alleged gang in a shoot out in late March. Many Italian officials have publicly expressed scepticism towards the transparency of Cairo's investigation. Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt's foreign ministry said on Monday that the ministry had not yet "been officially notified" about the recalling of Italy's ambassador to Egypt for consultations, following a series of meetings in Rome between Italian and Egyptian officials investigating the murder of Guilio Regeni in Egypt. An Egyptian delegation headed to Rome on Wednesday to submit a 2000-page report to chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone on Cairo's investigation into the killing of Regeni, who was found dead in Cairo in February. The Egyptian foreign ministry's spokesman, Ahmed Abu Zeid, said the ministry had not yet been informed about the reasons behind the recall, "particularly as no statement has been issued yet regarding the results of the meeting between the Egyptian and Italian investigation teams looking into the case of the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni." Abu Zeid added that the ministry is awaiting the return of the Egyptian team "in order to attain their assessment of the results of the meetings, and what could potentially be issued by the Italian side regarding the results of the meetings held in Rome over the past two days." The Egyptian foreign ministry's response comes after Italy said in an official statement that it has decided to recall its ambassador to Cairo for "an urgent evaluation" of what steps to take to "ascertain the truth about the barbaric murder of Giulio Regeni". "Italy will stop only when it has the truth," Italian Prime Minister Renzi said on Facebook after the ambassador was recalled. Search Keywords: Short link: US Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Friday for talks with top Iraqi officials on the war against the Islamic State militants group. Kerry will meet Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, State Department spokesman John Kirby said. He will "underscore our strong support for the Iraqi government as it addresses significant security, economic, and political challenges," Kirby said. Iraq is battling IS group, which overran swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014, in a campaign that has been hit hard by plummeting world prices for oil, on which it relies for the vast majority of its revenues. Abadi is also seeking to replace the current cabinet with a government of technocrats, a move that has faced opposition from powerful parties and politicians that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds. Kerry, who is visiting Iraq for the first time since September 2014, will "discuss the (US-led) coalition's continued support for Iraqi-led efforts against" IS group, Kirby said. US-led strikes and training have helped Iraqi forces regain significant ground from the militants both north and west of Baghdad. The top US diplomat travelled to Iraq after visiting the small but strategic Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, where he held talks with Gulf Arab foreign ministers on the conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Kerry called on Iran to help end the wars raging in Yemen and Syria, where Tehran and its Gulf Arab rivals are backing opposing sides. Search Keywords: Short link: A Lebanese military court sentenced former information minister Michel Samaha to 13 years in prison with hard labour on Friday for attempting to carry out "terrorist acts", a judicial source told AFP. Samaha was convicted of transporting explosives to carry out attacks and assassinations of political and religious figures in Lebanon with the help of Syrian security services. The ex-minister was arrested in 2012 and sentenced in May 2015 to four and a half years in prison, but that conviction was quashed a month later and a retrial ordered. "The prosecution asked for the death penalty but he was sentenced to 13 years with hard labour," the judicial source said. Under Lebanese law, the actual time Samaha has been sentenced to amounts to around 10 years. The former minister was also stripped of his right to vote or stand for public office, the source said. Samaha, a Christian politician and former adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, admitted during his previous trial that he had transported the explosives from Syria for use in attacks in Lebanon. But he argued he should be acquitted because he was a victim of entrapment. His previous sentence was denounced as "scandalous" by Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi as it would have seen him released at the end of 2015 because of time served. Search Keywords: Short link: British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond warned over threats to Hong Kong's autonomy Friday as he visited the city where fears are growing that Beijing's grip is tightening. It was the first visit by a British foreign secretary for five years and comes in the wake of a high-profile case in which a group of Hong Kong booksellers went missing, only to surface in China. One of the booksellers was British citizen Lee Bo, whose case caused the greatest outcry as he was the only one to disappear from Hong Kong, prompting accusations that Chinese law enforcement agents were operating in the semi-autonomous city, illegal under its constitution. "We believe that he was removed under duress to the mainland... now our principal concern is that he is returned to Hong Kong free of any duress and able to carry on his life here without any constraints or impositions on him," Hammond told reporters at the city's British consulate on Friday. Hammond said he will raise the issue with China's foreign minister Wang Yi in a Saturday meeting in Beijing, adding that people were nervous over the incident. "There are people in the business community who are unnerved by this incident and we need everybody to make very clear this is not going to happen again," he said. In a meeting with Hong Kong's leader Leung Chun-ying, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said that Hammond would restate "support for Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy, rights and freedoms", as well as commitment to the Sino-British joint declaration which protects Hong Kong's liberties. The city has been semi-autonomous since it was handed back to China by Britain in 1997 under an agreement that protects its freedoms for 50 years. However, there are concerns those freedoms are disappearing. The five booksellers worked for a Hong Kong publishing house famous for salacious titles about high-ranking Chinese politicians. They went missing at the end of last year. Four are under criminal investigation in the mainland -- the fifth, UK citizen Lee Bo, says he is "assisting" with the investigations and has come back to visit Hong Kong recently, insisting he is a free man. Britain has voiced anger over Lee, saying it believed he was "involuntarily removed to the mainland" from Hong Kong in what it called a "serious breach" of the handover agreement. China criticised the UK for interfering in its affairs. The other four men disappeared from Thailand and mainland China. The FCO added that Hammond would also "underline the importance of One Country, Two Systems and of restarting progress on political reform" in his meeting with Leung later Friday. The political reform process has stalled since mass pro-democracy protests in 2014 failed to win concessions from the Hong Kong authorities and Beijing. The rallies were calling for fully free leadership elections, after the government introduced a reform package that activists derided as fake democracy because it allowed Beijing to vet candidates. The package was eventually voted down in the legislature and the reform debate is now on ice. Hammond's visit is the first stop on an east Asia tour, ahead of the G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Japan starting on April 10. He will also meet members of Scotland's Rugby Sevens team as the Hong Kong Sevens tournament kicks off on Friday, as well as Hong Kong and British businesses "to discuss new ways of connecting the UK, Hong Kong and China markets", the FCO said. Search Keywords: Short link: A Hindu temple in western India on Friday lifted a centuries-old ban forbidding female devotees from entering, after a court said women had a fundamental right to worship. Activists have been campaigning to end Shani Shingnapur temple's traditional ban, after authorities last year blocked a woman who attempted to enter its inner sanctum. "We have followed the court order and allowed women devotees into the inner sanctum," Satish, a temple official, told AFP by phone from Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra state. Bombay High Court said last week women have a fundamental right to go into places of worship and asked authorities to ensure their safety. The court's directive followed a petition by the Bhoomata Brigade, a women's group who attempted to enter the temple in January along with dozens of other activists. Lead activist Trupti Desai said the ban constituted gender discrimination that should not be tolerated in the 21st century. But despite the court order, hundreds of angry villagers blocked her and about 30 other women from going inside the temple at the weekend before being detained by police. The skirmishes led the temple authorities to temporarily ban both men and women from entering the sanctum, in a bid to end the standoff. Many religious places in India traditionally bar women from entering the core area of temples and mausoleums. Kerala's famous Sabarimala temple bans all female worshippers aged between 10 and 50 years. Women have also been prevented from entering Mumbai's Haji Ali Dargah mausoleum since 2011, with its trust saying close female proximity to the tomb of a revered saint is "a grievous sin" in Islam. Search Keywords: Short link: Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will travel to the Vatican next week, setting up a possible meeting with Pope Francis that could serve to broaden his appeal to Catholic voters ahead of crucial nominating contests in a series of Northeastern states. Like the pope, Sanders has made the economic inequality and the plight of the working class a central tenet of his message. His scheduled April 15 visit to Vatican City, where he will give an economic address at a conference, will come just days before Democrats in New York vote in their state primary. The following week will bring contests in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, all states with large populations of Catholic voters. In an interview on MSNBC, Sanders, who would be the first Jewish president if elected, described himself as a "big, big fan of the pope," who leads the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. Speaking to reporters in New York later, Sanders said he hoped to meet with Francis. "The pope's schedule is determined by the Vatican but I would certainly be enthusiastic about that," said Sanders, 74, the Brooklyn-born son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. "... I think there is a possibility but that has not been scheduled. Sanders' victory earlier this week over Hillary Clinton in the Wisconsin primary marked his sixth win in the past seven contests against the former secretary of state, sparking renewed talk of Clinton's political vulnerability despite her substantial delegate lead. The announcement came after the Vermont senator this week saying Clinton, a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state, was not qualified to be president. After heavy criticism from Clinton's campaign and other Democrats, Sanders backed off Friday morning in an interview on NBC's "Today." Asked if Clinton was qualified for the presidency, Sanders replied, "Of course." "On her worst day, she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates," he said, referring to New York developer Donald Trump and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. 'DON'T DO LASTING DAMAGE' Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, urged both Clinton and Sanders to make sure that whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee does not end up in a weakened position to take on the Republican candidate in the general election. "I think both campaigns really need to be careful about making sure that we don't do lasting damage," Wasserman Schultz told Fox News Channel Friday. Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said Sanders aligning himself with the pontiff makes sense. Trailing badly in the delegate race, Sanders must find opportunities to boost enthusiasm for his campaign. "Look at buzz and the excitement it's going to create. It's going to drive the news cycle," he said. A meeting with the pope could provide an electoral boost to Sanders, who has trailed Clinton in terms of support among America's Catholic Democrats. Earlier this campaign season, Clinton scored victories over Sanders in Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Texas, all of which are more than one-quarter Catholic. A survey by the Pew Research Center earlier this year found that while almost 70 percent of Catholic Democrats thought Clinton would make a good president, just 46 percent thought Sanders would be one. Clinton leads Sanders by almost 700 delegates - 1,749 to 1,061 - with 1,955 left to be allocated. Pope Francis, a 79-year-old Argentine, also has been outspoken about helping the poor. Sanders said on Friday he admires the pope for criticizing the "worship of money, the greed that's out there." "There are people who think that Bernie Sanders is radical," Sanders said on MSNBC. "Read what the pope is writing." Francis' popularity with both Catholics and non-Catholics has given him an image of a grandfatherly priest who understands how difficult it sometimes is to follow Roman Catholic Church teachings. He became a part of the Republican race in February when, in response to a reporter's question, he suggested Trump was not a Christian because of his plan to build a wall to keep immigrants from crossing the southern U.S. border. Search Keywords: Short link: Mohamed Abrini, who was wanted for November's Islamic State attacks in Paris, has been arrested in Brussels, Belgian public broadcasters said on Friday, adding that Abrini was probably involved in last month's Brussels bombings. Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian, was "more than likely" the "man in the hat" seen on security camera footage at Brussels airport on March 22 with two suicide bombers, VRT and RTBF said on their websites, citing unidentified sources. Public prosecutors confirmed in a brief statement only that police had made several arrests related to the Brussels attacks. They scheduled a news conference for 9:30 p.m. (1930 GMT). If confirmed, the arrests would mark a success for Belgian security services, which have faced fierce criticism at home and abroad since Brussels-based militants organised the attacks that killed 130 in Paris on Nov. 13. The arrests came a day after police issued new images and detail on the "man in the hat". They follow the arrest in Brussels on March 18 of a key surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam. He was seen driving with Abrini towards Paris two days before the Paris attacks. Four days after Abdeslam was arrested, the brothers Brahim and Khalid El Bakraoui and a third local man, Najim Laachraoui, set off bombs that killed 32 people at Brussels airport and on a metro line running under European Union institutions. VRT and RTBF said Abrini was probably the man disguised in heavy glasses and a floppy hat who was pictured with Brahim Bakraoui and Laachraoui moments before the two men blew themselves up at the airport. A second suspect held on Friday was believed to be a man seen with Khalid Bakraoui at a metro station shortly before Bakraoui blew himself up on a train on the same line downtown. VRT named the second man as Osama Kraiem and said he was believed to be the same person as Naim al-Hamed, who was seen on a wanted poster released by French police. Broadcasters said he had also been caught on CCTV buying holdalls at a downtown mall that were later used in the Brussels bombings. Some media said he was a Swedish citizen based in Belgium. Abrini was arrested in the borough of Anderlecht, VRT said, next to the western district of Molenbeek, which has been at the heart of Belgium's troubles with Islamist militants. He had been on Europe's most wanted list since being seen on a motorway service station CCTV video driving with Abdeslam towards Paris from Belgium. The car they drove was used two days later in the attacks, in which Abdeslam's elder brother was a suicide bomber. The man in the hat left the airport shortly after the twin suicide bombings and was tracked on CCTV for several miles into the city centre. On Thursday, investigators released new video footage of him and urged people to look for his discarded coat. He had been difficult to identify from the footage, which showed him pushing a laden luggage trolley alongside the two men who blew themselves up with similar bags. A third bomb was later found abandoned at the airport. Search Keywords: Short link: In a gala ceremony held on Thursday night at Sharjah Heritage Institute, the rule of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan Bin Mohamed Al-Qasimi, honoured the Historic Cairo Rehabilitation Project with the award for the Best Practices for Conservation of Cultural Heritage in the Arab World, alongside nine other winners. Mohamed Abdel Aziz, Egypt's assistant antiquities minister for Islamic and Coptic antiquities, told Ahram Online that Egypt was one of 40 participants at the exhibition this year. Egypt, represented by the Historical Cairo project, along with the UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Tunisia, won the award for Best Practices for Conservation of Cultural Heritage in the Arab World. He added that the event was part of activities of Sharjah-based ICCROM-ATHAR (Architectural and Archaeological Tangible Heritage in the Arab Region), a regional conservation centre founded by ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) and the Government of Sharjah in the UAE in 2012. ATHAR focuses on architectural and archaeological tangible heritage in the region including heritage collections, rich and varied historic places, sites and monuments. Search Keywords: Short link: (Beijing) The second-largest maker of telecoms gear in China is scrambling to get off a U.S. export blacklist that threatens to dry up supplies of critical components. "The investigations are still in progress, and may result in criminal and civil liabilities under U.S. laws," ZTE Corp. said on April 6, when it released its earnings figures for 2015. U.S. authorities have been investigating ZTE since 2012 over allegations it sold software and equipment containing components made in the United States to Iran through shell companies to get around U.S. trade sanctions, people close to ZTE said. The U.S. Commerce Department said on March 7 that American manufacturers are banned from selling components to ZTE, and foreign manufacturers will be prohibited from selling products containing a significant amount of U.S.-made parts to the firm. ZTE and three subsidiaries ZTE Kangxun Telecommunications Ltd., Beijing 8-Star International Co. and Iran-based ZTE Parsian were hit by the rules. The company won a temporary reprieve after a series of talks with U.S. officials, and some supplies are being allowed until June 30, a ZTE employee who asked to remain anonymous said. ZTE delayed the release of its 2015 financials by almost two weeks to assess the impact of the export restrictions, the company said. Net profits rose 22 percent last year to 3.2 billion yuan, the firm said, although it fell short of a January projection of 3.8 billion yuan, a filing to the Shenzhen stock exchange on April 6 said. Total revenue crossed the 100 billion mark for the first time, a 23 per cent increase from 2014, but short of a January forecast by 600 million yuan. The tough export restrictions are a major setback for the telecoms equipment and smartphone maker, which relies heavily on imported parts. Exports from the United States account for up to 15 percent of its total supplies, Nomura Securities International Inc. said. The company had enough components in stock to support production for the next six months, a telecom industry analyst in Hong Kong said. "Without government support, ZTE can do almost nothing about the ban," an industry insider said. "ZTE is nervous If the ban is extended, it may kill the company in half a year." China's Ministry of Commerce issued a statement on March 8 that said it opposed the U.S. sanctions. Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the media on the same day that "this approach will only hurt others without necessarily benefiting oneself." ZTE's shares resumed trading in Shenzhen and Hong Kong on April 7, after a month-long suspension. Changes at the Top On April 5, ZTE announced what it said was "a routine change of executives." Zhao Xianming, the firm's chief technology officer, took over as CEO from Shi Lirong, who has run the company since 2010. Zhao was also named the firm's chairman, replacing ZTE's 75-year-old founder, Hou Weigui, who retired in late March. Two executive vice presidents, Tian Wenguo and Qiu Weizhao, also stepped down. Changes to the old guard may be linked to the export restrictions, several people close to the company said. ZTE did not respond to Caixin's questions on the matter. U.S. trade regulators softened their position on March 24, allowing ZTE and ZTE Kangxun to make purchases from their U.S. suppliers until the middle of the year, the source from ZTE said. The company must renegotiate once this deadline passes, the source said. Some of the company's U.S. suppliers resumed sending components to factories in the southern city of Shenzhen, where the firm is headquartered, the person said, and the first shipment arrived on March 28. ZTE's assembly lines have continued to roll out products without any disruption so far, the source said. But U.S. trade authorities could revoke the temporary permission after June 30. "No one can predict what factors may affect their decision," he said. The episode has served as a wake-up call for domestic tech companies that are dependent on imports for key components, analysts said "In the information and communications technology sector, Chinese companies are unable to wholly rely on self-production," said one analyst in Hong Kong. "China still lags behind in key areas, such as the production of computer chips, storage devices, electronic devices used in telecom towers and other advanced materials." Caught Off Guard U.S. trade regulators started probing ZTE's business dealings with Iran four years ago, several people close to the firm said. "Officials visited ZTE's offices in the United States in 2012, checked the computers and copied many files," one source said. U.S. commerce officials met with company representatives to discuss ZTE's ties with Iran about three years ago, another person familiar with the matter said. Despite this, the restrictions from U.S. authorities still took ZTE by surprise. "According to suppliers, ZTE placed many orders to buy components a few days before the ban hit, indicating the company was caught off guard," the analyst in Hong Kong said. If the temporary reprieve comes to an end, ZTE may face catastrophic losses, several analysts said, because a shortage of components will affect all production lines from smartphones to base stations and other network equipment. "ZTE will have to adjust to a supply shock and its market share may shrink quickly due to production halts," an analyst said. U.S. semiconductor companies, such as Qualcomm Inc., Xilinx Inc. and Altera Corp., account for 10 percent to 15 percent of ZTE's total component supplies, said Huang Leping, a telecoms analyst at Nomura. "It will be very difficult for ZTE to find alternative suppliers" for chips it buys from Xilinx and Altera, said Huang. ZTE produces about 3.4 percent of the mobile phone handsets sold globally and has a 10 percent stake in the international telecom network equipment market, data from Nomura showed. If the United States continues with the tough restrictions, the manufacturing of all of ZTE's telecom network equipment its largest business segment will be crippled, said an expert from China Telecom, the country's third-largest wireless carrier by number of users. ZTE may have to redesign its products to replace the components with older versions that it has in stock, said the China Telecom expert, who asked not to be named. This would affect quality and raise production costs, he said. Many of the company's recent smartphone models may also have to go out of production because they use Qualcomm chips, said an employee of supply chain service provider Eternal Asia Supply Chain Management Ltd. The U.S. Commerce Department said in a statement that based on data from 2011, ZTE can find alternative suppliers for about 30 percent of the components it needs. A Wake-up Call The ban also threatens ZTE's long-term growth plans. The restrictions are likely to weaken ZTE's bid to build a 4G network at home with China Telecom and China Unicom, said Liu Zhicheng, an analyst at BOC International, the brokerage arm of Bank of China. China Unicom, the country's second-largest wireless carrier by number of subscribers, may drop ZTE from its 4G equipment suppliers' list if the ban continues, the telecoms giant's chairman, Wang Xiaochu, said. ZTE's suppliers in the United States, including Oclaro Inc., Lumentum Holdings Inc. and Fabrinet Inc., have seen their share prices drop sharply since the ban was announced. Optical and laser components provider Oclaro said its third quarter sales will suffer because ZTE was a major customer, buying almost one-tenth of its products. The bigger risk to U.S. chipmakers and suppliers is that the Chinese vendor may take more of its business in-house. ZTE is reassessing its vast supply chain to find ways to reduce its reliance on U.S. component suppliers, a ZTE employee said. It may invest more on research and development in key components, the employee said. "I think the Chinese government will also increase its supports to R&D efforts among domestic high-tech firms," he said. (Rewritten Han Wei) (Beijing) Two experts have questioned how the government is handling yet another problem in the baby formula industry one involving knockoffs that comes in the wake of a scandal eight years ago that saw six babies die and hundreds of thousands of others fall ill due to tainted milk products. The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) said on April 4 that it ordered a nationwide inspection of baby formula on store shelves after police in Shanghai broke up a ring that was putting cheaper milk products for infants into packages that looked like those of several name-brand companies. The CFDA said police arrested six people who admitted making 17,000 containers of the knockoff baby formula. The food-safety watchdog did not initially say what brands were involved, but said the formula met national standards. It also did not say when the illegal activity took place. The Procuratorate Daily, a little-known newspaper linked to the country's top prosecutors' office, reported on March 22 that police in Shanghai acted on a tip-off to detain six suspects involved in counterfeiting baby formula products in September last year. The newspaper reported that the ring sold the products to retailers in Zhengzhou, Henan Province; Changsha, Hunan Province; Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province; and Yanzhou, Shandong Province. It made nearly 2 million yuan by repackaging cheaper baby formula and milk powder for adults into containers bearing the labels of name brands, the newspaper said. It is unclear why the CFDA waited several months to comment on the incident. Wang Dingmian, head of the Guangzhou Dairy Business Association, said regulators should rethink how they are supervising the industry, which is still getting over the melamine scandal of 2008. That episode involved dairy farmers spiking raw milk with a chemical called melamine, which made the milk appear to be rich in protein. The government later blamed the industrial chemical's presence in milk products for killing six babies and making an estimated 300,000 others sick. Wang also said the authorities were irresponsible for withholding information about which brands were counterfeited, how long the ring was active and in how many places their products were sold. This could further erode public trust in the domestic dairy industry, he warned. The CFDA said in a new statement on April 6 that the American Abbott and domestic Beingmate brands were used by the counterfeiters. It also repeated its statement that the faked products still met safety standards, a move the regulator said was intended to prevent the public from panicking. Lei Yongjun, the founder of a club for dairy company executives, said he doubted this safety assurance because the watchdog has not released any test results. He also asked why regulators were so slow to respond to a crisis, and said the information it is providing is inconsistent. "The CFDA earlier said that several brands might have been affected, but why has it only named Abbott and Beingmate?" he asked. Abbott Laboratories Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. said in a statement on social media on April 6 that it alerted Shanghai police about a small amount of counterfeit baby formula products sold in China. It did not say when it told police about this. Abbott Laboratories Trading said the case was resolved in December, and all problematic products were recovered. Beingmate also released a statement the same day to say that one of its formula products had been knocked off, but that the incident occurred before April 2015. It launched an inspection of its own after the CFDA alerted it about problems, but found no suspicious products. (Rewritten by Li Rongde) (Beijing) Police in the capital say they have arrested a man who apparently attacked a female guest at a hotel in Beijing, triggering a public debate over violence against women in China. Beijing police said on social media on April 8 that they caught a man who is seen in a surveillance camera video attacking a female guest in the hallway of the Yitel Hotel in the capital's 798 Art District a day earlier. The woman posted video footage and a detailed written account of the incident on social media on April 5. The video, which lasts about 3 minutes and 30 seconds, shows a man grabbing a woman as she approaches the door of a hotel room, then looming over her for a couple of minutes as he uses a phone. At the end of the clip, the man tries to drag her into a stairwell, but a female guest stops him, prompting him to flee. During most of the incident a person whom the woman who was attacked describes as a hotel employee stands near the man, seemingly trying to calm him down. The police did not say why the man attacked the woman. The woman's posting on social media has prompted a public debate about violence against women and the unwillingness of anyone involved in the episode police, hotel management and most of the other guests to do anything about it. She complains that the hotel employee asked her to be quiet when she was pleading for help. The video shows at least four other guests pass by during the episode, seemingly thinking they were witnessing a couple's public quarrel, a sight that is not uncommon on the streets of China's cities. This prompted one Net user to write: "So the guy could hit her if they were a couple or they knew each other? Even if it was her mom, the person should be stopped when he is choking the woman, pulling her hair and dragging her away!" The woman also complained on social media that she could not find any member of the hotel's management after the incident. When she called the police, an officer told her that station was not responsible for the area of the hotel. "The hotel has the responsibility to protect its customer when her safety is being threatened and the police should investigate immediately," another Internet user wrote. "Please don't tell women to be more careful and teach them self-defense techniques after things happened. We (women) do not come to this world to fight with bad guys." The People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, shared tips on social media for how women can protect themselves, prompting one angry Net user to write: "Why the hell isn't there anything to teach men what illegal things they shouldn't do?" Homeinns Hotel Group, which owns the Yitel Hotel, issued a statement after the woman uploaded the video to say it is cooperating with a police probe. The hotel held a news conference to address the episode on April 6, but it was delayed for four hours. When it finally started a hotel spokesperson read out a brief apology to the victim and left without answering the questions of several reporters in attendance, the news website Youth.cn reported. A group of feminist activists rallied in front of the Yitel Hotel as the news conference was going on. They held signs that read: "Indifference is poisonous, hotel and police are responsible" and "Who should be responsible for women's safety?" Allianz Life Insurance, the Korean affiliate of Germany's Allianz Group, has begun to cut back on the number of its employees, receiving on Monday employees' applications for early retirement. An executive of the company said Monday that the early-retirement application option would be available for a two-week period starting Monday, and that every employee of the company could apply. He said that the company had expected about 10 to 15 percent of the employees to apply for retirement, but the ratio could go up slightly. As the current payroll at Allianz Life runs at 2,350 workers, 230 to 500 are likely to retire soon, the executive said. He also said that the early retirement package included a bonus payment equal to 30 months' salary. When the first boatload of deported migrants arrived Monday at the Turkish port of Dikili, a small group of Turkish human rights activists turned up to welcome them. Turkey is expecting to receive another shipment of 200 migrants deported from Greece on Friday, as part of the deal reached in March between the European Union and Ankara to alleviate Europe's migrant crisis. But there is also nervousness among some Turks who question whether their country can and should absorb the refugees who do not return to their nations of origin. The deportees from Pakistan and other countries who arrived in Turkey from Greece this week have been whisked away from the docks where they disembarked and taken to a reception and removal center in Kirklareli, 500 kilometers away. The deal brings a list of incentives for Turkey, including billions of dollars in aid and the possibility of visa-free travel to Europe, as well as eventual accession to the EU. But some Turks condemn the deal, saying it does little to widen their long-sought access to Europe. For Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the agreement is an opportunity to raise his standing at a time when he is under scrutiny for his government's offensive against Kurdish separatists in Turkey's southeast and its crackdown on the media. This week, Erdogan criticized the European Union's approach to the migration crisis. "Did we turn Syrians back? No, we didn't, but they [EU nations] did," he said in Ankara. "By way of placing razor wire, they did not let these people into their countries. We see who is dying on the Aegean Sea, but the number of those rescued by us on the Aegean is 100,000." Officials say more than 400 people have died over the past year while trying to make the short, but dangerous, crossing between Turkey and the Greek isles. Under the deal reached in mid-March, Turkey will receive more than $3 billion in aid to take care of the refugees. For every migrant returned, Turkey sends one Syrian refugee to the EU. Greece and the EU are to deport all migrants who arrived on Greek soil after March 20. While Greece reports that between 300 and 500 people continue to turn up on its shores daily, that number reflects a considerable drop from before the agreement. Putting money in offshore accounts is not necessarily illegal, and can be used to establish legal tax shelters or ease international business deals. But the report said the documents show banks, law firms and other offshore players often fail to follow legal requirements to make sure their clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption. The ICIJ also said its analysis of leaked records indicates that by the end of 2015, Mossack Fonseca the law firm at the center of the document dump was collecting fees for more than 16,300 offshore companies from China and Hong Kong, accounting for 29 percent of its business worldwide. Hong Kong is the company's busiest office in Asia and the world. On Wednesday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said that Chinese leaders' relatives who have offshore holdings include: Deng Jiagui, the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping; Lee Shing Put, a son-in-law of Standing Committee member Zhang Gaoli; Zeng Qinghuai, a brother of former Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong; and Li Xiaolin, the daughter of former Premier Li Peng. Among the more than 11 million documents are details about the offshore holdings of relatives of at least seven current and former Politburo Standing Committee members, a powerful political body in China, and the grandson-in-law of the founding father of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong. A massive data leak from a Panamanian firm has revealed that from relatives of the founding father of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong, to current leader Xi Jinping, offshore holdings are common place among the families of China's ruling elite. The documents confirmed some details already known about financial connections between Gu Kailai, the wife of former rising Chinese political star Bo Xilai, and a French architect. There is also new information. In an article for ICIJ, Alexa Olesen noted data showing that Gu switched the ownership structure of her offshore company just two weeks after she murdered British businessman Neil Heywood. Both Gu and her husband are now in prison in China. Massive wealth accumulated by the families of Chinas ruling party members has long been a big concern in China, but also a topic on which discussion is tightly controlled. Much less is known, however, about the ways China's rich and powerful hide their wealth. China has moved quickly to limit discussion of the Panama Papers online and the foreign ministry has refused to comment on the massive document dump, describing the revelations about links between officials relatives and offshore firms as "groundless." Even Mao's Relatives The documents also include information about Chen Dongsheng and a company he incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 2011. Chen is the husband of Kong Dongmei, a granddaughter of Mao Zedong. The two were married that same year. The couple were thrust into the spotlight in 2013 when they were included in New Fortune magazine's rich list, ranking 242nd with an estimated personal wealth of $815 million. In an interview with the Financial Times later that same year, however, Chen said his relationship with Kong had nothing to do with his business success. Details about the holdings of Hu Dehua, the son of late Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang, were also among the files. According to documents obtained by the ICIJ, the late leader's son listed his family's home address in Beijing, where Hu Yaobang lived when he was head of the party, for a company he incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 2003. Dollar Transaction One of the youngest family members with offshore holdings unveiled through the leaked documents is Jasmine Li Zidan, the granddaughter of Jia Qinglin, a former Politburo Standing Committee member. As a freshman at Stanford University in California in 2010, Li became the owner of an offshore company called Harvest Sun Trading Limited. According to the ICIJ, documents show ownership was transferred to Li for one dollar from Zhang Yuping, the founder of Chinese luxury watch distributor Hengdeli Holdings Limited. Li has two companies registered in the British Virgin Islands: Harvest Sun and Xin Sheng, which are parent companies of two Beijing-registered consulting companies. More Transparency According to documents, Deng Jiagui, the son-in-law of Xi Jinping, became the sole director and shareholder of one offshore company in 2004 and two more in 2009. The "shelf companies" -- corporations that have no activity -- were in the Mossack Fonseca inventory. The ICIJ said that by the time Xi Jinping became president in 2013, the companies were dormant. Since coming to power, Xi has carried out a high-profile campaign against corrupt officials, publicizing some prosecutions in state media as evidence that the Communist Party is serious about punishing graft. However, authorities also have aggressively censored news stories by foreign publications that explore the overseas investments and financial gains by top officials and their relatives. The Chinese public wants more transparency about the financial dealings of its officials and their families, but it is unlikely that the new revelations will lead to any concrete actions by the government to address the use of offshore holdings. On a VOA Mandarin call-in talk show Wednesday, a caller surnamed Peng said, "The saddest thing is the attitude taken by the Chinese government. They tried to cover up, to block the news, in order to 'maintain stability.' Their so-called anti-corruption campaigns are fake, because it is institutional corruption. Officials under this system cannot survive without corruption." A panelist on the program, economist and news commentator He Qinglian, said offshore accounts are not against the law in China. "China is concerned about whether the source of the money is legal. What is exposed by the Panama Papers is really just the tip of the iceberg," she said. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied allegations that documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm contain evidence of corruption among his closest associates, saying the so-called Panama Papers are part of a Western campaign to undermine Russia. Speaking Thursday to a media forum in St. Petersburg, the Russian president said the leaked documents are part of an attempt to make his country "more docile," to create "distrust within society toward the authorities, the state administration bodies, and to set one against the other." Citing an allegation made by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Putin accused the U.S. government of being behind the Panama Papers. "That behind this stands... officials and official bodies of the United States, WikiLeaks has now shown us." Putin noted that he himself was not mentioned in the documents. "You went through these offshore [documents]," he told the assembled journalists. "Your humble servant is not there, so there is nothing to talk about. But there is an assignment! [So] what did they do? ...They found acquaintances and friends." North Korean propaganda has started using the term "communism" again for the first time in 14 years. The term quietly slipped from use in October of 2002, when then-leader Kim Jong-il was quoted as saying that the North was "in no position to discuss idealistic communism when socialism is not even being achieved." But the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper used the term on March 19 and 21 as well as last Sunday and Tuesday and Thursday this week. In orthodox Marxist-Leninist theory, communism is an ideal state that is achieved after a society moves from capitalism to socialism. North Korea removed the term communism from its constitution altogether and the Workers Party charter in 2009, partly because it has nothing to do with the dynastic dictatorship in the North. So why has his son Kim Jong-un dusted it off now? One North Korean source said this appears to be a desperate move to rein in public discontent by mobilizing North Koreans under the idealistic goal of communism as the North prepares to hold the first Workers Party congress in 36 years. Kim, who has no achievements other than nuclear weapons development under his belt, is seeking to unite the North Korean people under a common flag. In its March 28th edition, the Rodong Sinmun also warned of an "arduous march" ahead, in terminology that recalled the deadly famine of the mid to late 1990s. North Korea watchers said the term suggests Kim Jong-un is feeling the pinch due to tougher international sanctions. North Korea appears especially unnerved by Chinese President Xi Jinping's pledge of "sweeping" sanctions against the North. China has been criticized for loopholes in implementing international sanctions, but prices have apparently skyrocketed in the North's open-air markets recently. According to the Daily NK website, gasoline prices in North Korea surged 53 percent a month after fresh international sanctions were imposed. Food prices are also on the rise. One source said wealthy North Koreans are stocking up on food and daily necessities due to fears of a sharp decline in trade with China. Foreign trading companies that deal with North Korea have apparently halted selling the North products on credit and are demanding cash up front. Kim Jong-un's mobilization of North Koreans for the Workers Party congress is also putting a strain on his people, who are being forced to cough up money and being press-ganged into sprucing up Pyongyang under a "70-day campaign." In 1987, nation founder Kim Il-sung announced that the party congress was canceled in the absence of radical improvements in providing food and shelter for the public, and the congresses were not revived under his son Kim Jong-il. But Kim Jong-un is pushing ahead with the shindig in an apparent attempt to legitimize his rule. Harsher terms await drug offenders 2016-04-08 07:49 Chinese courts will pass stricter sentences for a range of drug-related offenses "as the drug problem spreads more rapidly and drug offenses occur more frequently", Ma Yan, a senior Supreme People's Court judge, said on Thursday. According to the court, 137,198 people were punished for drug-related crimes last year, up 25 percent year-on-year. A judicial review from the top court called for the tougher sentences and added 12 new types of drugs, including methcathinone and tramadol, to the list of controlled substances. The review makes smuggling, transporting, buying, producing or illegally holding any of 28 drugs a criminal offense. Meanwhile, the criminal threshold for possession of ketamine, known as "K powder" and the most widely abused drug in the country, has been lowered, the document said. "The review defines 500 grams of ketamine as a 'large amount' and people who smuggle, transport, purchase, make or illegally possess that much of it will be sentenced to at least 15 years in prison," said Fang Wenjun, a judge in the top court's No 5 Criminal Tribunal, which specializes in drug cases. Previously, offenders received a 15-year sentence for cases involving a kilo of ketamine, Fang said. "The fight against ketamine in our country is becoming more serious," he said, adding that the drug poses significantly public safety dangers. "We found many cases in which defendants injured others or crashed while driving under the influence of ketamine, because it often makes users delusional," he said. Li Wenjun, an associate professor who specializes in narcotics control at the People's Public Security University of China, applauded the tougher penalties in the new judicial review, but said it will be difficult to halt drug abuse, in part because the chemical ingredients are available. Ketamine, often used as an anesthetic in surgery, relieves pain, "but it has indeed occurred in the past that medical professionals stole chemical ingredients from hospitals and refined them into the drug," she said. Although China has taken steps to limit the accessibility of the chemicals needed to make ketamine, people can still buy raw materials to refine into ketamine, she said, which is why K powder is often seen in drug cases. caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn China, Sri Lanka pledge to further advance strategic cooperation 2016-04-08 08:24 BEIJING, April 7, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) holds talks with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Beijing, China, April 7, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Tao) BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- China and Sri Lanka pledged to further push forward their strategic cooperative partnership and inked a series of documents in such fields as economic cooperation, finance, medicare and transportation on Thursday. During the talks with visiting Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Beijing, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang hailed the profound friendship between the two countries, saying the bilateral ties have withstood the test of time. China is willing to deepen mutual trust, extend practical cooperation with Sri Lanka so as to take their strategic partnership of cooperation to a new height, Li said. He said the continued development of China-Sri Lanka cooperation on major projects has brought benefits for the people of both countries. "We welcome the resumption of the Colombo Port City project, and stand ready to work with Sri Lanka to push forward the construction steadily," said Li. The Sri Lankan government officially informed the Chinese investors of resuming the construction of the multi-billion dollar Port City project last month, one year after its suspension. Li called on both sides to speed up the negotiations on the second phase operation of the Hambantota Port in the southern part of Sri Lanka, so as to help Sri Lanka give full play to its geological advantage to become an important international logistic hub. He also called on both countries to conduct production capacity cooperation in order to exert China's advantage on equipment manufacture and expedite Sri Lanka's industrialization. China encourages its companies to invest in Sri Lanka and participate in the cooperation in industrial parks, special economic zones, and the processing and manufacturing sector, Li said, calling for support from Sri Lanka. For his part, Wickremesinghe said Sri Lanka, faced with the task of economic and social development, is willing to learn from China's experience and develop greater synergies between its own strategies and China's Belt and Road Initiative, jointly building the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road proposed by China. He said Sri Lanka will protect the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies in line with its law and foster a sound environment for Chinese investors. Both prime ministers agreed to further advance FTA talks between the two countries, expressing the hope of seeing tangible results come out within the year. They also called for enhanced cooperation on construction of ports, airports, roads, railways and in the fields of finance, science and technology and culture. Prior to the talks, Li held a welcoming ceremony for Wickremesinghe. The two prime ministers witnessed the signing of seven deals on economic and technological cooperation, extradition, finance, medical care and transportation after the talks. Also on Thursday, China's top legislator Zhang Dejiang met with Wickremesinghe on further enhancing parliamentary exchanges between the two countries. Zhang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), said the NPC is willing to maintain exchanges with Parliament of Sri Lanka in such areas of state governance and legislation, calling on both sides to improve legal environment to facilitate pragmatic cooperation and consolidate the traditional friendship. Wickremesinghe said Sri Lanka is ready to promote the exchanges between the law-making bodies of the two nations. Wickremesinghe arrived in Beijing on Wednesday night for a four-day official visit to China. Related: Sri Lanka PM's China visit will further boost bilateral ties: Chinese ambassador COLOMBO, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's visit to China will inject new impetus into the development of China- Sri Lanka ties, Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Yi Xianliang has said. Wickremesinghe left for an official visit to China on Wednesday, his first visit as prime minister to China since the government of President Maithripala Sirisena was formed in January last year. Full Story Sri Lanka looks forward to further strengthening ties with China: official COLOMBO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka looks forward to further strengthening its ties with China this year and the government aims to attract more Chinese investments, Deputy Minister of State Enterprise Development, Eran Wickremeratne said here on Thursday. At a media briefing held in the capital, Wickremeratne said that Chinese investments were vital for Sri Lanka and a mega 1.4 billion U.S. dollar mega Port City project funded by China Communications Construction Company Limited, which would soon resume construction in Colombo. Full Story 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 >> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 >> The VCs have been asked to put in their papers before 10 a.m. on Monday, October 24. #COVID-19 New COVID-19 cases post sharp on-week rise amid resurgence woes South Korea's new COVID-19 cases stayed below 30,000 for the fifth consecutive day Sunday, but the daily count recorded a sharp hike from the previous week amid rising concerns ove... #illegal gambling China-based online gambling ring busted; 20 arrested Law-enforcement authorities here said Sunday they have busted an online gambling ring based in China for illicit operations in South Korea, worth a total of 5.7 trillion won (US$3.... This week, the governor of Mississippi passed the "religious freedom bill", which sounds liberating but it's anything but. In short if you cite "religious reasons" you can "deny LGBT people marriage, adoption and foster care services; fire or refuse to employ them; and decline to rent or sell them property." As Ellen points out, this isn't a political issue, this is a "human rights issue." It is the very "definition of discrimination. While this kind of backward thinking is depressing in the extreme, there is always hope. Louisiana born Ellen closes with: If youre in Mississippi or North Carolina or anywhere, and youre saddened by the fact that people are judging you based on who you love, dont lose hope. I was fired for being gay, and I know what it feels like. I lost everything, but look at me now. I could buy that governors mansion, flip it and make a $7 million profit." Well, whaddaya know, it's not all about Cap and Bucky's relationship after all... In this new featurette, Marvel leading ladies Scarlet Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Emily Van Camp discuss their respective roles in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War - dropping quite a few insights along the way. Expect to see Black Widow drop a regrettable clanger now that she's torn between either side, VanCamp's Sharon Carter engaging in some impressive fight sequences, and is Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda appears to responsible for a certain explosion? The film is due for release on May 6th stateside. Well, that terrible song by Joan Osborne song is good for something. God is a slob like one of us in Jaco Van Dormaels (Toto The Hero) Charlie Kaufman-meets-Jean-Pierre Jeunet absurdist comedy-drama. "God exists. He lives in Brussels." God is a cranky, chain-smoking middle-aged man (Poelvoorde, Man Bites Dog) who shuffles about his cramped apartment in his slippers and dirty dressing gown. He delights in casting misery on the world by typing 'laws' into his Apple computer (toast always lands butter side down, the other queue moves faster). Fed up with his nasty ways, his young daughter Ea (a fantastic Groyne. Two Days One Night) logs on and sends everyone in the world the dates of their deaths, effectively robbing God of his powers (if everyone knows when theyre going to die, caution is thrown to the wind and they do what they want). With help from older brother JC (!), Ea then escapes the apartment and into downtown Brussels to seek six disciples to pen a new testament and right all of Gods wrongs. But God is in hot pursuit Amelie's stamp is all over this. From the kooky visuals (the severed hand dancing on a table like Fred Astaire) to the descriptive voiceover ("she looked at me like a box of thumbtacks left out") that likes to explain in detail, and through flashback, the roots of a character's kooky behaviour. But the playfulness is always and forever tempered by an undercurrent of ennui. The other apostles include the terminally sad Aurelie (Laura Verlinden), who lost her arm as a child in a subway accident, a killer Francois Damiens) who fantasises about randomly shooting people, and lonely Marc (Serge Lariviere) who is obsessed with a particular type of woman since he saw a bikini-clad teenage girl on the beach when he was eight. Despite the tone veering from riotously funny episodes (one guy, knowing his death won't come for years yet, takes to social media to document his death-defying stunts) to desperately sad moments when the story pries into the private lives of the would-be apostles; there are some outlandish ideas too with would-be apostle Catherine Deneuve falling in love with a gorilla. Testament to the writer-director's skill that a balance between these disparate tones is somehow achieved. Van Dormael needlessly ties up loose ends with convenient and cute coincidences but his film is bursting with original ideas. The European Union has initiated a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with Malaysia, aiming to reinforce the mutual political dialogue on a range of issues including fight against terrorism, migration issues, energy, sustainable development, education, health, public administration, governance and the promotion of human rights. The PCA will become an overarching legal framework governing the relations between both sides. The deal is a testimony of growing intensity of the EU-Malaysia relations and bilateral cooperation as well as of an increasing importance that the EU attaches to the partnership with ASEAN. In the future, the PCA may be complemented by a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Malaysia is one of the ASEANs founding countries and is the sixth ASEAN member to finalize PCA talks with the European Union. Negotiations for similar agreements were concluded with Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The PCA with Indonesia has already entered into force. The EU-Malaysia relations are currently governed by an European Commission-ASEAN Cooperation Agreement signed in 1980. The new PCA will replace the current agreement and significantly strengthen relations in the areas of a political dialogue, intensification of regional international and cooperation, trade and investment and many specific areas. The agreement will be signed after the completion of all internal procedures. The EU Delegation in Malaysia was opened in 2003 and since then, the dialogue, trade and policy interaction between both sides have immensely intensified. Malaysia is the EUs second most important partner in ASEAN after Singapore. Currently, there are no preferential trade deals between both sides but more than 70 percent of Malaysias exports to the EU already enter duty-free. Malaysia is a major trading partner in goods such as machinery and appliances while the potential of the EU-Malaysia trade in services is still untapped. Homelink said to be seeking funds Updated: 2016-04-08 10:14 (Agencies) Beijing Homelink Real Estate Brokerage Co is seeking to raise funds in a financing round that will give the property company a valuation of about 40 billion yuan ($6.2 billion), according to industry sources. The firm, which focuses on rental and secondhand real estate transactions, is raising about $1 billion and has attracted funding from Chinese Internet giants including Tencent Holdings Ltd and Baidu Inc, said the sources. Homelink, which opened its first physical store in Beijing in 2001, had expanded to 5,000 outlets across 24 cities in the country by October. It has moved online to build a database that includes information on 56 million property units and expects transactions initiated on its platform to rise 67 percent to at least 1 trillion yuan by 2017 from last year, according to a report in People's Daily. "Tencent would love to have this investment, to provide customers mortgage and bridge loans," said Li Muzhi, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Arete Research Services LLP. Online property firms like listings site SouFun Holdings Ltd and real estate agency E-House China Holdings Ltd are benefiting from central bank monetary stimulus and an easing in housing-market regulations, particularly in the major cities. Steps the government has taken to encourage home buying include a reduction of minimum down payments and cuts in deed and business taxes on home transactions. E-House rose 2.6 percent on Wednesday in the United States, the most in more than a month. Leju Holdings Ltd climbed 3.8 percent, the most since March 29, while SouFun edged 0.7 percent higher. If the funding goes through, Homelink would become China's sixth-largest venture-backed company, according to CB Insights' unicorn-tracker. Rosatom hopes to plug into nuclear industry Updated: 2016-04-08 10:17 By Lyu Chang(China Daily) Alexander Merten, president of Rosatom International Network. Rosatom, the Russian State Atomic Energy Corp, is seeking to hit big in China's nuclear industry with the opening of a regional center headquartered in Beijing on Thursday, according to a senior official of the company. "We are looking to expand our business in China, a market with huge potential for growth in the nuclear industry, and the activities of regional center are designed to help strengthen our cooperation with the country," said Alexander Merten, president of Rosatom International Network. The company is not only planning to build more new reactors with its long-standing partner China National Nuclear Corp, but is also expected to expand its business into "non-nuclear activities" such as agriculture, organic chemicals and nuclear medicine, Merten said. He made the remarks on the sidelines of the 14th China International Nuclear Industry Exhibition, a four-day event being held in Beijing. Units 1 and 2 of Tianwan nuclear power plant in Jiangsu province equipped with the VVER1000 reactor, Rosatom's third-generation nuclear technology, are already in operation, while units 3 and 4 at the site are still under construction. Together with its Chinese counterparts, Rosatom has built a nuclear fuel plant and a gas centrifugal plant designed to enrich the uranium, a key process in manufacturing fuel for nuclear reactors. Earlier reports said that the Russian company is also considering the possibility of building a new nuclear power plant in China's inland area, possibly in the country's northeastern Heilongjiang province. "I think the country also needs nuclear plants inland to feed its energy demand. Russia is one of the few countries with vast experience in building and operating inland nuclear plants," he said. China's nuclear industry is on the fast track to become one of the world's largest, with plans to have completed 58 gigawatts of installed capacity with another 30 gW under construction by the end of 2020. But Rosatom will face fierce competition from companies such as the US Westinghouse Electric and France's nuclear giant Areva with rival third-generation nuclear designs such as AP1000 and EPR1000, both of which aim to expand its presence in the Chinese market. "What we are able to provide to our clients is a whole package deal from uranium enrichment, nuclear fuel assembly, construction of nuclear power plants to the fuel reprocessing, and I think that is not something that our rivals can provide," Merten said. Rosatom's 39 nuclear reactors across the world can be used as references for construction of new nuclear power plants, he said. Hangzhou's innovation efforts encourage startup firms Updated: 2016-04-08 10:18 By Xu Xiaomin(China Daily) Young entrepreneurs at an international entrepreneurship forum in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province. LONG WEI / FOR CHINA DAILY As part of its efforts to attract top professionals to make Hangzhou an innovation hub, the capital city of Zhejiang province will provide as much as 100 million yuan ($15.44 million) in subsidies to some of the most valuable startup programs, said a top city official. The city will also offer subsidies ranging between 5 million and 20 million yuan to leading projects developed overseas. "We are going all out to turn Hangzhou into a hotbed for innovation and talent plays a key role in realizing that goal," said Zhao Yide, Party chief of Hangzhou, at a news conference. "We hope to attract professionals from around the country and the world to live in Hangzhou and start their businesses here." Hangzhou, just 175 kilometers from Shanghai, was in the past a convenient second-choice destination for professionals who could not secure positions in Shanghai. These days, however, Zhao said that an increasing number of professionals have come straight to the city. More than 23,000 Chinese, who returned home from overseas, have already chosen to work in Hangzhou, according to figures released by the authorities. Early last year, the city issued 27 policies related to talent recruitment, targeting those who have managed startup companies as well as innovative and creative high-level professionals. The new policies represented a breakthrough in various areas such as residency, education, medical, social security, financial support and product commercialization. "All the comprehensive measures we have made, from environmental protection to intellectual property rights, are to attract quality talent to work and live in Hangzhou," Zhao said. Chen Yiyou, founder and president of New Horizon Health Technology Co Ltd, said he chose to establish his business in Hangzhou because of the government's solid support for the new technology industry as well as the industrious spirit of the city's residents. His company specializes in the early screening of intestinal cancer. Chen said he had applied for preferential support for his new company in 2013 and was subsequently awarded a starting fund of 5 million yuan within the same year. He was also given preferential support in residency matters. "These are some of the reasons why Alibaba Group Holding Ltd was born here," Chen said referring to the e-commerce giant founded in the city 17 years ago. "The efficiency of the government is very important in attracting overseas talent. In terms of setting up a business, I believe that Hangzhou is one of the best cities in China right now. After coming back to China and working in Hangzhou for more than three years, I can confidently say that I had made the correct decision," said the Chinese-American doctor, who has worked in several major cities in China and the United States. But apart from trying to attract experienced professionals from home and abroad, the city has also set up a 100 million yuan fund to help local university students start their businesses. According to government statistics, about 70 percent of the graduates from 36 universities and colleges in Hangzhou chose to start their careers in the city in the past years. "Our statistics show that every week in Hangzhou there are 76 university students starting their own businesses while an average of 34 enterprises are founded by university students," said Ma Xiaohui, vice-mayor of Hangzhou. German conglomerate expands into world's biggest medicine market Updated: 2016-04-08 10:18 (Agencies) Phil Blake, Bayer's US president and head of pharmaceuticals for the Americas. [Photo/Agencies] The German conglomerate that invented aspirin over a century ago wants to take over much more of your medicine cabinet. Bayer AG is boosting its presence and brand in the United States, the world's biggest medicine market. Bayer is increasing everything from marketing and research operations in the US to the number of its nonprescription medicines in pharmacies and grocery stores. The US expansion is part of the 153-year-old company's transformation from a chemical-and-dye manufacturer, a business it spun off last year, to a pure "life sciences" company focused on the health of people, pets and plants. "I hope that over the next few years, people will learn that Bayer is more than aspirin," Phil Blake, Bayer's US president and head of pharmaceuticals for the Americas, said in an interview at its US headquarters in Whippany, New Jersey. Bayer's strategy is a departure in an industry in which companies typically swim together in the same direction. Bayer is focused on expanding in the US, while other top drugmakers are concentrating on increasing sales and manufacturing in Asia and other developing markets. The world's 14th-biggest drugmaker already sees signs its strategy is paying off. Last year, Bayer's sales jumped 28 percent to about $14 billion in the US and Canada, where consumer health sales soared 66 percent and prescription drug sales jumped 23 percent. Global revenue rose 12 percent, to nearly $51 billion. "The US is the most important country for Bayer," said global innovation chief Kemal Malik. Bayer, based in Leverkusen, Germany, boosted its research budget last year 21 percent to $4.7 billion. And it's doing more in two areas rivals have mostly abandoned despite huge unmet need and millions of patients: heart disease and women's health. Bayer is doing more research collaborations in the US, like its deal with Johns Hopkins University to develop medicines for vision-damaging diseases. It also has a partnership with Massachusetts startup CRISPR Therapeutics, to develop new therapies for blood disorders, blindness and other conditions. Across the US, Bayer has been hiring hundreds of scientists, factory workers and salespeople, and enlarging or building new research labs, offices and medicine factories. It funds a San Francisco "incubator" housing startups developing experimental medicines and related technology. And it's pouring $1 billion into new greenhouses, factories for crop-protecting chemicals and development of seeds that can withstand climate change. A key part of Bayer's US strategy is expanding its consumer health business. That's been driven by its 2014 purchase of Merck & Co's consumer health unit for $14.2 billion. The combined business vaulted to No 1 in US consumer health sales, surpassing Johnson & Johnson. Iconic Bayer aspirin, patented in 1899, holds 62 percent of US market share among aspirin brands. Sales are still growing, up 7 percent last year to $520 million worldwide. Pain relievers and vitamins aren't sexy, but they have appeal: Development costs are low, advertising can quickly boost sales, products attract few lawsuits compared to prescription drugs, and they sell steadily for decades. Bayer now markets 170 consumer health products, 17 with annual sales topping $100 million. The expanded consumer health portfolio now holds more prized eye-level supermarket and pharmacy shelf space, which boosts sales. Bayer now markets the former Merck brands worldwide, which helped it increase total consumer health sales 30 percent last year. Bayer is a leader in women's health, selling Yaz, Yasmin and other birth control pills; Mirena and other intrauterine devices, and Essure, an implant for permanently preventing pregnancy. Last month, US regulators required that Essure bear its strictest warning, noting chronic pain and bleeding in some users, and ordered Bayer to conduct new safety studies. It has recently become a contender in cancer medicines, jumping from one a decade ago to three today, with two dozen more in patient testing, innovation chief Malik said. Meanwhile, under a new partnership with the American Association for Cancer Research, Bayer will give US scientists grants to transform ideas for new cancer targets into medicines. Trade firms hail show prices cut Updated: 2016-04-08 10:19 By Du Xiaoying(China Daily) The Homping Grill's exhibition area at last year's China Import and Export Fair, which was held in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province. ZOU HONG / CHINA DAILY Organizers claim reduction will mean 240m-yuan saving for all participants Exhibition fees for domestic exporters taking part in the upcoming China Import and Export Fair are being cut on the average by 18 percent, the biggest reduction in the history of the event, in an attempt to boost flagging foreign trade. Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said the average price of a stand at the event, more often called the Canton Fair, which starts on April 15, will be reduced by 4,000 yuan ($618) on average, which he said should mean a 240-million-yuan saving for participants. Shen said the move is to carry out the State Council's measures to support growth in foreign trade by domestic firms. This year's Canton Fair runs until May 5 in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. Started in 1957, it is largely viewed as a barometer of the country's foreign trade. "The export situation is complex and still severe, but the signs are good that structural changes in export practices will improve," Shen said. "China's share of the international market is still rising steadily." Shen said the ministry had sent 17 investigating groups to the 20 provinces and cities that account for 97 percent of the country's global trade, between late February and the beginning of March. Their research covered 200 companies from 20 industries, that accounts for 70 percent of the country's exports, such as household appliances and vehicles. Chen Zhiyu, vice-general manager of Fujian Meinkind Baby Products Co Ltd, a children's car seat manufacturer, said the pricings will certainly benefit companies taking part, and the wider economy. His firm has taken part in the fair for the past four years, as well as other recent trade events in Hong Kong and Germany. Xiao Feng, a vice-general manager of Shenzhen OneTouch Business Service Ltd, said the cuts in charges will send a positive sign that the central government is keen to support private firms in their search for overseas trade, especially as production costs continue to rise at home. He admitted the appeal of taking part in the past Canton fairs has weakened, and that he had noticed that the number of international companies taking part in the fair is also dropping, with more relying instead on e-commerce platforms to promote their goods and services in China. "We need to improve the pricing power of our export companies," Xiao said, to ensure Chinese goods "remain competitive". OneTouch is a subsidiary company of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, and provides business outsourcing services for small and medium-sized firms trading overseas. Last year, China's exports fell 1.8 percent in value to 14.14 trillion yuan. Data from the General Administration of Customs showed that in February this year, they had already dropped 20.6 percent year-on-year, the largest monthly fall since May 2009. Debt-to-equity plan welcomed by experts Updated: 2016-04-08 10:19 By Wu Yiyao in Shanghai(China Daily) Experts have applauded a pilot debt-to-equity swap plan that would allow banks to convert bad loans into equities in the borrowing enterprise, while they said banks need to be more prudent when managing risks. The plan, which may be approved by the end of this month, may allow the conversion of 1 trillion yuan ($154.6 billion) in bad loans, reported Bloomberg on Tuesday. A research note from Xiangcai Securities Co said the swap plan would bring about a win-win situation in which borrowing enterprises are lifted from financial difficulties and recover, helping lenders to reduce bad loan ratio. Bad loans in China's banking sector soared 51 percent in 2015 to 1.27 trillion yuan, the highest level in a decade, according to data from the China Banking Regulatory Commission. Most of businesses that are likely to be included in the plan are from particular sectors, including mining, steelmaking and nonferrous metals, which have been suffering from downward pressure and overcapacity. These enterprises, which have been making losses in the past few years and could be unable to repay debts in due time, may be given a second chance to recover as fundamentals improve, the report said. For lenders, the swap plan may reduce the banking industry's nonperforming loan ratio by one percentage point and may lift banks' annual net profit by an average of four percentage points, according to research note by Huatai Securities Co. However, whether the goal of the plan will be achieved depends on the actual operation and performance of the borrowing enterprises, said researchers. "In good cases, borrowing enterprises may return to the black and the bad loans become good equities for lenders. In bad cases, enterprises may not successfully recover from the financial difficulties, and the bad loans become bad equities for lenders, which will dent lenders' profits and hurt shareholders' returns," said a research note from Orient Securities Co. Sun Lijian, a professor at Fudan University, said long-term expectations of commercial banks' prosperity have been affected as concerns rise over asset quality, according to a report from the China Economic Panel Indicator by the Financial Research Center of Fudan University, a joint project between Fudan University and ZEW, a German-based center for economic research. Wang Zhongmin, vice-president of the National Council for Social Security Fund and an expert on asset management, said: "The financial market needs more tools and channels to deal with risks including moral hazards." Jiang Xueqing in Beijing contributed to this story. China's most expensive vacation can be booked April 25 Updated: 2016-04-08 16:20 By Shi Jing(chinadaily.com.cn) China's largest online travel agency, Ctrip, will sell its 2017 travel-around-the-world trip on April 25. HHtravel, Ctrip's high-end travel brand, will be responsible for the sales and operation of this product. Priced at 1.38 million yuan ($213,500) for each person, only 10 vacancies are available. It is the highest priced single travel product in the Chinese mainland. The 80-day travel package sold out in 13 seconds last year. Stretching from Jan 3 to March 23, the trip will cover 22 countries and regions, with total flight mileage reaching 63,223 kilometers -- 1.5 times the circumference of the equator. Taking off from Hong Kong, the trip will cover South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, Finland, Czech Republic, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and the two Poles. All the flights will be in business class. Cruise trips, luxury train rides, private helicopter flights and even a nuclear powered icebreaker trip will be included. Highly celebrated hotel brands, such as Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton, will be booked for accommodation. The trip also includes first-class restaurants, such as Longitude 131 at Ayers Rock in Australia and Hakkasan in London. When the Bard met his Chinese match Updated: 2016-04-08 08:19 By Wang Mingjie(China Daily Europe) 1616: Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu's China was coauthored by Tian Yuan Tan, Paul Edmondson, and Shih-pe Wang. China and the UK stage celebrations to mark the 400th anniversary of the deaths of two master playwrights China and the UK will honor their most famous playwrights, Tang Xianzu and William Shakespeare, with a series of events this year. The dramatists were contemporaries who lived thousands of miles apart, and both died in 1616. This has led numerous scholars to conduct comparative studies on their works, which remain hugely influential to this day. A scene of A Midsummer Night's DREAMING Under the Southern Bough portrays Chunyu Fen meeting the Princess in the ants' kingdom. Professor Zou Yuanjiang gives a talk on Tang's masterpiece The Peony Pavilion at University of Leeds. [Photos provided to China Daily] Shakespeare's plays are a mainstay of the British school curriculum, while Tang's best-known opera, The Peony Pavilion, continues to be performed worldwide. Both were "great men in the circle of world drama", according to Aoki Masaru, the Japanese scholar and Sinologist, who many credit as being the first to link the Bard with Tang in his 1943 book A History of Chinese Literary Thought. To mark the 400th anniversary of the writers' deaths, plays, seminars, book fairs and lectures will be held to celebrate their legacies in China and the United Kingdom. "Celebrations for Shakespeare and Tang will be the highlight of China-UK cultural exchanges in 2016," enthused Xiang Xiaowei, minister counselor for culture at the Chinese embassy in London. He added that they will play an essential role in promoting mutual understanding and trust between the two countries by deepening exchanges and cooperation in literature and drama. The celebrations will include a special stage production, A Midsummer Night's DREAMING Under the Southern Bough, which has been billed as "when Shakespeare met Tang". Aimed primarily at student audiences, the show is a mash-up of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Bard's comedy of magic and mismatched love, and Tang's A DREAMING Under the Southern Bough, an opera about a soldier's fantastical journey through a kingdom of ants. "Through art and performance, we can examine ourselves, our culture and our humanity," director Steve Ansell says. "And by examining the art and performance of another culture, we're able to dynamically articulate our similarities and our individualities." The play will be staged in Leeds, Edinburgh, and three cities in China from July to September, and is organized by the University of Leeds Staging China, its Business Confucius Institute, and the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. As the cast will mostly be made up of Western actors, the show will be a spoken word performance with musical accompaniment. "Spoken word presents an opportunity to break with convention while still being inspired by it, and create a new world for Tang's characters to inhabit," Ansell says. This year's London Book Fair will also feature a discussion on Shakespeare and Tang and their impact on drama, to be staged at Olympia London on April 12, organized by China Universal Press and Publication Co. In March, Zou Yuanjiang, a philosophy professor at the University of Wuhan and vice-president of the Tang Xianzu Research Society, was invited to talk on The Peony Pavilion at several British universities. Such tours "not only illuminate the work of a legendary Chinese writer to audiences in the UK, but also have a great impact" among young Chinese people, according to Li Ruru, a professor of Chinese theater studies at the University of Leeds, who helped organize Zou's visit. By comparing the literary greats, "we're raising awareness among UK scholars and readers, so that they look more carefully at what is out there in terms of Chinese classics", adds Tian Yuan Tan with the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, who coauthored the book 1616: Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu's China. Adam Strickson, a fellow in theater and writing at the University of Leeds, who studied the works of Tang and Shakespeare, says both "shared a love for mixing low life or the bawdy with the sense of a tortuous moral journey of self-discovery". They also use dense and layered poetry to go beyond the surface, he says, while the metaphor of the dream as a journey of confusion and enlightenment is central. "I have the sense both were involved in a religious quest for meaning, and that this revolves around an exploration of loss, grief and reconciliation in the family". The difference, he adds, is that the Bard's work represents people of all backgrounds and classes, whereas Tang's works seem to come from a more aristocratic and esoteric background. wangmingjie@mail.chinadailyuk.com Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) A playwright and litterateur of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), he was born in Linchuan, which is today in Jiangxi province. He served as an official in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. His major plays are collectively called Four Dreams, which includes The Peony Pavilion, The Purple Hairpin, The Handan Dream and A Dream Under the Southern Bough. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) The English poet and playwright is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. His works, including collaborations, consist of about 38 plays and 154 sonnets. His most famous works include Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale. A comparison of Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu from various scholars "They were both great playwrights; they extracted material from others' works and challenged conventions in drama." Zhao Jingshen (1902-1985), a Chinese novelist "Neither had the freedom to make up stories to reveal the nature of reality. Instead, they chose to borrow ancient legend to criticize the reality." Xu Shuofang (1923-2007), a scholar of Chinese classics "They lived in an age when England and China were both experiencing a boom in theatrical culture." Tian Yuan Tan, with the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies Highlights April 8-11 Cultural Festival and International Conference on Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare in Suichang, Zhejiang province April 20 Professor Martin Butler will give a talk on China on the culture of Shakespeare's England at Leeds University April 22 Dr. Catherine Swatek will discuss Peony Pavilion at Rhodes College, Memphis, USA April 23 Shakespeare's birthday; 400th anniversary celebrations will take place at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon April 23 Shakespeare's Schoolroom and Guildhall will officially open its doors in Stratford-upon-Avon July 27 Leeds Intercultural Theatre Festival will open at Leeds University and the play A Midsummer Night's DREAMING Under the Southern Bough will be performed Throughout August An exhibition about Tang Xianzu will be on display at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Sept 24-26 A Tang Xianzu-Shakespeare Festival and conference will be held in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province 'Midwife to the dying' in Sardinia Updated: 2016-04-08 08:21 By Chen Mengwei(China Daily Europe) Michela Murgia unveils a Chinese translation of her Italian novel on so-called mercy killing in the 1950s Chinese readers are getting a chance to know an Italian writer who is not among the traditional big names. Michela Murgia, 44, who was born in the Italian autonomous region of Sardinia, recently unveiled a Chinese translation of her award-winning novel Accabadora in Beijing. Michela Murgia, Italian author. Photos Provided to China Daily Murgia's novel spotlights an illegal yet revered profession, known as accabadora, in her hometown in the 1950s. The Sardinian term loosely means "midwife to the dying" - people who gave critically ill patients a quick end with familial consent, somewhat similar to what today is called euthanasia. The methods are different, though. Bonaria Urrai, the story's protagonist, does it with the help of a small bottle of anesthetic and a soft pillow. Back then, Murgia says, some did it with a hammer and others used cruder means. "Bonaria simply uses a pillow. What matters is not how they end it," Murgia says in Italian. "It is how to accompany a man to the end of his life. This is an endless debate in Italy." She spoke to China Daily with the help of an interpreter. The practice of accabadora was never legalized in Italy, and it has been discontinued. In Murgia's words, the idea behind the existence of an accabadora is that no one is born without another person's help, and no one should have to leave without someone's help. "Some people say, 'Oh, you're so ahead of your time in Sardinia. You had euthanasia so long ago.' I say, No. What the accabadora does is not euthanasia," Murgia says. "Life in Sardinia used to be very fragile in the olden days. ... We needed the accabadora for that reason," she says, adding that the region's economy was weak and medical care was underdeveloped. Having said that, in her novel, Bonaria, the female "mercykiller" never takes an old man's life if her principles aren't first satisfied. They are simple and clear: The patient has to be dying in agony, with absolutely no hope of recovery, and the family members, including the patient if conscious, must specifically ask for it. When a family of six invites Bonaria to "bring peace" to their old father, who had been in bed for months, they claim the old man had lost his voice and they are making a plea on his behalf. But when Bonaria asks to be left alone with the old man, he grabs her wrist and tells her hoarsely how his sons want to get rid of him. Bonaria storms out of the room and throws the most vicious curse she knows at the family. "You said he couldn't speak. For the monstrous lie you told me, your children, born and unborn, shall never die in peace," the novel has her as telling the sons. "Feed him (the old father), and if he starves, you shall never fall asleep in life." "Our education and society should aim to protect the weak," Murgia says. "If we cannot do that, we are going in the wrong direction." Following a Sardinian tradition, Murgia was given away to an adoptive family at age 18, as a fillus de anima, their "soul child". Interestingly, in her novel, the other main character, Maria Listru, is also the "soul child" of Bonaria. Murgia says her fiction is to some extent based on personal accounts of her relatives and friends. Though born in the 1970s, the writer set her story in the '50s because she grew up with her grandparents' tales and "mentally lived in the old times" of rural Sardinia. Despite being an atheist, the politically active novelist, a frequent speaker on women's rights, holds a balanced view on secular laws. "Italy is putting too much emphasis on efficiency, making standards accordingly," Murgia says, adding that laws should be made taking into consideration human factors such as faith. The novel won Murgia several awards in Italy, including the prestigious Premio Camxpiello. chenmengwei@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily European Weekly 04/08/2016 page20) Not from the usual perspective Updated: 2016-04-08 08:21 By Yang Yang(China Daily Europe) French writer Agnes Desarthe says that, as a woman, it is her responsibility to break men's hold over literature As part of this year's Francophone Festival in China, French writer Agnes Desarthe visited Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai recently to talk with readers. Two of her novels and four of her picture books have been translated into Chinese, including Five Photos of My Wife, A Secret of No Importance, Je Veux Etre Un Cheval (I want to become a horse), Les Freres Chats (Cat brothers) and Dingo Et Le Sens De La Vie (Dingo and the meaning of life). The author, 50, wrote in her early novels about death, massacres, aging and memories. She also created interesting female characters of a rich and delicate psychological mix in novels like Five Photos and A Secret of No Importance. Most of her books are for children. "When I was a little girl, I got on better with adults than with children. And now as a grownup, I get on very well with children," she says in an interview with China Daily. Desarthe recalls being asked why she also is interested in older people. "I said because they are like children. ... They watch. I am a watcher because a writer is more of a watcher than a listener." Desarthe's sympathy for people on the margins permeates her works for children. At a recent discussion with young Chinese readers at the Institut Francais de Chine in Beijing, Desarthe said that the first book she wrote was about a "girl penguin" who is ashamed of herself because she feels cold. "She lives among other penguins, but no one feels cold except her," she says. Desarthe's maternal grandfather was killed in Auschwitz during World War II. As a writer of Jewish origin, Desarthe takes the responsibility to draw people's attention to that part of history. "I speak about what I know. For many people in France, it's either mysterious or even worse - false. Lots of people would like to think it never happened," she says. "It's important to bring history to life. One of the ways is to fictionalize it, to make novels out of it and write stories about it, to draw people to something that they might either ignore or don't want to hear about, because they think it's too sad, too horrible." Telling children about violence in history through stories is probably a good idea because they are within the comfort of storytelling, according to Desarthe. Like many female writers, Desarthe does not like to be labeled a "female writer". Being a woman is a fact that you cannot and should not overlook, Desarthe says. "For centuries and centuries, men were the writers, mainly writing about men or women but from a male point of view. "I told myself, well, that's your job. Now that you are a writer. You should write about women from a feminine point of view or about men from a feminine point of view." Now, creating a female character for her novels is "like doing it from scratch" because in literary history most were created by men. "I feel politically drawn to (the responsibility). I should write about women, as a woman and for women", she says. In her last novel, Ce Coeur Changeant (A changing heart), she writes about the different stages in a woman's life. "I realized babies were absent from literature because it was written by men who didn't interact much with them, especially in the old times. Literature lacked this character," she says. yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn When the Bard met his Chinese match Updated: 2016-04-08 08:19 By Wang Mingjie(China Daily Europe) China and the UK stage celebrations to mark the 400th anniversary of the deaths of two master playwrights China and the UK will honor their most famous playwrights, Tang Xianzu and William Shakespeare, with a series of events this year. The dramatists were contemporaries who lived thousands of miles apart, and both died in 1616. This has led numerous scholars to conduct comparative studies on their works, which remain hugely influential to this day. 1616: Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu's China was coauthored by Tian Yuan Tan, Paul Edmondson, and Shih-pe Wang. A scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream Under the Southern Bough portrays Chunyu Fen meeting the Princess in the ants' kingdom. Professor Zou Yuanjiang gives a talk on Tang's masterpiece The Peony Pavilion at University of Leeds. Photos Provided to China Daily Shakespeare's plays are a mainstay of the British school curriculum, while Tang's best-known opera, The Peony Pavilion, continues to be performed worldwide. Both were "great men in the circle of world drama", according to Aoki Masaru, the Japanese scholar and Sinologist, who many credit as being the first to link the Bard with Tang in his 1943 book A History of Chinese Literary Thought. To mark the 400th anniversary of the writers' deaths, plays, seminars, book fairs and lectures will be held to celebrate their legacies in China and the United Kingdom. "Celebrations for Shakespeare and Tang will be the highlight of China-UK cultural exchanges in 2016," enthused Xiang Xiaowei, minister counselor for culture at the Chinese embassy in London. He added that they will play an essential role in promoting mutual understanding and trust between the two countries by deepening exchanges and cooperation in literature and drama. The celebrations will include a special stage production, A Midsummer Night's Dream Under the Southern Bough, which has been billed as "when Shakespeare met Tang". Aimed primarily at student audiences, the show is a mash-up of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Bard's comedy of magic and mismatched love, and Tang's A Dream Under the Southern Bough, an opera about a soldier's fantastical journey through a kingdom of ants. "Through art and performance, we can examine ourselves, our culture and our humanity," director Steve Ansell says. "And by examining the art and performance of another culture, we're able to dynamically articulate our similarities and our individualities." The play will be staged in Leeds, Edinburgh, and three cities in China from July to September, and is organized by the University of Leeds Staging China, its Business Confucius Institute, and the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. As the cast will mostly be made up of Western actors, the show will be a spoken word performance with musical accompaniment. "Spoken word presents an opportunity to break with convention while still being inspired by it, and create a new world for Tang's characters to inhabit," Ansell says. This year's London Book Fair will also feature a discussion on Shakespeare and Tang and their impact on drama, to be staged at Olympia London on April 12, organized by China Universal Press and Publication Co. In March, Zou Yuanjiang, a philosophy professor at the University of Wuhan and vice-president of the Tang Xianzu Research Society, was invited to talk on The Peony Pavilion at several British universities. Such tours "not only illuminate the work of a legendary Chinese writer to audiences in the UK, but also have a great impact" among young Chinese people, according to Li Ruru, a professor of Chinese theater studies at the University of Leeds, who helped organize Zou's visit. By comparing the literary greats, "we're raising awareness among UK scholars and readers, so that they look more carefully at what is out there in terms of Chinese classics", adds Tian Yuan Tan with the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, who coauthored the book 1616: Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu's China. Adam Strickson, a fellow in theater and writing at the University of Leeds, who studied the works of Tang and Shakespeare, says both "shared a love for mixing low life or the bawdy with the sense of a tortuous moral journey of self-discovery". They also use dense and layered poetry to go beyond the surface, he says, while the metaphor of the dream as a journey of confusion and enlightenment is central. "I have the sense both were involved in a religious quest for meaning, and that this revolves around an exploration of loss, grief and reconciliation in the family". The difference, he adds, is that the Bard's work represents people of all backgrounds and classes, whereas Tang's works seem to come from a more aristocratic and esoteric background. wangmingjie@mail.chinadailyuk.com Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) A playwright and litterateur of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), he was born in Linchuan, which is today in Jiangxi province. He served as an official in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. His major plays are collectively called Four Dreams, which includes The Peony Pavilion, The Purple Hairpin, The Handan Dream and A Dream Under the Southern Bough. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) The English poet and playwright is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. His works, including collaborations, consist of about 38 plays and 154 sonnets. His most famous works include Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale. A comparison of Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu from various scholars "They were both great playwrights; they extracted material from others' works and challenged conventions in drama." Zhao Jingshen (1902-1985), a Chinese novelist "Neither had the freedom to make up stories to reveal the nature of reality. Instead, they chose to borrow ancient legend to criticize the reality." Xu Shuofang (1923-2007), a scholar of Chinese classics "They lived in an age when England and China were both experiencing a boom in theatrical culture." Tian Yuan Tan, with the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies Highlights April 8-11 Cultural Festival and International Conference on Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare in Suichang, Zhejiang province April 20 Professor Martin Butler will give a talk on China on the culture of Shakespeare's England at Leeds University April 23 Shakespeare's birthday; 400th anniversary celebrations will take place at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon April 23 Shakespeare's Schoolroom and Guildhall will officially open its doors in Stratford-upon-Avon July 27 Leeds Intercultural Theatre Festival will open at Leeds University and the play A Midsummer Night's Dream Under the Southern Bough will be performed Throughout August An exhibition about Tang Xianzu will be on display at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Sept 24-26 A Tang Xianzu-Shakespeare Festival and conference will be held in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province (China Daily European Weekly 04/08/2016 page1) Senegal, surprises and a feast for the senses Updated: 2016-04-08 08:20 By Chris Peterson(China Daily Europe) Nothing comes anywhere close to the chaos of taxis in Dakar, but I have rarely met such friendly, eager people I don't think I knew what to expect. My youngest daughter had moved to Dakar, in Senegal, late last year, and was eager for my wife and I to fly out and spend Easter with her. My only experience of Africa was a couple of business trips to Nairobi 20 years ago, spent in splendid air-conditioned isolation either in an anonymous hotel room or a car going from one meeting to another. Dakar is something else. Leopold Sedar Senghor International Airport, named after the much-loved poet, philosopher and literary figure who was Senegal's first president after independence in 1960, gives you a taste of what is to come. Teeming crowds, dust everywhere, and apparent chaos, plus a rather exotic approach to queuing. "Which carousel will our luggage be at?" "Je suis desolee, je ne sais pas (I am so sorry, I don't know)." This from the baggage handler, said with a large smile. You couldn't get angry. Baggage finally retrieved, fingerprints taken on arrival by a gendarme, after an hour we found ourselves walking the gamut of people wanting to change money, carry our bags and offer us instant guided tours of Dakar - even though it was nearly midnight. Then, at the end of the open-air walkway, Mai-Anh and her partner Jamie waited for us. But I'll tell you one thing - I have been hassled and hustled at airports worldwide, but nowhere have those hassling and hustling been so polite. Seriously polite. And they take no for an answer. Imagine the formulaic politeness of the French language, imbued with a gentle African languor. Now for the reality check. I've learned to judge the efficiency of a city or country by its taxis, whether it's the metered correctness in Singapore, the white-gloved unformed Tokyo cabbies, the hugely well-informed black cab drivers in London, or the feigned indifference of Paris taxi drivers. Nothing comes anywhere close to taxis in Dakar. Meters? Forget it. You negotiate the each price before you get in. Change? Forget it. Just make sure you have lots of small notes. Luxury? Er, no. Air-conditioning is the windows wide open. The taxies are, like all public service vehicles in Dakar, a miracle of faith (inshallah) and an average of 25 years of abused French or Japanese automobile technology. Plus, the most bizarre bodywork. It's as if someone had taken a hammer, beaten every square centimeter of bodywork, and then painted it yellow and black - with a handheld brush. So, faced with that, we decided to hire a robust 4x4, which was one of the smartest things we did, considering the state of the roads, which, away from the main coastal road, are largely dirt tracks. But despite all the dust and the decay, we had a ball. I have rarely met such friendly, eager people, all keen to share their lives and love of Senegal. Time after time, we were asked what we thought of the country, and the people. Time after time, we responded positively. Of course, there are downsides. The sight of small boys begging for food and money is dreadful, the more so when you learn they are sent there by their parents. Known as talibei, the Arabic word for pupil, there are some 50,000 of them. Their parents, some from neighboring countries, sent them to Dakar under the care of a marabout, or spiritual guide, whose job is to teach them the Koran and Arabic. All too often they are sent onto the streets to get food and money. Some in Senegal say that the system, when applied properly, "strengthens you as a person"; I quote one of my daughter's neighbors, a charming man in his 30s, who himself was a talibei. He's now studying business administration. But all too often it is abused, and the government is working with various NGOs and charities to address the situation. Where, I hear you ask, is the link to China? Well, I spotted a group of friends from Shanghai on their first visit, and by the wreckage on their table, much seafood and beer had been the order of the day. You could say they were enjoying themselves. China itself re-established full diplomatic relations with Senegal in 2005, and there are now at least 26 official Chinese development projects underway, ranging from construction of a government e-network, upgrading of the country's power supply network, to a revival of the capital's bus transport network - and boy, do they need it. Meanwhile, I'm gearing up for my debut visit to Beijing, which I suspect is much more high-tech than Dakar - and with smarter taxis and much better buses. Watch this space. The author is managing editor of China Daily European Edition, based in London. Contact the writer at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com (China Daily European Weekly 04/08/2016 page11) 'Asymmetric harmony' good for Sino-US ties Updated: 2016-04-08 08:20 By Robert Lawrence Kuhn(China Daily Europe) Vital that each side comes to appreciate the other side's core interests, not just what they are, but also how they have come to be Chinese President Xi Jinping has met again with US President Barack Obama, and pundits the world over were eager to offer suggestions and proposals to improve Sino-US relations. This is no altruism: it's not a matter of hoping to help China and the US get along; rather, everyone recognizes that their relations affect the stability and prosperity of the whole world. Though good-willed and appreciated, much of the advice - whether prescriptions or proscriptions - is repetitive, even soporiferous. Maybe that's a good thing - because predictability, in sensitive diplomacy as in financial markets, is a good thing. But maybe there's better advice. The Xi-Obama meeting took place during the fourth Nuclear Security Summit, which was held in Washington on March 31 and April 1. While the aim of the summit was critical - preventing nuclear terrorism - attention was focused on the sidelines where the two leaders huddled. The last time the two leaders met, in September, also in Washington, the summit went surprisingly well - considering the low expectations going in, what with cybersecurity and maritime disputes dominating the agenda. At the time, wise counsel was to focus on areas that unite us, not divide us, so the list stressed climate change, economic cooperation, fighting terrorism and organized crime, preventing pandemics, promoting alternative energy and green technologies, stopping regional wars, and the like. While nothing in Sino-US relations is easy, these areas of common concerns are easier to handle - but are here not my focus. I prefer to tackle the thorny, contentious issues. How can the sides show mutual respect without compromising their core interests? And how can they accommodate each other without lapsing into appeasement? Honesty is a place to start, even if not so politically correct. Here's what some on each side, suspicious of the other, really think. In China, some say that the US seeks to "contain China" and thwart its historic rise. They see the US encircling China by alliances, explicit or implicit, with Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and India; manipulating Taiwan to keep the motherland divided; coercing China to open its markets in order to control its industries and exploit consumers; restricting Chinese companies' operations and mergers and acquisitions in the US; hacking China's computers and sending spy planes to patrol China's shores; fomenting "extremism, separatism and terrorism" in the Tibet and Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous regions; and injecting Western values to overwhelm Chinese values, eroding China's independence and undermining its sovereignty. In the US, some say that China is a looming political and military challenger, an economic superpower that plays by its own rules and whose opaque intentions are intimidating its neighbors; China acts solely in its own interests, critics claim, even to the detriment of the international order; China is a mercantile predator that uses government power to promote commercial interests, boosting exports and stealing jobs, and allows nefarious hacking and industrial theft. Moreover, the government limits human rights to maintain control, and China's mounting military power, especially its modernizing blue-water navy, betrays expansionist ambitions. How to deal with such sweeping, invidious suspicions? The normal way is for leaders to emphasize commonalities and manage differences, which seems to work well at first, but then often seems to backslide. There is no magic solution. While progress is best made incrementally, not precipitously, I like to push for fresh perspectives. I've been thinking about how to characterize differences between China and the US, and a descriptive term I've been playing with is "asymmetric". Because the core interests of China and the US are not the same - which is fortunate - a zero-sum game is not inevitable. We hear about "asymmetric warfare". How about "asymmetric peacefare"! Contrast US-China disputes with, say, the struggle between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to control Poland. That was a "symmetric dispute" in that each side wanted the same thing, turning it into a classic zero-sum game and becoming one of the factors that led to World War II. This is no such symmetric dispute between China and the US, and therein lies the potential for progress. So what are the kinds of asymmetric disputes and how can they be handled? There is an obvious political asymmetry. Obama is in his last year in office and seeks, in his opinion, what's best for the US, without having to worry about the next election. Xi has yet many years in office and seeks, in his opinion, what's best for China - what it will take to transform his country through economic transition, reform and the rule of law. More important, though, is the China-US asymmetry in core interests. China would like the US to understand and respect its three core interests: China's political system, which China's leaders believe serves the best interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people; China's development as the country's highest priority, which leads naturally to the need for social stability, especially during a time of economic complexities when deep and sensitive reforms are essential; and China's sovereignty over specific land and maritime territories, which reflect both historic realities and national pride. The US would like China to understand and respect its three core interests (with respect to China): the sanctity of the international order and the standards of international law; accepted norms of behavior in economics and commercial activities; and respect for human rights and various freedoms. It is vital that each side comes to appreciate the other side's core interests, not just what they are, but also how they have come to be. Each side should come to discern the ways of thinking that led to the specific development of each core interest. In this manner, by discerning different "ways of thinking", one acquires deeper understanding and can make more nuanced and effective judgments. I believe that these asymmetric core interests should not conflict. My hope is for harmony, which is why my call is for "asymmetric harmony" to help facilitate relations. Perhaps recognizing the reality of the asymmetry and the need for the harmony can transform thinking. The author is a public intellectual, political and economics commentator, and international corporate strategist. He is the host of Closer To China with R.L. Kuhn on CCTV News. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily. (China Daily European Weekly 04/08/2016 page10) Aqueous solution Updated: 2016-04-08 08:21 By Liu Xiangrui(China Daily Europe) A Swiss water expert's long collaboration with his Chinese counterparts yields results Andreas Goetz, a Swiss expert on water management, considers the work he has done in China over the past decade a great success. "We first made a rope of cooperation. Now, it has developed into a net," the 68-year-old says of the roles he and Chen Lei, China's water resources minister, have played in various projects. Andreas Goetz, an expert in water management. Liu Xiangrui / China Daily The two men first met in 2001, when Goetz was deputy director of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Over the years, Switzerland has accumulated lots of experience in water management and a great deal of data. During their interactions, the two experts found that both countries were pursuing similar goals in water management, and the first joint project began in 2002 after news of a Yangtze River flood drew Goetz's attention. He wrote an e-mail to Chen, asking if Swiss experts could do anything to help. When Chen replied positively, Goetz's organization sent a team to assist China in building a hydrological forecast and warning system in the Yangtze basin. The project, which used technologies developed in Switzerland, proved worthwhile. The next year, when Chen invited Goetz to inspect the project, they decided to collaborate long term. Since then, workshops on technical issues related to water for Chinese and Swiss officials and experts have been held every two years, alternating between the countries. After a successful workshop in 2008, the two sides signed a Sino-Swiss cooperation agreement that enables not only high-level exchanges, but also the joint undertaking of projects. "The development of the water sector cannot be realized in a sustainable way without the support and cooperation of the international community," Goetz says. "Sino-Swiss cooperation (in this field) is an excellent example of extremely successful collaboration between two countries." After the agreement, joint projects that cover key areas - integrated water management, and a warning system for glacier lake outburst floods, glacier melting and dam safety - were established. More recently, the two sides have initiated another joint project in the Jinsha River Basin in Southwest China's Yunnan province, a mountainous region with great potential for economic development, but one that faces the challenges of both spatial development and climate change. In that way, Jinsha has a lot in common with Switzerland, Goetz says. The project's long-term goals include developing an integrated water management system that is effective in protecting life and the environment, contributing to the continued development of the local economy and taking into account the effects of climate change. Goetz says climate change is melting glaciers, which has become a significant challenge the world over, and advanced technologies are needed to deal with the problem. "Working together makes things much easier. Our scientists can learn new things in this project. What we'd like to do is to make it a common platform and benefit all regions with the knowledge we learn here," he says of the Jinsha project. After working with Chinese officials and experts for years, Goetz has gained some insights into the country's water sector, both in terms of achievements and challenges. He says forming an integrated water management system, especially in a large country like China where different sectors are involved, isn't easy. "Everyone thinks he is at the center of the field. That's not true. If you have enough water for agriculture, maybe you won't have enough for the population or for industry. You have to work together. And that is the most difficult part." Switzerland took decades to build an integrated water management system, he says. "It will also take China a long time to do so, but the pressure is much higher now because of the fast development." Goetz and Chen have developed a close friendship in addition to maintaining professional exchanges over the years. He says the minister has become acquainted with all of Goetz's family members and even remembered to send flowers when he and his wife celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary a few years ago. "We think in similar ways. It takes you some time to understand each other and speak the same language," says Goetz, who believes that their friendship has facilitated the cooperation. "Friendship ... fosters mutual trust and was one of the most important elements for our successful cooperation." Goetz received the Friendship Award in 2012 from the Chinese government. The annual award is the highest honor for foreigners who have made significant contributions to China's social and economic development. Now, as a senior consultant for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Goetz continues to support Sino-Swiss projects in water management and climate change. He has visited China more than any other foreign country, while his work has taken him to remote places in Yunnan and the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Many officials with the Ministry of Water Resources recognize his name. Goetz is glad his family is connected to China, too. His daughter has been working in Shanghai for more than five years. liuxiangrui@chinadaily.com.cn Andreas Goetz (fourth from right) joins water experts on a visit to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in Lijiang, Yunnan province, in 2013. Photo Provided to China Daily (China Daily European Weekly 04/08/2016 page21) Skoda to rev up China sales Updated: 2016-04-08 08:22 By Li Fusheng(China Daily Europe) Chinese and German automakers will invest heavily to boost Czech brand's offerings in Chinese markets SAIC Volkswagen will spend about 2 billion euros ($2.27 billion) over the next five years to boost Skoda's offerings in China, the biggest single investment the Czech brand has received since its entry into the Chinese market in 2007. The investment is detailed in an agreement signed by Volkswagen AG, China's SAIC Motor Corp Ltd and Skoda Auto AS in the presence of President Xi Jinping and his Czech counterpart, Milos Zeman, on March 30 in Prague. A salesman helps a customer with a Volkswagen Skoda at a shopping mall in Kunming, Yunnan province. Reuters Founded in 1895, Skoda became a wholly owned subsidiary of Volkswagen in 1991. The three parties also agreed that Skoda would assume an equity position in SAIC Volkswagen, but this is subject to approval by the Chinese authorities. "The equity interest in the company is the basis for the independent branding of Skoda cars and consequently the brand's profiled staging in China," says Skoda CEO Bernhard Maier. China has grown into Skoda's largest market worldwide. Its China sales reached 281,700 vehicles last year, accounting for more than one-fourth of its global sales in the year. "We owe this success to our attractive model range and the very constructive and friendly cooperation with our longstanding Chinese partner SAIC Volkswagen," Maier says. He adds that the investment will enable Skoda to rapidly expand its offerings to include forward-looking vehicle concepts and modern technology. "Our aim is to double deliveries in China by 2020." Zhang Zhiyong, an auto analyst in Beijing, says the investment is important to Skoda as new models will certainly boost its sales and brand recognition in the Chinese market. The investment is also intended to cover pioneering electric concept cars, connectivity and digitalized individual mobility, according to Jochem Heizmann, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group China, who says it is a "strong signal" regarding the future research and development of new vehicle concepts and environmentally friendly technologies in China. Skoda is preparing a comprehensive SUV campaign for the Chinese market, as SUVs have been the fastest-growing segment in the Chinese market. It will show concept car Vision S in China for the first time at the Beijing Auto Show from April 25 to May 4, offering a glimpse of the large SUV that is expected to be launched in China in the first half of next year. Another body variant of Skoda's large SUV is already in development. The brand also intends to bring out a crossover utility vehicle for Chinese consumers. Skoda launched its first China-made model, Octavia, in 2007. It now has six different model series on the Chinese market, from the small Fabia through to the mid-sized Superb. lifusheng@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily European Weekly 04/08/2016 page28) Germany key to Chinese investment Updated: 2016-04-08 08:22 By Wang Mingjie(China Daily Europe) Nation's 'hidden champions' make its smaller companies highly attractive acquisition targets Germany's ranks of small and medium-sized enterprises, especially so-called hidden champions, have been key to drawing more Chinese investment, and the trend shows no signs of abating, according to Hermann Simon, one of the country's most influential business thinkers. Hidden champions are often market leaders, either worldwide or within the continent they are based in, with revenues below 5 billion euros ($5.55 billion). Simon, chairman of Simon-Kucher & Partners, a global consultancy firm founded in Bonn, says Chinese investors, unlike some US firms, see acquisitions in Germany as long-term strategic investments. He says most German businesses are happy with Chinese buyers. An Ernst & Young report in February shows Germany was the most attractive destination in Europe for Chinese investment last year, with 36 acquisitions. The United Kingdom came second with 34 and France third with 20. Simon, 69, believes this trend will continue thanks to Germany's many hidden champions, a term he coined to describe relatively unknown SMEs that are the backbone of a nation's economy and have for many years sustained Germany's leading position in exports. "We have at least 10,000 SMEs that are potential takeover targets for Chinese companies," he says, adding that of the 3,000 or so hidden champions worldwide today, "about 1,300 are from Germany". Many German SMEs are leading niche markets globally and are valued below several billion euros, he says, which makes them natural targets as the majority of Chinese acquisitions in Europe are limited in size, and Chinese industrial companies have a strong sense of affinity or preference for German SMEs. China is one of few nations with so many entrepreneurs that understand the concept of hidden champions, Simon says. One prominent example he cites is a Chinese chemical products owner whom he met during a recent visit to Shandong province. To focus on his core business, the Chinese entrepreneur gave up a couple of businesses and as a result is now the world leader in three chemical compounds. On another occasion, when Simon was giving a presentation in Shanghai, he noticed the hidden champions concept was met with great interest. "The ones that pursue this successfully will be role models for the next generation," he says. There is a largely positive attitude in German business circles toward Chinese investors, according to Simon, who says that, unlike some US companies that acquired European enterprises and focused on maximizing short-term gains before looking to offload them again, Chinese buyers tend to see such purchases as strategic investments. "Having gained a foothold in Germany and in international markets, they tend to focus on longer-term prospects and on creating a group of Chinese and German companies that are successful in global markets in the long term," he says. The Chinese investment in Germany is less aggressive compared with the Americans, he says, adding that Chinese buyers in Germany behave in a moderate and reasonable way. This means an SME is more likely to retain its identity after a takeover, he adds. Simon acknowledges there is concern in Germany about more Chinese investment pouring into the country, but says: "When General Motors took over Opel in 1929, or Ford built a huge automobile plant in Cologne in 1930, people said we would be dominated and conquered by the Americans, and that we would be a colony of the US. But it turned out to be nonsense. The same is now true for Chinese acquisitions." He believes Chinese investment can bring advantages for both sides and refutes the notion that Chinese companies are simply trying to extract know-how from Germany to transfer to China. "To a large degree, that's impossible because a very large part of the knowledge resides in the employees. I meet German companies all the time and they tell me their know-how is not in the patterns, not in the written or digital documentation, but it is in the skills of their employees, not only the engineers and scientists, but also the workers." In addition, he says, Chinese investment means German SMEs can gain a "stronger capital base" and access to the Chinese market. Simon, who in an online poll by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper was named the second-most influential management thinker in German-speaking countries, says German SMEs are in general becoming more open due to internationalization. "They're increasingly taking on foreign managers, non-Germans and nonfamily members, and the positive experiences foster an attitude of openness." Although he believes Germany's hidden champions can be excellent role models for Chinese companies, Simon says most would still prefer to avoid a takeover if possible. "There is a sufficiently high number that need capital or have succession problems, or are under increasing pressure from overseas companies - in China, for instance. It's not solely voluntarily that they are saying 'We are open now'. Often they need to take on external investors." wangmingjie@mail.chinadailyuk.com What makes a company a hidden champion They go for growth and are driven by market leadership. They focus on narrow markets and are deep rather than broad. They tend to do things themselves and refrain from outsourcing core competencies. They combine specialties in products and know-how with global sales and marketing, and serve the target markets through subsidies. They are massive innovators, and the effectiveness of their R&D beats that of large companies by a factor of five. Their innovation processes are fundamentally driven by the market and technology. Their greatest strength is their closeness to customers, while their strategies are value oriented, not price oriented. ( China Daily European Weekly 04/08/2016 page32) Treaty at top of EU agenda Updated: 2016-04-08 08:20 By Su Qiang and Chen Yingqun(China Daily Europe) China's transformation can be a win for both sides, official says Closing in on a bilateral investment treaty with China is at the top of the agenda for the EU this year, according to the chairman of the European Parliament delegation for relations with China. Negotiators for both sides said they reached clear conclusions on the ambitions and scope of the agreement after a ninth round of talks in Beijing this year. The first round was in November 2013. Jo Leinen (second from right), chairman of the European Parliament delegation for relations with China and his wife (second from left); Alojz Peterle (left), a member of the parliament; and Frank Schwalba-Hoth, co-founder of German Green Party, meet with China Daily senior edtiors at the newspaper's headquarters in Beijing on March 30. Zhu Xingxin / China Daily Beyond the treaty, China and the European Union "have a large portfolio (of joint tasks) working toward climate protection, energy transition, and to fight global terrorism", Jo Leinen says in an exclusive interview in Beijing. He also attened the World Green Design Forum in Tianjin. China's economic transformation can create a win-win situation for both sides, he says, adding that once the treaty is signed talks can begin on a free trade agreement. He says the so-called Juncker Plan, a 315 billion euro ($358 billion) investment plan to stimulate the European economy, will boost infrastructure and technology, making it easier for countries like China to invest. He also welcomed China's efforts to restructure industries with overcapacity, such as steel and cement, especially in the face of recent protests by European steel workers. "It's good that the Chinese government is restructuring and giving new jobs to people who have been working in many of those companies. This is finding a new balance." He adds that the protests have not solely been aimed at China, but also at other industries and countries. Globally, there is an overcapacity in steel, and the European industry may also need to restructure, he suggests. On another major talking point in Europe, the United Kingdom's potential exit from the EU, he says such a move would be a mistake. "This is the 21st century. Britain is no longer an empire but a little island in the Atlantic. Leaving the EU would leave Britain weaker. It would lose influence on the continent and worldwide." He adds that the EU should look to integrate more rather than disconnect. Contact the writers through chenyingqun@chinadaily.com.cn So good it can kill Updated: 2016-04-08 08:21 By Pauline D. Loh(China Daily Europe) Editor's note: To understand China you have to sit down to eat. Food is the adhesive that holds the Chinese social fabric together. In the face of increasing globalization, food is also one of the last strong visages of community and culture. As a young student in the United Kingdom, I ate fish often. But it was always disguised, covered in crispy batter or appearing as neat, geometrically perfect pieces of breaded "fish fingers". All the most succulent bits were missing. Where was the head? Where was the tail? Where were the tender, fatty belly bits that my grandfather always reserved for me? Spring is the best season to eat fish, as most fish are invigorated by the growing warmth, and fattening up for the most important ritual in their lives - mating. Provided to China Daily That was the first time culinary culture shock set in. Chinese almost everywhere eat the whole fish, wasting nothing. A table-sized fish would be steamed or cooked whole and served at the table. The meal is only complete when the skeleton is picked totally clean. A bigger fish may be cut up and braised or cooked in soup, bones included. Fish may be filleted and sliced thinly to be used in stir-fries, but the head and bones are always reserved, to be used in a rich fish stock. The fish stock is a culinary lesson in itself. The best broth is made by frying the bones with aromatics such as ginger and onions. Then, boiling water is added to the pan and kept on a rolling boil until a milky-white, fragrant stock emerges. But the real art of eating fish is knowing when to eat it. Spring is when most fish are invigorated by the growing warmth, and fattening up for the most important ritual in their lives - mating. From the thawing lakes and rivers in the north to the rich river deltas along the eastern seaboard, the waters are coming alive with fat fish. These may include fishes that are seldom eaten in other seasons such as the knife fish of the Huangpu River and the more widely distributed puffer fish. Puffer fish, known as fugu in Japan, is called hetun in China. This translates literally to "river hog", a term that references both its rotundity and its epicurean desirability. In Yangzhou especially, the usually measured enthusiasm of the city's scholarly gourmets rises to fever pitch. The best puffer fish are produced around the region. Scholars and poets have paid tribute to the puffer fish for as long as they could hold a brush, including the famous Song Dynasty (960-1279) poet Su Dongpo, known for his love of good food as much as for his literary works. There was a story that once related how Su sat back in his chair after a meal of hetun, only to lean forward again to pick up another delicious morsel. "This is to die for," he reputedly said. And it's true. The puffer fish needs special skill to prepare because its blood, ovaries, liver and intestines are so poisonous they can kill. According to a senior colleague whose wife's grandfather was a certified puffer fish chef in Yangzhou, the preparation takes much skill. These days, trained chefs must display proper certificates and in time-honored tradition must personally appear before the gathered diners and eat the first piece of the fish to prove credibility and skill. Yangzhou men love this risky delicacy so much that they are known as its "cousins". According to another young Yangzhou gourmet, the fish can be cooked in a white stock or red-braised with slightly fermented hard bean curd. Sometimes, tender alfalfa sprouts are added. Both colleagues agree that puffer fish skin is "good for the belly" in that the little bristles on the skin can do an internal cleaning job. Nowadays, most puffer fish are farmed to satisfy growing demand and their toxic properties significantly reduced and controlled. My family, as southerners, have always eaten carp in spring. The Cantonese carp is as fat as it is long during this season, with its belly hugely distended by roe and milt. Our favorite way was to braise it with plenty of sliced ginger and the first fresh green onions sprouting after the winter cold. My grandmother first would fry the whole fish, scales and all, until it was crispy and golden brown. According to her, the scales had a layer of fat underneath that would keep the flesh tender and moist. The entire fish would then be placed on its bed of aromatics and gently braised until cooked. I can still taste the moment when the clay pot cover was lifted and fragrance of fresh carp filled the room. The highlight was always when grandfather broke open the fish belly and lifted out the first spoonful of golden roe. Sometimes the carp was a boy. In that case, its belly would be filled with smooth, silky, snow-white milt. This was a rare delicacy. Now that I live in Beijing, the carp is one of the few freshwater fishes available in the local markets. The northern variety, though, seems longer and leaner, and I have yet to see either roe or milt. My husband tells me that the Yellow River is famous for its huge carp and that the region has special carp banquets. I look forward to my first taste of Yellow River carp, but my palate loyalty probably always will stay with the short, fat Pearl River Delta carp of my childhood. Curiously enough, my spouse and I have chosen to retire in Yunnan province, where carp is another spring specialty. Yunnan's tribal minorities cultivate rice in terraces cut out of the hills. In spring, when the rice plants flower, the carp in the flooded rice terraces feast on the fallen blossoms and grow fat. That is when they are harvested and processed. The fresh carp is halved lengthwise and marinated with mountain peppers, wild ginger, chilies and regional herbs. They are then salted and packed into specially made wooden casks or clay urns. This ensures a year's supply of fish. paulined@chinadaily.com.cn Air New Zealand says it will not resume flights to Vanuatu until the runway of the Pacific nation's international airport is properly fixed (AFP Photo/Naashon Zalk) (AFP/File) Air New Zealand said Friday it would not resume flights to Vanuatu until the runway of the Pacific nation's international airport is properly fixed. The Kiwi flag carrier, along with Virgin Australia, suspended services to Port Vila in January, citing safety concerns over the deteriorating runway at Bauerfield International Airport. Qantas also suspended a code-share agreement with Air Vanuatu over the issue. It is a major economic blow for the impoverished nation, which is still rebuilding after Cyclone Pam last year and relies heavily on tourism. The government has commenced interim repairs but Air New Zealand said they were not good enough. "The one-year lifespan of these repairs does not provide sufficient operational certainty to build a sustainable service on," it said in a statement. The airline said it had written to Vanuatu's Civil Aviation Authority outlining the conditions for its return. "Air New Zealand would only consider resuming services once a permanent solution for the runway at Bauerfield airfield has been fully funded, designed to a satisfactory standard and contracted to a competent contractor," it said. The Australia-based foreign policy think-tank the Lowy Institute said in a report last month that tourism accounted for 40-65 percent of Vanuatu's economic activity. It said the runway had needed repairs for years but Vanuatu's notorious political instability hampered efforts, with plans constantly changing as governments came and went. Air New Zealand said it was hopeful a World Bank building programme would result in proper repairs and a resumption of services. Qantas said its code-share with Air Vanuatu remained suspended while Virgin Australia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bauerfield airport advertises daily flights by Air Vanuatu as well as less frequent services by Fiji Airways, New Caledonia's Aircalin and Papua New Guinea's Air Niugini. Approval for Nearly 1,000,000 Square Feet of Medical Cannabis Cultivation Facilities Located 47 Miles from Boston DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / April 8, 2016 / AmeriCann, Inc. (ACAN), a company that designs and develops advanced medical cannabis facilities, has released final plans for its Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center (MMCC) development in Freetown, Massachusetts. Please click this link to view the MMCC rendering: http://americann.co/projects/mass-medical-cannabis-center/ The MMCC design is one of the largest and most technologically advanced cannabis cultivation facilities in the nation. The nearly 1,000,000 square foot project will consist of multiple planned phases for tenants in the Massachusetts medical marijuana market. The first phase of the project, in Building A, consists of 130,000 sq. ft. of cultivation and processing infrastructure, which can be expanded to approximately 600,000 sq. ft, based on patient demand. Through AmeriCann's Preferred Partner Program, the MMCC facility will be leased exclusively to companies that have received a provisional or final registration to cultivate, process, and sell medical cannabis by the Department of Public Health. "We believe the MMCC project will create a center of excellence and set a new standard for the entire cannabis industry for quality control, efficiency, and sustainability," stated Ben Barton, CFO and Founder of AmeriCann. "Utilizing advanced greenhouse technology for cultivation provides our partners with the ability to produce superior sun grown medicine with far less energy and a reduced environmental impact." MMCC is the first planned and approved greenhouse project in the Massachusetts medical marijuana market. The facility has been designed utilizing AmeriCann's proprietary system known as "Cannopy." AmeriCann has drawn on its team's extensive experience in traditional horticulture, lean manufacturing, medical research, facility construction, regulatory compliance, security, cannabis cultivation and genetics, extraction techniques, and infused product development. Story continues The company plans to utilize the Cannopy system in the building of similar facilities in additional states and is actively seeking suitable locations for expansion. When fully developed, MMCC is projected to create over 300 jobs with an annual projected payroll of over $14 million to the local community. AmeriCann has been in discussions with Freetown officials for over a year and the town has provided strong support for MMCC. The Freetown planning board gave unanimous approval to the development plans in a public forum on December 8, 2015. Planning Board Chairman, Kevin Desmarais, closed the meeting by saying, "This has been one of the better public processes with which I've been involved. I'd like to thank the applicant [AmeriCann] for being such a professional outfit." The legal cannabis industry has experienced dramatic growth throughout the nation in recent years. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of medical cannabis and as many as ten additional states are expected to regulate cannabis by ballot initiative or legislatively during 2016. The Massachusetts Medical Use of Marijuana Program, which was approved by voters in 2012 by a wide margin, continues to be one of the highest regarded markets by industry experts even with the first dispensaries having only recently opened. A ballot initiative to allow for full marijuana legalization has received the necessary signatures and is expected to be on the November 2016 ballot for Massachusetts voters. "The state [Massachusetts] could become one of the biggest regulated cannabis markets in the country; bigger than Colorado and Washington State," according to Marijuana Business Daily. The Boston Globe recently reported the regulated cannabis market in Massachusetts may exceed $1,000,000,000 by 2020. AmeriCann's Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center Rendering: About AmeriCann AmeriCann, Inc., with offices in Denver, CO and Boston, MA, designs, develops, and owns advanced medical cannabis facilities to produce the best possible medical cannabis in the most efficient manner utilizing advanced, sustainable practices. The Company has over 1,000,000 square feet of facilities in development. AmeriCann does not cultivate, process, or distribute cannabis, but partners with local businesses to serve patients in their communities. More information about the Company is available at: http://americann.co Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "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 (the "Exchange Act") (which Sections were adopted as part of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). Statements preceded by, followed by or that otherwise include the words "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "prospects," "outlook," and similar words or expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would," "may," and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any anticipated results, performance or achievements. The Company disclaims any intention to, and undertakes no obligation to, revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, a future event, or otherwise. For additional risks and uncertainties that could impact the Company's forward-looking statements, please see the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2015, including but not limited to the discussion under "Risk Factors" therein, which the Company has filed with the SEC and which may be viewed at: http://www.sec.gov Contact Information: Corporate: AmeriCann, Inc. 3200 Brighton Blvd. Unit 114 Denver, CO 80216 (303) 862-9000 info@americann.co www.americann.co Investors: Hayden IR hart@haydenir.com (917) 658-7878 SOURCE: AmeriCann, Inc. By Maximiliano Rizzi and Sarah Marsh BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine President Mauricio Macri said on Thursday he had nothing to hide regarding his links with an offshore company revealed by the "Panama Papers," after a federal prosecutor called for an investigation. Macri is among scores of politicians and business figures internationally named in documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies. The son of an Italian-born business tycoon, Macri has said he was not legally obliged to declare his connection with the offshore company named in the "Panama Papers" as he never had a stake in it. The president said he was simply director of the Bahamas-based company, Fleg Trading Ltd., now closed, which was created by his father to make investments in Brazil. Critics say he owes a more thorough explanation of this and his alleged connection with another offshore company, Kagemusha SA, registered in Panama, given that such firms are often used to launder money and evade taxes. "I have acted in accordance with the law and have nothing to hide," Macri said in a televised news conference. He said he would on Friday ask a court to certify his declaration of assets in order to clear up any doubts. Macri also said he would put all his assets in a blind trust while president, a measure designed to prevent conflict of interest and generate transparency in the administration of his business interests. State prosecutor Federico Delgado asked the judiciary earlier on Thursday to investigate if Macri's failure to declare his connection with the offshore company meant he had "maliciously failed to complete his tax declaration", a crime which carries a sentence of 15 days to two years. The case was assigned to Judge Sebastian Casanello, who must now decide if there is sufficient evidence to open a probe. Macri's appearance in the Panama Papers and the way his administration has handled the matter has cast some doubts over his 2015 campaign pledge to fight corruption. Story continues The head of the Argentine anti-corruption office, Laura Alonso, a member of Macri's party, swiftly defended Macri after the leak emerged, saying that creating a company in a tax haven was not a crime. Opposition lawmakers called for her resignation on grounds her job was to root out corruption, not defend the president. (Additional reporting by Nicolas Misculin; Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Andrew Hay) An employee sits at a Bharti Airtel public phone booth installed at the airport in New Delhi October 23, 2012. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash/Files NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian telecommunications giant Bharti Airtel Ltd said on Friday it had agreed to pay Aircel 35 billion rupees ($526 million) for radio frequencies in eight service areas, to make its 4G mobile broadband services available across India. Bharti, India's largest mobile phone operator, will acquire the rights to use spectrum in the 20 Mhz 2300 band from Aircel, the company said in a statement to the Indian stock exchange. Last month Bharti agreed to pay 44.28 billion rupees to Videocon Telecommunications for more mobile spectrum. Booming sales of smartphones in India are encouraging telecom operators to expand their infrastructure spending to increase their 3G and 4G mobile broadband services. India has over 1 billion subscribers to mobile voice telephony services but only a third of those currently use mobile Internet services. ($1 = 66.5523 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Keith Weir) bill clinton Former President Bill Clinton said that he "almost" apologized for clashing with Black Lives Matter protesters on Thursday in Philadelphia, he recalled during a campaign event the next day. "I like and believe in protests," Clinton told a crowd on Friday in Erie, Pennsylvania, according to The Guardian's Sabrina Siddiqui. "But I never thought I should drown anybody else out. And I confess maybe it's just a sign of old age but it bothers me now when that happens." "I almost want to apologize for it," he added. "But I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country." Clinton became enraged after a group of Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted him multiple times at a Thursday rally for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner. He offered a particularly passionate defense of his tough-on-crime approach during the 1990s. Both Clintons have softened some of their stances on police issues. "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," Clinton said on Thursday. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens she didn't. She didn't!" "You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter," he added. "Tell the truth!" On Friday, Clinton said that he "realized" he and the protesters were talking past each other instead of engaging in a dialogue. "We've got to stop that in this country," he said. "We've got to listen to each other again." NOW WATCH: Watch Bill Clintons heated exchange with Black Lives Matter protesters More From Business Insider BEIJING (Reuters) - Companies from China's violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang signed deals worth about $2 billion with Pakistan this week during a visit to Pakistan by Xinjiang's top official, who sought to cement ties with an important security partner. Pakistan last year agreed energy and infrastructure projects worth $46 billion with China to set up a so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in a boost to Pakistan's crumbling infrastructure and energy sector. In return, China will get a free trade zone in Pakistan's Gwadar port and access to the Arabian Sea. New Pakistani roads will open up routes for Chinese goods into Europe and the Middle East from landlocked Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan. During a four-day visit to Pakistan, Xinjiang's Communist Party chief Zhang Chunxian met Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, visited Islamabad, Karachi and Gwadar, the official Xinjiang Daily said on Friday. "China and Pakistan have a deep friendship, are good neighbours, friends, brothers and partners," the newspaper cited Zhang as saying. "On this trip, I have deeply felt this friendship and the atmosphere surrounding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor." The $2 billion in agreements covered infrastructure, solar power and logistics, among other projects, signed by companies from Xinjiang with their Pakistan counterparts, the newspaper said, without giving details. China and Pakistan call each other "all-weather friends" and their ties have been underpinned by long-standing wariness of their common neighbour, India, and a desire to hedge against U.S. influence in the region. But China has also long urged Pakistan to weed out what it says are militants from Xinjiang, who are holed up in lawless ethnic Pashtun lands on the Pakistan-Afghan border, home to a mix of groups, including the Taliban and al Qaeda. While meeting Sharif, the two countries agreed to continue working together to fight terrorism, strengthen border controls, maintain regional peace and stability and ensure the economic corridor projects are protected, the newspaper said. Story continues Zhang also met Pakistan's military on the trip, it added, without elaborating. Hundreds of people have been killed in unrest in Xinjiang in the last few years. Exiles and rights groups say Chinese controls on the religion and culture of the Muslim Uighur people who call Xinjiang home is largely behind the violence, rather than any well-organised militant groups. China denies any rights abuses in Xinjiang and says its people are free to practice Islam. Zhang visited a mosque in Islamabad, where he "got a deep understanding of Pakistan's religious affairs management", the Xinjiang Daily added. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel) HOUSTON, April 8 (Reuters) - Colombia's state-run Ecopetrol will significantly increase crude imports in April to some 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) with four cargoes that are heading to its Cartagena refinery, according to Thomson Reuters Trade Flows data. Latin America's fourth largest oil producer, Colombia started regular crude imports last year trying to configure a better slate for its Cartagena refinery, which was modernized and expanded to process up to 165,000 barrels per day (bpd). In 2015 it received Nigeria's Bonny Light crude and Artic's Arco blend shipped from Norway. Since then, it has been mostly buying spot cargoes of Latin American crudes, including Mexican and Brazilian grades. The Andean country's crude imports jumped to 75,000 bpd in January, but no purchases were registered from February through March, the data say. In April Ecopetrol will discharge a 500,000-barrel cargo of Arco blend, a 1-million-barrel cargo of Mexico's Maya, a 630,000-barrel cargo of Kazakhstan's CPC light blend shipped from Russia and a 900,000-barrel cargo of Angola's Dalia medium crude. U.S. ExxonMobil appears as seller of the Angolan and Artic crudes, while Spain's Repsol is the seller of the Mexican crude cargo. Ecopetrol declined to comment. These purchases, which represent a 33 percent increase versus February volumes, will mark the first time the country buys Angolan and Kazakh grades since it started importing crude for Cartagena. Ecopetrol expects to cover 30 percent of Cartagena's crude feeding with imported oil, the refinery's chief told Reuters in October. Along with Colombia, OPEC-member Venezuela has increased crude imports since 2015. (Reporting by Marianna Parraga, additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Andrew Hay) (Repeats April 7 column. John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own) * Deutsche Bahn rail map: http://tmsnrt.rs/1RG9RH1 By John Kemp LONDON, April 7 (Reuters) - China is pioneering a trans-continental rail service carrying cargo between the Far East and Western Europe with the aim of capturing some of the freight which currently moves by sea and air. China has the financial resources and the economic incentive to build a major transcontinental railroad service within the next 5-10 years, and the project has strong political backing from top leaders for economic and strategic reasons. From very small beginnings with just a few experimental journeys five years ago, the number of trains running and the volume of freight carried is growing rapidly. Freight trains originating in China have arrived in cities as far afield as Madrid and Tehran as China seeks to demonstrate the viability of a trans-continental service ("From China to Spain by rail", Railway Gazette, 2014). China Railway, the state-owned railroad operator, now runs a regular weekly container train between Wuhan and Hamburg in Germany with other cities in both countries also developing scheduled services. China Railway sent its 200th block train from Wuhan to Hamburg last month loaded with clothing, general merchandise, electronic products and other goods. Until now, trains have catered for shippers moving goods in bulk, but China Rail is experimenting with less-than-container-load (LCL) shipments that consolidate freight and move it to European destinations. China Rail has partnered with Germany's Deutsche Bahn to build up overland freight service between the two countries ("Deutsche Bahn intensifies its involvement in China", DB, 2016). Some 400 trains travelled between the two countries in 2015, hauling 30,000 shipping containers, according to Deutsche Bahn, and there are plans to increase that to 100,000 containers a year by 2020. All current freight services use sections of the Trans-Siberian Railway running from Vladivostok to Moscow (http://tmsnrt.rs/1RG9RH1). Story continues The northern route sees freight cross directly from China into Russia in the Russian Far East, or indirectly via the Trans-Mongolian line through Ulaanbaatar. But there is also a southern route taking freight from China into Kazakhstan that then joins up with Trans-Siberian railroad at Yekaterinburg in Russia. China has plans for an even more southerly route to Western Europe via Central Asia, Iran and Turkey and the Balkans. The recent arrival of the first train from China at Tehran railway station marked an important symbolic milestone in developing the route ("First train from China to Iran stimulates Silk Road revival", Xinhua, 2016). QUICKER TRAVEL The present northern route through Russia is around 13,000 kilometres (8,077 miles) long and takes around 16 days while the southern route through Russia and Kazakhstan is 10,000 km and takes 12 days. Sailing time from China's east coast ports to Hamburg is around 30 days, so rail freight offers time savings of 14 to 18 days. The main logistics challenge at present is the need to transload or bogie-exchange the containers to cross the territories of the former Soviet Union ("World Factbook: Railways", Central Intelligence Agency, 2016). China, as well as Iran and Turkey, use the same standard rail gauge as most countries in Europe (1.435 metres) but Russia, Kazakhstan and other former Soviet territories plus Mongolia use a broader gauge (1.520 metres). Rail freight therefore requires special handling at China's borders with Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, and again between the borders of Russia/Central Asia and Iran/Europe ("List of track gauges", Wikipedia, Apr 2016). Either the shipping containers have to be transloaded from one train to another or the bogies have to be exchanged. Both operations cost time and money. But even with this time and cost penalty, rail freight is much faster than maritime transport between the Far East and Europe. AIR CARGO CHALLENGE Most freight between China and Europe currently moves by sea, with smaller volumes sent by air, with the choice depending on the characteristics of the cargo and how urgently it is required. Bulky, heavy, low-value and non-urgent cargo is sent by ship while light, compact, high-value and time-critical cargo is flown in the hold of passenger aircraft or in dedicated cargo planes. Rail freight offers a compromise which could attract some shippers away from the other modes of transport since it can handle heavier items than normal air freight but is faster than sea-borne cargo. Deutsche Bahn has said the overland route is appealing to electronics and automotive manufacturers because the value lost on goods such as computer components and engines during the longer sea journey is high ("China-Europe containerized rail shipments gain momentum," Journal of Commerce, 2015). Some rail services such as the stops in Tehran and Madrid clearly serve a symbolic purpose, as well as testing equipment and operations for further network expansion. But the number of regular scheduled train services between city pairs in China and Europe such as Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Duisburg, Hamburg and Lodz is growing rapidly. Between many city pairs, trains are running several times per week, and the frequency is reaching close to daily on the most important routes at the busiest times of the year. In the medium term, rail may only capture a tiny share of the cargo carried by ship but it could make more significant inroads into air freight. NEW SILK ROAD STRATEGY The development of a transcontinental rail service linking China, Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe aligns with the strategic vision outlined by China's President Xi Jinping. "The Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road," one of Xi's most prominent ideas and directly associated with the president, can easily be dismissed as an empty political slogan. But the rapid development of rail links across the Eurasian continent fits closely with the landward component known as the Silk Road Economic Belt. For diplomatic reasons, China is anxious to cement ties with its immediate neighbours on the Eurasian landmass. Transport and economic integration through rail links are a good way of advancing this agenda. China's diplomatic strategy is most obviously embodied in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) linking China with Russia and four of the five Central Asian states. Mongolia, India, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan have signed up as SCO observers while Belarus and Turkey are dialogue partners. The development of transcontinental freight corridors would give economic substance to these diplomatic relationships. Transcontinental railroads could also boost China's economic integration with Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, offering a faster option than sea freight but a cheaper one than air cargo. Finally, the rail network also diversifies and strengthens China's transportation options, usefully by-passing chokepoints such as the Malacca Strait. Commentators have often observed that China is a land-based and continental power while the United States is a maritime and global one. China's policymakers are responding to that asymmetry in a number of ways, including the development of a much more powerful ocean-going navy. But since China is a land power on the Eurasian landmass, it makes sense to develop rail links and other land-based freight corridors away from sea lanes patrolled and controlled by the United States. (Editing by Susan Thomas) LIMA, April 8 (Reuters) - Copper output from Freeport McMoRan Inc's Cerro Verde mine in Peru, one of the country's biggest, has been cut back during a 48-hour strike that started early on Friday, the labor union said. Workers are protesting what they describe as the near disappearance of their profit-sharing bonus this year and had announced plans for the stoppage last week. Nearly all of the mine's 1,600 unionized workers took part in the strike, said union leader Zenon Mujica, who added "it has partially affected production." Cerro Verde, which is 53.6 percent-owned by Freeport, produced 41,873 tonnes of copper in February, up 180 percent from the same month in 2015 as the mine expanded operations. The mine's management did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd controls 21 percent of Cerro Verde, and Peruvian miner Buenaventura owns 19.6 percent. (Reporting by Ursula Scollo; Editing by Richard Chang) The headquarters of Germany's Deutsche Bank is photographed early evening in Frankfurt, Germany, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) has reached an agreement with Cologne public prosecutors to pay a 10 million euro (8 million) fine in a tax avoidance case involving its Swiss subsidiary, a person familiar with the situation said on Friday. Germany's biggest bank was under investigation in the case for allegedly helping clients bypass German tax authorities, the person said. German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which also reported on the case, said an investigation on a similar charge was also under way involving Deutsche Bank's Luxembourg unit, which could lead to a fine of less than 10 million euros. Deutsche Bank and the Cologne prosecutor's office declined to comment on either case. Commerzbank (CBKG.DE), HVB (CRDI.MI) and HSH Nordbank [HSH.UL] have already paid millions of euros in fines in similar cases. German financial watchdog Bafin has sent requests for information to the country's banks to determine their role in setting up offshore shell companies exposed by the publication of the Panama Papers this week, sources familiar with the probe said. (Reporting by Andreas Kroener in Frankfurt and Matthias Inverardi in Duesseldorf; writing by Jonathan Gould; Editing by Sabine Wollrab and Jane Merriman) Quantitative Analysis of Latin America's Bull Run: Is It Overdone? (Continued from Prior Part) More interest in Brazils currency In the previous part, we discussed that a series of problems are impacting Brazils performance. So, why are currency investors showing more interest in the Brazilian real? Anti-government forces help drive the Brazilian real Rising political unrest in the current government raised hopes among investors for a political reformation in the country. The detention of the Brazilian (EWZ) president regarding corruption charges in the state-owned oil company Petrobras (PBR) is one of the most significant turnarounds in boosting investor confidence. The Brazilian real is reacting positively to rising anti-government agitation. Feds dovish stance Brazil is a commodity-dependent economy. The appreciation in the Brazilian real can be correlated with the fall in the US Dollar Index (UUP). Since commodities (DBC) are dollar-denominated assets, a stronger dollar impacts commodities movement. Fed Chair Janet Yellens recent statement clearly indicates the cautious stance of the Fed. Policymakers are expecting more downside risk for the US (QQQ) (VFINX) (IVV) (SPY) due to the global (ACWI) slowdown. This statement weakened the US Dollar Index against other currencies. It boosted other currencies. A weaker dollar helps move the investment from the currency market to other riskier asset-like commodities. Therefore, the last two-month equity run was backed by the rise in commodity prices. Next, well analyze the potential outcomes for the geopolitical situation in Brazil. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: (In April 7 item, corrects title of Bechtel's Paige Wilson in 8th paragraph) By Anthony Esposito and Pratima Desai SANTIAGO, April 7 (Reuters) - Engineering and technology companies servicing the mining industry see a silver lining to the crippling rout in copper prices: new business opportunities have opened up for improving productivity as producers rush to rein in costs. Delegates at the annual Cesco/CRU gathering of the copper industry in Chile this week concluded that miners will focus on cutting costs to survive low prices, rather than significant output cuts to offset slow demand growth from top consumer China. During the commodities super-cycle, producers made huge capital expenditures, but "the focus for the industry over the next two years will be on productivity improvement, and all the mining companies trying to reduce their cash costs," said Pertti Korhonen, chief executive of Finnish mining technology company Outotec. "There is a lot of opportunity to use modern technology, including digitalization and automation," Korhonen told Reuters this week. Service providers have also suffered during the commodities downturn, forced to lay off workers as a drop in big-spending mining projects hit revenues. "All engineering companies have needed to adjust themselves in order to get through this rough time ... we're anticipating a difficult market, with no more than 5 to 6 million man hours of engineering for mining during the year," said Juan Rayo, CEO of Chile-based engineering firm JRI. But with copper prices now hovering around $4,650 a tonne and the $10,000 a tonne prices from February 2011 a fading memory, miners are seeking further savings through operational efficiencies and boosting productivity. "Now the focus is on getting the most value from facilities that are already producing, through expansions, solving bottlenecks and incorporating new technologies and competitive designs," said Paige Wilson, general manager of Bechtel Mining & Metals, Americas. Story continues Mining equipment maker Joy Global Inc says producers can get more bang for their buck by using "smarter" equipment, such as its hybrid shovel, combining attributes of an electric shovel and a hydraulic diesel excavator. The company says the hybrid can cut costs by up to 15 percent per tonne. But as miners tighten their belts, some question how much they will be willing to spend on new equipment. Outotec's Korhonen said he has already seen appetite from mining companies for newer technologies. "If you reduce your energy consumption, you reduce your water consumption, you improve your throughput, you can get immediate opex savings, you can get immediate advantages. So I think if the numbers talk for themselves, they will find the money." (Reporting by Anthony Esposito & Pratima Desai; Editing by David Gregorio) * Association Agreement triggered Maidan protests * EU, Ukraine have huge stake in making treaty work * But exporters fret deal won't make up for lost trade with Russia * Exporters say quotas stifle trade growth * Minister says deal is about more than just trade By Pavel Polityuk GORODOK, Ukraine, April 8 (Reuters) - Ukraine's Association Agreement with the European Union was meant to lure the bread basket of the former Soviet Union away from its longstanding ties with Russia by offering better access to the EU market. But debate about it was the spark that lit the Maidan street protests in 2013 and a pro-Russian insurgency that led to more than 9,000 deaths. The disruption sent exports to Russia into freefall and depressed sales to the European Union. Now many exporters are worried that the deal, in place provisionally since January, does not offer enough to compensate for the collapse in trade with Russia to just $4.83 billion last year from $15.06 billion in 2013. "Our company does not feel any change," said Taras Barshchovsky, the founder of T.B. Fruit, the parent company of Galicia-Trade, which makes juices from apples, carrots, cherries and other fruits. Under the deal tariffs were lifted on most products traded between Ukraine and the EU. Quotas for textiles were lifted and will be phased out over 5 years for mineral products, chemicals, plastics and wood. In agriculture, by far the largest sector of the economy with a 12 percent contribution to gross domestic product, and also an area where Ukraine can successfully compete with European producers, many quotas were unchanged including for maize, alcohol and fruit juice. Barshchovsky said the low quotas were a problem for his company and showed the deal had limited benefits for Ukraine. "In my opinion, they're pulling the wool over our eyes," he said. The EU rejects any idea the deal is unfair and Ukraine's exports to the EU rose 3.3 percent in January, the first month of the deal, to 1.02 billion euros compared to a year earlier, according to data from EU's statistics agency Eurostat. Story continues And Ukrainian attitudes towards the EU remain broadly positive. A survey in November showed 58 percent of Ukrainians supported the EU deal, versus 15 percent who wanted a customs deal with Russia. There is, however, growing disillusion with how Ukraine has turned out despite promises of the Western-backed leaders who came to power after Maidan. Corruption is still endemic, the separatist war in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east is raging, and a political crisis has delayed talks for new overseas aid. At the same time, Ukraine's chief backers, the United States, the EU and the International Monetary Fund, are getting increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of change, and the IMF has threatened to end a multi-billion dollar aid package. The Association Agreement itself may be under threat after Dutch voters rejected it in a referendum on Wednesday, although Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the result won't push his country from an EU path. ROTTING POTATOES Under pressure from Russia, the Kremlin-backed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich pulled out of signing the Association Agreement in 2013, setting off a chain of events that culminated in his ouster in February 2014. Some see Wednesday's Dutch rejection of the deal, even if the result is non-binding and was already signed by the Dutch prime minister and all other European Union nations, as playing into Russia's hands. With Russia also imposing a trade embargo on Ukraine and blocking the transit of Ukrainian products to Asia, Alex Lissitsa, Chief Executive Officer of Ukraine's agricultural lobby UAC, estimates Ukrainian farmers are losing about $1 billion a year in business from Russia. "At this stage Ukraine has received few benefits from the free trade zone - it is simply a political and long-term deal," he said. "Markets that were open have remained open, while those that were closed, remain closed," he added. Ukrainian potatoes were left to rot, he said, because the markets of Russia, Crimea and the war-torn Donbass region had gone, and sales to the EU can't make up the shortfall. Sugar producers have a similar complaint. Ukraine produces 1.5-2 million tonnes of sugar a year. But its quota to sell to the EU is just 20,000 tonnes, Ukrainian sugar union Ukrtsukor said, saying the EU should raise this to at least 300,000. Ukraine's main poultry union says its businesses lost $60 million a year from being shut out of the Russian market. Russian restrictions on the transit of Ukrainian goods meant Ukrainian businesses were forced to reroute trade through costly routes such as Georgia and Azerbaijan, the union said. "The main problem is that there is a very small quota for certain types of produce, including poultry products," it wrote in an email. Yuriy Kosyuk, who owns Ukraine's largest poultry company and an ally of President Poroshenko, went as far as to say publicly that Ukraine had been "duped". However, the poultry union acknowledged that while the EU is a huge opportunity for poultry producers Ukrainian companies need time to bring their products up to EU standards. For other sectors of the economy, the deal has also made little difference. "For metallurgists the agreement with the EU did not lead to any changes in terms of quantity or quality of trade. We have traded openly with the EU since Ukraine joined the WTO (World Trade Organization) after tariffs were scrapped on metal product supplies," said Roman Kurashev, marketing director for Metinvest, Ukraine's largest steel maker and exporter. LONG-TERM GOAL Both the EU and Ukraine's government have played down the effect of the quotas. Protesters didn't man the barricades at Maidan "just to sell a jar of honey to Europe," Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko told Reuters in an interview. "I wanted my children to live in a European country with European values," he said. "Any process is long-term process and you cannot get everything at once." The EU's representative office in Kiev said in a statement the deal gives Ukraine fast access to EU markets with quotas "limited to a small number of agricultural products." Ukrainian exporters aren't able to sell enough products in many cases because their products don't meet the standards stipulated in the agreement, it said. "Rather than blaming the EU and asking for additional quotas, many producers should rather lobby the Ukrainian government and urge it to focus on the implementation of the sanitary and phytosanitary chapter of the (agreement)," the statement said. Ukraine and Brussels have a huge stake in showing they can make their relationship work and that Kiev's pain of losing its alliance with Russia will be worth it in the long run. Mired in internal feuding and struggling to put Ukraine's war-torn economy back on track, the popularity of the post-Maidan government has collapsed. That in turn could bring about snap elections later this year that could see a sharp rise of populist parties such as the Radical party, which has railed against the EU deal as well as the IMF's austerity measures. "What they signed is categorically not in the interests of Ukraine," said Radical party leader Oleh Lyashko about the deal. "It is not mutually beneficial if they give us peanuts and, in exchange, demand we take off our trousers, sell our land, our wife and our country." (Additional reporting by Margaryta Chornokondratenko and Robin Emmott; Writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Anna Willard) Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta has said that while he is not planning a return to politics, "you can never resign from political engagement." Letta, who spoke to CNBC from the Ambrosetti Workshop on Friday, said he was "absolutely not" planning a comeback. However, the former PM said, "You can resign from parliament as I did, but you never resign from the political engagement. Political engagement is heart." He added that he fears for Europe's future. "This is why I am so engaged in helping Europe, supporting Europe and saying that Italy has to take this leadership because Italy's engagement is crucial for the future of the European Union," he told CNBC. Letta believes that a global solution is needed to tackle the refugee crisis in Europe, otherwise, "we close one road and the other road will be opened," referencing the change in 2015 of the route for migrants to enter Europe from the Balkans rather than the Mediterranean. An outspoken critic of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, Letta said that while he still hoped the Republican candidate would lose the presidential elections, Trump is succeeding in "changing the political mood in the States. He is obliging the other candidates, maybe also the future president to change mood, to change direction, to have different opinions on many topics trade is becoming for both the euro and the American camp a sort of devil, it's a big problem for all of us." Letta told CNBC that regardless of the outcome of the U.S. elections, the consequences of Trump's candidature will be "very important on the American political landscape but also on the rest of world." Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook. More From CNBC Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont backed down on Friday from his controversial assertion that rival Hillary Clinton isnt qualified to be president following a huge backlash from Democrats complaining that Sanders was hurting their partys chances for victory in November. Fuming after days of perceived slights from Clinton that he might not be prepared to be president and needs to do his homework -- even on his signature issue of breaking up the big banks -- Sanders earlier this week said she had disqualified herself by accepting millions of dollars in campaign funds from Wall Street and other special interests, voting in 2002 to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and backing free trade deals that hurt U.S. workers. Heres the Big Risk Sanders and Clinton Are Taking as They Trade Insults The response from Democratic party leaders and liberal columnists was swift and stern: The Vermont senator who once prided himself on his civility in campaigning had breached political etiquette and risked creating an irreparable fissure in the party. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote that Sanderss campaign has lost its ethical moorings in attacking Clinton. In back-to-back appearances on MSNBCs Morning Joe and NBCs Today, a mildly repentant Sanders sought to repair the damage with laudatory comments about Clintons intelligence and experience. He told Today hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie that of course Clinton was qualified to be the next president. Despite the bitter exchanges between the two, Sanders hastened to add, On her worst day, she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates." Sanders said during both television appearances that it had become apparent that the Clinton campaign had decided to change its tone and go negative after losing to Sanders in Wisconsin and five other states recently, and that Sanders felt he had no choice but to punch back. Related: Sanders: Ill Win New York, Too and Then the White House Story continues What am I supposed to do? Just sit back and say, hey, I come from a small state. Were really nice people, Sanders told the Morning Joe anchors. Weve got to fight back and thats what were trying to do. I hope though, let me be clear on this, lets get back to the issues. Hillary Clinton and I have strong disagreements, I respect her, but lets start debating the issues. As for Krugmans criticism that he has lost his ethical moorings, Sanders retorted: How often have I talked about Hillary Clintons emails? Have you heard me? Not a word? How often have I talked about the Clinton Foundations fundraising? Have you heard me say one word about that? I am trying to stay away from personal attacks on Hillary. Democrats who have been tolerant and even encouraging of Sanders run at Clinton from the left balked at his most recent statements, and by Friday morning he faced a torrent of attacks from pundits on the left. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, who has been generally friendly toward Sanders, called his attack on her qualifications a ridiculous thing to say and mocked him for falling back on the she-hit-me-first defense, noting, The problem is that Clinton never said such a thing. Related: Not So Fast, Hillary: Bernies Right About Breaking Up the Banks Krugman, the liberal New York Times columnist who has been notably cool to Sanders so far, blew up on Friday, saying, the way Mr. Sanders is now campaigning raises serious character and values issues. Krugman took issue with Sanders claim about Clintons supposed disqualification for office by supporting past trade agreements and voting to authorize the Iraq war. This is really bad, on two levels. Holding people accountable for their past is O.K., but imposing a standard of purity, in which any compromise or misstep makes you the moral equivalent of the bad guys, isnt. Abraham Lincoln didnt meet that standard; neither did F.D.R. Nor, for that matter, has Bernie Sanders (think guns). The criticism of Sanders echoed on Capitol Hill on Thursday, when virtually no Democratic senator would take Sanderss part in his mushrooming feud with Clinton. Related: Sanders Plan Would Raise Taxes a Staggering $13.6 Trillion over a Decade There are policy disagreements he may have with her on some things lets stick to those, lets not say that the most qualified candidate for president is simply unqualified, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), told The Washington Post. Weve got to refrain from ad hominem attacks. Weve got to stay focused on what weve got to do in November. Despite his surprisingly strong performance throughout the primary contests, Sanders rarely has gotten a favorable nod from congressional Democrats, in part because he has run as an independent throughout his political career and only caucuses with the Democrats to leverage his influence in the Senate. Clinton, by contrast, has labored in the Democratic vineyards for decades and enjoys widespread support among Democratic lawmakers and party leaders. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a veteran lawmaker, voiced deep concern that Sanders was doing terrible damage to the partys prospects this fall with his outbursts. What he does is divide the Democratic faithful, and why would he want to do that? The Sanders camp quickly went into full retreat, evidenced by the candidates own comments on the morning talk shows and by an interview Sanders senior advisor Tad Devine gave to the Washington Posts Greg Sargent. Bernie has said hes going to support the nominee, and Im sure hell do everything to make sure that the next president is a Democrat, Devine said. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: By Devidutta Tripathy and Euan Rocha MUMBAI/TORONTO (Reuters) - Fairfax India Holdings said on Friday it has agreed to acquire a minority stake in privately held Indian petrochemical company Sanmar Chemicals via a roughly $300 million investment. The Sanmar investment is the latest in a string of bets Fairfax India and its sister concern Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd have made in the country within the last year. The two entities are chaired by Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa. Indian-born Watsa, whose main investment vehicle is Fairfax Financial Holdings, set up Fairfax India in 2014 to hone in on investments in that country, where he expects strong long-term growth driven by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic reform agenda. "The economy in Canada is about $2 trillion with only 35 million people, while India by comparison with 1.2 billion people plus has an economy the same size. It's an unbelievable opportunity," said Watsa, in an interview. The investment in Sanmar that will give Fairfax a 30 percent equity stake in the company, is being made via a combination of equity and fixed income instruments, as Reuters had initially reported earlier on Friday. Sanmar, a family-owned firm chaired by N. Sankar, is one of India's largest producers of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The firm, which owns manufacturing facilities in India and Egypt, is also a manufacturer of other specialty chemicals. Sanmar is also in the process of expanding its PVC capacity in Egypt from 200,000 tons a year to 400,000 tons a year. Once completed, Sanmar will have a total PVC capacity exceeding 700,000 tons a year, making it one of the largest PVC makers globally. This investment, Watsa's latest bet in India, comes barely weeks after Fairfax agreed to buy a 33 percent equity interest in the Bangalore International Airport from GVK Power and Infrastructure Ltd for $321 million. "We just bought a 33 percent stake in the Bangalore airport, and we hope to add more over time, as that airport is going to expand," said Watsa. "The Indian economy is going to expand, it just stands to reason that as the economy expands there'll need to be more infrastructure investments." Back in February, Fairfax bought a 45 percent stake in ADI Finechem, a small Ahmedabad-based specialty chemical company, for $19 million. Last August, it acquired a majority stake in India's largest nongovernment grain-handling company, National Collateral Management Services Ltd, for $126 million. (Additional reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru and Krishna N. Das in Mumbai; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila) * French health agency targets glyphosate-tallowamine mixes * French move comes amid fierce debate over glyphosate risks * Monsanto sees limited impact from French ban (Adds analyst comment) PARIS, April 8 (Reuters) - France's health and safety agency is poised to ban weedkillers that combine chemicals glyphosate and tallowamine because of concerns over possible health risks, it said Friday. The ANSES agency sent a letter this week to manufacturers informing them that it intends to withdraw the authorisation for such products, Francoise Weber, the ANSES deputy director-general, told Reuters. The agency had reviewed products combining glyphosate and tallowamine after conclusions published in November by the European Food Safety Agency suggested there were greater potential health risks in combined use rather than when glyphosate is used alone, she said. "It is not possible to guarantee that compositions containing glyphosate and tallowamine do not entail negative effects on human health," Weber said. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller, has stirred fierce debate over the past year since a World Health Organisation body classified it as a probable carcinogenic, and EU countries are discussing whether or not to extend its EU-wide licence. France's environment minister has been pushing for an EU-wide ban on glyphosate-based products and is also supporting legislation that would outlaw a type of pesticide blamed for harming bees. Tallowamine is used in weedkillers to allow them to be absorbed effectively by plants. It is combined with glyphosate in many weedkillers but a large number of glyphosate products without tallowamine are available in France, Weber said. Glyphosate and tallowamine combinations were previously withdrawn voluntarily from the German market by manufacturers, she added. Monsanto said the commercial impact would be "minimal" as it had already shifted away from using tallowamine. "The elimination of glyphosate sales in France by itself should not have a material effect on Monsanto, maybe $20 million of earnings impact. If it spreads to the rest of Europe the impact would be greater though, as Europe is a premium market; could lead to up to $100 million of earnings impact," Bernstein analyst Jonas Oxgaard said in an email to Reuters. Story continues In an emailed statement, Monsanto described the glyphosate debate in Europe as "political" and said that tallowamine-based products "do not pose an imminent risk for human health when used according to instructions." Arguments over glyphosate have divided scientists and pitched environmental protection groups against chemical companies and farmers who say there are no viable alternatives. A final decision by ANSES on withdrawing glyphosate-tallowamine mixtures would take at least several weeks because the agency must first consider comments by the manufacturers, who have two weeks to submit arguments, Weber said. (Reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris, additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by Bate Felix, David Goodman and Bernadette Baum) PARIS/BERLIN, April 8 (Reuters) - France and Germany have joined Britain in suspending export credit facilities for Airbus jet deliveries, several people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The move follows Britain's decision last week to suspend export financing and alert the country's Serious Fraud Office after Airbus Group said it had uncovered discrepancies in past applications and that it had itself notified the UK authorities. Britain, France and Germany typically act in concert in supporting some aircraft exports, taking a share of financing in proportion to the amount of industrial work in each country and declining to take up the slack when one agency withholds credit. A German economy ministry spokesman confirmed that the financing, provided on its behalf by Allianz unit Euler-Hermes, was no longer available on this basis. Berlin is also examining whether the UK episode could have consequences for export credits already awarded, he added. In France, three sources said export credits were no longer available for the time being. Airbus Group declined to add to a previous statement that it was co-operating with export credit agencies and that it expected the financing to be resumed in the near future. (Reporting by Tim Hepher, Gernot Heller, Matthieu Protard, Leigh Thomas; editing by Geert De Clercq) Airbus's company logo is pictured at the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, December 4, 2014. REUTERS/ Regis Duvignau By Tim Hepher and Gernot Heller PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) - France and Germany have joined Britain in suspending export credit facilities for Airbus (AIR.PA) jet deliveries, expanding the fallout from a potential corruption probe in Britain, several people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The move follows Britain's decision last week to suspend financing and alert the Serious Fraud Office after Airbus Group said it had found anomalies over the declaration of overseas agents and that it had itself notified the UK authorities. Unusually, it leaves the world's two largest planemakers, Airbus and Boeing (BA.N), both facing paralysis over government export financing as Congressional delays leave U.S. Export Import bank unable to support Airbus's U.S. rival. In Europe, Airbus draws on financing support for some sales from Britain, France and Germany where its main factories are. The nations typically act in concert, offering guarantees in proportion to the industrial work in each country, but declining to take up the slack whenever one of them refuses to take part. A German economy ministry spokesman confirmed that the financing, provided on its behalf by Allianz (ALVG.DE) unit Euler-Hermes, was no longer available. Berlin is also examining whether the UK episode could have consequences for export credits already awarded, he added. In France, three sources said export guarantees were being withheld for the time being. "Audits are being carried out in the UK and we are waiting for the conclusions for those," a French government official said. Airbus Group declined to add to a previous statement that it was co-operating with export credit agencies and that it expected financing to be resumed in the near future. For now, the market impact is seen as limited as the use of export credits has dwindled to around 6 percent of deliveries from 40 percent at the height of the 2008-10 financial crisis. But the unprecedented halt raises doubt over the financing for some upcoming deliveries, pushing up demand for commercial loans and placing pressure on Airbus to offer bridge financing. Story continues "The problem is that deals financed with export credit are usually the tough-to-finance ones, so finding a commercial alternative is not always that simple," a market source said. AGENT FEES AND NAMES The agency which underwrites aircraft exports in Britain has said it will not support Airbus deliveries until it gets assurances about Airbus's current practices on overseas agents. The UK case involves discrepancies over the amount of agents' fees disclosed in applications for export support, or missing names of third parties, in some cases dating back several years, two people familiar with the matter said. A person responsible for overseeing some of the information supplied in export credit applications is no longer with the group, people familiar with the matter said. Airbus Group declined comment. The decision by Airbus to report itself reflects efforts by many aerospace companies to toughen compliance and review their records for past failings after a series of industry scandals. In its just-published annual report, Airbus said a newly centralised compliance team was revising the procedures on hiring consultants and warned investors this may "lead to additional commercial disputes or other consequences". Europe's largest aerospace group says it is co-operating with four existing criminal probes into suspected irregularities in defence or security markets, including a British investigation into a $3.3 billion communications deal with Saudi Arabia and a German probe into the sale of fighter jets to Austria. (Additional reporting by Matthieu Protard, Leigh Thomas,; Editing by Geert De Clercq and David Evans) General Electric (GE)'s Jeff Immelt fired back at Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for saying GE was among companies "destroying the moral fabric" of America. "GE has been in business for 124 years, and we've never been a big hit with socialists. We create wealth and jobs, instead of just calling for them in speeches," Immelt , the company's chairman and CEO, said in an op-ed on The Washington Post this week. Sanders made his comments on Friday to the New York Daily News editorial board. Said Immelt: "Our employees are proud of our company. I meet second- and third-generation employees whenever I travel across the country. I am one myself. Our suppliers and partners are proud of our company. Our communities are proud of our company. Our pride, history and hard work are real the moral fabric of America." The Vermont senator's campaign did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment on Thursday. Click here to read the full op-ed. More From CNBC A police officer escorts a migrant (C) from a Turkish ferry carrying the second group of migrants deported from Europe to Turkey on April 8, 2016 as they arrive at the port of Dikili district in Izmir (AFP Photo/Ozan Kose) Dikili (Turkey) (AFP) - Greece deported a second batch of more than two hundred migrants to Turkey on Friday under a controversial EU deal to stem mass migration as Germany announced a sharp drop in asylum claims. Greek officials said two boats carrying 124 migrants -- most of them Pakistani men -- had been sent back across the Aegean Sea where hundreds have lost their lives in a quest to reach Europe. A small group of activists leapt into the water, clutching onto the anchor of the first ferry in an unsuccessful bid to stop the deportation, while a group of protesters chanted "EU, shame on you" and "Freedom for the refugees". After arriving at the Turkish harbour town of Dikili, security officials escorted the downcast migrants, clutching blankets and with small backpacks on their shoulders, off the vessels. A Greek government statement said the migrants included 111 Pakistanis, four Iraqis, as well as citizens of Bangladesh, India, Morocco, Egypt, and a man claiming to be of Palestinian origin. One of the Pakistanis was not accepted by Turkish authorities at Dikili for undisclosed reasons and was returned to Lesbos, the statement said. In a separate operation, another 97 people -- mainly Pakistanis and Bangladeshis -- were returned to Turkey via the land border, Greek police said. The deportations are taking place under a deal between Turkey and the European Union, which is straining under the pressure from the unprecedented flow of migrants into its territory. Turkey has promised to take back all irregular migrants entering Greece since March 20 while Europe has agreed to resettle one Syrian refugee directly from camps in Turkey for each Syrian deported. The deported migrants arriving in Dikili underwent health checks and registration before they are due to be sent by bus to Kirklareli on the Bulgarian border, from where they are expected to be deported back to their home country. The threat of deportation is aimed at discouraging people from making the often deadly crossing in flimsy boats. Story continues - 'Off to good start' - The transfers began Monday with some 200 migrants returned to Turkey, but then stalled after a last-minute flurry of asylum applications. Human rights watchdogs say the scheme is badly flawed, and have raised concerns that migrants may not have the chance to apply for asylum before being deported. France's Secretary of State for Europe Harlem Desir, speaking in Athens Friday, called on EU members to do speed up efforts to help Greece deal with the migrants. Desir was in the Greek capital with his Dutch, Italian, Maltese, Portuguese and Slovak counterparts with whom he held talks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. They will travel on to Istanbul on Saturday. If all the member states respect their promises," to provide humanitarian aid and personnel reinforcement to Greece "we would have the capacity to accelerate" both the sending of migrants from Greece to Turkey," he said. While concerns remain over the deal, Germany -- Europe's top destination for refugees -- said it had "got off to a good start". Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere announced that asylum applications had dropped 66 percent in March, down to 20,000. De Maiziere has warned that the shutdown of the Turkey-Greece route may encourage more migrants to attempt the even more dangerous Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy. The drop in migrant numbers appears largely due to much-criticised border closures in the Balkans, as well as an increased clampdown by Turkey on people smugglers. Greece, which has borne the brunt of the migrant crisis, plans to evacuate a huge makeshift camp at the port of Piraeus ahead of the busy tourism season. - Nothing for nothing - While Europe appears to be getting its side of the bargain, Turkey warning that if the EU broke its promises it "will not implement the agreement. "We have received lots of thanks for our action on the refugees and in the fight against terrorism. But we are not doing this for thanks," said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "Everything should happen in line with what has been promised, what has been set out in the text." Turkey has been promised visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe by June 2016, and the revival of its long-stalled EU accession process. Turkey is also to receive a total of six billion euros ($6.8 billion) in financial aid up to the end of 2018 for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. Rights groups have criticised these concessions as a "dirty deal", with the EU accused of turning a blind eye to Erdogan's slide into authoritarianism and crackdown on press freedom. A Greek flag flutters in the wind as tourists visit the archaeological site of the Acropolis hill in Athens, Greece July 26, 2015. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun ATHENS (Reuters) - Mission chiefs of Greece's European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders left Athens on Friday for consultations in Brussels adjourning the country's key bailout review for one day, a government official said. Technical teams of the lenders remained in Athens, the official said. A meeting of the mission chiefs would go ahead as scheduled with Greece's labour minister on Saturday after their return. "They departed for one day. They are going to Brussels for deliberations and they will be back," the official told Reuters. Representatives of the lenders started new consultations in Athens this week on signing off on Greece's progress in adopting terms of a multi-billion euro bailout. If concluded, the review will pave the way for talks on debt relief with the EU and potentially unlock additional funds from the bailout, which is worth up to 86 billion euros in total spread out over three years. Athens needs the money to repay 3.5 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank in July, as well as unpaid domestic bills. (Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; Writing by Renee Maltezou Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) LONDON, April 8 (Reuters) - Hedge funds investing in China lost an average of 7.4 percent in the first quarter of 2016, the fallout of a turbulent three months for the world's second largest economy, all but wiping out all the previous year's profits, data from eVestment showed. A slowing of China's growth along with pressure on its stock markets, corporate borrowers and the yuan currency sent a shockwave through global financial markets in January. Public media in China lashed out at hedge fund "speculators" and regulators took a raft of measures to prevent the aggressive shorting of local markets and offshore trading of the yuan. The result has been a calming of volatility in the past six weeks and what a number of bankers describe as a "capitulation" by the largely U.S.-based funds who bet most heavily on a sharp devaluation of the yuan. The regular eVestment figures give no indication of what assets funds lost money on, but showed those investing in China lagged returns of 16.9 percent and 18 percent for those investing in fellow emerging market leaders Brazil and Russia. Hedge funds investing in China made 7.5 percent over the whole of last year. (Reporting by Maiya Keidan; editing by Patrick Graham and David Evans) Reading the Steel Rally: US Steel Stocks in April (Continued from Prior Part) The Tata Steel crisis Tata Steel has decided to exit its UK operations after years of losses. ArcelorMittal (MT) is no stranger to the crisis facing the European steel industry. MT gets ~50% of its revenues from Europe, making it leveraged to any uptick in the European steel industry. With the crisis at Tata Steel UK, protectionism demands have started to echo across the EU (European Union) as well. Protectionism in Europe? We should note here that MT has so far lagged behind companies like U.S. Steel Corporation (X) and AK Steel (AKS) in 2016. This could partially be due to MTs Europe exposure. If the EU clamps down on steel imports from the United States (VTI), companies with exposure to Europe should also gain. Steel prices have improved in Europe as well as in other regions (see graph above). As a geographically diversified company, MT would stand to gain from improvements in global steel markets. The iron ore scene Meanwhile, although iron ore prices have lost some of their recent gains, they are still trading high on a year-to-date basis. As an integrated steel producer, MT stands to gain if iron ore prices trade higher. According to ArcelorMittal, the company has now brought down the cash flow break-even costs below $40 per metric ton. MTs mining business will benefit if iron ore prices move to higher price levels. Other integrated steel producers like U.S. Steel Corporation (X), Gerdau (GGB) and POSCO (PKX) will also likely benefit if iron ore prices rise. Risks MT faces significant annual debt maturities over the next couple of years. For now, however, the company has managed to raise cash through a rights issue. However, further equity issuance might only lead to earnings dilution. Another risk that ArcelorMittal faces would be with concerns over Brexit, or the UKs possible exit from the EU. Markets might not be totally factoring in the impact of Britain leaving the EU on the regions economy. But one thing is certain: the 1Q16 earnings season will be crucial for steel companies in justifying their soaring valuations. Story continues Keep visiting Market Realists Steel page for more developments in this industry. Browse this series on Market Realist: NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's top cigarette maker ITC Ltd, part-owned by British American Tobacco, said it was not ready to print bigger health warnings on its packs as mandated by the government and will keep its factories shut until clarity emerges on the new rules. ITC's comments highlight the latest tussle between India's $10 billion cigarette industry and the government after new rules kicked in on Friday mandating health warnings should cover 85 percent of a pack's surface, up from 20 percent now. A parliamentary panel last year forced the government to delay the new rules, saying it was assessing how the industry would be impacted. But the health ministry later said the warnings must be adopted on April 1. The panel of lawmakers last month called for reducing the size of warnings to 50 percent to protect the interests of the industry and tobacco farmers. ITC said the health ministry's push to go ahead with its rule was "contrary to its earlier decision to await the (parliamentary) committee's findings". "The industry was led to believe that the government would renotify new health warnings after considering the committee's recommendations," ITC said in its statement. Health ministry officials could not be reached for a comment on Saturday. A senior official had told Reuters on Friday the government was committed to implementing new rules. A leading industry body had said on Friday that cigarette makers, including ITC and its rival Godfrey Phillips India Ltd, which is a partner of U.S.-based Philip Morris International, suspended production as the new policy created confusion. Smoking kills about 1 million people in India each year, BMJ Global Health estimates. The World Health Organization has called the debate on reducing the warnings size in India "worrisome". (Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Rafael Nam and Louise Heavens) By Kaori Kaneko TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's leading capital spending indicator was expected to show its first fall for three months in February after a surprise one-off factor jump in January, a Reuters poll found. Core machinery orders, a highly volatile data series regarded as a useful leading indicator of capital spending in the coming six to nine months, was expected to fall 12.4 percent in February from the previous month, the poll of 18 economists found. Core machinery orders rose 15.0 percent in January but were inflated by large orders from the steel industry. Excluding this factor, economists said, orders were flat versus the previous month. "Corporations' willingness to undertake capital spending has not especially deteriorated at the moment. But there is a downside risk as corporate earnings are worsening rapidly," said a survey respondent from Dai-ichi Life Research Institute. The poll found that core orders, which exclude those of ships and electrical equipment, were expected to dip 2.7 percent in February from a year earlier after an 8.4 percent gain in the previous month. The Cabinet Office will release the core orders at 8:50 a.m. on Monday. (Sunday 2350 GMT) The corporate goods price index (CGPI), which measures the price companies charge each other for goods and services, was seen falling 3.5 percent in March from a year ago, the poll showed. That would be the 12th straight monthly fall, partly because the rising yen exchange rate pushed down import costs. The Bank of Japan will announce the CGPI data at 8:50 a.m. on Wednesday. (Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Eric Meijer) By Osamu Tsukimori TOKYO, April 8 (Reuters) - Japan's Osaka Gas Co said this week it plans to expand its liquefied natural gas (LNG) trading activity as it adjusts to a market that has shifted from being undersupplied to a glut within the last two years. The utility said as part of the trading expansion it would try to sell LNG it does not need when it sees short-term opportunities, as well as set up long-term sales agreements with other buyers of the fuel. A surplus has emerged in global LNG production, especially in supplies from Australia, while at the same time demand from top buyers Japan, South Korea and China has stalled. Osaka Gas - which has a minority stake of 1.25 percent in Chevron's Gorgon project in Australia - has already sold long-term contract cargoes from there to Okinawa Electric Power , and may in future sell off LNG it has contracted from a project in the United States, company officials said. "Gorgon's contract is on an FOB (free-on-board) basis, so we can market the cargoes if there are customers who are interested," Masayuki Inoue, Osaka Gas general manager of corporate strategy told Reuters on Thursday. "If, for example, it were very cold in winter in South Korea, we could resell the cargoes on the spot market," he said. With the advent of 130 million tonnes of LNG capacity in Australia and North America by 2020, producers such as Woodside Petroleum and Chevron, and buyers such as Japanese utilities, have expanded trading teams to handle excess cargo flows and navigate a more open market. The oversupply is giving buyers the upper hand with producers in demanding more flexibility, such as in allowing the resale of contracted cargoes on the spot market, and has also given traditional importers like power utilities an incentive to invest in trading desks. Osaka Gas is contracted to buy 1.38 million tonnes of LNG a year from the Gorgon project when it reaches full capacity. The gas plant, which shipped its first commercial cargo in March, was shut down early this month temporarily due to technical problems and may not restart for up to two months. Story continues Osaka Gas has commitments to take too much LNG term supplies compared with projected demand in the short to medium term, President Takehiro Honjo said separately during a Thursday luncheon with reporters, declining to give detailed figures. In Japan, the world's biggest importer of LNG, other buyers also have plenty of supplies. Osaka Gas, Japan's second-biggest city gas supplier, will also consider reselling destination-free cargoes from other projects as well, including the U.S. Freeport LNG project set to start up in 2018, Inoue said. (Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Henning Gloystein and Tom Hogue) NAIROBI, April 8 (Reuters) - Kenyan police have ordered the arrest of eight senior executives from National Bank of Kenya and Chase Bank Kenya Ltd, its inspector general said on Friday. On March 29, National Bank placed its chief executive officer and five top managers on leave to pave way for an internal audit. Chase Bank Kenya's managing director and chairman resigned on Wednesday, a day before it was put under receivership. Inspector General Joseph Boinnet said in a statement that National Bank's CEO, Chase Bank's former managing director and chairman and the five other National Bank officers could voluntarily present themselves to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations before 3:30 p.m. local time to avoid arrest. (Reporting by Duncan Miriri; writing by George Obulutsa; editing by Jason Neely) * Will resume issuing bauxite export permits to clear stockpiles * Impact of extended bauxite ban limited -trader (Adds quotes, details) KUALA LUMPUR, April 8 (Reuters) - Malaysia will extend its ban on bauxite mining by another three months, effective April 15, in order to clear stockpiles and remove the risk of the aluminium-making ingredient contaminating the country's rivers, the environment minister said on Friday. While lower output at the world's top exporter of bauxite threatens to interrupt supply to the world's biggest aluminium producer, China, traders expect the impact to be limited given China's ample stocks of the raw material. Malaysia's largely unregulated bauxite mining industry has boomed in the past two years to meet demand from China, filling in a supply gap after Indonesia banned exports, but the frenetic pace of digging has led to a public outcry with many complaining of water contamination and destruction of the environment. Late last year, bauxite mining was blamed for turning the waters and seas red near Kuantan, the capital of Malaysia's third-largest state and key bauxite producer Pahang, following which, in January, the government imposed its first three-month ban on mining the commodity. "The cabinet today agreed to the ministry's suggestion that the bauxite moratorium in Kuantan be extended by three more months," said Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, Malaysia's natural resources and environment minister at a press conference. "One reason for the moratorium extension is to clear the stockpile, only then can we clean the stockpile areas. This is so that we remove the possibility of remnants of the bauxite stockpile contaminating the river and sea in the event of rain." Existing bauxite stockpiles in Kuantan must be exported before the moratorium can be lifted, Wan Junaidi said, adding that there were 3.6 million tonnes of stocks in Kuantan. Malaysia had shipped out around 3.5 million tonnes of the commodity to China in December, but exports dwindled to slightly under 1 million tonnes in February. Story continues Malaysia will resume issuing bauxite export permits to help miners clear existing stockpiles, Wan Junaidi said. It had frozen export permits during the first moratorium. If producers are unable to clear up stockpiles within three months, it is up to them to apply for additional extension, the minister added. A Singapore-based alumina trader said he expected the impact of the extended ban to be limited due to China's ample stocks as well as low metal prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) that have curbed production. Aluminium prices sank 18 percent last year on a China-driven supply overhang and have not made any gains so far in 2016. China may hold more than 20 million tonnes of imported bauxite stocks, said Xu Hongping, an analyst at China Merchants Futures. "Their stocks could support five months of production." "China has also started importing bauxite from Guinea, which should replace the bulk of demand from Malaysia," Xu said. (Additional reporting by Melanie Burton in Melbourne and Polly Yam in Hong Kong; Reporting by Joseph Sipalan, writing by Emily Chow; Editing by Himani Sarkar) KUALA LUMPUR, April 8 (Reuters) - Malaysia extended its ban on bauxite mining by another three months, effective April 15, in a move that could chip away at stockpiles of the aluminium-making ingredient in top buyer China. Mining activity in Kuantan, the capital of Malaysia's third-largest state and key bauxite producer Pahang, has boomed in the past two years to meet demand from top aluminium producer China. But the frenetic pace of digging led to a public outcry with many complaining of water contamination and destruction of the environment. In January, Malaysia imposed a three-month ban on all bauxite mining activities and a freeze on new export permits. "The cabinet today agreed to the ministry's suggestion that the bauxite moratorium in Kuantan be extended by three more months," said Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, Malaysia's natural resources and environment minister at a press conference. Existing bauxite stockpiles in Kuantan must be exported before the moratorium can be lifted, he added. (Reporting by Joseph Sipalan, writing by Emily Chow; Editing by Himani Sarkar) By Anshuman Daga and Saeed Azhar SINGAPORE (Reuters) - French utility Engie (ENGIE.PA) and Japan's Marubeni are among several suitors preparing to bid for Chevron Corp's (CVX.N) Asian geothermal energy blocks valued at about $3 billion (2 billion pounds), sources familiar with the matter said. Potential buyers including Southeast Asian firms are attracted by the opportunity to gain control of large blocks of geothermal assets located in Indonesia and Philippines. "There's a lot of jostling going on to see who's teaming up with whom. I expect to see companies forming consortiums for this big sale," said one banker involved in the process. "The Japanese are key as whoever ties up with them would have access to low cost funding and that boosts their chances," he added. Indicative bids for the assets are due this month, said some of the sources, who declined to be identified as the information is not public. Like many rivals, Chevron is selling assets, cutting jobs globally and slashing capital spending to save cash in a bid to preserve its dividend amid weak oil prices. Chevron, which hired Citigroup (C.N) as its adviser for the sale, kicked off the auction last month, sources said. Chevron, Marubeni, Engie and Citigroup declined comment. "For global players, it provides an entry into the geothermal markets in Indonesia and possibility of further expansion," said consultancy Wood Mackenzie's principal power analyst Bikal Pokharel. Two Chevron subsidiaries operate geothermal projects in Salak and Darajat fields in west Java with a capacity to generate nearly 650 megawatts of electricity. The combined output produces enough renewable energy to supply about 3 million homes, according to Chevron's website. HUGE POTENTIAL Pokharel said Indonesia had estimated a geothermal potential of 27,700 megawatts, the highest in the world, but its current installed capacity was less than 5 percent of the potential. He said contradictory and untested regulations, land acquisition, building transmission infrastructure and lack of clarity in pricing methodology remained major challenges. Story continues Medco Power, which operates two geothermal projects in Indonesia, is keen to buy the assets and would consider looking for a partner due to the large value of the assets. "We have expressed our interest in seeing the data on its asset," Fazil Alfitri, president director of Medco Power, a subsidiary of Medco Energi Internasional (MEDC.JK), told Reuters. Indonesia has unveiled land and regulatory reforms aimed at boosting production of geothermal energy, but investment in renewables has been slow in Southeast Asia's largest economy. Geothermal energy is created by the heat of the earth. It generates reliable power and emits almost no greenhouse gases. Chevron also has a 40 percent interest in Philippine Geothermal Production Company, Inc., which produces steam energy for third party-owned geothermal power plants. They have a combined generating capacity of 692 megawatts. Southeast Asian power firms Aboitiz (AP.PS) and Banpu Power (BAP.BK) may bid for Chevron's assets, said the sources. Banpu said it would consider the terms and size of the assets before making a decision. Sources said Chinese power firms are also expected to participate in the auction. (Additional reporting by Wilda Asmarini in JAKARTA, Enrico Dela Cruz in MANILA, Khettiya Jittapong and Manunphattr Dhanananphorn in BANGKOK, Yuka Obayashi in TOKYO and Geert de Clercq in PARIS, Reporting by Anshuman Daga and Saeed Azhar; Editing by Denny Thomas and Mark Potter) LONDON, April 8 (Reuters) - Index provider MSCI is seeking feedback from investors on the ease of access to the Nigerian equity market, a move that could lead to it being excluded from MSCI's Frontier Markets index. The consultation follows the introduction of restrictions on foreign currency trading, MSCI said in a statement issued late on Thursday, adding that it would announce its decision on or before April 29. Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy, is facing its worst crisis in decades as the falling price of oil has slashed revenues, prompting the central bank to peg the currency and introduce curbs to protect foreign exchange reserves, which have fallen to 11-year lows. The International Monetary Fund has called on Nigeria to lift the curbs and let the naira currency reflect market forces more closely, as the restrictions have significantly affected the private sector. MSCI said that ease of capital inflows and outflows was one of the key criteria in its market classification framework. "Introduction of restrictive measures, such as capital or foreign exchange controls, which can lead to material deterioration of equity market accessibility, may result in the exclusion of such market from the MSCI Frontier Markets Indexes and a reclassification to Standalone Market status," it warned. Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, said the possibility that Nigeria might lose its place in the index had been a risk since it was excluded from key bond indices by JPMorgan and Barclays last year. "Now the risk has become acute," he said. Being excluded would create a higher hurdle to attracting future investments, as there would be no need for passive frontier market funds, which track the MSCI index, to hold Nigerian stocks. "With this news, Nigeria's hopes of attracting private sector investors have been dealt another blow," Robertson added. Daniel Salter, head of equity strategy at Renaissance Capital, said that about $480 million of MSCI benchmarked money was in Nigeria, in both mutual funds and exchange traded funds. (Reporting by Claire Milhench Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.) April 8 (Reuters) - NXP Semiconductors NV is considering a sale of its standard products business and has received interest from Chinese buyers, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. NXP, whose shares were up about 2.5 percent in U.S. premarket trading, may seek at least $2 billion for the unit, which makes semiconductor parts used in consumer electronics, Bloomberg reported. (http://bloom.bg/20dBGsa) The unit contributed about $1.24 billion of NXP's revenue in 2015, or about a fifth of the total, according to a regulatory filing. The business has drawn interest from suitors including Jianguang Asset Management Co, the Beijing-based investment firm known as JAC Capital, according to the report. NXP, which is based in the Netherlands, sold its RF Power business to Jianguang Asset Management last year for $1.8 billion. (http://bit.ly/1SErjbo) China has shown particular interest in investing in foreign technology companies as Beijing seeks to become a global semiconductor powerhouse. NXP completed its nearly $12 billion deal to buy Freescale Semiconductor last year to create the world's top maker of automotive electronics. Joon Knapen, a spokesman for NXP, said the company did not comment on rumors or speculation. JAC Capital did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. Up to Thursday's close of $81.26, NXP's shares had fallen more than 3 percent this year. (Reporting by Narottam Medhora in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta) Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama is fond of saying he has run his last election, but Hillary Clinton's shortcomings and Donald Trump's shock ascent are drawing him ever faster into the 2016 race. Still, inside the White House, the panic is starting to ease. In the early days of the Democratic primaries, Team Obama watched in horror as heir apparent Hillary Clinton stumbled and fumbled her way through contests against unlikely rival Bernie Sanders. The former First Lady, former Secretary of State, former Senator -- one of the most qualified presidential candidates in modern history -- seemed uninspired and uninspiring, awkward on the stump and seen with suspicion by key swathes of the electorate, including, incredibly, women. There was talk of an early presidential endorsement to prod the election-winning "Obama coalition" -- African Americans, Latinos and college-educated whites -- into getting behind her. But that was a last-ditch nuclear option, one which risked fracturing the party and would inject Obama into the center of the election when he still had a year of governing left to focus on. Instead, Obama more subtly put his hand on the scales. "She's extraordinarily experienced and, you know, wicked smart," Obama told Politico in a January interview. "(She) knows every policy inside and out sometimes (that) could make her more cautious and her campaign more prose than poetry, but those are also her strengths. It means that she can govern and she can start here, day one, more experienced than any non-vice president has ever been who aspires to this office." Even before that glowing appraisal, it had been an open secret that the Obama White House saw Clinton, whom he beat in 2008, rather than Sanders as the guarantor of his legacy. The leftist Vermont Senator may be likeable and may say things that appeal to the same young voters who helped bring Obama to the White House. But if he became the nominee his narrow electoral appeal could likely spell crushing defeat in the general election, bringing Obama's legacy into question. Story continues Facing a hostile Congress in his second term, Obama has leaned heavily on executive actions to make his mark as president. But executive actions to prevent millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, weakening the Cuba embargo, a nuclear deal with Iran, or tackling climate change could be undone with the stroke of a Republican presidential pen. So there was relief when Clinton hugged Obama hard, improved her pitch, won big among black and Hispanic voters in southern states and began a relentless marching toward the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the party nomination. Today the Democratic race continues, but the outcome seems in less doubt. Now it is the vitriolic no-holds-bared Republican race that has drawn Obama into the election race faster than expected. - Enter 'The Donald' - As the White House's concerns about Clinton have ebbed, its concerns about Donald Trump have grown. Obama has gone from expressing confidence that the bombastic real estate tycoon will not been elected to warning Trump is hurting America's standing in the world. Lashing out at "vulgar and divisive rhetoric" Obama has attacked Trump's plan to force Mexico to pay for a border wall as "half baked" and his views on East Asia as those of someone who "doesn't know much about foreign policy, or nuclear policy, or the Korean peninsula, or the world, generally." Obama was always going to find Trump objectionable. As so often in American politics, popular new candidates appear to be the antithesis of the incumbent. Where Obama is eloquent and ponderous, Trump is rambling and instinctive. But observers say Obama's sharper tone represents a real fear, as well as a real sense of opportunity. "I think he feels the stakes are pretty high and the threat of Trump very real, as well as (Texas Senator Ted) Cruz," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton University. "If the Democrats were not as divided I think he would step in even more aggressively." Obama's poll numbers appear to have benefited from Trump bashing and contrasting the silliness of the campaign with the seriousness of the Oval Office, but there is also an electoral purpose. Although Trump's standing outside hardline Republican circles looks border-line fatal for the general election, the White House will be concerned about his ability to woo disgruntled voters in the rust belt. Trump won the Michigan and Illinois primaries handily and is polling well in Pennsylvania, where the Great Recession hit hard. If he were able to convert that into wins in those states in the general election it would put the White House within striking distance. Obama is increasingly giving a preview of what his role might be in preventing that scenario, raising cash for the Democratic Party and energizing young Democrats and those from minorities. A recent high-energy fundraising trip to Austin, Texas was likely a preview of election events in college towns from Madison, Wisconsin to Ames, Iowa. Obama is likely to spend much of his time trying to ensure that the coalition that served him so well -- young college-educated voters, African-Americans, Latinos -- stay angry and Republicans keep turning out to vote. "Obama's role in the campaign will likely resemble that of Ronald Reagan in 2008 more than the efforts of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush," said Brendan Doherty of the US Naval Academy's Department of Political Science, contrasting elections where popular presidents were invoked and two unpopular presidents shunned. As one aide put it: "He's still the most popular politician across America." Panama was removed from the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering 's (FATF) gray list last February, but the Panama Papers scandal has led to scrutiny of the country. The leaked financial report, which contains 11.5 million encrypted documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, exposes politicians and celebrities who own offshore shell companies and property. While many of the activity isn't illegal, some of the documents shed light on hidden businesses and wealth. Still, the country has not broken any laws, according to Frank De Lima, a former Panamanian economy and finance minster. He told CNBC on Thursday that Panama has made great strides to rid of its bank secrecy reputation and has vigorously fought against money laundering, terrorism and tax evasion. "The truth is that most of the corporations that were used by these high-profile clients weren't Panamanian," he said during an interview with "Power Lunch." "The money that these individuals or corporations are hiding is not in Panama, it's in other banking centers. " A U.S. Treasury Department spokesperson said Wednesday that the agency aims to submit a long-delayed rule to the White House for review. The proposed regulation is said to force banks to uncover the names behind shell companies in efforts to address money laundering and other financial crimes. The initiative is a result of the Panama Papers scandal. While De Lima believes that the label Panama Papers is a big blow to Panama, he contends that the firm is one in Panama and is not representative of the entire country. He suggested that the documents could be referenced as the "Mossack Fonseca's Papers" instead. "We feel that it's completely unfair that they refer to this case as the Panama case," he said. "When you talk about tax evasion and money laundering it's a whole network and Panama is one piece of the puzzle in this case." Story continues De Lima was a spokesperson for former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli in his 2009 election campaign. He also led the country's double taxation treaties negotiating team in 2009. The organization was formed as part of efforts to remove Panama from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's gray list, which was achieved in 2011. Critics argue that the Panamanian laws make financial crimes possible, but De Lima contends that the country has implemented changes to its former relaxed financial policies. De Lima said Panama is no tax haven, he said that the corporate tax rate is 15 percent and individual tax rate can be as high as 25 percent, depending on one's tax bracket. "Our legislation meets international standards in regards to tax transparency," he said. "These documents date back 40 years also, so what happened before these laws were put in place it's hard to criticize." Despite helping change Panama's financial policies, De Lima was detained for nine months in a probe of political graft allegations before being released on bail in February. He is disputing the charges. Reuters contributed to this report. More From CNBC Brussels (AFP) - Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini was arrested Friday, a police source said as Belgian authorities announced they had detained several people in connection with the deadly Brussels airport and metro bombings. The police source gave no details of the location or circumstances of Abrini's arrest but VRT television said it took place in the Anderlecht district of the Belgian capital which was home to several other suspects now linked to both the Paris and Brussels attacks. RTL television showed footage of what it said could be Abrini's arrest, with a man pinned down on the sidewalk by several armed plain-clothed police wearing facemasks and then being bundled into a grey civilian car. Other reports said among those arrested was a person seen talking to Khalid El Bakraoui who blew himself up at Maalbeek metro station, not far from EU headquarters in Brussels. The federal prosecutor's office said there would be a press conference at 9:30 pm (1930 GMT). Abrini, 31, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, was caught on film at a motorway service station en route to Paris shortly before the November 13 killings with another suspect, the now detained Salah Abdeslam. Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim blew himself up in Paris, was arrested March 18 in Brussels, not far from his family's home in the Molenbeek district of the capital. Abdeslam -- who his lawyer said also intended to blow himself up but backed out at the last minute -- fled back to Brussels after the Paris attacks, which left 130 dead, finding refuge in the city despite a massive manhunt. He is now awaiting extradition to France. - The 'man in the hat' - The arrests came just one day afer prosecutors launched a fresh appeal for help in finding the suspected surviving attacker in last month's Brussels airport bombings, releasing a video of the escape route taken by the so-called "man in the hat". Police have been searching for this third suspect ever since he was seen on CCTV next to the two suicide bombers -- identified as Khalid's brother Ibrahim and Najim Laachraoui, believed to be the bomb maker. Story continues The airport and metro attacks, Belgium's worst terrorist onslaught, claimed 32 lives. There was some initial media speculation that the third man was Abrini and police sources told AFP at the time that it was one possibility investigators were considering but nothing appeared to come of it. The federal prosecutor's office said several arrests were made Friday in connection with the Brussels airport and metro attacks. "The federal prosecutor confirms that there have been several arrests in the course of the day in connection with the attacks on the airport and metro," a statement said. The police video released Thursday shows the third man, wearing a dark hat and a light-coloured jacket, fleeing the airport's departure hall after the bombs went off at 7:58 am on March 22. He then continued on foot to central Brussels where surveillance cameras lost track of him at 9:50 am, having discarded his jacket on the way. The man appeared calm and at several points appeared to be on the phone. The federal prosecutor appealed for anyone who might have seen the man to come forward and stressed that investigators were urgently looking for the jacket which might "give invaluable information to the investigators." Last week, police asked all residents and business owners in the Brussels region who have external surveillance cameras not to delete any footage from March 15 onwards. - Belgium criticised - Critics say Belgium has not done enough to tackle Islamic radicalisation as close links have emerged between the Brussels and Paris killings which were claimed by the Islamic State group. They say Abdeslam must have had some help to have been able to elude the police for four months and then was only finally tracked down in his home base in Molenbeek. Abdeslam says he had no knowledge of the Brussels attacks, according to his lawyer, despite having links to Khalid El Bakraoui. He also knew Laachraoui, who drove to Hungary with Abdeslam in September. More links between the suspects have come to light following the arrest near Paris last month of Reda Kriket, who police said was planning an attack of "extreme violence" based on the arms and explosives found in a flat he used. Two suspects in that case, identified as Abderrahmane A. and Rabah M, were remanded in custody in Belgium on Thursday, prosecutors said. Three other suspects held in connection with the Paris attacks, as well as Abdeslam himself, also had their detentions extended. (Note: election law forbids publication of polls in Peru a week prior to April 10 voting) (New throughout, recasts to focus on second-round scenario, adds context and details from poll) By Teresa Cespedes and Mitra Taj April 7 (Reuters) - Peru's leftist presidential hopeful Veronika Mendoza was seen statistically tied with front-runner Keiko Fujimori if the two women end up in a second-round battle after Sunday's election, according to an Ipsos poll obtained by Reuters Thursday. Mendoza, a 35-year-old lawmaker promising "radical change," would win 42 percent of votes while center-right Fujimori would get 43 percent in a run-off, according to the survey, the first time they were seen head-to-head in the increasingly likely situation. The survey, which had a margin of error of 2.3 points, was conducted on April 6 after tens of thousands of Peruvians protested against 40-year-old Fujimori's candidacy on the anniversary of the day her father, former strongman Alberto Fujimori, ordered the military to shutter congress, 24 years ago. Fujimori slipped 3 points in the Ipsos poll but remained the clear favorite for the April 10 election, with 37.7 percent of valid votes and a double digit lead over each of her nine rivals. However, at least 50 percent of votes are needed to win outright and stiff opposition to Fujimori is widely expected to force her into a second-round battle with the runner-up. Mendoza has surged on promises to ditch Peru's business-friendly constitution to virtually tie investor-favorite Pedro Pablo Kuczynski for second place in opinion polls - spooking markets that had bet on a fifth straight conservative government in the global minerals exporter. The Ipsos survey showed Mendoza with 20.1 percent of valid votes in the first-round, while Kuczynski would get 20.3 percent. Those figures excluded 16.4 percent of blank or spoiled ballots. Remaining undecided voters were mostly poor, rural and female - voters who have opted for Mendoza as election day nears. Story continues However, Mendoza also faces growing resistance from voters wary of upsetting a long stretch of economic growth with unorthodox policies. The share of Peruvians who said they would "definitely not" vote for Mendoza rose three points to 44 percent, while opposition to Fujimori jumped six points to 51 percent, according to Ipsos. A Fujimori-Mendoza run-off would be the first in Peru to feature two women. Kuczynski was seen beating Fujimori by seven points in a second-round election, according to Ipsos. (Reporting by Teresa Cespedes and Mitra Taj; Editing by Sandra Maler, Robert Birsel) April 7 (Reuters) - A jury in St. Louis, Missouri on Thursday rejected a request for about $1.8 billion in damages against Philip Morris USA in a class-action lawsuit that claimed the company misled smokers about the health risks of "light" cigarettes. The lawsuit was filed in 2000 after plaintiffs alleged the Altria Group Inc unit violated Missouri's Merchandising Practices Act in marketing Marlboro Lights. "The jury correctly rejected plaintiffs' allegations of misrepresentation and damages," Murray Garnick said on behalf of Philip Morris USA in a statement. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prohibits the use of "lights" and certain other descriptions unless the manufacturer receives permission to use them. In November, the Illinois Supreme Court also threw out a $10.1 billion verdict against Philip Morris USA in a long-running lawsuit accusing the company of misleading smokers about the health risks of "light" cigarettes. (Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Hay) April 8 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. THE GLOBE AND MAIL ** Ottawa and Quebec face a possible new hurdle in their efforts to help Bombardier Inc and its troubled C Series aircraft - the U.S. government. The Obama administration has put the federal and provincial governments on notice that it considers the planned bailout of the Montreal-based company a worrisome barrier to trade, according to an annual compendium of dubious foreign practices by U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. (http://bit.ly/1Vctn03) ** Alberta can no longer fuel the growth of Canada's economy without the federal government's help building a new pipeline, Premier Rachel Notley warned in a televised address on Thursday. (http://bit.ly/23ojtu6) NATIONAL POST ** Postmedia Network Canada Corp has formed a special committee of independent directors to help "explore and review alternatives" aimed at improving its capital structure and liquidity as steep debt repayments weigh on the media company despite significant cost-cutting. (http://bit.ly/23ojZbx) ** Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd has attracted a powerful opponent to its proposed takeover of Norfolk Southern Corp - the U.S. Army. In a letter to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which must give its approval before any merger can go ahead, the army argues the proposed takeover raises national security concerns since both railroads own "hundreds of miles" of strategic rail lines and serve major military installations. (http://bit.ly/1S18xxg) (Compiled by Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru) Middle-class Americans received protections for $14 trillion in retirement savings this week, as the Department of Labor finalized its long-awaited fiduciary rule, which has been in the works for almost the entire Obama administration. The impulse behind the rule is simple: to ensure that investment advisers for retirement plans operate in the best interest of their clients rather than for the benefit of their corporate treasuries. Until now, there was no rule preventing investment advisers from providing conflicted advice to holders of individual retirement accounts (IRAs). An adviser could recommend mutual funds or annuities from their own affiliates, getting hidden commissions for funneling customers into them, and generating higher fees than similar products. The White House estimates that small savers lose as much as $17 billion a year from this type of conflicted advice. Finally, that should come to an end. Related: Why Youll Be Getting Better Advice Next Year The financial industry did succeed in inserting some fine print. The implementation period got extended to one year instead of eight months, pushing it into the next administration. Advisers will also still be able to tout their own firms products over a rivals, as long as they certify through a best-interest contract that their clients wont be scammed. Only one best-interest contract will have to be signed per client, no matter how many products they purchase or how many customer service representatives handle the account. Existing clients will only get a notice instead of a signed contract. And advisers can still offer newsletters, marketing materials and general investor education that wouldnt be covered by the best-interest contract; only individual advice applies. Despite these potential loopholes, the rule represents a giant step forward for ordinary investors, who no longer have to battle their own advisers for the best deal for their retirement. Story continues Wins like this over the financial industry dont happen every day. This is a testament to the perseverance of public servants like Labor Department official Phyllis Borzi, who willed this rule into existence. It also shows the influence of the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party, which found itself less willing to heed the cries of disaster from the finance lobby over this rule. However, as admirable as this rule is, it does not cover all investors. The Labor Department rule is limited to retirement plans, whether IRAs or 401(k) plans linked to an employer. People are limited in how much money they can place in such retirement accounts in a given year. Any other investment savings must go into a separate brokerage account. And those accounts remain governed by a less-stringent suitability standard, meaning that advisers must recommend investments suitable for their clients, without having to necessarily act in their best interest. Related: The Retirement Revolution That Failed Why the 401(k) Isnt Working Only the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has the authority to issue blanket rules governing all investment advisers and broker-dealers. The Labor Department asserted authority over retirement accounts based on the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA. But the SEC has failed to institute any rule for the broader market, amid infighting and suspicion that the end product would simply reflect a giveaway to Wall Street. Congress made its feelings known on this in the Dodd-Frank Act, explicitly charging the SEC with studying and thereafter devising a uniform fiduciary standard. That was six years ago, but the agency hasnt moved forward, despite prodding from the financial industry, which has better relationships with the SEC and would have preferred that it set the tone for these rules rather than the Labor Department. SEC Chair Mary Jo White, who has come under fire from reformers for her friendliness with Wall Street, committed the agency to completing a uniform fiduciary rule only after the Labor Department announced its revamped rule last February. But both Democrats and Republicans on the commission were skeptical, for different reasons. Republican commissioners didnt want any new rules whatsoever, warning that higher costs for advisers would lead them to pull their services for middle-class savers and leave those investors in worse shape. This is a peculiar claim: that investors can only receive advice from professionals if its used to rip them off. On the flip side, The Wall Street Journal reports that Democratic commissioners believed that any rule spearheaded by White would be inadequate, and would harm the Department of Labor process by giving the industry an alternative to tout. So White was alone in seeking the rule change. Related: How to Simplify Your Retirement Accounts and Make More Money Now that the Labor Department rule is out, the SECs ability to shape a uniform standard has been compromised. The agency still claims that its on track to propose a rule by October. But while it still retains the authority to do that, its regulators must take into account how advisers are already adapting to the Labor Departments implementation. The SEC has said that navigating the at times contradictory mandates from Dodd-Frank could put a final fiduciary standard years away. If the industry is already complying with stricter Labor Department rules and showing no difficulty, it puts pressure on the SEC to bring up its standards. The coalition that fought off Wall Street to make the Labor Department rule a success will also play a role. They could reasonably ask: Why shouldnt investors have the same kind of security in non-retirement accounts that they do in their IRAs and 401(k) plans? Why should some brokers be able to take commissions for pushing clients into high-fee proprietary products, when others cannot? The SEC has been remarkably consistent in missing timelines for promulgating rules under Dodd-Frank, and when it has finished them, they often have plenty of safety valves for the industry to exploit. Right now theres a big discrepancy in the way investors get treated outside of retirement plans and inside them. The SEC can fix that, but it has to show some actual will to follow its mission and protect investors. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Not since Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson has any candidate for president wanted to do as much to expand the size and scope of the federal government as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the democratic socialist who has high ambitions to beat out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination this summer. Johnson poured hundreds of billions of dollars into his Great Society including the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and Sanderss revolutionary government and social welfare agenda could easily match or exceed that spending. Related: Sanders Tax Plan Soaks Everybody, With the Wealthiest Paying Millions More If Sanders had his way, the government would provide free college tuition to all students at state-run colleges and universities. Americans would be entitled to medical and family leave from work, courtesy of the federal government. Rather than trimming benefits of the Social Security system, as fiscal conservatives say would sustain the retirement program, Sanders would engineer an historic expansion of the program for retirees and the disabled. Thats just for starters. Sanders most ambitious and costly proposal would enact a European-style single-payer national health insurance program to guarantee every American health care coverage. He would launch a major new infrastructure program to repair and replace the nations aging highways, bridges, airports and water projects. And he would provide universal childcare and pre-school programs. To his credit, Sanderss has proposed a series of massive income and payroll tax increases to help offset the cost of his ambitious program. Thats assuming, of course, that he could push trillions of dollars in tax hikes past congressional Republicans who wouldnt even go along with a five-cent increase in the federal gasoline tax last year to help repair crumbling highways. A recent analysis of Sanders tax proposals by the joint Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, concluded that Sanders plan would raise $15.3 trillion over the coming decade. The Vermont senator who is campaigning largely on the issues of income inequality and the corruption and excesses of Wall Street, would spread the pain of higher taxes across the board, but with the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans being hit with an average increase of more than $3 million in 2017. Story continues Related: Clintons Tax Hikes on the Rich Could Raise $1.1 Trillion Over 10 Years Based on his campaigns own estimates, Sanders would increase government spending other than for interest on the debt by 38 percent over the next decade, according to a new analysis released Thursday by the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). But rather than fully offsetting his spending with tax increases, as Sanders has pledged to do, the offsets would fall significantly short of the costs. Bottom line: the plan would add between $2 trillion and $15 trillion to an already unsustainable $19.2 trillion national debt. Based on the budget watchdogs estimates, Sanders proposal would boost spending and tax revenue to far beyond any previous levels in the United States over the last half century. As a point of reference, the United States has spent an average of about 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product over the past 50 years dating back to the Johnson administration, and never more than 24.4 percent. By contrast, spending under a President Sanders, spending would average between 30 and 35 percent of the total economy, depending on whether healthcare costs and interest on the debt rise or fall. In actual dollar terms, Sanderss most important initiatives would cost between $17 and $28 trillion, depending on healthcare cost variables, while his tax increases would raise less than $16 trillion. While Sanders numbers crunchers optimistically predict that their fiscal program would actually reduce the debt by $2.8 trillion in the coming decade relative to current spending policies, CRFB challenged many of the candidates assumption. If they are right, then Sanderss proposals would cause the national debt to rise from 74 percent of GDP in 2015 to as much as 139 percent of GDP by 2026. Related: Trumps Tax Cuts Would Add $24.5 Trillion to the Debt The CRFB has taken similar tough looks at other presidential candidates tax and spending proposals, including a recent one showing that Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas would add $12.5 trillion to the national debt by 2016 with his military spending and tax reform ideas. Sanders and his advisers have generally discounted criticism of his programs especially his national health care plan that carries a net cost of $19.5 trillion over the coming decade as political jousting. Clinton has frequently criticized him for making pie in the sky promises that he could never deliver on in the real political world. She and others have complained that his numbers dont add up. We applaud Senator Sanders efforts to pay for his ambitious policy proposals through serious and specific tax increases, the CRFB report concluded. However, based on our estimates, these offsets will fall short of paying the full cost of Senator Sanderss proposals, and they certainly fall short of putting the debt on a sustainable path. This is particularly troubling given that the magnitude of Senator Sanders tax increases leave few options available to further tackle the debt, the report added. (Reuters) - UK's Serious Fraud Office has initiated a criminal investigation into Tata Steel's operations, the Telegraph reported on Thursday. Police officers are investigating charges that Tata Steel's staff in and around its Yorkshire's site, may have faked certificates on the composition of the products before its sale, the newspaper said. (http://bit.ly/25Obf0i) Examined documents have affected 500 customers, including BAE and Rolls-Royce, Telegraph said, citing a source. Tata, the biggest steel producer in Britain, has put its British businesses up for sale due to high costs, weak demand and a flood of cheap supplies from top producer China. The British government, under fire for the way it has responded to the crisis, opened talks with potential buyers for Tata Steel's UK operations, including Gupta's Liberty House, earlier this week. (Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler) (Reuters) - British spot gas prices fell slightly on Friday on a slightly oversupplied network, while falling wind power output boosted demand for gas-fired electricity generation. Within-day gas prices was down 0.10 pence per therm to 27.60 p/therm at 0808 GMT, while gas for Monday delivery was down 0.15 pence at 27.5 p/therm. The UK gas market, which started the session undersupplied by 12 million cubic metres/day (mcm), moved into slight surplus in the morning, with demand estimated at 273.1 mcm/day versus supply at 274.3 mcm/day, National Grid data showed. Imports from Norway via the Langeled pipeline, Britain's main import artery, rose by around 3 mcm/day to 55 mcm/day, while small gains in flows from the Netherlands through the BBL pipeline and some domestic terminals also helped support supply. Further along the curve prices for May delivery rose 0.10 pence per therm to 26.52 pence. Domestic gas output from the UK Continental Shelf is estimated at 153 mcm/day but a flow disruption into Shell's Bacton terminal means physical flows are closer to 145 mcm/day. Britain-bound liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments are steady with no new cargoes announced, although the LNG Enugu tanker which has just departed Nigeria's loading port of Bonny is signalling the Milford Haven port in Wales as its destination. However, the heading may simply be out of date given the LNG Enugu previously delivered a cargo from Bonny to Milford Haven. The Qatari LNG tanker Zarga is currently sailing through the Mediterranean and may be heading for Britain, gas analysts at Thomson Reuters said. [LNG/TKUK] In the Dutch gas market, the day-ahead price at the TTF hub fell by 0.23 euro per megawatt hour to 11.20 euro/MWh. In the European carbon market, front-year EU allowances edged down 0.04 euro to 5.24 euros a tonne. (Reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic; editing by Jason Neely) By Kay Johnson ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) hopes to overcome by 2020 the challenges of building a $10-billion gas pipeline through Afghanistan's most violent areas, by making sure it benefits Afghan contractors and communities, a bank official said. Shareholders of the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI) project agreed on Thursday to invest $200 million in studies and engineering for the pipeline, looking to link gas-rich Turkmenistan with eager markets in Pakistan and India. Originating at the giant Galkynysh gas field in Turkmenistan, the TAPI pipeline, which involves the four countries' own energy companies, would carry 33 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year. But current plans route the underground pipeline through one of Afghanistan's most violence-wracked provinces, Helmand, where the Taliban insurgents hold sway. "I agree ... we're going through some of the toughest territory in Afghanistan," said Sean O'Sullivan, the Central and West Asia director general of the ADB, a transaction adviser for the project. "The challenge is there. There's no doubt about it, but I am sure it's doable." He added, "I think if it happens, it will be quite an unprecedented example of regional cooperation, particularly in a region that finds it difficult to cooperate." The ADB would be able to capitalise on lessons it has learnt from other infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, including building power transmission lines from Uzbekistan to Kabul and a setting up a railway in the north, O'Sullivan said. Under current timelines, the pipeline could be operational by 2020, he told Reuters in a telephone interview this week. Key to the TAPI's success would be spreading jobs among Afghan communities, rather than bringing in foreign contractors. "Usually we in ADB would say, 'Look, it's a $100-million project,' for example, and we'll break it into two or three contracts and that would attract international bidders," O'Sullivan added. Story continues But for Afghan projects such as TAPI, O'Sullivan said, "We want to split it up into smaller parts that Afghan contractors are capable of doing, and hope to reduce the security risk by doing so." Turkmenistan, which sits on the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, started building its section of the 1,814-km (1,127-mile) link, designed to ease its dependence on Russia and China, last December, but the three other countries have yet to begin work. Turkmen state energy firm Turkmengas is the main shareholder of TAPI Pipeline Company Limited, the joint venture set up to carry out the project. Other investors are Afghan Gas Enterprise, Pakistan's Inter State Gas Systems Ltd and GAIL (India) Ltd. (Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) TOKYO, JAPAN and TROY, MI--(Marketwired - April 07, 2016) - Expands existing joint venture to include all of Asia Pacific Joint venture will be renamed TS Kelly Asia Pacific, and will be headquartered in Singapore Provides both companies with accelerated growth opportunities, larger workforce solutions presence, critical mass, and enhanced competitive positioning in the global marketplace Provides clients with seamless, cross border HR solutions Parent companies to form joint collaboration committee to explore additional opportunities to create value together Temp Holdings Co., Ltd. (TSE:2181) and Kelly Services (KELYA) (KELYB) today announced an agreement to expand their existing North Asia joint venture, TS Kelly Workforce Solutions (formed in 2012), to cover all of Asia and the Pacific. The new joint venture, TS Kelly Asia Pacific, will be headquartered in Singapore and is expected to be the largest workforce solutions company in the Asia Pacific region. By expanding its scope from four countries/regions to 12, TS Kelly Asia Pacific is positioned to be a leading player in Asia Pacific's growing workforce solutions market. The joint venture, projected to be finalized by the end of June, combines the resources and expertise of Kelly's staffing operations across Asia Pacific with Temp Holding's businesses including Capita, with offices in Singapore and Malaysia; First Alliances, with offices in Vietnam; and Intelligence, with a presence in Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia. Temp Holdings will continue to own 51 percent of the expanded joint venture, with Kelly Services owning the remaining 49 percent. Takayuki Yamazaki, current chief executive officer of TS Kelly Workforce Solutions and executive officer of Temp Holdings, will serve as CEO of TS Kelly Asia Pacific. The creation of TS Kelly Asia Pacific will capitalize on the strong reputation Kelly Services has developed in Asia Pacific as a leading talent provider and on Temp Holding's regional presence. The outsourcing and consulting group of Kelly Services, KellyOCG, is not part of the joint venture and will continue to operate under the complete control and ownership of Kelly. Story continues The new organization, with nearly 1,600 employees, will operate in the following countries/regions: China Singapore India Hong Kong Malaysia Australia Taiwan Thailand New Zealand South Korea Indonesia Vietnam "As globalization in talent management becomes increasingly critical, I am convinced that expanding our current joint venture is the best way to further strengthen our presence in the region," said Masamichi Mizuta, president and representative director, Temp Holdings. "Temp Holdings and Kelly Services have a history of respecting each other's corporate values since the formation of a strategic alliance in 2010. Our goal is to further strengthen the relationship of the two parties and to expand our presence in the Asia Pacific region." "The creation of TS Kelly Asia Pacific confirms Kelly's commitment to strengthening our workforce solutions presence in the rapidly growing Asia Pacific market while solidifying our KellyOCG focus as that of a leading talent provider to multinational companies with operations in the region," said Carl Camden, president and chief executive officer, Kelly Services. "We will continue to provide our global clients with seamless, cross border HR solutions in Asia Pacific with the goal of becoming the most trusted talent management brand in the region." In 2010, Temp Holdings and Kelly Services formed a strategic alliance to expand and strengthen their competitive positions in the global staffing market. The two companies announced their first joint venture in 2012, TS Kelly Workforce Solutions, to expand both companies' presence in North Asia. With the creation of TS Kelly Asia Pacific, both companies are well-positioned to serve as a major workforce solutions partner for multinational and regional companies seeking talent solutions across Asia Pacific. As an additional step in their relationship, the parent companies of the new joint venture announced the creation of a "Joint Cooperation Committee" consisting of executives from both companies. This committee will collaborate on future initiatives in such areas as technology, sales and marketing, and product development. About Temp Holdings Since the establishment of Tempstaff Co., Ltd. in 1973, the firm has developed into a leading talent solution provider covering contingent labor, permanent placement, outsourcing and outplacement support services. Since 2008, its holding company Temp Holdings has been listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. (TSE:2181) Revenue in 2015 was $4.0 billion. Visit http://www.temp-holdings.co.jp/english/. About Kelly Services As a global leader in providing workforce solutions, Kelly Services, Inc. (KELYA)(KELYB) and its subsidiaries, offer a comprehensive array of outsourcing and consulting services as well as world-class staffing on a temporary, temporary-to-hire, and direct-hire basis. Kelly has a role in managing employment opportunities for more than one million workers around the globe by employing 550,000 of these individuals directly with the remaining workers engaged through its talent supply chain network of supplier partners. Revenue in 2015 was $5.5 billion. Visit kellyservices.com. By James Davey LONDON (Reuters) - Tesco (TSCO.L) is expected to say its recovery, though still in its early stages, is gaining momentum when the supermarket operator reports annual results next week. Sales, profit and asset values at Britain's biggest retailer have been hammered by changes to shopping habits and the rise of German discounters Aldi [ALDIEI.UL] and Lidl [LIDUK.UL], while an accounting scandal severely dented its reputation. Yet former Unilever (ULVR.L) executive Dave Lewis has impressed investors with his decisive actions since replacing sacked predecessor Phil Clarke as chief executive in September 2014, and the latest evidence of his efforts could be on show in next Wednesday's update. Lewis is trying to revive Tesco with a focus on lower prices, better customer service and new relationships with suppliers, the root cause of the accounting issues being investigated by Britain's Serious Fraud Office. Lewis, dubbed "Drastic Dave" for his radical overhaul of Unilever, has also sold assets including Tesco's South Korean business, slimmed down a bloated product range and cut costs, including thousands of jobs, to reduce debts. Tesco shares have gained 28 percent so far this year on recovery hopes and the group enjoyed its best Christmas trading performance for four years. Improving monthly UK industry data has followed. Analysts at Barclays, Tesco's in-house broker, forecast a 0.8 percent rise in fourth-quarter UK like-for-like sales, which would be the first positive quarter in more than three years. "While this is very welcome, the discounters continue to open stores and take market share, Asda seems to be sharpening its offer, and there will likely be cost pressure," the analysts said, noting factors including a rise in the government-mandated minimum pay rate dubbed the national living wage. Lewis has said he hopes to deliver an operating profit before one-off items for the year to Feb. 27 similar to the 940 million pounds made in the previous year. Analysts on average forecast 932 million. Story continues However, the fact that Tesco made a trading profit of 3.97 billion pounds in 2011-12 shows the extent of its profit collapse in recent years. Analysts expect profit growth in the 2016-17 year. The average forecast is for an underlying operating profit of 1.25 billion pounds. But in the meantime progress is difficult and no dividend is expected to be paid for the past year, or a timetable set out for its resumption. Results are due on April 13 at 0600 GMT. (Editing by David Holmes) City workers walk past the Bank of England in the City of London, Britain, March 29, 2016. REUTERS/Toby Melville By Huw Jones and Andy Bruce LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England's insurance regulator has been appointed the new deputy governor of the central bank responsible for day-to-day bank supervision, the Treasury said on Friday. Sam Woods will become head of the central bank's Prudential Regulatory Authority, where he is now executive director of insurance supervision. He will take over on July 1 from Andrew Bailey, who will head Britain's Financial Conduct Authority. "I believe Sam is the best person to ensure that these vital reforms he helped design will be a success and to deliver a strong, secure and globally competitive regime for all financial services," Chancellor George Osborne said in a statement. Woods was not among those touted in the media as a contender for the job. Lawyers said his appointment was probably intended to avoid controversy, unlike the appointment of Bailey to head the FCA, which had been announced earlier. Bailey is replacing Martin Wheatley, a hardliner who was ousted by Osborne, in a move widely criticised as a retreat from close scrutiny of British banks. "The Bank is much more associated with continuity than revolution since 1694," said Rob Moulton, a financial services lawyer at Ashurst. "You wouldn't want two revolutionary leaders for the two regulators at the same time. It suggests an ultimate triumph of the BoE, that they produce their own replacement at the PRA and take over the FCA," Moulton said. Woods has been appointed for a renewable term of five years. A former banking supervisor, more recently he has been overseeing the introduction of new European Union insurance capital rules known as Solvency II that came into force in January, the PRA's biggest single task in the past year. "Sam is a dedicated public servant a forward-looking policymaker and a natural leader," BoE Governor Mark Carney said. Woods spent 10 years at the finance ministry before joining what was then the Financial Services Authority in 2011. He transferred to the Bank in 2013. Story continues With Osborne looking for a more accommodative attitude towards the banks, lawyers said they were not surprised that an internal candidate was chosen to head the PRA, which has taken pragmatic stance in its dealings with lenders. "The PRA seems to be on a safe course and doing well, so continuity makes sense," said Etay Katz, a financial services lawyer at Allen & Overy. "You are looking at a relatively young organisation with a good sense of direction, so why would you want to have anyone but a capable internal to take it forward?" Katz said. Under Bailey, the PRA was a subsidiary of the Bank, but it is now being folded into the central bank. The PRA's board will become the Prudential Regulation Committee. Woods will also sit on the Financial Policy Committee and on the FCA board. (Additional reporting by Andy Bruce, editing by Larry King) New cars are seen on the showroom floor at the Medved dealer in Denver December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Rick Wilking (Reuters) WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) - - U.S. wholesale inventories fell at their fastest pace in nearly three years in February, pointing to a sharper slowdown in first-quarter economic growth than previously thought. Wholesale inventories dropped 0.5 percent in February, the Commerce Department said on Friday, the sharpest decline since May 2013. Analysts polled by Reuters expected a 0.1 percent decline. The government also revised its reading for January to show a 0.2 percent decline in inventories rather than a 0.2 percent rise. Inventories are a key component of gross domestic product changes. The component of wholesale inventories that goes into the calculation of GDP - wholesale stocks excluding autos - dropped 0.4 percent in February. Weak economic growth in the first quarter of recent years has led many analysts to wonder if the government is having trouble making seasonal adjustments to its data. Weak inventories in the first three months of the year could lead to catch-up growth in the economy in the second quarter as companies restock their shelves. Economists generally expect the economy grew at less than a 1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, down from a 1.4 percent rate in the last three months of 2015. At February's sales pace, it would take 1.36 months to clear shelves compared with 1.37 months in January. ((Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Andrea Ricci); ((jason.lange@thomsonreuters.com; +1 202 310 5487; Twitter; @langejason; Reuters Messaging:; jason.lange.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))) (Adds comments from source, details; changes story label to VICENZA-EQUITY/FORTRESS from FORTRESS INV GLO-POPOLARE VICENZA/UNICREDIT) CERNOBBIO, Italy, April 8 (Reuters) - UniCredit is aware of a proposal by U.S.-based Fortress Investment Group to buy into a 1.8 billion euro ($2 billion) share issue the Italian bank is guaranteeing at smaller rival Popolare di Vicenza, but has no say over it. UniCredit is sole underwriter for up to 1.5 billion euros of the cash call Popolare Vicenza is carrying out as it lists its shares on the Milan bourse this month in an effort to plug a capital gap. UniCredit had considered delaying the deal as Italian banking shares plunged but decided to press ahead. Popolare di Vicenza is assessing a proposal by Fortress, which has offered to take a stake in the bank and buy its troubled loans, a source close to the matter said on Friday, confirming press reports. "I know they spoke but we can't interfere," UniCredit CEO Federico Ghizzoni told reporters on the sidelines of a business conference. According to Il Sole 24 Ore, Fortress would invest around 500 million euros in the cash call, though it added the bank was not enthusiastic about the offer. The Italian market for troubled loans, which ballooned to 360 billion euros during a three-year recession, has attracted the interest of investors in high-risk assets. Banks, however, are reluctant to sell at the prices that buyers require as they entail taking a loss. Banca Carige this month appointed a new board that is likely to reject a similar proposal by Apollo Global Management. The New York-based fund has offered to buy the Italian bank's 3.5 billion euro stock of bad loans and plug a capital shortfall by subscribing to the bulk of a 550 million euro share issue. ($1 = 0.8804 euros) (Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro and Valentina Za; Editing by David Holmes) Wells Fargo John Stumpf Wells Fargo just agreed to pay $1.2 billion for improper mortgage-lending practices. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday announced that it had settled civil mortgage-fraud claims against the San Francisco-based bank related to residential home-mortgage loans it sold between 2001 and 2008. The claims were also against Wells Fargo executive Kurt Lofrano. According to the DOJ statement, Wells Fargo certified that certain loans were eligible for Federal Housing Administration insurance, when in fact they were not. That meant the government wound up having to pay insurance claims when some of those loans defaulted. "Today, Wells Fargo, one of the biggest mortgage lenders in the world, has been held responsible for years of reckless underwriting, while relying on government insurance to deal with the damage," said US Attorney Preet Bharara for the Southern District of New York. "Driven to maximize profits, Wells Fargo employed shoddy underwriting practices to drive up loan volume, at the expense of loan quality." "Today's court filing details a previously announced agreement in principle that resolves not only the pending lawsuit filed by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, but also a number of other potential claims going back as far as 15 years in some cases," said Franklin Codel, president of Wells Fargo Home Lending. "It allows us to put the legal process behind us, and to focus our resources and energy on what we do best serving the needs of the nations homeowners." Wells Fargo will report first-quarter earnings on Thursday. Morgan Stanley in February agreed to pay $3.2 billion over charges that it misled investors on the quality of mortgage loans it sold. Goldman Sachs in January announced that it would pay a $5 billion settlement related to residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) sold between 2005 and 2007. That nearly wiped out fourth-quarter earnings for the firm. Story continues Here is the press release: WASHINGTON The Department of Justice announced today that the United States has settled civil mortgage fraud claims against Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. (Wells Fargo) and Wells Fargo executive Kurt Lofrano, stemming from Wells Fargos participation in the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Direct Endorsement Lender Program. In the settlement, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $1.2 billion and admitted, acknowledged and accepted responsibility for, among other things, certifying to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), during the period from May 2001 through December 2008, that certain residential home mortgage loans were eligible for FHA insurance when in fact they were not, resulting in the Government having to pay FHA insurance claims when some of those loans defaulted. The agreement resolves the United States civil claims in its lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, as well as an investigation conducted by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York regarding Wells Fargos FHA origination and underwriting practices subsequent to the claims in its lawsuit and an investigation conducted by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of California into whether American Mortgage Network, LLC (AMNET), a mortgage lender acquired by Wells Fargo in 2009, falsely certified and submitted ineligible residential mortgage loans for FHA insurance. The settlement was approved today by U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman for the Southern District of New York. This settlement is another step in the Department of Justices continuing efforts to hold accountable FHA approved lenders that unlawfully submitted false claims at the expense of American homeowners and taxpayers, said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer, head of the Justice Departments Civil Division. In addition to todays resolution with Wells Fargo, the department has pursued similar misconduct by numerous other lenders, returning more than $4 billion to the FHA fund and the Treasury and filing suit where appropriate. We remain committed to protecting the public fisc from all who seek to abuse it, whether they do business on Wall Street or Main Street. This Administration remains committed to holding lenders accountable for their lending practices, said Secretary Julian Castro for HUD. The $1.2 billion settlement with Wells Fargo is the largest recovery for loan origination violations in FHAs history. Yet, this monetary figure can never truly make up for the countless families that lost homes as a result of poor lending practices. Today, Wells Fargo, one of the biggest mortgage lenders in the world, has been held responsible for years of reckless underwriting, while relying on government insurance to deal with the damage, said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara for the Southern District of New York. Wells Fargo has long taken advantage of the FHA mortgage insurance program, designed to help millions of Americans realize the dream of home ownership, to write thousands and thousands of faulty loans. Driven to maximize profits, Wells Fargo employed shoddy underwriting practices to drive up loan volume, at the expense of loan quality. Even though Wells Fargo identified through internal quality assurance reviews thousands of problematic loans, the bank decided not to report them to HUD. As a result, while Wells Fargo enjoyed huge profits from its FHA loan business, the government was left holding the bag when the bad loans went bust. With todays settlement, Wells Fargo has finally resolved the years-long litigation, adding to the list of large financial institutions against which this office has successfully pursued civil fraud prosecutions. Misconduct in the mortgage industry helped lead to a destructive financial crisis that spanned the globe, said Acting U.S. Attorney Brian Stretch for the Northern District of California. American Mortgage Networks origination of FHA-insured loans that did not comply with government requirements also caused major losses to the public fisc. Todays settlement demonstrates the Department of Justices resolve to pursue remedies against those who engaged in this type of misconduct. This matter is not just a failure by Wells Fargo to comply with federal requirements in FHAs Direct Endorsement Lender program its a failure by one of our trusted participants in the FHA program to demonstrate a commitment to integrity and to ordinary Americans who are trying to fulfill their dreams of homeownership, said Inspector General David A. Montoya for HUD. According to the second amended complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, the government had alleged: Wells Fargo has been a participant in the Direct Endorsement Lender program, a federal program administered by FHA. As a Direct Endorsement Lender, Wells Fargo has the authority to originate, underwrite and certify mortgages for FHA insurance. If a Direct Endorsement Lender approves a mortgage loan for FHA insurance and the loan later defaults, the holder or servicer of the loan may submit an insurance claim to HUD for the outstanding balance of the defaulted loan, along with any associated costs, which HUD must then pay. Under the Direct Endorsement Lender program, neither the FHA nor HUD reviews a loan for compliance with FHA requirements before it is endorsed for FHA insurance. Direct Endorsement Lenders are therefore required to follow program rules designed to ensure that they are properly underwriting and certifying mortgages for FHA insurance and maintaining a quality control program that can prevent and correct any deficiencies in their underwriting. The quality control program requirements include conducting a full review of all loans that go 60 days into default within the first six payments, known as early payment defaults; taking prompt and adequate corrective action upon discovery of fraud or serious underwriting problems; and disclosing to HUD in writing all loans containing evidence of fraud or other serious underwriting deficiencies. Wells Fargo failed to comply with these basic requirements. First, between at least May 2001 and October 2005, Wells Fargo, the largest HUD-approved residential mortgage lender, engaged in a regular practice of reckless origination and underwriting of its FHA retail loans, all the while knowing that it would not be responsible when the defective loans went into default. To maximize its loan volume (and profits), Wells Fargo elected to hire temporary staff to churn out and approve an ever increasing quantity of FHA loans, but neglected to provide this inexperienced staff with proper training. At the same time, Wells Fargos management applied pressure on its underwriters to approve more and more FHA loans. The bank also imposed short turnaround times for deciding whether to approve the loans, employed lax underwriting standards and controls and paid bonuses to underwriters and other staff based on the number of loans approved. Predictably, as a result, Wells Fargos loan volume and profits soared, but the quality of its loans declined significantly. Yet, when Wells Fargos senior management was repeatedly advised by its own quality assurance reviews of serious problems with the quality of the retail FHA loans that the Bank was originating, management disregarded the findings and failed to implement proper and effective corrective measures, leaving HUD to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in claims for defaulted loans. Second, Wells Fargo failed to self-report to HUD the bad loans that it was originating, in violation of FHA program reporting requirements. During the period 2002 through 2010, HUD required Direct Endorsement Lenders to perform post-closing reviews of the loans that they originated and to report to HUD in writing loans that contained fraud or other serious deficiencies. This requirement provided HUD with an opportunity to investigate the defective loans and request reimbursement for any claim that HUD had paid or request indemnification for any future claim, as appropriate. During this nine-year period, Wells Fargo, through its post-closing reviews, internally identified thousands of defective FHA loans that it was required to self-report to HUD, including a substantial number of loans that had gone into early payment default. However, instead of reporting these loans to HUD as required, Wells Fargo engaged in virtually no self-reporting during the four-year period from 2002 through 2005 and only minimal self-reporting after 2005. In his capacity as Vice President of Credit-Risk Quality Assurance at Wells Fargo, Lofrano executed on Wells Fargos behalf the annual certifications required by HUD for the Banks participation in the Direct Endorsement Lender program for certain years. Lofrano also organized and participated in the working group responsible for creating and implementing Wells Fargos self-reporting policies and procedures. In contravention of HUDs requirements, that group failed to report to HUD loans that Wells Fargo had internally identified as containing material underwriting findings. Moreover, Lofrano received Wells Fargo quality assurance reports identifying thousands of FHA loans with material findings very few of which Wells Fargo reported to HUD. * * * As part of the settlement, Wells Fargo has admitted, acknowledged and accepted responsibility for, among other things, the following conduct: During the period from May 2001 through, on or about Dec. 31, 2008, Wells Fargo submitted to HUD certifications stating that certain residential home mortgage loans were eligible for FHA insurance when in fact they were not, resulting in the Government having to pay FHA insurance claims when certain of those loans defaulted. From May 2001 through January 2003, Wells Fargos quality assurance group conducted monthly internal reviews of random samples of the retail FHA mortgage loans that the Bank had already originated, underwritten, and closed, which identified for most of the months that in excess of 25 percent of the loans and in several consecutive months, more than 40 percent of the loans, had a material finding. For a number of the months during the period from February 2003 through September 2004, the material finding rate was in excess of 20 percent. A material finding was defined by Wells Fargo generally as a loan file that did not conform to internal parameters and/or specific FHA parameters, contained significant risk factors affecting the underwriting decision and/or evidenced misrepresentation. Wells Fargo also admitted, acknowledged and accepted responsibility for the following additional conduct: Between 2002 and October 2005, Wells Fargo made only one self-report to HUD, involving multiple loans. During that same period, the Bank identified through its internal quality assurance reviews approximately 3,000 FHA loans with material findings. Further, during the period between October 2005 and December 2010, Wells Fargo only self-reported approximately 300 loans to HUD. During that same period, Wells Fargos internal quality assurance reviews identified more than 2,900 additional FHA loans containing material findings that the Bank did not self-report to HUD. The government was required to pay FHA insurance claims when certain of these loans that Wells Fargo identified with material findings defaulted. Lofrano admitted, acknowledged, and accepted responsibility for, among other things, the following matters in which he participated: From Jan. 1, 2002, until Dec. 31, 2010, he held the position of Vice President of Credit Risk Quality Assurance at Wells Fargo; in that capacity, he supervised the Decision Quality Management group; in 2004, he was asked to organize a working sub-group to address reporting to HUD; in or about October 2005, he organized a working group that drafted Wells Fargos new self-reporting policy and procedures; and during the period October 2005 through Dec. 31, 2010, based on application of the Banks new self-reporting policy and by committee decision, Wells Fargo did not report to HUD the majority of the FHA loans that the Banks internal quality assurance reviews had identified as having material findings. * * * Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mizer thanked the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of California for their diligent pursuit and successful resolution of this matter and the Commercial Litigation Branch, HUDs Office of General Counsel and HUDs Office of Inspector General, for their extraordinary support. The case settled by todays settlement is captioned United States v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., et. al., 12-cv-7527 (S.D.N.Y.) NOW WATCH: Hillary Clintons new Wall Street plan targets big banks and executive bonuses More From Business Insider This piece originally appeared on Oilprice.com. I follow oil pretty closely given our exposure. As such, I get frustrated with many press and news show accounts of the commodity. It gets worse when the pundits and writers should know better. Frequently inexact terminology leads to misconceptions and sometimes I see outright falsehoods that completely distort the truth. As a former oil analyst and professional energy investor, I feel compelled to take those to task. As a realist, I see that all markets require a difference of opinion and all investors talk their "book". For this reason, when Jeff Currie at Goldman Sachs Commodities Group gets on CNBC and opines about future price movements, I give little notice. Jeff is posturing for his customers and GSs positions. Jeff can spin the story either way and chooses his statistics accordinglyThats what he is paid very well to do. Last week (March 28, 2016), I heard Dennis Gartman of the Gartman Letter, a trader and investor that I respect and have learned much from, spout an outright falsehood on CNBC. Everyone can have a bad day, but I've been hearing various versions of this for months. Dennis said in essence that oil prices could not rise very much because of all the capped wells that could be brought on line very rapidly. He predicted no more than $42/bbl this year. He estimated that at current strip pricing, you could lock in $45/bbl in 12 months, making large numbers of these capped wells profitable. The implication being that at current prices, the market would be rapidly flooded with new oil. Ill take the over on price, the under on production and bet all my capital that Im right. (Oh, I already did that). Dennis should know better. For fun though, I thought Id like to take apart his thesis. First, there are no "capped" wells in the U.S. To my knowledge not one well has been capped due to low prices, especially relatively young horizontal shale wells. Older wells are capped all the time when production is no longer sufficient to pay operating expenses for the well. Generally, onshore wells may cost something in the order of only $2,000 per month to operate. At $40 dollar oil, 3 barrels per day of production (gross) should cover operating costs. Story continues What Dennis is likely referring to is the "Drilled Uncompleted" or DUC well inventory in the various shale plays. Some estimates have shown as many as 4,000 of these DUCs exist and the numbers are rising. Many pundits cite these DUCs as an effective ceiling on oil prices. However, a DUC is very different from Gartman's implied "capped" well. There are many reasons why a producer would drill and not complete a well. They may have had a rig under contract, they may want to beat competitors, retain their or their service companies' good employees, they may be able to hold expiring acreage, they may just want to see what the rocks look like in a particular area. However, the most likely reason is that the completion costs of these wells can amount to over 60 percent of well cost maybe - $3 to $4 million per well. As such, this investment is very difficult to recoup if a well's flush initial production is sold at low prices. This is compounded when whole well pads are completed at the same time to increase efficiency. If you don't like the price one well gets, six wells coming on line at the same time is worse. This also flows into the other reasons why this production will not flood the market, namely the intersection of costs, timing and decline rates. o Costs - 4,000 wells at even $3 million per well is $12 billion dollars. Given the upheaval among producers, where does Dennis suppose the $12 billion will come from to "instantly" "uncap" these wells and increase production? Not from the banks, the high yield market is tight, equity investors have stepped up for some Permian and Eagle Ford producers, but $12 billion is a lot of money. o Time - Let's say that oil prices above $40/bbl equals a green light for energy producers to attack their DUCs. (There appears to be no factual basis for this, but let's pretend.) A quick look at C&J energy services, which controls the country's third largest frac fleet as well as other completion services, tells part of the story. Today, just over 50 percent of the companies' fleet is working and the rest is "stacked" or to be retired. The people were laid off months ago. Clearly, when they get the signal that their customers want more completion services, they will begin to reactivate some of this idle iron - one frac fleet at a time. The problem is the C&Js stock price is $1.46 and they have close to $1.2 billion in debt. Where will the money come from to rehire people, and reactivate idle equipment? After that, will the people return? Yes, but slowly and at a high cost. What about Baker and Schlumberger? Both are in better financial shape but their fleets have been stacked also and at this time, investors are in no mood to hear a company talk about adding capacity. When these companies return fleets to active status, they will be competing to hire a smaller pool of laid off workers. o Decline rates - Wells producing from tight rock or shale (wells that must be fracked) exhibit steep decline curves on the order of 75 percent during the first year of production. The implication is that producers are on a never ending treadmill in order to maintain or grow production volumes. That is, they must complete new wells in order replace the natural declines from existing wells. There are two critical points associated with these steep decline curves that pundits like Gartman don't appear to grasp. The first is that based on current data, the four key liquids rich shale plays have declined by over 600,000 bopd since their peak of production in March, 2015. This production is gone. These wells have depleted. They can't be turned back on. The only way to increase production again is new completions and new wells - in other words massive new reinvestment. This is very different from past cycles when OPEC dialed back production by idling a major field or two until demand rebounded. These OPEC giant and super giant fields are a totally different animal. It's all about the infrastructure, not the productivity of a single well. The entire complex can be shut down, reworked, maintenance performed, etc. then turned back on...more akin to a refinery than typical single or multiple well fields. But that's another story. Bottom line - that 600,000 bopd is not magically coming back. It took the onshore industry something like 12 months running flat out to add those volumes. Given oil prices, it will be quite a while and it will take higher prices before the industry even gets back to a steady walk, much less a flat run. Another key thing to understand about decline curves is that they are continuous and right now declines are accelerating. However for example purposes, let's look at the Eagle Ford. There are some 10,000 wells in the Eagle Ford producing today, and they are all in decline. The EIA estimates the average Eagle Ford well adds 800 bopd in its first month of production. Last month, Eagle Ford production is estimated to have declined by 60,000 bopd. That implies that 75 new wells per month must be drilled and completed to just replace this 60,000 bopd. Assuming it takes 15 days to drill a well, that implies around 38 rigs drilling and around 25 frac fleets running above what is running today! Today, there are 42 rigs drilling for oil and we estimate 10 - 15 frac fleets running in the Eagle Ford...so just to replace production, the industry would have to increase rigs running by nearly 100 percent and frac fleets by 150 - 200 percent. This would require a massive mobilization of capital and manpower. During this whole mobilization process, production from existing wells is declining, month after month. Don't get me wrong, I believe this will happen. However, I know this won't happen quickly and won't happen at $40/bbl oil, making Gartman's thesis and pricing argument completely false. Production data, or lack thereof, is a primary hindrance to clear and transparent oil fundamentals. The mechanics of the above discussion would be more obvious if we could measure field production in real time. In fact, production data in Texas takes some three months to even estimate, and these estimates are often revised. The same goes for well completion data. The EIA tries to model this through its "Drilling Productivity Report". However, there are no similar efforts for the rest of the global oil industry, in fact, OPEC publications use third party reporting not internal or "real" data from the companies themselves. In Saudi Arabia, production statistics are a state secret. Not surprisingly, many countries distort the data to suit their own needs. That's why the IEAs look at G7 storage data is an important industry statistic. It is widely recognized that both global demand and supply data is inaccurate, but changes in storage inventories should reflect supply and demand changes. The only problem with this approach is they only get data for around 2/3 of the global storage capacity. This is what led to the recent headlines "800,000 bopd of oil is missing". Supply estimates exceeded demand estimates by 800,000 bopd during the quarter, yet storage didn't build, leaving the question of where did the oil go? The answer is that there never was this extra oil...if it existed, it was burned. More than likely, both supply and demand estimates were off by that amount. Third parties like Drilling Info, BTU Analytics, CERA, etc. provide their looks at the market for very high prices, and as such are much more granular than those from government data providers. As much as they try, they are still limited by the availability of international data and reporting time lags domestically, not to mention their own biases. Generally it takes 18 months before the world has a decent picture of supply and demand. This is little consolation to those trying to do real time analysis on the direction of prices. That is why I can say categorically "the fix is in". In other words, fields are declining, meaning investment is far below levels required just to replace production. The only thing that will change the vector of these declines is more spending, lots more spending, and the only thing will spur lots more spending is higher prices. Significantly higher than $40/bbl. In conclusion, we have a typical commodity price cycle. Prices have dropped to levels destroying capital, bankrupting businesses, idling massive amounts of equipment and manpower. The cycle is reversing now. The weekly EIA numbers are showing steady declines in production (this is a balancing item - not real production estimates) and also increasing demand--In the United States. The IEA is showing the same thing in their monthly report that has a decent look at the G7 countries and attempts to look at the G20. Between these two, there is a large world with little accurate measurement. China for instance jailed a Platts reporter for espionage when he tried to put together a fundamental energy statistics database. Inevitably, we will have another price shock--or at minimum an upside surprise. It's unavoidable at this point. Oil never transitions smoothly. Just like all the oil bulls had to be run out during the declining price stage, all the price bears, like Dennis Gartman, will be run out when fundamentals hit them over the head. Gartman, to his credit, will change his tune 180 degrees when he sees the actual data shaping up. That's how he has survived so long and profitably as a trader. More from Oilprice.com: Driverless Cars Or Electric Vehicles, Which Will Dominate The Future? Oil Prices Slide On Falling Hopes For Output Freeze Did Italy And Malta Actually Agree To Swap Oil Rights For Refugees? But by then it will be too late, the world will want incremental supplies immediately--yet the industry cannot scale in real time. In order to motivate producers to get busy and provide incremental supplies, prices must increase sharply from current levels. My prediction $80/bbl in 18 months, but it won't last very long. I think $60-$70/bbl is a healthy range. See original article on Fortune.com More from Fortune.com WisdomTree Investments Inc. (NASDAQ: WETF), the fifth-largest U.S. issuer of exchange traded funds, added to its already formidable lineup of emerging markets dividend ETFs Thursday with the debut of the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Dividend Fund (BATS: DVEM). The WisdomTree Emerging Markets Dividend Fund follows the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Dividend Index (WTEMI), a fundamentally-weighted benchmark featuring dividend payers from Brazil, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey. DVEM's holdings are weighted on the basis of annual cash dividends paid. There are advantages to weighing stocks in an ETF by their dividends paid, or their dividend stream as WisdomTree puts it. This methodology of weighting stocks by their Dividend Stream can help magnify the effects dividends have on performance, potentially increasing returns or reducing volatility compared to traditional capitalization-weighted indexes. The power of weighting equity markets by the dividends companies pay rather than by their market value can be seen in the live performance track record of the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Dividend Index vs. the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, said the issuer in a statement. DVEM's underlying index has a dividend yield of 4.3 percent, well in excess of the yield on the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. China and Hong Kong combine for over 27 percent of the new ETF's geographic lineup. Russia and Brazil, two of the most volatile emerging markets, and South Korea, one of the least volatile developing economies, each command weights in excess of 9 percent. Since inception in mid-2007, DVEM's underlying index has handily outperformed the MSCI Emerging Markets Index while displaying a noticeable correlation to the widely followed emerging markets benchmark, according to WisdomTree data. Like many emerging markets dividend ETFs, DVEM's largest sector weights include financial services, telecom and energy. In that order, those three sectors combine for over 52 percent of DVEM's weight. Consumer staples is the only sector to get a double-digit allocation in the new ETF. Roughly half of DVEM's top 10 holdings are state-controlled companies. Story continues When DVEM's index was last rebalanced, 45 percent of its weight was tilted toward companies with dividend yields of 4.6 percent or higher. That is more than double the weight of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index to the comparable stocks. DVEM's annual fee is 0.32 percent, or $32 per $10,000 invested. See more from Benzinga 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. LUSAKA, April 6 (Reuters) - Zambia's government is talking to mining companies to try to resolve a dispute about higher electricity prices introduced at the start of the year, an industry official said on Wednesday. Zambia increased the price of electricity for miners by 26 percent on Jan. 1 as part of a bid by Africa's second biggest copper producer to attract more investment in power generation. But the increase has been disputed by miners in Zambia - which include Glencore, Canada's First Quantum Minerals , Vedanta Resources and Barrick Gold - as they are already grappling with a slump in commodity prices. The ministry of energy had told mining companies they would have to pay 10.35 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour from Jan. 1, up from 8.20 cents per kilowatt hour previously. Copperbelt Energy Corp. Managing Director Owen Silavwe told reporters the mining companies were still paying the old tariffs while talks with the government continued. Copperbelt Energy is the main power supplier to mines in Zambia and buys most of the electricity from state power firm Zesco Ltd. "The government is talking to the mining companies and all other stakeholders, including ourselves. Hopefully agreement will be reached soon," Silavwe said, without giving a timeframe. The World Bank has recommended Zambia charge mining companies higher electricity tariffs to attract investment in power generation. (Reporting by Chris Mfula; editing by Ed Stoddard and David Clarke) 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. Taipei, April 8 (CNA) President Ma Ying-jeou () will unveil a monument to his East China Sea peace initiative when he visits an islet near the disputed Diaoyutai Islands on Saturday, during which he will also speak about his vision of peace in the East China and South China seas, as well as the Taiwan Strait. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his staff spent a record $264,137 on non-essential goods and services in 2015, including $174,321 on communications consultants, according to documents released under Freedom of Information Spending on consultants from the so-called Mayors Discretionary Fund increased 86% from 2014s $93,815 and far exceeded the $129,346 spent on all goods and services that year. Between November 2011 and December 2015, the total cost of consultants, advertising, travel, taxis, food and drink and other items was nearly $650,000. Of that, 60 cents of every taxpayer dollar went to consultants, many of whom have ties to the Robertson-led Vision Vancouver party.NPA Coun. George Affleck called it wasteful. The Mayors Office directory shows 10 staff while another 25 people work in communications jobs at city hall and parks board.As the mayor, when he talks about affordability and the ever-increasing costs to people of this city, the first place he should look is literally in his own office, Affleck said. If he cant provide restraint of his own spending, how can we expect he has any kind of ability to manage taxpayer dollars?More than a third of the money paid to consultants in 2015 went to two former Robertson aides who left their city jobs last spring.Lara Honrado, who worked in the Mayors Office from October 2009 to April 2015, is principal at Georgetown Strategy Consulting, which was paid $31,000 for strategic planning services from May to September. Honrado also heads the Burnaby-North Seymour federal Liberal riding association.Ko worked under Robertson from November 2010 to May 2015. She joined a U.S. charity affiliated with the United Nations Refugee Agency, but was paid $30,000 until last October for consulting services, stakeholder engagement and helping the transition to her April 2015-hired successor, Nicole Seguin. Seguins partner, Jacob Hunter, is a former Vision Vancouver data and voter targeting manager and ex-organizer of Vancouvers annual 4/20 marijuana-promotion festival.Other highlights:mo Monday night, the Village of Nickerson, roiled in controversy as well over 100 community residents gathered to listen, and present their discord over the Project Rawhide proposal to build a fully integrated poultry processing plant just two miles west of their small town. In the end, the Nickerson Village board of trustees leaned in favor of the majority of Nickerson community members present and voted against a proposed change to a land use map. The change would have set aside a sizable portion of land located about two miles west of the village for industrial usage, allowing for the possibility of a potential poultry processing facility to be built upon that land. Initially, it appeared that the unanimous and democratic vote had served up a big victory to those opposed to the facility. Randy Ruppert, spokesman for Nebraska Communities United, an organization made up of Fremont and surrounding area residents, felt good about the decision. I feel blessed that the democratic process is surviving, Ruppert said. However, in the days that followed, divisions within the community still appear as roiled as the night of the Nickerson meeting. One new point of contingency circulating among those opposed to project is the fact that a big chunk of the land of the proposed Rawhide sight, lies outside the jurisdiction of Nickerson and is owned by Dodge County. So that portion of land is not affected by the Nickerson vote. Other fallout from the night in Nickerson has ignited fears among a few area residents, particularly those in favor of bringing such an operation to the area, like the members of the growing network the farmers employed to raise the chickens on their farms prior to processing. Those fears stem from comments by a small contingency of people comments described by some as offensive have circulated among various media outlets, including the Fremont Tribune. Those comments referenced the ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds of people that might be employed by the facility. And it is precisely those kind of comments and heated divisions that have driven the fears of one farmer, who at the behest of the still-unnamed company, was asked to participate as a potential member of the growers network. On the condition of anonymity due to the controversy surrounding the Rawhide proposal, that farmer agreed to speak with the Fremont Tribune. The GFDC has verified that the farmer was indeed asked to be a potential member of the growers network. I have concerns about my family, concerns about my property being vandalized and my reputation being trashed, the farmer said referring to anxiety that his name might become public. He also said he discussed his concerns with the GFDC and that they understand the nature of those concerns. Despite those fears, he continues to hold a favorable opinion of bringing the facility to the Greater Fremont area. Heres an opportunity to provide jobs, and a skill set from a large range of people from IT to regular laborers; and to bring young people back to farms this is a viable opportunity that could work well, he said. He stressed that people need to look at both sides of the issues and weigh the pros and cons before definitively deciding to support or oppose the issue. Until you get all the information you cant make a knee-jerk reaction, he added. Following the meeting in Nickerson, Don Schneider, an attorney in Fremont who serves as the legal representation for the Nickerson Board of Trustees, spoke with the board, discussing some of the statements and concerns expressed by the community. First, Schneider clarified that the proposal before the board on that night was not a rezoning or annexing proposal. He explained that it pertained only to a change in Nickersons blue print for the future for the use of the land. In short, it would have changed the planned use of that land to industrial usage. But the key (to understand), he continued, is that they (the village of Nickerson) cannot actually rezone it to industrial without having first changed the Future Land Use Map. In other words, the vote against the proposed change created a barrier to the initial steps that the Rawhide company needs to take in order to proceed. Schneider, further expounded that the night exemplified democracy in action. They (the Nickerson board) listened to the people, Schneider said. He also spoke to why the board voted against the proposal. Primarily, Schneider reported, board members worried about the increase in traffic; the stress on the Logan View and Fremont school districts; the use of TIF funds for project financing; and the possible environmental hazards and nuisances like soil contamination and odor, respectively. Schneider strongly clarifies that the Nickerson boards decision had nothing to do with vitriolic comments, made by a small contingency present at the meeting, who referenced ethnic, racial or religious backgrounds of the workers that might be employed by such a facility. Schneider went on to express the idea the United States is a country of immigrants. He followed up those ideas by referencing the parable of the Good Samaritan that comes from the Bible. He said some members of the board were actually offended by such comments mad that night. At one point during the meeting in Nickerson, Robert Thurman, member of the Nickerson Board of Trustees, posed two valid questions to the congregation of people. First he asked who among those present was from Nickerson. About three-fourths of the hands in the room went up. Then Thurman asked, who is against this proposal. All of those hands remain up. We listened to member of the community and they enlightened us. Nobody wanted it so why should we vote it in, Thurman said. He also clarified that racial, ethnic and religious issues played very little in the boards decision. Ruppert said his organization, Nebraska Communities United, agreed with Schneider and Nickerson. That is our opinion also, he said. This is not about nationalism. This is not about closed-mindedness. This is a country of immigrants and that (ethnicity, race and religion) is a totally separate issue. Ruppert made clear that Communities United wants the decisions regarding Rawhide to undergo the democratic process. He said his group holds no animosity towards anyone, including farmers in the growers network, who might be favor of the facility. They just wants a fair and open dialogue with the business organizations, community leaders and other entities who are working to attract companies like the one behind Rawhide. Our group is always more than willing to sit down with proponents (of Rawhide) if they are willing to bring facts to the table. Ruppert, who spent 30 years working for the railroad and in close conjunction with the farming community said, They are a group we are trying to protect from vertical integration farming. This type of farming, if you so choose to call it, is fraught with economic pit falls. The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) announced the election of its new Chairman at the Councils Annual General Meeting on 6 April 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Gerald Lawless, former Group Chief Executive Officer of Jumeirah Group and now Head of Tourism and Hospitality at Dubai Holding, is the latest Chairman of WTTC. In his 18 years as CEO of Jumeirah Group, he spearheaded the growth of the hotel chain to one of the best-known luxury hospitality brands in the world, expanding the companys portfolio to 22 hotels in 11 destinations and establishing Burj Al Arab Jumeirah as the most luxurious hotel in the world. Gerald has been a Member of the World Travel & Tourism Council since 2005, sitting on the Executive Committee since 2008, and as Vice Chairman since 2012. Mr. Lawless will take over from Dr. Michael Frenzel, Chairman Emeritus TUI AG. The WTTC Chairman is elected for a term of two years. Outgoing Chairman, Dr. Michael Frenzel said I am delighted to welcome Gerald as WTTC Chairman. Gerald has been an active Member of WTTC, responsible for bringing the Global Summit to Dubai in 2008 and serving on the Executive Committee and as a Vice Chairman. His commitment to WTTCs Mission will be invaluable, as the organization continues to drive recognition of Travel & Tourisms social and economic impact amongst governments around the world. Gerald Lawless, Chairman, WTTC, said: Over the past 11 years, I have been privileged to be a member of the World Travel & Tourism Council. I believe strongly in the mission of the organization, which advocates the benefits of Travel & Tourism, not only to the global economy but also to society in general. Travel & Tourism is and will remain a force for good. It deserves a lot more recognition from governments worldwide. WTTCs latest data shows that the sector accounts for 9.8% of the worlds GDP, contributing over USD$ 7.2 trillion. Last year Travel & Tourism added 7.2 million jobs to the global economy, supporting a total of 284 million jobs around the world. Nice bit of news this week out of Fun Bits, the studio best known for the Fat Princess games, which is offering a pair of $1,000 scholarship grants to any high school students graduating this year in Mississippi who identify as LGBT and seek to pursue a college education in art or video game design. "I was given a $500 award grant to help me travel to and teach English in Japan in my freshman year. It changed my life," CEO Chris Millar told Gamasutra. This offer is especially notable in light of the fact that Fun Bits is based in Seattle; the studio's offer is a response to Mississippi governor Phil Bryant's decision this week to sign into a law a bill that empowers businesses in the state to refuse service (based on religious beliefs) to people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Shortly thereafter Fun Bits posted the scholarship grant offer to Facebook, where supporters have already shown interest in matching the grant with their own funds. Aspiring game makers interested in taking Fun Bits up on the offer can check out the full details and requirements over on its Facebook page. LOS ANGELES, April 07, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Anton & Chia is pleased to announce that Gregory A. Wahl, the Firms Founder and Managing Partner, will participate in an upcoming live Expert Webcast video panel, M&A Due Diligence, on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 11AM-12:30PM Pacific Daylight Time. This program is complimentary to attend and will offer MCLE and CPE credit. RSVP / LEARN MORE HERE In addition to Greg Wahl, the panel will include Matt Porzio of Intralinks, Terry Allen of Pepper Hamilton, Mike Evans of Newport Board Group, Kenan Gay of Development Advisors, and Patrick Stroth of Rubicon Insurance. Alex Kasdan of DelMorgan & Co. will moderate the discussion which will address the following topics as well as questions from the audience: M&A due diligence process Managing communications and data exchange Business, legal and financial due diligence Cybersecurity and privacy Potential unrealized value: incentives Reps & warranties and cyber insurance The event is produced and hosted by Expert Webcast, www.expertwebcast.com. Anton & Chia, LLP is a full service accounting and auditing firm. It is registered with the PCAOB, CPAB, ICABC and the AICPA and is focused on providing assurance, tax, and consulting services to companies that are planning to go public or are already publicly traded in the United States of America and Canada. www.ancsecservices.com Expert Webcast is a sophisticated source of expertise for the professional and the business communities locally, nationally and cross-border. Producing the industrys leading webcast panels covering corporate, M&A, restructuring and finance topics, Expert Webcast features foremost experts in law accounting and finance, and addresses timely and relevant issues faced by general counsel, C-level executives, boards of directors, business owners and their advisors, as well as institutional investors. www.expertwebcast.com YONKERS, N.Y., April 8, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Senior Helpers, one of the nation's largest in-home senior care companies, announced today that it is expanding its coverage in the New York City metropolitan area with the opening of an office in Westchester County. The office, located in Ridge Hill, NY, will provide professionally trained in-home senior care for families and seniors living in Ardsley, Bronxville, Dobbs Ferry, Eastchester, Hastings on Hudson, Irvington, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Ossining, Pelham, Tarrytown, Tuckahoe, Yonkers and portions of northern Westchester County. It complements the other Senior Helpers offices that currently serve New York City, the Sound Shore and central regions of Westchester County and portions of northern Westchester County. "I am excited to join my colleagues in providing dependable and affordable care to Westchester's families," said Joanne Taylor, owner of Senior Helpers Westchester. "The training and certification that Senior Helpers provides its caregivers helps seniors remain living safely and comfortably in their own homes, even if they are living with Alzheimer's, dementia, or other age-related conditions. We want families to have peace of mind knowing that Senior Helpers honors its pledge to provide care and comfort at a moment's notice." Taylor additionally explained how her staff aims to treat the seniors who depend on them for care. "We really aim to treat them like family, which is why we only hire the most qualified and compassionate individuals as caregivers. Applicants undergo a thorough screening process that includes reference and background checks, and we also screen for personal traits, such as kindness and conscientiousness." Senior Helpers caregivers are able to provide services that include meal preparation and medication reminders as well as transportation, assistance walking, companionship and more. Caregivers are available on an hourly basis or on a full-time, 24/7 basis. For more information, please visit http://www.seniorhelpers.com/newyorkwestchester-ny. About Senior Helpers: Senior Helpers is one of the largest in-home senior care franchised businesses in the U.S. with over 240 franchised businesses operating across the country. Founded in 2001 with a vision to help seniors who wish to remain in their homes despite age-related illnesses and mobility challenges, Senior Helpers has now cared for tens of thousands of seniors with a pledge to provide "care and comfort at a moment's notice." Senior Helpers offers a wide range of personal care and companion services, including trained Alzheimer's, dementia and Parkinson's care, to assist seniors who wish to live independently. Learn more by visiting www.SeniorHelpers.com. TERRE HAUTE, Ind., April 8, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Baltimore-based Senior Helpers, one of the nation's largest in-home senior care franchised businesses and a leader in personalized in-home senior care, announced today the opening of a new Senior Helpers location in Terre Haute, IN. The business, which will be owned and operated by Matthew Page, will be the 257th Senior Helpers franchise nationwide. The location is expected to open in April 2016. "We are pleased to welcome Matthew Page to our team as the newest Senior Helpers franchise owner," said Chris Buitron, Vice President of Marketing for Senior Helpers. "Mr. Page brings a tenacity for success and an acute understanding of the in-home senior care industry to his new role as owner, and we look forward to watching him serve the seniors and families of Terre Haute." Matthew Page, an Indiana native who grew up in Northwest Indiana, holds a bachelor's degree in rhetoric from Wabash College. Mr. Page's interest in the senior care industry came as a result of watching his family struggle to find suitable in-home care for his aging grandmother. "Every family deserves the peace of mind that comes from seeing their senior loved one thrive under the care of a qualified caregiver," said Mr. Page. "Watching my family struggle to find quality in-home care for my grandmother showed me first hand how valuable compassionate and qualified caregivers are to families and communities." Shortly after that experience, Mr. Page's aunt opened her own Senior Helpers business in South Bend, IN, and has become one of the leading Senior Helpers franchise owners in the United States. Page's experience watching his grandmother age, in addition to the mentoring he received from his aunt, led him to decide that the senior care industry was a path he wanted to follow. Senior Helpers of Terre Haute will begin serving clients in April 2016. Those interested in services or employment can visit www.SeniorHelpers.com/WesternIndiana-in or call (812) 814-3142. About Senior Helpers: Senior Helpers is one of the largest in-home senior care franchised businesses in the U.S. with over 240 franchised businesses operating across the country. Founded in 2001 with a vision to help seniors who wish to remain in their homes despite age-related illnesses and mobility challenges, Senior Helpers has now cared for tens of thousands of seniors with a pledge to provide "care and comfort at a moment's notice." Senior Helpers offers a wide range of personal care and companion services, including trained Alzheimer's, dementia and Parkinson's care, to assist seniors who wish to live independently. Learn more by visiting www.SeniorHelpers.com. The City Council today voted in legislation that will empower the Department of Transportation to exact control over the city's 60-plus pedestrian plazas, likely relegating costumed characters, desnudas and ticket sellers to designated zones within the Times Square pedestrian plaza from 42nd to 47th streets as early as this summer. The final vote on Intro 1109 was 42-1, with five abstentions. Brooklyn Councilmember Robert Cornegy was the sole 'no' vote. "Don't knock the hustle," he said when asked about his decision. "I don't believe we should regulate or police any New Yorker out of harmless activity they rely on to keep money in their pockets and put food on the table, and that includes posing in costume and performing for tips in the transit system. To me, these expressive activities help make New York City a more vibrant, world-class city." The legislation was backed by the Times Square Alliance, a business-interest group that raised concerns about "aggressive" desnudas and costumed characters over the summer, coinciding with a flood of tabloid coverage and calls for regulation. The Alliance teamed up with the Naked Cowboy to formally endorse the legislation last week. The DOT has already suggested eight "activity zones" throughout the Times Square pedestrian plaza, each about the size of a city bus, where costumed characters, ticket sellers, and desnudas would be legally restricted. Designated "flow zones" would be reserved for walking. Some costumed characters and ticket sellers have countered in recent weeks that the legislation was drafted without their input, impedes their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression, and could negatively impact their business by inhibiting their movement around the plaza. (DOT) Abstaining from the vote on Thursday, Brooklyn Councilmember Antonio Reynoso expressed concern that the legislation awarded too much power to the DOT. "We have all seen community concerns fall on deaf ears as city agencies move forward," he said. "This is going to lead to a lot of tension. Keeping people corralled could have [negative] consequences, and justify the DOT kicking [costumed characters] out of Times Square altogether." In the lead-up to Thursday's vote, bill co-sponsors Dan Garodnick and Corey Johnson reiterated their position that the legislation does not impede free speech, using terms like "constitutional safeguard" and "common sense regulation." Garodnick said that while the legislation empowers the DOT to propose rules for Times Square, the Council will "make sure" that none of the rules impose content-based restrictions on free speech, or restrict the type of activity permitted in Times Square. James Franzetti, an attorney currently representing multiple costumed characters, counters that activity zones are inherently in violation of content-based free speech, because restricting his clients' movements will impede their ability to work. "In limiting them to certain areas, you are telling them where they can't be," he said. "The [proposed] areas are so small that it's going to be impossible for them to interact with the public." Spider-Man and friends watch from the balcony during today's City Council vote (Katie Whittaker / Gothamist). Last week, the NYPD confirmed that the new law empowers officers to take "civil and criminal action" against anyone who doesn't comply with the DOT's rules. Many of Franzetti's clients are currently bringing unlawful arrest suits agains the City. "The vast majority of these cases are dismissed," Franzetti said, recalling a Cookie Monster arrested for groping a woman's breasts (Franzetti says no charges were filed), and a Batman accused of disorderly conduct. "Unlawful arrest and unlawful police interference are definitely a concern with these new rules." Abdel Amine Elkhezzani, 37, has worked as Spider-Man in Times Square for ten years, and is represented by Franzetti. He was arrested recently after he allegedly got in a physical altercation with a customer over a tip, although he's disputing the allegations. Elkhezzani sat in the balcony for today's vote, and stressed that he plans to keep fighting. "I will fight for my rights until the last minute," he said. "Live free or diethat's what my Spidey sense tells me." Franzetti confirmed on Thursday that "more than five" costumed characters are prepared to file a lawsuit against the Times Square Alliance and the City, depending on the specific regulations put forward by the DOT. Additional reporting by Katie Whittaker. Ta'Jae Warner, the 17-year-old-girl rendered brain-dead after an attack last Friday in Coney Island, died on Tuesday after her family had her taken off of life support. The night of the beating, Warner had gone with her younger brother to a store near her home in Ocean Towers, a Mitchell-Lama complex in the southern Brooklyn neighborhood. The New York Times reports: A group of girls approached the boy and threatened to kill him, [Warner's] cousin Jahmika Johnson said. Ms. Warner, who had been inside the store, walked out and confronted the girls in an effort to protect her brother, and the argument escalated to a fight, Ms. Johnson said. A police account of the crime makes no mention of the other girls who are said to have been present for the attack, naming only 18-year-old Sabrina Agard-Forde of Brownsville, who officers arrested on assault charges. Police say Agard-Forde hit Warner in the face, and that she fell and hit her head on the pavement, losing consciousness. Doctors at Coney Island Hospital placed her in a medically induced coma, and on Saturday she was transported to NYU Hospital, where she was declared brain-dead on Sunday. Other charges may be brought depending on the findings of the Medical Examiner's Office and a grand jury. "The case is a tragedy," said Agard-Forde's lawyer Robert Heilbrun. "My client has never been in trouble, never been arrested. Shes graduating from Brooklyn Bridge high school in the spring. And when all the facts are out she will be exonerated." Warner's father Arthur urged others who may have been involved to turn themselves in, though police say they aren't seeking any other suspects. 'Give yourself up," he said. "Because the one that they do have in custody will sing. She's going to sing her tune." Agard-Forde was released on bail on Sunday. Warner's mother Niece is struggling to understand what happened. "She had no enemies," she told the Daily News. "She never really went outside." There had been 46 felony assaults and 1 murder in Coney Island's 60th Precinct as of March 20th, compared to 59 assaults and 2 murders at the same time in 2015, according to NYPD statistics. The owner of Williamsburg nightclub Verboten, which was seized by the Department of Taxation & Finance last week for failing to pay $360,378.05 in taxes, was arrested today for writing fraudulent checks. The NYPD has confirmed that Jen Schiffer, who owns the club along with husband John Perez, was arrested in Greenpoint at around 12:53 p.m. and charged in connection with writing five fraudulent checks amounting to $31,000. Schiffer is currently in custody; a post on Facebook claims to show a photo of her in the midst of the arrest: Jen Schiffer of Verboten NYC arrested on Fraud charges. Hmmm. Who didn't you pay this time? (stand by for the police... Posted by Boston TimPoleet on Thursday, April 7, 2016 Verboten was seized on March 30th, but Schiffer and Perez filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy the following evening, and Verboten was able to reopen. The club's investors had previously accused the couple of fraud and mismanagement, claiming they concealed revenue, rerouted deposits into their personal accounts, recorded fraudulent expenditures, and failed to pay state taxes, among other infractions. Schiffer and Perez are also named in a lawsuit alleging she sexually harassed employees, withheld wages and tips from employees, and stole employee tips, among other claims. The club has not responded to request for comment. We will update when more information becomes available. As a warm-up to the big Navy Yard debate and New York primary, Senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders will be holding two rallies in Brooklyn today. The first is in Midwood at 3 p.m. and the second is in Greenpoint at 5 p.m. Here are details: The Midwood rally will be held on the block of Sanders's childhood home; the program begins at 3 p.m. but doors open at 1 p.m. While the event is free, Bernie's campaign recommends the public RSVP here, as "Admission is first come, first served." Oscar-nominated actor and activist Mark Ruffalo will be a special guest. The crowd entrance will be at Avenue P and East 26th Street. The campaign's Greenpoint event is at WNYC Transmitter Park, with doors opening at 3 p.m. and the program starting at 5 p.m. This is also free with admission "first come, first served" with the crowd entrance via Greenpoint Avenue; here's the RSVP for the Greenpoint event. Susan Sarandon will be appearing. His Bronx rally had about 18,000 attendees. It's unclear if he'll be taking the subway to any of these events. Anyway, in true NYC fashion, this Bernie mural got bombed: A photo posted by @theonlymeathead on Apr 7, 2016 at 12:44am PDT Welcome back, man! A man was stabbed in the face, hands and arms during a possible attempted robbery on the Bleecker Street 6 train platform early Friday morning, according to the NYPD. The victim, who apparently does not speak fluent English, was waiting on the southbound 6 train platform when he was allegedly attacked. He is reportedly visiting from Israel (a police spokesperson said he was wearing traditional Hasidic clothing), and is currently hospitalized in stable condition. Two good Samaritans notified NYPD officers of a stabbing victim at the Bleecker Street station around 3:30 a.m. on Friday, according to a spokesman for the department. Officers discovered the victim, believed to be in his 50s, with lacerations to his face, hands and arms. He was transported to Bellevue Hospital. "We just saw him coming up the subway steps and he was bleeding really heavily," a witness told NBC. "We helped him out. We put pressure on his wrists." The suspect took an indeterminate amount of money from the victim before fleeing the station, according to a preliminary investigation. The NYPD is looking for a black man with dreadlocks who was last seen wearing a brown jacket. The incident is not currently being investigated as a hate crime. Southbound 6 trains were still bypassing Bleecker Street as of 8:30 this morning. In January, a 71-year-old woman was slashed on the left side of her face on a southbound 6 train approaching Bleecker Street, in what was apparently a random assault. The New York primary is a very big deal this year, with 291 delegates up for grabs and the winner still up in the air. Both Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, are frantically campaigning here and upstate (wherever that is) ahead of April 19th. They are even debating at the Brooklyn Navy Yard next Thursday, April 14th. But Sanders is answering to a higher power on April 15th: He's going to the Vatican to talk about social, economic and environmental issues. On Morning Joe today, Sanders called himself "a big, big fan of the Pope" (he is),"I was very moved by the invitation. Obviously there are issues we don't agree onwomen's rights and gay rightsbut he's played an unbelievable role in injecting a moral consequence into the economy... He is talking about the idolatry of money, the worship of money, the greed thats out there, how our whole culture is based on: I need more and more and more. And, I dont have to worry about veterans sleeping out on the street or elderly people who cant afford their prescriptions." In a statement released by his campaign, the Senator said, "I am delighted to have been invited by the Vatican to a meeting on restoring social justice and environmental sustainability to the world economy. Pope Francis has made clear that we must overcome the globalization of indifference in order to reduce economic inequalities, stop financial corruption and protect the natural environment. That is our challenge in the United States and in the world." If elected, Bernie Sanders would be the first Jewish president, not to mention the first president who might have to mediate the Park Slope Food Co-op debate about hummus. But does this mean Pope Francis is officially a Bernie Bro? Unclear, but the Vatican spokesman has previously declared, "The Pope has clearly said he didnt want to get involved in the electoral campaign in the US." The families of 11 NYC public school students and a powerful pro-charter school advocacy group are suing the Department of Education, claiming that the City is failing to protect public school students from violent bullying and harassment from teachers and fellow students. One parent is alleging that her seven-year-old son was dragged down a flight of stairs by a teacher who remained at the school for three years after the incident without punishment. Another says that her eight-year-old son was punched and kicked by two classmates, and that the school failed to discipline the bullies. "Since I went in and spoke to the administration nothing has changed," said the eight-year-old's mother in a video testimonial. "If schools aren't accountable, who is?" Families For Excellent Schools, the pro-charter advocacy group named in the suit, has a history of taking jabs at Mayor de Blasio and the public school system, often making the case that black and Hispanic students bear the brunt of perceived dysfunction in public schools. The group released a report in February alleging a spike in school violence under de Blasio's tenure, and a controversial pro-charter TV ad released last fall suggests that public schools stack the cards against minority students. This week's suit charges that minority students are disproportionately victimized by school bullies, and that the violence has reached "epidemic" proportionsfour NYC public school students were found bringing a gun to school over three weeks this spring and, according to New York State data, complaints of violent episodes in NYC schools increased 23% last school year. The Dignity for All Students Act of 2010 mandates that all public schools implement anti-harassment codes of conduct, hire staff to address bullying, and report all incidents to the DOE. "DOE has violated its own regulations by routinely failing to report, investigate, and remedy allegations of violence and harassment," said the plaintiffs in a release. The City has countered that its own statistics show a decrease in violent incidentsa 14.29% drop in felony crimes in schools this year to date, and a 6.77% drop in less serious crimes. The NY Times points out that the City's statistics account for incidents with NYPD involvement, while the State statistics come straight from school administrators, and might include incidents that were never reported to the police. A task force has been assigned to revise the State's system, which currently records incidents without verifying them. Success Academy, one of NYC's largest charter school networks, is closely aligned with Families for Excellent Schools and has recently accused the New York Times of unfairly singling it out, reporting on its allegedly discriminatory suspension tactics and harsh disciplinary approach. The network did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit. "This lawsuit is nothing but a political ploy, said Zakiya Ansari, advocacy director for the teachers' union-aligned Alliance for Quality Education, in a statement to Buzzfeed. "[FES] doesn't care about our public schools, and its shameful that they have decided to perpetuate the false narrative that our black and Latino children are violent." "We absolutely have more work to do, but school safety is showing us consistently that they can and will continue to drive down crime in the schools, and keep all students and staff safe," said Mayor de Blasio in a statement regarding the suit. DOE Chancellor Carmen Farina said the department is taking the allegations seriously and following the lawsuit process in a timely fashion. We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today Police in New Jersey have arrested a 20-year-old who took officers on a high speed chase on his motorcycle back in December, and filmed the whole thing. Video of the hair-raising December 10th run from the law made its way to a YouTube channel highlighting illegal motorcycle exploits, which NBC4 reports is managed by a friend of the suspect, biker Anthony Darrigo. Cops in sleepy Pequannock Township, 50 minutes west of New York City, say an officer spotted Darrigo popping a wheelie on his Honda street bike that afternoon, and when he tried to pull him over, Darrigo booked it. The five-minute helmet-cam video shows some deeply irresponsible maneuvering, including red-light running, passing on the right on a one-lane on-ramp, and lane-splitting at high speeds on a highway. Police and reporters have made a big deal about Darrigo's speedometer reading 160, which it does, but we'd like to just note that the unit of measurement isn't clear in the footage, and it could be showing kilometers per hour (that's still about 100 miles per hourthe guy was going fast, no doubt). Officers called off the chase on orders from their supervisors, and couldn't trace the bike because its plate was bent, obscuring the numbers, according to Pequannock Township police. On April 6th, four months after the chase and three months after the video went live, cops had traced the video to Darrigo and they executed a search warrant at his house. There they seized his motorcycle, biking gear, computer, and phone as evidence. He is being charged with eluding police and resisting arrest. He was released without bail. NBC4 caught up to Darrigo. He acknowledged being the rider on the video, and he claims he carried out, and filmed, the whole suburban version of the Kessel Run because he was "nervous." "I don't know why I did it, just all in the heat of the moment," he said. "I was just nervous." Darrigo is currently nursing a leg broken in a bike crash. He whined to the station that his arrest might hamper his dreams of becoming a state trooper. If convicted, he could have his license suspended, and do prison time. He said he loved riding motorcycles"I don't think I'll ever let go"but that he now plans to drive "very carefully." Pequannock Police Capt. called the stunt an act of "unbelievable, insane disregard for public safety." For a taste of what some of Darrigo's dirt-bike- and four-wheeler-riding counterparts are up to in New York City, here's another video of antisocial biker behavior from the channel that got Darrigo caught. News Far-right Meloni sworn in as Italys first woman PM The first woman to head an Italian government, Meloni took the oath before President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinal Palace in Rome, once home to popes and kings of Italy. Upcoming events Firefighters & friends event in Montana City The Montana City Volunteer Fire Department will hold their ninth annual Montana Firefighters & Friends event on Saturday, April 9, at noon the Montana City School, 11 McClellan Creek Road in Montana City. Join us for this family fun event. There will be a silent auction, barbecue, bake sale and fire truck tours. Firefighters will be cooking. Bring your appetite and your support. *** Grandstreet season launch party April 9 Join the Grandstreet Theatre staff and board of directors for the launch of the 2016-17 season with deserts, drinks and dancing to Ten Years Gone at the Montana Club, 24 W. 6th Ave.,on Saturday, April 9, at 7 p.m. The cost is $30. We will announce the upcoming season lineup, present Grandy Awards, and offer discounts on season passes. Season logo artwork by Kelly Anne Dalton and Ali Zackheim will be on display, and we will have selections from our coming season performed by Katy Wright, Kevin Mathews, Lyla Ackerman and Maddie Cormier. Also, new this year, Grandstreet will sell a range of Flex Passes. *** AARP driver safety classes AARP Driver Safety will hold a daytime and an evening class in Helena in April. Participants receive updates on the rules of the road and learn driving strategies to adapt to the effects of aging and to reduce chances of having a crash. The course was developed for participants age 50-plus, but is open to all ages. The course fee is $20 ($15 with AARP membership card). Auto insurance companies in Montana provide a multi-year discount to participants 55 years of age and older. To register for a class, call 457-4712 April 12 (Tuesday) at First Interstate Bank, 2021 N. Montana Ave., from noon to about 4:30. April 20 (Wednesday) at Pheasant Glen Residences, 3440 Ptarmigan Lane, from 5:30 to about 10 p.m. *** Bernie Sanders town hall meeting A Bernie Sanders for president panel discussion will take place Thursday, April 14, from 6-9 p.m. at the Plymouth Congregational Church, 400 S. Oakes. Helena-area panelists include, Mike Murray, Eric Ulberg, Tony Rubino, Mark Ibsen, Gerald Ziegler, Melissa Kaiser Synness and more. There will be a free soup and bread dinner, music and door prizes. For more information email HelenaforBernie@gmail.com. *** Warrior run and military gala April 16 The seventh annual Montana Warrior Run will take place on April 16 at Centennial Park. The 10K starts at 8:30 a.m. with a 5K at 10 a.m. and a 1-mile run at 11:15. To register go to runsignup.com/ and search for the Montana Warrior Run. Later, join us for the second annual Military Appreciation Gala at the Gateway Center, 1710 National Ave., from 6-11 p.m. The event will celebrate the military and veteran community. There will be food, live entertainment, silent auction, raffle and more. Visit www.eventbrite.com for tickets and more information. Announcements Helena toastmasters take 3rd in contest The International Speech and Evaluation contests were held in Missoula on April 2. This field of competition is from the clubs in western Montana. Molly Peterson from Helena Toastmasters Club took the third place in Evaluation Contest with Bonnie Hamilton from the Lewis & Clark Toastmasters Club taking third place in the International Speech Contest. The next level of competition, the Regional Contest is being held in Bozeman on April 23. *** PSC asks you to 'call before you dig' In an effort to remind people about safe practices when digging, the non-profit Common Ground Alliance sponsors National Safe Digging Month every April. Montana PSC Chairman Brad Johnson said, "A quick call to 811 before you dig can save a life, and as April is National Safe Digging Month, its only appropriate that we spread awareness of this important tool. When someone calls 811 in the U.S., he or she is connected to the local one call center, where a representative collects information about the callers planned dig site. The call center then communicates the information to the appropriate utility companies, which send professional utility locating technicians to identify and mark the approximate location of lines within a few days of the phone call. Once lines have been marked, the caller may dig safely around the marks. To learn more about National Safe Digging Month, visit: bit.ly/235pjnr and www.montana811.org/ *** Host families needed for Spanish students World Heritage Student Exchange Programs is looking for American families to host high school students from Spain. These students have received scholarships through a partnership with the Amancio Ortega Foundation in Spain. The foundation carefully screens and selects 100 students who have passed the high academic qualifications as well as being financial-need based to provide a full scholarship for them to study in the U.S. for one academic year. By living with local host families and attending local high schools, the students acquire an understanding of American values and build on leadership skills. To become a host family or find out more about World Heritage and the prestigious Spanish Scholarship Program, please contact regional coordinator Courtney Wade, at 720-209-1145 or 866-939-4111, via email at Courtney@World-Heritage.org or visit www.whhosts.com. *** Registration open for Advanced Placement Summer Institute Montana educators can now access high-quality Advanced Placement professional learning without leaving the state, which will provide more students the opportunity to earn college credit for those AP courses. The 2016 Montana AP Summer Institute is June 27-30 in Bozeman. Educators will spend four days learning from some of the nations best AP teachers in biology, computer science, English literature and statistics. Registration for the summer institute is now open. Learn more about the AP Summer Institute or register, http://opi.mt.gov/Programs/gifted_AP/index.html. *** Womens Foundation announces new grant opportunity The Womens Foundation of Montana, a project of the Montana Community Foundation, announced they will invest more than $50,000 in increasing the economic security of Montana women and girls in the next year. The new grant funding will focus on creating systemic change to improve the economic status of women, supporting programs that give girls the tools to be financially successful and programs that improve womens economic security. Funds will be awarded by WFMs board of advisors to nonprofit organizations that work to directly grow economic security for Montana women and girls through advocacy and programs such as job training, financial education, leadership and entrepreneurship programs, wage negotiation training and innovative STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programming for girls. Preference is given to programs that show innovation, collaboration and tangible, measurable results. Letters of intent will be accepted until April 30. Application materials are available at www.wfmontana.org. The following was disseminated by the Union of Informed Citizens in Armenia. "After restart of Karabagh war (commonly referred to as the 4-day war), Armenian peoples perception on many issues suffered a drastic change. After being attacked by new cutting edge tanks of Russian production, the TOS-1A Solntsepyok system that burns the infantry alive, and the Smerch multiple rocket launchers prohibited by Dublin Convention, people began to raise their concerns about a number of issues which had previously seemed to be taboos. In particular, it refers to Russian-Armenian relations, the EAEU and the CSTO. The EAEUs Last Argument In the recent years, it became obvious that Armenias membership in the EAEU causes more economic damage rather than economic benefit. It should be noted that in 2013 the Armenian side mentioned for several times that its membership in that union is aimed more at security of Armenia, rather than economy. However, the 4-day war in Artsakh (Armenian name for Nagorno Karabagh) showed that the EAEU does not solve any security issue. First of all, it is worth reminding you that two of the members of EAEU, namely Belarus and Kazakhstan, had an obviously anti-Armenian position on the issue in question and supported Baku. Moreover, the Armenian Foreign Ministry even invited the ambassador of Belarus to Armenia to the ministry to demand explanation for Minsks statement on the conflict escalation. In the meantime, Kazakhstan announced that the meeting of EAEU prime ministers in Armenia is undesirable because of the war and that it would be more expedient to move the venue of the meeting to Moscow in order for the meeting not to be viewed as support to one of the conflict sides. Thus, this was simply a diplomatic step showing that the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan will not come to Armenia when military actions are being carried out against its friend Azerbaijan. The Death of the CSTO Apparently, the prime minister of Kazakhstan has forgotten that his country is member of the CSTO. And if he considers that Armenia is a military conflict side, then Kazakhstan should support Armenia by any means. While Armenias de-jure military ally Kazakhstans prime minister decided not to come to Armenia because of the conflict, not less worrying was the behavior of Armenias military and strategic ally Russias prime minister. In particular, Dmitri Medvedev decided to cut short his two-day visit to Yerevan, and spend the second day of his visit in Baku. This step, which significantly contradicts the diplomatic ethics, must have been very insulting for the Armenian authorities even if Russia was not Armenias ally. But in this case, we deal not only with disrespectful attitude, but also with factual betrayal by the ally because it is obvious that Medvedev cuts short his visit to Yerevan for the same reason as the prime minister of Kazakhstan decides not to come to Armenia in order not to insult Azerbaijan. To put it differently, the Russian prime minister did not hesitate to violate the diplomatic ethics so that his visit is not viewed as any kind of support to Armenia. Ironically, our main strategic ally does not spare any effort in NOT supporting Armenia Even politically. P.S. After all the aforementioned reflection, an important question comes to mind. Why should Armenia continue its membership in the CSTO and the EAEU?" Daniel Ioannisyan, Anna Pambukhchyan, Union of Informed Citizens Heres how Wisconsins U.S. senators voted on major issues this week. The House was in recess. FEDERAL AVIATION BUDGET: Voting 98 for and none against, the Senate on Wednesday agreed to start debate on a bill (HR 636) that would authorize federal aviation programs through September 2017 at a cost of $33.3 billion. In part, the bill would fund capital improvements at hundreds of airports; subsidize passenger service to smaller cities; improve airport and aircraft security; bar drones from entering within five miles of commercial air space and launch consumer protections such as standardized airline disclosures of extraneous ticketing fees. A yes vote was to start debate on a bill authorizing Federal Aviation Administration programs. Voting yes: Tammy Baldwin, D, Ron Johnson, R TIGHTENED SECURITY ON AIRPORT PERIMETERS: Voting 85 for and 10 against, the Senate on Thursday adopted an amendment to HR 636 (above) that would require U.S. airports to tighten their perimeter security, in part by greatly reducing the number of portals used by airport and airline employees to enter and leave their places of work. The amendment was a response to global acts of aviation terrorism assisted by workers bearing security badges. A yes vote was to tighten perimeter security at U.S. airports. Voting yes: Baldwin, Johnson UPGRADED CHECK-IN, BAGGAGE SECURITY: The Senate on Thursday voted, 91 for and five against, to require tighter airport security at check-in counters, baggage-claims and other non-secure locations outside of Transportation Security Administration screening areas. Under the amendment to HR 636, the TSA would step up its deployment of so-called VIPR teams, which are highly visible units that patrol concourses with bomb-sniffing dogs and expanded search authority. In addition, airport security personnel would receive special training for responding to active shooters. A yes vote was to adopt the amendment. Voting yes: Baldwin, Johnson Voting no: None Not voting: None AIRLINE PASSENGER SPACE, COMFORT: Voting 42 for and 54 against, the Senate on Thursday defeated an amendment to HR 636 that sought to require what would be the first space and comfort standards for the seating of airline passengers. The amendment proposed freezing leg room, seat width and other dimensions at their current levels while the Federal Aviation Administration develops minimum standards. A yes vote was to require minimum space and comfort standards for airline passengers. Voting yes: Baldwin Voting no: Johnson Key Votes Ahead In the week of April 11, the Senate will continue to debate federal aviation programs. The House schedule was to be announced. Thomas Voting Reports Youd think history might serve as a guide for the politicians and preachers good Christians all, of course who have chosen to use the Bible to bolster their bigotry against people theyve placed outside the magic circle. Weve seen this before, and it didnt turn out well for those who claimed a mantle of righteousness. Yet onward they march. Mississippi recently passed a religious freedom law designed to provide legal cover for those who wish to discriminate against gays and lesbians. The law is quite specific, allowing government clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and protecting businesses that refuse to serve them. Does this ring any bells? Do any of these people remember Jim Crow, a system of legalized oppression that stunted Mississippi for generations and whose legacy the state is still struggling to overcome? They cant have forgotten not all of them. Gov. Phil Bryant, who signed the odious bill, is certainly old enough to remember. Hed remember, too, that, during his childhood, many of the leading church folk declared that God was on the side of discrimination. And history should have taught the governor about Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple who dared to marry in 1958. The Virginia judge who sentenced them to prison for their crime wrote: Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. ... The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. Indeed, this practice of using the Bible as a prop for prejudice has a long and ignominious tradition, spanning centuries and continents. In the United States, slave owners conveniently saw in the Bible a heaven-sent sanction for their brutal greed. Throughout the 19th century, preachers delivered sermons claiming that the Old Testament did sanction slavery, as the Rev. Richard Fuller put it in 1847. Others saw a validation of white supremacy in a Bible verse about the descendants of Ham. Proponents of religious freedom statutes point to the First Amendment, which enshrines as a central value the protection of religious views, even those that are outside the mainstream. Congress reiterated its fidelity to that founding principle as recently as 1993, when a bipartisan majority passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It was designed for such cases as the Sikh firefighter who wants to keep his beard, or the Orthodox Jew who needs an exemption from a Sabbath work requirement. But the U.S. Supreme Courts 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage set off a spate of proposals that serve no purpose except bigotry laws that prop up prejudice with Scripture. The giveaway in several of those bills is this: They allow for-profit businesses to claim to have religious beliefs and to refuse service on that basis. (The Supreme Court opened the door for that with its unfortunate 2014 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, which assigned religious beliefs to corporations. That involved a companys religious freedom to refuse to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives.) Churches, by the way, dont need any extra legal protections. The First Amendment has always given religious institutions wide latitude to practice their beliefs as they see fit, even if that means making invidious distinctions. Catholic priests have long reserved the right to refuse to marry those who are divorced; many conservative churches refuse to ordain women. So clerics may decline to perform the marriage rite for same-sex couples without fear of legal sanctions. Given that, there is no need for laws that legitimize discrimination, and some states, either through revision or veto, have stepped back from such mean-spirited laws. North Carolina, however, has forged ahead with its bathroom bill, passed to nullify a Charlotte law that would have allowed transgendered individuals to use public restrooms of their choosing. And other state legislators are still debating proposals meant to show their disapproval of same-sex marriage. Onward they march toward their heterosexual heaven. News & Information Visit us at the new www.wklawbusiness.com for all legal, business and health care products and services from Wolters Kluwer Law & Business CCH UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE 4/8/16 Connecticut High Court finds installers free from employers control, not employees The judgment of a trial court that installer/technicians were employees under the ABC test set forth in the Connecticut Unemployment Compensation Act was reversed by a divided Connecticut Supreme Court. As an initial matter, the state high court concluded that the employer satisfied its burden of showing the installers/technicians were free from its control and direction under part A of the ABC test. Further, it concluded that the meaning of places of business should not be extended to the homes in which the installers/technicians worked, unaccompanied by actual employees of the company and without its supervision. Thus, the case was remanded with directions to render judgment sustaining the employers appeal (Standard Oil of Connecticut, Inc. v. Admr., Conn. Sup. Ct., No. SC 19493, March 15, 2016). Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-08 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] Negotiations for first program review to be concluded soon, gov't sources say [02] Greece to turn page after program review, gov't vice president Dragasakis says [03] Activists attempt to prevent readmission of migrants to Turkey [01] Negotiations for first program review to be concluded soon, gov't sources say Negotiations for the first program review will be concluded soon as it is the desire of all sides to reach an agreement, according to government sources. The same source said that Greece has gained ground in tax and social security issues and opposed to additional measures. They also pointed out that everyone knew the July agreement would bring measures of 5.4 billion euros in a three-year period (until the end of 2018) adding that the pending measures are estimated at 2.6 billion euros and need to be implemented in the next 30 months. [02] Greece to turn page after program review, gov't vice president Dragasakis says The government is determined to conclude the program review in a way that will allow Greece to turn the page and speed up the government work, government vice president Yiannis Dragasakis said during a book presentation. Dragasakis stated that April is a critical month as the Greek program review has and will be concluded and outlined the five most important issues; the program review to be concluded this month, to be feasible and realistic, to be accompanied by adequate financing, to provide for a clear framework in respect to debt settlement and be complete in order to remove uncertainty. He also underlined that the government has implemented almost all fiscal measures and added that the successful outcome of the program review is everyone's responsibility. He also referred to the refugee crisis that Greece has to deal with. As he said, it is a great problem that we face as a society in terms of solidarity and humanism. The government vice president expressed optimism that the problem will appease in the current month. "The EU-Turkey agreement will be tested in this period and we hope that the latest reduction in refugee flows is not temporary," he stressed adding that vigilance is required. "We cannot relax as long as the borders are closed, as long as Europe does not actively show solidarity, at least all countries, and as long as the roots of the problem - war, instability and crises in the region - continue to exist." [03] Activists attempt to prevent readmission of migrants to Turkey Three demonstrators on Lesvos attempted on Friday morning to block a ship carrying 45 Pakistani migrants, who were to be returned to Turkey, as part of the EU-Turkey agreement. The three men grabbed on to the anchor of the ship to prevent it from setting sail. The Coast Guard arrested the three activists who will be brought before the prosecutor facing charges of obstructing the transport. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-08 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] Tsipras: OLP-TAIPED agreement to cut Silk Road shorter [02] Heads of institutions return to Brussels; negotiations to resume on Saturday [03] Working meeting on the refugee crisis underway [04] 52,666 identified refugees and migrants in Greece on Friday [05] Better management of NPLs will free capital to the real economy, Katseli says [01] Tsipras: OLP-TAIPED agreement to cut Silk Road shorter The signing of the agreement between TAIPED (Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund) and Cosco for Piraeus port authority (OLP) will cut the Silk Road shorter, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Friday. Greece gets into a new phase where emphasis will be placed on the restructuring and recovery of the economy, said Tsipras noting that this investment will give the signal for more investments. Tsipras said that the government's aim is to safeguard labour relations and protect the environment. On his part, the president of Cosco group Xu Lirong noted that the group considers the government's decision to sign the agreement at Maximos mansion a great honour. [02] Heads of institutions return to Brussels; negotiations to resume on Saturday The heads of the institutions return to Brussels on Friday in order to have private meetings with their superiors. They are expected to come back on Saturday. Therefore, the negotiations between the institutions and the Greek government will be interrupted for one day. Their aim is to have the report ready by Tuesday and the agreement concluded by Easter. [03] Working meeting on the refugee crisis underway A working meeting on the refugee crisis is held on Friday at Maximos Mansion. Alternate Minister for Migration Policy Yiannis Mouzalas, Alternate Civil Protection Minister Nikos Toskas, the representative of the Refugee Coordination Crisis Management Body Giorgos Kyritsis and the secretary general of the Defence Ministry Yiannis Tafyllis participate in the meeting. [04] 52,666 identified refugees and migrants in Greece on Friday 52,666 refugees and migrants were on the Greek territory on Friday while 149 new arrivals were recorded in the last 24 hours. According to the Refugee Crisis Management Coordination Body's figures, 28,972 of the refugees are in northern Greece, 11,269 of them are in Idomeni, 14,327 are hosted in the region of Attica (4,668 at Piraeus port), 6,499 on the Greek islands and 2,868 are hosted in different areas in Central Greece. [05] Better management of NPLs will free capital to the real economy, Katseli says An efficient management of non-performing loans -particularly business loans- could become a determine factor in the sustainability of enterprises in multiple ways, National Bank's chairman Luca Katseli said. Addressing an event organized by QualityNet Foundation to present a Greek Sustainability Code, Katseli said that freeing capital currently put aside to absorb possible damages and channeling them to the real economy was a driving force to boost investments, restart viable business units and increasing productivity in the country. The Greek banker noted that channeling funds to the real economy under sustainability terms, required the development of new innovative funding tools, adjusted to the needs and particularities of each market, or sector. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-08 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] "I have to defend Greece on the protection of external borders,"Austrian Defence Minister tells ANA-MPA [01] "I have to defend Greece on the protection of external borders,"Austrian Defence Minister tells ANA-MPA The Greek-Austrian relations at Defence Ministers' level are excellent, Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil said in an exclusive interview with ANA-MPA. He also said that he agreed on many issues with his Greek counterpart Panos Kammenos. The Social Democrat politician clearly distance itself from the Christian Democrat Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner and her positions on the guarding of the sea borders. "I have to defend Greece on the issue. Hungary has land borders, it has built a fence and around 200-300 people cross the borders every day ... Greece has sea borders, and it is even harder to protect them. On the issue of protection of external borders, Greece can't be accused of." During his visit to the refugee camp at Schisto, Doskozil found that the refugees are satisfied and underlined: "Greece should be thanked for that issue. What it is doing, it is doing it for the whole of Europe," he said. Asked if the Syrian refugees will stay in Greece, the Austrian minister said: "I think we have to assess the situation at a European level and ask who will be granted asylum and then consider the issue of distribution. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-08 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] PM Tsipras: Deal between Piraeus port and Cosco will shorten the Silk Road [02] Greece and lenders need to reach a deal in next few days, source tells ANA-MPA [03] Ministries unveil online database issuing official certificates to Greek expats [01] PM Tsipras: Deal between Piraeus port and Cosco will shorten the Silk Road Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will visit Beijing in June following an official invitation by his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang, it was announced on Friday, following the signing of the sale of a majority stake of Piraeus port (OLP) to China's Cosco in central Athens. The deal was signed by Cosco's chairman Xu Lirong, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the head of Greece's privatization agency (HRADF), Stergios Pitsiorlas signed the deal at Maximos Mansion and a ceremony followed at Zappeion. According to the deal, Cosco will acquire 51 pct of Piraeus Port (OLP) for 280.5 million euros and the remaining 16 pct for 88 million after five years, once it concludes mandatory investments. The concession deal will last until 2052. Speaking after the deal was signed, Tsipras said the amended agreement between the Greek and Chinese side for the development of Piraeus provides a very important opportunity to give a new perspective for growth in the long relations between the two countries. "This amended deal comes at a crucial time for Greece, at the end of a very difficult era and at the start of a new, more optimistic era, when the weight will shift towards restarting the economy. For this, investment activities - especially those who can attract other important investments a have a special importance and value to us," he noted. Tsipras also said the deal sends a message for attracting new investments to Greece, showing the country is open to investments "as long as these investments respect labour laws and the country's environmental law, in the way that this deal does." The prime minister noted that Greece's geographical position and its EU membership allows it to become China's main partner in its economic, trade and cultural activities, which could then be promoted to the European continent. "We aspire to become a bridge between East and West and, on your side, I believe that through this agreement you will be able to shorten even more the renowned 'Silk Road'. The facilities but also the opportunities here in Greece to build a trusted partnership can also provide speed and efficiency in the transport of goods from China to the Mediterranean and Central Europe," he said. On their side, HRADF head Pitsiorlas and Cosco's Xu Lirong noted the importance of the deal saying it is a big step in the strategic cooperation between the port and the Chinese shipping giant. Xu Lirong also said Cosco is committed to a harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the port of Piraeus. "We'll invest to the upgrade of the infrastructure and the modernization of the port equipment and we will manage each service with a modern mentality," he said. "We intend to turn Piraeus into the largest container hub in the Mediterranean; we'll reform the car area and strengthen the supply chain. We will invest in maintaining the shipbuilding infrastructure, seek a greater share in the cruise sector and organize coastal shipping. Piraeus will become the international distribution center of the eastern Mediterranean." The head of Cosco also said the company is dedicated to long-term growth in Greece. "We'll spend capital, even our blood for this port. We'll turn Piraeus into the pearl of the Mediterranean. The port of Piraeus is like Argo; let it open its sails and bring the goldenfleece," he said. On his side, China's Ambassador to Greece, Zou Xiaoli, spoke of a further contribution to the region's development and conveyed the congratulations of the Chinese Premier, while noting the jump in Chinese investments that this deal will bring to Greece. "The port, along with the railway tracks of Hungary and Serbia which have started being constructed, will improve the effectiveness of the transports between China, Asia and Europe," he explained. The ambassador also said today's signing of the deal is China's vote of confidence for the Greek economy and Greece's vote of confidence to the Chinese investment and a common future. "We are looking forward to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' visit to China this year," he added. [02] Greece and lenders need to reach a deal in next few days, source tells ANA-MPA BRUSSELS (ANA-MPA/M.Aroni) - The need to have a deal between Greece and its creditors on an overall package of measures and reforms in the next couple of days was noted by a Eurozone source to ANA-MPA on Friday. "Decisions are now in the hands of the Greek government, either there's a decision on an overall package of reforms until Sunday night, or not," a Eurozone official told ANA-MPA. The same source said that if there's a deal in the next few days then the next disbursement of aid could take place at the beginning of June. [03] Ministries unveil online database issuing official certificates to Greek expats A new project that will allow Greeks living abroad to request and receive official certificates online from the country's consular offices around the world was unveiled by Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias and Interior Minister Panos Kouroumblis on Friday. Speaking during a joint press conference, Kotzias said it is a "jump in the quality of services offered by Greece's consular services throughout the world, facilitating the lives of Greek expatriates." When the project begins, Greeks will be able to receive certificates of birth and marital status online, thus cutting time spent searching for such paperwork in Greece and saving money for the State. The minister also said the first online database will be launched soon at Greece's consular office in Dusseldorf for a trail period of one week, before it is expanded to other countries. On his side, Kouroumblis said this program will bring the diaspora closer to Greece, by showing the country cares and sends them a message of hope and optimism. He also said this connection with the database is the second achieved by the interior ministry, with the first one connecting with a database of the education ministry. Kouroumblis also said that the ministry will complete a program of 15 database connections during the year. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-08 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] President Pavlopoulos thanks visiting EU ministers on solidarity towards refugee issue [02] Ai Weiwei to host first exhibition in Athens to highlight plight of refugees [01] President Pavlopoulos thanks visiting EU ministers on solidarity towards refugee issue The visit of EU ministers to Athens is proof of solidarity with Greece which should exist in addressing the refugee issue, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos said on Friday, as he welcomed six EU ministers at the Presidential mansion with Alternate Minister for European Affairs Nikos Xydakis. The European Union delegation included Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Kenders, French secretary of state for European affairs, Harlem DAsir, Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak, Italy's Secretary of State for European Affairs, Sandro Gozi, Portuguese Secretary of State for European Affairs Margarida Marques and Maltese Parliamentary Secretary for EU Funds Ian Borg. Speaking with the ministers, Pavlopoulos said times are crucial for both Greece and for Europe adding that the country will implement the EU-Turkey deal to its fullest, and will do it based on the principles and values of the European Union and with humanism. He also urged the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to fully comply with its responsibilities on the issue. "Regardless of the UNHCR's institutional commitment deriving from the EU-Turkey deal, it is certain that the same rules of the organization on the refugees impose specific obligations which must be implemented," he said. Earlier the six ministers met with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras with whom they discussed the management of the refugee crisis. [02] Ai Weiwei to host first exhibition in Athens to highlight plight of refugees Prominent Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei will hold his first solo exhibition in Athens which will include works created in his studio in Lesvos, at the Museum of Cycladic Art, from May 20 to October 30 this year. Ai set up a studio on the island of Lesvos earlier this year to create art dedicated to the plight of the refugees and migrants who make the perilous journey to Europe. In February, he showcased his first project affected by the refugee crisis in Berlin, when he covered the entrance of the city's concert hall, with the orange life jackets used by refugees. According to the museum, this is the first time his work will be exhibited in an archaeological museum. " The artist's show, titled Ai Weiwei at Cycladic", will feature previous work exhibited abroad, such as Grapes (2011), Divina Proportione (2012), Mask (2011) and Cao (2014), as well as new works, inspired by the refugee crisis and a new marble sculpture inspired by the archeological collection in the museum. The museum also announced that 10 pct of the proceeds from tickets, sales and sponsorships will go directly to carefully selected NGOs which are active in tackling the refugee crisis in Greece. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article February 25, 2022 - Aron Sousa, MD As I write, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has commenced and is playing out in video before our eyes. It is frightening, surreal, and deeply disturbing. The tragedies for the people of Ukraine must be first in our thoughts. Geographically but not emotionally distanced from this madness, we have students, staff, and faculty with loved ones in harms way. And, if we can be of help to you, by all means reach out to any of us. NEW YORK - Earlier this week, at a press conference Illinois Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno told reporters that John Kasich had the best chance for success against the Democrats. So, as Illinois co-chairman for Kasich, she continued to back the Ohio governor in his presidential bid. Radogno's comments line up with the talking points the Kasich campaign is pushing via an online and digital buy in New York City in the days before their April 19th GOP primary. In the ad below, Kasich does not mention the frontrunner Donald Trump, only U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. Script :30: Voiceover: You have only one choice. One choice that will stop the Clinton political machine: John Kasich. Don't be fooled. Ted Cruz can't win the nomination outright and he can't defeat Hillary Clinton either. John Kasich will win the convention and he'll defeat Hillary Clinton in the fall. Want to stop the Clinton machine and win the White House? Your only choice is John Kasich. Script :15: Voiceover: You have only one choice. One choice that will stop the Clinton political machine: John Kasich. Don't be fooled. Ted Cruz can't win the nomination outright and he can't defeat Hillary Clinton either. Your only choice is John Kasich. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland met with Illinois U.S. Senator Mark Kirk this week WASHINGTON - Thursday, U.S. Senator Mark Kirk tweeted out a photo of thank you note he received from President Obama. Only two Republican members of the U.S. Senate remain open to holding confirmation hearings for Judge Merrick Garland - President Obama's nomination to succeed the late Antonin Scalia: Susan Collins of Maine and Kirk of Illinois. Kirk told reporters over and over during the visit that "We need an open-minded, rational, adult conversation" about Garland's nomination. On a wintry December Delhi night, election strategist Prashant Kishor was meeting a BJP leader from Assam. It had been just a month since he had pulled off the incredible feat of helping Lalu Prasad Yadav-Nitish Kumar script a comprehensive victory over the BJP in the Bihar assembly polls. Now he was in talks with the Congress high command and Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to bail the party out in the assembly elections due in four months. So why was he meeting Himanta Biswa Sarma, the ex-Gogoi aide who had joined the BJP in July 2015? Married to an Assamese doctor, Kishor had an offer for Sarma, a former classmate of his wife: "Rejoin Congress and you'll be made CM candidate." The meeting ended with Sarma rejecting Kishor's offer and vowing to put an end to his record and reputation. advertisement For reasons still not clear, Kishor quit the Assam assignment, but the over 200 public meetings and rallies across the state Sarma held over the course of a month proved his point of the ex-Congress minister being the party's biggest challenge now. In comparison, BJP CM candidate Sarbananda Sonowal has had 20 meetings outside his constituency Majuli; Gogoi, 50. And Sarma had not even begun to campaign in his own constituency Jalukbari till April 8. That's the reason why BJP president Amit Shah, on receiving the news of the over 80 per cent polling in the first phase of elections on April 4-traditionally, higher turnout indicates a change-made the first call to Sarma to congratulate him on his hard work. Yet, two days later, unlike other state leaders, Sarma did not join Shah when the BJP president came to Assam for four rallies; he finished five more during the day to up the ante in lower Assam, which goes to polls on April 11. The day Shah called, another call went from Sonia Gandhi's office to a top Congress leader in the state seeking his view on the Congress president personally attacking Sarma in her speech at rallies in Barpeta and Jagiroad, two important constituencies in lower Assam. A decision was taken against it considering Sarma has refrained from badmouthing her though he has been unsparing of her son. "The BJP-AGP-BPF alliance will win over 45 seats in the first phase," Sarma tells India Today, as he threads his way through the jam-packed main street of Pathshala, a township 100 km away from Guwahati, the crowd jostling to have a glimpse of him or to touch him. There is a history to this rock star image of the 48-year-old leader: as health minister, he ensured government doctors stayed in rural hospitals; as education minister, he introduced a transparent recruitment system which helped 60,000 graduates get teachers' jobs through a written test. In fact, the BJP expects to use this performance record to attract even minority votes. "Nearly 1 lakh teachers working in non-provincialised schools are from minority communities. They believe only Sarma can regularise their jobs," says Shyamkanu Mahanta, a Guwahati-based entrepreneur and educational activist. advertisement The Shah touch But if Sarma is leading the BJP fight from the front, party president Amit Shah had chalked out the blueprint months in advance. Despite stiff resistance from the RSS, he and Narendra Modi took a stand on inducting Sarma into the BJP and to give him the task of managing the campaign. Though Sarma is often credited with forging BJP's alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad and the Bodoland People's Front, it was Shah who was adamant on a pre-poll tie-up with them, a lesson he learned from the Bihar debacle. Getting the AGP on board was not easy, as two top leaders-president Atul Bora and former CM Prafulla Kumar Mahanta-were against any truck with the BJP. The strategy was to get second-rung AGP leaders to work on them. The task was assigned to BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, who made several trips to the homes of three AGP MLAs. BPF leaders, known for their proximity to Sarma, were easy riders. AIUDF bounty But the BJP campaign received its biggest help, ironically, from AIUDF founder Badruddin Ajmal who is perceived as the chief patron of the alleged Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, often engendering insecurity among Assamese-speaking people who fear a demographic destabilisation courtesy the rise in Muslim population in certain districts of Assam. The much-publicised fact that Assam, with 35 per cent Muslims in its population, ranks second among states with the highest Muslim population adds to the fear. The 66-year-old perfume baron has often expressed his desire either to be chief minister or play kingmaker, "No party in Assam will be able to form government without AIUDF help," says Ajmal, in his speech in fluent Assamese at Kosuah Tiniali under Raha constituency. His audience speaks a local Bangla dialect, though all the speakers, including local leaders, address them in Assamese; even the posters are printed in Assamese. advertisement The scene repeats itself in three other places inhabited by colloquial Bangla-speaking Muslims. Ajmal is welcomed at every meeting with a gamocha-a traditional Assamese way of greeting a special guest. His appeal lies in that most of them-often suspected to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh-go to Assamese medium schools and Assamese is the official language of communication for them. Click here to Enlarge AIUDF chief Badruddin AJmal at a rally before the first phase of Assam polls But for a campaign aimed at cashing in on the fear of the natives of being outnumbered by "people from another country", it does not bother the BJP. The party has entered the battle with a fresh war cry: it's the last battle of Saraighat to throw away the outsiders led by Ajmal. The naval battle of Saraighat was fought in 1671 near Guwahati where the Ahom army defeated Aurangzeb's forces. advertisement Sarma amplifies it further by defining it as a struggle to protect mati (land), bheti (home) and jati (the nation). "We cannot let a Bangladeshi Ajmal rule the state," he says in Pathshala. He chooses either to intensify his attack on Ajmal or sober it down, depending on the percentage of Muslims in the constituency. He gets instant feedback as a supporter texts him asking him to enhance the secular quotient after his speech at Golakganj. In the next meeting at Bilasipara, he talks of a government by Ram and Rahim-the tweak in script inspired by the bearded men with skullcaps in the front. If BJP insiders are to be believed, this "us vs them" campaign was an afterthought. The initial plan was to attack the Gogoi government on anti-incumbency. However, the several volte faces by the NDA government on Assam in the last two years forced the party to rethink strategy. The sensitive issue of big dams has been carefully avoided while the Gujarat model has been marketed with freebies such as rice for Rs 2 a kg for BPL families, Rs 5 lakh for women self-help groups and declaration of districts and engineering colleges here and there. Coming from Sarma, the words have meaning: he introduced five new medical colleges in the state and distributed free laptops and cycles among students in his term. Gogoi, on the other hand, is branded as the patron of destruction and protector of illegal immigrants, a fear stoked further by raising the bogey of Congress forming government with Ajmal. The AIUDF chief says he will indeed join a Congress government if Gogoi and three of his colleagues are dropped. In the March 21 Rajya Sabha election, he offered unconditional support to Congress candidates even when not required, forcing Gogoi to cry foul. "The AIUDF has a secret understanding with BJP," he told india today. "We did not ask for support but it gave only to help BJP spread its dirty campaign." The BJP's dirty tricks department was certainly at work in the Rajya Sabha campaign as its ally BPF propped up a local businessman as a consensus candidate of the Opposition against the two Congress candidates. "This meant every Congress vote counted and to keep the MLAs happy, the party had to declare a ticket to every sitting MLA, forcing it to field several candidates with high anti-incumbency," says a senior Assam BJP leader. However, even the BJP has not been immune to ticket distribution blunders. In Rangiya, Bilasipara East, Dhekiajuli, Margherita and Shivsagar, outsiders have replaced "winnable" local candidates. But Sarma who, along with Sonowal and Madhav, was part of candidate selection, defends each decision. "It was a meticulous process," he says. "For instance, in Muslim majority East Bilasipara, Ashok Singi was given a ticket because as a contractor he has hold over 10,000 Muslim labourers." --- ENDS --- Nitish comes good on his election promise. But in appeasing one constituency, he has sacrificed a significant source of revenue and paved the way for the illicit liquor business. The informer was reliable; but his story sounded very unusual to Bettiah Additional Superintendent of Police Rajesh Kumar. Someone in Jhhakra village, just about 25 km from Kumar's office, had built an additional septic tank in his house just to store illegally procured spirit. Unusual but worth a probe: Rajesh led a team of sleuths to raid the house only to find an ordinary toilet basin fitted over the tank. A booster pump installed next to it, however, gave the real purpose away. The cops used the same pump to suck the spirit out of the underground tank. It was more than 12,000 litres, good enough to satisfy the drinkers of the district for a month. advertisement The cops also stumbled upon spurious Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) kept in a jar. But Indrashan Sah, the man who built the underground liquor vault, managed to escape. While the raid was conducted on the night of March 3, nearly a month before the sale of country liquor was banned in Bihar on April 1, it only confirmed fears that as the administration prepared itself to impose prohibition, the bootleggers too had been preparing to make a killing. Subsequent statewide raids have confirmed as much. In fact, many of Bihar's villages like Jhhakra are closer to Nepal-geographically and otherwise; which influences their culture and livelihood-than Patna, where decisions are taken on what to drink and what not. The CM's turn Though Bihar began with partial prohibition from April 1, confining the ban to the sale and consumption of country liquor while permitting commerce in IMFL and premium foreign liquor through state-run outlets, Nitish Kumar switched gears in four days, ordering complete prohibition on April 5. "We had initially thought of phase-wise imposition of prohibition in Bihar. But within four days of partial prohibition, which prompted overwhelming approval, we have decided to impose complete prohibition with immediate effect," the CM said, he emerged from a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. According to a senior leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, with whom Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) is in alliance, the sudden shift was prompted by "the delayed realisation that by allowing the sale of foreign liquor and banning country liquor at the same time, the government may end up creating a misplaced impression of it being pro-rich". Complete prohibition will only enhance the CM's reputation, while sparing the excise department the complication of selling IMFL while enforcing a ban on country liquor. How it happened It was on July 9 last year, prior to the 2015 assembly polls, that Nitish Kumar first made the prohibition pledge. Somewhat contrary to his image as a meticulous planner, the announcement had been made on the spur of the moment after a few women in the audience demanded a ban on alcohol at a function jointly organised by the state government and the Department for International Development. As he finished his speech and returned to his seat, the CM had initially not heard the demand in the din. It was only when he checked with his cabinet colleague sitting next to him that he took the mike once again and promised prohibition should he come back to power. advertisement The jarring irony is that it was Nitish Kumar's government which has been credited in the past for reviving the liquor business in Bihar. The state government changed its excise policy after he became CM in 2005 as the head of the JD(U)-BJP alliance. And yet it was Nitish's government that had set up the Bihar State Beverages Corporation Limited in 2006, and made it mandatory for all manufacturers to sell liquor through it. The Bihar government then started allotting more liquor shops and began increasing licence fees to boost revenue. Liquor, the money spinner Country spirit and IMFL sales helped Bihar's excise revenue jump from Rs 525 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 4,001 crore in 2015-16, the seven fold rise making excise duty the fastest-growing segment in the state's revenue kitty. Nitish needed all this money to fund popular welfare schemes like giving bicycles to school girls, something that earned him laurels-and votes. It was a bit like Robin Hood administration, taxing the liquor lovers and returning the money in the shape of social welfare schemes. In fact, excise duty contributed 12.95 per cent to the state's total revenue of Rs 30,875 crore in 2015-16. Country liquor alone made up Rs 2,159 crore of excise duty. Add to it sales tax collection, and it appears that prohibition will cost the state government about Rs 5,027 crore, more than 16 per cent of Bihar's total revenue. advertisement The new position Yet, Nitish is prepared to take the hit. The new guidelines have forced closure of all the 5,446 registered private liquor stores in Bihar, including the 2,471 shops trading in country-made liquor. The 650 government shops, which the government had earmarked for the sale of IMFL, will never open. While Nitish's decision for total prohibition has blunted the BJP's charge of "selective treatment of liquor", the challenge before him is now bigger. Speaking in the assembly on March 30, Nitish discussed stringent punishments and the "humanitarian touch" in his new excise policies, allowing compensation to families whose kin have died in illicit liquor tragedies and assistance to victims with permanent disabilities. The biggest challenge advertisement An earth-mover crushes illegal liquor bottles seized by the police in Nawada. Photo: Ashok Priyadarshi Bihar last month amended its excise rules after 101 years, inserting severe penalties for violating prohibition norms-including capital punishment for illicit liquor manufacturers whose brew causes deaths. But such punishments are unlikely to be an effective deterrent in the absence of an efficient enforcement machinery. The biggest challenge for Nitish, however, is to enforce the ban using a system which has seldom risen to occasion in the past. The biggest handicap could be the over dependence on the Bihar police, which has miserably failed in the past even when it comes to routine prevention of crime. Worse still, cases of illicit liquor and hooch tragedies occurred even when when sale and consumption of country liquor was legal in Bihar. In 2012, more than 26 persons lost their lives in a series of hooch-related deaths in Bihar. At the operational level, the stark reality facing the authorities is that 22 of Bihar's 38 districts share borders with the states of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal, besides Nepal where there is no ban on liquor. Managing the 1,800-km-long and porous Indo-Nepal border with its numerous open transit points will be a particularly difficult exercise. Everything from electronics to drugs to liquor, guns and counterfeit currency-and, of late, even terrorists-flows across this border. Prohibition is nothing less than a godsend for the smugglers, and hoping that the Bihar police, even with active support of Sashastra Seema Bal personnel, can seal it would be wishful thinking. In fact, across the country, prohibition has commonly failed to be effective because of a nexus of corrupt officials, policemen, smugglers and bootleggers, who join hands to compromise the system. The ban on country liquor may also create health worries, as a large number of drinkers may switch to 'toddy' (fermented palm sap)-though its sale has also been banned-and other less monitored liquor as a substitute. In the past, the bootleggers have been found spiking toddy by mixing it with drugs to ensure an instant high. Earlier trysts The current dry spell in Bihar is the state's second brush with prohibition. The first was during the tenure of the late socialist chief minister Karpoori Thakur, between 1977 and 1979. His successor Ram Sundar Das promptly withdrew the decision. Prohibition failed to have the desired impact then as an unprepared administration was overwhelmed by the enterprising liquor smugglers who made a killing by selling alcohol at a premium. Millions of drinkers While there is little authoritative data available on the number of liquor consumers in Bihar, India's Annual Health Survey (AHS) of 2010-11 offers some insight. According to it, 9.5 per cent of adults in Bihar, including women in the above 15 years age group, were in the habit of consuming alcohol. The male population formed the bulk of this group, with 18.1 per cent of men (in the 15 and above age group) consuming alcohol. Only 0.7 per cent women were habituated to drink. According to 2011 census figures, Bihar has 2,49,45,051 males in the age group of 15 years and above. The health survey figures placed in this backdrop leave Bihar with nearly 44 lakh alcohol consumers. "The strong presence of drinkers, coupled with diluted social values and weak preventive mechanism, means the authorities will have to rely on a mix of persuasion and assertion along with sustained deaddiction efforts to fructify the scheme," says Dr N.K. Choudhary, a retired professor of economics and an acclaimed independent thinker. The politics of prohibition Overall, the decision may help Nitish retain the seemingly caste-neutral constituency of women voters, one he created since first coming to power in November 2005 and has nurtured through his subsequent electoral highs and lows. Indeed, Nitish is the first Bihar politician who thought of women as a separate and distinct community and give them a voice and recognition. Since coming to power, Nitish has systematically challenged Bihar's patriarchal society and granted 50 per cent reservation to women in panchayats. The idea of a Dry Bihar may incense liquor lovers, but in caste-ridden Bihar, no male voter is likely to vote for or against a party just because it bans liquor. On the other hand, a ban on liquor has a singular appeal for Bihar's women who struggle every day in the state's backwaters, often watching their menfolk frittering away their time and money on drink. The social cost of alcoholism is visible at the deaddiction centre of the Nalanda Medical College, Patna. Twenty-five-year-old Ghanshyam is threatening two security guards who are barring his exit. A former data entry operator, Ghanshayam used to earn Rs 15,000 a month, but lost his job four months ago due to his drinking. Married and a father of two, his family dragged him to the centre. As Dr Santosh, the nodal officer at the centre, gives him his medical dose, Ghanshyam pleads with him to get "one last drink". The centre has 21 such patients. They are being given beta blockers, sleep-inducing medicines, muscle and mind relaxants. What they want, though, is libation, not liberation. That is now going to get tough in Nitish's Bihar. A colonial hangover? A short history of prohibition in India Alcoholic beverages have a venerable history in India, but the dithering debate between proponents of state regulation of alcohol consumption and production on the one hand and votaries of prohibition on the other is a more recent phenomenon. It was the colonial state that first introduced excise regulations such as the Abkari Act of 1878 in Bombay Presidency with the intention of "extracting maximum revenue from a minimum consumption of alcoholic liquors", as one scholar puts it. Given the importance of such revenue to the government of British India, it was probably inevitable that boycotting liquor became a popular plank of the swadeshi movement as early as 1905, a sentiment that would soon be articulated as a demand for prohibition by the first provincial ministries of the Indian National Congress. By the 1930s, several provinces had prohibition boards and committees enforcing regulations that permitted alcohol only for 'non-Asiatics' or members of the armed forces (Bombay, Central Provinces and Berar), or for 'persons other than Mussalmans' (in parts of Bihar).In Independent India, several states introduced prohibition, and the Planning Commission set April 1958 as a target date for nationwide prohibition in the second five year plan. Since that high-water mark, however, most states have relaxed restrictions on alcohol consumption. With the latest ban, Bihar will find an odd companion in Gujarat as India's only 'dry' state. Nagaland has technically been under total prohibition for decades but the law is mostly observed in the breach here. Elsewhere, Manipur observes prohibition, but exempts its hill districts; Mizoram limits alcohol purchases to Rs 500, Lakshadweep is dry but for Bangaram, and Kerala claims to be phasing in prohibition (while exempting toddy and 27 'five star' bars)... --- ENDS --- Yeddyurappa is currently the national vice-president of the BJP and a member of Lok Sabha. He replaces Prahlad V Joshi. By India Today Web Desk: The Bharatiya Janata Party today announced names of party presidents of five states. One of the most prominent names in the list is of former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa. Yeddyurappa, who had been associated with the BJP for nearly 40 years, had to resign some four years ago following allegations of huge corruption. However, just days before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP took Yeddyurappa back in the party. advertisement Yeddyurappa is currently the national vice-president of the BJP and a member of Lok Sabha. He replaces Prahlad V Joshi. Yeddyurappa became the frontrunner to take up the post of the party's Karnataka unit after the Supreme Court last year declined to intervene and revoke a Karnataka High Court order putting on hold his prosecution in cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act. BJP's press release. Yeddyurappa's Karnataka Janata Party, which he formed after his exit from the BJP, not only spoiled the saffron party's chances of retaining power in the state in 2013 but also relegated it to the third spot by eating into its voteshare. The BJP has handed over the responsibility of leading its Uttar Pradesh unit to Keshav Prasad Maurya. Uttar Pradesh will be voting for a new Assembly in 2017. While Vijay Sampla will be leading the party in Punjab, where Assembly elections are due next year, K Lakshman has been made Telangana unit chief. --- ENDS --- A special CBI court has sent a reference to the Delhi High Court to initiate contempt proceedings against the investigation officer of a corruption case against IAS officer Rajendra Kumar, principal secretary to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, and other officials. By Sneha Agrawal: A special CBI court has sent a reference to the Delhi High Court to initiate contempt proceedings against the investigation officer of a corruption case against IAS officer Rajendra Kumar, principal secretary to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, and other officials. The court while ordering the de-freezing of accounts of one the companies allegedly linked to Kumar on April 5 sent the criminal contempt reference against investigating officer Jayant Kashmiri and other officials who approved a reply in connection with the investigation that was filed in court. advertisement "CBI will contest the said order in the appropriate manner by following due legal procedure," a CBI spokesperson said. The court at the same time pulled up CBI for flouting procedures with impunity and being conspicuously ambiguous in its probe in a graft case against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's principal secretary Rajendra Kumar and others. CBI had registered a case against Kumar and others on allegations against the officer that he had abused his official position and secured Delhi government tenders of `9.5 crore between 2007 and 2014 to a company. While de-freezing two accounts of the M/s Endeavour Systems Pvt Ltd, which was alleged to have received contracts from Kumar, who had purportedly favoured it by abusing his official position, Special CBI Judge Ajay Kumar Jain noted that the investigating agency was expected to follow the mandate of law. "It is not appropriate that the accounts of the company remain frozen till the conclusion of the investigation, particularly when more than three months have already elapsed and there is nothing on record by CBI that by what time they will conclude the investigation," the court said, adding that it could hamper the business of the firm with consequent loss to the livelihood of its employees. This is not the fisrt time the special CBI court hearing the matter has made harsh observations against the agency. However, CBI officials say that in the past, one of the orders was challenged by the agency and later set aside by the Delhi High Court. "Initially the CBI court ordered the release of documents seized by the CBI. The order was set aside and CBI was allowed to retain the documents," a CBI official said. CBI officials said on February 9, 2016 that the trial court allowed de-freezing of accounts of another company M/S Laxmi Enterprises and the order was challenged on March 10. "Delhi HC has already served a notice in the matter," the official added. In its March 11 reply in the trial court, CBI had stated that it has challenged the order on de-freezing of accounts of Laxmi Enterprises. In the same reply, the agency objected to the application seeking de-freezing of accounts of Endeavour Systems. The court noted that the CBI, neither in its reply nor during the arguments, could point any entry in the accounts which suggested that huge bribe amounts were received prior to December 18, 2015. "It appears a bit unusual that bribe amounts are coming into applicant accounts, whereas ordinary course of conduct suggest that applicant company who alleged to have secured contracts should have bribed the public servants. CBI being premier investigating agency is expected to follow the mandate of law," the order said. advertisement There is explicit requirement of section 102(3) CrPC that after seizure, the CBI has to forthwith report to the concerned magistrate regarding the seizure. However, in the present case the CBI flouted this requirement with impunity, the court said. No explanation The court further said the CBI is conspicuously ambiguous and also did not expand arguments from where the commissions were received by the applicant company and in what manner the commissions are illegal. In its order, the court said the CBI could not explain what were the illegal commissions obtained in these accounts by the company. From the basis of seizure of the bank account it does not appear that the applicant company has either not performed the work or performed sub-standard work, it said. "It is not the case of CBI till present stage, according to their reply and arguments, that the applicant company has not executed the contracts properly or performed sub-standard work," the court said. advertisement On December 15 last year, the CBI had raided the office of Rajendra Kumar, close to the Chief Minister's office, in connection with the case. Also Read SC directs CBI to return seized documents of AAP's Rajendra Kumar CBI raids Delhi CM's principal secretary Rajendra Kumar's office following Ashish Joshi's complaint --- ENDS --- The MHA in its letter has elaborated on what amounts to "disrespect" to the national flag, emblem and anthem. The move comes in wake of frequent complaints of disrespecting national anthem and misuse of the state emblem. The Centre has come out with a fresh set of guidelines to maintain the sanctity of the national flag and anthem. By Ankur Sharma: Amidst the raging debate over nationalism, the BJP-led central government has come out with a fresh set of guidelines to maintain sanctity of the national anthem and national emblem. In an order issued to the state governments and other law enforcement agencies, the Ministry of Home Affairs has told the agencies to initiate action against those who are found disrespecting the anthem and the state emblem. advertisement The MHA in its letter has also elaborated on what amounts to "disrespect" to the national flag, emblem and anthem. The move comes in wake of frequent complaints of disrespecting national anthem and misuse of the state emblem. The Centre has sent an order to all government machineries and asked them to act against those people, officials who are violating rules and take action against concerned officials using national emblem wrongly. "Complaints are being received by this ministry (MHA) from various quarters about the insult or disrespect to the National Anthem of India. Orders relating to the National Anthem must have strict compliance. It is also requested that suitable instructions in this regard may please be issued to all concerned agencies," the MHA said in its letter sent to all departments, ministries and states. Sources say since October last year, the government has been receiving complaints along with instances where people have directly or indirectly insulted national anthem. "It has been noticed that MHA is receiving complaints regarding disrespect of the national anthem. So, an order has been issued along with details regarding the national anthem of India so that various government machineries can check that no one disrespects the national anthem intentionally or unintentionally," a senior government official told MAIL TODAY. In January this year, a resident of Kandivali, Mumbai, was heckled out of a suburban cinema hall for refusing to stand up when the national anthem played before the screening of the movie. Similarly, in November, a few people were told to leave a cinema hall in Kurla, a central suburb, after they refused to stand up for the national anthem. According to the MHA letter issued to all government machineries, "Whenever the anthem is sung or played, the audience shall stand to attention. However, when in the course of a newsreel or documentary anthem is played as a part of the film, it is not expected of the audience to stand as standing is bound to interrupt the exhibition of the film and would bring in disorder and confusion rather than add to the dignity of the anthem," MHA says. The government says there are two versions of national anthem, one is of 20 seconds and another is of 52 seconds. advertisement Similarly, the MHA has asked states and the central departments to keep a check on those officials wrongly using the state emblem. "It has been brought to the notice of this ministry that various government agencies which are using the State Emblem of India on their stationery, publications, seals, vehicles, buildings websites, etc, often omit the motto Satyameva Jayate. It may be noted that the state Emblem of India is incomplete without the motto inscribed (in Devanagari script) below the profile of the Lion Capital is an incomplete display of the State Emblem of India." Also Read High-mast Tricolours to fly in all central universities Watch: Saffron flag is also a national flag, says RSS --- ENDS --- The 11.5 million documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca showed it helped thousands of individuals and companies from around the world set up shell companies and offshore accounts in low-tax havens. By AP: A European Union official has threatened to sanction Panama and other nations if they don't cooperate fully to fight money laundering and tax evasion, after a leak of data showed the small country remains a key destination for people who want to hide money. The 11.5 million documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca showed it helped thousands of individuals and companies from around the world set up shell companies and offshore accounts in low-tax havens. Because such accounts often hide the ultimate owner of assets, they are a favoured tool to evade taxes, launder money or pay bribes. advertisement So far, the scandal has brought down the leader of Iceland and raised questions about the dealings of the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, famous actors, athletes and the circle of friends of Russian Vladimir Putin, who some allege has profited indirectly from such accounts. On Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged he profited from his father's investments in an offshore tax haven before being elected. "People are fed up with these outrages," said Pierre Moscovici, who heads financial affairs for the 28-nation EU. He took to task countries like Panama that facilitate such secretive, low-tax accounts. "The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking," he said. Panama is listed by the EU as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, and Moscovici urged the country to "rethink its position in this regard." The EU has to "be ready to hit them with appropriate sanctions if they refuse to change," he said. The Central American country's government is offering to cooperate more. On Wednesday, President Juan Carlos Varela announced the creation of an international committee of experts to recommend ways to boost transparency in Panama's offshore financial industry. But Varela defended his country against what he called a "media attack" by wealthy nations that he says are ignoring their own deficiencies and unfairly stigmatising Panama. Ramon Fonseca, a co-founder of the law firm at the centre of the scandal and until recently a top adviser to Varela, yesterday said the only law that has been broken so far is the right to his clients' privacy. He said the biggest source of secretive shell companies is Europe and the US. "If a company in England has problems nobody says anything against England, but when it happens to a firm in Panama it's a big problem and the entire world beats up on poor Panama," Fonseca said. Also Read: British PM David Cameron admits he held stake in father's offshore trust --- ENDS --- The India Today Special investigation team travelled to Assam where we found it was ridiculously easy for a foreign national to acquire Indian citizenship by submitting fake documents. By Rahul Kanwal: Illegal immigration is by far the biggest issue in the Assam elections. But just how widespread is the problem of illegal immigration? The India Today Special investigation team travelled to Assam where we found it was ridiculously easy for a foreign national to acquire Indian citizenship by submitting fake documents. What's most disconcerting is that our reporters found several illegal immigrants who have been officially declared as foreigners by the tribunal but who still have the right to vote. So when Assam votes in the second phase on April 11, it won't just be Indian nationals who will be casting their vote in the assembly elections but also several illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. This is an India Today exclusive. advertisement In most elections, it is usually only the citizens of a country who get to cast a vote. But that's not the case in Assam. Here the opposition alleges that its not just the original inhabitants of the state who are casting their vote but also thousands of migrants who have sneaked in from Bangladesh. Illegal immigration is, by far, the biggest issue in the Asssam election. But political rhetoric aside is it really easy for a Bangladeshi immigrant to become an Indian national? To find the answer to this question, India Today's Special Investigation Team travelled to Dhubri in Assam. Dhubri lies on the Assam-Bangladesh border. A large part of the district is unfenced, because the Brahmaputra river flows along the border regions. 75% of the district's citizens are Muslims. The rate of growth of the Muslim population in Assam in general, and Dhubri in particular, is far higher than in the rest of the country. Locals complain that a large part of the reason behind the spurt in the Muslim population is the illegal immigration from Bangladesh. Our first stop was the District Transport Office. Here driving licenses are supposed to be made for Indian nationals. But for the touts outside the transport office it matters little whether the prospective customer is an Indian national or a Bangladeshi immigrant. Our reporters specifically tell the tout that the person for whom the license is being sought is a Bangladeshi. Here is his answer. Abu Tahab (tout): The person whose licence has to be made, where is he from? India Today: From Bangladesh Tout: Bangladesh, Bangladesh India Today: What else Tout: Yes, yes India Today: He's not from here, if he was, he would have all the documents Tout: He's from Bangladesh, what you've said is right. I will make it quietly, understood? Tout Abu Tahab goes on to tell our reporters that it will cost Rs 10,000 to get a real Indian license for the Bangladeshi immigrant. The license will be on a Dhubri address. Tout: Do you know the name & address? India Today: We have everything from there, not here. Tout: I've understood... this is okay, it will get made. India Today: How many days will it take? Tout: It will take at least a month. What you are asking me to do costs nothing less than 10,000 advertisement India Today: Okay Sneaking into Assam from across Bangladesh is very easy. The size of the Brahmaputra varies hugely immensely through the year, making it almost impossible to fence the border. The first thing an immigrant needs is a certificate of citizenship, which as Abu Tahab told us is available for as little as Rs 10000. Since 2013, the office of the National Register of Citizens is engaged in an elaborate exercise to determine the number of foreigners in the state. Our reporters visited the district office of the NRC in Dhubri. Here we met Shantanu Chakraborty, the district project officer. Shantanu told us of dozens of cases of Bangladeshi migrants who had been obtained citizenship using fake Indian documents. Shantanu Chakraborthy said, "Like the sample I have, this is a school certificate. Devnagri hindi medium school has given the document. But when we verified it, we found out that the school was established in 1969. How could anyone study there in 1957?" The NRC investigation has found that there are 27000 illegal immigrants in Dhubri alone. This is the number of migrants who have been officially caught, not the number of migrants who actually sneaked in. advertisement We next travelled to the Hallapura village in Dhubri where locals spoke of how immigration has altered the composition of their village over the past few years. India Today: What village is this? Local: Hallapura India Today: How many Bangladeshis are here? Local: Many India Today: Many. when did they come? Local: They come every year. India Today: 5-10 years ago? Local: Yes India today: Who all do you know? Local: There is a house right there. From Dhubri, we moved to Chirang district. The situation here is similar to Dhubri. Once again outside the transport office we found people willing to help facilitate any document which could help a Bangladeshi immigrant get Indian citizenship. Tout: He's told us, i was told that someone needs birth certificate, transfer certificate. Certificate needs to be given to you. India Today: In Rs 5,000 Tout: Yes India Today: We'll give. when will you give it? will you get it made today? Tout: I've said that the person who needs licence made is literate. how much has he studied? India Today: Till 10th standard Tout: Till 10th. there's a man in bijni who will give class X certificate. advertisement In Chirang the cost of a school leaving certificate is Rs 5000 while a driving license costs Rs 3500. What's most alarming is that the National Register of Citizens has discovered dozens of cases of illegal immigrants who have managed to acquire a bonafide Indian voting card. Pratik Hajola is the Commissioner of the National Register of Citizens. He told us about several cases where foreigners had been caught by the NRC but their names still existed on the electoral rolls. Take the case of Mariam Nessa wife of a Mustafizur, resident of Kharballi village in Barpeta. In 2011, the Foreign Tribunal determined that Mariam is a Bangladeshi national. But despite that when votes are cast on 11 April, Mariam will be entitled to vote. Her voter identity card number is HTN4137433. Prateel Hajela said, "So what happens is that these 40,000 foreigners leave one place & go to another. They don't even change their names. How many times will they change it? how many times will they get pan cards made. So in the electoral roll my name gets cut because instead of husband, there is a declared foreigner in the list. I thought these were people who were changing places. They are not fixed. They go to another polling station & put their names in the electoral roll." With Kumar Ashish and Arun Singh in Guwahati, this is Rahul Kanwal reporting for the India Today Special investigation team. --- ENDS --- By Samonway Duttagupta: Being the prime deity of Hindu religion, Goddess Durga is prayed in every part of the country, in every form we know her -- Kali, Chamunda, Durga, etc. Such is the faith in Her power that beautiful temples have been built by devotees over the centuries. Some of them are even known for their locations -- up in the mountains, by the River Ganga and so on. Let's take a look at some of the most famous Durga temples in India. advertisement Vaishno Devi, Jammu and Kashmir Picture courtesy: Reuters Located up on the Trikuta Hills, at an altitude of 5,200 feet, the Vaishno Devi temple is considered to be one of the most revered temples in India. In fact, it is one pilgrimage that remains crowded with devotees at all times of the year. The 13 km trek up to the temple starts from Katra, a small town in Jammu, from where the journey can either be completed by foot or atop horses and ponies. Unlike other temples that have idols or photographs of the goddess, the shrine of Vaishno Devi has natural rock formations inside a cave, often referred to as the pindies. Dakshineswar Kali Temple, West Bengal Picture courtesy: Flickr/Sambit Mahapatra/Creative Commons One of the most famous temples dedicated to Goddess Kali, the Dakshineswar Temple was built by Rani Rashmoni way back in 1885 at a time when the British still ruled Bengal and other parts of the country. The temple was built by the queen in memory of her husband who wanted to construct it before his death. Located at the banks of River Hooghly, the temple complex follows the traditional Bengali style of architecture and has a three-storeyed structure that houses 12 shrines dedicated to Lord Shiva, a Radha-Krishna temple and the main shrine dedicated to the powerful Goddess Kali. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is believed to have a lot of faith in this temple since his early years. Also read: 4 of the most amazing Shiva temples in India other than Amarnath and Kedarnath Chamunda Devi, Himachal Pradesh Picture courtesy: Facebook/Hum Himachali Hain Yaar This temple sits in a quaint location at the banks of Ban Ganga River in Kangra Valley of Himachal Pradesh. Being at an altitude of around 3,300 feet, the temple is surrounded by picturesque mountains that make a trip to this place worthwhile, whether you are a devotee of not. The Chamunda avatar of Kali is worshipped in this temple -- goddess Chamunda is known for defeating the demons Chand and Mund. Dharamsala is located at a distance of 15 km, so travellers and devotees both like to visit this temple from the popular hill station. The presence of Ban Ganga River makes it convenient for the devotees who want to take a holy dip. Kamakhya Temple, Assam Picture courtesy: Flickr/Rajesh_India/Creative Commons The famous Kamakhya Temple is perched within the Nilachal Hills in Guwahati district of Assam. The temple is one of the shakti peeths located in different parts of the country. Each of these shakti peeths is built upon a part of Sati's body, which was cut into several pieces by Lord Vishnu's sudarshan chakra, at a time when Lord Shiva was carrying Sati's body on his shoulder following her demise. The Kamakhya Temple is believed to have been built upon the place where Sati's reproductive organ had fallen. This is also the reason why Goddess Kamakhya is popularly known as the yoni goddess. advertisement Bamleshwari Devi Temple, Chhattisgarh Picture courtesy: Facebook/Durga - The Holy Deity Even if you are not a Hindu devotee, a visit to this temple as a traveller is worthy at any given time. The simple reason behind this is its location -- the Bamleshwari Devi Temple is located at the top of a hill in the Dongargarh district of Chhattisgarh, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful viewpoints of the state. The 360-degree of the lush green surroundings, the nearby town and the hillocks is a treat for any traveller. One can either walk up to the top or take a ropeway up to the 1,600-feet-high peak. As the name suggests, the temple is dedicated to Mata Bamleshwari, an avatar of Goddess Durga that is highly revered by the locals. --- ENDS --- The chances of terrorists getting their hands on radioactive substances for use in dirty bombs is greater because nuclear technology is used in multiple sectors-in hospitals for screening and cancer treatment, in industry for radiography, and in power generation, to name just a few. The havoc wreaked by frequent attacks in different parts of the world has made terrorism the greatest global threat of our times. All these attacks-from Paris to Brussels and from Mumbai to Pathankot-are aimed at gaining mass attention in the most dastardly of fashions, with no concern for human life. One small mercy is that terror groups have been unable to detonate a nuclear device so far. But even this scenario is becoming increasingly real. The Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, from March 31 to April 1, in which 50 nations, including India, participated at the invitation of US President Barack Obama, has raised an alarm that the possibility of terrorists detonating a nuclear device is no longer illusory. There is evidence that ISIS is trying to acquire nuclear weapons, nuclear material to make weapons, and radioactive material that can be detonated in dirty bombs. Of the three, while the threat of loose nukes from the erstwhile Soviet Union seems under control now, and weapons-grade nuclear material is still hard to come by, the threat of dirty bombs is starting to loom large. advertisement These bombs are different from conventional ones because they have radioactive material at their core. Even if these materials are not of the nature or purity required to manufacture large-scale nuclear weapons, the effects of detonating a dirty bomb could be disastrous. The immediate death toll may not be much higher than conventional bombs, but radiation could lead to widespread ecological damage and make the area unliveable. If detonated in the heart of a city, entire sections may have to be cordoned off and abandoned. And if it's at a commercial centre, the loss of innocent lives is bound to be coupled with widespread panic and crippling economic costs. The chances of terrorists getting their hands on radioactive substances for use in dirty bombs is greater because nuclear technology is used in multiple sectors-in hospitals for screening and cancer treatment, in industry for radiography, and in power generation, to name just a few. Radioactive materials for these civilian uses are spread in vast areas that are difficult to monitor. This has been proven by the radiation accidents in different parts of the world over the years. India was shown to be particularly vulnerable after a radioactive material, Cobalt60, was found dumped in a scrapyard in Mayapuri, New Delhi, in 2010, leading to at least eight people suffering high radiation doses. Though procedures have been strengthened in recent times, urgent steps are needed to combat this new threat. There is a need for a closer monitoring of resources, for the training of forces that guard such materials, for increased security at India's 21 nuclear power plants, and for ensuring international cooperation so that no other nation can become a hotbed for acquiring radioactive materials that can be used against another country. For this week's cover story, Group Editorial Director (Publishing) Raj Chengappa travelled to Washington. Chengappa, who has been covering India's nuclear journey for over two decades now and is the author of Weapons of Peace: Secret Story of India's Quest to Be a Nuclear Power, examines the reality of the nuclear threat and how to combat it. Nukes in the hands of terrorists is a storyline Hollywood has been obsessed with for decades. This fantastical threat becoming a reality is a deadly reminder of the world we now inhabit. This is an issue that can't be taken lightly. There can be no laxity in the face of unyielding terror. We live in a very dangerous world of unknown, unseen enemies. --- ENDS --- The victim, a resident of Assam, was allegedly being blackmailed over messages by the staff member for the last 15 days. By Manish Sain: Amidst controversies raging across universities, top media institute Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) finds itself in the eye of a storm over allegations that a faculty member at its Dhenkanal campus sexually harassed a student. According to a report in the Odiya daily Prameya, a female student yesterday accused a teaching associate in the institute of sending her indecent messages. advertisement The victim, a resident of Assam, was allegedly being blackmailed over messages by the staff member for the last 15 days. "The students protested in front of the institute head's office and demanded the resignation of the faculty member," said sources. Later in the day the teacher accepted the allegations and also admitted to have sent indecent messages to the victim, some students told India Today. There has been no official confirmation on the resignation. The series of lewd messages from the teacher started after a male student was found in the girls' hostel at night about a month ago. Both the students - the boy and the girl - were suspended for a month following the incident. The sources close to the matter said, "The teacher started sending messages while the female student was suspended. This went on for about last 15 days." The messages sent by the teaching associate, also hailing from Assam, suggested he had asked for sexual favours from the girl. "I want to touch your soft skin" and "Spend a night with me" were two of the messages the teacher is alleged to have sent, said a student on request of anonymity. The administration refused to comment on the matter. The institute head Mrinal Chatterjee was not in town at the time and couldn't be reached for a comment. Other staff members refused to comment on the issue. The Dhenkanal branch of the media institute, which was constituted in 1993, has never had a permanent teaching staff. It has been running with the help of teaching assistants hired on a temporary contract basis. The institute earlier came into controversy when some students at the Delhi campus staged a vigil for Rohith Vemula, a student of Hyderabad University, who committed suicide earlier this year. After the incident, a senior professor and journalist, Amit Sengupta was transferred to Dhenkanal for allegedly inciting unrest among students. Sengupta had termed the transfer as a "punishment posting" and had resigned in protest. ALSO READ 40 per cent Delhi women faced sexual harassment in past year: Study --- ENDS --- advertisement India is trying to equip the military with more unmanned technologies to gather intelligence as well as boost its firepower along the vast land borders with Pakistan and China. It also wants a closer eye on the Indian Ocean. By Reuters: India is in talks with the United States to purchase 40 Predator surveillance drones, officials said, a possible first step towards acquiring the armed version of the aircraft and a development likely to annoy Pakistan. India is trying to equip the military with more unmanned technologies to gather intelligence as well as boost its firepower along the vast land borders with Pakistan and China. It also wants a closer eye on the Indian Ocean. advertisement New Delhi has already acquired surveillance drones from Israel to monitor the mountains of Kashmir, a region disputed by the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals and the cause of two of their three wars. As defence ties deepen with the United States, which sees India as a counterweight to China in the region, New Delhi has asked Washington for the Predator series of unmanned planes built by privately-held General Atomics, military officials said. "We are aware of Predator interest from the Indian Navy. However, it is a government-to-government discussion," Vivek Lall, chief executive of US and International Strategic Development at San Diego-based General Atomics, told Reuters. The US government late last year cleared General Atomics' proposal to market the unarmed Predator XP in India. It was not clear when the delivery of the drones would take place. (Photo: Reuters) (Photo: Reuters) The navy wants them for surveillance in the Indian Ocean, where the pilotless aircraft can remain airborne for 35 hours at a stretch, at a time when the Chinese navy is expanding ship and submarine patrols in the region. Moves by India to enhance its defence capabilities have in the past provoked sharp reactions from Islamabad, where the government and military are worried about falling further behind their bigger rival in the arms race. Pakistan's foreign ministry could not be reached for comment on Friday, the start of the weekend there, while the military had no immediate comment. Carter visit India's air force has also asked Washington about acquiring around 100 armed Predator C Avenger aircraft, which the United States has used to carry out strikes against Islamist militants in Pakistan's northwest and neighbouring Afghanistan. But it would need clearance from the Missile Technology Control Regime group of 34 nations as well as approval from US Congress before any transfer of lethal Predators could happen, officials said. The push for the drones comes as US Defense Secretary Ash Carter heads to India this weekend for talks to cement military collaboration in the final months of the Obama administration. Indian military officials said they expected the request for the armed aircraft to figure in Carter's talks with his Indian counterpart, Manohar Parrikar. advertisement Washington wants India to sign a set of agreements including on the use of each other's military bases that would help them operate together. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has signalled its willingness to move forward with the proposed pacts after the previous administration did not act for more than a decade. Retired air vice marshal Manmohan Bahadur said the proposed acquisition of armed Predators would give the military the ability to carry out cross-border strikes, or even attack targets lying deeper inside a neighbouring country. "But at the end of the day, it's a political decision. It's one thing to lob artillery shells, its another to use air power, that's an escalation," he said. India has not moved against Pakistan militarily despite blaming militant groups based there for orchestrating attacks on its soil including one on Mumbai in 2008, in part out of fear it would spiral into a broader conflict. But a drone strike might be a less risky option, experts said. Ejaz Haider, a Pakistani security analyst, said Islamabad would object to the transfer of such drones in the region. advertisement But he questioned their effectiveness if they entered Pakistani air space, since it would probably try to shoot them down, something it did not do with US drones. "There is obviously going to be push-back from Pakistan, because if it (the drone) does get through in some way or other it enhances Indian capability," he said. Also Read: China to get hit by Pak-backed terror: V K Singh US says it wants India-Pakistan to engage in dialogue to reduce tension Pakistan says peace process with India is suspended --- ENDS --- In a press conference held in Islamabad, Pakistan Foreign ministry took a completely different stance over what Basit said while talking to reporters in New Delhi. By India Today Web Desk: Yesterday Pakistani envoy to India Abdul Basit said that the peace process between Islamabad and New Delhi stands "suspended." Moments later his foreign ministry contradicted him. In a press conference held in Islamabad, Pakistan Foreign ministry took a completely different stance over what Basit said while talking to reporters in New Delhi. "Your question implies whether the foreign secretary-level talks will take place or not. I have stated this many times that both countries are in contact with each other and it has been reiterated from both sides that modalities are being worked out," Pakistan Foreign ministry spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said. Varying statements from Pakistan's two top officials has once again highlighted the massive confusion with regard to its India policy. Basit's response to a question over Pathankot attack probe also underlined the gulf between the civilian and military leadership of that country. Big Questions Pak envoy trying to kill India-Pak peace process? Pak High Commissioner's comment misinterpreted? Split between Pak civilian-military authorities? Where do India-Pakistan relations stand now? Pakistan's dubious game to sabotage peace talks? Who is sabotaging the talks between India and Pakistan? No NIA visit to Pakistan after Basit's comment? Basit's comments showcase Pakistan's duality? How will India react to Basit's statement? How has the spy row impacted India-Pakistan ties? advertisement Speaking to Karan Thapar on the show To The Point, former Indian envoy to Pakistan Satyabrata Pal said," As far as the government of India is concerned everything else is predicated to get some assurance on terrorism. So, indeed the larger process is in a state of suspended animation and has been for some time now." Senior journalist Suhasini Haider also believed that Pakistan wants to present a picture where it can blame India for delaying the peace talks. "On the one hand it does seem that Basit was making a point that it was upto India to restart the dialogue," Haider said. Former Pakistani envoy to India Aziz Ahmed Khan, however, refused to label statements of Basit and Zakaria as contradictory. "We have been talking about resuming the dialogue. But nothing has happened for the past two years. All Basit was talking about that the talks are 'suspended' and not 'broken off'. I don't think Basit's statement merits such a sensationalism. Abdul Basit has not said anything which is contradictory to Pakistan government's position," Aziz Ahmed Khan said. Defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqa also rubbished the notion that Basit has 'killed' India-Pakistan talks, and said, "His views reflected a kind of frustration. As far the Pakistani government is concerned, it is ready to start the talks." --- ENDS --- Divided into two groups, the RCB players led by captain Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle showcased the two jerseys. By Indo-Asian News Service: Indian Premier League (IPL) team Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) unveiled on Friday an all new black and red jersey with two designs for home and away matches. "We are the first IPL team to have home and away jerseys," said RCB chairman and its owner United Spirits Ltd's chief marketing officer Amrit Thomas. Divided into two groups, the RCB players led by captain Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle showcased the two jerseys. advertisement Some of the other team members who donned the jerseys included Shane Watson, KL Arun, Stuart Binny, Varun Aaron, Sarfaraz Khan, S. Aravind and Yuzvendra Chahal. Explosive batsman Abraham De Villiers was absent from the event. (Full IPL 2016 coverage ) Talking about the team, captain Kohli said, "This time we have a better team. And Bengaluru has always had the best fan base. That's why I love coming back to the city." Recalling the just concluded World Twenty20 tournament, Kohli engaged in some banter with Gayle. "We hate you for having beaten us. But after that we were all rooting for the West Indies anyway," he told Gayle. The jerseys have been designed by Michael Foley and manufactured by Bengaluru-based company Zeven; they are made of Atmocool fabric. And for the first time @RCBTweets will have an away jersey too. #IPL pic.twitter.com/oerd2YV5Ae&; IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) April 7, 2016 RCB selected a group of fans as The Bold Army after a selection process to be the official cheer squad. The Bengaluru team also unveiled its team anthem, RCB PlayBold Anthem, composed by Salim Merchant while the whole event was live streamed on the team's official Facebook page. Interestingly, nobody spoke a word about RCB creator Vijay Mallya and the event completely lacked the page three glamour and celebrities. --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: It's not been long since rumours were doing the rounds of social media that Charlize Theron was in talks to join the Fast And Furious 8 star cast. Now, it is official that Charlize Theron will play the villain in the eighth instalment of the Fast And Furious franchise. The franchise's official page posted a photo of the blonde actor with "F#8" production and wrote, "Our crew will face its greatest adversary ever in our next film as we welcome Charlize Theron to the Fast family. 4.14.17. #F8." advertisement Our crew will face its greatest adversary in our next film. Welcome Charlize Theron to the Fast family. 4.14.17. #F8 pic.twitter.com/6QIQz6UcWR Fast & Furious (@FastFurious) April 7, 2016 Charlize Theron will join the rest of the stars including Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez and Tyrese Gibson in the next film. The Fast And Furious official Facebook page too shared the news: "Our crew will face its greatest adversary ever in our next film as we welcome Charlize Theron to the Fast family. 4.14.17. #?F8" The film will see as a director by Straight Outta Compton director F Gary Gray. The film is slated to release on April 14, 2017. --- ENDS --- After months and months of mud-slinging, Karisma Kapoor and Sunjay Kapur have finally decided to reach an amicable decision. The estranged couple, who has been at loggerheads for quite some time, has reached an agreement on modalities for separation before the Supreme Court. If reports are to be believed Karisma has been given the custody of her children by the Supreme Court on Friday. By India Today Web Desk: After months and months of mud slinging, Karisma Kapoor and Sunjay Kapur have finally decided to reach an amicable decision. The estranged couple, who has been at loggerheads for quite some time, has reached an agreement on modalities for separation before the Supreme Court. If reports are to be believed Karisma has been given the custody of her children by the Supreme Court on Friday. advertisement ALSO READ: Is this the real reason behind Karisma Kapoor and Sunjay Kapur divorce? ALSO READ: Karisma Kapoor-Sandeep Toshniwal party together, put break-up rumours to rest According to a report in NDTV, the 41-year-old actor has finally won the custody battle, which has been the major bone of contention between the estranged couple. However, Sunjay has been granted the visitation rights. The couple has two kids- Samiera and Kiaan. It has been further reported that a house in Mumbai owned by Sunjay's family in Mumbai has been given to Karisma. Moreover, the monthly interest from bonds of Rs 14 crore bought by Sunjay for their children will be used to pay their expenses. The settlement between the two also suggests that Karisma would withdraw the case of domestic violence filed against her husband and her mother-in-law within two weeks. Karisma and Sunjay had filed a mutual consent divorce petition in 2014. But Karisma took everyone by surprise when she withdrew her consent from the divorce in November 2015 due to their disagreement on some financial issues. Later Kapur made heads turn with his statement that Karisma married him on a rebound after her break-up with Abhishek Bachchan. The mudslinging did not stop here. The Dil Toh Pagal Hai actor later filed a dowry harassment case against Kapur and her mother-in-law. In a new twist to the much-prolonged divorce, Sunjay sought transfer of their divorce proceedings from Mumbai to Delhi, alleging that he was getting threat calls from the underworld. But it seems that the two have finally decided to put an end to the entire episode by reaching on a mutual agreement. Sanjay and Karisma tied the knot in 2003 but things turned sour between the two quite soon. However, the two tried to work out things for a few years, however, Karisma moved out of Sunjay's house in 2010 and permanently shifted base to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Karisma is reportedly dating Sandeep Toshniwal and rumours are rife that Sunjay is in a relationship with Priya Sachdev. advertisement --- ENDS --- "Mamata Didi never attended meetings in Delhi to discuss the issue of states' development only because Modi convened them. But whenever she visited Delhi, she met Sonia Gandhi and took her blessings," Modi told an election rally in Birpara. PM Narendra Modi said West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has always missed meetings called by the Centre and has failed to bring in transformation despite her call for regime change. By Soudhriti Bhabani: Launching a blistering attack on West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said Didi had always boycotted meetings called by the Centre on the issue of development. But she never missed any opportunity to take blessings from Sonia Gandhi during her visits to Delhi, the PM added. "Mamata Didi never attended meetings in Delhi to discuss the issue of states' development only because Modi convened them. But whenever she visited Delhi, she met Sonia Gandhi and took her blessings," Modi told an election rally in Birpara. advertisement PM Modi said the West Bengal CM had failed to bring in any transformation despite her call for regime change. "Whenever the Centre called a meeting to discuss development of states, she boycotted it, even though it hurt the interest of her state. What kind of chief minister is she?...She gave the call for Paribartan and misled the people of Bengal. She talked about Ma-Mati-Manush, but there is only maut (death) and money. The Narada sting operation has shown it all." Urging people to give his party a chance in Bengal, he said wherever the BJP was in power, there is development. "Here also I have an agenda and that is to bring about a comprehensive development all across the state," he added. The PM also took a dig at the recent incident of Kolkata's Vivekananda flyover collapse, saying instead of beginning immediate relief work and saving people, the West Bengal had started the blame game. "The first thing she said was to put the blame on the Left for giving the contract of the flyover. But if the flyover was completed, would she have congratulated the Left? She would have taken the credit then for the flyover," he said, pointing out that Mamata only carried forward the legacy of the Left-led West Bengal to further ruin. He said the future of the people in Bengal is not safe in the hands of the Trinamool Congress and the Left. Talking about both the Saradha chit fund scam and the controversial Narada sting operation, PM Modi said: "It was such a big scandal but did Didi take any step against them or expel them from the party? Didi has adjusted with corruption." Also Read Modi tears into Mamata's 'Ma, Mati, Manush' mantra in Bengal rally Bengal records 80 per cent, Assam 70 in 1st phase --- ENDS --- Trinamool Congress party chief Mamata Banerjee accepted that there have been few mistakes in the state under her rule but urged the people to continue to support the party in the ongoing state Assembly elections. "I am at fault. I am taking responsibility for all the errors. You can be angry with me but do not deprive Trinamool Congress of your blessings. Otherwise it will be difficult for me to move ahead," Mamata said. Photo: PTI By Anil Giri, Manogya Loiwal : What happens when a chief minister has a team of men allegedly taking cash for work...well...the CM keeps apologising for their deeds. In the first of its kind apology and a statement that echoed a definite shift from the Trinamool Congress' (TMC) usual confident undertone, party chief Mamata Banerjee accepted that there have been a few mistakes in the state under her rule but urged the people to continue to support the party in the ongoing state Assembly elections. advertisement Mamata, who has been on a tour across districts as part of her election campaign, was addressing a public meeting in Kulti in Asansol when she rendered her apology. "I am at fault. I am taking responsibility for all the errors. You can be angry with me but do not deprive Trinamool Congress of your blessings. Otherwise it will be difficult for me to move ahead," Mamata said. The ruling government has been under a lot of pressure in the past few weeks with the party's image taking a beat down after a string of its ministers were recently exposed in the Narada sting operation. The March 31 flyover collapse further triggered a nationwide outrage among the people and also spread allegations over the ruling TMC's corrupted ways. The admission on camera by the TMC candidate and Bidhannagar mayor Sabyasachi Dutta about the illegal construction syndicate also created a renewed ruffle among the party. And with the ongoing assembly elections, Didi's party has been facing quite the heat. Incidentally, this is the first time the chief minister has shown any signs of apology for her party on a public platform. Having countered every allegation as a move by the opposition to bring her party down in the past or squarely blaming the Left for every deed, this is for the first time that Banerjee accepted that few mistakes were committed by her party members. Fearing losing out on a section of the vote bank with the recent tirade of negativities hitting the ruling government, the Trinamool head honcho accepted her mistakes in front of a huge crowd in Asansol but also urged voters to support her this time. However, Didi's words of guilt failed to escape the wrath of the opposition. Calling it the Trinamool leader's way to try and brainwash the public, state Congress President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury hits back at Mamata for this. "This admission of guilt is not genuine. She is trying to play the victim card. It is Mamata Banerjee's drama to evoke some sympathy from the people." Chowdhury commented when asked. Banerjee also blamed the Central government for the continued water crisis in Asansol, adding that the funds had been stopped under the JNNURM scheme. advertisement Now, whether the admission of guilt by the Trinamool chief indeed brings in some more favoured votes for her party can only be determined after the Assembly elections results are out. Also read: Modi tears into Mamata's 'Ma, Mati, Manush' mantra in Bengal rally Mamata opposed flyover then gave 9 extensions herself: Congress 23 killed as under-construction flyover collapses in Kolkata --- ENDS --- Senior advocates Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde have been asked to assist a special bench as the court wasn't satisfied by quality of defence lawyers hired by the convicts. By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court today ordered two senior advocates to defend four death row convicts in the December 2012 gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student in New Delhi. After being relegated to cold storage for more than two years, the Supreme Court on April 4 finally began hearing the appeal filed by the four adult convicts in the gruesome Nirbhaya gangrape and murder against the death sentence handed down by the trial court and Delhi High Court. advertisement Senior advocates Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde have been asked to assist a special bench as the court wasn't satisfied by quality of defence lawyers hired by the convicts. The decision was taken by a three-judge bench comprising of Justices Dipak Misra, V Gopala Gowda and Kurian Joseph. According to a report by ANI, the apex court has said Raju Ramachandran will argue for Mukesh (29) and Pawan Gupta (22) and Sanjay Hegde will represent Vinay Sharma (23) and Akshay Thakur (31). The case will be heard on July 18. In September 2013, the trial court awarded death sentence to the convicts and six months later, the Delhi High Court upheld their conviction and sentence. All the convicts moved the Supreme Court in 2014, which stayed their execution. As per procedure, the apex court also needs to confirm the capital punishment and only then Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay and Akshay can be hanged. The juvenile convict has already walked free after serving three years at a juvenile home while another accused - Mukesh's brother Ram Singh - committed suicide inside Tihar Jail during the trial. The gangrape took place in a private bus which the victim had boarded along with a male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. The accused threw out the victim and her male friend at an isolated spot. She died in a Singapore hospital on December 29. Also Read: Supreme Court begins Nirbhaya hearing after 2 years 40 per cent Delhi women faced sexual harassment in past year: Study --- ENDS --- With the help of the CRPF, the NIT students on Thursday hoisted the tri-colour and sung the national anthem inside the NIT campus. By Naseer Ganai: Angry at being called anti-national for their action against non-local students of the National Institute of Technology (NIT), senior J&K police officers have taken to social networking sites to vent their frustrations. What has angered these officers, who have been on the fore-front of anti-militancy operations in the state, the most is their removal from the NIT campus and replacement by paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). advertisement With the help of the CRPF, the NIT students on Thursday hoisted the tri-colour and sung the national anthem inside the NIT campus. "Many of my colleagues have been asking, while many more must be thinking, 'whose war are we fighting?' All I can tell them is that this is just another phase and this too shall pass. J&K Police doesn't need any certificate for patriotism. We must continue doing the good work that we are doing within the ambit of law and nothing shall deter us. The common people whom we serve may be alienated from us for reasons more than one, but our good work shall certainly help us win their hearts someday," a top police official posted in north Kashmir wrote on his Facebook page. In a WhatsApp group, a top police official of the rank of Deputy Inspector General wrote: "Jammu and Kashmir Police doesn't discriminate on the basis of who's local and who's nonlocal. Neither do we enjoy beating up people. Force is used only for maintenance of law and order and to disperse unlawful assembly of people." Another senior officer of the rank SSP, while defending police response against the NIT students, wrote: "Someone resorting to violence is committing a crime and police knows how to take on crime." Another SSP posted in Srinagar wrote: "Police action is not doubted when a student from any other institute is booked for breaking law, but there's controversy while we are dealing with students of a particular institute!" "You beat a law enforcement officer for enforcing law. Better start your own police station inside the NIT and tell an engineering student to operate the kotwali," an officer wrote in his angry post. Jammu and Kashmir police has maintained that they lathicharged some non-local NIT students as they had resorted to stone pelting on police. A police spokesman said about 500 NIT students carried banners displaying their demands and tried to take out a march. "They tried to come out on the main road. The police deployment stopped them from doing so and told them to move back. The mob resorted to violence and assaulted the policemen, including officers, and started stone pelting," the police spokesman said. He added this resulted in damage to public property. "The deployment chased the mob and in this melee some of the students got injured. They were given first aid." advertisement Police sources said they have identified 20 students and faculty member for inciting students and whipping up passions. Police says they have video recording of the entire episode. Also Read Students who choose to leave NIT can, says institute NIT Srinagar stand-off: New video shows students pelting stones Shift NIT from Srinagar, demand non-Kashmiri studentsNon-Kashmiri NIT students claim they were beaten up by J&K Police --- ENDS --- As the lights in the hall dimmed and the film started playing on the large overhead screen at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, the 50 heads of state, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had assembled for the fourth Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC on April 1, watched with rapt attention. Just before that, US President Barack Obama had shooed the media out of the hall and informed the leaders that the film simulated a possible nuclear attack by terrorists and its aftermath. It was similar to a war-gaming session where leaders were expected to react to a developing nuclear terror attack. A collective gasp went up at the scenes of terrorists flying a crop duster, spraying deadly radioactive material extracted from radiological equipment found in medical institutions over a densely populated area, causing horrific sickness and death among the citizens. The film ended with the grim message of how the world will have to combat terrorists intent on causing mass casualties by afflicting population centres with radiation sickness, as the film depicted. advertisement The ingredients of a radiological dispersal device, or dirty bomb as it is called, are the same isotopes that make cancer treatment and blood transfusion possible. When these are packaged along with explosives and detonated in a city centre, those in the immediate vicinity will be killed by the blast. But the radioactive fallout will cause fatal radiation sickness to thousands in an area of 3 sq km-the size of Connaught Place in New Delhi-leaving behind a smouldering radiological ruin. Worse, the area would have to be cordoned off for years till disaster management forces, wearing protective gear, scrub the area clean of contamination. It is a nuclear Armageddon that the world can ill afford-the psychological, political and economic aftershocks could be felt for years after such an attack. A senior Indian official, who was present in the hall, told India Today that, after the movie ended, Modi, who was among the first to offer comment, told the gathering, "The only way to reduce the scope of terrorists using such weapons of mass destruction is greater international cooperation and action including information sharing, intelligence exchange and developing human resources on a mass scale to tackle the threat." Leader after leader who spoke after the Indian prime minister agreed that only their collective action could stem what Obama described as "one of the greatest threats" the world had ever faced-of terrorists using nuclear devices to cause havoc. The attacks in Mumbai, Paris and, more recently, in Brussels and Lahore, are clear indications that terrorists are looking for far bigger and more dramatic strikes which imbued the summit its sense of urgency. Just how serious the danger of a nuclear attack by terrorists is comes from information collated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which maintains an Incident and Trafficking Data Base (ITDB) of nuclear and radioactive materials. As of December 31, 2014 (the latest figures available), the ITDB reported a total of 2,734 confirmed incidents of either unauthorised possession and related criminal activities, including theft of sensitive nuclear material and radioactive sources across the world since 1993. As the IAEA observed, "Incidents reported to the ITDB show that problems persist with regard to illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive material, and with thefts, losses and other unauthorised activities and events." For India, the threat of nuclear terrorism is frighteningly real. It has a vast nuclear complex encompassing the full spectrum of capabilities -making nuclear weapons (it now possesses around 120 nukes), 22 reactors that generate power including some that produce weapons-grade nuclear materials, large amounts of radioactive nuclear waste (spent fuel) stored in special containment areas, and over 7,000 institutions that use radiological devices, particularly hospitals, for both diagnosis (X-rays) and treatment (cancer). While a majority of the nuclear complexes are safeguarded and agencies tasked with monitoring the movement of nuclear material in the country regarded as thorough, there are growing concerns that terrorists are employing increasingly sophisticated means to penetrate these institutions and facilities. advertisement There are three mains ways terrorists could stage nuclear attacks in India and the rest of the world: 1. Detonate a nuclear bomb-either a weapon stolen from a state's arsenal or an improvised nuclear device made from weapons-grade nuclear material that they smuggled out 2. Sabotage a major nuclear facility and cause it to release large amounts of harmful radiation 3. Detonate a dirty bomb or radiological dispersal device in a city centre How vulnerable are Indian nukes? In India, it is extremely difficult for terrorists to either steal a nuclear weapon or carry significant amounts of weapons-grade nuclear material from the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) complexes and use it to build a bomb. India's nuclear weapons reportedly lie dispersed in several sites across the country and are preserved in reinforced concrete vaults that can survive a nuclear attack from an enemy country or bunker-busting missiles. These sites are heavily guarded and accessible to only a chosen few. Given India's no-first-use doctrine (which means it will use its nuclear weapons only if another country employs atomic bombs to attack it), the vast arsenal remains recessed in guarded silos. Only if the threat of war escalates are these removed and mated with missiles. India has a strong command-and-control system that goes right up to the prime minister (who has the codes to give the order) and the Nuclear Command Authority, which controls all movements of nuclear weapons. It is a tightly closed loop, which operates behind an extra-thick curtain of secrecy, and has remained impenetrable not just to other wings of government but also any terrorists who plan to lay their hands on them. advertisement Click here to Enlarge US President Barack Obama with PM Narendra Modi at the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit This is true of all major complexes across the country responsible for making weapons-grade nuclear material and building bombs. The two key agencies that do this are the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), which makes the nuclear core, and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), which makes the explosives required for the detonation of bombs as well as the missiles used to deliver them. Complexes of these behemoths are protected by the "defence in depth" system, which has rings of fences, barriers and security-which makes them almost impenetrable. Still, as the recent terror attack on the Pathankot airbase has shown, India's critical defence facilities remain vulnerable and call for even more stringent security. advertisement Are India's nuclear power plants well protected? While stealing a bomb is almost impossible, the threat that terrorists might actually make one, especially a dirty bomb, by collecting weapons-grade nuclear material or harmful radioactive substances used or stored in India's nuclear complexes is not insignificant. Just as in all such facilities across the world, the danger comes from an "insider threat"-the large number of personnel employed in nuclear institutions with authorised access to facilities, materials and sensitive information. The global summit last week advocated, with good reason, that all participating countries beef up their personnel monitoring. In Belgium, whose capital Brussels was subjected to horrific terrorist attacks last month, there was a major sabotage at its Doel-4 nuclear power reactor in August 2014. One of the personnel is thought to have tampered with a critical cooling valve, which caused the turbine to overheat and destroy itself. Though it was in the non-nuclear area of the plant, it cost over $200 million and had to be shut down for several months. Belgian authorities have not caught the saboteur, but investigations revealed that an outside contractor cleared for inspecting plants had left to fight for the ISIS two years earlier. Though not a suspect in the Doel-4 incident, it is matter of concern that there was a potential jihadist who had access to vital areas of the plant. The fears were compounded when it was discovered that some of the ISIS operatives involved in the recent Brussels attack had in their possession hours of surveillance video taken in November 2015 of the home of a senior official in a Belgian nuclear research centre that had substantial quantities of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU), which could be used to make nuclear explosives. Investigators suspect that they planned to kidnap the official or his family in an effort to gain access to the facility and its sensitive uranium. This is being regarded as the first confirmation of ISIS's nuclear intent. It is well known that its forerunner Al-Qaeda was after nuclear explosives and even appointed a "nuclear CEO" to obtain them but failed to do so. Indian nuclear establishments already have a robust Personnel Reliability Programme (PRP) for all employees working in their facilities. There are measures to vet and verify all those being inducted, including family and criminal history, apart from screening them for serious medical conditions. Periodic reviews are done to study employee behavioural patterns and the company they keep. But a report last year by Dr Rajeshwari Pillai Rajagopalan, Senior Fellow of the Observer Research Foundation, found that protocols for hiring of contractors and short-term labourers were erratic even though restricted to the outer periphery of the nuclear complex. Click here to Enlarge Getty Images Also, despite these stringent measures, several incidents have occurred which are a cause for concern. At the Kaiga Atomic Power Plant in Karnataka in 2009, a disgruntled employee reportedly contaminated drinking water supply with Heavy Water from the plant which led to the poisoning of 45 employees. In 2014, at the Madras Atomic Power Plant in Kalpakkam, Vijay Singh, a head constable of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), shot and killed three people with his service rifle soon after arriving for work. It was apparent that the PRP review missed his deteriorating mental condition. It is the CISF that guards the inner perimeter of all nuclear complexes and, like all other security forces, it too has disgruntled elements and personnel susceptible to corruption. Rajagopalan advocates setting up a separate nuclear constabulary to strengthen the security of India's atomic facilities. The other major peril for nuclear plants is cyber attacks. When the US wanted to stall Iran's nuclear programme, their spies got an insider to bug the computer controlling the centrifuges with a virus called Stuxnet. Apart from damage to the controlling systems, a cyber attack may be used to disable the alarm systems for stealing nuclear materials, and even altering accounting systems to hide the theft. Terrorists could use it to access sensitive information, as was done at a South Korean nuclear plant recently where the personal data of employees and facility blueprints were hacked. To address the threat, India has set up the Computer Information and Security Advisory Group (CISAG) that now conducts audits of information systems, frames guidelines and advises on measures to mitigate cyber attacks and their effects. Meanwhile, the use of USB and external drives is forbidden in nuclear complexes and there is limited internet connectivity. Smartphones, however, pose a new threat that establishments have yet to tackle. The DAE has developed a hierarchy of cyber security architecture, including Secure Network Access Systems (SNAS). The real concern, experts say, is the possibility of a "man-made security Fukushima" happening. (In 2011, a tsunami lashed the Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan, destroying its cooling system, resulting in a reactor meltdown and releasing highly radioactive material into the atmosphere). DAE officials say that every Indian nuclear power plant must have what is known as a Design Basis Threat (DBT) document that ensures it has an advanced physical protection system to prevent sabotage-related radioactive material leaks. These include failsafe systems shutdowns, active and passive cooling systems, and robust containment features to withstand not just earthquakes and tsunamis but also human saboteurs. Major precautions have been taken in recent years to ensure that radioactive waste generated during the operation of nuclear power plants is not misused. Low-level radioactive waste is segregated, solidified and packed into containers, which are then sent to specially constructed disposal structures, including reinforced concrete trenches and tile holes in access-controlled areas with 24x7 surveillance. About highly radioactive waste, officials say that India has a closed fuel cycle where almost 97 per cent of the spent fuel is reprocessed for reuse in fast-breeder reactors. This prevents a buildup of plutonium stockpiling that could become a prime target of terrorists. The remaining three per cent of high-level waste is vitrified and cooled in vaults for 40 years before being disposed of in controlled zones. Meanwhile, India has shut down its only HEU power plant following global measures to reduce the stockpile of this highly radioactive material. Sekhar Basu, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), told India Today, "Our nuclear complexes have the highest level of security. It is multi-layered and totally secure." Can radiological devices fall into the wrong hands? The gravest danger comes from a 'dirty bomb' or radiation dispersal device from radiological material commonly available in hospitals, industry and educational institutions. In India, there are over 7,000 institutions that possess machines that use radioactive material necessary for diagnostics and treatment, apart from industrial use. Worryingly, there are many reports of this material finding its way into the wrong hands. One such incident in 2010, when a scrap dealer in Mayapuri was found with a decommissioned cobalt unit belonging to Delhi University, set off alarms. One person died and seven others 'sustained' radiological injuries. Following the incident, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), the key nuclear safety institution, issued new directives to strengthen the licensing system and mandated that all institutions using radiological devices furnish details on the location and disposal of such equipment. The AERB has developed a database of radiation sources utilised in the country and recently instituted e-LORA (e-Licensing of Radiation Applications), a platform for complete automation and to facilitate end-to-end licensing of facilities using radiation sources. DAE is also developing technologies to replace these devices, particularly Cesium-137, with much less dangerous radiological substitutes. The nuclear plant at Kaiga, Karnataka. Photo: Corbis Recently, an inter-ministerial Counter-Nuclear Smuggling Team has been formed to craft a coordinated multi-agency approach that includes intelligence agencies, atomic energy scientists and ministry of external affairs officials to deal with the threat of individuals or groups trying to acquire nuclear or radioactive materials for malicious purposes. What would inspire greater confidence is if Parliament passed the pending 2011 legislation to establish a Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) fully independent of the DAE. The current AERB has always been viewed as a handmaiden of its parent organisation. Meanwhile, the country is also gearing up for a possible nuke attack. The National Disaster Management Authority has a dedicated nuclear, chemical and biological wing that is involved in conducting mock drills and exercises, apart from acting when such an event occurs. But state-level disaster management agencies need to be involved too. As a start, a network of 23 emergency response centres spread across India has been set up by the DAE to detect and respond to any nuclear or radiological emergency anywhere in the country. Officials report that all major sea ports and airports of the country are being equipped with radiation portals and detection equipment to monitor all vehicular, passenger and cargo traffic. Nuclear threat from neighbours Yet it may not be enough for India to only reduce the risks of nuclear material being used. Terrorists have no borders and can pick up radiological materials from other countries that have lax regulations. There are tens of thousands of radiological units spread across the world. Particularly vulnerable are those in Central Asian and African countries. At the Nuclear Security Summit, Modi was scathing of the way the world has been handling the threat of nuclear terrorism. He said, "While terrorists are using 21st-century technology, our responses are rooted in the past. While terrorists are globally networked, we still act only nationally to counter this threat. While their reach and supply chains are global, genuine cooperation between nation-states is not." Indirectly referring to Pakistan, which has been dragging its feet on prosecuting the perpetrators of the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai and more recently on the Pathankot air base, Modi pointed out, "Without prevention and prosecution of acts of terrorism, there is no deterrence against nuclear terrorism." It is imperative that the world acts in concert. Pakistan has the world's fastest-growing nuclear stockpile and also harbours the most dangerous terror groups. In the past, nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan had passed on nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea-so it has a history of nuclear waywardness. While the Strategic Plans Division, which controls Pakistan's nukes, claims that it has 25,000 troops to guard its nuclear stocks and facilities, there have been several high-profile attacks on other military installations that demonstrate the terrorists' intent and capabilities. Also, the nexus between intelligence agencies is worrying, and the insider threat looms large. As Modi said, with clear reference to Pakistan, "state actors working with nuclear traffickers and terrorists present the greatest threat." It was Obama who in 2009 initiated the Nuclear Security Summit process to start a dialogue among leaders of nations to combat the threat of nuclear terror through both global and national means. Among the positive outcomes of the four summits was the setting up of a Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, a voluntary international partnership of 86 countries and five international organisations, including the IAEA, to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect and respond to nuclear terrorism. India also set up the Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership in Haryana, which has already trained over 300 participants from 30 countries on emerging nuclear security topics such as insider threats, vulnerability assessment, transportation security, cyber security and response to radiological attacks. Meanwhile, as Amandeep Singh Gill, India's bright joint secretary who deals with nuclear issues in the MEA, pointed out, "India has pushed that the IAEA be given a central role in fostering international cooperation and facilitating national efforts to strengthen nuclear security." At the summit, Modi announced a further $1 million to bolster IAEA's Nuclear Security Fund. India had put down a similar amount at the first summit. This year's summit had the Interpol being roped in to track criminals involved in the smuggling of nuclear material. As the curtain fell on the fourth and final summit, it was clear that while much progress had been made in the intervening years to reduce the threat of dangerous nuclear material or devices falling into the wrong hands, the world remains vulnerable to such strikes and the process is far from complete. Experts at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center who run its 'Project on Managing the Atom' assess that "the global nuclear security framework remains a patchwork and does not include any agreed standards that specify what levels of security are needed for nuclear weapons and weapon-usable nuclear materials or any verification of commitments or even self-reporting in a consistent format". With Obama's presidency ending this year, the summit process is also over unless the next US president decides to continue the good work. Meanwhile, India has joined 35 other nations in implementing the nuclear security initiatives taken at the four summits. Among the pending tasks is to push for the reduction of the 1,400 tonnes of HEU that 24 countries still have-the material much sought after by terrorists wanting to make bombs. There are still egregious weaknesses, including a lack of equipment to detect if someone is carrying highly radioactive material in a suitcase. Obama observed in his concluding address that the world was lucky that no terrorist had so far detonated an improvised nuclear device. But, if we do not heed the warnings, our luck is certain to run out. Follow the writer on Twitter @rajchengappa --- ENDS --- This whole incident in not about reciprocity, it is about cooperating...and let's hope that the spirit of cooperation is retained in the days and weeks ahead, Basit said. By Mail Today: Soon after the return of the Pakistani investigation team that visited India to probe the Pathankot attack, Pakistan has hinted that Indian investigators are unlikely to be allowed to visit the country. Citing the principal of reciprocity, New Delhi has maintained that an Indian team should be allowed to visit Pakistan to take the probe forward. Pakistan envoy Abdul Basit said on Thursday that peace process between the two countries stands suspended. "It is very difficult for me to say. But at this stage...the whole investigation is not about question of reciprocity in my view. It is more about extending cooperation or our two countries cooperating with each other to get to the bottom of the incident," he said. advertisement His comments came days after a five-member Joint Investigation Team(JIT) from Pakistan visited India to carry forward the probe into the attack at the Pathankot airbase after which India was expecting to send a team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) to the neighbouring country. Earlier, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said NIA did mention to the JIT that they would like to visit Pakistan in connection with the probe. The work of JIT in India was as per the terms of reference which were agreed upon between the two governments through their respective foreign offices. "They (visits) are on reciprocal basis and in accordance with the existing legal provisions," Swarup said. Basit, however, during an interaction in Foreign Correspondents' Club in New Delhi, said, "This whole incident in not about reciprocity it is about cooperating... and let's hope that the spirit of cooperation is retained in the days and weeks ahead," he said. When asked whether he was ruling out NIA visit to Pakistan, he said, "I leave it to your imagination." According to the Terms of Reference for the JIT visit, it was to interview key witnesses and victims of the Pathankot attack but there was no mention of access to military or any other security personnel. Pakistan has said that India did not produce witnesses belonging to the security forces. "The JIT visited the crime scene and also recorded the statements of some witnesses. However, the witnesses belonging to the Indian security forces were not produced before it," said the Pakistan Foreign Office on Wednesday, in its first statement on the team's return from India. The Terms of Reference also said that the JIT would collect and review physical evidence, collect pieces of forensic evidence to find possible matches. JIT would share with Indian counterparts, details of investigation conducted by it, upto the time of the visit, get briefing from NIA about the investigation conducted by them besides performing any other task associated with the investigation, the terms also said. Also Read Pakistan says peace process with India is suspended --- ENDS --- Masood Azhar, his brother Rauf and two other handlers of Pathankot attackers now formally wanted in the case. By India Today Web Desk: A special NIA court today issued arrest warrants against four Pakistani handlers of Pathankot attackers. The list includes Masood Azhar, his brother Rauf, Kashif Jaan and Shahid Latif. Masood Azhar, his brother Rauf and two other handlers of Pathankot attackers now formally wanted in the case. India has maintained that Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar had masterminded the January 2 terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. Earlier this week , China had blocked India's move to include Masood to a UN Security Council blacklist of terrorists. advertisement India has repeatedly said that it has provided ample evidence to Pakistan about involvement of JeM operating from across the border in the attack in which seven military personnel were killed. A 5-member Pakistani Joint Investigating Team was allowed to visit Pathankot last month in connection with attack probe. A similar probe team headed by National Investigation Agency sleuths was to visit Pakistan later this month. However, Pakistan's envoy to India Abdul Basit's yesterday statement that the peace process between India and Pakistan stands "suspended" has almost ruled out the possibility of an Indian investigating team visiting Pakistan. --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today offered prayers to Goddess Maa Kamakhya Devi at her historic temple atop Nilachal Hill. The Prime Minister, who came here from Delhi last night, performed puja on the occasion of the first day of Navratri at the Shakti Pith dedicated to Goddess Durga and her various incarnations, temple officials said. Modi drove up to the base of the Kamakhya temple and walked up the flight of steps to the shrine amid tight security to offer his prayers to the Goddess in the sanctum sanctorum. advertisement Coming out of the shrine, Modi, who visited the temple for the first time, went towards the people and shook hands with them. "After many years, on first day of Navratri, getting an opportunity to visit Kamakhya Temple & offer prayers to Maa Kamakhya. Feeling blessed," the Prime Minister had tweeted before leaving. Modi later left for his campaign for the second and final phase of elections in Assam. --- ENDS --- There have been ample rumours that Rahul was married, but now there seems to be clinching evidence with Rahul's friend Asif Ali speaking up about a marriage that happened in Ranchi. By Munish Chandra Pandey: The investigation into Pratyusha Banerjee's death seems to be getting murkier by the day. While Mumbai's Dindoshi Sessions Court rejected boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh's bail plea on Thursday, the Mumbai Police are now keen to arrest Rahul on the basis of the FIR filed by Pratyusha's mother Soma Banerjee. The FIR, which Mail Today has access to, makes some sensational claims. Soma has said in the FIR that Pratyusha had shown her aunt Barnali injury marks on her body in January this year. She has also allegedly told her aunt that Rahul had threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone about it. The FIR also says that in March, Pratyusha told her aunt that she was fed up with her life because Rahul was torturing her. advertisement Soma has alleged that Rahul asked Pratyusha not to speak to her parents. Soma said that she had been witness to many of their fights when she stayed with the couple in January this year. The FIR also says that Rahul was using Pratyusha's debit card. There have been ample rumours that Rahul was married, but now there seems to be clinching evidence with Rahul's friend Asif Ali speaking up about a marriage that happened in Ranchi. There are photographs of the weddinf as well, which are in Mail Today's possession. Pratyusha's family has claimed that she was not aware of her beau's marital status and Rahul's father Harshvardhan had also told media that he was never married. Speaking exclusively to Mail Today, Rahul's friend of 10 years, Asif said, "I had attended the wedding of Rahul and his air hostess wife in Ranchi. But later on Rahul divorced." Asif said that he had met Pratyusha only once with Rahul. "I was invited by them for dinner and had gone last December," Asif said. After Rahul's bail was rejected, the police came to arrest him at Sai Hospital but his doctor SJ Goel did not let police take him into custody. Also Read 18 things Pratyusha Banerjee's parents revealed about her relationship with Rahul Raj Singh Pratyusha Banerjee case: Police examining her bank accounts Pratyusha and Rahul got married two months ago at a temple, claims her cousin --- ENDS --- A ban on mist fans and conversation in whispers--Kate and Williams' dinner in Delhi will be an affair to remember! By India Today Web Desk: That the British royals are just a couple of days away from their India visit is no secret. That they would be going to Bhutan after visiting our humble country is no secret either. What has been kept a secret so far, however, are the exact details of their Delhi trip--it has already been revealed that when in Mumbai, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be put up in the Presidential Suite of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, and will be attending a grand gala in the evening that will be attended by Bollywood A-listers like Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. If you're just boarding the train, here is the royals' itinerary for their 6-day India-Bhutan trip. advertisement So, as we were saying, the exact details of their Delhi trip have not officially been divulged yet. A source--who must not be named--has told India Today Online that Kate Middleton and Prince William have a date with Delhi's British High Commission on April 11 for a grand dinner in celebration of the Queen's 90th birthday (which falls on April 21). Image for representational purposes only. Picture courtesy: Pinterest According to our sources, the celebration in Delhi was supposed to be attended by one of the country's most renowned names in music, AR Rahman, but unfortunately, the Academy Award-winning composer will apparently not be able to attend for unstated reasons. "The celebratory event will have bigwigs such as the CEOs of Wipro, the Apollo group and HCL. A total of 1,500 to 1,800 guests have confirmed their attendance for the dinner," said the source. And since the royals must be entertained, well, royally, the British Royal Air Force band as well as the Indian Air Force band are scheduled to add background music for the special evening. Image for representational purposes only. Picture courtesy: Pinterest Image for representational purposes only. Picture courtesy: Pinterest "Besides music from both the bands, the national anthems of both the countries will also be played. The food served at the dinner table would be a mix of both Indian and British cuisines," said the source. One thing the royals are extremely wary of, however, are mist fans. "Their representatives have said a big NO to mist fans, because they're unsure of the liquid that goes into these fans; it could be contaminated for all you know. So, for security reasons, mist fans have been banned from the venue," adds the source. Another interesting nugget of information we stumbled upon was that the British High Commission's officials have been told to talk to each other in soft whispers. That's right, no one is allowed to talk in their normal, everyday tones. It's the royals, after all, they like it subtle! --- ENDS --- CPIL has contended that Reliance Jio Was given 4G licence for data services and not for voice telephony which it was permitted later. By Indo-Asian News Service: The Supreme Court today dismissed a plea by Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) seeking cancellation of Reliance Jio's 4G licence on several grounds. A bench comprising Chief Justice TS Thakur, Justice AK Sikri and Justice R Banumathi while dismissing the plea by CPIL left the matter on spectrum user charges to the government. CPIL has contended that Reliance Jio Was given 4G licence for data services and not for voice telephony which it was permitted later. advertisement The judgement was pronounced by Justice AK Sikri. --- ENDS --- The Shani Shingnapur trust today allowed women devotees to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the famous temple. The temple in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district has traditionally banned women from entering the shrine's sacred platform. By India Today Web Desk: After days of confrontation, the Shani Shingnapur trust today allowed women devotees to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the famous temple. Earlier today, dozens of male devotees broke barricades to enter the innermost area of the temple in violation of the trust's restrictions on both male and female devotees. The temple in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district has traditionally banned women from entering the shrine's sacred platform. advertisement Sayaram Bankar, a trustee of Shani Shingnapur temple, said the trustees held a meeting today and decided to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees including men and women, in keeping with the high court directive. Last week, the Bombay High Court had ruled that it is the fundamental right of women to go into places of worship. Meanwhile, activists of Bhumata Ranragini Brigade alongwith their leader Trupti Desai have left for the temple to offer prayers. "Der se aye lekin durust aye (better late than never)," Desai said reacting to the development. "We are happy that the temple trustees have taken a wise decision," she added. In January, a group of around 1500 women activists, tried to forcibly enter the Shani Shingnapur temple but were stopped by cops. The Maharashtra government has promised the Bombay High Court that it will enforce a law which will have provision to jail a person for six months for preventing anyone from offering prayers at a temple. "There is no place for discrimination in Hindu culture. We will implement the honourable high court's decision in true spirit," CM Devendra Fadnavis had said earlier. ALSO READ | Can't bar women from entering temples, rules Bombay High Court --- ENDS --- "Those students who choose to leave the institute now will be provided an opportunity in the Minor Lieu of the minor" read an order from the institute. By Naseer Ganai: With non-local students of Srinagar National Institute of Technology (NIT) demanding shifting of the institute from the Valley, the institute administration on Thursday issued a circular informing students that they could leave the institute if they wanted to. "Those students who choose to leave the institute now will be provided an opportunity in the Minor Lieu of the minor" read an order from the institute. advertisement The officials said the students who have to appear for an exam on April 11 and 14 but want to leave for their homes will be given an opportunity to appear for the exam later. "Students are also requested to form a team of their representatives who can further discuss their grievances with the Chairman Board of Governors and MHRD team" read the circular issued on Thursday. The non-local students continued their strike on Thursday and hoisted the tricolour on campus with help of CRPF men. The MHRD team had a meeting with the agitating students and assured them that they would help them if they wanted to leave the campus. Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh who is in Srinagar, said those found guilty of mishandling the NIT situation will be punished. Education Minister Naeem Akhtar said that a magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the incident and the report would be submitted within two weeks. Police sources said during preliminary investigations with the help of some videos they have identified around 20 students who resorted to violence on campus. "A case has been registered. There are acts of rioting, damaging public property, and acts of causing danger to life. Most of the students involved in inciting tension have backlogs and are in the institute for past 7-8 years," said a police officer adding that a faculty member is also under scanner. DGP K Rajendra Kumar also visited the campus on Thursday afternoon to take stock of the situation. He assured the students of security. In spite of being in the coalition with PDP, the BJP has hardened its position on NIT issue as senior party leader Arora took up the issue with DGP. "I expressed my concern over the unfortunate incident and I demanded action against delinquent policemen involved in lathicharge," he said. The National Conference has expressed concern over situation in Srinagar NIT saying the state government is duty bound to instill a sense of security and confidence among students and restore normalcy in the institution at the earliest possible instance. "We believe the government should handle the situation independently without lateral interventions by those who appear to be in the driver's seat. Rushing in people from the HRD Ministry and deploying CRPF teams on the NIT campus speaks volumes about New Delhi's confidence in Mehbooba Mufti," NC spokesman Junaid Azim Mattu said. "We want peace and harmony to be restored and believe the institute should be closed for a few days," he said. advertisement Meanwhile, the state government ordered a time-bound inquiry into the incident which is snowballing into major crises in the state. A group of Kashmiri students at Government Engineering and Technology College Jammu told reporters that their valuables, books and other goods were thrown out by 'goons' and local students who barged into their rooms and thrashed them. "We were in our hostels. Everything was peaceful. Suddenly we heard a large number of students along with locals shouting anti-Pakistan slogans," they claimed. "There is no police or security available. We are insecure and these goons are making rounds inside campus with sharp-edged weapons," they alleged. Also Read NIT Srinagar stand-off: New video shows students pelting stones Shift NIT from Srinagar, demand non-Kashmiri students Non-Kashmiri NIT students claim they were beaten up by J&K Police --- ENDS --- A tigress was found dead in Maharashtra's Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve today. Hers, however, is not the carcass that made it to the news this year. Are we losing more big cats to unnatural deaths than we are accounting for? By Shreya Biswas: Today happens to be the day Disney's The Jungle Book released in India. Nationwide, people applauded the animated animals on screen, rejoiced the tender bond between a human child and the beasts of the jungle. Today also happens to be the day a tigress - a living and breathing one - was found dead in a reserve in Maharashtra. advertisement The tigress's carcass, as ANI reports, was found at Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra's Chandrapur. In the pictures, the feline's lifeless body can be seen floating on water. No special effects there. The tigress was found dead in Maharashtra's Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve. Source: ANI The death of Ranthambore's Sharmilee Within these few months, 2016 has brought in the news of one too many tiger deaths across the country. Last month, the famous tigress of Ranthambore, Sharmilee, was found dead in the ravines of Kota's Kalisind River. The carcass of Sharmilee, who was moved to Kota's Sultanpur range from Ranthambore Tiger Reserve six years ago, was found four days after her death on March 30, already decaying. Officially named T-35, Sharmilee was known for attention-evading nature, and even in death, the tigress remained tucked away in solitude and mystery. Although her death brought her in the spotlight as many suspected foul play, the postmortem remained inconclusive. "The cause of death is hard to be ascertained since the body was nearly decomposed," said a local forest department officer said. "Though chances of the tigress being poisoned are almost zero, we want to rule it out scientifically through a forensic investigation." Tigress Sharmilee. Source: Indiawilds.com/ Debasis Bose The dead cubs and tigers of Pench Tiger Reserve A tigress and two of her cubs were found dead in Madhya Pradesh's Pench Tiger Reserve on March 28. The autopsy later suggested that the animals had died of poisoning. Reserve Field Director Subhranjan Sen said that the mother tigress was 12-years old, while her babies were just 8 months of age. "We have launched probe to find the culprits who (possibly) poisoned them," he said, adding that viscera samples of the dead animals would be sent to a laboratory. Picture for representation. Source: Wikipedia Earlier in January, two tigers and a leopard were found dead "in the district and the adjoining Pench Tiger Reserve". One of the tigers, KT23, believed to be a cub belonging to the Pench Tiger Reserve, was found in Deolapar forest range. The other one was found in an open well in the Reserve. advertisement While the former was suspected to have died from electrocution or poisoning, the latter could have fallen into the well and drowned while hunting. The leopard, as per the forest officials, was run over by a train near Chimnazari village in Nagpur. Picture for represention. Source: PTI Madhya Pradesh lost of 16 Tigers in 12 months In last one year, Madhya Pradesh alone has lost around 16 tigers to poaching and other causes. A week before the deaths of the two tigers mentioned above, four more tiger cubs had been found dead in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district. This incident shook the state forest minister into initiating a SIT probe into the matter. In fact, there have been at least nine tigers deaths in last eight months at Pench Tiger Reserve. As a result, local guides, jeep-operators and resort owners protested by not taking tourists into the forest on April 2. The reserve authorities, however, are of the view that most of these deaths were natural or caused by territorial fights among the tigers. An NGO named Prayatna holds the state government for these death. Speaking to PTI, the NGO's head, Ajay Dubey, said the state government has 'failed to protect' the tigers. advertisement "MP, which was once tagged as tiger state, has slipped to number three slot in the country in big cats count primarily due to the state government's failure to protect the majestic beasts," said Dubey. We cannot make animals immortal. Even the mighty tigers have to die when their time comes. It is the issue of losing them to carelessness and selfish acts like poaching that needs to be fought. However, on a brighter note, let us remind you that Madhya Pradesh has just inaugurated the world's first white tiger sanctuary this Sunday. --- ENDS --- An Army convoy was passing by Goriwan (Bijbehara) town on Jammu-Srinagar highway when the militants hurled a grenade at it. Army convoy was crossing Goriwan town on Jammu-Srinagar highway when the militants hurled a grenade at it. (Photo: ANI) By India Today Web Desk: Two civilians were injured in Bijehara town of Kashmir today afternoon when militants lobbed a grenade at an army convoy. The militants lobbed a grenade at an army vehicle near Goriwan on Srinagar-Jammu highway but it missed the target. "An Army convoy was passing by Goriwan (Bijbehara) town, on Jammu-Srinagar highway when the militants hurled a grenade at it," a senior police official quoted. advertisement Traffic was temporarily suspended on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway. Several checkpoints were created and search operations were mounted by the security forces to track down the militants. (Photo: ANI) In another incident, ISIS and Pakistani flags were displayed again today near Jamia Masjid in Srinagar. There have been more than a dozen incidents of ISIS flag raising in Kashmir valley in recent months. ALSO READ: Indo-Pak border gets security boost as Home Ministry plans to plug gaps: All about it --- ENDS --- The statements came after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit said that the peace process with New Delhi remained suspended. By India Today Web Desk: Hours after Pakistan suspended the peace process with India, the US administration said that it wanted both the nations to 'engage in direct dialogue' to 'reduce tensions' between them. "We believe and it's been our longstanding position that India and Pakistan stand to benefit from the normalisation of relations and practical cooperation, and we encourage them to do so, to engage in direct dialogue that's aimed at reducing tensions between the two governments and two countries," US State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. advertisement "We strongly support those efforts, because we believe it will lead to greater stability and peace in the region and will benefit both countries," Toner said in response to a question on the remarks of Pakistan Ambassador to India Abdul Basit in New Delhi, wherein he said the talks between the two countries are "suspended". The statements came after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit said that the peace process with New Delhi remained suspended. "It is the Jammu and Kashmir dispute that is the root cause of mutual distrust between India and Pakistan... Therefore, its fair and just resolution, as per the aspirations of the people of Jammu & Kashmir, is imperative," the Pakistani diplomat said. Also read: By suspending talks with India, has Pakistan barred NIA visit on Pathankot? Pakistan says peace process with India is suspended --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: An American girl, Elizabeth Myers, recently had the chance to meet Pope Francis. The 5-year-old, who suffers from the Usher's Syndrome--an ailment that gradually makes the patient deaf and blind--got a set of special seats at Francis' general audience in St Peter's Square. But why was Myers present there? Reuters reports that Myers' meeting with Francis is a part of her parents' 'visual bucket list'. The list is for them "to show her people and things while she can still see." advertisement Myers and her parents, who originally hail from Lexington, Ohio, have drawn the attention of American media time and again--and were even offered round-trip tickets by an airline to anywhere in the world, for which the family chose Rome. Describing their meeting with the Pope, Myers' mother, Christine Myers, said, "She was awestruck. She just teared up. To her, he's the big guy in the white hat. He asked us to pray for him and told us he would pray for us. I feel an absolute sense of peace. For the first time, I've felt peace." According to Reuters, Elizabeth Myers--who still doesn't know what is happening to her--might lose her vision within seven years. Which is why her parents want her to see things and places while she can. "I feel like I have very little time to show her so much," her father, Steve Myers, said. --- ENDS --- But Voice of American News reports that Bahrains human rights record was a focal point of conversations between Kerry and his Bahraini counterpart Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa. The Secretary of State raised particular concerns about a political dissident who was detained along with her young son. But media coverage of the meeting does not indicate that Kerry ever addressed comparable Iranian human rights issues during his visit. Iran has been widely described as being in the midst of a renewed crackdown on political dissent and pro-Western sentiment, with several mass arrests and politically motivated prosecutions having been reported since the conclusion of nuclear negotiations between Iran and six world powers last summer. The fact that this has not been addressed alongside public discussions over Irans foreign policy gives credence to concerns that human rights has been sidelined as the Obama administration focuses attention on the nuclear deal. This criticism was stated explicitly by James Lynch, the Middle East and North Africa deputy director for Amnesty International, in an interview with Agence France-Presse. The associated Amnesty campaign was highlighted on Thursday by an article in the India Times.It points out that Iran has been identified as the leading contributor to an increase in worldwide execution rates, which has led to the totals for 2015 being higher than any year since 1989. At a time when most nations of the world have decreased their use of the death penalty or discontinued it altogether, the worldwide total have nonetheless increased by approximately 50 percent. Three countries are responsible for 89 percent of those executions that could be independently verified. Amnesty International reporting at least 977 executions in the Islamic Republic. This total is only exceeded by China, which does not share records of any of its executions with the public. This is not to say that Iran has been transparent about its use of the death penalty, and indeed many human rights groups have speculated that the actual figures for 2015 could exceed those that have been confirmed. This perception is supported by Tehrans simple denial of other human rights criticisms, and also by the fact that the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has a standing list of 518 people who have simply vanished after being placed in the custody of regime authorities. This statistic was highlighted by IranWire on Thursday in a report that put specific focus upon an unresolved story from the 1980s that is reminiscent of the Bahraini detention highlighted by Secretary of State Kerry, but considerably more serious because it involves the probable death of an infant. The report notes that in September 1983, the pregnant wife of a Marxist activist was detained in Evin Prison, where she gave birth to a baby girl. Prison authorities later took the child away from her mother under the pretense of a routine medical exam, but never returned it or released it to family members outside of the prison. The mother was then told that the baby had died, but its body was not released and no place of burial was reported. IranWire notes that the babys surviving family still attend protests 33 years later alongside the families of other persons who have gone missing within the Iranian justice system or who have been detained as political prisoners and subjected to harsh treatment or arbitrary extensions of their sentences. Many foreign advocates for the victims of such human rights abuses are notably concerned about their apparent lack of support from Western government officials, especially in the context of the nuclear agreement. On this point, Amnestys James Lynch said, Western countries are starting to build commercial ties and trade missions. However, human rights has been absolutely left in the margins. In contrast to such statements, Emily Norris of the US State Departments Office of Iranian Affairs told attendees of RightsCon in San Francisco last week that US policy toward Irans human rights violations remains unchanged. She emphasized that sanctions related to those abuses remain in place even though sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program have now been lifted. But although official US policy may not have changed, this does not isolate the Obama administration from criticism regarding the practical neglect of those issues. According to an Iranian human rights group, this years RightsCon, the annual international conference focusing on issues of free expression and human rights on the internet, highlighted some ways in which tech companies could help to guard against monitoring and online repression by Iranian authorities. It also indicated that existing US sanctions have prevented some companies from offering potentially helpful services a situation that could be reversed by the active provision of incentives or exceptions to the sanctions by the US government. But at the same time, RightsCon presenters also pointed to some of the independent resources that do exist to help Iranian activists and ordinary citizens, such as the Gershad app that allows users to track and report upon the locations of Iranian morality police, who routinely harass citizens for supposed violations of Islamic standards of behavior, sometimes resulting in arrest and prosecution on charges that are not recognizable as crimes but may carry the death penalty in Iran. These concerns were expressed once again during Kerrys visit, which CNN describes as paving the way for a summit in Saudi Arabia later this month, where US President Barack Obama will meet with executives from members states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Voice of America News specifically detailed remarks made by Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa while Kerry was visiting the island nation that serves as the base for the US Navys Fifth Fleet. Whereas Khalifa demanded that Iran change its foreign policy and cease its funding and support of terrorist groups and regional proxies, Kerry struck a more moderate tone, urging Iran to prove to the world that it wants to be a constructive member of the international community. The Secretary of State also disputed the notion that Iran is as dangerous as it ever has been, insisting that last summers nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic and six world powers including the United States had been successful in constraining some of Irans behavior. Secretary @JohnKerry delivers a statement after the U.S.-Gulf Cooperation Council Ministerial Meeting in #Bahrain. https://t.co/4Y1vY1K3t5 Department of State (@StateDept) April 7, 2016 The contrast between Kerrys public statements and those of his Arab counterparts led CNN to report that the differences between the two sides are unlikely to narrow in the immediate future. Experts seem to agree that the White House faces a steep uphill battle in its efforts to convince its Arab allies of the validity of current US policy in the region, which those allies have responded to by launching their own efforts to confront Iranian military and political influence in places such as Yemen. Some experts have been sharply critical of what they perceive as the Obama administrations dismissal of Arab warnings about the Iranian threat. For instance, CNN quotes Lori Plotkin Bloghardt of the Center for Near East Policy as saying that calls for the Gulf Arab states to reconcile with Iran are tantamount to calls for the US to reconcile with Al Qaeda. Those who perceive Iran as a major threat to the region have also criticized the White House for treating the Islamic Republic as a potential partner in Middle Eastern affairs such as the conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. This apparent willingness to cooperate was manifested in recent months through the US inclusion of Iran in international talks about the Syrian crisis. Those talks led to a tentative ceasefire between non-ISIL combatants in the civil war, but they also appear to have prompted the Obama administration to step back from its prior insistence that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of Iran, be removed from power in favor of a multi-party transitional government. Iran made it known early in the talks that it would not consider an alternative to the Assad government, which it has been propping up with arms shipments, proxy forces, and Revolutionary Guards advisors for the better part of five years. Last month, the White House claimed that Iran was scaling back the Revolutionary Guards presence in Syria following the conclusion of the ceasefire, but these claims were quickly disputed by Middle East experts. The claims seem to have been further undermined on Thursday, when Trend reported upon a meeting between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku. Although that meeting reportedly addressed multiple issues, a major point of focus was the mutual commitment to ongoing coordination in Syria, where Russian air strikes have also been assisting in the defense of Assad. Furthermore, some of the initial disputes to the White Houses claims of an Iranian draw-down focused on the notion that even if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps ceased to deploy advisors and combat troops, this would not affect the influence that Iran wields through Shiite militias, including Hezbollah. This criticism was also reinforced on Thursday when The Tower pointed out that Hezbollah had begun building a fortified base in Syria with the intention of stockpiling heavy artillery and brining battle tanks there. As well as underscoring the persistence of Iranian influence, this report justifies earlier warnings that that influence would lead to Hezbollah establishing a permanent foothold in the Golan Heights. These remarks came two days after Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, described the nuclear agreement and any subsequent international negotiations as instances of self-humiliation. Jafaris rejection of diplomacy coincided with statements boasting of the expansion of the Iranian ballistic missile program and declaring that the IRGC and the Islamic Republic as a whole have been preparing for all-out war with the US and its Gulf Arab allies. Although Jafari and Rouhani appear to be at odds with each other over the practical value of negotiations, the president has previously joined the IRGC commander in praising the countrys missile program and vowing to increase its stockpiles of long-range, large payload ballistic missiles. After the US imposed new sanctions on Iran as punishment for the October violation of a UN Security Council resolution banning Iran from testing such nuclear capable weapons, Rouhani ordered his defense minister to rapidly expand ballistic missile production. Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan followed up on this with assurances of major advancements not only in the Iranian missile program but also in the domestic production and foreign acquisition of other advanced weapons, including Russian-made fighter jets. On Wednesday, just ahead of Rouhanis latest defense of diplomacy, Dehqan presided over the opening of an explosives manufacturing plant and spoke to Irans state-affiliated media outlets about Irans intentions for rapid military advancement. The Times of Israel quoted him as saying, Concurrently with its efforts to increase the precision-striking power of its weapons systems, the Defense Ministry has also paid attention to boosting the destructive and penetration power of different weapons warheads and has put on its agenda the acquisition of the technical know-how to produce Octogen explosive materials and Octogen-based weapons. In addition to its function as an explosive in missile warheads and as a solid rocket fuel, Octogen has potential applications as part of a detonator for a nuclear bomb. But although advancements in the Iranian ballistic missile program pose a growing threat to the USs Arab allies, the Islamic Republic is still far from posing a direct military threat to North America or Western Europe. This was underscored by US Navy Admiral Michael Rogers in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. The Associated Press reports that Rogers acknowledged that the US still has much greater military power than all major potential adversaries, including Iran, Russia and China. However, Rogers also emphasized that all three of these countries have the potential to make up for their comparative military deficiencies through asymmetrical warfare such as cyberterrorism and cyberespionage. As commander of the US militarys Cyber Command, Rogers reported that the gap in power is comparatively narrow in this field. And it threatens to become narrower in the midst of numerous reports about the growth of Irans hacking capabilities and marginally successful attacks on American and European systems. These reports indicate that at the same time the Iranian regime is boasting of its military strength via its official propaganda, it is also quietly working to compensate for actual deficiencies by finding other ways to harm Western infrastructure. [April 07, 2016] HID Global Enters Market for Citizen IDs on Mobile Phones HID Global, a worldwide leader in secure identity solutions, today announced it has entered the market for mobile citizen IDs that can be carried on smartphones, leveraging the success of the company's award-winning solutions that have proven the benefits of mobility across a wide variety of secure identity applications. The HID goID platform for mobile IDs enables driver licenses and other government IDs to be carried on smartphones that become all-in-one devices for receiving, presenting and authenticating mobile IDs with the highest level of privacy protection. This marks a new era in which individuals will be able to confidently use their smartphone as their secure, trusted ID, and governments can reach a new level of convenience in issuing IDs and extending their relationships with citizens. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160407005469/en/ "Mobile IDs will simplify people's lives, empower them with more applications and increase the level of trust for individuals to use their digital identity," said Rob Haslam, Vice President and Managing Director of the Government ID business within HID Global. "As the first solution to enable convenient yet secure issuing and receiving of credentials over the air, the HID goID platform creates a brand new category for mobile citizen IDs. Governments around the world already rely on HID Global for major programs, such as the US Green Card, Ireland Passport datapage, Angola National ID and more; HID goID lays the foundation for HID Global to lead the industry's evolution to mobile IDs as well." Powered by HID Global's breakthrough Seos technology, the HID goID platform for mobile IDs goes much further to enable instant over-the-air provisioning and streamlined access to cloud-based government information services with the assurance that all transactions are secure and trustworthy. This ensures all transactions related to issuing, managing and presenting credentials using mobile phones are conducted in a highly secure, closed-circuit environment protected by end-to-end encryption. Seos technology has already demonstrated the transformational power of a rel="nofollow" href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FetfWt4wqrXQ&esheet=51315315&newsitemid=20160407005469&lan=en-US&anchor=mobile+IDs&index=3&md5=72b98c673c3e6c4fa59cb1eab53f6c9a" rel="nofollow">mobile IDs in numerous applications, and there is growing demand for this capability to provide the equivalent of a digital wallet for carrying multiple identities tied to the user's one true identity. A Zogby Analytics poll of 18- to 34-year olds who have smartphones revealed that 39 percent would like to verify their identity with a digital ID instead of showing a driver's license. With IDs on smartphones, citizens are in control of the data made available in different scenarios, such as only showing a person's photo and age. HID Global is now engaging with national governments and state and provincial driver's license agencies about the possibility of launching goID pilots that will explore each jurisdiction's specific platform deployment objectives and requirements. The solution will eliminate the need for people to stand in lines for new cards and renewals. Key focus areas include: preventing fraud through authentication over secure channels; optimizing flexibility for online authentication if a citizen's smartphone battery is dead; simplifying issuance through over-the-air provisioning as already proven at universities, banks, hotels, hospitals and other institutions leveraging Seos technology; and protecting privacy by utilizing a smartphone's Bluetooth connection so users can electronically present their credentials without physically relinquishing their smartphones. To watch the HID goID video, click here. The HID goID launch is a key element in the company's broader mobility initiative aimed at creating a more convenient, trusted and secure user experience in today's increasingly connected and mobile-first world. To read about HID Global's mobility initiative, click here. Live demonstrations at ISC West 2016 in Booth #11063 Visit HID Global's booth for a wide range of mobile security demonstrations, along with the company's broad portfolio of solutions for creating, managing and using secure identities. Stay Connected with HID Global Visit our Media Center, read our Blog and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. About HID Global HID Global is the trusted source for innovative products, services, solutions, and know-how related to the creation, management, and use of secure identities for millions of customers around the world. The company's served markets include physical and logical access control, including strong authentication and credential management; card printing and personalization; visitor management systems; highly secure government and citizen ID; and identification RFID technologies used in animal ID and industry and logistics applications. The company's primary brands include ActivID, EasyLobby, FARGO, IdenTrust, LaserCard, Lumidigm, Quantum (News - Alert) Secure, and HID. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, HID Global has over 2,700 employees worldwide and operates international offices that support more than 100 countries. HID Global is an ASSA ABLOY Group brand. For more information, visit http://www.hidglobal.com. HID, the HID logo, HID goID and Seos are trademarks or registered trademarks of HID Global or its licensors in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks, service marks, and product or service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160407005469/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 07, 2016] Tenet Appoints Howard Hacker Chief Compliance Officer Tenet Healthcare Corporation (NYSE: THC) today announced that Howard Hacker has been named senior vice president and chief compliance officer, effective May 2. As chief compliance officer, Mr. Hacker will provide expert management and oversight of the company's ethics and compliance program as established by Tenet's Quality, Compliance and Ethics Program Charter. This enterprise-wide compliance oversight includes 79 acute care hospitals and their affiliated outpatient facilities, over 700 physician practices, United Surgical Partners International, Conifer Health Solutions, and other services and functions within the company. Mr. Hacker will report directly to the Quality, Compliance and Ethics Committee of Tenet's board of directors. "Howard brings a wealth of experience to Tenet, and I could not be more pleased to have someone with his considerable talent join our organization," said Trevor Fetter, chairman and chief executive officer. "For healthcare organizations to succeed in the long term, they must operate from a strong foundation of values supported by an effective compliance program. I am delighted to wok with Howard and all of our leaders to uphold the highest standards of integrity in our service to our patients and our communities." Mr. Hacker said, "Integrity is an essential part of Tenet's culture, and I am excited to be joining an organization and a leadership team that is so focused on quality and integrity. I look forward to leading the company's compliance program and enhancing our culture and reputation to build a stronger business." Mr. Hacker succeeds Vanessa Benavides, who left Tenet to assume the leadership of compliance and privacy operations at Kaiser Permanente. Howard Hacker Biographical Information Mr. Hacker joins Tenet after more than a decade at Pfizer Inc. where he served in various leadership roles within Pfizer's legal and compliance teams. Most recently, he served as Chief Compliance Counsel for Pfizer's Global Established Pharma business, overseeing its comprehensive global compliance program. Prior to Pfizer, Mr. Hacker worked for the law firms of Jones Day and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. Mr. Hacker is a member of the Texas bar. He received a bachelor's degree in History and Russian from Washington University in St. Louis and his law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. About Tenet Healthcare Tenet Healthcare Corporation is a diversified healthcare services company with 130,000 employees united around a common mission: to help people live happier, healthier lives. Through its subsidiaries, partnerships and joint ventures, including United Surgical Partners International, the company operates 79 general acute care hospitals, 20 short-stay surgical hospitals and over 470 outpatient centers in the United States, as well as nine facilities in the United Kingdom. Tenet's Conifer Health Solutions subsidiary provides technology-enabled performance improvement and health management solutions to hospitals, health systems, integrated delivery networks, physician groups, self-insured organizations and health plans. For more information, please visit www.tenethealth.com. The terms "THC", "Tenet Healthcare Corporation", "the company", "we", "us" or "our" refer to Tenet Healthcare Corporation or one or more of its subsidiaries or affiliates as applicable. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160407006444/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 07, 2016] NetHope Welcomes New Members WASHINGTON, April 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, NetHope, Inc., an organization that convenes the world's largest international nonprofit organizations (NGOs) and technology giants for global impact, announced five new NGOs to its rapidly growing nonprofit membership: Pro Mujer, NetHope's first member organization from the global south; HIAS, the oldest refugee resettlement organization in the world; Europe-based humanitarian organizations Danish Refugee Council and Medair; and Deutsche Welthungerhilfe, Germany's largest NGO. NetHope's members represent a diverse set of missions including conservation, agriculture, gender issues, microfinance, and humanitarian and emergency relief. "Each organization brings a wealth of expertise and experience to the collective, which makes us stronger and more effective at improving the human condition around the globe," said NetHope's CEO Lauren Woodman. For new members, joining NetHope means being part of a group that is committed to collaboration around Information and Communications Technology (ICT) needs to further their missions. Member organizationshave access to technical expertise of the group to strengthen their organizational capacity and enhance their technology leadership through training, collaboration opportunities and programs. Most recently, NetHope mobilized members to respond to the Syrian refugee crisis. The organization is implementing connectivity solutions in the rapidly growing refugee camps in Jordan and providing connectivity kits for nonprofits working along the migration routes to assist refugees with mobile connectivity and recharging cellular devices. Its network of technical specialists also supported member organizations and refugees. In the past year, NetHope was instrumental in responding to the Ebola crisis in West Africa by bringing communications equipment and deploying connectivity solutions for its members in the region. In partnership with crisis informatics experts, NetHope provided critical visualizations of mobile networks, a map of Ebola treatment units, the trajectory of new outbreaks and their relationship to mobile coverage areas. This ensured that those in need of care were able to receive it quickly and that providers were prepared to receive patients, preventing further spread of the virus to other individuals. About NetHope NetHope empowers committed organizations to change the world through the power of technology. By facilitating collaboration between NetHope's nonprofit members, foundations, and tech sponsors, NetHope is a catalyst for productive innovation and problem-solving in humanitarian and conservation work. Since its founding in 2001, NetHope has grown to represent 49 diverse international NGOs working on some of the world's toughest challenges including poverty and hunger, refugee displacement, human trafficking, gender inequality, and environmental protection. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nethope-welcomes-new-members-300248138.html SOURCE NetHope [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 07, 2016] Fitch Rates Maricopa County Unified School District No. 89-Dysart (AZ) Ser 2016 Rfdg Bonds 'AA-' Fitch Ratings assigns a 'AA-' rating to the following bonds of Maricopa County Unified School District No. 89-Dysart, Arizona (the district): --$74.9 million refunding bonds, series 2016. The bonds are scheduled for negotiated sale the week of April 11th. Proceeds will be used to redeem portions of the district's outstanding debt for interest savings. Fitch also affirms the 'AA-' rating on the district's $80.1 million (pre-refunding) school improvement bonds (series 2006D, 2007A, 2007B, and 2009D), and $48.3 million in refunding bonds (series 2014). The Rating Outlook is Stable. SECURITY The bonds are payable from an unlimited ad valorem tax levied against all taxable property in the district. KEY RATING DRIVERS REGIONAL ECONOMY IMPROVING: Further, modest strengthening of the local economy is marked by continued improvement in employment, development activity, and tax base metrics. FINANCES SATISFACTORY: Fund balances and liquidity are sufficient given the state funding framework that supports education. A recently passed budget override will ensure near-term stability in district revenues and provide operational and programmatic resources. LONG-TERM LIABILITIES MANAGEABLE: Debt levels are modest and fixed carrying costs remain moderate. Principal amortization is rapid. RATING SENSITIVITIES STRUCTURAL BALANCE: Fitch will continue to monitor the district's ability to maintain structural balance in the context of an uncertain state funding environment. CREDIT PROFILE Located northwest of Phoenix in central Maricopa County (GOs rated 'AAA'; Outlook Stable), the district encompasses 140 square miles and serves an estimated population of 175,100 in the city of Surprise and the towns of El Mirage and Youngtown. CONTINUING ECONOMIC IMPROVEMENT The Phoenix metro area continues its recovery from the severe recession and housing market collapse. Area cities have been reporting increasing sales tax revenues for several consecutive years, and metro area unemployment is down to 4.6% as of January 2016 compared to 5.8% just 12 months prior. Housing prices also continue to experience steady gains; Zillow reports Surprise home prices are up roughly 7.5% over the past 12 months with a median home price of $212,500. Tax base declines were dramatic post-recession; the cumulative drop in the district's secondary assessed value (SAV) between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2014 was 44%. SAV for fiscal 2015 reversed that trend with 10% growth, bringing the tax base close to $1.13 billion. Starting in fiscal 2016, the voter-approved constitutional amendment proposition 117 took effect, thus limiting annual growth in the assessed property value of locally assessed properties. Without the new limitation, the tax base grew 14% from fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2016, evidencing the continuation of economic recovery in the area. Preliminary figures for 2017 show moderate growth of 4.1% in the limited assessed value (the value on which the property tax rate is levied under proposition 117), and a slightly stronger 6.1% on a market value basis. Fitch believes continuation of moderate growth is reasonable given the two-year lag in Arizona between market-based property valuations and taxable values, as well as recent housing market trends. IMPROVED FINANCIAL POSITION The district's financial profile has been pressured in recent fiscal years by statewide funding cuts and delays to education funding beginning in fiscal 2009. Right-sizing of operations has been a challenge, yet strong management, voter-approved budget overrides, and spending controls have helped stabilize operations. Fiscal 2015 marked the third consecutive year of general fund surpluses, adding $3.2 million to fund balance at year-end and bringing reserves to a comfortable 15% of spending. Management reports fiscal 2016 will continue the prior years' trend, spending only 96% of the budget and carrying over the state-permitted 4% to use for future capital spending. In November 2015, voters in the district authorized the district to exceed its statutorily prescribed maintenance and operation budget limit by an amount not to exceed 15% of the prescribed limit (roughly $18.8 million). The seven-year override begins in fiscal 2017 and will be used to re-instate full-time kindergarten, reduce class sizes, and adjust salaries to market rate. The 2015 override replaces a prior override that began its first year of phase out in fiscal 2016 (a budgetary reduction of $6 million). SHORT-TERM BORROWING CONTINUES The district historically has issued tax anticipation notes (TANs) for cash flow purposes. The state aid delays exacerbated liquidity concens, and the district also utilized a separate short-term borrowing program with the county treasurer's office to help cash flow. More timely state aid receipts have improved the district's liquidity in recent years, and in fiscal 2016 the district will only issue $10 million in TANs. Management hopes to eliminate this practice in part through moving teachers to a 12-month pay cycle. LOW DEBT; UNCERTAIN CAPITAL ENVIRONMENT Overall debt levels are low at 1.7% of market value or less than $1,000 on a per capita basis. Amortization of direct debt is rapid with 90% retired in 10 years. The current debt service payment structure steadily increases from $14.3 million in fiscal 2016 to $18 million in fiscal 2022 (9.3% of fiscal 2015 governmental spending). Future funding for the district's larger capital needs remains somewhat uncertain given the voter rejection of an $87 million GO bond proposal in November 2013. 'Soft' annual capital needs that include textbooks and other instructional equipment will continue to be met with available capital fund balances. Inability of the district to pass a GO bond would be of concern to Fitch as capital funding from the state for growing school districts has been significantly reduced. Slowed enrollment growth and rezoning of school attendance boundaries provides adequate capacity at existing schools, alleviating the need for new district school facilities in the near-term. The district participates in a state-sponsored, cost-sharing multiple-employer pension program, Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) for which the state establishes annual required contribution levels. The Arizona legislature annually establishes the ASRS contribution rate, generally equivalent to the legislatively determined actuarial rate (although by statute the legislature can establish a contribution rate that differs from the actuarially determined rate). Under GASB 68, the district reports a fiscal 2015 ASRS net pension liability (NPL) of $159.9 million, with fiduciary assets covering 69.5% of total pension liabilities at the plan's 8% investment return assumption (approximately 62.6% based on a lower 7% investment rate assumption). The NPL of the plan represents a modest 1.9% of fiscal 2015 market value. Carrying costs (including debt service, pension and OPEB contributions through ASRS) are manageable at 13 % of fiscal 2015 governmental spending. Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. Fitch recently published exposure drafts of state and local government tax-supported criteria (Exposure Draft: U.S. Tax-Supported Rating Criteria, dated Sept. 10, 2015 and Exposure Draft: Incorporating Enhanced Recovery Prospects into U.S. Local Tax-Supported Ratings, dated Feb. 2, 2016). The drafts include a number of proposed revisions to existing criteria. If applied in the proposed form, Fitch estimates the revised criteria would result in changes to less than 10% of existing tax-supported ratings. Fitch expects that final criteria will be approved and published in the beginning of the second quarter of 2016. Once approved, the criteria will be applied immediately to any new issue and surveillance rating review. Fitch anticipates the criteria to be applied to all ratings that fall under the criteria within a 12-month period from the final approval date. In addition to the sources of information identified in Fitch's applicable criteria specified below, this action was informed by information from Lumesis. Applicable Criteria Exposure Draft: Incorporating Enhanced Recovery Prospects into US Local Tax-Supported Ratings (pub. 02 Feb 2016) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=875108 Exposure Draft: U.S. Tax-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 10 Sep 2015) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=869942 Tax-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 14 Aug 2012) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=686015 U.S. Local Government Tax-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 14 Aug 2012) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=685314 Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/content/ridf_frame.cfm?pr_id=1002179 Solicitation Status https://www.fitchratings.com/gws/en/disclosure/solicitation?pr_id=1002179 Endorsement Policy https://www.fitchratings.com/jsp/creditdesk/PolicyRegulation.faces?context=2&detail=31 ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON (News - Alert) THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160407006534/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Itongadol.- At the Israel premiere of a film starring Kevin Costner, the Hollywood actor said he does not care whether anti-Israel activists, including Roger Waters, disapprove of his visit to the Jewish state. I dont ask anyones permission to travel, Costner said in an interview Tuesday a press conference earlier this week at the Cinema City multiplex near the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya. Asked by a reporter whether Roger Waters, a British musician known for his role as former Pink Floyd frontman and for promoting boycotts on Israel, Costner said: Who? I havent heard of it, adding: Ive received lots of love here. I wouldnt have missed that. Costner, who in 1991 won two Academy Awards for directing and acting in the box-office hit Dances with Wolves, was in Israel for a screening of the upcoming action film Criminal, in which he stars alongside Ryan Reynolds, Gary Oldman and Israeli actress Gal Gadot. But he told reporter at the cinema Tuesday that he came to support the films Israeli director, Ariel Vromen. This is his country, his parents are here, and Im very proud of him. Hes a young man who is truly doing well, Costner said. Speaking of Gadot, Costner said she was lovely to work with and a wonderful partner. He also said that he met Gadot for the first time ahead of a scene in which his character assaulted hers in a bedroom. I shook her hand, said: Hi, Gal, Im Kevin, and we immediately started acting out the scene. Criminal tells the story of Jericho Stewart (Costner), a death-row inmate working to complete a deceased CIA agents last mission to save many lives. In addition to having an Israeli director and a co-star, the film has an Israeli producer: Avi Lerner. Costner, 61, said he had visited Israel once before, approximately four decades ago. proxima Hallaron grafitis antisemitas en campus del Reino Unido tras la visita del embajador de Israel Ronnie Green is a good pick for the next chancellor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Greens strong background in agriculture is key. Agriculture and related fields will increasingly become more important and respected in academe as the world struggles to feed its burgeoning population. His leadership skills have been demonstrated and honed as leader of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Enrollment in programs under his authority has risen to a new high of almost 3,500. Hes overseen the hiring of 75 new faculty members, boosting the number of faculty by about 30 percent. Research funding has increased to $125 million during his nearly six-year stint in charge. One noteworthy example of his leadership was the decision at UNL in 2013 to conduct a study to examine and summarize existing scientific research on climate change. The move came after a legislative attempt by Sen. Ken Haar to authorize such a study faltered due to opposition from senators skeptical of climate change. The study puts Nebraska in a better position to adapt to climate change. Thats critical since agriculture directly and indirectly contributes more than $20 billion a year to the states economy. His expertise is more than academic. Green, a first- generation college graduate, grew up on a beef, dairy and crop farm in Virginia. He came to UNL in 1985 to pursue his doctorate after earning degrees from Virginia Tech and Colorado State University. He was at Colorado State when UNL alums suggested he apply for the post at IANR. You find believers in Greens leadership at many levels. In announcing Greens appointment, NU President Hank Bounds said that he received positive feedback from students, faculty, and staff and from leaders in agriculture and business. Representative was a comment from senior agribusiness major Grant Rathje of Seward at one of the forums for finalists in the chancellor search. I think hes very much a visionary leader, Rathje said. He knows where he wants to take this campus, and I believe hes got the ability to do that. As chancellor Green will move into a job with a huge scope. The campus has more than 25,000 students and employs more than 6,400 faculty and staff and has an operating budget of more than $1.2 billion. And, of course, Green takes on oversight for the Husker athletics program. Among a vocal segment of the population that responsibility ranks at the top. Confirmation of Greens appointment by the NU Board of Regents should be considered a foregone conclusion. He will take over a campus that has made significant strides in the past 15 years under Harvey Perlman. Green said Wednesday, Our best days are ahead of this university. We think hes right, and we wish him well. In November, Nebraskans should vote to retain the current law which has replaced the death penalty with life in prison without parole. The lead editorial on April 5 gave excellent arguments for not bringing back capital punishment ("Learning about death penalty," April 5). Judges, juries and law enforcement are fallible. If there is any chance that an innocent person will be put to death for a crime he or she did not commit, that alone is sufficient reason to eliminate the death penalty. As the editorial stated, "if Nebraska voters seriously look at the death penalty, they will realize that the system is too capable of error to be put back on the books." My only concern about the editorial is the last line. It asks Nebraskans to "vote against the death penalty referendum.'" That's correct but when voters go to the polls, they could find the ballot language confusing. To clarify: a vote against the referendum will be a vote to retain LB268, which was passed by the Legislature last year. A vote for the referendum will be a vote to repeal LB268 and restore the death penalty in Nebraska. In November, we need to defeat the referendum by voting to retain current law. Bob Reeves, Lincoln The page may have moved, you may have mistyped the address, or followed a bad link. Visit our homepage, or search for whatever you were looking for 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. Bhutanese refugees in Nepal pledged $1m support The United States has confirmed a US$1 million contribution for the World Food Programme (WFP) to provide food assistance to refugees from Bhutan living in Nepal. The contribution from the United States will help WFP provide basic food such as rice, pulses and vegetable oil for nearly 17,000 refugees. China's Xinjiang seals Pakistan ties with $2 billion in deals Companies from China's violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang signed deals worth about $2 billion with Pakistan this week during a visit to Pakistan by Xinjiang's top official, who sought to cement ties with an important security partner. Constitutional Council meeting ends inconclusively The meeting of the Constitutional Council held to discuss regarding selection of next chief justice ended inconclusively on Friday. The meeting was held at official residence of the Prime Minister at Baluwatar. Costly connections Neither of the twoIndia and Chinashould ever be given the monopoly of trade in this country Prahlad Rijal is a business reporter at The Kathmandu Post, focusing on the energy sector. Before joining the Post, Rijal was an online reporter at The Himalayan Times. Sangam Prasain is Business Editor at The Kathmandu Post, covering tourism, agriculture, mountaineering, aviation, infrastructure and other economic affairs. He joined The Kathmandu Post in October 2009. Five held with fake Indian notes worth IRs10 million The Special Bureau of Nepal Police has arrested around five people with fake Indian currency with face value of around IRs 10 million. Those held are Pakistani and Nepali nationals. Hero Duet scooter in market Hero MotoCorp on Wednesday launched its new 111cc scooterDuetin Nepal, reiterating its commitment to introduce youthful, efficient and reliable products. India pledges Rs116m to Kaski institutes The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu has extended financial pledge to build infrastructure for three educational institutes in Kaski district. It aint interference Nepali leaders welcome the support of the world community when it is in their interest NC will not join govt without planning: General Secy Koirala Nepali Congress (NC) General Secretary Shashank Koirala has said that NC will not join the current government led by CPN-UML without planning. Pope Francis to make key marriage pronouncement Pope Francis is to make public the conclusions of his two Synods on the family in a document eagerly awaited by 1.3 billion Roman Catholics. Professional Nepali wrestler appointed Goodwill Ambassador Nepali Professional Wrestler Bharat Bahadur Bishural has been appointed the Honorary Tourism Goodwill Ambassador by the Nepal Tourism Board. Indian Shani temple to allow entry of women in sanctom sanctorum after men barge in Soon after scores of men forced their way into the inner sanctum of the Shani Shinganpur temple in Maharashtra on Friday, the temple trust announced it won't stop women from entering the sanctum sanctorum to worship there. The roving bandits When those in power feel their tenure is short, the tendency is to make hay while the sun shines Two boys drown in Itahari Two kids drowned in a local Thalaha River at Aaurabani VDC 2 of Sunsari district on Thursday, Area Police Office, Duwahi said. Copperas Cove, TX (76522) Today Windy. Cloudy skies will become partly cloudy this afternoon. High 86F. Winds S at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.. Tonight Cloudy with occasional showers overnight. Low 71F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Marine authorities yesterday suspended two ferry captains for engaging in a race on their way to Koh Phangan island last weekend. A captain for Seatran company has his license to operate commerical ships suspended for two years for starting the race with a boat from a rival firm called Raja Ferry, while the latter ships captain also lost the license for six months for taking up the challenge, an official said. They were both wrong, but their wrongdoing carries different weight, Prawate Suphachai, head of the provincial marine department, said Thursday. The incident took place on Saturday when Seatran ferry captain Wattanapong Srisaiyapetch tried to overtake and race off a Raja Ferry ship, piloted by Niran Yenraksa, and almost came to a collision. Instead of swerving away, Niran stayed on course and attempted to race with Wattanapong, according to Prawate. The law says that in event of another ship blocking your way, or if theres reason to believe that the ship will block your way, its your responsibility to avoid it, so they were both wrong, Prawate said. He added that Wattanapong and Niran can appeal the decision within 30 days. The two ships, which carried people and vehicles, were en route to Koh Phangan, famous for its monthly Full Moon Party. The near-collision was filmed by Facebook user Kanchit Boonmak, who posted it online, drawing many comments that criticize the Seatran captain. He wrote that the Raja Ferry captain eventually stopped the ship and averted a potential disaster. Seatran 8, youre such a genius, Kanchit wrote. If Raja didnt stop the engine, it would have been a wreck. I guess you forgot how many people on his ship want to be safe. Surat Thani has some of the busiest ferry routes in the country, connecting the mainland with popular tourist destinations like Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao. In the light of April 2 incident, Prawate, the marine official, said hes planning to summon all ferry captains in the province for a lecture on safety and manner. Every captain is knowledgeable and able, but we will summon them to stress [about values], Prawate said. We will tighten the screws. We want them to have a service mind. Every captain is skilled, but they must also be courteous. Like most of other modes of transportation in Thailand, sea travel is fraught with a history of frequent accidents, mostly involving speed boats. Thank you to Khaosod English Ferry Captains Lose License for Racing to Phangan Island which was brought to us by Google Alerts. The city of La Crosse could look to outside help to gain new perspectives on South Avenue after a committee approved the move Thursday. The La Crosse Finance and Personnel Committee approved spending $133,000 to hire consulting firm Toole Design Group to assist in developing a plan for South Avenue alongside the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. If approved by the Common Council next week, the agreement would allow Toole Design Group to launch a public input process, which would include a four-day charrette workshop. Council member Martin Gaul, who cast the sole dissenting vote, doesnt believe the gains justify the expense, saying the DOT has indicated it is willing to negotiate and take the citys concerns into account, citing its proposal of narrow lanes and an option for bike lanes announced earlier this week. Gaul said that between city staff and council members, he believed spending the money would be unnecessary. We should maximize the use of our resources and the states and take advantage of what we have in front of us, Gaul said. However, other council members, including Francis Formanek, questioned whether they would be able to bring changes to the DOTs new proposal, specifically the placement of three roundabouts at the intersections of Ward Avenue, 16th Street and West Avenue. To go to the north off of South Avenue on the other side of West Avenue, youll have to travel all the way down to 16th Street, Formanek said. That could cause public safety issues by delaying emergency vehicles when minutes or seconds can make a vital difference, he said. Mayor Tim Kabat proposed working with Toole Design, citing their familiarity with the city after the Rose Street design process. I see the hiring of Toole Design as kind of a natural outgrowth of that process, Kabat said. The work that Toole Design has already done for the city, the conversations that staff has had with them about this portion of South Avenue is very important. Jim Rohe, project development chief engineer with the DOT, indicated at Mondays Board of Public Works meeting that the DOT would be more than willing to work alongside Toole Design and the city to develop a public input process. VATICAN CITY Defining his mission to create a more merciful church, Pope Francis published a much-anticipated exhortation on love and marriage Friday, easing the way for divorced and remarried Catholics to rejoin the faith but reiterating limits on gay unions and the ban on contraception and abortion. The 260-page document, the product of several years of debate within the Roman Catholic hierarchy, advocates for flexibility, tolerance and compassion in the church. But it may disappoint Francis legions of liberal fans looking for doctrinal change. By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, the pope wrote. Let us remember that a small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order. As he enters the fourth year of his papacy, Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas, has struck a sharp contrast to his predecessor, Benedict XVI, by calling for a more inclusive church. He has traveled to the poorest slums and violent prisons on four continents, washed the feet of Muslims during Easter ceremonies and excoriated the rich and powerful for their greed and neglect. The guidelines released Friday continued that theme, treading a line that is not always predictable. In some areas, he pushes boundaries, while in others he hews to traditional teachings. The document represents Francis final word on a host of family- and life-related issues that were debated at two frequently tense synods at the Vatican in 2014 and 2015. Titled Amoris Laetitia, Latin for The Joy of Love, the Apostolic Exhortation gives some wiggle room on granting Communion to remarried divorcees a hot-button issue that divides Catholic conservatives and progressives and is of special interest to American Catholics. Currently, the church officially excludes remarried divorced Catholics from Communion because it sees their first marriage as still valid, meaning the person is living in sin. Francis states bluntly that divorce is an evil but adds, It is important that the divorced who have entered a new union should be made to feel part of the Church. They are not excommunicated and they should not be treated as such, since they remain part of the ecclesial community. Their exclusion can be surmounted, he says, adding that local priests and bishops can work with such couples to that end. The Christian communitys care of such persons is not to be considered a weakening of its faith and testimony to the indissolubility of marriage; rather, such care is a particular expression of its charity, the pope wrote. The pope admits that the document is not offering a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases, but he appears to leave the door open to bishops to offer Communion on a case-by-case basis. Is the pope changing the rules? No, said Vatican spokesman Greg Burke. But does he leave daylight? Yes. There is an attitude of welcome. On gay unions, Francis is less ambivalent. De facto or same-sex unions, for example, may not simply be equated with marriage, he writes. No union that is temporary or closed to the transmission of life can ensure the future of society. Francis is equally forthright on abortion: So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mothers womb, that no alleged right to ones own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the property of another human being. Going further, he quotes synod documents which state that those who work in health care facilities are reminded of the moral duty of conscientious objection, and adds that the Church strongly rejects the forced State intervention in favor of contraception, sterilization and even abortion. Such measures are unacceptable even in places with high birth rates, yet also in countries with disturbingly low birth rates we see politicians encouraging them. Francis views reflect Catholic doctrine, but his words will have extra resonance in the U.S. during an election year. Church leaders broadly welcomed the popes message. Catholic liberals and gay groups expressed disappointment, while conservatives remained uncomfortable with granting any leeway that in their view could undermine religious discipline. Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez said the popes message comes at a critical time, when the meaning of marriage, family and love is confused and disputed in our society. Gomez said he was encouraged by what the pope said about preparing couples for marriage and the need to approach wounded families with compassion. We need to inspire people to see marriage and family as Gods way for their lives, and to call them to this adventure in life-long love that grows deeper through the sharing of joys and trials and the bringing of new life into the world, Gomez said in a statement. We all have a lot to learn from Amoris Laetitia. Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, said conservative Catholics who shun the idea of divorce should not be worried about the documents conciliatory tone. It is not a slippery slope, but a pathway forward for people who have otherwise found themselves stuck, Cupich said at a news conference. Francis ability to really be sensitive to the human situation in life continues to amaze me. Hes got an intuition about where people live their actual lives. Hes not living in a bubble. Catholics for Choice said the papal exhortation displayed the immense chasm between church policy and everyday Catholic practice. The law says one thing, but Catholics the world over behave according to their conscience, Jon OBrien, the groups president, said in a statement. How you apply the law matters its what drives people away. OBrien acknowledged that Francis pastoral approach represented a breath of fresh air compared to his predecessors. But, he added, the pope again condemned abortion as evil and went back to the party line about contraception to shore up any concerns that conservatives may have that real change is possible. All this, OBrien said, despite the fact that about 1 in 4 Catholics in the United States has been divorced. Between the tough words on abortion and gay marriage, the document dwells at length on how to shore up the institution of marriage, offering guidance on how to build a loving family with tips on forgiveness, patience and sex. Francis warns that we treat affective relationships the way we treat material objects and the environment: everything is disposable; everyone uses and throws away, takes and breaks, exploits and squeezes to the last drop. Then, goodbye. Narcissism makes people incapable of looking beyond themselves, beyond their own desires and needs. He admits that the church has spent too long waving rule books at families instead of giving constructive advice on how to avoid breakups. We have long thought that simply by stressing doctrinal, bioethical and moral issues, without encouraging openness to grace, we were providing sufficient support to families, strengthening the marriage bond and giving meaning to marital life, he writes. To illustrate his point, Francis quotes the 1987 film Babettes Feast: The most intense joys in life arise when we are able to elicit joy in others, as a foretaste of heaven, he writes. We can think of the lovely scene in the film Babettes Feast, when the generous cook receives a grateful hug and praise: Ah, how you will delight the angels! Supporting survivors of sexual assault is something campuses need to do better, activist Annie Clark said during a presentation at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Clark, co-founder of the organization End Rape on Campus, was the keynote speaker for UW-Ls Social Justice Week, which ends Friday. Sponsored by the universitys new Social Justice Institute, the week focuses on a multitude of social justice topics such as white privilege, mental health issues, gender issues and racism. Sexual assault has come under greater scrutiny on campuses in recent years, and the UW System formed a task force on the issue in 2014. Campus sexual assault is something that administrators at UW-L continue to say is under-reported, citing that one in four female college students will be assaulted before they graduate. During her presentation, Clark spoke about her history, as well as providing background on the different federal laws and requirements that colleges and universities have to comply with in regards to sexual assault. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Clark became an activist on the issue of campus rape after she and another student at the university reported they were sexually assaulted to the administration. When they found the schools response to the complaints inadequate, Clark and others filed a complaint against the university to the U.S. Department of Educations Office of Civil Rights under Title IX, an amendment to the Civil Rights Act that prohibits gender discrimination in higher education. Clark was featured in the documentary The Hunting Ground which investigates the issue of sexual assault on campus and the alleged failure of college administrators to act. Praised by organizations such as CNN, which co-produced the documentary, the film has also drawn criticism. The media has a lot to learn about how to better cover sexual assault, Clark said, as news outlets tend to favor white, blond women like her in their coverage of the issue. Journalists go after survivors, picking apart every little detail of their stories, she said, and almost every survivors story is met with skepticism. There is an entire spectrum of things we are not even seeing when we look in the media, she said. We need to educate our media better to tell these stories that are actually happening. Universities can also do more, and she argued that complying with the law is the bare minimum campuses can do. During her presentation, she spoke of the requirement under Title IX that protects students from gender discrimination as well as the federal Clery Act, which requires universities to do more to report and keep track of crime on campus, including rape. But this issue is also much larger than just colleges and universities. If students are first hearing about topics such as consent at orientation, it is too late. We have a lot further to go and we have to start earlier, Clark said. Universities need to more to be survivor-supportive, she said, in terms of policies and approaches to sexual assault. Campuses need to commit to their students and never stop moving forward. What is the cost of not believing a survivor? And in a lot of ways that cost can be deadly. I am not the only survivor in this room, Clark said at the end of the event. For anyone else going through this, I believe you and you are not alone. There is so much that goes into making sure our children have a quality public education that properly prepares them for the 21st century. From what is taught in the classroom, to fair funding, transit and having extracurricular activities that include sports, music, theater and other things, we know there are truly many important parts to public education. One very critical piece of public education is the free and reduced lunch program that makes sure thousands of children across the state have access to nutritious food at school. Last week, my Democratic colleagues and I sent a letter to the Department of Public Instruction and the Department of Health Services asking for Wisconsin to apply to participate in a federal program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency recently announced a pilot program available to multiple states that would allow the use of Medicaid data to automatically certify students (Direct Certification) for free and reduced-price breakfast and lunches. This is essentially an expansion of Direct Certication that would allow more low-income students to become eligible for the free and reduced lunch program. In recent years, Wisconsin has strived to utilize the Community Eligibility Provision to provide free meals to all students in eligible schools. Currently, almost 60 percent of CEP-eligible schools are enrolled in Wisconsin with about 85 percent of the highest-need schools being enrolled. Using this information, it becomes clear this expansion would make sense and be relatively simple to implement in Wisconsin since we are already very active identifying children who are eligible for free meals at schools through the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program. According to data compiled by the Hunger Task Force, 96 percent of Wisconsins school districts utilized Direct Certication to identify students who are eligible for free school meals during the 2013-14 school year. At the start of the 2014-15 school year, Wisconsin was ranked 11th out of 38 states nationally that were not CEP pilot program states. However, under the current Direct Certication rules, many low-income children are left out because their household may not be participating in one of the federal nutrition programs that Direct Certication is set up to check. By adding Medicaid to the list of assistance programs with which Direct Certication is able to work, there is the possibility of identifying about 20,000 more children whose families meet the income requirements for free meals at school. This inclusion would potentially increase the power of Direct Certication in Wisconsin by more than 6 percent, and could make a crucial difference to the more than 13,000 low-income students at almost 80 Wisconsin schools who have not enrolled in CEP and are not quite eligible for the highest level of federal meal reimbursement. Even if the Direct Certication expansion allowed us the opportunity to provide nutrition options to just one more child, its something we should look into doing. The fact that it will help thousands of students shows its necessary and is clearly the right thing to do. I hope the leaders at DPI and DHS will respond to our call for action and apply for this helpful program that will provide necessary aid to some of our most vulnerable public school students. Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier The board earmarked $1.54 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds for the dredge, designed to keep channels open and supply sand to nourish eroding beaches up and down the York County coast and beyond. Should the life of one innocent be sacrificed to save many others? That is the thematic question of director Gavin Hoods new film, "Eye in the Sky." The movie is set in 2015. The United States and Britain are set to carry out a joint drone attack. They aim to kill a terrorist before he carries out a suicide bombing that could kill many people. The thriller follows the drone operation which is about to strike a terrorist cell in Nairobi, Kenya. Officials are faced with moral questions as an innocent civilian enters the area where the missile is expected to strike. Military officials in different parts of the world watch video of the target area provided by a tiny spy drone. They observe as a Briton-led group of terrorists prepares for a major suicide attack in Nairobi. The officials consider moving from their capture-only drone operation to a deadly one. The military and political debate over the decision delays action and that worries Helen Mirrens character, Colonel Katherine Powell. She is the leader of the joint military operation. Time is running out. The situation becomes even more complex after a child enters the drone target area. Colonel Powell watches from London. She is ready to kill the terrorists. Her goal, as she sees it is to prevent a possible terrorist massacre. But others consider the political and diplomatic results of such an attack. One character describes the weight of the military decision simple. He says If they kill 80 people, we win the propaganda war. If we kill one child, they do. No easy answers Gavin Hood says "Eye in the Sky" shows that there are no easy answers when it comes to drone warfare. Will you sacrifice, will you definitely take one innocent life in order to possibly prevent the loss of 80 lives? What if there were five innocent lives close to this kill zone? What if the estimate of the loss of life (by the terrorists) was only 20? What if it was 2,000?" he asks. The filmmaker hopes "Eye in the Sky" will generate discussions among his audiences on the human, political and strategic costs of drone warfare. If you are not there and you are only attacking from the sky, how [do you expect] the local population to respond? he asks. Hood says his film is imaginary but the story was fully researched. "We spoke to people from all areas. From the military lawyers, who were involved in this, to drone pilots, to military intelligence officers. He said a real drone pilot was permanently on set to make sure that everything was correct. Real life dilemmas Along with Helen Mirren, the late actor Alan Rickman plays the sharp but cool under fire Lt. General Benson. Aaron Paul is the emotional drone pilot Steve Watts. Together they successfully communicate the message of "Eye in the Sky" -- that as exact as drone missiles might be, they are still guided by often conflicted human beings. In Gavin Hoods words, there are military people who seriously question the use of the drone and there are people within the military who think it is the best thing that ever happened." Gavin Hood says the debates we see dramatized in Eye in the Sky are very much like the debates happening in real war rooms, and elsewhere in the real world. Im Marsha James. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and visit us on Facebook. _________________________________________________________ Words in This Story thriller n. a novel, movie or theatrical production that is exciting; a story full of exciting action, mystery or suspense cell n. a small group of people who work together secretly as part of a larger organization or group massacre n. the violent killing of many people zone n. an area that is different from other areas cool under fire expression of calm at a time of threat or unease EDITOR'S NOTE: This year, the U.S. National Park Service turns 100. Americans 28th President, Woodrow Wilson, formed the National Park Service in 1916 to protect the wild and wonderful landscapes in the United States. Today, the National Park Service protects over 400 parks and historical sites from coast to coast. Every week, VOA Learning English will profile one of the sites within the National Park Service. This week, we visit one of the most unusual national parks in the United States. It is called the Dry Tortugas National Park. It includes seven small islands. They are about 200 kilometers off the coast of the state of Florida. One of the islands was once a prison. The first European to see the small islands was the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon. He arrived by ship in 1513. Ponce de Leon was an older man, who was searching for special water that stories said would make him young again. It was called the Fountain of Youth. Ponce de Leon named the islands the Tortugas. Tortuga is the Spanish word for turtle. Thousands of turtles lived on the islands. Ponce de Leon was able to capture many of these creatures to provide meat for his ships crew. He never did find the Fountain of Youth. In fact, the islands had no fresh water on them at all. The Tortugas were dry. The word dry began to appear on early maps of the area to warn ships that they could not find fresh water there. Centuries later, Americas third president, Thomas Jefferson, took an interest in the islands. He hoped they could become a place that could help protect ships traveling in a large area of water called the Florida Straits. He proposed a military base be built there. In 1821, the United States took control of Florida and its islands. Construction on a military fort began in 1848, long after Jeffersons death. The fort was to be the home of 1,500 men and 450 huge cannons. The forts name? Fort Jefferson. Fort Jefferson was never really completed. It had to be worked on continually. The salt air, wind, water and sand quickly caused problems. The weight of the forts heavy brick walls made them sink into the sand. Slaves and prisoners did the building and repair work at the fort. Many of the prisoners were army troops. They had been found guilty of crimes, and ordered to serve their sentences at Fort Jefferson. In July of 1865, four new prisoners arrived at Fort Jefferson. They had been found guilty of taking part in the successful plot to murder the president of the U.S., Abraham Lincoln. One of the prisoners was sentenced for giving medical aid to the man who killed President Lincoln. He was also found guilty of being an active member of the assassination plot. That man was Samuel Alexander Mudd. He was a 32 year-old doctor from the state of Maryland. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life doing hard labor at Fort Jefferson. The walls at Fort Jefferson were about 15 meters tall. Inside the walls of the fort were hundreds of rooms. Most of them held huge guns that pointed out to the sea. Many other buildings were also inside the huge fort. No prisoner had ever successfully escaped from Fort Jefferson. It was more than 200 kilometers across open ocean to the nearest occupied land. Samuel Alexander Mudd must have believed the fort would be his home for the rest of his life. But he was wrong. In 1867, Doctor Mudd was helping the prison doctor treat victims of yellow fever. Many people died from yellow fever. Soon, the prison doctor lost his own battle with the disease. Only Doctor Mudd was left to treat the increasing number of men who became sick with yellow fever. Later, the sickness seemed to leave the island. Many of those who survived knew they owed their lives to Doctor Mudd. Almost every man in Fort Jefferson wrote to the president of the United States asking that Mudd be pardoned because of his work treating patients who had yellow fever. They called Mudd a hero. In February of 1869, President Andrew Johnson signed a presidential pardon. Mudd was a free man. He left Fort Jefferson and returned to his home in Maryland. He once again became a family doctor. Visiting Dry Tortugas In 1874, the American army left Fort Jefferson. Modern artillery made the fort no longer useful. Today the old fort and empty little islands provide a protected home for thousands of birds, fish and sea turtles. Visitors travel for hours on high-speed boats that bring them to the islands from Key West, Florida. They swim in the warm waters and enjoy the bright Florida sun. Many try snorkeling or scuba diving to explore the underwater shipwrecks. Still others bring tents and spend a few days living on the white sand beaches. Thousands of visitors make the trip to the Dry Tortugas National Park every year. Of course, soldiers no longer greet them when they arrive at Fort Jefferson. Now, friendly members of the National Park Service do. They meet every boat filled with visitors. They smile and say, Welcome to Fort Jefferson and the Dry Tortugas National Park. The small islands days as a prison are long past. Yet almost every visitor to the park asks about its most famous prisoner, Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd. They ask to see his room. Most people know that the doctor did not end up spending the rest of his life in the Fort Jefferson prison. Only a few of the huge cannons remain at the park. They help show visitors what the old fort looked like. The weather continues to affect the forts grounds and buildings. So workers continue to fight against environmental damage. The park extends over an area of more than 26,000 hectares. Almost all of this is ocean and living coral reefs that protect the islands. Many ships have sunk in the waters around the islands over the centuries. The wrecks of these ships help provide safe places for many fish. Thousands of kinds of fish live in these waters. Some visitors are even lucky enough to see sea turtles swimming in the clear blue waters. Dry Tortugas is also home to many seabirds. Visitors are not permitted on some of the islands within the park to protect birds that are laying eggs. The striking natural beauty and relaxed feel of the islands today seems far different from Dry Tortugas earlier history as a lonely, inescapable prison. I'm Ashley Thompson. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story turtle - n. a reptile that lives mostly in water and that has a hard shell which covers its body sink - v. to go down below the surface of water, mud, etc. sentence - n. the punishment given by a court of law yellow fever - n. a serious disease that causes fever and often yellowing of the skin and that is passed from one person to another especially by the bite of mosquitoes pardoned - v. to officially say that someone who is guilty of a crime will be allowed to go free and will not be punished snorkel - v. to swim while using a snorkel, a special tube that makes it possible to breathe with your head underwater. scuba dive - v. to swim underwater using an air tank and a special breathing machine that you strap on your body tent - n. a portable shelter that is used outdoors, is made of cloth (such as canvas or nylon), and is held up with poles and ropes Pope Francis has called on the Roman Catholic Church to welcome divorced and remarried Catholics without making changes to the churchs teachings. The Vatican released a 256-page document from the pope on Friday. The document, called The Joy of Love, discusses family life for the worlds 1.2 billion Catholics. Pope Francis is urging local clergy to accept divorced Catholics and those who re-marry in civil ceremonies on a case-by-case basis. He said that the churchs teachings on marriage should not be the final word. The document said, a pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in irregular situations, as if they were stones to be thrown at peoples lives. This would bespeak the closed heart of one used to hiding behind the Churchs teachings. Gay Catholics, however, said the pope had failed them. The document welcomed gays in the Roman Catholic church but repeated its opposition to same-sex marriage. "He has ignored submissions and appeals by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics," said Peter Tatchell, a British gay rights advocate. "Gentler words do not assuage Vatican opposition to gay equality." Last October, the Pope met with 270 Catholic bishops to discuss family issues and church teachings on homosexuality, marriage and divorce. The new document was a sign of Francis' call for the church to be more forgiving with imperfect Catholics. The biggest issue at the synod meeting last year was whether the church should offer Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics. Church teaching says that a remarried person must receive an annulment of an earlier marriage to take part in Communion. In an annulment, Catholic clergy rule that the earlier marriage was invalid, in violation of church law. Conservatives oppose any change to the churchs teaching. Liberals want to look at each marriage on a case-by-case basis. They support creating a path that could lead them to take part in major religious ceremonies. Francis changed church law last year to make it easier to get an annulment. On Friday, he said the opposition from conservatives was in conflict with Jesus' message of mercy. "In thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God," he said. "Let us remember that a small step in the midst of great human limitations can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties." The Rev. James Bretzke, a Boston College theologian, said the document will help clergy to welcome divorced and civilly remarried Catholics back to the church. He said, "Pope Francis does not outlaw that, whereas John Paul II specifically outlawed (it). Mark Brumley has published the writings of retired Pope Benedict XVI. He said Francis' attention to morality "doesn't mean this is a free pass to do whatever you want." He said the document tries to navigate the difficult path of supporting church teaching while letting the civilly remarried to participate in the life of the church. "It's a very tricky thing," Brumley said. Im Mario Ritter. Hai Do wrote this story for Learning English. The information was based on reports from VOANews.com and the Associated Press. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. ______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story divorce v. to legally end a marriage case-by-case - adj. considering each case individually apply - v. use submission - n. something that is submitted gentle - adj. kind and quiet imperfect - adj. having mistakes or problems synod - n. a formal meeting of church leaders grace - n. a state of being pleasing to god navigate - v. to find the way to get to a place This is Whats Trending Today People on social media are demanding that a second European leader resign this week. They are talking about British Prime Minister David Cameron, after his father was named in the newly-released Panama Papers. With more than 125,000 tweets, the hashtag #resigncameron trended worldwide on Twitter Thursday and Friday. Camerons father, Ian, was a stockbroker who died just after his son became prime minister. Ian Cameron was among the long list of people identified in the Panama Papers. Their names were among the 11 million documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The documents provide details about over 200,000 offshore bank accounts. The papers show how rich people, public officials and their families hid their investments and avoided paying taxes. David Cameron said on Thursday that he profited from an offshore fund set up by his father. He denied any wrongdoing, however. "I want to be as clear as I can about the past, about the present, about the future because, frankly, I don't have anything to hide," Cameron told Britains ITV. The prime minister said his family owned shares in Blairmore Holdings, a Bahamas-based company. The shares were worth about $42,000. He said he sold them in 2010, just months before becoming Britains leader. David Cameron also told ITV that he paid all the "normal" income taxes on the profits from the sale. But some people are not happy with his explanation. Many on social media demanded that Cameron step down as prime minister. They say he hid wealth to avoid paying British taxes. The Panama Papers already forced Icelands Prime Minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, to resign from office. The documents showed that his wife owns a company in the British Virgin Islands that has $4 million in claims against Icelands collapsed banks. On Monday of this week, thousands of protesters gathered outside Icelands Parliament to call for his resignation. Gunnlaugsson resigned the next day. And thats Whats Trending Today. I'm Dan Friedell. Ashley Thompson adapted this story for VOA Learning English from VOA News reports. George Grow was the editor. ____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story stockbroker - n. an individual whose job is to buy and sell shares of stock for other people offshore - adv. overseas; outside the country fund - n. investments that are used for a special purpose income - adj. money that is earned from work, investments and or businesses Hospital board candidate Dr. Wayne Weston brings to the race decades of experience treating patients. In November 2015, he was recognized by the Nebraska Medical Association for his 50-year career. In addition, Weston served previously on the Lexington hospital board. He was elected in 1978, and re-elected in 1982 and 1986. Notably, he served on the board while also practicing at Plum Creek Medical Group. I was the first physician elected to that board, Weston said. At the time, there were some rumblings about conflict-of-interest, but the people elected me. And I can tell you the other board members told me many times they appreciated having my perspective, a doctors perspective, on the board. Weston said he was motivated to re-seek a seat on the board because, Im absolutely stunned and surprised at the conflict between the hospital board and Plum Creek Medical Group. Its totally out-of-order. The biggest reason I ran, he explained, was the many local people told me they want to see their own doctor at their own hospital, without worrying about any animosity between the two. The hospital has to be able to create an atmosphere of cooperation, trust, and planning for the present and the future. They have to do what is best for the citizens, because its their hospital. Its the peoples house, Weston continued. They are entitled to have a board administrator and doctors who get along. They are entitled to not worry about pressure from the hospital influencing how their doctor treats them. They are entitled to know that the hospital has the publics best interest in mind. Weston said the doctors at PCMG dedicated their careers to Lexington and the hospital, and do not deserve to be treated like this. Weston said hes concerned about the growing national trend of more doctors being employed by hospitals, as opposed to opening private practices. The modern trend is for young doctors to be employed, which is partly due to the fact that after so many years of school, they carry immense debt. I view that with alarm, he said. Weston continued that when doctors are employed by a hospital, the number of tests they run and number of patients they admit is a direct financial benefit to the hospital. That pressure from the hospital can directly interfere with the doctors loyalty to the patient, he said. This is happening nationwide. Weston moved to Lexington in 1966, and practiced medicine in the community for nearly 30 years. He said he is deeply committed to the hospital, and even provided input into how the facility should be designed. He traveled to several small hospitals to get insight into what worked and what didnt. I have deep interest in the hospital, and I feel I have the background to be a good board member. The animosity absolutely has to end. People tell me, I want to see my doctor, and go to my hospital, he said. LINCOLN Nebraska farm and ranch land owners got a little closer to sharing $20 million worth of new property tax credits Thursday. State lawmakers advanced Legislative Bill 958 to the last of three rounds of consideration on a voice vote. The measure represents one-half of a property tax relief package pushed by Gov. Pete Ricketts, who has made property tax reduction his top priority of the session. As advanced, it would add $20 million annually to the states Property Tax Credit Fund. The new money would go to owners of agricultural land, boosting their property tax credit to about $108 per $100,000 of valuation, starting in 2017. Under the bill, the amount allocated for tax credits to residential and commercial property owners would remain at the current level. The credits appear as a line on the annual property tax statements. As introduced, LB 958 would have capped the statewide growth of agricultural land valuations at 3 percent and tightened budget and levy limits on several local governments. The Revenue Committee rejected nearly all of those original provisions after concluding that they would not be effective or would have unintended consequences. On Thursday, lawmakers approved an amendment that removed the only remaining budget limit provision, one that would have affected community colleges. Sen. Al Davis of Hyannis said community colleges were targeted because they increased the amount of money collected from property taxes faster than other local taxing entities. He said the Legislature needs to take a closer look at their spending and decide whether Nebraska can afford all of its community colleges. State Sen. Mike Gloor of Grand Island, who introduced the bill, said he agreed to remove the provision because it faced stiff opposition and could have jeopardized the bill. The other part of Ricketts property tax plan, LB 959, cleared second-round debate Wednesday. Lawmakers are expected to vote Tuesday on final passage for both bills. Union Pacific Railroad has confirmed it is furloughing mechanical department employees in North Platte and South Morrill. The furloughs experienced thus far in these locations and across UPs network have primarily been employees working in our Transportation Department train, engine and yard or TE&Y employees, Calli B. Hite, director of corporate relations and media for Union Pacific Railroad, said in an email to the Telegraph. These furloughs tie directly to the nations well-documented decline in coal usage and corresponding decrease in coal shipments, which has diminished the need for car and locomotive repairs in these locations. Specifically, Union Pacifics coal shipments were down 37 percent through April 2. Union Pacific does not provide location-specific furlough information, but Hite said that as of March 4, Union Pacific had 4,100 employees furloughed across its 23-state operating system and 1,500 locomotives in storage. Additionally, we are in a quiet period due to our upcoming 2016 first quarter earnings release on April 21, Hite wrote via email. At that time, we may update systemwide resource information which includes stored locomotives and furloughed employees. The UP furloughs are more than at any time since 2008 and 2009, the Omaha World-Herald reported Sunday. Freight shipments are 6 percent lower so far in 2016 for all U.S. railroads than at the same point in 2015, the newspaper reported. Texas-based BNSF, owned by Omahas Berkshire Hathaway and the largest U.S. railroad, has 4,600 on furlough, also the most since the last recession. BNSF employs about 5,000 Nebraskans. BNSF Chairman Matt Rose told an energy industry conference in Montana last week that the railroad has stopped hiring and is offering buyouts to older employees. He said the rough patch might last for years. Although oil and coal shipments have fallen dramatically at both Union Pacific and BNSF, other shipments are down as well. Grain is down 8 percent, stone, gravel and sand down 20 percent and metals products down 14 percent. Food shipments are down 3 percent, metal down 17 percent and scrap metal down 13 percent. This report includes material from the World-Herald News Service. The Acer Liquid Jade Primo is a smartphone with a 5.5 inch display, Windows 10 software, and support for Microsofts Continuum feature which lets you connect the phone to a keyboard, mouse, and display to run (some) desktop-style apps. Its one of the first phones from a company other than Microsoft to support Windows 10s Continuum for phone software. But its taken a little while for the phone to reach the market. Acer unveiled the Liquid Jade Primo in September, 2015, showed it off at CES in January, 2016, and promised it would be available for purchase in February. That didnt happen but now you can finally get the Liquid Jade Primo in Europe for about 599 Euros. Acer officials have said the company plans to sell the phone in the United States, but no launch date has been set yet. The 599 Euro price tag includes a docking station which lets you connect the phone to a display, keyboard and mouse. Once youve done that, youll be able to treat the phone sort of like a desktop: Universal Windows Platform apps downloaded from the Windows Store will be able to run in full-screen mode on your monitor, allowing you to take advantage of the extra screen real estate. In this mode, the phones Start Screen becomes a desktop-style Start Menu. Theres also a taskbar along the bottom of the screen. At this point Continuum doesnt allow you to run older Windows apps designed for x86 processors and it doesnt allow you to view multiple apps at once. Everything runs in full-screen mode. But you can keep using your phone even while it powers a desktop experience. You can view one app on the phone and another on the monitor. And you can respond to phone calls or incoming messages on the big screen if youd like. The 5.5 inch Liquid Jade Primo has specs that are pretty close to those of the 5.2 inch Microsoft Lumia 950, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM ,32GB of storage, and a USB Type-C port. But while Microsofts phone has a 2560 x 1440 pixel display, Acers has a full HD AMOLED display. Other features include a 21MP rear camera, an MP wide-angle front camera, 802.11ac WiFi, and 4G LTE cat 6. via Mobiflip and GSM Arena BlackBerrys first Android-powered smartphone may not be a top seller, but by most accounts the BlackBerry Priv is a pretty good phone and one of the only options for folks that want an Android phone with a physical keyboard. The Priv is also pretty expensive. It sold for $699 at launch, and even after a recent $50 price cut, its not exactly cheap. So the company is apparently taking a different approach for its next two Android phones. Theyll be mid-range devices. BlackBerry CEO John Chen spoke with The National about the companys strategy moving forward. While he didnt provide many details about upcoming hardware, he did confirm that two mid-range Android phones were on the way. One will have a keyboard, while the other is a touchscreen-only devices. The image above, by the way, is allegedly of the BlackBerry Vienna, an upcoming phone with a keyboard that was leaked to CrackBerry in November, 2015. Its not clear how accurate the images are of if BlackBerry has made any changes to the design since then. Chen says the Priv was too expensive to appeal to a lot of the enterprise customers BlackBerry was targeting although starting with a high-end phone might have been a smart move anyway, since it shows that BlackBerry can make high-quality phones running operating systems other than BlackBerry OS. The company does plan to continue releasing updates for phones running BB10 software, but there are currently no plans to release new phones running the operating system. At the same time, BlackBerry has been transitioning from a hardware company into a software and services company that provides communication, security, calendar, and other apps and tools that work with with Android, iOS, and Windows. While the company isnt ready to stop making its own phones just yet, its not hard to imagine a future where BlackBerry is known more for its software than its hardware. via Trusted Reviews The ICT-focused event represents the largest gathering of CIOs, business heads, and technology thought leaders in Egypt and will this year run under the theme 'Leading Your Organisation's Digital Transformation'. Jyoti Lalchandani, group vice president & regional MD, IDC Middle East, Turkey & Africa "Egypt is increasingly being exposed to a new wave of disruptive technologies that present incredible opportunities to drive innovation and value creation across all facets of the organization," says Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC's vice president and regional managing director for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. "At IDC, we believe the single most important competency required to thrive in this new digital economy is the ability to rapidly respond to changing conditions within the ecosystem in which the organisation resides. The ultimate aim must be to deliver a compelling customer experience that seamlessly blends the digital and the physical worlds, but success in this regard will only come with a whole new level of enterprise-wide collaboration that encompasses the entire CxO value chain." Against this backdrop, IDC has announced that it will host two workshops on the sidelines of this year's Egypt CIO Summit based around its IT Executive Programs (IEP). Some of IDC's most respected global vice presidents will be flying in to host these workshops, which will explore the very latest developments in the areas of cloud hosting and enterprise mobility. Internet of Things Asmaa Hosny, CEO, ITIDA, Egypt IDC will also host four technology-focused tracks that will present expert insights into the issues currently shaping ICT investment across the wider region. Joining them on the agenda will be two entirely new sessions that will explore the business value of Internet of Things and the rise of Smart City initiatives in Egypt. "Recognising the importance of creating the right ecosystem for technology to flourish, the Egyptian government is working on a number of strategic initiatives to accelerate the process of digital transformation," says Asmaa Hosny, ITIDA's newly appointed CEO. "The implementation of Smart Cities is among our top priorities, with plans already in place to establish state-of-the-art technology parks across Egypt, thereby enabling technology diffusion across all areas and facets of businesses. This comes in line with a multi-dimension strategy administered by MCIT and ITIDA to foster ICT innovation, invest in startups, and capitalise on talent nationwide." ITIDA is the IDC strategic partner for the Egypt CIO Summit 2016; and summit partners include Dell, Intel, EMC and Aruba; and Veeam and Juniper Networks (in association with Salec) as gold partners. * Follow the conversation at #IDCEGYPTCIO. Anybody who has seen the brilliant and visually spectacular movie Kingsman: The Secret Service will tell you how mind-blowing the famous church massacre scene was. Perhaps no other film has used the song Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd so aptly. The church scene, in which our favourite Kingsman secret agent goes into an uncontrollable murder rampage, is definitely one of the best action scenes in film history. But everyone who has watched the film also knows that the high which the action causes in the church scene is soon followed by the immense pain in the next scene, in which one of the most important characters in the movie meets with an extremely sad and unexpected death. Or does he? Right when Kingsman fans were sure that the character who was apparently killed was actually dead, actor Taron Egerton who plays the protagonist Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin in the movie tweeted this image to suggest that "this ain't that kind of movie, bruv". That's right, Kingsman fans. Get excited. Get very excited. We don't think we need to tell you who the owner of those tortoiseshell frames is. This probably means that arguably the best character in the movie will return for the sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle, which is scheduled for release on 16 June, 2017. And we are not going to spoil it by naming that character for the people who have not seen the movie yet. Because it's good manners not to give out spoilers. And "manners maketh man". Thane: A local court has sentenced a 60-year-old man to three years simple imprisonment for outraging modesty of his minor daughter. Additional Sessions Judge V V Bambarde recently sentenced the man after he was found guilty under IPC section 354-B. Public prosecutor Sanjay Londhe, in his submission, told the court that the accused returned to India in 2006 from Saudi Arabia. He started to molest his daughter, who was then studying in class XII. He repeated the offence on several occasions when the victim was alone at home and continued it for nearly four years. Victim's mother frequently visited doctor owing to her ill health while her two brothers went out for work, he said. The police charged the accused under IPC section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354-B (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to disrobe), 376 (2)(f) (whoever commits rape on a woman when she is under twelve years of age). The accused was arrested in August, 2014, based on complaint filed by his daughter, who later mustered courage to report the offence. The prosecutor further told the court that the accused touched her daughter inappropriately and threatened her of dire consequences if she disclosed about it to her mother or anyone else. "After sometime, the accused forced the victim to have intercourse with him and threatened that if does not fulfil his demand, he will stop her education. It was then she confided into her mother," he said. The judge observed that the accused used criminal force and outraged modesty of his daughter. " He compelled to strip off his own daughter. It is heinous offence. So, I answer point no.1 in the affirmative and hold the accused guilty of offence under section 354-B of IPC," the court said. Mumbai: Nearly 4,000 post-graduate doctors from 18 medical colleges across Maharashtra on Friday went on a strike demanding transfer of two senior doctors from the state-run JJ Hospital in Mumbai. The Directorate of Medical Education, meanwhile, has recommended that government invoke Maharashtra Essential Services Maintenance Act (MESMA) to thwart the strike. Since last one week, doctors have been demanding transfer of JJ Hospital's Dean and noted eye surgeon Dr TP Lahane and her deputy Dr Ragini Parekh, head of the Ophthalmology department. "As decided collectively, all 4,000 residents doctors from across the state have gone on an indefinite strike from 8 am today and won't budge from their stand till the state government accepts our demand and gives an assurance in writing," a senior officer-bearer from the central wing of Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) said. "We will be attending to patients under emergency services, but Out-Patient Departments (OPDs) have been shut in all public medical colleges from 8 am today," he said. "We will continue our protest till the state government transfers Lahane and Parekh as they are harassing students and not fit for their posts," he alleged. Responding to a query that Directorate of Medical Education has recommended invoking MESMA against them, he said, "They should know that MESMA applies to full-time government staff, and we are trainee doctors. How can they impose MESMA on us." However, state Directorate of Medical Education and Research Head Dr Pravin Shingare rejected the argument of the striking doctors. "It is the prerogative of the state government to categorise the services that fall under the ambit of the Act. MESMA has been invoked in the past in so many cases against those who were not state government staff but used to render their services to residents of the state," Shingare told PTI. "Government can declare that these services and its providers are under the MESMA, that's it," he said. "We have recommended and requested our medical education minister to invoke MESMA which he has readily accepted. Now it will go for publication in the government gazette, and then the gazette notification (invoking MESMA) will be issued," he said. Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh on Friday held talks with representatives of non-local students of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Srinagar in a bid to restore normalcy on the campus. Apart from Nirmal Singh, Education Minister Naeem Akhtar and NIT Director Rohit Gupta were involved in talking with a dozen-odd student representatives at Singh's official residence on Friday evening, a top state government official told IANS. The official said the ongoing meeting had stretched for three hours and the government was hopeful of an end to the impasse at the NIT soon. Earlier on Friday, non-local students held a protest march on the NIT campus in Nigeen area. When the students tried to march on to the main road outside the campus, police told them they were not allowed to hold their protests outside. A senior police officer told IANS that the protesting students were dispersed without use of force. The non-local students have demanded action against policemen who beat them on 4 April during the protest on the campus. Police had claimed the protesting students resorted to stone-pelting, damaged public property and roughed up a deputy superintendent-level police officer. Police registered two first information reports regarding the unrest on the NIT campus on 31 March and 4 April. After the non-local students expressed lack of faith in the Jammu and Kashmir Police, Central Reserve Police Force and Sashastra Seema Bal troopers were deployed on the NIT campus. The state government has ordered a magisterial probe into the NIT unrest and asked the inquiry officer to submit a report within 15 days. The non-local students numbering 1500 have been boycotting classes for the last five days. A three-member team of human resource development ministry headed by Sanjeev Sharma has been camping in Srinagar for three days to hold talks with the protesting students. It will submit a report to the ministry on the matter. Fresh protests on Friday rocked the National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Srinagar as the outstation students took out a march in the campus to press for their demands which includes shifting the institute out of Kashmir. A student from Bihar also alleged that she was threatened by Kashmiri girls with rape if non-locals continued with their agitation. "I was threatened by Kashmiri girls of my class to attend classes, otherwise we will be raped and molested by the locals," The Times of India quoted her as saying. Narrating the ordeal, the student said, Yesterday, a group of Kashmiri students walked up to me and said: Ek ke saath rape hoga toh sab thande pad jaoge (If one of you gets raped, the rest will fall silent), reports India Today. A group of students tried to march towards the main gate but were stopped by the security force personnel on duty inside the campus, officials said. They said the students wanted to interact with the media personnel camping outside the main gate of the institute at Hazratbal. The students shouted slogans in favour of their demands but later went back inside the campus, the officials said. The NIT authorities on Thursday allowed the students to skip the minor examinations scheduled to start from 11 April saying they would be given an opportunity to write these exams later. "Those (students) who choose to leave (for home) will be provided another opportunity to appear in the minor in lieu of the minor, which is scheduled from 11 to 14 of April," an order issued by the office of the Registrar said. The students are demanding that the NIT campus be shifted out of Kashmir, action be taken against police officials involved in lathicharge of the students last Tuesday and action against officials of the NIT who according to them are involved in anti-national activities. The state government has ordered a time-bound inquiry into the incidents of violence on 1 and 5 April, triggered by clashes between local and outstation students over India's loss to the West Indies in the World T20 up semifinals last week. "We have instituted an enquiry to go into the incidents at the NIT," Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh said on Thursday. He said Additional District Magistrate Srinagar will conduct the inquiry and submit his report within 15 days. Police have also registered two separate FIRs regarding the incidents of student violence that took place on NIT Srinagar campus last Friday and Tuesday. The first FIR was registered against unknown persons for the clashes between outstation and local students on 1 April, a day after India lost to West Indies in the semi-final of the World T20 Cup. The police has invoked sections 148 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 427 (mischief), 336 (endangering life of others) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) for the clashes between local and outstation students that took place last Friday. In the second FIR registered on 5 April, the police, besides slapping the charges of the previous FIR, has added sections 353 (assault on public servant) and 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant). While no one has been named in the two FIRs yet, the official said police is investigating the video evidence of violence that took place on the days of incidents. With inputs from PTI A storm is brewing in National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bengaluru after a professor slut-shamed a girl during a lecture for wearing shorts. Professor V Nagaraj of NLSIU on 4 April allegedly shamed a girl for turning up in shorts for the lecture. When the student stood up against the statements made by the professor, Nagaraj even cast aspersions on her character. Among several unsavory statements, Professor Nagaraj is alleged to have said, We all know why parents marry their children off - so that they can have sex. Just because the parents marry off their children for this reason, it does not mean that the children have sex in front of their parents. Needless to say, the comments did not sit well with the third year students of LLB class who protested by turning up in shorts the next day. They demanded an apology from the professor, but he refused, and still vehemently denied that he made statements such as, "You can come to class without a dress also. That is how your character is, Im going to ignore you." A student of NLSIU from the same class released a 'statement of condemnation,' and addressed it to all faculty members and the vice chancellor. Read the full statement here: Statement of CondemnationAs many students of the III year batch of B.A., LL.B. (Hons.), NLSIU, we issue this statement... Posted by Mamidipudi Mukunda on Tuesday, 5 April 2016 Speaking to HuffPost India, Professor Nagaraj said that the matter should be "objectively" investigated by a body constituted by the University administration. "The matter I reported to the head of the institution as soon as the allegation started. Now it for the university administration to handle this," he said. It is genuinely worrisome when a premium institute like NLSIU gets in the limelight for such reasons. However, the professor in question was clearly in denial about any wrongdoing when he said this to Legally India: "Nothing like (what is described in the statement) happened. Students are making false and baseless allegations. It is for the university authorities to examine this incident. This is the first time that students have made such a statement (whereas) I have been teaching for 27 years. Former in-charge of NLSIU's sexual harassment committee, Prof VS Elizabeth, however, responded with a near perfect statement after the incident, a part of which read: It is important that all of us, particularly faculty, should think before we make comments, particularly should not be casting aspersions on people's character based on what they wear or don't wear. After all the amount of cloth we use to cover our bodies does not proportionately reflect our morality. Many sexual abusers of children and women most certainly wear more clothes, does it mean that they are more moral than the rest of us? In a historic decision, the Shani Shingnapur temple authorities debunked its 400-year-old tradition, allowing women devotees to enter the inner sanctum of the temple to offer prayers. Significantly, lifting of all gender barriers for access to the core area came on the auspicious occasion of "Gudi Padwa", marking New Year by people across Maharashtra. According to ANI, Bhumata Brigade leader Trupti Desai along with a group of women entered and prayed inside inner sanctorum of Shani Shingnapur temple for the first time in 400 years. Activist Trupti Desai enters and prays inside inner sanctum of #ShaniShingnapur temple pic.twitter.com/Ruouuo0qPj ANI (@ANI_news) April 8, 2016 Earlier on Friday, about 250 residents of Shingnapur village thronged the temple premises and barged into the inner sanctum breaking through the double barricades put up by the trustees around the sanctum, to offer 'Jal Pooja' on the occasion of Gudi Padwa, the Hindu New Year. Shortly thereafter, the temple authorities announced the decision of allowing women into the inner sanctum. Sayaram Bankar, a trustee of Shani Shingnapur temple, said the trustees held a meeting on Friday and decided to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees including men and women, in keeping with the high court directive. "We will welcome (Bhoomata Brigade leader) Trupti Desai also if she comes for darshan," he said, referring to the campaign spearheaded by the outfit for breaking the tradition followed by the Lord Saturn shrine. Temple trust spokesman Haridas Gaywale also said, "The trust has at the meeting decided there will not be any discrimination and today all parts of Shani temple are open for all." Hailing the decision taken by the temple authorities, Trupti Desai, leader of Bhumata Brigade an activist group that has led the protest for entry, told CNN-IBN: We welcome the decision taken by the trust. It's a victory for women. This is a great achievement against gender inequality. "We will definitely go and offer prayers at temple's sanctum today," she added. She hoped that trustees at Trimbakeshwar and Mahalaxmi temples in Nashik and Kolhapur respectively, too would take similar decision to end injustice against women devotees. Desai said, "If a single man enters the sanctum other than pujari, the court orders have to be followed, everyone has to follow the order. The day has come today (when) we will enter the 'shani' platform." "This is our victory. It was our will power that we will enter the core area...you all must have been seen women activists were manhandled. Despite the odds women came forward with all preparations and might. This is victory of Bhumata Brigade, of our movement. It is also victory of gender equality." "Our fight has been going on for the past three-four months. We faced a lot of hurdles. We have been maligned, we were detained despite the court orders," Desai said. On media's role in her campaign, she said, "Media has been with us and they also took a stand with us. This is media's win as well." The debate over the issue escalated after a woman last year tried to enter and offer prayers at the Shani Shingnapur temple, in 'breach' of the age-old practice of prohibiting entry of women. The agitation for women's entry gained momentum over the last few months, even as the temple authorities had later barred men also from entering the sanctum sanctorum. The Shani Shingnapur temple had barred women for centuries from the inner sanctum that is dedicated to Shani, or Saturn. It is one of a handful of Hindu temples in the country that does not allow women entry. The Bombay High Court had observed that women should have equal access to places of worship. "There is no law, which prevents women for having equal access from entering a temple. If men are allowed then women should also be allowed," the court had said. With inputs from PTI Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Friday filed a criminal defamation petition against solar scam accused Saritha Nair for "baseless allegations" and four journalists from two TV channels for telecasting them as part of a "conspiracy". An official in Chandy's office told IANS that the petition has been filed at the Ernakulam chief judicial magistrate court and was been accepted and posted for hearing on 28 May. "He has filed a defamation case and along with it has pointed out that there was a conspiracy behind it," said the official who did not wish to be identified. The journalists named in the case are MG Radhakrishnan and Vinu John of Asianet News and Manoj Varma and K Rajendran of the Communist Party of India-Marxist-backed Kairali TV channel. In his petition, Chandy said that these journalists knowing very well that Nair was involved in several cheating cases and lacks credibility, still decided to air the letter purportedly written by her, alleging she was sexually exploited by Chandy at his official residence here. It was on 3 April that Asianet News TV first released the letter written by Nair, who was also present when the channel aired the news. Appearing on the news channel, Nair confirmed that she had written the 24-page letter while in police custody in 2013. She, however, said she will not discuss its contents. Chandy, addressing an election meeting at Wayanad on Friday, reiterated that if there is even one percent truth in the allegations that has now come, he is not fit to be in public life. Reacting to the petition of Chandy, Nair welcomed it. "I will deal the case legally and am now planning to give a case, in which I will be producing more evidence, so the question of waiting till May 28 does not arise," she said. However, on Thursday, Nair's former counsel Feny Balakrishnan told reporters that the letter that was shown on TV channels was a fake one as he had read the original letter and it has no mention of Chandy at all. On the day this letter surfaced, Chandy dismissed it as nothing but part of a larger conspiracy ahead of the upcoming assembly polls and asserted that he will seek legal recourse against such defamatory revelations. The solar scam case surfaced when Nair and her live-in partner Biju Radhakrishnan were arrested in 2013 on charges of cheating numerous investors who paid money for solar panels. Over 30 cases of cheating against Nair and Radhakrishnan are registered in various courts. Police estimate that they cheated investors to the tune of over Rs.6 crore. While Nair is out on bail, Radhakrishnan is in jail on charges of murdering his first wife. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the government to clarify its stand on a PIL seeking return of Kohinoor diamond in the country. A bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur, which did not issue notice on the PIL, asked the Solicitor General to seek instructions in the matter within a week. "Everybody is claiming the Kohinoor. How many countries are claiming Kohinoor? Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and even South Africa. Somebody here is also asking for the Kohinoor. Do you know about it," the bench asked the Solicitor General. Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar said he was unaware about it and would need time to seek instructions and get back. During the hearing, the bench, also comprising Justices R Banumathi and U U Lalit, said there has been a press report attributing statements to the British Prime Minister quoting him as saying, "if we were to accept such demands, British Museums would be empty". "Why don't you approach the government? Hasn't the government taken up the matter? Government has done something. They have done whatever it could," the bench told the petitioner. The apex court was hearing a PIL filed by All India Human Rights & Social Justice Front seeking directions to the High Commissioner of United Kingdom for return of the diamond besides several other treasures. The PIL has made Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Culture, High Commissioners of UK, Pakistan and Bangladesh as parties in the case. It has also sought return of the "ring and talwar of Tipu Sultan and other treasures of Tipu Sultan, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Rani of Jhansi, Nawab Mir Ahmad Ali Banda and other rulers of India." New Delhi: A 51-year-old Uber cab driver was allegedly murdered by two juvenile passengers who dumped his body at an open field in West Delhis Mundka area, police said on Friday. The incident took place Wednesday afternoon and came to light Thursday morning, when the local residents in Mundka spotted a cab parked on a road for hours and informed the police. Soon, the drivers body with bullet wounds, was found in a field nearby. The victim was identified as Kuldeep Thakur who owned the car and had turned it into a cab affiliated to two aggregator services including Uber. His family was informed about the incident immediately, a senior police official said. Kuldeeps family told police that he had left home on Wednesday for work but did not return. The police approached the cab aggregator service and obtained details of the cab bookings. During investigation, it emerged that Kuldeeps cab was last booked by a youth from south-west Delhis Najafgarh for Hiran Kudna village, the official said. The police soon zeroed in on one of the accused teenagers and during interrogation he confessed to his crime, also disclosing the name of his accomplice. Both accused juveniles have been apprehended, DCP (West) Pushpendra Kumar said. During interrogation, the accused said they had hired Kuldeeps cab on Wednesday afternoon. During the journey they entered into a heated argument with him, when suddenly one of them pulled out a gun and shot at him. The teenagers, both 17-year-old, then dumped his body in the open field and fled. Kuldeep, a native of Himachal Pradesh, lived here with his wife and three children. He was the sole breadwinner of the family and his eldest daughters marriage is on the cards, Kuldeeps nephew Jograj said. He said, Kuldeep had worked as driver for years and purchased his own car earlier this year. His family left for Himachal Pradesh on Friday for the last rites. The victims relatives have alleged that Uber showed no cooperation in the initial phase of the investigation and did not support the family at all, a charge denied by the latter. The relatives also alleged that Uber had deleted Kuldeeps name and other details from its database. Uber in a statement said, Our thoughts are with the family of our driver-partner, the victim of this mindless violence. We have pro- actively shared details with the police to assist them with their investigation. The BJP on Friday made a politically bold move to appoint Keshav Prasad Maurya as its party chief in Uttar Pradesh, BS Yeddyurappa in Karnataka and Vijay Sampala in Punjab. It has also appointed party chiefs in two other states K Lakshman in Telangana and Tapir Rao in Arunachal Pradesh. The appointment, of Maurya and Yeddyurappa and two politically significant states in north and south India, is an indicator that that the national party chief Amit Shah has not gone by the popular perception or the kind of political heat their nomination may generate outside of their party, or even inside a section of his own party. For Shah, it seems their ability to reach out to the larger numbers were far more important than their alleged involvement in some cases of crime or corruption. Of the five party chiefs appointed -- Maurya and Lakshman are OBCs, Yeddyurappa of dominant Lingayat community and Sampala, a Dalit who has a name for himself by his sheer personal grit. The 47-year-old Maurya, a Lok Sabha MP from Phulpur, succeeds Laxmikant Vajpayee, a Brahmin in UP. His appointment has come as surprise to many in the party. But that's what had happened over a year and half ago when the party tickets for UP in parliamentary elections were to be announced. The party nomination for Phulpur seat was held till the last minute. Many senior leaders were rooting for Sidharth Nath Singh, grandson of Lal Bahadur Shastri and party national secretary for nomination from that seat. But Shah, then as party general secretary in charge of UP put his foot down and insisted that the ticket for this seat be given to Maurya. There had been several allegations against him but Shah brushed them aside and ensured that he was nominated by the party as its candidate. His name was announced just ahead of closure of nominations for that round of poll. Maurya is an aggressive campaigner and believes that the party could be back in the reckoning in the state only if it wins confidence of non-Yadav backward and most backward castes' confidence and succeeds in wooing a section of the Dalits. Should that be the case, the upper castes would side with the party. Maurya has also has a strong VHP background. A senior BJP leader from UP said Maurya was the late VHP leader Ashok Singhal's favourite and his appointment as UP BJP chief was his one of the last wishes. This was conveyed to Shah before he died. Shah too had a liking for Maurya. UP is a super high stakes battle for the BJP and Shah, by appointing a member from most backward comminuty as state party chief, has played his first card. Yeddyurappa's return as the Karnataka BJP chief is equally interesting. Some corruption cases against him are still pending, but there is a belief in the BJP leadership that he would not be held guilty in any of these cases. There is also a perception among some senior party leaders who have been closely associated with party affairs in Karnataka that Yeddyurappa was treated unfairly by party patriarch L K Advani. Yeddyurappa, a Lingayat leader has a strong social support base. His command over party workers is also very strong. His departure from the party had cost it dearly in the last assembly elections. By appointing him as party president, Shah has given clear signals that he intends to give an early start to for 2018 state assembly elections. After all, Yeddyurappa had led the party to its first victory in a South Indian state. The nomination of Vijay Sampala in Punjab is equally interesting. Sampala, a Dalit who worked as a farm labourer in Punjab and later as a plumber in Saudi Arabia before turning to politics is a moving saga of personal grit. He won the 2014 parliamentary elections from Hoshiyarpur in Punjab and was made a minister of state in the union government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had then spoken highly of his calibre and hard work. The party's stakes in 2017 Punjab assembly elections are high and the state has a sizeable Dalit population. Sampala would be expected to give a boost to BJP campaign. The appointment of a two-time MLA, K Lakshman in Telangana and former MP Tapir Rao in Arunachal Pradesh as party president is again intended to give a message that the current Modi-Shah dispensation at the Centre is giving primacy to leaders with wider social support base. New Delhi: A number of academicians, writers, students and activists on Friday vowed at the Pratirodh forum here to keep resistance alive till there was complete freedom to think and speak freely. Among those who expressed their views were writers Krishna Sobti and Kancha Iliah, historian Harbans Mukhia, lawyer Vrinda Grover, social activist Gauhar Raza, journalists Siddharth Varadrajan and Shoma Chaudhury, and student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar, Shehla Rashid, Omar Khalid (all Jawaharlal Nehru University), Richa Singh from Allahabad University, Dontha Prashanth from Hyderabad University and Rakesh Shukla from Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. The speakers expressed concern over rising intolerance in the society, the suppression of dissent by the government and the increasing attempts at the saffronisation of education and educational institutions. "Dalits and other underprivileged students cannot go to Cambridge and Oxford. But they can go to Jawaharlal Nehru University and Hyderabad University, and we are producing intellectuals here," said Dalit writer Ilaiah. Veteran journalist Varadrajan expressed concern over editors becoming opportunist and consequently certain important issues not finding a place a place in the media. "Many significant issues which need to be discussed are either relegated to inside pages or just do not appear in the media. And those journalists who try to raise these issues are pressurised in many ways," he said. JNU Student Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and vice president Rashid dwelt on changing definitions of nationalism and constitution's architect B.R. Ambedkar's relevance in today's politics and social structures. "If we want to challenge the politics of suppression and Hindu nationalism, we will have to move on the path of (Mahatma) Gandhi and Ambedkar and we would have to be on the same page," Kanhaiya said. Rashid rued that Ambedkar was reduced to a mere Dalit icon though he was a "greater scholar than most savarnas of his time". She also questioned the changing definition of nationalism and its relevance. "There has to be justice before jai," Rashid said. Other student leaders including Richa Singh and Rakesh Shukla too called for keeping the resistance alive till "the mind was without fear". The hacking to death of Nazimuddin Samad, the sixth secular Bangladeshi blogger to be murdered in the last 14 months, has no doubt been carried out by religious fanatics but the government also cannot wash its hands off the responsibility for the killing, feels Shireen Huq of NariPokkho, a women's rights organisation in Bangladesh. Samad, 28, was vocal against radical Islam and used social media to regularly post feminist and atheist criticism of the religion. A student of the state-run Jagannath University, Samad was returning home after his classes on Thursday night when he was waylaid near Old Dhaka's Sutrapur area by machete-wielding assailants. They slashed at him and then pumped a bullet into his head, just to be sure. Samad was an activist of Bangladesh's Gonojagoron Moncho (platform for popular uprising), a social movement that began in Dhaka's Shahbag Square in February 2013, calling for the death penalty for those found guilty of war crimes committed in 1971. The organisation also seeks to resist the politics of the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party On his Facebook page, Samad was regularly critical of both the Jamaat and the BNP, but he also didn't spare the ruling Awami League, criticising the failings of the current government. His last post, in fact, implied that Sheikh Hasina's party will fall if it did not make swift changes, writing (in Bengali): The situation of the country, the deterioration of law and order is an indication that maybe you cannot stay long in power. The breakdown of the law and order in Bangladesh, which Samad pointed out before he was killed, and the total lack of trust between the citizens and the state are issues that cropped up repeatedly during Firstpost's conversation with Huq as she blamed the government for tolerating the intolerance. Huq says that by its inaction and apathy, the state has made it easier for acts of violence to take place. "The murder of Samad is a targeted killing," she says. "It is very much a planned attack as were the ones before. The most worrying part is that there are groups organised, armed, motivated by hatred and ready to kill anyone for their belief...However, this also represents a certain level of intolerance that is being tolerated by the government. So far, none of the murder cases have been solved. There have been a few face-saver arrests, but none of the perpetrators of the heinous killings have so far been brought to book. That sends a very poor signal," says Huq. "Instead of a thorough probe and trial, what we have seen in the contrary is less-than-satisfactory response from the government," says the founder-member of NariPokkho, the organization that is fighting for human rights, ending of violence against women and a number of other issues ever since it was formed in 1983. Even as Bangladesh sees unprecedented, bloody attacks on secular bloggers and activists who are vocal against religious fundamentalism, war crimes, minority issues, corruption and injustice against women, the government prefers to look the other way, sometimes even blaming the Bangladeshi writers instead. "We have very senior and responsible members of the government turning against the bloggers themselves, saying that the writers should refrain from expressing their opinions which run contrary to the view of the majority, thereby implying that if they continue to do so, they stand the risk of exposing themselves to more attacks. As if violence is inevitable if you don't fall in line." This, says Huq, is a dangerous line of thought, one that seeks to justify violence and shrinks the space for dissent in a democracy. "This opinion from the top, that attacks are inevitable if you do not conform, is unfortunately seeping through into the society. The space for people with different views or dissenting views is becoming even smaller. When you have senior government functionaries making statements like that, then you are sending a message to the people that these bloggers are wrongdoers. And that is deeply worrying," pauses Huq. "People who have dissenting views are caught between the proverbial devil and the deep sea," she adds. "On the one hand you have the state clamping down on people with divergent opinion in various ways; increasing number of disappearances, for instance, in which state agencies are found to be directly involved and you have contempt laws being used injudiciously. The whole general atmosphere of intolerance is being nurtured and spread by the intolerance of the government," says the human rights activist. "And on the other hand, of course, you have the religious fanatics who are ready to kill for their faith." Huq believes the deaths could be stopped if the police do their job. Which sadly, she says, they are not. "Widespread corruption is a factor and our police force is no exception. One of the reasons why people are not surprised at the lack of arrests or prosecution is that there is so much corruption. On the whole, the wheeling and dealing around crimes has become commonplace." "It is of course no surprise that the law-keepers would be corrupted in a country where senior politicians are accused of corruption at the highest level." Though there have been reports in the international media about the presence of ISIS behind the murders, Huq says there is no dearth of fanatics in Bangladesh to kill the secular bloggers. "Whether there is an Islamic State connection is not, I don't know. Our government has repeatedly denied such reports. But whether or not it is Islamic State, the fact remains that these are organised killings, not spur-of-the-moment crimes. "And sadly, the government is not doing enough to prevent it. It is not sending a strong enough message that there must be space for differing views in democracy, space for different beliefs and equal rights for minorities. This is partly because the government is exercising the same kind of intolerance towards political rivals or civil society criticism." The Constitution of Bangladesh was amended in 1988 to make Islam a state religion though a subsequent amendment in 2011 has reinstated secularism as a fundamental principle. Huq believes this is a contradiction. "Islam was introduced as a state religion 17 years after Independence as the 8th Constitutional amendment. In the 15th amendment which took place in 2011 when present ruling party Awami League enjoyed a majority in Parliament secularism was reinstated as a principle but Islam remained as the state religion. This immediately gave rise to a conflict. You cannot have a secular state and then keep a faith as the state religion. Although we were the first people to go to court against this Constitutional amendment, over the years I personally don't think the status as the state religion has made much of a difference in the practice of Islam," she said. "But where it has made a difference is introduce a notion of unequal citizenship. And that can lend a degree of license to people who may think that it is right to attack people of other religion and that they have the moral authority. The killing of bloggers are being done by extremists. Having Islam as the state religion doesn't necessarily lead to such attacks; its effect, if any, is less dramatic. But it certainly encourages daily discrimination and makes the minorities more vulnerable to appropriation of properties or desecration of their places of worship." Huq feels that there has been a late increase in social conservatism in Bangladesh. In her area of work, she has also witnessed a spike in attack against women. "The number of attacks on women, and of gangrapes, appear to have definitely gone up. Since the Nirbhaya case in Delhi, there have been reports of women being raped in moving buses in Bangladesh as well. The media recently reported the rape and murder of a young woman in a military cantonment area. Though government announced quoting forensic report says that there was no sexual violation. Nobody is prepared to believe this, there is a complete breakdown of trust between citizens and the state." "Therefore the killings of bloggers, while a distinct phenomenon, must be contextualised within the larger state of lawlessness and violence with impunity that Bangladesh is witnessing," says Huq. BRUSSELS Mohamed Abrini, wanted for November's Islamic State attacks in Paris, was among five people arrested in Brussels on Friday, Belgian prosecutors said, adding that he was also involved tied to last month's Brussels bombings. They said they were checking whether Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian, was the "man in the hat" seen on security footage at Brussels airport on March 22 with two suicide bombers. Belgium's public broadcasters said it was "more than likely" he was. The arrests mark a signal success for Belgian security services, which have faced fierce criticism at home and abroad since Brussels-based militants organised the attacks that killed 130 in Paris on Nov. 13 and 32 at home four months later. Interior Minister Jan Jambon, who offered to resign over the failure to arrest one of the suicide bombers months ago, tweeted congratulations to those involved in the arrests. But there was no change in the national security alert level and Jambon added: "The struggle against terrorism goes on." The arrests came a day after police issued new images and detail on the "man in the hat". They follow the arrest in Brussels on March 18 of a key surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam. He was seen driving with Abrini towards Paris two days before the attacks in the French capital. Four days after Abdeslam was arrested, the brothers Brahim and Khalid El Bakraoui and a third local man, Najim Laachraoui, set off bombs that killed 32 people at Brussels airport and on a metro line running under European Union institutions. Another suspect held on Friday may be a man seen with Khalid Bakraoui at a metro station shortly before Bakraoui blew himself up on a train on the same line downtown. Prosecutors named him as Osama K, adding he had used the false name Naim al-Hamed. Prosecutors said he had also been caught on CCTV buying holdalls at a downtown mall that were later used in the Brussels bombings. Osama K. was identified by police near Ulm in Germany some weeks before the Paris attacks in a car rented by Salah Abdeslam, prosecutors said. They did not confirm reports that he was a Swede named Osama Krayem, a former fighter in Syria who may have returned to Europe along with other militants among refugees who reached the Greek island of Leros in September. Abrini was arrested in the borough of Anderlecht, local media said, next to the western district of Molenbeek, which has been at the heart of Belgium's troubles with Islamist militants. He had been on Europe's most wanted list since being seen on a motorway service station CCTV video driving with Abdeslam towards Paris from Belgium. The car they drove was used two days later in the attacks, in which Abdeslam's elder brother was a suicide bomber. Abrini and Abdeslam had also rented an apartment used by some of the Paris suicide attackers, prosecutors said. Abrini's fingerprints and DNA were found in two Brussels apartments, including the one from where three men, including the two bombers, took a taxi to the airport on March 22. It was later found to have been used as a bomb-making factory. The man in the hat left the airport shortly after the twin suicide bombings and was tracked on CCTV for several miles into the city centre. On Thursday, investigators released new video footage of him and urged people to look for his discarded coat. He had been difficult to identify from the footage, which showed him pushing a laden luggage trolley alongside the two men who blew themselves up with similar bags. A third bomb was later found abandoned at the airport. (Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop and Gabriela Baczynska; Writing by Alastair Macdonald and Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Alastair Macdonald) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Karachi: Pakistan's trade with India is on track despite "suspension" of bilateral dialogue, Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir has said. Dastgir was talking to the media here on Thursday after attending the Texpo Pakistan exhibition, which was attended by around 400 foreign delegates. "Suspension of dialogue with India did not suggest an end to bilateral trade," Dawn newspaper quoted Dastgir as saying. He said that Pakistan intended to hold a single-country exhibition in India. The minister said the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) has changed its focus from holding general exhibitions to single segment of products. He said there was a shift in commercial strategy as more importance was being given to regional countries, including Central Asian states, Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka. For achieving the export strategy target of USD 35 billion, the government has posted trained commercial counsellors in potential markets, he said. ATHENS A ferry carrying 45 migrants left the Greek island of Lesbos for Turkey on Friday, the second such journey carried out under a controversial EU deal to stem mass irregular migration to Europe. A second boat carrying a larger group was scheduled to leave the island later in the morning, state TV reported. Those who left early on Friday were from Pakistan, it said. The first group of 202 migrants to be returned, most of them from Pakistan and Afghanistan, were sent back to Turkey on Monday. At the port of Mytilene, at least two activists jumped into the water close to the small ferry, dangling from the heavy chain of the anchor and flashing the 'v' sign for victory. They were hoisted out of the water by the Greek coastguard. The first group of 202 migrants to be returned, most of them from Pakistan and Afghanistan, were sent back to Turkey on Monday. Under the EU-Turkey deal, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who enter Greece through irregular routes in return for the EU taking in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and rewarding it with more money, early visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations. (Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Nick Macfie) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Yangon(Myanmar): Myanmar's government has begun releasing political prisoners under a plan announced by the country's new de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Myanmar media reported that more than 60 students arrested a year ago during a protest over education reforms were released Friday by a court in the central town of Tharrawaddy. The releases were part of a general amnesty that also covered other convicts ahead of Myanmar's traditional New Year festival, often the occasion for prisoner releases. Rights groups estimated that 100 political detainees remained in prison when a military-backed government was succeeded by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party late last month. About 400 others were being held pending trial, including those freed in Tharrawaddy. London: British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted that he had held a 30,000-pound stake in an offshore fund set up by his father, after days of pressure following publication of the Panama Papers. Cameron said he sold the stake in the Bahamas-based trust in 2010, four months before he became Prime Minister, in an interview with television channel ITV. Downing Street have issued four statements on the affair this week following Sunday's publication of the leaked Panama Papers, which showed how Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca had helped firms and wealthy individuals set up offshore companies. "We owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000 pounds (37,000 euros, USD 42,000)," Cameron said. "I sold them all in 2010, because if I was going to become Prime Minister I didn't want anyone to say you have other agendas, vested interests." WASHINGTON Russia played a role in the release of an American citizen held by Syrian authorities and the United States has had "periodic contact" with the Syrian government, the U.S. State Department said on Friday. In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the Russian military had taken a U.S. citizen from Syria to Moscow, after President Barack Obama personally asked President Vladimir Putin to help search for Americans in Syria. The man was handed over to the U.S. embassy in Moscow and has now left Russia, the ministry said on Friday. The Washington Post, citing two U.S. officials, reported that Syria's government had released Kevin Dawes, who was abducted after traveling to Syria in 2012. Dawes, described by the newspaper as a freelance photographer, was recently allowed to call family and receive care packages, signaling to officials that the Syrian government was moving toward his release, the Post reported. U.S. State Department Spokesman Mark Toner said the person was freed several days ago and had left Syria but did not identify the individual. "We are appreciative of efforts on the part of the Russian government that it undertook on behalf of this U.S. citizen in Syria," Toner told a news briefing. Toner did not elaborate on Moscow's involvement. Toner said U.S. authorities have been in touch with Syrian officials, an instance of rare cooperation between the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations. "We have also been in direct periodic contact with the Syrian government regarding consular issues in general and American citizens detained in Syria," Toner said. The United States has called repeatedly for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down since Syria's civil war broke out in 2011. The Washington Post said Dawes' release was seen as a positive sign for American reporter Austin Tice, who also went missing in Syria in 2012. The State Department is continuing to work through Czech officials in Syria to get information on Tice as well as on other U.S. citizens missing in Syria. Tice's family declined to comment. (Reporting by Megan Cassella and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Paul Simao and James Dalgleish) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Ankara: Turkey's state-run news agency says a Turkish official has been arrested in a police sting operation for attempting to sell the designs of two Turkish-made firearms to a US-based company. Anadolu Agency says Mustafa Tanriverdi, who headed a factory run by the state-owned Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation, was arrested in the capital Ankara on Thursday as he left a restaurant after arranging to sell the designs to an official of a US-based company for a total of 1.2 million Turkish lira ($420,000.) Tanriverdi was charged with bribery and with "benefiting from state secrets and infidelity to state services," Anadolu reported. Hurriyet newspaper says Turkish police were tipped off by the US-based Turkish businessman who was part of the sting operation and acted as the buyer. SAN ANTONIO Two people were killed in an apparent murder-suicide at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio on Friday that triggered a 90-minute lockdown at the facility, military officials and the Bexar County Sheriff's Office said. Military officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the shooting was not an act of terrorism. Both victims were men and two weapons identified as Glocks were found at the scene, Brigadier General Robert LaBrutta, Commander, Joint Base San Antonio, told a news conference, adding they were not releasing further details at this time. The Air Force Times, an independent news outlet, citing internal Pentagon communications, reported that the commanding officer of a training squadron at the base was shot by an airman. It updated its previous report that the squadron was a K-9 unit, saying the initial communications may have listed an incorrect squadron. "This morning we received one of those calls you never want to receive," LaBrutta said. "Our hearts and prayers go out to the families that are going to be affected by this tragedy," he said, adding that no other victims were found. He declined to surmise on what might have been the motive or give details on why they thought it was an apparent murder-suicide. LaBrutta said that after an initial report of a shooter, security officers rushed to the scene within three minutes. Both victims were found in an office. The incident took place at the Medina annex at the facility, where dog training takes place. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was called to assist and has taken the lead in the case, the sheriff's office said. (Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and reporting by Lisa Maria Garza in Dallas; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jeffrey Benkoe) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Dhaka: Bangladesh vowed Friday to catch the killers of a student murdered this week after criticising Islamists on social media, as hundreds of secular activists held a protest to demand action. Nazimuddin Samad, a 26-year-old law student, was killed late on Wednesday near his university in Dhaka by unknown assailants carrying machetes. It was the latest in a series of murders of secular bloggers and campaigners in Bangladesh and has sparked international outrage, as well as demands for the government to protect freedom of speech in the Muslim-majority country. Police on Friday filed a murder case and said they were treating his death as a "targeted killing", although no arrests have yet been made. Abu Hena Muneem, a senior home ministry official, dismissed claims the government was failing to protect secularists and said the authorities were doing all they could to track down Samad's killers. "The accusations are not correct. Our law enforcement agencies are working very hard to find the culprits and they will soon be arrested," Muneem told AFP. Activists, however, expressed concerns about the government's readiness to protect them as they held a protest march in the capital. Around 400 people chanted slogans including "stop the culture of impunity, save secular Bangladesh". "It is very worrying," said Imran Sarker, a spokesman for Bangladesh's biggest secular activists' group Gonojagoron Mancha. "We wonder whether the government actually has the goodwill to put an end to this." Samad's murder was the sixth such killing in 15 months. His childhood friend and fellow activist Gulam Rabbi Chowdhury said he had gone into hiding before the attack and deactivated his Facebook page for a number of months. Manjula O'Connor, an Indian-born psychiatrist and Australasian Centre for Human Rights and Health director, has been campaigning to ban dowry in Australia. She said the recommendations would give greater clarity to authorities, and a voice to the victims. Premier Daniel Andrews has said he will implement all recommendations of the 1900-page report. Now the Royal Commission into Family Violence has recommended that within 12 months the Victorian government should include dowry-related abuse as a form of family violence - in particular economic abuse . The young woman had barely exchanged a few words with her husband before marrying him. Credit:Joe Armao "When the young women goes to the police and say, 'He has kept my dowry, he has got my gold, and all the cash', police say to the girls,'We don't know what you mean by dowry?'" Dr O'Connor said. "When they explain it is a gift, [the police] say, 'Why did you give so much gifts in the first place?' They have no cultural awareness of the pressure the family are under to give these huge amounts of gifts. "What this will do is make them [the women] feel heard and validated, and it will allow the judiciary to document, and the police to document the words 'dowry-related gifts' in their statement." In 2014, former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu tabled a petition in State Parliament calling for the practice of dowry to be made illegal in Victoria. For Simran, the relentless coercion for money spelt the end of her young dreams. Zurich: A school's decision to allow two Muslim pupils not to shake their teachers' hands has added fresh fuel to an ongoing debate in Switzerland about integration of immigrants. When the 14- and 15-year-old brothers refused to shake female teachers' hands last November, citing their religious beliefs, the school in Therwil near Basel replaced the customary greeting with a verbal one from the boys to both male and female teachers. The compromise solved the issue at the school, but when the public broadcaster SRF reported on it last week, it tapped into a groundswell of concern about immigration that is being felt all over Europe. The Egerkinger Committee, a lobby group that succeeded through a referendum in 2009 in banning minarets, and wants to do the same for Muslim face veils, has called for immigrants shunning Swiss customs to be shown the door. Lawmakers in Tennessee are one step closer to making the Bible the southern state's official book, alongside the state's official fruit a tomato and its official wild animal the raccoon. The move comes just weeks after the legislature's attempt to designate an official state gun the high-powered rifle. Official designations are usually a lighthearted, symbolic exercise meant to draw attention to unique aspects of a state, but the battle over the so-called "Bible bill" highlights the ongoing debate over the role of religion in government. Republican lawmakers who passed the legislation in the state Senate by a 19-8 vote Monday said the bill was not a government endorsement of religion, but an effort to honor the Bible's historical and cultural contributions. "We're recognizing that the only way that we can in the state of Tennessee," said the bill's sponsor, Republican Senator Steve Southerland. This is the second attempt by the Tennessee state legislature to designate the Bible as the official state book. Last year, legislative action on the bill was delayed and the State's Attorney General found the bill violated the First Amendment's establishment that "no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship." Bishop Gene Robinson, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told VOA the legislature's argument about the cultural importance of the Bible ignored the direct violation of the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. "We do have language about religious institutions and not favoring one over the others," he said. "This is an opportunity to teach the public about what our Constitution says and what it really means." Cultural clash A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found 81 percent of adults in Tennessee identify as Christian compared to 70 percent of adults nationwide. Robinson said this legislation is one of many bills coming up in state legislatures to address problems that don't actually exist, and that lawmakers could acknowledge the Judeo-Christian heritage of the United States by passing a resolution acknowledging the Bible's influence. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, a Republican, said the bill wasn't "very respectful" because it places the Bible on the same level as trivial items like the state's official beverage milk and its official fish the smallmouth bass. Passage of the bill would mark the first time the Bible has been made an official state book. Religious believers "feel that progressive social changes in the laws are threatening their way of life and they have a right to speak up," said Chad Pecknold, an associate professor at the Catholic University of America, who studies the intersections between religion and culture. "But this is the wrong way to make that case," he said Haslam has not said if he would veto the bill. It will automatically become law within 10 days of House and Senate speaker approval if he does not veto it. Nearby controversies Governors in the nearby southern states of Georgia and Mississippi faced intense protests recently over controversial decisions about religious-based legislation. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, a Republican, on Tuesday signed into law a bill permitting churches, religious charities and private businesses to decline services to same-sex couples on the basis of their religious beliefs. The Republican governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, vetoed similar legislation last week under pressure from activists and businesses threatening boycotts. Deal said he did "not think we have to discriminate against anyone to protect [Georgia's] faith-based community." South Korea says 13 North Koreans have defected to their southern neighbor after working at a restaurant in a foreign country. A spokesman for Seoul's Unification Ministry, Jeong Joon-hee, said people working in overseas restaurants have defected before, but never multiple workers from the same restaurant. He said the group, consisting of one man and 12 women, arrived in South Korea Friday. He did not say what country they had been working in. North Korea usually blames South Korea for convincing North Koreans to defect. President criticized Earlier Friday, North Korea launched a verbal attack on South Korean President Park Geun-hye in response to her participation last week in a U.S.-hosted nuclear summit in Washington. A spokesman for Pyongyang's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said Friday that Park is a "matchless evil woman" who has "increased the danger of a war" on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea's government responded sharply, warning North Korea against "slandering" its leaders, said Park Soo-jin, deputy spokeswoman for the South Korean Unification Ministry. Last week's nuclear summit focused on the rising tensions between the two Koreas since North Korea conducted a nuclear test in January and followed it with a long-range rocket launch a month later. Nuclear ambitions On Tuesday South Korea said it has concluded that North Korea is now capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on its medium-range missiles. A South Korean official said Seoul believes North Korea has "accomplished miniaturization of a nuclear warhead to mount it on a Rodong missile." The official said Seoul has no evidence that North Korea had actually deployed such a nuclear-tipped missile, but the new assessment was the first direct acknowledgement of the North's growing nuclear prowess. The South Korean assessment of the North's nuclear missile capability came as a U.S. think tank, the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said that recent satellite images of North Korea's main nuclear complex show suspicious activity that could indicate it is re-processing plutonium for additional nuclear bombs. North Korea has carried out four nuclear tests - the most recent in early January - and test-fired missiles in defiance of sanctions against such tests imposed by the U.N. Security Council. "It is like the hydra. You chop off one head, and two pop up." Thats how one Lakota Indian described the methamphetamine epidemic that is crippling Native American communities across the United States. Meth was developed early in the 20th century and used to treat hyperactivity, obesity and other disorders. The U.S. declared meth a controlled substance in the 1970s. It wasnt long before criminal groups began manufacturing the drug illegally, initially in California, but by the 1990s, meth began to spread eastward into rural communities in the West and Midwest. The drug found its way onto Indian reservations, where today, more Native Americans, proportionately, are addicted to meth than the rest of the U.S. population. "Youve got remote areas and less policing. Even the Mexican cartels, as they distribute their meth in the U.S., often they will go to Indian reservations, particularly in Oklahoma, Kansas and on up into the Dakotas, to have the methamphetamine manufactured, said James E. Copple, founding partner of Strategic Applications International, a group which has contracted with federal government to help Native American tribes fight meth." "Meth is cheap, easy to use and results in a longer high, Copple said. About 12 hours, compared to heroin, which last only an hour to two." Its a highly addictive drug, he said, and over the long-term, leads to paranoia and severe depression. "When theyre high on meth, beyond the paranoia, they have this sense where they feel like their skin is being bitten or eaten by bugs, and so they start slicing away at themselves, picking and scratching away at their skin, he said. This pick effect leads to the open sores and infections associated with meth addicts. Meth use has led to a rise in violent crimes: Robbery, assault, identity theft, child abuse and homicide. Toni Red Bear, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, was addicted to meth for more than three years. "Being addicted is like having the devil on your shoulder, she said. You can be in the middle of the deepest, darkest despair in your life where you dont want to live if you dont have the drug. Then you go get your fix and you feel healed." Today, Red Bear counsels other addicts as a case manager for the tribal health department. But she still suffers from the longer-term effects of meth use. Before I used meth, I could remember anything and everything. I was good at math. Now I cant even remember five items on a 10-item grocery list, she said. She says that even when addicts are brought into the health-care system, there arent enough resources to treat them. Meth treatment costs substantially more than most other addiction treatments and lasts substantially longer, often over a year. Youth, elders fighting back The biggest impact of meth is on the children, said Ebony Tiger, 17, a member of South Dakotas Yankton Sioux tribe, among whom meth has replaced alcohol as the drug of choice. They don't get the things they need because their parents or whoever they live with use the little money they have to get the drug." She should know. Her mother has been a meth addict since Ebony was an infant. I never felt the love a child should feel by his or her parent, she said. I was left here and there with people I did not know and people who were also alcoholics and drug addicts. I never really had a place to call home until one of my aunts took me in, she said. Today, with the help of one aunt, she chairs Native American Youth Standing Strong, a community group working to discourage Native youth from experimenting with drugs. Julie Richards, an Oglala Lakota mother and grandmother living on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, remembers when she first learned about the dangers of meth. One day back in November, 2005, my friend Connies daughter Chantel was home alone when someone knocked at the door. The visitor was an older woman who convinced Chantel, 15, to smoke meth for the first time. The girl took only one hit. A short time later, she complained of a headache and collapsed dead from a brain aneurysm. Ive been on a personal vendetta against meth ever since, Richards says, adding that her own daughters have struggled with addiction. I started finding out who the meth dealers were and then I would put their names out there, publicly shaming them on Facebook. Richards organized the Mothers Against Meth Alliance (MAMA), a group of mothers who go out nightly to confront the dealers. Sometimes its just three of us, four if were lucky. Sometimes its just me and my kids, she said. Her work has put her at risk. Ive had my car windows bashed out, twice, she said. And Ive had a gun pointed at my face. When I call the police, either they dont respond or they take an hour to show up. And nobody is ever arrested. She believes that tribal police, like everyone else, are scared: Of the dealers, of the dealers families. But that may be simplifying the problem. Limits of law enforcement The Oglala Sioux Tribes Department of Public Safety consists of fewer than 100 sworn officers serving about 40,000 residents over more than 800,000 hectares. A cop can be 100 miles [160 kilometers] away from the crime scene, but hes not just dealing with meth, but child abuse, domestic disputes, robbery, assault, drunk and disorderly or driving under the influence of alcohol, said one Lakota man who asked not to be named. He suggested that police may deliberately turn a blind eye to meth buyers and sellers. Everyone on the reservation is related, he said, a reference to tiospaye, a Lakota concept of extended family that can include dozens, even hundreds. So if you're a cop, that might be your little nephew out there using meth. Or your mom or your brother. And if you arrest your mother for dealing and send her to prison for 10 years, what are your brothers, uncles, nephews and her customers going to do to you, your wife and children? Coppel admits there is a degree of corruption in many not most - tribal leadership councils, law enforcement agencies, and courts. And for this reason, some tribe members may be reluctant to call upon the very agencies that exist to protect them. VOA made repeated calls to the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe Department of Public Safety and Attorney General's Office requesting comment, but our calls were not returned. Looking into the past for answers Some tribes have turned to traditional practices. The Lummi Tribe of Washington State, the Lac du Flambeau Band in Wisconsin, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota and others have resorted to banishment and dis-enrollment of members convicted of dealing, making or trafficking meth. Historically, banishment placed tribe members at the mercy of the wilderness. Today, it means being separated from loved ones and possibly losing out on health, housing, and education benefits. But punishment may not be the answer. Were never going to arrest our way out of this problem. It requires a community solution - treatment and all the necessary psychosocial support, a context in which the recovering addict can find a job, have family and spiritual support, said Copple. "Throwing federal dollars at reservations isnt effective either, not unless the various federal agencies coordinate with one another and with local public health, law enforcement and other agencies, he said. If we could break down those silos to come up with coordinated approaches where the tribal communities themselves own the issue and own the solutions, then I believe there is hope. But some tribal members arent so sure. The drug war is over, said one Lakota native, gloomily. The drugs have won. After a rocky week of campaigning featuring a double-digit primary loss and an unexpected battle over qualifications, Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are rushing to claim delegate-rich New York as their own heading into the states April 19 primary. The state awards 95 delegates on the Republican side and 291 delegates on the Democratic side. Frontrunner businessman Donald Trump heads into New York after the first major primary loss of his campaign in Wisconsin this week, securing 35 percent of the vote to winner Ted Cruz 48 percent. Trump has been a media star in New York City for decades and has a double-digit lead over Texas Senator Ted Cruz in advance polling. But his loss in Wisconsin exposes deeper problems in his campaign. A new Associated Press-GFK poll released this week shows Trump is viewed unfavorably by 7 out of 10 Americans, including half of Republican voters. The poll found dislike for Trump is common to Americans of all races, genders and geographic locations, raising key questions about his viability in a general election. Analysts say Trump still has a viable path to winning the nomination since 36 percent of the total delegates are still to be won. Trump would need to win 63 percent of those delegates in primary votes to outright secure the nomination while Ted Cruz needs an almost 97 percent to win. Trump hires veteran consultant Trump's loss in Wisconsin appears to increase the likelihood of a contested nomination. The Trump campaign is focusing on building a strategy heading into the Republican convention this summer in Cleveland. This week, Trump hired Paul Manafort, a longtime political veteran, to manage the increasingly complicated battle for convention delegates. The campaign has now gotten to the point where how you win and where you win does matter and then protecting what you won, Manafort told the New York Times in a phone interview Thursday. Cruz has argued throughout the campaign that he is the only viable candidate in a general election but the demographics of upcoming votes in liberal northeastern states dont play to his campaigns strengths. Cruz didnt back down from comments earlier in the campaign when he attacked Donald Trump for his New York values. Everyone in New York and outside of New York knows exactly what I meant by that, Cruz told CNN Thursday. And it is the liberal values of Democratic politicians who have been hammering the people of New York for decades." Cruz is relying on a long term strategy on the ground in primary states, monitoring the obscure rules and regulations that govern party delegates and the nomination process. Ohio governor John Kasich who has already been mathematically eliminated from winning enough delegates to secure the nomination continued his fight to take his candidacy all the way to Cleveland, holding a town hall event in Syracuse, New York Friday. Democrats turn negative An April 7 McClatchy/Marist poll shows former secretary of state Hillary Clinton beating Trump 51 to 40 but tying in a head to head matchup with Ted Cruz with 47 percent of the vote, while Vermont Senator Sanders beats all three remaining Republican challengers in a general election contest. Sanders looks to build on momentum from winning six out of the last seven primary contests, although he still significantly trails Clinton in overall delegate totals. Clinton has not mathematically eliminated Sanders from contention but she holds a commanding lead of 1,749 delegates over the 1,061 awarded to Sanders. Both Clinton and Sanders claim New York as home ground Brooklyn-born Sanders set up a campaign office there, just blocks from the campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton, who represented the state of New York as a senator. In a sign Wednesday that the battle for New Yorks Democratic primary delegates may move closer to the consistently nasty tone of the Republican field, Sanders said Clinton was not qualified to be president because of her vote in support of the Iraq war and willingness to accept Wall Street money. Sanders who has previously resisted opportunities to campaign negatively against Clinton faced sharp criticism online for his words. Clinton supporters took to social media under the hashtag #ClintonSoQualified to note Clintons years of experience as first lady, New York senator and secretary of state. President Barack Obama has refrained from getting involved in the Democratic presidential primary until now but appeared to comment Thursday on the intensified battle between Clinton and Sanders. In a Chicago town-hall meeting with law students, Obama warned against Democrats developing a Tea Party mentality and fighting against each other at the expense of party unity. I dont see that being where the Democrats go, but its always something we have to pay attention to. The pace of voting has significantly slowed since large numbers of delegates were awarded in state primary votes in February and March. Wyoming holds a Democratic caucus ten days before the New York Primary vote, on April 9. When Ray Choto got a call inviting him to team up on "one of the biggest data projects ever," the reporter for VOA's Zimbabwe service couldn't resist. He joined hundreds of other members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in reviewing more than 11.5 million documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Their findings from the so-called Panama Papers began rolling out Sunday, revealing a vast global network of secret offshore tax havens for the privileged and the powerful. Choto's initial report detailed how Zimbabwe's leading platinum mining company, Zimplats, allegedly funneled managers' salaries through an offshore company, violating the country's exchange control rules. Zimplats' majority shareholder, South Africa's Impala Platinum (Implats), has called for "an urgent investigation." The documents also showed that Mossack Fonseca clients include 23 people who've been sanctioned for supporting regimes in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia, Iran and Syria, Choto reported. He's also pursuing other leads found through the tedious, exacting process of sorting and reviewing data, looking for patterns, then following up with countless hours of reporting. Selective group The VOA reporter is one of 370 journalists, scattered among more than 100 news organizations in roughly 80 countries, working with the Washington-based ICIJ. The broad collaboration nonetheless is "an exclusive project, not open to any journalist. There's a lot of vetting that has to be done," said Choto, who has been involved with ICIJ since 2001. ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle told VOA that more than half of the reporters on the project are not ICIJ members, but collaborating with these journalists is a key part of the group's publication strategy. "In the traditional American nonprofit [journalism] model, you get funding and at the end of the project you approach a publication partner. I think a better way of doing it is getting the publications involved from the start. You're able to basically parlay the value of the story to get the resources of all the media partners." Choto built a reputation for strong investigative work at The Standard in Harare, Zimbabwe. In 1998, the journalist linked some cabinet ministers, police officials and business people to drug rings and money laundering. The following year, he reported that 23 Zimbabwe military members, including some officers, were jailed for conspiring to overthrow longtime dictator Robert Mugabe. Choto says he and his publisher were arrested and tortured for refusing to divulge the names of military sources. "I was beaten with wooden planks on my naked body," Choto said, adding that his captors also "would apply electric shocks. The torture was for three days; my editor was held for 10 days." The two were released after steady publicity from South African media pressured the government to relent. Choto and his editor, Mark Chavunkuka, later were jointly honored with the International Press Freedom award. Relocating to U.S. Choto came to the United States in the fall of 2000 as a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. Three years later, he joined Voice of America in Washington. Now 54, he covers breaking news while also continuing investigative work. Early last year, he collaborated with ICIJ on an investigation into the foreign accounts of international banking giant HSBC. Its Swiss private banking arm "made huge profits by allegedly engaging in shady deals of over $270 million with some Zimbabwean citizens seven years ago, in the process, disadvantaging the poor southern African nation of the much-needed foreign currency," he wrote for VOA. That story arose from files shared with ICIJ by the French newspaper Le Monde. ICIJ's Ryle told WIRED that the Panama Papers' document trove represents the biggest leak in history, "about 2,000 times larger than the WikiLeaks state department cables." The journalists worked in secret on the files some of them for up to a year sharing information via secure websites and avoiding email or any other communications that might compromise confidentiality, according to WIRED. Journalists have a proprietary claim on information relating to their own countries, Choto said, and they pass along information they discover that might be useful to a foreign colleague. His ICIJ colleagues have turned out stories of possible misdeeds. While offshore havens themselves are legal, their lack of transparency makes them attractive for hiding crime and corruption. In Iceland, Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, tendered his resignation Tuesday, a day after angry crowds gathered in Reykjavik to protest what they suspect was an effort to hide assets offshore. Close associates of Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China also have been linked to the law firm's secretive services. Choto suspects Zimbabwe residents "are excited in their hearts" about his findings, but he says his homeland "is one of those places where people cannot freely express themselves, to go out and demonstrate unless you belong to the ruling party. You've seen people being beaten for demonstrating peacefully." He continues digging into the Panama Papers. "There are a lot of amazing stories that are still to be told." Ties between Ankara and Tel Aviv are seemingly warming up as the Turkish foreign ministry underlined in a statement that progress was made in the latest round of talks held in London and that an agreement could be materialized very soon. Turkey used to be Israels closest ally in the Middle East but relations became sour in May 2010 when Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara flotilla that was carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza in defiance to the blockade imposed on the Strip. The incident resulted in the death of nine people, an American and eight Turkish citizens. Relations have been improving since last year after Israel apologized for the flotilla incident but Turkey has stressed that normalization with the Jewish State will not go ahead without the compensation of the Turkish victims and lifting of the blockade on Gaza. That condition has been a major challenge but has not stopped the two governments from holding several meetings to revive ties lately. The Turkish foreign ministry statement stated that the two sides are closing the gaps and have agreed that the deal will be finalized in the next meeting which will be convened very soon without dwelling on the context or content of the agreement. The delegations were headed by Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, the Israeli prime ministers special envoy, Joseph Ciechanover, and acting chairman of Israels National Security Council, General Jacob Nagel. President Erdogan used to be a fierce critic of Israel but he recently seemed to be softening his position after he received during his recent visit to Washington representatives of Jewish organizations in the US. Khalifa Haftar, head of the Libyan army under the Tobruk-based government, spoke about the ongoing political crisis since the arrival in Tripoli of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) by clarifying that the military has no interest in forming a military council to oversee the affairs of the country. Yet, he renewed his support to the House of Representatives (HoR) and underlined that he will only support a unity government endorsed by the parliament while warning that we will not stand idle if the political process leads the country into abyss. The HoR made its eighth attempt, on Monday, to hold a vote of confidence on the GNA but it failed to reach a quorum. Haftar lambasted those who accept the division of the country saying they have sold their honor and conscious. He vowed that Libya will remain united and unified and honorable Libyan people and the army will defend the unity of our nation. The political crisis in the country reached a new level since the arrival of the GNA in Tripoli last week. In the latest development, members of the National Forces Alliance decided to set up a State Council to be based probably in Benghazi. Its different from the one that was established during the Radisson Blu Hotel meeting of some lawmakers from the General National Congress (GNC) this week. The National Forces Alliance walked out of the GNC in 2014 following the election of the Tobruk parliament. The party would soon hold a consultative meeting with its political allies. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Khalifa Ghweils website is believed to be taken over by the GNA while Prime Minister Thinnis Facebook page is also inaccessible hinting that a communication battle could just be beginning. The Saudi monarch arrived in Cairo Thursday in his first visit to Egypt since ascending to the throne, a special visit said to announce several billion-dollar agreements to shore up and revive Egypts unraveled economy. King Salmans visit has been highly expected in Cairo as analysts say it will unveil numerous billion-dollar deals among which $1.5 billion package earmarked for development projects in the Sinai, agreements on the maritime borders between the two countries and on their electricity grids connection. Cairo also expects the king to oversee the signing of a $20 billion deal to finance Egypts petroleum needs over the next five years, The New Arab Qatari media reports. The Kings accompanying businessmen will also announce a $4 billion investment in other projects including the Suez Canal, energy and agriculture. Ten per cent of that amount has been reportedly deposited in Egyptian banks. King Salmans talks with Egyptian officials will also touch on regional issues including Saudi Arabias lead in regional warfare in Yemen, Syria and its regional hegemony competition with Iran. Cairo has been reluctant to fully embark on the Saudi-led international campaign in the region even though it has lent support to the Saudi-led coalition against Houthi rebels in Yemen. Analysts say Riyadh will try to convince Cairo to thaw ties with other Saudi Arabias regional friends namely Turkey and Qatar which have bemoaned President Abdel Fattah al-Sisis military coup against their ally President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are fighting Muslim Brotherhood that both see as threat to their internal security. The five-day visit, taking place as Saudi Arabia is asserting itself as leader in the Arab and Islamic world, blows up reports that al-Sisi has lost Riyadhs favor. King Salman is expected to address the Egyptian parliament on Sunday. Angola, Africas second largest crude producer, on Wednesday said it plans to start talks with the International Monetary Fund about a loan to help its oil-dependent economy cope with the slide in oil. Despite the countrys oil and diamond resources, Angola suffers endemic poverty, with more than a third of the population of around 24 million living below the poverty line, according to the United Nations. Fallout from the oil price crunch is inflicting even more pain on the already struggling poor and risks threatening the stability of the country. According to the IMF, discussions would begin next week in Washington on what could be a three-year support plan for the government. Angola will work with the Washington-based found to create policies aimed at strengthening fiscal discipline, simplifying the tax system, and improve transparency of public finances and in the banking industry. The IMF stands ready to help Angola address the economic challenges it is currently facing by supporting a comprehensive policy package to accelerate the diversification of the economy, while safeguarding macroeconomic and financial stability, the Fund said in a statement. Angola has depended on oil production for 95 percent of its export earnings and more than half of government receipts. Economic growth slowed to 3.5 percent last year from 6.8 percent in 2013, according to the IMF. Nigeria, Africas most populous nation, has announced plans to send an astronaut into space by 2030 as part of its drive to develop a world-class space industry, CNN TV channel reports. The west-African nations Minister of Science and Technology Ogbonnaya Onu who disclosed the information in Abuja, was quoted as saying that space is a major asset that Nigeria must be involved in for the purpose of protecting national interests. In his words, a Nigerian Space Agency delegation will visit partners in China this month to discuss logistics and investment for a manned space mission, which would be the first by an African nation. We have developed the capacity to design and assemble spacecraft, he continued. The last stage is the capacity to launch and we believe very strongly that with the support from President Muhammadu Buhari, we will utilize whatever limited resources that we have in a very efficient manner to make sure that we make the nation proud. His announcement comes roughly a month after a highly-circulated email claimed that a Nigerian astronaut has been secretly sent to space in 1989. The email claims a Nigerian scientists cousin was the first African in space, but was left stranded on a secret Soviet space station when his seat to return to Earth was filled by cargo after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The author of the email, a Dr. Bakare Tunde, requests the sum of $3 million to help rescue his cousin. African Union commission chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will step down from her post at Addis Ababa in July, her spokesman said on Wednesday. AU Commission Chair Dr Dlamini-Zuma didnt submit an application for a second term when the deadline closed on Thursday, 31 March, her spokesman Jacob Enoh Eben said. She is not seeking a second term as chair of the African Union Commission, Enoh said, without giving details. Her successor to the four-year post will be appointed during the next AU summit in the Rwandan capital Kigali in July. Dlamini-Zuma is set to return to south-Africa in October, after a handover to the new chair. Dlamini-Zuma was the first woman to hold the AUs top position when she was elected in 2012. Former health, interior and foreign minister in South Africa and veteran of the fight against apartheid, Dlamini-Zuma is a leading candidate to succeed South African President Jacob Zuma as ANC leader. Dlamini-Zuma has benefited from good propaganda in the ANC party and has developed a reputation of being a strong leader. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa is seen as another strong candidate to replace Zuma as party head. South Sudans opposition leader Riek Machar on Thursday confirmed he will be arriving in the capital Juba on April 18 to take up the position of Vice President in the newly created transitional government. After more than two years of civil war, the return to Juba of Riek Machar and his troops from the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army In Opposition (SPLM-IO) is a key step in the implementation of the August 2015 agreement on the formation of a government of national unity. Machar, who was ousted from his position as vice president in July 2013 by the president, Salva Kiir, has not been to Juba since December 2013, when clashes within the presidential guard escalated into a war that took on a tribal dimension. I am confirming the date of my arrival to be April 18 and thereafter form with President Kiir the Transitional Government of National Unity and hold the Transitional National Council of Ministers, Machar said in a letter to the head of the body monitoring the implementation of the peace deal. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since 2013 and more than two million displaced from a country that only came into existence in July 2011, when it gained independence from Sudan. Under pressure from the United States, the United Nations and other West powers, Machar and Kiir signed an initial peace deal in August and agreed to share out ministerial positions in January. 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This is Entercom. 170 Million Monthly Broadcast Listeners 2 Billion Yearly Podcast Downloads 60+ Million Monthly Digital Reach 500+ Per Year Events and Concerts A platform of influence We are leading the way in helping advertisers connect with audiences in meaningful, engaging ways across our integrated platform of iconic broadcast brands, expansive digital assets, premium podcast network and live events and experiences. Our capabilities Serving our communities We are committed to supporting the health and success of the communities at the heart of our business. We use our voice to unite listeners, brands, and employees, and create positive impact around key causes. Learn more Credit: George Hodan/public domain A warning for coffee workers in roasting factories and corner cafes across the country: keep your face away from the bins of roasted beans. That's the latest word from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is examining the health hazards faced by some 600,000 people nationwide who spend their days roasting, grinding, packaging and serving coffee. The agency is conducting tests at about a dozen facilities across the country in the wake of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation that exposed how a naturally occurring chemical endangers coffee workers. The agency's first test results, from a midsize roasting facility in Wisconsin, found extremely high levels of two lung-destroying chemicals in the roasting bins. Investigators with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, a research arm of the CDC, spent several days at Madison-based Just Coffee in July. Investigators tested personal air space and took air samples to measure the concentration of the chemicals diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione. They also evaluated the company's ventilation and other operating systems. Diacetyl has been tied to the deadly lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans, more commonly known as "popcorn lung" for its association with the many illnesses suffered by microwave popcorn workers in the early 2000s. The chemical's molecular cousin, 2,3-pentanedione, has shown equal toxicity in animal studies. Both chemicals have been made synthetically to give a buttery flavor to all kinds of foods and beverages and have been deemed safe to ingest in trace amounts. Inhaling the compounds, however - whether natural or synthetic - can prove deadly. The tests at Just Coffee were the agency's first study of a coffee facility that does not used added flavors. The results underscore the risk faced by all coffee workers, not just those in facilities where artificial flavors are used. The two chemicals form when coffee beans are roasted and then are released into the air in greater concentrations when the beans are ground. Levels also build up as the beans "off gas" in the storage bins. NIOSH Director John Howard told the Journal Sentinel the issue is a priority for the agency. "There's a large number of workers and the harm is really severe," he said. Last year, the Journal Sentinel hired an industrial hygienist to sample the air in the Just Coffee plant and another Wisconsin roastery. Both agreed to allow the news organization to test for the chemicals. Results showed levels at both facilities exceeded the government's safety recommendations, in some cases by nearly four times. Executives at Just Coffee then asked NIOSH do a full health hazard evaluation to get a better idea of the scope of the problem and understand how to protect workers. NIOSH researchers found levels in three breathing-zone samples that exceeded the safety levels recommended by the CDC. The CDC has proposed that workers not be exposed to more than 5 parts per billion of diacetyl over an eight-hour work day, during a 40-hour workweek. Results showed one Just Coffee roaster was exposed to more than 7 parts per billion. Researchers noted typical exposure levels could actually be worse depending on the time of the year. That's because the testing was done when two large bay doors on each end of the production space were open and accessory fans were being used to increase air flow. Had the bay doors at Just Coffee been closed - as they usually are during colder months - the level of contaminants could have been higher. NIOSH researchers went back to Just Coffee last month to do additional testing when the doors were closed and to conduct medical tests on the workers. Results from that visit are expected in the coming months. Scientists familiar with diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione say workers' exposures to short blasts of high levels are also of significant concern. NIOSH found diacetyl concentrations inside the bins where beans are stored reached as high as 7,000 parts per billion. Thus the warning for workers to avoid sticking their heads in or hovering over the containers. "We certainly do think peak exposures are important because they happen throughout the day," said Rachel Bailey, a medical officer in NIOSH's respiratory health division. Bailey noted the results were the first among a dozen studies of coffee processing facilities now underway across the country. Future results will focus more on specific tasks workers complete and look for links between medical data and exposure sources. NIOSH researchers also warn that the storage bins can contain high levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, gases that in high enough concentrations can lead to serious illness and death. Two bins tested in the Just Coffee plant exceeded the agency's ceiling limit of 200 parts per million for carbon monoxide. Researchers cited a number of case studies from 2002 to 2013 of people being poisoned by carbon monoxide after roasting coffee in poorly ventilated areas. Exposure levels vary The degree of exposure in an establishment depends on a variety of factors such as ventilation, number and size of batches roasted, how much coffee is ground on site and what type of equipment is used. The test results highlight potential problems in production areas of commercial settings and cannot be applied to grinding and brewing coffee at home or sipping a cup in a cafe where grinding and roasting occurs. In interviews, CDC officials stressed the importance of employers testing the air to find out what the contaminant levels are in their production facilities. It's impossible to know by looking or even smelling. In addition, they said, employers should implement medical surveillance programs to monitor employee lung function. Damage from diacetyl can occur quickly though symptoms may emerge more gradually. One of the main indicators of a potential problem is shortness of breath, especially after exertion such as from climbing stairs. It is important that workers have baseline and regular lung function tests so any decline can be spotted early. Those with bronchiolitis obliterans are often initially misdiagnosed with asthma, chronic bronchitis, emphysema or pneumonia; or their symptoms are attributed to smoking, CDC experts say. Last year, five coffee roasters- from cafes to midsize facilities - agreed to share their medical tests with the Journal Sentinel and have the results reviewed by three doctors with experience in diacetyl-related illnesses. Of the five workers, four had lung tests or symptoms consistent with hazardous exposure to the chemical, according to the doctors. Further testing would be required for a diagnosis. Coffee workers with concerns about their health should alert their physicians to their occupation. The Journal Sentinel investigation also found that despite huge advances in medicine and data collection and analysis in recent decades, the nation's workplace-illness surveillance system remains incapable of detecting clusters of medical conditions related to specific jobs. Matt Earley, co-founder of Just Coffee, said the specialty coffee industry is quickly recognizing the potential hazards of diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione and taking steps to protect workers. His company, for example, has improved ventilation and is looking for possible ways to mitigate exposure from the storage bins. "To me, it's a real opportunity for the industry to develop new technology and equipment that will take care of this," Earley said. So far, he said, the fixes have not been outrageously costly, adding that having NIOSH assess the work environment has been a help. "It's not at all like a punitive government agency coming in and saying 'we're shutting you down.' NIOSH is so appreciate of companies who are stepping up right now and helping them develop their standards and understanding of this. It's been really helpful to us. "You have to be proactive and willing to take the necessary steps to protect your workforce." Explore further New studies further show risk of chemicals to coffee roasters 2016 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Three student engineers explain how they're applying the principles of gaming to the process of stroke rehabilitation. Credit: Matthew Modoono. Peter Scannell, E'16, is one of five student engineers working to harness the power of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to help stroke patients overcome hemispatial neglect. Also called unilateral visual inattention or hemi-inattention, it's a neuropsychological condition preventing stroke victims from perceiving stimuli on one side of their body or environment. "We want to gamify the process of rehabilitation," Scannell explained at RISE:2016, where the engineers-in-training demoed a prototype of a game integrating the virtual reality headset and a body motion tracking system. Here's how it works: Apply the headset, move your head to locate cabinets and drawers to your left, to your right, and in front of you, and then use your hands to open them. Said team member Jesses Michel, E'16: "Right now, you can do a lot of useful things with the Oculus Rift, especially in terms of physical therapy and brain exercises." Under the direction of Waleed Meleis, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the students conducted a needs assessment with physical therapists at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. The next step is to conduct a pilot test with a small sample of adults with hemispatial neglect to determine the efficacy of their VR interface. "The goal is to help make physical therapy for hemispatial neglect more engaging and more applicable," said Michel. Explore further Oculus unveils new prototype VR headset Ten years after the federal government approved the first vaccines to combat the cancer-causing human papillomavirus, nine years after those vaccines were recommended for all adolescent girls, and five years after they were recommended for all adolescent boys, less than half of girls and only a fifth of boys are getting immunized. Despite state efforts to raise vaccination rates, public health officials say that for a variety of reasons, mainly wariness over the HPV's association with sex, parents and especially doctors have not embraced the potentially life-saving vaccine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of 2014, only 40 percent of girls ages 13 to 17 had completed the three-vaccine course of HPV immunization. (And just 22 percent of boys had done so.) That's well short of the 80 percent goal set in 2010 by the federal government in its Healthy People 2020 report, which established health objectives for the nation. Even states that require HPV inoculation for school admission or mandate that schools teach students about the virus have fallen far short of the federal benchmark. "We think the rates are dismally low and very alarming," said Amy Pisani, executive director of Every Child by Two, a nonprofit that aims to reduce instances of vaccine-preventable illnesses. "We clamor and clamor for a vaccine to get rid of these terrible diseases and yet we aren't implementing them." Some states fare significantly worse. In Tennessee, for example, the vaccination rate for girls was 20 percent - the lowest rate in the nation - and 14 percent for boys. Even the best-performing state, Rhode Island, one of only two states plus the District of Columbia that require HPV inoculation for school admission, has rates well below the national goal, with 54 percent of girls and 43 percent of boys receiving all three HPV vaccinations. Particularly vexing to public health experts is the fact that the HPV vaccination rate lags far behind that of two other vaccines recommended for the same age group. The national rate for adolescents receiving the Tdap booster (to prevent tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis) is 88 percent, and for the vaccine to prevent meningococcal diseases, the rate is 79 percent. HPV is a group of more than 150 related viruses, which together are the most common sexually transmitted infections in the United States. According to the CDC, about 79 million Americans are now infected with HPV and 14 million people become newly infected each year. Nine out of 10 HPV infections resolve themselves within two years, mostly with no symptoms whatsoever, but 10 percent of the infections lead to cancer, especially cervical cancer, but also cancers of the vulva, vagina, penis, anus and throat. It takes years, if not decades, for a person with HPV to develop cancer. The vaccines are nearly a hundred percent effective in preventing precancerous tumors (tumors that are not growing aggressively, killing surrounding tissue or spreading to other parts of the body, but are considered likely to do so), according to the CDC. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes inoculation recommendations to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recommends the vaccine for boys and girls at 11 or 12, likely before they become sexually active and possibly exposed to HPV. ACIP recommended the vaccine for boys in 2011. Boys were not included in ACIP's original recommendation for HPV vaccines because it took longer for medical researchers to find a reliable way to detect HPV-related precancerous tumors in males. ACIP now recommends the vaccine for women up to age 26 and males up to 21. In women older than 26 and men older than 21, the vaccine is much less effective. That the HPV vaccine requires three inoculations over several months contributes to the low vaccination rates. CDC data show a dramatic drop-off between the first and last doses. But health policy experts also point to other factors, especially the discomfort over the association between the virus and sexual activity. HPV is most commonly spread through sexual relations. When the vaccine was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006 and recommended for all adolescent girls the following year, opponents argued that the vaccine would prompt young people to start engaging in sex by freeing them of the fear of contracting HPV. At least one study shows no uptick in sexual activity in girls who have been immunized. Nevertheless, the concern prompted the Texas Legislature in 2007 to overturn the executive order issued by Republican Gov. Rick Perry, earlier that year, requiring all girls entering the sixth grade to be immunized. The same fear doomed immunization bills in a number of other states. The exceptions were Rhode Island, where both boys and girls entering the seventh grade must be inoculated, and Virginia and the District of Columbia, where girls entering the sixth grade must be immunized - but not boys. Their laws were passed when the recommendation applied only to girls and have not been altered to reflect the change. Immunization supporters also hurt their own cause with ill-advised strategic decisions. For example, some state legislators soured on immunization requirements after Merck & Co., the manufacturer of the first HPV vaccine, mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign in favor of the vaccine, prompting a backlash among parents, doctors and consumer advocates. Walt Orenstein, a professor of medicine at Emory University and the former director of the National Immunization Program at the CDC, said federal and state public health officials also erred by focusing the early public information campaign on the sexual transmission of the virus, rather than on the vaccine's life-saving benefit. "It should have been pushed out as an anti-cancer drug," Orenstein said. "People didn't understand why their children needed this drug when they were still years away from being sexually active." Many who study immunizations think that too few doctors and nurse practitioners discuss the HPV vaccine with parents in a way that conveys its importance. Some parents and providers are reluctant to engage in conversations about sex - especially when the child is a preteen. Health care providers "believe it will take a lot of time, that parents either aren't interested or would give them a hard time about it, and physicians don't want to talk about sex when indeed they don't have to," said Noel Brewer, who does research on immunizations at the University of North Carolina and who has studied parental and provider attitudes toward HPV. Pisani, the director of Every Child by Two, witnessed that attitude firsthand. "My son, when he turned 11, we went to see our pediatric nurse practitioner," Pisani said. "She said, 'He's due Tdap and meningococcal. Do you also want to get HPV?' She made it sound optional, as though it was no big deal." Pisani said a pediatrician talked her cousin's 16-year-old daughter out of getting the vaccine until she was 26. Aside from the sex-related issues, policymakers say medical providers may feel the HPV vaccine is not urgent because symptoms do not surface for many years and the virus poses no risk of being spread in an elementary or middle school, where students usually are not sexually active. But Brewer's research demonstrates that, contrary to what doctors may believe, parents are interested in the vaccine and a strong recommendation from a physician correlates highly with youngsters getting the full course of vaccinations. Although health policymakers want to see more vaccinations, few argue in favor of adopting mandatory state vaccination laws. Such laws, they say, often prompt a backlash, as in Texas, and can cause the opposite of the intended effect by heightening suspicion and resistance. Denying children entry to school when they aren't dangerous to anyone else is poor public policy, said Debbie Saslow, director of cancer control intervention, HPV and women's cancers at the American Cancer Society. "Let's say you're in Tennessee and 80 percent of boys are not vaccinated and 60 percent of girls aren't and you open school, and suddenly you have to keep more than half the school home," she said. "They have low SAT scores and low grades and now you're making them sit at home? You'd be guaranteeing yourself a backlash." Those who track immunization rates say mandatory immunization only helps marginally and, in the case of HPV, only in places where the rates were not abysmally low. "Mandates are a last resort after you've built consensus that they are a good thing to do," Orenstein said. At least a dozen states have passed laws mandating HPV education (Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Texas and Washington). But those expert in HPV doubt the laws have had much impact. Instead, they believe the best way to raise immunization rates is to better educate health care providers. Much of that education occurs through a federally supported process: Through AFIX (assessment, feedback, incentives and exchange), state and local health officials visit pediatricians and internists who routinely administer immunizations to examine their procedures and suggest improvements. To varying degrees, most states participate in the process. One promising strategy is for practitioners to send out reminders that children are due for their vaccinations or that they failed to come in for an appointment when they were due. Health policy researchers say "reminder and recall" notices are one of the most reliable means of keeping patients up to date on vaccinations. Yet the practice is still not that widespread among doctors. "Somehow our dentists and vets know how to do it, but I never get anything like that from my doctor," Orenstein said. Explore further Vaccine has cut HPV infection rate in teen girls by two-thirds: study 2016 Stateline.org Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Georgia developing close relations with Azerbaijan President Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili has met with the President of the Rumsfeld Foundation and former US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, within the frameworks of his working visit to the US, Georgia Online reported.At the meeting, Margvelashvili said in particular that Georgia continues to develop close relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey. Joint projects are related to both energy carriers from the Caspian to the Black Sea and the transport and logistics fields, he said.The Lapis Lazuli Corridor is quite an important project, and there is active consideration going on today with Turkmenistan in connection with this project, which includes Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, said President Margvelashvili.During the meeting, the parties discussed the Southern Gas Corridor project, which envisages the supply of Azerbaijani gas to Europe via Georgia and Turkey.The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages the transportation of gas from the Caspian Sea region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey.At the initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijans Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to the Turkish and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline. No Georgian Dream coalition for new parliamentary race By Messenger Staff The Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party says it will take part in the upcoming October elections independently, separate from the other political parties of the Georgian Dream (GD) coalition created prior to the 2012 parliamentary race, when GD replaced the nine-year rule of the United National Movement (UNM) party.The statement of Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili came after the decision of one of the parties of the GD coalition, the Republicans, last week with the reason to end the inter-coalition confrontations and not to create any awkwardness for the GD party which now wishes to participate in the elections independently.The head of the GD party, Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said those who hold senior positions in the Cabinet or other state bodies would retain their posts until the elections for stability to be ensured in the country.It was also announced that the parliamentary majority will not split before the race.The GD coalition was initially formed by ex-Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili prior to the 2012 elections, who is frequently labeled as the unofficial ruler of the country by the opposition and the civil sector.It was stated from the very beginning that the coalition was composed of parties with quite different approaches but their unity was necessary that time in order to defeat the UNM.At that time, the GD coalition was composed of the Georgian Dream party, the Republicans, the Free Democrats, the Conservatives, the Peoples Party, the National Forum and the Industrials.The Peoples party was the first faction to quit the coalition in 2013, as it had different viewpoints.In 2014 the Free Democrats followed suit in the wake of the scandal related to ex-Defence Minister and party leader Irakli Alasania, after a number of MoD employees were detained for allegedly misspending budgetary funds.Alasania stated it was a black PR stunt against him as he was striving towards Georgias rapid integration into NATO. He accused Ivanishvili of being behind the campaign against him and said that Georgias European course was at risk.Currently, the GD party occupies 44 seats in Parliament, the Republicans have eight, while the Conservatives, National Forum and Industrials all have six.Prior to the Republicans statement, a confrontation emerged between the Republicans and the Industrials, when the head of Industrials, Gogi Topadze, accused Defence Minister Tinatin Khidasheli - a representative of the Republicans - of rigging by-elections in one of Georgia's regions.No violations of the electoral code were detected by a subsequent investigation.Khidasheli said during the confrontation that the Republicans would stand strong, and unlike the Free Democrats they will not quit either the coalition or any senior posts.However, they will still quit the coalition prior to the elections. The National Forum and the Industrials have not yet announced their intentions, while the Conservatives still wish to be with the GD party.According to the current polls, none of individual parties enjoy high ratings. It will be difficult for former members of the coalition to win seats in the legislative body independently.The GD party will have to make realistic offers and produce a completely renewed team to achieve some success, as many of its current members have incurred irritation amongst the public.There is still time left before the elections and new coalitions or parties might yet emerge for what promises to be an interesting parliamentary race. The News in Brief Bidzina Ivanishvili donates 87 trees to Tsikhisdziri park Former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili donated 87 trees to a newly developed park in Tsikhisdziri in the Adjara region. Various species of trees will be planted on four thousand square meters of land. The trees were brought from Italy by Bidzina Ivanishvili. A total of twelve species are amongst the collection. A new park will be built with new plants, lights and pavements. Bidzina Ivanishvili promised the local population that he would build a park, said an engineer of the Zimo company, which will build the park. (IPN) Tbilisi plans to regulate its taxis to eliminate discomfort Tbilisi City Hall has begun work on new taxi regulations that will eliminate the discomfort of taking taxis in the capital. Mayor Davit Narmania said on Friday that taking a taxi will become more secure and comfortable. The new regulations are not yet ready, but a spokesperson for City Hall told DFWatch that three meetings have been held with experts, representatives of taxi companies and members of City Hall over what kind of standards there will be for drivers and cars and how to serve clients properly. We have so far only outlines concerning security, driver and cars. This means that the car has to be well maintained and passengers should be secure, while the driver has to have a health and drug check. Those are the issues which we have discussed, however the final document is not yet ready, City Hall representatives said. Last year, there were media reports about the possibility of establishing a system for licensing taxi drivers, but Tbilisi City Hall claims licensing is yet to be mentioned during the discussions. Discussions dealt with how to register taxi drivers, how many taxis should serve the capital, and how many of them should be individually or company owned. (df watch) UN Secretary General's press office does not confirm reports on UN Secretary Generals possible visit to Georgia in April UN Secretary General's press office does not confirm reports on UN Secretary Generals possible visit to Georgia in April. As UN envoy Nikola Krastev told IPN, the date of Ban Ki-moons possible visit is not known at this time. The Russian media reported that at the end of April, the UN Secretary-General plans to visit Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. Prior to that, on March 11, Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Davit Zalkaliani said that Ban Ki-moon would travel to Georgia for an official visit, though an exact date has yet to be announced. (ipn) Dinner with Obama: President Margvelashvili highlights Georgias role in world nuclear security Georgias President Giorgi Margvelashvili has spoken at the Nuclear Security Summit dinner hosted by US President Barack Obama in Washington on April 1. Margvelashvili addressed more than 50 world leaders and talked about what efforts his country had made in order to ensure nuclear security. The President said one of the worlds greatest challenges was the risk that nuclear materials and technologies could end up in terrorist hands. In that context, he briefly elaborated the steps Georgia had taken since the last Hague Summit to prevent nuclear terrorism and to further meet international obligations. "We passed the new Law over Control on Military and Dual Use Items that brought Georgias legislation on strategic export control in line with EU standards, he said. "At the same time, we adopted the new Law on Radioactive Waste, and strengthened state control over nuclear and radiation safety and security. Also, Georgia formed a new Agency for Radioactive Waste Management to operate both centralised storage and disposal facilities. Margvelashvili stressed that according to the agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Georgia approved the 2015-2019 Integrated Nuclear Security Support Plan (INSSP), and elaborated the national strategy and action plan to reduce chemical, biological, radiation and nuclear (CBRN) risks. "And most importantly, as considered in the communique of the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit, we repatriated enriched uranium with strong support of the US and International Atomic Energy Agency, he said. "Consequently, today I represent Georgia as a non-nuclear state. Margvelashvili added, however, the proliferation of the WMD (weapons of mass destruction)-related materials and technologies remained a subject of serious concern for Georgia. "Taking into account our proximity to the regions that pose a high risk of proliferation, Georgias growing transit potential could become a matter of increased interest for certain international criminal or terrorist groups, he said. Margvelashvili also highlighted that both the regional and global nuclear security could suffer substantially without placing the respective control mechanisms and international presence over the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region (South Ossetia), which currently were beyond the effective control of the legitimate central authorities, and where international control mechanisms did not extend due to the ongoing Russian occupation. "To be specific, in recent years we had several recorded attempts of smuggling nuclear and radioactive materials via Georgias occupied regions, and that further amplifies the sense of danger, Margvelashvili said. "Fortunately, these illegal activities were duly prevented by Georgian law enforcement agencies, he added. "However, let me once again underscore that in the absence of the international presence on Georgia's occupied territories, it has become virtually impossible to conduct any type of verification activities on the ground. As a result, the risk of proliferation of the WMD-related materials in and from these occupied regions has tremendously increased. The President reiterated Georgias stance as conveyed at the Hague Summit, that this concern was not for individual countries alone but for the international community as a whole. "Thereby, we urge you to join us in paying this challenge the attention it deserves, and immediately address this pressing problem, he said. (Agenda.ge) Broward and Palm Beach counties choose their 2016 GOP presidential delegates Saturday while Miami-Dade chooses delegates April 16th. Here is a look at what is at stake this year from William March at the Tampa Bay Times and Amy Sherman at the Miami Herald: Alan Hays, a Republican state senator from Umatilla, has never been interested in national political conventions, dismissing them as just a formality. He didnt even bother to drive to Tampa for his partys 2012 convention. But this year is different. Hays, state co-chairman for Ted Cruz, is considering applying for one of Floridas 99 delegate slots for the July convention in Cleveland. If it does go beyond the third ballot, I want to be there to vote for Cruz, Hays said. Turmoil in the primary and the increasing chance of a contested convention are sparking unusual interest in what is typically a little-noticed exercise in political log-rolling and rewarding party faithful: choosing the states convention delegates. Instead of just being props in a ceremonial coronation of a partys pre-ordained presidential nominee, delegates this year may actually make a history-changing decision. Heres the bad news, however, for those itching to participate: If youre not a long-time, committed party activist, you can probably forget it. Even Hays fellow Cruz co-chairman, state Rep. Neil Combee of Polk City, applied and got turned down. Keep reading our story -- including about delegate selection in South Florida -- here. @jamesmartinrose With most political enthusiasts' attention riveted on the divisive GOP presidential race, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is urging the Democratic White House hopefuls to tone down their rhetoric. Wasserman Schultz, who lives in Weston when she isn't in Washington or traveling the country as head of the Democratic National Committee, was asked about the increasingly sharp attacks against each other in recent days by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "I think both campaigns really need to be careful about making sure that we don't do lasting damage," Wasserman Schultz told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program Friday morning. "I don't think we're at that point, but I think it is important to be careful that at the end of the primary process, when we have a presumptive nominee, that we're able to easily reunify." In advance of the April 19 primary in New York, which Clinton represented for six years as a U.S. senator before heading the State Department, Clinton has challenged Sanders' allegiance to the Democratic Party and questioned his preparedness to be president. On Wednesday, Clinton told MSNBC that Sanders "himself doesn't consider himself to be a Democrat." Sanders, who lists his party for Senate votes as Independent but caucuses with Democrats, has at various times in his career described himself as a Socialist or a Democratic Socialist. Clinton also criticized Sanders' repeated presidential campaign calls to break up big banks, again comparing her record as a pragmatist who gets things done. "You can't really help people if you don't know how to do what you are campaigning on saying you want to do," Clinton said. Sanders responded that night at a rally in Philadelphia. "She has been saying lately that she thinks I am quote-unquote 'not qualified to be president,'" Sanders declared. "Let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton, I don't believe that she is qualified if she is, though her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special-interest funds. I don't think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don't think you are qualified if you support the Panama free trade agreement." Clinton didn't actually say the phrase Sanders attributed to her about his lack of qualifications, but that phrase or similar ones ran in headlines in some news accounts of her comments. Despite the sharp exchanges, Wasserman Schultz said it doesn't compare to "the food fight and the civil war that continues to rage on the Republican side." Wasserman Schultz, who some Sanders supporters have accused of favoring Clinton in the Democratic race, also said that Clinton and then-Sen. Barack Obama had a more hard-hitting contest in their presidential primary campaign in 2008. "Right now I would characterize the tenor and tone of this party to be nothing like the intensity of where we (Democrats) were eight years ago in 2008 between then-Sens. Clinton and Obama," she said. After Obama gained the Democratic nomination in that primary race and then defeated Sen. John McCain to gain the White House, he chose Clinton as secretary of state. The two established a close relationship, and she has been trumpeting his achievements during her current run. On the Republican side, billionaire businessman Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz have been engaged in a nasty war of words for weeks, with the fight intensifying two weeks ago when the Republican front-runner tweeted an unflattering photograph of Cruz's wife Heidi Cruz. @ByKristenMClark Republican Gov. Rick Scott's political committee launched an online ad today in an attempt to turn the tables on a woman who scolded him and called him an "a--hole" at a Gainesville Starbucks this week. In a now infamous confrontation, Cara Jennings wanted to know why Scott approved legislation regulating abortion providers and she criticized him for opposing Medicaid expansion in Florida. Before leaving the coffee shop empty-handed, Scott at the time offered an unrelated talking point that "we've got a million jobs" in Florida. (Part of the confrontation was captured on video, prompting it to go viral Wednesday. Watch it here.) "A million jobs? Great. Who here has a great job?!" Jennings yelled at Scott. "Well, almost everybody," claims the new 60-second ad from "Let's Get to Work." The ad mocks Jennings by simultaneously attempting to reinforce Scott's jobs claim and demonizing her for the outburst. Scott's ad refers to Jennings, a former Lake Worth city councilwoman, as a "latte liberal" and "terribly rude woman" and sarcastically points out that she's a self-proclaimed "anarchist," who has in the past refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance. "That woman clearly has a problem," the narrator says, before noting that 9,300 jobs have been created in the Gainesville area since Scott took office in 2011 and the unemployment rate there was cut in half. In answer to Jennings' question, the narrator concludes that "almost everybody" has a great job in Florida -- "except those who are sitting around coffee shops, demanding public assistance, surfing the Internet and cursing at customers who come in." Watch the ad here: Photo credit: Screen-grab from Let's Get to Work / YouTube @ByKristenMClark Florida's legislative session will get an early start in 2018, just like this year. Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill today that moves the 2018 session's start to Jan. 9. The Florida Constitution allows the Legislature to start session early in even-numbered years. Otherwise, session begins on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March. (The 2017 session will start March 7.) Lawmakers were divided in moving the session date up for 2018. SB 7076 passed the Senate by a 27-11 vote and the House by a 89-28 vote. During Senate debate, some senators questioned the cost and need for having an earlier session. Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, responded at the time: "When youre on spring break with your kids this year, youll understand the significance of it." Scott also signed 16 other bills into law today, including one that helps the families of law enforcement and first responders who are killed on the job. SB 7012 -- sponsored by Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Margate, and Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-North Fort Myers -- provides the deceased individual's monthly salary to their beneficiaries for their lifetime. The expanded benefit applies to law enforcement officers, firefighters, corrections officers, emergency medical technicians, paramedics and probation officers. The benefit takes effect July 1 and retroactively applies to eligible individuals who were killed in the line of duty on or after July 1, 2013. "This legislation will ensure that these brave Floridians have the peace of mind knowing that their family will have financial support if the unthinkable were to ever happen," Scott said in a statement today. Here were all of the new laws Scott approved today. He still has 26 bills pending on his desk from the 2016 session. Looking to take over former presidential candidate Marco Rubios soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat, U.S. Rep. David Jolly wants to educate voters about his conservative bona fides in Congress including his opposition to Common Core. The Indian Shores Republican has been in the House of Representatives for two years after winning a 2014 special election to replace his mentor, the late Rep. C.W. Bill Young. In that short span, he said, he has helped change federal education policy. "Last year, I worked with my colleagues to end funding for federal Race to the Top grants, which require participating states to adopt the Common Core standards as a condition for receiving federal funding," he said on his campaign website. The Common Core State Standards are a set of shared guidelines in English and math designed to prepare students for college and to unify educational goals nationwide. Theyve become an unpopular subject with many conservatives. We decided to test Jollys assertion that states had to adopt the Common Core in order to win federal grants. See what Joshua Gillin of PolitiFact Florida found. @MichaelAuslen Lt. Col. Glenn Sutphin, the longtime chief of staff and top lobbyist to the Department of Military Affairs, will be the interim executive director of the Florida Department of Veterans' Affairs, Gov. Rick Scott announced Friday. Sutphin, a 30-year veteran of the Florida National Guard, has been with the Department of Military Affairs since 1999. "He served alongside the brave men and women of our state in the Florida National Guard and has dedicated his career to not only making sure all Floridians are safe, but also making Florida the most veteran friendly state in the nation," Scott said in a release. Mike Prendergast resigned from the Department of Veterans' Affairs in March, one of several Scott agency heads to leave in recent months. Sutphin's appointment is subject to approval by the Cabinet, which meets April 26. Usifu Bangura felt his skin vibrate when he stepped off the plane in Freetown and the 90-degree air pummeled his body. "That's where my skin feels best," said Bangura, a native of Sierra Leone. But when the Missoula man awoke in the morning and looked across the city of nearly 1 million, the poverty struck him. "This is where my mother wanted to take me away from. It opened my eyes a lot more," said Bangura, wearing a hand-embroidered shirt from Sierra Leone. On Thursday, Bangura arrived back in Montana from a month in the small west African country where his mother gave him up for adoption in 2004. Eventually, he landed in Montana, and last year, after learning about the Ebola crisis, he pledged to return to Sierra Leone to take water filters and discover other ways to help. He not only fulfilled his mission overseas, he has a team including a lawyer and professionals working in international development ready to help him set up a nonprofit, the Bangura Project, to continue the work. "I really want to put my heart and soul into this nonprofit and this project," Bangura said. In Sierra Leone, he ate much rice and cassava, bobbed and weaved through traffic in a place with no road system, and found appreciation for all the things his life in the U.S. has given him that he wouldn't have in Africa. "I'm thankful of the resources I have here and the opportunities I was given here," he said. *** At first, Bangura didn't know if he'd find his mother alive, but he connected with Fatu Fhanko prior to his trip, and he also learned of an older brother he didn't know he had. His mother had given him up for adoption along with a couple of younger siblings who also landed in the United States. Last month, Bangura's older brother, Ibrahim, met him at the airport, and they had a moment of understanding when they locked eyes. Bangura is tall, and his brother is short from malnutrition, but they recognized each other as family. "We laughed when we first saw each other," said Bangura, 19. A couple of days later, after a three-hour cab ride to the village of Mambolo, he embraced his mother for the first time since he left Sierra Leone. "We hugged each other a lot. It's one of those things I can't get out of my head," Bangura said. Then, he asked her a question. "Where do you get your water?" "Come with me," she said. All his life, Bangura remembered the long hot walks his mom would take with him as a child strapped to her back in search of a spring or river far from the city. It was the reason he knew he wanted to take LifeStraws to Sierra Leone. On the tour last month, his mom walked him down to a swamp, a stagnant waterbed about a mile away from the village. "I said, 'This water is not very clean,' " Bangura said. "She said, 'I know, but this is the only way we get water.' "It's another heartbreaking thing to see, but it's just the reality." On his trip, supported by individual donors as well as the the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation and Axiom of Missoula, Bangura delivered six LifeStraws, each with the capacity to support a village. He handed the first one to a woman named Neyata, a mother whose source of drinking water for herself and her baby was murky white and filled with particles. She was a relative in Kambia, outside Freetown. "It's heartbreaking to know people drink that water, and it's the only way they survive," he said. *** One of Bangura's objectives during his stay of a month and couple of days in Sierra Leone was to conduct a needs assessment in villages, with questions about sanitation, water, roads and transportation, education and electricity. Now that he's back in the U.S., Bangura and the professionals working with him to launch the nonprofit will evaluate the assessments and make a plan to help based on the needs. Already, Bangura has seen that solar panels would be a major contribution. He said Sierra Leone lacks major infrastructure, including electricity. "The children want to study at night, but they don't have lights," he said. Bangura's return to Sierra Leone will depend on money. His mom would like to visit him in Montana as well, and he would like her to do so. Seeing her was bittersweet, he said. He was happy to know she was alive, but also disappointed to see the poverty in which she had to live. On his trip, he visited the metal shack where he grew up, a structure just 10 feet by 15 feet, and he returned to the orphanage that took him in, a place that's still in operation. He recognized some of the teens there as ones who were children when he was a child, and they quizzed him on America. "Have you been to New York?" "Have you been to L.A.?" "I said, 'I'm from Montana.' " BUTTE Police arrested retired Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill who said he fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden for driving under the influence early Friday, according to the Butte-Silver Bow County sheriff's department. O'Neill, 39, was found sleeping behind the wheel of a vehicle at the Town Pump at Montana and Platinum streets about 2:30 a.m. The vehicle was running and the tail lights were on, said Undersheriff George Skuletich. Police officers woke him up by opening the car door. They said he appeared under the influence confused and somewhat lethargic. He failed a field sobriety test typically given to suspected alcohol-impaired drivers, and other tests at the county jail. The undersheriff said O'Neill refused a breath test and was released from jail at 4:26 a.m. on a $685 bond. County prosecutors charged O'Neill with misdemeanor DUI, a first offense. He was issued a notice to appear at an arraignment in Butte city court by Tuesday. Four police officers responded to the scene after five to six individuals alerted the convenience store clerk that a man was sleeping in a running car. According to the report, O'Neill said he had one drink, then denied it. He also said he may have taken Ambien, a prescription drug most often used to treat insomnia. Alcohol was not detected on his breath by police and was not found in the vehicle. O'Neill told authorities he had flown to Butte from overseas, initially saying from Europe and later saying Central America. Skuletich said reports show that although O'Neill was "very cooperative," officers determined he was unable to operate a motor vehicle safely. His Texas driver's license was taken by police, and he was issued a 72-hour temporary driving permit. Because O'Neill refused a breath test, he faces a six-month suspension of his driver's license, according to state law. "The facts are that I took a prescribed sleep aid to help with long-standing severe insomnia," O'Neill said in a statement released Friday through a public relations firm. "While the timing was bad and I highly regret this decision, I am innocent of the charge and have entered a plea of not guilty. "I am confident I will soon be cleared of this matter," he said. Sheriff Ed Lester issued this statement on the arrest: "I have great respect for Rob O'Neill and what he has done for our country. That being said, this incident was handled the same way as any other DUI investigation. Mr. O'Neill has the same presumption of innocence as any other citizen. We will let the county attorney and the court proceed from this point." O'Neill's 40th birthday party, open to the public, has been in the works for some time, and is planned Saturday at The Depot on South Arizona Street. According to the Associated Press, O'Neill began publicly discussing his role in the 2011 bin Laden raid two years ago. He told the Associated Press in a 2014 interview that the U.S. public had a right to know more details about the killing of the al-Qaida leader. Pentagon officials previously said it is not clear whose shots killed bin Laden. O'Neill has made numerous speeches across the country since 2014. O'Neill, who joined the Navy in 1995, participated in the 2009 rescue of the captain of a merchant ship taken hostage by Somali pirates, a mission that was the subject of the Tom Hanks movie "Captain Phillips." He also helped rescue the survivor of a four-man team attacked in 2005 while tracking a Taliban leader in Afghanistan, which was featured in the 2013 film "Lone Survivor." O'Neill was born and raised in Butte. *** The Associated Press contributed to this report. WASHINGTON Jacob J. Lew, President Obamas second-term Treasury secretary, has kept such a low profile in these relatively placid economic times, compared with his crisis-era predecessor, that it seemed he might end up best known for his pending decision to pick a woman for portraiture on the $10 bill. No more. This week Mr. Lew announced new tax regulations that helped foil the biggest tax-dodging deal to date Pfizers pharmaceutical merger with Allergan, based in low-tax Ireland and will probably discourage more corporate inversions that send American corporate headquarters overseas. Last week he took to both television and a prestigious think tank to define the future of the United States sanctions policies, after the Treasurys moves to unwind some sanctions on Iran, for accepting nuclear limitations, while imposing others on that country and North Korea. Mr. Lew is leading Mr. Obamas history-making re-engagement with Cuba as well as efforts to resolve Puerto Ricos financial crisis. And on Monday, he will deliver another administration policy manifesto America and the Global Economy: The Case for U.S. Leadership at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, and in a 5,000-word essay in Foreign Affairs magazine. Those events, culminating with this weeks surprisingly muscular tax clampdown and his own public relations efforts, have raised Mr. Lews profile higher than any time since he became secretary three years ago. That has brought praise from Democrats, and harsh criticism from Republicans and some business groups, which say the Treasury is overreaching its authority and damaging the economy. BANGKOK A parliamentary committee in Malaysia on Thursday called for an investigation of the former head of the countrys troubled state investment fund and said that the funds advisory board, led by Prime Minister Najib Razak, should be abolished. Within hours of the committees report, the members of the board of directors of the fund, known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB, said they would offer their resignation to the funds owner, the Ministry of Finance. The ministry is headed by Mr. Najib, who serves as finance minister in addition to his other roles. This has been a difficult decision to take, but we believe it is the right thing to do, given the circumstances, in order to facilitate any follow-up investigations as recommended by the committee, the board said in a statement. Critics and published reports have accused Mr. Najib of depositing hundreds of millions of dollars in his personal bank accounts, much of it from 1MDB. When fifth graders asked their guest about whether he had pets (he does, dogs and cats), he went on a really hilarious riff about mosquitoes, who, he said, dont have any sense of appreciation. He said when he is in a good mood and he knows he is not sick, he will allow mosquitoes to feed on his blood (since he is the Dalai Lama) and said their whole body becomes red and then they fly, but there is no indication of appreciation, a feeling that so provoked him that he had approached scientists to inquire whether insects are even capable of gratitude. He said that, as he gets old, his cat is also getting old, and he imitated a doddering old cat, and it was very funny. At some point, it seemed like he happily might go on talking for three or four hours. He was in the middle of telling a parable about a Jain monk from the sixth century B.C. when an administrator interrupted him and he guffawed. (His laugh is alternately a snicker, a chuckle or a fully liberated guffaw.) He said, I am always telling my audience that once this persons mouth opens, then he will blah blah blah continuously, that is my weakness. Then he just kept barreling on very cheerfully for another quarter of an hour. He also said some serious, important stuff, which may have gone over my 5-year-olds head. That the institution of the Dalai Lama is outdated, and emerged from the feudal system, and that he is proud to have ended it (debatable whether this has really happened). He criticized Sharia law, which he said was created for a nomadic civilization. He said the same thing about the Hindu caste system that it was a remnant of a different age that must be abandoned, left behind. Copyright 2022 HT Digital Streams Ltd All Right Reserved CLOSE CALL A .45-caliber bullet was found in a 2006 Ford van parked across from the Student Union Building at Montana Tech shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday. The bullet traveled through a rear window of the van and was found in the rear passenger area. Police say the vehicle belonged to a male cook who works on campus. No injuries were reported and no foul play is suspected. Police believe the bullet was from someone possibly doing target practice behind Tech. WANTED MAN Patrick Peterson, 32, of Butte was arrested on the 700 row of Silver Bow Homes on Thursday. He was wanted on two misdemeanor criminal contempt warrants issued in Butte city court. SNOOZING MAN Jason Acebedo, 40, was found sleeping on the floor in the lobby area adjacent to the Uptown post office, 60 W. Galena St., about 7:30 p.m. Thursday. The homeless man is facing a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass to property. VIOLATION Harold Mitchell, 52, of Butte was arrested after police say he was walking with a woman who had filed a restraining order against him in the area of Platinum and Montana streets Thursday night. He is facing a violation of protection order and criminal possession of drug paraphernalia, both misdemeanors. Police arrested retired Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill who said he fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden for driving under the influence early Friday, according to the Butte-Silver Bow County sheriff's department. O'Neill, 39, was found sleeping behind the wheel of a blue 2005 Nissan Sentra at the Town Pump, Montana and Platinum, about 2:30 a.m. The vehicle was running and the tail lights were on, said Undersheriff George Skuletich. Police officers woke him up by opening the car door. They said he appeared under the influence confused and somewhat lethargic. He failed a field sobriety test typically given to suspected alcohol-impaired drivers and other tests at the county jail. The undersheriff said O'Neill refused a Breathalyzer test and was released from jail at 4:26 a.m. on a $685 bond. County prosecutors charged O'Neill with misdemeanor DUI, a first offense. He was issued a notice to appear at an arraignment in Butte city court by Tuesday. Four police officers responded to the scene after five to six individuals alerted the convenience store clerk that a man was sleeping in a running car. According to the report, O'Neill said he had one drink, then denied it. He also said he may have taken Ambien, a prescription drug most often used to treat insomnia. Alcohol was not detected on his breath by police and was not found in the vehicle. O'Neill told authorities he had flown to Butte from overseas, saying initially it was from Europe and then saying Central America. Skuletich said reports show that although O'Neill was "very cooperative," officers determined he was unable to operate a motor vehicle safely. His Texas driver's license was taken by police, and he was issued a 72-hour temporary driving permit. Because O'Neill refused a breath test, he faces a six-month suspension of his driver's license, according to state law. The firm that manages O'Neill's motivational speaking engagements CRC Public Relations in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to comment Friday afternoon. Sheriff Ed Lester issued this statement on the arrest: "I have great respect for Rob O'Neill and what he has done for our country. That being said, this incident was handled the same way as any other DUI investigation. Mr. O'Neill has the same presumption of innocence as any other citizen. We will let the county attorney and the court proceed from this point." O'Neill's 40th birthday party, open to the public, has been in the works for some time and is planned Saturday at The Depot on South Arizona Street. According to the Associated Press, O'Neill began publicly discussing his role in the 2011 bin Laden raid two years ago. He told The Associated Press in a 2014 interview that the U.S. public had a right to know more details about the killing of the al-Qaida leader. Pentagon officials previously said it is not clear whose shots killed bin Laden. O'Neill has made numerous speeches across the country since 2014. O'Neill, who joined the Navy in 1995, participated in the 2009 rescue of the captain of a merchant ship taken hostage by Somali pirates, a mission that was the subject of the Tom Hanks movie "Captain Phillips." He also helped rescue the survivor of a four-man team attacked in 2005 while tracking a Taliban leader in Afghanistan, which operation was featured in the 2013 film "Lone Survivor." O'Neill was born and raised in Butte. Despite potential hazards, Anaconda has seen increased interest in the economic potential of the 130 acres of black slag, highly visible along Highway 1 east of the city. Anaconda Superfund coordinator Carl Nyman says its only a matter of time before someone develops the slag. Charlie Coleman, Environmental Protection Agency project manager for Anacondas Superfund site, said the slag, by itself, is not dangerous unless it is broken up into finer material. Six workers at a U.S. Minerals plant that converts Anacondas slag into roofing granules and blasting abrasives were exposed to close to five times the permissible level for arsenic for prolonged periods, according to the Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health findings. OSHA cited 16 violations against the plant and slapped nearly $107,000 in fines on the company for not protecting its workers. OSHA reported that it found arsenic in the workers microwave. U.S. Minerals has 15 days to contest the citations. The Illinois-based company said via email Wednesday that it does not agree with OSHAs findings and intends to fight the allegations. OSHA recommended the plant provide workers with respirators to better protect them. The workers wore masks that were ineffective in protecting the workers from potentially inhaling arsenic-laden dust, according to OSHA. U.S. Minerals would not respond to further questions over whether it will provide respirators to its six employees at the plant during the 15-day period the company has to contest OSHAs findings. President Michael Johnston said via email he has no further comment. Coleman said he was not familiar with OSHAs citations against the plant, but he said it is possible the workers are encountering other deposits within the slag, such as old tailings. The slag pile is the waste byproduct from nearly 100 years of smelting copper. The pile, which runs for approximately a mile along Highway 1, contains around 26 million cubic yards of slag. Coleman said EPA will not look into the additional material, such as old tailings, the workers may be finding in the slag pile. EPA provided U.S. Minerals with data about the site, and it is up to the company to protect its workers, Coleman said. U.S. Minerals leases the slag pile from Atlantic Richfield Company, which is the responsible party for the Superfund site in Anaconda. EPA deemed the slag as both historic and available for economic reuse instead of waste material. In December 2015, Missoula-based Rick Tabish, who is known for receiving a conviction later overturned for the murder of Las Vegas casino executive Ted Binion in 1999, approached Anaconda-Deer Lodge County. He was interested in building a plant to turn the slag into proppant, a material used for oil and natural gas fracking. But Tabish, who was expected to give a presentation to the March board meeting for the Mill Creeks Tax Incremental Financing Industrial District, did not show. The board tries to promote development in the Mill Creek area near the slag pile. Despite the recent controversy around the U.S. Minerals plant, Tabish told the Standard Thursday that the project is still moving forward and has been held up only due to internal legal steps the company has to perform. Tabish previously told the Standard he believes his plant, if it gets going, will create up to 700 jobs for the community. Everything is going forward and moving as fast as possible, Tabish said. Usifu Bangura felt his skin vibrate when he stepped off the plane in Freetown and the 90-degree air pummeled his body. "That's where my skin feels best," said Bangura, a native of Sierra Leone. But when the Missoula man awoke in the morning and looked across the city of nearly 1 million, the poverty struck him. "This is where my mother wanted to take me away from. It opened my eyes a lot more," said Bangura, wearing a hand-embroidered shirt from Sierra Leone. On Thursday, Bangura arrived back in Montana from a month in the small west African country where his mother gave him up for adoption in 2004. Eventually, he landed in Montana, and last year, after learning about the Ebola crisis, he pledged to return to Sierra Leone to take water filters and discover other ways to help. He not only fulfilled his mission overseas, he has a team including a lawyer and professionals working in international development ready to help him set up a nonprofit, the Bangura Project, to continue the work. "I really want to put my heart and soul into this nonprofit and this project," Bangura said. In Sierra Leone, he ate much rice and cassava, bobbed and weaved through traffic in a place with no road system, and found appreciation for all the things his life in the U.S. has given him that he wouldn't have in Africa. "I'm thankful of the resources I have here and the opportunities I was given here," he said. At first, Bangura didn't know if he'd find his mother alive, but he connected with Fatu Fhanko prior to his trip, and he also learned of an older brother he didn't know he had. His mother had given him up for adoption along with a couple of younger siblings who also landed in the United States. Last month, Bangura's older brother Ibrahim met him at the airport, and they had a moment of understanding when they locked eyes. Bangura is tall, and his brother is short from malnutrition, but they recognized each other as family. "We laughed when we first saw each other," said Bangura, 19. A couple of days later, after a three-hour cab ride to the village of Mambolo, he embraced his mother for the first time since he left Sierra Leone. "We hugged each other a lot. It's one of those things I can't get out of my head," Bangura said. Then, he asked her a question. "Where do you get your water?" "Come with me," she said. All his life, Bangura remembered the long hot walks his mom would take with him as a child strapped to her back in search of a spring or river far from the city. It was the reason he knew he wanted to take LifeStraws to Sierra Leone. On the tour last month, his mom walked him down to a swamp, a stagnant waterbed about a mile away from the village. "I said, 'This water is not very clean,'" Bangura said. "She said, 'I know, but this is the only way we get water.' "It's another heartbreaking thing to see, but it's just the reality." On his trip, supported by individual donors as well as the the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation and Axiom of Missoula, Bangura delivered six LifeStraws, each with the capacity to support a village. He handed the first one to a woman named Neyata, a mother whose source of drinking water for herself and her baby was murky white and filled with particles. She was a relative in Kambia, outside Freetown. "It's heartbreaking to know people drink that water, and it's the only way they survive," he said. One of Bangura's objectives during his stay of a month and couple of days in Sierra Leone was to conduct a needs assessment in villages, with questions about sanitation, water, roads and transportation, education, and electricity. Now that he's back in the U.S., Bangura and the professionals working with him to launch the nonprofit will evaluate the assessments and make a plan to help based on the needs. Already, Bangura has seen that solar panels would be a major contribution. He said Sierra Leone lacks major infrastructure, including electricity. "The children want to study at night, but they don't have lights," he said. Bangura's return to Sierra Leone will depend on money. His mom would like to visit him in Montana as well, and he would like her to do so. Seeing her was bittersweet, he said. He was happy to know she was alive but also disappointed to see the poverty in which she had to live. On his trip, he visited the metal shack where he grew up, a structure just 10 feet by 15 feet, and he returned to the orphanage that took him in, a place that's still in operation. He recognized some of the teens there as ones who were children when he was a child, and they quizzed him on America. "Have you been to New York?" "Have you been to L.A.?" "I said, 'I'm from Montana.'" Two Australian men who were in Butte last week for a college mining competition are recovering after being shot early Tuesday in an apparent drug deal gone wrong in the heart of New Orleans, according to The Times-Picayune and a newspaper in Perth, Australia. According to perthnow.com.au, the victims have been identified as Western Australia's Curtin University students Jake Rovacsek and Toben Clements. The students were shot after reportedly asking to buy drugs in a bar and then not having the money to pay for them, police said. However, a relative of one of the two men is disputing the police account that the pair tried to buy drugs, according to the New Orleans newspaper. The unnamed family member told Australian television news outlet Nine News that the students thought they had received an invitation to a party, a narrative he said is supported by others who were with them prior to the shooting. New Orleans police said the pair asked a stranger at a Bourbon Street club for drugs and that stranger, working with two others, set the young men up to be robbed. According to police and the Perth newspaper account: One of their attackers offered a frightening warning before bullets were fired. "You know what time it is?" one of the assailants told the students. The victims, aged 21 and 23 from the university's School of Mines, were at The Swamp bar in Bourbon Street at about 4 a.m. when they approached "an unknown black male," New Orleans police said. The students asked about purchasing drugs from him and then left the bar and followed the man to a four-door, dark-colored sedan where a driver was waiting inside. He drove them across the Mississippi River to Algiers, a residential suburb. "The driver took the two victims toward Algiers, and along the way, he told them that it would cost several hundred dollars to purchase drugs," police said in a statement. "The victims told the driver they did not have the money available. "When they arrived at LB Landry Avenue and Shepard Street, the pair said they exited the vehicle and were approached by another unknown male who demanded their money. "When they told him they didn't have it, the unknown male shot them both and then jumped in the vehicle with the unknown driver and fled the scene." One victim was shot in the stomach and the other in the chest. Both were in stable condition in the hospital. The students were shot in New Orleans just days after taking part in the International Mining Competition which was hosted by Montana Tech this year. Detectives have called on locals to help identify the three suspects involved in the incident. New Orleans police spokesman Dave Badie said that they were still searching for the shooter. Badie said he did not know what type of drugs the Australians were trying to buy. He said detectives were seeking surveillance footage to help with the investigation. "We are trying to get surveillance video, but we don't have anything like that," he said. Bourbon Street tourists voiced concerns knowing that criminals are preying on visitors, especially when thousands are expected to flood the city for this weekend's French Quarter Festival. "Every time someone tries to come talk to you, you've got to think are they really being friendly, or are they trying to be friendly to get something out of you?" said tourist Aikehl McTush to Fox 8 Live. "You just have to be smart about what you're doing." Curtin vice-chancellor Deborah Terry confirmed the shooting saying the WA School of Mines students were in stable condition in hospital. Professor Terry said the duo were in the U.S. as part of the WASM Wombats team which was competing in the 38th International Mining Competition in Butte. The Wombats won the event, making it their second straight men's world title. After the games finished, the duo flew to New Orleans for a private holiday, she added. "Both students' families have been contacted and are arranging to travel to the U.S.," Professor Terry said. "The University is providing support and assistance to the injured students and their families. Support is also being provided to the others in the group who were not in the vicinity of the shooting and are unharmed." Curtin WA School of Mines director Professor Sam Spearing is en route to New Orleans to provide support to the students and their families. "This is a very distressing situation, and our thoughts are with the injured students and their families. Curtin will continue to provide all the support it can to all those involved," Professor Terry said. Congratulations Mayor John Ries and the Walkerville Town Council members for wanting to zone your community for the benefit of your Walkerville residents. Beware Walkerville, since Butte-Silver Bow's zoning is broken you may want to move cautiously before making your final decision to allow Butte-Silver Bow to administer your zoning program. This could erase Walkersville's unique identity and your residents' future ability to control your community's destiny. BSB residents live in an environment where neighborhood public input is not wanted, and it usually falls on deaf ears. Our neighborhoods are at the mercy of a Zoning Board of Adjustment whose members do not have a clue of what the purpose of the board is, which is to make zoning decisions based on BSB written ordinance. This is not to say the members are stupid, it's because this is the way BSB Planning Department wants it. Therefore, the board will likely vote for whatever the Planning Department recommends (right or wrong). Improper zoning decisions have created long-lasting negative impacts to many of Butte's residential neighborhoods. This is the reason we see our residential neighborhoods fragmented with new apartment complexes, business and other new nonconforming uses that according to BSB zoning ordinance are not allowed. Again this is not to say these projects are bad projects; they are simply located in the wrong zones with many in residentially zoned neighborhoods. The State of Montana sets guidelines called statute (state law) which municipalities must follow when writing municipal ordinance. Around 1978, when BSB decided to zone the City of Butte and Silver Bow County, the seated County Attorney Robert "Bob" McCarthy spent many hours drafting BSB zoning ordinance and he did a wonderful job. All of it was in compliance with Montana State statute and served BSB well for many years. After Mr. McCarthy's retirement, the BSB Planning Department found it could bend the zoning ordinance rules to fit its personal whims and get away with it as long as the Zoning Board of Adjustment is kept in the dark. Today, unfortunately under the guise of zoning, the BSB Planning Department continues with this procedure of permitting illegal nonconforming uses in zones that do not allow for such uses. Therefore the whole intent of zoning in BSB is effectively gutted. Their methodology for operating in this manner is so they can eliminate Public Hearings (an illegal act). By law the first step to allow nonconforming uses to locate in zones that do not allow for such uses is that the zone in question must be rezoned prior to permitting to accommodate the requested use. This is a time-consuming process involving public hearings through the Planning Board that usually result in much strong residential testimony against the proposed project and probably will terminate it. The solution for BSB Planners is to eliminate half of the process, thus the residents of the zone are denied an opportunity to participate. Unfortunately, BSB taxpayers continue to pay large sums of money to support the BSB Planning Department for zoning protection we no longer receive. If this is the type of zoning you want for Walkerville, join us. Robert W. Lienemann, Butte 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 [] ZAR X was granted a stock exchange licence by the Financial Services Board in March, and is set to start trading on 1 September 2016. ZAR X promises a low-cost, simple, and convenient trading platform, which will allow South Africans to trade shares even if they have never invested money or opened a bank account before. The platform is designed to empower those who dont have skills or experience in investing to easily and safely build a brighter financial future for themselves, said ZAR X. The company said its platform will give business enterprises a flexible, transparent, and affordable way to list their restricted or limited share offerings. ZAR X versus the JSE ZAR X CEO Etienne Nel told BusinessDay TV they will be a fully-fledged independent stock exchange, similar to the JSE. Nel said they do differ from the JSE, though, as their focus is the restricted market and mid-sized capitalization type companies (R500-million to R5-billion companies). The minute that you want to have complex listing requirements, lots of liquidity, and broad appeal, go to the JSE, said Nel. Nel said their initial focus will be on low-hanging fruit the companies that the JSE cannot list, like the traditional over-the-counter market and the related shares around this market. He said an advantage is the ZAR Xs T0 settlement model, where the transaction is settled and cleared instantly. If you trade on the JSE today, your transaction will only be settled and cleared in five working days. He said their T0 settlement model is groundbreaking, and reduces settlement risk. Our market which we are offering is a real market. There is no additional activity over and above standard trades. We have no derivatives or short selling. Technology companies interested in listing on ZAR X Nel said they have eight companies which have committed to listing on ZAR X, and many others which have shown an interest in joining. ZAR X director Geoff Cook told MyBroadband that a number of technology companies have approached them to list on the exchange. Due to confidentially clauses, the names of these companies cannot be disclosed. More on ZAR X South Africa gets a new stock exchange ZAR X Internet ride-sharing app Uber says a small number of its Cape Town drivers have decided to stop partnering with the service amid price decreases of up to 20%. Uber this week announced it will drop prices from April 7 in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban by up to 20% to boost demand during the quieter winter period. The company said its price-drops in other global cities such as Lagos have resulted in boosted demand and greater earnings for drivers. Uber said it plans to implement minimum payment guarantees for partner-drivers if the price cuts dont drive up demand. But upon hearing about the price cuts earlier this week, about 50 Cape Town Uber drivers stopped working on Wednesday night and headed to the companys Greenpoint office to demand answers and pose questions. Subsequently, a number of partner-drivers have further decided to stop transporting passengers using the Uber app, a company official told Fin24 on Friday. The company has not disclosed the exact number of partner-drivers who have stopped using the service. Unfortunately a small number of partner-drivers in Cape Town have not heard about our guarantee so have chosen not to use the app for now, Samantha Allenberg, the head of communications at Uber Africa, said in an emailed statement to Fin24. We are trying to speak with them to reassure them of our guarantee, Allenberg told Fin24. Uber drivers are not employed by the company but rather partner with the service. This means that the drivers earn a percentage of each fare. Hijacking in Cape Town Meanwhile, reports emerged on Thursday night that an Uber passenger witnessed his driver being hijacked by three individuals at Cape Town International Airport. The hijackers reportedly drove off with the Uber driver while the passenger was forced to exit the vehicle. The driver and passenger emerged unscathed while the car was not stolen. Its unclear if the incident could be a case of possible intimidation among drivers regarding this weeks price-cuts. We have been in touch with the rider and driver-partner to offer our support and we are relieved to hear both of them are okay. An investigation is underway, Allenberg told Fin24. We are committed to the safety of riders and drivers and we take any incident very seriously, Allenberg said. More on Uber Uber could cut Joburg traffic by 800,000 cars Driver strike reports are exaggerated: Uber South African Uber drivers strike after price cuts Uber cuts South African prices It is a shaky time for the banking sector in Kenya. A new no-nonsense Central Bank Governor has forced Kenyans to really think hard on where they decide to stash their money. In just a few months, 3 banks have been put under statutory management following questionable financials. It started with Dubai Bank, then Imperial Bank and yesterday Chase Bank. Chase looked like a vibrant bank attractive to young customers. However, behind closed doors, directors were issuing themselves loans of more than Sh1 billion each, putting a big strain on the books. With these latest developments, what is the best place to bank your money? It so happens that CBK has classified banks into tiers. Tier 1 is made up of the big old banks. These will almost certainly never go under in a similar way as Chase or Imperial. They have millions of clients and hundreds of billions in assets. You can imagine the situation in Kenyan homes, towns and streets if say, Equity Bank went under. With over 8 million customers, that would effectively translate into a revolution and possibly the end of the government. Tier 1 banks are definitely the safest. These belong to a category Americans like referring to as Too big to fail. Wikipedia defines it as follows, Certain corporations, and particularly financial institutions, are so large and so interconnected that their failure would be disastrous to the greater economic system, and that they therefore must be supported by government when they face potential failure In 2008, the US government was forced to bail out their top tier banks following the financial crisis. JP Morgan Chase (No relation to Kenyas Chase), Wells Fargo, and Citigroup received KSh 2.5 trillion each. Other banks received lesser amounts. Here in Kenya, 6 banks make up the top tier, and collectively control 49.9% of the market. 16 other banks make up Tier 2, and collectively control 41.7% of the market. The last tier, Tier 3 is made up of 21 small banks that control 8.4% of the market. Tier 1 1. KCB 2. Equity Bank 3. Cooperative Bank 4. Standard Chartered 5. Barclays Bank 6. CBA The Biggest in Tier 2 CFC Stanbic NIC Diamond Trust Bank I&M Chase Bank Bank of Africa Family Bank Ecobank Housing Finance Full list Someone said that if your bank has no queues, it may be time to re-consider that partnership. A group of Kenyan atheists have finally gained recognition after their organization was registered as a society under the society rules of Kenyan Law. The group made headlines in February when they accused the government of discrimination after authorities turned down a request to register their organization. The 60-member Atheists In Kenya applied for official recognition last year. They were told the application was turned down because of concerns that registration could affect the peace [and] good order in the country. Head of Atheists In Kenya (AIK) Harrison Mumia accused the official registrar Maria Nyariki of running her office through guesswork, as she cannot possibly know what impact registration would have. We are being discriminated (against), although the constitution allows freedom of association, Mumia said in a past interview. He added, Atheists in Kenya want a place, recognition and space to interact, estimating that atheists make up 5 to 7 percent of the population. But in a turn of events, Atheist In Kenya (AIK) has now been officially registered. This is after Mr Mumia said that he would be taking the issue to court because he argues the constitutional right to freedom of association had been violated. The constitution of Kenya grants every Kenyan the right to form an association and cannot discriminate on the basis of conscience and belief. Mr. Harrison Mumia/Photo Courtesy The group has not been shy about criticizing faith groups. In its website, the group states: Theres no reliable evidence for any god, or even for Jesus. There is also extensive evidence that Jesus and all gods are fictional characters myths, created mainly by primitive people who had little understanding of how our universe operates. This week, one of the big news in the country was the dismissal of ICC cases against Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua Arap Sang. Judges of Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court declared that the two have no case to answer. The proceedings were declared a mistrial due to alleged witness interfering and political meddling. Asserting that the accused were discharged without prejudice to their presumed innocence and the Prosecutors right to reprosecute the case at a later date, the Trial Chamber declared the charges against the two dropped. The announcement was of course a big talking point among Kenyans, with many political experts coming up with conspiracy theories about the case. One such theory that has grabbed peoples attention on social media asserts that CORD leader Raila Odinga pulled all the necessary strings to free DP William Ruto. The theory was posted on Facebook by one, Hon Jim Bonnie. It reads: I attended one of the Bunge la Mwananchi in town this evening, the debate was on Ruto and ICC and this is what one of the speakers said (this is wisdom which I cant eat alone so I had to share with you): Ruto should thank Raila for assisting him. In fact, he should go and kneel before Jakom and thank him for saving him from the ICC. Its Raila who talked to his international friends to set Ruto fee. When Raila visited South Africa and recently Tanzania, he was finalizing the deal to have Ruto free. Most of you dont know this, me I know. Magufuli hosted Raila and a delegation from Europe, American, Hague and Africa where they asked Raila Odinga to tell them what they should do. Raila told them that they should set Ruto free. Si unaona immediately alitoka Tanzania Ruto akaachiliwa? Then everyone, including Opus Dei, responded; YEEEES. Heres how some Kenyans reacted: Tom Collins Mopao: Mercy Akpa: Joyce Mugo: Edith Odiawo Nyartelo: Munene Wahome: Michael Okello: Chebet Byegon: Liz Lizz: Ken Ngubiah: Nickton Jeremy: Vickie Kavinya: Hashim Malable: Higgs John: Selina R Rosa: G G Peter Atom: Chief Justice Dr. Willy Mutunga has declared that he is worth over Ksh 80 million in property and cash. This is inline with upholding the values of transparency and accountability. Through his twitter handle, the CJ made public documents showing his earnings at 50 million shillings in salaries, inclusive of allowances from the Judicial Service Commission that he chairs. In the wealth declaration forms published, his income and assets from 2012 to late 2015 indicates he earned a gross salary of 71 million shillings with 21 million shillings going to tax, leaving him with a disposable pay of 50 million shillings. His Standard Chartered Bank Kenya shillings account has a balance of Ksh 415,035 while his dollar account in the same bank has USD34,509 which is an equivalent of 3.5 million shillings. The forms also listed two apartments worth Sh12.5 million and Sh. 19.1 million shillings as his main assets. The CJ also owns a piece of land in Kitui County worth Sh. 2.1 million and two cars; a saloon car valued at 750,000 shillings and another one worth 650,000 shillings owned by his spouse. Below are the tweets and the documents: 1. In upholding the values of transparency and accountability I make my wealth declaration public. pic.twitter.com/KYqvSIz5oY Dr Willy M Mutunga (@WMutunga) April 6, 2016 2. Soon I will be subjected to forensic lifestyle audit. pic.twitter.com/KuaRghqolf Dr Willy M Mutunga (@WMutunga) April 6, 2016 Everyone wants to know that their money is in safe hands. When rumors started spreading on Wednesday that Chase Bank was going under, everyone rushed to withdraw their money. More than Sh8 billion to be exact according to CBK governor Patrick Njoroge. If the mass panic did not happen, there would have been minimal disruptions. The CBK governor actually says that the decision to put it under receivership was made at 4am in the morning. It so happens that Chase has a subsidiary by the name Rafiki Microfinance. Following the events at its parent company, Kenyans flocked Rafiki branches to withdraw their money. This is despite Governor Njoroge promising that Rafiki is independent and strong. TV personality Swaleh Mdoe was spotted at one of the branches, probably also withdrawing his life savings. Via @Saddam_KE Its sad to see a revered authentic Kenyan brand like Uchumi go down the gutter. The once vibrant supermarket became victim of prolonged mismanagement from the Kirubis to the Cianos. The result is a company that is a shadow of its former self. Theyve been having issues with suppliers and have even been forced to close several branches. Since it would be embarrassing to have empty shelves in their stores, Uchumi has been forced to improvise. I think the only person smiling is the popcorn supplier. Uchumi Ngong Road (Via @kalekachali) Visiting The Hague on Friday (8 April) NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow addressed the EU Inter-parliamentary Conference on the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy with a focus on how NATO could cooperate more closely with partners and with the European Union. He stressed that the relationship between the European Union and NATO has rarely been closer, and it has never been as important as it is now. Mr. Vershbow also addressed complex challenges stemming from the South: War in Syria and the growing instability across North Africa and the Middle East pose a serious threat to our own security, stability and cohesion, he said. He added that the EU and NATO are working together to manage the humanitarian refugee crisis and that by coordinating NATO and EU capacity-building efforts, we can have greater success in halting the spread of violent extremism and in stabilizing Europes southern neighbourhood. During the visit, the Deputy Secretary General also delivered a speech at a gathering organised by the Netherlands Atlantic Association and the Netherlands Atlantic Youth. Speaking about new security challenges, he said that for the first time in the Alliances history, Allies face major threats from two strategic directions at the same time. Preeminent among these threats are the provocative actions of a more aggressive and assertive Russia which continues to display little regard for international law and the highly complex challenge of an unstable Middle East and North Africa, right on NATOs doorstep, he said. Mr. Vershbow said that at the NATO Summit in Warsaw the Alliance will not only consider the long-term implications of Russias foreign and defence policy for NATO, but will also take steps to address the grave situation along our southern borders. Later in the day, Deputy Secretary General Vershbow was also meeting with the Dutch Minister of Defence Jeannine Hennis-Plasschaert. Following consultations with Russia, we have agreed to hold a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at Ambassadorial level. This meeting will take place in the next two weeks at the NATQ headquarters in Brussels. The NATO-Russia Council will discuss the crisis in and around Ukraine and the need to fully implement the Minsk Agreements. We will discuss military activities, with particular focus on transparency and risk reduction. We will also address the security situation in Afghanistan, including regional terrorist threats. This meeting is the continuation of our political dialogue, as agreed by NATO Heads of State and Government. At the same time, there will be no return to business as usual until Russia again respects international law. BACKGROUND NATO decided to suspend all practical cooperation with Russia in April 2014 in response to Russias aggressive actions in Ukraine. This decision stands. At the same time, NATO kept channels of political dialogue and military communication open. Since the start of the Russia/Ukraine crisis, there have been two NRC meetings (March 2014 http://bit.ly/23oy4pe and June 2014 http://bit.ly/1qzD7Fy), and two meetings of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (March 2014 http://bit.ly/1RIqemk and March 2015 http://bit.ly/1NdmjZk ), which included Russia. The NATO Secretary General and Deputy Secretary General, as well as other senior NATO officials, regularly meet with senior Russian officials. The NATO Secretary General last met with Foreign Minister Lavrov at the Munich Security Conference in February 2016. The Deputy Secretary General has met several times with the Russian Ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, including in recent months and weeks. NATO-RUSSIA COUNCIL The NRC is a forum for consultation between NATO and Russia. Within the NRC, Allies and Russia work as equals and all decisions in the NRC are taken by consensus. The NATO Secretary General is the chairperson of the NRC. The NRC was established at the NATO-Russia Summit in Rome on 28 May 2002. Iran army ground forces holding exercise in West Azarbaijan Province Sovereignty renunciation to be punished in Armenia with 12-15 years of imprisonment, as per justice ministry draft 2 pilots killed in Russia fighter jet crash Russia, France defense ministers discuss Ukraine Fighter jet crashes into house in Russias Irkutsk 150 residents of 3 Karabakh settlements handed over to Azerbaijan get compensation certificates Rishi Sunak confirms UK premier bid Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson hold talks Biden slammed for 'scary' long pause during interview Elite US troops conducting exercises on Ukraine border Iran MP: Military exercises on Azerbaijan border are decisive response to Israel Xi Jinping elected Communist Party of China Central Committee general secretary Armenia envoy presents credentials to Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency chair Hungary to approve by years end Sweden, Finland petitions to join NATO US researchers debunk main theory for origin of life Iranian MP: Iran will conduct military exercises wherever it deems necessary Finnish delegation to visit Ankara to discuss NATO membership 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 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 Artak Beglaryan: You will see me in new position 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 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 Private jet goes missing off coast of Costa Rica 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 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 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 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? 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 Japan and U.S. will hold joint military exercises France withdraws from Energy Charter Treaty CNN: White House is in talks with Elon Musk to create satellite Internet service Starlink in Iran Baku outraged by Iran's statements and frightened by IRGC military exercises Who are main beneficiaries of 'Zangezur' corridor?: Another anonymous article by 'Haykakan Zhamanak' newspaper Ankara decides to stand up for Riyadh amid deteriorating relations between Saudi Arabia and U.S. French Foreign Minister considers it vital to keep lines of communication with Russia open Pentagon refuses to give details of conversation between Austin and Shoigu Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin: Head of Caucasus Muslims Department again made slanderous and false statements Erdogan denies using chemical weapons against Kurds and threatens those who dare to talk about it Saudi Arabia and China will strengthen their ties in energy sector Governor of Gegharkunik province receives representatives of OSCE fact-finding mission Penny Mordaunt runs for Prime Minister of Great Britain Sweden expects ratification of NATO membership application by Hungary and Turkey to be completed soon European Union will allocate 1.5 billion euros per month to Kiev in 2023 An Israeli-built flight school opened in Greece Russian Railways is negotiating with Azerbaijan and Iran to launch the Rasht-Astara route Overchuk: Construction of road through Meghri, whose sovereignty is not in question, depends on Armenia's position Armenian Defense Minister's working visit to India is over Hungary will not agree to limit prices for imported gas Iranian Foreign Minister: Iran considers Armenia one of most important transit countries Naribekyan participates in meeting of secretaries general of PACE parliaments Delegation from United Arab Emirates visits Armenia at invitation of head of MONKS: Two agreements signed Dollar, euro drop in Armenia Iran consul general in Armenias Kapan: We do not accept any change of borders Baza: Mobile military registration and enlistment offices will be removed on Russian-Georgian border Iranian Consul: Countries of region do not need presence of foreign armed forces Armenia FM: Iran consulate general in Kapan will be important for regional security Iranian Consul General advises Kapan residents not to worry anymore: Iran is here for Armenian people FM reaffirms Armenia plan to open consulate general in Irans Tabriz Turkey to open consulate in occupied Armenian Shushi city of Artsakh Turkish Ministry of Finance: Ankara can buy Russian oil without Western funding Armenia Security Council chief briefs European Parliament rapporteur on recent Azerbaijan military aggression British bookmakers name favorite for post of prime minister Erdogan: Armenia-Azerbaijan relations progress will contribute to Armenia-Turkey relations normalization Iranian Consulate General opens in Kapan Erdogan: Turkey is looking for alternative to American F-16 fighters Iran consul general: We are here for Armenian people Turkey FM slams OSCE decision to send needs assessment mission to Armenia Peskov reacts to Erdogan's words about Putin's softening on Ukraine negotiations European Parliament rapporteur on Armenia visits Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan European Parliament rapporteur on Armenia to legislature speaker: Attack was from Azerbaijan, naturally Armenia President to EEU PMs: We will manage to take another confident step by respecting mutual interests EUSR Toivo Klaars exclusive interview with NEWS.am on EU Monitoring mission,Nagorno Karabakh future and violence videos Explosions rock Ukraines Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia Although the situation along the Karabakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact is relatively calm in the past two days, the Armenian military servicemen and volunteers, who are on duty at the military positions in Martuni Region of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Artsakh), are vigilant and ready to push the adversary back, should it launch an offensive. Its calm at nights, but were always at the military positions; always ready. They [i.e. the Azerbaijani armed forces] cant be trusted, volunteer Pavel Avagyan told the Armenian News-NEWS.am special reporter in Artsakh. Even if all the Azerbaijanis were to attack on our positions, we are the masters; we are the masters of our lands. NKR Defense Army serviceman Armen Melkumyan, for his part, noted that even though in the past two days the adversary occasionally violates the ceasefire agreement that was recently reached, it gets an adequate response as well. We stand ready to prevent, in a very short period, any advance [by Azerbaijan] at any time, he added. NKR Defense Army soldier Gor Kirakosyan, in turn, assured that they are vigilant and that the violations by the adversary are prevented. Even if they want to carry out a sabotage infiltration, they cant; they wouldnt have time. Were standing here jus for that, Private Kirakosyan said. And NKR Defense Army serviceman Edgar Gevorgyan added that they had no fear during the recent four-day military actions, their team was always consolidated, and the adversary was forced back. We stand ready now, too; well fight to the end, Gevorgyan said. Ill keep this land at the cost of [my] blood, too. YEREVAN. - During the joint extended session on the situation following the large-scale hostilities launched by Azerbaijan along the Karabakh-Azerbaijani Line of Contact, the Political Science Association of Armenia and the Specialized Doctoral Conferral Committee 056 of the Supreme Certifying Commission of Armenia, Political Science and International Relations, in conjunction with the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the Ministry of Defense, adopted an appeal to the UN Secretary General, the Acting Chairman of the UN Security Council, presidents of the United States, Russia, and France, as well as the Speaker of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia. Below is the full text of the Appeal, which was presented by Doctor of Political Science, Professor and Major General Hayk Kotanjian, President of the Political Science Association of Armenia and the Specialized Council 056 of the Supreme Certifying Commission of of Armenia. RESUMPTION OF LARGE-SCALE HOSTILITIES BY AZERBAIJAN AGAINST THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH REPUBLIC PREPARED BY: POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION OF ARMENIA POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SPECIALIZED DOCTORAL CONFERRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SUPREME CERTIFYING COMMISSION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES OF THE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE TO THE UN SECRETARY GENERAL, HIS EXCELLENCY MR. BAN KI-MOON TO THE ACTING CHAIRMAN OF THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL, PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF CHINA TO THE UNITED NATIONS, HIS EXCELLENCY AMBASSADOR LIU JIEYI TO THE PRESIDENTS OF THE OSCE MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIR STATES, THEIR EXCELLENCIES MR. FRANCOIS HOLLANDE OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, MR. VLADIMIR PUTIN OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, AND MR. BARACK OBAMA OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE SPEAKER OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA, HIS EXCELLENCY MR. GALUST SAHAKYAN On 2 April 2016, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched a large-scale attack along the Karabakh-Azerbaijani Line of Contact bombarding border settlements. Once again, Azerbaijan has derailed the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair states to resolve the Karabakh conflict through peaceful negotiations. Azerbaijans main goal is to undermine the OSCE Minsk Groups mission, occupy Nagorno-Karabakh, and commit genocide against its Armenian population. With the threats of a large-scale regional war Azerbaijan continues to disorient the international community and blackmail the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair states and UN Security Council Permanent Members, the United States, Russia, and France, by exerting pressure on Armenia. Azerbaijani side rejects the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs proposals on monitoring the ceasefire by use of technical and human professional resources, which is fraught with constant threat of the resumption of hostilities along Karabakh-Azerbaijani Line of Contact. Azerbaijan planned this resumption of hostilities concurrent with the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. As in the past, Azerbaijan once again escalated the conflict, as well as unleashed military actions on the Line of Contact during important international meetings and visits of foreign dignitaries to the region. For example, Azerbaijan initiated similar provocations on the eve of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clintons visit to Armenia in June 2012 (Azeris kill three more Karabakh soldiers), as well as ceasefire violations before and after the meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Bern on 19 December 2015 (Border concerns: Sargsyan-Aliyev meeting brings no immediate tranquility in conflict zone). Azerbaijan, rewriting history and distorting the essence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, accuses the Republic of Armenia of occupying Nagorno-Karabakh. As Armenias President Serzh Sargsyan stressed in his presentation at Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government, those using the word occupation with regard to Karabakh should take into account the political fact that Karabakh itself was the victim of Azerbaijani occupation for over 70 years: on 5 July 1921, the illegitimate political body of the Bolshevik Party the Caucasus Bureau made an illegal decision, under pressure from Stalin, to annex the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. This indeed was an occupation. (See the decision of the Caucasus Bureau "Historical prism". 1921. Bolshevik games around Karabakh). In this context, it is necessary to briefly introduce the legal foundations for the proclamation of freedom of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. On 30 August 1991, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a Declaration on the restoration of the sovereignty of the Republic of Azerbaijan in violation of then-current USSR constitution and legislation. In response to this unlawful decision, on 2 September 1991, a resolution was adopted at the joint session of the Councils of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) and Shahumyan District on proclaiming the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (the Republic of Artsakh) on the territory of the NKAO AzSSR and Shahumyan District AzSSR according to international law and the principles of the 3 April 1990 USSR Law On the procedure of cessation of a Soviet Republic from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the then-operating Soviet legislation. ( " , " No 1410-1 3 1990 ." , ", 1990, No 15, - ; USSR Law "On the procedure for regulation of issues related to the secession of a Union Republic from the USSR" No 1410-1 of 3 April 1990, "Bulletin of the Congress of Peoples Deputies of the USSR, the Supreme Council of the USSR", 1990, No 15, Declaration on the Proclamation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic). On 18 October 1991, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan, continuing its illegal actions, adopted a Constitutional Act on Independence, thus declaring its decision to withdraw from the Soviet state-legal system, and legislatively established its refusal to coordinate, in future, the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh. On 23 November 1991, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan passed a law on the dissolution of the Nagono-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. In response to those illegal acts, on 10 December 1991, a referendum of independence was held in Nagorno Karabakh strictly meeting international standards and the USSR Law of 3 April 1991, and in the presence of international observers. The Azerbaijani minority of NKR was given the opportunity to take part in the referendum. But on Bakus intructions they declined that opportunity. ( - (Act on the results of the referendum of the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic). Subsequent events eliminated the imperative obligation of coordinating the results of the referendum with the USSR central bodies, since, on 21 December 1991, the Alma-Ata Declaration on dissolving the Soviet Union was signed. (The Declaration of Alma-Ata, 21 December, 1991). Hence, the Referendum held on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh is legal, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic established as a result is legitimate, and the recognition of its independence is the key to the resolution of the conflict. Armenia, not calling into question the legality of the Referendum and showing its good will, agreed to accept the Madrid Principles as a basis for further negotiations in support of the Co-Chairs activity, along with the proposed statement on continuing additional procedures for the formulation of self-determination. (Referendum as a gesture af a good will: Peace and war scenarios for Karabakh). In this regard, we consider it appropriate to accept the legality of the Referendum on declaring the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and the respective corresponding resolutions of Armenias agencies on the results of its legitimacy, and to develop and sign an agreement on comprehensive cooperation with NKR. Qualifying the large-scale hostilities launched by Azerbaijan as provocations to destroy the OSCE Minsk Group platform, we appeal to the UN Secretary General, the Acting Chairman of the UN Security Council, and the Heads of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair states, abstain from engaging in false equivalency between the aggressor and those defending themselves. So as to prevent the hazard of a large-scale regional war, the aggressive actions of Azerbaijan deserve clear-cut political assessments and punishment. It should be highlighted that Azerbaijans large-scale offensive against NKR never impeded the natural course of public and state life either in Armenia or Artsakh. State authorities and institutions, public organizations, and private enterprises continue to effectively perform their economic, financial, political-diplomatic obligations, loyal to their commitments before citizens and the international, governmental, and non-governmental institutions. In this regard, we underline the commitment of the Armenian sides to democracy, human rights, guaranteeing foreign and domestic investments for the further development of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Appreciating the efforts by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair states to reach a peaceful resolution to the conflict, we urge them to: use all the necessary means for stabilizing the situation and to not allow any provocations against peace in Nagorno Karabakh, urgently raise the effectiveness of the monitoring conducted along the Line of Contact by the OSCE and incorporate the appropriate mechanisms for investigating ceasefire violations with the possibility of sanctions against the violator, restore the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as a full party to the negotiations, as envisaged in the Document adopted by the OSCE Senior Council on March 31, 1995, recognize the independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as a key to the resolution of the conflict. Political Science Association of Armenia Political Science and International Relations Specialized Doctoral Conferral Committee Armenians of Australia held a protest action against Azerbaijans aggression towards Nagorno-Karabakh at the Azerbaijan Embassy in Canberra on Friday. The protesters wanted to hand over a letter that was rejected by the Azerbaijan Ambassador to Australia, but Nigol Touman Chapter Chairman, Aram Tufenkjian read it aloud, the Armenian Naational Committee of Australia reported. Dear Ambassador Jamshidov, We, the members of the Armenian Youth Federation of Australia, stand at your Embassys doorstep with representatives Armenian-Australian community, to add our voice of discontent with our brothers and sisters of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh. The attacks your government and military initiated on April 1-2 were unprovoked, and a threat to the sovereignty of the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh, who practiced their right to self-determination nearly 25 years ago. The helicopter shellings, tank fire and drone explosions - all well-documented in this modern age of communications - are evidence of your attempt to destroy Armenian civilians; their homes, churches, businesses and schools. Further evidence of these attempts by Azerbaijan is the brutal murder by shelling of our fellow Armenian youth from Martuni. Why did 12-year-old Vaghinak Grigoryan have to die while on his way to school? Why did his 3 classmates, one of them his brother, have to be wounded? We cannot forgive this. We also cannot forgive the war crimes that have also been documented during the previous week by your government. Three of our elderly in Talish were butchered in their homes. Their ears cut off. This is not something Australians take too kindly to. This is not something we forgive. We demand that you stop your attacks immediately. We demand that you accept the internationally accepted right to self-determination for the people of Nagorno Karabakh. We will never give up our land. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Armenians across the world in defence of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh. MOSCOW. - The large-scale military actions unleashed by Azerbaijan have struck a serious blow against the negotiation process aimed at Karabakh conflict settlement and the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs. Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian, who is on a working visit to Moscow, said the aforementioned at the meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Friday. According to Nalbandian, urgent practical steps are necessary for stabilizing the situation. The interlocutors continued the discussions held in the recent days on the tension of situation in the Karabakh conflict zone. Sergey Lavrov noted that since the very beginning of escalation, Russia has exerted efforts toward the ceasefire. He noted that the use of force in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone is unacceptable, attaching importance to the observation of the ceasefire agreement and ruling out of the recurrence of such situations, as well as creation of corresponding conditions for continuing talks in the format of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship. The Armenian and Russian FMs attached importance to the implementation of the proposals made by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs aimed at the enhancement of ceasefire observation. Sergey Lavrov briefed Edward Nalbandian on the Russian-Azerbaijani meetings held in Baku. The sides also referred to the process of implementing agreements reached between the supreme leadership of Armenia and Russia in different areas of cooperation, as well as issues on the Armenian-Russian bilateral agenda. Apart from this, the FMs discussed a number of pressing international and regional issues. Reference was made to the situation in the Middle East, protection of the minorities, especially the Christians, and the efforts of the international community in fight against terrorism. Ilham Aliyev should be tried by an international tribunal for the crimes in Nagorno-Karabakh, the statement of the Assadakah Italia Federation and Arabic-Italian and Mediterranean center Onlus says. The statement of the organization reads: The organization condemns the military attack of Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh and states about the military crimes of Baku army, about constant violations of international law, such as irregular firing by the Azerbaijani artillery at residential settlements and schools, beheading of Armenian soldier in Karabakh and the solemn demonstration of his head, as well as the barbarian murder of an elderly Armenian couple in their home in Talish village. They were killed together with their daughter. Assadakah Italia Federation demands that the Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev be taken to international tribunal and be tried as a military criminal together with other officials responsible for such violence. The Federation expresses serious concern about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and is uptight about ethnic and religious cleansings of the Armenian and Christian population by Azerbaijan. This danger can be exclaimed by the presence of an unknown number of Islamic State fighters among the Azerbaijani soldiers. During the last months, Ankara and Baku media outlets published a number of articles on the Azerbaijani fighters who have returned home. They mention about 3,000 fighters, many of whom are now in Azerbaijan and must be considered as dangerous terrorists. Assadakah Italia Federation states that a century after the Armenian Genocide, the danger lies in that Turkey and Azerbaijan can together commit a new crime against humanity. Assadakah Italia Federation calls on the Government and Parliament of Italy to take decisive measures against Azerbaijan. Italy should also take a tough stance on the consequences of terrorism, which can follow from Azerbaijan. The Federation urges the [Azerbaijani] authorities to observe the agreements on ceasefire. Emory College junior Caroline Schmidt has been named one of 20 winners of the 2016 Beinecke Scholarship. The award means that Schmidt, a creative writing major from Phoenix, will receive $34,000 to help defray the cost of graduate school: $4,000 prior to entering and the rest while attending the graduate school of her choice. "I'm thrilled I can actually go to grad school now," Schmidt says. "I have always wanted to be a professional writer and I needed grad school for that. This makes it more real." The Beinecke Scholarship Program was established by the board of directors of The Sperry and Hutchinson Company to honor Edwin, Frederick and Walter Beinecke. The goal is to provide substantial scholarships for the graduate education of young men and women of "exceptional promise" and for them to be "courageous" in selecting a graduate course of study in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Lynna Williams, associate professor of English/creative writing, taught Schmidt in three courses introduction to fiction, intermediate fiction and non-fiction writing. Her student, she says, epitomizes the academic qualities of a Beinecke Scholar. Schmidt also fits the description of an emerging talent as an author, given her dedication to critique sessions in Emory's workshop-oriented creative writing program and her willingness, almost eagerness, to revise a work until she finds the perfect words. "Caroline is a natural storyteller," Williams says. "You can't do that without rigor and creativity." "She has an incredibly inquiring mind and a great level of empathy," Williams adds. "Those abilities allow her to visualize and create characters who are nuanced and complicated." Schmidt focused on her writing while also developing arts-oriented extracurricular programming for students and hosting a weekly radio show, says Megan E. Friddle, director of Emory's National Scholarships and Fellowships Program. Next year, after two years serving as poetry and fiction editor, Schmidt will take on the role of editor-in-chief for Emory's nationally-renowned literary magazine, The Lullwater Review. Schmidt received word of the scholarship via email, right before she submitted an application to write a novella for an honor's thesis next year. She is looking into pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in programs as varied as the prestigious, small workshop at Brown University and a well-regarded program near her home, at Arizona State University. She credits working with her peers and professors at Emory especially Williams on fiction and recently named Guggenheim Fellow Jericho Brown on poetry for helping her win the Beinecke Scholarship and readying her for the next level. "I'm so thankful for the Emory creative writing program," Schmidt says. "Just the time and effort the professors give here, you can tell they genuinely care about the students and their growth and well-being. I feel very well cared for here." Georgian Wine Catalogue To add this Search Box to your website, click here. Many designs are available. 08.04.2016. Georgian wine is continuing to make an impression around the world; next destination Baltic countries.Georgias National Wine Agency announced a number of events were planned to raise awareness of Georgian wine in countries across the Baltic Sea, such as exhibitions and wine tasting events where Georgian wine will be proudly presented.Initially the Agency will promote the traditionally-made Georgian drink in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.Baltic countries are one of the interesting export markets for Georgian wines. Different campaigns and activities are planned for these countries, which would increase Georgian wine sales there, said head of the Agency's PR and marketing department Irakli Cholobargia.The Agency reported today Georgian red wine will be showcased in Latvia's capital Riga, after making an impression in Lithuania and Poland recently. This week nine Georgian wine companies presented their locally-produced red wines in capital Vilnius and in Kaunas, a city in south-central Lithuania. At the events guests were encouraged to discover the rich history of Georgian winemaking and to taste unique red wines from Georgia.The Georgian wine companies that were showcased in Lithuania were Shalvino, Georgian Wine House, Lukasi, Kakhuri, Georgian Legends, Wine Man, Winery Khareba, Winiveria and Usakhelauri.Another wine degustation was held on March 30 in Polands capital Warsaw. The main concept of the event was to show the tandem of Georgian wine and Polish cuisine.At this event guests were invited to taste Georgian wine produced by Schuchmann Wines Georgia, Chateau Mukhrani, Vaziani Company, Telavi Wine Cellar, Kindzmarauli Marani, Corporation kindzmarauli, Archil Gunia Marani, Beka Gotsadze Marani and Nika Bakhia Marani.Export figures released by Georgias National Wine Agency revealed last year more Georgian wine was exported to Poland, Lithuania and Estonia.Wine exports increased to all three countries:Poland by 1,600,302 bottles (three percent increase);Lithuania by 658,666 bottles (four percent increase); andEstonia by 506,124 bottles (54 percent increase);Raising the profile of Georgian wine in European and Asian countries was something the countrys National Wine Agency was actively pursuing.Georgia was creating a wine network in China, increasing wine exports to Europe and the United States. The Agency expected export figures would rise further once Georgian wine was promoted in Baltic countries. The requested page is currently unavailable on this server. Back to [RTHK News Homepage] Alan Walters, professor of vegetable production in the Department of Plant, Soil and Agricultural Systems at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is in the midst of a Fulbright Research Scholar vegetable production project in Morocco. His work will help subsistence-level small farmers produce more consistent and more marketable vegetables and fruits. (Photo provided) Vegetable scientist assisting Moroccan farmers by Andrea Hahn CARBONDALE, Ill. Consumers want consistency. They want to buy a pepper thats the same size as other peppers, and they want carrots the same color as other carrots. That seems simple enough. Except that its not simple not in Morocco, where even fertile fields and Mediterranean climate can give way to drought all too easily. Small family farms in Morocco grow what they can, and consistency in size, shape and color is not necessarily the first focus. Alan Walters, professor in the Department of Plant, Soil and Agricultural Systems at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is a vegetable scientist, an expert on finding ways to improve farming methods. Hes working in Morocco with the Moroccan-American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange in Rabat, and the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) at its regional center in Agadir as a Fulbright Research Scholar. The Fulbright research project began as a conversation between Walters and INRA Director Mohammed Badraoui, about improving marketability of vegetable crops for small farmers. Walters favors improving local traditional vegetable varieties as well as introducing vegetables that may thrive in a difficult climate. Walters Fulbright is a serial, or flex, scholarship, which means that he will visit Morocco for two months in three consecutive years. His first visit was in 2015, and his 2016 visit was in early spring. Hell return in 2017 for the final part of the Fulbright project. You cant really conduct agricultural research in a six-month time frame, so the serial Fulbright option works best, Walters said, shortly after he returned from his second visit. In Morocco, Walters is working with INRA to improve revenue generation for small subsistence farmers. Morocco is blessed with some of the most arable land of all the Arab and African countries. Morocco exports many horticultural crops, including melons, tomatoes and various fruits, to Europe, and is expanding commercial crops such as cotton, corn and soybeans. Cereal crops such as wheat and barley are staples in the landscape. Argan, olive and palm dates are traditional crops that are also widely grown. However, other than the fertile lands near the sea, much of the land is arid and mountainous. In addition, poverty is rife in rural areas; 70 percent of the nations poor are rural. The small farmers in the less fertile areas struggle to survive. Walters is trying to help these farmers grow more efficiently and to produce more not only for their own consumption but also to increase the value of what they bring to market for sale or export. And thats where produce consistency comes into play. Many of the small landowner vegetable farmers use landraces, he said. The landraces are adapted to the climate, but they oftentimes do not produce a consistent end-product. If you walk into a field of peppers, youll find peppers as small as your pinkie-finger or as big as two or three fingers together, all the same kind of pepper, but different sizes and even shapes. A landrace is a domesticated, highly heterogeneous crop population that has adapted to the regional environment. Landrace farming is a traditional method in which farmers use seeds from what they produce, saving and holding seed from year after year. A major advantage is that farmer has little to no seed cost when using saved seed. However, a disadvantage, of course, is that landraces require effort on the farmers part to collect, save and store seed, and a bad year or two jeopardizes the farmers seed stock. And then theres the nature of the landrace itself. The high genetic diversity allows for adaptation to drought, heat and soil aridity but the genetic diversity contained within landrace populations contributes to inconsistent appearance in the resulting produce. As noted, consumers tend to prefer consistent appearance, the kind of consistency produced by standard hybrid cultivars. Cultivars are the result of careful breeding in pursuit of desirable traits including consistency. Commercial farming uses hybrid cultivars almost exclusively, with farmers purchasing seed every year. There are plenty of advantages, including access to the latest and greatest high yield, high disease-resistance cultivars. One might almost say the cultivar is good for profit and farming efficiency and the landrace is good for survival and adaptation. In order to help the small farmers increase vegetable production, Walters began collecting dozens of landraces in different vegetables and melons to evaluate them for suitability to the harsh inland Moroccan climate. Hes currently involved in the evaluation stage, focused on carrots, melons and watermelons, onions, pumpkins and turnips. Ultimately, hell recommend the best-performing landraces for seed increase and eventual distribution to farmers. In 2017, he and the INRA team he works with will distribute seed from these best-performing landraces at a grower meeting at the research farm in Belfaa, south of Agadir. The procedure will help jumpstart the small farmers into increased production, a solution that Walters hopes has immediate as well as sustained benefit for them. The Fulbright program was developed and implemented by the United States government to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, education, knowledge and skills. As Walters explains, the Fulbright program allows Americans to learn intimately about other cultures and people. His personal experience allowed him as an American not only to conduct valuable research in Morocco, but also to gain a comprehensive understanding of Moroccan food, culture, history and people, and is, as he said, an experience he will carry with him the rest of his life. Walters Fulbright Moroccan experience is not his first for vegetable production work in harsh and often unsuitable climates. He also lent his expertise to Afghanistan with the U. S. Agency for International Development, and to The Gambia as part of the multi-organization-supported Womens Green Yard project. He also teaches a global seminar study abroad class in Costa Rica, where students learn about tropical crop sustainability and biological diversity in what Walters described as a once in a lifetime opportunity for students to see and learn about sustainable living and agriculture in a foreign country. National popular vote far better than Electoral College system for choosing presidents, Stanford professors say The Electoral College distorts presidential campaigns, disenfranchises voters and drives partisanship, Stanford scholars say. They suggest constitutional reforms to adopt a single national popular vote where the one-person, one-vote concept applies. hafakot/ Shutterstock Stanford political experts say it is time to abolish the Electoral College in favor of a single national popular vote where all votes count equally. It is time to abolish the Electoral College in favor of a single national popular vote where all votes count equally, Stanford political experts say. The Electoral College is responsible for disenfranchising, in effect, huge swaths of American voters, said Doug McAdam, a professor of sociology who studies American politics. A single national popular or "constituency" vote would determine the president based on who won the most votes total across the country. Otherwise, McAdam said, "The great majority of American voters exercise no real political voice in the outcome of presidential elections." Under the U.S. Constitution, the Electoral College determines who is the U.S. president, based on vote totals in each state. The candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes (270) wins the presidency. Each state's number of electors is equal to its number of members of Congress (representatives plus senators). Washington, D.C., also has three electors, so the total number of Electoral College members is 538. According to McAdam, four out of five Americans exercised no real electoral voice in the 2012 presidential election due to the winner-take-all Electoral College system, which made campaigns focus on the handful of "battleground" states that were up for grabs heading into the election. "If we define 'battleground' states as those where the final margin of victory was 5 percent or less, only six of the 50 states qualify. They were Colorado, 4 percent; Florida, 1 percent; North Carolina, 3 percent; Ohio, 2 percent; Pennsylvania, 5 percent; and Virginia, 3 percent," he said. McAdam noted that the mean margin of difference in the remaining 44 states was a whopping 19 percent. "Even with such populous states as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio in the mix, the total population of the 2012 battleground states was barely 20 percent of the country's total," he said. Battleground states dominate McAdam suggests abolishing the Electoral College. "No principle is more fundamental to the theory of democratic governance than political equality; that is, the idea that every citizen's voice or views should count as much as anyone else's," said McAdam, co-author with Karina Kloos of the 2014 book Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America. The current system violates this principle, McAdam said, due to its winner-take-all nature. In a close election, voters in one or more of the battleground states may determine the outcome of the contest, he said. "What about all those citizens who reside in non-competitive states? Consider the loyal Republican who lives in California or the stalwart Mississippi Democrat? Every four years, voting for them is an exercise in political powerlessness, at least when it comes to the presidential race," he said. Eliminating the Electoral College would empower voters, McAdam said, likely driving up voter registration and voting rates while creating a greater focus on issues (and not states) in presidential races. "No single reform would deliver on this promise more than this one," McAdam said. But eliminating the Electoral College would not be easy. An amendment, whether proposed by Congress or a national constitutional convention, must be ratified by either the legislatures of three-fourths (at present 38) of the states or state ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states. Still, 17 such amendments have passed since the Constitution was adopted in 1789, the last being in 1992. McAdam said that another flaw with the Electoral College occurs when none of the candidates wins 270 electoral votes. Then, the fate of the presidency goes to the U.S. House of Representatives thus taking it away from individual American voters. This happened in 1876, and given current conditions in the presidential campaigns, could happen in 2016, he said. National unity a factor Jack Rakove, a professor of history and of political science, said the Electoral College issue vexed the framers at the 1787 Constitutional Convention down to their final days of debate and they were not sure how it would work in practice. "They adopted the Electoral College not because they found it attractive in itself, but simply because it was the least objectionable alternative," said Rakove, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. "The idea of a legislative appointment of the chief executive might have seemed more attractive, but the framers worried that that would make the president a tool of some dominant faction in Congress, and reduce the initiative and independence they wanted him to have," he added. Rakove also recommends replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote. He bases his view on the one-person, one-vote concept and the national unity it could offer. "The electoral weight of the citizen should not vary from one place to another based on the distorting effect of the 'senatorial bump,'" which refers to the overrepresentation of small states in the Electoral College due to their two Senate-based electors, he said. Rakove said the last three U.S. presidents have all suffered from attacks on the legitimacy of their election fueled in part by the perception of a nation largely divided into red and blue states. "If we think of the electoral map as a tableau of national division, we form a disparaging view of the victor's presidential authority right from the outset," he said. However, if the winning candidate was perceived to be the victor of a truly national election, partisanship might decrease, Rakove said. The way to begin the reform process is by establishing a prestigious national commission capable of recommending constitutional change, he said. The art of compromise David W. Brady, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said that a candidate can win the Electoral College and as a result, the presidency without winning the popular vote. It's happened four times. Brady pointed to Andrew Jackson and Samuel Tilden, who won the popular vote in 1824 and 1876, respectively, only to see their opponents walk into the White House. This also happened to Grover Cleveland in 1888; he won the popular vote but lost on electoral votes to Benjamin Harrison. And in 2000, George Bush prevailed similarly over Al Gore. The origins of the Electoral College, Brady said, date back to the Constitutional Convention, when the big states put forward a plan favoring them and the smaller states countered with their own plan. "The resulting compromise gave us the malapportioned Senate and the Electoral College, where a state gets the number of representatives plus the two senators," Brady said. Media Contact Doug McAdam, Sociology: (650) 723-9401, mcadam@stanford.edu Jack Rakove, History: (650) 723-4514, rakove@stanford.edu David Brady: Political Science: (650) 723-9702, dbrady@stanford.edu Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, cbparker@stanford.edu Shanghai will increase monitoring of mortgage lending as part of stricter measures to cool an overheated property market, according to a document seen by Reuters today.Banks will be required to provide details on their home mortgages to buyers, the document released by the central bank's Shanghai branch said.Shanghai authorities released new rules last month tightening mortgage down payment requirements for second home purchases and increasing the threshold non-residents need to meet to buy homes in the city.Property prices in top-tier Chinese cities are booming while prices in smaller cities, where most of China's urban population lives, are sinking, complicating government efforts to spread wealth more evenly and arrest slowing economic growth. REUTERS PS GC1645 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-673860.Xml Eight months of hibernation in a "den", working on a secret project and no weekends amid precautions for secrecy -- that's how the largest leak in whistleblower history was pulled off, exposing a widespread system of global tax evasion. The Indian Express newspaper was part of the global media network coordinated by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for the leak that included more than 4.8 million emails, three million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that specialises in creating shell companies in which its clients used to hide their assets. Ritu Sarin, Executive Editor at the Express, shares with IANS, how "Project Prometheus" came by and how they secretly worked for the expose that touched celebrities, athletes, business executives and world leaders. There are about 500 Indians who have stashed their wealth in offshore shell companies, according to the leak. Excerpts from the email interview with Sarin. Q. Tell us how it began. A: Barely four months after the ICIJ-Indian Express investigation into HSBC accounts (Swiss bank leaks) got over, they called again from Washington informing us about a spanking new project. This was in July last year. The Indian Express was a "natural" partner for the ICIJ since we have twice before collaborated with them on a major project (in 2013 and 2015) and since I have been a ICIJ member for over a decade now. So in July, the agreement was signed, which stipulated the embargo guidelines, credits for ICIJ and Suddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper which got the leaks and so on -- and "Project Prometheus" was rolling. Q: Did you always believe it was going to be this big? A: I never had any doubt that The Indian Express would back me all the way. For, which other newspaper would invest in a team of editors working for eight months on a single story? Everyone was excited from the Day One and the team was formed in consultation with the editors. All the precautions of system security and fire walls were taken by ICIJ and despite the fact that we have an open office plan, nobody heard the words Mossack Fonseca spoken these eight months. I was confident there would be no leak, so while others in the office may have known something expansive was in the works, nobody knew what precisely. Q. How did you manage secrecy? A: We got systems installed in a "den" in one side of the office and took simple precautions of not leaving papers around; being careful on the phone and so on. The ICIJ had inbuilt fire walls like password protected access to the "Forumn" where an authenticator had to be used for entry and all email communication was done on an encrypted service. The ICIJ also repeatedly issued guidelines and even asked us to report any theft of laptops or phones. Fortunately, we pulled it off. Q. Is this the biggest scoop of your journalistic career? A: I'm hoping the biggest is yet to come. In terms of scope of the investigation and the space given day after day (almost six pages on Day 1), it may be the biggest but I have earlier done some important stories too: the Zail Singh interview for Sunday magazine and Tata tapes and the troop movement story for The Indian Express. But as I said, I hope the best is round the bend. Q. How did the pool of reporters around the globe coordinate? A: In September, around 100 reporters, working on "Project Prometheus", along with the entire ICIJ staff and editors of Suddeutsch Zeitung met for a two-day brainstorming session in Munich. I represented The Indian Express. There were some training sessions and presentations from reporting teams on early finds. It was a rare exchange of ideas and a sort of undercover meeting of investigative reporters from around the world. The rest of the exchanges were done on the "forum" where files and data were fed and thematic as well as regional groups created. There was, for instance, a separate group working on Iceland; even one for art dealers who were Mossack Fonseca clients and so on. Q: Eight months of reading into data, decoding it, analyzing it. Must have been boring? A: It has been an exhausting exercise. Meant working weekends, long hours before the machine, eight months of hibernation. Q: Did you and the Express have editorial control on the Panama stories? A: Of course, we had complete editorial control. All project members were free to pick anything from the millions of files. Just before publication date, ICIJ asked for rough news-lists from country leaders. Q: Did all the journalists involved in the project have access to all the data? A: Everyone had the same access to the entire data. Q Why not release all the data the way Wikileaks did it? Questions are being raised if it was a selected expose as few names from the West or America has been named so far? A: Just like they did for the earlier BVI (British Virgin Island) investigation, the ICIJ will be releasing some interactive data --not the documents -- but a month after project launch. It is ICIJ policy not to make all documents public. Q. Anything interesting you can recall happened during the course of your investigation? A: The three of us (P. Vaidyanathan Iyer, National Affairs Editor, Jay Mazoomdaar, Associate Editor and myself), evidently, seemed least disappointed when India lost the T20 semi finals. The final was on April 3 and Project Prometheus was to go to print the same night! (Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at sarwar.k@ians.in) --Indo-Asian News Service sar/hs/vt ( 961 Words) 2016-04-08-18:29:30 (IANS) "NEWS! Kareena may have signed her next film, directed by TE3N's Ribhu Dasgupta,' read the post. Writer-director Ribhu Dasgupta, who has recently directed Amitabh Bachchan, Vidya Balan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui for upcoming thriller 'TE3N,' set to release this summer, has already started penning his next. Reportedly, Ribhu shared the script with Bebo in March and last week the actress agreed to do the yet-to-be-titled thriller, which is supposed to role in June. In a recent interview with a leading daily, the 35-year-old actress even said that after rejecting over six scripts in last three months, she will begin her next project around June. Did she hint about Ribhu's movie? Currently Kareena is in Bangkok shooting a commercial and will start prepping up for the thriller once she is back this weekend. (ANI) The two leaders will meet during the upcoming meeting of Foreign Ministers of Russia, India and China on April 18 in Moscow. External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said, "India is in constant touch with China on the matter. The issue has already been taken up at high level. There cannot be two sets of rules for judging terrorists." Replying to a media query on consular access for former Indian Navy official who is Pakistan's custody, Swarup said India is yet to get the access. Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit, meanwhile, said he subscribes to Chinese view on Masood Azhar. China maintains that designation of any individual as terrorist by the U.N. is a serious issue, and therefore, there was a need for more evidence from India for better understanding to ban JeM chief. (ANI) While hearing the petition on imposition of Uttarakhand High Court and an Ordinance Bill throughout the day, the court ordered both the parties to present their submission in this regard by April 12. The court stated that the next hearing will be heard on April 18. The hearing will continue tomorrow again on a petition regarding the termination of assembly membership of nine rebel Congress MLAs. The court also ordered that the stay on Judgement of the single bench will remain in force till 19th of this month. The Centre, in a dramatic move, dismissed the Congress government and imposed President's rule in the state citing breakdown of governance. Not amused by the step, Chief Minister Harish Rawat termed it as the 'murder of democracy'. With the move coming weeks after President's rule was imposed in Arunachal Pradesh, an angry Congress claimed that the BJP had stooped to a new low and would challenge the order in court. The crisis in the hill state erupted on March 18 when nine Congress MLAs rebelled against Rawat's government, resulting in flip-flop in the passage of the Appropriation Bill. The BJP met the governor the same day and staked claim to form the government.(ANI) After Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit said that India-Pakistan Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue has been suspended at present, the Congress Party said Prime Minister has been walking into situation which has led to national embarrassment repeatedly. "By permitting a JIT to visit India we have taken a wrong decision, instead an NIA team should have visited Pakistan and had probed the role of Maulana Masood Azhar," Congress Deputy Leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma told ANI. "Pakistan has tried to give an impression and even in today's statement, that it is India which is a victim of targeted terrorism, which is fermenting trouble. There can't be anything more serious to be termed as a setback," he added. Sharma also said that it is Pakistani government and their establishment which have taken a position. "The high commissioners don't decide for the governments, he has only articulated what the view of the Pakistani establishment collectively has been," he said. Meanwhile, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari assailed the Modi Government over the remarks of Pakistan envoy. "It is extremely unfortunate that Pakistan has decided to take this position. But more fundamental questions is: Are we ourselves to be blamed for Pakistan's belligerence? There is a need to get off the high horse of the jingoism and for this government to really introspect and retrospect about their Pakistan policy over past 22 months," Tewari told ANI. "Unfortunately the policy of the BJP government has been a story of flip flops and U-turns which has allowed the Pakistan deep state and the terror groups orchestra to run circles around India," he added. He further said that Prime Minister Modi needs to understand that the Pakistani deep state doesn't want to have peace with India, hence the dialogue with India has to be in a calibrated manner. Pakistani envoy Basit said that the dialogue with India is suspended, while hinting that the National Investigative Agency (NIA) will not be given access to JeM chief Masood Azhar for the probe into the Pathankot attack. "I would say the dialogue is suspended," Basit said during an interaction at the Foreign Correspondents club while responding to a question on the status of the comprehensive bilateral dialogue announced by foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and Pakistan's foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz last December. While the MEA has countered the Pakistan high commissioner's assertion that the visit by Pakistani JIT was not on reciprocity, saying before the team's visit here, both sides had agreed that it would be on the basis of reciprocity. "We have seen comments by the Pakistani high commissioner on the visit of the JIT Team to investigate the terrorist attack on the Pathankot Air Base that have reference to reciprocity. MEA would like to clarify that on 26 March, 2016, before the visit of the JIT, the Indian high commission formally conveyed to the Pakistani foreign ministry that the Terms of Reference 'are broadly agreed to with the proviso that these would be on the basis of reciprocity and followed in accordance with extant legal provisions'. "Subsequently, the JIT visited from March 27 to April 1, 2016," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said. (ANI) the Hindu calendar New Year is being celebrated across the country today, marking the first day of spring season and New Year's Day of the traditional Hindu calendar based on the beginning of new moon. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his wishes saying, "greetings to people across India celebrating the advent of the New Year. May this new year bring joy & prosperity." Known by various names, Chaitra Sukladi, Gudi Padava, Ugadi, Cheti Chand, Navreh and Sajibu Cheiraoba, different states across the nation are celebrating the festival in their own way. "Wishing all my Sindhi friends on the auspicious occasion of Cheti Chand. We bow to Lord Jhulelal & seek his divine blessings. Gudi Padwa wishes to all friends in Maharashtra. Praying for a phenomenal year, full of happiness and success. On the special day of Ugadi, my greetings to everyone. I hope the new year brings peace & prosperity in our society. Navreh greetings to my fellow citizens. I pray that the coming year enhances the spirit of happiness and harmony in our lives. Sajibu Cheiraoba greetings to the wonderful people of Manipur. May the new year fulfil all your wishes," the Prime Minister said in a series of tweets. (ANI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi also tweeted his greetings on Ugadi saying, "On the special day of Ugadi, my greetings to everyone. I hope the new year brings peace & prosperity in our society." Thousands of devotees are thronging temples to pray for happiness and prosperity in the New Year. Special prayers are being held at all major temples in the two states like Tirumala, Vijayawada, Srisailam, and Yadadri temples. People taste the special Ugadi Chutney of six basic delicacies comprising Neem flowers, tender mangos, new jaggery, salt and tamarind symbolizing the need to take all incidents of life with equanimity. They listen to Panchangam- religious almanac of the coming year to mark the festival. Literary discussions, poetry recitations will be held during the day long celebrations. As part of Ugadi celebrations, the two State Governments are all set to honor eminent persons from different walks of life. Governor E S L Narasimhna, Telangana Chief Minister Chandrasekhara Rao and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu greeted Telugu people on the occasion. While the Telangana government is celebrating the Telugu New Year in Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh government is celebrating it in Vijayawada. (ANI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended his greetings on Twitter saying, "Gudi Padwa wishes to all friends in Maharashtra. Praying for a phenomenal year, full of happiness and success." The day of Gudi Padwa begins with an oil-bath and eating Neem leaves ritual followed by prayers. Days before the festival, people start cleaning their homes and courtyards to start preparations for the actual day. On the day of the festival, people decorate their doorsteps with Rangoli. Flowers are used for decorating the house and a toran made of mango leaves is hung across the top of the door. On Gudi Padwa, a new pot made of silver, copper or bronze covered in auspicious red, yellow or saffron cloth is hoisted upside down at the entrance of the house. This is called the Gudi. It's a sign of prosperity and good things to come. A procession, Shobha Yatra or Cultural Parade will also be held where people dressed in traditional attire unite and perform the lezim to entertain the audience. This day is celebrated to mark the return of Lord Ram to Ayodhya along with his consort Sita and brother Lakshama after defeating demon King Ravana in Lanka.(ANI) Tanzil was shot at from a close range on the night of April 2 was on his way back from the marriage ceremony of his niece, along with his wife and two children. The NIA officer died on the spot while his wife was rushed to the Fortis Hospital in Noida and remains critical. The Uttar Pradesh Police had on Wednesday said the investigations and analysis of evidences are pointing at some personal angle behind the murder. Additional Director General (Law and Order) Daljeet Chowdhary told the media that the slain officer had some personal as well as professional matters, adding separate teams of ATS, STF and U.P Police have been constituted to inquire into the same. Talking about the killers, he said there were two motorcycle-borne masked assailants - one was riding the motorcycle while another fired the shots. The DG (Law and Oder), however, refused to answer whether the police had identified the assailants or their gang. (ANI) Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over Pakistan policy, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said it has received a body blow. Mr Abdullah was reacting to Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit's statement that talks between the two neighbours are currently suspended. Taking to micro blogging site Twitter the Working President of the main opposition National Conference(NC) said "PM Modi's Pakistan policy has been delivered a body blow today..,..Surprisingly the dialogue has been called off by Pakistan". However, his tweet evoked mixed reaction, while some saying it is no surprise, others observing, first it was former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee and now Mr Modi. "HC Basit's statement is baffling..,..Although there's no talk of any suspension of talks by Govt in our media..,..Too busy with Panama", said a tweet while another said "Congrats..,..best result for people like you who wish that Kashmir issue is never solve". "Face saving by Pak Govt. prior to expected negative report of current Pathankot visit or worse.,..Govt has totally lost control". "No Surprise, Pakistan Will do everything to hide its terror face among World Community, but now under firm grip of PM MODI !", a post held. "Pehle atal behari, abki modi ki bari. #agrasummit #PathankotProbe", said a tweet.UNI BAS PR SS -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-673277.Xml However, situation in Anantnag and Kulgam in the south Kashmir was normal. Business and other activities remained paralysed and traffic was off the roads in these districts, though there was no strike call from any separatist organisation. However, traffic on Srinagar-Jammu national highway, also passing through parts of Pulwama district, was plying as additional security forces had been deployed along with Road Opening Party (ROP) at Pampore, Awantipora and other areas to prevent any stone pelting on vehicles. Work in government offices and banks was affected. The educational institutions wore a deserted look in both the district as students stayed away. Additional security forces and State police personnel have been deployed in sensitive areas in both the districts to prevent any demonstration. Security forces and state police personnel had been deployed in strength in both the districts to prevent any law and order problem. A local militant of HM was killed in an encounter at Gadoora in Pulwama on April 5 evening while two militants of the same outfit were killed in Shopian in the wee hours yesterday, when a police vehicle was set on fire by demonstrators, raising pro freedom slogans.UNI BAS PR PM0950 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-673283.Xml Alleging that snowballing of an administrative issue at National Institute of Technology (NIT), Srinagar, into a controversy is a deep rooted conspiracy, Kashmir Economic Alliance (KEA) asserted that the people of Kashmir were committed to protect the non-local students. "Even when the communal wave was flowing across India, Kashmir was safe for non-local students whom people of Kashmir always cared for like their own children. So how come can anyone say that the non-local children are not safe here," Kashmir Economic Alliance Chairman Haji Muhammad Yasin Khan said.Alleging that the issue turned controversial only due to the undue and uncalled interference from Home Ministry, Mr Khan said what had been projected by government as a serious matter can be resolved harmoniously within an hour. "We appeal the government to let us go in and meet the two groups of students and things will be resolved soon," Mr Khan added.Accusing RSS to hatch up a conspiracy to shift the college out of Kashmir valley, he said this will never be allowed. "Moreover, when the central government has been silent over the killing of innocent Kashmiri students by security forces, why is creating so much of hue and cry over an administrative matter," Mr Khan asked.UNI BAS PR PM0957 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-673285.Xml Tripura government has rejected the demand of CBI probe into the assassination of former Health minister Bimal Sinha under mysterious circumstances in March 1998 at Abhanga of Kamalpur in Dhalai district in North Tripura.Taking part in the short discussion of opposition legislator Sudip Roy Barman yesterday on the comment of the one member judicial commission headed by Justice M Yusuf that the state government did not extend adequate cooperation to the fact finding commission, Chief Minister Manik Sarkar rejected further inquiry into the case.The commission was constituted three months after the incident and it had submitted the report in 2000. As per the provision of the Act, the state government was supposed to table the report in the Assembly within six months, but it did not do so.Recently, following direction of Tripura High Court, the state government had tabled the report on March 23. Following pressure from the opposition to Speaker Ramendra Chandra Debnath allowed discussion on the report, where Chief Minister Sarkar and CPI-M party were attacked by the opposition members.Opposition member Mr Barman had advocated for CBI probe to bring the guilty persons to the justice, he said the government has tried to suppress the Yusuf Commission report for 16 long years."After the High Court's directive, the government has made the Yusuf Commission's report in public. In its report, the Commission had said the government did not lend helping hand to probe the tragic incident", he pointed out.Referring to commission's observation, he pointed out that it was not the first time that Sinha went to militant hideout on March 31, 1998. ''Sinha used to visit the hideout to release abducted CPM leaders from militant clutch. It shows it was having directly or indirectly link with the extremists,'' he said.Mr Barman accused Mr Sarkar of hatching conspiracy to kill Sinha to retain the post of Chief Minister, as Sinha was the main contender for the post and in several occasions before he was killed Sinha mentioned it in various levels.Before the incident Mr Sarkar and some of his party leaders held secret meeting with Prakash Karat in Agartala. According to Mr Barman, the plan of Sinha's assassination was plot in that meeting and commission also indicated it in the report."When CPM party could pay Rs 13 lakh to get release of Ranjit Ghosh, a subordinate party leader in Kamalpur subdivision, why the same party could not come up with such an effort? In the final hour of the incident, frustrated Bimal Sinha had said he had not got any help from the party to meet the ransom demand of the extremists," Roy Barman stated."The Commission has expressed its doubt over role of the then Confidential Assistant of Bimal Sinha Sukha Ranjan Sinha. They should have lodged an FIR against Sukha Ranjan soon after tabling the report of the Yusuf Commission", he said adding that the police report was appeared to be farced and desperately attempted to save the killers.However, the Chief Minister said, "Sinha was murdered in a political conspiracy only after 20 days of I became CM and I did not know about his association with militants. The commission neither blamed the state government nor the state police for the tragic incident. It said he was himself solely responsible for his assassination."Congress has called for statewide general strike on April 18, demanding CBI probe into the case and resignation of Mr Sarkar on the issue.UNI BB KK PR PM1132 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-673332.Xml The Prime Minister had arrived in the city yesterday and spent the night at the Raj Bhawan. He drove to the shaktipeeth in a special convoy. He paid obeisance to the Mother Goddess and offered 'Puja' in sync with 'Navratri' rituals. Mr Modi spent nearly half-an-hour inside the temple, emerging with folded hands after offering obeisance and also waving to waiting crowds and shaking hands with the people. The Prime Minister was accompanied by Union minister and Assam's chief ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal and BJP leader Dr Himanta Biswa Sharma, among others. Modi will address four rallies at Raha, Rangiya, Sorbhog and Guwahati later in the day before returning to New Delhi in the evening. The Prime Minister had toured the state for two days for first phase election campaign, polling for which was held on April 4. Polling for second and final phase is slated for April 11.UNI SG KK PR PM1154 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-673364.Xml 'Gudi Padwa' very first day of Chaitra month of Marathi new year today is being celebrated with enthusiasm and gaiety across the Marathwada region. This day is also celebrated as 'Hindu New Year'. On this auspicious day, Gudi was installed, with the help of Kalash on the top of Bamboo stick wrapping with new clothes, Nim trees leaves and garlanded with sugar Gathi (sweet) and flowers in front of their respective houses after completing poojas. On this occasion in the city behalf of the Hindu New Year reception Committee is going to take out a grand 'Shobhayatra' from 1500 hrs onwards from Historic Sansthan Ganesh temple after performing Arathi by the founder president and Aurangabad MP Chandrakanat Khaire and president of the committee Mr HarbhauBagade, who is also state Assembly speaker in which all the activists from various hindu outfits will participate by wearing traditional dresses with displaying awareness, religious live shows during the procession. The procession will take on route of Rajbazar, Gulmandi, Aurangpura and it will reach to Khadkeswar near temple of the lord Shiva where the procession will culminat after Yogeshswranand Sadguru Dr. Shri. Mangalnath Maharaj pravachan, later this evening, commitee member said. UNI VKB NV PR PM1255 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-673444.Xml A woman and her two minor sons were killed and later their bodies set on fire at Dhobahi village under Amnaur police station in Saran district late last night. Deputy Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar said the woman, identified as Pooja Devi, and her two sons, Nikhil(4) and Naitik(2) were first killed with sharp weapons and later set on fire apparently to destroy evidence. Mr Kumar said, Prime facie it appears to be dowry related killing and the mother-in-law of the slain woman has been taken into custody for interrogation. The charred bodies of the deceased have been sent to hospital for post mortem examination, he said adding that the further details were awaited.UNI XC-IS PR NS1234 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-673414.Xml Orsi, who clinched the deal with India when he was heading Finmeccanica, was arrested in 2014. Subsequently, he had resigned as Chief Executive of the group. After charges of bribery to get the deal clinched in favour of the company surfaced, India had terminated the contract and launched its own CBI probe into the case. Finmeccanica's subsidiary AgustaWestland had till then supplied three out of 12 choppers to the Indian Air Force, which remained hangared ever since. India had also put on hold all the defence dealing with the company till the case against it was pending. UNI MK PR 1333 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-673523.Xml Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini's plans to play captain Vincent Kompany in Tuesday's Champions League quarter-final, second-leg against Paris St Germain could rekindle his feud with Belgium manager Marc Wilmots over the defender.Kompany, who has struggled with a persistent calf problem this season, has not played since injuring his knee against Dynamo Kiev on March 15, and Wilmots is concerned another injury could rule the Belgium captain out of the Euro 2016 finals.With the tie evenly poised after City came from behind to secure a 2-2 draw at the Parc des Princes in the first leg and a place in the semi-finals at stake, Pellegrini said Kompany had an outside chance of playing in the home leg."We'll see him during the week and what he improves," the Chilean told reporters. "The last few days, he's worked very well. We must test him with more intensity and it's very difficult to tell now."Pellegrini's stance is at odds with his Belgium counterpart, who had insisted earlier that the 29-year-old would not risk his fitness by playing again this season with the June-July tournament in France a long-term goal."Vincent Kompany suffered a calf tear, which means he will need five to eight weeks to return. I spoke to him on the phone. He has huge desire. We'll see him on 16 May," Wilmots had said.This is not the first time the influential central defender has been caught in a club vs country dispute.In October, Kompany was named in Belgium's squad for the Euro 2016 qualifiers against Andorra and Israel, despite him having been out since September after picking up an injury against Juventus, and Pellegrini saying he could not play.In 2013, Pellegrini's predecessor Roberto Mancini criticised Wilmots for playing Kompany against Macedonia after he returned from a two-month injury absence.REUTERS DS PM1324 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-673491.Xml Tamil Nadu Governor Dr K Rosaiahtoday offered prayers at the TTD Temple in the city on the occasion of Ugadi, Telugu New Year's Day. He was accompanied by his wife K.Sivalakshmi and otherfamily members. Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa also greeted the Governor on the occasion. In her greetings, Ms Jayalalithaa said ''on this joyous occasion of Ugadi, I convey my best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year to you, your wife and all the members of your family.''UNI GV 1315 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-673504.Xml Eleven years after dodging the agencies to escape arrest, Kalamessery bus burning accused K A Anoob was arrested by the NIA from Delhi airport soon after his arrival from Dubai, UAE, last night.Anoob was one of the three culprits who had hijacked a Tamil Nadu state bus loaded with passengers on September 9, 2005, commandeered it to near Kalamessery town and set it ablaze to put pressure on the Tamil Nadu government for release of Abdul Nazar Madani, the leader of Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) of Kerala, lodged in Coimbatore jail in connection terror-related case. In the incident, all passengers were asked to get down before the culprits set it afire. The bus was plying between Ernakulam and Salem.A total of 14 accused were involved in the terror-related case. Investigation was completed and charge sheet filed before the Special Court for trial of NIA cases in Ernakulam on December 17, 2010 against 13 accused. One accused Abdul Rahim, who was killed in encounter at Jammu and Kashmir, has not been charge sheeted. Trial is yet to be scheduled.Madani was later allegedly found involved in several serial bomb blasts cases also, one which occurred in Bangalore in 2008.UNI PRA SW AE 1453 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0384-673608.Xml Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi today chaired a meeting to review the preparationsand arrangements made for the May 16 Tamil Nadu Assembly polls. At a star hotel in the city, Mr Zaidi, who arrived herefrom Puducherry last evening and met representativesof political parties, who aired their grievances, held a meeting with DEOs, SSPs, DIGs, IGs along with Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni and State police nodal officers. During the meeting, Mr Zaidi asked the officials to strictly adhere to rules and asked them to ensure that the model code of conduct was implemented in letter and spirit. He also elaborated on various measures put in place by the Election Commission for a free and fair election. He would also be meeting the Chief Secretary, DGP, Home Secretary, Commissioner (Income Tax) and Commissioner (Excise). During the meeting, Mr Zaidi inaugurated election-related merchandise and training for videographers. He also declared open 50 additional facilitation centres to enable voters procure voter IDs. An exhibition collating the photos of various programmes conducted for systematic voters' education and electoral participation (SVEEP) was also displayed depicting the EC's efforts to increase voter awareness. The focus areas of SVEEP activities include campaigns in low turnout polling stations and Assembly constituency areas, facilitating electoral search through app and website, registration of eligible electors, urging voters to exercise theirduty, reminders for polling date, ethical voting, familiarising usage of electronic voting machine (EVM) and voters verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), and familiarising the electoral process through model polling stations. The publicity methods adopted for the awareness were posters, banners, pamphlets, events and ads. Awareness messages were even conveyed through rangolis to reach the common man. UNI GV 1400 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-673575.Xml Except actor and AIADMK Founder MGR, neither the ruling AIADMK nor theOpposition DMK has won two consecutive termsthough the two dravidian majors have been elected alternatively by the voters. Aiming to create a record of sorts by winning it for the second successive term and retain power, AIADMK Supremo and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa will launch her election campaign in the city tomorrow. She would be addressing a public meeting at Island Grounds, a venue which was popular forhosting expos and meetings. The party workers were gearing up for the rally and were looking forward to the first campaign address by Ms Jayalalithaa and arrangements were on in full swing. Senior ministers held detailed discussions with the party district secretaries about the arrangements. ''Since this is the first campaign meeting of Amma, as Ms Jayalalithaa is affectionately called by the AIADMK cadres, and it will beheld in Chennai, we are planning a grand show of strength'', AIADMK leaders said. Party sources said even as Ms Jayalalithaa addresses the cadre at the rally, arrangementswere made to telecast live in all the city constituencies through LED vans, which would be positioned at vantage points in many areas. Even as her rivals DMK, DMDK-PWF and BJP yet to release the list of candidates, the AIADMKSupremo is setting out on a gruelling campaigningschedule covering several districts, including the neighbouring Puducherry. During her campaigning, Ms Jayalalithaa will seek support from the electorate for an impressivemandate. AIADMK sources said that Ms Jayalalithaa would also introduce all her party candidates contesting from the city during the electionrally. After finishing her campaign in Chennai, the AIADMK chief would campaign in Cuddalore, Dharmapuri and other northern districts andcover the entire state during her month longtour. After sweeping the 2011 Assembly polls,Ms Jayalalithaa single-handedly decimated all her opponents in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, winning 37 of the 39 seats and shewas determined to ensure her party's victoryby a record margin this time. UNI GV 1448 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-673649.Xml Additional Superintendent of Police Roopesh Dwivedi said a completely charred body was found from the factory premises. The deceased was yet to be identified. "The fire control room received information regarding the blaze at around 0945 hrs. Flames engulfed the godown containing potato chips, onions and fodder. The inferno was doused with the help of two teams and eight tankers in two-and-half hours," said Fire Sub-Inspector Amar Singh. Sub-Divisional Magistrate Sandeep Soni told UNI that Tara Singh (25), Mathura Bai (26), Rani (30) and Vikram (35) sustained burn injuries and were admitted to the Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital. The condition of Tara Singh and Mathura Bai is serious. Town Inspector (Rau) Vikram Sisodia said the cause behind the blaze is being ascertained. Police are looking into the arrangement of security-related resources and whether the factory had license. Further action would be taken on the basis of statements of the injured.UNI XC-PS AE VN1514 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-673599.Xml Outstation students continued to protest to press for their demands though the Jammu and Kashmir government has already announced a magisterial inquiry into the incidents within the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Srinagar. Students, including girls, staged a sit-in within the campus last night before going back to their rooms. A team of Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) rushed on April 6 had held talks with the NIT administration, faculty members and outstation and local students. The outstation students took out a procession within the campus today, demanding among other things shifting of Institute of outside the Valley, action against the police personnel involved in the lathicharge and those who indulged in alleged anti-national activities. They also demanded that they be allowed to go homes. However, the NIT authorities have already given a choice to students to appear or skip the examination scheduled to start from April 11. The authorities added that the students who wish to skip the examination and leave the campus for their homes will be provided another opportunity to appear in the examination later. During the procession, a group of students shouting slogans in favour of their demands, tried to march towards the main gate to interact with media persons. However, central paramilitary forces deployed on the campus stopped them and persuaded the students to remain within the campus. The agitated students are demanding shifting of campus out of Kashmir, action be taken against police officials involved in lathicharge on April 5 and action against officials of the NIT allegedly involved in anti-national activities.MORE UNI BAS AE VN1558 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-673675.Xml A man found guilty of molesting his minor daughter, has been sentenced to jail by the Thane district court here yesterday. Public Prosecutor Sanjay Londhe told the court in his submission that the accused who returned to India from Saudi in 2006, started molesting his daughter, who was in XIIth standard. He went on committing the crimerepeatedly for four years, when no one was at home. Her two brothers went out on work and her mother used to go to a doctor as she was not keeping well, Mr Londhe informed the court. The prosecutor further told the court that when she was in XIIth standard, her father in around 2010 started misbehaving with her. Whenever she objected, he threatened to kill her and sent her mother to her maternal home. When she find this unbearable, she told her mother. After hearing both the prosecution and defence counsel, Thane Additional Sessions Judge VV Bambarde said the accused had committed an offence falling under Section 354B of the IPC and should undergo simple imprisonment for a period of three years. Police charged the accused under Sections 354, 376 (2)(f),506 (2) and 354B of IPC and arrested him in August 2014, based on the complaint by his daughter, who was fed up of constant harassment.UNI XR NV RJ AE VN1555 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-673615.Xml A two-judge bench, comprising Chief Justice Manjulla Chellur and Justice Arijit Banerjee, issued a ruling after hearing the counsels for four petitioners who prayed for an investigation into the tragic incidentin congested north Kolkata. The court asked the state government to provide details in the report about when, the flyover was planned and when its construction had begun. The bench also wanted to know from the government how the flyover collapsed and what "is its future plan". The case would come up for further hearing after three weeks. A portion of the 2.2 km long flyover came crashing down on March 31 killing at least 27 people. UNI XC PL SW AE VN1547 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-673689.Xml Posting a picture allegedly of 2010 violence showing demonstrators beating a security force jawan with lathis in Kashmir and later trying to connect it with yesterday's demonstration in south Kashmir by working president of the main opposition National Conference (NC) Omar Abdullah evoked sharp reaction. Mr Abdullah in a tweet had said "Protesters assault police, burn their vehicle & militants are given a "gun salute". CM talks about office cleanliness!!!". Pictures alongwith the tweet show a security force jawan being hit with lathis by some youths, thousands of people attending funeral of slain militants and a police vehicle in flames. However, Mr Abdullah's tweet got sharp reaction alleging it was a picture of 2010 when he was Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. More than 120 persons, mostly youths were killed in security force and police firing in the Valley and hundreds were also injured. "that's Fake Image From 2010, 6 Years Old Pic. Let's Stop Spreading Lies. #NITSrinagar", said a tweet while another said "Irony Is That This Pic Was Posted On 28th June 2010, When You Were Chief Minister Of J&K. Self Goal? #NITSrinagar #TirangaInNITsrinagar ". "Sir, I am running your fake account & have written clearly in my bio.Better you also write it in your bio. Fake Pic tweeting" and another wrote "Sir, Your fake concern about J&K is clearly visible. Pls write in your Bio 'Fake Pic Uploder' Sir using Image from 2010 ? shame on you to spread lies here is the original check the date. "tries a joke on him self! Uploads violent pics from his tenure and blames it on the current govt," said another tweet. A police vehicle was set ablaze by the demonstrators in Shopian, after two Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) top commanders were killed in an encounter with security forces early yesterday.UNI BAS AE VN1700 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-673787.Xml The Maharashtra government has decided to extend the deadline for disposing off pending stock of cigarette, bidi and other products with 40 per cent pictorial health warning, till the end of this month. The decision was taken in a meeting of the office bearers of the Mumbai Bidi Tambaku Vyapari Sangh (MBTVS) and representatives of cigarette manufacturers with Maharashtra Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and FDA Girish Bapat, yesterday. In the meeting Mr Bapat told the office bearers of Vyapari Sangh to inform all vendors to dispose off old stock by 30 April after which, a penalty will be imposed on the vendors if they are found in possession of old stock. Narayan Mankikar, Vice President of the Mumbai Bidi Tambaku Vyapari Sangh told media persons that in the meeting, Bapat told them that the FDA would give them back the stock of cigarettes, which was marked and kept aside, during the raids on godowns, conducted in the last few days. After the statutory requirement to carry 85 per cent health pictorial warning on front and back of the pack came into effect from April one, the FDA officials raided godowns all over Maharashtra and marked and kept aside tobacco products worth Rs 273 crore. The stockists were warned not to release the stock with old pictorial warning. In the raids products worth Rs 273 crore, including Rs 30 crore from Mumbai were seized and kept aside. More UNI AAA NV ADG CS1702 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-673755.Xml : A Sessions Court here today sentenced three persons for forcing a Bangladeshi woman into flex trade and sexually assaulting her in an apartment in this district of Kerala last year. Marad Special Additional Sessions Judge S Krisha Kumar sentenced A B Naufel (30), of Udinur Thrikkarippur in Kasargod district and Wayanad Muttil Bavakka alias Suhail (44) and his wife Ambika alias Saajitha (34) and eight, five and three years imprisonment after finding them guilty of presenting young women from Bangaladesh to clients on May 30, 2015. The court also slapped a five of Rs 50,000 on the first accused and Rs 25,000 on second third respectively. The court also directed to pay the penaltycollected from them to the victim. Five accused were acquitted by the court as charges against them could not be proved. According to prosecution, the gang had lured the women to their group, promising to take her for sightseeing. She was accommodated in an apartment near Eranhipalam in the city and later presented before some clients. Following the incident, she was lodged in a shelter home here. Learning about herpathetic plight, some voluntary organisations came forward to help her. With the permission of the court, she returned to Bangladesh with her husband.UNI PCH KVV AK 1815 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0328-673706.Xml Respecting to Bombay High Court ruling, the Shani Singanapur Trust today decided to allow women to enter the sanctum sanctorum, breaking the decades old tradition. The trustees bowed down on the auspicious day of 'Gudi Padva, new year for people acorss Maharashtra. Sayaram Bankar, a trustee of Shani Shingnapur temple, said, ''In our meeting we have decided to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees, including men and women, in keeping with the Bombay High Court directive.'' ''We will welcome [Bhoomata Brigade leader] Trupti Desai also if she comes for darshan,'' he said, referring to the campaign spearheaded by the outfit for breaking the tradition followed by the shrine of Lord Shani. On April one, the High Court held that it is the women's fundamental right to go into places of worship and the government is duty-bound to protect it. The agitation for women's entry gained momentum over the last few months, even as the temple authorities barred men also from entering the sanctum sanctorum. Meanwhile, Ms Desai welcomed the decision of Shani Shingnapur temple trustees to open gates of the sacred 'Chauthara' for men and women devotees, and said it was a 'wise' step on their part. She hoped that the trustees at the Trimbakeshwar and Mahalaxmi temples in Nashik and Kolhapur too would take similar decision to end injustice against women devotees. Earlier in the day, more than 100 pilgrims from Shingnapur village entered the sanctum sanctorum of the temple and offered prayers to the deity on the occasion of 'Gudi Padwa', even as the temple officials tried to prevent them. UNI NV SS AE GC1806 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-674012.Xml According to IIC of Mahakalapada police station Padarbinda Tripathy one Bhima Swain and his threeyear old son, Pabitra Swain, were returning to their house in a cycle when a speeding truck hit their bicycle. While the child died on the spot Bhima Swain sustained critical injuries in the accident and was rushed to the district head quarter hospital for treatment. Later he was shifted to SCB medical college and hospital at Cuttack as his condition deteriorated. Angry local people staged a road blockade on Jamboo-Marshaghai canal road near the accident spot at Maladiha compensation to the deceased child's family and free medical treatment to the critical injured person. The IIC of Mahakalapada led by police team rushed to the spot along with the local executive magistrate and managed to pacify the agitation. The district administration has provided Rs 20,000 from district Red Cross and also assured the agitators that the district administration would write to the state government to provide compensation from the Chief Minister's relief fund. Vehicular traffic was paralysed on the busy road for couple of hours due to road blockade. The Mahakalapada police has seized the truck and detained the driver, Mr Tripathy said.UNI XC-DP AKM AY AS1904 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-674075.Xml : The sexual harassment of women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 insists that all workplaces shouldhave an appropriate complaint mechanism with a complaints committee, special counselling or other support services. The Act requires all workplaces to set-up Internal Complaints Committees toaddress the issue of sexual harassment, said Chairperson of the Child WelfareCommittee (CWC), Vidyaa Ramkumar, explaining the Act in a training programmeorganised in the Pondicherry University. Dr Vidyaa said a woman must head the complaints committee and no less thanhalf its members should be women and the committee should also include an NGO/individual familiar with the issue of sexual harassment. The Chairperson said the complaint procedure must be time-bound and confidentiality must be maintained. "Complainants/witnesses should not experiencevictimisation/discrimination during the process," she added Explaining the Act, she said an aggrieved woman can file a complaint withinthree months of the harassment incident (or later, if allowed by the committee) and the Inquiry should be completed within 90 days. Dr Vidya said the Act provides the option of a settlement between the aggrieved woman and the responded through conciliation, but only on the request of the woman. However, money compensation cannot be basis for the settlement. Dr Vidyaa said it is the duty of the employer or other responsible persons in theworkplace or institution to prevent sexual harassment, provide mechanisms for theresolution of complaints. She said the employer is expected to set-up an 'Internal Complaints Committee' ('ICC') and the government should set-up a 'Local Complaints Committees' ("LCC") at the district level. As per the recommendations of National Commission for women, there is a need to improve relationships between the police and educational institutions. If a case is reported from an educational institution, the case must be entrusted with a woman police officer for inquiry and to initiate further proceedings in the case. The educational institutions should have an internal security committee, whichshould meet monthly or bi-monthly. Experts should be invited to inspect the college area to assess the security needs and arrangements on campus. Educational institutions must perform their administrative role for security of the students, she said, adding, students must begiven proper training in self-defence. She said the law applies to women harassed in the workplace, including womenworking as domestic workers, daily wagers, temporary or permanent, full-time orpart-time, as well as volunteers.UNI PAB KVV AK 1945 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-673921.Xml Prime Minister Narendra Modi today sought blessings from Goddess Kamakhya at Her shaktipeeth atop Nilachal hill in Guwahati, Assam's main city. The Prime Minister, who was in the state to campaign for the BJP-led alliance for state polls, started his day by visiting the temple, accompanied by Union Minister and Assam's chief ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal and BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sharma, among others. Mr Modi had arrived in the city yesterday and spent the night at the Raj Bhawan. He drove to the shaktipeeth in a special convoy 1000 hrs this morning. Mr Modi paid his obeisance to the Mother Goddess and offered 'puja' in sync with Navratri rituals. He spent nearly half-an-hour inside the temple, emerging with folded hands and vermilion-smeared forehead and garlands and traditional Assamese 'gamocha' around his neck, after offering obeisance. As other devotees and people crowded to catch a glimpse of the Prime Minister in person, Mr Modi went about waving to the crowd and shaking hands with a few. He also met a group of small school girls, who touched the PM on his forehead to know that he was for real as a smiling Modi obliged. The Prime Minister later addressed four election rallies at Raha, Rangiya, Sorbhog and Guwahati before returning to New Delhi in the evening. At the rallies, mentioning of his visit to Kamakhya temple, Mr Modi said it was a privilege for him to pay obeisance before the Goddess on the first day of Navratri festival. He also invoked a couplet of the Purana which stated that the goddess resides in every household in the form of the women of the house in Kamrupa, the ancient name of Guwahati. The Prime Minister had toured the state for two days for first phase election campaign, polling for which was held on April 4. Polling for second and final phase is slated on April 11. UNI SG AKM AE AS1951 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-674366.Xml A group of villagers from different parts of the Santhal Pargana region led by BJP MLAs Anant Ojha and Ashok Kumar met Chief Minister Raghubar Das at the project building here and submitted a report regarding fixation of land rates in the area. The MLAs told the Chief Minister that on the basis of conversation with the villagers, it has come to notice that they want more prices of their lands which are being acquired by the public and private companies. They said at the time of rate fixation, companies like NTPC, Coal India, Railways and Road Construction Department should be included. The MLAs had visited Simra, Nohandia, Haripur, Gandhigram and Hahazor and talked with the villagers. After listening to MLAs, Mr Das said the government will soon take a decision over the issue. He assured the farmers that no injustice would be done with them and they are the one who give the people foodgrains therefore they would get the right claim. "The government is serious about the poor, the farmers, workers and the villagers and take decisions in their favour," he said. Earlier, a team led by Chief Secretary had already submitted a report over land rate fixation. The state government would study both the reports before arriving on a final decision.UNI AK BM AE AS1921 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-674213.Xml Listing out his development agenda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today urged electorate to ensure clear majority for BJP led alliance in assembly polls in the state saying Assam needs double engine both at the centre and in the state to put it back on track fast paced development. Concluding his whirlwind election campaign ahead of second phase of polls in Assam, Prime Minister Modi said,"few people are waiting in the wings for hung assembly and they want nobody should get majority so that they could make government dance to their tunes...I, pray to you all don't take half hearted decision on the fate of Assam". "Give us a chance with full majority to serve you," Mr Modi said adding that `remote controlled' government will destroy the state.In the second leg of campaign trail, Mr Modi today addressed back to back four rallies and touched upon the host of issues afflicting the people starting from availability of electricity to potable water.Batting for same government at the centre and in state, Mr Modi said,"Assam needs double engine one in Delhi and the other one here to pull it out from the deep ditch and put it back on track of fast paced development".Buoyed by the prospect of better than expected show in first phase of polls, the BJP led alliance turned Mr Modi's last rally in suburban Guwahati into a show of strength. Galaxy of party leaders from North East including Arunachal Chief Minister Kalkio Pu, Minister of State for Home Kiran Rijjiju, DONER Minister Dr Jitendra Singh along with chief ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal shared the dais. Attacking former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his statement that his government believed in more work than mere talks, Modi said, "What he said was true and the scams of his period have started speaking now.""Manmohanji ne kahan ki zubaan se zyada kaam bolta hain aur ab toh aapka kaam bolne laga hain..,..Yeh toh saach hain ki paap bolte hain aur ab toh parche khulne lage hain aur sab pareshan hain (Manmohanji had said that work speaks more than words and now their work has started speaking. It is true that sins do speak, now the results of their misdeeds are out and all are perturbed)", he said.In an apparent dig at Singh, Mr Modi said the nation has suffered enough from 'back-seat driving' and asked people not to hand over the 'remote control' into anyone's hands."There are some people who are getting greedy that they will take advantage of a hung assembly and claiming they will run business. Should this be allowed ?", he questioned "The country has suffered enough from this back-seat driving. Should Assam be allowed to be destroyed through this backseat driving..?..They are not interested in the country..,..Don't give the remote control into anyone's hands," he saidHitting out at chief minister Tarun Gogoi, he said governance has been hit due to corruption and nepotism."We are concerned about the sons and daughters of Assam, not the sons and daughters of a select few," he said, taking a dig at Gogoi, whom he accused of being busy only in "settling" his son."Three days are left (for polls) and there will people trying to spread lies and rumours. It is your task to counter them by going to every household and not be misled by them..,..If by chance in Assam an unstable government is formed, forces trying to break the country will try to benefit", he added. Raising the Saradha scam issue for the first time in Assam poll campaign, the Prime Minister said that the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana had been launched to ensure that such fraud did not take place in future..,.."The poor went to chit funds because they did not have access to the banks..,..It was my government that has stopped them from going to chit funds by allowing them to open zero-balance bank accounts under the PM Jan Dhan Yojana," Modi told the election rally. . UNI ABI RJ SS -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-674493.Xml Panun Kashmir, an organisation of displaced Hindu Kashmiris and its sister units today organised a joint protest against alleged victimisation of NIT- Srinagar students here.KSD (nodal agency for relief to Kashmiri pandits) , RIK and other nationalist KP organisations protested at Jantar Mantar in support of protesting students of NIT Kashmir this evening.''The nation is going through an angry mood against the JK police brutalities on NIT Srinagar students and harassment to NIT students by college administration.While the government top brass has been giving assurances and terming it as minor lathi charge, the state administration's high handedness show separatist hatred agenda and therefore this agitation is being organised'' , a Panun Kashmiri activist said.''Panun Kashmir supports shifting of NIT outside Kashmir and appeals to the government to recognize that NIT Ksahmir is located in a milieu that allowed the genocide of entire Hindu community of Kashmir'' , he said.Vijay Raina, President Kashmiri Samiti Delhi-- said time has come to eradicate the political confusions of decades and that all the demands of the Kashmiri migrant community be met without any delay.UNI SY SB 2020 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0291-674535.Xml Bharat Raksha Manch(BRM) national secretary Anil Dhir today alleged that Rayagada district civil and police administration have kept an animal welfare activist under illegal detention, tortured him and filed a number of false cases against him. The district administration resorted to this after Tirthankar Sahu, the animal welfare activist told an official of the President Office about the negligence of the district administration in checking the crime. Mr Dhir said, Mr Sahu, also a volunteer of the Gau Gyan foundation and his associates had approached several police stations in Rayagada and Koraput, to help rescue of thousands of cattle being smuggled to outside the state for slaughter but the police refused to help. Scores of calls were also made by volunteers of the animal welfare board of India, Gau Gyan foundation, people for animals and associated groups to the SPs of these two districts but nobody helped. On April 3 last, Mr Sahu had a chance meeting with one Purushottam Das from the office of the President of India at the Rayagada circuit house. He told Mr Das about apathy of the district civil and police administration. In preventing the illegal transportation of cow but it did not go down well with the collector and the SP who were also present there. On the next day, Mr Dhir said Mr Sahu was assaulted inside the grievance cell of the collector's office when he complained about the inaction of the police that led to the smuggling of thousands of cattle during the previous fortnight. He alleged that assistant collector Ishaq Madina tore his petition, collector, Jagannath Mohanty roughed up Mr Sahu and DSP Santanu Mohanty kicked him in the chest. Mr Sahu was kept in police lock-up for 27 hours and booked in a slew of false cases under the IPC, including 307. On April 7 last, Mr Sahu was attacked by goons inside the jail premises- as part of a plot to kill him. He was hit with iron rods from behind by a group of 15 people and was hospitalised with serious injuries. But the collector in a response to a querry made by the Gau Gyan foundation, New Delhi said it was a duel. Manch convenor Murali Manohar Sharma said as a volunteer of Gau Gyan foundation, Mr Sahu has been working for the rescue and rehabilitation of cattle for the past three years. He has filed 180 cases in the High Court in 2015 against the connivance of the civil and police administration in cattle-smuggling. Last July, Mr Sahu was called by the President of India in response to the hundreds of letters he and his associates from Odisha had written against the civil and police administration's neglect of the issue. In February-March this year, he had met 470 MPs and submitted a memorandum, appealing to them to uphold the cattle-protection laws and declared cow as the Mother-of-the-Nation. Mr Sharma said due to a nexus between civil, police and cow mafia, nearly 250,000 cattle are illegally transported every month for slaughter to West Bengal, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and Bangladesh. Mr Dhir said Mr Sahu was very often harassed, framed up in false cases, jailed and tortured inside the jail. This year, in January, he was tortured in Jeypore jail in Koraput district.UNI BD AKM SB AN2037 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-674408.Xml The Marine Fishery Department will impose a ban on fishing activities along the eastern coast of Bay of Bengal in Odisha including Kendrapara and Jagatsinghpur from April 14 to June 15 to facilitate fish breeding. According to Assistant Director fishery(Marine) Department, Biraja Prasanna Mohapatra, the ban is imposed every year during this period. He said the marine fishery department has appealed the fishermen not to venture into sea with mechanized vessels and trawlers as it would not only affect the breeder fish but also affect breeding process. This ban coincides with the spawning season for fish, during which they release their eggs. As trawlers use fishing nets with small gaps, eggs and young ones would be caught in the nets leading to depletion in fish production, Mr Mohapatra said. After the ban imposed under Orissa Marine Fishing Regulation Act as many as round 632 trawlers, including 558 registered mechanised trawler of Jagatsinghpur, would remain anchor in the jetties of two coastal districts, official sources said. However, the Catamarans and manual fishing boats have been exempted from the ban. The nets used by the fishermen in catamarans are different from those used by the trawlers. The marine fishery department has also asked the authorities of Industries, which are set up near the Port town paradip, not to discharge effluents into the water bodies that are connected with the sea, as it would affect adverse impact on fish breeding and spawning, the official sources said.UNI XC DP BM PS AS2036 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-674367.Xml Ashish Padhi, Counsellor (Science, Education and Counsular), Embassy of India, Bangkok presented the award to Mr Ravinder Reddy, Director, Bharathi Cement Corporation at a function specially organised held Bangkok recently, the company said in a release here today. Bharathi Cement was chosen from the survey conducted by ibrands 360 and nearly 100 top brands have been selected out of 400 shortlised top brands for this award across Asia from different fields/industries. Bharathi cement is a group company of Vicat-France. At present, Bharathi cements has a 5 million tonnes cement production capacity at kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh and 2.75 million tonnes cement production capacity at Kalburgi district of Karnataka. With two manufacturing facilities, branch Bharathi is operating with total capacity of 7.75 million tonnes per annum.UNI KNR KVV AK 2110 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-674543.Xml Asserting that non-local youth studying in National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Srinagar are safe in the valley, moderate Hurriyat Conference (HC) chairman Mirwaiz Moulvi Umar Farooq said despite Kashmir dispute, people have kept their centuries old tradition of tolerance and brotherhood alive. "During the past 25 years, people of Kashmir despite witnessing violence, killings of their near and dear ones, kept centuries old tradition of the valley of tolerance and brotherhood alive," he said. Citing examples of 2008 and 2010 summer unrest in which hundreds of youth lost their life in security forces actions, Mr Mirwaiz said no harm was done to any outsider whether tourist or otherwise who were in thousands present in the valley at that time. "Again in the devastating floods of September 2014 when non-locals in large numbers were stuck in Srinagar, it was the Kashmiri youth who rescued them and provided them food and shelter," he said, adding Kashmiris have no personal animosity against the people of India, but were fighting for their rights and the injustices committed against them. He said students from outside the state studying in Kashmir were safe and whatever has been witnessed in NIT, Srinagar for the past few days was unfortunate. Mr Mirwaiz said it was a deliberate attempt to pitch Hindus versus Muslims and local students versus non-local students with a purpose to create a divide in the students for their petty vested interests. He said this was being done with an intention to create an impression that non-locals and outside-state students were not safe in Kashmir and some unscrupulous elements even demanded shifting of NIT, Srinagar to some other place, which is ridiculous and condemnable. Questioning the political circles indulging in cheap publicity, Mirwaiz asked why they didn't come forward when Kashmiri students were being harassed, victimized and beaten in Rajasthan, Meerut and at other places of India. Appealing the corporate sector of Jammu and Kashmir to invest in education sector, the Hurriyat chairman said it could reduce the dependence of the Kashmiri students on the educational institutions outside the state. He said it was a reality that Kashmiri students studying in various educational institutions outside the state and their parents always felt apprehensive about their safety due to the changed atmosphere in India. Meanwhile, expressing hope that the India-Pakistan dialogue process would move ahead, Mirwaiz said Kashmiri people have always stood for cordial relations between New Delhi and Islamabad. But, he said, the reality was that dialogue over issues like Sir Creek, Siachen, water and trade between the two countries cannot move forward until they address the basic issue of Kashmir.UNI BAS SB AS2148 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-674580.Xml The police today arrested the father of an underage driver involved in a hit-and-run case while allegedly driving a Mercedes car. Earlier, the police registered a case against him for handing over the keys of his vehicle to his son who was to attain the age of 18 years in three days.According to police, the accident involving the teenager took place on Monday in which a business consultant lost his life near Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence.Police sources said the accused, who was allegedly over-speeding, ran away from the spot when the incident occurred. Later, the victim's family provided to the police a footage from a CCTV camera in which the entire incident was captured. The 32-year-old business consultant, Sidharth Sharma, was on the way to his house when he was killed in the accident. The underage driver is a student of class 12. UNI SM AY 2236 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0352-674672.Xml Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray today departed from his earlier stance on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and slammed him for not fulfilling his pre-election promises andfollowing policies that are allegedly not in the interest of the country and its people. Addressing a public rally at historical Shivaji Park ground in Dadar area of the city on auspicious Gudi Padwa festival, the new year of Maharashtrians, this evening, he verbally attacked the Prime Minister for his failure on Pakistan policy, his inability to fulfil assurances to the people of the country, continuing with thepolicies of previous Congress-led UPA government, failing to bring back black money, alliance with PDP in Jammu and Kashmir, sudden visit to Pakistan to greet his counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday and JNU row over 'Rashtrawad' (nationalism). Mr Thackeray said that Mr Modi came to power by making a propaganda against Pakistan, but he has now totally failed in foreign policy with the western neighbour. Recalling Mr Modi's sudden visit to Pakistan on the birthday of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawab Sharif and feeding him cake, the MNS chief pointed out that within few hours the terrorists attacked the Pathankot airbase. He asked why is the Samjhauta Express still running despite several attacks by terrorists? Mr Thackeray also hit out at the BJP for allegedly funding the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen(AIMIM) party and said, ''BJP is providing funds to that party whose chief Asaduddin Owaisi has been making statements against the country and refusing to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even if he was beheaded. The MNS chief said no case was registered against Mr Owaisi but when Raj Thackeray says something, immediately a case has been registered. Mr Thackeray ridiculed the BJP government on the 'Deshdrohi' and 'Deshbhakt' factors and asked what are the parameters for these? Talking about the 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' controversy, Mr Thackeray recalled that former Prime Minister Indra Gandhi used to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' thrice after her every public meeting.More UNI ST SSSB AN2311 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-674668.Xml Manoj Jaiswal (42) was sitting in his office at Ganesh Nagar area of Titwala after finishing his pooja on Gudi Padwa day this afternoon, three unidentified people came to his office at around 1300 hrs and attacked him with an axe, injuring him, police said. He was rushed to J J hospital in Mumbai, but succumbed before admission. An offence under section 302 of Indian Penal Code has been registered with the Kalyan rural police against unknown persons. Police have launched a hunt for the assailants. UNI XR SS SB AS2321 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-674686.Xml The United States government has warned its citizens against all non-essential travel to Pakistan in the wake of the ongoing 'security concerns' in Pakistan. According to a statement by the US State Department, the American Embassy in Islamabad and the Consulate General in Karachi continue to provide consular services for all U.S. citizens in Pakistan. "Pakistan continues to experience significant terrorist violence, including sectarian attacks. Several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups continue to pose a danger to U.S. citizens throughout Pakistan. Across the country, terrorist attacks frequently occur against locations where U.S. citizens and Westerners congregate, as well as against local civilian and government targets. Terrorists and criminal groups regularly resort to kidnapping for ransom." the statement said. On April 16, 2015, an American educator was shot by two gunmen on motorbikes. Evidence suggests she was targeted, in part, because she was a U.S. citizen. Asserting that the Government of Pakistan maintains heightened security measures, particularly in major cities, following attacks or in response to threats, the State Department added that sectarian violence remains a serious threat countrywide and the Government of Pakistan continues to enforce blasphemy laws. "Religious minority communities have been victims of targeted killings and accusations of blasphemy. Terrorists frequently target places of worship of various faiths," the statement said. The local government restricts access for non-Pakistanis to many areas, including the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Afghan border, the Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, the area adjacent to the Line of Control in the disputed territory of Kashmir and much of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and Balochistan. "The travel of U.S. government personnel within Pakistan is restricted based on security or other reasons. Movements by U.S. government personnel outside of Islamabad are severely restricted, and consulate staff cannot drive personally-owned vehicles," the statement added. According to the advisory, U.S. government personnel may not: - Attend services at places of worship without prior approval. - Use public transportation or stay overnight at hotels in Pakistan. If you choose to live or travel in Pakistan despite this warning, we recommend you: - Vary travel routes and timing, even for routine trips. - Minimize the duration of trips to public markets, restaurants, and other locations - Minimize the number of U.S./western nationals congregating in any one location at any time. - Avoid hotels that do not apply stringent security measures. (ANI) A widely seen cell phone video of a school police officer in San Antonio bodyslamming a 12-year-old girl was decried by two rights groups who called for schools to rein in violence by officers against students.The San Antonio Independent School District has launched an investigation into the officer, Joshua Kehm, who has been with the district since February 2015. He has been placed on leave pending its outcome."We hope this serves as a wake-up call not only to San Antonio ISD - but to the broader community - that we need a full dialogue around the appropriate role of police in schools," said Deborah Fowler, executive director of Texas Appleseed, a public interest justice center.The incident in the video that hit social media on Wednesday is one of several in recent months showing school resource officers using physical force against students.The 33-second video of the March 29 incident shows the officer grappling with the girl in a school hallway, picking her up and throwing her to the ground.The girl lies motionless while the officer handcuffs her. She then gets up and is led away by the officer.Kehm was trying to break up a confrontation between Janissa Valdez and another girl, school district officials have said. Kehm declined to speak about the incident when reached by phone.The video does not show what led to the incident or what happened after the girl was led away."We call on the San Antonio Independent School District to fully investigate and hold accountable the officer in this video," said Matt Simpson, a senior policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.Supporters of the officers said they exercised appropriate force to subdue students who were a threat to others.The mother of the student in San Antonio told reporters on Wednesday she was mad and upset by what happened."Who is to tell that he couldn't do it again to another student, or do it to my daughter again?" asked Gloria Valdez.Almost 31,000 police officers are at U.S. public schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and incidents of violence by officers in schools, especially against racial minorities, have raised concerns.Two Baltimore school officers were charged with crimes in March after they were caught on video as one of them repeatedly slapped a student outside a high school.REUTERS KU PR0441 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0348-673232.Xml Former President Bill Clinton faced down protesters angry at the impact his crime reforms of 20 years ago have had on black Americans and defended the record of Hillary Clinton, his wife, who is relying on the support of black voters in her quest for the presidency.The former president spent more than 10 minutes confronting the protesters at a campaign rally in Philadelphia for his wife on Thursday over criticisms that a 1994 crime bill he approved while president led to a surge in the imprisonment of black people.The Democratic race for the Nov. 8 election has become increasingly heated as Hillary Clinton, stung by a string of losses in state contests, has traded barbs with her rival for the party's nomination, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, over who is better prepared for the White House.In Philadelphia, several protesters heckled the former president mid-speech and held up signs, including one that read "CLINTON Crime Bill Destroyed Our Communities."Video footage of Hillary Clinton defending the reforms in 1994 has been widely circulated during the campaign by activists in the Black Lives Matter protest movement. In the footage she calls young people in gangs "super-predators" who need to "be brought to heel." Hillary Clinton, 68, who also has faced protesters upset by her remarks, in February said she regretted her language.Bill Clinton, 69, who was president from 1993-2001, on Thursday defended her 1994 remarks, which protesters say were racially insensitive, and suggested the protesters' anger was misplaced."I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," he said, shaking his finger at a heckler as Clinton supporters cheered, according to video of the event. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She (Hillary Clinton) didn't.""You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter," he told a protester. "Tell the truth."Hillary Clinton promised to end "mass incarceration" in her first major speech of her campaign last year. She has won the support of the majority of black voters in every state nominating contest so far, often by a landslide.Spokesmen for the campaign and Bill Clinton did not immediately respond on Thursday to a request for comment.A SURGE IN PRISONERSThe United States has more people in prison than any other country. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.05 million prisoners were held in federal or state facilities in 1994. By 2014, it was 1.56 million. That year, 6 percent of all black men in their 30s were in prison, a rate six times higher than that of white men of the same age.Bill Clinton said last year that he regrets signing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law because it contributed to the country's high incarceration rate of black people for nonviolent crimes. On Thursday, he did not explicitly recant those regrets, but appeared to be angry at any suggestion the bill was wholly bad.The legislation imposed tougher sentences, put thousands more police on the streets and helped fund the building of extra prisons. It was know for its federal "three strikes" provision that sent violent offenders to prison for life. The bill was backed by congressional Republicans and hailed at the time as a success for Clinton.Although Bill Clinton is popular among Democrats who view him as a gifted speech maker and crowd pleaser, he has in the past veered from the carefully calibrated message put out by her campaign, causing problems for her spokespeople.During Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 presidential bid, civil rights leaders and high-ranking Democrats in Congress criticized the former president for statements he made during a heated campaign against then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama. Bill Clinton said that Obama's campaign had "played the race card." Obama became the first U.S. black president in November that year.Bill Clinton's remarks on Thursday drew criticism online. Some saw him as dismissive of the Black Lives Matter movement, a national outgrowth of anger over a string of encounters in which police officers killed unarmed black people.Johnetta Elzie, a prominent civil-rights activist, wrote online that Clinton "can't handle being confronted by his own record.""This is like watching a robot malfunction," she wrote.Earlier in Philadelphia, Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, assailed Clinton as unqualified to be president as the two campaigns became increasingly testy less than two weeks before New York's nominating contest."Are you qualified to be president of the United States when you're raising millions of dollars from Wall Street, an entity whose greed, recklessness and illegal behavior helped destroy our economy?" Sanders said at a news conference.Clinton this week sharply questioned Sanders' credentials and ability to carry out a campaign pledge to break up the big banks.Spokesmen for Clinton noted that she never said the word "unqualified" when she questioned his preparedness for the presidency, but they declined to say whether she believes in that characterization.Clinton aimed for a more magnanimous tone than her aides when speaking to reporters during a subway ride in New York City."I don't know why he's saying that," she said of Sanders' calling her unqualified. "But I will take Bernie Sanders over Ted Cruz or Donald Trump any time," she said of the two leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. REUTERS KU 0419 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0348-673234.Xml President Barack Obama has defended his pick of a white man to fill a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy against criticism he could have chosen someone from a more diverse background, saying Merrick Garland was "indisputably qualified" for the post.Obama was yesterday speaking at a town hall-style event at the University of Chicago Law School, where he once taught, as part of a White House campaign to pressure the Republican-led Senate to approve Garland, a centrist appellate court judge.Responding to a question from a student about what kind of "diversity" Garland brought to the job, Obama joked that he came from Skokie, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago."At no point did I say: 'Oh, I need a black lesbian from Skokie in that slot ... can you find me one?' That's just not how I've approached it," Obama said, noting he had transformed the federal court with diverse picks."Yeah, he's a white guy, but he's a really outstanding jurist. Sorry," Obama said of Garland, 63, calling him "indisputably qualified to serve on the highest court in the land."Obama's first two Supreme Court picks were women, including Sonia Sotomayor, the court's first Hispanic justice. Some groups had hoped Obama would this time nominate appeals court judge Sri Srinivasan to be the court's first Indian-American member.Garland faces an uphill fight being confirmed in the face of Republican opposition.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has insisted the next president, who will take office on Jan. 20 after the Nov. 8 election, should fill the vacancy created by the Feb. 13 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.Before the event, McConnell dismissed Obama's Chicago event as political theater."I'm sure he'll gloss over the fact that the decision about filling this pivotal seat could impact our country for decades, that it could dramatically affect our most cherished constitutional rights like those contained in the First and Second Amendments," McConnell said in a Senate floor speech, referring to gun rights and freedom of speech and religion.The high court is now split 4-4 between conservatives and liberals. Garland, if confirmed, could tilt the court to the left for the first time in decades.'INSTITUTIONAL INTEGRITY'Obama told the law school audience that the partisan fight over the nomination threatened to erode the "institutional integrity" of the courts."We are going to see the kinds of sharp partisan polarization that have come to characterize our electoral politics seeping entirely into the judicial system, and the courts will be just an extension of our legislatures and our elections and our politics," Obama said."At that point, people lose confidence in the ability of the courts to fairly adjudicate cases and controversies," he said.Most Republican senators have backed McConnell's stance. Only two of the 54 Republicans in the 100-seat Senate have said Garland deserves hearings and a vote.Some others have said they will meet with Garland privately for a "courtesy visit." That includes Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who is set to have breakfast with Garland next Tuesday, but only to explain why he will not consider his nomination.Yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, announced he would have a courtesy meeting with Garland. But Graham's spokesman said the senator had not changed his opposition to holding hearings and a vote on the nomination.REUTERS KU 0433 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0348-673236.Xml US Secretary of State John Kerry has called on Iran to stop its destabilising behaviour and work with its neighbours in the Middle East to end the wars in Yemen and Syria. Kerry, who is on a visit to Bahrain to meet foreign ministers in the Gulf Cooperation Council, on Thursday said the US was concerned about Iran. Last week, the US Navy seized hundreds of AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled-grenade launchers and machine guns from a small ship. Kerry said the weapons were on the move from Iran to arm Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Washington Post reported. "Rather than send weapons to the Houthis, join in efforts to convince them to make peace," Kerry said. The US officials were concerned about fragility of the existing cease-fire in Syria and have expressed uncertainty over the prospects for a cease-fire that is due to start this weekend in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition of Gulf countries conducting airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Houthis. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, whose country chairs the GCC, said relations with Iran will be chilly till the country ends its interventionist policies. "We stressed that if Iran wants to have normal relations with the GCC states, it has to change its policies and abide by the good-neighbourhood principle," he said. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has made overtures for warmer relations, efforts that powerful segments of the Iranian government do not support. "Tehran wants interaction with the world, with its neighbouring countries," Rouhani said on Thursday. The criticism of Iran emanating from the Gulf came as ships in the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, joined in a three-week, multinational exercise to practice mine clearing and other tactics designed to keep open the sea lanes through which at least a third of the world's oil resources are shipped. At least four ships thought to be bound from Iran to Yemen have been stopped in the past six months, and large quantities of weapons seized. "If Iran is going to give meaning to the words in the last few days about wanting to work with people, it is by getting engaged in making peace in Yemen, not adding more weapons and fuelling the conflict," Kerry said. --Indo-Asian News Service py/vt ( 390 Words) 2016-04-08-12:31:31 (IANS) Switzerland's finance minister has defended the use of offshore companies by the world's wealthy to cut their tax bills, now under scrutiny after publication of the "Panama Papers"."You have to create these opportunities," Finance Minister Ueli Maurer, from the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), told Swiss newspaper Blick in an interview published today."Rich people pay a lot more tax than me," said Maurer. "I am not rich - and without the rich I would have to pay more tax."Four decades of documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up offshore companies and has offices in Zurich and Geneva, showed widespread use of those instruments by global banks and triggered investigations around the world.Maurer's comments were not echoed by the head of Switzerland's financial watchdog Mark Branson yesterday. He said the country's banks must clamp down on money laundering in the wake of the Panama Papers.The Geneva prosecutor has also opened a criminal inquiry in connection with the millions of documents leaked to the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. They then became part of a broader investigation coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.Switzerland is the world's biggest international wealth management centre with around 2.5 trillion dollars in assets and has taken on more wealth of late from emerging markets, from which it is harder determine the origin of assets, Branson said.REUTERS PS BL1436 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-673612.Xml Once driven to near irrelevance by the rise of Islamic State abroad and security crackdowns at home, al Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated 100 million dollars in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the country's third largest port.If Islamic State's capital is the Syrian city of Raqqa, then al Qaeda's is Mukalla, a southeastern Yemeni port city of 500,000 people. Al Qaeda fighters there have abolished taxes for local residents, operate speedboats manned by RPG-wielding fighters who impose fees on ship traffic, and make propaganda videos in which they boast about paving local roads and stocking hospitals.The economic empire was described by more than a dozen diplomats, Yemeni security officials, tribal leaders and residents of Mukalla. Its emergence is the most striking unintended consequence of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The campaign, backed by the United States, has helped Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago.Yemeni government officials and local traders estimated the group, as well as seizing the bank deposits, has extorted 1.4 million dollars from the national oil company and earns up to $2 million every day in taxes on goods and fuel coming into the port.AQAP boasts 1,000 fighters in Mukalla alone, controls 600 km of coastline and is ingratiating itself with southern Yemenis, who have felt marginalised by the country's northern elite for years.By adopting many of the tactics Islamic State uses to control its territory in Syria and Iraq, AQAP has expanded its own fiefdom. The danger is that the group, which organised the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year and has repeatedly tried to down US airliners, may slowly indoctrinate the local population with its hardline ideology."I prefer that al Qaeda stay here, not for Al Mukalla to be liberated," said one 47-year-old resident. "The situation is stable, more than any 'free' part of Yemen. The alternative to al Qaeda is much worse."Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is struggling to extricate itself from the Yemeni quagmire a year after intervening in the country's civil war. Riyadh is determined to deny bitter rival Iran sway over another Arab capital. It has focused on attacking the Houthis who have seized parts of northern Yemen and who are allied to Iran.But despite thousands of aerial bombings, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have failed to push the Houthis from the capital Sanaa. An estimated 6,000 people, half of them civilians, have been killed. A temporary ceasefire between the internationally recognised government, which is backed by the Saudis, and the Houthis is due to begin on April 10.In a recent statement issued by the Saudi embassy in Washington, Saudi officials said that their campaign had "denied terrorists a safe haven in Yemen."And yet, AQAP's strength is growing.A US counter-terrorism official said AQAP remained one of al Qaeda's "most potent affiliates." The United States launched its deadliest air strike yet on the group on March 22nd, killing around 50 of its fighters at a military base outside Mukalla."The group's bomb-making expertise and long-standing ambitions to carry out attacks using novel or complex tactics underscore (the) threat," the official said.A senior Yemeni government official said the war against the Houthis "provided a suitable environment for the ... expansion of al Qaeda." The withdrawal of government army units from their bases in the south, allowed al Qaeda to acquire "very large quantities of sophisticated and advanced weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and armed vehicles."As well, the coalition's preoccupation with fighting the Houthis "made it easier for al Qaeda elements to expand in more than one area," he said. "And this is why al Qaeda has today become stronger and more dangerous and we are working with the coalition now to go after elements of the group ... and will continue until they are destroyed."ANATOMY OF AN ECONOMIC EMPIREBarely a week after Saudi Arabia launched "Operation Decisive Storm" against the Houthis in March last year, Yemeni army forces vanished from Mukalla's streets and moved westward to combat zones, security officials and residents said.The city's residents were left defenceless, allowing a few dozen AQAP fighters to seize government buildings and free 150 of their comrades from the central jail. The freed included Khaled Batarfi, a senior al Qaeda leader. Pictures appeared online of Batarfi sitting inside the local presidential palace, looking happy and in control as he held a telephone to his ear.Tribal leaders in neighbouring provinces told Reuters that, in the security vacuum, army bases were looted and Yemen's south became awash with advanced weaponry. C4 explosive and even anti-aircraft missiles were available to the highest bidder.And just as Islamic State seized the central bank in Mosul in northern Iraq, AQAP looted Mukalla's central bank branch, netting an estimated 100 million dollars, according to two senior Yemeni security officials."That represents their biggest financial gain to date," one of the officials said. "That's enough to fund them at the level they had been operating for at least another 10 years."In a sign that AQAP not only wants to get rich but also seeks official recognition as a quasi-state, it unsuccessfully sought permission from the Yemeni government to export crude oil in October and collect a share of the profits, according to a tribal leader and two senior officials.Yemen's government refused, fearing the deal would give de facto recognition to the internationally blacklisted group. "Al Qaeda sent a mediator to the government to get them agree to listen to this deal," the tribal leader, who is in southern Yemen, told Reuters."Their offer was they need the official documents from the government to sell crude oil, and they would get 25 per cent of the profit, and 75 per cent for the government."The government rejected the offer, said both the tribal leader and Badr Basalmah, a former transport minister in Yemen's government."Yes, that happened," Basalmah said, speaking by telephone from the Saudi capital of Riyadh. "The government refused completely to have anything to do with this deal because it would give authority and legitimacy to al Qaeda."ON THE WATERFRONTIn Mukalla port, a thriving fuel smuggling network enriches AQAP daily.Tribal sources, residents and diplomats told Reuters the militants gained control of the ports in Mukalla and Ash Shihr when they first stormed the cities in April last year. The militants began imposing tax and custom tariffs on shippers and traders."The group is experiencing a period of obscene, unprecedented wealth and luxury," one resident of Mukalla told Reuters.A current official in the transport ministry estimate AQAP's daily revenue at 2 million dollars a day. Some local traders put it as high as 5 million dollars a day from customs duties and smuggled fuel, according to Basalmah, Yemen's former transport minister."You will find hundreds of oil trucks there smuggling fuel from one area to another where they are selling it," said Basalmah.Abdallah al-Nasi, governor of neighbouring Shabwa province, where AQAP controls some territory, said the group has become the de facto fuel supplier. "They sell the fuel to whoever buys it," Nasi told Reuters by phone "The government-run petrol stations buy from them and sell it on to the citizens."Tribes who work with al Qaeda now control much of the country's oil infrastructure. Six white oil tanks on a beach between Mukalla and Ash Shihr are linked by pipeline to the Masila oilfields which are estimated to hold more than 80 percent of Yemen's total reserves.After army forces withdrew from the area last year, armed local tribes linked to al Qaeda took charge. That prompted major companies operating there - state-owned PetroMasila, Canada's Nexen Energy and France's Total - to shut production and end exports. A PetroMasila official said that small amounts of oil are still being extracted for use in provincial power generators. Total said it has not restarted operations. Nexen did not respond to a request for comment.ROBIN HOODIt is a dramatic change of fortune for a group that was founded in the late 1990s and merged with al Qaeda's Saudi branch in 2009. After a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks against the Yemeni government, and two foiled bomb plots on US-bound airliners, AQAP was forced into retreat by assaults from Yemeni tribes and troops as well as persistent US drone strikes.Now the group has embarked on a brazen campaign to shake down state-owned firms, including the national oil and mobile phone companies. AQAP uses the money it extorts to win favour among its subjects. Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen scholar at Oxford University, calls it a "Robin Hood" strategy.In January, a copy of a demand issued by AQAP circulated on local media. The notice, on AQAP letterhead, demanded 4.7 million dollars from the national oil company's bank account in Mukalla. "May God grant that all serve the country and the faithful," the note said.A top government security official said the oil company paid the full 4.7 million dollars. A source at the bank said it had paid only 1.4 million dollars. A representative of the oil company declined to comment.Officials at the three biggest national mobile phone companies, MTN, Sabafone and Y Telecom, said AQAP had also demanded payments of 4.7 million dollars each from them. The firms all said they refused to pay.Late last year, AQAP cancelled payroll taxes in areas it controls because it deemed the practice un-Islamic. In a video posted on YouTube in November, the chief of al Qaeda's Sharia court in Hadramout - the coastal region where Mukalla is capital - announced it would repay government workers taxes they had paid. In the video, a bureaucrat is shown counting out wages for a worker from a bulging wad of Yemeni currency."The poor have been paying alms to the rich and the rich don't pay, and it's the tyrants and oppressors who are the ones getting this money," AQAP fighter Ali bin Talib al-Kathiri said in another video. "Because those oppressors have not implemented God's law, they've eaten up the people's money in sin."Kathiri died in January in a gun battle with southern tribesmen. But AQAP's populist strategy is paying off, said Oxford University's Kendall.The group regularly posts pictures of its fighters repairing damaged bridges and paving streets in Hadramout and other cities under its control. It says the money for the repairs comes from groups such as Guardians of Sharia or Sons of Hadramout, names AQAP has taken on as part of a rebranding effort to emphasise its local origins.In one video posted on February 28, AQAP members deliver free medical supplies and equipment to the kidney dialysis and cancer wings of a local hospital. The boxes of supplies are sealed with the tape of a Western pharmaceutical company."These are some medicines from your brothers, the Guardians of Sharia, to al-Jamii hospital which was going to be closed ... because of no money," says one fighter whose face is blurred out. The video also shows a hospital official saying he had received money from al Qaeda to pay workers' salaries.A POPULAR HAVEN?The group has exploited sectarian grievances to brand their state-building project as a liberation movement. "So many areas fell to us after the Houthis left because we are the entity that people trust," AQAP leader Batarfi said.In the five coastal provinces stretching from the government's temporary seat in Aden to Mukalla, a familiar pattern has recurred in recent months. Al Qaeda forces storm a town, plant their flags, and then watch as local leaders acquiesce.Citizens say they are tired of moving and would rather live with al Qaeda's control."With al Qaeda, if you resist, you never know when they could come and assassinate you," one Yemeni sheikh said.AQAP has also learned to be less cruel than its rival, Islamic State, which has struggled to gain a foothold in a population repelled by its brutality. While AQAP has resorted to killing suspected "sorcerers," and carried out stonings of at least one man and woman accused of adultery, residents and the group's online media suggest such incidents are rare.And even when AQAP publicises punishments, their videos and photographs never show the level of gratuitous gore that Islamic State revels in. Rather than resorting to mass beheadings, AQAP has detained or put under house arrest several dozen army officers and other figures they see as a threat, activists said.One Mukalla resident said her life had changed little since AQAP swept through the city. "We carry out our lives normally, they walk among the people," she told Reuters by phone. "Of course they're trying to create a popular haven."A regional diplomat who follows Yemen says that if al Qaeda manages to successfully root itself as a political and economic organisation, it could become a more resilient threat, much like al Shabaab in nearby Somalia."We may be facing a more complicated al Qaeda," the diplomat said, "not just a terrorist organisation but a movement controlling territory with happy people inside it."REUTERS PS BL1448 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-673631.Xml Russian President Vladimir Putin has said 'patriotism' is one of the key components of Russian self-consciousness, a feeling which unlike some European countries, is not lost in Russia.''What is very important for Russia, for a Russian person (and you have just put this correctly, if indirectly) is a sense of patriotism, a sense of national identity, something that certain European countries are losing, much to their regret,'' Mr Putin said yesterday, while answering a question from a participant of the All-Russia People's Front (ONF) Media Forum. The Media Forum is organised by the Russian Popular Front and focuses on topical issues in regional life, the development of independent Russian journalism, and international issues. Journalists from all around Russia, bloggers, heads of federal media outlets, and the heads of relevant government ministries and agencies, attended the forum.''We have this inside us. Our love for our Motherland is in our hearts,'' he said, stressing that ''Patriotism is a fundamental component of our national consciousness, one of our values and ideas.''In this connection, Mr Putin recalled the words of outstanding Soviet Russian scholar Dmitry Likhachev that patriotism drastically differs from nationalism.''Remember the words of Dmitry Likhachev, a wonderful scholar and humanist of the 20th century. He said that patriotism fundamentally differs from nationalism. Nationalism is hatred for other nations, while patriotism is love for one's Motherland,'' the Russian President noted.UNI XC RJ AE 1604 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-673775.Xml Two men who were detained in Germany on suspicion of having links with Islamic State and of planning a "serious act of violence" have been released, Bavaria's office of criminal investigation said today.German police held the 46-year-old Iraqi and a 29-year-old Nigerian yesterday after receiving a tip off. Security sources had provided information that both could have been in contact with members of the Islamic State militant group."During the course of comprehensive investigations, the criminal charge of planning a serious act of violent subversion could not yet be further corroborated or confirmed," Bavaria's criminal investigation office said in a statement.It added that neither searches of the men's homes or rooms nor questioning had given any such clues.It did not mention the possible Islamic State links in its statement.Security in European countries has been intensified since attacks claimed by Islamic state that killed 31 people in Brussels in March and 130 in Paris in November.Islamic State released a video on Tuesday suggesting it might carry out further attacks in the West, naming London, Berlin and Rome as possible targets.REUTERS PS BL1627 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-673832.Xml US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders today accepted an invitation to visit the Vatican on April 15 for a conference on social economic and environmental issues, his campaign said."Pope Francis has made clear that we must overcome 'the globalization of indifference' in order to reduce economic inequalities, stop financial corruption and protect the natural environment. That is our challenge in the United States and in the world," Sanders said in a statement.Sanders' announcement came as the pope called for a Church that was less strict and more compassionate towards "imperfect" Catholics.REUTERS PS BL1657 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-673901.Xml The European Union condemned what it said were human rights abuses in Republic of Congo during violence following the country's March 20 election, echoing similar concerns voiced by the US State Department.Seventeen people died in clashes after President Denis Sassou Nguesso's disputed re-election, including in gunfights that broke out on Monday in the opposition strongholds of southern Brazzaville."The post-electoral process was marked by violations of human rights, arrests and intimidation of the opposition and the media," the EU said in a statement. "This puts into question the credibility of the results."The US State Department said in a statement yesterday that it was "profoundly disappointed" by a "flawed" electoral process."Widespread irregularities and the arrests of opposition supporters following the elections marred an otherwise peaceful vote," it said.Opposition leaders say the elections, in which Nguesso won a new five year term with 60 per cent of the vote, were fraudulent. The EU had declined to send observers to the polls, citing issues with electoral laws and the voter register.Nguesso has ruled the oil-producing Central African country for 32 of the last 37 years. In October he pushed through constitutional reforms that lifted age and term limits that would have prevented him from standing.The government said it had arrested 50 former members of the "Ninja" militia that fought Sassou Nguesso in a 1997 civil war that it says were involved in Monday's gunfights.Guy Brice Parfait Koelas, the opposition candidate who came in second in March polls, said this week that police had arrested and jailed residents of the southern Brazzaville neighborhoods without cause.REUTERS PS BL1751 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-674059.Xml Hussein said they are alarmed by the violent killing of yet another blogger Nazimuddin Samad in Bangladesh. Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani renewed their call to the Bangladesh Government as a first step forward to halt all executions and institute a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. As per reports, Bangladesh has more than 1,200 prisoners on death row and in March this year alone at least 13 people were sentenced to death in separate murder cases in four districts in the country. (ANI) Earlier, President El Sisi welcomed King Salman, who is on an official five-day visit to Egypt -- his first official visit to the country since ascending the throne. After the official reception ceremony, El Sisi and the Saudi monarch held bilateral talks. The Egyptian president "expressed the appreciation of the Egyptian people and leadership for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and King Salman, given their honourable positions in support of Egypt and its people", said an official statement. The two sides emphasized their keenness to leverage the visit to further enhance the historic and distinct relations that bind the two countries and to strengthen cooperation in all fields so as to consolidate joint Arab action in the face of challenges and threats currently besetting the Arab world, the statement said. After the meeting, President El Sisi hosted a banquet in honour of the Saudi Arabian king and his delegation. Both sides are expected to sign a range of agreements. --Indo-Asian News Service rn/dg ( 207 Words) 2016-04-08-19:53:31 (IANS) VIENTIANE, April 8, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to Laos Guan Huabing (R, front) and Lao Deputy Foreign Minister Khamphao Ernthavanh (L, front) shakes hands on the handover ceremony in Vientiane, Laos, April 8, 2016. The equipment offered by China for an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit later this year was handed over to Laos on Friday. (Xinhua/Liu Ailun) VIENTIANE, April 8 (Xinhua) -- The equipment offered by China for an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit later this year was handed over to Laos on Friday. According to an agreement signed between the Chinese and Lao governments, China will provide vehicles, security check facilities and office equipment, as well as installation and technical training. The aid project started in December 2015 and all the equipment arrived in Vientiane in March. China has also sent technical personnel to train Lao drivers for the Chinese vehicles. The project, which will help Laos in preparation for the ASEAN summit, is also expected to open up a new era for cooperation between the two neighbors. Chinese Ambassador Guan Huabing and Lao Deputy Foreign Minister Khamphao Ernthavanh joined the signing of handover document. Vientiane will host the ASEAN summit in September as Laos took over the rotating presidency of ASEAN for 2016. 55 BEIJING, April 8, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Liu Qibao (1st L), head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, hands a certificate of Goodwill Ambassador for China Voices to a representative during a discussion with experts and scholars participating in a seminar on telling China stories more vividly in Beijing, China, April 8, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Tao) BEIJING, April 8 (Xinhua) -- The publicity chief of the Communist Party of China (CPC) asked experts and celebrities to actively engage in international exchanges and present to the world a real China "through good story-telling." Liu Qibao, head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, on Friday attended a seminar on how to tell China stories well, saying that telling stories is the best way to communicate with the world. Held by the Publicity Department of CPC Central Committee and the State Council Information Office, the seminar was also attended by experts and celebrities from sectors including economy, science, literature, arts and sports. "We will confidently tell why China can benefit the world, make the world understand what contributions China has made and will make for the world," Liu said. He urged them to actively respond to the concerns of the world, telling both the achievements and shortfalls. Chinese national on money laundering, gaming charges Kwok Keung Chow, 55, who operated a gaming machine establishment in Penal, appeared before Magistrate Deborah Ann Antoine in the San Fernando Magistrates Court, and was not called to plead to the first charge that was read to him. Chow was arrested yesterday by police officers of the Financial Investigations Bureau (FIB). The businessman became a resident of this country over 20 years ago and also operated a popular eating establishment in St James. Antoine read the charge which alleged that on Thursday, Chow, of SS Erin Road, Debe, had in his possession at 164 SS Erin Road, TT$656,800, US$8,500 and Cd $1,070, knowingly or having reasonable ground to suspect the money is criminal property. The charge was laid under the Proceeds of Crime Act Chapter 11:27, Sect 45 (1) b. The second charge alleges that Chow had at the same address, common gaming machines without the required permit, contrary to the Gambling and Betting Act, Chapter 11:19, Section 4 A. He pleaded not guilty to that charge. The charges were laid by Ag Sergeant Junior Marcelle of the FIB. Attorney Keith Scotland, instructed by attorney Roshni Saith, pleaded for bail, saying that Chow was born in China, but had been a resident of this country since 1996. He is a member of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and a part-time chinese interpreter. When confronted with the allegations in respect of the charges, Scotland added, Chow cooperated with the police investigators. Antoine granted Chow bail in the sum of $700,000. The cases were postponed to May 3. Man gets bail for allegedly beating granny Teejai, 28, re-appeared in the Princes Town First Magistrates Court on Wednesday. Rambachan was advised that he had no previous convictions. At his initial appearance on Monday, the accused labourer pleaded not guilty. The charge against Teejai alleged that on the night of March 25, at Buen Intento Road, Princes Town, he broke and entered the home of Kuntie Bachan with intent to rob and robbed her of a quantity of jewelry as well as TT$1,000 and US$1,000 together valued at $79, 800. Both the accused and the victim are from Buen Intento Road, Princes Town. Police Constable Mitchell of the Princes Town Police Station laid the charge. Sgt Roger Richardson prosecuted while attorney Hosein Ali, represented the accused. Teejai will reappear in court on April 27. Two women charged with fighting Ria Henry, 38, of St Margarets Village, Claxton Bay, was charged with fighting and marijuana possession, at about 1.15 am on Wednesday. Magistrate Ava Vandenburg- Bailey, read the charge to the mother of five, that she had in her possession two packets containing marijuana, at the St Margarets Police Station. The charge of fighting in a public place was also read to her. She pleaded not guilty to both. The charges stemmed from an incident at a bar in St Margarets Village in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. When arrested by Corporal Roger Ramlogan and Constable Alisa Hassanali of the St Margarets Police Station, Henry was taken to the station. The charged alleged that the packets were found on the accused woman at the station. Deyna Alves, 32, of Cocoyea Village, San Fernando, also pleaded not guilty before the magistrate to the charge of fighting. Vandenburg- Bailey read three other charges that Alves used obscene language, resisted the arrest of PC Hassanali and assaulted the police officer as well. PC Ramlogan laid the charge against Alves for assaulting Hassanali. Afzal Mohammed, 55, also appeared before the magistrate, charged with using obscene language, obstructing Corporal Ramlogan in the execution of his duties and resisting arrest. The charges against Mohammed allegedly stemmed from the same fighting incident involving Henry and Alves. Mohammeds case was adjourned to May 5, after the magistrate granted him $15,000 bail. The cases involving Henry and Alves were adjourned to May 6, they having been granted $20,000 bail each. PM travels to US, UK, Ghana in May These meetings will relate to energy, security, commerce and anti-corruption issues, said Minister in the Office of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs stuart Young, who announced the details of the Prime Ministers diary at a Cabinet media briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister in st Clair, Port-of-Spain. Young could not give a total cost for the travels but said it was justified expenditure. The costs are being settled, the minister said. The costs can be justified because right now the Government has to take certain steps and initiatives to see what can be done outside of Trinidad and Tobago and this trip to Ghana is very important from that aspect. Young continued, The other one is a necessary trip to meet with the Vice President of the United states to lead the Caricom delegation with respect to both energy and security matters, that is a necessity. And then of course I am sure everyone would want us to be part of the international fight against corruption. I think that will be justified in the circumstances. The minister said it was quite a tight trip. The PM is due to leave on May 2 to meet with Biden on May 3 and May 4 alongside officials from the Caricom secretariat. This will be to discuss energy and security-related issues in Washington DC, Young said. This summit is part of the continuation of the discussions between the Us and the Caribbeans Central American energy security Task Force. From Washington DC, Rowley will leave on May 4 for New York where he has accepted an invitation to deliver the keynote address at Medgar evers College on May 5 for a dinner recognizing individuals and corporate contributions. The importance of this Medgar evers College is that Trinidad and Tobago nationals account for 23 percent of the colleges international student population, Young said. so there is a wide diaspora there that the Prime Minister sees it fit to address at their invitation. Medgar evers College previously honored then prime minister Patrick Manning in 2007. Faculty members have included Professor Elizabeth Nunez, sister of former Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira. Young said the Prime Minister then flies across the Atlantic to meet with Mr Robert Dudley who, as you know, is the chief executive officer of BP, on May 7, to continue discussions that have begun with Trinidad and Tobago and British Petroleum. He will be accompanied by Minister of energy Nicole Olivierre. Rowley will then leave the following day, May 8, for an official visit to the Republic of Ghana. This visit to the Republic of Ghana is at the invitation of the President, His excellency John Dramani Mahama, who extended this invitation to the Honourable Prime Minister when they met at the CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government) meetings in Malta last year, Young said. This is the exploration and the continuation of bilateral discussions between Trinidad and Tobago and the Republic of Ghana in the areas of investments such as banking, governance, institutional corporation, technology transfer. The trip is also for the purpose of exploration of energy sector-related investments and aid to Ghana. The Prime Minister will be there from May 8 to May 11. Young said members of the private sector will be invited but details remain pending. As you know, some of our Trinidadian companies, for example Republic Bank Ltd, have heavy investments in Ghana, Young said. From Ghana, Rowley will travel to a London anti-corruption summit which has been called by Cameron and starts May 12. This is a massive move by Prime Minister Cameron and it comes at quite an interesting time with what we have seen unfolding internationally with respect to corruption, Young said. so Prime Minister Cameron is having a summit where we expect world leaders to also be in attendance. Cameron has faced heated criticism in the UK for his and his wifes family ties to offshore banking funds. David, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, has extended this personal invitation to our Prime Minister Dr Rowley based on discussions they held in Malta, Young said. I can tell you, the people of Trinidad and Tobago, that in the meetings I attended in the UK two or three weeks ago, we are featuring quite brightly in the international spotlight on our fight against corruption. Young will also attend the London summit on May 12. I will be joining the Prime Minister there on May 12 to have these conversations with international leaders as to how we can make it easier for the flow of information, among other things, to combat international corruption, the minister said. On May 13 further meetings with anti-corruption officials are planned. The Prime Minister returns on May 14. DOMA to Imbert: Address inefficiencies High on the list is the question of how we are going to deal with the terrible inefficiencies that are plaguing the country, particularly in transportation and infrastructure. We are also very concerned about the labour climate in the country, and we feel strongly that the government needs to encourage a healthier industrial climate, so that we could encourage foreign investment. Aboud also weighed in on the foreign exchange situation, saying that he is in agreement with Imberts stance on not reintroducing foreign exchange controls. He called such controls archaic and a recipe for disaster. Foreign exchange controls are disastrous, and therefore should never be even part of the discussion. What controls do is, they create a complete dislocation of the function of the economy, and create tremendous shortage in areas where there is need, and an oversupply where there is no need. We already experienced the agony of that, and that is an old world technique that has been proven to fail. What we are looking for is new world strategies. Confirmed Zika cases now 11 The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) said the two additional cases came from Oropouche and Barataria. There are at this time, no confirmed cases in Tobago. According to the Ministry of Health, the latest cases appeared to have been contracted locally. Both patients presented with a rash, fever and generalised body pains. The Insect Vector Control Division; County Medical Officers of Health for St. Patrick and St. George West; the Siparia Regional Corporation and the San Juan/ Laventille Regional Corporation were informed and field work has commenced. The Health Ministry was again urging citizens to take steps to prevent the infection of themselves and others, which meant keeping their surroundings clean. Govt SEWs up new business In promoting electronic services which provide access to government information, Gopee-Scoon said online avenues can lead to the creation of new businesses and investments, declaring the country must move away from its dependence on an oil and gas economy. Trinidad and Tobago must do things differently. Diversification and building international competitiveness are now more than ever, important. In fact, they are critical to our economic survival, Gopee- Scoon said the launch of three new services of the Single Electronic Window (SEW ), or TTBiz Link, at the Hilton Trinidad & Conference Centre, Port-of- Spain. The minister advocated that the services of the SEW will help to encourage new trade, especially by improving communication among State agencies, business and citizens, without having to be led by Government. We do that by digitising and democratising information, by creating online avenues through which citizens can easily and securely access government services, via their phones and desktops, do it by facilitating trade and commerce, by reducing the demands and costs for business by creating an enabling environment in which persons do not spend precious time or money on simple administrative processes, by reinvesting in their businesses and hiring people, and innovating to create even more opportunities for future growth Government should not be the main driver of growth but rather have a facilitative role. The eight ministries currently on board with SEW services are the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of National Security, the Ministry of Works and Transport, the Ministry of Public Utilities, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Health. Gopee-Scoon observed the non-energy sector failed to grow significantly when oil and gas prices were high, signalling now is the time for innovation in the ways business is done. Even the global energy industry is making changes, citing the move to alternative fuels away from oil and gas. The non-energy sector, however you define it, has lagged behind the energy sector, and it has not sufficiently expanded when oil and gas prices were strong. A new global paradigm has set in with slower than usual global growth, low exports of oil and gas, (but) increased investments in alternative fuels, and alternative fuel technology, Gopee-Scoon noted. Economist: Give citizens right to referendum Speaking during the open forum at an event titled Lets Do This Together: Participatory Democracy in Trinidad and Tobago, hosted by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES ), at the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, Sagewan-Ali lamented that the countrys existing Constitution did not allow for such a system and basically protected itself from the very people for whom it was drafted. We have to get the right to referendum enshrined in the Constitution, she told the forum during the question and answer segment. (A referendum is a vote by the electorate on a political question that has been referred to them for a direct decision.) Panellists included retired head of the public service Reginald Dumas; Fixin T&T head Kirk Waithe; Congress of the People (COP) member Ashaki Scott and gender affairs scholar Dr Gabrielle Hosein. Noting that St Vincent already has a provision for the right to referendum in its Constitution, Sagewan-Ali observed, for example, that young people in this country did not appear to have any faith in the existing political system. There is a sense of apathy. They feel that they have no opportunity to have a stake in the country. That kind of movement (referendum) is what we need, she said. Sagewan-Ali also complained about the slow pace of development in the country, despite the billions of dollars that have been spent over the years. She noted that current talk about economic diversification has been bandied about since Independence in 1962. Dumas, meanwhile, recalled that the idea of implementing the right to referendum in the Constitution was put to this countrys first prime minister Dr Eric Williams but he did not want it because it would have given a different result. He said although the right to referendum has been a feature of the constitutions in many Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), it was put in by the British to move away from the Privy Council. Dumas suggested the right to referendum may not be accepted by the current administration. Young: DNA evidence can help murder detection rate Questioned at the Cabinet media briefing on statements by police officials on Wednesday lamenting the low detection rate for murders, Young said the State is collaborating with international agencies on the use of DNA evidence. DNA evidence, experts believe, can be used in criminal investigations to identify perpetrators. The issue of DNA is on the table at the (Ministry of the) Attorney General and Legal Affairs and is something that is getting our attention and you are right because it can help with respect to the detection rate, Young said. We have been in discussion with international parties relating to that. The last time the State legislated the issue of DNA evidence was in 2012 with the passage of the Administration of Justice (Deoxyribonucleic Acid). Young said reform of the criminal justice system namely the video recording of evidence - is also being considered to assist in prosecution of accused persons. He said the State is in the process of implementing the use of audio visual recording equipment for statements. These are initiatives that will play a major role...it might not go directly to the detection rate but certainly impact and positively influence the conviction rate, he said. What you have now is recording of statements being given by accused and witnesses by audio and visual recording, so of course it immediately eliminates the times spent at trials challenging the veracity of statements. Meanwhile, chairman of Alliance of Independents (AOI) Joe Pires said the disturbing trend in the decline of the detection rate for murders can be directly linked to a number specific policy- based initiatives in national security, apart from proper policing and investigative work. In a release yesterday, Pires said the AOI has noted the alarming reduction in the detection rate from the time that former Minister of National Security, Gary Griffith and key members of the former National Operations Centre (NOC) left or were removed from office. Senior homicide investigator Snr Supt Zamsheed Mohammed on Wednesday disclosed the murder detection rate had fallen from 17.8 percent between August 2014 to March 2015, to 8.6 percent for the same months between 2015 to this year. Family of slain 19-year old teenager awarded $2M after their son was unlawfully shot by trigger-happy cop In a desperate bid to keep the killer cop off the stand, South Carolina cops settled for $2,150,000 with Zachary Hammonds family in their wrongful death lawsuit. (Article by Grant Stern, republished from https://photographyisnotacrime.com/2016/03/30/south-carolina-cops-pay-zachary-hammonds-family-2-15mm-wrongful-death-settlement/) Seneca Police Lt. Mark Tiller shot and killed Hammond, then lied about the circumstances, claiming the teen tried to run him over. But Tiller shot through the passenger window. It was a small time marijuana sale gone horribly wrong. Zachary Hammonds passenger was the target. South Carolina cops didnt want to release the video, so three newspapers sued, seeking the truth for the 19-year old victim of the Drug War. Now taxpayers will foot the bill for the disgraced South Carolina cop Lt. Tiller, who wasnot even criminally charged in state court for the gruesome shooting. Fortunately, Uncle Sam took notice of the video released when state prosecutor Chrissy Adams justified Hammonds homicide, and the US Attorney began a criminal, federal civil rights investigation into Lt. Tiller. Lt. Tiller was due to be deposed in the civil suit on, but didnt want to take the standbecause according to his attorneys request for a protective order: Due to the open and active criminal investigation, requiring Mr. Tillers participation in his deposition for this matter will force him to confront the troubling prospect of either waiving his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, or repeatedly invoking this privilege to the detriment of his interest in the instant litigation Mr. Tiller faces the prospect of profound criminal exposure as a result of the ongoing criminal investigation. As a result, the active investigation profoundly and detrimentally impacts Mr. Tillers ability to participate in his upcoming deposition The likelihood of a forthcoming indictment is more than mere speculation, as the federal investigation remains active with criminal investigative activity having occurred within the last 10 days. Now, the family will at least be spared a long trip through the Federal civil court system, but that will never bring back the son, brother or cousin lost to police violence in the Drug War. Because the resistance to disclosure was dauntless, indicating to the world the ferocity and tragedy of Lt. Tillers killing of an unarmed teenager. Last summer, in the days after the shooting, South Carolina cops refused to even release the Lieutenants name. Read more at: https://photographyisnotacrime.com/2016/03/30/south-carolina-cops-pay-zachary-hammonds-family-2-15mm-wrongful-death-settlement/ Submit a correction >> Pacific Fleet commander wants to confront China in the South China Sea but White House is balking (NationalSecurity.news) The four-star admiral in command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet has been arguing behind closed doors that hes ready to confront the Chinese navy over its bullying and assertiveness in the South China Sea, but the White House has put up resistance each time, the Navy Times reported earlier this week. PACOM commander Adm. Harry Harris wants the U.S. Navy to take a more confrontational approach to reverse Chinas strategic gains in the region, proposing a more robust response to Beijings island building that would likely include launching aircraft and conducting operations within 12 miles of those man-made islands what Harris calls the Great Wall of Sand before it extends to within 140 miles of the Philippine capital, sources told the paper. Harris and other PACOM officials have been pushing, publicly and in private, for months to adopt a more aggressive stance against Chinese expansionism, even accusing Beijing outright in February of militarizing the South China Sea. However, the Obama administration with only nine months in office remaining is instead choosing to pursue cooperation with China on a number of fronts, from nuclear non-proliferation to a wider, more ambitious trade agenda and as such would prefer to avoid any increase in tensions in the SCS, experts noted. The White House has even gone to the extent of muzzling Harris and other military leaders in advance of an upcoming security summit. They want to get out of office with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of cooperation with China, Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and defense strategy analyst with the Center for a New American Security, told the Navy Times. The administration has sought to stifle Harris rhetoric, along with other military leaders who have been attempting to sound the alarm about Chinas growing militarism in one of the most vital trade routes in the world. The White House has largely watched as Beijing works to solidify outsized sovereignty claims to most of the South China Sea. Undoubtedly acting on the orders of President Obama, National Security Advisor Susan Rice has imposed a gag order on military leaders regarding the dispute over South China Sea claims in the weeks leading up to last weeks high-level nuclear summit, two defense officials with knowledge of the situation told the Navy Times on condition of anonymity. Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the summit in Washington, D.C., and met privately with Obama. The gag order was included in notes from a March 18 meeting of the National Security Council, and it included a request from Rice to tone down public comments on Chinas recent moves in the region, Navy Times reported, quoting one defense official familiar with the meeting. More: In issuing her order, Rice sought to give her boss and Xi maximum political maneuvering space during their one-on-one meeting at the summit, which was held March 31-April1. Sometimes its OK to talk about the facts and point out what China is doing, and other times its not, the official familiar with the memo said. Meanwhile, the Chinese have been absolutely consistent in their messaging. The order has had a chilling effect within the Defense Department and has served to discourage forthright public discussion, officials noted, and has extended beyond the nuclear summit. Sources told the Navy Times that push-back from the NSC has become normal in instances where U.S. leaders have said things that baited the Chinese into taking hardline positions. Military leaders interpreted this as an order to stay silent on Chinas assertive moves to control most of the South China Sea, said both defense officials, prompting concern that the paltry U.S. response may embolden the Chinese and worry U.S. allies in the region, like Japan and the Philippines, who feel bullied, the Navy Times reported. China has been building islands and airstrips atop reclaimed reefs and outcroppings in the Spratly Islands, an area believed to be rich in natural resources but which are claimed, in part, by several other nations including the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia. Reuters reported that Xi told Obama during their meeting that China would not accept freedom of navigation as an excuse to violate its sovereignty, after news broke that the U.S. would be sending another warship near a South China Sea outpost claimed by Beijing as sovereign territory. Our long-standing position is unchanged we do not take a position on competing sovereignty claims to naturally formed land features in the South China Sea, a senior Obama administration official told Reuters. More: We routinely conduct such operations throughout the world to challenge maritime claims that would unlawfully restrict rights and freedoms provided in international law. This applies to the South China Sea as well, said the official. Critics of the administrations wait and see approach say it is only emboldening the Chinese, who show no signs of pulling back or slowing their island reclamation projects. The White Houses aversion to risk has resulted in an indecisive policy that has failed to deter Chinas pursuit of maritime hegemony while confusing and alarming our regional allies and partners, said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement to Navy Times. Chinas increasingly coercive challenge to the rules-based international order must be met with a determined response that demonstrates Americas resolve and reassures the region of our commitment. Evidence and intelligence indicates that China is preparing to build another man-made island on the Scarborough Shoal, an atoll that is only 140 miles off the coast of the Philippine capital of Manila, and well within that countrys 200-mile economic exclusion zone, thereby extending Chinas clams. If Beijing were to deploy missile batteries and air-defense radars on the atoll as it has on other outcroppings in the South China Sea it would put U.S. forces in the Philippines within range during a crisis. See also: Navy Times Reuters NationalSecurity.news is part of the USA Features Media network. Submit a correction >> President Shri Pranab Mukherjee to inaugurate the International Convention on World Homoeopathy Day on 9th April, 2016 New Delhi, Fri, 08 Apr 2016 NI Wire The Central Council for Research in Homeopathy (CCRH), an autonomous research organization of Ministry of AYUSH, Government of India and an international organisation Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis (LMHI) are jointly organizing the International Convention on World Homoeopathy Day, with the support of Ministry of AYUSH on 9-10 April, 2016 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. The event is being organized to commemorate the 261st birth anniversary of the founder of Homoeopathy, Dr. Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician, who was a great scholar, linguist and acclaimed scientist. Honble President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate the convention. Shri Shripad Yesso Naik, Minister of State for AYUSH (Independent Charge), will be guest of honour. World Homoeopathy Day, celebrated the world over to commemorate the birth anniversary of this legendary scientist, is an ideal day to stress upon the new possibilities in the global health scenario if Homoeopathy is integrated in mainstream public health. With World Health Organisation emphasising on the need of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), Homoeopathy has a lot to offer to the world since it is economical, safe and effective. The theme of the Convention is Integrating Homoeopathy in healthcare, as the Convention would aim at highlighting the health and cost benefits of integrating Homoeopathy in healthcare among the health professionals and policymakers, by way of scientific evidence and rich clinical experiences. Homoeopathy has its own distinct advantages of being safe, effective and economical, and, therefore, could contribute significantly to the health scenario of a country. The potential of Homoeopathy remains largely unexplored and, therefore, underutilized in public health. This, despite the fact that Homoeopathy is practised in more than 80 countries of the world and is known to be effective in various communicable and non-communicable diseases chronic diseases and diseases of children and mothers. India, today, is the world leader in Homoeopathy, in terms of infrastructure and trained resources. We have the highest number of homoeopathy colleges, dispensaries, hospitals and practitioners. This is due to the support that Homoeopathy has received from the Government of India for its advancement and spread. A number of National Health Programmes are either exclusively based on Homeopathy/ AYUSH or integrated with conventional medicine (National Campaign for Mother & Child Care, Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram, Swasthya Rakshan, National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) etc.). People of India have ready access to Homoeopathy in most regions and effectively use the system for many day to day and chronic ailments. This convention will deliberate upon various significant issues in Homoeopathy. The convention include special sessions on Homeopathy on cancer, Homeopathy on Mental Health, Homoeopathy on Epidemics, Homoeopathy on Public Health, Clinical Research Studies, drug validation and drug development among others. Session on basic research will try to address the usually favourite points of skeptics, like non-existence of original particles in ultrahigh dilutions, lack of understanding of mechanism of action of homoeopathic medicines, etc. Sessions on applied research will be inclusive of studies on evidence-based studies on various clinical conditions, and throw light on where we stand today in terms of level of evidence. The exclusive public health session will discuss the ways of promoting Homoeopathy globally and chalk out the channels to enhance international cooperation among countries and to establish dialogue for promotion of Homoeopathy at political level. There will be sessions which will discuss the global scenario of Homoeopathy and challenges related to education and spread of Homoeopathy in various countries. Quality and validation related concerns for homoeopathic medicines will also be discussed at length. Strengths of Homoeopathy in veterinary diseases will also be taken up separately, as will be the subject of philosophy of Homoeopathy and its practical application. Internationally acclaimed scientists known for their remarkable work in various fields will be attending this convention. Among these, 16 international speakers will also present their work and views on Homoeopathy. In all, over 100 papers will be presented through oral or poster presentations. Several countries are participating in the convention including Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Italy, Netherlands, U.K., Austria, Armenia, Canada, Israel, Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, France, UAE, Cuba, Nepal, Turkey, Argentina, Slovenia, Pakistan, Ghana and Kenya. Health Ministers of Bangladesh and Nepal and state Health Ministers of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka are also participating. BRICS and SEAR countries will hold special meetings during the convention to strategize their consolidated efforts for promotion of Homoeopathy in their respective countries, with supporting each other with information exchange and technical knowhow. CCRH is expected to sign two Memoranda of understanding (MoUs), one each with Yerevan State Medical University, Armenia and College of Homeopaths of Ontario, Canada on cooperation in the field of Research and Education in Homoeopathic Medicine during the convention. Representatives from WHO will also be participating. Source: PIB Joint Statement issued at the Conclusion of the 22nd Basic Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change New Delhi, Fri, 08 Apr 2016 NI Wire 'Basic has Played a Proactive and Constructive role in Combating Global Climate Change and International Climate Change Negotiations': Javadekar India has said that the BASIC group has played a proactive and constructive role in combating global climate change and in the international climate change negotiations, which led to the successful adoption of the Paris Agreement. Addressing a joint press conference with Ministers of BASIC group here today, Minister of State (Independent Charge) of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Shri Prakash Javadekar said that it is an opportune time for the BASIC group to renew its efforts in the post-Paris period, invigorating the steps taken domestically, as well as internationally to address climate change. I feel glad that the Paris Agreement recognizes the imperatives of sustainable patterns of consumption and production, with developed countries taking the lead, and climate justice in strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, Shri Javadekar said. Shri Javadekar also emphasized that the BASIC group has been a strong advocate of the principle of Differentiation and operationalization of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) in the climate change regime. The Minister also highlighted that BASIC countries have started taking pre-2020 actions, more than what is expected and much beyond their capacity. Shri Javadekar expressed the hope that the developed world will make an all-out effort to mobilize $ 100 billion, which was an essential feature of Paris agreement. A Joint Statement was made at the end of the meeting. The following is the text of the Joint Statement at the conclusion of the 22nd BASIC Ministerial meeting on Climate Change: 1. The 22nd BASIC Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change was held in New Delhi, India on and April 6-7, 2016. The meeting was attended by Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Mr. Prakash Javadekar, Special Representative for Climate Change of China, Mr. Xie Zhenhua, Under Secretary-General for the Environment, Energy, Science and Technology, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, Ambassador Antonio Marcondes, and Chief Director, International Climate Change Relations and Negotiations of South Africa, Mr. Maesela Kekana,. 2. Ministers welcomed the adoption of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and acknowledged that the 21st Conference of Parties (COP-21) held in Paris in December 2015 marked a milestone in global climate cooperation. They underlined that the Paris Agreement is meant to enhance the implementation of the Convention and is comprehensive, balanced and ambitious. It also reiterates the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR & RC). 3. Ministers appreciated the role of the French Presidency in carrying all Parties together and ensuring the successful adoption of the Paris Agreement at COP-21. The Ministers also commended the role of BASIC and G-77 & China groups in negotiating the Paris outcomes and securing interests of the developing countries. They reaffirmed the commitment of BASIC countries to G-77 & China and expressed their appreciation of South Africas chairing of the group. 4. Ministers underlined that the Paris Agreement recognizes the imperatives of sustainable patterns of consumption and production, with developed countries taking the lead, and the importance of climate justice, in strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change. 5. Ministers commended the efforts by BASIC countries and other developing countries in tackling climate change, both pre- and post-2020, and emphasised that these represent far more ambitious efforts compared to their respective responsibilities and capabilities. 6. The BASIC countries look forward to signing the Paris Agreement on 22 April 2016 during the High-Level Signature Ceremony convened by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. They expressed their will to initiate necessary domestic processes for ratification, acceptance or approval as soon as possible with a view to facilitate the timely entry into force of the Agreement, and urged other countries to do so as well. 7. Ministers reiterated the importance of pre-2020 actions in building trust amongst the Parties and noted with concern the pending ratification by many Annex I Parties of the Doha Amendment, which establishes the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. They urged Annex I Parties to both ratify and revisit pledges of Quantified Emission Limitation and Reduction Objectives (QELROs) to close the emission gap. They also emphasized that raising pre-2020 ambition on other pillars of the Convention (viz. adaptation, finance and technology and capacity building support) will pave the way for the implementation of the Paris Agreement. 8. The Ministers reiterated that Parties contributions, termed as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), are to be country driven and comprehensive. The Ministers reflected on the importance of adaptation and means of implementation as key elements of Parties efforts under the Agreement. 9. The Ministers stressed the differentiated obligations in mitigation actions of developed and developing countries, as well as for the provision of support, and emphasized that developed countries should continue to take the lead. They also recalled that the Paris Agreement specifically mentions that the time frame for peaking will be longer for developing countries. Ministers felt that proper anchoring of differentiation in contributions of developed and developing countries is a sound basis for ambitious actions. 10. Ministers also underscored the need for financial support to developing countries for effective implementation of their mitigation and adaptation actions through accelerating the work on the new Technology Framework and the Technology Mechanism including its assessment for a meaningful and tangible dissemination, transfer and deployment of technology from developed to developing countries. They also emphasized on the role of innovation and international cooperation in enhancing global actions. 11. Ministers welcomed the setting up of the Paris Committee, a new institutional mechanism for enhancing capacity building activities in developing countries, and urged developed countries to provide financial support for capacity building in developing countries. 12. Ministers emphasized the importance of building on the existing transparency framework under the Convention, for effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and reiterated the importance of providing support and flexibility to developing countries, including through the Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency, in fulfilling their obligations under the proposed enhanced transparency framework. Ministers further underlined that transparency of support is a fundamental aspect of the implementation of the Paris Agreement and that the consideration of this issue should not be outsourced to other entities. They also reflected on the need to focus on the qualitative aspects of climate finance on transparency of support. 13. Ministers identified means of implementation in the context of provision of finance, technology transfer and capacity building support as the most important enablers of action for developing countries. Ministers expressed their concern over the lack of adequate support in this respect and urged developed countries to honour their obligations under the Convention. 14. Ministers also urged developed countries to scale up their level of financial support with a complete road map to achieve the goal of jointly providing USD 100 billion per year by 2020. Reiterating the role of public finance, Ministers called upon developed countries to fulfill their pledges to the Green Climate Fund. 15. Ministers noted that the next session of the SBI, SBSTA and Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement will be deliberating on a number of issues related to the Paris Agreement. In this regard, Ministers hoped that issues under these bodies will receive balanced treatment and pledged their support to the incoming COP Presidency of Morocco to ensure a successful COP-22. 16. The BASIC countries expressed concern that the draft proposal on Global Market Based Measures (GMBM) under the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) may impose inappropriate economic burden on developing countries, where the international aviation market is still maturing. They urged the ICAO to develop climate change measures in a manner that is consistent with the principles of CBDR & RC, and to align the GMBM with the relevant provisions of the Paris Agreement. 17. Ministers agreed to further strengthen the cooperation and solidarity among the BASIC countries. 18. Ministers welcomed the offer of South Africa to host the 23rd BASIC Ministerial meeting. Source: PIB Water is a common legacy: Pranab Mukherjee New Delhi, Fri, 08 Apr 2016 NI Wire On the occasion of "water India Week" President Pranab Mukherjee addresses national and foreign experts. President Pranab Mukherjee congratulated the Ministry of water resources, river development and Ganga Rejuvenation for organizing "India Water Week 2016" and said I am happy that many national and foreign experts are attending the annual event on water resources management and also sharing their experiences towards water management. Mr. Mukherjee congratulated Israel who is also this years partner .who is developing practical innovations for optimally utilizing and saving every drop of water they can. He said we need to recognize that India is facing huge shortage of water, we represent 17 percent of world's population but we have only 4 percent of world's renewable water resources. We all are aware about the effect of climate change in our country and around the world and also other factors like increase in population, urbanization and industrialization demand of water has increased. National Water Mission is one such mission launched in the year 2011 with an objective of conservation, equal distribution and minimization wastage of water. And also government "Interlinking of Rivers" program will help in over come the imbalances in water availability. He further said any strategy for efficient water management will not go far if we will not create awareness and involve the participation of communities. In the same order I am glad that the government has taken up "Jal Kranti Abhiyan" to consolidate water conservation. Providing safe drinking water to our people is one such area where a lot of work needs to be done. Many communities India are still away from the basic water infrastructure we need to provide proper water infrastructure so that we can rejuvenate these population. We should respect the principle that water is a common legacy; we should treasure it, utilize it and pass on to our future generation. President Pranab Mukherjee said I see "India Water Week" as a key initiative for sharing best practices and ideas which will help in identifying timely solutions in order to confront the critical issue of water SpaceX will try yet again to land its Falcon 9 rocket on a robotic ship in the Atlantic Ocean Friday (April 8). The landing attempt will come during the launch of SpaceXs robotic Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA, which is scheduled to take place at 4:43 p.m. EDT (2043 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. They will be launching the BEAM module. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is an experimental expandable space station module being developed by Bigelow Aerospace, under contract to NASA, for use as a temporary module on the International Space Station (ISS) from 2016 to 2017. Bigelow has plans to build a second BEAM module as an airlock for the Bigelow Commercial Space Station. The BEAM is an experimental program in an effort to test and validate expandable habitat technology. If BEAM performs favorably, it could lead to development of expandable habitation structures for future crews traveling in deep space. The two-year demonstration period will: Demonstrate launch and deployment of a commercial inflatable. Implement folding and packaging techniques for inflatable. Implement a venting system for inflatable shell during ascent to ISS. Determine radiation protection capability of inflatable structures. Demonstrate design performance of commercial inflatable structure like thermal, structural, mechanical durability, long term leak performance, etc. Demonstrate safe deployment and operation of an inflatable structure in a flight mission. Mission success could see reusable rockets lowering launch costs by 3 to twenty and giant expandable space stations See more pic.twitter.com/pYrygtXadu Today Dragon was loaded with late load cargo in advance of tomorrows 4:43pm ET launch https://t.co/tdni5406Hi SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 7, 2016 Israel is working with Lockheed Martin and the F-35 Joint Program Office to maximize autonomy of its planned stealth fighter force, including its own command, control, communications and computing (C4) system, indigenous weaponry and the ability to perform heavy maintenance in country rather than at predetermined regional overhaul facilities. Once the first F-35Is arrive here in December, state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will begin installing a tailor-made C4 system on top of the central avionics embedded in the joint strike fighter. Its open architecture, which sits on the F-35s central system, much like an application on your iPhone. So it doesnt change anything in the aircraft itself, but it gives the Israel Air Force (IAF) the most advanced and adaptable processing capabilities with relative independence of the aircraft manufacturer, said Benni Cohen, general manager of IAIs Lahav Division. In an interview Monday, Cohen said IAI is already producing the C4 system for installation in the first planes due here in December. It introduces a new level of freedom for the IAF, as it paves the way for additional advanced capabilities to be embedded in the F-35I in the future, he said. As for weaponry, the Israel Air Force and state-owned Rafael Advanced Systems Ltd. have been working with Lockheed Martin to adapt the Israeli Spice 1000 electro-optic standoff precision strike system for internal carriage on the F-35. Sacrificing stealth for more range and other options Similarly, Lockheed Martin is engaged with Cyclone Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Elbit Systems, on external fuel tanks to augment range beyond the 18,500 pounds of fuel carried internally by the F-35. At a later phase, Israeli defense and industry sources say they hope to develop with Lockheed Martin and with the consent of JSF partner nations conformal fuel tanks to significantly extend the range while in stealth mode. Israel has many enemies with different levels of air defense capability. It can be more important for Israel to be able to hit enemies that are farther away than to have maximum stealth in all situations. Israel has a history of heavily modifying their F15 and F16 planes. Stealth may only last another 5-10 years against countries with advanced defenses In 2012 Aviation Week article indicated that low radar cross section is a niche capability [aka stealth], and new sensor technology advances can make it less important. China, India and Russia are already finding weaknesses in stealth as they develop it for their own advanced strike aircraft. A senior Israeli Air Force official as saying (of the F-35) We think the stealth protection will be good for 510 years, but the aircraft will be in service for 3040 years. In terms of technology programs, five to 10 years is more or less an appropriate length of time to develop a new, medium-to-high complexity system based on well-understood physics. Something that degrades stealth capability somewhat wont mean that the stealthiness is completely going to disappear. F15 Silent Eagle Israel being able to take control of the development, modification and maintenance of its planes would be another reason for interest in an F15 silent eagle. Israel could learn to adapt the stealth modifications to all of their older F15 fighters. SOURCES Defense News, Aviation Week The U.S. Navy will seek $81.4 billion to buy 38 warships, submarines and support vessels in the next five years, according to new budget figures from the service. The plan calls for spending about $14.7 billion on seven vessels next year, $16.8 billion on eight in fiscal 2018, $16.2 billion on seven in 2019, $16.9 billion on eight in 2020 and $16.8 billion on eight vessels in 2021. The first new Gerald Ford aircraft carrier will be commissioned this year and the second should be commissioned in 2020. The third new carrier is scheduled for a 2025 commissioning. The new Navy plan proposes bankrolling one new frigate each in fiscal 2019 and 2020 and two in 2021, for a total of $3 billion. These are the first of as many as eight better-armored and more survivable versions of the Littoral Combat Ship that Defense Secretary Ash Carter and his predecessor Chuck Hagel directed to be built. The Navy plans to hold a competition for the frigate program, selecting between Lockheed and Austal, which both currently build versions of the Littoral Combat Ship. The five-year plan also updates funds earmarked to start work on replacing the Ohio-class nuclear missile submarine. The service plans to spend $9.25 billion through fiscal 2021, up from the $5.7 billion it planned to spend through 2020 in last years plan. The boost comes from $3.6 billion earmarked in 2021 to begin construction. The Navy last week announced that General Dynamics will be the prime contractor, with Huntington Ingalls the subcontractor. The Littoral Combat Ship will be optimized for lethality and survivability. The program is transition to a multimission frigate. The 40-knot sprint speed requirement will go away to allow for more armor, more weapons, an over-the-horizon missile and full-time anti-torpedo protection Not Found The requested URL was not found on this server. Apache Server Port 80 The Tunisian government has allocated 230 to the fight against terrorism and is determined to also tackle smuggling, become a major concern for the countrys security and economy, Prime Minister said on Thursday. Prime Minister Habib Essid, who was giving a lecture at the Institute of National Defense, in the military base of Bortal Hayder, also announced that an anti-terrorism package worth more than 160 million will be allotted to the army and security forces which have been fighting terrorists since the 2011 revolution. Security challenges and fight against terrorism are on top of the governments priorities, Essid said, indicating that the government is also seriously taking on the battle against smuggling which is one of the main helping factors of terrorism. Additional 38 million will be provided to the customs in this regard. Smuggling has caused equal harm to the Tunisian economy as has terrorism which has sliced the countrys tourism industry revenue down by 60 per cent. The parallel market represents 50% of the national economy, he explained. Essid said that smugglers help terrorists move in steep paths and that several terrorist attacks were committed by terrorists who originally were smugglers, citing one of the elements that had taken part in Ben Guerdanes attack. To combat smuggling, the Prime Minister proposed two solutions which consist in creating free zones to gain back smugglers and involve them in the creation of an economic momentum in their regions as well as the creation of additional jobs and the realization of specific programs covering many regions and business sectors. A free zone will be established at Ben Guerdane, a town near the Libyan border, which witnessed bloody clashes between regular forces and terrorists early in March. The free zone will be operational by 2017, the Prime Minister said. Moroccan and Mauritanian servicemen have benefited from intelligence course training conducted by US military experts in preparation for upcoming exercise African Lion 2016. The training course was held March 3-25 at the Moroccan Southern Zone headquarters in Agadir, according to press reports. The three-week course is the first of what US service members are hoping will be more intelligence training events with Moroccan partners. The training focuses on several methods of intelligence gathering and analyzation methods to support tactical military operations. I envision that the knowledge gained from this course will help the Moroccan and Mauritanian trainers become proficient with basic intelligence concepts and be better able to reduce uncertainty for their commanders, said the US Marine intelligence security cooperation officer with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Africa. The course will also help them thrive in uncommon, complex environments, and be better prepared to support African Lion 2016 said the US intelligence security cooperation officer. According to Gibraltar Chronicle, Moroccan forces have also carried out lately a month-long operational training in Sennybridge, South Wales, with the Royal Gibraltar Regiment [RG]. The RG continued its close relationship with the Moroccan Armed Forces at Exercise Jebel Tarik, and invited members of the Forces Armees Royale [FAR] to join. A week before deployment to Sennybridge, 20 FAR personnel arrived in Gibraltar and underwent pre-deployment training. It is good to work with foreign troops, particularly the Moroccans, given the fact we have been working with them for over 15 years now, said Chief Instructor Sgt Joshua Whitaker. These opportunities allow us to share ideas on best practices and enable the RG to continue developing its special relationship that has been in place for such a long time. The FAR troops were highly motivated and competent soldiers that engaged with us instantly and became fully integrated with the company from the outset, he stressed. King Mohammed VI launched Friday in Rabat a new structural project of car-manufacturer Renault group in Morocco called Renault Ecosystem. The project, meant to consolidate the positioning of the Moroccan automotive sector on the world chessboard, requires an investment of about $1.0 billion and will develop a global supply platform for the manufacturer. The sovereign presided on this occasion over the signing ceremony of three conventions related to the new Renault Ecosystem project, to industrial land and to vocational training in the automotive sector. The project will generate a $2.0 billion additional turnover per year, multiply by three folds the amount of purchases by Renault of parts manufactured in Morocco, said Moulay Hafid Elalamy, Minister of Industry and architect of the industrial acceleration plan launched in April 2014. The project will also create 50,000 new permanent jobs, tripling thus the number of jobs generated by Renault in the North African country. The Renault ecosystem will achieve a local integration rate of 65 pc. With this integration rate, we will reach the size needed and long awaited by many OEMs wishing to operate in Morocco, the minister said. The rapid development of Renault group in Morocco was possible thanks to the stability of the Kingdom, its attractiveness and good governance, he said. In 2015, Renault group produced 2.8 million vehicles worldwide. Out of this total, 288,000 vehicles were manufactured in Morocco. 256,500 Morocco-made units were exported to more than 20 European and Arab countries. During the same year, the car manufacturer produced 662,289 vehicles in France and 468,000 in Spain. Bernard Cambier, Director of Operations of the group for the Africa-India-Middle East Region, hailed the Sovereigns vision which, he said, made it possible for Morocco to score such a rapid industrialization. He mentioned in this vein the major development and infrastructure projects achieved under theleadership, such as the Tangiers-Med port. The Renault group is happy and proud to have been associated as a partner in this development, he said. For all the stakeholders in the Renault Ecosystem, the development prospects are very important; they are based on the dynamics of the Moroccan market and exports growth and also on the development of the Spain-based Renault and Nissan plants that produce bestselling vehicles, Bernard Cambier said. The development prospects in sub-Saharan Africa can offer some great opportunities for the tangier-based Renault plant, in addition to the expansion of other sectors such as spare parts and toolmaking industry, engineering at competitive costs and equipment supply, he said. I feel your pain! Americas first black president has some detractors among the African-American community of Philadelphia. While rallying support for his wife ahead of Pennsylvanias Democratic primary, Bill Clinton found himself in a shouting argument with a group of Black Lives Matter protesters. The activists crashed Clintons speech, bearing homemade signs reading, Clintons crime bill destroyed our communities, and, Welfare reform increased poverty. One sign made reference to Hillary Clintons infamous use of the right-wing trope superpredators a term that described a new class of young black criminals who lacked all conscience and empathy during her husbands reelection campaign. The former First Lady apologized for using the term when confronted by protesters back in February. Her husband took a different approach. I dont know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out into the street to murder other African-American children, Clinton told the protesters. Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didnt You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. The former president also defended his welfare-reform act, which several studies have linked to a stark increase in child poverty: They say the welfare reform bill increased poverty. Then why did we have the largest drop in African-American poverty in history when I was president? The largest in history. What happened was the Supreme Court elected President Bush 5 to 4. Then all these Republicans took over state legislatures. We left them with enough money to take care of all the poor people who couldnt go to work, on welfare. We left them with the money they had before the welfare rolls went down 60 percent. The Republicans took it away and theyre blaming me, and apparently her, when she had nothing to do with it. One problem with Clinton blaming Republicans for taking away peoples welfare is that, without his law, they wouldnt have been able to. Before the welfare-reform act, the federal government guaranteed assistance to impoverished families with dependent children who met a given set of eligibility requirements. Clintons law replaced that federal guarantee with block grants to the states. That allowed Republicans (and many Democrats) at the state-level to shift welfare spending away from their poorest, least politically engaged constituents. It was not difficult to predict that Republican governors would use this new authority in the manner Clinton now derides, or that a system of inflexible block grants would drive up the rate of extreme poverty. Peter Edelman, an assistant secretary in Clintons Health and Human Services Department, resigned after his complaints about the welfare bill went unheeded. In 1997, he explained the problems with the block-grant system in an article for The Atlantic: First, that there will be no federal definition of who is eligible and therefore no guarantee of assistance to anyone; each state can decide whom to exclude in any way it wants, as long as it doesnt violate the Constitution (not much of a limitation when one reads the Supreme Court decisions on this subject). And second, that each state will get a fixed sum of federal money each year, even if a recession or a local calamity causes a state to run out of federal funds before the end of the year. Fifteen years after the welfare-reform act went into effect, extreme child poverty had increased by 150 percent. Clinton concluded by warning his wifes supporters not to believe the protesters, saying that the activists knew what he was saying was true because they wont hush. When someone wont hush and listen that aint democracy. Theyre afraid of the truth. Dont be afraid of the truth. You can watch an extended version of Clintons back-and-forth with the protesters here: All those long hours in the library studying for finals helped some Brooklyn College students learn at least one new fact: Their Flatbush Avenue campus might have a little bit of a bedbug problem. Thats what some students were claiming, who went on Facebook to complain and collectively freak out that theyd seen bedbugs in the library, an academic hall, and maybe a room near the cafeteria. Bed Bugs in Brooklyn College! Fuck this shit ! Posted by Noura Amara on Tuesday, April 5, 2016 School administrators checked out the stories, and sent out a mass calm down email to the student body: Over the past week, weve received isolated reports of bed bugs in two separate areas on campus. Our pest control experts have conducted inspections and all areas have been treated. No additional activity (such as live insects, carcasses, or eggs) was identified. This confirms that these were stray bed bugs likely to have been inadvertently introduced from an external source. That doesnt seem to have stopped all of the bedbug paranoia, and some students started sharing pictures and videos of cockroaches and other suspicious critters spotted on campus. Well spare you the visuals, but a spokesman for the school told the Ditmas ParkFlatbush Patch that while the bedbug issue has been taken care of, the cockroaches get a warning this time. Yes, 2016 is looking bad for Republicans. But bad times might not last too long. Photo-Illustration: Daily Intelligencer; Photo: John Lund These are some anxious times for the Republican Party. Given 17 candidates running for the presidential nomination in a year when the fundamentals looked pretty good for a return to the White House, the party rank and file are apparently narrowing the GOPs options to (arguably) their two weakest prospects, the repellent Donald Trump and the extremist Ted Cruz. Considering the high stakes of this years elections, thats bad enough, and could get worse if trouble at the top of the ticket spreads downward to Senate and even House races. But many Republicans fear (and many Democrats hope) that the convulsions of the 2016 nominating process could represent a definitive life-and-death crisis for the GOP, especially if Trump triumphs in Cleveland. One of the vanquished candidates, Senator Lindsey Graham, put it most bluntly last August: If Donald Trump is the nominee, thats the end of the Republican Party. Meanwhile, Democratic observers have frequently accused the Republican Party of inviting this disaster through decades of race-baiting and culture war, suggesting the GOP is reaching a just and predictable nadir where it could languish divided and defeated. You never know, but history and logic should tell us that in our two-party system, presidential-election disasters rarely have produced long-term declines for either party: 1966 was a banner year for Republicans, and 1974 an even better year for Democrats, two years after presidential debacles. Democrats won eight net Senate seats and recaptured that chamber in 1986, two years after Fritz Mondale lost 49 states. Even more recently, a terrible 2008 presidential election for Republicans quickly led to its best midterm showing in decades. RealClearPolitics Sean Trende offers up a variety of past cries of despair about the permanent damage supposedly wrought by one electoral catastrophe; they were all premature. But doesnt Trump represent a more basic challenge to the ideological underpinnings of the Republican Party? Yes, and its one that will be quickly and thoroughly consigned to the dustbin of history if the ticket goes down to ignominious defeat. Short of victory, the outcome most orthodox Republicans want most is to be able to blame defeat on Trump and cast a terrible anathema on anyone who utters his name with anything less than contempt for years to come. The silver lining of a Trump nomination that defies conservative ideology is that conservative ideology cannot be held responsible for making Hillary Clinton president. A Cruz nomination and defeat would not have the same silver lining, though it would also be rationalized as attributable to the candidates high-profile advocacy of extremist tactics for advancing conservative ideology. Hed be cast as another Goldwater, when the times called for another Reagan. But there would still be no particular need for any struggle for the soul of the Republican Party, which could pick up right where it left off in 2013 with Reince Priebuss autopsy report calling for a less threatening profile for conservatism. Best of all for the GOP, it probably would not have to wait very long for a comeback. The more House seats it loses this November, the more House seats will be vulnerable to being recaptured by Republicans in 2018, when pro-Republican midterm turnout patterns and the near-universal phenomenon of the party controlling the White House losing House seats in midterms will all but guarantee some GOP gains, particularly if congressional Republicans recapitulate their Obama-era success in obstructing presidential leadership. Meanwhile, the 2018 Senate landscape is one of the most heavily pro-Republican election years in living memory, with Republicans only having to defend 8 of 33 seats up that year (even as Democrats defend 4 seats in states Obama lost twice). The ideological divisions of 2016 would likely be forgotten amid the party-wide war cry of resistance to the administration of Hillary Clinton. The more you think about it, what really might trigger a Republican crack-up would be a Donald Trump nomination and victory in November. Then the hegemony of orthodox conservative ideology would be threatened by a Republican in the White House, wielding the power of the presidency. Then it would be Republicans, not Democrats, facing a midterm backlash against the party controlling 600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And then it would be Republicans blamed for the real-life consequences of Trumps irresponsible policies. Its no wonder so many big donors and Establishment Republican pooh-bahs are talking about focusing on down-ballot races in November. They may be sorely tempted to take a dive in the presidential race if they can mitigate the collateral damage. They could then repossess the battered GOP and start working on the great comeback of 2018. This is not going well. Photo: Joshua Lott/2016 Getty Images President Obama is growing increasingly frustrated with Senate Republicans refusal to hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, his pick for the Supreme Court following the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia. And during an appearance at the University of Chicago on Thursday, Obama made the case for conservatives to end their unprecedented blockade of Garland and get on with the nomination process. But more than that, he foreshadowed a future, stemming from conservatives insistence that the next president choose the new justice, in which the nomination process becomes entirely political a majoritarian exercise of who controls the presidency and who controls the Senate. Nobody has plausibly made the argument that this is not the kind of person wed want on the Supreme Court, Obama said during a question-and-answer session with faculty and students. The question then becomes: Why is it so hard for the guy just to get a hearing and a vote? He went on, What you have here is, I think, a circumstance in which those in the Senate have decided that placating [their] base is more important than upholding their constitutional and institutional rules in our democracy in a way that is dangerous. He warned that, if hes succeeded by a Republican, Democrats in the Senate might retaliate against any future nominee by blocking them in kind, which could leave the seat empty for a prolonged period. Americans are already beginning to see the Supreme Court through a partisan lens, and if the nomination process gets even messier, Obama said it could erode the integrity of the judicial branch. The courts will be just an extension of our legislatures and our elections and our politics, he said. At that point, people lose confidence in the ability of the courts to fairly adjudicate cases and controversies. Senate Republicans, of course, deny that their refusal to acknowledge Obamas nominee is about politics at all. But in a speech to the Senate on Tuesday, Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, equated following the law with advancing conservative policy. Justices appointed by Republicans are generally committed to following the law, he said. But some of the Justices appointed by Republicans often dont vote in a way that advances conservative policy. He went on: If we want the confirmation process to be less divisive, if we want the public to have more confidence that the Justices havent exceeded their constitutional role, then the Justices need to demonstrate that in politically sensitive cases, their decisions are based on the Constitution and the law and not on their political preferences. No doubt the Republican base the one Obama fears Grassley and others are seeking to placate would agree. Photo: Gilbert Carrasquillo/2015 Gilbert Carrasquillo Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf signed two executive orders on Thursday to protect LGBT residents against employment discrimination, Politico reports. One order bans discrimination against any employee or applicant for employment on the basis of race, color, religious creed, ancestry, union membership, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, national origin, AIDS or HIV status, or disability. The second imposes similar nondiscrimination requirements in awarding state contracts and grants. Last week, the governor issued a statement sharply critical of North Carolinas new anti-LGBT law banning transgender people from using bathrooms that do not match the sex on their birth certificate. According to the Associated Press, Wolf chose to act after anti-discrimination bills protecting LBGT Pennsylvanians were introduced in the state legislature but stalled there. In his announcement of the executive orders on Thursday, Wolf lay the blame for the holdup on Pennsylvania Republicans. With no sign that Republican leaders plan to free this bill that has broad, bi-partisan support, he said, I am taking action to protect those that I can and send a signal to the country that Pennsylvania is open for business no matter who you are or whom you love. North Carolinas new law, which purports to protect religious freedom, has drawn condemnation from business leaders and politicians in other states, including New York mayor Bill de Blasio and governor Andrew Cuomo, both of whom have banned nonessential government travel to North Carolina in protest. A law similar to North Carolinas was signed in Mississippi this week. Georgia governor Nathan Deal was presented with such a bill as well, but he vetoed it after coming under pressure from business interests in the state. South Carolina state legislators are also considering their own bathroom bill, but Governor Nikki Haley said on Thursday that such a law is unnecessary. Sanders/The Pope 2016 Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images Bernie Sanders is socially liberal and fiscally Catholic. I am a big, big fan of the pope, Sanders told MSNBCs Morning Joe on Friday, shortly after announcing that he had been invited to speak at the Vatican next week. Obviously there are areas where we disagree, on womens rights, on gay rights. But he has played an unbelievable role of injecting a moral consequence into the economy. Sanders went on to applaud Pope Francis for his advocacy on behalf of the dispossessed and his denunciation of the global economys idolatry of money. Hes talking about the idolatry of money. The worship of money, Sanders said. The greed thats out there: how our whole country is based on how I need more and more and more, and I dont have to worry about veterans sleeping out on the street or elderly who cant afford their prescription drugs. NEW: @BernieSanders invited to speak at the Vatican: 'I am a big, big fan of the Pope' https://t.co/H3hsF1W5te Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) April 8, 2016 This isnt the first time that Sanders has described the pontiff as if he were an unofficial economic adviser. Back in February, Sanders went so far as to describe Francis as a fellow socialist. Whether or not the pope shares the Vermont senators enthusiasm for Eugene Debs, hes feeling the Bern enough to have invited the Jewish presidential candidate to speak at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, during a conference on social, economic, and environmental issues. Or, at least, hes enthused enough to have let Bernie invite himself. On Friday afternoon, the president of that Pontifical Academy threw a great oak trees worth of shade at the Democratic candidate. Sanders made the first move, for the obvious reasons, Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, told Bloomberg. I think in a sense he may be going for the Catholic vote but this is not the Catholic vote and he should remember that and act accordingly not that he will. However, the Sanders campaign vehemently denied Archers claim, telling Bloomberg, Your story is categorically untrue. The invitation came to the senator from the Vatican. Late Friday, a senior Vatican official told Reuters that Archer was mistaken. Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo told the news service, This is not true and she knows it. I invited him with her consensus. Bernie was invited to speak at The Vatican a full week ago. The original invitation. pic.twitter.com/ksujx2Ajej Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 8, 2016 Sanders will head to Rome immediately after the April 14 Democratic debate in Brooklyn. The senator told the Washington Post that his speech at the Academy will focus on how we can create a moral economy that works for all and address the planetary crisis of climate change. One thing Sanders probably wont be bringing up at the Vatican: Hillary Clintons emails. But he did bring them up on Fridays Morning Joe, in order to make a point about how he never brings them up. .@BernieSanders: I have tried to stay away from personal attacks... We've got to fight back. https://t.co/OOrCjoPzDK Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) April 8, 2016 Ive been called a protector of the NRA. The Clinton campaign has said that I want to dismember American health care and leave people without Medicaid, Sanders told the MSNBC hosts, defending his recent attack on Clintons qualifications for the presidency. How often have I talked about Hillary Clintons emails? Have you heard me? Not a word. How often have I talked about the Clinton Foundations fund-raising? Have you heard me say one word about it during the campaign? To say that I am running a vitriolic campaign Sanders then asked, How often have you heard me say, Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster, and I have the photographs to prove it? Not once! Okay. He didnt ask that last one. And he went on to say that Clinton is extremely bright, and that he hopes the primary campaign will move away from personal attacks and back to their differences on the issues. Thursday night on CBS, Sanders reiterated his commitment to support Clinton if shes the nominee, suggesting that, when he calls her not qualified for the presidency, he really means less qualified than the Jew wholl be palling around with the pope next week. This post has been updated. She started it. Photo: William Thomas Cain/2016 Getty Images So far this years Democratic primary contest has been relatively high-minded, especially compared to the Republican side, but over the past two days things have gotten nasty. The conflict began when Hillary Clinton implied Sanders wasnt a real Democrat and hadnt done his homework on his pet issue: breaking up big banks. Based on headlines, Sanders took Clintons remarks to mean shed said he wasnt qualified to be president, and he shot back that maybe she wasnt qualified, either. Having successfully driven Sanders to a boiling point, Clinton then backed off, saying shed take Sanders over Donald Trump or Ted Cruz anytime. But the question remained: If Sanders thought Clinton so unqualified, would he endorse her if she won the nomination in July? The answer, it seems, is yes. During an interview with CBS on Thursday evening, Sanders assured anchor Charlie Rose that he thinks the idea of a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for this country. He went on, I will do everything in my power and work as hard as I can to make sure that that does not happen. And if Secretary Clinton is the nominee, I will certainly support her. In other words, Sanders is still dedicated to maintaining party unity in the face of Republican challengers. However, he refused to walk back his comments. When Rose asked Sanders if he believes Clinton is unqualified to be president, Sanders responded with a coy, Well, does Secretary Clinton believe that I am unqualified to be president? He conceded that she has years of experience and is extremely intelligent, but said, we should not get into this tit for tat. We should be debating the issues facing the American people. But a minute later, Sanders appeared to contradict himself: Rose: People are saying the tenor of this campaign has changed, and its sounding more and more like the Republican campaign. Sanders: Lets not go that far. Rose: But take a listen to this, this is what youve said. You said that, Clinton should apologize for Iraq war deaths. Sanders: This is after I was asked to apologize for the tragedy in Sandy Hook. You know, put these things into context. Rose: Tit for tat. Sanders: It is tit for tat. But Im responding to attacks that are being made against me. This sentiment echoes what Sanders said in Philadelphia earlier Thursday. And although Sanders maintains the tone of the Democratic race is far from that of the Republican campaign, his response still rings of she started it. Warrens on the case Photo: Steve Pope/Getty Images Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are pushing for the U.S. Treasury Department to investigate whether American individuals or companies conducted illegal business through the Panama-based law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal. The two Democrats sent a letter to Treasury secretary Jack Lew on Thursday, urging him to look into whether any U.S. or U.S.-linked company or person involved with Mossack Fonseca may have facilitated money laundering, terrorist financing, or other illegal activity, including with any U.S.-designated persons, Politico reports. U.S. designated persons refers to the Specially Designated Nationals list, a list of people and entities with which its illegal for U.S. citizens or residents to do business. The Justice Department is aware of the news reports, seeing as it is staffed by living people who presumably have internet access, but it hasnt said whether it intends to follow up on them. Early reports based on the leak of more than 11 million documents from the worlds fourth-largest offshore services company named world leaders, politicians, businesspeople, and celebrities from more than 200 countries, but no Americans. However, Suddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that originally obtained the documents, has hinted that U.S. individuals will be named in forthcoming revelations. U.K. prime minister David Cameron is also in hot water after the leak revealed that his father had run an offshore fund that avoided paying taxes in Britain. After hemming and hawing for three days, Cameron admitted that he and his wife had owned shares in the fund, which he sold just before entering office in 2010, according to The Guardian. At least one MP from the opposition Labour Party has called for Cameron to resign over the emerging scandal. Other world leaders named in the Panama Papers include Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and Russian president Vladimir Putin, who in characteristic style dismissed the expose as an American plot to weaken Russia. As someone who could pull the Court to the far right for eons, Lee may be scarier than his friend Ted Cruz. Photo: George Frey/Getty Images The Republican battle to make Barack Obamas Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland go away, and the efforts to pin down GOP presidential candidates on pre-vetted lists of potential Supremes, have all led to increased speculation about the next justice. At present, theres a major boom among conservatives for Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Today the Washington Posts James Hohmann offers a rundown on all the reasons Lee is enjoying this attention. For one thing, the Utah senator has long been considered Ted Cruzs best friend in the upper chamber, so if Cruz is elected, its a bit of a no-brainer if Lee wants a robe. For another, Lee would probably have an easier time getting confirmed by his colleagues in the clubby Senate than some law professor or circuit-court judge, and might even avoid a Democratic filibuster (assuming Republicans havent already killed the SCOTUS filibuster via the nuclear option). But one of the two most important reasons for the Lee boom is buried pretty far down in the story: Lee is just 44. That means he could squeeze four or more decades out of a lifetime appointment. Yep. If nominated next year for the Scalia seat, Lee would be the youngest nominee since Clarence Thomas, who has now been on the Court for nearly a quarter of a century, with many years of extremism probably still ahead of him. Before Thomas, you have to go all the way back to Bill Richardsons favorite justice, Whizzer White, in 1962, to find a nominee as young as Lee would be. As you may have noticed, life expectancy has been going up for Americans in recent decades. For conservatives seeking a permanent grip on the Court and on constitutional law, someone Lees age is money. But the second reason Lee would be significant is only hinted at by Hohmann in the praise lavished on the solon by the Heritage Foundation and longtime right-wing legal thinker Senator Jeff Sessions (the two most likely sources for SCOTUS advice for Donald Trump, as it happens). Lees not just any old constitutional conservative; hes a leading exponent of what is called the Lochner school of constitutional theory, named after the early-twentieth-century decision that was the basis for SCOTUS invalidation of New Deal legislation until the threat of court-packing and a strategic flip-flop resolved what had become a major constitutional crisis. Lee has, on occasion, suggested that child labor laws, Social Security, and Medicare are unconstitutional, because they breach the eternal limits on federal power sketched out by the Founders. Like most Lochnerians, he views the constitution and the courts as designed to keep democratic majorities from stepping on the God-given personal and property rights of individuals and corporations alike. So its no surprise hes been a bitter critic of the deferential view towards Congress expressed by Chief Justice Roberts in the decision that saved Obamacare. In effect, Mike Lee could become a more influential successor to Clarence Thomas after overlapping with Thomas on the Court for a decade or two. If Democratic senators have a problem with that possibility, they might want to begin making noises about it so that at least the supposition that Lee is pretty easily confirmable may be called into question. Photo-Illustration: George Karger/Pix Inc./Time Life Pictures/Getty Welcome to Its Complicated, a week of stories on the sometimes frustrating, sometimes confusing, always engrossing subject of modern relationships. C was a bored stockbroker with a penchant for party drugs; J was a flip-flop-wearing, globetrotting couch-surfer who didnt want to be tied down. When he decided he loved her, she wanted out. This is their story. C We met through a couch-surfing website. He was visiting town and wanted to meet people. My profile photo was of my brother, so he assumed I had a boyfriend. He said, Im picking up a friend at the airport Tuesday night, but do you want to do a happy hour? J I had a few days to kill before I picked up this other girl I was dating. She was flying in from Australia. I found Cs profile and I thought she was a dude. She has a dudes name and her brother is in her picture. I was like, maybe its a couple? Couples are cool. Turns out she just had a guy in there so men wouldnt creep on her. C I wasnt physically attracted to him. Hes 6 2, 240 pounds, and he was wearing ratty jeans with worn-off bottoms. He had on flip-flops and his toenails were bright purple. He was living my dream life I felt very stuck and smothered in this small conservative town working as a stockbroker. One drink turned into seven, we got totally drunk. We took my dog home and went from one bar to the next. Finally, he was like, Oh shit, I need to go pick up my friend. J I thought she looked fun. She could have one drink after work and that could turn into many drinks and many bars and 12 hours. C We spent summer together. We lived in houses with lots of people. Everybody was bunking on these bunk beds and they had a lot of travelers coming through who stayed and then moved on. It took a few months for us to have sex. He thought I had a boyfriend; I dont think I ever told him that first night that I didnt. He didnt hit on me and I didnt hit on him. He was very clear he wasnt looking for a girlfriend, he was like, Im a rolling stone, I dont need a woman to complicate things. J She said she just wanted to have fun and didnt want anything romantic. I was like, great. I have a girlfriend anyway. She was up for anything. C I was slowly becoming attracted to him. We really were friends first, but I think there was always an attraction there. We ended up hooking up and he was really sweet. He would bring me flowers. We did acid on a glacier. I realized I had to get out of my current job. I needed to move. He said, Come stay with me in Berkeley for a month. I didnt even know if we were exclusive or not. I thought he was dating this other girl but then she ended up sleeping with my ex-boyfriend. It turns out she was dating J but he told her it was over because he was more interested in me. J I drove to get her, took her to Berkeley, and she didnt leave. It was supposed to be a week. The drive was very intimate. We were vibing. C The sex was really good, we always had fun, it was always adventurous. I loved spending time with him, but I just never thought we would be together forever. I think I was the first girl he ever really let in that way. I remember it was his dads birthday, and I was like We should call him, so we did. I was like, Hey, its Js girlfriend! And he was like, J has a girlfriend? We thought he was gay. At one point he even said, Look, Im falling in love with you, and Ive never felt like this before, and I think this could be it. And I was like, Uh I dont feel the same. We broke up a couple times. We would start to have arguments and disagreements, and instead of wanting to take the time and energy to understand the POV and work through our issues, my go-to was why are we even together? That was on me. J When she takes E she is super lovey and happy and emotional. It was nice, but then she would come down and it would be back to normal. I understand that dynamic. I just remember things being fun all the time. It was so fun in the beginning and then, as we were going, a relationship felt right. I said that to her and she was like, Eh, maybe not. I was bummed out. C I was definitely attracted to other people when we were together but it takes a lot for me to want to have sex with another person. It was kind of a balancing act we were in a hard-partying, sex-loving group of people. J was loving it. He slept with other people and I dont think I minded. I was like, You can, I dont want to. It brought some tension to our relationship, but I dont think it was the basis of our breakup. J There were group situations but we didnt have sex with other people. There was a technical line. We went to a lot of parties. I dont even remember I am pretty sure I didnt sleep with other people. But it was a talking point, for sure. When you mix sex, drugs, and not much sleep, you get into some intense conversations. C We had so many breakup talks. It just kind of lost its importance because we kept breaking up and getting back together. The final blow was kind of a whimper. We were in Italy, and I was like, I think this really has to be it this time, we really need to not be together. J We had to stop hanging out, we had to stop traveling together and having fun. She went home and immediately met the guy shes getting married to. C There was definitely some tension, but he was living in Berlin, dating other people. I got on OkCupid and met somebody. J and I were definitely soul mates in one way. But when I met my fiance, we had an intellectual connection, an emotional connection; I took him home the night I met him and we had amazing sex, and Ive never done that with anybody. He was the one. It was amazing. And, meanwhile, Js in Berlin, super lonely, having some not-so-great dates, hes really unhappy, hes reaching out to me for emotional support,and Im like, I cant do this right now, Im getting into this new relationship with this guy Im falling in love with, and J was like, What the fuck? First of all, youre my best friend, and I need you. Second of all, we just broke up a month ago and youre already falling in love with this other person. I think I really hurt him and I think he was mad at me for a long time. J I was alone and sick in Berlin. I couldnt have fun and I was, like, pretty miserable. I think I did want to settle down with her, if she had suggested it I would have been into it. She was a super-great partner. They are getting married in June. Im the photographer, and I am organizing the bachelor party. I have been seeing a girl for a year now, shell be there, too. Though Saudi Arabias plan of a $2 trillion fund exudes power and confidence, raising a megafund of that size is practically next to impossible, unless crude oil prices see a significant appreciation or Saudi Arabia plans to sell a higher portion of Aramco. The Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has outlined ambitious plans for the future of the Kingdom in his five-hour long interview with Bloomberg. He wants to reduce Saudi Arabias dependence on oil; however, there are numerous hiccups to his proposed plans. Saudi reserves are depleting at a fast pace From its peak in 2014, the Saudi reserves have depleted by a whopping $150 billion. In 2015 alone, the Kingdom consumed $115 billion in reserves, when the crude oil prices averaged $48.67 per barrel. Even in January 2016, the FX reserves dropped by more than $14 billion, according to the HSBC economists Simon Williams and Razan Nazzer, as reported by the business insider. Related: Is A Permanent Decline Coming For Russia? (Click to enlarge) The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects crude oil prices to average $34.04/b in 2016 and $40.09/b in 2017. If the crude oil averages below $40 till the end of 2017, the Saudi Kingdom will likely lose another $150 to 200 billion from their reserves in the next two years. A few experts expect the reserves to drop to $200 billion by 2018 if the oil prices dont recover. If the reserves drop below a critical level, Saudi Arabia will be unable to maintain the riyals peg to the U.S. dollar. Abandoning the peg will usher in a different set of problems, which the Kingdom cannot afford. Related: ExxonMobils Secret Weapon Against Low Oil Prices Aramco might not command a valuation of more than $2.5 trillion Prince Salman expects to raise large sums from the sale of 5 percent in the flagship Saudi Aramco. There is no doubt that Aramco will be valued astronomically; after all, it pumps 10 million barrels per day, which is the equivalent of what all the companies combined in the U.S. pump each day. However, it is difficult to arrive at a valuation for the crown jewel of Saudi Arabia. Aramco also has roughly 260 billion barrels of oil reserves. Considering a $10 per barrel valuation of the reserves, Aramco will be worth more than $2.5 trillion. As the Prince plans to divest only a 5 percent stake in the giant, it turns out to be closer to $125 billion, which is roughly equal to the amount of reserves that Saudi Arabia drew from its foreign reserves in 2015 as a result of low oil prices. Thus a 5 percent stake sale in Aramco will only replenish the foreign reserves used up in a single year. Related: Why Oil Prices Will Rise And Many Pundits Will Be Caught By Surprise Though a few might argue that a $10/b valuation is too low, a comparative study of the other existing state-run oil companies shows a similar valuation across the board. The Russian Rosneft OAO, which pumps 5 million barrels a day, has a market capitalization of $35 billion. Similarly, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, which controls a large part of the Brazilian oil, is valued at $23 billion. Only the Chinese companies such as PetroChina have higher valuations. Hence, generating $2 trillion in the next few years by selling only 5 percent in Aramco, especially with oil at such low levels, will be a tall ask. Though the plans of the Saudi Arabian deputy crown prince seem to be heading in the right direction, oil prices and valuation mathematics dont seem to be supporting them. If the market values Aramco close to $2.5 trillion, it will dwarf Google and Apple by a huge margin, but this valuation will not fetch the Kingdom sufficient money for it to launch a $2 trillion fund. We will get more clarity when the Kingdom lays down its concrete strategy. By Rakesh Upadhyay for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Reprinted from Consortium News Several weeks ago, I received a phone call from legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh who had seen one of my recent stories about Syria and wanted to commiserate over the state of modern journalism. Hersh's primary question regarding reporters and editors at major news outlets these days was: "Do they care what the facts are?" Hersh noted that in the past -- in the 1970s when he worked at The New York Times -- even executive editor Abe Rosenthal, who was a hard-line cold warrior with strong ideological biases, still wanted to know what was really going on. My experience was similar at The Associated Press. Among the older editors, there was still a pride in getting the facts right -- and not getting misled by some politician or spun by some government flack. That journalistic code, however, no longer exists -- at least not on foreign policy and national security issues. The major newspapers and TV networks are staffed largely by careerists who uncritically accept what they are fed by U.S. government officials or what they get from think-tank experts who are essentially in the pay of special interests. For a variety of reasons -- from the draconian staff cuts among foreign correspondents to the career fear of challenging some widely held "group think" -- many journalists have simply become stenographers, taking down what the Important People say is true, not necessarily what is true. It's especially easy to go with the flow when writing about some demonized foreign leader. Then, no editor apparently expects anything approaching balance or objectivity, supposedly key principles of journalism. Indeed, if a reporter gave one of these hated figures a fair shake, there might be grumblings about whether the reporter was a "fill-in-the-blank apologist." The safe play is to pile on. This dishonesty -- or lack of any commitment to the truth -- is even worse among editorialists and columnists. Having discovered that there was virtually no cost for being catastrophically wrong about the facts leading into the Iraq invasion in 2003, these writers must feel so immune from accountability that they can safely ignore reality. But -- for some of us old-timers -- it's still unnerving to read the work of these "highly respected" journalists who simply don't care what the facts are. For instance, the establishment media has been striking back ferociously against President Barack Obama's apostasy in a series of interviews published in The Atlantic, in which he defends his decision not to bomb the Syrian government in reaction to a mysterious sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Though The Atlantic article was posted a month ago, the media fury is still resonating and reverberating around Official Washington, with Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt penning the latest condemnation of Obama's supposed fecklessness for not enforcing his "red line" on chemical-weapon use in Syria by bombing the Syrian military. Remember that in 2002-03, Hiatt penned Post editorials that reported, as "flat fact," that Iraq possessed hidden stockpiles of WMD -- and he suffered not a whit for being horribly wrong. More than a dozen years later, Hiatt is still the Post's editorial-page editor -- one of the most influential jobs in American journalism. On Thursday, Hiatt reported as flat fact that Syria's "dictator, Bashar al-Assad, killed 1,400 or more people in a chemical gas attack," a reference to the 2013 sarin atrocity. Hiatt then lashed out at President Obama for not punishing Assad and -- even worse -- for showing satisfaction over that restraint. Citing The Atlantic interviews, Hiatt wrote that Obama "said he had been criticized because he refused to follow the 'playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment,' which would have counseled greater U.S. intervention." Hiatt was clearly disgusted with Obama's pusillanimous choice. The No "Slam Dunk" Warning But what Hiatt and other neocon columnists consistently ignore from The Atlantic article is the disclosure that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper informed Obama that U.S. intelligence analysts doubted that Assad was responsible for the sarin attack. There was a little noted footnote to Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders big win in the Wisconsin primary buried deep in the final vote stats. Bernie actually bagged a far bigger percent of Black votes than expected. He got more than one-fourth of the Black vote. Now the reason that this got lost in the primary post-mortem, really two reasons why, was one, Clinton as expected got 74 percent of the Black vote. So the 26 percent that Sanders got seemed paltry. The second reason it flew under the post-mortem radar scope is the by-now etched in stone campaign narrative that Hillary has an iron-clad lock on the Black vote, and that Bernie can only win young, white, left voters in "white" states. The Clinton lock on the Black vote notion rests on some well-known and well-tuned reasons that go beyond the fact that she is married to Bill, and Bill's near universal past popularity with African-American voters has endowed her. She has a sterling track record and history in speaking out on civil rights, health care, poverty and women's issues. She has deep ties with legions of black elected officials and civil rights leaders. And she is the one Democrat who blacks, especially black women, say they personally admire. Clinton also learned the bitter lesson of her South Carolina primary loss to Obama in 2008 that did much to wreck her assumed easy glide path to the Democratic presidential nomination that year. This go round there has been a Hillary sighting at just about every Black college, Black legislative function, Black churches imaginable. She's met with Black Lives Matter activists at times and has done a public mea culpa for bill's hard-nosed criminal justice initiatives that have resulted in the astronomical swell in the number of Blacks in state and federal pens in America. This seeming lovefest with Hillary at any other time would be more than enough for her to skate through a primary with little worry about being upended. And certainly without a seeming Johnny come lately challenger, the likes of Sanders from one of the whitest states in the union. And a man who has made clear during much of his Senate career and the embryonic stages of his presidential run that his first and last mantra will be chasing the Wall Street money lenders out of the public temples. This seemingly one trick pony focus assured that Sanders would get almost zero traction and votes when he rolled his campaign to the South. And that's exactly how it played out. Clinton crushed him with the Black vote there. But Sanders learned from this. He stepped up his game and has made a mighty effort to get visibility, traction, and endorsements from black organizations and elected officials wherever he can get them. He's publicly embraced a lot of what Black Lives Matter has said and advocated on curbing police violence, mass incarceration, and criminal justice system reform. He's lifted a page from the Clinton playbook with some Bernie sightings at Black churches and colleges. He even stopped the tap dance around the one question that more than a few Blacks have asked him and that's what he thinks about reparations. At the Tindley Temple, a Black church in Philadelphia, Sanders didn't exactly embrace reparations, but he did concede that the federal government must make a massive effort to give poor Black communities the lion's share of financial aid and should formally apologize for slavery He's learned something else about race politics. It's fine to talk about smashing wealth and income inequality, but that doesn't do much when even black millionaires, business persons and professionals can be spread-eagled by police after a phony stop, or shadowed by store security in retail stores, or watch as cabs ignore their frantic signals to stop and breeze by them, or are excluded from contract bidding by the good ole' boy system. Having all the wealth in the world means nothing in the face of naked and raw racial degradation. To make any headway with Black voters, Sanders will have to make the case, and make it repeatedly and convincingly, that fighting hard against wealth and income inequality must be squarely tied in with fighting just as hard against racial inequality. The first hint that Sanders' halting efforts to break Clinton's iron-grip on Black voters paid some dividends came in the early March Michigan Democratic primary. Sanders got almost one-third of the Black vote in that primary. It did more than raise a few eyebrows. It was just enough to edge Sanders past Clinton and nab the win. It also did much more. It proved that in close contests in the Northern states with a significant percentage of Black votes, Sanders need not top Clinton's Black vote total. This won't happen. He just needs to slice into her percentage of the Black vote to be competitive, and as Michigan showed, to even defy the odds makers, and win. Clinton has always understood that in a racially tense and polarized nation, race matters, and matters greatly. Sanders is now getting that. And he is actually bagging Black votes, and likely will continue to bag them. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is From Sanders to Trump: A Guide to the 2016 Presidential Primary Battles (Amazon Kindle) He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Saturdays 9:00 AM on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network Reprinted from Smirking Chimp As he has so many times in recent months, Barney Frank had some harsh things to say about Bernie Sanders -- this time in a recent interview with Slate.com. Frank has endorsed Hillary Clinton (a fact neither he nor Slate interviewer Isaac Chotiner saw fit to mention), and has written several nasty, petty, and personal attacks on Bernie Sanders in his capacity as a Clinton surrogate. He stayed true to form in his Slate interview, arguing that Bernie Sanders got little done on Capitol Hill. That's become classic Clinton spin. She and her surrogates love to claim that Bernie Sanders is just a talker, while Clinton and her allies -- despite her "centrist" leanings -- are "progressives who get things done." Here's the truth: Hillary Clinton got very little done during her eight years in the United States Senate, while Bernie Sanders amassed an impressive record of accomplishments in both the House and Senate. Sanders began racking up legislative accomplishments in the House of Representatives, where a 2005 analysis of legislative data revealed that he had passed more amendments in the House than any other Member of Congress over a 10-year period. In 2005, Rolling Stone called him the "amendment king." But as Politifact notes: "In comparison, Hillary Clinton passed zero roll call amendments during her tenure as a senator from New York from 2001-09." Readers who have been subjected to Barney Frank's unsubstantiated trash talk should note this, also from Politifact: "Out of 419 amendments Sanders sponsored over his 25 years in Congress, 90 passed, 21 of them by roll call votes." Where has been Barney Frank been for 25 years? For Mr. Frank, and any other readers who might be unfamiliar with the Sanders record, here are some examples of his many accomplishments: When Sanders was Chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee, it was learned that veterans were not receiving the medical care they needed in a timely fashion. Long waiting lists at the Veterans Administration led to a national scandal. In response, Sanders built a strong coalition of veterans' groups to back a comprehensive $21 billion bill that allowed the VA to hire more doctors and nurses, increase its operational staff, and ensure that veterans get the care they need. Republicans blocked that bill, but Sanders did not give up. Instead, Sanders worked with Republican Senator John McCain on a compromise deal that passed the Senate 93-3. "It wasn't a perfect bill," Sanders says of the VA deal. "I would have written it differently, and John (McCain) would have written it differently." "But we got it done," Sanders adds. McCain agrees. "Negotiating with Bernie was not a usual experience, because he is very passionate and he and I are both very strong-willed people and we spend a lot of time banging our fists on the table and having the occasional four-letter word," McCain told The Huffington Post. "But at the end of the day, Bernie was result-oriented." We'll repeat that last phrase for Mr. Frank's benefit: "Results-oriented." Frank told Slate that Bernie Sanders "has been in Congress for 25 years with little to show for it in terms of his accomplishments." Really? The VA has hired over 14,000 new doctors, nurses, and medical staff a result of Sanders' work on that bill alone, and the backlog in disability claims has been reduced by nearly 90 percent. 14 terrorists killed in Lower Kurram Agency PESHAWAR: At least 14 suspected terrorists were killed and several others injured when security forces repulsed an attack on a check-post in Lower Kurram Agencys Mangor Sar area near the Pak-Afghan border in the wee hours of Thursday. According to security sources, Nearly 50 terrorists from Afghanistan sneaked into Pakistani territory and attacked the check-post with heavy weapons. Security forces strongly retaliated and killed 14 militants on the spot and injured several others. Some other militants fled under the cover of darkness. The security forces have cordoned off the area and launched search operation against the militants. Meanwhile, a policeman was killed and a passer-by injured in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast near a police check-post in Peshawar. SSP operations Abbas Majeed Marwat said that half a kilogram of explosive material was planted near a check-post in Samar Bagh area of the city. The explosion killed an on-duty policeman and injured a passer-by. India does not want comprehensive talks with Pakistan: Pak High Commissioner NEW DELHI: Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit says that Pakistan wants to have a normal and peaceful relationship with India on the basis of sovereign equality and mutual interest. Talking to Foreign Correspondents in New Delhi, the High Commissioner said there is no short cut to achieve a lasting peace and nor does cherry-picking work. He said that India does not want comprehensive talks with Pakistan and this is the reason peace process if suspended between both the countries. There are no chances of Indian investigation team to visit Pakistan, he added. He also said that Pakistani government knows about elements causing unrest in the country and also know about those behind such elements. Arrested RAW agent is the confirmation of Pakistani stance, he added. The recent arrest of Kulbhushan Yadav in Pakistanirrefutably corroborates what Pakistan has been saying all along. We all are aware of those who seek to create unrest inPakistan and destabilize the country. They are bound to fail as the people of Pakistan are united to effectively counter anti-Pakistan subversive activities, the HC said. He said that Pakistan is optimistic about Indias participation in the scheduled SAARC summit in Islamabad. The 19th SAARC Summit will be held in Islamabad in November this year. We sincerely hope the Summit, building on the past achievements, would help create more synergies and win-win situations, Basit said. He said fair and just resolution of Kashmir issue as per the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir is imperative and attempts to put it on the back burner will be counterproductive. Lets be realistic. It is the Jammu & Kashmir dispute that is the root cause of mutual distrust and other bilateral issues. Therefore, its fair and just resolution, as per the aspirations of the people of Jammu & Kashmir, is imperative. Attempts to put it on the back burner will be counterproductive, Basit said. The peace process between India and Pakistan has been "suspended" and there are no talks scheduled between the two countries, Abdul Basit said. Asked at the Foreign Correspondents Club about a meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two countries, Basit said: "There is no meeting scheduled for now. I think at present the peace process is suspended." "India is not ready as yet," Basit said, but quickly added that "we can only resolve issues through dialogue". This is the first official word from Pakistan about the latest breakdown in the now-on-now-off peace process with India. He was speaking in the background of the January 2 Pathankot terror attack, which killed seven security personnel. The attack has stalled the resumption of dialogue between the two sides. Evading a direct comment on the possibility of NIA team visiting Pakistan for Pathankot terror probe, Abdul Basit said, "It is not about reciprocity but co-operation of our two countries." He said the Zarb-e-Azb operation against terrorism and militancy is yielding good results. He said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly believes in enhancing regional cooperation and connectivity. However, a strong regional cooperative structure cannot be built on unpredictable bilateral relations. We need to move on all fronts simultaneously if we are to benefit from the opportunities unleashed by globalization. He said Pakistan is an important member of the international community. Our contributions in developing non-discriminatory and effective multilateral frameworks, ranging from security to economic cooperation to human rights issues are recognized the world over, he said. Basit said: Pakistan, a country of 200 million people, is blessed with enormous resources. We have begun our march towards stability and prosperity. Nothing can detract us from realizing our potential. Our economy is also showing signs of recovery. Macro-economic indicators are encouraging. There is special emphasis on infrastructure development and energy projects. With growing foreign investments the overall economic situation is steadily improving, he said. MQM achieved sweeping victory in NA-245, PS-115 08 April, 2016 Related News Imran Khan distributed loan cheques under Kamyab Jawan Programme PTI govt to face all challenges coming its way: Imran khan More on this View All Tips for Taking Incredible iPhone Travel Photos Top 2021 Accessories We Know You Will Love Types of Casino Payment Methods Best Poker Hands ever played on a Casino Are Slot Developers Important for players? Hand Wash and Toiletries in Pakistan And the Role of DUPAS in Reshaping the Industry Woke Bingo KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) on Thursday achieved a sweeping victory in the by-polls held for NA-245 and PS-115, according to unofficial results reported by DawnNews. MQM's candidate, Kamal Malick, managed to secure more than 39,000 votes, while PPP's Shahid Hussain managed to secure around 3,000 votes for the NA-245 seat. A large number of MQM supporters and activists were seen celebrating the victory in the constituency. Earlier, hours before the by-polls were scheduled to start, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) candidate's made a dramatic exit. The polls were expected to be a contest mainly between the MQM and the PTI. In a serious blow to PTI, however, its candidate for NA-245 Amjadullah Khan announced his decision to withdraw in favour of the MQM candidate, citing neglect for his campaign on part of the PTI. Flanked by MQM leaders Amir Khan and Kanwar Naveed, Amjadullah Khan announced his decision to withdraw in favour of MQM's Kamal Malick at an early Thursday press conference, held at the Khursheed Memorial Hall at MQM's Nine Zero headquarters. The PTI candidate accused his party of neglecting him and alleged that PTI chief Imran Khan did not even make a telephone call to him during his campaign for the constituency. He added that the PS-115 provincial constituency, where by-polls are taking place today as well, was the sole focus of PTI. When Ali Zaidi called a party meeting before the NA-245 by-polls in Karachi, there should have been thousands of workers there but only about 150 people attended. He claimed that PTI refused to provide him any funding for his election campaign or other such cooperation. "PTI workers and activists asked me for money before elections after Ali Zaidi left the meeting. Is this your PTI?" Amjadullah, who was going to make his electoral debut in NA-245, said he was a total misfit in the PTI and that individuals like him "cannot sustain in the party". He said there was no such thing as management in PTI. "Imran Khan is a good person but is unable to run a party," he went on to say. Khan does not know how to play a politician so he should engage himself in welfare work only, he remarked. He further said that the MQM already had a soft image among the masses, "which has become clearer in the current scenario". The national and provincial seats had fallen vacant after MQM MNA Rehan Hashmi resigned from NA-245 and MPA Dr Arshad Vohra from PS-115 when the party assigned them key positions in the upcoming local government system after the Dec 5 polls. The North Nazimabad and North Karachi constituency of NA-245 has long been a stronghold of the MQM where its candidate Hashmi bagged 115,776 votes to emerge victorious in the 2013 general elections when the percentage of votes polled stood at 54.28. Similarly, Dr Vohra won the PS-115 seat, which consists of Lines Area localities, in the 2013 general elections with 55,804 votes when the percentage of votes polled stood at 53.30. On the seats, PTI candidates emerged as runners-up with 54,937 and 18,622 votes, respectively. The PTI insisted that the 2013 elections were not fair and for Thursdays by-polls the party looked hopeful that the results would be in its favour; so did its rival MQM. With PTI candidate's departure, there are 15 candidates vying for the NA seat, although the main contest is now likely between the MQM, Pakistan Peoples Party and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazal, which have fielded Kamal Malick, Shahid Hussain and Abdul Rasheed, respectively. For the Sindh Assembly seat, of the 14 candidates the actual contest would be between Faisal Rafiq of the MQM, Amjad Asif of the PTI, Saeed Chowla of the PPP and Ehsanullah Hazarvi of the JUI-F. The Mohajir Qaumi Movement, better known as Haqiqi, has also fielded its candidate, Jameel Qadri, for PS-115 after maintaining a low profile for the past several months. In the NA constituency there are over 409,600 voters where 227 polling stations have been set up while in the PS-115 constituency there are over 162,000 voters where 83 polling stations have been set up. In the NA constituency there are 33 highly sensitive, 124 sensitive and 70 normal polling stations while in PS-115 there are 66 most sensitive while 14 sensitive and only three normal polling stations. For security and secrecy of the ballot, Rangers has been deployed inside and outside the polling stations and police is to ensure discipline around the polling stations. PTI spokesperson Naeemul Haq while talking to reporers on Thursday said that Amjadullah Khan posted a tweet saying "he took this step for the protection of his family". Haq said he was not aware of Amjadullah's reservations with the party but that he has been missing since last night. MQM after first attacking Amjadullah's camp pressurised him to join the party "as a defence against Mustafa Kamal's politics against MQM", the PTI spokesperson said. He said the right move would have been to postpone the by-election to allow PTI to field another candidate. Responding these claims, Amjadullah said, "I am joining the MQM of my own accord and there has been no pressure on me. I have struck no deal with the MQM or any other party and all decisions are mine." "I joined the PTI because I was impressed by Imran Khan and his personality but was disappointed by the party leadership during local government polls." Following Amjadullah's dramatic press conference, PTI also called an emergency press conference at the Insaf House, however the conference was later cancelled at eleventh hour, with no clear reasons given for the cancellation. Mumtaz Qadri family to observe his chehlum ISLAMABAD: The capital administration and police have approached the family of Mumtaz Qadri after reports that his relatives and villagers were also planning to hold his chehlum on April 10. Qadri was hanged in the Adiala Jail of Rawalpindi on February 29 this year for assassinating former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer in 2011. On March 27, Sunni Tehreek organsied a gathering in Liaquat Bagh in connection with Qadris chehlum and later the participants reached the federal capital and staged a sit-in in the red zone for four days. However, a few days ago, a religious party, the administrations of some shrines in the capital and a politician from central Punjab, who is affiliated with religious seminaries, separately announced to observe the chehlum on April 10. Officials in the capital administration and the police on the condition of anonymity told reporters that the religious party had threatened to observe the chehlum and take out a rally from Qadris native Athal village to the D-Chowk. Similarly, the administrations of shrines also announced to observe the chehlum. They also planned to hold a Quran khwani in the shrines and later reach the grave of Qadri to offer fateha. Likewise, the political leader also announced to visit the grave along with his supporters and students of seminaries, the officials added. To ensure that there is no security issue in the capital, the administration and police officials held a meeting with the family of Qadri. During the meeting, the family said they would observe the chehlum in their village and had invited about 40 to 50 villagers and relatives to the event. The family said they had nothing to do with other people and their acts. The officials were given a verbal assurance that the family would not join hands with anyone in observing the chehlum, a police officer said. In reply to a question, he said the family did not need a permission from the police or the local administration to observe the chehlum. But other people who announced to observe the chehlum and hold rallies would have to take permission. However, he added, the administration had decided not to allow such rallies. An official of the capital administration said the caretakers of the shrines had been asked to disassociate themselves from the event. They need permission to arrange Quran khwani outside the shrine premises such as on a road, hold rallies or go towards the grave in groups, he added. Another police officer said the politician from the central Punjab was also approached, who agreed to cooperate with the police and administration by disassociating himself from the event. PAF to upgrade fleet of fighter jets PARIS: Pakistan wants to upgrade its ageing fleet of fighter jets in anticipation of a prolonged battle against militants, although the purchase of fifth-generation planes would only be a last resort, a senior air force official said. Pakistan, fighting a Taliban insurgency in the tribal areas, a separatist insurgency in Balochistan along its Iranian border, also has a heavily militarised and disputed border with India in the east. In 2014, the military launched a crackdown in North and South Waziristan and has managed to push back militants into a few pockets. But the air force, which will need to retire dozens of jets over the coming years, lacks the latest technology and relies heavily on a fleet of about 70 US-made Lockheed Martin F-16s, which are solely capable of carrying out precision targeting. "Our concern is that we don't know how long these anti-terrorist operations will continue," Pakistan Air Force second-in-command Muhammad Ashfaque Arain told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday. "We have weakened them (militants) to a great extent, but I don't see an end in the very near future, so all the burden is being shared by the F-16s and its pilots." Sceptics suspect Pakistan's military is seeking an improved arsenal to counter the growing military might of India. Pakistan's fleet also includes hundreds of Dassault Aviation French-made Mirage jets that are over 40 years old and F7 Chinese warplanes that are over 25 years old, both of which the air force plans to retire over the next few years. To fill the void, Islamabad has decided to bet on the JF-17 fighter, jointly developed by China and Pakistan, rather than spending billions on fifth-generation multi-role aircraft like Dassault's Rafale, which rival India is buying, or the Russian Su-35. That option, Arain said, had almost been ruled out for being too expensive and because Pakistan did not want to mix technologies and resources. It would only be reconsidered if "it was pushed against a wall". Instead, 16 JF-17s will be produced this year with a further 20 in 2017, but Arain acknowledged that the jets' usefulness in current operations was limited because it lacks precision targeting. "Operationally, the aircraft are working pretty well so if we had a targeting pod on the JF-17, the burden would be shared," Arain said. He said his visit to Paris was in part aimed at assessing from French officials the prospects of supplying the Thales-made Damocles, a third-generation targeting pod. He said that was Islamabad's priority for now. Previous negotiations in 2010 for a deal worth 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion) worth of electronics and missiles collapsed under pressure from India, uncertainty over Pakistan's finances and fears of the transfer of technology given Chinese involvement in the JF-17. "We're looking at the best option. The Damocles is a battle-proven system and the other options are not," Arain said. "If we do not get the Damocles pod for example, then we will need to look for alternate options that may not be proven." He said that in the long run, the air force was thinking about its needs beyond 2030 when F-16s and JF-17s would start to be replaced. The United States in February approved the sale to Pakistan of up to eight F-16 fighter jets for the short term, but Arain said even that was proving complicated. "It's a much cheaper fighter jet, but buying more F-16s is economically not feasible for us and then there is a lot of human outcry," he said. Arain countered any suggestion that Pakistan might want greater air power to target India by saying that New Delhi itself was expanding its fleet. Key step in the synthetic route to cortistatin A. Credit: The University of Hong Kong A team of researchers led by Professor Pauline Chiu from Department of Chemistry, the University of Hong Kong, has successfully achieved a formal total synthesis of cortistatin A, a molecule which could help mitigate the growth of cancer tumours. The findings were published in Chemistry-A European Journal recently. This novel strategy of synthesizing the molecule was deemed to be "highly important" by the refereeing panel, and usually less than 10% of manuscripts receive such a positive review. Cancer is a disease characterized by an abnormal and unregulated growth of cells. Nevertheless, cancer tumours cannot grow larger than two millimetres unless it is accompanied by angiogenesis, which is a development of the blood vessel network needed to nourish the tumour and enable it to metastasize. Thus, angiogenesis-inhibiting molecules could help to mitigate the growth of cancer tumours. Currently, Avastin is an anti-angiogenic drug in clinical use for the treatment a range of cancers. Cortistatin A is a natural product isolated from an Indonesian marine sponge that has been shown to have potent anti-angiogenic activity at low dosages. Apart from being a lead compound in the development of anti-cancer therapies, a derivative of cortistatin A has also been found to be a powerful anti-HIV agent. It is difficult to harvest Cortistatin A from natural sources, and thus its laboratory synthesis is a way to obtain quantities of it for further research and drug development. Professor Chiu's strategy to this molecule, implemented together with two PhD students Kuang Liping and Liu Lok-lok, applied a (4+3) cycloaddition reaction which was developed and optimized in her lab to make the central seven membered ring structure. "The invention of new chemistry reactions is an extremely important field of research, because each new reaction is an enabling tool, and can open doors to the synthesis of many important molecules. In this case, the cycloaddition reaction we developed is the key step in our strategy that enabled our synthesis of cortistatin A to be accomplished efficiently," said Professor Chiu. The impressive biological properties and complexity of the structure of cortistatin A have motivated many renowned chemists worldwide to synthesize this molecule. The efficient route that Professor Chiu developed affords the highest total synthesis yield of cortistatin A reported in the world so far. The yield exceeds that of a semi-synthetic route developed in the Scripps Research Institute, and is over 7-fold higher than the total synthesis developed at Harvard University. Using this route, cortistatin A and its analogues can be more efficiently synthesized to facilitate further medicinal chemistry research to improve its efficacies toward drug development. Explore further Designed drug candidate significantly reduces HIV reactivation rate More information: Liping Kuang et al. Formal Total Synthesis of (+)-Cortistatins A and J, Chemistry - A European Journal (2015). Journal information: Chemistry A European Journal Liping Kuang et al. Formal Total Synthesis of (+)-Cortistatins A and J,(2015). DOI: 10.1002/chem.201502890 Provided by University of Hong Kong A Gentoo penguin is seen next to a cross that stands as a memorial to three British Antarctic Survey scientists who disappeared in the early 1980s, on Petermann Island in Antarctica Waddling over the rocks, legions of penguins hurl themselves into the icy waters of Antarctica, foraging to feed their young. Like seals and whales, they eat krill, an inch-long shrimp-like crustacean which forms the basis of the Southern Ocean food chain. But penguin-watchers say the krill are getting scarcer here around the western Antarctic peninsula, under threat from climate change and fishing. "Krill is the power lunch of the Antarctic. It's a keystone species for everybody," says Ron Naveen, leader of the US conservation group Oceanites, as penguins squawk on the rocks behind him. In a vast ocean whose water flows influence the whole planet, krill rely on the sea ice to protect them and provide algae to feed them while they grow. The ice is getting scarcer. The peninsula has warmed by three degrees Celsius over the past half-century, according to groups such as the World Wildlife Fund. Scientists suspect that shifting ice patterns are effecting penguin populations. "The interaction between warming temperatures, increasing ocean acidity and of course to some extent, although that's not clear yet, an interaction with the fishing industry fishing for krill, will put pressure on predator populations that are mostly krill feeders," such as penguins, says Steven Chown, a biologist at Monash University in Australia. Cilia Indahl, head of sustainability at Norwegian fishing company Aker BioMarine, speaking next to a picture of a krill aboard the oceanographic acoustic research vessel Akademik Ioffe, off the western Antarctic peninsula Trawling for supplements On the rocky shores and blue icebergs of the peninsula and its islands, brown fur seals bark and jostle each other. Humpback whales flash their white bellies as they heave out of the depths. Among hordes of orange-beaked Gentoo penguins waddles the occasional Adelie penguin with white rings round its eyes, or the Chinstrap, with a fine black stripe at its throat. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says Adelies and krill are both potentially threatened by future climate change. Species such as Adelies are also threatened by krill-fishing, it says. An Antarctic skua eats the remains of a penguin, on Petermann Island The Antarctic creatures are having to share the krill with humans. "Krill fishing may be occurring too close to where the penguin breeding colonies are," says Naveen. "And perhaps more importantly, areas where the penguins are foraging." Fishing boats catch 300,000 tons of krill a year, the IUCN says, made into feed for farmed fish and "Omega 3" oil supplements, said to soothe sore joints and other complaints. Cilia Indahl, head of sustainability at Norwegian fishing company Aker BioMarine, says the total amount of krill caught is just 0.5 percent of the 60 million tons eaten each year by sea creatures. But the company has developed a method to minimize environmental harm, she says. The boats trawl slowly, using special filtered nets to avoid catching other creatures. Fishing in Antarctica is monitored by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) "We will also have to consider where we fish for krill, making sure that there is minimum overlap with other animals like penguins and whales and where they feed," she says. Penguins and politics Fishing in Antarctica is monitored by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). Member countries must agree between them on catch limits and no-fish areas. Environmentalists insist that CCAMLR renew key regulations on krill fishing when it gathers for its annual meeting in October. "There's going to be a fight about whether or not the subdivision of the krill catch, that protects foraging predators like penguins, will be continued," says Andrea Kavanagh, head of the penguin conservation campaign of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a US non-government organization, referring to the system of restrictions on krill fishing in certain areas. A humpback whale is seen jumping out of the water off the western Antarctic peninsula "Some countries such as Russia and China indicated they did not see the need for it at last year's meeting. They want to be free to catch as much krill as possible near the Antarctic Peninsula, including right next to penguin colonies that have been in decline for the last three decades." Some countries have proposed setting aside a big protected zone in the Ross Sea, a remote, unspoiled Antarctic area of rare species. But campaigners and officials involved in the talks complain of resistance by China and Russia to that proposal too. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told AFP that China agreed to support the Ross Sea plan after it was modified to strike a better balance "between protection and the rational use of resources." But the Russian fisheries ministry told AFP in a statement that the system of fishing regulations overseen by various other world bodies "fully meets modern requirements in respect to the conservation of biodiversity and does not require any radical changes." Campaigners say agreement on conservation measures will be crucial for the future of the region, considered one of Earth's last wildernesses. "I feel when I'm here like I'm on the front lines of climate change," says Naveen, who has spent 22 years counting penguins. "It's happening right now and these penguins are trying to adapt. They're sending messages to us about how the planet is changing." Explore further Penguins that shun ice still lose big from a warming climate 2016 AFP The predictions only get worse. In 2007, a United Nations panel of scientists studying the rise of sea level related to climate change predicted that, if nothing was done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, seas could rise by about 2 feet by 2100. By 2013, the panel had increased its forecast to more than 3 feet, which would put major cities at risk of flooding and storm surge. Yet all along, the panel emphasized what it did not know. It expressed particular uncertainty about what could happen to the ice sheet in Antarctica. To help fill in the gaps, it invited outside scientists to contribute their own research. Now the outside research is bearing fruit - and the news is not good. A new study published in the journal Nature painted perhaps the most ominous picture yet. It showed that, by the end of this century, sea levels could rise 6 feet or more - again, if nothing is done to reduce emissions - potentially inundating many coastal areas, submerging nations and remaking maps of the world. The study focused on one of the most elusive aspects of sea-level science: What will happen to the West Antarctic ice sheet? Scientists have long believed the ice sheet would melt from climate change and contribute to higher sea levels. But they believed that the melting, and rising sea levels it would cause, could occur over many hundreds or even thousands of years. The new study, by Robert DeConto, a geoscientist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and David Pollard, a geoscientist at Pennsylvania State University, based its finding on models it developed from studying ancient sea level and temperature changes. The scientists found that drastic sea level rise could happen within a lifetime. As alarming as the study may have seemed to the public and to policymakers, Benjamin Horton, a coastal geologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey who studies sea level, said it did not surprise many people in his field. In 2013, Horton led a survey of almost 100 sea level scientists that concluded that seas could rise almost 4 feet by 2100 - higher than the United Nations panel's worst scenario. But within that group, 13 scientists said there was a 17 percent chance that sea levels would rise by 6.6 feet, a figure in line with the study. Why has it been so hard to predict sea level change? Predicting changes involves measuring and modeling several different factors that then have to be blended together, Horton said. Those elements include an increase in volume from expansion caused by warming water, the melting of glaciers in places such as Alaska and the melting of ice sheets in places such as Greenland and Antarctica. Measuring sea changes from the first two, he said, is much easier than measuring what the vast ice sheets are doing. What has helped improved our understanding of how ice sheets melt? Satellite technology and imagery had made it easier to understand what is happening above and below the West Antarctic ice sheet, Horton said. "These ice sheets have this double whammy," he said. "They're heated at the surface from air temperature and they're heated at the base from ocean temperatures. "They retreat and then they become unstable and they retreat even further. They have all these feedback mechanisms that keep on making the situation worse." The process involves what is known as cliff collapse. "Ponds of meltwater that form on the ice surface often drain through cracks," the article said. "This can set off a chain reaction that breaks up ice shelves and causes newly exposed ice cliffs to collapse under their own weight." How much water do the ice sheets hold? Horton said that the Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to raise sea levels 6 meters, or more than 20 feet, if they completely melted. Antarctica holds much more ice, enough to raise seas 65 meters, or more than 200 feet. But this extreme scenario could happen only over thousands of years. What can be done? Even as the study released this week predicted potential catastrophe, it also emphasized that the West Antarctic ice sheet probably would cause little change in sea level if temperature increases can be held under 2 degrees Celsius. That is a central goal of the climate agreement reached in Paris in December, though it is far from clear that countries will achieve it. The obvious solution, Horton said, is to move quickly away from burning fossil fuels that contribute to climate change and rapidly expand solar, wind and other renewable forms of energy. "We have a choice right now," he said. "If we strongly mitigate against greenhouse gases, we can keep the sea level rise to a manageable level. These papers are not all doom and gloom. They are providing a warning and we as a scientific community are trying to stress the urgency on climate change. "This is a dire warning, a dire prediction, but we can do something about it." Explore further Sea-level rise could nearly double over earlier estimates in next 100 years More information: Robert M. DeConto et al. Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea-level rise, Nature (2016). Journal information: Nature Robert M. DeConto et al. Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea-level rise,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/nature17145 2016 Los Angeles Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory drifts away from the space shuttle Atlantis on April 7, 1991, following its deployment during the STS-37 mission. Compton's successful career ended in June 2000 when the observatory reentered Earth's atmosphere. Credit: NASA/Ken Cameron Twenty-five years ago this week, NASA launched the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, an astronomical satellite that transformed our knowledge of the high-energy sky. Over its nine-year lifetime, Compton produced the first-ever all-sky survey in gamma rays, the most energetic and penetrating form of light, discovered hundreds of new sources and unveiled a universe that was unexpectedly dynamic and diverse. "The instruments were really a great leap forward, and they showed us for the first time just how varied and interesting the gamma-ray sky really is," said Neil Gehrels, the mission's project scientist, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Compton's many findings included the discovery of a new class of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, the surprising detection of gamma rays from thunderstorms on Earth, and the most persuasive evidence to date that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) were the most distant and powerful explosions in the cosmos. "When scientists saw the early results, it wasn't long before discussions turned to the need for a new mission with improved instruments so we could get a better look at these exciting phenomena," said Goddard's Julie McEnery, the project scientist for NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. "Fermi is essentially the direct descendant of Compton and even involves many of the same people, including Neil." Compton was launched April 5, 1991, on STS-37, the eighth flight of the space shuttle Atlantis. On board were Commander Steven R. Nagel, Pilot Kenneth D. Cameron, and Mission Specialists Linda M. Godwin, Jerry L. Ross, and Jay Apt. At the time, the 17-ton observatory was the heaviest astrophysical payload ever flown, a record not broken until the launch of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and its propulsion stage in 1999. The EGRET sky as seen in gamma rays above 100 MeV. Brighter colors indicate greater numbers of gamma rays. The most prominent feature is the central plane of the galaxy, which runs across the middle of the map, a result of gamma rays produced when accelerated particles strike interstellar gas and starlight. The largest yellow spot on the right side of the galactic plane is the Vela pulsar, one of five new gamma-ray pulsars EGRET discovered. The prominent reddish blob at top right is the blazar 3C 279. Credit: NASA/EGRET Team On April 7, the crew prepared Compton for its release into orbit. Godwin guided the observatory out of the payload bay using the shuttle's robot arm so the solar panels had room to unfurl. "We were elated when we saw the solar panels deploy properly, since those had been problematic on the ground," said Apt, now a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and College of Engineering in Pittsburgh. Then came the bad news. Ground controllers couldn't unfold the high-gain antenna needed to send science data back to Earth. Efforts to free the structure included varying its temperature by rotating the shuttle's payload bay in and out of sunlight and gently wiggling the shuttle arm, but it wouldn't budge. With no options left, Ross and Apt were cleared for an unscheduled spacewalk, NASA's first in nearly six years. The astronauts saw no apparent reason for the failure, and Ross, who retired from NASA in 2012 as the first person launched into space seven times, received approval to apply what he has called "a good old farm boy whack." Supporting himself on Compton with his right hand, he reached out with his left and shoved the boom twice with about 40 pounds of force. Nothing happened. "I pushed a third and fourth time and it started to move a little. Finally, on the fifth and six tries, the boom swung free," he recalled. With that, the spacewalkers proceeded to the opposite end of the boom, manually swung the antenna to its full extent and locked it into place, clearing the way for Compton's release. The all-sky map produced by Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT), using data from Aug. 4, 2008, to Aug. 4, 2015, is sharper, more detailed and shows higher-energy gamma rays than EGRET's. The LAT has detected more than 10 times the number of gamma-ray sources seen by EGRET. In fact, the LAT has captured more high-energy gamma rays from a single source, the Vela pulsar, than the total number detected by EGRET from all sources. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration Then known simply as the Gamma Ray Observatory, it was soon renamed in honor of Arthur Holly Compton, an American physicist and Nobel laureate who discovered that high-energy light underwent a change in wavelength when it scattered off electrons and other charged particles. This process played a central role in gamma-ray detection techniques used in all of the observatory's instruments. Cosmic gamma rays are few and far betweenand the higher their energy, the rarer they become. Compton's four gamma-ray instruments were the largest orbited to date and achieved better than 10 times the sensitivity of previous missions. In increasing order of their energy ranges, they were the Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE), the Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment (OSSE), the Imaging Compton Telescope (COMPTEL), and the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET). Taken together, they covered an unprecedented energy range, from 20,000 electron volts (eV) to 30 billion electron volts (GeV). For comparison, visible light ranges from about 2 to 3 eV. BATSE was developed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and provided the first compelling evidence that brief, intense, almost daily gamma-ray bursts resided far beyond our galaxy. "GRBs had bedeviled astronomers for several decades before Compton was launched, and the consensus among astronomers was that they came from neutron stars within our galaxy," said Gerald Fishman, who led the experiment and is now a co-investigator on Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor at the National Space, Science and Technology Center in Huntsville. This illustration of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory shows the locations of its four instruments, the Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE), the Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment (OSSE), the Imaging Compton Telescope (COMPTEL), and the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET). Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center It was quickly evident GRBs were distributed all over the sky instead of in a pattern reflecting the structure of our Milky Way galaxy, strongly suggesting the bursts were originating far beyond our cosmic neighborhood. Proof of this came in 1997 when ground-based observatories were able to rapidly perform follow-up studies of GRBs seen by the Italian-Dutch satellite BeppoSAX. We now know these bursts are extraordinary explosions located millions to billions of light-years away, usually a result of the deaths of massive stars or mergers of neutron stars and black holes. Both Fermi and NASA's Swift satellite continue to study GRBs, and each mission has detected more than a thousand to date. The EGRET instrument on Compton, led by Goddard's Carl Fichtel, was built in collaboration with Stanford University, the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and Grumman Aerospace. It conducted the first all-sky survey of high-energy gamma rays, which have energies above 100 million electron volts (MeV). A major finding was the discovery of a new class of active galaxies that produce most of their light at these energies. An active galaxy is an otherwise typical galaxy with a compact and unusually bright core. The greater-than-normal luminosity of this central region is produced by matter falling toward a supermassive black hole weighing millions of times the mass of our sun. As it approaches the black hole, some of the material becomes channeled into particle jets moving outward in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. In quasars and blazars, the most luminous active galaxy types, one of these jets happens to point almost directly at Earth. When viewing these sources, we're effectively looking down the barrel of a black-hole-powered cosmic cannon. EGRET showed these jets reach much higher energies than previously suspected. When Compton launched, most astronomers thought gamma-ray bursts were related to dense neutron stars in our galaxy. With enough bursts, they thought, the distribution of GRBs would concentrate in certain regions, such as the galactic plane. Instead, BATSE showed that gamma-ray bursts occur all over the sky and their distribution bears no sign of the galaxy's underlying structure. This was compelling evidence GRBs were exploding in distant galaxies, an interpretation later shown to be correct. Credit: NASA/BATSE Team When Compton launched, high-energy gamma rays had been detected from only one galaxy other than our own, a quasar named 3C 273. Yet when EGRET imaged the area in June 1991, scientists saw another quasar, 3C 279, undergoing an outburst that made it one of the brightest objects in the gamma-ray sky. It became the archetypal gamma-ray blazar, and most of the discrete objects identified by EGRET, as well as those now being cataloged by Fermi, fall into this class. 3C 279 has since produced even larger flares. Compton's other instruments also produced impressive results. OSSE, led by James Kurfess of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, mapped gamma rays from a cloud of antimatter surrounding the central region of our galaxy. COMPTEL, a European-led instrument with principal investigator Volker Schoenfelder at the Max Plank Institute in Germany, identified locations in our galaxy where newly formed radioactive elements, such as aluminum-26, could be found. Compton was the second of NASA's Great Observatories, a series of ambitious astronomical satellites designed to explore different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. The first mission in the program was the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990. Compton was followed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1999 and the infrared-sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope in 2003. All of them remain operational today except Compton, which was deliberately deorbited in 2000 following the failure of one of its gyroscopes. Its scientific legacy continues in Fermi, Swift and other space observatories exploring the universe's highest-energy light and the extreme phenomena producing it. Explore further Fermi sees record flare from a black hole in a distant galaxy A total solar eclipse progresses through its stages as witnessed from the Indonesian island of Ternate in March, 2016. Credit: Ruben Ruiz What's the big deal about solar eclipses? Seen one, seen 'em all. Why would you travel more than 18,600 miles for two minutes of totality? These are the questions friends and family ask when they hear you just returned from an eclipse expedition (and are planning the next one). I spent my spring break this year in Indonesia for a total eclipse, visiting Bali, Jogja, Krakatoa and other sites and viewing the eclipse March 8 from Ternate. Umbraphiles (literally "shadow lovers") travel thousands of miles over many days to get a few precious minutes in the moon's shadow. If you are unlucky, the sky might be cloudy just at the wrong time or even raining! But if all goes well, you are treated to one of the most amazing experiences that nature has to offer: a total solar eclipse. A solar eclipse happens when Earth, the moon and the sun align exactly. This happens during "new moon," but not all months have eclipses because the plane of the moon's orbit around Earth is tilted with respect to the plane of Earth's orbit around the sun. Only near the "nodes" (the intersections of the two planes) can the moon's shadow touch Earth. The moon is about the same angular size as the sun (a half degree in the sky), so the moon can block it out entirely if you are in the exact right place at the exact right time. Since the moon is only 1/400th the size of the sun, it must be 400 times closer. Credit: Patricia Reiff and Colin Law So what do folks see during a total solar eclipse? First, the moon begins to cross the face of the sun. That instant is called first contact. The magical "diamond ring" occurs when the final piece of the sun is still visible. This lasts just a moment and then totalitysecond contactoccurs. Only then can you take the required special filters from your eyes and see the amazing total eclipse in its full glory, and only for the time that it is total at your location, which can be from a second to nearly 8 minutes. Totality is a full-body experience. Although there are many excellent photos of totality, seeing it for yourself is much more dramatic. As totality approaches, the sky gets darker. It's really hard to notice the difference until the sun is 90 percent covered. Then you notice the sky seems gray, not blue, and the shadows all seem very sharp. Birds may start to roost. The temperature may fall by several degrees, and the wind may pick up. Street lights come on. The diamond ring seen in the last seconds before totality during an eclipse in 2012. Credit: Brian Verkaart It's an eerie feeling, and for many, a spiritual experience. The eclipse looks huge in the sky, because the corona adds up to several times the sun's diameter. Some folks stare so intently they forget to use their binoculars! That's too bad, because through binoculars, you can see the prominences that leap up from the edge of the sun, the bright inner corona and the wispy outer corona, all at the same time. It's a magical sight, just not the same in photos. Those that show detail in the prominences are taken with a short exposure and can't show the outer corona. Longer exposures that show the outer corona overexpose the prominences. So the eye, preferably aided by binoculars, is the best tool. All too soon the totality ends. This is the third contact. The chromosphere flashes, and then you may see "Bailey's beads," caused by pieces of the sun peeking up behind mountains on the edge of the moon. Then the diamond ring reappears as the sun emerges. Is it really over so quickly? Tears of joy are common. Those who want to capture the whole sequence stay for that last hour that the moon finishes its travel across the face of the sun, ending at fourth contact. Others embrace and take selfies with the still partially eclipsed sun on their faces. The scene in Ternate, Indonesia, during the March eclipse. Click on the image for a larger version. Credit: Patricia Reiff And the discussion begins: Which one are you going to see next? For Americans, it's been a long dry spell since the last total eclipse crossed the United States in 1979, but a great one is coming next year. On Aug. 21, 2017, a total eclipse will cross the continent from Oregon to South Carolina, and folks are already picking their observation spots. Hotel space is already gone at many great sites. Because the orbits of the moon and Earth are ellipses, the moon sometimes appears larger than the sun, leading to a very long eclipse. Other times the moon appears smaller than the sun, and even if you are in the right place, the sun is not completely covered, leading to a glowing ring of sunlight around the moon. In those cases, called annular eclipses, it is never safe to take off your special solar filters, and you don't get to see the corona. I don't really travel to those anymore; I save my eclipse travel funds to see totality! And no, they are not all alike. At solar maximum, the corona is symmetric around the sun. At solar minimum, the corona is extended along the sun's equator. Eclipses that occur near sunrise or sunset can have lovely reflections along the water or placement near interesting objects. Eclipses that occur near noon are best to see the moon's shadow racing toward you at 1,000 miles per hour, like a black tornado. Clear skies can show "shadow bands." Cloudy skies can often thin out at totality just enough to see through a bit, or it can be raining. Even in cloudy conditions you can experience the change in the wind, the darkness of the sky, the change in temperature and the creatures heading for bed. So if you haven't seen a total solar eclipse, make your plans! The 2017 eclipse will be one of the easiest to see in a long time. The Houston Museum of Natural Science is reserving hotel space in Casper, Wyo., and many other operators have tours planned, and I frequently am a guide. Or just find a good spot on the center line, but be sure to be inside the path of totality. There's an interactive map of the eclipse at www.eclipse2017.org/ and other sites. In the meantime, you can see a video of totality from this past Indonesian eclipse at www.facebook.com/Trigger.MMS/ and learn more about eclipses at space.rice.edu/eclipse/. Clear skies! Two-thirds of social housing tenants interviewed for a recent study needed financial help from friends, family and neighbours to make ends meet, often because of benefits cuts. The British Sociological Association's annual conference in Birmingham heard today [Friday 8 April] that 64% of those interviewed had needed informal financial help over the previous 12 months to cover basic living costs. Eileen Alexander interviewed 200 social housing tenants in 2013 and 2014 and found that many were being supported financially by their adult children, parents and grandparents, as well as friends and neighbours. "People described this informal support as crucial financial contributions towards household items, particularly rent, utilities and food," said Ms Alexander, who carried out the research as part of her PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "People described support being provided by family members, but also by neighbours, friends and co-workers. "The interviews also made evident that support flowed not just from the older generation to the younger, but as frequently financial support was provided by young adult children to their parents and grandparents. "The interviewees said that income fluctuations and benefit changes rarely affected just one person or one household, but had clear ripple effects which touched large networks of extended family, neighbours and friends, who all pulled together to support each other financially during difficult periods." Ms Alexander carried out the interviews in Plymouth, Torbay, Bristol, Bath and small villages in Wiltshire and Dorset. This gave her a sample that was representative of urban and rural in the region and UK. She found that most received a series of small payments of around 20 or 30, but that this support was crucial to their ability to cover their basic living costs because of fluctuating income and in some cases cuts in benefits such as the bedroom tax. One man in his 40s told Ms Alexander: "My teenage daughter who works part-time and makes about 100 a week now pays 15 a week to cover my spare room [benefit cut]. I don't know what I'd do without her." Another woman in her 30s said: "My father has been helping me, because if I pay the [bedroom] tax I can't pay for my own food. But him not having a job at the moment means he only has so much money to spare. I can't keep on asking." A 54-year-old woman said: "My neighbours had to help me with food. I couldn't afford my medication for my arthritis at the time. It's so wrong. If you had told me that at 54 I'd be relying on handouts from my neighbours, I wouldn't have believed it." Other interviewees told Ms Alexander: "I have two or three friends and we 'leap frog' over each otherwhen the one person runs out of money the other normally has some. So it's an informal arrangement with friends, but it works really well. We rally together. We've been friends since we were boys so we look out for each other." man in his 50s. "Without my family I don't know what I would do but I feel beholden to my family, it's not nice to feel like a burden all the time. I want to repay them, but I can't see how." woman in her 30s Ms Alexander said: "The interviewees provide insight into the financial and emotional consequences of drawing on limited reserves available within a support network. "Interviewees described how their family and friends were often experiencing similar financial struggles. In most cases several members of the support network had been hit by benefit cuts, by poor employment prospects, and were facing low or non-existent savings. Interviewees described how their support networks were essential to their financial security, but also how dependence on family and friends could lead to financial and emotional strain, and even to relationship breakdown. "Their responses vary from financial support reinforcing relationships and solidarity between family and friends, to unease about dependency and loss of dignity, to outright conflict that leads to the breakdown of significant relationships." Ms Alexander found that that money from friends, family and neighbours was their most common source of emergency support. Overdrafts, bank loans, credit cards or pay day loans were each used by only a fifth or less of the interviewees in the previous year. Explore further Caregivers of people with dementia face financial hardships Instead of giving a gift card, give actual stock in a company. Buy it at the supermarket. Palo Alto, CA, April, 2016 Leading the consumerization of stock, Stockpile is now offering the worlds first gift card for stock, making it easier than ever for the average consumer to invest in the stock market. Stockpile gift cards are now available at local grocery and retail locations, including OfficeMax, Office Depot, Wegmans, Giant Eagle, Kmart, Buehlers and Supervalu. Starting in April and moving into the summer, Stockpile is expanding its reach with a roll out in additional locations including, ToysRUs, Dierbergs, Wakefern, Brookshire, Rales, Tops, Simon Malls, Hyvee, Weis, Staples, Slaters, Yokes, Key Foods, Big Y, Sears, Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons. This brand new concept makes buying stock as easy as purchasing any other consumer good. Most people have never had an opportunity to own stock in their favorite companies because its too expensive and complicated to get started, said Avi Lele, founder and CEO of Stockpile. You cant do anything with $25 at a traditional brokerage. Stockpile removes those barriers by using fractional shares and bringing the stock market to you. For the first time ever, youll be able to walk into the supermarket and buy a gift card for, say, $25 of Apple stock right off the rack. Buy it for yourself or as a gift for family and friends. With a thousand different stocks, ETFs, and ADRs to choose from, investors can buy or give the exact dollar amount they want. Stockpile allows customers to give via physical gift card or e-gift, allows users to redeem rewards points for stock, or turn existing gift cards into stock. Once a stock is purchased or redeemed via gift card, the stockholder receives a fractional share of the stock in a real brokerage account that will go up and down with the market. Stockholders can hold on to the stock and track its progress, buy more of the stock or other stocks, or cash out of the stock by selling it whenever they want. Stockpile is partnering with companies and nonprofits who care about financial literacy and empowerment and want to make stock and ETFs accessible to everyone, said Dan Schatt, Chief Commercial Officer at Stockpile. Local credit unions to Fortune 500 companies are leveraging Stockpiles platform whether its to offer a brand new set of gifting services, a differentiated loyalty program, or an innovative employee incentives and recognition plan. They also get a new way to communicate more personally with their retail shareholders. Stockpile, which recently secured $15 million in funding, is backed by an all-star team of advisors, including Don Kingsborough (founder and former CEO of Blackhawk Network) and Melanie Healey and (former President of North America for Procter & Gamble), and notable investors, such as Ashton Kutcher (actor, entrepreneur and tech investor). Stockpile will dramatically change the way we purchase and gift stock in this country, said Ashton Kutcher, actor, entrepreneur and tech investor. Stockpile has nailed it its a drop-dead easy user experience and affordable to all. How Stockpile is revolutionizing access to the stock market: Buy it by the dollar. Buy any dollar amount of stock for yourself, or give any amount up to $1000 as a gift. Get fractional shares of real stock. If you redeem a $50 gift card and Disney is trading at $100 a share, you get half a share. Purchase in 2 minutes. Use a credit or debit card to purchase Stockpile gift cards at Stockpile.com or download the iPhone app. Buy them in stores. Stockpile gift cards are available nationwide in select supermarkets and retail chains. Any age. Even kids and teens can own stock with an adult on the account with them. Free switching. Gift card recipients can redeem their Stockpile gift card for the stock on the card, a different stock, or even a merchant gift card. About Stockpile: Stockpile is revolutionizing the investment world by making the purchase of stock as easy as buying a gallon of milk. Stockpile gift cards now available at grocery stores and retailers in addition to financial institutions and online can be redeemed for stock in your favorite companies. Buy them for yourself or give them to friends and family of any age, with no account minimum. Founded and headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., Stockpile promotes financial inclusion, empowerment, and literacy by enabling access for all to the financial markets. To learn more about this convenient and delightful way to invest, visit www.stockpile.com. Other Point of Sale blogs that may interest you: This important event was sponsored by PaySpace and Hybrid Ghana Ltd. A key highlight at the conference was a special session by Dr Mrs Bernice Welbeck, acting Executive Secretary of the Ghana Labour Commission who spoke on Why HR Needs to Ensure Their Organisations Comply with the Labour Laws of Ghana. She revealed 7, 449 industrial disputes were recorded by the commission from 2005-2015, with an average of 748 disputes each year. Dr Mrs Welbeck advised, As HR Practitioners, you must bear in mind the fact that the era of Master-Servant relationship is gone, and the era of Social Partnership is here, while urging delegates to be abreast with the labour law. READ MORE: Africa HR Conference Accra to Host 5th African HR Conference Other speakers included Marina Milantoni( Group HR, West Africa); Irene Asare(HR Director, Tullow Oil); William Easmon (HR Director, Barclays); Scott Ellis (PaySpace, South Africa); Akwasi Sarpong (ILO); Emma Wenani (HR Director, Global media Alliance): Adeniyi Oromolaran (Nehemiah Resources,Nigeria); and Dr Theophilus Tshukudu ( University of Botswana) and many other reputable experts who took delegates through a mix of plenary sessions, masterclasses, practical workshops, keynote addresses, video and role play. Delegates were taken through vital HR topics from Employee Engagement, Strategic HR and Business Performance; Talent Management & Succession Planning; Performance Management; Occupational Health & Safety; Employee Wellness; HR Technology; Policy, Labor Law & Employee Relations; among many other insightful areas in HR. Attending the fifth Africa HR Leaders conference were HR Directors and Managers, Heads of HR, Group HR, Talent Acquisition Managers, Training and Development Managers, etc from reputable organizations such as Goldfieds Ghana Ltd, PZ Cussons, Danadams, Barclays Bank, OIC, Unibank, Bank of Ghana, Ghana Cocoa Board, Diamond Cement, The Multimedia Group, G4S, National Banking College, Accra Polytechnic, Ministry of Trade, GHAPOHA, Catholic Relief Services, Reserve Bank of Malawi, UT Bank, NCA, eSoko, Union Savings, Trojan Power, CDD, Westec, Ghana Chamber of Mines and many others. Both delegates and speakers at the fifth Africa HR Leaders Summit were very excited by sharing HR knowledge and modern practices from the private, government and non-government sectors across Africa. Kudos to OMLAfrica for organizing a truly beneficial conference said one delegate.I dont know which to say first: congratulations, or thank you. Because you deserve both! Well done for an excellent outing, said another. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and it was indeed a fantastic platform and a great learning curve for us in terms of presenting our services, a speaker remarked.A sponsor also had this to say: From my side, I really felt it a tremendous privilege being part of the event and really enjoyed the fantastic organisation, hospitality and friendships formed.On a personal note I cant thank you enough, I really really enjoyed the week.Anita Wiafe-Asinor, CEO, OML Africa,concluded We are very glad we have been able to hold our fifth annual Africa HR conference with much success. The two others arrested are a female Literature Teacher of the same school and a female student. The candidate led a [WAEC] depot keeper who caught her in the action to the female literature teacher. According to the girl, the female teacher gave her the answers to be given to the students in the examination hall, the Ashanti Regional Branch Controller for WAEC, Alex Bosompem, told Accra-based Joy FM. Mr. Bosompem added that the headmaster, Ekow Quashie, was arrested because he had in his possession some yet-to-be-written papers on his mobile phone. The musical features a barber who murders his customers by slitting their throats and selling their remains to a pie shop. The incident happened on Wednesday evening (NZ time), but both victims of the show are now in a stable condition, New Zealand media reports. The school that put on the show told TVNZ what happened was unfortunate and isolated incident". The mishap was due to a razor wrapped in duct tape and paper, and was used for a throat-slitting scene. The chief is currently seeking refuge at the Navrongo Police Station while a joint police-military team has moved in to the area to maintain law and order. It is unclear what sparked the violence, but it is reported that a chieftaincy dispute between the Paga and Buru-Navio chiefs which have been pending in the past three years could have been the reason behind the latest attacks. Reports say that the paramount chief of Paga sees Navio as a community under his control, but the Chief of Navio does not. Speaking to journalists at the police station at Navrongo, the chief claimed the Thursdays attempt on his life was masterminded by the Paramount Chief of Paga.Its clear. Thats the Paga Chief. He sent them. His sons were there with the mob. As at now, I dont know where my family [is]. People are even saying that they have killed me; Im in the mortuary currently. But Im in the Navrongo District Police Commanders office currently. I just managed to escape. It wasnt easy at all. The attack prompted a District Security Council (DISEC) meeting that lasted between 5:00pm and 8:00pm at Paga.Addressing the media, the Kassena-Nankana West District Police Commander, DSP Isaac Kojo Forson, said he did not see anyone being brutalised. The youth went and burnt an innocent persons car. The car that they put the fuel inside, the soldiers saw it. I was here. So, they moved there. They said they saw some of them sitting under that tree; that was why they moved to arrest. So, its like people were running helter-skelter. I went there to stop them, that they should not brutalise anyone. In fact, I didnt see whether they were brutalising anyone. But they went there to make arrests. But through arrest, anything can happen, DSP Forson said. Emmanuel Yaw Owusu, who is a security man at the Anyaa Central Assembly of Pentecost Church, was convicted after he pleaded guilty to four counts of threat of death. Owusu sent this text message to the four pastors: We are robbers. We demand 5,000 Ghana cedis from you and your church or we eliminate you and your family as well as 5,000 members of your church. Send it or action. He claimed to have got the numbers of the four pastors - Rev. Dr Nana Anyani Boadum, Rev. Dr Prince Baah, Bishop Samuel Noi Mensah and Rev. Christopher Marfo Ahenkorah- from a 2014 and 2015 church dairy. Narrating the facts, Chief Inspector Ofori Amanfo said the complainant, Rev. Dr Boadum, is a clergy and the General Overseer of Jesus Generation Ministries and that on March 23, this year, the complainant received the threatening text message from a Vodafone number 0200381608. Prosecution said the complainant reported the matter on April 1, and Owusu was arrested when he agreed to meet an undercover agent to receive the money. Ghanaians in the Eastern Region working for Turkish ARDA Group Company have spoken out about alleged abuses at the hands of their Turkish bosses, however, the company says there's no truth to it. Citi FM reported workers in Akim Oda protested demeaning actions, physical assaults, working odd hours and unstable salaries from their bosses. The workers told Citi FM one of the managers regularly assaulted the workers, stating a colleague was beaten on the weekend after he was accused of liaising with outsiders to steal from the company because he placed a machine where it wasnt supposed to be. The company has been operating in the Oda area for the past three years undertaking water projects and related infrastructural works at Akim Oda, Winneba and Cape Coast, after winning a Government contract. Pulse Ghana contacted ARDA, and an emailed response that came from the company said there is no such a thing like that. The response appeared to be from one of the Turkish bosses on the ground here in Ghana. The response said the employees cause hurt and damage to our machines to block the work process. The respondent said an excavator operator drove the excavator into a quagmire twice in two days, costing the company a lot of money. When I shouted to him in anger when he was on one machine, that he operates, he was afraid and fell down on the ground from the machine and get injured, the respondent wrote. Then after, to take the money from me, his family begun to threaten me and started to make rumors like this. He said the company covered the cost of sending the person to hospital who has since recovered. The respondent said the project, to provide clean drinking water, will be completed on May 1. This is not the first time local workers have outlined unfair treatment or abuses from foreign bosses, a Korean boss in Accra was charged with assault by police for slapping his Ghanaian employee with a hot slice of pizza. Mr. Young Gyu Lee, Chief Executive Office of Peterpan Restaurant, a Korean chain in Ghana, allegedly used hot pizza to slapped of of his employees, a Cecilia Ampadu. The four suspects Esmail Yahya Zey ad aka Evra Allerson, Gaafar Eissa Yahya Amer aka Ciro Carlos, Waleed Ahmed Yahya aka Debuchya Allard all students and Eissa Yahya Airier, a businessman reportedly concealed their Yemeni identities and feigned French nationalities in an attempt to beat security personnel at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra. It is not clear what their real motive of hiding their Yemeni identities was. Background The four people entered the country as far back as November 2015, before the suspected two Al-Qaeda foot soldiers detained in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba who are also Yemeni nationalities arrived in Ghana for their two-year stint. Its not clear if the four suspects visit has anything to do with the presence of the Guantanamo Bay former detainees. According to the prosecution led by DSP Aidan Dery, the four on November 24, 2015, did forge official documents being the Republic of France Passport Number 04417928. The accused persons were arrested by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra in November with different names in their French passports. They arrived at KIA on board Ethiopian Airline Flight ET 920. However, speaking through an Arabic interpreter, the accused persons denied the offence. While undergoing arrival formalities, Evra Allerson, Ciro Carlos and Debuchya were found with French passports with different names. A further search on them revealed that all the accused persons had Yemeni passports also. When they were quizzed they mentioned one Abdulai Mohammed in Yemen as the one who secured them the French passports and gave them a phone number to call a certain Mohammed in Ghana on arrival. The accused persons were to transit in Ghana and continue to France and then to Istanbul in Turkey. Stripped of narration and other standard documentary features, Scrap Metal Men director Alex Wondergem instead takes a cinema verite approach following a day in the life of two Dagbani metal traders - Chief and Life Owner. Through this fly on the wall mode of filming, we navigate this landscape by following the daily lives of two scrap metal men as they trade and sell metal through congested Ghanaian city roads and markets on wet day in Accra, bargaining and bartering for every Cedi they make. is the first major documentary production by Alex Wondergem and Adu Lalouschek. The former Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) further stressed on "Minority Caucus" on Joy News on Thursday (April 7) that, even with the oil money at their disposal, the NDC keeps borrowing from the IMF without care and yet does not give Ghanaians value for money in the projects executed so far. "We could have done more with this money as we would have built nine more of such buildings in the Volta Region if we had that money," Mr. Amewu opined. He also accused the NDC of corrupt practices citing the mode of awarding of contracts. The former MCE said the NPP adopted the competitive bidding process in awarding government contract to bring the cost down. He bemoaned the NDC's sole sourcing method for awarding of government projects which shoot the cost up. Mr. Amewu narrated how he forced the regional minister to get the Hohoe road completed. President John Mahama had mentioned in his State of the Nation Address that the Hohoe road was among the many his administration had completed. However, Mr. Amewu said he was forced to raise the alarm because that road had not been done at the time the president said it had. He said the people of Hohoe should be grateful to the NPP for pushing the government to make the road motorable. The NDC is doing that road because of shame not because they respect the people of the Volta region, said Mr. Amewu. He thinks it is disingenuous on the part of President Mahama to make a blanket statement that the NPP did not do anything for Voltarians. Ablekuma Central and South parliamentary seats are held by the NDC while Ablekuma West and North are held by the NPP. This is representative of the situation in the Greater Accra Region at large where the race between both parties is very tight. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the incumbent, is running against two others, Teo Tettey and Roni Nicole. The race is thought to be between Owusu and Nicole. Its relatively brief history shows that the one who wins the partys nomination has an incredibly high chance of winning the seat in November since the party has a commanding share of votes in the constituency. In 2012, Ursula Owusu beat the NDCs Victoria Hamah convincingly by winning 36,975 votes representing 58.22% of the total valid votes. Hamah managed 26,153 (41.18%), Perry Senyo (Progressive Peoples Party) won 291 (0.46%) while Daniel Noye (Peoples National Congress) won 55 (0.09). Magnus Asiamah Bekoe of the National Democratic Party cupped it all with 40 votes representing 0.06%. With a staggering 10% difference coupled with the Ghanaian electorate rarely changing its voting patterns in parliamentary elections, the winner of the NPPs nomination appears to be set to be in the chamber in January 2017. Since getting into parliament, Ursula Owusu (the favourite) has been one of the most outspoken members of the opposition on the floor. She is highly critical of the governing party; previously describing its leaders on a television show as clueless, visionless and purposeless. This quote, after it was used as a montage made Ursula very popular. The 52 year old lawyer is a regular pundit on political shows on radio and television in Ghana which has seen her grow into a household name in the country. She is a prominent feminist and child activist. In 2014, she was a leading critic of fellow MP Nelson Abudu Bani after he suggested that women who committed adultery should be stoned. In 2015, she was seen as one of the female MPs that the leadership of the NPP wanted to protect with its affirmative action policy. Adcock said in August it would sell the loss-making Indian unit Cosme Farma Laboratories to focus on its South African home market, saying significant additional investment was needed to compete in the pharmaceutical market in India. The cash sale to Samara Capital Partners Fund would include Adcock Healthcare, a manufacturer and distributor of pharmaceuticals in India, which runs Cosme Farma Laboratories, South Africa's Adcock said in a statement. The Indian unit posted a net profit of 2.1 million rand in the six months to end-December and reported net assets worth 701.3 million rand during the period. The South African firm bought Cosme Farma Laboratories for 822 million rand in 2013 but had to write down its value by 278 million rand in 2014 and a further 74.4 million rand last year. South Africa's Adcock would retain Adcock Healthcare's division that handles back office support services, quality control and assurance, among others, the firm said. The sale is subject to approval by the India's Foreign Investment Promotion Board. In Nigeria it is even worse. Overseas critics are even regarded as people of knowledge and intelligence. In this dear country of ours critics are easily tagged as Read more: Sarkodie hits hard at critics The Nigerian society does not allow for scrutiny. You cant scrutinize a popular person, a politician or a celebrity. Once you criticize a politician or celebrity then you are seen as a bad person or an enemy of progress. Who is a critic by the way? According to Cambridge Dictionary a critic is someone whose job is to give their opinion about something, especially films, books, music, etc This is what critics do, give their opinion about a movie they've watched or an album they have heard. So, what is wrong about stating your opinion? Well, opinionated people dont make the best of friends. People do not like opinionated people. And in a country like ours where everyone goes with the flow, someone with a different opinion isnt everyones favourite. This is a reason why critics are attacked- they challenge the popular thinking of society. You can call them rebels and intellectual outlaws. Society does not like rebels and outlaws. This is why celebrities are attacked. Also no one likes a smart ass. We all have that friend that thinks he is smarter than everyone, and maybe he is. The fact is we hate whenever this friend shows off how smart he is. It pisses us off. To be honest critics can be smart asses who want to show off how brilliant they are. When they state their opinion about something we hate the fact they show us how not smart we are. I remember when I wrote my review about Mavins group album '' in 2012. It was a scathing review and Don Jazzys followers slaughtered me online. To be fair maybe the album was slightly better than what I rated it but people really came out for me. This is an album that had hits and Don Jazzys fans could not understand why I said the album sucked. Their general consensus was it was a good album and I came up with a divergent view. I went against the prevailing thought pattern of their society. Read more: Freeze blasts Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of COZA Controversial OAP Freeze is one critic who gets constantly slayed for his blunt views on societal topics. He gets attacked over and over again because his views differ from that of the mainstream. Freeze is in support of the Religious Censor Bill in Kaduna state. Christians have attacked him for his views on this. Why? Because Freeze is going against the belief of the Christian society. Headlining this maiden edition is American Grammy award-winner, Kirk Whalum, who represents a unique class of artistes with a rich repertoire of sounds including Pop, Gospel, R&B, Smooth Jazz, Instrumental Pop, Quiet Storm, Urban and Contemporary Jazz music, amongst others. He will share the stage with some of Naijas finest entertainers including Omawumi, Yinka Davies, Tosin Alao, the host band, Sweet Sound and many others. Celebrated since November 2011, the International Jazz Day (IJD) is a global initiative that highlights Jazz music for its diplomatic role in uniting nations. Each year on April 30, this international art form is recognized for promoting peace, dialogue among cultures, diversity, and respect for human rights and human dignity; eradicating discrimination; promoting freedom of expression; fostering gender equality; and reinforcing the role of youth in enacting social change. This is the mandate of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), chaired by Director General, Irina Bokova, and legendary pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, who serves as a UNESCO Ambassador for Intercultural Dialogue and Chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. As Nigerias contribution to the global celebration of Jazz, Runway Jazz is scheduled to hold over 2 days - April 29 and 30, 2016 at the Eko Hotel Convention Centre, Victoria Island, with a line-up of activities including a Jazz Concert & Fashion exhibition, Music Masterclass and Fine Dining. It will also serve as a platform to recognise some of Nigeria's greatest music icons - Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey, Victor Olaiya, and Victor Uwaifo - whose achievements on Africa's music landscape have made them exemplary ambassadors of Nigerian Music and symbols of our cultural heritage. Apart from Grace, another man said to be her accomplice in the murder, Benjamin Otu, who happens to be her boyfriend, was also arrested and he has confessed to being part of the plot to murder the victim. It was gathered that Lucky and his wife, both from Akwa Ibom State, had some disagreement during the day and thinking everything had been settled, he went to bed, she invited Otu inside and he held Lucky while Grace used a kitchen knife to slit his throat while he slept. As her husband bled profusely and helplessly, Grace stood by and watched, ensuring that he was dead before she alerted their neigbours. According to a police source, the incident was reported at the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti, Yaba, and Grace was arrested. It was during interrogation that she confessed to the act and implicated Otu as her accomplice, leading to his arrest as well. He was said to have escaped the hands of the law on March 12, 2016, and no traces has been found leading to his whereabout. Tomiwa is a member of a gang known for notorious raping and stealing. Other members of his gang are however still in the police custody. A resident of Sango-Ota disclosed that some police officers might be involved in the disappearance of the rape suspect. He explained that Tomiwa might have been released by the policemen at the station, who have made it difficult to rid the environment of miscreants. He said, The gang usually ambushed residents going to work at 5am, snatched their bags and raped them. A lot of girls have moved out of this community." "We have arrested the suspects more than seven times and took them to the station, but the officers would collect money and release them." They are so confident that whenever we threaten them with police, they will say they will come back if they are arrested." "They have been threatening our lives. Three weeks ago, they waylaid another 18-year-old girl while returning from work in the evening and raped her." "We took Dekunle (Lawal), Tomiwa and Owolabi to the station two weeks ago as regards the incident. Tomiwa fled the station, while the two others were later released. As the search for Tomiwa continues, the Ogun State Police Command Public Relations Officer, DSP Muyiwa Adejobi, said the suspects would be transferred to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the command for further investigation. He also assured the residents of the community that the police will increase its efforts to remove criminals from their environment. He said, The suspects were arrested for different offences, including rape, stealing and breach of the peace. But no suspect escaped from the station. The residents should rest assured that the community and others would be sanitised from hoodlums terrorising the areas. The suspects will be charged to court after investigation. 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! Amoah also known as Esi Yeboada, a petty trader, was reported to the police by her 17-year-old daughter, Joyce Amoah, a Junior High School 2 (JHS2) student, who is the mother of the dead baby. The suspect was said to have buried the little tot in a shallow grave behind a public toilet at an outskirt of Akotokyer, a suburb of Cape Coast. Joyce reportedly told the police that her mother started picking quarrels with her when she became pregnant, often getting angry that she was still in school and too young to get pregnant. Narrating further, Joyce said that when she was delivered of the baby, her mother who was also nursing a baby, asked her to give the grandchild to her for her to breast feed her whilst she (Joyce) continued with her schooling. However, on Tuesday, April 5, 2016, Joyce claimed she couldn't find the whereabouts of the baby and when she asked her mum, she denied knowing the whereabouts of the baby. The young girl then went to the police to report the missing child and her mother was arrested and during interrogation, she confessed to killing the baby and took the police to she had buried the remains which was exhumed and deposited at the Cape Coast Hospital. The suspected Boko Haram terrorists are reportedly from Baga in Borno State. The Brigade Spokesperson, Captain Eze Ikechikwu, while speaking with news men on the arrest, revealed that the sect members had been intercepted with the poisoned fishes at Hadeja Local Government Area of Jigawa State. It is assumed that the intent had been to sell the tainted fishes to unsuspecting members of the public. Vanguard reports that a source said The aim of studying the document presented by the NASS by the executive was to compare what was eventually approved with what was sent in by the President. Another official who spoke to Vanguard said There is a groundswell of opinion that Mr. President should sign the bill into law if there was no substantial deviation that could affect the performance of the budget. Adding that President Buhari was eager to sign the bill into law to ensure immediate implementation and to give a new lease of life to the people and arrest the hardship in the land. Abubakar made the disclosure on Friday, April 8, 2016, during a press conference to launch the 52nd anniversary celebration of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), Daily Trust reports. Looking at where we are coming from, I think we have done substantially well. In those days in 2014, you had convoy of vehicles moving round villages and killing Nigerians but it is no longer so, he said. So, we came up with the idea of 'safe corridor'. If you want to come out, come out and then we profile you, keep you under watch before taking the next step. So many of them are surrendering in large numbers, we have seen that they are surrendering because they know that there is no escape. Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau recently appeared in a video in which he supposedly urged his followers to surrender. However, the sect released another video soon after and denied that it was surrendering. ----------------------------------------------------------------- He made this known in Abuja on Wednesday, April 7, at the launch of Amnesty International Global Death Sentences and Executions report. Malami, who was represented by Sylvester Imahanobe, assured that he would work to Amnesty International to stop execution of convicted criminals in Nigeria, if a bill to that effect is proposed by the international human rights body Terrorists in Nigeria are tried under the Terrorism Prevention Act which does not carry death penalty. That is why even those Boko Haram members, who have been convicted cannot be executed because the maximum sentence prescribed by the law is life sentence, he said. In stressing his support for the abolition of death penalty, the AGF pointed out that according to studies, "death penalty has not stopped people from committing crimes. He noted that the Federal Government is working towards ensuring that the prison system is indeed corrective and not punitive, as it is currently. According to the Amnesty report, there was dramatic global rise in the number of executions recorded in 2015, which is the highest since the last 25 years. In his ruling on Thursday, April 7, Justice Goodluck held that the applicants detention by the EFCC for over two weeks is unconstitutional. The judge who ruled on the ex parte application filed by Robert ordered that the bail should be guaranteed by two sureties. According his ruling, each of the sureties must be a serving or retired Director in any of the Federal Governments ministries or parastatal and must be resident within Abuja. The applicant was also ordered to deposit his passport to the Chief Registrar of the court. Pulse recalls that the EFCC arrested Robert on March 23, 2016, over an alleged diversion of $40m through a firm, One-Plus Holdings, which is a sister company of Kakatar Construction and Engineering Company Limited, through an alleged phoney contract of securing oil pipelines. Channels Television reports that the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmoud Yakubu, also expressed confidence in the agencys readiness. Speaking on the deployment of policemen, Danta Walima, who spoke on behalf of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) commissioner of police said We are very prepared, we have everything we need to curb any form of crisis. Over 13,000 police officials are to be deployed within the FCT. The commissioner is also inviting men of conventional police and mobile police force from neighbouring states so as to ensure adequate security during and after the election. There will be enough manpower and escorts at the collation centers and at the 2000 polling units in the FCT. The FCT council elections are scheduled to hold on Saturday, April 9, 2016. Abuja officially became the capital of Nigeria on12 December 1991. Watch video below. The diseased, who was said to be a teenager, was reportedly shot dead by a female officer on Wednesday, April 6, at a filling station in FESTAC Town, Lagos State. There were conflicting reports about the circumstances that led to the boy's killing. According to the Police version, there was a fracas between the Civil Defence officers and some 'men,' which led to indiscriminate shooting that killed the boy, a motorcyclist identified as Emeka. Three other people were seriously wounded in the incident, Police said. However, a senior police officer who anonymously spoke at the scene of the incident on Wednesday condemned the NSCDC officers, assuring that they would be brought to justice. The statement was signed by Fatima Agwai the Chief Press Officer of the commission. It said that Angwe made the remark when the Coordinator and Directors of Kartu Library Foundation, an NGO, led the President and members of Childrens Government of Nigeria to the Commission. The Executive Secretary, who was represented at the occasion by his Senior Special Assistant, Mr Lambert Oparah, said that the commission had issues of women and children as one of its cardinal thematic areas of focus. He said that the Commission was partnering with other stakeholders like the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and UNHCR to ensure that victims of terrorism were taken care of. He commended the president of the Childrens government, Ms. Zainab Mohammed and her Executives for their concern about the condition of IDPs in country. He appreciated the Foundation and the Executive members of the Childrens government for making him an ambassador of Childrens government. Angwe assured them of an enduring partnership that would ameliorate the condition of IDPs especially in the North Eastern part of the country. In his remarks, Mr Patrick Ikpeme, the Coordinator of Kartu Foundation, the NGO piloting the affairs of the Childrens government, noted that there was about 300,000 children in various IDPs camps in Nigeria. He appealed to families in Nigeria to adopt the children since the camps would one day close. Speaking to State House correspondents in Abuja on Friday, April 8, after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, Mohammed said the move is to enable each Minister "see how it affects his or her ministry''. He said the crucial FEC council summoned by President Muhammadu Buhari was "to avail every minister to look at the details of the budget''. "As you all know we received the details of the 2016 budget from the National Assembly, yesterday, and an extraordinary meeting of the Federal Executive meeting was called this morning to avail every minister to look at the details of the budget and see how it affects his or her ministry," Mohammed said. "I must say that at this point, it is still work in progress, we have broken up. "This is to say that; yes, we received it, we are studying it and we will come out with a statement later. The Comptroller-General of the NSC, Col.Hameed Ali (rtd.) made the appeal on Thursday in Abeokuta when he visited Governor Ibikunle Amosun. Ali, who was on a tour of customs formations in the state, said that such synergy had become necessary to strengthen the anti-smuggling campaign of the service. He noted that the Nigerian government had lost considerable revenue to smuggling while the service had continued to lose its personnel to smugglers almost on daily basis. The NSC boss urged the government to dissuade youths particularly those at border communities from engaging in smuggling. "Many of the youths at border communities have erroneously taken smuggling as a way of life. "The government need to educate them through traditional rulers in such areas on the criminality and dangers associated with such nefarious business," he said. Ali, who expressed regret that revenue from foreign trade had declined, expressed optimism that effective anti-smuggling drive could boost such earnings. He pledged that the NSC would support all efforts at developing local industries, adding that the service could generate increased revenue on excise duties from such industries. In his remarks, Gov. Amosun said that no country could develop without a vibrant and well equipped customs service. He said that his administration had continued to sensitise the people on the illegalities of smuggling. The governor, who pledged government support for the NSC, however, urged Ali to direct his men to exercise caution in dealing with members of the public, particularly market women. He expressed dissatisfaction with the attitude of some customs personnel, who he accused of entering market stalls to confiscate textile materials claimed to had been smuggled without thorough investigation. Emm, I signed budget without details? Anybody who told you that, go and ask him again, he said. He stated this on Thursday, April 7, while speaking to State House Correspondents after a private meeting with president Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa, Abuja. On what he discussed with the President, Obasanjo said he only came to share some his experiences as President with Buhari. But when asked what the experience are, he said: If I say I share experiences with my wife, will you ask what I discussed with my wife?. In the application Metuh's counsel, Emeka Etiaba, had asked the judge to disqualify himself from the case on the grounds that he had been unfair to his clientin the trial. But counsel to the prosecution, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Sylvanus Tahir, asked the court to dismiss the application, stressing that it lacked evidence. There is no reason a reasonable man will think that the presiding judge has exhibited any conduct which has cast doubt on his ability to dispense justice fairly, he said. The defendant alleging bias against the court has not provided evidence. We urge your lordship to dismiss the application. The honourable judge is not a party to this case. He is not on trial. However, while delivering his ruling, Justice Abang held that the application was an abuse of court process,and therefore dismissed it. Metuh is facing a seven-count of charge of criminal breach of trust and money laundering to the tune of N400m. A witness, Samuel Madojemu, who testified against Orubebe before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) said the former minister left out the Abuja property which he bought on April 2011 from the asset declaration forms that he submitted to the CCB. Madojemu also told the tribunal that the ex ministers property is located at Plot 2057, Asokoro District. Orubebe served as minister of special duties under the administration of late President Umaru Yaradua, and later as minister of Niger-Delta affairs under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. The former minister is facing trial for alleged false asset declaration The Federal Government earlier streamlined the four-count charge against former Orubebe, into a single-count charge of false asset declaration. He also pleaded not guilty to the corruption allegations filed against him before the Code of Conduct Tribunal. Investigations by Premium Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), has revealed on Tuesday, April 7, that Mark owns eight offshore companies in the Island. But a statement released by the former senate leader described the report as plot by some political elements to tarnish his image. The statement reads: "Our attention has been drawn to spurious Media reports on the Panama papers in which former President of the Senate, Senator David Mark was alleged to have operated offshore companies. For the avoidance of doubt, in the released materials of the Panama Leaks, his name is not listed anywhere in the database of Mossack Fonseca Law Firm. "We reiterate categorically, that he is not directly or indirectly connected to any of the companies registered, operated or managed by the Mossack Fonseca Law Firm. We challenge all those behind this propaganda and Media outburst to prove or show that Senator Marks name was mentioned in the leaks. "He is prepared to stand and defend himself against any accusation in relation to this matter. Senator Marks Media team has carried out its own search of the Mossack Fonseca database and found no statement, item or any connection to Senator David Mark or his Family. It follows that there is no record whatsoever of any impropriety or wrongdoing. We recall that in his quest for Senate Presidency in 2007, there was an attempt to bring a similar issue to the fore in order to stop him. So what are their fears now in 2016 for regurgitating the same issue?Once more, Senator Mark has distanced himself and any member of his family from the said Mossack Fonseca Firm and has no affiliation whatsoever with any company operated, registered or managed by Mossack Fonseca. "Senator Mark has not contravened any laws of the land and he is treating this for what it is, an attempt to blackmail and tarnish his hard earned image by some political elements. "As a public officer, Senator Mark has maintained a high level of decorum, respects and observes the laws of the land and believes in the sanctity of the rule of law. He will not be distracted by what is clearly a deliberate mischief and propaganda." "Records of all his assets are available with the relevant government agencies and can be verified. He has consulted his legal team and will take this up accordingly." Nigerians who were named in the documents include former Delta State Governor, James Ibori, former Senate President, David Mark and wife of Senate President, Bukola Saraki, Toyin Saraki. Falana said "Private persons are not prohibited from keeping accounts wherever they like. However public officers have always been barred by the Code of Conduct Bureau and Code of Conduct Trubunal Act from operating foreign accounts in any manner whatsoever. To that extent, former and serving public officers whose accounts have been published in the Panama Papers are liable to be prosecuted if they had failed to declare them in their asset declaration forms. Secondly, the onus is on them to prove that any funds in such accounts emanated from their legitimate income. "The program will focus on policies to improve governance and fiscal management, strengthen institutions, foster financial sector development and fill considerable data gaps. Technical assistance and capacity building will be an integral part of the program," Zandamela said. The so-called Staff-Monitored Program does not involve financial support to the war-torn African country, but is a necessary step toward a potential IMF loan program. It is expected to start in May pending IMF approval. It sends a positive signal to international donors about Somalia's commitment to improve its governance. A similar program for Afghanistan has helped to mobilize billions of dollars in donation pledges. Somalia is one of the least developed countries in the world and is in the process of building a fully functioning government. Chase Bank Ltd. experienced liquidity difficulties following "inaccurate social media reports" and the departure of two directors and was not able to "meet its financial obligations on April 6", the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) said in a statement on its website. "In light of the above, CBK has appointed the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation to assume the management, control and conduct of the affairs and business of the institution and to exercise all the powers of the institution to the exclusion of its Board of Directors," the central bank said. Chase Bank Kenya, a privately owned mid-sized lender, said on Wednesday its chairman, Zafrullah Khan, and group managing director, Duncan Kabui had left the bank, but gave no reasons for their departure. Chase Bank Kenya could not be reached for comment by Reuters. The receivership of Chase is the third by the central bank since the second half of last year. Dubai Bank, a smaller lender, was taken over by the central bank followed by another mid-sized lender Imperial Bank. The collapse of Imperial caused jitters in the market as investors fretted about the health of the country's financial sector in East Africa's top economy. The attacks became aggressive after last seasons controversial rape scene which saw Sansa Stark raped on her wedding night by sadistic husband Ramsay Bolton. In season one of show, Emilia Clarke who plays Mother of Dragons on show, was coerced into marriage to Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo, and forced to consummate their union on their wedding night. In an interview with Glamour Magazine, Clarke spoke on her controversial season one rape scene, and how it affected her character. ALSO READ:undefined "Well, Daenerys and Khal Drogos arranged marriage, and the customary rape that followed ask George RR Martin why he did that, cause thats on him, she told Glamour Magazine. But I thought the consensual sex she has thereafter was genius. She is physically saying, 'You cant rape me again. Im going to be in control and show you something youve never seen before. At the heart of it, were telling a story; you need that part of the story to feel empathy for Daenerys. You see her attacked by her brother, raped by her husband, and then going, F--- all of you, Im gonna rule the world. Thats where we are now." ALSO READ: undefined Clarkes character, Daenerys Targarye (Mother of Dragons) was last seen in season five finale, surrounded by a swarm of Dothraki soldiers. The fifth season of show came to an end in June 2014 with the epic death of Jon Snow. Emilia Clarke recently revealed that her ideal "Game of Thrones" plotline involved 'close-ups of all the boys' penises.' ALSO READ:undefined "Game of Thrones" returns for a new season on April 24. The next edition of the event is set to hold on Thursday, April 14, 2016, with Omoni Oboli headlining. Oboli's latest movie "Wives on Strike," will also screen at event. Omoni Oboli is an actress, director and producer, who studied Foreign Languages at the University of Benin, majoring in French. In 1996, while still at the university, she shot her first film. She then took a 10 year break, got married, and returned to the screen in 2009 with the movie "Entanglement". 2010 saw Omoni feature in the award-winning film "The Figurine," which won the Best Picture award at the 2010 Africa Movie Academy Awards. ALSO READ: undefined Omoni's "Wives on Strike" features a blend of Nollywood talents, such as Uche Jombo, Chioma Akpotha, Ufuoma McDermott, Kehinde Bankole, Kalu Ikeagwu, Julius Agwu, Kenneth Okonkwo among others. The movie is a hilarious comedy about a group of market women who decided to take matters into their own hands against their husbands in a bid to stir them into standing up for a young girl whom they wanted to protect from the wishes of her own father. The women, who hilariously interpret their roles, set a series of events in motion to give the movie many moments of laughter without missing a beat on the reason for everyone to know why they are on strike. For information on how to get a free movie ticket for any film, follow @PulseMovies247on twitter. What better way to ease off the stress of the week than watch a good movie. With that in mind, check out our list of movies currently showing in cinemas across Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. Starring: Morena Baccarin, Gina Carano, Ryan Reynolds Synopsis: Gifted with accelerated healing powers and a twisted sense of humor, mercenary Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) adopts the alter ego Deadpool and hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life Showing: Friday - Thursday: 12:35pm Starring: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine Synopsis: Portokalos family secret brings the beloved characters back together for an even bigger and Greeker wedding. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 12:45pm, 2:40pm Friday - Thursday: 6:40PM, 8:30PM Friday - Saturday: 10:20AM, 2:55PM, 7:00PM Sunday: 2:55PM Monday - Thursday: 10:20AM, 2:55PM Friday - Thursday: 11:00AM, 2:40PM. Friday - Thursday: 12:25 pm, 7:00 pm Starring: Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman Synopsis: Col. Katherine Powell, a military officer in command of an operation to capture terrorists in Kenya, sees her mission escalate when a girl enters the kill zone triggering an international dispute over the implications of modern warfare. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 12:50PM, 7:00PM, 9:00PM Friday - Thursday: 12:45pm, 2:40pm Friday - Thursday: 12:50PM, 2:50PM, 4:50PM, 6:50PM, 8:50PM Friday - Thursday: 11:00AM, 9:05PM Friday - Thursday: 2:30 pm, 4:42 pm, 6:54 pm, 9:06 pm Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gaddot. Synopsis: Fearing the actions of Superman are left unchecked, Batman takes on the man of steel, while the world wrestles with what kind of a hero it really needs. With Batman and Superman fighting each other, a new threat, Doomsday, is created by Lex Luthor. It's up to Superman and Batman to set aside their differences along with Wonder Woman to stop Lex Luthor and Doomsday from destroying Metropolis. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 12:25PM , 3:20PM, 6:15PM, 9:10PM Friday - Thursday: 1:00PM, 4:30PM, 6:15PM Friday - Thursday: 11:50AM, 12:40PM, 2:40PM, 3:40PM, 5:30PM, 6:30PM, 8:20PM, 9:20PM Fri-Thur: 2:35pm[3D], 5:25pm[3D] Fri-Thur: 3:20pm, 6:10pm, 8:20pm Fri & Sat: 1:10 pm, 4:10 pm, 7:10 pm, 9:05 pm, 10:10 pm Sun - Wed: 1:10 pm, 4:10 pm, 7:10 pm, 9:05 pm, 10:10 pm Thu: 1:10 pm, 4:10 pm, 7:10 pm, 9:05 pm. 10:10 pm Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller Starring: Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, Tom Costello Synopsis: The story of Eddie Edwards, the notoriously tenacious British underdog ski jumper who charmed the world at the 1988 Winter Olympics. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 12:50PM, 5:00PM Friday - Thursday: 12:10PM, 4:40PM Fri-Thur: 4:20pm Friday - Thursday: 12:45 pm Friday - Thursday: 11:10AM, 12:25PM. Starring: Kareena Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Arjun Kapoor, Rajat Kapoor Synopsis: Follows a young, married couple whose relationship challenges the gender roles placed upon women and men in Indian society. Showing: Friday - Sunday: 7:05PM Friday - Thursday: 12:00PM, 4:40PM Starring: Donnie Yen, Lynn Hung, Jin Zhang, Mike Tyson. Synopsis: When a band of brutal gangsters led by a crooked property developer make a play to take over the city, Master Ip is forced to take a stand. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 9:05PM Starring: James Remar, Sherilyn Fenn, Ron Carlson Synopsis: Global climate change prompts a scientific corporation to genetically modify Alaskan polar bears with horrific and deadly results. Showing: Tues-Thur: 10:35am, 9:00pm Friday - Thursday: 11:00AM, 2:50PM Friday - Thursday: 1:00PM,3:15PM Friday - Thursday: 12:30PM, 4:20PM Starring: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman Synopsis: In London for the Prime Minister's funeral, Mike Banning discovers a plot to assassinate all the attending world leaders. Friday - Thursday: 4:20pm, 6:15pm, 8:10pm Friday - Thursday: 4:15PM, Friday - Thursday: 8:15 pm, 10:25 pm Friday - Thursday: 1:00PM, 3:00PM, 5:00PM, 7:00PM, 9:00PM Saturday - Thursday: 7:10PM, 9:10PM Genre: Animation Starring:Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba Synopsis: TIn a city of anthropomorphic animals, a fugitive con artist fox and a rookie bunny cop must work together to uncover a conspiracy. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 8:15 pm, 10:25 pm Friday - Thursday: 11:30AM, 3:50PM Friday - Thursday: 11:30AM, 3:50PM Friday - Thursday: 10:45AM Genre: Animation, Action, Adventure Starring: Jack Black, Bryan Cranston, Dustin Hoffman Synopsis: Continuing his "legendary adventures of awesomeness", Po must face two hugely epic, but different threats: one supernatural and the other a little closer to his home. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 2:50 pm, 4:55 pm Fri-Thur: 12:40pm Fri-Thur: 10:20am Friday - Thursday: 12:20PM, 2:10PM, 4:00PM, 5:50PM Friday - Thursday: 5:25PM, 7:15PM Friday - Sunday: 12:55PM Monday - Thursday: 12:55PM, 2:55PM Genre: Romance Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Zoe Kravitz Synopsis: After the earth-shattering revelations of Insurgent, Tris must escape with Four beyond the wall that encircles Chicago to finally discover the shocking truth of what lies behind it. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 11:55 am, 2:25 pm, 4:55 pm Friday - Thursday: 12:15pm Friday - Thursday: 6:00PM, 8:20PM Friday - 11:00AM, 3:00PM, 9:10PM Saturday - Thursday: 3:00PM, 9:10PM Friday - Thursday: 1:10PM Genre: Romance Starring: Uche Jombo, Chioma Akpotha, Ufuoma McDermott, Kehinde Bankole, Kalu Ikeagwu, Julius Agwu, Kenneth Okonkwo. Synopsis: The movie is a hilarious comedy about a group of market women who decided to take matters into their own hands against their husbands in a bid to stir them into standing up for a young girl whom they wanted to protect from the wishes of her own father. The women, who hilariously interpret their roles, set a series of events in motion to give the movie many moments of laughter without missing a beat on the reason for everyone to know why they are on strike. Showing: Fri - Wed: 2:55 pm, 4:58 pm, 7:01 pm, 9:04 pm Thu: 2:55 pm, 4:58 pm, 7:01 pm, 9:04 pm Friday - Thursday: 2:30PM, 6:20PM, 8:10PM Friday - 4:50PM, 7:35PM Saturday - Thursday: 11:05AM, 1:00PM, 2:55PM, 4:50PM, 7:35PM Friday - Thursday: 2:55PM,7:15PM Genre: Starring:Brenton Thwaites, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gerard Butler Synopsis: Mortal hero Bek teams with the god Horus in an alliance against Set, the merciless god of darkness who has usurped Egypt's throne, plunging the once peaceful and prosperous empire into chaos and conflict. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 10:20am Friday - Thursday: 2:20PM, 6:40PM, 9:10PM Friday - Thursday: 4:40PM, 9:00PM Genre: Starring:Jennifer Garner, Kylie Rogers, Martin Henderson Synopsis: A young girl suffering from a rare digestive disorder finds herself miraculously cured after surviving a terrible accident. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 1:15pm Friday - Thursday: 7:40PM Friday - Saturday: 10:40AM, 5:05PM, 8:55PM It was President Muhammadu Buhari that forced me to contest for the governorship race of Kaduna State in revenge for persuading him to run the presidential race, the governor said. If he had not asked me to run for the governorship, I wouldnt have stood before you today as the governor of Kaduna State. It is the Buhari phenomenon that had swept away the PDP. Buhari is a man of integrity, a Nigerian leader whose name has not been found in the Panama documents, he added. A similar comment had earlier been made by Kaduna Senator, Shehu Sani who said that he stepped down for El-Rufai because the latter was Buharis choice for governor of the state. I wanted to contest for the governorship and I opened offices in Zaria, Kaduna and Kafanchan, and later there was pressure on me that I should step down. Politicians came to meet me; that I should step down and allow El-Rufai to contest because they said he was the favourite of the president, Sani said on Friday, August 21, 2015, during an interview with Leadership. Meanwhile, the Senator recently warned El-Rufai to stop eyeing Buharis seat and focus on ruling Kaduna. ---------------------------------------------------------- Aluko made the allegation on Thursday, April 7, 2016, while addressing a press conference in Lagos, Vanguard reports. I have not fled the country and equally on bail from the agencies while snippets of issues ensuing from these statements are filtering into the ears of the actors/beneficiaries such that attack are now coming from all direction targeted at me, Aluko said. While the army council sacked their officers as a result of the investigation, it is unfortunate that the civilian actors/beneficiaries of the Ekitigate are not only walking the street freely, but also threatening my person and family. This a call on the Attorney General of the Federation not to allow all these to be swept under the carpet in view of recent happening. The far reaching effect and implication on our electoral process and procedure are obvious. I never prostrated with Hon. Olugbemi anywhere. Olugbemi will do anything for Fayose after all, he is an appointee of Fayose. Please note that I understand Fayose and I understand the working system. I can tell you that Olugbemis press statement was composed directly by Fayose and delivered to Olugbemi though his media aide, he added. Aluko had earlier accused Fayose of receiving $37 million from former president, Goodluck Jonathan to rig the June 2014 elections in Ekiti. He was however recently caught on camera reconciling with Fayose at a peace meeting, an action which he has described as a tactical error. ------------------------------------------------------------- The April 7 meeting was the fourth one that Obasanjo and Buhari had held behind closed doors since the latter took office on May 29, 2015. The first one held on August 7, 2015, the second on September 8, 2015 and the third on November 10, 2015. Buhari had also met with Obasanjo twice before he was sworn in as Nigerias president. Obasanjos importance to the Buhari administration was further emphasized by his appointment as the presidents special envoy to Guinea Bissau in August 2015. Buhari sent Obasanjo to mediate and help find a solution to the political crisis which was plaguing the West African country at the time. I sent President Olusegun Obasanjo because he is the only person living or dead that has ruled Nigeria for 11 years. I served under him as a military Head of State. He has a strong commitment to Nigeria and Africa, Buhari later explained via a statement released by his media aide, Femi Adesina. That was why I looked for him and asked him to collaborate with President Macky Sall of Senegal to stabilise the situation of Guinea Bissau, he said. Obasanjos recent visit to Borno State, which is at the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency, also suggests that hes on special assignment from the Presidency. Talking to the President (Buhari) about the issue of insurgency in particular and insecurity in general, I know that he is very, very concerned, and not only very concerned, he has got it right, the former president said while in Maiduguri on Monday, March 28, 2016. He (Buhari) has ensured that where they (Boko Haram) have occupied is cleared of any mines. Where you have mines, lives are not only insecure, people feel intimidated for you never know when you may step on them, he added. --------------------------------------------------------------- Speaking to Channels TV on Thursday, April 7, Malla said their suspension is illegitimate. Pulse recalls that on Tuesday, the state assembly members threw caution in the wind as they physically attacked one another following the appointment of caretaker committee chairmen without due consultation with the house of assembly. Governor Tanko Al-Makura had appointed and inaugurated sole administrators to man the affairs of the 11 local government areas in the state following the end of the two-year tenure of the incumbent their chairmen. During the inauguration ceremony, Al-Makura assured that elections would be conducted as soon as possible. Urhoghide made the comment on Thursday, April 7, 2016, while addressing journalists in Abuja, Daily Post reports. I see this thing as a misplaced priority. I see it as something strange in our political history. It is a slight on the National Assembly. It is a pity that 109 Senators are not allowed to make their own free choices. What is going on in the court is just drama," he said. We in the PDP will support him till the end. Since he became the Senate president, Saraki has been able to dignify the Senate. The turning point has been made. We must be able to choose our presiding officers without anybody interfering. Anybody thinking that they will have a chance of making a replacement choice when they remove Saraki is joking. The PDP will decide who will be the president. Anybody they are thinking of will not succeed. The number has not waned. Saraki is getting more support from Nigerians. The APC must not be unmindful of the fact that when we made Saraki Senate President, the PDP had the chance of producing the president. But, the APC is pushing its luck too far, he added. A similar sentiment had earlier been expressed by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Niger Delta, Senator Peter Nwaboshi. Sarakiis currently facing a corruption trial before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT). -------------------------------------------------------------- This was revealed by the Executive Secretary of the states Scholarship Board, Dr Sahabi Yauri, on Thursday, April 7. In an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Bbirnin Kebbi, Yauri said that out of the amount, N147 million was for tuition, registration and tenancy for 30 indigent students studying medicine in Indian universities. He added that N97 million was for the fees of 30 students studying medicine, dentistry and surgery in Sudanese universities, while N70 million was for 5,000 indigent students studying in tertiary institutions in the country. The executive secretary said some of the beneficiaries were studying in the country in six institutions that included Federal University Birnin Kebbi, North West University Kano, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Alqalam Islamic University Katsina and Sokoto State Polytechnic. He explained that the amount had been released to the bank accounts of the benefiting institutions, stressing that payment was approved after scrutiny of students to avoid misplacement of priority. Yauri then urged the students to reciprocate governments gesture by studying hard to justify the investment made on them and commended the conduct of the students, especially those who were studying abroad. During the final debate, about 60 sex workers demonstrated outside the parliament in Paris. Placards read, Dont liberate me, Ill take care of myself. Though those in support of the law says it is to minimalize trafficking, the members of the Strass sex workers Union say it will affect the livelihood of prostitutes. The law also stated that foreign prostitutes will be given a temporary residence permit in France if they agree to find jobs outside of prostitution. Speaking to the Associated Press Agency, Maud Oliver, Socialist MP stated that because 85% of prostitutes in France were as a result of human trafficking the law is willing to help prostitutes who are willing to change. The most important aspect of this law is to accompany prostitutes, give them identity papers because we know that 85% of prostitutes here are victims of trafficking, Oliver said. Civil rights activists Mahamat Nour Ahmed Ibedou, Younous Mahadjir, Nadjo Kaina Palmer and Celine Namadji were arrested two weeks ago and charged with seeking to disturb the peace by calling for anti-government demonstrations. The activists' trial opened in the capital N'Djamena on Thursday amid tensions. At least two people were injured when clashes erupted between police and protesters who tried to block the path of the vehicle which was driving the activists back to jail, according to Amnesty. Chad has one of the region's most capable militaries and has played a central role in Western-backed efforts to take on Islamist militants, including al Qaeda affiliates and Nigeria's Islamic State-linked Boko Haram. The leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm have put the offshore wealth of politicians and public figures under worldwide scrutiny. Just days before a visit by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Algeria summoned the French ambassador on Wednesday to complain that French media reports on the issue were a "malicious campaign". Valls starts a two-day visit to Algiers on Saturday to discuss trade ties and investment opportunities. Algeria, an OPEC member, is seeking to diversify its economy away from oil and gas. Algeria fought a war of independence through 1962. Paris has declined to apologise for the colonial past. Interior Minister Nouredine Bedoui on Thursday described the summons as an "appropriate reaction" to the media coverage of Bouteflika. Guests at the open-air event in central Pristina coughed and wiped their eyes as tear gas canisters were set off just before Thaci gave his inaugural speech to a 1,000-strong audience including Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and diplomats. Police said 12 people were arrested. The public transfer of power from Thaci's predecessor Atifete Jahjaga came a day after he took the oath of office in parliament, an event that was also marred by an opposition boycott and protesters throwing stones outside. The opposition in the majority ethnic Albanian state accuses Thaci of helping clinch an EU-brokered agreement in 2015 that gives a small Serb minority more power over local government decisions and raises the possibility of financing from Belgrade. Thaci, who led a guerrilla insurgency against Serbian forces in 1998-99, went ahead with his ceremony despite the tear gas, saying he wanted dialogue both with Serbia and domestic critics. "Kosovo and Serbia should pass from the phase of normalisation of their relations to the phase of reconciliation between two countries. We will continue the dialogue with the EU and Serbia," he said, standing under Kosovo and European Union flags. "Kosovo does not belong more to one ethnic community and less to another. Kosovo is the homeland of all," he said. Kosovo's biggest opposition party Vetevendosje said its supporters had released the tear gas and vowed not to accept Thaci as president, a largely ceremonial role. Opposition parties have protested for six months against the deal with Serbia, staging street rallies, repeatedly setting off tear gas in parliament and clashing with police. In January, protesters set the government building on fire. Kosovo declared independence in 2008 almost a decade after NATO air strikes drove out Serbian security forces accused of killing and expelling ethnic Albanian civilians during a counter-insurgency war. Kosovo's independence is now recognised by more than 100 countries, though not by Serbia. According to Reuters, the Nigerian and an Iraqi were detained on Thursdays, April 7, and accused of planning a serious act of violence. A prosecutor, Thomas Steinkraus-Koch, information was provided by security sources that both men could have been in contact with ISIS members. Report said no suspicious items were found on the suspects upon arrest but police investigation is ongoing. They are being held in the Bavarian capital Munich and nearby Fuerstenfeldbruck, a police statement said, adding that no imminent threat to the public yet. Islamic State had on Tuesday released a video, suggesting it might carry out further attacks in the West, naming, London, Berlin and Rome as possible targets. Islamic State's stronghold in Libya is the city of Sirte but it also has a presence in Derna and Benghazi in the east and Sabratha in the west, General David M. Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command, told a news briefing. "In Benghazi and Derna, (Libyan armed groups) have fought back against the Islamic State and made it much tougher for them to operate, as well as in Sabratha," he said. The group's growth in Libya has worried Western governments, which fear it will take advantage of persistent political chaos to emulate its success in seizing territory in Iraq and Syria. Since 2014, loose coalitions of armed brigades have backed rival governments in Tripoli and the east. Western governments back the Government of National Accord, in part as the best chance for uniting armed factions against Islamic State. "The challenge of the Government of National Accord is to bring them together, one for the future of Libya, but also to get rid of ISIS," Rodriguez said. He downplayed the possibility Islamic State could strike out from its base and take large portions of territory as it did in Iraq and Syria. "They don't have the homegrown people that know as much about Libya like they did in Iraq and Syria," Rodriguez said. "The Libyan people are also different in the way they treat and respond to foreigners, so all that has an impact." Cameron's admission comes five days after a massive document popularly tagged "Panama Papers" was leaked. The document exposed the hidden funds of thousands of individuals of worldwide. The Prime Ministers father, Ian Cameron, who passed away in 2010, was exposed as running a fund under the name of Blairmore Holdings in the papers. Cameron's office had initially said that it was a private matter whether or not the Prime Minister had benefitted from the fund. It later issued a series of statements denying the Prime Minister currently benefits from offshore funds, or stands to do so in the future. Cameron said he and his wife, Samantha, held 5,000 units in the Blairmore Investment Trust for three years from 1997. The stake was purchased for 12,497 and sold for 31,500 in January 2010, giving the Camerons a 19,003 profit, 300 below the capital gains tax allowance. But the prime minister insists his family declared all annual dividends they received from the investment, and paid full income tax on any returns. I want to be as clear as I can about the past, about the present, about the future, because, frankly, I dont have anything to hide, Im proud of my dad and what he did and the business he established and all the rest of it, Cameron said in an interview with In an interview with ITVs political editor, Robert Peston, on Thursday, April 7. I cant bear to see his name being dragged through the mud. I chose to take a different path from my father, grandfather and great-grandfather, who were all stockbrokers, and Ive got nothing to hide in my arrangements and Im very happy to answer questions about it. The Panama Papers also named Nigeria's Senate President, Bukola Saraki, former Senate President David Mark and the Prime Minister of Iceland among several others as owners of offshore companies. Since 2002, Pahrumps drug court has admitted countless drug offenders with mixed results. Fifth District Court Judge Robert W. Lane developed the program as an alcohol and drug intervention method for adults and juveniles. It hoped to help chemically dependent and nonviolent individuals into substance abuse treatment services. Additionally, it was also is designed to provide an alternative to incarceration and to help participants become and remain drug free so they may get back to living healthier, more productive lives. Last month, three former drug users, young women in their 20s, successfully graduated from the curriculum, clean and sober. All three share similar stories on how they became addicted to drugs and what it took to become sober. Jennifer Benedict, who has three kids, began using in 2002, and was sentenced to drug court along with three years probation for possession of a dangerous drug without a prescription. The drug was a generic form of Xanax, however, she said her first drug of choice was methamphetamine. She was once arrested in California, and again in Pahrump back in 2014. Benedict entered the program on Dec. 31, 2014, and graduated March 14 of this year. She said it was drug court that saved her life. I dont think I would have been able to quit drugs without drug court, she said. Drug court is the main reason why Im doing so much better right now. I am now employed and I have my family back who trusts me. Im about to get married and have a stable relationship. The WestCare outpatient program helped me to learn about healthy relationships and unhealthy ones. Pahrumps WestCare provides health and human services in both residential and outpatient environments for addiction treatment and other services. Benedict said with WestCares program, she was provided one-on-one meetings and individual groups done in different phases. Benedict also credited her friend Pam with recovering from her addiction. She saw it in me that I could do better and she didnt want to see my kids get taken away by the state, she said. She helped me with my children while my mom and my dad took my daughter and raised her. I am getting married on April 23rd, and now that Im around my family again, Ive had so many good times. From her experience, Benedict offered up advice for others who may get the urge to use drugs. I would simply tell them not to get started, she said. There is always that urge to use again, but I go to my AA and NA meetings. There will always be that addictive behavior, but you can just change it by doing the right thing. Show me who your friends are, and Ill show you who you are. I dont hang out with them anymore. I have my kids and my new fiance and loving parents. Ronna McKiernans drug of choice was also methamphetamine. She was arrested three times and was originally given probation, but soon afterward, violated the order and ended up behind bars again. McKiernan was in the program for 13 months. Using drugs pretty much destroyed my life, she said. It destroyed everything. I lost my family, I lost my kids and pretty much lost everything. When I was in drug court, I was given back custody of my kids and now they live with me. Like Benedict, McKiernan credits drug court with her recovery. For me, it wasnt really that hard to kick my drug habit, she said. I just went through the drug court program and the WestCare outpatient program, which is required. It is actually a very good program and Im grateful for it because it saved my life. Thats all I did for the past year. Completing the drug court program. Additionally, McKiernan said she does not get the urge to use drugs again, after turning her life around. I still continue to go to meetings and I have a whole new life, she said. I stay with the program which helps me stay clean. I got my life back, I got my family back, and I have custody of my kids. I also have a good job. I have all the reminders every day in my life why I shouldnt go back to using drugs. McKiernan also imparted some sage advice to would-be drug users and those who have been ordered into the drug court program. My best advice to someone young, is just dont get started, she said. There are a lot of new people who get into drug court each week, and they really fight the system. If they put as much energy into doing the program instead of fighting it, they would see that it is there to help them. I think drug court saved my life. For Jessika Burke, her drug use began in 2011 and she was arrested that same year. She racked up another arrest in January of 2014. Unlike McKiernan, Burke said she initially loathed the drug court program when she first entered. I wasnt ready for drug court back then, she recalled. I ended up dropping out, six and a half months into the program, because I thought that I had my problem handled. I ended up relapsing and for the next two years of my life I was living miserably on the streets, addicted and I couldnt find myself out of it. Following her 2014 arrest, Burke wrote the court a letter, asking for another chance. She said she had really become aware of her problem and wanted to restart the program. The court wrote me a letter back saying that if all of my drug tests came back negative, I would be able to get back into the program, she said. I had hit the point of insanity to such an extent that I had wound up being sent to the Lakes Crossing Mental Institution in northern Nevada. While at the facility, Burke said she was relieved when doctors told her she was well enough to return home. I underwent a mental health evaluation and they told me that I was sane and well enough to come home, she said. I absolutely love drug court and I love everything about the outpatient rehabilitation program. It saved my life. Burke said her drugs of choice varied. It was definitely methamphetamine for the upper, and then to come down off of meth, I would drink anywhere from a pint of liquor to a full bottle, while taking many prescription medications like Oxycontin, Xanax and Valium. Maintaining her sense of humor, Burke said a lot of her problems began after hitting rock bottom. You could say I got myself into a deeper hole once I hit rock bottom just to prove that I could go even lower, she said. I dont have any children, thank God. I still stay with my grandmother and my mom and it definitely tore a hole through my relationship with them. Burke noted her drug use affected her state of mind to the point of mania. I had become so paranoid and angry, she said. It got to the point where I was just such an angry and depressed personality, that all I would do is sit there in my room and stare at the floor. Burke said it was difficult at times for her to stop using, but once she came to grips with her plight, she was able to see and think differently. Her recovery began soon after picking up an Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous book while incarcerated. I was able to be honest with myself and once I made that commitment to the first step by admitting that I had a problem, it wasnt all that hard. I began working the steps and I realize that I was working them naturally. I began reading the books and highlighting it with my colored pencil. As I was highlighting it, I realized that I was ready, and that it was working naturally and I didnt have to struggle. With my first time around, I was struggling because I was fighting it. Burke is now gainfully employed and looking forward to the next chapters in her young life. Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes The image of college students on spring break is sun, beaches, and partying. However, a group of college students ditched the stereotype and took in rural law instead. The image of college students on spring break is sun, beaches, and partying. However, a group of college students ditched the stereotype and took in rural law instead. A group of students from University of Nevada, Las Vegas Boyd Law School took part in a program dubbed alternative spring break in March, where one of the days drew them out to Nye County to see the legal system in a rural setting. The group of six students spent time in Pahrump as well as Amargosa Valley, meeting judges and lawyers in the area and getting a firsthand feel how law is handled in the county. Nikki Harris, alternative spring break coordinator at UNLV, said the program in its fourth year tries to spend equal time in the north and the south part of Nevada since they are the only law school in the state. The law school uses the program to promote public interest. After spending time up north in Carson City last spring break, this year the program found its way closer to UNLV and made the 70-mile-plus drive to Nye County. I wanted to do something this year that was more close to home for the students who were likely to wind up working in Clark County when they graduate, Harris said. One of the challenges was how far did we have to go where they could experience something that is considered more rural than Las Vegas. For Harris and most of her students it was their first time visiting Nye County so they really didnt know what to expect. I heard plenty about it and knew it was a short drive and I was encouraged to take a look to see whats different between Nye and Clark county, as far as practice of law and the needs of citizens in that area, Harris said. One of the students that took part in the trip, first-year law student Seleste Hamilton, said that the alternative spring break intrigued her. It seemed like a really great opportunity to not only meet the attorneys and judges but also being able to visit Pahrump and Amargosa Valley to help individuals with legal topics, Hamilton said. The group worked with Nevada Legal Services while spending their day in the area, as they conducted a forms clinic in Pahrump. Where law students will assist attorneys at Nevada Legal Services in the ask a lawyer program where they help people fill out civil, self-help forms, Harris said. Nevada Legal Services and alumni of UNLV in the area also helped set the group up with the right local contacts to ensure they got the full legal experience in town. That enabled students to meet people that practiced somewhere a little differently and hear the differences between the Regional Justice Center (in Las Vegas) and the Fifth Judicial District Court, Harris said. In addition to local attorneys, students also met with Fifth Judicial District Court Judge Kimberly Wanker, who gave them an in-depth look at the court system in Nye County. Despite talking about several aspects of the legal system in Nye County, a few topics stood out more than others to Harris and her students about the difference between the two neighboring counties. With public safety a major concern in this day and age, especially in state and county buildings, the group was surprised how lax things were at the Pahrump Justice Center. The biggest thing that we are still talking about is that there is no security in the courthouse, Harris said. That was blowing our mind and still does. With what they heard from Judge Wanker about instances that have occurred in the past, they were even more taken aback by the lack of security that was present in the court. Judge Wanker gave us a lot of stories about security issues that they have to address and deal with differently since they dont have that screening station, Harris said. That was very interesting to hear that the judge does stuff traveling with her bailiff for the security issues that they have to address, as well as the judge carrying a weapon. Harris went on to say that through the stories they heard, that carrying a weapon seemed to be the norm in Nye County, but is unheard of from the judges in Clark County. Another aspect that the group found interesting is how the legal cases in the county intertwined with one another. We also spoke to the judge about the types of cases she encountered as well as what clients Nevada Legal Services work with and the types of issues and how they overlap and dont stay in just one particular practice area, Harris said. So that was very intriguing as well. In addition, the drug court that is in place here in Nye County was another area of the legal system that drew the spring breakers interest. Judge Wanker took students on a tour and also discussed the drug court as a way to try to rehabilitate, as opposed to punish necessarily, Harris said. It did seem a little more hands-on and more of a caring approach to really try and help families that were in the system. One story the judge told us was that any given day you could have a defendant and victim who could be person A and B, but tomorrow they could switch roles and oftentimes drugs were a part of that. Hamilton agreed, as talking with Judge Wanker and the attorneys she grasped that there were more drug-related legal issues in Nye County compared to what shes seen in Las Vegas. Compared to Las Vegas, there seems to be more issues with drugs in Pahrump, which I thought it was cool that they had the drug court, to help with the problems dealing with drugs, Hamilton said. One of the goals of the alternative spring break program is to try and get law students to consider working in a rural area of the state once they graduate and after the day spent in Nye County there was some talk of that. Actually, one of our students, she was born and raised in Las Vegas and said after being up there and speaking with the attorneys we met with that her eyes are open and shes not saying she wont stay in Las Vegas, but now there is more opportunity to see what else is nearby, Harris said. We also had a few students discuss the more hands-on approach, as far as the ask a lawyer type of questions that they were being asked. So I think students were a lot more curious about the area than they expected to be. Hamilton concurred, stating that she is actually considering doing some form of legal work in Nye County while she completes her schooling. Im looking into helping with Nevada Legal Services while Im in law school with Pahrump form clinics, she said. Because of what Ive seen on the trip, I would also like to do pro bono work in Pahrump. I plan on living in the Las Vegas area after Im done with school, so Id like to go up and help some of the people out there, who might not have access to affordable legal assistance. In all Harris said the experience was a success and that they will consider returning to the area for future alternative spring breaks. The big thing was getting out of Las Vegas for the day and seeing the different opportunities and issues that were presented to us while in Nye County, she said. Contact reporter Mick Akers at makers@pvtimes.com. Follow @mickakers on Twitter. The Nye County Water District Governing Board will address overdedicated water rights after most of its members rejected the idea of looking into beneficial water use. The Nye County Water District Governing Board will address overdedicated water rights after most of its members rejected the idea of looking into beneficial water use. The board initially sought legal advice about proof of beneficial water use in Basin 162 from George Benesch, legal counsel for the Nye County Water District at the January 25 meeting. In a letter addressed to Nye County Water District General Manager Darrell Lacy on Feb. 12, Benesch said that the board didnt have the authority to demand to direct Nevada State Engineer Jason King to prove beneficial water use. It would be a futile act for the district to direct the state engineer to call for proof of beneficial use in the Pahrump Hydrographic Basin, Benesch said in a letter. Benesch said that state law provides for a groundwater management plan for the Pahrump Hydrographic Basin and such a plan has been drafted and is in the process of being approved at the local level. The ongoing proceeding of adopting such a plan would be the appropriate place to bring the proposed action that is the subject of this letter to the attention of the state engineer, he said in a letter. Most members of the board abandoned the idea after hearing the letter, but chair Greg Dann said he still wants to pursue the plan. The longer we put off rectifying this problem, it will come back, I guarantee you, to every single domestic (well) owner in this valley, no doubt in my mind, he said. Nevada water law follows the doctrine of prior appropriation, or first in time, first in right, which means that the first person to file on a water resource for beneficial use is typically considered first for a permanent right to the water. This, however, is subject to the state engineers determination of available unappropriated water, according to Southern Nevada Water Authority. Per the boards request, Oz Wichman, contractor for water board, will draft a letter for a clarification of overdedicated water rights. Overdedication is a large part of getting the overallocation amount in line with perennial yield, Wichman said after the meeting. The state of Nevada issued over 60,000 acre feet of water rights for Basin 162. The amount of perennial yield in Basin 162 is 20,000 acre feet. This leaves the Pahrump Valley with 40,000 acre feet of overappropriation. Wichman said when a developer creates a subdivision, the state of Nevada requires them to dedicate water rights some 3-to-4 times greater than anticipated actual use. Only 25-to-30 percent of those water rights are pumped, he added. So the question is what happens to everything that is overdedicated, Wichman said. We need to clarify that the state engineer will not allow these water rights to be moved in support of another project, he added. Contact reporter Daria Sokolova at dsokolova@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes.com With their win, Pahrump Valley has clinched a playoff spot in the 3A southern regional tournament. The Trojans need just one more win or a tie by Equipo Academy to lock up the No. 1 seed in the Mountain League. The Belgian Village Inn, home of the legendary VandeReuben, is reopening this spring. Well, sort of. Katie Manning, whose grandparents opened the Moline landmark in 1977, plans to reopen the restaurant, which closed in February 2014, with a limited menu of chilled not grilled rye and raisin bread sandwiches. Ive been around this my whole life, the 28-year-old said from inside the maroon tavern on 7th Street in Olde Towne. Its one of those things where you dont know you really loved something so much until its gone, and I think a lot of people around here feel the same way. Manning first broke the news last Saturday on Facebook when she created the page for the eatery under the new name, Belgian Village To Go. She plans to sell signature items, including oatmeal cookie dough and homemade bread, every Thursday starting later this month. Initially, Ill probably have some help from friends and family, but this is just me, said Manning, who will commute to the Quad-Cities every week from her home in Cedar Rapids. Im making all the bread, all the sandwiches and all the dressings, and honestly, it will take me three to four days to prep for that one day of being open. Manning added that her mother, Karen, is leading her through a crash course in baking and sandwich crafting. To jog your memory, the traditional hubcap-sized Reuben comes stacked with sauerkraut, corned beef, ham and Swiss cheese smothered in a secret sauce. We dont know how its going to go, but were all behind it, said Karen, who noted that her daughter has rehabbed the kitchen and purchased new equipment. Theyre the exact same recipes, just made by younger hands. Meanwhile, the 2,625-square-foot building remains up for sale. Mel Foster Co. lists the near century-old structure for $249,900. If the building sells, thats fine, said Karen, whose parents, Denis and Loretta Cuervorst, started their culinary career baking bread in the house. The whole point is for her to be able to do this in any location. As for the cold sandwich concept, Manning said she launched the idea two years ago on the restaurant's final day to keep up with the barrage of customers. "We didn't have a grill big enough to cook them fast enough, but they flew out the door that way," she said, noting that people can grill the meals at home. "It's a bit scary, but it's something I just had to do." WASHINGTON | The voters have spoken: Never Trump. Wisconsin Republicans sent the nation a clear message Tuesday night in the drubbing they dealt the bilious billionaire. Republicans, and Americans, are better than Donald Trump. The message goes well beyond the 13-point primary victory over Trump by Ted Cruz, himself a less-than-ideal candidate for Republicans. Not only did 65 percent of Republicans vote for somebody other than Trump, but four in 10 said they never would vote for him: They'll vote for a third-party candidate, support Hillary Clinton or stay home in November if Trump is the nominee. Thirty-five percent of Republicans said they'd actually be scared about what Trump might do as president and an additional 20 percent colored themselves concerned. Wisconsin confirms what voters elsewhere have decided. Trump has won only 37 percent of Republican votes nationwide, and he hasn't gotten an outright majority in a single contest, even as the field has shrunk. Take away some Southern states where Trump did particularly well and his share of the vote is even punier. I'm not joining the parlor game of predicting whether Trump can get enough delegates to secure the nomination or can prevail at the convention. In a sense, it doesn't matter. We already know for certain and American allies around the world should recognize this, too that the majority of Republican voters, like the vast majority of Americans, want nothing to do with Trump. Six months ago, when Trump was lapping the field in public opinion polls, I argued that he would ultimately fail because "American voters are more sensible than many poll-obsessed journalists and commentators give them credit for. Trump ... won't prevail in the Republican primary because voters, in the end, tend to get it right" and "will never choose a candidate who expresses the bigotry and misogyny that Trump has." That prediction looked shaky for some time, but Trump's recent tumble rewards a faith that the voters, in the long run, almost always get it right. It has been a wild ride, as Trump has gone from impossible to inevitable and now to questionable. There were long periods of despair, as the country came closer than it has in modern times to embracing an authoritarian leader and as Trump released waves of bigotry. Other Republican candidates, putting ambition before country, waited too long to clear the field to give voters a consensus alternative to Trump. Is Trump done? "Donald Trump will lose the Republican presidential nomination," my colleague E.J. Dionne boldly forecasts. Another esteemed colleague, Eugene Robinson, looks at the delegate math and the polls and says "reports of Trump's demise are surely premature." But, either way, it has become clear that Trump is ultimately doomed. True, he has a sizable lead in the upcoming New York primary, and he could secure the nomination without getting a majority of the popular vote. But Republican voters are correctly coming to understand that, even if he limps through the nominating process, his reckless candidacy will be a sure loser in the fall. Wisconsin exit polls found that among Republicans whose top priority is a candidate who can win in November, seven in 10 picked Cruz and only two in 10 voted for Trump. Half of Cruz supporters and six in 10 John Kasich supporters acknowledged being "scared" of what Dangerous Donald would do in the White House. Half of Republican voters said Trump has run the most unfair campaign, while only three in 10 embraced Trump-style isolationism. Cruz gained on Trump in Wisconsin among all types of Republican voters, even though fewer than 15 percent of Republicans said they were excited about Cruz. This is evidence that Cruz's support is largely a Never Trump phenomenon. No doubt many factors contributed to Trump's unmasking: the violence at rallies, his talk of punishing women who have abortions, his campaign manager facing charges from an altercation with a female reporter, the cockamamie ideas Trump has offered to make Mexico pay for a border wall and to cut the debt in half. But most likely the majority of Republicans were never willing to support him and this is becoming obvious only now because they're coalescing around Cruz. As Dionne put it, the "instinct that Americans would never choose as their president a clownish peddler of racial and religious stereotypes who made everything up as he went along was right from the start." It was touch-and-go for a while. But you'll rarely lose money betting on the wisdom of the voters. MOSCOW, April 8 (RAPSI) The Moscow City Court on Friday put a stay on the proceedings for recovery of 16 million rubles ($236,000) from opposition politician Alexei Navalny in favor of Kirovles Company in connection with the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), RAPSI reported from the courtroom. The hearing was suspended until Russias Supreme Court takes a decision upon the ECHR ruling. In February, ECHR published a ruling regarding Kirovles embezzlement case, claiming that Navalnys and his accomplice Pyotr Ofitserovs rights on a fair trial were violated. However, ECHR did not find a political motive in this case. ECHR ruled that Navalny must be compensated with 48,000 euro of legal costs and Ofitserov with 22,000 euro. Additionally Russia was ordered to pay 8,000 euro each in damages. Russian Ministry of Justice appealed this ruling in the Supreme Court. Navalny was given a five-year suspended sentence in July 2013 for embezzlement at the Kirovles timber company. In May, Moscow's Lyublinsky District Court increased a probation period for him to 5.5 years in the case. Ofitserov has received a four-year suspended sentence. According to investigators, while serving on a voluntary basis as an adviser to the Kirov Region governor, Navalny allegedly organized the theft of over 10,000 cubic meters of timber from Kirovles between May and September 2009. He presumably acted in collusion with Vyatka Timber Company Director Pyotr Ofitserov and Kirovles CEO Vyacheslav Opalyov. We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on the website. The purposes of using cookies are defined in the Privacy Policy of RAPSI If you agree to continue using cookies, please click the "Confirm" button. If you do not agree, you can change your browser settings. Man responsible for embezzling money from real estate investors sentenced to 13 years MOSCOW, April 8 (RAPSI) Head of several construction organizations in Novosibirsk, Vladimir Zurkov, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for defrauding real estate investors of 900 million rubles ($13.4 mln), RIA Novosti reported on Friday. According to investigators, Zurkov was acting against the interests of his organizations and investors. He was selling residential and non-residential premises in the buildings around Novosibirsk under prices that were significantly lower than market ones in order to accelerate sells. As a result, his construction companies went bankrupt and were not able to fulfill their obligations to 913 citizens. Zurkov appropriated money earned from his deals while the damage caused by his actions reached 900 million. 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 Polisario has not yet recovered from the hard blow it was dealt in January when the Swedish government refused to recognize its fanciful republic that it suffered a new setback inflicted by the highest authority of the European Union (EU.) The Polisario leaders and their Algerian mentors were stunned by the appeal lodged by the Council of Europe against the ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which annulled the 2012 EU-Morocco Agriculture Agreement. For the Polisario and the Algerian rulers, it is not the appeal proper that is most bothering, but the solid arguments put forward by the Legal Department of the European Council. Actually in the appeal filed on February 19, the European Council argues that the judges of the ECJ committed errors of law in concluding that the Polisario was directly and individually concerned by the annulled decision. For the Council of Europe, which acts and speaks on behalf of the 28 EU Member States and coordinates the EUs policy, the Polisario has not the standing to lodge a complaint with a European jurisdiction, and likewise cannot claim any right in connection with the southern provinces of Morocco. In the appeal published lately in the official gazette of the EU, the European Council underlines the many loopholes of a judgment based on unfounded assumptions and false allegations detrimental to Morocco that were presented by the Polisario and the European lobbyers supporting the separatist front. In its argument, the Council has laid bare the dubious claims of the Polisario and Algeria, whose final objective is to create an artificial state in North Africa. The Council has at the same time shown a clear-cut position of the EU in favor of Moroccos inalienable rights over its southern provinces and their resources. And as usual, the manipulations and maneuvers designed by Algeria and the Polisario ended up in failure as they do not hold because they are illegitimate and groundless. 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 Here are the Halloween and fall events happening in Salina As people in Salina get ready for fall, there are several events happening on Halloween and the days before it. 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. Seguin, TX (78155) Today Some sun this morning with increasing clouds this afternoon. High 89F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.. Tonight Cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 74F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph. In praise of my Ohio State students and their research on marijuana law, policy and reform | Main | "Reconceptualizing the Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, and 'Cruel and Unusual' Punishment" This new Reuters article, headlined "Bill Clinton confronts protesters who say his crime reforms hurt blacks," reports on a notable exchange about crime and punishment involving former President Bill Clinton today. Here are the details: Former President Bill Clinton faced down protesters angry at the impact his crime reforms of 20 years ago have had on black Americans and defended the record of Hillary Clinton, his wife, who is relying on the support of black voters in her quest for the presidency. The former president spent more than 10 minutes confronting the protesters at a campaign rally in Philadelphia for his wife on Thursday over criticisms that a 1994 crime bill he approved while president led to a surge in the imprisonment of black people.... In Philadelphia, several protesters heckled the former president mid-speech and held up signs, including one that read "CLINTON Crime Bill Destroyed Our Communities." Video footage of Hillary Clinton defending the reforms in 1994 has been widely circulated during the campaign by activists in the Black Lives Matter protest movement. In the footage she calls young people in gangs "super-predators" who need to "be brought to heel." Hillary Clinton, 68, who also has faced protesters upset by her remarks, in February said she regretted her language. Bill Clinton, 69, who was president from 1993-2001, on Thursday defended her 1994 remarks, which protesters say were racially insensitive, and suggested the protesters' anger was misplaced. "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," he said, shaking his finger at a heckler as Clinton supporters cheered, according to video of the event. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She (Hillary Clinton) didn't." "You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter," he told a protester. "Tell the truth." Hillary Clinton promised to end "mass incarceration" in her first major speech of her campaign last year. She has won the support of the majority of black voters in every state nominating contest so far, often by a landslide.... Bill Clinton said last year that he regrets signing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law because it contributed to the country's high incarceration rate of black people for nonviolent crimes. On Thursday, he did not explicitly recant those regrets, but appeared to be angry at any suggestion the bill was wholly bad. The legislation imposed tougher sentences, put thousands more police on the streets and helped fund the building of extra prisons. It was know for its federal "three strikes" provision that sent violent offenders to prison for life. The bill was backed by congressional Republicans and hailed at the time as a success for Clinton.... Bill Clinton's remarks on Thursday drew criticism online. Some saw him as dismissive of the Black Lives Matter movement, a national outgrowth of anger over a string of encounters in which police officers killed unarmed black people. Former Prez Clinton takes on protestors complaining about his tough-on-crime policies | Main | Should we be linking nationwide crime spikes to heroin addiction and the black market it is driving? April 7, 2016 "Reconceptualizing the Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, and 'Cruel and Unusual' Punishment" The title of this post is the title of this interesting new article by Alex Reinert now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract: The meaning of the Eighth Amendments Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause has long been hotly contested. For scholars and jurists who look to original meaning or intent, there is little direct contemporaneous evidence on which to rest any conclusion. For those who adopt a dynamic interpretive framework, the Supreme Courts evolving standards of decency paradigm has surface appeal, but deep conflicts have arisen in application. This Article offers a contextual account of the Eighth Amendments meaning that addresses both of these interpretive frames by situating the Amendment in eighteenth and nineteenth-century legal standards governing relationships of subordination. In particular, I argue that the phrase cruel and unusual punishment was intertwined with pre- and post-Revolutionary notions of the permissible limits on the treatment of slaves. The same standard that the Framers adopted for the treatment of prisoners in 1787 was contemporaneously emerging as the standard for holding slaveholders and others criminally and civilly liable for harsh treatment of slaves. Indeed, by the middle of the nineteenth century, constitutional law, positive law, and common law converged to regulate the treatment of prisoners and slaves under the same cruel and unusual rubric. Thus, when the Supreme Court of Virginia referred to prisoners in 1871 as slaves of the State, the description had more than rhetorical force. Going beyond the superficial similarity in legal standards, examining how the cruel and unusual standard was explicated in the context of slavery offers important insights to current debates within the Eighth Amendment. First, the contention by some originalists that the Punishments Clause does not encompass a proportionality principle is in tension with how courts interpreted the same language in the context of slavery. Indeed, relationships of subordination had long been formally governed by a principle of proportional and moderate correction, even though slavery in practice was characterized by extreme abuse. Second, to the extent that dynamic constitutional interpretation supports limiting criminal punishment according to evolving standards of decency, the comparative law frame used here raises questions as to how far our standards have evolved. This, in turn, should cause commentators and jurists to reconsider whether the twenty-first century lines we have drawn to regulate the constitutional bounds of punishment are adequate to advance the principle of basic human dignity that is thought to be at the heart of the Eighth Amendment. April 7, 2016 at 07:47 PM | Permalink Comments All this paper does is replicate the intellectual mumbo jumbo at the heart of all of the court's rulings regarding dignity. We didn't fight a civil war over dignity, we fought one over equality. Equality and dignity and two incompatible concepts, if not incompossible ones. Posted by: Daniel | Apr 7, 2016 11:58:31 PM Dignity is "the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect." From ancient times, it was honored as an important quality, but one historically often only deemed appropriate for a specialized elite. In the U.S., it was to be a basic right of the average man. No titles of nobility to be granted here, for instance. Federalist 1 speaks of the Constitution as "the safest course for your liberty, your dignity, and your happiness." "Dignity" has been used in hundreds of court opinions for good cause. Dignity was so much of a concern in Hamilton's times that men fought duels when their dignity was threatened. A major way was to diminish one's manhood, to allege they were not your equal. Dignity is protected by various constitutional provisions and the barrier of cruel and unusual punishments is a major one. But, slavery was a major way dignity was denied, and this was a concern in the anti-slavery movement. As Booker T. Washington once noted: "By the same token that Lincoln made America free, he pushed back the boundaries of freedom everywhere, gave the spirit of liberty a wider influence throughout the world, and reestablished the dignity of man as man." Equality and dignity are compatible. OTOH, it just might be that Daniel is on a different wavelength here, which has been the case in the past. Posted by: Joe | Apr 8, 2016 9:43:25 AM Post a comment After his car was stolen, El Salvadoran national Pedro Figueroa-Zarceno went to the San Francisco Police Department to file a report. But when officers learned of a warrant for his arrest it remains unclear what kind Figueroa-Zarceno was taken into custody and handed over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. Correction: Per the Chronicle," Federal officials said Figueroa-Zarceno was the subject of a deportation order arising from his failure to appear at an immigration hearing in San Antonio in December 2005, and from a 2012 conviction for drunken driving." The event was interpreted by many as a violation of San Francisco's local Sanctuary City Policy, a practice of non-cooperation between the SFPD and federal immigration authorities to protect immigrants like Figueroa-Zarceno from deportation, which he now faces. Specifically, the policy is an ordinance, established in 1989, that the city's sheriff should not deliver federal immigration authorities inmates with no legal status unless they carry with them a violent felony conviction from the past seven years and face another violent felony charge. The case of Figueroa-Zarceno got Supervisor John Avalos, a self-appointed protector of the Sanctuary City policy, pretty fired up at the time."We want to make sure that as the sanctuary policy is politicized by whats happening on a national level," Avalos said, "that we can protect it and make it stronger and make sure that people like Pedro do not get impacted." At a public hearing and committee meeting today, the Chronicle reports that Avalos will seek to tighten the screws on the policy, which Supervisors last upheld in a unanimous vote this past October. To be precise, the current ordinance restricts local law enforcement from holding jailed inmates past their release date and communicating with immigration and customs officials in order to hand them over. Notifying federal authorities that an inmate is about to be release is not technically against the ordinance, although it sounds like such prerelease notifications are informally banned. Now, Avalos's extension would formalize the current practice of withholding such notifications. The last vote on the subject, a defense of the ordinance, followed a public outcry that was particularly pitched in conservative media related to the killing of Kathryn Steinle at Pier 14 the previous summer. That preceding spring, the Sheriffs Department had released Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a man who had unlawfully re-entered the United States after his fifth deportation to Mexico. He has been charged in Steinle's shooting death, and most recently in the case, Lopez-Sanchez's defense sought the dismissal of murder charges, claiming that it's clear the shooting was the accidental outcome of a ricochet. Then-Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi was criticized for not handing over Lopez-Sanchez to immigration agents who sought to deport him a sixth time, though he maintained that city law restricted him from doing so. In fact, he had issued a department memo reiterating the policy, banning communication with immigration agents who might seek to deport jailed suspects. But current Sheriff Vicki Hennessy campaigned on the claim that she favored notifying federal agents of inmates with serious convictions who might be released. Hennessy reportedly testifies at the hearing today. "We cannot allow one event to dictate 25 years of our citys policies toward undocumented immigrants," Supervisor Malia Cohen said in October, referencing the Sanchez-Lopez case." [We] cannot allow hateful conservative news stations to drive how we make policy decisions here in San Francisco," she added. While human delivery people may someday face competition from flying Amazon and Google drones, those drones themselves may have a worthy competitor in robots, the likes of which the Chronicle now profiles. It doesnt make sense to drive a two-ton car to deliver two pounds of something. It wastes energy, time and CO2. one robotics CEO, Allan Martinson, told the paper. His company, Starship Technologies, was founded by some former architects of Skype, and is perhaps testing with designs to deliver goods for Walmart. If you think Starship's robot probes look like they belong on a distant planet, you aren't wrong they're repurposed space-sample collectors designed for a NASA contest. Another challenger in the delivery race is Dispatch, not to be confused with the stoner-bro band of yore, and the company's aptly-named bot "Carry." Though just two such Carry robots exist, Dispatch is well funded, having scored a $2 million investment round led by esteemed VC group Andreessen Horowitz. Carry's appearance is also somewhat striking it looks like an ambitious mini-fridge or the precursor to R2D2 from Star Wars. But, as opposed to navigating a barren lunar landscape, robo-deliverers from Starship and Dispatch must navigate a bustling human world. To get its start, Dispatch is using Carry to stroll around Menlo College and CSU Monterey Bay. The great thing about college campuses is that they are dynamic with bikes, skateboards, pedestrians, Dispatch CEO Stav Braun said. Its a great environment to train our system. Starship and Carry can each accommodate more than a flying drone four to five grocery bag-sized loads or so and best of all, they won't fall out of the sky. But nonetheless, legal frameworks and regulations, the bugaboo of innovation, will require as much careful maneuvering as city streets or college quads. To that effect, the Chronicle points out that last week, the Federal Aviation Administration cleared the way for some drones, while in DC, a bill concerning driverless couriers, the Personal Delivery Device Act of 2016, will be considered soon. Starship and Carry are autonomous and electric, but can also be controlled remotely, many at a time by a single person in Starship's conception. And as for the drone competition? The technology is at this inflection point potentially where it can work really well, Andreessen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon tells Forbes. If you actually study the math of shipping a toothbrush to you, it costs $5 for a flying drone and just 50 cents on the ground. Related: With This SF Delivery Service Flowchart, You'll Never Go Anywhere To Get Anything Again What's this? It appears that the wives of two sworn enemies in SF politics, District Attorney George Gascon and former Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, are going to share a stage this weekend in a Spanish-language production of The Vagina Monologues. The famed Eve Ensler play, which has now been performed by groups of women thousands of times around the world, is of course about female empowerment and touches on issues of sex and rape, and a production is taking place Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Victoria Theater in the Mission starring both Eliana Lopez and Mrs. Gascon, a.k.a. Fabiola Kramsky, as the Chronicle reports. Lopez, of course, was at the center of that 2012 domestic abuse case involving Mirkarimi, in which Gascon was the man leveling the charges against the newly elected sheriff. Mirkarimi weathered the storm of an Ethics Committee hearing and kept his job following a brief suspension, and even got his domestic violence conviction expunged in 2015. But his reputation never quite recovered, and he lost a reelection bid last year to Vicki Hennessy. And Lopez, who's producing The Vagina Monologues en espanol, was a noted Venezuelan telenovela star before relocating to San Francisco to have Mirkarimi's baby. Last year, she wrote and starred in a one-woman show, also in Spanish, that was all about her husband's scandal, titled, "Cual Es el Escandalo?" or "What Is the Scandal?" Gascon's wife, Kramsky, is a native of Mexico City and will allegedly be doing some of the racier material in this weekend's production. She's no stranger to stage and screen either she's an Emmy-winning TV journalist who's worked for Univision, first in Los Angeles and more recently hosting the daily morning show "Al Despertar" on Univision San Francisco. Lopez and Kramsky also took part in Ensler's One Billion Rising event in SF in 2013, as Fog City Journal reported, to bring attention to sexual violence against women and girls worldwide. Previously: Not A Joke: Eliana Lopez Is Doing A Comedic Play, In Spanish, About The Mirkarimi Domestic Abuse Scandal Protesters marched throughout the Mission last night in protest of yesterday's SFPD shooting death of a homeless man currently only identified as "Jose." While officers claim that Jose charged at them with a kitchen knife, and that they fired in self defense, The Guardian, the Chronicle, and NBC Bay Area are all reporting that multiple witnesses contradict police claims and insist that Jose neither charged at officers nor was he holding a weapon when police opened fire. Over one hundred people marched last night to the 19th and Shotwell Street site of the shooting, reports Mission Local, before continuing on to the SFPD Mission Station on Valencia at 17th Street. "How do you spell brutality?" video shows protesters chanting in front of the station before answering, in unison, "SFPD." How do you spell brutality? SFPD https://t.co/ye4P2auOvc 64 GB (@gilbazoid) April 8, 2016 He didnt charge at the officers," The Guardian reports one witness, John Visor, as saying. "He was going in circles because he didnt understand what they said. He had a knife on him but he didnt have it out." This account, which directly contradicts the official police narrative, is backed up by another witness, Rosalyn Barnett, who told NBC Bay Area that not only was Jose not charging officers when they opened fire, but in fact he was moving away from them. "They start launching bean bags at him and he started to run away," she explained, adding that it was then that police shot Jose. A third witness, who saw the shooting from his kitchen window, spoke with the Chronicle and also told a story that stands in sharp contrast to SFPD's version of events. He didnt ever charge, explained the neighbor, who requested to remain anonymous. It seemed unnecessary. He didnt move toward them, but you could tell he was mad. Jose had reportedly been living in a homeless camp on Shotwell Street, and at least one of his neighbors told The Guardian that Jose grew up in the neighborhood. An eviction apparently forced him from his apartment and onto the street, where he'd lived for an unknown amount of time. Jose was reported to have died yesterday at SF General around 1:00 p.m. Black and brown United protesting another murdered community member by @SFPD #justicenow pic.twitter.com/BEKbUWfAXX Kenny (@KentaviousPrime) April 8, 2016 Yesterday's shooting has echoes of the December shooting death of 26-year-old Mario Woods. In that case, police initially claimed that Woods had moved toward them with a weapon outstretched in a threatening manner, before additional video surfaced casting doubt on that claim. And in what appears to be an added tragic element to yesterday's incident, friends of Jose are saying that he spoke no English and likely didn't understand police commands. "There are now two investigations underway by the Police Department and the District Attorney," wrote Mayor Ed Lee in a press release Thursday, "and today, I am asking the Office of Citizen Complaints to launch their own independent investigation." The investigations are unlikely to bring solace to those who feel the police gunned down Jose without cause. Speaking with Jose's friend and witness to yesterday's event, John Visor, a reporter with ABC 7 seemed in a state of disbelief, asking, "You saying it was cold blooded murder?" To which the Visor replied, "Yeah." Previously: [Update] Homeless Man Shot By SFPD Has Died, Witnesses Dispute Police Claims DES MOINES | House Republicans unveiled a Medicaid oversight plan Thursday that requires unprecedented data and reporting by private managed care organizations. Rep. Linda Miller, R-Bettendorf, said the GOP health care initiative is intended to add protections and accountability measures to ensure patients continue to receive high-quality care. Iowans expect us to have oversight of the Medicaid system. Its our job, Miller told reporters at a Statehouse news conference. She said the House GOP approach will provide details lawmakers need to make good decisions within an existing framework to oversee a Medicaid program that now is being managed by three private companies. We want it to be efficient and we want to make sure that the data that were getting back as legislators and policy makers actually makes sense, added Miller in discussing the plan. It also calls for letting the public see much of the performance data from managed care organizations. Senators who supported a more-expansive oversight structure called the GOP bill a good start for negotiations they hoped would net a bipartisan compromise. We believe the bill that we passed provides the kind of oversight we need in Iowa to ensure that that health-care safety net is truly in place and, if its not, what we can do to try and make sure that we close any gaps, said Senate President Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque. Does that mean that we shut the door on any negotiations -- of course not. Earlier this session, senators voted 32-18 in support of an oversight plan to closely monitor the private companies managing Iowas $5 billion Medicaid system. Sen. Liz Math, D-Robins, chairwoman of the Senate Human Resources Committee, said much of the data covered in the Republican House plan is information that the private companies and state agencies already are going to produce under the Medicaid managed care contract. She sad she wants to see a little bit more robust consumer protection and independent assessments from providers, enrollees and experts outside the Medicaid system. Sen. David Johnson, R-Ocheyedan, said at first blush the House GOP approach appears quite passive, calling for a lot of reports with no explanation of what happens next or who determines when protections and advocates are needed MCOs or the Medicaid clients doctors. This is a work in progress. I believe we need to leave the session with some form of legislative oversight but we actually need to give the Legislature more authority to hold meetings with administrative staff and MCO representatives, said Johnson, who called for quarterly Medicaid oversight meetings. Im still optimistic we can leave here with some agreement on oversight. House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, said she expected some form of Medicaid oversight would be included in the Legislatures fiscal 2017 health & human services budget bill that gets passed before the session ends later this month. At the end of the day what is important to know is that we have never, ever held this states health plan to higher standards than we are today, Upmeyer told reporters. We have never had higher standards of integrity, transparency and accountability. Including the Medicaid oversight language in a budget bill would make it subject to an item veto by Gov. Terry Branstad, which was a concern from some legislators on Thursday. Growing your team is an important part of growing your business. But its not always a simple process. There are expenses and laws to take into account, like Californias new $15 an hour minimum wage. And you may even have to deal with things like seasonal hiring, which the White House may be able to help you with. Read about these news items and more that may impact your small business in this weeks Small Business Trends news and information roundup. Employment California Minimum Wage Poised to Rise to $15 an Hour Labor costs just shot way up in the states of California and New York. California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation Monday that will raise the minimum wage in the state to $15 an hour. Similar legislation was signed in New York the same day. What Can the White House Teach You About Summer Hiring? Are you starting to think ahead to summer hiring? Maybe you own a seasonal business that needs more staffers in the summer or maybe youre just thinking summer could be a good time to hire some students and get energetic young employees at a reasonable rate. As you look for summer workers, millions of youth are also looking for summer employment and coming up short. Legal New Jersey Proposes No Text While Walking Law Smartphone users in New Jersey will have to break themselves of the habit of using their devices while out and about. Proposed by Assemblywoman Pamela R. Lampitt, a new no texting while walking bill hopes to impose a $50 fine for those caught walking on sidewalks or streets using their phones and other mobile devices without hands-free tools. Sage Small Business Survey Says Washington Out of Touch A survey of small business owners by Sage, a business management software company, regarding the 2016 election, revealed that a significant disconnect exists between the priorities and policy initiatives that small businesses want the federal government to focus on and what they perceive government devotes its time and energy to instead. Green Business Plastic Bottle Cutter Shows Innovative Products Can Be Low Tech In a world filled with 3D printers that can make pizza on command and smart-watches that can monitor daily health, it seems that low-tech gadgets can still be game-changing and innovative. Take the Plastic Bottle Cutter. The product first appeared on Kickstarter on February 23, 2016. Marketing Tips Viraltag: A Visual Marketing Tool Review Until recently, social media marketers who wanted a visual marketing solution to manage their image-heavy posting schedule have gone without. Now Viraltag has come to the rescue. What is Viraltag? At its core, Viraltag enables you to manage your social media updates, workflow and tracking in one spot. Retail Trends A Year Later, Amazon Exclusives is Still a Major Option for New Products A year ago, Amazon launched Amazon Exclusives, a platform for unique products offered exclusively on the Amazon platform. For small businesses selling products online, the platform offers an opportunity to reach a huge network of shoppers and even get help from Amazons marketing team. Is Swiping Tinder Style the New Trend in Ecommerce Apps? You dont have to be a frequent user of Tinder to understand the popular dating apps impact on popular culture. In fact, one of the apps most popular features is actually making its mark on the business world. If you are unfamiliar with Tinder, the app allows users to swipe the screen to indicate whether or not they are interested in a person theyve been matched with. Small Biz Spotlight Spotlight: Bookly Uses Cloud Technology to Simplify Bookkeeping Bookkeeping isnt often thought of as a fun activity for business owners. But thats why companies like Bookly aim to cover those tasks so business owners can focus on what they do best. Bookly started because of the frustrations of one small business owner, and has grown into a service that helps many more. Read about the company in this weeks Small Business Spotlight. Small Business Loans StreetShares Facilitates Low Risk Small Business Loans for Veterans The SEC has approved new plans for a revolutionary type of loan facilitated by both crowdfunding and traditional funds. Mark Rockefeller, CEO of StreetShares, of Reston, Virginia, feels the result should benefit small businesses owned by veterans by making financing easier to obtain. Minority Businesses Struggling With Credit According to Experian Report Minority businesses still struggle with credit in a way other small businesses do not, a report from global business analytics firm Experian says. According to Experian, minority owned businesses see an average business credit score of 49.7, five points lower than other U.S. businesses. Small Business Operations UPS Renames Next Day Air, Adds Over 12,000 Zip Codes UPS has rebranded its oldest small package delivery service in order to provide more reliable logistic solutions for small businesses. Social Media Are Twitter Emojis a Growing Business Trend? Social media has completely changed the way businesses communicate with customers. Instead of the same dry, text-filled marketing messages, businesses are finding new and interesting ways to get their messages across. One such technique is the use of Twitter emojis. In fact, Twitter recently released some ideas for ways brands can work emojis into their Tweets. Taxes 5 Tax Breaks for Hiring New Employees Payrolls are expected to expand this year, making it more challenging for employers to find good workers. The strong job market likely will pressure employers to offer higher wages and more benefits than in the recent past in order to attract and retain talented employees. This all adds to the cost of hiring. Technology Trends 5 Cool Innovations Seen at Envision Microsoft Envision is a conference and event geared toward businesses of all sizes. While many of the products, sessions, and partner exhibitors were obviously targeting large enterprises, we did see a number of innovations of interest to smaller businesses. Microsoft CEO Challenges Business Leaders: Make a Difference in the World At the Microsoft Envision 2016 event in New Orleans this week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (pictured above) outlined his vision of technology as transformational and challenged the audience and business leaders to use technology to make a difference in the world. For Nadella, technology isnt just a tool. 7 Things About the Microsoft Envision Conference Microsofts major business-focused event for the year, Microsoft Envision, is taking place this week in New Orleans. This was the first year for the event with Microsoft Envision 2016 held at the citys Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Keynote speakers on the first day included Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Dan Schulman, the CEO of PayPal. New OS X Update Improves Stability of Your Mac Installing the latest updates a company provides for its software is key to ensuring the device and system you have in place are protected. While large enterprises have IT personnel to carry out this task, if you are a small business owner, it generally means having to do it yourself. See Also: Raising the Minimum Wage is Not Just Bad for Business Owners Antamedia Software Eliminates Security Risk on Public Computers You can now safely and securely turn any computer into a self-service kiosk thanks to Antamedia Software the providers of software for Internet cafe software and WiFi hotspot billing. Antamedia Ultimate Kiosk Software solution essentially locks down parts of a regular computer, allowing the user to leave it open for public use without security concerns. Cloud Security Demystified Cloud-based IT systems fulfill important functions in almost every modern industry. Companies, non-profits, governments, and even educational institutions use the cloud to expand market reach, analyze performance, manage human resources and offer improved services. Gov. Jerry Brown Photo via Shutterstock Get the latest headlines from Small Business Trends. Follow us on Google News. 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 Sonia Blue Jones. LA PLATA, Md. (April 8, 2016)At Mattawoman Middle School in Waldorf, a large banner hangs in the front entrance of the school that reads "Welcome to the Magic KingdomWhere Dreams Really Do Come True." Students learn that education is key to endless possibilities in classrooms supported by caring and committed teachers. Mattawoman is referred to as the "home of The Magic" and students are eager to learn and excel not only in the classroom, but in additional activities that support a positive school climate.Leader of this supportive kingdom is Sonia Blue Jones, a five-year veteran Charles County Public Schools principal. New this school year to serving as Mattawoman principal, Jones' leadership mission is to create an environment where teachers love to teach and students love to learn. In her first year at the school, Jones has earned the utmost respect of her staff. Jones' colleagues refer to her as a "glowing example" of a principal who goes beyond regular duty.Jones is often sought out by students because she is viewed as a leader with a big heart who takes the time to stop, listen and support her students. Jones' magical "glow" extends outside of her school and in to the community she serves. Diana Scott, a Mattawoman teacher mentor, refers to Jones as a "force to be reckoned with" who tirelessly advocates for children. Others see Jones' passion, too, and for this and her commitment to educating all children, Jones was named the Charles County Public Schools 2016 Principal of the Year and finalist for the Washington Post's Principal of the Year awards program.Jones said she is honored to be recognized for doing what she loves to do, each and every day. "This year I was assigned to Mattawoman Middle School. I was grateful for the opportunity to become acquainted with a new staff, students and a new community. I am proud to lead such an energized and devoted family of teachers who are committed to student achievement," Jones said.Jones said her desire to become an educator stemmed from her upbringing. Her mother, Joan Blue, was a teacher and instilled in Jones all of her principles of teaching. "She was passionate, creative and most importantly effective," Jones added. When she first started her career as a teacher, Jones incorporated principles of teaching she learned from her mother in the classroom. She taught for several years at the elementary school level with Prince George's County Public Schools and transitioned to administration as an assistant principal with District of Columbia Public Schools in 2004. "My transition to leadership was born out of a desire to effect change on a larger scale," Jones said.She joined Charles County Public Schools as a vice principal in 2010 at Matthew Henson Middle School, under the leadership of the late Ronald Stup. Jones credits Stup for providing her with several opportunities to hone her leadership skills and passing on his mantra of "leaders grow leaders."According to her colleagues, Jones is quite the leader. Jennifer Branham is a vice principal at Mattawoman and member of Jones' leadership team. Branham said not only has Jones taught her how to become a strong, positive leader, but has become her mentor and helps her guide decision making and problem solving. "Ms. Jones has had a lasting impact on my style of leadership, and I believe in years to come, I will use her leadership style to guide me as a future principal," Branham wrote in a nomination letter.Maria Parks is a school secretary at Mattawoman and describes Jones as an exceptional leader who has brought a "breath of fresh air" to the school. Jones appreciates the hard work and professionalism of all staff members and takes time to acknowledge their efforts. She is visible all over the school, from classrooms and the hallways, to the cafeteria and media center in order to be where the students are and spread positive support. She makes it a point to greet all students each morning at the start of the school day and students respect her for enthusiastic and supportive demeanor.Mattawoman eighth grader Kadasia Barnes wrote a letter of support for Jones' nomination. In her letter, Barnes said the student body at Mattawoman is grateful to have Jones as its principal because she is a hard worker who makes learning fun. "She is always smiling and excited to come to school and see all of her students. She works hard at her job and is the best principal this school has ever had," Barnes wrote.Cheyenne Owens also recommended Jones for recognition. The Mattawoman eighth grader wrote a letter of recommendation that details Jones' focus on the safety and security of staff and students. "Ms. Jones acts as a mother, she tries to keep us safe and in a healthy environment. She talks and interacts with us and enforces the rules for our safety," Owens wrote.Jones first became a principal in 2011 at Henson, following nearly a full school year of serving as the school's acting principal after the death of former principal Stup. Jones jumped in to serving as principal and worked diligently to establish relationships with her school communitystudents, staff, parents and community membersbuilt on respect, high expectations and consistency.During Jones' tenure at Henson, Charles County Public Schools launched a middle school redistricting to relieve overcrowding at area middle schools. Students from several neighborhoods were rezoned to attend Henson and a negative perception about the school grew in local communities. Comments were made about Henson being an "aging facility" and "under resourced." Jones quickly rallied her staff with a plan of action to change this perception and show off all that the school had to offer."When our new families arrived we showed them why we were 'The Best School in the Universe.' We provided excellent customer service through phone calls and emails as well as walk-in conferences with administration. Under my leadership I created a healthy school climate where teachers enjoyed teaching," Jones said.And her goal of supporting a healthy school climate where teachers enjoy teaching followed her to Mattawoman. Margot Savoy teaches eighth-grade language arts at Mattawoman and recalls a promise Jones made during their first staff meeting. "If you take care of the students, I will take care of you."Savoy wrote a letter of recommendation on behalf of Jones' nomination and described in it all of the positive changes she sees occurring at Mattawoman. In particular, Savoy mentions an altercation among two students and overhearing their peers talk about staying focused in order to enjoy a positive, behavioral, interventions and supports (PBIS) event Jones coordinated for students who modeled good character. "It's nice to hear the students talk about staff in a positive way. They too are believing in the promise made. I can feel the change in the atmosphere throughout the school," Savoy wrote.Jones is hard at work at Mattawoman with a new visionto make the school a premiere science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) middle school in Charles County. She plans to accomplish this by continuing to support a positive climate for students and staff. "My leadership mission is and always will be to create an environment where teachers love to teach and students love to learn," Jones said.As the 2016 Charles County Public Schools Principal of the Year, Jones will be honored by the Board of Education at its May 10 meeting. This year the Post changed their Principal of the Year awards program. Finalists from each participating school district were in the running to be selected as one overall regional winner. Finalists, including Jones for Charles County, will be honored by the Post later this school year. ANNAPOLIS (April 7, 2016)The Maryland Senate Thursday rejected a bill to automatically register every eligible adult in the state to vote amid concerns about privacy and the possibility that non-citizens might get registered. The vote was 21-24, with seven Democrats joining Republicans in killing the measure. The bill, SB350, the Universal Voter Registration Act, sponsored by Sen. Roger Manno D-Montgomery, would have required the Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) and social service agencies to provide the State Board of Elections with personal information about eligible adults so they could be registered. However, the bill also contained a provision allowing individuals who did not wish to be enrolled to opt out by notifying their local election board. Sen. Manno said his bill would have made Marylanders lives easier by sparing them the hassles associated with registration. "It basically eliminated this hoop that we've erected, that people have to jump through in order to be able exercise their right," Manno said. "If you're eligible to vote, you ought to be able to vote, government should get out of your way and that's what we're trying to do here. It simply removes the barrier to be able to get to vote." Non-citizens voting Sen. Michael Hough, R-Frederick, asked if the MVA is able to discern between citizens and noncitizens. "Yes the MVA can determine citizenship," said the floor leader on the bill, Sen. Paul Pinsky, D-Prince George's. But Hough said, "I'm staring at a letter right here from the MVA that says the state cannot require an applicant to provide documentation of citizenship. The MVA says they cannot determine that, in fact, the MVA says all that they can determine is what's called 'lawful presence' which is not citizenship." Pinsky said the MVA has already has safeguards in place that negate the need to ask whether or not someone is a citizen. "They legally because of other laws can't ask that question per se, but what they do when people come and registerthey ask for a birth certificate and other information which implicitly lets them know if someone is a citizen or not," Pinsky said. Domestic violence victims could be found Senate Minority Leader J.B. Jennings. R-Baltimore and Harford, said domestic violence victims could possibly be identified by automatic voter registration. He asked Pinsky if those individuals, whose information is protected by a state program, could possibly be registered if they forget to notify their local election board that they do not wish to be registered. "I understand that you guys did take the address confidentiality program that our Secretary of State's office has and put it into the bill, which is commendable, but not every abused spouse or stalked victim is in that program, correct?" Pinsky said individuals who are not registered in that program could potentially be registered. "If they're not registered by their local board based on the domestic violence language and the laws that protect their information and then they don't look at the mailings from the State Board of Electionsthat could possibly happen," Pinsky said. Government intrusion Sen. Jim Brochin, a Towson Democrat, said the bill constitutes governmental overreach. "People have the right to be left alone and one of the things that I always thought was great about this country that changed a lot since 9/11, is you had the right to be anonymous if you wanted to, you had the right to be left alone and not bothered by government and this is a direct intrusion," Brochin said. In earlier debate, Brochin had objected that people could be registered as unaffiliated voters if they didn't check their mail. LEONARDTOWN, Md. Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme. (April 7, 2016)The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office today released the following incident and arrest reports.3/23/2016 DISORDERLY CONDUCT: Deputy D. Smith responded to the area of South Hampton in Lexington Park for the report of a fight in the street. Upon arrival, the deputy observed the suspect,, strike a victim in the face several times. After a brief foot chase, the suspect was placed under arrest and charged with Affray, Disorderly Conduct, Failure to Obey, and Resisting Arrest. CASE# 15523-163/24/2016 CONCEAL DANGEROUS WEAPON: Deputy R. Steinbach responded to San Souci Plaza in California for the report of two subjects loitering. Upon arrival, Steinbach made contact with the suspect, who appeared to be concealing something in his pocket. A subsquent search revealed the suspect,, attempted to conceal a dangerous weapon in his pocket. Cox was transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center for Dangerous Weapon - Conceal. CASE# 15699-163/25/2016 TELEPHONE MISUSE: Deputy J. Kerns responded to the 22000 block of Washington Street in Leonardtown for a reported harassment. The victim alleged the suspect,, placed explicit photos of the victim on the Internet without the victim's consent. Parks harassed the victim by calling the victim repeatedly and sending harassing text messages. Deputy Kerns requested Parks to be charged with Telephone Misuse and Place Intimate Sex Image on the Internet. CASE#15801-163/26/2016 ASSAULT: Deputy D. Holdsworth responded to the 36000 block of Asher Road for the report of a domestic disturbance. The victim alleged the suspect,, slapped the victim in the face multiple times. There were visible signs of injury,and Clark was placed under arrest for Assault in the Second Degree. CASE# 15965-164/01/2016 ASSAULT: Cpl. M. Peacher responded to the 25000 block of McIntosh Road in Hollywood for the report of an assault. The victim alleged the suspect,, reached over the seat in a motor vehicle and strangled the victim. When the victim attempted to exit the vehicle, Stamey punched the victim in the face multiple times. The victim displayed visible signs of injury. Stamey was placed under arrest and transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center. He was charged with Second Degree Assault and Reckless Endangerment. CASE#17242-164/01/2016 POSSESSION OF CONTRABAND: Deputy First Class S. Kerby responded to the St. Mary's County Detention Center for the report of contraband. While searching the suspect,, Sgt. B Hartz discovered a piece of cellophane wrapping, suspected Suboxone, in a slit in the tongue of Page's left shoe. The same location in the right shoe was aluminum foil containing a white powder substance. During the search, Page assaulted the corrections officer, grabbed the aluminum foil from a shelf, and ingested most of the white powder. Page was charged with Second Degree Assault and Two Counts of Possession in a Place of Confinement. CASE# 17154-164/02/2016 ASSAULT: Deputy A. Schultz responded to the 22000 block of Lawrence Avenue in Leonardtown for the report of an assault. The victim alleged the suspect,, struck the victim on the left side of the face during an argument. There were visible signs of injury. Subsequently, Tournay was placed under arrest and charged with Second Degree Assault. CASE# 17386-164/03/2016 ASSAULT: Deputy R. Roszell responded to the St. Mary's County Detention Center for the report of an assault. The investigation revealed, two inmates were involved in a verbal altercation that became physical when suspect Jones struck the victim in the face. The suspect,, was charged with Second Degree Assault and Assault on an Inmate. CASE# 17559-164/05/2016 ASSAULT: Deputy D. Potter responded to the 46000 block of Valley Court in Lexington Park for the report of a loud argument. The victim alleged the suspect,, scratched the victim during an argument. The victim displayed injuries consistent with the allegations. During her arrest, Thurstin became enraged and shattered the rear side window with her feet. Thurstin was transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center and charged with Second Degree Assault and Malicious Destruction of Property. CASE# 17746-16 This caricature of Bernie Sanders was adapted from a Creative Commons licensed photo by Nick Solari available via Wikimedia. Created by DonkeyHotey, via Flickr, using Creative Commons license. WALDORF, Md. (April 8, 2016)U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign on Friday at 5 p.m. will open its southern Maryland field office. The office is located at 173 St. Patrick's Drive, Suite 104, Waldorf.The Waldorf office is the fourth Sanders field office in Maryland. Additional offices are located in Baltimore, Rockville, and Ellicott City."With three weeks left until the April 26 primary, our campaign is gaining momentum," said Maryland Steering Committee Chair Ben Jealous. "We have cut Secretary Clinton's lead in half. It's clear Bernie Sanders' message of taking on a rigged economy, providing universal health care and tuition-free college is resonating with Maryland voters. We are going to compete for every vote here in Maryland and will open additional field offices in the coming weeks." BALTIMORE (April 8, 2016)A Herndon, Va., resident and her husband are going to have an easier time paying for their two children's college tuition after winning $50,000 on a Maryland Lottery scratch-off.The prize came courtesy of a Royal Gems instant game purchased at H V Liquors located at 22576 MacArthur Boulevard in California. The Virginia woman's husband purchased the ticket at the St. Mary's County retailer and gave it to her to scratch, but she couldn't immediately tell how much they had won. Her husband went to a Lottery retailer and scanned the scratch-off at the ticket checker, which directed them to cash the ticket at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore.I was traveling and he told me on the phone, said the lucky winner, who works in customer service. He said, 'I've got some good news.'This is by far her largest Lottery win. Her previous best came last year when she won $5,000 by hitting the Pick 4 straight on a $1 bet. She said the money will help to pay for her children's college expenses, and she added that she might do some traveling.The $20 Royal Gems ticket launched in September and one of its $1 million top prizes is still waiting to be claimed. There are also two remaining $50,000 prizes, 10 $10,000 prizes and thousands of prizes ranging from $20 to $5,000. NEW YORK (April 8, 2016)Fitch Ratings has affirmed the 'AAA' rating on the following bonds of Calvert County, Maryland (the county): --$132.5 million of outstanding general obligation (GO) bonds. The Rating Outlook is Stable. Security The bonds are general obligations of the county backed by a pledge of its full faith, credit and unlimited taxing power. Key Rating Drivers SOUND FINANCIAL POSITION: Fitch expects the county to maintain a healthy level of reserves despite several years of expected continued drawdowns for capital and operations. Sound budgetary flexibility is highlighted by ample revenue raising capacity and spending control. MANAGEABLE LONG-TERM LIABILITIES: Debt metrics and carrying costs for debt service, pension and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) are low. WASHINGTON D.C. MSA BEDROOM COMMUNITY: The county is part of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and benefits from a strong regional labor market with consistently low unemployment rates and higher wealth levels. Moderate taxpayer concentration exists in the energy sector. INCREASING EXPOSURE TO REVENUE CONCENTRATION: The county's significant exposure to revenue concentration from two energy companies is increasing. The county projects forecasted revenue from one of the companies to more than double to 15% by fiscal 2018. Rating Sensitivities FINANCIAL FLEXIBILITY: The rating is sensitive to the county's demonstrated ability to maintain a high level of financial flexibility, including satisfactory reserves. Credit Profile Calvert County is located in southern Maryland approximately 42 miles southeast of Washington D.C. and 64 miles south of Baltimore. Calvert County is located on a peninsula, bound on the east by the Chesapeake Bay and on the west by the Patuxent River, with 110 miles of shoreline. The county has a 2015 estimated population of 90,595. Above-Average Economic Factors Calvert County's unemployment rate is low at 4.2% in January 2016 and benefits from the county's proximity to larger regional employment centers. Approximately 63% of the county workforce commutes outside its boundaries. Median household income is 25% and 77% above state and national levels, respectively. The two largest private sector influences on the county economy and budget are Constellation Energy Group's Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant and Dominion's Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility. Constellation and Dominion account for 16% of the county's tax base, and their investment in the county is expected to increase as Dominion adds a $3.8 billion LNG exporting terminal to its plant that comes online in fiscal 2018. Financial Position Remains Sound Property taxes are the largest revenue source for the county at 60%, followed by income tax at 31%. Property tax revenues are not subject to a cap or limit, and the tax rate is competitive with other governments in the region. The income tax rate is capped at 3.2% and the county's current rate is 2.8%. Recent operating deficits have been largely driven by increased debt service, pension, and insurance costs without offsetting revenue actions. Fiscal 2015 operations resulted in a $7.9 million use of fund balance, which was larger than the $5.9 million appropriation in the original budget. Both income tax and property tax revenues came in under budget with property taxes decreasing year-over-year. The year concluded with an unrestricted fund balance of $44.9 million or a healthy 18.8% of spending. The unrestricted fund balance includes the county's stabilization reserve equal to $19.4 million or 8% of spending (the county's policy requires the higher of $10 million or 8% of current budgeted expenditures). The fiscal 2016 adopted budget included a fund balance appropriation of $5.6 million, which year-to-date results show the county as on track to realize. The deficit includes a $3.3 million operating deficit as well as approximately $2.3 million in pay-go capital spending. The unrestricted balance is expected to remain sound at $40.5 million or 16.9% of spending. The recommended fiscal 2017 budget includes use of an additional $8.9 million of fund balance. Operating revenues are reasonably forecast to increase 2% from fiscal 2016 year-to-date projections. No tax rate increases or other material revenue enhancements are included and total general fund reserves are budgeted to decrease but remain sound at 13% of spending. Fitch Expects County To Address Forecasted Gaps The county has chosen in recent years to use a portion of its reserves, rather than increasing revenues or cutting spending in anticipation of receipt of PILOT payments from Dominion (IDR of 'BBB+'), for its new LNG exporting terminal. Plant construction is at or ahead of schedule for completion in fiscal 2018 at which time annual PILOT payments will average $55 million (24% of fiscal 2016 revenues) for five years, followed by a 42% tax credit for nine years. Dominion's exporting contracts are fully subscribed at capacity in fixed 20-year contracts with investment-grade counterparties (see Fitch's March 2016 press release, 'Fitch Revises Dominion Resources' Remarketed Junior Sub Notes Rating to 'BBB''). The county forecasts a break-even budget in fiscal 2018, at which point previously postponed non-recurring expenditures such as funding the OPEB trust and making transfers to the capital fund are increased. Manageable Long-Term Liabilities Overall debt levels are low at less than 1% of market value and $1,152 per capita. The county aggressively repays its outstanding debt with 86% retired within 10 years - leaving ample capacity to fund future borrowing needs. The county's capital plan includes issuing $108 million in tax supported debt by 2022. Fitch expects debt levels to increase but remain manageable. The county manages three single-employer defined benefit pensions plans; one for general employees, another for the sheriff's department, and a third, smaller plan for the volunteer firefighters. The county plan for general employees was closed in 1999 when new employees were moved to a defined contribution plan. The funded status of the pension plans on a combined basis is 86% as reported by the county and slightly less at 80% when calculated using a 7% rate of return. The size of the combined unfunded liability is quite small at $35.3 million, or less than 0.3% of market value. Fitch estimates the cost of servicing the county's outstanding debt combined with nearly all actuarially-required pension payments and OPEB pay-go contributions at a low 9.3% of fiscal 2015 governmental spending. Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. In a highly publicized, alleged gay hate crime incident that occurred on March 14 in Miami Beach at the BK Whopper Bar, the validity of events as portrayed by the victims is now being called into question. According to the incident report, which was provided by the Miami Beach Police Department, both victims Eric Danko and Jordan Schaeffer of LA were initially "uncooperative" when approached by the responding officer. Both victims also initially left the scene, where Schaeffer has told CBS Miami 4 that it was after a kissing session between Schaeffer and Danko that Schaeffer was attacked. Its not right that anyone should suffer a hate crime and be a victim based off the person that they are, Schaeffer said. Schaeffer was left with a "lacerated lip" as a result of the altercation, the report says. Both Schaeffer and Danko were treated by Miami Beach Fire and Rescue at the scene. The original report does not state use of derogatory gay terms by the attacker; however, the report was amended after the initial statement was given to police in which Danko and Schaeffer say they were called "faggots" before being attacked. "This is why they feel this battery was a hate crime, the report states. Neither Schaeffer nor Danko returned phone calls, text messages or Facebook messages to SFGN requesting comment on the incident. The report also states that Danko admitted to being under the influence of GHB, better known as the date rape drug. Gay men ingest GHB for its altering affects, including higher sex drive and experience; but there is also a downside to taking the drug, such as erratic and violent behavior, according to the CDC. Primary groups using GHB include party and nightclub attendees and bodybuilders, the CDC website states. The Whopper Bar, where the incident took place, is close to gay nightclub Twist. Both Danko and Schaeffer refused photos of their injuries, according to the report. The manager of the Whopper Bar stated, "She did observe all parties involved in mutual combat." Tim Baird, who posted on social media about the incident, said via a Facebook post he witnessed the altercation, and the story being told by Schaeffer and Danko is "completely inaccurate." "As we saw it, he is mainly responsible for the fight, and the altercation had nothing to do with his sexual identity. I've already contacted the Miami (Beach) police to offer my perspective, if they want it, Baird said. Miami Beach PD spokesman Ernesto Rodriguez confirmed that they had been contacted by Baird, who was also visiting from Washington D.C., and that department LGBT liaison Juan Sanchez had reached out to him for additional information. "We only have one side of the story," Rodriquez told SFGN. "We are looking to identify the attacker or attackers but to also get another side of the story. We encourage people to come forward." Rodriguez said that the Miami Beach PD does not charge alleged attackers with hate crimes. It is an underline, secondary charge that will be determined by the Miami-Dade Office of the State Attorney (SAO), he said. "We have partnered with the SAO, which is currently pursuing this as a felony battery. In this case, there are significant injuries," he said. "After we present the charges to the SAO, they make the decision." If the SAO does determine this to be a hate crime then the penalty for the charges will "heighten," Rodriguez said. The FBI has defined a hate crime as a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offenders bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity. Regardless of whether this incident is classified as a hate crime, Miami Beach is a safe place for the LGBT community, advocates say. "Miami Beach is one of the most visited cities on the planet which also welcomes over 1.2 million LGBT visitors annually. The negative incident rate for tourists visiting our community is extremely low. Although the situation that happened at Burger King is truly unfortunate, we have every confidence in our Police Chief Dan Oates and the Miami Beach Police Department to keep our city a very safe place for our LGBT tourists," said Steve Adkins of the LGBT Visitor Center on Miami Beach. Rodriguez added, "I personally would never discourage any sort of affection to loved ones. Love is love...It is 2016. Everyone is able to do as they please and should do so freely." Anthony Martinez Beven covers Miami-Dade County for SFGN. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Extrasolar Planet NASA Astronomers have made great strides in discovering planets outside of our solar system, termed exoplanets. In fact, over the past 20 years more than 5,000 exoplanets have been detected beyond the eight planets that call our solar system home. The majority of these exoplanets have been found snuggled up to their host star completing an orbit (or year) in hours, days or weeks, while some have been found orbiting as far as Earth is to the sun, taking one Earth year to circle. But, what about those worlds that orbit much farther out, such as Jupiter and Saturn, or, in some cases, free-floating exoplanets that are on their own and have no star to call home? In fact, some studies suggest that there may be more free-floating exoplanets than stars in our galaxy. This week, NASAs K2 mission, the repurposed mission of the Kepler space telescope, and other ground-based observatories, have teamed up to kick-off a global experiment in exoplanet observation. Their mission: survey millions of stars toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy in search of distant stars planetary outposts and exoplanets wandering between the stars. While todays planet-hunting techniques have favored finding exoplanets near their sun, the outer regions of a planetary system have gone largely unexplored. In the exoplanet detection toolkit, scientists have a technique well suited to search these farthest outreaches and the space in between the stars. This technique is called gravitational microlensing. Gravitational Microlensing For this experiment, astronomers rely on the effect of a familiar fundamental force of nature to help detect the presence of these far out worlds gravity. The gravity of massive objects such as stars and planets produces a noticeable effect on other nearby objects. But gravity also influences light, deflecting or warping the direction of light that passes close to massive objects. This bending effect can make gravity act as a lens, concentrating light from a distant object, just as a magnifying glass can focus the light from the sun. Scientists can take advantage of the warping effect by measuring the light of distant stars, looking for a brightening that might be caused by a massive object, such as a planet, that passes between a telescope and a distant background star. Such a detection could reveal an otherwise hidden exoplanet. The chance for the K2 mission to use gravity to help us explore exoplanets is one of the most fantastic astronomical experiments of the decade, said Steve Howell, project scientist for NASAs Kepler and K2 missions at NASAs Ames Research Center in Californias Silicon Valley. I am happy to be a part of this K2 campaign and look forward to the many discoveries that will be made. This phenomenon of gravitational microlensing micro because the angle by which the light is deflected is small is the effect for which scientists will be looking during the next three months. As an exoplanet passes in front of a more distant star, its gravity causes the trajectory of the starlight to bend, and in some cases results in a brief brightening of the background star as seen by the observatory. The lensing events caused by a free-floating exoplanet last on the order of a day or two, making the continuous gaze of the Kepler spacecraft an invaluable asset for this technique. We are seizing the opportunity to use Keplers uniquely sensitive camera to sniff for planets in a different way, said Geert Barentsen, research scientist at Ames. The ground-based observatories will record simultaneous measurements of these brief events. From their different vantage points, space and Earth, the measurements can determine the location of the lensing foreground object through a technique called parallax. This is a unique opportunity for the K2 mission and ground-based observatories to conduct a dedicated wide-field microlensing survey near the center of our galaxy, said Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division in NASAs Science Mission Directorate at the agencys headquarters in Washington. This first-of-its-kind survey serves as a proof of concept for NASAs Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which will launch in the 2020s to conduct a larger and deeper microlensing survey. In addition, because the Kepler spacecraft is about 100 million miles from Earth, simultaneous space- and ground-based measurements will use the parallax technique to better characterize the systems producing these light amplifications. To understand parallax, extend your arm and hold up your thumb. Close one eye and focus on your thumb and then do the same with the other eye. Your thumb appears to move depending on the vantage point. For humans to determine distance and gain depth perception, the vantage points, our eyes, use parallax. Flipping the Spacecraft The Kepler spacecraft trails Earth as it orbits the sun and is normally pointed away from Earth during the K2 mission. But this orientation means that the part of the sky being observed by the spacecraft cannot generally be observed from Earth at the same time, since it is mostly in the daytime sky. To allow simultaneous ground-based observations, flight operations engineers at Ball Aerospace and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder will perform a maneuver turning the spacecraft around to point the telescope in the forward velocity vector. So, instead of looking toward where its been, the spacecraft will look in the direction of where its going. This alignment will also yield a viewing opportunity of Earth and the moon as they cross the spacecrafts field of view. On April 14 at 11:50 a.m. PDT (18:50 UT), Kepler will record a full frame image. The result of that image will be released to the public archive in June once the data has been downloaded and processed. Kepler measures the change in brightness of objects and does not resolve color or physical characteristics of an observed object. Observing from Earth To achieve the objectives of this important path-finding research and community exercise in anticipation of WFIRST, approximately two-dozen ground-based observatories on six continents will observe in concert with K2. Each will contribute to various aspects of the experiment and will help explore the distribution of exoplanets across a range of stellar systems and distances. These results will aid in our understanding of planetary system architectures, as well as the frequency of exoplanets throughout our galaxy. For a complete list of participating observatories, reference the paper that defines the experiment: Campaign 9 of the K2 mission. During the roughly 80-day observing period or campaign, astronomers hope to discover more than 100 lensing events, ten or more of which may have signatures of exoplanets occupying relatively unexplored regimes of parameter space. 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. For more information about the Kepler and K2 missions, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler Despite the addition of new routes from Bratislava and Kosice Slovakia is still lacking air links with the main hubs in Europe. Font size: A - | A + LAST year, air traffic in Slovakia experienced a significant 15 percent increase helped mainly by the low-cost air carriers. However, air travel in Slovakia still lags behind the European average. Passenger transport at the Bratislava airport has improved but there is no change in terms of the dominant position of the low-cost carriers (LCC), Antonin Kazda, head of the Air Transport Department at the University of Zilina told The Slovak Spectator. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The number of the passengers processed at Slovak airports is growing at the fastest rate in Europe. Airport Poprad-Tatry experienced a 250 percent increase in the number of passengers and Kosice was also ranked amongst the fastest growing airports in Europe. Despite the addition of new routes from Bratislava and Kosice, including Madrid, Brussels and Dubai, Slovakia is still lacking air links with the main hubs in Europe. The frequency of flights in Slovakia remains among the lowest in Europe. Passenger per inhabitant statistics, which measures traffic, gives Slovakia the statistic of 0.3 passenger per inhabitant. This is far behind the EU average of 1.8, Lubomir Korsnak, analyst with UniCredit Bank Czech Republic and Slovakia, cited Eurostat data. Unnoticed problems Many of the problems mentioned by Kazda would be left unnoticed by the occasional Slovak traveller. The lack of services and good connection times emerges only when comparing Slovak air traffic with European standards. The main problem is that air traffic is not among the governments priorities, said Kazda. He criticised the lack of strategic planning and lack of funding of the regional airports. The problems of the airports are not discussed with professionals. In terms of tourism, it is practically impossible to easily get to Slovakia. Business travellers face problems with connections. Apart from Kosice, which flies to Vienna and Prague once a day (via Bratislava), there are no links from the regional airports to the hub airports that would be suitable for business travellers, said Kazda, adding that it causes outflow of the potential travellers to the airports in Vienna or Budapest. Even the Ryanair route to Brussels is a night flight, which is unsuitable for people on business. Moreover, it is a typical LCC flight without through ticketing (when a passenger buys one ticket and can change between the planes freely) and use baggage transfer services. Key management positions at the biggest airports are filled by political nominees, who have different priorities than effective operation of the airport, said Kazda. No wonder that the announcement of the shortest regular line between Bratislava and Vienna was mocked. Kazda specified that regional lines are justified only between Kosice and Bratislava, however, it will lose significance after the construction of the highway and high-speed railway is completed. On the other hand, the Transport Ministry views the stabilisation of air traffic in a positive way. Regional airports are a huge potential for the development of tourism, which is confirmed by the record numbers of tourists in the past year, ministry spokesman Martin Kona said. Kazda pointed out that the government should focus on the operation of the regional airports that are dependent on funding. The operation of regional airports with up to 250,000 passengers a year requires government funding, said Kazda. Moreover, the connection to the airports should be addressed, as a journey from some regions to the airports in Bratislava or Vienna can take up to five hours. In such situation, the connections could be provided under the EU Public Service Obligation scheme (PSO), which is a common practice in many countries, said Kazda. Relying on low-cost carriers In 2015, Bratislavas airport served 1,564,311 passengers, which was a 15.4 percent increase from the previous year, spokeswoman Veronika Sevcikova said, the first double digit increase since 2006 and a reversal of the declining numbers from 2008 onwards. Bratislava has managed to attract two new low-cost carriers. Russian low-cost carrier Pobeda operates seven flights a week to Moscow and Wizz Air now flies to Skopje, in Macedonia. Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair opened a permanent base in Bratislava in March 2015, which is ranked among the biggest achievements of the airport. Ryanair is our long-term, transparent partner, that transported 8 million passengers by September 2015 and we are proud of the cooperation, said Sevcikova. On the other hand, experts point out that Bratislava relies too much on the low-cost carriers and is lacking permanent links to the biggest European hubs. Bratislava is dominated by Ryanair, which fends off most of the competition, and Vienna airport with connections to all major destinations is just a 30 minute drive, Kazda said. Slovak airports are serving about 2 million passengers a year but another 3.5 million use the airports in nearby countries in Vienna, Budapest, Katowice, Krakow and Prague, Kazda said. It is mainly an economic problem, as Slovakia loses money via passenger taxes, parking fees and tickets purchased by foreign companies. Even the Slovak companies AirExplore and Go2Sky operate abroad due to the complicated situation in the domestic market. New hub links The general assembly of the International Civic Aviation Organization (ICAO) will take place during Slovakias EU presidency, where Slovakia will speak on behalf the whole EU. Slovakia as a member state will respect the new European Strategy for Aviation, which was approved by the European Commission in December 2015, said Kona. It is considered a breakthrough initiative that will support the European economy, strengthen industrial foundations and contribute to the EUs leading role in the world. In November 2015, Polish national carrier LOT announced that they would start operating direct flights from Kosice to Warsaw six times a week, starting March 30. It means that we secured connection with a third big hub airport, said Juraj Toth, the marketing manager of Kosice airport. The LOT company offers flights to more than 60 destinations, including North America and Asia. It will be via a connecting flight from Kosice. From April 2016, Ryanair will redirect its flights to Brussel-Charleroi to the main Brussel-Zaventem airport in order to improve connections with the European capital during Slovakias EU presidency. Further improvements could be made by more attention by the government and greater involvement of the regions in the air traffic. Transport has a significant impact on tourism and it not restricted only to buses and trains, Kazda said. The United States has paid its own high economic and societal price from segregation. Our experience may help other countries dealing with these difficult issues. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled The Roma have been a part of Europes rich cultural tapestry for hundreds of years. With their own unique languages and culture, the Roma number an estimated 10 to 12 million across the continent, while one million American citizens of Romani descent live in the United States. With each generation, they have contributed creativity and energy to Europes cultural landscape. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Despite slow progress over decades, many Roma still live on the margins of society and continue to fall victim to violence and discrimination in education, employment, housing, and healthcare. They face an uphill fight to do the normal things that most of us take for granted going to school, seeing the doctor, applying for a job, or finding decent housing. The United States marks International Roma Day each year to signal our commitment to the inclusion and equal treatment of all Roma. We also commend the activists and citizens who fight every day to end discrimination against Roma and other minorities. Slovakia has the right to be proud of its fast growing economy and falling unemployment and it continues to attract outside investment with its talented labor force and strong economic fundamentals. But the long term prospects of this economic development depends, in some part, on better integration of the Roma. No country can meet 21st century challenges when a large segment of its population and its workforce is marginalized. Roma today face sharply lower odds of graduating school and finding jobs a result of a self-perpetuating cycle of unequal access to education and employment. Addressing these inequalities is not only a human rights issue, but also a smart economic strategy and an investment in Slovakias future. Providing Roma with the equal access to the education and skills they need to find employment contributes directly to Slovakias competitiveness. The United States works with our European and international partners to promote equal treatment for Roma and all minorities. We also must continue the conversation with the Romani community to learn more about their needs, their challenges, and their hopes for the future not just of their community, but the future of the country of which they are a part. The United States has paid its own high economic and societal price from segregation, unequal opportunity, and social marginalization which has meant we have failed to benefit from the full economic potential of all our citizens. Our experience may help other countries dealing with these difficult issues. Our history is not perfect, but it is ours. We can learn from this history as Americans, as Europeans, as Slovaks and together create the foundations of a more inclusive, prosperous society for generations to come. By Liam Wasley, Charge d'Affaires at the US Embassy in Slovakia If Abdeslam had had to show his passport on travels across Europe, Paris attacks would have been more difficult to execute Font size: A - | A + A report that Belgium-born Salah Abdeslam, currently Europes most reviled terrorist, may have spent three weeks cooling his heels in Nitra, should not surprise us. Instead, it should alarm us about Europes inadequate security arrangements. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Following the attacks in Paris last November, which killed 130 people, media reported that Abdeslam had visited six European countries in the nine months leading up to the massacre, including Italy and Greece in August 2015, and Hungary and Austria in September. He is suspected of having used the journeys to transport guns, explosives and accomplices returning from Syria, including the ringleader of the Paris operation, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Given those aims, Abdeslams apparent sojourn pod Zoborom, and the claim that he has a relative living in Nitra married to a Slovak, does not necessarily mean that Slovak security was then, or is now threatened. Even though its unlikely he was here to visit the first Christian church built on Slovak territory, or to pay his respects to Cyril and Methodius. Nor does the story, if true, imply a failure by Slovak police or intelligence services. Europe has open borders, so if a French citizen like Abdeslam takes it into his head to visit the self-styled mother of all Slovak cities, theres not much to stop him. Unless we get a timely warning from foreign security agencies. Read also: Read also: Paris attacker was in Slovakia Read more And theres the rub. By the time Abdeslam is alleged to have visited Slovakia the summer of 2015 Belgian authorities should have had him on their radar. Because back in January 2015, Abdeslams radicalized childhood pal Abaaoud had emerged as the main suspect in a terrorist plot in the Belgian town of Verviers that police managed to foil. Salah Abdeslam was among those rounded up and questioned and then released. Along with Abdeslams own multiple arrests (mostly for drugs and theft), this would presumably have resulted in an electronic flag being attached to his passport, alerting foreign border authorities to the real and suspected security risks he represented. Except we never got a chance to check his passport, because he never had to show it. Nor, presumably, was he challenged in the other Schengen countries he visited. Instead, a radicalized Muslim was able to shop for bomb materials and accomplices across Europe. And then kill scores of people. Schengen has been both a historical triumph and a deep convenience. But the time has come to talk seriously about closing Europes borders. Humanitarian, economic and nostalgic considerations aside: security comes first, and last year we had only as much of it as Belgium was able to provide. What can readers find about Slovak businessman and the papers owner Andrej Babis in Hospodarske Noviny (HN); or rather what can they not find? Font size: A - | A + [The richest Slovak businessman is also active in the Czech Republic, both in business and as finance minister and chairman of the ANO 2011 party.] Babis faces the biggest scandal so far; Babis in a nest; Disappointment with Babis these are headlines of stories which recently informed on the scandal that has shattered the Czech political scene, broke by three influential dailies in Slovakia: Dennik N, SME and Pravda. The fourth influential daily Hospodarske Noviny, which happens to be owned by billionaire Babis has so far not written a single word about the possible subsidy fraud worth two million euros in Babis firm Capi hnizdo (Storks Nest). Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Is this a coincidence, or does HN do extra work for its owner? To outline the answer, we tried to look at how Slovak dailies cover the richest Slovak and the Czech politician. The rich, likeable man Babis bought HN three years ago. One of the changes introduced by the new management was abolishing the foreign desk, as well as a stable page covering events abroad. This can be one of the reasons why the daily brings less information about some scandals in Czech politics than the remaining dailies. Despite this, HN mentioned Babis in more than a hundred stories since January 2014. Similarly as in other media, most of them seemed more or less neutral in HN. However, their owner was portrayed positively in every sixth story; for comparison in Slovak tabloid dailies, Novy cas and Plus 1 den, this was true for every sixteenth story, while dailies Sport, Sme and Dennik N avoided praising Babis completely. It has to be stressed that positive mentions about him in HN were mostly not clearly PR stories. The only exception seems to be direct interviews with the newspapers owner, like for example the one from May 2014. Already its headline I am a Politician by Mistake, I am not the Right Type for That loosely connects to the election campaigns slogan of ANO We Are not Like Politicians, We Work Hard. In the initial part, the author described Babis as one of the most influential people in central Europe; while avoiding the conflict of interests which he brought about when accepting the position of finance minister. Moreover, he got the chance to react to the accusation that he uses media to his advantage. The question was as follows: After having bought the Czech publishing house Mafra (part of which is also the HN daily), you faced criticism that you will use media to your advantage. You claim this is not the case. After such pressure, Babis could sigh with relief. The questions that followed are the dream-of every politician; for example: What is your priority as a minister? Silence is golden When comparing stories mentioning Babis, HN appears a bit better. Most negative mentions about him appeared in Dennik N (60 percent of stories) and Sme (40 percent). Far behind are HN where negative mention was recorded in 11 out of 104 stories. Their authors include also journalists who have left the economic daily in the meantime. One of them was even the columnist Arpad Soltesz who several times gently picked at Babis in his regular column. In one of them, he for instance mocks the owner of the food trust that he can win over Czech President Milos Zeman with his sausages. A more amiable approach of HN towards its owner could be seen not just in the number of positive or negative mentions, but often also in what the newspaper plays down or keeps silent about. We noticed this approach in HN during several scandals which were covered more critically by other influential media, as well as rendering them more space. This can be illustrated by the coverage of one of Babiss scandals with Slovak connection the dispute with the Nations Memory Institute (UPN) about his alleged cooperation with the communist-time secret service, StB. Campaign of enemies Ultimately, Babis succeeded in the dispute and won the ruling that he was not an StB agent in the past. HN wrote one authorial story related to the issue, from the trial in January 2014, and apart from this, it only published two more news shorts from newswires on back pages, and one short authorial story in July about Babis victory. The court case did not make it to the cover page a single time, and it did not get a single opinion piece in the paper. In the above-mentioned interview with Babis, the HN journalist posed a single indirect question: Because according to the Nations Memory Institute, you were an StB agent? Babiss answer: I wasnt, this is what my enemies keep spreading. The journalist seemed content with this answer; as she did not return to the issue in the interview. Compared to four stories on the scandal published by HN, Sme focused on it in 26 pieces. With one exception from a newswire, all others were made by the dailys reporters. The case four times appeared on the front page. Sme even published seven critical opinion pieces. Besides reports from the trials, Sme also offered several investigative stories in which reporter Matus Burcik worked with UPN files. For example in the story StB sa opierala o Babisa (StB leaned on Babis), he e.g. pointed to the discrepancies in the testimonies of the prosecutors key witness, Andrej Kulha, in court. Hidden respite Similarly, HN informed also on Babiss companies and economic interests. His chemical factory Duslo Sala received in Slovakia in 2014 a ten-year tax holiday worth a total of 58 million. The plant was to invest the sum into modernisation of the production of ammonia. Neither Economy Ministry, nor Duslo Sala informed on the tax relief; it was Czech journalists who uncovered it. How did HN master this issue? Their readers were not able to read about criticism which accompanied the investment stimulus for the company. The daily failed to notice it. HN offered a single, brief news piece signed by the abbreviation RED (redakcia, meaning editorial staff) in June 2014 when the scandal was widely publicised. It was published on July 10, on page four, in the column V skratke / In Short, with the headline Duslo sala je blizko danovym ulavam / Duslo Sala is Close to Tax Reliefs. Apart from the monitoring of Czech website E.15, which was the first to break the story, it contained a brief statement of Duslo Sala CEO Peter Blaha: We asked for investment stimulus, and the European Commission will be deciding on it. It will assess whether this is not unallowed support. Moreover, HN wrote erroneously in this story that the plant does not get the tax holiday just for free; it rather plans to create hundreds of jobs. Actually, the condition for receiving investment stimulus was not to employ new people which was also subject to criticism. Duslo Sala pledged not to fire the current employees. The only critical text published by HN concerning the scandal was the opinion piece of former finance minister Ivan Miklos from January 12, 2015, i.e. six months after the subsidy was granted and the scandal already faded away. The neglected empire as the economic daily fails to be critical or even neutral from the news point of view in issues which are related to its owner. Instead, it often opts for keeping silent. It took such a stance also in the case spekaciky [special type of sausage meant for grilling, frying or roasting]. Slovak Agriculture Minister Lubomir Jahnatek in 2014 proposed that spekaciky could be produced without meat, only from poultry in form of mechanically separated meat (MSM), mechanically recovered/reclaimed meat (MRM), or mechanically deboned meat (MDM). The idea came from the Union of Slovak Poulterers which represents a number of poultry-processing plants, including the Hyza plant from Babis group Agrofert. After protest from food-processing companies and producers of traditional spekaciky who make them by adding pork and beef, Jahnatek withdrew his proposal. The scandal attracted attention of several media, among others also Sme, or the news website Aktualne.sk. In HN, it received no space. The daily also did not inform on the fire which struck in October 2015 one of the fattening halls of the Hyza company, in which 20,000 chickens died. The dailys readers also did not learn that in the beginning of this year, Hyza called on consumers to return to shops the poultry stemming from breeding points where salmonella was found. Although Andrej Babis operates mainly in the Czech Republic, his firms play a key role in several industrial branches also in Slovakia. Despite this, Hospodarske Noviny did not bring a single story since early 2014 about his Hyza company which belongs among the biggest poultry processing companies in the country, as well as across Europe. HN also did not mention the bakery company Penam which is an important player on the bread market. And about Duslo Sala, they informed only concerning the investment in an ammonia-producing hall. This is surprising in a newspaper focused on the economy. Soft-normalisation After the Penta investment group entered several influential media in 2014, the notion of oligarchisation of media has been debated more also in Slovakia. Especially the Sme daily, but also the Trend weekly brought several critical stories towards Pentas steps, and thus tired to demonstrate to readers their independence of their owner. HN, also thanks to their owner being engaged mostly in the Czech Republic, remained slightly distanced from this debate. The daily is the smallest national daily (average sale rate for last year is an average of 12,175 copies), but its social impact is not marginal. Hospodarske Noviny is, according to the findings of Transparency International (TI), also the most subscribed paper in public administration. In a sample of important state offices, public firms and self-administrations, TI found HN subscriptions in 181 cases, while Pravda had 129 subscriptions and Sme 121. The impact of billionaire Babis on his media was confronted more by Czechs. His media campaign started already in June 2013 when he bought the significant Czech publishing house MAFRA which published, among other things, dailies Mlada Fronta Dnes and Lidove Noviny. He became a media mogul and after success in parliamentary election in October 2013, media started to liken him to former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Former editor of MF Dnes and Lidove noviny, Pavel Safr, wrote that Babis represents a threat to freedom in media and a kind of soft-normalisation [ an apparent hint to communist-time effort at suppressing all reformist and anti-Soviet efforts after crackdown on Socialism with a Human Face in 1960s Czechoslovakia]. Safr laid out an analysis of the contents of two dailies, a year-and-a-half before Babis bought them, and six months afterwards. According to it, the number of positive news about the mogul increased in MF Dnes from 30 in the first phase to 202 in the second one; while in Lidove Noviny, the increase was from 20 to 164. In Slovakia, this situation has not been so evident. However, our analysis implies that in three years with Andrej Babis, Hospodarske Noviny failed to struggle free of this cramp. On one hand, it consequently informs on its ownership conflict everywhere it is mentioned. On the other hand, Babis can be sure that no criticism will come from his newspaper. In return, the Czech Berlusconi does not require his Slovak paper to do any extra work which would help his business or political career. It is enough for him to be almost invisible for the daily. Transparency International Slovensko If you think that following the independence of media makes sense, please support Transparency also financially. Only with your support, we will be able to continue monitoring backstage influences in media. Thanks! Young people are often surprised when someone explains to them who the LSNS leader really is, according to the president. Font size: A - | A + Leader of Peoples Party Our Slovakia (LSNS) Marian Kotleba is a fascist and there is a need to name things directly and clearly without any fear, President Andrej Kiska stated when commenting on his discussions with students about extremism, the the TASR newswire reported on April 7. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Young people are often surprised when they receive an explanation of who Kotleba really is. Apart from the fact that he marches in uniform with a torch, he also declares that the Slovak National Uprising in 1944 is one of the saddest moments in the history of our state. He keeps telling people that it is not their problem that many Jews were taken away to concentration camps and perished under the wartime Slovak State in1939-45, according to Kiska. Read also: Read also: Opinions on not inviting Kotleba differ Read more Kotleba is a fascist, and when we speak about this with students, they often propose banning his party, Kiska said, as quoted by TASR. But we dont want to ban anything because thats not a solution. We need the state to function properly. Kiska paid a visit to the town of Krupina in Banska Bystrica region on April 7 partly due to the results of the 2016 general election, which saw wide support for Marian Kotlebas LSNS in the town, according to TASR. When a state is failing, people resort to extreme solutions. Everything possible must be done to improve the functioning of the state and to look for solutions that will help to prevent people from voting for extremism, according to Kiska. At a meeting with Krupina town council Kiska learnt what bothers the local people most. Precitajte si tiez: Precitajte si tiez: Analysts: Kotleba uses American campaign tactics Read more The unemployment rate is around 10 percent here, but the truth is that many young people have left for bigger cities, Kiska said, as quoted by TASR. There are villages in Krupina district whose unemployment rates exceed 50 percent. Infrastructure is another thing that the people of Krupina are worried about. International traffic, which includes big lorries, passes through the city on a daily basis. Thats not acceptable. Kiska also attended a discussion with pupils from a local secondary school and stated that as a president he has been talking to students about what helped LSNS get into parliament. Ive been meeting young people over the past few weeks. We always discuss why they voted for an extremist party, Kiska said, as quoted by TASR. Ill never show support to any political party that leans towards fascism or consider it to be a normal political partner. The Defence Ministry has also reported that US military aircraft will fly over Slovakia during April and May Font size: A - | A + A total of 55 members of the military police along with their colleagues from the Czech Republic and employees of the Slovak Interior Ministrys Office for the Protection of Constitutional Officials and Diplomatic Missions are undergoing training on how to protect VIPs. The exercises are taking place at the training centre in Lest in Banska Bystrica region, the TASR newswire learnt on April 7. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The Bodyguard exercise is part of Slovakia's preparations for its upcoming presidency of the EU. Our military police will be able to tap into the experience gained from this exercise not only during the presidency, but also in relation to ongoing international crisis management and various foreign missions, said Defence Ministry State Secretary Marian Salon at a briefing in Lest on the same day. Military police chief Milan Hamar underlined that current developments in Europe clearly indicate the importance of such exercises. In addition, the military police have been equipped with new weapons and technologies, and so we need to practice their deployment, stated Hamar, as quoted by TASR. Members of the press were shown a video presentation of the past few days of the exercise. This included a demonstrations of how officers would proceed when protecting a VIP under physical attack, when dealing with a sniper and when faced with a more comprehensive attack. Precitajte si tiez: Precitajte si tiez: NATO Force Integration Unit quietly arriving in Slovakia Read more The Defence Ministry has also reported that US military aircraft will fly over Slovakia during April and May as part of a planned and coordinated exercise by Slovakias NATO partners, TASR learnt on same day. The USA has been granted permission to fly Hercules C-130 aircraft over Slovakia at low altitudes. The flights, which will take place in the north and centre of Slovakia, will be monitored. Collective security in central Europe is crucial, said Defence Ministry State Secretary Ivan Macovsky, as quoted by TASR. Mutual coordination of procedures as well as familiarity with terrain allow for the effective deployment of allied units in a crisis situation, whether it be of a military or non-military character. Thats why these training activities over NATO member states are very commonplace. Ladislav Lazar is leaving his post at state-run company Water Management Construction Font size: A - | A + Ladislav Lazar is leaving his post as director of state-run company Water Management Construction (VV) following a discussion with new Environment Minister Laszlo Solymos of Most-Hid. The minister views this company as strategic for both the ministry and the state, Juraj Rybansky, from the ministrys press department told the TASR newswire on April 7. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Until a new director is selected VV will be headed by Andrej Kasana, who served as dam security department chief until his nomination to this temporary role. Read also: Read also: Dennik N: Third most profitable firm is a shell company Read more A few months ago, Lazar was linked by the then opposition to a controversial contract for ferry transport between Danube River ports at Vojka nad Dunajom and Kyselica in Trnava region. The contract was signed by VV and private Bratislava-based company Ponton City in June 2015 for a term of 15 years. The cost over 15 years will reach 51.38 million including VAT, which is over the limit set for public procurements - 25 million excluding VAT. This is due to the ferrys schedule. The contract for the ferry service states a frequency of 19 journeys a day. However from July 1, 2015 the ferry began to operate according to a different schedule with a frequency of 35 journeys a day, which increased costs, according to the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO) leader Igor Matovic. Read also: Read also: Police investigate ferry tender scandal Read more Matovic argued that building a bridge would have been more cost effective. Former environment minister Peter Ziga of Smer who had to face a no-confidence motion in parliament over the case, claimed that the state did not lose even a single euro over the ferry contract. The second year of Week of Slovak Films promises 21 movies, in Bratislava with English subtitles, and a host of events. Font size: A - | A + After the success of the first, tentative year of the display of Slovak films made during the previous year, it will be repeated also in 2016 between April 11 and 16 in Bratislavas Lumiere cinema. Later, it will travel to cinema clubs across Slovakia in Kosice, Zilina, Martin, Banska Bystrica and Nitra. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Concentrating the best [cinematic] works into one point enables audiences to see films in mutual connections and contexts, and it will lead to confronting individual creative processes, while also making an idea about thematic lines and outlining a coherent image about where Slovak cinema is going, president of the Slovak Film and Television Academy, Marek Lescak, said. Film award art of the week For the first time, the week will include awarding the national film prizes Sun in a Net / Slnko v sieti, rewarding the best films of 2014-2015 which fulfil the criteria. Competing in the 6th year of the event will be 13 feature films, 19 documentaries, and 10 animated cartoons. Two filmmakers will also receive the award for Exceptional Contribution to Slovak Cinematography: presidium of the Slovak Film and TV Academy (SFTA) selected director Juraj Jakubisko (who made internationally renowned films like Bathory or Perinbaba and A Thousand-Year Old Bee) and cameraman Igor Luther (the Tin Drum, Via Mala, The Cold Light of Day) whose movies will be screened during the weekend preceding the awards gala (which takes place on April 16 evening, in the Slovak National Theatre and live broadcast by Slovak public TV, RTVS). They will be awarded together, as they started filming together, in former Czechoslovakia, organisers told a press conference. Cameraman Igor Luther (Source: Miro Nota) As for movies, most nominations are going to films Koza (Goat), Deti (Children) and Eva Nova. All three were already screened with English subtitles, as they had previously been shown at foreign festivals. The Week of Slovak Films will present 21 out of altogether 25 films made (the remaining four have not fulfilled the criteria, e.g. of having been already shown publicly); feature films, documentaries and animated films made between January 1 and December 31 2015 and already screened. It will also include accompanying events (in Slovak): three expert discussions evaluating last years films and two workshops of the young generation of filmmakers. There will also be a debate on the copyright law, tutored by co-organiser, the LITA agency overseeing royalties and copyrights. The festival will be opened by the road-movie Stanko which was already screened abroad but is waiting to see its Slovak premiere (on March 11). Information on all films and their screenings and English subtitles marked as AT can be found at www.tyzdenfilmu.sk; and the awards are detailed at www.slnkovsieti.sk. The catalogue accompanying the festival is bilingual, as is the website. For Slovak audiences, the chance to see filmmakers in person who will attend the screenings can be the right bait, while for foreigners, this might be the chance to watch the latest Slovak films with English subtitles. Slovak films in focus It is very good that we are trying to make this event a tradition and that some processes are started that could increase the rate of visitors of Slovak films, as well as evoke interest from abroad, Lescak told the press conference on March 30. He added that organisers would like to show that top Slovak films can enter the European context and also that there have appeared works successful among viewers which disprove the notion that Slovak films are not interesting for audiences. Koza movie (Source: Martin Kollar) Martin Sulik, director, academy lecturer and member of the of the SFTA presidium, summed up that by the end of the 1990s, another film director Dusan Trancik said that Slovak movies are rare swallows which should not be shot at. He wanted to say, Sulik explained that each and every Slovak film made then was the outcome of enormous effort and is so rare that it is hard to evaluate it objectively, bearing standard criteria. Since then, though, the situation has changed so much that the whole society has become interested in domestic production, and Slovak films now can compare easily with foreign productions. That may or may not translate into a president Trump putting the interests of the people first. But what that has already accomplished is a revolution in American politics, where real power has for too long been lodged in the hands of lobbyists and the political class. Trump is being seen as actually trying to wrest the power away from the establishment for the benefit of the people. The voters appreciate the fact, and are eager to be part of the rebellion against the old order. Are the above four factors enough for Trump to win the election? Well, not by themselves. All is relative, and candidate Trump is only as strong as his opponents are weak. Luckily for him, his rivals just happen to look weak by comparison. Which is the fifth reason why Trump must win. Hillary Clinton cant possibly beat Trump in a race for the White House. Her track record in public office has been horrible. Her candidacy is being weighed down by all sorts of ethical and legal scandals that make her practically unelectable. She might not even make it to a Democratic Party nomination. Nor does being a woman help; unfortunately, America is not yet ready for a woman-president. They can pay lip-service to woman empowerment all they want, but come the crunchtime and the Americans will vote for a man like Trump. Besides, Clinton is all over the map with her policies: she struggles with issues, her election programs is devoid of substance, and she does not speak to the things that preoccupy Americans. While Bernie Sanders might perhaps give Trump a run for his money, for now it looks like he is being thrown under the bus by the Democratic Party apparatchiks eager to please the special interests that bankroll them. So where does that leave us? Heres the prediction: come next November, Trimp will be a shoo-in for the White House. If, of course, nothing happens to him before that. "I think the Austrian business community deplores the problems that exist which have to do mostly with the economic situation in Russia and worldwide the lack of growth that we have, or in Russias context even the negative growth, which is predicted for this year," Brix said. The ambassador spoke in favor of maintaining contact between the business circles of the two countries, saying that the work in this direction was already carried out. "What we can do we certainly cant change the climate of the global economy, but we can lay the ground work for a constant and reliable contact between the economic players in our two countries. This is what is important in our view, and the groundwork in this area has already been done," Brix stressed. Earlier in the week, Russia President Vladimir Putin said in a meeting with his Austrian counterpart Heinz Fischer that relations between Moscow and Vienna were developing despite all existing hurdles. In February, the Austrian vice chancellor visited Moscow for a joint economic commission after a break of more than three years. The Russian-Austrian trade declined due to overall deterioration of Moscow-EU relations after the European Union imposed sanctions on Russia over alleged meddling in the Ukrainian crisis. The claims have been continuously refuted by Moscow that has maintained that the sanctions are counterproductive. BRUSSELS (Sputnik)The referendum on the EU-Ukraine Association agreement in the Netherlands is not just about the agreement itself between the two governments, but more of the mood to the events occurring in the European Union, Russian Ambassador to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov said. We understand quite well that this was a referendum not only on the association of the European Union and Ukraine, but also on the mood of what is happening in the European Union. This point of view is also held by many experts and political scientists who are following the development of this story, Chizhov told RIA Novosti in an interview. The results of the EU-Ukraine Association agreement referendum in the Netherlands may have a great influence on the situation in Great Britain on their upcoming Brexit referendum, Vladimir Chizhov said. "We shall witness modular homes in more places in Sweden unless the asylum policy is tightened," maintain Roger Hedlund, Mikael Eskilandersson and Jorgen Fogelklou of the Swedish Democrats Party in an article they penned for Aftonbladet "One aspect they all have in common is the very low long-term value, as modular homes are to be demolished after only several years of use," they argued. "In [Sweden's second largest city] Gothenburg, the housing plan has already resulted in protests, particularly among those living in low-density residential areas, but we also want to emphasize that the new asylum accommodations are unsuitable for other places as well," they said, stressing the growing feeling of insecurity among homeowners in many neighborhoods. Even Karin Ernlund of the Center Party (Centerpartiet) censured the very placement of the temporary homes. "None of the temporary homes for the new arrivals are located in the center of Stockholm, something that does not sit well with a decent integration policy and the ambitions of Stockholm's leftist majority to reduce segregation," she told Dagens Samhalle. The popular reaction to modular houses is particularly adverse in areas that are affected by the program, as dissatisfied residents are being steamrollered by the municipal authorities. "People are desperate, angry, frightened and above all they feel totally powerless," write Maggi Haglund and Madeleine Nilsson of the Swedish Democrats Party (Sverigedemokraterna) in their scathing article in Svenska Dagbladet. Had his privileged upbringing been funded by a father who made his millions out of aggressive tax planning? Did Cameron himself still benefit for the same tax scam? His first answer through his spokeswoman was: "That is a private matter." Pressed again on the issue, Downing Street stonewalled, saying: "The prime minister doesn't own any shares." By Tuesday, Cameron was forced to open up a little, saying: "In terms of my own financial affairs, I own no shares. I have a salary as prime minister and I have some savings, which I get some interest from and I have a house, which we used to live in, which we now let out while we are living in Downing Street and that's all I have. I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description." By Wednesday, the question of whether Cameron had benefited from a tax avoidance scheme was answered with a little more clarity by Downing Street: "There are no offshore funds/trusts which the prime minister, Mrs Cameron or their children will benefit from in future." The words "in future" had journalists agog. 'It Has Been a Difficult Few Days' By Thursday, Cameron's evasion was too much even for him and he finally admitted that he had, indeed, benefitted from the Panamanian trust, Blairmore, set up by his father Ian which he sold shortly before becoming Prime Minister in 2010 to the tune of a US$422,000. #CurseDavidCameron we need this man to get to the bottom of Camerons crimes against the people of Britain pic.twitter.com/iaa0OmL6NV jimmy sutherland (@j_sutherland2) 7 April 2016 "It has been a difficult few days, reading criticisms of my father and his business practices my dad a man I love and admire and miss every day. But I should deal with the past as well. Because of course I did own stocks and shares in the past quite naturally because my father was a stockbroker. "I sold them all in 2010, because if I was going to become prime minister I didn't want anyone to say you have other agendas, vested interests. Samantha and I have a joint account. We owned 5000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000. I paid income tax on the dividends," he told ITV News. "He [his father] left me some money, very generously, quite a lot of money. It was [US$422,000]. I obviously can't point to every source of every bit of the money, and dad isn't around to ask the questions now. I've never hidden the fact that I am a very lucky person. I had wealthy parents who gave me a great upbringing. Who paid for me to go to an amazing school. I have never tried to be anything I am not," Cameron said. At the end of a week when he was also accused of using taxpayers' money to fund a pro-EU campaign over the referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union stealing a march on anti-EU campaigners by spending US$13 million ahead of the official campaign period Cameron faces a weekend when he hopes bad news will just blow away. #CurseDavidCameron May one day you really, REALLY need the #NHS and it isn't there to save you'. pic.twitter.com/MndL1ma7W6 Alan Weaver (@alanweaver1957) 7 April 2016 Evading the issue on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, before fessing-up by Friday has made Britain's Prime Minister appear evasive, which will make for taxing times ahead. Sauli Niinisto has repeatedly indicated his personal support for the NATO cause. However, a majority of his fellow Finns, including former Presidents Tarja Halonen and Mauno Koivisto, have opposed membership, because they feel Russia harbors no ill-will towards their country. With opinions becoming increasingly polarized, antagonism against NATO is becoming manifest, even in Sweden. Rune Lanestrand, former political editor of Alvsborgsposten and a long-standing member of the Central Preparedness Board of Psychological Defense, has recently initiated a petition to call off the Memorandum of Understanding, an agreement which was signed between Sweden and NATO in 2014 in hopes of further intimacy. "The ongoing propaganda proceeds from the alleged need for Sweden to join the war-mongering organization NATO, which instead is being depicted as a peaceful organization. A Swedish membership would only increase tensions around the Baltic. We should not abandon but rather reinforce our neutrality, which was introduced by the first Bernadotte on the Swedish throne, Karl Johan IV, and has given us peace for more than two centuries," Lanestrand told Nyheter Idag. "Nowadays, NATO advocates have unleashed one wave of war propaganda after another through major media, radio and television. Russia, which is much less of a threat than returning Daesh terrorists, is being depicted as a major hazard. The intention is to railroad [through] a so-called host country agreement, that would give NATO almost unlimited permission to act on Swedish soil." MOSCOW (Sputnik) The UK voters desire to leave the European Union will be encouraged after the refusal of the majority of the Dutch citizens to back the ratification of the EU-Ukraine association deal, the deputy chairman of German parliamentary group Die Linke told Sputnik Friday. The Dutch referendum is a very strong signal for the UK that will hold in June an in/out referendum, Wolfgang Gehrcke, who is on a trip to Moscow, said. On Wednesday, two thirds of the Dutch people voted against the Netherlands governments decision to ratify the EU-Ukraine association deal signed in 2014, according to preliminary referendum results. The same day, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that the Netherlands could reconsider the ratification of the EU-Ukraine association deal as the majority of the population says "no." Thaci, who has a long record of participating in Kosovar politics, previously served as the head of the breakaway republic's foreign ministry, as deputy prime minister and, between 2008 and 2014, as prime minister. He began his political rise in the early 1990s when, using the moniker 'The Snake', he became a member of the KLA leadership's inner circle, responsible for securing funds and arms, and for training militants in neighboring Albania to be sent to Kosovo. Ceremony of new president inauguration has started: The ceremony of new president inauguration Hashim Thaci wh https://t.co/Z59pJZWqoa Kosovo News Links (@dlKosovo) 8 2016 . In her 2008 book entitled The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecutor Carla Del Ponte alleged that Thaci was directly involved in the KLA's illegal organ trade; the KLA was accused of harvesting the organs of mostly Serbian prisoners of war at secret detention centers in Albania. In 1999, the prosecutor wrote, about 300 Serbs and other non-Albanians were kidnapped and taken to northern Albania, where their organs were removed, and sent, for profit, to hospitals across Europe. Furthermore, she continued, "which services responded? I have seen a commentary from the commander of the border guards, who said they know nothing about it. It's important to ask, as this is a very serious matter, even though one does not really want to ask our poor prime ministerJournalists, I want to remind you not to give in to demagogy, when you are told that this is all a state secret." Speaking in the Sejm on Friday, Jukneviciene, who is a member of the Homeland Union party, asked Prime Minister Butkevicius directly to specify when the incursion took place. In her words, fooling people on this important issue of national security is just as dangerous as a possible landing of Russian special forces itself. For his part, journalist Liudas Dapkus, the editor in chief of Lrytas.lt, one of Lithuania's most popular news portals, asked why, if the information was true, nobody had reacted to it properly. "If this did indeed take place and no one reacted, this is a serious problem. Where is the foreign ministry's note of protest to Russia? Where is the decision to strengthen the coast guard? Where is the international scandal? And if all of this didn't happen, go to hell with your never-ending cloak and dagger games." MOSCOW (Sputnik) Copenhagen and Oslo are keen on preventing the uncontrolled flow of migrants from moving further into Europe's north, Danish Minister for Immigration, Integration and Housing Inger Stojberg said at a press conference with her Norwegian counterpart Sylvi Listhaug. "I have been looking forward to speaking with my Norwegian colleague, since we have a joint interest in ensuring that the stream of refugees into Europe doesn't move to the North," Stojberg said on Friday. Listhaug arrived in Denmark on Friday and visited the tent camp for asylum seekers in Naestved. She has a big social media following. And obviously I dont even have half of what she has. She hit 39 million followers on Instagram yesterday, I've got like 50 0000. But its not necessary to look like someone else to become big on social media proven by Benny Winfield Jr. who calls himself the King of the Selfie Movement. Winfield is a sales representative from Texas, whose Instagram MrPimpGoodGame got a massive following in 2013 for posting exactly the same close-up type of shots his smiling face with different backgrounds. He later admitted to Vice that about a third of those photos were taken on the toilet. In an interview to Dutch broadcaster NOS on YouTube, MrPimpgoodgame gave a simple explaination for his selfie obsession: Because Im getting response, Im getting attention Winfield Jr. also said that he was getting both positive and negative reactions from the audience, but it didnt matter much to him: Youre gonna still follow me While the selfie epidemic brought popularity to Instagram celebrities like Parke, Winfield and others, it also helped to jumpstart a separate niche in hardware manufacturing. Monopods, or so-called selfie sticks, were known to customers in Asia before. But now, with the unstoppable selfie trend, the production of this simple accessory has grown significantly, crossing borders and breaking cultural barriers. According to NPR, a New York based company called Selfie on a Stick has seen a 3,000% growth in sales in November of 2015. So if you want to look like your idol, or make an idol out of yourself, if youve got something unusual, funny, or shocking about your daily life or appearance use your imagination. With just a smartphone and an Instagram account (and perhaps with a decent selfie stick too) you can become a digital age celebrity, followed by thousands of people from all over the world. PALMYRA (Syria) (Sputnik) Russia played a key role in the liberation of the historic Syrian city of Palmyra from Islamic State (ISIL, also known as Daesh) extremists, Governor of the Syrian Homs province, Talal al-Barazi, told journalists. "Without any doubt, the action of the Russian aviation that supported the Syrian army in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group played the main role in liberating Palmyra from extremists," Talal al-Barazi said. On March 27, the Syrian army, backed by militias and Russian Aerospace Forces, fully liberated Palmyra, which was under the control of Daesh since May 2015. WASHINGTON (Sputnik)The US-led coalition plans to work with Iraq to turn up the pressure on Daesh terrorists embedded in the country by targeting more of the groups leaders and training more Iraqi forces, US Secretary of State John Kerry said during a press conference in Iraq on Friday. "In the coming weeks and months, the coalition will work with Iraq to turn up the pressure even further," Kerry said. "We will continue targeting and taking out Daeshs leaders and we will train local forces to take and hold more ground." Kerry warned during his unannounced trip to the country on Friday that the Iraqi forces would continue to work to "improve every aspect of our capability" against Daesh and would "not be complacent at any point in this campaign." "In banks, for example, credit card information of their customers is stored in a fragmentary state, in a special way, in encrypted systems of their own production, equipped with multi-stage protection against hacking. For example, when information on 2.7 million credit cards of one of the world famous bank was stolen, the hackers were unable to take advantage of it for their own purposes, because much of the data was stored in other systems," Ucar told Sputnik Turkiye. In the case of the Turkish government, however, there was no reliable information storage system, he added. However, reversing the damage from the leak could be costly. "In the long term, [Turkey should] firstly, change the ID numbers of the identity documents of Turkish citizens, and secondly, to complicate the process of using these numbers, that is, to take additional security measures when conducting transactions with these numbers," Ucar told Sputnik Turkiye. He added that currently, Turkish citizens are asked for their national ID numbers when buying medicines at a pharmacy, or even renting a bicycle, which he does not see as a good way to protect such important data. "The war in Iraq," Shadjerah continued, "the vacuum that was created, contributed to create Daesh. The policy in Syria exactly the same thing created an environment where groups like Daesh would flourish. Same thing happened in Libya." "In Iraq, in Syria we could blame Iran's involvement, but in Libya there was no Iranian involvement and no Russian involvement. The policy of going in, and, instead of diplomacy, destroying the whole infrastructure, has showed us in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in Libya that it creates an environment for exactly these extreme groups to flourish." Asked whether this kind of disaster was a design of the US government or merely a result of its shortsightedness, he said: "first, there was Afghanistan. One could say that this was a shortsightedness, that the policy backfired with the 9/11 attack. But then there was Iraq. And some people trying to find excuses. But we see this thing happening over and over again, and it only happens in places where there is a level of independence in these states." "Then obviously one come to a conclusion that no one is such a fool to make the same mistake so many times, as systematically," Shadjerah asserted. "So therefore you have to say that there are elements at least who actually designed this. And if you pose a question who benefited from this, it is definitely not the [Middle East] region who benefited from this. The only people who could probably benefit is Army industry and certain set of powers who didn't want a strong opponent in the region." Asked whether, instead of training, the US troops should engage the Taliban on the ground, Hathaway suggested that, "in some important ways, US troops are engaging Taliban today. There have been a couple of US deaths this year in Afghanistan, even though the actual combat operations there for the American troops were supposed to have ended in 2014. "There is still fighting, the principal purpose [of the US forces] remains one of conducting counter-terrorist operations and train and otherwise assist the Afghan security forces." In the meantime, Afghan Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai has confirmed plans to relocate government troops throughout the country. According to Stanekzai, it made little sense to spread forces across sparsely populated districts in the Helmand province, from which the troops pulled out in February. Asked whether this is an attempt to rebrand a retreat, Hathaway noted the "groups of Taliban that roam the area virtually at will, even though the Afghan forces were dispersed at checkpoints throughout the region." According to the strategist, the relocation announced by Stanekzai "is not retreat so much as simply concentrating forces in a small number of geographical areas. In a way, this does reflect an admission in a part of Kabul that previous strategy simply was not working." WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The deployment by the United States of 12 F-15 Eagle combat jets to the European Command (EUCOM) will not significantly affect the obsolete, World War II-style deployment of the US military in Europe, retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor told Sputnik. "[I]n contrast to reorganized Russian air and ground forces, the US and allied forces are poised to operate on the World War II model a sure way to lose the fight," Macgregor, a military historian and leading US tactician stated on Thursday. The redeployment of the F-15 jets in no way significantly altered the military balance in Europe, Macgregor emphasized. First up today, Todd Allbaugh, a former Chief of Staff in the WI State Senate says he left the Republican Party when, during a closed-door caucus meeting to discuss the state's Photo ID voting restriction law in 2011, GOP lawmakers were "giddy" about the prospect of using the law to disenfranchise Democratic voters in the Badger State. Then, WV's own Bob Kincaid, Head-On Radio Network host, co-founder of the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Campaign and President of Coal River Mountain Watch, joins us to discuss Blankenship's federal sentencing yesterday for his part in conspiring to violate mine safety regulations leading to the tragic 2010 Upper Big Branch (UBB) coal mine explosion. Kincaid details the once-powerful coal baron's rise to power, why the former CEO of Massey Energy got off so lightly in both federal and state court, why coal remains king among both Democrats and Republicans in WV, and how Obama's mythical "War on Coal" shows no signs of ending deadly coal mining and toxic mountaintop removal in the state. On the emotional reaction by families of UBB victims following Wednesday's sentencing (see this from a miner, Tommy Davis, who lost his brother, son and nephew in the disaster), Kincaid describes it as "heartbreaking" and yet "another chapter in the 125-plus-year-long exploitation and devastation of the people of this state and this region" which has resulted in coal industry-caused deaths numbering "in the tens of thousands". Despite the disaster that has devastated the community, he warns "of course, it's going to happen again, because Don Blankenship was not the only coal boss who hates safety regulations. Remember, here in West Virginia, and generally in the Republican Party, those are not 'safety regulations' that Don Blankenship conspired to evade. Those were 'job-killing regulations'. . 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. Sputniks Brian Becker spoke to Jennifer Chavez, staff attorney at EarthJustice, about the ongoing health crisis. She told Loud & Clear that it is a valid policy for officials and utilities to downplay problems as a means to avoid causing panic, but that it is irresponsible and unethical to fail to provide people with the information they need to protect themselves. When you know that kids are drinking lead in their water, and there is no human tolerance for lead, and that it has a lifetime implication and public officials are quibbling about this, that, and the other thing, and not trying to stop it, as their urgent priority. It would seem to me that they should not only be fired, they should be held accountable that's criminal negligence, isn't it? Becker asked Chavez. Its certainly, in terms of ethical behavior, it was not the ethical thing to do, to wait, Chavez said. Its important for people to understand that this is a problem across the country. Many people do not realize that their water has levels of lead in it that may be harmful to them. Public utilities are supposed to provide public education and let their customers know about this risk, but what we find time and time again is that utilities downplay the risk of lead in water and play up the risks of lead from other sources. Meanwhile, Klein notes that a lot of firepower has been brought to bear by the Clinton campaign to slap down what they claim is the non-issue of the candidate accepting money from the petroleum industry. The writer refuted the notion and explained why the Clinton camp and its supporters are so very wrong. Hillary Clintons campaign, including her Super PAC, has received a lot of money from the employees and registered lobbyists of fossil-fuel companies. Theres the much-cited $4.5 million that Greenpeace calculated, which includes bundling by lobbyists, Klein wrote. But thats not all. There is also a lot more money from sources not included in those calculations. For instance, one of Clintons most prominent and active financial backers is Warren Buffett. While he owns a large mix of assets, Buffett is up to his eyeballs in coal, including coal transportation and some of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the country. Klein detailed further examples of Clintons reliance on oil money. Then theres all the cash that fossil-fuel companies have directly pumped into the Clinton Foundation. In recent years, Exxon, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron have all contributed to the foundation. An investigation in the International Business Times just revealed that at least two of these oil companies were part of an effort to lobby Clintons State Department about the Alberta tar sands, a massive deposit of extra-dirty oil. Leading climate scientists like James Hansen have explained that if we dont keep the vast majority of that carbon in the ground, we will unleash catastrophic levels of warming. Klein wrote that it isnt just Clintons corporate cash, but her "pro-corporate ideology," making it seem natural to accept money from lobbyists and banks, blinding her to the reasons why it is an endemic political problem. The aviation authority said the plane was flying at a speed of 600 kilometers an hour and made a nosedive at 50 degrees before crashing into the ground. "At a height of 900 m there was a simultaneous control column nose down input and stabilizer 5-degree nose down deflection, resulting in abrupt descent with negative vertical acceleration of 1g. The following crew actions to recover did not allow to avoid an impact with the ground. The impact occurred with a speed of over 600 km/h over 50 degrees nose down," the report says. The IAC said that airline pilots and test pilots from Russia, the United States and the United Arab Emirates were all involved in the investigations into the crash and also verified that the crew was in possession of valid licenses and had undergone training on the aircraft. "Currently works are underway at the IAC facilities to reproduce the circumstances of the accident. Both airline pilots and test-pilots from the Russian Federation, the USA and the UAE have been engaged in the investigation to assess the status and actions of the crew. According to the available information the involved pilots were holding valid pilot licenses and other pertinent papers, had undergone required training and had sufficient flight experience," according to the report. MOSCOW (Sputnik)Russia has made a major contribution to the establishment of a ceasefire regime between the sides to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict , Russian Ambassador to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said Friday. "It's precisely the large-scale Russia's interference that led to the truce," Lukashevich said. According to Lukashevich, Russia used all its opportunities to influence the parties to the conflict to end the hostilities fully supporting the OSCE Minsk Group efforts co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France. MURMANSK (Russia) (Sputnik)In March, Russia and Finland agreed to introduce temporary restrictions at two checkpoints on their border, Salla and Raja-Jooseppi, for citizens of third countries. "The implementation of the restrictions will start on 10 April at 00:00. Cross-border traffic at Salla and Raja-Jooseppi will be restricted temporarily for a maximum period of 180 days," the Finnish Foreign Ministry said. It was added in the statement that only the citizens of Finland, Russia and Belarus, as well as their family members, regardless of their nationalities, could use the aforementioned border crossing points. MOSCOW (Sputnik)Oil prices continue to be exposed to volatility risks, while the recent stabilization should be attributed to the possible output reductions, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Friday. "I think that volatility risks still persist. [The stabilization] has been a result of market settling down after seeing prospects of a coordination effort by oil producing countries," Novak said in an interview with the Rossiya 24 channel, adding that the outlook for oil prices now depends on the results of the final deal between oil producers on freezing output. Global oil prices plunged from $115 to less than $30 per barrel between June 2014 and January 2016, hitting their lowest levels since 2003 amid an ongoing glut in global oil supply. The prices began to rebound in mid-February, with the Brent crude benchmark hitting the $40 per barrel mark in early March. The journalist believes that handpicking those who will receive asylum-seeker benefits guaranteed under international law will not solve the problem. Rather, he states, immediate action must be taken to improve conditions within Syria. "This is not a solution. The only solution is to end the bloody war in Syria." The UNHCR has criticized the plan as a human rights violation the collective expulsion of refugees is prohibited by European and international law but what is the mechanism for this plan? "The mechanism is what they call the market economy, explained Okuyan. Nobody cares about anything and it is completely illegal." The journalist explained that countries are ignoring their human rights obligations under international law, and exploiting the tragedy for their own gain. "It is the same inside Turkey with the businessmen collecting healthy, skilled workers from the camps while those in need are ignored. This is a non-ethical rule." How many of the refugees transit through Turkey? "Most of them come through Turkey close to three million," said Okuyan. "The numbers staying in Turkey have dropped substantially, though, and today there are more than 1.5 million refugees already in Europe being rounded up. Its a real human tragedy." Talk about dominating. Not only did Bob Krivelin win five legs of the recently completed NAADA Trotting Series but he also was victorious in the series $15,000 finale which was presented Thursday evening at Yonkers Raceway. In fact, he won that contest by five lengths with his own Permanent Joy in a time of 1:59. My horse went a big trip, he said. We had the pole (position) and (Dave) Yarock (with Nautilus De Vie) left like gangbusters which was OK with me but when Alan Schwartz slipped in in front of me as we headed to the quarter pole it upset my plans for a two-hole journey. Yarocks trotter led the field by the first quarter in :29 and with horses hung on the limb and moving up it forced Krivelin to come first-up as the field headed to the half-way point.. I really didnt want to come out so early but with (Bob) Hechkoff and Joe Lee moving up from the rears I really had no choice but to move when I did, Krivelin related. Getting out in front of the outside flow allowed Krivelin clearance and he was able to challenge Yarocks trotter as they headed for the third stanza. However Nautilus De Vie hung tough and Permanent Joy didnt clear until the two trotters passed the three quarters. But once Kriveilns horse settled down along the pylons only the margin of victory was in doubt. At the wire Permanent Joy was five lengths in front of runner-up Joe Lee's Boysdroolgirlsrule who finished a long neck better than Bob Hechkoffs AJ Destiny. Im proud of my driving victory but Im even prouder of my training, added Krivelin who doubles as Permanent Joys trainer. I keep him in his own huge paddock on my farm which is outside (the village of) Goshen (NY) and rarely do we put a harness on him between races. For extra exercise we tow him along on my farms bridle path from time to time Krivelin, a food purveyor in New York City, it marked his 190th amateur driving victory and his 107th win as a trainer. (NAADA) Its always special when a horse or human gets inducted into a Hall of Fame. Countless horsepeople and scores of equines have participated in harness racing since its inception, but harness racings Halls of Fame honour the best of the best. When it was recently announced that the great Odies Fame will be inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame this summer, it meant even more for one particular person. One cannot think of Odies Fame without instantly thinking of her co-owning trainer, Buddy (Harold) Wellwood. As an article by CTV News London explains, Wellwood passed away unexpectedly in 2000 and Odie passed four years later, in 2004. Last fall, Buddys daughter, Nicole, was featured in the mainstream media across Canada. Her seven-year-old son, Evan Leversage, was the boy whose town of St. George brought him Christmas in October because he was terminally ill with brain cancer. Evan passed away on December 6. When hearing of Odies induction into the Hall, Nicole took to her Facebook page to reflect on the situation. Dad I know you will be watching over Evan till we meet again, she wrote. I am so proud of you dad and honestly feel thankful that you are being honoured. Odie proved how amazing of a horseman you were! The Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame 2016 Induction Ceremony will be hosted at the Mississauga Convention Centre on Wednesday, August 3, 2016. Located at Woodbine Racetrack, Toronto, Ont., the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame is a national organization dedicated to honouring the best in Canadian horse racing as we preserve the history and heritage of the sport. (With files from CTV News London) After turning heads with an Ontario Sires Stakes record mile in her lifetime debut, pacing filly Thatsoveryverynice has garnered attention each time she's set foot on a racetrack. Her winter training performances leading into her three-year-old season caught the attention of an owner so impressed he had to acquire an interest. Trot Insider has learned that Thatsoveryverynice has been partially sold to Adriano Sorella. He joins trainer Tony Alagna and Toronto's Marvin Katz on the ownership group. Sorella, who has some horses with Alagna, was down in Florida watching his own horses train when a flashy filly caught his eye. "I was watching all his three-year-olds training down, and she's a real nice horse. She's training with his big colts, and I didn't really say much to him I just watched," said Sorella. "Marvin Katz was down and they were going over the filly and looking at her and once he left I asked Tony who owned the horse, and he said that Marvin had just bought in to buy a good portion of the horse. Their intentions are to race her back this year and then possibly breeding to Captaintreacherous, because that would be a good cross." Sorella kept watching the filly train down, then looked back at her races from her two-year-old campaign. The daughter of Vintage Master - Fox Valley Zena won four of her eight seasonal starts and banked more than $191,000. Among her victories were a division of the Eternal Camnation and her Shes A Great Lady Stakes elimination. She finished third in that Final, then finished off the board in her final two outings of the year. "I noticed that towards the end of the year she tailed off a bit so I asked him what that was all about and I really liked the answers that I got," stated Sorella. "Tony finally said to me 'you're asking a lot of questions about the filly' and I said 'yeah, because I want to buy in on her or buy her.' He said 'I own part of her with Marvin and I don't think there would be any problem with that.'" The two discussed numbers and Sorella took those figures into consideration. "I came in [Wednesday] to watch these horse train again...Just before I left -- I haven't said anything to him -- I was just kind of mulling it around in my head. Before we left training, I just looked at him and said 'I'm going to take a piece of that horse' and that's it." The fact that Thatsoveryverynice is holding her own with Alagna's top pacing colts certainly isn't lost on Sorella. Two of Alagna's colts, American Passport and Racing Hill, are rated in the top 10 of Trot's 2016 North America Cup Spring Book. "I watched her train and she's going with his big colts. She's going with horses like American Passport every step of the way," the owner continued. "The horse has got a ton of speed." Not only does she boast serious speed on the track, she's a stone cold stunner off the track. "She's got the look of a racehorse, she's nice: big built, she's got a big butt on her. The way her stride goes...when you're buying them, that's what you're looking for. Of course, when you're buying babies, you don't know that until they hit the racetrack. So when I saw that I said 'this is a nice horse'. "She's staked to pretty much everything so it was a no-brainer." Not only is Sorella looking forward to watching his new investment race in 2016, he's most looking forward to watching her race in person. Located just 15 minutes away from Mohawk, he'll be able to see his filly compete in any local OSS or Grand Circuit events hosted at the Campbellville oval. That said, Sorella feels Thatsoveryverynice has what it takes to compete with the divison's best on the Grand Circuit. "She's definitely a Grand Circuit filly. The way she goes now, I'm pretty sure she can go with them. It also helps that we still have a great program in Ontario, I think there's nothing to complain about. "I watched that division last year...there are some really nice horses, like L A Delight. What a fantastic filly she is. And then when they go Grand Circuit, you still have L A Delight, Casie Coleman's got a couple of nice fillies, Nancy Johansson has a nice filly...with what this horse has done, she won the Eternal Camnation at 2, she looks sharp to me and I think she can go with those fillies. She looks like the real deal." With her speed and looks, Sorella is not only looking forward to seeing Thatsoveryverynice compete. He's stoked on the potential for her foals to hit the ground when her racing career is over. Currently just a racehorse owner, this would be Sorella's first foray into the breeding side. "The residual value there is really strong because she's shown she was a good two-year-old, if she comes back the same way and is a great three-year-old or a good three-year-old...just the mare factor there, breeding to 'The Captain' or whoever, that residual value right there for a top mare. Good mares are hard to find. "You don't pull the trigger on a horse that you think is just going to be an OK OSS horse. I think she's in a bit of a different class." "Last year was a pretty wide open group of two-year-olds. For him to put away $370,000, he was one of the richer colts last year in North America....He had 11 starts last year and he was right there in the Breeders Crown." The countdown to the 2016 Pepsi North America Cup continues, with Trot Magazine profiling the horses predicted to be the top contenders for Canadian harness racing's richest prize. At 14-1, Nvestment Bluechip is the first of two Ontario Sires Stakes competitors cracking the top 10 of Trot's 2016 Pepsi North America Cup Spring Book, coming at #5. The son of Shadow Play consistently accrued earnings for his ownership group, missing only one payday in 11 starts as a freshman to amass $367,153 while taking a mark of 1:51.1. A $40,000 yearling purchase, Nvestment Bluechip is owned by Ontario's Michael Guerriero, Denis Breton, Tom Kyron and trainer Dave Menary. Trot Insider caught up with Menary for an update. Where did he winter? "I turned him out in North Carolina at Olive Branch Farm." When did you bring him back in to start training? "He came back January 15th." Where are you at with him right now? "He's going two trips. He's right on schedule." Have you noticed any changes from last year to this year? "Every horse Chris [Coyle] sends back, they're always in great shape. He was a good looking colt last year but he really looks like a horse now." Did you feel the horse needed to add much size from two to three? "No, he's just always been a good doer and really takes care of himself. He's a super-smart horse and he lasted right through the year last year, kept his weight good. This year, he's really blossomed." When will he qualify? "I'll kind of let him tell me that but I'm thinking the middle of May." What's his early schedule looking like leading up to the Pepsi North America Cup? "His first stake will be a [Ontario Sires Stakes] Gold in London if we choose to go to the half-mile track. He's also got the Somebeachsomewhere." What is he staked to past the North America Cup? "In August I paid him into the Battle of the Brandywine just because he had a big gap in his schedule there. I paid him into the Simcoe, the Little Brown Jug and the Breeders Crown...he has opportunity to tackle the Grand Circuit boys but we're lucky to have the Sires Stakes too." At what point last year did this horse show you North America Cup-level talent? "Early on he was one of my best babies. I pegged him in November [2014] as the best one I've got this year. He was a super trainer and all of a sudden he got a bit too smart, and once he got qualified he wasn't that good of a trainer. When he showed up and the lights were on, he knew it was game time." What makes this horse such a great competitor? "His attitude. He always tries, he never stops coming." Any other North America Cup-eligible colts in your stable? "I have another colt that I'm pretty high on, and the direction he's heading...a colt by the name of Major Hill. He was lightly raced last year and I really like the way he's coming back. With him I have the luxury of him being a maiden so I'll be able to get some starts into him at home. Depending on when he's ready he's also eligible to The Diplomat Series. I'll see how quickly he comes along." No Sea Change in New Papal Document Contact: Kerry Beck, Catholic Answers , 619-387-7200, kbeck@catholic.com SAN DIEGO, April 8, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Catholic Answers expert Jimmy Akin says Pope Francis's new document on the family, released today in Rome, calls for greater pastoral care of married couples but does not change Catholic teaching regarding homosexuality and Catholics who are divorced and remarried civilly.The new apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (Latin, "the joy of love") focuses on pastoral care rather than doctrine. The pope issued it in response to two meetings of bishops worldwide, called synods, in 2014 and 2015, both of which were devoted to the topic of the family."Pope Francis's new document displays great concern about how to help families survive and grow closer to God amid all the challenges they face today," Akin said. "But it does not contain the radical changes in Church teaching and practice that some hoped it would."Although Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics is only one of many topics the apostolic exhortation addresses, it's the one that has drawn the most concern from Catholics.Going into the synods, German cardinal Walter Kasper proposed to allow such individuals to receive Communion after a "penitential period," which would require a change in Church doctrine. Although many observers thought the pope might address the Kasper proposal in this document, he does not.Instead, Francis emphasizes that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to such situations and quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church saying such individuals' moral culpability "can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors.""The document calls for careful discernment of particular couples' situations in a way that does not water down or deny the historic teachings of Christ and the Church on marriage," Akin said.Contrary to the hopes of some, the document also did not attempt to reframe the Church's teaching on same-sex activity or same-sex unions. Such unions, says Pope Francis, "may not simply be equated with marriage." He also says it is unacceptable "that local Churches should be subjected to pressure in this matter and that international bodies should make financial aid to poor countries dependent on the introduction of laws to establish 'marriage' between persons of the same sex."To arrange an interview with papal expert Jimmy Akin, call Kerry Beck at Catholic Answers at 619-387-7200, or e-mail him at kbeck@catholic.com The mission of Catholic Answers, the largest lay-run Catholic apologetics organization in the U.S., is to explain and defend the authentic Catholic Faith. tech2 News Staff GOQii announced that it has named former Google executive Amit Singhal to its Board of Directors, which will also be his first role since leaving his position as Head of Google search. Amit's career at Google began when he rewrote the search engines ranking algorithm'. He is also said to have led a team responsible for creating Google Search as well as the core search quality department. Prior to Google, Amit worked at AT&T Labs, where he conducted research in IR and database programming. Fortune magazine named him one of the smartest people in the tech industry. Additional board members include Bala Deshpande, Senior Managing Director at New Enterprise Associates; Alex Yao, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at Cheetah Mobile, Pravin Gandhi, Entrepreneur and Founding Partner at SeedFund; and Vishal Gondal, Founder and CEO of GOQii. November last year, GOQii announced its Series A funding of $13.4 million, which was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Cheetah Mobile, and Edelweiss with additional support from Great Wall Club (GWC), DSG Consumer Partners, Ilkka Paananen and Pravin Gandhi. Its an exciting time to be at GOQii and we are thrilled to have Amit join our board of directors, said GOQii CEO Vishal Gondal. Amits expertise is unparalleled and will be invaluable as we execute on our vision of helping millions of people shift to a healthier and sustainable lifestyle. GOQiis trajectory of success has continued to impress me. I look forward to GOQii establishing its platform as the go-to solution in the health and wellness and wearable spaces, said Amit Singhal, GOQii Board of Directors. Im excited to advance the companys mission as it does cutting edge work by integrating industry leading technology with personal interaction to improve users health and wellness. tech2 News Staff Microsoft Edge is following in the footsteps of Chrome by automatically pausing non critical Flash content in web sites. Video or Games are exempted, animations and advertisements will be paused by default unless the user decides to view the content by clicking on it. This classification of content is similar to the approach used by Chrome. The changes are expected to be effective from the Windows 10 Anniversary Update scheduled for a July release. Flash has been the web standard for video and rich interactive content, but HTML5, JS and other technologies offer the same if not better functionality without the drawbacks. Flash has always been a headache in terms of vulnerabilities and potential to be exploited. Microsoft hopes to give it's users a more secure environment to browse in by slowly phasing out Flash. Another reason to block playing the content by default is that Flash is very resource hungry. Edge has reduced the consumption of Battery with this move, and alternatives to Flash are less demanding when it comes to the CPU and memory. Finally, Microsoft is pushing for adoption of more modern and open web standards, as against an older proprietary format. Microsoft posted a strongly worded explanation for the move in its developer blog : "We are planning for and look forward to a future where Flash is no longer necessary as a default experience in Microsoft Edge." tech2 News Staff While Motorola's flagship smartphone scene seems confused at best with Motorola X Style and Moto X Force fighting for the top spot, 2016 may be a better year. The first leaks about the company's upcoming 2016 flagship seems to have already popped up online. HellomotoHK has put up a rather interesting post on its social media channel showing a spy shot of an unknown Motorola smartphone. The device in the blurry picture shows off a smartphone with trademark "M" logo on the top bezel, with the form factor of a Motorola-made Google Nexus 6. What is interesting however, is that there is a fingerprint reader and it sits on the front of the device. Again, the placement is very similar to what we have on Apple devices, with the fingerprint reader sitting right above the data/charging port. The charging port again appears to be a USB Type C charging port and there are other finer details like the presence of a front facing flash, that simply looks like a white dot in the leaked image. While the smartphone in question does appear to be a prototype, it could also be a gist of things to come for Motorola. The placement of the fingerprint reader could change because Motorola always intended to place it on the dimple at the back of its handsets. Motorola made official earlier this year that all of its smartphones launched in 2016 would feature a fingerprint reader, something that the company has stayed away from for a very long time. The only Motorola smartphone to feature one so far was the Atrix 4G that features a fingerprint scanner on the chin of the device. hidden The Panamanian lawyer at the center of a data leak scandal that has embarrassed a clutch of world leaders said on Tuesday his firm was a victim of a hack from outside the company, and has filed a complaint with state prosecutors. Founding partner Ramon Fonseca said the firm, Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies, had broken no laws and that all its operations were legal. Nor had it ever destroyed any documents or helped anyone evade taxes or launder money, he added in an interview with Reuters. Company emails, extracts of which were published in an investigation by the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organizations, were "taken out of context" and misinterpreted, he added. "We rule out an inside job. This is not a leak. This is a hack," Fonseca, 63, said at the company's headquarters in Panama City's business district. "We have a theory and we are following it," he added, without elaborating. "We have already made the relevant complaints to the Attorney General's office, and there is a government institution studying the issue," he added, flanked by two press advisers. Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak of more than 11.5 million documents, dubbed the "Panama Papers," from the law firm that span four decades. The papers have revealed financial arrangements of prominent figures, including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain and Pakistan and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the president of Ukraine. On Tuesday, Iceland's prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned, becoming the first casualty of the leak. "The (emails) were taken out of context," Fonseca said, denouncing what he called a "witch-hunt". He lamented what he called journalistic activism and sensationalism, extolling his own investigative research credentials as a published novelist in Panama. He said he feared that his rivals could muscle in on their business following the leak. "The only crime that has been proven is the hack," Fonseca said. "No one is talking about that. That is the story." He said his company had a staff of around 500, 300 of which work in Panama, but declined to comment on his law firm's structure or franchises in other parts of the world. Setting up a company might cost between about $700 and $1,000, he said, with a significant part of that fee going to the government. Mossack Fonseca has set up around 250,000 businesses over the past 40 years. He added that it is cheaper to do business in Nevada. He said business rules have tightened and that his company has adhered to them. "Fifteen years ago, due diligence didn't exist and they are judging us by other standards," Fonseca said. France announced on Tuesday it would put the Central American nation back on its blacklist of uncooperative tax jurisdictions. Alvaro Aleman, chief of staff to Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela, told a news conference the government could respond with similar measures against France, or any other country that followed France's lead. "This is a tropical storm, like the ones we have here in Panama where once it passes the sun will come out," Fonseca said. "I guarantee you that we will not be found guilty of anything." Reuters tech2 News Staff Reports have surfaced of an Uber driver, named Kuldeep, being shot to death by two of his passengers in New Delhi. The police have tracked down both passengers via Uber's records and have the two in custody. The alleged killers are thought to be in their teens and it's not clear yet if they are minors. Details of the tragic event aren't forthcoming at the moment. What we do know is that the passengers boarded the Uber vehicle at Najafgarh in southwest Delhi. The passengers reportedly got into a fight with the driver and in the midst of the journey, shot the driver. The driver passed away at the hospital that he was taken to. This incident occurred on the night of 6 April. Traditionally, we've seen Uber drivers accused of taking advantage of passengers, going to the extent of raping and even killing some of their passengers. Uber has been introducing safety measures that would help improve passenger safety in the country. Uber is yet to respond on the incident. We will update accordingly. hidden By Asheeta Regidi WhatsApp introduced end-to-end encryption for all its services today. This means that all user calls, texts, video, images and other files sent can only be viewed by the intended recipient, and no one, not even WhatsApp itself, can access this data. This guarantee of user privacy creates new concerns for the government. WhatsApp will now find it impossible to comply with government requests for data, since WhatsApp itself will not have the decryption key. In effect, WhatsApp is doing exactly what Apple did in the Apple vs FBI battle; its preventing government access to data, but on a much larger scale. While Apple restricted access to users of iPhones only, now practically every user of WhatsApp on any device is protected. 51% of all users of internet messaging services in India use WhatsApp, with a total number of over 70 million users (Source: TRAIs OTT Consultation Paper, dated March 2015). WhatsApp has now prevented government access to the messages and calls of at least 70 million Indian users. No encryption requirements are applicable on OTTs like WhatsApp Telecom service providers and internet service providers, like Airtel and Vodafone, have to obtain a license from the Department of Telecommunications in order to be able to provide such services in India. This license includes several restrictions, including license fees, ensuring emergency services, confidentiality of customer information and requirements for lawful interception, monitoring and the security of the network. These include encryption requirements. For example, the License Agreement for Provision of Internet Service (Including Internet Telephony) for internet service providers (like Reliance and Airtel), permits the usage of up to 40-bit encryption. To employ a higher encryption standard, permission will have to be acquired and a decryption key deposited with the Telecom Authority. Apps like WhatsApp, Skype and Viber are, however, neither telecom service providers nor internet service providers. These are known as Over-The-Top Services, or OTTs. Currently, OTTs are not regulated and as such, there are no encryption requirements, nor are there any other requirements in the name of security which these have to comply with. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India came out with an OTT Consultation Paper in 2015. Discussions on the paper are closed, but TRAI is yet to issue regulations on the matter. In the absence of any regulations at present, its clear that WhatsApps new end-to-end encryption policy is perfectly legal, even though it presents a new dilemma for the government. Impact of end-to-end encryption on proposed regulatory system Other countries have adopted various approaches to resolve the issue of OTT services. For example, in France, Skype was made to register as a telecom operator. In Germany, Voice-Over-IP is subject to the same requirements as other telecom services because of the technology neutral approach of its Telecommunications Act. In China, VOIP calls have a separate regulatory system under the head of voice based calls. These systems will make voice-over-IP subject to the same security requirements as telecom providers. For the most part however, OTT services are unregulated abroad as well. In a detailed discussion on the issue in TRAIs OTT Consultation Paper, TRAI notes that OTT services circumvent all regulatory requirements by providing services which are otherwise available only through a license. It has suggested the classification of OTT services either as a communication service provider or an application service provider, and to impose similar regulatory requirements as on telecom service providers. The proposed licensing requirements include enabling lawful interception. It can be assumed that the provisions will be along the lines of those imposed on telecom regulatory requirements. Given that a 40-bit encryption system is a much lower standard than that used by WhatsApp and also considering that WhatsApp doesnt even possess the decryption key for deposition with the relevant authority, it remains to be seen how the government will gain access to WhatsApp messages. Liability of WhatsApp to comply with decryption directions under IT Act WhatsApp, being an intermediary, is expected to comply with directions to intercept, monitor and decrypt information issued under Section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Complying with such a direction will now be impossible for WhatsApp in view of its end-to-end encryption. Even before the introduction of this, since WhatsApp is not a company based in India, it may have been able to refuse to comply with such directions. In fact, compliance by such companies in regard to data requests from the Indian government has been reported to be very low. Indias now withdrawn draft encryption policy took the first step towards overcoming these problems and obtaining access. It required service providers, from both India and abroad, which are using encryption technology, to enter into agreements with India in order to be able to provide such services. One essential requirement of these agreements was to comply with data requests as and when theyre made by the government. This will include any interception, monitoring and decryption requests made under Section 69 of the IT Act. Though it was later clarified that WhatsApp is not within the purview of this policy, this indicates the route that may be taken by the government to obtain access. If WhatsApp refuses to comply with such a regime, that would make WhatsApp illegal in India. End-to-end encryption is not without its drawbacks. The high, unbreachable level of security and privacy available is in favour of users and against governments. It will make such systems the favorite for illegal activities as well. For example, tracing voice calls made by terrorists using Voice-Over-IP is extremely difficult because of its routing over fake networks. The issue raised in the Apple vs FBI case was also the same, whether an individual users privacy can be compromised in favour of the larger public interest. A balance between the two is needed, maintaining user privacy and allowing interception for lawful purposes is required. The author is a lawyer with a specialisation in cyber laws and has co-authored books on the subject. Alumni have summitted the highest points of every North American country Scaling new heights or overcoming the insurmountable have become cliches associated with the achievements of MIT students. But for Matthew and Eric Gilbertson (both PhD 14) those phrases apply almost literally. In just over five years the twin brothers have scaled the highest peaks of every single country (23 to be exact) in North America. In an interview with The Tech, they reflected on their incredible journey from the hours of careful planning, to treading surreptitiously on the edge of perilous cliffs, to the sheer exhilaration of reaching the summit and the realization that they are the only breathing human beings in a quarter-mile radius with nothing but tranquility and snow for company. The sense of adventure had been instilled in their early childhood: Our dad would take us on backpacking trips. As a family we tried to visit as many states as possible, Eric recalled. At MIT, the Gilbertsons joined the MIT Outing Club (MITOC) where they teamed up with fellow hiking enthusiasts to embark on a number of expeditions throughout the country. We got inspiration from other club members travel experiences, [and from members] who encouraged us to travel to other countries, Matthew noted. In fact, we are still part of MITOC. We were working on climbing the highest points of each state. We finished in 2012. That is when we started thinking seriously about going for every country in North America. Being graduate students had both its perks and challenges when it came to meeting their ambitious target. We lived on graduate student stipends so we had to live frugally. We rarely ate outside and saved as much as we could for our trips, Eric said. On the flip side, there were plenty of opportunities for traveling as the brothers frequented numerous research conferences. We would try to visit the highest peak of a country when we went to a conference. If we had a stop-over while returning, we would try to scale the highest peak of that country too. I got to visit Japan and India this way and Eric managed to visit Brazil and the Netherlands, Matthew said. Planning ahead was a significant part of their endeavor, and one they relished. We used Google Earth a lot and read travel reports of fellow climbers, Matthew said. While gathering as much information as possible was important, it was also essential to be physically prepared for the challenges that lay ahead. We would climb the stairs of the Green Building and run around the Charles, Eric added. But despite the meticulous planning, as the brothers frequently discovered, the best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray. On a trip to St. Kitts and Nevis to scale Mount Liamuiga (3,793 ft), Matthew recalled, We got to the end of the trail that was supposed to lead to the summit and it turned out it was only the edge of the crater rim of the mountain with the obvious summit on the opposite side. We thought we could just bushwhack through the jungle along the rim to the summit, but that turned into an epic battle with unclimbable mud cliffs, dense ferns, downclimbing, vertical bush traversing, and a few near falls. By sunset, after eight hours of thrashing through the jungle and only covering two miles, we had just about given up and were ready to bushwhack down to the ocean through the night when we stumbled upon an old trail that miraculously led to the true summit. It was not always the treacherous trails or natures traps that proved to be a bane. Sometimes, as the brothers discovered, it was other human beings that challenged them. Eric reminisced on the time they were in Honduras to climb Cerro Las Minas (9,347 ft) and encountered a road blocked due to a group of people on strike. After an hour some government official from Tegucigalpa arrived in a big SUV, followed by a truck full of armed military men. The SUV broke through the barrier, and they managed to follow closely behind. There is no telling how much longer that road was blocked, but we luckily we made it through and climbed Cerro Las Minas that afternoon, Eric said. Of the twenty-three peaks they conquered, on only four of them did the brothers seek guides. St. Lucia and Cuba legally required escorts, while Honduras posed the risk of landmines. In Belize, they sought protection against armed Guatemalan gold miners. The brothers consider USAs Denali (20,310 ft) and Canadas Mount Logan (19,551 ft) to be the most challenging of the 23 high points, both of which required ski plane travel on and off the mountain, plus two weeks of arctic high-altitude glacier travel over heavily crevassed terrain to reach the summits. With the myriad of physical challenges, the rush of adrenaline and perhaps even a modicum of apprehension, the most cherished aspect of climbing could often be cerebral. Eric Gilbertson, now a mathematics professor in North Seattle College said the most satisfying feeling was seeing all the hours of planning and ironing out the minute details come to fruition when he is on the summit of a mountain. For Matthew, one of his most memorable trips was when his wife Amanda accompanied him to the highest point in Dominica, an island nation in the Caribbean. Having conquered the highest points in North America, the brothers have set their sights on scaling the highest points of every country. On our website countryhighpoints.com, we have a color-coded world map that works as follows: if we have not visited a country it is white, if we have visited a country but not climbed its highest peak it is red, and if we have ascended the highest point of that country, it is blue. I always have this map on my mind when I am climbing and the thought of turning a red to blue keeps me going. Currently, 85 countries are blue and 10 are red. The two have applied for a Guinness World Record. After pretty extensive research, Eric said, we have come to conclude that we are the first people in the world to climb the highest point in every North American country. They aim to be recognized in the next edition of the renowned record book. The journey to the highest peaks of 195 countries began with a single peak for the Gilbertsons. The conquest of all twenty-three North American high points definitely represents a commendable achievement. But for them the journey continues. After all, when the prize is standing atop a peak with no human being in sight, just snow and tranquility, the temptation is just irresistible. US indicates to grant refuge to some BD bloggers in danger The United States has condemned the 'barbaric' murder of Bangladeshi online activist Nizam Uddin Samad and indicated that granting refuge to a select number of bloggers who face 'imminent danger' is under consideration. "...my understanding is that for a select number of bloggers who continue to be under imminent danger, that is one option that's under consideration," said Mark C Toner, Deputy Spokesperson of the US Department of State, at a regular briefing in Washington, DC on Thursday. Toner, however, said this is a process run by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He made the remark when a journalist wanted to know about the latest status of US position as couple months ago, human rights advocates wrote a letter to Secretary John Kerry that talked about this wave of killings and asked him to see if it was possible to give people who are threatened in this way refuge in the US. "I don't know - I'll have to see if that's actually - if there are individuals who are taking advantage of that. I just don't have clarity on it...we can probably get an update whether it's actually been - it's actually in train. I just don't know," the Deputy Spokesperson added. Toner said the law student (Samad) was apparently killed for speaking out against 'violent extremism' in Bangladesh. "We offer our condolences to Samad's family and our unwavering support to the Bangladeshi people in their struggle against violent extremism." Nazim Uddin knew and Bangladesh's history has shown that violence will not defeat Bangladesh's proud tradition of free and independent discourse. "So we stand with the Bangladeshi people in rejecting this vicious act and uniting to preserve a tolerant and inclusive society that protects freedom of expression." He said the United States will continue to support the government of Bangladesh in its efforts to combat terrorism, counter violent extremism, and bring to justice those who commit such heinous acts. Meanwhile, the US Embassy in Dhaka on Friday issued a statement of the US Department of State strongly condemning the barbaric murder of Samad. Samad, a master's degree student of Jagannath University and said to be an organiser of Ganajagran Manch, a secular campaigning group, was killed in the city on Wednesday. The United Nations, European Union, Amnesty International and local rights bodies condemned the killing. -- Dhaka, Apr 8 (UNB) Capital punishment MI Farooqui : A convict at the gallows could hardly narrate the pangs of death as vividly as Socrates had done. He was convicted by the majority of 500 jurors of Athens (361-139) in 399 BC on charges of corrupting the youth, practicing religious novelties, and neglecting the gods. Administered with Hemlock to lead to death he vividly narrated the effects of the poison before he breathed his last. This is reported in the Phaedo of Plato as follows: Socrates, walked about, when he said that his legs were growing heavy, lay down on his back; for the man so directed him. And at the same time he, who gave him the poison, taking hold of him, after a short interval, examined his feet and legs; and then, having pressed his foot hard, he asked if he felt it. He said that he did not. After this, he pressed his thighs; and thus going higher, he showed us that he was growing cold and stiff. Then Socrates touched himselfand said that when the poison reached his heart he should then depart. But now the parts around the lower belly were almost cold; when uncovering himself, for he had been covered over, he said (and they were his last words): 'Crito, we' owe a cock to Aesculapius; pay it, therefore, and do not neglect it... Shortly after he gave a convulsive movements and was gone. (Extract from Physiological Materia Medica of Wallium H. Burt, M.D.; B. Jain Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India; 1991; pp 341-2). It is doubtful that forced death of a convict brings him any lasting sufferings of punishment. Death soon brings him solace and peace. He is laid to rest with his religious belief that he would survive in paradise, and would be resurrected. Some of the convicts even refuse to appeal against convictions. The jurisprudence is based on 'life for life, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth'. Th is is a retaliatory justice. The principle does not hold well in case of other crimes, namely, 'rape for rape and torture for torture'. Retaliatory punishments by lethal injunction or by beheading or electric chair; or by firing squid or hanging are all 'inhuman and degrading treatments' of the convicts. The convict is deprived of the life, which may occur to any person by accident or natural death. Cause of death may vary. It may be peaceful or apparent violent. But feelings of death in all the variant conditions are momentary. Within moments a convict is dead. It is faster now than that of Socrates with a pang yet to be told. A convict is removed from the society to the satisfaction of the few, and horror to many Punishment is not achieved in true sense of the term. On death he is at large as a person who commits suicide. The 'purpose to punish is defeated. Such convicts do not suffer more than a few moments, but it brings perpetual sufferings to others. What Socrates said at the end of the trial: " .... Whether life or death is better is known to God alone. No ham1 can befall a good man in life or indeath. Death is either an eternal dreamless sleep or a journey to a better world. In either case, it is not an evil." Draco (7th century BC) .was the legislator of Athens" 'in' Ancient Greece. He prescribed death penalty for the offences including the minor ones: His legislations were harsh and severe. We still remember him by' calling the harsh and inhuman legislations as Draconian laws. All his laws were repealed by Solon in the early 6th century BC with the ' exception of the homicide law, We have therefore inherited homicide law with death penalty from Draco. It is a Draconian law that has survived so long. (The writer is a Senior Advocate of Supreme Court of Bangladesh) Lack of satisfactory proof of guilt offers option to give the benefit of doubt (From previous issue) : 20. Since the entire case rests on circumstantial evidence it is necessary to refer to the principles which should guide the court in considering the conviction of an accused resting on circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence means a combination of facts creating a net without there, being any tear through which the accused can escape. In the case of Jaharlal Das vs State of Orissa reported in AIR 1991 (SC) page 1388 Supreme Court of India has observed that; "The circumstantial evidence in order to sustain conviction must satisfy three conditions; (i) the circumstances from which an inference of guilt is sought to be drawn must be cogently and firmly established; (ii) those circumstances should be of a definite tendency unerringly pointing towards the guilt of the accused; (iii) the circumstances taken cumulatively should form a chain to complete that there is no escape from the conclusion that crime was committed by the accused and no one else, and it should also be incapable of explanation on any other hypothesis than that of the guilt of the accused". When the evidence of PWs 1 and' 2 are found to be unreliable in view of the evidence of PWs 3, 5, 7, and 8 the order of conviction basing on circumstances from the evidence of PWs 1 and 2 is unsafe. The chain of circumstances is not complete so as it lead to the conclusion that the appellants and no other could have been the assailant. We do not find anything in the evidence that at or about the time of murder, no third person, excepting the appellants and the deceased were present at the place of occurrence. It can be a case of "may be true". But there is distance between "may be true" and "must be true". The same divides conjecture from sure conclusion. 21. In view of the evidence discussed about it is difficult for us to draw conclusion that within all human probability it was the accused appellants no one else, who had murdered the victim Mukti. 22. We are conscious that a grave and heinous crime has been committed but there is no satisfactory proof of the guilt. We have no option but to give the benefit of doubt to the accused and we are constrained to do so in this case. 23. Accordingly we find merit in these three appeals. 24. Accordingly, all the appeals being Criminal Appeal No. 11 of 2010,12 of 2010 and 13 of 2010 are allowed. The impugned judgment and order of the High Court Division in Criminal Appeal No. 3215 of 2004, Criminal Appeal No.3346 of 2004 and Criminal Appeal No. 2910 of 2004 are set aside. Consequently, the judgment and order of Metropolitan Additional Sessions Judge, 51h Court, Dhaka dated 19-7-2004 passed in Metropolitan Sessions Case No. 1215 of 2002 arising out of GR Case No. 342 of 2000 corresponding to Badda PS Case No. 19 dated 20-3-2000 is set-aside. The accused appellants are acquitted from the charge under sections 302/34 of the Penal Code. The respondent is directed to set them at liberty at once if they are not wanted in any other case. (Concluded) More migrants shipped back to Turkey under EU pact Migrants clash with Greek police during a protest against the closed border with Macedonia, at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni. Al Jazeera News :Two groups of migrants have been sent back to Turkey from Greece as part of a controversial EU-Turkey deal aimed at curbing the refugee and migrant flow to Europe.A ferry carrying 45 male migrants from Pakistan left the Greek island of Lesbos early on Friday before a second ferry was sent to Turkey, bringing the total of deportees to 124, officials told Al Jazeera.Before the first boat departed from Lesbos, several rights activists plunged into the water close to the small ferry, dangling from the anchor chain and flashing the "V" for victory sign in an attempt to prevent the vessel from leaving.In the first wave of deportations last Monday, 202 people, mostly from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, were sent back to Turkey from Lesbos and Chios.Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Lesbos, said that a total of 326 people have been sent to Turkey since deportation started."In the same period, there have been 518 new arrivals on Greece's shores so if the aim of the deal was to stop the flow of illegal migration, it doesn't seem to be working," she said. Greece struggles to implement Turkey-EU refugee deal "There are thousands still locked up in detention centres and they are willing to apply for asylym." Under the EU-Turkey deal, Ankara will take back all refugees and migrants who enter Greece through irregular routes in return for the EU taking in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey via official immigration channels. As part of the deal Turkey was also promised more EU money, visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations.Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that his country would not implement the agreement unless the EU fulfilled its promises towards Turkey.Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting from Dikili on the Turkish coast, confirmed that the people sent back were from countries other than Syria so they were not protected under the terms of the EU-Turkey deal. He said that due to the uncertainty surrounding their future, an NGO was trying to match up the people with lawyers in Turkey who could provide some clarity on their rights.Meanwhile, Turkish parliament approved late on Thursday an agreement enabling Ankara to repatriate Pakistani migrants.Under the EU-Turkey deal, all "irregular migrants" arriving in Greece from Turkey since March 20 face being sent back. While the operation has been running smoothly, human rights groups feared for the future of asylum seekers. The groups are worried that Greece would be overwhelmed with potential asylum seekers and authorities would not have the resources to process their applications.This would mean some refugees would be deported without being able to exercise their right to apply for refuge, according to the groups."We need to hold the [European] commission and all EU countries to the vision of a Europe that serves as a global leader on refugee rights," Judith Sunderland, acting deputy Europe and Central Asia director at US-based Human Rights Watch, said."That means repealing this terrible deal with Turkey, and advancing large-scale refugee resettlement, humanitarian visas, and family reunification guided not by migration control but by a commitment to safe and legal alternatives to human smugglers for people who need refuge." Previous enmity' led to Nazimuddin killing: Police UNB, Dhaka : Police primarily suspect that Jagannath University (JnU) student and online activist Nazimuddin Samad was murdered due to previous enmity as no anti-religious writing was found after the scrutiny of his Facebook status. Police have also kept 5-6 suspects under close watch in connection with the killing that triggered uproar among the student community. A group of assailants, numbering 4-5, swooped on Nazimuddin Samad at Ikrampur of Sutrapur in the capital on Wednesday night, and hacked and shot him indiscriminately, leaving him dead on the spot. Sub-inspector of Sutrapur Police Station Nurul Islam filed a case in this connection on Thursday night accusing 4-5 unidentified miscreants of the murder. Inspector (Investigation) of the police station Samir Kumar Sutradhar was made the Investigation Officer (IO) of the case. "After preliminary investigation, it seems to me that the killing took place due to previous enmity as no anti-religious comment was found in his Facebook status," the IO told UNB on Friday evening. "Anyway, the possibility of the involvement of a religious extremist group is also there in our mind," the IO said. Replying to a question, he said Nazimuddin came to Dhaka barely two months back. "We're trying to ascertain whether he had any previous enmity in his area in Sylhet," he said alleging that his relatives who came to Dhaka to bring his body from Sylhet did not give any information in this regard. However, the investigators are keeping a close watch on 4-5 suspects who were vary close to him, inspector Sutradhar added. Meanwhile, Nazimuddin Samad was buried at his family graveyard at Tukabharaut village, Bianibazar in Sylhet on Friday morning. The burial took place around 11am after a namaz-e-janaza at the village. Nazimuddin Samad, 26, an LLM student of JnU, was also the information and research secretary of Sylhet unit of Bangabandhu Jatiya Jubo Parishad and an activist of Sylhet Ganajagaran Manch. Filipino DoJ summons Wong, Xu Staff Reporter : The Department of Justice (DoJ) on Friday summoned casino junket operators Kam Sin Wong (Kim Wong) and Weikang Xu for questioning over $81 million Bangladesh central bank's heist funds that transferred to four private accounts at a branch of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. DoJ's assistant state prosecutor Gilmarie Fe Pacamarra ordered both the businessmen to attend the preliminary investigation of the banking heist on April 19. The prosecutor also directed the two businessmen to submit their counter-affidavits and other supporting documents before the scheduled hearing, according to the reports of Philippines media. "You are hereby warned that failure on your part to comply with this subpoena shall be considered as a waiver of your right to present your defense and the case shall be considered submitted for resolution based on the evidence on record," said the summon notice. The Anti-Money Laundering Council of Philippines earlier filed money laundering charges against Wong Xu. The businessmen allegedly violated Section 4(a) and (b) of the Anti-Money Laundering Act. Former Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito is also facing charges in connection to the money laundering scheme. Hackers attempted to infiltrate the computers at Bangladesh Central Bank and attempted to transfer $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Only one out of 35 attempted transfers were not blocked and went to four accounts at the Jupiter branch of RCBC in the Philippines. The Philippine Senate Blue Ribbon Committee also launched an investigation over the money-laundering scheme and completed its third hearing on the scam on March 29. It will continue hearing into to know how the $81 million of Bangladesh's stolen funds were transmitted through the four private accounts at a branch of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. Testimonies at a Philippine Senate hearing showed around $6.9 million out of the $81 million stolen by cyber criminals from the Bangladesh central bank's account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and transmitted to fictitious bank accounts in the Philippines remain in local casinos and may still be recovered. CID quizzes 5 more persons Staff Reporter :A team of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Friday again interrogated five persons, including the family members and friends of Sohagi Jahan Tonu at the CID office in Comilla in connection with her murder.Tonu's elder brother Nazmul Hossain, her cousin Laizu Jahan, friend Manisha, and cantonment board staff Ismail Hossain were taken to the CID office for questioning around 8:30am on Friday where they stayed until 11am. The CID team headed by Abdul Kahhar Akand, Special Superintendent of Police, in Dhaka along with the Comilla CID team quizzed them. Earlier on Thursday, the CID team led by Special Superintendent of Police (SSP) Abdul Kahar Akand arrived in Comilla to investigate the Tonu murder.The team investigated the place where Tonu's body was found, and several other places on April 2 and 3. At that time, they also interrogated Tonu's parents, the examining doctor and nurses, and several other people.While talking to journalists, Comilla zone SSP Nazmul Karim Khan said they were trying to figure out who was on duty on the day at the place where the body was found. He said, several others will also be questioned.Tonu, a second-year history student and a cultural activist, was found dead near her home inside the cantonment on March 20. Her father Yaar Hossain filed a case the following day without naming any accused.Investigators are yet to make a breakthrough.The case was handed over to the Detective Branch of police on March 25, but the CID was put in charge of the case a day later.The murder caused outrage in different parts of the country, with people from all walks of life calling for the arrest and punishment to the culprits. Dhaka Central Jail to be opened tomorrow The newly built Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina tomorrow (Sunday). Staff Reporter :The government is going to shift the prisoners of Dhaka Central Jail to their new destination at Keraniganj, in the outskirts of the capital by this month.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to inaugurate the newly-constructed central jail tomorrow (Sunday).Inspector General of Prisons Brigadier General Syed Iftekhar Uddin said this in a press briefing in Police Headquarters on Friday.He said, "The shifting of furniture and documents could be completed in several phases, and the task of taking prisoners will end in a single day, possibly at the weekend so that vehicles from all prisons can be used for the purpose."The move can take place on a suitable day in the running month after consultation with different law enforcing agencies, the jail boss said. The IG of Prisons said, Keraniganj Jail can accommodate 4,590 male prisoners, and all facilities for them as per the Jail Code are available there as well.He also said, "Essentially Dhaka Central Jail has been shifted to Keraniganj with a view to mitigating the accommodation crisis of the prisoners. It was dilapidated, demanding renovation. There are about 8,000 prisoners in the jail against a capacity of 2,684.""We have installed mobile jammers so the inmates can't use phones. I have also proposed the buying of luggage and personal scanners for the new prison and for Kashimpur Jail," he said, speaking of plans to make prisons 'tech-friendly'. The state authorities implemented the project in Teghoria Union of Keraniganj on a 194.41 acre area at a cost of Tk 406.34 crore. Comilla, Nilphamri move into final in IGP Cup Kabaddi BSS, Dhaka : Comilla and Nilphamari districts moved into the final of the BBS Cables IGP Cup National Youth Kabaddi (Under-21) eliminating their respective rivals in the semifinals held on Friday at the kabaddi stadium in the city. The final of the competition will be held today (Saturday) at 4 pm at the same venue. In the day's first semifinal, Comilla distrit beat Rajshahi district by 21-13 points while Nilphamari district defeated Satkhira district by 29-23 points with one creditable 'lona' in the day's second semifinal. How to get education technology right Jeff Tyson : Technology and education are colliding like never before, and educators and policymakers are struggling to make sense of what it all means for the future of learning. Increasingly, donors recognize education technology - or "edutech" - is an important tool for promoting quality education, and governments are asking for more and more donor support to help them adopt technology that leads to better learning. Devex spoke with several key edutech donors who revealed that the demand for education technology is greater than ever, while policymakers and educators often find themselves overwhelmed by the number of edutech innovations available, and unsure how to identify the wisest investments. High demand and high confusion The demand for - and "confusion about" - education technology is greater than ever, Michael Trucano, the World Bank's senior education and technology policy specialist and global lead for innovation in education, told Devex. The United States, China and Europe witnessed an "explosion in investments," but now that consumer growth has leveled off, investors see middle and low income countries as edutech's "great emerging market," Trucano said. As computers and mobile devices proliferate, more and more private sector companies are approaching education ministries with the next influential gadget or technology-assisted program. With so many innovations out there, "people aren't sure what to do," Trucano said. The diversity of approaches is impressive. Math teachers like Julio Rios Gallego in Colombia are taking their lessons to YouTube, while in India, innovators are working to tackle low literacy rates by adding same language subtitling to Bollywood music videos - "karaoke on television for mass literacy," according to Brij Kothari, president of the nonprofit PlanetRead. Some education professionals say the promise of edutech is its ability to make classrooms virtual and allow for greater personalized learning. Online platforms like Knewton allow students to learn online at their own pace, individually interact with the subject matter and receive detailed explanations of their mistakes and errors. Programs like these can provide teachers detailed information about how each of their students learns best and where they fall in relation to their peers. "[Personalized learning] is a direction I think that the industry is convinced that we're all going to go," Trucano said. But the World Bank official added that online personalized learning is still fairly new to teachers, and many are not used to getting detailed data on every student and then incorporating that information into lesson plans. One result is that the data goes unused and ignored, Trucano explained. The edutech sector has seen expectations outpace outcomes before. Five years ago, education technology professionals focused on getting tech - computers, tablets, phones - to parts of the world that lacked it. Education technology was driven by the hardware - the technology itself - without adequate consideration for the content housed within the technology and what would or would not catch on in certain contexts, Christopher Fabian, co-founder and co-lead of UNICEF's innovation unit told Devex. One Laptop per Child, a nonprofit founded in 2005 to distribute laptops to children in developing countries, has been widely criticized as a U.S.-driven effort that failed to take into consideration country context, to provide adequate training for teachers, and to demonstrate significant results on learning. Now, Fabian said, there is a growing recognition that policy makers and development professionals cannot just dump hardware into communities. Instead, there has to be a greater focus on prototypes, models and measurement. Donor roles amid rapid growth Despite a confusing abundance of new edutech initiatives, policymakers are working to create environments that are receptive to new technology - even if they might not know which technology to adopt or how to adopt it. In Kenya for example, ministers have pledged to connect every school to electricity "in preparation for deployment of ICT." By the end of 2016, 1 million Kenyan students will have "technology gadgets that will help them begin the process of digital learning," according William Ruto, deputy president of Kenya and former minister for higher education, who spoke at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai in March. It can be difficult to pinpoint precisely how big the education technology sector is or how much any single donor is currently contributing, since general education and "edutech" investments often overlap. But what is clear, according to Trucano, is that demand for donor support is on the rise. Donors, through their investments, have a role to play in alleviating at least some of the confusion around education technology by addressing this demand and helping to bring to scale initiatives that have potential and warn against distracting gimmicks. Donors can separate "the hope from the hype," Trucano said. Some ministries of education will adopt technology without first considering its content, and what is practical or realistic to implement, explained Anthony Bloome, senior education technology specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Donors can help policymakers answer some basic questions before they choose to adopt new gadgets, Bloome said. For instance, donors can help policy makers clarify their objectives, what content and technology they already have in place, and how the impacts of new technology could be measured. Education donors have so far been hesitant to invest in education technology initiatives because of a perceived lack of evidence as to what works and why. "The evidence that does exist is mixed and nuanced and from developed country experiences," according to Trucano. There is no one recipe for effective edutech, acknowledged Cristina Pombo, senior specialist in the Office of External Relations at the Inter-American Development Bank. In recent years however, a number of donor-driven programs have emerged - many of them at the behest of partner governments. In 2011, USAID, World Vision and the Australian government launched a $25 million initiative called All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development - a science and technology competition designed to improve literacy in developing countries. In 2013, UNICEF launched its Child Friendly Technology Framework to guide organizations and entrepreneurs in the creation of an education project with a technology component. And in that same year, the International Finance Corporation - the arm of the World Bank focused on private sector development - invested $5 million in Coursera, a free platform for online classes, as part of an effort to expand free online education in emerging markets. The Inter-American Development Bank, with support from the Korean government, launched the initiative Graduate XXI, designed to scout out high potential edutech entrepreneurs throughout Latin America and create a "map of educational innovations" that can be used by policymakers and governments in the region. IDB is also investing in a widespread broadband initiative to improve internet connectivity, which includes a $50 million loan to Nicaragua. The World Bank is supporting three pilots with the Foundation for Learning Equality, an NGO working to bring Khan Academy content to offline environments, Trucano said. USAID, the World Bank, IADB, UNICEF and 15 other partners have come together to create Mobiles for Education Alliance - a group of foundations, multilateral and bilateral organizations committed to pursuing low-cost mobile technologies to improve learning. And to date, UNICEF has raised $9 million for open source technologies for children through its innovation fund. In the coming years, education technology is going to become increasingly fundamental to how development professionals think about global education as a whole, according to Trucano of the World Bank and Bloome of USAID. "[Education technology] will just be part and parcel of the education program instead of being seen as 'in addition,'" Bloome said. And that likely means more funding for edutech as the development community races to ensure quality education for all by 2030 - a commitment included among the Sustainable Development Goals. "I think it's inevitable that we'll be asked for more and more assistance in these sorts of areas, because it will be more integral to the way education systems function, for better and for worse," Trucano said. (Jeff is a global development reporter for Devex. Based in Washington, DC, he covers multilateral affairs, U.S. aid and international development trends). "The idea that this money is somehow being wasted is simply not true." BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) A Thursday debate on public defender funding had one lawmaker questioning the cost of Louisiana's death penalty. Rep. Steve Pylant, R-Winnsboro, said he is not sure it justifies the about $10 million that capital defense services receives annually. Pylant spoke during discussion about a proposal to reconfigure the state Public Defender Board and specifically allocate 65 percent of its annual budget to local public defenders. The House Criminal Justice Committee voted 10-2 to send the proposal to the full House for debate. The bill, brought by Rep. Sherman Mack, R-Albany, would reduce the 15-member board to 11 in a move to make it more effective and guarantee a funding threshold for local defenders "doing the ground work," he said. He said his proposal was not a criticism of the current board. Lawmakers debated the board's funding requirements at a time when strained operating budgets have led some parishes to restrict indigent defense operations under the threat of layoffs and shuttered courts. Rep. Joe Lopinto, R-Metairie, said he was hesitant to require future boards to enforce any specific funding percentages because of the uncertain nature of funding reliant on state money, local revenues and court costs. Hugo Holland, with the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, said a fundamental issue is that too much state money is "thrown at" the capital system. He pointed to the board allocating a third of its funds to the system at the expense of public defenders' offices. Mack added that the mandated funding percentage wouldn't differ much from the general percentage already given to public defenders, but it would guarantee funding to help them set budgets. He said he was willing to hear ideas on the bill, which he called "a work in progress." Supporters of the redesign called the capital program too costly, while opponents said the mandated percentage would take away from important work instead of fixing Louisiana's underfunded criminal defense system. Funding capital services, the opponents argued, is necessary because the time and cost it takes to prosecute the cases would bankrupt local district attorney offices. Kerry Cuccia, Capital Defense Project director, called the figures given to the committee misleading, and he said "only slightly more than half" of the $10 million figure goes to trial services. The capital defenders receiving the funding have taken all cases and met success, he said. "The idea that this money is somehow being wasted ... is simply not true," Cuccia said. The issue, he countered, lies in a state criminal defense system that does not have enough money to meet demands. A Lafayette judge has decided to weigh for himself whether the scion of a wealthy South Louisiana newspaper family is mentally competent enough to be released from a psychiatric hospital and stand trial. Braxton Moody IV A Lafayette judge has decided to weigh for himself whether the scion of a wealthy South Louisiana newspaper family is mentally competent enough to be released from a psychiatric hospital and stand trial, according to a report in The Advocate. Braxton Moody IV has been confined at a mental-health facility since his arrest last summer after he allegedly fired a gun at the boyfriend of his ex-wife. The 64-year-old, whose family owns a number of small-town Louisiana newspapers and after whom UL Lafayettes business school is named, faces two decades in prison, but so far his mental-health issues are complicating adjudication of the case. Read more here. Though G. John Prestigiacomo started playing fiddle after he retired; hes quickly become a sought-after bow master. How did you wind up down here playing in a Cajun band? I retired from IBM back in 2010 and I was living in Maine at the time. And since I was raised on the bayous of South Louisiana, I was raised around Cajun music. I had a long discussion with myself and decided that I want to come back home to Louisiana and learn how to play the Cajun fiddle. I guess what prompted me to want to learn how to play the Cajun fiddle was when BeauSoleil was playing in Portland, Maine and I got to see them. So when I move back to Louisiana in May 2012, I contacted Mitch Reed, who offered to teach me how to play fiddle. So, here I am. You play in a bunch of bands. How did you get pulled in so many directions? I dont think I would call it being pulled in many directions. I view this as therapy. I gave up music altogether back in 1978 and after 34 years, I decided to pick it up again. My father was a musician, my grandfather was a musician, my fathers brothers were all musicians, but I learned very quickly that music would be a hobby, not a career. I graduated from music in 1976 with an undergraduate degree and have a performance degree in clarinet from the Conservatory of Music in Salzburg, Austria and Zurich, Switzerland. For me music is fun. So, therefore, whenever a band needs a fiddle player to sit in with them, Im happy to do so, if I can. I enjoy learning and playing with all different types and styles of musicians What instruments do you play? I started playing piano when I was 5 years old, with my mother sitting next to me at the piano singing old Italian songs that my father used to play and that she wanted me to learn how to play on the piano. My major instrument was the clarinet. But having a degree in music, I had to learn the basics of all of them. But I learned that you could only master one instrument at the time and I chose the clarinet. Now I only play the fiddle, but once in a while Ill pick up the bass and try my hand at it. But, Im of the opinion that we should pick a horse and ride it. What was your earliest exposure to Cajun music and music in general? I was born and raised in Baton Rouge but when I was a youngster my family moved to Houma in grade school and thats where I lived until I graduated from college in 1976. Being raised in Houma, there was tons of Cajun music all over the area. However, the Cajun music in that part of Louisiana is very different than the Cajun music here in Acadiana. I would say that the music around Houma was more swamp pop, and the Cajun music of Acadiana is more traditional Cajun music. Keep in mind, Houma is closer to New Orleans so therefore youre going to have more of a jazz and blues feel to the music. Other than the ones you play with, what is your favorite local band? Why? Thats a very hard question to answer. I would say my favorite type of Cajun music is one that is very traditional, employs old traditional techniques and is un-synthesized and modernized. I enjoy listening to Ray Abshire and his band, TMonde and Kristy Guillory and Anya Burgess duo album. So, what bands do you specifically play with? I play exclusively with the Cajun Stompers. I do sit in from time to time with many other bands Rachel Wilson & Cajun Express. I have sat in with La Recolte when their fiddle player was not available and many others. Being retired, I do enjoy listening to many of the young people play and advance in music. As I mentioned earlier, my first job was teaching music back in the late 70s, so I enjoy watching young people blossom in music. Pre-purchase property inspection is a relatively new thing in the United Kingdom. Its not something that most people have heard about, but it has become increasingly popular over the last few years with the rise in property prices and increased demand for high quality homes. What are the benefits of pre-purchase building inspection? What can you expect to find out when you pay someone else to inspect your home before you buy it? And what should you look for during an inspection? Many people want to know if theyre buying a house thats been well maintained or if its had any serious problems. If youve found a place on the market that seems attractive, but then discover some issues after moving in, you may not be as excited about buying it as you thought you were. Its important to do your due diligence when looking at properties. A lot goes into making a property appealing to potential buyers, from the landscaping to the flooring to the kitchen appliances. The same applies when inspecting a property there are many things that need checking over to make sure everything is running smoothly. Here are some of the benefits of performing a pre-purchase inspection: You get to see exactly what will happen to your money When you go shopping for a new car, youll probably be shown several different models. You might even be shown one that looks like a great value, but doesnt fit around all of the extra features that you want. When it comes time to actually buy the vehicle, however, you wont have seen how your money will be spent on it once you drive it off the showroom floor. Likewise, when you shop for a new home, you dont really know what youre getting yourself into until you move in. In order to get a feel for whether the home youre considering is what you want, you normally have to spend quite a bit of time inside it. This allows you to learn more about everything that youre going to be spending your hard-earned cash on. A pre-purchase building inspection gives you much the same kind of experience without having to spend thousands of dollars. Since youre paying for the service, you can expect to see exactly what youre paying for, instead of just seeing a vague idea of what you might end up with. You find out about potential major repairs Some buildings are very expensive to maintain, which means that owners often neglect them for the sake of saving money. While youre paying for a building inspection, youre also paying for a professional who knows how to spot signs of trouble and repair work that needs doing. If you notice that a particular area of your new home needs fixing right away, you can call in an expert to take care of it quickly. If you find that theres something wrong with your boiler, you wont have to wait weeks for a plumber to come over and fix it. Instead, youll have access to a solution immediately. You can save hundreds of pounds by finding out about potential problems early on One of the biggest expenses when you first buy a home is the cost of moving in. Many people dont realize this until its too late. Buying a home involves not only paying for the actual house, but also for moving costs, furniture, and other items that have to be moved along with the home. Having a good idea ahead of time of what youre likely to encounter can help you avoid these kinds of costs. If you know youll need to replace the plumbing system, for example, youll be able to put together a budget for the expense and plan accordingly. You can protect your investment by finding out if the homes been well cared for While there are plenty of people who think that houses always look better when theyre newly built, youd be surprised at how well maintained older residences can still look nice. Sometimes, though, those homes need some additional maintenance to keep them looking their best. This could involve repairs that arent so noticeable or small improvements that you wouldnt consider otherwise. Even worse, some houses have fallen into disrepair without anyone noticing. This is why having a professional perform a building inspection prior to purchasing a home is such a big benefit. Not only will it give you insight into the state of the property, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing youre not getting taken advantage of. As long as youre aware of the potential pitfalls, youll have less reason to worry about the state of your new home. You can use information gathered during a building inspection to negotiate a lower price If youre worried about buying a home because you suspect that it may need extensive renovation work, you may already have a rough idea of how much work youll need to do to bring it up to scratch. That knowledge can come in handy if you decide to buy the home. You can use all of the details that you gather during a building inspection to present a realistic picture of what the home is worth to prospective buyers. If a potential buyer thinks that the home is worth more than what you paid for it, you can try negotiating a lower price. You can sell your home faster and for more money If you decide to list your home on the market soon after buying it, youll need to price it accurately in order to attract buyers. But if youve already done a thorough building inspection, youll know exactly what work is needed and what the current market conditions are. In other words, youll be able to make a more accurate estimate of the amount of money youve invested in the home and how much its worth. If you find that youre selling your house for close to its full market value, you can use this information to convince the potential buyer that your home is worth the asking price. Even if youre planning to stay in the home for a while before you decide to sell, the fact that you did a thorough building inspection will give you more confidence when listing it. Prospective buyers will know exactly what theyre paying for. Your home will hold its value longer As mentioned earlier, the value of a home depends heavily upon the condition of the building itself. If your home is in bad shape, potential buyers wont be interested in buying it. On the other hand, if youve performed a thorough building inspection and know what sort of repairs are necessary, you can offer your prospective buyer a compelling reason to invest in your property. When you buy a home, youre essentially agreeing to have it inspected periodically to ensure that it stays in top shape. Not only does this allow you to avoid expensive repairs down the road, but it can also increase the value of your home. You can make smart decisions about property investments Buying real estate isnt as simple as just driving a couple of minutes to pick up a house. There are lots of considerations involved, ranging from location to cost. The same is true when youre investing in property. If you find a house that meets all of your requirements, youll want to make sure that you have a solid understanding of where it stands with regards to the rest of the market. If you havent spent enough time researching the area, you could inadvertently end up with a bad deal. There are lots of resources available online that can help you determine the overall level of competition in your area. They can also help you figure out if there are any properties that meet your requirements that you didnt know about. If you own rental property, you can use the information to identify tenants who might cause damage If you own rental property and youve noticed that certain tenants consistently cause damage, you can use the results of a building inspection to identify them. You can then contact them directly to let them know that youre watching them closely and that you dont appreciate the problem theyre causing. They might start taking better care of their homes, which would be good news for everyone. It could also be the case that youll find out that theyre responsible for previous damages that werent caught during a previous visit. You can make smarter decisions about hiring contractors If youve hired contractors to build or repair your home, you might want to ask them for references. However, unless you perform a thorough building inspection, you might not know exactly what to look for. For instance, maybe you only checked the roof for leaks or the walls for cracks. You might not have looked underneath the foundation for anything that could cause a future issue. By performing a building inspection, you can ensure that you hire reputable contractors who will be trustworthy with your money. You can avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition Of course, the main benefit of structural inspections perth is that it helps you avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition. Before you make the decision to buy a home, you should do whatever you can to find out about the state of the building. You can also ask your realtor about what sorts of inspections are typically recommended. Some agents say that its standard practice to check the heating system, the roof, the electrical wiring, and the floors. 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The story is set in Anna, where the sexual assault occurred, and in Carbondale, where another main character, a Christian mental health counselor, works. She said it took her eight years to complete the book. "It's a Christian horror story," she said. "Its a psychological horror, and for people who are actually struggling with sexual desires that are specifically directed toward children they will find (some answers) They will find the horror in their own lives and be able to match that with the horrors that my character feels." Her desire is that people read the novel and find that God can heal them from their unhealthy and negative thoughts and free them from the oppression from shame and guilt stemming from the childhood abuse. She earned a M.S. in Family and Consumer Sciences (with an emphasis in family services) and an M.A. in English (with an emphasis in literary studies with creative writing) from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. She said her goal is to write fiction that inspires people who are struggling with destructive sexual desires to create healthy ways to deal with that. "Im saying that at the level of spirit, that if people will allow God to work and they will apply principles from the Bible and read literature that will help guide them thought the process that they can be healed." Though she preaches a Christian solution, the church does not frequently address and teach people to look to God for relief from issues of child sexual abuse, as it does with such issues as drug abuse, crime and even homelessness, psychiatrist Dr. Carl C. Bell notes in the book's foreword. A staff psychiatrist with Jackson Park Hospital, Dr. Bell calls the topic that Ennis-Klyczek writes about a "common problem in society." "However, the all-too-common problem of sexual abuse of children is rarely discussed in polite society, and I think this is due to shame, guilt, fear, denial, and other emotional and psychological reasons for keeping this problem in the dark." In his work with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, he's discovered that they suffer from low self-esteem and express symptoms of anxiety that correlate directly with their history of childhood sexual abuse and its related traumas. "Traces," Dr. Bell writes, "addresses these issues in a tasteful and genuine manner." "Traces" will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and in an e-format on Ennis-Klyczek's website, www.bfpbooks.biz. She also expects to promote the book this summer during speaking engagements. Two men were indicted earlier this week on methamphetamine charges, stemming from incidents in Union and Williamson counties, according to a news release from James L. Porter, the acting united states attorney for the southern district of Illinois. Indicted Tuesday were Troy A. Smith, 44, of Jonesboro and Jeremiah Lee Jae Sadler, also known as 'Jeremiah L. Sadler,' 36, of Marion on one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. The alleged offenses occurred between 2015 and February 2016, according to the news release. The methamphetamine charge carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release and a $1 million fine. Both men are scheduled to appear in court on Monday Smith for an initial appearance and Sadler, who is being held without bond, for a detention hearing. The investigation is ongoing; it is being conducted by the Southern Illinois Enforcement Group, Southern Illinois Drug Task Force and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Union and Williamson County State's Attorney offices also assisted in the investigation. -- The Southern The average South Carolinian probably isnt aware of the time and expertise that goes into developing a quality public health system that guards against a potential flu outbreak, tests fish to determine if they are safe to eat, educates citizens amid concerns about the Zika virus and provides vaccinations to children to protect them and future generations from preventable diseases. They likely arent aware of what goes into making sure that infants get proper food and nutrition, citizens are educated on sexually transmitted diseases and people of all ages receive critical health information aimed at helping reduce obesity and tobacco use. They might not know what goes into monitoring and treating chronic diseases or tuberculosis. But while they might not fully understand what it takes to build effective programs to address those issues, citizens most certainly understand that if someone isnt doing that vital work and much more our overall public health and quality of life will decline. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control is the agency charged with that big task. DHEC employs many professionals and experts whose job it is to understand how all these things work together to impact communities. More importantly, they possess the skills necessary to help develop a public health system capable of preventing and responding to the various emergencies and outbreaks that sometimes arise. DHEC oversees many efforts to reverse negative public health trends. Were seeing improvement. For example, infant mortality in South Carolina has decreased by over 30 percent from 2005-2014. In the area of youth smoking, an analysis of the agencys 2015 South Carolina Youth Tobacco Survey shows that between 2013 and 2015, cigarette use among high school students has continued to fall below record levels, from 15.4 percent to 11.9 percent. With locations in all 46 counties around the state, DHEC is accessible to all residents who make numerous clinic visits each year, whether for TB therapy or a flu vaccine. Three programs in particular comprise the vast majority of visits to our clinics: the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Nutrition Program, Preventive Health (family planning services and STD testing/treatment) and Immunization. During the 2014-15 fiscal year, we had 831,674 client visits to those programs: 596,662 WIC visits 177,400 Preventive Health visits 57,612 Immunization visits Although we work year-round to educate and inform citizens about a wide range of public health issues, this week gives us an opportunity to highlight the impact public health programs and services have on protecting and improving the well-being of all South Carolinians. South Carolina is joining communities around the country this week in recognition of National Public Health Week, which runs April 4-10. Day in and day out, DHEC works to help communities, families and individuals access information and resources to facilitate personal wellness and empower healthy choices throughout life. We are dedicated to keeping our air, water and food safe. We also work tirelessly to prevent health emergencies. But emergencies do arise at times, and DHEC will be there to respond to such challenges. These days, DHEC is closely monitoring the Zika virus, although there has not been a confirmed case found in South Carolina. The public is understandably concerned about the disease following an outbreak in South America and advisories from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention telling pregnant women to refrain from traveling to areas where the virus is common. It is likely that Zika will, at some point, be detected in South Carolina. As it does in the case of other mosquito-borne diseases, DHEC is working to detect the presence of Zika in South Carolina and is regularly providing information and education to health care providers, local mosquito-control programs and the general public. DHECs public health staff is seeking to detect the virus as early as possible in the event it appears in mosquito populations or in travelers who visited areas where the virus is active. Whether faced with the daily task of helping citizens stay well or working to prevent or respond to a public health emergency, DHEC is committed to maintaining a strong public health system that keeps our citizens healthy and productive and our communities prosperous and vibrant. 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. /By Azernews/ By Amina Nazarli Azerbaijan has requested a technical assistance from the World Bank for the implementation of compulsory health insurance in the country. Director of the State Agency for Compulsory Health Insurance Zaur Aliyev and WBs expert Tihomir Strizrep, who arrived in Baku at the invitation of the agency, discussed the issue of providing long-term technical assistance in the establishment of mandatory health insurance model. For long time, Strizrep headed the Social Health Insurance Foundation in Croatia. Currently, as the WB expert he assists in the creation of the health insurance system in many European countries. Strizrep and specialists of the State Agency discussed global approaches to health care financing and got acquainted with the work of public hospitals. The State Agency for Compulsory Health Insurance was created by presidential order in 2007, but the head of the agency was appointed last year. Currently, the state agency is drafting a pilot project on compulsory health insurance, which is expected to be implemented before the end of the year. The project being prepared with the active participation of international experts will worth 10 million manat ($6.6 million). Azerbaijan has only voluntary medical insurance, fees for which amounted to 36.86 million manats (about $24 million) in January 2016, with payments of up to 4.47 million manats (about $2.94 million). Although the practice of life insurance has long existed in the developed countries, this kind of insurance is just beginning to gain momentum in Azerbaijan. Expert in the field of insurance Khayal Mammadkhanov said that populations interest to insurance sector has increased in recent years. However, the rise in life insurance is mainly linked with employers, who are forced by the state to insure the life and health of their employees, he said. Recently, more and more citizens, who want to insure their health appeal to insurance companies. However, the scope of the insurance market in Azerbaijan is still small, and the blame for this rests on the shoulders of the insurance companies, which do not motivate people to insure. The share of life insurance in Azerbaijan is not more than 10 percent of the total insurance market, while in Europe the share of this segment accounts for up to 60 percent, the expert explained. Azerbaijan adopted a law on medical insurance in 1999. Under the law, a compulsory form of health insurance is an integral part of the state social insurance policy and ensures the provision of medicines and medical service to the population. After the adoption of the appropriate law, several insurance companies engaged exclusively in life insurance of citizens have been opened in Azerbaijan. Under the law, insurance agencies engaged in life insurance, must obtain a special license. Currently, Azerbaijan has three insurance companies providing in health insurance, Mammadkhanov said. /By Azernews/ By Fatma Babayeva Although Saudi Arabia announced that it will not put a brake on its oil output unless Iran and others agree to join in, analysts are still optimistic about the upcoming Doha meeting and expect oil production cut. Saudi Arabias deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman said that if all countries agree to freeze production, were ready, in reference to the other members of the OPEC. If there is anyone that decides to raise their production, then we will not reject any opportunity that knocks on our door, he told Bloomberg last week. Russia and Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil producers, together with Qatar and Venezuela have agreed to freeze production at January levels in Doha on February 16. The states set a goal to maintain average production at the level of January 2016, but there was a condition if other producers will join this initiative as well. OPEC and non-OPEC states are going to discuss freezing oil output in market in order to save the collapsing oil prices at the forthcoming meeting in Doha on April 17. Countries like Ecuador, Algeria, Nigeria, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have voiced their willingness to join to the act. Iran also confirmed its participation in the meeting, but warned that it does not seek to join the initiative. The price of a barrel dropped by almost 3.3pc as Saudi Arabia voi9ced its condition, falling below the $40 dollar mark to $39. Later, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak revealed that Russia may hold separate bilateral talks with Al Riyadh before the Doha meeting if such a necessity or possibility arises. Russia has not discussed the issue on Irans participation in freezing oil production with Saudi Arabia either but it is ready to talk on the matter, Novak told to RIA Novosti. "I hope that certain consolidated position will prevail during the discussions in Doha, and yet all the parties agree, said Novak. Tehran, in turn, stated that the country will discuss freezing oil production only after its output reaches 4 million barrels per day. At present, it is at the level of 3.1 million barrels, according to the data provided OPEC. Novak has previously spoken in favor of having a different approach to Tehran's involvement in the freezing of oil since the sanctions hindering the export of black gold were lifted just in January. Nawal Al-Fuzaia, representative of Kuwait at OPEC believes that oil producers may agree to freeze without the participation of Iran in the negotiations, as they have no other choice. Prices could go higher by the latter part of the year. The Brent crude price is expected to average between $45 and $60 in the second half of 2016 and until 2018, the Kuwaiti official said. Thomas Pugh, leading British economist at Capital Economics also expressed similar views. He said that although the Saudi princes comments led to a weakening of the market expectations of a possible deal in Doha, still a compromise can be reached, even without the participation of Iran He believes that Mohammed bin Salmans statement was spontaneous and it should not be viewed as the final word. However, Tony Headrick, an energy market analyst at CHS Hedging LLC believes that Iran heavily influences the idea of freezing oil production. The oil producers may agree to freeze oil production, but Iran's position will have a significant impact on the effectiveness of any deal, he said. "Given the fact that the meeting is scheduled, it is possible, the parties will reach an agreement, but the patience of oil producers to maintain a stable level of production will dry up with the increasing market share of Iran," Hedrick emphasized. /By Azernews/ By Laman Ismayilova The house-museum of Leopold and Mstislav Rostropovich hosted an event titled "To live means to love. Future without drugs!", dedicated to one of the main problems of the modern world - drug addiction, Trend Life reports. The event, organized in the framework of the Fight Against Illegal Drug Trafficking State Program is a joint project of the House Museum of Rostropovich, Abdulla Shaig house-museum and Technical-Humanitarian Lyceum No-2 named after H. Makhmudbayov. Sheila Heydarova, addressing the opening ceremony, said that the project aims to warn the young people about disastrous consequences of drug abuse. The speakers also remembered how the outstanding musician, Mstislav Rostropovich supported young musicians, his master classes, philanthropy and scholarships allocated by Rostropovich Fund of Cultural and Humanitarian Programs. Director of Abdulla Shaig house-museum Ulker Talibzadeh, for her part, stressed that children are our future. So, we must encourage them to live healthy lifestyle. Not only parents, but also the whole society is responsible for that. Also, doctor of State Drug Dispensary Yashar Badalli told about the drug abuse and answered a number of questions from participants. Later, " To live means - to love" poem written by prominent Azerbaijani writer Abdulla Shaig was read out. Then, visitors were shown educational video titled" Drug addiction is a social problem". By Nazrin Gadimova As the situation over the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region remains tense, Moscow has activated its shuttle diplomacy to find a fair method of resolving the long lasting Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Long-simmering tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan flared up again on April 2 when Yerevan tried to provoke a war and repeatedly violated the ceasefire through firing on civilians. Azerbaijan has replied with a strong counter attack and later unilaterally called on truce, but the Armenian side again resorted to the provocation. The parties to the conflict have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact through the mediation of Russia, which is the co-chair country in the OSCE Minsk Group. Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov was expected to visit Baku long before recent developments in Nagorno-Karabakh. However, the main agenda of his visit has changed after escalation of the conflict. Immediately after arrival in Baku, Lavrov was received by countrys President Ilham Aliyev to discuss the situation. President Aliyev has once again emphasized that Azerbaijan is committed to continuing the negotiating process, adding that a ceasefire is the only way to prevent an escalation in the region. The ceasefire was observed, but unfortunately, the Armenian side violated it, Ilham Aliyev stressed. We want to settle this conflict peacefully, on the basis of norms and principles of international law, and I think that all these years, more than 20 years that have passed since the ceasefire, suggest that we seek a political settlement. Baku has already announced that the ceasefire does not mean that Azerbaijans occupied lands will remain under occupation. Azerbaijan has agreed to ceasefire but warned that it will not turn blind eye if Armenian side commits provocation. Baku is ready for peace and sits at the table of negations, but it will not tolerate the endless occupation of its historical lands. Lavrov, in turn, stressed that a resumption of hostilities have probably been the worst in the last many years. He added that Russia has undertaken everything necessary to help the parties to the conflict to reach an agreement on a ceasefire. We are ready to help to ensure that this arrangement will not be breached, the Russian foreign minister noted. Lavrov believes that it is important to calm down the situation in this particular issue. We have proposals that we, together with the co-chairs, are trying to engage more actively in order to achieve an agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia, he said, adding that Moscow fully supports the initiatives undertaken by the OSCE MG. It is important to take some confidence-building measures as soon as possible and create the necessary prerequisites for a resumption of the political process, the Russian FM stated. Lavrov, in his interview with the Russian media, stated that the release of the regions around Karabakh and simultaneous addressing of the issue of its status will allow unlocking the situation in the conflict zone. Yerevans response to these statements will be known in the upcoming days, when Lavrov will meet with his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian. Moscows work to enhance the conciliation of Armenia and Azerbaijan will be continued this weeks, as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is also expected to visit Azerbaijan to discuss the aggravation of the situation in Azerbaijans occupied territories. Russia, which enjoys much influence on Armenia, has always been considered a key party in brokering a lasting solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. The OSCE Minsk Group, established in 1994 and co-chaired by Moscow, Washington and Paris, could not arrange for a meaningful pathway forward to end the conflict and start moving toward the end of the occupation. The current situation is absolutely unacceptable for Azerbaijan, which repeatedly stated its dissatisfaction with the Minsk Group activities. The co-chairs of the Group continue to make monotonous statements on the settlement of the conflict. Unfortunately, these statements do not reflect the actual situation. An ehsan has been given on behalf of President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva to commemorate Azerbaijani martyrs, who died heroically while repulsing the Armenian provocation on the line of contact of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops. The event, which was organized at the Heydar Mosque, was attended by Azerbaijan`s first lady Mehriban Aliyeva, mothers of the servicemen, who were martyred and wounded in the struggle to liberate Motherland, and public figures. President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva met with family members and relatives of the servicemen, who were recently martyred and wounded in the battles for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan as a result of the violation of the ceasefire by the enemy on the frontline. Mehriban Aliyeva offered her deep condolences to mothers and relatives of the martyrs, and wished those wounded the soonest possible recovery. The first lady addressed the event. The event then featured the recitation of verses from the Quran. Family members of the martyred and wounded servicemen thanked the Azerbaijani government and people for attention and support. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday offered Armenia's President Serzh Sargsyan to discuss Russia's proposals on the measures that might be implemented over the shortest possible term, TASS reported. He spoke about the proposals during talks with Sargsyan. Medvedev said in response there was no alternative to peaceful talks and discussions as instruments of solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh. The Foreign Ministers agreed to join efforts as the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs in order to normalize the situation in the conflict area as soon as possible. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry has dismissed the information spread by Armenian Defense Ministry that allegedly Armenian armed forces have captured Azerbaijani army's vehicle full of military equipment. Only Armenian Defense Ministry representatives could carry out an operation involving special forces to destroy a non-combat vehicle which poses no threat, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry told Trend Apr.8. The ministry said that such type of vehicles do not pose any threat as they are not equipped with armaments. Ankara regards any threat against Azerbaijan as a threat against itself, 'Turkiyegazetesi' newspaper quoted Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as saying Apr.8. He noted that there is an Armenian lobby in the OSCE Minsk Group member states. Unfortunately, although Turkey is a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, other co-chairs such as Russia oppose Ankara's participation in the settlement of Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, according to Davutoglu. The prime minister believes that the OSCE Minsk Group member states should more actively participate in this conflict's settlement. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire. 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 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. /By Azernews/ By Nazrin Gadimova Baku has once again proved the world its commitment to peace after agreeing to cease operations on the contact line of the Armenian and Azerbaijani troops, which escalated following Yerevans provocation. As a result of systematic, deliberate and targeted attacks launched by Armenians on civilian population from April 2 through April 5 six civilians, including two children below 16 years, were killed and 26 civilians were seriously wounded. The cease-fire has been pushed by Moscow with a view to restart talks between the warring parties and find end to the conflict. Although the international community expressed hopes the ceasefire will be observed by all sides, the aggressor Armenia continued to ignore peace calls. The guns went silent on April 5, but shortly after Armenian militaries began to breach the ceasefire and again shell the Azerbaijani positions in Nakhchivan. Baku instead obeyed the truce, pointing out that the main risk to this truce is that the Armenian side does not want peace, but seeks to maintain the status quo. When the situation in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region has exploded unexpectedly following Armenias provocation, a number of worlds leaders and organizations have expressed their concern over the embarrassing situation. Russia, the U.S., Iran, Georgia, Germany, Canada, Italy and many others have urged the parties to the conflict to strictly observe ceasefire. They hoped that if this temporary truce can be converted into a permanent ceasefire, then the sides could launch talks to end this decades-long conflict. Actually, the Nagorno-Karabakh issue needs a comprehensive settlement that cannot be reached if Armenia continues to violate a fragile truce. The world community should develop such an approach, which will restrain Armenia from committing crime against Azerbaijan and its civilian population. The Azerbaijani side showed that it is ready for peace and sits at the table of negations, but it will not tolerate the endless occupation of its historical lands. Azerbaijani community living in Austria held a demonstration of protest against Armenia`s military aggression in front of the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna. The protesters waved national flags, held slogans in their hands chanting The world community must recognize Armenia`s aggression against Azerbaijan, Karabakh is internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan, Put an end to Armenia`s aggression against Azerbaijan, Armenia, withdraw from occupied territories of Azerbaijan during the rally. The protesters called on the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries not to ignore Armenias atrocities in the occupied territories and put an end to aggression of the neighboring country. They distributed books and brochures informing the public about Armenia`s aggression against Azerbaijanis. Chairman of the Brazil-Azerbaijan inter-parliamentary friendship group, member of the Chamber of Deputies Claudio Cajado has made remarks on the latest violation of ceasefire by Armenians on the troops contact line, the embassy of Azerbaijan in Brazil said. At the plenary session, Claudio Cajado expressed deep concern with the death of peaceful people on the frontline, stressing, the presence of Armenian armed forces in the occupied Azerbaijani territories raises tension and is threat for peace and stability in region. Chairman of the inter-parliamentary friendship group reminded the four Resolutions of the UN Security Council on withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands and stated that these resolutions need full and immediate implementation. On April 4, vice-president of the Brazil-Azerbaijan inter-parliamentary friendship group at the Brazil's Chamber of Deputies Rodrigo Maia and Rio de Janeiro City Councils external affairs committee chairman Cesar Maia have made joint statement on the violation of ceasefire at the frontline of the Armenian-Azerbaijani troops. The Statement says: We condemn the latest provocations committed by the Armenian armed forces against Azerbaijan on the troops contact line. We all know that Azerbaijan is victim of the Armenian aggression. It is over 20 years that Azerbaijani lands are under the Armenian occupation. As a result of this occupation more than one million of Azerbaijanis have become refugees and IDPs. Unfortunately, Armenia ignores Four Resolutions adopted by UN Security Council in 1993 when Brazil was the non-permanent member of the UN SC and supported these documents. The world community, including the OSCE Minsk Group should make every effort and exert pressure on the aggressor to implement these Resolutions. Related to the happenings, we express our full solidarity with the fair position of Azerbaijan. /By Azernews/ By Nazrin Gadimova An agreement was reached on restoration of ceasefire regime since 15:00 (GMT+4) on April 8 on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said. The parties to the conflict plan to take bodies of the military personnel left on the battlefield from 15.00 to 20.00, through the mediation of OSCE representatives and International Committee of the Red Cross. Earlier, Baku announced launching of the investigation after several citizens reported about the servicemen who have gone missing in the recent military operations on the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops. The situation on the frontline aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region. The hostilities renewed in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3. The Azerbaijani Army destroyed about 370 enemy soldiers since the start of the hostilities, according to the defense ministry. Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact starting from 12.00, April 5, as a meeting between the Chief of General Staff of Azerbaijan Armed Forces Colonel General Najmaddin Sadikov and the Chief of General Staff of Armenian Armed Forces Colonel General Yuri Khachaturyan took place by the mediation of the Russian side. /By Azernews/ By Amina Nazarli Over the past few years, Azerbaijans tourism sector has experienced continues growth and growing investments, and turned into one of the fastest growing sectors in the national economy. Many international agencies have already recognized the impacts the tourism sector brought into Azerbaijans economic, socio-cultural, and infrastructure sector. The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), in its 2016 report analyzing data from previous years and providing a forecast for the future, stated that Azerbaijan has made significant progress in the tourism sector. WTTC experts noted that Azerbaijan was able to earn 2,678 billion manats (about $1.8 billion) thanks to tourists. For comparison, Azerbaijans revenues from this sector were 654 million manats ($430 million) in 2010, and a year later the country earned 988 million manats ($650 million). The experts predict 6.4 percent of growth in Azerbaijans tourism sector in 2016, expecting that the country will generate 2, 848 billion manats ($1,875 billion) due to foreign tourists. As for foreign visitors, their number can reach 2, 67 million this year. Giving a forecast for 2026, the WTTC expects that Azerbaijan, also known as the Land of Fire, will derive more than 5 billion manats (about $ 3 billion) on foreign tourists, whose number will reach 3,37million in that year. Meanwhile, the WTTC experts predict decline in the domestic tourism, reporting that residents of the country will spend 1, 460 billion (about $961) on travel and tourism during this year. Chairman of Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTA) Nahid Bagirov , in turn, said that the number of tourists is growing by 20-30 percent every year and over the next five years the flow of tourists will increase by 100 percent. Income from this sector will exceed 4 billion manats ($2.6) under our calculations. By predicating this data, we mean only tourists, who come to rest in the country, we do not take into account those who come on a business trip he told local media. He said Azerbaijan has many attractions, which are very popular among foreign tourists including Shirvanshakh Palace, Atashgah, Gobustan, Heydar Aliyev Center and Flame Towers. But for the attraction of more tourists, Bagirov regards its necessary to develop the restaurant culture, taking into consideration the variety of the national cuisine. Azerbaijani dishes are very popular among tourists, but apart from the food, people are looking for a show. Therefore, the capital city and regions should open appropriate restaurants that will not only provide delicious food, but also show, which will display our traditions, folk dances and music. This is practiced in many countries, in particular Turkey and Georgia, the AzTA chairman said. The expert also talked about the ongoing projects in tourism sphere, which will soon be presented to public: But we do not want to disclose all the secrets. One of the most attractive tourist objects will appear in Gobustan. And the best PR for the country is carrying out major international events such as inaugural European Games, Eurovision and Formula 1, which will be held in the capital this year. Moreover, tourists coming to these events, then tell about the country to their friends, and thus the interest is growing with each passing day, Bagirov emphasized. Many experts claim that the devaluation of the national currency manat, has created favorable conditions for the development of tourism. They say hotels and restaurants have become much more affordable in comparison to previous years, noting that the country should carefully approach to this positive phenomenon. Chairman of the Centre for Sustainable Development Studies Nariman Agayev said that the number of hotels for people with an average income are increasing. If 3-4 years ago, we had nothing to offer to foreign tourists besides expensive luxury hotels, then the situation has changed today, he said. In neighboring Georgia hotels of this price series appeared long ago, but in Azerbaijan the process its little bit slowly, according to the expert. But today we can observe that small 10-15-room hotels have also began to appear in Baku, a room that can be rented for an average of $35-60 per day, Agayev said. The Culture and Tourism Ministry says that Azerbaijan is able to accommodate from 35,000 to 40,000 tourists per day. PHOENIX Claiming its a matter of security, the state House on Thursday banned reporters from the floor who would not consent to extensive background checks. Several media organizations who routinely cover the Legislature, including The Associated Press, the Arizona Republic, the Capitol Times and Capitol Media Services were denied the traditional access after refusing to sign documents allowing House staff to check not just criminal history records but all civil records, driving records and other public records. House leaders said similar documents would need to be signed by any other reporter coming to the Capitol for the day who also wanted floor privileges, which have traditionally been granted for more than three decades. Even Rep. Bob Thorpe, R-Flagstaff, who said he supports some scrutiny of who has floor privileges, said that seemed unnecessary. I dont think we need to go through these folks background with a fine-toothed comb, with a microscope, he said. But the policy went beyond the checks, listing specific criminal offenses which would automatically disqualify a reporter from having floor privileges, including misdemeanor offenses like trespass. Speaker David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, said it was not targeting the media but about keeping lawmakers safe. He cited a disturbance last week, not at the press tables in the secure area of the House but in the public gallery. But several Democrats openly scoffed about the claim of those concerns for their safety, pointing out the recently revealed news that Gowan was allowing lawmakers to carry concealed weapons on the floor. Rep. Lela Alston, whose legislative experience goes back to 1977, said shes never felt at risk from the public. And Alston said she weathered some high-tension times such as the impeachment hearings in the 1980s against Gov. Evan Mecham. Alston said her worries are a bit closer to her. I want to know how Im going to be safe on this floor, she said. Alston said she wants a list of lawmakers who Gowan has allowed to be armed. I would like to know about that so I know, when in times of tension, who I need to stand away from, she said. House Majority Leader Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, said its all about ensuring that those who have access to the secure areas of the House have been properly screened. But House Minority Leader Eric Meyer, D-Paradise Valley, pointed out the requirement for a background check does not apply to individuals who House members can invite into the secure area and onto the floor. Rep. Reginald Bolding, D-Laveen, suggested that the new regulations have less to do with security than with the discomfort of some lawmakers with what reporters have been writing. And that, he said, includes reports on state-paid travel. That is a reference to an extensive story earlier this year by Hank Stephenson of the Arizona Capitol Times about Gowans travels at state expense, much of it in the congressional district where he wants to get elected. Gowan eventually had to repay the House more than $12,000. Late Thursday, the attorney generals office confirmed it was conducting a thorough investigation into what Gowan, who had sought the probe, insisted was an innocent mistake. Ginger Lamb, the papers publisher, noted the list of disqualifying crimes like rape and assault also included trespass. And Stephenson has a 2014 conviction for trespass, the result of a fight in Wickenburg. Lamb called the timing of the speakers action peculiar. This new protocol would have an adverse effect on a member of our reporting team that has written several stories that are critical of the speakers leadership, she said in a prepared statement. I would hope this is coincidence, but past experience leads me to believe otherwise. The speaker denied the policy has anything to do with any specific reporter and any specific story. Instead, he said it stems from a disturbance last week in the House gallery by protesters. The gallery is a public area that does not require badge access. The protests followed a meeting of the House Elections Committee over problems with the March 22 presidential primary, a meeting at which many were denied a chance to speak. And Gowan said it also has nothing to do with the media at all, saying the policy covers covered all nonemployees who have access through key cards to the House floor so that we know who people are, come in, so that our members are protected. I dont understand the crisis here, he said. But House Counsel Robert Ellman, in a March 31 memo to Gowan obtained by Capitol Media Services, said nonemployee badge holders are generally if not exclusively law enforcement officers and reporters. Gowan conceded under questioning that in the last 34 years there has never been an incident involving a reporter granted floor access. But the speaker said thats irrelevant. There had never been an attack on 9/11 either, like that occurred either, before on our shore, he said. But it did. And he repeated his concerns about the protests, all of which occurred in non-secure areas. You got people locking themselves to doors, Gowan said. You got somebody up here (in the gallery) who held onto a seat, wouldnt even let the troopers pull him out. And he said other protesters were collapsing on the troopers. Thats pretty scary, Gowan said. Montenegro said the press has not been locked out of the House. He said as long as reporters agree to the background checks their floor privileges can be restored. And he pointed out reporters, like all members of the public, can watch from the third floor gallery. But that cuts off the traditional access reporters have to lawmakers before and after the floor to question them about their comments, bills and amendments. Much of the debate, which took more than an hour, was about the juxtaposition between Gowans stated concerns about the safety of lawmakers and comments by House members about their colleagues being armed. Rep. Randall Friese, D-Tucson, said Arizona law makes it a crime to bring a weapon into a public building where there are signs forbidding that. This building has such a notice on the front door, he pointed out. But House majority publicist Stephanie Grisham said the speaker removed a similar sign that used to be on the back door of the House, the one often used by lawmakers. That, she said, means legislators are not breaking the law. Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, hinted shes one of the legislators who is armed. But she said its necessary though she said its more likely to come from the public gallery, as there are no metal detectors in the House. If someone stands up here and decides theyre going to open fire, they will know, at least after today, that theyre not going to be alone, the only person carrying a weapon, that there will be more than one here on this floor that will fire back, she said. And that, members, brings safety to this body. Quebedeaux Mitsubishi is hosting a grand opening event to announce its presence as the only Mitsubishi dealership in Southern Arizona since 2011. The new dealership, 3434 E. Speedway, opened about a month ago next to the Quebedeaux Buick/GMC property. The event Friday, April 8, and Saturday, April 9, will include balloons, soft drinks and hot dogs to bring people onto the property. The lots inventory includes about 250 used and 120 new vehicles, said Paul Quist, general sales manager at the Mitsubishi property. Sales have been OK. Our advertising is starting to kick in now. People just need to be aware that were here, said Quist. He has been with Quebedeaux for six years, formerly as sales manager at GMC, which has been owned and operated by the Quebedeaux family since 1957, according to a statement from the company. There has been no Mitsubishi dealership in Tucson since Jim Click closed his at 6370 E. 22nd St. five years ago. PHOENIX A study analyzing which metropolitan areas retain their university graduates the most has come under fire after the Phoenix metro area landed in the basement of the rankings. Officials with the Maricopa Association of Governments and the Arizona Commerce Authority fought back, and the studys author has revised the numbers. Jonathan Rothwell, a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, collected data from LinkedIn profiles to examine where two- and four-year college graduates are likely to stay put. The result? The Phoenix/Mesa/Glendale area ranked last in retaining its graduates, with only 18 percent of four-year university alumni sticking around to work. The New York area, by comparison, had a 71 percent retention rate in the same category. Richard Florida, a writer for the blog CityLab, published Rothwells data last month in an article titled The U.S. cities winning the battle against brain drain. The data covered more than 1,700 of the largest U.S. colleges and universities, according to the article. However, Rothwell included students from the University of Phoenix in his analysis. In 2014, the Arizona campus of University of Phoenix had more than 180,000 online-only students compared with less than 9,000 students physically in Arizona, according to the Arizona Commerce Authority. Grand Canyon University was another online-heavy institution considered in the study. Nearly 50,000 students were online-only. I understand the effort and applaud the effort of putting together the data, said Anubhav Bagley, information services manager for the Maricopa Association of Governments. It just needs to be done right. Doing it right means understanding the nuances of Arizonas universities, Bagley said. Bagley said 284,000 students graduated from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University over the past 15 years. Data from the Maricopa Association of Governments and Arizona Commerce Authority show more than 69 percent of those graduates still live in Arizona. I got personal emails from the Maricopa association and from another organization in Phoenix, both of which were very disappointed with the blog, Rothwell said. I tried to tell them, Look, it was because the University of Phoenix was in there, and Im sorry we didnt adjust for that. We didnt really do this in-depth analysis. Its just presenting this raw data. Florida updated the article, pointing out the caveats in the Phoenix area. And Rothwells revised figures showed the Phoenix area with a 41-percent retention rate for four-year university graduates, which would likely push Phoenix out of the 10-worst metro areas in that category. (The author did not revise the charts accompanying his article.) In Rothwells eyes, the criticism of his work stems from a misunderstanding. It was never my intention to suggest people are disproportionately leaving Phoenix because of any negative characteristics that the city has, Rothwell said. We plan on doing more research on this. We want other people to do more research with this data. Although it wasnt Rothwells intention, local officials said the data cast a misleading shadow on Phoenix. Any studies or reports like this that provide a negative connotation about our region or state are concerning because these numbers have a life of their own, Bagley said. These stories have a life of their own, and they keep coming up. I had the opportunity to spend this past weekend across the border in the Bella Vista neighborhood of Nogales, a dusty labyrinth of meaty fragrances, gas station block parties and staircases made from car tires leading up to homes on the hill. Like many, I've been going to Nogales since I was a UA freshman, when my dorm friends and I would walk over to buy trinkets and go to the bars. It seemed very commonplace back then, but somewhere along the way people stopped going, and now just give me worried looks when I tell them about it. You see, I still like to go about once a month, to eat tacos, walk around downtown and buy cheese and local veggies from the street sellers who come up from their farms in Imuris. It's a fun city! Nogales is definitely industrialized and not nearly as touristy as it used to be, but never once have I felt unsafe. And I have gone a lot. But this? This experience was a new adventure ... My host sister Karyme at home with her Barbies. She helps her mom sew dresses for them. I traveled down to Nogales for a weekend Spanish immersion program run by HEPAC, or Hogar de Esperanza y Paz. HEPAC is a community center in Bella Vista that provides free meals and educational activities for disadvantaged people in the neighborhood. (Some departments at the University of Arizona use this program to help satisfy foreign language requirements, but it's open to anyone. For more info and to sign up for future trips, go to friendsofhepac.org) I paid $150 for the trip, which included three days of Spanish classes and outings led by program volunteers. A volunteer family hosted me at their home, and fed me extremely well if I do say so myself. (Gracias Elena! No picante!) Around lunchtime we would go to the HEPAC's sunny kitchen for Spanish cooking classes, where the head cook Juanita Ponce showed us how to make Baja fish tacos and pork tamales with salsa verde. On the last day, the Guadalajara-native hosted a fish barbecue at her house down the hill. She bought half a dozen whole corvina fish and filleted them, smothering them with a glaze of pureed red chiles, mayo and Dijon mustard, scattering raw onion slices on top. (The heads went into a clear soup, which we sipped from mugs on the patio.) The recipe is called Pescado Zarandeado, and it's from the coastal state of Sinaloa. Juanita in her kitchen, with and my host mother Elena (right) and another host Lola (left). Juanita making barbecued Pescado Zarandeado, a Sinaloa recipe Every day after our cooking classes, we would hop into the car and drive into town, where we ate more incredible food. Well I did at least ... While downtown, I snacked on cinnamon churros fresh from the bubbling oil, grilled elote corn and crunchy chicharrones tacos that dissolved in your mouth like salty cotton candy. Over by the Purisima Concepcion church I found a man selling big chunks of crystallized sweet potatoes and yellow cactus candies. He told me the latter are called Viznaga, which is a type of barrel cactus that needs to be 30 years old when it's harvested. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture!) In the future I want to learn more about this unique treat, with the texture of a Sour Patch Kid and a vegetal sweet taste. On Sunday the last day, we visited a Oaxacan festival in a supermarket parking lot outside of downtown. Vendors had come up to sell their wares, which included chocolate mescal dessert drinks, sweet gorditas filled with cream and Oaxacan grasshoppers sold by the pound. A vendor sold chapulines, or grasshoppers by the pound. These are typical Oaxacan snacks. Sweets booth at a Oaxacan festival, with edible skulls made from amaranth seed. A vendor holds up his large Oaxacan corn tortillas called tlayudas. A Oaxacan "quesadilla" stuffed with stringy Oaxacan cheese and chocolate mole. It's actually a little hard to say any of my meals were truly Nogales-style cuisine. Like any border city, people settle here from all regions of Mexico, bringing their recipes along with them. The carnitas tacos might be from Michoacan, the fish from Sinaloa, grasshoppers from Oaxaca, etc. But there was one thing I did eat that my hosts assured me was 100 percent Nogalense: tacos de perro. It sounds bad, but a taco de perro is actually just a folded and fried tortilla stuffed with mashed potatoes. I ate four of them at HEPAC one night while people were singing songs around the campfire, staring down at the city lights below. FLORENCE Brooke Eden confessed to Thursday's early afternoon Country Thunder audience: "You don't know me. I'm brand new." And then she proceeded to perform as if she was a seasoned veteran, someone with the confidence to hold the audience's attention for a full hour and have them attempt to sing along to songs they had never heard before. Eden, who opened Country Thunder here before a crowd that numbered several hundred and later in the day swelled to 27,000, doesn't have a record out yet; she's working on it. But she has a single, a hot rocker called "Daddy's Money" that she saved until the end. That's a trick they teach you in Country Music 101 save your best until the end. But Eden didn't have to convince anyone to hang with her through her 60 minutes in the spotlight. She had the audience on her side from her opening rocker "Let's Get Crazy" to her soulful, bluesy cover of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep." She did only two covers during her show; the Adele hit and a cover of UK artist James Beck's "Hold Back the River" a nod to her experience last month playing the Country2Country Festival in England. Instead she did something pretty daring: a whole show of songs no one had ever heard before unless they trolled YouTube and saw a few of those songs performed in radio station shots and songwriter showcase concerts. Her music leans on the rocking side of country. Driving percussion thumps along in "Wild Heart," and Eden perfects a near growl in "Silence Speaks," her answer to the heartbreaking cheating ballad "If I Would've Known." Eden took the audience on her "Quarter Life Crisis," a pop rock gem that speaks to the indiscretions of youth, before closing her show with "Sunday Morning," telling the women in her audience "if you're going to be his Saturday night, you best be his Sunday morning." The sentiment seemed to resonate judging from the cheers from the handful of young girls who shoved straw hats into her hands as she signed autograph along the catwalk. FLORENCE Chase Bryant had that pivotal role of middle man at Thursday's opening day of Country Thunder 2016. He was the artist charged with setting the tempo, setting the mood for the night. He could bring the energy and create a fired-up atmosphere for Thursday's headliner Kip Moore and openers Old Dominion. Or he could play it low key. Yeah, right, Chase Bryant play it low key. Maybe at a funeral, but on Thursday at Country Thunder West festival grounds, with some 27,000 people in the audience, Bryant played it anything but low key. He jumped up and down, strutted the length of the catwalk as the sun set and played rock-infused country loud enough to entice a few people in the front row to move back a few or 20 rows. Bryant is a newcomer to country music, and someone who is quickly showing that he has no intention of being a flash in the pan. He already has a pair of Top 10 hits out of "Take It On Back" and "Little Bit of You" and on Thursday night the 23-year-old Texas native pulled out some impressive covers of Tom Petty's "Free Falling" and Justin Timberlake's "Drink You Away," including emulating Timberlake's on-my-knees-begging-you-please move. That was pretty darn cool. Border Patrol agents have shot their guns five times this fiscal year, including two incidents in the agencys Tucson Sector, newly released data show. Customs and Border Protection released sector-specific use-of-force statistics Thursday, six months after reporting national numbers without sector-specific information. The largest law enforcement agency in the country will now update the number of incidents on a monthly basis, broken down by sector and by branch. CBP also said Thursday it is seeking industry input on body and vehicle-mounted cameras. The fiscal year 2017 budget calls for $5 million to be spent on, among other things, the camera system and development of the agencys policy for their use. This solicitation for information on available technology is an important step in CBPs efforts to determine how expanded camera usage can benefit our agency, Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske said in a news release. CBP is committed to this effort and expanded transparency through a number of efforts, including an increased camera infrastructure. CBP wants to look into using the cameras for areas at, and between, the ports of entry. That would include checkpoints, outbound operations and other areas labeled high risk, the release said. CBP has come under increasing scrutiny for its use of force and lack of transparency. Over the last five years, agents and officers have killed at least 40 people 11 of them in the Tucson Sector. Since fiscal year 2011, use of force cases dropped about 36 percent nationwide among the three branches within CBP Border Patrol, Office of Field Operations and Air and Marine Operations from more than 1,000 to 756 last year. So far this fiscal year, CBP has reported 282 use-of-force instances. The vast majority, 185 cases, involved a less lethal device. CBPs data reflect individual uses of force, not incidents. For instance, there may be multiple uses of force during a single event. Agents in the Tucson Border Patrol Sector are among those in the Southwest that report the most use of force. Last fiscal year, the sector reported 160 cases three of them involving a firearm. The rest were instances in which they used a less lethal device, which could be a baton or pepper-ball gun or other, which the agency describes as offensive driving techniques or physical strikes. During the same time period, the Big Bend Sector and San Diego agents shot their weapons five and six times, respectively. Since Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, through Feb. 29, there were 58 use-of-force incidents, including two involving a firearm in the Tucson Sector. Thats topped only by the 65 cases in the El Centro Sector. While the American Civil Liberties Union welcomes the release of the new data, it said it is likely underreported given the number of complaints the ACLU receives and that the large less lethal incidents demand more context. Thursdays numbers were missing a fatal shooting in El Paso, the Los Angeles Times reported. The ACLU has said it would like for CBP to report information regarding the circumstances of the incidents, how they were reported and what, if any, disciplinary actions resulted. Why hasnt the agencys new emphasis on de-escalation had a larger effect, and what disciplinary consequences have resulted from force incidents that violate policy? Chris Rickerd, policy counsel with the ACLU, said in an email. Since 2014, Kerlikowske has announced new training and guidelines aimed at curbing abuses and changes made in how use-of-force incidents are investigated, and he has released the agencys use-of-force policy handbook, all in an aim to address concerns of lack of accountability and transparency. A group of police experts reviewed 67 deadly force cases in 2013 and found that at times agents had deliberately stepped in front of cars and sometimes fired in frustration. The Border Patrols propensity to frequently use force underscores our disappointment at its slow pace of accountability reforms, Rickerd said. Body-worn cameras within a strong policy framework are badly overdue, and an independent law-enforcement panels June 2015 use-of-force recommendations must be implemented immediately. In January, a Border Patrol agent shot and wounded an alleged drug smuggler near the Arizona-New Mexico border, the latest shooting in the Tucson Sector. But nearly three months later, neither CBP nor the Department of Justice has released additional information, including the name or nationality of the person who was shot, the number of times he was shot or his medical condition. A spokeswoman with the U.S. Attorneys Office in New Mexico said Thursday she couldnt provide any information on a matter that is under investigation. In October, a Border Patrol agent patrolling the fence near Naco fired his weapon at a man he thought was pointing a gun at him. Mexican authorities, Border Patrol agents and aircraft from the Air and Marine Operations searched the area but didnt find anyone. The speakership of Southern Arizona Rep. David Gowan has gone from hopeful to disappointing to a full-on fiasco. When he assumed the role last year, Gowan, a Republican from Sierra Vista whose district touches eastern Tucson, was the first speaker of Arizonas House of Representatives from Southern Arizona since 1988. While he was known as a courteous overseer of the chamber in his first term, he did not bring any particular benefits to Southern Arizona, declining even to defend his alma mater, the University of Arizona, from budget cuts. This year, controversy after controversy has dogged Gowan, culminating in Thursdays shameful climax. His office demanded this week that the reporters who have badges allowing them onto the House floor go through an extensive background check or be expelled from the floor. They chose not to accept the new requirement and were banished to the gallery, as Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services reported. It was all for security reasons, Gowan and some of his Republican colleagues insisted. They needed to be sure the reporters on the floor didnt pose a danger. Lets not put too fine a point on it: That justification is complete bull. By restricting journalists in the name of suddenly urgent security concerns, Gowan was treading a path broken by dictators like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. If they dont like what someone is reporting, they declare the journalist a terrorist or the outlet a security risk, and shut them down. In Gowans case, the target was plainly obvious: Hank Stephenson, a reporter who covers the House for the Arizona Capitol Times. Stephenson had the temerity in January to uncover the unethical use of cars from the state fleet by Gowan and other House members. Although those cars are for official use only, Stephenson reported, Gowan and other House members had begun under his speakership to use them for all sorts of unofficial business on the taxpayers dime. Gowan, who went on a campaign trip in a state car, ended up paying back $12,000 to the state and asking the Attorney Generals Office to investigate his actions. That rankled, of course, and Stephenson has continued his tough reporting. Although Democrats in the House filed an ethics complaint against Gowan and others who appeared to have abused state-car privileges, Rep. David Stevens, the chair of the House ethics committee, declined to investigate. Stevens, by the way, is Gowans friend and seatmate from Sierra Vista, appointed to the chairmanship by the speaker. This week, Stephenson posted on Twitter, the social media site, a photo of a television screen showing the Arizona Diamondbacks opening-night game: Behind a batter, there was Gowan, sitting next to Arizona Diamondbacks co-owner Mike Ingram in the front row. Thats significant for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, Ingram is chairman of a company, El Dorado Holdings, trying to build a 28,000-home master-planned community west of Benson. Gowan is sponsoring a bill that would make it easier for El Dorado and other developers to get tax-exempt bond financing for building infrastructure in new projects like this one, which is in his legislative district. (Gowans campaign said the speaker had held a fundraiser that night at a suite in the ballpark and just went down for a short period to visit with Ingram.) The broader significance is that Gowan has become known as a speaker who indulges in the perks of his office, as Ive detailed in previous columns. Being seen in front-row seats with a businessman whom Gowan is helping with legislation only reinforces that impression. As Gowan cracks down on reporters, the Senate is actually making progress on its budget discussions, the Arizona Republic reported Thursday, but the House is muddling along. Perhaps its not surprising that Gowans chamber is going much slower this year than last: There is no benefit to the speaker to go fast. Gowans time in the Legislature ends with the close of this session. When that happens, Gowans power will evaporate. Though he is running for Congress in District 1, he doesnt have the political skill or broad base of support to take the next step without the leverage of his position. So I expect the session to drag out, and Southern Arizonas embarrassment to continue. Unions Trump endorsement When the National Border Patrol Council made an unprecedented presidential endorsement last week, it was surprising but not really. The council, which represents thousands of agents in Southern Arizona, endorsed Donald Trump for president, the unions first-ever endorsement in the primary season. Thats why it was surprising. Trump speaks the same language as the union one of overwhelming crisis on the border and of the need for heroic, manly efforts to stop it. In its endorsement, the union spoke of the need of a pro-America president who seals the border before it is too late. That got an eyeroll from the New York Times editorial board this week. What I f ind disturbing is the degree to which the union seems to have bought the entire Trump line, not just his position on border issues, which is understandably appealing to some agents. It parrots Trumps claim to be beholden to no one, of others betraying this country and of him being bold and outspoken. By falling for him so completely, it puts its credibility at risk not just with Americans, but also with the agents who arent so credulous. Hart loses key support First, Rep. Macario Saldate called in the Star for UA President Ann Weaver Hart to resign either her position with the UA or her new job on the board of DeVry Education Group. When she didnt, 22 legislators sent a letter asking for her to quit her UA post. This was even more significant than it sounds. Thats because these are officials, many from Pima County, who can be counted on to make the strongest case for the university at the Legislature. In a time of state budget cuts, the university needs these people more than ever. And Hart has lost them. Tough matchup for JP Justice of the peace is not one of those offices that usually stir up big-name contests. This year, though, theres a heavyweight battle in a district that encompasses part of central Tucson and the northwest side. On Feb. 5, Jeff Rogers, the former chairman of the Pima County Democratic Party, filed to run for the office in Precinct 6. He was joined March 4 by Paula Aboud, a former state senator. The two are vying to replace JP Paul Simon, who is retiring. State residents who start at the University of Arizona this fall will pay 3.2 percent more for tuition than current freshmen, and nonresidents will pay 7.2 percent more. The rate increases were approved Thursday, April 7 at the UA during a meeting of the Arizona Board of Regents, overseers of the state university system. Most current UA undergraduates about 78 percent are not affected by the changes. Their rates were set in years past and locked in under the UAs guaranteed tuition plan. A UA freshman who lives in Arizona will now face an annual tab of $11,769 for basic tuition and mandatory fees, an increase of $366. A nonresidents tab will rise by $2,337 to $34,967. Regents spent much of Thursdays session lamenting the need for tuition increases and calling on the Arizona Legislature to give back tens of millions in funding previously cut from the university system. The board has asked lawmakers to restore $32 million in funding to the university system for the coming school year $24 million more than the $8 million Gov. Doug Ducey has proposed in his budget. Regents said they cant keep hiking tuition rates indefinitely to make up for state cuts. Current rates already are a strain for many Arizonans, especially those with just enough income that they dont qualify for financial aid, they said. More and more were creating stress in the middle class and that cant continue, said Regent Rick Myers of Tucson. The new UA rate structure also includes a 2.8 percent increase for in-state graduate students and a 5.8 percent increase for nonresidents. Those changes adds up to an extra $355 for residents and $1,765 more for nonresidents. Students at the UAs Sierra Vista campus will see their bills rise by 2.9 percent to $8,803 for residents. Nonresidents would pay 5.9 percent more for a total of $31,265. Regents also approved tuition increases for Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University. ASU undergraduates who live in-state will pay 1.5 percent more next school year. The change will add $162 to a basic tuition bill, increasing it from $10,478 to $10,640. ASU also is reducing a $320 per student surcharge the school instituted last year in response to state budget cuts. The new surcharge is $270. At NAU, tuition will rise 3.9 percent to $10,764 for an in-state freshman under that schools guaranteed tuition plan. Several thousand Pima County voters are getting a letter they never asked for telling them that they arent registered to vote. The Washington D.C.-based Voter Participation Center sent out the bulk mailing that county election officials say is inaccurate because many of the recipients are, in fact, probably registered. The Recorders Office has been informed that the VPC group receives their initial list from commercial mail vendors, but the information does not accurately reflect the voter registration records in Pima County, said Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez. We encourage citizen participation in all elections but we always caution voters from responding to requests for information from or providing information to groups or individuals that you do not know. This isnt the first time Rodriguez has warned the public about mailings from the Voter Participation Center. She warned voters about a similar mailer in the fall of 2014, but said her office has no legal authority to regulate these mailings to the public. No one from the Voter Participation Center could be immediately reached for comment. The president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan group, Page Gardner, told the Star in 2014 that her group is solely focused on trying to registering voters. Since 2004, she said then, her group has registered 2 million voters. This is not the first time the group has run afoul of Arizona election officials, either. In 2007, then-Secretary of State Jan Brewer chastised Gardner for misleading and deceptive mailings sent by the group when it was called Womens Voices Women Vote. Brewer also pointed out a rather large mistake on the return envelope seven years ago. In addition, our State Capitol Phoenix is embarrassingly misspelled Pheonix on the return address envelope, wrote Brewer. As news crews arrived at the Mission San Xavier del Bac on Thursday morning, seeking details on the black graffiti marring the historic churchs exterior, Christine Encinas watched from a few hundred yards away, wiping tears from her cheeks. She hadnt seen the graffiti, and she didnt want to. I dont know what kind of people would do that, destroying something so special, said Encinas, who is Tohono Oodham. She grew up in San Xavier and works at a souvenir shop near the mission. Ive never seen anything done to it. The vandalism, discovered early Thursday morning, is under investigation by the Tohono Oodham Police Department. The mission church is located south of Tucson in the San Xavier District of the Tohono Oodham Nation. Although the interior of the church was unaffected, vandals damaged the missions white, lime-mortar exterior, the courtyard walls, a sidewalk and a nearby tribal cemetery. By Thursday afternoon work crews had already removed most of the markings on the walls, which will have to be resurfaced. All the damage can be repaired and wont seriously affect the ongoing restoration of the church, officials said. During Thursdays 8:30 a.m. Mass, the Rev. Edward Sarrazin said he prayed for the person who did this, that their heart would be softened. The church has withstood earthquakes and lightning strikes, he said. Well get over this. Mission San Xavier is now heightening security around the church, he said. Daniel Morales, whose family has worked on the mission restoration for four generations, said the vandalism hurt everyone. At Mass this morning, you could see the sadness in the peoples eyes. Everybody was stunned. Morales said the graffiti is painful because the mission belongs to everyone. While he was saddened this morning, his spirits were lifted by the response. This guy showed up with his power washer and said, Where can I start? Morales said. Mission San Xavier supporters felt a sense of urgency to get the church cleaned before todays memorial service for renowned historian and author Bernard Bunny Fontana, the leading expert on San Xavier. Fontana, whose career in Southwestern history and archaeology stretched six decades, died April 2 at age 85. The church is deeply personal for the Tohono Oodham people, whose ancestors built the mission, said Tim Lewis, an art conservator. He was one of four Tohono Oodham apprentices who, in the 1990s, were trained by an international team of art restoration specialists to help preserve the churchs interior. Its a part of our heritage, he said. Our ancestors built it. Were trying to maintain their memory. Of those who committed the vandalism, Lewis said, Its just sad they had to resort to this to get recognition. Theres just no words, said Carolyn Reino, who is Tohono Oodham and owns C.R. Arts and Crafts, a shop at the San Xavier Plaza near the mission. How disrespectful to a place that is holy. James Griffith, the retired anthropologist and folklorist, was at the San Xavier Cooperative, just south of the mission, to talk to a group of mission docents when he was told about the graffiti. What can I say? Its a damn shame, said Griffith, shaking his head. REPAIRS UNDERWAY Since 1978, nonprofit Patronato San Xavier has overseen the preservation of and fundraising for the mission. It was an extensive case of sacrilege against an iconic, historic structure, said Chuck Albanese, president of the Patronato San Xavier board of directors. Its a sacrilege against the mission that represents all the values of this community, well beyond the church. To resurface the exterior walls that were vandalized, workers will use a mixture of lime, sand, water and cactus juice, as a bonding agent, Albanese said. The material allows the walls to breathe and release moisture, mirroring the original techniques used to construct the brilliant white walls of the church, also known as the White Dove of the Desert. Built between 1783 and 1797, the Mission San Xavier del Bac is a National Historic Landmark known for its Spanish Colonial architecture in a Baroque style. The mission, Arizonas oldest intact European structure, is still an active parish and draws roughly 200,000 visitors each year from around the world. In November the mission was named to the 2016 World Monuments Watch a list of cultural heritage sites that are fragile and in need of international attention to ensure their future. For Arlene Antone OBrien, who grew up in a small village on the Tohono Oodham Nation, the desecration of the mission felt very personal. It felt like somebody died, said OBrien, who now lives in Tucson. She came to the mission Thursday morning to hear a friend sing, which she said helped revive her spirits. I felt stronger and better after that, she said. On Thursday, a man with a long, dark ponytail and tattoos on his arms walked up to the faint black lines on the Mission walls where workers had power-washed away the graffiti. Help India! By Shafeeq Hudawi Thiruvananthapuram: In March 2016, while the entire mainstream media was still busy with the incidents in JNU, a Dalit woman activist was attacked by unknown assailants while she was sleeping in her house at Thirumala Thachottukavu in Thiruvananthapuram of Kerala? For Dhanya Raman, this was a repeat of an attack back in 2012 when she was assaulted some goons at her house. Support TwoCircles Such incidents are not uncommon for Dhanya, who has for long staged a war against the officers of Tribal Department and encroachers of tribal lands. She has been receiving constant threats because of her legal battle against corruption rampant within the department and cases of sexual assault against adivasi and dalit children in Kerala. Dhanya Raman Dhanya Raman, who is the daughter of Dalit leader PK Raman, has been working for the welfare and empowerment of the Dalit and Adivasi communities across Kerala. I have been fighting for the rights of the tribals and other marginalised communities and raise voice against corruption. This might have made me a target of the bureaucrats and land mafia, says Dhanya Raman. Her efforts have ensured that several persons were punished because of her interference in corruption case and cases of assaults and abuses against Adivasis and dalits. Last month, she filed a complaint with the office of Thiruvananthapuram range Inspector General of Police, Manoj Abraham regarding a fund embezzlement case related to the Tribal Department in the state. Besides, she has exposed corruption of Rs. 148 crore in the implementation of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) welfare scheme in addition to the corruption of Rs. 6.5 crore in Janani Janma Raksha project. In October 2015, Dhanya filed an RTI query to know about the fund allocation for the tribal welfare programmes in the state. The tribal department has been reporting the allocation of 1 lakh crore rupees for tribal welfare. A shocking scam was brought light through this RTI. Despite crores of rupees are allocated by the governments our children die due to malnutrition. They remain uneducated and undergo exploitation. How can I remain tight-lipped? asks Dhanya. Following her efforts, 937 Child sexual abuses cases were registered in the state. In these cases regarding abuse of tribal children, only outsiders were involved, Dhanya says. Dhanya adds that lands of 317 tribal families were illegally taken by land mafia across Kerala. According to her, the main stream political parties are least interested in addressing these woes as the Dalits and Tribals are yet to emerge as vote banks. In addition to the fight against government officials and land mafia, this lady has now declared a war against the exploitation of tribal boys by Maoists. More than 68 tribal settlements in Kerala are under Maoist threat. Maoists compel our boys to join with them and thus deny them education and opportunity to form as a self organized and empowered group, Dhanya says. According to the activists, NGOs are also threats to be eliminated while it comes to the mainstreaming of Dalits and Adivasis. We have educated and smart youngsters within our own communities. They should be recruited for the job to uplift us. NGO activists get money allocated for us and spend it for their choice, she points out. Currently, she is visiting Adivasi students hostels across the state in a bid to make them aware of their right and convey them the need to be educationally empowered. The Dalit and Adivasi population in Kerala is more than 35 lakh, among which only 35,000 have been employed by the government. 75% of the total employed work as the lowest grade employees. Although Dhanya is an interior designer by profession, she hardly gets time to work as a professional as she has to travel all the way from Thiruvananthapuram to various tribal settlements in a bid to get a direct picture of the sufferings, being faced by the underprivileged communities. She is also working with Education Empowerment Programme (EEP), meant to educate the disconnected and school dropouts. Dhanya has now joined hands with Adivasi and Dalit leaders in order to bring various 54 communities, scattered across different organisations, under one flag. She is now holding talks with leaders of Dalit and Adivasi leaders in Kerala. Educational and political empowerment is my top priority. If we are politically and educationally empowered no Dalit or Adivasi children will be raped and their land will not be illegally occupied, she says. Related: TCN Positive page Help India! By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net Hyderabad: Criticising the role of Muslim ruling class in Hyderabad, city-based Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee, said that the leadership have completely failed at the time of crisis to fulfill their responsibility of using political pressure on the government of Telangana to provide justice to the victims of the Aler encounter. Support TwoCircles People of Hyderabad are in great shock that even though Muslim political class is powerful they did not save the youth of their community. The community is even more concerned that even after the completion of one year of cold blooded murder; the Muslim political class has failed in getting justice to the families of the victims. As per the victims family version, they were active and in forefront till the completion of funeral of the encounter victims and then slowly disappeared, reads the statement issued by CLMC. The statement was issued while on the first anniversary of the Aler encounter where five Muslim under trial prisoners were killed by police on April 7. The five UTs were killed in exchange of gun fire, as claimed by police whereas victim families term it as fake encounter aimed at retribution. While reminding all the concerned citizens, the state and the media, the CLMC statement said, The familymembers of the victims are struggling every day to reckon with the reality of how the whole state machinery conspired to deny them basic legal rights. But still they are waiting for the justice to their loved ones who were killed in the encounter. Terming newly-formed Telangana state as a police state, CLMC attacked K Chandrasekhar Rao for not fulfilling the promises made. The Chief Minister of Telangana Mr. K Chandrasekhar Rao who had given many assurances to the Muslim community during the movement has turned off his promises. Instead of fulfilling his promises for the upliftment and development of the Muslim community, five Muslim youth who were under trial were killed by his police in a gruesome manner. After this killing, question was raised in the Assembly, the CM answered that the Assembly would discuss this issue in a detailed manner but one year has passed, Chief Minister does not have time to discuss and he did not fulfill his promise. The TRS government has taken U turn on the promises given to the people of Telangana. The KCR government did not even initiate judicial magistrate enquiry u/s 176 (1) (A) CrPC. On the other hand, in an atrocious move Chief Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao-led TRS government ignored the demands; instead the state itself registered an attempt to murder case against the prisoners who died in the police firing, the statement further reads. Emphasising on the Judiciary to deliver Justice, CLMC said, Five Muslim youth killed were under the custody of judiciary, it was the responsibility of the judiciary to protect them. But even the judiciary failed in this matter. And not only this, the judiciary did not even take serious note of this brutal killing; it should have taken suo motu and ordered for enquiry under section 176 (1) (A) of Cr.PC which is mandatory as per Supreme Court and NHRC guidelines for the encounter killing by the police. The National Human Rights Commission and the National Commission for Minorities has not taken this matter seriously, CLMC said. The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) did not take this case as suo motu and did not even respond after sending reports and requests to take up this issue in the greater interest of justice. The committee appealed to the Chief Justice to intervene into this matter and provide speedy justice to uphold the confidence of the people on judiciary. We requested the Chief Justice of Apex Court to take this matter as suo motu PIL in the greater interest of justice. But that also has not worked out. Demands put forth by CLMC are: 1. Demand to CM of Telangana K Chandrasekhar Rao to take immediate action before the time slips off from the hands! Once the time slips away, the name of the first CM of Telangana would be written in black letter in the history. Because he played the role of silent spectator on the brutal killing of Muslim youth. 2. Demand for enquiry u/s 176 (1) (A) of Cr.PC which is mandatory as per Supreme Court and NHRC guidelines. 3. Demand to register case u/s 302 of IPC against the policemen involved in the killing of five under trial Muslim prisoners. 4. We demand the Chief Justice of Telangana High Court to list the matter on the first priority basis and fulfill his responsibility to provide justice to the victims families. 5. We demand Muslim political class should open their mouth and speak for the community they belong to as they stood for the other backward communities. My wife and I are a couplein everything, even in Finance. And when we got married she told me: "From now on you take care of the bills, we will open an account together and you decided our future!" I weresurprised by the decision to because at the beginning of dating she was already well organized with their accounts. So we decided to make a plan for how it would be our relationship with money. First step was to list all the expenses that would have to keep the house, our common interests, car payment, house financing. And a financial reserve of course, required not to get caught by unwanted surprises. And so it was. We decided that each would have its percentage to spend the salary, so it would be fair, because the two have different incomes. All decisions are not easy to take. Also because many had a life, a financial rut before marrying. But when the decision is to join forces efforts should be in common to work. At the time of the marriage vows the bride and groom make the usual statement, "I promise to be faithful in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, in wealth and poverty." This is ulitma that is complicating many couples who do not understand that deciding to join are becoming a common society. By common interests for joint projects, to prosper together goals, grow, make your stronger. The relationship of a couple can be compared to business where two companies join forces to prosper together. The goal of this union is that both sides have advantages. If one side wins, the other will see being harmed, and will break the agreement. So one side seeks another partnership to thrive. It's the truth. People are marrying thinking that marriage is only of bodies, feelings and to care for children. But where is the goals that each had before marrying. The frustration of marriages begins there. But this only happens why not hear this talk about wishes and aspirations, where everyone would like to get and seating. The secrets, motivations, ambitions, desires, these are emotions that each must meet the other. Where does the money? In carrying out these emotions. If all of them are not shared and each one wants to do them alone. How will the entity signed the marriage? Put some dreams and desires aside for the beginning of this process to flourish is essential to success. You see, I'm not saying you should give up your dreams because of marriage. But it should be discussed before considering marriage. The question is evaluate where your new family fits this dream. For example, "my dream is to ride a bike around the world;" "Living a year abroad to know the culture." These dreams and desires must be analyzed before the wedding. What is your REAL passion for this? Is it my biggest challenge? If the answer to all these questions is YES, then decide whether the marriage is a priority. Or, if you find a partner or ideal partner who has the same desires and would like to join forces to achieve them together. It would be the true pinnacle of fulfillment of dreams. In most cases where the couple unites financial forces they thrive. The couple comes in tune and together define what should be invested for the couple and what each needs to own achievement. This financial process will succeed only with the complicity of both financial goals. What we want to be or have? What we need? What we need? Thought must be in the US and not in the US. Thus, the money will never be the problem between the couple, but the motivation for fulfillment of dreams and desires. Always thinks that money is not your enemy but the reward for their efforts. And it will help you to realize your wishes and dreams materials. Sherlock Holmes the most loved TV series of BBC One/Masterpiece has finally begun shooting for its highly awaited Season 4. The filming has been started in UK and the cast includes the cutest Sherlock aka Benedict Cumberbatch along with Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson and Amanda Abbington as his wife Mary. The newest member to join the hit series is Dr.Watson & Amandas baby. Ghosts of the past return in Sherlock Holmes season 4 The fourth season is also reported to be high on ghosts, for now we can only guess if its related to the Moriarty or not. The makers have reportedly given a statement to the paparazzi which said that the story they created and began to tell will now reach its climax. It has to be kept in mind that the cryptic duo of the makers has earlier said that the series will run long, so the climax can mean anything but the end of the series. The special episode has built a lot of curiosity The series is produced by Hartswood Films and made a amazing come back to Television with its release of a special episode on New Years day on BBC one scoring a rating of a whooping 8.4 and marked over 11.6 million consolidated viewers that too for just one episode. The special episode named The Abominable Bride was 90 minutes long and was also released theatrically even in China and Korea. Sherlock Season 4 will have three parts Sherlock Season 4 will be divided into three parts and will be headed by Rachel Talalay. Benedict Cumberbatch who has just wrapped shooting for Marvels Doctor Strange movie looks too excited to start with Sherlock since he has began shooting instantly post the movie. Looks like Benedict in real life doesnt believe in sleeping or resting just like his on screen character Sherlock Holmes. Though Season 4 has no fixed air date as yet, previous Sherlock seasons which have aired on BBC make us guess that this season too will air around the winters, so it might be end of 2016 or the early 2017 when we get to see the new season of the most popular detective on television right now. For now we just hope that Sherlock seasons keep coming and this is not the last one, even if it takes a long time to come out with a season it will be bearable till the time we get to see Sherlock Holmes solving unthinkable mysteries in his most charming and mysterious fashion. Men prefer brunettes or blondes? Usually it is said that the weaker sex prefers to own these: of course not talking about beer, but to girls. Some would even claim that men prefer blondes because they are stupid - and then, perhaps, on a par with the IQ of the boys. A vulgar stereotype and abused, but now a scientific study has completely reversed. Blondes are smarter blackberries. The study The study was carried out by a group of researchers at Ohio State University and involving over 10,878 women, which has been rated the IQ. Blonde women - or at least those who have claimed to be the natural blond color of their hair - have been shown to have an IQ of 3 points higher than women blackberries, brown or red. A study that might make people smile, of course, but in fact reverses a stereotype often found offensive and annoying. The stezzo Jay Zargosky, who led the study, blonde jokes mindless and all physical have important repercussions in the lives of these people: "Stereotypes have an impact on job recruitment, promotions and other social experiences. This study is important because it shows that there should be no discrimination against blondes on their intelligence." Zargosky also tends to point out that the study does not want to define the blondes as more intelligent than the others, but simply confines itself to eradicating the common mentality one annoying stereotype and discriminatory. Research has in fact registered an IQ of 103.2 of blonde women against 102.7 of chestnut women, 101.2 women with red hair and 100.5 of women with hair blacks.Zargosky also states that there is no link between the blond hair and intelligence, but simply coincidence that girls with blonde hair are born into social structures and families most advantaged in terms of culture, and better educated. Finally, in 1985, each had to show the natural color of their hair. To eliminate all prejudice based on racial and ethnic differences, scholars have eliminated African Americans and Hispanics from the analysis. Scholars explainthat it is not possible to establish a genetic relationship between hair color and intelligence, highlighting the findings could partly result from the fact that women monitored were very stimulated intellectually. However, this does not affect the result, although statistically the advantage of the blondes is not significant. German companies see opportunities in China's transformation Updated: 2016-04-08 11:29 (Xinhua) BERLIN - Despite a slowdown of China's economy, German companies see great business potential in China's structural transformation, a leading business representative said on Thursday. China's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 6.9 percent in 2015, the slowest annual expansion in 25 years. The country set an average of annual growth target of at least 6.5 percent for the coming five years. "In addition to global economic downturn, the slowdown of China's economy was mainly due to an ongoing transformation process of the country," said Alexandra Voss, executive director of the German Chamber of Commerce in North China, quoted by a post on the website of the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK). China launched a "supply-side" reform last year, aiming at reducing non-effective and low-end supply, improving products and service quality and boosting productivity by innovation. "China will increasingly rely on a growth that is not only driven by fixed investment and exports, but by the service industry, the domestic consumption and innovation," Voss said, adding that such reforms, especially further market liberation, a promotion of innovation and improvement of health and green technologies, meant potential for German companies. "German companies can contribute their expertise and experience as important cooperation partners," she said. Genetic predictions fail to pass the test Updated: 2016-04-06 09:10 By Shan Juan(China Daily) Although genomic testing is making ground in China, many experts are warning that the procedures are flawed, and that patients are failing to act on the results. Shan Juan reports. When Lily (not her real name) received the results of a genomic test she had taken, she was relieved and delighted to discover that it had ruled out the possibility of a higher-than-average risk of breast cancer. The 30-year-old real estate agent in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, had feared she would develop the disease as a result of her fast-paced working life and hyperplasia, a precancerous condition that was discovered in her breast last year. Technicians screen samples of genes that may cause deafness at a medical testing lab in Zhengzhou, Henan province, on Feb 20. Sha Lang / For China Daily In early March, after her aunt was diagnosed with the disease, Lily signed up for a genomic test that was advertised as "predicting" breast cancer. She ordered a testing kit online, and when it arrived she carefully followed the instructions. She wiped the inside of her mouth with the oral swab sticks provided before mailing the samples to a consumer genetics lab in Guangzhou. The Chinese literature major, who has a 2-year-old son, had never heard of genomic, or DNA, testing until 2013. She only became aware of it when news broke that the actress Angelina Jolie had undergone a double mastectomy and later had both ovaries removed because doctors had detected the presence of a "mutated" BRCA (breast cancer) gene. The faulty gene, which gave her an 80 percent chance of developing breast cancer and a 40 percent chance of ovarian cancer, had been detected via a genomic test, which identifies changes to chromosomes, proteins and genes. Public interest The news prompted widespread public interest in predictive genomic testing in China, and also provided opportunities for businesses that provide test kits to hype their products. A click on any large e-commerce platform results in lists of home genetic-testing services that operate through the mail, with the cost ranging from several hundred to tens of thousands of yuan. The companies claim that the tests can predict heart disease, most forms of cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and even obesity. They say the results can help to determine and deliver targeted prevention that, coupled with lifestyle changes, can save lives. Predictive services test an individual's DNA for genetic variations that may raise the risk of developing certain diseases. They are intended to influence patients and prompt them to adjust their lifestyles to reduce the risks, according to the test companies. However, those claims rarely stand up to scrutiny, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK, the results of which were published in the British Medical Journal last month. The researchers concluded that although the tests can suggest a higher level of risk, they fail to prompt changes that could reduce those risks. Immature technology Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert and academic at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said predictive genomic testing is an immature technology and not yet ready for wide promotion and application. "For individuals, it's not worth doing, and it shouldn't be used so often to 'predict' diseases," he said. However, he admitted that genomic testing is a good tool for early forecasting of certain inherited conditions such as Thalassemia - a disorder that can affect the amount of oxygen carried in the blood - and congenital deafness. Chen Wanqing, director of the Chinese National Central Cancer Registry at the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said given that most illnesses involve the interaction of dozens, or even hundreds, of genes, coupled with an individual's environment and lifestyle, "this type of predictive genetic testing is mainly about business hype in most cases". According to Chen, genomic testing, which is recognized by China's health authorities, is mainly used for the diagnosis and treatment of cancers, but accurately predicting the risk of cancer is difficult. The procedure also requires more research because little is known about the pathogenic genes of most cancers. Ying Jianming, deputy director of the pathology department of the Cancer Institute and Hospital at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said doctors can gain better insight into potential illnesses by looking into the makeup of inherited genes that are faulty and therefore susceptible to mutation. He cited Jolie as an example; her mother died from ovarian cancer, and the actress later discovered that she had inherited a faulty BRCA1 gene from her mother. The presence of the gene - which regulates cell growth, but can increase the chances of cancer developing if it mutates - raised Jolie's risk of breast and ovarian cancer to 10 times higher than the average for women. Excision or removal of potentially affected organs or limbs can reduce the risk by 80 percent. "So, she made her own medical choice (to have surgery), but it's one that can't be used widely because of the high cost," Ying said. He added that the risk of legal action further down the line means few doctors in China would be willing to perform surgeries such as those Jolie underwent without the presence of reliable symptoms or other evidence of disease: "A tense doctor-patient relationship undermines such preemptive, and therefore risky, medical procedures." The well-defined genetic link to inherited disease demonstrated by Jolie is uncommon, but, in addition to breast and ovarian cancers, colorectal and medullary thyroid cancer can also be detected this way. "However, the risk for those two is not as high as for breast and ovarian cancers," he added. He suggested that women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer should be screened for inherited BRCA genes because a positive result could warn other family members that they may also be at risk. Abnormal genes The majority of inherited breast cancers are associated with two abnormal genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2. Women who inherit a mutated version of either, irrespective of whether they came from their mother or father, have a much higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers. Most people who develop breast cancer have no family history of the disease, but if there is a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, or both, genetics may have played a role in the development of the illness, experts said. According to the United States National Cancer Institute, women with an abnormal BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene have an approximately 60 percent risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer, and the chances of developing ovarian cancer also rise. Generally for women, the risk is 12 to 13 percent. Abnormal BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes are found in 5 to 10 percent of breast cancer cases in the US, the institute said. Ying said most public hospitals in China don't provide testing for BRCA genes because of a lack of effective and feasible interventions later on. Zhao Ping, director-general of the Cancer Foundation of China, said genomic tests are useful because they can demonstrate a person's risk of developing certain types of cancer, but at present the knowledge is of little medical use. "In the majority of cases, no further medical procedures can be undertaken, based merely on predictive genetic testing," he said. Zhao added that cancer is known to be caused by genetic mutation, but detection of "faulty" genes related to certain types of cancer doesn't necessarily mean that the patient will develop the disease. He urged the health authorities to strengthen the regulations covering genomic testing, which is almost entirely unregulated by law or government guidelines. Despite the doubts about the effectiveness of DNA testing, some researchers believe that it can still play a role in improving people's health. Allied to other disease risk assessments, DNA tests may help physicians indentify the individuals at greatest risk, which allows targeted interventions, such as surgery, drug treatment and screening tests, said Wei Yingjie, a senior cardiologist in Heilongjiang province. According to the World Health Organization, one-third of cancers are preventable, so changes to lifestyle and behavior are the keys to avoiding illness. Furthermore, raising a person's awareness of their genetic predisposition could prompt changes to their lifestyles, such as eating more healthily or stopping smoking. Wei cautioned the public about using the genomic tests currently on the market for cardiovascular diseases. He said most heart conditions are caused by multi-gene-mutations and environmental factors, which can't be predicted. "Certain variant genes could be just a tiny part of all the risk factors," he said. That means the vast majority of illnesses cannot be predicted with genomics, he said. There are only a few exceptions, including neural tube defects, which affect the brain, spine and spinal cord, and Marfan's syndrome, a condition that can affect cardiovascular and optical functions. Wei said the results of genetic tests can be difficult to interpret, so specialists such as geneticists and genetics counselors must be brought in explain what the results could mean to an individual and their family members, but "China currently lacks genomics specialists of this type". Rather than genomic tests, many doctors are urging the greater implementation of precision medicine - a new approach to treatment and prevention that takes individual variations of genes, environment and lifestyle into consideration - to improve the nation's health. Yu Jun, a leading researcher in genomics and bioinformatics at the Beijing Genomics Institute at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said a nationwide precision-medicine initiative is being planned to provide training in the relevant procedures. Qin Huaijin, of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said precision medicine is a huge and complex system that combines big data and personalized medicine: "It is definitely the future trend of medicine." Contact the writer at shanjuan@chinadaily.com.cn Precision medicine initiative targets nation's health China has launched a strategic initiative to boost the use of precision medicine - treatments specifically designed for individual patients - that will receive government funding of 60 billion yuan ($9.2 billion) by 2030. With a huge human gene bank as the foundation and gene-sequencing as the tool, the initiative aims to develop more-targeted diagnostics and treatments for specific diseases through advanced medical science and technology. Major focuses will include cardiovascular disease, diabetes and selected cancers, which are currently the main killers in China, said Cao Xuetao, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College. Cao said the essence of precision medicine centers on methods of prevention, diagnosis and treatment that take individual variability, particularly genomics (the study of the structure, function, evolution, and mapping of genomes), into consideration. Modern tools, such as genomics and bioinformatics - the collection and analysis of complex biological data, such as genetic codes - will help to achieve that. "It will matter greatly to both the individual patient and the government because it can help provide the most effective treatments for individual patients and also reduce medical costs overall," he said. To kick-start the initiative, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has solicited the first 4,000 volunteers for genetic studies, but that's just the beginning, according to Cao. "We are planning a gene data pool covering at least several million Chinese. The more data we have, the more precise the prevention and treatment will become," he said. Francis S. Collins, director of the United States National Institute of Health, said collaboration will be the key to success. "We'd like to cooperate with China in precision medicine. To bring these data sets together is the only way to make the collaboration work, and make the whole greater than the sum of its parts," he said. "We are all one part of the family of human beings and we have to do it (develop the tests) together if we want to know important things about human health," he said. In the long run, it will teach people more-effective ways to stay healthy and also save the government considerable expenditure on medical bills, he said. "So there is also an economic driver here, to come up with ways of reducing healthcare costs," he added. However, industry insiders said more preparation in relative research and rule setting concerning genetic data sharing will need to be undertaken before that can happen. (China Daily 04/06/2016 page6) In policy shift, China to store less corn Updated: 2016-04-07 11:26 By Paul Welitzkin in New York(China Daily USA) It's not clear yet if China's shift in corn policy will affect the global corn market, although some believe it may result in fewer imports of corn substitutes such as barley and sorghum to the country. China said last month it will move away from stockpiling corn and start selling its huge inventory in a bid to improve agricultural efficiency. "We hope the new reform will let the market play more of a role in the formation of prices," Liu Xiaonan, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, told Reuters. Fred Gale, an agricultural economist at the US Department of Agriculture, said the change is part of a general shift toward a policy in which the government allows prices to be set by market forces. "Instead of manipulating prices to support farmers, the government will give them subsidy payments and overhaul the agricultural sector to make it more efficient," Gale wrote in an e-mail. Gale said a massive surplus of corn in China has forced the government to stockpile large amounts of the last four corn crops. "Because China's corn prices are so much higher than world prices and demand for corn is down, feed mills have been importing cheaper substitutes for corn. There is not enough space to store the grain," he said. The effects on the global market are indirect according to Gale. "China can't subsidize corn exports and it limits imports of corn with a quota, so it's insulated from the world market to some degree," he added. Gale said China receives most of its corn imports from the Ukraine (3.9 million metric tons in 2015). "China has already cut back on imports of corn from the United States," he said. Last year the US exported 550,000 metric tons of corn to China out of total exports of more than 44 million metric tons. Gale said the policy change may mean a decline in imports from the Ukraine. Indirect effects will be a decline in China's import of corn substitutes such as sorghum, barley, distillers grains and cassava. "Last year, the combined total of China's imports of these was about 38 million metric tons. As Chinese corn prices fall, imports of these commodities will fall too," noted Gale. paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com Bringing life back to Qukou Updated: 2016-04-08 08:05 By Luo Wangshu(China Daily) I first visited Qukou, a township in Kaixian county, Chongqing, in the winter of 2012. I was left with a deep impression of the air pollution, the large number of plastic bags and pieces of paper discarded in the streets, and the green algae blooms that drifted on the surface of the river and grew along the banks. The trees were withered and dying. I met a 50-something farmer who had injured his left leg while working in a factory in a different province as a migrant worker. The injury had forced him to return to Qukou, where he lived on the compensation the government had provided for land commandeered for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, even though the sum was too small to support him for the rest of his life. I don't remember his name, but the sight of him limping away is embedded in my memory. Before returning to Kaixian, I imagined a similar experience; a dirty river, dusty, poorly maintained roads and miserable locals. However, when I arrived in Qukou, in the exact same spot as four years before, I couldn't believe my eyes. The road was the same, but the garbage had been cleared away. The water in the river was clear, and the trees that grew above and below the waterline were fresh and green, although a little denuded by the harsh winter. "I plant water chestnuts, which grow on the surface of the river. They require very little attention, but always produce a bumper harvest," said Zhu Hongbao, a 59-year-old farmer. "I don't own any land now because the water level has risen. The government compensated everybody, but we still need to find other ways of earning a living," he said. "Water chestnuts are so easy to plant. I sow the seeds, then harvest the chestnuts and sell them. The rest of the time, I enjoy myself playing games, such as mahjong," he added. To protect the water quality, farmers are forbidden from planting crops when the water level rises. "It's hard to completely ban local farmers from planting on their own land. Before, some farmers planted crops when the land was exposed to the air, but when the water level rose and covered the land, the dead crops released nitrous oxide, which polluted the air," said Huang Yazhou, deputy head of the Pengxi River wetland natural reserve administration bureau in Kaixian. "We teach them (the farmers) to plant crops, such as water chestnuts, that are valuable and don't affect the quality of the water," he said. "It hasn't been easy, but gradually the farmers have taken all the lessons on board. After all, the river is their home and they want the best for it." (China Daily 04/08/2016 page6) Manila drill seen as US power play Updated: 2016-04-08 08:01 By Li Xiaokun(China Daily USA) Military exercise may escalate tension in region, expert says The ongoing US-Philippines military drill, which apparently targets China, and the predicted passage of US Navy vessels near China's Nansha Islands are designed to serve US interests at the cost of China's, observers said. Manila is eager to expand its territory to China's Meiji Reef in the South China Sea, said Yang Xiyu, a research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, and the US "might use its joint drill with the Philippines to show support for the expansion." "It's highly possible that US forces will choose Meiji Reef for their passage," he added. Reuters cited an unnamed source on April 2 as saying that the US Navy plans to send ships through a passage near Meiji Reef this month, the third in a series of such challenges that have drawn sharp criticism from China. The US has conducted so-called freedom of navigation exercises in recent months, sailing near Zhubi Reef, part of the Nansha Islands, and Zhongjian Island, part of the Xisha Islands. The scale and number of vessels sailing near the reef are not likely to be lower than the previous two challenges undertaken by US destroyers, Yang said. Yin Zhuo, director of the People's Liberation Army Navy's Expert Consultation Committee, said Washington is using the South China Sea issue to endanger Beijing's ties with its neighbors and to draw Japan, the Philippines and Australia into a collective containment of China. The move will lead to escalated tensions in the region, he said. A small contingent of Australian troops will join the exercises, while Vietnam and Japan have sent officers in an observer capacity. "Eager to undercut China's mounting regional influence, some specific nations take delight in sowing seeds of discord between China and rival claimants, and boosting their military presence and patrols to thwart China in the name of safeguarding freedom of navigation," Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary. About 8,000 US and Filipino troops have been engaged in the annual, 11-day military exercise since April 4. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter will observe the drill after arriving next week, the first US defense chief to do so, Reuters said. Manila played down any suggestion that the Balikatan ("Shoulder-to-Shoulder") exercise, which will simulate retaking an oil-and-gas platform and practice an amphibious landing, targeted any specific country. Asked if the drill's scenarios include a potential security crisis in the South China Sea, Lieutenant-General John Toolan, commander of US Marine forces in the Pacific, said, "It does, absolutely," according to Reuters. Toolan said a mobile rocket system that has been deployed in various areas, including Afghanistan, will be used during the exercise for the first time. "We can move this stuff anywhere we need to." Rene de Castro, an international studies professor at De La Salle University in Manila, told Agence France-Presse that the drills appeared to have China's presence in the South China Sea in mind. "Looking at the features of Balikatan - the mobile missile-launchers, the fighter planes - that is an indication that the alliance is being geared for territorial defense," he said. President Xi Jinping told US President Barack Obama on March 31 during their meeting on the sidelines of the nuclear summit in Washington that China would not accept any behavior under the guise of freedom of navigation that violates its sovereignty. lixiaokun@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily USA 04/08/2016 page1) Reworking a formula for economic success Updated: 2016-04-08 08:00 By PETER FUHRMAN(China Daily) An assembly line of a Daimler AG venture in Minhou, Fujian province. Investment from Germany jumped 59 percent year-on-year to $410 million in the January-February period, 2015. [Yang Enuo/China Daily] My on-the-ground experience in China stretches back to the beginnings of the reform era in 1981. Yet I cannot recall a time when so much pessimism, especially in English-language media, has surrounded the Chinese economy. Yes, it is a time of large, perhaps unprecedented transition and challenge. But the negative outlook is overdone, and starts from a false premise. China does not need to search for a new economic model to generate further prosperity. Instead, what is happening now is a return to a simple formula that has previously worked extraordinarily well: applying pressure on China's State-owned enterprises to improve their efficiency and profitability, while also doing more to tap China's most abundant and valuable "natural resource"the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese people, the talent to start a company, provide new jobs and build a successful new business. These two together provided the impetus for the economic growth since the 1990s. In the 1990s, SOEs accounted for perhaps as much as 90 percent of China's total economic output. Today, the SOEs' share has fallen to below 40 percent by most counts. Once the main engine of growth, SOEs are now more like an anchor. Profits across the SOEs have been sinking, while their debt has risen sharply. Arresting that slide of SOEs is now vital. SOE reform has long been on the agenda of the Chinese government. But such a reform has become more urgent than ever, as well as more difficult. There are fewer SOEs today than in 1991 when serious SOE reform was first undertaken. Among those that remain, many are now extremely big and rank among the biggest companies in the world. The restructuring of any such large company is always difficult. China, however, has taken some key first steps in that direction. The Chinese government has divided SOEs into those that will operate entirely based on market principles and those that perform a social function. It is downsizing the coal and steel industries, two of the largest red-ink sectors. Senior managers of some large SOEs have been dismissed or are under investigation for corruption, and experiments linking SOEs' salaries more directly with profitability are underway. Less noticed, but in my opinion, as important is a strong push now at some SOEs and SOE-affiliated companies to become not better but among the best in the world at what they do. Tsinghua Unigroup in semiconductors, China National Nuclear Corporation and China General Nuclear Power in building and operating nuclear power plants, and CITIC Group in eldercare are seeking global glory. They are trying to sprint while most other SOEs are limping. Luckily for China, the overall situation in the entrepreneurial sector is far rosier. All it needs is a more level playing field. Important steps to further free up the private sector are now underwaytaxes are being cut, banks pushed to lend more, and markets long closed to protect SOE monopolies are being pried open. Healthcare is a good example in this regard. All these moves are part of what the government calls its new "supply side" policy. The aim is to demolish barriers to competition and efficiency. Chinese entrepreneurs have shown time and again they have world-class aptitude to spot and seize opportunities. They are leading the charge now into China's underdeveloped service sector. This, more than manufacturing or exports, is where new jobs, profits and growth will come from. Opportunities also await smart entrepreneurs in less efficient industries like agriculture, in getting food products to market quickly, cheaply and safely. In cities, traditional retail has been hit hard by online shopping. Struggling shopping malls are becoming giant laboratories where entrepreneurs are incubating new ideas on how Chinese consumers will shop, play, eat and be entertained. China's economy is now 30 times larger than what it was in 1991, and far more complex. The private sector 25 years ago was then truly in its infancy. But, there is still huge scope today for China to gain from its original policy prescription: prodding SOEs to get in line for reform while letting entrepreneurs meet the needs of Chinese consumers. The author is chairman and CEO of China First Capital. Business meeting - San Francisco Luo Linquan (front row, fi fth from right) , consul general at the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco, takes a group photo with senior executives of American companies headquartered in the Bay Area. Also attending was San Francisco Mayor Ed LEe (front row, fourth from left). During a meeting with CEOs and presidents from companies such as Wells Fargo, Uber and EY, Luo said US companies are launching more exchanges with their Chinese counterparts and expanding their business scopes in China. 'The economic and trade relationship between China and the US is robust,' said the Chinese top diplomat, who added that more exchanges and cooperation are anticipated in the future. Provided To China Daily The Fosters: learning China by going Updated: 2016-04-08 11:00 By May Zhou in Houston(China Daily USA) Lily and Charles Foster take their children to visit the Great Wall in 2000 to celebrate the new millennium. Provided to China Daily Charles Foster, who has traveled to China extensively, still vividly remembers his first trip there in 1979. "I was very curious about China at that time," he said. "I remember I was playing magician in the streets of Beijing - I had a Polaroid camera and took photos of people and they were amazed to see their images gradually appear before their eyes." Little did he know at that time that 10 years later he would marry Chinese actress Chen Ye, now known as Lily Chen Foster, who became famous with her leading roles in big-budget movies like The Burning of Yuanmingyuan and Reign Behind a Curtain. They have two sons and have made many trips to China. They just traveled to Shanghai, Foster's hometown, in March, and the contrast was dramatic. "We stayed in the Pudong section," said Foster. "The new zone is filled with modern buildings. The shopping malls and streets are full of global name brands. I felt I was in the Galleria, not Shanghai," she added, referring to Houston's largest mall. "I felt like a foreigner in Shanghai. Where I grew up, the buildings, the trees, they were all gone. Every time when I saw something familiar, I would become excited and emotional because it brought back memories of my childhood," she said. While she does not entirely embrace the transformation that has occurred in her hometown, her husband sees it as a sign of progress. "I understand Lily's desire to go back to something authentically Chinese, but it tells us that China is very prosperous," he said. "There is a lot of ultra-modern architecture in Western style. To me it shows China's certain acceptance and openness to the West. "It's a positive thing," added Foster, a lawyer who served as chairman of the Asia Society Texas Center for two decades and is currently chairman of US-China Partnerships. The Fosters took their first joint trip to China in the early 1990s. "I took him to the Forbidden City and showed him the throne where I once sat to film the movies. I spent eight months in the Forbidden City playing the empresses. To me it was like going home," she said. They also went on an excursion organized by the Asia Society. Along with diplomats and political and business leaders from China and other countries, they rode on a boat from Chongging to Wuhan to see the Yangtze River and Three Gorges before the dam went up. During that trip, Charles Foster realized that his actress wife's influence extended well beyond China. "It was arranged to rotate seating every night for people to get to know each other," he said. "The first night a powerful Philippine businessman named Washington Sycip approached Lily and said: I am a Shanghainese, in dialect. His family was originally from Shanghai, and I thought that was quite cool." The second night the Fosters were seated with then-deputy premier of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong and his wife. He also said to Lily: I am a Shanghainese, in dialect. The third night, there were no Asians at their table, but Michael Blumenthal, who served as secretary of the Treasury under president Jimmy Carter, said to Lily: "I am a Shanghainese," in dialect. Blumenthal had lived for eight years in Shanghai as a Jewish refugee during World War II. "It's unreal that all these people from different countries have ties to Shanghai," Foster said. Of their many trips to China, one place stands out for Charles Foster as his favorite spot - Tian'anmen Square. "Standing on the square, you are surrounded by the museums, the People's Congress, the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong and the Forbidden City. There is such a concentration of power, culture and history at that one spot," he said. On one visit they bought tickets to climb up to the Tiananmen Rostrum and stood where Mao Zedong once stood. "I was so emotional with mixed feelings I almost cried," said Lily Foster. For her, visiting China went beyond sightseeing or business. She took her sons to live in a simple cement block building one summer and enrolled them in local school programs. They spoke Chinese and played with Chinese kids. "We wanted them to experience everyday Chinese life and culture," she said. This May, the first World Tourism Development Conference will be held in China. "I think this is entirely appropriate for two reasons," said Charles Foster. "In the last decade or two, there has been an extraordinary shift where China is the recipient of curious foreigners. Also, China has become extraordinarily prosperous and accounts for the most outbound tourists." To him, tourism serves as a kind of diplomacy. "On the American side especially during the political campaign, the relationship with China gets simplified to a couple of controversial issues, such as South China Sea and the trade imbalance. If you just focus on the problems, the public can get a stilted view. "Individuals can travel to China and form their own opinion. You see China in a different context, and the majority of people there simply just work and live their lives. "Lily and I constantly encourage people to visit China, give advice on where to visit and what to do. China is so big that you can go back over and over again and still not have seen all of it," he said. mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com Zhao Shilan trial date delayed second time Updated: 2016-04-08 11:00 By Lia Zhu in San Francisco(China Daily USA) The trial of a former Chinese official and his ex-wife charged with immigration fraud, transportation of stolen funds and money laundering has been adjourned again, this time until Feb 28, 2017. Qiao Jianjun, who is accused of embezzling funds while serving as director of a grain company in Henan province, is still at large. His ex-wife, Zhao Shilan, was arrested in March 2015 in Newcastle, Washington. The trial, which was originally scheduled for July 14, 2015 at the District Court in Los Angeles, was postponed to April 6, 2016 due to its complexity. The pair has been one of a few high-profile cases emerging since the Chinese government launched its campaigns Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Skynet aimed at returning suspected corrupt officials who have fled overseas back to China to face justice. In March 2015, Chinese prosecutors gave the US State Department a priority list of 150 people it wanted help in finding and in repatriating money they allegedly embezzled, as well as the suspects. Qiao is on that list. According to the US attorney's office in Los Angeles, Zhao and Qiao pretended to remain married and lied about the source of Zhao's foreign investments in order to obtain US immigrant visas. In 2009, the two received visas as a couple and came to the US that October. In mid-2011, Zhao applied to have her green card made permanent. By early 2012, the pair had about $2.2 million in laundered funds deposited in a Canadian bank account. They purchased property in Seattle and Newcastle in the State of Washington with money Qiao allegedly laundered from fraudulent transactions. According to China Press' Thursday report, the US court will confiscate a number of properties owned by the pair, including a condo in New York, and a hotel and two houses in Monterey Park, Los Angeles County, with an estimated value of more than $5 million. If convicted, Zhao faces sentences of five years in prison for the charges of conspiracy to commit international transport of stolen funds and immigration fraud, 10 years for the immigration fraud charge and 20 years for the money laundering conspiracy charge. China assisted in Qiao and Zhao's case as well as other cases involving suspected corrupt Chinese officials. The country has stepped up its campaign to track down wanted fugitives hiding overseas since Operation Fox hunt was launched in 2014. The US does not have a formal extradition treaty with China, but alternatives to extradition exist, including deportation for violations of US immigration laws. According to China's public security ministry, 366 of the 857 suspects apprehended last year surrendered as a result of Operation Fox Hunt. liazhu@chinadailyusa.com EU to benefit from China's 13th Five-Year Plan: Chinese ambassador Updated: 2016-04-08 04:33 (Xinhua) BRUSSELS -- Europe is expected to benefit from the implementation of China's new five-year development plan, said Head of Chinese Mission to the European Union (EU) Yang Yanyi on Thursday. Successfully implemented, the 13th Five-Year Plan, the country's economic and social development blueprint for the 2016-2020 period, will facilitate the EU's effort to set its recovery on a sustainable path, Yang said at the European Parliament. The 13th Five-Year Plan, to put China on a qualitative and more sustainable growth trajectory and further galvanize global growth, will be favorable for the 28-country bloc to unlock investment, foster productivity and accelerate the process of convergence, Yang said. China set its gross domestic product (GDP) growth target in a range of 6.5 percent to 7 percent this year in the plan, trying to restructure its economy into a more sustainable one driven by domestic consumption and service sectors. The shift will lead to rising demand by China, which is a huge market with the population of over 1.3 billion people, for imports of consumer goods and services, and help boost the EU's exports to China, the ambassador said. The world's second largest economy, according to the Plan, will speed up the implementation of its free trade strategy, which is supposed to boost negotiations on investment agreement between China and the EU as well as moving towards broader ambitions including China-EU free trade agreement. Meanwhile, European companies will enjoy more opportunities to use their technological forte to gain foothold in the Chinese market including in such areas as innovation, connectivity, information technologies, urbanization, finance, clean energy, services and circular economy, the ambassador said. China and the EU are both major partners to tackle climate change. In the 13th Five-Year Plan, China outlined ambitious target to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 18 percent by 2020. China's moving toward a cleaner, greener model of economy will have big implications for the environment and China-EU cooperation on climate change, Yang said. China has set 2020 as the target year to realize the first "centenary goal" of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, pledging efforts to double GDP and per capita personal income from the 2010 level. The five-year plan aims to keep medium-high growth in the next five years. By 2020, the size of China's economy is expected to exceed 90 trillion yuan (13.8 trillion U.S. dollars), compared with 67.7 trillion yuan in 2015. Record number of countries expected to sign historic Paris climate accord Updated: 2016-04-08 06:11 (Xinhua) UNITED NATIONS -- A record number of countries are expected to sign a historic climate agreement at a signing ceremony on April 22, the deputy UN spokesman said Thursday. More than 130 countries have confirmed that they will sign the Paris Agreement on that day, the first day that the accord adopted in December in Paris is open for signature, Farhan Haq said at a daily news briefing here. "This is expected to surpass the previous record of 119 signatures for an opening day signing for an international agreement, set by the Law of the Sea in Montego Bay (in Jamaica) in 1994," he said. More than 60 heads of state and government will be attending the signing ceremony to be hosted at UN Headquarters in New York by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, demonstrating the continued high level of engagement by world leaders to accept and implement the Paris Agreement, he said. "The Signing Ceremony will mark the first step toward ensuring that the Paris Agreement enters into force as early as possible," he said. "The Agreement will enter into force 30 days after at least 55 countries, accounting 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, deposit their instruments of ratification or acceptance with the secretary-general." Adopted by the 196 Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement sets a target of holding the global average rise in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and preferably below 1.5 degrees. British Foreign Office urges overseas Brits to stop 'bizarre requests' Updated: 2016-04-08 09:03 (Xinhua) LONDON - British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on Thursday urged overseas Britons to use consular services for genuine emergencies rather than "bizarre requests." Confused Britons looked to the FCO for advice on bizarre issues ranging from where to buy English bacon in Europe, how to recruit a butler in Lebanon and how to avoid nudists in southern Spain, according to the FCO. In a statement, the ministry released the top ten "weirdest consular calls" it has received in the past year, calling on the public to use its services for genuine emergencies. The "weirdest" requests also include a British man asking for assistance to get illegal employment in Singapore, a confused businessman looking for information on the construction of plug sockets, and another man in the Republic of Korea asking what he could do with his old pound notes. "Our consular staff are a helpful bunch and do an amazing job helping out Brits in trouble around the world - but it is important that people remember they are there to help with genuine emergencies and not as an alternative to directory enquiries," said James Duddridge, a FCO minister. "Every minute they spend handling a call requesting advice on butlers or nudists is time taken away from dealing with life and death cases, so I urge the public to think before picking up the phone," he added. According to the 2015 UK Travel Habit Tracking Research Report, almost three quarters of Brits (74%) thought the FCO could get them out of jail if they were arrested. Meanwhile, almost a quarter (22%) thought the FCO could arrange for them to get home if they lost their ticket and 15 percent presumed the FCO would lend them money if theirs was lost or stolen. Latest FCO figures show that over the last year almost half a million calls were made to its consular services. The vast majority of people who approached them were having genuine requests. Over the last year, the FCO helped 3,250 Britons who were hospitalized; 4,770 who were arrested, and the families of 3,670 who died overseas. Nearly 38,000 replacement travel documents were issued. Rwanda marks 22nd anniversary of 1994 genocide Updated: 2016-04-08 09:12 (Xinhua) Teenagers hold candles to mourn victims of the Rwanda Genocide, at the United Nations Office at Nairobi, in Kenya's capital Nairobi, on April 7, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] KIGALI - Rwanda on Thursday paused once again to mark 22nd anniversary of the 1994 genocide in which more than one million people, mainly Tutsi and moderate Hutus, were killed. A series of activities were taking place across the country, with the main commemoration being held at Kigali Memorial Center, where Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and his visiting Tanzanian counterpart, John Magufuli, laid wreaths on graves in which more than 250,000 victims were buried. Later the two presidents lit the Flame of Remembrance, beginning the 100 days of mourning. The Flame of Remembrance symbolizes the courage and resilience of Rwandans over the last 22 years. The commemoration period is locally known as Kwibuka, Kinyarwanda word for remembrance. During the 100 days of remembrance, guests are invited to leave a message in the memorial's digital guestbook as a way to remember the victims and show support to survivors. "During Kwibuka22, we invite visitors to pay their respects by touring the memorial and laying a flower on the burial place. In Rwandan culture, we light a fire as we mourn lost loved ones and we will honour this tradition by lighting the Flame of Remembrance on April 7, 22 years after the Genocide," said Honore Gatera, Manager of the Kigali Genocide Memorial in a statement. More than 500 guests, including international leaders, dignitaries, survivors and their families, and representatives of survivor organizations gathered at the center, and marked the day with moments of silence. "We come here every year but we shall not tire as long as I'm still alive," said a woman survivor who gave her name only as Jackline, whose husband perished in the genocide. "Memories are still fresh, it's like it happened yesterday." Speaking at the commemoration activities, Jean Damascene Bizimana, the executive secretary of the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide, called on Rwandans and friends of Rwanda to join the fight against genocide ideology. "Genocide ideology should be relentlessly fought because genocide perpetrators and their backers have continued to distort the truth around it," Bizimana said, adding that education is key to fighting genocide ideology and denial. Zhao fraud trial delayed yet again Updated: 2016-04-08 10:00 By LIA ZHU in San Francisco(chinadaily.com.cn) The trial of a former Chinese official and his ex-wife charged with immigration fraud, transportation of stolen funds and money laundering has been adjourned again, this time until Feb 28, 2017. Qiao Jianjun, who is accused of embezzling funds while serving as director of a grain company in Henan province, is still at large. His ex-wife, Zhao Shilan, was arrested in March 2015 in Newcastle, Washington. The trial, which was originally scheduled for July 14, 2015 at the District Court in Los Angeles, was postponed to April 6, 2016 due to its complexity. The pair has been one of a few high-profile cases emerging since the Chinese government launched its campaigns "Operation Fox Hunt" and "Operation Skynet" aimed at returning suspected corrupt officials who have fled overseas back to China to face justice. In March 2015, Chinese prosecutors gave the US State Department a priority list of 150 people it wanted help in finding and in repatriating monies they allegedly embezzled, as well as the suspects. Qiao is on that list. According to the US attorney's office in Los Angeles, Zhao and Qiao pretended to remain married and lied about the source of Zhao's foreign investments in order to obtain US immigrant visas. In 2009, the two received visas as a couple and came to the US that October. In mid-2011, Zhao applied to have her green card made permanent. By early 2012, the pair had about $2.2 million in laundered funds deposited in a Canadian bank account. They purchased property in Seattle and Newcastle in the State of Washington with money Qiao allegedly laundered from fraudulent transactions. According to China Press' Thursday report, the US court will confiscate a number of properties owned by the pair, including a condo in New York, and a hotel and two houses in Monterey Park, Los Angeles County, with an estimated value of more than $5 million. If convicted, Zhao faces sentences of five years in prison for the charges of conspiracy to commit international transport of stolen funds and immigration fraud, 10 years for the immigration fraud charge and 20 years for the money laundering conspiracy charge. China assisted in Qiao and Zhao's case as well as other cases involving suspected corrupt Chinese officials. The country has stepped up its campaign to track down wanted fugitives hiding overseas since Operation Foxhunt was launched in 2014. The US does not have a formal extradition treaty with China, but alternatives to extradition exist, including deportation for violations of US immigration laws. According to China's public security ministry, 366 of the 857 suspects apprehended last year surrendered as a result of Operation Fox Hunt. liazhu@chinadailyusa.com Chinese tourist arrivals up 93% in South Africa Updated: 2016-04-08 17:28 By HOU LIQIANG in Nairobi, Kenya(chinadaily.com.cn) South Africa saw a huge increase of Chinese tourists in January and the country is expecting a Chinese tourist boom with a series of measures to facilitate their coming, according to South Africa's digital publishing house, 24.com. The report said data from Statistics South Africa show that 1,012,641 tourist arrivals to South Africa were recorded in January this year, up 15 percent from that of the same month last year. It is the first time South Africa had more than one million tourist arrivals in a month, it said. The report said 79 percent arrived from African countries and the others were from overseas. And of the overseas visitors, arrivals from China grew by 93 percent. South Africa Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom indicated that despite China's economic slow-down, there is an expected boom of Chinese tourists in South Africa, the report said. It said a series of measures have been taken to attract expected Chinese tourists. With an Accredited Travel Company program in China, which was announced by the Department of Home Affairs of South Africa in January, Chinese travelers to South Africa don't need to make in-person applications at visa processing centers any more. There's also no requirement for Chinese nationals to have transit visas to travel to South Africa's neighboring countries. South Africa also opened new visa facilitation centers in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, and Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province. The country already had visa centers in Beijing and Shanghai. Five more centers are expected to be open at the end of April in another five provincial capitals. "We are confident that the number of tourists visiting South Africa from China will grow significantly this year. Our discussions with the Chinese travel trade have included measures on how to make the best of the expected boom," Hanekom was quoted as saying. In 2015, China was the world's top outbound tourist market, with more than 100 million Chinese traveling abroad. With the opening of direct flights, relaxation of visa regimes and other incentives, many African countries are expecting the arrival of more Chinese tourists, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency on Thursday. In 2015, China Southern Airlines launched flights to Kenya's capital, Nairobi, from Guangzhou and Air China also launched direct flights from Beijing to Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. A Lethal Harvest Updated: 2016-04-08 10:28 By Chris Davis(China Daily USA) A white rhino calf stands beside its grazing mother in Kruger National Park. courtesy of IFAW / J. hrusa Thanks to unabated demand for its horn in Asia, the African rhinoceros is teetering on the verge of extinction. There are some ideas for saving them that go beyond stopping poachers, Chris Davis reports from New York. C runch the numbers any way you want, but the endangered African rhinoceros is at a tipping point. More are poached each year than are being born. All 5,000 wild black rhino could be gone in 10 years; all wild rhinos - including the 15,000 whites in South Africa - by 2036, experts say. A record 1,338 were slaughtered for their horns in 2015. That's up from one the year before 2007, when there were 13 taken; 111 in 2008; 333 in 2009; 448 the next year. That's a 40 percent-a-year rise. The numbers have marched upward steadily in tandem with elephant ivory. The reasons are plain. People who traffic ivory also traffic rhino horn. The routes and techniques to smuggle the two commodities to consumers are similar - as are the consumers. While there has been a steady push on enforcement, small underpowered governments can't keep up with what has become a robust and deadly criminal enterprise. There have been a few creative ideas put forward to save the rhino, from the high-tech - one startup, Pembient, is trying to "biofabricate" artificial rhino horn - to good old fashioned free market economics. The question is: Can any of it be done in time? The conventional tendency is to point to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as the main culprit on the demand end for rhino horn and simply say if people stopped using it, the poaching would stop. There is a precedent for such an approach, as Harry Peachey of Conservation Messaging LLC explained. Between 1970 and 1990, the black rhino population in Africa had dwindled down 98 percent - the largest recorded decline in modern history of any large mammal - all from poaching. The primary consumer was Taiwan. Go into any TCM pharmacy there at the time and the pharmacist would typically have a rhino horn on a spindle, scrape off the customer's order and wrap it up. In the early 1990s, a delegation from the UN went to Taiwan on what was ostensibly a consumer survey and ended up teaching more than they learned. They asked people if they used rhino horn. The vast majority said yes they did. Did they know that it was moving rhinos to extinction? No, they did not. Was that a matter of concern to them? Yes it was, most said. "That could have been a very pure response, it could have been because they wanted rhinos to remain extant so they could have access to rhino horn for the rest of their lives," Peachey said, "but regardless the vast majority were concerned and as a result they turned away from rhino horn and went to other medicines. It had an effect on poaching and at the time rhino poaching became almost a non-issue." Black rhino The black rhino population got a chance to recover, from less than 2,000 to more than 5,000 today. Moving into the 20th century, the black rhinos' cousins to the south, white rhinos, were the ones who needed help. Their numbers had plummeted perilously to less than 50, perhaps to 20. South Africans took them onto reserves and protected them, watching over them and protecting them, thanks to which there are now more than 20,000, a huge recovery and success story. South Africa now has 80 percent of Africa's remaining rhinos and 25 percent of those are privately owned on ranches and reserves. But they are all under siege. "With this increasing demand for rhino horn the tables are starting to turn," Peachey said. "Most of the rhinos that are poached now are southern Whites, but any rhino with a horn is vulnerable." The heaviest demand is coming from Vietnam, he said, where it is being given as gifts and bribes to curry political favor. "Rather than consuming it a few grams at a time, rhino horn there has become a status symbol, consuming more in one event than you would under more traditional circumstances use in an entire lifetime. And there are people who did this two or three times and the value of horn has escalated incredibly." To address the crisis, South Africa put together a panel of experts last year to explore the idea of creating a legalized international market in rhino horn trade, something the rhino ranchers are obviously in favor of. The problem for the panel was there was practically no literature - studies, surveys, data, analysis - of the market. Enter the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "We were hearing about a proposal that South Africa was looking at to legalize an international trade," said NRDC researcher Alex Kennaugh. "We wanted to look at the data to see if the economics stacked up. And found that there was no good statistically significant data about what the demand looked like." The South Africans pushing for the market reckoned they could supply the demand and if they couldn't then the model fell apart, Kennaugh said. "They basically said we'll flood the market, the price will drop, it will alleviate poaching pressures. But if you can't supply the market, then of course that doesn't hold water." The numbers being used to make the case didn't sit right with Kennaugh. "We decided it might be better to get some harder numbers," she said. "Something we could really start to draw what the demand looked like, get a sense of the scale and get an idea of why consumers want to purchase it." Then nations could begin to design what conservationists call "demand reduction strategies". Or actually say, Yeah, you can supply the market; maybe this is a good solution to the poaching problem. The South Africans' proposed supply of horn was a mixture from natural mortality and harvesting from privately-owned herds. "The thought was private individuals could have rhino farms and non-lethally shave or cut the horn off and supply the market - a non-lethal solution to supply the demand. They grow back at a slower rate - 1 kg a year once they start cutting it," said Kennaugh. "So you have to wait until the rhino is about 6-years-old and they have a life span of 36 years. So you can shave off one kilo every year for the life of the animal. South Africa has a long tradition of using wildlife as a commodity to generate revenue." Azerbaijan, Armenia agree to observe cease-fire Updated: 2016-04-09 05:50 (Xinhua) BAKU -- Azerbaijan and Armenia on Friday agreed to observe a cease-fire after clashes lasted for almost one week, leaving the truce in tatters. Both sides of the conflict agreed to observe the ceasefire along the contact line effective from 3 am local time, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday. The Azerbaijani and Armenian armed forces conducted a search for the remains of soldiers who were killed during recent clashes, said the statement. The sides conducted search operations with the mediation of the OSCE and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the contact line of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region have reportedly flared up overnight Saturday with the two countries' defense ministries blaming each other for triggering the escalation. The clash lasted several days and left more than 70 soldiers and civilians dead before a ceasefire was agreed in Moscow on Monday. Also on Friday, Azerbaijani Foreign ministry spokesman Khikmat Hajiyev told media here on Friday that Azerbaijan will hold talks on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's settlement only with Armenia. "Armenia occupied the Azerbaijani territories, so Azerbaijan will hold talks with Armenia and not with Nagorno-Karabakh separatists," he said in a statement. He added that Baku has always welcomed the establishment of contacts between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of the Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has governed its own affairs with military and financial support from Armenia. Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war over the mountainous territory in the early 1990s in which thousands were killed on both sides and hundreds of thousands displaced. When we were in Montreal last month on the ALEPH / Jewish Renewal Listening Tour, Rabbi David and I -- along with Rabbi Jan Salzman, visiting from Burlington, and Rabbi Shalom Schachter, visiting from Toronto -- were interviewed by Leslie Lutsky for Radio Centre-Ville. The interview will air on April 9th at 8:30 in the morning on 102.3FM and online at Radio Centre-Ville. It will also be available as a podcast for a week. Here's a taste of what we had to say: Jewish Renewal is the most recent expression of the yearning of the Jewish spirit. We understand Judaism and all spiritual life to evolve. We have been doing it for thousands of years, and we never imagine stopping. Jewish Renewal understands this , and evolves pathways of spirituality that are based in the ways of the earth, based in the collectivity of political, economic, social and spiritual expressions, understands that Jewish life has never been frozen in a time or place or one way of doing things or beingand so ALEPH, as the umbrella organization for Jewish Renewal, understands and seeks to achieve a world that is beyond denominational lines, that is beyond the fractures of one way of being spiritual or religious, and to work with others who are like-minded and like-hearted in bringing that kind of Jewish spirituality into the world. -- Rabbi David Markus Jewish Renewal takes a variety of forms. Its not one single thing everywhere you go. Its characterized by heart, by spirit, by direct experience of connection with the holy and with God, by music, by creative liturgy, innovative approaches to liturgy and prayer, by a commitment to social justice and transformation of the world... [In] anything that identifies as Renewal, you will find most if not all of these things. -- Rabbi Rachel Barenblat Deep thanks to Leslie for interviewing us, and for giving us the opportunity to share some of what's exciting to us about Jewish Renewal with the listeners of Radio Centre-Ville. 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. The Vietnam Guinness Book of Records has recognised Duong Van Ngo as the man who has spent the most time writing letters for those unable to write by themselves. His main job is translating Vietnamese letters into English or French and vice versa. Looking up a word in a dictionary while translating letters. Vu Phuong from Tan Phu asks him to translate her letter into English to send to her cousin in the US. Many tourists to the Saigon Central Post Office are curious about his work. Ngo has been working here since he was 18 years old. He can fluently communicate with foreign tourists in both English and French. During his free time, he also introduces tourists to the architecture of the Saigon Central Post Office. He is admired and loved by his neighbours. Despite being 85 years old, Ngo still cycles from his house to the Saigon Central Post Office to work. Taking photos with young tourists. Trung tam sach ky luc Viet Nam xac lap ky luc ong Ngo la Nguoi viet thu thue lau nam nhat Viet Nam. Representatives of Vietnamese and Canadian pork companies discuss about their products Photo by Embassy of Canada HA NOI Viet Nam News - Canadian pork exporters attended a seminar held in Ha Noi on Wednesday by Canada Pork International (CPI) and the Embassy of Canada in Viet Nam. At the seminar, 13 firms met with a number of Vietnamese pork importers, processors and end-users to showcase Canadian pork and find opportunities for co-operation. Canada is the third largest pork exporter in the world, producing two million tonnes of pork processed from 26.7 million high-quality pigs," said Canadian Ambassador David Devine. "CPI is bringing together a delegation of member companies to explore market opportunities and establish business links with Vietnamese importers, the Ambassador told Viet Nam News. He added that the impressive growth of 230 per cent in Canadian pork exports to Viet Nam in 2015 confirms the high potential of the Vietnamese market for Canadian pork products. It also shows the confidence Vietnamese clients have in the quality and safety of the Canadian product. Cesar Urias, CPI director of Market Access and Government Programmes Management, said Canada was recognised worldwide as a producer and supplier of high-quality pork, with a long history of sending pork across the world. In 2015, Canadian agrifood and seafood exports to Viet Nam reached C$353.6 million (US$270.44 million), five times the number in 2010. CPI is the export development and promotion agency of the Canadian pork industry, with its members representing Canadas pork exporting industry. A similar event is taking place in HCM City at the Le Metridien Saigon Hotel today. VNS Steel is prepared to be transported at Viet Duc Steel Co in the northern province of Vinh Phuc. VNS/VNS Photo Tran Viet HA NOI (VNS) The Viet Nam Competition Authority (VCA) will host a public consultation meeting on May 5 to collect opinions from agencies and businesses on the duties imposed on imported steel. At the meeting, participants can present opinions on protective measures for steel products imported to Viet Nam, according to the VCA. As previously reported by Viet Nam News in early March, MOIT announced safeguard duties on imported steel products as a temporary protective measure against inexpensive imports that were allegedly threatening the domestic industry. According to Decision No 862/Q-BCT, the ministry will issue temporary safeguard duties of 23.3 per cent on steel billets and 14.2 per cent on long steel products for a maximum of 200 days. Explaining the extra tariff, the Ministry of Industry and Trade said it was a temporary measure aiming to protect the domestic steel industry from a flood of cheap steel, mainly from China. The move also targeted to help local steel makers have more time to spend on business restructuring and competitiveness improvement. However, many companies in the country do not consider the tariffs an opportunity to improve their production quality or enhance their competitiveness. They see them as taking advantage of the opportunity to raise steel prices, leading to a price surge in the domestic steel market. About half a month after the tariffs were applied on March 7, steel prices increased from between VN10.3 million and VN10.7 million (US$460-480) per tonne to VN12.5 to 13.5 million per tonne. My new house needs around nine tonnes of steel, Duong Van Them, who is building a new house, told Tin tuc (The News) newspaper. I have paid a deposit of VN100 million for the steel seller in February, but as steel prices have increase after the new tariffs were applied in early March, I must spend an additional VN20 million. That was just the losses suffered by one household. Building constructors, who use thousands of tonnes of steel per year, must spend more as well. Many local steel suppliers are hoarding steel, which is putting additional pressure on consumers when, in fact, there is no shortage of steel for domestic consumption. According to data from the Viet Nam Steel Association, steel production output in the first two months of this year reached more than 1.15 million tonnes, while consumption is only estimated at around 1.05 million tonnes, excluding steel companies inventory of more than 500,000 tonnes. World steel prices in the first two months of this year remained at $310 per tonne and increased slightly to $320 per tonne in March. According to experts calculations, even though safeguard tariffs have been imposed, the increase of VN2 million is unreasonable. To compete with steel importers, domestic producers should seek ways to lure customers such as improving product quality and reduce prices, said Nguyen Van Sua, vice chairman of the Viet Nam Steel Association. VNS HCM CITY HCM City is calling for foreign investment in the automobile manufacturing industrial cluster located in the citys Cu Chi outlying district. In October 2014, the citys Peoples Committee approved a project to build the cluster in Cu Chi. Covering an area of nearly 100 hectares, the project has an investment of more than VN500 billion (US$22.43 million). The cluster was built by Hoa Phu Join-Stock Company, which includes three stakeholders, the Sai Gon Transportation Mechanical Corporation (SAMCO), Sai Gon Construction and Development Join Stock Company (SINVESCO) and the HCM City Infrastructure Investment Join Stock Company (CII). According to Hoa Phu Joint Stock Company, the cluster focuses on part supplying for the local automobile industry, including manufacturing automobiles, auto components, and transport equipment. The investor plays a role in linking foreign and local auto enterprises as well as transferring technology and providing market information and sales for local companies. The cluster is located in a strategic location as it is next to Provincial Road 8 to the southern provinces of Tay Ninh, Long An, Binh Duong and ong Nai. HCM City has 22 industrial clusters with a total area of 1,600 hectares with land rent terms of 50 years. Most industrial clusters are located in the citys western outskirts areas, including Cu Chi and Hoc Mon, which still have more land for developing industrial zones and clusters. However, many industrial clusters in Cu Chi are not yet 50 per cent full and are still looking for more investors, especially foreign ones. The industrial cluster badly lacks investors for the rest of its area. Nguyen Xuan ien, SAMCOs deputy marketing director, said the company now had 40 per cent of stock at this cluster. In October 2014, SAMCO and its Japanese partner broke ground on the commercial automobile factory, and opened one year later with a target of making 800 automobiles a year for the domestic market, ien said. The company plans to expand its production to other automobile lines to show its potential to attract foreign investors in the cluster. However, there are only several factories operating in the cluster, all of which are Vietnamese enterprises, excluding only one Japanese partner of SAMCO. SAMCO plans to expand its existing factory in the cluster, which will account for one-third or even half of the industrial clusters total area. The Vietnamese automobile market is growing well and the industrial cluster is expected to attract full investment by 2020, according to SAMCO. Former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently issued a decision on policies to implement Viet Nams automobile industry development through 2025. The measures include a master plan through 2020. Among the policies outlined are assistance for credit, demand stimulation and market development. The part supplying industry for the sector will use advanced technologies and enter partnerships with leading world manufacturers to be eligible to supply spare parts for vehicles made internationally. By 2020, the automobile part supplying industry is expected to be able to meet about 35 per cent of the demand for domestic spare parts and accessories. It should also be able to satisfy more than 65 per cent of local needs between 2026 and 2035. The plan also targets the export of about 90,000 made-in-Viet Nam cars by 2035, encouraging the production of environmentally friendly vehicles. Meanwhile, technology will be upgraded to make products meet international standards. The strategy underscores the need to boost linkages and co-operation among automakers and assemblers, enterprises engaging in support industry and research and training centres in all economic sectors. VNS HA NOI Vietnamese shares extended rallies on both local exchanges yesterday as positive business information drove companies up and energy stocks benefited from recent gains in oil prices. The benchmark VN Index added 0.7 per cent to close at 571.60 points, rallying 2.8 per cent in the last three trading days. The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange rose 0.5 per cent to finish at 79.70 points. The northern index has increased by 1.6 per cent in the last four sessions. Both markets were boosted by stocks that have provided positive business information. Dairy firm Vinamilk (VNM) rose 2.9 per cent after the company recently removed seven businesses from its portfolio to raise foreign investment in its capital. Tien Len Steel Group JSC (TLH) jumped 5.7 per cent after the company said it expects a net profit of VN100 billion (US$4.4 million) in the first quarter of this year, a huge improvement compared to last years total loss of VN169 billion. The Telecommunication Industry Electronics JSC (TIE) surged 6.4 per cent after the company reported an audited net profit of VN14 billion, a slight increase from the companys pre-auditing result. Local energy stocks rose on recent gains in crude prices, on lower US stockpiles and a weaker US dollar, after the US central bank showed caution about this years rate hike plan. However, crude prices turned into negative territory as Iraqs exports increased and analysts were pessimistic that an agreement on a production freeze may be reached at a meeting this month between major producers. US crude West Texas Intermediate (WTI) inched down 0.1 per cent to trade at $37.71 a barrel and London-traded Brent crude was down 0.2 per cent to trade at $39.78 a barrel. But in general, WTI and Brent crude have surged 5.6 per cent and 5.5 per cent, respectively, in the last three sessions. In the energy sector, PetroVietnam Gas Corp (GAS) advanced 2.5 per cent, while other major stocks such as PetroVietnam Drilling and Well Service Corp (PVD), PetroVietnam Mud Drilling Corp (PVC) and PetroVietnam Technical Service Corp (PVS) were up between 1.4 per cent and 1.9 per cent. In addition, investor confidence was bolstered as foreign investors recorded a net buying value of VN113 billion on both local bourses, local media reported yesterday. Strong foreign investment lifted Saigon Securities Inc (SSI), HCM City Infrastructure Investment JSC (CII) and insurer Bao Viet Holdings (BVH) with gains of 0.4 per cent, 5.4 per cent and 0.9 per cent, respectively. Both local markets traded more than 170 million shares worth VN2.73 trillion, unchanged from Wednesdays trading value. VNS HA NOI Viet Nams consumption of electronic and electrical appliances is expected to rise from 7.3 per cent to 11.9 per cent by 2020, thanks to a new focus on its youthful consumers. Market research results from GFK Retail and Technology Market Research Vietnam Limited show that improvement in average earnings has greatly affected household consumption expenditure, especially in household electrical and electronic appliances. The countrys GDP per capita topped US$2,109 last year, but household expenditure will increase to around $3,737 per household per annum. Besides, local rising demand in the electronic and electrical retail markets has not been fully tapped. The retail market in Viet Nam has currently only satisfied 25 per cent of the demand. The figure is estimated to reach about 45 per cent in 2020. Expenditure on electronic and electrical appliances alone is estimated at around VN157 trillion ($6.8 billion), of which, electronic products accounts for VN60 trillion, led by mobile phones, notebooks and tablets. Meanwhile, household electrical products accounted for VN97 trillion with flat-screen televisions dominating, followed by air conditioners, fridges and washing machines. ang Tran Hai ang, deputy director of VietinbankSc Research Centre, explained that Viet Nam has become an official member of a number of free trade agreements, including EU-Viet Nam, Viet NamSouth Korea, the Trans Pacific Partnership, and recently the ASEAN Economic Community. The Ministry of Finance has prepared a list of import tariffs to reduce to zero for all imported items from member countries. Firstly, high-quality electronic and electrical products from Japan, South Korea, and Thailand are entering into Viet Nam with competitive prices. This will boost domestic consumption in the future. Although domestic demand for electronic and electrical products is increasing rapidly, the retail distribution network is only in the hands of a few enterprises and in big cities. A market survey by VietinbankSc says that in the genuine mobile phone market, The Gioi Di ong accounts for 30 per cent of market share, FPT 10 per cent, provincial stores and electronics supermarkets 20 per cent, and small mobile phone stores 40 per cent. As for the electronics market, there are fewer distributors but on a larger scale, including Home Center, Nguyen Kim, ien May Xanh, ien May Cho Lon, Pico, Tran Anh and MediaMart. In May last year, leading Vietnamese property firm Vingroup also entered the consumer electronics retailing sector with the introduction of the brand VinPro. Vingroup set a target to bring the total number of VinPro and VinPro+ stores to 25 and 100, respectively, last year. According to Huynh Phuoc Cuong, retail director of GFK, foreign investors opt for buying well-known and prestigious distribution networks and stores instead of building a new risky distribution network. At present, legal factors allow them to carry out this objective easily. Power Buy Company Limited, a company of Thailands Central Group, has already acquired a 49 per cent stake in Nguyen Kim Trading Joint Stock Company, one of the biggest home appliance store chains in Viet Nam. In addition, Central Group has also bought a 49 per cent stake of Pico. Japanese corporations owned a 49 per cent stake, a 91 per cent stake, and a 30 per cent stake of Citimart, Tran Anh, and Fivimart respectively. A few shopping centers have been bought by investors from South Korean and Hong Kong. With the market is changing so rapidly, concerns have been raised whether Vietnamese businesses will be able to withstand the intrusion of experienced and rich competitors from other countries. Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, Tran Quoc Khanh, said that there will still be a place for small businesses as long as they are proactive and learn to adapt to the new situation. -- VNS The conference "Meet to meet the SDG" was co-organised VCCI and UNIDO, under the umbrella of the UN Global Compact Network Viet Nam. Photo dangcongsan.vn HA NOI Viet Nam News - Local businesses were urged to play their roles in meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs) to promote a more inclusive, sustainable and equal global economy by 2030, a conference heard yesterday. The conference Meet to meet the SDG was co-organised by the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), under the umbrella of the UN Global Compact Network Viet Nam, as an initiative for all interested stakeholders to share experiences, ideas and support to achieve sustainable goals. Leaders of 193 United Nations member states in September 2015 adopted the Agenda 2030 with 17 SDGs addressing challenges of economic development, social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and good governance. Seen as a call for innovation, reform and inclusion, the Agenda 2030 saw businesses as the key driver to achieving SDGs, with responsibilities and opportunities for the private sector of critical importance. Speaking at the conference, Pratibha Mehta, UN Resident Co-ordinator in Viet Nam, said that SDGs are particularly suited to complex issues faced by middle income countries like Viet Nam. In order to meet SDGs, the Government, businesses and civil society must all participate, Pratibha said. The role of businesses will be central in achieving SDGs. Businesses have the power lead change for social good. And businesses can innovate for inclusive and equitable societies. There should be no inherent conflict between economic, social and environmental impacts with SDGs, Pratibha said. According to Nguyen Quang Vinh, deputy general secretary of VCCI, making SDGs come true is not only a duty, but also a great opportunity for businesses. Vinh said that VCCI with its Office for Sustainable Development for Business will provide the private sector with guidance, networking, know-how, and recognition to make SDGs succeed for all businesses in Viet Nam. Florian Beranek, UNIDOs lead expert on societal responsibility, said that meeting SDGs will depend on inspired, creative and successful entrepreneurs. Economic expert Pham Chi Lan said at yesterdays conference that meeting SDGs is critical for Viet Nam to achieve the aspirations of "Viet Nam 2035: Towards Prosperity, Innovation, Equity, and Democracy" the report launched last month by the World Bank and the Government of Viet Nam. The Government, businesses and society will all benefit from meeting SDGs. Lan said that Viet Nam must speed up institutional reforms, improve the business climate, and renovate the growth model from extensive to intensive. In addition, businesses must strive to enhance competitiveness and to improve productivity and efficiency to compete amid rapid global integration. VNS a Nang A Laos-Viet Nam Cuisine and Cultural Performance Exchange will be held at the Laos General Consul in a Nang in celebration of Lao New Year, Boun Pimai (Pi Mai Lao). The Laos General Consul said the annual event, to be held on April 8, would be a rendezvous for Laos expats, Vietnamese friends and international organisations in a Nang and the neighbouring provinces of Kon Tum, Quang Nam and Thua Thien-Hue on the occasion of the Laos New Year celebration. The event will see 22 pavilions featuring Lao cuisine during Boun Pimai (April 14-16) at 16 Tran Quy Cap Street in a Nang City. Vietnamese artists and Lao expats will jointly perform the Lao traditional dances and folk songs on the festive night. a Nang has provided scholarships for more than 700 Lao students studying in colleges across the city as well as for education and investment projects in Laos. The city had built relationships with provinces in southern Laos and signed up for assistance projects for provinces in Laos, worth a total of US$2 million, from 2013 to 2017. The city inked 29 Memorandums of Understanding with cities and provinces, such as Vientiane, Savannakhet, Champasak and Sekong, as well as Salavan, Attapu, Bolikhamsay and Xaynhaburi. VNS HA NOI A music and dance performance encouraging naval soldiers who live far from home to fulfil the mission will be organised on April 9. Entitled Spring Family Islands, the concert features singing and dancing by famous artists such as Trong Tan, Anh Tho and Thanh Thuy. Songs to be performed include Gan Lam Truong Sa (Spratly Is So Close) composed by Hinh Phuoc Long, Tinh Ta Bien Bac ong Xanh (Our Love, Silver Sea, Green Fields) by Hoang Song Huong and Noi ao Xa (On the Far Island) by The Song. It is a gift to encourage the soldiers and their families to complete the task to protect national sovereignty. The concert also raises peoples awareness of the role and strategic position of our territorial waters, Phan inh Tan, speaker of the Ministry of Culture, said. The songs praise the patriotism, beauty and value of the sea and islands. They ask people to be responsible to protect the sovereignty. The programme will be broadcast live on Viet Nam Television from the Viet Nam Exhibition Centre for Culture and Arts, 2 Hoa Lu Street, Ha Noi. -- VNS Deputy Le Nhu Tien. File Photo HA NOI Viet Nam News - National Assembly deputies said they hope newly elected Prime Minister Phuc will continue the fight against corruption and wastefulness. Deputy Le Nhu Tien of the central province of Quang Tri said that despite some progress in recent years, results have not satisfied voters. He added that he hoped the new Prime Minister could use his experience handling internal issues to fight corruption and crime in order to make Viet Nam a safe country, serving socio-economic development. Deputy Nguyen Thai Hoc of the southern coastal province of Phu Yen called on the new prime minister to take drastic action and mobilise the entire political system to fight corruption. Tran Du Lich, a deputy in HCM City, said he expected the new official to step up administrative reforms, which are an essential part of the solution to corruption problems. The administrative system comprises three components: administrative institutions, organisational apparatus, and human resources. I think human resources are the most important. With experience and efforts the Prime Minister gained in the field, I hope for clearer results, Lich said. VNS HA NOI Viet Nam News - National Assembly deputies voted to relieve the Vice State President, the Chief Judge of the Supreme Peoples Court and the Prosecutor General of the Supreme Peoples Procuracy of their posts during the 13 th NAs last meeting in Hanoi on April 7. As many as 458 lawmakers or 92.71 percent of the total consented to dismiss Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan from her post. Meanwhile, Chief Judge of the Supreme Peoples Court Truong Hoa Binh will leave his office with 471 approval votes, equivalent to 95.34 percent of the total NA deputies. Nguyen Hoa Binh was nominated as Chief Judge of the Supreme Peoples Court. File Photo Nguyen Hoa Binh will also step down from the position as Prosecutor General of the Supreme Peoples Procuracy with 472 yes votes or 92.55 percent of the total. The relief of the positions was conducted in the form of secret ballot. Later, the lawmakers voted on draft resolutions on the dismissal of these posts presented by the NAs Secretary General Nguyen Hanh Phuc. Accordingly, 450 (91.09 percent) approved the resolution on the relief of Vice President Nguyen ThI Doan, 452 (91.50 percent) adopted the resolution on the dismissal of Chief Judge Truong Hoa Binh and 447 (90.49 percent) were unanimous on the resolution on relieving Prosecutor General Nguyen Hoa Binh of his duty. ang Thi Ngoc Thinh (left) was nominated as Vice President. Photo zing.vn The last two resolutions will take effect from the date when the NA elects a new Chief Judge and a new Prosecutor General. During the afternoon session, President Tran ai Quang presented proposals for the posts of the Vice President, the Chief Judge and the Prosecutor General. ang Thi Ngoc Thinh, a member of the Party Central Committee, deputy chief of the Party Central Committees Office and a deputy of the 13 th legislature, was nominated as Vice President. Nguyen Hoa Binh, Secretary of the 12 th Party Central Committee and a deputy of the 13 th NA, was nominated as Chief Judge of the Supreme Peoples Court. Le Minh Tri was nominated as Prosecutor General of the Supreme Peoples Procuracy. Photo congan.com.vn Le Minh Tri, a member of the 12 th Party Central Committee and deputy head of the Party Central Committees Commission for Internal Affairs, was nominated as Prosecutor General of the Supreme Peoples Procuracy. The legislators then discussed in groups the list of nominees for the posts. Results of the election for the positions will be announced in the morning session on April 8. VNA /VNS Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Le Hai Binh. File Photo HA NOI Viet Nam requested China to cancel its oil drilling plan and promptly remove its Haiyang Shiyou 981 drilling rig from the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin whose delineation is under negotiation, said Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Le Hai Binh. He made the statement yesterday in reply to reporters queries on Viet Nams reaction to China sending the rig to operate in the waters off the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin on Sunday. According to a spokesperson, the rig was located at 17 degrees 3 minutes 12 seconds latitude north and 110 degrees 4 minutes 18 seconds longitude east. The demarcation of this area is being negotiated over by Viet Nam and China. Viet Nam demands China not repeat such unilateral actions that complicate the situation and make pragmatic contributions to peace and stability in the East Sea, he said. Viet Nam maintains and protects all of its legitimate rights and interests to the above-mentioned area through peaceful measures in tune with internal law, he affirmed. On Tuesday, a Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative met and handed a diplomatic note to the Ha Noi-based Chinese Embassys representative to protest against Chinas act. Also yesterday, Binh extended Viet Nams response to China switching on a lighthouse on Xubi Reef of Viet Nams Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago. Viet Nam requests China to immediately stop its violations of Viet Nams sovereignty in Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa archipelagoes, seriously observe international law, particularly the 1982 UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as well as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and take no more actions complicating the situation in the East Sea, he said. Viet Nam, once again, affirmed that the country has full legal foundations and historical evidence proving its indisputable sovereignty over the two archipelagoes, he noted. The diplomat said Chinas aforementioned act has seriously violated Viet Nams sovereignty over the Truong Sa archipelago, adding that it was illegal and void. The same day, a Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative met and handed a diplomatic note to a Chinese Embassy representative to object to the deed. VNS Fomer Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and New Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (right). VNA/VNS Photo Nhan Sang HA NOI Viet Nam News - Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has pledged to build a transparent, strong, united government that will take drastic, creative and effective actions, and do its best to serve the people. In an interview on his firs working day yesterday, Phuc said he was fully aware that this was an honour and heavy responsibility entrusted to him by the Party, State and people. The Government leader vowed to work with Cabinet members to perform their functions and missions well, as stipulated in the Constitution and law. Asked about priorities under his leadership in the foreseeable future, the Prime Minister said he and the Government would do their best to fix shortcomings, uphold democracy and continue accelerating comprehensive renewal and international integration, contributing to fulfilling socio-economic development goals. Several priorities would include stabilising the macro-economy, promoting economic growth, reforming administrative procedures, encouraging start-ups, tapping creativity and talent, and rallying all possible resources for development, he said. Discipline in the State administration and the entire society would be strengthened, corruption and wastefulness be drastically driven back, he said, adding that the Government would resolutely safeguard independence, sovereignty and national territorial integrity. More attention would be paid to ensuring the material and spiritual lives of the people, as well as their security and safety. First the State would help residents hit by disasters, drought and saltwater intrusion settle down into their lives; combat epidemic diseases; and ensure food safety and hygiene. The Prime Minister also attributed achievements made in national construction and defence to efforts by the Party, armed forces, people, business community and overseas Vietnamese. He took the occasion to call for building and upholding the power of the great national unity in combination with the power of modern times in order to create a strong, wealthy country under the ideals of democracy and fairness. He expressed his thanks and hoped to continue receiving valuable support from governments and peoples, international organisations and friends worldwide. VNS HA NOI Viet Nam and Timor Leste will intensify their cooperation across politics, economy, investment, trade, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy, and communications. This was reached during the talks in Ha Noi yesterday between Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and Timor Lestes Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Hermani Coelho da Silva, who is on an official visit to Viet Nam from April 6-8. Minh affirmed that Viet Nams policy is to boost the friendship with Timor Leste bilaterally and multilaterally and expressed his hope that the visit will help spur the friendship and multi-dimensional affiliation between the two countries. He vowed that Viet Nam is ready to support Timor Leste in agriculture, rural development, poverty reduction, and aquaculture while asking for the countrys facilitation of operations of Vietnamese investors there. The guest minister wished to learn from Viet Nams development experience and develop mutually-beneficiary cooperation with Viet Nam. He said he was delighted with the two countries rice trade and suggested the early organisation of the first meeting of the foreign minister-level joint committee. He pledged to steer relevant ministries and sectors to work on the signing of agreements on investment protection and promotion, agriculture cooperation, trans-national crime prevention and combat and judicial assistance in crime issues and extradition. The officials exchanged views on regional and international cooperation issues of shared concern, pledging to enhance coordination at multilateral forums and organisations. Viet Nam values Timor Lestes determination and efforts to soon join ASEAN and will work with other bloc members to support the country in realising its desire. On the East Sea issue, the two sides agreed on the need to ensure maritime and aviation security and safety, address disputes in the sea by peaceful means on the basis of international law, including the UN Convention on the law of the sea 1982, and maintain peace and stability in the area. VNS HA NOI Ha Noi Peoples Committee Chairman Nguyen uc Chung on Wednesday called on municipal agencies to reduce spending on street lighting, trees and waste collection in the city. He asked for an installation of LED (light-emitting diode) lighting products in the city over the next five years to save energy. The city pays VN260 billion (US$11.66 million) to light the streets each year. The LED lights are expected to reduce spending to VN90-120 billion ($4-5.38 million). Chung said that all future road projects would have to use LED. He also asked to halve the spending on public trees. He applauded the Ha Noi Park and Tree Company for investing in new tree-cutting equipment and machines, which had helped reduce tree-cutting costs from VN2.5 million ($112) to VN700,000 ($31) per tree and ensure labour safety. Also on Wednesday, the company started using two new tree-cutting machines that can deal with trees up to 26 and 32 metres tall. Each machine requires only three workers to operate. Previously, 10 workers were required to cut trees. Vu Van Vien, director of the citys Department of Transport, said that in order to improve the citys aesthetics, the city must move all electrical lines and cables underground when it upgrades roads to avoid having to dig roads more than once. Vien also suggested Ha Noi Transport Company be allowed to oversee all bus stations and bus stops to ensure smooth operation and quality. Now, seven companies are managing 363 bus stations and more than 2,200 bus stops in the city. VNS HCM CITY The central province of Quang Nam has approved the second phase of a project to build concrete dykes along Cua ai beach to cope with worsening coastal erosion near Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Nguyen Van Dung, chairman of Hoi Ans Peoples Committee, said the project, with total investment of more than VN80 billion (US$3.59 million), would be funded with VN50 billion ($2.24) from the central governments budget and the rest from Hoi An. Under the project, 750 metres of concrete dykes will be built from the Vinpearl resort area to the river mouth of Cua ai beach. During the first phase of the project in 2011, more than 850 metres of dykes were built at a total cost of VN70 billion ($3.14 million). In 2014, when the erosion became worse, the province spent VN25 billion ($1.12 million) to erect iron poles and set up a sandbag revetment 400 metres along the coast. However, the project was not effective in the long run. The province is now asking for the Government to allocate VN40 billion ($1.79 million) to help eroded areas stretching 1.3 kilometres along the coast. It will use Dutch technology, with a total investment of VN55 billion ($2.46 million). Nguyen The Hung, vice chairman of the citys peoples committee, said Cua ai beach erosion had become more serious, destroying the beach and affecting the tourism industry in Hoi An. Long-term solutions Experts said at an international conference recently held in Hoi An that the coastal erosion at Cua ai was a serious problem not only for Hoi An but for the entire province. Many provinces in the central region had not developed long-term plans for the sustainable development of rivers, estuaries and coasts. Nguyen The Hung, vice chairman of the citys peoples committee, told Viet Nam News on the sidelines of the conference that all sand-mining activity should be strictly banned in the downstream areas of the Thu Bon and along the provinces coastline. More specialised dykes, other than sandbag revetments, should be built to shield Cua ai beach from further attrition, he said. Local scientists have also said that protective forests should be planted and new measures taken to retain the soil. However, the Hoi An government lacks the funding, technology and knowledge to resolve the problem and is waiting for support from the province and the central Government, according to Hung. Nguyen Trung Viet, rector of the Central Region College of Technology, Economics and Water Resources, said in an interview that temporary solutions would not achieve sustainable outcomes and might do the opposite. Such measures could cause erosion in neighbouring areas. For example, some resorts have built their own dykes independently without co-ordination with others. These activities could cause erosion at nearby hotels and resorts, Viet said. Co-operation between scientists, businesses and provincial authorities is needed to effectively resolve the issue, he said. The citys peoples committee has asked the provinces peoples committee and the central Government for additional funds for soil retention, and has also sought advice from experts. Cua ai Beach, which is 7.6km long, was 3km away from the shore 40 years ago. It was separated from the residential areas by huge sand dunes, according to local residents. However, in recent years, erosion has eaten into the land at an alarming level. Hundreds of households have moved to other places due to serious coastal erosion. VNS Border guards at the Vinh Hoi ong Border Gate in southern An Giang Province have arrested four Cambodians for allegedly smuggling in goods and money over the Cambodian border. Photo thoibao.today AN GIANG Border guards at the Vinh Hoi ong Border Gate in southern An Giang Province have arrested four people for allegedly smuggling in goods and money over the Cambodian border. The four, all Cambodians aged between 24 and 36, have been handed over to the police, the Border Guard said. The suspects were spotted on the morning of March 27 in a small boat travelling at high speed from Can Na Canal in Cambodias Ta Keo Province into Viet Nam and apprehended by the Border Guard. A search of the boat found 49.81 taels of gold, VN986.85 million and 809,000 riel in cash and four mobile phones totally worth nearly VN3 billion (nearly US$130,000). VNS. Cyprus has opened a consulate in HCM City and appointed entrepreneur Dr Phan Quoc Cong as its honorary consul-general. Photo quehuongonline.vn HCM City Cyprus has opened a consulate in HCM City and appointed entrepreneur Dr Phan Quoc Cong as its honorary consul-general. The European nation does not have an embassy in Ha Noi and its affairs in Viet Nam, like issuing visas, were handled by its high commission in India. Demetrios Theophylactou, Cypruss ambassador to India and Viet Nam, on Wednesday said: Opportunities in Viet Nam are now significant for Cyprus to involve more directly. Tran Thi Hieu Hanh of HCM Citys Foreign Affairs Department said: I would like to congratulate and thank Dr Cong for his contributions to strengthening the relationship between the two countries. Cong got a PhD from the USs Southern California University in 2003 and is currently attending the Eisenhower Fellowships programme for diplomats. He is the founder and chairman of ICP company, chairman of Sai Gon Food, and member of management teams at PNJ, Hoa Thien Phu, and Mekong Capital. VNS HCM CITY Two years ago, Pham Quynh Tram was on her way to visit her grandmother when the motorbike driven by her mother was hit by a drunk driver. Tram and her mother fell on the street but were uninjured because they were wearing standard helmets. Tram, 10, described the accident during her speech at an English-Speaking Contest held on Wednesday (April 6) at Truong inh Primary School in HCM Citys District 12. Trams speech, which won first prize for fifth graders, sent her schoolmates a message: We should obey traffic safety regulations such as wearing helmets and not drive when drunk. After the contest, about 2,000 students and teachers watched a fashion show and play in which students performed. Tran Thi Hong An, principal of Truong inh School, said she was pleased to see more of the schools students wearing high quality helmets to school every day. The aim of the English-speaking contest helps the youngest members of the community to learn invaluable skills in road safety and proper helmet use. The contest was part of Traffic Safety Day, which is being carried out at 11 schools throughout the country in March and April by the National Traffic Safety Committee in co-operation with Ministry of Education and Training, and Asia Injury Prevention Foundation, funded by Abbott Laboratories, the global healthcare company. It is part of an education component of the Helmets for Families programme, which for the last three years has raised awareness about road safety literacy and safe behaviour among Vietnamese families. The programme is carried out at two schools in Ha Noi, four in HCM City and five in the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh. More than 10,000 parents have attended and been provided with subsidised, high-quality helmets in exchange for sub-standard ones which they had been using. From early 2014 to December 2015, the programme has helped raise the average helmet-wearing rate from 6.8 per cent to 66.3 per cent at schools in Ha Noi, from 27 per cent in to 82 per cent in HCM City, and from 30.4 per cent to 80 per cent in Tra Vinh. According to the National Traffic Safety Committee, peoples awareness about helmet wearing has also improved as a result of programmes as well as strict fines imposed on violators. The national helmet law requires adults and children six years old and above to wear standard helmets. The number of children under 14 years old diagnosed with a brain injury due to traffic accidents and lack of a helmet accounts for 13.4 per cent of the total number each year over the last five years. Students in ASEAN countries, China, Japan, and Korea yesterday began a four-day forum to discuss issues related to Viet Nams international integration. Photo hochiminhcity.vn HCM CITY Students in ASEAN countries, China, Japan, and Korea yesterday began a four-day forum to discuss issues related to Viet Nams international integration. More than 100 student delegates, including 1,000 students from universities and colleges in HCM City, are attending the International Student Science Forum 2016, organised for the first time. Co-hosted by the Viet Nam National Union of Students in HCM City and the Viet Nam National University in HCM City, the forum aims at strengthening solidarity among students in ASEAN Community and neighbouring countries. Together with international lecturers, the participants are taking part in panel discussions covering such topics as studentscreativity and scientific research, volunteer activities, start-ups and employment, and climate change and environmental protection. Associate Professor Duong Anh uc, deputy director of Viet Nam National University HCM City, said the forum was a chance for students from ASEAN Plus Three nations to exchange knowledge, ideas and discuss important issues of the regions. ASEAN is proving itself to be a dynamic economic zone, he added. However, aside from achievements in economy, science and technology, there are still challenges in human resources, environment and climate change. Students and future generations, with keen guidance from former generations, have the responsibility of building an ASEAN area of amity, stability and sustainability, uc said during the events opening ceremony. As part of the agenda, the delegates will take part in exchange programs with students from a number of universities in HCM City. VNS Students practise at a vocational training school. Many vocational training schools equipped with modern machinery and study tools worth billions of ong are facing student shortages due to low rates of enrolment. Photo tienphong.vn HA NOI Many vocational training schools equipped with modern machinery and study tools worth billions of ong are facing student shortages due to low rates of enrolment. Many classrooms have been left unused, representing a large waste in these schools. The Hanoi Electromechanical Vocational Training College in Ha Nois Mai Dich Road is one such example. Last year, the school invested US$3 million to buy study equipment and another VN11 billion ($493,350) to improve teaching quality at the school. Previously, in 2014, the school was given VN14 billion ($627,900) to buy modern equipment and VN20 billion ($897,000) to build infrastructure. Within two years, the school has become one of the most high-quality vocational schools in the country with a series of modern machinery that can be used at large-sized enterprises. A welding machine, for instance, is worth up to VN5 billion ($224,250). However, the school remains deserted and many vocational training classes are yet to be opened. ong Van Ngoc, rector of the school said that the school found it hard to attract students to enroll. In 2014, there were about 1,200 students enrolled at the school. Last year, the number rose slightly to 1,236. Yet the training capacity of the school was 3,000 students. Although the school committed to refund the school fees of graduates who could not find a job, and as many as 50 enterprises co-operated with the school to create jobs for graduates, enrollment was still a problem, he said. The Ha Noi Vocational College of High Technology is facing a similar situation. Established in 2009, the school has invested roughly VN200 billion ($8.9 million) to buy machinery and equipment for 20 professional practices. With modern facilities in Ha Nois Tu Liem District, the school was expected to attract about 6,000 students per academic year. However, after five years of operation, Pham Xuan Khanh, rector of the school, said a shortage of students remained a big problem in spite of the schools efforts. In the early years, the school only attracted about 1,000 students each year. Last year, the school took a series of measures such as speaking to students at high schools about the college and working with dozens of businesses to assure 90 per cent of graduates would have jobs. The number of enrolled students increased modestly to 2,000. Worse, about 500 students dropped out during the training process, he said. Many tools have never been used as we dont have the students. Last year, Nguyen Hoang Phuong, rector of HCM City-based Hoan Cau Vocational College sent a petition to the municipal Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs to close down the school. The school only trained 100 students in 2011 and the number reduced even further in following years. Cao Van Sam, deputy director of the General Department of Vocational Training said that many private vocational schools ended up closing down and hundreds of public vocational schools were forced to integrate. The reason, Sam said, was that vocational schools could not compete with universities, especially when many universities now only reviewed transcripts for enrollment as many vocational schools did. Sam said the idea of going to a university at all costs instead of applying for a vocational school that suited the students ability also worsened the situation. Students should focus on what brings them a job, he said, adding that in recent years, thousands of unemployed university graduates have turned to vocational training to get a job. Figures from the General Department of Vocational Training showed that there are approximately 190 vocational colleges and 245 vocational centres. However, the enrollment numbers did not meet their training capacity with less than two million students enrolled in these school last year. -- VNS A Vietnamese worker in Taiwan. Vietnamese labourers who want to work abroad in Taiwan have to pay higher fees than regulated by the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs. Photo vov.vn HA NOI Vietnamese labourers who want to work abroad in Taiwan have to pay higher fees than regulated by the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs. Under the ministrys regulations, a person has to pay a maximum fee of US$4,000 for a labour export company to work in Taiwan. The fee includes expenses for agency, recruitment, passport and other legal procedures. However, the real fee was much higher, Voice of Viet Nams online newspaper VOV reported yesterday. Nguyen Van Tuan of Nghe An Province said he had to pay $4,500 for the fee to work in Taiwan a few years ago. But now it was different. Labour export companies often required Tuans friends to pay a fee of $5,500 to $6,500 to work in Taiwan. Explaining the situation, Tran Lan, deputy head of the Corporation Import Export Trade Co-operation Viet Nam International Human Resources Joint Stock Company (Vinaincomex) a company with 15 years of experience sending people to work in Taiwan - said the company calculated that if a labourer paid a fee of $4,500 and signed a contract that allowed them two hours of extra time daily, they could earn more money. It brought them more benefits compared with paying a fee of $4,000 and having no extra time, she said. Nguyen Luong Trao, chairman of the Viet Nam Labour Export Association, said the issue needed to be fixed, but it required co-operation between labour export companies and labourers, he said. Trao also said Taiwan was a potential market so a lot of labourers still wanted to work there, despite the high fees, since they could earn money. Statistics from the ministrys Viet Nam Association of Manpower Supply showed that more than 67,100 people were sent to work in Taiwan in 2015, accounting for 66.7 per cent of the total number of labourers sent to Northeast Asian countries in 2015. Viet Nam began sending workers to Taiwan in 1999. Eighty per cent were domestic helpers. In 2005, Taiwan stopped accepting them due to the high number who left their place of employment while in Taiwan working illegally. VNS The UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has opened an investigation into over allegations related to certificates used to verify the composition of products. Tata Steel, which is seeking to sell its UK businesses, referred itself to the fraud office after an internal audit that suggested inappropriate testing and certification. On Friday, the company said the matter was related to events in 2015 when, during an internal audit, inappropriate testing and certification procedures were identified at its South Yorkshire-based Speciality Steels. Speciality Steels produces around 225,000 tonnes of steel, comprising around three per cent of Europes total output. The company said its UK unit not only proactively notified accreditation and certification bodies, including the SFO, but also had a detailed dialogue with them. These investigations have confirmed the thoroughness and adequacy of Tata Steels response, risk assessment and disclosure programme and no accreditation has been withdrawn from speciality steels, the company stated. Apart from the authorities, the company said it informed over 450 direct and 150 indirect customers and there had been no recalls of the material in service. According to reports, the documents being examined by SFO affected 500 customers, including global giants like BAE and Rolls-Royce. A Rolls-Royce spokesperson said: We were made aware of an issue by Tata last year. We have not been contacted by the SFO and cannot comment on any investigation. At least nine employees of the company were suspended after the auditors found that inappropriate testing and certification may have occurred. So far, there is no suggestion that the information on the certificates has led to any safety concerns. A trading standards investigation is also taking place, but it is unknown whether the two probes are linked in any manner. A London-based spokeswoman for the SFO declined to comment on the report. The steelmaker last week said its considering the sale of its unprofitable UK division, citing global oversupply and high costs that mean trading conditions in the UK and Europe have deteriorated. UK business secretary Sajid Javid flew down to Mumbai earlier this week to hold talks with Tata group chairman Cyrus Mistry in an attempt to find a solution that would help save the nearly 15,000 jobs on the line. It is believed a deal to save Tatas Scunthorpe plant can be reached as early as Monday with UK-based investment firm Greybull Capital. Meanwhile, Indian-origin businessman and founder of the Liberty Group Sanjeev Gupta on Friday formally took charge of Tata Steels loss making plants in Scotland. Gupta, who has also expressed an interest in acquiring Tatas embattled Welsh unit of Port Talbot, hailed the fresh chapter in efforts to begin work on the re-opening and recovery of the two mothballed steel plate operations at Dalzell and Clydebridge in Lanarkshire, negotiations for which began last November. Its plan is counter to the current UK steel industry, which relies on the import of iron ore and coal from far flung corners of the globe, the firm said. Founded in 1992, the Group has turnover approaching $7 billion with net assets of $1 billion. In the medium term, Liberty wants to create an end-to-end process that starts with the melting of UK recovered scrap steel and continues through the manufacture and distribution of high-quality downstream steel products. Liberty Steel, part of the Liberty House, which is part of the Gupta Family Group (GFG) Alliance, is a global metals and industrials business trading in 30 countries and operating from international hubs in London, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong. Just before a three-day visit to India that starts in Goa on Monday, US Defense Secretary has initiated far-reaching changes in America's military command structures to ensure it remains a globally effective force. Unlike India, where a proposal for a tri-service chief of defence staff (CDS) remains on the back burner and military command structures almost never feature in top-level discussions, Carter has ensured attention from President Barack Obama himself. Obama spent Tuesday afternoon in discussions with Carter's military team - including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Joseph Dunford, top US combatant commanders from across the world, and senior Department of Defense (DoD, or Pentagon) officials. Their discussions of threats, strategies and budgets continued over dinner. Just before that presidential meeting, Carter, speaking at a Washington DC think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, publicly outlined his proposed changes to the 30-year-old Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which mandates America's current military structure. The US Congress will be required to approve these changes before they are implemented. Carter indicated the cyber command would become a full-fledged combatant command; rejected a proposal to reduce the number of combatant commands; and ruled that America's nine combatant commanders (COCOMs) would continue to report directly to the Defense Secretary and the president. The Goldwater-Nichols Act distributes US combat units worldwide between nine combatant commands, each commanded by a COCOM - a four-star general with a mix of army, navy, air force and marine corps units under his command. Goldwater-Nichols places COCOMs directly under the Defense Secretary. The CJCS remains outside the operational command chain, functioning as an independent military advisor to the Defense Secretary and president, advising on overarching issues of global force deployment, roles and long-range planning. The Pentagon's Unified Command Plan distributes the globe between six geographical COCOMs - Africa Command (USAFRICOM), Central Command (USCENTCOM), European Command (USEUCOM), Northern Command (USNORCOM), Pacific Command (USPACOM), and Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM). Separately, three functional commands look after Special Operations (USSOCOM), strategic (nuclear) forces (USSTRATCOM), and strategic transportation (USTRANSCOM). India's military structure has far less inter-service coordination. Except for the small Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC), there is no joint service command. Instead, 17 separate army, navy and air force theatre commanders (India has no marine corps) report to their respective service chiefs. In the absence of a tri-service chief, each service chief functions in his own silo. A three-star chief of integrated defence staff provides the facade of jointmanship, but he is largely powerless before the three service chiefs. Interestingly, India, which lies within the area of responsibility of USPACOM, has asked the Pentagon for formal linkages with USCENTCOM, which is associated with areas to the west of India, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and West Asia. It is possible that USPACOM headquarters in Hawaii, and also USCENTCOM headquarters at Tampa, Florida might each have an Indian liaison officer posted. Carter's most far-reaching proposal is to make the Cyber Command a full-fledged combatant command. Pointing out that cyberspace was a battleground as important as the traditional domains of air, land, sea and space, he said: "That is why our budget increases cyber investments to a total of $35 billion over five years, and why we should consider changes to cyber's role in [the Pentagon's Unified Command Plan". Next, Carter nixed the long-standing proposal to reduce the number of geographical commands by merging North and South America into a single entity; and, similarly, place Europe and Africa under a single command. Experts had wanted this in order to reduce senior management personnel by 25 per cent. Carter, however, has pointed out that geographically distinct commands served a purpose - to cater for "their distinct areas of emphasis". Instead, savings could be made "by integrating functions like logistics and intelligence and plans across the joint staff, the combatant commands and subordinate commands." Next, Carter rejected a proposal for COCOMs to report to the CJCS, rather than to the President and the defense secretary. Explaining this, he stated: "(I)n today's complex world we need someone in uniform who can [advise the defense secretary] about to where to allocate forces throughout the world and where to apportion risk to achieve maximum benefit for our nation. And the person best postured to do that is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." In February, Carter had issued the 2017 Defense Posture Statement, which identified five evolving challenges for the US. Two related to great power competition and "full-spectrum warfighting". The first was the evolving challenge that Russia again poses in Europe, after a quarter of a century; and, second, the aggressive rise of China in the Asia-Pacific. The Russian threat remains subordinate to that of China, with the Defense Posture Statement explicitly stating that Obama's 2012 rebalance to Asia will continue, "to maintain the regional stability we've underwritten for the past 70 years in this, the single most consequential region for America's future". The other three challenges include deterring North Korea by placing US forces in the Korean peninsula; deterring Iranian aggression against US allies, especially Israel; and to counter terrorism, especially the rise of ISIL. Underlining the shift from the counter-terror and counter-insurgency operations that tied down the US in Iraq and Afghanistan for fifteen years, the Defense Posture Statement notes: "We will be prepared for a high- end enemy-what we call full-spectrum. In our budget, our plans, our capabilities, and our actions, we must demonstrate to potential foes that if they start a war, we are able to win, on our terms." China's notorious online controls have long been criticised as censorship by human rights groups, businesses, Chinese internet users and . Now they have earned a new label from the American government: trade barrier. United States trade officials have for the first time added China's system of internet filters and blocks - broadly known as the Great Firewall - to an annual list of trade impediments. The entry says that over the last decade, the limits have "posed a significant burden to foreign suppliers, hurting both internet sites themselves and users who often depend on them for business." The move, which isn't likely to have immediate repercussions, speaks to the American government's growing concern over Chinese internet regulations and could foreshadow more aggressive actions. It also underscores the opposing visions the world's two largest economies have on how the internet should work and be managed. The United States argues against overt censorship and policies that block the flow of data across borders. has been pushing its agenda that each state should have the right to closely control what websites are available within its borders. The report from the Office of the United States Trade Representative said that over the last year, the "outright blocking of websites appears to have worsened," noting that eight of the top 25 most popular global sites are blocked in . "Much of the blocking appears arbitrary; for example, a major home improvement site in the United States, which would appear wholly innocuous, is typical of sites likely swept up by the Great Firewall," the report said. blocks some of the biggest corporate names on the internet, including services offered by Google, Facebook and Twitter. That can hobble the ability of foreign companies to do business in China, whether through blocked websites or workplaces that cannot reach Gmail, Google's email service. China also blocks a growing number of foreign news outlets, including the website of The New York Times. Officials at China's commerce and foreign affairs ministries, as well as at its top internet regulatory agency, did not respond to requests for comment. In recent years, China and the United States have clashed over trade in the technology industry. Last year, the Obama administration responded to lobbying from American companies against a number of Chinese laws that the companies said were devised to push them out of China. Beijing toned down language in an antiterrorism law, and it scrapped a regulation restricting what foreign hardware could be sold to Chinese banks. Still, any effort by the United States to persuade China to reduce its internet censorship would most likely be a nonstarter. The Chinese government considers the close control of online discourse a matter of national security, largely out of concerns about the internet's power to aid the organisation of protests and the spread of dissent. As a result, Beijing has shown little flexibility on issues of censorship, and it tends to block any internet media it feels it does not have complete control over. Scott Kennedy, deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and Studies, said the move by the United States trade office illustrated the gulf between the attitude represented by China's heavy regulation of the internet and the one put forward by the United States through trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. "China is far less willing to separate commercial and national security concerns," he wrote in an email. "This difference in approach is unlikely to disappear anytime soon, no matter how much the US highlights the issue." China cites the threat of online espionage, pointing to disclosures by Edward J Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, that showed American intelligence efforts to use American hardware abroad to gather information. Online filters in China create an internet largely walled off from the rest of the world, violating the fundamental idea of the web as an open channel of communication among people across the globe. Detractors say that the practice is anticompetitive, prohibits freedom of expression and ultimately damages Chinese economic growth by limiting access to information. Supporters of China's policies say that the rules have allowed the country to foster a thriving set of domestic internet companies. The United States trade office added China's Internet censorship policies to its annual National Trade Estimate Report, released on March 31. The insertion was reported on April 1 by Inside U.S. Trade, a trade publication. American trade officials have scrutinised the Great Firewall in the past. In 2011, the United States trade office said that China's filters were a commercial barrier that hurt American small businesses. The statement was among the formal questions submitted through the World Trade Organization to China about what laws and regulations dictated the availability of commercial websites in the country. Some of the largest American Internet companies and foreign trade groups have long lobbied the United States to treat censorship as a trade matter. For instance, in 2008, Google's deputy general counsel testified before a Senate subcommittee that the United States government should make the matter a central issue in trade talks. 2016 The New York Times News Service Chinas former leader mysteriously removed A rare public spectacle has drawn attention at the closing ceremony of China's Communist Party's National Congress, as President Xi Jinping prepares to be handed a third term in office. 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. IOWA FALLS The estate of an Iowa Falls man who was killed in a hail of gunfire during a 2014 standoff with authorities is taking the city, county and state police to court. Officers were called to Leighton Charles Fitzs College Avenue home the afternoon of April 17, 2014, because he was armed and suicidal. Fitz, 25, who was wearing a bullet-proof vest, refused to obey officers commands, and he was shot when he reached for a weapon, according to the Iowa Division of Criminal investigation. Weeks after the shooting, the Iowa Attorney Generals Office said it found the officers use of deadly force was justified and reasonable. But a lawsuit recently filed by Fitzs estate and his father, Charles Fitz, who is the estates administrator, alleges authorities could have used non-lethal methods to defuse the standoff. The lawsuit which alleges wrongful death, battery and violation of constitutional rights was filed on March 30 in Hardin County District Court, and on Tuesday the defense petitioned to move the matter to U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. Defendants in the lawsuit are the city of Iowa Falls, Hardin County, Iowa Department of Public Safety and Iowa Falls officers Bryce Knudsen, Joe Metz and Michael Liittschwager, state troopers Jeremy Schaffer and Kyle Haack and Hardin County sheriffs lieutenant Rod Stoner. According to the suit, the officers confronted Leighton Fitz outside his home for about five minutes before the shooting started. In all, 68 rounds were fired, and Fitz was struck 17 times and died at the scene. The suit claims Fitz wasnt brandishing a weapon at the time, and two of the officers had been close enough to restrain Fitz. The lawsuit is seeking damages to include funeral expenses, pain and suffering, loss of support for five children and loss of consortium on behalf of his father. Gun charge filed in neighbor dispute WATERLOO A Waterloo man accused of firing a gun during a dispute with his neighbors has been indicted on federal gun charges. A grand jury returned the indictment charging Ricky Slim Iceburg Peeples with being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. Waterloo police detained him that same day. The charge alleges Peeples possessed a .22-caliber H&R revolver despite convictions for drugs in 1980, false use of a financial instrument in 1987 and burglary and attempted murder in 1991. Police were called to the Randolf Street apartment building where Peeples lived Jan. 2 after he allegedly yelled at neighbors, attempted to break open their door and fired a shot into a wall. Officers found the revolver hidden behind a sink in his apartment. He was arrested on state charges, which were dismissed when the federal charges were filed. DES MOINES Iowa Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds has embarked on an economic development mission to Israel with the Republican Lieutenant Governors Association. The delegation departed Saturday and return April 17. The goal is to build on existing relationships and foster new partnerships with Israeli government, military and business leaders, according to a news release from the governors office. The delegation also will engage in economic development opportunities unique to each state. Over the course of this delegation, I look forward to meeting with state officials and discussing business and economic opportunities for Iowa, Reynolds said. DES MOINES The platform discussion may not be the only displays of passion and drama at four Iowa GOP district conventions Saturday. The possibility of a contested Republican National Convention will place more importance on the election of 12 delegates to the partys gathering in Cleveland. Iowas delegates are bound on the first ballot. So if only one candidate is placed into nomination, the Iowa delegation will cast its entire vote for that person. However, if more than one candidate is nominated and the process goes beyond the first ballot, Iowa delegates will be able to vote for the candidates of their choice. So the election of delegates at the district conventions will be far more important than it has been in the past, according to Tim Hagle, who teaches political science at the University of Iowa. Or it can be important, Hagle said. We dont know yet because if Donald Trump gets to 1,237, thats all she wrote. If he doesnt, then thats when things become interesting. The fact that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz came in first and Donald Trump second wont matter on a second ballot, he said. The nominee needs 1,237 delegates to win the nomination outright. By most counts, Trump has 743 delegates And Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has 517. Cruz won the caucuses back in February with 28 percent of the statewide caucus vote to 24 percent for Donald Trump and 23 percent for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. According to the Republican Party of Iowa delegate apportionment process, Cruz will get eight of the Iowa GOPs 30 RNC delegates, Trump and Rubio each get seven, Ben Carson gets three and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former CEO Carly Fiorina and Ohio Gov. John Kasich each get one. Cruz won the caucuses in 56 of 99 counties. That includes 13 of 20 counties in 1st District where Waterloo-Cedar Falls is located and 12 of 24 counties in the 2nd that is home to Iowa City. Trump won 10 in the 2nd and seven in the 1st. Rubio claimed two 2nd District counties. That appears to give Cruz, who along with Trump are the only candidates still actively campaigning, appears to have the advantage going into the district conventions. So Republicans who want to be national convention delegates will have to indicate how they will cast their votes should the convention go beyond the first ballot, Hagle said. Folks will have to give some indication of what they plan to do on a second ballot before they get elected a delegate to national convention, he said. They will have to indicate whether they will either a) support a particular person or b) support whoever the nominee is. For those selected as delegates, the national convention could more than kind of political fun time, Hagle said. Delegates may actually get a chance to decide something pretty important for the party. Conventions FYI: 1st District: Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, University of Northern Iowa, 8201 Dakota St., Cedar Falls; 2nd District: Bridge View Center, 102 Church St., Ottumwa; 3rd District: Southwestern Community College Gym, 1501 W. Townline St., Creston; 4th District: Fort Dodge Senior High School, 819 N. 25th St., Fort Dodge For times and agendas, visit www.iowagop.org. By Jim Waters Apr. 03, 2016 | 09:28 PM | LEXINGTON, KY If you don't believe satirical journalist P.J. O'Rourke's quip that "giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys," start paying attention to what's happening in Frankfort and Washington.Better yet, try taking some of that money away or at least making politicians more accountable for how they spend it.Be prepared for the incessant whining and excuse-making sure to follow your demand that they live within their current means, work harder, pay debts, prioritize spending and save for rainy days just like responsible Kentucky families must do.For years, fiscally sane Kentuckians have been astonished by the absolute defiance on display in Frankfort toward the right spending decisions or even just some restraint, especially in challenging times.They must really be amazed at the approach taken regarding the new budget by House Speaker Greg Stumbo, a Prestonsburg Democrat, who moonlights as an ambulance chaser for a personal injury law firm marketing itself as "ForThePeople.com."Stumbo's been willing, for example, to hold up the commonwealth's entire budget in order to force inclusion of free community college tuition for all Kentucky high-school graduates, despite the fact that more monies must be found to address the nation's worst and further worsening public-retirement system.Reasonable Kentuckians must also be amazed that as this column is released, the legislative session is in its final throes and still no budget's been passed.Lawmakers have found time to file some 940 other bills, including legislation requiring men to be married and receive approval from their wives before using Viagra and banning teens under the age of 18 from using tanning beds.Yet the Speaker, as head of the majority party in control, has utterly failed to provide the leadership required to get House Bill 303 the budget passed and thus fulfill the state House's singular constitutional duty.Even if some kind of spending plan gets approved by the time you read this, the process remains a frustrating failure and needs an overhaul built around accountability and transparency.The Frankfort press corps eager for drama and pitting sides against each other while being inexperienced at covering a conservative, decisive governor drives a narrative that presents all spending plans as equal.Plus, statehouse reporters frequently if unwittingly cover these final budget spasms in ways that portray political leaders sympathetically as really working hard "for the people," willing even to eat take-out and burn the midnight oil in order to meet the constitutionally determined April 15 deadline for making final decisions about how to spend $22 billion we taxpayers give them during the next biennium.Puh-leeze. They've had months to get this work done and have failed.Gov. Matt Bevin, despite being brand new to the process and having just won an election weeks earlier, met his constitutional responsibility to present the executive branch's budget proposal during the General Assembly's opening days.Bevin's two-year spending plan calls for 9 percent cuts to most state-government agencies and programs, including universities.Stumbo distorts the governor's intentions, claiming Bevin wants to harm education simply because he challenged university presidents to find inefficiencies and tighten their collective belts as several already have, so that the commonwealth can start down the long road toward saving our public-pension funds and tucking money away to address future pension needs so we don't repeat our retirement systems' messy history.That's like big-spending politicians in Washington labeling Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul "weak on national defense" because he wants the military to quit spending $640 for new toilet seats and put the money toward paying down the national debt.Such demagoguery whether during a debate about national defense in Washington or an austere budget in Frankfort is many things: a time-buster, resource-waster and confidence-diminisher.But "for the people" it's not. past daily news Sep 13 (1) Sep 09 (15) Sep 06 (12) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (10) Aug 31 (17) Aug 29 (14) Aug 26 (13) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (12) Aug 19 (21) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (10) Aug 10 (10) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (10) Aug 06 (10) Aug 05 (8) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (14) Jul 29 (1) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (10) Jul 22 (11) Jul 19 (16) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (10) Jul 15 (13) Jul 12 (7) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (11) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (8) Jun 28 (7) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (8) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (9) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (9) Jun 18 (8) 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I have a handle on what really bothers the Russians. Not the propaganda that you hear in the west and other news, but what gets to the Russians and makes them upset So when something such as (is announced!) We have made a decision to create a new federal executive body within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, namely the National Guard, the Russian president said Tuesday. The National Guard will be fighting terrorism, organized crime, all in close cooperation with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They will also continue to perform the functions which are currently carried out by riot police units, SWAT, etc., he added. I look at this information and shrug, for I have been through it all and everything Russia does is old hat to me But I do say, Russia is more like America everyday! Svetochka is upset and we talk about it This morning she was unhappy That the Russian government feels they need to have an elite group of police, for as most of the world knows; elite anything always leads to downgrading of freedoms I understand her concerns and I understand what happens when such programs are enacted. Sveta is correct to have a bad feeling in her stomach for such changes. At the same time I understand such changes are brought about by the people themselves and this action above is such a change. Terrorism is the calling card to stifling a countries people I know, I watched the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave; become a wasteland of liberty and rights, plus a freedom pit that everything fell into Svetochka has seen this about America and she does not want that to happen to her land, her home and her life of freedom, liberty and justice I explain to her what is happening and it makes me sad to see it happening slowly, just like in the west, for one day as in the west, the changes will happen too quickly for the people to keep up People do not understand from the west when I say and talk about how free I am in Russia. Freedom is perspective and from my perspective of course. But watching that freedom leave out the backdoor is from another front row seat that I have been able to procure and now watch it all happen again * * * * * * * * * * Years ago Russia changed there cops from Militsiya to Politsiya; I said then that this was a crucial error and big damn mistake. Sveta feels that way also and everyday the feeling gets worse These are the areas that will hurt Putin and the governmental areas, not America and her meddling ways, not the EU and her games, but the internal changes that destroy the trust in the old ways. Change happens, but change has to be smart * * * * * * * * * * I know why this is being done And I can not disagree totally with the decision. I am the epitome of war itself and know as with everyone like me; this is sometimes a necessary evil, but as with all evil, it will garner strength and get out of hand. Maybe not tomorrow, but before you know it in a few years, it become the albatross around everyones neck In this case this is the lessor of the two evils. The west is driving billions of dollars into Russia right now and paying for an uprising. Response has to happen, for once again, America tries to destroy those that do not toe the line and kiss her ass * * * * * * * * * * The Russian people are smart and will see the truth better than the people in the western world. But there is always a handful of people who will rob your home for drug money and that is the people that the west tries to use to upset apple carts all over the world Svetochka has a right to worry She has seen terrible things happen to Russia and she misses her times in the Soviet Union. She had become fairly happy now with the status quo in Russia, when the status quo keeps changing due to outside, inside and games. Things get scary for all involved Too many things are changing too fast * * * * * * * * * * Svetochka has a right to worry WtR If youre looking to try out an online casino, there are several things that will help you make a decision. Heres what you should look for when choosing an online casino Are they regulated? A lot of the larger ones have licenses issued by the authorities in their respective regions, so its worth checking this first. Do they offer games from different software providers? Some casinos just use one software provider and limit your selection. This is fine if you like playing those types of games but you may want to check other casinos as well. What does their payout percentage look like? The payout rate refers to how much money you can expect to win after every bet. A high payout rate means youll be able to play more often without having to worry about losing all your money. Its also important to know the minimum and maximum bets allowed on each game. If youre going to play roulette, for example, then you probably dont want a casino with a minimum bet of less than $2.50 or even lower than that. The players used to play the game slot online in the land based casinos in the past time. But now with time after the invention of the online casinos players play the game slot online. Online platform provide the players with the convenience in playing and even better winning. Even after keeping a good percentage of the profits, they distribute good funds to players. How many games do they offer? There are lots of different types of games to choose from. Roulette, blackjack and poker are some of the most popular options, but you might find slots, video pokers, video bingo and others as well. You can usually filter these games down to only show the ones that interest you best, so make sure that your list isnt too long! Is there a bonus offer? Many online casinos offer free bonuses as part of their welcome package which includes new players being awarded 100% up to $10 instantly, for example. These offers are great but not everyone has access to them all the time (and some require you to deposit real money). If youd prefer to avoid paying a fee, some casinos offer no-deposit bonuses where you can get a certain amount of funds before you need to put any actual money into the account. These are usually offered alongside welcome bonuses, so make sure you read both parts of the terms and conditions carefully before signing up. Does it offer live dealer games? Live dealers are much preferred by many over regular virtual versions, so it pays to check this option out too. Most online casinos now offer live dealer games in addition to their regular offerings, allowing you to experience the thrill of the real thing without needing to leave home. Now that youve got an idea of what to look for when choosing an online casino, heres some tips for making the right choice It really comes down to personal preference. No two people are exactly alike, so everyone has an opinion on what they like and dislike about each casino. That said, here are some things to consider in order to narrow down your choices Popularity. Check out reviews, forums and Facebook pages to see what other people think of the casino. Also, ask around at work or friends houses who they would recommend to you. You could always take a look at the casinos website too, to see what kind of information they provide about themselves. Reputation. Find out what the general public thinks about the casino. Check out any customer reviews on sites like Trustpilot, Amazon and Google Play to find out more. As far as gaming goes, you can also check out the Better Business Bureau to see whether there have been any complaints against the casino. Security. Make sure the casino uses SSL encryption to secure its transactions, meaning that your private data stays safe during transactions. Other than that, look for security seals on the site itself and verify that theyre legitimate. 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You can test drive various casinos completely risk-free, so you can feel confident about your choice before you make a single penny deposit. NEW YORK, NY, April 08, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- With his captivating voice and a sound that exhibits his passion from every note, Grammy award winner Richie Stephens and The Ska Nation Band will release their new studio album Internationally, April 15th (Pot of Gold, Adriatic Sound/Zojak World Wide). The 14-track album available for pre-order today, comes with the instant-grat track Fire Fire, a tribute to ska. Richie Stephens and the The Ska Nation band (based out of Italy), came together to create this masterpiece, which listeners can appreciate and become educated at the same time. The album starts with a single title 'Foundation', which mentions some of the ska greats and states that 'ska a the original sound, Jamaica's first big music". "I truly think ska music should be preserved and respected by us as Jamaican people for being our first international music" says Richie Stephens. Connecting with the Ska Nation band, a nine man ska ensemble, while in Italy last summer performing at the Casalabate Festival, the creative bond was instant. All members of the band were born and currently live in Salento, southern Italy. The single Kingston Salento captures the connection between Richie Stephens & The Ska Nation and the love for ska on a global level. With half of the album being completed in Italy and half the album completed in Jamaica, Internationally is also symbolic of the passion and impact ska music have on a broader spectrum. "Ska music is far more loved and respected over seas, than in my own country Jamaica" says Richie Stephens. The album Internationally follows a theme - genre of ska and gives listeners an ability to dance as well. Throughout the album Richie Stephens and The Ska Nation band embrace the musical magic of ska. Bringing to life a positive and motivating message in one of their singles Born To Be Great feat. Sly & Robbie and still giving the listener a feeling of happiness as they sing and dance along. For many music lovers they may view ska music as 'older reggae music', Richie Stephens and The Ska Nation band definitely changed that stereotype. With singles like Original Style feat. Sean Paul and Gentleman, Internationally feat. Sud Sound System or Everybody Dance (Remix) there is a youthful tone, which highlights the ability to blend age groups and still showcase the brilliant musical arrangement and greatness of ska. "I would like every one to listen this album and realize that ska music is a very serious genre that can stay on top if given the right opportunity like before" says Richie Stephens. Pre - Order Today & Receive First Single Fire Fire https://itunes.apple.com/album/internationally/id1097866379?ls=1?ls=1&app=itunes # # # Apr 8, 2016 | By Alec As our regular readers might know, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which often teams up with researchers from the nearby University of Tennessee, has been responsible for some awesome 3D printing innovations. Just six months ago, for instance, the partners joined forces with Aerojet Rocketdyne to purchase three top quality laser 3D printers to create 3D printed aerospace applications. More recently, the lab collaborated with two innovative high school students, who had an idea for a 3D printed self-locking nail. The two students in question are Max Lamantia and Devin Schafer, both seniors at the Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Under the direction of their engineering teacher Melinda Hamby, they worked on finding a solution to the problem of nails becoming loose from wooden structures over time. The age old problem occurs due to natural heat and humidity fluctuations of the wood. We had heard a couple of complaints from our friends and families about their wooden patio nails coming out and being dangerous to walk around on, said Lamantia. We decided that there had to be an easy fix for this that was faster and less expensive than using screws. Together, they came up with a remarkably simple solution they called a self-locking nail, which was inspired by the shape and purpose of a hollow-point bullet. After studying various nail designs, they had the brilliant idea of adding a ring of teeth to the nails striking edge, which looks the nail into the wood at multiple locations. When we compared different ideas, we had two that we really liked, Schafer said on the TU website. We decided to combine the both of them for our finished product. But taking a good idea from the drawing board into real life is often the most challenging part. Fortunately, Lamantia had participated in the 2015 Governors School for Engineering, which was hosted by the University of Tennessee. There, he met professors Kurt Sickafus and and Tai-Gang Nieh of the Universitys Department of Materials Science. Contacting them again in January, he asked them for advice on how to begin prototyping and developing their new nail concept. They were only too happy to help, and acted as co-mentors for taking the project further. Realizing that 3D printing might be the best solution for developing a prototype, they approached Suresh Babu, the joint UT-ORNL Governors Chair for Advanced Manufacturing a 3D printing expert. Babu was also only too happy to help, and enlisted the services of grad student Sarah Jane Foster, ORNL researcher Fred List III and tech intern Keith Carver. With their help, they produced a prototype of these self-locking nails using their selective laser melting 3D printers, creating what is now called the Lamantia-Schafer self-locking nail. Partnering with UT and ORNL has been invaluable for our students and our school, said their teacher Hamby. Not only has it helped Devin and Max through mentorship and prototype production, it has also brought validation to the design process that we teach in our engineering program here at Central Magnet. The next steps in the project will be focused on testing performance, material selection and analysis, in an attempt to optimize the nails functionality. Perhaps a staple in hardware stores in a few years? More importantly, the project is a step towards stimulating Tennessees next generation of makers and engineers exactly why the researchers were happy to help. This successful collaboration between Central Magnet School, UT, and ORNL demonstrates how the College of Engineerings Governors School program is highly effective at promoting the development of our next generation of engineers and technical professionals right here in Tennessee, said Sickafus. With projects like this being created by high schoolers, the future of making is looking very bright. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Apr 8, 2016 | By Alec Over 10 million people in the world are amputees most of them children living in developing countries. And yet in countries like Uganda, a prosthetic is a rare thing. That is why Canadian non-profit social enterprise Nia Technologies is now working together with software specialists Vorum to greatly increase the production speed of 3D printed prosthetics in the developing world. And there, they are seriously needed. There are only 12 practicing orthopedic technologists in Uganda, a country home to more than 90,000 disabled children in need of orthotic and prosthetic devices after decades of internal, mine-filled conflict where child soldiers are frequently employed. As it can take a week to produce a conventional prosthetic, it is a country that can greatly benefit from the large productivity gains offered by 3D printing. That, in a nutshell, is why Nia Technologies is now integrating Vorums Canfit 3D design software into their 3D PrintAbility platform. Vorum is the developer of one of the most widely used prosthetic design software solutions. Currently used at more than 650 facilities throughout the world, Vorum software can increase prosthetic production productivity by up to 600 percent. A perfect partner, in short, for Nia Technologies, a Canadian non-profit social enterprise with roots at the University of Toronto. Nia Technologies key solution is 3D PrintAbility, a digital toolchain that provides orthopedic solutions in developing countries. Most importantly, it significantly reduces production time for orthotics and prosthetics. It is estimated that it could cut production down to 1.5 days meaning an overnight stay in the hospital is more than enough for a child. The ingenuity of 3D PrintAbility lies in its integration of highly specialized design software with inexpensive commercial scanners and printers to produce better fitting devices more quickly than is possible with conventional methods, says Matt Ratto, Nia Chief Science Officer and University of Toronto Professor. To further optimize that process, Vorum is thus enabling the integration of their Canfit software, and is also helping with the developing of 3D PrintAbility. The Canfit computer-aided design (CAD) software application empowers you to quickly design all types of custom prosthetic and orthotic devices. Uniquely easy to learn and anatomically correct, it will have you reaping the full benefits of digital O&P technology in short order, its developers say. The complete Vorum integrated CAD/CAM solution for prosthetics and orthotics includes 3D scanners, computer-aided shape modification software, automated carvers, and 3D printer integration. Nia, of course, is thrilled with this inclusion. Vorums generous contribution of Canfit to 3D PrintAbility means that Nia will be able to deliver proven, comprehensive, and easy-to-use tools to developing countries like Uganda sooner and more economically than originally planned, said Ratto. Nia CEO Jerry Evans further said it would actively let them help children. "Roseline, a four-year-old Ugandan girl born without a right foot, was the first patient to receive a 3D PrintAbility socket in 2015. With her 3D PrintAbility socket in place, Roseline was able to walk and run alongside other children for the first time in her life. Our goal is to help thousands more children like Roselineand Nias partnership with Vorum, a market leader in fabrication technologies in the developed world, will help us get there sooner, he said. Especially in countries like Uganda, it is expected that 3D PrintAbility will now be able to help local prosthetic developers vastly increase their output. Nias 3D PrintAbility solution will enable a substantial increase in the capacity of the very few trained orthopedic technologists in countries like Uganda to provide life-changing, high-quality artificial limbs to children in need, said Carl Saunders, Vorum CEO. We are thrilled to contribute to a social enterprise that will empower local providers to help thousands of additional children in the poorest countries. Clinical trials are set to begin at the CoRSU Hospital in Uganda, with 3D printed transtibial (below-the-knee) prosthetic sockets and ankle-foot braces the first on the agenda. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: IMGCAP(2)] Firms often look for something to differentiate themselves from the pack. It can range anywhere to being a tightknit, community-oriented business, to a specialization-heavy practice. For Philadelphia-area firm Drucker & Scaccetti, their distinctive element came in the form of a special identity: They are "Tax Warriors." Drucker & Scaccetti has been in business for 25 years, specializing in tax advice, compliance, and strategy. Some 20 years ago, the firm started to use the idea of the "Tax Warrior" to represent the firm. Originally penned by writer and D&S client Reese Palley, the code of the "Tax Warrior" blends a bit of humor with the dedication D&S wishes to provide to their clients: "When King Arthur of the Round Table sought to redress injustice, he sent out his Warrior Knights to do the job. When the ancient Emperors of Japan were required to impose justice in their realm, they called upon their Samurai Warriors. In 1215, when the King of England wielded excessive power, the Warrior Barons imposed the Magna Carta upon him. With few avenues for justice, when the Jews of the Middle Ages needed a protector, they conjured up the Warrior Golem. When God was in trouble, and the Devil was ascending, he summoned the Warrior Archangel, Michael, to do battle for the Lord. During difficult times in human history, when the chips were down and reason did not prevail, the ultimate call for help by those in need was to the Warriors - be they Knights, Samurais, Barons, Golems, or Archangels. It is the Warriors who stand between the governed and the unbridled power of the governors. So be seated and comforted, your protector and advocate is near. Welcome to the realm of the Tax Warriors." [IMGCAP(1)] "We knew we wanted to have fun in the business world," says Jane Scaccetti, shareholder and CEO at D&S. "We would like [our] people to come into the office and enjoy what theyre doing -- have a creative aspect to what theyre doing. It's part of our core values. "If we can make this place a little bit better to enjoy, that works for the firm and allows us to do it for more people," she adds. Local Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist (and D&S client) Tony Auth painted five original watercolors for the Warrior creed, bringing Reese's mantra to life for D&S professionals and visitors alike. The art is displayed in D&S's main conference room, otherwise known as "The War Room" to the firm's professionals. [IMGCAP(3)] The firm didn't stop there -- In 2013, the D&S presented "Finding Humor in Taxes," an art exhibit in Philadelphia showcasing cartoons from Tony Auth, New Yorker cartoonist Joseph Farris, and others to over 100 guests and clients. D&S marketing director Eric Elmore says that the event further showcased the firm's good-natured attitude towards their line of work. "We ran it like a museum exhibit -- with cartoons all over the place with that feeling that clients or potential clients get when we walk them through the [Tax Warrior] mantra," says Elmore. "If great editorial cartoonists can find humor in [tax], so can we." [IMGCAP(4)] What the "Tax Warrior" mantra seems to have ultimately given to D&S is an overall idea on what their firm stands for. What could have just been an inside joke for the firm has grown into a point of pride, turning D&S into a beacon for positive firm culture and values. "Anytime I give away my business card, it sparks a conversation and immediately I can tell them what it means to me and how we advocate for our clients," adds shareholder Rosalind Sutch. "From a marketing standpoint, [it's] something unique that makes you stand out." "Its not about getting a tax return done, having good food, or a great client," says Scaccetti. "Its about your people and giving them an environment they can do the best work they can do." [IMGCAP(5)] Click on the following to see large-scale images of the Warrior Barons, the Warrior Angels, the Warrior Golem, the Warrior Samurai, and the Warrior Knights of D&S. Drucker & Scaccetti is just one entry in our ongoing series on intriguing accounting professionals. If you have a submission that we should know about, email sean.mccabe@sourcemedia.com. Other entries include: According toThe Utah Statesman, Utah State University's student newspaper, the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at the University will be launching a new Executive Master of Accounting (EMAcc) program, set to debut this upcoming June. Similar in nature to an Executive Masters of Business Administration, the program is designed to help a professional work and study for CPA status simultaneously. The program is a response to many state policies that require a student to have taken graduate-level accounting classes to obtain their licensure as CPA. The EMAcc program will allow students to earn their masters degree without quitting their job or going to school full-time. This is a pioneering effort. I dont know of any other programs that are just like this, Dr. Nate Stephens, an associate professor of accounting at USU and director of the new program, told theStatesman. We started to ask around. We had conversations with professionals in the work force and community, local businesses, and the advisory board for the School of Accountancy. All of them confirmed that there was a need." Bonnie Villarreal, director of the current Master of Accounting (MAcc) program, went on to say that she doesn't believe the MAcc is practical for students anymore. For those who may enter the job market, and then decide that they need (their MAcc), the EMacc will give them an efficient way to come back to school without making the sacrifice of a full-time commitment, she told the Statesman. The EMacc program is will have students take classes online together, as well as meet face-to-face on campus for five weeks throughout the year. UHU faculty, as well as guest speakers from across the country, will teach the courses. In the EMacc, were teaching all the stuff that people at high levels of companies need to know, stuff theyre not going to get even in a traditional MAcc. Were kind of even going beyond it, Stephens told theStatesman. Theyre learning from experts at the top of the profession. For more on the program and the University, head to the student newspaper'ssite here. (Bloomberg) U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron was accused of hypocrisy after he said he held a stake in an offshore fund set up by his late father until six years ago, an admission broadcast on national television following four days of questions over the investment. The premier gave in to intense pressure to give details of his interests in the Blairmore Holdings Inc. fund after it was mentioned in reports that emerged Sunday following the leak of millions of documents from a Panamanian law firm detailing attempts to avoid tax. He previously only said that he, his wife Samantha and their children hold no offshore funds now and will not in the future. He said that sunlight is the best disinfectant and wasnt entirely straight with the British people about what his own financial arrangements were, Tom Watson, deputy leader of the main opposition Labour Party, told the BBC on Friday. That wouldnt be so bad if he hadnt also been lecturing very prominent people about their own tax arrangements, some he called morally wrong for being invested in similar schemes. The British public want a lot more answers from David Cameron before this scandal goes away, Watson said. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon added her voice to the controversy, telling ITV that Cameron has big questions to answer over his tax affairs. The bookmaker Ladbrokes Plc said the odds of Cameron being replaced this year are now just 2-1, or two pounds for every pound wagered. The prime minister has said he wont run for a third term in 2020. The furor over the fund has hit Cameron at a time when hes fighting multiple crises, with his Conservative Party divided over whether or not Britain should stay in the European Union and doubts about the survival of the U.K. steel industry. After a bruising week in which U.K. media have picked over the Cameron familys ties to the fund, the prime minister is trying to put the controversy to rest. Samantha and I had a joint account, Cameron said Thursday in an interview with ITV News. We owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010, a few months before he became prime minister. The stake was worth something like 30,000 pounds ($42,000), he said. The couple made a profit, but it wasnt enough to be subject to capital-gains tax, Cameron said, adding that income tax was paid on the dividends. Social media lit up with criticism of Cameron on Thursday evening, with Labour supporters and lawmakers reminding the premier of his 2012 statement that he was relaxed about publishing his tax returnsomething he has not yet doneand sharing a tweet sent by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in 2014. Tax evasion is not just illegal, its immoral, Osborne wrote then. People evading tax should be treated as common thieves. Cameron insisted that all U.K. taxes were paid on his income from the investment and there was a fundamental misconception that the unit trust was established with the idea of avoiding tax. It wasnt, he said. I think it is being unfairly described and my fathers name is being unfairly written about. Tax Returns Cameron repeated on Thursday that he is relaxed and happy to publish his tax returns without saying when it would happen. We hope to publish as soon as possible, his office said on Friday. The Guardian newspaper reported earlier this week that Blairmore had paid no U.K. tax on its profits for three decades. Cameron said the fund was properly audited every year and reported to the U.K. tax authorities. If you were a U.K. citizen and bought units in it, then you paid income tax on the dividends and you paid capital-gains tax when you sold the shares, he told ITV. It was subject to full U.K. taxation. You Push Camerons admission follows four separate statements about his financial affairs in which he first said it was a private matter and then said neither he nor or his wife and children benefit or stand to benefit from the fund. That left reporters asking about whether he had benefited in the past. As ever, if you come out with a statement that only covers half the ground, then journalists, being not stupid, try to chase it further, John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, said by phone. And once you force a politician to make a second statement, and therefore youve got them to cover some ground, you push. It has been a difficult few days, reading criticisms of my father and his business practicesmy dad, a man I love and admire and miss every day, the prime minister said in the interview, conducted in Exeter, southwest England. I cant bear to see his name being dragged through the mud. The prime minister said that his financial affairs are very transparent and hes willing to make them more so. Frankly I dont have anything to hide, he said. All stocks and shares that he had were sold in 2010, he said, because if I was going to become prime minister, I didnt want anyone to say you have other agendas, vested interests. Camerons father, Ian, left him 300,000 pounds, he said, some of which came from another unit trust in the Channel Island of Jersey. I obviously cant point to every source of every bit of the money, and dad isnt around to ask the questions now, he said. (Bloomberg) The Internal Revenue Service sent out more than $330 billion in refunds to U.S. taxpayers last year. To capture some of this year's cash, and jump on a marketing opportunity, companies are offering freebies and discounts celebrating the end of the annual filing ordeal. Here's a roundup of what's on offer. Unless otherwise noted, prices are, sadly, before taxes. Food and Drink Discounted dinners: Visitors to Boston Market on Tax Day, April 18, can get a half-chicken individual meal with two sides, cornbread, a regular fountain drink, and a cookie for $10.40, in honor of the awful form. Without the promo deal, the tab would be $11.77 at many Boston Market restaurants. At Outback Steakhouse restaurants, diners can get 15 percent off their check on April 18. To get a coupon, go to the web site's Offers section and sign up for emails. You'll also get the coupon if you download Outback's mobile payment app. Half-off drinks: All alcoholic beverages will be half off at the BLT Prime restaurants in New York and the Trump National Doral resort in Miami on April 18. The same deal applies at BLT Steak restaurants in New York, Charlotte, Waikiki, Washington, D.C., and White Plains, N.Y. Other ESquared Hospitality restaurants taking part in the promotion: New York's Casa Nonna, Horchata, and the Wayfarer, and the Florentine in Chicago. Free sandwiches: Schlotzsky's is giving customers a free small Original sandwich with the purchase of a 32-oz. drink and a bag of chips on April 18. Random prizes will be awarded to fans who upload a picture of their free sandwich to Twitter or Instagram using #TaxDayBites. Discounted margaritas: Guests get $5 Presidente Margaritas (thats tequila, orange liqueur, and brandy) at participating Chilis. A burger for a song: The Hard Rock Cafe in New York City's Times Square (and 42 other Hard Rock Cafes in the U.S.) on April 18 hosts Sing for Your Supper on Tax Day. From 5 to 7 p.m., anyone over 18 in Times Square who wants one of the chain's Legendary Burgers for free must sing karaoke outside the restaurant, on 43rd and Broadway. The burger is $17.95 for those who can't, or won't, sing. Free burgers, no song required: Ohioans can enjoy some McDonald's deals on Tax Day. Participating locations in Dayton and Cincinnati will offer those who buy a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder a second one for 18. In Toledo, customers can get a second Quarter Pounder for 18. And in northeast Ohio, customers who buy one Sausage McMuffin with egg or Big Mac can get another one for 29 at participating locations. Hungry taxpayers who prefer burgers from Sonic Drive-In can get half-price single-patty cheeseburgers on April 18. Free coffee: Participating McDonald's in Arizona, Vermont, Colorado, and Wyoming are offering tired taxpayers a free small coffee on April 18. Free shaved ices: Kona Ice trucks will offer free shaved ice on April 18 to help anxious tax payers CHILL out. The usual cost is $3 to $5, depending on the location. To find out if one of the company's 700 trucks is in your area, tweet your zip code to @KonaIce. Free dessert: Leading up to Tax Day, people who sign up for Tony Roma's Email Club will get a coupon for a free dessert in their e-mail, valid through April 29. Those who eat at a participating location on Tax Daythe majority of restaurants offering the deal are in Florida, New York, Texas, and Californiawill get a dessert coupon to use on their next visit to a participating location. Services Shredding: On April 18, taxpayers can get five pounds of paper shredded for free at Staples stores across the country. At Office Depot and Office Max, print out a coupon from the website or show one on your phone and get five pounds of bulk bin shredding now through April 23. Spa deals: The Hand & Stone spa franchise, with about 150 locations in the U.S. and Canada, offers members getting a one-hour massage or facial a "1040 EZ Upgrade" of a hot towel hand or foot massage, peppermint scalp massage, or mini cold stone face massage for $10.40 extra. Guests and members can get a one-hour massage or facial itself for $39.95, a $10 discount. Oasis Day Spa, with locations in New York and Westchester, N.Y., is giving taxpayers 15 percent off all spa services from April 11 to 15. Tax preparers get 15 percent off in-office services such as massage. Travel Kimpton Hotels: Among the deals offered by the chain is the Monaco Pittsburgh's Relax After You Tax Sale, which frees guests from city and state taxes. Call between April 15 and 19 to book stays through June 30. Deals at Kimpton's Palomar and Monaco Philadelphia hotels include a stay in a suite, a couples massage, an "amenity from the chef," and a bottle of sparkling wine (rate code for all three deals: TAXDAY) for $1,040. The deal is good for stays between April 15 and 25 at the two properties. The tax offer at four Kimpton Chicago properties lets guests pay $10.40 for perks valued at $20, such as 2 p.m. checkout, a bottle of wine or Prosecco, $20 off parking, or a free appetizer and cocktail at the bar. The promotion at Kimpton's Grand Hotel Minneapolis offers those who book a stay during April a room with a king or two queen beds, a tax-friendly welcome amenity including local beers and candy (such as a Payday bar), a $25 restaurant credit, and no room tax. Available April 1 through April 30, Thursday through Sunday. Grand Lucayan Bahama: The Tax Season Relief Sale offers travelers who book a stay of at least three nights 50 percent off rates, which start at $95 per room per night, from Sept. 2 through Nov. 15. The sale includes a $100 resort credit per room. The deal must be booked between April 1 and April 30 (rate code: RTTAX16). Marriott: The chain wants consumers to make the most of their tax return dollars at 10 of its Washington, D.C., hotels, such as its JW Marriott, Autograph Collection, Renaissance, Marriott, Courtyard, and Residence Inn properties. From May 6 to Sept. 5, the longer a guest stays, the more he or she saves. Book three nights, save 15 percent; stay four and save 20 percent (promo code: SPU). Westin: The Westin New York Grand Central Hotels The Tax Is On Us deal offers a 15 percent reduction off flexible rates on weekends now through Dec. 31, 2016, when booked by May 17. (Lodging taxes in New York are about 15 percent.) Rates start at $186, and some blackout dates apply; use promo code TAXBRK when booking online. Tribute Portfolio: On the West Coast, theres a tax-free stay deal at Avenue of the Arts Costa Mesa, in Orange County. Thats an 11 percent discount for those who book a room between now through April 30, for visits through April 30. (Use rate plan LTPKG1 when booking online.) The starting rate is $199. Wyndham Hotels: Some of the chain's hotels in "top family vacation destinations," such as Puerto Rico, Orlando, Miami, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Charleston, offer up to 35 percent off the best available weekday rate for those who visit between May 2 and Sept. 2. Starting room rates range from about $84 a night in Atlanta to about $161 a night in Miami. Customers must book between April 10 and April 17 and use the code DISTAX. Viceroy: The Viceroy Central Park New York is offering 18 percent off all 2016 bookings for any room, suites included, when you book on April 18. Gambling Free slots: BorgataCasino.com is giving online account holders 10 bonus dollars free to play slots, classic slots, and progressive slots if they deposit $40 or more with the site on April 18. After signing in, go to the cashier tab and deposit at least $40 using the bonus code TAXDAY16. Free slots, tax bonus: Plaza Hotel & Casino Slots players who win at least $1,200 (the point at which federal taxes are due) will be paid a 28 percent bonus on any winnings above that amount and get up to $20,000 in free slot play on April 18. To win, you have to be a member of Plaza's Royal Rewards Players Club, its loyalty program. Goafest 2016 got underway with a bang yesterday. Compared to the previous years, participation has gone up and this year sees the introduction of the Young Abbys as well as the Gender Sensitive Abbys. There are several sessions and interactions to look forward to. Amid the busy sessions and the anticipation of the Abby Awards, Adgully caught up with a cross-section of the advertising and marketing fraternity to gauge their mood about the Goafest this year, what they are looking forward to, how to engage the younger generation in advertising and raising the stature of the festival. T Gangadhar, Managing Director, MEC South Asia What are you looking forward to at Goafest this year? I am essentially looking forward to arising speakers and, of course, meeting all my old friends thats just the two expectations that I have. I think Goafest is the Cannes Festival of Goa. I dont think any other show in India is as big as the Goafest. What more needs to be done to draw in the younger lot in advertising to Goafest? I think there is need to get a more diverse set of international speakers, promote the festival in a manner that people from outside will come and participate as well and get everyone to participate. Ajay Kakar, Chief Marketing Officer, Aditya Birla Group - Financial Services What are you looking forward to at Goafest this year? Nothing changes. Goafest is the melting point of the best of media, marketing and advertising; its our clan and it is of the industry by the industry. What more needs to be done to draw in the younger lot in advertising to Goafest? See its the youth right, you cant force them. They have to taste success and they will come back for more, so I think it is important for us to have sessions which attract them, any session that attracts them will lead them to stay more and more. So, the first day, they may be outside the convention hall, the next day they will be inside, and offly by the third day they wont come out! Kamal Basu, Marketing & PR Head, Volkswagen India What are you looking forward to at Goafest this year? My expectation from Goafest is to see some very quality work that has worked for brands. I am assuming it will be transparent and genuine, unlike some of the past years and there will be no controversies as they are not good for the industry. I think in terms of the event and the sessions, they need to integrate a little bit of funk to ensure that the new generation is also kept engaged, because they tend to have very little patience. So we need to make sure that we are catering to them as well because while most of the sessions are worth their value in gold for the newcomers in the industry, maybe a little bit of interesting fun quotient can be brought in to make sure that they are kept engaged. What do you think has stopped Goafest a tad short of achieving the stature of say, a Cannes Festival? Its unfair to compare Goafest with Cannes, which is held at a different location and has a more global arena. Goafest is Indian. Over the last 10-odd years, the festival has reinvent itself; it has moved from being held in Mumbai to Goa, which in itself is a big progress. It is fun and is well-managed and as the years pass by, it will scale up to be bigger. Subhobroto Chakraborty, Chief Digital Mentor for an upcoming digital academy What are you looking forward to at Goafest this year? My expectation from any conference regarding marketing is always taking back lots of knowledge, lots of real case studies where people like us learn from the peers. The reason why so many youngsters are outside the convention hall is because I dont think there are much of real case studies and learning happening. There are more of panel discussions; when we are in Goa, we dont expect too much of panel moderators or discussions. We look for what brands are doing for agencies and what the agencies are doing for brands and learning from both sides. What do you think has stopped Goafest a tad short of achieving the stature of say, a Cannes Festival? Cannes can only happen when there are lots of international speakers, if they try and bring everyone together it will be a better learning experience. We come here looking for a lot of knowledge and content. However, here at Goafest, there is a part where its about awards, once you receive it you are out of it and it helps the winners get more business. Its the advertising and business part of the festival, where is the learning part? What more needs to be done to draw in the younger lot in advertising to Goafest? The younger generation gets bored very fast. Their daily lives are very hectic and there are tremendous work pressures, so they come to Goa to relax. You have to engage them with lots of fundamental things that they dont know. It is 100 per cent engagement and remarkable content that people look out to. The youth are looking out for futuristic and remarkable content that they want to learn from the leaders in the industry. Sanjay Tripathy, Senior Executive Vice President - Head Marketing, Product, Analytics, Digital & E-Commerce, HDFC Life What are you looking forward to at Goafest this year? I am expecting more of digital this year, a good start is with the Goafest app. I am looking forward to sessions that are focused on digital and how the customers are changing. What more needs to be done to draw in the younger lot in advertising to Goafest? I think we need to up the expectation matching based on the topic vis-a-vis what the kids expect. If you look at the discussion today, the Conclave is more about the industry CMOs coming and talking about what they expect from the agency, which is slightly more focused towards the senior management of the agencies rather than the junior management; of course, it is good to know from the client directly. There are at least 20 CMOs talking daily be it from telecom, finance, or FMCG about their expectations from the industry. People come to Goafest expecting much more informal sessions. Right now, I think the content is very formal and more suited to the top management. Suriyanarayana Ramsai What are you looking forward to at Goafest this year? More quality work. What do you think has stopped Goafest a tad short of achieving the stature of say, a Cannes Festival? I think consistency is the biggest thing, and it has been widely accepted. That is why it is working towards being the biggest advertising event. Today, there is a lot more work that are getting recognised on international platforms. Sundar Kondur, Vice President - Advertising Sales, The Hindu Group What are you looking forward to at Goafest this year? A lot of fun, networking, and meeting all the lost friends, besides we have a lot more celebrities coming in. Zee Media Corporation has announced that Rohit Gandhi, who is heading ZMCLs English News Channel WION as Editor-in-Chief, will additionally take over the role of Editor-in-Chief of its English daily DNA. Additionally, Shreyasi Goenka, who has been mentoring the content at DNA for a while, will now take the responsibility of Content Advisor and will guide all functions of DNA. Uday Nirgudkar, who has been heading DNA along with Zee 24 Taas, will now continue to lead Zee 24 Taas as its Business Head. The new appointment came into effect yesterday. All editorial functions will henceforth report to Gandhi. Commenting on the new leadership, Dr Subhash Chandra, Chairman, Essel Group and Zee Media Corporation, said, One of our Vision 2020 goals is to become a leading global media conglomerate which is hugely dependent on our ability to create an organisation that has the capacity to achieve its desired aspirations. We believe that the convergence of our media businesses, that is, television news and print platforms, is an opportunity that will help us to achieve this organisational aspiration. With Zee Medias ambition to get into English news broadcasting, both the brands put together give the organisation an opportunity to serve our audiences better. Speaking on her association with DNA, Shreyasi Goenka said, Since its launch in 2005, DNA has become the preferred choice for Indias young and dynamic readers. We have been continuously innovating with offerings like I am in DNA of India, a technology-enabled initiative that promises to enlighten, engage and empower citizens of India in getting involved in the cause for better governance. We are confident that this new seamless organisational structure will bring in fresh insights and views, thus helping us to leverage resources more effectively and in maximising our market potential. Speaking on his new role, Rohit Gandhi said, We are moving to expand our coverage and the editions of DNA. It is a great opportunity for us to bring more textured content from all parts of India to give our readers a far deeper understanding of India and the world. I look forward to working with Shreyasi in building an insightful newspaper. AF introduces Air Superiority 2030 study The Air Force introduced the results of a yearlong study focused on developing capability options to ensure joint force air superiority in 2030 and beyond during an Air Force Association breakfast April 7 in Arlington, Virginia. According to Lt. Gen. Mike Holmes, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, the gap between the U.S. militarys air superiority capabilities and potential adversaries network of capabilities is closing at an accelerated rate. In order to counter emerging threats, air superiority must be viewed as a condition, not capability, using multi-domain solutions developed through a more agile acquisition process. After 25 years of being the only great power out there, were returning to a world of great power competition, Holmes said. We need to develop coordinated solutions that bring air, space, cyber, electronic environment and surface capabilities together to solve our problems. Air superiority is the most important thing the Air Force provides for the joint force in the tactical environment, Holmes continued. I dont believe there is anyone in our armed forces who has ever fought a combined arms battle without complete control of the air, and theres no one in our armed forces who has ever fought a combined arms battle against an enemy armed with precision weapons. With direction from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, Air Force operators, acquirers and analysts formed an enterprise capability collaboration team to evaluate these problems from a new vantage point to propose solutions and lay out a plan to achieve those solutions as quickly as possible. The ECCT looked to military experts, academia and industry for input and then conducted integrated planning, analysis and assessments. More than 1,500 submissions were distilled into 220 initiatives, which were then divided into various operational concepts. Eventually the team determined an integrated and networked family of capabilities operating across air, space and cyberspace was the most viable option. Theres no silver bullet, said Col. Alexus Grynkewich, the Air Superiority 2030 ECCT lead. We have to match tech cycles -- some of them are really long. Engines take a long time to make, but information age tech cycles are fast. Software updates are constantly moving. So how do you move from pacing yourself off industrial age mindsets to information age mindsets? The answer, Grynkewich said, is parallel development of maturing technologies for sensors, missions systems, lethality and non-kinetic effects, on appropriate time cycles. The next step is to pull technologies out of each of those parallel efforts when they are ready and developing prototypes, experimenting and gaining more knowledge to determine if the developments are whats needed in the field. Using cell phones as an example, the colonel compared the current acquisition process to the way his team sees agile acquisition happening in the future in order to maintain air superiority. In the past, the Air Force has pushed for generational technological advances equivalent to the transition from flip phones to smartphones, he said. It should instead be pursuing incremental advances like the upgrades provided by newer and newer versions of smart phones and continuing to upgrade along the way instead of waiting for a revolutionary jump in technology. What we hope to lay out is a way to prototype and experiment with a number of concepts, Grynkewich said. You can start building and then move forward if experimental capabilities are determined to make enough of a difference in highly contested environments of the future. In order to achieve air superiority in the future, bringing agility to multi-domain acquisitions is crucial. We've talked about acquisition agility a number of times in terms of, How do we save money and not wasting taxpayer dollars is absolutely important, Grynkewich said. But there's an operational imperative that says we have to do this and if we don't we're at a risk of failing as an Air Force and a joint force. USAF. (U.S. Air Force Graphic by Rosario "Charo" Gutierrez) The 502nd Air Base Wing and Joint Base San Antonio commander, Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, confirmed the identities of the two Airmen killed in a workplace violence incident April 8 at the Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland Medina Annex, according to a news release.Lt. Col. William A. Schroeder, the 342nd Training Squadron commander, and Tech. Sgt. Steven D. Bellino, a 342nd TRS student, were found dead inside an office of the squadron's headquarters building at the annex around 8:50 a.m. by first responders. The next of kin of the deceased have been notified by Air Force officials.Two handguns were found at the scene by first responders and the ongoing investigation also confirmed that this was a workplace violence incident and not the result of a terrorist attack."The 37th Training Wing mourns the loss of our Airmen and family members" said Brig. Gen. Trent H. Edwards, the commander of the 37th Training Wing, where both members were assigned. "Our primary focus at this time is to take care of the family and the men and women who are grieving our losses."A tragedy of this type is felt by each and every member, but we will pull together to help our own," LaBrutta added.Air Force officials are still investigating the incident and additional information regarding this incident will be released through public affairs channels as it becomes available.Brig. Gen. Trent H. Edwards, commander of the 37th Training Wing, has issued a statement saying that no trainees were affected by the April 8 incident.I want to notify you that no basic trainees or family members were injured or harmed in today's incident, Edwards said in the statement. Please rest assured that we are taking all precautions and measures to ensure their continued safety."Two people were killed in a shooting April 8 at the Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland Medina Annex, sparking an active shooter alert on base. There are no indications that this was a terrorist attack.Base first responders and local authorities have contained the scene and an investigation of the incident is underway.Names of the deceased are not being released pending notification of next of kin.A press conference will be held at the JBSA-Lackland Medina Base Road Gate at 11 a.m. with Brig. Gen. Bob Labrutta, the Joint Base San Antonio and 502nd Air Base Wing commander, along with officials from the Bexar County Sheriffs Office.More details will be released as they become available. Cody engages with deployed Airmen Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force James A. Cody engaged with Airmen deployed to Afghanistan in support of the NATO Resolute Support mission and Operation Freedoms Sentinel from April 4-6 through a series of Q&A format all calls, small group discussions and personal site visits. What you are doing is the most important job in the Air Force, Cody said to the deployed Airmen. You are the best choice for your job in the Air Force at this critical time. Cody made stops at Bagram Airfield, Resolute Support Headquarters in Kabul, Hamid Karzai International Airport and Kandahar Airfield, where he was able to see firsthand the impact Airmen are making every day in Afghanistan. Everybody here is working really hard; I can see that, he said. This is a dangerous place and I thank you for coming here and making the sacrifice. Airmen in Afghanistan are accomplishing critical roles as they perform launch and recovery of aircraft for counter-terrorism missions, find and process detailed intelligence information for combatant commanders, or train, advise and assist the Afghan military. Your work you are doing here is meaningful and purposeful, Cody said. You are here, doing this job, and you are saving lives. During the all calls and discussions, the chief candidly and honestly answered a variety of questions ranging from the new Enlisted Evaluation System to health care and compensation. He also received mission briefings from each of the units involved and had an opportunity to see Airmen display the weapon systems they operate. Throughout his interactions, he reminded Airmen of one thing. You are doing great things out here and I am proud of you, Cody said. Dont lose sight of what you accomplished out here. AF presents 2014, 2015 Sijan award winners Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Mark A. Welsh III presented the 2014 and 2015 Lance P. Sijan Leadership Awards to eight Airmen in the Airmans Hall on April 7 at the Pentagon. The Sijan award, first given in 1981, is named in honor of the first U.S. Air Force Academy graduate to receive the Medal of Honor. Sijan, a first lieutenant, was shot down over Vietnam on Nov. 9, 1967, and evaded capture for 45 days despite severe injuries. He later died while in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp and was presented the Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroism. The annual award recognizes the accomplishments of Airmen who have demonstrated the highest quality of leadership in the performance of their duties and their personal lives. Honorees are chosen in senior and junior officer and enlisted categories. Welsh addressed the award recipients, describing the significant events of Sijans capture and what his commitment and sacrifice meant to the Air Force. This is an unbelievable award. Its named after an unbelievable Airman, Welsh said. He would be very proud of you. Never forget that you represent him. Accompanying Welsh in the ceremony was Sijans sister, Janine Sijan Rozina. She also spoke to the award winners about how meaningful and commendable their actions are to the Air Force. Heroes are not born, theyre made through life decisions and commitments, Rozina said. 2015 winners The senior officer winner was Maj. Patrick J. Kolesiak, the 52nd Civil Engineer Squadron operations flight commander at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. He led the wings largest flight of 438 engineers supporting daily operations of a nearly 1,800-acre base, three weapons storage areas and 15 geographically separated units across four nations. Capt. David L. Plachno was selected as the junior officer winner. He serves as a C-17A Globemaster III aircraft commander from the 21st Airlift Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, California. His devotion led to the survival and relocation of 100,000 displaced refugees during the South Sudan civil war and humanitarian Level 3 emergency. The senior enlisted winner was Senior Master Sgt. Justin R. Deisch, a 5th Bomb Wing material flight chief at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. He coordinated a 40 percent increase in re-entry system movements supporting the 91st Missile Wings intercontinental ballistic missile field and overhauled three launch facilities negating any deficiencies to the order alert readiness. Tech. Sgt. Kevin S. Henderson was chosen for the junior enlisted category. Henderson served as the assistant chief of plan and programs of the 51st Civil Engineer Squadron at Osan Air Base, South Korea. His direction helped the flight mitigate more than 700 emergencies that protected the wings mission and allowed the wing to generate 9,000 sorties. 2014 winners Lt. Col. Stephen B. Matthews, the 49th Air Refueling Squadron commander at McConnell AFB, Kansas, was chosen for the senior officer category. Matthews led 92 aviators in Air Mobility Commands largest tanker wing, ensuring the safe execution of more than 480 sorties and 2,300 flight hours. The junior officer category winner was Capt. John L. Sullivan, a 509th Bomb Wing operations officer at Whiteman AFB, Missouri. He led the Air Forces largest nuclear security forces squadron that produced nine superior performers, two superior team awards and assured an excellent rating for the wing. Master Sgt. Janell R. McGivern was selected as the senior enlisted winner. She served as the 832nd Maintenance Squadron lead rotary wing advisor at Nellis AFB, Nevada. McGivern led her team of Air Force advisors in teaching and mentoring 270 Afghan airmen in helicopter maintenance fundamentals and fleet management for 37 aircraft across four mission design series. The junior enlisted winner was Senior Airman Tristan S. Windle, a 320th Special Tactics Squadron pararescue journeyman at Kadena Air Base, Japan. While on a nighttime raid he came upon a well-coordinated ambush including close-range suicide vest detonations and multiple victim-initiated improvised explosive devices, resulting in 34 casualties. Windle, despite his own wounds, directed security and organized the evacuation of 66 members of U.S. Special Operations Forces, nine Afghans and one military working dog. Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanicas former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption over the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for Rs. 3,600 crore. In the ruling, which overturned a previous court order of 2014, Bruno Spagnolini, the former CEO of Finmeccanicas helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, was also handed a four-year prison term by the court on Thursday. The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively, it said. The ruling has come as a severe blow to the Italian company which had just managed to leave the corruption saga behind that marred its image across the world. Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials told that the firm has changed completely. The company has undergone deep changes and it has changed completely from the time when the allegations came up first. Finmeccanica is a different company now, an official said. Both Orsi and Spagnolini were accused of international corruption and false invoicing in relation to bribes exchanged for a 560-million-euro (approx Rs. 4,250 crore) contract with India. Both were cleared on charges of committing international corruption at the first-instance trial in 2014 but convicted of false invoicing and sentenced to two years in prison. In Italy, criminal sentences are not usually considered definitive until the appeals process has been exhausted, the report said. In October, 2014, a lower court had convicted Orsi and Spagnolini of falsifying invoices but acquitted them of corruption. Both appealed against the conviction, while the prosecution appealed against the acquittal on the corruption charge. On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with Finmeccanicas British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of paying kickbacks to the tune of Rs 360 crore by it for securing the deal. The Maharashtra government has assured the Bombay High Court that it would adopt measures to ensure that Rs. 100 stamp papers are easily available with vendors. Government Pleader G W Mattos also informed that the state government had exempted the stamp duty chargeable on affidavits or declarations made by people for obtaining caste, income, domicile and nationality certificates. For these purposes, Rs. 100 stamp papers would no longer be required; the pleader told a division bench of Chief Justice D H Waghela and Justice M S Sonak. Accordingly, the bench recently disposed of a petition it was hearing suo motu on a newspaper report which said that stamp papers of Rs. 100 denomination had disappeared and were not available with the vendors, thereby causing hardship to students who have to give declarations for seeking admission in colleges. The report said people were forced to buy stamp papers of higher denominations for petty affidavits, lease agreements and visa applications in view of shortage of Rs. 100 stamp papers. Moreover, vendors were selling Rs. 100 stamp papers at double or triple the face value due to short supply. The report further said that the shortage of stamp papers has especially hit students seeking admissions to educational institutions as they need to submit affidavits along with admission forms. In an affidavit, Additional Controller of Stamps denied shortage of stamp papers of Rs. 100 denomination. The affidavit said the government had granted stamp vending licenses to bar associations for sale of stamp papers and court fee labels in court premises. Accordingly, stamp vending licences have been issued to Dadar Bar Association, Bombay Advocates Bar Association at Small Causes Court, Mumbai, Motor Accident Claim Tribunal Bar Association, Borivali Advocates Bar Associations, Advocates Associates of Western India and Mazagaon Court Bar Association. Yielding to a high voltage campaign by activists, the Shani Shingnapur temple trust allowed women to enter the sanctum sanctorum, breaking the tradition followed for several decades. Significantly, lifting of all gender barriers for access to the core area came on the auspicious occasion of Gudi Padwa, marking New Year by people across Maharashtra. Earlier on Friday, about 250 residents of Shingnapur village thronged the temple premises and barged into the inner sanctum breaking through the double barricades put up by the trustees around the sanctum, to offer Jal Pooja on the occasion of Gudi Padwa, the Hindu New Year. Shortly thereafter, the temple authorities announced the decision of allowing women into the inner sanctum. Anyone can enter the sanctum and the committee cant stop them from entering. The rule was that men and women both can worship god (darshan) from the lower part of the temple, but when men entered the sanctum then it became our responsibility to also let women enter, Nana Sahib Bankar, vice-president of the Shani Shingnapur Trust, told the media here. Trustee Shalini Lande informed the mediapersons about the decision on behalf of the temple trust. The step was immediately welcomed by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and womens group Bhumata Ranragini Brigade that was agitating for it for four months. The state government has taken the same stand from the very beginning and we filed an affidavit in the High Court that there should be no discrimination. Today, they have decoded on this issue and we wish that after today, no one needs the police to get darshan. Religion never discriminates on the basis of caste or gender, Fadnavis said. Trupti Desai, who led the agitation, welcomed the decision of Shani Shingnapur temple trustees to open gates of the sacred Chauthara for men and women devotees, and said it was a wise step on their part. Der se aye lekin durusta aye (It was late but in the end correct decision), she said reacting to the development that signalled a victory for her prolonged fight against gender discrimination at places of worship. We are happy that the temple trustees have taken a wise decision eventually, she said. Desai said she and her group of activists would be soon leaving for Shani Singnapur to offer prayers at the temple. After long struggle, Ahmednagars Shani Shingnapur temple opens its doors to women, ending a centuries-old ban that had been challenged in courts by various activists and inspired a high-voltage campaign. Earlier on Friday, over 100 men had forced their way into the inner sanctum of the temple dedicated to Shani (Saturn) to mark the Gudi Padwa the beginning of New Year according to the Hindu calendar. Last week, the temple said neither men nor women would be allowed into the area that has an idol placed on an outdoor platform. The new restrictions were introduced to circumvent a court ruling that women and men must have equal access to Hindu places of worship. To keep women out, the temple barred entry for male devotees as well, and said only male priests would be allowed into the inner sanctum. In November last year, this Lord Shani temple performed a purification puja after young woman offered worship to the idol placed on a platform from where women are traditionally barred. At a time when women are fighting for priesthood all over the world, Shani Shingnapur temples this act came as a shocker. However, the incident is not entirely unexpected as a number of such incidents are becoming common over the years. Temple officials and thousands of locals who live near the Shani Shingnapur temple have fought to maintain the tradition that discriminates against women. Women are being discriminated on one pretext or the other. The feminist organizations along with progressive male organizations must take up the issue seriously. Raja Ram Mohan Roy would be in tears to see his India in such a state after two centuries when he kick started social reforms. This is not just a religious issue; its a social conditioning too. Two days back, one of the Sunni Muslim priest claimed that women were only meant to rear children. People need a sacred text to look up to amend their archaic beliefs. Only our constitution can provide such a sacred template. In 2000, Narendra Dabholkar led a campaign demanding entry for women into the Shani Shingnapur temple. The trail-blazing activism by rationalist firebrand Dabholkar, who was killed by right-wing elements, and his Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (MANS) to combat the ban on women entering temples was a vital phase in the organisations untiring efforts to strive for gender equality in Maharashtra. While the struggle commenced with the usual raucous noises from the right-wing patriarchy, it culminated on a happy note with these very sections joining in the cause to uphold the dignity of women across the State. In 2000, several progressive sections, including activists, socially-committed theatre and film artists and grassroots leaders led by Dabholkar, actor Shriram Lagoo and farmer leader N.D. Patil led a march from Pandharpur to Shani Shingnapur in Ahmednagar to protest against the ban which saw the participation of a large number of women activists. However, the right-wing political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena, along with several fringe Hindutva groups, prevented the campaigners from entering the iconic temple. After heated arguments with district officials intent on averting trouble, the campaigners were thrown into jail for the next two days. In 2011, in an obvious effort at garnering goodwill by appearing to fight for womens equality, the BJP and Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena worked for ensuring the entry of women into the legendary Mahalaxmi temple in Kolhapur district. In a single stroke, a 2,000-year-old tradition, emblematic of overweening patriarchal codes, bit the dust. The Shani Shingnapur temple attracts thousands of devotees daily. Worshippers of the famous Sai Baba temple in Shirdi make it a point to visit the Shani Shingnapur temple also. The practice of barring women from the inner sanctum of religious places is prevalent in some of Maharashtras most revered shrines; among them are the Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai. Earlier, the Dargahs trust has cited menstruation as one of the reasons for not allowing women into the mazaar. In response to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by activists Noorjehan Niaz and Zakia Soman of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, the trust said many religions impose restrictions on women owing to menstruation, perceived as unclean or embarrassing. In the Hindu community a girl, after she reaches puberty, is barred from entering the prayer room or performing any religious prayers during her menstruation. The only reason mentioned in our scriptures is that she is (ashudha) unclean during that period. Let us go back to see when, where and why this custom started. During those days, ladies would have take their bath either in the river, pond or near the well. During the time, when the girl would be in menstruation, it would be an awkward to bathe together with the rest of the ladies, as it would probably pollute the water. Since, the ladies did not bath and there were no bathroom facilities for the rest of the day during the menstruating period, they would naturally be termed unclean during that time. Hence, they were being barred from the clean places in the house, namely the prayer room or the kitchen. This is, as far as the physical aspect of being (ashudha) unclean, goes. However, when the scriptures spoke of ashudha, they may have not only meant the physical aspect but the mental aspect as well. Science talks of the menstrual syndrome, i.e. a woman is more irritable during those days because of a hormonal imbalance. Psychics claim that there is a different aura around a menstruating woman, maybe again a chemical reaction. Segregating to pray requires a positive attitude and people tend to respond to the negative vibrations of a person standing with you; maybe that was the reason why a woman was barred from public places of prayer during those days. Whatever might be the reason, the ladies who work hard whole month should get a complete rest during that period. However, today things have changed and women are much more capable of performing tasks during that period. Here, Im happy to see that the rules made by man in older days are changing with time. I think, this is New Year gift by the lord for women. I hope, slowly all the conservative decision will shed one by one. (Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com) Under fire over the lathicharge against outstation students of the NIT in Srinagar, two senior officers of the Jammu and Kashmir Police have hit back, saying they dont need certificate of nationalism or impartiality from anyone. The police officersMubassir Latifi, a SSP posted with the elite crime branch and Firoz Yehya, DySP at Baramulla Headquarterstook to social media on Thursday to vent their anguish over the criticism against the state police for the action against the students in the wake of the unrest at the National Institute of Technology (NIT). J&K Police doesnt need any certificate of nationalism or impartiality from those whose valour doesnt extend beyond their keypads, Latifi posted on his Facebook account. J and K Police is a saga of sacrifice and courage and has brought this state out of a madness called terrorism, Latifi, a Masters in Law, said. Jammu and Kashmir Police doesnt discriminate on the basis of whos local and whos non-local. Neither do we enjoy beating up people. Force is used only for maintenance of law and order and to disperse unlawful assembly of people, he added. He said anyone resorting to violence was committing a crime. Someone resorting to violence is committing a crime and police knows how to take on crime, he wrote. Yehya said that many of his colleagues have been asking and many more must be thinking whose war are we fighting? Many of my colleagues have been asking and many more must be thinking whose war are we fighting? All I can tell them is that, this is just another phase and will pass. Further, JK Police doesnt need any certificateWe must continue doing the good work within the ambit of law and nothing shall deter us.Good common people who we serve may be alienated with us for reasons more than one and our good work shall certainly help us win their hearts, Yehya, a Masters in Economics, said. Canada Shows Its Indifference to Assyrians and Yazidis As Islamic extremists systematically target religious minorities in the Middle East and execute a ruthless campaign to wipe out Christians, Yezidis and other vulnerable groups, Canada seems shockingly indifferent to the plight of those facing genocide. Kyle Matthews, a Montreal-based expert on mass atrocities prevention, religious extremism and international issues, is troubled by Canada's response to the unfolding genocide. "Are we helping the most vulnerable?" he wondered in a telephone interview. "I think there are still some question marks about whether we are really helping the most vulnerable," continued Matthews, who is the senior deputy director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University and a Fellow at the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. Christians excluded Many Syrian Christians are afraid to live in Muslim-dominated refugee camps run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Consequently, many Christians do not register with the UN agency. If Syrian Christians don't feel safe or comfortable in UNHCR-run camps, what alternatives do they have? "Christian refugees live in privately rented accommodation," stated Kiri Kankhwende, a representative of Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), in an email. According to Kankhwende, "Christian refugees are excluded from any support provided by UN and other international organizations because they live outside camps." "Local Christian communities and churches, and some Christian organizations, have taken on the massive task of providing assistance to both Muslims and Christian refugees without discrimination," Kankhwende said. "Their resources are now exhausted due to the overwhelming numbers." Does CSW reach out to Christian refugee families who are fearful of living in UNHCR refugee camps? "CSW does indeed reach out to Christian families who are fearful of living in refugee camps," Kankhwende replied. "CSW maintains effective communication with those families and parties involved, including through fact-finding and solidarity visits, documenting testimonies of victims, interviewing eyewitnesses, liaising with church and community leaders and lobbying key international actors for assistance." Canada no longer prioritizes the persecuted The Trudeau government has yet to acknowledge that Assyrian Christians, Yezidis and other religious and ethnic minorities are targets of genocide in Iraq and Syria. Consequently, resettling Christian refugees is not a political priority for the Liberals. Similarly, the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has yet to explicitly acknowledge that Christians and others are targets of genocide. "For government-assisted refugees, generally speaking, individuals presenting vulnerabilities and compelling protection needs in the country of asylum are prioritized in accordance with the UNHCR Resettlement Handbook," Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada stated in an email. "Those in need of legal and/or physical protection are considered as one of the vulnerable groups Canada resettles, and the UNHCR does refer these cases to Canada for resettlement." Under the Harper government, Canada prioritized persecuted refugees from Iraq and Syria for resettlement in Canada, a policy that the Liberals opposed in opposition and scrapped once they came to power. Canada's current refugee policy is based on the work of the UNHCR. The UN agency identifies refugees for resettlement based on certain criteria, including persecution, the likelihood of being able to return home and single-family households. Canada is resettling "a very minute, small percentage" of the refugee population that has fled Syria and Iraq, noted Matthews. "We can't resettle everyone." However, the genocide-prevention expert does not understand the current government's aversion to prioritizing persecuted refugees. And he pointed out that there is nothing in refugee or international law that would prevent Canada from prioritizing a targeted group that "deserves additional protection" over "the average person in a refugee camp." In addition, Matthews stated that many persecuted minorities in Iraq and in need of special protection "are not considered for resettlement by the Canadian government, because they are not Syrians." The situation of Iraqi Assyrians, Yezidis, and other ancient communities is especially dire. Religious intolerance Is the UNHCR doing enough to help Christians and Yezidis and other persecuted refugees? "This is a big problem," Matthews replied. "I understand that the UNHCR is under enormous pressure and has no resources." Religious persecution and intolerance are rampant in the Middle East and many Muslim-majority countries. And Matthews cites research conducted by the PEW Research Center that documents societal intolerance in the Muslim world. For example, PEW published data in February 2015 that highlighted religious intolerance in Muslim-majority countries. The report, entitled Latest trends in religious restriction and hostilities, found that "social hostilities involving religion were highest across the Middle East and North Africa" in 2013. PEW measured intolerance on its Social Hostilities Index, comparing regions around the globe. According to the report, the Middle East "remained well above the global median." "A lot of the average people living in the Middle East have these ideas and actually carry them out against their neighbours, who are a different religion," Matthews said of religious bigotry. "This is proven and most likely explains why they [religious minorities] are not in these camps, or why they don't set up churches in many of these camps. They do not feel safe." Flawed UNHCR, Canadian programs Canada's reliance on UNHCR lists is one reason this country is not welcoming large numbers of the most vulnerable refugees, namely persecuted Christians and other religious minorities facing genocide. Having made an extremely ambitious pledge during the federal election campaign to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015, the new Liberal government found itself scrambling to meet that commitment. "The easy way to do that is go to the UNHCR and ask them for the list of the most vulnerable, process it, and get them over here," Matthews said. "And that was what was done." Many Syrian Christian refugees remain outside of the UNHCR system. "For this reason, Christians have problems obtaining refugee status and, because of this, difficulty getting any form of help," said Father Andrzej Halemba, who heads up projects in the Middle East for Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic nongovernmental organization that assists persecuted Christians. "The reality is, perhaps, the truly most vulnerable are even afraid to go to refugee camps run by the UN," Matthews asserted. "That means a lot of these people are just not able to be part of this generous resettlement program by the Canadian government. That, I think, is unfortunate." Matthews said Kurdish families in Montreal have come to him seeking help for family members trapped in the Middle East. Many Kurdish refugees avoid UNHCR camps in Jordan or Lebanon, while others are stuck in Turkey, where the UNHCR does not operate. As a result, Matthews said, "they can't get access to resettlement." "There is just no way for them to actually get in the Canadian resettlement channel," Matthews continued. And he noted that the Kurds are the West's most reliable partner in the battle to destroy ISIS, and yet Canada is doing little to resettle Kurdish refugees. "It just seems like there are some serious gaps in our refugee policy," he said. What advice does Matthews have for the Trudeau government regarding genocide prevention, protecting the most vulnerable refugees, and applying the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Doctrine? "First and foremost, resettling refugees from one part of the world where they already have protection, to Canada, is not R2P," he said of the UN human rights doctrine that obliges the world to prevent mass atrocities. Matthews recommends that the Liberal government "create an R2P focal point" within the government to guide Canadian policy on genocide prevention and civilian protection. "We have nobody with this responsibility right now, and we are not able to grasp prevention policies," he said. "We're seeing entire religious minorities in the Middle East being wiped out," Matthews said. And yet Canada is not doing enough to save the victims of genocide. "I just don't get it." Kerry Logistics has appointed Ronnie Kempf as the new managing director for Germany and Switzerland. Kempf took up his new position on April 1 and is based at the Kerry Logistics Europe headquarters in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. From here, he will run the operative business in Bremen, Hamburg and Frankfurt as well as oversee the further expansion of sales activities in Germany. In addition, Kempf will also take over the position of managing director for Kerry Logistics Switzerland. Kempf will also supervise the integration of the airfreight and seafreight offices in the two countries but the two operations will continue to function as independent legal entities. Kempf has worked for a range of logistics companies in Germany over the last 15 years, including Schenker Germany, ABX Logistics, Geodis Wilson and Agility Logistics. He replaces Bruno Lombardi. Kempf said: Kerry Logistics maintains a leading position in many areas of the logistics supply chain throughout the Asian market. It is on this basis that we see great potential for sustainable growth, especially in Germany and Switzerland. I am looking forward to the new, exciting and demanding tasks and am delighted to be part of this dynamic company. April 8, 2016 ERBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan The ongoing reform push by Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has brought about a sense of unity in the Kurdish ranks, unseen for the past couple of years. When Abadi declared plans in February to reshuffle his Cabinet, an unintended consequence of his efforts was uniting major Kurdish factions in opposition to his stated goals. Kurds have stood against Abadi's efforts to circumvent established political blocs and pick technocratic ministers for his Cabinet without having them being nominated by political groups. "The Kurdish unity has stemmed from understanding the delicacy of the current situation in Iraq and Kurdistan," Tariq Gardi, an Iraqi member of parliament from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) that has the largest Kurdish bloc in the Iraqi parliament, told Al-Monitor. "Kurds agree that the principle of political partnership should be reflected in Baghdad's institutions, as we Kurds are not just a political faction but a key component of this country." The five Kurdish blocs in the parliament in Baghdad have 62 seats in the 328-member chamber. The KDP has 25 seats, and the rest is divided among four other parties that are the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Gorran, Kurdistan Islamic Union and Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal). Although Abadi put forward 14 names at a parliament session March 31 as his choices for ministerial portfolios, the opposition from established Kurdish parties appears to have worked. They were against Abadi picking the ministers without consulting with them and objected to the reduced share Abadi has given to the Kurds. Now, Nizar Saleem Numan Doski, Abadi's nominee to head the crucial Ministry of Oil, has said he will not accept the nomination if Kurdish blocs in the Iraqi parliament do not support him. Kurds have even suggested that if Abadi is so keen to form a Cabinet of nonpartisan technocrats, he should also step down because he is a senior leader of the Islamic Dawa Party and as such does not fit the criteria he has set for his own Cabinet. The current show of Kurdish unity in Baghdad comes amid deep fissures among those parties over a number of thorny issues in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the heart of the disputes is the fate of the office of Iraqi Kurdistan's presidency. Gorran and Komal have opposed the extension of Massoud Barzanis tenure for another two years by a government body known as the Justice Ministry's Consultative Council. The political strife led to Barzani's KDP taking the unusual step of blocking Gorran's speaker of the Kurdish parliament from entering the Kurdish capital, Erbil, on Oct. 12, 2015, and expelling four Gorran ministers from the Kurdish Cabinet. Ever since, the parliament has been in a state of limbo. Gorran is now back in its opposition role inside Iraqi Kurdistan and demands an overhaul of the establishment there. Before its expulsion from the government, Gorran was the second-largest bloc in the Kurdish coalition government in Erbil with four ministerial portfolios out of 21. But despite the bad blood in Iraqi Kurdistan, both Gorran and Komal have stood together with the KDP and other Kurdish groups in Baghdad in opposing Abadi's efforts to reform the Iraqi government. The Kurdish parties, in fact, appear to have developed an ability to compartmentalize their differences. "There is currently a strategy by the Iraqi Kurdish parties to ensure there is a unified stance in Baghdad. This stance appears to be insulated from the political rivalries inside Iraqi Kurdistan," Ahmed Ali, a research fellow at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimaniyah, told Al-Monitor. Although Gorran has joined the Kurdish consensus in Baghdad with regard to Abadi's moves, Sirwa Abdulwahid, a member of parliament from the party, said they support the prime minister's reforms. "His reform efforts are good," Abdulwahid told Al-Monitor. She added, "What we are against in regard to Abadi's reforms is that the Kurdish representation in Baghdads institutions should not fall below 20% of the posts." Of the 14 ministers proposed by Abadi for his new Cabinet, only two are Kurdish. Abdulwahid said her party, like other Kurdish groups, is against Abadi's decision "to pick ministers for us. Everywhere in the world, political blocs pick their nominees and they are the ones representing people politically." The Kurdish members of parliament who Al-Monitor spoke to said Abadi's nominees for the ministerial positions will be most likely rejected by parliamentary blocs. They say Abadi now either has to accept "technocratic" individuals put forward by political groups or risk facing a no-confidence motion by the members of parliament. Amid the newfound Kurdish unity in Baghdad, some politicians are already calling for the unity in Baghdad to be used as an opportunity to mend fences inside the Kurdish house as well. In a sign of its disgruntlement with the situation back in Iraqi Kurdistan, Gorran has refused to attend meetings of Kurdish blocks held in the Kurdish region and only attends the ones convened in Baghdad. Ahmed Haji Rashid, a member of parliament from Komal, said calling for Kurdish consensus in Baghdad while imposing a party's will in Kurdistan can't continue. He directs the bulk of his criticism at the KDP, which is the dominant party in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). "Fundamental reforms should be carried out in the political, administrative and economic realms," Rashid wrote in a post on his public Facebook page. "The KRG needs to be a balanced institution in terms of its participants and the current monopolization needs to end." Kurdish sources say Abadi has now authorized the Kurdish blocs to pick three ministers for the new Cabinet on the condition that they are "technocratic" and competent. If at the time of launching his reform project the prime minister hoped he could capitalize on the deep divisions among Kurdish parties in Iraqi Kurdistan to press ahead with his agenda, he has just achieved the opposite. His Cabinet overhaul efforts have only triggered a strong backlash and united response from the Kurds. April 8, 2016 Aya Mahmoud, a dress designer whose designs cater to veiled women, is being rebuffed by religious and secular critics alike for staging her second annual beauty pageant, which culminates April 9 with the crowning of Hijab Queen in the Cairo suburb 6th of October City. Yet the event has a growing fan base: Last year, only 200 women sought the title; this year, 2,500 women applied through the pageants Facebook page. The call for candidates a few months ago was met with scorn from Salafist clerics, who view the pageant as a shameless display of the female form, as well as from secular citizens who decried the need to cover womens crowning beauty their hair. Mahmoud says the pageant draws attention to the beauty of loose-fitting clothes and long veils that cover the neck and hair, which are worn by many Egyptian women. Speaking to Al-Monitor, she said the pageant emphasizes that it is possible for women to be stylish and beautiful while wearing the veil. The event aims to help spread the veils use throughout Egyptian society, she said. She noted that the event portrays Islam in an appealing way, while challenging calls to discard the veil and depictions of veiled girls and women as unattractive or lacking fashion sense. Egyptian journalist Sherif el-Shubashi last year called on women to discard their veils. He said Egyptian women had been threatened, coerced and psychologically pressured to wear the veil in a grand publicity campaign unleashed by political Islamist factions in their quest to form a new caliphate. Shubashi was hardly the first to make such a call. Years before him Gaber Asfour, a literary critic known for being part of the "old guard" of intellectuals under Hosni Mubarak and who later went on to serve as culture minister, had publicly advocated the idea on several occasions, which was fiercely attacked in parliament and by Islamists. Also, Nawal El Saadawi, an 83-year-old female writer, physician and activist, has long been considered one of the staunchest opponents of women covering their heads or wearing the hijab. Still, Mahmoud pointed out the growing popularity of the pageant concept. In fact, a separate but similar pageant was held in January in Sharm el-Sheikh. Mahmoud told Al-Monitor the judges for her pageant spent two months selecting 10 finalists, traveling to far-flung governorates to choose one or two contestants from each. Despite the Miss title, applicants included married women, some of whom have reached the final round, she said. All were required to hold a university degree. They also must be 25-35 years old, at least 160 cm (5 feet 1/4 inches) tall and weigh less than 80 kilograms (176 pounds). They must be committed to wearing loose-fitting clothes and a veil that completely covers the neck and hair. Mahmoud told Al-Monitor that many of the applicants held masters degrees, and many were physicians, businesswomen and successful entrepreneurs. Contestants had to pass tests related to general culture, technology, religious and political affairs, speech, manners, and self-confidence. She added that the winner will be crowned ambassador of the hijab community, necessitating that she have an acceptable level of cultural awareness, a strong personality and the ability to speak well in public. In applying, many women wore clothes that resembled the veil but did not conform to the strict interpretation of what a veil is supposed to be, Mahmoud said. Moreover, many applicants wore tight-fitting clothes that accentuated their female form, which violates the purpose of the veil, according to Mahmoud. She added that the judges helped those women change their dress styles to conform to traditional veiled values and introduced them to the style of loose-fitting clothes that hide the female form. The six-member panel of judges included Islamic-dress fashion designers, cosmetics experts, stylists and professional photographers. Samia Khodr, a sociology professor at Ain Shams University, told Al-Monitor that Egyptian society currently suffers from a "general state of unsightliness," as she characterized it. Many women, veiled or not, go out in public wearing clothes that are not color coordinated or are unflattering to their body types. Khodr said any call to teach young women the art of dressing, particularly those who wear the veil, might lead to positive results especially among a Facebook audience, as many girls learn mannerisms from social media. April 7, 2016 A top US senator is floating an ambitious proposal to rebuild Egypt and other Middle East trouble spots, prompting congressional soul-searching into whether the region's strongmen have any desire to change. The chairman of the Senate Appropriations panel on foreign aid, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., laid out his vision for a "Marshall Plan" in an April 7 briefing with reporters following his trip to the region. As a preliminary step, he said he would work within his subcommittee on emergency funding of "multiple billions" of dollars for Egypt and several other countries. "One thing I will talk to [Democratic counterpart Patrick] Leahy [D-Vt.] about is an emergency appropriation that will help Egypt, Jordan and probably Lebanon to deal with the stresses they're facing," Graham told reporters. "And we need to get some money into the system to help Israel create some capabilities to shore up borders that have been compromised." Graham made the remarks following a congressional delegation he led to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel, during which he and several other lawmakers met with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and other national leaders. Separately, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., also met with Sisi on April 7. "I was stunned at how things have deteriorated," Graham said, notably in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel. "If you go to Egypt and don't realize they need some help yesterday, you're making a huge mistake." Graham did not offer specifics about his proposed emergency appropriation, which would go beyond the $1.3 billion in military aid and $150 million in economic assistance that the State Department has requested for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Several senators who went on the trip with him also argued for beefed up support for Cairo. "We came back with a renewed sense of urgency about what we should be doing in that part of the world to help address some of the crisis issues," Senate Foreign Relations member David Perdue, R-Ga., told Al-Monitor. "[Sisi] has the potential of being a great partner of the United States. Yes, there are issues, and we had some very strong conversations. But we walked away with a sense of encouragement that he recognizes the balance that needs to be had." Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., like Graham a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed. "If you take a look at Egypt, we have two things that we need to do there: We need to figure out what more we can do to provide them with the capabilities to take the fight to [the Islamic State], in particular in Sinai," he said. "We also need to work with them on economic relationships. Their economy is in serious trouble. The foreign direct investment is anemic. Their tourism is almost nonexistent. So we've got to figure out how we work on those fundamentals that also allow the president to continue to gain the popular support that he needs to stabilize and strengthen his military." Tillis said he would also look favorably on Egypt's requests for helicopters, fighter jets and surveillance technology. But Graham may have a harder time inside his own spending panel. Leahy, for one, recently wrote a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking him to investigate "allegations of gross violations of human rights" in Egypt and Israel. "Egypt of course is in violation of a lot of aspects of the Leahy law," Leahy told Al-Monitor. "I'll talk with [Graham]." Other panel members were equally skeptical. "Maybe we ought to do some emergency appropriations for the crises in our own country before we start spending money on other people's crises," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Al-Monitor. "I think [the Egyptians] still have a lot to prove. [Their] prisons have become a hotbed of anti-Americanism. This isn't just about a potential threat to Sisi this is also a potential threat to the United States. I think as long as there's real conditionality applied to the aid, I'm willing to consider it." The business community could give Graham's proposal a boost. The American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt will be sending some 40 top-level executives to Washington later this month to make the case for increased US investment and political support for the Arab world's most populous country. "We do have a current-account hole because of tourism going down the tubes because of terrorism," said Hisham Fahmy, CEO of AmCham Egypt Inc. He said Egypt could use "exceptional appropriations funds or loan guarantees," but he questioned the political appetite for such legislation. Complicating matters, the US aid pipeline to Egypt is already backlogged with many hundreds of millions of dollars in unused support. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report last year found that $460 million out of $1.4 billion in economic support funds appropriated between 2009 and 2014 remained unobligated, and that number has only grown since then. The GAO report faulted "ongoing changes in Egypts political leadership" and "various congressional holds and legal restrictions" for part of the backlog. The State Department has asked Congress to stop conditioning aid to Egypt on progress on human rights, but the proposal is a hard sell. "Get back with me about that one," Graham told Al-Monitor. "It might be a bridge too far." After the emergency aid bill, Graham said he wants to start a conversation about helping build institutions in a dozen fragile states from Libya to Yemen along the model used to rebuild post-World War II Europe. He envisioned a global effort that would promote education, democracy and women's rights across the region as an antidote to terrorism. "Al-Sisi doesn't want to be the dictator of a failed state," Graham said. "Are we throwing good money after bad? I dont think so, but Im running out of ideas." Such a plan, Graham said, would allow Egypt to have access to lower-interest loans and preferential trade agreements while bolstering the country's civil society. The idea drew immediate skepticism in Washington from experts who question Middle East strongmen's desires and abilities to build democratic institutions and free-market economies. "The Marshall Plan worked in Europe because we were rebuilding economies that had functioned well, not building over a nearly hopeless Egyptian economy," said Elliott Abrams, the top official in charge of democracy promotion under President George W. Bush. "Because the army owns half the economy, it will always block the real reforms needed." Appropriations member Chris Coons, D-Del., said he will need to see a convincing case for emergency aid. But he gave Graham kudos for starting a larger conversation. "Sen. Graham and I share a concern about having a longer-term plan for stabilizing fragile and failed states across the Middle East and North Africa," Coons told Al-Monitor. "I commend Sen. Graham for saying 'here is an ongoing, serious challenge to security in the region that we probably should be investing in now and will need additional resources next year' and starting a conversation. I don't know how far that conversation will go. I look forward to seeing the specifics of his proposal." April 8, 2016 CAIRO On March 22, Sayed Farag, an Egyptian member of parliament representing Cairo's Hadayek el-Qubba district, announced an initiative to form a parliamentary delegation that would visit the Israeli Knesset to discuss pending issues between the two countries. Farag was inspired by former President Anwar Sadat, who spoke in the Israeli Knesset on Nov. 19, 1977, and discussed the problems facing both countries at the time. As soon as the media published the news, many members of parliament objected and considered the initiative a form of normalization with Israel that should not be accepted under any circumstances. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Farag described his opponents as ignorant, given that there is a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. He said that Egypt has a permanent ambassador to Israel and the same goes for Israel, and the two countries have legal diplomatic channels as well. Farag called on people to be reasonable and seek to achieve the countrys national interest, even if that has to be done by sitting together, negotiating and proposing solutions to reach consensual settlements. He said that whether we like it or not, there are pending issues between the two countries, and we cannot ignore one another: "Why dont we use all possible solutions that might achieve national interest through public diplomatic channels?" The text of the interview follows: Al-Monitor: What is the goal of this initiative? What motivated you to launch it? Farag: To sum it up, my initiative aims at solving all pending issues that involve Israel or that the latter can contribute to settling. The purpose is to stop the killing of even one Egyptian soldier on the dear Sinai [Peninsula] lands and to solve the Palestinian issue a mission international leaders and governments have failed to complete. When I voiced my readiness to visit the Israeli Knesset along with several fellow members of parliament, I wanted to sit with them to negotiate and benefit from their experience. We all know that Israel is advanced militarily and has state-of-the-art technological equipment. Why, then, dont we benefit from this development and make deals with it to purchase weapons? This cooperation does not mean I approve of its politics in the region or of its actions toward our Palestinian brothers. Al-Monitor: How can we learn from the Israelis when it comes to advancing society, as you said? Farag: Both countries will benefit, but we should first sit and negotiate. The Palestinian cause has been unresolved for years. Terrorism in Sinai is on the rise, and there are countries supporting it and participating in it. Why dont we use all possible solutions that might achieve national interest through public diplomatic channels? Many are saying that Israel is supporting extremist groups in Sinai. Therefore, if we negotiate with it and reach an agreement, it will halt its support. We would eradicate terrorism and extremist groups in Sinai. Al-Monitor: What in particular drew you to the Israeli experience as something Egypt could benefit from, instead of perhaps another country? Farag: I found the huge military progress and equipment that we should get introduced to and buy if needed the most alluring. Just imagine a weak citizen throwing a stone at another citizen carrying a rifle equipped with a scope! This is when I thought, why dont we buy rifles from Israel? Why dont we benefit from its military development? Al-Monitor: What is parliament Speaker Ali Abdel Aals position on this initiative? Farag: Abdel Aal is a reasonable man who is well aware of the national interest and seeks to fulfill it. But he did not talk to me officially in front of the other members of parliament. We had a friendly discussion during which he told me, If you managed to solve the crisis to solve the Palestinian issue I will applaud you, because this is a huge problem no one has been able to solve." Al-Monitor: Have you been attacked by any members of parliament for launching this, or have they welcomed it? Farag: Unfortunately, I was fiercely attacked by ignorant people after announcing the initiative. I do not know the real reason behind their objection. We are now living in peace and there is a peace agreement guaranteeing this. Each country has an ambassador residing in the other. Where is the problem in negotiating once, twice or 20 times? Why did Sadat confront Israel? Why did he communicate with it and embarrass it in front of the whole world? Al-Monitor: Are you concerned that this could provoke a backlash from the public, given the Egyptian peoples general opposition to Israel? Farag: I was not afraid of anyone because it goes without saying that I have an honorable national record, and I always seek to fulfill national interest. I knew that I would face strong opposition. People never agree on one thing, but there are many reasonable individuals who supported my initiative and understood its content and goal. Al-Monitor: Does your initiative include discussing the Palestinian issue with the members of Knesset? Farag: Of course, as it involves discussing all aspects, crises and issues that concern the interest of the Arab nation in particular the Palestinian cause. Al-Monitor: Some members of parliament have suggested amending the Camp David Accords. What is your stance on this? Farag: I do not approve of the amendment of any international agreements currently. Al-Monitor: Whats your take on the governments program that was presented to parliament in recent days? Farag: With the available data and under the current circumstances, I announced my approval of the governments program. The current phase necessitates cooperation with the state institutions to serve the citizens. As you know, Egyptian tourism is facing a setback and the Egyptian economy is collapsing. The Central Bank has many challenges up its sleeve due to the depreciation of the Egyptian pound. Therefore, the governments program amid all this is good, but it has to implement it as soon as possible. We will oversee its implementation step by step in the coming phase. Al-Monitor: Do you support Prime Minister Sherif Ismails recent Cabinet reshuffle, or do you think a complete change of government is needed? Farag: We have a big problem with the decision-making process. Unfortunately, the easiest thing is to change and replace ministers. But this is a mistake. We should give the government a chance and grant ministers some time to solve citizens problems, and then hold them accountable if they go wrong. Changing the government only a few months after its assignment is useless. For instance, newly appointed Minister of Labor Mohamed Saafan is a decent man. I sat with him and listened to him after he was attacked by other members of parliament who accuse him of being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. But he has no affiliations and he has reiterated this. I would like to say this to the opponents: Give the official some space to work. Do not punish him for his intellectual or political affiliations, but rather [judge him by] what he is offering citizens. Whether the minister is communist, Christian or pagan, what he is giving citizens is the most important. Al-Monitor: What do you think of the states general budget that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi approved and sent to the parliament for discussion? Farag: Most members of parliament voiced their approval of the state budget because resources are limited and crises are increasing. This is the best-case scenario at the moment. April 6, 2016 Egypts UN ambassador Amr Abu Atta created quite a stir by abstaining during an otherwise unanimous vote to punish and repatriate UN peacekeeping battalions that include personnel suspected of sexual abuse in their assigned countries. Theres a lot of speculation over why Abu Atta declined to vote March 11 on the US-drafted resolution before the UN Security Council. Some imply he simply chose to swim against the tide to become famous. But there are many alternative reasons. The draft resolution that was put forth by Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, stipulates that if members of a peacekeeping nations forces are accused of sexual abuses and their country fails to investigate the allegations, hold perpetrators accountable or inform the secretary-general of its actions, its entire force should be repatriated. In an interview with UN Radio, Abu Atta said, We abstained from voting on the draft resolution as we believe that the Security Council has nothing to do with this issue, which falls under the purview of the General Assembly. Sexual abuses are not related to the international peace and security. Although Egypt condemns with the utmost force all sexual abuses by peacekeepers and deals with such abuses with the utmost firmness, whether in Egypt or at the international level, we believe in the need to set certain criteria to preserve the credibility of the troops who have sacrificed their lives and left their homes to maintain peace and security. These forces ought to feel a sense of justice. Therefore, we developed a number of criteria. Abu Atta explained that according to the second paragraph of the resolution, there are three steps a country should take when there are grounds to suspect its personnel of sexual exploitation or abuses: Investigate the allegations, hold the perpetrators accountable and inform the secretary-general of the measures taken. Should a state fail to meet these conditions, the secretary-general has the right to repatriate the entire military unit of the accused soldier and replace it with another unit. The repatriation criteria, Abu Atta said, amounts to collective punishment of an entire unit, which is irrational. He called for an amendment that would not have required all three conditions to be met. According to the UN Conduct and Discipline Unit (CDU), the number of sexual charges against peacekeepers amounted to 758 cases from 2007 until March 31, 2016. It doesnt appear likely that Egypt abstained in defense of its own UN forces, which have participated heavily in UN peacekeeping missions in conflict zones across Africa, including the Ivory Coast, Western Sahara, Central African Republic, Mali, Darfur, Liberia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Al-Monitor found only two charges against Egyptian soldiers. One soldier was just accused in March and investigations are ongoing. The second soldier was sentenced in 2014 to five years in prison. In that year, the total number of sexual charges for all UN personnel in all countries amounted to 52, according to the CDU. For police and military personnel, the figure was 38. Nick Birnback, public affairs chief for the UNs peacekeeping department, wasn't able to confirm how many Egyptians the UN has accused of sexual exploitation. "No agreements have been reached yet with member states for publishing information prior to 2015," he told Al-Monitor. Moreover, it does not seem that Egypt abstained to protect the countries whose soldiers are often involved in sex crimes in peacekeeping missions. Egypt does not hold strong relations with those countries. In fact, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ranks first among countries whose troops were involved in sexual crimes from 2015 until March 31, 2016, with 17 accusations, followed by the Republic of Congo with seven accusations and Morocco with seven. However, the DRC and the Republic of Congo are not strategic allies for Egypt in Africa. It should be noted that Egypts relations with Morocco have been strained since the overthrow of former President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. South Africa, whose relations with Egypt also have been strained since Morsis overthrow, has faced five charges. Egypts objection to the US draft resolution could have other dimensions. Perhaps Egypts concerns are the same as Senegal, China and Russia, which all initially objected to the resolution before voting to ratify it three days after. In fact, Senegal is the largest contributor to the UN peacekeeping forces among the 15 states of the Security Council, with 3,475 soldiers, policemen and military experts, followed by China with 3,045, and then Egypt with 2,809. The countries that initially voted for the proposal contribute only about half as many troops as the countries that initially objected to the resolution. Bahaa el-Maghawry, an analyst who previously taught political science at Cairo University, pointed out that when internal conflicts arise in developing nations, powerful countries like Russia, the United States and other NATO members often get involved by supporting one of the parties of the conflict so they can benefit later, when the party they backed holds the reins of power. Therefore, countries such as Egypt, China and Senegal might place great value on maintaining their peacekeeping forces in the conflict zones to safeguard their interests especially if there is a conflict of interest with the powerful countries, particularly in Africa, which is rich in natural resources and tied to Egypt with very strong bonds. The collective punishment and [repatriation of an entire force] because of a mistake of an individual poses a threat to the existence of a country in the peacekeeping forces, he told Al-Monitor. The countries that voted in favor of the resolution are able, with their economic, military and technological capabilities, of preserving their interests outside the banner of the peacekeeping units. Ambassador Mohamed Orabi, former foreign affairs minister and interim chairman of the Egyptian parliaments Foreign Relations Committee, told Al-Monitor, I am convinced of [the need for] the Egyptian amendments to the US resolution. However, Egypt should not stand alone in objecting to the proposal, as this could harm its image before the international community. It should have exerted its diplomatic influence before, and not during, the voting session, because the preliminary rejection by Senegal, China and Russia was not enough especially since they ended up voting in favor of the proposal, perhaps to save face and avoid Egypts faux pas in the eyes of the international community. April 7, 2016 TEHRAN, Iran On March 23, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted to pass Resolution A/HCR/31/L.27, thereby extending the mandate of the special human rights rapporteur for Iran, Ahmed Shaheed. The resolution was approved by a margin of five votes. Shaheed, whose mandate was renewed for the fifth time since his first appointment in 2011, said in a statement that the Iranian government has taken positive steps to address the matters of dispute with the UN Human Rights Council. However, he reiterated previous claims of executions, arbitrary arrests, detentions and prosecutions of Iranian citizens over the exercise of their rights. The Islamic Republic was quick to react to the vote, with its Foreign Ministry on March 24 strongly rejecting it as politically motivated. However, what appears to have particularly irritated Iran is how three of its neighbors on the other side of the Persian Gulf Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar voted in favor of the measure. Indeed, the Iranian Foreign Ministry noted that Saudi Arabia itself does not respect the basic rights of its own citizens, particularly female dissidents and activists. This was the first time that Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar had directly voted against Iran on human rights-related matters. In the UN Human Rights Councils previous vote on Iran, Resolution A/HRC/25/L.9 in March 2014, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with Kuwait, were among the countries that abstained. Of further note, Iran implicitly criticized Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states at the UN Human Rights Council only some three weeks prior to the vote on Shaheeds mandate. Speaking in Geneva on March 1, the head of the Iranian judiciarys Human Rights Council, Mohammad Javad Larijani, slammed regimes that deprive their citizens of the very basic and minimal right to participate in shaping their destiny, in a thinly veiled reference to some of Irans southern neighbors. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAEs votes at the UN Human Rights Council prompted some Iranian media outlets to suggest that Iran has been given an opportunity to retaliate by urging the international body to shed light on human rights abuses on the Arabian Peninsula. The row over the latest Iran-related vote in the UN Human Rights Council could be seen as part of the wider tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. What already were strong differences spiked in the aftermath of the death of hundreds of Iranian hajj pilgrims in Mina on Sept. 24, 2015. However, what broke the camels back were the attacks by angry protesters on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran this January over Riyadhs execution of Saudi Shiite dissident cleric Nimr al-Nimr. In response, Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran, with other GCC states following suit and either also cutting or downgrading relations. Indeed, former Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told Al-Monitor he sees Saudi Arabias vote at the UN Human Rights Council in the context of its rivalry with Iran, including what he called the regional war the [Saudi] kingdom has waged on the Islamic Republic. Asefi told Al-Monitor, Saudi Arabia has been interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and has been adopting a hostile and belligerent policy toward Iran for several years now. Based on our information, the Saudis helped the Israelis a lot in their war on Lebanons resistance movement Hezbollah in July 2006 and went on with the same attitude in Syria and later in Yemen. The war on Yemen has destroyed the countrys infrastructure; 80% of Yemenis are displaced and in need of assistance. Now, the kingdom faces the fact that it has failed in Yemen, but instead of accepting its own incapability to understand the real facts on the ground and reviewing its wrong policies, it is shifting the blame to Iran and taking the confrontation to other fronts such as the UN Human Rights Council. Yet when challenged about the human rights situation in Iran, the former senior Iranian diplomat simply asserted that Saudi Arabia is not at a position to give an opinion about human rights in Iran, adding, when it comes to the human rights record in Saudi Arabia a country that does not even hold elections the facts speak for themselves. Riyadh has indeed been under fierce criticism over its rights record for years. Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First have issued reports and statements on rights violations within Saudi Arabia, while the yearlong Saudi-led war in Yemen has drawn condemnation not only from rights bodies but also charity groups such as Oxfam. Moreover, in a recent statement to the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International noted the unwavering record of committing gross and systematic human rights violations by the kingdom. Amnesty also accuses Saudi Arabia of standing in the way of the establishment of an independent international investigation into violations by all parties to the conflict in Yemen. Qatar and the UAE, the two other GCC members who voted to renew Shaheeds mandate on Iran, have also been under fire over their rights records. Amnesty has condemned Doha on several occasions, saying it has arbitrarily restricted the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch in its 2015 report slammed the UAE for arbitrarily detaining individuals on alleged national security grounds. It also accused UAE security forces of torturing detainees in pretrial detention. However, UN Human Rights Council Resolution A/HCR/31/L.27 is about the human rights situation in Iran, and not the Arabian Peninsula. Thus, regardless of the dismal rights records of some of those who voted in favor of the resolution, the key matter is the human rights situation in Iran, and perhaps equally pressingly, how the intensified Iranian-Saudi tension is increasingly affecting their immediate neighborhood. In this vein, Asefi, who has also previously served as Irans ambassador to the UAE, said he does not believe that Qatar and the UAE have adopted inherently confrontational postures toward Iran. He told Al-Monitor that Doha and Abu Dhabi are used to following Riyadh, and expressed hope that the two countries will change their course. Moreover, Asefi concluded, Although Iran has all the means and capabilities to react in kind [to the Saudi vote], it has more important priorities in the Middle East. Hence, Tehran prefers to help settle down the current regional conflicts and crises, rather than play Saudi Arabia at its own childish game. April 7, 2016 Last week, a small Palestinian delegation walked into the mourners tent of the Amar family in the Druze village of Julis. They shook hands with the relatives of Brig. Gen. Munir Amar, who was killed in a March 25 plane crash, and said that President Mahmoud Abbas had sent them to express his condolences for the tragic death of their loved one. This was not an insignificant event. Amar headed the civil administration in the West Bank and was the face of the Israeli occupation authorities. Part of his job was to sign off on orders for the demolition of Palestinian homes in Area C (under full Israeli control). The visit was the latest in a series of recent gestures by the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah toward Israeli society. The others included friendly interviews with Abbas on Israeli media, an invitation from Abbas to opinion makers to dine with him at his headquarters, the Muqata, and joint activities with Israeli-Palestinian organizations such as the Geneva Initiative. At the same time, a public opinion poll indicates that Israeli Jews are still marching to the right to the far right. The Peace Index for March 2016, published by the Israel Democracy Institute, shows that a sizable majority of the Jewish public rejects the distinction between global terrorism, nurtured by radical Islam, and Palestinian terrorism, nurtured by the desire to shake off the Israeli occupation. Of those polled, 64% said they agree with the idea espoused by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that global terrorism and Palestinian terrorism are one and the same. The obvious conclusion is that most Jewish Israelis believe the violent conflict with the Palestinians is unrelated to the occupation. If ending the occupation would not end the violence, then ipso facto, there is no need for negotiations over the fate of the territories. Furthermore, the majority of the Israeli Jewish public, 62%, believe that the staying power of their society, given the current round of violence, is stronger than that of the Palestinians: 69% of those on the right believe this, 59% in the center and 44% on the left. Only 5% think the Palestinians will outlast the Israelis. In other words, Israelis are in no rush to change the status quo. Israeli Jews also do not fear international pressure. Some 78% think Israel should not take into consideration international demands to refrain from targeted killings (as the Israel Defense Forces calls the killing of wanted Palestinians), demolitions of family homes of Palestinians involved in attacks on Israelis and other questionable means used by the Israeli defense establishment in the fight against terrorism. Gadi Blatianski, head of the Israeli branch of the Geneva Initiative, did not seem surprised by the poll results. In a conversation with Al-Monitor, he related a finding that bodes ill for the Israeli peace camp: A recent survey conducted by his own organization shows that the younger a person's age, the greater his or her resistance to a diplomatic process to end the conflict with the Palestinians. Those younger than 34 tend, more than older adults, to rule out compromise on core issues. Nonetheless, there is still some good news, Blatianski said: 50% of ultra-Orthodox Shas voters support a peace blueprint similar to the one proposed by the Geneva Initiative and have some optimism about the prospects of reaching an agreement. I want to believe that this is thanks to our work with the Knesset members and activists from Shas, Blatianski said. He went on to share an anecdote that could explain the gap between his group's findings and those of the Peace Index and other polls. Blatianski explained, We recently conducted a seminar for the heads of the community of Ethiopian origin, among them also were members of the Likud Partys Central Committee. At the end of the session, a few of them asked me, How can we reiterate the messages we heard here, and that even won us over, without being identified with the left? From this, Blatianski inferred that the challenge is not about formulating the right message, but finding the leadership to deliver it to the public. Instead of getting a tail wind from politicians who identify with our way, said Blatianski, we are getting a head wind. Indeed, at various times, the leaders of the center left Zionist Camp and the centrist Yesh Atid have insisted that there is no better diplomatic and security solution than the Clinton Parameters, outlined by President Bill Clinton in 2000, and the principles encapsulated in the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. Although they understand the serious nature of the situation, as Blatianski noted, The problem is that they are busy chasing an electorate that is running to the right. The veteran peace activist continued, They are competing with Netanyahu to see who protests the loudest against settlement product labeling [required by the European Union] and have started calling the Israeli colonizers of the West Bank settlers [those establishing a new community, not derived from the word settlement]. By doing so, they are, in fact, saying that Netanyahu is right and are moving Israeli society still further to the right, making it harder to move them back to the left. In recent years, Abbas' grandchildren and the daughters of Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat have participated in the summer camps of the Seeds of Peace organization, devoted to bringing together Israeli and Palestinian youths. It is hard to imagine Netanyahus children or those of HaBayit HaYehudi Chairman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett spending time at such a camp. Palestinian journalists have never visited the offices of an Israeli government minister, but their Israeli counterparts are frequent visitors to the offices of top Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah. The belief in Israeli society that there is no Palestinian partner for peace has taken hold and refuses to let go. On the Israeli side, there is no entity like the one established by the Palestine Liberation Organization to maintain interaction with Israeli society. Abbas appointed his close associate Mohammed al-Madani to head this committee. In a conversation with Al-Monitor in fluent Hebrew, the deputy head of the committee, Elias Zananiri, said that he has no beef with the Israeli public running away from contact with the Palestinians. Of course Im frustrated with our lack of success in breaching the walls of Israeli fear and loathing, but Im not completely surprised, said Zananiri. What do you expect of Jewish citizens whose leader questions the basic democratic rights of Israels Arab citizens? Asked whether he had reached a point of despair, Zananiri was quick to respond, Of course not. Isnt it enough that we have a physical separation barrier between the two people? I will do everything I can to prevent a separation fence in their souls. I will keep knocking on every door. Eventually you will stop banging your head against the wall. April 8, 2016 AMMAN, Jordan With King Abdullah II spending 25% of his time abroad in 2015, the Jordanian monarch has not lacked opportunities to meet foreign leaders. Three months into 2016, Abdullah has already visited Washington three times to discuss the war in Syria and the refugee crisis in Jordan, and he regularly meets regional leaders, including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. Despite Turkeys critical role in the Middle East, especially in the ongoing Syrian war, Abdullah has not met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in more than three years, since March 6, 2013. What explains the cold relations between the Jordanian and Turkish leaders? Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish member of parliament and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Al-Monitor, The Jordanian royal family sees Erdogan and the AKP [Justice and Development Party] as first and foremost a Muslim Brotherhood movement. From the Jordanian point of view, this is a problematic relationship. Erdogan has repeatedly attacked Sisi, even calling him an illegitimate tyrant following the 2013 overthrow of Ankara ally President Mohammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt is one of Jordans strongest allies, so the Turkish presidents attacks on Sisi have strained ties with Abdullah. In addition, while Erdogan has strongly supported Hamas, another Brotherhood movement, Abdullah is close to Fatah, Hamas' Palestinian rival. Jordanian leaders regularly meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads Fatah. Erdogans support for the Brotherhood not only strikes an ideological nerve in Ammans foreign policy but also irritates the Jordanian regime domestically. The Brotherhood in Jordan represents one of the opposition centers to the kings power, and Erdogan is one of the sponsors of the Brotherhood in the region, both intellectually and politically, Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Al-Monitor. Jordan has adopted a series of restrictive measures against the local Muslim Brotherhood over the past year. Of note, on March 29 the government barred the organization from holding internal elections and last year canceled a 70th anniversary rally. The bad blood between Abdullah and Erdogan runs deeper than ideological divisions. Hassan Momani, professor of international relations at the University of Jordan, told Al-Monitor, It is clear that there is no personal chemistry between King Abdullah and Erdogan. The two leaders' upbringings differed greatly. While the Jordanian king received his education in England and the United States, Erdogan remained in Turkey and participated in Islamist politics from a relatively young age. Although Erdogan has been criticized for launching verbal tirades against regional leaders, it has been Jordans monarch who has repeatedly attacked the Turkish president. According to a leak reported March 25 in Middle East Eye, Abdullah told US congressional officials during a January visit to Washington, The fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy and Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook. Asked whether the Islamic State (IS) was exporting oil to Ankara, Abdullah responded, Absolutely. Abdullahs accusation that Ankara is working with IS likely does not sit well with Erdogan, as Turkey has suffered several horrific attacks by IS of late. An informed source, who requested anonymity for lack of authorization to speak with the press, told Al-Monitor that ties between Amman and Ankara had reached a crisis. Given that the kings quotes were published right before Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was scheduled to visit Jordan on March 27, the source wondered whether the timing of the leak had been intentional, to try to sabotage the visit, which had required weeks of planning. Abdullahs condemnatory remarks about Erdogan this year were not his first. In April 2013, Abdullah had told Jeffery Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine, Erdogan once said that democracy for him is a bus ride. Once I get to my stop, Im getting off. In the same interview, Abdullah says he believes Erdogan is not truly committed to democracy and is more interested in promoting Islamism and tightening his grip on power. Oraib Rantawi, director of the Amman-based Al-Quds Center for Political Studies, reiterated that Ankaras support for the Muslim Brotherhood extends throughout the region and that this has been a major stumbling block to relations with Jordan. Rantawi told Al-Monitor that over the past several years, since the Arab Spring, Turkey has found an opportunity to expand its hegemonic role in the whole region, which was against Jordanian interests in general. This is a view commonly held by Amman elites. Khalid Dalal, Royal Court media director, and Minister of State for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani refused Al-Monitors repeated requests for interviews. The differing approaches to the five-year Syrian war have also exacerbated relations between the two leaders. Cagaptay explained that while Jordan has placed an emphasis on supporting moderate rebels in southern Syria, radical jihadists and IS militants have thrived on Syrias northern border with Turkey due in part to Ankaras policies. Summing up Abdullah's position, Cagaptay said, Turkey has played it wrong by producing unintended as it might be policies that have resulted in the rise of radicals in northern Syria. Nonetheless, ties between the two countries are not uniformly negative. Trade remains relatively strong, having reached $1 billion. Yet, the ideological clashes over the Muslim Brotherhood, lack of personal chemistry between Erdogan and Abdullah and with conflicting views toward Egypts Sisi have ensured that ties between Amman and Ankara remain poor. Given the many regional challenges to both countries bordering Syria, a strong relationship between Abdullah and Erdogan would appear to be beneficial to both sides. But for now, ideology trumps realpolitik. April 7, 2016 While world attention focuses on the recent liberation of Palmyra and devastation the Islamic State caused to that ancient site in Syria during a lengthy occupation, looting and trafficking of antiquities is on the rise throughout the Middle East. Social dislocation and economic crises in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings have increased the incentive for ordinary people to pilfer precious artifacts in Egypt, Yemen and Libya. At the same time, groups such as IS and al-Qaeda are profiting from trafficking these items through organized networks primarily to private collectors in Europe, Asia and the United States. Monica Hanna, an Egyptian archaeologist, told a Washington think tank via Skype on April 7 that the security crisis accompanying the 2011 revolution against President Hosni Mubarak triggered a gold digging fever in Egypt. While the situation has improved somewhat, she said, archaeological sites are still not under control. Organized gangs are looking for specific types of objects that run the gamut from pre-dynastic treasures to Coptic manuscripts, Islamic art and pieces from the era of the 19th century Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali, she said. Each time period has its own client, Hanna told the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Much of the loot winds up in Turkey en route to Europe and the United States, or in the case of Islamic art, the Persian Gulf states, she said. In a recent interview with Al-Monitor, Egypts former minister of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, also blamed security turmoil in the aftermath of the January 25 [2011] revolution for the explosion in illegal excavation in Egypt. In addition, Hawass cited the decline of tourism, which he said had cut funding to government antiquities bodies for protection and development of museums and archaeological sites. Experts fault the demand side of the equation and lax enforcement by Western countries of laws that bar trafficking in looted antiquities. Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, a Washington-based non-profit, noted that the US has laws but we need to use them. Too often, she said, antiquities trafficking is treated as a victimless white-collar crime if it is treated as a crime at all. This did not start with Daesh [IS] and they wont be the last, she said. IS looting of artifacts in Syria and Iraq has become a major source of income for the terrorist group and has thus attracted interest from anti-terrorism authorities. The UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution more than a year ago calling upon all countries to block Syrian antiquities, Davis said, but the US Congress has yet to pass implementing legislation. She urged the Barack Obama administration to use its executive authority in the meantime to impose emergency import restrictions and to treat antiquities trafficking that originates with IS as a terrorist financing crime, not just a crime against cultural heritage. She also praised authorities in New York City who have been using state laws to go after dealers in illegal cultural goods. During a recent Asia Week event in New York, Davis said, police conducted a daily raid on auction houses and dealers to ferret out trafficked items before they could be sold. Alexander Nagel, a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, told the think tank audience that he has been working with US customs and immigration authorities to train them in spotting illegally trafficked antiquities. One positive development, he said, has been the creation of so-called red lists of artifacts belonging to major archaeological sites in the Middle East. Davis said the advent of cellphone aps such as Snapchat and Instagram have helped experts document looting at Palmyra and other major venues. Statues looted from Palmyra wound up at an auction at Raqqa recently, she said, and were identified through these digital means. Most of the illegal items are bound for collections that will not be viewed publicly for a long time, if ever. One challenge, Hanna said, is to raise awareness among those purchasing these pieces that it is uncool to buy antiquities looted from the Middle East. Auction houses also need to be more vigilant, the experts said, and make sure that items are acquired from legitimate vendors and approved for export by government authorities when possible. Given the degree of death and destruction in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, policing archaeological sites may seem like a minor priority. Iris Gerlach, an expert on Yemeni and Ethiopian antiquities, said it is vital to raise awareness among local populations that they are losing their heritage by allowing artifacts to be wrenched from the ground and divorced from their historical context. Ultimately, however, it will be difficult to stop the trade when local people have few other options and a single page of a medieval Quran can fetch $25,000, Nagel said. April 8, 2016 The Panama Papers scandal, which led to the resignation of the prime minister of Iceland and has also troubled many other world businessmen, politicians and celebrities, has not yet fully reached Turkey. It has been reported in Turkish media that 101 companies and 10 clients from Turkey are also involved, and their names will be disclosed in May. So far, therefore, the scandal has had no political repercussions inside Turkey. However, certain elements of the Turkish media have already began cooking up the idea that the Panama Papers can have political implications for Turkey as yet another nefarious conspiracy against the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a long editorial in Yeni Safak, one of the many pro-Erdogan newspapers, Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Karagul made his argument emphatically on April 7. The release of the Panama Papers has me seriously worried, Karagul wrote. I believe that this is not a money laundering operation or a tax issue. It is the extension of a much bigger plan, a showdown project. This project, Karagul further explained, was led by everyone from US intelligence to UK and German intelligence. Its aim was a new form of intervention on the global scale. Accordingly, countries, leaders, political staff and political discourse that seem incompatible with the West would be toppled and replaced by Western puppets. "Now they are attacking Russia, Karagul claimed, adding, They are attacking Pakistan. They might attack Turkey. They are going to wear out the other countries among their targets. That is when their operational forces on the inside will take action, and some are going to join this wave out of naivete. Of course, one could ask why they were also attacking the leaders of Iceland, the United Kingdom and the Bashar al-Assad regime as well all of which were curiously left out of Karaguls analysis. It is perhaps more accurate to take this not as an analysis, but as a clumsy application of the Erdoganist narrative of the past three years: that the West is conspiring against the patriotic leaders who are trying to make their countries independent actors on the global scale. Notably, Karagul was not alone in making this argument. Another columnist in his paper offered a similar view in a smartly titled piece, The Tailor of Panama. Accordingly, Vladimir Putin's claim that this leak could be the work of the CIA made a lot of sense. Otherwise, why, for example, would Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev be targeted right at the heat of the renewed Azeri-Armenian conflict? Meanwhile, Ali Keskinoglu, a cybersecurity expert, spoke to the pro-Erdogan Ihlas Agency with a similar tone. This is a scheme of lies and libels which will hit Turkey, too he claimed. They will soon release fake documents about Turkey. Various newspapers and portals published these views as news, such as Milliyet, Akit and Haberler.com. What does this all mean? Does it mean that there are some influential people in Turkey who are afraid of what might come out from the Panama Papers and their mouthpieces are preparing the ground for the necessary counterattack? I am sure that is what some opposition voices may claim in Turkey. That would be, however, only another conspiracy theory, again based on speculation rather than facts. One has to read the Turkey-related content of the Panama Papers before making such comments. Yet we can safely say that Turkeys ruling pro-Erdogan elite, whose worldview is both reflected and sustained by the pro-Erdogan media, sees the world through a thick conspiratorial lens. They really believe all the reactions to Erdogan come from the fact that he is making Turkey great again notably a popular ambition around the world these days. Hence, everything that happens in Turkey and around the world that may even potentially hurt Erdogans image must be an attack against the great leader, against which he must be defended. The result is a bulletproof ideological commitment that is resistant to being confused by any sort of political blunder or scandal. There are indeed some moderate pro-Justice and Development Party writers who have lately criticized this siege mentality and offered more factual analyses of the Panama Papers, but they are not defining the dominant narrative. It is noteworthy that a similar ideological narrative is built around another important leader of time Vladimir Putin. As explained in a recent conference at George Washington University, which I attended, the ruling conservative ideology in Russia is also built on the view that Putin is restoring Russias lost greatness and that is why he is targeted by the West and Western agents at home. It is no accident that the Erdoganist Karagul agrees with this narrative, arguing, Now they are attacking Russia. That is why, in fact, Putin had great prestige among Turkeys hard-core Erdoganists, until the clash of Moscow and Ankara over Syria, which peaked with the downing of a Russian warplane by Turkish air forces in November 2015, initiating a sort of cold war between the two countries. But now there are signs that Turkey can make up with Russia. The alleged killer of the downed Russian pilot was arrested in Turkey as duly noted by the Russians. Meanwhile, pro-Erdogan writers began arguing that the plane incident was yet another conspiracy by the nefarious parallel state to create a crisis between the two friendly countries. So don't be surprised if soon, somehow, Turkey and Russia restore their ties. The two countries have many pragmatic common interests, after all, and are run by people with very similar world views. April 7, 2016 Since Israel imposed its blockade on the Gaza Strip after Hamas victory in the 2006 legislative elections, besieged Gazans have received remarkable regional and international support, including health and infrastructure projects, the rebuilding of destroyed houses and the construction of schools. Turkeys presence in this regard owes perhaps to good ties with Hamas, although Turkey has also funded projects in the Fatah-controlled West Bank, most notably the Jenin industrial estate in the north that created 15,000 jobs. Some observers are impressed with Turkey's generosity, but is it too good to be true? Some suspect more than altruistic motivations that may have to do with Turkey's interest in establishing itself as a key political player in the West Bank's future. In one of the most recent projects, Palestinian officials announced March 23 they signed a contract with Turkey to build 320 housing units for the victims of the Israeli war on Gaza in the summer of 2014. Palestinian Minister of Public Works and Housing Mofeed al-Hasayneh has estimated that the war resulted in the destruction of 12,000 housing units and damage to 160,000, of which 6,600 were left uninhabitable. Mohammed Murtaza, coordinator of the Gaza office of the Turkish International Cooperation and Coordination Agency, told Al-Monitor the new housing project will cost $13.5 million. The 5.4-acre project consists of 20 four-story residential buildings divided into a total of 320 housing units of roughly 1,000 square feet each. The site is in the Wadi Gaza region, about a mile from the eastern border with Israel. He added, Given the security threat in this area, we informed Israel of our project coordinates so as to avoid any destruction in any potential military confrontations. This project and other Turkish projects are a sign of Turkey's popular and official sympathy with the Palestinians in Gaza and represent an attempt to lift the siege that was imposed on them 10 years ago. Since 2006, Turkey has seen dozens of economic, developmental and humanitarian projects in Gaza through, including the provision of temporary shelters for those whose homes were destroyed in Israel's wars in 2008, 2012 and 2014. In addition to the extensive residential destruction from those wars, dozens of mosques, cemeteries, schools, universities, media offices and other buildings were also damaged. Turkey paid to repair electrical networks, and water and sanitation facilities, and rebuilt houses of worship, cultural centers, heritage sites, roads and bridges. It also helped compensate farmers for their losses. Turkey has delivered tons of medical aid and treated wounded Palestinians in Gaza. It has granted Gazas university students scholarship opportunities and organized mass weddings for thousands of low-income young people. Turkeys projects in Gaza are implemented through Turkish relief organizations including the Turkish Yardim Eli (Helping Hand) Foundation, the Turkish Red Crescent Society and the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation. Turkish projects in Gaza are of great value to the Palestinian economy in light of the siege and closure suffocating the Palestinians," Mouin Rajab, an economics professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, told Al-Monitor. "These projects have served large Palestinian sectors, especially the contracting sector. They have provided numerous job opportunities that increased the GDP and reduced the unemployment rate, which peaked in May at 43%." He noted, however, "In addition to the economic profits it reaps from its projects in Gaza, Turkey seems to be seeking a weighty political role and influence in the Palestinian political course." Al-Monitor spoke to a Palestinian official following the Turkish projects who declined to be named. He said, It is difficult to determine the precise number of jobs provided by the Turkish projects, but these projects have been operating in Gaza for almost 10 years, and I believe that they have provided no less than 15,000 jobs. Al-Monitor toured a few the Turkish projects in Gaza, including the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in central Gaza Strip. Islamic University of Gaza managed the construction of the $35 million hospital, which began in 2011 on an eight-acre site. The hospital provides health services in all medical fields and is equipped with modern operating rooms and radiography equipment. Khalil Shaheen, research director at the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor, Turkey is aware that Gaza, despite its small geographical area estimated at 360 square kilometers [139 square miles], has an important role in the politics of the region. Turkey seeks through its projects in Gaza to increase its political influence in the Palestinian arena. Although it does not offer Hamas any cash, Turkey seeks through its economic projects to reason with Hamas and tame its political positions. He added, The growing economic projects in Gaza could force Hamas to weigh its gains and losses when considering any future military confrontation with Israel, since it will fear the destruction of the Turkish projects. Hamas now has something to lose. On Feb. 3, a large Turkish economic delegation that included a number of senior Turkish business leaders visited Gaza and met with Ismail Haniyeh, the deputy head of Hamas' political bureau. The delegation confirmed Turkeys willingness to establish an industrial zone in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, which is projected to create 10,000 jobs for Palestinians. Hassan Asfour, the former Palestinian minister of nongovernmental organizations affairs, called on the Palestinian presidency Feb. 29 to rise against the political role played by Turkey in Gaza. He said Turkey's actions will destroy Palestinian legitimacy, create a state of national geographical separation between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and press for the establishment of Gaza as a state. Asfours call coincides with reconciliation talks between Israel and Turkey. Ties between them were cut six years ago, when the Israeli military attacked the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara off the Gaza coast. In December 2015, the news leaked that Turkey is seeking a foothold in Gaza as one of its conditions for reconciliation with Israel. Ghazi Hamad, Gaza's deputy foreign minister and a Hamas leader, told Al-Monitor, Turkey has been implementing projects in Gaza for nearly 10 years in the various health, infrastructure, education and housing fields. The Turks are generous with the Palestinians in Gaza and they opened permanent offices for their charity organizations in the Gaza Strip. He added, The political positions of Turkey, in parallel with its economic support, exceed by far some Arab positions. However, despite their economic projects in Gaza, the Turks did not ask Hamas to take any particular political positions. Their assistance was purely humanitarian." Some say that many donors, including Turkey, are not charities. Political interests may motivate Turkeys financial and humanitarian aid, no matter how hard both sides try to deny it. Increasing Turkish projects in Gaza would allow Turkey to become a key player in the Palestinian issue, as is evident in its stances and moves regarding Israel's blockade. However, Egypt, Gaza's closest neighbor, refuses to grant Turkey a foothold in the Gaza Strip. Egypt considers Gaza an internal national issue and the country's relations with Turkey are already strained, as Turkey is harboring Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Cairo fears that additional Turkish influence in Gaza would represent a threat to Egypts eastern border with the Strip. April 7, 2016 Scrambling to reduce its gas dependence on Russia, Turkey has moved to speed up the construction of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), designed to carry Azeri gas to Europe via Turkey, and set up three new liquefied natural gas facilities. According to the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK), Russia provided Turkey 26.97 billion cubic meters of gas in 2014, or 54.8% of the total import of 49.26 billion cubic meters. Iran was second with 8.93 billion cubic meters, followed by Azerbaijan with 6.1 billion. Turkey imported also 4.18 billion cubic meters of gas from Algeria, 1.41 billion cubic meters from Nigeria and 1.69 billion cubic meters from the spot market. The EPDK has yet to reveal the 2015 statistics, but according to the head of the Natural Gas Distributors Union, the countrys gas consumption amounted to 47.5 billion cubic meters last year. Though the unions figure points to a decline of 1.76 billion cubic meters from the previous year, the EPDK estimates that consumption in 2016 will increase to 49.56 billion cubic meters. The crisis with Russia, sparked by Turkeys downing of a Russian jet at the Syrian border in November, has prompted Turkey to seek new supply strategies that would reduce reliance on Russian gas in the shortest possible time. Accordingly, diversifying supplies has emerged as a priority to change the balance. The plane crisis aside, Russias tensions with Ukraine are also of close concern to Turkey. In comments to Al-Monitor, Gokhan Yardim, the former head of Turkeys state-run pipeline company BOTAS, noted that the gas transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine was due to expire in 2019. Turkey imports up to 14 billion cubic meters of gas per year via this route, he said, stressing that alternative sources should become operational before 2019 to make sure Turkey has a replacement. So, what alternatives are there for Turkey? TANAP is the first project that comes to mind. Currently under construction, the pipeline is scheduled to become operational in 2018 and carry gas from Azerbaijans Shah Deniz-2 field to Europe via Turkey. Out of the 16 billion cubic meters of gas the conduit will initially carry, Turkey will get 6 billion cubic meters, while the rest will flow on to Europe. After the crisis with Russia, however, Turkey has launched efforts to accelerate construction, holding high-level talks with Azerbaijan. In March, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in Ankara, and said the two sides were making efforts to finish TANAP ahead of schedule. The meeting followed Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglus trip to Baku on Dec. 3, days after the downing of the Russian plane, during which he also spoke of efforts to complete the conduit before 2018. The plan aims to get the pipeline running in late 2017, with the prospect of Turkey increasing its initial share to 10 billion cubic meters if needed. The more Turkey imports from TANAP, the less it will buy from Russia. The Russian gas currently flows from two conduits to Turkey: the Ukrainian route and the Blue Stream pipeline, which runs under the Black Sea. Even if the flow via Ukraine stops, 10 billion cubic meters from TANAP will mean a problem-free replacement for Turkey. Yardim, however, believes the acceleration plan is too ambitious. Getting gas from TANAP in 2017 will be a surprise. Even if the flow starts, it will be limited to a few billion cubic meters, he told Al-Monitor. Pointing to technical obstacles, he explained, The compressor tender was only recently completed. The manufacturing process is likely to take 18 months, meaning late 2017. And the job is not over with the completion of the pipeline. They need to drill wells and build platforms at Shah Deniz II. Drilling a single well will not be enough. All this could be ready for 2018, but Im doubtful about 2017. Still, Yardim believes Russian dominance over Turkeys gas imports is bound to diminish in the next few years. Turkeys projects and plans are being shaped toward this end, he said. Israeli gas is another alternative. Turkey and Israel have recently revived talks to normalize ties, with the prospect of gas trade seen as a key incentive for reconciliation. Israels gas-exploitation project, however, is bound for a delay following a critical ruling by the countrys Supreme Court last month. Citing legal flaws, the court gave the government a year to amend the plan for the development of offshore reserves or see the plan canceled. The project involves a deal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached with Texas-based Noble Energy and Israel's Delek Group last year, giving them control of the country's largest gas field, Leviathan. Turkey, meanwhile, is drawing up new projects that have yet to be officially announced. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source who took part in meetings on the issue told Al-Monitor that Ankara plans to set up three floating terminals off Eregli in the Marmara Sea, Aliaga in the Aegean Sea and a yet undetermined location off the countrys southern coast to receive LNG imports by sea. The terminals would consist of anchored ships serving as storage facilities for incoming LNG supplies. Work is currently underway for a tender for the floating facilities, a model that countries like Brazil and Chile are already using, the source said. The capacity of each terminal is not yet known, but the project is planned to have a total capacity of more than 10 billion cubic meters and become operational in two years. Additionally, the government plans to open tenders to expand the capacity of an existing LNG facility at Eregli, the source said. All projects are aimed at reducing reliance on Russian gas, but Russia is bound to remain Turkeys largest supplier with the 16 billion cubic meters of gas flowing through the Blue Stream. Yet if everything goes as planned, its share will shrink from 55% to 30-35%. Editor's note: This article has been updated since its initial publication. April 7, 2016 The United States is trying to devise a plan that will appease Turkey while still allowing Kurds to help expel the Islamic State (IS) from the Menbic-Jarablus front in Syria. Turkey's resistance to the Kurds' participation is creating discord with the United States and further exposing Ankara's hostility toward the people of Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava). Ankara insists on an operational plan that excludes Rojava's People's Protection Units (YPG). The United States might come up with a plan that will take Turkeys sensitivities into account by making the YPG less visible, but the group will still play a key role in the fight. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised this issue last week in his Washington talks with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry. According to information supplied to Tolga Tanis, Washington correspondent for Turkey's Hurriyet daily newspaper, Turkey has two conditions for a Menbic operation: 1.Arab tribes that will take part in the operation should be separate from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is affiliated with the YPG. 2.The United States must step up its air support to the Turkey-backed opposition groups in Marea. According to Hurriyet writer Verda Ozer, who accompanied Erdogan on his US trip, Ankara made a proposal to Washington. "Give up the PYD. Instead, we will fight [IS] on the ground with Arab and Turkmen groups we support, Ozer wrote. The PYD is the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party; the YPG is its armed branch. Ozer added that Turkey asked for US air support for Turkish soldiers in ground operations, but Washington's administration said it wont give up on the PYD and also warned of Russia's possible reaction if Turkish soldiers take part in a ground operation. Menbic, Al Bab and Jarablus on the western side of the Euphrates River are under IS control, while the Azaz-Marea line parallel to the river is controlled by Ankara-backed groups. Turkey says these groups in the Azaz-Marea pocket will prevent the Kurds from crossing west of the Euphrates River and serve as an alternative force to expel IS from the region. There are, however, problems with both of Turkey's proposals. The YPG breaking off from the SDF is incompatible with the realities of the region, and groups supported by Turkey cannot control the region on their own. The numbers and capacities of these groups, said to have 3,000 fighters, are exaggerated. Moreover, their relations with al-Qaeda and Salafi jihadist groups are being overlooked. The US administration insists on working with the SDF, whose backbone is the YPG, but which also has Arab, Turkmen and Syrian elements. These contradictory plans are delaying the closure of a 98-kilometer (61-mile) border gap that is IS' only window to the outside world and accommodates the flow of militants. Since the Syrian army recaptured Palmyra from IS, the United States also feels the need for a victory hence, the increasing pressure on Ankara. A US delegation was dispatched to Ankara on the heels of Erdogans Washington visit to work on operational plans. The current plan being considered is to delay action on the Jarablus front and focus on Menbic. The Kurds are being flexible to ease American planning but without exiting from the stage. An interesting development in this critical process has been the setting up of the Menbic Military Council. This may well be part of a formula to lower the YPG's visibility. The council, established at the Tishrin Dam (south of Jarablus), is discreetly led by the Kurds and includes groups such as Shams al-Shamal Brigades, Suwwar al-Menbic, Jund al-Haramain, Martyrs of Euphrates and Turkmen al-Menbic. Al-Monitor asked a Kurdish source familiar with US-Kurdish interactions whether the United States, which used to attach priority to liberating Raqqa, has changed its approach. What does the American plan entail now? Has it shared this plan with the Kurds? What role will the Kurds have? Is the United States in touch with Russia about this issue? Our Kurdish source replied, The US had shifted priority from Jarablus and Raqqa because of Turkeys reactions. We wanted to liberate west of Euphrates first. But when the Syrian army succeeded at Palmyra, the US agreed that the Menbic operation was feasible. After all, they also need a victory. The US doesnt want the regime forces to control this region. "[Bashar al-]Assads forces are preparing for operations at Aleppo. If the SDF wont do it, regime forces will dominate the region. The plan is to first liberate Menbic and set up a civil administration there, as was done at Tell Abyad. Meanwhile, Jarablus will be encircled, but not under the YPG banner. Of course the SDF will be the main force, but to appease Turkey, credit will be given to the role of the local population. I think the US has shared this plan with the Russians. What do Kurds say to Turkeys idea of deploying other forces including the Turkmens? Al-Monitor's Kurdish source said that, just as there are Turkish sensitivities, there are also Kurdish concerns. YPG will not allow Turkmen units like the Sultan Murat Brigade to enter the area. We cannot allow [IS] mentality to prevail in the region under different connotations," he said. "What will change if [IS] goes but is replaced by al-Nusra Front? Al-Monitor asked the same questions of PYD co-chair Salih Muslim. The Menbic Military Council was [just] established. I dont have the full details, but Kurds will either be a part of that body or will coordinate with it. Fifty percent of Menbic villages are Kurds. There cant be an operation like this without the Kurds. Our priority is to cleanse these villages from [IS]. Second is Jarablus, which is the transit route for [IS]. Unless you cut that off, you cannot liberate Raqqa, Muslim told Al-Monitor. I dont know how they will persuade the AKP [Justice and Development Party] rule in Turkey, but something has to be done. You cannot ignore that Kurds make up more than 50% of Menbic, Azaz and Al Bab. Kurds have armed units inside the SDF that used to fight against the regime, and now they fight [IS]. Turkey cannot reject the Kurds. If it is going to live alongside the Kurds, then it has to accept their existence. Kurds refer to Tell Abyad when they discuss the local administration to be set up after the liberation of Menbic. Kurdish sources persistently say the YPGs goal is not to dominate the area after expelling IS. As in Tell Abyad, control will be handed over to local elements, they say. Naturally, despite this apparent flexibility, Kurds have not given up on their goal of opening a corridor between Afrin and Kobani cantons. They dismiss Ankaras allegations that this corridor is an integral part of the Kurdish dream of setting up a Kurdish state between the Tigris River and the Mediterranean Sea. It's important to establish which force will be liberating Menbic and Jarablus, but just as vital is determining who will be in charge afterward. Kurds have been making discreet contact with some local notables and tribal leaders in the area controlled by Turkish-supported groups. Kurds who are careful to keep a low profile in such contacts have been able to set up a friendly network in the Shehba area despite Turkey's warning. There are also Arabs and Turkmens in that network. Kurds are preparing the joint administration of Shehba after liberating it from IS by setting up a council of elders and an executive committee. Parallel to civilian activities, military operations were launched from the Tishrin Dam to the north and from Afrin to the east. This is how Menagh air base was recovered. Kurdish operations were halted near Azaz and Tel Rifat because of artillery fire from Turkey and the US decision to appease Ankara. In summary, IS infiltration of Turkey through the 60-mile border gap, the role of those infiltrators in terror operations in Europe and the relocation of some of them to Libya have made Ankaras game-spoiler attitude unbearable. Washington, which has promised Ankara there wont be a Kurdish corridor, feels it has to do something. Americans dont think Ankaras demands that Arab tribes should be separated from the YPG are workable. Washington isn't in favor of US air support to Turkish-supported forces on the ground, which would then be allowed to control the Menbic-Jarablus line. We will now wait and see how the United States squeezed between its NATO ally Turkey and the Kurds, who are achieving results with their organizational and operational capacity will make do with interim formulas. Capture.JPG Go Build Alabama is hosting an eight-week tour of the state this spring, starting this week with a launch event involving Limestone County Schools and the Limestone County Career Technical Center (CTC) in Athens. The Follow the Flag campaign will target young people to raise awareness of the state's career opportunities in the skilled and construction trades. "Workforce development and economic development go hand in hand," said Jason Phelps, executive director for the Alabama Construction Recruitment Institute. "As our state's economy continues to grow, it's important our young people are prepared to take advantage of the rewarding and immediate opportunities available in the skilled and construction trades." Limestone County CTC provides training for 24 career paths and has 850 students from seven high schools in Athens and Limestone County. The county board of education spent $3.1 million in summer 2014 to expand the school's facilities and provide additional growth for its construction trade programs. Limestone County Schools Superintendent Tom Sisk said the goal is to help students prepare for opportunities in a growing field that is experiencing a shortage of skilled workers. "We're proud to partner with Go Build, and have always been impressed by the growth of our students once they enter our programs and are able to access the unique hands on experience we offer," he said. In addition to Limestone County, the Go Build flag will visit: Gadsden - Gadsden State Community College April 11-17 Birmingham - BJCC for SkillsUSA April 18-24 Tuscaloosa - Tuscaloosa Career and Technology Center April 25 - May 1 Selma - Wallace Community College May 2-8 Montgomery - MPACT May 9-15 Dothan - Wallace State Community College May 16-22 Mobile - Barton Academy May 23-29 Pepper Place collage.jpg The Market at Pepper Place begins its 2016 season on April 9 and continues every Saturday through Dec. 10. (Images courtesy of The Market at Pepper Place) The Market at Pepper Place opens its 2016 season this Saturday, with about 100 Alabama farmers, food vendors, artisans and craftspeople scheduled for the opening weekend. The farmers and producers market continues every Saturday, rain or shine, through Dec. 10. Hours are 7 a.m. to noon. Visitors to the market this Saturday can expect to find such spring produce as strawberries, cauliflower, lettuces, leafy greens, mushrooms and sweet potatoes, according to The Market at Pepper Place executive director Leigh Sloss-Corra. Farmers and vendors will set up shop in tents located in the parking lot of the Pepper Place complex at 2829 Second Ave. South, as well as along 29th Street between Second and Third Avenues South. Among the farmers returning to the market this year are Calvert Farm, Crocker Farms, Hepzibah Farms, Penton Farms, Snow's Bend Farm and Southern Foothills, according to Sloss-Corra. This Saturday's market will also feature music from Debbie Bond and Radiator Rick on the parking lot stage and Fiddlin' in the Parlor on the 29th Street stage. Market guests also may enjoy breakfast burritos from Homewood Gourmet, as well as doughnuts, sausage biscuits, scones and hot and iced coffee. Chris Hastings' new OvenBird restaurant, which opened near the end of the 2015 Pepper Place season, will open for brunch starting at 9 a.m. New to the market this year will be the Makers Village, a weekly curated event featuring Alabama artisans and crafters, plus live music, food and demonstrations, workshops and lectures by some of the makers. Part of the Alabama Tourism Department's Year of Alabama Makers campaign, the Makers Village will take place in the parking lot next to OvenBird beginning June 4 and continuing every Saturday through Sept. 3. Those hours will be 8 a.m. to noon. For more information about The Market at Pepper Place, including a roster of farmers and vendors, go here. Actor Ewan McGregor, as Edward Bloom in "Big Fish," holds the mystical snake/stick in the film "Big Fish." The resin prop is for sale on Amazon. Ever wanted a memento from the feel-good movie "Big Fish," which was set in and filmed in Alabama? Now you can own an "original movie prop" for sale on Amazon from the Prop Store. If you were hoping for Ewan McGregor's shoes thrown over the utility line, or the hat Danny Devito wore as the circus ringmaster, you might be disappointed because what's for sale is ... a stick. But take heart in the fact that it is an important stick, at least in illustrating Tim Burton's fantastical story line, based on the book by Alabama native Daniel Wallace. The owners of Spectre, an abandoned set near Montgomery built by Burton to portray the fictional town in the movie, are hoping to restore it. The "Snake Stick" for sale for $595 on Amazon was used in the scene in which McGregor as Edward Bloom grabs a snake in the water but when he lifts it up, he sees it is actually a curved stick. The "Snake Stick" for sale for $595 on Amazon was used in the scene in which McGregor as Edward Bloom grabs a snake in the water but when he lifts it up, he sees it is actually a curved stick. (Source: Amazon.com) Here is the description from Prop Store: "Made from resin, this prop is textured with a realistic wood grain to look like a thin tree branch. The stick is curved in several places and one end resembles the head of a snake. Due to production use and storage this item features some wear with some of the adjacent twigs broken off, exposing the resin beneath the paint. Aside from the wear, this item remains in overall fair condition." The stick is 38 inches long. Click here to see the Amazon listing. If you visit the Prop Store's website directly, you'll find four other "Big Fish" props for sale. They include: Nurse's record for Edward Bloom, $145. "This item can be found in the hospital room of the older Edward as his son speaks with the doctor about his father's stories. The report, which is held on a metal clipboard, has been filled out in pen and notes Edward's temperature, blood pressure, condition, and prescribed medication." Edward Bloom's pajamas, $489. "These pyjamas can be seen in the first half of the film in the real time sequences when Ed is ill in bed, desperate to share his stories with his son. The striped pale blue pyjamas, made by 'Anto' in Beverley Hills, have a label inside the shirt collar with the actor's initials and the date 'Dec 2002'." Custom made for actor Albert Finney. Handi-Matic Accessory Kit, $489. "This box and others like it can be seen when a young Ed Bloom has gone for an interview at Handi-matic. The box has a picture of the Handi-Matic hand on the front with the words 'kitchen accessory kit' alongside." Edward Bloom's draft letter, $395. "This item was made for the scene in which young Sandra (Alison Lohman) visits Edward in the hospital after agreeing to marry him. This letter is an order to report for induction into the Armed Forces from the Selective Service system. This unsigned document displays Edward's name and address in Ashton, Alabama, along with instructions on reporting for induction. Included with this letter is an envelope with Edward's address." Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com Don't Edit Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com Things to Do in Tuscaloosa: April 8-10 Here's what's shaking in the Druid City this weekend, including the Tour de Tuscaloosa on Saturday. (Ben Flanagan/AL.com) Don't Edit Lawrence Specker | lspecker@al.com Dumpstaphunk at Druid City Music Hall Dumpstaphunk will perform at the Tuscaloosa venue on the Strip on Saturday at 8:30 p.m., with doors opening at 7:30. The all-ages show will also feature Tuscaloosa's own The Doctors and The Lawyers and other special guests. Tickets cost $10-$15. Purchase tickets here. (Michael Weintrob photo courtesy of Silverback Artist Management) Don't Edit Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com Tuscaloosa River Market Saturday, 7 a.m. until noon Tuscaloosa River Market, 1900 Jack Warner Parkway Located on the banks of the Black Warrior River, the Tuscaloosa River Market has a farmers market every Saturday morning from 7 a.m, until noon. Learn more at www.tuscaloosarivermarket.com. Don't Edit Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com 5k Race to Solve the Puzzle and Walk for Autism The Autism Society of Alabama will host its annual Walk for Autism, the single-most powerful fundraising event in April that unifies thousands of participants statewide in support of the mission and projects of the Autism Society. Autism is the fastest growing developmental disability in the U.S., and affects as many as 50,000 people in Alabama. The walk will take place Saturday starting at 7 a.m. at the Tuscaloosa Riverwalk at 100 Greensboro Avenue. (Ben Flanagan/al.com) Don't Edit Don't Edit Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com Tour de Tuscaloosa More than 10,000 people attended last year's event (combined with Druid City Arst Festival) and organizers expect more of the same in 2016. The race returns with a criterium located near Government Plaza Saturday and a road race the next day. On Sunday, the venue will move out to Sipsey Valley High School with a challenging 12.5-mile Road Race Loop. Racers will ride for $8,000 in purse, prizes and primes. Junior Series races are included. The event starts at 8 a.m. Saturday. (Ben Flanagan/AL.com) Don't Edit Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com Druid City Arts Festival The annual regional celebration of original arts with a focus on music returns. This multi-genre, week-long festival culminating on Saturday a free, all-day, all-ages festival from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. in Government Plaza in downtown Tuscaloosa. The Druid City Arts Festival's goal is "to provide a high quality arts and music festival that strengthens Tuscaloosa as a destination market for the arts circuit and to educate, engage and inspire the youth and adults about the arts and humanities within the Tuscaloosa community." Learn more at www.druidcityartsfestival.com. (Ben Flanagan/AL.com) Don't Edit Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com The Great Tailgate BBQ Cook-off The inaugural Great Tailgate BBQ Cook-Off benefiting Habitat for Humanity of Tuscaloosa will host 16 teams competing in various barbecue categories including beef, chicken and pork. For a suggested donation of $10, guests will receive three tasting tickets to sample three meats of their choice. Guests can vote for their favorite dishes in the People's Choice category. Visit www.greattailgatecookoff.com for participation and sponsorship information. Check it out on Saturday from noon until 5 p.m. at Government Plaza. Don't Edit Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com New Orleans Jazz Brunch with Voodoo Saints at 301 Tuscaloosa's downtown restaurant 301 Bistro, Bar and Beer Garden started a new weekend tradition, hosting a weekly Sunday New Orleans Jazz Brunch from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. Local artists Voodoo Saints will perform from noon until 2:30 p.m. Enjoy some New Orleans food and music on Sunday. (301 Bistro, Bar and Beer Garden) Don't Edit Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com Tuscaloosa's Got Talent "Drishti Presents Tuscaloosa's Got Talent" (hosted by Madison & Shepherd) will take place Sunday at 4 p.m. Tickets cost $12 per person. All proceeds benefit Project Blessings, while $1 from each ticket sold goes to the Bama Theatre. The historic Bama Theatre is located at 500 Greensboro Avenue in downtown Tuscaloosa. (Ben Flanagan/al.com) Don't Edit Don't Edit Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com Movies! The Cobb Hollywood 16 has two new movies this weekend, including the Melissa McCarthy R-rated comedy "The Boss" and the first-person action flick "Hardcore Henry." Check Fandango for showtimes. (Universal) "Mrs. Bentley is a champion for women who have ever been made to feel they weren't good enough, smart enough or young enough. She walked away from the enticing spotlight and alluring power that often blinds common sense and stuck to her principles of honor and dignity." Those are the words of columnist Leslie Anne Tarabella, who praised Dianne Bentley for her poise in the midst of the scandal involving Gov. Robert Bentley. "Perhaps it's the shadow cast by the Vulcan that lends just the right conditions to grow a perfect steel magnolia in Alabama, but whatever it is, Mrs. Bentley tapped into it and is one of the many ladies in the Yellowhammer State who have the grit to persevere under pressure." AL.com's Facebook community chimed in as well, with many agreeing that the former first lady has shown tremendous character in the past few weeks. Others, however, were a bit more skeptical. What are your thoughts on Dianne Bentley? Does she deserve praise? Let us know in the comments below and over on Facebook too. As part of a growing cooperative movement in New York, two groups of immigrant women drive business and redirect power. This article originally misidentified the picture of Juana Dwyer and said Beyond Care was founded in 2012. It was, in fact, founded in 2008. Brooklyn, New York At a coffee shop in central Brooklyn, facing an empty square where a freezing wind blows in the early afternoon, Rocio Morales and Leydis Munoz discuss various ideas for expanding their Brooklyn-based business. I believe we can do so much more, says Munoz, who recently became vice president of the childcare services provider Beyond Care. We want to be in all five boroughs of New York City. Thats the big challenge, says Morales, who is president of the business, and adds: We have many ideas. Her voice is slightly hoarse from a stubborn cold but today is bad timing for being sick. Morales and Munoz technically have the day off from work and are spending it each with her young child a couple of strollers are parked directly in front of the two women, both in their 30s but they are also attending a meeting with Beyond Cares lawyer later this afternoon. Morales and Munoz are confident about the potential of their business because it follows a model that may seem obvious, but makes Beyond Care stand out in the industry of domestic work: They respect workers by ensuring fair salaries and working conditions, and support them in training and developing their skills. Committed, highly professional nannies will attract clients who want their children in the best of hands, and that will help Beyond Care to expand further, Munoz believes. Because we have really good nannies. Really good, she says with emphasis. Other agencies have no training. We dont stop training. Theres always something new to learn, says Munoz. Me as a single mother, she continues and nods towards the stroller with her sleeping toddler, I want someone who can take care of my child. That philosophy is the exception rather than the rule in the domestic work industry, where workers, most of whom are women, earn substandard pay, experience little economic mobility, and rarely have employment contracts or enjoy basic rights, according to the National Domestic Workers Alliance, who call this line of work invisible and unregulated. Driving change to empower low-income women At Beyond Care, the workers drive the change they want to see in the industry. They are able to do so because they own the business. Beyond Care is a worker-owner cooperative, made up of 46 Latina women who work and earn their salary through the business that they also own and run. All members have invested in the cooperative and have a vote in its democratic governance, and they equally benefit from its success. Morales, while part of the cooperatives leadership, is a worker-owner herself, and knowingly sums up the most tangible benefits: Better salaries, vacation, sick days. I never had a contract before or was paid for sick days, Munoz says. This is a real job, and we take it seriously. You have a limit, and you dont go out of your contract. A current surge of interest in worker cooperatives builds on experiments with alternative economies and democratic business in the 1970s and 80s, but today theres a new focus on the models potential to empower low-income workers in the US, particularly minority women. Social mobility is generally hard to achieve for the countrys working poor, but women, whose salaries are at only 78 percent of what men earn in the US, represent two out of three low-income workers. Rather than participating in a rigged system, women cooperative worker-owners flip how business and power traditionally work. The democratic workplace becomes not just a job, it becomes a site of community and solidarity building, says Rachel Isreeli, who is Worker Cooperative Developer at the nonprofit Center for Family Life, a programme of SCO Family of Services, which incubated Beyond Care in 2008 when it was founded by 17 immigrant women. The centre has helped develop eight immigrant cooperatives since 2006, the majority all-women, and recognises an interest in the model of low-capital cooperatives, Isreeli explains. [That] allows people to create a cooperative that works for them rather than mold themselves into an existing business model. In 2015, the City of New York set aside $1.2m to support 26 existing cooperatives, such as Beyond Care, and support the start-up of another 40, marking the largest sum of money ever invested in the sector by an American city government, according to The Democracy at Work Institute. A survey undertaken by a group of organisations who have made those cooperatives possible showed that 77 percent of the entrepreneurs and cooperative members who benefited from the initiative were women, and 76 percent Latina. Professional pride Members of Beyond Care try not to work on the first Saturday of the month, when they all gather at Center for Family Life in Brooklyn for their monthly four-hour meeting. At around 9am, the women start filing into a room with turquoise walls, and chairs arranged in a classroom setting, with greetings of buenos dias good day in Spanish sounding through the open door. Many arrive with coffee cups and plastic bags containing breakfasts of bagels and juice cartons, people small-talk, and a few members drop off their children with a nanny, who the cooperative hires for the occasion. Of the 46 Beyond Care members, 45 are present for the meeting that morning, and they bring in several extra folding chairs from another room. Morales stands up with other members of the leadership, all wearing blue T-shirts with the Beyond Care logo. Four years ago, when a friend introduced her to Beyond Care, she didnt know how a cooperative worked. Morales says: I just sat in a corner and listened. New members undergo weeks of professional training, and must be approved by existing members based on their experience and values, and worker-owners do further education around four times a year. Courses range from physiotherapy and etiquette classes to speech therapy, while workers learn to spot if a child has special needs. I have many years of experience, but I can see those things because of my training, says Munoz, who highlights how the cooperative restores professional pride and respect in an occupation that much of society undervalues. Some people dont realise that this is a career and think being a nanny just happened to you. But theres a big difference between being a babysitter and a nanny, Munoz says. A nanny is there for your child 100 percent; when theyre sick, on their first day of school, she continues. Its a lot of work. If you dont feel appreciated, its hard. Beyond Care makes you feel that you are appreciated. It definitely makes me feel like its a career. Years ago, Munoz stopped working in childcare to train as a medical assistant and landed a job upon graduation. But she missed her old work while sitting at her desk, glancing at the clock, thinking, at this time I would be in the park with the kids, Munoz recalls. She initially came to Beyond Care just for the nanny training, which is available to non-members, but has now been part of the cooperative for two years. You have to love working with kids to do this kind of work, she says. Raising wages On Tuesday nights, a group of nine Filipina women, together the Damayan Cleaning Cooperative, gather at a small office in Manhattans midtown, located on a street busy with traffic from nearby Penn Station. Im coming straight from work, says Guada Omaguing on her way up the narrow, carpeted stairs. Several of her fellow cooperative members are in a similar situation, so the women take turns bringing cooked meals to the meetings. Holding brightly coloured paper plates, they help themselves and each other to the trays and bowls of noodles, fried fish and chicken liver, grapes and blueberries. Who took notes last time? asks one cooperative member as they are about to start the meeting. I did but I cant read them, answers Omaguing as she looks over her handwritten notes. In September 2015, members of the nonprofit Damayan Migrant Workers Association founded Damayan Cleaning Cooperative, which, just as Beyond Care, receives counselling and support from the Center for Family Life. These are still the early days of the business and there are not yet enough clients for all members to work exclusively for the cooperative. Tonights agenda includes approving the cooperatives vision statement, according to which the cooperative will promote the rights and liberation of all workers, women, immigrants and marginalised communities, as member Emma Serafin reads to the group. One member is concerned the statements use of the word women gives the impression that the cooperative excludes men. Lydia Catina Amaya raises her hand to comment: We know that in our culture, the immigrants are mostly women. They do everything for their families, they make sacrifices. Amaya places her head between her hands for a moment and continues: Its particularly women who have experiences of exploitation. A few more opinions are voiced, and everyone agrees to keep the statement as it is. Domestic poverty pushes millions of Filipinos, mostly women, to seek employment in foreign countries in order to provide for their families. But many end up as victims of labour trafficking and abusive working conditions. WATCH: War on women, war on liberty? Fighting for rights The Damayan Migrant Workers Association educates and mobilises workers to fight back against exploitative systems, and the cleaning cooperative is an integrated part of that movement, says executive director of the association Linda Oalican. So [the cooperatives] model is not just a business model, it should be an organisational strategy to develop the power and leadership of workers. To Juana Dwyer, a year-long member and chairwoman at the worker association, and a founding cooperative member, that strategy is crucial. Its a big thing to know your rights. It gives confidence, Dwyer says. Our jobs are very important to the people on Wall Street, to doctors. They cant work without domestic workers. We make the jobs of others possible. Dwyer left the Philippines and arrived in the US on September 8, 2001 a day of celebration of the Virgin Mary, she explains. That is a fact of significance to her since, Dwyer says, she used to pray to the Virgin Mary in times of hardship. A survivor of labour trafficking like the majority of her fellow cooperative members, she spent her first years in the US in isolation at a care institution, where she was on call 24 hours a day, barely making any money. Like many other undocumented immigrants, she had no voice, Dwyer explains, and did not know her rights. Later, she worked for different families and drily sums up the attitude of many clients towards domestic workers. When you work for a private family, they say, We treat you like family. But they give you leftovers. One client refused to pay her the agreed two weeks vacation, and told her it was rude of her to inquire about the missing pay by text message, then fired her and withheld her severance pay. Actually, they fired me by texting, Dwyer says and scoffs at the irony. This time, however, she went to Damayan Migrant Workers Association, which helped her win back the money. Dwyer hopes to grow the cooperative, which ensures contracts, safe working conditions and $15 an hour in wages for workers. From her experience running a business in the Philippines, she knows that requires dogged determination, and she tells anyone who will listen about the cooperative. When I go to my doctor, I talk about Damayan, Dwyer says. READ MORE: Turning the page for feminism But advocates have pointed out that hugely successful cooperatives abroad benefit from public contracts and laws that help elevate them, and that it may require further policy change for cooperatives in the US to expand. As Oalican points out, Damayan Cleaning Cooperative depends on clients who agree with their mission of giving workers higher wages, while many conventional companies simply will not care. Isreeli thinks that cooperative organisations and entrepreneurs can have the mutual goal to achieve a union between creating cooperatives and using them as a tool to change policy and standards. We can create coops where members are politically conscious, involved and able, alongside community members, to change the policies while doing development work. What better people to speak to these issues than worker-owners themselves? Isreeli says. It wont happen without a movement. Growing community At Beyond Cares meeting, the cooperative welcomes nine new members, who receive diplomas as proof that they have done the required training and are professional nannies. The new worker-owners study the documents, and hand them over to others who ask to have a look. The cooperative provides a community and network of professional women, who support each other in an otherwise solitary business, Morales says. And after several years in business, the leadership wants to expand that community further. We want more members in not just Brooklyn, but also in Manhattan and Queens, Morales says. We need to start looking around: What do our members want? Sure, it can be hard to reach agreements among a growing group of worker-owners, Munoz admits. To have that many strong, independent and professional women in one room, she says and laughs, can be a challenge. But the benefits of an empowered community outweigh those challenges. We all work for the best of the coop. We want it to grow bigger, Munoz says. Its a diamond in the rough. READ MORE: Going places girls education in Ghana Lima, Peru Victoria Vigo was in the 32nd week of her third pregnancy when she went to hospital complaining of pains. She was immediately taken to the operating room and given a C-section. Her baby lived for only a few hours. Vigo was devastated. But what made it worse was overhearing one of the doctors talk about how she was now being sterilised. It was 1996 and Vigo had heard rumours of other women being forcibly sterilised, but had never thought it would happen to her. Five months later, when a group of researchers from a local university visited her, she found out that her name was on a list that had been sent to the government as proof that the hospital had fulfilled their quota of sterilisations. Vigo sued the hospital and won her case several years later. Between 1996 and 2000, during Alberto Fujimoris second term as president, somewhere between 260,000 and 350,000 people, mostly poor, female and Quechua-speaking, were sterilised. In 2,074 cases, women gave statements testifying that the procedure had been done against their will. Some reported the use of violence, some to being offered money in exchange for undergoing it and others, like Vigo, said theyd had their tubes tied while hospitalised for other reasons. At least 18 women are known to have died of complications arising from the procedure. Ollanta Humala, the current president of Peru, created a database of the victims. Furthermore, last May, the authorities reopened a case against Alberto Fujimori who is already serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and crimes against humanity for directing death squads over his role in the sterilisation programme. Most doctors feared losing their jobs In the 1990s, Dr Rogelio del Carmen Martino worked in a small medical centre in the north of Peru called Centro de Salud Maternal Infantil de Castilla (CESAMICA), near the city of Piura. He says his team of four an anaesthetist, two surgeons and a gynaecologist were ordered to sterilise 250 women in three days. It was technically impossible, Del Carmen told Al Jazeera by phone. Such a treatment would put the lives of patients in danger. We would have to work like a chorizo machine. So we went to Lima to complain, but during the meeting it was clear to me that the people giving the orders on behalf of the Fujimori government didnt understand why their demand was so absurd. Some in Del Carmens team had studied abroad, so they knew that even if they were fired as a result of refusing to sterilise the women, other job opportunities would arise. But, the doctor says, his team was an exception: most medical staff in village hospitals didnt enjoy the same luxuries, and therefore didnt feel they could complain about the situation. Most doctors feared losing their jobs, he says. So they simply had to do what they were told and reach their quotas. For Del Carmen the most important thing now is justice. And as Keiko Fujimori, Alberto Fujimoris daughter, runs for the presidency in Sundays elections, he says he isnt drawing attention to the actions of her father in order to discredit her. I respect politicians, he explains. And this is not just a story to smear Keiko Fujimoris name. But it is important that it becomes clear what happened in that period, and who was responsible for it. After her parents divorce in 1994, at the age of 18, Keiko Fujimori became the First Lady of Peru until the end of her fathers presidency in 2000. As a result, many consider her tainted by the actions of her father during these years. In a recent speech at Harvard, Keiko Fujimori blamed medical staff when asked about the sterilisations, and said she lamented the damage inflicted on the victims. But, according to Peruvian newspaper La Republica, the orders containing these quotas came directly from the Ministry of Public Health. Eliminate poverty, eliminate the poor Last Tuesday, Victoria Vigo went to the Plaza San Martin in the Peruvian capital of Lima to take part in a march against Keiko Fujimori. The date of the march was symbolical to the protesters: in 1992, Alberto Fujimori staged a coup against his own government on that day dissolving Congress, intervening in the judiciary and letting the armed forces block independent media. La Republica published empty pages the following day in protest against the censorship. During the protest, in which at least 30,000 people participated, the demonstrators chanted: We are the children of the villagers who you couldnt sterilise. The idea then was: to eliminate poverty, we simply eliminate the poor, says Sandra de la Cruz, a social sciences student and communications officer at the organisation Somos 2074 y muchas mas, which refers to the 2,074 women who testified to being sterilised against their will. The historical context was very violent. There were soldiers everywhere fighting the [Shining Path] guerrillas. Imagine tents set up in this chaotic situation, where women were led without understanding anything that was told to them about what was going to happen. For Vigo, a mea culpa would be sufficient. She says she doesnt bear a grudge and doesnt want to see anybody jailed for what happened to her. But, she says, it is important that somebody takes responsibility for it. I am one of the few victims who does speak Spanish and dares to talk about what happened, she says. But Vigo is not afraid that something like this could happen again if Keiko Fujimori becomes president. She believes the young are too well informed nowadays. They are watching her [Fujimori] with every step she takes. So, even if she wanted to, a programme like the sterilisations would be impossible to set up. Times have changed for the better. The world is plagued by elites who ask citizens to tighten their belts while they go on with their lavish lifestyles. The Panama Papers leak offer for the first time a clear understanding of how world elites engage in shady financial mechanisms to avoid paying taxes and thus contribute to the financing of their national welfare system and development efforts. More importantly, the colossal sums mentioned shed doubt on the way those sums were accrued in the first place and the probity of 140 senior officials many of whom are heads of state from 50 countries. What can be considered as the biggest leak in the history of data journalism in the words of Edward Snowden, underscores the hypocrisy of many rulers who shamelessly opened offshore entities to protect personal assets while enforcing fiscal burdens on their populace. From David Cameron whose father managed during 30 years an offshore holding in Panama as he was leading the fight against a Greek bailout in Brussels to the family members of seven African head of states. From Mauricio Macri elected president of Argentina three months ago on a political platform to fight corruption to the rulers of some of the most authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and Asia. All have demonstrated the same blatant cynicism while exempting themselves from the fiscal rules they imposed on their subjects or electorate. Unfair propaganda? Most will deny any involvement and will claim instead to be the victim of an unfair propaganda from foreign forces to destabilise their country. However, it will be hard for Vladimir Putin to explain how his best friend, a musician, is at the centre of a billion-dollar offshore scheme. READ MORE: Privilege and the Panama Papers Similarly, it will be tough for authorities in China to explain why the names of family members of at least eight current or former members of the Communist Partys elite Politburo Standing Committee including Deng Jiagui, the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping can be found in the data leaked. Even if the state apparatus immediately tries to contain the spread of the information in both countries, the magnitude of the scandal will eventually force explanations. The main takeaway from the Panama Papers leak is the confirmation that regardless of geopolitical interest, nationality or political affiliation, our world is plagued by the corruption of our political and economic elites... by The argument of a foreign plot is hard to defend. First because the Panama Papers implicates and exposes political rivals. If Putin is presented as having hidden his wealth, so is Ukraines President Petro Porochenko, one of Putins most vocal opponents. The leak implicates Bashar al-Assad through his cousin Rami Makhlouf at the same time as the rulers of several countries who pledged to bring him out of office. More importantly, the data analysis has been carried out simultaneously by 108 news agencies from 76 countries, all members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) which has mainly been known until now for its work denouncing US lobbyists. The main takeaway from the Panama Papers leak is the confirmation that regardless of geopolitical interest, nationality or political affiliation, our world is plagued by the corruption of our political and economic elites who regularly ask everyday citizens to tighten their belts while they use offshore companies to perpetuate their lavish lifestyle. In this scenario, whistle blowers and the ICIJ are the only significant counter power shedding light on the abuse of dominant social casts. In a global society that remains dominated by a flawed nation state system in which rulers can perpetuate the legality of offshore financial schemes, albeit morally contestable, the resistance can only be a transnational popular movement of empowered individual citizens. Corrupt behaviour The political future of senior officials and head of state whose corrupt behaviour has been revealed in the Panama Papers will vary significantly from one country to the next. Putin will probably use these denunciations to his advantage, on the path to the upcoming presidential elections at the end of the year. His control over domestic media is such that he will portray himself as a rebellious scapegoat and his re-election remains very likely despite the developing economic recession. On the other hand, reactions in more liberal democracies may jeopardise the political future of senior officials linked to tax evasion in Panama. Hundreds of protesters in Iceland swarmed the capital Reykjavik calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. So far, David Cameron has declined to comment on the involvement of his father in these offshore schemes, but he will have to face heavy fire in Parliament and with media with a certain impact on the end of his time in office. Over the next couple of weeks, the Panama Papers will offer us a survey of the healthiness of domestic institutions in countries where elites have been compromised. From authoritarian regimes where the news will hardly be debated to vibrant democracies in which heads of state will be held accountable and might eventually have to step down. Remi Piet is assistant professor of public policy, diplomacy and international political economy at Qatar University. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Reports say Rolando del Torchio was released on the southern island of Sulu after ransom was paid. The armed group Abu Sayyaf has freed a former Italian priest after six months of captivity in Sulu the southern Philippine group of islands. Philippine troops and police found Rolando del Torchio on a ferry at Jolo port in Sulu province, and took him to a military clinic for an examination because of his poor health, a military report said. READ MORE: Abu Sayyaf back in the spotlight A Philippine news site reported that del Torchio was released after a ransom was paid. Another site reported $630,000 was paid. In Rome, the Italian foreign ministry thanked the Philippine government for its excellent cooperation and commitment, which allowed the release. Del Torchio has lived in the southern Philippines despite its history of violent attacks on other Italian priests. In 2011, Father Fausto Tentorio, who belonged to the same mission as del Torchio, was killed in Mindanao. Del Torchio left his Roman Catholic mission several years ago and started a pizza restaurant in Dipolog city. At his pizzeria last October, six gunmen seized and took him away in a van and then a motorboat. He was eventually taken to the Sulu archipelago, where Abu Sayyaf fighters have held several kidnapping victims in their jungle camps. News of del Torchios released was also greeted with relief in his adopted hometown of Dipolog, where he is widely popular. Long-running security problems have hounded the southern Philippines. Abu Sayyaf has been involved in deadly bombings, extortion, kidnappings for ransom, and beheadings in Sulu and other islands in Mindanao. In 2014, the group freed two German hostages after a $5.6m ransom was paid. It is believed the group is still holding several kidnap victims, including two Canadians and a Norwegian who were seized from a beach resort along with a Filipina woman. Egyptian fighter Rifai Ahmad Taha a former aide to Osama bin Laden reported killed in Syria in a drone attack. A senior Egyptian al-Qaeda member and former aide to Osama Bin Laden was reportedly killed in an American air strike in northwestern Syria, a monitoring group and relatives confirmed. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Rifai Ahmad Taha, 60, who was fighting in Syria, died in a US drone strike on Tuesday in Syrias Idlib province. In Egypt, a relative said Tahas wife and brother received confirmation about his death and dozens of members of armed groups were paying condolences on Friday to the family. The relative spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press news agency. Al-Qaedas Osama bin Laden killed However, in Washington, Department of Defense spokesman Matthew Allen said officials couldnt confirm Tahas death. I can confirm that the US struck a vehicle killing several AQ militants, said Allen, using an acronym to refer to al-Qaeda. The results of this strike are still being assessed. Before joining al-Qaeda, Taha was a top figure in Egypts armed group Gamaa Islamiya, which massacred 58 foreign tourists in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor in 1997. Taha was jailed in 2001 in Egypt under the rule of then-president Hosni Mubarak after being detained in Syria and handed over to Cairo. He was released after Mubarak was removed from power in 2011. He was also involved in plotting an assassination attempt against Mubarak during a visit to Ethiopia in 1995. The former Egyptian president was not harmed when his convoy was hit by gunfire. In the early 1980s, Taha spent five years in jail after the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Osama bin Laden formed al-Qaeda after fighting with the mujahidin against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The group is blamed for carrying out the September 11 attacks on the United States that killed about 3,000 people in 2001. Bin Laden was killed in a raid in Pakistan by US special forces in May 2011. Police also looking into whether Mohamed Abrini, arrested along with four others, is the so-called man in the hat. Belgian authorities have confirmed the arrest of key Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini along with four other people, including a man they believe may have helped the Brussels bombers. The prosecutors said on Friday they were also looking into whether Abrini is the man in the hat, the surviving third suspect seen on CCTV images next to the two suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the Brussels airport on March 22. We are investigating if Abrini can be identified as the third person at the Brussels national airport, the so-called man with the hat, said prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt. Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian, has been on Europes most wanted list since the November 13 Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed. He was last seen two days before the attacks in a motorway service station CCTV video driving with another Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested last month towards the French capital from Belgium. The car they drove was used in the attacks, in which Abdeslams elder brother was a suicide bomber. Second metro bomber? Another man arrested on Friday, identified as Osama K, may have been present at the suicide bomb attack in the Brussels underground station of Maelbeek, prosecutors said. The man was seen in the company of Khalid el-Bakraoui before he blew himself up in the metro, and was also filmed buying the bags used in deadly attacks that same day on the Brussels airport. OPINION: The slaughter of the innocent in Brussels The investigators are now verifying whether Osama K can be positively identified as being the second person present at the time of the attack in the Maelbeek subway station, Van der Sypt said. Al Jazeeras Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, said if the metro link is confirmed, that would signal a big scoop for authorities. We know that this man was seen by the bags that the Belgian airport bombers used in their attack they hid their explosives in luggage so this is someone that theyve also been looking for extremely intensively over the last few weeks, Butler said. Media had previously mentioned a second underground attacker, but officials had not confirmed that. Coordinated attacks The attacks on Brussels airport and a metro train last month killed 32 people and wounded hundreds in the worst such incident in Belgian history. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), which claimed responsibility for the Brussels bombings, also took credit for coordinated attacks in Paris in November . Fridays arrest of five suspects came a day after Belgian authorities released photos and video of the man in the hat airport suspect. Five hours after the initial detentions, authorities were still carrying out a raid in the same Anderlecht area of Brussels. The government and top security officials gathered in a national security council meeting after Fridays detention to assess the consequences of the operation. At least six million children in Ethiopia face critical food shortages as a result of the worst drought in 50 years. The charity Save the Children warned on Friday that the number of Ethiopians without enough food is rising as the drought intensifies in the African country with children particularly vulnerable. The drought-affected area is vast with a population of about 30 million affected with more than a third in need of emergency food assistance. The region has now suffered three failed growing seasons in a row since mid-2014. More than 14,000 pastoralist families have been on the move since July, looking for work or clean water supplies. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, chief executive of Save the Children, pressed the international community to step up its support for those suffering. READ MORE: Ethiopia drought as bad for children as Syrias war Thousands of children are at high risk of malnutrition and waterborne diseases. Families are on the move, desperate to find food and water, Helle said in a statement. We have all the right early warning systems in place to prevent potentially enormous human suffering, but what use is early warning if the international community doesnt come forward? Aid agencies and the government said that they must raise more than $1.4bn of aid to handle the crisis, but that only about half of the amount has been collected. Habiba, a mother of seven children from Bekato, said she has suffered along with her children because of the crisis. Six of her children became sick and were being treated. There was no milk, food, or water as the well had dried up. Can you understand as a mother what it is like to see six of your children so ill? Layla, mother of four-year-old Malou, said her daughter had been diagnosed with pneumonia. We came here from our village. We had to walk six hours on foot to come here, Layla said. This is the longest drought I have ever seen. Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn urged the world last month to donate more towards food aid. The $1.4bn emergency appeal is the third largest in the world after those for Syria and Yemen, which are engulfed in war. Ethiopia was devastated by drought in the 1980s that exacerbated by a civil war killed hundreds of thousands of people and brought the countrys deadly famine global attention. Group calls the firing of Hesham Genena who alleged corruption cost Egypt $75bn between 2012-2015 unconstitutional. Lawyers in Egypt plan to appeal against the move by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to sack the countrys top auditor who reported that tens of billions of dollars had been lost to government corruption. Hesham Genena, the former head of Egypts Central Auditing Organisation (CAO), was fired on March 28, months after alleging in a TV interview that an audit found that corruption had cost the state an estimated $75bn. Genena was appointed head of CAO in 2012 by former president Mohamed Morsi, a member of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi was overthrown by Sisi in July 2013. Following Genenas allegations, Sisi appointed a fact-checking committee to look into the issue. On January 12 two weeks after its formation the committee accused the auditor of exaggerating the figures and misleading the public. Listening Post Testing times for Egypts media Several rights groups have condemned Genenas firing, saying Sisis move was incompatible with Egypts constitution. Last July, the president issued a decree giving himself powers to sack the heads of regulatory agencies, raising questions about the independence of such groups. The decree issued by the president does not give him the authority to sack [Genena], said Osama el-Shishtawy, founder of the National Movement for the Defence of Hesham Genena, an independent group made up of at least 200 lawyers. Shishtawy told Al Jazeera earlier this week that lawyers met Genena at his house and decided to file an appeal in Egypts Supreme Administrative Court. We agreed on forming an agenda to file an appeal on the dismissal sometime next week, he said. According to Article 215 of Egypts constitution, regulatory agencies, including the CAO, shall be technically, financially and administratively independent. The constitution clearly states that you cant dismiss the head of the Central Auditing Organisation, Kareem Abdel Rady, a lawyer and researcher for the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, told Al Jazeera. In order for this decree to be constitutional, the constitution itself would need an amendment, he added. Genenas media statements In December, Genena was cited in a news report as saying that the cost of corruption in 2015 alone exceeded $75bn. But the auditor later said his statements had been misreported, noting the $75bn figure was for the 2012-2015 period. Genena said the CAO report was done in cooperation with the Ministry of Planning and that the planning minister was aware of its findings. Al Jazeera made several attempts to contact the Ministry of Planning for comment without receiving an answer. READ MORE: Egypts top auditor faces backlash over graft comments Media reports cited Genenas lawyer saying the CAO report had been undertaken with the United Nations Development Programme. Al Jazeera contacted the UNDP office in Cairo but its representative referred to a gag order issued by the public prosecutor in January on any coverage of the 400-page reports findings. Following his dismissal, Genena was reportedly placed under house arrest by Egyptian authorities, but this was denied by a source close to Genena. There were no investigations of any kind held with Genena that would lead to any decision of a house arrest, the source told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. At the time of publication, Genena had not been questioned over alleged wrongdoing by any Egyptian authority, according to the source. He wasnt summoned to the general-prosecutor or the public prosecution, nor was he asked to go. Media reaction Genenas statements on corruption and his subsequent firing have been widely discussed in Egyptian media. TV presenter Amr Adib speculated that Genenas sacking had to do with disclosing information harmful to national security. Genena will live the rest of his life caught up in court cases, Adib said. On Wednesday, local newspaper Youm7 accused Genena of espionage, saying he had leaked national security information. A year before his dismissal, Genena alleged in a TV interview that members of Egypts Interior Ministry and public prosecution were trying to defame him by making accusations that he belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. Goebbels under Hitler depended on this method. Lie, then lie, until all the others believe you, Genena told Egypts Ten TV network in April 2015. Since his election in 2014, Sisi has promised to fight corruption in Egypt. In 2015, the country was ranked 88 out 168 in Transparency Internationals rating of public corruption. Asked whether appealing against the presidents decision to fire Genena would bring negative repercussions, Shishtawy said that he was speaking out in favour of the country and its president. [Sisi] is a man thats fighting corruption, so I dont think were doing anything against the state at all, he said. Follow Mohamed Hashem on Twitter: @mhashem_ Papal document says individual conscience should be guiding principle in dealing with sex, marriage and family life. Pope Francis has published new guidelines on family values including divorce and contraception saying Catholic leaders should show more mercy towards its members who stray from church doctrine. The long-awaited document released on Friday called the Joy of Love does not change Catholic doctrine, but insists the church should no longer sit in judgement of those who fail to live up its ideals on marriage and family. On thorny issues such as divorce and remarriage of Catholics, Francis said that he understands those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion. We have been called to form consciences, not replace to them. by Pope Francis But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness, the pontiff wrote in the 260-page document. Catholic doctrine states that unless church members receive annulment, or a church decree that their first marriage was invalid, they are committing adultery and cannot receive Communion. On Friday, Francis said that the rigorous response by conservatives was inconsistent with Jesus message of mercy. He repeated what high-ranking church members had endorsed in previous meetings, highlighting the need for pastors to help individual Catholics over the course of spiritual direction to determine what God is asking of them. By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God, he said. Last year, Francis issued an order that fast-tracks the process of annulment. Respect and dignity On contraception, which is also prohibited by the church, Francis stressed that a couples individual conscience must guide their decisions and the churchs pastoral practice. We have been called to form consciences, not replace to them, he said. But he squarely rejected abortion as horrendous. On same-sex marriage, the document repeated the churchs position that it cannot be equated to marriage between man and wife. But it also states that gays are not to be discriminated against, and are to be welcomed into the church with respect and dignity. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna, told a Vatican press conference on Friday that while there was no explicit change in church doctrine about the family, the document contained an organic development in church teaching. There are true novelties in this document, but no ruptures. But conservatives were less welcoming of the popes proposal. Mark Brumley, who publishes the writings of retired Pope Benedict XVI, said Francis emphasis on conscience doesnt mean this is a free pass to do whatever you want. Its a very tricky thing, Brumley said. Meanwhile, Francis condemned at length the verbal, physical and sexual violence many women endure in marriages. He rejected their sexual submission to men and the reprehensible practice of female genital mutilation. And he said the belief that feminism was to blame for the crisis in families today was completely invalid. Two hospitals in Homs hit by suspected government air strikes while medical workers shot dead north of Damascus. Besieged towns in Syria are facing critical humanitarian situations with aid workers trying to help their inhabitants being bombed in air strikes and targeted by snipers. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported on Friday that in the encircled East Ghouta district of Homs, two field hospitals, a school, and inhabited buildings had been bombed in the past week, killing at least 38 people and wounding 87 others including five medical staff. The catalogue of horror continues virtually unabated in many besieged areas, Dr Bart Janssens, MSF director of operations, said in a statement. We reiterate our call for an end to indiscriminate or targeted violence on civilians or civilian areas. READ MORE: US should not arm Syrian rebels East Ghouta remains under the control of armed groups fighting the Syrian government. Charlotte Morris, an MSF spokeswoman, told Al Jazeera that the Syrian military was suspected of carrying out the deadly air raids. Across Syria, an estimated 1.5 million people live in besieged areas, Morris said. In Zabadani, outside the capital Damascus, the surrounded towns only remaining medical doctor and a member of a rescue team were killed by a sniper after treating a patient, MSF said. Over the past few weeks, several areas in the Damascus region have been shelled, including al-Marj, Deir al-Safir and Zebdine. MSF said in Madaya, five people died including two children who could have been saved if medical evacuations had been allowed. The Daraya and Duma areas, meanwhile, remain completely blocked from any humanitarian access. Janssens urged government and rebel forces to allow medical evacuations and unhampered delivery of humanitarian supplies to civilians. According to the United Nations, more than 250,000 people have been killed and millions have fled their homes since Syrias conflict erupted in March 2011. The UN said it is planning to begin a large-scale evacuation of wounded and sick people from four besieged Syrian towns next week. Jan Egeland, who heads a UN-backed humanitarian task force for Syria, said a very major medical evacuation was planned for Madaya and Zabadani, both blockaded by the government and its allies, and Fuaa and Kafraya, besieged by rebels in Syrias northwest. Nazimuddin Samads killing is the latest in a series targeting secular bloggers and campaigners in Bangladesh. Bangladesh vowed on Friday to catch the killers of a law student murdered after criticising Islamists on social media as hundreds of secular activists held a protest demanding justice. Nazimuddin Samad, 26, was killed late on Wednesday near his university in the capital Dhaka by unknown assailants carrying machetes. It was the latest in a series of killings of secular bloggers and campaigners in Bangladesh and has sparked international outrage, as well as demands for the government to protect freedom of speech in the Muslim-majority country. Police on Friday filed a murder case and said that they were treating his death as a targeted killing. Abu Hena Muneem, a senior home ministry official, dismissed claims that the government was failing to protect secularists and said authorities were doing all they could to track down Samads killers. The accusations are not correct. Our law enforcement agencies are working very hard to find the culprits and they will soon be arrested, Muneem told AFP news agency. READ MORE: Bangladesh activist Nazimuddin Samad hacked to death Activists, however, expressed concerns about the governments readiness to protect them as they held a protest march in the capital. About 400 people chanted slogans including stop the culture of impunity, save secular Bangladesh. It is very worrying, said Imran Sarker, a spokesman for Bangladeshs biggest secular activists group, Gonojagoron Mancha. We wonder whether the government actually has the goodwill to put an end to this. Samads murder was the sixth such killing in 15 months. His childhood friend and fellow activist Gulam Rabbi Chowdhury said he had gone into hiding before the attack and deactivated his Facebook page for a number of months. The move came after two days of talks between Egyptian and Italian investigators in Rome ended without progress. Italy recalled its ambassador to Egypt on Friday in protest over what it said was a lack of progress in the investigation into the brutal murder of an Italian student in Cairo two months ago. Ambassador Maurizio Massari was summoned to Rome for consultations on an urgent assessment of the most opportune moves to renew efforts to find out the truth on the barbarous murder of Giulio Regeni, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said. The move came after two days of talks between visiting Egyptian and Italian investigators in Rome ended without a resolution of mounting tensions between the two countries. We want only one thing, the truth about what happened to Giulio, Gentiloni said in a tweet. READ MORE: Egypt prosecutors in Rome to discuss Giulio Regeni case Regeni was in Cairo doing research for his doctoral thesis on trade unions in Egypt on behalf of Britains University of Cambridge. He was last seen on January 25, a day on which Egypts security services were on high alert for possible demonstrations to mark the fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak. Seven days later, the 28-year-old was found dead on the side of a motorway on the outskirts of Cairo, with what Italian officials say were clear signs of torture. Egyptian authorities initially blamed the death on a road accident. Several other explanations for the murder were offered by Egyptian officials and media in the following weeks most recently that Regeni was the victim of a gang of robbers but none of them was judged credible by Italian authorities. OPINION: An Italian students death in Cairo and now we care? A statement by the Rome prosecutor in charge of the case said that the Egyptians had handed over phone records of two of Regenis Italian friends who were in Cairo at the time of his disappearance, as well as photos taken on the day his body was discovered. The statement made no mention of CCTV footage of the neighbourhood from which Regeni disappeared, which the Italians had asked to see, or whether Regeni was under surveillance before his abduction. The Egyptians indicated they were still considering the possibility that Regeni was abducted by an anti-foreigner criminal gang whose members all died in a police shoot-out last month. The Italian prosecutor reiterated his conviction that there are no elements to directly link the gang to the torture and death of Giulio Regeni, the statement said. The killing has jeopardised relations between the two countries, with Italy warning this week of diplomatic retaliation after complaining that Egypt was dragging its feet over the affair. Michel Samaha has jail sentence increased to nine years and nine months after a retrial for plotting bomb attacks. A Lebanese former minister convicted last year of smuggling explosives and planning attacks had his jail sentence increased to nine years and nine months in court on Friday after a retrial. Former information minister Michel Samaha, who has close ties to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was detained in August 2012 and sentenced in 2015 to four and a half years. This latest sentence was for his suspected motivations, and was actually set at 13 years. In Lebanon, however, a prison year is equivalent to nine months. Samaha, who was freed on bail in January pending his retrial, confessed to the charges before the first sentence was handed down, and gave details of a plot allegedly devised with Syrias security chief Ali Malmuk. Then Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi had described the shorter sentence as a travesty of justice. Rifi resigned in February, partly due to Samahas release on bail, which he said showed the Shia movement Hezbollah, an ally of Assad, was causing paralysis in state institutions. His bail was also cited by Saudi Arabias Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir as evidence of Hezbollahs growing clout in the country, as Riyadh cut aid to Lebanon as part of efforts to isolate its main regional rival, Iran. Syria war reflected Syria is Lebanons largest neighbour and before its civil war had long played a dominant role in the tiny Mediterranean country. Al Jazeeras Jamal El Shayyal, reporting from the Lebanese capital, said that this sentencing was a reflection of how the Syrian war is playing out in neighbouring Lebanons politics. Indeed, while ex-Prime Minister Saad Hariri, figurehead for the March 14 movement, tweeted out his support for Samahas conviction, other public figures close to Hezbollah also used Twitter to vent on the politicised nature of the trial. El Shayyal also highlighted another trial possibly taking place soon, of Sunni Muslim Shaykh Ahmed al-Assir, a supporter of rebel groups fighting President Assad in Syria accused of stoking armed conflict in Lebanon. Lebanon has already been on the brink ever since the regional conflict between Saudi and Iran started playing out here, El Shayyal said. Each side is trying to politicise [each issue] and score points. The 124 people sent from the Greek island of Lesbos to Turkey were from countries other than Syria. Two groups of migrants have been sent back to Turkey from Greece as part of a controversial EU-Turkey deal aimed at curbing the refugee and migrant flow to Europe. A ferry carrying 45 male migrants from Pakistan left the Greek island of Lesbos early on Friday before a second ferry was sent to Turkey, bringing the total of deportees to 124, officials told Al Jazeera. Before the first boat departed from Lesbos, several rights activists plunged into the water close to the small ferry, dangling from the anchor chain and flashing the V for victory sign in an attempt to prevent the vessel from leaving. They were plucked from the water by the Greek coastguard and the ferry eventually left port to transfer the Pakistanis to Dikili in Turkey, ERT television reported. More detainees expected to be released, including 40 students facing charges since March 2015. A Myanmar court has freed 69 jailed students in the first wave of detainee releases after Aung San Suu Kyi pledged that the release of activists and political prisoners would be the first priority of her new government. Suu Kyi guided the National League for Democracy party (NLD) to a landslide win at the polls in November and a confidant Htin Kyaw was sworn in as the countrys new president after more than five decades of military rule. The routine jailing of dissidents by the former junta stirred an international outcry and support for the pro-democracy movement. Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest, and many current NLD MPs served time in prison. According to local media reports, the political prisoners were among a more general amnesty for around 4,000 prisoners across the country. You 69 are all freed now without charges, said Chit Myat, township judge at the Tharrawaddy court, ending the prosecution of those students over an education protest that was crushed in a violent police crackdown in March 2015. Suu Kyi was sworn in as minister of foreign affairs, education and energy but the upper house of the Myanmar parliament passed a proposal to create a new position as state adviser that will give her a powerful role in running the country. In her first statement since assuming the new, broadly defined role, Suu Kyi said that she was going to try for the immediate release of political prisoners, political activists and students facing trial related to politics. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 90 political prisoners were in jail and more than 400 activists were facing trial as of February. The vast majority were arrested before last Novembers elections. Among those held were 40 students facing charges including unlawful assembly and rioting over education reform protests that were violently broken up by police in the central town of Letpadan in March 2015. Another 30 students are on bail but facing similar charges. Federal prosecutor calls for an investigation after leaked documents show the president had links with offshore company. Argentine President Mauricio Macri said he had nothing to hide after revelations in the Panama Papers that he had links with an offshore company. A federal prosecutor has called for an investigation into Macris involvement on Thursday. The president was among scores of global politicians and business figures named in documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up offshore companies. The son of an Italian-born business tycoon, Macri said he was not legally obliged to declare his connection with the named offshore company as he never had a stake in it. The president said he was simply director of the Bahamas-based company, Fleg Trading Ltd., now closed, which was created by his father to make investments in Brazil. I have acted in accordance with the law and have nothing to hide, Macri said in a televised news conference. I did not receive any payment for acting as a director [of offshore companies]. Tomorrow [Friday] I will present myself before the court with all information necessary for the judge to verify that what I have done is correct. I am calm. I have obeyed the law. I have nothing to hide. Critics say Macri owes a more thorough explanation of this and his alleged connection with another offshore company, Kagemusha SA, registered in Panama, given that such firms are often used to launder money and evade taxes. OPINION: Panama Papers Why should we care? Why do people have offshore companies? Congressman Hector Recalde said. In general, it is to hide something, and what we want to know is why the president was trying to hide something from the state. Thats why Macri needs to be investigated, he added. On Thursday, state prosecutor Federico Delgado asked the judiciary to investigate if Macris failure to declare his connection with the offshore company meant he had maliciously failed to complete his tax declaration, a crime which carries a sentence of 15 days to two years. The case was assigned to Judge Sebastian Casanello, who must now decide if there is sufficient evidence to open a probe. Macris appearance in the Panama Papers and the way his administration has handled the matter has cast some doubts over his 2015 campaign pledge to fight corruption. British Prime Minister David Cameron earlier admitted he benefited from the offshore investment fund set up by his late father, after days of pressure following the publication of the Panama Papers. He said he owned a stake in the Blairmore trust, which he sold in 2010 four months before taking office. Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson was forced to quit office as he became the first politician brought down by the leaks. US company set to attach experimental expandable space habitat to the International Space Station. If the thought of travelling for months or years in the confinement of a tiny spacecraft is making you give up on the idea of interplanetary exploration, then Thursdays arrival of an unusual cargo at the International Space Station could maybe make you change your mind. Designed to unfold once in space, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, could provide space missions with larger and more robust living quarters if proven successful. The 1400kg craft will be attached to a port on the station during a resupply run by private US space company SpaceX. It will expand out to be a fully deployed structure, and at that point the astronauts will actually enter the BEAM, and that will be a historic moment, Mike Gold, from Bigelow Aerospace, told Al Jazeera. Game changer Spacecraft are normally made from sealed aluminum shells, packed with insulation and shielding. Their size is usually limited by the type of rocket they are launched on. To get around this, Bigelow Aerospace developed an expandable craft that provides a habitat four times its packed-down size. This type of technology can be a complete game changer, Space Systems Expert at MIT Sydney Do told Al Jazeera. [It will make] deep space missions to asteroids, the Moon or Mars, a lot more economical and the reason why thats the case is inflatable technologies in general allow you to have more room for a smaller amount of mass. Protection in a hostile environment The walls of the habitat are made out of 16 layers of high-tech materials. These include pressure seals, radiation and heat protection, as well as a layer of material that is similar to the one used in bulletproof vests, in an effort to protect the habitat against the impact of micro-meteoroids or space debris. If you were going to get shot would you rather have aluminum in front of you or a Kevlar-like weave, which is a similar technology to which we use in our habitats? asks Gold. I would vote for the Kevlar. Its actually a much safer system when it comes to both radiation and the physical debris. The 4m-long experimental habitat has no windows, nor internal power, and will not be lived in by astronauts on the space station. Crew members will enter the module every few months to collect sensor data and inspect its general condition. Larger habitat planned The expandable space habitat will spend the next two years attached to the space station, undergoing tests, but Bigelow Aerospace has plans for a much bigger model. It says its B330, which can be expanded to provide 330 cubic metres of internal space, is big enough to house up to six crew memebers, and will make long-duration space travel to the Moon or Mars cheaper and more comfortable. As you spend more time in an extremely remote environment, psychologically it is more comforting for you if you have more volume, says Do. Its the difference between staying in a youth hostel and staying in the penthouse suite of a five-star hotel. If you are going to stay somewhere for many months to years, you want to live in that penthouse suite. Workers at cement plant kidnapped earlier this week after ISIL launched attack on Syrian government forces near Dumayr. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) has released most of the cement workers it kidnapped on Thursday, a monitoring group said. It was still unclear how many were being held and how many of the kidnapped Al-Badia cement factory workers were freed sources told Al Jazeera that the number was far less than 300 but ISILs Amaq website said the armed group had released nearly 300 workers. It also said that the group executed four workers for being from the Druze minority and would not release 20 men accused of belonging to a pro-government forces. Local officials in two nearby towns secured an agreement for ISIL to release the workers, kidnapped from the plant located near the town of Dumayr, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The monitoring group said that around 170 workers were freed after others had already managed to escape. A military source the told AFP news agency that he saw dozens of cement workers arrive on Friday evening at a nearby regime-held military airport. READ MORE: Mass grave discovered in Syrias recaptured Palmyra Syrian state television said ISIL had kidnapped 300 workers and contractors. The Observatory said 140 workers had fled before the fighters arrived. ISILs latest attacks near Damascus are seen as retaliation for military setbacks suffered by the group elsewhere in Syria. Last month, Syrian regime forces backed by Russian warplanes drove ISIL from the strategic and ancient city of Palmyra, which the fighters had controlled for 10 months. Reyhanli, Turkey His team was wrapping up. They had finished for the day. For hours, the volunteers had combed a strip of land near Idlib almost 25 metres long, in search of landmines. Proceeding centimetre by centimetre, they had removed 42 unexploded mines. But Colonel Adeeb Ateeq, who defected from the Syrian army in 2012 amid concerns over heavy civilian casualties, knew from experience that there must be another mine in the area. As he contemplated where it might be, a sudden explosion threw him three metres through the air. As he crashed to the ground on his back, Ateeq looked down. Where his left leg had been, he saw only blood. Anyone who moves may step on an unexploded device, Ateeq told Al Jazeera in an interview from his rented apartment in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, where he has been living since the accident in August 2015. Children, women, old people many of them dont even know what a mine is. They dont see it until it explodes. WATCH: Syrians fleeing war maimed by landmines Ateeq is one of many victims of mine-clearing operations in Syria, where millions of people live with the daily risk of running into unexploded devices. Amid the countrys precarious security situation, international organisations have been reluctant to launch large-scale clearance operations, leaving residents in some areas to take matters into their own hands. Explosives planted in agricultural fields, next to roads, inside villages and around schools and hospitals can emerge years after the battle ends. The United Nations estimates that it will take decades to clear Syria of all unexploded devices. According to recent estimates, more than five million Syrians live in areas that are heavily contaminated by unexploded devices, including more than two million children who are at risk of falling prey to explosive remnants of war, such as landmines, cluster munitions and other devices. Among the victims is Jamila Muhammad, 65, who remained in Syria even after several of her children and grandchildren fled to Turkey. Almost a year ago, in May 2015, she was out herding the familys small flock of sheep near al-Khalfatli, a small village near the Turkish border. I bent down because I saw a pretty flower, Muhammad told Al Jazeera. But under it was a mine. Muhammad lost the lower part of her right leg in the explosion. She tried to get treatment in Syria, but eventually her son convinced her to go to Turkey to be fitted for a prosthetic limb. After several months of rehabilitation, she is still not used to her artificial leg, she said. Ateeq is one of the rare Syrian volunteers with professional experience in clearing explosive devices. After defecting from the army, he says he decided to use his expertise to protect civilians from the danger of unexploded devices. He founded the Syrian Centre for Awareness and Demining, where he trains small teams in mine clearance and risk education. People are killed by explosives every day. I have to help with what I know. That is not a matter of choice. by Colonel Adeeb Ateeq, demining trainer We started from zero, he said. We were training small groups of volunteers in mine clearance and providing risk education to children Normally a mine clearance team has protective gear, helmets, advanced tools. We wear T-shirts. The group, which now includes more than two dozen volunteers, operates in northern Syria and southern Turkey. Despite the dangers, this has become a common situation in wartorn Syria, said Sarah Marshall, the programme manager for the UN anti-landmine agency UNMAS. Throughout Syria, local communities have been undertaking ad hoc clearance activities, as they see no help forthcoming, Marshall told Al Jazeera. Since people have little expertise, the accident rate is high. International assistance with the clearance of unexploded devices has been limited for a number of reasons, Marshall said, noting that until recently the only official international clearance operation was in Kobane in 2015. Besides general access and security issues, neighbouring countries and [parties to the conflict] see mine action as military activity, she said. We are trying to make them understand this is purely humanitarian. It is basic protection of civilians. IN PICTURES: Healing on the Syria-Turkey border A major issue faced by UNMAS and its 25 international and Syrian partner organisations is that in order to clear some types of explosives, additional explosives are needed. We cant send explosives across the border and we cant train Syrians to use explosives. Nobody would accept that, Marshall said. As a result, UNMAS has been working with the international NGO Mayday Rescue to train teams from the White Helmets, the Syrian civil defence volunteers, to destroy cluster munitions using flares instead of explosives. The first two teams were deployed in March. The UN agency is aiming to further expand such operations throughout the year, while also investing in risk education, Marshall said: We understand that people cannot give up farming, but we can inform them how to mark explosives so they can keep using at least part of their agricultural land. Ateeq, meanwhile, says he is ready to go back into the field as soon as he has recovered. People are killed by explosives every day, he said. I have to help with what I know. That is not a matter of choice. After claims of repression and unfair constitutional change, Djiboutis vote is not without controversy. It is a country with fewer than a million people and very limited natural resources yet Djibouti is courted by world powers. That is because of its strategic location at the entrance to the Red Sea and south of Suez. Relatively stable, it has drawn the attention of military planners in Japan, China, France and the United States, who have all set up military bases there. Voters in the tiny east African nation cast their ballots on Friday to pick a president. Yet, not everyone has been enthusiastic about the vote, with some opposition parties boycotting it. Incumbent President Ismail Omar Guelleh has been in power for 17 years but the opposition accuses him of not doing enough to deal with the countrys high unemployment rate. According to the World Bank, 20 percent of the population lives in poverty. After claims of repression and unfair constitutional change, the election is not without controversy. What will the vote mean for stability? And what are the global implications from a strategically important part of the world? Presenter: Sami Zeidan Guests: Hamidou Wone Specialist in conflict management who served as a diplomat in the Horn of Africa Aly-Khan Satchu Emerging economy specialist in Nairobi, Kenya Thomas-John Guinard Legal officer in charge of Djibouti at the human rights organisation, Alkarama I am a jazz aficionado as well as a philosophy professor. Being in front of a classroom teaching is my favorite place on earth, second to a good jazz club with hip friends. In the midst of a philosophy class, I may wax enthusiastic about the transcendent qualities of asaxophone solo or the preternatural swing of's timekeeping or the song-writing and band-leading genius of. These comments are not merely idiosyncratic. They reflect something of a philosophical theory of pedagogy that is steeped in jazz sensibilities. After over thirty years of teaching philosophy in a variety of settings, I have come to realize that my manner of pedagogy has developed in ways that reflect the sensibilities and philosophy of jazz. This has much to do with my long-time love of jazz: the music, the history, the culture, and the players. The classroom should swing; students and their professor should spend time in the woodshed; the class will jam on philosophical themes deeply rooted in tradition, but be open to new chops. Some of my students learn these terms, incorporate them into their vocabulary, and start using them in relation to whatever subject we are addressingand not just about jazz.It is difficult to fit jazz into a tight analytical definition in which necessary and sufficient conditions are stipulated (as much as the analytic philosopher in me craves this). The feeling of jazz is not easily corralled into a definition. As Louis Armstrong said, "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." Jazz has rightly been called "America's classical music," but that is more of a title than a description. Eschewing precision let me say that jazz is known for at least three salient and laudatory features, all of which translate fruitfully into a philosophy of pedagogy for philosophers (and others).First, jazz works from and creatively appropriates a revered and rich tradition, the origins of which are not entirely clear and are matter of scholarly dispute. The call-and-response patterns of African slave songs and spirituals are evident in the ensemble creativity of jazz, for example. It is a musical dialogue. But jazz critic Stanley Crouch claims that indigenous African music does not swing. Swing possesses a certain glide or lightness to its rhythmic propulsion that is lacking in other rhythmic patterns. However, Duke Ellington composed a piece called "It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got that swing," which has become a jazz standard and an encapsulation of what jazz is. But "swing" can transcend musical form to mean anything that embodies the deepest elements of jazz, such as improvisation and syncopation. Whatever jazz's genesis, a jazz musician must master the jazz tradition in order to perform this demanding but delightful music. If you listen to the conversations between jazz pianistand her musician guests on NPR's "Piano Jazz," you will understand this. Crouch also writes that you hear the entire history of the jazz saxophone in the playing of. To some extent this is true, mutatis mutandis, for any great jazz instrumentalist or vocalist. Every jazz musician must sit at the feet of the great bands and the virtuoso performers. To learn from such a varied and luxuriant tradition requires extensive study and practice. Jazz musicians speak of this as "time in the woodshed." The angular, odd, and complex structures of many of pianist's compositions sent Monk and his band mates into the woodshed for extended periods of time. When John Coltrane joined Monk's band for a few months, he developed a deeper musical sensibility, given the rigor of the music. He said that "Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order." Coltrane, throughout his career, was so fiercely dedicated to practicing that he would often fall asleep with his saxophone; he would practice fingering when he was not in a situation where he could blow; and even sometimes practiced backstage while his band was playing without him.Philosophy is rooted in a far longer line of tradition, reaching back to the Greek Presocratics and to the Wisdom literature of the Bible (such as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes). As such, it demands of its disciples a lifetime "in the woodshed" where they aspire to master its arguments, its historical development, and its applications to all manner of life. The exemplary professor of philosophy (or of any other discipline) immerses himself in that history and finds inspiration from its virtuosi. When one studies what the best philosophical minds have thought about the perennial philosophical themes of the good, the true, and the beautiful, these philosophers become living and talkative residents in the soul. These ideas and arguments are, thus, not static pieces of information. These cats just keep blowing! Teaching classic ideas year after year is never boring if one engages them as philosophical "standards," to use the jazz idiom for the received repertoire that jazzmen must master. These are treasures to which one repeatedly returns afresh. A philosophy professor who knows and savors the tradition can become a philosophical virus, infecting students with a like passion. Just as in a spirited jazz performance, each musician finds inspiration from the others, the classroom may become the stage for an intellectually sparkling and surprising dialogue.Although I have taught Kant's epistemology for many years, I must return to the woodshed every time I teach it in order to reacquaint myself with this demanding work and to envision novel ways in which to make it clear to students encountering these jaw-dropping ideas for the first time. I also attempt to expose Kant's philosophical clams (a jazz term for musical missteps), such as his rejection of the ontological argument. Time in this woodshed often yields surprises. Just as a jazz musician may deepen his playing unexpectedly after years of performingas John Coltrane dramatically did from around 1962 to 1965a philosopher may return to a classic argument and discover something entirely new. After being skeptical of the ontological argument for God's existence for many years, about a decade ago I came under its metaphysical spelland while teaching introduction to philosophy, no less. I now enthusiastically present the various versions of the argument to my sometimes bewildered students, who are assigned a chapter I wrote on the topic.Second, jazz is, at its best, highly creative in composition and in performance. Although jazz virtuosi are steeped in tradition, they must find their own voice in order to perpetuate that tradition in new formsthat is, to refract jazz through the prisms of their own unique personalities. Finding that voice requires moving from imitation to creation. Basic techniques must become second naturethe fingering of a saxophone, the strokes on the drums, embouchure for reeds and brassbut the artistic voice moves beyond technique and imitation. Jazz musicians must invent their own chopsa term invented by Louis Armstrong that refers to the musician's distinctive performing abilities. Drummer Art Blakey mastered a chop so distinctive it became eponymous. According to the Impulse Records web page, "Blakey developed a press roll so exquisitely forceful and so unmistakably his that drum manuals give it a formal name, "the Blakey Press Roll." And few, if any, can match it.Philosophy professors likewise need creativity rooted in studious routines if they are going to stimulate their students to pursue the truth through reason over a lifetime. Just as jazz musicians need to learn their scales in order to use them as building blocks for their own style, so philosophers and their students require a common vocabulary with which to speak. This tradition is not a museum to visit, but rather a deep well from which to draw ideas for the ongoing dialectic. This kind of interactive discourse is the analogue to the call-and-response element of jazz. By engaging this tradition actively, both professor and students begin to find their intellectual voices. As in jazz, some philosophical chops become so distinctive they become eponymous, such as "Plato's Cave," "Frankfurt counter-examples" or "Pascal's wager" or Searle's "Chinese room." Neither I nor my students may ever have philosophical chops named after us; nonetheless, a serious engagement in philosophy immerses on in this stream of ideas.Third, jazz is, according to the master jazz writer Whitney Balliett, "the sound of surprise." A well-played piece of jazz musiceven the most well-known standardsummons new ideas from jazz performers. The well-known need not be the well-worn, since the musical formtied to the discipline of the musicianscan always yield something fresh and inspiringor disastrous. There are no guaranteed results. This "sound of surprise" flows from the inherently improvisational nature of jazz, which requires the creativity of both the individual soloist and the ensemble as a unit. The difference between the two types of improvisation is vanishingly small if not artificial in a tight jazz group, since each musician is so highly attuned to the playing of the other musicians. A jazz musician who listens to and responds appropriately to fellow musicians is said to have big ears. Drummerclaimed that he and the other members of the classic John Coltrane Quartet (Coltrane accompanied byon bass,on piano, and Elvin Jones on drums, 1961-65) performed nearly telepathically, given their ability to anticipate, complement, and inspire each other musically. Sheet music was not necessary, since so much had been imprinted on their collective soul. The individual and group improvisation of jazz makes jazz an aesthetic high wire actand one without a net. True jazz is never canned or routinized, as is "smooth jazz" (as with the abysmal Kenny G). Jazz performers compose in public. Jazz critic, Ted Gioia, calls jazz improvisation "the imperfect art" in a book of the same name. Things can go wrong at these high altitudes and there are no parachutes. One may be in for a rough ride on the unpredictable currents of creativity. Yet the possibilities are enticing and elevating. A book by Eric Nisenson, which is dedicated to the improvisational artistry of saxophonist, is appropriately entitled Open Sky. Even jazz musicians less known for their improvisational prowess may stun audiences and even themselves in moments of spontaneity, as did tenor saxophonistwhen he soloed for twenty-seven choruses during "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956. After this epiphany, Gonsalvas claimed the role of a key soloist in the Ellington unit.Philosophy in the classroom should allow for and encourage the kind of serendipity celebrated by jazz. The professor (rooted in the tradition) along with the students (who are more recently initiated into the tradition) work to comprehend the great ideas in a structured but also free collaboration. With enough woodshed time, the toughest concepts and arguments can be performed winningly through lecture, discussion, and testing. The class readings become the musical score, the professor is the band leader, and the students learn to play the score and improvise on it. The professor needs big ears to read the students' responses and to inspire them to jam hard on the chord changes (that is, concepts). The whole (students and professor) is greater than the sum of the parts, just as in jazz. And if "don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing."When the chemistry is right, I generate new ideas and experiment before the students. Thinking aloud in public is an intellectual performance. Students do it as well. They sometimes surprise me with their chops. I then tryin the spirit of jazzto let them take ideas in new directions. A few years ago, a student in my introduction to philosophy class raised an earnest question about the relationship between faith and reason that triggered an unplanned and very fruitful discussion. This kind of improvisation can be exhilarating; it can also fall flat. Yet even then, rescue is possible, as in jazz. Pianistsaid he once played the wrong note while in a highly improving band lead by trumpet master,. However, Hancock reported that Davis responded by playing a note that made Hancock's mistake "right." Many times while leading a free-flowing but focused discussion on a philosophical theme, a student will offer something out of tune. But when at my best, I can find something worthwhile in the comment or take it into a more fruitful direction. In the realm of studied risk lies the promise of new flights into "the open sky" of rational argument. The idea of jazz pedagogy came to me while jamming in a lecture, and I have been in the woodshed with it ever since.There are many more chops to develop and traditions to fathom and appropriate in order to draw out the connections between the artistry of jazz and the artistry of the philosopher's professorial pedagogy. But if we attend to the jazz sensibilities of mastering and extending a tradition through a strong work ethic; if we labor to find our own philosophical and pedagogical voices; and if we savor "the sound of surprise," we will be well on our way to swinging in the classroomand beyond. is obviously a power to be reckoned with on the Polish music scene, as not only the founder and director of Fortuna-music and a teacher in Poznan's Academy of Music but as a leading jazz trumpeter in the country. On this disc he has invited three stalwart American musicians to join him and together his bandmates have selected their repertoire of six nineteenth century Polish folk tunes, to which are added four of Fortuna's own compositions. It makes for interesting fusion listening.Fortuna uses the same musicians who appeared in 2012 as the Mack Goldsbury Quartet. Then the musicians gathered in El Paso, where reedman Goldsbury and bassist Erik Unsworthy are based, to record a live album 'Live at Coco's' released by Cadence Records. The current album was recorded the same year in Poznan, Poland, and as Fortuna intended strongly reflects Polish musical heritage and his acknowledged debt to itThe tunes are frequently led by Fortuna or Goldsbury, and often evoke a klezmer feeling with unison runs before engaging in more modern contests and duels. Goldsbury also leads some adventurous cross melodies, as in the third track "God what are you saying?," where Fortuna and Unsworth both follow with some inspired soloing, before returning to the traditional theme to conclude.The selection works well. Wailing and lacrymose folk melodies are interspersed with Fortuna's offerings, and there is inspiring interplay of trumpet and sax, eg. Pros pan ojiec, with solid rhythm from Unsworth and drummer Frank Parker Jr. This is more than just an introduction to current intercultural Polish musical threads; it is a deft investigation of two or more diverse, but sometimes parallel worlds. Indeed in Polish Zoska can refer just to a young girl named Sofia or Zofia, to a national hero (Tadeusz Zawadzki) as well as to a hanky sack or beanbag! And don't miss the hokey Youtube video featuring Fortuna's multicultural dress sense, as well as some cute dancing to his music! A professor from the University of California Berkeley addressed students about secularism Thursday. Saba Mahmood spoke to about 120 people on how the separation of church and state affects Islam. Her presentation took place at the Bob Graham Center for Public Service in the Pugh Hall Ocora at 6 p.m. and was free to the public. The event was co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Religion and the Center for Womens Studies and Gender Research. Mahmood compared religious minorities in different countries including Bahais in Egypt and Muslims in France. She discussed minorities legal rights and instances of discrimination. How is discrimination to be judged, she said. By whom, and what grounds? Mahmood told students discrimination is the result of majority power. We are all implicated in the same problem, and its hard for us to see that, she said. Kevin Baron, the civic engagement coordinator for the center, said Mahmood was brought in to have an open discussion on religious minorities. The idea of the event is bringing in a prominent researcher to talk about an important subject matter, he said. UF political science junior Luke Waldron said he thought Mahmoods speech opened up an interesting dialogue. It was a little different than what I thought, the 21-year-old said. I liked that she used examples from both Europe and the Middle East. @merylkornfield mkornfield@alligator.org Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Saba Mahmood spoke to about 120 people on how the separation of church and state affects Islam at the Bob Graham Center for Public Service on Thursday. All Florida universities have the opportunity to use Canvas. The Board of Governors for the State University System of Florida, made up of 12 in-state public universities, has decided to use Canvas as its official online learning system. The universities will receive a discounted rate for subscribing to the system in 2016, said Brittany Davis, the communications director for the State University System. The Board of Governors wanted to implement a common system so students would not have to use multiple platforms for their classes, she said. Across the board, Canvas just came off as a very good choice, she said. Davis said five universities in the State University System, including UF, the University of Central Florida and the University of South Florida currently use Canvas. She said colleges in the Florida College System, made up of 28 state and community colleges, including Santa Fe College, can also choose to use Canvas. The cost for universities subscribing to Canvas will change based on the number of universities that decide to use the program, she said. If universities subscribe in 2016, they will get a 10-percent discount on subscription fees. Ashley Wilt, a UF nutritional sciences junior, said she prefers using Canvas over other course-management programs. Its logical, the 20-year-old said. Its kind of laid out similarly to a social media page. She said it would be easier for students if more Florida schools used Canvas. When UF used Sakai, she said multiple systems were harder to navigate. I can only imagine transferring, she said. It would be more confusing. @k_newberg Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now knewberg@alligator.org What a week its been, readers. Weve got presidential candidates throwing shade at one another, Gainesville residents yelling at Florida governors in Starbucks, Star Wars Easter eggs and secrets circling our social media and oh, yes, finals week rapidly approaching to wreak havoc on our precious grades. But in the meantime, thank you, readers, for tuning into our vain attempt at making sense of the world, our long-winded banter, our latest segment of Darts & Laurels By now, youve probably heard of the interview The New York Daily News had with Bernie Sanders. Pretty close to a disaster, read subsequent headlines. For many media outlets, this interview was the long-awaited, quintessential ah-hah, gotcha! moment in which Sanders finally exposed himself as all talk, no walk on providing specific answers on how hed actually break up the banks. But if you take the time to closely read the transcript of this interview, youll quickly find it was really The Daily News who didnt have the facts together. In pressing Sanders on how exactly hed break up the big banks, The Daily News brought up the Federal Reserves authority, to which Bernie responded with confusion. And rightly so: The Fed has less to do with breaking up the banks than The Daily News suggested. Yet The Daily News persistently pressed Sanders with this notion and proceeded to run negative articles dismissing him as having his head in the clouds. The same thing happened on foreign policy: The Daily News asked Sanders how he felt on President Obamas removal of drone authority from the CIA, to which Sanders responded with confusion. Yeah, thats because in June 2015, Obama actually let the CIA keep their authority on drones. And for some reason, The Daily News editorial board has been slow to clarify these mistakes. Please, readers, before you base your judgments on this article or share it on Facebook, take a moment to realize how fabricated and slanted the interview was. So, a dart to The Daily News for their blatant attempt at gotcha journalism, and a laurel to those journalists who did their jobs and accurately reported on the interview, such as Huffington Posts Ryan Grim and The Young Turks. Now, onto a real issue of utter controversy: the intersection of Museum Road and Reitz Union Drive. You all know it: those crosswalks right outside of the Reitz. This intersection is where happiness goes to die, where cars go to sit still at 0 mph for what feels like forever during rush hour, where seas of pedestrians and speeding drivers collide. Kidding aside, cars sit awkwardly waiting for the crosswalk to be completely empty, while pedestrians stroll through without regard for traffic or surrounding drivers. We give a dart to this intersection and a laurel to those brave souls who eventually approve a streetlight permit there. And lastly, we extend a laurel to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for hosting Babymetal, a Japanese metal band, on the show Tuesday. Surely Colberts producers knew the thrashing drums and distorted guitar would be a little much for the shows audience, so we commend their willingness to push the musical envelope of late-night television. If any of you have been dying to add new music to your Spotify mix, heres the perfect band. What better to keep you awake during your all-nighters than a head-banging session at Marston Science Library? Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now The subject of women's hair choices in the workplace has long been a fraught topic, and it's infinitely more so for women of color who embrace their natural hair texture. It's the perfect storm of sexism and racism, and it's just the worst. While it's not untrue to say that we've made strides when it comes to making natural hair better understood and celebrated on a mainstream level, there's still a depressingly long way to go. The latest public display of the extent to which this disturbing sexism-racism hybrid is still at play? The shocking, racially charged results that pop up when you do a Google image search for "unprofessional hairstyles for work." The issue first caught people's attention when Twitter user @BonKamona tweeted a side-by-side comparison of the results of searches for "professional" and "unprofessional" hairstyles for work. Twitter content This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. The divide is pretty startling: The images that the algorithm deemed "professional" were overwhelmingly white and straight-haired, while the "unprofessional" ones showed almost exclusively models of color with curly hair (and Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games trilogy, which we have to agree probably isn't an ideal work look). Another user, @MalumDube, pointed out that one hairstyle seems to magically transform from "professional" to "unprofessional" when transferred from Rachael McAdams to a black model: When it comes to switching up your hair color, there's one rumor that I hear time and time again: that certain hair colors only work for certain skin tones. And that in order to pull off every shade in the hair color spectrum (I'm talking blonde, black, brown, and red), you have to have neutral undertones in your skin. But if there's one color-chameleon A-lister out there to debunk this myth, it's Emma Roberts. The Scream Queen actress debuted her new red hair earlier this month, and the color looks just as good with her pink-tonedi.e. not neutralcomplexion as her blonde or brown did. So what's the deal? "The big misconception with hair color is that you can only wear a certain color because of your skin tone," says Meri Kate O'Connor, a colorist at Eva Scrivo Salon in New York City. "That's not true. You just haven't found the right tone of hair color for you." In Roberts's case, if you look closelyor have the eye of a trained professional coloristyou can see that with every hair color she's had, there's a slight golden tone. If you pull out your color wheel that you definitely keep on hand at all times, you can see that gold falls pretty much across the circle from pink, which makes them complementary colors. Those are colors that bring out the best in one another, so the gold tones in Roberts's hair looks best with the pink tones in her skin. It's for this reason that celebrities including Beyonce, Rachel McAdams, and Sophia Vergara have also pulled off many different hues. They've found the right tone for them. Before I bore you with an entire course in color theory or confuse you any further, if you're looking to change up your color, don't worry. "Any good colorist will be able to tell you what looks good on you," says O'Connor. All you have to do is stop telling yourself you can't. Photos, from left: Thomas Concordia/WireImage for BaByliss PRO; Bauer-Griffin/GC Images; Christian Vierig/Getty Images Now that we've set the record straight, go forth and braid! 2005 .. Almotamar.net - At least eight citizens were killed and others were injured by air raids waged by the Saudi aggression war jets on al-Wazeiah district of Taiz province on Friday. A local official said that the aggression warplanes launched two raids on al-Wazeiah district, targeting a car carrying citizens in al-Raqah area in central of the district, which led to the killing of eight people including women and injuring others. The number of victims could rise because there are people with serious injuries, the official said. He pointed out that the victims were targeted while they were trying to flee to a neighboring area from the intense air raids on the different parts of the district. Another raid targeted Sukinah School in the district, leaving large damage to the school building, the official added. REACTION India will repent if does not take Basits threat about Kashmir seriously Alwihda Info | Par Hem Raj Jain - 8 Avril 2016 Bengaluru, India Sub:- Not Pakistan but China is speaking about Kashmir. ---- India is trying to play down the threat issued by Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit during his press conference on April, 7 where he said to the effect that now Kashmir will be discussed before any other matter because (as per Basit) if solution to Kashmir issue is further delayed then it will have serious implications. But government of India (GOI) is naively thinking that it is another hollow threat without realizing that this time this threat has teeth for the simple reason that China is behind it. Therefore if India does not want to face another tragedy (like partition of India in 1947 or fiasco in 1962 Sino-India war) then it should start preparing itself, as given below, for major military show down with Pakistan and may be even with China (which eventually may not remain merely a moral supporter of Pakistan during likely Indo-Pak war on Kashmir) :- (1)- It is not Pakistan but China is speaking through Basit about Kashmir. India has touched raw nerve of China about economic-corridor. Everybody knows that economic-corridor (including Gwadar Port) through Pakistan is a question of life and death for China for the simple reason that it gives shortcut to China for access to Arabian sea bye-passing Pacific and not so friendly countries of Pacific region and also India. As far perfunctory protest of India about economic-corridor through POK it is not taken seriously by China because India itself does not take POK (as integral part of India) seriously and has not done anything to retrieve POK. India considers itself over-smart and thinks that merely by mentioning in the Constitution of India or by unanimous resolution in Parliament that entire J&K is an integral part of India the entire J&K including POK will forever be integral part of India. The absurdity of such delusion of India is already flying in the face due to simple reason that POK is still with Pakistan which makes mockery of Indias assumption / claim that entire J&K is an integral part of India. India does not understand that territories are decided by military power and not by writing it on some paper (howsoever sacred that paper may be). (2)- But as per Pakistan the subversive activities of India through Indian spy in Baluchistan (which contains substantial part of economic-corridor in addition to Gwadar Port) is too much for China and has worked as proverbial last straw. Though India refuted Pakistans claim of Indian spy Yadav caught in Baluchistan but India is unconvincing. During debate on this issue in media it was revealed that as per yadavs family he was out of touch from his family for three months. In this age of mobile phones where Yadav must have been talking to his family in 2-3 days if not daily it raises a question why Yadavs family did not approach police or embassies through Ministry of External Affairs when Yadav lost contact with his family for three months. Otherwise also instead of taking its own territories (with China and Pakistan) India indulges in rebellious activities of local people against their governments as it did in case of Tamils in Sri Lanka which backfired and ended in gory and horrible end. Therefore there should not be any surprise if India is involved in clandestine activities in Baluchistan, which has again backfired due to China factor. (3)- Therefore China is playing Arunachal Pradesh ( as a bargaining territory) about entire J&K for Pakistan. China will help Pakistan in demanding entire J&K and Pakistan may end up keeping at least POK if not more (which serves the purpose of China about economic-corridor) while allowing India to retain whatever J&K is with India. China knows that there is substantial anti-India sentiment in Kashmir and post NIT controversy more of such anti-India sentiment will remain in Kashmir for quite some time. Because political atmosphere in Kashmir is getting vitiated due to removal of local police and by deploying central forces inside the NIT campus of Muslim majority Kashmir valley and by bringing special teams from HRD ministry of GOI led by pro Hindutva BJP. Hence China will persuade Pakistan to refrain from nuclear war and instead China will mobilize world community (in this age where England recently allowed referendum for separation of Scotland) for plebiscite in J&K by raising bogey of Pak nukes falling in the hands of Jihadis / ISIS, Al-Qaeda etc. (by Pakistan selling these nukes due to economic hardship) due to war of smaller Pakistan with much larger India. (4)- Therefore if India allows Pakistan and China to take lead on and precipitate Kashmir issue and does not prepare for immediate retrieve of POK it will be too late. For this, if such support comes then fine but India should not crucially depend on support of any country against Sino Pak alliance on Kashmir rather should be prepared for pinpricks from China (on Sino-India border and about Arunachal Pradesh) in order to help Pakistan in Indo-Pak war on Kashmir. For such massive military preparation India should immediately recover Rs 1,000 Trillion tax money out of black money in order to prepare for retrieve of POK even militarily if necessary. [ 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. Based on RTI information and a PIL in Patna High Court as per expose of New Nation TV Channel, in 2011-12 nearly 6.50 lakh farmers earned Rs ~ Two thousand lakh crore (2,000 Trillion) which mostly of course is black money shown as agriculture income (on which there is no income tax) to evade tax and in last mainly 8 years these ~ 1 million tax evaders have shown ~ 2,200 Trillion as agricultural income (where as in 2006 only 85 persons declared Rs 16 million as agricultural income). As per governments new scheme if 45 % of black money is given as tax then remaining 55 % can be retained by the person. Hence if 45 % of Rs ~ 2,200 Trillion is taken by government as tax on this black money then Rs ~ 1,000 Trillion will come to government as tax. The government of India (GOI) should immediately raise the demand of this Rs ~ 1,000 Trillion tax money from these ~ one million tax evaders (who are misusing & maligning the profession of agriculture to evade tax in a country where thousands of real / genuine farmers are committing suicide every year). GOI can consider declared income minus maximum income from land holding as non-agricultural income hence black money because on this tax has not been paid] (5)- In addition to military approach India should also mobilize world community (i)- Against Pakistan due to its vulnerability before Jihadi terrorist elements and which is threat to global peace (ii)- Against China (and against its veto right) due to its record about human rights including lack of democracy. It is hoped, at the hands of Pakistan and China, the government of India will not be caught unawares on Kashmir Regards Hem Raj Jain (Author of Betrayal of Americanism) Bengaluru, India. Dans la meme rubrique : < > Mahamat Ahmad Alhabo : "je ne suis pas un cancre !" Tchad : "l'officialisation de l'anglais serait nefaste pour le pays" Tchad : suspendu de ses fonctions, le delegue de l'environnement du Salamat se defend Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) INTERNATIONAL Meet Rodrigo Duterte: the Donald Trump of the Philippines Alwihda Info | Par Info Alwihda - 8 Avril 2016 In Guns, Goons and The Presidency, yesterdays episode of Al Jazeera Englishs award-winning 101 East, presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte was compared to Donald Trump and labeled the Dirty Harry of Philippine politics ahead of next months elections. As author Marites Vitug says, Hes the most outrageous, the most colourful and the most interesting character in this upcoming presidential elections. We compare him to Trump of the US because he likes to shock with his statements, he can be very irreverent, and very reckless. As 101 East presenter Steve Chao says, Rodrigo Duterte is far from your average politician unapologetic about his professed love for women, guns and fast bikes. His hometown of Davao City was once a violent no-go area, overrun by criminals. Now, with Duterte as mayor, its the fourth safest city in the world, according to some surveys, unless youre considered a criminal. While some celebrate the success of his zero-tolerance strategy, critics point to alleged human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, death squads and more than 1000 unsolved assassinations. As inspector Ronald Lao tells Chao, Criminals are hesitant to commit crime here because if they are not arrested, they are killed, especially if they are armed with firearms and attempt to shoot arresting officers. Duterte has said that if he becomes president, he will solve drugs, criminality and corruption in three to six months. When asked by Chao why he believes hes the only candidate who can clean up the country, he replies, Because I am the only person to date to say it: stop it or Ill kill you. Chao speaks to Clarita Alia, a mother whose four teenage sons were assassinated. Although theres no evidence Duterte was involved, she blames his vigilante approach to justice. I dont want him to be president, she says. So many have already died while hes been mayor; how many more will die under his presidency? Duterte says those who accuse him of human rights abuses should file a case against him. This has yet to happen, but it appears that his successful fight against crime has led to a wave of copycats in other cities. For example, Chao speaks to an active cell of assassins who claim that theyre hired by police to take out undesirables and that they were modeled on Dutertes approach in Davao. For some, Dutertes approach brings back disturbing memories of President Ferdinand Marcos, who declared martial law in the 1970s in the Philippines. Over the decade, in the name of peace and order, tens of thousands were arrested and tortured, with thousands more killed. What worries some observers is that Duterte has publicly described Marcos as the best president the country has ever had, Chao says. As Vitug says, If he [Duterte] has a penchant for dismissing judicial process, a penchant for doing swift justice, then what does that say for his regard for popular decision-making for popular processes or democratic processes? When asked by Chao if his strong form of leadership could eventually lead him to take democracy away and push towards a dictatorship, Duterte says, I do not have that messiah complex. You do not go about declaring martial law or a revolutionary government if there is really no reason to do it. But if the life of the Republic is at stake, then, maybe. At 71, Duterte says he was ready to retire and spend more time with his family, but decided to run for president because the lineup of candidates are corrupt and incompetent. As he says, There is no cure for stupidity and incompetence. Polls have Duterte as one of the top presidential candidates. In his 20 years in political office, hes never lost an election, so could he be the next president of the Philippines? Watch and embed the promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izsol_5lJuY. Watch and embed the full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NrIcuBf7iU. Guns, Goons and The Presidency repeats on Al Jazeera English on Sunday, 10 April 2016 at 18:30 CAT on 101 East, Al Jazeeras multi-award-winning, weekly current affairs programme focusing on a diverse range of stories and investigations from across Asia and the Pacific. For more information, visit http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/ or follow @AJ101East on Twitter. Dans la meme rubrique : < > Tchad : le senateur americain Bob Mendez reclame des sanctions apres la repression des manifestations Tchad/Inondations : lONU intensifie ses efforts pour mobiliser les ressources (porte-parole) Assemblees annuelles FMI/BM : etat de lAfrique, des opportunites dans une periode turbulente Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) COMMUNIQUE World Bank Group Unveils New Climate Action Plan - 8 Avril 2016 Plan to Help Countries Meet Paris COP21 Pledges WASHINGTON, April 7, 2016The World Bank Group today announced plans to help developing countries add 30 gigawatts of renewable energy enough to power 150 million homes to the worlds energy capacity, bring early warning systems to 100 million people and develop climate-smart agriculture investment plans for at least 40 countries all by 2020. These are among a number of ambitious targets laid out in the World Bank Groups new Climate Change Action Plan, approved today, which aims to accelerate efforts to tackle climate change over the next five years and help developing countries deliver on their national climate plans submitted for the historic climate agreement reached at COP21 in Paris in December last year. The release of the Climate Change Action Plan comes just two weeks before world leaders officially sign the Paris Agreement in New York. As part of the Paris process, 140 countries working with the Bank Group lodged national climate plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs. Following the Paris climate agreement, we must now take bold action to protect our planet for future generations, said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. We are moving urgently to help countries make major transitions to increase sources of renewable energy, decrease high-carbon energy sources, develop green transport systems, and build sustainable, livable cities for growing urban populations. Developing countries want our help to implement their national climate plans, and well do all we can to help them. To maximize impact, the Action Plan is focused on helping countries shape national policies and leverage private sector investment. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, aims to expand its climate investments from the current $2.2 billion a year to a goal of $3.5 billion a year, and lead on leveraging an additional $13 billion a year in private sector financing by 2020. As well its own financing, the World Bank also intends to mobilize $25 billion in commercial financing for clean energy over the next five years. The Bank Group will also continue to deepen its work to help countries to put a price on carbon pollution to create incentives for public and private sector decision makers to make the right climate choices. The Action Plan recognizes that climate change is a threat to efforts to end poverty, and that there is an increasing urgency to protect poor people and poor countries. As part of its response, the Bank Group plans to bring early warning systems to 100 million people across 15 developing countries, and help bring adaptive social protection social safety nets that can quickly support people affected by a disaster or an economic shock to an additional 50 million poor people by 2020. At the same time, the Bank Group will pilot a new approach in 15 cities that aims to boost urban resilience by integrating infrastructure, land use planning and disaster risk management. If we dont act, climate change threatens to drive 100 million more people into poverty in the next 15 years, said John Roome, Senior Director for Climate Change at the World Bank Group. The Action Plan will allow us to help developing countries more quickly, and in the areas where support is most needed, such as disaster preparedness, social protection, and coastal protection. The Action Plan also lays out plans to quadruple funding over five years to make transport systems more resilient to climate change, as well as invest at least US$1 billion to promote energy efficiency and resilient building by 2020. IFC sees a large opportunity for promoting climate-smart urban infrastructure, and its EDGE Green Building Program aims to have a presence in 20 markets over the next 7 years. The World Bank Group will develop climate smart agricultural investment plans for at least 40 countries, design sustainable forest strategies for 50 countries by 2020 and promote climate-informed fisheries management. The Bank Group will also help green the financial sector through a coordinated approach across banking, pensions and capital markets to implement changes needed nationally and globally. It will also create special teams to work with countries to generate a robust pipeline of bankable projects, with a focus on areas like rooftop solar and boosting the growth of distributed solar in Sub-Saharan Africa The Action Plan aims to deliver on the Bank Groups commitment announced in October 2015 to increase climate financing to potentially $29 billion annually by 2020, with the support of its members. It also sets out a new approach to take the growing threat of climate change into account across the Bank Groups operations. Climate risk screening which is already applied to projects supported by IDA, the World Banks fund for the poorest countries will be extended across other World Bank operations in early 2017. Dans la meme rubrique : < > Tchad : Le complexe scolaire "Soleil Brillant" ouvre les inscriptions et reinscriptions pour une rentree au 1er octobre 2021 : Les etablissements scolaires de Floride Charter School Associates choisissent le SD-WAN infogere de GTT Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) In the wake of the headline-grabbing leak of the Panama Papers, banks should prepare themselves for renewed scrutiny of their efforts to thwart money laundering and illegal tax shelters. Additional personal liability risk may also fall into the laps of bank executives and compliance officers as regulators try to get to the bottom of why accounts for corrupt politicians were set up without much or any transparency. Already, the initial news reports on the cache of 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca have prompted investigations by several foreign governments and may lead to more aggressive regulation. There are likely more revelations to come. The news reports focus on secretive offshore accounts held by high-profile government leaders that prompted questions over the source of funds. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which has analyzed the documents, says it will release a full list of companies and individual affiliated with them in early May. While the focus now is on Mossack Fonseca, the source of the documents, there are other Panamanian law firms in the business of setting up offshore accounts with the same structures, and firms in other jurisdictions that do so as well. In fact, as the Financial Action Task Force emphasized in its 2006 assessment of the United States, a number of U.S. states have laws and regulations allowing citizens and foreigners to establish accounts whose beneficial owners aren't fully transparent. It's likely we're in for another round of government action on the unregulated "gatekeepers" that have helped create secret accounts and shell companies since the 1940s. Offshore account issues gained attention more recently in 1998 with the case of Citibank's dealings with the brother of a former Mexican president, as well as provisions in the Patriot Act dealing with certain high-risk accounts, and numerous reports issued by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Yet there is some good news from all this. The types of structures Mossack Fonseca sets up aren't necessarily illegal or unethical as long as they have the appropriate transparency and are used for legitimate purposes. There are a limitless number of such uses. Someone who maintains a yacht in the British Virgin Islands, for example, may need or want an account there to pay the crew. People may want to hold assets overseas to avoid illegal seizure by a repressive home-country government or even devaluation of local currency. There are even well-intentioned reasons for shrouding the identity of account holders, such as reducing the risk of kidnapping for ransom. But weeding out the illegitimate structures from the ethical ones can be tricky. Where does all this leave financial institutions? Regulatory and law enforcement agencies have a history of taking action after revelations like this. Even the best institutions that believe everything they have done is legal may need to reevaluate their clients, transactions and compliance programs. Institutions that take a proactive stance should be in a much better positon than those that take a wait-and-see attitude, even if they already have adequate programs. First, do an inventory of accounts and use it to quantify exposure and risk. Banks should know which Panamanian companies they're doing business with. They should review the relevant accounts to ensure information on beneficial owners is on file, using enhanced due diligence if necessary, and that there's proper documentation of sources and use of funds and actions taken regarding noncompliance. This may take them beyond checking lists to analyzing transactions to see that they're consistent with the purpose of the account and the client's financial capacity. There's also a need to ensure compliance with tax reporting requirements. For U.S. citizens, this includes filing of annual reports required by the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, as well as the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts required by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Technology can accelerate this process. As compliance professionals saw with sanctions imposed as a result of the Arab Spring, there is likely to be a narrow window for proactive engagement. Second, banks should assess their management and governance regarding these issues, reviewing policies and procedures, including the length of time they've been in place. Given the focus on personal liability, institutions may want to get independent reviews, including testing and remediation of due diligence and evaluation of transactions, to better document their compliance programs. All of these steps will help them manage their exposure and reputational risk. Third, institutions should document these efforts and share the findings with appropriate regulators and law enforcement agencies, such as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and state banking authorities. Some examiners are already making inquiries with banks about these issues. In other words, banks should redouble efforts to do what they should have been doing all along aiming to ensure full transparency and documentation of their account holders. Harold A. "Hal" Crawford is a managing director at K2 Intelligence, an investigative, compliance and cyber defense services firm. He can be reached at hcrawford@k2intelligence.com. In mid-March I published an article in World Net Daily about an incident at St. Petersburg Catholic High School in St. Petersburg, Florida, Last month, the entire student body was called together to hear a deceptive presentation on Islamophobia from the notorious Ahmed Bedier, who openly supports the jihad terror group Hizballah and has worked for the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Now the principal of St. Petersburg Catholic High, Fr. Richard Rosin, is making a clumsy attempt at damage control. He sent parents this letter -- and some of them sent it to me: Dear Parents/Guardians: You may have heard that Ms. Pam Geller of Breitbart media has written a scathing and erroneous article about St. Petersburg Catholic High School. The article attempts to address the assembly held on Thurs. Feb. 18, 2016. It is important to allay any fears that this article has created. The principal is sloppy and intellectually lazy: my name is Pamela Geller and the piece to which he is referring didnt run in Breitbart News, but in World Net Daily. And while he claims that my article was erroneous, youll see that he doesnt in his entire letter give a single example of any erroneous claim I made. A few months ago some students came forward who were concerned about the media coverage of the Islamic people. The impression that seems to be prevalent in the media is that all Muslims are terrorists. The students recognized that such an irrational, global portrayal is not in concert with our Catholic faith nor our mission to educate the whole person. The media coverage of the Islamic people were news reports of jihadi attacks -- and many of those attacks involved the slaughter of Christians living under Islamic rule. They were oppressed and slaughtered because they were Christians. Is this how the good Father Rosin should respond and educate his young people? And where did these students see media reports claiming that all Muslims are terrorists? Thats ridiculous. The media bends over backwards to make sure that Americans think that terrorism has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam, and that peaceful Muslims are victims of backlash after terror attacks. Meanwhile, one of my sources at the school has informed me it was just one student who thought this deceptive assembly would be a good idea, and she reportedly pressured the administration to get it approved. In the end, however, everything that occurs at that school is the responsibility of the principal. I wonder if anyone even vetted this Fr. Rosin. Not only was it a disgrace to subject these Christian kids to this propaganda, but it could have potentially been very dangerous. After considering the request to present an appropriate and correct view of Islam, the administration agreed to have an assembly. Upon the recommendation of a well respected member of the clergy of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, who previously had our speaker make a presentation to his parish as part of an interdenominational dialogue, we asked Mr. Bedier to speak to our students. A correct view of Islam? From a former representative of terror-tied CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist funding trial in our nations history? If Fr. Rosin really wanted to present an accurate view of Islam, he should have Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sutlan, Nonie Darwish, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robert Spencer -- not a former representative of a group with multiple links to Hamas, and which has been designated a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates. Why didnt the principal invite to the school one of the Catholic priests from the Middle East whose flock has been decimated by Islamic jihadis? Beginning with the Baron Bulletin of Feb. 5, 2016, I indicated that we would be having the assembly on Islam. The assembly was published on our calendar. As always, parents were invited to attend. In fact, I had hoped more parents would be in attendance to share this information with their child and have a meaningful discussion. After the assembly, our teachers spent time in classes discussing the assembly. By all accounts from the teachers, the discussions were very productive. If this is true, all the teachers are as clueless and intellectually subjugated about this foremost issue of our time as Fr. Rosin is. Additionally, St. Petersburg Catholic High School recorded the presentation. This was done so that any parent who wished could view the presentation for discussion with his/her son/daughter. There were a few parents who requested the link to this video. While there is some disagreement about a few comments Mr. Bedier made, I did not find anything to be inappropriate in the presentation for our students. The Superintendent of Schools for the Diocese of St. Petersburg has reviewed the presentation and found nothing inappropriate for our students. Nothing inappropriate? As I showed in my original article on this, Bedier minimized, downplayed, and dissembled about the jihad threat. He falsely exaggerated Muslim achievements, played moral equivalence games in claiming that there were Christian terrorists as well as Muslim ones (with his one example being Tim McVeigh, who is supposed to be equivalent to the perpetrators of 28,000 jihad attacks since 9/11), and gave students an incomplete and misleading picture of the doctrinal differences between Islam and Christianity even as Muslims are persecuting Christians to a degree unparalleled for centuries. After the assembly it was discovered that Mr. Bedier posted a picture of our students on his Facebook page. We were not aware he would do so and in our continuing effort to protect the privacy of our students, we requested he remove it. More dishonesty. Bedier took the picture during his presentation and said that he was going to post it to social media. So then Fr. Rosin was shocked to find it on Facebook? As soon as I contacted Mr. Bedier he very willingly removed the picture. However, it is apparent that one or more of our parents have shared misinformation about this assembly with outside sources, e.g., Breitbart media, initiating a chain of events that could potentially incur significant negative repercussions for our school and our students. Ms. Geller not only spoke disparagingly about St. Petersburg Catholic High School but also the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. She also encouraged her readers to contact St. Petersburg Catholic High School and published the school phone number. Since we have received a few phone calls as a result of Ms. Gellers article, we have been extra vigilant with regard to our visitors on campus as an added measure to continue to ensure the safety of our students. What ridiculous posturing. Fr. Rosin, those who oppose jihad and Sharia are not murderers. None of my readers or supporters have committed any acts of violence. Nor have I ever called for or condoned any violence. Your students need have no fear of me or my supporters. They should fear Islamic jihadis who have repeatedly threatened to murder American civilians -- but you have made sure that they are ignorant and complacent regarding that threat. In his presentation, Mr. Bedier explained the Muslim perspective as well as bringing our attention to some very interesting and salient points for dialogue with the Abrahamic traditions. He condemned terrorism of any kind as well as advocated for reconciliation and understanding among all people. Is that not what our faith teaches? There was no occasion during Mr. Bediers presentation where our students could have been exposed to physical, psychological, spiritual, moral or intellectual harm. This was not an exercise for the purpose of indoctrination but of understanding, which is what we want our students to be able to accomplish. There was no occasion during Mr. Bediers presentation where our students could have been exposed to physical, psychological, spiritual, moral or intellectual harm? What a hubristic claim. How could Fr. Rosin possibly know this? Is he so relativistic and intellectually compromised that he thinks that a patently deceptive presentation designed to make students less willing and able to resist a genuine and growing threat doesnt cause psychological, spiritual, moral or intellectual harm? And Bedier, who has featured open supporters of Hizballah on his radio show and worked for a Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood group, condemned terrorism? Is Fr. Rosin really that naive and eager to be fooled? And does he really expect parents to be as well? Our assembly followed the example of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who urge us to open, honest dialogue of our faith with all our brothers and sisters. Our students are taught not to be ignorant of their Catholic faith, nor to shy away from sharing their Catholic faith. They are also taught that living their faith as Jesus commanded is the best way to help others understand their life with God. In reality, Muslim groups worldwide are making active efforts to convert Christian young people to Islam (sometimes forcibly). The Catholic Church has done absolutely nothing to counter this, even as former Catholics have become jihadi terrorists. The Pope and the U.S. bishops are committed to the idea that Islam is a religion of peace while Muslims who know better are picking off their young people and turning them into killers. The dialogue theyre so fanatically committed to, meanwhile, has not saved one Middle Eastern Christian from being brutalized by Muslims, or one church from being destroyed. In this Jubilee Year of Mercy, we are reminded that Gods mercy is greater than all of us. Let us share His love and mercy with each other. Love and mercy -- good. Love, mercy, and truth -- better. But youre not going to get truth from either Ahmed Bedier or Fr. Rosin. Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administrations War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here. It's a pleasure to explore C. Edmund Wrights critique of Donald Trump in the American Thinker, now that the Orange Beast is apparently on course to the White House -- if Cruz, Hillary, Soros, Bernie and the GOP-Democrat-One-Party Machine don't shoot him down first. Mr. Wright has shown his insights and concern for the country many times in the pages of AT, very much to our benefit. He is raising questions that need to be asked. Predicting what politicians will actually do if elected is extremely hard, but we can't avoid it today. So this is the toughest of all questions, and one of the most important. No matter who gets in we have to watch 'em like a hawk. Your political activism can't end at the voting booth. I've trended toward liking The Don, with Cruz as a strong second. I would like a Trump-Cruz ticket. But I take it for granted that the national disaster of the Obama-Clinton years is so much worse than any of our candidates, that we must -- repeat must -- unite against the Far Left come election time. On the socialist side, we have an unrepentant Stalinist running against a likely national security felon and Saul Alinsky acolyte. After the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and almost all the gruesome little Marxist tyrannies 25 years ago, this Return of Frankenstein in America is plainly insane. Even Putin must be repelled by these throwbacks. But the Left is stuck with them. A Hillary & Huma administration would be secretly shaped by the paleo-Nazi Jihadist movement of the Muslim Broederbund, which is not just a fantasy, but a powerful, shadowy Jihad network out to kill its enemies big time. We are looking at a deadly ideological plague from the Muslim world, and Hillary is already sleeping on the job (after a stroke or near-stroke), while official Muslim Sisterhood honcho Huma controls access to She Who Must Be Obeyed. H&H would be a national disaster, and our two-party establishment seems to be too ignorant, afraid or sold out to see clear and present danger. Even Speaker Ryan grew a Jihad-chic black beard when he was elected by the House. In the real world voters are faced with choices, not fantasy alternatives. Come the election it will be Hillary or Bernie against one of ours. Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan wont be on the ballot. Mr. Wrights foremost critique of Trump is that hes against free trade. Trump certainly sounds like it. However -- I cant really believe that Trump hasnt noticed that South Korea is fabulously successful while the North is stuck in a Stalinist control-freak nightmare without end. Free trade, free speech, free life has made all the difference. If Trump doesnt read the WSJ editorial page, his children who are in business certainly do, and his long-time friend and political adviser Rudi Giuliani has talked for years with the economic libertarians of the Journal Ed Page. I just cant believe that Trump would really be a rigid economic nationalist. Trump constantly over-promises on renegotiating international trade agreements, claiming powers the president doesnt have. When a candidate makes promises he cant keep, chances are that hes just raising the stakes, just like The Art of the Deal. You start with big demands and then work out a deal that allows both sides to claim a win. Trumps daily media dump always goes over the top. Our One Party Line media cant help themselves, poor things, they just fall for those headline-making outrages every single day. The next day he takes it all back, but thats too much like common sense, and the media dont want common sense. Theyre out for blood and guts, and by now they expect a daily outrage from The Don. Trump Hates Women! Trump is Hitler! You know the drill. Mr. Trump keeps throwing shark bait and they keep snapping it up. Which is why Trump is leading the GOP pack. For Republicans and regular folks, the media are a minefield, worse than KKK night riders. Talk about a bloodthirsty mob and they bring down their scapegoats most of the time. They are still trying to destroy Justice Clarence Thomas today, decades after his nomination battle. They are evil personified. The big news in this election is that somebody has managed to beat the Power Class at its own game of intimidation and fear mongering. That person would be Donald Trump. The media are a Free Fire Zone for anybody who doesnt bow to their sacred cows. Mentally they may rank D-, but they dont care, because they have the power of fear. Zigzagging through that minefield is the Dons first real achievement. The media minefield must be his first objective. Without that you never get chance to run against Hillary, or -- Gawd help us -- the Bern. The throwback Left is intellectually bereft, but it understands power. They followed their prophet Karl Marx to Conquer the Organs of Propaganda, and today thats all theyve got. Trump is not headlining sensible policy ideas every day, because he has to feed the sharks. But he does have policy proposals (see here), which have too many multisyllabic words for the press to understand. The underlined specifics of Trumps proposals dont sound insane. France and Japan have been pursuing similar policies for decades without dropping free trade completely. I think they lean too much in the control-freak direction. Free trade is theoretically optimal, but in fact we end up with some practical compromise. There are no metaphysically free markets. On balance, Trump is following a rational course. I would love to see real policy debates among his advisers, who are generally very solid. But we may have to do some homework for that, like reading up on whatever they have written before. Then be careful to step over the snoring reporters in the hall. Is the Obama administration, or at least some officials in it, hostile toward whites? This is certainly an awkward, publicly unspeakable question -- and answering it is exceptionally difficult. Not easy to discern the motives of countless Washington bureaucrats. Nevertheless, recent events outside of Baltimore, MD suggest that enmity toward whites does afflict some Obama administrators and our proof, though short of the smoking gun standard, is probably as good as it gets. In a nutshell, thanks to Washingtons money and political pressure, thousands of poor blacks will now be re-located from Baltimores slums to upgraded housing in the surrounding, nearly all-white suburbs. Baltimore County will spend $30 million over the next decade to help private developers build 1000 homes for low-income African American families in affluent suburbs. In addition, the country will create 2000 units of subsidized Section 8 housing where residents will have access to better schools and less crime (housing must be built or rented in racially integrated clusters to avoid creating new ghettoes). To ensure that these new residences are family friendly, 500 units must contain three or more bedrooms. Housing access will be encouraged by requiring landlords to consider all sources of income -- including public welfare -- in assessing tenant creditworthiness. Participants will also receive help with moving expenses and security deposits. And to facilitate integration into new (white) neighborhoods, extensive counseling (called Mobility Counseling Programs) will teach newcomers about housekeeping and property maintenance, good neighbor skills, financial management and budgeting. Government sponsored re-location of poor black city residents into affluent white suburbs is hardly new and rests on a theory positing the malleability of human behavior: pathological behaviors are environmentally determined and so just improve environments and bad behavior will vanish. Specifically, moving underclass African Americans to pleasant white, affluent towns will see a notable reduction of crime, illegitimacy, drug and alcohol addiction, welfare dependency, domestic violence and other tribulations currently plaguing black inner-city neighborhoods. In addition, the transformation will succeed absent any prior psychological changes of new arrivals. In effect, an industrious law-abiding African American who autonomously flees to the suburbs to live a better life is identical to his Baltimore neighbor motivated solely by the promise of a more spacious, cheap apartment. It is also assumed that pathologies will be mitigated by inter-racial, inter-class contact. For example, lower class black youngsters will improve academically if they encounter more studious white classmates. And osmosis will flow only one way -- white youngster will not gravitate toward crime when socializing with black inner city refugees. It is hard to think of a more incorrect theory of human behavior. Tellingly, when such enterprises are discussed in official reports, the stress overwhelmingly is on the benefits to the recipients and advice on how to overcome (white) public resistance. The unspeakable harsh truth is that these newly relocated inner-city residents will bring their pathologies with them and after a few years the areas surrounding the freshly built homes and Section 8 apartments will resemble dilapidated crime-ridden Baltimore. If the transformative power of a better physical setting were correct, how do you explain massive white resistance to such enterprises? Are the millions of whites who over countless decades fled the influx of underclass blacks hallucinating or being fooled by racial demagogues? If such population movement worked as advertised, why must Washington impose it by court decrees, fines for non-compliance and other cram-down measures? How can advocates of this alleged panacea explain why busing thousands of academically troubled poor black students to top-flight white schools has failed? Is leafy small town America the magic cure for drug addiction and illegitimacy? Recall Ferguson, MO: put troubled black residents of St. Louis into a nice white suburb, and you create a new St. Louis slum. Now for the near-smoking gun proofs that this enterprise smells of contempt for whites. First, all this draconian coercion is outside federal law regulating discrimination in housing. Legal penalties for housing discrimination have nothing to do with coerced integration and to obscure the non-legal gun-to-the-head power, the consent of whites is officially deemed voluntary. No doubt, the hapless whites of Baltimore Country just realize that resistance is futile; you will be absorbed by the federal colossus. Second, prudence would suggest a modicum of cost/benefit analysis of this enterprise, and this scrutiny is totally absent (see here for a sampling of research on the alleged advantage of such re-locations). Only the supposed benefits for blacks inform calculations, for example, better schools, and experience suggests that these are likely to be transitory. Nor is there any mention of how the new arrivals will find employment in suburban areas with limited public transportation. Total silence surrounds the inevitable costs for whites: loss of home equity, increased school violence, more crime, and the shredded social cohesion associated with imposed racial diversity and, in the long run, the costs of moving elsewhere. Indeed, HUD is already anticipating white flight and is trying to impose rules that would forbid real estate agents from openly discussing the negative consequences forthcoming racial shift. Of the utmost importance for this near smoking gun evidence, these benefits provided to blacks need not come at the expense of whites. The same millions could have been spent in the city of Baltimore building nice homes for blacks adjacent to their old residences and if suburban whites were guilty of racial discrimination, just fine them versus (non-legally) imposing unwanted integration. Moreover, inner-city construction could have utilized nearby unemployed African American Baltimore residents who would, as an extra dividend, gain some job training (the model is Habitat for Humanity). Everything would be win/win politics. But, this sensible win-win solution fails to harm whites and so it is politically off limits. Beyond these immediate problems inflicted on whites will be, in all likelihood, the political costs of changing these once relatively racially homogeneous suburbs. Ferguson, MO is the future: more communal racial strife, yet more whites will flee, civil rights groups demanding more inclusionary policies, and, eventually, Department of Justice intervention to remedy alleged race-related injustices -- a too white police department, too few black office holders or an excessive expulsion rates of black students, to name but a few possibilities. One can only wonder why officials cannot foresee this racial-train-wreck-in-the-making. This is punitive policy-making that can only reflect the presence of deeply rooted racial animosities. Helping poor African Americans find decent housing is just the polite cover story. At least some government officials in the Obama administration want to punish suburban whites and given that Uncle Sam will foot the bills, inflicting this damage is irresistible. This week Mississippi passed their own religious freedom bill, House Bill 1523, which has been repeatedly dubbed the horrific anti-LGBT law in the media with promises to make the lives of LGBT citizens an oppressive living nightmare. Naturally, like all other religious freedom bills in the country, LGBT citizens are not even involved, let alone discriminated against. But the narrative cry is so loud no one is capable of grasping this simple and logical point. As with North Carolina and Georgia, Mississippi is being threatened with federal funding withdraws and many large companies ranging from Disney to PayPal have declared they will not do business in the state any longer. Several states have also halted official state-funded travel to the offending states. The left, of course, believes this kind of intimidation will force the hand of the governors to back down on their respective laws, and they are likely correct. Withstanding the tsunami of liberal outrage is a challenge few in any officials can handle. The boycotts will continue and the left will grow more outraged and more dramatic. Sobbing and terrified LGBTers will continue cranking out article after article detailing their imagined discrimination while absolutely none ever occurs. Uninformed average people will imagine restaurants putting up no gays allowed signs and ambulances turning away transgender people dying in the streets, regardless of the truth of the situation. Despite the nonsense we are sure to be inundated with daily for years and pending any lawsuits reversing it, this is actually a remarkable opportunity for each state involved. The silver lining to this situation is that each state may possibly get to protect its citizens religious liberties and grow a more independent economy built on local business. What happens when large corporations pull out of the state? Well, liberals imagine that without the good graces of say, PayPal, the economy of the state will suffer. This is not necessarily true, however, if the state generates its own alternative. As each large business removes itself, room is opened for smaller and local businesses to begin growing. Jobs are not given to us by the government or by benevolent corporate giants. They can be grown from the ground up. Since no one is actually going to experience discrimination, there really is no fear of citizens civil rights being violated. However, with the promised exodus of liberals it provides an opportunity to fill elected seats with rational people not swayed by propaganda. Liberals threatening to leave only opens up room for those who wish to take a more reasonable approach to local and statewide government. This is true as well if the federal government chooses to withhold funding. States rely too much on federal funding as it is. This gives the federal government too much influence. If the state can stand on its own, generate its own revenue and build its own economy the federal government has less to manipulate. The truth is the only people wishing to impose their beliefs on others are leftists. While a Christian business may choose to deny services for an event, they have no interest in denying service to an individual. Transgender people have been using public restrooms without issue since the 1960s and there is no reason anyone should expect their personal sense of gender to override the natural inclinations of others to use the correct bathroom in public. Transgender people are simply not going to be discriminated against and those who feel they will be fall under the no shoes, no service concept of appropriate social behavior and expectations. No one involved on the right has even proposed criminalizing or limiting transgender freedoms or liberty and certainly no one cares if a gay person buys from their shop. People simply do not want to be bullied into participating in events or concepts they deeply oppose and no one wants their daughter in the same bathroom with a man who believes wearing a dress and a wig makes him a woman. Could the state fail? Absolutely. We all rely too much on others to keep us afloat at the state level these days. But is this a good opportunity to stretch our collective independent muscles? Very possibly. Perhaps once the citizens experience a slight separation from the federal government they will want more. We dont need huge corporations to fund us or give us jobs and the less space they take up the more you and I can fill with our own industry. The progressive snobs can feel superior and righteous for boycotting what they obviously dont understand but feel passionate about anyway and the citizens of the state can be free from their overbearing presence. Its a win-win. Ironically the businesses in question are engaging in the exact kind of protest the laws they are protesting protect, but regardless it is their choice. Businesses have the right to boycott and pull out. Individuals have the right to refuse to spend their money for any reason they feel is important. A state does not need to pay for travel to other states. Protest is perfectly acceptable even if it is over something utterly nonsensical. The point is to enjoy freedom; not convenience. If the people of North Carolina, Mississippi and hopefully Georgia can appreciate that, they will be better off. I am a gay man, but I have no fear of religious freedom laws. In fact, I fully and enthusiastically support them. I think it is time to send an important message about independence and self-governance. Want the federal government to stop holding their funding over your head? Want big overbearing businesses to leave you be so you can grow your own industries? Want obnoxious liberals to pack up and leave for more progressive states? Want to be more in charge of your own laws, your own economy and your own path with less interference overall? Pass more anti-LGBT laws. Regardless of their true intent and actual outcome it seems they are remarkably effective methods of clearing out the progressive clutter and if you can stand tall without backing down, just may leave you with a fresh and clean start to better independence and freedom. Chad Felix Greene (@Chadfelixg), author of Jewish Childrens Books, NonFiction, and Social Commentary www.reasonablygay.com In a Philadelphia rally for Hillarys presidential campaign yesterday, Bill Clinton left the reservation for Democrats, rebuking #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators who repeatedly interrupted him, protesting the crime bill he signed into law (and that Hillary had campaigned for). Here is a short version of the now famous confrontation, in which he says to the BLMers, "You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. Tell the truth." And he even defends his welfare reforms. And here is a longer version, with his initial response to the protesters and what followed: There are a number of schools of thought about this notable departure from the rules of the Democrat reservation, which Ace well describes: Everyone treats these radicals as if they have Absolute Moral Authority and that the only possible response to their constant, violence-tinged disruptions is to say, "Yes of course you're right -- you are black, and I am white. Therefore everything you say is good and wise, and yes, you can shout in my face for ten minutes while I try to have a moment's peace eating this sandwich away from my office." On the left, there is horror at the lese-majeste toward BLM, and even demands to Fire Bill Clinton. Michelle Goldberg writes at Slate: I wonder if theres a part of Bill Clinton that doesn't really want Hillary Clinton to become president, particularly if she has to distance herself from his legacy to do so. How else to explain why one of the worlds most talented and agile politicians is so consistently flat-footed and destructive when advocating on his wifes behalf? How else to explain his terrible and destined-to-be-viral confrontation Thursday with Black Lives Matter protesters in Philadelphia? Ms. Goldberg apparently doesnt remember (or is too young to know about) the famous confrontation with Sistah Souljah during Bills 1992 presidential campaign, which served to distance him from the then-radical wing of the racial grievance industry and reassure white voters that he could be trusted. If this Philadelphia confrontation had taken place after the convention with Hillary as the nominee, it would serve a similar function. But of course, there is now the danger that Bill will diminish black turnout for his wife, and possibly drive younger black voters toward supporting Bernie Sanders. Goldberg sees Bill as sabotaging Hillary: One might attribute this repeated clumsiness to the fact that Bill Clinton is getting old; his hearing is bad, and on the trail he looks frail and wan. Perhaps hes simply slipping, mentally. But lets remember that Clinton caused similar problems for Hillary in 2008. There was the time he tried to diminish Obamas victory in South Carolina by noting that Jesse Jackson won there as well. The time he described the idea that Obama had gotten the Iraq war right as the biggest fairy tale Ive ever seen. The timeit hurts to remember itwhen he complained that the Obama campaign played the race card on me. Another interpretation is that Bill is simply defending his own administration, and now that he is old, very thin and white-haired, and not looking too vigorous, he is not going to put up with what Tom Wolfe once described as mau-mauing. Paul Mirengoff sums it up: If youre a Democratic politician, you uncomplainingly take crap from militant African-Americans; its what you do. Unless youre Bill Clinton. Hes a former U.S. president. He doesnt take crap from anyone. There is also the small, incidental matter that what Bill said is inarguably (to all except race mongers on the left) true. The BLM crowd does not care a whit about the vast numbers of black lives snuffed out by other blacks, often the teenage superpredators Hillary denounced in 1996 while supporting the crime bill her husband had signed... ...and abjectly apologized for naming a few weeks ago: In that speech, I was talking about the impact violent crime and vicious drug cartels were having on communities across the country and the particular danger they posed to children and families. Looking back, I shouldnt have used those words, and I wouldnt use them today. My own take is that Bill knows the fix is in and Hillary has the nomination locked up. He well remembers how much Sistah Souljah did for him in his first presidential campaign, and he is sick and tired of being heckled at a time in life when he doesnt really need to take any crap. I also think he understands very well the factor that the media will never, ever discuss: black anti-semitism. A few days ago, I wrote about PayPal's hypocrisy in canceling plans to open an office in Charlotte, N.C. due to the LGBT legislation passed by the legislature. The fact is, PayPal has corporate offices in some of the most anti-gay countries in the world. PayPal partnered with a Middle East payment company, Network International, to open an office in Dubai. The United Arab Emirates employs the penalty of death to those convicted of being gay or performing gay sex. So PayPal punishes North Carolina for keeping men out of the ladies' room while sucking up to a government that executes people just because they're gay. Because, justice. The company also has offices in Russia, where gay and transgender people are routinely beaten and a law is on the books prohibiting "gay propaganda." But North Carolina is lectured and chastised for not alllowing men to use a women's room. The Washington Times points out that corporate hypocrisy on this issue is not limited to PayPal: Whether its Apple opening stores in Saudi Arabia or American Airlines looking to dominate the Cuban travel market, many of the companies that have threatened to cut business ties to North Carolina over its bathroom bill are eager to do business in countries with regimes far more repressive of gays (and everyone else). PayPals international headquarters are located in Singapore, where sexual contact between males is punishable by up to two years in prison, and even littering can be punished by flogging. The company has a software development center in Chennai, India, where same-sex marriage is prohibited. Matt Sharp, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said PayPals actions internationally speak louder than its words at home. Theyve got a political agenda that theyre trying to push in the U.S. But it definitely does not line up with what their actions are saying around the world in places like Malaysia and others, Mr. Sharp said. Apple is among the other major corporations that have taken to the pulpit to lecture North Carolina for its sins despite doing business with anti-gay foreign regimes. CEO Tim Cook was one of several high-profile tech CEOs who signed a letter to Republican Gov. Pat McCrory calling on him to repeal the legislation. We are disappointed in your decision to sign this discriminatory legislation into law, the letter reads. The business community, by and large, has constantly communicated to lawmakers at every level that such laws are bad for our employees and bad for business. But, as Mr. Sharp points out, that has not stopped Apple from opening stores in Saudi Arabia, where gay people are regularly executed in public and cross-dressing is also a criminal offense. Pro-gay and trans advocacy are illegal, as is every religion except Islam. In my PJM piece, I ask, "What justification is there for punishing an American state for passing a law inconsistent with what PayPal sees as its values regarding LGBT issues, when the company opens an office in Dubai where gay people are executed?" The only answer to that question is profits. Corporate America is only as tolerant as it can afford to be without losing money. All this talk about "corporate values" is blather. If those "values" interfere with the company making money, the company will drop them. The pious denunciations by corporations of the commonsense law in North Carolina ring hollow when they are exposed as hypocrites and charlatans on LGBT issues. A journalism prize ceremony honoring a New York Times reporter who died in 2008 produced the weirdly incongruous spectacle of Barack Obama rebuking members of the press for trivializing the political process. It was something to see. His chin jutted out Mussolini-fashion, the president inveighed against the fluff that characterizes campaign coverage and complained that politics has become entirely untethered to reason and facts and analysis. He scolded the agenda-driven sycophants who abjured basic journalistic responsibilities to gush over silly, wildly overblown Hollywood productions showcasing faux Greek columns and fatuous blather about halting the rise of the oceans, the sort of ham-fisted propaganda that would have embarrassed Leni Riefenstahl. He chided grown men who squealed like schoolgirls over a candidates ability to read from a teleprompter, demanding that they act their age. Yes, it was quite a spectacle. Media reaction was prompt and resolute. At a press conference the following day, President Obama was asked to explain why he joined a church presided over by a virulently anti-American racist. He was taken to task on his long friendship with the Jew-hating preacher, on his complaisance in the face of sermons suffused with bigotry. One budding Sam Donaldson crossed the line separating boldness from lese majesty to ask why he had chosen the author of those sermons to officiate at his wedding and the baptisms of his children. The President, displaying his trademark cool, disposed of the effrontery with Jesuitical subtlety by pointing out that although he loved Reverend Wright, he had thrown him under the bus to make himself acceptable to the electorate. Reporters rose as one and cheered the courage of their Sun King. The blizzard of tough questions intensified. Why had he described the actions of fanatic Islamic terrorists who sought out a Kosher grocery store and slaughtered Jews there as random violence? Did he understand the meaning of the word random? Was the shakedown artist Al Sharpton an appropriate choice for go-to-guy on racial matters? Could he tell us about those enormous contributions to America made by Muslims? Was he referring to the creation of the US Navy, made necessary by the predations of the Barbary pirates? What did he think of Al Sharptons behavior following the brutal rape of the Central Park jogger when the hustler had dispatched his Rent-a-Mob to the hospital where the comatose woman hovered between life and death? Did he think that the mobs shouting whore at the hospital windows was respectful of the victim? Why had Susan Rice been dispatched to five Sunday talk shows to peddle an outright lie? Why was the fabrication about an obscure video his administrations official position for two weeks? What was his interpretation of Al Sharptons silence on the rape and beating of a black woman in Brooklyn that happened soon after the jogger was attacked? What does he think it says about Donald Trump that the mogul opted to pay the medical expenses for yet another black life that didnt matter at all to black leaders? Why did he look the American public in the eye and lie about his healthcare program? Why did he lie about not knowing terrorist Bill Ayers? Why exactly are his academic records sealed more tightly than the Manhattan Project ever was? Seriously, Al Sharpton? There is a kernel of truth at the center of this protracted April Fools joke: Barack Obama really, no kidding, honest-to-God reproached the mainstream media for failing to discharge their duties as journalists. Although the president managed to deliver his remarks with a perfectly straight face, he made it clear that he wasnt being entirely facetious. He was dead earnest when he insisted that his adoring acolytes were giving those evil Republicans a pass. He expects better of his team. It would be no surprise at all if, even before the enactment of our nation's 16th Amendment, Democrats had been anticipating the value of a federal income tax as a club to smite their political enemies. While their most vocal proponent of the issue, William Jennings Bryan, didn't include that particular consideration in his compelling exhortations to enact such a tax, it is not difficult to visualize that perennial presidential candidate (1896, 1900, 1908) offstage in a smoke-filled room offering other Democrat leaders this enticement: C'mon guys, when I'm president we'll be able to hammer the Republicans with tax audits until they do our bidding. Not to say that abuse of taxing authority is limited to Democrats; Richard Nixon reportedly used the federal tax audit to punish political enemies who angered him enough. But there's no question that it has been the Democrats under Barack Obama who have made taxing power a weapon of mass destruction. Granted, in the most recent IRS scandal it was a passive use: the withholding of tax-free status from conservative political organizations. The damage from that is impossible to assess, although the coast-to-coast fallout could be that we are now enduring a second four years of Chicago Way corruption of our legal system. The fact that the milquetoast members of the Republican majority in Congress have consistently failed to follow through on their investigations and pressure for indictments has only emboldened Democrats nationwide. All of this brings us to this situation in Seattle, where a liberal Democrat city council has enacted an extortionate tax specific to guns and ammunition, a flat $25-per-gun purchase and anywhere from two cents to five cents per round of ammo. The tax is having its desired effect, driving gun stores out of Seattle to surrounding suburbs. That this tax on citizens' Second Amendment rights will have any true impact on the number of household guns in Seattle is, like most liberal endeavors, laughable. It will, however, raise both prices and demand in Seattle's criminal black market, and it's a dead certain fact it will send jobs and the taxes that were already being collected from these gun stores to other, more sensible municipalities. But the real lesson to be learned here is that while Democrats deny and dismiss the destructive effects of higher taxes on American industry, instead attributing manufacturers' moves to offshore locations to corporate greed and an unwillingness to pay unionized workers a fair wage, Seattle's Folly demonstrates full well that they know better. Here they have deliberately weaponized their taxing authority to target one small, specific business type for no other reason than to force it to do precisely what they deny giant American corporations are doing: move to a less tax-oppressive environment. The only difference is that this time, the Democrats in power view the move-out as a desirable outcome. When the Democratic Party finally expires from this metastasizing corruption, the carcass will no doubt have the green bile of hypocrisy oozing from every orifice. The left is freaking out about the Mississippi law (H.B. 1523) passed recently. Big businesses, like PayPal, are boycotting Mississippi and North Carolina. From the typical headlines, one would think that the law allows anyone to discriminate against a gay person who enters a business establishment and is refused service merely for his sexual orientation. Not so. It actually prohibits the government from suing a person or organization that "sincerely" holds "religious beliefs or moral convictions" that "(a) Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman; (b) Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage; and (c) Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual's immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth" (Sec. 2). In other words, a religious person can't be sued if he believes in traditional or conjugal marriage, doesn't believe in sexual relations outside marriage, and believes that males and females really are different. Section 3, the heart of it, lays out the protection for a religious organization or religious private citizen. First, a religious organization cannot be discriminated against if it refuses to solemnize or accommodate in a facility a same-sex marriage not just a gay person outside the marriage context. Likewise for a business owner who holds to those convictions in Section 2 if he doesn't provide his services in the context of a marriage ceremony. Next, the state shall not discriminate against adoption or foster agencies that hold to those religious or moral convictions. In plain terms, a foster parent can tell his foster daughter that a princess marries a prince, and Catholic adoption agencies can send children to heterosexual married couples without fear of reprisal in a court of law. The state shall not discriminate against a citizen who refuses on those moral and religious grounds to operate on someone desiring genital reconstruction surgery, or psychological counseling, or fertility services, but the citizen should not deny a visit to the office. Thus, a counselor cannot not be sued if he believes that homosexuality is a sin and counsels reparative therapy, for example. The state cannot sue a business or school that separates men from women in the locker room or restroom. Finally, the state cannot bring an action against a state employee, like a county clerk or justice of the peace, who speaks his convictions even while on duty, and he cannot be sued if he turns over his official duties to another employee in the office who doesn't hold those religious and moral convictions. In plain language, a justice of the peace doesn't have to marry a same-sex couple, and he can tell them why without fear of a lawsuit. But the state has to be quick to offer another solution. So the irony is that the religious person can't be discriminated against for his convictions, and the gay person has other avenues to seek his goals (e.g., marriage or flowers). Religious freedom is an ultimate blessing for our nation. James Arlandson's website is Live as Free People, where he has posted What is moral law? Will breaking moral law break America? Men in Black at the GOP Convention, and Why Trump might win it all. At the historical center of Romanias capital city Bucharest, stands the colossal Palace of the Parliament, one of the most expensive and extravagant building project undertaken in the last century. Regarded as the crowning jewel of the megalomaniac Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescus ambitious urban development plan, and an embarrassment for its citizens, the Palace was built at great human and economic costs. To build the House of the Republic, the dictator leveled an entire hill and wiped out one fifth of the historic center of Bucharest. The project consumed a third of Romania's budget over 5 years. Despite being the object of disdain, it is Bucharests most visited tourist attraction. Photo credit: Alejandro Giacometti/Flickr The Palace of the Parliament claims many superlatives it is the second largest administrative building in the world, after The Pentagon in the United States; the third most massive building in the world, after the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Mexican Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan; and the heaviest building in the world. At USD 4 billion, it is also the most expensive administrative building in the world. The cost of heating and electric lighting alone exceeds $6 million per year, as much as a medium-sized city. The idea for the Palace of the Parliament, originally called The People's House, took root in Ceausescus mind after a visit to North Korea's Kim II-sung in 1972. Impressed by how his fellow dictator had built Pyongyang, Ceausescu started making plans for the most lavish palace in the world that would hold all the functions of his socialist state, aside from serving as a handsome residence for him and his wife. After a devastating earthquake in 1977 leveled Bucharest, Ceausescu seized the opportunity and decided to completely rebuild the city in his own vision. To accommodate his massive plans, Ceausescu demolished most of Bucharest's historic districts including more than two dozen churches, synagogues and temples, numerous factories and hospitals, and hundreds of homes. Some 40,000 people were forcibly relocated. One-fifth of central Bucharest was razed to the ground including a hill. Photo credit: Nico Trinkhaus/Flickr Construction began in 1984. Between 20,000 and 100,000 workers toiled in 24-hour shifts, seven days a week. To finance the project, Ceausescu took an enormous foreign debt which he repaid by exporting all of the country's agricultural and industrial production while the Romanian people starved and the standard of living sank to an all time low. Some 3,000 people were reported to have died. A young architect named Anca Petrescu (named by BBC as the worst architect in the world) was appointed chief architect of the project. Anca, who was only 28 years at that time, collaborated with nine other architects and some 700 subordinates on the buildings design which combines elements and motifs from a multitude of classical sources. The palace is 240 meters long, 270 meters wide and 12 stories tall. There are eight underground levels with the last one designed to serve as an anti-nuclear bunker for Ceausescus family, in the event of a nuclear war. Inside the palace there are 1,100 rooms with total floor area of 365,000 square meters. 900,000 cubic meters of wood was used for parquet and wainscoting, 1 million cubic meters of marble, and 200,000 square meters of woven carpets. 3,500 metric tones of crystal was consumed to manufacture 480 chandeliers. By December 1989, the building was only two-thirds complete, when Romania erupted in a revolution and Ceausescu had to escape the capital by a helicopter. He was later captured and executed by firing squad. The building was eventually completed in 1994. It now houses the Romanian Senate and Chamber of Deputies, and a modern art museum which occupies the ground floor. 70% of the building still remains empty. Photo credit: yk poon/Flickr Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr Photo credit: Anders Sandberg/Flickr Photo credit: Antoine Collet/Flickr Photo credit: Gaspar Serrano/Flickr Sources: www.local-life.com / CNN / Wikipedia The Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge are the latest smartphones to come from Samsung. These are smartphones which followed in the footsteps of the popular re-envisioning of the Galaxy series with the previous model, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. In spite of specs and some cosmetics differences, they were very much in keeping with the Galaxy S6. However, it is starting to seem that when it comes to sales, the two handsets are very different with reports suggesting the Galaxy S7 duo are clearly outselling their predecessors. Since the two devices became available, the market and consumers in general have been watching closely to see how the devices perform, with reports coming through as early as Marc 11 suggesting the Galaxy S7 devices were selling better than their predecessors in areas like Europe. A point which is reconfirmed today in the latest report. According to the details which are based on preliminary results from a Counterpoint survey of over forty countries, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are outperforming the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge in most regions. As to be expected the results do differ from region to region with the U.S. said to be 30-percent higher than the Galaxy S6/Edge sales, Europe to be 20-percent higher and China 10-percent higher. In fact, the results suggest that in some regions the increase is as much as 50-percent, with Counterpoint noting that the only region in which they are seeing flat year over year growth is their home region, South Korea. Which in some respects might not be as negative as it sounds. With Samsung having such a dominant presence in South Korea, it is likely they are hitting somewhat of a ceiling in terms of how much they can grow. While in the other regions, growth is possible and the latest results do seem to be suggesting they are achieving that growth with their latest handsets. Advertisement In terms of interpreting these results, Counterpoint note that Samsung made some very specific and clever moves this year which helped the launch. One of which was ensuring that in spite of the cost of the handsets, they were seen as value packages due to them being combined with various promotions like the free Gear VR headset and VR content bundle. Likewise and specifically in terms of the U.S. market, Counterpoint note that the decision by Samsung to release the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge in March (and earlier than usual) worked in their favor. With the results of the analysis being that Samsung has shipped in excess of 10 million handsets globally, an across the board improvement of 25-percent compared to the twin Galaxy S6 handsets. One interesting point to note is that Counterpoint suggest the breakdown of units ships comes in as 47-percent for the Galaxy S7 Edge and 53-percent for the Galaxy S7. In an effort to boost sales of the expensive Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, Rogers has started to include a FREE Samsung 128GB microSD memory card, valued at $129.99. Rogers, Bell and Telus are all offering the Galaxy S7 for $399 on a two-year contract and the Galaxy S7 Edge for $499 the 128GB memory card will help soften the blow a little, since most people tend to purchase additional memory. With read and write speeds of up to 80MB/second and 20MB/second respectively, you can transfer files, apps and videos more quickly. This offer is for new and existing customers that are looking to upgrade or add a new line and is good while quantities last and is subject to change without notice. It should also be noted that if you return your Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge within their 15-day return policy that you must also return the Samsung 128GB memory card in its original condition. The Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge were released last month and are selling very well according to analysts especially the Galaxy S7 Edge. The Galaxy S7 comes with the same 5.1-inch display size as the Galaxy S series has for the past few years. This year, Samsung changed up the Galaxy S7 Edge model by increasing its size to 5.5-inches last year, the Galaxy S6 Edge was 5.1-inches and the Galaxy S6 Edge Plus was 5.7-inches. This was a smart move on Samsungs part and eliminated its Edge models from competing directly with the Galaxy S7 at 5.1-inches and the Galaxy Note series which is 5.7-inches. This brings hope to those that are looking forward to a Galaxy Note 6 and Galaxy Note 6 Edge there is just something about those curved display edges that adds appeal to the design, as well as additional functionality. Both models use the QHD Super AMOLED displays for stunning graphics and the US models use the new Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor and Adreno 530 GPU, while other areas use the Exynos 8890 octa-core processor both of which are much more powerful than last years models. The main camera changed from a 16MP shooter to a Dual-Pixel 12MP that has already been crowned by DxOMark as the best mobile camera around. Both models offer larger batteries than last year but have a rapid charge feature as well as quick wireless charging. Qualcomm is the most popular mobile processor manufacturer in the world. The companys flagship Snapdragon 820 64-bit quad-core processor is currently fueling a number of flagship devices out there, including the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, LG G5 and the Xiaomi Mi 5. That being said, HTC will introduce their new flagship (HTC 10) on April 12th, and pretty much every single rumor that surfaced said that the device will ship with the Snapdragon 820. Keep in mind that a lower-end HTC 10 variant was also mentioned (Snapdragon 6XX), but were talking about the companys flagship here. Well, Qualcomm has decided to release a new teaser on Twitter which contains the Power of 10 hashtag which HTC uses to promote their upcoming HTC 10 flagship. Qualcomm posted an image on twitter with the Performance 10 caption, which clearly suggests that the HTC 10 will be fueled by Qualcomms most powerful SoC. Now, as far as other specs go, the HTC 10 is rumored to sport a 5.2-inch 1080p (1920 x 1080) display, along with 4GB of RAM and 32GB / 64GB of internal storage. The Snapdragon 820 SoC will ship with the Adreno 530 GPU for graphics rendering, and we still dont know what size will be HTC 10s battery, but we do hope HTC will include a 3,000mAh+ unit in this device. The phone will be made out of metal, and judging by the leaks, the phone will sport a physical home button below the display. The 12-megapixel rear-facing camera has been rumored as well, and a 5-megapixel snapper will, allegedly, going to be available up front. Android Marshmallow will come pre-installed on the HTC 10, and on top of it, youll find HTCs Sense 8 UI. Advertisement The HTC 10 Taiwan pricing and Sense 8 UI leaked earlier today, and it seems this will be quite a pricey phone, though that was to be expected. The leak said that the 32GB and 64GB storage variants of this device will cost NT$22,900 ($706) and NT$24,900 ($768) in Taiwan, respectively. In addition to this, the leak suggested that the phone will be available in Taiwan starting April 15th. Either way, stay tuned, well report back if new info surfaces. Samsungs Galaxy S5 was and will perhaps always be a divisive flagship from the South Korean giant. It launched among ridicule from some for looking like a band-aid and well, it wasnt the most attractive device that Samsung had ever shipped. Regardless, the Galaxy S5 gave Samsung fans a great fingerprint sensor, a good grip in the hand and a pretty excellent camera at the time. That was, of course, back in the halcyon days of 2014 and no company has changed the overall look and feel of their phones as much in that time as Samsung. Despite its age however, the Galaxy S5 is still being updated and those with a Galaxy S5 on Sprint will be getting the update to Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow right about now. The new Samsung software version for this Android 6.0.1 update is G900PVPU3CPCA and Sprint is detailing a phased roll out of the update from April 7th to May 19th. That means that it might be some time before you see the update hit your device, but we doubt it will take as long as this for the majority of users to see the update. As is often the case with major software upgrades from Samsung, this will update the underlying Android software to the newer version, but leave most of Samsungs software well alone. It looks as though this update will allow users to take advantage of Marshmallows Adoptable Storage, essentially merging a microSD card with the internal storage to create one central pot for apps and media, which is a damn fine feature to have. Elsewhere however, were looking at all the same sort of features that Marshmallow launched with last fall, including Now on Tap, Doze and the fingerprint scanner should become more useful here, too. Advertisement Sprint has been doing a pretty good job of getting software upgrades like these out to customers quicker than most other carriers as of late, and its nice to see a two-year old device continuing to get updates. It is however, likely to be the last update that the Galaxy S5 sees due to its age. This sadly means that the Galaxy S5 probably wont see an update to Android N, but by the time that hits most devices, users of the Galaxy S5 might well have moved on anyway. T-Mobiles Product Manager, Mr. Des Smith (aka @askdes), has announced via Twitter that the LG V10 will receive a much-awaited update next week that should usher in Android Marshmallow for the dual-screen, triple-camera smartphone, which was launched late last year by South Koreas LG Electronics. The carrier has already rolled out the latest full-release version of Android to the LG G3 and the LG G4, so the V10 was naturally expected to be the next in line, especially as T-Mobile had already officially announced the smartphone as one of the devices on its network slated to receive Android Marshmallow. Back in January, the carrier had announced a list of LG devices on its network that were earmarked to get the Marshmallow treatment and the LG V10 featured prominently on that list along with usual suspects like the G3 and the G4. So taking into account all of the above, Marshmallow for the LG V10 was obviously to be expected at some stage this year, but it should still please LG V10 users on T-Mobile to finally hear something concrete on this front especially from the T-Mobile management. It is worth noting, however that Verizon had rolled out the Marshmallow update to the LG V10 last month itself, but there have been no reports about either AT&T or Sprint joining Verizon or T-Mobile as yet. Of course, the U.S. is not the only country where LG V10 users are getting their first official taste of Marshmallow. The device received Android 6.0 in South Korea and Turkey last month itself, so it was only a matter of time before LG and its carrier partners started rolling out the new Marshmallow-based update to the devices globally. Advertisement LG recently launched its flagship smartphone for 2016, the LG G5, which brings some new features hitherto unseen on mainstream handsets. While some features like a dual-rear camera set-up is starting to become comparatively more common, the one area where the device is truly unique is the way it deals with the removable battery. Of course, having been launched just recently, the G5 already comes pre-loaded with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. As for the impending Marshmallow roll out for the V 10, @askdes did not say anything specific about it in his tweet, so well have to wait to see when it finally goes live. Its been a busy Spring for the world of smartphones, and we still have a ways to go yet. While Apple is up to their classic tricks of making the old new again, others have released genuinely forward-thinking devices. The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are off to a great start and LGs G5 finally hit shelves in all of its modular glory. A surprise contender has arrived in the form of Huaweis P9 and its excellent Leica-powered dual camera setup, and Android N has Nexus fans excited for the future of Android. HTC has an announcement next week as well, which should stir things up further and bring the Taiwanese name back to this Top 10 where they belong. 10. Motorola Droid Turbo 2/Moto X Force Advertisement When Motorola teamed up with Verizon to make the original Droid smartphone they started something pretty special. Now, with the latest version released last year they offered up a device that was more Motorola than any previous effort, and its a better device because of it. With a 5.4-inch Quad HD display that features a ShatterShield glass panel, the Droid Turbo 2 (known as the Moto X Force outside of the USA) is a solid device that has some great features, a good camera and a decent overall experience. Even so, being shackled to just Verizon in the US isnt too helpful, and even though its a better device on paper for many at least Motorola dont seem too bothered in pushing it in more key markets around the world. 09. Sony Xperia Z5 Advertisement When Sony launched the Xperia Z5 range, we were a little confused after coming so close after the Xperia Z3+, but nevertheless Sony forged on. With the Xperia Z5, they improved a number of things, but more importantly they slimmed the bezels down around the 5.2-inch 1080p display and upped the camera. The 23-megapixel camera on the Xperia Z5 is easily one of the best out there, perhaps not in terms of features or gimmicks, but in pure, everyday performance. Sadly, the Xperia Z5 is still a little too expensive than it ought to be and in the USA it loses the fingerprint sensor for whatever misguided reason making Sonys current flagship a bizarre option from one of the biggest brands out there. 08. LG V10 Advertisement When LG announced the LG V10, it was easy to write this off of as a G4+, but LG went further than that to create a genuinely different device, one that even stands out against the new G5. With many of the same features of the G4, but adding a 5.7-inch Quad HD display as well as a quirky second display up top, the V10 is larger and altogether built for action. Its got a grippy back panel and an aluminum frame that LG says adds some more rigidity to the whole package. The camera might not be the best sensor-wise, but with some of the best software out there, the V10 becomes one of the better options for those that want to create and edit videos and whatever else from their devices without sending the footage elsewhere. 07. Google Nexus 5X Advertisement The Nexus 5X launched as a device that many appreciated for being not only another LG Nexus but also a return to a device that wasnt massive. Indeed, the 5.2-inch Full HD display makes the Nexus 5X something for those that still use a smartphone in one hand, but the Snapdragon 808 and 2GB of RAM under the hood make the Nexus 5X feel older than it really is. Still, if stock Android and a great camera are two boxes you want ticked, then the Nexus 5X should be what youre looking for. As an added bonus, the thing just keeps on getting cheaper and cheaper. 06. Huawei P9 Advertisement Huawei has been lurking in the shadows for some time now, and with every great release it becomes more and more clear that Huawei are aiming for the very top of the smartphone business. This time around, Huawei have partnered with Leica to bring two cameras to the P9. The 5.2-inch Full HD P9 has a color and monochrome sensor that both work together to deliver much more light and much more contrast. Its thinner than practically any other smartphone out there and Huawei werent afraid to let people know that it doesnt have any sort of camera bump at all. We have one in-house and will be putting together some more coverage on it, but for now Huawei have one of the most surprising releases in memory. Lets just hope it comes to the US as its hitting mostly everywhere else. The Huawei P9 will go on sale later this month. 05. OnePlus 2 Advertisement The OnePlus 3 might very well be just around the corner mark June down, folks but for now the OnePlus 2 is still a device that can trade blows with some new, 2016 devices. With a fairly decent 5.5-inch 1080p display and a Snapdragon 810 paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, the OnePlus 2 is a stacked device, even if these are 2015 specs. What makes the OnePlus 2 so appealing however, is its price. At just $349 now, for the 64GB, 4GB model, the OnePlus 2 offers some of the best value out there, and at long last its finally getting Marshmallow. 04. Samsung Galaxy Note 5 Advertisement The Galaxy Note 5 is, for the most part simple a larger Galaxy S6 with a few tweaks here and there. Which is disappointing in some ways, but good in many others. Compared to the Galaxy Note 4 it looks much nicer and feels more like the premium device that it is. However, when you add in the larger 5.7-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display and the excellent S-Pen, the Galaxy Note 5 really comes alive. Its powerful, speedy and versatile. It has a great camera, it looks great and while it might not offer much else compared to the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S7 lines, theres just something about a Galaxy Note device. 03. Google Nexus 6P The Nexus 6P was a return to form for the Nexus line as well as a big deal for its manufacturer, Huawei. With a 5.7-inch Quad HD AMOLED display, the Nexus 6P is one hell of a device, and while theres no microSD card slot or removable battery, it makes up for this with great battery life and a pretty stellar camera especially at this sort of price unlocked. If youre looking for great hardware to show off Android in all of its pure glory, then the Nexus 6P is a great option. Being able to experience Android N before it launches quite hurt, either. 02. LG G5 The above picture sums up what LG is trying to do with the G5; offer a good look and feel without sacrificing on expandability. The all-metal G5 has a removable battery, a microSD card slot, and will have a camera grip and better sound from Bang & Olufsen in the future through different modules. With two cameras that offer different angles, the G5 is truly a versatile and flexible smartphone, LG have even shrunk it down to a 5.3-inch design to make it more accessible and while the software is not to everyones liking, the G5 is one hell of a package, especially if you want it all without the compromises. 01. Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge The Galaxy S7 line might only be slight improvements over last years Galaxy S6 line, but they have a lot to offer to well, pretty much anyone. And thats really the appeal of this years Galaxy S powerhouse, they look great, they have even better battery life, they sound great, they take better pictures. The list of little betters and improvements is near endless with the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. Sure, theres no removable battery but then theres no unsightly gap and there might not be the ability to use a camera grip, but then the Galaxy S7 is water-resistant and well, looks like it does. The names of persons implicated in the leak of the so-called Panama papers on April 3 reads like a whos who of the politically powerful in many parts of the world. Included among the persons whose family members and close associates have been identified are: British Prime Minister David Cameron, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, South African President Jacob Zuma, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It should be noted, however, that there has been no evidence of direct connections to companies and bank accounts by these people. Neither has there been any evidence of illegal behaviour or wrong doing specifically by them. Some media are feeding a frenzy because mentioning well-known names helps to create and sustain a story that suggests impropriety. The so-called Panama Papers is 11 million files leaked from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, to an organization called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) which has widely publicised much of the material. The law firm has denied any wrongdoing, and said it has fallen victim to an international campaign against privacy. The resignation of Icelands Prime Minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, has helped to fuel the story, even though he has not stood down over an illegality. His resignation followed demonstrations based on the allegation that he concealed millions of pounds offshore. Prime Minister David Cameron has also been compelled to talk about his familys private business after his father was among those named in the Panama Papers. The Caribbean will not be immune from the excitement that is being generated by the leaking of the papers. It seems that many of the companies, quite legitimately established by Mossack Fonseca, were registered in the British Virgin Islands. From all that has emerged so far, it seems that many of the persons who have been identified in the Panama Papers were not evading tax or laundering money. The majority appeared to have been planning their taxes, including by the use of legitimate vehicles for avoiding the payment of tax. Tax avoidance in not illegal. Tax evasion is. But, increasingly there is a tendency to blur the two by those who advocate against low-tax or no tax jurisdictions, claiming that they are tax havens. Already, one high-tax European Union country, France, has announced that it is putting Panama back on its list of uncooperative countries. One official of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Angel Gurria, has also sharply criticised Panama in the wake of Panama Papers. Gurria stated publicly that Panama is the last major holdout that continues to allow funds to be hidden offshore from tax and law enforcement authorities. But, neither of the spokesmen for France or the OECD dealt with the fact that high tax jurisdictions force companies and persons to seek low tax jurisdictions to plan their financial affairs and that no illegality has so far emerged from the events in Panama. For its part, the Panamanian government has pointed out that it has been removed from the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the multilateral body that makes rules to counter money laundering and terrorism financing. In other words, it was judged to be compliant with FATF rules. The government has also pointed out that half of offshore companies that were established by Mossack Fonseca are registered in the British Virgin Islands a jurisdiction that operates under British legislation. The government also stressed that all of the 10 banks named in the Panama Papers as doing business with the law firm hit by the hack were based in Europe, not Panama. Significantly, the government further noted that the US state of Delaware allowed great anonymity for company owners. The tactic to ignore other jurisdictions and focus solely on Panama is unfair and discriminatory, the statement said. It is clear from all this that high tax jurisdictions and others have branded Panama without establishing that there is any evidence of money laundering or tax evasion. The fact is that establishing vehicles for tax planning, including avoidance, is not illegal. Panama has been very strong in resisting the imposition of rules by the OECDs Global Forum on automatic Information exchange. It is now paying the price for its attempts to be independent. In this connection, the observations of Dr Bruce Zagaris, a renowned US Tax lawyer is pertinent. He made the remarks at a meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organisation of American States that I chaired on March 30. He pointed out that the Global Forum is a sham by which the OECD strictly controls the agenda, the delegates and the information distributed to attendees, and, in terms of tax policies, the large countries have blocked efforts to have a universal organisation such as the United Nations make policy. It is interesting that the Russian President Vladimir Putin whose name has been bandied about in relation to the Panama Papers has pointed out that his name is nowhere in the records. Caribbean jurisdictions have worked hard with scarcer resources than Panama to comply with all the imposed rules and regulations, and to protect their standing in providing financial services. But, as events in Panama show, innuendo is all that is needed if facts confront assertions. Responses and previous commentaries: www.sirronaldsanders.com By Sir Ronald Sanders (The writer is Antigua and Barbudas Ambassador to the United States and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London and Massey College, University of Toronto. The views expressed are his own) (ANSA) - Bangkok, April 8 - Rolando Del Torchio, the Italian hostage freed Friday after five months in the hands of suspected Islamist militants in the Philippines, is in "precarious health", the Filipino army said. He has therefore been taken to the army's trauma centre, a spokesman said. Del Torchio, a restaurateur and former missionary, was abducted in October with Islamist group Abu Sayyaf the primary suspects. It is not known if a ransom was paid. Del Torchio, a bar owner, was taken hostage on Mindanao island and released on Sulu island. (ANSA) - Rome, April 8 - Italy on Friday recalled its ambassador to Egypt after a two-day summit between investigators into the torture and murder of Giulio Regeni failed to shed light on the atrocity that occurred in Cairo earlier this year. Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni recalled Italy's ambassador to Cairo, Maurizio Massari to assess the "most opportune" measures to get at the truth over Regeni, who was abducted, tortured and murdered in Cairo early this year. Regeni, a Cambridge doctoral researcher working on Egyptian trade unions, went missing in Cairo on January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak. His burned, beaten, stabbed, and mutilated body turned up on the city's outskirts on February 3. Egypt initially said he was a road-accident victim, then suggested a gay lovers' spat, said his wounds were due to an Egyptian autopsy, and most recently said he was the victim of a kidnapping gang that was subsequently wiped out by the police leaving them unable to testify. Italian judicial sources said that the 2,000-page dossier the Egyptian delegation has brought on the case is "still incomplete" and lacks fundamental elements that Italy has been asking for for over a month. (ANSA) - Istanbul, March 8 - Protests resumed on the Greek island of Lesbos on Friday against migrants being sent to Turkey as part of the deal between the EU and Ankara to address the asylum-seeker crisis. The agreement entails, among other things, the expulsion of economic migrants to Turkey in exchange for the EU receiving Syrian refugees currently in Turkey. On Friday several protestors threw themselves into the water at Lesbos port in a bid to stop the ejections. Nevertheless a ferry carrying 45 Pakistani asylum seekers managed to depart and arrived later at Dikili, in Turkey. Another two ships with around 100 migrants are expected to depart from Chios and Samos later in the day. Expulsion operations were suspended after the first 202 migrants were sent from Lesbos and Chios to Turkey on Monday. (see related) (ANSA) - Rome, April 8 - Premier Metteo Renzi's government reiterated that it was necessary to focus on growth and job creation after years of painful austerity in a draft of its economic blueprint, the economic and financial document (DEF). "The government considers the adoption of a more restrictive tone in budget policy to be inopportune and counterproductive," said the draft document, which ANSA has seen, signed by Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan. The document highlights the risks linked to deflation, which Italy is currently enduring, and "insufficient coordination of fiscal policies" at the EU. It said restrictive budgets could have "perverse" effects and end up worsening the public debt situation rather than improving it. (ANSA) - Cairo, April 8 - An Egyptian diplomatic source on Friday told ANSA that Egypt is awaiting the results of a summit between Egyptian and Italian investigators in Rome on the Giulio Regeni case, and that Egyptian investigators will tell their Italian counterparts "the whole truth" on the circumstances surrounding the abduction, torture and murder of the 28-year-old Italian researcher in the country's capital. "(Egypt) hopes that Italy shows understanding about the investigative procedures on the Regeni murder," the source said. Italian judicial sources said that the 2,000-page dossier the Egyptian delegation has brought on the case is "still incomplete" and lacks fundamental elements that Italy has been asking for for over a month. Rome has complained about a lack of cooperation from Cairo in getting to the bottom of the case and has threatened consequences if there is no progress. (ANSA) - Rome, April 8 - The government's four-year economic blueprint, the financial and economic planning document (DEF), goes before the cabinet for fine-tuning Friday night. Italian GDP will rise 1.2% in 2016, down from 1.6% in a previous estimate, and then grow by 1.4% in 2017 and 1,5% in 2018, according to the DEF, a draft copy of which has been obtained by ANSA. Italy's deficit-to-GDP ratio will fall from 2.6% to 2.3% in 2016, according to the DEF. It will fall to 1.8% in 2017 thanks to higher revenues and spending cuts, the DEF said. There will be a "slight surplus" in 2019. Italy's public debt will drop to 132.4% of GDP in 2016 from 132.7% in 2015, according to forecasts in a draft of the government economic blueprint, the economic and financial document (DEF). In September the government had predicted the debt would drop to 131.4% of GDP this year. The DEF is to be presented to the European Commission along with Renzi's latest reforms plan. Premier Metteo Renzi's government reiterated that it was necessary to focus on growth and job creation after years of painful austerity in a draft of the DEF. "The government considers the adoption of a more restrictive tone in budget policy to be inopportune and counterproductive," said the draft document, which ANSA has seen, signed by Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan. The document highlights the risks linked to deflation, which Italy is currently enduring, and "insufficient coordination of fiscal policies" at the EU. It said restrictive budgets could have "perverse" effects and end up worsening the public debt situation rather than improving it. (by Cristiana Missori) FLORENCE - "Many contradictions, many ongoing transformations. This is Saudi Arabia today, a country where about 60% of the population has less than 30 years of age, with a new leadership of youth and where minorities and those will fewer rights start having more space". So said Mahmoud Sabbagh, a Saudi filmmaker who will present Friday his latest feature film at the Middle East Now festival in Florence running through April 10. The film is called Barakah MeetsBarakah (Barakah Yoqabil Barakah). It is a bitter-sweet comedy on youth in the Kingdom, much more progressive than how it is portrayed by western media, very much involved in social networks, not in line with religious precepts and far removed from a certain obscurantist mentality which is embedded in the country. Set in the port city of Jeddah, it talks about a love story between Bibi (a nickname for Barakah) - the adoptive daughter and heiress of a rich family and Instagram star - and Barakah, a government employee of humble origin and theatre actor. Living their love story is not easy but the couple succeeds in getting around the impositions of tradition and religious police. With this first film, Sabbagh launches a message of hope, as he explains to ANSA, ''because the Kingdom is changing'', he assured. ''I wanted to talk about my generation, the one of the new millennium''. A generation, he said, that had ''fewer privileges than our fathers. We were deprived of our rights on a social, economic and political level''. At a certain point in the movie, in fact, Sabbagh compares two generations, his parents' and his own. ''I compared Saudis to other Saudis'', in a comparison ''with the glorious past'' and ''showing how societies can evolve (or involve) from within''. The images remind of Egypt in the 1950s or Iran before the revolution. The 1970s - he said - brought the revolution to Iran and the preaching of some zealots to the Kingdom. Until then, the Kingdom was open''. Filming in Jeddah, he said, was very complicated but also very fulfilling. ''There were obstacles and difficult moments'', he admitted. The situation is the same described by Haifa Al Mansour, the first woman director in the Kingdom. ''It is true, we don't have a cinema industry, no film schools, no unions of the category. There is also no legal framework, nor are public funds allocated to support'' cinema. Worst still, Saudis have no commercial movie theaters since 1978. However, noted Sabbagh, who is just over 30, ''as artists it is possible to create and invent from scratch''. ''And the Saudi public wants cinema. I have devoured foreign films when I was young and grew up with Italian and Egyptian neo-realism - works that inspired me''. Barakah meets Barakah has not yet been filmed in the Kingdom. It will tour festivals in the Arab world until September and will reach Saudi Arabia directly as a 'video on demand', as there are no movie theaters. The filmmaker is also planning a film on his country's history. ''I am working on two projects at the same time'', he revealed. ''A television series dedicated to Jeddah in the 19th century, when it was a flourishing port and a cosmopolitan city, as well as a place of ethnic and religious tension, and a second film also dedicated to Saudi youth''. BEIRUT - ISIS allegedly killed 175 cement factory workers abducted over the past 48 hours during an offensive north-east of Damascus, Lebanon's Daily Star reported on Friday, quoting Syrian military sources. Reports on the incident, however, are contradictory, starting with the number of people kidnapped. On Thursday, government sources reported that 300 people were abducted, the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 140 had fled while 170 others were held by the jihadists. Egypt: Saudi king announces construction of Red Sea bridge Al Arabiya, Sisi wants to name it after King Salman (ANSAmed) - CAIRO, APRIL 8 - The king of Saudi Arabia has announced that a bridge will be built over the Red Sea linking the Kingdom to Egypt, the website of the BBC reports, as a visit of King Salman is ongoing in Cairo. The Red Sea, in its narrowest areas or in the northern part in line with Cairo, is wide between 20 and 35 kilometers. The BBC reports that, in a statement released on the second day of his visit to Cairo, King Salman stressed that the bridge would boost trade between the two allied countries. The broadcaster's website recalled, however, that a ''Red Sea bridge linking the two countries has been proposed several times before but has failed to become a reality''. (ANSAmed). PARIS - French Environment and Energy Minister Segolene Royal has decided to implement an ''immediate'' moratorium on permits to search for hydrocarbons in the Mediterranean Sea. ''Given the dramatic consequences that can strike the whole Mediterranean in case of an oil drilling accident, Segolene Royal has decided to implement an immediate moratorium on the search for hydrocarbons in the Mediterranean, both in France's territorial waters and in the exclusive economic zone'', said a statement quoted by French media. Francois Hollande's minister will thus ask for ''the extension of this moratorium on the whole Mediterranean in the framework of the convention of Barcelona on the protection of marine environment and the Mediterranean coast''. Tunisia: Hahn, 250 mln euros in aid from EU in 2016 Two healthcare centers inaugurated in Beja governorate (ANSAmed) - TUNIS, APRIL 8 - The European Union will support Tunisia in 2016 with aid worth approximately 250 million euros, the EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy Johannes Hahn said Friday, during a visit to the North African country to discuss with its leaders EU-Tunisia relations also ahead of the EU Association Council on April 18. European Union aid for Tunisia will concern, among other things, professional training and means to boost employment, a key factor for Tunisia's development, marked by high unemployment rates. During the visit, the European commissioner and the Tunisian Health Minister Said Aid inaugurated two new structures of the governorate of Beja, part of a wider program of EU funding for the creation of 13 new healthcare centers and the renovation of another 60 centers in 13 different governorates of Tunisia. (ANSAmed). ISIS: media, 175 workers abducted yesterday in Syria killed According to Syrian military sources; 140 others able to flee (ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, APRIL 8 - ISIS allegedly killed 175 cement factory workers abducted over the past 48 hours during an offensive north-east of Damascus, Lebanon's Daily Star reported on Friday, quoting Syrian military sources. Reports on the incident, however, are contradictory, starting with the number of people kidnapped. On Thursday, government sources reported that 300 people were abducted, the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 140 had fled while 170 others were held by the jihadists. (ANSAmed). Migrants: Berlin, 66% drop in Germany in first quarter 2016 De Maiziere, from 500,000 in third quarter 2015 to 170,000 (ANSAmed) - BERLIN, APRIL 8 - A clear decrease in the inflow of migrants has been reported in Germany, Interior Minister Thomas De Maiziere told a press conference in Berlin on Friday. The inflow dropped 66% from the 500,000 migrant entrances reported in the last trimester of 2015 to the 170,000 registered in the first quarter of 2016, the German interior minister said. De Maiziere explained that asylum applications have increased in Germany while migrant arrivals have decreased: 181,400 asylum requests have been presented since January 1 this year. The minister then stressed the good result obtained by Berlin through measures concerning the Balkans: ''in the first trimester of 2015, the asylum requests presented by migrants coming from the six countries of the Balkans were 61% of the overall number, about 20,000; in the first trimester of 2016 they dropped to 5%, with 3,000 applications''. (ANSAmed). AJACCIO (FRANCE) - It is an emergency that often remains forgotten amid news of mass deaths at sea or new barriers at borders: that of thousands of children and teens who lose months or years of school because they are fleeing war, with huge damage for their future. In order not to 'lose' one or more generations, a company from Basilicata, specialized in advanced communication technology, Openet, is about to launch a pilot project with the European Space Agency (ESA) to enable young migrants - as well as all pupils who cannot go to school for a variety of reasons - to get an education. ''The project is called Oneclass! Openet for education - explained on the sidelines of COPEAM's conference in Ajaccio, Vito Gaudiano, CEO of Openet - and comes from our experience in Africa to support education, thanks to long-distance classes that reach students in remote places thanks to a connection through satellite or tablet. They don't even need electricity, because they can function through solar panels. The problem of immigration today is not only economic, or people arriving to look for a job, but political and social, because young people are fleeing war, and for many of them this means, amid travels and difficulties in their guest country, losing months or years of school. There is an extremely beautiful video that shows a Syrian school where attendance is called and nobody is there to answer. These kids deal with the problem of abandonment but also, even when they find dignified hosting situations, that of being included in new school programs, for example due to the new language. We want to provide, thanks to technology, didactic support to these students. With videoconferences, tutors, teachers that can follow them from Syria or any other country, and didactic material, all supervised through monitoring applications that follow the whole process, until graduation''. ESA will provide support thanks to these applications it deals with, which are not very well known but can be used in daily life. The pilot project, the first of its kind in Europe, will kick off in September in two schools in Basilicata, because this strategy, said Gaudiano, can be used also for children who are in classes of different grade in the same room or who are sick and can't go to school. Also in Basilicata, the platform will be connected to teachers in France or England to make learning a foreign language easier. ''The aim is to be open to the world and support integration'', concluded Gaudiano. Kosovo: tear gas at inauguration ceremony of new president Five arrests. Pristina under tight security for Hashim Thaci (ANSAmed) - PRISTINA, APRIL 8 - Tear gas on Friday was fired in Pristina, probably by members of the nationalist opposition, shortly before the start, in the central Skanderberg square, of the official inauguration ceremony of the new president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci. Protesters were able to fire tear gas in spite of tight security and safety checks put in place thanks to a massive deployment of anti-riot police across the center of the Kosovan capital. All streets in the area were closed for security reasons, along with local cafes and restaurants. In the transfer of power, outgoing president Atifete Jahjaga handed over to Thaci the text of the constitution. The swearing-in ceremony of the new president, elected on February 26, occurred yesterday in parliament. The ceremony, without the presence of a public, was attended by several guests and foreign leaders, including Albanian Premier Edi Rama, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic and EU representative to Pristina Samuel Zgobar. The opposition has been opposing the government for months, blocking in all possible way parliament's activities, also by throwing tear gas inside. Members of the opposition are asking Premier Isa Mustafa to step down over his alleged role in backing agreements with Serbia and Montenegro they believe harmed the sovereignty of Kosovo. Such agreements concern the creation of a Community of Serbian municipalities in Kosovo and a border line with Montenegro. (ANSAmed). Pope opens up to communion for divorced who remarry Don't discriminate against gays, Francis says in exhortation (by Paul Virgo). (ANSA) - Vatican City, April 8 - In his new apostolic exhortation the family Pope Francis opens up to the possibility of divorced Catholics who remarry being able to take communion. The hotly awaited post-synodal document on "the joy of love" (Amoris Laetitia) is the culmination of almost three years of consultations with Catholics from around the world. The pope said that remarried divorcees "must be more integrated into the Christian communities" and that it is necessary to evaluate what "forms of exclusion... can be overcome". The Argentine pontiff says the way forward is look at individual cases, bearing in mind that "the degree of responsibility (for the breakdown of a marriage) is not the same in all cases". He added that "the effects of a rule must not always be the same... no even regarding the sacramental rules". Pope Francis said "for divorced people who are living a new union it is important to let them know they are part of the Church, they are not excommunicated." He said that "no one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!". The Argentine pontiff reiterated his position that gays should not be discriminated against but he also said that gay marriage was "outside God's plan". He said gay people "should be respected in their dignity, with care to avoid "all branding of unfair discrimination' and especially all forms of aggression and violence". But he said "no foundation exists for assimilating or drawing analogies, not even remote, between homosexual unions and God's design on marriage and the family". Pope Francis reaffirmed the Catholic Church's stance that a marriage is between a man and a woman, but also opened towards civil unions and cohabitation, provided they come from "cultural situations or contingencies" rather than "prejudices or resistance to the sacramental union". Francis also restated the Catholic Church's no to abortion and euthanasia and approved of conscientious objection by doctors. "The family protects life in every stage, and also its ending. Therefore we remind those who work in health facilities of their moral duty to conscientious objection," he said, also stressing once again that the Church is against the death penalty. The pope slammed surrogate motherhood and condemned violence against women, female genital mutilation and workplace discrimination against women as "unacceptable". Francis said sexuality is a "wonderful gift" from God, and approved of sexual education but not as a means to advocate against having children. "In no way can we understand the erotic dimension of love as a permitted evil or as a weight to bear for the good of the family, but rather, as a gift from God that beautifies the encounter between spouses," he said. He added, however, that modern life puts sexuality at risk of being "dominated by the poisonous spirit of disposability", and that even in marriage "sexuality can become a source of suffering and manipulation". The pope said sexual education for young people should be seen as "education in love, in reciprocal giving" but not as the "invitation to protect oneself, seeking 'safe sex', as if an eventual child would be an enemy against whom one must protect oneself. "That promotes narcissistic aggression instead of welcoming". Francis cited the words of St. Pope John Paul II, who said "responsible paternity isn't unlimited procreation", and added that married couples may choose to limit the number of children they have "for sufficiently serious reasons". However, he spoke harshly against "coercive government interventions that favor contraception, sterilisation, or even abortion", calling them "unacceptable". Francis added that his exhortation was "special" during the Roman Catholic Holy Year Jubilee of Mercy. He said this was because it aimed "to encourage all to be witnesses to mercy where family life does not realise itself perfectly or does not proceed with peace and joy".(ANSAmed). Best Home Improvement Products and Services Would you like to submit an article in the Home Improvement category or any of the sub-category below? Click here to submit your article. Would you like to have your product or service listed on this page? Contact us. Best Shopping Products and Services Would you like to submit an article in the Shopping category or any of the sub-category below? Click here to submit your article. Would you like to have your product or service listed on this page? Contact us. 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. by Sumon Corraya Nazimuddin Samad was 28 years old and studied Law at the Jagannath University. Friends describe him as a brave free thinker. He was part of the Ganajagaran Mancha movement, which defends the rights of bloggers. On his Facebook page, the student had criticized the Islamic drift in the country. Dhaka (AsiaNews) - Nazimuddin Samad, a 28 year-old law student was hacked to death and shot for his ideas contrary to Islamic radicalism. The murder took place around 8 pm last night at a busy intersection in the Sutrapur, a historical district of the capital of Bangladesh. The young man was returning home with friends after attending courses offered by Jagannath University, where he had been admitted a few months ago. Friends have reported that the student as a "courageous" free thinker who supported the formation of a secular country that respects human rights. He was also part of Ganajagaran Mancha, a movement for bloggers rights. Some witnesses reported that three assailants on motorcycles approached Nazimuddin near the intersection of Ekrampur and started to attack him with machetes. Then they fired a gunshot to his head, to make sure of his death. Witnesses also report that as they struck him, the attackers shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great). No one has yet claimed responsibility for the act, but the incident recalls the killing of four other bloggers, murdered for their "atheistic ideas". For some time, Muslim extremists have been targeting free thinkers and democracy activists, justifying their killing by calling their victims "atheists". Ahmed Rajib Haider was the first blogger to be killed for his anti-Islam" ideas in 2013. So far this year, four other bloggers have lost their lives. In February Avijt Roy was murdered near the University Dhaka; in late March, also in the capital, Muslim fundamentalists hacked to death Oyasiqur Rahman; two months later, it was the turn of Ananta Bijoy Das, who was murdered in Sylhet; and finally, Niloy Chakrabarti was killed, execution style, in August in broad daylight, under the eyes of his mother and sister. On October 31, Faisal Dipan Arefin, a publisher with progressive ideas, was stabbed to death. Nazimuddin was the son of Shamshul Haque and he was born in Sylhet. He was an activist of the Ganajagaran Mancha group, which works for the defense of free thought in Bangladesh and calls for the punishment of war criminals from the struggle for liberation war of 1971. On his Facebook profile he wrote: "I do not belong to any religion". On the same platform, the day before his murder he had expressed his concern about the Islamist drift of the country and the government inaction. (Sumon Corraya collaborated) The blogger was killed for his secular and democratic ideas. Fellow students block roads around the university where he studied and protest government inaction. According to students, the inability of the police in pursuing the perpetrators of the murders of four other bloggers, "contributed" to Nazimuddins death. Dhaka (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The students of Jagannath University, where Nazimuddin Samad, the blogger hacked to death was studying, took to the streets of Dhaka to protest Government inaction of the face of growing Islamic extremism. Although no one has yet claimed responsibility for the murder of the 28 year old, the investigators said that the dynamics of the attack resembles the one used by the Islamic group Ansarullah Bangla Team, already banned by the state and accused of the premeditated murder of other free thinkers for being "atheists". Nazimuddin was murdered in Dhaka on the evening of April 6, under the eyes of dozens of witnesses, on his way home after university classes. He was first struck with machetes and then killed with a gunshot to the head. According to witnesses, while they were attacking him the killers shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great). The young man had repeatedly spoken out against the extremist drift in the country and on his Facebook profile he wrote of "not belonging to any religion". He was born in Sylhet and was part of Ganajagaran Mancha movement, which works to the defense of free thought in Bangladesh and calls for the punishment of war criminals of the 1971 liberation struggle. Nazimuddins body was returned yesterday to his family, after it was delivered to Sir Salimullah Medical College in the capital. His fellow students blocked roads around the school. According to them, police inaction in previous murders of four bloggers "contributed" to the student's death. Kabir Chowdhury Tanmoy, President of Online Activist Forum, said: "Talented young people are being killed one after another, but there is no trace of visible measures against these brutal acts." For some time, Muslim extremists have been targeting free thinkers and democracy activists, justifying their killing by calling their victims "atheists". Ahmed Rajib Haider was the first blogger to be killed for his anti-Islam" ideas in 2013. So far this year, four other bloggers have lost their lives. In February Avijt Roy was murdered near the University Dhaka; in late March, also in the capital, Muslim fundamentalists hacked to death Oyasiqur Rahman; two months later, it was the turn of Ananta Bijoy Das, who was murdered in Sylhet; and finally, Niloy Chakrabarti was killed, execution style, in August in broad daylight, under the eyes of his mother and sister. On October 31, Faisal Dipan Arefin, a publisher with progressive ideas, was stabbed to death. by Benigna Menezes* Eluru (AsiaNews) - The convent of the Immaculate Missionary Vimala (female congregation linked to the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions) celebrated the 50th anniversary of its foundation, which dates back to 1966. The celebration took place on April 4 in Tanuku, in West Godavari (Andhra Pradesh district), on the occasion of the Feast of the Annunciation. Msgr. Jaya Rao Polymeric, bishop of the diocese, presided at a liturgy dedicated to the work of missionaries. Addressing the religious sisters and more than 20 priests, the bishop said: "You here have made a difference by spreading the Gospel and working to serve people". Msgr. Jaya Rao praised the missionary "for your effort in bringing the light of Christ among the masses, through catechesis, visits to families, spiritual support, education and other means." "For 50 years, your presence - he continued - brings hope and joy to hopeless situations, because you work as ambassadors of God to free those who are in darkness. This is why we must celebrate this Jubilee of Mercy. Let us rejoice and sing praises to the Lord for blessing your 50 years of evangelization. " Until 1957, Tanuku was a remote location of Bhimavaram parish. In that year, Fr. Jacob Medayil, the pastor of Bhimavaram, was invited by a Tamil family visiting the area. Through his visits and his zeal, he welcomed some families into the Christian community through baptism. On August 15, 1962, along with 75 Catholics he erected the parish of Tanuku. The church and rectory were built on 8 December 1963. At that point, Msgr. Ambrogio De Battista, Bishop of Vijayawada, the then Bishop of the diocese invited the PIME Missionaries of the Immaculate to serve in the parish. On June 15, 1966 Vimala Convent was founded, along with a nursing school. In 1973 the government also granted a license for a primary school. Mother Clara Bellotti was the founder of this mission. She had a very clear vision of the sisters' task: to help the poor girls who lived in the rural area to have better job opportunities. So in 1973 she also opened a tailoring center, which was joined by a writing class the following year. Over the years, the school has become the Vimala Industrial Training Centre (ITC), which forms students and ensures them good job opportunities. Next to the school there is also a campus that offers free accommodation to students. Through the work of the missionaries, participation in the Christian community has also increased. The sisters visit villages and bring medicines, support, and education to the poor population. Today, there are thousands of Catholics and recently 50 new chapels were built in the villages scattered in the territory, which house prayer meetings and celebrations of the liturgy on a regular basis. Those present, including many lay collaborators, thanked the missionaries and pioneers of Tanuku community for their "generous service." *Missionary of the Immaculate Amadiya (AsiaNews) Below are a collection of photographs of Holy Week and Easter celebrations among the refugees from Mosul and the Nineveh plain. These are the men women and children who fled in the summer of 2014 as a result of the advance of the Islamic State and who still today are living in shelters in Iraqi Kurdistan. The photos were posted by Fr. Samir Youssef, an Iraqi priest of Amadiya, who has been on the front line in welcoming and aiding refugees. Fr Samir is also among the representatives of the campaign "Adopt a Christian from Mosul" launched by our agency to respond to the emergency, which continues today, to offer help to the Christian, Yazidi and Shia refugee families. For ten years, the general was deputy chairman of the Central Military Commission, second only to the countrys leader. He is accused of taking US$ 12.3 million in bribes, but his personal wealth is much greater. Very influential under President Hu Jintao, he could rely on many loyal officers. Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) China announced that it would press graft charges against former top General Guo Boxiong, a former military chief in the Peoples Liberation Army. Military prosecutors said Guo and his family took an extremely large amount of bribes, Xinhua reported. The latter is estimated to be around US$ 12.3 million, but the disgraced generals personal fortune is estimated to be much larger. Guo also allegedly took advantage of his position to aid the promotion and relocation of other people. Guo confessed to his wrongdoings, the report said. Analysts noted that the timing of the announcement was significant, coming after a military overhaul and reshuffle of the top ranks by President Xi Jinping, who also chairs the powerful Central Military Commission. Xi announced plans to reduce the size pf Chinas armed forces, which currently stand at about 2.3m servicemen and women, and has warned top military brass against the temptation of corruption. Guo had already been forced out in 2015. In July last year, he was also expelled from the Communist Party. Guos family and associates have also been investigated for graft in the past two years, including his son Guo Zhenggang, a former deputy political commissar of the Zhejiang Military Region. Because of his political influence, the military procurator put in several years of preparation before formally arresting him, said Hong Kong-based military expert Liang Guoliang. Guo stayed in the position for one decade, meaning many of the senior military officials were promoted under his influence, Liang said. Hence, the go-slow approach to his prosecution. Guos downfall is part of a campaign against Chinas "tigers and flies" of corruption, launched by Xi Jinping in 2012. No one has been spared, not even the Armed Forces. in fact, in recent years, several dozen high-ranking officers have been charged, jailed, or expelled from the Party for bribes or similar charges. Guos case follows that of Xu Caihou, a former Central Military Commission vice-chairman at the same time as Gen Guo, who died of bladder cancer in March of last year. In an Al Arabiya video, the former commander of Saddam Husseins army slams the US and the "Iranian domination" in Iraq. With "religious" overtones, says hunt is on for "Iran's collaborators", in alliance with Saudi Arabia. He is considered one of the leaders of jihadists conquest of Mosul and Nineveh Plain. Baghdad (AsiaNews) - Former Iraqi Vice President under Saddam Hussein, Izzet el-Duri, given up for dead in 2015, reappeared yesterday in a video in which he urges Iraqis to rebel against the "Iranian domination" in the nation and to ally themselves Saudi led coalition. The video was broadcast by the pan-Arab Al Arabiya, close to Saudi Arabia, and posted on You Tube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT5pn5zayW4) on the Youtube page of the Saudi newspaper Ukaz. According to reports from the Iraqi and Western press in 2015, Izzet El Duri died in the east Iraqi province of Salah Eddin, near the Allas oil well. The international US-led coalition that invaded Iraq, had drawn a deck of cards with pictures of the 55 most wanted of the Baathist regime. Izzet el-Duri was the "king " clubs, among the top six most wanted men. After the liberation of Iraq by the coalition, Izzet el-Duri disappeared and a ransom of 10 million dollars to anyone who would capture or kill him proved fruitless. Izzet El Duri led the resistance north of Baghdad in 2003 by creating the Army Nakshabandi, active mainly in the Dora area, carrying out military incursions against the government that succeeded Saddam and which he considered stacked with "traitors and collaborators with the invaders." The announcement Izzet el-Duris death in 2015 as a result of "intense fighting" conducted by the Iraqi army and popular armed groups, had been commented at the time, as a "major blow" against the militants of Salah Eddin province. Izzet el-Duri is believed to have been one of the commanders who led the Isis militiamen to their victorious conquest of Mosul and Nineveh Plain. In yesterdays video, the former vice-president, a Sunni, appeals to the Iraqi people to side with the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia, in fighting against Iranian hegemony in the region. Here is the complete translation of his speech: "We consider that all that Iran is doing today in Iraq, the actions of its agents, its militias and its military and security organs is the fault of the US administration. It is important to take action to save Iraq and the Iraqi people from the hegemony, domination and occupation by Iran and stop the flow of blood, destruction, demolition and demographic change [preventing] further clashes and fighting". "O sons of Iraq, o knights of resistance, if you do not join the Arab front, fight under the banner of the Arab coalition led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, sooner or later you will be burned by the Persian fire and you will be cursed by Allah and history". "There are only two ways to drive out the Persians and liberate them from Yemen: the first, the safest and fastest is to oblige Iran and its agents to submit to the resolutions of the UN Security Council issued in this regard and [follow] the conclusions issued by the national dialogue under the patronage of the legitimate national government and the Council of Cooperation of the Arab Gulf nations. The second way is to step up the hunt for Irans collaborators, putting an end to their power and capabilities". (PB) With a formal vote, the National Assembly elects Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who will lead the Legislature until 2020. In his inaugural speech he swears to defend "the country's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity." The reference is to the territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea. Hanoi (AsiaNews) - With a formal vote, Vietnams National Assembly has elected a new prime minister, who will lead the Legislature until 2020. Nguyen Xuan Phuc, 62, was the only candidate for the office after being elected by the Communist Party Congress held in January. He received 446 votes out of 490. This concludes the elections of the three highest offices of State, after the re-election of Partys General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and the nomination for President of Tran Dai Quang, which took place last week. Nguyen Xuan Phuc has a long career within the Party: He was governor of the central province of Quang Nam and vice president for five years. The new prime minister has vowed "absolute loyalty to the country, the people and the Constitution". In his televised inaugural speech, Phuc promised a period of reform and a close fight against corruption, stressing that he will defend "firmly the country's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity." The reference is to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, where for years China has been expanding its influence at the expense of neighboring countries, including Vietnam. Hanoi is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia (+ 6.8% in 2014), but faces a period of high public debt and budget deficit. The reforms initiated by former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung opening up to a liberalization of the marketplace have increased income per capita, but the economic growth pattern has given rise to problems, such as excessive dependence on exports and foreign investment, with the government sector often ineffective compared to the private sector. Tan Dungs application for the post of Secretary General of the Party has failed. After workers uncover the remains of an ancient Byzantine church at the site of a planned shopping centre, local authorities remove remains and allow construction to go ahead. Both Christians and Muslims protest in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Source told AsiaNews that economic interests are more important than the territorys history and culture. Jerusalem (AsiaNews) People in Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank have voiced their anger against the decision by Gaza authorities to continue the construction of a shopping mall at a site that contains the ancient ruins of a Byzantine church. A Christian source in Gaza, who asked his name not be used, told AsiaNews that "across the West Bank, Christians and Muslims have forcefully called for a stop to the construction in order to evaluate the findings. For many, the ruins are a major discovery, but little is known about what has become of the artefacts. Last week, construction workers found the remains of the 1,500-year-old church in Palestine Square in Gaza City. This is important not only for Gaza Christians, but also for all the people of the territory. In spite of the discovery, neither Hamas, which rules Gaza Strip, nor the Palestinian Authority stopped construction to prevent further loss of artefacts. Instead, plans to build one of Gazas largest shopping centres will remain on track. Among the reasons for the decision to continue work is the impossibility according to the authorities of the Strip to sustain the costs of research for other finds and their conservation. Although Palestinian authorities have great interest in preserving the remains, they cite a lack of resources to do so. The site we are talking about is 2,000 square metres and 10-metres deep and requires hundreds of workers and millions of dollars to carry out proper excavation to extract pieces and read the texts, said Abu Rida Jamal Abu Rida, head of the PA Antiquities Ministry. Hence, the decision to remove all the remains found so far and cover everything up. However, this has infuriated the Christian community. "We do not know what happened to the Byzantine cross, column, and other objects," the source told AsiaNews. "Some government officials must have taken them away. This is not a sectarian or religious issue, the source said. It's just about economics, business. The mall is tempting, which is why they want to continue at any cost. In any event, "the government does not care about historical, religious, or artistic matters. They cordoned off the area, and gave the go-ahead to lay the foundations. In reality, the finding was a blessing for the city of Gaza," said the source, for both Christians and Muslims "who live together in the Gaza Strip, help each other, and nurture bonds of friendship. For now, there are no sectarian tensions." by Nirmala Carvalho The Archbishop of Guwahati spoke about the Indian Salesian held by a Jihadi group in Yemen. The clergyman was aware of the risks he was taking, but always wanted to do this work. The prelate met with the family and saw the solidarity of Christians around the world. The brother of the kidnap victim wept during a moment of prayer. Mumbai (AsiaNews) Mgr Thomas Menamparampil SDB, the current apostolic administrator of Jowai and archbishop emeritus of Guwahati, India, spoke to AsiaNews about Fr Tom Uzhunnalil, the Indian priest abducted in Yemen in early March. "From the start I admired his courage and his foresight in all situations," the prelate said. He was well aware of the risks that he faced and was ready to suffer his fate." Still, "we hope wholeheartedly that he can be rescued from his kidnappers and that the sisters can find a way to continue their mission." "When I read the news about the brutal murder of the sisters and saw their pictures, I was travelling to a remote mission-station. I wept. I could not control myself," the archbishop said. A Jihadi group, in all likelihood linked to the Islamic State group, has held Fr Tom Uzhunnalil since 4 March, after it stormed a home for the sick and elderly run by the Missionaries of Charity in Aden. During the attack, four Sisters of Mother Teresa and 12 other people present in the facility were slaughtered. So far, nothing is known of the fate of the 56-year-old priest who was born into a deeply Catholic family in Ramapuram, near Pala (Kottayam, Kerala). His uncle Matthew, who died last year, was also a Salesian, and the founder of the mission in Yemen. Father Tom had been in Yemen for four years. During Holy Week, unsubstantiated stories began circulating in India claiming that the kidnappers planned to torture, kill and crucify the priest on Good Friday, the day when Christians mark Christs passion and death. Such unconfirmed rumours have led to repeated denials by the Salesians and the Vicariate of Arabia, but have helped fuel fears about the Indian priests fate. Over the past few weeks, prayers were recited in Indian and various parts of the world calling for the clergymans release. One was held in the Archdiocese of Bangalore on 4 April, a month since the abduction. A leading peace and human rights advocate, Mgr Menamparampil met Fr Tom on several occasions. He remembers his uncle, Fr Mathew, "who proved himself very successful in Yemen. Lately though, "things have changed", the bishop said. However, "Fr Tom was not thinking of giving up so easily. He used to encourage the sisters to be ready for martyrdom. That is exactly what they did. Recently, the bishop visited Fr Toms family in Ramapuram, Kerala, where he met and talked with his older brother, Mathew. The relatives "received many visits in recent days," the prelate explained, "including several bishops, local BJP leaders and others." Groups of faithful "spent time praying with Mathew" for Fr Toms release. "I too asked him to pray and requested him to read the first five verses of Psalm 20, my favourite." "As he read the first line 'May the Lord hear your prayers in time of trouble', he broke down. He could not continue reading for some time. The archbishop of Guwahati told Fr Toms family about the worldwide wave of solidarity and the many prayer meetings held for his release, and he wept even more. With me were two of my priest brothers, and they too jointed in prayer for Fr Tom. The family "has no more information than what has appeared in the papers," Mgr Menamparampil said; however, Kerala and Indian authorities are doing their utmost to secure the Salesian priests release. Some years ago, Fr James Pulickal, SDB, was working in Sudan, said the archbishop. At one point, He was kidnapped by some Muslim group and detained for years before he was released. His natural goodness touched them and persuaded them to let him go. Let us put our trust in the Lord who knows times and seasons for everything. The incident occurred on 6 April. The pastor said police and soldiers fired shots near the church and used tear gas and batons against parishioners, before they tore down decorations from the site. Hanoi (AsiaNews) Three Catholics were injured during in a clash with security forces in Houng Phuong, a village in Quang Binh province (central Vietnam), Radio Free Asia reported. On Wednesday, police and soldiers fired bullets near the church and used tear gas and batons on the parishioners before tearing down decorations erected for an annual festival. It was noon time and most of the men were at work, so only old women and children were at home, local priest Fr Le Nam Cao told RFA. Parishioners told me of the crackdown. I told them that I would not go out and they should go home and just let them do whatever they wanted because we had no weapons, so it was not good for us. Whilst Fr Le Nam Cao tried to convince his parishioners to stand down, some of them ignored his advice. Some people did not agree, so they fought back against the troops including policemen and soldiers who were well equipped with tear gas, bullets and batons, the priest said. This is not the first time authorities have clashed with church parishioners, but usually it comes in the form of individual harassment, Le Nam Cao explained. There were times they sent troops here to guard our village for two days. When they came here before they said they were searching for some drug dealers or something else. They did not say that they were cracking down on us. About 48 per cent of Vietnam's 87 million people is Buddhist, and 7 per cent is Catholic. Although a small minority, Christians are particularly active in education, health and social affairs. However, religious freedom has steadily eroded in recent years. Under Decree 92, more controls and restrictions have been imposed on religious practice, boosting the power of the Communist Party and the one-party state. The Vatican press office said that the idea is being considered, but does not confirm dates or details. The Pope has been invited by the Greek-Orthodox Synod and the Greek president. Both Orthodox primate of Greece Hieronymos and Bartholomew, confirm their presence on Lesbos. Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Pope Francis could accompany the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and the Orthodox primate of Greece Archbishop Hieronymos, on a visit to migrants and refugees on the island of Lesbos. The director of the Vatican press office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, said that the Pope wishes to make this visit, but he cannot confirm dates or details. What we know for now is that the Greek Orthodox Church has expressed the wish that Pope Francis visit the island where hundreds of thousands of migrants have been herded together. Most of them are from the Middle East and Africa and are waiting to enter Europe or be returned to Turkey or their homeland, according to an agreement drawn up between the EU and Turkey. A statement from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople confirmed that the Pope, Hieronymus and Bartholomew will visit Lesbos "in the very near future." The Greek site Romfea.gr instead reports that the Pope will certainly be present and that the visit will take place at the end of next week, with the presence of the Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras. The visit has also made headlines in Greek media who point to a Greek Orthodox Synod document, which speaks of Pope Franciss wishes and the visit, as well as the invitation to the pontiff by the Greek president. Unofficial Greek government sources say that the visit should take place on 14-15 April and should last a few hours. A visit by Pope Francis to Lesbos, along with the patriarch and primate would be a very strong gesture to push the European Union to change its policy towards migrants. According to Orthodox observers, a meeting of the Pope with the Primate and Bartholomew would also give help focus attention on the Great Orthodox Synod, scheduled for June 16 to 27 next in Crete. by Franco Pisano Pope Francis Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia "about love in the family" is published. The family is founded on marriage, it is central to the life of the Church and every society, which should support it, rather than hold it hostage; the family has rights such as education, which cannot be violated; the family should not be confused with other forms of union. "Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it." Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The Christian family is based on marriage, "an inevitable mixture of enjoyment and struggles, tensions and repose, pain and relief, satisfactions and longings, annoyances and pleasures" (n. 126). It is central to the life of the Church and of every society, which should support it, rather than hold it hostage; the family has rights such as education, which cannot be violated; the family should not be confused with other forms of union. But it is not an "ideal", as a concrete reality that presents different facets according to cultural, economic, social influences. A reality that must be acculturated and that the Church must look upon with the love and mercy of Jesus, thus trying to "welcome" even the "irregular" situations. These are the principal themes of " Amoris laetitia " ( "The joy of love"), the post-synodal apostolic exhortation "on love in the family" by Pope Francis, which was made public today. Significantly dated March 19, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, it ends with a prayer to the Holy Family of Nazareth, asking that it help make our families "places of communion and prayer, authentic schools of the Gospel and small domestic churches". The lengthy document - 263 pages in the English edition - has a fundamental thread of being concrete in the face of different situations, with the result that for some issues "each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs"and that if" of course "unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it (n. 3). This also applies to the question that has been the focus of media attention on the two Synods on the family, in 2014 and in 2015, that of the divorced and remarried, and in general those who are in "irregular" situations. In fact, if one takes into account the innumerable variety of concrete situations " this Exhortation could be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases. What is possible is simply a renewed encouragement to undertake a responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases, one which would recognize that, since the degree of responsibility is not equal in all cases,335 the consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the same"(n. 300). "It is a matter of reaching out to everyone, of needing to help each person find his or her proper way of participating in the ecclesial community" (n. 297), the "need to be more fully integrated into Christian communities in the variety of ways possible, while avoiding any occasion of scandal" (n . 299). Apart from this issue, this document shows that already in the Bible "the word of God is not a series of abstract ideas but rather a source of comfort and companionship for every family that experiences difficulties or suffering"(n. 22). And "neither todays society nor that to which we are progressing allow an uncritical survival of older forms and models. It is also evident that the principal tendencies in anthropological-cultural changes are leading individuals, in personal and family life, to receive less and less support from social structures than in the past" (n. 32). Then there are the "challenges" ranging from the migration phenomenon that "traumatizes people and destabilizes the family" (n. 46), gender theory, for which " human identity becomes the choice of the individual, one which can also change over time"(n. 56), the anti-birth mentality and impact of biotechnology in the field of procreation, homelessness and unemployment, to pornography and abuse of minors. The Pope also notes "the growing danger represented by an extreme individualism which weakens family bonds and ends up considering each member of the family as an isolated unit, leading in some cases to the idea that ones personality is shaped by his or her desires, which are considered absolute"(n. 33). If this is the reality, its opposite is a"far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families" (n. 36). Instead one the Church must follow the example of Jesus who proposed a demanding ideal but "yet never failed to show compassion and closeness to the frailty of individuals like the Samaritan woman or the woman caught in adultery" (n. 38). The Church is called in short "to form consciences, not claim to replace them" (n. 37). Formation, however, is a need for this in many ways, given that " Today, more important than the pastoral care of failures is the pastoral effort to strengthen marriages and thus to prevent their breakdown" (n. 307). Education, then, starting from marriage preparation " There are a number of legitimate ways to structure programmes of marriage preparation, and each local Church will discern how best to provide a suitable formation without distancing young people from the sacrament". "It affects the quality and quantity" (n. 207). Education is also needed in the accompaniment of spouses in the first years of married life (including the theme of responsible parenthood) and seminarians should receive a more extensive interdisciplinary, and not merely doctrinal, formation in the areas of engagement and marriage( n. 203). The pastoral care of engaged and married couples should be centred on the marriage bond, assisting couples not only to deepen their love but also to overcome problems and difficulties" (N. 211). The foundation of marriage, in fact, is love. "The Christian ideal, and especially in the family, in spite of everything is love" (n. 119) and "marriage is a precious sign of this, because when a man and a woman celebrate the sacrament of marriage, God is, as it were, mirrored in them; he impresses in them his own features and the indelible character of his love. Marriage is the icon of Gods love for us "(121). A love that in matrimony is also eros, the Pope recalled, because although there have been exaggerations and deviant forms of asceticism in Christianity, the Churchs official teaching, in fidelity to the Scriptures, did not reject eros as such, but rather declared war on a warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of eros actually strips it of divine dignity and dehumanizes it"(n. 147). Love, however, "always gives life. For this, conjugal love does not end with the couple "(n. 165). This is the affirmation with which the fifth of the ten chapters of the Exhortation begins, entitled "The love which becomes fruitful." It speaks of accepting a new life, the expectation of pregnancy, the love of mother and father. " It is important for that child to feel wanted. He or she is not an accessory or a solution to some personal need. A child is a human being of immense worth and may never be used for ones own benefit. So it matters little whether this new life is convenient for you, whether it has features that please you, or whether it fits into your plans and aspirations. For children are a gift. Each one is unique and irreplaceable"(n.170). And "every child has the right to receive the love of a mother and a father, both necessary for its integrated and harmonious maturation " (n. 172). The child also has the right to be educated by his parents. "The State offers educational programmes in a subsidiary way, supporting the parents in their indeclinable role; parents themselves enjoy the right to choose freely the kind of education accessible and of good quality which they wish to give their children in accordance with their convictions. Schools do not replace parents, but complement them. This is a basic principle "(n. 84). But the family in the document is not the mononuclear, it extends to uncles, cousins, relatives of relatives, friends and elders. "Our elderly are men and women, fathers and mothers, who came before us on our own road, in our own house, in our daily battle for a worthy life.212 Indeed, how I would like a Church that challenges the throw-away culture by the overflowing joy of a new embrace between young and old! "(N. 191). A family that includes adoption, acceptance, promoting a "culture of encounter". A particular task of the family is education. In fact, "the family is the first school of human values, where you learn the proper use of freedom" (n. 274). And "In the family we can also learn to be critical about certain messages sent by the various media. Sad to say, some television programmes or forms of advertising often negatively influence and undercut the values inculcated in family life."(n. 274). This education comes primarily from their parents' behavior and affects growth of the child. "If parents are obsessed with always knowing where their children are and controlling all their movements, they will seek only to dominate space. But this is no way to educate, strengthen and prepare their children to face challenges"(n. 261). Formation also falls within sex education, to which "yes" the Pope devotes a chapter. "the information has to come at a proper time and in a way suited to their age. It is not helpful to overwhelm them with data without also helping them to develop a critical sense in dealing with the onslaught of new ideas and suggestions, the flood of pornography and the overload of stimuli that can deform sexuality. Young people need to realize that they are bombarded by messages that are not beneficial for their growth towards maturity. They should be helped to recognize and to seek out positive influences, while shunning the things that cripple their capacity for love(n. 281). It must instead be "within the framework of an education to love, a reciprocal gift" (n. 280). Frequently, then, "sex education deals primarily with protection through the practice of safe sex. Such expressions convey a negative attitude towards the natural procreative finality of sexuality, as if an eventual child were an enemy to be protected against. This way of thinking promotes narcissism and aggressivity in place of acceptance. It is always irresponsible to invite adolescents to toy with their bodies and their desires, as if they possessed the maturity, values, mutual commitment and goals proper to marriage. They end up being blithely encouraged to use other persons as an means of fulfilling their needs or limitations. "(n. 283). Finally, bringing up children, calls for an orderly process of handing on the faith. This is made difficult by current lifestyles, work schedules and the complexity of todays world, where many people keep up a frenetic pace just to survive.306 Even so, the home must continue to be the place where we learn to appreciate the meaning and beauty of the faith, to pray and to serve our neighbour". (287). "Parents desirous of nurturing the faith of their children are sensitive to their patterns of growth, for they know that spiritual experience is not imposed but freely proposed. It is essential that children actually see that, for their parents, prayer is something truly important. Hence moments of family prayer and acts of devotion can be more powerful for evangelization than any catechism class or sermon"(n. 288). Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "We are all sinners," we have to recognize it and we should not "judge others. This is because "we are all forgiven" since Jesus took every sin "to the Cross " and is the mercy of God made flesh. " Pope Francis has begun a new cycle of reflections for the General Audience dedicated to how Jesus brought the mercy of God to fulfillment following the series dedicated to mercy in the Old Testament. 40 thousand people were present in St. Peter's Square for the weekly appointment and as is tradition Pope Francis toured among them in his white jeep. In his catechesis he emphasized that Jesus always expressed, realized and communicated "mercy, in every moment of his earthly life. "By meeting the crowds, proclaiming the Gospel, healing the sick, approaching the least, forgiving sinners, Jesus makes visible an open love, without exception, without boundaries. A pure love, free and absolute. A love which reaches its culmination in the sacrifice of the Cross. Yes, the Gospel is indeed the 'Gospel of Mercy', because Jesus is Mercy! ". "All four Gospels attest that Jesus, before beginning his ministry, wanted to be baptized by John the Baptist (Mt 3,13-17; Mk 1,9-11; Lk 3,21-22; John 1:29 -34). This event gives decisive guidance to the whole mission of Christ. In fact, he did not present himself to the world in the splendor of the temple, as he could have done, he did not announce himself to the sound of trumpets, as he could have done nor come in the guise of a judge, as he could have done. Instead, after thirty years of hidden life in Nazareth, Jesus went to the River Jordan, along with so many people of his people, and got in line with sinners, he had no shame, he was there with everyone, with sinners to be baptized. Therefore, from the beginning of His ministry, He was manifested as the Messiah who takes on the human condition, moved by solidarity and compassion. As he himself says in the synagogue of Nazareth identifying with the prophecy of Isaiah: " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19). All that Jesus did after His Baptism was the realization of the initial program: to take to all the love of God that saves; Jesus did not bring hatred, He did not bring enmity: He brought us love! a great love, a heart open to all, to all of us! a love that saves!. He made Himself close to the last, communicating to them Gods mercy, which is forgiveness, joy and new life. Jesus, the Son sent by the Father, is really the beginning of the time of mercy for the whole of humanity! Those who were present on the banks of the Jordan did not understand immediately the importance of Jesus gesture. John the Baptist himself was astonished by His decision (cf. Matthew 3:14) but not the heavenly Father! He made His voice heard from on high: You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased. (Mark 1:11). Thus, the Father confirmed the way the Son undertook as Messiah, while the Holy Spirit descended upon Him as a dove. So Jesus heart beats, so to speak, in unison with the heart of the Father and of the Spirit, showing all men that salvation is the fruit of Gods mercy. We can contemplate the great mystery of this love even more clearly by turning our gaze to Jesus crucified. While He is about to die for us sinners, He entreats the Father: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34). It is on the Cross that Jesus presents to the Fathers mercy the sin of the world, the sin of all, my sins, your sins. And there, on the Cross, He presents them to the Father. And with the sins of the world all our sins are cancelled. Nothing and no one remains excluded from this sacrificial prayer of Jesus. This means that we must not be afraid to acknowledge and confess ourselves sinners. How many times we say: But he is a sinner, he has done this, and that , and we judge others. And you? Each one of us should ask himself: Yes, he is a sinner, and I? We are all sinners, but we are all forgiven: we all have the possibility of receiving this forgiveness, which is Gods mercy. Therefore, we must not be afraid to acknowledge ourselves sinners, to confess ourselves sinners, because every sin was born by the Son on the Cross. And when we confess it repentant, entrusting ourselves to Him, we are certain of being forgiven. The Sacrament of Reconciliation renders actual for each one the strength of the forgiveness that flows from the Cross and renews in our life the grace of mercy that Jesus acquired for us! We must not be afraid of our miseries: each one of us has his own. The power of the love of the Crucified knows no obstacles and is never exhausted, and this mercy cancels our miseries. Dearly beloved, in this Jubilee Year, let us ask God for the grace to experience the power of the Gospel: the Gospel of mercy that transforms, which makes us enter in Gods heart, which enables us to forgive and to look at the world with greater kindness. If we receive the Gospel of the Risen Crucified One, the whole of our life is moulded by the strength of His love, which renews". Finally, after the audience Francis said that "today marks the third World Day of Sport for Peace and Development convened by the United Nations. Sport - he continued - is a universal language that brings people together and can help to bring people together and overcome conflicts . Therefore I encourage you to live the sporting dimension as the gym of virtue in the integral development of individuals and communities". by Nina Achmatova The body is outside the interior ministry and reports directly to the President. It is formed by troops of the Interior Ministry, anti-riot police and 'swat' teams. Officially it is tasked with countering terrorism and drug trafficking, but according to experts it will be a "praetorian force" aimed at suppressing protests and possible control of the elite. Moscow (AsiaNews) - On April 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the creation of a new security body, the National Guard, which will have the task of combating terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime but also, as the Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov has clarified, unauthorized protests. In a meeting with the Interior Minister, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, and others responsible for the national security Putin explained that the new force will be born from the merger of the troops of the Interior with the anti-riot police (OMON) and the emergency teams (SOBR). A as explained by the head of the Kremlin, the agency for the fight against drugs (FSKN) and Immigration Service (FMS) will also be incorporated into the structure of the Ministry of Interior. The Russian president has not provided any information on the size of the National Guard, nor on how it will coordinate with the secret services, the FSB (the former KGB). The new body - headed by former head of the presidential guard and deputy interior minister, Viktor Zolotov - reports directly to the Russian president, and has special powers for the exercise of its function, which according to experts, it has in common with the FSB , of which Putin himself was once a member. According to analysts, the new organization will have the task of coping with the risk of riots triggered by the economic crisis that Russia is facing, also in view of the September parliamentary elections. Speaking to press Peskov explained that the National Guard can participate "in efforts to ensure public order, for the maintenance of public safety and emergency management", but ruled that his institution is in no way linked to the upcoming referendums and then to presidential of 2018. According to some experts, the move effectively resizes the group of so-called 'siloviki' (strongmen: intelligence and security services). According to the Kremlin spokesman, however, there is no crisis of confidence in this regard. The American expert Mark Galeotti, who specializes in the Russian security services, believes that the National Guard will become "a powerful paramilitary security force with elements throughout the country." While adding that he will only be able to make a more detailed analysis after the new units enter service, Galeotti noted that "there was no real reason to create this body (which was discussed in 2012) outside the Interior Ministry troops, if not that those in power are seriously concerned about public disorder ". According to the expert, the new unit will be a real "public security force", a sort of "praetorian force" headed by a Putin loyalist, Zolotov, who will be responsible not only for controlling the masses but also the elite. Damascus (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Syrian rebels have torn control of al-Rai from the Islamic State (IS), a strategically important town in northern Syria. It is a major military success for the non- jihadist opposition, already committed in the battle for the conquest of Aleppo, the second most important city in the country. Al-Rai was taken yesterday after days of heavy fighting between the warring sides; it guarantees the rebels control of a vital supply route linking Syria to Turkey. Local sources said that an alliance of local "rebel Islamists factions and " has taken hold of the city; Now they can cut off the supply lines to the Islamic State militias, engaged in a fierce battle in Aleppo. Analysts and experts point out that now al-Rai will become the base for attacks against the jihadists in the east and south of the country. The main danger is represented by anti-personnel mines planted by Daesh [the Arabic acronym for IS] before their retreat, as well as anti-tank mines and suicide bombers ready to blow themselves up. In recent weeks the IS suffered heavy defeats on the ground, including the loss of Palmyra, an ancient town east of Damascus, which is back under government control since late March. The cease-fire - which excludes Daesh and other jihadist groups, including the Nusra Front - has reduced the number of civilian casualties, in the context of a war that in five years has caused 270 thousand deaths and generated a humanitarian crisis without precedent, with millions of refugees. Meanwhile at least 200 people are missing in Damascus following a jihadist attack on a factory in the outskirts of the capital. The workers were kidnapped while they were in the dormitory, in Dumeir (40 km east of Damascus), where there has been heavy fighting between the army and Daesh. Another 140 workers managed to escape; at the moment there is no news on the fate of the kidnapped workers. Hundreds of people came together at the College Notre-Dame de Jamhour to celebrate an annual interfaith ceremony. Sidon Mufti Salim Soussan stressed moderation and rejected violence. Disability as source of diversity and beauty was the main theme, with Mercy as the "common point" between Christians and Muslims. Beirut (AsiaNews) Hundreds of people gathered on Monday at the College Notre-Dame de Jamhour (Beirut) for the annual interfaith ceremony held on the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord. Participants celebrated diversity, including disability, as an invaluable element of beauty and enrichment, and condemned the violence and suffering caused by extremism and terrorism in Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Middle East. The solemnity marks the moment when the Archangel Gabriel revealed to the Virgin Mary that she would become the mother of Jesus, the Saviour. Six years ago, the Lebanese government declared the day a shared Christian-Muslim national holiday, and it has been celebrated as such ever since. Some 30 associations, congregations and groups sponsored the interfaith meeting, Lebanese French language daily L'Orient-Le Jour reported. Leading Lebanese and people from other parts of the Arab world took part in the event. Speaking on behalf of the Lebanons chief Mufti, the Mufti of Sidon Salim Soussan stressed moderation and rejected extremism and terrorism as a choice for Lebanese Muslims as well as other Lebanese. Equally, he expressed hope for a "strong and fair" state. Nagy Khoury, a former student leader in Lebanons Catholic schools and current secretary general of Christian-Muslim meeting, said, "The world's beauty lies in its diversity." In such diversity, there are also "physical differences", in particular disabilities because, "each handicap bears a message, and each message has a priceless human value". Stressing this years theme, unity in diversity with people who live with a handicap, he called on participants to observe a minute of silence "for the victims of hatred and terrorism" in Turkey, Belgium, France, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc. Shaikh Mohammad Nokkari, a leading Lebanese Sunni, shared a personal experience he had last summer with those present. On 15 last August 2015, feast day of the Assumption, he was at the Madonetta Shrine in Genoa, for the feast day celebration. As unusual as the presence of an imam in a Christian place of worship may be, his address was about Mary. Speaking at length, he also offered an embrace of peace between Islam and Christianity. I did not realise, he explained, that so many faithful would come from all over Italy" to join in Islamic-Christian prayers" for Our Lady. None of this, he noted, would have been possible if we, in Lebanon, had not made the feast day of the Annunciation a world celebration across cultures and oceans. In fact, in the last week, interfaith ceremonies dedicated to Mary have been held across Lebanon, bringing together Christians and Muslims. In Jamhour, College Notre-Dame dean Fr Charbel Batour took part in one such ceremony. In his address, he focused on the Jubilee Year proclaimed by Pope Francis, saying that mercy is precisely the "common point" around which Christians and Muslims can reconnect. At the college, the highlights of this years ceremony included an address by a ten-year-old Muslim girl named Mariam Adra, from Tripoli, who spoke about the beauty of bearing the name Mary, and said that she was personally close to the Virgin. Managing partner Juan Martinez said client demand is a significant factor in the firms growth, but added that the firm is making a concerted effort to foster the growth of all staff.We have invested heavily in the ongoing progression of our existing solicitors over several years, and we are receiving the benefits of that investment now, Martinez told Australasian Lawyer.Crucially, we have been able to demonstrate a career progression for our staff, and therefore we haven't faced the same staff retention challenges as some of our competitors.They still have the opportunity to progress to partnership, and the lack of an artificial ceiling in this regard is working in our favour.The promotions are across the firms Insurance, Litigation, Commercial and Real Estate & Projects sectors.In Sydney, Tim Ainsworth in the Insurance Group to the partnership, along with two partners in the Litigation Group, Karen Fairbairn and Daniel Zabow.Colin Almond, in the Melbourne Litigation Group has been promoted to the partnership, along with Johnny Ho, in Melbournes Commercial Group and Alex Koidl of the Melbourne Real Estate & Projects group.The firm has also promoted Andrew Allan (Insurance and Australian Government Canberra office), Melissa Hanbidge (Litigation Brisbane office), Colin Harris (Building & Construction Brisbane office), Joy Horwood (Litigation Perth office), Shanna Kruger (Real Estate & Projects Sydney office), Kaveetha Kumar (Insurance Sydney office), James Lofting (Planning, Environment & Government Melbourne office), Mark Riddington (Building & Construction Sydney office) and Daniele Solomon (Litigation Melbourne office) to the position of special counsel.Without wanting to over simplify our success, our continuing growth is in response to client demand, Martinez said.No other firm is able to match the value that we offer in a sustainable manner, and that is proving to be increasingly attractive to potential lateral recruits from global and domestic law firms.The combination of size and capability, benchmark value and quality is compelling to clients in such a highly challenged market. EV Tesla Motors is asking the Australian government and its legislators to implement several policy changes, including incentives and emission regulations, in order to support the acquisition of electric vehicles.The American carmaker is joined in its endeavor by energy suppliers AGL Energy and Transgrid. The two energy giants figured out they would have significant benefits if they get consumers to buy more power each month, while the eco credentials alone would help their image.Furthermore, Australias pressing greenhouse gas problem could be partly solved by popularizing electric vehicles, the Sydney Morning Herald informs.The unveiling of the Tesla Model 3, which saw hundreds of Australians lined up in Melbourne and Sydney to place a deposit, raised the attention of the two electricity providers.According to Choice, only eight Tesla Supercharger stations are installed in the country. When compared to Europe or the USA, it is a small number.The aid of two electric suppliers would help Tesla build more superchargers for its customers, while owners of other electric vehicles could benefit from an enhanced infrastructure for EVs. After all, electricity suppliers are essential not only for the charging network but also for the success of electric cars.If customers cannot acquire cheap electricity at home to charge their vehicles, there is no chance electrics will be popular in the country. But governments can support this with incentives for those who buy and drive electric vehicles.Thus, owning ancan be made tempting with the help of lawmakers, through measures such as purchase incentives, annual deductions, reduced parking fees, and priority lanes.According to a report published on Thursday, titled The Path Forward for Electric Vehicles in Australia, the $8,000 in benefits could be achieved by the government with targeted incentives like exemptions from the Fringe Benefit Tax. Such benefits are not uncommon, and other states have used them in the past to favor the acquisition of eco-friendly vehicles. Welburn, a 65-year-old veteran who has been with General Motors since he turned 21, has studied sculpture and product design at the College of Fine Arts at Howard University in Washington, D.C. His first stint at GM was at the Buick Exterior Studio, where Welburn worked on the Riviera and Park Avenue.In 1975, Welburn was assigned to Oldsmobile, where he developed the record-breaking Aerotech. For the younger audience, it is worth mentioning that the Aerotech hit 257 miles per hour (413.6 km/h) in 1987. After he had been promoted to Oldsmobile chief designer in 1989, Ed began an assignment at Saturn, a brand that had to go after GM applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.Some of his and his teams more modern projects include the Hummer H3, Cadillac Escalade, the latest generation of full-size trucks. There is no doubt that this man has put its mark on all things General Motors. My favorite thing about Welburn is that his fascination for GM started in a damn cute way. Im referring to when Ed Welburn wrote to General Motors in the 1960s, when he was 11 years old, asking how could he become an automotive designer. The rest, as they say, is history.After a 44-year career laden with successes, the sixth design chief in the 108-year existence of GM will make way for a young gun of great talent. With the company since 1983, Michael Simcoe started at Holden. His best efforts include the VT Commodore, WH Caprice/Statesmen, VE Commodore, and the GMC Terrain, Buick LaCrosse, Chevrolet Camaro, and Cadillac CTS.Mark Reuss, the executive vice president of Global Product Development and Global Purchasing and Supply Chain, had the following to declare about the change at GM Design: Given his deep global experience and passion for breakthrough design, Michael is the right person to lead GM Global Design. He is known for his ability to take diverse ideas and mold them into great products that surprise and delight our customers.Mary Barra, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, added, GM Design is among the most respected and sought-after organizations in the industry because of Eds leadership. He nurtured a creative, inclusive and customer-focused culture among our designers that has strengthened our global brands. NHTSA The South Korean carmaker discovered that the supplier of the particular circuit board upgraded the protective covering of the electronic element in October 2010, so they decided to recall all the MY 2011 Sonata sedans manufactured between late December 2009 and the end of October 2010.The recall action targets approximately 173,000 Sonata units, Automotive News informs. As theexplains, the loss of power steering increases the risk of an accident, especially at low speed.Furthermore, the issue is upsetting for the driver, as increased effort is required to turn the wheel if the power assistance fails.Hyundai informed the NHTSA that the company did not have any knowledge of any accidents or injuries related to this potential issue. The carmaker will replace the circuit boards of the affected units with the upgraded elements.However, the company has not specified how many warranty claims it received for loss of power steering on the MY2011 Sonata. Since this entire situation led to an internal investigation, we expect the number to be significant.Carmakers regularly perform internal quality control and inquiries, and those issues which involve repairs on warranty are pursued with the utmost attention. After all, each automaker wants to have the best possible results in reliability surveys, which lead to an increase in sales, brand image, resale value, and customer confidence.Unfortunately for carmakers and consumers alike, issues with suppliers can result in costly recalls. Naturally, the client has no fault in this, but they lose valuable time with the schedule of a repair and the trip to the dealer.Meanwhile, the brand is also affected, as their image is stained by having to fix issues caused by third parties with which they did business. On the supplier side, the companies which provided the potentially defective components must pay for the replacement parts. The unexpected class action lawsuit is based on assumptions made by the customers, who believe that the carmaker uses defeat devices to trick emission testing machines.They motivate their beliefs on the fact that the Mercedes-Benz BlueTec cars passed dyno tests with adequate emissions, while real world testing showed that their nitrogen oxide gas and CO2 emissions were higher than claimed.As Automotive News notes, Daimler officials consider the class action lawsuit to be unfounded. They have reaffirmed the fact that Mercedes-Benz vehicles do not use devices to falsely reduce emissions during testing.This is not the first interaction between Hagens Berman and Mercedes-Benz, as the law firm has filed a complaint with the EPA against the German automaker, accusing them of the same thing they based the class action suit on.Back then, Daimler was alleged to have very high levels of nitrogen oxide gas (NOx) while engines were operating at low temperatures. The mentioned temperature was below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). In the conditions described, the law firm accused Daimler that their diesel engines (BlueTec) had NOx emission levels over 65 times the maximum limit allowed by the EPA.At the time, Daimler officials explained that all their cars obey legislation, but admitted that the exhaust gas after the treatment system was at reduced capacity in certain conditions - like low outside temperatures - to prevent condensation and corrosion in the exhaust.The German companys representatives have explained that this feature is entirely legal, and we believe that it probably happens to every car on the market. After all, emissions testing is performed with the engine at operating temperature, and in controlled-temperature environments.Daimler promised full cooperation with the EPA at the time, but the organization has yet to publish its findings. However, if the German company is proven right by the EPA report, the entire case could be dismissed by the District Court of New Jersey. HERSMAN The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration honored 16 safety leaders and organizations, including National Safety Council CEO Deborah Hersman, during a special ceremony at the 34th annual Lifesavers Conference. NHTSA, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, hands out its NHTSA Public Service Awards each year to recognize highway safety contributions throughout the nation. The Lifesavers Conference, held this year April 3-5 in Long Beach, Calif., is the nations largest assembly of highway safety professionals. The Department of Transportation is dedicated to safety, but we cant do it alone, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. The NHTSA Public Service Award recipients help us improve safety each and every day across the country. The winner of the U.S. DOT 50th anniversary Award was Dr. William Haddon, who was saluted posthumously. Haddon, the first administrator of NHTSA, was a celebrated physician and scientist who made major contributions to motor vehicle safety in the U.S. We rely on the continued leadership of safety practitioners all across this nation to help us tackle the most dangerous driving practices whether it is drunk driving, seatbelt use, child passenger safety, or distraction, said current NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind. The winners exemplify the highest levels of dedication and hard work that are critical to saving lives on Americas roads. Here are the 16 NHTSA Public Service Award winners: Shocking as it may seem, a flaw was detected too late. It stands out that Honda has overcharged its consumers. In line with that, Honda is presently dealing with irate consumers requesting compensation for the overcharged. A report from The Verge relayed how the company was charging its consumers twice. Many Honda owners have also noticed that they have been charged more than what they owe for. The crisis began when Honda deducted from the consumers bank account twice which led to more financial distress for some car owners. Since the payment scheme was implemented, Honda car owners had to endure the repercussions of fees and a possible inability to pay other bills, according to the same post. Owing to the rising awareness, even the social media accounts of Honda got an influx of customer complaints. Given the sheer number of clienteles affected, Honda's customer service phone lines have been inundated. All the more, since the main phone support is packed up, consumers have banked their queries online through Twitter and Facebook in frustration. Meanwhile, Honda accepts the flaw and rebutted that it was not intentional. The car company even stated that it was a payment processing error. To prove the latter, Honda said that their finance sector is working urgently to resolve the issue. Even Senior Vice President of AHFC David Paul added on to state, "We recognize that payment processing is a serious issue to our customers and we have a team actively working on this issue to resolve it and take care of our customers. Also our customers are our top priority and we apologize for the inconvenience and any concerns that have resulted. We will make this right for our customers." More report from Automotive News revealed that Honda noticed the glitch too late. However, the compensation process is currently underway and refunds would be issued as soon as possible. The recent news and updates concerning Honda is a wake up call for all car manufacturers out there. With the technological innovations in payment schemes, flaws can arise which is why proper measures are needed to ensure that consumers and their finances are protected and are secured at times, and at all cost. Uisee Technology, founded by one of Intel's former engineering manager, has recently gained recognition as one of the startups that plan to further revolutionize driverless technology. China's auto industry is also fast becoming a melting pot of known automakers and startups. Gansha Wu's 16-year career at Intel gave him the courage to leave his former successful job and together with four co-workers formed Uisee, which stands for Utilization, Indiscriminate, Safety, Efficiency and Environment, according to the NY Times. Mr. Wu also mentioned that the company is in the process toward "fully autonomous driving" according to the news agency. He also noted on the addition of driver assistance systems which would be integrated into wholly driverless cars during limited situations and controlled environments. The company further aims to develop these technologies to assist drivers and not completely replace them. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has also expressed a certain amount of anxiety in terms of the country's poorly marked lanes on roads as well as minimal visibility of signage. Other non-mechanical obstacles that could pose a great risk for drivers are animals, trucks, rickshaws, and even people. "That makes for a more challenging engineering problem in China," according to partner Junyi Zhang of Roland Berger consulting firm. Taiwanese venture investor and former Google China head, Kai-Fu Lee commented on Wu's team as a rare group of "supertalent," according to Gizmodo "They combine a mechanical expert from a university, a top computer vision expert and machine learning from Google as well as Gansha and his team of semiconductor experts. Gansha is an excellent leader that binds these people together," continued Lee. Two known Chinese companies, Yutong and Baidu, have been busy doing public demos of their own version of a self-driving bus. Other public vehicle systems in China such as taxis are predicted to be autonomous over the next few years, in a year or two maybe. Acura and its parent company, Honda, will unveil new SUVs at the 14th Beijing International Automotive Exhibition (Auto China 2016). The Beijing Auto Show is scheduled for April 25-May 4, 2016. According to Motor Authority, almost three years ago Acura presented its SUV-X concept car that previewed a new compact crossover. The car maker is just weeks away now from presenting the production version. The Japanese brand has confirmed to unveil the production version of the SUV-X at this month's 2016 Beijing Auto Show. The same publication reports that the new car model will be called a CDX. The new Acura vehicle will be the first manufactured by the Japanese brand in China. It is expected that the CDX could be even exported to the United States and Acura's other markets. The CDX might be related to Honda's HR-V and target the Lincoln MKC, BMW X1, Audi Q3 and Mercedes-Benz GLA. According to Autocar Professional, the parent company of Acura, Honda, will have a joint booth with Dongfeng Honda Automobile Co and Guangqi Honda Automobile Co at the 2016 Beijing Auto Show. Honda will unveil an SUV based on the Concept D presented at Auto Shanghai 2015. The Concept D provided a preview into the upcoming design for the China-only all new premium crossover, according to Motoroids. The premium Honda utility vehicle offering is will be called the UR-V. The upcoming mass-production Honda SUV model is made-for-China and it will be a top-end model offering a spacious cabin and high-quality driving. The Concept D-based SUV model equipped with advanced safety technologies is positioned as a new flagship model of Honda in China and it will go on sale from both Dongfeng Honda and Guangqi Honda. The UR-V will be positioned above the CR-V in the Chinese market. The upcoming Honda SUV will include premium features and will be considerably bigger. Honda is planning to sell the UR-V crossover only in China. What do you think about the new SUVs to be unveiled by Honda and Acura at the 2016 Beijing Auto Show? Please share with us your opinions in our comments section. Toyota plans to open a new research hub for self-driving cars in the state of Michigan. According to Auto News, Toyota Research Institute has announced on Thursday, April 7, that their in-house R&D division is setting up a location in Michigan. This would be Toyota's third such facility in the United States. All the Toyota autonomous vehicle research bases are tied to elite universities specialized in self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. Toyota already has similar centers with Stanford University in Silicon Valley and MIT in Cambridge, Mass. Toyota Motor Corp. announced that its third Toyota Research Institute (TRI) facility will be located in Ann Arbor, Mich., near the University of Michigan campus, according to Forbes. The chosen location is in an area of western exurban Detroit competing with Silicon Valley to become a top hub for the autonomous automobiles industry. Ahead of the announcement, Gill Pratt, CEO of TRI, said that "Toyota has deep roots in the Ann Arbor community," beyond the research that the University of Michigan is doing in advancing research in autonomous driving and automotive safety. Mr Pratt made his announcement at a conference in Silicon Valley, during a keynote address. According to the same publication, the Ann Arbor location will become home to about 50 employees and it is scheduled to open in June. Toyota will transfer to the Ann Arbor research hub 15 employees from the Technical Center in nearby York Township. The company is been researching autonomous cars in the Technical Center in York Township for more than a decade. The TRI in Ann Arbor will be also joined by a pair of Michigan engineering faculty members. The two area leads are Edwin Olson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and Ryan Eustice, an associate professor of naval architecture and marine engineering. The TRI was established in late 2015. The project is part a $1 billion program over the next five years with the aim to improve Toyota's autonomous vehicle and robotics know-how, programming software and artificial intelligence. The research group is also developing mobility solutions for people unable to drive and an autonomous vehicle incapable of causing a crash. According to Bloomberg, Mr Pratt said that "co-opetition" among automakers is key to saving each year over one million lives lost worldwide to traffic fatalities. We invite you to share your comments about Toyota's new research hub to open in Michigan. A "platoon" of connected trucks completed a 1,300 mile trip across Europe to prove the concept of autonomous truck platooning. A dozen trucks from various manufacturers (from six different brands) took part in the European Truck Platooning Challenge, according to Gizmodo. This concept for truck platooning is based on the idea of linking several autonomous trucks with Wi-Fi to form a tight convoy. By using slipstreaming to prevent access and save fuel, this can make life easier for drivers. According to the website eurotruckplatooning.com , each truck platoon departed from its production location or home base. Scania left from Sodertalje, south of Stockholm, driving to Maasvlakte II in the Port of Rotterdam. Volvo started from Gothenburg and stopped in Vilvoorde. MAN started from Munich and Daimler from Stuttgart (both in Southern Germany). DAF started from their production location in Westerlo, Belgium and IVECO departed from Brussels. Trucks linked up to platoon together and eventually ended their journey in Rotterdam. This is the first cross-border demonstration of truck platooning and also a test that involved different brands. In the end, everything proved to be a resounding success. Platooning is a much easier than the fully-autonomous vehicles that Apple, Google and other automakers are working on. Trucks just need to follow in a line and to talk to each other to form a platoon, rather than navigate the road by calculating complex variables. Self-driving trucks are probably the easiest and the most obvious potential beneficiaries of autonomous technology. The convoy of wireless-linked trucks has giving a glimpse of the future of road haulage, according to The Guardian. Truck platooning will come online much sooner than driverless cars. The Dutch infrastructure and environment minister, Melanie Schultz van Haegen, explained that truck platooning has the potential to contribute in the near future to road safety and to ensure more efficient and cleaner transport. We invite you to share with us your opinions on the benefits of truck platooning and your own vision about the perspectives of autonomous driving in the near future. Director and heavy breather Joey Silvera gives fans a visual taste of both exotic and domestic transwomen in this 42nd entry into his popular series. Although every scene is worth a watch, its the local girls who generate the most emotional warmth. Things start off with a beautiful genderfuck scene starring cis-chick Holly Heart and her best friends sister, TS Tarynxo. Heart cant praise the still transitioning Tarynxo enough, which adds heat and authenticity. River Stark has a shock of purple hair and a reputation for being wicked. When Robert Axel begins sucking her cock, she kicks back with a cigarette, only putting it out and removing her eyeglasses when the ass-licking begins. Teen cover girl Alexa Scout saves Silveras mail from ravening dogs before earning a mouth and hand full of male man Axels cum. Minimally English-speaking Toei, Ice and Leticia Castro serve up largely wordless solo scenes, whereas pretty Sophie communicates her fondness for Johnny UK and what he does to her ass with dazzling smiles and broken English. 8 April 2016 10:43 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova The Armenian armed forces continue to violate the truce on the contact line of troops in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region despite the achieved agreement on ceasefire. Azerbaijans Defense Ministry reported that the enemy broke the ceasefire 110 times over the last 24 hours. Shots were fired on both Azerbaijans positions and villages. The enemy was using 60-millimeter mortars and large-caliber machine guns. Azerbaijani positions located on nameless heights and in the villages of Kemerli, Mezem, Gaymagli and Gizilhajili of the Gazakh district were fired at by Armenians stationed in the Doveh, Voskepar and Barekamavan villages of Armenia's Noyemberyan district and in the Berkaber and Paravakar villages of Armenia's Ijevan district. Armenian military stationed in the Aygepar village of Armenia's Berd district opened fire at the Azerbaijani army positions in the Alibayli village of the Tovuz district. Azerbaijani army positions located on nameless heights of Gadabay and Julfa districts were fired at by the Armenian military stationed on nameless heights in Armenia's Krasnoselsk and Sisian districts. Armenian army also opened fire from positions near the Gulustan village of the Goranboy district, the Goyarkh, Yarimja, Chilaburt villages of the Terter district, the Shikhlar, Javahirli, Sarijali, Kangarli, Novruzlu, Shuraabad, Merzili, Yusifjanli and Garagashli villages of the Aghdam district, the Kuropatkino village of the Khojavand district, the Garakhanbeyli, Horadiz, Gorgan, Ashagi Seyidahmadli villages of the Fizuli district and the Mehdili village of the Jabrayil district. Armenians also opened fire upon the Azerbaijani army positions from nameless heights in the Goygol, Goranboy, Khojavand, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts. In view of the operational situation, the Azerbaijani military units inflicted 114 strikes on enemy positions. The countrys defense ministry further dismissed the Armenian sides reports that allegedly Armenian armed forces have captured Azerbaijani army's vehicle full of military equipment. Only the Armenian Defense Ministry representatives could carry out an operation involving special forces to destroy a non-combat vehicle which poses no threat, the ministry told Trend on April 8. The ministry stressed that such type of vehicles do not pose any threat, as they are not equipped with armaments. The situation on the frontline aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region. The hostilities renewed in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3. The Azerbaijani Army destroyed about 370 enemy soldiers since the start of the hostilities, according to the defense ministry. Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact starting from 12.00, April 5, as a meeting between the Chief of General Staff of Azerbaijan Armed Forces Colonel General Najmaddin Sadikov and the Chief of General Staff of Armenian Armed Forces Colonel General Yuri Khachaturyan took place by the mediation of the Russian side. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 13:55 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova An agreement was reached on restoration of ceasefire regime since 15:00 (GMT+4) on April 8 on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said. The parties to the conflict plan to take bodies of the military personnel left on the battlefield from 15.00 to 20.00, through the mediation of OSCE representatives and International Committee of the Red Cross. Earlier, Baku announced launching of the investigation after several citizens reported about the servicemen who have gone missing in the recent military operations on the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops. The situation on the frontline aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region. The hostilities renewed in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3. The Azerbaijani Army destroyed about 370 enemy soldiers since the start of the hostilities, according to the defense ministry. Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact starting from 12.00, April 5, as a meeting between the Chief of General Staff of Azerbaijan Armed Forces Colonel General Najmaddin Sadikov and the Chief of General Staff of Armenian Armed Forces Colonel General Yuri Khachaturyan took place by the mediation of the Russian side. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 18:14 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova Russia can play a key role in the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that flared up unexpectedly on April 2, believes the Secretary General of the OSCE. Russia's contribution to resolving the long lasting conflict will bring results and create conditions for a new phase of negotiations that will be much more constructive than previous talks, Lamberto Zannier, Secretary General of the OSCE told Ria Novosti on April 8. He voiced hope that all the efforts will be consolidated and the problems will be resolved at the negotiation table. Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal, but they have not been enforced to this day. A precarious cease-fire was signed in 1994. However, the Armenian forces committed armistice breaches on the frontline almost every day. As the fragile ceasefire was broken following Yerevans provocations on April 2, it became clear that those directly engaged in resolving the conflict should find another effective method that will allow deterring the aggressor. The OSCE Minsk Group, acting as a sole negotiator between Armenia and Azerbaijan, has responded immediately after the aggravation of the situation on the frontline, but the co-chairs have confined themselves to general statements. The parties to the conflict have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact only after the mediation of Russia, which is the co-chair country in the OSCE Minsk Group. Zannier further said that the OSCE is ready to hold a new special session on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict if the situation there aggravates again. The OSCE held a special session on April 4, while on April 7, the OSCE Permanent Council discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and it will also discuss this conflict the next week, Zannier said. Zannier stressed that the new special meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council with the participation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs will be held when they come back from the Nagorno-Karabakh region. "They [the co-chairs] are in the [Nagorno-Karabakh] region now and will stay there as long as necessary to define the next steps and review the actions to be done," he said. "The co-chairs must report about everything to the OSCE chairman-in-office. So, I think they will go to Berlin. Then they will decide themselves when to arrive in Vienna." Zannier further added that the co-chairs' mission has no time limits. Meanwhile, Russia's Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich stated that the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE's sole responsibility, other organizations can only help. "There is a full, 100-percent responsibility of the OSCE as a mediating party for what happens in the conflict zone," he said during the Moscow-Vienna video conference. He further reminded that Russia's large-scale and high interference has allowed reaching truce between the conflicting parties. "We emphasized respect and full support for the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and used all our opportunities to influence the conflict parties, with which we have strategic relations," said Lukashevich. The co-chairs together with the Personal Representative of the Chairperson-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, travelled to the regions shortly after the Vienna meeting, which was held to discuss the recent developments in the Azerbaijani occupied territories. Following the talks with Azerbaijans officials, the co-chairs noted that the negotiations over the Nagorno-Karabakh problem should become intensive and decisive step should be taken towards a peace settlement. The OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, proceeding talks based on the renewed Madrid principles. The statements promising a sincere contribution to the peaceful resolution of the conflict have become frequent, but declarative in essence. The very attitude broke confidence in success of the mediators representing the U.S., Russia and France. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 17:21 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova Azerbaijan is fully complying with the agreement on the cessation of hostilities along the line of contact between the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said on April 8. However, the ministry reported, Armenias military leadership continues to report about losses on the frontline despite the reached agreement on ceasefire. The monitoring, held on Armenian media and social networks, revealed that the enemy has mentioned the previous number of the dead soldiers as newly killed, the ministry said, noting that the enemy tries to blame Azerbaijan of violating the ceasefire by spreading false information about the dead soldiers. The opposing party may disseminate such information for two reasons. Either it (Armenia) is forced to report about the dead soldiers, as it can no longer hide this data, or its soldiers are dying because of the arbitrariness, lack of discipline and psychological stresses encountered as a result of tensions, clashes that continued for several days on the frontline, the ministry said. The situation on the frontline aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region. The hostilities renewed in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3. The Azerbaijani Army destroyed about 370 enemy soldiers since the start of the hostilities, according to the defense ministry. Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact starting from 12.00, April 5, as a meeting between the Chief of General Staff of Azerbaijan Armed Forces Colonel General Najmaddin Sadikov and the Chief of General Staff of Armenian Armed Forces Colonel General Yuri Khachaturyan took place by the mediation of the Russian side. Later, an agreement was reached on restoration of ceasefire regime since 15:00 (GMT+4) on April 8 on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops. The parties to the conflict plan to take bodies of the military personnel left on the battlefield from 15.00 to 20.00, through the mediation of OSCE representatives and International Committee of the Red Cross. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2016 21:00 (UTC+04:00) By Elmira Tariverdiyeva Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan paid a visit to Germany. This visit coincided with the period of provocations carried out by the Armenian troops on the line of contact with Azerbaijani troops and the subsequent devastating response. Booed by a large crowd of Azerbaijan's supporters in Berlin, president Sargsyan did not miss the opportunity during the visit to complain that Azerbaijan successfully repelled the attack and recaptured some of its own territories from the occupation forces of Armenia. However, Sargsyan also tried to mislead the international community by making up a story about the so-called Azerbaijan's attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, although no fighting was observed in there. In fact, the Azerbaijani army repulsed attacks of the Armenian troops, shelling Azerbaijani villages near the troops' contact line. Meanwhile, there are no civilians living on the other side of the contact line - in the Armenia-occupied territories. Besides, Sargsyan shared his fears with German Chancellor Angela Merkel regarding the military power of Azerbaijan, the country he was disparagingly speaking about until recently. After the failure of his occupation troops, Sargsyan noted with fear that today, Azerbaijan has more modern types of weapons, and bitterly complained that it was observed during the three days of fighting. However, contrary to the expectations of the Armenian leader, Merkel expressed support for something Armenia and President Sargsyan don't want. Merkel urged the OSCE Minsk Group to progress in the process of peace talks over Nagorno-Karabakh, and Armenia, the country which did everything possible to make the negotiations stagnate, certainly didn't like it. It's obvious why it happened: it is disadvantageous for Yerevan to change the status quo of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which assumes continuation of the occupation policy before the whole world community. Nevertheless, during the press conference with Armenia's president, Merkel urged for immediate promotion of the negotiation process and increasing the effectiveness of the OSCE Minsk Group's work. She pointed out that this international format is responsible for the work on resolving the conflict and promised to support the Minsk Group's work "in a particular way." The western part of the world made it clear for Sargsyan that the current situation doesn't benefit anyone and Europe is ready to make every effort to prevent another outbreak of violence in the strategically important South Caucasus region. The remarks made by all international players which urged for immediate promotion of the negotiation process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, create hope that after everyone saw firsthand that it is not a frozen conflict, the international players will increase the pressure on Armenia to bring it back to the constructive talks. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 10:32 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova Baku has once again proved the world its commitment to peace after agreeing to cease operations on the contact line of the Armenian and Azerbaijani troops, which escalated following Yerevans provocation. As a result of systematic, deliberate and targeted attacks launched by Armenians on civilian population from April 2 through April 5 six civilians, including two children below 16 years, were killed and 26 civilians were seriously wounded. The cease-fire has been pushed by Moscow with a view to restart talks between the warring parties and find end to the conflict. Although the international community expressed hopes the ceasefire will be observed by all sides, the aggressor Armenia continued to ignore peace calls. The guns went silent on April 5, but shortly after Armenian militaries began to breach the ceasefire and again shell the Azerbaijani positions in Nakhchivan. Baku instead obeyed the truce, pointing out that the main risk to this truce is that the Armenian side does not want peace, but seeks to maintain the status quo. When the situation in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region has exploded unexpectedly following Armenias provocation, a number of worlds leaders and organizations have expressed their concern over the embarrassing situation. Russia, the U.S., Iran, Georgia, Germany, Canada, Italy and many others have urged the parties to the conflict to strictly observe ceasefire. They hoped that if this temporary truce can be converted into a permanent ceasefire, then the sides could launch talks to end this decades-long conflict. Actually, the Nagorno-Karabakh issue needs a comprehensive settlement that cannot be reached if Armenia continues to violate a fragile truce. The world community should develop such an approach, which will restrain Armenia from committing crime against Azerbaijan and its civilian population. The Azerbaijani side showed that it is ready for peace and sits at the table of negations, but it will not tolerate the endless occupation of its historical lands. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 09:47 (UTC+04:00) The Club de Madrid has called on all the parties to strictly respect the cease-fire and avoid any actions or statements that could lead to further escalation. The Club de Madrid has been following with deep concern the reports of heavy fighting along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh which have resulted in a number of reported casualties, including civilians. The Club de Madrid deplores the loss of lives these clashes are causing and extend our condolences to all the families affected, the statement reads. Unstable situation on the ground demonstrates why the sides must enter into an immediate negotiation under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs on a comprehensive settlement of the conflict. The Club de Madrid considers there is no military solution, welcomes that according to the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a key priority for the European Union and expects both sides to resume efforts towards a peaceful solution of the conflict based on the Madrid Principles and the United Nations Security Council resolutions. The situation on the frontline aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook several strategic positions. The hostilities renewed in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3. The Azerbaijani Army destroyed about 370 enemy soldiers since the start of the hostilities, according to the defense ministry. Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact starting from 12.00, April 5. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 11:06 (UTC+04:00) Azerbaijani community living in Austria held a demonstration of protest against Armenia`s military aggression in front of the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna.. The protesters waved national flags, held slogans in their hands chanting The world community must recognize Armenia`s aggression against Azerbaijan, Karabakh is internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan, Put an end to Armenia`s aggression against Azerbaijan, Armenia, withdraw from occupied territories of Azerbaijan during the rally. The protesters called on the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries not to ignore Armenias atrocities in the occupied territories and put an end to aggression of the neighboring country. They distributed books and brochures informing the public about Armenia`s aggression against Azerbaijanis. For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. Over the entire period of its existence, the OSCE Minsk Group, which acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, failed to move forward in resolving the long lasting conflict --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 13:50 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova The presence of Armenian armed forces in the occupied Azerbaijani territories raises tension and is threat for peace and stability in region. Chairman of the Brazil-Azerbaijan inter-parliamentary friendship group, member of the Chamber of Deputies Claudio Cajado has made the remark at the plenary session, while commenting on the latest violation of ceasefire by Armenians on the troops contact line, the Azerbaijani embassy in Brazil reported. Cajado reminded the four resolutions of the UN Security Council on withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands and stated that these resolutions need full and immediate implementation. For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. Over the entire period of its existence, the OSCE Minsk Group, which acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, failed to move forward in resolving the long lasting conflict Earlier Vice-President of the Brazil-Azerbaijan inter-parliamentary friendship group at the Brazil's Chamber of Deputies Rodrigo Maia and Rio de Janeiro City Councils external affairs committee chairman Cesar Maia have made joint statement on the violation of ceasefire at the frontline of the Armenian-Azerbaijani troops It is over 20 years that Azerbaijani lands are under the Armenian occupation. As a result of this occupation more than one million of Azerbaijanis have become refugees and IDPs. Unfortunately, Armenia ignores Four Resolutions adopted by UN Security Council in 1993 when Brazil was the non-permanent member of the UN SC and supported these documents. The world community, including the OSCE Minsk Group should make every effort and exert pressure on the aggressor to implement these Resolutions. Related to the happenings, we express our full solidarity with the fair position of Azerbaijan, the statement reads. The situation on the frontline aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region. The hostilities renewed in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3. The Azerbaijani Army destroyed about 370 enemy soldiers since the start of the hostilities, according to the defense ministry. Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact starting from 12.00, April 5, as a meeting between the Chief of General Staff of Azerbaijan Armed Forces Colonel General Najmaddin Sadikov and the Chief of General Staff of Armenian Armed Forces Colonel General Yuri Khachaturyan took place by the mediation of the Russian side. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Prime Ministers of Armenia and Russia, Hovik Abrahamyan and Dmitry Medvedev, discussed both bilateral issues related to the allied relations of Armenia and Russia and integration issues in the sidelines of the EAEU during their meeting. Armenian PM Abrahamyan announced about this after the meeting, adding that the meeting went on in a very cordial and friendly atmosphere. We also discussed issues of mutual interest in such fields as economy, energy, transport, agriculture, tourism, humanitarian cooperation, education, culture, as well as the legal framework, which was supplemented with new documents. The importance of the activities of the Armenian-Russian intergovernmental economic commission was underscored, which is one of the best ways of developing economic and trade relations between the two states, Armenpress reports PM Abrahamyan saying. Abrahamyan added that they both attached great importance to the proper operation of Verin (Upper) Lars checkpoint. Summing up his speech, Hovik Abrahamyan noted that the talks went on in an atmosphere of mutual understanding and constructiveness, as always. The Prime Minister expressed conviction that the agreements reached as a result of the meeting will be successfully brought to life. 8 April 2016 16:42 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova The settlement of the Armenia Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well as further development of the Russian-Azerbaijani cooperation were high on the agenda of talks held between President Ilham Aliyev and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is on a visit to Baku on April 8. Greeting Dmitry Medvedev in Baku, President Aliyev said there is an extensive agenda between Azerbaijan and Russia. The president noted that Medvedev has paid the visit to Azerbaijan during the period of escalation of the situation around the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "Regrettably, the conflict hasn't been resolved throughout many years. We periodically face armed provocations by Armenians," said Ilham Aliyev, adding that another such attempt was made in early April. "Azerbaijani settlements were shelled, over 400 houses were destroyed," said the president, stressing that there are victims among the civilians as well. The head of the state said that Azerbaijan had to retaliate to prevent the military provocations and restore ceasefire. "I would like to express gratitude to Russian leadership for the timely efforts and activities for de-escalation of the situation," he added. "Russia's President Vladimir Putin made a phone call to me and Armenian president. Moreover, Russia's chief of general staff contacted to the two countries' chiefs of general staffs. A truce was established as a result of the mediation efforts," said the president, adding that nevertheless, Armenia does not always respect the ceasefire. "I should note that Azerbaijan is committed to the peaceful and political settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on the international law and relevant decisions of the UN Security Council and other international organizations," Ilham Aliyev said. President Ilham Aliyev further added that Dmitry Medvedev's visit is also a good opportunity to discuss other issues on the agenda such as the relations in trade, economic, energy, transportation and humanitarian spheres. The Russian-Azerbaijani relations have a very good dynamics and stand out with friendliness and sincerity, Ilham Aliyev believes. Russia plays an important role in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair, Medvedev said at the meeting. Medvedev also stressed his participation in the process of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The PM said he had spent a lot of efforts on the conflict's settlement and wouldn't like them to be in vain. Azerbaijan can be sure that Russia will do its best for the conflict to be resolved, he said. Medvedev further said Azerbaijan and Russia have a lot of different joint projects, which will also be discussed during the visit. "As you said, there are relations of strategic partnership between our countries, as well as a lot of projects in the economic, humanitarian sphere, a variety of joint political issues that we discussed," said Medvedev. Of course, the current situation, the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, is not quite that simple, the Russian prime minister added. "Frankly speaking, this topic is of great concern to Russia," said Medvedev, adding that relations with Azerbaijan and Armenia are extremely important for the country. Moscow, as a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, as a responsible state, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council is committed to the approaches within the framework of the UN procedures and other ones, he said. "We hope that the currently established peace will be long-lasting, and the sides will be able to continue discussion of issues of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's peaceful settlement," Medvedev said. "I convey to you the best wishes of Vladimir Putin," he said to Azerbaijani president, adding that the relations between the two countries are very versatile, and there is always something to discuss. The one-on-one meeting was followed by the expanded meeting. Addressing the expanded meeting, Medvedev said Azerbaijan and Russia are strategic partners in a number of spheres. "Fortunately, our range of relations isn't only confined to problems, there is a huge variety of relations where we have a very advanced cooperation and strategic partnership," he stressed. Medvedev went on to add that Azerbaijan and Russia have the opportunity to make additional efforts for the economies of the two countries to function more in line with one another, for good effect. Last year, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia declined, the prime minister said, adding that the reduction mainly occurred regarding cost indexes due to the changes in prices for goods the countries supply to each other. However, this shows that a number of projects can be revived, said Medvedev. The Russian prime minister suggested President Aliyev to discuss this issue, and humanitarian issues as well. President Aliyev, in turn, said there is a very good dynamics in Azerbaijani-Russian relations in many spheres. "Although the trade turnover has slightly dropped for objective reasons, we have a potential to boost the cooperation in trade and economic spheres and great potential in energy and transportation spheres," he added. Azerbaijan's president also highlighted the traditional cooperation in humanitarian sphere which has very good prospects and good results. "In general, this is the basis of our relations," said President Aliyev. "Therefore, I hope that we will have detailed discussions with our colleagues on the concrete issues related to trade and economic and of course, political relations." The expanded meeting was followed by the joint press conference, addressing which President Aliyev said Azerbaijan considers today's visit of Dmitry Medvedev to Baku as another proof of friendly and partner attitude towards the country. "We attach great importance to your visit," President Aliyev told Medvedev. "Today, during the talks in the expanded and one-on-one formats, we discussed the important issues of bilateral cooperation and regional problems." President Aliyev added that, especially taking into account the recent escalation, they also had detailed discussions on the issues related to the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He said Azerbaijan appreciates that Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is on an official visit to Baku today. "I invited Medvedev to visit Azerbaijan and I know that he was planning to pay this visit. But the fact that this visit was paid today is considered by us as another proof of friendly and partner attitude towards Azerbaijan," added Ilham Aliyev. Medvedev, in turn, said Russia appreciates the high level of relations with Azerbaijan. We really appreciate such level of relations with Azerbaijan, traditions of friendship and mutual understanding, which have formed throughout the centuries and which now bear good fruit, said Medvedev. Later, a dinner reception has been hosted on behalf of President Aliyev in honor of Dmitry Medvedev. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 16:13 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova A meeting of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers kicked off in Moscow on April 8. After discussing various aspects of development of multifaceted cooperation and deepening of foreign policy coordination within the CIS framework, the top diplomats from CIS countries exchanged views on important regional and global issues. The renewed hostilities in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict resolution were high on the agenda of the Moscow meeting. CIS Chairman of the Executive Committee, Sergey Lebedev, addressing a press conference following the meeting, said that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov informed the participants about his meetings held in the South Caucasus, while Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian voiced their positions. All the sides expressed their satisfaction with the termination of hostilities, Lebedev said, emphasizing that the CIS foreign ministers expressed hope that the parties will return to the negotiating table with an aim to finally resolve this difficult conflict. In the statement issued following the meeting, the CIS states noted that they have been following with great concern the reports on hostilities along the contact line in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, which have led to casualties, including among civilians. "We urge the conflict parties to strictly observe the cessation of hostilities and to show restraint in order to prevent new casualties," the statement reads. "All the possible measures should be taken as soon as possible to stabilize the situation and intensify efforts for peaceful settlement of the conflict, based on the principles set by the OSCE Minsk Group." The situation on the line of contact of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Armed Forces aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region. The hostilities renewed in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3. The Azerbaijani Army destroyed about 370 enemy soldiers since the start of the hostilities, according to the defense ministry. Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact starting from 12.00, April 5, as a meeting between the Chief of General Staff of Azerbaijan Armed Forces Colonel General Najmaddin Sadikov and the Chief of General Staff of Armenian Armed Forces Colonel General Yuri Khachaturyan took place by the mediation of the Russian side. -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 16:40 (UTC+04:00) Russia's President Vladimir Putin held an operative meeting with permanent members of the country's Security Council, TASS agency quoted the Russian president's spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying April 8. Earlier , Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed the escalation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh by phone, said a statement issued by Kremlin. President Putin informed President Nazarbayev about the mediation measures taken by the Russian side, said the statement. The situation on the frontline aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region. The hostilities renewed in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3. The Azerbaijani Army destroyed about 370 enemy soldiers since the start of the hostilities, according to the defense ministry. Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to cease operations on the line of contact starting from 12.00, April 5, as a meeting between the Chief of General Staff of Azerbaijan Armed Forces Colonel General Najmaddin Sadikov and the Chief of General Staff of Armenian Armed Forces Colonel General Yuri Khachaturyan took place by the mediation of the Russian side. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 12:30 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova The first trilateral meeting of foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran was of significant importance for all the three countries taking into account the importance of issues discussed by Elmar Mammadyarov, Sergey Lavrov and Mohammad Javad Zarif. Baku hosted the first trilateral meeting of foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran on April 7, where the three countries discussed both political and economic issues, as well as recent developments in the region. Azerbaijani MP, Rovshan Rzayev believes that the North-South transport corridor project, which was among the discussed issues, will contribute to development of economy and to ensuring security in the region. "I believe that after this meeting a new stage of cooperation will begin among Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran," he told Trend, adding that this meeting will also contribute to strengthening of political relations among Baku, Moscow and Tehran. Rzayev said that this trilateral meeting of the top diplomats of Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran may also have an impact on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "Azerbaijan enjoys good relations with both Russia and Iran. I believe that the two countries can play a greater role in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," he added. The meeting is believed to open a new page in the history of regional cooperation and would contribute to the strengthening of peace and stability in the region. Political analyst Arzu Nagiyev said that the Baku meeting is a logical continuation of agreements reached between Baku and Tehran during President Ilham Aliyev's visit to Iran. He also assured that this meeting will give an impetus to the development of cooperation and ensuring security in the region. "After the lifting of international sanctions imposed against Iran, the development of cooperation serves for the interests of all the three countries," the expert noted. "One of the main topics of discussions was the North-South transport corridor project. This project enjoys a significant importance for cargo transportation sectors of Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran." Nagiyev believes that after the April 7 meeting of Mammadyarov, Lavrov and Zarif, Armenia, which tried to prevent the implementation of this project, remained aside from it. "This is natural, because the main condition for the implementation of this project is to provide security. Due to the fact that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict still remains unresolved and Yerevan prevents the conflict resolution under the condition of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, then Armenia fails to guarantee the security," he stated. The North-South corridor, from India to Helsinki, with a length of 5,000 kilometers is designed to carry more than 20 million tons per year. It is a multimodal route for transportation of passengers and cargo from Russia's St. Petersburg to the Mumbai port. It is designed to carry transit cargo from India, Iran and other Persian Gulf countries to the territory of Russia (the Caspian Sea) and further - to Northern and Western Europe. Commenting on the results of the meeting, MP Fazil Agamali considers this meeting as the final stage of intense talks on the North-South transport corridor project. "I think that the parties have reached a decision on the upcoming tasks, because there are no major differences of opinions. Under the agreement, Russia will get an access to Iran, and from there - a direct access to the two seas. This is a very important issue for Russia. Iran has also wished to have a high level of relations with Russia. The North-South transport corridor is passing through Azerbaijan; therefore, the implementation of this project is not possible without Azerbaijan. This project will bring tangible dividends to Azerbaijan," he added. The MP believes that all the discussed during the ministerial meetings are very important for Azerbaijan. -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 11:59 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva Azeravtoyol JSC, engaged in construction and upgrade of the road infrastructure and the World Bank signed an agreement allocating a $140 million loan to Azerbaijan for the Additional Financing for the Third Highway Project. The agreement was unedr signed by Azeravtoyol Chairman Saleh Mammadov and head of WB office in Baku Larisa Leshchenko on April 5. The additional financing will allow to complete upgrading of the Baku Shamakhi road sections by expanding them from two to four lanes, and support strengthening Azerbaijans nascent motorway management and maintenance program. The project will help provide better transport services in mountainous central and northern regions of Azerbaijan, which have considerable potential for tourism and industrial production. The total amount of the additional financing equals to $186.6 million, $46.6 million out of which will be paid by the Azerbaijani Government. Some 40 percent of the funds will be spent on the restructurisation and privatization of the state-owned enterprises in this field. Total investments by the WB in the road projects of Azerbaijan (1st, 2nd, 3rd road projects) amounted to$1 billion. The work on the reconstruction of Baku-Shamakhi road is carried out within the framework of Third Highway Project. Third Highway Project,approved in 2010, costs $356.15 million, and $241.6 million out of the figure is provided by the WB. This project includes two directions. The first direction is related to the reconstruction of the highway network of Azerbaijan and transit corridors, the second to the local roads reconstructed within the framework of the regional development strategy. The project is expected to be completed in September 2016. Azerbaijan is a WB member since 1992. The WB has allocated loans worth 3, 785 billion to Azerbaijan till February 2016. These funds were used to finance 60 projects. Azerbaijan has used $2,764 billion or 73 percent of the total loans allocated by the WB till the beginning of this year. In addition, the WB has allocated 45 grants to Azerbaijan with total amount of $ 41.586 million between 1995-2014. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 13:10 (UTC+04:00) By Nazrin Gadimova The Parliamentary Committee has discussed the law On anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguard measures on April 7, as some MPs proposed to simplify the language of of the law. This law is aimed at protecting the interests of the country and local producers and stipulates measures to prevent the damage or its threat, which applied by dumping or subsidized import to domestic producer and regulates antidumping implementation of compensatory measures and special duties. The chairman of the parliamentary committee on economic policy, entrepreneurship and industry, Ziyad Samadzade, said that the text of the law is very complicated and difficult to understand. Mirgasim Vahabov, head of the finance and currency regulation department at the State Customs Committee, also agreed that the draft law is difficult to understand, and, moreover, it has a lot of repetitions and conflicting paragraphs. MP Ali Masimli, in turn, noted the necessity of getting other structures involved in the elaboration of the bill. This bill cannot be developed only by one ministry as it addresses issues that affect the economic, customs, judicial and legal aspects, Masimli explained, adding that entrepreneurs support is very important in resolving this issue. If the bill is passed in this form, it will create a dual effect and can lead to rise of protectionism, which will have a negative impact on the industry, the MP added. Following the meeting, the law was recommended for discussion at the plenary session of the Azerbaijani Parliament. The law, which was adopted in the first reading on February 12, envisages preventing damage caused by the dumping policy, which occurs when manufacturers export a product to another country at a price either below the price charged in its home market or below its cost of production. This policy is carried out with various purposes, including penetration or strengthening in the new market and displacement of competitors. In case of lack of similar goods in exporting countrys internal commodity turnover, or if the sale volume of these goods in the home market is less than five percent from the volume of its export, the above-mentioned law provides determination of the dumping margin by comparing goods export price with its export price in the third country. Furthermore, if the exporting country conducted sale of these goods within at least six months (in volumes not less than 20 percent of the volume, which allows determining the normal cost of goods), it cannot form the basis for determining normal cost of goods, the law says. The influence of the dumping or subsidized import on the local manufacturers will be defined by the analysis of the import volume, its influence on the cost of local goods, a difference between the price on the imported and local goods, as well as a dumping margin and some other indicators. Appropriate anti-dumping measures can be applied only after careful researches and 60 days within the beginning of check. Temporary measures such as anti-dumping or countervailing duties, or the monetary deposit equal to these duties, can only be taken after completion of the investigation into complaints of local manufacturers and only when the dumping policy causes material damage to the national industry. In general, anti-dumping and countervailing measures can be applied no more than five years. -- Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 17:34 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova The North-South and East-West (TRACECA) transport corridors will complement each other, believes Akif Mustafayev. The East-West project links the Far East countries - China, Japan, Korea with Europe, but the North-South project will connect the Scandinavian countries to the Persian Gulf, due to which these two projects will not compete, the TRACECA National Secretary in Azerbaijan told Trend on April7. Azerbaijan enjoys a strategic location on the intersection of these two major transport projects linking north with south and east with west, and its geographic location is expected to pave the way for Azerbaijan to become a transport hub in the region. "Cargoes, which come from China, can be directed to Northern Europe, and the goods from Western Europe - to Iran, that is, the North-South and East-West corridors actually combine. In this case, Azerbaijan will become a hub, a logistics center of transit cargo transportation," Mustafayev said. Cargoes from all directions are expected to enter the free trade zone to be established in the Alat settlement near Baku, where an international commercial port is located. The TRACECA program was established at the Brussels conference on 3 May 1993 which was attended by the ministers of transport and trade of eight states -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. The Europe-Caucasus-Asia Transport Corridor (TRACECA) is involved in gradually developing trends of trade and economic development. Major traffic flows passing through a corridor formed on the one hand, in Western and Central Europe, and on the other - in Central and South-East Asia. The North-South corridor, from India to Helsinki, with a length of 5,000 kilometers is designed to carry more than 20 million tons per year. It is a multimodal route for transportation of passengers and cargo from Russia's St. Petersburg to the Mumbai port. It is designed to carry transit cargo from India, Iran and other Persian Gulf countries to the territory of Russia (the Caspian Sea) and further - to Northern and Western Europe. Experts believe that the North-South route enjoys several advantages compared to other transport corridors; it is more profitable for each parameter than other alternative routes, such as the Suez Canal-the Mediterranean Sea-Northern Europe and the Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan-Russia-Northern Europe routes. The preliminary estimates show that at an initial stage, it is planned to transport 6 million tons of cargo via the North-South corridor a year, and 15 to 20 million tons of cargo in the future. Leonid Gusev, a senior research fellow at the Analytical Center of the International Studies Institute at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, believes that this project has good prospects to be realized. "The North-South project has been developed for quite a long time and its implementation could significantly reduce the time of delivery of goods," Russian expert told Trend. Gusev noted that the international sanctions imposed on Iran were previously creating difficulties for the implementation of the project. However, currently, the project has good prospects for development. "This project requires significant amount of investments," he noted. "It is necessary to thoroughly study the issue and if it is solved, the project will be possible to be realized soon." On April 7, Baku hosted the first trilateral meeting of foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran, Elmar Mammadyarov, Sergey Lavrov and Mohammad Javad Zarif, where the sides discussed cooperation in implementation of bilateral and trilateral projects, including the North-South transport corridor. The sides agreed on the joint work of transportation ministries, customs and consular services to advance the transportation projects. The sides also agreed that the relevant ministries of these countries will comprehensively review the implementation of the North-South transport corridor project. Alexander Savchenko, the director of the Russia-based Centre for Situational Monitoring and Regional Studies, believes that joining this project is beneficial for Moscow as it will allow Russia to strengthen economic ties with a number of states in its south. "For Russia, this project can be beneficial in terms of transit, as well as in terms of infrastructure development and strengthening economic ties," he told Trend . "The project will facilitate the transportation cooperation with Iran and beyond. Potentially, it becomes possible to facilitate cooperation with India." -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 17:04 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva Azerbaijan Deposit Insurance Fund (ADIF) has paid compensation worth over 23.89 million ($15.66 million) manats to clients of the bankrupt Bank of Azerbaijan, the Fund reported. The volume of paid compensation amounted to 96.3 percent of the bank's insured deposits. The applications have been received from the insured depositors of Bank of Azerbaijan since January 29, 2016, and the payment of compensations has been started since then. The size of the insured deposits in Bank of Azerbaijan amounts to 24.2 million manats ($15.87 million). The payments have been made in the designated agent banks- branches of Muganbank and Rabitabank. Meanwhile, customers of Ganja Bank has been paid 83.3 percent or over 866,000 manats ($568,000) compensation since February 4. In general, the size of insured deposits in Ganja Bank stands over one million manats ($656,000) The payments to the depositors of Ganja Bank have been made in branches of Rabitabank, Unibank and Kapital Bank. ADIF also started paying compensations to the depositors of Texnikabank since February12. Since that date, the bank's customers were paid more than 110.81 million manats ($73 million), or about 90.4 percent of the total compensation. The payments to depositors were made in branches of Texnikabank and Muganbank, Rabitabank, Unibank and Kapital Bank. ADIF pays up to 30 000 manats ($19 000) for each insured deposits. Overall, the Fund paid more than 135 million manats ($88.5 million) till now. ADIF was established in August 12, 2007 after the Law on Deposit Insurance was adopted. Its mission is to prevent depositors from losing money and ensure sustainability in the financial and banking system whenever banks or local branches of foreign banks become insolvent. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 16:52 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijans State Musical Theatre hosted a meeting with representatives of the U.S. embassy in Baku, Trend Life reports. Theatre Director Aligismet Lalayev, addressing the meeting, spoke about cultural and friendly relations between Azerbaijan and the United States. We believe that the project supported by the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan will play an important role in the development of cultural relations between our countries", said Lalayev. Amy Petersen, Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy, for her part, said that ties between the two nations are expanding every day. She stressed that the meeting is aimed at further developing relations between the two countries. "The Musical Theatre is a perfect space for musical project "the Broadway". We believe that the joint project of Company-E and Azerbaijan State Musical Theatre will be a great success," said Peterson. The project is scheduled for mid-May 2016. Company E, chaired by Paul Gordon Emerson, is a contemporary repertory dance company and film-making group deeply committed to the finest repertory and artistry. Since Azerbaijan's emergence as an independent nation in 1991, the U.S.-Azerbaijan relationship has evolved into a strategic partnership based on mutual interests and common values. The two countries cooperate in various fields including, energy, economy, agriculture, culture, education and security. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 13:21 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli Today, social media has grown so big that it cannot be overlooked when considering job duties. More and more employees start the workday not by reading emails, but by checking the messages on their personal pages in social sites. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have created a buzz in the business world, and not all employers agree that use of social networks in the workplace is good for productivity. They become a real headache for entrepreneurs, since employees may spend too much time on social networks. In fact, not all managers are willing to put up with this situation, and fortiori, to pay for the work hours spent on the Internet. Some studies show that the activity on social media may over time, enhance certain skills that contribute to better performance in the workplace. However, experts also underline that excessive use of social networks has a detrimental effect on productivity and encourages moderation. Many countries discussed the issue of prohibiting use of social networks in workplace, but mostly labor ministries rejected proposals noting that such questions should be regulated by collective agreement and local normative acts. Fatima Samadova, an experienced HR specialist believes that social networking in the workplace should be used for professional activity, but not for private purposes. If an employee spends his /her working time on social networks, it is an indicator of low occupancy or a poor performance. Of course, this does not apply to those whose work is directly and exclusively related to the social media marketing, she said. Although many consider social networking as time-wasters, a number of studies have shown just the opposite, proving that social networking may actually increase ones job productivity. They claim that some time spent chatting with friends on the social network is capable to perfectly distract employees, give the brain needed rest and recharge, and thus, as a result, increase productivity, raise morale and prevent fatigability. About the improvement of productivity, many can say that workers relax while checking their social network page or the news feed in a couple of minutes. But to be honest how one can assess how much, a worker can rest when he/she continues to look at the monitor or screen. It definitely does not improve workers performance, Samadova belives. Since social networks are a primary vehicle of communication today, and because much of that communication is public, its no surprise some HR-s and marketing managers utilize these sites in their hiring process. For HR professionals, in particular for our company, aside from finding candidates, its also a good way to know a person better, as you can draw some conclusions about the nature and interests of a candidate through his/her social network page, the specialist stressed. To keep its staff away from the distraction of social networks in the workplace, some companies defined a social media policy by limiting the use of company property for personal internet media. Experts believes that such kind of restrictions not always give positive results, as employees think that their bosses try to limit their freedom and increase workload . This, in turn, reduces the motivation of people, their loyalty and desire to devote all their efforts to work for the company. Samadova believes that companies can ban use of social networks among employees who are not required to use them for job. This practice is normal and allows a person to concentrate on daily work. Employees who want to update their news feed will still find a way, because it is impossible to prohibit use of social networks from personal mobile devices, she said. If an employee claims that needs social network for work duty, but he/she uses it for personal purposes, then first we give a verbal warning and the second time -- written warning. This adds responsibility to the employee. Of course, if such incidents are repeated, it makes sense to think about how good the employee performs his/ her duties, Samadova noted. Among the most popular social networks Facebook is the leader in Azerbaijan and favorite of both older and younger generation. Then cames Twitter and Instangram. Worldwide, there are over 1.59 billion monthly active Facebook users which is a 14 percent increase year over year. The number of Azerbaijani-speaking users exceeds 1.5 million as of November 2015. The number of Azerbaijani companies promoting their services and products via social networks increase every day. Telecommunications companies occupy leading position in Azerbaijan in number of users on Facebook, according Sosial Bakers. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz STEPANAKERT, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Defense Minister of NKR, Commander of the Defense Army, Lieutenant-General Levon Mnatsakanyan met with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs James Warlick, Igor Popov, and Pierre Andreu at the NKR Defense Army Headquarter. Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, Personal Representative to the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office was also present at the meeting. Armenpress reports the press release of the NKR Defense Ministry states, The Defense Minister of Artsakh referred to the latest developments on the contact line of Karabakh-Azerbaijan opposing armies at the meeting, introducing irrefutable evidences over the military aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan, and particularly over the inhumane acts against civilians. For their part, the Co-chairs reconfirmed the necessity of measures aimed at peaceful settlement of the conflict and discussed future steps for that process. 8 April 2016 15:51 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva Although Saudi Arabia announced that it will not put a brake on its oil output unless Iran and others agree to join in, analysts are still optimistic about the upcoming Doha meeting and expect oil production cut. Saudi Arabias deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman said that if all countries agree to freeze production, were ready, in reference to the other members of the OPEC. If there is anyone that decides to raise their production, then we will not reject any opportunity that knocks on our door, he told Bloomberg last week. Russia and Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil producers, together with Qatar and Venezuela have agreed to freeze production at January levels in Doha on February 16. The states set a goal to maintain average production at the level of January 2016, but there was a condition if other producers will join this initiative as well. OPEC and non-OPEC states are going to discuss freezing oil output in market in order to save the collapsing oil prices at the forthcoming meeting in Doha on April 17. Countries like Ecuador, Algeria, Nigeria, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have voiced their willingness to join to the act. Iran also confirmed its participation in the meeting, but warned that it does not seek to join the initiative. The price of a barrel dropped by almost 3.3pc as Saudi Arabia voi9ced its condition, falling below the $40 dollar mark to $39. Later, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak revealed that Russia may hold separate bilateral talks with Al Riyadh before the Doha meeting if such a necessity or possibility arises. Russia has not discussed the issue on Irans participation in freezing oil production with Saudi Arabia either but it is ready to talk on the matter, Novak told to RIA Novosti. "I hope that certain consolidated position will prevail during the discussions in Doha, and yet all the parties agree, said Novak. Tehran, in turn, stated that the country will discuss freezing oil production only after its output reaches 4 million barrels per day. At present, it is at the level of 3.1 million barrels, according to the data provided OPEC. Novak has previously spoken in favor of having a different approach to Tehran's involvement in the freezing of oil since the sanctions hindering the export of black gold were lifted just in January. Nawal Al-Fuzaia, representative of Kuwait at OPEC believes that oil producers may agree to freeze without the participation of Iran in the negotiations, as they have no other choice. Prices could go higher by the latter part of the year. The Brent crude price is expected to average between $45 and $60 in the second half of 2016 and until 2018, the Kuwaiti official said. Thomas Pugh, leading British economist at Capital Economics also expressed similar views. He said that although the Saudi princes comments led to a weakening of the market expectations of a possible deal in Doha, still a compromise can be reached, even without the participation of Iran He believes that Mohammed bin Salmans statement was spontaneous and it should not be viewed as the final word. However, Tony Headrick, an energy market analyst at CHS Hedging LLC believes that Iran heavily influences the idea of freezing oil production. The oil producers may agree to freeze oil production, but Iran's position will have a significant impact on the effectiveness of any deal, he said. "Given the fact that the meeting is scheduled, it is possible, the parties will reach an agreement, but the patience of oil producers to maintain a stable level of production will dry up with the increasing market share of Iran," Hedrick emphasized. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 23:30 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva Azerbaijans state energy company SOCAR is constantly looking for new and profitable opportunities for the diversification of domestic and foreign investment, but at the moment, there is no decision on the purchase of new gas stations. Nizamaddin Guliyev, spokesman for SOCAR told media on April 1, commenting on the information disseminated in Austrian mass media about the talks between SOCAR and Welser-Doppler on the acquisition of gas station network. Guliyev stressed that SOCAR adheres to the principle of vertical integration in its strategy for internal and foreign investments with a view to increase the efficiency of the value chain. This strategy will enable SOCAR to bring manufactured products to the market in more favorable terms and increase the efficiency of company's contributions to the economy of the country in the long run. The public is regularly informed about the company's decisions related to investments in accordance with the business ethics standards, he added. Josef Franz Doppler, the owner of the Austrian company also refuted the media reports in his interview to finanzen.at on April 5. Currently, the company owns a network of gas stations in Azerbaijan, Romania, Switzerland, Georgia and Ukraine. SOCAR is keen on expanding operations in the retail oil products in the markets abroad and involved in different stages of oil and gas production such as exploration, production, transportation and marketing of petroleum and petrochemical products in the domestic and international markets, as well as supplying natural gas to local industry in Azerbaijan. The company has representative offices in Georgia, Turkey, Romania, Austria, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Britain, Iran, Germany and Ukraine, and trading companies in Switzerland, Singapore, Vietnam, Nigeria, and other countries. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 10:27 (UTC+04:00) Police are conducting another anti-terrorist operation in Turkish city of Istanbul on Apr.8, Turkiye newspaper reported. The operation is being carried out in two districts in Istanbul and it involves more than 200 police officers. There are already detained people, whose names have not been disclosed. It is expected that similar operations will also be held in Turkey's other major cities on Apr.8. The last time police carried out an anti-terrorist operation in Istanbul on March 30. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 11:29 (UTC+04:00) Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ratified the agreement with Georgia on cooperation in energy sphere, 'Resmi Gazete' online newspaper reported. The two countries signed the agreement on cooperation in energy sphere on April 9,015. Georgian State Electrosystem (GSE) has started to carry out the functions of a transit corridor from Azerbaijan to Turkey since February. The electricity export from Georgia to Turkey stood at 420 million kilowatt hours in 2015. No electricity was imported from Turkey during the reporting period. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 8 April 2016 13:35 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva Iran has signed new contracts with European companies on oil export, Mohsen Gamsari, director of international affairs in the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) told Mehr News. After concluding agreements with a number of European companies including Total, Iran signed several more agreements with other companies which implementation will begin in the near future, Gamsari added. He further said that the name of the new European oil buyers will be announced once the agreements come into force. In mid-February, Iran loaded its first cargo of oil to Europe since international sanctions ended in January. Gamsari emphasized that there are already operating contracts for exporting hydrocarbons to the Europe with the Greek company Hellenic Petroleum, Russia's Lukoil and Spanish Cepsa, in addition to the agreement with Total. Shell may resume oil imports from Iran after it pays all debt for previously delivered oil, an official representative of the Iranian Oil Ministry said earlier. Shell repaid most of its debt in March. The company paid to Iran $ 1.9 billion out of $ 2.1 billion blocked Iranian assets for the sale of oil. The export of oil reached more than two million barrels per day during the first days of the new year of Iranian calendar (March 20), the ministry reported. The EU was importing 800 000 barrels of Iranian oil and condensate before sanctions imposed in 2012. Iran's crude oil sales to Europe is expected to surpass 300 000 barrels per day once the all contracts come into force. ---- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3.0 ( - - ): editor [at] bahrainmirror.com YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENRPESS. On April 7 the Armenian Youth Union of Poland made a protest in front of the embassies of Russia, the United States and France in Warsaw. As Armenpress reports, the protestants demanded the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries to recognize Azerbaijan as an aggressor country and internationally punish it for its inhuman crimes committed in Artsakh in recent days. After their speeches the Youth Union sent a letter to the Russian embassy of Poland where they demanded from Russia to recognize the independence of Nagorno Karabakh Republic, condemn Azerbaijan for its aggressive actions and make clear and targeted political assessments. Then the participants of the protest moved to the embassy of the United States of Poland and forwarded a letter with the same message to the U.S. side. They strongly condemned the policy of double standards towards the Karabakh people in front of the U.S. embassy. A similar letter was also sent to the embassy of France and after that the participants of the protest with the supervision of Father T. Tachat Abegha Tsaturyan of the Armenian Apostolic church in Poland moved forward to the Warsaw Armenian park where they together in the front of the cross prayed for the independence of Armenia and Artsakh, for the power of Motherland, for the victory of the Armenian army and for the souls of our martyred hero soldiers. The mac is back for the third year, and, like previous years, theres more to sample at the Macaroni and Cheese Festival than would probably b Related Info CITY FOOD TRUCK REGULATIONS Food trucks that operate within city limits must be parked on a paved parcel of commercial land zoned C-2, and home to an existing business. Permanent chairs or tables are prohibited. In areas with different zoning, a conditional use permit is required. Trucks must have a transient outdoor business permit, which costs $43 and must be renewed at least three times a year. Each time, its good for up to 120 days, depending on how long the property or business owner specifies in a letter of authorization. Trucks must also have a business tax certificate, popularly known as a business license. These are good for a year, from July 1-June 30, and cost at least $31. Charges vary depending on the start date, the type of business and the estimated gross receipts for the fiscal or calendar year of operation. COUNTY FOOD TRUCK REGULATIONS The County of Kern requires food trucks to obtain a yearly public health permit regardless of whether they operate in the city or in the county. Prices range from $105 to $600 depending on the risk and the number of inspections required. Food trucks are inspected at least twice a year. Food trucks operating in the county must also register annually with a commissary, where their food must be prepared and stored, where any waste must be disposed, and water and supplies restocked. Prices vary depending on the commissary. They must also have restrooms with hot and cold running water and paper towels available within 200 feet during their hours of operation. Instead of a city tax certificate, trucks operating in unincorporated county areas need a peddlers permit from the Kern County Sheriffs Office. According to the KCSO website, the fee for an itinerant peddler license is $130, and $65 to renew. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijan shelled and fired at civilian settlements and positions in Tavush and Gegharkunik Provinces of Armenia. As Armenpress reports, this was stated by Press Secretary of the Ministry of Defense Artsrun Hovhannisyan. In particular, Azerbaijan fired 120mm mortars and SPG-9 type weapons at the Karmir, Ttujur, Baghanis villages. Fortunately there are no casualties, Hovhannisyan said. Azerbaijan continued violating the ceasefire agreement in the early morning of April 8, during which Azerbaijan fired various caliber weapons (more than 2000 shots) along the entire line of contact, and also 60mm mortars. Heavy violations took place in the northern direction (Talish), as a result of which Private Hrach Muradyan (born 1983) was killed and others were wounded. In the northeastern direction of the line of contact, Private Gevorg Mghdesyan (born 1996) was fatally wounded. An investigation is underway to determine details. The Nagorno Karabakh Defense Ministry shares the grief of loss and expresses its support to the families, relatives and co-servicemen of the killed soldiers. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Following a boycott by hard-line Scottish nationalists, sales of Tunnocks iconic tea cakes have risen by 10%. Adverts for the Scottish snacks appeared on the London Underground at the beginning of this year featuring the words Great British Tea Cake. This led extreme Scottish nationalists to stage a protest outside Tunnocks Lanarkshire headquarters, where they called for a boycott of the tea cakes. This was a politically motivated attempt to force the countrys most famous confectionery company to crumble. But it has emerged that the campaign backfired, after Tunnocks revealed this week that sales were bolstered by the controversy. The company said the sales surge was fuelled directly by the publicity unwittingly created by the protesters. Such is the interest in the brand that the firm has now released a range of tea cake-themed merchandise. Fergus Loudon, operations director at Tunnocks, said: It meant the Tunnocks name was being talked about all over the world and people are still talking about it. It prompted a lot of people to go out and buy tea cakes, and has been fantastic for us in terms of sales. There was a definite spike. Sales are very, very strong. Our order book is full to overflowing. Last December, an online petition was launched, targeting the use of palm oil by Tunnocks. GYUMRI, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The trial of Valery Permyakov, accused of murdering the Avetisyan family, will continue at the 102nd Russian military base in Gyumri on April 8. In the previous trial sessions the publication of documents was finished, and the presentation of material evidence will already begin this session. After that session Permyakov will be interrogated. As in case of the trial by the Russian side, according to lawyers, he will probably refuse to testify, and his testimony will be released. The six members of the Avetisyans family were shot and killed in Gyumri at around 6 a.m. on January 12, 2015. The only survivor was 6-month old Seryozha Avetisyan, who was transferred to a hospital with injuries caused by a cutting and piercing tool. The childs health condition became worse on January 19. After fighting for his life and undergoing several difficult surgeries for a week, six-month old Seryozha Avetisyan also died on January 19. There was severe renal insufficiency and cardiac insufficiency, and doctors werent able to save his life. Soldier of the 102nd Russian military base stationed in Gyumri, Valery Permyakov was charged with killing the members of the Avetisyan family. Russian border guards found him when he was trying to cross the Armenian-Turkish border and handed him over to the commanders of the 102nd Russian military base. The criminal case was opened under the Article 104, paragraph 1 of the part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia (murder of two and more persons). Permyakov confessed his guilt. On August 12, The Russian side sentenced Permyakov to 10 years of imprisonment for desertion and illegal possession of a firearm. Berry Fever in Michoacan, Jalisco and Baja California Jalisco, Mexico - A new berry fever has attracted the interest of farmers in Michoacan, Jalisco, and Baja California, which began growing berries due to their high profitability. A producer specialized in producing berries (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries) can earn up to six times what a producer of corn makes because a ton of berries is being paid for more than 20,000 pesos while a ton of corn costs 3,000 pesos. Meanwhile avocado prices only surpass berry prices by 30 percent, as they are sold at 26,000 pesos per ton. Each year many producers attracted by the prices achieved by berries have chosen to start cultivating this culture to the point that the area planted with these berries grew by 179 percent in the last 10 years, going from 8,968 hectares in 2005 to more than 25,000 last year, according to the Agricultural and Fisheries Information System (SIAP). Jesus Valdes, founder of Main Land Farms, a company that produces and exports berries, said that producers had to make a high investment, of at least half a million pesos per hectare, to start cultivating this crop but that its profitability was higher than that of other crops. Michoacan, Baja California, and Jalisco are the main producers in the country, as they account for 85 percent of the domestic production's value. The main export destination is the United States, with just over 90 percent of shipments, followed by Europe, and Asian markets, such as Japan and Hong Kong. In 2015 berry exports, which include exports of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries, amounted to 1,501 million dollars, only 380 million dollars lower than avocado exports and 321 million dollars less than tomato exports, according to data from the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA). 80 percent of exports were aimed at retail chains like Costco, Walmart, and Target, where consumers can find Mexican berries under different brand names, such as Naturipe, BerryFresh, Driscoll's and Red Blossom. As berry exports have a sustained double-digit growth each year, berry producers in Mexico want their fruits to become the agricultural product with the highest export value. "If this growth rate continues, we will rank first and double our production in four years," said the president of the National Association of Berry Exporters (Aneberries), Mario Andrade. Currently Mexico produces 30 percent of the berries exported in the world. The Vice President of Driscoll's Mexico, Mario Steta, estimated that by 2020 the value of berry exports would be about 3 billion dollars. "We will have surpassed avocado and tomato exports, which are the country's flagship products, regarding their value" Steta said. In 2006, Mexico only exported $450 million dollars and the country had almost tripled that number by 2015. The berry exports industry has had to pay a price for exporting more than 390,000 tons and 1,500 million dollars, specifically in Baja California, where hundreds of laborers of the San Quintin Valley in Ensenada have protested to demand better working conditions. According to Mario Steta, this is the great challenge for the sector. "In the next few years, the sector has to focus on improving the conditions of workers in the rural environment (...) otherwise, nobody is going to work for us," he stated. 6 top reasons to save your money Most people know they should be saving a portion of their income, but they might not grasp all of the benefits of doing so. Saving is an important habit to get into for a number of reasons it helps [...] , , , , . Alex E. Limkin A great advocate for New Mexico lands and wildlife, Aldo Leopold, is fittingly honored with a trail that winds behind the Rio Grande Nature Center. This mile-long loop takes visitors through lands he knew intimately. Following the trail lined with cottonwoods, visitors can enjoy quotes from Leopold's writings posted every few hundred yards. These phrases, dating back a century, deal with the importance of our land base and reflect the thoughts of a man who worked to establish public land projects such as the Rio Grande Valley State Park, Albuquerques zoo and the Gila Wilderness. The trail honoring Leopold was dedicated by the city in February 2009. Less than four years later, his work is at risk. Without any supporting data, Mayor Richard Berry has determined that the river corridor and the Bosque are underutilized, according to a representative at a recent public meeting. Albuquerque's top dogs believe the Bosque, an "environmental gem," can and should be better integrated into the fabric of the city. They intend to accomplish this by tearing down natural habitats and laying out roads, parking lots and infrastructure. I attended the town hall meeting at the Rio Grande Nature Center on Tuesday, Dec. 4, to register my opposition. Berry was not present, but members of his development committee were on hand to answer questions. They said the purpose of the meeting was to find out what the community thinks about building in the Bosque. Although they were not prepared to take comments, I spoke up from a page of prepared remarks because the Bosque cannot speak for itself. The mayor is an accomplished entrepreneur, and that's why Im worried: Businessmen may be skilled in enterprise, but they are not good at understanding the fragility of a desert river ecosystem or respecting the deep connections Albuquerqueans feel to wild land. During my remarks, I wondered aloud if the mayor and the members of his development committee bothered to walk the short length of the Aldo Leopold Forest Trail to read the quotes memorialized there. One near the riverbank where the Rio Grande flows beneath Montano would have jumped out at them: "The average Albuquerquean man, woman, or child, is in need of a place within walking distance of the city where he can enjoy a breath of fresh air and a sight of a few trees, a few birds, and a little water ... Just a good trail along the bank and clean woods." This comment was made nearly 100 years ago when the Bosque was far wilder than it is today. Berrys development team believes we don't use the river corridor sufficiently. This stems from misunderstanding. When the mayor and his team visit the Bosque, they see a tract of trees and a stretch of river and think, What can we build here that will attract visitors to this spot? They don't understand that people are already coming precisely for what exists theretrees, birds, fresh air, a little water and a "good trail along the bank and clean woods." That is the attraction: nature. A great part of my recovery from the wounds of war was communing with that sliver of land known as the Bosque, observing the river. The quiet, protected space, a haven where I could walk for miles, connected me to life beyond myself and aided in my recovery. Theres little doubt that the natural world offers healing to anyone who has experienced intense duress in their life. Unlike other wilderness areas, its easy for me to reach the Bosque from anywhere in the city. I can go by foot, bicycle, bus or car, and trailheads and parking are obvious and adequate. Young and old alike can walk the distance required to reach the river. I regularly make the trip with my 86-year-old father, my 3-year-old nephew and my pregnant wife. Miles of trail exist in the Bosque, offering splendid views of the river, and a myriad of plant and animal life along its edges. At the town hall meeting, the project organizers maintained that development of the Bosque will encourage better stewardship. I disagree. Education and exposurenot developmentare the keys to promoting stewardship. Programs offered at the Rio Grande Nature Center and by the Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program reach thousands of children a year. If we promoted environmental and outdoor education in school curricula, we could reach thousands more. It is time to return to Leopolds ethic and re-dedicate ourselves to the preservation and health of the Bosque. The mayors plan to incorporate our wild area into a concrete maze of traffic lights and gridlock, if allowed, would be a great disservice to the environmental gem that is our river wonderland, and one of Albuquerques greatest features. Let the Bosque be. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. Turkey and Israel are making progress in settling on an agreement to restore ties between the two countries, Armenpress reports citing RT. Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary, Ambassador Feridun Sinirlioglu, the Israeli Prime Minister's special envoy Joseph Ciechanover, and acting chairman of Israel's National Security Council, General Jacob Nagel met in London on April 8, Turkish Foreign Ministry said. Delegations of two countries were also participated in the meeting under their supervision. The parties agreed that the deal should be finalized in the next meeting which will be convened soon, Turkish Foreign Ministry said. . Relations between the two states were severed in 2010, after Israeli Marines killed 10 Turkish pro-Palestinian activists who attempted to enter Gaza in breach of the blockade. The ship has not been subject to the requirements to pass the test of Israeli customs, and 9 Turkish citizens were killed as a result of the Israeli military shootings. Turkey and Israel were strategic partners in the past, however, the relations were frozen after Turkey moved its foreign policy from European integration to the strengthening of the Arab-Muslim positions in the world. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. Speaking on behalf of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues, Co-Chairs Robert Dold (R-IL) and Frank Pallone (D-NJ) on April 7 issued strong, bipartisan calls, asking President Obama to forcefully condemn Azerbaijans military offensive and urging top U.S. House appropriators to zero-out U.S. military assistance to Ilham Aliyevs armed forces, Armenpress reports, citing the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). We echo the powerful, pro-peace message the Armenian Caucus delivered today to President Obama and key U.S. House appropriators, said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. We join with them in supporting a shift in U.S. policy that challenges Aliyevs aggression and protects American taxpayers from subsidizing an Azerbaijan military that is killing innocent Armenians, destabilizing a vital region, undermining U.S. interests, very likely committing war crimes, and risking the outbreak of an even larger regional conflict. Stated simply: Ilham Aliyev doesnt need U.S. military aid, he doesnt deserve U.S. military aid, and he shouldnt get U.S. military aid. In their letter to the President, in addition to calling for a forthright condemnation of Bakus belligerence, the two Co-Chairs asked that he suspend U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan, provide emergency relief aid to Nagorno Karabakh, and send a State Department fact-finding mission to both evaluate the destruction inflicted by Azerbaijans aggression and assess the humanitarian relief and reconstruction needs of Nagorno Karabakhs affected civilian population. They noted that, Azerbaijans attacks represent a dramatic escalation in President Aliyevs destructive pattern of aggression, constant threats of renewed war, ongoing incitement of anti-Armenian hatred, and the military targeting of Armenian civilians in both Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia. They also reflect his desire to act with international impunity as so clearly demonstrated by his rejection of common-sense, cease-fire monitoring and other accountability-oriented initiatives such as the urgently-needed Royce-Engel peace proposals that are supported by your Administration. In their bipartisan appeal to the leadership of the State-Foreign Operations subcommittee, the panel that writes the foreign aid bill, the Co-Chairs urged Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-TX) and Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-NY) to include a provision in this measure ensuring the suspension of military aid [to Azerbaijan] until its government ceases cross-border attacks, ends its threats of renewed war, and agrees to a settlement of regional conflicts through peaceful means. They added, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has made it abundantly clear through his countrys escalating aggression that Azerbaijan believes it can continue to receive American military aid no matter its actions. This belief is wrong. While the United States provides military assistance for a number of reasons, our assistance should never be taken for granted, and we should never tolerate its unacceptable misuse by foreign nations. The letter closed with the two legislators stressing that, In calling for a suspension of military aid to Azerbaijan, we are mindful that Azerbaijans regional aggression both reflects and reinforces its pattern of domestic abuse, including its brutal crack-down on dissent. Rather than providing military aid to Azerbaijan we should be putting pressure on the country to cease its undemocratic policies. Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements. According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later.On April 3 the subversive group of Azerbaijan brutally killed 3 elderly and vandalized their corpses in Talish village. The Armenian side has 36 losses, 21 soldiers missing, 122 wounded. 5 more people including the heads of two rural communities of Syunik Marz, were killed on their way to Martakert on April 4. Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1-5 as a result of the crushing counterattacks by the Armenian side against the military aggressions towards the Nagorno Karabakh Azerbaijan lost 2 helicopters, 24 tanks, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, 7 UAVs, 1 21-MM multiple rocket launcher system. During military operations the Azerbaijani armed forces had more than 300 causalities, nearly 2000 wounded. On April 5 at 12:00, the fire was ceased in the line of contact between Karabakh and Azerbaijani opposing forces. The agreement of ceasing the fire was reached at the meeting of the Chiefs of General Staff of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow on April 5. Azerbaijan intensively violates the ceasefire. In the early morning of April 7, two sabotage penetration attempts were made by Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani armed forces fired towards civilian settlements and military units of the Armenian Vardenis city on April 6, 10:35-23:00. In particular, besides firing various caliber weapons, the Azerbaijani side fired large caliber heavy machine guns and 60mm mortars. The Armed Forces of Armenia did everything for maintaining the ceasefire agreement. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan was on an official visit to Germany from April 6-7. During the visit, the President met with Germanys top leadership, President Joachim Gauck, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bundestag President Norbert Lammert, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Serzh Sargsyan gave an interview to the German Deutsche Welle, and answered questions regarding the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Russia selling arms to Azerbaijan, EEU membership and adoption of a resolution on the Armenian Genocide by the Bundestag. Armenpress presents the full interview in a non-official translation. - Mr. President, I will not ask you about the reasons of the escalation of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, as I predict your answer. I am interested in what have you done to stop further bloodshed. - We did every possible thing. 3 years ago Azerbaijan declined 2 principles of the 3 proposed principles by OSCE Minsk Group, and now Azerbaijan says that the conflict must be settled based on territorial integrity. Secondly, besides the anti-Armenian speeches and aggressive attitude, Azerbaijan has increased its military budget and increased its military rhetoric. - Excuse me for interrupting; I would like to know what the Armenian side has done to prevent the escalation of the situation. - Thats what Im saying. We were warning relevant structures what all of this can lead to. We proposed to initiate a ceasefire violation investigation mechanism in the line of contact, in order to be able to have concrete information as to which side is initiating the conflicting operations. -The war, as it usually does, began unexpected, however 3 days later the ceasefire agreement was also unexpected. Who helped to achieve this agreement? - We do not consider that the military operations began unexpectedly. It was expected. What had to happen, happened. However the ceasefire was also not unexpected. The Azerbaijani side suffered many losses. Besides, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia called his counterpart of Armenia and informed that the Azerbaijani side is ready to meet in Moscow with the Armenian side. Of course the support of the international community was also present. Many countries and international organizations made relevant statements. Experts point out the high risk of escalation in the region for a long time, where the opposing forces are facing each other. Why dont you want them to be separated by peacekeepers, lets say Russian peacekeepers? - We never said that we are against it, however we believe that the conflict should have a final settlement. We expressed our readiness to sign a relevant document, which implied presence of peacekeepers. However Azerbaijan refused this. - You said that Russia had a concrete role in achieveing the ceasefire agreement. How do you assess Russias position in this conflict? You said that Russia is your strategic partner, your sponsor, and in the same time, it sells arms to Azerbaijan. - Ive never said that Russia is our sponsor, neither have I said that any country in general was or can be our sponsor. Russia has never had the same role for Armenia as Turkey has for Azerbaijan. - However you consider Russia your strategic partner. - Yes, that is correct. Russia is our strategic partner, we have strategic agreements with Russia. In the same time we openly say that we are against Russia selling arms to Azerbaijan. During the joint briefing with Chancellor of Germany you said that the people of Nagorno Karabakh want to build their destiniy on their own, build their future and live in their country. Do you consider this wish a legal one? Nagorno Karabakh however is a self-declared republic, but you havent recognized it. Why? - Because that is a compromise from our side. If today Armenia recognized the independence of Nagorno Karabakh, it would mean that we refuse to negotiate around the conflict. If we recognize the independence, then what would the negotiations be about? By the way, this is also an answer to your previous question as to what we do for ceasing the escalation. We do not recognize Nagorno Karabakh Republic in order not to escalate the situation even more. - Already 20 years the negotiations for the settlement of this conflict are taking place under the OSCE Minsk Group. Do you still have hope in this? Or do you think new approaches are needed? What kind of a role can Germany and the EU have in your opinion? - I think that the Minsk Group is an optimal format, and we cannot say that no results were achieved during these years. Changing the format will not do anything, as the Minsk Group include countries and co-chairing countries (Russia, France, USA) who have enough resources to influence the developments in Nagorno Karabakh. Azerbaijan however, does insist on changing the format. Regarding Germany: Germany is now chairing OSCE. This organization has a good format, and I am sure that this will be effective. Besides, Germany is part of the Minsk Group. -Armenia has been part of the Eastern Partnership program, which implied association prospects with the EU. But you decided in favor of the Eurasian Economic Union. What triggered this decision? Russias pressure? Economic calculations? Ukrainian developments? -I would like to make a correction : We still are a member of the Eastern Partnership. The new phase of negotiations began in December of last year. We will sign an agreement with the EU. There was no pressure from the Russian side. We were guided by economic reasons. Russia is our biggest market and our largest trade partner. Russia has offered very favorable conditions for us within the Eurasian Economic Union, by providing a 30% discount on its products. My principle is taking decisions which can be realized. - The last question is from a whole different sphere. Germany still hasnt recognized the massacres of Armenians during the 2nd World War as Genocide. In February this year the Bundestag postponed the adoption of the resolution because of Turkey. How do you asses Germanys position? - Let me start by saying that the German President used very correct and precise words in his speech last year in April in Berlin Cathedral. We are grateful to him. Besides, I hope that the Bundestag will adopt a resolution prior to summer vacations. Southeast High School in Bradenton is helping the environment and beautifying their campus by collecting discarded bottle caps. The project started with an idea from now-retired educator Yvonne Eisenberg. In 2013, Eisenberg began encouraging her students to collect caps from juice, detergent, milk, water, dish soap and other approved containers. Her colleagues in the school's art, culinary, drama and science departments, as well as nearby businesses like Callaghan Tire, soon joined the effort. (L to R): Georgette Trott; Sue Cutchineal; Fred Johnson; Yvonne Eisenberg, Retired Educator; Jane Toole; Marie Hyppolite; Ernie LeValley; and Jason Schiessl (Manatee County School District) Students sorted the caps weekly. My students were amazing," said Eisenberg. "They knew which bottle caps were good and which were bad. They were learning math skills and how to save the environment at the same time. It took three years to finish, but the school community finally collected 1,200 pounds of caps, which is what they needed to make a new bench for their campus. That new bench, made entirely from the collected caps by Recycled Plastic Factory in Englewood, Florida, now sits in the school's ESE Department hallway. Its a lot of bottle caps," said art teacher Barbara Tapley-Kenney. "You dont realize when you melt this little thing down how little space it takes it up. If you were to pick up this bench, I dont know if I can pick it up. Its very heavy. Its very sturdy and solid. It is going to last a lifetime." Recycled Plastic Factory, which makes eco-friendly furniture, made the bench for the school at no charge. Now, the school wants to add another bench, only this time in their other school color: orange. They also want to collect the caps needed to make the bench in a shorter amount of time. "It was well worth the effort doing it because now we have a really nice bench," said Tapley-Kenney. "And now we're going to do a second one." The U.S. Coast Guard rescued a pair of fishermen on Thursday whose boat was taking on a lot of water in the Gulf of Mexico about 20 miles off the Tarpon Springs shore. "We got on board, we passed a portable pump," said John Montelbano, petty officer 3rd class. "We dewatered almost 1,000 gallons out of their engine room." The two fishermen on board the 36-foot boat named the Nomad, Michael Westfall and William Alley, were unable to keep up with the flooding water. The Coast Guard said they received a mayday call at 7:53 a.m. "They had a pretty good amount of water, pretty substantial," Montelbano said. "When we got on board we were about ankles deep in water." (Courtesy USCG) Alley said he noticed the Nomad taking on water when he woke up in the middle of the night. "I was sleeping on the deck, and looked out there and saw the water," he said. "Catching it in time. Mike found the leak in the hull. It was a lot of bailing." The owner of the boat, Steve Hawley, said the cooler hose came off the engine, which started the flooding. Once the Nomad was stabilized, the Coast Guard towed her back to the Sponge Docks in Tarpon Springs. "Thank them very much for saving our lives," Alley said. The fishermen had left on Wednesday and were on their way to go fishing for grouper. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. There is an agreement to strictly keep ceasefire regime in the southern and northern parts of Karabakh-Azerbaijani contact line on April 8 from 15:00 to 20:00 and to start searching the bodies of killed soldiers both from the Armenian and the Azerbaijani side. Armenpress was informed about this by the Spokesman of the NKR Defense Army Senor Hasratyan. The International Committee of the Red Cross and field assistants of the special representative of the OSCE Minsk Group coordinate the process. Firefighters been battling brush fires that have burned hundreds of acres in Central Florida. A brush fire in Lake County burned 141 acres Thursday near State Road 44 and Royal Trails Road. Fire crews spent hours battling the blaze, originally thought to be close to 300 acres, as it raged near a neighborhood in Eustis. Seven homes were threatened, one was damaged and one out building was destroyed, according to Lake County Fire Rescue. Fire Rescue officials said the cause of the fire was an unauthorized pile burn. Something happened this fast within minutes," resident Jason Hasty said. "It goes to show you that anything can happen that fast in a blink of an eye. According to fire officials, the blaze is now 100 percent contained. No one from the neighborhood was injured, but crews did find a baby bear, which was nicknamed Smokey Jr., with burns on its paws and face. The cub is expected to be OK. Crews from the Florida Forest Service and Volusia County Fire Rescue were assisting. Lake County Fire Rescue is monitoring the area this morning in case of hot spots. A brush fire in Lake County burned 141 acres Thursday, April 8, 2016, near State Road 44 and Royal Trails Road. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. International media continues widely to release the events taking place in the line of contact between Armenia and Azerbaijan in recent days. Correspondent of Italian RAI NEWS 24 public TV channel Annamaria Esposito also presented the situation in Artsakh from Nagorno Karabakh Republic. As Armenpress reports, on April 7 during television broadcasting for several times the journalist reports that she is in Stepanakert central square which Baku threatens to bomb. She reports the statement by Erdogan where he says that they are with Azerbaijanis and Karabakh will return back to Azerbaijan soon. Then she moves to village Levonarkh in Martakert region, shows the destructions of GRAD multiple rocket launcher used by the Azerbaijani armed forces, and also the kindergarten and the school yard of the same village where shells have fallen. She concludes that the Azerbaijani side targets the civilian objects. She also states that several facts prove that Azerbaijan used Smerch multiple rocket launcher in Karabakh. The journalist asked the Armenian soldier whether they have any information about the participation of the Islamic State (ISIS) militants in the conflict against the Armenians. The soldier told no, however, he mentioned that the methods of Azerbaijani operations and especially what happened with the hostages remind the terroristic style of the Islamic State. Get ready for a new girl crush. Kate Middleton is the end-all, be-all for Anglophiles, but her husband's cousin is garnering some attention of her own. Lady Kitty Spencer, the oldest daughter of the late Princess Diana's brother Charles, is an up-and-coming name you need to know. At 25, she can be spotted on the red carpet, hanging out at parties with "Downton Abbey" cast members, or rocking a bikini on her Instagram account -- a risque move whether you're royal or not. So who is this party-going royal? The first cousin to Princes William and Harry was born in England and later moved to South Africa with her family in 1995. After her parents' divorce, she stayed down south when her father moved back to England. Though she appears to be a fun-loving 20-something in photos, she doesn't just rest on her laurels. Kitty -- yes, that's her real name, not a nickname -- is the ambassador for Give Us Time, a charity that matches British military families with vacation packages donated by hotels and travel agencies. SEE ALSO: Young, rich and royal: Monarchs from around the world It's a good thing she doesn't assume she can get by on royal privilege, because thanks to the, frankly outdated, succession system (called primogeniture), Kitty will not inherit her family estate because she is not a man. The estate will go instead to her younger brother, Louis. Kitty is playing it off in the least sour-grapes way possible. She claims primogeniture is the "correct way," explaining to Tatler magazine last October that "I like that the house stays within the same family name with the same surname. I wouldn't want it any other way for the Spencers. And I just know my brother is going to do an impeccable job." If you say so. Archaic inheritance systems notwithstanding, this young royal has a pretty nice life. Take a look at the gallery above for a glimpse into the fabulous life of Lady Kitty Spencer. Courtesy of the City of Beaumont This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A snapshot of Jefferson County shows it isn't faring as well as the rest of Texas in just about every category of "well-being," from public safety to public health, employment to income and children to seniors. The survey, released Thursday by the Southeast Texas Nonprofit Development Center, is intended to help the more than 1,700 nonprofit and faith-based agencies in the county evaluate their own programs and figure out how to deliver more effective service, the report's author said. "If our current programs and services are not resulting in favorable outcomes, then we must transition to programs that lead to better outcomes and a healthy, thriving community," said Nancy Correa, program director of the Nonprofit Development Center. Correa, who has a background in public health, said she compiled and wrote the report over the course of two months with data available from a variety of sources, like crime statistics and health reports. Titled "It's Our Community: The State of Jefferson County," Correa said the information "snapshot" is more concise than other similar kinds of assessments and points to weaknesses that other social service agencies and public policymakers can analyze easily when shaping strategy to meet the challenges. The B.A. and Elinor Steinhagen Benevolent Trust granted $10,000 for it, which Correa describes as a first-of-its-kind snapshot, covering the 250,000 residents in Jefferson County based on data from 2014. FAT OR FIT? By the slimmest of margins, Texans aren't among the fattest For example, of the 60,000 children under 18 years old in Jefferson County, 43 percent live in single-parent homes. A third of the children are below the poverty line, described as a family of four earning under $24,000. Forty percent of the county's children live in a home that receives public assistance. The state as a whole is 30 percent. Among seniors, 65 years of age or older, 50 percent of the 32,000 seniors in Jefferson County live alone; 46 percent are disabled; 33 percent are widows; and 22 percent are veterans. The health comparisons offer a starker view of the state of the county. Jefferson County has a higher rate of adult smokers, at 22 percent, than the rest of Texas, which is 17 percent. Correa said the information contained in the report is designed to help policymakers make good decisions, like Port Arthur's recent adoption of a smoking ban in bars and restaurants. STUDY: These are the 10 least healthy counties in Texas Obesity in the county is 36 percent, compared to the state's 29 percent. Chronic disease rates usually are higher in Jefferson County than in the rest of Texas Diabetes is at 14.2 percent; the rest of the state is 11 percent. Sherry Ulmer, the city of Beaumont's public health director, said she thinks the health assessments in the snapshot look accurate. "We have a lot of diabetes and hypertension," she said. The city recently qualified for a grant to provide education and outreach for the next five years on the health risks of diabetes, obesity and hypertension. The snapshot reveals the high risk that peopel have in Jefferson County. For example: - Heart disease is 13.5 percent; the state is 7.8 percent. - Cancer is 10.8 percent; the rest of Texas is 9 percent. - Stroke is 5 percent here; the rest of Texas is 3 percent. Ulmer said the city has campaigns in place to address several of the findings such as a partnership with the state Office of Minority Health and Health Equity to launch community events aimed at reducing obesity, specifically for adults in the African American and Hispanic communties. The health department also is addressing childhood obesity with the "Let's Move! Beaumont" campaign and to educate people about the danger of strokes. Both hospitals in Beaumont are certified stroke centers. READ MORE: Beaumont-Port Arthur population remains stagnant as rest of Texas grows Correa's snapshot also reflects a distressing comparison to the rest of the state in death rates per 100,000 population, including: - Death from heart disease is 213 per 100,000; the rest of Texas is 170. - Cancer deaths are 176 per 100,000; the rest of the state is 156. - Stroke deaths here are 55; the rest of the state is 40. - Lung cancer deaths are 54; the rest of Texas is 38. - Homicides are 13 per 100,000; the rest of Texas is five per 100,000. - Accidental deaths are 44.6 per 100,000 population; across the rest of the state, it's 36.8. Crimes also are elevated in comparison with the rest of the state, per 100,000 population. - Burglary is 913; Texas is 618. - Assaults are 406; Texas is 242. - Robbery is 173; Texas is 114. - Rapes are 61.8; Texas is 42.6. - Murder is 9.8; Texas is 4.4. "The goal is to supply nonprofits and funders with information on how to prioritize their limited staff and money," Correa said. HEALTH SCARES: Report highlights 20 Texas counties with highest STD rates "This tool identifies where the biggest needs area. Obviously, we need more services and more programs across the board," she said. Not every program works as intended, said Correa, whose background is in public health. The DARE program, designed to divert youths from drug abuse, did not significantly reduce drug abuse among participants from the broader population of abusers. Correa said the report includes data on more than 200 indicators of community well-being of Jefferson County. "This report is a benchmark," she said. "We tried to make it short and user-friendly." See a snapshot of the statistics included in the report in the slideshow above. DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/dwallach YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The recognition of Nagorno Karabakh by Armenia will not be the end of the world, in an interview with journalists the head of the European Integration NGO, National Assembly MP Karen Bekaryan said this on April 8. Its not the first time the Armenian President raises the point of the possibility of recognizing Nagorno Karabakh Republic by Armenia. I am personally do not think that the recognition of Karabakh is the end of the world or it doesnt give any opportunities for further steps. I do not agree with the statement that the recognition should become the disaster by which we challenge the Co-Chairs. There is logic of process development. Politics is not in favor of big, uneven steps. It loves actions that are more precise and are based on facts. Therefore, an intermediate steps exists upon the recognition of independence, Armenpress reports, Karen Bekaryan mentioning. Bekaryan is confident that this step is the agreement of mutual military assistance between Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. If we need next step after that, we will put the next step on daily agenda, he mentioned. MP of the National Assembly urges to avoid from further extremes. At the same time Karen Bekaryan states that the issue of Nagorno Karabakh recognition will be on daily agenda waiting for an appropriate moment. The non-recognition of the independence of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic is compromise from the Armenian side. As Armenpress reports, the President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan talked about this during an interview with the German Deutsche Welle TV channel. That is a compromise from our side. If today Armenia recognized the independence of Nagorno Karabakh, it would mean that we refuse to negotiate around the conflict. If we recognize the independence, then what would the negotiations be about? We do not recognize Nagorno Karabakh Republic in order not to escalate the situation even more, Serzh Sargsyan announced. If any Texans think the Legislature will follow California and New York in approving a $15 minimum wage in the next session, they might as well look for unicorns in the Big Thicket. Ditto for matching the six weeks of paid leave for new parents just approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It just won't happen in our famously business-friendly low-regulation state. To be fair, those provisions would not be affordable for many Texas businesses. Heck, they aren't affordable for some businesses in California and New York. But there's a movement nationwide that applies to Texas too, and it's reflected by those higher minimum wages and other changes. It's an awareness of the growing gap between rich and poor, and the stagnation of the middle class. Many hard-working folks have had little or no raises since the 2008 recession. Their standard of living is not going forward - or it's noticeably retreating. They're worried that their children won't have a chance to live the American dream that is supposed to be available to all those who play by the rules. State government can't fix that problem by itself, but it shouldn't ignore it either. Job creation in Texas demands an educated workforce, which comes from good public schools and affordable colleges. If we can't provide that, startups and new factories will shift to states that can. Higher-paying jobs also enable more Texans to buy homes and create the kind of stable communities we all want. If those workers don't have health insurance of some kind, their productivity will clearly suffer. Yet the last two governors have stubbornly refused to OK Medicaid expansion that could insure up to a million new Texans, with the feds picking up 90 percent of the costs for the first three years. The list goes on. In addition to the moral reasons for these changes, there are hard-nosed business ones too. The old trickle-down theories won't work anymore - and haven't for some time. Our business-friendly state must become more worker-friendly to keep pace with these profound changes rippling across the nation. On April 7, Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan and University of Michigan Health System officials provided the Brighton City (Mich.) Council a detailed presentation about plans to construct an ASC, according to whmi. Here are five points: 1. The outpatient center will house a small area for patients requiring an overnight stay. 2. If a patient needs care for more than 23 consecutive hours, the ASC will transfer the patient to another U of M facility. 3. U of M's 313,000-square-foot ambulatory facility will offer more than 40 medical specialties and will have ample space for expansion. 4. Construction is set to begin in 2017, and the facility is projected to open in early fall of 2018. 5. U of M does not require any type of approval from the city to move forward with plans. More articles on surgery centers: Post-closure, Flamingo Pecos Surgery Center's medical assets to be auctioned: 4 notes Northpointe Health to expand campus, build ASC: 5 highlights Medical Consultants partners with IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital 4 notes CMS has warned Pine Ridge (S.D.) Indian Health Service Hospital that its Medicare contract will be terminated May 16 unless the hospital enters a systems improvement agreement with CMS by the close of business April 29. In an April 8 letter to the hospital, CMS said an Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act revisit survey conducted at the hospital February 25 revealed the facility was in violation of certain Medicare requirements, including anti-dumping provisions and appropriate medical screening examination policies. Based on medical record review and staff interviews, CMS determined hospital staff failed to provide medical screening examinations that were appropriate to the presenting symptoms of six of 26 selected patients. The facility originally had until February 17 to make improvements or it would lose its Medicare contract, but CMS offered the hospital three extensions. In its April 8 letter, CMS said it will offer no further extensions. The Indian Health Service said it is meeting with CMS and the Oglala Sioux Tribe to discuss how to move forward. The IHS also said it is committed to making changes to ensure patients at Pine Ridge Hospital receive safe care. "IHS' goal is to work with CMS as expeditiously as possible to reach agreement on a Systems Improvement Agreement that would further extend the date of the proposed termination while the Pine Ridge Hospital works to ensure quality healthcare," said IHS in a prepared statement. Pine Ridge isn't the only IHS hospital that could lose Medicare funding. Rosebud (S.D.) Indian Health Service Hospital was set to lose its Medicare funding March 16, but CMS extended the termination date in early March. CMS granted an extension to explore a possible systems improvement agreement with the IHS. More articles on healthcare finance: Lawmakers want hospitals to help pay for Medicaid expansion in Louisiana California companies take on Sutter Health over cost of care 5 healthcare CFOs in the headlines More than half 55 percent of hospitals in Western Pennsylvania recorded operating losses in the last six months of the 2015 calendar year, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This marks a notable increase in Pennsylvania hospitals reporting operating losses from just months earlier. According to the report, 34 percent of hospitals reported recording an operating loss when surveyed June 30, the end of fiscal year 2015. The Post-Gazette data comes from a survey of 62 hospitals conducted by the Healthcare Council of Western Pennsylvania. Factors that have influenced this financial downturn include payers classifying an increasing number of hospital stays as outpatient observations, rather than inpatient admissions, and the shift to high deductible health plans, according to the report. The shift to these health plans has impacted hospital finance in two ways, according to the report. First, that the higher out-of-pocket costs have led to a reduction of inpatient surgeries by 5.82 percent in the last half of 2015 compared to the year prior. Second, patients who do go to the hospital often cannot afford to pay their bills. Denis Lukes, CFO of the Healthcare Council of Western Pennsylvania, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that these losses are not sustainable. Read the full report here. More articles on finance: Beauty retailer replaces Tenet on S&P 500 ADR limits & denials: 4 observations from Craneware's Jeff St. Vrain| Jefferson's neuroscience institute gets boost with $20M donation Cincinnati-based Mercy Health has appointed three senior executives. Here are seven things to know about the leaders. Anton Decker, MD, will serve as the system's chief clinical officer. 1. Dr. Decker also will continue his role as president of Mercy Health Physicians, Mercy Health's employed physician group practice. 2. Prior to joining Mercy in 2015, Dr. Decker was CMO and chairman of Banner Medical Group, part of Phoenix-based Banner Health. He also was board chairman of the Banner Health Network, Banner Health's accountable care organization. 3. Dr. Decker is a gastroenterologist and joined Banner Health after a 10-year career at the Mayo Clinic, first in Rochester, Minn., before moving to Scottsdale, Ariz., in 2004. Brian Smith has been named system COO. 4. Previously, Mr. Smith was executive vice president of operations for Mercy Health's northern Ohio markets where he oversaw performance improvements in the Toledo, Lima, Lorain and Youngstown markets. 5. He also previously was CEO of Mercy Health North Division and executive vice president and COO of St. Rita's Health Partners in Lima, Ohio. Drew Banks was appointed system chief strategy officer. 6. Prior to joining Mercy Health, Mr. Banks was president and CEO of DBS Healthcare Consulting where he led accountable care design, strategic planning and operational excellence initiatives with health systems nationwide. 7. He also previously held various leadership roles with St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Edgewood, Ky. More articles on executive moves: Seton hospitals hire new COO: 3 things to know Spreemo names director of neurophysiology: 3 things to know TriHealth hires new chief human resources officer: 5 things to know In a court filing Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) claimed the board of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Broward Health obstructed a state investigation and intimidated potential witnesses, according to a report in the Sun Sentinel. The filing was made ahead of a Friday hearing in the Broward Circuit Court, according to the report. Here are five things to know about Gov. Scott's claims and the board's response. 1. The claim was filed to defend the governor's decision to suspend Broward Health Chairman David Di Pietro and board audit committee Chairman Darryl Wright, according to the report. The governor claims he made this decision not because of individual misconduct, but because Mr. Di Pietro and Mr. Wright represent the board, which as a whole impeded a state investigation and intimidated witnesses, according to the report. 2. The investigation, led by Florida Chief Inspector General Melinda Miguel, examines allegations that the board improperly influenced health system operations. This includes coercing staff into contracts with specific companies, according to the report. 3. Specifically, Gov. Scott claims two main actions by the board undermined the investigation. First, the board hired a private law firm. Gov. Scott opposed the presence of lawyers in witness interviews with the inspector general due to potential intimidation, according the report. Second, not long after interim CEO Kevin Fusco assured employees they could talk to the inspector general without notifying the health system, he was removed by the board, according to the report. Gov. Scott felt this removal sent a strong message to employees. 4. However, Mr. Di Pietro's version of events paints a different picture. Mr. Di Pietro denies that he has intimidated potential witnesses and claims he has been cooperating with the investigation, according to the report. He also noted it is not an investigation, it is a review, and the board has not taken an adversarial approach. 5. Mr. Di Pietro claims Mr. Fusco was not removed for telling employees they could speak to the inspector general without fear of retaliation, as Gov. Scott alleged. He claims that argument is not logical because Mr. Fusco forwarded that message from Mr. Di Pietro. Instead, he claims it was a combination of low morale and employee complaints that led to Mr. Fusco's removal. More articles on leadership and management: Sentara Laboratory Services named Lab of the Year Allergan CEO calls Treasury Department 'a bit un-American' Dr. Donald Berwick: 'It is time for era 3' of medicine Larry Sanders, the brother of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), jumped into the healthcare discussion Thursday with an Op-Ed published by The Guardian that calls the Affordable Care Act "inadequate." "Obamacare, though an improvement, is an inadequate alternative [to a single-payer system]. It helps some people get insurance but it doesn't guarantee coverage: 20 million people have been able to get insurance; 30 million are still not covered for healthcare," he wrote. Mr. Sanders, who serves as health spokesman for the Green Party of England and Wales, has lived in Britain since the late 1960s. He said the U.S. healthcare "system's failure is glaring," and that "the strangest thing about the debate over healthcare in the U.S. is that it is still going on." Mr. Sanders lauds his brother's healthcare policies and compares Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's views to Republican candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) because both do not support a single-payer system. He wrote that much of what is wrong with the American system comes from private insurance, pharmaceutical prices and wasteful procedures. "It is hard to see a solution that is not a publicly financed, universal and not for profit," he wrote. More articles on leadership and management: Fla. Governor: Broward board intimidated witnesses, blocking state investigation Allergan CEO calls Treasury Department 'a bit un-American' Dr. Donald Berwick: 'It is time for era 3' of medicine After three years, Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare Services has been given final approval to acquire Saint Michael's Medical Center in Newark, N.J. Prime agreed to buy Saint Michael's for $62 million and invest $50 million to modernize the hospital. In addition, Prime committed to keep "substantially all" of the hospital's 1,400 employees. New Jersey began its review of the transaction in December 2012. Saint Michael's officials said the extended consideration of the transaction is the chief reason it filed for bankruptcy last August. Over the past several months, the New Jersey State Health Planning Board and the state's acting health commissioner, Cathleen D. Bennett, approved the deal. On Thursday, Essex County Superior Court Judge Walter Koprowski signed the final approval, according to NJBIZ. "The judge's order brings closure to a long period of uncertainty," Saint Michael's President and CEO David Ricci told NJBIZ. "I am thankful to all those who stood with us and by us during that period. Now we can look forward to a stable future under the leadership of Prime Healthcare that will allow Saint Michael's to continue providing high-quality healthcare to the residents of Greater Newark." More articles on healthcare industry transactions: Health insurer UCare to merge with Fairview Health Services Physicians Realty Trust discloses $725M deal with CHI: 6 things to know Henry Ford expands Michigan footprint with addition of Allegiance Health Louisville, Ky.-based Humana is looking to reach out to its senior demographic through a new medium: television, according to AdWeek. Advertising agency BBDO New York has taken the lead in creating the TV advertising campaign, "Start With Healthy," which premiered April 5. The campaign works to reach Humana's Medicare enrollees, according to Louisville Business First. The first advertisement, titled "Birthday," shows a man celebrating his 67th birthday. His family and friends throw him a surprise party, and he receives his dream trip to Alaska. But he's only able to enjoy the party and trip because he's worked with his physician and Humana to take care of his health. The second ad, called "Carnival," features a woman who travels to visit her grandchildren. She works with Humana to maintain her health, so she's able to go to a carnival with them, where she goes on rides and wins them an enormous stuffed banana. "What sets this work apart is the focus on what better health through Humana enables our health plan members to accomplish," said Mark Mathis, Humana's director of corporate communications, according to the report. "Humana understands that people, especially the boomer generation, want to grow, not fade; stay relevant, useful and influential." BBDO New York will continue working with Humana and rolling out further campaigns throughout 2016. The Government Accountability Office has found cybersecurity weak points in the health insurance websites of three states: California, Kentucky and Vermont, according to The Associated Press. A few of the weaknesses still haven't been fixed. After analyzing the states' websites between October 2013 and March 2015, the GAO released a report which did not explicitly identify the affected states last month. The GAO disclosed the states' names April 7 after a request from The Associated Press. The GAO report found the following problems in the three states' websites, although it did not match each state with a specific problem. A state didn't "encrypt passwords, potentially making it easier for hackers to gain access to individual accounts," according to the report. Another state didn't correctly utilize "a filter to block hostile attempts to visit the website," according to the report. One state didn't "use the proper encryption on its servers," according to the report. The Associated Press reached out to officials from each state to discuss the cybersecurity issues. Roy Kennedy, a spokesman from California's state exchange, Covered California, declined to comment on the exchange's plans to address the flaws. Instead, he cited a letter to Congress from Peter Lee, Covered California's executive director, in which Mr. Lee said there haven't been successful website security breaches. Kentucky's former governor, Steve Beshear (D), said "because of the time required to fix the technical issues, not all those issues had been addressed" when Gov. Matt Bevin (R) took office late last year. However, he added that "there were never any security breaches of any kind," according to the report. Gov. Bevin plans to dismantle the state exchange, Kynect, this year. Lawrence Miller, director of health reform for Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D), said the state's exchange had changed vendors since March 2015, and that "the correct controls were in place" during the transition, according to the report. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. OSCE is willing to convene a new special session on the Nagorno Karabakh issue in case the situation worsens. This was stated by OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier. We had a special session on Monday. The Permanent Council conducts meetings every week and discusses all issues. Yesterday the Council discussed the Nagorno Karabakh issue. Next week discussions will continue, Armenpress reports Zannier saying during an interview with Ria Novosti. The OSCE Secretary General stressed, that the OSCE Permanent Council session will take place with the participation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs when they return from the region. If of course, the situation worsens, we shall convene a special session. Otherwise, we havent planned anything until the return of the Co-chairs, Zannier said. At the same time, he added that the Co-chairs will depart for Berlin from the region and in a few weeks for OSCE. They are currently in the region and will remain there as long as necessary, to clarify further steps and see what is needed to be done. Then they must report everything to the President. So I believe they will depart for Berlin, and then will decide when to arrive in Vienna, the OSCE Secretary General said. To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below A Brexit could become a "distraction" from the real issues facing the UK economy, a leading economist has warned. While Ulster Bank has not taken an official stance on the issue, its chief economist Richard Ramsey said he was sceptical of claims Northern Ireland would benefit financially from the UK leaving the EU. Speaking at the bank's annual agriculture briefing, Mr Ramsey also warned that a Brexit could prevent politicians from addressing the economic deficit. "If nothing else, Brexit is a huge distraction," he added. "If you think of the whole machinery of government, if there was to be a Brexit over the next five years, instead of tackling the NHS or getting public finances in order, they'll be diverted to negotiating out of the EU and working out what happens thereafter. Some legal experts reckon that could take up to 10 years." Mr Ramsey also claimed Northern Ireland was "exposed more than the rest of the UK to developments in the EU". And he claimed that the looming referendum was creating "additional uncertainty" for agriculture, with the sector already hit hard by falling milk prices. The latest figures from the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development showed a price per litre of 18.54p in February - down 4.13p over the year. "The oversupply of commodities has also been depressing milk prices, and throughout 2015 exchange rates had not been working in the sector's favour," Mr Ramsey said. "However, that has reversed in the first quarter of this year as sterling has experienced its sharpest fall against its main currency peers since 2007. "If there is one thing that the agriculture sector in Northern Ireland has shown consistently over the years, it is resilience, and it will need that quality again as it plans for the future." Mr Ramsey told how 60% of Northern Ireland's exports were sent to the EU, and predominantly the Republic of Ireland. And while Scotland was one of the most pro-EU UK nations, "in export terms it's one of the least exposed". Mr Ramsey added that the UK economy was in a vulnerable situation and any negative economic shocks would hit hard. He warned it was unlikely the UK could negotiate trade deals in the two years allocated and said that this had never been done before. Member states would not be obligated to strike a deal with the UK and could be prone to fear that it would encourage the others to also leave. Mr Ramsey said he expected the result of the referendum would be less clear-cut than the last UK referendum in 1975 - and that continued EU dissension could cause economic uncertainty to rumble on for decades to come. The economist also warned that an export levy of up to 20% could potentially apply between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, should the UK leave the EU. The figure sits in line with the World Trade Organisation export levy and would apply if an alternative agreement was not put in place. The Republic of Ireland is Northern Ireland's biggest trading partner across all sectors including food, accounting for 33% of all exports and a total value of 2.11bn. However, trade with the Republic has dropped by 8.1% in the past year, down 185m. Northern Ireland's exports to the EU as whole fell by 4.6% last year, to 3.46bn. Mr Ramsey used his Ulster Fry Index as a tool to highlight the benefits of deflation for consumers. He claimed the cost of the dish was at its lowest in seven years and had dropped by 8.5% year-on-year. The massive 340m deal to sell Homebase was agreed in Northern Ireland, where the DIY chain's holding company is based The massive 340m deal to sell Homebase was agreed in Northern Ireland, where the DIY chain's holding company is based, it has emerged. Information service Experian revealed that the sale of Homebase to Australian retailer Wesfarmers inflated the value of mergers and acquisitions in the province to more than 392m. Experian yesterday confirmed that Homebase, which has nine DIY and furniture stores in the province, was incorporated in Northern Ireland as Hampden Group Ltd in 1976. As well as operating the Homebase stores in the province, Hampden is an investment holding company for subsidiary Home Retail Group firms. The value of mergers and acquisitions and other big corporate deals in Northern Ireland surged by 90% in the first three months of the year, according to Experian's deal review and advisor league tables for the first quarter. There were 36 transactions involving firms in the province from January to March, down from 42 at the same time in 2015. In a separate deal, Homebase parent company Home Retail Group has sold its Argos business to Sainsbury's for 1.4bn. Experian, which collects the figures on corporate deals, said the Homebase/Wesfarmers contract "was easily the largest transaction in the region, worth over 320m more than the next largest transaction, in which Glenmore Generation raised 23m in new funding for the development of a new power generation facility". Law firm Carson McDowell advised on nine of the deals, with a total value of 35m. One of the biggest was the sale of Co Antrim-based Chain Reaction Cycles to major rival Wiggle. Carson McDowell managing partner Michael Johnston said: "Our solicitors have taken the lead on several landmark deals in recent months, including advising the shareholders of Chain Reaction Cycles in its merger with Wiggle, and Abbey Insurance on all legal aspects of the purchase of Open + Direct." Corporate law firm Tughans was the most active legal advisor in the period, with 13 deals - and with Carson McDowell in second place - improved on its fourth-place position for 2015. And at the top of the value table for legal teams were UK-wide firms Herbert Smith Freehills and Linklaters, which both advised on the Homebase deal. While Homebase was the biggest value deal, there was a 22.2% growth in the number of small deals worth between 0.5m and 10m. However, the value of these deals was down to 17.7m, though the category included Newry-based First Derivatives, which had paid 2.2m for QuantumKDB (UK). Mid-market deal numbers of between 10m and 100m were down from six to two, while their value also dropped dramatically from 184.7m to 34.6m. The Hampden Group deal with Bunnings - the DIY arm of Wesfarmers - was the only mega-deal worth more than 100m so far this year. Brighton Pier is also known as the Palace Pier One of Britain's most famous seaside attractions, Brighton Pier, is being sold for 18 million. The Grade II* listed landmark in East Sussex was placed on the market for the first time in more than 25 years back in 2011 before being withdrawn the following year. Eclectic Bar Group, chaired by ex-Pizza Express entrepreneur Luke Johnson, has now entered into a conditional agreement to buy the Brighton Marine Palace and Pier Company, which owns the well-known structure. It plans to fund the purchase through a conditional placing of ordinary shares to raise at least 8.5 million and the rest through a 13 million debt financing agreement with Barclays. Mr Johnson, an ex-chairman of Channel 4, said Brighton Pier - also known as the Palace Pier - was one of "the most iconic and instantly recognisable attractions in the UK". He said: "The pier is hugely popular with the British public and it occupies a special place as a landmark at the heart of Brighton. "Brighton is one of the UK's most popular visitor destinations, with over 10 million visitors per year, making it the most visited place in the South East. The pier itself is Britain's most popular attraction outside London." Famous names such as Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly, Sir Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee have all paid a visit to the pier, as have modern-day stars such as The Who and Arctic Monkeys. Along Brighton's coast is another landmark, the Grade I listed West Pier, which remains a twisted shell after being destroyed by fires and storms. Dublin Airport is set to start work on a long-awaited second runway in a move that could further boost passenger numbers from Northern Ireland. The airport said the 320m (260m) project, which is scheduled to be completed in 2020, would enable it to introduce routes to destinations including Asia and Africa, as well as South America. Earlier plans to build a second runway were abandoned during the economic downturn. The new one could mean that passengers from Northern Ireland who would usually fly from Belfast to London to catch connecting flights to such destinations will instead be able to fly direct from Dublin. Dublin Airport said the decision to proceed with the runway came after a surge in passengers in recent years. While recent numbers for people from Northern Ireland using the airport in 2015 are not yet available, there was a 52% jump in people from the province using Dublin in 2014, to 864,000. A spokeswoman for the airport said 2015 would also show an increase from Northern Ireland but could not yet say the extent of the growth. The business welcomed 25 million passengers in total in 2015, up 13.2%. Dublin Airport Authority chief executive Kevin Toland said: "Driven by demand from airlines and passengers, Dublin Airport's current runway infrastructure is at capacity during the peak hours and this must be addressed to enable future growth. "The north runway will significantly improve Ireland's connectivity, which plays a critical role in growing passenger numbers and sustaining the future economic development of Ireland." The Institution of Civil Engineers in Northern Ireland said there could be opportunities for companies from here. Regional director Richard Kirk added that he felt the runway would herald many other opportunities. "Northern Ireland has benefited from improved cross-border infrastructure in recent years and the expansion of Dublin airport will provide us with options and access to international destinations for work and leisure," he said. "There will undoubtedly be great opportunities for civil engineers to contribute their expertise to this exciting project to help build the quality of life of everyone on the island of Ireland." A spokeswoman for the airport said: "Contracts for the runway will be done through a competitive tender process and will be advertised through the Official Journal of the European Union, so everyone is welcome to tender for the business including Northern Ireland contractors." Northern Ireland companies with a track record in airport infrastructure include the Lagan Construction Group. According to its all-star cast, new fantasy adventure The Huntsman: Winter's War spins the fairytale genre on its head. Keeley Bolger meets Emily Blunt, Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain to get the on-set gossip. Nick Frost is recalling a memorable day on the set of new fantasy film, The Huntsman: Winter's War. "We (me and Rob Brydon) got hauled into a net one day with Jessica Chastain and Chris Hemsworth, and had Chris' leather-clad junk ground into our faces for four or five hours ... it was great," he deadpans. As the scene - which sees the four characters awkwardly entwined after being bundled together in the net trap - suggests, this movie takes on a somewhat lighter tone than 2012's Snow White & The Huntsman. A companion piece to the original, rather than a sequel, it nonetheless marks the return of the calculating Ravenna, played again by Charlize Theron - only this time she's accompanied by her heartbroken younger sibling Freya (Emily Blunt), and the sisters are hell-bent on conquering the land. Their plans for domination, however, are thwarted, when renegades Eric the Huntsman (Hemsworth), who helped Snow White in defeating Ravenna in the first movie, and his forbidden lover Sara (Chastain), go on a quest to halt them in their tracks. Directing duties have shifted to Cedric Nicolas-Troyan (Rupert Sanders, who directed the 2012 movie, left the franchise after his affair with Kristen Stewart, who played Snow White, was revealed). There are also new characters in a team of foul-mouthed dwarves, played by Frost, Brydon, Sheridan Smith and The Iron Lady's Alexandra Roach. Chastain, known for her roles in Zero Dark Thirty and The Help, is pleased that plots in modern fairy tales reflect society's progressive attitudes. "Everything is more interesting when there's balance involved, and if you look at movies like Frozen, and what these fairy-tale films have been in the past and what they are now, you do see a change," says the California-born star (39). "Love is a very important part in these movies. In The Huntsman, (there's the love between) Sara and Eric, but also between the sisters," she adds. "But it's not finding a mate and settling down, that's not the be-all and end-all. "I loved Frozen and loved that it was about the sisters," Chastain adds. "I loved that the joke they kept having in the film was like, 'You love him? You only met him for one day and now you're going to get engaged.' It's just so ridiculous. "It's a trope of fairy tales of the past. We're in a different age and that's not what everyone's calling for now." Part of the appeal for Blunt, Roach and Chastain was the chance to be part of a female-led cast. "Women are proving time and time again that they can be a part of big-action blockbusters and fantasy films like this," says Blunt, who will be leading the cast in the big-screen adaptation of hit thriller The Girl On The Train later this year. "The thing that drew me to this in particular, was the three very powerful female leads; layered, nuanced, interesting characters. That was a big part of the draw." Flowing gowns and robes look great on screen, but in reality, can be troublesome for the actors, faced with long days on set. "Even though it looks very icy on set, it was boiling," Blunt recalls with a laugh. "It was one of those studio sets, where you're hit with the lights all the time, so Charlize and I would be standing by the fans going, 'Can you turn the AC on?', in our huge gowns." Although Blunt's character, who has ghostly pale hair and spiky costumes, is feared in the film, in real life, her two-year-old daughter, Hazel, was nonplussed by her mum's transformation. "She was completely unfazed by it, which is quite a relief, and also a little bit worrying that she thinks this is what I look like at all times," jokes British star Blunt (33), who is currently pregnant with her second child. Much as Hemsworth celebrated the female-led cast, he did find himself being teased by Blunt, Chastain and Theron, who he teasingly likens to "bullying sisters". "I copped it a fair bit," reveals the Thor actor with a laugh. "It was good fun, though. I had brothers growing up, but this was a whole different world for me. They all had a great sense of humour. Charlize especially - she doesn't pull any punches, she says it how it is. "She's very quick-witted, it's exhausting trying to keep up. I'd just be like, 'You can have that joke, I don't even care any more'." But Hemsworth did manage to get his own back on Chastain. "Most of the scenes I did were with Chris, Nick and Rob," explains Chastain. "The boys would gang up on me a little bit and tease me about being a vegan. Because I was always so cold, Chris would say, 'We've got to get you some food', and tease me about it. And then, because he's such a nice guy, he'd go, 'You know, my mum's a vegetarian, so I don't mean anything by it.' "There was a lot of teasing of everyone on set, but whenever the girls were together, Chris was going to get it." Welsh actress Roach, who played the young Margaret Thatcher in the Meryl Streep-led Iron Lady, was often the butt of Brydon's jokes in the dwarf camp. "He did refer to me as 'the competition winner'," she says with a laugh. "He said, 'You know Sheridan Smith has won Baftas, Nick Frost is famous, I myself, Rob Brydon, am famous ... and she's a competition winner'. "That's what he would say to me, but in a funny way. It was that kind of banter on set with us the whole time. Rob loves an impression, and he's very good at it. "He kept us entertained." Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame has been repeatedly vandalised Thousands of people have signed a petition calling for Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to be removed after it was repeatedly targeted by vandals. The landmark honouring the American billionaire has been daubed with a swastika, a mute symbol and even dog excrement during his controversial campaign to become the next US president. Mr Trump, who is the front-runner to secure the Republican nomination, has been criticised for calling for a ban on Muslims entering the US and claiming women should face "some sort of punishment" for having abortions if the procedure is outlawed. The petition, which has attracted more than 15,000 signatures, claims Mr Trump's star is an "insult" and the acts of vandalism showed "the public's disdain" towards the monument. "It's clear that the community does not think he deserves to be represented there," a statement on the Care2 Petitions website said. "The fact that Donald Trump has a star along with the likes of Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Audrey Hepburn is an insult in and of itself. "Trump's despicable messaging represents all the worst parts of our national conversation, which explains the public's disdain for this historical monument to him. "The message is clear: the public does not approve of Trump or the fact that he has a Hollywood star." The campaign comes after more than half a million people signed a petition in January calling for Mr Trump to be banned from entering the UK. It followed the former Apprentice star's comments on Muslims and his claims that parts of London were ''so radicalised'' that police were ''afraid for their own lives''. Leron Gubler, president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said there were no plans to remove the star dedicated to Mr Trump, who received the honour in 2007. "The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a registered historic landmark," he said. "Once a star has been added to the Walk, it is considered a part of the historic fabric of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. "Because of this, we have never removed a star from the Walk." Johnny McDaid with his ex-fiance Courteney Cox in Malibu, California, on Easter Sunday Courteney Cox is reportedly moving to Ireland to work on her relationship with Snow Patrol star Johnny McDaid. The 51-year-old actress and the Londonderry born musician were seen together for the first time since their December split on Easter Sunday in Malibu, California, fuelling rumours that they are back together. The pair were engaged in June 2014. However, they called the relationship off four months ago after reports of differences over where to live and how they handled life in the spotlight, which is said to have put their relationship under strain because of their different approaches to fame. But an insider told OK magazine that the former Friends star may consider a move to Ireland to give their relationship another shot. The insider said: "A permanent move is off the table. "But Courteney is willing to spend more time in Ireland to make the relationship work. At this point she'll bend over backward to make Johnny happy." "Being away from Johnny made Courteney realize how much she missed him," a source added. The pair had been spotted shopping together in the US and they also enjoyed a dinner date at Craig's in West Hollywood. 'They ordered wine and pizza and looked so happy together,' a fellow diner told Life & Style who also confirmed the duo sat side-by-side in a private booth. After their split, celebrity website TMZ claimed he wanted to return to live in the UK, with Cox more content to remain in America. There were also rumours the Derry man was uncomfortable in the limelight. Originally from Alabama, Cox is now based in Los Angeles with her daughter Coco (11). Cox was married to Coco's father actor David Arquette from 1999-2013 and he also lives nearby. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian side has no POW (prisoner of war) from Azerbaijan, the Executive Director of the Foundation Against the Violation of Law Larisa Alaverdyan said this during the press conference in Armenpress press hall. We have the bodies of Azerbaijani soldiers. I would like to say that the Armenian side follows all humanitarian norms. Armenia collected the bodies, keeps them in proper conditions and does nothing with them, which we cannot say for Azerbaijan, said Larisa Alaverdyan pointing out that the mishandling with the bodies is the signature of Azerbaijan. Referring to the missing in action Larisa Alaverdyan mentioned that the authorities carry out the necessary steps at the highest level and cooperate with the International Committee of the Red Cross. I assure you that the work is being carried out at professional level, said Larisa Alaverdyan and referred to the situation of the missing in action stating that they do not know about them whether they are alive, wounded or just simply they are hidden in the forest. Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements. According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later.On April 3 the subversive group of Azerbaijan brutally killed 3 elderly and vandalized their corpses in Talish village. The Armenian side has 44 causalities, 21 soldiers missing, 122 wounded. 5 more people including the heads of two rural communities of Syunik Marz,were killed on their way to Martakert on April 4. Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1-5 as a result of the crushing counterattacks by the Armenian side against the military aggressions towards the Nagorno Karabakh Azerbaijan lost 2 helicopters, 24 tanks, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, 7 UAVs, 1 21-MM multiple rocket launcher system. During military operations the Azerbaijani armed forces had more than 300 causalities, nearly 2000 wounded. On April 5 at 12:00, the fire was ceased in the line of contact between Karabakh and Azerbaijani opposing forces. The agreement of ceasing the fire was reached at the meeting of the Chiefs of General Staff of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow on April 5. Louis celebrates with Sharon Fegan and her son Daniel on his birthday Louis Walsh has no plans to change his mind after claiming Dublin is more fun than Belfast. As he launched the Circuit of Ireland Rally in Belfast yesterday the pop mogul also hinted he could return to The X Factor. Further Reading Read More Walsh found himself out of favour here last month after claiming in an interview that the Titanic City trailed behind the Fair City when it came to the craic. "What I said was Dublin is more fun than Belfast, and I stick to that," he said. "Dublin is more fun than most places in the world. It's more fun than Glasgow or Manchester or Birmingham or anywhere." He added: "Dublin is just the best place in the world - that's the truth whether you like it or not. You know it's true." Speculation over Walsh's next career move grew this week after X Factor judge Cheryl Fernandez-Versini quit the show to focus on her music career. Asked if he was returning to the judging panel, Walsh said: "There's a good chance, but I'm not saying officially I am. I've nothing signed. I'd like to go back if Sharon Osbourne came back. "Simon, Sharon and I are good fun. That would be like the dream team, and maybe Nicole Scherzinger or Rita Ora. I've not signed, but I'm talking to them." While the talent show has seen its viewing figures plummet in the past year, Walsh insisted he was confident that he could help boost the ratings. "It's been on for about 12 years now," he said. "Every show has to change, you know, and make things a bit different. I think if Sharon, Simon and I were there, we would make it fun again." Ahead of the Belfast auditions for the show later this month, Walsh added: "Belfast has some of the most amazing musicians. One of my favourite musicians in the world is from Belfast, Van Morrison. You have Snow Patrol, too. "The talent is there in the North. They just need to take a chance and go for the auditions. "I'd love someone from Belfast, and from Dublin, absolutely, because the talent is there. "It's tough, but if they're good enough I'd definitely put them through. I always put Irish people through, even if they're bad!" Walsh was also in Newry yesterday for the opening of a newly refurbished Specsavers store. He has spoken about suffering from hearing loss in recent years and has urged others not to be embarrassed to get a hearing test. His visit was a huge thrill for 11-year-old Daniel Fegan from Newry, who was celebrating his birthday. Daniel's mother Sharon, director of the Specsavers store, said Louis secretly admitted to her that he had agreed to return to The X Factor. "It was fantastic," she added. "We only got a few quiet words because he was only just home from America. "He was saying he was with Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne. He said: 'I can't really say yet, but yes, I am doing The X Factor again'." Sharon added the visit was the perfect present for Daniel. "He had a great time," she said. "Daniel has special needs but loves music. He enjoyed meeting Louis and enjoyed the atmosphere and the excitement. "Louis was very happy to take a photograph. He also signed the birthday card. Daniel was just happy to sit and take it all in and enjoy the atmosphere." The Belfast auditions for The X Factor will be held at the Victoria Square Shopping Centre on April 18 Owen Teale's theatre accolades include the 1997 Tony Award for best actor for his role in A Doll's House Welsh actor Owen Teale will join Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart in the revival of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land. Teale, recently seen on screen in the hit TV series Game Of Thrones, will play the character of Briggs in the production. The play sees two ageing writers, Hirst (Sir Patrick) and Spooner (Sir Ian), meet at a pub in London's Hampstead. They drink late into the night, moving to Hirst's stately home nearby. As the two become increasingly inebriated, their stories become less believable as their conversation turns into a power game. No Man's Land will tour the UK before opening in the West End at Wyndham's Theatre. Wyndham's is where it was performed from 1975 to 1976, when it starred Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud - and is also the theatre where Sir Patrick first saw the play. Starting in August, the tour will include the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield, the Theatre Royal in Newcastle, the Theatre Royal in Brighton and the New Theatre in Cardiff. Sir Ian and Sir Patrick have already starred in No Man's Land, directed by Sean Mathias, on Broadway at New York's Cort Theatre in 2013. Teale, 54, previously starred alongside Sir Ian in Dance Of Death, and his theatre accolades include the 1997 Tony Award for best actor for his role in A Doll's House. He has also appeared in various Shakespearean adaptations including Julius Caesar, King Lear and Henry IV. His Game Of Thrones character, Alliser Thorne, was responsible for reportedly killing one of the show's most popular characters, Jon Snow, at the end of the last series. Viewers were outraged as Thorne plunged a knife into Snow's chest, whispering "for the Watch". His additional TV credits include a role in HBO show Conspiracy, ITV's Torchwood and The Cherry Orchard opposite Charlotte Rampling. Jeremy Corbyn received a surprise celebrity endorsement after actor Danny DeVito revealed he is a supporter. The Hollywood star said he believed the Labour leader would make a "great PM" and do a better job than David Cameron, who has faced intense pressure to detail his financial affairs since the Panama Papers leaks. DeVito, 71, recently endorsed US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders by introducing the Democratic candidate at a rally in Missouri last month. Speaking at an event for The Motion Picture and Television Fund in Los Angeles, DeVito said he was also a "big-time" supporter of Mr Corbyn. He told the Press Association: "I like the idea of people telling the truth. I like them to get to the bottom of things. In our government we have a lot of subterfuge. "Now we've got the Panama thing. What is it? Why doesn't anybody want to pay taxes and just fix the country and make everybody have a good life? It's really crazy. " I think he (Mr Corbyn) would make a great PM. Way better than Cameron." DeVito, whose acting career has spanned five decades and has included starring roles in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Twins, LA Confidential and the classic TV series Taxi, also criticised former prime minister Tony Blair. "Look at your history, for crying out loud," he said. "A little sketchy guy hanging out with George Bush. What was his name? Blair." The Labour leader later tweeted: "R eally pleased to get an endorsement from @DannyDeVito. I feel a Twins sequel coming on." Northern Ireland would suffer more than Britain if the UK votes to leave Europe, a former senior Cabinet minister has said. Labour MP Alan Johnson said there were "all kinds of ramifications" around a Brexit and the effect would be "more pronounced" for businesses in Northern Ireland. Mr Johnson was in west Belfast at Delta Packaging to help launch a 19-strong team of pro-EU business leaders. Among those in the group are former Allstate boss Bro McFerran; Glyn Roberts of the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association; NI Screen chair Rotha Johnston, and top businessman Dr Len O'Hagan. Former Ulster Unionist Health Minister Michael McGimpsey is also backing the 'remain' campaign. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Mr Johnson - who held a number of roles in Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's Labour administrations - said: "It's the same here as everywhere else in the UK, that for Britain's prosperity, for our security, our voice in the world, we need to remain in the EU. "There's a particular dimension here in that we would have the only land border with an EU country. "There are all kinds of ramifications around that... it's even more pronounced here, and Northern Ireland is a net recipient of money from the EU. "I think Northern Ireland epitomises what that money is there for, the structural funds. "The idea is to ensure that in this single market, there are rules that protect workers, consumers and the environment, so it's not just a race to the bottom." Mr Johnson, a former Home Secretary, said walking away from the European Union would leave the UK trying to negotiate trade agreements with Europe and with dozens of other nations around the world. "We get representation from the Republic of Ireland, who are very worried about the implications," he pointed out. Asked whether the pro-Europe campaign had been slow to get going in contrast with the Brexit campaign supported by London Mayor Boris Johnson among others, he said: "The people who want to leave, the people who are vociferous about these things, have the loudest voices. "The second aspect is what we call 'blue-on-blue'. "When a Cabinet member, say Theresa Villiers, is arguing with the Prime Minister, that's a news story. We tend to get pushed out of that. But I think that will change. As we get closer to polling day, people will be more interested in the facts." Shadow Secretary of State Vernon Coaker, who joined Mr Johnson yesterday, said: "It's not only the manufacturing businesses, it's the services sector. The access to that market. "The idea that we pull out and everything will be fine... a fingers-crossed approach to the future is not the certainty people want." Delta Packaging boss Terry Cross believes the UK should actually go further and be part of the eurozone. "You have all these currency rate fluctuations. Unfortunately, in this argument, the single currency isn't up for discussions," he said. Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Britain Stronger In Europe, said it was "fantastic to see so many talented and committed people, from all walks of life, uniting to say that Northern Ireland and the whole of the UK are stronger, safer and better off as part of the EU". The group here is being chaired by Tom Kelly, founder of Stakeholder Communications. "I am passionate in my belief that the future of everyone in Northern Ireland will be better off by the UK remaining in the EU," he said. The loyalist camp set up in the Woodvale area of north Belfast Loyalists at the protest camp at Twaddell Avenue in north Belfast Gerald Solinas, left, and James Small pictured at Camp Twaddell at Ardoyne in North Belfast with other protestors. Picture by Kelvin Boyes/PressEye Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Hundreds of bands march through west Belfast this evening to mark the 1000th day of protest at the Twaddle Peace Camp. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Hundreds of bands march through west Belfast this evening to mark the 1000th day of protest at the Twaddle Peace Camp. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Hundreds of bands march through west Belfast this evening to mark the 1000th day of protest at the Twaddle Peace Camp. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Hundreds of bands march through west Belfast this evening to mark the 1000th day of protest at the Twaddle Peace Camp. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is George Chittick during the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is George Chittick during the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is George Chittick during the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is Gerald Solinas the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is Gorge Chittick at the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is George Chittick during the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is William (Willie) Frazer during the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is George Chittick during the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast , UK - April 07, Pictured is Gerald Solinas the 1000th day parade held at Twaddell in North Belfast on April 07, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) One thousand days after it started its protest the Orange Order last night said its determination to see its Ligoniel lodges march home past Ardoyne shops remains undimmed. The long-running protest has cost the public purse around 18m in policing and other costs. A crowd of several hundred supporters - many in Orange regalia - gathered at Twaddell Avenue last night to mark the milestone. They cheered as they heard Belfast county grand master George Chittick hit out once again at the Parades Commission, whose members he described as "muppets". "Our parading culture is a hostage of fortune to republicans - this situation cannot and must not be allowed to continue," he said. "We may have different opinions at times on how that may be achieved, but the one thing that unites us is to see the wrong decisions of the Parades Commission put right. "The only thing that hinders that objective is when we take our focus off where the problem lies. "It lies with intransigent, sectarian republicanism and legislation that is a protesters' charter." He called on unionist political leaders to explain what they proposed to do to safeguard the right to march. "To all our local unionist political parties who started this campaign with us, I would urge you to spell out clearly before the coming election what steps you will take to ensure change; what pressure you will put on the Westminster administration to change, and what sanctions you will take against republicans and nationalists when they police our culture through the farce that is the Parades Commission?" And the Orange chief sent a strong message of continued defiance to the authorities, and a rallying cry to the protest supporters. "A fundamental change to parading legislation is not an option for the future but a requirement," he said. "We will continue to agitate and protest until fairness and equality for all is achieved, or as we put it, civil and religious liberty for all and special privileges for none. The campaign will continue. The message is clear from the gathering here this evening - let them home." The supporters heard a message of encouragement from Christopher McGurk, the chairman of the Regimental Blues, a group of Scottish loyalists who travelled to Belfast to support the Camp Twaddell protest. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Mr McGurk said there was some disillusionment and frustration at the lack of support for the Camp Twaddell protest from politicians. "If everyone moves in the right direction, the parade will go up that road," he said. "Regardless of what I believe, this camp is going nowhere. "The community is saying enough's enough." One supporter, Margaret (who declined to give her surname), felt that a stand had to be made in defence of loyalist culture. "From the 'Black Friday' Agreement I feel my culture has just been being chipped away, eroded," she claimed. She added the protest was a human rights issue. "If we'd been black or Muslim or any ethnic minority there would have been an outcry. This is a human rights issue more than anything." The PUP's Billy Hutchinson was among the crowd. "Nobody ever thought that this protest would last a thousand days," he said. "It's a thousand days too long. We need to get this situation resolved, and I hope that we can have it resolved this year. "All sides march in this society; we need to get this sorted." After the speeches the crowd sang God Save The Queen before drifting off into the cold spring night. Jeremiah Mathis Thede denies a charge of endangering an aircraft or persons in the aircraft The decision to divert a transatlantic flight over an alleged air rage incident was recommended because there was a potential "time bomb" on board, a court has heard. Joseph Oka, a United Airlines relief pilot, said he feared the actions of an unpredictable passenger could have been a distraction for something more sinister. He told Antrim Crown Court: "I was thinking, can this just be a minor incident? Our training is to treat every incident as not minor. "This could really be a diversion to take attention away from the front." The Boeing 777 carrying 264 passengers was en route from Rome to Chicago on June 20 last year when the captain made the decision to touch down at Belfast International Airport after concerns were raised about the behaviour of Jeremiah Mathis Thede. The Californian, 42, denies a charge of endangering an aircraft or persons in the aircraft. Mr Oka, a former US navy pilot with 19 years' experience at United, said he made the unprecedented recommendation to "offload" Thede as the plane approached the end of UK airspace. To the forefront of his mind was an extreme incident where a passenger on a previous flight had been involved in a prolonged struggle before the plane could land, he said. "There could potentially be a time bomb on board," he said. "Do you want to deal with it on the ground or in the air, given that we were about to coast out? "There would be a long period for someone to get hurt while trying to get to an airport." The relief pilot, who is legally required to sleep during the first three hours of the flight, described being woken twice and asked to deal with Thede, adding: "That never happens." Complaints included allegedly "staring" at a female passenger and invading her personal space. Thede, who had changed his clothes a number of times and was standing up rummaging through his bag in the overhead bin, had been given three warnings to change his conduct, the court was told. Mr Oka did not witness any inappropriate behaviour but said he believed the accounts of the crew and concerned passengers. He said: "Another part of our training is that if any passenger's behaviour or conduct affects the safety or comfort of another passenger, they may be removed - and that was clearly happening. "I just felt that the crew members' duties had been interfered with enough, we were reaching the point where we were coasting out and once you are over the Atlantic there are not a lot of places to land. "It's better to offload this gentleman and continue with this flight." The court heard there was no evidence that Thede's actions were part of a wider distraction plot and shortly after the captain announced the plane was being diverted he appeared to be asleep. He was only woken when police officers escorted him off, it was claimed. It also emerged that although restraints were available they were not deployed. Previously the court has been told the plane had to dump thousands of litres of fuel before making the unscheduled stop. And as the crew would have exceeded their legal flying hours if the aircraft had resumed the journey straight away, the passengers were forced to wait almost 24 hours before the plane could take off again, with many having to sleep on the terminal floor. Throughout proceedings Thede, who was dressed in a navy suit jacket, white shirt and grey trousers, listened intently from the dock, occasionally taking notes. The trial continues. Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Gemma Weir with her baby Stella aged 6 month , Joins Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Gemma Weir with her baby Stella aged 6 month , Joins Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon call for change in abortion laws. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Northern Ireland's health care professionals should adopt a policy of "don't ask, don't tell" if a woman seeks help after having taken abortion pills bought over the internet, the Royal College of Midwives has said. It comes after a 21-year-old woman bought drugs on the internet to induce a miscarriage after failing to raise enough money to travel to England for a termination. A barrister for the woman told Belfast Crown Court that had his client lived in any other region of the UK, she would "not have found herself before the courts." On Monday she was handed a suspended prison sentence after her former housemates reported her to the PSNI. Read More The case has reignited a furious debate over Northern Ireland's abortion laws. 'DON'T ASK DON'T TELL' Ambiguity surrounded the legal obligation on health professionals if women confirm to them they have used abortion pills bought online and are seeking medical attention. The Department of Health said that a woman who feels she needs medical treatment should not be deterred from seeking help. Breedagh Hughes from the Royal College of Midwives told the BBC Stephen Nolan Show that - while it was "unsatisfactory" - a "don't ask don't tell" policy should be applied by health professionals. Essentially women are required to "lie by omission", she said. "That's the crux of it, that they 'know' it to be unlawful," she said. "The American army used to have this saying. 'Don't ask, don't tell'. I think that's exactly the same principle that's going to have to be adopted here. It's not very satisfactory. "The alternative is stick your two fingers in your ears and sing very loudly. "Take your fingers out of your ears and look at the women and say 'you are telling me you have been pregnant, you are no longer pregnant and are bleeding. How can I help you?' "That's not satisfactory. Because any relationship between any health care professional and the people they are caring for is built on mutual trust Where you are requiring the woman to lie to you by omission. "It's almost, 'don't tell me what you've done because you will put me in a position where I have to do something about it'." 'HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS AND WOMAN IN UNTENABLE POSITION' The Health Department stated that unless a woman tells the professional she has taken the pills, a doctor is "unlikely" to be able to tell if the miscarriage occurred naturally or with the drugs. Ms Hughes said it was not a good way to start a very "intimate" relationship that health care professionals have with those they are caring for. "That's where the 'I won't ask you and you won't tell me and we will go from there' comes from." Ms Hughes said that ideally doctors would rather know as much information as possible from their patients but that this puts both people in an "untenable position" in this scenario. "Because the law is quite clear that you must report any crime which attaches to it more than five years of a prison sentence or you yourself face criminal proceedings," she added. "It's like someone coming into casualty and they have been shot, you have to report that. It's in that sort of arena. But it's wider than just nurses and midwives working in hospitals. "If you are a school nurse, for example, and somebody comes flying through the door saying 'nurse quick my friend is bleeding to death in the toilet, she bought these tablets on the internet' "That isn't even the woman herself giving that information, that's somebody else and once you know it you can't unknow it, it's a very difficult circle to square and the guidance doesn't help." 'ALWAYS SEEK MEDICAL HELP DESPITE RISK' However despite the risk of prosecution, the Royal College of Midwives has urged women to seek medical help if they require it, no matter how they have found themselves in that position. Ms Hughes said: "The guidance talks about the need to provide professional care to the woman and that is obviously everyone's first priority and despite all risk of prosecution I appeal now to anyone woman or girl in need of attention, no matter what she's done, please go and seek that help from the most relevant person whether it's your GP or Emergency Department or maternity admissions unit. "Please go and get that help and if you can remember not to say anything when you get there that would be even more helpful." 'LEGAL OBLIGATION TO REPORT UNLAWFUL ACTIVITY' The Department of Health has said it is important for women not to be deterred from seeking medical treatment. A Department of Health spokeswoman said: It is important that any woman who feels she needs medical treatment is not deterred from seeking it. "Women who are in need of medical assistance should always seek advice and treatment from their health professionals. Unless the woman herself provides the information, a health professional is unlikely to be able to tell whether a miscarriage has occurred naturally or has been caused by abortifacient drugs and if it has been, whether the drugs were administered lawfully (in Great Britain, for example) or otherwise. All health professionals have a legal and professional obligation to practice within the law and have an obligation to report activity they know to be unlawful. PRO-CHOICE PROTESTS On Thursday night pro-choice activists took to the streets to protest against the prosecution of a woman who induced a miscarriage with tablets bought online. Read more Read More Around 80 people gathered outside Belfast's High Court, chanting: "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries. We say pro-choice, they say no choice." The demonstration was organised by the Alliance for Choice and the Belfast Feminist Network, and attended by members of the public, trade unions and Amnesty International. The Maze Prison where Gerry Kelly escaped from in 1983 The food lorry at the centre of the breakout A soldier vaults his way into a garden near the M1 as a large-scale search operation gets under way for the Maze escapees The son of a prison officer murdered by the IRA in Dublin has urged the Republic's acting Justice Minister to step into the row over a movie about the 1983 Maze prison escape. The recently vacated Cork Prison is to be used as a set for the film about the biggest ever British prison breakout. Brian Stack was chief officer at Portlaoise when he was shot and fatally wounded in March 1983. His son Austin yesterday criticised the Irish Prison Service for allowing filming. It said the project "was providing employment opportunities and investments in local businesses and services". But Mr Stack said the Irish Government had intervened before, when former minister Dermot Ahern refused to allow the use of his departmental offices for the filming of The General, the 1998 John Boorman film about Irish gangster Martin Cahill. "Mr Ahern told me that he took a principled stand and would not allow a State facility to be used to make a film which glamorised Martin Cahill," said Mr Stack. He added that he was now calling on the acting Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald to take "the same principled and courageous stance as the former minister did". Expand Close Criticism: Austin Stack / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Criticism: Austin Stack Further Reading YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The recent events in Nagorno Karabakh not only have long-term destabilization effects, but they will also become a new challenge for international, as well as humanitarian law. Armenpress was informed about this by the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian announced this in the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers. On April 8 Nalbandian participated in the regular session of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers. The heads of foreign affairs discussed several issues related to the CIS activities and to the rise of its effectiveness. Foreign Minister of the Republic of Armenia gave a speech during the session. Referring to the Azerbaijans unleashed military operations against Artskah, Edward Nalbandian said: Throughout its existence, the CIS has played a role in political, economic, humanitarian and other processes, but it has not always lived up the expectations. It does not manage to prevent a number of negative things that exist in numerous fundamental issues, including that in the security field. One of those issues the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Recent day events not only led to human losses and the intensity of the crisis, to long-term destabilization, but also they can become a new challenge for international, as well as humanitarian law, not only for the UN Charter and for the provisions of fundamental documents of international law, but also they can become a challenge for the CIS Charter where the peaceful settlement of disputes and conflicts is also enshrined in. These events took place since not everyone agrees with this approach within the CIS. The recent large-scale attacks by Baku against Artsakh violate the ceasefire agreement of 1994 and the reinforcement of 1995 trilateral unidentified ceasefire agreement. By the way, the first agreement was initiated in the sidelines of CIS inter-parliamentary summit. Just from the first hours of the onslaught civilian facilities were deliberately targeted, as a result of which civilians, including children, lost their lives. The numerous calls of the international community to find a peaceful solution to the conflict were thoroughly ignored by Azerbaijan. Evidently, all these have a severe impact on the negotiation process and the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs, Nalbandian said, adding that Armenia has called on the international community to restrain Azerbaijan from militaristic aspirations for many times, considering a development of situation in the way we witnessed in the recent days. He stated that the priority issue of today is to find ways to rule out the reoccurrence of the same situation in the future. Foreign Minister Nalbandian also referred to organizational issues within the CIS, mentioning that a multidimensional institution is impressive when it operates fully with We believe that while taking decisions aimed at deepening partnership in this or that direction, it is necessary to take into account the level of real interest of the member states in that. I want to stress it, real partnership, but not an artificial readiness. We have a situation now when one of the member states signs only 10% of the documents, and the 90% with reservations, Nalbandian said, stating that when taking a decision it is of key importance to take into account that some of the CIS member states are also member of other integration unions. Nalbandian also stressed that this approach must not lead to limitation of cooperation within the limits of already existing legal documents. The CIS Foreign Ministers discussed and approved over a dozen of legal documents referring to various cooperation fields in the sidelines of the CIS. A man accused of the sectarian murder of a civil servant in Northern Ireland has links to loyalist paramilitarism, police said. Paul McCauley, a Catholic, was left in a vegetative state after being beaten by loyalists in Londonderry's Waterside area in 2006. He died in June aged 38. Matthew Brian Gillen, 28, was charged at Londonderry Magistrates' Court with the killing after investigators made audio recordings of him, his solicitor said. A Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) detective told the court: "We believe Mr Gillen is still linked with loyalist paramilitarism and at the very least he is a supporter of it. "This is based on a number of items found during a house search." Father-of-one Mr McCauley was 29 when he attended a barbecue for a friend who was moving away from Northern Ireland. A gang of up to 15 people emerged from nearby bushes and attacked him and two friends as they were clearing up after the meal in the early hours of the morning. He suffered severe head injuries and died last summer in a care home. Gillen's counsel Sean Doherty said the evidence upon which his client was charged was based upon audio recordings of the defendant. Expand Close Paul McCauley died after a vicious attack by a gang of 15 men in 2006 left him in a vegetative state / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Paul McCauley died after a vicious attack by a gang of 15 men in 2006 left him in a vegetative state He appealed successfully for bail. "If he is granted bail there are no steps that he can take that would interfere with the integrity of that evidence. "The evidence comes from his own mouth." Expand Close Victim: Paul McCauley / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Victim: Paul McCauley The detective told the court the assault on Mr McCauley was being treated as a sectarian attack and had been linked by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC), a paramilitary ceasefire body established by the British and Irish Governments, to the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Gillen, from Abbeydale in Londonderry, is also accused of causing grievous bodily harm and attempting to cause grievous bodily harm. He was dressed in a grey sweater and spoke only to confirm his name. In opposing bail, the officer said if released Gillen could pose a significant risk to witnesses or prevent others from coming forward. He cautioned that the defendant's personal safety would also be endangered - he has been threatened before. The senior officer also warned there was a risk of the suspect fleeing, since he worked across the UK and Europe. Mr Doherty said his client had no criminal record. Gillen was originally arrested in 2006. He was again detained last December and freed on police bail but returned to custody for more interviews recently. His solicitor said he was a man of good character who had been in employment since the killing. Magistrate Barney McElholm released him on bail of 2,000 and ordered that he reside at Abbeydale in the city. He asked for his passport to be confiscated but the court was told he did not have it after a mix-up over his belongings. He was ordered not to leave Northern Ireland and to report regularly to a police station near his home. The accused was remanded on bail to reappear before the same court on April 21. The chief constable has conceded that criminal proceedings are "increasingly unlikely in a vast majority of unresolved cases" from the Troubles. George Hamilton also told victims of the Enniskillen bombing it was unlikely those behind the IRA attack, which killed 11 people, would "end up in a court room." Mr Hamilton admitted the PSNI has been "unable to secure the evidence required to take that horrible atrocity through the criminal justice system". He made his comments at a seminar in Co Fermanagh hosted by the South East Fermanagh Foundation, a victims group. "I'll not risk causing further pain by giving unrealistic expectations of what the justice system can deliver," said Mr Hamilton. He explained that the bombing had been subject to various investigations and reviews and that there was "still some unfinished business around that." "Some of that work continues, albeit I need to deal with expectations," Mr Hamilton added. "I'm not sure this is going to end up in a court room, in fact it would be unlikely. Accept my assurances that if and when new leads become available, they will be pursued." With almost 1,000 other legacy cases, Mr Hamilton said he couldn't "put a timescale on the work for us getting to them", the Impartial Reporter reported. He added: "Please do not think that those who lost their lives in any of these terrorist attacks have been forgotten about by us, by me. I can assure you they haven't." The chief constable also appealed to Stormont politicians to address the impasse in relation to the past. "It is important to point out that policing alone cannot sort out the issues of the past," he said. "Policing alone can not build the past towards a better, brighter future or one that resolves all the difficulties of the past. That is something only society can do." He concluded that the PSNI's Legacy Investigations Branch was largely determined by circumstances outside his control. "We are driven by the law, not by a wishlist, not by who shouts the loudest," he explained. Stephen Gault, who lost his father Samuel in the bomb, said Mr Hamilton's comments left him feeling "horrified." He also questioned the chief constable's claim that there may never be anyone prosecuted and hit out at the former Historic Enquiries Team (HET) for the way in which it handled the investigation. "A report was never published by the HET in regards to their findings into the case and more worryingly by the HET's own admission the review into Enniskillen was the longest case that they were dealing with," Mr Gault said. "The case was live with the HET for over nine years and it was only on the eve of the 25th anniversary that a potential new line of enquiry was passed onto the PSNI for investigating. "The big question for me is, who is being protected from justice being served for the murder and bloodshed in Enniskillen?" On Monday First Minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster told party members in Belfast that she would continue to "defend" victims of the Troubles. "And under my leadership I will never support the rewriting of our past," she added. "Those who terrorised our land and perpetrated the most evil of acts must not have the fear of justice lifted from them." Pictured (l-r) at the Civic Dinner in City hall to mark the Centenary of the Easter Rising are, Ken Martin (Royal British Legion), Deputy First Minister, Martin Mc Guinness, Lord Mayor Dublin, Criona Ni Dhalaigh, Belfast Lord Mayor Arder Carson, The Lord Lieutenant Fionnula Jay-O'Boyle and Charles Flanaghan TD. PIc By Paul Moane / Aurora PA Belfast Lord Mayor, Arder Carson, with guests at the Civic Dinner in City Hall to mark the Centanary of the Easter Rising, The Lord Lieutenant Fionnuala Jay O'Boyle and Charles Flanagan TD. Pic By Paul Moane / Aurora PA Pictured (l-r) at the Civic Dinner in City hall to mark the Centenary of the Easter Rising are, Ken Martin (Royal British Legion), Deputy First Minister, Martin Mc Guinness, Lord Mayor Dublin, Criona Ni Dhalaigh, Belfast Lord Mayor Arder Carson, The Lord Lieutenant Fionnula Jay-O'Boyle and Charles Flanaghan TD. PIc By Paul Moane / Aurora PA A representative of the Royal British Legion has attended a civic dinner at Belfast City Hall to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising. The event hit the headlines earlier this month after Irish President Michael D Higgins pulled out of attending. It was understood his reason for cancelling his planned attendance was because unionist councillors indicated they would not attend. A spokesman for Aras an Uachtarain said the President had accepted the invitation on the basis that there was cross-party support. "This now is no longer the case, leaving the President with no other option but to withdraw as he does not want to become embroiled in matters of political controversy," he said. The DUP has been accused of scuppering the dinner by refusing to attend. The party said it had no objection to the event happening, but would not be there. Belfast Lord Mayor Arder Carson expressed his disappointment, but said the event would go ahead. The dinner took place at Belfast City Hall on Friday evening. The Royal British Legion was represented at the dinner by Ken Martin, the chairman of the Royal British Legion in the Irish Republic. The guests also included Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, acting Irish Foreign Affairs minister Charlie Flanagan, Lord Mayor of Dublin Criona Ni Dhalaigh and Belfast's Lord Lieutenant Fionnula Jay-O'Boyle. An estimated 150 soldiers were among the 500 people killed when Republican rebels staged an uprising during Easter 1916 in an attempt to overthrow British rule in Ireland. DUP leader Arlene Foster declined to attend Easter Rising commemorations in Dublin, describing the republican rebellion "as a violent act that killed many hundreds of Irish people". "As such I don't think it was right to commemorate an attack on a State that I believe in," she said. A young father who died in hospital following a two-car collision in Carryduff has been named. Scott McNeill suffered serious injuries in the collision on the Ballynahinch Road and died on Thursday in hospital. The 21-year-old passed away following the crash between the Drumalig Road and Carr Road shortly after 9pm on Wednesday. He was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital afterwards. Mr McNeill, from Dromara, Co Down, was father to a young boy. Another man taken to hospital was understood to be in a stable condition yesterday. Police are appealing for anyone who was travelling on the Ballynahinch Road last night and who witnessed the collision to contact officers in Lisburn Police Station on 101. The road was closed but has since reopened. In a notice in today's Belfast Telegraph, the owners and employees at McCormick Metal Fabrication in Downpatrick expressed their sympathy to Mr Scott's father, David, as well as other family members, Patricia, Andrew, and Jemma. Shocked friends paid tribute on social media, including one who wrote: "You'll be in our hearts forever and will be missed dearly. "Heaven has gained another angel, you'll be racing up in heaven." Mr McNeill was the second person to die on Northern Ireland's roads this week. On Monday, a man in his 60s died following a two-vehicle collision at the junction of Belfast Road and Wallace Avenue in Lisburn. David Cameron successfully argued in 2013 for trusts to be treated differently from companies in anti-money laundering rules David Cameron was today accused of "completely undermining" the Government's claims to be tough on tax dodgers after the Prime Minister personally intervened to try to prevent EU transparency rules affecting offshore tax trusts. The Prime Minister was forced to respond to the scandal after it emerged that he sent a letter to the European Council president Herman van Rompuy in 2013 arguing for trusts to be treated differently from companies in anti-money laundering rules. Mr Cameron claimed that it was "clearly important we recognise the important differences between companies and trusts". "This means that the solution for addressing the potential misuse of companies, such as central public registries, may well not be appropriate generally," the letter said. Labour said Mr Camerons position "completely undermined" Tory claims to be determined to act on tax avoidance. Another day and another story emerges which exposes what the Conservative Party really thinks in its heart of hearts about tackling tax avoidance, said Labours shadow Treasury minister Richard Burgon. "The Prime Minister can't raise a finger to save our steel industry but at the drop of a hat he can personally intervene to undermine EU efforts to clamp down on tax avoidance. Tax evasion is not just illegal it's immoral.People evading tax should be treated same as common thieves.This agreement helps us tackle them George Osborne (@George_Osborne) October 29, 2014 "When things like this come out from the very top of the Conservative Party it completely undermines anything they have said previously on this major issue. Forced to respond to the allegations, following a speech on Europe in Exeter, Mr Cameron told students he had put tax avoidance at the top of the agenda during his chairmanship of the G8 group of leading nations. Britain has been an absolute leader on this and we will continue to do it, he added. But Judith Sargentini, the Dutch MEP who led the European Parliament's work on the draft rules, told the Financial Times that she saw the UKs call for different treatment for trusts as a danger and a possible loophole". The revelation adds to the pressure on Mr Cameron after the Panama Papers leak revealed his late father, Ian, had been the director of an offshore fund that allegedly paid no UK tax in 30 years. Asked about questions over the Prime Ministers finances on BBC Radio 4s Today programme, the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said he did not think anything more that can be added to Downing Streets previous statements. These questions were honestly answered from the beginninghe made it very clear he is not benefitting from any offshore trust of this kind." Challenged by Today programme host John Humphrys on whether Mr Cameron had benefitted in the past, he added: Hes already answered these questions. He may not have answered them to your satisfaction but these questions have been answered and Ive nothing more to add to them. A government spokesman said Mr Camerons stance was taken because of concerns that seeking to apply registers of "beneficial" owners to trusts "would distract from action against those areas of most concern, such as shell companies". "In practice, these further changes weren't achievable. In the subsequent negotiations, we were able to secure a sensible way forward which ensures that trusts which generate tax consequences have to report their ownership to HMRC." The spokesman defended the Government's record on tackling tax evasion and avoidance, pointing to legislation forcing British companies to disclose who owns and benefits from their activities which comes into force in June. In the latest of a series of clarifications of Mr Camerons tax arrangements, Number 10 insisted that neither the PM, his wife Samantha or their children would benefit in the future from offshore funds or trusts. Labour, however, is still demanding to know however whether they have benefited previously from the arrangement although there is no suggestion that having done so would have been illegal. Conservative ministers have, however, insisted that the Government has led the way in fighting tax avoidance, claiming that Mr Cameron has championed a transparency agenda, since at least 2013 when, ahead of a G8 summit, he promised: Im going to push for international agreements to fight the scourge of tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. That means automatic exchange of information between our tax authorities so those who to evade tax have nowhere to hide. Mr Cameron, though, has faced criticism for failing to secure reforms in all but two of the UKs overseas territories and Crown Dependencies, which see would see major beneficiaries of offshore companies named in public registers. Independent Edward Snowden worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency (AP/The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras) Edward Snowden has put further pressure on David Cameron following the release of the Panama Papers by urging the British public to force his resignation. Mr Cameron faced a difficult week of questions before he admitted on Thursday to profiting from the sale of shares in an offshore fund. Mr Snowden sought to ratchet up the pressure on the PM on social media. Referring to growing critcism of David Cameron's admissions, Mr Snowden stated the next 24 hours could change Britain. Mr Snowden also said it was up to the British public if Mr Cameron resigned. He said that in Iceland, where the Prime Minister did resign, ten per cent of all voters were in the streets within 24 hours, and for less [revelations]. Up to the British public, not us. In #Iceland, 10% of all voters were in the streets within 24 hours, and for less. https://t.co/IkUZztX8WG Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 7, 2016 However, with the population of Iceland just 323,002 people and the population of Great Britain significantly more at 64.1 million people, the chances of ten per cent of the UK electorate going to the streets to demand Mr Camerons resignation might seem unlikely. Read More Mr Snowden also made posts highlighting the #resigncameron trend on British social media. He also seemed to imply that a "strategy" was required to force the resignation of the Prime Minister. #UK Twitter right now: "Let's hope Cameron resigns." With respect, hope is not a strategy. #PanamaPapers https://t.co/FVJcJUOOMG Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 7, 2016 He had previously mocked Mr Cameron for his comments, made earlier in the week, in which he said his financial affairs were a private matter. Resignation of Iceland's PM may explain why the UK PM is so insistent public has no right to know a PM's "private" finances. #PanamaPapers Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 5, 2016 Resignation of Iceland's PM may explain why the UK PM is so insistent public has no right to know a PM's "private" finances. #PanamaPapers Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 5, 2016 The Prime Minister admitted he had profited from selling shares he owned in the offshore Blairmore Investment Trust, set up by his father, Ian Cameron, and run from the Bahamas. Mr Cameron sold the shares for 31,500 before entering office in 2010. He and his wife Samantha Cameron made a 19,000 profit. Despite paying income tax on the dividends there was no capital gains to pay on the sale as it was below the then tax threshold for Capital Gains Tax. Mr Cameron also came under criticism after he said of his fathers 300,000 inheritance that he cannot point to every source of the money. In the past, the Prime Minister has spoken strongly against tax avoidance and called it morally wrong. Tax avoidance, often facilitated by the use of overseas companies to avoid paying taxes, is not illegal like tax evasion but is considered by many to be immoral. Independent David Cameron successfully argued in 2013 for trusts to be treated differently from companies in anti-money laundering rules Panama Papers: David Cameron declared he has "no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds" after his late father Ian's tax affairs were highlighted in the document disclosure. [File photos] David Cameron has admitted he did have a profitable stake in his fathers offshore investment fund, before selling it for around 30,000 before he became Prime Minister. The admission comes five days after a huge cache of documents were leaked dubbed the Panama Papers detailing the tax affairs of thousands of individuals of worldwide. The Prime Ministers father, Ian Cameron, who passed away in 2010, was exposed as running a fund under the name of Blairmore Holdings in the papers. Downing Street staffers initially said that it was a private matter whether or not Mr Cameron had benefitted from the fund. It later issued a series of statements denying the Prime Minister currently benefitted from offshore funds, or stood to do so in the future. Though, despite the clarifications, a number of questions still remained. Exclusive: David Cameron admits to Robert @Peston he did have stake in his father's offshore trust #PanamaPapershttps://t.co/MbNZOtykeQ ITV News (@itvnews) April 7, 2016 Read more Tax evasion is not just illegal it's immoral.People evading tax should be treated same as common thieves.This agreement helps us tackle them George Osborne (@George_Osborne) October 29, 2014 Read More Labour has condemned the way information about Mr Camerons financial affairs was revealed with drip, drip statements, and the revelations will raise questions about why Mr Cameron did not admit to personally profiting until five days after the Panama Papers were leaked. But in an interview with ITV News, he insisted that it was a "fundamental misconception" that Blairmore Holdings, set up by his father Ian Cameron the 1980s and run from the Bahamas, was set up to avoid tax. He said his father was being "unfairly written about". He said that his and Samantha Camerons profit from the scheme was "subject to all the UK taxes in the normal ways". Number 10 said Mr and Mrs Cameron bought their holding in April 1997 for 12,497 and sold it in January 2010 for 31,500. "I paid income tax on the dividends, but there was a profit on it but it was less than the capital gains tax allowance, so I didn't pay capital gains tax, but it was subject to all the UK taxes in all the normal ways," Mr Cameron told ITV. "So I want to be as clear as I can about the past, about the present, about the future, because frankly, I don't have anything to hide. "I'm proud of my dad and what he did and the business he established and all the rest of it. "I can't bear to see his name being dragged through the mud, as you can see, and for my own, I chose to take a different path from my father, grandfather and great-grandfather, who were all stockbrokers, and I've got nothing to hide in my arrangements and I'm very happy to answer questions about it." Independent David Cameron successfully argued in 2013 for trusts to be treated differently from companies in anti-money laundering rules David Cameron has been accused of hypocrisy after he admitted he did have a profitable stake in his father Ians offshore investment fund, despite previous statements condemning aggressive tax avoidance as not morally acceptable. In the past Mr Cameron has been critical of tax avoidance and Downing Street staffers have made clear his contribution to tackling tax evasion as a key part of his economic plan. John Mann, a Labour MP and member of the Treasury Select Committee, said the admission by the Prime Minister should lead to his resignation. He added: So during the 2010 General Election campaign Cameron failed to declare offshore shares. Get out now hypocrite. Here are some of the Prime Ministers past statements on tax avoidance: On Jimmy Car, June 2012 An investigation by The Times into tax avoidance, in 2012, exposed a single Jersey-based scheme that shelters 168 million a year from the taxman. The comedian Jimmy Carr is understood to be the largest beneficiary of the K2 tax scheme. Frankly some of these schemes where people are parking huge amounts of money offshore and taking loans back to just minimise their tax rates it is not morally acceptable, Mr Cameron said. Read more Read More World Economic Forum, January 2013 We want to use the G8 to drive a more serious debate on tax evasion and tax avoidance Exclusive: David Cameron admits to Robert @Peston he did have stake in his father's offshore trust #PanamaPapershttps://t.co/MbNZOtykeQ ITV News (@itvnews) April 7, 2016 Read more Read More Good Morning Britain, January 2013 Tax avoidance, in these cases, of very aggressive tax avoidance schemes they are wrong and we should really persuade people not to do them. Read more Read More G8 Summit, June 2013 You have to collect the taxes that are owed. That is only fair for companies and people who play by the rules and its vital for developing economies too. Read more Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon call for change in abortion laws. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Gemma Weir with her baby Stella aged 6 month , Joins Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Gemma Weir with her baby Stella aged 6 month , Joins Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 7/4/2016 Protesters outside the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday afternoon , The protest was Hosted by Alliance for Choice and Belfast Feminist Network , Due to Women appearing in court, relating to abortion laws in Northern Ireland. On Monday A woman was given a suspended prison sentence after buying drugs to terminate her pregnancy. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Pro-choice activists took to the streets yesterday to demonstrate against the prosecution of a woman who induced a miscarriage with tablets bought online. Around 80 people gathered outside Belfast's High Court, chanting: "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries. We say pro-choice, they say no choice." The demonstration was organised by the Alliance for Choice and the Belfast Feminist Network, and attended by members of the public, trade unions and Amnesty International. It came after a 21-year-old was given a three-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, for procuring an abortion with medication purchased on the internet. Alliance for Choice chair Emma Campbell said: "We are outraged at the criminalisation of women that need to take abortion into their own hands, because they cannot access the means to travel to England. "Northern Irish women have abortions - thousands go across (the water) to do it. The MLAs are fine about it as long as they don't have abortions here so they don't lose their religious voters." Rowan Tunnicliffe, chair of Amnesty International at Queen's University, added: "Women in Northern Ireland... do not have the same rights as women in England. They do not have the right over their own body. The state is enforcing unwanted pregnancy. "It's an income issue too - women from poorer backgrounds are disproportionately affected. Better-off women can afford to travel for treatment. We're saying that this isn't right." A second protest against criminalising abortions will be held in Londonderry later this week. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry vehicle ( Ural model) has crashed into a gorge, Armenpress was informed by Press Secretary of the Ministry of Defense of Armenia Artsrun Hovhannisyan. At this point I can only confirm that this accident has indeed happened. Details about casualties is being clarified, Artsrun Hovhannisyan said, adding that he will give details soon. Ireland's acting Prime Minister Enda Kenny has issued a second plea for his arch rival to accept a ground-breaking coalition government. Opposition leader, Fianna Fail's Micheal Martin, flatly dismissed the first offer to join a partnership with old civil war enemies in Mr Kenny's Fine Gael and end a six week political stalemate. The Taoiseach said it was in the national interest and called for a new way of doing politics to provide stable, lasting government alongside reform of the parliament. "Ending civil war politics is the best thing for our country now," he said. Mr Kenny has written to Mr Martin and 15 Independents in the Dail, a hung parliament after the February elections, with the revived offer. He has asked them to join round table talks next week. "Our proposal is to create a government based on parity of esteem, consensus building, mutual respect and collective decision making," Mr Kenny said. "Such a Government would have the capacity to deal with our country's challenges over a full Dail term and beyond. "Our approach to further discussions with the Independents and other political parties would be based on the principle that all those who work to form such a Government would have an opportunity to participate in it, consistent with their electoral mandates." The proposal would end more than 90 years of bitter civil war era enmity between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and break a deadlock caused by an unprecedented voter split in the general election. Mr Martin, whose relations with Mr Kenny are understood to be lukewarm at best, rebuked the original offer in a frosty 10-minute meeting with the caretaker Taoiseach on Thursday afternoon. But Mr Kenny said the proposed talks could give people the chance to discuss and agree how such a government will work. "I believe that a partnership government is in the best interests of our country and deserves full consideration," he said. Mr Kenny claimed his party has made every effort to form a government since the election to tackle serious national and international challenges facing Ireland. He pointed to housing and homelessness with 5,000 people in emergency accommodation, pressure on the health service with record overcrowding in A&Es, employment, rural issues and the threat of Brexit. Irish voters face the prospect of going back to the polls if a stable minority government cannot be formed within the coming weeks. Acting premier Enda Kenny has accused his arch-rivals of a serious mistake in spurning his proposal for a ground-breaking coalition to free the country from political stalemate. His Fine Gael party overwhelmingly backed moves towards a a "full partnership government" with ancient enemies Fianna Fail amid fears for the ongoing economic recovery. The proposal would have ended more than 90 years of bitter civil-war era enmity between the pair to break a deadlock caused by an unprecedented voter split in February's general election. Both parties held meetings of their parliamentary members on Thursday on the prospect of a historic deal. But after four hours of discussions with his own rank and file, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin delivered his rebuke in a frosty 10-minute meeting with caretaker Taoiseach Mr Kenny. Afterwards, he insisted Fianna Fail had campaigned to put Fine Gael out of power. "We made a core commitment to the Irish people, we reiterated it time and time again and we are not going back on it," he said. Mr Kenny hit back that Fianna Fail was acting in its own selfish interests. "I believe that this decision is a serious mistake and one which was driven by narrow party interests rather than the national interest," he said. "Ireland needs a stable and lasting government to meet the many national and international challenges facing the country. "Fine Gael's preferred option of a full partnership is the best option for providing the necessary stability and it is very regrettable that Fianna Fail has rejected this historic opportunity." Voters now face the prospect of going back to the polls if a stable minority government cannot be formed within the coming weeks. Fine Gael said the "partnership" offer remains on the table. But with both sides trading insults on the choreography of the offer, or the haste with which it was turned down, it appears unlikely they will strike a deal any time soon. Mr Martin said he would support a minority Fine Gael-led government from the Opposition benches, if he could not form one himself. Concerns would remain over the stability of such an administration. Bookmakers immediately slashed the odds on a second general election being held on the back of Fianna Fail's refusal to enter a "grand coalition" with Fine Gael. After its meeting, Fine Gael party secretary Helen McEntee said: "This is an historic offer, representing seismic change in the political landscape. "I believe now more than ever we need to put the people first." Catherine Byrne, Fine Gael's acting chairwoman, said a "partnership government" is the best way to assure stability. "Fine Gael TDs and Senators overwhelmingly supported a partnership government, as the best way to provide a stable and lasting government to deal with the issues concerning people and the challenges facing the country," she said. However, a slew of senior Fianna Fail figures remained trenchant in their opposition to a partnership. Niall Collins, the party's justice spokesman, said it had sought votes on the basis that it would not support Fine Gael in power. "I think to roll over now to enter a grand partnership or coalition with Fine Gael would be a betrayal of that," he said. John McGuinness was one of the few high-profile Fianna Fail figures to publicly back the idea. "I have no problem with a partnership government that gives 50-50 to everyone involved," he said. Willie O'Dea, a former Fianna Fail minister, campaigned on the basis of not supporting a Fine Gael minority government. "The people of this country voted to get rid of the outgoing government; they voted to get rid of Enda Kenny as taoiseach," he said. Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said Fine Gael and Fianna Fail had engaged in six weeks of play acting. "It was always clear from the election results that the only real option was for the two conservative parties to form a government," he said. "The policies of both parties are entirely compatible. The civil war excuse is bogus." Mr Adams added: "It will be entirely reprehensible if Fine Gael and Fianna Fail came back next week, having suspended the Dail, and go through the same charade again. That would be unacceptable. "They should either do a deal or they should admit that there won't be one. It's time they were honest with people." Luggala, Co Wicklow, where the photographs of the mass graves were allegedly taken Gardai and environment officers are set to dig up parts of a well-known country estate after photos of a mass deer grave emerged online. The snaps, allegedly taken at the Luggala estate in Co Wicklow, show dozens of rotting carcasses lying in an open pit. A spokeswoman for the Waste Management section of Wicklow County Council has confirmed that a "thorough investigation" will now be carried out into the alleged discovery at the beauty spot where parts of TV series 'Vikings' are filmed. She explained that they received a formal complaint on Tuesday and gardai have also been alerted. "The allegation is that there are a number of carcasses on the Luggala estate," she said. "There will be an investigation. An environmental warden will call out to the area." She added: "This is being taken very seriously. "The investigation will be thorough." The spokeswoman was unable to say what the alleged offence was ahead of receiving the environmental officer's report. But she insisted that any investigation would be treated "extremely seriously and quickly". The images, taken in February by a local man, show dozens of dead deer in a massive pit. A video was also seen by the Irish Independent. It is understood that these have now been handed over to authorities and will form a major part of the investigation. Gardai will probe if the deer were culled by licensed hunters. Located in the Wicklow mountains, 28 miles from Dublin, the demesne has also been used as a location for films such as Zardoz (1974), starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling; Excalibur (1981), featuring Nigel Terry and Helen Mirren; The Nephew (1998), directed by Pierce Brosnon; King Arthur (2004), with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley; and Asterix et Obelix (2012), with Gerard Depardieu. The 5,000-acre estate near Roundwood was a former holiday retreat for Michael Jackson who stayed there for nearly 11 weeks with his children in 2006. Dozens of other famous names including artist Lucian Freud, poet Seamus Heaney and rockstars Bono and Mick Jagger have all stayed in the estate. Source Irish Independent Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in New York (AP) Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame has been repeatedly vandalised Thousands of people have signed a petition calling for Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to be removed after it was repeatedly targeted by vandals. The landmark honouring the American billionaire has been daubed with a swastika, a mute symbol and even dog excrement during his controversial campaign to become the next US president. Mr Trump, who is the front-runner to secure the Republican nomination, has been criticised for calling for a ban on Muslims entering the US and claiming women should face "some sort of punishment" for having abortions if the procedure is outlawed. The petition, which has attracted more than 15,000 signatures, claims Mr Trump's star is an "insult" and the acts of vandalism showed "the public's disdain" towards the monument. "It's clear that the community does not think he deserves to be represented there," a statement on the Care2 Petitions website said. "The fact that Donald Trump has a star along with the likes of Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Audrey Hepburn is an insult in and of itself. "Trump's despicable messaging represents all the worst parts of our national conversation, which explains the public's disdain for this historical monument to him. "The message is clear: the public does not approve of Trump or the fact that he has a Hollywood star." The campaign comes after more than half a million people signed a petition in January calling for Mr Trump to be banned from entering the UK. It followed the former Apprentice star's comments on Muslims and his claims that parts of London were ''so radicalised'' that police were ''afraid for their own lives''. Leron Gubler, president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said there were no plans to remove the star dedicated to Mr Trump, who received the honour in 2007. "The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a registered historic landmark," he said. "Once a star has been added to the Walk, it is considered a part of the historic fabric of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. "Because of this, we have never removed a star from the Walk." Michaella McCollum Connolly pictured during an interview with RTE in 2016 after being released on parole from a Peruvian prison Michaella McCollum during her exclusive first interview with the Irish broadcaster RTE (RTE/PA) A senior cleric has compared drug mule Michaella McCollum to a man jailed for his part for a scandal linked to former US President Richard Nixon. Archbishop Sean Walsh said the Dungannon woman had shown the same power for redemption as Charles 'Chuck' Colson, a lawyer known as Nixon's "dirty tricks man", who found God and became a preacher. Further Reading Read More "When you look at Michaella and the spiritual journey she is on, you see it in the past as well, in people like Chuck Colson," he said. "He found God and set up a charity for prisoners and became a preacher. He changed his life, as Michaella is now doing." Archbishop Walsh, who has been a special pastor to many ex-pats in Peruvian prisons, has invited Michaella to live with him and his wife at his apartment in Lima. She was seen in their neighbourhood the day after her RTE interview. The archbishop, who was allowed to marry after converting to the Eastern Catholic Church from Roman Catholicism, said he was very interested in people like Michaella and Colson who find God and learn to turn their lives around while in prison. "I have thought about writing a book about such people and the journey they have taken," he added. He also claimed Michaella had matured while in jail and spoke fluent Spanish. She will now be volunteering in his church and helping Spanish-speaking priests learn how to speak English. "We should always hold out for redemption," Archbishop Walsh said. "Michaella is a wonderful young woman and she has found her path in life. She will also be working with Aids patients. I think she is going to have a wonderful future." Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer PARTY SCENE: Michaella in Ibiza Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of her club hostess outfits Michaella McCollum after her arrest AP Photo/Martin Mejia CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru Michaella McCollum's mother Norah McCollum and sister Samantha McCollum vist the Peru prison Melissa Reid Michaella McCollum and ex-boyfriend Dwayne Mullan Dungannon drugs mule Michaella McCollum Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum Connolly arrives to court for her sentencing in Callao, Peru (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) AP Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly (right) and Melissa Reid (front) in handcuffs as they are moved from the National Police anti-drug headquarters to a court to be formally charged for drug trafficking in Lima, Peru, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013 AP Michaella McCollum Connolly with reality TV star Mark Wright at a promotional night hosted by Belfast's M Club Michaella McCollum Connolly with Brad Houston from England Michaella McCollum Connolly Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Colson was imprisoned after organising the break-in to the psychiatrist's office of a man the Nixon government suspected of leaking information about the Vietnam war. The same team later broke into the Democratic Party's headquarters at the Watergate hotel, prompting the Watergate scandal. Further Reading Michaella McCollum Connolly with reality TV star Mark Wright at a promotional night hosted by Belfast's M Club Michaella McCollum, right, and Melissa Reid, left, were jailed in Peru last year after they admitted trying to smuggle cocaine worth 1.5 million pounds from Peru to Spain (AP) Belfast solicitor Peter Madden said Michaella McCollum and co-accused Melissa Reid have been well treated by the authorities Lawyer Peter Madden, who represents Michaella McCollum, has claimed his client has suffered from a lack of food. Michaella McCollum, centre, and Melissa Reid leave the court after being sentenced in Peru. CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru SECRET STASH: The drugs found in food packs in the girls luggage Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event Michaella McCollum Connolly (left) and friend Melissa Reid in the airport after they were arrested Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly and Melissa Reid from the National Police anti-drug headquarters in Peru (AP) Police escort Melissa Reid, front, and Michaella McCollum to a hearing in Lima, Peru (AP) Michaella McCollum, left, and Melissa Reid listen to a translator during a hearing at court in Callao, Peru (AP) Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum, both handcuffed, arrive for a court hearing in Lima, Peru (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) Michaella McCollum Connolly arrives to court for her sentencing in Callao, Peru (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) Michaella McCollum Connolly pictured during an interview with RTE in 2016 after being released on parole from a Peruvian prison Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of her club hostess outfits Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer Much has been written and much has been joked about the incarceration and release of Northern Ireland drug smuggler Michaella McCollum. But it was a joke Facebook posting the Peruvian police thought to respond to. The satirical 'Dundonald Liberation Army' Facebook page posted about the police's "frantic" search for Michaella's bun, in reference to her change of hairstyle for her RTE interview. "The authorities in Lima are frantically trying to ascertain the whereabouts of Michaella McCollums bun it has emerged. "Viewers were so stunned by the disappearance of the bun that they didnt even realise that Michaella dodged every single question she was asked," the page joked. "No, we don't," the Facebook verified Policia Nacional del Peru profile page responded. It also 'liked' the post. When the real Peru peelers post on the DLA page to say they aren't searching for Michaella's bun ... Posted by Dundonald Liberation Army on Wednesday, 6 April 2016 McCollum was released from jail in Peru on parole after serving two years for smuggling drugs into the South American country. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Rifai Ahmad Taha was killed in Idlib province A senior Egyptian al Qaida figure fighting in Syria has been killed in a US drone strike, an opposition monitoring group and relatives said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Rifai Ahmad Taha was killed in a strike on Tuesday in the north-western Idlib province. Before joining al Qaida, Taha was a top figure in Egypt's notorious militant group Gamaa Islamiya, which massacred 58 foreign tourists in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor in 1997. He was also allied with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said several al Qaida members, including Taha, were killed in the strike. He said one of the dead was identified as Abu Omar al-Masri - which is Arabic for Abu Omar the Egyptian - but that it was not clear if Taha was using that name. Taha was believed to be in his 60s. In Egypt, a relative said Taha's wife and brother had received confirmation of his death. In Washington, Department of Defence spokesman Matthew Allen said the US struck a vehicle killing several al Qaida militants. He added that officials are still assessing the strike. "I can confirm that the US struck a vehicle killing several AQ militants," said Mr Allen. "The results of this strike are still being assessed." On Wednesday, Syria's al Qaida branch known as the Nusra Front confirmed the death of Abu Firas al-Souri, a senior figure in the group, in another US air strike in Idlib. Taha's relative said dozens of members of Islamic groups were paying condolences to the family at the home of his brother, Gharib, in the southern Egyptian village of Nagaa Dunqal. According to the relative, Taha told his family he believed he was being followed and three days before his death he called his brother from Syria to tell him that the Americans were monitoring his movements. Taha was jailed in 2001 in Egypt under the rule of then-president Hosni Mubarak after being detained in Syria and handed over to Cairo. He was released after the long-serving leader was removed from power in 2011. Before that he spent nearly three decades outside Egypt, including stints in Afghanistan and Sudan where bin Laden lived, and was also in Pakistan. Taha was also involved in plotting the assassination attempt against Mr Mubarak during a visit to Ethiopia in 1995. The former Egyptian president was not harmed when his convoy was hit with bullets. In the early 1980s Taha spent five years in jail after the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat by Muslim extremists. Bangladeshi students protest after blogger Nazimuddin Samad was hacked to death in Dhaka (AP) The US has condemned the latest killing of an outspoken opponent of radical Islam in Bangladesh as "barbaric", and is considering granting refuge to a select number of bloggers in imminent danger. Assailants hacked and shot 28-year-old law student Nazimuddin Samad on Wednesday night on a street in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The unidentified attackers shouted "Allahu Akbar", or "Allah is great", and escaped by motorcycle. At least five secular bloggers and publishers were killed in similar attacks last year. This has heightened concern that religious extremists are gaining a foothold in Bangladesh, a Muslim country with traditions of secularism and tolerance, and that authorities are failing to provide protection. In December, US-based human rights groups urged their government to offer "humanitarian parole" for Bangladeshi writers targeted by extremists for their secular beliefs. Karin Deutsch Karlekar of PEN America reiterated that call to the US and other countries, saying that Mr Samad's killing "is a cruel illustration of the costs of inaction". State department spokesman Mark Toner strongly condemned the "barbaric murder" of Mr Samad and told reporters the US offers "unwavering support to the Bangladeshi people in their struggle against violent extremism". He said that humanitarian parole for a select number of bloggers who continue to be under "imminent danger" is one option under consideration, but referred questions on it to the Homeland Security Department. Shin Inouye, press secretary at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is responsible for administering such cases, declined to comment about any specific requests for humanitarian parole. Humanitarian parole is used sparingly to bring a person into the US for a temporary period of time due to a compelling emergency. No group has claimed responsibility for the killing of Samad, a supporter of prime minister Sheikh Hasina's secular Awami League party. Bangladeshi police suspect Mr Samad was targeted for his outspoken atheism and for supporting capital punishment for war crimes committed during the independence war against Pakistan in 1971. Mr Hasina's government set up special tribunals to try war crimes cases, including against senior leaders of an opposition, Islamist party. Mr Hasina's government has accused the opposition of supporting religious radicals it blames for the attacks on bloggers, minority Shias, Christians and foreigners. Some of the attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group, but the government dismisses those claims and says the Sunni extremist group has no presence in the country. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. Ombudsman of the Republic of Armenia Arman Tatoyan had a working meeting with head of the EU delegation to Armenia, Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary Pyotr Svitalsky. Representative of the office Andrea Khalupova was also present at the meeting; Armenpress was informed by the Ombudsmans office. Issues related to the strengthening of the legislative and practical guarantees of human rights, and development of the capacity of the Ombudsmans staff, in particular in regional units, were discussed during the meeting. Ambassador Svitalsky stressed the importance of the Human Rights Defenders role in the context of assuring freedom and rights, and expressed willingness to support bilateral cooperation projects. Arman Tatoyan, stressing the role of the EU delegation in strengthening the capacities of the Ombudsmans office, reassured his readiness to expand the field of cooperation and implement bilateral projects. I refer to the article headlined 'Civil Service lifts embargo on recruitment and promotion', which was published in your newspaper on April 7. Specifically, I wish to correct the factually inaccurate statement: "There were initial fears that the VES (voluntary exit scheme) could result in the shedding of 20,000 jobs. That figure appears to come out at considerably less, resting at just under the 3,000 mark." For the avoidance of any doubt, the 20,000 job figure related to an estimate of the reduction in jobs across the Northern Ireland public sector as a whole, of which the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) is only one part. The NICS, which accounts for approximately 15% of the employees of the Northern Ireland public sector, will, in fact, reduce its headcount by 2,990 via its own voluntary exit scheme, which is now closed to further offers. It is, therefore, misleading for the Belfast Telegraph to compare the 20,000 and 3,000 figures in the manner it does in the article. The article is also selective in quoting from Dr Malcolm McKibbin's communique. Critically, that communique also made it clear that, in lifting the embargo, the NICS would continue to control recruitment and promotion to ensure the pay bill savings achieved via the voluntary exit scheme would not be eroded. COLIN LEWIS Deputy secretary, Department of Finance & Personnel Like many other Belfast citizens, I was terribly disappointed that President Michael D Higgins had withdrawn from the civic event at Belfast City Hall commemorating the Easter Rising. Apparently, his decision was motivated by so-called "democratic" unionists, who declined invitations to the event. In that light, advisers felt his attendance would be controversial. Might I offer a piece of advice to President Higgins? Bowing to intolerance is not the way to build an inclusive society. Did those well-paid advisers even consider the feelings of the people of Belfast who regard Michael D Higgins as their president? Those same people would have been delighted to have seen him at Belfast City Hall. Belfast contributed in no small part to the Easter Rising. Charlie Monahan, from Short Strand, was the first volunteer to die in Easter Week. Two of the seven signatories, James Connolly and Sean Mac Diarmada, had strong connections. Perhaps, in this centennial year, it is time the government in Dublin started to acknowledge the responsibility and, indeed, the debt of gratitude it has to Irish citizens in the north, rather than kowtowing to the ungraceful bluster of the naysayers who claim allegiance to another state? EDDIE WHYTE Sandefjord, Norway I am writing in relation to articles about Campbell College in your paper on March 24, page one ("Top Belfast grammar is damned by inspectors") and page five ("Campbell College needs outside help to improve standards, critical inspection finds"). Both stories were inaccurate. This is disappointing, given the contact with your paper ahead of the articles being published. The ETI provided a response, setting out the findings of the report. In addition, the inspection report is in the public domain. It is concerning that the Belfast Telegraph could publish a story that was so misleading, inaccurate and devoid of journalistic standards. I would ask the Belfast Telegraph to reflect on the coverage of school inspections and the adverse impact misleading coverage can have. The ETI's focus is to promote improvement and to encourage schools to find ways to address any areas for improvement. NOELLE BUICK Chief inspector, Education and Training Inspectorate Britain is a small island close to the coast of Europe. No referendum can change that. For centuries, Britain has striven to ensure that it is able to influence events in Europe. This is why the Duke of Wellington, as he became, fought in Spain and at Waterloo. It is why thousands died at The Somme and Ypres and on the beaches of Normandy. British statesmen have understood for centuries that Britain disengages from the rest of Europe at its peril. Britain has been - and will continue to be - profoundly affected by Continental Europe, however the vote goes. Within the European Union, Britain can influence decision-making. Outside, its voice and concerns can - and probably will - be ignored, despite the fact that Britain would be seriously affected by decisions made by the member states. Thousands of men have died so that our country's values would shape Europe. Walking away from the European Union would be a betrayal of generations of statesmen and servicemen. To opt for isolation is a recipe for impotence on the European and world stage. AP MILROY By email YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in Nagorno Karabakh during the telephone conversation with the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazerbayev and presented him the results of his telephone conversation with the authorities of Armenia and Azerbaijan. As Armenpress reports citing the official webpage of the Kremlin, the President of Russia informed Nazarbayev about the intermediate efforts by the Russian side, including also the efforts of the Prime Minister, Foreign and Defense Ministers of the Russian Federation. They also discussed the schedule of the meetings that are going to be held at the highest levels of the Eurasian Economic Union. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. Parliamentary factions of Armenia have different positions on the issue of possible deployment of peacekeepers in the conflict zone of Nagorno Karabakh. Armenpress reports in an interview with reporters head of ARF (Dashnaktsutyun) faction Armen Rustamyan announced that as long as the Armenian troops are capable of controlling the situation, there is no need to deploy peacekeepers. As long as we are able to keep control, and I am convinced that we can do that, there is no need to do that. It, of course, can be in the interest of some countries, and I do not rule out that such a plan will be discussed, as, in any case, we must take into account that a new reality has occurred to which the international community must adequately respond. We are working in that direction, the MP mentioned. Head of Prosperous Armenia party faction Naira Zohrabyan said that the issue of peacekeepers as part of the comprehensive package of principles for the conflict settlement has periodically been discussed, but their political force has no concrete position on that as for now. The position of the Prosperous Armenia party is not clear yet, it needs discussions, as there are some real questions such as who are the peacekeepers and which country do they represent? As I have no detailed information of the negotiation process, I cannot give a precise answer, the MP said. Head of ANC (Armenian National Congress) faction Levon Zurabyan mentioned that they fully support the idea of deploying peacekeepers. If there is settlement, there must be peacekeepers as a guarantee of non-resumption of military operations. According to the settlement principles, if Armenian troops, in this case the Defense Army, abandons the positions, there will be formed a vacuum which will either be filled by Azerbaijani troops or remain empty, which will create an opportunity for Azerbaijan to resume aggression, the MP mentioned. As refers to the issue of Turkish involvement in that process in some way, Levon Zurabyan stated that since the presidency of Levon Ter-Petrosyan they have said that Turkey cannot become part of those peacekeeping troops for the simple reason that it is a party of the conflict. Turkey expressed solidarity with Azerbaijan, even launched hostilities by blockading Armenia. This factor is enough to exclude its participation not only in the negotiation process, but also the peacekeeping troops, head of ANC faction added. Head of RPA (Republican Party of Armenia) faction Vahram Baghdasaryan mentioned that the Armenian side has never applied for deployment of peacekeeping units, but has not said that it is against that mechanism of settlement. ein Google-Unternehmen Google-Dienste anzubieten und zu betreiben Ausfalle zu prufen und Manahmen gegen Spam, Betrug und Missbrauch zu ergreifen Daten zu Zielgruppeninteraktionen und Websitestatistiken zu erheben. 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Sofern relevant, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auerdem, um Inhalte und Werbung altersgerecht zu gestalten. Wir verwenden Cookies und Daten, umWenn Sie Alle akzeptieren auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auch, umWahlen Sie Weitere Optionen aus, um sich zusatzliche Informationen anzusehen, einschlielich Details zum Verwalten Ihrer Datenschutzeinstellungen. Sie konnen auch jederzeit g.co/privacytools besuchen. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The Government of Nagorno Karabakh supports and assists civilians who were evacuated during the military operations. As Armenpress reports, this was announced by Artak Beglaryan, Press Secretary of the Prime Minister of Nagorno Karabakh. Necessary assistance is provided as needed. In particular, dozens of families were provided with shelter, food is being provided. Besides, in one of Stepanakerts restaurants, free food is being prepared for the evacuated. The Operative Center is providing clothing and other assistance to the ones in need. I express gratitude to everyone for their love and devotion to Artsakh. I am happy to see that helping one another is a characteristic among Armenians. Thanks to everyone for their support. I will inform about the activities of the Operative Center, for you to be sure that every assistance sent to Artsakh is delivered to its goal, he said. Media Advisory, April 7, 2016 Contacts: Katie Davis, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 560-2414, kdavis@biologicaldiversity.org Sandy Bahr, Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter, (602) 999-5790 Mike Quigley, The Wilderness Society, (520) 334-8741, mike_quigley@tws.org Film Screening Celebrates Grand Canyon, Highlights Need for National Monument Havasupai Tribal Councilwoman Carletta Tilousi to Open Event at FilmBar PHOENIX Three original films that capture the diverse personal, cultural, recreational and biological values of the greater Grand Canyon region will be shown at FilmBar in Phoenix on Thursday. Carletta Tilousi, councilwoman with the Havasupai Tribe, will discuss the long-term efforts to protect the region from uranium mining and her support of the proposal. The films view the greater Grand Canyon region through the eyes of adventurers, tribal leaders, athletes, veterans, scientists and artists who explore, train, conduct research and live in this iconic landscape. The films showcase the monumental beauty of the canyon and the conservation legacy of past generations, and they highlight the need to permanently protect the areas water sources, wildlife and heritage. Films will be shown starting at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 14, at FilmBar. Martins Boat, a film by Peter McBride: A celebration of the life and activism of Martin Litton told through the story of a dorys maiden voyage down the Colorado River. Film will run approximately 24 minutes. The Land We Defend, a film by Ian Shive: A story of seven military veterans who were strangers before connecting in the wilderness of the Grand Canyon region. Film will run approximately 8 minutes. North Rim Notes, a film by Ed George: A stunning showcase of the landscapes of the greater Grand Canyon and the people who have worked, studied and lived in the Grand Canyon who support the proposed national monument. Film will run approximately 14 minutes. Interviews and film clips Councilwoman Tilousi and campaign supporters working for the designation of the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument will be available for comment. Film trailers, clips and still photos are available upon request. Background The culmination of more than a decade of effort by local Arizona communities to protect the culture and environment of the greater Grand Canyon region, the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument proposal presents a clear path toward more inclusive and ecologically sound management of Americas public lands surrounding Grand Canyon National Park. In November Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources, introduced legislation that provides the framework for this national monument proposal. Support for the proposal also comes from local tribal nations and communities, local elected officials, and a broad range of recreation, business and conservation interests across the state. In light of congressional inaction, these groups along with people across the country, have called on President Barack Obama to take action to protect the greater Grand Canyon region from toxic uranium mining and to ensure a sustainable future for the people of northern Arizona by using his authority under the Antiquities Act to designate this national monument during his remaining year in office. Scientists from Penn Medicine and other institutions unlock a mystery about 'long non-coding RNAs'. A new genetic clue discovered by a team co-led by a researcher at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is shedding light on the functions of the mysterious "long non-coding RNAs" (lncRNAs). These molecules are transcribed from genes and are often abundant in cells, yet they do not code for proteins. Their functions have been almost entirely unknown--and in recent years have attracted much research and debate. Reporting in the journal Molecular Cell, the scientists determined that one prominent lncRNA may be a "red herring," with no evident biological role to play--whereas the DNA from which it originates does perform an important function, as an "enhancer" that stimulates the expression of an important protein-coding gene nearby. "An implication of this finding is that many lncRNA-producing regions of DNA may not function through their lncRNA products at all, but only through the DNA itself," Vikram R. Paralkar, MD an instructor in the division of Hematology/Oncology at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, and first author of the study, said. The discovery underscores the importance of non-protein-coding DNA in biology, and the importance of exploring its functions. Although a popular view still has it that DNA is transcribed into RNA, and the RNA is usually translated into protein, scientists recently have learned that protein-coding DNA makes up less than two percent of the mammalian genome--and is vastly outnumbered by non-protein-coding DNA. Some non-protein-coding genes produce small RNA molecules, and many of these have known functions, often in regulating other genes or RNAs. But thousands of our genes produce lncRNAs--defined as being at least 200 nucleotides in length--and their functions remain poorly understood. In a study published in 2014, Paralkar and colleagues identified over a thousand distinct lncRNAs in mouse and human blood cells. Most had never been described before. But many turned out to originate from areas of the genome containing known or suspected enhancers--small regions of DNA where transcription factor molecules gather, to stimulate the transcription of nearby genes. In the new study, Paralkar and colleagues, including senior author Mitchell J. Weiss, MD, of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, and researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, examined the possible enhancer function associated with one of these mystery lncRNAs, a product of a mouse gene called Lockd. The Lockd RNA product is particularly abundant in mouse red blood cells and some other cell types. One possibility is that this lncRNA has some undiscovered function in cells. Another possibility is that the Lockd DNA itself has some function, while the RNA transcript is without function--a genomic "red herring." Lockd's transcription-starting "promoter" region contains binding sites for multiple transcription factors, and it lies immediately downstream, on the mouse genome, to Cdkn1b, a gene whose protein product plays a key role in regulating cell division. To investigate the functions of Lockd, Paralkar and colleagues used an advanced gene-editing technique to delete the Lockd DNA from a mouse blood cell line. "When we did this, the expression of Cdkn1b was reduced by 70 percent," Paralkar said. Next, the researchers used a different technique to block the transcription of Lockd RNA while leaving the Lockd DNA intact. The Cdkn1b expression was not affected. "In other words, getting rid of the RNA transcript doesn't make a difference, but getting rid of the DNA does make a difference," Paralkar said. The researchers found strong evidence that in the twisted, looping, double-helix structure of the genome, the promoter end of Lockd DNA comes into direct physical contact with the promoter end of its neighbor Cdkn1b, and in that way acts as an enhancer to stimulate Cdkn1b's transcription. Paralkar acknowledged that the Lockd RNA may one day be found to have some other function. "It's impossible to prove absolutely that it has no function--but it seems at least that it has no obvious function in regulating its neighbor Cdkn1b," he said. He emphasized, however, that in determining the function of non-coding DNA and RNA, both DNA-deletion and RNA-blocking experiments--as in this study--are needed to distinguish the function of DNA from its RNA product. "One has to decouple the transcript from the DNA," Paralkar said. "Future studies of lncRNA function should adhere to that requirement." He added that the discovery of this enhancer function for one example of a lncRNA gene points to the possibility that this is a broadly used mechanism in the genome, found in non-coding and perhaps even some protein-coding genes. Indeed, enhancers are theorized to be one of the key genomic features that distinguishes species such as mice and humans--which share nearly all their protein-coding genes, but relatively few of their enhancers and lncRNA-coding genes. "The fact that mice and humans are so different may be due largely to the fact that their genes are being regulated so differently by enhancers, some of which produce RNA molecules that we detect as lncRNAs," Paralkar said. Source: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Race and gender diversity is good business sense; so says Michelle Atagana, Google SA's head of communications and public affairs. The former Memeburner was asked to share her views on the role of race and gender diversity within the tech sector to the crowd of entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts at the much anticipated Net Prophet conference that took place in Cape Town yesterday. Image via Memeburn But how does one approach a topic of such mammoth societal relevance and ensure that the audience leaves affected by the message? Atagana did it by serving up a reality check and some very doable practical solutions. Diversity barriers Atagana pointed out a harsh South African reality: entrepreneurship is not viable for young black people. The black tax refers to the duty of the first qualified in a black family to support their extended family members if they happen to land a job. This responsibility, more often than not, leads young graduates to opt for the corporate job inclusive of employee benefits instead of an entrepreneurial venture. A business is nothing without its people and a willingness to understand them can go a long way. Another obstacle to technological diversity is the limited access to it. Atagana is passionate about barriers to technology being removed. Data is expensive and people are data conscious. Technological access is a right, not a privilege technology can change lives, she exclaimed. Practical steps For diversity to move from a pie-in-the-sky ideal to a transformative reality, businesses need to make practical changes from the ground up. Atagana offers the following practical steps to encourage diversity in business. Be honest: Be honest that South Africa is a young country in that it has a young democracy. Be honest about race and gender and engage in discussions surrounding it. Silence does not bode well for success. Pay your interns: Paid internships balance privilege. A very small portion of the South African population has the kind of support system in place that allows them to work for free. A financial and familial support system is a privilege that not many have access to. Pay for lunch and transport at the very least. Bridge the language divide: Make an effort to understand the ideas of those for whom English is not the mother tongue. Do not allow creative entrepreneurial ideas to go ignored due to a language barrier. Hire humans: Recruitment requirements often dictate the hiring of employees based on certain demographics - two women, one black man, a UCT graduate, etc. Adapt recruitment to focus on human qualities, not necessarily numbers. Diverse businesses are profitable, with Atagana reporting that companies with a racially diverse leadership are 35% more successful. Businesses need to be cognisant of the challenges facing the South African workforce and then implement actionable steps to promote equality. Sometimes its a matter of making a small move to bring about big change. Iconic chutney brand works with packaging experts, Just Design, to launch new flavours and range extensions Mrs Balls is a household name in South Africa with a long-standing heritage as one of the countrys big icon brands. Chutney is an integral part of local culture and Mrs Balls has earned a place in the hearts and kitchens of SA cooks. Recently, to keep up to date with South African flavour trends, the much-loved brand extended its flavour portfolio by adding three new variants to their range, as well as a Love Local heritage label exclusively for Woolworths. Because this is the first time that the brand is actively extending their flavour portfolio beyond dialing up taste cues like hot and experimenting with the norms of chutney, they sought the help of seasoned innovation and brand specialists, Just Design. The challenge for the design team was to remain true to the heritage of the brand, whilst still considering the retail space, shelf standout and category cues. The three new flavours combine local and international palette preferences: Jalapeno, Chakalaka and Sweet Chilli. Mrs Balls has always appealed to LSM 8-10 traditionalists with the launch of these new flavours, the brand is expanding its market to more mainstream palettes and a wider audience. The innovation is not only an exciting and unique dip into the taste of South Africans, but it also starts to promote the use of chutney in new and unexpected ways thus changing consumer behavior and attitudes towards chutney. What has traditionally been perceived primarily as a condiment can now be used in salads, as dips, with cheeses, in bastings and marinades the possibilities are endless. The chutneys are also Halaal and Kosher. With the considered approach balancing established and new, Just Design ensured that the flavours and limited edition are in keeping with the hallmarks of the brand, each one still exuding premium quality and heritage. The new flavours are on sale in most major retail outlets and the limited edition has been available in Woolworths stores since mid-March 2016. About Mrs Balls: Based on a generations-old secret family recipe, Mrs H.S. Ball's Chutney was started by Amelia Ball at the start of the last century, made on a small scale and either given as gifts to friends or sold at church bazaars and grew rapidly through popular demand. So popular became its wholesome, piquant and fruity flavour that the Ball kitchen was transformed into a makeshift production line. As demand continued to soar, Amelia and Herbert sought the assistance of Cape Town businessman Fred Metter, who procured both the octagonal jar and the oval label with which today's chutney lovers are so familiar with. A Woodstock factory was opened in 1917, and as exports to Great Britain increased, an even bigger facility was later opened in Diep River. Over the years Mrs Balls has formed part of Unilever foods and in April 2013, Mrs Balls became a wholly owned subsidiary of Tiger Consumer Brands Limited. More information available at: http://www.tigerbrands.com/ About Just Design For fifteen years, Just Design has proven their creative excellence, respect for budget and timelines, and technical ability with rollouts into major international FMCG brands with over 200 SKUs. With a national footprint and accounts across Africa, Middle East and Europe, they represent blue-chip clients and global brands, and are one of the top 3 packaging design agencies in South Africa. For further information, please contact: Vanessa Bosman az.oc.ngisedtsuj@assenav +27 (0) 11 234 4249 Johnson & Johnson has launched its global public health (GPH) strategy, aimed at harnessing the company's expertise and resources to innovate and collaborate in finding solutions for public health issues, especially those plaguing Africa. Johnson & Johnson's new global public health innovation space in Cape Town The initial stages of the strategy starts with a new site located in Cape Town, and will focus on three core areas: HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and maternal, newborn and child health. The company plans to expand its focus areas to address other unmet global health needs and its geographic reach. A privilege and a responsibility Paul Stoffels, scientific officer, Johnson & Johnson believes that corporates in the scientific field should regard providing public healthcare solutions as both a privilege and a responsibility. By directly engaging with and empowering researchers and the healthcare community across South Africa, we will be better able to direct our resources and advance innovations that can lead to greater impact. We think this can work anywhere in the world, but our urgency right now has to be in Africa because of the patients needs. One pill a day Dr Stoffels started his career in Rwanda at the height of the HIV epidemic, with its complex ARV regimen. At the time he found it hard to believe when a colleague envisaged that the disease could be managed by one pill a day. Now, 25 years later, an HIV+ person in the western world has a normal life expectancy minus two years, he explains. A melting pot of ideas He points out that the company is ready to make its know-how available and to create an environment where people can work together to find affordable solutions in its incubation space, JLabs. We are looking at different options in the mobile and tech space, we dont want to own the ideas, but rather create a vibrant open house with a diversity of thinking. Im extremely optimist. Most innovations take 20 years to get from the laboratory to the market, so we need to identify areas of research and start working, Dr Stoffels says. He cites an example: Why do you think we could move so quickly with the Ebola outbreak. It all started with 9/11 when the American government perceived the virus as a potential terrorist threat and began working on a vaccine. Yet, look at Zika, it was not seen as a risk and so no research has been done on it. The projects Expanding R&D skills and capacity among African scientists Janssen Pharmaceutica is collaborating with the University of Cape Towns Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D), which is pioneering world-class drug development in Africa. By helping to expand critical research and development skills and capacity, the collaboration supports H3Ds vision of discovering and developing innovative medicines for unmet medical needs on the African continent and beyond. Cultivating Africas innovation through health technology hubs Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS teams will provide local incubators ongoing mentoring support to foster the growth of the community of entrepreneurs developing new health ventures in the region. The engagement will follow the model used by Johnson & Johnson Innovation to provide R&D, product development, and commercialisation, legal and investment guidance to entrepreneurs and start-ups so that they may focus on achieving scientific advances. Stemming the tide of HIV in adolescent girls South Africa is among the countries benefitting from the US Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)s DREAMS Partnership, which Johnson & Johnson is supporting through Janssen Pharmaceutica. The company will provide in-country consumer insights, expertise and financial resources in South Africa and nine other sub-Saharan countries to support a suite of programmess focused on empowering adolescent girls, ensuring improved access to treatment and prevention options, and creating supporting communities. Johnson & Johnson has joined other major partners in the DREAMS Partnership including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Girl Effect. Pioneering partnership to improve health care delivery in low-income South African communities Partnering with Unjani Clinics to help strengthen health systems in vulnerable districts by investing to increase vital training and business resources to nurses as well as expanding access to affordable primary healthcare services. The initial investment focuses on 19 clinics, with plans to scale to 50 clinics nationwide by 2018. Pick n Pay says it will be a customer of GWK Farm Foods, the newest subsidiary of one of SA's largest agro-processing groups, which launched on Thursday a R400m wheat flour mill and pasta and biscuit factory in Modderrivier, near Kimberley. The supermarket chain said it would take about R45m, or 4,500 tonnes, of wheat products from the new facility over 12 months. The factory is the first producer of food-related fast-moving consumer goods in the Northern Cape. "I was stunned at the figures. It will be huge," Suzanne Ackerman-Berman, transformation director at Pick n Pay stores, and chairwoman of the Pick n Pay Foundation, said on Thursday. She said the products would initially be traded at Pick n Pays inland operations, and then be considered for sale nationally. The daughter of Pick n Pay founder Raymond Ackerman was among speakers at the launch including members of provincial and national government. Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Mzwandile Masina said at the launch on Thursday the new GWK factory dovetailed with the governments vision of boosting agro-processing within the National Development Plan. It would help alleviate poverty, and encourage black farmers to produce quality products to distribute through GWK, helping boost food security in SA. Tom Meintjes, GM of grain products for GWK Farm Foods, said the group had invested in significant research and development to keep farmers competitive. It was accredited to agri-sector training authorities and along with support for fertilisers and irrigation, helped shareholders to access appropriate market value chains. "A lot of black farmers are already shareholders in our business," he said. The GWK group turned over R8bn last year, making R164m in profits, part of which it redeems to shareholders over a period of years. It produces meats, and specialty products including pecan nuts, food oils, livestock feed, wine, and potatoes, while providing services such as food storage, processing, distribution, and financing. It also provides fuels and conducts livestock auctions. Products made at the new factory include spaghetti, penne, macaroni, and white and brown bread, and cake flours for retail and bulk delivery. The facility produces about 30 tonnes of biscuits a day. The group employs about 2,000 people across offices in SA and supplies farm inputs to fertiliser companies, such as Omnia. Tru-Cape Fruit Marketing, the marketer of South African apples and pears, and supplier of Abate Fetel pears, is investing in a varietal-specific promotion to drive consumer awareness of Abate Fetel and sales at retail level in April 2016. With television spots on DStv, ETV, SABC 1, 2 and 3 in two bursts, its television commercial will have a sting encouraging engagement via SMS, which, in turn, drives the competition mechanics. Tru-Capes marketing director, Conrad Fick, explained: Were delivering our Takeaways from Nature message to consumers to increase foot traffic into stores with a text message that dovetails with the in-store tastings in 34 outlets around the country and using Facebook for this promotion as an engagement tool. A challenge for Tru-Cape, which sells Abate Fetel into selected grocers, is to tailor-make a promotional campaign that will be relevant not only for the stores target markets, but also to avoid consumer confusion around the promotion. Take a selfie Were inviting Tru-Cape customers to visit one of the 34 participating outlets, the details of which are on the Tru-Cape.com site, and to take a selfie at the tasting station and hashtag #AbateFetel, #storename. To enter, they must upload the picture onto the Tru-Cape Facebook page and #TruSnack. One winner, chosen at random, will be an iPad Air 2 with a Tru-Cape branded cover, richer, Fick explained. According to Fick, the second arm of the promotion is to engage with people who cant get to the tasting stations. Were capitalising on the trend of photographing your food and sharing it to your social media networks by inviting customers to purchase Abate Fetel pears and refer to Tru-Cape.com for recipe inspiration. Snap a picture and upload it along with the recipe to the Tru-Cape Facebook page with the hashtags #AbateFetel and #TruDish. One winner will also be selected, at random, to win an iPad Air 2 with a Tru-Cape branded cover. According to Fick, Tru-Cape invested below-the-line in information and recipe leaflets inserted into bags as well as point-of-purchase materials to complement in-store tastings. Tru-Capes MD, Roelf Pienaar, said that with each season that Abate Fetel is marketed, more and more consumers get to experience this versatile pear, which, unlike most other pears that need to be ripened at home, is good to eat fresh and crisp and is delicious as it ripens and the white flesh becomes juicy. People also seem to like that Abate Fetel is Italys favourite pear and one of the most ancient - it was cultivated by a French Monk, Abbe Fetel, in 1866. In the first 2016 issue of 'Strategic Marketing Africa', the quarterly journal of the African Marketing Confederation, covers 'Seeking the great African middleclass'. The much-vaunted growth of the African middleclass has been a catalyst for attracting significant investment to the continent, particularly in consumer-based industries. However, in the light of recent concerns raised by a number of experts, is the size of the continents middleclass turning out to be a case of miscalculation and over-optimism? Africas story of a middleclass rising has caught the worlds imagination in recent years. Summing up a sea change in international attitudes towards Africa, the respected international business magazine The Economist proclaimed in 2011: After decades of slow growth, Africa has a real chance to follow in the footsteps of Asia. At that time, the idea of a rapidly expanding continental middleclass was grabbing the attention of international consumer goods producers and retailers. However, four years later, signs of growing disillusion are now coming to the fore, notes the journal. I am having serious doubts about the African middleclass growth miracle, the magazine quotes Graham OConnor, CEO of Spar Group, as saying. The supermarket chain is active in 11 sub-Saharan African countries. Nestle also has serious qualms. The Swiss-based FMCG giant made tangible its concerns in June 2015 when it announced a 15% reduction in workforce and a 50% reduction in its product line in its so-called Equatorial Africa region. In a frank media interview, Nestles CEO for the region, Cornel Krummenacher, conceded that growth had not lived up to the groups estimates made in 2008. We thought this would be the next Asia, but we have realised the middleclass here in the region is extremely small and it is not really growing, he said. The comments are in strong contrast to the optimistic conclusion reached by the African Development Bank in a research study published in April 2011 and entitled The Middle of the Pyramid: Dynamics of the Middleclass in Africa. The study came to a sensational and what has been a very influential conclusion: Africas middleclass is far bigger and growing faster than originally thought. Other topics under the spotlight in this issue of the magazine include a breakthrough for market researchers, who have finally developed an acceptable pan-African measure of socio-economic status, and an analysis of the challenges and opportunities facing tourism marketers on the continent. Strategic Marketing Africa is published four times a year in print and digital editions and is distributed via marketing bodies in the African Marketing Confederation member countries of Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Indian Ocean Islands. It is also available in selected airline lounges and embassies, and is mailed to a selected list of marketing industry professionals. SA's bulk export volumes fell 11.7% year on year (y/y) in March to 11-million tons (Mt), data from the Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) showed on Thursday. This was after a 15.7% y/y slump in February to 12.6-million tons (Mt) and a 12.2% y/y decline in January to 14.4 Mt following a 7.3% increase in 2015 to a record 168 Mt. Bulk exports out of Richards Bay, which is mostly coal, fell 2.1% y/y in March to 7.2 Mt after growing 8.2% in 2015 to 93 Mt. As Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) no longer releases operational statistics, economists are finding it more difficult to track economic performance in SA in a timeous manner. Despite the 40% plunge in the iron ore price in 2015, bulk exports out of Saldanha, which is mostly iron ore, increased 12.7% in 2015 to 63.4 Mt, but in March 2016 there was a 38% y/y plunge to 2.9 Mt. If Saldanha exports are excluded, then total bulk exports would have grown by 4.4% y/y in March. The 30% slump in the maize harvest last season compared with the previous season has also affected bulk exports with grain and sugar bulk exports from the other ports such as Durban down 19.3% in 2015 to 11.6 Mt, although there was a surprise 12.8% y/y rise in December, the first y/y increase since January 2015. In January 2016, bulk exports out of the other ports plunged 44% y/y to 742,140 tons but rose to 924,943 tons in February, which was still a 7.8% y/y decline. In March, there was a 27.5% y/y jump to 899,038 tons. Source: BDpro YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. USD exchange rate against the Armenian national currency is 483.48 AMD on April 8, which is an increase of 0.87 AMD against the previous day, Press service of the Central Bank of Armenia informed Armenpress. Euro exchange rate is 549.96 AMD increase by 0.12 AMD, British Pound exchange rate is 680.74 increase by 1.66 AMD. Russian ruble exchange rate is 7.18 AMD increase by 0.07 AMD. The prices for precious metals are as follows: the price for gold per gram is 19 thousand 307.5 AMD, silver- 236.58 AMD, and platinum 14 thousand 844.75 AMD. After all the fuss last year around the speed with which the energy minister was pushing through the country's nuclear programme, it seems that the procurement process have been quietly swept under the carpet for the time being. On or off? The Democratic Alliance (DA) was very quick to pronounce the programme mothballed after Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson informed a parliamentary committee that the April 1 deadline in the procurement process had not been met, and that no new date had been set. Of course, the department of energy was equally quick to deny this, saying in a statement that the process to procure had been delayed for more consultations but had not stalled. There is a consultation process with key stakeholders that the department of energy has undertaken before issuing the request for proposals (RFP). This consultation process has not yet been concluded and the RFP will be issued as soon as this process is concluded. The process is continuing and should not be rushed, it said in a statement. Not a popular choice Besides the fact that the proposed six nuclear power stations would come with a price tag of R1trn, a number of interest groups, including the official opposition, voiced concerns about where the money was going to come from. There were also rumblings about the less-than-transparent way in which a Russian and Chinese service providers were being courted. Questions were also raised about how realistic providing 9,6gW of nuclear power by 2030 is, given the continuous delays in getting the coal-fired station, Medupi, up and running. On the other hand, the renewable energy procurement process has worked extremely well, with all projects being delivered on time. Begging the questions why renewables werent being considered as a serious contender to nuclear power. Then theres also the concerns about safety following the Fukushima disaster a few years ago. Eskom scrambling for solutions Cash-strapped power utility Eskom, which relies heavily on coal for electricity generation, is scrambling to keep the lights on and raise the capital needed to build new coal-fired units and maintain its existing fleet of plants. Anyone who's travelled abroad knows that you usually return with a pocketful of change in the currency of the country you've visited. Banks arent keen to exchange it and the fees involved invariably cost more than the value of the coins and notes, so it usually ends up in the back of a drawer somewhere or given to the kids as play-play money. Jeff Paterson with Richard Branson after winning the Pitch to Rich competition Two local lads have solved this conundrum with a fintech idea that converts unwanted change into the currency of your choice. A bright idea Jeff Paterson and Oliver du Toit are the brains behind Fourex. a kiosk where mixed coins and notes are simply dumped in the slot, and the machine uses its high-speed technology to identify, evaluate and exchange each and every coin or note. The kiosks accept coins and notes from over 150 currencies, as well as money from the old European currencies. (Deutschmarks, pesetas and schillings). Local UK coins can also be converted into cash. You can choose to exchange your money directly into either pounds, euros or dollars. Pitch to Rich winner The idea was so innovative that it caught the eye of maverick millionaire, Richard Branson, who helped the duo get their project off the ground through his Pitch to Rich 2015 competition, which Fourex won. Paterson answers a few questions about their awesome idea. Tell us a bit about your background? Paterson: Both Oliver and I worked in the construction industry for most of our lives. We met in the Middle East when we were building million dollar projects for Etihad Airways. Both of us were born in Joburg. How did you come up with the concept and how long has it been in development? Paterson: One of the perks of working for an airline is the discounted flights, and it wasnt long before I had built up a jar of money, left over from all my overseas trips. I took my these notes and coins to a bureau de change, which would not exchange the coins, and wanted to charge me a terrible exchange rate on top of a fee per currency to exchange the notes. The fees they were proposing to exchange notes were often more than the value of the note itself. Our theory was that everybody who travels must face the same problem, so there must be billions of rands in unused currency lying around. It took us nearly five years to develop the technology, build the database, and secure the contracts to place the machines. Where are you now in terms of getting the kiosk into the market? Paterson; Our service appeals to almost everybody, so we had to be visible to as many people as possible. The London Underground sells over 1,2bn tickets a year so this would be the ideal place for our machines. After two years of negotiating, we finally managed to secure a contract with London Underground to place our machines into their stations. We currently have machines in Kings Cross, Blackfriars and London Bridge stations, and have an aggressive roll out, with over 400 machines planned within two years. We are negotiating further contracts with other rail companies and supermarket chains. Tell us about winning Pitch to Rich? Paterson: Winning Pitch to Rich transformed our business. Fourex has the potential to revolutionise an industry, and fills a definite need. Having Richard Branson, the worlds greatest entrepreneur, give us the stamp of approval validated that, and the exposure from winning Pitch to Rich has opened so many doors. Since winning the competition, we raised investment from a South African capital fund which will help us roll out across the UK, and we continue to get unbelievable support from the team at Virgin. A small example is the opportunity to place our machines into the Virgin train network, which gives us great locations outside of central London. You've also won a few other awards, tell us about them? We have been nominated as one of Europes top 100 fintech firms for 2016, as well as one of the UKs top 50 disruptive firms. Where to from here? Paterson: We are looking to change an industry. We believe that by solving a problem and offering any kind of exchange, at the best possible exchange rates without any hidden fees, we have the capacity to disrupt the market. By digitising an industry, we reduce costs, rely on less staff, and are able to offer a better service to our customers. When can we expect Fourex in South Africa? Paterson: We are talking to a few interested parties in South Africa at the moment. Hopefully early in 2017. Citrus growers in SA face losses of about R50m after voluntarily suspending all exports of organic lemons to the European Union (EU) due the risk of citrus black spot (CBS). GregMontani via pixabay However, despite being highly priced, organic lemons make up a small portion of citrus production. While acknowledging the losses, farmers said they were choosing to view the suspension of exports to EU as a way to help safeguard a key market. Growers said on Thursday that they would withdraw all their organic lemon exports to the EU in 2016. Citrus growers have had a difficult two years after the EU imposed a ban on South African imports in November 2013 because of citrus black spot. The ban was lifted in January 2014. Citrus black spot, which affects some South African produce, causes blemishes on the fruit's peel. The citrus industry generates R9bn from global exports, R4bn of which comes from the EU. This represents 40% of SA's citrus exports. Decision lends credibility to industry's risk management system Citrus growers felt that while the latest decision to suspend exports of organic lemons to the EU would affect some farmers, it would also serve to strengthen and improve the credibility of the industry's risk management system that was put in place to mitigate the risk of citrus black spot. "It will have an impact on those growers. It could be a sacrifice of about R50m... on their side and for them to voluntarily do this is very commendable," Citrus Growers Association EU envoy Deon Joubert said. Citrus Growers Association CEO Justin Chadwick said the action by lemon growers should be commended as it showed responsibility. It also showed ongoing efforts to mitigate the perceived risk of citrus black spot spreading to the EU. "This highlights the extreme measures being taken by the South African farmers in order to maintain uninterrupted market access for other citrus varieties, despite an ongoing scientific dispute about the real risk of CBS infection in the EU," said Chadwick. Farmers growing organic products did not use chemicals, so it was more difficult to control environmental effects, said Chadwick. Joubert said farmers could explore opportunities in other regions, including the Middle East and Russia, although finding alternative markets was difficult. Source: BDpro Eastern Cape farmers are being thrown a lifeline, with the government preparing to clinch a deal that will soon open the gates of Gauteng, giving struggling producers access to wider and lucrative markets. The Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform is to sign a memorandum of agreement which would make the Eastern Cape one of Gauteng's biggest farm produce suppliers. Miroslav Liska via 123RF _livestock_farmers The provincial government is also establishing an Eastern Cape Beef Fund to boost 100 black beef farmers, giving them funding and the means to sell locally and globally. These were some of the plans announced by Rural Development and Agrarian Reform MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane in Bhisho yesterday. A drive to commercialise and transform the province's farming industry "Gauteng doesn't have land and it wants to have off-take agreements with our farmers to produce certain commodities [not yet determined]," Qoboshiyane said in an interview. "Our farmers will get money from this opportunity as they will sell their produce to Gauteng, which is focusing on being the agro-processing hub of the country." Delivering his policy speech, Qoboshiyane said the government was on a drive to commercialise and transform the province's farming industry by continuing to hunt for profitable markets with which local producers could partner. "The idea is to move from the mass distribution of livestock and funds with no clearly defined or visible results," he said. "Agriculture must create jobs in the province and we haven't done that with the old method, hence the strategic shift to commercialisation. "We need current commercial farmers to join this initiative to develop black farmers to be commercial farmers too. "There are more opportunities from such, which include logistics, insurance, packaging, processing," he said. Support for livestock farmers The department has set aside R30- million for the 2016-17 financial year to support livestock farmers. Qoboshiyane said the establishment of the Beef Fund would see 700 jobs created. "These farmers will be trained and given weaner calves that will be fattened and sold to domestic and export markets," he said. One of the farmers in line to benefit from the Beef Fund initiative, Laphum'ikwezi cooperative leader Nonzwakazi Jantjies, from Bedford, said they were excited about the department's plan to assist them. "This means we would be able to create more jobs for our communities," Jantjies said. "The department has been assisting us already with heifers and we sell locally. "It's good that there are more plans to make us grow in this industry." Support for the citrus industry Qoboshiyane said R4-million would be set aside this year to support the citrus industry and R1-million for deciduous fruit. Sundays River Valley Citrus Company director Hannes de Waal said it was encouraging to see the government prioritising agriculture, but they would have liked to see more funding allocated to citrus as it had growth potential. "I think we are still missing the point because citrus is the biggest job and wealth creator in our province," he said. "I am not saying other areas must be neglected. "More funding is needed to speed up the transformation and to grow citrus farming." Building a poultry network The department also plans to link the yet-to-be-operational Grahamstown poultry abattoir with the Rocklands farmers in Uitenhage to give them market access. "We have retailers interested in being involved in the abattoir, but we will not divulge their names for now," Qoboshiyane said. "We will also link them up with schools, link them with retailers to sell their produce." The abattoir had the potential to slaughter 2,000 chickens a day, he said. Agri-parks The department also planned to place the agri-parks under the Eastern Cape Rural Development Agency as it felt municipalities did not have the capacity to run the parks. The Eastern Cape would have six agri-parks in district municipalities, including at Sundays River, where farmers would have the opportunity to produce and sell their produce to the parks. "Our plan is to engage the national department and municipalities to agree that these agri-parks be managed and facilitated by the ECRDA following the success of the four Rural Enterprise Development hubs. "We can use existing expertise from our department and the ECRDA to drive these parks to have immediate results," Qoboshiyane said. The national department was allocated R6-billion over three years for the establishment of agri-parks. Each agri-park was to receive R45-million in funding for its operation. Drought relief Qoboshiyane said they had set aside R95-million this year for drought relief in the province. The money would be used to provide at least 6,000 tonnes of feed for livestock, to create 40km of fire belts next to farms and to refurbish 58 boreholes and windmills across the province. The department also has plans to provide 460 rainwater tanks to farmers and produce fodder on 2,050ha of land. Commercial farmers in the making Qoboshiyane also announced a plan to convert 150 farmers into commercial ones this year. This would include 50 wool producers, 50 beef producers and 50 crop producers." Additional reporting by Zine George Source: Herald Transnet Port Terminals has set up a task team to prepare its facilities for the seven million tonnes of grain that will be imported to compensate for a shortage triggered by SA's worst dry spell since 1992. Jovan Jaric via 123RF This will be the country's biggest grain import in seven years and it is expected that between next month and April next year, seven million tonnes of the grain, of which 3.8-million tonnes will be maize, will move through SA's ports. The country is usually a net exporter of maize, but drought has devastated the crop and led to a dire outlook on how much of the grain SA will produce this year. SA consumes 10.5-million tonnes of maize a year. Transnet committed to handling imports Devina Vijiam, a senior manager for strategic projects at Port Terminals, said yesterday the state owned entity was ready to process the seven million tonnes of grain and had set up a task team to assist. Vijiam was speaking to grain importers at a Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry trade and investment forum. "Transnet is committed to handle the entire over-the-border and domestic cargo through our facilities," she said. SA had previously imported one million tonnes of maize in 2007-08. Other grains that the country imports include wheat, soybean, rice, peanuts and sunflower. Some of the grain imports will move through the ports of Durban, Richards Bay, East London, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. Durban's Agri terminal is the country's largest grain terminal and handles about 1.4-million tonnes of grain a year. In addition to using its available silos and storage facilities at its ports, the state-owned entity has had to collaborate with inland silo owners for maize storage. Transnet Freight Rail gets ready Transnet Freight Rail had committed 3,284 wagons to transport domestic and over-the-border maize cargo, Vijiam said. "Recently, about 2,481 of these wagons have been put into the system... to make sure that we are ready when the imports arrive in the country next month," explained Vijiam. Transnet has committed volumes from customers. "Durban has 1.3-million tonnes committed, with indirect capacity in the region of 1.4-million tonnes based on the four-week dwell time of a vessel." January rains causes initial estimated to be revised Wandile Sihlobo, an economist at Grain SA, said it had been estimated initially that the country would have to import five million tonnes of maize, but this had been revised down to 3.8-million tonnes because of January's rain. "The rains experienced in January made some difference, as the areas on which maize is planted increased to 1.9-million hectares, from one million hectares." The total area on which the country's farmers have planted maize is 2.6-million hectares. Farmers expect a crop yield of 7.1-million tonnes for the 2016-17 marketing period. "We believe that Transnet will be able to handle the amount of grain needed in the country," Sihlobo said. "Just yesterday, they handled about 160,000 tonnes of grain, a sign that they will be able to manage what is required of them." Source: Business Day During the months of July to September, the national carrier of the United Arab Emirates, Etihad Airways, is introducing three additional passenger flights per week between Johannesburg and Abu Dhabi to cater for increased demand. Robert Frola via Wikimedia Commons Complementing the airlines existing daily service between the two cities, the new flights will be operated by a combination of Airbus A330-200 and Boeing 777 aircraft, offering a total of 2,200 additional seats in Business Class and 21,500 additional seats in Economy Class over the three-month period. These additional flights offer greater flexibility for the large numbers of guests travelling between the UAE and the GCC region, and South Africa over the summer period, said John Friel, Etihad Airways general manager, South Africa. They also provide our guests travelling from South Africa with greater access to a large number of popular holiday destinations across our global network, in Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, Australia and the USA. The new service will operate as per the schedule below (local time): The Minor Hotel Group has tabled an ambitious plan to operate 50 more hotels in Africa within the next five years. With high-end hotels planned for thriving cities including Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos and Abuja, the multi-million Rand plan will treble its current footprint. Royal Livingstone - Deck at sunset with zebras At the moment we have 25 hotels in Africa and we want to grow by 50, adding 10 a year for the next five years, said Sir Richard Hawkins, the Minor Hotel Groups regional operations director for Africa, operating out of their Johannesburg offices. The tactic will be to negotiate management deals with hotels of about 150 bedrooms, with the possibility of taking equity in them later. No fixed budget has been allocated, but with each management deal likely to cost about R225 million, its a potential investment of more than R11-billion in the next five years in Africa alone. Its not an open pocket of money but where there are opportunities we will go in, Hawkins said. Building presence in South Africa The group is keen to establish a presence in South Africa through business hotels in Johannesburg, business and leisure hotels in Cape Town, and leisure hotels along the Western Cape. That will build on the R679.5 million deal Minor Hotel Group struck with Sun International in 2014 when it opened an office in Johannesburg after buying a stake in eight Sun International properties. The group took over the hotels attached Sun casinos in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia, and rebranded them as Anantara and AVANI properties, which are two of the six brands owned by the company. The deal didnt cover South Africa, however, and Hawkins is anxious to fill that gap through management contracts with the owners of established hotels or newly built properties. We are looking for existing assets because we dont want to get involved in the construction, he said. He is currently negotiating for two business hotels in Ndola in Zambias copper belt, and with a small chain of hotels in Bulawayo, Harare and Victoria Falls. Africa poised for growth Hawkins believes Africas hospitality industry is poised for some unprecedented growth. Africa has the infrastructure, it has 1.2-billion people, its got the resources that the rest of the world wants, and an emerging middle class which has money and is willing to spend it. We want to be there to receive them, he says. But you have to pick your battles, he believes. If you are scared dont come to Africa, but we are not scared. We are Africans so we know Africa and we understand the risks of dealing with Africa. We are not going to go to the DRC, for instance, because its a difficult market, but we will go into Nigeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Morocco, Cameroon and we will come into South Africa. Anantara Medjumbe Island Minor Hotel Group already operates 146 hotels under six brands, including luxury Anantara resorts in the Far East, the Middle East, the Maldives and Mozambique; AVANI business hotels in Mozambique and the Far East; and the five star Per Aquum brand in Zanzibar, the Maldives and Dubai. Despite a huge investment in education over the last 20 years, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Equatorial Guinea, Lesotho and Libya are ahead of South Africa, according to a literacy survey carried out by the United Nations Development Programme. Many KwaZulu-Natal learners come from communities which do not have libraries and it is shown that access to libraries improves learner performance and increases their chances of success. Without proper resources there can be no equity in education, says Imraan Noorbhai, Standard Banks provincial head in KZN. With this in mind, Standard Bank KZN has embarked on an exciting project of providing mobile libraries to six deserving schools located in the vicinity of their major branches in KZN, namely Newcastle, Pietermaritzburg, Richards Bay, Durban/Westville, Phoenix/Umhlanga and Chatsworth/Pinetown regions. A literate, educated society is a safer, healthier and more prosperous society. So by promoting reading, writing, and other academic subjects it will lead the way in promoting prosperity through knowledge. It is envisaged that the introduction of these mobile libraries to the six previously disadvantaged schools will go a long way towards improving the literacy rate in our province, continues Noorbhai. Adequate reading material In September 2015, the minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, issued a call to all South Africans to make the country a reading nation. The Department of Basic Education launched the 'One Thousand School Libraries' campaign. One thousand libraries, reading corners or container libraries will be built or refurbished every year to ensure that by 2019 every school has access to adequate reading material, especially to encourage recreational reading. The launch of the Standard Bank 'Every Child Must Read' campaign was held at the banks regional office in Kingsmead Office Park recently. The Deputy Minister of the Department of Basic Education, Enver Surty, was in attendance. He praised Standard Bank for this initiative and urged all South Africans to come on board. "We need to give books as gifts, we need to read to our children and get them to read to us. This cannot be done in schools alone we need to read in our homes as well, said Surty. The roll-out of the libraries to the beneficiary schools will be coordinated and managed by Ahmed Motala of the New Africa Education Foundation, an NPO that has partnered with Standard Bank and the Department of Basic Education. On the final weekend you can register to vote in South Africa's 2016 municipal election, Facebook will run its first-ever voter registration campaign in Africa in partnership with the South African Electoral Commission. People over the age of 18 who log on to Facebook after noon on Saturday 9 April, will see a message at the top of their newsfeed which reminds them to register to vote. By clicking a link in the message, people will be directed to the Electoral Commission website, which will give people information about how to register to vote. Youll also be able to share with your friends that youve registered. The message will be rolled out over a 24-hour period to encourage people to register ahead of the elections in August. Past studies have found that voters who see more of their Facebook friends talking about voting are more likely to vote themselves. Rolling out the Voter Registration button is a small way that Facebook is helping to encourage people to take part in the democratic process. This year for the first time the Electoral Commissions Contact Centre is also responding to queries from voters posted on Facebook and other social media sites. Similar 'I'm a Voter' and Voter Registration buttons have been used in the United States during the last three US elections, the UK election, for the EU parliamentary elections and in the worlds largest democracy, India where the megaphone reached 31 million people and 4.3 million people shared that theyd voted. If your company is your body, then your brand is your face, both sensing and communicating. Your face not only tells the world who you are, but based on the cues it receives, informs your brain and body as to where you are. It works very much like a brand, which should be engaging both your internal organisation and the public with your business in deep, meaningful ways. Everything in a company environment stems from branding from internal culture to public face, which is why getting your brand right is so critical. And, because companies (along with the times) change, it's imperative to regularly revisit your branding. Just think of recent top-of-mind international rebrands such as Google, Airbnb and Lexmark. As businesses, we get so locked into what we do and how we do it that we often forget to ask ourselves why we do things and what our purpose is. And in some cases in which businesses have these answers, they are not translated to their clients and opportunities are missed for customers to have an engaged and meaningful relationship with your brand. Sometimes we are also too close to our own identity to aptly judge how well our brand represents us, which is kind of like living in an untidy house: It looks normal to you because you are used to it, but others see it as messy. In South Africa, we don't have a legacy of brand as a valuable asset. In many cases, companies have visual identities in the form of logos and colours that are somewhat distinctive, but this in itself is not a brand. So what is the difference between a visual identity and a brand? Visual identity refers to the visual elements that represent a business, like a logo. Brand is a larger expression and is more of a narrative, which tells people what your business stands for. It stands for the promise you make and the personality you convey. Of course, your visual identity needs to speak for your brand, but without the brand, you are presenting a half-baked version of yourself to the world, and even to your own employees. This can be detrimental. Eight important reasons why companies need strong brands: First and foremost, a brand is an internal rallying point that gives everyone in the organisation a cohesive personality it says this is who we are. This is very powerful, and creates a stronger team. Strong, consistent brands stand out and attract the right audiences. Brands increase loyalty customers become loyal to brands they can identify with emotionally. Good brands create perceptions of quality, the single most important contributor to a company's return on investment. A strong brand boosts confidence in the future earnings of a company. Price premiums are justified by strong brands. A powerful brand creates a halo effect, which motivates people to be more forgiving of inferior service (i.e. Blackberry). As the world changes, so do perceptions and feelings, and brands need to reflect these changes. Imagine if BP and Shell were still touting 'petrol' instead of 'environment'! How to make sure rebranding is effective The critical make or break for successful rebranding is that it must be approached from a strategic business perspective. Brand strategy must be in line with business strategy, and if you don't have a business strategy, that can be conceived before rebranding or as part of the rebranding strategy. Brand position must accurately reflect your business values. Part of this process is a comprehensive understanding of your audiences, as well as competition and changing trends within the industry. All this means engaging in proper and in-depth analysis. It's important that your brand differentiates itself from competitors. It also must be single-minded. The biggest mistake many brands make is in trying to be everything to everybody. Once a brand strategy is in place, be prepared to back it up with a strong implementation strategy for corporate communications, marketing and internal communications. Knowing when its time to rebrand If companies are unsure whether or not a rebrand is necessary, do an internal audit - a self-analysis with the management team to see if the current brand is relevant. The questions to ask are: Is your brand aligned with your business objectives? Do your current communications reflect who you are? What do people think of you? To make sure you're not suffering from an 'untidy house syndrome', go outside your bubble and ask customers for their input. If youre still unsure about a rebrand, consult with an agency that can offer professional brand strategy, and would be able to give you a credible audit on all aspects of your brand health. Once you've decided a rebranding is due, your brand agency, which should have extensive experience in aligning brand with business strategy, can begin the rebranding design. Beautiful logos that don't reflect a company's strategy are like bad tattoos. The other critical factor is collaboration. Rebranding should be an engaging and collaborative process for client and agency. It should have at its core a brand workshop, which will create a space where it's fun for clients to talk about their own business with creatives. The dynamic should be more of a gentle steering by the agency rather than an imposition of its views. For in the end, the client has to own the brand 100% in order for it be effective. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The Political Science Association of Armenia and the Specialized Doctoral Conferral Committee 056 of the Supreme Certifying Commission of the Republic of Armenia Political Science and International Relations in conjunction with the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the Ministry of Defense during the joint extended session held on April 6, discussing the situation following the large-scale hostilities launched by Azerbaijan along the Line of Contact of the Karabakh and Azerbaijani forces, adopted an Appeal to the UN Secretary General, the Acting Chairman of the UN Security Council, the Presidents of the United States, the Russian Federation, and the French Republic, the Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia. Armenpress introduces the full text of the Appeal bellow, presented by Doctor of Political Science, Professor, Major General Hayk Kotanjian, and President of the Political Science Association of Armenia and the Specialized Council 056 of the Supreme Certifying Commission of the Republic of Armenia. RESUMPTION OF LARGE-SCALE HOSTILITIES BY AZERBAIJAN AGAINST THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH REPUBLIC PREPARED BY: POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION OF ARMENIA POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SPECIALIZED DOCTORAL CONFERRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SUPREME CERTIFYING COMMISSION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES OF THE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE TO THE UN Secretary General, His Excellency MR. Ban Ki-moon TO THE ACTING CHAIRMAN OF THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL, Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations, His Excellency Ambassador Liu Jieyi TO THE PresidentS OF THE OSCE MINSK GROUP CO-chair states, their Excellencies Mr. Francois Hollande of the FRENCH Republic, Mr. Vladimir PUTIN of THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, AND Mr. Barack Obama of THE UNITED STATES To the speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, his excellency MR. Galust Sahakyan On 2 April 2016, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched a large-scale attack along the Karabakh-Azerbaijani Line of Contact bombarding border settlements. Once again, Azerbaijan has derailed the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair states to resolve the Karabakh conflict through peaceful negotiations. Azerbaijans main goal is to undermine the OSCE Minsk Groups mission, occupy Nagorno Karabakh, and commit genocide against its Armenian population. With the threats of a large-scale regional war Azerbaijan continues to disorient the international community and blackmail the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair states and UN Security Council Permanent Members, the United States, Russia, and France, by exerting pressure on Armenia. Azerbaijani side rejects the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs proposals on monitoring the ceasefire by use of technical and human professional resources, which is fraught with constant threat of the resumption of hostilities along Karabakh-Azerbaijani Line of Contact. Azerbaijan planned this resumption of hostilities concurrent with the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. As in the past, Azerbaijan once again escalated the conflict, as well as unleashed military actions on the Line of Contact during important international meetings and visits of foreign dignitaries to the region. For example, Azerbaijan initiated similar provocations on the eve of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clintons visit to Armenia in June 2012 (Azeris kill three more Karabakh soldiers, www.armenia.com.au/news/Armenia-News/English/11824/Azeris-kill-three-more-Karabakh-soldiers/350), as well as ceasefire violations before and after the meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Bern on 19 December 2015 (Border concerns: Sargsyan-Aliyev meeting brings no immediate tranquility in conflict zone, www.armenianow.com/karabakh/68860/armenia_karabakh_azerbaijan_reactions_commentaries_talks). Azerbaijan, rewriting history and distorting the essence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, accuses the Republic of Armenia of occupying Nagorno Karabakh. As Armenias President Serzh Sargsyan stressed in his presentation at Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government, those using the word occupation with regard to Karabakh should take into account the political fact that Karabakh itself was the victim of Azerbaijani occupation for over 70 years: on 5 July 1921, the illegitimate political body of the Bolshevik Party the Caucasus Bureau made an illegal decision, under pressure from Stalin, to annex the Armenian-populated Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan. This indeed was an occupation. (See the decision of the Caucasus Bureau " ": 1921 . . ("Historical prism". 1921. Bolshevik games around Karabakh), www.memo.ru/d/118764.html). In this context, it is necessary to briefly introduce the legal foundations for the proclamation of freedom of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. On 30 August 1991, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a Declaration on the restoration of the sovereignty of the Republic of Azerbaijan in violation of then-current USSR constitution and legislation. In response to this unlawful decision, on 2 September 1991, a resolution was adopted at the joint session of the Councils of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) and Shahumyan District on proclaiming the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (the Republic of Artsakh) on the territory of the NKAO AzSSR and Shahumyan District AzSSR according to international law and the principles of the 3 April 1990 USSR Law On the procedure of cessation of a Soviet Republic from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the then-operating Soviet legislation. ( " , " No 1410-1 3 1990 ." , ", 1990, No 15, - ; USSR Law "On the procedure for regulation of issues related to the secession of a Union Republic from the USSR" No 1410-1 of 3 April 1990, "Bulletin of the Congress of Peoples Deputies of the USSR, the Supreme Council of the USSR", 1990, No 15, Declaration on the Proclamation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic), www.nkr.am/ru/declaration/10/). On 18 October 1991, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan, continuing its illegal actions, adopted a Constitutional Act on Independence, thus declaring its decision to withdraw from the Soviet state-legal system, and legislatively established its refusal to coordinate, in future, the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh. On 23 November 1991, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan passed a law on the dissolution of the Nagono-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. In response to those illegal acts, on 10 December 1991, a referendum of independence was held in Nagorno Karabakh strictly meeting international standards and the USSR Law of 3 April 1991, and in the presence of international observers. The Azerbaijani minority of NKR was given the opportunity to take part in the referendum. But on Bakus intructions they declined that opportunity. ( - (Act on the results of the referendum of the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic), www.nkr.am/ru/referendum/42/ ). Subsequent events eliminated the imperative obligation of coordinating the results of the referendum with the USSR central bodies, since, on 21 December 1991, the Alma-Ata Declaration on dissolving the Soviet Union was signed. (- , -, 21 1991 . (The Declaration of Alma-Ata, 21 December, 1991), http://cis.minsk.by/page.php?id=178). Hence, the Referendum held on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh is legal, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic established as a result is legitimate, and the recognition of its independence is the key to the resolution of the conflict. Armenia, not calling into question the legality of the Referendum and showing its good will, agreed to accept the Madrid Principles as a basis for further negotiations in support of the Co-Chairs activity, along with the proposed statement on continuing additional procedures for the formulation of self-determination. (Referendum as a gesture af a good will: Peace and war scenarios for Karabakh http://www.harvard-bssp.org/static/files/390/Lyon%20University%20Yerevan%20INSS%20Regional%20Security%20South%20Caucasus%20Conference.pdf). In this regard, we consider it appropriate to accept the legality of the Referendum on declaring the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and the respective corresponding resolutions of Armenias agencies on the results of its legitimacy, and to develop and sign an agreement on comprehensive cooperation with NKR. Qualifying the large-scale hostilities launched by Azerbaijan as provocations to destroy the OSCE Minsk Group platform, we appeal to the UN Secretary General, the Acting Chairman of the UN Security Council, and the Heads of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair states, abstain from engaging in false equivalency between the aggressor and those defending themselves. So as to prevent the hazard of a large-scale regional war, the aggressive actions of Azerbaijan deserve clear-cut political assessments and punishment. It should be highlighted that Azerbaijans large-scale offensive against NKR never impeded the natural course of public and state life either in Armenia or Artsakh. State authorities and institutions, public organizations, and private enterprises continue to effectively perform their economic, financial, political-diplomatic obligations, loyal to their commitments before citizens and the international, governmental, and non-governmental institutions. In this regard, we underline the commitment of the Armenian sides to democracy, human rights, guaranteeing foreign and domestic investments for the further development of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Appreciating the efforts by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair states to reach a peaceful resolution to the conflict, we urge them to: use all the necessary means for stabilizing the situation and to not allow any provocations against peace in Nagorno Karabakh, urgently raise the effectiveness of the monitoring conducted along the Line of Contact by the OSCE and incorporate the appropriate mechanisms for investigating ceasefire violations with the possibility of sanctions against the violator, restore the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as a full party to the negotiations, as envisaged in the Document adopted by the OSCE Senior Council on March 31, 1995, recognize the independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as a key to the resolution of the conflict. Political Science Association of Armenia Political Science and International Relations Specialized Doctoral Conferral Committee Cinema Nouveau will screen 11 feature-length films from the 2016 European Film Festival in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban from 6-15 May 2016. These include the Oscar-winning documentary Amy, an intimate portrait of late British singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse. Festival director Katarina Hedren says, We wish to contribute to the ongoing story of Europe. This story is one of a diverse continent in an interconnected world, which seems to be spinning faster and not always in the right direction. Other offerings are the dramas Macondo (Austria), Body (Poland), Montanha (Portugal), Flowers (Spain), Something Must Break (Sweden) and Labyrinth of Lies (Germany). Also gracing the silver screen during the festival are the musical comedy Belgian Rhapsody (Belgium), biopic Chocolat (France) and documentaries Fire at Sea (Italy) and A Family Affair (the Netherlands). The European Film Festival is coordinated by the Goethe-Institut South Africa, hosted by Ster-Kinekor Cinema Nouveau, and organised in partnership with the European Union and 11 other European cultural agencies or embassies in South Africa. These are the General Representation of the Government of Flanders, the French Institute, the Italian Cultural Institute, the Camoes Institute, the British Council, and the Embassies of Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Norbert Spitz, director of the Goethe-Institut, on behalf of the European partners, says, Katarina Hedren has put together a selection of feature films and documentaries that allows us to discover unconventional, surprising and moving portraits of life in the multifaceted place that Europe is. Adds Lola Gallant, brand manager of Cinema Nouveau, adds, As the festival exhibitor, we are delighted to be partnering with the Goethe-Institut and its partners to host the third annual European Film Festival. As Cinema Nouveau, we pride ourselves on providing a platform to screen a wide variety of foreign-language films. We believe the eleven films, lined up for this years festival, which would otherwise not be accessible to local cinema audiences, are must-see content for any film lover. Bookings open on 15 April 2016, with tickets priced at R55 for more information, go to www.cinemanouveau.co.za. For more information and festival trailer, go to www.eurofilmfest.co.za. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The involvement of the members of ISIS in Azerbaijani army and their participation in Artsakh-Azerbaijani borders in April has become a matter of discussion and great concern in different international media sources. In Italian Spondasud.it website the analyst finds similarities between actions of Azerbaijani armed forces in Artsakh and actions done by ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Armenpress reports the Italian website stresses that beheading people or cutting their ears is typical of terrorists and the members of ISIS tend to boast about it In Ezdipress website, the cruel death of the soldier of Yezidi decent and the publication of the photos have awakened great contempt among yezidi users. In the comment section of the website there are hundreds of comments, where the readers draw parallels between Azerbaijan and ISIS, stressing that Azerbaijan is not that different from ISIS. Majority of users consider the actions of Azerbaijan military forces as war crimes. In the same website Azerbaijani users also took in part in the discussion, these users not only accept atrocities done by Azerbaijani soldiers, but also stress that everything is allowed during war. The fact that the members of ISIS are fighting in Karabakh, is also confirmed by the ISNA website. 100 Azerbaijani solders who are members of ISIS, have returned to their home country from Syria in order to participate in the war against NK, the swebite writes. ISNA writes that the members of ISIS, who are of Azerbaijani decent and whose number is near 100, have left Syria with the intention of participating in Karabakh War, are returning to their country through Turkey. In this context, the news provided by the Azerbaijan media are crucially important, that Turkish special subdivision have arrived in Azerbaijan in a helicopter to move the bodies of the fellow soldiers to Turkey. Doing the analysis the media sources mentioned above point out that the number of Azerbaijani militants participating in ISIS was 3000. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. A joint session of the Standing Committees on State and Legal Affairs of the two Armenian states chaired by the committee chairpersons Hovik Jivanyan (NKR) and Hovhannes Sahakyan (Republic of Armenia), took place at the NKR National Assembly on April 8. As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the National Assembly of Nagorno Karabakh republic, before the start of the joint session, parliamentarians observed a minute of silence in memory of the boys who died defending the borders of their motherland these days. The meeting participants exchanged opinions and comprehensively discussed issues related to the study and presentation of consequences of the international instances of violence, including the brutal killings of civilians and the shelling of Armenian settlements as a result of large-scale hostilities provoked by the enemy on April 2 to 5 at the Karabakh-Azerbaijani border. The meeting was attended by the deputies of the NKR National Assembly, the NKR Human Rights Defender, Yuri Hayrapetyan, the NKR Minister of Justice Ararat Danielyan and deputies of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia Edmond Marukyan Levon Martirosyan and Zaruhi Postanjyan. The NKR Human Rights Defender, Yuri Hayrapetyan presented a summary of the work done by the office these days and indicated all the obstacles due to which Artsakh cannot directly apply to international institutions. Minister of Justice Ararat Danielyan suggested considering what happened in the light of the opportunities provided by international conventions and recommended to create action plan for the implementation of the relevant work in the European institutions. At the end of joint discussions it was decided to coordinate the work of fact-finding with other involved government agencies and prepare for their submission to the international institutions. Then the parliamentary delegation was received by the Chairman of the NKR National Assembly Ashot Ghoulyan. At the meeting the agreements reached during the meeting and the direction of future work were submitted. Head of the Parliament informed colleagues that over the last days of Artsakh NA deputies also discussed the idea of creating a special parliamentary commission to study consequences of the Azerbaijani aggression and it is already defined. An agreement was reached between the Republic of Armenia and NKR MPs to intensify cooperation in these matters and implementation of specific steps in this area. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian, who is on a working visit in Moscow, met with Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov on April 8. The interlocutors continued their discussion of the recent days over the escalation of the situation in Karabakh conflict zone. As Armenpress was informed from the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of MFA Armenia, the press release reads as follows, Edward Nalbandian stated that the negotiation process of Karabakh conflict settlement and the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs have been seriously damaged due to the military operations unleashed by Azerbaijan. In the words of the Minister urgent practical steps are necessary to stabilize the situation. Sergey Lavrov mentioned that just from the beginning of the escalation Russia made efforts for ceasing the fire. He assessed use of force in the conflict zone of Nagorno Karabakh as inadmissible, highlighted the implementation of the armistice agreement, the exclusion of the re-occurrence of similar developments and the creation of relevant opportunities for the continuation of the negotiation process in the sidelines of OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs format. The Armenian and Russian Foreign Ministers attached great importance to the implementation of the proposals made by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs for the reinforcement of the ceasefire. Sergey Lavrov informed Edward Nalbandian about the results of Russian-Azerbaijani meetings in Baku. The Ministers touched upon the implementation process of the agreements reached between the top leaderships of Armenia and Russia in different spheres, as well as other issues of Armenian-Russian agenda. The Foreign Ministers of the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation discussed a number of urgent international and regional issues, referring to the situation in the Middle East, particularly to the issue of protecting the Christians and the efforts of the international community for fighting against terrorism. 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 The state of Ohio participated in the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare much to the chagrin of Republican primary voters across the country who haven't exactly endorsed Governor John Kasich's presidential candidacy, but that doesn't mean Republicans in the state legislature have given up on trying toss the working poor overboard. Under a new proposal pushed by state lawmakers, those who enroll in Medicaid would be forced to pay a premium on top of what they already pay in taxes. The proposal, subject to federal approval, would require those being treated for breast and cervical cancer, teens coming out of foster care and other working-age, nondisabled adults on Medicaid to make monthly payments into a health-savings account to help cover their expenses beginning Jan. 1, 2018. Nearly 3 million Ohioans are enrolled in Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled. About half would be subject to the new requirements which must be approved by federal regulators. Medicaid officials project an average of 130,000 beneficiaries would lose coverage each year of the five-year pilot. Governor John Kasich suggested that the new premium should only be imposed on those with incomes above 100 percent of the federal poverty level, but Republicans in the state legislature did not agree. Not that I believe Kasich deserve praise for his suggestion. He doesn't. He should have rejected the entire proposal. Republicans believe the state must take these steps to save money, but the federal government will still cover 95 percent of the cost of Medicaid expansion in 2017 and at least 90 percent of the cost in 2020 and beyond. The cost of kicking this many people off their coverage would undoubtedly wipe out a significant portion of any potential savings that would be gained by denying them coverage. Sick people with no coverage tend to visit emergency rooms more often. There's also the loss of business and economic activity for the local healthcare industry in Ohio. This is a very bad idea. CHICAGO In the political pendulum that marks Illinois' budget gridlock, the legislature's Republican minority leaders are taking their turn with a $1.3 billion proposal to fund human and social service programs. The proposal relies on a mix of general fund revenues -- $433 million -- and funds from non-general fund accounts -- $858 million -- but it requires that lawmakers approve a series of pension related measures proposed by Gov. Bruce Rauner in his fiscal 2017 budget. That poses a big obstacle for the plan amid the ongoing political divide between the Republican governor and the Democrats who control both houses of the General Assembly. Senate Bill 3418 would fund seniors in the state's Community Care Program and programs that serve veterans, those with mental issues and developmental disabilities, homeless youth and veterans, addiction treatment, and the Special Olympics. The proposal comes amid a growing outcry from social service agencies and public higher education institutions all starved for cash as the state's inability to adopt a budget for fiscal 2016 continues into its tenth month, with no signs of progress. "We have crises cropping up all over the statehuman services are urgent to many members," said Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont. Radogno and House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, are sponsoring the plan. "The social safety net in Illinois is at a breaking point," Radogno said. Democrats who hold supermajorities in both chambers have proposed their own funding legislation for social service programs. Rauner and his fellow GOP lawmakers have rejected Democratic plans to fund both social services and public higher education, arguing that they don't identify a full funding source and rely on an overly strained general fund that is already at least $5 billion short of needed revenue this year. The Democrats' plan on social services relies on a mix of general fund support and surpluses in some non-general fund accounts. The new Republican plan relies heavily on $780 million in savings projected from passage of pension reforms proposed in Rauner's fiscal 2017 budget. Rauner's proposals would phase in over five years the impact of changes in actuarial assumptions to soften the near-term impact on pension contributions, end the impact of end-of-career salary increases, and shift state payments for retirement contributions for education employees earning more than $180,000 over to local colleges and districts. Rauner's budget proposal anticipates that the changes, along with pension reforms proposed by Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, would save $5 billion over four years. Cullerton's office left the door open to consideration of the new proposal and said it welcomed Republican participation but cautioned that it raises some "initial concern" due to its reliance on funds that come from pension changes. "Recent history would suggest that is unwise," Cullerton spokesman John Patterson said, referring to past reforms of the state government and Chicago pension programs that were shot down by the courts. "The last pension reform legislation was supposed to save billions. It saved nothing," he said. "We'll have to look closely at this proposal." Passage of any plan that relies on general funds would offer limited help for organizations waiting on their aid because the state is months behind on bill payments with the comptroller's office reporting Friday a current backlog of $7.1 billion. Durkin also stressed during the news conference growing concerns over higher education funding. The state's two-year and four-year schools have been hit with downgrades and some face accreditation risks as they struggle to make do without state aid that represents in some cases 30 to 40% of their operating revenues. Chicago State University plans to close early this year. "There are a range of options out there we should be exploring, and we owe it to the people, and students, of Illinois to have an open and bipartisan dialogue," Durkin said. But on that subject Republicans and Democrats also remain deeply divided. Rauner has rejected Democratic funding bills because they don't identify funding mechanisms. Democrats are opposed to a Republican bill because it would broaden Rauner's budget powers. STEPANAKERT, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS/ARTSAKHPRESS. NKR Deputy PM Arthur Aghabekyan turned to his compatriots living in Artsakh, Armenia and abroad, notifying that the bank accounts set by Artsakh Government accumulate more and more financial means, which will be directed to modernization of arms of the Armed Forces. Dear compatriots living in Armenia, Artsakh and abroad, neither Russians, nor anyone else but Armenians will die on our borders or have a role in the defense of our motherland. The special bank account set by the Artsakh Government accumulates more and more money, which will be directed to acquiring arms for the Armed Forces. We have no alternative; we must carry out our own defense. By donating financial and material resources to the defense sphere, you will be able to spare the lives of our soldiers, Armenpress reports Arthur Aghabekyan mentioned. The money raised by donations for the defense of Artsakh has amounted to 891 million, 583 thousand and 119 drams, 63 thousand and 707 USD, 1938 Euro, and 11 million and 238.6 thousand ruble by 07.04.2016. Thousands of compatriots apply to the Government of Artsakh Republic expressing their readiness to assist Artsakh in this hard situation. You can do your transfers to the following bank account With AMD cquiring bank- Artsakhbank CJSC Address, Kievyan St.3, Yerevan, Armenia SWIFT` ARTSAM22 Account number 22300612211100(AMD) Account number 22300110153200 (USD). Account number 22300200153300 (Euro). Account number 22300400153100 (RUR) YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The process of exchange of bodies of soldiers killed in Karabakh conflict zone goes on with the mediation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). NKR Presidents Spokesperson David Babayan told Armenpress that the Artsakh side hopes the exchange of bodies will not last more than 2-3 days. Earlier an agreement had been reached to strictly abide to the ceasefire agreement in the northern and southern directions of Karabakh-Azerbaijan contact line during the period of 15:00 to 20:00 of April 8 and start the searching process of the bodies of both Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers. The process is coordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the field assistants of the Special Representative of the OSCE Minsk Group. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The Diocese of the Armenian Holy Apostolic Church of Canada condemns the vicious aggression of Azerbaijan against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), that started on April 2, 2016, and calls on the Government of Canada and the international community to unequivocally condemn the violation of the 1994 ceasefire agreement by Azerbaijan. Armenpress reports the statement also mentions that, This escalation by Azerbaijan is a follow up of previous provocative statements made by Azerbaijan that the international community failed to objectively condemn and hold Azerbaijan responsible for its acts of numerous aggression and cease fire violations against Artsakh. The recent most tragic news about this Azerbaijani aggression have shaken us from coast to coast across Canada. We have all been following closely the news about Azerbaijans despicable attacks against the peaceful civilians of Artsakh as well as the heroic response that our brothers and sisters have given to the aggressor. Unfortunately, due to numerous instances of violations of International Humanitarian Law by the army of the Republic of Azerbaijan, this full-scale aggression has led to numerous casualties and loss of both military and civilian life in Artsakh. The Armenian Diocese of Canada offers prayers for those who have lost their lives during this recent aggression by Azerbaijan, and for the safety of the peaceful Armenian population of Artsakh who remain vulnerable to the aggressors attacks. We pray, also, for the brave soldiers of Artsakh and the Armenian armed forces, who defend their borders at the risk and too often at the cost of their own lives. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The Republic of Armenia will do everything to achieve international recognition of Nagorno Karabakh through negotiations. Armenpress reports RPA spokesperson, Vice President of Republic of Armenia National Assembly Eduard Sharmazanov told the journalists about this after the RPA Executive Body meeting. We reconfirmed that Armenia is the security guarantee of Nagorno Karabakh and will do everything to ensure the security of the people of Nagorno Karabakh. The conflict must have an exceptionally peaceful settlement within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs based on the three Madrid principles. The people of Nagorno Karabakh must decide their own fate and Nagorno Karabakh cannot have a lower status than it has now de-facto, Eduard Sharmazanov said. To the question which side benefits more from the establishment of the ceasefire, the RPA Spokesperson noted that it stems from the interest of everyone, as the military solution to the issue is inadmissible. As the Presidents of the Republic of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh have righteously mentioned, the struggle of the people of Karabakh does not aim occupying territories belonging to others. Karabakh people wish to decide their own fate, live in an independent and democratic state, Sharmazanov said, adding that Military escalation can lead to undesirable consequences. War is a dangerous solution. We do not want war, we just protect our sisters and brothers so that they can live in a safe country. Referring to the possibility of the deployment of peacekeeping troops in Nagorno Karabakh, Eduard Sharmazanov mentioned that the President of the Republic has stated that the Armenian side will not oppose that decision, if a comprehensive solution is put on the table with the deployment of the peacekeepers as part of that solution. According to the Republican politician, the root causes of the problem must be pointed out and solved, not the consequences, as Azerbaijan insists permanently. Azerbaijan always speaks out about elimination of consequences, while the root cause of the problem is that the people of Artsakh want to hold a referendum, based on their right to self-determination, as a result of which they will decide to live independently. Why do the people of Scotland have a right to self-determination but people of Artsakh have not? he added. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. Vice President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia calls on the Armenian communities of the Diaspora to make use of all their ties to raise the issue of Azerbaijani-committed war crimes against civilians in international institutions. Armenpress reports Sharmazanov announced after the RPA Executive Body meeting that a parliamentary group is engaged in that issue. The works are also closely monitored by the Ministry of Justice. A professional group will be set, all material evidences will be collected and submitted to relevant bodies for imposing sanctions on Azerbaijan. We must be able to use all the platforms to show the civilized world that Azerbaijan, that takes military actions against civilians, must be punished for violating the norms of international law and the Geneva Conventions, the National Assembly Vice President said. Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements. The Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later. On April 3 the subversive group of Azerbaijan brutally killed 3 elderly and vandalized their corpses in Talish village. The Armenian side has 44 causalities, 21 soldiers missing, 122 wounded. 5 more people including the heads of two rural communities of Syunik Province were killed on their way to Martakert on April 4. Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control making the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1-5 as a result of the crushing counterattacks by the Armenian side against the military aggressions towards the Nagorno Karabakh, Azerbaijan lost 2 helicopters, 24 tanks, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, 8 UAVs, 1 21-MM multiple rocket launcher system (Grad). During military operations the Azerbaijani armed forces had more than 300 causalities, nearly 2000 wounded. On April 5 at 12:00, the fire was ceased in the line of contact between Karabakh and Azerbaijani opposing forces. The agreement of armistice was reached at the meeting of the Chiefs of General Staff of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow on April 5. Azerbaijan has violated the agreement several times, but in a much lower intensity. Vice President Mokgweetsi Masisi has been placed on the weight scale and found to be too light to qualify as the countrys next president. Francistown South Member of Parliament (MP) Wynter Mmolotsi told a fully packed political rally at Philip Matante East ward that his greatest fear and worst nightmare is for Mokgweetsi Masisi to be the next president of Botswana. The time I was still a member of the BDP Masisi was like a ball boy in terms of status, said the deputy president of Botswana Movement for Democracy, adding that Masisi held no position of influence, and has never contributed anything of significance to the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) since its formation. He said it boggles the mind as to why President Ian Khama handpicked him to be his successor at the expense of other deserving BDP members who could do better than him. But then he answered himself: Masisi was chosen simply because he is Khamas bootlicker as he dances to every tune the president plays, he said. Mmolotsi continued that while at the BDP he was ranked No. 5 in the partys hierarchy as deputy secretary general higher than Masisi, who was at the time just a nonentity, he said wondering what qualities Masisi possesses to make him a president. Mmolotsi implored voters to not vote for BDP candidate Peter Nare as he accused the ruling party councillors of sleeping on the job and preferring beer guzzling over the concerns of their electorate. He added that the current BDP councillors in his constituency are not at all cooperative and sabotage whatever developments are earmarked for the area. Most of them do not have my phone number and there is one particular councillor who spends most of his time drowning himself in beer and I want you as responsible citizens to desist from wasting your votes. If you vote for Nare, you will be making the gravest mistake as I long to work with a councillor from the opposition since most of us have the interests of our electorate at our hearts compared to the BDP councillors who are only concerned with the politics of the belly. He pointed out that he had a good working relationship with the late Shadreck Nyeku who was his comrade and a workaholic. He begged the electorate to vote for Uyapo Nyeku on the 23rd of April 2016 since he is a capable leader who can take their ward to another level. YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. Spokesperson for the Republican Party of Armenia Eduard Sharmazanov believes Azerbaijan and Turkey are the greatest threats for the region. In his words, Turkey is the only regional state, also Minsk Group member, that clearly and explicitly supports Azerbaijani aggression. Do not forget that Turkey continues to keep Armenia under blockade, Turkey does not open the border unilaterally and brings the reason of Nagorno Karabakh process for non-ratification of the Zurich Protocols, Armenpress reports the official said after the RPA Executive Body meeting. Sharmazanov urged to focus on Turkey, the President, Prime Minister, and the Foreign Minister of which encouraged Azerbaijan in its aggression. I am concerned over the issue that some figures have appeared in the Republic of Armenia that have assumed the role of Turkeys advocate. I believe that if there is a country that must be condemned for all these, in addition to Azerbaijan, is Turkey, Sharmazanov added. Referring to the announcement of the President of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, made in Germany in a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that Armenia feels sorrow to see Russia selling arms to Azerbaijan, Sharmazanov mentioned that this is not the first time the President speaks out about that. He also stated that the mentioned announcement is first of all a political assessment and a political signal. KEITH JACKSON BOUGAINVILLE president John Momis has said he has concerns at the impact of under-resourcing and other large problems affecting the provinces education system. In an interview with Radio New Zealand Internationals Don Wiseman, Dr Momis admitted that Bougainville has a big percentage of our youth who can effectively be called a lost generation. They are very, very frustrated, traumatised, and unless something is done soon it's a total injustice to them and we are sitting on a time bomb. Dr Momis agreed with Wisemans observation that many of those children and their parents would not have gone to school because of the civil war, resulting in two successive generations without any opportunity of schooling. Third Gen FLIR. Photo: Raytheon. TUCSON, ARIZONA (BNS): The US Army has awarded a contract worth $56 million to develop the 3rd Generation Forward Looking Infrared B-Kit, an upgrade to night vision equipment that will allow ground troops to discriminate between friend or foe at twice the distance of current systems. The next generation B-Kit is a form/fit upgrade, allowing an affordable and low risk upgrade to the 17,000 fielded 2nd generation ground FLIR systems. This will be developed by a team of Raytheon Company and DRS Technologies. Under the four-year engineering, manufacturing and development contract, the team will deliver B-Kit systems for platform system integration and testing. A two-year option to build additional systems for more comprehensive testing is also included. During the last decade, Raytheon delivered more than 20,000 2nd generation FLIR sensors to the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and FMS Customers. Third Gen FLIR will offer ground troops four fields of view, dual-band infrared imaging and improved stabilization for significant improvements in range performance, Raytheon said. "After decades of experience delivering high-performance night vision to the US Army, our team is uniquely qualified to help maintain combat overmatch for our ground troops," said Duane Gooden, Raytheon Land Warfare Systems vice president. Third Gen FLIR will dramatically increase the range of ground combat vehicle sensors under all conditions, allowing our forces to acquire and stop the enemy." Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Some Brandon University students are accusing the schools administrators of plagiarism after large portions of a report making recommendations on how to improve sexual violence policy on campus appear to have been copied from a similar Queens University document. The accusation comes in the wake of BUs admission of wrongdoing in how the school handled allegations of a sexual assault earlier this week. The Queens document, called Sexual Prevention and Response Report and Recommendations, was published in April 2015. The BU report was made by a task force struck in October 2015 after a first-year student alleged she had been sexually assaulted on campus about a month earlier. Stefon Irvine, the de facto leader of the We Believe Survivors student group on campus, said a BU faculty member discovered the resemblance between the two documents on Wednesday evening, a day after the BU recommendations were made public. The BU document includes near-verbatim paragraphs in at least three of its nine recommendations from the Queens report. It doesnt credit or mention the Ontario university in the document. Both schools released written statements within three minutes of each other late Thursday afternoon. Sexual violence is a sector-wide issue and one that is taken very seriously. In developing protocols and polices, it is common for universities to examine best practices at other institutions, read the Queens statement. The BU statement said, After conducting an extensive review, the task force identified the Queens University policy framework as being widely known, an example to be followed and highly suitable for Brandon University. The Sexual Assault Advisory Committee will be reviewing our procedures and protocols, including concerns that have been raised recently, as it develops Brandon Universitys own policy framework. Neither institution took questions. BUs Academic Dishonesty and Misconduct policy defines plagiarism in part as, Portions of the work extracted from another source without proper and full credit to the original author. The potential penalties for students found to breach the policy range but include expulsion from school. The report does reference and attribute a Faculty and Staff Response Guide prepared by Georgia Tech. Earlier on Wednesday, Sharon Hooper, BUs chief human resources officer and one of three people on the task force, said the recommendations were designed to take specific points from the incident in September to a larger committee that will rework all of BUs sexual violence policies over the summer. I can honestly tell you that the care and concern of that student was top of mind with everybody, she said. We want to make sure we pay attention to what happened and have our lessons learned, and we co-opt all students and knowledgeable faculty to help draft our way forward and put together a policy and protocol. She wasnt available for comment after the plagiarism allegations were made public. In light of the revelation, Irvine wants the task force to show its work. I want them to release all of their meeting minutes. If this task force has been meeting of the last seven months, there should be some transparency and accountability, he said. Anybody that is writing any kind of report you have some time of scrap paper, some kind of this is how we got to where we are and I would like to see those documents be published, Irvine said, adding the recommendations should be re-published to acknowledge the work they plagiarized. I think, again, they are more concerned with trying to uphold the reputation of the institution under the guise that weve been working tirelessly on sexual assault for the last several months, Irvine said. tbateman@brandonsun.com Twitter: @tombatemann Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Three provincial party leaders were grilled on what their party would do for the Wheat City during a noon-hour debate hosted by the Brandon Chamber of Commerce on Thursday. Many Brandonites dont identify as being a rural constituency, said chamber president Jordan Ludwig. Rural economic development initiatives in the past have treated all communities outside the capital region as rural. Ludwig asked each leader how he or she would ensure that Brandon receives the necessary resources to grow and diversify an urban economy. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister, from left, Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari and NDP Leader Greg Selinger take part in the Brandon Chamber of Commerce debate at the Victoria Inn on Thursday. NDP Leader Greg Selinger recommitted to building a new school in Brandon to help with the growing population, and praised the potential business school partnership between Brandon University and Assiniboine Community College. Ludwig followed up by asking for specific strategies the NDP would employ directly for Brandon that are not a broad rural strategy. Well partner with you on priorities that you identify that will make a difference, Selinger said, also touting the provincial nominee program to help address labour shortage. Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister didnt have specifics, but said a better tax program is needed, and reaffirmed his commitment to reducing the PST in the first term of his government. Ludwig said while tax rates are an important piece of economic development, he doesnt believe that is the main strategy. Can you identify some specifics and priorities for western Manitoba? he asked. Pallister responded by saying Ludwig is wrong in his observation. If you talk to business recruiters around the country and in Manitoba, theyll tell you the first consideration is the tax climate, he said. What we are proposing to do is give Manitobans back the right to have a vote, which was taken away by Mr. Selinger. Tom Bateman/Brandon Sun Brandon East Liberal candidate Vanessa Hamilton, from left, Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari and the partys communications director, Mike Brown, listen to a question during an announcement outside Brandon City Hall on Thursday. Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari touted the partys plan to provide one per cent PST to municipalities on a per capita basis, allowing local government to choose what the money should be used for. Thats partnership, thats allowing people to do what they need to do for their own communities, she said. Ludwig responded by saying while giving municipalities extra funding is a good thing, it isnt a strategy. The debate, held at the Victoria Inn, was moderated by Chuck Davidson, president of the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, with a panel consisting of Ludwig and past Brandon chamber presidents Todd Birkhan and Nonny Cancade asking the questions. The debate had a business focus on topics including economic development, attracting new business, retaining workers, etc. Candidates exchanged barbs, including one comment from Bokhari calling out Pallister for not participating in debates. I feel like we should give Brian a round of applause for showing up for a debate today, she said. Tom Bateman/The Brandon Sun Brandon East NDP candidate Drew Caldwell, NDP Leader Greg Selinger and Brandon West NDP candidate Linda Ross make an announcement at the partys Wheat City campaign headquarters on Thursday. Pallister had a dig for Selinger, Whats worse, losing five candidates or five cabinet ministers? Bokhari inadvertently drew applause for Pallister when she said to the crowd, Lets really think about what a Brian Pallister government looks like. jaustin@brandonsun.com Twitter: @jillianaustin Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Manitoba Liberal party, if elected, says it will build also a new school in the citys south end, Brandon East candidate Vanessa Hamilton promised on Thursday. The school would cost between $20 and $25 million, and shovels will hit the ground during the Liberals first term in office, Hamilton said, flanked by party leader Rana Bokhari. The promise largely lines up with one made by the NDP, in the Nov. 16 throne speech. Both schools would be kindergarten to Grade 8, have room for child-care facilities, and be built at Maryland and Ninth Street. Bokhari said the pitch wasnt inspired by the NDP announcement. I dont listen to their announcements. I dont know what their plan is, frankly, she said. Unlike the NDP promise, Hamilton said her partys commitment includes all-day kindergarten. The Brandon School Division is funding all-day kindergarten on the backs of property owners, but were committed to doing that at the provincial level, Hamilton said. Liberal communications director Mike Brown said the government is under-building child-care spaces, but Bokhari didnt say whether all new schools built under a Liberal government would have child-care space. Hamilton said the school should have been built by the NDP years ago, and that she had been consulting with several stakeholders, including the Brandon Teachers Association. (The NDP) make promises and then they never come through. Its a trust issue more than anything else, were committed to doing it, Bokhari said. The school would be funded as an infrastructure project, and wont count against Brandons share of the Municipal Infrastructure Fund. One notable absence from the announcement was Brandon West Liberal candidate Billy Moore. Brown quipped that Moore was studying his policy, which drew laughs from Bokhari and Hamilton. Brown said whether Moore, who also missed a debate at Brandon University on Wednesday, would make any more public appearances will depend on how studying goes. When pressed, Brown said he didnt know where Moore was. We expected him at the debate this morning and we just havent seen him today. tbateman@brandonsun.com Twitter: @tombatemann Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2016 (2390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. EDMONTON Alberta Premier Rachel Notley used a provincewide TV address Thursday to deliver one of her strongest statements to date on the need for new pipelines, saying Albertas fate is Canadas fate. Every Canadian benefits from a strong energy sector, said Notley in the 15-minute taped address aired on three networks. But we cant continue to support Canadas economy unless Canada supports us. That means one thing: building a modern and carefully regulated pipeline to tidewater. We now have a balanced framework to develop our industry, and every government in Canada understands this issue must be dealt with. We must get to yes on a pipeline. Notley has run into roadblocks as she tries to build consensus for the Energy East pipeline to take oil from Alberta to ports and refineries in New Brunswick in order to get better returns abroad. Quebec, in particular, is seeking a more detailed account of the proposed pipeline and its environmental effects. It was an informal speech, with Notley seated in the sunshine at the kitchen table in her home, a bowl of fruit at her elbow. She addressed a number of provincial issues ahead of next weeks 2016-17 budget, and fired a suggestive shot across the bow of unions in coming labour negotiations. If you are a government partner delivering services to Albertans, please remember that Albertans want us to live within our means, said Notley. Albertans arent looking for any significant increases in public spending in times like these. Notley has been under pressure from some critics to freeze wages for teachers, nurses and other public sector workers given the provinces contracting economy. Notley, however, has refused to address the issue specifically, saying shell honour existing contracts but wont negotiate new deals in the media. Notley said Alberta remains poised to rack up a deficit exceeding $10 billion in the April 14 budget. She said low oil prices continue to wreak havoc on the economy. There is no question that this is a very serious and prolonged shock, the most dramatic in generations, said Notley. She said the budget will have measures to keep spending in check, and deliver a four-point plan to create jobs and diversify the economy. Notley said the measures announced in the last budget to boost business and jobs are taking effect. In the last budget, the province freed up to $1.5 billion to Alberta Treasury Branches to lend out to grow small and medium-sized businesses. Notley says about $335 million of that has now been loaned out. The premiers office said the cost of the televised address was $85,000. Opposition Wildrose Leader Brian Jean said Notley is talking loudly about solutions to broader issues, but isnt finding a way to make herself heard. On issues of uncertainty surrounding approval on pipelines, on equalization, and on other issues impacting Alberta, the premier truly needs to find her voice, said Jean. Progressive Conservative Leader Ric McIver said the speech showed Notley has a destination to fix the broken economy, but no road map. The new economy that she promises is a fantasy. Its unicorns and rainbows that no one can identify, said McIver. She can guarantee how many jobs her government can kill, but she cant guarantee a single job theyre going to bring in. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. TORONTO The epic time-travelling series Outlander will delve deeper into the bloody politics of 18th-century Scotland but remains more herstory than history, suggests star Caitriona Balfe. The Irish actress says the sprawling romance/fantasy/historical drama kicks off with her time-jumping Second World War nurse Claire arriving in Paris with her husband, 18th-century Scotsman Jamie, intent on infiltrating Parisian high society and stopping the Jacobite Uprising of 1745. As with other details from the series, recounting this bit of real-world history is about more than just dramatizing important turning points, its about offering up a fresh look at the past, says Balfe. Caitriona Balfe appears in a scene from "Outlander" in this image released by Starz. The epic time-travelling series "Outlander" will delve deeper into the bloody politics of 18th century Scotland but remains more "herstory" than "history," suggests its star Balfe. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Neil Davidson/Starz via AP She points to the colour-blind hip hop musical Hamilton and its modern look back at the U.S. founding father as another historical project challenging our understanding of the past. History is his story and as you see with things like Hamilton and all of these things, now people are going back and theyre like, Well, it wasnt all written by middle-aged white men, so lets see what was going on in the rest of the place,' Balfe says during a visit to Toronto on Friday. As such, Balfe says shes mindful of keeping the show true to a gender-balanced view of the world. That means challenging the writers when a scene doesnt quite feel right. I continuously question my own barometers on where things should be and sometimes especially when it comes to the lovemaking scenes sometimes its a room where you have three women and one man having a discussion, sometimes its three men and one woman, says Balfe, whose show is based on Diana Gabaldons international bestselling book series. The beauty of our show is we give a very balanced view on relationships but its always a negotiation. I feel very strongly that I will fight for certain things for my character and I feel a responsibility towards her. The shift to France sets a new tone and visual palate for the second season, she says. Visually its a very different show. The minute we get to Paris its this sumptuous and luxurious place but within that it feels like the most beautiful fruit just slightly rotting, Balfe says. Theres a lot of political manoeuvring and duplicity and underhanded chess playing almost. I think this couple, theyve taken on a mission to try and change fate and the big theme of this is time and fate. How do you battle against things that are really immovable? Claire makes it her mission to prevent Charles Stuart, also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, from leading a Jacobite rebellion, which she knows will ultimately end with the destruction of Highland culture. But Balfe notes that Claire is now pregnant, and Jamie, played by Sam Heughan, is struggling to recover from the brutal assaults that closed the first season. New villains emerge, but the effects of past traumas remain, she teases. The sweeping costume drama centres on a married Second World War nurse who in 1945 is mysteriously transported back in time to 1743 Scotland. While there, Claire falls in love and marries the dashing young warrior Jamie Fraser, and draws the ire of a redcoat captain who also happens to be the ancestor of her modern-day husband. The second season of Outlander debuts Sunday on Showcase. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. NDP Leader Greg Selinger and Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari squared off in a relatively uneventful debate at the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium on Thursday night. Topics such as health care, infrastructure, the disproportionate number of First Nations people in prison and the provincial deficit dominated the debate between jabs about who wasnt there. Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister didnt attend the debate, which was hosted by The Brandon Sun and Westman Communications Group. He did take part in the Brandon Chamber of Commerces debate earlier in the day. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun NDP Leader Greg Selinger and Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari share a laugh while taking part in the provincial leaders debate hosted by The Brandon Sun and Westman Communications Group at the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium on Thursday evening. Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister did not attend the debate. In front of a crowd of approximately 120 last night, the two party leaders fielded questions from three panellists Sun reporter Jillian Austin, CKLQ news director Clay Young and Brandon University political science associate professor Kelly Saunders. During a discussion about the deficit, moderator Kerry Auriat asked Selinger point blank: Who Manitobans can trust when it comes to the provinces finances? The ones that gave the numbers and thats us, Selinger said. Last month, the NDP provided a fiscal update that showed the summary deficit is projected to spike to $773 million by years end or $351 million higher than predicted in April 2015. The reason the numbers changed is because the economy had some struggles, Selinger said, adding that most provincial governments in Canada didnt meet their deficit targets this fiscal year. More concerning, Selinger said, is that Pallister remains silent on his plan. That is by far the biggest risk to Manitobans, Selinger said. A person running for office, leading in the polls allegedly, saying he cant give you an idea of what he is going to do when he gets into office. Bokhari said whichever party wins on April 19 will be in a difficult financial position, and its time to recognize who is being hurt the most by higher taxes and deficits under the NDP. Manitoba families, we know youre struggling, Bokhari said. Youre struggling because your hydro is going up. Youre struggling because your food costs are going up. Poverty rates are increasing. Food bank use is increasing. You have seniors struggling. We have to bring it back down to people. One of the only heated exchanges between the two leaders came while discussing the ethics of who should be allowed to become a candidate. The Manitoba Liberals came under fire after sexist social media comments surfaced from one of its former candidates. NDP MLAs jumped on the comments and demanded the candidate, Jamie Hall, be removed. The Liberals severed ties with Hall over the social media posts. At the same time, it was revealed NDP candidate Wab Kinew posted misogynistic comments on his social media. Selinger stood by Kinew. Bokhari said the NDP created a double standard. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun A crowd of around 120 people listen at the provincial leaders debate hosted by The Brandon Sun and Westman Communications Group at the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium on Thursday evening. It was your party that demanded that we remove Jamie Hall, Bokhari barked at Selinger during the debates only fireworks. It was your party that made noise about all the other candidates and you chose to keep your star candidate. Bokhari, who is running against Kinew in Fort Rouge, said she didnt flinch in the face of adversity. She said her party has made some mistakes, but shes the only leader being honest with voters. Every single day you have that person and we hear it at the door you are owning those comments, Bokhari told Selinger. It takes leadership to stand up and say I will not accept that It doesnt matter if its a star candidate or not. Its a value system. Selinger said Kinew took responsibility for his comments and that the difference was Hall was engaging in that behaviour while he was a candidate. False, Bokhari said interrupting the NDP leader. Selinger said people can change and that Kinew has. One thing that Ive learned is that none of us is perfect and those that think they are the most dangerous, he said. The most entitled (people), who never apologize for anything, never think that they can do anything wrong, never open to feedback, those are the ones that scare me the most. Both leaders promised to match City of Brandon capital funds for the Keystone Centre. ctweed@brandonsun.com Twitter: @CharlesTweed Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Brandon Sun editor Matt Goerzen and reporter Ian Hitchen were both named Canadian Association of Journalists awards finalists Thursday in the community media category. Hitchens The Runaways explored the dangerous cycle of troubled teenage girls repeatedly running from home and humanized how Manitobas child welfare system exposed young girls to risk of substance abuse and sexual exploitation. Im delighted to be nominated and thankful to co-workers who worked with me on the project, he said. But Im grateful to the brave young women who shared their stories. File photo Brandon Sun reporter Ian Hitchen is also a Canadian Association of Journalists awards finalist in the community media category. Hitchen explored the dangerous cycle of troubled teenage girls in The Runaways. Goerzens Breaking Faith delved into the story of Henry Lawrence, who struggled with asbestosis, and his family who took up their fathers crusade against the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba after Lawrence widow was denied death benefits. In October last year, the piece won the prestigious, international EPPY Award for best investigative/enterprise feature on a website with under one million unique monthly visitors. Roughly five months later, the team that helped put it together was featured in the cover story in Editor & Publishers April edition about how newspapers are creating engaging longform journalism in the digital age, alongside the New York Times series on nail salons and The Post and Couriers Pulitzer prize-winning series on domestic abuse. Its just an honour to be nominated, said Goerzen, who first wrote about Lawrence in 2007 when he was a reporter at The Brandon Sun. Im really proud our staffs team effort and their dedication to covering these difficult stories. The other three finalists in the community media category include Heres What Got Buried Under The Rock by Gagandeep Ghuman of The Squamish Reporter, the Up In Smoke series by Joseph Couture of the London Yodeler and Chasing A Crisis: The Challenge Of Caring For Vancouvers Severely Mentally Ill And Addicted Residents by Travis Lupick of Georgia Straight. It is gratifying to see what community journalism can accomplish, Sun publisher Eric Lawson said of the recognition. I am proud of our newsrooms commitment to telling Westmans stories, and doing so with such professionalism. The string of nominations marks a big year for a small paper as it continues to pursue more longform and digital projects, which often take months to produce. The Sun is set to release a short documentary series later this summer about veterans in western Manitoba who received Frances highest honour for their sacrifices in Normandy during the Second World War. The winners for the CAJ awards in most categories will receive a $500 cash prize. They will be announced at the gala and conference banquet hosted at the Coast Edmonton Plaza Hotel on May 28. Last month, Hitchens piece was also nominated for a National Newspaper Award for The Runaways in the local reporting category. Photographer Tim Smith was also nominated for a National Newspaper Award in the feature photo category for his stunning shot of a skater on the smooth-as-glass ice at Clear Lake a rare opportunity due to the lack of snow. Smiths photos series on the Hutterites of Manitoba, which caught the attention of the New York Times last year and was featured on its Lens blog, is also to be displayed at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in October. Hitchen and Smith will be travelling to Edmonton where the National Newspaper Awards will be announced on May 27. The winners will receive a $1,000 cheque. The Brandon Sun Before New York's presidential primary on April 19, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders will head to Vatican City for a conference on environmental and social justice issues. The conference hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences will be held on Friday, April 15 the 25th anniversary of "Centesimus Annus," an encyclical written by Pope John Paul II which focuses on economic and political themes. "I am delighted to have been invited by the Vatican to a meeting on restoring social justice and environmental sustainability to the world economy," Sanders said in a statement. "Pope Francis has made clear that we must overcome 'the globalization of indifference' in order to reduce economic inequalities, stop financial corruption and protect the natural environment. That is our challenge in the United States and in the world." Sanders, who hasn't spent a lot of time in New York even though polls show he trails Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton by 10 points, will hold events in the Empire State over the next couple of days. At 1 p.m. Friday, he'll hold a rally in Brooklyn with actor Mark Ruffalo. Later in the day, he'll hold another rally in Brooklyn. His special guest for that event will be actress Susan Sarandon. On Saturday, Sanders will meet with African American leaders at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Clinton to speak at NYSUT convention New York's powerful teachers union will have a special guest at its annual Representative Assembly Friday. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will speak at the event, which is being held at the Riverside Convention Center in Rochester. Clinton is expected to deliver remarks during a program which begins at 7:30 p.m. The convention isn't open to the public. The stop will cap off a busy day for Clinton. She has three other western New York events planned, including a jobs roundtable in Buffalo. She also will hold rallies in Buffalo and Rochester before attending the NYSUT convention. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. MERRITT, B.C. Burrowing owls will be released on First Nations land for the first time in British Columbia with the goal of reintroducing the endangered yellow-eyed birds on a reserve near Merritt. Bernadette Manuel of the Upper Nicola Band said three pairs of the pop-can sized brown and white owls will be released into burrows that have been built for them. We see it as a responsibility as stewards of the land, she said Friday of the federally funded project the band undertook over two years in partnership with species-at-risk biologists and the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC. A burrowing owl is shown in a handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ho-Ron Dudley Burrowing owls were traditionally considered guardian spirits to hunters and warriors of the Upper Nicola Band, but Manuel said none have been seen for over a decade. On Sunday, members of the band will hold a ceremony as six owls are released into a burrow built for them on a reserve, Manuel said. The birds coming to their new home were raised for a year by the society at a site in Kamloops. Manuel said the First Nation considered eight reserves before finding suitable grassland for the project with the help of the society, which runs a captive breeding program and annually releases burrowing owls in the provinces southern Interior. Biologist Chris Gill, who is working on the project, said burrowing owls live in nests dug by badgers and marmots but when their numbers decreased due to the loss of grassland habitat across the country, the owls started disappearing too. Badgers are an endangered species in Canada and because of the declines of badgers there have been less burrows available for burrowing owls. Gill said the very charismatic owls eat insects and rodents but have had dwindling access to prey because of the use of pesticides on agricultural land. If these reintroduction programs werent being undertaken in British Columbia there wouldnt be any breeding owls in B.C. The Burrowing Owl Conservation Society began a captive breeding program about 26 years ago, said president Mike Mackintosh. He said members of the First Nation will feed the six owls and a mesh net will be placed on top of their burrow to protect them from predators, such as coyotes, dogs and cats, before they can fly around the grasslands. Mackintosh said the hope is that the owls will breed this spring before migrating south as far as Mexico and returning in the fall. When they fly south we have fairly low returns so thats the big problem were trying to overcome, the big hurdle, he said. Last year, 65 burrowing owls were released and had offspring, totalling about 200 birds that were raised successfully in the wild, Mackintosh said. Sixty of the birds came back to B.C. after migrating south, triple the number from a year earlier, he said, adding its difficult to determine why there was such a jump in returning owls. It could be connected with milder winters and to some degree with climate change. We simply dont know at this point. By Camille Bains in Vancouver Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Some 20 years ago, University of Saskatchewan political scientist John Courtney wrote that its inherently destabilizing for a political party to conduct periodic leadership reviews. Tom Mulcair, who faces a leadership review vote this weekend, would no doubt agree with Courtney that such a process invites dissension. Technically, delegates to this weekends convention will be asked in a secret ballot to decide whether the party should hold a leadership convention. It amounts to a vote of confidence in Mulcairs leadership after he led the party to a disappointing third-place finish in last falls federal election. The NDP conducts such votes at every convention, though they rarely generate the kind of tension attending this one. Both the Liberals and Conservatives put their leaders to similar tests but only at the first national convention following an election in which the leader does not become prime minister. Some provincial parties also subject their leaders to leadership reviews. Herewith, with the help of Courtney, a brief history of leadership reviews and some of the most dramatic moments theyve produced: The Liberal Party of Canada was the first to adopt a leadership review process, in 1966, with the implicit understanding that it would not be used until after then-leader Lester Pearson stepped down. That process was first employed in 1970, when Pierre Trudeaus leadership was handily endorsed. Also in 1966, the Progressive Conservatives were waging a bitter internal war over John Diefenbakers leadership. Dalton Camp ran for party president on the promise that hed hold a leadership convention within a year. He won, the leadership convention was held in 1967 (electing Robert Stanfield). Leadership reviews were entrenched in the partys constitution in 1969. 1983, Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clarks leadership is endorsed by 66.9 per cent of delegates, with 33.1 per cent voting for a leadership convention. Clark decides thats insufficient to silence his critics within the party and resigns. He runs in the subsequent leadership race but loses to Brian Mulroney. 1986, Liberal leader John Turner faces a vigorous effort to dump him, led in part by supporters of Jean Chretien, runner-up to Turner in the partys 1984 leadership race. An organized campaign, dubbed the Friends of John Turner, spends almost a full year and pulls out all the stops to win the leadership review. Turner is endorsed by 76 per cent of delegates, remaining leader until 1990. August 2002, Liberal leader and prime minister Chretien announces his intention to retire in 18 months, heading off a potentially humiliating result in a leadership review scheduled for February 2003. The party, controlled by erstwhile leadership rival Paul Martin at the time, eventually pressures him to move up his retirement date to November 2003. 2005, Parti Quebecois leader Bernard Landry quits in a huff during a party convention after winning a 76-per-cent endorsement, which he deems insufficient. 2006, Alberta premier and Conservative leader Ralph Klein is endorsed by just 55 per cent of delegates, even though hed previously announced his intention to retire in 2008. He resigns a few months later. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Seven stories in the news today from The Canadian Press: NDPS TOM MULCAIR TO BE TESTED IN EDMONTON Leader Tom Mulcair speaks to the NDP caucus during a retreat in Montebello, Que., on January 19, 2016. More than 1,500 NDP faithful are set to gather in Edmonton today, where their leader once believed to be the ticket to the electoral promised land will face a critical test. The event is expected to get off to an awkward start, with Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff set to be one of the first to speak just days after publicly announcing his opposition to Mulcair. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld More than 1,500 NDP faithful are set to gather in Edmonton today, where their leader once believed to be the ticket to the electoral promised land will face a critical test. The event is expected to get off to an awkward start, with Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff set to be one of the first to speak just days after publicly announcing his opposition to Mulcair. NOTLEY PROMOTES PIPELINES IN TV ADDRESS Alberta Premier Rachel Notley hs used a provincewide TV address to deliver one of her strongest statements to date on the need for new pipelines, saying Albertas fate is Canadas fate. Every Canadian benefits from a strong energy sector, said Notley in the 15-minute taped address aired on three networks. Notley is trying to build support for the Energy East pipeline from Alberta to ports and refineries in New Brunswick. PM TRUDEAU SAYS HE DOESNT HAVE OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS Prime Minister Trudeau says you wont find his name in the leaked documents that sparked an international furor over tax avoidance. Speaking in Sudbury, Ont., Trudeau said he has been fully open with Canadians about the investments he holds. He said the Panama Papers highlight concerns people have about political leaders and other powerful corporate figures using offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes. LONG-AWAITED ASSISTED DYING LAW COMING SOON The Trudeau government wont be taking a permissive approach to medically-assisted dying in long-awaited legislation to be unveiled as early as next week, The Canadian Press has learned. Sources, who arent authorized to speak publicly about the imminent bill, say it wont adopt some of the most controversial recommendations from a special parliamentary committee. FUNERAL TODAY FOR JEAN LAPIERRE AND RELATIVES A funeral for former federal cabinet minister Jean Lapierre and five of his relatives will be held today in eastern Quebec. They died in a plane crash on March 29 while headed home for the Lapierres father. The service will take place at 9 a.m. eastern in Bassin, Lapierres hometown in Iles-de-la-Madeleine. CANADA FACES EU VISA DEADLINE Canada and the European Union are racing towards Tuesdays deadline to avoid triggering a process that could result in Canadian travellers having to obtain a visa to travel to 26 European countries. It is part of an ongoing dispute in which the EU has pushed Canada to lift its requirement on travellers from its member countries, Romania and Bulgaria. LATEST JOBLESS NUMBERS TO BE RELEASED TODAY Statistics Canada will update the countrys unemployment figures today for March. In February, the jobless rate rose to 7.3 per cent for first time in three years amid flat overall job growth. The economy lost 2,300 net jobs in February as the national rate increased by 0.1 per cent for the third month in a row. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/04/2016 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Im not able to be here tonight. I would like to be. I would like to be at all them. But Id also like to be helping my candidates all over the province. Ive been invited to be in every riding by my candidates. Its not something that the other leaders have a challenge in doing. They dont have the challenge of being wanted in all their ridings. Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister To be fair to Brian Pallister, there is some truth in the comments above, which he uttered to a slew of media representatives following yesterdays noon-hour Brandon Chamber of Commerce debate. Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari was unable to field a full slate of candidates in all of Manitobas 57 constituencies, due to problems with paperwork, and complications with a few other hopefuls. And considering she is in a tough fight with the Tory and NDP candidates in her chosen constituency of Fort Rouge, its perhaps not surprising that the neophyte has chosen to stay close to home for much of this campaign yesterdays debates marked the first time she has been back in the Wheat City since the writ drop. For NDP Leader Greg Selinger, who was noted as the most unpopular premier in the country last February in the results of an Angus Reid poll, its no secret that at least a few NDP candidates believe their campaigns are better off without him showing up. Less than two months ago, backbench St. Norbert MLA Dave Gaudreau stormed out of a raucous caucus meeting after having bluntly told the premier people hate you. Ouch. Thats got to sting. Perhaps Bokhari and Selinger arent needed or wanted in every constituency in the province. And we have no doubt that Pallister, like all the leaders, has received dozens of debate requests from several organizations. It comes with the territory. But to be very honest, that doesnt change the fact that Brian Pallisters decision to take a pass for yesterdays The Brandon Sun and Westman Communications Group public leaders debate was disappointing and unfortunate. People in Westman should have had a chance to ask their own questions of party leaders, beyond the often Winnipeg-centric nature of province-wide debates. And last nights debate was a free public event that was also broadcast on cable television and local radio. Although business questions to the party leaders are obviously important, as we have said before, the chambers business-centric debate is geared toward a narrower audience. Its also a much friendlier, more receptive audience to a Progressive Conservative base, and therefore a safer venue for the Tory leader. There is an obvious benefit to voters in having a debate in the evening, when most people are able to tune in to their cable station, local radio or turn up in person. In our opinion, this is a great way to encourage public engagement. The Brandon Sun had been in talks with all three parties since last October over the potential for a leaders debate in Brandon on April 7, with the knowledge that the chamber was intending to hold its own debate for members over the noon hour. The hope was that having our debate on the same day would make it easier not more difficult for all leaders to attend, in spite of their busy schedules. Instead, Mr. Pallister went to Winnipeg yesterday directly after the chamber debate for a 4:30 p.m. announcement, with plans to get ready for a major platform announcement this morning. All we can say is, apparently six months lead time isnt quite enough. A pity. Although we note that he has promised to be back in Brandon later today, we think Westman residents would have enjoyed listening to him last night. It would especially have been helpful to any remaining undecided voters in Manitoba. And according to the results of a Probe Research poll released last night, nearly a quarter of Manitobans remain undecided. Thats a huge number. As such, with less than two weeks left to voting day, party leaders should jump at any chance to get their message out to places like vote-rich Brandon. For Mr. Pallister, this is indeed a missed opportunity. Update 4.37pm: The Independent Alliance is seeking a joint meeting with acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin and themselves "in the next 24 hours" in a bid to force a breakthrough to the political stalemate, write Fiachra O Cionnaith and Juno McEnroe. Independent Alliance members Michael Fitzmaurice, Finian McGrath and John Halligan confirmed the plan to the Irish Examiner as the group's six TDs meet to discuss the situation facing the country, which later saw a statement released detailing the move. Under the plan, the Shane Ross-led group wants the two party leaders to sit down with it "as a matter of urgency" as it is "anxious to resolve the current deadlock" and wants to see a real "dialogue" between Mr Kenny and Mr Martin. It also believes exact details are required "from both parties" over the "scope and timetable any minority government may be allowed to govern within". "We believe both parties should be able to reach agreement on mutual support for at least three budgets, so as to provide the country with the stability which all parties have acknowledged is necessary. "These issues need to be clarified immediately," the Alliance's statement read. It is understood Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have yet to make any decision on the proposal. However, it is far from certain it will take place with relations between both Mr Kenny and Martin taking a severe hit this week over the failed "equal partnership" talks. The Independent Alliance proposal has been made after a day of increasing pressure on Independents to make a decision on which party - if any - they will back in next Thursday's latest taoiseach nomination vote in the Dail. Update 1.31pm: Fianna Fails Jack Chambers has claimed a coalition with Fine Gael will not happen, writes Elaine Loughlin. He added that it is now up to the Independents to decide on the type of minority government that will be formed. The Independents will have to decide which party they will go into a minority government they will go into, he told RTEs News at One. We want to see real Dail reform. I dont believe a grand coalition between Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the Independents will offer that reform. Update 1pm: Fianna Fail TD Timmy Dooley has attempted to put the pressure back on Independent TDs, saying they can end the political stalemate next Thursday and that "it's there's to call", writes Fiachra O Cionnaith, Political Reporter. The party's transport spokesperson made the comment after his colleague Eamon O Cuiv earlier said any party that gets close to 60 seats in the next Taoiseach nomination vote may be able to form a minority government. Speaking on Newstalk's Lunchtime programme, Clare TD Timmy Dooley said what happens next "will depend on how the Independents decide to move over the coming days". While claiming he does not "want to put pressure on them", he said "it's there's to call". Mr Dooley denied his party is "shirking responsibility" and insisted he and other Fianna Fail TDs do not want to be forced to "reflect" on breaking pre-election promises not to enter power with Fine Gael when the next election takes place. He said Micheal Martin believed when he sat down to speak with acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny on Wednesday evening that only a minority government scenario was on offer, and that this remains an option for Fianna Fail. Fianna Fail has made it clear it is still focussed on leading a minority government and is seeking to organise talks for Monday or Tuesday next week, with phone calls expected long before those days. However, a number of Independents - who are meeting with themselves at 5pm this evening - are believed to be frustrated by the larger parties positions and may not back either on Thursday. Asked when a government may be formed, Mr Dooley said he would "hope" by the end of this month. However, he noted this is the Grand National horse racing weekend and that "you may want to lay that bet off somewhere else as well". Update 12 noon: President Michael D Higgins will not intervene in the political stand-off unless he is directly requested to do so by caretaker Taoiseach Enda Kenny, writes political reporter Fiachra O Cionnaith. A spokesperson for President Higgins said the country's most senior figure has no plans to intervene in the crisis. He said there has been no contact between President Higgins and Mr Kenny, and that Aras an Uachtarain has no view either way on whether one should be forthcoming. Under articles 13 and 16 Constitution, the sitting president may only intervene in political matters under certain circumstances that are deliberately restrictive in order to ensure the independence of the Dail and Seanad. Update 11.45am: Waterford Independent TD John Halligan has said it is unlikely the Independents will support either Enda Kenny or Micheal Martin for Taoiseach next week in the Dail, writes political editor Daniel McConnell. Mr Halligan was scathing in his criticism of both Mr Kenny and Mr Martin in not being able to do a deal. Speaking to the Irish Examiner, he said: It is appalling, it is outrageous. We are livid and sick. We have taken a lot of flack from our own supporters about possibly doing a deal. But we stood up to the plate. But we will not be used as cannon fodder by either of them." Asked if he could see himself supporting either man in the Dail for the vote next week, Mr Halligan replied in the negative. No, I cant. I have to speak to the rest of the lads but at this stage no. And given what they have done, to hell with them both. Their behaviour is pathetic and childlike. "When you think of the wars going on around the world and we cant get two democratically elected leaders to sort it out. It is despicable, Mr Halligan added. Update 10.30am: Kerry TD Michael Healy Rae (pictured above) has said he is disappointed to have put "two weeks into talks and FF put 10 minutes into talks with Fine Gael" about the formation of a government. He added: "No one will thank you for causing a second election. We'd have the same result and be back in same position again." Some have suggested that President Michael D Higgins (pictured below) could take a hand in negotiations if no outcome can be reached - he has the power to refuse to dissolve the Dail or address the Oireachtas. Constitutional law expert Dr Conor O'Mahony said the rules governing such an intervention make it problematic. He explained: "There is a power for the President to address the Houses of the Oireachtas. But the President can only do so on the consent of the Government, so the content of the address has to be agreed and cleared. "The Government in this case is Fine Gael and Labour, so the perception could arise there is some degree of favouring one political party over another." Earlier: Fine Gael has "done everything it possibly could" to form a government in recent weeks, and remains open to talks with Fianna Fail on forming a partnership government, acting Health Minister Leo Varadkar has said. Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland, he said: "It's absolutely the case that Fine Gael is still open to talks with Fianna Fail." He suggested the best way forward was for the two parties to meet on policy issues first, and look at forming a shared policy agenda, before talking specifically about a structure that would support that agenda. However, he said Fine Gael did not believe a Fianna Fail-led minority government was viable. "It's a simple matter of arithmetic really," he said, as Fianna Fail has only 43 seats in the 158-seat Dail. "You might as well talk about a Sinn Fein-led minority government, or one led by one of the smaller parties. It's just not viable," he said. Mr Varadkar said the Fine Gael offer of a partnership government still stood. "That's for three reasons," he said. "First is that it's in the best interests of the country, second that it respects the outcome of the election and third it would provide us with a stable and lasting government to help heal our fragmented society." He said while he had not expected Fianna Fail to accept the proposal for partnership immediately, he was surprised at the haste with which they rejected it. "Fine Gael has done everything it possibly could in the last month to form a government," he said, referring to talks with Independents, smaller parties and culminating in the offer to Fianna Fail. "We're keen to get a Government in place for the country." A man who acted with others in the stabbing of a 28-year-old in Blanchardstown four years ago, has moved to appeal his conviction for murder. Andrew Gibney (aged 23) of Drumheath Avenue, Mulhuddart had pleaded not guilty to murdering Gerard Burnett (aged 28) at Castlecurragh Vale, Mulhuddart on August 21, 2012. Mr Burnett suffered 30 stab wounds after he was attacked by a group of men outside his girlfriends house and was pronounced dead in hospital a short time later. Gibney was found guilty by a jury verdict of 10-2 and was given the mandatory life sentence by Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy on January 28, 2014. Opening an appeal against conviction today, counsel for Gibney, Giollaiosa O Lideadha SC, said his client had always fully accepted his moral and legal guilt for his part in the events which lead to Mr Burnett's death. However, Mr O Lideadha said a miscarriage of justice occurred in this trial resulting in his conviction for murder. He said Gibney, in his drunken state, intended to cause harm to Mr Burnett but not serious harm. Others went further. There were five people in the beginning of the attack and two inflicted fatal wounds a short time after three, including Gibney, had left, Mr O Lideadha said. He referred to the recent UK Supreme Court decision known as 'Jogee' which found the British courts to have wrongly interpreted the law on joint enterprise for 30 years. The UK Supreme Court found that the British courts had not recognised the moral guilt of someone who went along with others to commit a crime that is subsequently escalated by somebody else, Mr O Lideadha said. Undoubtedly, persons who join together in a joint enterprise are liable for the consequences of all actions tacitly agreed upon, Mr O Lideadha said. But if the intention of another person in a joint enterprise was different to the intention of the accused there was no statutory presumption of transferring intent. There's no law which says you are to be presumed to intend the consequences which others in a joint enterprise adopt, he submitted. There was an evidential basis on which the jury could have concluded that Gibney intended to harm Mr Burnett but not cause him serious harm or to kill, Mr O Lideadha submitted. But his partial defence was not allowed to be considered by the jury. Instead, the trial judge gave the jury an option between outright acquittal or manslaughter on a basis which would have required the jury to find Gibney hadn't acted in concert at all. It was a practically impossible formulation, Mr O Lideadha said. Referring to a witness statement which was admitted into evidence under section 16 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 a procedure adopted when witnesses resile from their statements Mr O Lideadha said it was open to the jury to reject that statement and the slant put on it by the prosecution. The witness, Lee Dalton, had stated that Gibney told him on the night in question that he was 'going to kill' Mr Burnett. Mr O Lideadha said the witness did not literally mean kill but 'beat up' and the statement was taken in circumstances where the gardai were putting to the witness that he was an accomplice in the killing. Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Seamus Clarke BL, said Mr O'Lideadha's possible factual summary hinged on the witnesses' interpretation of the words 'I'm going to hill him' and an attempt to transport that interpretation to Gibney. Gibney had told gardai during interview that he 'didn't know what the intention was' but 'I didn't intend to murder,' Mr Clarke said quoting memos of interview. When asked by gardai when he decided to "do this", Gibney replied: "The stabbing? Half an hour before hand,", Mr Clarke quoted. On Gibney's own evidence, Mr Clarke said, he admitted to forming an intention to stab and it was for the jury to decide whether the facts stacked up. In an attack where 30 stab wounds were caused, are we out of manslaughter and into common design for murder, Mr Clarke asked the court. The appeal hearing before Mr Justice George Birmingham, Mr Justice Garrett Sheeehan and Mr Justice John Edwards, was adjourned to a later date. Update 6.36pm: The Independent Alliance have said neither Fianna Fail nor Fine Gael have given a clear answer to their invitation of a round-table meeting tomorrow writes Political Reporter Elaine Loughlin. Independents have accused both parties of playing absolute games and it is now time they woke up. Shane Ross said the Independent Alliance had written to both Mr Kenny and Mr Martin seeking an urgent meeting to bring the two parties together within 24 hours. But they received replies from both leaders which did not directly respond to the request. The Taoiseach said he is willing to host a meeting, bring all parties together, he didnt respond to the invitation which we issued and he didnt give a timeline on it, he also appeared to be referring the old idea of a coalition. Micheal Martin has said he is willing to meet us within 24 hours, its not clear at this stage whether he would include the Taoiseach in that. This is a matter of extreme urgency and any playacting should not be tolerated. Mr Ross added: We are not clear what the relationship would be between them will be in minority government. East Galway TD Sean Canney said the Independent Alliance want to ensure that a stable government is created. He added that the international community is now looking at Ireland and a lack of government could impact on the economy. The people of this country deserve better than what they are getting from the two main parties. It has been played out like a game of football, who has the ball, who wants to be captain. Its time for them now to sit down in a room calmly and coolly, Mr Canney said. Michael Fitzmaurice added that the Alliance would be available to talk over the coming day. We will make ourselves available anywhere in the next 24 hours no matter where we have to drive to we will do that. Independent Alliance member Kevin Boxer Moran claimed Independents had shown the way adding that with the tow political parties its all about whos in control, who has the power. We are not saying that we are saying we are there to government, we are there to participate and lets get around the table and sort this out once and for all. I think its time they woke up, he said. Update 5.48pm: Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny is "prepared" to host a meeting with Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin and all Independents who have taken part in talks to date after being urged to do so by a key Independent group, writes Fiachra O Cionnaith. In a letter to the Independent Alliance after 5.30pm this evening, the Fine Gael leader confirmed he is willing to participate in the potentially crucial round-table talks. This afternoon, the Independent Alliance - which is comprised of Shane Ross, Finian McGrath, Michael Fitzmaurice, John Halligan, Sean Canney Kevin 'Boxer' Moran - raised the pressure on Ireland's two largest political parties by insisting they need to meet again. In a letter to Mr Kenny the Alliance - which had itself come under pressure from both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail to decide who it will back for government - said it wanted an answer on a meeting between it, Mr Kenny and Mr Martin within 24 hours. Responding to the request in his own letter to the Alliance this evening, Mr Kenny said he is "prepared to host such a meeting". He confirmed: "I intend to write to all Independent members and to the Fianna Fail leader to that effect." Enda Kenny has offered to host a meeting of FF leader and Independents in effort to form a govt. pic.twitter.com/2DoaBYAVYl Justin McCarthy (@MrJustinMac) April 8, 2016 Earlier: A potential future Fianna Fail leader has insisted the "blame game" over Ireland's political stalemate must end and that he is willing to open talks with Fine Gael writes Fiachra O Cionnaith and Juno McEnroe. The party's finance spokesperson Michael McGrath, who shares the Cork South Central constituency with party leader Micheal Martin, made the comments after another day of stand-off between the country's two largest parties. While Mr McGrath is on Fianna Fail's four-strong negotiating team and is believed to favour some form of Coalition, it is the first time he has made such detailed comments on the issue. Speaking to RTE this evening, the senior Fianna Fail TD said trust is essential for any working relationship and that it must be rebuilt between Fine Gael and his own party. He said now is the time for cool heads and that the "rhetoric" of recent days between acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Mr Martin and others needs to be toned down. Saying the "blame game" must end, Mr McGrath also said that Independents remain central to discussions. However, he said if no agreement can be reached, he would be willing to open talks with Fine Gael as a member of Fianna Fail's negotiating team. Mr McGrath said "we have to avoid a second election" as it will be "costly, unnecessary" and is unlikely to lead to any significant change in result. He added that the arguments are this stage are "circular, we're going around in circles at the moment" and that "a minority government is where we have to go, but we're not there yet". On Thursday, the vast majority of Fianna Fail's parliamentary party - made up of TDs and senators - backed Mr Martin's decision to outright reject Mr Kenny's Wednesday night offer of an "equal partnership" Government deal. However, while a senior TD said there was no "fire and brimstone" moment, a number of the party's TDs also questioned whether the move was the right approach during the four-hour meeting. They included Marc Mac Sharry, John McGuinness, Jackie Cahill, Fiona O Loughlin, Billy Kelleher, Robert Troy and John Brassil. Mr Kelleher, who was Fianna Fail's director of elections, and Mr Troy are understood to have raised the question for practical reasons due to the current numerical breakdown of the Dail. Mr McGrath was notably less vocal in his views during the meeting, but asked how a minority government would work in practice. He has repeatedly held his own counsel on the stalemate since the general election. It is so far unclear what response if any Fianna Fail headquarters will make to Mr McGrath's remarks. President Barack Obama this week lauded new Treasury regulations aimed at curbing so-called corporate inversions, in which U.S. companies merge with foreign firms to ease their tax burdens. Although the practice is legal, the president said companies effectively renounce their citizenship and stick the rest of us with the bill by performing such maneuvers. The new rules have already scuttled a proposed $160 billion merger between Pfizer, based in New York City, and Allergan, a former U.S. firm now headquartered in Ireland. The merger was expected to save Pfizer, a pharmaceutical giant, about $35 billion in taxes. What should the U.S. government do to discourage companies like Pfizer from moving overseas? Are more rules the answer? Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, weigh in. BEN BOYCHUK Two numbers help shed light why a corporation such as Pfizer would want to merge with a company like Allergan and end up based in Dublin instead of New York: 35 and 12.5. The United States has a corporate income tax rate of 35 percent the highest in the developed world. Irelands tax is just 12.5 percent. True, no American corporation with halfway competent tax attorneys and accountants will ever pay the full 35 percent. Pfizers effective tax rate was around 25.5 percent in its 2014 filings. Why wouldnt Pfizer go for the more favorable rate? Wouldnt you? The handwringing over corporate inversions is really a conflict over fundamental principles. President Obama and many Democrats treat paying taxes almost as a moral act. For a corporate giant like Pfizer to use existing laws to get a better deal is repugnant to them. But for Pfizers corporate officers, its simply a matter of doing whats best for companys shareholders. If you have a 401(k) or a government pension, you might be one of them. Companies want to remain competitive. They seek every possible advantage. Thats simply what corporations do. Remember: What Pfizer tried to do is perfectly legal under U.S. tax code. Less clear, however, is whether the new Treasury regulations are legal. They probably arent. In order to find out, a company would need to challenge the rules in court. And in order to have standing to sue, that same company would need to spend several years and risk tens of millions of dollars tussling with the IRS. What does seem clear, however, is that the rules will make it increasingly difficult for U.S. firms to do business. Perhaps instead of punishing companies, the Obama administration should seek to make the tax code more competitive. Obvious, right? Even some Democrats believe the U.S. corporate tax rate is too high. But the lowest rate Obama will entertain is 28 percent. Better to stick it to the corporations and settle for anemic economic growth than to entice companies to leave Dublin for New York with a better deal. JOEL MATHIS Heres one underlying conundrum on the issue of business taxes: Are corporations people or arent they? We already know the Republican answer to this question: Corporations are people, my friend, as Mitt Romney famously said in 2012. That point of view often means that corporations have the same rights as you or I including the right to free speech, which in practice means that corporations have just as much right as you or I to spend thousands or millions of dollars to influence the workings of government. Oddly, though, corporations rarely bear the same responsibilities as people. Case in point: Crossing borders and adopting a new nationality is, in most cases, quite hard and often illegal for real people. Corporations, though, increasingly act as persons without a country, able to contort themselves to pick the country in which they can pay the lowest wages while picking another in which to pay the lowest taxes. The result: Big corporations can make millions in profits in the United States while doing relatively little to contribute to the communitys upkeep. And, oh yeah: Many of the companies still keep their top executives in the United States making the whole thing a bit of a fiction. The equivalent? If your family adopted a Canadian child and declared Canadian citizenship all while staying snug at home in Peoria. Its absurd. No wonder Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have made a dent in this election year. Republicans will tell you that companies flee or do corporate inversions to transfer their citizenship abroad because of Americas high corporate tax rate of 35 percent. Dont believe them. A Reuters analysis last year of six such companies found they had an average effective tax rate of just 20.3 percent. Is it wrong for companies to move overseas for tax breaks? Its certainly unfair. Lets give big corporations a choice. They can keep the tax advantages and international flexibility that real people dont have, or they can have the legal personhood that gives them an outsized say in our politics. They shouldnt have both. The High Court is due to hear the States response to its ruling that a wider section of Moore Street in Dublin should be declared a national monument. Minister for Arts and Heritage Heather Humphreys wanted to build a commemorative centre at the site to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising. A Pakistani man has been jailed for nine years at the Central Criminal Court for killing a man he suspected of having an affair with his wife. Shahzad Hussain (aged 35), with a last address at Woodland Avenue, Mosney, Co Meath, was previously jailed for life for murdering his wife's cousin and his own distant relative Muhammad Arif (aged 32). He was also sentenced to seven years for seriously injuring his wife Rashida Bibi Haider (aged 44) and two years for assaulting her on January 6, 2011 at Mr Arifs apartment in Fitzwilliam Court, Dyer Street, Drogheda, Co Louth. He had denied the charges. However, in July 2014 the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed his murder conviction and ordered a retrial after a three-judge court found that there was a very real risk of injustice in the manner in which the central question of provocation was explained to the jury by the trial judge. Last January Mr Shane Costelloe SC, prosecuting, told the Central Criminal Court that in circumstances where the court of appeal had directed a retrial, he had been instructed by the DPP that Hussain could be arraigned on count one. On January 27 Hussain pleaded not guilty to the murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Mr Arif. At the time prosecution counsel told the court that this plea "meets the case in the circumstances". The court previously heard that Hussain was currently serving a sentence on the other two counts on the indictment "as those were not overturned by the court of appeal." Today, Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan extended her sympathy to the family of Mr Arif who she said had "died so tragically". Ms Justice Heneghan told the court that at the sentence hearing on April 4, evidence was given by Detective Inspector Patrick Marry from Dundalk Garda Station concerning the "distressing facts of this case". "It has been said in cases where there has been a death that even a long sentence will end at some point but the suffering of the deceased's family is indefinite and this is unfortunately true," said the judge. Ms Justice Heneghan said the aggravating factors in the case included the use of a knife by the convicted assailant, the severity of the wound inflicted and the hardship caused to the wife of Mr Arif. "The mitigating factors are Mr Hussain's early plea of guilty coupled with his genuine remorse. I have also taken into account as other mitigating factors his voluntary attendance at the garda station, his admission to the gardai to stabbing Mr Arif, his previous good character and the fact he did not bring a knife to the scene," said Ms Justice Heneghan. The judge then imposed a nine-year custodial sentence and backdated it to the date of his arrest on January 7 2011. The decision to divert a transatlantic flight to Belfast over an alleged air rage incident was recommended because there was a potential "time bomb" on board, a court has heard. Joseph Oka, a United Airlines relief pilot, said he feared the actions of an unpredictable passenger could have been a distraction for something more sinister. He told Antrim Crown Court: "I was thinking, can this just be a minor incident? Our training is to treat every incident as not minor. "This could really be a diversion to take attention away from the front." The Boeing 777 carrying 264 passengers was en route from Rome to Chicago on June 20 last year when the captain made the decision to touch down at Belfast International Airport after concerns were raised about the behaviour of Jeremiah Mathis Thede. The Californian, 42, denies a charge of endangering an aircraft or persons in the aircraft. Mr Oka, a former US navy pilot with 19 years' experience at United, said he made the unprecedented recommendation to "offload" Thede as the plane approached the end of UK airspace. To the forefront of his mind was an extreme incident where a passenger on a previous flight had been involved in a prolonged struggle before the plane could land, he said. "There could potentially be a time bomb on board," he said. "Do you want to deal with it on the ground or in the air, given that we were about to coast out? "There would be a long period for someone to get hurt while trying to get to an airport." The relief pilot, who is legally required to sleep during the first three hours of the flight, described being woken twice and asked to deal with Thede, adding: "That never happens." Complaints included allegedly "staring" at a female passenger and invading her personal space. Thede, who had changed his clothes a number of times and was standing up rummaging through his bag in the overhead bin, had been given three warnings to change his conduct, the court was told. Mr Oka did not witness any inappropriate behaviour but said he believed the accounts of the crew and concerned passengers. He said: "Another part of our training is that if any passenger's behaviour or conduct affects the safety or comfort of another passenger, they may be removed - and that was clearly happening. "I just felt that the crew members' duties had been interfered with enough, we were reaching the point where we were coasting out and once you are over the Atlantic there are not a lot of places to land. "It's better to offload this gentleman and continue with this flight." The court heard there was no evidence that Thede's actions were part of a wider distraction plot and shortly after the captain announced the plane was being diverted he appeared to be asleep. He was only woken when police officers escorted him off, it was claimed. It also emerged that although restraints were available they were not deployed. Previously the court has been told the plane had to dump thousands of litres of fuel before making the unscheduled stop. And as the crew would have exceeded their legal flying hours if the aircraft had resumed the journey straight away, the passengers were forced to wait almost 24 hours before the plane could take off again, with many having to sleep on the terminal floor. Throughout proceedings Thede, who was dressed in a navy suit jacket, white shirt and grey trousers, listened intently from the dock, occasionally taking notes. The trial continues. Three men have been arrested in Co. Tipperary, following a seizure of drugs with an estimated street value of 240,000. Customs seized herbal Cannabis worth an estimated 140,000, believed to have originated in Spain, was discovered at a premises in Roscrea. Update 7.10pm: Gullinbursti and Minella Reception suffered what proved to be life-ending falls over the Grand National fences in the Crabbie's Topham Chase at Aintree. Emma Lavelle's Gullinbursti was fatally injured after parting company with Gavin Sheehan at Becher's Brook during the Grade Three handicap, while the Nigel Twiston-Davies-trained Minella Reception came to grief at the same fence and was later put down as a result of his injuries. Sad to report that the Emma Lavelle trained Gullinbursti was fatally injured in the Topham at Aintree #RIP pic.twitter.com/UY8nHSDoHx Mr. Racing Tips (@MrRacingTips) April 8, 2016 Minella Reception had initially been assessed and treated by veterinary staff on the course and was transported back to the stables for further assessment. The veterinary team determined Minella Reception's injury was not recoverable and on welfare grounds it was necessary for him to be humanely euthanised. Minella Reception had to be put down after the Topham Chase Racing Post (@RacingPost) April 8, 2016 The deaths are the fourth in a race over the National fences this week, after both Clonbanan Lad and Marasonnien died after collapsing during the Fox Hunters' Chase at the track on Thursday. John Baker, north west regional director for Aintree's owners Jockey Club racecourses, said: "We'd like to express our sympathies to the connections of Gullinbursti and Minella Reception. "While you can't remove all risk from any sport, we acted on evidence to make significant changes here at Aintree, including to the cores of every fence on the Grand National Course, and we've seen hundreds of horses compete safely since over the last few years." Original story: Four-times race winner Gullinbursti suffered a fatal injury following a fall in the Crabbie's Topham Chase at Aintree. The Emma Lavelle-trained 10-year-old was put down after parting company with Gavin Sheehan at Becher's Brook during the Grade Three handicap. Minella Reception was assessed and treated by veterinary staff on the course following a fall in the same race and was transported back to the stables for further assessment. Gullinbursti's death is the third in a race over the Grand National fences this week, after both Clonbanan Lad and Marasonnien died after collapsing during the Fox Hunters' Chase at the track on Thursday. Former US president Bill Clinton is offering a near-apology for his heated exchange with protesters at a campaign event for his wife, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton told supporters in Pennsylvania on Friday that he likes protests but it "bothers" him when activists drown him out. "So I did something yesterday in Philadelphia. I almost wanted to apologise for it, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country," he said. The handful of protesters at the Hillary Clinton presidential rally on Thursday were objecting to welfare reform and gun violence laws passed when Bill Clinton was in office 20 years ago. "I don't know how you would characterise the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," Bill Clinton told the crowd. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn't. You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter." As first lady, Mrs Clinton used the term "super-predators" to describe young people in gangs in a 1996 speech about the crime bill, one of her husband's signature policy achievements. Some blacks have found the term offensive, and she has said she regrets using the term. Bill Clinton has also said he regrets signing the 1994 legislation because it contributed to high incarceration rates of black people for non-violent crimes, like minor drug offences. On Friday, he said Americans need to be able to have conversations, even when they are angry, a standard he failed to meet on Thursday with the protesters. "I realised, finally, I was talking past her in the way she was talking past me. We got to stop that in this country. We got to listen to each other," he said. A fugitive suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks has been arrested in Belgium, French police officials said, after a raid Belgian authorities said was linked to the March 22 Brussels bombings. The suspect, Mohamed Abrini, is believed to be the mysterious "man in the hat" who escaped the double bombing at Zaventem airport, according to one of the French officials. That would mean Abrini had a key role in both attacks carried out by the so-called 'Islamic State' cell that left a total of 162 people dead - 130 in Paris and 32 in Brussels. Friday's arrest of at least two people came a day after Belgian authorities released photos and video of the airport suspect. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office confirmed "several arrests" but refused to provide more information. Abrini was the last identified suspect still at large from the November 13 attacks in Paris, although his precise role has never been clear. He is a 31-year-old Belgian-Moroccan petty criminal believed to have travelled early last summer to Syria where his younger brother died in 2014 in IS's French-speaking brigade. He has not resurfaced since the emergence of surveillance video placing him in the convoy with the attackers headed to Paris. He had ties to Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who died in a police stand-off on November 18, and is a childhood friend of brothers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam. He went multiple times to Birmingham, England, last year, meeting several men suspected of terrorist activity, a European security source said. He added that the meetings, including one later last summer, took place in several locations, including cafes and apartments. He was travelling with Salah Abdeslam, who is in jail in Belgium for involvement in the Paris attacks, in the convoy headed to Paris in the 36 hours leading up to the attacks. The man in the hat was with the two suicide bombers who killed 16 people at Brussels airport on March 22. A second arrest could also be linked to the Maelbeek subway bombing that killed another 16 people during rush hour that morning. On Thursday, authorities released photos and video of a man wearing a dark hat, leaving the airport on foot, walking to the nearby town of Zaventem and then into Brussels, where all traces of him were reportedly lost. A 27-year-old man's ambitious plan to propose to his girlfriend after scaling a cliff face went a bit awry after he had to be winched to safety by a rescue helicopter. Michael Banks climbed Morro Rock, just off California's Central Coast, to propose to his girlfriend, who was watching via FaceTime video. The good news for Mr Banks was that his girlfriend said yes; the bad news was that he got stuck. Morro Bay fire captain Todd Gailey said Mr Banks "took a different trail down, much steeper" and became stranded. "He couldn't go any direction, on a sheer ledge, with his feet dangling 80ft off the ground." A rescue helicopter was called in, with Capt Gailey descending by cable to hoist Mr Banks from the narrow ledge in a tricky operation, with the rotors spinning close to the cliff and ocean spray battering both men. In this photo provided by Bob Isenberg, Michael Banks is rescued after being stranded on a ledge off the ground on Morro Rock, a landmark in Morro Bay, California. Pictures: Bob Isenberg / AP Mr Banks was calm for most of the ordeal, but "a little unnerved" during the crucial airlift, Capt Gailey said. Morro Rock is a landmark located just offshore from the community of Morro Bay. Climbing is banned but some people attempt the ascent anyway, and there have been several fatal falls over the years. Typically when someone needs to be rescued they are fined, Capt Gailey said. It was not immediately clear if Mr Banks, who was unharmed in the incident, was punished in any way. Mr Banks said nothing during the rescue about any second thoughts on his choice of setting for the proposal, Capt Gailey said. However, the fire captain suggested that other romantics should consider a place "where you're not in danger of falling off a cliff". The US has condemned the latest killing of an outspoken opponent of radical Islam in Bangladesh as "barbaric", and is considering granting refuge to a select number of bloggers in imminent danger. Assailants hacked and shot 28-year-old law student Nazimuddin Samad on Wednesday night on a street in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The unidentified attackers shouted "Allahu Akbar", or "Allah is great", and escaped by motorcycle. At least five secular bloggers and publishers were killed in similar attacks last year. This has heightened concern that religious extremists are gaining a foothold in Bangladesh, a Muslim country with traditions of secularism and tolerance, and that authorities are failing to provide protection. In December, US-based human rights groups urged their government to offer "humanitarian parole" for Bangladeshi writers targeted by extremists for their secular beliefs. Karin Deutsch Karlekar of PEN America reiterated that call to the US and other countries, saying that Mr Samad's killing "is a cruel illustration of the costs of inaction". State department spokesman Mark Toner strongly condemned the "barbaric murder" of Mr Samad and told reporters the US offers "unwavering support to the Bangladeshi people in their struggle against violent extremism". He said that humanitarian parole for a select number of bloggers who continue to be under "imminent danger" is one option under consideration, but referred questions on it to the Homeland Security Department. Shin Inouye, press secretary at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is responsible for administering such cases, declined to comment about any specific requests for humanitarian parole. Humanitarian parole is used sparingly to bring a person into the US for a temporary period of time due to a compelling emergency. No group has claimed responsibility for the killing of Samad, a supporter of prime minister Sheikh Hasina's secular Awami League party. Bangladeshi police suspect Mr Samad was targeted for his outspoken atheism and for supporting capital punishment for war crimes committed during the independence war against Pakistan in 1971. Mr Hasina's government set up special tribunals to try war crimes cases, including against senior leaders of an opposition, Islamist party. Mr Hasina's government has accused the opposition of supporting religious radicals it blames for the attacks on bloggers, minority Shias, Christians and foreigners. Some of the attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group, but the government dismisses those claims and says the Sunni extremist group has no presence in the country. KARACHI: Gold prices on Friday lost some value on the local market, traders said. They dropped by Rs500 to Rs147400... SINGAPORE: US oil may test a support at $81.14 per barrel, a break below which could open the way towards... TOKYO: Japan intervened in the foreign exchange market on Friday to buy yen for the second time in a month after the... RALEIGH The General Assembly recently passed a law invalidating a Charlotte ordinance allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of the sex with which they identify. Opponents of the ordinance cited privacy and safety concerns with allowing women to enter men's restrooms and men to enter women's restrooms, changing facilities, and locker rooms. Proponents hurled accusations of discrimination and radicalism.North Carolina is not alone in dealing with the transgender bathroom issue. In January and February, more than two dozen similar bills were filed in state legislatures. Legislators in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin are considering bills allowing transgender people to use the bathroom or locker room that reflects their gender identity.The General Assembly came back for a special session. The final vote in the House was 82-26, with bipartisan support. The vote in the Senate was 32-0; Democratic members of the Senate walked out, avoiding a vote altogether. Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill into law hours later.House Bill 2, disallowing the bathroom ordinance and clarifying local government authority, passed despite a lot of drama, press buzz, partisan bickering, and pundit posturing. But did it have to be so hard and so hurtful?No one should minimize the heartache, struggle, and hardship that people dealing with sexual identity challenges face, especially young people. Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue said during the debate that a relatively simple court suit could have derailed the Charlotte ordinance without "scaring the bejesus" out of everyone. Amen.Are costly lawsuits or sweeping legislation the only possible resolutions? Remember the controversy, legislation, and lawsuits surrounding magistrates objecting to conducting same-sex marriages? Couldn't that have been solved with reasonable accommodation for everyone involved?A common-sense photo ID provision preserving integrity in elections while accommodating those who needed extra help might have prevented ugly protests, voter confusion, and costly litigation.When did working through tough challenges and coming to agreements become the last choice in problem resolution and governing?One alternative to the Charlotte ordinance would be for all public facilities to provide a single-occupancy bathroom option for anyone who feels uncomfortable using a multi-stall bathroom. This would be open to anyone who wants additional privacy - senior citizens, parents with young children, and yes, transgender people. If there is a need to construct them, do so at taxpayer expense.It's different for private facilities. Government ought to respect the property rights of private business owners rather than mandating special accommodations. By allowing business owners the freedom to run their companies the way they choose and with motivation to succeed and make a profit, business practices eventually conform with public sentiment and demand without government coercion. Free markets work when left alone.North Carolina is not a "home rule" state, meaning local governments are the creature and creation of the General Assembly - it's in our state Constitution. There are some things cities just can't do without creating inconsistencies in laws across the state, causing confusion and inequities, and jeopardizing the competitive position of the state's business climate.Passing the bathroom ordinance was way beyond Charlotte's legal authority. Requiring private contractors to pay certain wages or regulate their employment practices is also way beyond the city's authority. Charlotte leaders knew this and recklessly ignored the Constitution.The speedily called special session and resulting legislation were necessary to ensure public facility privacy and security, statewide consistency in laws, and protection of rights. It also was necessary to remind local governments that their authority is limited.It's really a matter of rights: privacy rights, property rights, religious freedom rights, and the right to dignity and respect. North Carolina is a leader in protecting those rights. Let's keep it that way. Sunday, the 1st of May, 2016, 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. LAGOS: More than 600 people are now known to have perished in the worst floods in a decade in Nigeria, according to... BRUSSELS: EU leaders on Friday reached agreement on a roadmap aimed at putting in place measures within weeks to... TEHRAN: Iran has once again rejected allegations that it has supplied Russia with weapons "to be used in the war in... Prosecutors and the ACT government have lost an attempt to prosecute a kangaroo cull protester behind closed doors. The case against Christiaan Klootwijk, 70, resumed in the ACT Magistrates Court on Friday morning, continuing a lengthy prosecution over his alleged blowing of a whistle near a cull site last year. Christiaan Klootwijk pleaded not guilty to two charges he hindered a public official. Credit:Graham Tidy Klootwijk is accused of hindering the cull workers by making loud noises, which included blowing a whistle. It is alleged that his actions were designed to scare off kangaroos, making it difficult for them to be shot, and halted the cull for about 45 minutes. Labor government minister Meegan Fitzharris has admitted to an official meeting with her husband over the Manuka Oval redevelopment bid, in her capacity as member of the ACT Parliament. A day after Ms Fitzharris said she had gone to some lengths to avoid a conflict of interest and would remove herself from discussions or deliberations about Manuka, The Canberra Times can reveal her husband, Pierre Huetter, took part in a briefing about the unsolicited bid to Ms Fitzharris and her staff on February 18. Government minister Meegan Fitzharris and husband Pierre Huetter, pictured in 2011. Credit:Lyn Mills Mr Huetter is a former staffer for Chief Minister Andrew Barr and works for Dowse Projects, which has been employed by the GWS Giants to work on its bid with Grocon to redevelop the oval and build up to 1000 apartments, a hotel, shops and other developments on the site. In response to questions, a spokeswoman said Ms Fitzharris accepted an offer to all members of the Legislative Assembly for a briefing on the plan as the development is in her electorate, but she said an official from directorate was also present. Canberra multimillionaire Matt Bullock has sold his online transaction company for more than a thousand times the money in his bank when he started it. When the Pearce man developed eWAY 18 years ago, he had $50,000 to his name. On Friday, he sold it to American payment technology services giant Global Payments for $US50 million. Canberra entrepreneur Matt Bullock at home in Pearce. He has just sold his online transaction company eWAY for $US50 million. Credit:Rohan Thomson Understandably, Mr Bullock feels a great sense of achievement from his brainchild that grew to doing 5.8 billion online purchases last year, or about a quarter of all internet transactions in Australia. "What this shows is that you can do anything in Canberra," he said. Low oil prices and a strong US dollar have weighed on Costco's performance in recent months as the discount retailer draws up plans for its first Australian supply depot and seeks out new "infill" sites across all its major, capital-city markets. Same store sales from Costco's international network, including South Korea, Taiwan and Australia, fell by 4 per cent in the 31 weeks to April 3 or 1 per cent in the month of March, however the group's total sales grew by 3 per cent year on year in the same one month period to $US10.71 billion ($14 billion). Costco Australia managing director Patrick Noone. Credit:Lannon Harley LJH And excluding the impact of petrol purchases and foreign currency exchange costs, Costco's total sales grew by 4 per cent in March and sales increased by 5 per cent from the retailer's store network outside of the US and Canada, including Australia. Head of Costco's Australian operation Patrick Noone said the Australian dollar's slide from parity with the US dollar to about US75 had "changed the maths quite a bit". The upshot is its key recommendation is for 7-Eleven to agree to enter a compliance agreement. This would include head office setting up a "guarantee" reserve fund to repay workers when the franchisee fails to rectify the wage breach, introducing photographic identification of all employees, owning and operating all CCTV systems in 7-Eleven franchises and introducing a biometric time recording system for all employees and franchisees to enable head office to monitor accurate records of working hours, as well as requiring franchisees to send head office weekly store rosters. Perhaps they could think about the following recommendation, which would cut to the chase: being obliged to report all instances of non-compliance to the FWO. The finer details of the agreement are still to be mapped out, but, given the magnitude of the problems uncovered at 7-Eleven and the fact that head office only began to deal with them after a media expose and a boycott of stores by outraged customers, it seems a shame more couldn't be done. "7-Eleven must now accept its moral and ethical responsibility for what has been happening and work with us to root out and deal with its franchisees who have built the underpayment of wages into their business model and who in some cases prey on vulnerable workers they can control," James said. To its credit the regulator gave an honest account of its limited powers and penalties, which hampered its investigation. Its biggest impediment is the inability to compel witnesses to cooperate, a power most other regulators have, including the Coalition's proposed ABBC. "Unlike some regulators, we do not have the capacity to require any person to answer questions on the record in relation to alleged contraventions of workplace laws," the report stated. Absent that power, it is forced to rely on information gathered through other means. "Investigations in this Inquiry have been characterised by widespread lack of cooperation and creation of records that concealed rather than established contravening conduct," the report said. It also outlined the size of penalties available to it, which are too low to act as a deterrent. For example, failing to make or keep records under section 535 of the Fair Work Act attracts a maximum penalty of $5,400 for an individual and $27,000 for a company. Underpaying wages attracts a maximum penalty of $10,800 for an individual and $54,000 for a corporation. Knowingly making false or misleading records attracts a maximum penalty of $3,600 for an individual and $18,000 for a corporate. Many workers on visas Despite the gravity of the situation and that 1.3 million workers in Australia are on visas, there seems little appetite on both sides of the political spectrum to tackle the situation. Even the shadow minister for employment, Brendan O'Connor, is wary of granting FWO the power to compel witnesses. "Extending coercive powers to the civil jurisdiction must be justified and balanced with appropriate protections, unlike those the government wants to give to the ABCC." The best the FWO has been able to do is take five of the 20 stores it raided to court, which is costly and carries the risk of the franchisee then going into liquidation to avoid paying fines and back pay. In the other cases, one store received an enforceable undertaking, nine letters of caution, eight infringement notices and one compliance notice. The total amount of money recovered from eight stores is almost $200,000 with a further $83,600 being pursued through legal action. The Fels Wage Fairness panel, which is not subject to the same strait-jacket as FWO, has raided 50 stores and paid 300 workers $10 million in backpay, which is equivalent to approximately $38,000 each. Another 2000 staff are in the process of being assessed, which could result in $75 million being paid. Besides the compensation panel, 7-Eleven has tried to repair its damaged reputation by changing its flawed business model and putting a few heads on sticks, including the chief executive and chairman. But 7-Eleven has come to symbolise what is going wrong in a number of sectors of the economy, where wage fraud is part and parcel of doing business and vulnerable foreign workers are the enablers for this insidious practice. Loading The FWO has taken tough action against a few franchisees, but hundreds have done the wrong thing. Some through necessity and some because they can. Australia has a high rate of firing workers when companies downsize compared with many other developed nations, a new report has found. And while 70 per cent of workers who are laid off find a new job within a year, one in three will be paid less than they were in their old jobs. One in eight move into jobs that require a lower set of skills. One in three Australian workers made redundant are paid less in their new jobs. Credit:Gabriele Charotte The new report by economist Ann Vourc'h for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that each year around 2.3 per cent of Australian workers lose their jobs as a result of corporate downsizing or closure. Of those who lose their jobs, 70 per cent find a new one within a year and 80 per cent are re-employed within two years. But their new jobs are more likely to pay less than the ones they left behind. The Parliamentary Budget Office's report on the future cost of the Higher Education Loans Program highlights the contradiction at the heart of the federal government's plan to deregulate university fees. The government tries to argue that cutting subsidies for undergraduate places by 20 per cent and allowing universities to charge whatever fees they want is necessary because higher education has become too great a burden on the Commonwealth budget. What the report shows, however, is that implementing the government's plan would be the worst possible course of action if the aim is responsible budget management. The amount of outstanding HECS debt would blow out massively, potentially making the whole HELP system unsustainable. The PBO report estimates that within 10 years the annual cost of HELP loans now $1.7 billion will have risen to $11.1 billion, accounting for 46 per cent of the nation's public debt. A man once known as the "lieutenant" in the Bali nine trafficking ring has been arrested after a naked woman was found dead in Sydney's inner west. A nude Khanh Thanh Ly, 35, was allegedly found standing over the body of the woman in the shallows of Parramatta River at Cabarita on Thursday night. Concerned residents called triple zero about 11.30pm after hearing screaming and yelling at Cabarita Wharf. Police say the 27-year-old victim, believed to have been a n Indonesian national who had just returned to Australia, had cuts to her face and was floating in about 30 centimetres of water. Detectives investigating the alleged murder of home invader Ricky Slater-Dickson are identifying a significant number of burglaries committed by him in the weeks leading up to his death, including a violent attack on a young woman after she woke to find the suspect in her bedroom. The terrified 22-year-old woman was repeatedly punched during the home invasion in the inner Newcastle suburb of The Junction just one week before Slater-Dickson lay unresponsive in a neighbouring suburb after allegedly being choked by home owner Ben Batterham after he found the convicted rapist inside his house. The victim identified Slater-Dickson as her attacker after seeing reports of his death, and her suspicions were confirmed when a mobile phone taken during her attack was found at the alleged murder scene in Hamilton. Sydney is hurtling towards an unsolvable transport crisis if job growth in western Sydney continues at the same rate as it has for the past decade, a new report says. There will be a jobs deficit of more than 300,000 and nearly half a million people mostly professionals travelling long distances will be forced to leave western Sydney each day to get to work by 2036 if things continue the way they are. A new report says Sydney will be "strangled" by congestion if more jobs aren't created in western Sydney. This is the grim projection made in the Western Sydney University report, which says Sydney will be "strangled" by congestion on roads, trains and buses, a loss of productivity and rising costs if nothing much changes. "Global Sydney will suffocate," the report's author Professor Phillip O'Neill, director of the Centre for Western Sydney, said. A 25-year-old, Thornlands man is due to appear in the Southport Magistrates Court on Saturday morning after he allegedly rammed a police car and assaulted police. He was also found to be in possession of drugs and stolen property, police said. About 10am, police on patrol noticed a person of interest parked in a car in a shopping centre car park at Upper Coomera. A man will appear in Southport Magistrates Court. The officers pulled in behind the man's car when he allegedly reversed his vehicle into them, damaging the bonnet and headlight. Then the man kicked and punched an officer in a struggle. A woman and another person were on a jet ski off Fraser Island when they had a close encounter with a great white shark, a shark conservationist says. The pair were off Fraser Island, close to Ungowa Creek, when they spotted what they said was a "six-foot bronze whaler". They steered towards the shark to get a better look, which proved to be too close for the shark, which turned around and struck at the jet ski. "So this just happened. I literally had to move my leg so it didn't get mauled!!" wrote one of the jet ski riders, Libby Williams, who had filmed the event from her GoPro. Testimony wrapped up in the Kyle Coleman inquest on Thursday with coroner Jan Bentley reserving her decision to a later date while she considers the evidence. Dennis Lynch, Barrister for Kyle Coleman's parents, called for an unlawful killing finding saying that Kyle Coleman never returned from Undilla Station on February 21, 2014 and was killed there by James Coleman (no relation) on their camping trip that weekend. The search for Kyle Coleman. Credit:North West Star Mr Lynch said his findings were based on the many lies in James Coleman's testimony after he returned to Mount Isa - an outback Queensland mining town about 820km west of Townsville - on February 22. Mr Lynch said those lies included telling police they had only gone to the first crossing at the Undilla property before turning back, failing to disclose he had two weapons, telling people Kyle Coleman had come back to his house before leaving on foot with his backpack and swag, telling people he lost his mobile phone, and lying by omission when he failed to tell police he had cleaned his car on Saturday morning. The founder of an anti-Islam and anti-immigration political party has hit out at a Queensland pub for discrimination because it wouldn't let her meet there. Kim Vuga, the grandmother who rose to prominence sticking to her views on SBS' Go Back to Where You Came From reality show, said it was another example of a nationwide clampdown on free speech. Kim Vuga (left), while on Go Back to Where You Come From. Credit:SBS She'd organised to have a group "meet for drinks" at the Beach House Hotel in Hervey Bay before heading to another, unnamed hotel for the meeting itself, she said to prevent the venue being attacked online by "anti-Reclaim Australia" groups. On Friday, Ms Vuga was told she and her members weren't welcome in the venue. A man has been charged over a brazen hooning incident on the Gold Coast. Police allege 32-year-old Wade Tyron Summers from Ipswich performed a burnout and made rude gestures in a Nissan Skyline just before 1am on Wednesday outside the Surfers Paradise Police Station. The station was open at the time but police did not arrest the man. That night he allegedly continued his hooning behaviour, this time on Surfers Paradise Boulevard, revving his engine and creating noise. A woman has been threatened with a gun during a home invasion west of Brisbane. Police say three men entered a house in the Ipswich suburb of Raceview about 10.30pm on Thursday, and threatened residents, including brandishing a gun at the woman. Three men entered an Ipswich house and threatened residents with a gun. Credit:iStock The woman suffered minor cuts and abrasions and police are still hunting for the trio, who fled through a broken front security screen. AAP An Israeli-Australian business has been banned from Facebook after sharing an anti-Semitic message on social media. Avi Yemini, the co-owner of IDF Training, said he was astounded his business had been banned from posting for three days for drawing attention to the hateful message posted on the business' social media page on Thursday. A self-defence workshop at the gym in Caulfield given by former Israeli infantry soldier Lior Offenbach last year. Credit:Jason South IDF Training is a pro-Zionist gym in Caulfield that trains members in Israeli self-defence techniques. Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis has hit out at those who sought to "vilify students and colleagues" by scrawling anti-Muslim slogans across its Parkville campus. Written in chalk, the messages appeared around the campus, but were soon washed away by staff and students. In a post on its Facebook page, Professor Davis condemned the vandals, who he said intended to cause "hurt". "Many are aware a number of offensive slogans were written in chalk on the Parkville campus today," he said. Helena, Montana: Montana authorities have filed drink driving charges against the former US Navy Seal commando who says he fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden. Butte-Silver Bow County Undersheriff George Skuletich says officers found Robert O'Neill asleep early on Friday in a running car parked outside a convenience store in his hometown. Former Navy Seal Robert O'Neill, who claims he killed Osama bin Laden. Skuletich says the 39-year-old O'Neill was confused and appeared to be intoxicated when officers woke him up. The officers took him to jail after he failed a field sobriety test. They charged him when he refused a Breathalyser test. He was released after posting a $US685 ($912) bond. American woman mistakenly kills her daughter Oregon shooting: 274 days and 294 mass shootings Why the US is No. 1 in mass shootings: study San Antonio: Police say two people are dead in an apparent murder-suicide at a US air force base in San Antonio, Texas. The shooting was reported at the Lackland part of Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, according to officials, with two bodies found inside a room at the base. FBI agents near the scene of the shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Credit:San Antonio Express-News It is believed the shooter is among the two dead, but sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement officers continue to search the building and nearby facilities. "We responded to reports of an active shooter at Lackland this morning," said Rosanne Hughes, a spokeswoman for the Bexar County Sheriff's Office. "We do have victims." The sheriff's office said the situation was still active by 9.45am local time, with deputies still inside a building at the facility. A law enforcement official said that the incident appears to have emanated from a dispute, and investigators were exploring the possibility that the shooter has died of a self-inflicted wound. The joint base was locked locked down due to the shooting. Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman at the Pentagon, said Friday that the service's security forces as well as local law enforcement were responding to the shooting. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams What a twist! The fight at Republican presidential campaign caboose John Kasichs Bay Ridge town hall was as staged as an episode of the Jerry Springer Show, according to tabloid television host Montel Williams, who was there stumping for the candidate. Ever seen a protest that well-choreographed and protesters with obvious training in voice projection? tweeted Williams, who has hosted The Montel Williams Show since 1991, and claimed the guys looked like actors. Two disrupters seated near the stage stood up and burst out yelling at each other about party affiliations while Williams talked up the Ohio governors bid at the Bay Ridge Manor on April 7, prompting security to drag out the louts. A Kasich spokesman claimed the troublemakers support Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and have pulled stunts like that before. Those were apparently two pro-Trump comedians that have attended candidate events in the past, communications director Chris Schrimpf in an e-mail. It definitely seemed staged, but Montel didnt script it, and it caught his team off guard, a spokesman said in an e-mail. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams Brooklyn-born Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (IVermont) will finally make a public appearance in his hometown on Friday, hosting rallies outside his childhood home in Midwood and in a waterfront park in Greenpoint. The James Madison High School alum who is in town ahead of the April 19 New York primary will first host an event sometime after 1 pm outside the building where he spent his formative years, on the corner of E. 26th Street and Kings Highway, joined by Hollywoods The Hulk Mark Ruffalo. He will then head to Transmitter Park on the Greenpoint waterfront sometime after 3 pm to give a speech with legendary actress and Clinton Hill homeowner Susan Sarandon. Both events are free and open to the public, but will be first come, first served. Flatbush rally outside Bernies old place (1525 E. 26th St. at Kings Highway in Midwood), April 8 at 1 pm. Free. RSVP here. Greenpoint rally at Transmitter Park (Greenpoint Avenue at West Street in Greenpoint), April 8 at 3 pm. Free. RSVP here. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams He came Cruz-ing for a schmoozing. Republican Presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz (RTexas) championed the plight of poor, minority teen workers in an effort to win over an audience of local black business leaders Downtown on Thursday night, slamming New Yorks recent minimum-wage hike as a burden on small businesses that will force them to replace those kids jobs with computers. Every time you raise the minimum wage, thousands of people lose their jobs, and the people who are laid off are typically teenagers low-income, African-American and Hispanic kids, he said to the crowd of around 30 inside the Marriott hotel on Adams Street. If you raise the price of labor too high, you substitute it with an iPad. The Harvard-educated former lawyer told the small crowd corralled by East New York-born Republican strategist and one-time city comptroller candidate John Burnett that he is dedicated to fighting these kinds of regulations and taxes, which have been hammering small businesses and their workers. The Tea Party favorite claimed that if his Cuba-born father hadnt been able to wash dishes for 50 cents an hour when he first came to America due to wage hikes or Obamacare, he would never have been able to bootstrap his way out of poverty. Likewise, young New Yorkers need experience so they can work their way up, he argued, not a wage they can support a family on. Most people arent providing for a family on their first job, thats when theyre just getting started, theyre learning skills, he said. I think every first job should focus on empowering. One attendee said she didnt agree with Cruzs minimum wage argument, but that he did a better job winning over the crowd in subsequent question-and-answer session that was closed to the media, in which he reportedly let his guard down and spoke candidly about small businesses, education, and criminal justice. I wasnt crazy about Cruz at first, but when I heard what he had to say, you could tell he loosened up, said a woman who identified herself only as Renee, and said she is considering voting for the Texan senator. Renee said she initially was planning to vote for Donald Trump, but has been turned off by his recent antics although she would vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (IVermont) if she werent a Republican. Another audience member said Cruz would struggle to win black Brooklynites votes due to his party affiliation, but praised him for taking the time to schedule the intimate gathering. Theres such a sour sentiment towards Republicans and conservatives, said Kevin Barrett, a real estate broker and writer. The people in the community should be pleased he came and addressed us not everybody does that. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams Flatbush will soon feel the Bern. Bernie Sanderss presidential campaign is opening its second Brooklyn office this time a stones throw from the Midwood-native-turned-Vermont-senators childhood home, organizers announced just 12 days before the New York primary. The Madison High School-educated presidential hopeful is opening the operation at the corner of Flatbush and Bedford avenues to reach communities other candidates have overlooked, a representative said. But the politician who previously occupied the building panned Sanders as a Bernie-come-lately because opponent Hillary Clinton headquartered her entire operation in Brooklyn Heights last year. Its great that he has an office here, but people should remember that Clinton has her entire national office [in Brooklyn], said state Sen. Kevin Parker (DFlatbush), who previously kept a district office where Sanderss now is setting up shop. Welcome to the party, Bernie. The new office will be a base for phone-bankers and door-knockers hoping to woo a neighborhood organizers say hasnt gotten enough love from candidates. The campaign is serious about reaching out to voters across the state and across the city and I think the Senator demonstrated that by holding a rally in the South Bronx to neighborhoods that are not usually visited by politicians, said spokesman and Crown Heights resident Karthik Ganapathy. So I think its partly to make sure were reaching out to everyone. Critics have slammed Sanders for a poor record on issues affecting people of color. And the senator from Vermont the second-whitest state in the Union has been courting black leaders in an apparent attempt to improve his brand with minority voters. Sanders opened his first Brooklyn office in Gowanus where whites comprise 62.6 percent of the population in census tracts within a half-mile of his outpost on March 26. Conversely, whites only account for 11.5 percent of the population within a half-mile of Sanders Flatbush office, census data shows. Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (DFlatbush) whose own office is less than a mile away took the stage with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in Crown Heights on April 5. Organizers are still negotiating a lease and havent set a date to Sanderss new office, Ganapathy said. Sanders and Clinton will take the stage at the Navy Yard in Fort Greene on April 14 for a final debate before the New York primary on April 19. Scandal kind of brushed past Olivia Popes kidnapping last season. Sure she had some mild PTSD and starting sleeping with a super hot dude who turned out to be evil, but she got back to business pretty quickly. So its about damn time that, in Thwack, Olivia finally cracks. The return of a major threat to everything shes worked for (and her emotional well-being) causes big problems. But its nothing that cant be solved with murder. Thats right, Olivia straight-up kills somebody and its not pretty. A Threat from the Past Guess whos back? Its former Vice President Andrew Nichols, aka the evil bastard who orchestrated Olivias kidnapping last year. Huck may have given him a stroke, but hes still alive, recovering and talking to Fitzs former reporter girlfriend Lillian Forrester about how the president went to war with West Angola because his girlfriend got kidnapped. Needless to say, no one wants that particular story to come out so everyone who was involved meets up in the White House: Fitz, Liz, Abby, David, Cyrus, Olivia and Mellie. Liz wants to have Huck finish the job he started and kill him. Cyrus doesnt care because Fitz gave him immunity for everything he ever did in the White House. Mellie visits Andrew to try and talk him out of it, but she fails. I know Andrew is recovering from a stroke, but his incredibly slurred speech makes it kind of hard to take this threat seriously. Its almost too comical when he tries to get a senator and former First Lady whos running for president to give him a hand job. Olivia Tries to Fix It Andrews return brings back Olivias PTSD and horrifying memories of being kidnapped. She even goes to Papa Pope and Jake, asking them to use the NSA to spy on Lillian so theyll know if and when shes going to publish the story. Olivias plan to fix things is having Huck drug and kidnap Andrew to negotiate with him in the White House bunker. He demands $10 million and Olivia representing him for a book deal for his silence. Olivia brings it back to the group, with Liz and Fitz each agreeing to pay half (because theyre super rich Republicans). Unfortunately, Andrew doesnt really want the money. Hes hellbent on destroying everyone and theres nothing they can do to stop him. Fitz Offers to Take the Hit With no other options, Fitz wants to take the fall for everyone. He plans on telling the world that he staged Andrews assassination attempt and thats why they went to war. Hed have to resign in disgrace, but it would protect everyone else. Abby is against it, but Olivia is for it because she thinks Fitz is being presidential. The problem is that Abby has turned into a monster refusing to let go of the Oval, even if Olivia doesnt think Abby is that scary. She has no idea. Abby goes to Andrew and makes a new deal. He covers up the president going to war and instead just throws Mellie under the bus. Abby is definitely a monster, willing to destroy anyone to protect the Oval. Olivia Goes CRAZY! Olivia is horrified at the Abby Monster she has created. She goes to Andrew to try and undo the damage to protect Mellie. But Andrew doesnt care. He taunts her about being a slut and a prostitute, talking about selling her at auction again. His comments bring back her PTSD and she starts reliving her kidnapping. And thats when Olivia snaps. She picks up a chair in the bunker and hits Andrew with it. Then she hits him again and again. Olivia literally beats Andrew TO DEATH with a chair. Fitz arrives in the bunker to comfort Olivia. Abby arrives and is horrified. Olivia quickly plans the cover, blaming the story Andrew told Lillian on his stroke to stop it. Before leaving, Olivia ominously wanrs Abby Never cross me again! Yeah, Abby may have thought she was a monster, but Olivia is still the queen. In the aftermath, Olivia goes home. And by home, I mean Papa Popes house. I would say that Olivia Pope is now Scandals villain, but I dont think the show has any heroes left. There are no White Hats, theyre all covered in blood like Olivias face. The Latino Vote The election is still going on in the background, with Mellie trying to get the Latino vote by meeting with a Catholic priest. It works, but Marcus is still bummed that no one at OPA seems to care since they were so focused on the Andrew situation. Elsewhere at Vargas HQ, the candidates brother Alex starts to put the pieces together about Tom being at the Capital the night of the shooting and that Tom is Cyrus boyfriend (and yes, theyre snuggled up in a hotel bed together, so thats confirmed). What does Alex do with this information? He takes it to Cyrus prostitute husband. Lets see Cyrus wriggle out of this one. Next on Scandal: The show is off next week, but on April 21 Jake is getting married. Unless Olivia can stop him. (Image courtesy of ABC) Housing minister Brandon Lewis has warned that a 'Brexit' in June would be catastrophic to the UK's housing market and construction industry. The pro-EU minister and MP for Great Yarmouth in East Anglia said: Brexit would be catastrophic for the housing market. To me the European debate is pragmatic. Our relationship with Europe is important to East Anglia, it's not an ideological issue. We could spent ten years extricating ourselves from the EU. People are cautiously optimistic we'll stay in. If come out that'll create huge uncertainty as a lot of our supply lines are in Europe. Speaking at the Mipim property show in Cannes at the launch of the Northern Gateway Development Zone, which includes Staffordshire and Stoke, Mr Lewis said that the UK needed foreign labour because of the shortage of skills in the construction industry. He joked that 'several generations back' in his own family he had Polish ancestors and added: The skills shortage issue is still a big problem in building. We need labour across the sector, not just brickies and carpenters but even in admin. We need more people coming into construction. The minister also urged local authorities to maximise income from their property assets and even move into the private rented sector. He said: Councils should be looking at their assets which give them an opportunity for an income stream. Equally they should use their assets to provide homes and these could be for private rented housing. Image courtesy of Shutterstock/ JMiks 5 changes to you, your seafood and the Shore from warming Atlantic The leader of a local group campaigning for residents to vote against staying in the European Union has hit out at the governments plan to distribute pro-EU membership leaflets across the country. The 16-page leaflets will be sent to 27 million UK homes from next week using over 9m of public money. Helen Hims, who is leading the local Sedgemoor Leave.EU group and was Burnhams UKIP parliamentary candidate last year, has spoken out about the news. She said: This is a case of how to rig a referendum give one side 9.3 million more resources than the other! In 1975, Harold Wilson and his government issued a taxpayer-funded leaflet to every household in the UK urging them to vote to stay in the Common Market. The Yes campaign spent ten times the resources of the No campaign and won two thirds of the vote. It was a majority obtained by profligacy and fraud. Fast forward 41 years and despite early promises by ministers not to do so, exactly the same stunt is being played out again by the British establishment. The government has just spent 9.3 million issuing a taxpayer-funded leaflet to every household in the UK urging them to stay in the European Union. The Remain campaign is yet again allowed to spend many times more than the Leave campaign in their desperate attempt to load the dice against Brexit. The production and mass-distribution of this biased and inaccurate leaflet only serves to prove that the arguments for staying in this expansionist and failing EU federal bloc are so weak, that only by skewing the playing field and throwing the full weight of the establishment behind it, do they feel capable of success. Prime Minister David Cameron has defended the pro-EU membership leaflet amid criticism that 9m of public money is being spent on one-sided propaganda. He said the government was not neutral in the referendum and the cost was money well spent. Pictured: South West MEP Dr Julia Reid, left, and Leave EUs Helen Hims PREMIERUL NICOLAE CIUCA: "Nu accept sa intrerupem procesul de invatamant pentru ca nu exista termie in vreuna dintre scoli" Civil society observers often say that the biggest obstacle in reducing corruption in the public sphere is that it has become so entrenched in everyday life that citizens have come to accept it as something they can't change. It was to change such attitudes, to empower people with a non-violent way to deal with corruption that an expatriate Indian physics professor in Maryland, US, designed a Zero Rupee Note (ZRN), visually as close to Indian currency notes as the Reserve Bank of India would allow it. It was an interesting theory, which in 2007, Vijay Anand, president of the NGO 5th Pillar, put into practice as a tool with which citizens could fight corruption. Similar to the Rs 50-note, the ZRN bears a slogan, "Eliminate corruption at all levels," and a pledge to neither accept nor give bribes. In the last nine-odd years, the Chennai-based NGO has distributed over 2.5 million such notes in five languages, and compiled accounts of how it has helped citizens get their work done without resorting to bribery and corruption. Here are some examples. A young girl was told that the only way to get a learner's license quickly was by greasing the palms of the officials at the RTO office. Instead, she handed a ZRN to a senior officer and requested for a licence. The abashed official handed it to her within five minutes. When a Chennai motorist was asked to pay a bribe of Rs 650 to retrieve his towed car, he too offered the police a ZRN. Not only did they withdraw their demand, the police also issued a receipt for the appropriate fine he paid. In another instance, one of 5th Pillar's staffers, Lakshmi Gunasekhar went to complain about a friend's lost purse in a Maharashtra police station. "The police wanted money to file an FIR. When I offered them a ZRN, they immediately became friendlier. They went to great lengths to assure me that they weren't really corrupt and helped us file the complaint!" she says. How does a note of no value fight corruption? First, corrupt officials seldom expect resistance from ordinary people. The handing over of a ZRN embarrasses them, even as it enables citizens to address corruption in a non-confrontational way. "We train citizens how to behave when someone asks for a bribe. Instead of aggression, a non-violent approach effects attitudinal change more effectively," says Gunasekhar. Further, accepting bribes is a punishable offence and the ZRN's passive resistance carries a threat of reprisal. Most important, the note indicates that its bearer has the backing of a civil society organisation committed to fighting corruption. In addition to the ZRN, 5th Pillar conducts several projects to acquaint citizens of their rights and empower them to fight corruption instead of simply giving in. One of their popular programmes, Freedom from Corruption, ran in 300 educational institutions last year. "We also train citizens to use the RTI act in our office every Saturday," says Gunasekhar. "Every week, the crowd ranges from eight to 30, which shows that citizens are concerned about making government functioning transparent and honest." Another project that 5th Pillar introduced last year, AGNI trains rural youths to use civic tools like RTI. "We trained people from two villages near Chennai last year. How many villages we reach out to this year, depends on how many volunteer to help us!" says Gunasekhar. With eight full-time staffers and a host of volunteers, 5th Pillar has managed to spread its base across Southern metros like Chennai, Vizag, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Incredibly, they charge no fees and turn no victim of corruption away - although they currently have no institutional donors. ZRNs are distributed free, although they cost less than a rupee to print. "Often, our ZRNs are printed for free (usually by printers who like the concept)," says Gunasekhar. Most of their resources come from members of 5th Pillar, who contribute $50 per annum. A handful of corporate donors have added to its kitty, but the resources are still nowhere near what they need to expand to other Indian cities. Yet, on the anvil are plans to provide a satellite RTI program for overseas Indians, and to provide online training on the RTI act and other ways to fight corruption. Where are India's readers? Amazon.in had an interesting answer to this when it conducted its Annual Reading Trends Report for 2015 - in the metros, as expected, but also in small towns and cities that haven't shown up before in reading surveys. The report said that readers in Surat, Bhubaneswar, Ernakulam, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam bought more books than readers in Indore, Raipur, Mysuru, Kanpur and Dehradun. Amish Tripathi's Immortals of Meluha and The Secret of the Nagas did blockbuster sales in translation from English into Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Marathi. How are English language publishers connecting with this geographically- and linguistically diverse generation of readers? Business Standard asked Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO of Westland, which publishes Tripathi and other writers who've done well in regional languages. "I agree that publishers have not done enough research to understand their readers. It is very easy to get away by saying Indians don't read but how do you then explain the relatively recent phenomenon of Chetan and Amish crossing the million mark in unit sales?" Padmanabhan said. He felt that English language publishers needed to do more to understand the opportunities in the Indian languages, and could start by nurturing reading in schools and colleges. Westland's experience with Amish's books was an eye-opener. "When we first considered bringing out a Hindi edition of the Immortals of Meluha, our first option was the licensing route." They weren't happy with the initial offers and decided to take a risk and publish their own translation. "Our initial print run was 10,000 copies, which we thought was fairly ambitious. As of today the combined sales of Tripathi's books is in excess of 500,000 copies in the Indian languages." Westland now publishes translations of their bestselling Indian language books in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu and Bengali, but Mr Padmanabhan sees this trend, increasingly followed by multinational and homegrown publishers entering the language market "only as a good beginning". The future could be very interesting, if there's a growth in bookstores in tier-2 and -3 towns and if digital publishing initiatives manage to use the ubiquity of smartphones to reach books to new readers. Hong Kong's banned books market: The industry for books banned in mainland China used to be a thriving one in Hong Kong, attracting publishers and booksellers like Morning Bell Press, Cosmos Books, Mighty Current and Causeway among others. That was before Lee Bo of Mighty Current Books and four of his associates disappeared last year in December, setting off shock waves through Hong Kong's thriving bookselling world. In March, Lee Bo returned to Hong Kong, escorted by an unidentified man from the mainland, and announced that he was quitting the bookselling business: "I want to forget the past and start afresh. I am starting another page in my life." Then he left, saying that he intended to take his son to the mainland for medical treatment, and "felt proud as a Chinese". The South China Morning Post reported that He Pin, the founder of New York-based Mirror Books, had drawn attention to plummeting sales after Lee Bo's disappearance, and predicted the end of the Hong Kong banned books industry. "Simply put, the Hong Kong [political] book industry has been collapsing mainly due to the Causeway Bay Books incident," he told the South China Morning Post. Among the books that may no longer be available are works on the fate of Chinese democrats in the 1950s (The Past Is Not Like Smoke, Zhang Yihuo), and books that critique Mao or the present regime. Chinese dissident writer Yu Jie's new book on China's president, Xi Jinping's Nightmare, has also run into trouble. Readers in Hong Kong may want to get their copies of Yan Lianke's Serve The People! while they can. It's famous for eliciting a blurb from the evaluation bureau of the Central Propaganda Bureau, which ordered a recall of all 30,000 copies of the Hua Cheng magazine in which it had been published. The CPB said: "It slanders Mao, the Army and is overflowing with sex." At the India Today Conclave, when Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Joint General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale said that he did not think homosexuality ought to be criminalised, Sangh groupies latched on to his statement to show how RSS was a better organisation than generally believed. Twitter was awash in self-congratulation among the RSS-supporting crowd. Within hours, Hosabale changed his stance. He clarified that when he said homosexuality need not be criminalised, what he meant was that homosexuality was a disease and that its "adherents" are objects of pity. "They deserve our sympathy and we must do all we can to cure them of this malaise," was the gist of his Twitter clarification. Just as quickly as Twitterati had put him on a pedestal a day earlier, they now threw Hosabale into the gutter. Of course, the political bent of the two groups differed markedly, but even conservative commentators expressed dissatisfaction. Everyone had been surprised at Hosabale's statement at the Conclave, and there was a feeling of "Told you so!" at his retraction. My question is: why are we even asking RSS for its opinion of homosexuality? It's not like the organisation's views are unknown. Did we really think that an organisation that champions conservatism, and whose political agenda includes such items as the Ram Mandir and a Hindu rashtra, would be cool with homosexuality? RSS has a specific purpose in India's political sphere, and that purpose is to provide ideological moorings to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is to BJP what the Gandhi family is to the Congress: parent, guide and ultimate arbiter. It has been remarkably successful in its project. RSS would like to take its project forward, and to that end, it works closely with the Modi government. So, while the government speaks of "vikas", RSS works from the sidelines to ensure that its larger cultural agenda is fulfilled. I would go so far as to claim that RSS understands that its hark-to-the-roots agenda is deeply regressive at a time when the country needs to look forward. But it recognises this need within the rubric of Hindutva. Its egalitarianism is restricted to championing the rights of historically marginalised communities within the Hindu faith, such as women and Dalits. Look at some of its recent statements. After RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat raised the issue of reservations during the Bihar elections, questions were raised on whether the organisation will force the government to reconsider quotas for Dalits and OBCs. Speaking last month at Nagaur in Rajasthan, the site of the annual meeting of Akhil Bhartiya Pratinidhi Sabha, RSS General Secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi said: "Babasaheb Ambedkar gave the provision of reservation. It was for social justice. Today, the level of education of Dalit class has improved. There are many backward castes today. It should be studied and discussed whether the deserving castes are getting reservation benefits. This issue should be studied. It is also a matter of detailed discussion whether or not creamy layer system should be there in all categories." With such statements, RSS sought to deflect criticism that it was against quotas with the plea that it was instead questioning if they were effective and whether they reached the right recipients. On women's rights too, RSS has been making the right noises. Referring to the recent agitation by women groups to enter the sanctum sanctorum of certain temples, Muralidhar Rao, a former convenor of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, said (also at Nagaur): "The Sangh has always stood for the progressive interpretation of religious texts. And anyway, the Vedas say there is nothing like man or woman before the divine force. I'd like to add here that what many observers interpret as a new turn for RSS is in fact only a reiteration of what the Sangh has broadly believed since the beginning." While these declarations are commendable in themselves, they need to be seen as part of RSS' larger goal of creating a monolithic Hindu nation. Gays do not fit this narrative, and are therefore up for ridicule. There is no inherent Hindu constituency that speaks up for homosexuals. To expect RSS to change its stand on the matter is, therefore, silly. That said, the issue sheds light on how problematic RSS' politics is in this day and age. The Hosabale episode reiterates the need for RSS to undertake genuine reform beyond its recent decision to change its uniform. While its shakhas played a pivotal role in ensuring Narendra Modi's success in 2014, that success could not have happened without Modi's development pitch, a promise that cannot be fulfilled without equal rights for all of India's citizens. Going forward, the organisation will have to decide whether it wants to stick to its reactionary agenda or mutate with the times to evolve into a more rights-based outfit divorced from a communal politics. Maruti Suzuki has announced the introduction of an automatic transmission variant of the Baleno Zeta. Priced at Rs.7.47 lakhs (ex-showroom, Delhi), the car is equipped with a CVT (Continuous Variable Transmission) unit and retains all the bells and whistles that are currently available on the manual Zeta variant. Earlier, the CVT was available only on the mid-trim Delta. Balenos Zeta trim comes loaded with alloy wheels, front fog lamps, auto headlamps, chrome door handles, auto dimming IRVM, height-adjustable driver's seat, keyless entry and go, illumination for the glovebox and an MID with a colour TFT screen. "Baleno has rapidly found success to become a popular premium hatchback owing to its design, technology and performance, said R. S. Kalsi, executive director (marketing & sales), Maruti Suzuki India Limited. We are thankful to customers for the support and continue our efforts to improve its availability. The automatic option Continuous Variable Transmission offered on the Delta variant has been much appreciated by the customers. We are now offering CVT on the Zeta variant as well, to popularise two pedal technologies. Since its debut in October last year, bookings for the premium hatchback have crossed over 1 lakh and Maruti Suzuki has delivered over 44,000 Balenos to its customers. In fact, the Delta CVT variant comes with a waiting period of around 6 months. The diesel powered Baleno Delta has a waiting period of 8 months. The company currently manages to deliver close to 8,000 units of the premium hatchback, and it is expected to increase production to meet the rising demand. Also, the Baleno is the first model to be exported to Suzuki's home market Japan. Going forward, Maruti plans to export the model to more than 100 countries from India. Source : BS Motoring The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has asked the police chiefs of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana to provide security to its officials and contractors executing the Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE). The NHAI had earlier moved the Supreme Court with an interlocutory application seeking police protection from unwarranted obstruction from miscreants and vested interests, who were obstructing construction of the expressway. The apex court has set July 2018 as the deadline for completion of the EPE. But according to the NHAI, vested interests in the districts of Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar and Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh and Sonepat in Haryana had obstructed commencement of the work. This despite land having been formally acquired and contractors appointed from amongst the best companies of the country. The Solicitor General of India had sought the Supreme Courts intervention, after which the court directed the Director Generals of Police of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana to ensure all requisite protection to NHAI officials and contractors to carry out their work on the EPE. The NHAI has also provided a list of specific points where the obstruction has been most perceptible. The highway authority expects the Supreme Court directive to facilitate the speeding up of the construction in view of the huge mobilisation of resources undertaken by contractors for all the six packages into which the project is divided. Source : BS Motoring The Delhi governments plans to exempt cars with parents driving their children in uniforms to school from the odd-even formula but with no suggestion on how they return home has resulted in twitterati making hilarious suggestions. Sir parents can drop them on even days & pick them up odd days. Problem solved, someone tweeted to Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi. Kejrwals office had sought suggestions from the public on how to overcome the problem, after a Delhi resident raised concerns on how parents would pick up their wards from their school later in the day, since the children would not be there in the cars. Thats a real problem. Looking for a solution. Pl suggest if anyone has any ideas, tweeted Kejriwal. This drew in a flood of suggestions from the public. Special school uniforms for parents and caregivers, quipped one twitterati. keep schools open on alternate days, offered another citizen. Sir, teach kids how to drive and make it legal so kids dont depend upon parents for this, was another tweet. The Delhi government has decided to reintroduce the odd-even formula for a fortnight from April 15 to decongest the citys roads. Women drivers and those taking their children in uniforms to schools are exempt from the rule. Source : BS Motoring India Holdings Corporation plans to invest $300 million in Chennai-based Sanmar Chemicals Group through a combination of equity and fixed income securities. It will acquire a 30% equity ownership in Sanmar. said the investment would be made through its wholly-owned subsidiaries. The company expects to generate a fixed return on its investment. It will infuse an initial tranche of $250 million upon closing the transaction. The second tranche of $50 million will be funded within 90 days thereafter by Financial Holdings or another investor. The first tranche is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2016 subject to meeting certain conditions such as establishing a term loan facility for $280 million between TCI Sanmar Chemicals Egypt, the Egyptian subsidiary of Sanmar, and its lenders. Sanmar is one of the largest suspension polyvinyl chloride (PVC) manufacturers in India with an installed capacity of 300,000 tonnes a year, apart from being the largest specialty PVC company in India. Sanmar is in the process of expanding its PVC capacity in Egypt from 200,000 tonnes a year to 400,000 tonnes per annum. Once the expansion is completed, Sanmar will have a total PVC capacity of 700,000 tonnes per annum, making it one of the largest PVC in the world. Sanmar also manufactures caustic soda, chloromethanes, refrigerant gases, industrial salt and speciality chemical intermediates. Prem Watsa, chairman of Fairfax India, said in a press release: "We look forward to our partnership with this distinguished south India group which, in addition to its technical and business expertise, is well known for its integrity and corporate social responsibility." Welcoming this investment, Sanmar Chemicals Group Chairman N Sankar said, "Sanmar will benefit by having a financially strong shareholder with a global footprint. We look forward to the expansion of our capacities in Egypt and India creating value for all stakeholders." Hindustan Construction Company Ltd (HCC) on Friday said that it has bagged a Rs 635 crore contract from NTPC in Uttarakhand. " has been awarded Rs 635 crore contract by NTPC to construct Head Race Tunnel (HRT) for Tapovan Vishnugad Hydroelectric Power Project on the River Dhauliganga in Chamoli District of Uttarakhand," the company said in a statement. The project is to be completed in 34 months. "This is an item rate contract involving salvaging of Double Shield Tunnel Boring Machine stuck in the earlier operation by other contractor, refurbishing and putting it in operation to construct 2.84-km long HRT, installation of segmental lining," the statement said. The contract also involves construction of 1.66 km long tunnel using drill and blast method, and concrete lining. HCC, President & CEO Engineering & Construction, Arun Karambelkar said: "We are pleased to secure this contract, which only manifests the expertise of in managing complex work in difficult terrain. "We are confident that our efficient and highly skilled team will not only salvage the stuck Tunnel Boring Machine but will complete the construction of Head Race Tunnel in the stipulated time frame." With this contract, order book has reached Rs 5,155 crore in the current financial year. Besides, the company is the lowest bidder in six projects worth Rs 4,300 crore. The combined order backlog is likely to cross Rs 21,000 crore in financial year 2015-16. HCC has executed many of India's landmark infrastructure projects and claims constructing 28% of India's Hydel Power generation and over 65% of India's Nuclear Power generation capacities, over 3,600 lane km of Expressways and Highways, more than 300 km of complex Tunneling and over 350 Bridges. South Korean ambassador to India Cho Hyun has denied talks on the much delayed Posco project during his interaction with Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik here. "The Posco issue did not crop up during our deliberations. Odisha has many other things to offer apart from the Posco project," he said. The envoy talked on potential areas of cooperation with the state. "Discussed investments and trade opportunities in Odisha with Korean ambassador Cho Hyun," Patnaik tweeted. Posco, meanwhile, has informed the Green Tribunal (NGT) that it wold not be able to set up the mega steel mill of 12 million tonne capacity in Odisha by July 2017. Posco's lawyer said the company has been unable to obtain forest and other statutory clearances and its environment clearance was valid till July 2017. With an investment size of $12 billion, Posco is the country's biggest FDI. The project, however, has hardly showed sign of taking off the ground, being marred by delays and protests since the signing of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Odisha government in June 2005. Posco's announcement to freeze its mega steel mill had fuelled concerns on the fate of foreign investments to the state since Odisha had touted the Posco project as an international commitment. Korean steel major told the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday that it would not pursue any more its Rs 50,000-crore integrated steel plant project in Odisha. In a case where was defending the revised environmental clearance it had received in 2014, the court recorded the Korean giant as stating the environmental clearance is valid only up to July 19, 2017, and they would not be able to do any work because the land has not been handed over to them and therefore the project cannot proceed any further. Project proponents are permitted to ask for five-year extensions to their environmental clearances and these are routinely granted in most cases by the Union environment ministry. However, asked the tribunal to cancel its clearance. Instead, the court ordered: At this stage they (Posco) are unable to carry out the project and if they plan to take advantage of the environment clearance and complete the project, they would inform the applicant and the tribunal. This effectively brings the curtain down on the companys beleaguered project, stuck in environmental litigation from the start. The project got its first ecology clearance in 2007 and the statutory forest clearance in 2010. In 2011, then Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh set up a committee to examine the validity of the clearance to what was then touted as the biggest foreign investment in the country. Ramesh cleared the project yet again but with additional conditions. This got challenged in the NGT. The green court suspended the clearance, setting up yet another committee to examine the matter. Based on this panels report, the ministry gave another clearance to the project in 2014. This fresh clearance was challenged again, for having allegedly violated the terms the court had imposed while asking for the re-examination. Meanwhile, the company was charged with cutting down trees on the site without having got a formal letter from the state government affirming its forest clearance. It was given a stop-work order in this instance. Oddly, the formal letter from Odisha, a formality in the forest clearance process, never came. The case also lingered at the NGT. On Friday, to the surprise of petitioner Prafulla Samantray and his lawyers, Ritwick Dutta and Rahul Choudhary, the company asked for its environmental clearance to be cancelled, saying it would not be able to complete the project by the deadline of the environmental clearance in 2017 which it could have sought to extend as a routine event. It, as mentioned earlier, instead asked for cancellation of the environmental clearance. The petitioner opposed this, preferring that the company formally ask the ministry for withdrawal. The court ordered that in the light of the companys statements, the appeal before it had become infructuous. It said in case the company again tried to pursue the project under the existing environmental clearance, it would have to inform the court and the petitioner, and the latter would hold the right to revive his petition. LIFE AND DEATH OF A STEEL PLANT PLAN Posco signs pact with Odisha govt for 12-mt steel plantPosco gets environment nod for the plant; state seeks nod from environment ministry for diversion of 1,253 ha of land to PoscoProject gets forest clearance for using forestland that villagers claim as betel plantationsUPA govt re-examines the green nod, puts new conditions; protesting villagers clash with police; clearance challenged in National Green TribunalTribunal suspends environment clearance, sets up panel to re-examine project for specific environment impactEnvironment ministry under UPA grants fresh clearance again with new conditions; clearance challenged for not following court orders; court stops work for lack of conveyance of forest clearance by Odisha to companyPosco tells court it will not pursue the project anymore At 44, Liberty House owner is making headlines for going against the trend of bringing the curtains down on the British steel industry. Last week, Tata Steel finally gave up on the UK units that came with the Corus acquisition in 2007, and said all options, including a potential divestment, were being weighed. The move has put 15,000 jobs at risk. The Indian steel major, however, is no oddball here; British steel industry is just a shade of what it used to be in its heydays in the 1970s when it was a steel-making superpower. In October, Thailand's SSI-owned Redcar steelworks decided to close down its UK units; the move affected some 2,000 jobs. Later that month, Caparo Industries filed for administration, threatening 1,700 jobs. But has stepped onto the scene as Britain's white knight. In November, hundreds of Caparo's jobs were saved as Gupta bought Caparo Tubular Solutions, the core business of Caparo Industries. And that's just one of the many deals he has struck in recent months to save British steel . Liberty House reopened a steel mill in Newport, in south Wales, last year after working on it for two years. Gupta has also bought two mills in Scotland that belonged to Tata Steel. But the big rescue is still in the making. Gupta has expressed an intent to buy Port Talbot, Britain's biggest steelworks. Though Liberty House is said to be approaching a turnover of $5 billion, according to its website, the Port Talbot deal, if it materialises, would certainly be an ambitious one. The curious thing is that Gupta believes it's possible to turn around the plant without any job losses. The strategy is to overhaul the steel-making process from an expensive blast furnace technology to the electric arc furnace route using scrap as raw material. This is baffling as electric arc furnace happens to be energy intensive. Experts are raising questions about the feasibility of such a technology switch as also the financial muscle to pull through the acquisition, but Gupta, it appears, is willing to put in money and time to make it happen. Those who know Gupta credit him for walking the talk. After all, when it comes to business, Gupta is no greenhorn. He comes from a successful business family that once owned Victor Cycles in Punjab. In 1995, Gupta graduated from the University of Cambridge and it was during these years that he started his business from a student apartment. After trading various commodities in markets across Asia, Europe and Africa, his focus turned to growing the trade in steel, metals and raw materials from 2000 onwards. Today, Liberty House operates from four financial hubs - London, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong- and has interests in a wide range of strategic assets in Asia, Africa and the UK. It employs 2,000 people globally and the steel-making capacity in the group is in excess of three million tonnes. The achievements sit lightly on his shoulders, says an Indian steel producer. But the bid to acquire Port Talbot would probably go down as the biggest contrarian bet in recent times. Lambda Therapeutic Research, a Global CRO in the Clinical research domain headquartered in Ahmedabad , announced that Tausif Monif joined as President - Global Operations. Lambda has offices in Mumbai (India), Poland (Europe), London (UK), USA andCanada (North America) offering End to End Clinical Research and total drug development solutions to Pharmaceutical worldwide. Lambda is accreditated by various worldwide Regulatory Authorities like ANVISA-Brazil, EMA, UK-MHRA, POLISH, ANSM (France), TGA-Australia, AGES (Austria), OGYI (Hungary), Turkey MOH,TPS-Canada, USFDA and WHO. Tausif brings with him a rich experience of more than 24 years in the Clinical Research Industry. His joining Lambda will support the company's vision of expanding their Global footprints. "I am pretty confident that his rich experience will help in driving Lambda's growth globally," said Bindi Chudgar, managing director of Lambda Therapeutic Research. The Global Fund, a Geneva-based public partnership organisation, has discontinued sourcing of anti-malaria drugs (Artemisinin based Combination Therapy, or ACTs) from in the light of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)s warning letter to the drug makers three plants. The move is a setback to Ipca Laboratories, a domestic market leader in anti-malaria segment. Anti-malaria drugs accounted for 24 per cent of the companys formulation exports, worth around Rs 300 crore, in FY15. The segment's share in exports, however, declined over the previous year. Africa is its main export market for these drugs. Following the announcement, the companys shares fell 10 per cent to close at Rs 499.30 apiece on Friday. In its note to investors, Edelweiss Securities said The Global Fund accounts for about 70 per cent of Ipcas total institutional business in Africa. It said the Ipca management had indicated that the remediation measures at its plants would be completed within six months and that Global Fund shipments would resume soon. This development effectively derails Ipcas business revival once again. In February, the company had received warning letters from FDA for its manufacturing units in Madhya Pradesh and Silvassa. The alerts were issued following FDA inspections in 2014 and 2015. AT STAKE The domestic tractor is bullish on the growth in the sector over the prospects of good monsoon season this year after two consecutive years of drought. The tractor has projected a growth of nearly 10 per cent this year after the sales had slipped by 10 per cent during 2015 calendar. The domestic tractor had clocked sales of under 5,00,000 units in 2015 due to drought and consequent fall in demand in the farm sector. "Tractor is a sentiments based industry and with the forecast of good monsoon this year and the focus on the farm sector by the central government, we are confident that the sector would grow by 10 per cent in 2016," Mahindra Farm Division COO Harish Chavan told Business Standard here. He was in town to launch the company's new tractor Yuvo in the Uttar Pradesh market. The new product falls under the 30-45 Horsepower (HP) category and joins the league of the company's existing range of 15-57 HP tractors. It spans five models and would be available in 15 states with the prices starting from Rs 4.71 lakh ex-showroom Lucknow. UP is the biggest tractor market in India and had clocked sales of about 95,000 units in 2014. However, last year the market slumped by 18 percent due to adverse agricultural sector performance following drought and weak rural demand. Chavan said Yuvo has been built to perform 30 different farming applications and serve diverse needs of farmers, from land preparation to harvesting as well as post-harvesting requirements. In UP, the company has a network of nearly 170 dealers. Over the years, the application of tractors for non-agricultural purposes, including haulage has been growing, keeping pace with growth in infrastructure and real estate sectors. Bowing to the Bombay High Court (HC) order and breaking 400 years of tradition, the Shani Shingnapur temple on Friday announced that both men and women will henceforth be allowed to enter the inner sanctum of the temple and offer their prayers. Anyone can enter the sanctum and the committee can't stop them from entering. The rule was that men and women both can worship god (Darshan) from the lower part of the temple, but when men entered the sanctum then it became our responsibility to also let women enter," Nana Sahib Bankar, vice-president of the Shani Shingnapur Trust, told the media here. He said that the temple had been following an ancient custom, but added that they had no objection in welcoming the court's order. Read more from our special coverage on "SHANI TEMPLE" Despite HC ruling, villagers, police prevent women from entering Shani temple Earlier today, around 100 men were seen storming into the inner sanctum of the holy place, defying the Trust's orders. On the festive occasion of Gudi Padwa, with hundreds of devotees in line to worship, a mob of men arrived outside the temple and stripped to their undergarments as they barged aside the security to enter the inner sanctum of the temple and pray at the holy site. "The state government has taken the same stand from the very beginning and we filed an affidavit in the High Court that there should be no discrimination. Today, they have decoded on this issue and we wish that after today, no one needs the police to get 'darshan'. The temple had reversed an ancient rule."The state government has taken the same stand from the very beginning and we filed an affidavit in the High Court that there should be no discrimination. Today, they have decoded on this issue and we wish that after today, no one needs the police to get 'darshan'. Religion never discriminates on the basis of caste or gender," Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis told the media. Bhumata Brigade activist Trupti Desai on Friday welcomed the decision of the Shani Shingnapur trust to allow females to enter the inner sanctum of the temple and offer their prayers and said that it was a victory for women power. "It is a victory for Bhumata Brigade. It is a victory for women power," Desai told ANI. "Today, we are going to take sight in the temple in a respectful way. We are going in a batch of eight to ten people. The trustee has also said that we will be provided police protection," she added. She also insisted that they are not going to return from the temple without offering the prayers today. It is a controversy that stirred the nation's imagination -- one that had women go to any length to defy a tradition that has been in existence since medieval times. Led by Trupti Desai, they were all set to use a helicopter to descend onto the sanctum sanctorium of the Shani Shingnapur temple, which had been off limits to them for centuries. The legal battle that ensued went in favour of the women, with a high court order allowing their entry. Business Standard gives you the low down on the flow of events, including the who, what, where and why. What's the big fuss? In January 2016, about 500 women from Bhumata Ranragini Brigade led by President Trupti Desai, stepped up to defy a five-century-old tradition that debars women from worshipping the stone idol of Lord Shani, on account of harmful vibrations believed to be emanating from the deity. The only demand of the activists is that women too have the right to pray. The Shani Temple, a unique place of worship in Maharashtra's Shingnapur village has no walls or roof. A self-emerged five-foot high black stone stands on a platform and is worshipped as the presiding deity. It is globally renowned as the only village where houses, including a local branch of a nationalised bank do not have doors and locks. However, recently for the first time, a woman was appointed as the trust president by the committee members. This is the first time in the temple's five-century-old history that this welcome development has taken place. Another woman, Vaishali Lande, has also been appointed to the board of 11 trustees managing the temple, Prafull N Surpuriya, a trustee, told IANS Who is Trupti Desai and what is Bhumata Rangragini Brigade? Equal-rights activists have for months been pressing for entry into the core of the temple (the sanctum sanctorium). Trupti Desai, who founded the Bhumata Ranragini Brigade in 2010 in Pune, launched a state-wide campaign in January to gather public support for their agitation seeking entry for women into the sanctum of the temple. She tried to do the same on January 26, but was arrested, then released. She said, This is a murder of democracy. Our fight has been going on for the past three-four months. We faced a lot of hurdles. We have been maligned; we were detained despite the court orders, she added. However, villagers opposed the campaign and formed a counter-campaign pandal' in order to continue the traditions. Desai's organisation currently has about 4,000 members, including some men. Bhumata Ranragani Brigade, an offshoot of the set up, is focused on women's causes, the latest of which is their right to enter the Shani temple. The brigade also assists victims of eve teasing, besides tackling dowry issues, domestic violence and sexual or physical assault. What are the political parties saying? The Womens wing of the Shiv Sena, along with other right-wing group represented by the Sanatan Sanstha supports the opposing villagers who want the ban to stay. Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS) and its women's wing Ranragini Shakha also supported them. However, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy stood up for women rights, saying, Virat Hindustan Sangam (VHS) stands for Hindu Renaissance and not Hindu revival. We must support women's demand for equal rights to men's for temple entry. Any Shastra sourced discrimination is amendable. Commies no!" Swamy tweeted. So, who supports Desai and company? As the issue unfolded rapidly in January, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis favoured a dialogue between temple authorities and activists to find a way out over the ban. Indian culture and Hindu religion gives women the right to pray. A change in yesterday's traditions is our culture. Discrimination in praying is not in our culture. The temple authorities should resolve the issue through a dialogue, he tweeted. What's the latest? On April 1, a division bench of the Bombay High Court, headed by Chief Justice D H Waghela and Justice M S Sonak, ruled in favour of the protesting activists. "There is no law that prevents entry of women in any place. If you allow men then you should allow women also," Chief Justice Waghela said. The temple trust, caught up in a tiff, decided to ban men as well, hoping to have overruled the issue of gender discrimination. That move backfired severely, as on the festival of Gudi Padwa, with hundreds of devotees in line to worship, a mob of men stripped down to their undergarments and barged past the security into the temple. Trustees, including Sayaram Bankar and Haridas Gaywale said they have decided to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees including men and women, complying with the court order. It is the state government's duty to protect the rights of women. If it is the sanctity of the deity that you are worried about then let the government make such a statement, the court said after abolishing the age-old tradition. "The state government has taken the same stand from the very beginning and we filed an affidavit in the High Court that there should be no discrimination. Today, they have decoded on this issue and we wish that after today, no one needs the police to get 'darshan'. Religion never discriminates on the basis of caste or gender," Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis told the media, Fadnavis said. Desai will be fighting a similar battle against the similar traditions practiced in Trimbakeshwar and Mahalaxmi temples in Nashik and Kolhapur. The Central Information Commission (CIC) has directed the petroleum ministry to provide information on Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhans residential and official accommodation to a Right to Information (RTI) applicant. Pronouncing its order passed on 4 April on the application by S C Agrawal, the CIC has asked the ministry to furnish details of the type of government accommodation available to Pradhan and the expenses made on renovation along with a statement on whether these expenses exceeded permissible limit.The transparency watchdog also asked to provide information on whether the oil ministry has spent funds on renovation of the residence and the office of Pradhan stating whether the ministry is entitled to spend funds in addition to the money spent by Central Public Works Department (CPWD).Pradhan, who is on a week-long trip to Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was not immediately available for commentWe direct the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) to provide to the appellant the information free of charge within thirty days of the receipt of this order, under intimation to the commission, Information Commissioner Sharat Sabharwal said in his order. The CIC also asked the ministry to transfer to the Cabinet Secretariat and the urban development ministry the appellants request for information on the rules governing the type of accommodation available to the ministers of state (MoS) and the expenses incurred by CPWD, the concerned ministry and the PSUs under the concerned ministry on renovation. The ministry has been directed to provide information, if any, on the funds spent by the oil PSUs and the CPWD on renovation of the ministers accommodation.Agrawal had in July 2015 filed an RTI query with the CPIO of the oil ministry seeking these details. The CPIO replied next month saying the information sought was not available in the ministry and its compilation from various filed would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority. Not satisfied with the response, Agrawal filed an appeal with the First Appellate Authority (FAA). The FAA stated the information on the ministers' accommodation was not available in the ministry and there was no specific heads of expenditure for such expenses. The FAA also stated that no information was available in the ministry relating to expenses incurred by CPWD or PSUs. Agrawal then filed an appeal before the CIC in October 2015. Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanicas former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption in the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for over Rs 3,600 crore. In the ruling, which overtured a previous court order of 2014 that had given Orsi reprieve in connection with the corruption angle, former chief executive officer of Finmeccanicas helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, Bruno Spagnolini, was also handed a four-year prison term by the court on Thursday. The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively, it said. The ruling has come as a severe blow to the Italian company which had just managed to leave the corruption saga behind that marred its image across the world. Though has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials told PTI that the firm has changed completely. The company has undergone deep changes and it has changed completely from the time when the allegations came up first. is a different company now, an official said. since then has changed its top management and its organisation. The official added that Italian judicial system is made of three appeals and the trial is against two former executives. The lawyers of both the accused have said that they will go in for an appeal. The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) are still probing the case in India in which former Indian Air Force chief S P Tyagi and his cousins are alleged to be the beneficiaries. The ED has booked Tyagi, his family members, European nationals Carlo Gerosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschke, four firms Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland and Chandigarh-based IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, two companies based in Mauritius and Tunisia, few other firms and unknown persons according to CBIs criminal complaint. Even as the immigration debate heats up in the US, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has said it has reached the mandated H1-B cap for FY17. The cap has been achieved within six days after the application process began. USCIS in a press statement said it received more than the limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions filed under the US advanced degree exemption. Since the number of applications has exceeded the total number of visas available, USCIS will award visas through lottery. Before running the lottery, USCIS will complete initial intake for all filings received during the filing period, which ended (on) April 7. Due to the high number of petitions, USCIS is not yet able to announce the date it will conduct the random selection process, the statement added. This is the fourth year that H1-B Visa cap is reached within the first five business days, indicating growing demand for the visa, popular among Indian information technology (IT) outsourcing services providers for deputing workers to clients locations. This is despite the increase in fees for certain categories of H1-B and L-1 visa. USCIS had in January this year announced a fee hike of $4,000 for certain H-1B petitions and $4,500 for certain L-1A and L-1B petitions. USCIS said the additional fees would apply to petitioners who employ 50 or more employees in the US, with 50 per cent of the employees being in H1B or L (including L1A and L1B) non-immigrant status. According to Nasscom, this rise would cost the IT sector about $400 million. H-1B is a non-immigrant category, which allows employers to temporarily recruit foreign workers for jobs requiring special skills such as architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences and biotechnology. The US issues 85,000 such visas every year and there is a provision to increase it by 20,000 for people with advanced degrees from US universities. According to media reports, USCIS received 250,000 applications for FY17. In the last financial year, USCIS had received 233,000 petitions. In comments that left New Delhi red-faced, Pakistans High Commissioner to India on Thursday said the bilateral peace process between the two neighbours stood suspended. He also indicated that an Indian probe team was unlikely to be allowed to visit Pakistan to investigate the Pathankot terrorist strike of January 2. However, there was damage control by Thursday late evening both in New Delhi and Islamabad. Indias external affairs ministry reminded Islamabad that the Pakistani joint investigation team was allowed in India on the basis of reciprocity. External affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup also pointed to the statement by the Pakistani foreign ministry in Islamabad. The Pakistani foreign ministry had said that modalities for the talks between foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan were being worked out. However, it was Basits interaction with media persons in New Delhi that started the confusion. I think at present the peace process between India and Pakistan is "suspended," Basit said. He said the visit of the Indian probe team wasnt about reciprocity. A Pakistan ioint investigation team (JIT) was in India recently. New Delhi had Islamabad to receive a team of the Investigation Agency (NIA) of India. "It is very difficult for me to say. But at this stage...the whole investigation is not about question of reciprocity in my view. It is more about extending cooperation or our two countries cooperating with each other to get to the bottom of the incident," Basit said. When asked for its reaction, South Block reacted cautiously. Swarup said the external affairs ministry would like to clarify that on March 26, before the visit of the JIT, the Indian High Commission in Islamabad had formally conveyed to the Pakistan foreign ministry that the terms of reference "broadly agreed to the provision that these would be on the basis of reciprocity and followed in accordance with extant legal provisions. Subsequently, the JIT visited from March 27 to April 1, he said. Swarup acknowledged the Pakistan High Commissioners comment that he thought the peace process was suspended. The external affairs ministry notes that in response to a question at his press conference on Thursday evening, the spokesman of the Pakistan foreign ministry said, Your question implies whether the foreign-secretary-level talks will take place or not. I have stated this many times that both countries are in contact with each other and it has been re-iterated from both sides that modalities are being worked out. I will again state that negotiations are the best means to resolve the issues. I have read the statement of the Indian foreign secretary you are referring to and in that also there was indication that the talks would take place. The JIT from Pakistan had visited India last month and went around the strategic air-force airbase in Pathankot that was attacked by Pakistani terrorists on the intervening night of January 1 and 2, leaving seven securitymen dead. Four Pakistani terrorists were also killed in the gunbattle. The issue is likely to be an embarrassment for the government with both the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party criticising its Pakistan policy. The peace talks were revived in October when Security Advisor Ajit Doval met his Pakistan counterpart, along with the respective foreign secretatries of the two countries, in Bangkok in October. A few days later, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj travelled to Islamabad for talks with her Pakistan counterpart Sartaj Aziz. The two neighbours had then decided to revive the 'comprehensive bilateral dialogue', agreeing to discuss all issues, including Kashmir and terrorism. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Lahore to meet Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif in end-December. A week later, the Pathankot airbase faced a terror attack. Not just the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has been extremely critical of the government allowing the Pakistan JIT to visit Pathankot. The Election Commission has decided to write a letter to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) asking the banking regulator to share inputs, related to cash flow increases in states that are going for assembly elections in the country. Media reports quoted RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan saying that it was estimated about Rs 50,000 crore to Rs 60,000 crore in cash would increase with public as a result of polls in four states and union territories. The states which are going for election includes Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam and Kerala. The Union territory include Puducherry. Rajan was also quoted in media saying that the matter should be looked into. Countering this view, the SBI Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya has said that the country has seen even bigger elections in earlier years, but the increase in currency with the public has not been that high, said reports quoting her. The spurt in cash this time is hurging the deposit growth and the deposit growth has come below advances, she was quoted. Responding to which, the Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said that in view of the statement made by the RBI Governor and the counter by SBI's Chairperson, the Commission has already taken up the matter to RBI. Zaidi, who was in Chennai to take stock on preparations for the upcoming assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, told reporters that the Election Commission is writing a letter to the RBI and will engage with the banking regulator. "We are requesting them to provide us inputs so that we can consider and examine and take appropriate actions. It is too early on the part of any person to draw any other conclusion," said Zaidi. Media reports quoted Rajan saying that "we some (sic) possibility that around election time cash with public increases". "We see that (surplus currency) not only in the states going for elections but also in the neighbouring states,'' he said. "There is something there. We need to understand it better," media reports quoted Rajan. On preparations for May 16th polling in Tamil Nadu, Zaidi said he was satisfied with the preparations and he also said the Commission will provide a level playing field for all the parties. He also listed out the measures, including usage of IT, setting up special booths for women and for disabled, deployment of additional forces and others, for the upcoming assembly election in the State. The Commission has launched a new campaign with a tag line saying 'My vote is not for sale' and said the election will be conducted in free and fair manner. "Our strategy is to mitigate money power. There is a need to reduce this menace. The Commission deliberated on this issue extensively and decided to increase the number of expenditure observers seven fold." He said unlicensed liquor bars will be closed and it will be ensured that they are not used for unlawful activities. Further the IT department will cross check the asset details of the candidates declared in the affidavit with that of their IT returns. The Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (Aptel) has struck down the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC)s order on compensatory tariff. Former CERC chairman Pramod Deo, during whose tenure the compensatory tariff order was passed, talks to Sanjay Jog on the issue. Edited excerpts: On what grounds has Aptel struck down CERCs compensatory rate order? Aptel held that the central governments guidelines on competitive bidding do not provide for general regulatory powers to override the terms of power purchase agreements (PPAs). Accordingly, the central government has not delegated or prescribed any power in the commission to grant compensatory rate. According to Aptel, the commission has no power to modify the rate or grant compensatory rate to the generators. What relief has the tribunal granted to Tata and Adanis projects? In its judgment, the tribunal draws attention to Article 12.7 of the PPA, which speaks of performance of obligation being hindered due to force majeure (unexpected circumstances, such as war, that can be used as an excuse when they prevent somebody from doing something that is written in a contract). It observes that the 12th edition of Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines the word hinder as make it difficult for (someone) to do something or for (something) to happen. Thus, in this case, the generators continuing to supply electricity to the procurers, will not necessarily lead to the conclusion that there was no occurrence of force majeure. The generators could get fuel-cost adjustment charge. The tribunal, therefore, directed CERC to assess the extent of impact of force majeure in the light of this judgment. Can you explain the philosophy behind CERCs judgment? It saw merit in the plea that promulgation of the Indonesian regulation has led to abnormal increase in the cost of generation of electricity making the project unviable. Unless the generators concerns are addressed, the possibility of their defaulting on obligations under the PPA cannot be ruled out. That will affect consumers interest. Utilities will have to invite fresh bids to meet their power requirements. It will affect investment in the electricity sector, which will. In view of all this, CERC saw it necessary to intervene in the interest of consumers, investors, and the power sector. What were the legal grounds on which CERCs order was based? On April 2, 2013, the Commission unanimously decided that the claims of Adani Power and Tata Powers Coastal Gujarat Power for force majeure and change in law were not admissible. However, by majority of three with one member dissenting, it was held that considering public interest, in exercise of regulatory powers provided under Section 79 of the Electricity Act, the Commission can provide redressal to generating companies and proceeded to constitute an expert Committee to look into the alleged difficulties faced by Adani Power and find an acceptable solution. What were the legal grounds on which the Supreme Court delivered its order? According to the Supreme Court, CERC has the power to regulate the tariff of the generating stations falling under its jurisdiction, keeping in view the objects of the Electricity Act to promote competition, encourage investment in the power sector and to protect consumers interest. The power to regulate tariff will also extend to the tariff determined through competitive bidding. The apex court ruled that CERC can fashion a relief even in the case of generating stations tariff discovered through competitive bidding, by providing for suitable adjustment in tariff while retaining the sanctity of competitive bidding under Section 63 of the Act. Mumbai will host the BRICS Friendship Cities Conclave from April 14-16. The event is being organized by Mumbai First, a think tank, along with the active support of the Government of India and Government of Maharashtra.The forum has received support from all the partner countries Brazil, Russia (India) China and South Africa. The Conclave is designed to facilitate meaningful dialogue between various stake holders who partake in shaping the renewal and development of urban areas - the public and private sectors, civil society, and academia. As many as 75 delegates comprising Governors, City Leaders, Urban Planners, Ministers and experts from across these countries will be attending the inauguration and two day conclave.The theme of the three day conclave is Urban Development and Future of Cities in BRICS countries. In the midst of urbanization posing a mega challenge for cities across the world, cities from developing countries face a common set of challenges and the conclave provides an outstanding platform for leaders from BRICS cities to converge, connect and learn from the experiences of other cities. State chief minister Devendra Fadnavis told reporters that the conclave will pave way for dialogue in shaping renewal and development of urban areas. ''With growing urbanization, this will be a great platform deliberate and exchange solutions and ideas from cities across the globe,'' he said. The participants will deliberate on the strengthening urban governance, making BRICS cities inclusive, making our cities safe and secure, urban transport: fixing the nerve centre of cities to shift to transit-oriented development, financing city infrastructure, building sustainable cities to improve delivery of urban services, making sustainable and affordable housing a reality and maximizing value through efficient land-use and urban planning. On the occasion, a special book on Urban Challenges called 'Making of Vibrant BRICS Cities' will be released. Over 35 experts on this subject from around the world have contributed to this book. Giving the final push to BJP's political blitzkrieg in Assam, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said the fate of Congress in Assam would be the same that happened with the party in 2014. "The Congress came down to 40 in 2014 in Delhi. The same fate is now reserved for them in Assam. They are going to be wiped out of the state. Over the years, the taste of people have changed. The new generation, particularly, do not anymore like hearing the same old promises of the Congress party. Fed up, they are now clamouring for change," said Modi, while addressing his final rally in Guwahati today. The Board Bureau, headed by former Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai, met for the first time on Friday to discuss consolidation among public-sector (PSBs) and board-level appointments, as well as means of recapitalising the lenders. The meeting was held at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)s Mumbai central office and was addressed by Jayant Sinha, minister of state for . Read more from our special coverage on "BANK BOARD BUREAU" Banks Board Bureau to discuss capital, consolidation today While the core members of the bureau refused to speak to the press, Sinha told reporters later in Delhi that the board discussed bank consolidation, tackling bad loans in bank books, and capital infusion in state-owned . Sinha said the proposed transformation of IDBI Bank into a privately-owned lender was underway. Minister Arun Jaitley had said in his Budget speech that the government would bring down its stake below 50 per cent in IDBI Bank and look into ways to consolidate existing banks. We have now undertaken this exercise of recapitalisation of banks within the existing resources. I am trying to find additional resources for that purpose, to strengthen the banks. Once they are strengthened, Im going for consolidation of some of the banks, Jaitley had said at an International Corporation event in New Delhi earlier this week. It is widely expected that Indias 27 public sector banks (including State Bank of India subsidiaries) would be brought down to around 10 banks as weak lenders would be merged with, or made subsidiaries of, stronger ones. The bureau, Jaitley said in his post-Budget interaction with the press, would spell out various modes of how to go for the consolidation. PSBs have enormous amount of bad debt, lowering profitability and eroding their capital base. RBIs asset quality review exposed further bad debt and banks reported ugly numbers in their December 2015 quarter results. The Punjab National Bank, for instance, showed a 93 per cent decline in profit after provisioning for these, and non-performing assets rising to 8.5 per cent of all loans. State Bank of India saw 62 per cent decline in net profit and fresh slippage of Rs 20,700 crore. Jaitley had said in Budget 2016-17 that the government was moving towards privatising IDBI Bank. Capital infusion of Rs 25,000 crore in 2015-16 was also not enough for the PSBs. The bureau is expected to discuss a way forward. India Water Week" is a key initiative for sharing best practices and exchanging ideas to identify timely solutions to critical water issues confronting our world today, says president . The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee addressed the valedictory function of India Water Week-2016 today (April 8, 2016) at New Delhi. . . Speaking on the occasion, the President said that he saw India Water Week" itself - as a key initiative for sharing best practices and exchanging ideas to identify timely solutions to the critical water issues confronting our world today. It is heartening that there has been a good response to the exhibition that concurrently been held - showcasing technologies and solutions for improving efficiencies in water use. He thanked the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation for organizing this event and appreciate the contribution of partner Ministries of the Central and State Governments. . . The President said that he cannot emphasize enough the value of a multi-disciplinary approach to water. We must prioritize resilient eco-systems, modern data management systems and innovations in technology. Our laws should inculcate a respect for the principle that water is a common legacy. We must treasure it, utilize it in a manner that enables us to pass it on - intact if not enhanced to our Generation Next. Governments Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan and Integrated Watershed Management Programme are important programmes to achieve this objective. . . Among the dignitaries present on the occasion were Shri Suresh Prabhu, Union Minister of Railways; Sushri Uma Bharti Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation; Shri Chaudhary Birender Singh, Union Minister of Rural Development, Drinking Water & Sanitation and Panchayati Raj; Smt. Vasundhra Raje, Chief Minister of Rajasthan and Shri Sanwar Lal Jat, MoS for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. . . PM greets people across the country, celebrating various festivals on the advent of New Year . The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has greeted people across the country, celebrating various festivals on the advent of New Year. . . "Greetings to people across India celebrating the advent of the New Year. May this new year bring joy and prosperity. . . Wishing all my Sindhi friends on the auspicious occasion of Cheti Chand. We bow to Lord Jhulelal and seek his divine blessings. . . Gudi Padwa wishes to all friends in Maharashtra. Praying for a phenomenal year, full of happiness and success. . . On the special day of Ugadi, my greetings to everyone. I hope the new year brings peace and prosperity in our society. . . Navreh greetings to my fellow citizens. I pray that the coming year enhances the spirit of happiness and harmony in our lives. . . Sajibu Cheiraoba greetings to the wonderful people of Manipur. May the new year fulfil all your wishes", the Prime Minister said.. . Indias independent miners have urged the government to exempt the aluminium raw material from export duty, due to the lack of its demand from domestic aluminium producers. Though the export duty on was reduced by five per cent, to 15 per cent, in the earlier Union Budget, the levy makes Indian exporters uncompetitive in global markets, they say. In contrast, the government had exempted low grade iron and chromium ore from export duty, from a uniform high of 30 per cent Read more from our special coverage on "BAUXITE" Bauxite miners seek to abolish export duty The export industry is already battling headwinds from the meltdown in global commodity . Therefore, customs duty on export of bauxite ore should be reduced to nil, said C K Joshi, chairman of the Gujmin Industry Association, representative body of mineral excavators in Gujarat. India has three billion tonnes of bauxite reserves. With around two million tonnes (mt) of annual aluminium production and remote chances of further large addition in production due to subdued price trends and the huge cost involved, the known bauxite reserves is estimated to last for at least 300 years. At least 80 per cent of these are in Odisha and Andhra, which is why nearly all the integrated alumina and aluminium plants are in the east and central regions of the country. The west coast is peppered with non-contiguous deposits of bauxite, none of which have the quality or critical mass to support an alumina refinery or integrated smelter. India is estimated to have exported around seven mt of bauxite, largely to China, in calendar year 2015. However, the export duty is a problem. Indian bauxite comprised only 14 per cent of the Chinese import requirement and, says the trade, is on a weaker wicket as compared to competitor countries, mainly on account of a disproportionate export duty and dwindling quality. Because of export duty mismatch, the livelihood of around 50,000 workers employed in this business is at stake. To protect the interest of these labourers, the government must abolish export duty on bauxite, said a senior official at a mining company. Shares of were down nearly 1% at Rs 49.80 on the Bombay Stock Exchange after ratings outlook downgrade by Moody's Investors Service, Inc. The global credit rating agency has affirmed Ba3 corporate family rating and senior secured Noted rating with outlook from stable to negative, the company said in a release. This is due to delay in execution of de-leveraging plan of the company, the release added. The stock opened at Rs 49 and touched a low of Rs 48.75. At 2:15pm, over 8.8 million shares were traded on both the stock exchanges. has surged over 4% to Rs 291 on the BSE after the company said that it has completed its exit from its asset management joint venture to Invesco. On BSE, so far 1,227 shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 8,544 shares in the past one quarter. announced that it has completed its exit from its asset management joint venture, Religare Invesco Asset Management Company (RIAMC) and Religare Invesco Trustee Company (RITC). It sold its 51% stake in the joint venture to the joint venture partner Invesco, which will now hold 100% in RIAMC. Invesco is a leading independent global investment management firm. The transaction is closed on 7 April 2016, following the receipt of all required regulatory approvals. An anti-terrorism court on Friday has issued non-bailable arrest warrants for Pakistan's former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf in judges' detention case. Legal proceedings were initiated against the former military dictator for detaining over 60 judges, including former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The judges were detained after proclamation of a state of emergency in the country, reports Dawn. During court proceedings, Musharraf's counsel Akhtar Shah submitted a 'wakalatnama' for his client prompting ATC judge Sohail Ikram to ask the whereabouts of the accused. However, the counsel of the former military dictator informed the court that his client had gone abroad for medical treatment with permission of the government. The ATC judge while observing that the accused did not get prior permission from the court before his departure issued non-bailable warrants against Musharraf and adjourned the hearing of the case till April 22. Musharraf is facing terrorism charges in the case which was based on a first information report (FIR) registered against him on August 11, 2009 by the Secretariat police for detaining over 60 judges, including former CJP. Campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday will address several election rallies in the state today, where polling will be held on Monday in the second and final phase of Assembly elections. He will be addressing people in Nagaon, Barpeta and Guwahati. The Prime Minister had earlier, addressed poll meetings in Upper Assam and Barak valley in the first phase. Meanwhile, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi will also address rallies in Lower Assam today. The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre to disclose its stand on bringing back the Kohinoor diamond. The apex court made this observation while hearing a petition filed by All India Human Rights and Social Justice Front. The petition had said that the government was not making efforts to bring back the diamond. The Solicitor General said in court that he would seek instruction from the government and will get back. The diamond was, by force, made to be presented to Queen Victoria in 1850, by the Marquess of Dalhousie, the British governor-general of Punjab. The people have been demanding the return of the 105-carat stone from many days. The British Government in 2013 rejected the demands for the return of Kohinoor. China has offered Sri Lanka 500 million Yuan to provide assistance to improve investment zones and speed up the industrialization process in the country. China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang made this offer during bilateral discussions with the visiting Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Beijing on Thursday. The Prime Minister said that Sri Lanka will adhere to the "One China" policy in the future. The Prime Minister also said that Sri Lanka will give its fullest support to China's 'one belt one road' concept, reports Lanka page website. During the discussions the Chinese Premier expressed his wishes that both sides will speed up the negotiation of the second phase of Hambantota port project, helping Sri Lanka to be an important transfer hub in international logistics. The Chinese Premier welcomed the resuming of the Colombo port construction and said China is willing to join hands with Sri Lanka to steadily expand the construction of the project. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe invited his Chinese counterpart to visit Sri Lanka as a measure of cementing ties between the two nations. The Chinese Primer accepting the invitation has said that he will tour the country next year. He suggested that both parties should strive for finishing the negotiation of China-Sri Lanka free trade agreement by year-end. China will develop industrial capacity cooperation with Sri Lankan plan to build an economic zone, and help speed up the construction of infrastructures and its industrialization process. The two leaders also focused on issues that are common to both countries and agreed to standby each other when it comes to important issues such as territorial integrity, sovereignty, and development. Following the discussions the two sides signed seven agreements. The agreements include an extradition treaty between the two countries, an MoU between the Chinese Commerce Ministry and Strategic Development and International Commerce Ministry of Sri Lanka. The Chinese Prime Minister hosted his Sri Lankan counterpart and his delegation to a banquet in the evening. Companies from China's violence-prone region of Xinjiang have signed deals worth about two billion dollars with Pakistan, during a visit to Pakistan by Xinjiang's Party chief Zhang Chunxian ,who sought to strenghthen relation with an important security partner. In return, China will get a free trade zone in Pakistan's Gwadar port and access to the Arabian Sea. New Pakistani roads will open up routes for Chinese goods into Europe and the Middle East from landlocked Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan. During a four-day visit to Pakistan, Xinjiang's Communist Party chief Zhang Chunxian met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, visited Islamabad, Karachi and Gwadar, reports the Dawn. The 2 billion dollar agreements covered infrastructure, solar power and logistics, among other projects, signed by companies from Xinjiang with their Pakistan counterparts, the newspaper said, without giving details. China and Pakistan call each other 'all-weather friends' and their ties have been underpinned by long-standing wariness of their common neighbour, India. While meeting Sharif the two countries agreed to continue working together to fight terrorism, strengthen border controls, maintain regional peace and stability and ensure the economic corridor projects are protected. Zhang also met Pakistan's military on the trip. Hundreds of people have been killed in unrest in Xinjiang in the last few years. Pakistan has last year agreed energy and infrastructure projects worth 46 billion dollars with China to set up the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Street Children expressed their views to the UN Advisory Board Members on the forthcoming UN General Comment on Children in Street Situations. This was done in a consultation jointly organised in New Delhi by Plan India and Consortium for Street Children (CSC), UK. With the participation of almost 54 children and young people, this consultation brought evident facts in front of the UN Advisory Board Members. They interacted with the children to understand their situation and what they could do to work towards helping governments to support children for overcoming their situation. The recommendations shared will be reflected in the forthcoming UN General Comment on Children in Street Situations, a key piece of international law on children's rights, laying out governments' obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The key demands of street children placed before the UN committee were protection, safe environment, shelter, food, identity and dignity. The major concerns included lack of healthcare, child trafficking, lack of address to substance abuse. Till date two programmes have been formulated by the Indian government, 'Integrated Child Protection Scheme' which encompasses street children in need of care and protection and 'National Plan of Action for Street Children.' Mr. Gehad Madi, Member, UNCRC Committee and Advisory Board said, "Developed by the UN's highest authority on children's right, the general comments lay out for the first time what the governments must do to respect children's rights under international law. These recommendations will prove to be a powerful tool to promote street children's rights." Plan India has been working with street children in India for over a decade. The flagship programmes includes School on Wheels, an initiative to improving the quality of education for underprivileged children, Dreams on Streets, a programme to end child begging at traffic signals of Delhi and Dreams on Wheels, an initiative that involve working with children living on railway platforms. With the Institute of Technology (NIT) in Srinagar becoming a focal point of controversy and furore following the baton charge on students by the police, Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh on Friday assured that the students at the varsity are safe and will be unharmed, while asserting that those responsible for attacking the students will not be spared. Speaking to ANI, he said that the controversy surrounding the issue of 'Kashmiri versus non-Kashmiri students' was redundant as there was no such issue prevalent. "NIT is an institution and the BJP believes that there should not be any political interference there, that's why the HRD is dealing with their academic and other issues including their safety. A magisterial enquiry is underway into the lathicharge on students and report will come in 15 days, following which all those police officials responsible will be punished," Singh said. Assuring complete security, he added that troops of CRPF and senior officers from the Jammu and Kashmir Police were deployed inside the campus and were constantly monitoring the situation. "As a Deputy Chief Minister, I assure the complete safety of the students and I am taking a personal interest in the matter. I had gone to Srinagar yesterday and I will be going there today as well to take stick of the situation," he added. The BJP leader also said that the students must not be worried as the institution belongs to them and also appealed to other parties to not politicize the issue as the state was a sensitive area and that the issue must be contained solely to that of interest. Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani had earlier said that her ministry officials are in the varsity campus to ensure that all of their issues are looked into while asserting that safety of students was her prime concern. A fact-finding team of the HRD Ministry arrived at the institute's campus on Wednesday for an on the spot assessment of the situation. The two-member team comprising a Director level and a Deputy Secretary level officer also spoke to the students to get their version of the events. Tension simmered at the NIT campus last week after India lost the World T20 semi-final to the West Indies. Some engineering students from outside the state claimed Kashmiri students had chanted anti-India slogans and burst firecrackers after India's defeat. India's expenditure only on security could reach a billion dollars by 2019, assuming if the Centre spends even 10 per cent of its budget allocated for AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) and Smart Cities Mission, according to a recent ASSOCHAM-Mahindra SSG joint study. "India needs at least $4 bn in public-private partnership (PPP) mode to address cybercrime related challenges at both individual and organisational levels including cyber sexual harassment, cyber bullying, information theft, defacing website, inflicting servers with viruses and others," noted the study titled 'New Age Crime' conducted by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) jointly with Mahindra SSG. The investment amount of $4 billion could be spread across upgrading technology, training cyber professionals, counselling of victims, creating cyber cells and others. With a view to increase the level of security across the country, India must spend at least $15 per citizen on homeland and border security on public-private partnership basis with total expenditure amounting to $15 billion (bn) by 2019, suggested the ASSOCHAM-Mahindra SSG study. "This will compliment India's existing scheme of insurance for every citizen, as it would be a proactive step," it added. United States of America (USA) had incurred losses worth $3 trillion during 9/11 attacks while Al-Qaeda had spend only about $0.5 million for executing its plan. As such, post 9/11 the US increased its expenditure on security. It had allocated $1,900 per citizen for its 318 million people with a total budget of $602 bn in 2015. The study added that India, which has experienced similar issues in the past, would be able to evolve further if it followed in the footsteps of countries like the USA. Highlighting the huge dearth of cyber security professionals in India, the study has suggested for moving some existing resources in technology space working for government to lead cyber security projects. "This way government projects will have some stability in this space." It also emphasised upon the need for a pragmatic approach for securing people, data and processes. Twenty-five Indian Army personnel recently underwent an intensive three week programme aimed at augmenting verbal communication skills in Mandarin Chinese. The programme was conducted by native Chinese instructors of India's first Taiwan Education Centre (TEC) at the Jindal School of International Affairs The training module was designed with significant emphasis on experiential learning and conducted by Jindal Institute of Leadership Development and Executive Education (JILDEE) of O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat Furthering its role in imparting executive education in India, O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) at Sonipat, Haryana, recently delivered training Programme in Mandarin Chinese Language for selected personnel of the Indian army. 25 personnel of the Indian Army participated in the intensive 3 week course conducted at the university campus. The programme was jointly conducted by Jindal Institute of Leadership Development and Executive Education (JILDEE), the executive education wing of JGU that seeks to impart leadership development and executive education programmes and the Taiwan Education Centre (TEC) at O.P. Jindal Global University, India's first Taiwan Education Centre (TEC), established by National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) with the support of the Ministry of Education, Government of Taiwan. This programme is also the second successful course Jindal Institute of Leadership Development Executive Education (JILDEE) has delivered in imparting Chinese Language for select army personnel. Speaking at the graduation ceremony of the 2nd batch of army personnel undergoing language training in Mandarin Chinese at the university Prof. (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar, Vice-Chancellor, O .P. Jindal Global University said, "I am certain that the Mandarin communication skills developed with the help of native Chinese instructors will be gainfully utilized by army personnel at diplomatic forums, bilateral negotiations and border meetings." He further stated, " The Jindal Institute of Leadership Development and Executive Education imparts programmes built upon a multidisciplinary approach and innovative thinking. JILDEE has been set up with a view to impart world class capacity training to participants and stakeholders and reflect our vision and long term commitment to institution building for nation building." "It is a matter of national honour and pride that the Taiwan Centre at our university is building the capacities of our armed forces to negotiate and manage India's relations with its most crucial neighbour, China", said, Dr. Sreeram Chaulia, Dean, Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA) which has also hosted the Taiwan Education Centre (TEC) since its establishment in 2011. Speaking on the occasion, Lt. Gen (retd.) Dr. Rajesh Kochhar, Director, Jindal Institute of Leadership Development and Executive Education, said, "The executive education programmes that JILDEE conducts are carefully developed and use various pedagogical approaches such as lectures, simulations, small group interactions, action learning projects, and case studies with the goal of ensuring that the participants can take the learning back to their work environment and apply the new skills gained from day one." Experiential learning was central to the training methodology adopted to develop and strengthen the language skills of the army personnel. The lectures were highly interactive and involved participants actively in group discussions, role plays, situational dialogues etc. The training also employed extensive use of audio visual aids including mandarin Chinese movie screenings for the participants. The personnel were also made to practice a mock India-China meeting with cultural insight and etiquette and introduced to the use of technology by using smart devices and online sources as part of the training module. Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nafees Zakaria has said that his country is ready to work with India to prevent an arms race in the region and added that the peace dialogue between the two nations will continue. Zakaria's statement comes a day after Pakistan's High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, said the peace process between Islamabad and New Delhi is temporarily suspended,reports Dawn. Nafees was responding to a query relating to President Obama's comments at the Nuclear Security Summit last week, in which he had asked India and Pakistan to work towards reducing their nuclear arsenal and develop military doctrines. Basit had on Thursday also gone into denial mode on the reciprocal visit by National Investigation Agency to Pakistan for the Pathankot attack probe. The spokesman noted that there was an increased understanding at the international level of Pakistan's concerns over India's expanding conventional and nuclear capabilities and their offensive force postures and military doctrines such as the 'Cold Start Doctrine.' The spokesman said that the limited resources of Pakistan and India should be channelled towards meeting the social needs of our people. Zakaria added that India's request for consular access to the captured spy, Kulbushan Jhadav, was under consideration and the decision would be taken as per the provisions of the 2008 accord on consular access. In a major setback to former minister K.M. Mani, the Kerala High Court on Friday rejected his request to cancel the corruption case against him. The court rejected his plea to suspend the vigilance proceedings against him in the bar bribery case. The court said that the steps/procedures taken by the vigilance court cannot be stayed. The Kerala Congress (M) supremo in his plea had said that as the investigation against vigilance SP R. Sukesan was in progress, the proceeding against him should be suspended until the crime branch probe was over. The crime branch probe was being conducted on the charges that Sukesan, in collusion with hotelier Biju Ramesh, had conspired against the government in the bar bribery case. Hotelier Biju Ramesh, who had accused Mani of taking bribe for reducing license fees of bar hotels, had also levelled charges against then excise minister K. Babu and said that he was part of the same scandal and had accepted a bribe as well. Babu, however, rubbished the charges against him, saying all allegations are baseless. Sri Lanka will sign the Paris Agreement on Climate Change at its signing ceremony to be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York on April 22. Sri Lankan Minister of Science, Technology and Research Susil Premajayantha will be signing the agreement on behalf of the government, reports Lanka Page. Sri Lanka at the 21st session of the United Nations Framework Convention held in the French capital of Paris on Environmental disaster (UNFCCC) from November 30, 2015, till December11 the same year agreed to contribute to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Premajayantha will also attend the UN General Assembly on the Drug Problem and the High Level Thematic Debate on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which will also be held on the preceding days. The Cabinet of Ministers has approved a proposal made by President Maithripala Sirisena to assign Premajayantha to sign the agreement and also to participate in the other functions in line with the ceremony. The Human Rights Commission, (NHRC) has issued notices to the Chief Conservator of Forests, Government of Tamil Nadu and District Collector, Nilgiris on a complaint alleging that wild animals straying into the inhabited areas in the villages and towns near the forest areas of Nilgiris have been killing people and damaging crops without any protective measures by the concerned authorities. They have been given eight weeks time to submit a report. While issuing the notices, Justice D. Murugesan, Member, NHRC has observed that "the Commission can very well understand the miserable plight of the populace in the affected areas, living up with the dangers of attack by the wild animals. The authorities cannot afford to be mute spectators in such circumstances." The complainant alleged that during the last three years, six persons were allegedly killed by tigers and 20 by wild elephants in the Ooty town area, Noolpusha, tea plantation at Bitherkkadu, Devarshole etc. but no action has been taken by the concerned Government officers. Requesting for protection to the people and their crops from the wild animals, the complainant has also drawn attention towards the African countries, which have tried to provide big trenches and nets to prevent the entry of wild animals into the human areas. Professor Bidyut Kumar Sarmah, who has been awarded the prestigious 'Norman Borlaug Chair' by the Indian Council For Agricultural Research for his pioneering research in insect resistance in grain legumes, is the first agricultural scientist from the north-east to have been selected for this honor. Dr. Sarmah, who hails from Assam's Jorhat town, is a known name in the field of agricultural biotechnology research in India for developing insect-resistant Bt-chickpea, which is in the process of deregulation through confined field trials. Dr. Sarmah is the director of DBT-AAU Centre and professor in the department of Agricultural Biotechnology of AAU, which apart from conducting research also conducts research training and programmes. "Although in India we produce the highest amount of chickpea worldwide almost 70 percent of chickpea is produced and area wise also 80 percent of it is produced in India and its use is also very rich in our country that's why we import huge amount of pulses not only chickpea but other pulses as well. Pulses are very important in Indian agriculture," said Dr. Sarmah. "Being in Assam why I thought of working in chickpea because in chickpea the major problem in Assam is the sour green paste," he added. Dr. Sarmah has been working in the field of gene technology for legume improvement for almost two decades and has successfully conducted several and international collaborative researches. His ten years of research in chickpea gene technology has led to a few significant achievements. The rare honor is given to him as an impact of his research in Indian as well as International agriculture. The Assam Agricultural University (AAU)-fraternity expressed its delight after the news of the honor was declared. "Since 2005 initially I started as the PhD student under him and later I was switched to Assistant Prof and since then both of us are collaborating with the project especially the chickpea project. It's a great experience working with him because he actually started the chickpea programme in AAU after coming back from US," said Dr. Sumita Acharjee, Assistant Prof, Assam Agricultural University. "I was really excited working with him, it is a completely different thing came into northeast about transgenic. It is a wonderful experience," he added. Dr. Sarmah will hold the chair as a " Professor" initially for a period of five years and will receive a grant of Rs. 2.5 crores for conducting research on "development of cisgenic chickpea resistant to pod borers". When it comes to assessing attractiveness, women judge their overweight peers more harshly than men, as per a recent study. The research from the University of Surrey and University of Oxford has described the relationship between attractiveness, BMI and gender, showing that while women are the harshest judges of weight in relation to beauty, they are also judged negatively by both men and women for being overweight. When these findings are applied to trends in wages, there is evidence that anthropometric attributes play a significant role in wage regressions in addition to attractiveness, showing that body size cannot be dismissed as a simple component of beauty. Researchers assessed how male and female interviewers scored the attractiveness of interviewees of both genders, looking at how BMI affects perceptions of beauty. They found that female interviewers would judge both men and women with higher BMIs as less attractive, whereas men would judge their fellow gender much less harshly. Professor Sonia Oreffice explained that this is the first study that looks at the relationship between BMI and attractiveness, from both gender's perspective. She concluded, "While we are not entirely surprised with the results that correlate BMI and attractiveness, what is remarkable is that gender of the interviewer makes a difference and that body size matters for wages not simply as proxy for beauty." This should prompt future researchers to seriously consider and account for the gender of the interviewer in any beauty analysis. This contributes to bridge the gap between studies on the economics of anthropometric measures (including height and BMI), on one hand, and the economics of beauty, on the other, estimating the relevance of body size and beauty. The study is published in the journal Economics and Human Biology. Dr. Mukul Sangma, Chief Minister of Meghalaya, expressed a keen desire to partner with FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO) to enhance the socio-economic position of women in the state. Many of the schemes of the Meghalaya government for imparting financial literacy and social emancipation could be integrated and dovetailed with those of FLO and the success stories so generated could be replicated in states across the country. Addressing the FICCI Ladies Organisation's (FLO) 32nd Annual Session, Dr. Sangma said that FLO provides an apt platform for integrating and scaling up the policies of the government. The convergence of efforts of the government and Flo could help in promoting women empowerment. He added that women should not be just beneficiaries in these initiatives but must be made partners. Mr. Sangma said that education could play a great role in improving the stature of women in society. Educated women had the power of scripting their own success stories while enabling their families and children to step up in the society. Mr. Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship & Parliamentary Affairs, today offered the government's commitment to FLO and assured that then government would facilitate the initiatives taken up by FLO. The government was promoting the agenda of skilling and had created an enabling ecosystem for it and needed organizations like FLO to scale up skilling. In his special address, Mr. Rudy said that only 4.5 per cent of India was skilled as compared to the US, UK, Japan and Korea with figures of 54 per cent, 68 per cent, 86 per cent and 96 per cent, respectively indicating a much higher percentage of skilled manpower. He added that 10 years of education was necessary but it does not make a person employable whereas a 10-week skilling program could allow a person to become immediately employable. Hence, it was imperative to promote skilling amongst workforce. On the occasion, a FLO Annual Report was released and the FLO Governing Body Members 2016-17 was announced. In her presentation on FLO initiatives, Ms. Archana Garodia Gupta, President, FLO, said that FLO had initiated a number of long term programmes such WE in Education; WE in Transport; WE in Telecom; WE in Ecommerce; SWAYAM; FLO Smart Village and FLO Mahila Haat Project. She suggested that the government could initiate policy & advocacy measures for women empowerment such as increasing land ownership by women; create women's industrial parks; create Mahila Haats; create a procurement policy for the government to purchase from women SHGs and entrepreneurs; skill development; gender budgeting in Sectoral Skill Councils; improving access to Finance; and making available good quality and affordable Childcare. In her acceptance speech, the new President of FLO, Ms. Vinita Bimbhet, announced that FLO would soon be opening a new chapter in Jammu and Kashmir. In his special remark, Mr. Harshvardhan Neotia, President, FICCI, said that men and women were equally responsible for achieving gender quality. Lauding FLO's efforts to bring about awareness among women and furthering the cause of women empowerment, Mr. Neotia said that FLO had initiated exceptional schemes which were bringing about a positive change. Later, Ms. Debjani Ghosh, Vice President, Sales and Marketing Group & Managing Director, South Asia, Intel; Ms. Rebecca R Tavares, Representative in India -UN Women and Mr. Akshay BD, Founding Member, Uber India, also shared their perspectives on women empowerment. The moderator of the session was Ms. Jyotsna Kaur Habibullah, Chapter Chairperson- Lucknow-Kanpur Chapter. Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan will be visiting Iran and the UAE between April 9 and 12. During his visit to Iran on April 9 and 10, Pradhan will meet his Iranian counterpart, Senior Adviser to President of Iran on Free Trade Zones and Governor of Central Bank of Iran in Tehran. He would also be addressing the Tehran Chamber of Commerce. He will be visiting Chabahar FTZ to interact with FTZ authorities. The last visit by an Indian Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas was in April 2007. India and Iran share historic bilateral relations with substantial economic engagements covering many sectors. The trade relations have traditionally been buoyed by Indian import of Iranian crude oil. The bilateral trade during the fiscal year 2014-15 was USD 13.13 billion. India imported USD 8.95 billion worth of goods mainly crude oil and exported commodities worth USD 4.17 billion. The visit envisages engaging with the Iranian political leadership to work with them, particularly in the hydrocarbon, petrochemicals and fertilisers sector for mutual benefits, including strengthening of India's energy security. During visit to UAE from April 11 and 12, Pradhan will meet his UAE counterpart Suhail Mohammed Al Mazrouei in Abu Dhabi. He will also meet with the CEO of ADNOC and Chairman of AIDA (Abu Dhabi Investment Authority). During his stay in the Dubai, Pradhan will meet Emirati businessmen, inaugurate the India Pavilion at the Annual Investment Meet-2016 at the World Trade Centre, visit Jabel Ali Free Zone Authority (JAFZA) and interact with JAFZA authorities. He is also scheduled to meet Indian businessmen and professionals. The visit of Pradhan to the UAE is a follow up of the February 2016 visit of Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Minister of Energy H E Mr Al Mazrouei. In the recent years, the traditionally close and friendly India - UAE bilateral relationship has evolved into a significant partnership in the economic and commercial sphere. India-UAE trade, which was valued at USD 180 million per annum in the 1970s, is today around USD 60 billion making UAE, India's third largest trading partner for the year 2014-15. For the UAE, India is the largest trading partner for the year 2014 with an amount of over USD 28 billion (non-oil trade). On the energy front, UAE contributes significantly to India's energy security, being the 6th largest supplier. India is the 2nd largest destination for UAE's oil exports. India imported 16.11 MMT of crude oil from UAE during 2014-15 and 11.52 MMT during April-December 2015. Pradhan will be accompanied by senior officials from his Ministry and also from Department of Petrochemicals, Department of Fertilizers, Department of Economic Affairs apart from CMDs/MDs and officials from Central Public Sector Oil and Gas, Fertilizers, Shipping and Metal companies. Representatives of private Indian companies involved in petroleum, petrochemicals and fertilizers sectors will also be travelling along with Sh Pradhan as part of a FICCI delegation. Pratyusha Banerjee's lawyer has said that he has '15 big reasons' as to why the late actress' beau Rahul Raj Singh "should be taken into custody and drilled further." With days passing by, more shocking revelations and allegations are coming up both from Rahul and Pratyusha's families, after the latter's suicide on April 1. According to the 'Balika Vadhu' actress' lawyer, after postmortem report, they think that Pratyusha was hit as well, reports a leading web portal. He also said, "Pratyusha's bank card was also used by Rahul! And also, before the police reached the hospital following Pratyusha's suicide, why did Rahul run away? Big question! Only Rahul can tell each and everything!" While speaking on Pratyusha being a victim of domestic violence, the lawyer said, the late actress had informed her friends of being physically assaulted. "Rahul never let Pratyusha talk to her parents. Why did he not inform the police after her suicide which he should have done in the first place? We did not even find any suicide note, probably Rahul has destroyed all the evidence against him," he added. He also stated that Rahul has had a record of cheating seven women and duping around Rs. 25 lakh in the past and hence, according to him, it can be a "pre-planned murder." Keeping all these points in mind, a local Mumbai court yesterday rejected the pre-arrest bail plea of Rahul, booked for abetment of Pratyusha suicide. Ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal produced a resilient performance to advance to the semifinals of the Malaysia Open Super Series Premier tournament in the women's singles event on Friday. Saina, who slumped to eighth in the latest world rankings, bounced back from a game down to claim a 19-21, 21-14, 21-14 win over Thailand's Porntip Buranaprasertsuk in a thrilling contest that lasted 58 minutes. The 26-year-old Olympic bronze medallist will next meet Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei on Saturday. Meanwhile, PV Sindhu struggled against Ratchanok Intanon from the beginning as she went down 7-21, 8-21 to the fourth seed Thailand opponent in the quarterfinal contest. Bowing to the Bombay High Court order and breaking 400 years of tradition, the temple on Friday announced that both men and women will henceforth be allowed to enter the inner sanctum of the temple and offer their prayers. "Anyone can enter the sanctum and the committee can't stop them from entering. The rule was that men and women both can worship god (darshan) from the lower part of the temple, but when men entered the sanctum then it became our responsibility to also let women enter," Nana Sahib Bankar, vice-president of the Trust, told the media here. He said that the temple had been following an ancient custom but added that they had no objection in welcoming the court's order. "The state government has taken the same stand from the very beginning and we filed an affidavit in the High Court that there should be no discrimination. Today, they have decoded on this issue and we wish that after today, no one needs the police to get 'darshan'. Religion never discriminates on the basis of caste or gender," Fadnavis told the media in Mumbai. Earlier today, around 100 men were seen storming into the inner sanctum of the holy place, defying the Trust's orders. On the festive occasion of Gudi Padwa, with hundreds of devotees in line to worship, a mob of men arrived outside the temple and stripped to their undergarments as they barged aside the security to enter the inner sanctum of the temple and pray at the holy site. The temple had reversed an ancient rule and declared that neither men nor women would be allowed into the area that has an idol placed on a platform. Bhumata Brigade activist Trupti Desai on Friday welcomed the decision of the trust to allow females to enter the inner sanctum of the temple and offer their prayers and said that it was a victory for women power. "It is a victory for Bhumata Brigade. It is a victory for women power," Desai told ANI. "Today, we are going to take sight in the temple in a respectful way. We are going in a batch of eight to ten people. The trustee has also said that we will be provided police protection," she added. She also insisted that they are not going to return from the temple without offering the prayers today. Recently, Tripura observed Odisha Day or Utkal Divas with performance by distinguished artists in Agartala. Traditional dance and music comprise the celebration of Utkal Divas. Odisha was formed on April 1, 1936. Every year on this day, the contributions and sacrifices made by the people of Odisha during the struggle for statehood is remembered. The festival was organized by Odia Samaj Tripura in collaboration with Sangeet Natak Academy and was inaugurated by the Tripura CM Manik Sarkar. "On behalf of Oriya Samaj we are organizing this festival to basically integrate cultural activities, cultural affairs between Tripura and Orissa, sharing of Orissa culture with people of Tripura and they are also accepting our culture, dance, food and festival," said Deepak Kumar Biswal, the organizer. The festival is organized with an aim to promote the rich and traditional art and culture of Odisha in other parts of the country and bridge the gap between the people of different regions. The performances by traditional artists on the classical 'Odissi dance' left the audience spellbound. Odisha's internationally acclaimed Sambalpuri folk dance gave the audience an insight of the culture and tradition of Odisha. The performance was enjoyed by both young and old alike. "Away from home is really a wonderful feeling and organizing this type of event in far away distance is really wonderful actually we are enjoying each and every moment of the programme and particularly when you see your own people, your own culture, own language is really a great thing. We are in debt to the people who are already here since many years and who have kept this culture alive here," said Iman, a local. The festival gave an opportunity to local artists to showcase their talent, who showcased their skills in the field of art, music, dance, literature, theatre and cinema. "The response is very good and I believe that it is helping to improve the relation between the people of Tripura and Odisha and especially the cultural front is strengthening," added another local Bimal Kumar Roy. Jyoti Tapao, who watched the programme, said that he was delighted to witness the culture of Odisha in Tripura. "It will give the message to the nation and people of Tripura and all over India that we all are united and culturally rich," she added. The festival not only brings two states closer, but also strengthens the cultural ties between Odisha and Tripura. New Delhi, Apr.8 (ANI): The statements made by Pakistan High Commissioner at the Foreign Correspondent's Club in New Delhi on Thursday have baffled many on both sides of the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC). How could a high commissioner call off; something way above his pay grade? Moreover, an ambassador's job profile explicitly makes it clear that he or she is posted to represent his country's views and to promote relations with the country to which he or she is posted. So, what was Abdul Basit exactly doing? The Pakistan High Commissioner was invited to the Foreign Correspondent's Club as a guest. From the beginning to the end of the statement made by him, he said that unless Kashmir problem is "solved", relations between India and Pakistan will not improve. The solution that Pakistan wants is supposedly a plebiscite, but what it actually wants, is complete accession of Kashmir. High Commissioner Basit left it unsaid, but his tone and tenor made it quite apparent. Ever since his appointment as Pakistan's high commissioner to India, Abdul Basit has shown that he is a hawk on Kashmir. The grapevine has it that Basit's relations are stronger with the 'establishment' in Pakistan rather than with the elected government of Nawaz Sharif. Indeed, even before the event at the Foreign Correspondents Club in New Delhi, phone calls had gone out to some reporters to "be there" as they would get "masala", a common enough term among reporters for some explosive story. Just the previous day, India's Foreign Secretary S.Jaishankar had said in the capital that "Terrorism" was the central issue in the relationship and all interactions between the representatives of both countries. However, High Commissioner Basit, barely 24 hours later, remarked that "cherry picking on issues would not work". India is annoyed with Basit batting above his pay grade. There will be a diplomatic fallout, but unfortunately what gets hit is the India-Pakistan peace process, which seemed to have been top-driven by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Not anymore, it seems. To this day, individuals of European and Asian heritage retain Neanderthal DNA in their genomes and now, a new study suggests that we did not inherit male genes from them. The Stanford University researchers completed the first in-depth genetic analysis of a Neanderthal Y chromosome. The findings offer new insights into the relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans and some of the genetic factors that might have kept the two lineages apart. The Y chromosome was the main component remaining to be analyzed from the Neanderthal genome, the researchers said. Researcher Fernando Mendez explained that characterizing the Neanderthal Y chromosome helped them to better understand the population divergence that led to Neanderthals and modern humans. It also enabled them to explore possible genetic interactions between archaic and modern gene variants within hybrid offspring. Mendez and his colleagues, including Carlos Bustamante from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, analyzed the Y chromosome from a Neanderthal male found in El Sidron, Spain. Their analysis suggests that Neanderthals and modern humans diverged almost 590,000 years ago, consistent with earlier evidence. The researchers say that the Neanderthal Y chromosome they sequenced is distinct from any Y chromosome observed in modern humans, suggesting that the lineage in question is to be extinct. They also found some intriguing protein-coding differences between genes on the Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes. Mendez noted that the finding that most of the functional differences associate with these genes, rather than with genes involved in sperm production, came as a surprise. The researchers say additional research is required to confirm the role of those Y-chromosome mutations in discouraging the formation of a hybrid Neanderthal and human species. They are planning those experiments now. The study appears in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Key benchmark indices extended gains in mid-morning trade. At 11:15 IST, the Sensex was up 20.11 points or 0.08% at 24,705.53. The gains for the Nifty 50 index were higher in percentage terms than those for the Sensex. The Nifty was currently up 18.10 points or 0.24% at 7,564.55. The Sensex rose 50.61 points or 0.2% at the day's high of 24,736.03 in mid-morning trade. The barometer index hit its lowest level in more than three weeks when it lost 76.91 points or 0.31% at the day's low of 24,608.51 in early trade. The Nifty rose 22.90 points or 0.3% at the day's high of 7,569.35 in mid-morning trade. The index hit three-week low when it lost 19.75 points or 0.26% at the day's low of 7,526.70 in early trade. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was strong. On BSE, 1,230 shares rose and 705 shares fell. A total of 127 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.5%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.57%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. In overseas stock markets, Asian stocks edged lower after overnight decline on Wall Street. US stocks closed lower yesterday, 7 April 2016, with financials leading declines on profit-taking in an overall risk-off environment ahead of earnings season. Bank stocks edged higher after the Reserve Bank of India issued guidelines allowing trading of priority sector lending certificates(PSLCs). Among public sector banks, Indian Bank (up 1.31%), Andhra Bank (up 1.08%), Punjab National Bank (up 1.05%), Union Bank of India (up 0.8%), State Bank of India (up 0.74%) and Bank of Baroda (up 0.14%) edged higher. Central Bank of India (down 0.67%), Bank of India (down 0.16%) and IDBI Bank (down 0.15%) edged lower. Among private sector banks, ICICI Bank (up 1.23%), Yes Bank (up 1.17%), HDFC Bank (up 0.37%), Kotak Mahindra Bank (up 0.2%) and IndusInd Bank (up 0.07%) edged higher. Axis Bank (down 0.81%) edged lower. Trading in PSLCs will allow market mechanism to drive priority sector lending by leveraging the comparative strength of different banks. The RBI said that all scheduled commercial banks (including regional rural banks), urban co-operative banks, small finance banks (when they become operational) and local area banks are eligible to participate in the trading of PSLC. The certificates will have a standard lot size of 25 lakh and multiples thereof. There will be no transfer of credit risk on the underlying and the settlement of funds will be done through the e-Kuber portal, a platform to enable trading in the certificates through the central bank's core banking solution (CBS). Aviation stocks edged higher on renewed buying. SpiceJet (up 3.16%), Jet Airways (India) (up 1.47%) and InterGlobe Aviation (up 1.29%) rose. Bajaj Auto rose 0.22% at Rs 2,380 after the company announced that an agreement has been reached between the company and KTM AG, which already have an intense and fruitful partnership, that will see Bajaj Auto extend its distribution network to embrace Indonesia, the biggest motorcycle market in South East Asia. The arrangement involves KTM branded Duke and RC motorcycles up to a displacement of 400 cc, which are developed and assembled by the successful Austrian-Indian joint venture. The motorcycles will be distributed through a chain of KTM dealerships, to be managed by Bajaj Auto in Indonesia. The announcement was made during market hours today, 8 April 2016. Meanwhile, Bajaj Auto's existing business partnership with Indonesia's P.T. Jaya Selaras Sejahtera will now focus on motorcycles above 400 cc. Cairn India fell 0.92% at Rs 145.50 after London-listed Cairn Energy PLC called an annual general meeting on 12 May 2016 to seek shareholder approval to sell or reduce its stake in the Indian firm through open market transactions. Cairn Energy holds 9.82% stake in Cairn India as per the shareholding pattern as on 31 December 2015. Religare Enterprises rose 3.87% at Rs 290 after the company said that it has completed its exit from its asset management joint venture Religare Invesco Asset Management Company (RIAMC) and Religare Invesco Trustee Company (RITC). It sold its 51% stake in the joint venture to the joint venture partner Invesco, which will now hold 100% in RIAMC. The consideration received for the sale is Rs 531.15 crore. Invesco is a leading independent global investment management firm. The transaction was completed on 7 April 2016, following the receipt of all required regulatory approvals. RIAMC reported a turnover of Rs 78.55 crore, translating to approximately 1.88% of Religare Enterprises' consolidated revenue for the year ended 31 March 2015 (FY 2015). RITC reported revenue of Rs 0.35 crore, translating to approximately 0.008% of Religare Enterprises' consolidated revenue for FY 2015. The agreement for sale with Invesco was entered into by the company on 18 November 2015. The consideration received for the sale is Rs 531.15 crore. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 April 2016. Meanwhile, as per the monthly data released by Association of Mutual Funds In India (AMFI), investors withdrew a net Rs 1370 crore from equity mutual funds in March 2016. This compares with a net inflow of Rs 2522 crore into equity mutual funds in February 2016. There was a net inflow of Rs 78 crore in balanced funds in March 2016, which was lower than inflow of Rs 941 crore in February 2016. Balanced funds invest the money in a combination of equity and debt, with majority of the investment going into equity. The funds' investments range from 65% to 80% in equity and the rest in debt. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Bajaj Auto gained 0.62% to Rs 2,389.50 at 11:30 IST on BSE after the company said that an agreement has been reached between the company and KTM AG to extend their partnership into Indonesian market. The announcement was made during market hours today, 8 April 2016. Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was up 8.19 points, or 0.04%, to 24,696.17. On BSE, so far 4,466 shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 21,312 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 2,396.90 and a low of Rs 2,350.15 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 2,655 on 23 July 2015. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 1,913.80 on 30 April 2015. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 7 April 2016, rising 3.04% compared with 0.16% decline in the Sensex. The scrip had, however, underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 1.84% as against Sensex's 0.67% fall. The large-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 289.37 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10. Bajaj Auto and KTM already have a established partnership for almost 10 years. Under the new agreement with KTM, Bajaj Auto will extend its distribution network in Indonesia, the biggest motorcycle market in South East Asia. The arrangement involves KTM branded Duke and RC motrcylces upto a displacement of 400 cc, which are developed and assembled by Bajaj Auto-KTM joint venture to be distributed through a chain of KTM dealerships, to be managed by Bajaj in Indonesia. The aim of arrengement is to expand the business in the relevant, growing and price sensitive market in South East Asia. The company added that the existing business partnership with the current importer P T Jaya Selaras Sejahtera will remain, but will now fully focus on model range above 400 cc. KTM is a premium European brand manufacturing sport motorcycles. Bajaj Auto will announce Q4 results on 25 May 2016. Bajaj Auto's net profit rose 4.7% to Rs 901.49 crore on 1% fall in net sales to Rs 5463.20 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. Bajaj Auto is one of the leading two-and three-wheeler manufacturer in India. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Ten bank stocks gained 0.01% to 1.17% at 11:00 IST on BSE after the Reserve Bank of India issued instructions on trading in priority sector lending certificates (PSLCs). The Reserve Bank of India issued the instructions after market hours yesterday, 7 April 2016. Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was up 25.77 points, or 0.1%, to 24,711.19. Among public sector banks, Punjab National Bank (up 1.17%), Bank of Baroda (up 0.17%), State Bank of India (SBI) (up 0.77%), Union Bank of India (up 1.16%), and Canara Bank (up 0.66%) gained. Bank of India was flat. Among private sector banks, HDFC Bank (up 0.18%), ICICI Bank (up 1.52%), Kotak Mahindra Bank (up 0.17%), Yes Bank (up 1.1%), and IndusInd Bank (up 0.01%) edged higher. Axis Bank dropped 0.9%. While releasing the instructions, S S Mundra, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank also launched a platform to enable trading in the certificates through its core banking solution (CBS) portal (e-Kuber). All scheduled commercial banks (including regional rural banks), urban co-operative banks, small finance banks (when they become operational) and local area banks are eligible to participate in the trading. Four kinds of PSLCs, namely, PSLC-agriculture, PSLC-small & marginal farmers, PSLC-micro enterprises and PSLC-general can be bought and sold via the platform. The certificates will have a standard lot size of Rs 25 lakh and multiples thereof. There will be no transfer of credit risk on the underlying and the settlement of funds will be done through the e-Kuber portal. The detailed user guidelines for trading on the platform are also available on the portal. The Reserve Bank of India had comprehensively revised the priority sector guidelines in April 2015 which provided for the introduction of PSLCs as a mechanism to incentivise banks having surplus in their lending to different categories of priority sector. On lines of carbon credit trading, the goal of PSLCs is to allow market mechanism to drive priority sector lending by leveraging the comparative strength of different banks. For instance, a bank with an expertise in lending to small farmers can overperform there and get benefit by selling its over performance through PSLCs. Another bank that is better at lending to small industry can buy these certificates while selling PSLCs for micro enterprise loans. The BSE Bankex had outperformed the market over the past one month till 7 April 2016, gaining 0.98% compared with 0.16% decline in the Sensex. The index had, however, underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 3.42% as against Sensex's 0.67% fall. Powered by Capital Market - Live News There has been a transaction of 20 billion US dollars in world Bamboo market by the end of 2015 whereas during this span a trade of Rs. 26,000 crores has been transacted in domestic bamboo sector Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, Shri Radha Mohan Singh said in World Bamboo that there is a tremendous demand of Bamboo in National and International markets. Therefore, Government is taking necessary actions to fill up the gaps between supply and demand in this sector. He further said that government is determined to find out possibilities in this arena and to ensure its supply in a smooth way. Shri Singh, while giving reception to the experts and representatives in the conference, deliberated that there has been a trade of 20 billion US dollar in World Bamboo Market by the end of 2015. Whereas during this span there has been a transaction of 26000 crore rupees in domestic bamboo enterprises. Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Minister said that government is looking out the possibilities of industrial production and its utilization related to Bamboo sector. Government is pondering over minutely to generate electricity through the direct utilization of bio fuel and bio mass gasification so as to produce charcoal or compressed bamboo biomass pallets. The plants have been set up for rayon /cellulose fibers for the production and exports of more quality bamboo fabrics like bath robs, baby wears, T- shirts, jackets, as well as suits. Shri Singh added that bamboo plays an important role in terms of food stuff nutrients and livelihood related ecological security. Bamboo sector can extend an important contribution in employment creation, to provide unabated livelihood means to the rural weaker sections and for abolition of poverty as permanent and renewable natural resource in the perspective of its constant development. Our 13% forest area is comprised of bamboo. More than 137 species of bamboo is grown in the country which are used for 1500 diversified utilities. Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Minister further said that there has been a decrease in bamboo and bamboo forest areas. There is a meager productivity of bamboo in India. Consequent upon there is tremendous gap between demand and supply of bamboo. According to the estimates chalked out by Niti Aayog the domestic production of bamboo is only sufficient for half of the demand in the country. Therefore there is an immediate requirement to increase production of quality bamboo to meet the enhancing demand of bamboo in other section of the society apart from elevating bamboo related traditional industry as well as bamboo enterprises. Shri Singh said that Keeping in view the possibility of, economic utilization of bamboo, government of India has initiated National Bamboo Mission (NBM) - A centrally sponsored scheme under Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in 2006 for overall development of bamboo sector. During this period, the mission alongwith its limited resources implementing this scheme in 28 states in the country with the assistance of State Bamboo Missions. Since the initiation of mission bamboo has been planted on 349864 hectare land. 1436 nurseries have been established to supply the quality saplings of bamboo. Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Minister said on this occasion that there is requirement to make an expeditious development of bamboo sector in India which is impossible without formulating appropriate strategies. He emphasized the educationists and researchers related to this area to extend their contribution to mitigate existing gap in technology and employment and to contribute to provide technological facilities to the bamboo artisans. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Hindustan Unilever rose 0.4% to Rs 864 at 09:21 IST on BSE, after the company announced that it has completed the acquisition of Masons Group flagship hair oil brand Indulekha. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 April 2016. It may be recalled that in December 2015, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) had announced signing an agreement with Masons Group for acquisition of its flagship Indulekha brand. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 2.16 points or 0.01% at 24,687.58 On BSE, so far 3,661 shares were traded on the counter as against average daily volume of 1.27 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 864.60 and a low of Rs 859 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 950.40 on 13 April 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 765.35 on 27 January 2016. The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 216.39 crore. Face value per share is Re 1. HUL's net profit declined 22.4% to Rs 971.40 crore on 3.2% growth in net sales to Rs 7822.86 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. HUL is a leading fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company. Powered by Capital Market - Live News The Indian electronics and hardware industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13%-16% during 2013-18 to reach US$112-130 billion by 2018 from current level of $75 billion, according to an ASSOCHAM-EY study titled 'Turning the Make in India dream into a reality for electronics and hardware industry'. The growth is expected on the back of rising consumer demand, growing disposable incomes, declining prices of electronics, and numerous government initiatives such as wider broadband connectivity, e-governance programs and others, notes the study. The study also highlights the key demand-side and supply-side challenges faced by companies in this sector and presents some of the policy recommendations to strengthen electronics manufacturing in the country. Growing reliance on imports for electronic components and rapidly increasing demand for electronic products makes it crucial to enhance /strengthen India's electronics manufacturing capabilities. Around 50%-60% of the demand for electronic products and the demand for nearly 70%-80% of the electronic components market is fulfilled through imports. According to Milan Sheth, Partner and Leader - Technology, EY, The Make in India initiative, combined with global manufacturers looking to relocate their manufacturing base from China to alternate locations such as India, Vietnam and Indonesia due to mounting labour costs provides a strong impetus to the Indian electronics and hardware industry. It presents an opportunity to become a manufacturing-led sector in India from being predominantly consumption-driven. That said, there exist certain challenges around ease of doing business, taxation-related issues, and lack of end-to-end manufacturing value chain including component ecosystem, skilled labour unavailability and infrastructure bottlenecks in the country. Although the Government has undertaken steps to promote India as a manufacturing hub in the last two budgets, certain areas are yet to be addressed. With the electronics sector expected to grow rapidly in the coming years, avenues will open for manufacturers to invest in the Indian market. Companies are looking at increasing their manufacturing base in India to serve domestic markets and also the Middle East, Africa and SAARC countries. However, to ensure that this momentum keeps pace, the industry and the Government need to work together, to make the Indian electronics industry highly competitive, notes the report. ASSOCHAM has been striving to create a common platform for the government and the industry to come together on the possible solutions to the current set of challenges and opportunities. The conference provided an opportunity to the panellists to reflect upon the obstacles and chart out a roadmap for the success of the Make in India initiative. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Ipca Laboratories fell 1.73% to Rs 746 at 12:12 IST on BSE, after the company informed that The Global Fund, Geneva, Switzerland, will not source drugs from the company following a warning letter from the US regulator. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 April 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 1.69 points or 0.01% at 24,683.73 On BSE, so far 3.36 lakh shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 51,203 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a low of Rs 480 in intraday trade so far, which is 52-week low for the counter. The stock hit a high of Rs 534 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 888 on 19 August 2015. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 7 April 2016, sliding 3.04% compared with 0.16% decline in the Sensex. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 19.27% as against Sensex's 0.67% fall. The mid-cap company has equity capital of Rs 25.24 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2. Ipca Laboratories said that The Global Fund, Geneva, Switzerland vide their letter dated 4 April 2016 (which was transmitted to the company vide their e-mail dated 6 April 2016), has informed the company that in the light of the warning letter issued to the company by the United States Federal Drug Regulatory Authority (US FDA) on 29 January 2016, they have re-assessed the situation and following a risk consideration exercise, will not allocate any volume of Artemisinin based Combination Therapy (ACTs) to the company and that will only source ACTs from other pre-qualified suppliers that have no outstanding issues with the regulators. Ipca Laboratories' net profit fell 44.2% to Rs 23.18 crore on 8.2% decline in net sales to Rs 674.27 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. Ipca Laboratories is vertically integrated and produces finished dosage forms and active pharmaceuticals ingredients. Powered by Capital Market - Live News After seeing a rangebound movement in intraday trade, the two key benchmark indices settled near the flat line. The barometer index, the S&P Sensex, lost 11.58 points or 0.05% to settle at 24,673.84. The Nifty 50 index rose 8.75 points or 0.12% to settle at 7,555.20. The minuscule decline pushed the Sensex to its lowest closing level in more than three weeks. Bank stocks edged higher after the Reserve Bank of India issued guidelines allowing trading of priority sector lending certificates. Shares of state-run power equipment major Bharat Heavy Electricals extended previous trading session's gains triggered by the company announcing a surge in its order inflow for the year ended 31 March 2016. Tata Power rose after the company announced that its wholly owned Singapore subsidiary Tata Power International Pte has signed an agreement with KS Orka Renewables Pte for the sale of its 50% stake in OTP Geothermal Pte. In overseas stock markets, European stocks edged higher after stronger-than-expected German trade data for February 2016. The Germany economy is the Europe's biggest. Earlier during the global day, Asian stocks ended on a mixed trend. US stocks closed lower yesterday, 7 April 2016, with financials leading decline on profit taking in an overall risk-off environment ahead of earnings season. The Sensex fell 11.58 points or 0.05% to settle at 24,673.84, its lowest closing level since 15 March 2016. The barometer index lost 76.91 points or 0.31% at the day's low of 24,608.51. The Sensex rose 50.61 points or 0.2% at the day's high of 24,736.03. The Nifty rose 8.75 points or 0.12% to settle at 7,555.20, its highest closing level since 6 April 2016. The index rose 22.90 points or 0.3% at the day's high of 7,569.35. The index lost 19.75 points or 0.26% at the day's low of 7,526.70. The BSE Mid-Cap index rose 0.64%. The BSE Small-Cap index rose 0.63%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was positive. On BSE, 1,481 shares rose and 1,043 shares fell. A total of 165 shares were unchanged. The total turnover on BSE amounted to Rs 1955.18 crore, lower than turnover of Rs 2956.03 crore registered during the previous trading session. Among the sectoral indices on BSE, the S&P BSE Basic Materials index (up 0.89%), the BSE Utilities index (up 1.59%), the BSE Capital Goods index (up 0.97%), the BSE Power index (up 1.58%) and the BSE Realty index (up 1.44%) outperformed the Sensex. The S&P BSE IT index (down 0.82%), the BSE Consumer Durables index (down 0.59%) and the BSE Teck index (down 0.66%) underperformed the Sensex. Bank stocks edged higher after the Reserve Bank of India issued guidelines allowing trading of priority sector lending certificates (PSLCs). Among public sector banks, Andhra Bank (up 1.57%), Punjab National Bank (up 0.8%), Union Bank of India (up 0.64%), State Bank of India (up 0.55%), Oriental Bank of Commerce (up 1.05%), Syndicate Bank (up 0.61%) and Canara Bank (up 0.3%) edged higher. Bank of Baroda (down 0.17%), Indian Bank (down 0.45%) and IDBI Bank (down 0.89%) edged lower. Among private sector banks, ICICI Bank (up 0.57%), Yes Bank (up 1.74%), HDFC Bank (up 0.3%) and Kotak Mahindra Bank (up 0.28%) edged higher. IndusInd Bank (down 0.21%) and Axis Bank (down 1.16%) edged lower. Trading in PSLCs will allow market mechanism to drive priority sector lending by leveraging the comparative strength of different banks. The RBI said that all scheduled commercial banks (including regional rural banks), urban co-operative banks, small finance banks (when they become operational) and local area banks are eligible to participate in trading of PSLCs. The certificates will have a standard lot size of 25 lakh and multiples thereof. There will be no transfer of credit risk on the underlying and the settlement of funds will be done through the e-Kuber portal, a platform to enable trading in the certificates through the central bank's core banking solution (CBS). Telecom stocks edged higher. Bharti Airtel (up 0.78%), Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (up 1.45%) and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (up 0.91%) rose. Idea Cellular (down 0.46%) edged lower. Reliance Communications (RCom) rose 0.4% at Rs 50.40. The stock hit a high of Rs 50.60 and a low of Rs 48.75 in intraday trade. Global credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service has cut the outlook on RCom's Ba3 corporate family rating to negative from stable, citing persistent delay in the company's sale of non-core assets. Moody's has affirmed RCom's Ba3 corporate family rating and senior secured rating. The negative outlook reflects Moody's view that ongoing delay in RCom's rollout of its deleveraging plans will keep its financial and credit profile strained over the near term. Bajaj Auto rose 1.26% at Rs 2,404.75 after the company announced that an agreement has been reached between the company and KTM AG that will see Bajaj Auto extend its distribution network to embrace Indonesia, the biggest motorcycle market in South East Asia. The arrangement involves KTM branded Duke and RC motorcycles up to a displacement of 400 cc, which are developed and assembled by the successful Austrian-Indian joint venture. The motorcycles will be distributed through a chain of KTM dealerships, to be managed by Bajaj Auto in Indonesia. The announcement was made during market hours today, 8 April 2016. Meanwhile, Bajaj Auto's existing business partnership with Indonesia's P.T. Jaya Selaras Sejahtera will now focus on motorcycles above 400 cc. Index heavyweight and IT major Infosys fell 1.21% at Rs 1,167.35. The stock hit a high of Rs 1,178 and a low of Rs 1,162.05 in intraday trade. The company will announce its Q4 March 2016 results on 15 April 2016. TCS dropped 1.71% at Rs 2,428.70. The stock hit a high of Rs 2,466.90 and a low of Rs 2,425.20 in intraday trade. The company will announce its Q4 March 2016 results on 18 April 2016. Shares of state-run power equipment major Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) rose 2.64% at Rs 122.45, with the stock extending previous trading session's gains triggered by the company announcing a surge in its order inflow for the year ended 31 March 2016 (FY 2016). The stock had risen 4.64% to settle at Rs 119.30 yesterday, 7 April 2016. On provisional basis, Bhel's order inflow jumped 41.9% at Rs 43727 crore in FY 2016 over FY 2015. Based on tentative financial performance, Bhel reported net loss of Rs 877 crore in FY 2016 as against net profit of Rs 1419 crore in FY 2015. Turnover declined 13.71% to Rs 26702 crore in FY 2016 over FY 2015. Tata Power rose 2.57% at Rs 65.75 after the company announced that its wholly owned Singapore subsidiary Tata Power International Pte (TPIPL) has signed an agreement with KS Orka Renewables Pte for the sale of its 50% stake in OTP Geothermal Pte (OTP). The aggregate cash consideration for TPIPL's 50% stake is $30 million. OTP, a 50:50 joint venture with Origin Energy, holds a 95% interest in Indonesia's PT Sorik Marapi Geothermal Power (SMGP). The divestment of the company's interest in OTP is consistent with its strategy to constantly review its businesses and restructure, as required, to deliver long-term value to shareholders, Tata Power said. Tata Power expects to complete the sale in next three months subject to necessary approvals. The announcement was made during market hours today, 8 April 2016. Separately, Tata Power announced after trading hours yesterday, 7 April 2016, that the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) has decided against providing compensatory tariff to the company's 100% subsidiary Coastal Gujarat Power (CGPL). CGPL operates the 4,000 MW Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) at Mundra, Gujarat. APTEL, while pronouncing the order, also remarked that Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has no power to grant compensatory tariffs. However, APTEL has thrown back the case to CERC. It has asked the commission to decide the tariff as per power purchase agreements (PPAs) and under 'force majeure' or 'change in law'. CERC has also been directed to conclude the exercise as expeditiously as possible and within a period of 3 months from 7 April 2016. In an order dated February 2014, CERC decided a compensatory tariff to be paid by the states procuring power from Tata Power and Adani Power's power generation units at Mundra with effect from the commissioning date of the units. The compensatory tariff was over and above the tariff agreed in the power purchase agreement. NTPC rose 3.95% at Rs 131.55. The stock hit a high of Rs 132.40 and a low of Rs 126.10 in intraday trade. Hindustan Unilever (HUL) dropped 1.23% at Rs 850. The stock hit a high of Rs 864.60 and a low of Rs 846.20 in intraday trade. HUL announced after market hours yesterday, 7 April 2016, that it has completed the acquisition of Masons Group flagship hair oil brand Indulekha. It may be recalled that in December 2015, HUL had announced signing an agreement with Masons Group for acquisition of its flagship Indulekha brand. The Sensex edged lower for the second day in a row. The Sensex has fallen 226.79 points or 0.91% in two trading sessions from its close of 24,900.63 on 6 April 2016. The Sensex has fallen 668.02 points or 2.63% in this month so far (till 8 April 2016). The Sensex has fallen 1,443.70 points or 5.52% in calendar year 2016 so far (till 8 April 2016). From a 52-week low of 22,494.61 hit on 29 February 2016, the Sensex has risen 2,179.23 points or 9.68%. The Sensex is off 4,420.77 points or 15.19% from a 52-week high of 29,094.61 hit on 15 April 2015. The Sensex is off 5,350.90 points or 17.82% from a record high of 30,024.74 hit on 4 March 2015. Meanwhile, as per the monthly data released by Association of Mutual Funds In India (AMFI), investors withdrew a net Rs 1370 crore from equity mutual funds in March 2016. This compares with a net inflow of Rs 2522 crore into equity mutual funds in February 2016. There was a net inflow of Rs 78 crore in balanced funds in March 2016, which was lower than inflow of Rs 941 crore in February 2016. Balanced funds invest the money in a combination of equity and debt, with majority of the investment going into equity. The funds' investments range from 65% to 80% in equity and the rest in debt. Meanwhile, global credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service said in a recent report that the rapid rise in foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in India mitigates the risks related to a potential widening of the nation's current account deficit from weaker remittances from Gulf countries and is credit positive for the country's sovereign rating. Moody's expects FDI inflows to climb further in response to government measures, such as efforts to liberalize foreign investment limits in several sectors and the 'Make in India' initiative. These trends are credit positive, as they lower India's susceptibility to external shocks at a time when capital flows to emerging markets are volatile and weak economic conditions globally and, in particular, in the Gulf countries, may dampen remittances, according to a statement issued by the rating agency yesterday, 7 April 2016 after the release of the report. The report says that a lower energy import bill and policy measures to contain gold imports are contributing to keeping the trade deficit at moderate levels. Going forward, the imposition of an excise tax on gold in the Union Budget 2016-17 is likely to dampen overall gold imports. India's current account deficit is now more than covered by its FDI inflows. The rise in FDI points to stronger investor interest in India on the back of robust economic growth, according to the report. The development of industrial corridors, investment and manufacturing zones, and 'smart cities' will further bolster investment inflows. Moody's expects acceleration in FDI inflows into the manufacturing sector as the government seeks to boost the manufacturing sector's share of GDP to 25% by 2022. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Market is seen opening almost flat. Trading of Nifty 50 index futures on the Singapore stock exchange indicates that the Nifty could gain 3 points at the opening bell. In overseas stock markets, Asian stocks edged lower tracking overnight decline on Wall Street. US stocks closed lower yesterday, 7 April 2016, with financials leading declines on profit-taking in an overall risk-off environment ahead of earnings season. Closer home, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth a net Rs 294.72 crore yesterday, 7 April 2016, as per provisional data released by the stock exchanges. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold shares worth a net Rs 16.06 crore yesterday, 7 April 2016, as per provisional data. Among corporate news, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) announced that it has completed the acquisition of Masons Group flagship hair oil brand Indulekha. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 April 2016. It may be recalled that in December 2015, HUL had announced signing an agreement with Masons Group for acquisition of its flagship Indulekha brand. Tata Power announced after trading hours yesterday, 7 April 2016, that the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) has decided against providing compensatory tariff to the company's 100% subsidiary, Coastal Gujarat Power (CGPL). CGPL controls the 4,000 MW Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) at Mundra, Gujarat. APTEL, while pronouncing the order, also remarked that Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has no power to grant compensatory tariffs. However, APTEL, has thrown back the case to CERC. It has asked the commission to decide the tariff as per power purchase agreements (PPAs) and under 'force majeure' or 'change in law'. CERC has also been directed to conclude the exercise as expeditiously as possible, but certainly within a period of 3 months from 7 April 2016. The case was being fought in APTEL between Tata Power and Adani Power with state utilities of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana. The three-year-old tariff pertains to pass through of cost escalation due to change in imported coal prices and regulations in the Indonesian coal market. Both Tata Mundra UMPP and Adani power plant run on imported coal. In an order dated February 2014, CERC decided a compensatory tariff to be paid by the states procuring power to the two power companies with effect from the commissioning date of the units. The compensatory tariff was over and above the tariff agreed in the power purchase agreement. Tata Power's Mundra UMPP in Mundra was awarded compensatory tariff at 52 paise per unit over the remaining life of the project. Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) will be watched. Media reports suggested that IOC is looking at buying equity stake in Nagarjuna Group's six million tonnes a year Cuddalore refinery in Tamil Nadu. IOC, however, clarified after trading hours yesterday, 7 April 2016, that there is no such proposal under consideration by the company at present and the news item is speculative in nature. Separately, Nagarjuna Oil Refinery clarified after trading hours yesterday, 7 April 2016, that various prospective investors, including public sector companies such as IOC have sought information on the project. These prospective investors have been provided with the information from time to time, it added. IT, telecom stocks and index heavyweights HDFC and ITC led losses for the two key benchmark indices yesterday, 7 April 2016. The barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, fell 215.21 points or 0.86% to settle at 24,685.42. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Moody's Investors Service has affirmed Reliance Communications' (RCOM) Ba3 corporate family rating and senior secured rating. Moody's has also changed the ratings outlook to negative from stable. List of affected ratings: Rating Affirmations: .. Issuer: Reliance Communications Limited ... Corporate family rating, affirmed at Ba3 Senior secured rating, affirmed at Ba3 Outlook Actions: .. Issuer: Reliance Communications Limited .... Outlook changed to negative from stable Ratings Rationale "The change in outlook to negative from stable reflects persistent delays in the company's sale of non-core assets, which underpins its deleveraging strategy. As such, there is unlikely to be a material improvement in leverage, as well as associated liquidity and refinancing pressures over the next 6-9 months, even if the company announces a binding tower sale transaction this quarter," says Nidhi Dhruv, a Moody's Vice President and Senior Analyst Furthermore, the negative outlook encapsulates expected changes in the key terms of the transaction -- including valuation which in our view could be up to 20-25% lower than our earlier estimates of $3.4 billion. Assuming a lower transaction value, adjusted leverage will decrease to about 4.0x-4.5x in the fiscal year ended 31 March 2018 (compared with 3.5x-4.0x in our earlier expectations) from 6.2x as of end-2015. Upon the completion of the share swap transaction with Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL unrated), RCOM will have adequate spectrum. However, should the company participate in the upcoming spectrum auctions, its leverage metrics will be further pressured. "RCOM also continues to have a strained liquidity profile, with the company remaining reliant on recurring covenant waivers due to its high leverage. There is also an ongoing need to refinance upcoming debt maturities, including $450 million in debt falling due in the quarter ending 30 June 2016. This includes a $350 million ECB facility at Reliance Infratel (unrated), which is guaranteed by RCOM and has a cross-default with other debt," adds Dhruv, also Moody's Lead Analyst for RCOM. Had the tower transaction closed within the original planned timelines, the proceeds from the sale could have been used for debt repayments, and our expectation was that the resultant reduced leverage would alleviate pressure on covenants. Moody's notes that RCOM has initiated discussions with banks for refinancing its upcoming maturities although the facilities are yet to be agreed on. Any delay in obtaining final approvals from the banks will lead to imminent ratings downgrade, which would be more than one notch. However, in our view, the probability of this occurring is very low. In addition, RCOM is pursuing a restructuring of its wireless activities. In December 2015, the company announced that it had entered into exclusive discussions with Aircel (unrated) for a potential combination of businesses. This deal has yet to close and on 23 March 2016, and the company announced that it had extended the exclusivity period by 60 days to May 2016. "Cumulatively, these transactions, when consummated, could benefit RCOM substantially. However, in our view, changes in the company's strategy have led to significant delays in execution of its plans. Hence any tangible benefit to RCOM's financial and credit profile will now be delayed for at least 6-9 months, which is beyond Moody's tolerance levels for its Ba3 rating," says Dhruv. When Moody's assigned RCOM's ratings in March 2015, the forecast incorporated the company's articulated deleveraging plans, which were largely premised on the sale of its non-core assets, primarily its sub-sea cable subsidiary GCX Limited (B2 stable), its direct-to-home (DTH) cable business and property assets in Mumbai and Delhi. However, Moody's believes RCOM is currently not pursuing the GCX sale and the DTH business as the deleveraging strategy is now hinged on tower disposals and the merger of the wireless business. RCOM has received cash proceeds of about INR3.3 billion ($50 million) through property sales, which represents less than 20% of Moody's initial expectations. There have been some positive developments over the last 3 months, relating to finalization of the spectrum trading and sharing agreement with Reliance Jio Infocomm (R Jio, unrated) and imminent completion of the share swap with SSTL. Benefits of spectrum agreement will start accruing to RCOM with transition of its CDMA subscribers to LTE, however meaningful financial and operational benefits will only accrue upon the, yet to be commercially launched 4G services by R Jio. The negative outlook reflects our view that ongoing delays in RCOM's rollout of its deleveraging plans will keep its financial and credit profile strained over the near term. Moody's will closely review the progress on RCOM's stated plans over the next 6-9 months. The ratings could be downgraded if RCOM (1) experiences a significant deterioration in market share and/or competition intensifies, such that profitability deteriorates; (2) fails to execute its deleveraging plans in a timely manner; (3) encounters difficulty in complying with its financial covenant requirements, accessing capital to fund growth or repaying/refinancing debt, as and when it falls due; or (4) implements aggressive investment and/or shareholder return policies. Specific indicators that Moody's would consider for a downgrade include: (1) adjusted debt/EBITDA failing to trend in line with expectations towards 4.0x by end-2016; (2) adjusted EBITDA margins falling below 30%; and (3) adjusted funds from operations + interest)/interest remaining below 3.0x. Furthermore, any unexpected regulatory developments in the Indian telecommunications sector will also be negative for the rating. Given the negative outlook, an upgrade is unlikely over the near term. However, the outlook could stabilize should RCOM (1) continue to grow its revenues and earnings of its core-Indian operations by increasing the number of subscribers and data revenue without compromising its EBITDA margins; (2) continues to generate positive free cash flow on a sustained basis; and (3) improve its liquidity profile significantly. Specific indicators that Moody's would consider for stabilizing the outlook include: adjusted debt/EBITDA at 4.0x-4.5x; adjusted EBITDA margins between 30%-35%; and adjusted funds from operations + interest/interest over 3.0x on a sustainable basis. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Held on 08 April 2016 Integrated Capital Services announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 08 April 2016, inter alia, has transacted the following businesses: 1. Appointment of Ram Lubhaya Kaura as Director-Finance of the Company, subject to approval of Shareholders of the Company. 2. Appointment of Monisha Meghna, an Associate Member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, as the Company Secretary of the Company. 3. Appointment of Messrs KR & Co., Chartered Accountant as Statutory Auditor of the Company for the financial year 2016-17, subject to the approval of Shareholders of the Company. 4. Redemption of 25,000 fully paid up 7% Cumulative Non-Convertible and Redeemable Preference Shares of par value of Rs. 100/- each, aggregating to Rs. 25,00,000/-, at par. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Religare Enterprises rose 4.23% to Rs 290.50 at 10:15 IST on BSE after the company said that it has completed its exit from its asset management joint venture to Invesco. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 April 2016. Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was up 2.01 points, or 0.01%, to 24,687.43. On BSE, so far 1,227 shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 8,544 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 291 and a low of Rs 282 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 394.95 on 17 April 2015. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 255.95 on 24 November 2015. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 7 April 2016, sliding 2.51% compared with 0.16% decline in the Sensex. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 5.95% as against Sensex's 0.67% fall. The mid-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 178.33 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10. Religare Enterprises announced that it has completed its exit from its asset management joint venture, Religare Invesco Asset Management Company (RIAMC) and Religare Invesco Trustee Company (RITC). It sold its 51% stake in the joint venture to the joint venture partner Invesco, which will now hold 100% in RIAMC. Invesco is a leading independent global investment management firm. The transaction is closed on 7 April 2016, following the receipt of all required regulatory approvals. Religare Invesco Asset Management Company reported a turnover of Rs 78.55 crore, translating to approximately 1.88% of Religare Enterprises' consolidated revenue for the year ended 31 March 2015 (FY 2015). RITC reported revenue of Rs 0.35 crore, translating to approximately 0.008% of Religare Enterprises' consolidated revenue for FY 2015. RIAMC and RITC were step down subsidiaries of the company. The agreement for sale with Invesco was entered into by the company on 18 November 2015. The consideration received for the sale was Rs 531.15 crore. Religare Enterprises' consolidated net profit rose 98.7% to Rs 185.34 crore on 33.3% rise in total income to Rs 1510.44 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. Religare Enterprises (REL) is the holding company for one of India's leading diversified financial services groups. REL offers an integrated suite of financial services through its underlying subsidiaries and operating entities, including loans to SMEs, capital markets, wealth management, health insurance and asset management. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Tata Power Company rose 0.86% to Rs 64.65 at 11:27 IST on BSE after the company's wholly owned subsidiary signed an agreement for the sale of its 50% stake in OTP Geothermal Pte for $30 million. The announcement was made during market hours today, 8 April 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 2.31 points or 0.01% at 24,683.11 On BSE, so far 4.02 lakh shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 5.43 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 65.45 and a low of Rs 64.30 so far during the day. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 7 April 2016, rising 8.28% compared with 0.16% decline in the Sensex. The scrip, however, underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 3.17% as against Sensex's 0.67% fall. The large-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 270.46 crore. Face value per share is Re 1. Tata Power International Pte (TPIPL), a Singapore company and wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Power Company signed an agreement with KS Orka Renewables Pte for the sale of its 50% stake in OTP Geothermal Pte (OTP). The aggregate cash consideration for TPIPL's 50% stake is $30 million, Tata Power Company said. OTP, a 50:50 joint venture with Origin Energy, holds a 95% interest in Indonesia's PT Sorik Marapi Geothermal Power (SMGP). SMGP is currently pursuing development of 240 megawatts (MW) Sorik Marapi Geothermal Power Project in North Sumatra. The transition is expected to benefit the project development, Tata Power Company said. The divestment of the company's interest in OTP is consistent with strategy to constantly review its businesses and restructure, as required, to deliver long term value to shareholders, the company said. The company has significant investments in Indonesia and remains committed to development of Indonesian power and energy sector, Tata Power Company said. The company's other investments in Indonesia include investments in PT Kaltim Prima Coal, PT Arutmin Indonesia and PT Baramulti Suksessarana Tbk, it said. The sale is subject to customary Conditions Precedent (CPs) including approvals from relevant Indonesian government authorities. The company targets to complete the sale in next three months subject to satisfaction of various conditions, Tata Power Company said. Meanwhile, Tata Power Company announced after trading hours yesterday, 7 April 2016, that the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) has decided against providing compensatory tariff to the company's 100% subsidiary Coastal Gujarat Power (CGPL). CGPL operates the 4,000 MW Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) at Mundra, Gujarat. APTEL, while pronouncing the order, also remarked that Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has no power to grant compensatory tariffs. However, APTEL has thrown back the case to CERC. It has asked the commission to decide the tariff as per power purchase agreements (PPAs) and under 'force majeure' or 'change in law'. CERC has also been directed to conclude the exercise as expeditiously as possible and within a period of 3 months from 7 April 2016. In an order dated February 2014, CERC decided a compensatory tariff to be paid by the states procuring power from Tata Power Company and Adani Power's power generation units at Mundra with effect from the commissioning date of the units. The compensatory tariff was over and above the tariff agreed in the power purchase agreement. Tata Power Company's consolidated net profit fell 87.6% to Rs 24.46 crore on 0.7% fall in total income to Rs 9313.19 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. Tata Power Company is India's largest integrated power company with a significant international presence. The company has presence in all the segments of the power sector viz generation (thermal, hydro, solar and wind), transmission, distribution and trading. Powered by Capital Market - Live News A bout of volatility was witnessed as key benchmark indices came off highs. At 12:16 IST, the Sensex was almost unchanged for the day at 24,685.27. The Nifty 50 index was currently up 7.30 points or 0.1% at 7,553.75. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was positive. On BSE, 1,247 shares rose and 872 shares fell. A total of 147 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.35%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.47%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. In overseas stock markets, most Asian stocks edged lower after overnight decline on Wall Street. US stocks closed lower yesterday, 7 April 2016, with financials leading decline on profit taking in an overall risk-off environment ahead of earnings season. Telecom stocks edged lower. Bharti Airtel (down 1.46%), Idea Cellular (down 1.46%) and Reliance Communications (down 1%) declined. FMCG stocks witnessed a mixed trend. Emami (up 1.89%), Godrej Consumer Products (up 1.66%), Bajaj Corp (up 0.39%), Marico (up 1.13%), Nestle India (up 1.3%), Procter & Gamble Hygiene and Health Care (up 0.57%), Dabur India (up 1.05%) and Britannia Industries (up 0.15%) edged higher. Colgate-Palmolive (India) (down 0.55%), GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare (down 0.45%), Jyothy Laboratories (down 0.29%) and Tata Global Beverages (down 0.13%) edged lower. Hindustan Unilever (HUL) was off 1.28% at Rs 849.60. The stock hit a high of Rs 864.60 and a low of Rs 847.95 so far during the day. HUL announced after market hours yesterday, 7 April 2016, that it has completed the acquisition of Masons Group flagship hair oil brand Indulekha. It may be recalled that in December 2015, HUL had announced signing an agreement with Masons Group for acquisition of its flagship Indulekha brand. Tata Power rose 1.01% to Rs 64.75 after the company announced that its wholly owned Singapore subsidiary Tata Power International Pte (TPIPL) has signed an agreement with KS Orka Renewables Pte for the sale of its 50% stake in OTP Geothermal Pte (OTP). The aggregate cash consideration for TPIPL's 50% stake is $30 million. OTP, a 50:50 joint venture with Origin Energy, holds a 95% interest in Indonesia's PT Sorik Marapi Geothermal Power (SMGP). The divestment of the company's interest in OTP is consistent with its strategy to constantly review its businesses and restructure, as required, to deliver long-term value to shareholders, Tata Power said. Tata Power expects to complete the sale in next three months subject to necessary approvals. The announcement was made during market hours today, 8 April 2016. Separately, Tata Power announced after trading hours yesterday, 7 April 2016, that the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) has decided against providing compensatory tariff to the company's 100% subsidiary Coastal Gujarat Power (CGPL). CGPL operates the 4,000 MW Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) at Mundra, Gujarat. APTEL, while pronouncing the order, also remarked that Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has no power to grant compensatory tariffs. However, APTEL has thrown back the case to CERC. It has asked the commission to decide the tariff as per power purchase agreements (PPAs) and under 'force majeure' or 'change in law'. CERC has also been directed to conclude the exercise as expeditiously as possible and within a period of 3 months from 7 April 2016. In an order dated February 2014, CERC decided a compensatory tariff to be paid by the states procuring power from Tata Power and Adani Power's power generation units at Mundra with effect from the commissioning date of the units. The compensatory tariff was over and above the tariff agreed in the power purchase agreement. Ipca Laboratories slumped 11.2% at Rs 496 after the company said that The Global Fund, Geneva, Switzerland, has decided not to source drugs from the company following a warning letter from the US drug regulator. The Global Fund, Geneva, Switzerland, vide its letter dated 4 April 2016 has informed the company that in the light of the warning letter issued to the company by the United States Federal Drug Regulatory Authority (US FDA) on 29 January 2016, it has re-assessed the situation and following a risk consideration exercise, will not allocate any volume of Artemisinin based Combination Therapy (ACTs) to the company and it will only source ACTs from other pre-qualified suppliers that have no outstanding issues with the regulators. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 April 2016. Meanwhile, as per the monthly data released by Association of Mutual Funds In India (AMFI), investors withdrew a net Rs 1370 crore from equity mutual funds in March 2016. This compares with a net inflow of Rs 2522 crore into equity mutual funds in February 2016. There was a net inflow of Rs 78 crore in balanced funds in March 2016, which was lower than inflow of Rs 941 crore in February 2016. Balanced funds invest the money in a combination of equity and debt, with majority of the investment going into equity. The funds' investments range from 65% to 80% in equity and the rest in debt. Powered by Capital Market - Live News During the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-2012), Uttar Pradesh (UP) has managed to exceed its target by setting up over 1,800 additional micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and generating over two lakh additional jobs, noted a just-concluded study by apex industry body ASSOCHAM jointly with Thought Arbitrage Research Institute (TARI). The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government's thrust upon development of MSMEs across the state has resulted in establishing over 1.66 lakh MSMEs with an investment of over Rs 13,000 crore and generating over 8.5 lakh employment opportunities during the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-2012), highlighted the study titled 'MSME sector in Uttar Pradesh,' jointly conducted by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and TARI. UP has made significant progress in promoting growth of MSMEs and has evidently been able to exceed targets set in the 11th Five-Year Plan (FYP) to generate 6.5 lakh employment opportunities by establishing 1.65 MSME units across the state, said Mr D. S. Rawat, secretary general, ASSOCHAM while releasing the findings of the study along with Mr Kaushik Dutta, director, TARI at a press conference held in Lucknow today. UP government is making significant efforts for providing conducive environment and policy support to enable MSME sector to achieve higher levels of production, exports and employment, said Mr Rawat. Implementation of Infrastructure and Industrial Investment Policy-2012 by the state government led to establishment of more than 45,000 MSME units with an investment of over Rs 3,000 crore, thereby providing employment to about five lakh people across UP in 2013-14, highlighted the ASSOCHAM-TARI study. However, there has been a fall in investments in MSME sector since 2012-13 which may be attributed to macro-economic slowdown and a shift in focus from manufacturing to services sector which requires lower investment. Repairing and servicing industries account for over 1/4th share in key MSME industries in UP followed by miscellaneous manufacturing (15 per cent), food products (15 per cent), hosiery and garments (11 per cent), the study noted. Similarly, repairing and servicing industries account for 21 per cent in terms of employment share in key MSME industries in UP followed by food products (14 per cent), miscellaneous manufacturing (14 per cent), hosiery and garments (11 per cent) and others. Western UP accounts for over 50 per cent share in terms of region-wise composition of MSME units followed by eastern UP (28 per cent) and central region (!6 per cent) and a similar trend is also there in terms of region-wise composition of employment in MSMEs in the state, highlighted the ASSOCHAM-TARI study. MSME sector accounts for almost 60 per cent of UP's total industrial output, thereby playing a crucial role in providing large scale employment at lower capital cost, promoting industrialisation in rural and backward areas, reducing regional imbalance and assuring equitable distribution of national income and wealth. Besides, MSME sector is the second largest employment generator (after agriculture) in UP, as it employs over 92 lakh people across the state. However, 90 per cent of these people are employed in unregistered MSMEs. ASSOCHAM has also urged the state government to revive over 84,000 sick MSME units across UP as the sector forms the backbone of economic progress and development of UP which is India's leading state with highest number of over 44 lakh enterprises in this sector, of which over 42 lakh units remain unregistered. Shortage of working capital, lack of technological support, internal structural issues, heavy interest burden, obsolete plant and machinery, resource crunch, dearth of manpower and certain key reasons of MSMEs in UP. The state government should involve industry players, academic institutes, field experts and others to assist sick MSMEs in reviving their businesses which would also lead to utilisation of the assets and capacity already created, suggested the ASSOCHAM-TARI study. Powered by Capital Market - Live News The tallest-ever statue of the Indian constitution's architect B.R. Ambedkar will be installed here, the Telangana government announced Friday. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao announced that he will lay the foundation stone for the 125-feet statue to mark 125th birth anniversary of Ambedkar on April 14. After chairing a meeting with his cabinet colleagues, senior officers and Dalit leaders, he said the statue will be unveiled on the same day next year. A committee headed by Deputy Chief Minister K. Srihari will identify suitable location in Hyderabad to install the statue. KCR, as the chief minister is popularly known, said the year-long celebrations to mark 125th birth anniversary will be organised on a grand scale. He directed officials to organise a programme every month. Every district will have special programmes. The TRS government will also launch distribution of three acres land among Dalits besides undertaking various programmes for their uplift. The decision by the Telangana government to install 125-feet statue comes few days after Andhra Pradesh made a similar announcement. Chief Minister N. Chadrababu Naidu had announced in the state legislative assembly on March 29 that the statue will come up in Amaravati, the new state capital being developed in Guntur district near Vijayawada. Naidu also declared that a memorial park will be built with museum, a Buddhist meditation centre, a museum and a library to highlight the teachings of Ambedkar. He said the installation of statue and memorial park will be part of the government's plans to develop Amaravati as a tourist hub with its rich Buddhist legacy. Union minister Jitendra Singh on Friday asked Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul to expedite the construction of Itanagar airport. "Connectivity is a major issue in Arunachal Pradesh, as a result of which its scenic richness remains underutilised and tourist potential does not give the maximum benefit. There is a need to expedite the airport construction in Itanagar," the minister of state in the ministry of development of north eastern region said. Another delayed project that Singh referred to was the setting up of the film and television institute in Arunachal, a ministry statement said. Pul called on the union minister on Friday, their first meeting after Pul became the chief minister. "Though Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced the film institute in the last year's budget, formalities to identify and acquire land have not been finalised till date, due to which work could not start," said Singh. Arunachal Chief Minister Kalikho Pul on Friday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an one-time development package for the northeastern state, especially for areas of the border with China. In his first visit to the capital after taking over as chief minister, Pul also met union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani, Power Minister Piyush Goyal, and Minister of State for Development of the Northeastern Region (DoNER) Jitendera Singh. "Chief Minister Kalikho Pul called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence today and appealed for a one-time special package to boost the economy and compensate for years of under-development in the state," said a statement from the chief minister's office in Itanagar. It said Pul contended that the request for one-time grant must not be considered on economic costs of development involved, but on confidence building initiatives that must be taken with respect to Arunachal as a strategic border state. Modi agreed to provide the central government's full support and resources for development of Arunachal Pradesh, saying the country's strength lay in these border areas. In his meeting with Rajnath Singh, Pul said that there was an alarming trend of migration of border population to urban centres, which was resulting in unclaimed and unoccupied areas, making the border prone to incursions. He said it was a major cause of concern and that steps needed to be taken to ensure that these border communities continue to inhabit their lands. Pul also raised concern over absence of basic facilities for troop patrolling up to last border point that continue to hinder effective patrolling of the border areas. "He (Pul) therefore appealed for facilities in border areas that included foot suspension bridges, culverts and log bridges, hutments, water supply, health assistance, basic education, power, telecommunication and media reach, CC steps for use by both villagers and defence personnel," said the statement. Pul said though the economic costs of provisioning for these facilities might appear high, but considering the distance and hard terrain where raw materials have to be carried on head load, it needed to be understood that the strategic benefits far outweigh these costs. In his meeting with Irani, Pul cited the poor education scenario of the state and how several government schools and colleges lacked sufficient infrastructure and all-weather buildings. Irani assured to give backup and full support to the state government's endeavour. In his meeting with Goyal, Pul mentioned his government's thrust to develop small hydro power projects as a dependable source of power for administrative centres across the state. He said that the state has so far identified 89 projects in border areas with an aim to provide power to unelectrified administrative circles down to circle headquarters in off-grid system. These projects with total installed capacity of 37.28 MW and a total cost of Rs.715.74 crore would be harnessed from nearby rivers, rivulets, and streams in an eco-friendly manner, he said. Goyal assured Pul all support, noting that Prime Minister Modi has accorded special consideration for Arunachal and all the northeastern states. In his meeting with Jitendra Singh, Pul expressed satisfaction at the cooperation and support offered to his government by the DoNER ministry in implementation of various developmental works in the state. Singh brought to the notice of Pul that there were certain pending projects in Arunachal Pradesh which required to be taken up on an urgent basis. "In this regard, he particularly mentioned the construction of airport at Itanagar which, he said, had got unduly delayed because of the issues related to identification of site and land acquisition," a ministry statement said. Pul became the chief minister in February after a controversial political turmoil in which Congress' Nabam Tuki was overthrown. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on Friday said Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's statement on not allowing an NIA team to visit Islamabad was wrong and won't help improve bilateral relations. "We reject the high commissioner's statement. What he has said is wrong. It will not help improve relations between the two countries," the minister of state for home told reporters here. Basit on Thursday said bilateral talks between India and Pakistan were "suspended" and that there was no question of allowing a National Investigation Agency team to visit Islamabad for the probe into the January 2 attack at the Pathankot airbase in Punjab. Asked about a meeting between the two foreign secretaries, Basit had said: "There is no meeting scheduled for now. I think at present the peace process is suspended. "India is not ready as yet," Basit had said, but quickly added that "we can only resolve issues through dialogue". "The investigation (into the Pathankot attack) is not about reciprocity," he had said. The Chinese government will provide Bangladesh grant assistance of about $50 million for construction of the eighth Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge. In this connection an agreement was signed between Bangladesh and China on Thursday in capital Dhaka, Xinhua reported. Bangladesh's Economic Relations Department (ERD) Secretary Mezbah Uddin and Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ma Mingqiang signed the agreement on behalf of their respective sides. According to an ERD statement, the eighth friendship bridge will be constructed on Kocha river in Bangladesh. The length of the bridge will be 1,400 metres and Bangladesh roads and highway department will carry out the project, it said. The bridge will play an important role in accelerating movement of people and goods of Barisal and Khulna divisions, said the ERD. Presently, it said, a ferry operates on the river which requires more than one hour to cross it. The construction of the first Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge, with a span of more than 917 metres in length, began in October 1986, and was completed in February 1989. Seven more friendship bridges have been completed across Bangladesh since then. Chinese President Xi Jinping met Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe here on Friday and discussed issues of core interests. China is willing to work with Sri Lanka to consolidate traditional friendship, expand reciprocal cooperation and push forward strategic partnership of cooperation to a new high, Xinhua quoted Xi as saying. He urged the two countries to integrate development strategies, maintain high-level exchanges, strengthen strategic communication, and handle bilateral relations from a long-term and strategic perspective. Wickremesinghe echoed Xi saying the strategic partnership of cooperation featuring mutual support and long-lasting friendship was in the interests of both Sri Lanka and China. It was also a consensus of all political parties in Sri Lanka, he said. The Sri Lankan leader appreciated the positive role played by China in promoting global economic stability and growth and thanked Beijing for its long-term assistance to Colombo. With regard to bilateral cooperation, Xi said the two countries should take the Belt and Road Initiative as an opportunity to deepen cooperation in trade, infrastructure, industrial parks, manufacturing and technology. China will positively consider helping Sri Lanka build health projects and was ready for more cooperation in areas such as tourism, education and culture, Xi said. He also vowed to strengthen communication and coordination with Sri Lanka under the frameworks including the UN, the ASEAN Regional Forum and the South Asian Association Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The Sri Lanka leader said Sri Lanka was willing to strengthen cooperation with China within the SAARC. Wickremesinghe will conclude his official visit to China on Saturday. The Delhi High Court on Friday asked the north civic body to comply with its order to remove a "piao" (drinking water kiosk) near Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib in Chandni Chowk, which was reconstructed overnight after its demolition on the court's March 28 order. A division bench of Justice S. Murlidhar and Justice Vibhu Bakhru expressed strong displeasure on reconstruction of 'piao' despite the court's order. "We don't want the message to go to anyone that they can take law in their own hand. It can't be tolerated. This is a complete breakdown of law and order, and we can't allow that to happen," it said. "This is not about the 'piao'. For us its dignity of court. Rule of law has to survive. Police can't say we are unable to handle the situation." The kiosk, demolished pursuant to court's March 28 order, was reconstructed overnight after which the high court on Thursday ordered its immediate removal and round clock police presence in the area. An encroachment drive, undertaken by the civic body after the March 28 court orders for the removal of illegal encroachments, including illegal religious structures, in Chandni Chowk within two weeks, had triggered protests and violence in the area on Wednesday. On Friday, the court slammed the the leaders of the Sikh groups who were leading the mob after Wednesday's demolition drive to reconstruct the kiosk. "If someone is not happy with our order they can approach a higher court but how can they take the law in their hand." It declined plea of the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee (DSGMC) to maintain status quo with regard to it. Senior counsel Pratibha Singh, appearing for DSGMC, said the 'piao' was within the pillar of the Gurudwara and that it was part of a historical structure. The court said it will look into the contention. "When did this 'piao' come up, we will see," the bench said asking Delhi government to submit a record on this aspect. The Delhi government also sought relaxation of court's order with regard to removal of the kiosk, as it was for providing free drinking water to people. However, the bench said: "Why don't you as a government supply free drinking water without using the 'piao'. All your politics, you can play out in the streets but not in courts." It further remarked: "Don't discriminate citizen between those who go to a gurdwara or a mandir with those on the streets. You must provide free drinking water to all people in Delhi. Its your duty." The court told Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung to hold a meeting with commissioner of North Delhi Municipal Corporation and the secretary of Public Works Department (PWD) with regard to the 'piao' and place a report before the court. It also restrained DSGMC leaders Manjit Singh G.K. and Manjinder Singh Sirsa from visiting the 'piao' site, which is already cordoned off. It, however, clarified that they can visit the gurudwara. The court posted the matter for May 12. Attacking Left Front spearhead CPI-M in this red citadel, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday charged the Marxists with joining the BJP in harassing her Trinamool Congress leaders by using central agencies like ED and CBI. Referring to the opposition campaign centred around the Saradha chit fund scandal as also the Narada sting footage that purportedly showed a number of Trinamool leaders taking money in return for doling out favours to a fictitious company, Banerjee said: "They are saying Saradha to Narada. But Saradha was formed during your (Communist Party of India-Marxist led Left Front) tenure. "They're calling Trinamool corrupt. What audacity! People will make you hold your tongue. None from my party has taken money. "This is a joint game of the CPI-M and the Bharatiya Janata Party. They are harassing us by using the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and the ED (Enforcement Directorate). That's because we are a good party." Following the Supreme Court directive, the CBI and ED are probing the Saradha scam. Narayangarh in West Midnapore district is the assembly constituency of state CPI-M secretary and leader of the opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra, who is seeking re-election from there. Coming down heavily on Mishra, she accused him of presiding over human carnages in areas like Netai in the district. "So many killings had taken place in one district. And they now preach about peace," she told the election rally. Ridiculing Mishra, who was health minister during the Left Front regime, she said: "He had not set up facilities for providing health services even in his constituency." Banerjee promised the audience that she would hold her first rally at Narayangarh if they defeated Mishra. Referring to CPI-M politburo member Mohammed Salim's speech at Labhpur in Birbhum district where he had warned that the Left Front will take account of all "murderers and executioners" who ran amok during the Trinamool regime after it comes to power, she said: "They are so shameless they are talking about revenge again. People will not allow you." Banerjee asked the CPI-M why it had given up its ideology to forge an alliance with the Congress. "You are fighting each other in Kerala, but embracing each other in Bengal." The green fields of Punjab, which are known to produce a golden harvest year after year to cater to the country's foodgrain needs, have a dark side -- water scarcity. Large areas in the state are staring at low water availability that has the potential of damaging the state's agrarian livelihood in the coming years. "Punjab, the land of five rivers, is staring at a dark future on the water front. The ground water level is fast depleting. Tubewells are being bored at between 300 and 400 feet. Every year, the level goes down by 10 feet. The situation is very alarming," farmer Kartar Singh of Bhogpur near Jalandhar told IANS. This situation prevails in the majority of areas across Punjab. Recent studies and official reports have shown the ground water is depleting alarmingly with concerned farmers saying they have no immediate solutions in sight. Of the 145 water blocks that Punjab has been divided into, 110 have already been declared "dark zones," state government officials said. Nearly 45 percent of the blocks have been "notified" by the state government, which means their water can only be utilised for drinking purposes and cannot be used by the agricultural and industrial sectors. Central and north Punjab, known as the Doaba and Majha areas and falling along the course of the Sutlej and Beas rivers, are the worst affected by the depletion of ground water. "Instead of harping on the SYL canal issue, the state government, if it is serious, should help farmers to adopt new technologies like micro-sprinklers and drip irrigation," agriculturist Khushwant Singh, a past member of the Punjab Agriculture Export Corporation, told IANS. Officials in the departments concerned admit that no effort for water management and regulation has been made so far, given the alarming situation. Punjab has not even set up an authority to regulate water use. With the state ready to go to the polls in the next 10 months (February 2017), the government of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal is all set to sanction another 250,000 tubewell connections to add to the existing over 1.3 million connections. "Punjab has to rely heavily on tubewells, as 73 percent of irrigation is being done through them, resulting in fast depletion of the water table. Now the situation has become extremely grave," an official note for a resolution against water-sharing with neighbouring states pointed out last month. "The watering of crops now is a wastage as each plant gets more water than what it requires because old techniques are still practised," agriculturist and member of the board of management of Punjab Agricultural University (PAU)-Ludhiana, Kulwant Singh, told IANS. He said the "real culprit" was the paddy crop, which was not natural to Punjab. "It guzzles 10 times more water than other kharif crops. Crop diversification and use of modern technologies like micro-sprinklers and drip irrigation are the steps forward to save water," he added. "Farmers should be encouraged to go in for short duration crops instead of the routine wheat-paddy cycle. Agriculture experts and PAU scientists are concerned about the ground water table going down," he pointed out. Against the national average of just over 40 percent area under agriculture, Punjab has over 83 percent of cropped area. Green Revolution state Punjab, which occupies just 1.54 percent of the country's geographical area, contributes nearly 50 percent of foodgrain to the national kitty. (Jaideep Sarin can be contacted at jaideep.s@ians.in) Egypt and Saudi Arabia announced their keenness to enhance bilateral ties and boost cooperation in all fields as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi held talks with visiting Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud here. Earlier, President El Sisi welcomed King Salman, who is on an official five-day visit to Egypt -- his first official visit to the country since ascending the throne. After the official reception ceremony, El Sisi and the Saudi monarch held bilateral talks. The Egyptian president "expressed the appreciation of the Egyptian people and leadership for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and King Salman, given their honourable positions in support of Egypt and its people", said an official statement. The two sides emphasized their keenness to leverage the visit to further enhance the historic and distinct relations that bind the two countries and to strengthen cooperation in all fields so as to consolidate joint Arab action in the face of challenges and threats currently besetting the Arab world, the statement said. After the meeting, President El Sisi hosted a banquet in honour of the Saudi Arabian king and his delegation. Both sides are expected to sign a range of agreements. Egypt and Saudi Arabia agreed on Friday to establish a land bridge to connect the two countries, visiting King Salman Bin Abdel-Aziz said. "The land bridge will be named after King Salman," Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said. The bridge will constitute a historical leap in connecting Asia and Africa and will raise the mutual trade exchange between the two continents to unprecedented levels, King Salman said. The bridge will create job opportunities for the whole region, he added. The Saudi leader is paying his first visit to Egypt since his inauguration as king in early 2015. "King Salman's visit to Egypt is meant to bolster ties and strategic partnership between the two countries in a manner that helps face regional threats and crises," said the Egyptian president. The two countries are capable of maintaining the security of the Arab region at this critical phase, al-Sisi said. He said coordination between the two countries was necessary to solve the Yemeni, Libyan, Syrian and Palestinian issues. "The visit aims to open new horizons for joint action and boost bonds between the two countries," al-Sisi added. Earlier, President al-Sisi has granted the Saudi king, who arrived on Thursday in Cairo for a five-day visit, the Collar of the Nile, Egypt's highest state honor. The two sides have signed eight agreements, six MoUs and three cooperation programmes that covered fields including education, health, housing, agriculture, electricity and marine transportation. Egypt and Saudi Arabia also agreed on setting up a King Salman University in the North Sinai city of Tour. Saudi Arabia has been the key backer of al-Sisi since the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 after mass protests against his one-year rule. It has pumped billions of dollars to help and invest into Egypt's battered economy. Former Gujarat IPS officer D.G. Vanzara, who spent eight years in jail, returned home on Friday to a hero's welcome, saying politicians had framed him in "encounter" cases. Driving home in a black Mercedes limousine, Vanzara, who got bail last year in the killing of Ishrat Jahan, told a huge gathering that all the "encounter cases" in which he and other police officers were jailed were genuine and done on information provided by the Intelligence Bureau. Speaking at the Town Hall, Vanzara asserted that everyone at the helm right from Delhi to Gujarat was aware of the encounters but he and several officers were framed in false cases by politicians with vested interests. He did not name any politician. After his first arrest in 2007, Vanzara spent nearly eight years in jail, having been charged in two "encounter cases". He got bail in February on the condition that he would not enter Gujarat. He was in Mumbai since then. A special CBI Court on April 2 finally permitted him to enter Gujarat. He got a rousing welcome from his family and supporters at the Ahmedabad airport and later at the Town Hall in Gandhinagar, where he was driven in a Mercedes car gifted by his son. Several policemen on duty at the airport and Town Hall saluted him. Holding a silver sword presented by his family, Vanzara danced to the beat of drums. His brother K.G. Vanzara, a Class I government official in Gandhinagar, broke into a song. Senior IPS officer P.P. Pandey, who shared the dias with Vanzara, described the bearded retired cop as a Brahma Rishi. Pandey, an additional director general of police, is an accused along with Vanzara in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case but was reinstated by the Gujarat government after being released on bail. Referring to the allegedly fake encounter cases, Vanzara said if he had not gunned down the "terrorists" they would have converted Gujarat into another Kashmir. He justified the killing of Ishrat Jahan and others and claimed that all top officials in Delhi and Gandhinagar, including the Intelligence Bureau, knew about the operation. In his 45-minute address, Vanzara said the country faced more serious threat from "anti-national politicians" than from Pakistan and China. He said he need not say anything about these "anti-national politicians" as the media has sufficiently exposed them in the last three months. He urged people to lend support to the "development agenda' of the Narendra Modi and Gujarat governments. He interspersed his speech with quotations from Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Buddha and several religious scriptures, including the Quran. Announcing that he would enter public life, Vanzara declared his resolve to devote the rest of his life to "serving" the nation. "My first inning is just over but the second innings starts today," he said. An Irish man has been jailed after tagging himself in a photo on social networking website Facebook that showed him taking part in a riot, a media report said. Robert Darragh, 21, kept his face covered so that he could not be identified in the CCTV footage. However, investigators looking through photos on social media sites from the riots found Darragh being tagged in a photo showing him participating in a riot during a clash between nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland in July 2015, belfastlive.co.uk reported. After his arrest, Darragh told the police that he had been drinking heavily and could not remember throwing anything at police. Belfast Crown Court sentenced Darragh to two years in jail. He will spend half his sentence in prison and the remainder on licence when he is released from custody. At least 29 police officers were injured in the riot that took place during the Loyalist marching season last year. Police lines were pelted with masonery, bricks, bottles and other items, with one officer almost losing an ear. In a crackdown on circulation of fake Indian currency in Nepal, police here on Friday said they have arrested six people, including a Pakistani national, for possessing fake Indian currency notes with a face value of Rs.10 million. The six -- one Pakistani and five Nepali nationals -- were arrested by the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police and paraded before media at a press conference here. According to police, one of them has been identified as Mahammad Nadim (PP number CD 9458742, Karachi) who was arrested from Thamel area of Kathmandu. Similarly, five Nepali nationals -- Umadevi Pandey, Ishowari Prasad Teli, Parmandna Yadav, Dil Bahadur Thapa and Mahadev Timilsina -- were arrested from various locations of Kathmandu. They were held while travelling to Kathmandu to receive the fake Indian currency notes. All the Nepali nationals hail from districts close to the Nepal-India border. After receiving the fake notes from Nadim and Mahadev, they were planning to sneak into India for circulating the counterfeit currency, police said. Using the open Nepal-India border, counterfeiters smuggle fake notes to India from the Nepali side and in most cases Nepalis, Indians and Pakistanis were found involved. Circulation of fake Indian notes using Nepal's territory is a top Indian security concern. The Group of Seven foreign ministers, during a meeting in Hiroshima, are to call on countries to resolve territorial disputes peacefully in accordance with international law in what will be seen as a response to China's aggressive military posture in the South China Sea, a government source said. In a statement to be issued after the two-day meeting that kicks off on Sunday, the ministers are expected to say that stakeholders in territorial disputes should abide by international court decisions, the source said on Thursday. Even though the statement is unlikely to name China, it is apparently aimed at Beijing, which has been asserting its power in the region by constructing military runways, advanced radars and deploying surface-to-air missiles in the Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands. Referencing a court decision would be timely as the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague is expected to issue a ruling over the territorial dispute between the Philippines and China this spring. Manila filed a lawsuit with the court in 2013 challenging the "nine-dash line", a vague, unilaterally declared boundary China drew around most of the South China Sea. Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly said that he would discuss maritime security issues at the G-7 foreign ministers meeting, but has not named China. For its part, Beijing has expressed concern over Tokyo's siding with other Southeast Asian nations, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, in the dispute. China pressed Japan in late February at a vice foreign ministerial gathering in Tokyo not to broach the subject at the G-7 summit, according to diplomatic sources at the time. As Japan is the only G-7 member in Asia and given the meetings are taking place in Asia for the first time in eight years, Tokyo hopes to demonstrate its leadership in addressing the issue. It will seek to convince European leaders to show solidarity with nations opposed to China's moves at a time when countries in Europe are focused on the Syrian refugee crisis and terrorism perpetrated by extremist groups such as the Islamic State. Meanwhile, Tokyo is also inviting other Asian countries such as Laos, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, as well as Papua New Guinea and Chad, which heads the African Union, to attend the G-7 outreach meeting, the government source added. The meeting will take place during the Ise-shima Summit next month to discuss global development and health. Astronomers from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii have uncovered a supermassive black hole in an unlikely location, indicating that these monster objects may be more common than once thought. The near-record breaking black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, was discovered in the centre of a galaxy, in a sparsely populated area of the universe. "The newly discovered supersized black hole resides in the centre of a massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 1600, located in a cosmic backwater, a small grouping of 20 or so galaxies," said lead discoverer Chung-Pei Ma, professor at University of California-Berkeley in US. The black hole, located about 200 million light years from Earth, is 10 times more massive than it was predicted for a galaxy of this mass, the researchers explained in the journal Nature. Until now the biggest supermassive black holes have been found in the core of very large galaxies in parts of the universe packed with other large galaxies. The current record holder weighs 21 billion suns and is located in the Coma galaxy cluster that consists of over 1,000 galaxies. NGC 1600, the dominant galaxy in its galactic group, is at least three times brighter than its neighbours. Most of the galaxy's gas was consumed long ago when the black hole blazed as a brilliant quasar from material streaming into it that was heated into glowing plasma. "Now, the black hole is a sleeping giant," Ma said, adding, "the only way we found it was by measuring the velocities of stars near it, which are strongly influenced by the gravity of the black hole. The velocity measurements give us an estimate of the black hole's mass." The velocity measurements were made by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North 8-metre telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had stopped smiling after the heavy polling in the first phase of assembly elections. And the Congress leadership cannot save the party from defeat in the polls, the second and final phase of which will be conducted on Monday, he told an election rally here in Nagaon district. Modi arrived in Assam on Friday to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Polling for 61 constituencies will take place on Monday. The prime minister arrived here after visiting the Kamakhya temple in Assam's main city Guwahati. He is expected to address another two rallies at Rangia in Kamrup district and Maligaon in Guwahati on Friday. "I thank the people of Assam for the unprecedented high percentage of voting in the first phase," Modi said, addressing the crowd in Hindi. "You must have noticed that the Assam chief minister has stopped smiling after the first phase. He is now inviting the Congress leaders from Delhi to save him. "But how can they (Congress leaders) save Gogoiji when they could not even save Delhi?" he asked, referring to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. In an obvious dig at Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Modi said Congress leaders were more concerned about "their own sons and daughters". He said he had come to Assam to seek the people's support to bring about a change of government in the state. Modi said he had not seen another state in India apart from Assam where he claimed the entire population lived below poverty line (BPL). "There are states in India where there are 20 or 30 percent BPL population. But the Congress in Assam has turned the entire population of the state poor as BPL." Appealing to the people of Assam to vote for the BJP and its allies, he said there should be a new government in the state in the new year. A total of 65 constituencies in Assam saw a record 82.20 percent polling in the first phase on April 4. Delegates from many countries are expected to attend a two-day convention here on homeopathy, starting on Saturday, organised by the central government. The international convention is being organised on the occasion of the World Homeopathy Day 2016 on Saturday which commemorates the 261st birth anniversary of the founder of this system of medicine, Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, an official statement said. President Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate the convention which is jointly being organised by the Central Council for Research in Homeopathy (CCRH), an autonomous body under the Ministry of 'Ayush', and an international organisation called Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis (LMHI). 'Ayush' is an acronym for 'Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy'. Delegates from Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Italy, Netherlands, UK, Austria and many other countries will participate in the convention, the statement said. A day after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit indicated that Indian investigators would not be allowed to visit that country, government sources on Friday said Islamabad was making a "sudden turn around" on the Pathankot probe as the visiting Pakistani JIT was "taken aback" by the body of evidence provided by the NIA. Sources maintained that the "hard evidence" tabled by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to the visiting Joint Investigating Team (JIT) during their five-day stay in India has left then "surprised". The evidence was proof of the "Pakistani links of the terrorists" -- those who attacked the Pathankot airbase on January 2, the sources said, adding: "They realise that their game is up. The sudden turn around on allowing an NIA team to visit Pakistan could be the result of that." Indian intelligence agencies told IANS that Pakistan has suffered a diplomatic setback during last few weeks as even their friendly countries like Saudi Arabia have lately started tilting towards New Delhi. India-Saudi Arabia strategic ties got a boost during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Riyadh last week. On Friday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval took stock of the situation in what they called a "routine" meeting. Seeking to dismiss the meeting as "routine", the sources said: "The meeting between Home Minister Rajnath Singh and NSA Doval is nothing unusual. Top brass in Indian security establishment keep meeting." The meeting, attended by senior officials from related security agencies, discussed Pakistan's turn around among other issues. "The issue of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar also figured," the source said, referring to the current unrest at the institute. Pakistan High Commissioner Basit on Thursday told journalists here that the ongoing peace talks between both countries would remain "suspended" and that "the investigation (into the Pathankot attack) is not about reciprocity". Basit's remarks negate the NIA's claims made on March 30 that Islamabad will "reciprocate" India's gesture of allowing Pakistani investigators, including an ISI official, to visit the IAF base in Pathankot to probe the terror attack by Pakistani terrorists. Sources said NIA officials had names of the terrorists, evidence like transcript of telephonic conversations and other electronic and forensic proofs including against Jaish-e -Mohammed chief Masood Azhar's brother Abdul Rauf. On March 30, NIA spokesman Sanjeev Kumar had said that both sides had "agreed" that the kind of cooperation India had provided to the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team would be reciprocated. "This is the reciprocity agreed," Kumar had told reporters. The remarks indicated India's intention to get similar access in Pakistan to pursue the probe into the Pathankot terror attack. India has been maintaining that the attack was masterminded by JeM chief Azhar, against whom an arrest warrant was issued by a NIA court in Mohali on Friday. The terrorists who killed seven Indian security personnel at the base ended up getting killed after an 80-hour gun battle. A court here on Friday directed Haryana Police to probe a "hate speech" allegedly made by yoga guru Ramdev in which he suggested that those refusing to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' deserved to be killed. Acting on the complaint of local Congress leader Subhash Batra, the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Ashwani Kumar asked the district police chief to submit the report by April 30. The TV channels played video recordings of a 'Sadbhavna Sammelan' held here on Sunday, showing Ramdev making the allegedly inflammatory comments. But for the law, he would have "beheaded" those who were refusing to raise the slogan 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai,' Ramdev allegedly said. Batra filed a complaint against Ramdev for the "hate speech" with the police. When the police did not register a case immediately, he approached the court. Ramdev is the brand ambassador of the Haryana government for yoga. The 'Sadbhavna Sammelan' was organised here to soothe public feelings following the unrest and violence caused by the Jat community's agitation for reservations in February in Haryana. Eight months of hibernation in a "den", working on a secret project and no weekends amid precautions for secrecy -- that's how the largest leak in whistleblower history was pulled off, exposing a widespread system of global tax evasion. The Indian Express newspaper was part of the global media network coordinated by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for the leak that included more than 4.8 million emails, three million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that specialises in creating shell companies in which its clients used to hide their assets. Ritu Sarin, Executive Editor at the Express, shares with IANS, how "Project Prometheus" came by and how they secretly worked for the expose that touched celebrities, athletes, business executives and world leaders. There are about 500 Indians who have stashed their wealth in offshore shell companies, according to the leak. Excerpts from the email interview with Sarin. Q. Tell us how it began. A: Barely four months after the ICIJ-Indian Express investigation into HSBC accounts (Swiss bank leaks) got over, they called again from Washington informing us about a spanking new project. This was in July last year. The Indian Express was a "natural" partner for the ICIJ since we have twice before collaborated with them on a major project (in 2013 and 2015) and since I have been a ICIJ member for over a decade now. So in July, the agreement was signed, which stipulated the embargo guidelines, credits for ICIJ and Suddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper which got the leaks and so on -- and "Project Prometheus" was rolling. Q: Did you always believe it was going to be this big? A: I never had any doubt that The Indian Express would back me all the way. For, which other newspaper would invest in a team of editors working for eight months on a single story? Everyone was excited from the Day One and the team was formed in consultation with the editors. All the precautions of system security and fire walls were taken by ICIJ and despite the fact that we have an open office plan, nobody heard the words Mossack Fonseca spoken these eight months. I was confident there would be no leak, so while others in the office may have known something expansive was in the works, nobody knew what precisely. Q. How did you manage secrecy? A: We got systems installed in a "den" in one side of the office and took simple precautions of not leaving papers around; being careful on the phone and so on. The ICIJ had inbuilt fire walls like password protected access to the "Forumn" where an authenticator had to be used for entry and all email communication was done on an encrypted service. The ICIJ also repeatedly issued guidelines and even asked us to report any theft of laptops or phones. Fortunately, we pulled it off. Q. Is this the biggest scoop of your journalistic career? A: I'm hoping the biggest is yet to come. In terms of scope of the investigation and the space given day after day (almost six pages on Day 1), it may be the biggest but I have earlier done some important stories too: the Zail Singh interview for Sunday magazine and Tata tapes and the troop movement story for The Indian Express. But as I said, I hope the best is round the bend. Q. How did the pool of reporters around the globe coordinate? A: In September, around 100 reporters, working on "Project Prometheus", along with the entire ICIJ staff and editors of Suddeutsch Zeitung met for a two-day brainstorming session in Munich. I represented The Indian Express. There were some training sessions and presentations from reporting teams on early finds. It was a rare exchange of ideas and a sort of undercover meeting of investigative reporters from around the world. The rest of the exchanges were done on the "forum" where files and data were fed and thematic as well as regional groups created. There was, for instance, a separate group working on Iceland; even one for art dealers who were Mossack Fonseca clients and so on. Q: Eight months of reading into data, decoding it, analyzing it. Must have been boring? A: It has been an exhausting exercise. Meant working weekends, long hours before the machine, eight months of hibernation. Q: Did you and the Express have editorial control on the Panama stories? A: Of course, we had complete editorial control. All project members were free to pick anything from the millions of files. Just before publication date, ICIJ asked for rough news-lists from country leaders. Q: Did all the journalists involved in the project have access to all the data? A: Everyone had the same access to the entire data. Q Why not release all the data the way Wikileaks did it? Questions are being raised if it was a selected expose as few names from the West or America has been named so far? A: Just like they did for the earlier BVI (British Virgin Island) investigation, the ICIJ will be releasing some interactive data --not the documents -- but a month after project launch. It is ICIJ policy not to make all documents public. Q. Anything interesting you can recall happened during the course of your investigation? A: The three of us (P. Vaidyanathan Iyer, National Affairs Editor, Jay Mazoomdaar, Associate Editor and myself), evidently, seemed least disappointed when India lost the T20 semi finals. The final was on April 3 and Project Prometheus was to go to print the same night! (Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at sarwar.k@ians.in) The newly-installed democratic government in Myanmar on Friday freed hundreds of people as part of a nationwide release of prisoners ahead of Thingyan, the Burmese New Year Water Festival. Families and activists gathered outside the gates of Insein Prison, near Yangon, to greet those who were freed on Friday, Efe news agency reported. As the released detainees left the prison gates, they were welcomed with hugs, tears and flowers. Friday's release of some 4,000 prisoners includes about 450 political prisoners, State Counsellor and National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi said in a statement on Thursday. According to the Democratic Voice of Burma broadcaster, about 100 prisoners left Insein Prison on Friday, another 30 were released in Mandalay; the same number in Taungoo; 29 in Sittwe; and 17 more in Tharrawaddy. However, it was not clear how many of those released were political prisoners. Each year, before Thingyan -- which starts next week and runs for several days -- authorities release prisoners, including those whose sentences are due to finish during the holiday period. Among those released on Friday was 61-year-old activist Thet Wai, who was detained for an illegal solo protest, and was warmly greeted outside the prison by activists who gave him flowers. Wai was due to be released on April 19. Speaking to his supporters, Wai demanded the new government press ahead with releasing all political prisoners. In Suu Kyi's statement on Thursday evening, she explained the government puts a high priority on releasing all political prisoners and detained activists "as soon as possible," the Irrawaddy news site reported. Myanmar has jailed about 100 dissidents, while around 400 activists are awaiting or are in the midst of a trial, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. A successful actor and producer, Shah Rukh Khan says he fears treading the path as a film director as he is not confident of "calling the shots". Asked if he ever plans to turn director, Shah Rukh told IANS: "I find it a very lonely job. I think if I have to direct, I need to gain my confidence in the next five years. (As of) Now I just feel very scared to direct. I don't know when to say, 'Okay, cut'." He believes he needs to give himself some years to be confident of being able to go behind the camera. "I have plans that in the next two to three years, I should go and take some course for three months to see how exciting it would be to tell a story. I don't know if I can call the shots," he added. Shah Rukh is currently busy promoting his forthcoming release "Fan", and he says the director of the film Maneesh Sharma has lived with the script for 10 years. "Maneesh had this idea seven years ago, but Adi (producer Aditya Chopra) felt Maneesh is not ready to do a film with me because there is a responsibility to work with a star. "Adi knows me well... That I am very sensitive and I cannot just be called to work. I like to be treated well, and be nice to. May be he was too young to be in that space." "Fan" is releasing on April 15. Pakistani law enforcement agencies have yet to ascertain the identity of the bomber who blew himself up at the Gulshan-e-Iqbal park in Lahore, killing at least 72 people and injuring scores of others. Even though the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the March 27 attack, saying they deliberately targeted Christians celebrating Easter on Sunday evening, and issuing a picture of the bomber, there is no evidence yet to prove that both claims were true, Dawn online quoted sources as saying on the condition of anonymity. Sources, also part of investigations and their supervision, said on Thursday that there was no prior specific threat warning for the park. There are indications of the arrest of some local helpers of the suicide bomber, but the sources contest it. They confirm that it was a suicide bombing. The only thing collected from the site was a half head with burnt ears. The head was sent to the Punjab Forensic Science Laboratory which conducted its DNA test and with its help identified the other parts of the blown up body of the bomber. They said that mere DNA test cannot establish bomber's identity. In order to do so, one has to match his DNA with those of his blood relations. So far, no relative of the dead man, or of the one claimed to be the suicide bomber by the TTP, have been located. Declaring that the dead man was actually the one whose picture was released by the TTP on the ground that their ears matched each other might not be a strong scientific evidence, the sources said. Sources said the precision of the attack and the colossal damage it caused proved its painstaking preparation. In this case, the bomber appeared to be in the locality much before he struck. They said Punjab has been successful in preventing terrorism last year and till the Gulshan-e-Iqbal tragedy this year because of intelligence-based proactive operations. China said on Friday it is in "contact" with India over Beijing's decision to block New Delhi's move to ban Pathankot terror attack mastermind, Jaish-e-Mohamed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei, answering a question during his briefing here, said that "China opposes all forms of terrorism and stands ready to strengthen pragmatic cooperation with all parties on fighting terrorism." Hong said that "China all along deals with the listing matter of the UN Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1267 on the basis of facts and in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and relevant rules of procedure. "China remains in contact with all relevant parties including India on this matter," he added. India has raised with China at a "high level" the issue of blocking a ban on the JeM chief. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is expected to raise the matter with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi when she meets him at the Russia, India, China trilateral meet in Moscow later this month. New Delhi has voiced disappointment over the blocking of its move to get Azhar banned by the UN. It was the second time that China blocked such a move. India had approached the UN in February to include Masood Azhar in the UN Security Council's 1267 sanctions list, in the aftermath of the January 2 terror attack on the Pathankot air base by Pakistan-based JeM terrorists. However, China, a close friend of Pakistan, requested the UN sanctions committee to keep on hold the move to ban Azhar. Beijing maintains that Azhar did not meet the UN criteria to be banned as a terrorist. The Islamic State terrorist group has kidnapped more than 300 workers of a cement company which is located north east of Abu al-Shamat area in Damascus countryside. A group affiliated to IS kidnapped more than 300 workers and contractors from al-Badiyeh Cement Company - a closed joint-stock company located north east of Abu al-Shamat area in Damascus Countryside. Syrian government has been in contact with al-Badiyeh Cement Company to inquire about the kidnapped people, Sana news agency quoted an industry ministry source as saying. So far the company has not been able to communicate with any of the abducted people, the source added. Nadim Kreizan, a local reconciliation official in Jeiroud area, said residents of Jeiroud town saw around 125 abducted workers being transported on board IS vehicles that headed towards Tal Dakweh on the outskirts of Eastern Ghouta. Rome, April 8 (IANS/AKI) Italy on Friday recalled its ambassador to Egypt after the failure of talks between Italian and Egyptian officials aimed at ending the deadlock over a probe into the murder of doctoral student Giulio Regeni. "Italy's Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni has recalled to Rome for consultations its ambassador in Cairo, Maurizio Massari," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "The decision follows developments in the investigation of the Regeni case, in particular the meetings held on Rome on Thursday and Friday between Italian and Egyptian investigative teams," the statement added. "These developments call for an urgent evaluation of the most opportune initiatives to be taken to re-launch a commitment to establishing the truth on Giulio Regeni's barbaric killing." Egypt has denied claims by human rights groups that its security services were behind the killing of 28-year-old Regeni, whose mutilated, half-naked body bearing signs of torture was allegedly found in a ditch on Cairo's western outskirts on February 3. It has made no arrests over the Cambridge University PhD student's killing and its lines of enquiry so far, including an alleged kidnapping gang disguised in police uniforms, have met with disbelief in Italy. Gentiloni on Tuesday threatened "immediate and proportional" measures against Egypt if Cairo did not speed up the probe, cooperate fully with Italian investigators and bring Regeni's killers to justice, which Egypt's government has pledged to do. Regeni vanished in the Egyptian capital on January 25 during an unprecedented security crackdown on the fifth anniversary of the popular uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. He was in Egypt to research independent trade unions and had written articles critical its president and former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi that were allegedly published in an Italian newspaper under a pseudonym. Citing an anonymous informant in Egypt's intelligence services, Italian daily La Repubblica on Wednesday implicated Egypt's leadership including its President al-Sisi in Regeni death at the hands of military intelligence services, saying they were aware of and approved his abduction. The paper suggested that during their meetings in Rome, the Egyptian officials would try to pin the blame for Regeni's murder on Giza's police investigations chief Khaled Shalab, who according to the informant ordered Regeni's kidnapping and murder. --IANS/AKI vd Bollywood actress Karishma Kapoor and her estranged husband Sanjay Kapoor on Friday arrived at an amicable settlement of the terms of their divorce before the Supreme Court with her getting custody of their children and him getting visitation rights. A bench of Justice A.K.Sikri and Justice R.K.Agrawal were informed about the terms of settlement in the course of the hearing held in their chamber. With this, the divorce suit filed before a Mumbai court would be converted into mutual consent divorce plea. Hearing on the divorce plea by the Mumbai court will take place in June. Karishma's lawyer Sandeep Kapoor told IANS that there were certain areas where there were difference between the couple but they were ironed out with the intervention of the judges. In the wake of the settlement, all the cases instituted in the course of matrimonial discord would be withdrawn, he said, adding the terms of settlement run into eight pages. While Karishma would continue to retain custody of children, Sanjay Kapoor would have visitation rights to meet them during summer and winter vacations and during Diwali holidays, Sandeep Kapoor told IANS. During the last hearing on March 8, the apex court bench was informed that both Karishma and Sanjay Kapoor have agreed on all the terms of settlement for parting of ways and have to work out a few modalities before they could be signed. US Secretary of State John Kerry has called on Iran to stop its destabilising behaviour and work with its neighbours in the Middle East to end the wars in Yemen and Syria. Kerry, who is on a visit to Bahrain to meet foreign ministers in the Gulf Cooperation Council, on Thursday said the US was concerned about Iran. Last week, the US Navy seized hundreds of AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled-grenade launchers and machine guns from a small ship. Kerry said the weapons were on the move from Iran to arm Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Washington Post reported. "Rather than send weapons to the Houthis, join in efforts to convince them to make peace," Kerry said. The US officials were concerned about fragility of the existing cease-fire in Syria and have expressed uncertainty over the prospects for a cease-fire that is due to start this weekend in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition of Gulf countries conducting airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Houthis. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, whose country chairs the GCC, said relations with Iran will be chilly till the country ends its interventionist policies. "We stressed that if Iran wants to have normal relations with the GCC states, it has to change its policies and abide by the good-neighbourhood principle," he said. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has made overtures for warmer relations, efforts that powerful segments of the Iranian government do not support. "Tehran wants interaction with the world, with its neighbouring countries," Rouhani said on Thursday. The criticism of Iran emanating from the Gulf came as ships in the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, joined in a three-week, multinational exercise to practice mine clearing and other tactics designed to keep open the sea lanes through which at least a third of the world's oil resources are shipped. At least four ships thought to be bound from Iran to Yemen have been stopped in the past six months, and large quantities of weapons seized. "If Iran is going to give meaning to the words in the last few days about wanting to work with people, it is by getting engaged in making peace in Yemen, not adding more weapons and fuelling the conflict," Kerry said. Mohamed Abrini, suspected of involvement in the November 2015 attacks in Paris, was arrested Friday by the Belgian police, reported Belgian broadcaster RTBF. Abrini is also thought to be the "man in the hat" who was caught on surveillance cameras at Zaventem Airport on the morning of the Brussels attacks little over two weeks ago, Xinhua quoted the local media as saying. Abrini was wanted for complicity in preparing the attacks in Paris. His DNA was found in an apartment in the Brussels' district of Schaerbeek, from which suicide bombers left to carry out the March 22 twin attacks. According to RTBF, a second person was also arrested. It could be Osama K., the person seen with suicide bomber Khalid El Bakraoui at the Brussels metro station Petillon, shortly before El Bakraoui set off an explosion at Maelbeek metro station. Osama K. is also thought to be the second person who bought at City 2 shopping centre the suitcases used in the attacks, RTBF added. However, the Belgian federal prosecutor confirmed only two arrests, without specifying their names, Belgian daily L'Avenir reported. Dual Belgian-Moroccan national Abrini had been filmed at a gas station in Paris two days before the November 13 bombings, along with Salah Abdeslam. Since Abdeslam's arrest, Abrini has become one of the most wanted suspects linked to the terrorist attacks in Paris. The November 13 attacks in Paris killed 130 people. The March 22 Brussels attacks claimed the lives of 32 people. Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has effected a reshuffle in the party, changing responsibilities of many senior leaders. After reviewing the organisational matters in Lucknow on Thursday, work of some party coordinators was changed, a leader told IANS on Friday. More changes are in the offing, he informed. Dinesh Chandra has been assigned additional work of Devipatan and Gorakhpur zones while Lalji Verma, so far taking care of party interests in Gorakhpur, was moved out. Mayawati is on a ten-day visit to the state capital, and is likely to continue assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the party's organisation. Emerging as the principle challenge to the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) in the run up to the assembly, to be held early next year, the BSP is working aggressively to "set its house in order and tighten the loose nuts and bolts before getting down to brass tacks", a close aide to the former chief minister said. The father of a minor who killed a 33-year-old business consultant by hitting him with his speeding Mercedes car here three days ago was arrested on Friday, police said. "Manoj Aggarwal has been arrested for abetting the crime of culpable homicide not amounting to murder," said Deputy Commissioner of Police Madhur Verma. Sidhharth Sharma died after being hit by the overspeeding Mercedes car on Monday night while crossing Sham Nath Marg in north Delhi's Civil Lines area to get some eatables from the nearby market. Police had apprehended the minor offender on Tuesday but freed him on bail as he was only booked under charges of causing death by negligence of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). After an uproar followed by allegations by the victim's family that police officers were going soft on the accused, police took a U-turn on Friday, not only changing the section mentioned in the FIR but also arrested Aggarwal. In an official statement on Friday, police said: "On examination of CCTV footage during investigation of case FIR No. 118 being registered at Civil Lines police station, it was found that the juvenile offender was driving his car in extremely fast speed in a residential area which caused the death of Siddharth Sharma." "It was not the first offence of rash and negligent driving by the juvenile. In the past, he has also been found driving in such a way thereby causing a road accident with another vehicle. "In view of above, the death of Siddharth Sharma is a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and hence section 304 of IPC has been added in place of section 304 A (causing death by negligence) of IPC," said Verma. The officer further said there had not been a single step taken by Aggarwal in prohibiting his son from taking the vehicle. "This is an act of criminal omission, thereby abetting the crime of the said juvenile. Therefore we arrested Aggarwal." Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh on Friday held talks with representatives of non-local students of the NIT here in a bid to restore normalcy on the campus. Apart from Nirmal Singh, Education Minister Naeem Akhtar and National Institute of Technology Director Rohit Gupta were involved in talking with a dozen-odd student representatives at Singh's official residence here on Friday evening, a top state government official told IANS. The official said the ongoing meeting had stretched for three hours and the government was hopeful of an end to the impasse at the NIT soon. Earlier on Friday, non-local students held a protest march on the NIT campus in Nigeen area here. When the students tried to march on to the main road outside the campus, police told them they were not allowed to hold their protests outside. A senior police officer told IANS that the protesting students were dispersed without use of force. The non-local students have demanded action against policemen who beat them on April 4 during the protest on the campus. Police had claimed the protesting students resorted to stone-pelting, damaged public property and roughed up a deputy superintendent-level police officer. Police registered two first information reports regarding the unrest on the NIT campus on March 31 and April 4. After the non-local students expressed lack of faith in the Jammu and Kashmir Police, Central Reserve Police Force and Sashastra Seema Bal troopers were deployed on the NIT campus. The state government has ordered a magisterial probe into the NIT unrest and asked the inquiry officer to submit a report within 15 days. The non-local students numbering 1500 have been boycotting classes for the last five days. A three-member team of human resource development ministry headed by Sanjeev Sharma has been camping in Srinagar for three days to hold talks with the protesting students. It will submit a report to the ministry on the matter. The Congress on Friday said that the BJP-led government's foreign policy had dismantled the entire matrix of India's strategic and diplomatic advantage over Pakistan. The Congress said it was time for the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to introspect and rectify the wrongs it has committed, adding that "the Congress will be ready to offer its advice in the matter". "(Prime Minister) Narendra Modi has dismantled the entire matrix of our strategic and diplomatic advantage over Pakistan," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told reporters here. "The United States has lifted the moratorium on sale of F-16s fighter jets to Pakistan. China has blocked India's effort to get the United Nations to declare Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar a terrorist. "Russia, the most trusted friend of India, has lifted an embargo on the sale of arms to Pakistan. They are also on the verge of starting a strategic relation with Pakistan," the Congress leader added. "Pakistan's sudden move to call off talks with India is also reflective of how the Narendra Modi government's flip-flop on Pakistan has allowed the neighbouring country to set the agenda of the dialogue process," he said while reacting to Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's statement on Thursday that talks between India and Pakistan were "suspended". The unilateral suspension of bilateral talks by Pakistan was a clear betrayal of the peace process as well as its commitment to resolve bilateral issues through peaceful negotiations, Surjewala said. He said that the National Democratic Alliance government's Pakistan policy had baffled its most ardent admirers as well as security experts and diplomats alike. "Efforts of the previous Congress government in isolating Pakistan internationally as the epicentre of terror have been undone because of poorly deliberated moves by Modi in engaging with the western neighbour," Surjewala said. The Congress leader said: "The new space available to Pakistan also tells us about the state of our relations with global powers like the US, Russia and China. In recent weeks, each one of them has been more than interested in engaging with Pakistan." "Modi ignored all pleas and invited Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team to visit Pathankot in Punjab to investigate the January 2 terror attack at the Indian Air Force base there, which originated from Pakistani soil." Surjewala said that despite repeated warnings by the Congress, the government took a U-turn on the distinction between state and non-state actors in Pakistan who are engaged in anti-India terror activities. "Naturally, the JIT returned to Pakistan and preposterously accused India of orchestrating the Pathankot attack," he said. "As a responsible opposition party, we believe, this moment allows the government an opportunity to pause, reflect, recalibrate and indulge in course correction. We would like to engage and offer support to the ruling dispensation, if they deem necessary," Surjewala said. The VHP on Friday said the Narendra Modi government's flip-flop over its policy towards Pakistan had confused the masses and demanded a white paper on its policies on terrorism and the neighbouring country. "When Narendra Modi took over as prime minister, the country hoped it will end terrorism by tightening noose around Pakistan's neck, but its flip-flop has created confusion in the people's minds," Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) joint general secretary Surendra Jain said here in a statement here. "Now, it seems that India has been put in the dock," he added. Jain asked the government to clarify its stand on terrorism and Pakistan's role in it. "The VHP demands that the government issue a white paper on terrorism and Pakistan so that the people's confusion on these issue is cleared. The government should also clarify its policies on these issues," Jain said. He said it was one of the major demands of the Bharatiya Janata Party when it was in opposition at the Centre. "Time has come for the BJP to come clear before the country with its pledge to end the menace of terrorism," Jain said. Hours after Tripura's Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Sudip Roy Barman resigned over his party's alliance with the Left Front in West Bengal, four other Congress leaders on Friday quit party positions on the issue. Tripura Congress' working president Ashish Saha, state Youth Congress president Sushanta Chowdhury, West Tripura Lok Sabha constituency Youth Congress President Viki Prasad and East Tripura Lok Sabha constituency Youth Congress chief Rantu Deb resigned from their party posts. They sent their resignation letters to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Tripura's CLP leader Sudip Roy Barman, who is also the opposition leader in the state assembly, on Thursday resigned from his post protesting his party's tie-up with the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) in the West Bengal assembly polls. "Congress' alliance with the Left parties in Bengal would be a far-reaching negative impact both in state and national level. Most Congressmen are upset over this unacceptable electoral tie-up," Saha, one of the 10 Congress legislators in the state assembly, told reporters. "We would be the true anti-Left group in Left ruled Tripura," Saha added. Barman, who sent his resignation letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and also to Tripura assembly Speaker Ramendra Chandra Debnath on Thursday, had earlier sent a note to Sonia Gandhi in February arguing against the alliance with the Left Front in West Bengal, saying it will prove "harmful" to the Congress. Meanwhile, Tripura Congress president Birajit Sinha and some others party leaders said they would abide by the decision of the central leaders about the alliance with the Left parties. "We will abide by the decision of the central leadership taken over the issue. Congress leaders' resignation from their party posts are unfortunate," said Sinha, also a sitting MLA and former minister. Political circles said that some other Congress leaders close to Barman and Saha might quit their party posts on the same issue and would either form a new party or join the Trinamool Congress headed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday urged the central government to set up a National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) in the state. Currently there are seven NIPERs across the country and six new institutes are being proposed. "In order to provide further boost to the availability of highly skilled human resource required for the pharma sector, government of Odisha would also like to have one such institute in the state," Patnaik said in a letter to union minister of chemical and fertilisers Ananth Kumar. The six new NIPERs are being proposed at Patna (Hajipur), Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Rai Bareli, Guwahati and Kolkata. Patnaik said the requisite built up space for the temporary campus of NIPER would be made available and land for construction of a permanent campus would be found. The government has also set up a bio-technology park over an area of 64 acres in Bhubaneswar and is in the process of setting up a Pharma Park and a Medical Device Park in Odisha, the chief minister said. "Hence, setting up of a NIPER in Odisha would be in the fitness of the overall scheme of development of pharmaceutical sector in this region with a view to training the future teachers, research scientists and professionals for the industry," said the chief minister. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday urged the people of Assam to vote decisively for the BJP, warning that a hung assembly will hurt the state. Addressing an election rally here in Kamrup district, the prime minister said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies wanted to form "a majority government" in the state. "Some people are waiting to see a hung assembly in Assam. They want to remote control Assam from Delhi," he said, in an obvious reference to the state's ruling Congress party. "So make sure that the BJP alliance gets an absolute majority." Modi also accused the Congress of exploiting what he called was the Bangladeshi vote bank to stick to power. "The people of Assam have supported the Congress wholeheartedly for 15 years. But the party has failed to reach beyond its Bangladeshi vote bank and dynastic politics, ruining the state," he thundered. The prime minister said that fencing the winding India-Bangladesh border was his priority. He said his government would take such steps that would not only stop infiltration from Bangladesh but ensure that all the illegal infiltrators living in Assam were sent back. And in an obvious dig at the Congress, Modi wondered why Saudi Arabia's decision to confer the highest civilian award on him had upset some people in the state. "I understand a certain country won't like India's relationship with some foreign country improving. But why a section of people here are having stomach ache? What kind of patriotism is this?" Earlier, at another rally at Raha in Nagaon district, Modi said Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had stopped smiling after the heavy polling in the first phase of assembly elections on April 4. And the Congress leadership cannot save the party from defeat in the polls, the second and final phase of which will be conducted on Monday, he said. Modi arrived in Assam on Friday to campaign for the BJP. Polling for 61 constituencies will take place on Monday. The prime minister first visited the Kamakhya temple in Assam's main city Guwahati. "I thank the people of Assam for the unprecedented high percentage of voting in the first phase," Modi said, addressing the crowd at Raha in Hindi. "You must have noticed that the Assam chief minister has stopped smiling after the first phase. He is now inviting Congress leaders from Delhi to save him. "But how can they (Congress leaders) save Gogoiji when they could not even save Delhi?" he asked, referring to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. He said he had come to Assam to seek the people's support to bring about a change of government in the state. Modi said he had not seen another state in India apart from Assam where he claimed the entire population lived below poverty line (BPL). "There are states in India where there are 20 or 30 percent BPL population. But the Congress in Assam has turned the entire population of the state poor as BPL." He said there should be a new government in the state. A total of 65 constituencies in Assam saw a record 82.20 percent polling in the first phase on April 4. The names cropping up on Day 5 of "Panama Papers" expose on Indians holding offshore companies include the promoters of the Oberoi and Ruchi groups, even as the thickest dossier yet is on a US-based Indian purportedly serving a jail term there for alleged fraud. Also named by the Indian Express, as part of a global expose of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and over 100 global media organisations, are an art diva, the kin of a tea baron and an entrepreneur couple. The newspaper said Umesh Shahra, promoter-director of the $6 billion Ruchi Group, floated at least eight offshore entities and two private foundations in Panama. This apart, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had named him in August 2014 for alleged irregularities in coal block allocations, the paper added. "The two trusts that Shahras set up in Panama are The Threewells Foundation, the public deed of which was signed on October 1, 2009, and One World Trust, which was set up on October 22, 2008," said the report, adding: "A detailed mail sent to him on March 29 and several calls made thereafter remained unanswered." As regards Oberoi, the newspaper alleged that while the group does disclose the names of a couple of such off-shore funds, but one set up in the Bahamas has not been divulged. The newspaper said it nonetheless got a detailed response from R.P.S. Oberoi, non-executive chairman of the group. "It is a matter of public record that the Oberoi Group and the Amex Group had a joint venture for hotels and hotel management outside of India for many years," said the response, which also went on to add that the business was mainly done through EIH Holdings in British Virgin Islands. "Amex Group is a private partnership whose business affairs are not public. The business affairs of Amex Group/Oberoi Group joint venture are confidential and the parties are legally bound not to discuss those matters with third parties." Then on the US-based hedge fund manager. "The most voluminous bunch of documents in 'Panama Papers' relating to Indian names belongs to brothers Chetan Kapur and Kabir Kapur and their entity 'Family and Children Charitable Foundation', incorporated by Mossack Fonseca in Panama in 2010," says the newspaper. The entire expose is the outcome of millions of leaked documents of Panama law firm Mossak Fonseca. "There are 499 sets of documents in Kapur files and they show that Opler, a 'vintage offshore company', was purchased by Chetan Kapur from Mossack Fonseca for $6,750 in 2007. It was only three years later that FCCF (the foundation) was set up," says the paper. "In January 2013, he (Chetan) was indicted by US Securities and Exchange Commission and ordered to pay $4.95 million in fines and barred from securities, brokerage and investment business," said the paper, adding a US Federal Court ordered him back in jail for failing to pay $10 million to the commission. Kabir Kapur told the paper that he has been a US national since 2011 -- before his name was added to the foundation in 2012. He also said Opler Consulting was since wound up, even as the foundation still exists. "As far as my brother Chetan Kapur is concerned, he is still in prison in the US," he said. "We have got no justice in this case from any quarter." Also in this edition is a response from Harshad Mehta of the Rosy Blue Diamonds conglomerate. "I have been a non-resident at the time when I, either incorporated, acquired or participated in these companies," he told the paper, alluding to the legitimacy of his offshore companies. "These companies were operating companies and the structures are all according to globally accepted and followed corporate holding structures. The locations are typically chosen for ease of incorporation, established legal systems and succession clarity," he is quoted as saying in the response. "Being a non-resident based in the UAE, tax avoidance was not a requirement for me nor was it my intention to establish companies in 'tax haven' jurisdictions such as the BVI (British Virgin Islands) for tax avoidance, as erroneously implied." Others named on Day Five include: Art collector Amrita Jhaveri of Amaya Collection fame, who is alleged to have set up an offshore firm in the Seychelles to own assets in Switzerland. The newspaper said she did not respond to calls, with her office saying the queries were passed on to her in London. Delhi businessman Satya Prakash Gupta, who admits to being the beneficiary owner of an offshore firm in Ras Al Khaima, but also said there were no assets in the company. Gargi Barooah, daughter-in-law of late Hemendra Prasad Barooah, the grand old man of Assam's tea industry. She is alleged as the sole beneficiary of Walker Foundation set up in Panama in April 2010. She, too, did not respond to queries, the paper said. Husband-wife duo Nimitt Rai Tiwari and Ankita Sehgal are directors in Damodar Sunidhi Ventures, based out of Delhi. The duo has been alleged to own Suncell Holding SA incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Ankita Sehgal did not respond to multiple emails. National Award-winning filmmaker Omung Kumar says he was left amazed by the determination of actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan when she decided to go ahead with the shoot of "Sarbjit" despite getting hurt. "Sarbjit" is a biopic on Sarabjit Singh, an Indian farmer who was convicted of terrorism and spying in Pakistan and was sentenced to death. Aishwarya essays the role of Sarabjit's sister Dalbir Kaur. While shooting for one scene, Aishwarya had to run frantically through some lanes filled up with mud, stones and cow dung and her footwear broke. But the actress decided to shoot the scene barefoot. Her feet were bruised by the end of the shoot. Kumar found it commendable. "We were shooting for a crucial sequence in Punjab, where Aishwarya had to run on a barren road. The heat was high and the crowd had gathered in great numbers so we had to finish that sequence as soon as possible. At the eleventh hour, Aishwarya's footwear broke and without any time she promptly volunteered to go barefoot. "I was amazed with her dedication and it was commendable that she did not throw any tantrums despite getting hurt," Kumar said in a statement. The film features actors like Randeep Hooda, Richa Chadha and Darshan Kumar. Randeep essays the character of Sarabjit and Richa will be seen as his wife in the film, which will release on May 20. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has urged overseas Britons to use consular services for genuine emergencies rather than "bizarre requests". Confused Britons looked to the FCO for advice on bizarre issues ranging from where to buy English bacon in Europe, how to recruit a butler in Lebanon and how to avoid nudists in southern Spain, according to the FCO. In a statement, the ministry released the top 10 "weirdest consular calls" it had received in the past year, calling on the public to use its services for genuine emergencies, Xinhua news agency reported. The "weirdest" requests also include a British man asking for assistance to get illegal employment in Singapore, a confused businessman looking for information on the construction of plug sockets, and another man in South Korea asking what he could do with his old pound notes. "Our consular staff are a helpful bunch and do an amazing job helping out Brits in trouble around the world - but it is important that people remember they are there to help with genuine emergencies and not as an alternative to directory enquiries," said James Duddridge, a FCO minister. "Every minute they spend handling a call requesting advice on butlers or nudists is time taken away from dealing with life and death cases, so I urge the public to think before picking up the phone," he added. According to the 2015 UK Travel Habit Tracking Research Report, almost three quarters of Britons (74 percent) thought the FCO could get them out of jail if they were arrested. Meanwhile, almost a quarter (22 percent) thought the FCO could arrange for them to get home if they lost their ticket and 15 percent presumed the FCO would lend them money if theirs was lost or stolen. Latest FCO figures show that over the last year almost half a million calls were made to its consular services. The vast majority of people who approached them were having genuine requests. Over the last year, the FCO helped 3,250 Britons who were hospitalized, 4,770 who were arrested and the families of 3,670 who died overseas. Nearly 38,000 replacement travel documents were issued. Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chief Pahlaj Nihalani wonders why people, especially film producer Mukesh Bhatt, are trashing the board's decision to give "The Jungle Book" a U/A certificate. In an interview, here's what Nihalani had to say: Q. Mukesh Bhatt feels the CBFC belongs in the garbage can? Many people would have the same opinion about some of the films he produces. It's all a matter of perception. Q. But why does he suddenly have these hate pangs about the CBFC? Because you gave a 'U/A' certification to the beloved children's story "The Jungle Book"? Correction. I didn't. The CBFC, an organisation appointed by the ministry Of information and broadcasting, of which I happen to be the chairperson, thought it sensible and wise to grant 'The Jungle Book' a 'U/A'certificate. Q. But your board member Mr. Ashoke Pandit has been quoted as saying the decision was yours, not the CBFC's? I have nothing to say about his comments. But as a board member, he is not allowed to give out confidential information on a public platform, specially when it is not true. Q. Coming back to Mukesh Bhatt's objections to the 'U/A' for "The Jungle Book"... Why is he talking about others' films? Didn't have his own release "Love Games" this Friday? Why is he so bothered about certification for "The Jungle Book" when the producer, Siddharth Roy Kapur, has gone on record to say he has no problem with 'U/A' for "The Jungle Book". And there's one thing that people opposed to the 'U/A' certification for "The Jungle Book" need to realise. Q. What is that? The film has been given the same rating all over the world in the UK, US, Canada, the Philippines. In the US and UK, it has been given a 'PG', parental guidance rating, which is the equivalent of our 'U/A'. Would Mukesh Bhatt like to throw the American and British censor board in the garbage can as well? A special court in Punjab's Mohali town on Friday issued an arrest warrant against Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar and three other operatives of the banned Pakistan-based terror group in the Pathankot attack case, an NIA official said. The non-bailable arrest warrant has been issued against Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf and two other JeM operatives - Kashif Jan and Shahid Latif. "In the Pathankot terror attack case, the honourable judge of special NIA court Mohali issued arrest warrants against the accused wanted in the case namely, Maulana Masood Azhar, Abdul Rauf, Kashif Jan and Shahid Latif," National Investigation Agency (NIA) spokesperson Sanjeev Kumar Singh said in New Delhi. NIA is handling the Indian investigation of the January 2 terror attack at the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot in which seven Indian security personnel were killed by suspected JeM militants. The NIA court is located in Punjab's Mohali town, 10 km from Chandigarh. The NIA had recently shared evidence of the JeM's role in the Pathankot air base terror attack with the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) set up by Pakistan to probe links of the terror attack to people based in Pakistan. The JIT had met top NIA officials in New Delhi and had travelled to Pathankot for a one-day investigation trip. The five-member JIT was shown a portion of the airbase where the security forces engaged the terrorists and was taken to other locations through which the terrorists had made their way towards the airbase. The JeM and Azhar have been blamed for terror activities in India, including the December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Late actor Paul Walker's daughter Meadow has struck a deal with the estate of the driver of the car in which her father died. The 17-year-old girl was awarded $10.1 million after the settlement with Roger Rodas's estate. Rodas was driving the car Walker was travelling in when they were involved in the accident in 2013, killing them both. Meadow's lawyer Jeffrey Milam issued a statement regarding the settlement with Rodas's estate on Friday, reports aceshowbiz.com. "The amount paid by the estate of Roger Rodas into a trust for Meadow Walker only covers a fraction of what her father would have earned as an international movie star had his life not tragically been cut short," the statement read. "Through his estate, Mr. Rodas, the driver of the car, took partial responsibility for the crash," he continued. "Meadow's lawsuit against Porsche AG - a $13 billion corporation - intends to hold the company responsible for producing a vehicle that was defective and caused Paul Walker's death." According to Milam, Meadow will receive approximately $7.2 million after expenses and attorneys' fees. Jeffrey said that the basis of the settlement was that Rodas was partly to blame for the fatal accident, although he was "not directing the car through any particularly unsafe manoeuvres when it went out of control." Meadow is still pressing with her lawsuit against Porsche, claiming that various design defects in the racing car caused the crash. However, a judge recently threw out an almost identical lawsuit filed by Rodas's widow, saying the design defect claims were unsupportable. Pope Francis has called for the Catholic church to revamp its response to modern family life, striking a delicate balance between a more accepting tone towards gay people and the defence of traditional church teachings on issues such as abortion. In a landmark papal document entitled Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love), Francis outlined his vision for the church on family issues, urging priests to respond to their communities without mercilessly enforcing church rules: "Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs," he wrote. The apostolic exhortation concludes a two-year consultation that saw bishops twice gather in Rome to debate issues affecting the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, writes the Guardian. In comments likely to be welcomed by some LGBT organisations, Francis urged the church to "reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while 'every sign of unjust discrimination' is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence." But the pope stopped short of pushing for a change in church doctrine. "De facto or same-sex unions, for example, may not simply be equated with marriage," he said. "Such families should be given respectful pastoral guidance, so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God's will in their lives," wrote the pontiff. The church defines same-sex relationships as "intrinsically disordered", although this phrase was absent from the exhortation. Following lengthy debate about the role in the church for remarried divorcees, who are not allowed to take holy communion, Francis did not call for the rules to be changed but said such parishioners must be made to feel part of the church. "[They] should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for a suitable personal and pastoral discernment," he said. Divorce was described as an "evil" that priests should help Catholics avoid, while being understanding towards those whose marriages have broken down. Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, the archbishop of Vienna, said that some Catholics would be disappointed that the pope had not provided a new set of rules to govern the church's response on the matter. The cardinal, who is viewed as a progressive within the Vatican hierarchy, said the pope's response demonstrated progress was being made on church teachings and the document would provide material for further discussion. Schonborn said the document showed something had changed in the church discourse. "Pope Francis speaks about families with a clarity that is not easy to find in the magisterial documents on the church," he said. He was joined at the Holy See by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the synod of bishops, who praised the pope's intervention: "In an era of global crisis in which families often suffer, the exhortation takes a positive look at the beauty of married love and the family." In the document, reflecting the hands-on approach seen throughout Francis' three-year papacy, the pope emphasised the need for priests to reach out to members of their communities and present the church as a "field hospital". The broader document saw Francis recognise the Catholic church's waning appeal to young people, urging churchmen to present a more appealing view of marriage. "I think of Saint Valentine's Day; in some countries, commercial interests are quicker to see the potential of this celebration than are we in the church," he wrote during a section on marriage preparation.The pontiff also dedicated two pages to "the erotic dimension of love" within marriage, promoting a positive vision of sexuality. "[This] must be seen as a gift from God that enriches the relationship of the spouses," he said. Formal sex education in schools, however, was decried as promoting narcissism through its discussion of safe sex. "Such expressions convey a negative attitude towards the natural procreative finality of sexuality, as if an eventual child were an enemy to be protected against," wrote Francis, asserting the church's opposition to contraception. In discussing reproduction, the pope voiced the Vatican's opposition to abortion in all circumstances: "No alleged right to one's own body can justify a decision to terminate that life." The pope also showed no opening towards fertility treatment, describing creation as something which "must be received as a gift" and suggested infertile couples adopt. Although the apostolic exhortation continues church rules that have remained in place for generations, the document also contains hints of the perceptiveness that has made the pope a popular figure globally. "Much hurt and many problems result when we stop looking at one another," he wrote, listing a string of common complains of family members feeling invisible or uncared for. Childish behaviour was another problem the pontiff saw afflicting marriages. "Only in their forties do some people achieve a maturity that should have come at the end of adolescence," he remarked, writes the Guardian. The 79-year-old pontiff also explored the way technology affects relationships, such as when people stay on their mobile phones during meal times. He saw the fast pace of the online world impacting people's approach to relationships: "They believe, along the lines of social networks, that love can be connected or disconnected at the whim of the consumer, and the relationship quickly 'blocked'." Pope Francis will make public the conclusions of his two Synods on the family in a document eagerly awaited by 1.3 billion Roman Catholics. It will detail the Pope's views about family life, marriage, contraception and bringing up children. Many hope it will open the way for the church to offer communion to the divorced and civilly remarried, something conservatives have resisted, BBC reported. The document is the culmination of three years' work by the Pope. The Pope sent a questionnaire to families across the world asking them about their hopes and their fears. Then he brought bishops and cardinals together for two Synods in Rome, at which he encouraged them to debate and even to disagree over issues that divide the church in many countries. Thedse range from offering communion for the divorced and remarried, contraception and the treatment of Catholics who are gay. The lengthy document will show exactly where Pope Francis stands -- with some already describing it as a Papal bombshell -- as he steps into the minefield of Catholic teaching on the family. While conservatives do not want him to change doctrine, liberals hope he will tell the church to show a more merciful attitude to those whose families do not conform to the current Catholic ideal. Some in the church have called for measures which allow a priest or a bishop to decide privately, on a case-by-case basis, if a Catholic who has divorced and remarried can be fully readmitted and receive communion. While progressives such as the influential Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany support this policy, conservatives maintain it would devalue the principle of marriage being indissoluble, established by Jesus. At the conclusion of the Synod last year, Pope Francis castigated church leaders whom he accused of burying their heads in the sand over the issue, arguing that their adherence to rigid doctrine was over-riding their concern for the suffering of families. The papal document is also expected to call for better marriage preparation while repeating the Synod's view that homosexual unions cannot be on par with heterosexual marriage. While the proposed $12 billion project of South Korean steel major Posco in Odisha is yet to see the light of the day after a decade, South Korean Ambassador to India Cho Hyun on Friday said the country wants to invest in other sectors in India. "Last month, I met a number of our businessmen during a summit in South Korea. I encouraged them to invest in India," said the Korean ambassador after holding a meeting with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here. "Discussed investments & trade opportunities in #Odisha with Korean Ambassador Mr. Cho Hyun," tweeted Patnaik after the meet. However, the Posco project did not figure in the meeting, said a state government official. "It is up to the company (Posco) whether it wants to set up its project or not. Korea has many other things to offer and not just Posco. We should not only focus on Posco here," the envoy told reporters. The steel project, billed as the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in India, is facing several legal hurdles and local opposition since it signed an MoU with the state government in 2005. The hope of Posco to set up the steel project faded away after the central government introduced the amended Mines and Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act 2015 mandating that the company has to participate in the bidding process to get raw material to feed the proposed steel plant at Jagatsinghpur. The statement of the South Korean envoy came at a time when the steel major told the National Green Tribunal that it would not be able to establish the proposed $12 billion steel plant in Odisha by 2017. Its lawyer informed the tribunal that it has not been able to obtain forest and other clearances while its environmental clearance is valid until July 2017. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Friday said that funding of NGOs who repeatedly petition the Supreme Court and National Green Tribunal should be probed. "Who is paying them the money to travel to and fro? Who is funding these litigations? Someone should enquire," he said while speaking at the foundation ceremony of a new bridge being constructed across the Rua de Ourem creek here. Parrikar said that he had also been a litigant in the apex court and that roughly the cost of each hearing at the Supreme Court incurs a cost of Rs.5 lakh, while the cost incurred at the National Green Tribunal is around Rs.3 lakh to Rs.5 lakh. "I was reading the central Lokayukta bill and it is there. NGOs will (now) have to show an account for the money they have received. Everyone should be accountable," he said, suggesting that some litigants were keen on making money by raising legal obstacles. Parrikar also warned a section of the media with defamation, claiming a news channel had been screening videos quoting an activist about how much money had been taken by him when Goa chief minister. "There is a TV channel and without realising that it is a sure-shot defamation case, it makes allegations about how much money has been eaten by me and how. And your channel people show this... I am used to it now. Anyone can say anything to politicians. I will not use the phrases they use because I am defence minister now," he said. Polarized politics is what pundits were expecting from the party and its principal leader with an eye on polls in key states. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised people by turning up in Riyadh to meet the custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines, King Salman bin Abdulaziz. In doing so, he has dropped a pebble in the pond. Ripples will lap at many shores in the region - Pakistan, Iran, the Gulf countries. Israel, of course, will have noted the visit with satisfaction. Editorials in the Gulf newspapers give glowing accounts of the visit. Millions of Indians in these states will obviously rejoice as well as their families in India. Establishments in Islamabad and Rawalpindi will peruse every phrase in the joint declaration issued at the end of the visit. The timing of the visit was such that defence and strategic relations had to be given saliency. Saudis are in deep trouble in Yemen. Relentless air bombings for a year have razed cities and infrastructure to the ground but not brought the Yemenis to their knees. Riyadh talks only of "Iran-backed Houthi rebels". With falling oil prices, the treasury is depleted. Providers of mercenary armies like Blackwater have been making money hand over fist. Riyadh has opened its coffers to lure Latin American private armies for combat duty in Yemen. Imagine, Roman Catholics from Colombia fighting for Wahabi Islam. It were in these desperate circumstances that Riyadh turned to their Pakistani friends for military help in Yemen, including for combat duties. After conferring with army Chief Raheel Sharif, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif placed the issue before the National Assembly where it was shot down. Saudis were in no mood for niceties. They simply put aside their old friendship with Pakistan and clasped India's hand. It would be wrong to say the Riyadh turned to New Delhi on a rebound. It is a long friendship of which energy security, Indian Diaspora, billions worth of remittances and annual Haj are some of the salient features. The finest diplomats have been generally selected as ambassadors. Vice President Hamid Ansari was one such. Also, the late king Abdullah was the Chief Guest at the Republic Day Parade in 2006. In 2010, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Riyadh. To that extent the present visit represents a continuity but in a different setting. Saudis have to pull themselves up if they are to avert a nosedive in Yemen at a time when nothing is going Riyadh's way in Syria. The other uniqueness derives from Modi's persona. Here is the first avowedly Hindu nationalist leader, one who declared in parliament that the entire Muslim period was one of "ghulami" or subservience: he has now reached out to befriend a country with a special resonance for the world's Muslims. It would be too abrupt to put it down to a change of heart. Implicit in the visit is nimble footed diplomacy: it foils Pakistan in its most vulnerable moment with the House of Saud. The Saudis have given New Delhi everything it could have wanted on defence, terrorism - and much more without naming Pakistan. There will be "exchange of visits by military personnel and experts, conduct of joint military exercise, exchange visits of ships and aircrafts and supply of arms and ammunition and their joint development". In this and several such blanket statements, the sky is the limit. Visits are often forgotten once the ink dries on agreements. To forestall this danger the two sides have "welcomed the decision for convening of the second meeting of Joint Committee on Defence Cooperation in Riyadh to follow up on the visit of Prime Minister Modi". Already there is talk of special envoys to keep up the momentum. The flip side to the narrative is the lack of finesse with which Iran has been handled. The visit was planned at a time when Saudis had snapped diplomatic ties with Iran after an uproar in parts of the Muslim world after the beheading of popular Shia cleric, Nimr al Nimr, in the oil-rich Eastern province of the Kingdom. Surely Tehran, with which we have a more assured future, could have been kept in the loop. That Oil and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is being sent to Tehran with a technical team to ostensibly discuss the $6 billion Farzand-B gas field project will be seen by Tehran for what it probably is - a damage control exercise. The Farzand project has been discussed for six years. That Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and, at some stage, even the prime minister will be Iran bound, is all very well, but an unnecessary phase of defensiveness would have been avoided by taking Iranian foreign office into confidence. It is very tempting to help protect the sea lanes off the troubled cities of Aden in Yemen and Jizan on the Saudi-Yemen border. Caution would be required because an opening with Riyadh could become a slippery slope if New Delhi finds itself taking sides in the Kingdom's adversarial moves in the region, eventually targeting Tehran. Already talks with Yemeni groups and the Saudis are taking place in Oman. These cannot be without direct or indirect Iranian participation. (A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views expressed are personal.) The Supreme Court on Friday appointed two senior counsel as amicus curiae to assist the court in the hearing of the appeals by the four convicts sentenced to death in the December 16 Delhi gang rape case, saying the matter was serious. Noting the gravity of the whole issue, the bench of Justice Dipak Misra, Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice Kurian Joseph appointed senior counsel Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde as amicus curiae to assist the court in the hearing of appeals by the four - Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur. While Ramachandran would assist the court in the hearing of the appeals by Mukesh and Pawan, Hegde would assist the court in the hearing of appeals by Sharma and Thakur. Making the appointment, the bench observed: "We must express our concern in the matter. We feel the gravity in the whole issue. Sometimes there are many perceptions and we don't want to miss anything. We would like to be assisted by the amicus curiae in the matter." The court then adjourned the hearing to July 18 to give time to them to go through the papers. The apex court had on April 4 commenced the final hearing on the appeals by the four December 16, 2012 Delhi gang rape convicts challenging the Delhi High Court verdict upholding their death sentence. On March 13, 2014, the Delhi High Court bench of Justice Reva Khetrapal and Justice Pratibha Rani had upheld the death sentence of all four. Mukesh, Pawan, Sharma, Thakur and Ram Singh along with a juvenile were accused of gang rape and assault on a 23-year-old paramedical student inside a private bus. The victim and her friend were thrown out of the bus after the crime. Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide while in incarceration. The victim died of grave intestinal injuries on December 29, 2012 at Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital. Singapore will raise the re-employment age of older workers from 65 to 67 with effect from July 1, 2017, Minister of State for Manpower Sam Tan said on Friday. The current re-employment age is 65, which was outlined in 2012, reports Xinhua news agency. The change means that older employees up to the age of 67 should be given the option to continue working. Tan said that older workers who meet the above criteria can also be re-employed with a different company if they agree to it. In the meantime, the previous legal provision which allows the company to cut employees' wages by up to 10 percent when they turn 60 will no longer be applicable. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday celebrated Telugu New Year 'Ugadi' with gaiety and traditional enthusiasm. The Chief Ministers of the two Telugu-speaking states attended the main official celebrations in their respective states, where 'agma' pundits read the 'panchangnam' or the forecast of the coming year. Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao attended the official function at Pragati Bhavan, his official residence in Hyderabad while his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N. Chandrababu Naidu launched the celebrations in Vijayawada. Both the leaders wished that Ugadi, this year named as 'Hevalambi', would bring peace and prosperity for Telugu-speaking people living across the world. They felicitated and presented awards to artists, writers and other personalities from various walks of life. Rao expressed the hope that the New Year will usher in peace and prosperity. He said the 'pundits' had forecast it would be a good year with abundant rain and bumper crops. His cabinet colleagues and senior officials attended the celebrations. People in both states offered special prayers, decorated the entrances of their houses and shops with strings of mango leaves, tasted the traditional festival food and heard 'panchangnam' to usher in the New Year. Thousands of devotees thronged temples to pray for happiness and prosperity. Special prayers were held at Tirumala, Srisailam, Vijayawada and Bhadrachalam temples. People also attended special functions where pundits read out the religious almanac of the coming year. Literary discussions, poetry recitations, recognition of authors through awards and cultural programmes marked the day. Women prepared 'Ugadi pacchadi', a mixture of neem buds, raw mango, tamarind juice, pepper, jaggery and salt, which is a necessary part of the celebratory dishes. The mixture symbolises various hues of life. Ugadi celebrations were also held at the headquarters of political parties in Hyderabad. YSR Congress party chief Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy attended the celebrations at Lotus Pond. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders of Telangana attended the 'panchangnam' held at their party head office. The celebrations started on Tuesday evening with E.S.L. Narasimhan, who is the Governor of both the states, hosting the two chief ministers and leaders of all parties and senior officials at Raj Bhavan. --IANS ms/pgh/bg (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Left Front may be huffing and puffing but the BJP, desperate to make a mark in West Bengal, is realising that Bengali votes may be culturally and intellectually "essentially pro-Left". West Bengal, where staggered assembly elections began on April 4, offers more than a Herculean challenge and jigsaw puzzle to the BJP and its of neo-nationalism, liberal economic policies and Hindutva slant, say those in the know of things. Even as the saffron party's electoral fortune surged in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Bengal, party leaders acknowledge that they are up against "basic ideological barriers" more than organisational weaknesses. "The fact that Bengali voters and even others in the state remain pro-Left ideologically, culturally and intellectually makes things difficult for the BJP in West Bengal, unlike in Assam where the pro-Hindutva slant always had acceptance among upper caste Assamese," a Bharatiya Janata Party leader who did not want to be identified told IANS. Thus, BJP managers believe that while the party is near a striking distance in Assam, the going would be tough in West Bengal despite an aggressive campaign against a limping Left and the ruling Trinamool Congress. In Assam, upper caste Hindus relate to the Brahminical appeal of the RSS and the BJP unlike in West Bengal where, ironically, the upper caste Bengali 'Bhadrolok' has for decades been associated with Marxist . One reason why Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee cornered what was once a solid Left vote bank and why she remains popular is that she never portrayed herself as anti-Left -- despite being the biggest political foe of the Marxists. Trinamool MP and former union minister Sishir Adhikari explained to IANS: "During Marxist misrule when Singur and Nandigram happened, the people of Bengal saw us as genuine followers of Communist ideology. That was the turning point of Bengal ." This was when, he pointed out, Trinamool leaders started mocking CPI-M leaders as "pseudo followers" of Karl Marx. "This actually helped the Trinamool to get votes. Slowly people in Maoist-hit areas developed courage and faith in democracy," he said. Thus, when Mamata Banerjee played to the hilt her pro-farmers card against the failed industrialisation attempts of the Left, she appeared to the peopleas a more genuine political leader than the Marxists. This also made easier the task of those Left cadres who decided to opt for 'Didi' -- Mamata Banerjee -- and her Trinamool Congress and abandon old-style Marxist politics. The BJP's Asansol MP and union minister Babul Supriyo admitted that Didi's persona too helped defeat the Left. "Didi's image as a pro-poor leader who wore rubber 'chappals' and a cotton sari actually challenged the Leftists' proletarian claims. But today, while 'Didi' still moves in chappals, her party colleagues are no less than 'crorepatis'," he said. In sharp contrast, both in economic and social contexts, the BJP lacks the Left slant. So, despite campaigning aggressively, the apprehension in the BJP camp is that the party may not win many seats in West Bengal. Indeed, there is acceptance that a higher vote share for the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls actually helped the CPI-M. For instance, in Raiganj seat, CPI-M's Mohammed Salim defeated Deepa Dasmunshi of the Congress by just 1,634 votes even as BJP candidate Nimu Bhowmick polled over two lakh votes. Sudip Bandyopadhyay, a long-time associate of Mamata Banerjee, has repeatedly underscored the importance of 'being Left' in West Bengal -- if one has to make a decisive mark. "We understood from the very beginning that the Left Front could not be defeated in Bengal from a rightist platform. So despite the best attempts personally from Atal Bihari Vajpayee and strong opposition from the likes of the late Ajit Panja, the Trinamool quit the BJP-led NDA," he said. The rest, as they say, is history -- or Didi's story. The BJP is beginning to understand this. (Nirendra Dev can be contacted at nirendra.n@ians.in) Trade with India was on track despite strains in diplomatic relationship, and Pakistan intends to hold a single-country exhibition in New Delhi, an official has said. Talking to the media on the first day of Texpo Pakistan exhibition, Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir said on Thursday that suspension of dialogue with India did not suggest an end to bilateral trade, Dawn online reported. The minister, while lamenting the negative impact of a recent bomb blast in Lahore on the exhibition, found presence of 400 foreign delegates encouraging. Khurram said the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) has changed its focus from holding general exhibitions to single segment of products. Similarly, there was a shift in commercial strategy as more importance was being given to regional countries, including Central Asian states, Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka. The UN special envoy for Syria expected intra-Syrian talks to resume on April 13 in Geneva in a bid to seek a political solution to the Syria crisis, a UN spokesman said here. Envoy Staffan de Mistura on Thursday "wanted to ensure that the talks will start a political process leading to a real political transition", Xinhua quoted Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, as saying. The newly announced date for the resumption of the Syria talks is four days behind the original schedule. The second round of Syrian peace talks was originally slated for April 9. In the coming days, de Mistura plans to travel to Damascus and Tehran, and also to meet with Turkish, Saudi and other officials, before returning to Geneva in the middle of next week, Haq said. While in Syria, he expects to meet the foreign minister and deputy foreign minister, Haq said. "The special envoy added that the proceedings in Geneva are expected once more to start with proximity talks," Haq said. The first round of intra-Syrian peace talks in Geneva wrapped up on March 24 with a paper of 12 points of commonalities being delivered to both sides for further consideration by de Mistura. The UN said a more positive atmosphere at the March round was helped by a cease-fire in Syria, which was declared on February 27 and remains broadly in place, despite multiple reported violations. More than 270,000 people have been reportedly killed in Syria and millions have fled their homes since the conflict broke out in March 2011. Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said on Friday his government has paid "a heavy price" for closing down hundreds of liquor bars, but the "firm" policy would actually help them in the elections next month. "We had to pay a heavy price. It's those, who have been affected by our decision to close down bars, who are against us and hence these allegations against our government," Chandy told reporters, referring to the "bar bribery scam" that badly bruised his government with allegations of graft. The scam saw finance minister K.M. Mani resigning last year, and also led to the stepping down of excise minister K. Babu. His resignation was, however, not accepted, following relief from the Kerala High Court. Chandy suggested he was so confident about the "clarity" of the policy of his UDF government that he would use it to canvass for votes for the assembly polls next month. "Our liquor policy will be taken up as a campaign material as we are very clear with what we want to achieve. In 10 years' time, prohibition will be in place in Kerala," he said. In contrast to the clear policy of the UDF government, the liquor policy of the Left Democratic Front (LDF), led by Commuist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), was "hazy and not clear," he said. "While we are seeking prohibition, they are speaking about the policy of abstaining from liquor. We are confident that our firm policy will help us in the polls," said Chandy. The Chandy government announced last year that licences of all the 730 liquor bars (two, three and four-star bars) in the state was not being renewed as a first step towards total prohibition. The decision left more than 500 liquor bar owners in dire straits, but won the approval of certain religious leaders. Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference welcomed the closing down of liquor bars and Archbishop of the Thiruvananthapuram Latin diocese M. Soosaipakiam has warned that any new government had better refrain from changing the policy. There are still 29 five-star hotel bars and 813 beer and wine parlours in Kerala. CPI-M's state party secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said if the LDF won the elections, it will not open bars, but will follow its declared policy of having an abstinence campaign with the help of NGOs. For William Dalrymple, the author of books like "City of Djiins", "In Xanadu" and "White Mughals", writing is an intellectual art while photography is emotional. The author, who recently published his first book of photographs, "The Writer's Eye", says that it's a medium to express beauty. "Photographs don't convey ideas, they express beauty. Photography is visual not intellectual. It comes from a different part of the brain," Darlymple, whose book is a collection of black and white photographs taken during his travels around the world over the past 18 months, told IANS in an interaction. Darlymple's photographs have received tremendous appreciation, but he described writing as his first love, saying it is an intellectual exercise where paragraphs are framed and words are carefully chosen. "Writing conveys ideas, every word reflects an idea. Writing is a highly intellectual art," said Darlymple whose books have won numerous awards including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award and the Hemingway Award. Explaining why he took photographs from his cell phone and not with a professional camera, he said: "Photography should always be about the eye, not the equipment". Darlymple draws inspiration from writer Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989) who emerged as a remarkable photographer after a collection of his images were published after his death. Chatwin's photographs "were full of surprises, even to those who thought they knew him well," according to Darlymple. "The Writer's Eye" is a compilation of black and white images Darlymple took during treks through Ladakh, visits to Yazd, Pasargardae and the deserts of western Iran, a journey along the Ganges and the marshes and causeways of coastal Northumbria and the desert fringes of Idaho. Darlymple said that he never planned to publish his photographs, but writer Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, who lends an introduction to the book, convinced him to present the record of his travels to the people. "I didn't plan to publish this book. Siddharth came up with the idea. It was nice to see somebody else being so enthusiastic about my work," said Darlymple. Darlymple's pictures redress the perception of black and white as unexciting and unemotional. He himself challenged this perception saying: "Black and white has the power that colour can never match. I love black and white as it has an ability to surprise. Coloured photographs are everywhere." "I always preferred black and white mainly because the medium seemed a much more daring and exciting world, full of artistic possibilities," the author said. (Mudita Girotra can be contacted at mudita.g@ians.in) In the Indian Railways (IR), it is impossible to get away from Jamalpur. This is where the East Indian Railway Company established its first railway workshop in 1862. Why choose Jamalpur, adjacent to Munger? I once asked the late Brijmohan Lall Munjal why Ludhiana became a cycle-manufacturing centre. There are always multiple reasons. He mentioned World War II and consequent supplies of armaments, using machines easily adaptable to cycle-making. (That argument also extends to uniforms and woollen garments.) For years, even centuries, Munger has been a centre for making guns, not only legal, but also of the illegal and cottage variety. That's a standard reason given for choosing Munger - tradition of making guns, pistols, spears and other ironwork. Plus, one was trying to construct a railway line from Howrah to Delhi and that might have been through Munger/Jamalpur. But a shorter line (Grand Chord or main line) developed via Gaya/Mughalsarai and the entire so-called Sahibganj Loop, including Munger/Jamalpur, became relatively neglected. No doubt, these reasons have some element of truth, but I particularly like another story. Most employees in the railway workshop then were British. As long as the workshop was in Howrah, they were found more at hotels, restaurants and billiard-rooms instead of the workshop even during working hours. Hence, the workshop was shifted from Howrah to Jamalpur, more than 450 km away. In a major setback for Ipca Laboratories, Geneva-based The Global Fund has refused to source anti-malarial drug from the company. The decision was taken in the backdrop of Ipcas Ratlam (Madhya Pradesh), SEZ Indore (Pithampur) and Piparia (Silvassa) manufacturing units receiving a warning letter from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January. These plants have been under FDA scrutiny since July 2014 and the company has voluntarily stopped supplies to the US. There were expectations that the anti-malaria drug supplies to The Global Fund will resume in FY17. Analysts say the World Health Organization has cleared the companys Ratlam facility. Rahul Sharma at Karvy Stock Broking had said last month that The Global Fund anti-malarial opportunity had reduced from $400 million due to a 50 per cent price cut coupled with a 10 per cent reduction in quantity. However, Sharma was expecting the Funds orders, which were postponed, to be awarded now. Ashish Thavkar at Antique Stock Broking was factoring in Rs 200 crore sales in FY17, but now feels the same will now not resume till complete clearance of plants by the US FDA. A complete clearance is expected to take at least six months. With the supplies to the Geneva-based company not resuming, FY17 earnings for Ipca will be impacted by 10-12 per cent (earnings per share impact by Rs 2.2-2.8), estimates Thavkar. Ipcas stock fell 10.6 per cent on the bourses to Rs 499.30 on Friday, following the companys announcement. Given the uncertainties over FDAs clearance as well as supplies to The Global Fund, the stock is likely to remain under pressure. With other analysts, too, expected to lower their FY17 earnings estimates, there could be some de-rating for the stock. What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it, said the Spanish painter, Salvador Dali. A look at the newspapers today morning could have convinced me that Dali was talking about India Pakistan relations. Pakistans High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit had announced yesterday that the peace process between India and Pakistan stood suspended. The Indian government was left red faced. The Belvedere Club at The Oberoi, Mumbai, on a Saturday afternoon turns out to be the perfect venue to meet Hemant Kanoria, chairman and managing director, Srei Infrastructure Finance. The members-only club for CEOs has few guests at lunchtime. Kanoria, based in Kolkata, is visiting the financial capital on business. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that people who dont chant Bharat mata ki jai have no right to live in India, and have mala fide intentions to break up the country withsilence, one supposes. RSS leader Indresh Kumar said that people who dont chant Bharat mata ki jai should go to Pakistan. Gujarat BJP leader Dilip Sanghani said that prospective students will have to write Bharat mata ki jai on their application forms if they want to get into any of the educational institutions run by his trust. Yoga guy Baba Ramdev said that but for the Indian constitution, he would decapitate lakhs of Indians for not chanting Bharat mata ki jai, causing Amit Shah to break out in support of free speech. Credit Suisse's Brexit ban is a display of neutrality its clients should cheer. The Swiss financial group has warned employees against participating in events, marketing or media engagements that could influence the outcome of the UK's referendum on European Union membership, in an internal memo seen by . Most multinational investment banks with European headquarters in London should want the UK to stay within the EU. An exit would mean higher short-term costs, and might force them to relocate some staff to another European country, in order to ensure international clients have full access to the single market. Yet, overt partisanship could unnerve certain clients who don't agree. Many hedge funds want out of the EU, for instance. Nor is it clear the UK electorate cares much for what big finance has to say. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs' arguments in favour of Britain remaining probably won't do much to sway voters. Personal views, such as Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam's desire to stick with the status quo, are a different matter. These should be welcome in the interests of open debate, even if they conflict with a company's official stance. So, it helps that Lloyds Banking Group's Chairman, Norman Blackwell, can be vocal about the benefits of leaving, even if the lender he chairs is neutral. There's a more important reason for banks to be wary, however. The proscriptions of Britain's electoral laws for companies that do not register as political influencers are fuzzy at best, but sanctions for breaches are punitive. Credit Suisse's fun police - Chief Financial Officer David Mathers and in-house counsel Adrian Ratcliffe - point out in their memo that these could include criminal liability for both the bank and individuals. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has also warned some staff about the ramifications. Other banks are likely to follow. The necessity of steering clear of such costly consequences has supplanted another motive for staying out of the debate: Switzerland's own uncertainty over its relationship with the EU. A Swiss vote in 2014 to cap immigration has meant that the country's free-trade arrangement with Europe is under review. That is hardly an advertisement for leaving the trading bloc. But, the UK's electoral rules mean that few banks, let alone Credit Suisse, will dare publicly to point that out. Around 110 selected candidates of Rashtrya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) in Nagaland today launched an indefinite sit-in-protest seeking appointment as secondary teachers. The candidates launched the sit-in-protest demanding "immediate issuance of their appointment order" outside RMSA Nagaland Mission Director office here. The candidates said they had sat for the examination against an advertisement for recruitment of over 900 secondary teachers under RMSA published on December 14, 2013. The written examination was held on May 24, 2014 and result declared on June 27, 2014. The viva voce was held in July 2015 and its result declared on November 30, 2015. Thereafter, the Department issued appointment letters to over 600 selected candidates while 111 are yet to receive any appointment letters from the authorities, they said. "First phase of appointment was done in mid-December last year, whereas candidates to be appointed in the second and third phase are still awaiting their appointment," they said. The candidates reportedly submitted a memorandum to the Mission Director, RMSA Nagaland, on March 14 and met him personally on March 28, during which the Mission Director asked them to wait till second week of April, 2016. However, the candidates claimed, the MD did not give any written assurance to them when they met him yesterday. Therefore, "having waited for more than two years, we have lost our hope on the authorities and launched the agitation seeking justice," said Iheilung, a representative of the agitators. "We will resort to hunger strike if the authorities do no respond to our call within the next few days," he said. The MD, RMSA Nagaland, could not be contacted while officials said he has gone to Delhi for some official engagement. Two security personnel who were deployed on a helipad were injured in a naxal attack in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Bijapur district today, police said. A group of Maoists opened fire on jawans guarding the helipad in a restive pocket in Pamed police station area, located around 500 km from Raipur, Bijapur Superintendent of Police K L Dhruv told PTI. However, the rebels fled the spot as security forces launched a retaliatory attack on them, he said. "A Chhattisgarh Armed Force jawan and another of district force sustained injuries in the incident," the SP said, adding that they were identified as Baburam Markam and Dinesh Ogre. Soon after getting information, reinforcement was rushed to the spot and the injured were admitted to a local hospital, he said. Security forces have launched a combing operation in the region to trace the attackers, the SP said. Three members of the minority Shia Muslim community were shot dead today by unidentified men in a suspected sectarian attack in Pakistan's financial capital Karachi, police said. The victims were returning home after offering Friday prayers at the Najaf Imambargah in north Karachi, they said. "They had just left the Imambargah on their motorcycles when they were attacked," police officer Arab Mahar said. Police suspect the incident to be a sectarian attack. Karachi in the past has been rocked by sectarian violence but today's murders were the first sectarian killing in the city this year. Due to the ongoing security crackdown on criminals in the city, incidents of target killings and sectarian violence have decreased but Shia Muslims have continued to be victims of attacks. Last year, at least 46 members of the minority Ismaili Muslim community were killed by terrorists in a bus near here. As many as 306 Indian students who unknowingly came to the US as part of a fake university sting operation conducted by law enforcement agencies to expose a visa scam, have been identified and located and the process has started for their deportation, officials said here. "The 306 individuals from India who were purported students at the University of Northern New Jersey have been identified, located and placed in the immigration process for removal in accordance to proper due process," Alvin Phillips, spokesman USICE Homeland Security Investigations told PTI. Ten Indian-Americans are among 21 people arrested as part of a sting operation in which a fake university was created by US authorities to expose a visa scam that allowed more than 1,000 foreigners to maintain student and work visas. The arrested people were brokers, recruiters and employers who unlawfully and fraudulently obtained or attempted to obtain student visas and foreign worker visas for approximately 1,000 foreign nationals from 26 countries. It is learnt that a large number of students who received necessary visa and permits to work in the US as a result of the sting operation for which they reportedly paid huge sums of money are from India. These people arrested for their involvement in an alleged scheme to enrol foreign nationals as students in the University of Northern New Jersey, a purported for-profit college located in Cranford, New Jersey (UNNJ). Unbeknownst to the defendants and the foreign nationals they conspired with, the UNNJ was created in September 2013 by special agents of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The HSI sting investigation was carried out to unearth the unauthorised networks and educational institutions that are "nothing more than sham visa mills," officials said, adding that these educational institutions have no curriculum, no classes, no instructors and no real students. A day after the leader of the opposition in Tripura Assembly, Congress's Sudip Roy Barman, quit his post opposing the party's alliance with CPI(M) in West Bengal, four more leaders of the party resigned today from their posts. Sitting MLA, Ashish Saha, state Youth Congress president Sushanta Chowdhury, West Tripura Lok Sabha constituency's Youth Congress president Viki Prasad and East Tripura Lok Sabha seat's Youth Congress chief Rantu Deb resigned from their posts. We have sent our resignation to Congress president Sonia Gandhi as we were facing wrath from the party ranks, the leaders told reporters during a press conference here. "We cannot face our party activists and supporters, who treat us as traitor for forging an alliance with CPI(M) in West Bengal. Many of our leaders and activists were tortured by CPI-M cadres in our state and on this plea our support base is going to erode. "I myself also cannot support this decision of the high command to tie up with CPI-M. So we have sent our resignations to Sonia Gandhi," Saha told reporters. Sudip Roy Barman had sent his resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi yesterday. Trai Chairman R S Sharma today said cost of activation of a new mobile connection can virtually come down to zero if electronic KYC of Aadhaar is implemented as authentication will be done digitally. He said transaction costs are reduced substantially when Aadhaar is used as an authentication tool. "If you are taking a mobile connection, currently the cost of activation of a mobile customer is Rs 150 because you have to fill a customer acquisition form (CAF), you have to give paper documents... If you use digital identity authentication, you can fill the customer form, digitally sign it and get your electronic KYC. So, essentially the cost is equal to zero," Sharma said at the annual growth Net summit here. Sharma has made recommendations to the Department of Telecom (DoT) to this effect and the latter has "apparently" accepted it. After the government finalises the norms, it will enable instant identity verification using Aadhaar card bio-metric data for a new mobile connection. When operators issue new connections using the Aadhaar card, it would speed up the verification process as everything will be done online, Sharma hoped. He, however, pointed to the big gap between technology development and its implementation. Sharma as the UIDAI Director General and then as Department of Electronics and IT (Deity) Secretary had earlier recommended to DoT on making the whole process paperless. This, however, met with scepticism in some quarters on security issues. "Now, what is happening is one person who takes your PAN card is able to give 20 SIMs to different people and if they commit a crime, you will be caught. You are not aware who is using or misusing your PAN card to get the SIMs," Sharma explained. Citing the example of Peshawar attack in Pakistan which killed many children, the Trai chairman said there were six terrorists who had SIMs that were issued to a woman. "Pakistan decided to authenticate all the SIMs with biometrics and they had completed the programme last year," he added. The Department of Telecom (DoT) has asked Reliance Jio and other telecom operators to resolve their issue around inter-connection of mobile networks as it falls "within the purview of Trai" and is subject to "mutual agreement" of the parties concerned. Jio has submitted to Trai that it will need 12,727 network inter-connection points for mobile services and 3,068 for STD call facility to start commercial services. It has complained that incumbent carriers have provided it less than 4 per cent of the required ports in the first year, due to which over 65 per cent of calls to networks of the top three operators are falling through. However, COAI maintained that the operators provided Jio sufficient capacity to support 10 times more customer base and congestion in its network may be due to free calls and data services. Jio has requested Trai to take action against incumbent telecom operators for purportedly denying adequate capacity leading to call failures in its network during the trial run. COAI further said its members, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, have given 400 inter-connection ports on an average which can support 15-20 million customers using telecom services on any other network. During the test run, Reliance Jio is providing 90 days of unlimited calling and 4G data use on its network for free. It claims to have 1.5 million subscribers during this phase. The company has set a target of achieving 100 million subscribers within a year of commercial rollout of the service. The extradition of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam has been suspended but is not being called into question, France's justice minister said today. Jean-Jacques Urvoas said in a statement the delay is due to "the requirements of the investigation in Belgium" about another case - a deadly police raid in the Forest neighborhood of Brussels days before Abdeslam's arrest. The French judges still have the possibility of requesting Abdeslam's "temporary transfer" to France so that he can be questioned and charged, the statement specified. Abdeslam fled to Belgium after the November 13 attacks on Paris and was arrested March 18 after four months on the run. Since then he has been in a prison in the Belgian city of Bruges. He faces preliminary terrorism charges for the Paris attacks, which killed 130 people. The Belgian procedure "does not in any way hamper the course of investigations in France", Urvoas stressed. Abdeslam's lawyer, Sven Mary, said yesterday that it will take some weeks before his client can be extradited from Belgium to France. He said that the existing Belgian arrest warrant must be lifted first. Ahead of the crucial primary here later this month, some Indian-Americans have backed Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, saying they agree with his views onstopping illegal immigration and feel a Trump presidency could benefit India. A report in the New York Times on the sentiments of immigrants for Trumpsaid some small groups of immigrants have come forward to support him despite the fact that he has said "Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers, suggested a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US and called for the deportation of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country." The report quoted Indian-American lawyer Anand Ahuja, founder of political action committee Indian-Americans for Trump 2016, as saying that he supports Trump for wanting to stop immigrants from entering the country illegally. "You should not reward people who have broken the law," Ahuja was quoted as saying in the report ahead of the April 19 primary. "You follow the law, you get punished. That's why I like Donald Trump when he says, 'Let's build a wall'." He added, "I believe anybody who came in this country illegally should be deported." Adity Sharma, 30, a law student, and one of about 20 members of Facebook group Hindus for Trump said the business mogul is a "strong" and "different" candidate. She and the group's other members believe that current American policy is too friendly toward Pakistan and that Trump could change that to benefit India. They also approve of Trump's proposed ban on Muslim refugees, the NYT report said. "By him not being so politically correct, it does make people sit up and listen," she said in the report. Experts, however, feel that support groups for candidates, like the one launched by the Indian-American group for Trump, do not reflect the entire community's sentiments and choice. The report quoted Devesh Kapur, director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, as saying that Ahuja's group was an "outlier in an Indian diaspora that had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats." In the 2008 presidential race, 84 per cent of Indian-American voters chose Barack Obama, according to a Pew Research Centre survey. "It has no reflection of representativeness by a long, long shot," said Kapur. "Whether it's Sikhs for Trump, Hindus for Trump, in each of them you would say: 'Really? How can that be?' It's a really tiny fraction. They represent themselves, not all Sikhs." Ahuja, however, added that showing support for Trump also invites backlash and criticism. "You become a subject of mockery and fun and criticism," Ahuja said, adding that he faced a lot flak on social media for supporting Trump. The bodies of two crew members of a Japanese airforce jet that crashed in mountainous terrain were found by rescuers today, bringing the death toll to six, the defence ministry said. The U-125 jet with six airmen on board left a military base in Kagoshima prefecture on the southwestern island of Kyushu on Wednesday afternoon, but later "disappeared from radar", according to the ministry. The cause of the crash is still unknown, but Defence Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters the ministry would investigate. Yesterday, the bodies of four crewmen were found as some 600 rescuers, including troops and fire fighters, searched for the plane near the base in bad weather. Television footage showed a ripped wing and white fragments spread out on a hillside where rescuers searched for the victims. Nakatani told reporters it was "extremely regrettable and sad that excellent crew members with a bright future ahead were involved in such an accident". An advanced life support ambulance which used to be stationed outside the residence of Bihar Health Minister Tej Pratap Yadav, was removed today after criticism mounted against it. The ambulance, under 108 service, equipped with a ventilator, echo-cardiograph machine, defibrillator and paramedical staff used to be parked outside 10 Circular Road, the official residence of former Chief Minister Rabri Devi, where Tej Pratap lives with his parents. The ambulance has been removed from 10 Circular Road, Patna Civil Surgeon Virendra Prasad said. Earlier, Tej Pratap said, "It was meant for service of people who come to meet me at the residence." Principal Secretary Health R K Mahajan echoed a similar view saying it was meant for common man who might face health problem in the scorching sun during their visit to the minister's residence. As per rules, an ambulance can be stationed only at the houses of the Governor and the Chief Minister and it joins their cavalcade. Patna district has 10 elite ambulances under 108 service, out of which nine are presently functional. With one kept at the minister's residence, the public had access to only eight ambulances. Both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have benefited in terms of growth after the latter's bifurcation in 2014, a BJP leader said today. "Both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have benefited from the bifurcation," K Hari Babu, BJP's Andhra Pradesh unit chief said at a function organised at the party's state office here to celebrate Telugu New Year day, "Ugadi". The Budget size of united Andhra Pradesh was around Rs 1 lakh crore, post-bifurcation, both states presented Budgets of above Rs 1 lakh crore. The Budget figures themselves reveal the growth of the two states after the division in 2014, he said. Babu said the BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre is committed to fulfil all promises incorporated in the Act which paved way for bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. The Union Transport Ministry has already announced road development projects for the state to the tune of Rs 65,000 lakh crore to improve connectivity in rural and remote areas. Once completed, these projects will change the face of Andhra Pradesh, he said. All under-construction irrigation projects in Andhra Pradesh will transform the economic condition of the state for better after they are completed, the BJP leader said, adding the share of Andhra Pradesh in Centre's housing scheme is much higher than any other state. Schemes launched by the Modi Government, such as 'Make In India', will usher in big changes in the country. Flow of FDI has increased manifold in the last two years and this reflects investors' confidence in the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added. Thai authorities have issued arrest warrants for two persons, including an Indian, in connection with the death of a Bhutanese drug mule whose body was found in a suitcase dumped in a canal here. The Criminal Court approved warrants for Manoj Kumar Daga, 38, and Tandin Wangchuck, 31, of Bhutan. Their photos were splashed in the local daily Bangkok Post. The two were charged with colluding to possess and sell illegal drugs and concealing or destroying a human corpse, Thai media reported. The warrants followed the discovery of the body of unidentified man who was found stuffed into a suitcase thrown into the Phra Nakhon district canal on April 3. Police earlier believed the man was likely an Indian national. They later found the corpse was that of a 46-year-old Bhutanese national. He was identified by Channel 3 as Ugyen Tshering. National police chief Chakthip Chaijinda said the dead man was a member of a transnational drug trafficking gang who died when a packet of drugs he was smuggling by swallowing them had burst inside him. There were eight members in the gang, comprising Indian and Bhutanese nationals, Bangkok Post said. The gang members were believed to have each swallowed between 40-50 small packs of methamphetamines. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul has requested the National Hydro Power Corporation (NHPC) not to confine their CSR activities to project-affected areas only. In a meeting with the Chairman and Managing Director of NHPC in New Delhi yesterday, Pul said that welfare activities should benefit all people, an official release said here today. "Send clear message that you are here for welfare of the people and not merely concerned with your own project," he said. The meeting also discussed on pending NHPC projects in Tawang and Lower Dibang Valley to which the chief minister assured full support and cooperation, the release added. In a major revelation, a devotee of Asaram Bapu, arrested here, told police that the self-styled godman had conspired to eliminate a witness who had deposed against him in connection with the mysterious death of two minor boys near his ashram here in 2008. Asaram's follower K D Patel, who was arrested after his surrender before a local court here yesterday, made this revelation during police interrogation, police said. Patel had allegedly financed attack on the witness Raju Chandak. During interrogation, Patel told police that Asaram had asked him to plan an attack on Chandak, who had conducted a sting operation against him (Asaram) following the death of the two boys, who lived in his ashram located in Ahmedabad's Motera locality, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) J K Bhatt told reporters. "Asaram was upset after Raju Chandak, his former devotee, did a sting operation against him and gave a CD to the media and police. Asaram asked Patel to kill Chandak and take the help of Kartik Haldar, (who was arrested last month in connection with murder and attacks on witnesses), and used him to fire at Raju Chandak. The weapon was thrown in Sabarmati river flowing near ashram, and motorcycle used in the operation was dumped in Vadodara," Bhatt said. In 2009, after Chandak deposed before Rtd Justice D K Trivedi Commission, constituted by the state government, to probe the death of two minor boys, Asaram planned Chandak's murder, Bhatt said. Bodies of the minor boys, who lived at a gurukul run by Asaram in Motera, were found on the bank of Sabarmati river near the ashram in 2008. "Asaram is a conspirator, it is revealed by K D Patel. Now that Asaram's involvement is known, we will take action against him in future," he said. Patel was arrested yesterday by SOG after he surrendered before a local court. His name was revealed by Haldar, who told police that Patel offered him money to kill Chandak. According to police, Patel worked as a mediator between Asaram and Kartik Haldar, who was arrested from Raipur in Chhattisgarh in connection with the murder and attack on witnesses against Asaram, Bhatt said. Patel was a manager, financier and legal cell head of Asaram's Motera ashram in Ahmedabad. According to his revelation, Asaram asked him to manage the murder of Chandak. Patel provided Kartik with money, motorcycle and a revolver after which Kartik, along with one Sanju Malegao fired upon Chandak and fled. Chandak survived the attack. Asaram is currently lodged in Jodhpur jail in an alleged rape case. (Reopens BOM22) Patel was earlier arrested in a Rs 13-crore bribery case by Surat police after he offered police bribe to weaken rape case against Asaram. Asaram is lodged in Jodhpur jail since 2014 in alleged rape case. A court in Gandhinagar this week framed charges against him in another rape case, filed by a Surat-based woman. Asian countries are seeking to strengthen military ties with the United States in the face of Beijing's expansionist ambitions in the South China Sea, Pentagon chief Ashton Carter has said ahead of a regional visit that will not include a China stop. "Almost all the nations there are asking us to do more with them... Bilaterally and multilaterally," Carter told the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York yesterday, before he heads off on a trip next week that includes India and the Philippines. "Indeed, in the South China Sea, China's actions are raising regional tensions," added Carter, who was invited to Beijing and accepted a visit sometime in the spring. But the trip was shelved several weeks ago because of what a US defence official called a scheduling problem. "Countries across the Asia-Pacific are voicing concern with militarisation, and especially with China's actions, which stand out in size and scope," Carter said. He added: "That's why many of those countries are reaching out anew to the United States to uphold the rules and principles that have allowed the region to thrive." China lays claim to almost all of the contested South China Sea, which is important for international shipping and believed to hold valuable mineral and energy deposits. Neighbouring countries and Washington fear China could impose military controls over the entire South China Sea, and Beijing has in recent months built massive structures including radar systems and an airstrip over reefs and outcrops. Carter reiterated the US line urging a diplomatic solution to ease tensions in the South China Sea, where the Philippines, a US ally, is among the claimants. Ties between Washington and Beijing have been prickly over a range of issues, the South China Sea prime among them. Bill Urban, a Pentagon spokesman, said officials were "actively looking" for Carter to visit China later this year. Passenger vehicle makers, including Maruti Suzuki, Mahindra & Mahindra and Toyota, have decided to jointly work on the matter related to ban on diesel vehicles above 2,000 cc in Delhi/NCR imposed by the Supreme Court. Senior officials of the automobile majors who met in Mumbai today also decided to form a core group, which will communicate with lawyers and brief them during the case, according to industry sources. "In the meeting it has been agreed to have a joint effort between the companies. It was also decided to form a core group to communicate with lawyers and and brief them during the proceedings instead of the companies doing individually," a source added. Besides, it was decided that some select senior people in the auto industry will interact with the government officials to explain their viewpoint. Earlier this week also the carmakers had got together here in the Capital to find a way forward in the wake of the Supreme Court ban on registration of diesel cars and SUVs of engine capacity of 2,000 cc above in the capital and NCR. The apex court, in its hearing on March 31, had directed the companies to sit together and come out with the "propositions" so that some solutions could be arrived at by holding a full-fledged hearing on Saturdays, a non-working day for the apex court, to save some "judicial time". In December last year, the Supreme Court banned registration of diesel-run SUVs and cars having engine capacity beyond 2,000 cc in Delhi and NCR till March 31, as it unveiled a slew of measures to curb the alarming rise in pollution levels in the city. On March 31 this year, the Supreme Court extended the ban till April 30. Mercedes-Benz and Tata Motors-owned JLR are among the worst hit due to the order as their entire diesel model range is powered by engines above 2,000 cc. Bangladesh today handed over the body of a Japanese woman to the Japanese embassy officials here, over five months after the 60-year-old businesswoman was allegedly murdered by her kidnappers and buried in a graveyard under a false name. "We have handed over the body to the Japanese embassy officials," a police official said, adding that investigations into the case are still on. Heroi Miata, who was living in Dhaka's Uttara area for 10 years, went missing in October last year after which her mother in Japan contacted the Japanese embassy in Dhaka. Following a complaint by Japanese embassy officials in November last year, an investigation was launched and Bangladeshi police found that she was murdered on October 29 last year and was buried in a graveyard here as a Muslim under a false name. Police detained five people suspecting their link to the murder and the woman's body was exhumed on a court order for autopsy. It was found that she was abducted for ransom and later was killed as the culprits failed to realise the amount they demanded, a police officer had said. Bangladesh last year witnessed the murders of another Japanese farmer and an Italian aid worker by suspected Islamists in separate incidents. The maiden meeting of the newly-constituted Bank Board Bureau (BBB) today discussed board-level vacancies as well as recognising stressed assets and resolving issues around them. The Bureau, headed by former comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) Vinod Rai, also discussed strategies for recapitalising banks and making them more competitive, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha told reporters here. Sinha, who along with RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan was part of the initial deliberations of the Bureau in Mumbai, said filling up of vacancies of directors and non-executive chairmen was discussed at the meeting. "Second, how to better recognise the stressed assets and if there are some hurdles, then how to solve them was discussed," said the minister, who flew down here from Mumbai after the initial round of discussions. Recapitalising banks and strategies around it also figured in the discussions. "How that will happen, how the government and RBI will work with banks' boards was discussed," he said. The agenda was also to deliberate on making banks more competitive if they have to compete in this changing financial landscape. "Then, what the role of consolidation will be and how much capital it will require from the government also came up," he said. The day-long meeting was held at the Reserve Bank's office in central Mumbai. Besides Rai, Bureau members -- ICICI Bank's former Joint Managing Director H N Sinor, Bank of Baroda's former CMD Anil K Khandelwal and rating agency Crisil's ex-chief Rupa Kudwa -- were present. Its ex-officio members -- Ameising Luikham, Secretary Department of Public Enterprises, and R Gandhi, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank -- too attended. The Bureau has three ex-officio members and an equal number of expert members in addition to the chairman. In the initial phase of today's meeting, Sinha, Rajan and his deputy S S Mundra were also present, but left early. "Excellent discussions at the Banks Board Bureau meeting today!" Sinha tweeted. The Bank Board Bureau has been constituted to help the government select heads of public sector banks and financial institutions and assist banks in developing strategies and capital-raising plans. There are 22 state-owned banks in the country, including SBI, IDBI Bank and Bhartiya Mahila Bank. BBB was proposed by the government as a body of eminent professionals and officials, which will replace the Appointments Board for appointment of whole-time directors as well as non-executive chairman of PSBs. They will also constantly engage with the board of directors of all the public sector banks to formulate appropriate strategies for their growth and development. The Bureau will search and select heads of public sector banks and help them develop differentiated strategies of capital-raising plans for innovative financial methods and instruments. It will also be responsible for selection of non-executive chairman and non-official directors on the boards. Besides, the body will steer strategy discussion on consolidation based on requirements. The newly constituted Banks Board Bureau (BBB), headed by former CAG Vinod Rai, today held here its first meeting that was attended by RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and Union Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, among others. The Bureau has been constituted to recommend the government on selection of heads of public sector banks and financial institutions and help lenders in developing strategies and capital raising plans. The day-long meeting was held at Reserve Bank's office at central Mumbai. Besides Rai, Bureau members - ICICI Bank's former Joint Managing Director H N Sinor, Bank of Baroda's former CMD Anil K Khandelwal and rating agency Crisil's ex-chief Rupa Kudwa - were present in the meeting. Its ex-officio members Ameising Luikham, Secretary Department of Public Enterprises; and R Gandhi, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank also attended. The Bureau has three ex-officio members and an equal number of expert members in addition to Chairman. In the initial phase of today's meeting, Jayant Sinha, Raghuram Rajan and his deputy S S Mundra were also present but they left early. None of the members from the Bureau, officials from Reserve Bank and Sinha spoke to media about the outcome of the meeting. However, Sinha, after his meeting, tweeted, "Excellent discussions at the Banks Board Bureau meeting today!". In an event yesterday here, Sinha told reporters that the first meeting of the Bureau will discuss the path of state -run banks' consolidation and also fix timelines. There are 22 state-owned banks in the country, including SBI, IDBI Bank and Bhartiya Mahila Bank. The BBB was earlier proposed by the government as a body of eminent professionals and officials, which will replace the Appointments Board for appointment of Whole-time Directors as well as non-Executive Chairman of PSBs. They will also constantly engage with the Board of Directors of all the public sector banks to formulate appropriate strategies for their growth and development. The Bureau will search and select heads of public sector banks and help them develop differentiated strategies of capital raising plans to innovative financial methods and instruments. It would also be responsible for selection of non- executive chairman and non-official directors on the boards. Besides, the body will steer strategy discussion on consolidation based on the requirement. Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi today charged the Nitish Kumar government with delay in acquiring land for construction of at least three academic and medical projects in Bihar despite obtaining a clearance from the Centre. The Centre had sanctioned the second unit of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) and Central University at Vikramsheela, but no headway has been made in construction of these projects as the state government has failed to acquire land in this regard, he said in a statement. Any number of letters have been written by various central ministries to the state government for acquisition of land for the second unit of AIIMS, IIIT and central university at Vikramsheela, but it has neither stepped up efforts to acquire land nor replied to the letters, Modi, a former deputy chief minister, said. "The Bihar government, which does not miss a single opportunity to charge the Centre with bias against the state, now owes an explanation to the people as to why three important academic and medical institutions of national importance have not made headway so far," he said. The NDA government had made a commitment on setting up a unit of IIIT in Bihar two years ago, while the announcement for the second unit of AIIMS in the state was made by the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in 2015-16 budget. The proposal for a central university at Vikramsheela in Bhagalpur district was part of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's special package of Rs 1.25 lakh crore for Bihar and a provision for Rs 500 crore was made for creation of the said university. A five-storey building collapsed spectacularly in a matter of moments in the heart of Istanbul today, sending passers-by fleeing in terror, local media reported. A video of the incident showed people standing by, phones at the ready as the building near Taksim square -- a popular hub for tourists and shoppers -- began to rumble. A white truck is seen frantically backing away, appearing to escape just in time as the building crumbles to the ground in one fell swoop, slamming into buildings across the road and scattering the curious bystanders. The Dogan agency said the building was empty, and that no-one was believed to be trapped by the debris, however disaster teams were despatched to the site as a precaution. A similar incident occurred in February when a five-storey building collapsed near Istiklal Caddesi, a famous shopping street in the heart of Turkey's biggest city. Residents of the city remain on edge after a suicide bomber killed four people and injured dozens in an attack on Istiklal avenue on March 19. In 1999 a massive earthquake in the north-western Izmit region which left more than 17,000 dead exposed numerous weaknesses in building construction in the country, such as the use of low-quality cement and the lack of quality control. A 51-year-old Uber cab driver was killed allegedly by two passengers, both minors, in west Delhi's Mundka area, police said today. The incident took place Wednesday afternoon. The two juveniles had booked the cab from south-west Delhi's Najafgarh area. While travelling, they had a heated argument with the driver, following which one of the juveniles allegedly pulled out a gun and shot at him, police said. The duo then dumped the driver's body at a secluded place and fled. The police zeroed in on and tracked them down with the help of the online booking software, they said. "Both juveniles have been apprehended," DCP (West) Pushpendra Kumar said. The driver was affiliated to both Uber and Ola cab aggregator services. Uber in a statement later said, "Our thoughts are with the family of our driver-partner, the victim of this mindless violence. We have pro-actively shared details with the police to assist them with their investigation. Under pressure to come clean, David Cameron has finally admitted that he profited from shares in a Panama-based offshore firm set up by his late father but sold his stake months before he became Britain's Prime Minister in 2010. The admission comes five days after the leak of millions of secret documents from a Panama-based law firm which revealed that the prime minister's father, Ian Cameron, who passed away in 2010, ran an offshore firm under the name Blairmore Holdings. After as many as four partial statements from Downing Street on the leak, Cameron confessed in a television interview last night that he did own shares in theBlairmore Investment Trust,which he sold for 31,500 pounds before he becamePrime Minister. "I did own stocks and shares in the past, quite naturally because my father was a stockbroker," he told 'ITV News'. "I sold them all in 2010, because if I was going to become Prime Minister. I didn't want anyone to say you have other agendas, vested interests. Samantha (Cameron's wife) and I had a joint account. We owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000 pounds," he said. He added: "I have been very clear about the future. I have said I am not going to benefit from any family trusts. I have been very clear about the present, I don't own any shares, I don't own any unit trusts or any investments like that. "My affairs are very transparent. I am happy to make them more transparent." The Panama papers revelations have already sparked political reaction in several countries, including India, where high-profile figures have been mentioned. The papers detail how the law firm Mossack Fonseca helped its rich clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax. The papers were were passed to German newspaper 'Suddeutsche Zeitung' and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with 107 media organisations worldwide. (Reopens FGN 11) Earlier on Tuesday, Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson became the first casualty of the leaks after he stepped down from his position following revelations that he owned an offshore company with his wife but had not declared it when he entered the Parliament. According to ICIJ, Cameron's father Ian used Mossack Fonseca's services to shield profits from his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings Inc, with a series of expensive and complicated arrangements. Ian was a director of Blairmore, an investment fund run from the Bahamas but named after the family's ancestral home in Aberdeenshire. The prime minister had been under increasing pressure as he has refused to give details of his family's money held offshore in a Caribbean tax haven. "It has been a difficult few days, reading criticisms of my father and his business practices. I think a lot of the criticisms are based on a fundamental misconception, which is that Blairmore, a unit trust, was set up with the idea of avoiding tax. "It wasn't. It was set up after exchange controls went so that people who wanted to invest in dollar denominated companies could do so," Cameron told 'ITV News'. However, the opposition Labour party accused him of "hypocrisy" as Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said Cameron had in the past called people who invested in similar schemes "morally wrong". The party feels Cameron's admission had failed to end the issue and demanded full disclosure on what other financial arrangements he had benefited from as an MP and then Leader of the Opposition, Watson added. Not many are aware that it is obligatory for doctors and hospitals to provide the copy of the case record or medical record to the patient or his legal representative. Indian Medical Association (IMA) has now embarked on a campaign to raise awareness among its 2.5 lakh members about the rights of patients and the laws that govern the area. "Every patient has a right to claim medical records pertaining to his treatment and the hospitals are under obligation to maintain them and provide them to the patient on request. As per the Medical Council of India (MCI) ethics regulations, not giving records can amount to professional misconduct," said Dr KK Aggarwal, Secretary General of IMA. The MCI has imposed an obligation on Hospitals as per the regulations notified on March 11, 2002, amended up to December 2010, to maintain the medical record and provide a patient access to it. According to them, every physician shall maintain the medical records pertaining to his/her indoor patients for a period of three years from the date of commencement of the treatment in a standard proforma laid down by the Medical Council of India. If any request is made for medical records either by the patients, authorised attendant or legal authorities involved, the same may be duly acknowledged and documents shall be issued within the period of 72 hours. "As per the proposed/draft 'Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Rules, 2010, copies of all records and statistics shall be kept with the clinical establishment concerned for at least 3 or 5 years or in accordance with any other relevant Act in force at the time," said Dr Aggarwal. As per Regulation 1.3.1 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002, "Every physician shall maintain the medical records pertaining to his/her indoor patients for a period of 3 years from the date of commencement of the treatment in a standard proforma laid down by the Medical Council of India and attached as Appendix 3". As per Rule 6F (3) of the Income Tax Rules, 1962, doctors in private practice are required to preserve the daily case register as per Form 3C for a period of six years from the end of the relevant assessment year. That would ordinarily mean for seven years from the close of the accounting year. CBI today approached Delhi High Court seeking stay of a trial court order defreezing two bank accounts of a firm being probed by it in a graft case allegedly involving Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's principal secretary Rajendra Kumar. The agency, which has rushed to the high court for urgent listing of the appeal for relief, failed to get any interim order as the matter could not be taken up for hearing. The CBI got the matter listed after mentioning it before a bench of justices B D Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva, who allowed it to be taken up today. The matter was listed before Justice P S Teji, who refused to take it up, saying he cannot hear it today and listed the matter for April 18. The CBI, through its standing counsel Sonia Mathur, moved against April 5 decision of a magisterial court which has castigated the agency for "flouting" procedures with impunity and being "conspicuously ambiguous" in the investigation into corruption allegations against Kumar and others. CBI submitted that the investigation is at crucial stage and the trial court's order at this stage is bad in law. It also said that they have evidence to establish that the firm, M/S Endeavour Systems Pvt Ltd (ESPL), was favoured. Special CBI judge Ajay Kumar made these observations while ordering defreezing of two bank accounts of ESPL, which was alleged to have received contracts from Kumar, who, according to the agency's charges, had favoured it by abusing his official position. The CBI had alleged that Kumar played an "active role in the process of promising and facilitating" award of tender to a "pre-determined party" -- ESPL -- due to extraneous considerations. The agency's raid on the office of Kumar, close to the Chief Minister's office in the Delhi secretariat on December 15 last year, had triggered a political storm. The court had noted that the CBI, neither in its reply nor during the arguments, could point to any entry in the accounts which suggested that huge bribe amounts were received in it prior to December 18, 2015. The trial court order had come on a plea moved by the firm seeking defreezing of its two bank accounts. While allowing the plea, the special court noted that CBI could not explain what were the illegal commissions obtained in these accounts by the company. CBI had registered a case against Kumar and others on the allegations against the officer that he had abused his official position by favouring the firm in the last few years in getting tenders from Delhi government departments. Kumar has been booked under section 120-B of IPC (criminal conspiracy), and under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act for allegedly favouring the company in five contracts worth Rs 9.5 crore during 2007-14. Separately, the special court had also urged Delhi High Court to initiate "contempt of court" proceedings against some CBI officials, including the investigating officer in this case. The special judge sent a reference to the high court to initiate contempt of court proceedings againstDeputy Suprintendent of Police of CBI, Jayant Kashmiri and agency other officials. CBI today opposed in Delhi High Court a plea by former Union Minister P K Thungon challenging his conviction and three-and-a half-year jail term in a corruption case relating to allotment of government shops here in 1993-94. Supporting the trial court's decision, the agency told a bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul that he had misused his official position by indulging in "corruption". "The applicant (Thungan) despite being at a responsible position as the minister of state indulged in corruption and caused undue pecuniary loss to the state exchequer...," the CBI said in their affidavit. The agency submitted that the accused had extended "huge pecuniary advantage to the other accused" in the case. CBI's standing counsel Rajdipa Behura, while filing of the reply on court's direction said his application for bail deserved to be dismissed. Thungon, also a former chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, was convicted by the trial court for offences under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The trial court had also imposed a fine of Rs one lakh on Thungon who is presently lodged in Tihar Jail here. It had acquitted two other accused -- Lakhpa Tsering and Krishna -- in the case. Thungon was the Minister of State for Urban Affairs and Employment at the time of the alleged offence when the government at the Centre was led by P V Narasimha Rao. Apart from them, then Urban Affairs and Employment Minister Sheila Kaul, and one Tulsi Balodi were also accused in the case. Proceedings against Kaul and Balodi were abated due to their death during pendency of the trial. The court, however, had found Kaul guilty in the case for conspiring and committing the illegal act. CBI had registered a case in 1996 against Kaul, Thungon, Tsering, Krishna and Balodi for allegedly hatching conspiracy in allotting shops and stalls in 1994. According to CBI, the five accused had allegedly conspired during September 1993 to June 1994 for dishonestly and fraudulently obtaining undue benefit in the allotment of shops on economical licence fee basis in contravention of rules governing such allotments. The three shops were alloted on April 9, 1994 and May 12, 1994, the agency had said. In July 2015, Thungon was awarded a four-and-a half-year jail term by a trial court here in a separate graft case of 1998 relating to misappropriation of funds. Preparing to leave the White House in less than 10 months, US President Barack Obama has said that change in a country happens when citizens are informed, engaged and asking tough questions. "Change happens when citizens are informed, are engaged, are paying attention, are asking tough questions," 54-year-old Obama said at the University of Chicago. "Asking tough questions of themselves not just of others. Not too comfortable with whatever dogmas that we all attach ourselves to. And you are learning the kind of critical thinking in this school that will allow you to become really good citizens. Use it," Obama said in his interaction with students of the Chicago Law School. "I'm phasing out of this particular part of my life, but I've said this before. I believed it when I was teaching here, I believe it even more now after having been president, the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizens. I really believe that," Obama said. Obama's presidency is set to end on January 20, 2017, when the 45th president is expected to take office. China has commenced the construction of a USD 30 million commercial complex in Tibet near the Indo-Nepal border aimed at boosting trade with Nepal. A ground breaking ceremony was held at the Tibet's Burang County, which is also located close to the Indian border. According to the local government, the Tanggar International Border Trade Market covers an area of 72,403 square meters and will receive a total investment of 195 million yuan (USD 30 million). The market, once built, will become a commercial complex that incorporates merchandise trade, business, leisure, logistics and storage. Burang borders Nepal to the south and India in the southwest, state-run Xinhua agency reported. Statistics from the local port management committee showed the total trade volume reached 54.2 million yuan by last November and 557 foreign merchants have set up offices at Burang Port. China has opened up it border with Tibet to supply petroleum and other essential products to Nepal during recent agitation against the new Constitution by Madhesis that restricted supplies from the Indian side. Both countries singed an transit treaty during recent visit of Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli. China today sentenced an activist who supported pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong to four and a half years in jail, his lawyer said as President Xi Jinping oversees a wide-ranging crackdown on civil society and free expression. Wang Mo was convicted of "inciting subversion of state power" by the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, his lawyer Chen Keyun told AFP. He was among five people sentenced by Chinese courts for the offence on Friday, according to lawyers and activists. In 2014 mass rallies brought parts of the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong to a standstill for 79 days as residents called for fully free elections for future leaders, but failed to win any concessions from the Hong Kong or Chinese governments. Wang held banners in the streets of the southern city of Guangzhou in support of the protests, as did Xie Wenfei, who overseas activists said was given the same sentence by the court. Under President Xi, China's ruling Communist Party has tightened controls over civil society, detaining or interrogating more than 200 human rights lawyers and activists in what analysts have called one of the biggest crackdowns on dissent in years. Three other activists were sentenced to jail terms, ranging from one to four years, for inciting subversion in other ways, lawyers told AFP. Liang Qinhui was jailed for 18 months according to his lawyer Wu Kuiming. Another of his attorneys previously told Radio Free Asia that Liang had posted images and messages critical of the Chinese leadership and political system online, adding: "I don't think his actions amount to criminal behaviour". Xu Zhiqiang, a Buddhist monk also known as Master Shengguan, who has frequently advocated for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown and called on officials to disclose their assets, was separately given four years by a Wuhan court, lawyer Liu Hao told AFP. Huang Jingyi was sentenced to two years by the same court, Liu added. Former President Bill Clinton is offering a near-apology for his heated exchange with protesters at a campaign event for his wife, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton told supporters in Pennsylvania today that he likes protests but it "bothers" him when activists drown him out. "So I did something yesterday in Philadelphia. I almost wanted to apologize for it, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country," he said. The handful of protesters at the Hillary Clinton presidential rally yesterday were objecting to welfare reform and gun violence laws passed when Bill Clinton was in office 20 years ago. "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," Bill Clinton told the crowd. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn't. You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter." As first lady, Hillary Clinton used the term "super-predators" to describe young people in gangs in a 1996 speech about the crime bill, one of her husband's signature policy achievements. Some blacks have found the term offensive, and she has said she regrets using the term. Bill Clinton has also said he regrets signing the 1994 legislation because it contributed to high incarceration rates of black people for nonviolent crimes, like minor drug offenses. Today, he said Americans need to be able to have conversations, even when they are angry, a standard he failed to meet yesterday with the protesters. "I realized, finally, I was talking past her in the way she was talking past me. We got to stop that in this country. We got to listen to each other," he said. BJP today hit out at both Congress and CPI(M) on issues of corruption and violence in Kerala, saying they have become "ideologically bankrupt." Urging the people to vote for BJP-led NDA in the May 16 Assembly polls, senior BJP leader and Union Minister J P Nadda said the two parties, Congress and CPI(M) speak in the same voice with an intention to stop the government headed by Narendra Modi at the Centre. Noting that the image of India had changed under the able leadership of Modi, he said, "Now it is not a following India, but a leader India, it is the fastest growing economy in the world." Launching a scathing attack on the "character" of Congress leaders in Kerala, he alleged there is no leader from the party in the state that is left without a scandal or scam. "Right from the Chief Minister to every minister to every MLA, they are all involved in some scandal or scam. It is shameful when the scandal or scam is not only related to money, but is more painful and shameful when it is also related to character," Nadda said, addressing an election meeting of the BJP-led NDA here. In an indirect reference to allegations against chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the solar scam, the BJP leader said questions have been raised on the character of the Highest person in the state". "What moral validity now the state leadership has? I feel very much pained... That such type of leaders are leading the state... Such an important state which plays such an important role in the country's politics. The people here who are leading are bringing disgrace to the state," he said. Nadda also slammed the LDF-led by the CPI(M). "If I talk about LDF, it has been the politics of physical violence, intolerance, physical attacks.It does not give a good image of a literate society," he said, referring to recent political violence, allegedly involving CPI(M) cadres in Kannur district. "Violence starts when vision and ideology stops," he said. Taking potshots at CPI(M) and Congress, Nadda said the two parties were fighting elections together in West Bengal and were fighting each other in Kerala. "This is the ideological bankruptcy they have...They are not here for any ideology. They are not here for the people of Kerala. They have got nothing to do with the welfare of Kerala.The parties have got only one thing to do and that is to seek power and enjoy the power.That is the only intention they have," he said. Eight country-made bombs were found near a Christian prayer centre at Kottlepadu village near here today, police said. All the bombs were defused, they said. The prayer centre is located in a fishermen-dominated village near seashore. People who had come for prayer today noticed a pot near the centre with some mysterious objects in it. On information, police reached there and found the pot had eight crude bombs in it, which were defused by experts. In a big victory to the campaign for gender equality, the famed Shani Shingnapur temple in Maharashtra today lifted the centuries-old ban on entry of women at the sanctum sanctorum, yielding to a high voltage crusade by activists and court directions. Soon after the temple trust announced the decision to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees to the core area of the shrine in Western Maharashtra, some women devotees entered the sacred spot and offered worship. Hours after the decision was announced, Bhumata Brigade leader Trupti Desai, who had led a sustained campaign over the issue, reached the Lord Saturn temple in Ahmednagar district and offered prayers. Before Desai reached the spot, two women activists, who earlier broke away from Bhumata Brigade, entered the sanctum sanctorum and offered prayers, pouring oil on the deity in a culmination of the three month-long agitation against gender bias at religious places. Significantly, removal of the gender barrier came on the auspicious occasion of "Gudi Padwa", marking New Year by people across Maharashtra. Welcoming the decision, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said, "discrimination on the basis of caste and gender should be eliminated from the minds of the people keeping with the modern times." Earlier in the day, around 250 men jumped barricades and forced their entry into the platform, saying it had been a long tradition for the devotees to offer worship at the shrine on the Gudi Padwa day. Sayaram Bankar, a trustee of the temple, said a meeting of the trustees decided to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees, including men and women, in keeping with the Bombay High Court directive. The High Court, had on April 1, held that it is the women's fundamental right to go into places of worship and the government is duty-bound to protect it. The debate over the issue escalated after a woman last year tried to enter and offer prayers at the Shani Shingnapur temple, in 'breach' of the age-old practice of prohibiting entry of women. The agitation for women's entry gained momentum over the last few months, even as the temple authorities had later barred men also from entering the sanctum sanctorum. Terming the decision as a wise step, Desai told PTI "Der se aye lekin durusta aye" (It was late but in the end correct decision)," she said reacting to the development that signalled a victory for her prolonged fight against gender discrimination at places of worship. She hoped that trustees at Trimbakeshwar and Mahalaxmi temples in Nashik and Kolhapur respectively, too, would take similar decision to end injustice against women devotees. The father of a 17-year-old Dalit girl, who was allegedly raped and murdered in Bikaner district today demanded a CBI probe in the case. He accused the police of not investigating the case properly and demanded the CBI probe with inclusion of a murder charge in the FIR lodged with the police station in Bikaner. "The local police is not investigating the case properly. They have not included the section for murder," he said here. The minor girl's body was found on March 30 from a water bank in the premises of her college. On the intervening night of March 28-29, she was found in the room of the college's physical trainer Vijendra Singh by the hostel warden. Singh was arrested and booked under IPC section 376 (rape) and other relevant sections of SC, ST and POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act. The hostel warden was also arrested for not informing the police after seeing the girl in Singh's room. With opposition Congress and BJP demanding his resignation following CBI notice seeking clarification on alleged receipt of a car from a chit fund company, Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister Sanjay Dasburma today called on Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. The reason of the meeting, which took place the CM's five-day visit to New Delhi, is yet to be known. It was, however, not a one-to-one meeting as four more ministers--Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak (Health), Pranab Prakas Das (Energy), Arun Sahu (Law) and Pradeep Panigrahi (Higher Education)--were also present. Meanwhile, Congress and BJP made fresh allegation and demanded CBI investigation into Dasburma's alleged investment in five companies. BJP state vice-president Samir Mohanty alleged that money cheated from people though chitfund companies had been invested in five companies owned by Dasburma's family and directors of the companies were his family members. "The registered office of all these companies is L-3/2 Labour Colony in Kharavela Nagar, Unit-3 of Bhubaneswar, Dsaburma's residence," Mohanty claimed. Senior Congress leader Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra said, "The investigation should find out who are the proprietors of these companies and their turnover." While Dasburma refused to make any comment on the matter, BJD spokesman Pratap Jena said, "Congress and BJP have joined hands to defame us in the State." The CBI on April 4 had issued a notice to Dasburma asking him to submit documents relating to vehicles he and his family used. Earlier, Congress leader Mohapatra had alleged that Artha Tatwa chief Pradip Sethi had given a statement to the CBI admitting that he had given a car to Dasburma. Saudi King Salman today announced that a bridge linking his country with Egypt will be built over the Red Sea to boost trade as the two countries signed 17 agreements to enhance bilateral ties. In his televised joint conference with Egypt's president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on the second-day of his visit, 80-year-old Saudi monarch said the bridge would be aimed at boosting trade exchange between the two allied countries and connecting the two countries. President Sissi suggested naming the bridge the "King Salman bin Abdel Aziz Bridge", after the Saudi monarch. "I agreed with my brother his Excellency President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to build a bridge connecting the two countries," Salman said. "This historic step to connect the two continents, Africa and Asia, is a qualitative transformation that will increase trade between the two continents to unprecedented levels," he said. Egypt and Saudi Arabia signed 17 agreements today. The agreement includes establishing King Salman Ibn Abdel Aziz University in Sinai, building residential buildings in Sinai, developing the Kasr el-Eini hospital in Cairo, and other agreements in different sectors. During his speech, President el-Sisi greeted King Salman and described his visit as "historical". Salman arrived in Egypt on Thursday for a five-day visit considered to be his first official visit to the Egypt since he came to the throne last year. A European Union (EU) official has threatened to sanction Panama and other nations if they don't cooperate fully to fight money laundering and tax evasion, after a leak of data showed the small country remains a key destination for people who want to hide money. The 11.5-million documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca showed it helped thousands of individuals and companies from around the world set up shell companies and offshore accounts in low-tax havens. Because such accounts often hide the ultimate owner of assets, they are a favoured tool to evade taxes, launder money or pay bribes. So far, the scandal has brought down the leader of Iceland and raised questions about the dealings of the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, famous actors, athletes and the circle of friends of Russian Vladimir Putin, who some allege has profited indirectly from such accounts. Yesterday, British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged he profited from his father's investments in an offshore tax haven before being elected. "People are fed up with these outrages," said Pierre Moscovici, who heads financial affairs for the 28-nation EU. He took to task countries like Panama that facilitate such secretive, low-tax accounts. "The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking," he said. Panama is listed by the EU as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, and Moscovici urged the country to "rethink its position in this regard." The EU has to "be ready to hit them with appropriate sanctions if they refuse to change," he said. The Central American country's government is offering to cooperate more. On Wednesday, President Juan Carlos Varela announced the creation of an committee of experts to recommend ways to boost transparency in Panama's offshore financial industry. But Varela defended his country against what he called a "media attack" by wealthy nations that he says are ignoring their own deficiencies and unfairly stigmatising Panama. Ramon Fonseca, a co-founder of the law firm at the centre of the scandal and until recently a top adviser to Varela, yesterday said the only law that has been broken so far is the right to his clients' privacy. He said the biggest source of secretive shell companies is Europe and the US. "If a company in England has problems nobody says anything against England, but when it happens to a firm in Panama it's a big problem and the entire world beats up on poor Panama," Fonseca said. The Commerce Ministry today said export of betel leaves to the European Union (EU) will be subject to registration with Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA). The move assumes significance as the EU had raised certain objections over the quality of the leaves. "Export of betel leaves to EU is subject to registration with APEDA," Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said in a notification. Investment firm Fairfax India will acquire 30 per cent stake in Chennai-based Sanmar Chemicals Group for an investment of USD 300 million (about Rs 2,000 crore). Fairfax, the Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa-owned group, will make this investment through equity and fixed income securities. Sanmar Chemicals is one of the leading PVC manufacturers in India with an installed annual capacity of around 3 lakh tonnes. "Fairfax India Holdings Corporation announces, through its wholly-owned subsidiaries, it has agreed to invest USD 300 million into the Sanmar Chemicals Group," the company said in statement. "As a result of this investment, Fairfax India will acquire a 30 per cent equity ownership in Sanmar and also generate a fixed return on its investment," it added. Fairfax India will invest in two tranches. In the first round, it will invest USD 250 million, post completion of the deal. The company said it cannot invest more than 25 per cent in any single investment deal, and therefore it will fund an initial tranche of USD 250 million upon closing of the transaction. The second tranche of USD 50 million will be completed within 90 days thereafter by Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd or another investor. The first tranche is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2016 upon the satisfaction of certain conditions precedent, including the establishment of a term loan facility for USD 80 million between TCI Sanmar Chemicals Egypt, the Egyptian subsidiary of Sanmar, and its lenders, the statement said. "Sanmar, under the leadership of N Sankar, one of the pioneers of the Indian PVC industry, and his son, Vijay Sankar, and their highly experienced management team, is well placed to cater to the growing demand for PVC in the emerging markets of India, the Middle East and Europe," Prem Watsa, Chairman of Fairfax India, said. Welcoming the investment, Sanmar group Chairman N Sankar, said, "We are excited at having Fairfax as a long-term partner. Sanmar will benefit by having a financially strong shareholder with a global footprint. We look forward to the expansion of our capacities in Egypt and India creating value for all stakeholders." The Sanmar is in the process of expanding its PVC capacity in Egypt from 2 lakh tonnes per annum to 4 lakh tonnes. Once the expansion programme is completed, Sanmar will have a total PVC capacity of over 7 lakh tonnes per annum, making it one of the largest PVC companies in the world. In addition, Sanmar also manufactures caustic soda, chloromethanes, refrigerant gases, industrial salt and speciality chemical intermediates. An inter-minister panel today cleared 10 foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals worth Rs 505 crore, including that of Singapore-based Helix Investment. Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), chaired by Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das, has approved 10 proposals out of 18 on the agenda. Helix Investment Pte proposal worth Rs 475 crore was approved by the Board, a Finance Minister official said. Of the 18, two proposals were rejected and 4 including that of Sharekhan was deferred. India allows FDI in most of the sectors through automatic route. However, investment in certain sectors need clearance of the FIPB. During April-December of last fiscal, FDI into the country grew by 40 per cent, year-on-year, to USD 29.44 billion. One of two goods trains carrying 50 tank wagons of water for drought-affected areas of Latur departed from Kota workshop in Rajasthan for Miraj in Pune division today. The second goods train consisting of 50 wagons is expected to be ready for water loading around April 15. "As per instructions from the Ministry of Railways, Kota workshop received two goods trains consisting of 50 tank wagons (BTPN) each for deployment in drought-affected areas of Latur during the summer season and the trips of the trains will be arranged as per the requirement," a railway release stated. The carrying capacity of these wagons is 54,000 litres of waters per wagon. "The first rake was turned out from workshop today at 1 PM and the train departed for Miraj in Pune division at 2:10 PM. The second goods train consisting of 50 wagons is expected to be ready for water loading around April 15," it stated. According to the release, the first BTPN rake was received on March 26 and second on March 28 at Kota workshop and steam cleaning, sludge removal, de-scaling, de-greasing and then final cleaning of these wagons were undertaken to make them fit for transportation of drinking water. Earlier, on a demand from the Rajasthan government, Kota workshop had turned out BTPN rake to transport water from Nasirabad to Bhilwada in Ajmer Division from January 2016 onwards which will continue up to the summer season, the release said. Maharashtra government had yesterday said Latur district in Marathwada region will get water through train within next 15 days. The countrys foreign exchange reserves rose a whopping $4.2 billion to touch a record high of $359.7 billion in the week ended April 1, on account of rise in foreign currency assets, the Reserve Bank of India said on Friday. Reserves had marginally declined by $387.5 million to $355.5 billion. Foreign currency assets (FCAs), a major component of overall reserves, rose $3.5 billion to $335.6 billion, RBI stated. FCAs, expressed in dollar terms, include the effect of appreciation and depreciation of non-US currencies, such as the euro, pound and the yen, held in the reserves. Gold reserves increased by $789.6 million to $20.115 billion. India's special drawing rights with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) increased by $13.9 million to $1.5 billion, while the country's reserve position declined by $143.3 million to $2.4 billion The number of foreign visitors to France grew in 2015 despite jihadist attacks in Paris thanks to a sharp rise in tourists from countries like India and Chiba, Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said today. France retained its crown as the world's top tourist destination with a total of 84.5 million visitors last year, an increase of 0.9 per cent on 2014. Ayrault said the attacks on bars, a concert hall and the national stadium on November 13 that killed 130 people "limited this growth, especially in the capital". He said a "spectacular rise" of 22.7 per cent in the number of tourists from Asia accounted for much of the increase. "The number of Chinese tourists passed the symbolic bar of two million for the first time, and reached 2.2 million," Ayrault said. More than half a million Indians also visited France. In 2014, France reduced the time for visas to be issued to 48 hours for visitors from China, India and Singapore. That helped to boost the number of visas issued to Chinese visitors by 38 percent in 2015, and to 48 percent for Indian tourists. Visitor numbers from the United States were also up, by more than 15 percent, but there was a dip of 1.5 per cent in the number of tourists from Europe, especially from Germany and Switzerland. Visitors from Britain (up 3.3 per cent), Italy and Spain helped compensate for the decrease. In August last year, then-foreign minister Laurent Fabius said he hoped France would break through the barrier of 85 million visitors in 2015. Ayrault said Friday his aim "remains to attract 100 million foreign tourists a year to France by 2020". The two German journalists of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily behind the Panama Papers revelations say they are surprised by the global shockwaves the leak caused and promised more sensational disclosures. "I never imagined there would be such a reaction, that it would be on every television channel and that we would receive media requests from all around the world," one of the reporters, Bastian Obermayer, 38, told AFP. Germany's second-biggest daily in sales, the Sueddeutsche received from an anonymous source more than 11 million documents of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that cast a harsh spotlight on the shady financial dealings of many of the world's rich and powerful. The liberal daily shared the massive leak with a consortium of hundreds of international investigative journalists who have mined the mountains of data for more than a year. Since Sunday, the revelations have brought down Iceland's prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, forced the resignation of a senior UEFA official and raised the heat on British Prime Minister David Cameron and Argentine President Mauricio Macri. "We are still in the middle of the revelations," said the other journalist, who has a confusingly similar surname, Frederik Obermaier, 32, speaking at the newspaper's headquarters in Munich. "In the coming days, there will be more topics that will make big headlines in many countries." In the mass leak, "we are seeing the most different types crimes, we see how the drug cartels launder money, that arms merchants are implicated, that sanctions are being circumvented, we are seeing tax fraud," said Obermayer. "If politicians really want to stop it, they must act now." "We really need a hammer to destroy the system of offshore companies," he added, arguing that "the policy of small steps is not enough". The data showed that, as national governments take steps against tax cheats, "they adapt, they find new ideas" to divert and hide their money, he said. His colleague, Frederik Obermaier, was more reserved: "I think there is a lot of talk, but what will be done in the end is a different thing." The reporters said they don't know the name of the source at the origin of the scoop, and that they received the data on offshore companies "more than one year ago". "I do not know if it's a man or a woman, or a group. I don't know the identity of this person," said Obermaier, adding however that "we have become a bit more familiar over the year" with the leaker. At pains to protect their source, the journalists also declined to reveal whether the person had been in contact again or had reacted to the international reverberations. But they were clear on the source's "moral" motivation, that the person "wants these crimes to be made public". The government is planning to come up with standards to curb noise pollution due to aircraft operations and ensure that noise levels are maintained within permissible levels. The proposal, which has been in the works for some time, comes against the backdrop of concerns expressed in some quarters, including by resident welfare associations, about noise pollution being created by aircraft operations. To assess the situation at airports, various studies have been carried out by agencies and discussions have been going on between different government departments over the last few years. The Environment Ministry is working on a proposal for bringing in standards on noise levels pertaining to aircraft operations and measures for maintaining noise within the permissible limits, a senior official said. Multiple rounds of discussions have already taken place among various agencies including the Environment Ministry, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the official said. Back in September 2013, a study on noise levels from aircraft operations at the Delhi international airport was conducted by DGCA through a foreign entity. Besides, CPCB has done studies on few other airports, the official said. In December 2014, the regulator had issued a CAR (Civil Aviation Requirement) on 'noise management of aircraft operations at airports'. The issue of noise pollution from aircraft operations has been simmering for sometime and some entities had also moved court and tribunals in this regard. Earlier this week, the National Green Tribunal, while hearing a bunch of pleas, asked why night curfew is not implemented for flights to and from airports across the country. According to a DGCA official, the general view has been that it would not be practical to put in place restrictions for night operations on aircraft in the country. Such a move could result in foreign carriers choosing other countries rather than India as their hub for operations. Many overseas airlines operate flights at night as that helps them in reaching their destinations in the morning hours, the official said. On April 5, NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar had directed the government to file a short note on steps taken by it to notify noise-level standards for airport noise zones. The government told the bench it was adopting various aircraft noise mitigation measures like Continuous Descent Approach and mixed mode approach to bring down noise levels at airports. Continuous Descent Approach or Optimised Profile Descent is a landing method designed to reduce fuel consumption and noise compared to other conventional descents. The tribunal was hearing a bunch of pleas filed by the residents of south Delhi's Vasant Kunj and Bijwasan areas and Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC), a super-speciality hospital located near the airport. The Supreme Court had last November referred the matter to NGT, saying the parties would not claim any interim order before the tribunal. Meanwhile, as per the CAR issued in December 2014, airport operators have to update their noise maps and noise management action plans in view of the traffic growth forecast at their airports at least once in five years. Apart from having a noise management action plan based on noise mapping study, airport operators are also required to set up real-time permanent Noise Monitoring System (NMS), as per the CAR. "Airport operators shall carry out a noise mapping study around their airports including areas directly under the flight paths, to assess the existing noise loads and the population affected within the various noise contours/maps using an internationally accepted noise model and actual data (eg flights, aircraft types, routes used, radar tracks). "Noise maps shall be validated with actual field noise measurements data," it had said. Greece deported a second batch of more than 200 migrants to Turkey today under a controversial EU deal to stem mass migration as Germany announced a sharp drop in asylum claims. Greek officials said two boats carrying 124 migrants -- most of them Pakistani men -- had been sent back across the Aegean Sea where hundreds have lost their lives in a quest to reach Europe. A small group of activists leapt into the water, clutching onto the anchor of the first ferry in an unsuccessful bid to stop the deportation, while a group of protesters chanted "EU, shame on you" and "Freedom for the refugees". Hours later the boats arrived in the Turkish harbour town of Dikili where security officials escorted the downcast migrants, clutching blankets and with small backpacks on their shoulders, off the vessels. A Greek government statement said the migrants included 111 Pakistanis, four Iraqis, as well as citizens of Bangladesh, India, Morocco, Egypt, and a man claiming to be of Palestinian origin. One of the Pakistanis was not accepted by Turkish authorities at Dikili for undisclosed reasons and was returned to Lesbos, the statement said. In a separate operation, another 97 people -- mainly Pakistanis and Bangladeshis -- were returned to Turkey via the land border, Greek police said. The deportations are taking place under a deal between Turkey and the European Union, which is straining under the pressure from the unprecedented flow of migrants into its territory. Turkey has promised to take back all irregular migrants entering Greece since March 20 while Europe has agreed to resettle one Syrian refugee directly from camps in Turkey for each Syrian deported. The deported migrants arriving in Dikili underwent health checks and registration before they are due to be sent by bus to Kirklareli on the Bulgarian border, from where they are expected to be deported back to their home country. Late yesterday, Turkey's parliament approved a deal signed in 2010 allowing for the repatriation of Pakistani migrants, local media reported. The threat of deportation is aimed at discouraging people from making the often deadly crossing in flimsy boats. The transfers began Monday with some 200 migrants returned to Turkey, but then stalled after a last-minute flurry of asylum applications. Human rights watchdogs say the scheme is badly flawed, and have raised concerns that migrants may not have the chance to apply for asylum before being deported. Italian fashion brand Gucci has been prohibited from using an advertisement in the United Kingdom which features what the Advertising Standards Authority describes as an "unhealthily thin" model. The ASA ran the rule on the fashion house's new 'The Cruise 2016' campaign, which first appeared in Britain in December 2015. It judged that the female model in question, Avery Blanchard, who is seen in one still from the video leaning against a wall in a long-sleeve printed dress - with, it must be said, a noticeably thin torso - was too thin in the way it was presented, reported New York Times. The fashion house had defended the image, saying it was aimed at an "older, sophisticated audience" and that the question of whether Blanchard was too thin or not was a subjective one for the individual reader. Gucci also pointed out that "nowhere in the ads were any models' 'bones' visible, their make-up was natural rather than heavy" and that the lighting was "warm to ensure there were no hollows caused by shadows and their clothes were not revealing." However, this didn't sway the ASA, which ruled: "We considered (the model's) torso and arms were quite slender and appeared to be out of proportion with her head and lower body. We also considered that her sombre facial expression and dark make up, particularly around her eyes, made her face look gaunt. "For those reasons, we considered that the model leaning against the wall appeared to be unhealthily thin in the image, and therefore concluded that the ad was irresponsible." Campaigners have long argued that overly skinny models can damage the confidence of young women and girls by promoting unrealistic and unhealthy body images. People in Maharashtra today celebrated the Hindu New Year with traditional fervour and welcomed it as per the Shalivahan Shaka calendar. The day is commonly known as 'Gudi Padwa'. Households across the state witnessed hectic activities with family members erecting the traditional 'Gudi' - a long bamboo stick with new silk cloth, garland and a dangling neem twig. It also has a silver or metal pot on it. As per belief, the long 'Gudi' symbolises victory and inspires people to prosper materially and spiritually. The women dish out sweets like 'Puran Poli' and 'Shrikhand' along with 'Aambe daal' and 'Sunth Paak'. The New Year day is also considered auspicious for 'vaastu puja' and opening new business establishments. Several community processions were taken out throughout the state. A number of stories are associated with the festival, prominent among them being the "theory of creation" and also the day when Lord Ram returned to Ayodhya after defeating King Ravana in Lanka. The year begins on the first day of Chaitra of the Hindu calendar named as Shalivahan. It is named so after King Shalivahan, from Paithan in Maharashtra. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his greetings, "Gudi Padwa wishes to all friends in Maharashtra. Praying for a phenomenal year, full of happiness and success. China has called for fast-tracking negotiations with Sri Lanka over the USD 750 million second phase of the Hambantota port which in the past caused unease in India over concerns that the project is part Beijing's 'string of pearls'strategy to contain it. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, during talks with his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe, said both sides should speed up the negotiations on the second phase operation of the Hambantota Port in the southern part of Sri Lanka. The first phase was completed in 2014 at a cost of USD 361 million. Li said the port will give Sri Lanka full play to its geological advantage to become an important international logistic hub. The second phase of construction is expected to cost over USD 750 million. Hambantota, the home of former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, aims to service ships travelling along one of world's busiest shipping lines -- the east-west shipping route. When the three phase project is completed, it will become the biggest port on South Asia with 4,000 acres of service area with provision to accommodate 33 vessels at a time. The scale of the project evoked concerns in India that it could be part of China's 'string of pearls' strategy to corner India. China, which has been building various ports in different countries including Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan, has denied having such a strategy. During their meeting yesterday, Wickremesinghe and Li also discussed the construction of an industrial park in Hambantota. Li also welcomed Sri Lanka's decision to lift ban on the construction of the Chinese funded USD 1.5 billion Colombo Port City Project. China will work together with Sri Lanka to push forward resumption of the delayed construction of the port city project in Colombo, Li told Wickremesinghe here yesterday. "We welcome the resumption of the Colombo Port City Project and stand ready to work with Sri Lanka to push forward the construction steadily," Li said. The Sri Lankan government officially informed the Chinese investors of resuming the construction of the multi-billion dollar port city project last month, one year after its suspension. Wickremesinghe also assured Li to "speed up" the construction of the controversial China-funded Colombo Port City Project which his government stalled for an year over environmental concerns. China has been setting up a series of ports across the Indian Ocean rim referred to experts as 'string of pearls' which many see as an attempt to contain India. (Reopens FGN 7) Both sides agreed to speed up the construction of the 583 acre the Colombo Port City (CPC) project to be built by a Chinese state owned company on reclaimed land which was stalled after the Maithripala Sirisena government came to power last year. It was halted over concerns relating to its environmental impact. The project was finalised during the Rajapaksa regime. "On CPC, both sides agreed to further speed up over all and comprehensive resumption of the work at this project," Xiao Qian, Director General of the Asia Department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry told the media while briefing over the outcome of the meeting between the two Prime Ministers. He said Sri Lanka has already made the announcement to resume work. "Now we will go into further technical details," Xiao said. While there is no clarity on the technical details, reports from Colombo quoted Sri Lankan officials as saying thatthe China Communication Construction Company (CCCC), which undertook the project is demanding USD 125 million penalties (USD 3.80 lakh penalty a day) as damages for stalling the project. Sri Lankan officials also said Colombo wants relief as it is struggling to service USD eight billions obtained during the Rajapaksa regime for various projects. Reports said Wickremesinghe, who before his election had threatened to scrap the CPC for adverse environmental impact, is due to negotiate the penalty payment in his talks with Li. The Sirisena government had earlier expressed serious reservations over the clause in the agreement to hand over 20 hectares of land to the CCCC on freehold basis with complete rights. The project had created disquiet in India over the growing Chinese presence in Sri Lanka. India has also not yet endorsed the Maritime Silk Road proposal because of its strategic concerns over the Chinese domination in the Indian Ocean - often regarded as India's backyard. Elaborating further on the talks on CPC, Xiao said, "this is an important project and both the countries have strong desire to further enhance and advance this project. On the Chinese side we hope to see earlier possible resumption. We believe it will come up very fast." Before embarking on his visit to Beijing, Wickremesinghe told the Chinese media in an interview that CPC will be given a special status as a unique financial and business district with laws of its own. Union minister Y S Chowdary, against whom a non-bailable warrant was issued in a loan default case, today claimed he was now not linked to the accused company and its management has to take responsibility on repayment of the over Rs 100 crore liability. "I had relinquished all my responsibilities as a founding director (of Sujana Universal Industries Ltd) in 2010. After that I acted as non-executive chairman of the company till 2014 and now I am not connected to the company. I was neither a director when the loan was taken (in the 2012)," he told reporters here. Chowdary said though he was the founder of the company but he had relinquished his shareholding and directorship. "Now I hold less than 1 per cent share in the company. My transactions are clean," he claimed. "However, this company I understand, had given some corporate guarantee to its step-down subsidiary (while borrowing loan). It's a civil matter between company to company and a person like me in individual capacity will never have any connection to this kind of deal," he added. Based on a criminal complaint filed by Mauritius Commercial Bank Ltd, the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate here yesterday issued the warrant against Chowdary, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, after he "failed" to appear before the court. Mauritius Commercial Bank Ltd had filed the complaint in the court accusing Chowdary and others of "defaulting in repayment of loan of Rs 106 crore". The bank had submitted that it had lent over Rs 100 crore to Heistia Holdings Ltd, a subsidiary of Sujana Universal Industries Ltd, and had secured a decree from a London court. Chowdary said the company officials-- managing director and other directors have already attended the court as part of the proceedings. "I see that there is an injustice in issuing NBW against a person who is no way connected to the company... However, it is a sub-judice matter and I have no authority or right to talk." Sujana Universal Industries Ltd has to take responsibility along with local bankers (who are board directors of the company), he said adding "it is a civil matter and the company management and the local bankers will together decide on how to discharge the liability. Asked if he was planning to move a quash petition in a higher court against the NBW or appear before the court, Chowdary said he will proceed based on the advice of his legal counsel. "My legal counsel is taking up effective required steps to address this issue." The Opposition is there only to keep on putting allegations. "It is a fact that the bank has to recover this money. Legally, if liable I will come forward and settle (pay the loan). No one can say that I will run away. Company is liable and they are addressing and they (its officials) have attended the court proceedings," the minister said. "I was pre-occupied with work and was unable to appear before court. Now NBW has been issued. We will definitely follow the law of the land. Last 30 years I (as an entrepreneur) have attended many courts but no issues are pending," he added. The court has posted the matter for hearing on April 26. The Allahabad High Court's Lucknow bench today refused to interfere in an issue related to a matter involving Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik and Cabinet Minister Azam Khan and sent a writ petition on it to records. A division bench of Justices Amreshwar Pratap Sahi and Attau Rahman Masoodi delivered the judgement on a writ petition filed by a local lawyer Ashok Pandey. "The issue not being justiciable on the facts of the present case, we are not inclined to interfere and the writ petition is consigned to records", the court said. Consequently, the petition deserves to be consigned to records with the hope and expectation that the constitutional authorities- the Governor, the Speaker of the Assembly, the Chief Minister and the Minister concerned would resolve the issue at the earliest. The petitioner had sought removal of Azam from the council of ministers on the grounds that the Governor has expressed displeasure over the alleged conduct of Khan. The petition was opposed by the state government which submitted that the proceedings inside the Assembly were privileged proceedings and any statement made inside the House cannot be subject matter of judicial scrutiny. "More so the admitted position was that the Speaker himself had exercised his authority to expunge any such objectionable remarks that were not desirable to be maintained on the records of the House", it added. Advocate General, Vijay Bahadur Singh, contended that once the remarks were off the record, nothing remains as urged earlier, would not give any cause so as to seek, a judicial review through a writ petition. Governor Ram Naik had objected to remarks made by Khan against him in the Assembly on March 8 and has also written to the CM for his removal. "The terminology used by Khan in Assembly is condemnable. I have written to the CM for his removal from his ministry and informed Parliament," Naik had recently said. US President Barack Obama hoped to have a formalised process of conducting drone strikes and releasing annual information on it to the public by the time he leaves office next January. "My hope is that by the time I leave office, there is a not only an internal structure in place that governs these standards (for drones) that we've set, but there's also a institutionalised process whereby the actions that the US government takes through drone technology are consistently reported on an annualised basis, so that people can look," Obama said in his remarks at the University of Chicago. He said this was really important to him as there is a lot of misinformation about the drone strikes. "There is no doubt that some innocent people have been killed by drone strikes. It is not true that it has been this sort of willy-nilly let's bomb a village, that is not how folks have operated," Obama said. "What I can say with great certainty is that the rate of civilian casualties in any drone operation are far lower than the rate of civilian casualties that occur in conventional war," the US President said in response to a question. Citing the example of the Osama Bin Laden raid, he said this was as precise, as effective an operation that anybody would dispute was in the national security interest of the US. "We put our best people in there who operate as precisely and as effectively as any group of individuals probably ever have in the history of the planet. They executed their mission flawlessly," he added. "But there were a number of people who were killed in that, who you might describe as not the targets of the mission -- members of Bin Laden's family for example. Now, that would be counted as a civilian casualty under the standards from which you drew your information," he said in response to a question that sought justification of drone strikes involving civilian casualties. If you calculated it as a percentage, there was actually a pretty high civilian casualty rate for this extraordinarily precise mission. "Now, imagine during the height of the Iraq war or when we were still actively fighting in Afghanistan, the number of civilians who were killed in normal military operations," he said. "We talk about the number of US troops that were killed in Iraq. The number of Iraqis that were killed, primarily by AQI and those we were righting, but also by US military that was trying to be as careful as possible in chaotic situations like Fallujah or Ramadi, were in the tens of thousands," he said. Obama said part of his job as president is to figure out how he can keep America safe doing the least damage possible in really tough, bad situations. "I don't have the luxury of just not doing anything and then being able to stand back and feel as if my conscience is completely clear. I have to make decisions because there are folks out there who are genuinely trying to kill us and would be happy to blow up this entire room, without any compunction, and are actively trying to find ways to do it," he said. The first ever domestic rankings by the HRD ministry for educational institutions have invited criticism from some academicians who say that the list was full of "surprises" even as the ministry maintained that the rankings were based on the data submitted by varsities. The critics noted that placing of IIM Udaipur above IIM Kozhikode and IIM Indore was surprising as was Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) being ranked at 83 while Jamia Hamdard University has been ranked at 18. "It is surprising that Jamia which is counted among the prominent universities in Delhi after DU and JNU has been ranked poorest at 83. We get record applications for limited seats. How have they judged us?," a JMI professor asked. According to former JNU Vice Chancellor S K Sopory, certain criteria were "absurd" and HRD should do a review for further rankings. "The criteria was developed by the ministry after wider consultation but there were certain absurd columns in the performa which we could not fill in. For instance, in the details of the visiting scholars there was a column asking for the PAN of the scholar, which we had to leave blank," he told PTI. "There is a scope for improvement and HRD should do a review of the criteria for further rankings. Also I believe record keeping is an issue with universities. Not all of them maintain their records as extensively and hence could have lost out in the rankings," he added. HRD ministry officials said some top instituions could not have figured in the ranking because they did not participate in the process and submit the data for judging them over various parameters. They also said that the criteria as well as the data on basis of which the decision has been reached are also available in public domain. "The rankings have been awarded as per a well defined criteria which is available on web. The decisions have been made on basis of the data which has been furnished by the institutions themselves and that is also in the public domain," the ministry officials said. Asserting that there are some slogans that people should feel proud when chanting, veteran actor Anupam Kher today wondered why some issues, which were never discussed in the last 60 years, like 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' slogan issue, are being raked up and debated now. "There are some slogans with which we are born and we die and one should feel proud while raising these slogans," Kher said amid chants of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. He was speaking at a global summit and trade fair, organised by Jain International Trade Orgnization 'JITO Connect 2016'. "Do not pay attention to the people, who have been disputing over the issue and if they are on the TV channels, turn off the television or switch to Doordarshan, because they show real news," the Padma Bhushan awardee said. "There are some issues which were never raised in the last 60 years, but now there are a few like chanting of "Bharat mata ki Jai" that are being raked up and debated," he added. In a veiled attack on AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi, he said, "Some people say that they will not chant the slogan as it is not written in the Constitution, but I feel proud when I raise these slogans." The actor said, "I did not receive such respect while doing 498 movies, which I have been receiving in last few months through my speeches and this is because whatever I am speaking is coming from the bottom of my heart. China today said it was in "close communication" withIndia over its decision to block New Delhi's bid to have Pakistan-based terror group JeM chief Masood Azhar designated as terrorist by the UN. "China is opposed toall forms of terrorism and is willing to step up pragmatic cooperation with all countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters here. When asked about Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar's remarks that India has taken up Azhar's ban issue with China, Hong said, "on anti-terrorism we always act based on facts and in accordance with rules and regulations of UN to deal with the listing in the 1267 sanctions committee". "We always keep in close communication with all the countries including India on this issue," he said. Jaishankar this week said that India has taken up at a "fairly high level" with China the issue of Beijing blocking its bid to have Azhar designated as terrorist by the UN. Last week, China stopped UN sanctions committee from designating Azhar as terrorist, maintaining that the case "did not meet the requirements" of the Security Council. This is not the first time China has blocked India's bid to get Pakistan-based militant groups and leaders proscribed by the UN. The UN had banned the JeM in 2001 but India's efforts for slapping sanctions on Azhar after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack also did not fructify as China, that has veto powers, did not allow it apparently at the behest of Pakistan again. Last July, China had similarly halted India's move in the UN to take action against Pakistan for its release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, saying its stand was "based on facts and in the spirit of objectiveness and fairness" with Beijing again claiming at the time that it was in touch with New Delhi. On whether the issue on the ban on Azhar can be resolved this year as it dragged into the second year, Lu said, "It is not the length of time." "It is a matter of time whether a consensus can be reached on the basis of full consultations." Asked to identify specific reasons for blocking Azhar's ban, Lu said, "Consultations in the Security Counciland internal discussions of its affiliations has its own set of discussion rules." "All the details are closed to the outside (world) for all these years the formation of the Security Council and its affiliations have been acting in line with these discussion rules. We hope there will be enough time for full discussion to reach a decision that can be justifiable in the international community," he said. The US, supported by two other permanent members of UN Security Council -the UK and France- moved the proposal at the UN's Sanctions Committee 1267 in the second-half of the last month to proscribe Azhar. The proposal, which was finalised after "consultations" between Washington and New Delhi, said JeM is a designated terror outfit and so its leaders cannot go scot-free. It was submitted just a day before the inauguration of US President Donald Trump. China has been constantly opposing efforts to get Azhar banned by the UN, which has proscribed his outfit JeM in 2001. The Chinese opposition is also seen by many as an action taken at the behest of its "all-weather ally" Pakistan. After the attack on the IAF base at Pathankot in January last year, India in February wrote to the UN calling for immediate action to list Azhar under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee. The efforts faced stiff opposition by China, which twice put a "technical hold" before finally blocking the Indian proposal in December. The India story today got some unqualified support from ICICI Bank MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar, who said it remains "a very, very bright spot" because of its young demography and has leapfrogged technology like none other. Driving the change is increasing use of Internet, which is changing the business model in India where technology is driving companies to transform themselves, she said. Kochhar was speaking as the chief guest at the Graduation Day ceremony at the Indian School of Business (ISB) here. "Global economy continues to be very uncertain, very volatile. India is a very, very bright spot," she said, laying a premium on its young demography. She reminded the audience that one has to learn all the time as "skills become obsolete in no time". "Illiterates of 21st century are not going to be those who cannot read or right. Illiterates of 21st century are going to be those who cannot learn, relearn and unlearn," Kochhar said. ISB Dean Professor Rajendra Srivastava said it is "heartening" to see that the alumni are already taking on leadership positions. "We now have over 400 alumni who have moved into CXO positions in the corporate world," he said. " The alumni of ISB (which has now completed 15 years) have also started over 400 businesses. The US has said it encourages "direct" Indo-Pak talks to reduce tensions and believes that both countries would benefit from "practical cooperation", hours after Pakistan said the bilateral peace process stands "suspended". "We believe and it's been our longstanding position that India and Pakistan stand to benefit from the normalisation of relations and practical cooperation, and we encourage them to do so, to engage in direct dialogue that's aimed at reducing tensions between the two governments and two countries," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. "We strongly support those efforts, because we believe it will lead to greater stability and peace in the region and is to the benefit of both countries," Toner said in response to a question on Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit's remarks that presently the peace process was "suspended". Reiterating that there is no change in US' Kashmir policy, Toner yesterday said the "pace, scope, and character" of talks on this issue depends on India and Pakistan. "Our policy regarding Kashmir has not changed. The pace, scope and character of those discussions or any discussions on Kashmir must be for the two sides to determine," he said. "We support any and all positive steps that India and Pakistan can take to forge closer relations," Toner said. Basit, in his remarks in New Delhi yesterday, also made a pointed reference to a former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, currently in detention in Pakistan on charges of spying. The US official, however, did not respond to questions on the arrest of the Indian national. "I am aware of the reports about the arrest. I don't have any details of the arrest," Toner said. The defence relationship between India and the US has emerged as that of a "strategic handshake", Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said today on the eve of his second visit to India. "Over the course of my years at the Defence Department, I have seen a remarkable convergence of US and Indian interests - what I call a strategic handshake," Carter said in his major policy speech on Asia Pacific on the eve of his nearly two-week overseas trip that will take him to India, the Philippines and the Middle East. Travelling to India at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Manohar Parrikar, Carter would be visiting the Defence Minister's home state of Goa, and New Delhi where he would be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Aptly reflecting the defence relationship between the two countries, Carter for the first time used the term "strategic handshake" from a public forum to describe defence ties between the two largest democracies in the world. "As the United States is reaching west in its rebalance, India is reaching east, in Prime Minister Modi's 'Act East' policy that will bring it farther into the Indian and Pacific Oceans," Carter said in his remarks before the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR), a top American think-tank. Carter said this handshake is reflected in the Joint Strategic Vision Statement that President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Modi released last January, and the 2015 Framework for the US-India Defence Relationship, which he signed with Parrikar last year in New Delhi. The Defence Framework is foundational and will guide the US-India defence relationship for the next 10 years. "There is another handshake between our countries as well - a technological one. In 2012, the United States and India created the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative, or DTTI, to leverage the convergence between our industrial and technological abilities in an unprecedented way," Carter said. DTTI grasps hands with Modi's 'Make in India' campaign to expand the nation's industrial and defence base and will lead to greater co-production and co-development of defence capabilities. In his meetings with Modi and Parrikar, Carter said, he would be discussing the progress the two nations have made in aircraft carrier, jet fighter, and jet engine collaboration. "We will talk about exciting new projects, the details of which I cannot go into this afternoon," he said. "The US-India relationship is destined to be one of the most significant partnerships of the 21st century. Ours are two great nations that share a great deal: democratic governments, multi-ethnic and multicultural societies with a commitment to individual freedom and inclusivity and growing, innovative, open economies," Carter said. "There is so much potential here, which is why we're seizing every opportunity we can," Carter said adding that last year, the Indian government reached out to the US to discuss the possibility of launching joint production on a new platform, to build on the work Lockheed Martin and Indian industry achieved on the C-130J aircraft programme, and what Boeing and Indian industry will achieve in the production of Apache and Chinook helicopters India recently purchased. A team of senior Pentagon officials and the defence industry are currently now in India looking at the potential co-production of fighter aircraft. These conversations represent the growing enthusiasm of the US-India partnership, and even more than that its promise, he noted. Acknowledging that these negotiations can be difficult and global competition is high, Carter said he has no doubt that in the coming years, the US and India will embark on a landmark co-production agreement that will bring the two countries closer together and make the militaries stronger. "As our strategic and technological interests have drawn together, so too have our military ties. We are coming together operationally across domains - by air, land, and sea - to collaborate in humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, maritime security and domain awareness," Carter said. This week, India and the US will also conclude several important agreements, including one on commercial shipping information exchange, which will make many new things possible in the future, Carter said. Shares of Ipca Laboratories slumped over 14 per cent today as Switzerland-based Global Fund, which financially supports various disease eradication programmes, will not source malaria drug from the company. The stock plunged 14 per cent to Rs 480 - its 52-week low -- on BSE. On NSE, it tanked 14.29 per cent to hit its one-year low of Rs 478.60. Switzerland-based Global Fund will not source malaria drug from Ipca Laboratories as the company has received a warning letter from the US health regulator for lapses in manufacturing norms at three of its facilities. In a regulatory filing, Ipca Laboratories yesterday said the Geneva-based organisation that provides financial aid against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, has informed the company about its decision on Wednesday via a letter. "In the light of the warning letter issued to the company by the USFDA on January 29, 2016, they (The Global Fund) have re-assessed the situation and following a risk consideration exercise, will not allocate any volume of Artemisinin based Combination Therapy (ACTs) to the company," Ipca Laboratories said. The Syrian conflict has acted like a greenhouse for extremist groups which are now spreading "like a cancer", the UN chief said today, urging greater cooperation to prevent radicalisation. The war raging in Syria has "provided the perfect breeding ground for extremist and terrorists to take root in the society," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Geneva. "Now (the Islamic State group) and all the extremists are spreading like a cancer around the world," he warned in remarks on the sidelines of a high-level conference on preventing violent extremism. In an earlier address to some of the 700 delegates -- among them around 30 ministers and deputy ministers -- Ban urged a radical rethink of ways to counter the threat from IS and other groups. "Evidence shows that security and military responses alone cannot defeat this scourge," he said, stressing that heavy-handed responses have sometimes "proven to be counter-productive" and can "end up further fuelling violent extremism". In January, Ban launched a global action plan, asking countries to come up with national plans to address the problem. Ban's plan encompasses 79 recommendations, from boosting education to promoting human rights to counter the recruitment drives of groups like IS and Boko Haram which prey on disaffected youth. It also calls for countries to try to appeal to fighters who have joined groups like IS to return home by offering education and job opportunities, and urges governments to engage with social media to find ways to challenge the jihadists' messages. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, whose country last month was rocked by terror attacks that killed 32 people, was among the many ministers who voiced support for Ban's plan. "We must remain vigilant to ensure that our fight against terrorism respects freedom of expression, the freedom of citizens," he told delegates. "Respecting human right is not only an efficient way to fight terrorism, but it is also a way to not give in to the terrorists," he said. The Syrian conflict has set the stage globally for the Islamic State group to spread like cancer or Ebola, the UN chief and the top UN Syria envoy said today. The war raging in Syria has "provided the perfect breeding ground for extremists and terrorists to take root in the society," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Geneva. "Now (the Islamic State group) and all the extremists are spreading like a cancer around the world," he told reporters on the sidelines of a high-level conference on preventing violent extremism. In an address before some of the 700 participants, including around 30 ministers and deputy ministers, UN envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura meanwhile said IS and other violent extremists are "like Ebola. They are looking for a weak body" to infect. "Any conflict that we allow to be protracted... Is now being infiltrated by the DNA of (IS) or international terrorism," he said. But both Ban and de Mistura insisted that, like disease, the extremist threat can be beaten with the right remedies. "Ebola has been treated and... I think (IS) and international terrorism can be treated, but with a series of different medicines used simultaneously," de Mistura said. Ban meanwhile urged a radical rethink of ways to counter the global terrorist threat, which he stressed was "not rooted or confined to any religion, region, nationality or ethnic group." "Evidence shows that security and military responses alone cannot defeat this scourge," he said, adding that heavy-handed responses have sometimes been "counter-productive" and can "end up further fuelling violent extremism". UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein agreed, telling the conference that "to fight violence, we must move beyond violence, lawful or otherwise." "If counter-terrorism operations compound fear and divisiveness... (they) do the extremists' work," he said. In January, Ban launched a global action plan, asking countries to come up with national plans to address the problem. His strategy encompasses 79 recommendations, from boosting education and promoting human rights to countering the recruitment drives of groups like IS and Boko Haram which prey on disaffected youth. It also calls for countries to try to appeal to fighters who have joined groups like IS to return home by offering education and job opportunities, and urges governments to engage with social media to find ways to challenge the jihadists' messages. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, whose country last month was rocked by terror attacks that killed 32 people, was among the many ministers who voiced support for Ban's plan. Italy today recalled its envoy to Egypt in protest over lack of progress in a probe into the murder of an Italian student in the Arab country. Italian foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni ordered the return of ambassador Maurizio Massari for consultations on the torture and murder of Giulio Regeni who was killed in Cairo and his body discovered in February. Egypt said it is waiting for the return of its investigators from Italy to know the results of the meetings they held during the past two days to investigate the murder of according to Ahmed Abu Zeid, spokesperson of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Abu Zied added that the ministry had not yet been officially informed about Italy's recalling of its ambassador, especially when there was no statement released about the results of meetings between the Egyptian and Italian investigators in Rome. Jamia Millia Islamia has issued a show-cause notice to a professor, barely a week before his retirement, for making "derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi" in a letter sent to the Vice Chancellor last December. Mohammad Sultan Bhatt was against inviting Modi for the annual convocation and had written to the VC communicating the decision of the Jamia Teachers' Association in this regard in December last year. However, he received the notice three months after writing the letter and eight days before retirement. He superannuated on March 31. The notice from Registrar Shahid Ashraf accused Bhatt of "convening a meeting of extended executive council of Jamia Teachers' Association and making denigrating remarks against the Prime Minister." "You are required to explain why disciplinary action should not be initiated against you for indulging in misconduct which caused serious damage to interest, reputation and secular image of the university," the notice read. For his part, Bhatt said "I don't know what made the university to be wide awake on the issue three months later. It has been deliberately done prior to my retirement". Jamia spokesperson Mukesh Ranjan said "we have recieved his response and the matter is closed". The professor, however, maintained he has no information about the closure. The varsity had in November last extended an invite to Modi, which triggered a controversy as a number of alumni demanded withdrawal of the invitation in view of the comments made by Modi against the varsity in 2008. While the university had rejected the demand to withdraw the invite, the Prime Minister had expressed his inability to preside over the event due to time constraint. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa today greeted Governor K Rosaiah on the occasion of Ugadi. Jayalalithaa sent a bouquet of flowers and a letter conveying her Telugu New Year greetings to the Governor, besides wishing him over the phone. "On this joyous occasion of Ugadi, I convey my best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year to you, your wife and all the members of your family," she said in her letter to the Governor. She also conveyed her greetings to Rosaiah over the phone and the Governor thanked her, a government release said. Later, Rosaiah and his wife Sivalakshmi visited the Tirumala Tirupati Devastanam temple here and offered prayers, a Raj Bhavan statement said. Kansai Nerolac Paints has signed up with IPL franchise Gujarat Lions as associate sponsor. Suresh Raina-led Gujarat Lions is one of the two debutant teams this IPL season which will begin on April 9. The association between Kansai Nerolac and Gujarat Lions follows some aggressive advertising by the brand during the recently concluded ICC World T20. ************ Shuttl to expand bus service in metros within a year * Bus aggregator platform Shuttl today said it will expand its service to metro cities within a year. "Shuttl is looking to expand to other metro cities in next 12 months," said Amit Singh, Co-founder and CEO, Shuttl. The company provides bus shuttl service in Delhi-NCR by aggregating fleet of about 500 buses. Paisabazaar ties up with 3 banks for savings a/c services * Online financial marketplace Paisabazaar.Com today said it has tied-up with three private sector lenders to offer savings account services to retail customers. "Online financial marketplace Paisabazaar.Com has expanded its business portfolio by entering into strategic partnership with Yes Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and IndusInd Bank for offering savings account services to retail customers," a company statement said. Citing industry estimates, it said only 40 per cent of India's population have access to savings account. However, this segment has been witnessing steady growth over the past few years and trend is expected to move upwards with the increase in penetration of Internet and mobile services in India, Paisabazaar.Com said. * * * * * * * * * * Haryana constitutes DLCC to boost investment * The Government of Haryana has constituted a District Level Clearance Committee (DLCC) under the chairmanship of Deputy Commission with a view to facilitate prospective investors in Haryana, Chief Minister Manohar Lal said today. This will help in providing speedy clearances to projects with investment of up to Rs 10 crore or involving Change of Land Use (CLU) requirement of up to 1 acre. Manohar Lal was deliberating in the state level Stake Holders sensitisation workshop on 'new initiatives ease of doing business in Haryana' organized in Gurgaon today. He said the dates of DLCC should be put on website of the district and also publicised in newspapers. The minister emphasised on speedy grievances redressal and said that e-Biz portal has been launched for online business clearances. * * * * * * * * * * Wheat arrival in Haryana mandis touches 66.59 lakh tonnes * The arrival of wheat in the grain markets of Haryana during the procurement season has touched an all time high of 66.59 lakh tonnes. Around 63.77 lakh tonnes had arrived in the mandis of the state during the corresponding period last year, a spokesperson of the Food and Supplies Department said here today. The official said, of the total arrival, more than 66.58 lakh tonnes have been procured by the government agencies at Minimum Support Price. He also said district Sirsa was leading in wheat arrival with more than 10.27 lakh tonnes arrived so far. * * * * * * * * * * Kalyan Jewellers sees 15-20% sales growth on Akshaya Tritiya * Kalyan Jewellers which will exhibit an exquisite collection of gold jewellery on Akshaya Tritiya expects 15-20 per cent rise in its sales growth on the auspicious day. The company said it will exhibit a specially curated selection of exquisite jewellery on Akshaya Tritiya which falls on May 9 this year. "We expect people to come in large numbers and expect sales growth at 15-20 per cent compared to last year and further believe Akshaya Tritiya will trigger momentum for jewellery sales for rest of the year", Ramesh Kalyanaraman, Executive Director, Kalyan Jewellers said. Western Union launches '30 Days of Betters' campaign * Global payments services player Western Union Company has launched '30 Days of Betters' campaign offering its receivers a chance to win up to Rs 1 lakh every day during the 30 days of Ramadan this year. "Money transfer recipients in selected locations in India will get a chance to contribute the amount they win towards the betterment of society or oneself during the 30 days of Ramadan," it said in a statement. The programme is named '30 Days of Betters' campaign. It has been launched simultaneously in the United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Indonesia and India, and will run until Eid Al Fitr in early July, it said. ******** Samsung opens first premium experience zone in Mumbai * Samsung India today opened its first premium experience 'Samsung Galaxy Zone' at electronic retailer Croma's flagship store in Mumbai to take advantage of the growth momentum in smartphone sales in the country. The move is aimed at enhancing the product experience for consumers as part of an overall retail innovation plan being rolled out across India. "'Samsung Galaxy Zone' is an innovative way of elevating their consumer's shopping experience," Samsung India Senior Vice President, Mobile and IT Ken Kang said. ******** PayUmoney launches first paperless SIM based POS terminal * Digital payment firm PayUmoney today launched a paperless sim based point-of-sales (POS) terminal for Rs 7,000 a unit. "With no monthly rental, no minimum balance, and the option to link any bank account, the PayUmoney POS terminal, costing a mere Rs 7,000, as opposed to Rs 15,000-25,000 charged by traditional channels, accepting all credit and debit cards, seeks to convert the retail experience," PayU said in a statement. The POS terminal can be operated using a pre-paid or post-paid SIM and does away with the use of paper receipts. "We decided to do away with paper transaction slips. A transaction acknowledgement will be sent to the buyer's mobile with a link that opens up a soft copy of an e-slip. The merchant gets an email copy of the same, every time a transaction takes place," PayUmoney CEO and Co-founder,Nitin Gupta said. US Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Baghdad today for talks with top Iraqi officials on the war against the Islamic State jihadist group. Kerry will meet Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, State Department spokesman John Kirby said. He will "underscore our strong support for the Iraqi government as it addresses significant security, economic, and political challenges," Kirby said. Iraq is battling IS, which overran swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014, in a campaign that has been hit hard by plummeting world prices for oil, on which it relies for the vast majority of its revenues. Abadi is also seeking to replace the current cabinet with a government of technocrats, a move that has faced opposition from powerful parties and politicians that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds. Kerry, who is visiting Iraq for the first time since September 2014, will "discuss the (US-led) coalition's continued support for Iraqi-led efforts against" IS, Kirby said. US-led strikes and training have helped Iraqi forces regain significant ground from the jihadists both north and west of Baghdad. The top US diplomat travelled to Iraq after visiting the small but strategic Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, where he held talks with Gulf Arab foreign ministers on the conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Kerry called on Iran to help end the wars raging in Yemen and Syria, where Tehran and its Gulf Arab rivals are backing opposing sides. US Secretary of State John Kerry vowed today to turn up the heat on the Islamic State jihadist group as he visited Baghdad to show support for Iraq's crisis-hit government. Kerry, on his first visit to Iraq since 2014, met with senior officials including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to discuss the fight against the extremist group. He told journalists that the US-led coalition and Baghdad would "turn up the pressure even further" on IS, which has suffered a string of territorial losses in recent months in both Iraq and Syria. The coalition is carrying out air strikes against IS, and is also providing training and arms to Iraqi forces. Kerry said that retaking Mosul -- the largest Iraqi city under the jihadists' control -- remained "at the top of the list in terms of priority". The Iraqi army said last month that its troops and allied paramilitaries had begun what was expected to be a long and difficult offensive to retake Iraq's second city. Iraq is battling IS, which overran swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014, while it grapples with a financial crisis caused by plummeting world prices for oil, on which it relies for the vast majority of its revenues. Abadi is seeking to replace his current cabinet with a government of technocrats, a move that has faced opposition from powerful parties and politicians that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds. "What we have signalled very clearly today... Is we support Prime Minister Abadi and his government as it addresses these very complex security, economic and political challenges," Kerry said during his visit that lasted several hours. "We urge everybody to work together. We urge everybody to put the interests of Iraq, writ large, ahead of personal interests or sectarian interests," he said. Abadi has announced a series of reform measures aimed at curbing government waste and corruption, and improving abysmal public services. But he has faced significant opposition behind the scenes, and little in the way of real, lasting change has been accomplished. In February, the premier called for "fundamental" change to the cabinet so that it would include technocrats and academics, as opposed to the current lineup of party-affiliated ministers. Abadi presented the names of proposed candidates to parliament last week, but some of the nominees have faced significant pressure to withdraw, and at least one has already done so. Britain, France and Russia backed the new UN-brokered unity government in Libya and called for international support for its efforts to reunite and stabilise the deeply divided country. Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said creating a central authority that can work effectively throughout the country is especially important "in light of the terrorist threat" and the presence of fighters from the Islamic State extremist group, also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh. Libya has been dominated by an array of militias since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Western nations view the new government, whose leader arrived in the capital Tripoli last week, as the best hope for ending Libya's chaos and uniting all factions against an increasingly powerful Islamic State affiliate, which has seized the central city of Sirte. Another government, based in the eastern city of Tobruk, still opposes the UN-backed body. Churkin said "it's good that some progress has been made but the situation in the country ... Continues to be nearly catastrophic." The UN needs to continue working to make sure "there is maximum unity among various forces in the country," he said, noting that parliament hasn't yet approved the unity government and some influential groups of people remain opposed. "They should gradually move, hopefully with the support of all the political forces, to reunite the country and to create a new central authority which will be effectively working throughout the country," Churkin said. "For the international community to help the Libyans fight this terrorist threat there must be central authorities." France's UN Ambassador Francois Delattre said the unity government has a "historic opportunity" to create the conditions for stability "and roll back the chaos on which Daesh has thrived." "Libyans must know ... That the international community stands behind them and will support them in their quest for stability," he stressed. Britain's UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft welcomed "the good news" that the head of the new government, Fayez Serraj, is now in Tripoli. He stressed the importance of "a step-by-step process" supported by the international community to accelerate the establishment of a stable and successful government. A fugitive suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks was arrested in Belgium today, French police officials said, after a raid Belgian authorities said was linked to the deadly March 22 Brussels bombings. The suspect, Mohamed Abrini, is believed to be the mysterious "man in the hat" who escaped the double bombing at the Zaventem airport, according to French officials. If true, that would mean Abrini had a key role in both attacks carried out by the Islamic State cell that left a total of 162 people dead 130 in Paris and 32 in Brussels. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity to offer details about the ongoing Belgian investigation, which has also involved French anti-terror police. Today's arrest of at least two people came a day after Belgium released photos and video of the airport suspect. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office confirmed "several arrests" but refused to provide more information. Five hours after the initial detentions, authorities were still carrying out a raid in the same Anderlecht area of Brussels. The government and top security officials gathered in a national security council meeting in the wake of today's detention to assess the consequences of the operation. Abrini was the last identified suspect still at large from the November 13 attacks in Paris which killed 130 people, although his precise role has never been clear. He is a 31-year-old Belgian-Moroccan petty criminal believed to have travelled early last summer to Syria where his younger brother died in 2014 in the Islamic State group's notorious francophone brigade. He has not resurfaced since the emergence of surveillance video placing him in the convoy with the attackers headed to Paris. He had ties to Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who died in a police standoff on November 18, and is a childhood friend of brothers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam. He went multiple times to Birmingham, England, last year, meeting with several men suspected of terrorist activity, a European security official has told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to provide details on the investigation. He said the meetings, including one later last summer, took place in several locations, including cafes and apartments. He was travelling with Salah Abdeslam, who is in jail in Belgium for involvement in the Paris attacks, in the convoy headed to Paris in the 36 hours leading up to the attacks. The man in the hat was with the two suicide bombers who killed 16 people at Brussels airport on March 22. A second arrest could also be linked to the Maelbeek subway bombing that killed another 16 people during rush hour that morning. Yesterday, authorities released photos and video of a man wearing a dark hat, leaving the airport on foot, walking to the nearby town of Zaventem and then into Brussels, where all traces of him were reportedly lost. VRT. With demands being raised in various quarters to make its stand clear on closed liquor bars in poll-bound Kerala, the CPI(M) today said it "will not reverse any of the decisions" of the Congress-led UDF government in this regard, if it comes to power. The clarification, by CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, assumes significance as the UDF and LDF have been coming out with divergent views on the issue. "If the LDF comes to power, it will not reverse any of the decisions already taken by the Kerala government on the liquor policy," Yechury told reporters in Delhi. "Our policy has always been to further reduce liquor consumption in Kerala society. So our effort is to further reduce liquor consumption," he said, indicating that if voted to power, LDF will not reopen the 700-odd liquor bars, shut by UDF government in 2014 as part of its liqour policy, which envisages a total prohibition over a 10-year period in the state. A controversy had erupted after CPI(M) politburo member, Pinarayi Vijayan stated that LDF was not for total prohibition, but for abstinence. Joining the issue, the Catholic church in Kerala had yesterday demanded that LDF make it clear whether it will reopen closed bars if voted to power in the May 16 Assembly polls and also wondered why it was "secretive" about its liquor policy. Reacting to Yechury's statement, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy attributed the CPI(M)'s "change of mind" to "fear of backlash" in the coming polls. "UDF's liquor policy is very clear. There is no lack of clarity in its policy," he said. Chandy said government had paid a "heavy price" due to the closure of bars as some of the affected bar owners were allegedly behind the latest allegations raised by solar scam accused, Saritha S Nair. Opposition leader and CPI(M) veteran, V S Achuthanandan said availability of liquor will be reduced in phases in Kerala. Queen of Pop Madonna returned to the UK this morning with the hope of being reunited with her eldest son Rocco. Following a bitter four-month custody battle with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie over the 15-year-old, she touched down in London's Heathrow Airport, dressed all in black, reported Telegraph online. The 57-year-old mother-of-four reportedly made the plans to visit the UK in order to get Rocco back in school, following his holiday in the Maldives with his father and step-mother. Rocco has been living in London with his filmmaker father and Guy's new wife Jacqui, along with their three young children, ever since reportedly leaving his mother before Christmas. He is alleged to prefer his "normal family life" in the British capital. Last month, a High Court judge in London urged Madonna and Ritchie to try to settle the four-month battle over their son and focus on enjoying what is left of Rocco's "precious" childhood. Justice MacDonald said it would be a "very great tragedy" if more of the "fast receding" days of Rocco's youth were taken up by litigation. The judge warned the pair that "summer does not last forever" - and said their child would "very quickly" become an adult. He pleaded with them to resolve their differences in a ruling on the latest stage of litigation following a hearing in the Family Division. MacDonald ruled that Madonna could halt legal action in England - and allow a judge in New York to make decisions. Madonna's arrival in the UK signals the end of Rebel Heart global tour, which made her the most successful solo touring artist of all time. She has completed 82 shows and earned over 120 million pounds from the tour. The Maharashtra government has assured the Bombay High Court that it would adopt measures to ensure that Rs 100 stamp papers are easily available with vendors. Government Pleader G W Mattos also informed that the state government had exempted the stamp duty chargeable on affidavits or declarations made by people for obtaining caste, income, domicile and nationality certificates. For these purposes, Rs 100 stamp papers would no longer be required, the pleader told a division bench of Chief Justice D H Waghela and Justice M S Sonak. Accordingly, the bench recently disposed of a petition it was hearing suo motu on a newspaper report which said that stamp papers of Rs 100 denomination had disappeared and were not available with the vendors, thereby causing hardship to students who have to give declarations for seeking admission in colleges. The report said people were forced to buy stamp papers of higher denominations for petty affidavits, lease agreements and visa applications in view of shortage of Rs 100 stamp papers. Moreover, vendors were selling Rs 100 stamp papers at double or triple the face value due to short supply. The report further said that the shortage of stamp papers has especially hit students seeking admissions to educational institutions as they need to submit affidavits along with admission forms. In an affidavit, Additional Controller of Stamps denied shortage of stamp papers of Rs 100 denomination. The affidavit said the government had granted stamp vending licenses to bar associations for sale of stamp papers and court fee labels in court premises. Accordingly, stamp vending licences have been issued to Dadar Bar Association, Bombay Advocates Bar Association at Small Causes Court, Mumbai, Motor Accident Claim Tribunal Bar Association, Borivali Advocates Bar Associations, Advocates Associates of Western India and Mazagaon Court Bar Association. Maharashtra cadre IPS officer Meeran C Borwankar was today appointed as Director General, Bureau of Police Research and Development(BPR&D),a consultancy organisation under the Centre for modernisation of police forces. The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has appointed Borwankar, a 1981 batch IPS officer, as DG BPR&D till the date of her superannuation, i.E. September 30, next year, an order issued by Department of Personnel and Training said. She is presently working in her cadre state Maharashtra. In her long career, Borwankar has also worked in Maharashtra's anti-terrorism squad (ATS). In another order, Yellapantula Mallikarjun- a non- government official- has been appointed as Officer on Special Duty to Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu. He has been appointed to the post till March 26, 2019, the date on which he attains the age of 60 years or on co-terminus basis with the Minister's tenure, it said. Newly-appointed BJP Karnataka chief B S Yeddyurappa today asserted that his main task would be to uproot the "corrupt" Congress regime from the state. The former state chief minister, who was till now discharging his duty as BJP Vice-President, became a frontrunner to assume the charge as the state party president, after the Supreme Court declined to intervene and lift a Karnataka High Court stay on his prosecution in a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The Lingayat leader will assume charge from Prahlad Joshi, whose term ended in October but was extended till today because of zilla panchayat elections. Joshi is a close aide of Union Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Ananth Kumar, considered Yeddyurappa's bete noire. Speaking to reporters in Delhi, Yedyurappa said his main task as state party president would be to uproot the "corrupt" Congress regime from Karnataka. "My task as the chief will be to throw out the corrupt Congress rule in Karnataka," he said after thanking National BJP President Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving him the responsibility. "I will discharge my duty as the state party president with honesty and sincerity. I thank Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and several other leaders to have bestowed faith in my leadership, and I would like to take all the leaders alongside in the state," he said. Yedyurappa said in his political career he has tasted many sweet and sour moments, but assuming charge as the party chief in the state is one the sweet moments. In January, the Karnataka High Court had quashed 15 FIRs filed against the senior BJP leader for alleged illegal denotification of lands based on a CAG report. The order came as yet another breather for Yeddyurappa, close on the heels of the High Court quashing former Governor H R Bhardwaj's sanction for prosecuting him when he was the chief minister and also the Lokayukta court striking down four FIRs against him for alleged illegal land denotification. (REOPENS MDS4) Yeddyurappa was not allowed to lead the party in the run up to the 2013 state Assembly elections due to pending corruption charges, which saw him landing in jail in 2011. Frustrated and disappointed at not getting the responsibility of leading theparty ahead of elections, Yeddyurappa formed his own party - the Karnataka Janata Paksha. His political fortunes changed after the NDA was voted to power in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He returned to the party and campaigned extensively to ensure a victory in Lok Sabha elections, where the party won 17 out of the state's 28 constituencies. Because of the pending corruption charges, he was kept out of the Union ministry. The party pacified him by giving him party vice-president's post. Yeddyurappa was accused of illegally denotifying land in favour of his relatives. Asked about pending corruption cases against him, Yeddyurappa said, he was confident of getting his name cleared from them as well. "I have total faith in judicial system. I have come out clean in almost all court cases, except one or two. I am confident and have faith in the judiciary that I will get justice," he claimed. Meanwhile, several state party leaders expressed happiness over Yedyurappa's appointment as the state unit chief. Calling Yeddyurappa a "friend", Ananth Kumar claimed utilising his experience, BJP will once again come to power in Karnataka in 2018. "Yeddyurappa is a mass leader; he is also farmers' leader, so his appointment will create a new atmosphere and confidence among party workers. This also shows BJP has taken upcoming elections seriously. I congratulate Yeddyrappa." Joshi said Yeddyurappa's appointment "is an appropriate decision and is on expected lines. We will all work together under his leadership to end Congress' misrule and bring BJP back to power." Expressing joy over Yeddyurappa's appointment his confidante and MP Shobha Karandlaje said he will emerge as a force in organising the party and fight the "Siddaramaiah government's misrule." "He has the strength to fight the elections that is just two-and-half years away, he is a fighter. I believe that BJP will come back to power under his leadership," she said. Malaysia is extending its ban on bauxite mining from mid-April amid concerns over contamination, media reports said today. The government in mid-January had initially implemented a three-month ban on bauxite mining in the rural state of Pahang over concerns about hazardous dust and pollution. "It is important for us to safeguard the environment," Environment Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar was quoted as saying by state agency Bernama. The additional three months will provide time to clear the more than 3.5 million tonnes of stockpiles, local media said. AFP reported on the modern day gold rush of bauxite mining in Pahang and its impact on residents and the environment weeks before authorities announced the January ban. Red dust was swirling around the pits and along the roads on which bauxite-laden trucks rumbled towards Kuantan, the capital of Pahang, for shipment to China. Residents complained to AFP of a rise in respiratory problems and skin rashes. Sea waters around Kuantan had turned red from contamination, worrying residents and environmentalists. Demand for bauxite, which is used in aluminium production, is soaring -- fuelled by heavy demand from China. Bauxite mining took off in Malaysia -- most of it illegal -- shortly after Indonesia, a top producer, banned mineral ore exports in January 2014 to encourage domestic metals processing, leaving major consumers in a supply crunch. Malaysian bauxite output more than quadrupled year-on-year in 2014 to nearly 963,000 tonnes, according to government figures. Maoists have given a call for 'Dandakaranya Bandh' on April 15, opposing the recent air-to-ground firing exercise carried out by the Indian Air Force (IAF) in Chhattisgarh's south Bastar region. "The pamphlets in which the outlawed CPI (Maoist) has opposed the aerial firing practice by IAF commandos have been recovered from the restive places of Bijapur, Sukma and Kanker districts," a senior police official involved in anti-Maoist operations told PTI. The IAF's Garuda commandos had conducted a special air-to- ground firing exercise in the insurgency-hit Sukma district of the state on April 1. A similar aerial firing practice was done in Bijapur last year. The pamphlets, released in Naxal's Dandakaranya Special ZonalCommittee(DKSZC)official representative Vikalp's name,have appealed to make the bandh successful. DKSZC oversees Maoist activities in Bastar and some parts of Maharashtra and Telangana. The pamphlets carry messages that "since last six months aircraft (are) blasting bombs in the area of south Bastar, Sukma, Dantewada and Bijapur districts, it means airforce planes may attack Maoists anywhere at any moment". "Security forces are conducting fake encounters and arresting innocent personnel in fake cases. They said helicopters are only being used for assistance work and firing on Maoists only in self-defence. But the fact is that as part of the Green Hunt operation, the government has given full authority to the air force to attack Maoists," the pamphlets read. Maoists have, however, announced relaxation for medical and educational institutions from the bandh. The police official clarified that they had already said IAF will retaliate in self-defence only. "IAFis basically tasked with carrying out rescue operations and provides logistical support to police and the central paramilitary forces in the Naxal-affected regions of the state. They will continue to do so," the official said. "However, keeping in view thatchoppers are often attacked and fired on by Maoistsduring its operation in the insurgency areas, it has been decided to fire only in self defence by IAF," he said. The official further said that as far as bandh call is concerned, the security forces have been put on alert. "Anti-Maoist operations are already underway in several forest pockets of Bastar. Keeping in mind the bandh call, they have been asked to be extra cautious," he said. Actor Matthew Perry says he is not too upset that he missed the recent "Friends" reunion. The 46-year-old actor found worldwide fame through playing Chandler Bing in the hit US television series, which ran from 1994 to 2004. In February, his co-stars David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc all joined together for a tribute to director James Burrows, but Perry had to miss out due to theatre commitments in London. When asked if he was sad he missed out on the segment, Perry said, "Not really, because it really wasn't a reunion. It was just six people getting together for a Jim Burrows special. It wasn't really a reunion. And I couldn't do it because I was in London doing my play." "Friends" continues to delight fans of all ages thanks to its loveable characters and timeless humour. Despite the fact it ended 12 years ago, it shows no sign of waning in popularity, which Perry finds amazing. "Because of Netflix, a lot of kids are watching and wondering why I look so old," he laughed. A mob set on fire five police vehicles and office of a minority-run school today on reports of alleged sexual abuse of a five-year-old girl student by a sweeper on its premises in Ayesha Nagar locality. "An irate mob gathered in front of the Urdu primary school, located adjacent to a madarsa, in the afternoon and set ablaze five police vehicles, including two vans and three motorcycles, apart from some furniture, documents, and computers in the office of the school," said Additional SP Sunil Kadasane. Police have detained the accused sweeper in connection with the alleged sexual assault that had reportedly taken place last week. Trouble started when the girl's parents met the school management today, during which arguments broke out. After a while, the parents along with some people gathered outside the school and demanded the suspect be handed over to them, Kadasane said. He said the mob then started throwing stones at the school even as the police rushed to the spot. "Police resorted to a mild lathicharge to disperse the crowd, but they (crowd) targeted the police and set ablaze five police vehicles and the furniture in the school's office," the officer said. A few policemen reportedly sustained injuries in the incident. Meanwhile, police are trying to check the spread of rumours after the incident in this communally-sensitive town. By the evening, a company of State Reserve Police Force and three platoons of Rapid Action Force were rushed to the city. Senior police officials are conducting meetings with Muslim community leaders and other influential people to avoid any probable communal spill over. The situation is under control now, police said, adding they have intensified patrolling. Asserting that the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in the city will be feasible, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said the planned centre in BKC can co-exist with the already notified GIFT City in Ahmedabad by partnering with it. Speaking a day after the task force on IFSC held its second meeting, Fadnavis said it has been decided to partner with GIFT given the financial capital's limitations and work in a "hub and spoke" model. "GIFT and Mumbai can co-exist. Mumbai has a problem of area, so in Mumbai you can develop an IFSC say in 50 acres. But, if you want to scale it up, you have to locate it elsewhere. So, the hub and spoke model can be there. Mumbai has inherent strength which nobody can take away. "If an IFSC is developed elsewhere, lets say a GIFT centre is developed, then both can compliment each other, both can co-exist and I think both can grow," he added. "I think feasibility is not a problem," Fadnavis asserted, pointing out that even though it is not notified as an IFSC formally, Mumbai is recognised as the country's top financial services centre by global rating agencies. He said ICICI Bank's MD and Chief Executive Chanda Kochhar made a presentation before the meeting chaired by Union Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, which impressed the strengths of Mumbai as a financial services arena as recognised by rating agencies. Soon after coming to power, the Centre gave a go-ahead for an IFSC at the GIFT City in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state Gujarat. The financial sector regulators chipped-in by making necessary amendments in the laws. Even though located physically within the country, an IFSC operates like a truly international area, with separate set of laws. The financial activities are undertaken in international currencies and separate books are maintained. Major cities in the world associated with high finance, including New York, London, Dubai and Shanghai, have such IFSCs. But nowhere else do two IFSCs exist in such a close proximity as Mumbai and Ahmedabad, located only 500 kms away, which has raised question marks over feasibility. The BKC, where the IFSC is proposed, already has country headquarters or offices of many financial sector participants, including SBI, Citibank and Standard Chartered. Fadnavis today said there can be sister relationships with IFSCs given the difficulties of operating in the city. When asked if the Mumbai IFSC will partner with GIFT City, he said, "If we could collaborate with multiple IFSCs and have sister kind of relationship, that would be better. Ultimately after deliberations, we thought that we should not restrict us to just one. But we should have multiple relationships with multiple IFSCs." Chief Secretary Swadheen Kshatriya said names of many IFSCs, including those at Tokyo, Shanghai, New York and London, were discussed at the meeting. Meanwhile, Fadnavis said the task force deliberated on the model of the special economic zone and how to approach the Centre for permission and added that details on this will be known in a month. Modalities for having a master plan for the IFSC, including the document of request for proposal (RFP) were discussed yesterday, he said, adding that already over 20 planners have shown interest. North Korea today launched the latest in a series of vicious personal attacks on South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, describing her as a "matchless evil woman" intent on war. The verbal assault from the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) followed Park's participation last week in a nuclear security summit hosted by US President Barack Obama in Washington that condemned Pyongyang's continued nuclear weapons push. A CPRK spokesman said Park's behaviour and comments at the summit resembled "the epileptic fit of a despicable confrontational maniac." Military tensions on the divided Korean peninsula have been rising since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, and a long-range rocket launch a month later that was seen as a disguised ballistic missile test. The North's state media had carried a number of similar verbal attacks on Park, employing coarse and often highly sexist language in condemning her uncompromising stance towards Pyongyang and the South's alliance with the United States. Today's statement, published by the official KCNA agency, said Park's insistence on the North abandoning its nuclear weapons programme proved she was "the worst blockhead, ignorant of how the world goes around." "The matchless evil woman pushed North-South relations to a total stalemate and increased the danger of a war," it said, criticising her "dirty existence" and "rabid dog" behaviour. The statement came a few days after an official North Korean website released a new propaganda video portraying a multiple rocket attack on the presidential Blue House in Seoul. "She cannot find shelter, even in the US," the CPRK spokesman warned. The Korean-language version of the same statement used even stronger language, calling Park "Obama's prostitute" who sold Korea's national interests to foreign forces. The South Korean government responded angrily to the abusive tone. "The government strongly warns North Korea against slandering our leader with unspeakable vulgar language ... And issuing physical threats," said Park Soo-Jin, deputy spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry in Seoul. President Park has taken a hardline with Pyongyang since the January nuclear test, leading calls for tough international sanctions and vowing a strong military response to any direct provocations from the North. National Aluminium Company (Nalco) has decided to install solar electrification systems in 163 periphery villages in tribal dominated Damanjodi sector of Odisha's Koraput district, where the company's Mines & Refinery Complex is located. The Rs 9-crore project would be executed through Nalco Foundation, the CSR arm of the company. The Foundation has already installed 30 solar street lights in 2 villages, as a pilot project, a company release said today. Besides, Nalco has also received proposals from local sarpanchs, MLAs, MPs and District Administration to take up different projects towards the infrastructure development in the villages around Damanjodi and Pottangi. In this line, Nalco is planning to implement 49 projects at a cost of Rs 15.83 crore in the first phase. In the second phase, 32 projects shall be implemented with an estimated cost of Rs 24.33 crore, it said. Nalco has also proved to be an active partner in implementing the Swachh Bharat and Swachh Vidyalaya Abhiyan. The company has constructed 473 toilets in 224 schools of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, out of which 172 toilets have been constructed in 85 schools of Koraput district, it said. In healthcare, besides its own hospital, the company is operating 4 mobile health units in Damanjodi area through Nalco Foundation, in association with Wockhardt Foundation of Mumbai to cater to the daily healthcare requirements of the people in 163 periphery villages and adjoining hamlets, free of cost. One Pakistani national was among six persons arrested today in Nepal for their involvement in a major fake currency racket and Indian currency notes with a face value of Rs 10 million were seized from them. Pakistani national Nadin Mohmad and his five Nepalese accomplices were arrested from the famous tourist hub of Thamel, four kilometers from Kathmandu, police said today. Rs 10 million fake Indian currency notes with Rs 500 denomination were seized from them, they said. "We have been successful in arresting them after following them for a long time. The gang were involved in printing and supplying fake Indian notes," said an official of the investigation team. They are believed to be members of a big gang involved in the fake currency racket, the police said. Necessary legal action is being initiated against them by taking them into custody. NIA today secured non-bailable arrest warrants against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf and two others for allegedly conspiring to carry out terror strike on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. A special NIA court based in Mohali issued the 'open-ended non-bailable warrant' against Azhar, his brother, main handlers Kashif Jaan and Shaid Latif for allegedly entering into a criminal conspiracy with JeM terrorists for carrying out a terror strike on the IAF base. The strategic base was attacked by terrorists of banned JeM during the intervening night of January one and two in which seven security personnel were killed. Four bodies of terrorists were recovered from the encounter site which lasted for nearly 80 hours. The special court issued the arrest warrant after weighing the evidence presented by NIA before it which included telephonic conversation between the terrorists and the Jaish handlers like Jaan and Latif. The video of Rauf, brother of Azhar, was also presented before the court. In the video which was uploaded on a website being hosted from Pakistan, Rauf had claimed responsibility for the attack and complimented his boys for it. The video has since been removed and the website has also gone off the cyber world. NIA has already sought voice samples of Azhar and three others from Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which came to India for carrying out a probe in the Pathankot terror probe. The non-bailable warrant will be sent to Interpol. India had built a strong case for proscribing Azhar as terrorist at the UN but the move was vetoed by China. An Interpol Red Corner notice is already pending against Azhar for being allegedly involved in the conspiracy behind attacks on Parliament and Jammu and Kashmir state assembly. Similarly an Interpol Red Corner Notice is pending against Rauf in connection with the IC-814 hijacking case of 1999. India has complained to Pakistan about the slow pace of probe in the Parliament attack case and Azhar being given a free hand to continue with his anti-India rhetoric. Islamabad has not heeded to India's demands to bring to book Azhar and other JeM top brass. In the meantime, NIA said that after posting the pictures of the four dead terrorists on its official website, more information was coming from across the world which included many people from Pakistan who were eager to share details pertaining to the slain militants. The four terrorists were identified as Nasir Hussain (Punjab province), Abu Bakar, (Gujranwala), Umar Farooq and Abdul Qayum (both from Sindh). Authorities of the Vivekananda College for Women today suspended nine of its students and asked 77 others to apologise to Calcutta University Vice-Chancellor Sugata Marjit who was pushed and shoved during an agitation by the students on Tuesday. Principal Soma Bhattacharya said they have sent a strong message to the students by suspending nine of them for a year who were caught in CCTV footage heckling the VC. They have also asked 77 other students to tender an apology. "Tomorrow I will go and lodge an FIR against an outsider who tried to stop the VC's car," she told PTI adding that there were outside involvement in the incident. The VC had gone to the college for some official work on April 5 when he faced the agitating students who were demonstrating before the principal's office demanding that 95 students who had failed in test examination be allowed to appear in the final examination. The government is actively reaching out to its citizens seeking inputs on key developmental challenges facing India as NITI Aayog today kicked off phase I of the 'Grand Innovation Challenge' today. The idea behind the programme, launched on the MyGov portal, is to involve citizens at the very first stage of innovation for India's development, the policy think-tank said in a press release. "We strongly believe in working together with states as Team India, involving every citizen to ensure India's progress and leaving no one behind. With a clear focus on the social sector and India's most vulnerable sections, we seek to involve citizens in crowd-sourcing ideas to address challenges facing India's development," it said. In phase I of the Challenge, Aayog wants the citizens to put forth what they think are significant challenges across the board and critical issues to address in order to develop the social sector. Modelled in the spirit of decentralised planning, the phase I ends on April 25. Entries should be submitted at https://mygov.In/task/niti-aayog-grand-innovation-challenge/. In phase II, based on a short-list of the urgent challenges as suggested by citizens, Aayog will seek innovative solutions to address them using appropriate technologies. Through this Grand Challenge, it encourages innovation, entrepreneurship and citizen-led solutions to problems. "Throwing our weight entirely behind these challenges, NITI Aayog will ensure the best, innovative solutions to pressing challenges receive full backing from the Government of India - from funding, mentoring, technical and academic support to scaling it up across the country and absorbing them in government schemes," it stated. These solutions should be specifically designed for India, made in India and adopted by the government. Citizens are expected to pick one of the 14 crucial sectors as a priority to ensure benefits to the most vulnerable, it added. At the end of the process, NITI Aayog will zero in on 10 such challenges from among those suggested by the citizens. The best 10 entries will receive certificates of acknowledgement from NITI Aayog. Furthermore, short-listed candidates will be invited to NITI Aayog as special guests for a discussion on the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), along with key policymakers of the government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has at various forums reiterated the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship for India's development. NITI Aayog is spearheading this key programme by formulating guidelines for implementing AIM. Warning against a "panic driven fire sale" of Tata Steel UK's Port Talbot plant, Britain's largest trade union Unite has asked the government to ensure that the sale done in a timely fashion. UK's Business Minister Sajid Javid, who was in Mumbai earlier this week holding crunch talks with Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry on sale of its UK steel business, visited Port Talbot yesterday where he met employees and union representatives. Port Talbot is Tata Steel UK's and Britain's largest steel plant. "Today was an opportunity for our representatives to impress upon the business secretary the importance of Port Talbot not just to the Welsh economy but to manufacturing across the UK," Unite said in a statement late yesterday. The union's Assistant General Secretary Tony Burke said the Secretary of State will have left Port Talbot today in no doubt whatsoever that this steelworks is a national asset and that this is a community that deserves a future. "We underlined again the need to keep this business together because that is the only way to sustain the UK as a manufacturing nation, and the need to proceed to sale in a timely fashion -- there must be no panic-driven fire sales," Burke added. He further said: "But all we know for sure is that Tata wants to sell, and that they have committed to proceed as a responsible seller. We now need to hear more about the next steps and what the government will do to retain UK steel manufacturing." Meanwhile, after visiting Port Talbot, Javid yesterday tweeted: "Thank you to everyone at Port Talbot today. Great to see the plant in action and constructive update with unions." After the meetings with Mistry in Mumbai, he said Tatas will launch sale process by Monday for its cash-guzzling UK steel business and his government has promised to help find a serious buyer and promised to secure jobs of the thousands of workers at the plants there. Unite, which claims to have more than 1.4 million members across industries the UK, asked the government to invest in the sector that is passing through "tough times". It sought government intervention to stabilise and secure the UK steel industry through a series of measures. "These include government investment to help the sector through these tough times and the UK government dropping opposition to European Commission proposals to place higher tariffs on cheap Chinese steel," it added. Unite further said it also wants ministers to take swift action on energy costs so that UK steelworkers can compete on a level playing field with their European counterparts and to compel British steel to be used in British infrastructure and defence projects. State-run NTPC today entered into an MoU with Hyderabad police to provide financial assistance of Rs one crore for the community CCTV project here. Under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and community development Initiative, NTPC entered into an MoU with the office of Hyderabad Commissioner of Police for installation of CCTV cameras in Old City areas. NTPC, which is the first PSU to join hands with Hyderabad Police for installation of CCTV cameras, would extend a financial assistance of Rs one crore for the installation at areas falling under Kamatipura Police Station limits. The Telangana government has started the process for setting up a 24-storied Command Control Centre at Banjara Hills, that will be connected with a city-wide community CCTV surveillance system consisting of over a lakh of CCTV cameras, Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahendar Reddy said. "This will act as one stop centre for handling all emergencies and crisis/disaster managements by all government departments. As part of this effort, Hyderabad Police started implementation of city-wide community CCTV surveillance system with the help of community support," he said. The CCTV camera project, is the biggest of its kind to be taken up anywhere in India. Several vital installations, will be mapped round-the-clock through surveillance cameras. The closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras technology will act as a force multiplier and help in checking crime and violation of traffic rules, he said. Reddy further said the Telangana government has come forward to invest about Rs 1,200 crore in terms of transforming Hyderabad City Police into a citizen friendly, citizen-centric and technology driven police organisation. "One of the elements of this entire project has been to cover the city with 1 lakh CCTV cameras all networked and monitored at multiple levels. All the cameras once established and networked will be driven with analytics and we do expect with 1 lakh cameras in the city, Hyderabad would become safe and secure from point of view of commoner, women, children," the Hyderabad Police chief added. The Old City consists of jurisdiction covered by about 30 police stations requiring a budget of about Rs 45 crore for coverage of the entire area under CCTV surveillance system, officials said. Currently the police are setting up CCTV cameras at various locations in the city as part of the community CCTV project. Seeking establishment of a centre of the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) in the state, Odisha government today offered logistic support to the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers for the purpose. "We have set up a Bio-Technology Park over an area of 64 acres in Bhubaneswar and are in the process of setting up a Pharma Park and a Medical Device Park in Odisha. Hence, the setting up a NIPER in Odisha would be in the fitness of the overall scheme of development of phamaceutical sector in this region," Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said in a letter to Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers Ananth Kumar. Noting that six new NIPER centres have been set up at Patna (Hajipur), Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Rae Bareli, Guwahati and Kolkata, Patnaik requested Kumar to consider setting up a centre in Odisha at the earliest possible. In order to increase the highly skilled human resource required for pharma sector, the state government would also like to have one such institute in Odisha, Patnaik said. He assured Kumar to make available the requisite built up space for running of the temporary campus of NIPER on an immediate basis and land for construction of its permanent campus in Odisha. Global economic body OECD has called a special session of countries, including India, on April 13 here to firm up cooperation between nations in the wake of the 'Panama Papers' disclosures in which about 500 Indians have figured for holding offshore assets in the tax haven nation. India adheres to a number of OECD norms for strengthening overseas tax cooperation and exchange of information and at the first meeting of a specially constituted Multi-Agency Group (MAG) of probe agencies held in New Delhi yesterday it was decided to approach the global body along with another similar forum FATF for support in this regard. A senior Finance Ministry official in New Delhi acknowledged that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) invite for the meeting is meant for all the countries affected by Panama disclosures but a final decision on an Indian representation in the meeting will only be taken by the government. "Government officials from around the world have called on the OECD to convene a special project meeting of the Joint International Tax Shelter Information and Collaboration (JITSIC) Network to explore possibilities of cooperation and information sharing, identify tax compliance risks and agree collaborative action in light of the 'Panama Papers' revelations. "The meeting, to be held in Paris on April 13 will bring together senior tax administration officials from countries worldwide," a statement by the OECD secretariat here said. It said the JITSIC is a network of tax administration officials with responsibility for responding to global compliance risks through active collaboration and fast and effective information exchange with other tax administrations. "The 'Panama Papers' revelations contain an unprecedented amount of information, including more than 11 million documents covering 210,000 companies in 21 offshore jurisdictions. Each transaction spans across a number of different jurisdictions and may involve multiple entities and individuals. "The meeting at the OECD presents tax administrations with a first opportunity to act on the considerable body of information revealed by the 'Panama Papers' release. As a network of tax administrations committed to sharing intelligence and working together to tackle common risks, the JITSIC network is well placed to take on this challenge," it said. The 'Panama Papers' this week disclosed a list of nearly 500 Indians including celebrities and industrialists who allegedly stashed money in offshore entities in Panama, considered to be a tax haven. After the names of Indians holding overseas accounts appeared, the government set up the MAG comprising officials from the RBI, IT department, Financial Intelligence Unit, Enforcement Directorate and Foreign Tax and Tax Research to investigate whether the money deposited in the tax haven is legal or illegal. The names were released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with Indian Express newspaper in India. The ICIJ added a disclaimer that there are also "legitimate uses for offshore companies". Oil prices bounced today, with Brent climbing back above USD 40, as the market digested falling US output ahead of a producers' meeting this month to discuss a proposed output freeze. US production fell for the 10th time in 11 weeks, to 9.0 million barrels per day in the week through April 1, the lowest level since November 2014, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration. Commercial crude stockpiles in the world's top oil consumer also dropped, indicating stronger demand. At around 0420 GMT, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for May delivery climbed 76 cents, or 2.04 per cent, to USD 38.02 and Brent crude for June was up 62 cents, or 1.57 per cent, at USD 40.05. Prices retreated yesterday following a five percent rally on Wednesday in reaction to the decline in US crude inventories. But traders are setting their sights on the April 17 meeting in Doha among crude producers led by Russia and Saudi Arabia to discuss measures to stabilise prices, including an output freeze at January 2016 levels. There have been conflicting signals on whether such an agreement would be reached. Saudi Arabia has said it will only agree to limits if others followed suit, while Iran said it is still ramping up production after Western economic sanctions were lifted only in January. "Unfortunately, history is against anything (concrete) coming out of the Doha meeting," analyst David Lennox of Fat Prophets in Sydney told AFP. "But a lot of OPEC countries are feeling great economic pain, which might give them the impetus to take some positive action in cutting production," he said. Retailers Association of India (RAI) has said that cashback or the money-back guarantee offers made by marketplace e-commerce players should be treated as influencing the selling price. In a letter to Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, RAI said with the objective of ensuring a level playing field for all channels of retail in India, the ministry should come out with certain clarifications so that there is no violation in the implementation of the spirit of the policy. It said that since the guidelines forbid marketplaces from participating in pricing directly or indirectly, all discounts, coupons, vouchers be offered by the individual seller. "These should not be issued by the marketplace. Thus, a basket level discount/cash back would have to be restricted to the basket/order of each seller and not at a consolidated level," it said. "Cashback/money back guarantee offered by a marketplace should be considered tantamount to influencing selling price," the association added. It also said that consolidated orders covering multiple sellers should not be permitted. "Considering that no seller should be having more that 25 per cent share on the market place, the marketplace must file monthly disclosure with relevant (Enforcement Directorate) authority, giving details," it added. RAI also said that a full seller profile, including tax registration details, contact numbers, PAN numbers should be available on the online platform and accessible to consumer. "Marketplaces be made responsible for vetting the genuineness of sellers listed on the platform and the authenticity of their contact details to protect consumer interest in cases where the products turn our faulty/fraudulent," it added. (REOPENS MES6) Jayachandra said the Cabinet also gave its nod for alloting land for setting up the Advanced Polymer Design and Development Research Laboratory cum High Learning Centre. The Central Institute of Plastic Engineering and Technology (CIPET), under Union Chemicals and Fertilizers Ministry, had already signed an MoU with the state government to set up the lab, he said. The estimated investment was Rs 87 crore and the state would share 50 per cent of the project cost, he said. "The centre will act as a multi-functional one-step facility with specialisation in product development in Polymer sector. It will also conduct R&D, product tests and evaluations and commercialisation of technology," he said. The proposed centre will play a pivotal role in developing new plastics technologies, processes and products to enhance the use of plastics for promotion of industries and betterment of the people, the Minister said. Jayachandra said the cabinet had given the green signal to Affordable Housing Policy, which will ensure that the government provide private developers and community borrowers financing option to meet the objective of affordable housing. The policy will address numerous challenges faced by private developers such as issues with land acquisition and wide array of clearances from government bodies, which plays an ugly role in delaying the project and mounting the cost significantly, Jayachandra said. An online petition demanding launch of criminal proceedings against big corporate defaulters like businessman Vijay Mallya has gone viral on social media platform with over 1.10 lakh people signing the plea on technology platform Change.Org in this regard. The petition demands criminal proceedings to be initiated against as many as 44 big defaulters who owe over Rs 4.8 lakh crore to public sector banks, quoting latest available data as on March 31, 2015. This Change.Org petition, which was started in February 2016, requests Finance Minister Arun Jaitley "to set a strong example that will make corporate defaulters think twice before cheating." The petition quotes media reports showing that the country's top five Public Sector Banks had outstandings of Rs 4.87 lakh crore from 44 big borrowers, each with pending dues worth over Rs 5,000 crore. There has been a growing clamour in the recent past to seek urgent action against Mallya for recovery of dues totalling over Rs 9,000 crore in unpaid loans and applicable interest. Mallya, as also his long-grounded Kingfisher Airline and UB Group holding company UBHL, have been declared wilful defaulters by some banks, while a consortium of 17 lenders, headed by SBI, have approached courts to seek fast recovery of their dues. As per the latest available data, there are about 7,686 wilful defaulters who owe Rs 66,190 crore to public sector banks. Of these, suits have been filed in 6,816 cases and FIRs have been lodged in 1,669 cases. Banks have initiated action under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act (Sarfaesi) Act in 584 such cases. Yesterday, Mallya was directed by the Supreme Court to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad. After banks rejected an earlier Rs 4,000 crore settlement offer from Mallya, the court also asked him to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. The petition says "hardworking people like you and me run from pillar to post for a bank loan. We are held accountable if we can't pay the loan back. Why should the taxpayer pay the price for corporate mistakes?" It further reads "73 per cent of these unpaid loans are from India's rich, like Vijay Mallya. Many of these unpaid loans are being written off. Instead of recovering them, we are pressurising the middle class and poor farmers. Over 7.21 crore people have availed services under Right To Service Act in Punjab since its inception. As many as 28,37,866 applicants have availed the notified services during February under the Act, an official spokesperson said here today. Till now more than 7.21 crore applicants have been provided notified services since the inception of Punjab Right to Service Act, 2011, he said. Only 14,160 applications are pending beyond the time line and the departments concerned have been asked to clear them immediately, he said. On the basis of reports received from various districts, Right to Service Commission took suo-moto notice in groups of cases where service was delayed beyond time lines without sufficient cause. With the intervention of the Commission 21,750 cases have been disposed of which includes 926 during January, 2016. Apart from this, suo-moto action was initiated by the Commission in 650 individual cases received from the public And services have been delivered by the authorities concerned in 622 of them, he added. Out of 1,230 and 253 appeals filed before the 1st and 2nd Appellate Authorities 1,193 and 220 have been disposed of by the authorities concerned. Similarly, 39 revisions out of 38 have been disposed of by the Commission, the spokesperson added. In all 85 officers/officials have been penalised by the Commission as well as 2nd Appellate Authorities for not providing services within timeline notified under the Act. During February, the Commission had imposed penalty on the civil surgeon Amritsar for not delivering the services of registration of birth certificate on time. Over a hundred people have been questioned following raids at several places in connection with the killing of NIA officer Tanzil Ahmed but no arrest has been made so far, Uttar Pradesh DGP Javeed Ahmed said today. "No person has been arrested yet. However, over a hundred people have been questioned in raids conducted in Delhi, Bijnor and Aligarh," Ahmed said here. He said many of those who have been questioned had provided "valuable" information about the incident which will play an important role in solving the case. "There is no time limit fixed for the investigation but the truth will come out soon," he said, adding the police is questioning all the suspects named by the family members of the National Investigating Agency (NIA) officer. Tanzil Ahmed, probing terror cases related to Indian Mujahideen, was shot dead on April 3 by two unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants who also wounded his wife when they were returning home from a wedding near UP's Bijnor town. The DGP said Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), Special Task Force (STF) and with NIA are jointly investigating the case. He also visited the spot in Sahaspur area where the officer was killed. Pakistan has backtracked from its promise to allow a team of Indian investigators to visit there to probe the Pathankot terror attack case apparently after finding that NIA has enough evidence to nail ISI's links with terrorists involved in it, official sources said. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had given the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of Pakistan, during its five- day trip to India, critical evidence on Pakistani handlers of the terrorists who carried out the January 2 attack on the strategic airbase. The JIT was given full transcript of the telephonic conversations between the terrorists and their Pakistani handlers along with their identity, the sources said. The NIA gave to JIT the links of Pakistani officials, believed to be ISI personnel, with the handlers of the terrorists, the sources said. The JIT was provided with electronic and forensic evidence regarding the slain terrorists' Pakistani links, name of the terrorists and several other critical evidence after an exhaustive probe conducted by the NIA. The Pakistani team was given concrete proof that Jaish-e -Mohammed chief Masood Azhar's brother Abdul Rauf was in constant touch with the terrorists and giving them necessary instructions during the three-day carnage. "The JIT was completely surprised over the evidence the NIA had gathered as proof of the Pakistani links of the terrorists. They realised that their game is up. The sudden turn around on the promise of allowing an NIA team to visit Pakistan could be the result of that," a source said. Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit had yesterday indicated that Indian investigators may not be allowed to visit Pakistan to pursue the probe in connection with the Pathankot attack. However, India countered it by saying that before the JIT's visit here, both sides had agreed that it would be on the basis of reciprocity. The government of Pakistan's troubled Balochistan province today claimed that around 92 militants have been killed in the region in the last four months. Balochistan home minister, Mir Sarfaraz Bugti told media that around 417 targeted operations were carried out in the province in the last four months. "The operations were carried out to root out militants of banned separatist outfits and terrorists involved in sectarian violence and terrorism," Bugti said. He confirmed that the frontier corps had successfully carried out an operation this week in the Kalat district in which around 15 militants were killed. Bugti said that the FC during its operations in the last four months had arrested 1,844 suspects and recovered 820 weapons, 56,986 rounds of ammunition and 10,727 kgs of explosives, adding that 6,151 other persons who could not produce their travel documents were also detained. The Balochistan government last Wednesday also claimed that security forces had arrested an Afghan intelligence agent near the Pakistan-Afghan border region of Chaman who was in possession of several explosives, ammunition and weapons. A Pakistani national and five Nepalese men from a major fake currency racket were arrested today by Nepal Police who also seized fake Indian currency notes with a face value of Rs 10 million. They were nabbed from the famous tourist hub of Thamel, four kilometres from Kathmandu, and seized Rs 10 million fake Indian currency notes with Rs 500 denomination, police said. Those who were arrested were Pakistani national Nadin Mohmad and five Nepali nationals. "We have been successful in arresting them after following them for a long time. The gang were involved in printing and supplying fake Indian notes, " said an official of the investigation team. They are believed to be members of a big gang involved in the fake currency racket, the police said. Necessary legal action is being initiated against them by taking them into custody. Nine men, mostly of Pakistani- and Afghani-origin, were today jailed for a total of 127 years by a British court for child grooming and sexual abuse of white teenage girls in the northern England town of Rochdale. The men were charged with a catalogue of serious sex offences against seven females aged between 13 and 23 at the time of the abuse between 2005 and 2013. Alison Cartmell from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told the court that some of the offenders gave their victims "alcohol or drugs as a way of controlling or even incapacitating them". "Some used violence and threats to intimidate and coerce them into having sex," she added. Judge John Potter at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court said two of the victims had suffered psychological harm due to the sexual abuse. "They were subjected to cross-examination which suggested they were not telling the truth. Each dealt with this ordeal impressively. I have little doubt that each of the victims have been affected by your abuse of them to some degree, some far more than others," he said. Detective Chief Inspector Jamie Daniels of Greater Manchester Police said: "This was an extremely complex case and I want to commend the victims for the immense bravery they have shown. "The process can be emotionally demanding and traumatic for the victims and we do not underestimate the courage this took." The men were arrested under Operation Doublet, investigating child sexual exploitation of white teen girls by older Asian men in the city near Manchester. The investigation was a result of a number of other Asian men being found guilty of child abuse since 2012 and has led to racial tensions in the region. The men, mostly of Pakistani- and Afghani-origin, are aged between 26 and 45 and include Shayfur Rahman, Kutab Miah, Rehan Ali,Iklaq Choudhry Hussain, Mahfus Rahman, Ashfaq Yousaf, Afraz Ahmed, Mohammed Davood and David Law. Their charges included rape, conspiracy to rape, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, sexual activity with a child and sexual assault. Hussain, who was sentenced to 19 years today, is on the run and is believed to have fled the UK to Pakistan during his trial. The 38-year-old had claimed during the trial that a family member had died and was given permission by the judge to attend the funeral - which he had said wasdue to be held in Britain. However, he neverreturned to court. British police had launched a manhunt for him earlier this year and said it is determined to bring him back to face justice. The Palestinians have given Arab nations a proposed UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as an obstacle to peace, the Palestinian UN Mission said. The draft resolution was immediately condemned by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "is taking a step that will push negotiations further away" to end the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians refused to provide any details of the text, but said the Security Council has unanimously agreed that Israeli settlements are illegal and it is their responsibility to act on this assessment and adopt a resolution on settlements. They recalled the Security Council's 14-1 vote on a resolution on settlements in February 2011. It was defeated by a US veto. That resolution would have condemned "illegal" Israeli settlements and demanded an immediate halt to all settlement building. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast War and built settlements there. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but nearly 600,000 Israeli settlers remain in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Peace Now, a dovish Israeli group that tracks settlement construction, said Israel began building 1,800 new settlement homes in the West Bank in 2015. The Palestinians claim the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as parts of a future state, a position that has wide global support. They view Israeli settlement construction as illegal and a major obstacle to resolving the conflict. Though Israel's closest ally, the United States has nonetheless opposed new settlements, saying they are an impediment to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. At the same time, the Obama administration in 2011 didn't want the Security Council to take up the issue, arguing it would complicate peace negotiations. Whether the US administration would adhere to that position and veto a similar resolution if it was put to a vote in the coming weeks remains to be seen. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which first reported on the resolution, said the Palestinians want the Security Council to vote when Abbas is in New York on April 22 to attend the high-level ceremony where more than 130 countries are expected to sign the landmark climate agreement reached in Paris in December. Netanyahu accused Abbas of avoiding direct negotiations, and Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon said the only way to promote negotiations must start with the Palestinians "condemning terrorism and stopping the incitement." "They are continuing to deceive the international community by putting forward initiatives that do nothing to better the lives of either side of this conflict," Danon said. Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela assured his French counterpart Francois Hollande today his country was committed to cooperating in the fight against money laundering, his office said. Varela, whose government is reeling from the so-called leaks, spoke with Hollande by phone after France said it was putting his country back on its list of those that do not cooperate in efforts to track down tax dodgers. Varela emphasized Panama's "commitment to continue cooperating with the community in the fight against the improper use of financial and corporate services," the presidency said. Hollande for his part "strongly encouraged" the Central American country to respond to information requests from French tax authorities and begin automatic data-sharing "as quickly as possible," his office said. Earlier, the French finance ministry officially returned Panama to its list of Uncooperative States and Territories (ETNC), four years after removing it following a bilateral deal on fighting tax evasion. Varela has been left battling for his nation's reputation after millions of documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca lifted a veil on how rich, powerful and sometimes criminal figures worldwide are channeling offshore financial dealings through Panama. The Panamanian leader insisted his government had made "important progress" on "strengthening" the country's financial services sector, but pledged to take steps to guarantee the full implementation of the deal with France. The two presidents agreed to set up a meeting of their finance ministers in the coming days, Varela's office said. Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini was arrested today, a police source said after a Belgian television station said he was detained in a Brussels district. At the same time prosecutors said police made several arrests in connection with the deadly Islamic State attacks on Brussels airport and metro last month. The police source gave AFP no details about the location or circumstances of Abrini's arrest but VRT television said it took place in the Anderlecht district of Brussels, home to several other suspects linked to the Paris attacks. Abrini, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, was seen at a petrol station north of Paris two days before the attacks with key suspect Salah Abdeslam, who drove one of the vehicles used in the November 13 assaults across Paris that killed 130 people. Abdeslam was supposed to have blown himself but did not do so, fleeing instead back to Brussels. He was arrested in Brussels on March 18 following a four-month manhunt and is being held in a high-security prison in the northern Belgian city of Bruges while awaiting his extradition to France. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office said they would provide more details later about the arrests in connection with the Brussels attacks. "The federal prosecutor confirms that there have been several arrests in the course of the day in connection with the attacks on the airport and metro," a statement said. The attacks killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more. Expressing displeasure over the reconstruction of a water kiosk near the historic Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib in Chandni Chowk area here after its demolition on judicial orders, Delhi High Court today warned it will not tolerate people taking law into their hands. "Why piao (water kiosk) is not removed? We do not approve of people taking law into their hands. This tendency of people to think they can dictate what will happen despite court orders, that culture is what we want to get rid off. That won't be tolerated. We do not want a situation where there is breakdown of law and order. "This is not about the 'piao'. For us it is about the dignity of the court and upholding the rule of law. There will always be a situation where someone is not happy," a bench of justices S Muralidhar and Vibhu Bakhru said. The court also pulled up Delhi government when it said the water kiosk was only for providing free drinking water. The court asked the government: "Why don't you as government provide free drinking water in that area as well as entire Delhi whose citizens desperately need it." "Don't distinguish between people who go to a gurdwara or temple and people on the streets. We would be happy if you provide drinking water to all people in the Chandni Chowk area and rest of Delhi, especially in this weather,"the bench said. The court also issued notice to the Delhi government, its public works department and North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) seeking their replies on a plea by Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) seeking that the water kiosk as well as another structure at Bhai Matidas Chowk there not be demolished as these were heritage structures. DSGMC also said it was not heard before the two structures were declared unauthorised. The court said it will decide whether the kiosk was a heritage site or not and asked the government to inform it when the kiosk was built. The high court had earlier ordered removal of illegal encroachments from footpaths and roadside of Chandni Chowk. A mob took to violent protests on Wednesday when municipal officials demolished the kiosk in the drive to remove encroachments following the high court's March 28 order. The 'piao' was rebuilt overnight after the officials left. (Reopens LGD19) With regard to the structure at Bhai Matidas chowk, it asked the Lieutenant Governor to hold a meeting and place a report with all materials on the basis of which the structure was declared unauthorised. The court said it had passed the demolition order after the government had said all religious groups were consulted prior to declaring the two structures, and several others in the area, as unauthorised and made it clear that action would be taken against those responsible if it was found that DSGMC was not heard or that the structures were heritage structures. The bench, however, did not pass any status quo order as sought by DSGMC, saying if the 'piao' can be reconstructed overnight after being demolished, it can again be constructed if it is found that it was a heritage structure. DSGMC, during the hearing, had sought a status quo order with regard to the two structures saying they could be demolished by the authorities before the next date of hearing of May 12. The two DSGMC members, Manjeet Singh GK and Manjinder Singh Sirsa, who were issued contempt notices for the kiosk's reconstruction, were today restrained by the court from going near the kiosk or from taking any "precipitative action". "We do not want them to cause any obstruction or lead any people there," the court said. However, the two DSGMC members said in court that they will not be able to obey the direction as they have to visit the Gurdwara in the coming week owing to a religious event and the 'piao' was within the Gurdwara. The bench however did not respond to the statement by them. Contempt notices were issued to the two after police told the court that they were "leading a mob" which had "violently" protested against the demolition of the 'piao' and were also responsible for reconstruction of the water kiosk. The high court had earlier ordered removal of illegal encroachments from footpaths and roadsides of Chandni Chowk. After the court was informed about the reconstruction, it had directed police to "immediately ensure round the clock vigil around the reconstructed 'piao' and ensure that it is not put to use". Delhi police today told the bench that there was a round- the-clock vigil at the site and no one was being permitted to use the 'piao'. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today greeted the countrymen on the advent of the New Year being celebrated in various parts and wished that it brings peace, prosperity and harmony. "Greetings to people across India celebrating the advent of the New Year. May this new year bring joy & prosperity," he said in a tweet. Greeting Kashmir Pandits celebrating the New Year, he said, "Navreh greetings to my fellow citizens. I pray that the coming year enhances the spirit of happiness and harmony in our lives". In another tweet, he said, "On the special day of Ugadi, my greetings to everyone. I hope the new year brings peace & prosperity in our society". He also wished Manipuris on the occasion. "Sajibu Cheiraoba greetings to the wonderful people of Manipur. May the new year fulfil all your wishes," he said. Extending wishes to Maharashtrians, he said, "Gudi Padwa wishes to all friends in Maharashtra. Praying for a phenomenal year, full of happiness and success". The Prime Minister also wished the Sindhi community celebrating the New Year. "Wishing all my Sindhi friends on the auspicious occasion of Cheti Chand. We bow to Lord Jhulelal & seek his divine blessings," he said. The festival marks the beginning of the Hindu Lunar calendar and is known by various names like Chaitra Sukladi, Gudi Padava, Ugadi, Cheti Chand, Navreh and Sajibu Cheiraoba in different states. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today offered prayers to Goddess Ma Kamakhya Devi at her historic temple atop Nilachal Hill here before resuming his poll campaign in Assam. Modi, who came here from Delhi last night, drove up to the base of the Kamakhya temple this morning and walked up the flight of steps to the shrine amid tight security to offer his prayers to the Goddess in the sanctum sanctorum where media was not allowed. The Prime Minister also performed puja on the occasion of the first day of Navratri at the Shakti Pith dedicated to Goddess Durga and her various incarnations, temple officials said. Coming out of the shrine, Modi, who visited the temple for the first time, went towards the waiting people and shook hands with them and left for his campaign for the second and final phase of elections on April 11 in 61 constituencies in middle and lower Assam. Modi is scheduled to address poll meetings at Roha, Rangia, Sorbhog and Guwahati today before returning to Delhi in the evening. The Prime Minister had also campaigned in the state for the first phase of voting on April 4. Over 2,000 delegates from 25 countries will participate in a two-day international convention on integrating homeopathy in health-care beginning tomorrow. The convention which is being organsied to mark "World Homeopathy day" by Liga Medicorum Homeopatica Internationalis (LMHI), an international body of homeopaths, and AYUSH ministry will be inaugurated by President Pranab Mukjherjee at Vigyan Bhawan. "World Homeopathy day is celebrated every year on April 10 to mark the birth anniversary of Dr Samual Hahnemann, the German doctor who is the founder of homeopathy," an official statement said. "The theme of the convention is integrating homeopathy in healthcare and over 2000 delegates from 25 countries will be participating in it. An MoU between the Central Council of Research in Homeopathy (CCRH, Armenia State Medical University and College of homeopaths, Canada, will also be signed," it added. Authorities in Pakistan's Punjab province today launched a probe against Jamaat-ud-Dawah, led by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed, for running a parallel judicial system here. "A team of senior police officers today visited the JuD headquarters at Jamia Qadsia, Chauburji and discussed the matter with the high command of Dawah," a source in Punjab police told PTI. "The police team will send its findings to Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah over the matter after recording the statements of some people who sought justice from the JuD courts," the source said. He said the police team also discussed the matter of Khalid Saeed, who was summoned by a Sharia Court of JuD in a monetary case. Saeed had also complained to the police that he was threatened by the JUD court to appear before it or face serious consequences. The JuD office-bearers told the police team that it had established "the Arbitrary Council presided over by Ulema (clerics) merely to provide arbitration services to consenting parties in the light of Quran and Sunnah (Prophet's teachings)". The JuD said it is not parallel court and does not issue any kind of summons or seek money for arbitration. On the other hand, Sanaullah said the government would not allow anyone to run a parallel judicial system in Punjab. "We will take appropriate action (against the JuD) if it is found running a parallel judicial system in Lahore," he said, adding FIR would be registered against those involved in it. On the lines of the Taliban, Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led JuD has recently set up a 'Sharia Court' here to hand out "easy and swift justice", the first such parallel judicial system in Pakistan's Punjab Province. Earlier, the Sharia courts were established in Kyber Pakhtaunkhawa province by pro-Taliban groups. (Reopens FGN 17) Meanwhile, Dawn Newspaper in its editorial today said "a broken judicial system is always likely to attract novel, even unconstitutional, quasi-fixes. With the superior judiciary and the legislative seemingly in denial about the need for root-and-branch overhaul of the judicial system, both state and society are finding alternatives that include parallel 'judicial' forums". JuD has established fledgling 'courts' in its headquarters in Lahore, from where summonses are being sent to citizens by self-appointed judges and their assistants. Of course, because this is JuD and perhaps because it is easier to do, the self-styled courts are operating under a religious veneer. The paper suggests that the JuD experiment needs to be shut down immediately, with no caveats and no possibility of quiet resurrection once the furore dies down. "In a preposterous world where such obvious principles need to be explained, it is easy enough to offer a straightforward refutation of the JuD's official defence/explanation. Syrian monitors and a relative of a senior Egyptian al-Qaida figure fighting in Syria say he was killed in a US drone strike there this week. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Rifai Ahmad Taha was killed in a strike Tuesday in Idlib province. Taha was part of an extremist group that massacred 58 foreign tourists in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor in 1997. He was also allied with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. In Egypt, a relative said today that Taha's wife and brother have received confirmation about his death. The relative spoke on condition of anonymity fearing reprisals. In Washington, Department of Defense spokesman Matthew Allen said the US struck a vehicle killing several al-Qaida militants. He added that officials are still assessing the strike. Underscoring the need for tax reforms in India, the US has said the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) is of paramount importance. "Given India's tremendous needs, its very low tax ratio, at 10 per cent of GDP, is notable.Accordingly, there is meaningful scope to address tax policy and compliance," Treasury Under Secretary Nathan Sheets told a Washington audience yesterday. "This is also where the pending Goods and Services Tax (GST) is of paramount importance," he said in his remarks before the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The deadweight loss that flows from India's states treating their internal boundaries as though they were international borders is apparent to all," he said. "The resulting inefficiencies include slow transit times, unnecessary red tape in tax administration and disruptions in the business climate. We support the government's ongoing efforts to accomplish this important reform," Nathan said in his appearance before this think-tank ahead of the next week's visit of Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. India and the US, he said are making progress on our bilateral tax issues. The US and India negotiated and signed a reciprocal intergovernmental agreement to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, pursuant to which both countries will collect and exchange information about the financial accounts of their respective tax residents, he said. This is an important tool to combat tax evasion in both our countries.In addition, the two countries will begin accepting applications for bilateral Advanced Pricing Agreements; this will benefit industries participating in cross-border business, he added. Fresh protests today rocked the National Institute of Technology (NIT) here as the outstation students took out a march in the campus to press for their demands which includes shifting the institute out of Kashmir. A group of students tried to march towards the main gate but were stopped by the security force personnel on duty inside the campus, officials said. They said the students wanted to interact with the media personnel camping outside the main gate of the institute at Hazratbal. The students shouted slogans in favour of their demands but later went back inside the campus, the officials said. The NIT authorities yesterday allowed the students to skip the minor examinations scheduled to start from April 11 saying they would be given an opportunity to write these exams later. "Those (students) who choose to leave (for home) will be provided another opportunity to appear in the minor in lieu of the minor, which is scheduled from 11th to 14th of April," an order issued by the office of the Registrar said. The students are demanding that the NIT campus be shifted out of Kashmir, action be taken against police officials involved in lathicharge of the students last Tuesday and action against officials of the NIT who according to them are involved in anti-national activities. The state government has ordered a time-bound inquiry into the incidents of violence on April 1 and April 5, triggered by clashes between local and outstation students over India's loss to the West Indies in the World T20 Cup semifinals last week. "We have instituted an enquiry to go into the incidents at the NIT," Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh said yesterday. He said Additional District Magistrate Srinagar will conduct the inquiry and submit his report within 15 days. Police have also registered two separate FIRs regarding the incidents of student violence that took place on NIT Srinagar campus last Friday and Tuesday. The first FIR was registered against unknown persons for the clashes between outstation and local students on April 1, a day after India lost to West Indies in the semi-final of the World T20 Cup. The police has invoked sections 148 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 427 (mischief), 336 (endangering life of others) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) for the clashes between local and outstation students that took place last Friday. In the second FIR registered on April 5, the police, besides slapping the charges of the previous FIR, has added sections 353 (assault on public servant) and 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant). While no one has been named in the two FIRs yet, the official said police is investigating the video evidence of violence that took place on the days of incidents. DMK and its ally Puthiya Tamizhagam (PT) today concluded identification of the four constituencies the latter will contest in the May 16 Tamil Nadu Assembly polls. The constituencies, all reserved, include Ottapidaram, represented by PT founder-leader K Krishnasamy in the outgoing assembly, according to the poll-pact reached between the two parties. DMK, leading the alliance, had yesterday allotted four seats to PT. As per the agreement signed by DMK President M Karunanidhi and Krishnasamy, the other seats PT would contest are Vasudevanallur, Srivilliputhur and Krishnarayapuram. Presently, Vasudevanallur and Krishnarayapuram are held by the ruling AIADMK while CPI represents Srivilliputhur. An ally of AIADMK in the 2011 elections, PT later switched sides and supported DMK leader Kanimozhi's candidature in the 2013 Rajya Sabha elections. DMK and Congress had yesterday identified the 41 seats the national party will contest in the 234-member assembly. Eyeing to return to power, DMK had allotted 58 seats to its allies including five each to two Muslim parties, while keeping a lion's share of 176 constituencies for itself. (REOPENS MES1) DMK and another of its allies, Indian Union Muslim League, also identified the five constituencies the latter will contest. IUML leader KM Khadern Mohideen said that he and Karunanidhi had signed an agreement in this regard following which his party will fight from Vaniyambadi, Kadayanallur, Poompuhar, Villupuram and Manapparai Assembly segments. (REOPENS MES2) Another DMK ally, MMK , will contest from Ramanathapuram, Ambur, Thondamuthur, Ulunthoorpet and Nagapattinam. The two parties arrived at a conclusion today over MMK's constituencies. MMK, which had aligned with AIADMK for 2011 elections, represents Ramanathapuram and Ambur in the present assembly. With drought cvondition becoming severe in Maharashtra, Ramkund, the sacred bathing ghat on Godavari river here, has dried up for the first time in last 139 years resulting in religious rituals almost coming to halt. Ramkund has dried up as water stock in Gangapur Dam has gone down due to severe drought and scanty rainfall last year. "Ramkund has gone dry after 139 years as irrigation authorities stopped releasing water (from Gangapur dam) into the river as keeping water for drinking is their first priority now," said Devang Jani of Godapremi Urban Action Committee. Interestingly, 'Gandhi Talao', a small pond located few metres from Ramkund, has water flowing into it though supply to Ramkund is stopped. Jani said inadequate rainfall since past three years only aggravated the situation. Rituals like performing 'shradh' and immersion of ash of dead are traditionally performed at Ramkund. However, the unprecedented situation has led to their suspension. Meanwhile, Satish Shuka, president of Nashik Purohit Sangh (priests' organisation), has requested the district administration to release water from dam so that devotees can perform rituals and also take a dip which is considered holy as per scriptures. Kumbh Mela, the largest religious congregation of Hindus held once in twelve years at different spots, was held in Nashik only last year. Jani said the civic corporation is mulling to dig borewells near Ramkund with the hope to fill it with water. However, this move is opposed by environmentalists. Gangapur dam, the main source of water for the city, now has only 27 per cent of total stock at 1512 tmcft. The Direct Current (DC) driven suburban local trains will ply for the last time on the Harbour Line tomorrow as part of a special service run by the Central from Kurla to CST wherein passengers can book a historic ride for Rs 10,000. "We are operating this special service to mark the irreplaceable contribution of DC rakes in the suburban local operations. Also, this would be an unmissable offer to get a ride on the last DC local," General Manager of Central Railways, S K Sood told reporters here. This special train would leave Kurla at 11.30 PM (on Saturday) and reach CST at 12.15 AM on Sunday. Also, people will get to witness the 'live' conversion (from 1,500 DC to 25,000 volt AC traction). After the train reaches CST, our team will start the conversion work of DC to AC, Sood said, adding a special function will be held at the CST heritage building in Mumbai, where participants will get to see the 'live' conversion. Sood said money collected by levying Rs 10,000 per passenger would be given to the drought-hit in Maharashtra. The iconic yellow-and-maroon direct current (DC) suburban local trains that served the metropolis for more than 90 years, started its first journey on February 3, 1925 when the first electric local ran between CST and Kurla on the Harbour line, marking the beginning of electrification of in India. However, CR's latest initiative has drawn the fury of railway activists and experts who are of the opinion that this has nothing to do with end railway travellers. A member of Divisional Railway Users' Consultative Committee (DRUCC) of Mumbai Division of CR, requesting anonymity said, "by charging Rs 10,000 for a single trip, CR railway officers have ensured that only those who are very rich and perhaps never travel by local trains can avail this opportunity. This is the height of the stupidity shown by the so-called intellectual class officers." He claimed that CR would find it hard to sell the ticket for even Rs 100. Former DRUCC member of Mumbai Division of CR and railway issues expert, Rajiv Singal said, "Railway officers think common travellars as rich as they are themselves. A common railway enthusiast would think 10,000 times before spending Rs 10,000 on a single trip. "A second class passenger will get yearly pass for five years while first class passenger would get a pass for over three years by shelling out this amount," he said. Singal also said the cause to collect funds for the drought-affected was quite good but the method adopted to fulfil it, was unfeasible. Another railway expert and president of Yatri Sangh Mumbai, Subhash Gupta said, "I was really shocked to know that would charge Rs 10,000 from each passenger. This is going to backfire." "I have tweeted Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu about this nonsensical move and have advised them that if Railways really want to help the drought-affected, then its officers should donate from their pocket or salary," Gupta said. Students from JJ School of Arts, who collaborated with CR for organising the event, have prepared to make it memorable for the participants, said Sood. The participants will have to follow a specific dress code and will be given a grand welcome with a special band during their journey from Kurla to CST. Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime has freed an American detainee, the US State Department said today, thanking Russia for intervening in the missing man's case. A spokesman would not confirm the identity of the released captive but did not dispute media reports that named him as 33-year-old Kevin Patrick Dawes, from California. An FBI missing persons report calling for information about Dawes's fate was taken offline today, suggesting that the US government can now account for his whereabouts. "This individual was released in the last few days. He is no longer in Syria," spokesman Mark Toner said. Citing US privacy law, the spokesman said he could give no further information about the former detainee's identity nor the manner of his release. But he thanked Assad's ally Moscow for assisting in the case. "We are appreciative of efforts on the behalf of the Russian government that it undertook on behalf of this US citizen," he said. A number of US citizens, including but not limited to 31-year-old photojournalist Austin Tice, are still reported as missing in war-torn Syria, Toner said. He would not be drawn on the full number of missing Americans. The FBI notice described Dawes as a freelance photographer, but a detailed profile published in GQ Magazine portrayed him as an adventurer and "have-a-go guerrilla." Prior to disappearing in Syria, Dawes had taken up arms with a militia in Libya, according to an interview he gave to NPR radio in 2011. Despite Dawes' somewhat different profile, the unexpected release has given hope to campaigners seeking the better known freelance journalist Tice's freedom. The FBI missing persons report says Dawes traveled to Syria in September 2012 from Turkey and has not made contact since October of that year. According to a Washington Post report, the Syrian government recently permitted Dawes to call his family and to receive a care package. The United States has no diplomatic relations with Syria, believing that Assad lost legitimacy after his crackdown on opposition protests triggered a civil war. Nevertheless, Toner confirmed that US officials had direct contact with Syrian officials to lobby for information on the missing Americans. And he thanks the Czech republic, whose embassy in Damascus represents the interests of Americans in Syria for their assistance in the matter. "We continue to work through the Czechs on the ground to get information on the whereabouts of Austin Tice," Toner said. The beleaguered Gupta family of South Africa today announced they would quit their own company amid increasing calls for a probe into the Indian-origin business barons' alleged influence in government through their links with President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's son Duduzane, who held a directorship in the company after starting there as an intern a few years ago, has also resigned amid a political storm over the issue. The three Gupta brothers - Ajay, Atul and Rajesh - have been under immense pressure for the past few months after several high-ranking members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), including the current Deputy Minister of Finance, claimed that the family had offered them government positions, including appointments as ministers. The Guptas have denied these allegations, which have been termed as "state capture". There have been widespread calls from several compatriots and aides of late President and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela as well as civil society and churches for Zuma to resign in the wake of the allegations and a finding by the country's highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, that he had breached his duties in terms of the Constitution. But the ANC has come out in defence of their leader. Simultaneous pressure on the Guptas has seen Oakbay's banks and financiers all severing their association with the business in the past fortnight. "It is with deep regret and a heavy heart, that following a period of sustained political attack on our family and our businesses, we took the decision yesterday to resign all executive and non-executive positions held in Oakbay Investments, by Gupta family members," the Guptas said in a statement today. Oakbay's executive committee and the CEOs of each of the businesses will continue to oversee the management and running of the business and all portfolio companies going forward. The Guptas cited the risk to its thousands of employees and their dependents as having influenced their decision. "By stepping down from all executive and non-executive positions and any involvement in the business, we hope to save the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people in our great rainbow nation," it said. Oakbay Investments earlier claimed that it has invested more than 10 billion rand in South Africa and employs more than 4,500 people. Reacting to allegations that the company had benefited unfairly from government contracts, Oakbay said less than 1 per cent of its revenue was from government contracts. Keeping aside the setback due to non-implementation of Rs 52,000 crore greenfield steel project of Posco, South Korea today expressed its interest to invest in India including Odisha. "Posco project unfortunately has not developed well. But, after 10 years of time, may be, we have to think more creatively," South Korean Ambassador to India Cho Hyun told reporters after meeting Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. Hyun, who was here to address a business meeting, said, South Korea has many other things to offer, not just Posco. Stating that South Korea is in favour of more investment in India, Hyun said he met a number of businessmen in South Korea last month and encouraged them to invest in India. To a question on the fate of Posco project, the MoU for which was signed with the state government way back in 2005, Hyun said, South Korean government will honour Posco's decision which will be on their commercial consideration. He said this while referring to Posco's decision to keep the Odisha project on hold. "Discussed investment and trade opportunities in Odisha with Korean Ambassador Cho Hyun," the Chief Minister tweeted after his meeting with Hyun. Patnaik, however, did not mention whether Posco figured in their meeting. Meanwhile, Odisha's steel and mines minister Prafulla Kumar Mallick said the state government was not apprised of Posco's decision of keeping the project at Paradip on hold. "We have requested the Centre to intervene and resolve Posco issue so that the country's biggest FDI is implemented in the state," the minister said. Democratic White House hopeful Bernie Sanders said today he hopes to meet Pope Francis while attending a conference on social and environmental issues at the Vatican next week. The Vermont senator said he was "very moved" by an invitation to join the April 15 Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences meeting, which will see him take a break from a bruising US presidential campaign. But while Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Sanders had been invited to the conference, he told AFP that "has nothing to do with the pope" and that no meeting with Francis is planned. In New York, Sanders told MSNBC that he was "a big, big fan of the pope." "Obviously there are areas where we disagree, on women's rights or gay rights, but he has played an unbelievable role, an unbelievable role of injecting a moral consequence into the economy," Sanders told the channel. He later told reporters that it was "a possibility" that he would meet Francis, but confirmed that nothing was currently scheduled. "It's something that I very much would like to do. The pope's schedule is determined by the Vatican, but I would certainly be enthusiastic about that." Sanders, who is Jewish but whose wife is Catholic, has frequently expressed respect for Francis, who was treated to a rock-star reception on an inaugural tour of the United States last year. The longest-serving independent member of Congress and self-declared democratic socialist is a champion of the struggling working class, and rails against the influence of big banks and billionaires. "We can not, as the pope often tells us, simply be worshippers of greed and money," he told reporters today. "We've got to create an economy that works for all people and not just the few." The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences was established by Pope John Paul II in 1994 to promote the study and progress of economics, sociology, law and political science. Other conference invited attendees include Ecuador's President Rafael Correa and Bolivian President Evo Morales, the organizers said. According to the RealClearPolitics poll average, Sanders trails Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton 42.5 to 53.5 per cent in the April 19 New York primary, the next key battleground in the US presidential race. Sanders, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, needs a win in Clinton's adopted home state to help keep alive his dreams of the White House. The Supreme Court today asked the government to clarify its stand on a PIL seeking return of Kohinoor diamond in the country. A bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur, which did not issue notice on the PIL, asked the Solicitor General to seek instructions in the matter within a week. "Everybody is claiming the Kohinoor. How many countries are claiming Kohinoor? Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and even South Africa. Somebody here is also asking for the Kohinoor. Do you know about it," the bench asked the Solicitor General. Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar said he was unaware about it and would need time to seek instructions and get back. During the hearing, the bench, also comprising Justices R Banumathi and U U Lalit, said there has been a press report attributing statements to the British Prime Minister quoting him as saying, "if we were to accept such demands, British Museums would be empty". "Why don't you approach the government? Hasn't the government taken up the matter? Government has done something. They have done whatever it could," the bench told the petitioner. The apex court was hearing a PIL filed by All India Human Rights & Social Justice Front seeking directions to the High Commissioner of United Kingdom for return of the diamond besides several other treasures. The PIL has made Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Culture, High Commissioners of UK, Pakistan and Bangladesh as parties in the case. It has also sought return of the "ring and talwar of Tipu Sultan and other treasures of Tipu Sultan, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Rani of Jhansi, Nawab Mir Ahmad Ali Banda and other rulers of India. A group of 45 Pakistani migrants arrived in the Turkish port of Dikili today after being expelled from Greece under a controversial EU deal to halt mass migration to Europe, a local official said. "The migrants are busy getting off the boat for identity and health checks," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "The Greek side has informed us that there will be three more boats today." The migrants will be taken by bus to reception centres in Kirklareli on the Bulgarian border, from where they are expected to eventually be deported back to their home country. Late Thursday, Turkey's parliament approved a deal signed in 2010 allowing for the repatriation of Pakistani migrants, local media reported. The group is part of the second batch of migrants to be expelled under the deal, which launched on Monday with the deportation of 202 people to Turkey. After getting off the ground, the deal quickly ran into trouble as migrants on the Greek islands launched a flurry of requests for asylum which legally prevents them from being deported. This led to several days of delays between deportations. The Greek government said those expelled had not requested asylum. Turkey has promised to take back all irregular migrants landing on the Greek islands since March 20 -- a figure which currently stands at about 6,000 -- while Europe has agreed to resettle one Syrian refugee directly from camps in Turkey for each Syrian deported. In return, Turkey is set to receive benefits including visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe, promised by June at the latest. Turkey is also to receive six billion euros (USD 6.8 billion) in financial aid up to the end of 2018 for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. While questions remain over how successful the deportations will be in the long-term in discouraging migrants from making the treacherous journey to Europe, the numbers arriving in the EU have fallen drastically in recent weeks. This is largely due to an increased clampdown by Turkey on people smugglers and a greater effort in stopping migrants from crossing land and sea borders into Europe. State media reported this week that 400 smuggling suspects had been arrested so far in 2016, and more than 65,000 migrants intercepted at sea and on land. Thirteen North Koreans working at the same restaurant in a foreign country have defected to South Korea, Seoul officials said today. People working in North Korean-operated restaurants overseas have previously defected, but this is the first time multiple workers have escaped from the same restaurant, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee told reporters in Seoul. North Korean defections are a bitter point of contention between the rival Koreas. Pyongyang usually accuses Seoul of enticing North Korean citizens to defect, something Seoul denies. Overseas North Korean workers are usually thought to be chosen largely because of their loyalty. Jeong said one male and 12 female North Korean workers arrived in the South on Thursday. He didn't reveal the country where they were working to avoid diplomatic problems and possibly endanger North Koreans still working in the country. The North Koreans told South Korean officials that they learned about the South and began to distrust North Korean propaganda by watching South Korean TV dramas and movies and from searching the Internet while living overseas, Jeong said. The Unification Ministry's website says more than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea as of March. A Singaporean woman MP's remarks that crowds of South Asian workers were "walking time-bombs" and must be fenced off from residential areas in the country's Indian quarter triggered angry reactions on the social media, forcing her to apologise. "I should not have used the phrase 'walking time-bombs' to describe congregations of high density," she wrote in a Facebook post. Phua is also the mayor of Central Singapore. As her constituency covers part of the Little India neighbourhood, she had put forth some suggestions to safeguard against a repeat of the Little India riot in December 2013 -- involving South Asian workers -- the worst outbreak of public disorder in Singapore in 40 years. The suggestions include forming a multi-agency Task Force to manage security risks of congestion or ring-fencing communal residential areas. During a recent visit to 'Little India', Phua said she noticed that the crowds that used to gather before the riot had returned, despite measures to ease large gatherings and alcohol sale restrictions in the area. Little India is a precinct of shops, hotels and motels where workers from South Asia spend their off days. Her remarks triggered angry reactions. "I have no intention to undermine any specific group," Phua explained. "I personally get along very well with the foreign cleaners in my constituency. To them and the other foreign workers in our country, thank you for your help and please accept my sincere apology if I have caused you concern." Foreign workers from South Asia form a large part of workforce in the construction and cleaning sectors in Singapore. Singapore's investments in India grew nearly 20 times in the past decade to SGD 12.1 billion, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat today said. Heng cited 50 years of successful bilateral diplomatic ties to reaffirm his country's partnership and friendship with India. "This is an opportune time to reaffirm the partnership between Singapore and India," said Heng, addressing over 1,000 delegates at the IIMPACT conference and exhibition here. "Over the past decade, Singapore's investments in India have grown nearly 20 times from SGD 653 million to SGD 12.1 billion," said Heng. He cited Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Singapore four months ago and the signing of a joint declaration to pursue economic cooperation between the two countries. "Whether as individuals, businesses or as nations, our impact is multiplied when we look for ways to partner others, here and with friends abroad, to bring our strengths together and collaborate to build the future we imagine for ourselves," said Heng. More than 6,000 Indian companies are in Singapore, working globally. Singaporean companies are steadily growing presence in India, he said. These bring "our strengths together and colaborate to build the future we imagine for ourselves," Heng said. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Modi sent a message, wishing success for the IIMPACT global event. IIMPACT has the highest concentration of IIM alumni in Singapore. Police today seized 2.4 kg gold and arrested six persons in this connection from Raxaul town located on the Indo-Nepal border in East Champaran district of Bihar, a police officer said. Acting on a tip off, the police intercepted a SUV near a hotel under Town police station area and nabbed six persons with 2.4 kg gold smuggled by one Md. Aslam from Dubai, Deputy Superintendent of Police Rakesh Kumar said. Aslam intended to take the consignment of gold, valued at Rs 70 lakh, to Delhi by road for which he had hired the SUV, he said. The other persons arrested in connection with seizure of smuggled gold consigment are: Md. Aqif, Raisuddin, Md. Tariq, Md. Gulam Gilani and Ashok Pandey (the SUV driver), the DSP said. Budget carrier has also increased its ticket cancellation charges by over Rs 350, days after its competitor IndiGo announced a flat charge of Rs 2,250 even as the DGCA deadline for airlines to submit their response on the issue ended today. The revised charges for cancelling a domestic ticket now stands at Rs 2,250 while for an international air ticket, it is fixed at Rs 2,500, said in a communication to travel agents. The new cancellation charges are effective from April 7, it said. Significantly, the move comes amid the civil aviation regulator--Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)-- seeking an explanation on the reasons for a flat cancellation fee and a body of air passengers Air Passengers Association of India (APAI) threatening to approach fair trade regulator, CCI for an investigation into the alleged cartelisation. The Gurgaon-based airline had earlier been charging a fee of Rs 1,899 for cancelling a domestic ticket and Rs 2,349 for an international air ticket. Most of the domestic carriers, including IndiGo, had increased the cancellation charges by a significant amount in February. DGCA had written to the airlines, including the regional ones, asking them to explain the reason for increasing ticket cancellation fee, which in some cases now is almost equivalent to the air fares charged for a short-haul journey. IndiGo had done away with the slab system in cancellation fee and announced a flat charge of Rs 2,250. The aviation regulator had asked the airlines to file their response by today. "We are preparing to petition to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to probe the recent hike in the ticket cancellation charges by the Indian airlines. The way these airlines have announced the increase one-by-one, the pattern definitely suggests an anti-competition practice," APAI President D Sudhakara Reddy had said. Hundreds of laid-off steelworkers gathered outside their former employer's office this week to protest at losing their jobs, victims of a global glut. But the smokestacks nearby were not British; they are in China -- the very place blamed by European politicians for the plunging prices and excess capacity threatening the industry worldwide. As recriminations fly over the closure of the Port Talbot steelworks, the pain of redundancy is felt as keenly in the northern Chinese steel hub of Tangshan as it is in Wales. "I have a daughter," said one man, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. "I'm the main breadwinner in the family. What can I do in the future?" He was among 4,000 people who workers say face unemployment after state-owned steel firm Guofeng halted work at one of its hulking production zones last week, citing "uncontrollable factors". They are just the tip of the iceberg; major Chinese steel producers lost more than 100 billion yuan (USD 15.5 billion) last year, an industry association said yesterday, and Beijing has said it will shed 500,000 steel jobs in coming years. National production grew sevenfold from 2000 to 2014 as domestic demand boomed from massive infrastructure investment in swelling cities, and as the government ploughed billions of dollars into heavy industry to counter the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis. At the same time plants built by private investors expecting ever rising prices also went into operation. By 2014, China was producing some 820 million tonnes a year -- about half the world total and seven times more than the second biggest producer, Japan. But domestic demand peaked the same year as China's building boom began to wane and growth slowed, analysts say, causing commodity prices to plummet. World export prices for steel have fallen more than 70 percent from an all time high of USD 1,113 per tonne in July 2008 to just USD 321 last month, according to the website steelbenchmarker.Com. China can now produce about 1.2 billion tonnes of steel each year, but local demand is around 700 million tonnes, and companies have looked to foreign markets to make up the deficit, primarily in Asia. "In 2015 China exported about 100 million tonnes of steel products," Cai Rang, chairman of the China Iron and Steel Research Institute Group told state media last month -- around twice as much as two years previously. The exports were "a relief for domestic capacity but a shock to the international market", he acknowledged. That shockwave played out when India's Tata Steel announced last month it was selling the loss-making Port Talbot steelworks, with the possible loss of 4,000 employee positions and many more indirectly, triggering doom-laden warnings of worse to come for Europe's steel industry. However, World Steel Association figures show that a tiny proportion -- about six million tonnes in 2014 -- of Chinese exports go to the EU, where some 100 million tonnes is traded between the bloc's countries. A constable of Uttarakhand Police's Special Task Force was killed in an encounter with wildlife smugglers in the forests of Dhauntri in the district, police said today. Constable Anant Yadav, who was part of a STF team chasing a group of wildlife smugglers, fell to their bullets in the wee hours yesterday, Circle Officer Devidutt Chaunsli said. All the wildlife smugglers except one escaped taking the advantage ofdarkness and the dense forests. One leopard pelt has been recovered from the arrested smuggler. Yadav was rushed to District Hospital Uttarkashi where he was declared brought dead. The forests of Dhauntri and adjoining areas are still being combed in search of the wildlife smugglers especially their leader Sundar Singh Bisht, the CO said. Japanese carmaker Subaru will recall more than 14,000 sport utility vehicles (SUVs) in China over flaws in their electronic parking brake (EPB) systems, the country's quality watchdog said today. The recall, starting on April 13, involves 14,802 imported Outback models produced between October 3, 2014 and August 31, 2015, according to a statement from the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. The faulty systems may damage brake motors, making the cars unable to be restarted, the administration was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua agency. Subaru will notify all affected customers and upgrade their EPB systems for free, according to the statement. A 230-bed super-speciality hospital, set up by Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir, was made operational today. The hospital will be formally inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 19. Built at a cost of over Rs 300 crore, the hospital has more than 20 different streams of medicine and surgery and two well equipped critical care ambulances, an official spokesperson said. It has been providing free OPD services and diagnostic test facilities from March 15, during the pre-launch period and will have facilities to treat patients suffering from cancer, heart and neurological diseases. The shrine board has concluded an agreement with Narayana Hrudayalaya Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru, for operationalisation of the hospital, the spokesperson said. Governor N N Vohra, who has been personally monitoring the establishment of this flagship project of the shrine board, visited various sections of the Hospital with Dr Raghuvanshi, MD of Narayana Health. He interacted with the doctors, paramedics and other staff and emphasised on the need for providing the best possible patient care so that the hospital develops as a medical care centre of excellence, the spokesperson added. Syria has freed an American citizen missing since 2012 in the war-torn country, the US State Department confirmed today. "We can confirm and welcome the that a US citizen was released by Syrian authorities," State Department spokesman John Kirby said without naming the freed hostage. The Washington Post identified the released man as 33-year-old freelance photographer Kevin Dawes. The FBI said Dawes travelled to Syria in 2012 from Turkey and had been missing since October that year. The US has no diplomatic relations with Syria following President Bashar al-Assad's brutal crackdown on opposition protests that sparked a deadly civil war in 2011. "The United States continues to work through every possible means to ensure the safe release of US citizens reported missing or taken hostage in Syria," Kirby said. "While privacy considerations prevent us from commenting further, we continue to work through our Czech protecting power in Syria to get information on the welfare and whereabouts of Austin Tice and other US citizens missing and detained in Syria," he said. Tice is another American photographer who has been missing in Syria since August, 2012. China, embroiled in a maritime row with its neighbours over the South China Sea, today asked G7 countries not to put territorial disputes in their agenda at the G20 summit to be hosted by it later this year, warning that it may be harmful to regional stability. "If some countries deliberately put historical issues or even disputes over territorial sovereignty into the G7 summit, it will not only be helpless for resolving the issues, but also be harmful to regional stability, which is obviously unacceptable," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said today. "We hope the G7 summit will focus on the topics of economy and development, which are the biggest concern all around the world, just as G20 does," he said at a joint press briefing following talks with visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. His remarks assume significance as China's claims over almost all of the South China Sea are countered by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. They accuse China of illegally reclaiming land in contested areas to create artificial islands with facilities that could potentially be for military use. The South China Sea is rich in natural resources. It is also a major shipping lane. Over half of the world's commercial shipping passes through the Indo-Pacific waterways. Answering questions about the relations between G7 and G20, Wang said the G20 comprises major developed and developing countries, which account for more than 80 per cent of global economic output and international trade. "This indicates that G20 is more representative for the common aspiration and consensus of the international community," he said, adding that it has become the most important platform for global economic governance and cooperation. As the host of this year's G20 summit, China will cooperate with other G20 members, including Germany, to find solutions to major problems of the world economy, said Wang. This year's G20 Leaders Summit will be held in September in Hangzhou, a popular tourist city and capital of China's eastern Zhejiang Province. Invited by Wang, Steinmeier is paying a three-day visit to China from today. The two ministers co-chaired the second session of Chinese-German strategic dialog on diplomatic and security affairs today. The overall number of tourists visiting France in 2015 rose marginally compared with the year before to reach an all-time high despite the two deadly attacks in Paris in January and November. Government figures released today show that 84.5 million tourists visited continental France, an increase of 0.9 per cent from 2014. The press office for France's ministry of foreign affairs said the latest figure "was an absolute record." The November 13 attacks in which 130 people died had a negative impact, with a drop of 15 per cent in the numbers of foreign visitors traveling to Paris in the months of November and December. Before that massacre, two shooters had stormed the office of a satirical newspaper in January, killing a dozen people. After a 1.8 per cent increase over the first three quarters, there was a 3.1 per cent drop at national level in the last quarter. "The attacks that hit Paris in November have restricted this increase, particularly in the capital," French foreign affairs minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said. "My goal remains to welcome 100 million foreign tourists every year in France from 2020." Paris tourism took a hit in the weeks following the violence. State statistics agency Insee said earlier this year that hotel occupancy in the French capital dropped by 25 per cent in the two weeks that followed the attacks, compared with November 2014. Air France estimated the attacks caused USD 130 million in lost revenue. But French authorities note that the country remains the world's leading tourist destination, with hotel stays going up 0.8 per cent across France in 2015. According to the latest figures, the largest increase was among tourists coming from Asia, whose numbers grew by 22.7 per cent, with Chinese visitors surpassing 2 million. The number of American tourists also increased considerably, by 15.2 per cent to 3.6 million in 2015, "marking a return of these customers to France," officials said in a statement. There was a 1.5 per cent drop in European visitors although the number of British tourists crossing the Channel went up 3.3 per cent. Pakistan's trade with India is on track despite "suspension" of bilateral dialogue, Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir has said. Dastgir was talking to the media here yesterday after attending the Texpo Pakistan exhibition, which was attended by around 400 foreign delegates. "Suspension of dialogue with India did not suggest an end to bilateral trade," Dawn newspaper quoted Dastgir as saying. He said that Pakistan intended to hold a single-country exhibition in India. The minister said the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) has changed its focus from holding general exhibitions to single segment of products. He said there was a shift in commercial strategy as more importance was being given to regional countries, including Central Asian states, Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka. For achieving the export strategy target of USD 35 billion, the government has posted trained commercial counsellors in potential markets, he said. A top aide to Donald Trump said today he was confident that the billionaire can win the Republican nomination for the White House outright and avoid a contested convention in July. "We have a clear path forward. It's difficult. We have to win. We have to win consistently," Paul Manafort, a veteran political strategist, told CNN one day after Trump put him in charge of the nomination process. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who crushed Trump in the Wisconsin primary this week and who has galvanized Republican leaders determined to stop Trump at all costs, had "seen his best day," Manafort said. By June 7, "it will be apparent" that Trump has the 1,237 Republican delegates needed to win the nomination without having his mantle contested at the party convention in Cleveland, Manafort told CNN. June 7 marks the last state elections in the White House nomination process with votes in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Democratic party votes in North Dakota and the District of Columbia. Trump leads the polls in the New York state primary on April 19, when 95 Republican delegates are up for grabs. Manafort also expects the tycoon to do well in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut. "By the time we get to California the momentum will be very clear. Ted Cruz's path to victory will be in shambles," he said. "I'm inheriting a great situation. I have to steer the ship in a little bit different direction." Trump's brash, insult-heavy campaign has had a polarizing effect on Republicans as well as the nation at large, but Manafort said he believed the party would unite behind Trump. The party frontrunner announced yesterday that he was putting Manafort in charge of managing the delegate count and the Cleveland Convention. Last week, Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was charged with battery for allegedly roughly grabbing a reporter. Manafort told CNN that while he would be listening to everyone, "I work directly with the boss. (Reopens FGN 1) "Governor Mike Pence will be representing me tomorrow in Wisconsin. I will be spending the day in New York in debate prep with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, Governor Chris Christie and Senator Jeff Sessions, and then flying to St. Louis on Sunday for the 2nd Presidential Debate," Trump said in a late night statement. Reacting to the video, Senator John McCain said, "There are no excuses for Donald Trump's offensive and demeaning comments." "No woman should ever be victimised by this kind of inappropriate behaviour. He alone bears the burden of his conduct and alone should suffer the consequences," he said. Two other Senators Kelly Ayotte and Richard Burr called the remarks "inappropriate". Senator Pat Toomey said the comments were "outrageous and unacceptable". Democrats seized the moment. Indian-American Mini Timmaraju, who is National Women's Vote Director wrote an email to the campaign supporters seeking donations to prevent Trump from winning the November elections. "The general election is a choice between the potential first female president and a guy who says...Do something with that sick-to-your-stomach feeling," she said. Turkey's Foreign Ministry says Turkish and Israeli officials have made progress on an agreement to normalize frayed ties and that a deal is expected to be reached soon. A ministry statement issued early today said officials who met in London yesterday agreed to finalize the deal during their next meeting "which will be convened very soon." Israel and Turkey were traditionally close allies, but ties broke down in 2010 over Israeli commandos' deadly storming of a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship. Relations declined further over Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's often fiery rhetoric against Israel. In a sign of a warming, however, the Turkish and Israeli leaders held a telephone conversation last month following a bomb attack in Istanbul that killed Israeli tourists. Turkey and Israel are on the brink of restoring their ties after a bitter falling-out five years ago, the Turkish foreign ministry announced early today after talks in London. NATO member Turkey was a key regional ally of Israel until the two countries cut ties in 2010 over the deadly storming by Israeli commandos of a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza, which left 10 Turkish activists dead. After years of bitter accusations and inflammatory rhetoric, the two sides held secret talks in December to seek a rapprochement, with another round taking place in February in Geneva. "The teams made progress towards finalising the agreement and closing the gaps, and agreed that the deal will be finalised in the next meeting which will be convened very soon," the Turkish ministry said in a statement after the fresh round of talks yesterday. An Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity that "the gaps are getting narrowed," without elaborating. Ankara said the latest talks in London brought together powerful Turkish foreign ministry official Feridun Sinirlioglu, Joseph Ciechanover, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli National Security Advisor Jacob Nagel. In an interview with Turkish newspaper Vatan today, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said "significant progress has been made", adding that the two sides were hoping to reach "a final stage" in the talks soon. Turkey had already said in February that the former allies were "close to concluding a deal". But they had yet to agree on all of Turkey's conditions, with the main hurdle appearing to be the lifting of Israel's blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Israel apologised to Turkey in 2013, in what many thought would trigger a warming in ties, but tensions soared again the following year when Israel launched a massive military offensive in Gaza. Turkey's other condition is that victims of the Mavi Marmara be compensated, and has said that talks have advanced in this regard. The Mavi Marmara was one of six ships which headed to Gaza in May 2010 carrying humanitarian supplies in a bid to break the blockade of the Strip which has been in place since 2007, shortly after the Islamist militant group Hamas won elections there. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the European Union that Ankara would not implement a key deal on reducing the flow of migrants if Brussels fails to fulfil its side of the bargain. Erdogan's typically combative comments indicated that Ankara would not sit still if the EU falls short on a number of promises in the deal, including visa-free travel to Europe for Turks by this summer. Meanwhile, the Vatican confirmed that the pope would next week make a brief, unprecedented trip to the Greek island of Lesbos where thousands of migrants are facing potential deportation to Turkey under the deal. "There are precise conditions. If the European Union does not take the necessary steps, then Turkey will not implement the agreement," Erdogan said in a speech at his presidential palace in Ankara. The March 18 accord sets out measures for reducing Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II, including stepped-up checks by Turkey and the shipping back to Turkish territory of migrants who land on the Greek islands. In return, Turkey is slated to receive benefits including visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe, promised "at the latest" by June 2016. Turkey is also to receive a total of six billion euros in financial aid up to the end of 2018 for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, described the visa-free regime as one of the "biggest benefits for Turkey" in the migrant deal. He told AFP that Turkey still has to fulfil 72 conditions on its side to gain visa-free travel to Europe's passport-free Schengen zone and that the move would also have to be approved by EU interior ministers. Turkey's long-stalled accession process to join the EU is also supposed to be re-energised under the deal. But Pierini said there were many conditions still to be fulfilled here. "The worst reading of the EU-Turkey deal would be to imagine that Turkey is about to get a 'discount' on EU membership conditions just because of the refugees," he said. Erdogan argued Turkey deserved something in return for its commitment to Syrian refugees, on whom it has spent some $10 billion since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. "Some three million people are being fed on our budget," the president said. "There have been promises but nothing has come for the moment," he added. The first transfer of more 200 migrants from the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios to Turkey took place on Monday. Officials said Greece was preparing to send around 50 more today unless they applied for asylum at the last minute. Two ethnic Armenian troops died in fighting with Azerbaijani forces today as the archfoes accused each other of breaching a ceasefire that halted the worst outbreak of violence in decades over a disputed breakaway region. The latest clashes are the first serious violation of a Moscow-mediated ceasefire that ended Tuesday the worst outbreak of fighting over the disputed mountainous region of Nagorny Karabakh since it was captured from Azerbaijan by Armenian separatists in the early 1990s. "Azerbaijan violated a ceasefire overnight... Using mortars" to shell ethnic Armenian rebel positions in Karabakh, the separatist defence ministry said in a statement. "One (Karabakh) soldier was killed in the northern sector (of the frontline) near Talysh, another one was fatally wounded at the northeastern sector," it said. The Armenian defence ministry said Azerbaijan shelled both military and civilian targets on the border. "The Armenian villages of Karmir, Ttudjur, and Baganis came under Azerbaijani fire," ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said in a statement. Azerbaijan said it returned fire after Armenian forces shelled its positions in Karabakh. "Azerbaijani armed forces responded to Armenian artillery strikes," defence ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahly said. "Civilian targets (in Azerbaijan) were also shelled by the Armenian forces." At least 77 people from all sides, mainly servicemen, have been reported killed since a simmering feud exploded into the worst outbreak of violence in decades on April 2, prompting both Russia and the West to call on the warring sides for an immediate truce. Azerbaijan's army claimed to have wrested back control of several strategic locations inside Armenian-controlled territory, effectively changing the frontline for the first time since an inconclusive truce ended a three-year war in 1994. Armenia dismissed the claims as "untrue". Armenia-backed separatists seized control of Nagorny Karabakh, a majority ethnic Armenian region inside Azerbaijan, in a war that claimed some 30,000 lives. Despite a 1994 ceasefire the two sides have never signed a peace deal and sporadic violence along the line of contact regularly claims the lives of soldiers on both sides. Energy-rich Azerbaijan, whose military spending exceeds Armenia's entire state budget, has repeatedly threatened to take back the breakaway region by force. But Moscow-backed Armenia has vowed to crush any military offensive. A 51-year-old Uber cab driver was murdered allegedly by two juvenile passengers who dumped his body at an open field in west Delhi's Mundka area, police said today. The incident took place Wednesday afternoon and came to light yesterday morning, when the local residents in Mundka spotted a cab parked on a road for hours and informed the police. Soon, the driver's body with bullet wounds, was found in a field nearby. The victim was identified as Kuldeep Thakur who owned the car and had turned it into a cab affiliated to two aggregator services including Uber. His family was informed about the incident immediately, a senior police official said. Kuldeep's family told police that he had left home on Wednesday for work but did not return. The police approached the cab aggregator service and obtained details of the cab bookings. During investigation, it emerged that Kuldeep's cab was last booked by a youth from south-west Delhi's Najafgarh for Hiran Kudna village, the official said. The police soon zeroed in on one of the accused teenagers and during interrogation he confessed to his crime, also disclosing the name of his accomplice. "Both accused juveniles have been apprehended," DCP (West) Pushpendra Kumar said. During interrogation, the accused said they had hired Kuldeep's cab on Wednesday afternoon. During the journey they entered into a heated argument with him, when suddenly one of them pulled out a gun and shot at him. The teenagers, both 17-year-old, then dumped his body in the open field and fled. Kuldeep, a native of Himachal Pradesh, lived here with his wife and three children. He was the sole breadwinner of the family and his eldest daughter marriage is on the cards, Kuldeep's nephew Jograj said. He said, Kuldeep had worked as driver for years and purchased his own car earlier this year. His family left for Himachal Pradesh today for the last rites. The victim's relatives have alleged that Uber showed no cooperation in the initial phase of the investigation and did not support the family at all, a charge denied by the latter. The relatives also alleged that Uber had "deleted" Kuldeep's name and other details from its database. Uber in a statement said, "Our thoughts are with the family of our driver-partner, the victim of this mindless violence. We have pro-actively shared details with the police to assist them with their investigation. The Telugu New Year 'Ugadi' was celebrated today all the over East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh with traditional gaiety and religious fervour. People in large numbers thronged temples in the district and offered special poojas. The devotees also took a holy dip in the River Godavari on the occasion. Deputy Chief Minister N China Rajapppa participated in the Ugadi celebrations in Muramalla village in I Polavaram Mandal. He felicitated 20 people with citation for rendering valuable services in respective fields. Several cultural programmes, including Kuchipudi dancer and kavi sammelan, were organised on the occasion. Britain's Serious Fraud Office has launched a "criminal investigation" into workings of Tata Steel UK in relation to certain events of 2015, amid the steel maker scouting buyers for its loss-making business. The matter relates to certain inappropriate testing and certification procedures at the South Yorkshire-based Speciality Steels business and a full investigation that was carried out internally with the help of experts. In a statement today, Tata Steel UK said it had informed relevant bodies, including SFO, about the issue after completion of internal investigation. "Amongst other bodies proactively notified by Tata Steel UK was the Serious Fraud Office, which has opened a criminal investigation," Tata Steel UK said. Without disclosing specific details about the probe, the company said since the initial notification, it has been cooperating fully with the SFO in their investigation. "It is not appropriate for Tata Steel to comment on that investigation," the statement said. Earlier in the day, the 'Daily Telegraph' reported that SFO has launched a criminal inquiry into the workings of Tata Steel UK. When contacted, the SFO told PTI that it was "declining to comment" on the matter at this stage. During an internal audit in 2015, Tata Steel said it came across certain inappropriate testing and certification procedures at the South Yorkshire-based Speciality Steels business. Speciality Steels produces around 225,000 tonnes of steel, comprising around 3 per cent of Tata Steel Europe's total output, and 275 million pounds of turnover, it said. This is also Tata Steel Europe's only electric arc furnace-based business. "Tata Steel UK took immediate action to address the issues uncovered. The practices were immediately stopped. A detailed investigation was carried out by a technical team from outside the Speciality Steel business, and its conclusions were verified by independent experts. "The investigation found the steel affected and supplied was always well within safety margins," the statement said. Tata Steel is seeking buyers for its cash-guzzling steel business in the UK. (REOPENS FGN39) Tata Steel UK said the affected stock was quarantined and assessed, and was either scrapped, transferred to another order or released as appropriate. "A number of Speciality Steels personnel were suspended," it noted. Further, Tata Steel UK last year had "proactively" notified the relevant bodies as soon as it was practicable after the internal investigation had reached conclusions, the statement said. These included accreditation and certification bodies. "A detailed dialogue has been undertaken with these bodies, who have undertaken their own investigations. These investigations have confirmed the thoroughness and adequacy of Tata Steel's response, risk assessment and disclosure programme. No accreditation has been withdrawn from Speciality Steels," the statement said. Tata Steel UK also said that over 450 direct and 150 indirect customers have been informed about the events at Speciality Steels. "There have been no recalls of material in service by any customer and no customer has brought a legal claim to date," it added. The US has condemned the "barbaric murder" of a law student who was killed in Bangladesh for speaking out against violent Islamist extremism and said it is considering granting refuge to a select number of bloggers who are under "imminent danger" in the country. Nazimuddin Samad, 28, a masters student of the state-run Jagannath University's law department who posted comments against radical Islamists on Facebook, was killed by suspected militants in Dhaka's Sutrapur area on Wednesday night. "We offer our condolences to Nazimuddin Samad's family and our unwavering support to the Bangladeshi people in their struggle against violent extremism," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said. Toner said humanitarian parole to "a select number of bloggers who continue to be under imminent danger" is one option under consideration but referred to Homeland Security Department for further details. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh over the past six months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers and foreigners. Last month, a 65-year-old Christian convert was hacked to death in the northern Bangladeshi town of Kurigram by three motorbike-borne unidentified assailants. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. "Nazimuddin knew and Bangladesh's history has shown that violence will not defeat the country's proud tradition of free and independent discourse. So we stand with the Bangladeshi people in rejecting this vicious act, and uniting to preserve a tolerant and inclusive society that protects freedom of expression," Toner said. "The United States will continue to support the government of Bangladesh in its efforts to combat terrorism, counter violent extremism, and bring to justice those who commit such heinous acts," Toner said. The US government today kept its encryption battle with Apple alive, pressing the high-tech giant to help crack an iPhone in a drug case in New York. The move by the Justice Department comes after a high-stakes showdown between Apple and the FBI over access to the iPhone of a California gunman came to an abrupt end, when investigators said they had extracted the data on their own. Key questions thus remain about law enforcement access to devices with strong encryption and how to balance that with user privacy rights -- questions that could be answered if the government's appeal in New York goes forward. "The government continues to require Apple's assistance in accessing the data that it is authorized to search by warrant," Justice Department lawyers told US District Court Judge Margo Brodie in a written filing. The US Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI went to court in New York to compel Apple to help it break into an iPhone confiscated in June 2014 from a suspected methamphetamine trafficker, according to court documents. The US government sought to get Apple to help break into the iPhone under the auspices of the All Writs Act -- a 1789 law that gives wide latitude to law enforcement, and the same one cited in the San Bernardino case. But earlier this year, a lower court judge sided with Apple, saying law enforcement lacked the authority to compel the company to comply. "The relief the government seeks is unavailable because Congress has considered legislation that would achieve the same result but has not adopted it," US Magistrate Judge James Orenstein wrote. The ruling signaled that Apple was on sound footing in the separate but similar battle with the US government over being forced to help crack into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a December shooting rampage in San Bernardino that left 14 dead. But that case was dropped when the FBI said an unnamed "outside party" had helped it access the data in the shooter's phone. The US Navy is building three super aircraft carriers and plans to induct the first next- generation warship, the USD 12.9 billion 'USS Gerald R Ford' this year, according to a top navy official. Sean Stackley, the Navy's assistant secretary for acquisitions, unveiled the timetable for the 100,000-tonne, 1,100-foot-long warship in testimony prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee. As of March, the Ford, on which construction began in 2009, was 97 per cent complete, Stackley said on Wednesday. The 'USS Gerald R Ford' is the first in a new class of US Navy aircraft carriers. He said the carrier is expected to begin sea trials in July and be delivered to the Navy by Newport Shipbuilding two months later. The carrier employs an advanced arresting gear - using water-based technology - to bring jets to a smooth stop. The ship is named after the 38th US president, who died in 2006. He served aboard the USS Monterey during World War II and was discharged from the Navy as a lieutenant commander. Stackley said the next carrier in the Ford class, the USS John F Kennedy, is scheduled to be launched in 2020. That ship was 18 per cent complete as of March, he was quoted as saying by the CNN. The third Ford-class carrier, the USS Enterprise, is set to begin construction in 2018, Stackley said. The timetable for the Navy's biggest warships came as he gave lawmakers the Navy's budget request for the next five years. The service wants to spend USD 81.3 billion over that period to build 38 warships, he said. Included in that request are the first replacement for the aging Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, nine Virginia-class attack submarines, 10 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and smaller numbers of other surface ships. The goal of the building plan is to have a Navy battle force of 308 ships by 2021, according to Stackley's testimony. The US Senate has unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the Maldives to rectify the "injustice" meted out to its former president Mohamed Nasheed and all other "political prisoners". The bipartisan resolution, adopted yesterday, expressed "profound concern over the prosecution and conviction of former President Mohamed Nasheed without due process" and urged the government to "take all necessary steps" to "redress this injustice" and "to release all political prisoners". The resolution was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, who is Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programmes, and Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In its resolution, Senate noted that increasing civil rights violations in Maldives fuel instability and pose a threat to regional security. "President Abdulla Yameen of the Maldives has increasingly cracked down on dissent within his own party and the political opposition, presided over the erosion of judicial impartiality, and put increasing pressure on civil society,"it said. Nasheed was allowed to travel to the United Kingdom for medical leave in January under intense international pressure. At the time, Minister for Legal Affairs Aishath Azima Shakoor told reporters that he would be able to stay abroad for necessary medical treatment and "[i]f he requests extension of medical leave, he will certainly get it." Yet yesterday, the government of Maldives wrote to President Nasheed rejecting his request for an extension based on medical reports stating he required further treatment for his serious spinal cord issues, said a media release. "The government of Maldives should see this unanimous Senate resolution for what it is - a direct rebuke not only to their wrongful prosecution, conviction and sentencing of President Nasheed but also to their arbitrary request for him to return to the country against medical advice," said Jared Genser, international counsel to president Nasheed and founder of Freedom Now. The US has warned its citizens against all non-essential travel to Pakistan given that the country continues to experience significant terrorist violence including sectarian attacks. "Pakistan continues to experience significant terrorist violence, including sectarian attacks. Several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups continue to pose a danger to the US citizens throughout the country," the State Department said yesterday in a latest travel warning on Pakistan which replaces that of the one issue on August 28 last year. While the US Embassy in Islamabad and its Consulate in Karachi continue to provide consular services for all its citizens, the two diplomatic posts are often limited in the services they can provide due to the security environment. The Peshawar Consulate no longer offers consular services, and the one in Lahore remains temporarily suspended. Noting that sectarian violence remains a serious threat countrywide and the Pakistan government continues to enforce blasphemy laws, the State Department said religious minority communities have been victims of targeted killings and accusations of blasphemy. Observing that attacks include armed assaults against heavily guarded facilities, such as military installations and airports, the State Department said terrorists have also struck universities, schools, rallies, places of worship, and large marketplaces in several Pakistani cities. Since the beginning of 2016, a suicide bomber killed at least 15 people and injured 25 others outside a health centre in Quetta, Balochistan; gunmen attacked Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killing 22 people; and a suicide bomber at a park in Lahore killed more than 70 people and injured more than 340. The Pakistan government maintains heightened security measures, particularly in major cities, following attacks or in response to threats, the State Department said. SP leader Shatrudra Prakash today alleged the Allahabad High Court order restraining any construction within 200 meters of the bank of Ganga has been "misinterpreted" by the Varanasi Development Authority (VDA) which is "harassing" people. The former minister claimed the order has created a "fear psychosis" among people whose houses fall within 200 meters of the riverbank and demanded that the High Court intervene in the matter. "VDA officials are harassing people residing in the area, citing the court's order. Many building are more than 100 years old and several houses, which were damaged in the recent earthquakes, needed repairs," he said. The Allahabad High Court on March 14, 2013 passed an order restraining any construction within 200 meters of the bank of the river. Vietnam demanded today that China remove an oil exploration rig from an area of the South China Sea where their border is still being demarcated, and said Beijing's unilateral actions were complicating the situation. The oil rig was at the center of standoff between the countries in 2014 when China parked it near the Paracel islands, which Vietnam claims as its exclusive economic zone. The incident sparked deadly riots in Vietnam. Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said China has moved the oil rig into an area in the Gulf of Tonkin where the countries are negotiating the demarcation of their sea border. "Vietnam resolutely opposes and demands that China abandon drilling plans and immediately withdraw the Hai Duong 981 oil rig from this area, and that it not take additional unilateral actions that further complicate the situation" in the South China Sea, Binh said in a statement, referring to the oil rig by its Vietnamese name. He said Vietnam had lodged a protest with the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi. Binh also said China's operation of a new lighthouse on one of the seven artificial islands it has recently constructed in the South China Sea was "illegal and invalid." Rejecting Vietnam's demands, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the oil rig is conducting standard exploratory activities within waters under China's "undisputed" jurisdiction. "We hope the parties concerned can see this objectively and rationally," Hong told reporters at a regularly scheduled briefing. Hong also said the operation of the lighthouse on Subi Reef is a matter falling within China's sovereignty. The lighthouse is intended to "better fulfill China's international responsibilities and obligations and provide more public facilities to the regional countries, so as to maintain freedom and safety of navigation in the South China Sea," Hong said. The relocation of the Chinese oil rig last Sunday came just days before Vietnam's legislature swore in new Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who has vowed to defend Vietnamese sovereignty. British telecom firm Vodafone today said it is doing the groundwork for a potential IPO of its Indian arm and holding private discussions with banks, but no decision has been taken as of now. "We are not commenting. We have previously said we have started preparations for a potential IPO, which includes private conversations with banks, but this is a lengthy process and no decision will be made until we are at the end of it," a Vodafone spokesperson said in response to an e-mail query. Vodafone has reportedly asked banks to sign a non-disclosure agreement as it proceeds to launch IPO of its Indian arm despite its ongoing dispute with the government. The company is believed to have moved the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) seeking appointment of a judge to preside over an arbitration over its Rs 14,200-crore tax case. Vodafone moved ICJ in March after arbitrators appointed by it and the government of India failed to reach a consensus on selection of a neutral/presiding judge of the three-member panel, sources aware of the development said. Vodafone, in 2013, had invoked the India-Netherlands bilateral investment treaty seeking resolution of a retrospective tax demand, which was imposed on it to sidestep a Supreme Court judgment that went in its favour. Conciliatory proceedings were initiated to resolve the dispute, but differences led to a breakdown following which arbitration was initiated. The government, in June 2014, had appointed former Chief Justice of India R C Lahoti as arbitrator while Vodafone came out with Canadian trial lawyer Yves Fortier as its choice. The two had zeroed in on Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf of ICJ as the presiding arbitrator. Lahoti recused himself from the case in May 2015 and a month later, Yusuf too declined to be part of the panel. Thereafter, India in July last year named Costa Rica-based lawyer Rodrigo Oreamuno to arbitrate on its behalf. But Oreamuno and Fortier have not been able to decide on a presiding arbitrator, forcing Vodafone to move ICJ, sources said. The government had initially issued a tax demand of Rs 7,990 crore on Vodafone for failing to deduct tax on capital gains made over its USD 11-billion acquisition of 67 per cent stake in the mobile-phone business owned by Hutchison Whampoa in 2007. The fluctuations of your heartbeat may affect your wisdom, according to a new study which suggests that heart rate variation and thinking process work together to enable wise reasoning about complex social issues. Researchers from University of Waterloo in Canada and Australian Catholic University identified conditions under which psychophysiology impacts wise judgement. "Our research shows that wise reasoning is not exclusively a function of the mind and cognitive ability," said Igor Grossmann from University of Waterloo. "We found that people who have greater heart rate variability and who are able to think about social problems from a distanced viewpoint demonstrate a greater capacity for wise reasoning," said Grossman. The study extends previous work on cognitive underpinnings of wise judgement to include consideration how the heart's functioning impacts the mind. A growing consensus among philosophers and cognitive scientists defines wise judgement to include the ability to recognise the limits of one's knowledge, to be aware of the varied contexts of life and how they may unfold over time, to acknowledge others' points of view, and to seek reconciliation of opposing viewpoints. The new study is the first to show that the physiology of the heart, specifically the variability of heart rate during low physical activity, is related to less biased, wiser judgement, researchers said. Human heart rate tends to fluctuate, even during steady-state conditions, such as while a person is sitting. Heart rate variability refers to the variation in the time interval between heartbeats and is related to the nervous system's control of organ functions, they said. Researchers found that people with more varied heart rates were able to reason in a wiser, less biased fashion about societal problems when they were instructed to reflect on a social issue from a third-person perspective. But when the participants were instructed to reason about the issue from a first-person perspective, no relationship between heart rate and wiser judgement emerged. "We already knew that people with greater variation in their heart rate show superior performance in the brain's executive functioning such as working memory," said Grossman. "However, that does not necessarily mean these people are wiser - in fact, some people may use their cognitive skills to make unwise decisions. To channel their cognitive abilities for wiser judgement, people with greater heart rate variability first need to overcome their egocentric viewpoints," Grossman added. The findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience. Prominent women from cross-section of society in Maharashtra today hailed the lifting of curb on entry of women in the core area of Shani Shingnapur temple, terming it as a "symbol of victory" for campaign on gender equality and a significant move towards empowerment of women. Giving in to a highly publicised campaign by activists, the Shani Shingnapur temple trust today allowed women to enter the sanctum sanctorum, breaking the tradition followed for several decades. Welcoming the move, Amruta, wife of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, told PTI, "This change (allowing women into the core area) was extremely important and is a really satisfying development. This sends a strong signal that women, like men, deserve all the rightful benefits." Amruta said women from different sections of society fought for the right to enter places of worship. "This is a symbol of change but the actual change will take place only when people will start changing their mindset towards women." Vijaya Rahatkar, Chairperson of Maharashtra State Women Commission, termed the decision as "rightful move" towards gender equality. "Yes, I am very happy to know that women have started praying in the sanctum sanctorum sanctorum of the famous temple. This is a significant move in the direction of gender equality and empowerment of women." The outcome was result of the joint effort of the judiciary and State Government who pushed for gender equality at places of worship, she said. On remarks by Bhumata Brigade, an outfit which spearheaded the campaign for entry of women into the Shani temple, that it will take up similar agitations for other shrines, Rahatkar said, "We would do every bit to support the women's cause within the framework of the Constitution. Our Chief Minister has already talked about it." Human rights activist and advocate Abha Singh thanked the Bombay High Court for its ruling calling for an end to gender bias at places of worship. "The High Court instructed State Government to ensure women are not stopped (from entering the Shani temple core area). The State was bound to act otherwise it would have faced contempt of court charge. (Reopens BOM21) Singh termed the decision on temple entry as a "surrender" by religious bigots. Preethi Herman, Country Head of Change.Org, a global online platform for social advocacy, said, "This is a historic victory (for women's rights). This fight was not just about one temple, or access to a place of worship. "It was about challenging power structures and reclaiming spaces by women. These women have proven what I witness everyday - regular citizens creating changes that are redefining India." Opposition Congress in the State also hailed the decision by temple administration. "Welcome the end of gender discrimination at Shani Shingnapur temple, with Women being given RightToPray at temple Chautara. "Gives us joy at RightToPray being granted to all. I have been supporting this demand in (Legislative) Council. Hope other such places of worship follow..." Congress MLC Sanjay Dutt tweeted. Chinese mobile device maker Xiaomi has sought complete exemption from the mandatory 30 per cent local sourcing norms for opening single brand retail stores in India. "The company has sought permission from the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) for opening single brand retail trading (SBRT) in India. They also want exemption from the mandatory local sourcing norms," sources said. When contacted about the matter, the company said: "We have filed an application for SBRT but would be unable to share more details as it is still at a nascent stage." Last year, the government had relaxed the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy for single-brand retailing. As per the policy, the government may relax the sourcing norms for entities undertaking single-brand retailing of products having 'state-of-the-art' and 'cutting edge' technology and where local sourcing is not possible. At present, 100 per cent FDI is permitted in the sector but the companies are required to take FIPB permission if the limit exceeds 49 per cent. In respect of proposals involving FDI beyond 51 per cent, sourcing of 30 per cent of the value of goods purchased will be from India, preferably from MSMEs, village and cottage industries, artisans and craftsmen, in all sectors. Xiaomi sells its devices through select e-commerce platforms and retail stores. India is one of the biggest markets for Xiaomi globally, which assembles devices like Redmi 2 and Redmi Note at the manufacturing facility of Foxconn, a leading contract manufacturer. According to research firm IDC, shipments in India grew 28.8 per cent year-on-year to 103.6 million units in 2015 compared with 10.1 per cent growth for the global market. Congress today criticised BJP for appointing former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa to lead the party in Karnataka, calling it "glorification of corruption". "The appointment of Yeddyurappa as President of BJP in Karntaka is nothing but glorification of corruption as for the first time in the history of Karnataka politics, the man who was jailed for corruption charges as Chief Minister has been made PCC chief of a party," said AICC general secretary B K Hariprasad, who is a Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka. Karnataka is due to have elections in 2018. Yeddyurappa, the tallest Lingayat leader who was removed as Chief Minister on corruption charges and had floated his own party before the last Assembly elections, returns to the helm of affairs in the state which BJP is looking to wrest power back from Congress. Reacting to his appointment, Yeddyurappa said his priority would be to bring back BJP to power as people are "fed up" with the "corrupt" Congress government. Congratulating Bollywood actor Emraan Hashmi for having successfully won the battle against his son's cancer, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called the six-year old a bigger superstar that his father. Kejriwal was speaking at the launch of Hashmi's debut book titled 'Kiss of Life' (Penguin Random House) held last evening at India Islamic Cultural Centre here. The book co-authored by Hashmi and 21-year-old Bilal Siddiqui, revolves around the actor's journey of coming to terms with his 4 year-old son Ayaan's kidney cancer and the long struggle that he and his wife endured, before their son was medically declared 'cancer-free'. Kejriwal said, "I would like to congratulate Emraan and Bilal for writing this book. I haven't read the book yet, but from whatever I have heard now, I think your son is a bigger superstar that you." After Ayaan was diagnosed with the disease, he was taken to Canada for a seven-month-long treatment that was not only painful but also expensive. According to the politician, Hashmi was fortunate to be able to finance such a costly treatment, pointing out that not everybody was capable of doing the same. It was the government's duty to come to their aid, he said. "Emraan was fortunate to have the money to take his child to Canada. But, there are a lot of people in our country who cannot afford such an expensive treatment. I think here it is the government's responsibility to invest sufficiently in public services so that people don't die because they don't have money. They should get complete healthcare facilities. That is the government's job and in Delhi we are trying our best," he said. Lauding the actor and his family's determination to end the struggle, Kejriwal said that the book was about "hope," which he said was imperative to get going with the challenges of life. "I think this book is about hope. And Emraan was right when he said that it was not just about cancer. First of all, for cancer patients, when they start losing hope, their bodies also start giving up rapidly. Therefore it is a must read for cancer patients. The book will keep on giving them and their families hope," Kejriwal said. Insisting that the book was not just meant for cancer patients, he urged that everybody must read it. He said, "I also think that everybody else should also read it because it is not just about cancer. Thereare many moments and situations in all our lives when we have to struggle a lot, and it will be great if there is hope too." 37 year old Hashmi, who moved to and fro between his professional and personal lives while his son was undergoing treatment, said that while he was frantically looking for remedies that could cure his son, he chanced upon a study that quoted majority (85 per cent) of the cancer cases were in fact lifestyle related. The actor was appreciative of Kejriwal's Odd-Even car scheme and said that more cities should adopt the practice and help curb pollution. "We have drastically changed our environment. The chemistry of the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water, our habits have destroyed things for us...This brings me to Mr. Kejriwal's fight against pollution in Delhi. There is a big connect between cancer and pollution. I think the fight should be fought in every city across the nation, because it is one of the key causes for cancers," Hashmi said. Ayaan's emotional tale of recuperation from the deadly ailment is peppered with funny anecdotes, which the actor has recounted from the sets of his films, as well as from his college and school days. "This book has evolved into more than that (Ayaan's fight with cancer) with funny stories from the industry, me as an irresponsible bum in my college and school and stories about kissing," the actor said. BEIJING (Reuters) - Companies from China's violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang signed deals worth about $2 billion with Pakistan this week during a visit to Pakistan by Xinjiang's top official, who sought to cement ties with an important security partner. Pakistan last year agreed energy and infrastructure projects worth $46 billion with China to set up a so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in a boost to Pakistan's crumbling infrastructure and energy sector. In return, China will get a free trade zone in Pakistan's Gwadar port and access to the Arabian Sea. New Pakistani roads will open up routes for Chinese goods into Europe and the Middle East from landlocked Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan. During a four-day visit to Pakistan, Xinjiang's Communist Party chief Zhang Chunxian met Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, visited Islamabad, Karachi and Gwadar, the official Xinjiang Daily said on Friday. "China and Pakistan have a deep friendship, are good neighbours, friends, brothers and partners," the newspaper cited Zhang as saying. "On this trip, I have deeply felt this friendship and the atmosphere surrounding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor." The $2 billion in agreements covered infrastructure, solar power and logistics, among other projects, signed by companies from Xinjiang with their Pakistan counterparts, the newspaper said, without giving details. China and Pakistan call each other "all-weather friends" and their ties have been underpinned by long-standing wariness of their common neighbour, India, and a desire to hedge against U.S. influence in the region. But China has also long urged Pakistan to weed out what it says are militants from Xinjiang, who are holed up in lawless ethnic Pashtun lands on the Pakistan-Afghan border, home to a mix of groups, including the Taliban and al Qaeda. While meeting Sharif, the two countries agreed to continue working together to fight terrorism, strengthen border controls, maintain regional peace and stability and ensure the economic corridor projects are protected, the newspaper said. Zhang also met Pakistan's military on the trip, it added, without elaborating. Hundreds of people have been killed in unrest in Xinjiang in the last few years. Exiles and rights groups say Chinese controls on the religion and culture of the Muslim Uighur people who call Xinjiang home is largely behind the violence, rather than any well-organised militant groups. China denies any rights abuses in Xinjiang and says its people are free to practice Islam. Zhang visited a mosque in Islamabad, where he "got a deep understanding of Pakistan's religious affairs management", the Xinjiang Daily added. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel) By Devidutta Tripathy and Krishna N. Das MUMBAI (Reuters) - Fairfax India Holdings Corp is close to acquiring a minority stake in privately-held petrochemical company Sanmar Chemicals Group via a roughly $300 million investment in the company, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The investment in Sanmar, may be paired with a smaller cash infusion from Fairfax India's larger sister entity, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. That would give the two entities - both chaired by Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa - a roughly 30 percent stake in Sanmar, said the two sources, who declined to be named as the talks are private. The sources said Fairfax may consider investing in both the equity and debt of Sanmar. Fairfax India and Fairfax Financial declined to comment on the matter. A spokesman for Chennai-based Sanmar was also not immediately able to provide a comment on the matter. The Times of India, in February, reported that Fairfax was in talks to buy a stake in Sanmar. Indian-born Watsa, whose main investment firm is Fairfax Financial Holdings, set up Fairfax India in 2014 to hone in on investments in India, where he sees strong growth opportunities. Fairfax India went public in early 2015 and raised more than $1 billion via its initial public offering. Watsa, who met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, has previously stated he is enthused about India's growth prospects due to Modi's economic reform agenda. The investment in Sanmar would be the latest in a string of Fairfax investments in the country this year. Last month, it agreed to buy a 33 percent equity interest in the Bangalore International Airport from GVK Power and Infrastructure Ltd for $321 million. In February, it acquired a 45 percent stake in ADI Finechem, a small Ahmedabad-based specialty chemical company for $19 million. This followed its acquisition last August of a majority stake in India's largest non-government grain handling company, National Collateral Management Services Ltd for about $126 million. Sanmar, a family-owned firm chaired by N. Sankar, is one of India's largest producers of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The firm, which owns manufacturing facilities in India and Egypt, is also a manufacturer of caustic soda and other specialty chemicals. (Additional reporting by Euan Rocha in Toronto; Editing by Diane Craft) - Fairfax India Holdings Corp, part of Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa's Fairfax Holdings, said it would invest $300 million in privately held Indian petrochemical company Sanmar Chemicals Group through a combination of equity and fixed-income securities. Fairfax India will have a 30 percent equity ownership in Sanmar following the investment, the company said on Friday. had earlier reported that Fairfax India is close to acquiring a minority stake in Sanmar, citing sources familiar with the matter. Fairfax India will fund an initial tranche of $250 million while a second tranche of $50 million will come from Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd or another investor, the company said. The investment in Sanmar would be the latest in a string of Fairfax investments in the country this year. Last month, Fairfax agreed to buy a 33 percent equity interest in the Bangalore International Airport from GVK Power and Infrastructure Ltd for $321 million. Indian-born Watsa, whose main investment firm is Fairfax Financial Holdings, has previously said he is enthused about India's growth prospects due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic reform agenda. Chennai-based Sanmar, a family owned firm chaired by N Sankar, is one of India's largest producers of polyvinyl chloride. The firm owns manufacturing facilities in India and Egypt. (Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila) - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc and Marriott International Inc said on Friday the stockholders of the companies voted to approve Marriott's acquisition of Starwood to create the world's largest hotel company. Holders of more than 97 percent of Marriott shares and over 95 percent of Starwood shares voted in favor of the cash-and-stock deal, which was valued at $12.41 billion as of Thursday. China's Anbang Insurance Group Co last week abandoned its $14 billion offer for Starwood Hotels, clearing the way for Marriott to buy the owner of Sheraton and Westin hotel brands. Marriott raised the cash portion of its offer to $21 per share on March 21 from $2 per share, valuing the total bid at $73.42 per share as of Thursday. Marriott said the deal was on track to close mid-2016. "Our teams continue to plan the integration of our two companies," Marriott Chief Executive Arne Sorenson said. The deal has cleared the pre-merger antitrust review in the United States and Canada and awaits approvals in the European Union and China. (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera and Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Don Sebastian) Oil prices jumped 6% on Friday, heading for the largest weekly gain in a month, as drawdowns in US crude stockpiles fed hopes that a punishing global oversupply may be approaching a tipping point after nearly two years. The shutdown of the Keystone crude pipeline to Cushing, Oklahoma has supported prices this week. Crude also drew support when Russia said its crude output fell in April, as major oil producing countries prepared to meet in Doha on April 17 to freeze production. US gasoline and diesel prices rallied more than 5% each. US crude this year has drawn support from cheap gasoline pump prices and benign driving weather. Ultra low sulfur diesel, also known as heating oil, rebounded this week on seasonally cold weather forecasts through late April. Brent crude futures were up $2.39 at $41.82 a barrel by 1:17 p.m. 1717 GMT, hitting a session high above $42. US crude futures rose by $2.28 to $39.53 a barrel. Earlier, it rose to nearly $40. For the week, both benchmarks were on track to gain about 8 percent, their most since the week ended March 4. "We are starting to draw crude inventories in the U.S." said Scott Shelton, broker with ICAP in Durham, North Carolina. "Run rates are rising and U.S. production is falling." "This is very different I think than what was expected. The market perceives that these draws may continue as the Keystone outage will increase the likelihood," Shelton said. US crude stockpiles fell by nearly 5 million barrels last week versus analysts forecasts for a build of 3.2 million barrels, government data showed. US firms cut oil drilling rigs for a third week in a row, adding to the improving fundamentals. The rally in US crude aside, Brent's front-month contract has also been at its smallest discount to the second-month contract since January, indicating more upward potential for the European benchmark. "We are continuing to cite the exceptional strength in the Brent curve structure as a bullish consideration to the entire spectrum," said Jim Ritterbusch at Chicago-based oil consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates. "You mix that with outages in Nigeria ... and put Doha on top of it, and your eyes are looking towards the tightening of the market," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB Bank in Oslo. By Libby George LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Friday, lifted by fresh hopes over a proposed freeze in oil production and firm economic indicators from the United States and Germany that cast a positive light on growth in fuel demand. Russia's oil production could fall in April, sources said, while the country's energy minister expressed hopes that producer nations could agree to an output freeze at a meeting in Doha later this month. Front-month U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were trading $1.33 higher at $38.59 per barrel at 0954 GMT, more than 3 percent above their last close. International Brent futures were up $1.30 at $40.73 a barrel. "You have declining supply in the United States and a declining rig rate," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst with SEB Bank in Oslo. "You mix that with outages in Nigeria ... and put Doha on top of it, and your eyes are looking towards the tightening of the market." U.S. crude stocks marked a surprise decline, Energy Information Administration data showed, while stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma hub dropped by more than 480,000 barrels due to the shutdown of the Keystone pipeline. Summer maintenance in the North Sea fields that form the basis of the Brent benchmark also helped boost near-term prices. Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note that U.S. shale production was in "freefall" and that "as the global oil glut starts to clear, crude oil should lead the way". A rebound in financial markets also boosted optimism over demand. The U.S. Federal Reserve said the country was on the path of more economic growth, while rating agency Moody's said Germany, Europe's biggest economy, should see a slight acceleration in growth to 1.8 percent. Still, some warned that oil prices could fall again, dragged down by a glut that will take time to clear and soaring production outside the United States. "We believe the current oil price is unsustainable and expect a fundamental price recovery when markets move into better balance in mid- to late-2H16," investment bank Jefferies said, adding that "the recovery could be protracted". Iraq said on Thursday that exports from its southern ports had hit almost 3.5 million barrels per day by April, up from an average of 3.29 million bpd in March, while Iran said it would participate in a production freeze only once it had regained its pre-sanctions level of 4 million bpd. (Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson) By Libby George LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Friday, lifted by hopes that a punishing global excess of crude oil could be nearing a tipping point and firm economic indicators from the United States and Germany that cast a positive light on growth in fuel demand. Declines in U.S. shale oil output and optimism over a proposed freeze in oil production, to be discussed by producers at a meeting in Doha on April 17, in particular helped to boost prices. International Brent futures were $1.85 higher at $41.28 by 1306 GMT and were on track for a weekly gain of more than 6.5 percent. Front-month U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were trading $2 higher at $39.26 a barrel, more than 5 percent above the previous close. "You have declining supply in the United States and a declining rig rate," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB Bank in Oslo. "You mix that with outages in Nigeria ... and put Doha on top of it, and your eyes are looking towards the tightening of the market." Russia's oil production could fall in April, sources said on Friday, while the country's energy minister expressed hopes that producer nations could agree on an output freeze at the Doha meeting. U.S. crude stocks marked a surprise decline, Energy Information Administration data showed, while stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma hub dropped by more than 480,000 barrels due to a shutdown of the Keystone pipeline. Summer maintenance in the North Sea fields that form the basis of the Brent benchmark also helped boost near-term prices. Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note that U.S. shale production was in "freefall" and that "as the global oil glut starts to clear, crude oil should lead the way". A rebound in financial markets also boosted optimism over demand. The U.S. Federal Reserve said the country was on the path of more economic growth, while rating agency Moody's said Germany, Europe's biggest economy, should see a slight acceleration in growth to 1.8 percent. Still, some warned that prices could fall in the near term. A surplus of spot oil was growing in Asia due to refinery maintenance. Additionally, Iraq said exports from its southern ports would rise in April, while Iran has refused to take part in any production freeze until it has regained its pre-sanctions level of 4 million bpd. "We believe the current oil price is unsustainable and expect a fundamental price recovery when markets move into better balance in mid- to late-2H16," investment bank Jefferies said. (Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson and Susan Thomas) South Korean steelmaker POSCO on Friday told the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that it would not be able to set up a $12 billion steel plant in Odisha by July 2017, as the construction is yet to begin. Regulatory hurdles have pushed back the project, billed as India's biggest foreign direct investment, for more than a decade. POSCO's lawyer told Reuters after a hearing in the NGT that the company has not been able to obtain forest and other clearances while its environmental clearance is valid until July 2017. POSCO could scrap plans for the Odisha project after a new law made it costlier to source iron ore for the plant, Reuters reported last July. India's is considering appealing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to back a proposal to toughen up anti-dumping rules to tackle a flood of cheap imports threatening its steel industry, a government source said. India is among a number of countries and groups such as the European Union weighing up taking further measures against cheap exports from countries such as China and South Korea. Indian purchases of Chinese steel products rose 5 percent in the 11 months to February, provisional government data showed, after more than trebling in the fiscal year ending March 2015. Imports from Japan were up 39 percent, while shipments from South Korea rose 54 percent between April and February. Because of the distress in India's steel industry, the ministry had written a letter seeking to change anti-dumping rules, said the source, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to media. According to the source, the letter had asked the trade ministry to alter anti-dumping rules unchanged for two decades to reflect only the dumping margin. This should effectively raise the duty and bring India in line with the United States and Canada, while meeting World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, the source said. But the trade ministry turned the proposal down and Trade Secretary Rita Teaotia said current rules were internationally accepted and followed, among others, by the European Union. "They are asking us to amend the rules, but they are looking at only one country, the United States," Teaotia told Reuters. The was now considering approaching the federal planning body, Niti Aayog, or the Prime Minister's office to press its case, according to the government source. India's steel secretary and Modi's office were not immediately available for comment. STEEL SECTOR LOBBYING Indian companies accuse South Korea, Japan, Russia and especially China, which produces nearly half of the world's 1.6 billion tonnes of steel, of unfairly flooding local markets with cheap products and undercutting them as demand slackens at home. India last week extended a safeguard import tax on some steel products until 2018 and imposed a floor price on overseas purchases in February, but companies such as JSW Steel, Tata Steel and Kalyani Steels have been lobbying for more measures. New Delhi currently takes into account the margin of dumping and the margin of injury to the industry and restricts anti-dumping duty to the lower of the two. The dumping margin is the loss for an exporter selling to another country, while the injury margin is how much the Indian steel industry is undercut. The domestic industry also has to prove that dumped imports are causing or likely to cause injury. Indian steelmakers say a change in anti-dumping rules would prevent the steel industry from dying out and stave off the dependence of sectors such as engineering goods on imports. The government has issued notices to China, Japan and South Korea proposing a probe on "dumping" of some steel products, according to a source at the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping & Allied Duties. "What we have been trying to explain to the user industry is that we are part of the same value chain," said Seshagiri Rao, joint managing director at JSW Steel. "If I am impacted today and you don't support us - because it is unfair trade which is happening - the same thing will happen to you." China's commerce ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the impact any changes to anti-dumping rules might have on its exporters. By Kay Johnson ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) hopes to overcome by 2020 the challenges of building a $10-billion gas pipeline through Afghanistan's most violent areas, by making sure it benefits Afghan contractors and communities, a bank official said. Shareholders of the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI) project agreed on Thursday to invest $200 million in studies and engineering for the pipeline, looking to link gas-rich Turkmenistan with eager markets in Pakistan and India. Originating at the giant Galkynysh gas field in Turkmenistan, the TAPI pipeline, which involves the four countries' own energy companies, would carry 33 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year. But current plans route the underground pipeline through one of Afghanistan's most violence-wracked provinces, Helmand, where the Taliban insurgents hold sway. "I agree ... we're going through some of the toughest territory in Afghanistan," said Sean O'Sullivan, the Central and West Asia director general of the ADB, a transaction adviser for the project. "The challenge is there. There's no doubt about it, but I am sure it's doable." He added, "I think if it happens, it will be quite an unprecedented example of regional cooperation, particularly in a region that finds it difficult to cooperate." The ADB would be able to capitalise on lessons it has learnt from other infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, including building power transmission lines from Uzbekistan to Kabul and a setting up a railway in the north, O'Sullivan said. Under current timelines, the pipeline could be operational by 2020, he told in a telephone interview this week. Key to the TAPI's success would be spreading jobs among Afghan communities, rather than bringing in foreign contractors. "Usually we in ADB would say, 'Look, it's a $100-million project,' for example, and we'll break it into two or three contracts and that would attract international bidders," O'Sullivan added. But for Afghan projects such as TAPI, O'Sullivan said, "We want to split it up into smaller parts that Afghan contractors are capable of doing, and hope to reduce the security risk by doing so." Turkmenistan, which sits on the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, started building its section of the 1,814-km (1,127-mile) link, designed to ease its dependence on Russia and China, last December, but the three other countries have yet to begin work. Turkmen state energy firm Turkmengas is the main shareholder of TAPI Pipeline Company Limited, the joint venture set up to carry out the project. Other investors are Afghan Gas Enterprise, Pakistan's Inter State Gas Systems Ltd and GAIL (India) Ltd. (Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) By Amy Sawitta Lefevre BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand is investigating 16 people, including current and former politicians and well-known business people, whose names appeared in the "Panama Papers", a top official at the country's Anti Money Laundering Office (AMLO) said on Friday. The individuals are among scores of politicians and business figures worldwide who feature in the massive document leak from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in establishing offshore companies. The investigation into possible money laundering is at an early stage and Thai authorities have so far found no evidence of wrongdoing, AMLO acting Secretary-General Seehanat Prayoonrat told reporters on Friday. Thailand has sought cooperation from Panama's anti-money laundering agency, he said, and would not release the names of the individuals on the list until authorities had verified the leaked information. Seehanat said he did not know if any members of the Thai military government were on the list. "We are doing preliminary checks," he said. (Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Sam Holmes) UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has initiated a criminal investigation into Tata Steel's operations, the Telegraph reported on Thursday. Police officers are investigating charges that Tata Steel's staff in and around its Yorkshire's site, may have faked certificates on the composition of the products before its sale, the newspaper said. Examined documents have affected 500 customers, including BAE and Rolls-Royce, Telegraph said, citing a source. Tata, the biggest steel producer in Britain, has put its British businesses up for sale due to high costs, weak demand and a flood of cheap supplies from top producer China. The British government, under fire for the way it has responded to the crisis, opened talks with potential buyers for Tata Steel's UK operations, including Gupta's Liberty House, earlier this week. By Libby George LONDON (Reuters) - Oil refineries are shifting into high gear to produce as much gasoline as possible for the world's fuel-hungry drivers - kicking the problem of a worsening diesel glut further down the road. The "margin" or profit derived from refining crude into diesel has plunged in Europe, hitting multi-year lows this week as demand for the fuel - used heavily for heating in the Northern Hemisphere - wilts towards the end of winter. But gasoline buying and margins are surging as U.S. drivers rev up for the summer and consumers in China and India also hit the road in record numbers. Bank of America Merrill Lynch said it now expects global gasoline demand growth of 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) - some 65 percent above the 10-year average. Traders and analysts said such lopsided demand could depress diesel profits for at least another year, as refineries running for gasoline are configured in such a way that they cannot produce it without pumping out thousands of barrels of middle distillates that the world is not consuming. "The worst is definitely yet to come. The diesel crack can still move lower ... to negative, even," said JBC analyst Michael Dei-Michei, referring to the gap between the price of diesel and the cost of the crude needed to produce it - a measure of profitability. "That's not out of the question." Gasoline demand over the past year and a half defied all expectations as drivers spurred by cheap oil hit the road in huge numbers and bought more gas-guzzling SUVs. The development was a lifeline to oil producers, encouraging refineries around the world to run at full steam. But refiners, who for years struggled to produce enough diesel to power industrial growth worldwide and who bet on flat to falling gasoline demand due to more fuel-efficient cars, spent years and invested hundreds of millions to maximize diesel. Saudi Aramco and its partners recently opened massive new refineries in the Middle East that were built to produce more than 60 percent middle distillates, while companies including ExxonMobil, Total, Galp and Repsol invested in European refineries to boost diesel. But now that they are up and running, the diesel outlets, such as oil drilling, railroads, construction and other heavy industries, are languishing. Figures in myriad countries, including China, Brazil and the United States, show diesel consumption flatlining or falling. A warm winter across the northern hemisphere kept households from burning heating oil at the usual pace, meaning stocks of distillates did not draw down as much as they normally would over the winter and the refinery maintenance season. "There's nothing that can give a (diesel) demand boost until we have a cold winter," Dei-Michei said. BURGEONING STOCKS, BITTER PILL A string of analysts have said economic run cuts - when refineries slow production to avoid producing unwanted or unprofitable fuel - will come to the rescue. But a variety of trading and refinery sources said that if gasoline demand grows at expected levels, the profits for selling it will keep refineries from slowing - placing even more diesel into glutted storage tanks and forcing margins lower. "It's a pretty bitter pill to swallow for those who invested (in diesel) to improve their margin," a European refinery source said. Refineries have been working for months to cut diesel production - doing everything from changing their crude slate to shutting upgrading units such as hydrocrackers. But sources said these efforts can sustainably cut only a maximum of around 2 percent for most refineries. "The European refining system is too exposed to diesel," one oil trader said. "If 65 percent of your products are negative, you'd need $35 gasoline cracks" to run on negative diesel margins. Still, Dei-Michei and others said a maintenance-season diesel stock draw, which dried out thousands of barrels from floating storage as well as on-land tanks, along with the construction of new tank space, means there is room in storage despite brimming stocks at hubs in Europe, Asia and Singapore. But the flood into storage could blunt diesel profits until as far as 2018. "The last time diesel stocks were high at the end of 2009, we entered a period when diesel demand grew more than gasoline, and yet it still took years to run through those excess diesel inventories," said Andrew Reed, analyst with ESAI. (Reporting by Libby George; Editing by Dale Hudson) As you switchback your way up the hill from Mussoorie to Landour, you are unprepared for the tranquillity that lies in wait. If Mussoorie heaves with noisy tourists and bristles with ugly, untamed construction, just 4 km away is a wooded sanctuary draped in silence and serenity. But if youre the sort of traveller who likes a laundry list of things to see, this is not the place for you. is where you go when you simply want to be amidst the sparkling air, the towering oaks and deodars, and the far-off peaks of the Garhwal Himalayas that spring into view on a clear, bright day. I am in when the rhododendrons are beginning to bloom, sending up their blood-red blossoms all over the hillside. But there are other delights in this quaint little town, looped in the figure of an eight. You can walk its near-secluded length and breadth the upper and lower chukkers, as the locals call it in an hour or so. Inhale the scented air, pause to admire a profusion of pink and white magnolias by the wayside or the emerald trough of the Doon Valley below, or look north to check if the mists have cleared. If youre lucky, youll see the snow-capped massifs of the char dhaam Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath. Nanda Devi, the second-highest mountain peak in India, is also visible from here. Situated at a height of about 7500 ft, and just an hour-and-a-halfs drive from Uttarakhands capital, Dehradun, Landour (the name derives from Llanddowror, a village in Wales) owes its unspoilt charm to the Army, which has kept the realty sharks at bay. A cantonment town since the days of the Raj, it has just 110-odd cottages. You can rebuild, but you cant add to the number of houses here. Which is why there are few hotels and Landour remains out of the tourist drag. The Parsonage, Victor Banerjees home in Landour A delicious Landour indulgence is to while away a morning or afternoon sitting at one of the cafes in Char Dukan literally four shops that comprise its high street. Tip Top Tea Shop, in business since 1910, is run by Vipin Prakash, who can flip a mean omelette while he shares some Landour lore with you. Sit here sipping a glass of delicious ginger lemon tea and wolf down a fat pancake dripping with honey and maple syrup (add both, dammit, you get hungry in the hills!) For food for the spirit, head to St Pauls Church next door. Built in 1840, this is where Jim Corbetts parents, Christopher and Mary Corbett, were married in 1859. Or take a walk to Lal Tibba, the highest lookout point in the area. Its equipped with a telescope and for Rs 60, theyll let you have a dekko at the peaks and throw in a coffee too. Its big downside: day trippers from Mussoorie come here with their selfie sticks and packets of Lays crisps a reminder that even in pristine Landour, civilisation is never too far away. Barking deer and Kaleej pheasant at Jabarkhet Nature Reserve Landour is a place where, to quote W B Yeats, peace comes dropping slow. Yield to it and maybe you will find yourself anew. Shuma Raha is a journalist based in Delhi UK's Serious Fraud Office has initiated a criminal investigation into Tata Steel 's operations, the Telegraph reported on Thursday. Police officers are investigating charges that Tata Steel 's staff in and around its Yorkshire's site, may have faked certificates on the composition of the products before its sale, the newspaper said. Examined documents have affected 500 customers, including BAE and Rolls-Royce, Telegraph said, citing a source. Tata, the biggest steel producer in Britain, has put its British businesses up for sale due to high costs, weak demand and a flood of cheap supplies from top producer China. The British government, under fire for the way it has responded to the crisis, opened talks with potential buyers for Tata Steel's UK operations, including Gupta's Liberty House, earlier this week. The rumour mill churned. Spending on marketing had been trimmed, many employees had started leaving, some long-timers stayed on, hoping things would turn. Then on New Year's Eve, as festive fervour gripped the beer-guzzling city of Bangalore, Sumit Jain, Co-founder and CEO of online real estate and property search company CommonFloor, asked a co-worker to email some documents to classified advertising firm Quikr. It was all over. CommonFloor would be acquired. "We have seen huge amounts of funding going into lots of companies in 2014 and 2015, some a little recklessly" Before a townhall the next week, on January 8, Jain was prepped by his communications team - a list of 35 'likely questions' to expect from employees. He knew most answers. He was one of the earliest to bet on India's consumer Internet sector. CommonFloor started in 2007, the same year as Flipkart. Like most new economy founders, Jain was aggressive, passionate, and appreciated ideas. By 2010, he was talking of a "clear visibility" in making "$100 million in topline over the next five years". On question-and-answer website Quora, he would jump in to promote his workplace. "We, at CommonFloor, give MacBooks to everyone in the engineering team," he once wrote. Someone asked if CommonFloor was a good place to work for a software engineer. "Dude, it is not just good, it is awesome. Just to make you more comfortable, the CommonFloor leadership team has more computer science engineers than MBAs." In the town hall, around 4.30 pm, memories may have flitted through his mind. Jain found himself addressing job security. "No one is losing jobs. Just stay put, keep working," he assured. It turned out to be different. Within a week after the acquisition announcement, many C-level executives werent seen in the office. The company had about 650 employees in Bangalore. According to an employee, only about 250 - mostly engineering and product teams - found a role in Quikr. The three-floor office in Bangalore's Indiranagar shut down mid-March. "Our integration process is still on and while we cannot confirm exact numbers as yet, the number you have quoted on the people being absorbed at Quikr are far lesser than the actual number," a Quikr spokesperson says. CommonFloor raised $15 million in January 2015, but could raise no more. Different reports alluded to monetisation problems. The company was running out of cash and New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management, a common investor in both CommonFloor and Quikr, is rumoured to have stitched the deal. A CommonFloor executive, who did not want to be quoted, says that the company had enough money in the bank but the market was tough and no one knew how long it could take to build a business in India. The merger appeared like a good idea and every investor, not just Tiger Global, played a role. Quikr is better capitalised. Because of its aggressive advertising, it is better known, too. The Quikr spokesperson says that there were "great synergies" between both Quikr and CommonFloor businesses. At the time of signing the deal, Quikr had about 10 investors and CommonFloor had about three. "While it helps to have common investors, we were in touch with each other six months before," a joint clarification from the two companies states. The developments, nevertheless, left many bitter. An employee wrote on Quora: "Thanks to the large VC firm for brokering such a brutal deal full of bloodshed and grief. Keep brokering more such deals and talent will shy away from working for start-ups fearing job security." The CommonFloor saga is just one of a series of incidents that has painted the $17-billion Indian e-commerce segment in less flattering light. In July last year, Housing.com's board fired Co-founder and CEO Rahul Yadav as his behaviour was "not befitting of a CEO and is detrimental to the company". Known to be brash, Yadav reportedly spent more than Rs 100 crore on an advertising campaign. The company continued to battle cash burn and by the year-end, laid off nearly 800 employees. During the same time, the hot food-tech sector started cooling. Restaurant aggregator TinyOwl scaled back operations in many cities and fired employees. One of the co-founders, Gaurav Choudhary, was famously held hostage for 48 hours by employees in Pune who demanded settlements. Zomato and Foodpanda, the larger of India's food-tech battalion, let go of at least 300 people each. In Bangalore, food-tech firm Dazo shut operations. SpoonJoy, a company with investors such as Sachin Bansal and the backing of SAIF Partners, sold to hyperlocal grocery and fresh food delivery company Grofers. But then grocery delivery companies themselves ran into trouble. Grofers reportedly shut down operations in nine cities and this February, PepperTap closed operations in six cities and laid off 400 employees as the "short to mid-term investment climate outlook" demanded the company focus on "depth rather than breadth". These were worrying signals. The party was gradually coming to an end after the giddy times of early 2015 when almost everyone raised insane venture capital, private equity and hedge fund money at valuations that increasingly look difficult to justify in 2016. Investors have turned cautious. And the funding tap isn't flowing easy either. One of the biggest signals of the valuation bubble deflating came in February this year. A Morgan Stanley mutual fund (Institutional Fund Trust Mid Cap Growth Portfolio fund) marked down the value of its stake in India's highest valued start-up Flipkart by 23 per cent in the quarter ended December to $59 million from $77 million in September 2015. It is a 27 per cent mark down when compared to the June quarter. That suggests Flipkart's $15 billion valuation has been hair cut to $11 billion. This, and incidents such as CommonFloor needled market watchers and start-ups with several lingering questions. Are Indian companies raising capital from the right investors? Are they raising quality money that comes with the mindset of long-term value creation? Are businesses even thinking about 'fundamentals' that create long-term value and wealth? Is the great Indian start-up bubble, which has now floated more than 19,000 companies, pricked? 2016 is the year for a reality check. One that shatters many myths. Myth 1: Always, a greater fool The investment momentum in Indian start-ups rocketed over the past five years. According to a Grant Thornton report, investment values increased at a CAGR of more than 57 per cent between 2011 and 2015, while investment volumes grew over 62 per cent. PE activity in 2015 touched an all-time high - investments totalled 1,049, over 600 of them in start-ups. The stars of Indian e-commerce became super stars. Flipkart and Snapdeal as well as taxi aggregator Olacabs raised funds in excess of $500 million. Paytm, Zomato, Quikr and ShopClues became unicorns - with valuations of more than $1 billion. Even when losses for some of these start-ups mounted, VCs played along, presenting more money and gifting higher valuations. Losses for Flipkart more than doubled in the year ended March 2015 to Rs 837 crore. Jasper Infotech's (Snapdeal) losses doubled, too, to Rs 265 crore in 2014. One97 Communications (Paytm) entered the marketplace business in 2014. It went from profits of Rs 6 crore in 2013/14 to a loss of Rs 372 crore in March 2015. Mahesh Murthy, Managing Partner of Seedfund, an early-stage venture firm, felt the forces driving investments and valuations in e-commerce and food-tech was the Greater Fool Theory, or in his words, the "Topi" theory - the idea that investors can get into a company, pump it up, and dump it onto somebody else's head. 2015 was the time for hedge funds like Tiger Global to roar. According to Grant Thornton, Tiger Global's investments in India nearly tripled to 35 by 2015. In 2014, it had just 13 investments. When hedge funds wrote big cheques, pressure built on the venture capitalists to invest. "FOMO (fear of missing out) drove a lot of investments. The theory was 'baad mein Gabbar ayega' (Gabbar would arrive)," says Sahil Kini, Principal at Aspada Investments, a venture firm, mouthing a fork-full of pasta at a small SDA Market joint in Delhi. By Gabbar, he meant the hedge funds. The result: start-ups of all shades cashed in. The 'me-too' models as well. Look at the long tail of food-tech companies, for instance. Just the ordering and delivery segment had nearly 10 established players at one time, including Foodpanda, Zomato, Swiggy, and TinyOwl. Nevertheless, TinyOwl managed to raise $27.67 million in four rounds from four investors before burning it all up. The capital cycles shrunk as well. Grofers, for instance, went from Series A to Series C in nine months - between February 2015 and November 2015, it raised $165 million from investors such as Softbank, Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital. While there was still euphoria in the Indian start-ups landscape in 2015, worrying signals surfaced from the Silicon Valley. Analysts questioned the business models of posterboys such as Twitter and online file sharing company Box. The values of some unicorns got marked down. Worse, the public markets discounted the valuations private tech companies commanded. Payments company Square, for instance, was valued at $6 billion in 2015 in private financing. The value halved when it went public in November. Other tech stocks tanked - Chinese e-commerce gorilla Alibaba, Box, dating company Match, and wearables firm Fitbit are all trading below their IPO price. In a few months, this sentiment made its way to India as well. Realisation set in. Each of the e-commerce sectors, just like food-tech, had a long tail. In the grocery vertical, over the past three to four years, about 60 multi-city start-ups and six prominent ones that included BigBasket, Grofers and PepperTap, mushroomed. China, in comparison, has three prominent players, according to Morgan Stanley Research - Alibaba, Yihaodian, and Fields China. In fashion, there were at least 10 established names, including Myntra, Jabong, Yepme and Limeroad. China has two, vancl.com and Meilishuo. Similarly, there are five prominent players now in the Indian furniture e-tailing category: Pepperfry, Urban Ladder, FabFurnish, Homelane, and Livspace. "Flipkart may be running out of options to maintain $15 billion valuation" But as Business Today mentioned last year, it was clear that each sector would end up supporting just one winner - that's the nature of the Internet markets where the winner takes all. That party - of lofty valuations, of raising fast money, of chasing reckless growth at any cost - started winding. The "Topi" Mahesh Murthy talks about has few takers. "The greater fools seem to have vanished," Murthy says. "You could say people have been investing in e-commerce and food delivery more to sell shares in the companies than to actually sell products to consumers," he adds, rather sarcastically. Vanishing fools imply consolidation of the market, like in the case of CommonFloor, as well as shut downs. Closures have come in all shapes and sizes. Mypacco, a logistics company that provided courier services to retail customers, started in Mumbai in 2014. But soon, it was burning more money than it earned. While it started making Rs 25 lakh a month in revenues mid-2015, it spent Rs 35 lakh per month. The company initially downsized and slowed growth, closing operations in Delhi, Noida and Surat. Then in November last year, it shut down the Mumbai business, too. "The retail model needed a lot of initial capital, which we did not get," Mukesh Agarwal, a founder of Mypacco, says. The curious case of OYO Rooms acquiring smaller rival Zo Rooms is another instance of the vanishing fool theory. This story is both tragic and intriguing. OYO and Zo operated a network of branded hotels and were playing the capital game, trying to sink each other. Both had big backers - While OYO is funded by SoftBank, Zo was backed by Tiger Global. But then, OYO raised a Series B round of $100 million in August 2015. The same month, Zo could only raise $32 million. Tiger Global did not want to fund Zo any further, a market watcher says. Its best case was to sell it to the bigger rival. In the case of distressed assets, common investors often try to consolidate the market to retain the value of their investments and avoid a write-down. OYO, according to the insider, agreed to a consideration of 6 per cent of the company's valuation of $400 million if Zo met the targets Ritesh Agarwal, CEO of OYO, set. Surprise! Zo ran out of money - even before the targets could be achieved. It stopped functioning. The transaction couldnt close. "How would you buy or merge a company that does not exist anymore?" asks an investor, who did not want to be named. "The fact that Zo has shut down makes it a distressed asset. The question is: what would a buyer want to pay in a distressed asset?" A spokesperson for OYO says that "at this point we do not have any comments to offer". Zo founders did not respond to messages left on LinkedIn. Deepak I. Shahdadpuri, Founder and Managing Director of DSG Consumer Partners, invests in consumer businesses and was an early investor in OYO Rooms. He sold his stake to SoftBank during the company's last financing round. The positive thing about the slowdown, he says, is that one would see a lot less money chasing the same businesses. "The negative side of the slowdown is that there was a period when I could sell my company at a healthy premium very quickly. That may fade away." Some well-capitalised investors, meanwhile, are refusing to participate in the future rounds of their portfolio companies, or are exiting. Helion Ventures, an investor in Flipkart, sold its stake a year ago. What motivated it to exit? "We could invest elsewhere and generate a higher return," Sanjeev Aggarwal, Senior Managing Director of the firm says. "Also, we are early stage investors. They don't invest at those valuations." Accel India, one of Flipkart's earliest investors, reportedly sold part of its stake during the last financing round of $700 million in July 2015. "What does it tell you? It tells you that the person who knows the company more than anyone else doesnt believe there is any further upside," an investor who did not want to be quoted says. The person he is referring to is Subrata Mitra, the first investor and outside board member in Flipkart. Accel said "no comments" to a questionnaire e-mailed by Business Today. Separately, Mitra did not respond to a questionnaire either. Long before the Morgan Stanley mutual fund marked down Flipkart's valuation, market watchers had been warning this was coming. The company's late stage investors, they said, could run out of exit options since a public market listing appears fraught with risks. "Amazon does $107 billion in revenues and its market cap is 2.7 times its revenues. So if Flipkart is doing $2 billion in revenues, its market cap by the same yardstick should be closer to $6 billion than $15 billion. So, Flipkart may be running out of options to maintain this $15-billion valuation," Murthy of Seedfund says. In the year ended March 2015, Flipkart had revenues of Rs 9,537 crore, as per disclosures with the Registrar of Companies. "I expect 2016 to be quite a bloodbath," Founder of ShopClues and automobile marketplace Droom Sandeep Aggarwal says, his voice booming on the telephone line. "The top 10 per cent of the companies who were the biggest beneficiaries of irrational valuations, and those who raised three-ten times of what they needed, will see a significant correction in the second half of 2016." Myth 2: The playbook is just GMV In April 2015, BT met Snapdeal's Co-founder Kunal Bahl at his old office in Delhi's Okhla. He was explaining the changing market share dynamics of e-tailing. Snapdeal + Freecharge (its acquisition) was nearly "neck and neck" with Flipkart + Myntra, he said, and dropped a line: "This is market share by value, or GMV. There is no other metric." The firm appears to have done a U-turn. It has stopped measuring success by GMV - its last disclosed GMV was $4.5 billion in August 2015. "We have not been tracking GMV even internally. The road to profitability is through transacting users and we pivoted towards it a few months ago," a spokesperson says. Snapdeal, including Freecharge and other companies in its 'ecosystem', now has over one million daily transacting users. "The metric of daily transacting users has been adopted by the company, as it is a good proxy measure of habit creation among users," the company says. This shift from bragging about GMV growth is industry-wide. Flipkart no longer talks of it either, neither does Amazon. What's happening here? "We have the advantage of one of the best technologies that provides the most targeted way for sellers to market their offerings to customers" To understand, we met ShopClues CEO Sanjay Sethi at his office in Gurgaon. In one corner of his room, is an arrangement of multiple Hindu god idols - Lakshmi, Krishna, Ganesh. Salt-pepper haired, he is wearing a grey tee and cargos. "Exam ka pattern change ho gaya (the pattern of the exam has changed)," he says in Hindi. Earlier, companies got high multiples for GMV, but starting late last year, investors are valuing the bottom line, too. GMVs nearly became the equivalent of the eyeball theory of 1999-2000 during the Dot-com boom and bust - investors funded any portal that had sizeable visitors. Nevertheless, the deal for marketplaces is tricky: A better bottom line would come at the cost of GMV, and therefore, market share. "You sell an iPhone for Rs 8,000 discount. But you are selling a Rs 50,000 phone - that gave you high GMV. If you have a GMV of 50,000, your value is a lakh. You get a multiple of GMV," explains Sethi. But when this discounting goes, it will impact GMV because people will buy less. "But when your bottom-line improves, you will get better multiples on the bottom-line. This year people will give you money for the bottom-line," Sethi adds. ShopClues, according to Morgan Stanley Research, has the best capital efficiency - GMV to total capital raised - in the industry today, ahead of Snapdeal, Paytm and Flipkart. Investors want e-commerce companies to reduce cash burn by stemming discounts, operational expenses and people costs. Nikesh Arora, President & COO of SoftBank, is one of the biggest dealmakers in the Indian Internet consumer play, with investments in Snapdeal and Ola. He thinks 2016 will be a year of execution. "We have seen huge amounts of funding going into lots of companies in 2014 and 2015, some perhaps a little recklessly," he had said in a meeting with Business Today in January this year. "Some of that would go away. Will that cause companies to fail? Yes, because you have to execute better to be there. Will you call it a bust or a rationalisation of the market? I prefer to say rationalisation." Arora, at one point in the interview, said companies must demonstrate "islands of profitability" in 2016 - it is this message that is perhaps resonating with Snapdeal. "They (Indian e-commerce marketplaces) may have gotten on top of the first mount but if they want to win the battle and climb up the mountain, they have to go through that thinking of creating profitability and show us, investors, that they are able to take their ideas, create a set of profitable customers, profitable transactions. And this is the playbook - this is what they are going to be expanding on in 2016," he explained. His portfolio companies were trying out premium products and services that are more margin friendly. Snapdeal, he said, has started offering faster delivery to specific customers to create a better experience and test if the customer continues using the marketplace. Independently, Snapdeal did not confirm this. Ola has introduced a higher priced product, Ola Prime; OYO Rooms started OYO Premium. E-commerce players are also reducing discounting. Over the past six months, fashion marketplace Myntra has reduced discounting by 6 per cent. The company is optimising its supply-chain - delivery routes, for instance. "We are at a scale that is sizeable. At this scale, we need to get the unit economics right and there is a push to profitability. We are consistently reducing discounts and are improving selection; what brands are selling, how premium are those brands," CEO of Myntra Ananth Narayanan says. The company, owned by Flipkart but run independently, currently has a GMV of $550 million. Will FDI help? The government recently announced 100 per cent FDI in marketplaces. While it could attract foreign investments, the jury is still out on two "conditions" the government issued: one, an e-commerce firm cannot permit one vendor to generate more than 25 per cent of its sales and two, the companies cannot "directly or indirectly influence the sale price of goods or services." This implies that marketplaces cannot resort to below-the-cost discounting. This could take the sheen away from the e-commerce industry that has grown on the back of what many refer to as "bribing the consumer". Of course, this provides a level playing field to offline retailers. The 25 per cent rule doesn't impact pure-play marketplaces, but could mean short-term itch for companies which have created primary sellers. Flipkart is trying to get leaner, too. In a meeting last year, CFO Sanjay Baweja told this writer that the company is focussing on eliminating inefficiencies. "Most of our process will be set right over the next 12-18 months. We will use a lot more automation in our processes," he had said. Payment systems, processing of data, the supply chain - all of these can benefit from the use of automation. E-mailed questions to founders Sachin and Binny Bansal weren't answered. Flipkart also did not respond to requests for interviews with executives such as Baweja. The companys spokesperson didn't take calls after an inquiry on the "tone" of this story. This was true of many other start-ups as well. This writer is bombarded with "requests" for coverage every day. But when it isn't about "soft" profiling, everyone runs for cover: calls aren't returned and texts on WhatsApp remain unanswered even as two blue ticks appear next to, "Hey, when is a good time to call?" Meanwhile, much like Flipkart, even food-tech companies are using automation to cut expenses. Foodpanda said it has automated its food ordering platform: the placing of an order, the communication of that order to a restaurant, and the confirmation. "We have been able to reduce our operational cost by 60-70 per cent based on multiple things, automation being at the centre of it," says Saurabh Kochhar, Co-founder and CEO of Foodpanda India. The drive towards automation started in the middle of 2015 and the company let go of 300 people made redundant by automation. "Open any website today and you will find half to one-third of the discounting that used to happen earlier," says Sudhanshu Gupta, Vice President of Business at Paytm. This writer met him at a watering hole in Delhi's Connaught Place. A Paytm-branded writing pad, which shouted "Go Big or Go Home" on the cover, lay nearby. Paytm, known for its wallet business, started a marketplace in 2014 and poached Gupta from Flipkart, where he was the category manager for Computers and Accessories. The company claimed super fast progress. "In January, we had $4 billion GMV, of which 45 per cent was the shopping business," Gupta says, before explaining how asset-lite its marketplace is. "We don't own our warehouses. Nor have we created our own logistics network. We have been able to aggregate the best of the service providers, in terms of courier partners and third-party warehouses." New marketplaces have learnt from the mistakes of the older ones. The discounting is disguised as cash backs and is far less harmful. Cash back, which tie into Paytm's wallet business, helps retain customers. "The cash back also has significant contribution of the seller of the brand. We have a policy not to contribute to more than 50 per cent of the cash back," says Gupta. So if the cash back on a phone sale is Rs 100, for example, Paytm would contribute a maximum of Rs 50 and the rest is contributed by the seller. Consulting firm KPMG works with most of the large e-tailers. Sreedhar Prasad, Partner at the company, says a reality check on "ecosystem bleed" is due. What does he mean? "Indian customers will not make e-commerce players profitable. They have to be profitable from the ecosystem; you need to have a reality check on where the ecosystem is making too much money," he says. By ecosystem he means companies that provide warehousing, last-mile fulfilment and payment gateway services among others. They may be minting money as marketplaces bleed. True, delivery companies are already feeling the heat. "Marketplaces are negotiating better rates for next year. They are asking for 5-10 per cent lower than the current price," Sanjeev Saxena, Co-founder of Ecom Express, a last mile logistics company, says. "The new rates will be implemented by June-July this year." Another facet of the new reality is that companies are experimenting with new revenue streams. E-commerce marketplaces primarily earn through the commissions they make for every sale. Nevertheless, companies such as ShopClues have learnt from the likes of Amazon, which monetises intellectual property. ShopClues sells the point-of-sale system it developed to merchants, invoicing products and merchandising solutions. "It is freemium - free to begin with, but pay for a premium model," Co-founder Sethi says. About 15 per cent of the company's revenues are currently generated though such monetisation. Myth 3: Indian firms for Indians A social media skirmish erupted on March 25, 8 am. Flipkart's Executive Chairman Sachin Bansal tweeted: "Alibaba deciding to start operations directly shows how badly their Indian investments have done so far." It appeared like deliberate leg pulling. Alibaba has invested in Flipkart's Indian rivals Snapdeal and Paytm but in March this year, Alibaba Group President Michael Evans met India's Communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to express his interest in a direct entry into what truly appears to be a messy battlefield. The aggressive Kunal Bahl came up with a scathing response to Bansal Didn't Morgan Stanley just flush 5bn worth market cap in Flipkart down the ??? Focus on ur business not commentary :) https://t.co/8NpkhWWo2j Kunal Bahl (@1kunalbahl) March 25, 2016 Lurking behind Bansal's tweet on Alibaba, the valuation mark down by the Morgan Stanley mutual fund, and efforts by investors to exit the company, is another disappearing myth. The belief that Indian companies will be market leaders in India, much like Alibaba or Didi Kuaidi in China. China speaks only Chinese but metro consumers in India speak English. That, combined with an open market, has left the door ajar for multinationals to spoil the Indian party. The expectation that Flipkart will be the Amazon of India and Ola the Uber of India appears to be crashing. A Morgan Stanley Research report, released in February this year, pegs the market share of Flipkart + Myntra by gross merchandise value (GMV) at 45 per cent, followed by Snapdeal (ex-Freecharge) at 26 per cent, Amazon India at 12 per cent, and Paytm at 7 per cent. The report does not suggest Flipkart losing any share. In fact, it has made small gains. The same report, last year, pegged Flipkart's share at 44 per cent and Amazon's at 15 per cent. Most companies, however, dispute the Morgan Stanley Research estimate. Amazon, of course, rubbishes, the report, and contends it has grown much faster. "The market (e-commerce) in India grew 65 to 70 per cent in 2015. But our growth was 250 per cent. So, we are growing four times faster than the industry. All our categories are growing 200 to 700 per cent," Amit Agarwal, Vice President and Country Manager of Amazon India tells this writer over a call. The company had previously announced that Diwali 2015 was four times bigger than Diwali 2014, and the company sold more in the last quarter of 2015 than it did in entire 2014. Amazon has the advantage of copy pasting its global platforms in India, those that have been perfected over many years. Indian companies will find that difficult to match up. Its ad platform is one such. "We have the advantage of one of the best technologies that provides the most targeted way for sellers to market their offerings to customers," Agarwal says. Similarly, the company can probably track every aspect of a consumer, and her buying behaviour, much better than anyone else. But more than anything else, it is current realities that could sink Indian companies. With investor pressure to boost the bottom line, the top line may shrink. That leaves Amazon, with unlimited capital, to go on the prowl, attack, and kill its prey. "That is the No.1 priority. To become big," Agarwal said, before hanging up. "Earlier, companies got high multiples for GMV but investors, starting late last year, are valuing the bottom line" If Alibaba makes a direct entry, a further erosion of market share is on the cards - unless Alibaba forms a united front, sort of a coalition, against Amazon. Like politics, business can make strange bed fellows. Right now, it is mere conjecture. Where does that leave Indian e-commerce in 2016 and 2017? Will it be a bloodbath, as some analysts pointed out, or a soft landing? Most hope it would be the latter. The reason is e-commerce is not the bubble. Indians are consuming more online and this appetite can grow with deeper broadband penetration. Second, the Seventh Pay Commission could boost consumption; more than one lakh crore rupees is expected to flow into the system. The Indian government has an interest in seeing e-commerce expand as well - much of the black economy could get converted to white over a period of time. The government's guideline to introduce 100 per cent FDI in marketplaces underlines that interest. No doubt, Morgan Stanley Research now has a new estimate for the market. It revised its estimate of the size of Indias e-commerce market (e-tailing) upwards to $119 billion in 2020 versus $102 billion seen previously. So, the bubble is not in e-commerce per se, but in the valuations of companies. However, most of the large e-commerce companies have funds that can last a year or more. Both Flipkart and Snapdeal's last financing rounds were in mid-2015. Companies typically raise money for 15-18 months. Considering that everyone is undergoing a belt tightening exercise, investors may, yet again, be willing to give a few the benefit of doubt. They can hope that the better-run companies can be publicly listed at some point. Perhaps, some of the e-tailers are now too big to fail. There is, of course, a brighter side to the expected soft landing. And that could take the industry to 'Phase 2' of its evolution. There would be more real businesses, less copycat companies and new entrepreneur heroes. How much money one raises will not be a sign of success. It would clearly differentiate the good VCs from the ordinary. And stable money from the 'tourist' dollars of hedge funds. After providing the master plan for developing Andhra Pradesh's new capital Amaravati, Singapore is looking at "retrofitting" of more Indian cities and plans to upgrade the transportation sector, a senior official said. Singapore provided the master plan for Amaravati, the new capital city of Andhra Pradesh, setting the stage for crucial participation in the massive development of India. Yeoh Keat Chuan, managing director of state-owned Economic Development Board, said Singapore is looking at participating in retrofitting of Indian cities and plans to upgrade its transportation sector, increasing its focus on Smart Cities . "We are looking at re-engineering transportation sector," Yeoh said, citing it as one of the opportunities for participating in the retrofitting of older Indian cities. Such solutions would help reduce congestion on the stressed infrastructure, he said after addressing some 1,200 delegates at the IIMPACT 2016 conference and exhibition being held here on April 8-9. He said several Indian, Chinese and South East Asian companies are collaborating and setting up partnerships and joint ventures in Singapore. "Singapore is a good location for international companies to collaborate and form partnerships," he said, pointing out that there are over 6,000 Indian, 5,000 Chinese and 10,000 Southeast Asian companies operating from the island state. Yeoh spoke about the 50-year development of Singapore to turn it into a global business centre, having developed expertise in urban redevelopment and water solutions. A call was also made to increase focus on developing infrastructure in India with Singapore being an intermediary for funding projects. "Structurally, there are a lot of things happening in India which can be enduring, can be durable, but more importantly the infrastructure that needs to be created has to be both competed for and collaborated with markets like Singapore," said Shyam Srinivasan, chief executive officer of the Federal Bank. "Singapore's message for India would be for urbanisation," Sam Pitroda, a former technology advisor to the Prime Minister of India, said. Singapore can also help India in its cleaning initiatives. "Singapore can help us design a strategy in cleaning," said Pitroda at the conference, organized by the Global IIM Alumni. He believes cleaning India would require massive investments in machinery, training, logistics, support and landfill among others which requires an elaborate plan. Pitroda also underlined the importance for India to continue on developing its infrastructure to support the 'Make in India' initiative. The National Chairman of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA), Jer Bergin, has called on the Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, to reject outright the draft offer from the EU for increased imports from the Mercosur countries. Bergin claims the Minister must work closely with his French counterpart to build further opposition among Member States and prevent any exchange of offers on sensitive products, which include beef. The EU draft offer is based on a TRQ (Tariff rate quota) of 78,000 tonnes of beef, of which 39,000 tonnes is High Quality Beef at a tariff rate of 7.5%. The IFA National Chairman said EU beef consumption has fallen by over 500,000t since 2010. Furthermore, Bergin claims the European market cannot absorb additional volumes of imports without a very negative effect on prices and farm incomes. He said a new impact assessment of a Mercosur trade deal for European agriculture is urgently required and should be discussed in both the Council of Ministers and European Parliament before proceeding with any further Mercosur negotiations. Mr Bergin said, "Previous analysis by the European Commission has shown that a Mercosur deal would inflict losses of 7.8bn on the EU agriculture sector. The individual losses at farm level would be much higher, particularly for beef farmers. This would have a major knock-on effect on rural economies, resulting in job losses." Source: www.businessworld.ie Ryanair have today announced the cancellation of 108 flights to and from Italy tomorrow. Ryanair flights from within Italy have also been cancelled. Ryanair claim all affected customers have been contacted by email and SMS text message where they have been advised of their options of a full refund, rebooking on to the next available flight or onto an alternative route. In a statement issued today, Ryanair said, "We sincerely apologise to all customers disrupted by these unjustified strikes the 5th such ATC strike in the last 3 weeks by ATC unions who are holding European consumers to ransom. We call on the Italian Government and EU Commission to take action to prevent any further ATC disruptions." Source: www.businessworld.ie The Little Museum of Dublin were celebrating this week after winning the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award 2016. The award is Europes highest honour in the heritage field, in the category of Education, Training and Awareness-Raising. Little Museum Director, Trevor White commented, "It is truly an honour to receive this award. We started this museum with a simple public call for donations, and it is thrilling to see how much the museum has grown in 5 years." The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys added, "The Little Museum is one of Dublins true gems; behind its relatively unassuming door on Stephens Green lies a treasure trove of historical and cultural objects. The personal nature of so many of these objects is the true beauty of the Little Museum, giving visitors a unique insight into our political and cultural history." She continued, "This award is further positive international recognition of the wealth and depth of Ireland's cultural offering to visitors, both domestic and from overseas, and of this island's ongoing position as a global innovator in cultural education and increasing cultural awareness." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us The G20 summit to be hosted by China this year should be about economics and not political issues like territorial disputes, China's foreign minister said on Friday, firing a warning shot ahead of the country's biggest diplomatic event of the year. The summit, expected to be held in early September in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, will gather major world leaders together like Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama. Japan next month hosts a summit of Group of Seven (G7) nations, which China is not a part of, and has proposed discussing issues like Russia, Ukraine's conflict and the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Speaking to reporters after meeting his German counterpart, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China wanted to make proposals at the G20 about global economic growth. "We hope that the G7 can be like the G20 and concentrate on economic and development topics countries of the world are the most focused on," Wang said. "...If certain countries, because of political aims, insert concrete issues like problems left over from history or disputes over territory or sovereignty into the G20, not only will this not benefit the issues' resolution, it could impact upon the regional situation and stability and is inadvisable." He did not elaborate or name any country. China has rattled nerves around the region with its increasingly assertive moves over territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas. China disputes ownership with Japan of a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea. China claims most of the resource-rich South China Sea amid rival claims by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie Mission chiefs of Greece's European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders held talks in Brussels on Friday on the country's key bailout review, a European Commission spokeswoman said, stressing that they were long-scheduled. "They will return within the day," Commission spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said, adding that euro zone officials were due to meet in Brussels anyway on Friday. An EU official close to the talks said they hoped for a deal with Greece by Sunday. "The Greeks are still short of meeting of the conditions of either organization," the official said. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Yahoo Inc has extended the deadline to bid for its businesses by a week to April 18, technology news website Re/code reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Yahoo, whose shares were up 1.4% in premarket trading, had set an April 11 deadline for preliminary bids, which could yield a deal by June or July, the Wall Street Journal had reported. Yahoo has launched an auction of its core Internet business, which includes search, mail and news sites, after abandoning its plan to spin-off its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The company has been struggling to keep up with Alphabet Inc's Google unit and Facebook Inc in the battle for online advertisers. Verizon Communications Inc is ready to make a bid for Yahoo's Web business, and hopes to make a merger more successful by also making an offer for a stake in Yahoo Japan Corp , Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Google is also mulling a bid for Yahoo's core business, Bloomberg reported, citing a source. However, Re/code's Kara Swisher said that a Google bid was "highly unlikely." Yahoo is also under pressure from activist investor Starboard Value LP which moved to overthrow the entire board of the company, including Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, last month. Starboard has been pushing for changes at Yahoo since 2014. Up to Thursday's close of $36.17, Yahoo's shares had risen about 9% since the beginning of the year. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Panama Papers: a tale of two Britains Published on April 9, 2016 Story by Pieter Cranenbroek en de fr it es pl [Opinion] The ongoing fallout from the leak of the Panama Papers has not spared the United Kingdom; the Prime Minister's late father Ian Cameron was among those named in the documents. Yesterday, David Cameron admitted having benefited from his father's offshore trust. Is this news? Certainly. Is this shocking? Not really... "Tax evasion is not just illegal its immoral. People evading tax should be treated the same as common thieves." I couldnt have put it better myself, which makes it all the more surprising that I took these words from Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. Sadly he tweeted this 18 months ago and not just now after his BFF David Cameron was caught earlier this week. I am referring, of course, to the Panama Papers. The 11.5 million leaked documents uncovered thousands of offshore companies set up for the rich and powerful to keep their money out of the hands of the taxman. A number of high profile politicians including Vladimir Putin, David Cameron, Icelands PM Gunnlaugsson and Ukrainian president Poroshenko are linked to the offshore tax havens. How surprising is the Panama Papers affair really? I know it's good that these things get confirmed every once in a while but deep down we already knew, didnt we? A lot of rich people move heaven and earth to shelter their money. God forbid they pitch in and pay their fair share to society. What else is new? That's not to say we shouldnt be outraged. The leak of the Panama Papers is the latest evidence that we're living in a society composed of two groups playing by different rules. If youre a Tory minister committing fraud with public money, you dont even have to pay back most of what you stole and get off with a slap on the wrist. If youre not part of the elite and you do the same thing, you face prison sentences of up to ten years. Yesterday Cameron admitted he benefited from his dads offshore trust, yet he seems under no pressure to resign. How come we're naturally suspicious of people in the lower echelons of society while we seem to have a blind spot for those higher up? Is it because we think the elite has obtained those places at the top on merit? Thats highly unlikely considering Britain has some of the lowest social mobility in the developed world. In a world of equal opportunities, Boris Johnson may well have been a market trader and a fairly good one at that but certainly not a potential prime minister. The contrast between these two groups in Britain has never been sharper. At a time when every penny is squeezed out of those further down the ladder, the ones standing on the upper rungs accumulate more and more, and do everything in their power to not share their gains with the rest. The Tories, who branded themselves "the party for working people" in its most recent election campaign, take no shame in giving the top 20% in Britain as much in benefits as the poorest 20%. Britain in 2016 means it's Christmas all year round for the well off. They get presents they dont need, paid for by money taken from people who can barely afford life's basic necessities. In the new normal, youre automatically assumed a "chav" or a "scrounger" if you need state assistance to sustain yourself. Authorities make you jump through hoop after hoop just to make sure you "deserve" your benefits. "The poor and the needy are selfish and greedy" is a particularly powerful Smiths lyric because of its inherent absurdity. Yet, somehow, its become the mantra of modern society. It's a vile reality in which people who have trouble making ends meet are assumed to struggle because of their own life choices. A clear example of this "demonisation of the working class" as journalist Owen Jones described it is a measure Iain Duncan Smith wanted to introduce in 2014. The former Work and Pensions Secretary who recently resigned his position over what he perceived as unfair disability welfare cuts wanted people on benefits to receive their payments on "smart cards". This meant they would have been restricted to spending their money on food and other essentials in a limited number of shops. It was so utterly patronising that Duncan Smith had to abandon the scheme, but it shows how the Tories think: if youre on benefits youre probably an alcoholic or a gambling addict. How different things are at the top where no such scrutiny exists. Despite the fact tax avoidance costs the Treasury 70 times more than benefit fraud, the finger is always pointed at those people who are continuously hit by cuts. We now know why, of course. The Camerons didnt just profit from tax shelters, the Tory leader also personally intervened to make sure the EU wouldnt crack down on these shady offshore trusts. It's blatant abuse of power to serve personal interests. Is this news? Certainly. Is this shocking? Not really. Whats shocking is that no matter how many of these stories are uncovered nothing ever seems to change. We keep voting in the same people, or we stay at home on polling day because it doesnt matter anyway. By the time the next election comes, all is forgiven or, most likely, forgotten and the whole circus starts anew. Save your anger for election time. --- This article was published by a cafebabel writer based in London. Story by Pieter Cranenbroek Teenage gangs of Brixton: Everyday London crime stories Published on April 8, 2016 en it de pl fr es In London, the phenomenon of knife crime between young people has once again begun to increase. To uncover a world behind the glitz and glamour of London Bridge or Piccadilly Circus, cafebabel went to Brixton a South London suburb with a large Afro-Caribbean population to meet Tracey "Sour" Miller, who in the 80s was known as the most dangerous girl in Angell Town. "You can crush us, you can bruise us, but you'll have to answer to, oh, the guns of Brixton." Those words were sung by The Clash in the 70s, when Brixton was a no-go zone for many white Londoners, or people without a criminal record. It was the territory of the Yardies, a place where the Jamaican mafia prospered undisturbed. The word was originally a nickname used by expats who arrived in droves in the 50s from West Kingston, Jamaica after the Government Yards built by the British in the former colony. A district with a large Afro-Caribbean population, the area is also known for the so-called Brixton riots historical protests that broke out in the area in 1981, 1985, 1995, and most recently in 2011. They have always resulted in the death of a black man at the hands of the police. In contrast to the richer areas in the west of the city even more so than the historically impoverished, working-class East End stood South London, and Brixton. Over the years, gentrification has significantly reduced such differences, but it has failed to solve a major societal problem: knife crime and gang culture now even more widespread and well structured. In the 80s there were the Younger 28s, the Junction Boys, the Peckham Boys and the Ghetto Boys. Nowadays there are the Muslim Boys, the Poverty Driven Children, the Guns and Shanks, the ABM (All 'Bout Money) and the TN1 (Tell No One). Their members are young, often still children. They are London born but largely from immigrant backgrounds, often coming from dysfunctional families. They carry out robberies, stabbings and even shooting, often resulting in imprisonment. They are driven by distress, poverty, and the hatred they experience at home. They live in an area neglected by the state. Children begin their "career" in the gangs at the tender age of 12 or 13, by stealing a few quid from local grocery stores only to wind up in prison by 16 on charges of armed robbery. Who are these young people? What are they looking for from society? Why does the British state seem to be ignoring them? Welcome to Angell Town When I arrive in Briton, the winter's day is cold and calm. On exiting the Underground, I find myself on Brixton High Street. It's filled with chain stores, fast food restaurants, and supermarkets. The murals of David Bowie are the current main attraction. The high street reflects the borough's multicultural demographic. My destination is elsewhere: Angell Town. Turning off the main road, it becomes less crowded and the shops are sparser. I'm entering the residential area of Brixton predominantly Afro-Caribbean. There is hardly anyone out and about except a group of young boys. It's five oclock and already getting dark. I reach Overton Road. Where the vast Angell Town council estate stands out due to its deprivation. I walk a real "neighbourhood within a neighbourhood". Rows of houses, side by side, patched with plywood. The curtains are closed. I reach number 159: the South Central Youth a help centre for young people sucked into the vortex of crime. Ann Stockreiter, head of the organisation, tells me what the organisation is all about. "I'm often the one who comes to the young people, though at times it's the other way round," explains Ann, "I meet them at police stations, or here, at the centre. We offer psychological and also practical support, to improve their lives. We support them in all fields, from school to family life. We want to develop awareness. "The baby gang situation has worsened since the 80s; the gangs are much more divided, and more numerous. The biggest and most structured gangs today are Rock Block, 67s and Siru, and their members are aged between 12 and 19 years." There is one thing I want to ask: what is the British government doing to help? "Unfortunately, the support that exists is insufficient. There's a lack of funding to finance organisations such as ours, but also a lack of awareness of the needs of these young people." I ask Ann for a story of one of their clients. "Joshua stopped attending school because he was verbally and physically bullied by his classmates," she explains, "He began to commit crimes, hustling and getting into trouble. With our support, he resumed his studies, received a degree in physics and chemistry, and now offers assistance in developing countries." An insider's insights What drives these young people to get involved with a criminal gang? I had the opportunity to interview Tracey Miller, or "Sour" as she called herself in the 80s when she was the most dangerous girl in Angell Town. At just 15 years old, she joined the dreaded Younger 28s gang. She robbed, stabbed, pushed drugs and ended up in prison. She told me her story, the unvarnished truth behind her actions. Born in Jamaica, Tracey came to Angell Town when she was 10 years old, together with her mother. With her father in prison, a schizophrenic mother and a series of short-lived stepfathers, her impoverished living conditions did not allow for the assumption of a better future. "When my mother had one of her attacks and they came to take her to a rehabilitation centre, she grabbed a knife from the kitchen to defend herself. Her behaviour seemed normal to me, and I grew up disillusioned. One of my stepfathers was a paedophile: he came out of the bathroom showing me his erection with his tongue out. I began to hide a knife under my pillow at night, and I was more than willing to use it against him if he touched me. From there, it didn't take long for me to start carrying a knife at all times. "It seems absurd, but in prison I felt safe, even protected," she continues, "I didn't have to worry about my mother and her mood swings, my stepfather or the bad company out there on the street. In prison I could be myself, without wearing masks or armour. "If I knew I had another choice? There is always another choice. I knew what I was doing was wrong, in the back of my head. My salvation was becoming pregnant at 18. My daughter made me a better person. My daughters are my contribution to society." Tracey now lives in Brixton with her two daughters, who know about their mothers past. She wrote a book about her story and has launched a campaign, One Minute in May, to raise awareness on the scourge of gangs and to support the families of those who every year fall victim to the guns and knives of Brixton. Across London in 2015, 15 young boys lost their lives because of knife crime. Police operations to counter gang culture are ongoing. The One Minute in May project. --- Text by Vittoria Caron. Photos by Valentina Cala. --- This feature report is a part of our EUtoo 'on the ground' project in London, seeking to give a voice to disenchanted youth. It is funded by the European Commission. Translated from Baby gang di Brixton: storie di ordinaria criminalita a Londra SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Larry McKinney, executive director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi is director of Texas OneGulf. By David Sikes of the Caller-Times In the competitive and complex world surrounding funding from the 2010 BP oil spill, Texas may have an edge. It's called Texas OneGulf or TONE, a group of 152 scientists led by Larry McKinney, executive director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. The institute is one of two Research Centers of Excellence designated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the only one charged with focusing on all aspects of the Gulf's environmental and economic health. While about 100 of the consortium's scientists from nine institutions gathered at the Harte Research Institute this past week, news spread among the five Gulf states and beyond about the signing of a consent decree between the U.S. Department of Justice and BP trustees, allowing up to $8.8 billion for the largest environmental restoration effort in American history. Funding under provisions of the federal RESTORE Act and for natural resources damages now are guaranteed for the next 17 years, according to the decree. Other institutes under the Texas OneGulf umbrella are the Center for Translational Environmental Health Research, Texas A&M University-College Station, Texas A& M University-Galveston, the University of Texas at Brownsville, Texas State University, the University of Houston Law Center, the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System Regional Association and the University of Texas Medical Branch-Galveston. The group's first meeting was last week in Corpus Christi, followed by a second workshop in Houston-Galveston, to prioritize research focuses and restoration needs so Texas can be more competitive in the funding process, McKinney said. "Texas both affects and is affected by the Gulf of Mexico in areas such as red tides, over fishing and closed beaches," McKinney said. "Our goal with Texas OneGulf and this network of experts is to bring together Texas' best scientists and Gulf experts to solve these problems and improve the health and well-being of us all." McKinney said the group's credibility and strength is derived from its diversity of disciplines. Beside the obvious areas of expertise such as marine and fisheries biology and coastal ecology, the consortium includes disciplines such as public health, environmental flows, socioeconomics, toxicology, ornithology, seagrass, sea turtles, oyster reefs and marsh restoration. The group is charged with studying sustainability, restoration and protection of the coast and deltas; researching and monitoring coastal fisheries and wildlife ecosystems; and offshore energy development, including research and technology to improve the safe development of energy resources; along with comprehensive observation, monitoring, and mapping of the Gulf to promote sustainable and resilient growth, economic and commercial development. Unlike some Gulf projects funded through other sources from the BP settlement, Texas OneGulf is all about science and research, McKinney said. However, science-based decisions and suggestions from the group should guide decisions on needs and where to focus funding, which could also influence some of the physical restoration projects involving oyster reefs, seagrass, wetlands and environmental river flows, he said. Ultimately many project-funding decisions will be vetted by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, the Texas General Land Office and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, in coordination with federal trustees. "I want to make sure the folks in Austin have a trusted science resource they can turn to for answers and guidance in their decision making," McKinney said. "It might be five to ten years down the road, but we'll get there." The decision-making process for specific projects, whether they be physical construction or environmental restoration, allows for public review and input through public meetings, online review and other means. McKinney said he hopes information provided by Texas OneGulf also helps stakeholders and the public add insight in their consideration of the Gulf's greatest needs. "Stakeholders can help identify problems, too," he said. "But they must trust the science we provide to expand their options." Assembling this many scientists from so many disciplines and asking them to focus on a common goal will be a challenge, McKinney said. "Every scientist thinks that what they do is the most important thing in the world," he said. 'The challenge is to find areas that we all agree upon. And the first step in doing that must involve all of us agreeing to try. Then we have to convince them that doing science for science sake has merit but not much value in this context. Can we take what they're doing scientifically to help solve and identify problems? That should be the goal." The group will present its strategic plan in March 2017 at the State of the Gulf Summit in Houston, where all strategic plans will be meshed into one vision for how to restore the Gulf, McKinney said. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Yazan Ghraowi displays chocolate candies that his family made on Thursday, April, 7, 2016, in Corpus Christi. The family of chocolatiers recently moved to the area from Syria. SHARE By Julie Garcia of the Caller-Times Some family businesses are sweeter than others. That is the case with the Ghraowi Chocolate Company, the city's newest candy factory, which will host a grand opening Saturday. Three members of the Ghraowi family, patriarch and 20-year chocolatier Bashar; his wife, Mais Kayal; and 19-year-old son Yazan Ghraowi, came to Corpus Christi five months ago to escape an increasingly unsafe life in the Middle East. After leaving their home, and chocolate factory, in Damascus, Syria, in 2012, the family spent time in Egypt before returning to the war-torn country. When the economy took a turn for the worst, they began plans to emigrate to Corpus Christi where Bashar Ghraowi's brother had been living for 20 years. The family has a history in chocolate making, which dates back to 1939. After a career as an engineer, Bashar Ghraowi learned the art of making chocolate from scratch from his father. The grand opening will be at 1225 Agnes Street, Suite B-16 from 2-7 p.m. Read more about the family's immigration to the United States and the steps they're taking to stay on Caller.com this weekend and Sunday in the Caller-Times. Twitter: @Caller_Jules SHARE FBI officials walk behind an military vehicle near the scene of a shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Friday, April 8, 2016, in San Antonio. (John Davenport/The San Antonio Express-News via AP) RUMBO DE SAN ANTONIO OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT First responders and FBI agents gather near the scene of a shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Friday, April 8, 2016, in San Antonio. (John Davenport/The San Antonio Express-News via AP) RUMBO DE SAN ANTONIO OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT Two Bexar County Sheriff's Deputies, left, stand outside a building near the scene of a shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Friday, April 8, 2016, in San Antonio. (John Davenport/The San Antonio Express-News via AP) RUMBO DE SAN ANTONIO OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT Two Bexar County Sheriff's Deputies stand outside a building near the scene of a shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Friday, April 8, 2016, in San Antonio. (John Davenport/The San Antonio Express-News via AP) RUMBO DE SAN ANTONIO OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT DALLAS (AP) An airman shot his commander in an apparent murder-suicide Friday at a U.S. Air Force base in San Antonio, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Two handguns were found near the bodies of the men, which were inside a building that's used for classrooms and offices, according to Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, who oversees Joint Base San Antonio. He stressed that the shooting was not an act of terrorism, and declined to identify the two, saying their families must be notified first. The Air Force's Office of Special Investigations is leading the investigation, and the FBI is assisting. The fatal shooting of the two is the latest to occur at a military facility in Texas in the last several years. In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans' clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist, then killed himself. About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, who also killed himself. And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting. Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland is the home of Air Force basic training. The Army's Fort Sam Houston and Air Force's Lackland and Randolph bases were combined during base realignment several years ago to become the military's largest joint base. SHARE This is an undated photograph provided by Belgian Federal Police shows Mohamed Abrini. Belgian authorities say several arrests have been made in relation to the Brussels attacks. The prosecutor's office said Friday April 8, 2016 that it made "several arrests" Friday, one day after it called on the public to help look for a key suspect in the March 22 attacks that killed 32 people. Belgian broadcaster VRT, citing sources it did not identify, said Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini was among those arrested. (Belgian Federal Police via AP) Related Coverage Flour Bluff HS grad among those killed in Brussels attack By The Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) - Belgian authorities say several arrests have been made in relation to the Brussels attacks, one day after they called on the public to help look for a key suspect who was involved in the March 22 bloodshed that killed 32 people. Gail Minglana Martinez, a 1992 graduate of Flour Bluff High School, died March 22 in the attacks that killed more than 30 people and wounded about 100 more, according to a statement from U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi. Martinez, 41, and her husband, Air Force Lt. Col. Kato Martinez, were in Brussels with their four children when suicide bombers attacked the airport and a subway train station. The prosecutor's office said Friday it made "several arrests" but refused to provide more information. Belgian broadcaster VRT, citing sources it did not identify, said Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini was among those arrested. Abrini is the last identified suspect still at large from the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris which killed 130 people. He is a 31-year-old Belgian petty criminal and is believed to have traveled early last summer to Syria where his younger brother died in 2014 in the Islamic State group's notorious francophone brigade. He has been on the run since the Nov. 13 attacks but never resurfaced after the emergence of surveillance video placing him in the convoy with the attackers headed to Paris. He had ties to Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who died in a police standoff on Nov. 18. SHARE Progress takes many forms within the free-enterprise system. Sometimes it means returning to a business model that was abandoned in favor of a purely technological solution, such as having a real human answer the phone. Customer gratitude offsets the overhead increase. App-driven ride services are a fat opportunity for this kind of progress, and it may happen right here in Corpus Christi. A new company, Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Tride, is considering bringing its blend of the best of old and new to town. Unlike Uber and Lyft, Tride's founders believe in showing enough commitment to a community to operate from a storefront, enough commitment to its drivers to embrace them as employees rather than keeping them at arm's length as freelancers, and enough commitment to their customers' security to welcome fingerprinting in addition to the background-checking method used by Uber. This fits a historic pattern of progress. It starts with a new product or service. The first to deliver it has no competition and often acts like it. In this case the innovation was a phone app that replaced traditional taxi dispatching and took payment automatically. Customers liked it enough to ignore the risk of getting into a stranger's personal vehicle. Drivers liked the flexibility enough, or were desperate enough for income, to accept zero employee benefits. When cities like Corpus Christi have sought to regulate Uber and Lyft with taxes, fees and fingerprinting, the companies usually have chosen to leave. This helps keep overhead nil. They have marketed their opposition to fingerprinting as a stand against government overreach and dinosaur technology, and in favor of what they have spun as superior background check methods. They haven't offered a convincing answer to the obvious question: Why not do both? Their customers willingly fight their battles for them, keeping lobbying costs low. In Corpus Christi, Uber customers have bullied the City Council into reconsidering its fingerprint requirement. Tride's newer business model is more advantageous to Corpus Christi or any city. One would think that Tride's willingness to operate here should end or at least mark the beginning of the end of the fingerprint debate and that Uber and Lyft's exit would be of little further concern. But Councilwoman Colleen McIntyre, a fingerprinting opponent, says travelers know Uber and Lyft and have their apps, and don't know Tride. That's a problem solved in a jiffy with old- and new-fashioned marketing. Really, it's as simple as putting up signs at the airport. Travelers who are accustomed to Uber and Lyft also are accustomed to adapting to local custom. In New York City they give subways a try. That's a much bigger culture shock than Tride instead of Uber or Lyft if they are from a city without subways. Modern travelers also are accustomed to downloading new apps. The councilwoman is too smart not to know all of this, as are we and most other people. So, who's she trying to kid, if not herself, us and most other people? Who does that leave? Angry Uber and Lyft customers complained that the council's initial decision to require fingerprinting was typical of backward Corpus Christi and its resistance to change. Continuing to press their argument rather than embrace an attractive, progressive solution is the kind of naysaying that is all too familiar in this city. Embrace the brighter future. The accident occurred at Mandoumba along the Yaounde-Douala highway on Friday April 1, 2016. ADS One person died in a car accident that occurred at Mandoumba along the Yaounde-Douala highway on Friday April 1, 2016 at 10:00p.m. Reports say the truck with number plate LTSR 349 loaded with sacks of cement, was heading to Yaounde when its driver lost track before driving some 50 metres away into a bush nearby. As a result, the conductor who allegedly was sitting on sacks of cement reportedly died on the spot while the driver had his two legs broken. Eyewitness reports say the conductors body was recovered from the bush but his right leg was not found. The witnesses told Cameroon Tribune that the driver complained that the accident was due to break failure. According to the witnesses, the accident was equally due to the poor state of the road in that area. Some of them said due to a deep pothole in the area, at least 60 vehicles get involved in accidents every week. The driver was rushed to the Yaounde Central Hospital where he is being administered treatment. ADS The Rum-Hi House is a converted traditional house known as a kominka. It features a dance floor, DJ booth and bar, as well as bowling facilities and a bathroom specially kitted out for foam parties. The concept, developed by BBDO Japan, aims to promote Bacardis new highball cocktail, made of rum, soda and lemon, and convey its brand philosophy of being Untameable. To stand a chance to party at the house, groups must number more than 20 and be over the age of 20. Other than that, the offer is apparently open to anyone, including foreign visitors. People are invited to apply via a dedicated site. The site is only in Japanese, meaning the group representative must at least have a grasp of the language. The winning punters will be selected by a lottery. The application deadline is 9 May, and the party itself will take place on 28 May. Takenori Hashimoto, creative director at BBDO Japan, said the location of the house is a secret, but somewhere around Tokyo. He explained the idea was to encourage Japanese revelers to lose their inhibitions while giving them a feeling of mystery and excitement. This video gives a sense of what to expect. The challenge was that Japanese people dont easily enjoy untameable spirit and do extraordinarily exciting parties like Westerners, Hashimoto said. Anyone who has stepped over Tokyo salarymen passed out on the street in the early hours of the morning could argue that the Japanese do in fact know how to party quite well. But the point about house parties being difficult to stage is valid. Japanese homes are too small and close to the house next door, Hashimoto continued. It is difficult to play music loudlyour idea was inspired by the Japanese housing problem. The concept is unique to Japanese circumstances in that sense. Bacardi is prepared to run the risk of the party becoming too wild. Of course, there are minimum rules, Hashimoto said. For example, dont break stuff, dont drink too much, and so on. But we dont aim to regulate the applicants. Our aim is to liberate them from stereotypes and [let] them enjoy the party freely and tremendously. Campaigns view: The idea of a brand sponsoring people to party with almost total freedom, in an exotic setting, is difficult to argue with. The house looks great and the perfect backdrop for sharing images of debauchery on social media. Of course, making it available for hire on an ongoing basis rather than as a one-off would take this to another level, but it's a good example of PR-thinking from an ad agency. Were this in the US, we would be more than a bit worried about the place getting trashedbut this is Japan. Still, the not-drinking-too-much rule seems a tad unrealistic. CREDITS Client: Bacardi Agency: BBDO Japan ECD: Masaki Honda CD: Takenori Hashimoto AD: Tsuyoshi Oyama, Shuichi Narita Producer: Tetsushi Kondo Production manager:Tadashi Bise Director: Yuki Mondo Cameraman: Tetsuya Kondo Art: ENZO Lighting: Mizoguchi Music: Michinobu Takarada Sources this week told Campaign Asia-Pacific that the deal the largest media pitch in China in 2015 is likely to be re-pitched over the next couple of months. It is believed that just two agencies could be invited to pitch, one of which is likely to be MEC, which was the incumbent until December. Following a four-way pitch last year, involving agency MEC, OMD and a local agency, the automotive brand handed media buying duties to Fuel. It is understood that Fuel was created under the Vivaki group to avoid client conflict. However, well-placed industry sources say that MEC is again managing media campaigns for the brand. MEC declined to comment while Fuel did not respond to email requests for comment at time of publication. Its understood BMBS posted a 33 percent rise in sales last year. In March, the brands V-Class multi-purpose vehicle had its Chinese premiere in Beijing, a model that has been available in Europe and America since 2014. The German automaker is optimistic on continued market success, citing growing demand for more spacious family vehicles thanks to changes in China such as the new universal two-child policy. Responsible for oversight of Publicis Medias operations in their respective markets, these appointments are intended to "better utilize the scale and capabilities" of its global agency brands Starcom, Zenith, Mediavest | Spark and Optimedia | Blue 449. The market CEOs, reporting to Gerry Boyle, regional CEO, Publicis Media, Asia Pacific are: Bertilla Teo, Greater China (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan) CEO, Publicis Media Anupriya Acharya, India CEO, Publicis Media Gareth Mulryan, Singapore CEO, Publicis Media Matt James, Australia and New Zealand CEO, Publicis Media In addition Chris Nolan has been appointed COO of Publicis Media Australia and New Zealand, while Mykim Chikli takes on the role of COO for Publicis Media Greater China. The reorganization of Publicis Groupes media capabilities into a Publicis Media hub is part of Publicis Groupes transformation efforts previously announced in December. Publicis Groupe is now organized into four solutions hubs: Publicis Communications led by Arthur Sadoun, Publicis Media led by Steve King, Publicis.Sapient led by Alan Herrick, Publicis Health led by Nick Colucci. These will be connected through a chief revenue officer organization, led by Laura Desmond. Publicis Media will be representing the groups top 20 markets, while Publicis One will service markets outside of those 20, billed as a global communications enterprise that unites all Publicis Groupe agency brands capabilities and expertise under one roof across 50 markets. Speaking to Campaign Asia-Pacific, Boyle said that the re-organisation of the Asia Pacific operations will be executed in a sequential fashion, with todays announcement marking the first phase. It was first important to establish local market leadership, the country CEOs, as they are going to be the people integrating the brands and practices, he added. Boyle said the second stage will be focused on establishing how the new global practises will work in areas spanning content, performance, corporate development and communications, trading, technology and innovation, research, analytics and insights. What were doing is pooling best talent we have from around the world in all markets and making it available to all four brands, he added. Publicis Media is going to be a brand-led organisation powered by global practices and that means powerful global agency brands, that will operate under one country CEO, supported by all the talent in the practises weve got and thats how were going to stimulate growth and make a difference, he said. Boyle added that in some cases such as business transformation, it will be a truly global practise while other services such as corporate development and communications would likely take on a more regional structure, with an even more local configuration for services such as content and performance. In the next month we will have a regional structure in place, including what the optimum roles are to make sure everyone is fulfilled and challenged and inspired as they can be, Boyle said. Boyle said that having established the best possible leadership for country markets, agency brand leadership announcement will follow very quickly. In some markets thats very clear, in other markets it will be announced in the next few days, he added. Vivaki, the groups ad tech arm will fall under the Publicis Media, as the company continues its rationalisation of all brands. Vivaki will integrate under the agency brands," said Boyle. Gerry Boyle Asked about the timeline for resolving the re-structure of the companys Asia Pacific operations, Boyle said the team was working toward end of April or beginning of May. With these things its hard to give a definitive date to it but we are certainly looking toward to resolve very quickly, he said. Boyle reported that feedback from the companys client base as so far been positive as well. Clients are interested in the brands, the leadership and the benefits they will get. I believe the benefits will come from those leaders of these practices, he said. If we are able to deliver to clients the best possible talent in all areas creating value for their business in a most efficient way, thats got to be good for both us and clients. When pointed out that the clustering of markets bears some similarities to the structure in play at IPG Mediabrand, which consists of three clusters, G14, World Markets and North America which the network is reportedly shifting away from Boyle declined to comment citing a lack of familiarity with the IPG system. He instead emphasised that the media agency brands, remain an important part of the global brand network. For example, clients wont feel the difference, whether they walk into Starcom Singapore, Philippines or China, Boyle said. Its just a different financial reporting structure. He also added that he doesnt view the companys current changes as a restructuring process, given the negative connotations associated with the term. I see it more as a creation process, Boyle added. Were standing at the edge of a huge opportunity for the groupto create a group and brand structure that is different from anything that sits in the market today. He added that the changes will be an amazing liberator of growth for both our people and clients. Whats interesting is that its a change that affects every single person in the company, as opposed to typical organisational changes which only affects a group or department,Boyle said. And so far, everyone is being extremely positive about the change. | BY Ricki Green | BWM Dentsu has today announced the appointment of Jordan Price as executive planning director, Melbourne. Price will join BWM Dentsu in his new role in May, 2016, following his leadership as executive planning director, head of planning for J. Walter Thompson Singapore and global planning director on Unilever LUX. Price comes to BWM Dentsu having previously worked in Germany, Canada, Japan and Singapore, with shorts secondments in both London and New York. Says Jamie Mackay, group strategy officer, BWM Dentsu: With more than 13 years of international experience in marketing communications, brand strategy development and insights generation, Jordan has the perfect combination of experience and skills to drive our mission to transform clients businesses and brands with long term Organising Ideas. I am very proud to have him in our Melbourne office, as well as adding to our national team of senior strategic thinkers that includes Megan Hales and Karl Bates. Prices focus in the newly created role as executive planning director a first for the BWM Dentsu Melbourne team will be to drive BWM Dentsus strategy and organising ideas development. He will work closely with the the leadership team to help grow the agency and strategic credentials. Says Price: I feel as if the stars have aligned for my joining BWM Dentsu, and I cant wait to jump in. The chemistry is great. I am totally on-board with the vision of the leadership team to take the agency to new heights, and believe I can bring a lot to the table from all I have learned over the years working in various cultural contexts around the world to help make that vision a reality. As a communication strategist, it is my job to unearth insights powerful enough to inspire great creative solutions, which drive both short- and long-term effectiveness. This means identifying and clearly articulating alternate, unexpected, and unexplored angles from which to view the challenges and opportunities brands and businesses face, in order to unlock much more impactful and original ideas. But more importantly, at this point in my career, is the need to bring my experience to help raise the bar on the agencys overall ability to unlock creative solutions we can be be proud of and which make a meaningful difference for our clients businesses. Mark Watkin, managing director, BWM Dentsu Melbourne, said he was pleased that Price is joining the team after an extensive search for the role. Says Watkin: Were confident that Jordans previous cross culture and multi-market experience will help drive the agency and our client partnerships. Jordan is passionate about the importance and relevance of brand, which directly aligns with the core values of BWM Dentsu. Importantly when we met with Jordan we instantly connected with him. During Prices tenure at J. Walter Thompson Tokyo, he successfully developed a new branding model, Brand Nurturing, to help bridge the gap between Japan and the West. This model has become core to the offering of J. Walter Thompson Tokyo. | BY Ricki Green | Scott Whybin, the chairman, regional creative director and founder of Whybin\TBWA Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland has resigned from the agency. After 21 years leading Whybin\TBWA, Whybin will step back from the executive management of the business in April 2016. Last year Whybin was inducted into the AdNews Hall of Fame for an exceptional career spanning over 30 years, including being the youngest ever creative director at The Campaign Palace at age twenty-six. Whilst at The Campaign Palace, Whybin wrote five of the Top Ten Australian ads of the last twenty-five years, including Dunlop Tyres and Sicem Rex for Antz Pantz. Whybin has won every local and global award and accolade that our industry offers. Four weeks ago, Whybin\TBWA was crowned the 2015 Australian Network of the Year by AdNews. Says Keith Smith, president international global markets, TBWA: Scott has helped to nurture and develop a significant number of the most talented and successful people working in the industry today, many of them are still working at Whybin\TBWA. Paul Bradbury (left) has been with Whybin\TBWA for over ten years, is the regional chief executive officer across Australia & New Zealand and has full responsibility for the region. They said the protest would "show solidarity with the people of Artsakh and to state to Azerbaijan that their aggression will not be tolerated by Armenians across the world". 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 internal memo simply reflects the decision-making process that is necessary in any government directorate or agency to ensure that appropriate business decisions are made around resourcing and the delivery of services in our community," she said. [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 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. There's no doubt about it, technology has changed the way we communicate and receive information. And because of this change, businesses have had to adapt how they communicate and build relationships with their customers. Consumers are in information overload and now look to the Internet, email or mobile phones to receive information about their favourite brands and companies. As a result, over the past few years, companies have largely shifted their efforts towards digital marketing. The Chief Marketing Officer Council reported the following "Facts and Stats" surrounding marketing spends that may or may not blow your mind: More than a third of CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) say that digital marketing will account for 75% or more of their spending within the next five years. Digital advertising was the fastest-growing category in 2014, with a 16 percent increase in spending. In April 2015, BIA/Kelsey estimated that US mobile ad spending on local, or location-targeted, placements would rise 56% this year to $6.7 billion. 28% of marketers have reduced their advertising budgets to fund more digital marketing. Worldwide social network ad spending reached $16.1 billion in 2014, a 3% increase from 2013. By 2018, Internet advertising will be poised to overtake TV as the largest advertising segment. So, what does this mean for you? It means digital marketing is only expected to grow, and perhaps not only grow, but also take over the advertising segment in the coming years, and it's important to gain these skills now to become a desirable candidate to employers. LinkedIn analyzed over 330 million LinkedIn member profiles to find the 25 hottest skills that got people jobs in 2014, and four were directly related to marketing: SEO/SEM marketing Marketing Campaign Management Digital and Online Marketing Channel Marketing As companies continue to invest in digital marketing they will be more likely to invest in employees with the skills that can help contribute to their marketing efforts. Learning these skills not only enhances your resume, but helps set you up for a life-long career in marketing. Add digital marketing skills to your resume, today. Enroll in edX's digital marketing courses and learn about social media marketing, e-commerce, data analytics, SEO, and everything you need to thrive in the digital economy. Digital Marketing, Social Media and E-Commerce for Your Business - The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania - April 18, 2016 Success in today's business world relies on a solid digital footprint. Companies that were non-existent a few years ago, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, have dramatically changed how we interact. Learn, from Wharton's top ranked business school, how the digital economy works and how to develop the critical insights needed to understand e-commerce, digital marketing and social media marketing. Introduction to Marketing: Tools to Set Enterprises Apart - The University of Edinburgh - May 9, 2016 - Self-Paced Marketing is integral in helping organizations increase revenue, build customer loyalty, and achieve overall success. And, in an exciting new era where innovation and new business models are at the forefront, businesses need to learn how to stand out and stay ahead of their competition. You'll leave this course equipped with the tools and skills to set your enterprise apart and know how to build compelling value propositions and effective digital marketing strategies, including gamification, to help achieve company goals. Digital Branding and Engagement - Curtin University - April 4, 2016 Branding and communication is undergoing a transformation in today's marketing environment. Brands must now learn how to converse with their consumers and build relationships. In Digital Branding and Engagement, you will learn about the digital marketing landscape, including the paid, owned and earned media framework. You will also have the opportunity to manage your own digital brand and experience the challenges in driving engagement and creating content that brings value to your brand. Reputation Management in a Digital World - Curtin University - May 30, 2016 It can take years to build a strong reputation, but only five minutes to ruin it in today's digital world. Learning how to effectively manage your companies' online reputation, whether it be through Facebook, Twitter, or blogs, is key to creating long-lasting and loyal relationships with your customers. You'll have the opportunity to become a communications manager and manage a fictional organization in this marketing course and learn how to handle online issues and crises, as well as build strong engagement with your audience. Introduction to Marketing - The University of British Columbia - Self-Paced One of the challenges in learning about marketing is that it can seem that everything is moving so fast. This marketing course will take a dynamic approach; using stories and real world examples, to show how marketing has evolved. You will learn, from a consumer psychologist and industry practitioner, how to segment your markets, understand the psychology of consumer decision-making and build effective communication efforts with customers. At edX, we want to provide you with courses and content that will help improve your career or perhaps allow you to embark on a new career-path. Check out our business and management courses to further your knowledge and earn verified certificates so your current or future employers can see what a valuable asset you are. As times change and industries evolve, so must our skills and knowledge. Enroll today. Toyotas third center in the United States will fund studies into artificial intelligence, materials science and robotics. Known as TRI-ANN, the new research facility will build a 50-strong team that will commence operations in June and will join TRI-PAL, in Palo Alto, opened in January, which works with Stanford University, and TRI-CAM, in Cambridge, which works with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The automaker states that each TRI facility will have a different core discipline and the latest one will focus on fully autonomous driving, while TRI-PAL will work on guardian angel driving, where the driver is always engaged and the vehicle assists when needed, while TRI-CAM dedicates its work to simulation and deep learning. Ann Arbor is a fantastic location for TRI to expand its autonomous driving efforts. We will benefit from Toyotas existing team and the University of Michigans research talent and facilities where we can perform extreme-limit testing in a wide variety of environments, commented Ryan Eustice, University of Michigan professor. With an initial funding of $1 billion, the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) has four initial mandates. The first one is to strive to enhance automobile safety, as the ultimate goal is to create a car incapable of causing an accident, regardless of the condition or skill of the driver, while the second one is to work to increase access to vehicles for those who cannot drive, including older people and those with special needs. The third goal is to translate the brands expertise in creating products for outdoor mobility into products for indoor mobility, while the final one will be to accelerate scientific discovery using techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence, in the sphere of materials science, which will eventually help reduce costs and improve performance of upcoming mobility systems. VIDEO Photo: Jerry Grugin Firefighters in Small Town, U.S.A. had to be called to get a five-year-old boy out of a tree. The youngster had climbed more than 10 metres up to check out a squirrel nest. That is absolutely classic. Only the curiosity of a young boy could prompt him to climb almost three stories up a tree. Once up there, however, the lad got nervous about climbing down, and had to be 'rescued' by the fire department. No one was angry at the boy, and the fire chief commented that the youngster will have a great story to tell his dad when he got home. What young boy has not climbed a tree, mountain, or whatever on a quest of curiosity? I loved exploring when I was younger, and I loved climbing trees. At around 10, I can remember climbing so far up a pine tree the branches were starting to break under my weight because they were so thin. I did not weigh very much. Of course, if I tried it now, the lower branches would groan and break before I even got my feet off the ground. But on that day, I was at least 15 meters from the ground. However, it was not curiosity that got me to climb to the heavens, it was bravado. I had to prove I was braver than everybody else by climbing higher up the tree than those scaredy cats could. And I did. I was too young to realize I was risking my life for the sake of bragging rights, but I did know I had those bragging rights. And when you are 10, bragging rights are a very important thing, and I never once thought of falling to the jagged rocks below. All that mattered was besting my buddies. Just as all that mattered for the squirrel-smitten lad was checking out where the adorable little rodent lived. As I grew older, my brain kicked into gear and I came to realized some of the stuff I was doing in the name of fun and bravado was pretty darn stupid. Problem is, that really didn't happen until I was in my mid-20s. All through the teen years my friends and I did some very stupid stuff and, by the grace of God, we not only survived, we did so with only minor injuries. Sure I have a few scars, badges of honour as we used to call them, but there was never a life-threatening injury. There were injuries, of course, and I am paying for those brazen younger days in my older days, but at the time it was all about the adventure and even if an 'old person' had told me I was going to creak and crackle and pop when I am older because of the stupid stuff I was doing, I wouldn't have listened. Just like my own sons and their friends didnt listen to me when I told them that. From climbing to the top of trees to tearing down a hill as fast as possible on pedal bikes to racing each other on dirt bikes, the younger years were a blur of thrills and several spills. Nowadays, when young men and women do crazy stuff they film it and put it on the Internet. And had there been an Internet when I was younger, I am pretty sure we would have done the same thing. Young men are full of bravado, and empty of common sense. I am no longer a young man, bravado is but a memory (like my hair), and I am blessed with an abundance of common sense. I also have an abundance of aches and pains to remind me I am no longer the young whippersnapper I once was. I don't recall why it was so important to do crazy stuff, why we always had to one up each other, and why we would put ourselves in mortal danger just for the thrill of doing so. But I guess that's the answer: The thrill. This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet. Photo: Trevor and Jessica Aitken Jessica and Trevor Aitken's trip to Mexico turned into a terrifying experience where they were kidnapped, robbed, held at gunpoint and left begging for their lives. The two recently travelled to Mazatlan to surprise Trevors parents who were vacationing in a gated community condo. The community was filled with Canadian snowbirds who had driven down to Mexico for the winter. On March 20, the couple took off with Trevors parents in their Jeep Grand Cherokee to El Quelite, a well-known day-trip for tourists, located about 40 kilometres outside of Mazatlan. Trevors parents, Jim and Carol, had driven their 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee to Mexico from Ontario in January and were planning on staying until the end of April at their rented condo. The four had lunch with another Canadian couple who had driven their own Jeep to El Quelite. We were driving and our friends were a couple of cars ahead of us, when a Rav4 cut us off, he said. They blocked the road, there was no where to go, there was a ditch on either side. Then four armed men with assault rifles and bullet proof vests jumped out. They started banging on the windows and pointing guns at us. The men threatened to shoot out the windows so Trevor and his father, who were both in the front seats, unlocked the doors and were dragged from the vehicle. They forced us into their vehicle, threw us in the back seat. Jess and my mom were left in our vehicle and two men stayed with them. Then the Jeep took off and we followed in the Rav4. Trevor estimates they drove off of the highway for about seven kilometres on a dirt road. Separated from her husband Jessica feared for her and Carols safety, as they were alone with the two men. They drove us into a field, and let Jess and my mom get out of my dads vehicle and they put them in the vehicle with us. Two of them took off in the Jeep, we think they wanted the Jeep, Trevor explained. The family sat for almost an hour and a half in the vehicle while the gunmen argued outside on the phone with someone in Spanish. They forced us out of the vehicle, and at this point they had already taken all of our jewelry, cash, cellphones and everything we had packed for our day trip in our vehicle, said Trevor. Then one of them left in the Rav4 and went and picked up the other two guys who had taken the Jeep. We were left with one guy who was pointing the gun at us. When the gunmen returned they had a cellphone on speaker, where a man could be heard yelling in English demanding more money or they would all be shot. Thats when they forced me to the ground and put me on my knees and held the gun to the back of my head, Trevor explained. He said he thought that was it, his life was over, and he would be killed in front of his wife and parents. Praying aloud Jessica began begging the gunmen to release her husband. Carol was holding my hands and telling me to just do whatever they say and that we should stay quiet, said Jessica. All of the sudden one of the gunmen started to yell La Familia over and over, which for some reason calmed the situation. Trevor and Jim were pushed into the back of the Rav4, while Jessica and Carol sat in the front seats and were driven out of the field back to the highway. They just let us go on the side of the highway, said Jessica. It was about 5 p.m. at this time so this happened to us in broad daylight. Shaken and terrified the four managed to wave down a vehicle, whose driver happened to be an off-duty police officer. The officer helped the family get water and called for help, which took a long time to arrive, leaving them vulnerable on the side of the road. Finally they were taken back to their condo, and were told to go to the police department the following day for a statement. My parents will never go back, they had planned to go to Mazatlan again next year, but now they are done with Mexico, said Trevor. I might go back, but I wont ever take a vehicle. Jessica and Trevor realize that bad things can happen anywhere, and while the police were friendly they were not helpful. There will never be justice for what happened, said Jessica. There was no real help for us, and this was a very serious thing that happened to us. People need to know when your life is put in jeopardy its scary, and you dont think it can happen to you but it can. Mazatlan is located in the state of Sinaloa, which is currently home to Sinaloa Cartel, often described as the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere, according to insightcrime.org. Currently there is no advisory for Canadians against travelling to Mexico; however the government does advise tourists to exercise a high degree of caution at this time. Visit Castanet's front page for more news. Photo: Contributed Forces in West Kelowna are mobilizing. Those against a plan by West Kelowna council to borrow up to $10.5 million to construct a new city hall on Elliott Road are conducting a door-to-door campaign and will also set up at high visibility locations in West Kelowna and on Westbank First Nation lands. Ian Graham, spokesperson for the no group, said they have permission from Westbank First Nation to set up at Canadian Tire, Home Depot, London Drugs, Superstore and the Extreme Eight Theatre. They are also setting up at Save-on Foods in downtown Westbank. Graham said he is involved in the campaign because he believes the Alternative Approval Process is faulty and should not be used. The AAP, which is available through the Community Charter written by the province, asks only those eligible voters to voice their disapproval through a petition form. If 10 per cent of the eligible voters disapprove, the borrowing bylaw is quashed and the city would have to go to a full city-wide referendum to obtain assent. "This is a big money subject and I think we deserve a chance to vote. A full blown referendum," said Graham. "And, if they found it was too expensive to do a full blown referendum, they should have done it the last time when they had an election. I think people need, deserve a chance to vote." Graham also questions whether a new city hall is needed right now. "I believe they will need a city hall. I'm not sure if they will need it in 2016 ... They think they need it just now. "I'm not sure they have proven it just yet, but the way they are doing it just now, we are not going to get much proof." And, Graham said, the people need to be fully informed as to what they are being asked to approve. In that respect, he says the city needs to come clean and answer all of their questions. He's not sure if they've done that yet. "There are a lot of questions and there are some answers, but not all of the answers make a lot of sense," said Graham. He said there is the prospect of a shared plaza out front which will belong to the developer but the city will be able to use it for nothing. "That doesn't really happen very often. I'm not sure whether they've really answered that question fully." In terms of parking at the site, Graham has more questions. "We have 100 cars underground and 100 cars above ground. Does that take care of the 100 people that drive there every day or the customers that come for meetings? "I'm not sure whether they've made their case yet and they don't make their case unless they give people a chance to vote, in my humble opinion." Photo: The Canadian Press Prosecutors charged four Los Angeles County social workers with child abuse, saying they were so negligent in handling the case of an eight-year-old boy who died of gruesome, multiple injuries that just like his abusers they were criminally responsible. The four, who include two supervisors, also were charged with falsifying public records. The Department of Children and Family Services said Thursday all four were fired last year after an internal investigation into the 2013 death of Gabriel Fernandez of Palmdale. "In our rigorous reconstruction of the events surrounding Gabriel's death, we found that four of our social workers had failed to perform their jobs. I directed that all of them be discharged," the department's director, Philip Browning, said in a statement. One of the four successfully appealed his termination to the county's Civil Service Commission and has been reinstated, prompting Children's Services to appeal that ruling in court. Prosecuting welfare workers for physical abuse caused by another is rare but not unprecedented. In New York in 2011, a child welfare worker and his supervisor were charged with negligent homicide in the death of a 4-year-old girl. They eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanour child endangerment charges. District Attorney spokeswoman Jane Robison said this is the first such case to be prosecuted in Los Angeles County, and prosecutors believe it may be the first in the state. An arrest warrant filed March 28 identifies the four Los Angeles social workers as Stefanie Rodriguez, 30, Patricia Clement, 65, Kevin Bom, 36, and Gregory Merritt, 60. Merritt, who was one of the supervisors, successfully challenged his termination and is now working for the county in another capacity. All four appeared in court Thursday to be arraigned, but the hearing was postponed until April 21. Instead, bail for each was set at $100,000. Their lawyers argued they should be released without bail, saying all had longtime ties to the area, arrived in court as ordered and had done much good for their communities. "My client's name will be cleared," Rodriguez's attorney, Lance Filer, said outside court. Clement, who was seen sobbing before the arraignment, is a former nun who worked most of her career as a public servant, according to her lawyer, Darcy Calkins. She also said she expects Clement will be exonerated. Clement has a graduate degree in marriage and family counselling and served as a chaplain at juvenile hall, Calkins said. Bom is a licensed therapist and elder in his church, and Merritt teaches college courses, according to their lawyers. "We're talking about a situation where there's a death of a child," Judge Sergio Tapia said in setting bail, which was less than the $155,000 prosecutors had sought. But the judge praised the four for arriving in court as promised and remaining well- mannered as they sat there all day. If convicted of child abuse and falsifying records, they could face as much as 10 years in prison. Gabriel died May 24, 2013, of injuries that included a fractured skull, broken ribs and burns across his body. Gabriel's mother, Pearl Fernandez, and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, have pleaded not guilty to murder and are in jail awaiting trial. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty. The Department of Children and Family Services opened a case file on him on Oct. 31, 2012, more than six months before he died. In bringing charges, District Attorney Jackie Lacey said it was the social workers' responsibility to protect him. Instead, prosecutors say, Rodriguez and Clement falsified reports that should have documented signs that Gabriel was suffering from escalating physical abuse and that his family had stopped participating in efforts to keep the family together. They say Bom and Merritt, as supervisors, knew or should have known those reports were false. "By minimizing the significance of the physical, mental and emotional injuries that Gabriel suffered, these social workers allowed a vulnerable boy to remain at home and continue to be abused," Lacey said. In the New York case, Administration for Children's Services caseworker Damon Adams and his supervisor, Chereece Bell, were charged with criminally negligent homicide and endangering the welfare of a child in the death of 4-year-old Marchella Pierce, who was repeatedly beaten and tied to a bed before her death in 2010. Adams pleaded guilty in 2013 to misdemeanour charges of falsifying business records, official misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child. Bell pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge of endangering the welfare of a child. If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,... Oslo order is Norcem's biggest in Norway to date 08 April 2016 Norcem, HeidelbergCements Norwegian subsidiary, and the Spanish-Italian contractor consortium Acciona Ghella JV (AGJV) have signed an agreement for the cement supplies to the Follo Line Project in Oslo. The supply of 280,000t of cement over a three-year period is Norcems largest contract ever. The cement supplies will start later in April. This is a milestone for HeidelbergCement in Norway and will put great demands on both production and logistics, said Dr Bernd Scheifele chairman of the managing board. Our subsidiary Norcem made the best offer and it has the necessary production capacities and logistics to supply the required volumes to this outstanding project in Norway. The Follo Line Project is currently the largest transport project in Norway and includes the countrys longest (20km) double-track railway tunnel. The new railway track runs between Oslo Central Station and the new station in the municipality of Ski in the Follo district, south of Oslo. It will enable a 50 per cent reduction in journey time between Oslo and Ski. The project is scheduled to be finalised at the end of 2021. Published under Syria: IS kidnaps 300 Al Badia cement workers ICR Newsroom By 08 April 2016 Some 300 employees and contractors of the Al-Badia Cement plant have been abducted by Islamic State (IS) militants in Dumeir, some 30km northeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus. The hostages were taken to a spot where IS had launched an assault against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad earlier in the week. There have been no successful efforts in establishing contact with any of the workers, according to state-run news agency Sana. No further details of the abduction are known apart from that it occurred amid heavy fighting in the north of the country on Thursday. Syrian opposition have advanced on Isis strongholds such as al-Rai in northern Aleppo, close to the border with Turkey. The 3.2Mta Al-Badia Cement plant is located in Abu El Shamat area, 80 km from Damascus and is part of the Italcementi Group which has a joint venture with the Saudi Muhaidib Group. Published under USA: Ash Grove announces more award winners ICR Newsroom By 08 April 2016 Ash Grove Cement Companys Durkee plant in Oregon has won an internal award for excellence in safety. Commenting on the win, Steve Minshall, Ash Grove corporate health and safety director, said: Earning the Safety Excellence Award takes focussed effort, teamwork, accountability and truly valuing the well-being of every person in the plant, and we congratulate the Durkee employees on their achievement. The companys plants in Durkee (OR), Leamington (UT), Midlothian (TX) as well as the Rivergate lime plant in Portland (OR) were recognised with one of the Ash Grove Safety Leadership gold awards. Louisville (NE) and Montana City (MT) plants each received silver. Ash Grove has this year given awards to its Leamington plant for quality control and to its Montana City plant for maintenance excellence and energy and resource management. Published under India: Sagar Cements reports 16% rise in March sales ICR Newsroom By 08 April 2016 Indias Sagar Cements Ltd reported a 16 per cent increase in March sales from 170,410t in 2015 to 197,583t. Sales were particularly strong in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where they rose by 135 per cent to 59,830t and by 119 per cent to 52,101t, respectively. Sales in Karnataka were hit by a 47 per cent decline and in Tamilnadu they fell by 36 per cent. Orissa and Maharashtra recorded decreases of 18 and six per cent, respectively. Output saw a 42 per cent rise from 140,480t in March 2015 to 200,000t in March 2016. In the FY to date (April 2015-March 2016), Sagar Cements experienced a seven per cent increase in sales to 1,653,525t from 1,550,098 year earlier. Published under Leuphana University of Luneburg, Germany, and information solutions provider Elsevier have announced the winners of the first Green and Sustainable Chemistry Challenge. The winning projects demonstrate the diversity and creativity of green and sustainable chemistry. Elsevier and Leuphana launched the Green and Sustainable Chemistry Challenge in 2015 to support and enhance sustainable research in the field of chemistry. The challenge aims to promote projects that offer environmentally friendly and sustainable processes, products and resources applicable for use in developing countries. Nearly 500 submissions were rated by an international jury, and five finalists presented their projects on Monday during the Green and Sustainable Chemistry Conference in Berlin. The winners are Yunsang Kim from the University of Georgia, USA, and Suzana Yusup from the Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia. Yunsang Kim was awarded a prize of 50,000. He convinced the jury with his project Sustainable Textile Dyeing using Nanocellulosic Fibers. Kim developed an innovative textile dyeing technology using Nanocellulosic fiber, which will greatly reduce generations of wastewater and release of toxic chemicals in textile dyeing process. The second prize worth 25,000 has been awarded to the project Biopesticide for Improvement of Paddy Yield of Suzana Yusup. Her project demonstrates how a unique combination of different plant extracts can be used to develop a water-based bio-pesticide. The team aims to assess the advantages of this synthesized bio-pesticide against the commercial bio-pesticide on paddy fields. In recent years, research on green chemistry has increased tremendously, yet research is still scattered and awareness of its importance is low, says Prof. Dr. Klaus Kummerer, Director of the Institute of Sustainable and Environmental Chemistry at Leuphana University and member of the judging panel. This is why Leuphana and Elsevier launched this challenge and organized the conference. With our initiatives we want to bring experts and communities together in order to foster exchange and jointly develop solutions for the environmental challenges we are facing. Sustainability is a topic that affects us all. Developed as well as developing countries have to rethink their industrial culture and assume responsibility for their ecological footprint, says Philippe Terheggen PhD, Managing Director at Elsevier. It is evident that chemistry can contribute significantly to a sustainable future. Through our publications and reports like Sustainability Science in a Global Landscape, we aim to make a positive environmental impact by sharing best practices, encourage debate and support researchers and decision makers. Next to our close partnership with Leuphana University, Elsevier will further continue this exchange with the launch of a new journal: Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry, which will provide expert views on current advances in Green and Sustainable Chemistry in the form of short review articles. The Chicago Venture Summit returns April 21 with a new approach to connecting startups with potential investors. The one-day event at Google's West Loop office will be hosted by ChicagoNext, the tech council run by World Business Chicago. The summit hopes to connect investors from around the U.S. with Chicago-based companies. Organizers expect more than 350 attendees. Advertisement For the inaugural summit in October 2014, ChicagoNext chose 30 startups to present to investors. This year, organizers have set up a database of startups to help investors choose which they'd like to meet. About 200 companies seeking funding during the next 18 months will be in the database, said Mark Tebbe , chairman of ChicagoNext. "All the people who are signing up from venture capital firms go into the database, describe what they're looking for and set up an agenda," Tebbe said. That allows investors to select companies in sectors and at funding stages they're interested in. Advertisement The event also will feature speeches from Steve LaValle, former chief scientist for Oculus VR, and Steve Jurvetson, a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm DFJ. A panel of founders including ContextMedia's Shradha Agarwal , Raise's George Bousis , Cleversafe's Chris Gladwin , Avant's Al Goldstein and kCura's Andrew Sieja will discuss lessons they learned while building their companies. Other panels will feature presidents of Illinois universities and private investment firms run by the Duchossois and Huizenga families. Tebbe also hopes the summit will demonstrate what Illinois Tech, the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago are doing to foster entrepreneurship through their curricula and by commercializing research. mgraham@tribpub.com Twitter @megancgraham "We're hoping not only to grow tech community here," said Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs. "We're trying to grow the financial industry here as well." (Erin Hooley, Chicago Tribune / 2015) Illinois is betting on the state's startups as vehicles to drive job growth and make money, even as it faces a months-long budget impasse. But Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs is pretty sure it's a good idea after all, the last time the state poured millions of dollars into tech investments, it paid off. Advertisement The treasurer's office is launching the next phase of a state program that began investing in local venture funds in 2002 and has reaped returns that surpass the rest of its portfolio. This time around, the state will deploy $222 million to 15 to 20 funds over the next three years. That's more than triple the $73 million invested through the original pool, which was called the Technology Development Account. Advertisement That first batch of cash was invested in 18 funds. By last June, the state said, it had reached returns of 6 percent from the technology fund, while the rest of the state's investments returned about half a percentage point. The Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund, which launched Monday with a town hall meeting drawing about 150 venture capitalists and supporters of the state's technology economy, aims to build on the momentum of the first fund. "We're hoping not only to grow tech community here," Frerichs told Blue Sky afterward. "We're trying to grow the financial industry here as well." The state is working with Northern Trust-owned 50 South Capital to pick the investment funds that will get Illinois' cash, none of which will receive more than 15 percent of the $222 million. The state received nearly $27 million in capital gains and dividends from the first round of investments as of June 2015, according to the fund's website. Frerichs also touted job creation: The program led to 3,900 new jobs in Illinois, he said. Greg Rivara, Frerichs' press secretary, acknowledged that some may be concerned about the tech investments, given the state's budgetary woes. He pointed out that the often-discussed deficit is in the general revenue fund, whereas the money for these investment funds comes from a separate $13 billion pool. "These are dollars that their investments have matured, and we are investing them again," Rivara said. If the state earns returns from the next investments, it will invest them again, he added. Advertisement Bradley Dorchinecz, director and co-founder of 50 South Capital, said this round of the Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund will last 10 to 12 years. Money may not trickle down to tech companies immediately, though. The state is planning to pick venture funds to invest in over the course of the next three years. Those firms may take even longer to put their capital into promising companies. Dorchinecz's 12-person investment team manages the state's tech investments and chooses which funds receive capital. "It takes four to five years, or even longer, to understand how those investments are doing," Dorchinecz said. He said the length of the fund is "a good thing because it does take time for these companies to mature." The treasurer's office launched a website for the Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund this week, an attempt to make information about the program easier to find, Rivara said. It lists members of the fund's advisory board, including Illinois Venture Capital Association Executive Director Maura O'Hara and Illinois Chief Information Officer Hardik Bhatt . The state approached its investments in venture funds in a similar manner to how other institutional investors act, said Bret Maxwell, managing general partner at MK Capital. Advertisement "I think, overall, it's helped the venture community here," Maxwell said. "It's also provided a lot of support and funding for a lot of companies here." Chicago's SitterCity, SpotHero and Diagnostic Photonics were among the startups receiving funding from the earlier fund. The technology community across Illinois and especially in Chicago has evolved since the state's first round of tech investments in 2002. There are more venture capital funds today, as well as accelerators that support startup growth, said Armando Pauker, a general partner at Apex Venture Partners, which participated in that first fund and plans to participate in the new one. A requirement of participation in the Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund is that venture capital firms must commit $2 to local companies for every $1 the state puts in. Pauker said that should be "no problem" for local investors, who would invest money here anyway. aelahi@tribpub.com Twitter @aminamania Many of today's job seekers see social media as the go-to platform for connecting with hiring managers and potential employers. But while social media can certainly enhance a job search, it can also have the inverse effect. "Social media has revolutionized the world of networking," said Tim Stevens, director of executive search consultants at Houston-based Vanderbloemen Search Group. "Twitter is the new cocktail party. LinkedIn is the new Rolodex, and Facebook is the new high school reunion. In 2016, if a candidate isn't on social media, I want to know why." A well-managed social media presence can indicate that a candidate is a natural networker while shedding a light on their personality beyond the rather rigid confines of a traditional resume and cover letter. And unfortunately, shunning social media altogether even if you're trying to act in an abundance of caution can make you look downright old-fashioned and thus off-putting to many employers. "Social media, when used properly, can be a really powerful tool," said Hilary Young, founder of Hilary Young Creative, a Philadelphia-based boutique agency providing creative services to small businesses and nonprofits. Social media provides a great opportunity to brand yourself as an expert in your field, Young said, therefore putting you above the noisy fray of much self-serving social chatter. "For example, if you are a marketing professional, you can use Twitter to post relevant and interesting marketing articles rather than posting about which nightclubs you like to frequent or your political views, both of which can be major red flags to potential employers." Yes, social media can hurt a job hunt. What might impress or amuse your close friends might have the opposite impact on potential employers. "Posting images of yourself in a drunken stupor, smoking a joint, or of yourself half-naked won't go over well with most hiring managers," said Erika Taylor Montgomery, founder and CEO of Seattle-based boutique public relations and social media management agency Three Girls Media Inc. She cautioned against negative posts and said that online rants show potential bosses only that you lack self-control and aren't dealing with your frustrations in a more professional or rational fashion. Casual online comments can also wreck a candidate's chances at a life-changing new position. "One potential employee we were vetting was posting memes from the movie 'Office Space' and commenting how she felt negatively about her current position," Montgomery recalled. "I imagined that if she was complaining online about one boss and employer that she'd definitely do the same with my firm." Typos and poor grammar in social media posts can also rub potential employers the wrong way, particularly those in fields where excellent writing is required. So just what are employers, recruiters and hiring managers looking for when they peruse a potential employee's online personality? "They can learn ... whether their candidate will be a good cultural fit with the organization and chemistry fit with the team," search consultant director Stevens said. One partiuclar area of concern for Stevens is how candidates treat those with whom they disagree on social media. "If they are highly critical, accusatory or mean online, that could be an indication of how they will treat the guests or customers of the organization that is recruiting them," he said. Employment experts assert that job seekers should post regularly on social media but that they should also behave as if everything they express online can be viewed by a potential employer, despite any given social media site's privacy settings. That means it's important to always try to come across as a positive and encouraging contributor rather than a negative, whiny online voice. "Figure out what your own personal brand is before you start posting," creative agent Young said. "Think about what you would want employers to know about you and what you definitely would not want them to know, and use that as a foundation for your social persona. "Anything that you would not say in an interview or in the workplace you shouldn't say on social media either," she concluded. The Senate declined to act on a bill that would prevent airlines from further reducing the size of seats and legroom in planes. (Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune) Washington If you're seeking relief from sardine-can conditions on airline flights, don't expect any help from Congress. The Senate voted down an amendment Thursday that would have ended any further reductions of airplane seat sizes. The amendment failed on a 54-to-42 vote, with most Democrats supporting the amendment by Sen. Charles E. Schumer , D-N.Y., and most Republicans opposed. The amendment to a sprawling bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a moratorium in reductions to seat size and pitch (i.e., the space between rows of seats) and empowered the FAA to set new standards, in consultation with experts, for seat dimensions that maintain "the safety, health and comfort of passengers." Advertisement Currently, regulators can take only safety into account in making such rules. Schumer took to the Senate floor ahead of the vote to describe his dismay with the incredible shrinking airline seat. "Flying is not pleasant anymore," he said. "You're crammed in. I'm not that tall. I'm a little under 6-foot-1, and what I do when I fly is I take out the magazine and the airsickness bag and the little folder that tells you where the exits are to gain a 16th of an inch more legroom, so my knees don't bang into the seat in front of me." Advertisement "This is a place where the public is clamoring for change," he continued. "I got more feedback on (the amendment) than most other things. You don't have to be 6-foot-4 to understand the problem." No senator of either party rose to argue against Schumer's amendment, but it was opposed by the leading airline industry trade group. A spokeswoman for Airlines for America told The Associated Press in February that "the government should not regulate, but instead market forces, which reflect consumer decisions and competition, should determine what is offered." One Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, Maine, voted for the amendment; three Democrats Thomas R. Carper, Del., Claire McCaskill, Mo., and Jon Tester, Mont. opposed it. Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., and Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., did not vote. Author Calvin Trillin, pictured here in Chiu Quon Bakery in Chicago's Chinatown in 2003, took heat this week for a poem he wrote satirizing food trend chasers. (CANDICE C. CUSIC / CHICAGO TRIBUNE) Calvin Trillin wrote a poem about Chinese food in the April 4 issue of the New Yorker that made the Internet mad. In the poem , Trillin satirizes food trend chasers, in this case name-checking Chinese provinces known for their cuisine. It begins: "Have they run out of provinces yet? If they havent, weve reason to fret. Long ago, there was just Cantonese. (Long ago, we were easy to please.) But then food from Szechuan came our way, Making Cantonese strictly passe. Szechuanese was the song that we sung, Though the ma po could burn through your tongue. Then when Shanghainese got in the loop We slurped dumplings whose insides were soup." But critics cried racism, perhaps unfamiliar with Trillin's dry humor and deep Chinese food research. Internet pitchforks really rallied two days later, with The Stranger claiming "Calvin Trillin's Nostalgia for a White Planet" and on Thursday VICE explaining, "Why 80-Year Old White Humorists Shouldn't Write About Ethnic Nuances in Chinese Food." Trillin's poem also inspired a response poem "Have They Run Out of White Poets Yet" and a hashtag #HaveTheyRunOutOf, by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Trillin's poem ends with these lines: Advertisement "Now, as each brand-new province appears, It brings tension, increasing our fears: Could a place we extolled as a find Be revealed as one province behind? So we sometimes do miss, I confess, Simple days of chow mein but no stress, When we never were faced with the threat Of more provinces we hadnt met. Is there one tucked away near Tibet? Have they run out of provinces yet?" Trillin defended the piece in an April 6 article in The Guardian saying it was simply a way of making fun of food-obsessed bourgeoisie. Trillin, noted humorist, eater and food writer, has a long history of digging into and writing about Chinese food. He once wrote a story about his craving for Chinese food while traveling, which led him to Sinorama in Paris and Cinske Zatisi in Prague. I remember this story in the December 1998 issue of Travel + Leisure well, because I had just come back from my first trip through Europe, a roadtrip that started in Munich and ended in London. No matter how good the local food, I craved Chinese food regularly too, understanding that Chinese food is too big of a classification. In countries where I did not speak the language it was comforting to share the mother tongue with my Chinese diaspora restaurant kinfolk, comparing our experiences in and out of the kitchen. And Trillin captured that culinary longing not only in that story but also back in his first food book American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater," published in 1974, in which he champions food low, not haute. But now Trillin, a veteran on the front lines of food, fighting what we may have thought was the good fight, is taking shots. The food podcast The Sporkful recently published a series, "Other People's Food" addressing many complex questions, including what happens when people cook food from a culture that's not their own, talking to Chicago's own Rick Bayless. In the latest episode of the food podcast Chewing , which I co-host with Chicago Public Media food and health reporter Monica Eng, we continue that conversation. We have titled the episode Ethnic v. White, (with very deliberate quotes around the words ethnic and white") because we know those words are provocative and difficult to define. In it we talk to Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold and Lucky Peach editor in chief Chris Ying about what they think of so-called "ethnic" and "white" food. Plus we play a game we like to call Will She Eat It? And this week I offer my co-host a Chinese-American dish which may just make the Internet mad too. lchu@tribpub.com Twitter @louisachu Chicago Public Schools students who used online courses to make up for failed math classes fared worse than those who took traditional remedial courses during summer school, according to new research on the effectiveness of online learning. The study, led by the American Institutes for Research, bills itself as the first in-depth examination of popular online courses that have won substantial investment from school systems and are seen as critical tools for reaching students who need to catch up. Advertisement Researchers found that a higher percentage of students who took traditional classes earned passing grades and scored slightly better on tests at the end of the course than those who took online classes. "I think the study findings raise some important cautions about the use of fairly standard, widely used online courses for, in this case, very at-risk students," said Jessica Heppen, the study's lead researcher. Advertisement "Which doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater," Heppen said. "There is continued need to improve opportunities for students to re-engage with content and school when they become disengaged, and have a lightbulb go off." Researchers published their findings in a series of reports, two of which were released on Friday. The study was conducted on approximately 1,200 CPS high schoolers who enrolled in summer school during 2011 and 2012 after failing second semester algebra. Researchers focused on algebra courses, they said, because more students fail that course than any other, and students who fail Algebra I are "particularly unlikely" to graduate. Students who needed to make up the course were randomly assigned to take either the online or "face-to-face" classes. Researchers said their findings suggest both online and "face-to-face" courses allowed students to make up for failed classes. But the study also found that neither form of learning appeared to do much to change the direction for students with "generally low-performing trajectories." "In the short term, it does worse than traditional classroom environment," Heppen said of the computerized classes. "In the long run, there isn't a difference." "I think it raises a question of if offering online options provides more students the opportunity to recover credit does the longer-term lack of difference outweigh the shorter-term differences you see?" Heppen asked. Vendors pitch computer-based remedial classes described by the researchers as "online credit recovery" courses as flexible, customizable and engaging ways to help students win back required credits. Advertisement CPS has long employed such products, and currently pays several companies to administer those courses to eligible students. "Providing our students with multiple avenues to recover high school credit and meet graduation requirements is critical in ensuring that each of our students are prepared for life when they leave our schools," CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner said in a statement. "CPS is committed to meeting our students where they are, and providing flexible instructional methods so that they can move on from high school into college and the workforce." However, researchers said, "evidence about the efficacy of online credit recovery is lacking." Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Credit recovery courses, Heppen said, are often aimed at older students who are getting ready to graduate and need to make up courses. In Chicago, Heppen said students move on to more advanced courses whether or not they've passed prior classes. That means students can enroll in geometry while still needing algebra credits, though there isn't necessarily a push to make up those credits in a certain time frame. Advertisement Despite evidence that traditional remedial courses show some better results compared with computerized courses, Heppen said it can be difficult to provide remedial courses led by teachers when schools aren't certain how many students are going to show up. "The online course option is really a matter of flexibility and convenience," Heppen said. "I think that this area of investigation could provide a call to all of us to really continue to work to improve the experience for students who need to recover credits," she said. "It seems our broader analysis suggests just getting the credit back doesn't help kids get back on track." jjperez@tribpub.com Twitter @PerezJr Two men were wounded during a shooting at a KFC in Chicagos Lawndale neighborhood. April 7, 2016. (WGN-TV) (Chicago Tribune) Two men were killed and six other people have been wounded in South and West side shootings since late Thursday morning, according to Chicago police. Most recently, a 23-year-old man was found shot to death in the West Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side about 11:50 p.m., police said. Advertisement Police responded to calls of a person shot in the 4700 block of West Huron Street and found the man lying on the sidewalk with a gunshot wound to the head, said Officer Ron Gaines, a police spokesman. The man was unresponsive and was pronounced dead at the scene, Gaines said. No other information about the shooting was immediately available. Advertisement After the shooting, police cordoned off about half a block of Huron with yellow and red tape. A white sheet covered the man's body, which was on the sidewalk on the north side of the street. Officers and detectives talked to neighbors and shone flashlights onto the sidewalk and the nearby area in search of evidence. A man and a woman walked up to the crime scene from the west side. The two lived a block away and heard about six gunshots, they said. "There it is," the man said, pointing to the body. The woman abruptly turned her back once she saw the body. She raised her hand and shook her head. "I gotta go," she said, stepping away. "I gotta go." "She gets sick," the man said. "Certain things make her sick." Advertisement And they walked away. Earlier, about 3:30 p.m., a 22-year-old man was killed and an 18-year-old man was critically wounded in a shooting at Chicago and St. Louis avenues in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, police said. The 22-year-old was shot in the chest and back, and the 18-year-old was shot in the head, said Officer Ana Pacheco, a police spokesman. Both men were taken to Stroger Hospital, where the older man was pronounced dead, police said. "This block went from zero to a hundred. We used to could stand outside, out here. All night without no shooting going on. All night, didn't we? When we was younger we used to just kick it," said 24-year-old Niger Edwards, a lifelong West Side resident. "Now you have to be cautious where you walk, who you talk to, who you know, 'cause they shooting up everybody. They don't care. They just don't care right now." There have been other shootings in the neighborhood recently, including three people shot in the alley across from where the two were shot. The earlier shooting, in mid-March, left a 16-year-old boy dead and two others wounded. "That's really overwhelming for people. These are kids," Edwards said. "It's been on the news that so many kids have died from gunshot wounds. And don't nobody care. It's like don't nobody want to stop to think about damn, OK, this ain't, this ain't how life supposed to be." Advertisement Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > In other shootings: About 6:30 p.m., a 16-year-old boy was wounded after being shot in the 3400 block of West 30th Street in the Little Village neighborhood, police said. The boy, who police said is a gang member, was dropped off at St. Anthony's Hospital after being shot in the right leg, police said. The boy was in good condition. He told police he was on the sidewalk when a black van drove up and someone from inside fired shots, police said. Two other men were wounded in the Lawndale neighborhood about 1:35 p.m. They were in a car in the 1100 block of South Western Avenue at a KFC restaurant when two men on foot opened fire before fleeing in a car. Both men, 24 and 26, suffered multiple gunshot wounds and were taken to Stroger Hospital. The older man was in critical condition. Farther south, about an hour earlier, in the Riverdale neighborhood someone shot an 18-year-old man. He was shot in the lower right leg shortly after noon in the 13000 block of South Drexel Avenue, police said. He told police he heard shots and felt pain. He was taken to Roseland Hospital in good condition, police said. A 22-year-old man was shot in the chest Thursday morning in Englewood, police said. The shooting occurred about 8:40 a.m. at 66th and Peoria streets, police said. The man was taken in critical condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. Police said he was walking when a man approached him and fired shots. He was hit several times in the chest. No one is in custody. Advertisement Check back for updates. AUSTIN, Texas A homeless 17-year-old has been arrested and will be charged with murder in the death of a University of Texas dance major in the heart of the bustling campus, police say. Meechaiel Criner wasn't believed to be a university student and hadn't been living in Austin long. Police Chief Art Acevedo said Friday that Criner could face additional charges in the slaying of 18-year-old Oregon native Haruka Weiser. Advertisement "We are very certain that the subject we have in custody ... is responsible for the death of this beautiful young woman," Acevedo said at a news conference. Weiser was last seen leaving the campus drama building Sunday night. Her body was found Tuesday in a creek near the alumni center and UT's iconic football stadium, an area that hums with activity day and night. Advertisement The slaying shook a campus of about 50,000 students. University President Greg Fenves called it "horrifying and incomprehensible." "It was unsettling," said 20-year-old Jasmine Chavez, who was on UT's central mall area Friday but hails from Houston. "I feel better now that they've caught the guy." Police released surveillance video that showed a man they said was a suspect walking a women's bicycle. Firefighters later recognized the man as Criner, whom they had spoken to in connection with a trash fire near the UT campus on Monday. An Austin resident who reported the fire also called police when she saw the surveillance video, Acevedo said. Criner wasn't arrested for the fire but was instead taken to a shelter. Police found him there Thursday and took him into custody without incident. His arrest affidavit said his clothing matched that of the man on the surveillance video and that he was in possession of a women's bike, as well as Weiser'sduffel bag and some of her other belongings, including her laptop. Weiser's autopsy showed she had been assaulted, but police have refused to release further details about how she died, except to say that the route she took from her dorm to the drama building often passed Waller Creek, where her body was found. Criner's affidavit said Weiser's body showed "obvious trauma." It also said campus surveillance video not made public showed the suspect watching a female thought to be Weiser as she walked in the direction of her dorm with her head down, looking at her cellphone. As she passed, the affidavit said, the suspect produced "what appeared to be a shiny rigid object" and followed her. The pair dropped from view as they reached the creek bank, though, and the suspect wasn't seen on video again for two-plus hours. Police said they hadn't recovered a crime scene weapon, however, and Acevedo wouldn't speculate on motive. Criner was jailed in Travis County on a $1 million bond. Judge Brenda Kennedy, who set the bond, signed the arrest warrant affidavit that states "there is sufficient probable cause to support the charge of murder." Advertisement Texas Department of Family and Protective Services spokeswoman Julie Moody said Criner "had been in Child Protective Services care" but that she couldn't elaborate on where, for how long, or provide any further details, citing privacy rules and the ongoing criminal investigation. Police have not released much about Criner's background, though a person with the same name and birthdate is listed in driver's license records as having lived in Texarkana, about 350 miles northeast of Austin. A 2014 article in a Texarkana high school publication featured a Meecchaiel Criner who described being bullied and difficulties in foster care as a child, saying, "What I want to leave behind is my name I want them to know who Meechaiel Criner is." Fenves said increased police patrols on campus, which have included state troopers in cars, on bikes and on horseback, would continue for the time being. The Department of Public Safety also is conducting a security review on campus. "We will honor Haruka's life and what she stood for," Fenves said. "We will take this as an occasion to do as Haruka's parents asked us to do, learn from this and make this a better community and a safer community for everyone." The university said that Weiser's was the first on-campus homicide since former Marine Charles Whitman climbed to the top of UT's bell tower on Aug. 1, 1966, and opened fire, killing 14 people and wounding scores of others. Authorities later determined Whitman also killed his wife and mother in the hours before he went to the tower. A 17th death would be attributed to Whitman in 2001 when a Fort Worth man died of injuries from the shooting. Advertisement Weiser's family said she had planned to take on a second, pre-med major soon and to travel to Japan this summer to see relatives. In a statement Friday, it said "we are relieved to hear" an arrest had been made. "We remain steadfast in our desire to honor Haruka's memory through kindness and love. Not violence," the family said. Associated Press WASHINGTON Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Friday he will attend a Vatican City conference on social, economic and environmental issues next week, making the symbolic overseas trip ahead of a pivotal New York primary against Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator has long been an admirer of Pope Francis on issues of wealth inequality and social justice and his presentation to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on April 15 will allow him to reach a larger audience of Catholic voters in New York four days before the primary. Sanders trails Clinton among delegates and the New York contest is an important step in the senator's ability to gain ground against the former secretary of state. Advertisement "The moral imperative that (the pope) is bringing to this discussion is absolutely extraordinary and absolutely what the world needs. These are issues that I have been dealing with for years," Sanders said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "On economic issues, on issues of poverty and income and wealth inequality, the issues of making sure we address the needs of the poorest people of this planet, this is something that the pope and I are very much on the same page," Sanders said. Advertisement It was not clear yet whether Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary, would meet with the pope during his trip. Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said "if the opportunity arises he would be delighted to meet with the pope" but Sanders has not received an official invitation from the Catholic leader. Attendees of the conference will include Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, along with Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, a member of the academy, and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to the United Nations on environmental and sustainability issues. Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the PASS, said he extended an invitation to Sanders because he seems to have a "real interest" in studying the papal documents issued by the pope. He did not issue invitations to the other presidential candidates. "I don't see the other candidates quoting the pope in their campaign. I don't know if the other candidates are interested in the documents of the pope," he said. A senior Vatican official told Bloomberg News that Sanders lobbied for the invitation and should not be injecting politics into the event. "Of course it can have a political effect but this is not our priority," said Sorondo. "The first thing is to study and discuss the doctrine of the church." Sachs, who has advised Sanders on foreign policy, said the invitation "reflects the very high resonance of the pope's messages on social justice and social inclusion with Bernie Sanders' messages on a fairer economy. He was excited, of course, to get the invitation." The meeting will mark the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus, a high-level teaching document which advocated for economic and social justice and environmental sustainability. Advertisement Sanders will be speaking at the conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, an advisory group comparable to a think tank that the pope has appointed to guide him on a wide range of public policy issues. The Rev. Thomas Reese, an analyst with the National Catholic Reporter and author of "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church," said it was unusual for a U.S. presidential candidate to be invited to participate in such an event in the middle of a campaign. European politicians and experts attend frequently, in part because they can more easily travel to Rome, he said. But Reese cautioned that the invitation should not be interpreted in any way as an endorsement from the pope. "Certainly the last thing Pope Francis wants to do is get involved in American presidential politics. He's made clear that he doesn't even want to interfere in Italian politics," Reese said. Associated Press On Tuesday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott got a jolt at a Gainesville Starbucks, but it wasn't from sugar, excessive caffeine or a new over-the-counter social justice campaign. Those things would be too boring. Instead of coffee, Scott got a high-decibel, no-mercy public scolding from one of his constituents. "You strip women from access to public health care," a green-shirted woman shrieked, pointing vigorously in the governor's general direction. "Shame on you, Rick Scott! You're an embarrassment to our state. You cut Medicaid so I couldn't get Obamacare." The woman, whose name is Cara Jennings, then called Scott a bad name starting with "a," so let's hope there were no kindergartners getting an unfortunate vocabulary lesson along with their hot chocolate in Starbucks that day. Advertisement "You should be ashamed to show your face around here," she continued. Scott, a proverbial deer in the muted coffee shop headlamps, gamely muttered something about creating a million jobs. "A MILLION JOBS?" Jennings hollered, dramatically looking around for effect, no doubt surveying the individuals camped out with laptops and blatantly spreading their stuff all over tables meant for four to six people. "Great! Who here has a great job?" OK, fine that last line was kind of funny. Because it's 2016, at least two people recorded the Great Rick Scott Starbucks Public Excoriation; in the version that went viral, the smartphone video operator even muttered his approving verdict upon Scott's hasty exit: "Sweet." For much of the Internet, that seemed to be the verdict as well: Jennings was a hero of sorts, "shaming" Scott, "giving him an earful" and generally serving as a voice of the people. Advertisement On one hand, this could be seen as a glorious example of speaking truth to power or gobbledygook to power, depending on your point of view and a celebration of America's long tradition of free speech. That's probably partly true. On the other hand, at least to me, it looks like yet another example of a culture in which people don't know how to behave in public spaces, and where life increasingly imitates the Internet. Close your eyes for a moment, and envision a lovely local Italian restaurant on a warm summer night. Picture tables lit by flickering candles, couples laughing together and large groups of jovial friends. Next, picture a pair of grandparents at the table next to you, watching, befuddled, as their "tweenage" grandchild stares like a zombie at a video screen, sporting giant, noise-blocking headphones that make her look like a cross between Princess Leia and a slightly grumpy bug. We've all seen something like this. Heck, I've even seen families forgo the headphones altogether, so that their unfortunate dining neighbors can catch strains of the "Frozen" soundtrack for the millionth time. Norms of behavior, in short, have clearly changed. Blatantly bad manners, if tied to some sort of screen, are met with an offhand shrug. In fact, these days, if you don't use a screen to sedate your kids at a restaurant, it will probably blow your waiter or waitress's mind. I speak from experience, by the way: I've banned screens from my kids at dinner, and after a few horrifying restaurant experiences that resembled the dining equivalent of Custer's last stand, behold! My kids can now order their own food; they can look strangers in the eye and have a conversation; they can calmly respond to horrifying unexpected real-world events, like the mistaken placement of cheese on a burger. Here's the sad thing. I cannot tell you how many times these simple feats have sparked amazement and admiration among restaurant staff. Children are increasingly immersed in a screen-fed world and according to Common Sense Media, childhood screen time now averages two to three hours per day for children under 8, six hours a day for kids 8 to 12, and nine hours for teenagers and that doesn't include time spent for school or homework projects. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, "studies have shown that excessive media use can lead to attention problems, school difficulties, sleep and eating disorders, and obesity. In addition, the Internet and smartphones can provide platforms for illicit and risky behaviors." There's even a new and rising disorder called get ready "text neck." For adults and children alike, screens can also distort reality which brings us back to that public anti-Scott rant. It was, when you think about it, the real-world version of a crazed, one-sided Twitter screed. Jennings had zero consideration for the other customers in the room, many hiding behind their own individual screens; it was an awkward moment in real life that somehow, once filmed and launched into the ether, suddenly gained clicks, approval and widespread applause. "I've gotten a tremendous amount of positive comments," Jennings told the New York Daily News. Indeed she has. When life imitates the Internet, buckle up: It's ranty out there. RealClearPolitics Advertisement Heather Wilhelm is a writer based in Austin, Texas. A church that was denied a special use permit by Midlothian officials can, at least for the time being, hold worship services in the village. A federal judge on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order against the village, which will allow members of the small Living Spring International Church to hold services starting Sunday, Noel Sterett, an attorney representing the church, said. Advertisement In February, trustees voted unanimously to turn down the church's request for permission to hold services in the lower level of an office building Living Spring's pastor, Yomi Joel, owns at 4645 W. 147th St. The church, which has about a dozen members, had last year held some services without the required permit. Congregants have been gathering for worship at a parishioner's home since the Village Board vote. Advertisement Last month, the church filed a federal lawsuit alleging that denial of the special use permit violated provisions of the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, as well as the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The order by U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feinerman doesn't end the lawsuit, but allows the church to hold services while the matter proceeds in court. The Daily Southtown reported March 13 about the church and Joel, who said he was told by the village before the special use request was acted upon to modify a washroom in the building's lower level to make it handicap-accessible and to install a handicap ramp, at a total cost of about $20,000. Village trustees who spoke with the Southtown denied that the village would have required those modifications before voting on a special use permit, and they said that the office building wasn't an appropriate location for a church. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > Midlothian, in a filing Wednesday, argued against the restraining order, saying that village ordinances and state statutes required the church to appeal the Village Board's decision in Cook County Circuit Court rather than in federal court. The filing by Jane May, an attorney with O'Halloran, Kosoff, Geitner & Cook, said she is prepared to present testimony that Village Board members denied the special use, in part, because the "proposed use would not be economically beneficial to the community, was not harmonious and compatible in use with the existing or intended character of the general vicinity, would not generate income in a business district" and that there wasn't sufficient parking at the building. The attorney, in the filing, said that complaints were received by the village from a business next door to the church about worshippers parking in its lot, and that there wouldn't be enough parking spaces should the church attract more followers. Sterett, in a filing Wednesday, said that, according to the village's codes, the church's 16 parking spaces would be sufficient for an assembly of nearly 100 congregants, and that complaints about worshippers parking in adjacent lots, "should be disregarded as pure hearsay and frankly unbelievable." Advertisement He said he understood that village officials planned to discuss the restraining order at a board meeting next week. May did not immediately return a message Thursday seeking comment. Joel said that he and church members are prepared to continue to press the lawsuit, but are also open to settling the matter with the village out of court. The lawsuit seeks court costs as well as unspecified monetary damages. mnolan@tribpub.com Newborn twin Reece O'Neill with her father Kevin O'Neill of Mount Greenwood at Advocate Children's Hospital. Thursday, April 7, 2016, in Oak Lawn (Jim Boyce-Daily Southtown) (Jim Boyce / Daily Southtown) Since April 1, "it's been like Noah's Ark around here the babies are coming in twos," said Dr. Brett Galley, neonatologist in the neonatal intensive care unit at Advocate Children's Hospital in Oak Lawn. In eight days, some 17 sets of twins have doubled the joy, doubled the fun and doubled the diaper count at the south suburban hospital. Galley said though the high-risk medical center is accustomed to welcoming and treating twins, the current population is "probably 3 to 4 times what we usually see." Advertisement He can't explain it. Neither can the Bertolettis and the O'Neills, who hail from Chicago's Mount Greenwood neighborhood and welcomed newborn twin girls this past week. Advertisement Molly and Estelle Bertoletti, born April 5, are the first children of Amy and Jon Bertoletti. Amy's a librarian at Crete Monee High School; Jon is an IT consultant in Chicago. Born at 36 weeks, Amy said the infants had some breathing issues. "They had masks on after they were first born," she said. "It was hard to see their faces. I couldn't hold them until they were 24 hours old. I didn't get that initial introduction." The girls improved rapidly and Amy said, "Now it's nice to see them and hold them." Jon, whose sister Sheila Ryan gave birth on Leap Day in February, wonders if the fact that his mom had twins increased his and Amy's odds of having them as well; Amy wonders if being age 38 did. Across the unit, fellow 19th Ward residents Kevin and Erin O'Neill welcomed Emma and Reece on April 2. The O'Neills are already parents to two boys, ages 5 and 7. They hope to introduce the boys to their newborn twin sisters within the next few days, said Erin, an elementary school teacher with Chicago Public Schools. "They'll be home in time for the White Sox (home) opener," said Kevin, a Chicago Police officer. Advertisement What exactly occurred in the water or skies across the Southland from last August into early September to cause this explosion of twins conception is a mystery as well to Asia and James Mackowiak of Crete. "It's kind of incredible," Asia said. Jaxson and Journey Mackowiak were born April 4. "I think we were the only set of a boy and a girl," said Asia, a paralegal who has three other children at home. "We've got everything set up. We're ready for it," she said. "It's going to be hard, but it's going to be exciting." Born at 35 weeks, the siblings weighed in at more than 6 pounds each. Advertisement "That's pretty big for twins," Asia said. Galley said often infants are born prematurely a common occurrence with multiples and struggle with breathing and eating issues. The birth date spectrum for the current group of twins in the unit spans 26 to 36 weeks, he said. "Those born at 26 weeks need a lot more support," he said. "At 36 weeks, we're just waiting for them to learn how to eat and gain a little weight." In general, he said, all of the infants in the unit were doing well. And because identifying a twin baby by sight can be as challenging for staff as it can be for family, Galley said: "We're very careful. We have a lot of fail safes to make sure we don't confuse the twins. We treat each baby as an individual." Advertisement Galley said, "We're used to dealing with multiples, but never to this level. Four sets at any time is not unusual, but 12 to 14 is really out of the ordinary." The spike in twin births is indicative of a nationwide trend. Dr. Helen Kay, a maternal fetal medicine specialist, said odds of giving birth to spontaneous, or fraternal, twins is approximately 1 in 90. The incidence rises with the increasing age of the mother and the use of fertility or reproductive assistance treatments. In addition, she said, certain ethnic groups have a higher occurrence of multiple births. "Asians have a very low number; African-Americans have the highest, maybe as high as 1 in 70," she said. Overall, across the nation the incidence of twins is rising because women are waiting longer to have children and because more couples are seeking reproductive assistance. Advertisement "The thinking is that older women ovulate more," Kay said. The same explanation applies to African-American women, she said. To avoid late-pregnancy problems, moms carrying multiples are given an earlier due date than the typical 40 weeks, Kay said. Fraternal twins, or those conceived when two separate eggs are fertilized by two separate sperm, are the most common, she said. Women expecting fraternal twins are typically given a due date of 37 to 38 weeks. The due date for those carrying identical twins, which begin as one fertilized egg and then divide, is usually 36 to 37 weeks, she said. Shawnice Randle's first ultrasound showed only one baby. "We went back three weeks later and that one had split into two," she said. Her identical twin daughters shared a placenta, but had their own sack. Advertisement "That's the safest way to have identical twins," she said. Madilyn and Madison were born April 6. Back home in Park Forest, a 7-year-old big brother awaits their homecoming. Shawnice, a nurse for Victorian Village in Homer Glen, said she is not apprehensive about being doubly blessed this time around. "I think everything will work itself out," she said. "We already know they're special." Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > Proud father Mike McIntyre, a delivery driver for amazon.com, added: "It's been amazing. It's only two days and I'm already overjoyed. I can't explain it. It's awesome. It's a blessing. I'm glad to be a part of this. Already we're making history being a part of this baby boom." Advertisement Jean Smith, manager of clinical operations in the neonatal care unit, said the NICU can hold up to 55 babies. By Thursday morning, occupancy was at 46. "And we've got another set of twins cooking right now," she said. "It's unusual, very unusual to have this many sets of twins," Smith said. "It puts the staff on higher alert because you have to be extra careful with twins. We check every baby by name, date of birth and medical record. With twins, they have same last name and usually the same date of birth." One fun sidebar to the twin explosion has been the observation of baby names. Popular ones, lately, Smith said, include names with an Irish origin, such as Liam and Conor, any form of Kayla and names of old, including Estelle, Rose and Olivia. dvickroy@tribpub.com @dvickroy A state-funded program designed to help chronic, non-violent offenders may be funded for now by Will County, but officials warned that they cannot continue Adult Redeploy Illinois (ARI) after spring without state grants. Tuesday, the county board's finance committee agreed to a "loan" of up to $75,000 to keep the program operating until June, in hopes that the state legislature will pass Senate Bill 2059 to release grant funds for the program and other ones. The full county board will vote on the loan at its April 21 meeting. Advertisement Finance committee chairman Mike Fricilone, R-Homer Glen, who voted against it, said if they agree to fund one program, "every department will be coming to us for the grant money they are not getting from the state." "We can't say yes to everyone. If the grants do not materialize, we will be in a hole big time," he said. "It's a great program. We know we need it, but we can't keep funding programs that the state is not. We do not have an endless pot of money." Advertisement The county previously agreed to loan the health department up to $3 million as needed, and will be repaid with property tax revenues. Other committee member said this program pays for itself and results in a cost savings for the county. Julie McCabe-Sterr, of the Will County State's Attorney's office, told both the judicial and finance committees that the Adult Redeploy program actually saves the county $436,000 annually by keeping people from returning to jail. The greatest cost savings to the county comes from getting offenders into treatment programs to reduce their substance abuse, and increase their social productivity by helping them find jobs, do community service, or get an education, which reduces recidivism, she said. Currently, there are 86 participants in this voluntary program that takes about 18 months to complete, and McCabe-Sterr said she is committed to seeing them finish, but agreed to take no more unless the state provides the grant funds. Those in Adult Redeploy have between four and 16 felony convictions, and due to their dependency on illegal drugs, they typically use crime to support their drug use. The county was awarded a $302,600 grant from the state, but has received no funds to date because of the state's budget impasse. The state's fiscal year ends June 30. To keep the program operating until the end of the county's fiscal year on Dec. 1, would cost $428,000, McCabe-Sterr said. Officials have included in Senate Bill 2059 $8.5 million for Adult Redeploy Illinois programs statewide for the state's fiscal year 2016, McCabe-Sterr said, adding that if she gets the state funds, she will reimburse the county. Advertisement Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > Finance committee member Gretchen Fritz, R-Plainfield, said the county has to look at "tapering off" this program. "I am not hearing of any hope from Springfield," Fritz said. Meanwhile, members of the judicial committee said they will continue to look at alternatives to incarceration. Committee chairman Darren Bennefield, R-Aurora, said they will be meeting with Chief Judge Richard Schoenstedt, Sheriff Mike Kelley and Warden Brad Josephson to discuss options. The capacity of the county's jail is 1,100, and currently has about 800 inmates. "If the county continues to grow, we are not far from having to use alternatives," Bennefield said. Advertisement slafferty@tribpub.com Seth J. Goodwin, 24, of Grayslake (right), was reported missing last week after leaving a bar on his motorcycle (left). On Sunday, his body was found with the motorcycle near Lake Villa. (Grayslake Police Department) Rachel Smith holds fast to a letter Seth Goodwin wrote her after her father died. "It was one of the most beautiful, kind and caring letters," Smith said Thursday. Advertisement Smith is now mourning the death of Goodwin, a 24-year-old Grayslake man who authorities said died in a March 28 motorcycle crash in Lake Villa Township. Goodwin's body and motorcycle weren't found until nearly a week later. She said the letter showed a different side of Goodwin, who projected a tough-guy persona. Advertisement Smith said she met Goodwin when he was "a very quiet, reserved" 16-year-old old who worked at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. She said they worked together for nine years, "but I would always see him as a little kid." "Basically I had to force him to talk to me at first," Smith said. "But I watched him grow into his own. He was such an intelligent and caring young man. He was like a little brother to me. Whenever he had an issue, he would call me and ask for advice." Goodwin was reported missing when he never showed up to meet friends in Antioch. "When I first heard he was missing I started sending him messages," Smith said. "When I didn't get responses, I was really scared. He would always answer right away." A bicyclist spotted Goodwin's motorcycle Sunday in a ditch west of U.S. Route 45 near Dada Drive in Lake Villa Township, according to the Lake County Sheriff's Office. Authorities found Goodwin and the motorcycle partially submerged in the ditch, said Det. Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the sheriff's office. Covelli said passing motorists would not have been able to see Goodwin's body or the motorcycle in the culvert. Goodwin was last seen leaving the Fogcutter Bar and Restaurant at 36021 N. Route 45 in Lindenhurst, according to a Grayslake police news release. Authorities said the cause of death was severe trauma from the motorcycle crash. Alcohol was a contributing factor, chief deputy coroner Orland Portillo said. Advertisement Final toxicology results are pending and the investigation into the crash is ongoing, authorities said. Smith, of Silver Lake, Wis., said services will be held on Sunday, the same day the Greek American Motorcycle Association will hold its fourth annual Motorcycle Blessing at Greek Orthodox churches throughout the Midwest. Goodwin enjoyed Norse culture and mythology, Smith said. He would study Medieval subjects and languages. "He definitely was one of a kind," Smith said. "He wanted to be a modern Indiana Jones. ... It's devastating because of how caring and good a person he was. It's a shame we didn't get to see him blossom into his potential." jrnewton@tribpub.com Twitter @jimnewton5 In 2017, the Lake County Discovery Museum, now based at Lakewood Forest Preserve in Wauconda, will be housed in the Lake County Forest Preserve District General offices in Libertyville, where a state-of-the-art collapsible compact facility will be used to store archives and artifacts. (Sheryl DeVore, Lake County News-Sun) Lake County Discovery Museum visitors have until Aug. 31 to visit the space in its longtime home, situated in a quaint collection of farm buildings among oak trees and a replica mastodon at the Lakewood Forest Preserve in Wauconda. Then the staff will catalog, pack and carefully move the museum's 23,000 artifacts and other paper documents to its new home at the forest preserves' general offices in Libertyville. The museum will reopen in about a year at the new location. Advertisement The Lake County Board purchased the general offices for $4.1 million in 2010 and agreed the museum eventually would move there. In February, board president Ann Maine approved plans to close the Wauconda site this summer, said Nan Buckardt, Lake County Forest Preserve District director of education. One of the main reasons to close the Wauconda facility is that the artifacts and displays are housed in old farm buildings that were retrofitted to create a museum, said Rebekah Snyder, director of development for the district. Advertisement "The temperature, light and humidity are really difficult to control there," Snyder said. "We want to be proactive" and not have to deal with potential issues, such as flooding, she said. The district had postponed the move when Gov. Bruce Rauner put a hold on a $750,000 capital grant award approved for the forest preserve during Gov. Pat Quinn's administration, Buckardt said. Similar funds are being withheld from other museums, she said. The likely sale of the Discovery Museum's Curt Teich Postcard Collection, which contains more than three million postcards from around the world, in part allowed the forest preserve to lower the cost of the museum move, Buckardt said. The district is currently negotiating with the Newberry Library in Chicago about taking the collection. The district will spend about $1.6 million to complete the museum project, which is about $750,000 less than what it originally had planned to spend, Buckardt said. "The reason there's such a lag between when we close and reopen is not only that we are innovating and reimagining exhibits, but we're also moving the entire collection, all the archival materials, the school diaries from the 1800s, the old maps, postcards of Lake County, personal diaries from various families," she said. The district will take bids on a state-of-the-art collapsible compact storage facility in late spring, Buckardt said. There are also plans for new classroom space on the first floor and a reading room where the public can do research. Advertisement "It will look much like a small library," Buckardt said. According to Snyder, while visitors won't be able to see permanent and temporary exhibitions for about a year, the staff will continue to do programs at schools and forest preserve facilities. "We will continue the annual Civil War Days in July, and after the museum closes, the annual Farm Heritage Show will continue in September," Snyder said. "Lakewood is still our forest preserve. So many people visit it for so many reasons." Snyder said the district has the option to move the museum again when the timing is right and noted it may not be housed forever at the general offices. Museum collections manager Diana Dretske has a busy year ahead of her working to catalog and prepare collections for the move. She admits being a bit sad about the changes. "Most of my career has been working here at this facility," she said. "I love this spot." Advertisement "We do expect people to miss it," Buckardt said. "It's a lovely site. The buildings have charm and character. The thing that's most exciting for me by moving the collection to the general offices, we will be able to have them cared for in a much better fashion. That's really a key part of this whole decision taking care of this material that's irreplaceable." Sheryl DeVore is a freelancer for the News-Sun Minority and low-incomes students in the two local districts have a better chance of being placed in gifted programs than in many school districts in the state. A report released last month by One Chance Illinois shows gifted black, Hispanic or low-income students get overlooked more often than their white and Asian classmates for gifted and talented programs in the largest unit and elementary districts in the state. Advertisement That is not the case in school districts like Illinois' Naperville School District 203 and Indian Prairie School District 204. Josh Dwyer, OCI policy director and report author, said both districts use objective tests first to identify a list of potential candidates for gifted programs. As such, he said Districts 203 and 204 are better able to identify giftedness in underserved populations. Advertisement The National Association for Gifted Children estimates between 6-10 percent of kindergarten through 12th-grade students can be identified as academically gifted. Dwyer said many school districts rely too much on parent advocacy or teacher recommendations, both of which are very subjective. The report notes that inequities arise because minority parents often have time or resources to advocate for their children. On the other side, parents can believe their child is above average and push for enrollment in gifted programming. He said studies also show teachers can unknowingly be biased. A study out of Vanderbilt University in January shows black students who score high on standardized tests are less likely than their white peers to be recommended for gifted programs in math and reading. That gap disappears when black students are taught by a black classroom teacher. Dwyer said best practices, like used in Districts 203 and 204, involve assessing students through a variety of tests, including cognitive ability. Tim Wierenga, assistant superintendent for assessment and analytics, said District 203 has been following its methodology for assessing students for gifted education for more than two decades. "The process takes out natural concerns of bias," he said. Advertisement District 203, which serves students in Naperville and Lisle, uses a variety of assessments, including Performance Series that measures a student's ability level in reading and math; the Cognitive Abilities Test that measures a student's verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal abilities; the Iowa Assessments that looks at vocabulary, reading and math; and the Iowa Algebra Aptitude Test. He said District 203 is constantly trying to improve the identification process. "We still have work to do," Wierenga said. "We still can do a better job." This year instituted an appeal process that can help students who might fall between the cracks. Wierenga said in some instances a student initially might not have met the criteria for further testing or services, but exhibits evidence for consideration. School personnel, parents or guardians, and even the student can request an appeal from Learning Services. The full process is outlined on the district website. Besides in-class differentiation, District 203 offers honors mathematics in grades 3-8, Project IDEA (Increase and Develop Excellence in Academics), or PI, in grades 4-8, and Project IDEA+ in grades 4-8. Advertisement Honors math and PI are available at all 14 elementary buildings and all five junior high schools. Project IDEA+, or PI+, is a magnet program designed for top performing students identified for Project IDEA and honors mathematics and is housed at Meadow Glens Elementary School for grades 4 and 5 and Kennedy Junior High School for grades 6-8. Laura Devine Johnston, assistant superintendent for elementary education, said District 204 also frequently assessed how it identifies students for its Project Arrow and accelerated mathematics gifted and talented program. The current protocol has been in place the last couple years. "Using multiple measures is key," Johnston said. District 204 begins screening in the fall when the Cognitive Abilities Tests are administered to all students in grades 2-5. The district also reviews standardized test scores, district assessments and observational classroom data. In the winter, more testing, like the Iowa Assessments, is given to students whose scores fall within the top 10 percent of their classmates, and the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test is given to all fifth-graders. This is also the time when teacher and parental input is sought. Advertisement By spring, a principal, teacher or parent can initiate a placement review for any student whose scores fall within the review range. Johnston said so many of District 204 conversations have centered on the achievement gap and meeting the needs of the student population, nearly half of which is not white. "I think our district has had so much discussion about diversity, our teachers advocate for underserved students," she said. While testing is initially used to identify students for Project Arrow, it is not the only way. Johnston said the district strives to view the child as a whole, including cognitive abilities and social emotional factors. Project Arrow and accelerated math are open to gifted students in grades 3-8 and are offered at all the elementary and middle schools in Naperville, Aurora and Bolingbrook. Advertisement Of the districts studied by One Chance Illinois, black students comprised a quarter of the student population, but only made up 16 percent of the gifted population. And though Hispanic students accounted for 37 percent of the student population, only 18 percent were in gifted classes. One Chance Illinois disparity for low-income students was even larger. Nearly 57 percent of students from the sampled districts came from low-income families, but only 33 percent participated in gifted programming. The percentage gap was much different for Districts 203 and 204. According to the group's report, the difference between the black student population in Naperville School District 203 and its black gifted student population is around 4 percent. For Hispanic student the difference was 7 percent. Economically, District 203 showed no disparity with 2 percent more low-income students involved in gifted programs. The gap between the overall population and the gifted population in District 204 was around 8 percent for both black and Hispanic populations and 12 percent for low-income students. Advertisement Executive Director Myles Mendoza of One Chance Illinois said his organization strives to bring high quality education to all low-income and working-class families. He said No Child Left Behind shifted school district priorities to focus attention on money or raising struggling students to achieve proficiency, and gifted education took a back seat more often. "We assumed our data would show issues identifying minority children as gifted, however, we were shocked by how much of a gap there really is and the reasons why," he said. subaker@tribpub.com Twitter @SBakerSun1 In this 2011 file photo, Niki Quasney, left, poses for a photo with Amy Sandler, in Munster, Ind. Lambda Legal announced Sunday that Quasney of Munster died Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015. She was 38. Quasney and Sandler had challenged Indianas ban on same-sex marriage as Quasney battled terminal ovarian cancer. (Jeffrey D. Nicholls / AP) The Munster Town Council is expected to vote April 25 on its long-awaited human rights ordinance. The council rescheduled its regular meeting from 7 p.m. April 18 to 7 p.m. April 25. The change was to ensure the full five-member council will be in attendance, said Council President John Reed, R-1st. Advertisement The human rights ordinance, which would provide equal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and other groups, passed on first reading with a 4-0 vote last month. Reed, the ordinance's most ardent supporter, said he had "no idea" what the outcome of the final vote will be. For Munster residents, many of whom have voiced their support for a human rights ordinance through the We Are Munster organization, the day of adoption has been a year in the making. Carly Brandenburg said she and fellow We Are Munster members plan to show a strong presence at the next council meeting, emphasizing that the ordinance is necessary for Munster's economic future. Advertisement "I believe there are companies that would relocate here or stay here based on the passage of the ordinance," she said. "Having an ordinance that shows the town welcomes diversity and inclusion and is up with the times is important." Brandenburg hopes the human rights sends a clear message about Munster's welcoming environment to all people and businesses and separates the from any perceptions that may have occurred as a result of the state's failed religious freedom bill, which could have enabled businesses to refuse service to LGBT individuals and other groups as a matter of freely practicing their beliefs. A number of local businesses have publicly supported Munster's proposed ordinance, including large employers such as Community Hospital and Target, and locally owned businesses including Dance Gallery and the Three Floyds Brewery, as well as the School Town of Munster. We Are Munster leader Paul Rotatori said that although he is not a member of the LGBT community, he felt it important to support the cause especially in light of the long road the ordinance has taken to come up for a final vote. "Over time our movement has only gotten stronger," he said. "I've met some amazing people in Munster from every walk of life because of this experience." If the ordinance passes, Rotatori is not sure what the future holds for We Are Munster. He encouraged people who want to know more about the town's progress toward passage of the human rights ordinance to visit the organization's website, www.wearemunster.com. Should the ordinance pass, it would become illegal in Munster "to obstruct someone from entering a business, entering into a contract, obtaining and maintaining employment or participating in any type of program or service available to the general public on the basis of race, sexual preference, disability or gender identity in the town of Munster." Jim Masters is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune. While speaking to University of Chicago law students on April 7, 2016, President Barack Obama answered a question about the diversity of his Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, saying, "Yeah, he's a white guy, but he's a really outstanding jurist." (White House) (Chicago Tribune) A comment made by President Barack Obama at the University of Chicago Law School regarding his nomination for the Supreme Court sent the northern suburb of Skokie trending on Twitter Thursday. "But at no point did I say: 'Oh, you know what? I need a black lesbian from Skokie in that slot. Can you find me one?' " the president said. "I mean, that's just not how I've approached it." The comment was in response to a question from an audience member that was critical of his nominating Merrick Garland, an appeals court judge from Lincolnwood, citing a lack of racial and LGBT diversity in the country's courts. Advertisement Twitter users responded to the comment with an array of tweets ranging from the comedic to the incredulous. Obama was at University of Chicago to promote Garland, who attended high school in Skokie and was born in Chicago, as his Supreme Court nominee, calling him "as good of a judge as we have in this country right now." Advertisement In response to questions Thursday about diversity in the federal courts, Obama defended both his record and his nomination of Garland, the Chicago Tribune reported. "Not to brag, but I have transformed the federal courts, from a diversity standpoint, with a record that's been unmatched," Obama said. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 11 President Barack Obama waves as he boards Air Force One with his daughter Malia at O'Hare International Airport on April 7, 2016, in Chicago. President Obama spoke at the University of Chicago, promoting his Supreme Court Nominee native Illinoisan Merrick Garland. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune) "Yeah, he's a white guy, but he's a really outstanding jurist, sorry," Obama said of Garland. rray@pioneerlocal.com Twitter @iamrichardray The President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has arrived in Hong Kong for the first time since taking office to discuss, among other things, regional cooperation. First proposed by the Chinese government two years ago, and headquartered in Beijing, the AIIB officially began operating in December. Since being proposed, more than 30 founding members have joined up, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil and South Korea. Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank President Jin Liqun says the first few months of operations are running smoothly. "Three months into operation, more than 30 countries with firm commitment are more eager to join, because the way we run the institution, the way we communicate with the board, the way we handle all have further convince those countries on the waiting list that they should become a member as soon as possible. " Jin stresses that even though the AIIB is a Chinese-led initiative, it is not a Chinese bank. He says any companies from any countries are welcome to bid for projects. "Yes, AIIB has the birthmark of China, but we are nurtured by 57 member countries. So the upbrain of AIIB would be in the charge of all the 57 countries, and very soon about a hundred countries. It is a bank owned by all member countries. He says the AIIB is also working in coordination with both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in helping finance infrastructure projects in Asia. But Jin says the AIIB's mandate also includes creating a return-on-investment for the countries which have seeded it with cash. "We take cost effectiveness as a key talent. AIIB should be as profitable, as cost-effective as a private sector company. When we say 'as profitable', I have to qualify we do not' maximize profit". We should try to be profitable thereby we will be in a better financial position to help low-income countries." Jin has also revealed the AIIB is looking at expanding its mandate, saying the bank is looking to invest in areas beyond physical infrastructure, including education and healthcare. Jin is in Hong Kong for meetings with leading officials from the city about Hong Kong's inclusion in the AIIB. Meeting with Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung, Jin says he's hopeful the city's plans to join the AIIB can be finalized before the end of this year. Alibaba's financial affiliate Ant Financial Services Group yesterday said it will cooperate with 1 million overseas merchants in the next three years to provide better services for Chinese outbound travelers. Alipay, the payment service operated by Ant Financial, will work with merchants in Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States so that Chinese travelers need not shift to a new service to search for local deals and coupons. The merchants' information will also be available for them in Chinese. Sabrina Peng, president of Alipay's International, said in a CNBC interview that the company's "vision is targeting 2 billion people within the next five to 10 years, not only in China but other countries too." Alipay is also talking with a number of partners ranging from financial institutions to restaurants and theaters across Europe to allow them to access Alipays data analyzing capabilities to help in their marketing strategies aimed at Chinese travelers. Alipay was used by 120 million users abroad last year. It has 450 million real-name verified users, and about 170 million transactions are processed every day. Models wear designs available on Mei.com during a runway show. [Photo/China Daily] Retailers are moving to convert adversity into opportunity as they try to breathe new life into a sluggish market by using Internet platforms to hawk their high-end merchandise. While the luxury goods retail market in China has been facing difficulties in recent months with sales declining and stores closing, some entrepreneurs are using this setback to seek opportunities online. Mei.com, a "flash sales" platform for luxury goods and fashion, and Alibaba's major online marketplace, Tmall.com, held a fashion show on March 30 in Shanghai, announcing a collaboration to launch a luxury channel on Tmall.com. The event follows Alibaba's investment in Mei.com last July, which is reported to be worth more than $100 million. The luxury channel began its test run in December, allowing Tmall customers to buy discounted luxury items from Mei.com. A total of 42 looks were unveiled on the runway, all using pieces available on Mei.com. The show was live-streamed on Tmall and all the items were available on the Tmall app. "We come from the luxury and fashion sectors, while Tmall specializes in data, technology and the Internet. The collaboration is to combine these competencies," says Seamon Shi, president of Mei.com. Mei.com and the luxury channel on Tmall are now unified in terms of inventory and membership accessibility. The move gives Mei.com access to Tmall's customers, who are estimated to number more than 400 million. The collaboration also signals a strategic step in Tmall's plan to diversify its offerings in a bid to build a one-stop shopping destination for the emerging middle class in China, says Dong Benhong, chief marketing officer of Alibaba. Meanwhile, Tmall has also been trying to upgrade its luxury offerings with the introduction of brands like Burberry and La Perla. Operating in China since 2010, Mei.com works directly with 3,600 brands in the luxury-goods and fashion sectors, and 300 of them have appointed the platform as their exclusive online partner in China. The brands on the website include Giorgio Armani, Ermenegildo Zegna, Roger Vivier, Michael Kors and Longchamp. Shi says that the company has seen triple-digit growth in the past few years, although he declined to give numbers. Compared with other international luxury-shopping websites like Net-A-Porter and Neiman Marcus, Mei.com distinguishes itself through its location and convenience, says Shi. "We are based in China so we can give the best service and the fastest feedback to customers here," he says. "Unlike physical outlets, flash sales protect the brands' image to a large extent. They also provide customers with the option to buy luxury products at an affordable price." The website is also developing a magazine on new trends and iconic products. As Thibault Villet, the CEO and founder of Mei.com, says: "Our aim is to be the No 1 luxury platform in China." Explaining his vision, he says: "What is exciting about doing e-commerce in China is that the ecosystem is changing all the time and we have to stay focused on innovation ... Three years ago, we were doing less than 20 percent of our business through mobile, but last month it was 80 percent. The customer experience is changing." Chinese customers are also evolving rapidly, according to surveys done by Mei.com. "Three years ago, they wanted more classic brands. But for the last year and a half, there is a very strong shift toward designer brands. The customers are physically and digitally traveling around the world so they are more informed and aware of global trends," says Villet. Referring to the recent slowing of the market in China, Edoardo Tocco, regional director of Tod's China, one of Mei.com's brand partners, says the country is still a great consumer market. "The main thing is to find the right key to open the right door. The consumers are there and they are waiting for you," he says. "The business model for retailers is to develop a multi-channel strategy. And e-commerce is becoming one of the most important channels." Solemn-faced couples holding a hammer and a sickle were a common sight in the early 1980s, when China introduced its one-child policy. They looked out of posters above a red slogan proclaiming, "Controlled population, planned growth". People view an exhibition of posters on the country's one-child policy in the 1980s. [Photo/Xinhua] More than three decades later, Chinese newspapers are displaying photos of smiling parents carrying two infants with the banner "Home with two kids". In January, China ended its one-child policy and allowed all couples to have two children. The new policy is expected to bring sweeping social changes. But the slogans have yet to catch up with the new family-planning regimen, said members of China's top advisory body. Zhu Lianqing, along with 40 other members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, offered a proposal to modernize outdated slogans promoting birth control and improve family planning services to boost fertility during the CPPCC's annual meeting in March. Ominous messages In the world's most populous country, childbearing is not a private issue among families. It has long been viewed as a "revolutionary task" in the national interest. In the early 1980s, red banners that declared the family planning policy, like Chairman Mao's famous quotations, bedecked city streets; in the countryside, slogans were painted on walls and buildings. Families that violated the one-child policy were branded "guerrillas", and they sometimes hid to escape huge fines or other penalties. Traditionally, perpetuating the bloodline is seen as a virtue in China. When New China was founded in 1949, the country was very poor and underdeveloped and the "more people, more power" idea was widely accepted. The population exploded from 540 million in 1949 to 830 million by 1970. The contrast sharpened between limited land and the massive population. Fearful that uncontrolled growth would restrict economic development, China started strict implementation of a one-child policy, mostly among its urban population in the late 1970s to deal with the population pressures. Family planning slogans reflected living and production conditions: "Bear fewer children, and plant more trees" or "Raising more children is not as good as raising more pigs". Some were more ominous, such as "One more baby means one more tomb" and "Uncontrolled births cause houses to collapse". In 2007, the government softened the tone with new phrases: "For Mother Earth, control childbirth" and "Fewer and healthier births make the countryside prosperous". Some stressed gender equality: "Boys and girls are equally important" and "Girls matter to the nation's future". Yet all "still strongly reflected the one-child policy", said Zhu, of the CPPCC. According to official data, the one-child policy was estimated to result in the prevention of 400 million births, and China's population dropped from 22 percent of the global population in the 1970s to 19 percent by 2010. Outdated content on the issue also appears in textbooks, he said, citing a paragraph in an elementary textbook in Zhejiang province that states: "From 1971 to 1998, the one-child policy resulted in a reduction of population, which saved 7.4 trillion yuan in child-rearing costs, almost equal to China's GDP in 1997." "It's ridiculous," Zhu said, suggesting that if schools teach the idea that "fewer births can save money", children would wrongly believe they were worthless. Today, people are China's most needed resource. While getting wealthier, the world's most populous country is also aging, with 220 million people aged 60 or older. Premier Li Keqiang, in his Government Work Report, noted that China has a labor force of 900 million, including 100 million who have received higher education or are professionally trained. "This is our greatest resource and strength," he said. Ironically, Chinese are now less inclined to take on the costs of more children. Last year, births numbered 16.55 million, a drop of 320,000 from 2014, accounting for just 12 percent of the world's newborns. Demographic experts predict that the second-child policy will result in only 3 million more babies every year. New Slogan! Family planning slogans are now needed to help reverse this trend and they should be "more interesting, vivid, and well received", said Zuo Dongling, a deputy of the National People's Congress. Social media is buzzing with tongue-in-cheek suggestions such as "Two babies rewarded; one baby fined; DINKs arrested", referring to those couples with "double income, no kids". Zhu Lianqing suggested the government learn from neighboring countries, such as South Korea, which encourages its people with slogans like "Dad, I'm lonely, and I want more brothers and sisters", "More kids, better lives", and "The biggest legacy for children is siblings." But just improving slogans is not enough for some. "Without improved services or polices, people will not have the courage to have more childrenno matter how good the slogan," said Zhang Jingping, a working mother of two. Other parents echoed her thoughts. Yu Li, a sales manager in the communications industry, who has two girls, wants preferential policies on school enrollment, and car and home purchases, as they are the most expensive and stressful requirements for raising children in large cities. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. There seems to be some truth in the old saying: "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." According to a new study released this week, people who eat fresh fruit on most days are at lower risk of heart attack and stroke than people who rarely eat fresh fruit. The findings, published by the New England Journal of Medicine, came from a seven-year study of half a million adults in China, where fresh fruit consumption is much lower than in countries such as the UK and the United States. Researchers from the University of Oxford and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences conducted a large, nationwide study of 500,000 adults from 10 urban and rural localities across China, tracking people's health for seven years through death records and electronic hospital data. The participants did not have a history of cardiovascular diseases or anti-hypertensive treatments when they first joined the study. The study found that eating fruits, mainly apples or oranges, was strongly associated with many other factors, such as education, lower blood pressure, lower blood glucose, and not smoking. But, after allowing for what was known of these and other factors, a 100-gram portion of fruit per day was associated with about one-third less cardiovascular mortality and the association was similar across different study areas and in both men and women. "The association between fruit consumption and cardiovascular risk seems to be stronger in China, where many still eat little fruit, than in high-income countries where daily consumption of fruit is more common," study author Huaidong Du of the University of Oxford said. Also, fruit in China is almost exclusively consumed raw, whereas much of the fruit in high-income countries is processed, and many previous studies combined fresh and processed fruit, said Du. Senior author Zhengming Chen, a professor at the University of Oxford, noted that it's difficult to determine whether the lower risk among people who eat more fresh fruit is because of a real protective effect. "If it is, then widespread consumption of fresh fruit in China could prevent about half a million cardiovascular deaths a year, including 200,000 before age 70, and even larger numbers of non-fatal strokes and heart attacks," Chen added. Flash The Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) said Thursday that a unit from the Intelligence Branch was able to free the two children kidnapped on Wednesday. The ISF said in a statement that "four crews of an Australian television were arrested by the Intelligence Branch on suspicion of involvement in the abduction of Lahala al-Amine, 6, and her four-year-old brother Nouh in Beirut's south eastern town of Hadath as well as the Australian mother of the siblings." According to the National News Agency (NNA), three gunmen, who were riding a silver Hyundai, abducted Lahala and Nouh while they were waiting for their school bus with their grandmother on the Hadath-Shweifat road. The kidnappers took away the children after hitting their grandma on the head, it said, adding that the abductors were filming the operation. The ISF investigation showed that the mother of the kids identified by the Australian media as Sally Faulkner was involved in the kidnapping. Faulkner claimed that her children's Lebanese father took them for a holiday and then allegedly refused to return them to Australia. Australia's Channel Nine said that the woman made an agreement with "60 Minutes program" crew to come and help her recover her children from Lebanon. The crew and the woman are held with the ISF for the investigation. Flash The Lebanese General Security Directorate said Thursday it arrested a Syrian member of the Islamic State (IS) militant group, who was planning to carry out attacks against the military forces. The Directorate said in a statement that "the suspect, identified as M.F., confessed to taking part in clashes against the army in the northeastern border town of Arsal in 2014." He was part of an armed group headed by Syrian Aa.H., known as "Abou al-Qaaqaa," added the statement. The suspect confessed his links to the IS and the fact that he has received training on how to make and plant explosives. What was also revealed in his interrogation was that he plotted and prepared to carry out a suicide attack against an army checkpoint. Over the past months, the Lebanese security forces have arrested scores of terrorists and suspects linked to the armed groups involved in the conflict in Syria. Flash The Islamic State (IS) militant group has been strengthening its position in Afghanistan since the end of 2015 and now there are about 6,000 IS militants there, the Russian deputy foreign minister has said. Supporters of the organization had been found in 25 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said in an interview with Kazakh newspaper "Kazakhstanskaya Pravda" published on Thursday. Among these fighters were citizens from countries in Central Asia and the North Caucasus, such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and North Caucasian republics of Russia, said Karasin. He disagreed with those who said that the threat from Afghanistan was allegedly often exaggerated. Karasin also said that the Taliban continued to strengthen its position in the region, and that the Taliban had even captured the provincial capital city of Kunduz for a few days in late December. Many militants were found on Afghanistan's borders with Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, he said. The Russian official stressed that the aggravation of terrorist challenges requires additional anti-terrorism measures, particularly in the framework of international and regional organizations, such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Effectively fighting terrorism is impossible without cutting off financing channels of terrorism, as required by United Nations Security Council resolutions, he added. Flash At least four Al-Shabaab militants were killed in a fighting between the Somali National Army backed by the African Union Peacekeeping mission (AMISOM) troops and the militants in areas close to Elbur town in Galgudud region, central Somalia Thursday. Abdi Hassan Mohamed, an official in the area, said there was heavy confrontations in Jacar and Dari environs, about 40km south of Elbur town, and the two sides exchanged heavy gunfire. Mohamed said the joint forces killed four Al-Shabaab militants and liberated four neighborhoods there, and will continue the operation against Al-Shabaab in Galgudud and Mudug regions. "Somali National Army backed by AU troops from Ethiopia conducted the operation. It took several hours to liberate four areas under their control, including Jacar and Dari and their environs," Mohamed said. The official did not, however, confirm if there were casualties on the military side. Galmudug State forces gained military victory over the fighting against Al-Shabaab militants in the same region last month. Flash China and Sri Lanka pledged to further push forward their strategic cooperative partnership and inked a series of documents in such fields as economic cooperation, finance, medicare and transportation on Thursday. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) holds talks with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Beijing, China, April 7, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] During the talks with visiting Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Beijing, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang hailed the profound friendship between the two countries, saying the bilateral ties have withstood the test of time. China is willing to deepen mutual trust, extend practical cooperation with Sri Lanka so as to take their strategic partnership of cooperation to a new height, Li said. He said the continued development of China-Sri Lanka cooperation on major projects has brought benefits for the people of both countries. "We welcome the resumption of the Colombo Port City project, and stand ready to work with Sri Lanka to push forward the construction steadily," said Li. The Sri Lankan government officially informed the Chinese investors of resuming the construction of the multi-billion dollar Port City project last month, one year after its suspension. Li called on both sides to speed up the negotiations on the second phase operation of the Hambantota Port in the southern part of Sri Lanka, so as to help Sri Lanka give full play to its geological advantage to become an important international logistic hub. He also called on both countries to conduct production capacity cooperation in order to exert China's advantage in equipment manufacturing and expedite Sri Lanka's industrialization. China encourages its companies to invest in Sri Lanka and participate in the cooperation in industrial parks, special economic zones, and the processing and manufacturing sector, Li said, calling for support from Sri Lanka. For his part, Wickremesinghe said Sri Lanka, faced with the task of economic and social development, is willing to learn from China's experience and develop greater synergies between its own strategies and China's Belt and Road Initiative, jointly building the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road proposed by China. He said Sri Lanka will protect the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies in line with its law and foster a sound environment for Chinese investors. Both prime ministers agreed to further advance FTA talks between the two countries, expressing the hope of seeing tangible results come out within the year. They also called for enhanced cooperation on construction of ports, airports, roads, railways and in the fields of finance, science and technology and culture. Prior to the talks, Li held a welcoming ceremony for Wickremesinghe. The two prime ministers witnessed the signing of seven deals on economic and technological cooperation, extradition, finance, medical care and transportation after the talks. Also on Thursday, China's top legislator Zhang Dejiang met with Wickremesinghe on further enhancing parliamentary exchanges between the two countries. Zhang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), said the NPC is willing to maintain exchanges with Parliament of Sri Lanka in such areas of state governance and legislation, calling on both sides to improve legal environment to facilitate pragmatic cooperation and consolidate the traditional friendship. Wickremesinghe said Sri Lanka is ready to promote the exchanges between the law-making bodies of the two nations. Wickremesinghe arrived in Beijing on Wednesday night for a four-day official visit to China. Flash The South-East Asian nation of Laos is set to greet new heads-of-state and government later this month as the country prepares for transition in key posts of President and Prime Minister expected to follow traditional Lao New Year festivities celebrated next week. The leadership transition takes place as the country of some six-and-a-half million continues in its 2016 role as chair of the 10-member ASEAN group of nations, culminating in September with the arrival of world and regional leaders for international summits in Vientiane. Candidates for high office and their deputies plus other key roles will be offered to members of the countrys March-elected National Assembly (NA) for consideration at the legislature's first session scheduled for April 20-23, according to a resolution issued by the NA Standing Committee. Leadership aspirants, whose candidacies come with assent of the Central Committee of countrys ruling Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP), are expected to reflect both the outcomes of Januarys 10th Congress and the make-up of its Political Bureau (Politbureau), which witnessed the elevation of Bounnhang Vorachit to the peak party leadership position of Secretary-General. Previous LPRP Secretary-General, the countrys two-term head-of-state President Choummaly Sayasone and the serving head-of-government, Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong, are not standing for reappointment to their respective roles. Adhering to a 5-year electoral cycle, Laos officially enshrined a preexisting convention for two-term limits applied to the position of head-of-state in its state constitution via an amendment approved by the National Assembly in December last year. With single-party political and governance institutions based on a Marxist-Leninist model, the Lao People's Democratic Republic was established on Dec. 2, 1975 led by LPRP co-founder and inaugural Secretary-General, President Kaysone Phomvihane. Flash The UN special envoy for Syria said on Thursday he expected intra-Syrian talks to resume on April 13 in Geneva in a bid to seek a political solution to the Syria crisis, a UN spokesman said here. Envoy Staffan de Mistura "wanted to ensure that the talks will start a political process leading to a real political transition," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here. The newly announced date for the resumption of the Syria talks is four days behind the original schedule. The second round of Syrian peace talks was originally slated for April 9. In the coming days, de Mistura plans to travel to Damascus and Tehran, and also to meet with Turkish, Saudi and other officials, before returning to Geneva in the middle of next week, Haq said. While in Syria, de Mistura expects to meet with the foreign minister and deputy foreign minister, he said. "The special envoy added that the proceedings in Geneva are expected once more to start with proximity talks," Haq said. The first round of intra-Syrian peace talks in Geneva wrapped up on March 24 with a paper of 12 points of commonalities being delivered to both sides for further consideration by de Mistura. The United Nations said a more positive atmosphere at the March round was helped by a cease-fire in Syria, which was declared on Feb. 27 and remains broadly in place, despite multiple reported violations. More than 270,000 people have been reportedly killed in Syria and millions have fled their homes since the conflict broke out in March 2011. Flash Greece was hit on Thursday by a 24-hour strike called by the umbrella public sector union, ADEDY, and other labor unions, in protest of the new austerity measures and reforms the government is discussing with the country's international lenders. More than 3,000 protesters marched in front of the parliament building in Athens yelling anti-austerity slogans, as public services nationwide were paralyzed. Public hospitals, schools and tax offices were closed, and all incoming and outgoing flights at Greek airports were cancelled from the early hours of Thursday until the early hours of Friday. There was also a media blackout, as journalists' unions participated in the strike. The latest strike was held as the government was aiming to close an initial deal with the envoys of creditors in Athens by Monday to conclude the ongoing review of the Greek bailout program quickly so that further rescue loans could be released to the debt-laden country. After six years of austerity and recession, demonstrators said they could no longer bear the burden of more harsh wage and pension cuts, and tax hikes. Visitors try out Huawei products during an exhibition in Beijing, Oct 12, 2010. [Photo/IC] JAKARTA - China's global information and communications technology (ICT) giant Huawei launched an end-to-end 4K Ultra high definition (UHD) video solution here on Thursday, in a bid to accelerate the largest Southeast Asian economy's ICT futures through video transformation. The 4K UHD video, which has four times more details than current Full HD, provides extremely clear picture and optimal user experience. However, it requires a higher bandwidth, lower latency, and a more reliable network with very low packet loss. Huawei's 4K UHD video technology has been applied to Indonesia's main operators, the company announced on the "Big Video Summit" held here. Sheng Kai, CEO of Huawei's local unit Huawei Indonesia, said due to the country's rapid economic growth and consumers' great demand for reliable video services, Indonesian operators are positioning video services as the center of digital transformation to uplift the broadband business growth. According to Sheng, Huawei will provide technical solutions, video experience guarantee, video service operation and maintenance to develop and explore the country's 4K Ultra HD Video services. Indonesia's Internet users have reached more than 93 million in 2015, accounting for 36.5 percent of the total population, and 81 percent of which goes to online video services. Basuki Yusuf Iskandar, head of the research and human resources development department in Indonesia's ICT Ministry welcomed Huawei's 4K technology and said Indonesia needs to introduce more modern ICT technology to boost the productivity. "Indonesia is still lagging behind regional peers in ICT development, the country should learn from China and make great effort to catch up." He said. A cashier at a Wal-Mart outlet in Shanghai.[Provided to China Daily] Part of retailer's effort to integrate businesses in a tough market Wal-Mart China is opening 60 new stores in the country by 2017 as part of its efforts to integrate its hypermarkets, membership stores and online platform to offer customers more convenience and quality products in a highly-competitive retail market, the company's top executive said. Greg Penner, chairman of the Wal-Mart board of directors, said in an exclusive interview with China Daily in Shanghai on Wednesday that the company has already opened more than 50 new stores since a plan to add 115 stores in three years was announced in 2015. "China has amazing growth opportunities which in the next five years will surpass the US market in retail potential," said Penner, who visited two Wal-Mart stores in Shanghai on Tuesday. In addition to growing its physical presence, Wal-Mart is also focusing on enhancing its online stores and building stronger digital relations with Chinese customers, he said. Penner was elected to lead the board in 2015. "Customers want their products from stores and also from online platforms and now have a choice of getting them delivered to their homes or picking up in the stores," Penner said, referring to the increasing importance of online shopping convenience to customers. Greg Penner, chairman of Wal-Mart board of directors. He added: "The food safety is critical in China and is a big part of our focus here." Penner said, in 20 years in China, Wal-Mart has built three brandsWal-Mart hypermarket, the Sam's Club membership store and Yihaodian, the retailer's Chinese online offeringall playing important roles in the company's growing business. Wal-Mart China operates 432 stores including 12 Sam's Clubs in 174 cities and municipalities. And registered users of Yihaodian have reached 130 million. Wal-Mart is the second-largest retail banner just behind RT-mart in modern trade (including hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores), according to Jason Yu, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel China. This sector of retail business has continued to experience sluggish growth in 2015, only growing by 3.3 percent from 2014. Hypermarkets declined in key cities and provincial capitals by 1.5 percent, but it managed to grow at 4.1 percent at national level as a result of more store openings in the lower-tier cities. Kantar Worldpanel expects to see continued development in the hypermarket format in lower-tier cities in the coming years. "The group presented clear strength in terms of hypermarket geographic coverage (more cities than anyone else) but also established its leadership in membership club format and e-commerce through acquisition of Yihaodian," said Yu. According to Kantar, Wal-Mart leads the modern trade sector in southern and western China. It started to embrace more O2O opportunities by launching a mobile shopping app and introducing Alipay to drive efficiency and customer experience, said Yu. Wal-Mart has recently launched its Global Shop, a cross border e-commerce platform, offering more than 200 imported items on Wal-Mart App. An employee counts yuan banknotes at a bank in Huaibei, Anhui province June 22, 2010.[Photo/Agencies] BEIJING - China on Thursday started to release its foreign-exchange reserve data denominated in Special Drawing Rights (SDR), along with the US dollar. SDR boasts stable exchange rates and can help evaluate the reserves more objectively, said a statement by the People's Bank of China. Reserves stood at $3.21 trillion, or 2.28 trillion SDR at the end of March. The yuan will be added to the SDR basket of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from Oct 1 with a weighting of 10.92 percent. The weighting of the other currencies in the basket is 41.73 percent for the US dollar, 30.93 percent for the euro, 8.33 percent for the Japanese yen and 8.09 percent for the British pound. Created by the IMF in 1969, the SDR is an international reserve asset supplementing members' official reserves. It can be exchanged among governments for freely usable currencies in times of need. The United States exported 27.5 billion kilograms of pork to China in the first two months of this yearalmost six times what it shipped in the same period last year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. China's pork imports may top 1 million metric tons for the first time in 2016 and are likely to be up by at least 28 percent on the 777,000 tons imported last year, Reuters reported. Demand from China will also benefit farmers in Germany and Brazil. China's pork imports, excluding offal, surged 111 percent in February compared to a year ago, reaching 74,371 tons. In January, imports grew by 56 percent to 97,033 tons, according to Reuters. Since 2015, US pork production has outpaced beef, says the USDA. Its largest export markets are in Mexico, China and Japan. DHAKA - China's economy has shown its mettle in recent times by passing one of the toughest tests of structural transformation, leading Bangladeshi experts said here Thursday. As a result of the time befitting measures, they said the Chinese leadership has successfully managed to safeguard the economy, once heavily reliant on industrial exports. Despite concerns about the slowing Chinese economy, the Bangladesh experts have sounded an optimistic note about the world's second-largest economy's prospects in the near future. They said the Chinese economy has gone through a structural shift from high growth to more moderate growth, but maintained that it remains perfectly sound as its leaders have implemented the right kind of directions to safeguard the country's economy from potential shocks, or so-called hard landings. Ahsan H. Mansur, executive director of the leading Policy Research Institute (PRI) think tank, told Xinhua that "Chinese economic management has been prudent and its leaders have avoided hard landings in Asia's previous crisis in the 1990s, as well as the global economic crises of 2008 and 2009." He said, "There is now a need for accelerating the reform agendas particularly for stimulating domestic demand." "We don't see signs of any more slowdown, or further deterioration behind what has passed," he added. Experts say recent economic indicators point to the recovery of the Chinese economy, which expanded 6.9 percent year on year in 2015. They say that it's encouraging to see that the entire Chinese leadership really worked hard to dispel worries about perceived economic woes related to China's slowing growth. "There is no reason at all to worry any more," said Khandaker Golam Moazzem, a research director of another notable think tank, the Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD). He said China's economic growth rate might not be as rapid as before but that there will certainly be further growth in the near future. The revival of other major economies like the US will definitely expedite Chinese economic growth, Moazzem added. To battle economic slowdown, the Chinese government has stepped up policy support including aiming for a higher fiscal deficit ratio and pro-growth easing in the money market. The effect of such intensified policy support is already quantifiable, and recent credit pickup as well as concerted local government's efforts to speed up property de-stocking has seen a significant uptick in fixed asset investment among other indicators. Senior commentator Saif Islam Dilal also expressed hope that the Chinese economy will regain its growth momentum and lead the global economy. "I do believe that Chinese economy will regain its growth momentum, it's just a matter of time. The economic shocks will, in fact, help China solidify its future economic development," said Dilal, also the president of the Economic Reporters' Forum, a professional body of economic journalists in Bangladesh. The future of the Chinese economy will be a big blessing not only for Asia, but for the global economy at large," said Dilal, a planning editor at Bangladesh's leading RTV satellite broadcasting channel. Chinese homebuyers look at housing models of a residential property project during a real estate fair in Shanghai, China, May 2, 2015. [Photo / IC] Home transactions plunged in Shanghai and Shenzhen just a few days after the two cities moved on March 25 to crack down on speculators and tame the overheated real estate market, the China Securities Journal reported on Friday. Daily second-home sales in Shanghai slumped to 1,000 units after the new curbs, only about half the previous level in early March, the newspaper cited statistics from Sinyi Realty, a Taiwan-based property firm. The city's daily sold floor areas dropped to 450,000 square meters during March 28 and April 3, down 56 percent from the previous week, according to CRIC research center under E-house China, a real estate information provider. Meanwhile in Shenzhen, new home sales dipped 16 percent to stand at 652 units on an average day during the same period, with floor space falling 15.7 percent -- the fifth consecutive week of cooling after the Chinese Lunar New Year. The drop came after the two cities rolled out new restrictions to rein in surging home prices on March 25 while squeezing out speculative homebuyers. Under the new rules, local families in Shanghai will have to pay at least 50 percent down payment for a second home or a minimum of 70 percent if the house is either above 140 square meters or priced above 4.5 million yuan ($692,300) and is located within the inner core of the city. Families with no permanent residency are required to pay taxes for at least five years in a row before buying a property in the city, compared with the previous requirement of just two years of tax payments. In Shenzhen, local homebuyers are required to pay at least 40 percent of the home price as down payment for a second home, and nonlocal families can only buy one property after paying taxes for at least three years. Outlook for the housing market has obviously turned, the newspaper cited Chinese economist Ma Guangyuan, and the new restrictions have squeezed out those whose pockets are deep enough to afford homes but with no buying qualification. That may drive down home prices in the two cities, Ma added. "Housing market in the two cities will cool down in a short period, but we cannot rule out the possibility of a rebound," Chen Jie, head of the real estate research institute of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, was quoted as saying. In February, Shenzhen recorded the biggest new-home price increase of 56.9 percent year-on-year among 70 cities, followed by Shanghai's 20.6 percent, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Wang Ying contributed to the story. A photo illustration shows a $100 banknote placed above Chinese 100 yuan banknotes in Beijing in this May 10, 2013 file photo. [Photo/Agencies] NEW YORK - Former US central bank heads on Thursday called the internationalization of the Chinese currency renminbi or the yuan, "a positive thing", saying it will motivate China to further open the market. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, and former Fed Chairs Ben Bernanke, Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan expressed this view when they discussed the US economy and global monetary policy issues at the International House of New York. Regarding the issue of renminbi internationalization, Greenspan said China has made extraordinary progress and evidences show that the renminbi is getting closer to becoming a floating currency. However, he pointed out that the total amount of holdings of the renminbi in international reserves is "relatively small," so its internationalization process might still have a long way to go. Volcker thinks the renminbi becoming an international currency reflects the openness of the Chinese economy. "It's good for the world," he said. Bernanke believes renminbi internationalization will motivate China to further open its market, reform its financial market, increase liquidity and strengthen regulation, which is "a positive thing. China's teenagers have demonstrated that they can be innovative despite being in an exam-oriented education environment, according to organizers of China Thinks Big (CTB). Introduced in 2012, CTB is a spin-off of the Harvard Thinks Big competition, an annual affair that fosters the exchange of creative ideas from students across the Harvard community. One of the highlights of Harvard Thinks Big is the presentation of ground-breaking innovations by 10 professors from various fields of expertise. In China, CTB has been branded as a competition that promotes a culture of innovation among Chinese students by getting them to formulate solutions to social issues in China and around the world. "It promotes and cultivates valuable qualities that Harvard students also seek to develop, such as research ability, teamwork, academic writing skills and presentation skills," wrote a Harvard University professor in his endorsement letter to CTB. The number of participants has been on the rise every year and CTB is looking to involve high school students outside China's major cities in the coming years. "Compared to previous years, we are seeing a greater diversity of topics. This trend demonstrates an increasing willingness of high school students in China to think independently, as well as a greater consideration of their own strengths and resources to produce actionable solution plans," said Benjamin Li, one of the co-directors of this year's competition. "We hope to encourage Chinese youth to learn more about the large social issues and think about how they would go about solving these problems," said Kong Yifan, another leader of the Harvard student team. The competition this year, which ended on March 20, attracted thousands of teams across the country and 15 finalists were selected after six months of judging and two rounds of on-site oral defense and competitions. Every year, the competition presents a judging board consisting of leading scholars from China and overseas, as well as local alumni and interviewers of top universities including Harvard and MIT. Teams had to work on one of the nine issues that fall under four main categories sustainability, humanities, community and science in society and they are required to create an actionable project that can effectively address the issue. The Little Wings, a team comprising students from Beijing National Day School, Tianjin Experimental High School and schools affiliated to Renmin University of China and Beijing Normal University, won the competition with their project that seeks to make learning about menstruation interesting while correcting misconceptions about it. Shanghai High School International Division, which won the third-prize in the 2015 competition, improved on its ranking this year with a second place finish. Their team, ArchiShanghai undertook a project about the issues surrounding Shanghai's architecture. The team of seven 17-year-olds had carried out extensive research, interviewing professors and subject matter experts, handing questionnaires to local residents along the streets and taking photos of various architecture before designing a 52-page book that documents some of the most historic buildings in Shanghai and tells of their significance to society. Bill Winters, chief executive officer of Standard Chartered Plc. [Provided to China Daily] New CEO Bill Winters says the country suits its business very well Get busy living or get busy dying. When Bill Winters was invited by the chairman of Standard Chartered Plc to join the group, the London-headquartered international banking and financial services company with a 150-year history in some of the world's most dynamic markets was on the verge of a huge restructuring. Last year, Standard Chartered reported a $1.5 billion pretax loss, which was its first annual loss since 1989. Its underlying loan impairment soared 87 percent year-on-year to $4 billion in 2015. Having spent 26 years with JPMorgan Chase & Co in diverse leadership roles and holding the post of co-chief executive officer of the investment bank between 2004 and 2009, the American was parachuted into Standard Chartered and was appointed as group chief executive in June 2015. Five months later, he announced a strategic plan to "significantly re-allocate resources to change fundamentally the mix of the group toward more profitable and less capital-intensive business". Under the plan, the key areas of investment include digital banking, wealth management and renminbi services. "We are repositioning some of our key businesses around the things where we are really good. I'm happy to say that everything we are investing, in one way or another, relates to our business in China and we remain positive on China's long-term potential," he said. Recently, he spoke to China Daily about his new strategy for the group and his vision for the role of China market in the bank's turnaround. The following are edited excerpts from the interview: A logo of Standard Chartered outside its representative office in Shanghai. SHA LANG / FOR CHINA DAILY You've carried out some major management changes and are implementing a new strategy for the group. What do they mean to your business in China? Will you adjust your strategy in China? The first thing I did after I joined Standard Chartered was to put a management team in place. Our intention was to allow our local offices to operate much more autonomously and directly. We want our country managers to have the ability to really run their business locally and make the management calls on the ground, so that they are responsive to the environments in the countries in which we operate. It's just been six months since we put that strategy in place, but I think we are already seeing a real focus on what our local clients need in major markets and positioning the rest of the bank businesses around those local opportunities. We launched an initiative to make our business much more efficient, which has involved automating some processes and digitizing our business. One of our four key initiatives is to invest in the continued opening up of China. That involves a broad role of different initiativesthe Belt and Road Initiative, the internationalization of renminbi, the opening up of Chinese capital markets, and the increasing need for emerging affluent Chinese savers to have access to investment products that we may be able to identify internationally or domestically. How do you plan to grow your business here while reducing risks? China's growth is slower but it's still 6.5 to 7 percent, which is still very fast in such a large economy. The nature of Chinese growth suits our business very well, so we're very committed, for example, to the Belt and Road Initiative. We operate in nearly half of the countries where the initiative is being rolled out. We as a bank have been and always will be very strong as a financier of underlying infrastructure. That sort of initiative coming out of China is very well suited to our business strategy. The Chinese financial system is internationalizing. As this large economy opens up to the rest of the world, we expect to play a very important role in partnership with the Chinese banks and build very strong businesses together. What does the Belt and Road Initiative mean for Standard Chartered? What will the bank do to facilitate the implementation of this initiative? The Belt and Road Initiative aims to boost trade and investment growth through better infrastructure connectivity across Asia, extending to the Middle East, Africa and Europe. We estimate that official financing for the initiative could potentially top $1 trillion in the next decade. We are dedicated to becoming a leading international bank in supporting the initiative by fully making use of the bank's unique network, franchise capabilities and rich client experiences. Among the 65 Belt and Road countries joining the initiative, Standard Chartered has branches in 26 countries and has been operating in most of those markets for more than 100 years. We have a proven track record, rich experience and strong expertise to help our clients invest in the Belt and Road projects. Last year, Standard Chartered recorded the first loss in the past many years. What are your strengths that will bring you back to profit making? I'm convinced that we can return the bank to profitability because the core strengths that have been with the bank are still there. We made some lending mistakes in the years previously that we needed to address last year. On top of that, we had a very difficult environment in our markets, with slower economic growth and much lower commodity prices. The economic environment remains challenging. Commodity prices remain low and there's quite a bit of uncertainty in terms of how markets will behave. But we are convinced that the markets which we operate in China, the rest of Asia, the Middle East and Africa have good medium-and long-term prospects. In China, in which sectors are your bad loans distributed? Are there any sectors or companies that you will refrain from lending? Our asset quality in China is broadly OK. We did have non-performing loans in China but the overall scheme of our Chinese business is perfectly manageable. We had some of the same concentrations of bad loans in China that we had elsewhere commodity-related companies. We have a very large small and medium-sized enterprises) business in China and we had relatively small but broadly dispersed risks in our commercial banking business. When you think about our aggregate nonperforming loan problem, China doesn't feature as one of the trouble spots. We are not looking to tighten up our standards fundamentally in China. You mentioned about digitizing your business in China. What do you think of the evolving financial technology and Internet financing here in China and emerging Asia? The development of financial technology now allows for leapfrogging in many different ways. Of course we can be the one that does the leapfrogging or we can be jumped over, depending on how proactive we are. I think there are broadly two types of financial technology firms that are being created: First, companies that want to disrupt the existing market and displace banks. Second, companies that want to find ways to basically serve banks or partner with banks. There will be a place for both as time goes by. We'll spend something like $1.4 billion this year on technology-related investments. Most of that is financial technology even if it's entirely based on our existing systems. What impact will the fluctuations of the renminbi exchange rate have on the currency's internationalization? The volatility in markets both the RMB itself and also the Chinese equity market and the impact of that volatility on international markets is quite profound. We have to split it into a few different areas to consider. I think the Chinese authorities are starting to have a set of long-term communication strategy that avoids the kinds of surprises that we had over the past eight months. But fundamentally, we believe that the China growth story and China competitiveness in international trade remain strong, so we don't see a need for its substantial reduction in the value of the Chinese currency. Do you visit China often? And what is your impression on changes in China over these years? I came to China in 1989 for the first time as a tourist, and I've come probably every year since. I've been to many different parts of China, sometimes alone and sometimes with my family because we very much enjoy traveling to this country. China has changed dramatically over that period. From the outsider's perspective, it's an incredibly dynamic country in every way and will continue to be so. CV Age: 54 Career: 2015 onwards: Standard Chartered Plc, group chief executive 2011-15: Renshaw Bay, chief operating officer and chairman 2011: Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, advisor 2010: Independent Commission on Banking, committee member 1983-2009: JPMorgan Education: 1983: Bachelor's degree in international relations from Colgate University 1987-89: Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania Family: Married with two children People visit the stand of Alibaba during the 12th China Digital Entertainment Expo, also known as ChinaJoy 2014, in Shanghai,July 31. [Photo/IC] HANGZHOU - Fake universities and shopping malls are among the latest to be added to the long list of knockoffs, from LV bags to Adidas sneakers, that China's e-commerce giant Alibaba is fighting. The operator of China's largest online shopping sites Tmall and Taobao said Thursday a "Taobao university" and three "Taobao eco cities" had illegally used its name. The "Taobao eco cities," billed as brick-and-mortar versions of the e-commerce platform, have bedecked their websites and buildings with logos such as "Working with Taobao of Alibaba" and "Follow Jack Ma (Alibaba founder) to do e-commerce," according to the Hangzhou-based company. One project even hung banners carrying "congratulations" from Alibaba, Taobao and Ant Financial (a financial service under Alibaba) at the site. The copycat establishments are to be found in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, Linyi, Shandong province and in the province of Guizhou. Xi'an has both a training institution named "Taobao university" and an "eco city." Alibaba and Taobao have filed lawsuits against the three "eco cities," with Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court, accusing them of breaking trademark rules and unfair competition. The delayed Colombo Port City project, a plan to create a South Asian financial hub, has been given the green light, the Sri Lankan ambassador to China confirmed on Friday. Karunasena Kodituwakku, Sri Lankan ambassador to China The $1.4 billion urban complex project will cover 233 hectares adjoining the Port of Colombo. The deal was signed between the Sri Lankan government and the China Communications Construction Co in November 2013. "We feel Colombo is ideal for a South Asian financial hub," Ambassador Karunasena Kodituwakku said in an interview with China Daily. The location of the project will help connect businesses from India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Singapore and the Middle East, he said. The Colombo Port City is one of China's key projects along the 21st Maritime Silk Road. "The most important South Asian port" under the initiative "will be a port in Colombo or another port in Sri Lanka", said the ambassador. Colombo Port City will become "a high-end urban complex in South Asia concentrating industries, including finance, tourism, logistics and information technology", and the whole project will create more than 80,000 jobs, according to the Chinese Embassy to Sri Lanka. However, the Sri Lankan government suspended the project in early 2015 after Maithripala Sirisena became president. A greater environmental impact assessment to allay public concern was needed, which was "not the fault of the Chinese company", Kodituwakku said. The construction project's "incremental environmental impacts" were assessed as "minimal/negligible at the reclamation site and the coastal zone to the North and South of the site," said an environmental impact report released in December by the Sri Lankan Coast Conservation and Coastal Resource Management Department. "The project will create employment. It will create tax income and indirect opportunities for other services. ... Everybody will benefit," the ambassador said. Following the footsteps of Facebook Inc, HTC Corp, and Sony Corp, US e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc is ready to toss its hat in the virtual-reality sector. According to virtual reality (VR) news site Upload, a post on the job networking site Glassdoor read Amazon is recruiting for a senior development manager for its virtual reality (VR) program. According to games.qq.com, a game channel backed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, eight of the top ten technology enterprises that ranked on Forbes' World Largest Tech Companies list have already expanded their wings into the VR industry. Let's take a look at the eight new comers who cracked the top ten list. Some of them have yet to be confirmed. Apple Inc WSJ in a report indicated in early February, Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab based at Stanford University, made a remark regarding the engineers of Apple visiting the center during a Wall Street Journal conference in California. According to mashable.com, the lab is the first place that businesses will go before developing a VR headset -- Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Facebook even went along shortly before the company acquired Oculus. Cai Meng/China Daily Some media reports say a youth returned to China after graduating from a university abroad and decided to receive technical training in Qingdao Technical College, East China's Shandong province, so that he could get a good job. The youth's decision has sparked a debate, with some people saying it proves studying abroad is worth less while others claim the quality of education students receive in China is better than that provided overseas. The youth's decision, however, doesn't mean he failed to acquire knowledge abroad or regrets studying overseas. Before jumping to conclusions, we must understand the relationship between academic education and vocational education, and help students make informed academic choices. Undergraduate students in overseas universities generally receive academic education, which in many cases may be non-vocational and non-career-oriented. Some students decide to complete post-graduate studies abroad after graduating from a college to give full play to their academic potential. But it is also normal for students to enroll in a vocational college after completing their undergraduate studies in a university. Moreover, some courses in overseas universities actually offer vocational education, which allows students to receive vocational training during their post-graduate studies. But in China, academic education and vocational education are mixed together in higher education. Given that students studying in universities offering academic education courses are also required to have a high employment rate, educators have in recent years been training them in vocational skills. Many people, including a large number of students, suppose basic theoretical courses are useless. Some people even want universities to reduce, if not altogether cancel, these foundation courses and offer more courses that will help graduates get jobs. People tend to comp are university graduates with vocational school graduates in terms of their overall employment rate and hand-on skills, and generally conclude the former are not "successful". But such comparisons focus on universities' utilitarian orientation. In fact, university students receiving vocational education after graduation should be regarded as those choosing another kind of education to further improve their knowledge and skills, not as "unsuccessful" people. And people have no reason to believe academic education is a failure. Academic education and vocational education should be complementary. Academic education should focus on expanding students' knowledge and making them competent in their fields rather than helping them find jobs. So instead of looking at university graduates' employment rate, we should track their long-term career development to evaluate the effects of academic education. There are also people who consider vocational education inferior to university education. But neither is superior or inferior. University education and vocational education have their own distinct characteristics. And if students receive academic education in foreign universities and return to China to enroll in vocational schools, one should analyze the requirements of the job market. But if students graduate from overseas vocational schools and return to receive further skills' training in China, their overseas study experience should be regarded as meaningless. The problem is that people in China use the same criteria to evaluate all universities: diploma and employment. When public opinion emphasizes diploma, the universities become more popular because they are able to award high value diplomas. But when it comes to employment, people suppose higher education is less useful, because the employment rate of vocational school graduates is much higher. Foreign education provides multiple choices for students, who can either receive vocational education after completing their academic education courses or receive vocational education before seeking admission to a formal university. Overseas universities offer a credit accumulation and transfer system to ensure students exercise their choice freely. An ideal education system is one that enables students to make their own choice-academic education or vocational education, studying in China or abroad-according to their financial conditions, academic performances, interests, capabilities and career paths. The author is vice-president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute. Military exercise may escalate tension in region, expert says A formation of the Nanhai Fleet of China's Navy on Saturday finished a three-day patrol of the Nansha islands in the South China Sea. [Photo/Xinhua] The ongoing US-Philippines military drill, which apparently targets China, and the predicted passage of US Navy vessels near China's Nansha Islands are designed to serve US interests at the cost of China's, observers said. Manila is eager to expand its territory to China's Meiji Reef in the South China Sea, said Yang Xiyu, a research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, and the US "might use its joint drill with the Philippines to show support for the expansion." "It's highly possible that US forces will choose Meiji Reef for their passage," he added. Reuters cited an unnamed source on April 2 as saying that the US Navy plans to send ships through a passage near Meiji Reef this month, the third in a series of such challenges that have drawn sharp criticism from China. The US has conducted so-called freedom of navigation exercises in recent months, sailing near Zhubi Reef, part of the Nansha Islands, and Zhongjian Island, part of the Xisha Islands. The scale and number of vessels sailing near the reef are not likely to be lower than the previous two challenges undertaken by US destroyers, Yang said. Yin Zhuo, director of the People's Liberation Army Navy's Expert Consultation Committee, said Washington is using the South China Sea issue to endanger Beijing's ties with its neighbors and to draw Japan, the Philippines and Australia into a collective containment of China. The move will lead to escalated tensions in the region, he said. A small contingent of Australian troops will join the exercises, while Vietnam and Japan have sent officers in an observer capacity. "Eager to undercut China's mounting regional influence, some specific nations take delight in sowing seeds of discord between China and rival claimants, and boosting their military presence and patrols to thwart China in the name of safeguarding freedom of navigation," Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary. About 8,000 US and Filipino troops have been engaged in the annual, 11-day military exercise since April 4. A flagship Disney store in Shanghai. Scalpers are cashing in on the huge demand for admission on the opening day of the Shanghai Disneyland park on June 16 by asking several thousand yuan for a ticket. Customers snapped up the first tickets issued for the opening day in just five minutes on March 28, temporarily crashing the website. Some who failed to secure tickets turned to scalpers. The park offers regular and peak-priced tickets, with regular ones costing 370 yuan ($57) and peak ones for high-demand dates selling for 499 yuan. Admission will be 499 yuan during the grand opening period from June 16 to 30. Vendors on Alibaba Group's e-commerce platform Taobao and the micro-blogging website Sina Weibo are selling tickets for the opening day for more than 1,000 yuan, with some even costing 3,899 yuan, according to media reports. A scalper from Shanghai, named "Li Zhenwei" on Alibaba's secondhand goods trading platform, is selling tickets for June 16 for 999 yuan, claiming to have bought 10 tickets with his wife from Alitrip, one of Disney's authorized ticket-selling websites. Another scalper at Taobao.com is selling tickets for June 16 to 30 for 580 yuan. Shanghai Disney Resort said, "We take various measures to prevent ticket scalping and the sale of fraudulent tickets....Guests should only purchase tickets from authorized official channels." Measures have been taken to combat scalping at the Shanghai park. For instance, tourists can buy a maximum of five tickets by giving an ID card number and must enter the park with their ticket confirmation and the identification document used to buy the tickets. When entering the park, the holder of the identification document should do so with everyone in the group. Liu Simin, deputy director of the China Society for Future Tourism Studies, said it is not surprising that scalpers have entered the market in view of the demand, adding that this also indicates that demand is strong among tourists. Wang Zhuoqiong contributed to the story. The new parking lot in Beijing's Tongzhou district has 64 spaces and is located near a hospital. Yang Kejia / China News Service A multistory parking lot that can be accessed by mobile phone app is expected to open in Beijing before the end of the month. Similar parking lots may be introduced across the city to relieve serious traffic congestion and a severe shortage of parking spaces, according to the operator. Ma Limin, chairman of Beijing Easy Parking Static Transport Investment Co, a private company in Beijing, said the lot provides 64 parking spaces and is located near a hospital in Tongzhou district. It has passed an initial inspection by the district authority, Ma said. Compared with traditional multistory lots, the new one is fully automatic and drivers can complete the process of locating parking spaces, parking their cars and retrieving them by accessing a mobile phone app developed by the company, Ma added. Few of the multistory lots in Beijing are operated automatically, causing difficulties for drivers using them, according to media reports. There were 2.9 million parking spaces for motor vehicles in Beijing by the end of 2014, but 3.8 million were needed, according to transportation authorities in the capital. For drivers of electric cars, which are increasing rapidly in Beijing, each parking space at the new lot is equipped with a charging pole, Ma said. Fees at the lot will be similar to or even lower than those at nearby lots, at about 4 yuan (60 US cents) an hour during the day, Ma said. "We are considering negotiating with government departments in other districts to build more such lots in Beijing, so that we can provide 500,000 parking spaces," he said. There were more than 5.5 million motor vehicles in Beijing by the end of last year, according to the transportation authorities, and severe traffic congestion and a lack of parking spaces has been a serious problem. Chen Yanyan, a professor of transportation studies at Beijing University of Technology, said, "Such intelligent multistory parking lots can be useful in many places such as old residential areas, where it is difficult to build underground lots. "If the new lot is well received, it may be adopted in some other areas of Beijing." Chen also said the supply of parking spaces in crowded central urban areas should be restricted to discourage the use of cars to ease serious congestion. Beijing is planning to introduce a blacklist of travel service providers that could include a hotel where a woman recently claimed she was assaulted, if it's found to be at fault. The woman, a tourist from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, who is being referred to by the alias Wanwan, told police that a man followed and attacked her at the Yitel Hotel in Beijing's Chaoyang district. The alleged assault happened at about 11 pm on Sunday, and the woman claimed several passers-by and a hotel employee did nothing to prevent it. Zhang Jing, an official at the Beijing Commission of Tourism Development, said the alleged assault was a public security issue and that it would be best to wait for the results of a police investigation before commenting. The tourism authority in Chaoyang is also involved in the investigation. "If the hotel made mistakes or there were flaws in its security measures and services, it will be held accountable," Zhang said. "We are drafting an overall plan to build a credibility system within the tourism industry in Beijing. After it gets approval, there will be a blacklist of unqualified travel agencies, scenic spots and hotels." Based on an industry regulation released by the China National Tourism Administration in July, travel service providers - including travel agencies, scenic spots and other tourism-related providers-found to have operational problems or to have violated tourists' interests, would get a black mark against them, and that information would be publicized for two years. After the alleged incident was reported on Sunday, Wanwan received a flood of calls from the media. However, she only accepted interview requests from three media outlets on Wednesday and said she was disappointed with the hotel's apology statement in response to her complaint. "The hotel only tried to communicate with me after my posts online attracted huge attention on Tuesday, and it only wanted to eliminate the negative influence and paid no attention to my feelings after the attack," Wanwan told China Central Television. "I came to Beijing as a tourist, so I could not have had anyone specifically targeting me for revenge. I chose the hotel because I believed in its brand. And this has made it even harder for me to accept how it has dealt with this incident." Wanwan said she is not seeking financial compensation from the hotel. "I simply want to defend my rights and I hope the hotel will pay much more attention to its management to avoid similar cases in future," she said. Cao Yin contributed to this story. The second unusual death of a government official in less than a week - a presiding judge at a court in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region - has drawn wide public attention, but detailed information about the incident and others like it in the past has not been released. Mi Jianjun, 55, who worked in the criminal division of the Intermediate People's Court in Tongliao, fell from the seventh floor of his office building on Wednesday. Court spokesman Li Fengyu confirmed the death on Thursday, saying an investigation is underway. Li didn't provide more information about the incident, and no detailed personal information about the judge was available as of Thursday evening. "He was declared dead at the scene," said an emergency rescue worker who requested anonymity. The body was sent to a funeral parlor. On Sunday, Tang Tiansheng, head of the Food and Drug Administration's Guilin bureau in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, died after falling from the eighth floor of the hospital building where he was a patient. Tang was admitted to the neurology department on April 2. That case also remains under investigation. Business magazine Caijing cited its own rough statistics showing there were 52 suicides among 99 unusual deaths of government officials between December 2012 and February 2015. Of the other deaths, 34 people were reported to have fallen from buildings or drowned. Little public information on the causes of those deaths is available. The magazine cited Xu Yan, a psychology professor at Beijing Normal University, as saying government officials are prone to depression when they encounter problems in climbing the ladder of officialdom in China and are left with few career options. But there are many reasons for depression among government officials, just as there are for every other person, said Ren Jianming, a professor of public administration at Beihang University who researches anti-corruption and governance. So it's hard to associate their deaths with anti-corruption efforts as rumors do, he said. Wei Jie, a lawyer at Jieqiang Law Firm in Beijing, said the deaths of government officials usually draw wide public attention because they are public figures, especially if the officials were involved in legal disputes or disciplinary cases. Officials of four counties in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region show the fly swatters they received as gifts from the audience during a TV series on March 27. Provided to China Daily A TV series in which officials are questioned about hot issues has turned its focus this year to corruption and poverty alleviation. Nanning TV in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region plans to broadcast 10 episodes from March to December. On March 27, top officials in four counties were questioned and given fly swatters as "gifts" from the audience. "The fly swatters mean that unreasonable behavior by some grassroots officers has been found in the four counties, and the public hoped they would realize their mistakes and prevent corruption," said Zhou Jun, producer of the program, the Dianshi Wenzheng, or Questioning Officials on TV. Since November 2012, China's leadership has conducted a nationwide crack-down on "tigers", the high-ranking corrupt officials, and "flies", the lower-ranked officials. "Our new program warns grassroots officers and suggests that their bosses improve supervision by sending them such gifts," Zhou said. In February, disciplinary supervisors found officers in the four counties' government departments playing games, reading novels, watching videos, drinking beer or studying the stock market during work time. "They recorded the behaviors on video and decided to expose it in our program," he said. "It's the first time that our show has covered issues related to corruption and disciplinary supervision. Officials were usually questioned about their ignorance in dealing with administrative affairs in the past," Zhou said, adding that previous topics focused mainly on people's livelihoods, and issues such as food safety. Thanks to the questioning on TV, 89 administrative problems involving 39 local government departments were solved in 2015, a statement said. "The program has become a bridge between residents and officials, playing its role in government supervision, as well as increasing interaction between the public and the government," he said. Media questioning has also been seen in Hubei province. Yang Weidong, a law professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, applauded the questioning on TV, saying that the exposure can motivate officials to improve. But he said that such questioning should be also regulated, "as how to put officials' responses into practice is more important than the show." Shanghai residents who fail to visit their elderly parents regularly may have their names added to a credit blacklist that could make it difficult for them to apply for jobs and loans, and even impact their eligibility for welfare. The move is the latest the city has made to encourage people to frequently visit elderly parents and ensure they are cared for, both physically and mentally. The recently amended Regulations on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly in Shanghai, which will take effect in May, was published on Wednesday. The regulations reaffirm that family members who live apart from aged parents have a responsibility to visit them regularly and ensure they are cared for. They also specify that offspring have an obligation to visit parents who live in nursing homes, and that facilities have the right to urge them to do so if they have not made an appearance for a month. Official statistics show that the number of registered permanent residents in Shanghai who are older than 60 reached 4.36 million last year. It was the first time in China that more than 30 percent of a city's population was older than 60. Nationally, the latest figures show the proportion of over-60s was 15.5 percent in 2014. Luo Peixin, deputy director of the law office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, said seniors who do not get regular visits can take relatives to court. "If the court verdict mandates that the children meet their obligations and they still ignore the requirement, they will find their details recorded in the public credit information system, which will be a barrier for them in social and economic activities, such as opening a bank account or applying for a free admission card at Shanghai Library," Luo said. Other convictions - such as for hit-and-run, drunken driving and even sneaking free rides on the subway - could also earn people an entry on the credit blacklist. "More and more people reaching old age are parents who have a single child, so it becomes even more important for the child to regularly check on the parents' situation," said Zhou Wenshu, a 29-year-old Shanghai resident. Statistics from the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau show that more than 80 percent of residents who have turned 60 since 2013 are parents of an only child. The number of elderly residents who lack regular family contact is also continuing to rise. Usually, information stored in the credit system is kept for seven years, but some observers have suggested that the black marks for repeat offenders should remain longer, to act as a more powerful deterrent. The requirement on offspring visits to elderly parents was enshrined in law in China in July 2013. A 77-year-old woman in Wuxi city, Jiangsu province, became the first in the country to use the law to sue her child for failing to make regular visits. The court responded by ordering the woman's daughter and son-in-law to visit her at least every two months and to make extra visits on national holidays. Screen capture of the video. [Photo/IC] The man who reportedly attacked a woman in a four-star hotel in Beijing on April 3 has been arrested, said the official SinaWeibo account of Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau on Friday. He was detained in Xuchang, Henan province, at about 9:00 pm on Thursday, after a joint operation between local and Beijing police force. The suspect, surnamed Li, aged 24, is from Henan province, according to the Weibo account. Further investigations are ongoing. On Wednesday, a woman claimed in an online post that she was assaulted at a hotel and the employees did not help her. The alleged incident and reportedly indifference attitude of the staff triggered public anger and calls for more protection of women. In the surveillance video of the hotel hallway, a man can be seen dragging the woman as she looked for her door key. Several people, including a hotel staff member, are then seen passing without coming to her rescue. The employee can be seen only verbally asking the suspect to stop the assault instead of physically intervening. Finally, some guests came to the woman's aid. But while they are calling the police, the man ran away. Most of internet users expressed sympathy for the woman and anger at the hotel and called for more protection of women. The incident raised huge concerns over public security and anger over indifference of public and authority. Beijing police said on Wednesday that they are conducting a "thorough investigation" into the case. The hotel has apologized and promised to tighten security. A female giant panda stays on a sharptooth oak, about 15 meters above the ground, in the Foping Nature Reserve in Northwest China's Shaanxi province. [Photo/sxdaily.com.cn] It takes a male panda 10 days to win the heart of a female, according to observations made at a nature reserve in northwest Chinas Shaanxi province. Staff at Shaanxi Foping National Nature Reserve took pictures of wild pandas mating after tracking them for a number of days during the annual breeding season, which occurs in March and April. On March 26, they discovered a male courting a female who was spurning his advances by hiding in a tree, about 15 meters above him. She stayed in the tree without eating while the male kept vigil at its base, never straying further than 50 meters away from the object of his affections. After 10 days of waiting, the male pandas was finally rewarded on April 4 when the female came down from the tree to mate. Reserve staff have witnessed pandas mating three times so far this breeding season. According to a report on the animals issued by the provincial government last March, there were 345 wild pandas in Shaanxi provinces Qinling Mountain area, which was a 26.4 percent increase from the previous survey. Giant pandas are an endangered species that are only found in China and the Shaanxi reserve, located in the provinces Foping county and established on Jan 1, 1980, is designed to protect the animals as well as the forests and other wildlife. Covering a total area of 35,000 sq km, the reserve has within its boundaries 1,580 plant and 265 animal species, including the giant panda, golden monkey, takin and leopard which are listed as first-class national-level protected wild animals. Migrant workers Zhang Yaozong (L) and his wife play with their son at their home in Zhangzhuang village, Hebei province, March 29, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Fifty percent of farmers responding to a survey said they have no plans to move to towns and settle down in urban areas, reported 21cn.com on Thursday. According to the study released by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) on Wednesday, only about 33 percent were positive about the idea of relocating to cities. Around 17 percent expressed neither negative nor positive view. The farmers cited many reasons for not wanting to move to cities. Age was cited as the biggest factor, with the majority, 20 percent, saying they were too old to work in towns, while the necessity of taking care of parents and children came in second place (18%), followed by farm work (10%) and unfamiliarity with urban lifestyle (9%). In China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), the urbanization rate will reach 60 percent in 2020, up 4 percent than 56.1 percent in 2015. However, 66 percent of respondents said they plan to go back to their hometown after a certain age. The report said if the migrants go back to rural areas after a certain period then that means the urbanization drive has not achieved its goals and that impedes the progress of urbanization. In recent years the number of migrants going to towns and looking for jobs has fallen. The growth rate of migrants looking for jobs in towns dropped to 0.4 percent in 2015 from 5 percent in previous years. Dang Guoying, a researcher at Rural Development Institute of the CASS, said many factors will influence the urbanization rate, including household system, social security, real estate price, minimum wage and land property right. To promote migration of farmers to urban areas, the report suggested reform of the urban and rural household system and improvement in the education system in rural areas. One of China's oldest universities celebrated its 120th anniversary on Friday, and the 60th anniversary of it moving from Shanghai to Northwest China's Xi'an, Shaanxi province. Xi'an Jiaotong University, or Xi'an Jiaoda as it is colloquially known, has educated more than 230,000 graduates over the past six decades, one third of whom went on to work and live in western China. This was the aim of the university's relocation by the State Council in 1955, to help speed up the development of the country's west, according to Wang Shuguo, Xi'an Jiaoda's president. Liu Yandong, vice premier of the State Council in charge of science and education, sent a letter of congratulations to Xi'an Jiaoda on the occasion of its anniversary, highlighting the positive contributions that it has made to the development of the country and the west of China. Chen Xuejun, 97, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor at Xi'an Jiaoda's power and energy institute, recalls leaving Shanghai with his wife when the university relocated. "We left our hometown in August 1956 and felt proud to have the chance to practice national strategy," Chen said. From a young teacher to an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chen overcame countless difficulties on his path to building China's first engineering research institute of thermal physics in western China, and achieved a number of scientific research results that won State-level awards. Like Chen, all the teachers and staff at Xi'an Jiaoda work toward building the university and, in turn, helping the country develop. In May, Xi'an Jiaoda launched the Silk Road University Alliance, which features 124 colleges and universities from 32 countries and regions, working together to build a higher education cooperation platform that will service the construction and development of the countries and regions along the ancient trading route. Then, in October, the university signed an agreement with the Education Ministry and Shaanxi provincial government to build a scientific innovation town in Xixian New Area, a State-level urban and industrial development zone between Xi'an and its neighboring city Xianyang, to further promote the school's education and scientific research and train new talents. Friday's celebration attracted a number of high-ranking officials, principals and representatives from 104 universities and 26 countries, including: Yukio Hatoyama, former Japanese Prime Minister, president of the East Asian Community Institute and honorary professor of Xi'an Jiaoda; Aurora Gonzalez, vice minister of Cuban Ministry of Higher Education; William Philips, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics; Berry Marshall, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine and foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; and Konstantin Novoselov, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics. Zhang Maizeng, Party secretary of Xi'an Jiaoda, said the university would continue to contribute to the development of western China, serve the country and conduct world-class research. BEIJING -- The Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) rolled out a series of measures to guarantee school safety across the country on Friday. Education Minister Yuan Guiren asked schools nationwide to promote safety education among students, conduct emergency exercises regularly and tighten safety checks to eliminate potential hazards, at a national conference on school safety. Kindergartens, primary and secondary schools should recruit enough security guards, Yuan said, ordering schools authorities to launch campaigns to clear safety loopholes on the campus and surrounding areas. Deputy public security minister Huang Ming vowed to crack down on school-related crimes, as well as increase safety inspection on school buses. First PrizeHarmony/ by Per Marquard Otzen (Denmark) The International Cartoon Competition on Community of Common Destiny for All is co-hosted by China Daily and the China Journalistic Caricature Society and organized by China Daily Website (www.chinadaily.com.cn) and News Cartoon Website (www.newscartoon.com.cn). The organizing committee of the competition received more than 2,000 cartoons from more than 20 countries, including China, the United States, India, Denmark, Turkey, Bulgaria and Cote d'Ivoire. The judges selected one First Prize winner, two Second Prize winners, three Third Prize winners and 80 Runner Up Prize winners. The collection of cartoons is a showcase of all the prize-winning works of this competition. It aims to help readers see the importance of the harmonious development of mankind through cartoons. The theme of the competition is "the community of common destiny for all". The community of common destiny is a concept proposed by President Xi Jinping, emphasizing that a country should take into consideration other countries' concerns while seeking its own interests and should promote the common development of all. This is because there is only one earth and one world for mankind, and hence we should promote awareness of the community of common destiny for all. The concept also stems from the idea that we are all descended from the same common ancestors. And although countries have different or even contradictory national interests, religious beliefs, ideologies and social systems, we all live in and share the same world and should try our best to coexist peacefully. In the face of crisis, we should choose cooperation over confrontation and common interest over conflicts, for a better future for humanity. Official Website: www.newscartoon.com.cn The following is the complete list of winners: First Prize Per MarquardOtzen - Harmony -Denmark Second Prize (two winners) Song Chen - World Convergence - China Zhou Xiyue - Beauty - China Third Prize (three winners) Daryl Cagle- Destiny - US Mowfak Hussin Galy - ONE MOTHER - US Sun Shenying - The Children Left Behind - China BEIJING -- Chinese people use their ID cards for everything from travel and banking to marriage registration. For many, the document also displays their least flattering photo. Authorities around the country have started catering to image-conscious citizens by helping them take ID photos worthy of the social media age. In late March, the public security department of north China's Hebei province announced on its Sina Weibo account that residents who apply for or renew their ID cards can take their own official selfies. In the past, the photos were taken by police officers. The new system allows people to sit in front of a screen, press a remote control button, review the pictures and choose a favorite. If they are not satisfied, they can try again. Hebei is not the only place in China to tackle the ugly photo problem. Shenzhen police have authorized professional photo studios to take ID pictures for residents, and police in northeast China's Jilin province worked with a software company in March to develop a photo editing program for government-issued IDs. He Peng, deputy director with Jilin's Exit and Entry Administration, said the new software can tailor the photos to meet requirements for ID cards, passports, and other official documents. "Police officers can help people shoot an attractive and approved photo in three minutes or less," He said. China has been issuing its second-generation ID cards, featuring computer chips and digital encryption, nationwide since 2005. The cards have validity periods ranging from 10 years for people between 16 and 25 years of age to 20 years for people aged 26 to 45, and even longer for older people. In other words, a bad photo can stick around for decades. Humor and hassle According to a Chinese Internet joke, if you want to know whether a person is really beautiful, you should check his or her ID or passport photo. "My new photo looks much better than the old one," said Zhang Nan, a Jilin University student, who recently renewed a second-generation ID card. Authorities have strict requirements for ID photos: the full face and ears must be visible, hair must not fall over the eyes, dark clothes should be worn, and no heavy makeup is allowed. "Due to the strict requirements and my fear of poker-faced police officers, the photo on my ID card is the ugliest one I have ever taken. It is good news that I now have the final say," said Weibo user "sssmu." An online survey showed that more than 71 percent of 419 respondents thought the photos on their ID cards, student cards and passports were ugly, and 45 percent admitted that the photos have led to hassle when flying, checking in to hotels or taking exams. "A teacher even refused to let me into class for an English exam because he thought it was not me after checking my ID card," said microblogger "Shuangbianhuyanzhuo." The unsightly photos are the subject of many funny stories. In order to get a good photo, one college student from Jilin's Yanji city repeatedly visited her local police station claiming to have lost her ID. "It is strange for a person to always lose an ID card. The girl finally told us that she thought her photos were too ugly and just wanted to take new ones," said police officer Li Jiaming (pseudonym). In another case, a woman from east China's Jiangsu province asked police officers to photograph her 32 times when renewing her ID card until she was satisfied. "The main function of photos on ID cards or passports is to be able to confirm someone's identity, so administrative departments usually treat cosmetic concerns as secondary," said Tian Feng, a sociologist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. However, higher expectations for photos among the public have led government departments to provide better service. Song Wanlai, a Jilin-based police officer, said it is reasonable for people to ask for attractive ID photos. "As long as the photos meet the requirements, we are willing to help people show a prettier face by updating our photo equipment and training ourselves," said Song. Daniel Ma, CEO of Shanghai YeDao. Provided to China Daily While people were debating about the rise of an "Internet starlet economy" in China, Daniel Ma and his partners were busy searching for ways to cash in on the phenomenon. In 2014, Ma and two business partners Chief Technology Officer Huang Chao and Vice President Hilda Ye co-founded Shanghai YeDao Inc in Shanghais Pudong district and the company has since been connecting social media stars with Chinese retailers looking to promote their products. Shanghai YeDao currently has 300,000 registered foreign users and 200 social media starlets. "At the beginning, we facilitated deals with female cyberstars from North America and Europe. We would mail clothes and cosmetics to them every month for free and all they need to do is to wear the clothes and makeup, take photos and post them on social media platforms like Instagram, along with a web link to these retailers," said Ma, CEO of Shanghai YeDao. After graduating from an MBA program jointly sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Russian government, Ma began his foray into Internet-related businesses in 2007. "In the past two years, more and more business starters have recognized the great opportunities provided by cross-border e-commerce in China. However, I found that such single-sided trading does not bring any actual business volume to Chinese companies," said the 30-year-old. When he realized that several Chinese companies were already in the cyberstar business and had signed up most of the popular Internet starlets, Ma decided to do things in a slightly different way instead approach social media stars in foreign countries. According to Ma, Western stars, when compared to their Chinese counterparts, pay more attention to personal style and are often more willing to create and develop their own brand. Because of this, Shanghai YeDao will soon be collaborating with these foreign stars to launch their own product lines that will be designed and produced by Chinese companies. Ma expects his team to generate up to 300 million yuan ($46 million) by the end of this year through this initiative. A technician demonstrates how to use a drone in farm production. A technical college in Guangzhou is establishing a new specialty to meet the growing demand for feishou, or drone operators, in prosperous Guangdong province. If there isn't enough time to complete preparations by the school term that starts in September, the program will begin enrolling students next year, said Lu Chusheng, deputy dean of Guangzhou Electromechanical Technician College. "More than 3 million yuan ($463,000) has been invested in major facilities and updated equipment for the establishment of the new specialty so far, while another 5 million yuan will be used to bid for a piece of land, covering an area of more than 1,000 square meters, for teaching drone flight," Lu said. The drone specialty is expected to become a signature subject at the college and attract a large number of high school graduates in the years ahead, since it should be easy for students to find jobs upon graduation, Lu said. About 50 students are expected in the first class. Drones are being used in an increasing range of industries in the Pearl River Delta cities and the entire Guangdong province. In Shenzhen alone, more than 700 drone manufacturers are registered, Lu said. Unmanned aircraft are widely used in fighting crime, fire control, rescues and agricultural industries. Liang Rui'er, deputy director of the college's mechanical and electrical equipment industry division, said the new drone specialty is being established in cooperation with Beijing's Beihang University, which will send professors and instructors to give lectures. "Students will be able to design, manufacture and operate drones when they graduate," Liang said. Yang Weiqun, a professor from Beihang University who will participate in the teaching, said, "The drone specialty will have great potential in China, as the country needs a large number offeishou." About 3,000drone operators were trained on the mainland last year, compared with between 30,000 and 40,000 in the United States, he added. According to Yang, operating a drone that weighs less than 7 kilograms and flies at an altitude of no more than 120 meters at a distance of less than 500 meters doesn't require a license. Otherwise, operators need a license granted by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of China. Guangzhou Electromechanical Technician College is expected to become the first to establish a drone specialty on the mainland, though many drone training centers have been set up across the country, Yang said. zhengcaixiong@chinadaily.com.cn President, visiting Swiss leader establish strategic innovative partnership spanning multiple sectors Chinese President Xi Jinping (L, front) holds a welcoming ceremony for Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann before their talks in Beijing, China, April 8, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] China and Switzerland signed five documents on Friday to boost cooperation in areas including work safety, science, innovation and low-carbon city construction as the two countries declared the establishment of their innovative strategic partnership. President Xi Jinping and visiting Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann witnessed in Beijing the signing of two memorandums of understanding, between the Chinese cities of Guangzhou and Chengdu and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation as part of a Sino-Swiss low-carbon city project. Calling Schneider-Ammann "an old friend of the Chinese people", Xi recalled his meeting with the Swiss president in June when he came to China for the signing ceremony of the China-proposed Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. Xi told his Swiss counterpart that the two countries should work together to establish innovative platforms for enhancing cooperation between enterprises, colleges and institutions. Regarding the growth in trade between the two countries, which last year celebrated the 65th anniversary of their diplomatic ties, Xi said, "The daily trade volume is now 26 times what it was annually in the first years after we established diplomatic ties." Switzerland is China's seventh-largest trade partner in Europe, and trade volume between the two reached $44.3 billion last year. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) shakes hands with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Beijing, China, April 8, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] China and Germany will give impetus to further cooperation in upgrading the manufacturing sector by embracing the latest automation, data exchange and manufacturing technologies, Premier Li Keqiang said while meeting with visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday in Beijing. "I hope both countries will make every effort to promote the linking of 'Made in China 2025' and Germany's 'Industry 4.0' strategy and make breakthroughs in cooperation on high-speed trains designed for third-party markets to stimulate economic growth," Li said. "Industry 4.0", a strategy Germany set in motion in 2013, has been regarded as a fourth industrial revolution leading the way for manufacturers around the world. China put forward its "Made in China 2025" strategy last year to transform from rough manufacturing to more value-added production. The two strategies have a common goal of improving industrial production. Taking part in the second round of the China-Germany Strategic Dialogue on Diplomacy and Security on Friday, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germany would like to increase its cooperation with China on high-speed trains and infrastructure. "The two countries should strengthen communication and expand cooperation to cope with the increasing challenges of the global economy and various difficulties for Europe," Steinmeier said. Also on Friday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said upon meeting with Steinmeier that Germany is welcome to contribute to the development of western China. As one of world's top three manufacturers, Germany employs leading manufacturing technologies, especially in the fields of automobile making, new materials and renewable energy, said Zhao Junjie, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "Germany can be a good model for China, which is trying to become a top manufacturer within a decade. China should expand the introduction of German technologies, based on the principle of mutual benefit, to fulfill its goal to be one of the top three manufacturing economies by 2035," Zhao said. Steinmeier is making his second visit to Beijing since becoming foreign minister in 2013, and recent years have seen increasingly intensive interactions between top leaders from the two countries. In December, Wang and his counterpart met in Berlin for the first round of the China-Germany Strategic Dialogue to reinforce the two countries' "all-around strategic partnership". In September, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to participate in the G20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Wang Xu contributed tothis story. Editor's note: With the International Principal Forum on Environmental Education and the China Youth Environmental Forum slated for April 23 in Beijing, Jiang Nanqing, the representative for the United Nations Environment Program's China division, talked with China Daily about UNEP's efforts in educating youths about the environment. Could you tell us about the program's worldwide education for environmental protection? UNEP believes that young people, empowered with the right knowledge as well as courage and optimism, can make a difference, which is the best investment we can make. We realized that there is no need to have a formal environmental education but that it should be embedded everywhere within our daily lives. Today, our world has been brought closer because of social media. If you have access to the Internet, you will find many websites connecting yourselves with the world. UNEP has a network called TUNZA for young people. If you go to our website, unep.org, and look for TUNZA, you will find the network of thousands of young people and leaders being invited to a global biennial conference, where community leaders exchange ideas about what to do on environmental issues and their communities where new business products are being developed. What are the goals of UNEP's environmental education for youths and what effect will your efforts have on their development? UNEP is paying a great deal of attention to youth education on the environment -this is the kind of energy that UNEP wants to foster. First of all, we want to help people to understand what the challenge is. We want them to have the best possible information. Young people can be much more convincing if they are aware of the facts about what is happening to our world. Their greatest strengths are their energy, vision and commitment. They do not want to take "No" for an answer - this is the great strength of young people. They know intuitively what is right and wrong and they are willing to become committed to do something about it. For UNEP, it is also important to show that young people may not necessarily hold high political offices, but that everyone can make a difference in their homes, their schools or in the workplace. Just by bringing in new ideas, they can influence the people around them - that is how changes start. What are the environmental programs initiated by UNEP that are targeted at youth education in China? In China, UNEP has collaborated with partners, including the Beijing Environmental Education Center, to translate and localize the UNEP/UNESCO YouthX-change Guidebook. UNEP's flagship report, the Global Environmental Outlook, has a version specifically for youth. The Elion Foundation has sponsored the translation and publication of it in Chinese and we have organized a summer camp in Kubuqi Desert in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region based on the report. It aims to inform children about changes in the environment, why they are happening and how to find solutions to these issues. We have invited kids to attend the Kubuqi Summer Camp and visit our office. ... When they told me that the summer camp has changed their attitude to the environment and the support from their parents, I was very pleased. What is the key to sustainable consumption? How do you evaluate China's performance in this regard? The key word for sustainable consumption is decoupling, which means the economic development has no relationship with resource consumption. Some cities in European countries, such as Germany, are making headway in decoupling. Compared with Europe, China is at the beginning stages ... and the awareness of consumers on sustainable products has yet to be realized. With increasing concerns about health and living standards, we are seeing more people buying green foods. But the knowledge about and tools for sustainable consumption, such as labeling and standards, are not widespread. Consumers have little access to and information about these issues, and these are what we are doing to make a change. What benefits will promoting the sustainable consumption concept among youth in China bring to the country and the world? China is one of the biggest countries and a switch in children's lifestyles would be critical to the future. This will bring fundamental changes to the world and we hope that this generation will take care of nature and the environment. My expectations for the upcoming forum is that it will enable young children to open up their eyes and understanding about the relationship between environment and our lives. We hope that children will focus on their daily lives, their consumption, water, waste and energy. This is all related with our sustainable development goals. Children will gain a better understanding about what solutions are the right ones and how to solve these problems. (China Daily 04/08/2016 page24) Night view of Ningbo. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn] The opening ceremony of the 2016 East Asia City of Culture event was held in Jeju, South Korea on Thursday. Delegations from Ningbo, Nara-ken and Jeju which were selected as East Asia's three cities of culture attended the ceremony. The event started at 7 pm and representatives from the three selected cities gave a speech before the beginning of performances. Videos of each city were also featured. Chinese representatives staged Ningbo opera Snail Girl, or Tian Luo Gu Niang. Yu Jie, deputy general manager of the Ningbo opera company, noted that Snail Girl is a household folktale in the eastern Zhejiang province. "It has been very popular among the locals since the 1970s. The reason why the company brought the story to Jeju is that Koreans are also familiar with it that will narrow the cultural distance between the two nations," said Yu. The troupe translated the story into both Japanese and Korean to give the audience a better understanding of the opera better. Ningbo delegations also showcased four intangible cultural heritages: lacquer wares, Ningbo cannitille embroidery, Xiangshan paper-cutting and Xiangshan fish rubbing (a traditional art to print the image of a fish on paper by using ink or pigment). The performance of four transmitters Chen Long, Qiu Qunzhu, Xie Caihua and Lu Shenggui attracted a lot of visitors. Some 20 photos reflecting the life and culture in Ningbo were also displayed at the event. Intimate Transgressions features works by artists from home and abroad. Its highlights include Angel (above) and Paradise Lost. Photos Provided To China Daily An ongoing exhibition at the Hangzhou Library shows violence against women during war through the multimedia artworks of contemporary artists from home and abroad. Intimate Transgressions runs through April 16 in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, and features 43 artists from China and nine other countries, including Japan, Israel and Ireland. Since last year marked the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the project was initiated in New York by Sam Chen, president of the Center for Asia Pacific Affairs, an NGO that documents the brutal abuses of Chinese women by Japanese forces during the country's invasion of China. At that time, large numbers of Chinese women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military. The CAPA decided to present the subject through contemporary art and asked Irish artist Fion Gunn to put together the New York show in September. Gunn says the project isn't a one-time event but a conversation that will likely evolve. After the debut exhibition in New York, Intimate Transgression was presented at Beijing's 798 art hub in October. "We brought the exhibition to Hangzhou because Hangzhou is a major center of art," says Hu Yuanbo, art director and a curator of the Hangzhou show along with Gunn. As an artist with ties to the city, Hu was able to pull in interesting artists from Hangzhou. "It's also great to involve local audiences, because they know the local artists, and it's great that they can see them in an international context," Gunn tells China Daily on the sidelines of the Hangzhou show. Nineteen local artists are part of the exhibition. Steamed crab and sticky rice are believed to enhance the fruitiness in Hennessy VSOP to elevate the complexity of cognac taste. Liu Zhihua / China Daily A recent cognac and food tasting in Xiamen was the second event in a campaign aimed at "rediscovering Chinese tastes" organized by the French luxury-liquor giant LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The French company launched the promotion in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in December to spotlight the variety of dining experiences that can be shaped by the chemical reactions between cognac and different Chinese foods. While the opening event in Guangdong paired cognacs with signature Cantonese dishes, the Xiamen event matched the company's premium French brandies with Fujian cuisine. Celebrated chefs and food critics were invited to create a set menu of seven dishes for the event, in collaboration with five prestigious Fujian restaurants in Xiamen and Fuzhou. The distilling and aging of cognac produces a high-alcohol drink with rich flavor that interacts differently with foods of different flavors and temperatures. "In China, especially in the south, people like to drink Hennessy cognac with a meal, instead of after a meal, and that inspired us to initiate the campaign," says He Wei-sheng, an established food critic and a principal designer of the menus. Chinese food, one of the most complex cuisine systems in the world, offers many opportunities to explore how its different flavors interact with cognac, He explains. Before last month's tastings in Xiamen, He and the team had tried all of the signature Fujian-style delicacies to select the most representative dishes to pair with the spirits. They found that foods made with dried spices, such as jiangmuya, or duck with ginger, and prawns with satay sauce, were able to intensify and change the flavor of Hennessy XO when eaten between sips of the cognac. They also found that foods that contain warm oil and are rich in meat, such as stewed Hakka-style chicken, will make the cognac rounder and smoother. Foods such as fotiaoqiang (Buddha Jumping Over the Wall) - with strong but not pungent flavors and foods that contain fermented substances, and creamy soups go well with Hennessy VSOP, elevating the taste and flavor of the cognac to a higher level of complexity. Seafood, which is important to both Fujian and Cantonese cuisines, but which often has a slightly sweet taste in Fujian cuisine, can intensify the umami flavor of Hennessy Paradis, and bring out the brandy's fruitiness and floral fragrance and a refreshing aftertaste. The changes in cognac flavor and taste, when consumed with Fujian cuisine, offer a unique dining experience, He says: "Same food, same Hennessy, but when they meet, they become different." When selecting dishes for the tasting, the team looked for traditional and time-honored delicacies. Beyond meal courses, local snacks and street food, such as tusundong, or seaworm jelly, are also great food choices to go with cognac, he adds. Southern China, including Fujian and Guangdong provinces, is the traditionally important market for Hennessy cognac, where people are apt to consume cognac at all kinds of business occasions, private celebrations, and family gatherings. The "rediscovering Chinese taste" campaign will come to Beijing and Shanghai soon, in an effort to allow more Chinese families to discover the spirit, according to Frederic Noyere, the brand's managing director in China. Brussels Airport partially reopened on Sunday, 12 days after it was hit by Islamic State attacks, with tearful staff applauding the first departure and an initial trickle of passengers undergoing strict new security checks. The key travel hub has been closed since two men blew themselves up in the departure hall on March 22 in coordinated blasts that also struck a metro station in the Belgian capital, killing a total of 32 people. A Brussels Airlines plane bound for the Portuguese city of Faro became the first plane to take off around 11:40 am. "We're back," Brussels Airport chief executive Arnaud Feist said after watching the plane, decked out with Belgian artist Rene Magritte's trademark birds and clouds, take to the skies. The restart of the airport has been hailed as the beginning of a return to normal for a traumatized country, but the shadow of the attacks loomed large. Two big white tents were serving as temporary check-in facilities to replace the blast-hit departure hall, and passengers were asked to come three hours before departure to allow time for tight new security checks. The first several dozen travelers to arrive on Sunday were met by heavily armed police and soldiers on the access roads to the airport. There was also a strong security presence inside the tents where passengers walked through metal detectors and had their bags screened before checking in and being allowed to enter the main building. A father dropping off his son and a group of friends for the Faro flight was positive about the changes. "This is the safest airport in the world right now, isn't it?" he said. 'We can overcome this' Loukas Bassoukos, a 20-year-old IT student waiting for his flight to Athens, said it felt "a bit weird" to be among the first to return to the bomb-hit airport. "So many people died here," he said. "But I think we can overcome this. I think we slowly have to start trusting the security controls." Psychologists were on hand to assist any passengers overcome with emotion. The number of flights will be stepped up quickly in coming days. Feist said he expected the airport to start running normally again from late June or early July. AFP - Reuters Users of social-networking app WeChat on Tuesday found their feeds full of blurred pictures, many accompanied by flirty captions. [Photo/IC] THE PERSONAL information of more than 200,000 infants and children aged from 1 to 5 years can be bought at the price of only 32,000 yuan ($4,920) in Jinan, capital of Shandong province in East China. As well as the children's names, the information includes the parents' phone numbers and the families' address. Beijing News commented on Thursday: The leaked information is not only a violation of privacy, but it also potentially puts the children at risk of child traffickers and pedophiles. Even though an amendment to the Criminal Law in 2009 makes the selling of personal information punishable by imprisonment and a fine, such infringements have continued and even intensified. Unfortunately, there are huge benefits to be made by selling personal information, and therefore the risk of three years imprisonment or criminal detention, plus a small fine, seems worth taking to some people. In Singapore, breaching the personal data law can result in a fine of up to S$1 million. In this light, our legislation needs to add a little "weight" to the penalties that such criminal activities incur. Beingmate milk powder is sold in a supermarket in Lianyungang city, jiangsu province. [Photo/IC] LAST SEPTEMBER, police in Shanghai municipality found that several suspects produced over 17,000 tubs of counterfeit milk powder bearing the labels of well-known domestic brands, which were sold in seven provinces and municipalities. Beingmate was recently reported to be involved in the scandal. It is time to strengthen the food safety regulation system, comments China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang: After the 2008 scandal, in which excessive melamine was found in domestically produced milk powder, authorities said they were strengthening their supervision over dairy products. This new scandal belies their words. Behind the large quantity of counterfeit milk power produced there must be a complete illegal industry. Had the watchdogs performed their duty even a little, how could such an illegal industry flourish? The China Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday that the false milk powder "meets food safety standards" but violates intellectual property rights. On Thursday they said what they meant by that was consumers should not panic even if they have bought the false milk. Maybe they mean to reassure consumers, but by saying this they did the opposite because their words were easily misunderstood. They need to take action; that is the only way to prevent panic. With an increasing number of sales channels, false products are a growing challenge. If the law enforcers continue to neglect their duty, consumers will continue to lose trust in the domestic dairy industry. It is hard to believe such illegal activities could survive in any society with the rule of law. The law enforcers must perform their duty instead of waiting for problems to be exposed. Stricter regulations are also needed, so that people can trace the producers of the milk powder they give their children. US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Madison, Mississippi March 7, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] As a close observer of several US presidential elections, I have found the 2016 race bemusing in both predictable and unpredictable ways. The most baffling is that so many Americans say they support Hillary Clinton when various polls show that the majority think she is less honest and trustworthy compared with her rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Honesty was everything for Americans when I travelled across the United States in the summer and fall of 1998 when the only topic was the lie President Bill Clinton told about Monica Lewinsky. What was also unforeseen was billionaire candidate Donald Trump, who seemed no more than a comedian just months ago, is still one of the Republic an front runners. But that is perhaps not that surprising given the US news media's obsession with Trump over the past months and the amount of cover age he's received. What is entirely predictable is that China continues to be the bogeyman. With former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's 2012 vow about naming China a currency manipulator from "Day One" still ringing in my ears, Clinton and Trump have both railed against China as a currency manipulator despite the fact this is less an issue than in 2012. Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers noted recently that it was a mistake for the US to push for China's exchange rate liberalization in a hope for the yuan's appreciation while market forces are pushing down the currency. Nevertheless, US politicians like to fool average American voters, many of whom have little knowledge of the world, especially when their prime source for information is cable news networks. Clinton and Trump talked about how the US has been ripped off by its growing economic relations with China. They are willing to say anything to please voters who lost manufacturing jobs due to globalization, and more to automation. Clinton's back tracking on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, whose standards she called "golden" as secretary of state but which she now opposes so as not to offend powerful trade unions, reflects that motivation. Yes, globalization has helped achieve the China economic miracle in the past three-plus decades, including lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. But this can mostly be credited to the Chinese government's policy of reform and opening-up to the world. Former US ambassador to China Stapleton Roy, whose wisdom I often admire, reminds people that trade is a form of cooperation. And few US consumers are willing to pay much more in department stores or Walmart just because something is made in USA. It's against the basic economic principles of comparative advantage. Besides consumers, US corporations have benefitted enormously from trading with and investing in China. If US politicians are bothered by made in China, they should come to China to see the numerous US brands from GM and Ford cars to Coca-Cola and KFC. Many Chinese would probably like the US to take back some of their investments relocated to China to take advantage of the lax environmental regime. I hope Clinton and Trump are ready to roll out red carpets for them when they return or adopt measures to make it more difficult for them to leave the US for developing nations. In various TV ads, Clinton has boasted of her record in criticizing China's human rights, especially women's rights, but she did not mention the women's rights situation in many of the US' allies. A Newsweek/Daily Beast study in 2011 found that China ranked 23 among 165 countries and regions for women's rights, an impressive record for a developing nation. In the categories of justice, health and education, China scored higher than the US. The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com The city of Zhanjiang in Guangdong province has launched a new travel card allowing residents to take public transport and rent bicycles with a single swipe, as a part of its "footprint city" initiative, according to the local government. The concept of "footprint city" was first put forward in 2014 and is unique to Zhanjiang as the city aims to reduce carbon emissions by encouraging its residents to use public transport or ride bicycles instead of clogging the roads with cars. One of the central aims of this policy is for buses and bikes to account for more than 30 percent of all transport in Zhanjiang. As of the end of March, Zhanjiang has built 472 service stations, providing 10,000 public bicycles for locals to rent, more than that of similar systems in London and New York. "With the help of public bicycles, I don't need to drive my car to work any more. I just use the card to take a bus and then to rent a public bicycle to my working place. It's not only convenient but good for my health," said a local surnamed Zhang. Statistics from the city's public transportation company show that the average use of the rental bicycles reaches up to 23,000 times every day, with the company issuing 71,444 cards to locals since the system went into operation in January 2015. "Zhanjiang should be a city on foot instead of on wheels," said Zhanjiang Mayor Wang Zhongbing, "City planning should focus on bus and bicycle lanes instead of wider lanes for cars." During the past two years, Zhanjiang has transformed 32 city streets, expanding their lanes for buses and bicycles. The Zhanchuan Avenue, which runs from the South to the North of the city, has spared 40 percent of its width for buses and bicycles. The city plans to transform 300 kilometers of streets into slow lanes for buses and bicycles, relocating the functions of some urban streets to provide more transport convenience for locals in the upcoming few years. The city of Zhanjiang is stocked with 10,000 public bicycles to provide transport convenience for locals. [Photo/zhanjiang.gov.cn] PERTH -- Australian Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester on Friday visited Chinese ship Dong Hai Jiu 101 in Fremantle, which has been involved in the operation in search of the Malaysian Airline MH370 since February this year and will resume the search after being equipped with a key search equipment. The Chinese ship is now at the port of Fremantle, about 20 km southwest of Perth, where Phoenix International's Remora III remote operated vehicle (ROV) is being mobilized. The ROV will be used in the recovery of the lost SLH-ProSAS-60 towfish. In a statement issued after his visit to the ship and meeting with Chinese Consular General Lei Kezhong, Chester thanked the Chinese government for providing the vessel to join the search operations for MH370. "The ship will embark on a mission in the next few days to recover the SLH-ProSAS towfish which detached from the vessel during its previous search effort," Chester said. "I wish the crew well in both the recovery mission and their ongoing efforts to locate MH370 in the 120,000 square kilometre search area." The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, on behalf of Australia, is leading the search for MH370. More than 95,000 square kilometres of the seafloor in the 120,000 square kilometre search area have been searched so far. In the past few months, several pieces of debris have been found along the western coast of Africa, including in La Reunion, Mozambique and South Africa. At least three pieces had been confirmed to be from MH370. Experts said that the fact that MH370 debris is discovered in Africa confirms the theories about underwater currents and drift modelling and is consistent with the analysis which leads to the current search in the southern Indian Ocean. Apart from Dong Hai Jiu 101, two other vessels, Fugro Discovery and Fugro Equator are also involved in the search operation. Teenagers hold candles to mourn victims of the Rwanda Genocide, at the United Nations Office at Nairobi, in Kenya's capital Nairobi, on April 7, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] KIGALI - Rwanda on Thursday paused once again to mark 22nd anniversary of the 1994 genocide in which more than one million people, mainly Tutsi and moderate Hutus, were killed. A series of activities were taking place across the country, with the main commemoration being held at Kigali Memorial Center, where Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and his visiting Tanzanian counterpart, John Magufuli, laid wreaths on graves in which more than 250,000 victims were buried. Later the two presidents lit the Flame of Remembrance, beginning the 100 days of mourning. The Flame of Remembrance symbolizes the courage and resilience of Rwandans over the last 22 years. The commemoration period is locally known as Kwibuka, Kinyarwanda word for remembrance. During the 100 days of remembrance, guests are invited to leave a message in the memorial's digital guestbook as a way to remember the victims and show support to survivors. "During Kwibuka22, we invite visitors to pay their respects by touring the memorial and laying a flower on the burial place. In Rwandan culture, we light a fire as we mourn lost loved ones and we will honour this tradition by lighting the Flame of Remembrance on April 7, 22 years after the Genocide," said Honore Gatera, Manager of the Kigali Genocide Memorial in a statement. More than 500 guests, including international leaders, dignitaries, survivors and their families, and representatives of survivor organizations gathered at the center, and marked the day with moments of silence. "We come here every year but we shall not tire as long as I'm still alive," said a woman survivor who gave her name only as Jackline, whose husband perished in the genocide. "Memories are still fresh, it's like it happened yesterday." Speaking at the commemoration activities, Jean Damascene Bizimana, the executive secretary of the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide, called on Rwandans and friends of Rwanda to join the fight against genocide ideology. "Genocide ideology should be relentlessly fought because genocide perpetrators and their backers have continued to distort the truth around it," Bizimana said, adding that education is key to fighting genocide ideology and denial. Apex Technology Co Ltd, a Chinese maker of cartridge, toner and printer components, is reportedly interested in Lexmark International Inc, a US manufacturer of computer printers that is in the midst of transforming into a software company. Apex, based in Southeast China's Guangdong province, is in talks to acquire Lexmark, Reuters reported on Thursday. Apex is working with a US investment bank and already has the backing of some Chinese banks, the report said, adding that there was no certainty of a deal. Ivan Feinseth, an analyst with Tigress Financial Partners LLC, believes it would be a good move for Apex to buy Lexmark. "Lexmark has a lot of value in its software business, and it's just taking time for the company to transition from a printer manufacturer into a higher-value software company," he told China Daily. "We print less and read more on tablets and phones, although printing is not going to go away entirely." In a research note, Feinseth wrote that Lexmark is poised to reap the benefits of its transition in the coming years. "They are positioning themselves to benefit from trends in important growth markets. Specifically, (Lexmark's) healthcare software meets an unmet industry need by consolidating all of a patient's image records such as forms, CT scans, MRI images, into one accessible space." Last October,Lexmark hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc to explore strategic alternatives,including a sale. Since 2010, the company has been acquiring software assets to lessen its dependence on the competitive printing business and shift to providing services and software in an increasingly digital environment. A year ago Lexmark acquired Kofax Ltd for about $1 billion to bolster its enterprise software business. "Lexmark believes that as part of another company, this is a better way for the transition to proceed," Feinseth said. If Apex does acquire Lexmark, the transaction could face a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency group that assesses the national security impact of foreign purchases of a US business. "On the surface, I would say no," Feinseth said, when asked if a CFIUS review could deter an Apex-Lexmark combination. "But you never know." paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com ANKARA - Turkish and Israeli officials have met in London and agreed to finalize the deal in the next round of talks for the normalization of diplomatic relations, the Turkish foreign ministry said Friday. The Turkish and Israeli negotiating teams, headed by under secretary of the Turkish Foreign Ministry Feridun Sinirlioglu, Israeli prime minister's special envoy Joseph Ciechanover and acting chairman of the National Security Council General Jacob Nagel, met in London on Friday, a written statement released by the Turkish foreign ministry said. "The teams made progress towards finalizing the agreement and closing the gaps, and agreed that the deal will be finalized in the next meeting which will be convened very soon," said the statement. Bilateral ties between the two countries, once close, collapsed in 2010 over the killing by Israeli marines of 10 Turkish pro-Palestinian activists who tried to breach the blockade on Gaza Strip. Following the assault, the two countries demoted the level of their diplomatic relations, as Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador in Ankara on September 2011. Last December, Israeli and Turkish officials reached a preliminary agreement to normalize relations, including returning ambassadors to both countries, as Israel agreed to pay 20 million U.S. dollars as compensation for Mavi Marmara victims. Ankara also insists on condition for ending the Gaza blockade. Xie Xiaoyan, China's first Special Envoy for the Syrian Issue, made his media briefing debut in his new capacity on Friday in Beijing. [Photo by Zhang Yunbi/CHINA DAILY] Xie Xiaoyan, the first government Special Envoy for the Syrian Issue, made his media briefing debut in his new capacity on Friday, saying that China's involvement will lead to a greater contribution of "wisdom and solutions". China's decision to appoint its first special envoy to the role will "better promote peace talks, more actively contribute China's wisdom and solutions", Xie, 62, said. China will also "more effectively reach out to other parties for better coordination and communication, and to continue play a constructive role in seeking a final and proper settlement of the Syria issue", he added. "It is because China upholds an objective and fair stance on the Syria issue that there are increasing calls among the international community for the Chinese to play a greater role," he said. China is committed to a political settlement of the Syria issue, the cessation of violence, and resolving disputes through launching an inclusive political process, dialogue and negotiation, Xie said. "China has made unremitting efforts in this regard.'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei confirmed Xie's appointment on March 29, and noted that he is a veteran diplomat with a vast trove of experience. "He was once the Chinese ambassador to Iran, the Chinese ambassador to Ethiopia and head of the Chinese Mission to the African Union. He knows Middle East affairs very well and will excellently fulfill his duties," Hong said. Xie Xiaoyan, China's first Special Envoy for the Syrian Issue, made his media briefing debut in his new capacity on Friday in Beijing. [Photo by Zhang Yunbi/CHINA DAILY] Xie Xiaoyan, China's Special Envoy for the Syrian Issue, stressed the need for an approach that "advances a political settlement and counterterrorism in parallel" at a media briefing in Beijing on Friday. "The efforts to counter terrorists and extremists within Syria will also facilitate the political settlement of the Syria issue. It is also a good thing for counterterrorism endeavors in the wider region," Xie told China Daily at the briefing. The international community should look at the larger picture of counterterrorism measures in Syria, work closely together and unify efforts, Xie suggested. Xie, 62, noted that peace talks are the only viable way to solve the Syria issue. "This is what we learned from the past five years of turmoil in Syria, and this is also what we learn from the Middle East hotspot issues," he said. The international community should continue to support mediation efforts by the UN Secretary-General's envoy for Syria, he said. The world should also push the Syrian government and the opposition to "meet halfway, seek common ground and eliminate differences, and find a solution through dialogue and negotiation that addresses the concerns of various parties", he added. The envoy also proposed measures be undertaken to achieve a comprehensive and durable cease-fire. "Killings only intensify hatred, and make Syrian society more divided. Violence for violence's sake will lead to nowhere," he said. Currently, the agreement on the cessation of hostilities endorsed by the UN Security Council is generally honored, and Xie called it "important progress made in seeking a political settlement of the Syria issue". "Various parties should commit to peace and stability, consolidate what has been made possible by the cease-fire so as to create more favorable conditions for a sustainable and durable cease-fire,'' he said. On consolidating and expanding humanitarian relief, Xie suggested that the international community should step up efforts to expand the pilot area for aid access to truly alleviate the sufferings of the Syrian people. "At the same time, we should look at the problems in the process of humanitarian relief in a sensible manner and avoid turning the humanitarian issue into a political one," he added. Containers from China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) are pictured at a port in Shanghai, China, in this February 17, 2016 file photo. [Photo/Agencies] Athens Greece sealed a deal to sell the shares of its biggest harbor to China COSCO Shipping Corporation Ltd. on Friday, concluding a sale that will give the Chinese shipping behemoth control over one of its key thoroughfares into Europe. Cosco pledged to make good on promises to drive more investment into the port and the country. "Piraeus will be like an Argo," a reference to the ship of ancient Greek mythology, Xu Lirong, president of China COSCO Shipping Corporation Ltd., said at an event in Athens after the signing with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. "Let's let it open the sails and bring back the golden fleece." Stergios Pitsiorlas, president of Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund which brought the long-delay deal to a conclusion earlier this year, said the signing was "an important agreement and an important moment". Cosco consolidated its hold over the Greek port in January, agreeing to pay 368.5 million euros for a 67 percent stake. Cosco will buy a 51 percent stake in Piraeus for 280.5 million euros and will acquire the additional stake in the next five years for 88 million euros on completion of the terms in the shareholder agreement, including investments. Greece's state asset sales fund, which handled the sale, said at the time the entire value of the Cosco agreement would come to some 1.5 billion euros, taking into account purchase price, investments, dividends and income from an existing concession agreement. Chinese investment in Piraeus is seen a key plank of China's One Belt, One Road policy, which envisages creating the 21st century land and maritime equivalent of the Silk Road. Since the Chinese shipping behemoth started container operations in 2009, traffic has surged at Piraeus, making the harbor one of the fastest-growing ports in the world. Premier Li Keqiang called Piraeus China's gateway to Europe in a visit to Greece in June 2014. Xu, who mentioned he had worked in Piraeus 10 years earlier, called the signing "a historic moment". The Piraeus sale is also seen as a yardstick in Greece's lacklustre state asset sales program, a key revenue-raiser tied to the country qualifying for billions in rescue funds from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund. The government and its creditors from the European Commission and International Monetary Fund have been locked in talks for weeks over the right mix of budget measures that would allow the release of additional bailout funds. Tsipras was originally scheduled to attend today's event but was forced to change plans due to the needs of the negotiations, Pitsiorlas said. More importantly, Cosco's supremacy at Piraeus is thought to be a prerequisite to unleashing more Chinese investment in Greece, where unemployment has soared and foreign investment dried to a trickle amid six years of political turmoil and concerns of financial collapse. Greek officials expect Chinese investment in projects such as a major freight and logistics center on the outskirts of the Greek capital and a new airport planned for the island of Crete. Cosco is also thought to be among suitors for the country's train operator, Trainose. The Piraeus sale is the first state asset sale the Tsipras government can claim since the leftist prime minister came to power a year ago, vowing to halt privatizations and tear up the two bailout agreements that forced higher taxes and cuts in wages and pensions on Greeks. In July last year he was forced to accept a new, 86 billion euro bailout to keep Greece in the eurozone. Cosco has seen five separate Greek premiers, not including caretakers, since it won the license to operate Pier II in 2008 for 30 years at a cost of 490 million euros. The deal has become a regular campaign issue as Greek politicians seek votes from union workers, such as those in the Piraeus docks, unhappy about austerity measures. MOSCOW -- Pilots of the FlyDubai passenger jet crashed in southern Russia last month were unable to avoid the accident in difficult weather conditions, despite their high qualification, investigators said on Friday. "According to the available information, the involved pilots were holding valid pilot licenses and other pertinent papers, and had undergone required training with sufficient flight experience," said the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), a civil aviation supervisory body for ex-Soviet states. Flight 981 of the Dubai Aviation Corporation (FlyDubai) en route from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, to southwestern Russia's Rostov-on-Don, crashed on March 19 when landing, killing all 62 people on board. Preliminary flight data analysis revealed that the crew was approaching to land manually with disconnected autopilot in difficult weather conditions with low clouds, rain, mist, strong wind and severe turbulence. After two landing attempts failed due to abrupt changes of wind direction and force, the pilots tried to climb again and set the engine to takeoff thrust, said the committee. However, at a height of about 900 meters, there was a "simultaneous control column nose down input and stabilizer 5-degree nose down deflection", resulting in abrupt descent with negative vertical acceleration, the committee said in a statement. "Afterwards, attempts of the crew to recover did not allow the avoidance of bumping against the ground," it added. The IAC said that the investigation was ongoing at its facilities to reproduce the circumstances of the accident with airline pilots and test-pilots from Russia, the United States and the UAE. The committee said the transcript of two hours of cockpit voice recorder data was nearly completed, and it planned to clarify the content with international investigators. Mansai Conner, 21,connects with a dog on the opening day of Dog Cafe, a coffee shop in Los Angeles, California, where people can adopt shelter dogs. [Photo/Agencies] A canine-themed cafe has opened in Los Angeles where people can pet, play with and even choose to adopt dogs. Sarah Wolfgang, founder of The Dog Cafe, had considered opening such a place in Los Angeles since 2014. But the idea first occurred to her while volunteering at a shelter in South Korea when she was 14. She thought about opening a cafe where guests could come and meet adoptable dogs. "The Dog Cafe is going to put a spin on the way people adopt, by totally reinventing the way we connect with homeless dogs. We want to provide you with the opportunity to see these highly adoptable pooches in their true light," Wolfgang told LAist, a Los Angeles-area news and information website. "And even if you're not looking to adopt, you can still enjoy all of the sloppy kisses you've ever wanted," she added. Wolfgang checked with the Los Angeles Health Department, which told her such a cafe would be legal as long as the areas where patrons buy coffee and pet the dogs were kept separate. In Shanghai, a dog-themed cafe was opened in 2014 and has since been frequented by dog lovers. More than 10 people-pleasing dogs surround each visitor as soon as they walk into the shop, which has a good reputation on dianping.com a Chinese equivalent of restaurant review publisher Yelp. However, cats seem to be more popular than dogs among those wanting to open a pet cafe in China. Based on information available on the Internet, there are cat cafes in Handan, Hebei province; Shenyang, Liao-ning province; Nanjing, Jiangsu province; and Fu- zhou, Fujian province. Tian Xiaofei, an office worker in Beijing who has two dogs, said she loves the idea of a dog-themed cafe and hopes that one might open in Beijing. "I know there was at least one dog cafe in Beijing several years ago, but it closed for reasons I don't know," she said. "It would be great if there was such a place in Beijing, because we dog lovers can meet up there and make friends and share our joy and experience. Moreover, our dogs will have a happy time as they can meet other dogs." BAKU -- Azerbaijan and Armenia on Friday agreed to observe a cease-fire after clashes lasted for almost one week, leaving the truce in tatters. Both sides of the conflict agreed to observe the ceasefire along the contact line effective from 3 am local time, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday. The Azerbaijani and Armenian armed forces conducted a search for the remains of soldiers who were killed during recent clashes, said the statement. The sides conducted search operations with the mediation of the OSCE and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the contact line of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region have reportedly flared up overnight Saturday with the two countries' defense ministries blaming each other for triggering the escalation. The clash lasted several days and left more than 70 soldiers and civilians dead before a ceasefire was agreed in Moscow on Monday. Also on Friday, Azerbaijani Foreign ministry spokesman Khikmat Hajiyev told media here on Friday that Azerbaijan will hold talks on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's settlement only with Armenia. "Armenia occupied the Azerbaijani territories, so Azerbaijan will hold talks with Armenia and not with Nagorno-Karabakh separatists," he said in a statement. He added that Baku has always welcomed the establishment of contacts between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of the Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has governed its own affairs with military and financial support from Armenia. Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war over the mountainous territory in the early 1990s in which thousands were killed on both sides and hundreds of thousands displaced. (Photo : Reuters) China's Shandong Ruyi is set to take over France's SMPC labels after acquiring a majority stake in the company. Advertisement China's Shandong Ruyi is buying Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company's 70 percent share in the French luxury brand SMCP Group, KKR announced on Thursday. A joint statement released by the three companies confirmed that Shangdong Ruyi has agreed to become the sole negotiator to purchase a $1.5 billion share in SMCP. It further said that KKR, which purchased a majority stake in SMCP in 2009, will now hold a minority interest, while SMCP's founder and management will reinvest together with Shandong Ruyi. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The terms and conditions stipulated in the deal were not divulged. JP Morgan is the exclusive underwriter of the debt linked with the transaction, according to Forbes. The recent deal will boost the fashion line's ambition to expand internationally, particularly in Asia as it will take advantage of Shandong Ruyi's expertise. Yafu Qiu, Shandong Ruyi's chairman, said the agreement is a "significant step for Shandong Ruyi in our continued endeavor to become a leader in the fully integrated textiles and fashion business, both in China and globally." SMCP, which owns the brands Sandro, Maje and Claudie Pierlot, currently runs over 1,100 outlets in 34 countries across the globe. The brand is categorized under the accessible luxury sector, with tag prices above fast-fashion chains like Zara and H&M, but below elite names such as Louis Vuitton. Last year, the company reported a 33 percent sales growth at 675 million euros ($766 million). Meanwhile, Philip Guarino from the consulting firm China Luxury Advisors said that this is a huge chance for expansion in Asia, explaining that "customers are more educated and demanding than ever before, more value conscious, and mixing and matching price points in their wardrobes in a very Western way." Advertisement TagsShandong Ruyi Technology, SMPC, JP Morgan, Fosun International, Guo Guangchang, KKR, Fashion (Photo : Getty Images) Isaac Newton's newly discovered manuscript will help scholars understand how alchemy really works. Advertisement Isaac Newtons handwritten manuscript was recently discovered via an auction. The mid-17th-century document had been in private hands for most of the 20th century. The Chemical Heritage Foundation, a non-profit based in Philadelphia, has obtained Newtons manuscript through an auction in February of this year. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The document contains the recipes that the renowned physicist hoped to use in his alchemic endeavours. Among its contents are the instructions needed to create a sophick mercury, which is a substance needed to make the legendary Philosophers stone. Published report from National Geographic stated that the English scientist copied the recipe by hand from a text owned by American alchemist George Starkey and added his own notes to the back of the document, which experts said should provide clues as to how he interpreted the complex and enigmatic instructions used by alchemists. "The significance of the manuscript is that it helps us understand Newton's alchemical reading -- especially of his favorite author -- and gives us evidence of one more of his laboratory procedures," said James Voelkel, curator of rare books at the Chemical Heritage Foundation's Othmer Library of Chemical History. Alchemy is also known as chymistry during the 17th century. It was centered on the belief that metals were made up of several different compounds, including a mercuric or sulfuric principle, and altering one of these principles would alter the metal itself. Still, a lot of alchemists also believed that using the Philosophers Stone would allow this to happen automatically. In addition, Newton has written other unrelated notes on the distillation of iron ore on the back of the manuscript. It can be considered as laboratory notes of a process Newton had tried or was thinking of trying. The physicist would always turn over a manuscript and write on the blank page on the back, according to Voelkel. Science historian William Newman of Indiana University said that the newly acquired manuscript will help scholars understand how alchemy influenced Newton. (Photo : Getty Images) US military officials have been gagged by President Barack Obama on issues related to China and the disputed South China Sea as Washington continues to negotiate with President Xi Jinping on a whole gamut of issues. Advertisement US President Barack Obama has issued a gag order on the military leadership over China's aggressive posturing in the South China Sea saying Washington's ongoing negotiations with Beijing on a wide range of issues are being hampered by heated rhetoric from military officials. Washington reportedly placed the gag order on military officials before the start of the nuclear security summit last week which was attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement US Pacific Command chief Navy Admiral Harry Harris has been the most vocal among the military hierarchy against China's activities in the disputed South China Sea. But, according to the Navy Times, President Obama has directed him to not talk about China, preferring the tactic of negotiations and dialogue over actions. Gag order The gag order was reportedly put in place for President Obama to be able to negotiate with Chinese President Xi privately on a range of important issues without being disrupted by his military officials' media statements and interviews. Harris allegedly wanted a direct confrontation with China, but President Obama has repeatedly turned down his proposals opting for a more diplomatic and peaceful tack in dealing with Beijing. Harris is reported to have proposed an all-out military operation with ships and aircraft near Beijing's artificial islands in the South China Sea to prevent possible Chinese expansion of the islands that may encroach within the territorial waters of the Philippines. Aggressive plans Harris's and the other officials' aggressive plans against China do not sit well with Obama and White House officials who are desperately trying to take the diplomatic route and negotiate with Beijing. The US military leadership's heated statements about China in the media are disrupting the process of negotiations the Obama administration is currently conducting with Beijing. "They want to get out of office with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of cooperation with China," retired Navy captain Jerry Hendrix told Navy Times. Amid the gag order, military officials have defended Harris's statements against China's aggressive posturing in the South China Sea saying these were in direct response to Beijing's continuous building of artificial islands and misleading the people and the media by declaring that the islands were purely for civilian purposes. The officials said China has since militarized the islands and has branded the US freedom of navigation exercises in the disputed South China Sea as "violations of Chinese sovereignty." . Advertisement Tagsgag order, US military officials, Navy Admiral Harry Harris, Beijing, President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi jinping, Washington, china (Photo : Getty Images) Vietnam's new leadership has instructed China to remove its oil rig stationed near the Paracel Islands. Advertisement In a new development in the South China Sea dispute, Vietnam on Thursday demanded that China removes its oil exploration rig near the Paracel Islands until both countries negotiate on an agreeable demarcation line. "Vietnam resolutely opposes and demands that China abandon drilling plans and immediately withdraw the Hai Duong 981 oil rig from this area, and that it not take additional unilateral actions that further complicate the situation," Vietnam's Foreign Minster spokesman Le Hai Binh said in a statement. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Binh said that Vietnam has lodged its protest with Chinese embassy in Hanoi. However, there has not been any official statement from China regarding Vietnam's demand. Hanoi's demands come a day after Vietnam witnessed change in its top leadership. Nguyen Xuan Phuc was sworn in as new Prime Minister of Vietnam on Thursday, and he pledged to protect the country's sovereignty at all cost. Tension has mounted between Vietnam and China recently over a maritime dispute. The Vietnamese and Chinese coast guard have clashed recently as the latter accuses Chinese fishermen of crossing into its territory. Vietnamese officials on Monday announced that they seized a Chinese vessel after it allegedly intruded into their maritime territory last week. The operation led to the arrest of a Capitan and two sailors, all of whom are Chinese citizens. Oil Rig Incident Escalated Tension Between China and Vietnam in 2014 In May 2014, China stationed oil rig HD-981 very near to Parcel island, which Vietnam claims as its exclusive economic zone. China's provocative move immediately led to tension between the two countries, with deadly riots and protests across Vietnam. Several Chinese-owned factories and companies were burnt down during the nationwide unrest. Paracel Islands is one of several islands in the highly disputed South China Sea. It is claimed by three countries - China, Vietnam and Taiwan. Several other islands and reefs of South China Sea are also marked with overlapping claims by China and several of its smaller neighbors. Advertisement TagsVietnam, china, South China Sea, parcel islands (Photo : Getty Images.) In a bid to further improve economic relationship with China, Australian Prime Minister will carry a strong business contingent of 1,000 business leaders when he visits China next week. Advertisement Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will lead a strong business contingent of 1,000 business leaders to China next week, as Australia seeks to further deepen its economic ties with China. This is the biggest business contingent led by an Australian leader to China, highlighting the importance of the economic cooperation between the two countries. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement China is Australia's largest trading partner and is also one of the largest foreign investors in Australia. China's steady transition from an export-based to consumer-based economy also presents a plethora of economic opportunities for Australian companies. "As China continues its transition towards a more consumer-led and services-based economy, more and more Australian businesses are finding new markets and new opportunities in China," Turnbull's office said in a statement. However, over the years relationship between Australia and China has hit a rough patch with regards to the issue of South China Sea. Turnbull recently criticized China's military built up in South China Sea, saying that it will prove counterproductive. Australian troops on Monday also joined the annual military war game near South China Sea, which is being jointly hosted by Philippines and America. The military war game is aimed at sending a strong response to China over its increasingly assertive actions in the disputed maritime territory. According to sources, Malcolm Turnbull will certainly take up the issue of the South China Sea during his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week. Experts claim that Australia's foreign policy over the South China Sea has undergone a paradigm shift, with Canberra increasingly taking a "pro American stance" in the issue. Advertisement Tagschina, Australia, South China Sea, Australia and China (Photo : Uriel Sinai/Getty Images) Because of identification problems, two Chinese couples who had identical twin grooms and brides went to doctors asking for cosmetic surgery to help them identify one another. Advertisement While having a twin has its perks, it has downsides too seen most especially when a pair of twins marries another pair of twins. Thats what happened to two pairs of Chinese identical males and females. Chinese twin brothers Zhao Xin and Zhao Xun, from a village near Yuncheng city in Shanxi province, dated and eventually married Yun Fei and Yun Yang, identical twin sisters from a village 10 kilometers away from theirs, reports news portal Chinanews.com. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The pairs married each other during the recent Lunar New Year celebrations, with Zhao Xun marrying Yun Yang and Zhao Xin marrying Yun Fei. A union between two sets of twins is called a quarternary marriage, reports Today. Both pairs of twins have various similarities that make them so alike, including their voices. These similarities make it difficult for people, even their families, to distinguish one from another. During their wedding day, both pairs even had to ask each other whos who to avoid making errors. Although each married the right one, identification problems continued showing up after the marriage. One such problem is caused by mistaken identity: one of the brothers went out for an after-dinner walk and returned home to find his brother holding his wifes hand. Of course, he was mistaken. Because of this, the couples asked doctors at a hospital in Shanghai to make some slight cosmetic adjustments to their faces so that it would be easier for them to distinguish one another. If that wasnt weird enough, heres another twin-marrying-another-twin story, this time with much more grandeur in terms of doubles. A wedding held in Kerala, India last 2015 had two identical pairs as well, reports Today. More than that, the marriage had more than just twin brides and grooms in the ceremony: twin brothers Dilraj and Dilkar Varikkassery reportedly married twin sisters Reema and Reena, and their marriage was officiated by priests Reji and Roji, who were twins too. In addition to that, the flower girls and page boys (equivalent to ring bearers) were also identical twins, and all of these pairs dressed alike. All in all, there were seven pairs of twins present in the wedding ceremony. Advertisement Tagsquarternary marriage, Twins, Lunar New Year (Photo : Getty Images) China does not want the South China Sea dispute to be discussed at the upcoming G20 summit it will host in September. Advertisement China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi revealed on Friday that Beijing wants the upcoming G20 Summit to focus on economic issues and not territorial disputes. Experts have intepreted this as a veiled warning to the international community not to raise the South China Sea issue at the high profile summit. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "If certain countries, because of political aims, insert concrete issues like problems left over from history or disputes over territory or sovereignty into the G20, not only will this not benefit the issues' resolution, it could impact upon the regional situation and stability and is inadvisable," Wang told reporters. China will host this year's G20 Summit in September where several global leaders including US President Barack Obama will gather to address geopolitical issues confronting the world. Wang expressed unhappiness over the fact that the upcoming G7 Summit - to be held in Japan in May - will be focusing on political issues, including the South China Sea dispute. "We hope that the G7 can be like the G20 and concentrate on economic and development topics countries of the world are the most focused on," Wang said. Last month, China requested Japan not to raise South China Sea issue at the G7 Summit, but Tokyo outrightly rejected Beijing's demand. In recent months, China has come under severe criticism from its neighbors and the international community over its assertive actions in the South China Sea. China is claiming a large part of the energy rich South China Sea, but faces competing claims from five of its small neighbors - Brunei, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam. Advertisement Tagschina, G20 summit, South China Sea Nandamuri Balakrishna has a humongous fan base in the two Telugu states. Recently India Today has published a cover story about Balayya and his achievements. It seems that the craze of Balayya is not just limited to the country but it has spread to even Europe. As per latest reports, a special report on Balakrishna has been published by a noted media house of Bulgaria, a European country. Photos of Balayya as Duryodhana, Abhimanyu, etc were published in the story. Well, the cover story is completely in the Bulgarian language, so there is no chance for fans to read it. But, it will be great news for fans to know that the image of their favorite hero has spread to other continents too. It may be noted that Baalayya had visited Bulgaria for the shooting of Dictator. Indiana state trooper sued a second time for sharing his faith 07 April, 2016 by Tobin Perry , | PENDLETON, Ind. (Christian Examiner)For the second time in 18 months an Indiana state trooper is being sued for sharing his faith with someone he pulled over for a traffic violation. According to a complaint filed in federal court on April 5 by the Indiana American Civil Liberties Union, state trooper Brian Hamilton asked Wendy Pyle whether "she had been saved" during a traffic stop in January. He then told the woman about his church and gave her directions to it. "Ms. Pyle was extremely uncomfortable with these questions," the lawsuit says, according to the Indianapolis Star. "In order to hopefully end these inquiries Ms. Pyle indicated that she did attend a church and that she was saved." Hamilton was sued for a similar incident in October of 2014 when he pulled over Ellen Bogan for a traffic violation and gave her a warning ticket. He then asked her whether she had a home church and had accepted Jesus as Savior. She said later that she didn't attend church but felt compelled to tell him she did when he pulled her over. When the first lawsuit was settled, Hamilton was advised not to question others about their religious beliefs or hand out pamphlets about his beliefs or church. According to the Indianapolis Star, ISP Capt. Dave Bursten said Hamilton has been moved to an administrative desk job on Jan. 15 following a complaint that was filed against him. "We don't want people to be afraid of making a complaint because they think we're going to publicize their name and create stress for them," Bursten said. The investigation into the complaint is ongoing, he added. Pyle is looking to get reimbursed for punitive damages and attorney fees. In January an Indiana state trooper was thanked and commended by a man he prayed with instead of giving him a ticket. The man had just gotten bad medical news about his daughter and was distraught. Sgt. Todd Durnil prayed for the man and told him his church would do likewise. The next day the man called the trooper's station in a desire to thank him for his kindness. The US Justice Department has delayed the sentencing of the man accused of killing nine African American members of a Charleston Episcopal church last year, as Attorney General Loretta Lynch considers whether to impose a death sentence or not. This is the second time 22-year-old Dylann Roof's federal trial has been delayed, after his attorneys helped extend the trial date several months ago, as the decision on capital punishment was uncertain. Roof is charged with hate crimes and nine counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. One of the slain was Senator Clementa Pinckney, who also served as the pastor at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Roof's attorney David Bruck said the defendant will plead guilty if the justice department agrees to put off execution in exchange for thirty years to life in prison, and in that case, only a plea hearing and sentence hearing will be required in the federal court. US District Judge Richard Gergel called on the federal government to decide speedily if capital punishment or life sentence is to be pursued against the accused. "There are victims here. They have a right to put this behind them," Gergel said. However, Gergel has agreed to the federal prosecutors' request to delay the trial, so that the attorney general can come to a decision on death sentence. Roof faces separate federal and state charges. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has called for a death sentence for Roof in the federal court, as he already faces death penalty in the state. State prosecutors have pursued death sentence for him in the trial, and the next hearing is scheduled for July. "This was the ultimate crime, and justice from our state calls for the ultimate punishment," Charleston County prosecutor Scarlett Wilson had said during a news conference in September. But she said that she will meet the victims' families before deciding if death penalty should be pronounced for Roof. Wilson did meet the families and said that it was "blessed to be in the presence of such wonderful people." The family members of the victims offered him forgiveness in televised messages. Daughter of victim Ethel Lance told Roof: "I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you.... You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people, but God forgives you, and I forgive you." A family member representing victim Myra Thompson, Anthony Thompson, said: "I forgive you and my family forgives you, but we would like you to take this opportunity to repent ... and confess." Alana Simmons, granddaughter of Reverend Daniel Simmons Sr., told Roof: "Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof - everyone's plea for your soul is proof - that they lived in love ... so hate won't win." The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed a lawsuit on behalf of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky against the state of Indiana, challenging the states new abortion law. HEA 1337, signed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence late last month, prohibits abortions sought due to genetic abnormalities such as Down syndrome. The law makes Indiana one of the most restrictive states when it comes to abortion laws, being only the second state to ban abortions because of genetic abnormalities, joining North Dakota. Ken Falk, legal director of ACLU of Indiana, says that the decision should be made by the woman whether or not to have an abortion. "The state of Indianas attempt to invade a womans privacy and to control her decision in this regard is unprecedented and unconstitutional, he said in a statement. The law has roused a social media campaign called Periods for Pence in which women call the governors office offering him information about their menstrual cycles. According to supporters of the bill, however, the law grants protections to unborn babies. "Gov. Pence has every confidence this law is constitutional," said Kara Brooks, a spokeswoman for Governor Pence. "We will work with the Attorney General to defend the law that enhances information expectant mothers receive and enhances protection for the unborn." The lawsuit argues that the law "imposes an undue burden on a womans right to choose an abortion because it bars that choice under certain circumstances, even if the pregnancy is in its early stages and the fetus is not viable, seeking an injunction to prevent the law from taking effect on July 1. Nepal has dismissed Christmas as a national holiday from the public calendar because of a "need to control the rising number of public holidays." Christians in Nepal have protested the decision, and called upon the government to restore the festival, according to Asia News. Christmas was first recognized as a national holiday in Nepal about eight years ago, when the country acquired a secular status. Since then, Christmas was a state-recognized holiday. But now the government plans to let only Christians take leave from government offices on Christmas. Federation of National Christian, Nepal (FNCN) said: "The government's decision, which ridicules basic norms of democracy and secularism and hurts the sentiments of minority religious group, has drawn our serious attention." "The government is trying to curtail the religious rights and freedom of minority religious groups. The twisted definition of secularism provided in the new constitution is also a testimony to this. The decision to limit Christmas holiday only to civil servants has dealt a serious blow to all Nepali Christians." The FNCN also warned of protests, which include submitting memos to the Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, Law Minister Agni Kharel, and Home Minister Shakti Basnet, apart from organizing peaceful rallies around the country. The head of National Federation of Christians, Rev. CB Gahatraj said, "Christians do not just work for the government. If Christmas is not a national holiday, the workers of the private sector will not be able to celebrate it. The Government recognizes 83 festivities for Hindus and other communities, but none for Christians." Rev. Ghatraj was concerned if the government has been "influenced by anti-Christian tendencies." "We are ready to sacrifice ourselves for our faith and the protection of freedom of worship. We strongly demand the restoration of the festivity and that the recent decision be dropped within a week. If the government fails to meet our request, we will protest across the country," said Gahatraj. Christian leaders came together in Nepal and have drafted a petition to hand in to top leaders of the country. FNCN noted that it was a violation of national and international laws, and gave a message to all Christians and minority communities in Nepal and around the world to stand united and protest government's decision to remove Christmas as the national holiday. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have called on Christians to love refugees rather than fear them, saying that the current approach of many churches in dealing with refugees is "far more American than it is biblical." The leaders were speaking at the Great Commission Summit, held at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary between March 29 and 31. "Whatever response is seen [in our churches] often seems to come from a foundation of fear, not of faith, flowing from a view of the world that is far more concerned with the preservation of our country than it is with the accomplishment of the Great Commission," said David Platt, president of the International Mission Board. Platt reminded the audience that millions of refugees have fled their homes from countries such as Syria and Sudan, and Christians must view this crisis through God's eyes of mercy and compassion. He referred to the biblical example of Boaz who sheltered Ruth, when she was a foreigner. He said that Boaz's actions did not just demonstrate godly compassion, but also were a critical moment in redemptive history, by building a lineage which would "lead to the quintessential kinsman redeemer, Jesus the Christ." "I fear that most people in our churches and maybe even in this room are paying very little to no attention to this - or if we are paying attention to it, we are looking at it through political punditry and partisan debates regarding whether or not we should allow relatively few refugees into our land," he said. "It is a sure sign of American self-centeredness that we would take the suffering of millions of people and turn it into an issue that is all about us." Platt urged the believer to be sensitive to people's needs across the world and be dedicated to helping them with the compassion of Christ. "Our God has not left the outcast and oppressed alone in a world of sin and suffering, he's come to us and he's conquered for us. Brothers and sisters, as followers of Christ, self is no longer our God, therefore safety is no longer our concern. We go and we preach the gospel, knowing that others' lives are dependent on it," he said. Southern Seminary and Boyce College professors encouraged the students to adopt Muslim families and understand the complexities of Islamic culture in a series of short talks organized on March 31, sponsored by the Jenkins Center for the Christian Understanding of Islam. "God wants something to happen in your heart so that it will appear outside," said Ayman S. Ibrahim, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Southern Seminary and senior fellow for the Jenkins Center. "Think of Muslims as a very diverse community. Muslims are in very deep need of something you have. I call it 'the gospel of hope.' ... They have no hope." Associate Professor of global studies at Boyce College, John Klaassen, who also wrote a book called Engaging with Muslims, said that churches can show their love by collaborating with refugee organizations and adopting refugee families when they come to the US. Speaking at the summit, Florida pastor Jimmy Scroggins asked Christians to get more serious about reaching people who are far from God through continual prayer and gospel-centered conversations. He referred to the first four chapters of Acts as a blueprint for how church needs to reach unchurched and broken people, with the aim of having a "messy and dynamic" church. Cardinal Raymond Burke Addresses Scandal at Notre Dame SAN DIEGO, April 7, 2016 / In an interview with Thomas McKenna of Catholic Action for Faith and Family Cardinal Burke discussed the position of Bishop Rhoades and his response to the scandal. While explaining that bishop Rhoades was "simply exercising his responsibility as a teacher of the faith and as a bishop who has the care of a prominent Catholic university in his diocese" he stated, "what he says is absolutely true and most commendable." Cardinal Burke expressed dismay with the university and explained "I find it difficult to imagine that a Catholic university would assign its highest honor to any politician who favors abortion and who also advocates for the recognition of the sexual liaison of two people of the same sex as equal to marriage." In response to Notre Dame's stating that it was bestowing this award to honor Vice President Biden for his public service in politics and not for his positions regarding support for abortion and same-sex marriage, Cardinal Burke clarified "as much as one may want to praise certain positions which he has taken, at the same time one must realize that other positions are in the most grievous violation of the moral law and therefore make him ineligible to receive such an award from a Catholic university." When asked about the point that Bishop Rhoades stated that this act would give public scandal, Carding Burke agreed and explained that "St. John Paul II observed in his apostolic exhortation on the laity, one of the greatest evils of our times is the tendency of Catholics to separate their faith from their daily living" and that this was exactly what was taking place. He concluded by saying that " it is a great scandal within the Church, but it is also a great scandal within society in general which depends upon the Church to give a witness to the truth about human life and the family." The full interview can be found at Share Tweet Contact: Thomas McKenna, Catholic Action for Faith and Family , 858-461-0777SAN DIEGO, April 7, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- In a recent interview, Cardinal Raymond Burke addressed the scandal caused by the University of Notre Dame announcing that they intend to confer the Laetare Medal, an honor given to Catholics "in recognition of outstanding service to the Church and society," upon Vice-President Joseph Biden at their 2016 commencement. Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne South Bend, the diocese where the university is located, has denounced it as scandalous.In an interview with Thomas McKenna of Catholic Action for Faith and Family Cardinal Burke discussed the position of Bishop Rhoades and his response to the scandal.While explaining that bishop Rhoades was "simply exercising his responsibility as a teacher of the faith and as a bishop who has the care of a prominent Catholic university in his diocese" he stated, "what he says is absolutely true and most commendable." Cardinal Burke expressed dismay with the university and explained "I find it difficult to imagine that a Catholic university would assign its highest honor to any politician who favors abortion and who also advocates for the recognition of the sexual liaison of two people of the same sex as equal to marriage."In response to Notre Dame's stating that it was bestowing this award to honor Vice President Biden for his public service in politics and not for his positions regarding support for abortion and same-sex marriage, Cardinal Burke clarified "as much as one may want to praise certain positions which he has taken, at the same time one must realize that other positions are in the most grievous violation of the moral law and therefore make him ineligible to receive such an award from a Catholic university."When asked about the point that Bishop Rhoades stated that this act would give public scandal, Carding Burke agreed and explained that "St. John Paul II observed in his apostolic exhortation on the laity, one of the greatest evils of our times is the tendency of Catholics to separate their faith from their daily living" and that this was exactly what was taking place. He concluded by saying that " it is a great scandal within the Church, but it is also a great scandal within society in general which depends upon the Church to give a witness to the truth about human life and the family." The full interview can be found at CatholicAction.org home World Church leaders must wait before baptizing asylum-seekers, says Danish Minister for Culture & Church A good number of Muslim migrants who fled from the Middle East have converted to Christianity during their stay in Denmark, and many more are waiting in line. This has caused some to think that they have done or are intending to do this in order for them to have better chances of being allowed to stay in the country. In light of the increasing controversy, Bertel Haarder, the Minister for Culture and Church, advised priests to wait until the refugees' asylum cases are processed before baptising them. "It's for their own good and to spare them from being accused of doing it in order to get asylum," Haarder said, as quoted by the CPH Post. "It's a case I will bring up with the bishops and at the upcoming bishops' council." In a poll conducted by the Church of Denmark of 100 priests across the country, it was revealed that from December to February, at least 110 asylum-seekers have converted to Christianity. Carsten Arum JArgensen of NArrelandskirken in Holstebro was one of the priests who baptised many asylum-seekers. He conducted the sacrament to 31 individuals since December. "This is a completely new situation and one that has also taken place in several areas," he told DR Nyheder, as quoted in another CPH Post report. "I think something happens to people who have been forced to flee and who experience terrible things. They're looking for a greater meaning to their existence. For an alternative to the evil they have witnessed." More than 300 people seeking asylum in Denmark are currently preparing for baptism. According to the report, in 2015, 55 applicants said they were apostates, thus they were likely to be persecuted in their respective countries. These cases were processed by the refugee council FlygtningenAvnet, with 31 initially rejected but were reprocessed following the applicants' conversion to Christianity. Residence was ultimately granted to 42 of them. While many refugees may be wishing to get into the country known for human rights and development, the Danish government has enforced stricter measures to discourage refugees from seeking asylum. According to The Huffington Post, these measures, including an anti-refugee ad placed in Arabic newspapers, are deemed as harsh and controversial. home World Feuding Christian groups unite to fix shrine at Jesus' tomb Three Christian groups known for disagreeing with each other have joined together to save the place believed to be where Jesus resurrected. The Aedicule, the 206-year-old structure located at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem, is at risk of collapsing. To keep this from happening, leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church agreed on March 22 to split the cost of $3.4 million to fix the shrine. A Greek bank contributed $57,000 to have its name displayed on the machinery. "One of the serious issues in the church is that the status quo takes place over every other consideration, and it's not a good thing," Franciscan friar Rev. Athanasius Macora told The New York Times. "Unity is more important than a turf war." In February last year, Israeli police closed the place and prevented pilgrims from entering because of reports that it was unstable and at risk of collapsing. The churches even protested against the sudden closure of the shrine. The church leaders said in their letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the police's "stated reason for this closure was their unsupported allegation that 'the structure of the Aedicule was not safe enough for pilgrims to enter'." "Regarding, the actual state of the stability of the Aedicule, we, far better than anyone else, know that the structure needs to be properly restored. Yet we have not been presented with any evidence that somehow some danger appeared, out of nowhere, that had not been there the day before that drastic police action," the letter said. The churches were apparently convinced later, since they are now working together to restore it. "Somebody had to push us," Rev. Samuel Aghoyan, the representative of the Armenian Patriarchate, said. "If the Israeli government didn't get involved, nobody would have done anything." It will be a slow process, but conservation expert Antonia Moropoulou said that the Aedicule will remain open to the public during the renovation. home US Franklin Graham brands PayPal 'hypocrite of the year' for cancelling NC expansion project due to transgender law Evangelist Franklin Graham slammed PayPal for cancelling their planned expansion project in North Carolina. "PayPal gets the hypocrite of the year award!" Graham wrote in Facebook. "This company says they're not coming to North Carolina because the legislators and Gov. Pat McCrory have passed a law to protect women and children against sexual predators by not allowing men to use women's restrooms and locker rooms." McCrory signed House Bill 2, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, which requires people to use facilities like restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms and shower rooms based on the gender they were born with as stated in their birth certifate rather than on their gender identity. Nicknamed by many as the LGBT bill or transgender law, it protects the rights of people not to be discriminated against based on "race, religion, color, national origin, age, biological sex or handicap." CNN says it also keeps cities from passing broad non-discrimination laws. "The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal's mission and culture," said PayPal CEO Dan Schulman in a statement.. The online payments company pulled out their plans to invest millions of dollars in Charlotte after the state passed the law that PayPal deems is discriminatory. The project could have hired 400 employees with PayPal's initial plan to invest US$3.6 million by the end of next year. Graham cited Congressman Robert Pittenger who pointed out that PayPal does business in many countries where homosexuality is illegal, in some even punishable by death, "yet they object to the North Carolina legislature overturning a misguided ordinance about letting men in to the women's bathroom." An ordinance in Charlotte that allowed people to use restrooms based on their gender identity could be used by individuals to take advantage of unwary victims. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest said that the law, which overturns this ordinance, is to protect women and children from molestation and assult. He emphasized the value of their lives. "North Carolina will never put a price tag on the value of our children. They are precious and priceless," he said, as quoted by WBTW News. "If a corporation wanting to do business in North Carolina does not see the worth of our children in the same light, then I wish them well as they do business somewhere else." The bill was signed by the governor on Wednesday after passing the House with an 82-26 vote and the Senate with 32-0. Democrats reportedly walked out in protest and did not vote. home World Relics of Byzantine church discovered by construction workers in Gaza Construction workers in Gaza unexpectedly discovered what is believed to be remnants of a Byzantine church. However, Christians in the Palestinian region are not happy with the way the archaeological find has been treated. According to Reuters, 15 ancient relics were found thus far, including a 35-inch foundation stone that has the Greek symbol for Christ. There are also parts of a marble pillar, one about three yards long, that bear Corinthian capitals. "Our first thought is that the site is a cathedral or a church from the Byzantine period," Jamal Abu Rida, the general director of the antiquities ministry, told Reuters. "During that era, there was a great interest among the Byzantine rulers to build churches in the Gaza Strip." Abu Rida thinks that the structure from which the relics came might have stood some time between AD 395 and the late 600s. During the time, diverse people visited and/or lived in Gaza, given that it was a rather rich seaport. Many churches were built from the early 5th century following the destruction of pagan temples in the late 4th century, but in the years following AD 637, many Christians converted to Islam, thus many churches were no longer used. The workers stumbled upon the relics on Saturday, April 2, at the Palestine Square while excavating the ground for an upcoming shopping center. But while Abu Rida said that the construction might need to be halted, Reuters reported that as of Monday, work continued. There was a digger and bulldozer, and it seems like no particular care was taken to try to preserve the site. The Jerusalem Post reported that on Wednesday, Palestinian Christians expressed their disappointment at how the archeological site has been handled. Apparently, they are pointing a finger at the Palestinian Authority as well as Hamas, accusing them of trying to remove the identity and history of Christians in the region. The report says that Father Ibrahim Nairouz of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem wrote a letter to PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and Minister of Antiquities and Tourism Rula Maa'yaa, saying that Christian legacy is being targeted in the region. "They used bulldozers to remove the antiquities and no one ordered a freeze of the construction work at this important archeological site," the priest said, as quoted by publication. "Had they found the remains of a mosque or synagogue or any other ancient structure, would they have dealt with them in the same manner? Or are they doing this because it's an ancient church?" Social media became the venue for Palestinian Christians to show support for the priest. home World Schools in Spain to teach Islamic Studies to counter extremism The government of Spain is aiming to counter extremism by teaching Islamic Studies in public schools nationwide, primarily by letting the students be exposed to a "moderate" interpretation of the religion. According to the Gatestone Institute, this is in accordance to Article 27.3 of the 1978 Spanish Constitution that says, "The State guarantees parents the right for their children to obtain a religious and moral education which conforms to their own convictions." There were also other agreements reached between the government and the Muslim community in succeeding years. Drafted by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the set of guidelines for teaching Islam to students in preschools, primary schools, and secondary schools were approved by the Ministry of Education and published on March 18 in the Boletin Oficial del Estado or the offical gazette of the state. Students may receive religious education upon request, and the Muslim community is allowed to select teachers and approve textbooks. There are several documents outlining the curriculum for the different educational levels, and according to the one for Early Childhood Education -- roughly translated via Google Translate -- the teaching of Islam to little children aims to convey security, affection and joy. Block 3 of the curriculum, for instance, tackles positive emotions and acceptance and tolerance of diversity, while Block 5 is about co-existence with others and includes teaching about the damaging effects of violent emotions and its prevention, among other things. The Gatestone Institute explains that the preschool curriculum will teach 3- to 6-year-olds the Shahada or the Islamic profession of faith. In Block 6, children will be taught the texts of oral tradition including Quranic stories and short Hadith. The teachings become less simplistic in primary and high school. While the objective of the classes is to prevent kids from being drawn to terrorism, the Gatestone article cited Block 8 in the secondary school curriculum that discusses the Al-Andalus (the Moors), which were occupied by Muslim conquerors during the Medieval period. The Islamic State terror group has promised before that they will make it a part of their caliphate. Moreover, the curriculum encourages students to find out more about Islam via the Internet, an avenue being used to radicalize Muslim youth. Soeren Kern, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the writer of the article, deems that the guidelines are aimed to stir religious fervor among the youth and promote Islamic identity. Moreover, it reportedly aims to instill an Islamic worldview in Muslim students. Breitbart, in its report, says that critics think that integration and Westernization are better options for fighting terrorism, things that the guidelines reportedly discourage. home World U.K. teachers' union to campaign for transsexualism support, 'gender questioning' A union for education professionals in the United Kingdom will lobby for the support for "gender questioning" students. During the annual conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, educators said that they will call for the campaign for funding and support and promotion of transsexualism in schools that are exclusive to either boys or girls. "Schools and colleges are experiencing an explosion of trans cases, for which they have usually made no advanced preparation. Although there is growing recognition that trans pupils and staff need a and are entitled to - understanding, respect, protection and support," one participant said prior to the conference, as quoted in the ATL website. According to the The Christian Institute, representatives from schools said during the event that steps are already being taken to make changes to policies in uniform and changing rooms. A teacher from North Yorkshite reportedly said that it's important to not require transsexual students to wear uniforms based on their sex at birth and to not tell them that they are simply going through a phase. However, the group reportedly criticized those educational institutions that refuse to comply. "We already provide advice to help schools understand how the Equality Act affects them, including specific guidance on trans issues," said a Department of Education spokesperson. "We are also investing 3 million in projects to help schools learn how to better deal with homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying." On the other hand, Humphrey Dobson, the Deputy Director of The Christian Institute, said that schools should not make policies "to satisfy adult political agendas." "Children are vulnerable and susceptible to all kinds of pressure while at school. Endorsing a child's confused feelings could lead them to undergo harmful hormone treatment or even 'sex change' surgery in later life," he said in response to ATL's plan. "Studies show that most children who are 'gender confused' at a young age eventually accept their biological sex after passing through puberty." The Association of Teachers and Lecturers' Annual Conference was held at the ACC in Liverpool from April 4 to 6. home World Vatileaks 2 trial back in court, Francesca Chaouqui takes the stand All five defendants were present Wednesday as the trial for the Vatileaks 2 case resumed. Francesca Chaouqui, one of the accused, took the stand. According to Rome Reports, Chaouqui narrated events from February 2014. Speaking of co-defendant Msgr. Lucio Vallejo Balda, she said that by September of that year, he was feeling abandoned so she helped him get involved in charitable activities. She denied any sexual relations with the monsignor, but she revealed to the court that he made a "confession about his private life" to her, something that she would not disclose. From there, the priest apparently started to "show an eccentric behavior," going so far as consulting an astrologer. She also admitted to introducing journalist Gian Luigi Nuzzi to Vallejo Balda some time in April last year, because the priest allegedly wanted to reveal the difficulties of his work. He was never forced to give information, Chaouqui said; instead, he voluntarily gave confidential information to the reporter. She also denied having seriously threatened the priest and having leaked documents. Her testimony contradicts those made by Vallejo Balda on March 14. The secretary of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See testified and admitted to leaking confidential documents, passing them on to Nuzzi and another reporter, Emiliano Fittipaldi. Nuzzi also received five pages worth of passwords for emails and documents. During the continuation of his testimony the following day, he said he gave confidential documents to the two reporters because he felt like he was being threatened. According to The Catholic News, Vallejo Balda narrated to the court what Chaouqui told him during a conversation in WhatsApp. "I will destroy you in all the newspapers and you know that I can do it," she said. "For me, giving those documents was a way to pay for my freedom," Vallejo Balda said during his testimony. According to the New York Post, the priest also said that his and Chaouqui's relationship was "clearly for me as a priest compromising," suggesting that she seduced him. Chaouqui is a member of the former Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See. Together with her and Vallejo Balda, the latter's former assisant Nicola Maio are accused of "committing several illegal acts of divulging news and documents concerning fundamental interests of the Holy See and the State." Meanwhile, Nuzzi and Fittipaldi are on trial for "soliciting and exercising pressure, especially on Vallejo Balda, in order to obtain confidential documents and news." The case centers on two published books by the two reporters, the content of which prosecutors say came from confidential information leaked by Vallejo Balda, Chaouqui, and Maio. Nepal has decided to remove Christmas from its calender in an effort to control the rising number of public holidays. Christians in Nepal are protesting the decision, however, calling for its immediate reinstatement. The Nepali government has emphasised that its decision is due to the high number of public holidays in the country, and it is not an act against Christianity. Christmas, first recognised as a national holiday eight years ago when Nepal became a secular state, has until now been the only Christian national holiday recognised by the country. "We are forced to take such a decision not to hurt Christians, but to control the rising number of public holidays," minister for home affairs, Shakti Basnet, told Asia News. Christians working for the government will be provided leave for the holiday, said Basnet. However, Nepali Christians say this amendment is not enough. "Christians do not just work for the government," said Rev CB Gahatraj, secretary general of the National Federation of Christians. "If Christmas is not a national holiday, the workers of the private sector will not be able to celebrate it. The government recognises 83 festivities for Hindus and other communities, but none for Christians." Gahatraj expressed concern that Nepali authorities have been "influenced by anti-Christian tendencies". The Inter-religious Council for Nepal and other interfaith groups have supported the Christian community in challenging the government's decision. "We are ready to sacrifice ourselves for our faith and the protection of freedom of worship. We strongly demand the restoration of the festivity and that the recent decision be dropped within a week. If the government fails to meet our request, we will protest across the country," said Gahatraj. Archbishop of Kenya hits out at Justin Welby over breakdown of 'godly order' The Archbishop of Kenya has hit out at the Archbishop of Canterbury after delegates from the Anglican Church of Kenya defied his authority to attend an Anglican meeting in Zambia this week. He condemned the "infectious" rejection of moral and spiritual authority, the breakdown of "godly order" in the Anglican Communion and the failure of Archbishop Justin Welby to issue a public rebuke. Archbishop Eliud Wabukala has also said that a letter stating the delegates would attend the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Lusaka is a forgery. The Church of Kenya is one of four provinces that declared they would boycott the meeting in protest at the failure of the "consequences" imposed by Anglican primates in January to prevent the liberal US Episcopal Church attending. Nigeria, Uganda and the province of Jerusalem and the Middle East are the three provinces not in Lusaka this week. However, in spite of a statement by Archbishop Wabukala that Kenya would boycott the meeting, his delegates are in fact understood to be in Lusaka. The Archbishop made clear his disappointment at this in another statement this week. "It is a matter of regret that this Church's delegation to the Anglican Consultative Council in Lusaka has been encouraged to disregard my spiritual counsel and attend this meeting," he said. He noted that in January, the Primates meeting at Canterbury agreed to curtail the participation of the Episcopal Church of the United States in Anglican Communion bodies for a period of three years "in view of its formal adoption of same sex 'marriage'." However, Bishop Tengatenga, the chairman of the council, had made clear to The Episcopal Church that its delegates were entitled to turn up and vote. Archbishop Wabukala said: "Despite my public statement and my personal direction to them, the Kenyan delegation has informed me of their intention to be present, with air tickets purchased for them and assignments already given. It seems that the rejection of the moral and spiritual authority of the Primates by the ACC Chairman, without public rebuke from the Archbishop of Canterbury, has become infectious and is encouraging further breakdown of godly order in the Communion. "The underlying cause of this particular problem, which is just one symptom among many, is the doctrinal confusion that has been allowed to take root in the Communion. The GAFCON movement, of which I am Chairman, is committed to the deep healing of the Anglican Communion by restoring the Bible to its rightful place among us and I remain entirely committed to that great cause." Brother of priest kidnapped by ISIS in Yemen: 'Everything is secure in God's hands' The brother of kidnapped priest Fr Tom Uzhunnalil is leaving everything in God's hands, according to the Catholic News Service. CNS interviewed Mathew Uzhunnalil at his home in Ramapuram in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Fr Tom, 56, was taken by Islamic State fighters who attacked an old people's home in Yemen on March 4, killing four nuns and 12 others. Mathew Uzhunnalil, 73, said: "I am waiting for clear good news. Until then, I will stay at home." He said he would return to his family in Gujarat only after he had news of his brother. "A lot of people are coming and even hold prayer meetings," he told CNS. Asked how he spent time in his ancestral home, he said: "I pray, recite the rosary and read." Quoting a book given him by his sister, he added: "Leave everything in God's hands and trust in him. Everything is secure in God's hands." He described his brother as "a very cool and quiet person". Widespread reports that Fr Tom was to be crucified were exposed as an internet rumour after repeated denials by the authorities and his ecclesiastical superiors. He is believed to be still alive and it is thought he may be held for ransom. Islamic State is believed to have raised large sums of money from the practice. However, there have been many reports of priests being tortured and murdered after being taken captive. On at least one occasion a ransom was paid for a priest who was killed anyway and returned to his family in pieces. Cardinal Burke calls Notre Dame award to pro-abortion, pro-same sex marriage U.S. Vice President Biden a 'great scandal' American Cardinal Raymond Burke has scored the University of Notre Dame for honouring U.S. Vice President Joe Biden with the Laetare Medal "in recognition of outstanding service to the Church and society," saying the latter is pro-abortion and pro-same sex marriage, which violate Catholic teachings. In an interview with Thomas McKenna, the cardinal calls the bestowing of the award a "great scandal." "[Not only is it] a great scandal within the Church, but it is also a great scandal within society in general which depends upon the Church to give a witness to the truth about human life and the family," he said. Burke said he cannot "imagine that a Catholic university would assign its highest honour to any politician who favours abortion and who also advocates for the recognition of the sexual liaison of two people of the same sex as equal to marriage." He said it is even more difficult that the university would award it on a Roman Catholic who supports "anti-life and anti-family policies and legislation." "It is my hope that Notre Dame University will hear the voice of their shepherd, the successor of the Apostles in their midst, and change this gravely wrong and most scandalous decision," he said. Burke said Biden's positions on human life and marriage contradict the natural moral law and the teaching of Jesus Christ. "So, as much as one may want to praise certain positions which he has taken, at the same time one must realise that other positions are in the most grievous violation of the moral law and therefore make him ineligible to receive such an award from a Catholic university," the cardinal said. He said St. John Paul II observed one of the greatest evils in modern "times is the tendency of Catholics to separate their faith from their daily living." And the award to Biden "is exactly what we have here." "So we have the impression, given to other Catholics and to the population in general, that one can believe one thing and act in a completely contrary way," he said. "The fact of the matter is that most people will simply conclude that the Catholic teaching with regard to the inviolable dignity of innocent and defenseless human life and the integrity of marriage as the faithful, indissoluble and procreative union of one man and one woman, is not very firm and that it can easily be violated." The Notre Dame faculty has called on the university leadership to cancel the award to Biden. Cardinal Nichols: Human trafficking is 'an evil crying out to heaven' The head of the Catholic Church in the UK has called for an international effort to eliminate human trafficking and modern slavery by 2030, describing it as "an evil crying out to heaven". Speaking at a side event at the UN's New York headquarters on behalf of the Santa Marta Group, Cardinal Vincent Nichols said the new sustainable development goals "cannot be achieved without effective, international cooperation at many levels". The Santa Marta Group was founded by Pope Francis in 2014 to strengthen and coordinate the global response to combating human trafficking and modern slavery. International partnership requires clear aims, which Nichols outlined as: "The well-being of every victim of human trafficking, for it is the victim who must always be central to our efforts; the enhancement of the work of law enforcement: the breaking up of criminal networks, the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators; and thirdly the strengthening of the legal frameworks within which this work is carried out." The event was jointly organised by the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN and the Santa Marta Group. Nichols said the Church has a "radical commitment to the dignity of every human person, a dignity which has to be protected and promoted in every circumstance and time; a dignity which does not depend on the abilities or status of a person but which is rooted entirely in the inner depth of the person's existence, in the gift of human life which always comes from the Divine Creator who has shown himself to be our loving Father." "Human trafficking and slavery radically strips a person of this fundamental dignity, reducing them to the status of a commodity," he said. "It is an evil crying out to heaven" that there are over 20 million people living in modern slavery today, and "a mark of deep shame on the face of our human family that no words can alone remove." Nichols quoted Pope Francis, who spoke at the UN last September urging members "to remember always that we are responding to 'real men and women, sons and duaghters of our one Eternal Father'. "In their plight we are complicit. In their freedom we will rejoice with a joy no other satisfaction can give," he said. Christian baker slams new 'religious freedom' bill for allowing discrimination against gay people A Christian baker from Mississippi has criticised the State's new 'religious freedom' bill for "decriminilising discrimination" against LGBT people. Govenor Phil Bryant signed a bill into law on Monday that allows religious organisations, individuals and businesses to refuse to serve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people if they believe it violates "sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions". It has been widely criticised as tantamount to Mississippi legalising support for discrimination against LGBT people. Mitchell Moore, a Republican voting Christian who owns Campbell's Bakery in Jackson, told NPR that this law goes against Christian principles. "I don't think that there is such a thing as a deeply held religious belief that you should not serve people," said Moore. "I am here to bake cakes and to sell those cakes. I'm not here to decide arbitrarily who deserves my cake and who doesn't. That's not what I do. That's not my job. "So leaving aside the stupidity of passing it because it decriminalizes discrimination which, that really is kind of the biggest issue but I can actually say I think the law of unintended consequences is going to come back to bite the people who signed this bill," he said. "If it is my sincerely held religious belief that I shouldn't serve them, then I can do that. And I can hide behind that language. But that language is so vague it opens a Pandora's box. And you can't shut it again." Moore, who described himself as a "deeply Christian man", said the premise of the law is counter to his belief system. "There is no sincerely held religious belief to think that I am better than other people to think that my sin is different than other people," he said. Christian student expelled from university for quoting Bible on homosexuality loses appeal The Christian student who was expelled from university for quoting the Bible on homosexuality has lost his appeal on the decision. Felix Ngole, aged 38 and married with four children, was asked to leave the University of Sheffield after he wrote a post on Facebook opposing gay marriage and quoting the Bible. He was in the second year of a Masters in social work. He was removed from the course after a Fitness to Practise Committee decided his post could have "caused offence" to some people. He quoted a passage from Leviticus on homosexuality and expressed support for Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk jailed after refusing to issue same-sex marriage licences. Ngole decided to apeal the decision after he was told that he was "excluded from further study on a programme leading to a professional qualification" and is "no longer recognised as a University student". He was told that by posting his comments on Facebook, the committee believed that he "may have caused offence to some individuals" and had "transgressed boundaries which are not deemed appropriate for someone entering the Social Work profession." His action would have an effect on his "ability to carry out a role as a Social Worker," the committee said. Ngole appealed on the basis that it should be left to the social workers' professional body to decide who is a fit and proper person to become a social worker. He has now learned from the appeals office that the social media post was "inappropriate" in light of the professional conduct outlined in the Health and Care Professions Councils. In a letter, the appeals office also said Ngole had not "offered any insight or reflection" on the potential impact of his postings, or on how the social work profession might be perceived by the public based on what he had posted. For this reason, the committee ruled that his expulsion was "proportionate". Mr Ngole said: "Like every other student at university I use social media to communicate and express personal views. In my Facebook posts in question, I simply expressed support for the biblical view of marriage and sexuality. "I did not say that everyone has to agree with me. However, I was reported to the university for these views and they unilaterally decided to end my course. In so doing, they ended my training for my chosen vocation in life. "At no stage when entering university were students told that their social media would be 'vetted' or that the university had a sole right to decide who should and should not go into their chosen profession. "All students would expect every professional body to have their own set of codes and practices and when the time comes, and each student would decide whether they felt comfortable in applying to that professions, given those codes [sic]. It should not be the role of a university to arbitrarily 'vet' who should enter a chosen career. "I shall be seeking to take further action as my case raises all sorts of legal questions as to whether Christians can any longer hold traditional biblical and moral beliefs and still enter mainstream professions such as social work, medicine, teaching and law in this country." Ngole, who is being supported by the Christian Legal Centre, is now considering further action. Andrea Williams, founder of the Christian Legal Centre, said: "The university's decision reflects a worrying trend throughout Higher Education institutions, which is to censor any view that may be deemed 'offensive'. "Mr Ngole has worked with those who identify as homosexual in the past and has always treated them with respect, never discriminating against them. There is no evidence that Felix's biblical views would have negatively impacted his work. "We have become used to registrars, nurses, teachers, magistrates and counsellors being disciplined in their jobs for acting according to conscience, but this is the very first time a Christian student has been stopped even before he enters his chosen vocation to hep others simply for holding traditional Christians views on marriage and sexuality. "This case raises fundamental issues which is why further action is vital." Did Christianity spread by violence? "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also" Acts 17:6 The life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus would have been useless to us unless we heard about it. Jesus ascending to heaven would just mean that he had gone. If, as looked highly likely, the early Church had been strangled at birth, then the past 2,000 years of Church history wouldn't have happened and Jesus would have been just another Palestinian peasant executed by the brutal Roman Empire. The survival and growth of the Christian Church over the past 2,000 years is itself miraculous. When Christ said "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it", he meant it. And he has been proved true. But now you get hit with one of the biggest objections: 'That's all very well, and maybe Jesus is OK but look at the Church!' The instinct of many Christians is to immediately say: 'Don't look at the Church'. But the trouble is, Jesus says the opposite. He says that people will see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. He says that all men will know that we are his disciples because of our love. And most astonishingly, he says that our relationship with the Triune God is the ultimate evidence of the Son being sent (John 17:21). So the neat escape clause of 'Don't look at us, look at Jesus' doesn't work. The Church is one of the great evidences for Jesus. Our non-Christian friends (and many of our Christian friends) when they think of the history of the Church will immediately play a word association game. Church = the Crusades, the burning of witches, the Inquisition. The cultural supremacy of the atheistic mind-set in the 20th Century has resulted in a re-writing of history so that the narrative is one in which the Church is associated with these host of negatives. It is a caricature, but like all caricatures there is an element of truth within it and therefore even Christians have fallen into the trap of distancing ourselves from the history of the Church. Doubtless you have heard the line: 'I like Jesus, but I don't like the Church'. This is often said by people who don't know either Jesus or the Church, but are just going by impression and feeling. As a historian I love reading and thinking about history and would recommend strongly that you actually do read books and primary sources if possible, rather than just rely on Google and Wikipedia. In terms of reading I would like to recommend the excellent series by Nick Needham, 2,000 Years of Christ's Power and three superb books by Mike Reeves: The Breeze of the Centuries, The Unquenchable Flame and On Giants Shoulders. These are general popular introductions. The early Church The second part of Luke's two-part account of the early Church (his first being the Gospel of Luke) is known as the Acts of the Apostles. His introduction to that is fascinating: "In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen." (Acts 1:1-2) You will note that he speaks of what Jesus began to do and to teach the implication being that his teaching and doing continued after he ascended into heaven. The book of Acts records how the early Church was birthed, developed and grown, spreading from Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, to its ending with Paul's house arrest in Rome. It is a fascinating story of courage, persecution, miracles, new churches and incredible growth. From the very beginning, the Christian Church has always been a missionary Church. The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus written less than 100 years after the death of Christ indicates one of the reasons why Christians had such an impact in the Roman Empire: "The Christians are distinguished from other men, neither by country, nor language, nor the customs they observe. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as Barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the nations in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life...They marry as do all; they beget children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven."(The Anti-Nicene Fathers, Vol 1) A pagan writer, Lucian of Samosta, in AD 170 gave his reasons for the growth of Christianity: "The Christians you know, worship a man to this day the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account... You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains their contempt of death and their voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws." Apart from the fact that Christians were prepared to die for their faith (note that they were not prepared to kill for their faith), this testimony reminds me of the words of Christ: 'all men will know you are my disciples if you have love one for another". What is the Church? Augustine said that he who does not have the Church for his mother cannot have God for his father. Which leads us to ask what is the Church? It is the ecclesia. The called out assembly of the people of God. There are different understandings of just exactly how a church should be governed, and there are different understandings of secondary doctrines in terms of theology and doctrine, but I would argue that the Church of Jesus Christ is one through all the ages and is, as Christ himself taught, his bride. I realise it can get very confusing with all the different denominations and claims and counter-claims. For me, I don't really have that much difficulty. God has preserved and kept his Church in many different forms and will continue to do so. In fact, it could be argued that the very flexibility of the Church and its ability to adapt to different cultures is one of the reasons it has continued to grow. The key element, though, has to be that the Church is the Church of Jesus Christ. He founds it, he is the cornerstone, and when she moves away from Christ she stops being the Church. Calvin summarised it well: "I am only saying that the blessed and happy state of the Church always had its foundation in the person of Christ." There is a basic simple point here: Christ is the foundation of the Church. Not nationality. Not class. Not priests, kings or queens. He is the foundation and the head. How much trouble would have been avoided if those that call themselves Christians and Churches had remembered and practiced this! Calvin also said: "In the church are mingled many hypocrites who have nothing of Christ but the name and outward appearance." Our atheist friends are very clever here they mix and match two doctrines. Firstly, they agree with Jesus' teaching about hypocrisy being one of the worst sins and gleefully point out the hypocrisies of many who claim the name of Christ. Then they put their own hypocritical doctrine of equality into the equation (hypocritical because they exclude themselves), and declare that it would not be right to condemn just one particular person or group so lets condemn them all! If one Christian does something wrong, then all Christians are to be blamed. If one church gets something wrong then all are tainted. Guilt by association. If we point out that this is a shallow and superficial view and does not take into account either the Bible's own teaching that all people including Christians are sinners and therefore of course Christians are going to do things that are wrong; nor the obvious observation that not every group that professes to be a church is a church, they protest 'but who are you to judge?'. And thus in the name of being non-judgemental, they judge us all. Of course there are going to be hypocrites and false churches but just because there is the false it does not exclude the real. Counterfeit banknotes only exist because real ones do. Counterfeit Christianity only exists because there is real Christianity. Sadly of course throughout history and still today there have been those who shame the name of Christ, by living lifes contrary to the faith they profess. This is even worse when it is church leaders who do so. Forgive me for citing Calvin again "How often did Christ and his apostles foretell that pastors would pose the greatest dangers to the church?" Did Christianity spread by violence? There is no doubt that once the Apostle Paul was told to go west to Greece, rather than east to Asia, European and world history was changed. The world was turned upside down (Acts 17). When the Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity in 312, it marked the transformation of the Church from being a persecuted and much maligned minority to eventually becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire. We can argue about how much that was a good or bad thing, but from that point on for many European countries and for most of subsequent European history, Church and State were intertwined. This means that we run into a problem when we consider the whole question of whether the Church used violence. So, for example, were the Crusades primarily religious, political or economic? Did the Church burn witches, or was it councils and governments? We really need to find out the facts as well as the context of what is involved. Many people seem to have the idea that the Church burnt or drowned millions of witches and that the Inquisition was responsible for death of hundreds of thousands more. But the nearest figures we have are that perhaps 40,000 women were killed as witches over a period of two hundred years that is 200 per year over the whole of Europe. It is of course 200 too many, but still a different story to that which is often portrayed. As for the Inquisition, the last figures I saw suggested that there were 6,000 deaths over 500 years. That is horrendous and I would not attempt to justify or excuse it in the name of Christ, but again it is not quite the story that we are led to believe. The trouble is that once the Church had political power, it became necessary if you wanted political power to belong to the Church. Then of course it becomes very difficult to distinguish between those who belong to the Church because they follow Jesus and those who belong to the Church because they want the power. And we must admit there are those who do have a false theology (i.e. Jesus wants us to burn heretics) who in their religious zeal cause a great deal of harm. Zeal without knowledge and love is always dangerous, but perhaps especially so when it is linked with religion. As Pope Benedict said: "The temptation to use power to secure the faith has risen again and again in varied forms throughout the centuries, and again faith has risked being suffocated in the embrace of power." Please don't equate everything that is done in the name of Christ with Christ. But then some will ask: 'Is that not having it both ways?' When we see some of the good coming from Christianity we claim it, but when we see the bad, we disclaim it. Can I suggest that it is a little more nuanced than that? I accept fully that Christians and Churches, including me and mine, will do things that are wrong and even evil. I accept that because I see it, and also because I believe what Jesus says about the pervasiveness of human sinfulness. However I also accept that though we are still sinners, it is possible to know them by their fruits. Any work of God in a human being will demonstrate something of the fruit of the Spirit, and any church of Christ, will show something of the beauty of Christ in the midst of all the sin and ugliness. The Christian way is not about power but about the way of the cross and every generation needs to learn that. David Robertson is the moderator of the Free Church of Scotland and director of Solas CPC, Dundee. Ethiopia in crisis: Drought leaves 15 million people vulnerable to starvation Ten million people are in severe need of food in Ethiopia, as the country faces its worst drought in 50 years. This number is likely to rise to 15 million people in a few months time, almost double the population of London, according to Donald Mavunduse, Tearfund's head of East and Southern Africa. The situation has been developing since October 2015, and aid agencies and the nation's government have come up with a plan, but they have only managed to get five per cent of the funding needed to implement it. Christian Today reported the situation in January this year, but Ethiopia has remained largely out of the headlines. The situation developed when the strongest El Nino in decades struck the country, which was already suffering from a drought, limiting the rainfall that usually comes between October and November. El Nino is a weather system that typically increases rainfall in California and southern US states and causes drought in other areas, including eastern and southern Africa. In Ethiopia, the lack of rain led to a failed harvest, destroying the agriculture on which 80 per cent of the population rely. "At the moment 10 million people urgently need food aid, and this number is growing, as each day, further households exhaust their stores," Mavunduse told Christian Today. "At the same time, households have coping mechanisms for crises such as this, which are understandable, but often destructive, and can escalate the number further. These include eating fewer meals, withdrawing children from school, because of fees, not accessing medical treatment, selling farming implements or burning trees for charcoal production. At the moment the Ethiopian government and NGOs are working tirelessly, but are only able to support a proportion of those in need. If we can meet the immediate humanitarian needs and address some of the negative coping mechanisms then we will both save lives and speed up the recovery." Shege Roba Fantalle, 30, is a farmer. Speaking to Tearfund, she described how life had become "bitter" during the drought. "We were hoping for things to improve. What we are eating now is dry, the water we drink is salty, and livestock are also affected. So far 30 of my goats and 40 of my sheep died because of the drought," she said. "Those that are alive are just lying down at home as there is nothing to feed them with. Please help us. We are very grateful for what we are receiving; please continue to stand with us. We would have lost all hope had we not received food aid." There is real fear that this crisis will have both a catastrophic human cost in the short term, and a longer term negative impact on development, reversing the progress Ethiopia has made in recent years. The Ethiopian government has invested significantly in improved early warning systems and infrastructure, but the combination of environmental factors have overwhelmed the systems in place. The crisis brings back memories of the country's 1983-85 famine, which left an estimated 400,000 people dead. It's not inevitable that history repeats itself, however, Ethiopia's government has collaborated with the UN and other aid agencies to develop a comprehensive document that lays out a plan to tackle the situation. The problem is, without the necessary funds $1.4 billion in total the scheme can't be implemented, and Ethiopia faces a downwards spiral. The United Nations' have launched a 90-day "Act Now. Protect Tomorrow" campaign urging nations and organisations to give. Currently, the Ethiopian government and the international community have pledged US$758 million. "We are looking at loss of life on a large scale if we do not respond adequately," said Mavunduse. "The millions who survive are also at risk of malnutrition, poor health, and lost education. Additionally, if households lose their livelihoods, then development gains made in the past will be eroded and the recovery after the drought will take even longer." Garissa one year on: Christians should expect persecution, pastor says Christians must expect to face persecution, according to one Nigerian pastor reflecting on the Garissa attacks a year on. "God is always just and we should learn to appreciate his will, depend on him for strength, and thank him for the gift of life because there is nothing that can compensate the lost lives of the students," Pastor Daniel, a Garissa-based church leader told International Christian Concern (ICC). If Jesus was the one most persecuted, then we as his followers must expect to be persecuted also, he said. On 2 April 2015, al-Shabaab gunmen raided Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya for more than 10 hours, killing 148 students, most of them Christians. Pastor Daniel now ministers to students who are coping with the consequences of the attack. One survivor, Anastaciah Mikwa, said she thanks God she's alive, despite suffering injuries that have left her unable to walk. She has undergone 28 surgeries, but still bears the physical trauma of the attack. "It's by the grace of God that they missed my head, but they shot me below my waist several times until they made sure I was dead," she told ICC. "It's by God's mercy towards me to be be alive today." Anastaciah was the only member of her dormitory to survive the attack. The other three girls were killed after sustaining gun shot wounds to the head. "When we heard that Garissa University was attacked we were deeply saddened and we were waiting for any news about our daughter," Anastaciah's father told ICC. "We received a phone call the same day in the evening from the Defense Forces Memorial hospital in Nairobi and informed us that Anastaciah was already in the Intensive Care Unit. This relieved our hearts and we continued to pray for her. We knew she was in a critical condition and anything can happen. We got depressed," he said. Anastaciah described this year as "my worst ever", and said her family has struggled to take care of her. However, she added: "I know with time I shall overcome this. My legs are getting better every day and now I can stand without the help of my crutches." Many students who survived the attack have chosen not to return to the university, including Leonard Rotich. "I lost my closest friends in that attack and I never want to go back to Garissa University again," he said. "Many of those that died were the first in their family to go to university, only to return home in caskets. Most families are traumatised." Israel warns growing arms race in Mideast could threaten its qualitative military edge The commander of the Israel Air Force (IAF) has cautioned that the growing international military deals by its neighbours could create "a potentially dangerous situation'' to Israel's military superiority in the region. Air Force chief Brig. Gen. Tal Kalman told participants at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies' conference in Tel Aviv that Israel is concerned that these weapons flowing into the region "could shift the balance of power'' and threaten the country's qualitative military edge. "There is the potential here for the erosion of the IDF's qualitative edge and the IAF's qualitative edge,'' Kalman said, according to CBN News. The general made the remarks which apparently were aimed to help secure more defence aid from the United States in order for Israel to boost its armed forces, not just upgrade their technologies, to keep ahead of potential foes. "There are countries here which have plans that are being actualised for arms deals in the hundreds of billions of dollars, for the most advanced Western weaponry and the most advanced Eastern weaponry,'' he said. Kalman cited Iran, which the Israelis fear will utilise sanctions relief from last year's nuclear agreement to build up its ballistic missile programme and arm Islamist guerrillas like the Hezbollah militia of Lebanon. The U.S.-led Iranian nuclear deal and the $150-billion cash influx to the Islamic Republic have made huge sums available to unstable governments in the region. Iran, considered as the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, has played a key role in many deadly terror attacks worldwide, CBN News reports. There have also been reports of Egyptian officials expressing interest in acquiring advanced Russian arms. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is also reported to have access to Russia's S-300 and S-400 air defence systems deployed in the war-torn country. As of last year, the State Department said some $33-billion worth of weapons were sold by the U.S. government to its Gulf allies. "There is a very great danger here, because today's enemy can be tomorrow's friend, and today's friend could be tomorrow's enemy," Kelman said in the forum hosted by Israel Defence magazine. The general's comments came amid ongoing negotiations with the United states over military aid package, with Israel reportedly requesting additional assistance from America beginning in 2018. Israel currently receives approximately $3 billion a year from the U.S. but when the current aid package ends in 2017, the country has requested that amount be increased to closer to $5 billion a year in order to maintain a qualitative edge over its enemies. Markets and morality: Why you can't do economics without God Christians on the Left, the organisation for Christians in the Labour Party, holds its annual Tawney Dialogue this month. Named after prominent Christian Socialist RH Tawney, it aims to bring theology and politics together, with a senior politician responding to a contribution from a theologian. The result is a discussion that is deeply rooted and politically practical. This year the theme is Economics for the Common Good. Daniel Finn, Professor of Theology and Clemens Professor of Economics at St John's University, Minnesota will speak. Labour's shadow chancellor, John McDonnell MP, will respond to Professor Finn's remarks. Ahead of the Tawney Dialogue, Stephen Beer quizzed him about matters of theology and economy. You are a professor of theology and economics. Has that brought particular challenges? Both disciplines engage in serious arguments, but they differ in purpose, method, and standards of evidence, among other things. I recall my sense in graduate school that the short walk from one corner of a courtyard to the diagonally opposite corner, in order to move between the department of economics and the divinity school, actually entailed moving from one universe of meaning to another. The fascinating thing, both then and now, is that each has insights that the other could greatly profit from. You have written in The Moral Ecology of Markets about how morality always plays a role in market construction, with the arguments about being where the moral bounds should lie. You offer a way in which people from different political perspectives can perhaps talk the same language. Have you seen any signs of this developing since the financial crisis and Great Recession? There was a rush of soul-searching when the Great Recession arrived, but with each passing year the extent and depth of its pains recede from the public consciousness. I do think it has encouraged heterodox economists in their critique of the mainstream, and the pain itself, lingering for so many, has encouraged a more popular complaint about "the system." I have not seen much growth in the inclination of people to speak respectfully with their opponents. Separate from the Great Recession, each year sees a growing polarisation abetted by the silos that make up most of the universe of political conversation on the internet. The financial crisis prompted a lot of soul searching. For a while it seemed that markets and morality might find each other again. Why do you think we have seen so little change? There has long been a debate about whether ideas or interests are more powerful in our public life. Here, it seems to me that both have contributed to the lack of real change. Each person in both economics and politics seems to have an explanation of the "real" cause of the financial crisis that allows his or her intellectual perspective to remain largely unchanged. There is indeed insincerity in the world, but making this accusation against one's opponents is morally dangerous. We judge our own sincerity by the character of our intentions; we judge our opponent's sincerity by the effects of his actions, interpreted, of course, within our own world-view. The only solution for all this that I know of is for each of us to have careful conversations with people with whom we disagree. Isn't a key problem that there is no alternative ideology, so political leaders and central bankers cling to the orthodoxy they know? If so, how can that change? Thomas Kuhn famously argued that, even in science, a new orthodoxy is often resisted by older scientists, and consensus only arrives after the old guard retires. JM Keynes argued that over the long term, ideas are more important than interests and that most men in their prime operate out of the mind-set they learned in school. Freidrich Hayek's conclusion was that believers in liberty must initiate a long-term effort to alter public consciousness to resist the pro-government tendencies of Keynesians and to rely instead on the initiative and judgment of individuals. Over the past seven decades, his plan has to a large extent come to fruition. One might argue that no other philosophical perspective has gained more intellectual respectability, more adherents, or more political influence than has the individualism that Hayek endorsed. Two approaches to morality were evident after the financial crisis. Some argued that the problem was with leadership and the ethical values of the investment bank trading floor. Others, usually on the Left, argued that it was the institutions and the systems that were the problem. Christians on the Left has long campaigned for separating investment from retail banking, for example. What is your view? Concerning the banking sector, I agree completely that it is only prudent to require the separation of investment and 'retail' banking. Economists employ the notion of 'moral hazard' to describe a situation in which one person is tempted to take a significant risk knowing that he himself is protected against the risk because another person will incur the cost. This is why the law forbids you from taking out fire insurance on your neighbour's house. Without separating these two banking sectors, we face unacceptably high systemic risks.Both personal virtue and well-structured institutions are essential for human flourishing. Each is necessary and neither is sufficient by itself. Structures are powerful: if the CEO of one of the large investment houses had been struck in 2007 by moral lightning and become deeply concerned about justice and the welfare of all, he would have been replaced. Everyone in the financial industry was making huge profits and the board at his firm would insist on participating. At the same time, however, the personal moral convictions of a leader are also powerful. If this were not true, we would not care who, from the handful of most likely candidates, was appointed as our supervisor at work or elected to be prime minister. We've asked you to talk about the common good. That is very much a Christian concept. How do you think we can talk about it to the wider world? Most people, including many economists, make the fundamental mistake of assuming that the common good is simply the sum of the good of all individuals in a society. The best definition of the common good was provided some 80 years ago by Virgil Michel, a monk of the Benedictine Abbey which sponsors the university where I teach. Father Virgil taught that there are two dimensions to the common good: the common conditions of social life and the attainment of the good life by everyone, at least to a minimum degree. Those common conditions include the systems that provide for us all: the educational system, the criminal justice system, the employment system, and other systems that provide parks and museums and transit. Much indebted to Thomas Aquinas, this view of the common good insists there can be no division between the individual good and the common good. It takes a lot of individual effort to maintain the common conditions necessary for human flourishing and our common effort to maintain them is part of our individual flourishing and the whole point of those common conditions is that every person flourishes. Politics seems in flux here in the UK, but we are also looking askance at the US at the moment! There is a lot of voter anger and frustration at the moment. How do you think it can be satiated? What do you think politicians on the Centre Left should do? I am deeply embarrassed by what is going on now in the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, arguably the finest statesman in the history of the United States. The anger and frustration, of course, are real and arise out of decades where ordinary people have not benefited much from the new wealth generated in their nation. But I also have deeper and longer range concerns about the political culture in my nation (and I will let you decide whether this applies here in the UK). For decades now much that occurs in popular culture suspenseful novels or television serials about national crises, movies about corrupt governments, and the like have made heroes of rugged individualists who break the rules, engage in extra-judicial killing of the bad guys, and love their families. In short, classic values like the rule of law and the importance of a loyal opposition have given way to the conviction that "the other side" is so bereft of principles that our side need not worry about the arguments or tactics we use to undermine them. I am by both instinct and conviction an optimistic person, but I have deep worries about the decline of our civilisation. What do you think the Christian politician should do in these times? I look forward to the Tawney dialogue to hear an answer to this question from Christian politicians. I would make one suggestion, a kind of spiritual discipline: that each of us keep a list of four or five of the most reasonable people "on the other side" and each day read carefully something one of them has written that opposes one of our own deeply-held convictions. Stephen Beer is Christians on the Left's political communications officer. He writes regularly on politics and economics. Twitter: @stephen_beer Nigeria: Hundreds killed and churches burned in latest Fulani massacre At least 500 people are reported to have been murdered in new attacks by Fulani herders in more than 10 villages in northern Nigeria. The villages in Agatu LGA remain under siege by the Muslim herders, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW). The latest attacks came soon after security forces in Benue State drove them out of another five communities they had occupied. Chief Elias Ekoyi Obekpa, local paramount ruler of the Idoma tribe in Benue State, disclosed the latest attacks. Senator David Mark, who represents the area and who visited Agatu last month, said at least 500 people died during the attacks. He added: "All the primary and post-primary schools, health centres, worship centres as well as the police station in the area have been burnt down." Angele Dikongue-Atangana, the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, also visited the area. She said that in 20 years of working in humanitarian relief, she had "never seen such a level of destruction". She called for national and international attention to the attacks, and said the villagers would need external help to rebuild their communities. Attacks by herdsmen are also occurring in areas of Benue State populated by the Tiv tribe. According to Minority Report, on 6 April, eight people were killed and one went missing after suspected herdsmen attacked the Mbaa ayo, Mbanyagbegher, Mbakwaken and Mbakyar Wards. The assailants are reported to have used a mobile phone belonging to an All Progressives Congress youth leader who was abducted from his home in Tarka and found dead on on 4 April. Herder attacks are also continuing in the south. On 2 April, Father Aniako Celestine from St Joseph's Catholic Church Ukana in Enugu State was kidnapped by suspected Fulani herders while travelling to his home in Ezeagu. The kidnappers used the priest's mobile phone to demand a 35,500 ransom for his release. Last month, herders destroyed farmland and livestock in Ungwuneshi in Awgu, Enugu State in an altercation prompted by the abduction of two local women. Supporters of a bill currently before the Nigerian National Assembly, that would establish grazing reserves and stock routes across the country, claim it would bring an end to violence involving Fulani herders. However, opponents of the bill say it would entail uprooting communities from their ancestral lands and warn that creating stock routes linking grazing reserves throughout the country with no additional provision for security would increase lawlessness. Mervyn Thomas, chief executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said: "It is deeply worrying to hear that communities in Agatu are still under siege weeks after security forces were sent there. The geographical range and scale of violence involving Fulani herders, and the proliferation of small arms, indicate that it has mutated far beyond inter-communal competition for resources into a significant threat to national security. "Addressing this violence must become a priority, with attacks being met by an effective defence of besieged communities, as well as of herders who are legitimate victims of cattle rustling. Murder, rape, and destruction of personal and federal property are criminal acts; consequently, perpetrators ought to be apprehended, disarmed and prosecuted in order to combat lawlessness and impunity. "In addition, given the significant sensitivities generated throughout the country, it is vital that the potentially explosive issue of grazing reserves is handled with extreme caution and objectivity." Nigerian boy on Muslim militants who slashed his face, blinded his eye and killed 23 in his village: 'I forgive them' More than a year after the radical Boko Haram militants attacked his village in Nigeria, killing 23 Christianswith one of the militants leaving him for dead after slashing his face with a machete13-year-old Danjuma Shakura has become the embodiment of the Christian virtue of forgiveness. The attack cut out his right eye and left an ugly scar on his face, Mission Network News reports. But despite the cruelty of the attackers, Danjuma told the Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) organisation that he has forgiven them, adding that they must have acted the way they did because they had never known the love of Jesus. Danjuma said he is not blaming God for the pain he suffered. In fact, he said his faith in God has grown even stronger. "God continues to guide and protect me," he told VOM. He recalled the tragedy that befell his village on Jan. 28, 2015 when more than 1,000 Muslim militants belonging to the Boko Haram movement burned their houses and killed Christians. One of the militants used a machete to slash his face. Danjuma fell unconscious. The survivors of the massacre believed he was among the dead and started preparing his grave. But before they could move his body, he woke up screaming. Villagers rushed him to the hospital and he was saved. The wound on his face was deep and the doctors didn't give him much of a chance to survive. But more than a year later, through the miraculous power of God, Danjuma is alive and well to bear witness to God's grace. He said he could still vividly remember running for his life, seeing fellow villagers being mercilessly killed and their homes torched. He said he could still remember the pain he suffered from the first strike of the machete on his face. But despite all these memories, he said there is no bitterness in his heart. He has learned to use a walking stick to find his way around and will soon be attending a school for the blind. He is also set to undergo surgery as doctors will try to repair the damage done on his eye. Christians outnumber Muslims in Nigeria 51 percent to 43 percent, according to the Joshua Project. Boko Haram has slaughtered thousands of Christians in Nigeria and neighbouring African countries and displaced more than 1.3 million believers. NVIDIA Pascal news: New Tesla GP100 GPU finally revealed, ready for HPC by June Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA Inc., finally announced the technical details of the much-talked-about high-power computing GPU, the GP100, during the opening keynote of the GPU Technology Conference or GTC 2016. This is the first product in a series that the company will soon be releasing, and it will be equipped with the latest Pascal technology. The company will be ready to ship it by June while OEMs and consumers can get their hands on the monstrous GPU by early 2017. The GP100 GPU is based on the Tesla P100 board, which uses the latest 16nm process. This means that NVIDIA can squeeze twice the number of transistors into the same amount of space used by the previous technology, the 28 nm process. It is 15.3 billion transistors against 8 billion, and this new technology can offer a great amount of increase in computing power as well as being more power efficient. PCWorld reported that the Pascal GP100 GPU can accommodate 3840 CUDA cores and 224 texture units into 64 streaming multiprocesors (SM) in a 610 mm2 size chip. By comparison, the previous Titan X and Tesla M40 using Maxwell technology contain 3072 CUDA cores. The L2 cache for the Pascal-based board is 4096 KB HBM2, while the old one offers 3072 KB GDDR5. Huang spent two hours explaining how the new NVIDIA Pascal-based GPUs will benefit supercomputers/deep learning, AI acceleration computing, data centers and cloud computing servers. The company has created the most advanced GPU architecture that the computing world has seen so far. Researchers will be able to solve more complex and larger problems in the fields of cosmology, seismology, climatology, material science, and a whole lot more, as WCCFTech reported. NVIDIA also announced that their new Tesla GPU accelerators will be used when the Piz Daint system receives its upgrade. The Piz Daint is Europe's fastest supercomputer and is located at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) in Lugano, Switzerland. It is currently ranked number seven among the Top 500 list of supercomputers in the world. Ian Buck, vice president of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA, said, "CSCS scientists are using Piz Daint to tackle some of the most important computational challenges of our day, like modeling the human brain and uncovering new insights into the origins of the universe." He then added, "Tesla GPUs deliver a massive leap in application performance, allowing CSCS to push the limits of scientific discovery." The gaming community, who are also looking forward to experiencing the computing power of the new Pascal technology, should not be disappointed. Consumer variants using the latest technology are expected during the ongoing GTC 2016. Panama Papers: Avoiding tax isn't a private matter. It's about a decent society This week, the world has been fascinated and appalled by the biggest single leak of information in history. The Panama Papers contain details of intricate arrangements made by the rich and powerful to avoid paying tax. Usually a story about the technicalities of taxation wouldn't be such big news. This is different, though. It has grabbed the international news agenda and doesn't show any sign of going away. Iceland's Prime Minister has already been forced out of office over his tax affairs. Prime Minister David Cameron is on the back foot in the UK over his father's offshore investment fund. More information is coming to light all the time who knows which public figure will be next to fall foul of the revelations? We're fascinated by this story for two reasons. Firstly, we are intrigued when famous and powerful people do something which is perceived to be wrong. It's the same when a celebrity has an affair, commits a crime or says something offensive. Even though the avoidance of tax revealed here is technically legal, to many ordinary people, it seems to be 'wrong'. We're therefore sucked into a story which shows not only politicians, but sports stars, movie directors, members of the Royal family, and a motley crew of hangers-on behaving badly. The tax avoidance may be legal, but we see it as yet another example of the excess of the rich and famous. The second reason this story is so popular is much more important than celebrity fascination, though. It goes to the heart of what it means to live together as a society. At a time when many developed economies claim 'there isn't enough money' and are pursuing austerity policies and cutting public services, the thought of the rich, powerful and famous avoiding tax becomes less a technical, legal issue and much more about the ethics of how we live together. Whenever a Christian ethic of taxation is discussed, Jesus' words in Matthew 22 are invariably quoted. "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" is a good starting place for discussion. Jesus is clearly suggesting that it's proper to pay taxes (this passage is also about far more than just taxes, of course). But the context into which Jesus spoke those words was completely different to today's world. The Roman occupiers demanded payment from the Jewish people, while the Temple taxes had to be paid as well. This was a situation where an exploited and occupied people were obliged to pay taxes to the Emperor and to the Temple authorities both of whom exercised power over ordinary people. In our contemporary, western democracies, tax plays a different role. We're not powerless, occupied people. In theory, we have a say over our own affairs. We are governed not by the military might of the Romans but by our own representatives. This means taxation isn't a tool of a repressive state it's a means to an end, and the end is governing ourselves and building a common life together. This is at the heart of the outrage against the Panama Papers' revelations. Someone who avoided tax in ancient Israel would have been a resistance hero. (This is why Jesus is asked the question in the first place should we pay the Emperor's taxes? it's an attempt to box him in as a revolutionary, or a Roman stooge. Jesus is far too wise to be boxed in, though.) In the US or the UK of the 21st Century, the person who avoids tax isn't a resistance hero that person is someone who is taking away from the shared life of the community. Taxation isn't the only way we contribute to the common life, nor is it the most important, but it is a significant part of how we build a society. Education, health care, pensions, social security, transport, law enforcement and much more is only possible because of taxation. The radical protestant Diggers of the 17th Century gave us the idea of the earth as a common treasury. Their leader Gerard Winstanley said the "Earth that is within this Creation made a Common Storehouse for all, is bought and sold, and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great Creator is mightily dishonoured." In other words, it's an offence against God and the created order for wealth to be accrued by a small number of people and denied to the masses. This shows why we consider the Panama Papers an offence, rather than just a distraction in the endless cycle of news. Those avoiding tax on an industrial scale may not be committing a crime, but they're rebelling against the right ordering of creation by hoarding wealth for themselves. It isn't only political radicals who feel the injustice of tax avoidance. Christian Aid's research shows conservatives are actually keen for tax havens to be shut down. This isn't necessarily an argument for high taxes or a big state. However, for society to function, we all need to feel a part of it, and if the elite is allowed to avoid tax on an epidemic scale, then the solidarity across society is fractured. Democracy depends on rule of law the idea that we are all subject to the same rules. A thriving society depends on us all feeling a part of it and contributing to it. What the Panama Papers reveal is that some people don't feel obliged to contribute. The rest of us are entitled to ask... Why not? Paris attacks: Key suspect Mohamed Abrini arrested in Brussels The key suspect in November's Islamic State attacks in Paris, Mohamed Abrini, has been arrested in Brussels, Belgian media said today. Abrini was also likely to have been involved in last month's Brussels bombings. He was "more than likely" the "man in the hat" seen on CCTV before the blast, said Belgian public broadcaster VRT, citing unidentified sources. Public prosecutors confirmed in a brief statement only that police had made several arrests related to the Brussels attacks. A second suspect, believed to have been seen with a third suicide bomber on the metro, was also held. VRT named the second man as Osama Krayem. It gave no other details. Abrini has been on Europe's most wanted list since being identified on CCTV video in a car with Salah Abdeslam, the recently arrested prime surviving Paris suspect, two days before the November 13 attacks in the French capital. The "man in the hat" left the airport shortly after the twin suicide bombing in Brussels and was tracked on CCTV for several miles into the city centre. On Thursday, investigators released new video footage of him appealing for the public's help in finding him. Wearing glasses and a hat, he had been very difficult to identify from the footage showing him pushing a laden luggage trolley alongside the two men who would blow themselves up with similar explosive bags. A third bomb was later found abandoned at the airport. Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels two weeks ago, four days before Islamic State suicide bombers struck in the city. Abrini has a criminal record, having been convicted in Belgium several times for robbery and violence. Additional reporting by Reuters. Pastor stabbed by own son at home in Virginia for still unexplained reason A pastor in Loudoun County, Virginia, was stabbed by his own son at home, the police said. The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office identified the victim as Pastor Dave Janney of the Purcellville Baptist Church in Purcellville. The incident happened at the pastor's home at around 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 5. The suspect was identified as Janney's 19-year-old son Jonathan, WUSA9 reported. "It's very disturbing. We love him so," said Vickie Leigh of the Leesburg Baptist Church who knows the pastor. The pastor's daughter called 911 for help. The police officers administered the medic kits to stop the bleeding before help arrived. Jonathan fled but was arrested by the police. He is facing charges of aggravated malicious wounding. A knife was found by the police. "He's not known to be a kid of violence. This was a total unknown for us. Are there issues? Obviously. Hopefully, we can get to the bottom of them, and the court system can help turn this around for them," Police Chief Cynthia McAlister said. Church members and residents were stunned by the news. "He's been here for 20 years. Everybody adores him," said Vickie Leigh. The pastor was taken to the hospital for treatment. In a statement, the church said "we want to thank our church family, the community, ministry partners, and friends for their overwhelming outpouring of love for our pastor, his family, and our church. "It has been a wonderful picture of the Body of Christ at work and the beautiful community we live in. We are happy to report that Pastor Dave Janney is continuing in stable condition and we are thanking God for the miracle that he is expected to make a full recovery," the church said. It said Pastor Janney has been with the church for more than 20 years and "our main focus is to love and minister to him and his family in order to help bring full healing and recovery." In an update on Thursday, the church said the pastor was released from the hospital and continues to recover well. He visited the church staff and the police and fire departments to thank them. "Please continue to pray for his recovery, his wife, Pam and their entire family," it said. Systemic tax injustice to blame for economic inequalities in Africa A new report suggests that ineffective and unjust tax systems are widening the gap between the richest and poorest members of society in a number of African countries, despite an increase in economic growth. In fact, Christian Aid and Tax Justice Network-Africa (TJN-A), which produced the report, contend that there is "clear evidence" that the growth is helping to maintain the position of the most vulnerable and poor, who are "actively impoverished in this process". "To make matters worse, we know that we are vastly underestimating the problem," notes the report, entitled 'Africa Rising: Inequalities and the essential role of fair taxation'. Tax systems are inadequate in many developing countries, where a lack of transparency often leads to tax dodging and illicit money flows, and has wider implications regarding political and social equality. It leads to an extortionate 555 billion being lost each year, which leaves the world's poorest communities the worst affected as they are not given money for the vital development of schools, hospitals and infrastructure. "High or increasing inequality levels can...lead to a rise in conflict and undermine the very fabric of society," the report reads. "There are many examples from Africa which show how rising inequality is leading to less stable and more violent and conflictive societies." The knock-on effects of this are far reaching. Although wealth has been increasing in many African nations for a decade, the rate of human development has not. Charles Abugre, Africa Director for the UN Millennium Campaign notes: "There is now a recognition that a fixation on growth is not only inadequate, but can generate a lot of problems. Increasingly people realise that our societies will be in crisis perpetually unless we pursue inclusive growth and equitable development. "Tax equity has to be part of the public policy debate." 'Africa Rising?' considers income inequality in eight sub-Saharan countries - Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe - and the research indicates that it is on the rise. "Inequality has been exacerbated by the growth model in many countries which has seen a concentration of income," says Alvin Mosioma, spokesperson for TJN-A. "It also reflects the inability of governments to tax the proceeds of growth, either because so much is given away in corporate tax breaks, or has escaped offshore into tax havens." The authors of the report believe that inefficient and unfair tax systems that punish the poor must be transformed in order to rebalance economic equality. "If countries in Africa cannot tax income and wealth correctly, they will shift the tax burden onto the poor," they note; indicating that financial transparency and the reduction of tax havens are vital for reform. It is not only individual African governments that are to blame for these inequalities, however. The report also points to the unjust policies of international governments, arguing that "the international community must shoulder a lot of the responsibility for increasing economic inequalities and for the short comings of tax systems and public finances in sub-Saharan Africa". Christian Aid's Africa policy and advocacy manager Sophie Powell says that fair taxation systems must be prioritised by governments all over the globe in order "to address inequality at its core". "It has to be recognised that progress will simply not be possible...without coherent and comprehensive international action to combat financial and corporate secrecy and to reduce the systematic problem of illicit financial flows," the report states. Those campaigning for greater transparency and the introduction of systemic justice are hoping that discussions on tax reform among the G8, G20 and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development this year will begin to challenge and address the inequalities so prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa at present. They admit, however, that national African governments will need to play a significant role if things are to change. "There has to be a significant amount of political will to investigate tax dodging, reverse the current corporate tax exemption schemes, and to make the elites pay their fair share," the report notes. "At the heart of this there is, and will continue to be, a lot of resistance from Africa's political and economic elites." Thousands quit Church of Denmark after atheist campaign Thousands of people have cancelled their membership of Denmark's state Church following a campaign by atheists. Nearly 3,000 baptised cancelled their membership last month after Denmark's Atheist Society, Ateistisk Selskab, launched a nationwide campaign advising people they could save money by opting out. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark is among several Churches in Europe subsidised by a Church tax. Although the tax is voluntary in Denmark, at a rate of around one per cent, Church members are automatically signed up and have to opt out rather than opt in. Nearly eight in 10 Danish people are members of the Church of Denmark, known as "the People's Church". The Church is both Protestant and episcopally-led. Everyone who is baptised automatically becomes a member. Just 2.4 per cent of members attend every week. The monarch is supreme authorithy of the Church and has to be a member, although not the monarch's spouse. However, Mary Donaldson converted from Presbyterianism when she married Crown Prince Frederik in 2004. Atheist Society spokesman Anders Stjernholm told Kristeligt Dagblad: "We are very pleased with the preliminary results. While our bus campaign calls for a broad debate about the foundations of faith, the withdrawal campaign targets the many Danes who have long considered leaving folkekirken, but have been putting it off because the process is too cumbersome." One vicar, Lena Kjems, who lost 14 members, said: "We can see that in most cases these are young men aged 18-25, and so we, as a city parish with many students, have been hit especially hard." Stephen Evans of the UK's National Secular Society told Christian Today: "It's not at all surprising that Danish citizens are cancelling their church membership. Nobody should be auto-enrolled into a religion, particularly when it comes with the imposition of a church tax to fund an institution that you may not support. "In secular democracies churches have to learn to stand on their own feet and not rely on unwilling citizens or the state for financial support. That goes as much for the Church of England here as it does the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark." Collecting guide: 9 things to know about Japanese screens Japanese screens (byobu) are exquisitely beautiful emblems of wealth and power. Matthew McKelway, Professor of Japanese Art History at Columbia University, offers an expert overview Whats interesting in the development of screen paintings, says Matthew McKelway, Takeo and Itsuko Atsumi Professor of Japanese Art History at Columbia University, is that we see a really broad variation of themes early on. Some of the earliest literary accounts seem to describe native landscapes rounded green hills, cherry blossoms, maple leaves and seasonal flowers but by the late medieval period we have examples that include human figures and narratives. As screens became increasingly varied in subject matter and style, members of the merchant class became keen collectors. Many beautiful examples are held in Buddhist temples, some commissioned by the temples and others donated by patrons. Today, gilded screens are still produced and used on special occasions such as award ceremonies and weddings. 1 When do screens date from? Among the earliest screen paintings in East Asia are examples in lacquer on wood from Six Dynasties China (220-589 AD). The earliest complete extant example in Japan, explains Professor McKelway, is from the Toji temple in Kyoto, built in 796 AD, depicting a 'Chinese recluse in a landscape with brilliant green pigments for the mountains'. Open a larger version of this image Anonymous (18th Century) Scenes from The Tale of Genji. Six-panel screen. Ink, colour, gold and gold leaf on paper, 37 x 104 in (95.2 x 266.1 cm). Estimate: $7,000-12,000. Offered in Edo to Post War: 500 Years of Japanese Art and Design, 12 November to 19 November online 2 What were they used for? Screens were used as diplomatic gifts. From the late medieval period onward, they were sent in considerable numbers to China and to Korea, says McKelway. The subject of the screen paintings could often be interpreted as a message to the recipient: 17th-century inventories describe images of Japanese warriors on screens sent to Korea which is interesting considering Japan invaded its neighbour twice in the 16th century. Japanese screens also played an important part in the sacred setting of Shinto and Buddhist temples. The concept of shogon is a decor used in the temple to heighten and intensify the atmosphere for rituals, the professor explains. The term encompasses the whole ensemble, from painted images and incredibly intricate silk borders on paintings to beautiful gilded incense burners and the like. Open a larger version of this image Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958), Pine Trees and Cranes. Pair of six-panel screens. Ink, colour, gold and gold leaf on paper. 67 x 151 in (170.2 x 383.9 cm.) each (2). Sold for $267,750 on 20 March 2013 at Christies New York They were also used at funerals and for the births of very high-ranking members of the aristocracy. Those serving the latter purpose, says McKelway, tend to be completely white or white with images of cranes or egrets painted on them. 3 Did screens contain popular themes? Screens often depicted images from the Tale of Genji, the classic work of Japanese literature written in the early years of the 11th century. Others, such as those given as a dowry for a young wife, might contain an underlying message, such as direction on how to behave at court. 4 Who were the leading screen painters? Although many of the screens are unsigned, there are some famous names that stand out for their innovation and skill. Hasegawa Tohaku to whom this pair of screens of the Uji River is attributed was attempting to do very different things with composition and materials to his competitors in the Kano school, for example, says McKelway. Open a larger version of this image Attributed to Hasegawa Tohaku (1539-1610), Willows and Uji River. Pair of six-panel screens. Ink, colour, gold, silver and gold leaf on paper. 62 x 139 in (159.4 x 354.3 cm) each. Sold for $605,000 on 22 April 2015 at Christies New York Around the 17th and 18th centuries, the artists hand began to be prized as much as the subject or material and, just as in the West, the individual's work was often preferred to that of the studio. Further important names from this period include Maruyama Okyo, Nagasawa Rosetsu, Soga Shohaku and Kishi Ganku. Yosa Buson, who was equally renowned as a haiku poet, is known to have established a lottery system in order to raise funds for the finest materials, such as silk satin. 5 What can we tell from signatures and seals? Signatures and seals began to appear on the screens in around the 16th century. An older, established painter who led a big atelier producing for a younger patron might enter his name in the lower corners of a pair of screens, Professor McKelway notes. If an artist were painting a screen for the shogun, however, he might not want to be so bold as to put his name on it. The seals, meanwhile, more commonly appear to indicate studio production. 6 How did production evolve over time? There was a marked difference in materials from commission to commission. In the 16th century, for example, we see a growing preference for extensive application of metal foils, particularly gold. Changes in Japan, such as national unification in the late 16th century, led to an advancement of technique. The late Momoyama period is considered by art historians to be the period of major compositional innovation, says McKelway. By the end of the 16th century, greater political stability contributed to urban development and increasing competition among painting studios. From the late 17th century, the breadth of patronage for works of art widened considerably as cities like Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya and Edo flourished, says the professor. The new consumerism was conspicuously displayed at the annual Gion festival in Kyoto, when screens and other treasures were taken out and put on show. This was unusual within Japanese culture, with its emphasis on discretion. 7 How did Japanese screens influence Western art? The first known Japanese folding screen to have been sent to the West was part of a Japanese diplomatic mission to Spain, Portugal and eventually to Rome in the 1580s, explains McKelway. Due to their delicacy and rarity these gifts were not widely dispersed in the same way as, say, traditional fans or Chinese porcelain. As they began to be acquired by museums and major collections in the 19th century, Japanese screens appeared in the work of artists such as Whistler and Manet. Open a larger version of this image Mori Kansai (1814-1894), Rabbits, 1881. Two-panel screen. Ink, colour and gold leaf on paper. 65 x 72 in (165.7 x 183.2 cm). Sold for $11,875 on 18 September 2013 at Christies New York 8 Are screens difficult to maintain? Like any work of art, painted screens require a great deal of care. As a rule, they should not be put up on walls because the hinges will strain, causing damage to the framework and tears on the painting surface. Temperature and humidity are also important considerations. Screens have to be kept in conditions similar to those in their place of origin, advises McKelway. Houstonians can dispose of their sensitive paperwork Saturday at the fourth annual Shred Day Houston. This free event, hosted by Comerica Bank and storage and information management services company Iron Mountain, will be from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Comerica Bank's Mangum Banking Center, 2201 Mangum Road. The event emphasizes identity theft prevention and recycling. The Houston Food Bank will also be there to collect non-perishable food. "There was a new U.S. identity fraud victim every two seconds in 2014. Yet, as fast as this crime is growing, one effective preventive step is to securely destroy sensitive paper documents by shredding," J. Downey Bridgwater, Comerica Bank's Houston market president, said in a news release. "Shredding will turn any document into tiny useless scraps of unreadable paper in a matter of seconds, an easy step that helps keep your personal information private." Since 2013, the two companies have destroyed and recycled more than 343,000 pounds of paper at Shred Day Houston events. Food and cash donations to the Houston Food Bank have provided nearly 102,000 meals. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The bearded, mustached and precisely trimmed sideburns of some of Houston's most notorious hairdos line the walls at Liberty Station Bar, framed and hung as part of one local artist's passion project. Ray Redding, a born-and-bred Houstonian, was inspired to showcase unconventional hair and the men behind these coifed and meticulously styled locks in his exhibit, "Houston Hair-raisers." The portraits are a part of FotoFest, which garners talent from around the globe and is the longest running photographic showcase in the country. HOUSTON STORIES: People explain their love for tattoos "I just told people, 'I want to shoot folks with interesting hair who do interesting things in Houston'," Redding said. "And the great part is, everyone was down and wanted to be a part of the series." Redding made his way through the 'hair' community in Houston, discovering an oddly connected group of people. "A lot of these guys know each other, and even if they don't know them personally, they'll recognize others by their hair," Redding said. "It's a sort of kindred spirit that's really what I wanted to show." The artist wanted to avoid the more commonly photographed hipster beard trend and focus on those who've been growing impressive 'dos for years. "For me, the hipster facial hair has been really well documented," Redding said. "I didn't want to make it about that. I wanted to show this group of people who've been known for their hair long before that trend." The exhibit has garnered an impressive local following, Redding said. "It's really started to take a life of its own," Redding said. "Now people are seeing the photos at the bar and calling me to ask to be in it. I guess it's just connecting with people." In a way, the exhibit is a long time coming for Redding, who worked in a corporate setting for over thirty years before retiring and pursuing his passion in photography. "I came out of school with a split creative personality," Redding said. "I have a degree in advertising and photography, but I got an advertising job right out of school." He felt torn by this split and knew he had to remedy the situation. "I told my boss, 'I've got this itch and I need to scratch it,'" Redding said. "He let me pursue this different side as long as I didn't use my actual name." Redding's alternate persona, TexasRedd, was born from this exchange and he started working under the alias. "I don't use it as much anymore, but that's where I started," Redding said. "Even today, some people don't know that TexasRedd is me on some of my older stuff." After spending parts of his life in Dallas and Austin, Redding was drawn back to Houston for its diversity and uniqueness with plans to stay. "There's just a spirit and energy in the people in Houston that my wife and I never saw in those other cities," Redding said. "It's a great place for inspiration and I don't think there's any other place in the country like it." 'Houston Hair-raisers' will be shown until April 24, along with the rest of the FotoFest exhibits. For more information or to see where other exhibits are located, visit www.2016biennial.fotofest.org. Amber Tamblyn, who most people know from the "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" films and TV's "Joan of Arcadia" and "Two and a Half Men," is also a poet. Last year, Tamblyn published her third poetry collection, "Dark Sparkler" (Harper Perennial) to wide acclaim. "Dark Sparkler" includes several poems about deceased child stars, including a blank page with the title "Lindsay Lohan." Days after the Tribeca Film Festival dropped a controversial documentary about vaccinations from its schedule, the Houston International Film Festival, or WorldFest, has also pulled "Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Conspiracy" from its lineup. WorldFest begins Friday and runs through next week. Hunter Todd, WorldFest's founder and director, said festival sponsors threatened to pull their financial support if the film showed. He said the monetary hit would have been around $50,000 and could have affected the festival's ability to return next year for its 50th anniversary. Andrew Wakefield, a discredited physician, directed "Vaxxed," a documentary that offers claims the Center for Disease Control and Prevention knew a measles/mumps/rubella vaccine could cause autism in children who received the shot. Wakefield was stripped of his medical license for falsifying a story that linked a vaccine for measles/mumps/rubella to autism. After pulling the film, Tribeca Film Festival Founder Robert De Niro, who was involved in the decision to accept the "Vaxxed," issued a statement: "My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for." De Niro has a child with autism. The film quietly premiered last Friday in New York independent of the festival, with Wakefield calling its Tribeca snub a "first amendment issue". (It's not.) Todd said the decision to open the film last week also played into WorldFest pulling it. "It was no longer a Premiere, and we are a premiere-only festival," he said. In addition to being the film's director, Wakefield is among its talking heads along with medical journalist (that's how he's credited in the film) Del Bigtree, who also is a producer. Among the organizations targeted in "Vaxxed" is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which the film accuses of covering up and destroying data that connects MMR vaccine to autism. Wakefield has suggested the film isn't anti-vaccine, but rather pro-safe vaccine. Cinema Libre Studio, which produced the film, offered the following nutshell description: "Vaxxed is a documentary that explores the journeys of parents whose autistic children were plausibly effected (sic) by a vaccine." Conspiracy theorist site InfoWars.com claimed the film was pulled from WorldFest due to political threats. While Todd describes the film as having been "censored," he denied any pressure from city officials. "The mayor did not call me," he said. "I am sure that he has better things to do." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A large fire broke out Friday morning at a LyondellBasell refinery in southeast Houston, sparking a shelter in place order for much of the area. The blaze started at about 10 a.m. at Houston Refining in a coker unit that's part of the refining process, said LyondellBasell spokesman Scott Buchman. The facility is located at at 12000 Lawndale near N. Allen Genoa. The fire was declared under control and tapped out at noon, according to the Houston Fire Department. There were no known injuries, Buchman said. HFD officials said all employees were accounted for. No toxins were detected in air safety tests, Buchman said. Houston Fire Department officials said a cleaning fluid and heavy fuel were burning. It's is not known what sparked the blaze, but the company has begun an investigation into the cause. OSHA will also investigate the fire. The organization conducted an on-site inspection on March 9 and that inspection is still open. To help the firm's crews battle the flames, HFD has 25 pieces of equipment at the scene and the Port of Houston Fire Boat is headed to the site. Other fire departments are also providing aid. National Weather Service Houston/Galveston A shelter in place was issued from Sims Bayou to Broadway and Manchester to Park Place, according to HFD officials. People in the area are asked to remain indoors. It was lifted at 11:15 a.m. Nearby Deady Middle School has received formal notification to shelter in place, according to Houston Independent School District spokeswoman Ashley Anthony. At Rucker Elementary and Chavez High, administrators have told students and staff to stay inside as a precaution, she said. The schools have also canceled all outdoor activities. There is no need to pick up students early at this time, according to officials. The facility is one of the largest refineries in the nation that processes heavy-sulfur crude oil, according to the company's website. It can transform very heavy high-sulfur crude oil into clean fuels such as reformulated gasoline and low-sulfur diesel. Other products include heating oil, jet fuel, olefins feedstocks, aromatics, lubricants and petroleum coke. The company has earned 13 national safety awards in the last five years, according to the site. It also had 10 safety violations during a 2009 OSHA inspection, many related to the mishandling of hazardous chemicals. In 2008, a crane collapsed during a maintenance operation there, killing four workers and injuring seven others. The facility is the only refinery owned by the global petrochemical giant. In the past, LyondellBasell CEO Bob Patel said the company may consider selling the refinery at some point. According to LyondellBasell's chemical inventory, the refinery can house more than 10 million pounds of methyl mercaptan. That's more than 430 times the amount that spewed into an enclosed building at DuPont's La Porte plant in November 2014, killing four workers there. The fire erupted a day after flames broke out at the ExxonMobil complex in Baytown, That fire was sparked about 4:40 p.m. Thursday, sending heavy clouds of smoke along Bayway Drive near West. No injuries were reported in the blaze. The company said an investigation will be conducted to determine what sparked the fire. The ExxonMobil facility is 3,400-acre complex that includes the nation's second-largest refinery and a sprawling petrochemical plant. More details will be reported as the story develops. Houston Chronicle reporters Ericka Mellon and Jordan Blum contributed to this report. Police are searching for two women and a man who apparently have a taste for stylish clothes after they snatched about $5,500 worth of shirts and pants from an Abercrombie & Fitch store in Sugar Land last month. The trio may be the same group that hit another Ambercrombie & Fitch store in northwest Houston. The brazen robbery in Sugar Land happened about 4:50 p.m. March 24 at First Colony Mall, 16535 Southwest Freeway, according to the Sugar Land Police Department. Police said the three walked into the store, stuffed 30 pairs of jeans into a bag and left without paying. About 30 minutes later they returned, grabbed 60 polo shirts and left without paying for them. The clothes, police said, were valued at more than $5,500. One of the women was described as about 5 feet ,2 inches tall and heavy. She wore a tan top, dark pants and sandals. She carried a tan purse. The other woman was described as about 5 feet, 3 inches tall and heavy. She wore sunglasses, a blue jacket, white shirt, denim pants and dark shoes. She carried a large purse. The man was about 5 feet, 9 inches tall. He wore a leather jacket, denim pants and dark shoes. Police said investigators believe the same three people robbed an Abercrombie & Fitch in Willowbrook Mall at 2000 Willowbrook Drive. No details about that incident were released. Anyone with information about the case is urged to call the Sugar Land Police Department at 281-275-2540 or Fort Bend County Crime Stoppers at 281-342-TIPS (8477). This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Along Riley Fuzzel Road, where - just a few months ago - sat a mess of orange cones and construction vehicles, now runs a freshly-paved, elevated beltway that connects Interstate 45, just south of The Woodlands, to U.S. 59 near Kingwood. The newest portion of Houston's third loop, the Grand Parkway, opened at the end of March. For months, the residents of the booming southeast part of Montgomery County lived around the traffic woes brought by the roadway's construction. Officials hope that its completion will not only relieve some of those woes on Riley Fuzzel Road, but will shorten commutes and take traffic off of other strained local roads. Last August, Grand Parkway construction prompted Precinct 3 Commissioner James Noack to release a letter that he sent to the chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Tryon Lewis, demanding that more effort be put into alleviating the mobility issues along Riley Fuzzel Road, calling it "a hazardous situation" and "like nothing I have ever witnessed." Noack referenced vehicle collisions, emergency vehicles being bogged down in traffic and negative effects on property values among his concerns. His office also stated that it had received hundreds of complaints from motorists at the time. Noack was unavailable for comment on the opening of the Grand Parkway, but a spokesman said that the situation had greatly improved in the Riley Fuzzel area in the past several months. Still, many residents there are unhappy with the current state of traffic. "It's been heinous," said Stephanie Toedter, who lives near where the new parkway intersects with Rayford Road. "I can't get anywhere. It takes 40 minutes just to take my daughter to dance class." Toedter said she doesn't think the convenience the Grand Parkway might offer outweighs the strain it's put on the community, particularly because it is a toll road. "It's too expensive," she said. "I don't feel like it's going to help too much. People say they're going to boycott it. They're making (traffic) worse by building this road." The 12.5-mile segment of the toll road is one of three that, together, took $1.1 billion and three years to connect Texas 249, northwest of Houston, to U.S. 59 in the northeast. The massive project, 30 years in the making, has drawn both praise and criticism, and those mixed reviews are reflected in those who live and work along Riley Fuzzel Road. Jestin Clark, who lives and works in the area, said he's excited to see the development that comes with the Grand Parkway. "There will be a lot of new businesses, property values will go up," Clark said. "It'll bring more jobs places to eat and shop." And sure enough, just within the area surrounding where the Grand Parkway intersects Rayford Road and Birnham Woods Drive, a new Wal-Mart and strip center have popped up, following a trend of development appearing along the parkway stretch. His coworker, Milton Gibson, however, doesn't see the Grand Parkway as a welcome addition. Gibson, who lives near Humble and drives about 15 minutes to get to his office on Riley Fuzzel Road, said that the traffic caused by the Grand Parkway construction has brought more harm than good. "It's been a pain," he said, "It's still a pain." "It's a nuisance now, but it will be done," Clark countered. But Gibson was not as enthused as Clark about the development the parkway will bring. "It's going to be all strip malls," Gibson said. "We're seeing the decay of what brings people to the area in the first place ... it's disgusting." Gibson said he remembers when Rayford Road - now a traffic-choked artery marked for expansion - was a tree-lined drive. To him, unchecked growth is spoiling the region. But Clark sees the development as natural. "My family moved here for those reasons - everything is 10 minutes away," he said. "(We) moved for the suburbs, not for the trees." Another resident of the area, Duane Turner, has already found that the Grand Parkway has made his life easier. "I've used it 12 times already," he said, just a week after the road opened. "It's a lot faster." But regardless of whether the Grand Parkway will add to or relieve traffic in the area, the southeast region of Montgomery County has already outgrown its infrastructure, transportation planners say. The widening of Rayford Road - one of the only major east-west corridors on that side of the Interstate - was listed as a top mobility priority in the South County Mobility Study conducted by the Houston-Galveston Area Council. Voters approved a $280 million road bond last November that earmarked $60 million to improve Rayford Road. The county is currently meeting with property owners who are affected by right-of-way acquisition for the project, which is slated for completion in 2019. Want to go? What: Montgomery County will hold a public meeting to update the community on the project to widen Rayford Road. When: April 14, 4-7 p.m. Where: Faith United Methodist Church, Community Room, 2403 Rayford Road in Spring Details: This meeting is an open house and there will be no formal presentation. Attendees are welcome to come and go at their convenience. A Seabrook optometrist on Friday told jurors that he was being attacked when he shot a drunken neighbor in the street in front of his home in 2013. "He had turned and was charging me," Karl Hormann said of shooting of 36-year-old Brandon Smith. "He was trying to hit me and lunge at me at the same time." Hormann, 56, was testifying in his own defense in his trial on charges of murder. He was the first witness the defense put on as they mount a claim of self-defense. Prosecutors cross-examining Hormann worked to show the eye doctor followed Smith off of his property and shot him instead of letting him leave. "Didn't you tell the 911 operator that you followed him into the street?" asked Assistant Harris County District Attorney Aaron Chapman. The prosecutor told jurors during the trial's opening statements that Smith was unarmed and was trying to leave the scene when he was killed. Smith died in the street after being shot once in the abdomen and once in the head in the early morning hours of May 26, 2013. A six-inch lockblade knife was found in his pocket. Hormann testified that during the heated argument, Smith said he had a knife and grabbed his pocket to show an outline of the knife. The prosecutor suggested that Hormann "concocted" the story. Hormann's attorney, Skip Cornelius, told jurors Smith was crashing a Memorial Day Weekend crawfish boil at the doctor's Taylor Lake home. Prosecutors have said that Smith lived nearby at his parent's home and could not hold a job. He had brain damage after being in a wreck when he was 18 and had a drinking problem, they said. A medical examiner testified that his blood alcohol level measured during his autopsy was .26, more than three times the legal limit. Smith was kicked out of the party after words were exchanged about 2 a.m., then returned a couple of hours later, and the altercation escalated. As the late-night argument became more heated, Hormann, who has a concealed handgun license, retrieved a semi-automatic pistol with a laser sight from his nightstand and confronted Smith. Hormann and his adult son both used their cell phones to call 911, and Hormann can be heard on the tapes shouting profanities at Smith. Smith finally went out the driveway gate, and Hormann testified he followed him to keep an eye on him until police arrived. During a demonstration of the shooting for jurors, Hormann said Smith walked away then turned and charged him. The eye doctor said he fired at least on warning shot, and then shot Smith in the abdomen as the younger man swung at him. Hormann fired again, hitting Smith in the temple. The trial, in State district Judge Marc Carter's court, began Monday and is expected to last into next week. If convicted of murder, Hormann faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate There's about to be a lot of yelling about Yale Street, as the historic span makes way for a modern replacement. Crews will close the bridge carrying the road over White Oak bayou on April 18 to prepare for demolition. For the next 20 months, drivers in the area will have to do without the segment of Yale. Signs warning motorists were installed recently by the Texas Department of Transportation, finalizing that construction is imminent. Detours are planned, but many drivers are expecting to avoid the area entirely. "When I saw (the sign) I told my wife we'd need to start having dinner around 8," said Lou Thompson, 55, who commutes from downtown to his Heights home via Yale. The bridge, built in 1931, is one of seven bridges in Houston listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Though the designation doesn't save the bridge, it does require a more meticulous process to replace it. The bridge has been a source of discussion for years, as commercial development south of it has increased. TxDOT nearly closed the bridge in 2012, when trucks weighing more than 3,000 pounds per axle were restricted from using it because of structural concerns. The weight-rating change worried neighbors and the bridge was improved so it could handle trucks weighing up to 10,000 pounds per axle. That still kept many trucks, including delivery trucks to the stores and restaurants along Yale and Heights, from using it. Police enforced the weight limits to limited results after they were put into effect. Replacing the bridge is expected to cost $2.8 million, TxDOT said. Marie D. De Jesus/Staff University of Houston officials are investigating the discovery of a note on campus that purportedly details an alleged kidnapping. University police said a student found the note about noon Friday on a water fountain in the Student Center South. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Just in time for the 50th annual Jim Bowie Days festival, the town that bears the famed Alamo defenders name now claims the worlds biggest knife. The larger-than-life Bowie knife was unveiled on Thursday in a park in Bowie a small North Texas town (pop: just over 5,000 residents) north of Fort Worth, off U.S. 81. The sculpture features some admirable measurements. The entire object is 20 feet, 6 inches long and weighs 3,000 pounds. The blade is made of stainless steel. SMALL-TOWN TEXAS: 21 awesomely weird Texas town names The monument was designed to tolerate winds up to 90 miles per hour, an inch of ice and seismic activity. The project almost didnt come to pass. Fundraising for the Bowie Knife Project started in 2013. However, by the end of 2014, organizers had raised only one-third of the projects estimated cost of $150,000 to $170,000. At the last minute, an anonymous donor gave $100,000 to save the undertaking. Diana Thomlinson, executive director of the Bowie Chamber of Commerce, noted the Bowie knife was funded with entirely private money. Project officials spent last year working on the sites architecture and other project details. The knife rests on a large base, and is surrounded by tiles of those who donated to the project. That includes a prominent plaque for Bob Hadley, who came up with the idea. Hadley died in a car crash in 2013. READ MORE: Take a historical tour of Texas Thomlinson said the residents hope the knife will provide a tourism boost for the small town along the historic Chisholm Trail. The monument also will serve as an appropriate centerpiece for the annual festival and rodeo called Jim Bowie Days. The chamber of commerce plans to have special guests on hand in June to confirm the landmark as the largest knife in the world. It will be a record, Thomlinson said. Were intending to have (officials for Guinness World Records) at our dedication ceremony. See other Texas entries world records in the gallery above. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SAN ANTONIO A tech sergeant at Lackland Air Force Base was being escorted to a disciplinary proceeding by a senior non-commissioned officer Friday morning when the tech sergeant opened fire in the commander's office, killing the commander, a source with knowledge of the attack said. The tech sergeant then killed himself. The senior NCO, a first sergeant, was uninjured, the source said. The murder-suicide left the base locked down for nearly 2 hours, officials said. Law enforcement swarmed Forbes Hall in the Medina Annex around 8:30 a.m. just minutes after reports of an active shooter were made, resulting in a lockdown of the entire base and schools in the area, Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta said at a late-morning press conference. Labrutta said the bodies of two men, who have not been publicly identified by officials, were found in a room in Forbes Hall near two pistols. Investigators searched a black Saturn coupe in the parking lot of Forbes Hall hours after the shooting. Evidence markers could be seen next to the vehicle. A source familiar with the incident said both guns belonged to the assailant. No other details about the shooter were immediately available. Another source familiar with the incident said the victim is a squadron commander. At the press conference, military officials refused to confirm details about the two men, including identity, rank and relationship. RELATED: Twitter catches San Antonio mapping mistake in CNN's coverage of apparent murder-suicide at Lackland The lockdown of the southwestern Bexar County base was lifted just before 10:30 a.m. Several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, responded to the scene. A nearby basic military training parade with anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 spectators was about to begin on Lacklands main base when the shooting occurred. The parade was abruptly ended after an active-shooter alert was issued, with the airmen and visitors moving from the parade field, across a parking lot and to the Gateway Club near Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center. They remained at the Gateway Club until the all-clear alert was issued. It was by the numbers. Weve practiced it several times, one person on the scene said. SEE ALSO: Reports: 17-year-old man arrested in death of University of Texas student Haruka Weiser A handful of parents arrived before noon to retrieve their kids from Valley Hi Elementary School, which is near the annexs main gate. The school will release its students at the normal time, a Northside Independent School District spokesman said. An email sent to mySA.com from a nearby resident said two siren announcements went off at around 8:45 a.m. warning that an active shooter was present near Building 134 on the base. RELATED: Basic training through the years: vintage photos reflect Air Force recruit life in San Antonio Lackland Air Force Base has Lackland Elementary School, Stacy Junior/Senior High Schools along with three early childhood centers. Editor's note: This story initially reported a squadron number believed to be involved in the shooting based on a report from the Air Force Times. That publication has now revised their report to exclude the squadron number. Text "NEWS" to 72727 to sign up for breaking news from mySA Staff writers Joshua Fechter, Sal Guerrero and Julie Cohen contributed to this report. kparker@mysa.com Twitter: @KoltenParker twhite@mysa.com Twitter: @TylerLWhite The Republican National Committee has hired former Texas GOP chairman Steve Munisteri to help lead an outreach effort aimed at ensuring a smooth ride through a contested convention. Munisteri, who chaired the Republican Party of Texas between 2012 and 2015, said he was brought on board as a senior adviser to the national committee largely because of his experience "keeping peace" in Texas' large contest-laden convention of 2012. Mathematical breakdown of the GOP primary strongly suggests that the party is headed for a complicated contested convention in July. That happens when no candidate claims a majority of the primary vote, and the national assembly of delegates casts a series of ballots until a nominee is elected. And it could get messy. RELATED: Despite streak, Cruz still headed for convention clash with Trump "Normally the conventions are pretty scripted and people show up to have a good time and give a send-off to the party's presumptive nominee. We don't know if that will happen this time," he said. "(If it doesn't,) many delegates would have many questions about how the process works and what's going to happen." Munisteri's hiring came as part of the RNC's Grassroots Assistance Project, announced Thursdaypart of an initiative to educate all participants on the process and procedures of the convention before thousands of Republicans gather in Cleveland in July. RNC chairman Reince Priebus said in a press release Thursday, "As we lay the groundwork for a fair and transparent convention, ensuring our delegate are informed and prepared is one of our highest priorities." RELATED: Growing chance of contested convention puts added focus on delegates As the vast majority of delegates are yet to be elected by state conventions, Munisteri is reaching out to the chairmen and directors of state Republican Parties to establish open lines of communication and ensure that questions are met with answers. He cited an example: if only part of the delegate assembly is present for a vote, does a vote require 50 percent of those present or 50 percent of all delegates? Answer: 50 percent of everyone. RELATED: Here's how an open Republican convention would work The pages and pages of RNC rules, he said, can be pretty dense. The other half of his role involves combatting misinformation and misunderstandings. He said that people often misidentify Republican pundits or officials on TV as speaking for the RNC, which maintains strict neutrality in the presidential primary. He aims to reassure voters, delegates and convention participants that the nomination process will unfold fairly. "We don't take sides in the presidential race. We're more like the referee," he said. "Misinformation gets out there. It's very important to have transparency." 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. Bill Clinton injected a disruptive element into the Democratic presidential campaign yesterday: truth. The question now is: How will his wife recover from this alien intrusion? The former president was stumping for Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia when protesters targeted the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that he had signed into law. The bill lengthened federal sentences for repeat felony offenders and provided federal funding for more state prison construction, among other provisions. Signs bobbing in the audience read: CLINTON CRIME BILL DESTROYED OUR COMMUNITIES and HILLARY IS A MURDERER. A heckler shouted out that Bill Clinton should be charged with crimes against humanity. At first, Clinton responded by touting the Democratic feel-good elements of the 1994 bill: a ban on assault weapons, funding for after-school programs in inner cities, and money for more cops so that the police could look like the people they police. It was then-Senator Joe Biden, Clinton said, who persuaded him to support the tougher sentencing measures in order to get the bill through a Republican Congress. But then, in the first of his inconvenient infusions of truth, Clinton added that it wasnt just Republican lawmakers who wanted a tougher response to crimeit was also African-American communities. They urged him to sign the bill, he said, because their kids were shot in the street by gangs. Thirteen-year-olds were planning their funerals, according to Clinton. The result of the bills passage? A 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in the murder rateand listen to this, he said, because of that and the background-check law, a 46-year low in the deaths of people from gun violence. And who do you think those lives were, that mattered? Whose lives were saved, that mattered? The hecklers werent placated. As chants continued to disrupt his speech, Clinton broke out in obvious exasperation: I dont know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children, Clinton said heatedly. Maybe you thought they were good citizens, [Hillary] didnt. You are defending the people who killed the people whose lives you say matter! Tell the truth. You are defending the people who caused young people to go out and take guns. Clinton also defended the historic 1996 welfare reform bill, currently the subject of a rearguard left-wing assault. If it increased poverty as its critics charge, he asked, Why then did we have the largest drop in African-American poverty in history? Clintons equation of todays virulent anti-cop protests with the enabling of criminals is about as visceral and daring a response to the Black Lives Matter movement as one could imagine. It also happens to be accurate. Data-driven, accountable policing and lengthened sentences for violent criminals have saved thousands of black lives since 1994. And now, as cops back off from proactive policing under the relentless charge that theyre racist for enforcing the law in minority neighborhoods, black livesincluding childrens livesare once again being lost at elevated rates, prompting no outcry or protests from Black Lives Matter. Clinton understands at a gut level the need for vigilant, strong law enforcement. He also knows that the people most hurt by crime are blacks. But Clintons unguarded outburst of honesty puts him and Hillary in a difficult position. The Democratic frontrunner has been furiously pandering to the anti-cop Left. She has claimed that it was reality that cops view black lives as cheap. She has amplified President Barack Obamas relentless lie that the criminal justice system treats similarly situated blacks and whites differently, and that it is shot through with racial bias. Even Bill Clinton wanly joined the Democrats criminal justice history revisionism last year with a half-hearted apology for the 1996 crime bill. But the former presidents display of righteous anger throws that carefully calculated groveling into disarray. The Left is furious. Vice News fumed that Clintons Philadelphia performance raises the question of whether Bill is actually helping or hurting Hillarys campaign with his history of veering dangerously off message while on the campaign trail for his wife. Its hard to see how Hillary walks this back. She can either acknowledge the truth, or betray him and continue to pander. Most likely, she will simply ignore the contradiction between her husbands criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement and her own embrace of it. The Clinton v. Clinton tension echoes the internecine warfare raging on the campuses. The Left has gotten so extreme that it is now eating its own. Photo by Spencer Platt/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 At first glance, the Panama Papers seem destined to become legend in conspiracy theory circles. The investigation, published Sunday, relied on 2.6 terabytes of secret data to reveal a vast network of offshore companies that hide money tied to politicians, celebrities, and criminals worldwide. These revelations offered conspiracy theorists a sip of ambrosia, a rare and highly visible confirmation of organized malice by the elites. Not since the Edward Snowden leaks have doubters of all things official been so strongly validated. But, perhaps predictably, conspiracy theories are now forming around the Panama Papers themselves. Some believe the work is meant to take the Benghazi heat off Hillary Clinton, while others claim the US State Department manufactured the stories to tar its political enemies. Online forum discussions, conspiracy theory magnate Alex Jones, and even WikiLeaks have cast doubt on either the origins of the documents or the integrity of the journalism. At issue, they say, are the organizations that fund the project leader, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Whats most striking is how a misunderstanding of how the news media works can simultaneously condemn proven muckrakers and empower state-run propaganda arms. Claims that #PanamaPapers themselves are a plot against Russia are nonsense. However hoarding, DC organization & USAID money tilt coverage WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 6, 2016 Sign up for CJR 's daily email First, some background: The German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung began receiving encrypted files from an anonymous source more than a year ago. The documentsemails, invoices, photographs, and morebelonged to the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in creating offshore companies for banks, on behalf of their clients. The newspaper came to ICIJ to lead what would become journalisms largest-ever cross-border investigation, encompassing more than 100 newsrooms in 80 countries. Their findings were damning and the fallout intense. So far, the Panama Papers have resulted in the resignations of Icelands prime minister, a top FIFA official, and the head of an Austrian bank. The coverage has also centered on Vladimir Putin. The investigation unearthed that associates of the Russian president hid billions of dollars in the coffers of offshore companies. When the news hit, Putin and his cronies came out firing. The states RT television news network claimed that Western media was out to shake up upcoming Russian elections. Other articles questioned how much influence the US government and powerful Americans had in the publishing process. The obvious implication: that ICIJ is a cover for more nefarious backroom players. So who are the donors behind ICIJ, and do they influence the editorial operation they fund? ICIJ lists its supporters on its website. Some, like the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, are geared toward encouraging strong journalism. Most others lean left. Open Society Foundations, for instance, is funded by wealthy liberal George Soros. The Ford Foundation, the Adessium Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation tend to support causes more associated with progressives, climate change among them. Thus, those caught in the crossfire of the Panama Papers and conservatives like Breitbart have joined in, throwing shade on the political leanings of the news organizations funders. Fair enough. (In fact, journalists should ask themselves whether they would call attention to the financial backers of a news organization funded by Republican heavyweights like the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson. Yes is the right answer.) But ICIJ director Gerard Ryle says the folks who write ICIJs checks dont write its stories. A firewall between the newsroom and its funders means they know only that a big story is coming, Ryle maintains. He says he doesnt accept donations from sources who want to dictate coverage, and there is no evidence to such that funders like Ford try to play a hands-on editorial role. Ive turned away money, he adds. And I dont believe in taking money just to do stories on a topic. ICIJ built its reputation by publishing international investigations into tax havens, but the group doesnt specialize in shady money. It has also covered the human effects of World Bank policies, mining in Africa, and the trade of corpses. If these accusations were borne of a conspiracy, the organizers sure packed a lot of shrapnel into the bomb. Even film star Jackie Chan is under the microscope. Whats more likely is that a handful of wealthy people set out to fund good journalism. The very status linked to their names incites paranoid speculation. Some people, for instance, jumped on the belief that the Rockefeller and Carnegie families finance ICIJ. Few names cause more alarm among conspiracy theorists. But the claim wasnt quite true. Foundations linked to each family support ICIJs parent, the Center for Public Integrity, but Ryle says his operation doesnt receive direct funding from them. So far, the conspiracy theorists have offered up little evidence supporting their theories. Believing in conspiracy theories is a lot like supporting a candidate, says Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami professor and an expert on conspiracy theorists. No matter what youre told, that information always gets interpreted in the light of what you already believe. As Uscinski notes, even The Washington Posts storied reporting on Watergate was the subject of dubious speculation. Had the Panama Papers exposed more Americans, fewer skeptics might have emerged. Of course, few US news outlets wanted to work with ICIJ, for whatever reason, and there remains hundreds of offshore company specialists whose files are still secure. #PanamaPapers: If you censor more than 99% of the documents you are engaged 1% journalism by definition. WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 6, 2016 What we do know has caused WikiLeaks to call for ICIJ to publish all documents related to the Panama Papers. The prolific leaker says that would enable independent sources to verify existing news stories and search for unreported information, pushing back against possible bias. Ryle has no plans to open his filing cabinet. He says the documents include passports, information on people whose use of offshore companies appears legal, and fodder for identity theft. The disagreement between the two parties, however, might be the result of a stab that Ryle took at WikiLeaks in an interview with Wired. Were not WikiLeaks. Were trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly, he told the magazine. Since then, the criticisms of WikiLeaks, which at first rallied around the Panama Papers, have bolstered conspiracy theories and propaganda published by affected countries. Is there any fruitful path to shutting down the noise? One that Ryle can think of: All you can do is do what you think is the best possible job, and then sit back and let the journalism talk. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Jack Murtha is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow him on Twitter at @JackMurtha A security company isnt liable for the theft of more than $60 million worth of prescription drugs from pharmaceutical company Eli Lillys warehouse in Connecticut six years ago, a federal jury in Florida says. Eli Lillys insurer, the National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh, sued Tyco Integrated Systems, alleging the company failed to adequately secure a report detailing security weaknesses at the warehouse in Enfield. The insurance company said the thieves somehow obtained information from the report and used it to break into the building. A jury in Miami reached the verdict Monday in favor of Tyco, formerly known as ADT Security Services and based in Boca Raton, Florida. Lawyers involved in the case and representatives from Tyco did not immediately return messages seeking comment Tuesday. Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly declined to comment Tuesday, saying in a statement that it was not involved in the lawsuit. In what authorities called the biggest heist in Connecticut history, thieves cut through the roof of Eli Lillys warehouse in Enfield, about 20 miles north of Hartford, in the early morning hours of March 14, 2010. They rappelled to the floor, disabled alarms, used a forklift to load pallets of antidepressants, antipsychotics and other drugs into a truck and drove off. Stolen were thousands of boxes of Prozac, Zyprexa, Cymbalta and other pharmaceuticals. Five men, all from Florida, pleaded guilty in connection with the theft. Three of them were sentenced to prison, one got probation and another awaits sentencing. The lawsuit said the thieves parked a tractor trailer in the only loading bay outside the view of surveillance cameras a weakness noted in Tycos security report on the building. They went to a small area on the roof that also was identified in the report, where they cut a hole and rappelled down to an area in the warehouse that the Tyco report noted was not monitored by security equipment, the lawsuit said. Under Eli Lillys insurance policy, the National Union Fire Insurance paid the drug company more than $42 million for loss of the drugs, damage to the property and other expenses. The insurance companys lawsuit sought to recoup the $42 million, legal costs for the case and other expenses. Tyco said in court documents there was no proof the thieves had information from the report. The company also said the lawsuit never said the burglars actually had confidential information about the warehouses alarm system or how they got it. We are pleased with the verdict in Tycos favor, but disappointed that the case had to be resolved by a two week jury trial, the company said in a statement Tuesday. It was gratifying that the jury found there was no evidence supporting the theory put forth by the insurance company plaintiff. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Louisiana Man Pleads Guilty in $1.5M Insurance Settlement Theft From Disabled Sister A Lafayette, La., man is facing a possible 20-year prison sentence for stealing about $1.5 million from an insurance settlement received by his sister. U.S. Attorney Stephanie Finley said Thursday that 37-year-old Kevin Ralph Andrus pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. Prosecutors said Andrus had been the curator for his sisters estate when an automobile accident left her incapacitated. As she recovered, she discovered that settlement funds had been transferred to Andrus personal and business accounts. Finley says the guilty plea was entered in a federal magistrate court and still must be accepted by a federal district judge. Then, a sentencing date will be set. North Carolina Residents Accused of Staging Car Accident Four individuals were arrested in connection with an alleged staged auto accident, according to an announcement by North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin. Investigators continue to seek two other suspects in association with the case. Investigators accuse the group of six of conspiring in an effort to commit insurance fraud against Peak Property and Casualty Insurance Company by providing false statements after allegedly staging an automobile accident in June 2015. Investigators allege they falsely claimed not to know the occupants of the other car in the accident, when all six are related to one another and reside in Tabor City. Patricia Riggins Sumpter was charged with two counts of felony conspiracy and one count each of attempting to obtain property by false pretense, insurance fraud and making false statements on an application for insurance. Sumpter was arrested on March 26 in Columbus County and placed under a $7,500 bond. Iesha Dashawn Sumpter was charged with two counts of felony conspiracy and one count of attempting to obtain property by false pretense. Sumpter was arrested on March 26 in Columbus County and placed under a $5,000 bond. Rachel Yvette Galloway was charged with two counts of felony conspiracy and one count each of insurance fraud and attempting to obtain property by false pretense. Galloway was arrested on March 29 in Columbus County and placed under a $5,000 bond. Ernestine Galloway was charged with two counts of felony conspiracy and one count each of insurance fraud and attempting to obtain property by false pretense. Galloway was arrested on March 29 in Columbus County and placed under a $5,000 bond. Elfonza Demetrius Riggins is wanted for two counts of felony conspiracy and one count each of insurance fraud and attempting to obtain property by false pretense. Hattis Tean Galloway is wanted for two counts of felony conspiracy and one count of insurance fraud. Iowa Pizza Restaurant Owner Charged With Arson, Fraud The owner of a central Iowa pizza restaurant has been accused of torching his business. Ankeny resident Robert Schultz is charged with arson, insurance fraud and criminal mischief. Schultz told Des Moines television station KCCI that hes innocent. The fire at the Pizza Ranch restaurant in downtown Jefferson was reported about 12:15 a.m. on Jan. 26. No injuries were reported. Greene County authorities say the business was having financial difficulties. General Contractor, Subcontractor Charged with Forging Invoices on Oklahoma Church Repairs Arrest warrants were issued for a general contractor and a subcontractor charged with fraudulently padding an insurance claim. An investigation by the Oklahoma Insurance Departments Anti-Fraud Unit found that Lisa Loven and Jeffrey Scott filed fake invoices with the insurance company for equipment that wasnt used. The Anti-Fraud Unit began investigating Loven in May after receiving complaints she was acting as an unlicensed public adjuster. One complaint involved an Edmond church that had received roof damage during a hailstorm on May 29, 2012. Investigators found Loven had submitted a typed invoice for $14,923 to pay for a rented crane to remove the church steeple. When investigators contacted the owner of the crane rental company, he said he had never worked on the church and that his invoices are handwritten. The owner said he provided a handwritten estimate to subcontractor Jeff Scott of Edmond Roofing. After speaking with an independent adjuster hired by the insurance company, investigators learned that a crane was not used on the church repairs and the steeple was not removed. Investigators believe Loven and Scott worked together to submit false documents to the insurance company for personal benefit. The Oklahoma County District Attorney has charged them with one count each of conspiracy to commit a felony and false claim for insurance. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. city of parma.jpg The city of Parma has agreed to pay $100,000 to a man who said that he was abused and shocked with a Taser during a medical emergency. (File photo) PARMA, Ohio -- The city of Parma has agreed to pay $100,000 to a man who said he was physically abused and shocked with a Taser when paramedics and police responded to a call about him having a seizure. Richard Pettry, 38, said he suffered a broken rib as a result of his August 2013 encounter with Parma's emergency responders. He said he was not aggressive or threatening, yet police and firefighters treated him as a violent suspect. The settlement in the federal lawsuit was signed by Pettry and his wife Christa on March 17. U.S. District Judge Benita Pearson dismissed the case on Thursday. Pettry filed suit against the city in July 2014. The suit says his niece, when she called 911, told the dispatcher that Pettry was having a seizure in his bedroom, but the responding paramedics did not obtain the proper information from dispatchers. When paramedics John Petro and Gary Vojtush arrived they asked Christa Pettry whether her husband had used illegal drugs. When Richard Pettry stood up on the bed, Petro and Vojtush tackled him and held him to the ground, the lawsuit says. Police officer Thomas Kuchler then arrived and used his Taser on Pettry several times, even though Pettry was not being aggressive, the lawsuit says. A toxicology report from a hospital showed that Pettry was not under the influence of any drugs at the time of the incident. A city prosecutor did not file charges against Pettry, saying he was having a medical emergency, the lawsuit states. "Mr. Pettry's medical emergency, his seizure and ... state, was so obvious that even a layperson would easily recognize the necessity for a competent and measured Paramedic response and a doctor's attention," the lawsuit says. David Malik, Pettry's attorney, said the case shows police historically treat those having seizures as combative instead of someone who cannot control their movements. "What they need is care," Malik said. "They don't need to be arrested." A statement from the city said it maintained that paramedics and police "acted appropriately in protecting Mr. Pettrey (sic) from further harm." The statement said the city and its insurance provider settled in order to avoid more litigation costs. Federalcourthouse.jpg Jury selection began Friday in the trial of four men charged in a $7 million investment scheme. (Eric Heisig/cleveland.com) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Four men charged with a $7 million scheme to sell unregistered securities and lying to investors about a medical device they claimed they were developing went on trial Friday. A jury was selected Friday and opening statements are scheduled for Monday morning in the case against Kenneth Jackson, 59, of Glenmont; William Schureck, 81, of Lexington; Dennis Deciancio, 73, of Macedonia, and Daryl Dane Donohue, 67, of Mansfield. They face charges including conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and making false statements. The quartet was indicted in July. All pleaded not guilty. The trial in U.S. District Judge Patricia Gaughan's court is expected to last at least four weeks, according to a trial brief filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office. According to a news release from the FBI, the four men were affiliated with Medical Safety Solutions, a Mansfield company that Jackson formed in 2007. They said the company would develop and sell a hypodermic needle destruction device they called the "Sharps Terminator." Jackson and Schureck filed a provisional patent application for the product in April 2007 but did not officially apply for the patent until September 2011 or a pre-market approval application until October 2012, the FBI says. During that time, they are accused of selling unregistered securities by seeking out investors to buy private shares of stock in their company. The shares were not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI says. They also lied to the investors about the Sharps Terminator, the news release said. Statements included saying Food and Drug Administration approval was imminent, even though they had not applied for approval, and that it was ready for mass production, the news release said. The men took investors to a facility and showed them parts, a small number of the completed units and product boxes that were mostly empty. Jackson and Schureck used investor money to cover other expenses, including other failed business ventures, officials said. Jackson gambled more than $3.3 million at Mountaineer Casino Racetrack & Resort in West Virginia between 2009 and 2013, the FBI says. The indictment says that Jackson has a previous conviction for his role in a $13 million Ponzi scheme. He was in prison between 1992 and 1999. Updated after a jury was chosen. steelman.png An artist's rendition shows the future interior of the Steelman Building. (Courtesy of Inbloom Consulting) CLEVELAND, Ohio - Eric Anderson of Butcher and the Brewer is leaving the East 4th Street brewery for Saucy Brew Works in the Hingetown neighborhood on the West Side. For Anderson, who was with Butcher since it opened, now is the right time to take the leap. "I get a chance to have ownership and do whatever I want," he said. "It's also a different space. (At Butcher) we have the stadium crowd and transient business crowd. But it's hard to get to with parking. I can rebrand this as my very own." Anderson's final day at Butcher and the Brewer is Friday, April 8. Saucy Brew Works will open in the neighborhood that includes Rising Star Coffee and Jukebox bar. Saucy will be located in the Steelman Building at Detroit Avenue and West 29th Street. There is room for two to three more retail spots - "something interesting," he hopes. Eric Anderson has been with Butcher and the Brewer since the inception of the East 4th Street brewery. Anderson is leaving the brewery he "engineered, built and designed since day one in June 2014." The planning dated to November 2013 in the bustling Gateway District. But greener - or in this case, sour - pastures called. "We bought a state-of-the-art automated German brewhouse," he said. "I'm looking forward to learning to use that. There's room for 200 barrels of sour beer. I'm looking forward to doing whatever the hell I want. Barrels tell you when beers are ready." Anderson is a creative, capable brewer who has crafted a variety of styles ranging from an albino stout to tafelbier - French table beer - at Butcher and the Brewer. Previously a machine shop, the Steelman Building had been empty for about 15 years and is equipped with high-powered voltage, solid concrete base and lots of sunlight, Anderson said. Saucy will offer self-service ordering for pizza and beer. Brewing equipment is expected to be delivered in November with launch aimed for first quarter of 2017, said Vicki McDonald of Inbloom Consulting. "We're looking to do some weird things - mixed fermentation, blending of yeasts, trying to play with the palate of ingredients," Anderson said. "The whole idea of being saucy - the irreverence with which we treat our beer - is what we'll set us apart." A perfect collaboration might be with Rising Star Coffee, whose coffee has been used in concoctions with local breweries before. Butcher and the Brewer isn't the first brewery to lose its brewer. As more craft breweries pop up, expect more musical chairs between brewers. Dan Malz recently left Portside Distillery and Brewery as brewer, and Shaun Yasaki previously left Platform Beer Co. Anderson is looking forward to the new endeavor but will miss his former colleagues. "I've worked with these guys for four years," he said of the Butcher crowd. "They're my friends, but it's time to move on." Copper wire. The commodity was trading at five-year lows Wednesday. Muriel de Seze | Photodisc | Getty Images China may be about to shock the global copper market by unleashing some of its stockpiles of the metal, which are near record highs, onto the global market. Four traders of copper, including two from state-owned Chinese smelters, said they expect China to raise its copper exports - which are usually tiny - in the next few months. China's refined copper exports averaged less than 10,000 tonnes a month in the first two months of 2016, and around 17,000 a month in 2015. If higher exports materialize, they will be a major jolt to producers and investors in the metal across the world - in particular because it would come during what is traditionally the strongest period of demand for copper from China, the world's largest consumer of the metal. It will also be a further sign that the Chinese economy is still struggling against headwinds. Some sectors that buy copper - such as construction and manufacturing - have been hit especially hard in the past couple of years. Traders and analysts in China say slowing building construction and electronics manufacturing has stifled demand for refined copper from the nation's massive smelting sector at a time when the country is already swimming in the metal. watch now China's copper consumption has been a crucial measure of the country's economic growth as the metal forms the essential network of its infrastructure, carrying water, conducting electricity and comprising the circuits in its machines. "The situation for copper smelters in China is probably the worst it has been in 20 years. But they won't admit it. It wouldn't surprise me in the least (if they start exporting)," said a source at an Asian copper producer, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media. Increasing Chinese exports would mark an abrupt turnaround in global copper trade flows as China's refined copper imports hit a record in 2015. Any exports could deliver a major psychological blow to market sentiment that has been buoyed lately by a more than 10 percent rally in prices since mid-January. The outbound flow of metal would also question the wisdom of the world's top mining companies to dial up copper production on the assumption of strong long-term demand out of China. In the past 20 years, copper producers around the world have opened new mines and increased production from existing ones because they knew that China would swallow just about any of the metal they could produce. watch now This was particularly the case during the massive commercial and residential development boom from 2005-2015 as the Chinese government pushed more people to move from rural areas into the cities. China now has 16 cities with more than 5 million people. But the faltering Chinese economy has changed all that. Many buildings, particularly in secondary cities remain empty, meaning demand for new housing projects has plummeted. Copper demand weaker than before The slumping consumption comes as the surging imports of 2015 and earlier this year have left China's copper stockpiles bulging and even the usual seasonal uptick in copper demand in the second quarter is not likely to help the country's smelters. "We still will see a seasonal demand rise this year, but it is likely to be weaker than previous years," said one of the traders at a state-owned smelter, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media. China may hold more than 1 million tonnes of refined copper stocks currently, including bonded stocks, exchange stocks and metal held by traders and smelters, according to estimates from He Xiaohui, an analyst at state-backed research firm Antaike. Want to boost your chances for college financial aid? Start early as in, before your child's sophomore year of high school. Until your child is a high school senior, you don't have to tangle with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (aka the FAFSA), the form that determines your family's eligibility for financial aid. But experts say it's worth estimating your aid ahead of time, and employ (legal) strategies to essentially work the formula and make you appear less affluent on paper. "We spend a lot of time doing all kinds of creative and fancy things to try to reduce their footprint," said certified financial planner Evelyn Zohlen, president of Inspired Financial in Huntington Beach, California. Melpomenem | Getty Images Upcoming changes require planning even further in advance. Starting with the 2017-18 FAFSA, families can file as early as Oct. 1, three months earlier than the current start date of Jan. 1, using income from the prior tax year. The changes effectively shift the base year of a student's financial aid eligibility a year earlier, from their junior year to sophomore year of high school, said Mark Kantrowitz, vice president of strategy for Cappex.com, a college and scholarship search site. "That suggests that you have to be careful about artificially increasing income starting January 1 of your child's sophomore year in high school," he said. Asset values are reported at the time you file the FAFSA, allowing more flexibility for last-minute moves. A few caveats about FAFSA preplanning: Some colleges also ask applicants to file the College Scholarship Service Profile (aka CSS), which uses a different formula. There are also other considerations, including parental marital status, age and number of kids in college, that can shift the formula and affect the expected family contribution. Some families won't be able to benefit much so it's worth estimating your aid with the government's calculator before making drastic changes. "For the true high-net-worth client, regardless of how they try to manipulate their financial structure, it's going to be fairly difficult to qualify for need-based aid," said Kevin Meehan, a certified financial planner based in Itasca, Illinois. (Even if you think that's the case, you should still file the FAFSA. Among other reasons, without it, you aren't eligible for any federal student loans and some kinds of state- or college-based aid.) Making your finances FAFSA-ready comes down to two parts: Assets and income. Assets Beef up retirement accounts. Balances in qualified retirement plans, including 401(k) plans, pensions and IRAs, aren't reported as assets on the FAFSA. Stepping up contributions in the years before filing, instead of putting money in a reportable asset like a brokerage or savings account, can lower your expected family contribution under the formula, said Meehan. But proceed with caution. Retirement contributions in a given year get added back as income in the FAFSA so an 11th-hour contribution won't help. Putting too much into retirement plans can mean you have less that's accessible for other financial goals without early-withdraw penalties, said Meehan. It can also hurt you in retirement. "If you shove everything into qualified plans you may have all this money that's tax-deferred for retirement," he warned. "Then when you go to take those monies out in retirement, you have a much higher tax outcome than otherwise." Shelter your kid's money. The FAFSA weights assets in the child's name more heavily than those in a parent's name. That's as much as 20 percent, versus a maximum of 5.64 percent for parental assets. The exception: 529 college savings accounts are assessed at the parent rate, even if they are in the child's name. If your child has money in a savings account or CD he or she has earmarked for college, discuss transferring those to a 529 to get that lower inclusion rate, Zohlen said. (Or, if it's earned income from a summer job, your child might make an IRA contribution so the money won't be counted.) And if those savings are earmarked for something else, like a car or computer? Try to make that purchase before filing the FAFSA, so the cash won't have to be reported, she said. Pay down debt. It's a smart magic trick. When you use money from a reportable asset to pay debt that isn't factored into the FAFSA like credit card balances, an auto loan or the mortgage on your primary residence it essentially disappears, Katrowitz said. Paying down your mortgage has extra benefits. The net worth of the home isn't included in the FAFSA, and that equity gives you more options when it's time to pay the college bills, said Meehan you might open a home equity line of credit. "That's going to be a lot less expensive than going out to get a private loan," he said, and the interest may be deductible. Assess ownership. If parental assets are better than child assets, assets in a grandparent or other relative's name can be even better. "Now when you go to apply for your FAFSA, you will legally not have to disclose that this account is in your name, because it's not," said Zohlen. But it's another tactic to approach with caution. Distributions from a grandparent's 529 account may be treated as untaxed income of the student on future FAFSA filings, cutting aid by up to 50 percent. "This is a terrible backfire," Zohlen said. Parents have two options to consider. You might reassign ownership of that 529 from a grandparent to yourself, which can be done easily. Or wait until after you've filed your last FAFSA, ahead of your child's senior year of college, to take distributions from a grandparent-owned asset, said Meehan. Income When Japanese messaging app Line found itself shut out of China, it took a somewhat unusual step. Instead of packing its bags at the disappointment of losing access to the largest smartphone market in the world, it started banking on plush toys and other merchandise. "Our messenger app remains unavailable in China at the moment. But when Line first entered China, we saw a huge popularity for its characters, and that remains today," said Takeshi Idezawa, Line Corporation's chief executive. China blocked a number of foreign chat services in August 2014 in a bid to tighten censorship on mobile messaging apps, hitting Line and Korean chat app KakaoTalk, among others. Despite the government move, Line is undeterred. "We haven't given up (on China even though) our messenger app is not available in China at the moment. We'll monitor the situation and proceed accordingly," Idezawa told CNBC's "Managing Asia". The Japan-based company which is owned by South Korea's largest web portal operator Naver . is popular in Asia and it has more than 200 million active users globally. Line's key markets are Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. The company is keen to expand its reach and will now focus on the Middle East and the rest of Southeast Asia, said Idezawa. It's eye-candy aplenty at the sixth edition of the Singapore Yacht Show, which kicks off Friday with vessels designed to appeal to the mega-wealthy. The weekend-long event aims to be a platform to introduce high-net worth individuals to yachting professionals and owners in order to bolster Southeast Asia's yachting culture. The yacht industry hope to capitalize on the tourism potential of Southeast Asian islands, world-renowned for their beauty, as well as the region's growing population of billionaires. Take a look at the ten biggest and shiniest toys on display. GSO Images | Getty Images Tax avoidance is like a game of musical chairs wealthy people are going to keep playing even if fewer seats are available. The explosive Panama Papers leak this week that revealed many hidden offshore accounts held by rich and powerful people worldwide has heightened calls for authorities to crack down on such tax-ducking shenanigans. At the same time, the Obama administration has introduced new rules that would make it harder for companies to shield income from U.S. taxes by relocating their corporate headquarters overseas through so-called inversions. But experts say that even before those events, it was already getting more difficult and riskier in recent years for wealthy Americans to hide their incomes. However, they also said they expect many rich people to continue pushing the envelope as they seek to keep more of their money from the tax man. "Let me tell you something, the rich are they worst ones, they're the ones who don't want to pay it," said Henry Obadiah, founder of Rock & Hammer Tax Service in New York. "The ones who can afford it the most hate paying taxes the most," said Obadiah. "They'll do anything to avoid paying taxes." Obadiah noted that a common tax avoidance tactic by wealthy people has been "to set up offshore corporations in the Cayman Islands or these other tax havens, where there is no corporate tax, and they'd funnel all of their incomes over there, and they'd pay nothing in taxes." But recently "it's gotten a lot harder to shield their income," Obadiah said. One major reason is that the federal government has become more aggressive at pursuing civil and criminal penalties against people who fail to file disclosures of overseas accounts. Obadiah said the civil penalties for failing to file the disclosure, known by the acronym FBARs (the IRS' abbreviation for foreign bank and financial accounts), can be significant. And "people would panic thinking they were going to jail" when they received a notification about a possible FBAR violation, he said. Because of such fear, the number of FBARs filed increased considerably in recent years. Last year, the number of foreign-account filings topped 1 million an all-time high, and an 8 percent increase over 2014's filings, according to the IRS. And the agency noted that FBAR filings have grown on average by 17 percent per year during the last five years. "Taxpayers here and abroad need to take their offshore tax and filing obligations seriously," said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. "Improving offshore compliance has been a top priority of the IRS for several years, and we are seeing very positive results." Joseph Gulant, an attorney and tax expert at the firm Blank Rome, said, "the noose is really tightening on these off-shore structures." As a result, "the field of play is much more constrained than it used to be" for rich people looking to reduce their tax exposure. The pressure is not only on rich people who use such accounts or off-shore corporations, but also on the overseas banks and countries that historically had accommodated efforts by the wealthy to dodge taxes, Gulant said. The banks and countries have increasingly submitted to such pressure. In 2014, a U.S. law went into effect to require foreign financial entities to disclose information about American clients or face financial penalties themselves. Gulant's firm has had clients come into the office and reveal they held overseas accounts or had other structures set up to shield their money from taxes, and asked "what should we do now?" Some of those clients, he said, are children or grandchildren of people who had escaped the Holocaust, and who only became aware of the existence of overseas accounts in their inheritance after the death of a parent or grandparent. Gulant's recommendation is to disclose everything to the U.S. government, even if the accounts or structure were not set up to duck taxes. "You're not going to be able to hide this stuff forever," he said. He also recommends that clients don't set up overseas accounts as mechanisms to reduce their tax exposure, even if the structure would arguably be legal. "It's just not worth the headache, in my view, that comes with this stuff," Gulant said. "It's being carefully watched, it's being systematically shut down." Getting some people to reveal their overseas accounts or shell corporations isn't always easy. "From my experience, the people that are involved with these things, they're not bad people," Gulant said. "But the old paradigm is this is what wealthy people did, this is what you do to hide your taxes." "We've had people who have shown up at the office and go through their portfolio of assets, and we'll advise them what the penalty is going to be" if they don't disclose the accounts to the government, or pay taxes on them, Gulant said. "And then we never hear from them again," he said with a laugh. In other cases,he said, "we've had people who have continued to engage in a series of schemes, if you will, against our advice or judgment, and some of them have actually paid the price ... civil and criminal." Gulant said that post-Panama Papers he expects some wealthy people to continue tax reduction strategies, which can include "strategies with off-shore trusts." "There are some legitimate trust structures that can be utilized," he said. "But you have to be very careful, because if you don't do it right, you could put yourself in a situation where the tax situation is worse." Sometimes, he said, the rich throw that kind of caution to the winds and set up an offshore asset protection trust in a place such as the Marshall Islands or the Cook Islands, which offer both a tax-free environment and privacy about who actually is controlling the trust. Those people think "I'm going to transfer all these assets to an island somewhere in the Pacific and my creditors, including the IRS are not going to be able to get it," Gulant said. But that belief won't necessarily withstand the legal power of the U.S. government. Another potential legal strategy even in the face of tightened rules about such inversions is to move an existing company overseas to a country that has a lower corporate tax rate than the United States, he said. And Americans can renounce their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. In 2015, nearly 4,300 Americans gave up their citizenship, an increase of more than 20 percent, the third year in a row for the record to be broken. Individuals who are willing to do so can also move within the United States to reduce, often greatly, their annual tax hit. David Tepper, the hedge fund billionaire who founded Appaloosa Management, filed to move his personal tax residency in December from New Jersey to Florida. He also officially moved Appaloosa out of New Jersey to Miami in January. Both moves could save Tepper hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, since Florida has no income taxes, unlike New Jersey, where the top income tax rate is 8.97 percent. People close to Tepper told CNBC he made the move to be closer to his mother and sister, who live in Florida. Next week is one of Jim Cramer's favorite weeks of the year for earnings. Investors can finally get past chatter of the Federal Reserve and politics and focus on the fundamentals of earnings. Unfortunately, Cramer isn't a big fan of many of the stocks that report. "My advice? Listen, learn, find out. Sometimes there is not that much money to be made. Next week is one of those times," the "Mad Money" host said. Here's what's on his radar for next week: Monday: Alcoa Alcoa is splitting into two separate companies, soon. The first is an engineered proprietary business and the second is a low-cost maker of commodity aluminum. Cramer has only liked the proprietary part of Alcoa, but if the Commerce Department adds aluminum tariffs, like it did with Chinese steel, then he thinks Alcoa's aluminum business could do well, too. "I say listen to the call, I don't expect a blowout quarter, and then get ready to buy the company that is about to break itself up," Cramer said. While everyone tries to get millennials to pay attention to live television, BuzzFeed was able to captivate more than 800,000 people at once thanks to some rubber bands and a piece of fruit. On Friday, the media company used Facebook Live to livestream its employees putting rubber bands around a watermelon with the goal of making it explode, which it ultimately did with an Internet-satisfying burst. There were more than 800,000 live viewers at the time of the explosion, and the video a simple affair with a melon, a table and two people in lab coats was watched more than 2.9 million times in total at the time of publication, according to Facebook. It had more than 318,000 comments and more than 8,400 shares by the time BuzzFeed turned off the show. "This far outperformed anything I'd previously thought possible," Jeremy Briggs, head of Buzzfeed Video in New York, told CNBC. "It had a lot of elements I was eager to test, but nobody saw this level of popularity coming. It's very exciting." The feed is now most-watched livestream, both concurrently and through replays, in Facebook history. The record was previously held by Vin Diesel. Soon after, other media outlets attempted to replicate BuzzFeed's success, including a Fortune editor who calculatingly stapled an orange. Below is a collect of tweets from users losing their collective minds over the juicy video. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell: Under Armour A two-for-one stock split takes effect Friday for the apparel maker's shares. Holders will get two shares of a new non-voting class "C" for every share of the "old" Under Armour (UA) they now hold. Yahoo Sources tell CNBC that Verizon may come forth with a bid for Yahoo as soon as next week, while there have been reports of interest from companies like Alphabet and Time as well as private equity firms Bain and TPG. Ruby Tuesday Ruby Tuesday reported adjusted quarterly profit of 3 cents per share, 2 cents below estimates, while the restaurant chain's revenue also missed forecasts. The company cites weather factors as cutting into sales, and also cut its annual outlook. Gap Gap reported March comparable store sales fell 6 percent, with the apparel retailer calling the month "challenging." The parent of Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy said it was taking steps to improve its results throughout its brand portfolio. Ulta Salon The specialty retailer will join the index after the close of trading on Apr. 15. It will replace hospital operator Tenet Healthcare , which will move to the S&P MidCap 400 to replace Jarden . Jarden is in the process of being acquired by Newell Rubbermaid . CBS RBC began coverage on CBS with an "outperform" rating, pointing to "top notch content" and new earnings streams. In the same report, RBC rated Time Warner and 21st Century Fox "outperform," while rating Viacom "underperform." LinkedIn The stock was downgraded to "neutral" from "buy" at MKM Partners, which said growth in online job postings appears to have peaked. MKM does remain positive on LinkedIn long-term. Intercept Pharmaceuticals The drug maker's shares may benefit after an FDA panel voted unanimously to recommend accelerated approval of its liver treatment Ocaliva. Depomed Depomed now has activist investor Starboard Value as a 6.8 percent stakeholder, with Starboard saying it would nominate a slate of directors to the drug maker's board. The investment makes Starboard Depomed's third largest shareholder. MetLife The government will appeal a judge's ruling that lifted the insurance company's so-called "SIFI" designation removed. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew rejects MetLife's contention that it is not a systemically important financial institution. AstraZeneca , Eli Lilly The drug makers said they would move a clinical trial for a new Alzheimer's drug forward after initial testing did not show any harmful side effects. Valeant Pharmaceuticals Valeant is not selling its Bausch & Lomb unit, according to investor Bill Ackman. He told CNBC that the vision products brand is a "core asset" and that the company is only seeking to sell non-core assets. WD-40 The company reported quarterly profit of 94 cents per share for its second quarter, 8 cents above estimates, though revenue came in below forecasts. The lubricant maker also raised its full year earnings forecast. Alliance Fiber Optic Products Corning is offering to buy the fiber optic parts maker for $350 million or $18.50 per share, 20 percent over Alliance's Thursday closing price. Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta has said that while he is not planning a return to politics, "you can never resign from political engagement." Letta, who spoke to CNBC from the Ambrosetti Workshop on Friday, said he was "absolutely not" planning a comeback. However, the former PM said, "You can resign from parliament as I did, but you never resign from the political engagement. Political engagement is heart." He added that he fears for Europe's future. "This is why I am so engaged in helping Europe, supporting Europe and saying that Italy has to take this leadership because Italy's engagement is crucial for the future of the European Union," he told CNBC. Peter Macdiarmid | Staff | Getty Images Whistleblower Edward Snowden is urging British people to demand the resignation of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron over the revelations in the Panama Papers. During a series of tweets the exiled American said U.K. citizens should attend a protest outside Downing Street on Saturday. Cameron is under fire for failing to previously disclose that he and his family had invested in an offshore investment fund run by his late father, which was exposed in this week's massive Panama Papers data dump. In one tweet, Snowden, who now lives in Moscow, said Cameron's case was more serious than that of Iceland's former Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who stepped down Wednesday following revelations that his wife had an offshore trust with ties to some of Iceland's bankrupt banks. "It's up to the British people, not us. In Iceland, 10 percent of all voters were in the streets within 24 hours, and for less," Snowden tweeted Thursday. In an earlier tweet, Snowden mocked Cameron for insisting that his family's tax affairs were not a public matter. "Oh, now he's interested in privacy," Snowden's message said curtly. Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told CNBC on Friday he's "troubled and disappointed" by the Obama administration's stopgap answer to trying to prevent corporate inversion deals. "The root cause here is this antiqued, outdated tax system that puts U.S. corporations, multinationals, at competitive disadvantage with their foreign competitors," Paulson said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "This hurts national economic security." The corporate tax system needs to be overhauled, he added. The Treasury Department took new steps this week to curb inversions, in which a U.S. company reincorporates overseas following the purchase of a foreign company. The biggest of these deals, the $160 billion combination of New York-based Pfizer and Dublin-based Allergan , fell apart. The U.S. needs to make it more cost effective for American companies to bring overseas profits back to the U.S., Paulson said. He said the U.S. needs to move to a territorial system, "and have American companies pay their taxes, whatever is the going rate is there, and then not penalize them for bringing their money back." Paulson, a former chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs , headed the Treasury in the George W. Bush administration from 2006 to 2009, in the lead up to and during financial crisis. He helped engineer the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) the bailout credited with preventing the collapse of the financial system. Argentina will head to the markets with its long-awaited multibillion-dollar bond issuance next week, according to media reports citing people familiar with the deal. The deal is set to top $12 billion and would mark the country's re-entry to the global markets since its massive default in 2001-2002. "I think it will appeal to a broad swathe of investors in search of yield but a more responsible yield, as the government adopts more orthodox macroeconomic policies," Fiona Mackie, the Economist Intelligence Unit's lead analyst on Argentina, told CNBC on Friday. "It is becoming very difficult in Latin America to find a credit that is not going through economic difficulties that have been brought on through economic mismanagement," she added. The funds raised would be used to repay so-called holdout creditors who have sued the country for repayment. These include U.S. billionaire Paul Singer's Elliott Management. Customers enraged by Netflix 's $2 price hike likely weren't paying attention two years ago. Social media users took to Twitter this week to criticize the online streaming company for a "surprise" increase of its monthly fees for grandfathered users. Tweet 1 Tweet 2 Tweet 3 Turns out, Netflix revealed the change back in 2014 and reminded shareholders again in January with a letter. "In Q2 and Q3, we'll be releasing a substantial number of our US members from price grandfathering on the HD plan and they will have the option of continuing at $7.99 but now on the SD plan, or continuing on HD at $9.99 a month," the company said in the letter. The fee hike, which starts for some users in May, was first announced in 2014, when Netflix bumped its monthly fee for ner users from $7.99 to $8.99. At the time, the company told members who were already signed up that they would get a two-year reprieve from the hike. Now Netflix is ready to collect. watch now The drive west into Hobbs, New Mexico a city of about 45,000 just over the line from Texas takes you past the typical array of chain retailers and restaurants, as well as a row of newer hotels on State Highway 18. At first glance, it looks like any one of the countless similar pockets of development across the country. Except the hotels are largely empty, offering rooms at steep discounts. And traffic in general seems sparse despite all the new construction. It wasn't always this way. Hobbs is an oil town, anchoring New Mexico's portion of the Permian Basin the nation's most prolific oil producing area, according to the Energy Department, made even more productive by new technologies like horizontal drilling and fracking. Two years ago, when crude prices topped $100 per barrel, the boom in Hobbs was something to behold. "You couldn't get a hotel room, and if you could get one, they'd be $250 a night," said Mayor Sam Cobb. The hotels along Highway 18 popped up as temporary housing for oil workers who were being bused in from around the country, but it wasn't enough. "People were living in their cars," the mayor recalled. Sales tax receipts for the city hit a high of $10 million a month at the end of 2014, around the time unemployment in Lea County hit a low of 3.5 percent. For retailers like Richard Martin, owner of the Martin Boot Company store on Broadway downtown, there was a steady flow of customers with money to spend. "The worst thing during the peak of the economy was that they didn't have time to spend it," Martin said. Today, oil prices are down more than 60 percent, and Martin's customers have changed. Now, he said, "They've got the time. They don't necessarily have the money." Sales tax revenues for the city have returned to a more normal $3 million a month, and it is easy to see why. Heavy equipment like trucks and drilling rigs that would have been scattered across the countryside hard at work a couple years ago now sit idle in padlocked equipment yards. Just outside of town in Manzano LLC's Bronco oil field, manager Mike Hanagan said the company stopped drilling new wells about a month ago because of the low prices. "You don't want to give your oil away at this rate," he said. That means less work for drilling contractors and oilfield service companies. The county's unemployment rate hit 7.6 percent in February, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The jobs that remain pay a fraction of what the oil workers had grown accustomed to. "Normally, where a truck driver was making $100,000, now they're down making $40,000," said County Commissioner Gregg Fulfer, who was forced to lay off a handful of employees at his own small oil and gas company because of the downturn. Sam Cobb, Mayor of Hobbs, New Mexico Justin Solomon | CNBC While all of this might seem to suggest despair, local officials say the situation spells opportunity. They say they learned from the last oil shock in the 1980s that booms don't last forever. So the city socked money away when oil prices were high. "If you take that excess and put it in the bank and not spend it like you think you are going to have it forever, it does not create a huge issue," the mayor said. In his office in City Hall a building that previously housed a bank that went bust in the 1980s Cobb displays architectural drawings for projects like a new wellness center that the city and county can afford to build now that construction is affordable again. This is not to say that things have been easy in New Mexico, the nation's sixth-largest oil supplier, where oil and natural gas previously accounted for around 35 percent of state revenues. Earlier this year, Republican Gov. Susana Martinez and state legislators had to trim spending and dip into reserves in order to balance the state budget, and state forecasters are warning of more shortfalls next year. At least two died in a Friday shooting at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. The Bexar County Sheriff's office said its deputies continued to search the base, and that they had found at least two dead in the incident. The scene was still considered active as of 10:40 a.m., ET, but a representative for the sheriff told MSNBC his office did not believe there was still an active shooter situation. The spokesman said the incident was an apparent murder-suicide. The official account for the sheriff first posted on Twitter about the active shooter reports at 9:50 a.m., ET. Sheriff tweet. About 25 minutes later, the same account said officials were working to clear the base's buildings. Sheriff tweet 2. Soon after, the sheriff's account said "we have victims" at the still active scene. Tweet 3. Staggs is leaving Disney because he did not receive assurances from the board that he would succeed Iger, sources told CNBC. Staggs unexpectedly announced on Monday that he will step down from his current role effective May 6 and will leave the company at the end of the fiscal year. Although Chief Operating Officer Thomas Staggs was seen as CEO Bob Iger 's heir apparent, Disney needed to expand its slate of candidates for the position since Staggs was not the "right guy for the spot," Sonnenfeld told CNBC's "Power Lunch." Disney made the right decision by broadening the scope of its succession plan, Yale School of Management's Jeff Sonnenfeld said Friday. "I think this is a board operating at its absolute best," Sonnenfeld said. "The easiest thing for them to do would have been to stay on the conveyor belt and put on a guy who would have done a fine job in a much more custodial role, not creative." Staggs did a "wonderful job" running Disney's theme parks, but creative storytelling and having a sense of drama and imagination was not his strongest suit, according to Sonnenfeld. Former Continental Airlines CEO Gordon Bethune, who is a board member of Honeywell, Sprint,and Prudential Financial, agreed that Disney made the right choice in expanding its search for other possible candidates. "There has to be a board with a plan, and having the CEO identify multiple successors and groom those people so there is a choice to be made when it's time to grow," Bethune told "Power Lunch" on Friday. He said the board at Disney needs to "deepen their bench" of potential successors. "The best companies develop two to three people, try them on in different roles and get the feeling for what the challenge or the superiority is going to be, and then they make a decision," said Bethune. "I've been there a bunch of times. It is the right thing to do." Disney did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on this story. CNBC's Julia Boorstin contributed to this report. The world's largest oil company will soon become the world's largest public investment fund. That's big news, but what exactly does it mean? Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman said earlier this month that his country would transfer ownership of the Arabian American Oil Company and some other national assets to the Public Investment Fund, one of several sovereign wealth funds through which the country invests excess cash from its oil and gas operations. Initially, only about 5 percent of Aramco will be listed on the Saudi stock market. But if investors are willing to pay $10 for each barrel of reserves left in the country, Aramco as a whole should be worth about $2.7 trillion. Simply by transferring Aramco equity to the PIF, the fund will become the biggest on Earth. Here's how the newly endowed fund would stack up compared with the other sovereign wealth funds, as tracked by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. Not surprisingly, a University of Arizona study found that when it comes to re-entry, prison time does not deter a person from attempting to cross again. If the motivating factor is to provide food and economic stability for the individual and their family, this should not surprise anyone. The proposed increase in prison sentences for immigrants come with massive costs to taxpayers and are based on speculation, not on factual data. Not only are the proposed changes costly, but these changes pose a real threat to reforming the entire criminal justice system. How can we reform a system that excludes from consideration a large segment of the population it affects? Further criminalizing immigrants is in direct opposition to reforming the system. The vast majority of people trying to re-enter the country (67 percent) have family in the United States, according to the USSC. Even more startling is that of those individuals trying to re-enter the country who do not have family in their native country, 98 percent have family in the U.S. Furthermore, the average age of first entry for those trying to re-enter the country is 17 years-old, meaning these border-crossers have spent their formative years making a life in the United States. The notion that these individuals are crossing the border to get on welfare is inconsistent with the findings of the USSC, which found that 75 percent of border-crossers had worked for at least one year prior to being deported. watch now The U.K. referendum on its membership of the European Union is the greatest risk facing the region, the vice-chair of financial services firm Allianz Global Investors told CNBC. Elizabeth Corley, the global CEO at Allianz Global Investors, said that it was a "very, very significant issue" regardless of the outcome of the vote on June 23. "If you think about the distraction value as a minimum for the whole of Europe of dealing with the referendum," she said on the outskirts of the Ambrosetti Workshop in Italy on Friday. "You think of the consequences of the U.K., the economic consequences over which there is significantly less debate over some of the national identity issues." The City of London at sunset Allan Baxter | Photolibrary | Getty Images Allianz Global Investors, owned by the German insurance giant Allianz, has 454 billion euros of assets under management. Corley described herself as "very pro-Europe" and said it would be fantastic if Britons voted to stay inside the European bloc. "The EU is our largest trading partner, we have a huge trade surplus from services. Services are highly regulated and under any scenario they'll remain regulated," she said. She added that a vote to leave would lead to an "annoying divorce" from the Union and estimated that the renegotiation of trade deals would take "at least five to 10" years and would distract policymakers from creating growth. "There won't be an amicable divorce," she added. The economic plan of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump is "especially troubling," anti-debt crusaders Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson told CNBC on Friday. Eliminating the federal debt without touching entitlements, as Trump has promised, would be impossible, said Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of President Barack Obama's 2010 bipartisan debt commission. "The arithmetic just won't work," Bowles said in a "Squawk Box" interview. He said a combination of economic growth, tax increases and spending cuts are needed to get the job done. In an interview this month with The Washington Post, Trump said he would be able to eliminate the $19 trillion national debt "over a period of eight years." Trump said "renegotiating all of our deals" would supercharge economic growth and enable the U.S. to pay down the debt. The Obama debt commission's Republican co-chair, former Wyoming Sen. Simpson, said it's "fantasy" to believe it's possible that increased economic growth alone can wipe out the deficit. "You could get up to 10 percent [growth] and it would take you 20 years to dig out of this hole," Simpson said on "Squawk Box," sitting next to Bowles. The 2010 Bowles-Simpson plan fell short of the votes from the bipartisan panel needed to recommend the framework to Congress. Simpson was also highly critical of Trump, as well as GOP presidential hopeful Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Describing the current state of the Republican race, Simpson said: "It's madness." "It's going to be a very disruptive, disemboweling thing of the Republican Party," he said. Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank J. Meric | Getty Images Career gurus and self-improvement advocates sprinkle their speeches with long to-do lists for aspiring entrepreneurs, but according to one self-made billionaire, only one thing is needed: action. "If you really want it, it's up to the entrepreneur to go make it happen," Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of Under Armour, told CNBC. Plank started his business from his grandmother's basement and says it's always a good time to begin a venture. "If you're going to start a company, it's not going to be in the millions of dollars, but it's going to be something for a lot of these kids out of the trunk of their car, the same way that I did," he said. The strategy is to find people who believe in the company's vision. Before Under Armour was a promising business, Plank sought out financial assistance from a local bank in Washington, D.C., Abigail Adams National Bank. "It was the vision of the bank president," he said. "[She] looked at me and said ... 'I believe in you and I'm going to give you a chance.'" The bank approved a $250,000 loan for the apparel company. The loan was 88 percent subsidized by the government. "The Small Business Administration was fundamental in helping our company," he said. "There's great initiative from the government if you know the right places to look." Today Under Armour's market cap tops $17 billion. Running a business is not the only thing on the Maryland-based CEO's agenda; instead he's set out to guide and inspire other up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Yearly, Plank searches for the next big business venture via Cupid's Cup, his company's national business competition. But what qualities does the lucky winner need to have? "I want people to believe in themselves; I want intellectual curiosity; I want someone who realizes that they don't know it all and that they're dying to learn," he said. The perks of winning the Cupid's Cup competition include more than $100,000 in cash and access to Plank's professional network. For those who want to start a business, Plank encourages them to take the leap and have "the courage to get out there," despite seemingly unfavorable circumstances. "People get way too caught up with what's happening when you're starting a business," Plank told CNBC. "There's enough people telling you what you can't do," he said. "Find out if somebody is willing to exchange your goods or products or services (whatever it is) for the hard cold cash in their pockets and there's no bad time to do that." Vietnam demanded China move a controversial oil rig on Thursday and abandon plans to start drilling in waters where jurisdiction is unclear, the latest sign of festering unease among the two communist neighbors. The $1 billion rig, which was at the center of a fierce diplomatic stand-off between the countries in 2014, had moved into an area of the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea about which Vietnam said the two countries were still "executing delineation discussions". China calls the rig Haiyang Shiyou 981. Vietnam refers to it as Hai Duong 981. "Vietnam resolutely opposes and demands China cancel its plan to drill and immediately remove the Hai Duong 981 oil rig out of this area," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said in a statement on the government's news website. China claims most of the resource-rich South China Sea amid rival claims by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. The World Bank has announced plans to fight climate change through a new Climate Change Action Plan that it hopes will see investment in environmental projects reach $29 billion a year by 2020. In a statement on Thursday, the Bank said that, in the next five years, it planned to help countries in the developing world add 30 gigawatts of renewable energy to global energy capacity; provide "early warning systems" to 100 million people; and develop "climate-smart agriculture investment plans for at least 40 countries." The news comes in the wake of the historic COP21 agreement reached in Paris at the end of 2015. There, 195 countries agreed to make sure global warming stayed "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and to "pursue efforts" to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Bank said its announcement came a fortnight before the world's leaders meet in New York to sign the Paris Agreement. "Following the Paris climate agreement, we must now take bold action to protect our planet for future generations," Jim Yong Kim, World Bank Group President, said in a statement on Thursday. DeWITT, N.Y. Patients seeking treatment for 10 common conditions represent more than 2 million annual visits to hospital emergency rooms (ERs) in New York state at an estimated cost of about $1.3 billion. Research that Excellus BlueCross BlueShield conducted found that nine out of 10 visits to the ER for these conditions could have been avoided or treated elsewhere, the health insurer said in a news release issued Wednesday. Rochesterbased Excellus is the largest health insurer in Central New York. The health plan analyzed potentially preventable emergency room visit data issued by the New York State Department of Health. Of the 6.4 million visits made to New York hospital ERs in 2013, more than 2 million involved common conditions such as ear or sinus infections and sore throats. The other conditions that New York state places in this category are headaches; back and neck problems; abdominal pain; nausea, constipation, and diarrhea; urinary-tract infections; bumps and bruises; and joint aches and pains, according to an infographic Excellus included with its news release. The state considers potentially preventable ER visits as ones in which patients could have been treated outside of the emergency room, or their conditions could have been avoided altogether through better care coordination and quicker access to primary and preventive care. Compared to treatment received in a primary-care setting, a telemedicine visit, or an urgent-care facility, the ER has the longest wait times and highest expenses, including out-of-pocket costs, Dr. Richard Lockwood, VP and chief medical officer at Excellus, said in the release. Emergency departments are vital community resources and should be reserved for patients with significant trauma and conditions that are potentially serious. Excellus said it used an extrapolation of its upstate New York health-insurance claims data to conservatively determine the $1.3 billion estimated cost of the statewide visits. Spending is likely to be much higher because costs in the New York City metropolitan area are typically greater, the insurer added. The best method of care for nearly all of these cases is for patients to see their primary-care doctors in office visits, said Lockwood. But when the physician isnt available, many of these potentially preventable ER cases can be addressed with telemedicine visits or going to urgent-care centers at considerably greater convenience and less cost. The cost analysis assumes that if a patient were to skip the ER and see his or her doctor for a minor condition, the office visit with the physician would take about 10 minutes and include a limited exam and treatment. For the 10 common conditions, telemedicine demonstrates itself to be the most convenient and cost effective alternative when your physician isnt available, said Lockwood. Many may not realize that telemedicine providers can write prescriptions, he added. Effective this past Jan. 1, health insurers in New York are mandated to cover telemedicine visits by customers who are enrolled in their commercial products, Excellus said. New York describes telemedicine as the use of electronic information and communication technologies by a health-care provider to deliver health-care services to an insured individual who is located at a different site than where the health-care provider is located, according to the Excellus news release. Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com The announcement on the screen at Syracuses Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at Oncenter indicating Anoplate Corp. as the recipient of CenterState CEOs Business of the Year award in the More than 50 Employees category. (Eric Reinhardt / BJNN) SYRACUSE, N.Y. CenterState CEO on Wednesday used its annual meeting to honor five area organizations with its Business of the Year awards in five different categories. The award recipients included Anoplate Corp.; Chocolate Pizza Company Inc.; Le Moyne College; Dermody, Burke & Brown, CPAs, LLC; and the Law Offices of Jose Perez, PC. More than 1,000 business and community leaders attended the annual meeting held at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at Oncenter, in Syracuse, according to the organizations news release on the event. CenterState CEO dubbed the event, Disrupt: Challenge the Status Quo. Anoplate of Syracuse, which specializes in surface engineering, won the award in the More than 50 Employees category. Chocolate Pizza Company of Marcellus won the honor in the Less than 50 Employees. CenterState CEO honored Le Moyne College in the Nonprofit category. In addition, Syracuse accounting firm Dermody, Burke & Brown, CPAs won the award in the Community Involvement category. And the Law Offices of Jose Perez, PC won in the Minority-owned Business category, which CenterState CEO presented in partnership with the Upstate Minority Economic Alliance. The announcement on the screen at Syracuses Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at Oncenter indicating Chocolate Pizza Company Inc. as the recipient of CenterState CEOs Business of the Year award in the Less than 50 Employees category. (Eric Reinhardt / BJNN) In his remarks, Robert Simpson, president & CEO of CenterState CEO, called on event attendees to disrupt the factors that create a cycle of economic stagnation, and fully seize the wealth of opportunities available to the region through the CNY Rising plan, according to the release. CNY Rising from the ground up is the name of the plan that the Central New York regional economic-development council submitted for consideration in Gov. Andrew Cuomos 2015 statewide economic-development contest. The state awarded the region $500 million after reviewing that plan. Simpson challenged the region to take risks and to act collaboratively to confront critical issues like poverty, government modernization, and transformative infrastructure projects. Today our region is at a major turning point; the current challenges and opportunities before us are a provocation to do better, Simpson said in the release. This requires stakeholders and partners across the community to be equally involved in the outcomes. We all have a vested interest in a better future. As a community we must reject the status quo and be willing to put in the hard work necessary to achieve true regional prosperity. Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com Storytime: What the pine and the elm can teach us BB King Club Supervisor Michelle Martinez cleans the windows at the front of the club on Beale Street. The city of Memphis is looking for a new management firm for Beale Street to take over the duties that John Elkington used to perform. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal) SHARE By Wayne Risher of The Commercial Appeal Beale Street's governing board will renew its search for a professional management firm April 15 with proposals due back June 24. The Beale Street Tourism Development Authority set the timetable Thursday, three weeks after passing on four proposals that were submitted in an initial search last fall. The lack of action March 17 drew complaints of unfairness from one would-be management firm, 21 Beale Street Inc. But Kelvin Willis, a 21 Beale representative, said Thursday his group would likely submit a revised proposal. "We fought too hard not to resubmit," Willis said. The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators in a March 30 letter to the board said in part "21 Beale Street has made a compelling case for approval..." 21 Beale was the only black-owned firm among the four making proposals. A caucus member, State Rep. Barbara Cooper, D-Memphis, told the board Thursday that 21 Beale had reached out to her. "I certainly want to be involved in what goes on in District 86," Cooper said. April 8, 2016 - Rick Gardner, principal at Hnedak Bobo Group, sits in what will be the firm's new offices in One Commerce Square. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) SHARE By Thomas Bailey Jr. of The Commercial Appeal The city's largest architecture firm announced Friday it is moving its 100 employees into One Commerce Square by November. Hnedak Bobo Group (HBG) is moving up from its headquarters of 25 years in a historic, three-story building at 104 S. Front St. to occupy the entire 23rd and 24th floors of the 30-floor skyscraper. A tour of the higher floor on Friday showed panoramic, 360-degree views that employees and visitors will enjoy. Demolition crews continued working Friday to create a blank canvas for HBG to fill with modern work spaces featuring low partitions that provide less privacy but more opportunity for collaboration. The Mississippi River and Arkansas Delta spread out to the west. Far-flung views to the east, north and south showed not only the urban landscape, but buildings HBG has designed over the years such as the historic Peabody Place renovations, Beale Street Westin Hotel, Tennessee Welcome Center and Shelby County Courthouse renovation. HBG is moving because the firm is entering a new era and the way it works is changing, said Rick Gardner, the firm's practice leader and a principal. "We needed a different kind of enviornment for our design teams to work in,'' Gardner said. "As we started looking around, One Commerce Square was just a solution to that. It gives us a lot of flexibility from a design point of view and it gives us a lot of flexibility from a growth point of view.'' HBG has signed a multiyear lease with Memphis Commerce Square Partners. The firm is not initially moving to more space; both places offer about 30,000 square feet. But HBG can easily expand as necessary to other floors in years to come, Gardner said. Kirk Bobo, the firm's business leader and a principal, described the move as "a dynamic opportunity to capitalize on a more synergistic, employee-centered workspace.'' Said Gardner, "As architects and interior designers, how we work is a highly interactive process - it's very collaborative.'' The firm wanted to stay Downtown. "There's not many places in the suburbs where you can walk outside your door and choose between 10 really nice places to eat lunch within a three and five minute walk,'' Gardner said. "That's important to everybody in the company. But you read about the younger generation, it's very important to them,'' he said. The addition of HBG pushes One Commerce Square's occupancy rate to about 70 percent, said Bob Worthington, chairman and chief executive officer of Worthington Hyde Partners, the managing partner of Memphis Commerce Square Partners. HBG will be the building's second largest tenant behind the State of Tennessee, which leases 104,673 square feet. A firm of HBG's stature is an endorsement of everything the landlord has done to bring One Commerce Square back to a "place of pride and prominence'' in the Downtown business community, he said. Completed as the National Bank of Commerce Building in 1973, the tower has twice suffered from the exodous of a primary tenant, first SunTrust Bank and later Pinnacle Airlines' headquarters. Worthington Hyde Partners led a partnership in buying the building out of bankruptcy and investing more than $10 million in upgrades, including the achievement of Gold LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design) status. "It's a great thing for the building, but it's also, I believe, encouraging for Downtown,'' Worthington said of the new lease with HBG. "We view it as somewhat of a reward for having chosen to remain fully committed to that building's future.'' Lease rates at One Commerce Square range from about $17.50 to $19 a square foot. Memphis-based Spaces Group is working with HBG's design team to create the new workspace, which Gardner said will be modern and technologically advanced. HBG designs buildings across the nation and specializes in designing for hospitality. The firm recently opened a second office in San Diego. SHARE Alex Grant (from left), Ben Rhea, Michael Luckey and David Hacking tended bar at Brooks Uncorked. Marianne Hartquist and Paul Shea were at Brooks Uncorked. Thomas and Meade Carlisle were at Brooks Uncorked. Stephen Rodda (from left), Shibahn Singh and Diana Clair Britton and Brian Hey were at Brooks Uncorked. The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art was uncorked so to speak for its "Brooks Uncorked: Shaken and Stirred" fund- raiser, held April 1 in Overton Park. Due to renovations, the museum space was dramatically opened up. The towering Nam Jun Paik TV sculpture, which stood in the center of the rotunda, was in storage, which gave more room for the 500 guests who attended the event to see and be seen. The room also housed some of the 15 restaurant stations and bars, which included wine, liquor and craft beer from Buster's Liquors & Wines and martinis and cosmopolitans with Pyramid Vodka. For the first time at a Brooks Uncorked event, a VIP area was housed upstairs where the Day Collection had been exhibited. Guests drank premium wine and ate cuisine from Lafayette's Music Room as well as getting a sneak peek at the new family interactive gallery funded by the Plough Foundation. "We're getting a little face-lift for our Centennial, which kicks off in May 2016 marks our 100th birthday year, and May 7 is the big community celebration," said Brooks fundraising events manager Lindsey Hedgepeth. "We're busy getting ready for that. It will ultimately result in more gallery space. And more space for our visitors to see art. "There will be rotating art in the rotunda called 'The Rotunda Project.' It's another way to get to know some new artists. We've never been able to use that space to hang art. We're excited to have more walls to do that." And, she said, "Our restaurant will look a lot different when it reopens. We will reopen to the public at the end of April." So, while the art is in storage, guests ate, drank and danced merrily to Ms. Nikki and the Sudden Changes band. Brooks Uncorked is the first in the Memphis Wine + Food Series, which includes The Grand Artisans' Dinner on May 20 at the James Lee House and the Grand Auction on May 21 at the Brooks. Mojo of Midtown Midtown Memphis Development Corp. got its mojo working again. The organization, which promotes Midtown neighborhoods, churches, businesses and schools, held its Mojo of Midtown Award Bash on March 30 at Circuit Playhouse. Awards went to Ardent Studios; Hattiloo Theatre founder, CEO and artistic director Ekundayo Bandele; Broad Avenue Arts District; Indie Memphis; Church Health Center founder/CEO Dr. Scott Morris; Memphis Heritage executive director June West; and Wiles-Smith Drug Store, which is no longer in business. Jody Stephens and Patrick Scholes accepted the Ardent Studios award; West Memorials co-owner Paul West, the Broad Avenue Arts District award; Indie Memphis president Ryan Watt, the Indie Memphis award; and owner Charlie Smith for Wiles-Smith. 'Note of Thanks' Memphis Symphony Orchestra music director Mei-Ann Chen received a baton from the collection of the late Vincent de Frank, the Memphis Symphony's founding conductor, at the Memphis Symphony League's "Note of Thanks" luncheon, held April 1 at Memphis Hunt and Polo Club. Vincent's widow, Jean de Frank, presented it to her. The event was held to thank Mei-Ann "for her dedication, passion and high-level music-making she has brought to our Memphis Symphony Orchestra and to our community," said Billie Jean Graham, event chair. "Mei-Ann collects batons, so we thought this would be special to her." Mei-Ann will step down as music director after the 2015-16 season. She will continue to conduct through May. The event drew 103 attendees, Billie Jean said. Randall Rushing performed selections including "I'll Be Seeing You." Joyce Cobb sang "The Lord's Prayer" for the invocation. Isabelle Welch is Memphis Symphony League president. The Commercial Appeal, 495 Union Ave. By George Cogswell of The Commercial Appeal Dear readers: Soon youll notice a few words added to our logo: "Part of the USA TODAY NETWORK." Let me explain. Simply put, The Commercial Appeal is under new ownership. We were purchased Friday by Gannett Co., Inc. which owns media companies in more than 100 local markets across the U.S. plus USA TODAY. Add Memphis to the list of Gannett cities that includes Phoenix, Detroit, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Nashville, Cincinnati, Louisville and Jackson, Miss. But please know The Commercial Appeal, commercialappeal.com and our digital apps are still your locally produced, hometown sources of news. Same staff. Same leadership. Same focus on issues important to Memphis. Still part of this citys heartbeat. Only stronger. What this transaction does is marry the tradition and brand strength of your 175-year-old local media company with the far-reaching news gathering resources of Gannett. Its purchase of the CA and 13 other publications owned by Journal Media Group adds considerable new muscle to the already impressive USA TODAY NETWORK. Combined, were a force of 3,800 journalists producing local content for 107 dailies in 34 states and Guam, in addition to Newsquest in the U.K., with its 150 local digital and print news brands. Well be a force within Tennessee as well with six dailies Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Jackson, Clarksville and Murfreesboro - sharing content and collaborating on statewide reporting projects. Were very proud of the history and tradition of the CA. Weve served this community and thats the way I look at it since the time of President Martin Van Buren. Weve reported on nearly every major historical event in this city, informed, entertained, and sometimes cajoled, since 1841. We continue to have the largest staff of professional journalists in the market and reach a huge audience each week through our daily print editions, website and apps. But our industry is changing through consolidation and were proud, too, to now be aligned with a strong national brand so focused on doing local journalism. Bob Dickey, president and chief executive officer of Gannett, last year explained the next-generation USA TODAY NETWORK to employees this way: That means we operate as one focused organization where local stories feed national news, and national news connects with local relevance. All presented with the integrity, clarity and focus only we possess. This network will allow us to share content seamlessly across the country, as well as help advertisers reach customers locally and nationally as digital technology helps them expand their consumer base. For the local readers, that means expanded access to news from other parts of the country. As Dickey said: Uniting our national and local brands into a powerful, singular network will connect our nation and neighborhoods in profound ways. The CA is changing but well never forget our roots or our mission. Thanks for your loyal readership. Sincerely, George Cogswell III Publisher March 11, 2016 - This panoramic photograph shows damage to the bluff along Riverside Drive from a mudslide Thursday. The Mississippi River Bluff Walk may have prevented damage to homes built along the bluff. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) SHARE By Ryan Poe of The Commercial Appeal The city plans to reopen the Mississippi River Bluff Walk by April 28 after spending $200,000 to stabilize the walking path following a mud slide, according to Memphis Public Works. The Bluff Walk, which runs atop the South Bluffs overlooking the river, was closed March 10 when heavy rain caused part of the bluff to spill onto Riverside Drive, undermining the walking path. The northbound lanes of Riverside between Georgia and Beale will be closed again beginning April 11 at 8 a.m. this time for repairs, according to a traffic notice from the city Thursday. All lanes will be closed from April 23 to May 15 for completion of the repairs and for the Memphis in May festival in nearby Tom Lee Park. Shelby County Election Commissioner Dee Nollner cuts, "I Voted Today," stickers at Collierville Church of Christ during early voting in July. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) SHARE By Clay Bailey of The Commercial Appeal A former head of elections for Tippecanoe County, Indiana, accepted the position as Shelby County elections administrator Friday afternoon only hours after the county Election Commission unanimously approved offering her the position. The commission voted unanimously in a special-called noon meeting Friday to direct chairman Robert Meyers to offer Linda Phillips its administrator's job. Shortly after 2 p.m., Meyers said she accepted the position. The chairman hopes Phillips can start by mid-May. Phillips technically was the only candidate still under consideration for the position. Chris Thomas, former Lakeland city manager and county commissioner, withdrew his name on Monday, according to Meyers. Phillips, who served as elections administrator in the county where Lafayette, Indiana, is located, reportedly was en route to Memphis as the commission was voting to begin looking for a residence. After serving as election leader in the Indiana county, she was elected county assessor for one term. She lost her 2014 re-election bid for the assessor's office. Phillips will replace Richard Holden, who retired from the position in December after a somewhat tumultuous tenure as the county elections administrator. "She tells me that she is very interested in our position," Meyers said before the vote. The chairman said he expects to offer Phillips the same salary Holden received about $108,000. A $5,000 moving expenses package was included in the commission motion regarding the hiring of Phillips. The question of the moving expenses was the most discussed matter in the meeting that lasted less than 10 minutes. Several candidates, including Thomas, were considered by the commission. Another candidate, Tammy Smith of Wilson County, Tennessee, previously declined the position. "She's the most qualified that we have come across, except for the first one (Smith) who turned us down," Commissioner Dee Nollner said. "She knows what she's doing. She knows what's expected. She knows how to conduct elections." At the British biotech company Oxitec, scientists study the pupae of genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, a vector for transmitting the Zika virus. Andre Penner Associated Press SHARE By Tom Charlier of The Commercial Appeal A resident who traveled to an area where the Zika virus is prevalent has been infected with Shelby County's first confirmed case of the disease, local health officials said Thursday. Health Department officials provided little information on the patient, who was described as a man who was in good condition. They said he had traveled to "one of the affected areas" where the mosquito-borne virus has been circulating, which includes much of Latin America and the Caribbean. " "The Shelby County Health Department continues to work collaboratively with the Tennessee Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to identify cases and educate our community," County Mayor Mark Luttrell said in a prepared statement. Previously, Health Department officials had said they would intensify their mosquito-control efforts once a local case of the virus had been confirmed. Although the virus isn't endemic to the area, it could be spread from an infected person to others via mosquito bites. Memphis is home to one of the specific mosquito species "Aedes albopictus," also called the Asian tiger known to transmit it. According to the CDC, there had been 346 travel-related cases of Zika virus reported across the U.S. as of Wednesday. "With the rising number of cases around the country, the department has been preparing for the possibility of a Zika virus case in our community," Health Department Director Alisa Haushalter said in a prepared statement. In most people, the Zika virus causes only mild symptoms, including fever, rashes, joint pain and conjunctivitis. Rarely do people get sick enough to go to the hospital. But the virus can be spread from a pregnant woman to her fetus, and it has been linked to a serious birth defect called microcephaly, distinguished by small heads, among babies born to mothers infected with Zika. Other problems found among babies infected before birth include absent or poorly developed brain structures, defects of the eye, hearing deficits, and impaired growth. The disease, for which there is no vaccine, has been spreading rapidly across parts of the Americas. In February the World Health Organization declared the virus a "public health emergency of international concern." By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal Three Republican challengers qualified before Thursday's deadline to face incumbent state Rep. Curry Todd, who has rarely drawn election opposition during his 17 years representing Collierville and nearby areas of District 95. Former Shelby County school board member Diane George, festival promoter Mark Lovell and former health care administrator Dana Matheny joined Todd in filing qualifying petitions for the August Republican Primary before Thursday's noon deadline. Meanwhile, in the only suburban municipal elections on the August ballot, Bartlett Judge Dan Brown is unopposed in Division 2 of Municipal Court, while in Division 1, Tim Francavilla, appointed to the bench earlier this year, drew opposition from Henry Miller. Decisions to run for those two offices were fast-tracked after Bartlett officials were told several weeks ago the judicial elections must be in August instead of November when they were previously held. Primaries for area U.S. Congressional Districts 8 and 9 are on the August ballot along with certain state Senate and House of Representative districts. Five Shelby County School Board members face re-election. The general election is set for November 8, but in conservative District 95, the August Republican Primary will decide who serves. No one filed for the district's Democratic Primary. In other key suburban races, state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, R-Collierville, is unopposed in District 32 as is state Rep. Ron Lollar, R-Bartlett, in House District 99. Both effectively win re-election since there also are no candidates for those offices in the Democratic Primary. Todd, the incumbent in District 95, may be vulnerable because of a 2013 guilty plea for driving under the influence and possessing a gun while under the influence. He also announced in 2012 that he has a slow-growing form of cancer. Staffers for Todd said he declined an interview request earlier this week, adding he generally doesn't speak with reporters. Liz Rincon, campaign strategist for George, pointed to Todd's DUI and his health. "Curry has stated that he has been unfortunately sick for a few years," Rincon said. "The state assembly is not hospice care ... It's time to have some new fresh leadership and healthy leadership." Rincon said George, 56, would focus on education if elected. Lovell, the 57-year-old festival promoter who brought the Memphis area the Delta Fair, is making his first run for office. Lovell says he's built a staff that can run his businesses while he's serving in the Legislature. He said the presidential race illustrates people are fed up with the status quo of politics, and it's a political climate favorable to him. "Plus I just think our district would be better represented by me than the current state representative," he said, adding it's natural for someone who's served in the same position for a long time to become complacent. Matheny unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Stephen Fincher in the 2014 primary for the U.S. House of Representatives District 8 seat. She formerly worked as a health care administrator and says if elected to the Legislature, she'd focus on health issues. "We've basically watched Obamacare begin to destroy health care from the inside out ... We need to put government back in its position and limit government," said Matheny, 52. She's interested in broader issues including government spending, personal liberty, border security and what she sees as society's moral decay. Clay Bailey contributed to this story. SHARE By Ron Maxey of The Commercial Appeal A lengthy battle with the federal government over ozone levels in DeSoto County has ended with a win for local and state officials who argued the county should not be lumped in with Memphis's lower compliance rating. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said Friday the federal Environmental Protection Agency has approved the state's request to redesignate DeSoto as being in attainment for the ozone standard. "This redesignation is important news for DeSoto County, the Memphis Metropolitan area and the State of Mississippi," Gary Rikard, MDEQ executive director, said. "We did not believe that DeSoto County significantly contributed to nonattainment in the Memphis area." The dispute dates to 2012, when the EPA designated a portion of DeSoto as failing to meet the federal ozone standard of no more than .075 parts per million. The EPA contended the county along with Crittenden County, Arkansas was contributing to nonattainment status of the Memphis metropolitan area. . Mississippi officials argued that all air monitors in the area meet the EPA standard, and therefore petitioned to remove DeSoto County from the Memphis area nonattainment zone and grouped with the rest of Mississippi as being in compliance. Local development leaders feared the nonattainment status would adversely affect industrial recruitment. "As a native of DeSoto County, I am keenly aware of the effect nonattainment could have as an unfair economic impact on the county," Rikard said. "Many people in the public and private sectors worked diligently together to get this designation changed to protect public health and the environment, but also to ensure the long-term viability of economic development." SHARE John Slater Memphis The Overton Park greensward was packed last Saturday, filled two-thirds with park-lovers. The balance was filled with cars. There was no violence, and the crowd did not prevent any parking. Against this backdrop, the city of Memphis produced a show of force worthy of a visit from the pope: 88 police officers, a horseback patrol, a paddy wagon and a circling helicopter. This cost the city more than $38,000 for the weekend. What a colossal waste in a city with a murder rate almost twice that of Chicago. For several years, parking on the greensward, while contentious, held to a line that gave the zoo about four acres (one-third) on overflow days. On March 1, the City Council passed a resolution that we were told would change nothing. In fact, it increased the zoos use by four acres to two-thirds of the greensward. On March 26, park users temporarily blocked parking. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen negotiated a deal to return to the previously agreed one-third space. He has proposed a cooling-off period, with the one-third line remaining in place, pending conclusion of mediation. Richard Smith, vice president of Global Trade Services at FedEx Express, who is involved in mediation as a proxy for the zoo, has said there is a solution that does not require long-run greensward parking. Park users trust him at his word. The Overton Park Alliance, including most of the park support organizations, has agreed to back Cohens approach, if the zoo does not again extend beyond the one-third line. This would prevent further wasteful diversion of limited police resources, so they can address the real crime problems of our city. SHARE By Doyle McManus The headlines about the "Panama Papers," the gigantic trove of offshore records that surfaced this week, were all about the famous names connected to secret financial accounts: Russia's Vladimir Putin, Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko, China's Xi Jinping, Syria's Bashar Assad, Saudi Arabia's King Salman and more. But on second glance, most of the names weren't too surprising. You didn't really expect the world's autocrats to keep their money at home, where it could be seized by whoever came next, did you? (And in some cases, the autocrats' names weren't really there; the accounts were held by family members or friends in Putin's case, an old classmate, a cellist with $2 billion.) What was more striking was the industrial scale of the money transfers: almost 215,000 offshore shell companies, more than 14,000 clients, more than 11 million documents and uncounted billions of dollars. That and the fact that the business of moving secret foreign money isn't confined to steamy tax havens like Panama. Some of the money in the Panama accounts ended up in the United States, invested in real estate and other assets from Miami to Las Vegas. The firms that transferred the funds included major European banks headquartered in Switzerland, Luxembourg and London. And most of the shell companies formed by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca were set up in the British Virgin Islands, a possession of Britain. "Those shell companies are being formed to buy property and open bank accounts in safe places places like New York and Los Angeles," said Sarah Chayes, a former U.S. advisor in Afghanistan who now works on global efforts to combat corruption. "What that law firm did is just one step in a chain of corruption services," Chayes told me. "And the next level outward includes people in the United States lawyers, real estate brokers, other agents." Indeed, the United States is an active competitor in the "corruption services" business. Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota have all passed laws making it easier to set up shell companies and harder to identify the real owners. Bankers say that has actually prompted a flow of foreign assets from traditional tax havens such as Zurich and Bermuda to less elegant banking centers like Reno and Sioux Falls. "How perverse that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour," Swiss lawyer Peter Cotorceanu wrote in legal journal cited by Bloomberg News. "That giant sucking sound you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA." Some people think that "rushing" is actually good news for the American economy. High-end real estate brokers from New York to Beverly Hills have seen a flood of buyers from Russia, China and the Middle East. "Wouldn't it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?" Michael Bloomberg said in 2013, when he was mayor of New York. But if there are short-term benefits to anonymous money, the long-term picture is far less sunny. At least some of that money is undoubtedly the product of corruption in other countries. And corruption is one of the main drivers of instability and terrorism around the world, including the rise of groups such as Islamic State. "Corruption is a radicalizer because it destroys faith in legitimate authority," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a speech earlier this year. "No one knows that better than violent extremist groups, who regularly use corruption as a recruitment tool." Corruption also robs poorer countries of money for economic development. One respected research group, Global Financial Integrity, estimates that corruption costs developing countries at least $1.1 trillion a year more than all the foreign aid and direct investment they receive from the rest of the world. There's no easy fix. Nobody's suggesting that corruption can be eliminated. But there are at least two things the United States can do to make it harder for foreign investors to evade taxes or conceal the proceeds from corruption. One is a practice European countries have already begun: Establish a "beneficial ownership registry" of the true owners of shell companies. In most countries, the registry is designed to be easily accessible to any government agency investigating a violation of the law; in Britain, it's intended to be open to the public. A second, less ambitious reform: Require lawyers, real estate brokers and registered investment agents to follow the "know your customer" regulations that apply to U.S. banks. Thanks to energetic lobbying, those industries are exempt from the federal requirement to report dubious inflows of foreign money. The Obama administration will have a chance to work on both of those ideas soon; British Prime Minister David Cameron is holding a global summit on corruption next month. Cameron has a personal stake in a successful outcome. His late father, Ian Cameron, ran an offshore investment fund to help wealthy British clients avoid paying taxes in Britain. His name turned up in the Panama Papers, too. Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Contact him at doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com. SHARE By Katherine McHugh Even after years of education, training and experience as an obstetrician/gynecologist, I am never prepared to deliver the news that a pregnancy is abnormal. There is no good way to tell a pregnant woman a woman who may already be wearing maternity clothes, thinking about names and decorating the nursery that we have identified a fetal anomaly that can lead to significant, lifelong disability or even her baby's death. In such situations, physicians have two responsibilities. First, we must always be supportive of the mother or family who has suddenly been confronted with the loss of an imagined ideal pregnancy and child. And second, we help them understand that they have options, one of which is the termination of the pregnancy. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case in Indiana, where a new law signed by Republican Gov. Mike Pence punishes doctors if they perform abortions for women because of their fetus' race or sex, or after a diagnosis of disability. Indiana's state government is intruding on the doctor-patient relationship at one of its most vulnerable, sensitive times. Which means that not only does the new law encroach on women's rights to control their own reproduction, it is also bad medicine. As a mother as well as a doctor, I am acutely aware of the intensity and fear of the unknown inherent in pregnancy and childbirth. Indiana now expects women who live here to experience them without trusting their doctors' knowledge and with strict limits on how doctors may treat patients limits driven not by science or research, but by politics. Supporters of the law, such as Pence, say the measure "affirms the value of all human life." And yes, some women do choose to carry abnormal pregnancies to term. I am honored to care for them and their babies. I have held and comforted babies as they died, because their mothers were too grief-stricken to bear it. I have cried with families as we watched their babies breathe their last breath. Not every woman can handle such horror. In the United States, abortion is an ethical, safe, appropriate and with the exception of North Dakota and Indiana legal medical option in the case of severe anomalies, one that spares women the emotional pain of stillbirth or the loss of an infant. That loss is dismissed and diminished by this law and by those who support it; the law doesn't save babies, it just forces a horrific fate onto both mother and child. It includes an exception only for termination of babies who would die within three months of being born, as if three months is enough time to justify forcing all women to take on the risks of carrying a pregnancy to term and delivering a baby, only to watch it die. And that exception would still require women to carry to term pregnancies with some severe and disastrous genetic abnormalities, all of which I've seen in women who chose to have abortions rather than deliver babies who suffer from them. Trisomy 13, or Patau syndrome, can leave babies with one eye, no nose, kidney defects and a spinal cord without skin covering it. Most are stillborn, but of those that are born alive, more than 80 percent die before they turn 1, only surviving that long after cardiac, spinal and other surgeries. Spinal muscular atrophy, one type of which is Werdnig-Hoffman disease, is characterized by rapid neurologic degeneration, causing an infant to die within a year because of respiratory failure. This disease doesn't have ultrasound findings, nor would it be found on any routine prenatal screening, so the only way one would know to test for it is if the parents have already had a child born with it. With such a poor prognosis, the parents may have already buried that child. Indiana would now force those parents to go through the same grief again if the disease was detected in a subsequent pregnancy. Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a sex-linked disease that causes muscle degeneration starting around 2 years old leading to profound weakness, a need for braces and wheelchairs by age 10, and eventual paralysis. This disease occurs almost exclusively in boys and carries a life expectancy of less than 25 years. It can't be detected with any existing prenatal test. But because Indiana's law also prevents termination of a pregnancy for reasons of gender, parents who already have a child with this horrible disease, and who find out they're expecting a son, will have a 50 percent chance of their newborn also having the disease. And they won't be able to do anything about it, except hope that they won't have to watch both sons die. Preventing women with these fetal diagnoses from choosing abortion forces them to watch their children die a slow, painful, premature death. My colleagues and I are already asking one another whether we should even offer prenatal screening now that there's no legal choice to end a pregnancy because of the results. Not all prenatally diagnosed disabilities are fatal, of course. Scientific advances can detect abnormalities with increasing accuracy, allowing families to decide whether having a child with a disability is right for them. Again, what is important is that they have the right to choose. That choice is not the radical outlier Indiana's new law might suggest: Research suggests that women terminate between 60 and 90 percent of pregnancies diagnosed with Down syndrome. These decisions are made out of love and compassion, a seemingly obvious concept but one that bears emphasizing. Families who choose to continue abnormal pregnancies and raise children with disabilities are faced with incredible hardships. It can be challenging to determine the severity of the disability before birth, so preparation can be difficult. In families with limited incomes and restricted resources, these children may not receive the care and attention they deserve, again increasing their suffering. Pence says he's shared "precious moments as governor" with such families, but he isn't the one paying the medical bills, transporting the children to their many therapists and doctor's visits, or missing work to serve as a caregiver. Babies are not born either strictly "normal" or "abnormal"; there is a huge range of outcomes, and before this law, each woman carrying a fetus with genetic anomalies might make a different choice. For those mothers who will now be forced to deliver babies they might not otherwise have had the babies "saved" by this law Indiana sets aside no additional funding or services. These babies will require long and repeated hospitalizations, surgeries, office visits, physical and speech therapy, home nursing care, and more. Rather than protecting life, the state has only prolonged suffering. Some women may still be able to find a physician who can provide them with the abortion care that they need, but through what channels? Instead of mourning a much-loved baby, a woman in Indiana will either have to lie to her provider and say she never wanted to be pregnant, leaving out the critical medical information that actually prompted her decision, or her provider will have to agree to terminate her pregnancy without asking why, which is terrible care. Those women who can afford it could travel out of state, away from their support systems, at great expense and additional stress. All of these options are inhumane treatment of a grieving mother. The relationship between a pregnant woman and her doctor requires both trust and privacy. There is no room for legislators in the exam room, and there is no space for politics in medical decisions. I provide advice based on scientific evidence and clinical experience so that patients may make educated decisions for themselves. This is impossible if I am legally required to withhold appropriate treatment for a medical condition. Women want what's best for their families during this precious and precarious time. I became an OB/GYN because I love celebrating the birth of a baby and honoring the new life in the world. Instead, this law forces me to ignore my medical training and stand idly by while my patients suffer. This is not the care I want to provide, nor is it what my patients deserve. Katherine McHugh is an obstetrician/gynecologist in Indianapolis, Indiana. She wrote this for The Washington Post. SHARE By Trudy Rubin Before the Wisconsin primary, Sen. Ted Cruz's views on foreign policy got too little attention. The media were so focused on Donald Trump's wacky worldview and odd foreign policy "advisers" that scant attention was paid to the Texan's foreign policy doctrine or team. That neglect should end now that Cruz's win Tuesday has undercut Trump's chance of clinching the nomination before the GOP convention. And once you start paying attention, what you find almost makes The Donald look good. Trump's proposals like blackmailing Mexico to pay for a border wall and withdrawing from NATO are so wacky, and his advisory team such nonentities, that it's almost impossible to take him seriously. Cruz, on the other hand, comes across as very, very serious. The Texas senator's approach to foreign policy could aptly be summed up by his formula for defeating ISIS: "We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion." In case conventional bombs aren't enough, Cruz has added darkly, "I don't know if sand can glow in the dark, but we're going to find out." Call it the bomb-'em-back-to-the-stone-age doctrine (with a nod to the World War II- and Vietnam-era Gen. Curtis LeMay). Cruz seems to be appealing to the same American frustrations as Trump, courting voters who just want to obliterate the Mideast and be done with it so we don't need to think about it anymore. Never mind that the indiscriminate bombing deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere would enrage the Muslim world, indeed most of the world. The ensuing carnage would ensure the emergence of ISIS 2.0 and 3.0 in these devastated countries. This doesn't seem to concern Cruz. Indeed, he says that on his first day in office, he would junk President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, which whatever its flaws will prevent Tehran from producing enough fissile material for nuclear weapons for at least a decade. This move would probably convince the ayatollahs to renege on their end of the deal, forcing Cruz to decide whether it was worth going to war to prevent an Iranian bomb. Given his apocalyptic language about the ayatollahs, would he carpet-bomb Tehran into oblivion? If not, what's his Plan B? Unlike Ronald Reagan, whom he constantly cites as his role model, Cruz seems to have a very limited foreign policy toolbox. Reagan used force in proxy wars with the Soviets and spoke of them as "an evil empire," but he also negotiated nuclear weapons treaties with Moscow. Cruz, on the other hand, seems disinterested in dealing with the complexities of the world he lives in. He proposes that police "patrol and secure" Muslim neighborhoods in America, a bizarre idea that insults Muslim Americans, few of whom live in isolated neighborhoods anyway. Cruz seems determined to alienate moderate Muslims at home and abroad. Indeed, the Texan appears convinced that the international fight against jihadi terrorist thugs must be waged as a religious war of Christianity versus Islam, a narrative that plays right into the hands of the Islamic State. To get a sense of Cruz's penchant for religious war, you need only look at some of the fringe extremists he has hired for his foreign policy team. That team includes Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy, a think tank that propagates wild conspiracy theories. Gaffney has said that "Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America's first Muslim president." Gaffney also claims the Muslim Brotherhood has "penetrated" the Bush and Obama administrations and is out to impose sharia over the entire country. His views are so bizarre that he has charged Grover Norquist with being a mole for the Brotherhood. Norquist, you may recall, is the president of Americans for Tax Reform and the creator of the anti-tax pledge that nearly every Republican in Congress has signed on to. When asked recently by CNN's Wolf Blitzer about Gaffney's role in his campaign, Cruz said, "I appreciate his good counsel." Chew that one over for a while. Also on Cruz's team is retired Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, an evangelical Christian whose public religiosity caused him difficulties when he was still on active duty. Boykin casts the war against radical Islamists as a struggle between Christians and Satan. And then there is Cruz team member Michael Ledeen, who for years has urged the United States to carry out "regime change" in Tehran. So if you thought Trump was scary, give a thought to what the country may face if President Cruz enters the White House. Consider the prospect of a deeply religious Christian evangelical who believes in holy war and surrounds himself with like-minded advisers. That prospect is almost enough to make Trump sound like a reasonable man. Trudy Rubin is a columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Contact her at trubin@phillynews.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 An MIT conference this week about the Internet of Things was fun until the topic of security came up. The audience stilled and focused at the mention. Sanjay Sarma, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, told this mostly startup crowd that he expects "a few disasters." Power plants will be taken down, as will a chemical plant. "I'm terrified of this," he said, about the cybersecurity risk. [ See infographic below for more on the scale of the Panama Papers breach. ] This week's hack of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca is an illustration of how much damage can be caused by a breach. Law firms are valuable and vulnerable targets, and they attract people interested in making money. ICIJ For example, a scheme at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, a U.S. law firm, yielded insider-trading net profits of more than $5.6 million, said the FBI in announcing a guilty plea of a New York man, a former employee of the law firm, last November. The employee's technique was simple. He searched the computer system for keywords such as "merger agreement" and "bid letter." Remarkably, it lasted five years. For its part, the Mossack Fonseca "Panama Papers" breach, exposing offshore accounts of the rich and politically powerful, is remarkable as well. The firm said it was an external hack that used an email exploit, but that doesn't say much. Were the law firm's systems patched and up-to-date? How did 11.5 million documents, or 2.6TB of data, leave the firm's network undetected? At 100 Mbps, it would take about two days to download 2TB of data. Whatever the intrusion technique, "the large amounts of data alone heading out from a company's networks should have raised alarms -- and yet it didn't," said Erka Koivunen, cyber security advisor for software vendor F-Secure. There isn't much sympathy for the world leaders whose offshore financial dealings have been exposed by the Panama Papers. But in the IT security community, there isn't sympathy for anyone who lets such a breach happen, either. "Regardless of what we think of the ethics of the law firm in question, this kind of failure in defending and monitoring one's 'kingdom' is absolutely unacceptable," said Koivunen. IT managers with concerns about the security practices of their outside legal counsel providers can ask those providers some questions, said Philip Lieberman, president and CEO, Lieberman Software, another security-software firm. Specifically, Lieberman recommends asking law firms about their penetration testing, physical and IT security, and whether they are running 'war games' against their systems to check defenses. The American Bar Association (ABA) said unauthorized access to sensitive client data -- the most serious breach -- was 3% for law firms overall, and 7% for firms with more than 500 attorneys. These are low numbers, but release of any client data can be a "major disaster" for any law firm, notes the ABA. Hacks that result in the release of large amounts of information to the public, via the news media, are not common. The data breach by Edward Snowden was against his own organization. The "John Doe" attack on Mossack Fonseca was different, according to Jeremy Bergsman, IT practice leader at CEB, a consulting firm. The key motivation for that attack was "reputational damage" -- a relatively new motive, he said. "The onset of such 'folk heroism' type of attacks indicates that the number of security incidents facing companies will likely increase," said Bergsman. Alex Pezold, CEO of TokenEx, a security firm, believes the Panama Papers breach will have far-reaching impact on law firms. Law firms have long been considered an "underserved market" on security. "We haven't seen anything like this to date." What the Mossack Fonseca hack does point out, said John Pescatore, director of emerging security trends at SANS, a security organization, is that professional services such as law firms and investment advisers are often not sufficiently protecting sensitive information. "People and businesses need to be a lot more careful who they trust with such information," said Pescatore. April Montgomery This story, "Consider the Panama Papers breach a warning" was originally published by Computerworld . Any day now, the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals will rule on the Federal Communications Commissions regulatory coup over the Internet, commonly known as net neutrality. And not a moment too soon. Because the FCCs rules are quickly descending from tragedy to farce. Netflix, whose streaming content makes up around one-third of Internet traffic at peak hours, was a chief advocate of the far-reaching rules, which, beginning in 2015, regulated the Internet for the first time. Citing an existential threat to Internet openness, Netflix demanded that Internet service providers (ISP) be prohibited from blocking or degrading data traffic. The threats were largely imaginary few if any cases of such behavior had ever been reported. So sinister was the possibility, however, that it required a new regulatory regime for the digital economy. Last month, however, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Netflix has been throttling, or capping, data rates (and thus video quality) for customers of some mobile carriers but not others. And that it has been doing so for at least five years, including the period when it was lobbying the White House and FCC. This is like finding out that Solyndra, the beneficiary of federal green-energy largesse, was actually a coal mining concern. FCC Commissioner Michael ORielly told a gathering on Tuesday that these revelations call into question the entire foundation and rationale for the net neutrality decision. In its admission, Netflix says slowing the bit rate is intended to help consumers stay below their mobile data limits. But why not disclose it? And why throttle consumers with AT&T and Verizon service but provide full quality to Sprint and T-Mobile users? The new FCC regime includes a transparency rule that requires ISPs to divulge such practices, and the very heart of the neutrality rule was to prevent such differential treatment based on whim. Netflixs epic hypocrisy exposes nearly every deficiency of net neutrality that critics have warned against for the last 15 years. For example, Web and content firms often have more market power than ISPs and are just as capable of controlling the content and quality of data flows. And yet the FCC applied its rules only to broadband service providers while exempting companies like Netflix and Google. Critics also said the rules would be especially harmful to mobile networks, which are more technically tricky and bandwidth-constrained than wired networks. In 2010, the FCC agreed and exempted wireless from its second attempt at writing rules. And yet this FCC, at the White Houses urging, applied the onerous new rules to mobile broadband providers. Netflixs secret throttling of certain mobile carriers, and its rationale that it was just trying to help economize on mobile data usage shows that the critique was spot on. Critics said any rules should focus on the welfare of consumers, not competitors. And yet the White House and FCC insisted on a policy entirely tilted to benefit Web and content firms, shackle ISPs and mostly disregard consumers. Sure enough, Netflixs throttling harmed both particular mobile ISPs versus their competitors and also those ISPs customers. In a double irony, these actions are allowed under net neutrality but may violate existing competition laws, which we said were sufficient to address exactly these types of squabbles in an environment as complex as the Internet. Critics said the rules would discourage creative partnerships and win-win transactions between ISPs and content firms, such as paid peering and sponsored data, that could rationalize the economics of the Internet and speed content to consumers. The new rules, however, may ban such cooperative programs as T-Mobiles Binge On and Verizons FreeBee, which are designed to ameliorate the very data-limit problem Netflix says it was trying to solve with its secretive, selective throttling. Before The Wall Street Journal asked Netflix if it was the source of the mobile slowdown, the company was content to let the world believe that the poor quality was the fault of AT&T and Verizon. This wasnt the first instance of Netflix sanctimony. In 2014, Netflix in sensational fashion charged ISPs with blocking its traffic at interconnection points. More than any other single incident, this narrative provided the momentum for the regulation of the Internet. Except it was false. After looking at traffic patterns, it became clear that the poor performance was due to Netflixs own routing decisions. It was a manufactured publicity stunt, which led to the downfall of one of the nations most successful economic policies of the last few decades. In the next few days or weeks, a federal court may begin the restoration of American Internet freedom. Bret Swanson is president of Entropy Economics LLC and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 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. Ashley Fox is an MEP for South West England, and is the leader of Britains Conservative MEPs. Private enterprise was responsible for turning Britain from a 19th century agrarian economy into a leader of the industrial revolution. Individuals invested in their ideas, developed businesses, employed others and paid taxes. The benefits spread through communities, enabling others to do the same and providing government with funds to invest in infrastructure, education and healthcare. This model was repeated across the Western world. It works. So why are we not now applying these proven methods in our attempts to help the developing world? Nirj Deva, our Development Spokesman, is proposing that we do just that. In a report being presented to the European Parliament next week, he argues that traditional aid will never be sufficient to ensure that our sustainable development goals are met. Instead, the EU should work in partnership with local businesses to help them flourish and drive the economy. Until now, the EU has not entered into public-private partnerships outside of infrastructure projects, but we are advocating a much broader approach while avoiding the kind of over-regulation that would exclude many small and medium-sized firms. As countries grow wealthier, they become more attractive for private sector investors and a virtuous circle is created. It is not just about supporting individuals and businesses. Money should be used to create an environment in which private enterprise can flourish by developing markets and building up the financial sector. The Private Sector and Development Report, which we hope will be backed by MEPs on Thursday, builds upon a report steered through the European Parliament by Nirj in 2014, which called for aid to be targeted at securing property rights in developing countries, where people traditionally have no legal claim to their house and land. Consequently, they cannot use them as security against loans, trapping them in poverty. The underlying principle in both cases is one of enabling individuals, communities and countries to help themselves. Of course this is not a new idea, simply an application of the old adage that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, but buy him a rod and he can feed himself for life. Having written previously on this site about unacceptable delays to the Passenger Name Record legislation, it is sad to report that another terrorist attack has occurred before it reaches the statute book. The bombs in Brussels last month might not have been prevented by a Europe-wide PNR system, but they highlighted once again the dangerous political game being played by socialist and liberal MEPs, who have insisted on creating an artificial link between PNR and new data protection rules. Thanks to the dogged determination of my colleague Timothy Kirkhope, an end is in sight to this saga. It now seems likely that common procedures for collecting and sharing information about passengers on all flights in, out and within the EU will finally be voted on next week. Not before time. I appreciate that a lot of political attention at the moment is focused on the coming EU referendum, but the work of Conservative MEPs in the European Parliament goes on and the purpose of this column is to report it. Timothys efforts are an outstanding example of how this work helps to deliver results for the voters we represent. Subsidiarity is not a subject to set pulses racing. But the principle of ensuring that decisions are taken at the appropriate level, be it local, national or European, is central to much of what Conservatives do in Brussels. In his annual report to the European Parliament on subsidiarity, Sajjad Karim, our Legal Affairs spokesman, is proposing a mid-term evaluation and a further assessment on every piece of new EU legislation to ensure that the principles of subsidiarity are being adhered to. Along with other recommendations promoting a greater role for national parliaments, his work highlights how we are working to reform the EU. Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publications, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate. On Wednesday afternoon, I saw a news alert flash up on my screen. Government to spend 9.3 million on sending leaflet to 27 million homes, it read. No, I thought, that cant be right. After all, David Cameron specifically ruled out the government doing such a thing back in February, after his triumphant return from Brussels with his so-called deal. So before reading out this seemingly astonishing bit of news, I thought I had double check to see if the Press Association had got it wrong. But they hadnt. Its hard to describe how angry this has made me. If you believe in any sense of fairness I just cannot see how you defend it. The increasingly hapless Liz Truss was sent out to do just that, and the best she could come up with was that people want the facts, so the Government is damn well going to give them to them. Except if you actually read the text of the leaflet it is full of opinions, threats and suppositions, with the odd fact thrown in for good measure. The Government argues that it should be able to set out its position, as if anyone would argue with that. However, to spend taxpayers money effectively to rig the referendum is an utter disgrace. If it was just a leaflet, that might so be so bad. After all, there is a precedent for this from 1975 and the 2014 Scottish Referendum (as if thats some kind of defence). But what has slipped under the radar is the fact that 3 million of the 9.3 million is going to be spent on other propaganda on the internet. News outlets report that this money will be spent on a website. Its almost impossible to spend that kind of money on a website, so what I imagine will be happening is that the money will be spent on Facebook and other social media advertising. This is a binary referendum. You can either vote Leave or Remain. Each campaign ought to have the same spending limit. But because of this government leaflet, the Remain campaign will have spent 16.3 million, while the Leave campaign will be able to spend a maximum of 7 million. On which planet is that fair? I dont think it matters which side of the argument you are on. This stinks. The news was conveniently released on the day that the Prime Minister was in a lot of trouble over Panama. The ghost of Jo Moore lives on. I do find it amusing that the Guardian is working itself up into such a lather about the Panama Papers. After all, it isnt averse to the odd bit of offshore tax planning itself, is it? The hypocrisy is breathtaking. And hypocrisy is about the worst you can accuse the Prime Minister of in all of this. Having publicly slated Jimmy Carr for his offshore tax avoiding activities a couple of years ago, David Cameron is now getting it on the chin for his own familys alleged activities. But so far, Jeremy Corbyns attacks have fallen slightly flat. Hes made all sorts of insinuations about the Prime Minister not paying tax but he has absolutely no evidence on which to base his allegations. He says there needs to be an independent investigation into whether Cameron paid tax on his 300,000 inheritance. Does he really think that any sitting Prime Minister would be stupid enough to try to fiddle his tax? Ah, say his detractors, we need to know if he has benefitted from offshore money at any time in his life. Are they seriously saying that an eleven year old Cameron should have asked his father how his school fees were being paid for, and then insisting that offshore money should not be used? Thats the level of this debate. The Prime Minister has understandably become rather exasperated and demanded that his critics put up or shut up. Even the normally sensible Wes Streeting has got in on the act. Oh well, at least the Labour Party is united on something being envious of anyone with money. I got a new pair of glasses this week. This is only noteworthy in so far as theyre rather different to my normal narrow lens, Norman Tebbit-style eyewear. Ive always wanted bigger-lensed glasses but Ive never found a pair that in any way suited my slightly odd-shaped face. Anyway, last week I found a pair which much to my surprise everyone seems to like. Im still in the feeling self-conscious faze though. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Im reading a gripping account of the downfall of Tony Abbott at the moment. Its called The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin Destroyed Their Own Government. Peta Credlin was the former Australian Prime Ministers Chief of Staff and, if this book is to be believed, a nut job of a Svengali, who had total control over the Prime Minister. Some of the anecdotes about her screaming matches are truly jaw-dropping. Abbotts main aim in life seemed to be to please her and prevent her from losing her temper. And when she did lose her temper hed run after her to console her and always taker her side even when he knew she was blatantly wrong. If he had taken the advice of all the people who implored him to ditch her, maybe he would still be in post. So Michael Gove has this month topped this sites Best next Tory leader poll. Good. I hope he takes encouragement from it and stands when the time comes. Ive got a frozen shoulder at the moment. Bloody painful. I went to see an osteopath on Monday. Christ alone knows what people outside the room thought we were doing, as I kept uttering rather loud ooos, ahs and light screams. Best not to speculate. So London will miss out on Winston McKenzie standing for the English Democrats for the mayoralty. He submitted nomination papers which had multiple identical signatures on, and they were two minutes late. This is a man who has been a member of the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, UKIP and Veritas. The English Democrats had a narrow escape. The man is a perpetual embarrassment with no self-knowledge. It can surely now only be a matter of time before he leaves the English Democrats and joins Labour. They would be welcome to him. During the MPs expenses scandal, those who work in jobs for which expenses are never claimed were, on the whole even more outraged than those who work in jobs for which they sometimes are. Some of this former group simply didnt understand and sometimes want to understand the concept of expenses. They werent just angry at MPs flipping properties or claiming for for moat maintenance or putting in for duck houses: they simply didnt understand why MPs could claim expenses at all. Something like this is happening over David Camerons personal finances and tax payments. As Mark Wallace noted on this site earlier this week, tax avoidance is configured like a rainbow. At one end lies the kind that the Government actually encourages us to do, such as the new Lifetime ISA, which rewards people for saving by enabling them to avoid tax on money saved in that vehicle. At the other is the straightforward criminality of an African dictator or Russian strongman plundering his people and stashing the loot offshore. And somewhere in between is activity which may be legal but is immoral the category that the last Cameron-led government labelled aggressive tax avoidance. None the less, lots of people persist in seeing all avoidance as evasion. Many of them have doubtless never filled in a tax return themselves, let alone employed an accountant to do so. Still others have, although they somehow do not themselves feel obliged to maximise the tax they pay to the Treasury. Others yet see evasion and avoidance as a black and white matter, with the first at one of the scale and the last at the other, and no grey ground in between that ambiguous business of conduct that may be lawful but is scarcely moral. To many people in this group, moving money offshore is always evasion, even though it often isnt. The Prime Minister has a fully-operating pair of politicians antennae, and will have known all this well when he became Leader of the Opposition. There is no evidence that Blairmore Holdings, the company set up by his father to manage money for clients, was involved in tax evasion. It seems simply to have acted as an offshore investment fund. But Cameron will have known that in the minds of the groups of people I describe, this in itself would have been seen as dubious if not immoral if not criminal and that, worse from a Conservative leaders point of view, the image of an Etonian-educated rich boy being part-funded from offshore would have been toxic in the eyes of these voters. And so, he says, he sold the stake of 31,500 that he and his family had held for shortly before he became Prime Minister in 2010. Cue outrage from the Guardian, which itself has a long and distinguished history of avoiding tax, and various Labour MPs who will surely, before too long has passed, see the media swivel its searchlights on the partys own better-off Parliamentarians and donors to search out whether any of them have ever salted money away offshore, or benefited from members of their family doing so, or have backers who so do. Guido Fawkes is already at work: see his items on Hilary Benn, Art Malik and Sadiq Khan. One can argue that Camerons antennae let him down earlier, and that he should have got rid of his stake when he first became Leader of the Opposition. But public attitudes to offshore money then, pre-crash, were less sharply disapproving. It is certainly true that his politicians sixth sense seems to have deserted him in the handling of claims about his father. The Prime Minister doesnt always manage to keep his temper (which of us can fairly blame him for that?) and his original instinct may have been, when confronted with claims about a father that he loved, to tell the media to take a running jump. A more likely explanation is that is the EU referendum is sapping his and Downing Streets energy, focus and judgement just as it did over Port Talbot last week, the threat to the future of which clearly caught the Government machine on the hop. On this site today, Bernard Jenkin argues that its decision to spend the best part of 10 million on propagating its Remain case is an outrageous abuse of taxpayers money which compromises civil service impartiality. We agree. But whether one does so or not, it is indisputable that, as far as Number 10 is concerned, the referendum is currently the only political game in town, dwarfing even Mays coming local and mayoral elections. This was always bound to be so. Those who called for a referendum, as this site did, or offered one, as Cameron did, must recognise this. We have no complaint about the Prime Minister going full-out for a win in June: thats what hes bound to do. But he will recognise that the more he pushes for a win, the more party unity is tugged at and tested and potentially pulled apart. For the Partys good, not to mention his own, he needs mechanisms to try to cool the temperature when it gets heated. Hence our call for Michael Gove to be made Deputy Prime Minister, either formally or in effect, to help keep the Partys temper and Governments shape. Two-thirds of our Party member readers agree. Were the Remain and Leave elements of the Party more involved in running the Government together, the temperature in Downing Street might just be a bit lower. Were this so, fewer mistakes might be made. And were this the case, Cameron himself might not have rushed out five different positions on the Blairmore Holdings saga in fewer days over which, in itself, he appears to have done nothing wrong whatsoever, unless one somehow counts it a fault to have been born with a well-off, good and loving man as a father. Ben Caldecott is Associate Fellow, and Sam Hall a Researcher, at Bright Blue. Conservatives instinctively understand the need to safeguard our environmental inheritance and to hand it on, enhanced, to future generations. Margaret Thatcher was articulating this when she told the Conservative Party conference in 1988: Its we Conservatives who are not merely friends of the Earth we are its guardians and trustees for generations to come. No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy with a full repairing lease. Throughout modern history, conservatives have been in the vanguard of environmental action. A Conservative Government passed the Clean Air Act of 1956, banishing lethal smog from urban centres, and President Ronald Reagan helped bring about the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which phased out Chloroflurocarbons (CFCs) from the upper atmosphere. The current Conservative Government has promised to phase-out coal-fired power stations by the mid-2020s, as suggested by Bright Blue last year. This makes Britain the first country to use coal for electricity and now the first major economy to commit to phasing it out. Conservatives can point to an impressive environmental record. Yet there are some within the conservative movement that seek to reject this tradition. Many deny the very existence of anthropogenic climate change. Some are using the steel crisis to rehearse their long-standing opposition to climate policies, despite research showing that they contribute just one per cent of the total production cost of steel. Critics of green policies often portray environmentalism as anathema to economic growth. Yet there is mounting evidence that the long-standing link between emissions and economic performance is now being broken. Between 2010 and 2014, the UK has cut its carbon emissions by 20 per cent while growing its economy by 27 per cent. Globally, in 2014 and 2015, emissions stalled while the overall economic activity increased. The historic Paris agreement in November 2015 affirmed the global commitment to decarbonisation. Figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance show that 2015 saw record investment of $329 billion in clean energy. The green energy revolution is under way and is gathering pace every year, with businesses and governments increasingly committing resources to this transition. If Britain is to remain competitive in the new global economy, we must transform too. Environmental action is key to economic growth. This means rejecting the old growth model dependent upon heavily-subsidised, finite fossil fuels, and developing a new economy powered by clean, renewable sources. Securing a competitive advantage in this new global marketplace, by developing the technologies, building the infrastructure, and manufacturing the products, will create high value-added, complex, and capital intensive economic output, able to drive growth, employment, and exports. Investment decisions being made now must reflect this economic imperative. For example, researchers from the University of Oxfords Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment have warned that fossil fuel power stations cannot be built beyond 2017 if the world is to meet its climate targets. It is vital that there are strong green voices on the centre-right to counter the sceptics. Otherwise, environmental policy risks becoming the preserve of the political left. This gives the left a free-hand to design environmental policies that reflect certain ideological preferences, including for state- over market-led solutions. If we are to build effective policies and public support to tackle urgent environmental problems, we need compelling and credible solutions from a centre-right perspective too. Thats why this week we are launching Bright Blues new Green Conservatism project. On a range of subjects from tackling air pollution to protecting our natural environment and improving domestic energy efficiency Bright Blue will be recommending new policies over the course of this Parliament to push the Prime Minister into ensuring this really is the greenest government ever. Close The supernovas near the Earth may have showered the planet with radiation that caused human evolution, according to a study. A powerful outburst from a dying star is called the supernova. Its explosion is so powerful that it can be seen up to the edge of the cosmos and can outshine other starts within its hosting galaxy. Scientists have stated that for more that 50 years, that supernova near the Earth may have influenced life on the planet. It disrupted climate change and even triggered the mass extinction. According to the previous research, supernovas that are around 325 light-years from Earth could send radioactive debris on the planet. This can happen at least once every 2 million to 4 million years, Scientific American reported. Significant levels of iron called iron-60 were discovered by the researchers in deep ocean rocks in 1999. That was a proof that supernovas have showered Earth with radioactive material. Supernovas can produce iron-60 10 times faster compared to the natural ways of creating it. Supernova explosion within 30 to 45 light-years from the Earth would be dangerous to life on the planet, previous research suggested. However, explosions that are close enough to create mass extinction are very rare, it could only happen "on the order of one every few billion years," said Anton Wallner, study co-author, a nuclear physicist at Australian National University in Canberra. Today, the researchers have located where the closest supernova on Earth had happened and when. They found out that it just happened recently enough that it possibly influenced life on Earth. The team was able to pinpoint the most probable sites and times of the explosion using supercomputer models to calculate the possible chunks of dying stars and the complex paths this radioactive matter took. Wallner said that the radiations from these explosions might have influenced the climate on Earth. Breitschwerdt also noted that the radiation might have triggered mutations in life-forms on the planet. Meanwhile, another group of scientists was able to create the first formation of a key sugar that is essential for life by cooking up a faux comet, according to Space.com. They created ice that resembles those that are detected by Rosetta, a European Space Agency mission that made the first landing on a comet. From that ice, they have created ribose, a sugar that is the key component of RNA, an important ingredient of human life. Organisms on Earth are composed of DNA and RNA which are the genetic materials that control an organism's physical makeup. The origin of these life components remains a huge question since it was discovered. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close Zika virus invades fetal nerve cells and delays brain development, brain scan done to 23 Brazilian infants with microcephaly suggested. Dr. Ana van der Linden of the Instituto de Medicina Integral, a researcher from Brazil's Northeastern state of Pernambuco was among the team that did the study and the first to suggest that the increasing cases of microcephaly in Brazil are connected with Zika virus. According to Fox News, Brazil is doing an investigation to thousands of microcephaly cases and has confirmed that more than 940 of these cases are related to Zika infections in their mothers. The scientists did multiple studies and tests on mothers in their efforts to eliminate other probable cause of the microcephaly, which includes cytomegalovirus, parvovirus, toxoplasmosis, rubella and HIV. All of these diseases resulted to negative. All mothers showed consistent Zika virus symptoms such as fever and rash. Seven infants were tested positive for Zika antibodies coming from their spinal fluids. CT scans were performed on babies between three days and five months old. All scans showed signs of brain calcification which suggests brain inflammation. Many of these babies showed other abnormalities such as disruptions in brain folds, brain swelling, underdeveloped brain structures, and abnormalities in myelin, which forms protective sheaths on nerve fibers. The findings showed that Zika virus can easily infect brain cells, slowing their growth. This is consistent with a study that was published last month that tested lab dishes full of nerve stem cells which are similar to the cells in the brains of human fetuses. The result of the study suggests that "ZIKV is associated with a disruption in brain development rather than the destruction of [the] brain," the authors write. However, they also stated that the results that positive as it can also be found in infants with different congenital viral infections, Tech Times reported. The recent Zika virus outbreak which started in May 2015 in Brazil was caused by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. During the outbreak, a huge number of babies with microcephaly were recorded in Zika-affected regions. There are strong evidence to prove that Zika causes microcephaly. However, a conclusive evidence to confirm the virus association with the birth defect may take years to surface. Meanwhile, more microcephaly cases were recorded in Martinique and Brazil. The World Health Organization said that 7 among the 32 cases reported last week in Colombia were positive for Zika virus on real-time polymerase chain reaction testing. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Im A Former President Of The Jewish Society. BDS Is Not Anti-Semitic By Keziah Berelson 08 April, 2016 Studentnewspaper.org As a Modern Orthodox Jew, a recent graduate from the University of Edinburgh and a former President of the Universitys Jewish Society, (2012/13), I congratulate the student bodys decision to pass a motion of BDS. This is a victory for minority rights and democracy at the University. BDS is a non-violent campaign called for by over 170 Palestinian civil society organisations which use the methods of boycott, divestment and sanctions from institutions and companies who benefit from and contribute to Palestinian oppression in order to pressure the Israeli state to operate within the boundaries set by international law. EUSA has stood in solidarity with Palestinians through their Right to Education Week and their twin union the Palestinian Birzeit Students Union in the West Bank since 2005. This vote shows that EUSA and Edinburgh University students are still committed to liberation politics. In the light of growing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism across Europe, this show of solidarity comes as a welcome and much needed stand. Increasing numbers of anti-Semitic incidents on UK campuses up and down the country are reported and dealt with accordingly. This demonstrates the hard work that liberation groups and student unions across the country have put into creating safe spaces where students feel comfortable speaking up about ways in which they have been discriminated. As a young Jewish woman I did not feel brave enough to speak up against the snide anti-Semitic comments I received at school, yet when I stepped into Bristo Square as a fresher in 2011 I slowly found myself in a place where people took my concerns seriously and safely. I found a fountain of information from which I could question the ideas and identity I had grown up with. It saddens me that this successful move by BDS campaigners is overshadowed by accusations of anti-Semitism, which detract from the terrifying rise of fascism on UK and European streets. The Zeig Heils and blood-painted swastikas daubed onto vans in Dover earlier this year and the fascist demonstration held in Golders Green this Saturday have been eclipsed by fearmongering of pro-Palestinian successes. We must not let them rise again. I understand why Zionist Jewish students will feel intimidated by this decision but I must ask that you speak to fellow Palestinian students. How has this reaction affected them? How safe do they feel on campus? I presided over a diverse JSoc headed by a committee of friends with different backgrounds, approaches to, and definitions of Judaism. 2011-13 was a tense period for liberation politics at the University of Edinburgh and we did all we could to support students who suffered from anti-Semitism on our campus and across Scotland. We decided to make the constitution apolitical and to create an Israel society where Edinburgh University students could discuss matters relating to Israel regardless of cultural or religious background, whilst creating a religious and politically pluralist JSoc. I must make clear that I am neither unique nor alone. Building on the work of organisations such as JFJP and the Jewish Socialists Group, the growing frustration felt by many millennial Jews about the default positioning that support for Israel receives amongst Jewish civil society organisations has manifested in Jewish blocs at anti-fascist demonstrations led by groups such as Jewdas, and the creation of Babels Blessing Radical Language School. Do not tell us how and what to experience as anti-Semitism. Do not assume a political opinion based on my religion or creed, for we are not all the same and we will not be silenced. Not in my name. Another Secular Blogger Killed In Bangladesh By Countercurrents.org 08 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org Attackers in Bangladesh wielding machetes killed a liberal blogger on Thursday, the latest in series of murders of secular activists. Postgraduate law student Nazimuddin Samad, 28, was attacked as he was returning from a class at his university in the capital, Dhaka. Three or four men attacked Samad with machetes and then shot him after he fell to the ground. Samad was critical of radical Islamists and used to campaign for secularism on Facebook. He was attacked at Ekrampur intersection around 8:30pm by three assailants while walking to his home in Gendaria with another youth after completing classes at the university near Bahadur Shah Park. Samad is the son of Shamshul Haque from Bianibazar area of Sylhet. He was the information and research secretary of Sylhet district unit Bangabandhu Jatiya Jubo Parishad. He was also an activist of Gonojagoron Moncho's Sylhet wing. His friends said that Samad used to campaign for secularism on Facebook and was critical of radical Islamists. A day before the murder, he expressed concerns over the country's law and order in a Facebook post. Police said that the killers who came on a motorcycle first intercepted them and then attacked Nazim with machetes. At one point, he fell on the street and then the attackers shot him to confirm death before leaving the place. Businessmen of the area closed the shops immediately after hearing the gunshots. During the murder, the killers were chanting Allahu Akbar, police said quoting locals. Last year, suspected militants killed five secular writers including Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin and his publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan. Avijit Roy was hacked to death near a book fair in the capital Dhaka in February last year the first in a series of attacks that targeted atheist and secular bloggers in Bangladesh. Avijit Roy was a also a prolific writer and had penned down a dozen books, mostly about science, philosophy and materialism. His last books Obisshahser Dorshon (The Philosophy of Disbelief) and Biswasher Virus (The Virus of Faith), were well received around the world. In the Virus of Faith his main argument was that "faith-based terrorism will wreak havoc on society in epidemic proportions". He also edited a popular blog Mukto-Mona. Police blamed the attacks on the banned local Islamist militant group Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT). Global Tax Havens or Havens For Dirty Money By Abdus Sattar Ghazali 08 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org Gabriel Zucman, the author of the 2015 book The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, estimates that $7.6 trillion is stashed in tax havens. This amounts to 8 percent of the worlds personal financial wealth. The author believes that if all of this illegally hidden money were properly recorded and taxed, global tax revenues would grow by more than $200 billion a year. Interestingly, on April 3, 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, leaked massive documents known as Panama Papers which reveal the shadowy world of hidden offshore finances of presidents and prime ministers. The biggest leak of financial data in history exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world. The German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), which worked on the leaked documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said the data provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the worlds rich and famous: from politicians, FIFA officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes. According to The Guardian, the Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from the database of the worlds fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. The massive leak of confidential documents from a Panamanian law firm has shown how some of the world's richest people hide assets to avoid paying taxes. Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistans prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypts former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has formed a high-level judicial commission to probe any financial wrongdoing, a day after three of his children were named in the 'Panama Papers' for owning offshore companies prompting demands for an enquiry by the opposition. Documents on the ICIJ website said Sharif's children - Mariam, Hasan and Hussain - "were owners or had the right to authorize transactions for several companies". Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharifs relatives Samina Durrani and Ilyas Mehraj have also figured in the documents examined. Icelands prime minister, Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, became the first major casualty of the Panama Papers, stepping aside from his office amid mounting public outrage that his family had sheltered money offshore. A $2bn trail leads all the way to Vladimir Putins best friend Sergei Roldugin who is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin told The Guardian that the media investigation into offshore accounts is motivated by Putinphobia, and that he has not been implicated in any wrongdoing. Putins spokesman Dmitry Peskov said its obvious that the main target of such attacks is our president, and claimed that the publication was aimed at influencing Russias stability and parliamentary elections scheduled for September. He suggested the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which co-ordinated the international investigation, has ties to the U.S. government. Family members of at least eight current or former members of Chinas Politburo Standing Committee, the countrys main ruling body, have offshore companies arranged though Mossack Fonseca. They include President Xis brother-in-law, who set up two British Virgin Islands companies in 2009. Chinas foreign ministry dismissed reports of the leaks from the Mossack Fonseca database as groundless accusations. A Communist party censorship directive instructed news organizations to purge all reports, blogs, bulletin boards and comments relating to Panama Papers revelations. Twenty-three individuals who have had sanctions imposed on them for supporting the regimes in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, Iran and Syria have been clients of Mossack Fonseca. Their companies were harbored by the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other jurisdictions. Tax Havens Jill Lawless of the Associated Press says there's one part of the British Empire on which the sun still does not set: its tax havens. Britain's former world dominance has left it with a string of tiny territories scattered around the globe, and many of them have become hubs for hiding money. Despite growing political pressure, shutting down these and other tax havens may be easier said than done, Jill said. As Britain's colonies gained independence after World War II, London encouraged several small Caribbean islands to become tax havens as a means to self-sufficiency. As a result, many of the world's tax havens have British links, including overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. The Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey off the French coast, which are possessions of the British Crown, have been havens for the wealthy and their money for almost a century. More than half the 200,000 companies set up for clients by Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca in the leaked files are registered in the British Virgin Islands, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. According to the BBC two broad qualifications for being a tax haven are to have a low or zero rate of income tax and guarantee the rich a cloak of secrecy they would not receive in their own country. They have also been used to cover up criminal activity. Since 2009, many attempts have been made to crack down on abuses. More than 700 tax transparency deals have been signed globally. Places including Switzerland, the Channel Islands and Luxembourg have tightened the rules, but Panama and the British Virgin Islands are among those criticized for not doing enough. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Group of 20 nations have persuaded more than 90 countries to share financial data in a bid to crack down on secret dealings. Mossack Fonseca The Panama Papers make it clear that major banks are big drivers behind the creation of hard-to-trace companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other offshore havens. They list nearly 15,600 paper companies that banks set up for clients who want keep their finances under wraps, including thousands created by international giants UBS and HSBC. Mossack Fonseca is one of the worlds top creators of shell companies, corporate structures that can be used to hide ownership of assets. The law firms leaked internal files contain information on 214,488 offshore entities connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories. The offshore system relies on a sprawling global industry of bankers, lawyers, accountants and these go-betweens who work together to protect their clients secrets. These secrecy experts use anonymous companies, trusts and other paper entities to create complex structures that can be used to disguise the origins of dirty money. The Mossack Fonseca law firm has worked closely with big banks and big law firms in places like The Netherlands, Mexico, the United States and Switzerland, helping clients move money or slash their tax bills, the secret records show. Big U.S. firms hold $2.1 trillion overseas to avoid taxes Not surprisingly, in October 2015, an economic study revealed that the 500 largest American companies hold more than $2.1 trillion in accumulated profits offshore to avoid U.S. taxes and would collectively owe an estimated $620 billion in U.S. taxes if they repatriated the funds. The study, by Citizens for Tax Justice and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, found that nearly three-quarters of the firms on the Fortune 500 list of biggest American companies by gross revenue operate tax haven subsidiaries in countries like Bermuda, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Apple was holding $181.1 billion offshore, more than any other U.S. company, and would owe an estimated $59.2 billion in U.S. taxes if it tried to bring the money back to the United States from its three overseas tax havens, the study said. General Electric has booked $119 billion offshore in 18 tax havens, software firm Microsoft is holding $108.3 billion in five tax haven subsidiaries and drug company Pfizer is holding $74 billion in 151 subsidiaries, the study said. "At least 358 companies, nearly 72 percent of the Fortune 500, operate subsidiaries in tax haven jurisdictions as of the end of 2014," the study said. "All told these 358 companies maintain at least 7,622 tax haven subsidiaries." Fortune 500 companies hold more than $2.1 trillion in accumulated profits offshore to avoid taxes, with just 30 of the firms accounting for $1.4 trillion of that amount, or 65 percent, the study found. In September 2015, a U.S. federal judge authorized the Internal Revenue Service to seek the names of Americans using accounts at two Belize banks. Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com Printer Friendly Version HCU In Custody - Part 1 08 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org The events at the University of Hyderabad on March 22 following the return of Prof. Podile Appa Rao as its Vice Chancellor have been well documented. 27 people including students, faculty and an independent documentary maker were arrested by the police, and subsequently charged with various criminal sections including Damage to Public Property, Causing Hurt with a Dangerous Weapon, Rioting and Criminal Intimidation. Accounts by reporters and others who met the arrested individuals suggested arbitrary arrest and unlawful treatment by the police amounting to police brutality in some cases. In the following video, the first of a series, some of those arrested recount their own experiences in police custody. Tweet WhatsApp Share Share on Tumblr Comments are moderated Four People Killed In Bangladesh Protesting A Coal Power Plant By National Committee on Bashkhali Killing 08 April, 2016 Countercurrents.org Being a close ally of present ruling party, S. Alam group, a Bangladeshi business house, has managed to acquire a permission from the government to set up a 1224 MW capacity coal plant in a populated location in coastal area, Bashkhali, Chittagong. The area is well known for its salt farming along with various fish and agro-cultivation. S. Alam group signed an agreement with two Chinese companies, SEPCOIII Electric Power and HTG to set up a coal based power plant back in 2013. On 16th February, 2016, the government of Bangladesh approved the deal and set a price to purchase electricity from S. Alam Group at a rate of BDT 6.61 per unit. S. Alam group managed to showcase a total of 600 acres of land for this plant. As much as 75 percent of the investment is reported to be borne by Chinese lenders. It is important to note that, no environmental impact assessment(EIA) report has been prepared on this plant. In addition, incidents of fraudulence and lack of transparency was visible from the very beginning of the project. Along with 7 thousand households, the propsed landmass for the plant also includes around 70 mosques, grave yards, a technical education institution, around 20 cyclone shelter houses, 1 high school, 8 primary government schools, 2 Alia Madrassa, 5 kaomi Madrassa, 5 markets, and 1 government hospital. Despite of the existence of such intense locality, a total of only 150 households have been reported in the area by the local administration in order to be able to handover the land to S. Alam group.Massive level of illegal practices have also been observed on the dealings of land. A good number of people have been reported to be victimized by the fraudulence of the agents of S.Alam group. People of Gandamara Union have been protesting against the proposed plant along with range of illegal activities associated with land purchase/acquisition for long. Assaults and threats became common in the process. The local people had tried to negotiate over the choice of location of the plant, appealing to spare the heavily populated areas. On March 23rd, a peaceful protest was organized in the area with the presence of the officials from the administration, in which around 30 thousand people participated. They demanded to spare the heavily populated segments of the area from the already chosen location for the plant. On 2nd April, the local villagers attempted to obstruct the entry of the officials of the S.Alam group into the area, 7 locals were arrested based on the incidenton April 3rd. On April 4th, a protest was organized under the banner of Boshot vita rokkha Committee (committee to protect housholds) demanding the release of the arrested ones. Meanwhile, the paid locals of the company called for a counter program in the same location to spoil the event. Following the situation, a restriction was imposed by the local police administration. However, while the angry protestors continued to gather on the spot, around 30 to 40 goons hired by the company began to fire on the unarmed villagers. A large number of people were shot on the spot. At least 4 have been reported to be confirmed dead. We would like to ask, if the state chooses to call it development, then where is the Environmental Impact Assessment report? Why is this atrocity? How come there is no space for peoples opinion? Why is the government so afraid of protest? What sort of democracy is this in which the police administration and armed goons are consistently used to assault the people in protest? We have seen it in phulbari. Now witnessing the same in Rampal coal project near Sundarban, Ruppur nuclear power plant and in Moheshkhali in Coxs bazar. As long as assault, land grabbing, evicting people, and threat continue in the name of development, discontent would prevail. If the interest and consent of people are not prioritized, people will reject every so called development project. We demand exemplary punishment for the persons responsible for killing innocent unarmed people. We also demand to scrap projects with irregularities, corruption, and threat to human livelihoods and environment including coal fired power plants in bashkhali and Rampal. We call for a protest rally in Dhaka and Chittagong on 5 april and call for nationwide protest on April 8th government to fulfill above demands. Engineer S M Shaheedullah, Convener Professor Anu Muhammad, Member secretary National Committee to Protect Oil Gas Mineral Resources Port and Power April 4 2016 US Seeks To Develop Close Military Ties With Sri Lanka By Vijith Samarasinghe 08 April, 2016 WSWS.org The US Navys Seventh Fleet Flagship, USS Blue Ridge, arrived in Colombo on March 26 for a five-day visit, with 900 sailors on board. This is the first time in five years that a US navy vessel has docked in Colombo. Marking the event, the Seventh Fleet command said the visit aimed to build new ties and promote peace and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific. Part of the US Pacific command, the Seventh Fleet is the largest of the US Navy and conducts forward deployed naval operations in support of US national interests in the Indo-Asia Pacific area. US national interests is a reference to Washingtons quest to establish unchallenged domination in the Indo-Pacific as part of its global drive for hegemony. Far from promoting peace and stability in the region, the US represents the greatest threat to peace and stability. Washington is aggressively preparing war plans against China in order to subordinate it to US interests and building military ties and alliances throughout the region for that purpose. In a display of the Colombo governments willingness to align itself with the US, President Maithripala Sirisena visited the warship as part of the official welcome. Later, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and parliamentary speaker Karu Jayasuriya boarded the Blue Ridge and participated in a reception with the naval officers and the US Ambassador to Colombo, Atul Keshap. Sirisena was installed as president in the January 2015 election in what amounted to a regime-change operation orchestrated by Washington. The US had supported former President Mahinda Rajapakses intensified war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and ignored his attacks on democratic rights. However, as Rajapakse strengthened ties with Beijing, Washington hypocritically exploited the issue of his governments war crimes and human rights violations and backed his removal from the office. After Sirisena took office and appointed the United National Party (UNP) leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister, a steady stream of American officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, visited Colombo to deepen ties with the new government. During the reception with Seventh Fleet officials, Ambassador Keshap said: This [naval ship visit] will be the first of many to come. Blue Ridge commander Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin emphasised that we would like to come back and bring more of our Seventh Fleet ships to Colombo and to Sri Lanka. Far from being a symbolic gesture of goodwill between the two nations, the ships visit is part of the close integration of Sri Lanka into the Obama administrations pivot to Asia directed against China. On March 29, senior Seventh Fleet officers met with Sri Lanka Navy and Air Force officials to discuss operational topics. A news release said there were discussions about potential bilateral training between the US and Sri Lanka, in a Pacific Partnership, a joint effort between the United States, foreign militaries, and other organisations to conduct civil-military operations including humanitarian and civic assistance. The discussions are indicative of the increasing Sri Lankan collaboration with the US military. Sri Lankan Rear Admiral Dharmendra Wettewa, who attended the talks, said: I hope we can have something constructive so that we can follow up for months and years. Earlier, a US embassy statement announcing the warships visit noted that it sought to build upon the US-Sri Lanka Partnership Dialogue held in Washington during February, at which both nations pledged to strengthen maritime security cooperation efforts in the Indian Ocean Region in order to counter piracy, provide humanitarian assistance, and ensure free and safe navigation in the regions vital shipping lanes. Freedom of navigation is the pretext used by the US and its allies to denounce China for reclaiming land on islets and reefs it controls in the South China Sea and to deploy warships and planes to the area. A joint statement issued after Februarys Partnership Dialogue said the US had invited Sri Lanka to join the Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor (IPEC), which is a grouping of India and some ASEAN nations with America to strengthen economic, trade and transport linkages between Central Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. The statement declared that economic cooperation between the US and Sri Lanka would fully leverage Sri Lankas location and skilled workforce. This formulation further indicated that the relationship between the two countries primarily hinges on Sri Lankas geo-strategic position in the Indian Ocean. Speaking in Washington on March 28, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Nisha Desai Biswal, outlined Washingtons policy priorities in South and Central Asia. Reiterating the regions strategic importance, Biswal said: Geographically, the Indian Oceans sea routes connect Asia with the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, and the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca are two of the worlds most important strategic economic throughways. She also noted that Central Asia shares borders with Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Iranall states where we have complex and critical foreign policy interests. Biswal said Sri Lanka was rebalancing its foreign and economic policy as it emerges from its self-imposed isolation and benefitting from its strategic location as a maritime gateway to some of the largest markets in Asia. Washington is also seeking to build a close military and strategic alliance with India against China. Washington is discussing a Logistic Support Agreement with New Delhis Bharatiya Janatha Party-led government to give the US military access to Indian bases. India is still hesitant to strike such an agreement, but the discussion underscores the aggressive intent of the US. Behind the backs of the population, the Colombo government is increasingly entrenching the country in the US war plans against China, which carry the danger of a catastrophic nuclear conflagration. SHARE By Shannon Hall of the Courier and Press The Warrick County Council is considering an innkeeper's tax to promote tourism in the county. Shari Sherman, executive director for the Warrick County Chamber of Commerce, came before the council in March to speak on behalf of the tax, which is sometimes called a "user fee." Under the proposal, people who stay at hotels, motels, inns or other lodging for less than 30 days would be taxed five percent of their bill. By creating an innkeeper's tax, a board would have to be established to oversee the money generated. About 75 counties in Indiana have such a fee, Sherman said last month. Vanderburgh's is eight percent. Sherman said at least three to four hotels are considering locations in Warrick County, which she thinks would generate an additional $100,000. The council decided to review the proposed ordinance, and tabled it to its May meeting. "I want to assure the public that we'll take this seriously," said Gary Meyer, Warrick County Council president. Resident Ted Metzger told the council he opposed the tax, saying it would add another layer of bureaucracy. "Why do we need to jump into bed with the Chamber of Commerce?" he said. Newburgh resident Kevin Scott also questioned the need for the tax. "People come to this county because we have low taxes," he said. He said just because other counties have the tax doesn't mean Warrick County needs to. Another chunk of the council meeting Tuesday was dedicated to internal confusion over appropriations. More than $3 million was planned to be appropriated for 15 construction projects, including work on Lincoln Avenue just outside Newburgh, that were already approved by the County Council last year. Auditor Debbie Stevens said she was told by the state board of accounts that the money had to come before the council again because the money was approved last year, but wouldn't be spent until this year. Warrick County Councilman Brad Overton said he doesn't think it's a good practice to reappropriate funds in that manner. He said if one council approves contracts and then a new council is elected and subsequently votes the projects down, projects could be halted. "I think a lot of this is failure to communicate before the meeting," Councilman Paul Rudolph said. Warrick County Council Attorney Cliff Whitehead said he believes that state law says if money is appropriated for a project in one year, it doesn't have to be re-appropriated the following years that the project continues forward. SHARE Beth Csukas By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press Today's the day! We've enjoyed our time at Frazier rehab and WOW are the people here INCREDIBLE, but it's time to move on! Beth came here Feb 16th on a stretcher and only minimally conscious and look at her now...she's absolutely a miracle... Posted by Support for Csukas on Thursday, April 7, 2016 Beth Csukas, the Evansville firefighter injured in a car crash earlier this year, is improving from a devastating head injury but has plenty of rehabilitation still ahead of her. A video posted online Thursday by her family showed her walking with the assistance of only one person out of a Kentucky rehab center and into a waiting car. "We've enjoyed our time at Frazier rehab and WOW are the people here INCREDIBLE, but it's time to move on!" the post that accompanied the 36-second video read. "Beth came here (Feb. 16) on a stretcher and only minimally conscious and look at her now. ... She's absolutely a miracle." Csukas' family and friends run the "Support for Csukas" Facebook page, which is used to share updates about her condition. Csukas was injured in a crash on the morning of Jan. 16 while driving on the new leg of Interstate 69 just south of Bloomington. According to state police, her car slid on an icy spot near mile marker 109 and struck an unoccupied INDOT truck idling on the shoulder. Csukas suffered a serious brain injury. Before being at the Frazier Rehab Institute Center in Louisville, Kentucky, she was treated at an Indianapolis hospital. Csukas, a Memorial High School and University of Evansville graduate, joined the fire department in 2007. For the last few years, she has been assigned to the fire station at Oak Hill Road. She spent Thursday night in Evansville, but went to Indianapolis on Friday in hopes of getting accepted into an outpatient rehab program there, her family said. "I guess it's a normal part of treatment for that kind of an injury," said Michael Whitledge, her fire department unit's captain. "That you do this program until you reach (certain) goals and then you move on to another one until you reach those goals." Whitledge told the Courier & Press that he's been able to visit Csukas a few times. She has made tremendous progress, especially given her first prognosis after doctors became confident Csukas would survive her injuries, he said. "She's doing really remarkable. I'm shocked." Whitledge said on Thursday. "Initially, they told her she was not getting out of bed." Numerous fundraisers have been held since the crash to help with costs associated with Csukas' recovery, and a GoFundMe page, which is still active, has raised more almost $24,000 for her and her family. Whitledge has also set up a fund at the Evansville Firefighters Federal Credit Union for anyone who wants to contribute to the cause but would rather do so in person. The credit union is located on Fourth Avenue, just north of Franklin Street. FILE - In this Nov. 23, 2015, file photo, the Allergan logo appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Allergan and Pfizer called off Wednesday, April 6, 2016, a record $160 billion merger after the Treasury issued new rules to make "tax inversions" less lucrative. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) SHARE By Joel Mathis And Ben Boychuk Tribune News Service (Tns) President Barack Obama this week lauded new Treasury regulations aimed at curbing so-called corporate inversions, in which U.S. companies merge with foreign firms to ease their tax burdens. Although the practice is legal, the president said companies "effectively renounce their citizenship" and "stick the rest of us with the bill" by performing such maneuvers. The new rules have already scuttled a proposed $160 billion merger between Pfizer, based in New York City, and Allergan, a former U.S. firm now headquartered in Ireland. The merger was expected to save Pfizer, a pharmaceutical giant, about $35 billion in taxes. What should the U.S. government do to discourage companies like Pfizer from moving overseas? Are more rules the answer? Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, weigh in. BEN BOYCHUK Two numbers help shed light why a corporation such as Pfizer would want to merge with a company like Allergan and end up based in Dublin instead of New York: 35 and 12.5. The United States has a corporate income tax rate of 35 percent the highest in the developed world. Ireland's tax is just 12.5 percent. True, no American corporation with halfway competent tax attorneys and accountants will ever pay the full 35 percent. Pfizer's effective tax rate was around 25.5 percent in its 2014 filings. Why wouldn't Pfizer go for the more favorable rate? Wouldn't you? The handwringing over corporate inversions is really a conflict over fundamental principles. President Obama and many Democrats treat paying taxes almost as a moral act. For a corporate giant like Pfizer to use existing laws to get a better deal is repugnant to them. But for Pfizer's corporate officers, it's simply a matter of doing what's best for company's shareholders. If you have a 401(k) or a government pension, you might be one of them. Companies want to remain competitive. They seek every possible advantage. That's simply what corporations do. Remember: What Pfizer tried to do is perfectly legal under U.S. tax code. Less clear, however, is whether the new Treasury regulations are legal. They probably aren't. In order to find out, a company would need to challenge the rules in court. And in order to have standing to sue, that same company would need to spend several years and risk tens of millions of dollars tussling with the IRS. What does seem clear, however, is that the rules will make it increasingly difficult for U.S. firms to do business. Perhaps instead of punishing companies, the Obama administration should seek to make the tax code more competitive. Obvious, right? Even some Democrats believe the U.S. corporate tax rate is too high. But the lowest rate Obama will entertain is 28 percent. Better to stick it to the corporations and settle for anemic economic growth than to entice companies to leave Dublin for New York with a better deal. JOEL MATHIS Here's one underlying conundrum on the issue of business taxes: Are corporations people or aren't they? We already know the Republican answer to this question: "Corporations are people, my friend," as Mitt Romney famously said in 2012. That point of view often means that corporations have the same rights as you or I including the right to free speech, which in practice means that corporations have just as much right as you or I to spend thousands or millions of dollars to influence the workings of government. Oddly, though, corporations rarely bear the same responsibilities as people. Case in point: Crossing borders and adopting a new nationality is, in most cases, quite hard and often illegal for real people. Corporations, though, increasingly act as persons without a country, able to contort themselves to pick the country in which they can pay the lowest wages while picking another in which to pay the lowest taxes. The result: Big corporations can make millions in profits in the United States while doing relatively little to contribute to the community's upkeep. And, oh yeah: Many of the companies still keep their top executives in the United States making the whole thing a bit of a fiction. The equivalent? If your family adopted a Canadian child and declared Canadian citizenship all while staying snug at home in Peoria. It's absurd. No wonder Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have made a dent in this election year. Republicans will tell you that companies flee or do corporate inversions to transfer their citizenship abroad because of America's high corporate tax rate of 35 percent. Don't believe them. A Reuters analysis last year of six such companies found they had an average effective tax rate of just 20.3 percent. Is it wrong for companies to move overseas for tax breaks? It's certainly unfair. Let's give big corporations a choice. They can keep the tax advantages and international flexibility that real people don't have, or they can have the legal personhood that gives them an outsized say in our politics. They shouldn't have both. ABOUT THE WRITERS Ben Boychuk (bboychu www.facebook.com/benandjoel 2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. PHOTOS of Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis are available from the Columnist Mugs _____ Topics: t000181653,t000156231,t000002537,t000002717,t000156338,t000181426,t000002953,t000003007,t000181361,c000213542,g000362661,g000066164,g000065556 SHARE Submitted by the Southwestern Indiana Association of Health Underwriters On March 3, Joe Donnelly (D-IN) became the latest senator to co-sponsor the Access to Professional Health Insurance Advisors Act of 2015, a bipartisan bill to amend the Affordable Care Act's medical loss ratio requirements. The Indiana State Association of Health Underwriters thanks Sen. Donnelly for his support. Donnelly agrees the bill will help protect consumer and employer access to licensed independent health insurance agents and brokers. Many insurers immediately slashed commissions when the rule took effect, and cuts in commissions continue today. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that agent commissions have fallen by as much as 50 percent since the passage of the federal health care reform law, forcing many professional agents and brokers to close their doors. Donnelly shows that he understands that the service and advice agents provide consumers and employers are ensuring consumers are enrolled in health plans that meet their financial and medical needs. Excluding commissions from the medical loss ratio will ensure that agents can continue to provide this indispensable service to Indiana families and small businesses across the state and the nation. Last Sunday's Argentina MotoGP saw a scary accident in pit lane, during the mandatory mid-race bike swaps. Alvaro Bautista lost control of his Aprilia as he headed towards the team members holding his second bike, the Spaniard's sliding RS-GP then striking one of his mechanics (see video below): "I was braking and went from the asphalt to the damp cement and there was nothing I could do to keep from hitting the mechanic that was waiting to take my bike," Bautista said. Asked in Texas on Thursday what could be done to help avoid such situations, race winner Marc Marquez explained: "For me yeah it's dangerous but it's like in Formula 1, in the past many incidents but they improve. And obviously on the bike the flag-to-flag is a special case, if it starts to rain or like in Argentina [due to tyres]. "Maybe reducing the [pit lane] speed can be a good option. But then riders will complain that we are losing too much time. If in the end it is for the safety, I think one [option] is this." As Marquez highlighted, the problem with reducing the pit lane speed limit (currently 60km/h) is that in the case of a normal flag-to-flag race - where it is purely up to the rider to decide if they want to pit due to the weather conditions - the time lost during a bike change will be greater. That in turn mean riders are more likely to stay out, for example, while using slick tyres in the rain. "And another thing is to have less people in pit lane would be better, because sometimes you come in and there are many people. That can be dangerous too," Marquez added. Valentino Rossi, runner-up to Marquez last Sunday, said of the Bautista incident: "For sure when you stay in the pit it is always dangerous, also in Formula 1 a lot of times this happens; the driver makes some mistake and takes out a mechanic unfortunately. "I saw the video and I don't know if Bautista braked too deep, or maybe in front of his box was wet... maybe he arrived a little bit too fast. I think going slower in the pit lane can be an idea, to be more safe." World champion Jorge Lorenzo has never been a fan of flag-to-flag racing, which was introduced to solve the chaos to live TV schedules caused by stopping and restarting races due to changing weather. "Personally I'm not a big fan of flag-to-flag. I prefer the rules from before. But you know in terms of television and this kind of thigs it's the best [option], so we have to find the compromise and solutions to get down the risk. In this case not only for the riders but also the mechanics," he said. "Especially also the riders don't know what the rider behind you is going to do. Which speed they are going, where in pit lane they will be stopping and changing the bike. We need to work to reduce the risk because it looks like this rule will stay in future." Marquez was embroiled in a close battle with Rossi until Sunday's bike swap, after which the Italian struggled to get the same feeling from his second bike. Rossi dropped 7.7s behind the Honda rider and would have been left off the podium had Ducati team-mates Andrea Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso not collided at the penultimate turn. Given his issues with the second bike, would Rossi prefer to change wheels instead? "Can have some good, some bad. First of all it is quite expensive I think to change tyres, but you can take the technology from the Suzuka 8 Hours. For sure the bikes would be a bit different with all the systems to change the wheels in a fast way. But you can have a problem anyway and I think this way [now] is not so bad." Marquez also feels that swapping the entire bike is safer: "Flag-to-flag is really difficult to understand for the riders, but for me it will be more dangerous to change the tyres. Because if there is some technical problem like we see with the wheels [coming loose] sometimes in Formula 1, I cannot imagine... For me this flag-to-flag system is the best one. We discussed it last year. Just we must manage the safety in the pits." Argentina was only the second time that bike swaps have been compulsory during a MotoGP race. The first occasion was at Phillip Island in 2013, also due to safety concerns with the then Bridgestone tyres. Sussex News Story Saved You can find this story in My Bookmarks. Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right. Melbourne-based integrator Vantage Systems has deployed Panasonic's high resolution training technology as part of a $1.4 million upgrade at the Australian Maritime College (AMC) simulations centre. The audio visual solutions and unified collaboration specialist Vantage Systems has been working with the University of Tasmania for two years providing video conference solutions. Vantage Systems is responsible for the world's first installation of Panasonic's PT-RQ13K, a 3-chip DLP laser projector with 4K resolution. The five projectors used in the upgrade produce 10,000 lumens brightness and a 20,000:1 contrast ratio, according to Panasonic. AMC Centre for Maritime Simulations manager Damien Freeman told CRN the system exceeded the centre's expectations. "The upgrade will provide students, researchers and commercial clients with unprecedented visual clarity in the simulation environment, which will provide better immersion in the simulation environment and lower annual running costs to the Centre," said Freeman. According to Panasonic, the lifetime of the projectors is around 20,000 hours as the laser technology in use reduces associated replacement and maintenance costs. AMC National Centre for Ports and Shipping director Thanasis Karlis said: "The $660,000 projection system was part of a multi-stage upgrade including the installation of two 360-degree tug simulators plus new desktop simulator software specialising in liquid cargo handling and engine room operations." The deployment took two weeks and, as part of the deal, Vantage Systems will provide a five-year maintenance service. The AMC Centre for Maritime Simulations is used for maritime human factors research and investigation into port development, ship manoeuvring, and improving ship and port safety. Their simulator database includes Australian and New Zealand ports, as well as areas of Europe, Malaysia, and Indonesia. AMC also provides regular pilot simulation training to maritime organisations such as TasPorts, Newcastle Ports Corporation, Rio Tinto, Port Kembla, Southport (NZ), TT Line, Woodside Energy and Port Nelson. Vantage Systems is present all over Australia and also provides services through global partnerships with Yorktel in the United States, and VideoCall in the United Kingdom. The latest zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Systems' Flash player has been used over the last few days to distribute ransomware called Cerber, email security vendor Proofpoint said. Adobe said it would patch the flaw, CVE-2016-1019, on Thursday. The vulnerability affects all versions of Flash Player on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS. Ryan Kalember, senior vice president of cybersecurity at Proofpoint, said his company detected an attack trying to exploit the flaw on Saturday. One of Proofpoint's customers received an email with a document that contained a malicious macro that led victims through a series of redirects that eventually reached an exploit kit. Exploit kits are software packages planted on domains that hunt for software vulnerabilities on a computer in order to deliver malware. If a victim lands on a page and has a software flaw in Flash, for example, the malware is quietly installed. The exploit kit using the zero-day Flash vulnerability is known as Magnitude, Kalember said. It's believed just one cybercriminal group is behind Magnitude. "They've been doing ransomware for some time," he said. "They were doing Cryptowall for a while, then they moved to Teslacrypt and now they're on Cerber." Proofpoint was surprised to see a zero-day vulnerability used to distribute ransomware. Zero days vulnerabilities are flaws that are actively being used in attacks and are unpatched by a vendor. Such vulnerabilities have a high price in underground markets since it is almost guaranteed that a victim will be compromised. "The very fact it is being used in ransomware is indicative of just how far ransomware has come since it's clearly profitable enough to use a very, very interesting vulnerability and exploit rather than selling to the highest bidder," Kalember said. The attackers, however, took an interesting step that was perhaps intended to delay security researchers. Kalember said the Flash exploit was engineered to only infect Flash Player versions 20.0.0.306 and earlier. That conflicts with Adobe's version of events. In its advisory on Tuesday, Adobe said a mitigation introduced in Flash Player version 21.0.0.182 prevents exploitation of the vulnerability. Kalember said the vulnerability actually affects all versions of Flash. The attackers, he said, just engineered the exploit so that it only targeted older versions of Flash, a technique known as degradation. "It's not Adobe that has mitigated that," he said. "It's the malware authors themselves." Other exploit kits including Angler have also degraded some of their attacks, Kalember said. Cerber is a relatively new type of ransomware that emerged in the last month. Curiously, it will not infect computers that are in Russia or ex-Soviet countries, Kalember said. Ransomware has become one of the most acute problems on the Internet. The malware encrypts most files on a victim's computer. The decryption keys are only obtainable by paying a ransom, which is usually requested in bitcoin. Whiting-Turner, a Baltimore, Maryland-based construction company with contracts in both the private and federal sectors, says a recent security incident at a vendor hired to provide tax services could impact employees and their children. A breach notification letter, submitted on April 6 to California and Vermont, says that on March 8, a vendor hired to perform tax services for Whiting-Turner noticed suspicious activity on their systems. Around the same time, Whiting-Turner employees reported fraudulent tax filings in their names. The construction firm shutdown the vendor's access to their systems and launched an investigation. The investigation is ongoing, but the notice was issued out of an abundance of caution, the company says. "...we believe this incident may affect the security of your childs information contained on that employee policyholders 2015 IRS Form 1095, which includes the following: name, date of birth, and Social Security number of any minor dependent," a letter from the company to parents and guardians explains. If the minor in question has a reason to file a tax return this year, the notification letter says they'll need to contact the IRS and file an Identity Theft Affidavit (Form 14039). Parents are also being offered one year of credit monitoring for the children potentially impacted. In a separate letter, addressed to employees, Whiting-Turner offers the same basic explanation, but notes that the incident affects current, former, or retired employees who received a 2015 W-2. It isn't clear if the incident reported by Whiting-Turner is related to the spike in email scams targeting W-2 information, but it certainly fits the bill. $2.3 billion in losses: According to stats recently released by the FBI, Phishing attacks targeting W-2 data, also known as Business Email Compromise/Correspondence attacks, have amounted to more than $2.3 billion in losses since 2013. Since 2015, the agency has seen a 270-percent increase in the number of identified victims and exposed loss. The vendor used by Whiting-Turner isn't named in the notification letter, however on April 4, the Maryland Comptroller announced the suspension of electronic and paper tax return processing from more than 60 organizations that operate within the state. In many cases, criminals will use stolen tax information and file fraudulent returns with smaller tax preparation firms in order to avoid scrutiny. However, once that firm's services have been overly abused, the criminals are forced to look elsewhere. Some of the nation's largest tax services have been abused by such schemes - no one is immune. Recap: In the first quarter of 2016, more 41 organizations reported Phishing attacks targeting employee W-2 records. Since the tracker on Salted Hash went live, others have started tracking the W-2 scams as well, including Cloudmark. According to an update on their blog, the company says at least 60 organizations have been victimized by these targeted attacks. As the second quarter of the year begins, a new crop of reported victims has already emerged. After seeing a trend in recent cases, one expert spotted an obvious flaw in the workflow at many of the victimized organizations. "The employee shouldnt have been able to access that much data without some sort of oversight kicking in. The fact that a single employee, for any reason, could grab so much data and simply send it to anyone, regardless of who they think that person is, is a scary prospect when you stop to think about it," remarked Jonathan Sander, vice president at Lieberman Software, in an email. "Of course, you can also ask why an employee would be fooled into thinking that an executive would be making such a sweeping request. That raises the question of how executives expect to be able to give directions. Executives need to lead by example, and if their example has made employees feel that the CEO may in fact ask for such a huge dump of data without qualification or process then that is an issue." Updated on 8-APRIL-2016 to add a link to a tracking blog published by Cloudmark. We can't seem to find the page you are looking for. You may have typed the address incorrectly or you may have used an outdated link. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate When he was being recruited to Pitney Bowes, Greg Karanastasis met with 14 employees. Now the companys vice president of global talent acquisition, Karanastasis has since streamlined the recruiting strategy and regularly asks himself: How do we balance purposeful speed with getting it right? Karanastasis discussed recruitment, retention and management as part of a panel at Thursdays Fairchester Recruiting Summit and Awards at the University of Connecticuts Stamford campus. The second annual event featured speakers and panelists who shared their insights and expertise on the ever-evolving worlds of recruiting and talent management. Bruce Ennis, vice president of human resources at Bigelow Tea, and Jim Bertoluzzi, director of human resources at Tauck, were also on the panel. Moderated by David Lewis, president and CEO of OperationsInc and AllCountyJobs.com, the panel, Why They Stay, concentrated on retention strategies utilized by some of the top firms in the United States. The panelists agreed that retention needs to multifaceted and focus on vetting candidates, as well as what happens after theyre hired. Ennis, of Fairfield-based Bigelow Tea, which employs 330 people, said family plays a primary role in its retention strategy, citing its history as a third-generation tea company. In a company like Bigelow, its really important to have a culture driven by the family, he said. The panelists also discussed whether and how retention has changed over the last 10 years. For the 95-year-old Pitney Bowes, culture has become much more important, as well as investment in its people. Retention is tied to the real or perceived investment in its employees, Karanastasis said. He cited the success of two targeted programs, Early in Career Development and Technical Ladder, as examples of how the company nurtures employee growth and gives them access to opportunities. The former targets employees with under 10 years of experience, while the latter helps employees grow their careers on a non-managerial path. As organizations become more and more flat, companies are looking for more innovative ways to think about development, he said. Pitney Bowes measures everything, he said, and it found a direct correlation between these development programs and retention rates. For Bigelow Tea, first impressions are key. Once you decide to hire someone, Ennis said, make sure you keep the lines of communication open, whether thats sending them a gift basket or letting them know youre excited for them to start. Dont let time fall flat between hire and start date, he said. You want that employee to go home and say I made the right decision. The Wilton-based travel company Tauck protects and invests in its company culture by treating its employees the same way it treats clients and by getting a bit creative. Every December, for instance, the company employs local high school students to send holiday cards and wrap presents on behalf of employees; its the companys busiest time of year. The best part? They only spend $750 annually on this project. You dont have to spend a ton of money on these things, Bertoluzzi said. Retention is not about money, its about so many other things. Last weekend's Wrestlemania 32, hosted in Dallas, shattered records for everything from attendance to social media and quickly became the highest-grossing live event in WWE history at $17.3 million. With numbers like that, it's no wonder the stars of the industry get paid big bucks. Politically speaking, Connecticuts Gold Coast never depreciates in value. A six-mile stretch of Greenwich coastline is virtually unrivaled in the country for attracting presidential hopefuls. From John Kasich to Hillary Clinton, all come to share in the abundance of campaign cash to be found here. Pan over the spits of land jutting into Long Island Sound, and theres a connection to the highest office in the land. In addition to a sitting president and a future president, five presidential and vice presidential candidates have panned for political gold along this narrow stretch of waterfront real estate during the past decade. The clout of the Gold Coast was not lost on Barack Obama in 2007, when hedge fund titan Paul Tudor Jones hosted an early fundraiser for the then-Illinois senator at his $26 million white-columned Belle Haven mansion. As Obama said, I thought the White House would be an upgrade, but maybe Ill stay here, recalled Democrat Ned Lamont, a Greenwich cable television entrepreneur who has run for the Senate and governor. Next door to Jones compound is the Belle Haven Club, where Jeb Bush filled his coffers last October before the former Florida governors presidential bid flamed out. Through the end of February, giving to presidential candidates for the four ZIP codes that encompass Greenwichs coastal neighborhoods totaled nearly $1 million for the 2016 campaign cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission. The sum does not include super PAC contributions, which are in the tens of thousands of dollars. The most recent marquee visit was by Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio who is running a distant third to Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the GOP nominating race. Kasich was the guest March 30 of investor Ian McKinnon and his socialite wife, Sonnet McKinnon, whose $27 million, 18,000-square-foot Riverside estate overlooks Long Island Sound. While there is a cachet that comes with hosting candidates as well as security costs some locals said it would be refreshing if there was greater access to the candidates. I just wish I would see more of them come back later for reasons other than making money, said state Rep. Fred Camillo, R-Greenwich, a Kasich backer who was in attendance at the fundraiser. Kasich also held a public town hall Friday at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. Ironically, two promontories to the west of where Kasich visited is a $54 million compound once owned by Trump that has been on the market for more than a year. In the same Indian Harbor association, which has a guard house, is a $30 million estate known as Villa Candia where Clinton raised $200,000 last June for her presidential bid. The property, first developed by 19th century New York political boss William Tweed and owned by retired financial trader Malcolm Wiener and his wife, Carolyn Wiener, is known for its extensive collection of rare art. On the same spit of land in Riverside as the Kasich fundraiser is the waterfront estate of state Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, a prolific bundler of political cash for the GOP who hosted President George W. Bush in 2006, former vice presidential nominee and current House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin in 2012 and Mitt Romney multiple times. Romney has the Romney bedroom, Lamont quipped. neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BRIDGEPORT Charles Valentino, former High Sheriff of Fairfield County and Prince of East Main Street, was sentenced Friday to a year in prison in connection with a scheme to make thousands of dollars off cars that were seized from delinquent tax payers in the city. I made mistakes and Im sorry for what Ive done, the 68-year-old Valentino told Superior Court Judge Robert Devlin before a courtroom packed with supporters. I know I did wrong and I have to live with that for the rest of my life. But while the judge said he recognized all the good Valentino had done in his service to the state, as a member of the citys zoning board and as an official in the citys Republican Party, he said he couldnt ignore the fact that Valentino had violated the public trust. There was one woman who owed $500 in taxes on her Mercedes, $500, and it was booted and towed and her car was sold, and the only ones who got any money out of it were you and the towing company, the judge said. Valentino was handcuffed and led away by judicial marshals, some of them the very men he had hired when he was in charge of courthouse security. Valentino, under a plea bargain, had previously agreed to plead guilty to three of 39 charges of second-degree forgery and criminal impersonation. The arrest of Valentino called into question the citys policy of towing the cars of people unable to pay their taxes. In many cases, the car owners are unable to pay the hundreds of dollars in fees tacked on by the towing companies in addition to the back taxes, and the cars are junked, with no money going back to the city. During the sentencing hearing, Assistant States Attorney Marc Durso told the judge Valentino forged legal documents and continued presenting himself as a marshal after he had been forced to resign for alleged perjury. A period of incarceration should be imposed, the prosecutor said. But Valentinos lawyer, John Gulash, countered that his client couldnt be punished more than he has already punished himself. In the end the judge sentenced Valentino to five years, suspended after he serves one year and followed by three years probation. A lifelong resident of upper East Main Street, where people still refer to him as the Prince, Valentino employs residents in a number of businesses he owns there, including the barbershop where he was first employed. He served as a state marshal for 13 years after voters eliminated the elected position of high sheriff, but was forced to resign in 2013 after he was caught lying on the witness stand in state court about serving legal papers in a case involving former Bridgeport Superintendent of Schools Paul Vallas. By state law, only state marshals are permitted to conduct auctions for tax delinquency. State police and the FBI claim that for at least a year after he resigned, Valentino was still passing himself off as a state marshal. They said he signed paperwork for the auction of the cars as a state marshal and used the notary stamp of his dead mother. He is also accused of doing evictions as a state marshal. I didnt take any money from people, not one dime from city taxpayers, Valentino told Hearst Connecticut Media following his arrest. I just auctioned cars; thats all I did. Valentino also denied doing evictions contending that he was only moving evicted people out at the request of a state marshal. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD The father of a 25-year-old man shot and killed by police last month made a desperate 911 call before his depressed son waved what appeared to be a real gun, prompting SWAT team members to fire the fatal shots outside the Newfield home, according to unsealed search warrants. Dylan Pape purchased a BB gun at a Wal-Mart in Norwalk, hours before police mistook it for a real pistol on the night of March 21, according to the warrants. Police found a receipt for the gun, as well as a clipping from The New York Times, Adam Lanzas Mental Problems Completely Untreated Before Newtown Shootings. The warrants for Papes house and rental car provided no clues as to why the items, especially the article about Lanza who killed 20 first-graders and six adults in a shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 were inside the Chevrolet Camaro. Papes parents, Linda and Richard, declined comment through their Stamford attorney, Mark Sherman, who also would not talk about the specifics of the warrant findings but said the family has been cooperating with State Police. This was a tragedy all around, and the family will wait for law enforcement to complete their investigation, Sherman said. State police have not released any information about what happened that night. Within 24 hours of the incident, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner made the unusual ruling that Papes death was a suicide-by-cop. It was only the second time in 20 years a police-involved shooting in Connecticut was determined to be a suicide. The affidavit accompanying the search warrant for Papes house and rental car provides the first insight into what led to the fatal shooting the first time Stamford police have killed a civilian in 31 years. According to the affidavit, Richard Pape called 911 and said his son was depressed and walking around the front of their Wedgemere Road home with a gun at about 7:40 p.m. on March 21. Richard Pape told dispatchers his son said, I have to do it. Pape said his son had been drinking that night and had no idea what he was doing. Pape also said his son made previous suicide attempts. As Special Response Team members arrived and negotiators tried to connect with Dylan Pape, the 2008 Stamford High School graduate continued to walk around the property and into the street, displaying the handgun and acting irrationally while getting in and out of his rental car, according to the affidavit. Pape ignored police commands to put the gun down and approached officers, placing them in a dangerous position for their own safety, the affidavit said. As a result of his actions, the affidavit said the officers were forced to shoot him. Wal-Mart receipt The SRT members who shot Pape were Lt. Christopher Baker, a 16-year member of the department and commander of the team, and Sgt. Steven Perrotta, who has been with the department for 12 years. Police found an instruction booklet for a XBC semi-automatic BB pistol and opened packaging inside Papes car, according to the affidavit. The pistol looks like a small semiautomatic gun and sells for about $25. Police also found a box of 15 C02 cartridges, BBs and a receipt for the items, including the gun, purchased at Wal-Mart in Norwalk on March 21, according to the affidavit. Police seized two laptop computers from inside the home and the residences surveillance camera system, the affidavit said. Pape was a plumber in training at Astacio Plumbing & Heating in Norwalk. His boss of two years, Richard Astacio, said Pape worked a regular day that Monday and left between 4:30 and 5 p.m. with no indication of the trouble that followed just a few hours later. He came to work in good spirits and was laughing, Astacio said of the last day he saw Pape. I wish there were signs. It took us all by surprise, and we are all hurting and praying for his family. WESTPORT A woman who survived internment the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. First Selectman Jim Marpe offered his condolences Friday to the family of the late Anita Pollak Schorr, praising her courage. Although her entire family was killed by the Nazis and she herself was sent to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Anita lived to see the end of the war. She immigrated to Israel and was one of the first four women to serve in the Haganah, the precursors to the Israeli Defense forces, wrote Marpe. Anita made it her mission to tell the story of what happened to her and to the six million other Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis. For the last 20 years that audience included Westport residents. She also developed a program to help middle school teachers incorporate the Holocaust into their curriculums. Show me an ecommerce website that hasnt faced hosting woes, and I will show you one that doesnt sell a thing! If you have a successful ecommerce website with a steady flow of traffic and sporadic traffic bursts, then you might have had reasons to be dissatisfied with your hosting solution. Uptime and speed aside, there are several other issues such as poor customer service, DDoS attacks and server-management problems that can irk you. With so many hosting solution providers, there is no reason why you should be suffering for it. Related: 5 Vital Considerations When Choosing Your Web Hosting Service A robust hosting solution has many benefits, and unlimited bandwidth and migration support just doesnt begin to cover it. A hosting solution should not only keep your website up and running but also bring in those coveted conversions. Wondering how? Read on. 1. The true cost of website downtime Every hour your website is down, you not only lose revenue but also productivity, cost of recovery and reputation. When Amazon.com and Amazon.ca went down for 30 minutes, the company lost estimated $2 million based on its previous years earning. Arguably, you might be a startup or a small business with less turnover compared to Amazon, but that means the loss will hit you even harder. Whats worse, the loss doesnt end here. Your loss means competitors gain as proven in many cases like Debenhams. So dont take website downtime lightly -- choose your website hosting wisely. 2. Getting website up to speed Every fourth visitor will not bother with your website if it takes longer than four seconds for it to load. Almost half of them wont come again either (Infographic). While revenue lost due to website downtime is calculable, you cannot calculate losses incurred due to slow websites, which is why it is even more dangerous. Believe it or not, there is even a psychological explanation why your website speed matters so much. This Website Speed Optimization guide pretty much sums it up from psychological conundrums to practical performance tips. The crux of the matter is that your website speed significantly affects your business -- and you cannot neglect it. Related: How to Choose the Right Host for Your Website 3. Goodbye 500 error Portal do Dog is a Brazilian website updated several times a day. The website boasts a lot of user-generated content, including videos. They have over eight million page views per month, eight gigabytes worth of data and an enormous fan community. A few years back they choose managed hosting provider Kinsta because they had a hard time finding a reliable hosting provider that could keep their website running smooth and fast at all times. After the switch, they saw a remarkable result: zero 500 error! If your website is prone to this error message, it would make sense to switch from shared mega-hosts to managed high-end services. 4. Save money with shared IPs. Dedicated or shared IPs? This one is as old as the chicken-and-egg argument. Most businesses worry that shared hosting might affect their business reputation, but watch Matt Cutts put a rest to all the worries in this short video. Google doesnt penalize good websites because they share the same IP as spammy websites, unless the IP has thousands and thousands of spammy sites. If, however, you chose your hosting provider smartly, you will never face this problem. Apart from cost savings, shared hosting offers many benefits -- such as its easy to set up, maintenance and security are provided by the hosting provider and updated technologies like Ubuntu, Nginx, PHP5-FPM, HHVM, MySQL (MariaDB), etc. ensure your website is always up and running. Related: Web-Hosting Troubles? How One Company Found a Solution By Building Their Own 5. Leverage the secured sockets layer (SSL) edge. In a bid to encourage a safe web, Google gives ranking benefit to websites that have a SSL 2048-bit key certificate. Searchmetrics even analyzed their data and found that there is a significant difference in search engine optimization (SEO) ranking between HTTPS- and HTTP-websites. In fact, the bigger your website, the more SEO ranking gains you get. Whats more, the green HTTPS bar or padlock can even boost trust and conversion. All in all, choosing a hosting provider that offers SSL certificate gives you an edge over HTTP websites. All the five points mentioned above show you how something as unrelated as hosting can affect your conversions. Whenever we talk about ecommerce solutions and conversion tips, we never discuss the importance of hosting, thinking its a given. However, hosting is the very foundation on which the future of your website rests -- so take great care when choosing your hosting solution. Related: Do People Think Your Ecommerce Business Name Is '500 error'? Upgrade Your Web Hosting Now. 5 Vital Considerations When Choosing Your Web Hosting Service How This Company Creates Instant Websites Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD - Mayor David Martin made his case Thursday to the citys business community that Stamford is a financially strong, safe, desirable place to live with a bright future. The lunchtime State of the City speech before the Stamford Chamber of Commerce at the Hilton hotel highlighted Martins achievements in refinancing debt at lower rates, negotiating a new police contract and attracting commercial tenants. He touted the citys AAA bond rating from Standard & Poors. That is something thats pretty rare for a community over 100,000 people and its pretty rare for a city as diverse as ours, Martin said. He blamed the 3.8 percent increase in property taxes in his proposed budget for fiscal 2016 on the rising cost of funding pension and retirement benefits, up 14 percent this year and accounting for nearly a third of the $536 million budget. The mayor also praised the police force for negotiating its contract rather than going to arbitration for the first time in 15 years, as well as its leadership in handling protests associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. Last year was a rough year for a lot of municipalities, Martin said. If you think back to what happened in Chicago or Ferguson or Baltimore, Martin said. Nothing happened in Stamford. In a wide-ranging talk that also touched on booming apartment construction as well as public safety advances including surveillance cameras in city parks and water testing at public schools, the mayor argued that Stamford is heading in the right direction. He hit a lot of the points that people wanted to hear about, such as what is our economy doing, how strong is the city, said Jack Condlin, chamber president. Bill Hennessey, a partner at Carmody Torrance Sandak & Hennessey, called the mayors talk comprehensive and found value in the details. The granular details about the pension liabilities and how they affect the budget was of great interest, Hennessey said. Its not a thing you typically hear about. Hearing the mayor explain that sort of thing puts a light on some of the challenges the city faces. Marjan N. Murray, an executive vice president at Peoples United Bank, said she would have appreciated an update on the train station development project as well as more focus on how the mayor plans to fill vacant commercial office space in the city. While the mayor cited several leasing deals including 137,000 square feet from Bridgewater Associates and 312,000 square feet for Synchrony Financial Murray, an expert in commercial real estate finance, was not impressed. The multifamily housing has attracted people to the city and has done really well so far, she said. Everything is getting leased. But we really need to fill some of these office buildings. The vacancy rate is still too high and we are needing to attract tenants to Stamford. He mentioned some leases, but some were people moving from one building to another. We need new companies coming in. The mayor said the office market is healthier than it appears. We believe we have more employees in Stamford now than we had before the recession hit in 2009, but they are in much smaller office spaces, Martin said. Gene Schreiner, a vice president at First County Bank, appreciated the mayors effort to show how Stamford stacks up against other Connecticut cities of similar size. Martin noted that while the statewide population is declining, Stamfords is growing with the mayor predicting another 2,000 residents will join the current tally of 128,000 by years end. It was very positive, Schreiner said. Theres growth and influx of people that other cities dont have. Brad Radulovacki, owner of Doctors Express of Connecticut, said Martin was realistic about Stamfords challenges and strengths. Its great to see an unemployment rate lower than the national average, he said. Its great to see population growth here. Those are key elements. Small businesses are still concerned about the focus of the town on large businesses. Im glad he brought up small business. We need as much attention as possible on small business. julie.alterio@scni.com; 203-964-2263 Its fair to say that this year, political conventions are getting a lot more attention than is typical at this point in a presidential race. Talk of delegates, platforms, and convention rules usually doesnt get underway until the two parties conventions are a week or so away. As the CEO for the Committee on Arrangements, the organization tasked with putting on this years Republican National Convention, its encouraging to see both the public and the press discussing these events, because they play such a unique, important role in our democracy. Thanks to this heightened interest, Americans now have more information about the process that culminates in the selection of each partys presidential nominee. Throughout the primary season, millions of voters have gone to the polls to make their choice for President. In many states delegates are being chosen to represent the voice of the voters and those delegates will represent them at the upcoming Republican convention. In July, the men and women elected to their states delegation will travel to Cleveland, Ohio so they can carry out their responsibilities. The National Convention is where our candidate for President of the United States will lay his vision as the leader of the free world to the voters across America and the world. The Party will also adopt our platform and rules for the 2016 Convention and the delegate selection rules for the future. There is no other single event that offers presidential candidates as significant an opportunity to present their vision for our country and the case for their candidacy to the American people. Simply put: there is no political event in the world with greater intensity and media coverage. The work of the convention is not just the responsibility of a few leaders; it is taken up by thousands of Republicans. On July 18, when the Republican convention officially begins, the population of Cleveland, Ohio, will have risen dramatically. There will be 2,472 delegates and 2,304 alternate delegates from all 50 states, the five territories, and Washington, D.C. Approximately 15,000 credentialed media will be on the ground an international press corps that is second only in size to the one that will cover the Olympic Games later this year. Add to that another 8,000 volunteers and 30,000 visitors, and one starts to get a better sense of everything that goes into putting on a political convention. An event of this size and scope requires good planning and preparation, and the Committee on Arrangements is hard at work along with its partners, the 2016 Cleveland Host Committee and the City of Cleveland to ensure that this years Republican National Convention is a success. Our committee has been working toward that goal for nearly two years. Over the next few months, well be in the final stretch, preparing for the delegates to arrive and for the proceedings to begin. The 2016 election is shaping up to be an important moment for the Republican Party and our country. While the time for choosing our next President is in November, the conventions this summer will give Americans a clear understanding of the choice that all of us, as voters, have to make. I hope you will tune in to hear about the Republican Partys vision for our country, to learn about the leader we are nominating for the presidency, and to be part of this important moment in our nations history. Jeff Larson is CEO for the Committee on Arrangements, 2016 Republican National Convention. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate NEWTOWN Superintendent of Schools Joseph Erardi Jr. stood before about 100 people at Newtown Middle School on Thursday night and vowed he would never sign an agreement allowing teachers to carry guns in the towns schools. The declaration came a day after Jason Adams, an eighth-grade science teacher with a valid pistol permit, was arrested after bringing a pistol into the middle school. Adams, who has taught at Newtown Middle School for 10 years, was charged with possession of a weapon on school property, a felony offense. He is on administrative leave with pay. Erardi told the audience he expects the school districts investigation into what he termed an egregious event will be completed in two or three weeks. More News Cops arrest Newtown teacher with gun at middle school I assure you it will be thorough, Erardi said before the meeting, and the staff member will be given the opportunity to be heard. We will maneuver cautiously, yet swiftly. Newtown Police Chief James Viadero, who spoke at the meeting, did not offer a timeline for his departments investigation. Adams is scheduled to be arraigned at state Superior Court in Danbury on April 20. Adams, 46, of Currituck Road, is not compelled to cooperate in the school districts investigation. If convicted in the criminal case, Adams would lose his teaching certification in Connecticut. Several people who identified themselves Thursday night as parents of Newtown schoolchildren asked if Adams had previously brought a gun into school. They also wanted to know why he did so Wednesday morning. Viadero and Erardi said they couldnt comment on the questions because of the ongoing investigations. Adams, meanwhile, did not return multiple phone calls seeking comment Thursday. A woman who answered the door at his home Thursday morning waved off a reporter for Hearst Connecticut Media seeking comment. It is not clear whether Adams had hired an attorney to represent him in the case. A chilling reminder While police and school officials continue their investigation into Adams, the incident and its repercussions have jangled the nerves of a community still traumatized from the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings. It was a very, very difficult day for staff, students, parents and the community at large, Erardi said Thursday afternoon. Classes were about to start Wednesday morning at Newtown Middle School when a staff member saw what appeared to be a weapon concealed under Adams clothing and reported it to security personnel, police said. Authorities said Adams violated state law and district policy forbidding the possession of firearms on school property. Newtown police arrived on scene as back-up for the school resource officer in under 90 seconds, Viadero said Thursday night. Erardi said all proceedings Wednesday morning at the school the conversations with Adams and his police-escorted departure from school were done out of the eyesight of students and staff. We attempted to talk to him, Viadero said Thursday night. Hes not going to comment. Hes placed under arrest. At least one man in attendance Thursday night defended Adams and his right to carry a pistol with a valid permit. The man said if Adams passed the background check to get a pistol permit, it should not be assumed he had bad intentions. Earlier in the day Thursday, Viadero said he could not release any new details about the case or discuss Adams reasons for bringing a weapon to work, but stressed no one in the school was ever in danger. The weapon was not drawn or used at any point, authorities said. Were trying to delve into why it happened, Viadero said. But we are very confident there was no danger to the school population. The Newtown Action Alliance was one of several groups to issue statements condemning Adams this week. Our community is still reeling from the tragic shooting that occurred on Dec. 14, 2012, the group said Thursday. Therefore, we are shocked and enormously disappointed that a middle school teacher from Newtown would bring his gun onto school property (Wednesday). The alliance praised school administrators and Newtown police for responding efficiently and effectively to this difficult situation. The group, which was formed after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, said the districts policy prohibiting guns on school property should be a model for schools across country. We encourage all schools in all towns and cities nationwide to adopt a similar policy to keep all children and teachers safe from gun violence, the statement said. Teachers should focus on teaching and defer to law enforcement with proper training to protect our students in schools. Response worked flawlessly Newtown Middle School has a resource officer, who is part of the police staff, and a security officer. Sgt. Aaron Bahamonde said district policy allows both officers to be armed along with any on-duty police officers who happen to be at a school. But off-duty officers are not allowed to bring a weapon on school property, he said. Bahamonde said if a district ever allows staff to carry firearms, those employees should have a thorough psychological evaluation on top of a background check and full training. They would have to train just like any police officer, he said, because were changing from personal protection to protecting other lives. Bahamonde said Wednesdays incident was not a setback in the healing process of the community, but it sure opened some wounds. Were trying to heal, and its certainly getting better, but this kind of incident bring flashbacks to peoples minds, he said. Erardi said the response was exactly what should have taken place from a security protocol standpoint. Somebody saw something, reported it and the armed officer responded, he said. The staff member was appropriate without incident, but I dont want to marginalize that piece of it. I dont want to marginalize the issue of having a weapon in our schools. Viadero echoed Erardis comments, saying the districts security protocol worked flawlessly. The chief described the incident as unfortunate because of the confidence parents place on teachers. This is someone parents believe they can trust, he said. 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. Videos of Floridian arrests bring renewed criticism of crackdown on election fraud Law enforcement body camera footage showed stunned and confused Floridians being arrested on voter fraud charges. Advocates are calling for changes. 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 The taxpayer-funded leaflet with which the Government hopes to persuade us to vote to remain in the EU raises many more questions than it answers. The problem is that it presents as undoubted fact various assertions on which well-informed observers can arrive at precisely opposite conclusions. Talking of a reformed Europe, which does not yet actually exist, it says the UK has secured tough new restrictions on access to our welfare system for new EU migrants. It completely fails to mention that the European Parliament has threatened to veto this concession. David Cameron has refused to apologise over his plan to use taxpayers funds for the pro-EU campaign Nor does it mention that the disincentive to migrants these modest welfare restrictions would create is likely to be cancelled out by the new Living Wage. David Cameron yesterday insisted that he makes no apology for spending 9.3million of taxpayers money on this leaflet campaign. He added we are not neutral in this as if anyone imagined he was. But he needs to be careful. Undecided voters realise there are two sides to the argument. People can tell one-sided propaganda, in Michael Goves words yesterday, when they see it. Some in the Leave camp say it is convenient for Mr Cameron this row has blown up at the very moment his familys tax affairs have come under scrutiny. Although the formal purdah period when strict rules kick in on how much can be spent on campaigning is limited to the last 28 days before the referendum, the Electoral Commission has advised that there should be no major intervention by Government after April 15 ten weeks before. Eurosceptics believe this is why the leaflet is being distributed now. The liberal Dutch have just held a referendum in which they voted, in what is seen as a deeply eurosceptic move, against an EU trade treaty with the Ukraine. The PM needs to remember that across Europe, the public do not like to be treated as fools by an ever more elitist political class. Corbyn the blind Jeremy Corbyns spineless response to the rise of anti-Semitism within the Labour party is utterly unacceptable. Last Saturday the Mail carried a brilliant investigation by Guy Adams exposing how extensive anti-Jewish bigotry has become in the party. We reported on Labour figures who spread bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, such as that Israel helped found Islamic State. The Mail also revealed the part played by Mr Corbyns long-term ally, John McDonnell, in the 1980s, when he co-edited Labour Herald at the time it published a piece comparing the Israeli government to the Nazis. Mr Corbyns brother, Piers Corbyn, has now dismissed as absurd a complaint by Labour MP Louise Ellman, who is herself Jewish, that the party leader has failed to stamp out anti-Semitic abuse. And the Labour leader has stood by his brothers attempt to downplay the seriousness of the problem. No wonder the Board of Deputies of British Jews finds his response very concerning. Labour is by tradition a proudly anti-racist party. If Mr Corbyn cannot see how endangered that reputation now is, he must be morally blind. Jeremy Corbyn's spineless response to the rise of anti-Semitism with the Labour Party is unacceptable An unhealthy irony Earlier this week, the health service was reported to be at breaking point, in part because of a huge surge in EU migrants. A man who was sexually abused as a child has told how he almost suffocated his wife with a pillow during a night terror, believing her to be his attacker. Paul Remmer, 37, from Thirsk, North Yorkshire, was raped at the age of five by family friend Graham Pipes, then 17, who was babysitting him at the time. However, he was sworn to secrecy and told he would be killed in his sleep if he told anyone. Not until he was 19 did he tell his partner Claire, who is now his wife, but he said he didn't feel ready to tell anyone else. Scroll down for video Paul Remmer, pictured with wife Claire, almost suffocated his wife with a pillow in April 2011, believing her to be his attacker. He suffered frequent nightmares following the attack, eventually prompting him to alert police Paul as a young boy, left, and his attacker, Graham Pipes, who was jailed for sexual assault in December 2015. Pipes was meant to be babysitting him when he launched the attack, which Paul never spoke of until year later Pipes was jailed for sexual assault in December 2015 after another victim came forward. Paul has now waived his right to anonymity to help other victims. He explained that he suffered a series of terrifying nightmares that continued to get worse, but the final straw came one night in April 2011, when they suddenly turned violent. It was after this that Paul knew he would have to tell the police what had happened. Paul said: After I was attacked, I buried it deep and I didnt tell a soul. When I met Claire, I trusted her instantly and I felt I could confide in her. 'However it was a long time before I felt ready to tell anyone else. 'My night terrors kept getting worse and I was absolutely distraught when I suddenly woke up that night and realised I was suffocating Claire. 'If anything had happened to her because of me I would be utterly devastated. I would have never forgiven myself. Recalling his confession, Paul's wife Claire said: 'My heart broke as he explained he was plagued with disturbing visions of Pipes standing at the foot of his bed, saying he was going to kidnap him' The couple, who live in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, have a daughter together as well as Claire's son from a previous relationship. Claire eventually convinced her husband to tell police about the attack years later 'Thats when I knew something had to be done. I told my family - which was really hard, and then we went to the police. 'When at first they told me they couldnt do anything about it due to a lack of evidence, I was heartbroken, but then another victim came forward. 'Finally, we had the chance to put my attacker in prison where he should be. 'With Claire by my side, I have beaten my demons and now I want to speak out to encourage other male rape victims to speak out. Claires my rock - and Id be completely lost without her. Claire said: 'Paul often suffered from nightmares, and one night he broke down in tears as he tried to explain why. 'Thats when he made his shocking confession - he had been raped when he was just five years old.The harrowing memory had haunted him his whole life, and he hadnt told anyone other than me.' Paul with wife Claire. He said: 'With Claire by my side, I have beaten my demons and now I want to speak out to encourage other male rape victims to speak out. Claires my rock - and Id be completely lost without her' Paul (pictured as a child) was only five years old when he was brutally assaulted by Graham Pipes in 1984. For years he was haunted by visions of his attacker standing by his bed and threatening to kidnap him Claire tried to persuade her partner - who she is now married to - to go to the police, but he was terrified nobody would believe him over the attack. Instead, he tried to put the 1984 incident to the back of his mind Claire tried to persuade her partner to go to the police, but he was terrified nobody would believe him over the attack. Instead, he tried to put the 1984 incident to the back of his mind. The pair got married and had a daughter, Ebony-Rose, now 16, as well as Claire's son from a previous relationship, Nathan, now 21. Over the years Paul's nightmares continued to get worse until one night, in April 2011. Claire recalled: 'Paul was having violent night terrors every night and often woke up crying, drenched in sweat. 'My heart broke as he explained he was plagued with disturbing visions of Pipes standing at the foot of his bed, saying he was going to kidnap him. 'Then one night, I woke as Paul was having another vivid nightmare. I tried to soothe him but, trapped in his terror, Paul thought I was his sick childhood attacker - and suddenly launched himself on top of me, forcing a pillow down hard on my face.' Paul's wife Claire said. 'Hes having counselling and were moving on with our lives. We can finally sleep safe in our beds, knowing that monster is behind bars, where he belongs' Paul was sworn to secrecy by his attacker, who threatened to kill him as he slept if he ever told anyone about it In January 2015, Paul heard that another male victim had come forward with evidence against Graham Pipes. He admitted to both attacks and in December that year he was jailed for five years and four months She said: 'I tried to tell him it was me he was attacking, not Graham, but I was terrified as I struggled for breath. 'Eventually, I fought him off and Paul snapped out of his nightmare. He was horrified when he realised what he had done.' The pair eventually went to police, but at first they said they didn't have enough evidence to charge Pipes with rape. Paul fell into a period of depression and even tried to take his own life. Then, in January 2015, they heard that another male victim had come forward with evidence against Pipes, who had assaulted him as he slept. Pipes admitted to both crimes and in December 2015 he was jailed for five years and four months at Preston Crown Court for the two sexual assaults. Following his ordeal, Paul says he would urge other victims of sexual assault 'not to hold it in, talk to someone' Paul said that the night terrors stopped after his attacker Graham Pipes was sentenced in December 2015 WHAT ARE NIGHT TERRORS? According to the NHS, night terrors, not to be confused with nightmares, are common in children aged between three and eight years old. A child who experiences night terrors may scream, shout and thrash around in extreme panic. Their eyes will be open but they are not fully awake, and they have no memory of the ordeal in the morning. Advertisement Detective Constable Catherine Thomas, from the Public Protection Unit, said: 'Graham Pipes is an opportunistic sexual predator who took advantage of a both vulnerable man and a young boy to satisfy his own perverse sexual desires. 'He showed no remorse or consideration for his victims, in particular the child whose innocence he stole, by denying the offence for years before he eventually did the decent thing and admitted it.' 'Both victims have shown considerable bravery in coming forward and I hope that todays result provides them with some solace so that they can start to move forward with their lives.' Claire recalled: 'That night, Paul slept soundly for the first time in years and he hasnt suffered a nightmare since. 'Hes having counselling and were moving on with our lives. We can finally sleep safe in our beds, knowing that monster is behind bars, where he belongs.' Advertisement These incredible photographs give a rare insight into the lives of the Kuna, the last tribe of the Caribbean. The matriarchal tribe live on the stunning San Blas islands, Panama, where their existence is under threat due to rising sea levels. Pictures taken by photographer Eric Lafforgue show how the women wear colourful clothes featuring traditional Mola designs, accessorised with red shawls and beaded jewellery. The Kuna have a traditionally matriarchal society, where the women are typically the breadwinners of the household. Pictured, Erme likes to cross dress in the privacy of his home but the village leader has forbidden him to wear clothes in public The Kuna people live on the San Blas islands, Panama. The women traditionally wear colourful garments and a red shawl The tribe have lived on the islands, which are only reachable by boat or plane, for centuries. A woman in traditional dress looks out to sea Fishermen can be seen slowly drifting across the water in their pirogues, which is a long, narrow canoe made from a single tree trunk Around 50,000 Kuna live in thatch huts on the idyllic islands, which the tribe have occupied for centuries. The Kuna have a traditionally matriarchal society, with belongings and property handed down from mother to daughter. The women are the breadwinners of the household and sell their Mola designs, which originated from body painting, to tourists at around 30 euros each. Meanwhile, Kuna men earn their living on the mainland, working in agriculture, fishing, and the coconut trade. The tribe believe that there are 'purbas', or spirits, everywhere and keep crosses to protect them from evil spirits. A woman only receives her name when she begins menstruating, at which point she also cuts her hair short. This is considered one of the most important ceremonies in her life and from then on, she will never grow her hair long again. The Kuna people have one of the worlds highest rates of albino births, with one albino for every 145 births. Pictured is an albino woman Albinos are considered a blessing and are called the 'children of the moon' in Kuna mythology A Kuna tribeswoman is pictured in front of an advert. Mola designs are incorporated into their traditional dress Women sell their molas, which originated from body painting, to tourists at around 30 euros each The Kuna people have one of the worlds highest rates of albino births, with one albino for every 145 births. Photographer Lafforgue described meeting a 40-year-old Albino woman called Maria during his visit to the islands. 'The albinos are respected and not persecuted or killed like in some African countries. Having an albino child is regarded as a blessing to the family,' he said. 'Maria lives with her 12 siblings and 10 members of her extended family in a simple thatch roof dwelling'. Her father, who parented two albino children, added: 'In Kuna mythology, albinos are called "children of the moon. 'They are a special savior race. During lunar eclipses, they would climb onto rooftops to frighten away a dragon that would try to devour the moon.' The women often wear a single gold ring, along with beaded jewellery. Pictured is an elderly tribeswoman in front of some mola designs Using a technique of reverse application, artists create images depicting natural scenes including landscapes and wildlife All the women wear 'winis', a colourful beaded accessory. It is made by wrapping the beads first around a piece of wood In the matriarchal Kuna society, belongings and property are handed down from mother to daughter. Pictured is a woman weaving a mola Kuna men earn their living on the mainland, working predominantly in agriculture, fishing, and the coconut trade Photographer Eric Lafforgue said most of the children will have to leave the island and continue their studies on the mainland The tribe are under threat from rising sea levels and tropical storms, and the islands may find themselves underwater in the next 20 to 30 years. While the government in Panama has developed a plan to relocate the Kuna to the mainland, only the younger generations seem willing to move. The Kuna also throw everything into the sea, as there is no waste disposal system in place on the island, causing a massive ecological problem. Lafforgue said: 'They want to preserve their unique culture while at the same time developing their economy. There are no big hotel chains on the San Blas islands, only small basic resorts or cabanas.' But he added: 'Most of the children will have to leave the island and continue their studies on the mainland. The future for Kuna is uncertain.' A Kuna woman, dressed in traditional clothing, drags a brightly-painted canoe to shore using a rope The tribe now have solar-powered pay phones. Pictured is a woman passing traditional thatched houses with a solar panel Pictured are Kuna children outside their school. Even school uniforms on the islands are influenced by mola art Children are taught to clean up rubbish on the island. There is no waste disposal system, meaning rubbish is often thrown into the sea The tribe believe that there are 'purbas', or spirits, everywhere. Wooden statues are used to keep evil spirits at bay Piles of rubbish wash up on the shore, next to a thatched village occupied by the tribespeople after she was cheated on with two other women At the time, I thought it was the best idea I've ever had. 3 months in? The struggle is real. Welcome to my vow of no sex. I'm Nixalina, Founder of London's award winning blog Sex & London City. I assure you, I didn't go to university with the aim of becoming a sex and dating expert - I somehow stumbled into it. Tripped and landed knee deep, in similar fashion to when you fall in love. Nixalina Watson is the founder of Sex & London City, a sex and relationships blog. In an effort to find an honest boyfriend after she was cheated on with two women last year, she has taken and vow of abstinence from sex I started out as a fashion and beauty writer for a London publication, which led me to start my own blog. I genuinely didn't expect anyone to read my ramblings, so when I started introducing dating features into my fashion blog, I was shocked at the immediate response. I was onto something here. It seemed no-one before had ever tackled the dating and sex scene head on, with brutal honesty and lack of concern for personal embarrassment. As my readers know, I have no social boundaries. And no filter either. Roll on 5 years with countless events and more dildos than one woman needs, here I am, an award winning sex, dating and relationships blogger. My career achievements still shock me...I never in a million years expected my blog to reach this level. It's just the best feeling ever. That is, until we come to my actual dating life. I had unknowingly become undateable. Now the writer feels the bigger her blog gets the worse her dating life becomes. She says 'as I was coined a 'dating expert', my dates disappeared. Guys seem unable to deal with the types of topics I cover' Yep, that's right. Just take some a moment to enjoy the severe irony of my situation. It appears that the bigger S&LC gets, the worse my dating life becomes. As soon as I was coined a 'dating expert', my dates disappeared. Guys seem unable to deal with the types of topics I cover - I think most of them are just fearful I'll write a bad feature on them. I do completely understand, but I constantly reassure that it is a job and I am a 'normal' human being who is, at 28, looking for something real, long lasting and meaningful. What I get offered is the exact opposite. Men seem to view me as that one-time fun girl they can take on a few dates, sleep with and then casually wave farewell. I don't think one-night stands are that terrible as long as both parties want just that one night. They can be so much fun. Nixalina felt men viewed her as a 'one-time fun girl' and so decided to give up sex for the whole of 2016 But I've done my time and I'm now after something that lasts longer than breakfast the next morning. It feels that men don't expect me to want an emotional connection due to my chosen career path, so they then act in a certain way with me. I have found that they fall into either of these two categories: dudes that are intimidated and run a mile, or dudes that see me as an ego boost for them. Game on. The vow came about not due to one particular guy, but a build-up of all of them. I would say though, the most recent guy (I was with him for 6 months in 2015) was the icing on my cake. Whilst feeding me a load of crap and spending time with me...he was also screwing two other girls and then committed to one of them, citing that 'she was the easy option and, well, you're the wild card.' Direct quote. But it's okay because, you know...I was the best girl in bed apparently. Sure. Wild card? Have a word mate. I have my own apartment, mortgage, my own brand, even my own pet. I do goddamn yoga and netball every week and I'm always busy blogging so no... you won't find me every weekend at some Shoreditch rave chewing my own face off. I'm independent and opinionated and I demand honesty from my man, but since when did that make you the risk option? Come on now guys, grow a pair. Nixalina worries that her sexual connections with men can cloud her judgements and make her less likely to spot when a man is leading her on, or when he is serious about being in a relationship with her But in all of this with jokes aside, I was the one left upset and hurt. I invested time, money and energy on this guy. It cut me up. I do not have spare time or energy as it is, so if I choose to hang out with a guy, it's because I see something there that's more than a fling. To find out I had been cheated on with two other girls was just the bobby pin that broke the blogger's bun. So, having checked myself back for 6 months and worked out that I was being fed a crock of bull just to keep me around for the decent bedroom antics, I decided enough was enough. I'm not doing it any more. Literally, doing it. I am not. Yes, they ask for nudes and try arrange netflix and chill. But no, deep down, they don't want you to agree So, for 2016 I made a vow to remove sex from my life. Not because I've lost the urge (hell no) but because I am aware that my sexual connections with men cloud my judgement. Had I not been sleeping with him, I'd have been more aware of the signs that said 'He is a cheating douche bag'. But when I sleep with a guy, BAM emotions all over the joint. I only sleep with guys that I see a future with and it bums me out big time that, every single time, it turns out they were telling me XYZ only to stick their penis in my ABC. You get me? I'm a hopeless romantic at heart so if they say 'I love you' then I believe them. I don't think 'Oh, but I bet you've got another two girls you're sleeping with behind my back too'. I like to give the benefit of the doubt at all times. Except these boys are constantly proving my gut instinct right. The aim of my vow is to exclude the sexual connection from dating, in the hopes that I meet a guy who wants more than just knicker removal. I want to dispel this idea that they all sit with - the sex blogger will be the best bang ever and she won't care if I leave straight after. Erm, no. It's a JOB. I am a female. I am looking for 'the one'. I want a relationship. You know, like every other living breathing human on the planet. She wants to eliminate the pressure to have sex while on dates, and said: 'It seems dates are just stepping stones to reach the goal: sex' I also feel that dating and romance has taken a huge nose dive in this 21st tech century, and I want to bring it back. With online dating sites and apps at our fingertips, everything is readily available and easily replaceable, which unfortunately includes partners too. If a girl seems like she won't put out or send nudes over, then fear not as they can fetch up the other 5 they swiped right to. I have previously written about the fact that I feel dating is becoming non-existent - no-one is dating these days just to 'date' and hang out with someone they quite like. The purity of a date is lost. It seems dates are just stepping stones to reach the goal: sex. With my vow, I aim to bring back real dating. I am being very open about my lack of leg spreading (national press makes it hard to hide) and guys can date me for me, or sod off. I want to find a guy who is happy to date, hang out, spend time together and just chill it, until such a time where we both want to move it to the bedroom and are exclusive only to each other. Why is everyone in such a rush these days? Calm it down! It feels like London has regressed into 15 year olds who have just discovered what an orgasm feels like. She feels that deep down men down really want women to agree to sex early on in the relationship. However, she is finding that she needs to reassure men that she isn't too serious when she reveals her vow to them Once again I need to reiterate, one night stands and no-strings fun is awesome and I have no issue with it, as long as both parties are on the same page. My issue only comes when guys pretend to want more knowing that I want more, only then to go ghost after I finally bothered to let him stay the night. Three months in and I can categorically say, it's harder than I thought! It's the age-old issue of someone saying 'don't think about a pink elephant'. Now you're all thinking it. So when I tell myself I can't have sex...guess what I constantly want? YEP. Like a dog on heat is an understatement. I'm seeing hot guys everywhere I turn and it's taking all my willpower not to call up an ex and recycle him for the weekend. My poor vibrators - thank god they're rechargeable. That leads me into the next point - I am now having to ban myself from overusing vibrators as I am discovering they are desensitising my clit. So how have the guys taken it? I am still going on dates and I am still very open (is there any other way to be) about my vow from the get go. Surprisingly, the ones I've been talking to this year seem very okay with it. This has made me start to look at men a little differently and think, perhaps, they feel the need to 'shag' straight away but actually it's refreshing for them to have the pressure removed. I always hear guys say that even though they push for sex quickly, if she holds out it makes them more interested. Yes, they ask for nudes and try arrange netflix and chill. But no, deep down, they don't want you to agree. But then again, I don't know if that's just the same old crap they're feeding me because now I am even more of a challenge! The tricky part to all this is explaining the vow to my dates without sounding like I want an immediate diamond. If I even so much as mention the word 'monogamy' they all start to melt and retreat back into the darkened corner. I am doing even more reassuring than ever before. The couple have two sons, Aerik, 19, and Jackson, nine, and a transgender daughter Alexis, 13, who came out when she was in the sixth grade Amanda's wife has legally changed her name and the gender marker on her birth certificate The writer from Ottawa, Canada, stayed with her spouse and helped her pick the name Zoe as her new moniker woman last July after 19 years of marriage and three children together A mother whose husband came out as a transgender woman after nearly two decades together insists that their marriage is better than ever because she is 'finally comfortable in her own skin'. Amanda Jette Knox, a writer from Ottawa, Canada, learned that Mark, her husband of 19 years, was a woman unhappily living in a man's body just 18 months after their child revealed that she is a transgender girl. 'The life I knew the life I had with my husband died that night. There's no other way to describe it,' she wrote in a in a powerful essay for Your Tango. True love: Amanda Jette Knox's husband of 19 years became her wife Zoe (left) after she revealed that she is a transgender woman. The couple is pictured in Montreal last month Amanda, whose husband is now her wife Zoe, explained they were on their way home after a 'botched date night' last July when she pressed her spouse about her chronic melancholy that had put a 'wedge' between them for years. When Zoe said she couldn't reveal what was going on with her, Amanda pointed out that she has been unhappy the entire 22 years they have been together and their three children 'can feel it'. 'It's not you. It's not the kids. This predates all of you, trust me,' Zoe told Amanda after she asked if it was her or their family that was making her unhappy. Life with Zoe is beautiful Zoe insisted that she couldn't tell Amanda what was wrong, and while she denied being gay, she was silent when she was asked if she was a woman. 'I, the supportive mom of a trans child, the advocate, the ally, friend of the LGBT community, replied with an eloquent, "Oh, you have got to be f*cking kidding me!"' Amanda said of her initial reaction, admitting that it wasn't her 'proudest moment'. Amanda explained that she felt both 'blindsided' and 'betrayed' because she though she knew everything about her partner, and she didn't know something like that could happen twice in one family. After sharing her deepest secret to Amanda, Zoe admitted that she never thought she would tell anyone the truth. 'I wanted to scream at him and I wanted to hug him, all at once. We were lost in a situation neither of us saw coming,' Amanda recalled. Although their daughter Alexis had just come out as transgender, Amanda said the first few months into her spouse's transitions from Mark to Zoe were 'incredibly bumpy'. Although a part of her feared their relationship wouldn't survive, it did. 'Life with Zoe is beautiful,' she said, revealing that she helped her wife pick out her new name by vetoing all the ones she hated. I wanted to scream at him and I wanted to hug him, all at once Less than a year after Zoe came out, she has legally changed her name and the gender marker on her birth certificate, and Amanda said their same-sex marriage 'feels right'. 'After nearly 23 years together, I finally have my whole partner, not just the part she wanted to show me,' she said. Amanda also praised her two sons, Aerik, 19, and Jackson, nine, for embracing Zoe as their mom and Alexis as their sister. Alexis came out to her parents as transgender in February 2014 when she was just 11 years old. The sixth grade explained in an email that she is a girl trapped in a boy's body. Amanda told Us Weekly that she feared her daughter being bullied, and at the end of sixth grade she was pulled out of school because her friends started to ignore her. However, two years later, Alexis is on hormone blockers to delay puberty and 'thriving' at a public middle school that has an all-gender bathroom and LGBTQ safe space stickers on all the doors. Through thick and thin: Amanda's wife has legally changed her name and the gender marker on her birth certificate, and the writer says their marriage is better than ever In her essay for Your Tango, Amanda praised Alexis for showing Zoe how 'to be brave like her by example'. 'My wife is gorgeous, witty, and social now that she's finally comfortable in her own skin. We're the happiest we've ever been,' she explained. Despite the cruel and horrific reactions some people have endured after coming out as transgender, Amanda said their 'families, friends and neighbors have all been incredible'. Zoe, who has worked at a large, predominantly male technology company for the past 15 years, recently came out to her colleagues as transgender and was touched by their overwhelmingly positive response. My wife is gorgeous, witty, and social now that she is comfortable in her own skin Amanda explained on her blog, The Maven of Mayhem, that Zoe shared her story by sending her co-workers an email, and she received 75 'incredibly kind responses'. Zoe had taken a week off after sending out her email and then spent the next week working from home. When she finally went back to the office as Zoe, she was nervous about seeing everyone face to face. However, her fears were unfounded as a few of her co-workers decorated her cubicle with colorful butterflies and wrote her new name in various locations. She was gifted a lily with a 'Welcome, Zoe!' card and a framed photo featuring an Oscar Wilde quote that reads: 'Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.' A woman who is thought to be the bendiest in Britain is so flexible she can fit into tiny kitchen cupboards and do the washing up with her feet. Claudia Hughes, 22, from London, who is 5ft 4ins and weighs seven stone, is a record-breaking contortionist who can even fold herself into a small wheelie suitcase. She is thought to be the only person in the country who can perform the the spinning Marinelli bend - a move which see her in an inverted backbend, supporting her whole bodyweight with her mouth by biting onto a leather strap attached to a pole. Scroll down for video Claudia Hughes, 22, pictured, is so bendy she can do the washing up with her feet flipped over her head while balancing on her arms. She is believed to be Britain's most flexible woman The dangerous gravity-defying stunt got its name from contortionist and international theatrical agent H. B. Marinelli. Claudia said: 'It takes amazing strength and I do it static or spinning. There are only a handful of experts around the world who can do it and I am proud to be one of them.' 'It is hard and scary and believe you me I was terrified when I first started learning. However I kept going and now I can put the UK on the map.' Claudia reveals she was teased as a child because of her 'weird flexibility', an attribute which is now making her a star. Claudia reveals she was teased as a child because of her 'weird flexibility', an attribute which is now making her a star The 5ft 4, seven stone brunette, shocked her parents, who thought their daughter would study at university, by enrolling at Circus Space to get her Bachelor of Arts in Circus Work with a major in Contortion Claudia, who can handily relax on the sofa and dust at the same time, had her contortion skills honed by a retired Mongolian teacher As a teenager, she trained in performing arts at The Urdang Academy - which gave her a firm foundation in acting, dancing and singing. She then went on to enroll at Circus Space to get her Bachelor of Arts in Circus Work with a major in contortion. She said: 'What started out as an interest in gymnastics has now turned into my career as a contortionist and I am proud to say I am also setting records as well. 'I was the only person doing contortion in the class, so I was making history. Not many people can claim a degree in contortion.' Claudia is thought to be the only Brit who can perform the spinning Marinelli bend, the hardest stunt for any contortionist. Pictured here performing the static version of the move Now, as well as performing all over the world, as pictured left, Claudia also carries out household chores such as putting away the pots and pans, right, in eye-watering positions to maintain her impressive flexibility Claudia's unique skills were honed by a retired Mongolian teacher, helping her to achieve a first class honours and win the prestigious Jane Rice-Bowen Award. The gymnast said: 'Mum was shocked. I think she thought I was going through a phase. Dad, well he was super shocked and hoped I would do accountancy or nursing and ensure a job for life! 'Instead I graduated last year with a Degree in Circus and Contortion.' Now, as well as performing all over the UK at parties, conventions, schools, nightclubs and modelling for promotional artwork, Claudia likes to amaze her friends by showing off her skills. Claudia's spine is hypermobile which allows her to flip her head and body over backwards and put her head between her legs, above, something which could cause a normal person's spine to break She said: 'When someone comes to my flat they're in for a mini performance because things people normally do standing up or with their hands, I will do using specialist contortionist moves . 'It keeps me flexible and is that added bit of extra practice I need to keep my edge and constantly test my abilities and muscle memory. 'I don't think of tasks in normal ways, I think of ways I can clean, put away groceries, dust and clean as tests to keep myself flexible. The harder the test the more flexible I become.' Useful home tricks include Claudia lying on the kitchen bench, flipping her legs over her head and using her hands and feet to wash the dishes. Useful home tricks include Claudia lying on the kitchen bench, flipping her legs over her head and using her hands and feet to wash the dishes - holding the scourer between her toes Claudia has been practicing since she was eight and she started dance classes with her sister, left. She has gone on to show off her impressive skills in front of large audiences, right After a trip to the supermarket, Claudia can balance on one foot and use two hands and her other leg to put away groceries. She also uses the same technique for pots and pans, allowing her to practice moves that most of us could only gawp at. Claudia can fit inside the bottom shelf of her tinned food cupboard by folding her body into the 50 x 30 x 30cm space - roughly the same as a wheelie case. The flexible athlete can also lie belly down on her sofa and flip her legs over her head to brush her hair or paint her nails. Claudia says that those who visit her flat will be in for a performance. She says: 'Things people normally do standing up or with their hands I will do using special contortionist moves' Claudia can also lie stomach down on her sofa flip her legs over her head and brush her hair or paint her nails, left. Additionally she can fold her body up to fit into tiny places like her kitchen cupboards, right While watching the soaps on TV she likes to use her flexible limbs to do the dusting to test and develop her muscle memory. She said: 'I am always the person called on to clean a hard to reach spot because of the way I can twist and manipulate my body. For me being bendy is incredibly useful. 'The more I practice, the better muscle memory I have and the harder I can push my body. Plus it makes for great party tricks.' Claudia has been honing her skills since she was eight and started dance classes with her sister. Pictured dusting at home: To stay flexible, apart from her cache of 'at home tricks', Claudia works out at the gym five times a week, swims and does yoga Claudia said: 'Growing up I was forever shocking people but the more I trained the more it became my dream to make a career out of being a contortionist.' 'During warm up I started doing flexes and stretches I thought were normal but even my dance instructor was shocked!' she said. 'It turns out I have hypermobile joints which means I can do things like spin my leg round in a 360 circle, fold my body like a triple sandwich and fit myself into a space that is 55cm x 35cm.' This sort of rare and unique flexibility means Claudia's spine is hypermobile. It allows her to flip her head and body over backwards and put her head between her legs, something which could cause most people's spine to break. She said: 'Growing up I was forever shocking people but the more I trained the more it became my dream to make a career out of being a contortionist.' Claudia can even brush her hair with her feet so she has both hands free to hold her mirror or apply her make-up simultaneously Now to keep in shape - aside from her cache of 'at home tricks' - Claudia goes to the gym five times a week, swims and does yoga. 'I eat healthily but remaining flexible is key,' she explained. Her amazing flexibility has seen Claudia perform in movies and exhibitions, and her image has been used for billboard advertising. The young star is also invited to perform at nightclubs, private parties and special events all over the world. Instagram is filled with bunny and hedgehog selfies from young women They have proven very popular with locals and tourists Both cafes charge 1000 yen ($12) for half an hour of playtime Ms Bunny cafe, which is next door, does the same with rabbits First it was cat cafes, where you could pay to cuddle up to felines. Then came owl cafes, dog cafes, budgie cafes, snake cafes and even goat cafes. Now there's a new kid on the block in Japan's animal cafe industry- hedgehog cafes. Less cuddly than cats or dogs, but just as cute, hedgehogs are the feature of new cafe Harry in Tokyo where you can pay to have a coffee, snack and play with the adorable animals. And if hedgehogs aren't your thing, there's also a rabbit cafe called Ms Bunny right next door where you can pet Bugs Bunny instead. Scroll down for video Careful: A hedgehog cafe has opened its doors in Japan, allowing customers to pay to cuddle and pet the tiny animals Hop to it: Next door is a rabbit petting cafe called Ms Bunny, where you can pay to cuddle floppy eared friends if hedgehogs aren't your style New kid on the block: Whilst cat cafes, dog cafes, goat cafes and snake cafes have been in Tokyo for a while, this is the first hedgehog cafe Harry cafe offers customers a half hour of hour of playtime with their choice of hedgehog for 1000 yen ($12) on weekdays and 1,300 yen ($16) on weekends and public holidays. Ms Bunny offers the same price next door if rabbits are more your style. If you don't feel like being cooped up inside, Ms Bunny also offers a 'Roppongi Rabbit Walk' option. For 3,000 yen ($37) you can take a rabbit for a walk around the area- depending on the weather and how the rabbits are feeling, of course. Too cute to handle: Both cafes charge 1000 yen ($12) for a half hour of playtime with the animals and are located in the Roppongi area of Tokyo Are you hearing this? Ms Bunny also offers customers the option to go on a 'Roppongi Rabbit Walk' where they can take the animals outside for an hour and walk them around Up for adoption: Both cafes also offer the animals for sale. Hedgehogs and rabbits are popular pets in Tokyo where limited living space means larger pets are less common Both cafes also operate as shops, selling the animals and supplies to customers. Both hedgehogs and bunnies are popular pets in Tokyo, where small living spaces means larger pets are less common. And in regards to fears of being poked, one of the staff at Harry, Mizuki Murata, told Reuters that it's actually easier to pet the animals than people think. 'We wanted to show people the charm of hedgehogs, which give the impression of being hard to handle. We wanted to get rid of that image by letting people touch them,' she said. 'We wanted to show people the charm of hedgehogs': Cafe worker Mizuki Murata said that the cafe is trying to prove to people that hedgehogs aren't hard to handle New sensation: Since the hedgehog cafe opened, it's become so popular there have been long lines to get in Hashtag cute: The cafes are also popular on Instagram where hip young women take selfies with the adorable animals Although the bunny cafe has been open longer, the hedgehog cafe only opened its doors in February and has had lines out the door on some days. The cafes have also proven popular on Instagram, especially with young women. The platform is filled with bunny and hedgehog selfies already and Tokyo's hip young crowd are clamoring to be seen there. Hope Manser was born to stand out. The vivacious 12-month-old is adored by her cousins and makes friends wherever she goes, her 'confident little personality' shining through. Hope was born with congenital melanocytic nevus, a condition that causes birthmarks on her scalp, face and body. But Hope's mother Karyn Manser told Daily Mail Australia she hopes through education people will look at her daughter for who she is, rather than the marks on her skin. Scroll down for video Gorgeous girl: Hope Manser was born with congenital melanocytic nevus, a condition that causes birthmarks on her scalp, face and body Family support: Hope's parents, Karyn and Matthew (pictured), hope to raise awareness about their daughter's condition 'If people understand the condition, they don't look at her differently,' Mrs Manser said. 'It's just getting people to accept that everyone is different and embracing it and embracing your uniqueness. 'Not judging people for what's on the outside.' Hope was born on March 15, 2015, to Mrs Manser, 38, and her husband Matthew, 39, who conceived while on their honeymoon in the Maldives. Growing up: Hope was born with marks on her face, scalp and spine, and soon after developed birthmarks on the soles of her feet All smiles: While Hope is at an increased risk of melanoma, her condition is mainly cosmetic Hope was born via assisted birth, and when Mrs Manser noticed the marks on her face, scalp and spine, she assumed they were bruises. When the nurse told her they were birthmarks she figured they would fade, and focused instead on her happy baby girl. It was not until the next morning that doctors told the Townsville couple Hope had congenital melanocytic nevus, or CMN. Happy newborn: When Hope was born Mrs Manser thought the marks on her scalp and spine were bruises Sleeping beauty: Just eight days after she was born Hope was flown to Brisbane to see a pediatric dermatologist, and luckily did not require any biopsies CONGENITAL MELANOCYTIC NEVUS Congenital Melanocytic Naevus, or CMN, is a skin growth present at birth. They can exist on any part of the body and grow in proportion to body growth. A giant nevus is one which covers a large portion of an anatomical site, for example, the scalp, arm, leg or back, or two per cent of the total body area. Most nevi are brown or black, with increased tendency for hair growth. For more information or support, visit nevussupport.com. Advertisement CMN is a rare disorder that affects about one in 20,000 newborns in some form and as few as one in 500,000 in its most severe form. The marks can exist on any part of the body, and be either small, medium, large or giant, Hope is in the giant category. Most nevi, or birthmarks, are brown or black in colour and have an increased tendency for hair growth. After Hope was diagnosed, doctors arranged for her to meet with a pediatric dermatologist in Brisbane eight days after she was born. Mrs Manser had spent the week after giving birth in hospital having suffered from post pregnancy pre-ecampsia, and it worried her to take her unimmunised baby on a commercial flight. Raising awareness: Hope's condition is extremely rare, and as few as one in 500,000 newborns are affected in its most severe form But the dermatologist brought good news: Hope required no biopsies on her birthmarks. While Hope's condition is primarily a cosmetic issue, it does put her at greater risk of developing melanoma. Children with CMN can also develop seizures or birthmarks on their brain or spine, and if they do, they can have developmental problems. Hope would need to undergo an MRI scan to test for this, and Mrs Manser said they were hesitant to put their baby girl under anesthetic. So far Hope has 'developed beautifully without any problems', and Mrs Manser said they would continue to monitor her closely for any change. 'It's her skin and her body': The Mansers said they would leave the decision to have the marks removed up to Hope Adorable: The only reason to remove the marks would be for cosmetic purposes, leaving the Mansers hesitant to make the decision for their baby girl As Hope has grown she has developed more birthmarks, first on the soles of her feet and then her legs and arms, and her existing marks have grown fine hair. They will continue to appear until she reaches the age of 30. 'They're all different sizes, but the major one on her scalp is mainly hidden by her hair,' Mrs Manser said. 'There's one on her forehead, but she has a fringe, and a little beauty mark on her right cheek. 'I look at her every day and couldn't imagine her without them.' Born to stand out: 'If we all look the same, how boring would it be,' Mrs Manser said While the Mansers have looked in to having Hope's birthmark's removed, there is no medical reason to do so and they will leave it up to Hope to decide if she would like to have them removed for cosmetic purposes. 'It's her skin and her body, and yes we have made choices for her medically, but it's her skin and her choice,' Mrs Manser said. As Hope grows older they plan to teach her that everyone is unique and it's okay to look different. A Wisconsin high school sparked fury when it tried to force a transgender boy to run for prom queen instead of prom king, having already banned the teen from using all male restrooms, and has been forced to make a U-turn on its controversial policy after coming under fire from an outraged public. Ash Whitaker, 16, who is a junior at Tremper High School in Kenosha, and his mother Melissa were left feeling upset and angry after the teenage boy was told by school administrators that he would have to run for prom queen because he was born as a female - despite the fact that he came out to his teachers as transgender last year. 'I am trying to run for prom king at my school, but am unable to due to my school's resistance and insistent discrimination against my transgender identity,' Ash wrote in a petition to the school, which was signed by more than 6,000 people. Scroll down for video Furious: Transgender teenager Ash Whitaker was left devastated after his Wisconsin high school tried to force him to run for prom queen instead of king, because he was born a girl Outcry: The 16-year-old, who is a junior at Tremper High School, quickly started a petition in an attempt to make the school change its mind - which it was eventually forced to do in light of the public outcry The teenager, who said that he has known he is transgender since the age of 13, added that the school has also banned him from using male restrooms - insisting that he use a private bathroom instead - and claimed that he has been 'unable to receive respectful identification from said administration'. To show their support for Ash, his fellow pupils organized a protest on Tuesday, in which they demanded that he be given the same rights as every other male student at the school, starting with his prom king nomination - but also moving far beyond that, with many of the teens insisting that Ash be allowed to the male restrooms. 'We all stand with him 100 per cent,' student Isabella Molina told Fox 6 News. 'He defines himself as a man. He deserves the respect to be treated as a man, and I dont understand why they would want him to run for prom queen. 'That is ridiculous. That is dehumanizing. I just want people to put themselves in Ashs shoes.' Standing by her son: Ash's mother Melissa, who has been a teacher at the school for 19 years, says she was outraged when she heard that her son was being forced to run for prom queen Helping hand: Many of Ash's peers rushed to his defense, with dozens of students turning up on Tuesday to protest the school's decision and demand a change to its policies 'School is supposed to be a safe place for everyone, where everyone can feel welcome and feel like they aren't going to be discriminated against,' another student added. Following the protests, the school district stepped in to make a final decision on the controversy, eventually agreeing to allow Ash to stand as a nominee for prom king. But while the school has now relented on its decision to try and force Ash to run for prom queen, following the very loud and very bitter backlash from his friends and family, he says that he is unable to celebrate fully because he knows the other issues are still very much present. According to Tanya Ruder, director of communications for Kenosha Unified School District, however, the decision about whether or not Ash will be allowed to use male restrooms going forward - something which he says he had been able to do for the past year, until being told otherwise in recent weeks - will take longer to sort, because administrators want to ensure the 'safety and equality of its students'. Still a ways to go: Having forced the school to change its decision regarding his nomination for prom king, Ash is now determined to make administrators let him use the male restrooms Happy place: Ash says that he believes the students' protest proves that 'in the grand scheme of things, my peers aren't uncomfortable' with the idea of him receiving the same treatment as all other males at the school 'I think [the students' protest] shows [the school] that, in the grand scheme of things, my peers aren't uncomfortable, they won't care,' Ash told ABC news. 'People think this is just about me, but it's not,' he added. 'It's for the kids who are still in the closet.' Ash's mother Melissa, who has been a teacher at Tremper High School for 19 years, also shared her fury at the school's U-turn regarding her son's transgender identity, admitting that she feels let down by some of her colleagues' actions. 'I said to them: "You guys preach about how we're supposed to be there for our students and to support them," and I said: "This is not supporting them, this is your bias and discrimination." 'You're going to tell me that my son, my son, has to run for prom queen?' Discussed her love of CSI Miami, The Night Manager and Downton Abbey She also described the Queen as 'the most wonderful grandmother' She appeared on the Kyle & Jackie O show on Friday to discuss her trip Sarah Ferguson is on her first trip to Sydney in 13 years this week It's her first visit to Sydney in 13 years, and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, is in the mood to chat. On Friday, the 56-year-old conducted an exclusive and in-depth interview with radio hosts, Kyle & Jackie O, in which she discussed everything from her own Royal wedding in 1986 to what she watches in her down time. She also spoke about still living with her ex-husband Prince Andrew, and why, in her opinion, they are the most 'extraordinary example of a unified family'. Scroll down for video Royal visit: It's her first visit to Sydney in 13 years, but Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, isn't only in Australia for philanthropic reasons - on Friday she conducted an interview with Kyle & Jackie O (pictured) No holds barred: During the interview, the Duchess of York discussed everything from her own Royal wedding in 1986 to Prince Andrew and the 'incredible love affair of my life,' to what she watches in her down time Ms Ferguson touched down in Sydney on Tuesday, where she was greeted by her older sister, Jane Ferguson and niece. 'It's been so busy,' she said, when talking about her schedule since her Australian arrival. 'Do you think Jane has let me have a break?' While she is in Australia, the Duchess is staying at the Intercontinental Hotel, and during the show, she discussed the gender pay gap and her charitable endeavours as well as less high brow topics such as what she likes watching when she is relaxing at home. 'I'm really into [the recent BBC series] The Night Manager at the moment,' she revealed, as well as well as discussing her penchant for Downton Abbey and, perhaps unexpectedly, CSI Miami. One of the most interesting discussions during the interview was when she talked about her relationship with Prince Andrew, who she affectionately described as the 'incredible love affair of my life'. 'It was the greatest day of my life marrying the finest man,' she said, talking about her own Royal wedding. 'It was an extraordinary moment when you think back,' she said. 'We first met when I was 12-years-old at a fireworks party. 'You cannot describe it, but you don't take a moment for granted.' Touchdown: The 56-year-old touched down in Sydney where she was greeted by her elder sister, Jane Ferguson, and niece - she talked about her busy schedule and passions during the interview Wonderful memories: One of the most interesting discussions was around Prince Andrew - she said of her own Royal wedding: 'It was the greatest day of my life marrying the finest man' - she said they met when she was 12 at a 'fireworks party The Duchess of York was similarly effervescent about the Queen during the interview. 'She's the most incredible lady I have ever met in my life,' she enthused. She [the Queen] is the best read person, and the most wonderful grandmother to the girls 'She's the best read person, and the most wonderful grandmother to the girls.' And while she was asked about that Anya Hindmarch handbag which was adorned with a photograph of Beatrice and Eugenie, she merely said that 'people will say I'm obsessed with the girls,' admitting she is somewhat. 'There is such pressure these days,' she told Kyle and Jackie O, when they moved on to talk about social media and what is expected of her two daughters: 'I find it impossible to keep up with it all.' State affairs: Sarah Ferguson is scheduled to visit St. Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst today Happy lady: Ms Ferguson also discussed her upcoming line of teas, which include the flavours strawberries and cream and mint humbug, as well as her forays into the film world She said that when she was young her family only had one telephone and she used to sit 'waiting for the Prince to ring'. Ms Ferguson also discussed her upcoming line of teas, which include the flavours strawberries and cream and mint humbug, as well as her forays into the film world and current state of mind: 'I love what I do...,' she said. 'I'm really happy.' Sarah Ferguson is scheduled to visit St. Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst today. There isnt a day goes by that someone doesnt mention Neil from The Young Ones to Nigel Planer it might be when someone stops him in the street for a selfie, or in a Tweet, or as his catchphrase Hea-veeeey is shouted at him as he passes by. And thats more than 30 years since the series was a huge, genre-changing hit in the UK and elsewhere in the world. A few months ago I went to Catalonia in Spain for an interview in the regions equivalent of the Royal Festival Hall, he says. The host turned to the audience and said, Now Neil is not a very Catalan name, but hands up all those people who are called Neil because of The Young Ones and loads of hands went up, people were even holding their babies up. It was like 1982 all over again. Nigel hasnt changed much from the days when he was the nations favourite put-upon hippy. He still has that permanent hangdog expression, that over-anxious manner. Nigel Planer with his third wife Roberta Green at the WhatsOnStage Awards in London in 2014. They married three years ago but first met when Nigel was in his twenties Neil was both a blessing and a curse for Nigel. The character, which he had first created as a stand-up persona before joining The Young Ones, was so established that Nigel struggled to get away from his shadow for many years. He had to start again; he wrote books and became a West End star. But after making the odd TV appearance in shows such as BBC2 sitcom Episodes, this year hes returned in triumph, starring in three very different parts: he played Rupert Murdoch in Comic Strips acclaimed film Red Top, a Cambridge spymaster in Grantchester and now hes reprising his role as the wily Mick in BBC1s OAP comedy Boomers. In this weeks episode, Mick has been thrown out of the house by his young Russian wife Elena and has moved, in his camper van, to the driveway of his friend Alan (Philip Jackson) and his wife Joyce (Alison Steadman). When we meet on set hes just done a scandalous scene snogging Joyce. It was great kissing Alison Steadman; we had to do it about 17 times before we got it right, grins Nigel, 63. The funny thing about getting older is that my services for kissing are called for more often. I did a film with Clare Higgins called I Give It A Year a few years ago and we did lots of snogging; that was fun too. I think I should put good snogger on my CV. Nigel says he loves Boomers because finally people his age are being shown as they really are. The only problem is, he says in a gloomy, Neil-like way, that there isnt enough death in the show. At this age they start to drop like flies, he muses. My two best friends from school are dead one went when he was 54 and the other at 62. I dont know why theyve avoided death on Boomers but I think it can still be funny. Once youre over 60 theres a lot of talk about operations and illnesses, spinal injuries, bad knees; all that. You feel like a survivor when so many of your contemporaries are gone. And I havent even mentioned Rik. There isnt a day goes by that someone doesnt mention Neil from The Young Ones to Nigel, pictured in the show far left beside Rik Mayall, Christopher Ryan and Adrian Edmondson He was still close to Rik Mayall, a fellow Young One and Comic Stripper, when he died in 2014 of a heart attack at 56. He pauses, his eyes filling with tears, when he thinks about Rik. I was surprised at the outpouring of emotion when he died, says Nigel. It was an extraordinary day. There was a black cab strike because of Uber [the cut-price minicab service accused of taking business from traditional taxis] and they were all protesting and had jammed the whole of London up. My bus couldnt get through so I had to walk. I was walking past these banks of taxis and every one of the drivers I passed said, Sorry about Rik. It felt like the whole thing was for him, the whole town had come to a halt. It was both upsetting and incredibly moving. I had to smile as I thought, You bastard. That is so typical that everything should stop when you go. It was such a surreal day. Nigel thinks about death a lot. His third wife, a psychotherapist called Roberta Green, is 13 years older than him and when I ask about the age gap he grins ruefully, saying, We have a competition over who we think will die first. Shes older but women tend to live longer than men so I tell her Ill go first. Its a little morbid. He and Roberta, who married three years ago, have an incredible history that he has never talked about before. They first met when Nigel was in his 20s. They fell in love when he was a lodger in her house. They were together for eight years before parting and he helped bring up her children, who were ten and 12 when they met. Nigel says he cant remember why they split, it was nothing dramatic, but it may have had something to do with him feeling too young for the weight of a family. Since then theyve had three marriages between them; Nigel has a son apiece Stanley, 27, and Harvey, 16 from unions with model Anna Leigh and actress Frankie Park, who were both younger than him. Nigel with co-star Alison Steadman on Boomers. He said he loves the show because finally people his age are being shown as they really are I was always in touch with Roberta and then around the time of my second divorce things happened naturally, he says. We had the same interests and shed help me out with the boys when I was working in the theatre. Wed go to the theatre or for dinner and the next step was to go on holiday. Our first relationship was such a long time ago but we fell in love all over again. It was very different after all the experiences wed been through. It was like a fresh start. When you have that much history together you can avoid a lot of pitfalls. It wasnt like we made a decision to be together; it just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Usually things have to be thought out but we didnt have to do any of that. We consider ourselves unbelievably lucky. Nigel grew up in a scientific family in west London, the middle of three brothers; his father ran a successful engineering firm and his mother was a speech therapist. He was the only one not to have gone into science and he says hes pleased that hes still making a living doing what he has always loved. I always think that if youre lucky enough to have something you enjoy, hang onto that, he says. I am lucky because from the age of eight I thought, I like doing comedy, I like acting. By the time I was 13 I was writing. I dropped out of uni to give it a go, and then came The Young Ones. Although his memories of that time are mostly happy, he does have some regrets. It would have been nice if we had got paid a bit more for it. But as in most cases, the people who take the first steps in a new direction arent the ones that exploit it. We made this strange step in the way we did comedy and we opened the doors to the generation after us who are now making some seriously big money. But theres no point in complaining about it. As Im getting older Ive been finding my feet a bit more in telly and its been very enjoyable playing these different roles. The success of Neil is what it is. Its rather nice to think that you have created something that lives in other peoples minds independently. People know him and love him, and I like that. Boomers, Friday, 9.30pm, BBC1. An earlier version of this article included a quote from Nigel Planer that said his wifes former husband had died. Mr Spencer Butler has since contacted us to say he is still very much alive. We are happy to make this clear and apologise to Mr Butler for the error, which was published in good faith. Robert Kennedy Jr. has banned his 20-year-old daughter Kyra from social media after she and a friend 'cyberbullied' a blogger who wrote about her. The 62-year-old's reps told The New York Post that she was forced off social media after she used Instagram to bait New York Magazine writer Allie Jones, who had written a piece on Wednesday commenting on a New York Times profile about Kyra and her friends entitled Move Over, Rat Pack and Brat Pack: Here Comes the Snap Pack. However, while Kyra and her friends appeared to have no gripes about the original piece, the socialite was apparently less than happy with Allie's subsequent remarks, and took to the writer's Instagram feed to comment on certain photos, writing one one image: 'I can play games too b***h.' Scroll down for video Father know's best: Robert Kennedy Jr. (left) has banned his daughter Kyra (right) from social media after she 'cyberbullied' a blogger who had written a story about her Online threat: 'I can play games too b***h,' Kyra wrote to New York magazine writer Allie Jones after the blogger penned a short essay commenting on a New York Times profile about the socialite and her friends Old pals: Kyra's friend Andrew Warren (pictured) started bullying Allie online before she joined in, asking Allie, 'Are you maybe gorgeous?' along with a laughing emoji The socialite ended the short message with a smiling devil emoji, but she didn't stop there. A black and white shot of Allie, Kyra inspired Kyra to sarcastically write: '@allierileyjones are you maybe gorgeous,' this time using the tears of joy emoji. '@alliereilyjones clearly taking your insecurities out on others. We can play too,' she continued before later deleting her comments. In her original piece about Kyra and her pals Andrew Warren and Gaia Matisse, Allie called the New York Times story a 'delightfully nauseating look into the lives' of the privileged twenty-somethings. In her story for New York Magazine's fashion blog, The Cut, she briefly referenced Kyra reportedly throwing a tantrum in 2015 after she was turned away from the club Lava at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York, because they refused to allow her in with her then 26-year-old half-sister Kick Kennedy's passport. Socialites: The New York Times dubbed Kyra (center), Andrew (left), and their social media savvy friends the 'Snap Pack' Doing her job: In her story for New York magazine's fashion blog, The Cut, Allie (pictured) briefly referenced Kyra reportedly throwing a tantrum in 2015 after she was turned away from a club for being underage Famous faces: Before shutting down her account, Kyra would often post photos of herself and her glamorous friends Rich kids: Kyra (right) spent New Year's in Aspen with Princess Olympia of Greece (center) and other friends 'I am a Kennedy, Google me!' she allegedly screamed outside. However, Kyra wasn't the only person from the 'Snap Pack' who was angered by Allie's words. Kyra's friend Andrew, who is a budding fashion designer and real estate investor's son, was actually the first one to start bullying Allie, writing: 'Large N In Charge [sic],' on one of her photos. 'Puffin cheeks 4 lyfe' and 'Oooo ya fierce [sic],' he added to others before Kyra joined in. In her story Allie had included one of Andrew's quotes from the New York Times piece, in which he states: 'I like to take photos, but Im not a bad person. Glamorous night: Kyra and Tiffany Trump (far right) walked the runway at Andrew's Just Drew fashion show in February Fashionable function: Gaia Matisse, Andrew, Reya Benitez, and Kyra (from left to right) attended the Dolce & Gabbana pyjama party together last month Wild child: Last August it was reported that Kyra's father was not at all pleased with her raunchy and revealing Instagram photos 'Ive had a cancer patient D.M. me on Instagram and say, Your Instagram snaps give me hope. She said I inspire her and I make her want to keep going every day so she can have a fun life.' Allie responded to their online harassment by posting another piece, titled Im Being Cyberbullied on Instagram by a Kennedy, revealing that she had reached out to them on Instagram to see if they wanted to email her about 'their concerns'. Meanwhile, Kyra is on a social media cleanse for the foreseeable future, with a rep for RFK Jr. telling The New York Post: 'Mr. Kennedy has spoken to Kyra and informed his daughter that their family does not bully people. 'He has instructed her to shut down all of her social media accounts immediately.' Last August it was reported that Kyra's father was not at all pleased with her raunchy and revealing Instagram photos, warning her to clean up the account or else, and it looks like she has finally crossed the line. Instagram cleanse: After learning of the comments she wrote on Allie's Instagram page, RFK instructed her to shut down all of her social media accounts 'Goodbye': It appears that Kyra managed to share this photo of Chanel Oberlin, Emma Robert's character from Scream Queens, before shutting down her Instagram account, although its unclear if it was her final post Second thoughts? Andrew also used a meme featuring Chanel to comment on his issues with Allie, but he later removed the post (pictured) Never-ending battle? Andrew posted this Instagram message on Thursday after Allie wrote another New York magazine post entitled Im Being Cyberbullied on Instagram by a Kennedy However, Andrew continues to use his Instagram page to lash out at Allie using memes featuring mean girl Chanel Oberlin, Emma Robert's character from Scream Queens. '#CurrentMood actually I'm in a great mood, and no ones jealous remarks are going to change that. Everyone already knows how we feel about you @allierileyjones [sic],' he wrote before removing the post. He responded to Allie's second post about him on Thursday by adding another photo of Chanel rolling her eyes. 'Mood: When an unprofessional writer who has nothing better to do keeps trying to make you look bad but really she's the cyber bully who started and won't give up #GiveUpAlready #AllieJones [sic],' he wrote. In February, many of Andrew's friends, including Kyra and Tiffany Trump, modeled his designs at his Just Drew show during New York Fashion Week. It has been linked to poor motivation, schizophrenia and paranoia. But marijuana is actually a very effective drug and should be legalised to help patients who are in pain, a leading doctor argues. Mike Barnes, honorary professor of neurological rehabilitation at Newcastle University, says there are an estimated three million cannabis users in the UK - one million of those who use it for medical reasons. At the moment, all those individuals are forced to use it illegally. Meanwhile, in the US, where the drug has been legalised, more than 1.2 million patients are prescribed medical marijuana. Cannabis should be legalised for medical reasons as the drug can help treat conditions from chronic pain to cancer, argues Mike Barnes, honorary professor of neurological rehabilitation at Newcastle University Professor Barnes, who has a long standing interest in the management of spasticity - a condition in which the muscles become stiff, causing pain or interfering with movement and speech - admits the drug carries risks and side effects. However, it is effective at treating conditions from chronic pain to cancer, he says. Writing for medical blogging site The Hippocratic Post, he says legalisation would allow robust studies to be carried out so the benefits and harms of the drug can be quantified. It would also allow the product to be regulated, minimising risks associated with buying an illegal drug. A long term advocate of the legalisation of cannabis for medical use, below, he explains his view... CANNABIS IS AN EFFECTIVE DRUG There is considerable evidence for cannabis being effective to treat a variety of conditions. Certainly quite good evidence exists showing it is effective in helping patients with spasticity. Indeed a cannabis product Sativex is prescribed legally to patients with multiple sclerosis if their spasticity has become resistant to other drugs. It has also been shown to reduce the number of times they need to empty their bladder. However, cannabis has also shown to be useful in chronic pain, particularly non-cancer pain and neuropathic pain, which is caused by damage to the brain or nervous system. Good evidence shows cannabis is effective in helping patients with spasticity, a condition in which the muscles become stiff, causing pain or interfering with movement and speech, Professor Barnes says (file photo) There are a whole variety of other conditions in which evidence shows it can be useful, for example managing the nausea that comes with chemotherapy and improving sleep. It can be used as an appetite stimulant for patients in debilitating conditions, such as those with HIV. There is also some evidence of efficacy in fibromyalgia, a condition characterised by muscle pain and stiffness, and rheumatoid arthritis, where the joints become inflamed and painful. It is also useful to treat inflammatory bowel disease, migraine, glaucoma - where pressure builds up in the eye, affecting sight - and some forms of dystonia - the medical name for muscle spasms and contractions. There is particularly good evidence of efficacy in a type of childhood epilepsy, Dravets syndrome, where sufferers have become resistant to drugs. Cannabis also has anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic properties A NATURAL ANTI-ANXIETY MEDICINE Marijuana is made from more compounds called cannabinoids (there are over 70 in natural cannabis), some of which are known to have a whole variety of interesting properties. One such cannabinoid is cannabidiol (CBD), a component of natural cannabis which has anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic properties. It can also help reduce fear memory, such as in post-traumatic stress disorder and in some phobias. It may have anti-inflammatory and brain-protecting properties. Overall there is good evidence of the efficacy of cannabis and indeed it has been used as a medicine for over 4,000 years. A DRUG WITH FEW SIDE EFFECTS Fortunately, cannabis has few side effects and the ones it does trigger are mild and well tolerated. They include dizziness, dry mouth, fatigue, sometimes nausea and some balance difficulties. Of course, in the cannabis that has relatively high THC (tetrahydrocannabinol the psycho-active component) there is the high which is sought by the recreational users. Around 10 per cent of people have troublesome but nevertheless tolerable side effects. Less than 1 per cent of individuals drop out of cannabis studies, which compares to about a 33 per cent drop out rate in opioid studies. Opioids are are a group of pain-relieving drugs which include morphine, codeine and heroin. LEGALISING CANNABIS LEADS TO BETTER QUALITY DRUGS Making cannabis legal will of course take it out of the illegal drug market. At the moment people who wish to buy cannabis have to do so through illegal drug pushers and much of the cannabis purchased is of unknown and sometimes dubious quality. If it is prescribed, then the cannabis can be made of predictable and high quality. The Sativex compound, for example, is of medicine standard and consists of 50 per cent THC and 50 per cent CBD. There are many different types of cannabis with varying ratios of the key cannabinoids. The drug can help managing the nausea that comes with chemotherapy, improve sleep and can be used as an appetite stimulant for patients in debilitating conditions, such as those with HIV, he added (file photo) Some people may benefit from a relatively high THC component and some from a relatively high CBD component. Growers can produce products that can be tuned to the various conditions for which it is helpful. Making medical marijuana legal would iron out anomalies in the law. Sativex is a legal product, while dronabinol, a synthetic THC used to treat nausea during chemotherapy, is also legally prescribed. Cannabis is an effective drug in treating chronic pain, cancer, migraines, inflammatory bowel disease, childhood epilepsy as well as improving sleep and stimulating the appetite Professor Mike Barnes, expert in neurological rehabilitation at Newcastle University And CBD in isolation is not a banned product. Thus the key components of cannabis are in various forms legal yet the use of herbal cannabis (which has less side effects than synthetic products) remains illegal. Frankly, this is rather a daft situation as 11 European countries, several other countries around the world and 24 US states have now made cannabis legally prescribable. They have determined that the benefits outweigh the risks. THE RISK OF SCHIZOPHRENIA Most objections focus on the long term side effects. There is some evidence that heavy recreational users of cannabis are at a higher risk of schizophrenia or other psychotic episodes. There is certainly a relationship between higher doses of cannabis and the mental illness, with schizophrenia mainly triggered in heavy users or those with a family history of psychosis. Obviously this is of some concern but the risk could be mitigated if doctors simply made them clear to patients. The drug does carry side effects: Heavy recreational users of cannabis are at a higher risk of schizophrenia or other psychotic episode Other authors have noted memory and thinking problems in heavy recreational users, but these problems seem to focus on a reduction of verbal memory in the longer term. Once again, this is of some concern, but a counter-argument is that legalising cannabis would make proper long term studies possible so these risks can be quantified and action taken to reduce them. Other studies claim cannabis reduces the volume of the brain, particularly around the hippocampus - thought to be the centre of emotion, memory. It also controls the autonomic nervous system, which controls unconscious actions such as breathing, our heartbeat and digestive processes. However, the significance of these findings is not certain. IS THERE A RISK OF DEPENDENCY? The studies show that around 9 per cent of cannabis users become dependent on the product, which compares to around 32 per cent of tobacco users and 15 per cent of alcohol users. A useful article in the Lancet in 2010 convincingly demonstrated that cannabis was overall less harmful than tobacco and alcohol. Studies in some of the US states, where growing ones own cannabis is legal, have shown that there is a diversion rate. In other words, some of the cannabis grown legally for medical reasons is diverted into the recreational market. Indeed, in Colorado it has been shown that there is four times more production of cannabis than is required for medical use within the state. This is a risk but it is a risk that is much reduced if cannabis is produced by licenced growers who can control the quality and ensure, with licenced pharmacists, a secure supply chain. Legalising the drug would allow for robust studies to be carried out on its effectiveness in treating medical problems, and its side effects, Professor Barnes said. Pictured, a multiple sclerosis patient PRESCRIBING CANNABIS COULD HELP PEOPLE IN PAIN Overall there are good reasons to prescribe cannabis. Certainly there are some concerns about long term usage. However, legalisation of cannabis for medical conditions would help around a million people in the UK every year who are in chronic pain or troubled by neurological and other conditions. It would also allow properly controlled studies to be undertaken to determine with accuracy the effectiveness and side effects of the product. At the moment there is a campaign to make medical usage legal see endourpain.org and I would encourage readers to sign that petition. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ZIKA WHAT IS ZIKA? The Zika (ZEE'-ka) virus was first discovered in monkey in Uganda in 1947 - its name comes from the Zika forest where it was first discovered. It is native mainly to tropical Africa, with outbreaks in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. It appeared in Brazil in 2014 and has since been reported in many Latin American countries and Caribbean islands. HOW IS IT SPREAD? It is typically transmitted through bites from the same kind of mosquitoes - Aedes aegypti - that can spread other tropical diseases, like dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever. It is not known to spread from person to person. Though rare, scientists have found Zika can be transmitted sexually. The World Health Organisation recently warned the mode of transmission is 'more common than previously assumed'. And, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued first-time guidance, saying couples trying to conceive should abstain or wear condoms for six months if the male has confirmed or suspected Zika. Zika is typically transmitted through bites from the same kind of mosquitoes - Aedes aegypti - that can spread other tropical diseases, like dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever Additionally, the CDC said couples should abstain or wear condoms for eight weeks if the female has confirmed or suspected Zika, or if the male traveled to a country with a Zika outbreak but has no symptoms. During the current outbreak, the first case of sexually transmitted Zika was reported in Texas, at the beginning of February. The patient became infected after sexual contact with a partner diagnosed with the virus after travelling to an affected region. Now, health officials in the US are investigating more than a dozen possible cases of Zika in people thought to be infected during sex. There are also reported cases in France and Canada. Prior to this outbreak, scientists reported examples of sexual transmission of Zika in 2008. A researcher from Colorado, who caught the virus overseas, is thought to have infected his wife, on returning home. And records show the virus was found in the semen of a man in Tahiti. So far, each case of sexual transmission of Zika involves transmission from an infected man to his partner. There is no current evidence that women can pass on the virus through sexual contact. The World Health Organization says Zika is rapidly spreading in the Americas because it is new to the region, people aren't immune to it, and the Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries it is just about everywhere - including along the southern United States. Canada and Chile are the only places without this mosquito. ARE THERE SYMPTOMS? The majority of people infected with Zika virus will not experience symptoms. Those that do, usually develop mild symptoms - fever, rash, joint pain, and red eyes - which usually last no more than a week. There is no specific treatment for the virus and there is currently no vaccine to protect against infection, though several are in the developmental stages. WHY IS IT A CONCERN NOW? In Brazil, there has been mounting evidence linking Zika infection in pregnant women to a rare birth defect called microcephaly, in which a newborn's head is smaller than normal and the brain may not have developed properly. Brazilian health officials last October noticed a spike in cases of microcephaly in tandem with the Zika outbreak. Scientists revealed a molecular map of the Zika virus, which could help scientists develop new treatments for the disease The country said it has confirmed more than 860 cases of microcephaly - and that it considers them to be related to Zika infections in the mother. Brazil is also investigating more than 4,200 additional suspected cases of microcephaly. However, Brazilian health officials said they had ruled out 1,471 suspected cases in the week ending March 19. Although Zika has not been conclusively proven to cause microcephaly, the World Health Organization has said that there is a 'strong scientific consensus' that it does. The WHO also stated that researchers are now convinced that Zika is responsible for increased reports of a nerve condition called Guillain-Barre that can cause paralysis. A team of Purdue University scientists recently revealed a molecular map of the Zika virus, which shows important structural features that may help scientists craft the first treatments to tackle the disease. The map details vital differences on a key protein that may explain why Zika attacks nerve cells - while other viruses in the same family, such as dengue, Yellow Fever and West Nile, do not. CAN THE SPREAD BE STOPPED? Individuals can protect themselves from mosquito bites by using insect repellents, and wearing long sleeves and long pants - especially during daylight, when the mosquitoes tend to be most active, health officials say. Eliminating breeding spots and controlling mosquito populations can help prevent the spread of the virus. WILL THE ZIKA OUTBREAK SPREAD TO THE US? Yes, leading global health experts expect the virus to appear in the US in the coming months. As the temperature begins to rise across the country, the mosquito is likely to become abundant across much of the southern and eastern US. The National Center for Atmospheric Research determined the Zika virus risk estimates for 50 US cities. Experts warn that the Zika virus, which is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, will soon spread to the US. Pictured above, a map depicting the 50 continental US cities facing the highest risk of the virus. Below, the projected timeline of when the cities will be hit THE US CITIES AT HIGH RISK FOR ZIKA VIRUS TRANSMISSION CITY STATE Charleston South Carolina Jacksonville Florida Miami Florida Mobile Alabama New Orleans Louisiana Orlando Florida Tallahassee Florida Tampa Florida Savannah Georgia Source: National Center for Atmospheric Research Cities in southern Florida, as well as impoverished areas in southern Texas, carry the highest risk of Zika outbreaks, a team of experts determined. However, the mosquito is also projected to appear as far west as Phoenix and Los Angeles, and as far north as New York City. The CDC said mosquitoes that can transmit the Zika virus may live in a larger swath of the US than previously thought, however. But, the expanded range doesn't mean that they will cause disease in those areas. The CDC revealed new maps of the estimated range of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and a related cousin. It had been thought that the mosqutioes would primarily reside in the southern part of the country. But, the new map shows the range of the Aedes aegypti mosquito could extend to parts of the Midest and Northeast. The CDC said the new maps are a best understanding of where the mosqutioes have been seen recently or previously. The CDC issued two new maps showing the expanded estimated range of the Aedes aegypti mosquito (top) - which is known to transmit the Zika virus - as well as the Aedes albopictus mosquito (bottom) - which scientists say has the potential to transmit the virus WHAT ARE THE TRAVEL ADVISORIES? US health officials recommend that pregnant women should consider postponing trips to at least 30 destinations. For up-to-date information of the CDC's travel advisories, check the CDC's Zika page. The CDC advises against traveling in Latin America to countries such as: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname and Venezuela. In the Caribbean: Barbados, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, St. Martin and Puerto Rico. Also, Cape Verde, off the coast of western Africa; and Samoa in the South Pacific. Additional countries have also been added to the list. In Brazil, most of the mothers who had babies with microcephaly were apparently infected during the first trimester, but there is some evidence the birth defect can occur later in the pregnancy, CDC officials say. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has ruled out entering into fresh talks with junior doctors' representatives in a dispute over pay The Government is refusing to re-open talks with junior doctors' representatives over a pay row, meaning the first all-out strike in the NHS' history is likely to go ahead this month. Today, a spokesperson for the Department of Health told MailOnline it would not enter into new discussions with the BMA over a contract dispute. The doctors union has had three years to negotiate and has already walked away from discussions twice - so the new deal will be imposed as planned in August. This means a strike in which junior doctors refuse even to provide emergency care is likely to go ahead at the end of this month - despite warnings it will put patients' lives at risk. In previous strike action medics have still provided emergency care to patients. But strikes planned for April 26 and April 27 will see the full withdrawal of labour by junior doctors between the hours of 8am and 5pm on both days. As junior doctors - everyone up to consultant level - make up the backbone of the workforce, there are fears some departments will have to close if there are not enough consultants to cover. The bitter dispute centres around a new contract in England which the Government says will create a truly seven-day service. Under the new contract, normal working hours will be extended from 7pm on weekdays to 10pm and will include Saturday from 7am to 5pm for the first time. A BMA spokeswoman told MailOnline the union wants to get back around the table with the Government in order to come to a solution. If the Government refuses to negotiate, it will continue with measures including industrial action which could mean more strikes for patients. So far, more than 24,500 operations have been cancelled since December last year, after the BMA launched the series of strikes. In a statement on its refusal to re-open talks with the BMA, a Department of Health spokesperson said: 'The escalation of strike action by the BMA will inevitably put patients in harm's way. 'We have continually sought a negotiated solution over three years of talks, during which there were two walkouts from the BMA, and now there's only the one issue of Saturday pay outstanding. The statement continued: 'If the doctors' union had agreed to negotiate on that as they promised to do in November, we'd have a negotiated agreement by now. 'Instead, we had no choice but to proceed with proposals recommended and supported by NHS leaders which were 90 per cent agreed with the BMA.' The bitter dispute centres around a new contract in England which the Government says will create a truly seven-day service. Pictured, doctors on the picket line in Bristol A strike in which junior doctors refuse even to provide emergency care is likely to go ahead at the end of this month. Pictured, picket lines outside the Bristol Royal Infirmary during a 48-hour walkout this week Dr Johann Malawana, BMA junior doctor committee chair, said that by refusing to cooperate, the Government is 'sticking its head in the sand'. He said: 'If the Government thinks that by sticking its head in the sand this dispute will end, it is very much mistaken. 'By refusing to negotiate it is wholly responsible for future industrial action. 'Let me be clear: no doctor wants to have to take any further action. They want to be at work, doing what they do day in, day out, caring for patients, but this contract will be bad not only for doctors but for the long term delivery of patient care. 'Patient groups, medical colleges, senior managers and the governments own safety adviser have all raised questions about the governments approach, yet still it refuses to listen. 'It is not too late to avoid further action and end this dispute through talks.' The Green Wing cast of Stephen Mangan, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Pippa Haywood, Tamsin Greig and Oliver Chris donned green scrubs to joined a picket line at Northwick Hospital in Middlesex yesterday Last week, The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges called on unions and the Department of Health to 'step back from the brink' and return to negotiations. A statement backed by the presidents of all 22 of the medical royal colleges across the UK urged the British Medical Association to suspend plans for the full walkout. It also called on Jeremy Hunt to pause plans to impose the new contract on junior doctors. 'This is a time of unprecedented crisis for the NHS,' the statement says. If the Government thinks that by sticking its head in the sand this dispute will end, it is very much mistaken Dr Johann Malawana, BMA junior doctor committee chair 'With this in mind and in the spirit of placing patient welfare first and foremost we are writing in response to the escalation of the junior doctor's dispute in England. 'We call on both sides in the dispute to step back from the brink by suspending imposition of the contract and the all-out strike and urge a return to negotiations. 'We believe that this is essential if the current impasse is to be broken and progress made in resolving this extremely damaging stand-off for the benefit of all NHS stakeholders, particularly our patients and trainees.' The BMA is launching a judicial review challenging the imposition of the contract. It will challenge the lawfulness of the decision, saying it is a 'total failure on the Government's part'. It branded the Government's handling of the process as 'shambolic', saying generations of doctors had been alienated. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is facing a legal challenge from NHS staff campaign group Just Health, who claim the contract is not legally enforceable. The group has raised 127,329 from 4,255 donations in just over a week to bring a High Court judicial review Doctors Nadia Masood, Marie McVeigh, Francesca Silman, and Ben White set up a crowdfunding page #JustHealth to create a legal challenge against the new junior doctors' contract The BMA claims the Government failed to carry out an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) when introducing the new contract. This is an assessment to ensure new rules do not unfairly discriminate or disadvantage anyone affected. However, the Government has since published its EIA. As part of the judicial review, a judge will review whether Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt's failure to follow due process when introducing the new contract means the Government acted unlawfully. However, in documents leaked to Health Service Journal last month, the BMA's own lawyers admitted there is 'nothing inherently unlawful' about the new contract. Last week, The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges called on unions and the Department of Health to 'step back from the brink' and return to negotiations. Junior doctors are pictured rallying in London Launching the judicial review - at 'great cost' to BMA members - should simply be seen as 'last throw of the dice' - an opportunity to negotiate improvements to the deal, the lawyers said. Mr Hunt is also facing a second legal challenge from NHS staff campaign group Just Health, who claim the contract is not legally enforceable. The group has raised 127,329 from 4,255 donations in just over a week to bring a High Court judicial review. On Monday, lawyers acting on their behalf served a 'letter before action' on the Department of Health, giving it seven days to explain how Mr Hunt's decision to impose new shift patterns from this summer was legal. It was one of the world's biggest gatherings...of miniature people. Worldwide, there is only thought to be about 200 people with primordial dwarfism, a condition causing underdevelopment of limbs. The condition means those with it are extremely short in stature but their bones and organs are in proportion to their bodies, unlike with other types of dwarfism. At the world's largest gathering, 35 primordial dwarves from around the world met up in Liverpool. It was organised by the Walking With Giants Foundation (WWGF) as a support group and to raise awareness of the hyper-rare condition. Scroll down for video Four-year-old Emma van der Linden, pictured with her mother Judith, came from Holland for the convention Children played games at the ninth ever The Walking With Giants Foundation annual conference in Liverpool The condition, believed to affect 200 people worldwide, means people like Emma van der Linden, four, pictured with father Robert, are small in stature but have organs and limbs relative to the size of their bodies Families travelled as far as Australia, Columbia, Canada and Russia for the week-long convention. For some, it was particularly emotional as it was the first time they'd seen another individual with the condition. Founders Sue and John Connerty, from Liverpool, have been running the it for nine years. They started the charity after their son Alex, who is now 10, was diagnosed with the condition. When he was a baby, the couple travelled to Seattle, to attend a convention organised by the Little People of America Organisation - and wanted a similar support network over here. 'When Alex was diagnosed it was very lonely, you search the internet, you trawl everything,' said Mrs Connerty. 'And I was just like ''Why me?'' You've got no one to talk to and ask questions.' After speaking to other families, the couple said they felt a massive sense of relief and many of their concerns were taken away. Faith King, three, and mother Janice, from Essex, were among 35 primordial dwarves at the week-long event Sue Connerty, founder of Walking With Giants, pictured with her son Alex, 10, Lucy Johnson, five, from Lancashire, Nevio Kreoi, five, from Croatia, Leo Lagana 15 from Australia, and Charlotte Garside, eight, from Yorkshire at the world's largest gathering of primordial dwarves Now they dedicate their lives to organising the convention in Liverpool, so families can seek comfort ask and assist medical research into the condition. Pauline Lagana, from New South Wales, Australia, and her 15-year-old son Leo, travelled thousands of miles to attend the convention for the second year running. The teenager has primordial dwarfism type II and his mother says the time he gets to spend with other people affected by the condition is priceless. She said: 'I remember the first time Leo met with all these people, it was like they were long lost cousins. 'We get a wealth of information talking to other parents that you just can't talk to normal parents about because we have so much in common with the problems that you have with a special, unique child that is primordial.' People with primordial dwarfism can suffer with learning disabilities and heart problems, depending on the type they have. It was also the only opportunity some families had received to get a thorough diagnosis as the couple organise for a specialist doctor to give one-to-one assessments. 'For a lot of the families this is the first time that they've met a similar family with a similar child. For them it's a journey of discovery,' said Mr Connerty. Families travelled as far as Australia, Columbia, Canada and Russia for the week-long convention in Liverpool People with primordial dwarfism can suffer with learning disabilities and heart problems, depending on the type they have. But the annual meetings let families talk to each other about the challenges they face 'Prior to the WWGF a lot of parents and also a lot of doctors had to rely on one research paper that was done 25 years ago. 'Since then, from bringing these families together, you could say that paper has been rewritten and it's been replaced by a lot of new research. 'The families, at the end of the week, will feel as they're not alone, they're not different to anyone else.' Robert and Judith van der Linden brought their four-year-old daughter Emma from the Netherlands to the convention. The experience of the other children will be great for the future to know what we're dealing with John Connerty, Walking With Giants Foundation Mr Van der Linden said: 'We were looking on the internet and found out about the group Walking With Giants and we took a look around and it looked familiar, they looked just like Emma. 'Emma is PD unknown. We'll be meeting the doctors and we're looking forward to it. We are a little bit afraid of the unknown, but on the other hand it helps us a lot if we know what she has. 'The experience of the other children will be great for the future to know what we're dealing with.' Ethan and Janice King, from Essex, brought their three-year-old daughter Faith to the convention for the second year in a row. 'We feel like it's great that we get the opportunity to have Faith using research for future generations of people with primordial dwarfism,' Mr King said. Mr and Mrs Connerty said they were proud the event had brought so many people together. 'With the right support, with the right network behind them, they can reach their full potential in life and that's so important, especially when you live in a world that's not made for you,' he said 'I'm so proud that my son is creating a legacy for the next generation of families so that they won't have to go through what we went through - lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, the stigma. 'Hopefully in the next 10 years, the next generation of families will be able to walk with their heads tall.' For more information about the Walking With Giants Foundation visit the website here. Emotional post has been shared and liked more than 3,700 times Had no break, had not had lunch or dinner, and was now too tired to eat A distraught mother has posted an emotional message on Facebook describing how her trainee midwife daughter is being worn into the ground due to NHS cuts. Jill Ingle, from Sheffield, took to social media in despair after her daughter Niamh returned home from her second consecutive night shift having not eaten a bite - and too exhausted to care. Niamh, 21, a second-year midwifery student, reduced her mother to tears after she handed back the meal she had taken to work both nights - but not managed to eat. Heading upstairs to sleep, she asked her mother to throw the food away. Former nurse Jill Ingle has posted an emotional message on Facebook describing how her trainee midwife daughter Niamh, 21, is being worn into the ground due to NHS cuts Writing on Facebook, Ms Ingle said: 'I don't often ask for people to share things of Facebook but this is the sort of thing that social media gets out that the censored news does not - so please pass it on if you feel you can. 'This is my daughter - I am very proud of her. 'She is in her second year of a midwifery degree - a trainee midwife - a career she is passionate about. 'This morning she came home after her second consecutive 12 hour night shift having not had a break - at all - all night - not one. 'She hadn't even sat down - all night - not once ...never mind eaten. 'She handed me her meal that had travelled with her for both nights uneaten and said "I'm too tired to eat it now, it will have gone off. Will you throw it away please? The Facebook post continued: 'She looked terrible - and I looked into those eyes that you see here and I saw a desperation. 'She went upstairs and I shed a tear. I would imagine that all the people on her course were as keen and as passionate as she was but she has lost count of the people who have dropped out. 'The powers that be are breaking people - breaking people like my daughter, breaking junior doctors, breaking the ill people who they look after with the changes to benefits and the rest. 'Whilst we read about the rich - and how they live their lives...' Niamh returned home from her second consecutive night shift having not eaten a bite - and too exhausted to care, Mrs Ingle said. Her post has been liked and shared more than 3,700 times since it was uploaded The post has been liked and shared more than 3,700 times since it was uploaded. Overwhelmed by the reaction to her post, Ms Ingle thanked everyone who had shared her tirade. She said: 'One or the really good things is that Niamh has received messages from all over the country (and abroad) giving her advice and encouragement and she has really appreciated it. Thank you again.' She looked terrible - and I looked into those eyes that you see here and I saw a desperation Jill Ingle Ms Ingle also explained she is a qualified nurse but is not practising - and believes pressures on student nurses are greater than when she was working, due to cuts to the NHS. She said: 'I used to be a junior ward sister at the children's hospital before I left. 'I've had some pretty horrendous shifts and I know what it's like but I can't remember it being so bad as a student in training - and we were counted in the numbers back then. 'The students these days are suppose to be supernumerary. It also seems to particularly acute in midwifery - on the labour wards.' Ms Ingle's post received widespread support, with many praising dedicated NHS staff like Niamh. While Barbara Wheeler write: 'I'm so sorry Jill. This is how it is in nursing too. With the cutting of bursaries, I would discourage my kids into the profession, I'm sad to admit.' Nevine El-Alfy said: 'I was her once. It angers me beyond belief. The whole thing. 'Lack of support for training. Lack of jobs after training. Oh there's a shortage of midwives, let's train more, but we won't make funds available to actually employ them afterwards.' The news comes as junior doctors are planning the first all-our strike in the NHS' history later this month over a dispute with the Government over pay. Junior doctors are pictured at a previous rally in London Helen Louise Hardy added: 'Oh Jill I am sad to read this but equally passionate about your request to get this out there. 'The government are breaking people in many ways and it needs to stop. God bless your daughter.' Meg Rickards said: 'Hope she's ok Jill ! she's doing and incredible job it's just such a shame the NHS is crumbling as she's studying! love to all xxxxx.' The news comes as the British Medical Association (BMA), who represent junior doctors among other NHS staff, are planning a mass walkout later this month. From 8am to 5pm on April 26 and 27, they will walk out of hospitals - refusing to provide emergency care for the first time in the NHS' history. Short intervals between pregnancies in addition to longer intervals increases the risk of autism, scientists have revealed. Women who space their pregnancies by less than two years are more likely to give birth to a child with autism spectrum disorder primarily autism, experts found. But comparatively, long intervals between pregnancies more than five years also raises the risk of autism, in particular Asperger disorder and pervasive development disorder. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that one in 68 children in the US have been identified with autism spectrum disorder. And, in the UK, nearly one in every 100 person has been diagnosed with autism, according to NHS. The findings suggest that waiting only two to five years between pregnancies is linked to a lessened risk of autism. Scientists revealed short intervals of less than two years between pregnancies - in addition to longer intervals of more than five years - are linked to a higher risk of autism spectrum disorder People with autism spectrum disorder often have problems with social interactions and communication. Autism spectrum disorders can be diagnosed as early as two years old but most are not diagnosed until after age four, the CDC said. Most neurodevelopment disabilities are thought to be caused by a variety of factors, including genetics, environment, parental health and behaviors during pregnancy, complications during birth and more. Previous studies have suggested that both short and long intervals between pregnancies are linked to an increased risk of maternal, perinatal, infant and child outcomes. But, the risk between birth spacing and neurodevelopment diabetes has received less attention. In 2005, the World Health Organization recommended conducting studies that examine the impact of birth spacing on psychological and neurological development in children. The current study, published in the journal Pediatrics, was a systematic review of more than 1.1 million pregnancies. The reasons for the association between a short [interval between pregnancy] and ASD are unknown Scientists from University of Valle in Cali, Colombia, discovered that short intervals between pregnancies are most closely linked to autistic disorder the most severe form of the conditions that comprise autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Autistic disorder is likely to co-occur with intellectual disability and a myriad of medical, behavioral and psychiatric complications. The scientists also noted that short intervals are linked to an increased risk of developmental delay. The researchers wrote: The reasons for the association between a short [interval between pregnancy] and ASD are unknown. However, the scientists suggested that a possible explanation is that maternal folic acid depletes after a pregnancy. The study said: Women who become pregnant before folate restoration is complete have an increased risk of folate insufficiency at the time of conception and during pregnancy. As a consequence, there would be an early alteration in the fetal neurodevelopment that could lead to ASD in early childhood. The study suggests women experience a drop in folic acid levels after pregnancy - and so, her folate levels may not be fully restored if she gets pregnant again within two years. In contrast, the study suggests longer intervals may have higher autism risks because of infertility, maternal stress or inflammation Furthermore, the scientists found that the majority of pregnancies after short intervals are unintended which is linked with a higher risk of prenatal maternal stress, possibly affecting the child. In contrast, waiting more than five years between pregnancies is associated with a higher risk of pervasive development disorder a diagnosis applied to children or adults who are on the spectrum but dont fully meet the criteria for another disorder. Longer intervals were also found to be linked to higher instances of Asperger's disorder. Asperger's is a condition considered to be on the high functioning end of the spectrum, causing difficulty with social interactions as well as a restricted range of interests or repetitive behaviors. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain the relationship between long intervals and autism spectrum disorders. Those include infertility (which could have caused the long interval), unintended pregnancy and maternal inflammation, the study said. 'Hang on a minute - didn't I used to be the bodyguard?' I've got a confession to make. As I settled down to watch this, I was expecting a high-concept, high-calibre spy thriller, something in the vein of Le Carre perhaps, or at least a decent Bourne. I blame the distinguished casting: award-winning veterans Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones and Kevin Costner, plus red-hot-right-now Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot. It had to be clever, right? Instead, what followed was a bold, brash, daft and often funny (sometimes intentionally) piece of filmmaking; a kind of mish-mash of Face/Off meets Ghost and The Fugitive. Let's just say if it had starred Jason Statham or Nic Cage, I'd have been better prepared. The plot (ahem) requires a bit of getting your head around: when a CIA agent is murdered while on a job of Vital Global Importance, his memories and skills are transplanted into the brain of unpredictable death-row inmate Jericho (Costner). While trying to figure out the significance of the hazy flashbacks flooding his mind, he escapes and seeks sanctuary at the agent's house, connecting with grieving widow Jill (Gadot) and her young daughter. Can Jericho avert international disaster before the memories fade for good? Or will he revert back to his dangerous ways? Like the protagonist at its core, Criminal battles with conflicting personalities. Is it a thriller? A comedy? Or something a bit more deep and meaningful? The best sequences by far are the all-out action ones, including a gripping opening that sees Reynolds race around London. The softer scenes, by contrast, are verging on cringey. Similarly, the casting achieves varying degrees of success. Gary Oldman looks like he's having fun as the CIA chief trying to prevent mass destruction, while Reynolds makes a suitably dashing agent, and Jones manages to add gravitas to the medical proceedings, despite looking rather sheepish throughout. However, the lead villain (Jordi Molla) seems about as terrifying as the tooth fairy, and Costner isn't terribly convincing as a hardened convict, despite a scary haircut and a lot of grunting. And yet, despite its flaws, there are parts of this that are reasonably entertaining. It's punch-packing, car-chasing, Friday Night fare, with the advantage of not taking itself too seriously. So who knows? Perhaps it will turn out to be this year's Snakes on a Plane or Sharknado. If you want to decide for yourself, I've transplanted a snapshot of my memories (oh alright, posted a trailer) below... Criminal will be in cinemas from 15 April Soon after the return of the Pakistani investigation team that visited India to probe the Pathankot attack, Pakistan has hinted that Indian investigators are unlikely to be allowed to visit the country. Citing the principal of reciprocity, New Delhi has maintained that an Indian team should be allowed to visit Pakistan to take the probe forward. Pakistan envoy Abdul Basit said on Thursday that the peace process between the two countries stands suspended. Casting doubts: Pakistan envoy Abdul Basit pointed out that the peace process between his country and India is currently suspended It is very difficult for me to say. But at this stage...the whole investigation is not about question of reciprocity in my view. It is more about extending cooperation or our two countries cooperating with each other to get to the bottom of the incident, he said. His comments came days after a five-member Joint Investigation Team(JIT) from Pakistan visited India to carry forward the probe into the attack at the Pathankot airbase, after which India was expecting to send a team from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to the neighbouring country. Earlier, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said the NIA did mention to the JIT that they would like to visit Pakistan in connection with the probe. The work of the JIT in India was as per the terms of reference which were agreed upon between the two governments through their respective foreign offices. They (visits) are on reciprocal basis and in accordance with the existing legal provisions, Swarup said. Basit, however, said during an interaction at the Foreign Correspondents Club in New Delhi: This whole incident in not about reciprocity, it is about cooperating... and lets hope that the spirit of cooperation is retained in the days and weeks ahead. When asked whether he was ruling out an NIA visit to Pakistan, he said: I leave it to your imagination. According to the Terms of Reference for the JIT visit, it was to interview key witnesses and victims of the Pathankot attack - but there was no mention of access to military or any other security personnel. Pakistan has said that India did not produce witnesses belonging to the security forces. The JIT visited the crime scene and also recorded the statements of some witnesses. However, the witnesses belonging to the Indian security forces were not produced before it, said the Pakistan Foreign Office on Wednesday, in its first statement on the teams return from India. Chief minister Kalikho Pul met Home Minister Rajnath Singh Since a BJP-supported government took charge of sensitive Arunachal Pradesh, security concerns have come to the forefront. Chief minister Kalikho Pul met Home Minister Rajnath Singh and discussed various issues with him, including the law-and-order situation in the state. During the 15-minute meeting, Pul apprised Singh of the security situation in the state, particularly in Tirap and Changlang districts, affected by insurgency. Pul also met Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju. AAP calls for a 'BJP mukt MCD' The BJP, which gave the call for Congress mukt Bharat, is being made to taste its own medicine. Gearing up for the municipal by-elections, AAP in Delhi has appealed for BJP mukt MCD. The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP has been alleging financial bungling by BJP in three civic bodies which, the party claimed, has essentially led to acute cash crunch. The party has put up posters across 13 wards where by-elections are due. Hi-tech battle against dengue Going hi-tech in tackling dengue, JP Nadda, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, on Thursday launched a mobile app - India Fights Dengue. Concerned over the disease with summers arriving, Nadda hoped that this application would find wide use. The fight against Vector Borne Diseases, especially Dengue, can be won only with effective community participation. This App empowers the community, he said. SC judges lash out over missing ASGs The Modi governments legal team faced a furious Supreme Court as none of the ASGs were present during a crucial hearing of a PIL on drought-hit farmers. Judges made their displeasure at the absence of ASG Pinky Anand very clear. When Anands junior said she was busy in another court, Justice MB Lokur retorted: You think two SC judges have no other job, but to come and sit here and stare at the clock and watch time ticking by? You think drought is not important? Jaitley: Rahul is a slow learner Taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley called the Congress vice-president a delayed learner while hailing his father as a quick one. Conceding that the BJP raised issues when in Opposition, Jaitley chided the Congress, saying it was raising issues without complete knowledge. With non-local students of Srinagar National Institute of Technology (NIT) demanding the institute be shifted from the Valley, the administration issued a circular on Thursday informing students that they could leave the varsity if they wanted to. The officials said the students who have to appear for an exam on April 11 and 14 but want to leave for their homes will be given an opportunity to appear for the exam later. Students are also requested to form a team of their representatives who can further discuss their grievances with the Chairman Board of Governors and MHRD team, read the circular issued on Thursday. Medical college students raise slogans in support of non-local Srinagar NIT students in Jammu The non-local students continued their strike on Thursday and hoisted the tricolour on campus with the help of CRPF men. The MHRD team had a meeting with the agitating students and assured them that they would help them if they wanted to leave the campus. Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh, who is in Srinagar, said those found guilty of mishandling the NIT situation will be punished. Education Minister Naeem Akhtar said that a magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the incident and the report would be submitted within two weeks. Police sources said that during preliminary investigations made with the help of some videos, they have identified around 20 students who resorted to violence on campus. A case has been registered. There are acts of rioting, damaging public property, and acts of causing danger to life. Most of the students involved in inciting tension have backlogs and are in the institute for past 7-8 years, said a police officer, adding that a faculty member is also under the scanner. Jammu University students shout slogans during a protest rally against police action against NIT's non-Kashmiri students Students block the road as they shout slogans against the alleged police brutality DGP K Rajendra Kumar also visited the campus on Thursday afternoon to take stock of the situation. He assured the students of security. In spite of being in a coalition with the PDP, the BJP has hardened its position on the NIT issue as senior party leader Arora took up the issue with the DGP. I expressed my concern over the unfortunate incident and I demanded action against delinquent policemen involved in lathi-charge, he said. The National Conference has expressed concern over the situation in Srinagar NIT, saying the state government is duty-bound to instill a sense of security and confidence among students and restore normalcy in the institution at the earliest possible instance. We believe the government should handle the situation independently without lateral interventions by those who appear to be in the drivers seat. Rushing in people from the HRD Ministry and deploying CRPF teams on the NIT campus speaks volumes about New Delhi's confidence in Mehbooba Mufti, NC spokesman Junaid Azim Mattu said. We want peace and harmony to be restored and believe the institute should be closed for a few days, he said. Meanwhile, the state government ordered a time-bound inquiry into the incident which is snowballing into major crises in the state. A group of Kashmiri students at Government Engineering and Technology College Jammu told reporters that their valuables, books and other goods were thrown out by goons and local students who barged into their rooms and thrashed them. We were in our hostels. Everything was peaceful. Suddenly we heard a large number of students along with locals shouting anti-Pakistan slogans, they claimed. Launching a blistering attack on West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has claimed that she boycotted meetings called by the Centre on development issues. But Mamata never missed any opportunity to take blessings from Sonia Gandhi during her visits to Delhi, the PM added. Mamata Didi never attended meetings in Delhi to discuss the issue of states development only because Modi convened them. But whenever she visited Delhi, she met Sonia Gandhi and took her blessings, Modi told an election rally in Birpara. Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) claimed that Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee had boycotted meetings called by the Centre on development issues PM Modi said the West Bengal CM had failed to bring in any transformation despite her call for regime change. Whenever the Centre called a meeting to discuss development of states, she boycotted it, even though it hurt the interest of her state. What kind of chief minister is she?...She gave the call for Paribartan and misled the people of Bengal. She talked about Ma-Mati-Manush, but there is only maut (death) and money. The Narada sting operation has shown it all. Urging people to give his party a chance in Bengal, he said that wherever the BJP was in power, there is development. Here also I have an agenda, and that is to bring about a comprehensive development all across the state, he added. The PM also took a dig at the recent Kolkatas Vivekananda flyover collapse, saying instead of beginning immediate relief work and saving people, the West Bengal had started playing the blame game. The first thing she said was to put the blame on the Left for giving the contract of the flyover. But if the flyover was completed, would she have congratulated the Left? She would have taken the credit then for the flyover, he said, pointing out that Mamata only carried forward the legacy of the Left-led West Bengal to further ruin. He said the future of the people in Bengal is not safe in the hands of the Trinamool Congress and the Left. Italian luxury brand Gucci is facing controversy over their ad campaign again So Italian luxury brand Gucci is facing controversy over their ad campaign again, this time for the Cruise 2016 visuals for using unhealthily thin models. In one of the images that came under the scanner after a complaint was made in the UK, 17-year-old model Avery Blanchard is gaunt and leans against the wall in a printed dress with golden shoes (right). She looks vapidly into space, appearing to be low on vitamins, sleep and fat reserves in general. Her waist size that could probably be held with a paper clip is complimented by another thin male model seated on the floor behind her. Oddly enough, they look like theyre trapped in a very posh villa somewhere outside Florence, with beautiful clothes to wear but no food at hand. In the second image (above), 19-year-old model Madison Stubbington is seated on a couch in a yellow dress and golden shoes on. With her Daddy longlegs limbs on display, she looks out of the frame, possibly thinking of breakfast that comprises more than an egg white and seven grapes. Regarding the first image, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of UK stated in their ruling, We considered that her torso and arms were quite slender and appeared to be out of proportion with her head and lower body. Further, her pose elongated her torso and accentuated her waist so that it appeared to be very small. In their defence, Gucci claimed that none of the models bones were visible, and that what made a model unhealthily thin was a subjective issue. Also, the ad that appeared on The Times website, was aimed at an older, sophisticated audience as the publication had an adult and mature readership. Gucci claimed that none of the models bones were visible, and that what made a model unhealthily thin was a subjective issue This is an interesting statement to make, since a bunch of 18 to 20-year-olds are being used to convey the epitomy of luxury, style and good life to an adult and mature readership. Of course many of the audience members fall in the demography of being older than the age of 20, working professionals, whose bodies have shifted from post-pubescent skinniness to more rounded curves. The concept of beauty conveyed is unique too, with models looking unwell with dark circles under their eyes, while most mature adults are leaning towards looking fresh and wholesome in their daily lives. Sure, the video is aesthetically pleasing set in a beautiful home with tasteful decor. However, to create an entire video campaign with scrawny young college students moving around in slowmotion is a bit unfair on the adult populace. While the idea of sophistication and affluence certainly comes through, what else can the hard-working professional with goals to run a company and look their best in the boardroom take away from the campaign? To be fair, there was never any intention to leave one with an honorary doctorate degree, but how inspiring can languid arm movements be after the first 10 seconds?. A campaign needs to be relatable to the target audience, and no amount of decelerated dancing will help the 30+ age group to resemble their youthful counterparts. The complaint that calls the brand out for being irresponsible may have a point as the ad conveys a very tacit form of visual bullying. If this were a real party, would the audience get to hang out with the cool kids shown in the advert, because they seem to be singularly selected on the basis of waist-size. The self-esteem and body image of a viewer, whether young or old, can be affected by misrepresentation as the majority of the general public can never come close to resembling such waif-like figures. In the defence of adults across the world, there has to be more to campaigns than the same old emaciated shpeel. The Colours of Rajasthan Big B, Amitabh Bachchan gave a sneak-peek on his official blog into the upcoming ad that he shot with wife, Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan By Radhika Bhalla The Bachchans certainly make an adorable couple, both on and off-screen. Big B, Amitabh Bachchan gave a sneak-peek on his official blog into the upcoming ad that he shot with wife, Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan for Kalyan Jewellers. The veteran actress (who celebrates her birthday today) is seen dressed in a leheriya sari in keeping with the poshak ensemble of Rajasthan. The look has been styled by designer Nachiket Barve, and is admirable for its graceful and elegant appeal. This skirt has officially gone viral period! By Radhika Bhalla American retail chain, JC Penny is in the news for all the wrong reasons this week a skirt that they put up on their website for sale seems to be celebrating women at an awkward time of the month. A white pencil-skirt with a purple flower placed in the front seems to look like a period stain to shoppers, and theyve taken to social media to question it. While one commenter on Imgur captioned, Really could've picked a better place for that "flower" design..., another on Twitter said, Making THAT time of the month a fashion statement, while a third stated, Sooooo... is this dress designed to hide a period stain?!@jcpenney. Ab un sab ko phansi nahi milega? Hamein insaaf nahi milega? Suna ki unko bada vakil de diya gaya hain ( Now wont they be hanged? Wont we get justice? Heard the accused got big lawyers)." Nirbhayas mother, flanked by her husband and son, was seen asking Delhi Police special public prosecutor and senior lawyer Siddharth Luthra this while standing in the corridor of the Supreme Court Friday evening. Minutes ago, a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra had, considering the gravity of the case and questions of law involved, appointed two senior Supreme Court lawyers to argue the appeals filed by the four convicts in the December 16 gang-rape and murder case against their death sentence awarded by the trial court and upheld by the Delhi High Court. Two senior Supreme Court lawyers were appointed to argue the appeals filed by the four convicts in the December 16 gang-rape and murder case Responding to the mothers query, Luthra asked her not to worry and said the judges, by giving the convicts senior lawyers was only trying to ensure that they got proper hearing which was mandatory in cases were accused faced gallows. While advocate Raju Ramachandran will represent convicts Mukesh and Pawan, another known lawyer Sanjay Hegde will argue for Vinay and Akshay. Incidentally, Ramachandran, who is opposed to capital punishment, had earlier represented 26/11 death convict Ajmal Kasab and Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memon in the Supreme Court. The bench amply hinted that the exercise of appointing the seniors was to ensure that all the convicts got a proper hearing as there were inadequacies till now. It is to be noted that Supreme Court in several other similar cases has repeatedly said a trial in which an accused does not get an opportunity to properly defend himself can be declared invalid from the outset. There was high drama before the appointment of the senior lawyers as M L Sharma and AK Singh, the lawyers who had represented the convicts in the lower court and high court vehemently protested saying the seniors shall argue only after they argued as they had been representing all accused from beginning. But putting his foot down, Justice Misra told them: You cannot stop us from appointing any amicus. The Supreme Court had on April 4 begun hearing the appeals after keeping it in cold storage for more than two years. As per procedure, the SC needs to confirm the punishment and only then can the convicts can be hanged. Assam's biggest election issue, illegal immigration, is not unfounded. An India Today TV investigation has revealed how illegal migrants from Bangladesh have acquired the right documents to exercise the right to franchise in Assam. A sting operation by India Today TV investigative team exposed the extent of the menace as well as the modus operandi of converting Bangladeshi immigrants into legitimate Indian citizens. According to the investigation, captured all on camera, middlemen have established a well-oiled machinery to provide documents of identity proof such as driving licences and school transfer certificates, against which these migrants can becomes citizens and exercise their right to vote. An India Today TV investigation has revealed how illegal migrants from Bangladesh have acquired the right documents to exercise the right to franchise in Assam The investigative team unearthed several cases in which such individuals who had been declared as foreign nationals by the Foreigners Tribunals, had their names on voter lists and were up for voting in the second phase scheduled for April 11. The authorities and the government Centre and state seem oblivious to this racket. The India Today TV investigation team caught National Register of Citizens of India (NCR) officials sharing insider details of the process and the fact that they had identified huge number of such cases. Officials also claimed that they had nearly identified all such foreign nationals in Assam, and were only another six months or so away from completing the process. According to NRC officials, just in Dhubri there might be as many as 12,000 Bangladeshi migrants who are living as Indian citizens with fake papers. We have got two lists of Bangladeshi migrants living in Dhubri. The first list was of some 11,975 persons. They are the DVoters or dubious voters and they cannot cast their votes as their cases are pending in the Foreigners Tribunal. Second list was that of another 16,504 such persons, said an NRC official caught on hidden camera. Migrants We are working through the method of sampling. The figure is nearly 30,000. Out of this we have checked 3,000 in which we have found 80 cases of illegal migrants. Out of these 20 have their names on electoral rolls. The rest 27,000 we have to find, but they might have moved from the given addresses, said a highly placed official of the NRC. Which means the voting is not authentic and can be challenged in the court, the investigating team asked. According to National Register of Citizens of India officials caught on camera, in only Dhubri district of Assam there might be as many as 12,000 Bangladeshi migrants who are living as Indian citizens on fake papers Yes. It is no more authentic with such people also participating in the election, the official replied adding that, We have so far identified the number of declared foreigners. The numbers of those not identified as yet is way more. Mir Hussain Khan has apparently studied from the Dev Nagri Hindi M E School in Dhubri district, for instance; at least this is what the schools transfer certificate (TC) declares. The TC also says that he was admitted to the school on January 15, 1957, while the school was established only in 1969. This was the finding of the NRC in Assam. The certificate also declares his character to be good and that he failed in Class 6 and studied in the school for only two years. Another case has a name from the Declared Foreigners-Post 1971s list featuring on the state voters list. A woman called Mariam Nessa, a resident of Barpeta district. Nessa was declared a foreigner under a Foreign Tribunal case number 396/11. Incidentally, she is on the voters list of the Jania constituency. Both the documents, the foreigners list and the voters list, have been accessed by the India Today TV team. According to the voters list, Nessa carries an Electors Photo Identity (EPIC) or simply voter ID card which has the number HTN4137433. Under the fathers/husbands name one Mustafijur is listed and Nessa is entitled to cast her vote at the Kharballi LP School on April 11. The team also did a sting on the middlemen who claimed to provide certificates and identity cards at a price Another case Similarly, Shahidur Rahman, allegedly a resident of village Dimakuri under the Golakganj police station of Dhubri district, is also a foreign national who has been issued a voter ID. Rahman was declared a foreigner under a Foreign Tribunal case but he is on the voters list of the Gauripur constituency. The voters list shows Rahman carries a voter ID card which bears the number FSC1298288. Under the fathers/husbands name one Nacharuddin Sheikh is listed and he is entitled to cast his vote at the New Dimakuri Public School on April 11. The investigation team also did a sting on the middlemen who claimed to provide certificates and identity cards at a price. I will provide a driving licence at a cost of Rs 10,000, said one Abu Taheb, who runs his racket from the Dhubri transport office, when he was asked if he could provide one for a person from Bangladesh. In Chirang district, the story remains the same. An agent named Nasir told the team that he would charge Rs 5,000 for a school transfer certificate and another Rs 3,500 for getting a driving licence made on the basis of the TC. Giving power to Dalits within the party fold is more important than trying to reconnect with the community, state leaders have told Rahul Gandhi, who is keen to regain the confidence of the Congress traditional vote bank. Over the past decades, Dalits had drifted away from the Congress because the community found little space within the organisation with hardly any projection of its leadership in states. On agenda Jolted after the debacle of 2014 national elections, in which the Congress was reduced to a mere 44 seats in the Lok Sabha, its lowest ever tally, Rahul has been trying to regain the confidence of Dalits. But a lot more needs to be done, if the issue is to be addressed. State leaders have asked Rahul Gandhi to give more power to Dalits within the party The SC leaders acknowledge the platform provided by the Congress to project their opinions but they feel that more needs to be done. More efforts need to be put into the strengthening of the Dalits position within the party, K Raju, in charge of AICCs SC cell told Mail Today. According to Raju, the SC leaders from states want concentrated efforts from within the party to promote Dalit leadership by giving them equal opportunities and adequate power. A few months ago, the Congress decided to expand the minimum representation of SC/ST/OBC/minorities in the party constitution from 20 per cent to 40 per cent. However, the provisions now need implementation, claim sources. Highlighting the need for the Congress to spell out its stand vis a vis the Dalits for the years to come, sources said the feedback obtained from the state leaders will be debated thoroughly at a special session to articulate the partys policy on the issue. Sources said Rahuls visits in the past to Haryana, where two Dalit children were burnt alive and recently to the Hyderabad University, where a dalit scholar Rohith Vemula ended his life, are clear attempts to be seen as the champion of the marginalised community. Rahul also highlighted the two issues in Parliament in an attempt to paint the ruling BJP as anti-Dalit. Sources said the Congress needs to present its pro-poor credentials with greater force amid attempts by the ruling BJP to woo Dalits. It shall be our endeavour to expose their anti-Dalit approach, said Raju. Keeping up with his plan, Rahul had made Dalit leader Ashok Tanwar the chief of Haryana Congress. Incidentally, the Dalits had deserted the Congress in the Assembly polls last year in the state. In Delhi too, the Dalit votes had shifted to AAP, leaving the Congress with zero seats in the Assembly. Earlier, in UP, Rahul had worked hard to wean away the Dalit votes from BSP supremo Mayawati ahead of the 2012 Assembly polls, but his efforts went in vain. The focus once again has shifted to UP, which will go to polls in 2017. In Punjab, which has the highest population of Dalits in the country and will go to polls next year along with UP, Rahul is trying to give prominent roles to Dalit leaders in an attempt to counter the BSP, which plans to contest all the 117 Assembly seats. An attack claimed by Islamic Caliphate in Brussels has yet again brought attention to the growing menace of radicalisation among younger Muslims which, needs to be addressed and tackled with greater focus while ensuring innocent people are not targeted. Muslim clerics, at last months World Sufi Forum addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, spoke about the greatness of a religion in whose name radicalised Muslims have taken extreme steps that are against the teachings of Quran. Sympathisers Earlier this year, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh repeatedly spoke about family values acting as a deterrent against Muslims in India joining ISIS, but there was a spurt in news reports that sympathisers of the Caliphate had been arrested from different parts of India, mostly South. The World Sufi Forum was organised in New Delhi in March Radicalisation has been and is now a growing concern among many Muslim communities. People who accept and imbibe radical ideas do not know or care for what Islam teaches. Fatwas calling ISIS unIslamic has limited objective as it does little to reform or change the perception of those who have moved on that path. In India for years security agencies warned against unhindered and unchecked money coming in from Gulf countries especially Saudi Arabia, in the name of supporting poor Muslim brethren in India. But, most centrist and centre-left parties shied away from identifying or even recognising this as an issue fearing loss of electoral support. Shying away from addressing what is a non-partisan issue affecting Indias largest minority and their relations with rest of the population political parties are busy scoring political points. If secular parties turn a blind eye to this growing phenomenon the Hindu right wing groups have distorted the issue through their undemocratic and on a few occasions, illegal actions. In a world of competitive politics dictated often by hysterical TV discussions and social media posts the matter remains out of the purview of any sensible discussion. Growth in construction of mosques and educational institutions by Wahabi and Salafi Islam supporters seems to have taken place with little or no government oversight. In several instances, it is local Muslim communities and clerics who opposed building of such mosques that would propagate Islam that militates against the prevalent and popular practices in India and rest of South Asia. On most occasions their inability to stop the rising influence of ultra-conservative ideas resulted in Salafi mosques sprouting in places like Bengaluru which, today boasts of 42 such places of worship with sizeable congregation. Local communities protested and some physically fought only to see such mosques come up where Muslims are told to reject innovation, rituals and Sufiya practices such as visiting graves of saints. Muslims are being told that Islam as practiced by their parents and forefathers in India has veered away from the actual teachings of Quran and the Prophet. Teachings Social media is a major contributing factor to the spread and acceptance of Salafist teachings. It is not to say that Salafis did not exist in India until now. The idea has been here since pre-independence and groups like Ahl-e-Hadees have actively sought for decades to bring Indian Muslims on the right path. Kerala is one state where they have had a substantial support base for decades. However, the spread and acceptance of Wahabi ideas (courtesy Saudi Arabia) and of Salafis (more conservative than Saudi Wahabis) in the last few years across Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, J&K, West Bengal and even Odisha should cause serious concern. Some would argue that every Wahabi and Salafi Muslim should not be viewed with suspicion and there is no reason to believe so. Propaganda What requires attention is the provocation for young Muslims to accept the propaganda of Wahabis and Salafis, and growth in the number of mosques and educational institutions financed by Gulf money. Surf through the Net and one sees questions and queries from young Muslims about where to find a Salafi mosque in many towns across the country or ask specifically for a Wahabi cleric. Who are the recipients of Saudi Riyals? Who is inviting foreign ultra-conservative clerics and preachers to India? Why are age-old practices of Muslims in India sought to be changed to Arabised ways that are alien to South Asians? Some of these people will become an integral part of a new ecosystem and state governments need to be aware of the goings-on. Security agencies need to actively identify and arrest the growth of ISIS sympathisers and the spread of radicalisation. At the same time Hindu extremist groups who are freely attacking Muslims and creating fear among innocents must be given exemplary punishment. Intimidation, attacks and in some instances killings of Muslims allegedly for eating beef seem to have become regular news. Modi government must direct states to take serious action against such attacks. No individual has any business to take law into his hands. If Babri Masjid demolition and Hindu- Muslim violence in Gujarat contributed to radicalisation of a section of Muslims, the Dadri lynching and subsequent attacks is playing on the minds of many young men. The Kohinoor issue has once again surfaced with Chief Justice T S Thakur expressing curiosity regarding the worlds most expensive diamond The Kohinoor issue has once again surfaced with Chief Justice T S Thakur expressing curiosity regarding the worlds most expensive diamond. Everybody is claiming the Kohinoor. Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and even South Africa are claiming responsibility of the stone. Do you know about it? the bench asked Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar. The SG said he was unaware and would need time to figure out details. A book on Mother Teresa for Kejriwal Former chief election commissioner Navin Chawla, presented a biography on Mother Teresa to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday. Chawla, who is the author of the book was closely associated with her for decades and was gifted a signed copy of the book by Mother Teresa herself. The Chief Minister also posted the picture with the book on social media website. AK wages Twitter war Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media and questioned his language in berating the West Bengal government for the Kolkata flyover tragedy. Kejriwal also defended his cabinet minister Kapil Mishra on Twitter. Journos who questioned my language in December and Kapils language this week silent on PMs language yesterday, Kejriwal tweeted, referring to his past comments on PM Modi and those of Kapil Mishra, Delhis water minister, this week. Aswinis plea awaits SC nod Senior Congress leader and former Law Minister Ashwini Kumar emerged in a new avatar as being a public interest litigant in Supreme Court Senior Congress leader and former Law Minister Ashwini Kumar emerged in a new avatar as being a public interest litigant in Supreme Court. Upon his plea, the apex court has sought the view of the Centre and all states on setting up old age homes in all districts of the country. The apex court also sought the assistance of the NGO HelpAge India and National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), which provides free legal services to weak and vulnerable sections of society. A tribute to the Sardar Post battle National Security Adviser Ajit Doval will attend CRPFs Valour Day on Saturday. The force commemorates on April 9, the battle of Sardar Post on Gujarat border, during the 1965 war with Pakistan, where two companies of CRPF held back a brigade level attack by Pakistan. Gallantry awards will be given to the force personnel on the occasion. Aswinis plea awaits SC nod Senior Congress leader and former Law Minister Ashwini Kumar emerged in a new avatar as being a public interest litigant in Supreme Court. Upon his plea, the apex court has sought the view of the Centre and all states on setting up old age homes in all districts of the country. Under pressure: Prime Minister David Cameron The anger over David Camerons holding in the Panama registered Blairmore Investment Trust looks much overdone. Sure, the Prime Minister tried to wriggle away from the scandal and was ridiculously slow in disclosing his interests. But we already knew that Cameron was a rich man, from a long line of stockbrokers who lived in an age when income on capital was sometimes taxed at more than 100 per cent. It may smell of elitism but it can be no surprise that he and the monied classes looked for alternative investments in non-sterling currencies and out of sight of the inland revenue. Understandable as the focus on Cameron has been, it is a distraction from the bigger issues exposed by the leak of 2.6 terabytes of offshore secrets. One of the biggest lessons is that in an age of cyber-hacking and whistleblowing, the net is closing rapidly on individuals and companies seeking to game the system. It also shines a harsh light on a number of other issues. These include the scale of corruption in republics of the former Soviet Union and China, the hopelessness of foreign assistance when sums beyond the dreams of avarice leak into the coffers of leaders and their families, and the role that some of Europes biggest banks notably HSBC, Credit Suisse and UBS have played and may still play a part in hiding income and wealth. The biggest indictment of HSBC, a bank that used to be admired for its Calvinist culture, is that former chief executive Michael Geoghegan and the current boss Stuart Gulliver were users of Panama law firm Mossack Fonsecas services. We already knew that HSBC was on probation in the US for money laundering in Mexico. We also knew that its Geneva branch was a honeypot for dictators and other undesirables. What is disturbing is that a London-supervised financial institution should be at the vortex of events. Russian citizens are said to be unfazed by the corruption around President Putins close associates on the grounds that he is a strong leader and because of suspicion it is all a Western plot. The fact that so few Americans have tumbled out of the files might even support the conspiracy theory that the cyber dump came from US security services. After all, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is supported by the Ford Foundation with alleged historic connections to the CIA.More troubling for George Osborne and the Government is the stain on the reputation of Chinese president Xi Jinping. The corruption-fighting leader has family members who have set up offshore entities. This is the trading partner we have endlessly courted to the point of putting up $3bn of capital for the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. As fast as Britain distributes is annual 12bn of foreign aid to developing countries, it often seems to flow out the back door. Among those nations caught up in the Panama scandal are citizens and corporations from Nigeria, Malawi, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Pakistan. It is interesting to note how differently the worlds real democracies and the countries on the fringe have reacted. Icelands PM Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson was out of office in a blink of an eye. In Holland, ABN Amro Group board member Bert Meerstadt resigned after his name appeared in the leaked records, and in Austria the chief executive of Hypo Landesbank Vorarlberg Michael Grahammer fell on his sword after a Panamanian connection was exposed. So far there have been few examples of people taking responsibility in nations with less established governance. The whole affair is forcing regulators to act quickly. The US Justice Department has added a dozen senior prosecutors to its already formidable army to check on money laundering, sanctions busting and potential corruption touching the US. Probes also have been launched in Australia and South Africa. Switzerland is showing a fierce determination to make sure that its two biggest banks, Credit Suisse and UBS, are clear of infection. In the City, the Financial Conduct Authority is having to fire up its rusty engines again to look at the new revelations, having given up the ghost at the turn of the year. HMRC is waking up from its slumber after expending much energy persecuting VAT miscreants and ordinary taxpayers. But with at least 50 per cent of the vehicles set up by the Panamanian law firm in the British Virgin Islands, the Cameron government has a real problem which reaches far beyond the PM himself. If ever there were a moment in history to correct the injustice of tax avoidance and evasion, it must be now. Nationalising crown territories, as Jeremy Corbyn suggested, is never going to happen. The best that can be hoped for is that Downing Street, so diffident about its own disclosures, is more robust in dealing with jurisdictions under its indirect control. Social workers missed a string of chances to put toddler Ayeeshia into care before she died and even ignored her mother's own pleas to take her child away. The trial of Ayeeshia Jane Smith's killers Kathryn Smith, 23, and her boyfriend Matthew Rigby, 22, also revealed the authorities placed her with a foster family only to give her back to her 'volatile' mother. Kathryn Smith even told social workers to 'take Ayeeshia away because I'm a c**p mother' and would spend her benefits on cannabis rather than feeding her daughter, hiding the drug in her child's Tommee Tippee drinking cup. In a case echoing the tragic death of Baby P, NHS doctors also failed to spot a 'concerning' pattern of historic injuries pointing to serious physical abuse in the months before she died. Social workers also saw drug use, violence and child neglect at the home where the toddler lived but mother and daughter were kept together until she died in May 2014. Despite blaming each other for Ayeeshia's murder, Smith continued to share a bed with Rigby until their trial and even gave him a winged locket containing her dead daughter's ashes. Abusive: Kathryn Smith, 23, left today, almost had her daughter Ayeeshia Jane Smith taken off her at birth over neglect fears and 21 months later the toddler died in an attack allowed by violent boyfriend Matthew Rigby, right Innocent: New pictures of Ayeeshia taken before her death show how she was injured frequently in her short life, and experts say they were non-accidental Abuse: This is the Tommee Tippee cup belonging to Ayeeshia, used by her mother to store her cannabis (pictured) Today Smith was found guilty of murdering Ayeeshia and Rigby guilty of allowing or causing her death. Heartbroken: Ayeeshia's biological father, Ricky Booth leaving Birmingham Crown Court today after his ex was found guilty of murder Her mother had beaten her until she resembled a 'car crash victim' and she had a torn heart, a partially severed tongue and was missing tufts of hair when she died. The little girl was heard screaming 'stop mummy, stop daddy' before she was murdered on May 1 2014. Ayeeshia was almost put into care from birth because it was feared she would be neglected by her troubled mother - but instead she was left to suffer a chaotic and violent home-life before she died. Matthew Rigby, who she called 'daddy', even threatened to burn their flat down with the family inside a month before he helped kill the toddler but she remained at home in Burton-on-Trent. One neighbour who knew Ayeeshia and her mother, who did not want to be named, told MailOnline: 'It's so sad to think what she went through, especially as she was too young to speak out or get help. 'It's disgusting to think social services gave her back to her mum'. Derbyshire County Council has carried out a serious case review into whether more could have been done to protect Ayeeshia. It will be published later this month. During Smith and Rigby's month-long trial it was revealed that Ayeeshia was not taken into care a second time despite: Her mother Kathryn Smith repeatedly asked social workers to 'just take her away because I'm a c**p mum' Toddler suffered cuts to her face and body, a bleed on the brain and her hair was missing in the months before she died Ayeeshia's killer Matthew Rigby said he 'hated' her and threatened to torch the house and set fire to her cot, which was brought to the attention of police. He was banned from seeing the family by the authorities but continued to visit Social workers said that her mother appeared 'spaced out' on drugs and the house smelt of cannabis. Kathryn Smith also refused to take drugs tests and would later admit spending 30 of her 52-a-week benefits on cannabis Ayeeshia had developmental problems and was malnourished. When put with a foster family she learned to eat solid food, said her first words, and grew to trust adults and put on weight. Four months later she was given back to her mother and regressed but stayed with her mother until she died The couple's former neighbour Tracey Roberts gave evidence that she heard a child's voice screaming 'stop mummy, stop daddy' just days before young Ayeeshia's death Toddler suffered regular suspicious injuries - including a hospital visit for a 'non-accidental' brain injury just four months before she died that has been compared to those found in 'car crash victims' A leading children's charity has blasted social services for missing opportunities to save Ayeeshia saying the failures had chilling echoes of the Baby P scandal. Peter Connolly died in August 2007, after suffering more than 50 injuries in just eight months, during which he was repeatedly seen by NHS staff and Haringey Children's Services - the same local authority that failed Victoria Climbie. Last picture: This is Smith and Rigby pushing tragic Ayeeshia in her buggy in the hours before the toddler died Catalogue: Ayeeshia's biological father Ricky took pictures of his child's injuries to her cheek, left, and chin, right, sustained while living with her cruel mother A picture taken at Derby Hospital showing an injury to Ayeeshia's finger in January 2014 - doctors missed a string of non-accidental injuries, the court heard Home: Ayeeshia's small bed photographed after her death with no mattress and toys piled next to it Squallor: Smith and Rigby's bed with a drug-filled Tommee Tippee cup and an ashtray lying on the floor next to it Claude Knights, CEO of Kidscape, said of Ayeeshia's case: 'It is extremely depressing to discover that one more vulnerable infant well known to children's services suffered fatal non-accidental injuries while she was subject to a child protection order. THE MISSED CHANCES TO HELP AYEESHIA JANE SMITH July 15, 2012 - Ayeeshia Jane Smith born to Kathryn Smith and biological father Ricky Booth but is allowed to go home despite fears the child would suffer 'neglect'. February 20, 2013 - Local authority keeps Ayeeshia on same safeguarding plan because of domestic violence at the family home. March\April 2013 - Further reports of domestic violence in Smith's relationship with Joshua Collier made to authorities. May 16, 2013 - Smith signs supervision order at court agreeing to move away with Ayeeshia to her mother's home in Buckinghamshire but within three weeks Smith breaches order by returning and Ayeeshia is taken into care. October 8, 2013 - Ayeeshia, who has said her first words and has put on weight, leaves foster care and returns to live with Smith. November 2013 - Smith begins relationship with Matthew Rigby January 7, 2014 - Ayeeshia taken to hospital with cut to bottom left lip and a bruise to the little finger. Doctors find a bald patch on the back of her head and diagnose child with alopecia. February 3, 2014 - Ayeeshia taken to hospital after suffering bleed on the brain caused by 'non-accidental' head injury. Doctors diagnosed her with a febrile convulsion, but an expert medical witness told the court this was unlikely and that medical tests for child abuse were not carried out. March 29, 2014 - Ayeeshia taken to hospital with laceration to inside of her lower lip. Social workers note Ayeeshia's weight falls 10kg in six weeks. April 1, 2014 - Social worker visits Smith at home where she claims she is not in a relationship with Rigby. Smith is warned that he poses a danger to her child. April 4, 2014 - Smith reports Rigby to police following domestic disturbance. He said he would burn down the house, the child's cot and plant cocaine to get Ayeeshia taken into care. April 24, 2014 - Doctors treat child for bruise to the nose, parents say she hurt herself falling from her potty. May 1, 2014 - Ambulance crews called to Britannia Way, Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, after Ayeeshia collapses. She dies later in hospital from a cardiac arrest. Medical experts say she was beaten and died. Advertisement 'This reminds us of the catastrophic death of Baby P and a number of similar cases which were followed by serious case reviews and the seminal Lord Laming report published in 2009. 'Ayeeshia's tragic and avoidable death leads us to ask if anything at all has been learned from the recommendations in these costly reports. 'Lord Laming made a plea for a more joined-up multi-agency approach, more robust questioning and monitoring of parents known to pose a threat to their children, as well as less hesitation to remove a child from a patently abusive and dangerous situation. 'Little Ayeeshia's horrific and tragic death is a stark reminder that despite robust knowledge of what needs to be done to protect children, consistent implementation of vital recommendations has not been achieved. 'There is certainly an urgent need to ensure that children's services, police and health organisations have protected budgets for the staffing and training of child protection units. 'Our society cannot stand by and allow such brutal destruction of innocent young lives.' Ayeeshia-Jayne Smith was born on July 15 2012 - but social services had grave concerns even a month before she was born that she would be neglected by her 'volatile' mother Kathryn. But the baby was allowed home on a child protection plan. This meant that at least three Derbyshire County Council social workers, a domestic abuse support officer and an NHS health visitor visited her throughout her short life. This arrangement continued in the 21 months until she was beaten to death - and despite drug use, a series of violent relationships and serious neglect she stayed with her mother Kathryn for most of her life. She was put in care in May 2013 but was returned to her her mother in the October. Denise Leavesley was Smith's social worker between June 2012 and May 2013 - and revealed that the mother had even asked them to take her into care. During the trial Mrs Leavesley revealed: 'She said I should just take the baby now'. Elizabeth Nugent, a support worker with Derbyshire Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse Service, visited Smith in early 2013 - and on arrival heard a loud bang and a baby's cries coming from the her flat. Mrs Nugent told the court: 'There was a clear smell of cannabis. I smelled cannabis outside the flat and as soon as Kat opened the door it was apparent someone had been smoking it. 'AJ was in her arms crying and shaking. Kat said she fell off the bed. I only saw the child's face once, Kat kept it covered up. 'The child's breath was quite quick and erratic. Her hair was quite knotted and it clung to her head. She looked pale and her eyes were sunken. 'Afterwards I made a safeguarding referral to social services because I was concerned for the child.' In April 2013 health visitor Sarah Shaw explained that during a home visit she saw her then boyfriend had punched the front door, before verbally abusing the young mother 'and kicking her in her stomach'. Horrifying: A post mortem examination revealed how the toddler had injuries all over her body - and some were up to four months old Tragedy: Ayeeshia's hair also fell out - experts told the trial that it may have been caused by stress or being pulled out At the time Smith was seeing a man called Joshua Collier, about whom social workers had raised concerns in the past. Derbyshire social services were concerned enough about the situation that they kept Ayeeshia on a safeguarding plan under the 'emotional abuse' category - but Ayeeshia remained at home. Ms Shaw said that she had tried to explain the risk to Ayeeshia from violent relationships. Describing the conversation she said: 'She got angry, swearing and stating to us to 'just take AJ away' because that is what we were going to do anyway and 'because I am such a c*** mother'.' A month later, when Ayeeshia was 11 months old, she was taken into care after her mother had refused to stay away from her violent partner. She thrived, learned to eat solid foods, said her first words and began to move on her own. She also gained trust in adults. But four months later she returned home - just seven months before her death on May 1, 2014. Expert witness doctor Kathryn Ward said: 'She would only take milk from a bottle and had been reluctant to take solids. 'She would wake every couple of hours in the night which was unusual seeing as she was nearly a year old at the time. She would take a couple of gulps of milk in the night then go back to sleep. 'She was wary of men though she had come to trust the foster carer's husband. 'She had an acceleration in growth velocity and was a more well-nourished looking child.' Tragedy: 21-month-old Ayeeshia Jane Smith (pictured) died from a rip to her heart that was caused by a powerful foot stamp or from being violently shaken Crime scene: This is the Burton home where Ayesshia was beaten to death and where she suffered a series of suspicious injuries before she died Ayeeshia was returned to Smith's care in October that year and shortly afterwards social services became aware of her dating a new man, 22-year-old Matthew Rigby - the man who would eventually help kill her. DOCTORS FAILED TO SPOT AYEESHIA'S NON-ACCIDENTAL INJURIES BEFORE HER DEATH Life on drugs: Kathryn Smith smoked drugs at home throughout Ayeeshia's tragic life including on the day she died in May 2014, The toddler was rushed to hospital with a 'non-accidental' head injury three months before she died, it emerged during the trial. Ayeeshia also saw a GP in January 2014 because of her alopecia, probably caused by 'trauma' at home or having her hair torn out, the medical expert said. Describing the 'non-accidental' injury Dr Ward told the jury at Birmingham Crown Court: 'It's well documented that child abuse may present in a child that has previously been well that suddenly collapses with an apparent life-threatening event. 'Signs of abusive head injury include a recurrence of life-threatening events, vomiting, and a call by the child's carer to the emergency services. These are red flags to doctors. 'There is no evidence this possibility (child abuse) was considered on February 3 (by doctors). It's probable that the event on February 3 was associated with non-accidental head injury.' Ayeeshia's alopecia, which was reported to doctors on January 7, 2014, could have been the result of 'trauma' caused by hair pulling, the court heard. Dr Ward said: 'Many stresses can cause children to have areas of hair loss, though it is uncommon in children younger than two. 'Children can pull out their own hair or someone else can pull on their hair. One of the problems in assessing the cause was by the time dermatologists saw Ayeeshia the hair was growing back. 'In my opinion the most likely cause would have been a viral infection or possible traumatic hair loss.' The couple's former neighbour Tracey Roberts gave evidence in which she claimed to have heard a child's voice screaming 'stop mummy, stop daddy!' just days before young Ayeeshia's tragic death. Mrs Roberts also said that she regularly heard Smith and Rigby rowing. On the day she died, Smith and Rigby claimed they had been trying to get her to use her potty after a 'perfect' outing to see the child's grandparents. The toddler died from a cardiac arrest triggered by a laceration to the heart which 'could have been the result of stamping', the jury was told. The pathologist who conducted the post-mortem revealed her wounds were so severe they looked like those sustained in major road accidents. Advertisement In January 2014, it emerged Smith lied to health visitor Sarah Shaw about the fact Rigby had damaged the front door of her flat after she claimed the couple had been locked out, initially blaming it on other residents. Social workers again discussed taking a toddler into care when it emerged the stepfather had reportedly threatened to torch the family flat, less than a month before the child died in May 2014. Senior social worker Stephen Crean, who was responsible for Ayeeshia's case, said: 'If concerns were escalating, which they appeared to be, then we will be initiating the process of care proceedings.' Only the day before the girl's death, a multi-agency risk assessment meeting involving police and social services took place in Tamworth, Staffordshire, to discuss Ayeeshia's welfare. It was decided to arrange for a domestic abuse support worker to visit Smith, according to Mr Crean. He then sent a text to Smith on the afternoon of April 30 2014, saying: 'Hi Kat, I would like to visit you and AJ tomorrow at 10am, is that ok?' Just over an hour after he sent that text, Ayeeshia had collapsed at her flat with fatal injuries. Earlier that month, Smith had refused to sign an agreement not to see Rigby, despite her having called police in the early hours of April 4 to report how he had threatened to burn the flat down. Mr Crean told the trial jury: 'The agreement was asking her to not let Mr Rigby in the flat because the concern was, according to the police, there was a threat to set fire to the flat, so the agreement was to not have any contact.' Expert witness Dr Kathryn Ward told their trial the toddler died in May 2014 because of 'punching, stamping or severe compression' and a 'concerning' pattern of injuries were not picked up on. The little girl also had a bruised neck as if she had been 'grasped and shaken' and suffered a 'blunt force trauma to the buttocks', she said. Dr Ward also told the jury that 'significant lacerations' to her tongue were probably caused by 'force of the jaw' clamping down when she was struck. A post-mortem examination also revealed the child had an old bleed on the brain and damage to her spine. The jury heard the chest injuries were as a result of a very heavy impact or impacts to the body which 'could have been as a result of stamping.' Smith told the court: 'AJ got really upset, so I popped my head around the kitchen door, to see AJ in the bedroom and said to Matt 'just leave it she's not going to do it'. She added: 'As soon as I said 'leave it', AJ stood up and started clapping and smiling.' The little girl asked her mother for some juice, and as Smith left the child's bedroom to fill the bottle, she was aware of Rigby joining her in the kitchen. Smith, who was in floods of tears in the witness box, described what happened next, saying: 'I heard a gasp from AJ. 'Me and Matt were in the kitchen and we looked at each other, so I knew he'd heard it. We went into her bedroom and she was just laying there. 'AJ was lay on her left-hand side, staring out the window and she looked all pale and her lips were blue and her mouth was bubbling.' Tragic: Ayeeshia Jane Smith, left and right with biological father Ricky, was only 21 months old when she died in May 2014 The couple attempted to resuscitate the girl, with Smith dialling 999 within three minutes, but despite the best efforts of hospital doctors nothing could be done to save the girl. Yet last week Matthew Rigby gave a different account in the witness box and pointed the finger of blame squarely at the little girl's mother, telling a crown court jury it 'must have been' her. Matthew Rigby denied murdering Ayeeshia Jane Smith in a 'moment of explosive temper' and changing his account to the jury at Birmingham Crown Court. Message: Stephen Crean, senior social worker for Derbyshire County Council, said in a report that Rigby had not posed a risk to Ayeeshia Smith's barrister accused 22-year-old Rigby of having taken out frustrations with the couple's dysfunctional relationship on the defenseless little girl during an incident on May 1 2014. But Rigby told the jury: 'I didn't injure that girl.' Smith's barrister John Butterfield QC asked Rigby why he had changed his story. Originally, Rigby had told police a version of events which would make him the last person to have seen Ayeeshia before she collapsed with fatal injuries at the family's flat in Britannia Drive in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire. Rigby, who the jury heard has two convictions for assault including one in which he bit another man, told detectives he had seen Ayeeshia 'on the potty' in her room as Smith went to get some juice for the girl. However, he told the court that Smith had told him what to say the day before he sat down with the police, and he was never present while the child went to the toilet. Mr Butterfield asked: 'Then why on earth would you have said it if you hadn't seen it?' Rigby, a former casual warehouse worker at the Superdry depot in Burton, replied: 'At that point I didn't think there was any foul play with Ayeeshia.' Turning to the fatal collapse of Ayeeshia, Mr Butterfield said: 'According to you, you didn't assault AJ on May 1. 'If it isn't you, it must have been Kathryn?' Rigby replied: 'It must have been, yes.' The barrister then asked why Rigby had chosen to sleep in the same bed as Smith right up until the start of their trial, and why at the start of the hearing he had accepted a locket containing the dead girl's ashes from his former lover. Mr Butterfield asked: 'Why would you take a gift from someone you believed to be the killer? 'The only reason you would, is because you well knew in reality it was you who did it,' he added. Rigby replied: 'That's not the case.' YOUNG LIVES TRAGICALLY LOST AFTER FAILURES BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES Daniel Pelka Daniel, four, died in March 2012 after a sustained period of 'appalling cruelty' during which his mother Magdalena Luczak, 27, and stepfather Mariusz Krezolek, 34, of Coventry, starved him, force-fed him salt, tortured him and locked him in a tiny room. At the time he died he had been tortured for six months and weighed just 1st 9lb, the same as an 18-month-old child. A review following his death also found that chances to save Daniel, who had gained the attention of social services and police - who visted the home 26 times, had been missed, but did not blame any individual agency. Coventry City Council has come under heavy scrutiny ever since the murder, which shocked the nation after it emerged social workers, police and teachers had all failed to save him. Peter Connelly Widely known as Baby P, 17-month-old Peter Connelly, died in August 2007, after suffering more than 50 injuries in just eight months, during which he was repeatedly seen by NHS staff and Haringey Children's Services - the same local authority that failed Victoria Climbie. Prior to his death, Peter had been admitted to hospital with injuries, and on one occasion, just days before his death, injuries to Baby Peter's face and hands were missed by a social worker after the child was deliberately smeared with chocolate to hide them. Peter's mother Tracey Connelly, her boyfriend Steven Barker, and Barker's brother Jason Owen were all convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child, the mother having pleaded guilty to the charge. The former director of Haringey children's services, Sharon Shoesmith, was eventually fired on the orders of the then Children's Secretary Ed Balls. Victoria Climbie Abuse victim Victoria, eight, who lived in Haringey, north London, died in February 2000 after being beaten, starved and tortured by her great-aunt Marie Therese Kouao and Kouao's lover Carl Manning, were jailed for life for murder. Victoria was burned with cigarettes, often tied up and hit with bike chains, hammers and wires, and the abuse had been noted by the police, the social services department of four local authorities, including Haringey council, the NHS, and charity the NSPCC, as well as local churches. However, during the trial following her death a judge described the failure by all to properly investigate the case as 'blinding incompetence'. A public inquiry, headed by Lord Laming, also found there were numerous instances where Victoria could have been saved and a subsequent report made numerous recommendations related to child protection in England. Advertisement 'My money - my income support': Shameless mum Kathryn Smith spent 30 of her 52 weekly benefits on cannabis and was high on the day her daughter died TEXTS BETWEEN AYEESHIA'S 'KILLERS' REVEAL CHAOTIC LIFE TOGETHER Admission: Kathryn Smith said she was a 'c*** mother' and said her daughter should be taken away Kathryn Smith and Matthew Rigby claimed to have split up but spent nights in bed together up until their trial. Smith even gave him a locket containing Ayeeshia's ashes when they first appeared in court. Their trial heard about their chaotic relationship On not feeding Ayeeshia (AJ) Smith to Rigby: 'I just want the money I'm owed. AJ's hungry. I'm going to get the f***ing bus down. If you're not there I'll blow your down off. I'm doing the dog as well.' In a text to her mother, she said: 'AJ's sat in her room crying because she's been hungry and for over a week I've not been able to feed her.' On drugs Smith to Rigby: 'I just want you to be happy and you shout all the time. I can't help the fact you forgot to pick the weed up. You didn't mention anything to me. That wasn't my fault'. Days before she died Smith had also texted Rigby and the pair had discussed buying cannabis because they were 'running low' and only had 'like ten grams left'. The rows On November 22, 2013 Smith to Rigby: 'Why say I don't look after AJ (Ayesha Jane) when that's all I do? How deceitful to go behind my back and pull me and my daughter down. 'You've stabbed me in the back good and proper. I need answers, Matt.' Rigby replied: 'F*** off. That should say it all. Believe what the f*** you want. Stop the riffraff over the phone. Why can't you just leave me the f*** alone?' On January 2, 2014 Rigby to Smith: ''Please delete my number from your phone. Goodbye, Kat. Just leave me alone. Thanks for the wasted Christmas and New Year's.' Smith replied: 'Looks like me and AJ have been led if you're willing to walk away so easy over a pathetic comment. 'I was a joke and you stormed away kicking my door in. You've got to get over a joke. 'My reputation? What's that? Sitting in my flat smoking weed with you? Because that's all I ever do. I'm getting kicked out, so thanks'. The couple repeatedly fell out but remained together until after they allegedly murdered the toddler. Advertisement Kathryn Smith spent 30 of her 52-a-week benefits on cannabis and flew into rages if she went without the drug. When asked about spending money meant to be used to clothe and feed her child Ayeeshia she told her trial: 'My money. My income support'. It later emerged she continued to claim that benefit for six months after her daughter's death. The 23-year-old smoked drugs at home throughout Ayeeshia's tragic life including on the day she died in May 2014, the jury was told. Smith admitted she had been concerned her daughter had get hold of super-strong skunk cannabis she stored in her daughter's Tommee Tippee drinking beaker. Christopher Hotten QC, prosecuting, asked her: 'Why didn't you tell them? 'If you were worried about her taking cannabis, why not say to paramedics, 'I'm worried she might have got hold of some cannabis'?' Smith replied: 'The paramedics were in my house, on top of my daughter, injecting her with drugs, and trying to save her life - there wasn't a conversation.' A quantity of cannabis worth 30 was found at the flat inside a Tommee Tippee plastic child's cup which Smith has already told jurors had never been used to feed her daughter because it was broken. She said she did not immediately tell police about the drugs in the flat adding: 'I didn't want people to look on me like I was a bad mother, it was illegal, I'm not telling the police it's in the house.' Ayeeshia, who was known to social services throughout her short life, was rushed to Burton's Queen's Hospital but later died. She had suffered a cardiac arrest, triggered by a laceration to her heart, which prosecutors say was caused by a foot stamp. On April 17 2014, days before the girl's death, two social workers visited at Smith's flat and tried to carry out an on-the-spot drugs test after smelling cannabis, but the young mother refused to comply. Then, less a week before her daughter's collapse, a senior social worker visited Smith and described her as looking 'spaced out', although Ayeeshia was not at home at the time. The next day, the court heard, Smith sent a text to Rigby asking: 'What's the plan babe, don't touch the buds (cannabis) in the box, we've got like 10g left.' She then sent a text message to her mother over a 40 debt she was owed by her father, to which her parents replied: 'What's it for, weed?' On the day of her daughter's death, Smith texted her father saying: 'Right, I'm going to get the f****** bus down, if you're not there, I'll blow your door off.' Mr Hotten asked her about these text messages to her father. He said: 'This was angry Kathryn, wasn't it? On the day somebody killed your daughter in anger.' She replied: 'Nobody was angry on that day, or the day before that, nobody was being angry that day.' Mr Hotten later asked her: 'So you spent 30 on cannabis from the benefits you were receiving?' Smith replied: 'My money. My income support.' It emerged in court that Smith continued to claim that benefit for six months after her daughter's death because she did not want to have to tell the welfare office her child was dead. This is the moment the lying mother of Ayeeshia Jane Smith called 999 to say her child had stopped breathing in an accident - minutes after she murdered her by stamping on her tiny chest. Kathryn Smith, 23, killed her 21-month-old daughter while at home in Burton, Staffordshire, with her partner, Matthew Rigby, 22, who was convicted of allowing or causing her death. Audio of Smith's 999 call reveals how the killer claimed Ayeeshia had a seizure and when the operator asked if she is breathing she said: 'No there's nothing, she's gone'. In fact the mother had beaten her until she resembled a 'car crash victim' and the toddler had a torn heart, a partially severed tongue, shattered ribs and was missing tufts of hair when she died. The little girl, who was known as AJ, was heard screaming 'stop mummy, stop daddy' before she was murdered on May 1 2014. Her cannabis addict mother kept drugs bought with her benefits in Ayeeshia's Tommee Tippee drinking cup, smoked the drug throughout her pregnancy and was high when she beat Ayeeshia, MailOnline can reveal. New pictures published today also reveal how the 21-month-old suffered a string of injuries to her face and body, including a bleed on her brain inflicted four months before she died. Innocent: New pictures of Ayeeshia taken before her death show how she was injured frequently in her short life, here face was gashed in the months before she was murdered by her cruel mother Kathryn Smith Abuse: This is the Tommee Tippee cup belonging to Ayeeshia, used by her mother to store her cannabis (pictured), which she paid for using her benefits Mugshots: Smith, left in custody, faces life in prison while Rigby, right, also faces a long sentence Smith wept uncontrollably in the dock, dabbing away the tears after the jury convicted her of murder and child cruelty this afternoon. Heartbroken: Ayeeshia's biological father, Ricky Booth leaving Birmingham Crown Court today after his ex was found guilty of murder Rigby, who had previous convictions for violence, was today found guilty of allowing or causing the death of a child but cleared of murder and child cruelty. When the jury cleared Rigby of murder, he mouthed 'thank you' but broke down in tears when he realised they had found him guilty on the lesser charge. Both have been remanded in custody until Monday, when they will be sentenced, and Smith faces life in prison while Rigby faces a long jail term. Social workers missed a string of chances to put toddler Ayeeshia into care before she died and even ignored her mother's own pleas to take her child away. The trial of Ayeeshia Jane Smith's killers Kathryn Smith, 23, and her boyfriend Matthew Rigby, 22, also revealed the authorities placed her with a foster family only to give her back to her 'volatile' mother. Kathryn Smith even told social workers to 'take Ayeeshia away because I'm a c**p mother' and would spend her benefits on cannabis rather than feeding her daughter. Ayeesha would sometimes go up to a week at a time without eating and only had crisps and small amount of chocolate biscuit in her stomach when she died. Smith would instead spend her benefits on feeding her cannabis habit and when asked in court whether this was cruel she said: 'My money - my income support'. In case echoing the tragic death of Baby P, NHS doctors also failed to spot a 'concerning' pattern of historic injuries pointing to serious physical abuse in the months before she died. Social workers also saw drug use, violence and child neglect at the home where the toddler lived but mother and daughter were kept together until she died in May 2014. Despite blaming each other for Ayeeshia's murder Smith continued to share a bed with Rigby until their trial and even gave him a winged locket containing her dead daughter's ashes. In the dock: Kathryn Smith, 23, has been found guilty of murdering her 21-month old daughters Ayeeshia Jane. Her partner Matthew Rigby, 22, was today found guilty of allowing her death Ayeeshia was almost put into care from birth because it was feared she would be neglected by her troubled mother but instead was left to suffer a chaotic and violent home-life before she died. Matthew Rigby, who she called 'daddy', even threatened to burn their flat down with the family inside a month before he helped kill the toddler but she remained at home in Burton-on-Trent. One neighbour who knew Ayeeshia and her mother, who did not want to be named, told MailOnline: 'It's so sad to think what she went through, especially as she was too young to speak out or get help. 'It's disgusting to think social services gave her back to her mum'. Derbyshire County Council has carried out a serious case review into whether more could have been done to protect Ayeeshia. It will be published later this month. During Smith and Rigby's month-long trial it was revealed that Ayeeshia was not taken into care a second time despite: Her mother Kathryn Smith repeatedly asked social workers to 'just take her away because I'm a c**p mum' Toddler suffered cuts to her face and body, a bleed on the brain and her hair was missing in the months before she died Ayeeshia's killer Matthew Rigby said he 'hated' her and threatened to torch the house and set fire to her cot, which was brought to the attention of police. He was banned from seeing the family by the authorities but continued to visit Social workers said that her mother appeared 'spaced out' on drugs and the house smelt of cannabis. Kathryn Smith also refused to take drugs tests and would later admit spending 30 of her 52-a-week benefits on cannabis Ayeeshia had developmental problems and was malnourished. When put with a foster family she learned to eat solid food, said her first words, and grew to trust adults and put on weight. Four months later she was given back to her mother and regressed but stayed with her mother until she died The couple's former neighbour Tracey Roberts gave evidence that she heard a child's voice screaming 'stop mummy, stop daddy' just days before young Ayeeshia's death Toddler suffered regular suspicious injuries - including a hospital visit for a 'non-accidental' brain injury just four months before she died that has been compared to those found in 'car crash victims' A leading children's charity has blasted social services for missing opportunities to save Ayeeshia saying the failures had chilling echoes of the Baby P scandal. Peter Connolly died in August 2007, after suffering more than 50 injuries in just eight months, during which he was repeatedly seen by NHS staff and Haringey Children's Services - the same local authority that failed Victoria Climbie. Last picture: This is Smith and Rigby pushing tragic Ayeeshia in her buggy in the hours before the toddler died Catalogue: Ayeeshia's biological father Ricky too pictures of his child's injuries to her cheek, left, and chin, right, sustained while living with her cruel mother A picture taken at Derby Hospital showing an injury to Ayeeshia's finger in January 2014 - doctors missed a string of non accidental injuries, the court heard Claude Knights, CEO of Kidscape, said of Ayeeshia's case: 'It is extremely depressing to discover that one more vulnerable infant well known to children's services suffered fatal non-accidental injuries while she was subject to a child protection order. 'This reminds us of the catastrophic death of Baby P and a number of similar cases which were followed by serious case reviews and the seminal Lord Laming report published in 2009. 'Ayeeshia's tragic and avoidable death leads us to ask if anything at all has been learned from the recommendations in these costly reports. 'Lord Laming made a plea for a more joined-up multi-agency approach, more robust questioning and monitoring of parents known to pose a threat to their children, as well as less hesitation to remove a child from a patently abusive and dangerous situation. 'Little Ayeeshia's horrific and tragic death is a stark reminder that despite robust knowledge of what needs to be done to protect children, consistent implementation of vital recommendations has not been achieved. 'There is certainly an urgent need to ensure that children's services, police and health organisations have protected budgets for the staffing and training of child protection units. 'Our society cannot stand by and allow such brutal destruction of innocent young lives.' Tragic Ayeeshia's mother and stepfather were caught EMBRACING halfway through their trial over the toddler's horrific death Child killers Kathryn Smith and Matthew Rigby were caught in an embrace midway through their trial, it can now be revealed. The couples clinch was caught on CCTV and witnessed by security staff, who reported it to the judge. Their bail conditions stated they should have no contact with each other and the pair had claimed they were no longer an item. However their trial heard that Smith and were two peas from the same pod who sought to protect each other by lying. Kathryn Smith, 23, and former partner Matthew Rigby, 22, outside Birmingham Crown Court. The pair were seen embracing during their trial which was a breach of their bail conditions They thrived on the turbulence of their violent, drug-fuelled relationship, the prosecution claimed. The couple, who met at school, loved the breaking up and the making up and had a common interest in smoking really large quantities of cannabis the jury was told. They smoked the drug three of four times a week and would row when they ran out. But they stayed together even after Ayeeshia died and were in a relationship right up until the start of the trial. They claimed to have then split up but at the start of the trial Smith presented Rigby with a locket containing Ayeeshia's ashes. Judge Geraldine Andrews demanded an explanation from the couples barristers when she was made aware of the embrace in a room just off the dock on Tuesday. Rigbys barrister claimed he was distressed and crying and Smiths hug was a natural, human response. Judge Andrews said the pair were on their last warning over their behaviour but allowed the trial to continue. The couple first met at school in south Derbyshire but lost contact. They started seeing each other again in the summer of 2013 after being reintroduced by a mutual friend Naomi Pantelle, 20, in Swadlincote. Miss Pantelle, 20, who had also dated Rigby, said: A relationship formed very, very quickly and they moved in together after a couple of days. But that relationship was volatile. Smith called the police on at least two occasions about Rigby. Social services wanted Smith to sign a contract agreeing to stop seeing Rigby but she refused. In March 2014, the couple moved into the two-bed maisonette in Britannia Drive, Stretton where Ayeeshia died. EXCLUSIVE: Ayeeshia scavenged in bins for food while her mother smoked cannabis reveals her godmother as new footage shows the tragic toddler as a happy four-month-old Tragic Ayeeshia Jane Smith would scavenge for food in bins after being starved by a cannabis-addict mother who was more interested in scoring drugs than her own child's funeral, the toddler's godmother has told MailOnline. Esta Barrett, 25, said she was glad Kathryn Smith was convicted and that she hopes 'she gets what's coming to her'. She added that she would like to see Smith be rehabilitated in prison. As Smith was found guilty of murdering Ayeeshia and Rigby guilty of allowing or causing her death today, new footage has emerged of the tragic child as a baby. Ayeeshia is shown gurgling happily while chewing on a mobile phone on her godmother Esta's lap when she was four-months-old. Almost 18 months later her mother beat her until she resembled a 'car crash victim' and she had a torn heart, a partially severed tongue and was missing tufts of hair when she died. The little girl was heard screaming 'stop mummy, stop daddy' before she was murdered on May 1 2014. Ayeeshia's godmother first met Smith when she was four months pregnant and saw first hand how the child was neglected and abused by her mother during her short life. She also revealed that her goddaughter, known as AJ, would scream in fear when handed to her tormentor Rigby, describing it as being like watching a 'horror film'. Esta believes Ayeeshia should have been in care before she died but every time social services threatened to take her away Smith would 'plead to get her back because she was a very good liar'. In an extraordinary interview with MailOnline Ayeeshia's godmother reveals: Rebuke: Ayeeshia Jane Smith's godmother Esta Barrett, pictured right with fiancee Elliott, has revealed how the girl's mother Kathryn Smith neglected the child under the noses of social services Kathryn Smith sent 'cold' Facebook message to friends saying simply: 'AJ has passed away' Smith was back in touch around time of the funeral to ask where to buy drugs - with no mention of her child Malnourished child would scramble for food in the bin and was dropped 'like a brick' by her mother Ayeeshia would scream uncontrollably like something in a 'horror film' when handed to Rigby, who is guilty of causing or allowing the girl's death Cruel mother smoked cannabis throughout her pregnancy - and would spend her benefits on drugs rather than food for her daughter Miss Barrett said that her former friend was constantly stoned throughout her pregnancy and would regularly see her smoking joints in front of the baby. And after the toddler died her mother sent her a 'cold' Facebook message saying: 'AJ has passed away' before later asking if she could help her buy cannabis with no more mention of Ayeeshia's death. But the reality was that Smith did not want her and would let her starve to spend her benefits on cannabis and would ignore Ayeeshia to concentrate on a string of affairs with men and women. Miss Barrett, who is engaged to long-term partner Elliott, told MailOnline: 'She was just a bad mum. She was more interested in her own love life. 'AJ should have been taken in by social services but instead they were taken in by Kat. I just hope that now justice has caught up with her.' She only found out about AJ's violent death in a 'cold' Facebook message. She said: 'I checked Facebook and there was a message from Kat saying, 'AJ passed away last night x'. She'd sent it four times in a row. Happier times: Ayeesha chews on a phone as a four-month-old in unseen footage given to MailOnline Close: A happy Ayesha kicks on the floor of her godmother's home when she was just four months old 'It was cold. The next message I got from her a few weeks later was asking if I knew anyone who had weed. There was no mention of AJ. 'We are still distraught about it now. AJ was like a daughter but when AJ died Kat seemed to be more interested in buying new clothes and wigs. She arranged a cremation very quickly. We were invited but too distraught to go'. It was the spring of 2012 that Kat Smith moved into the same block of flats on the outskirts of Swadlincote, Derbyshire as Esta Barrett. Miss Barrett, then 22, felt sympathy for Kat who was 19, four months pregnant and on her own. Her previous address had been her father's garage and that social services had arranged the move. 'Other girls who lived in the same block of flats warned me that she was a bad egg and had a bad temper but because I trust people I just saw a young pregnant woman moving in on her own and I wanted to help her.' If anyone needed support, Kat Smith it seemed, was that person. 'She had just shaved her hair off having a number one crew cut,' recalled Miss Barrett, 25. 'She said it was the stress of moving and splitting up from the baby's father. 'She wasn't too bad when she was pregnant but after the baby was born it was a different story.' When that child finally came in the shape of Ayeeshia, Kat's hair had started to grow back and Ricky was in her past. Rigby was today found guilty of allowing or causing the death of Ayeeshia but cleared of murder and child cruelty So too, it seemed, was her desperation to have children. Her father, Richard Smith, was a man with a good reputation locally. He and his wife Jane had adopted both of their children Kat and James, as tots but Mr Smith had suffered a breakdown after his wife, Jane, had left him and moved south a couple of years before Ayeeshia's birth. Miss Barrett would later witness their relationship at first hand. 'Richard Smith is an unbelievably lovely man,' said Miss Barrett. 'He is very quiet and placid but he and Kat never got on. She would be incredibly rude to him and he appeared to be nervous in her company.' As for Ricky Booth, the baby's teenage father, Miss Barrett said that they had been together for about a year before they split up during the pregnancy. Neglect: Ayeeshia would scramble for food in the bin of the family home and was thin and muted in the months before she died 'He was very young and not looking to have children. He told me that Kat was so desperate for a child that she was poking holes in the condoms.' When the baby was born her boyfriend was Brad but he was quickly replaced by Josh who turned out to be violent. Ayeeshia's godmother said: 'She appeared to have a lot of different partners girls as well as boys, and on one occasion she claimed to have been raped but nothing came of it and others suspected it was to explain away an STI. KAT WOULD DUMP AYEESHIA TO SMOKE WEED AND MEET BOYS Esta Barrett has revealed that Ayeeshia's mother Kathryn was completely ill-equipped to care for a child she didn't really want in her life. Smith would often leave the baby at her home after turning up unannounced - or call in the middle of the night to say she couldn't cope. Miss Barrett said: 'For over six months, I looked after that little girl on and off. To begin with Kat would leave AJ, as we all called her, with me when she went to her hairdressing course at Burton College but then it became whenever she wanted to go out be it to have a guy round or buy some weed. 'A lot of the time she was dropped off with no food or nappies, occasionally there was some milk but it didn't last long. 'At that time we did not have any spare money and our flat was not really suitable for a baby due to mould problems but Kat didn't care. 'I knew that little girl so well that I could recognise her cries and I distinctly remember going round there when she was about six months and AJ was giving her hungry cry and Kat was just cursing her for making so much noise. 'She would just bring AJ round and see, 'She won't sleep' and just leave her or sometimes she would ring me in the middle of the night and say that AJ wasn't sleeping and could I help.' Miss Barrett's fiance, Elliott Callard, said: 'At that time we were only getting weekends together and they were all taken up with AJ. I told her that she shouldn't allow Kat to use her like she was.' Advertisement 'There were a lot of violent incidents with Josh. Their door had a hole through it after one of their rows and there was a lot of smashed glass on another occasion.' With such a hectic social schedule it is perhaps little wonder that baby Ayeeshia quickly became a burden. 'Kat wasn't too bad when she was pregnant. She would smoke a lot of weed and her flat would stink of the stuff but compared to what she became after the birth she was alright. 'She just didn't appear to be too interested. Miss Barrett recalls two occasions when social services became involved and there was the threat of AJ being taken into care. 'She wasn't growing properly,' said Miss Barrett, 'and something happened with social services in February 2013 and Kat had to plead to get her back. She was a very good liar. 'Social services had been involved before because it was they who had arranged for her to move from her dad's garage into the flats when she was pregnant and they were involved again I believe in the May of 2013. It may have been connected to Josh, who was a violent partner.' Shortly afterwards, Miss Barrett and fiance Elliott Callard moved to a new address but they kept some contact with Kat for AJ's sake and went to visit about three months before the little girl died. That visit haunts them to this day. 'AJ was about 18 months,' recalled Miss Barrett, 'but she seemed very different to the bright little baby I'd known before. 'I can tell you she was a really bright little thing. When she was just a few months old she could clap along with me but when we saw her aged one and a half she just seemed a lot duller and quieter than before. 'On the afternoon we went round Kat was living with Matthew Rigby and we were in the kitchen and Matthew was rolling a spliff on the counter while Kat was trying to feed AJ some sugar puffs. 'Then she picked up the little girl and passed him to Matthew. Instantly she started this really terrible screaming. It was like a horror film. 'Matthew tried to calm her for a few seconds then handed her back to Kat saying he couldn't deal with it. 'Earlier I had seen AJ picking food out of the rubbish bin and I told Kat who just told her off. But why would any child take food from the bin if they weren't hungry? 'We don't know what to make of Matthew. He seemed alright and from what we've heard he is not a bad lad but hearing AJ's scream that day meant we could never fully trust him. 'Kat though had a proper nasty temper on her. She was always screaming at people. I heard the midwife get it from her one day and I overheard reference to her having attacked another girl with a baseball bat. 'I know she was very close to her adopted mother but she had also wanted to find her biological mother but this hadn't gone well'. Social services missed vital chances to save tragic Ayeeshia before she was stamped to death at 21 months by her self-confessed 'c**p mother' and stepfather THE MISSED CHANCES TO HELP AYEESHIA JANE SMITH July 15, 2012 - Ayeeshia Jane Smith born to Kathryn Smith and biological father Ricky Booth but is allowed to go home despite fears the child would suffer 'neglect'. February 20, 2013 - Local authority keeps Ayeeshia on same safeguarding plan because of domestic violence at the family home. March\April 2013 - Further reports of domestic violence in Smith's relationship with Joshua Collier made to authorities. May 16, 2013 - Smith signs supervision order at court agreeing to move away with Ayeeshia to her mother's home in Buckinghamshire but within three weeks Smith breaches order by returning and Ayeeshia is taken into care. October 8, 2013 - Ayeeshia, who has said her first words and has put on weight, leaves foster care and returns to live with Smith. November 2013 - Smith begins relationship with Matthew Rigby January 7, 2014 - Ayeeshia taken to hospital with cut to bottom left lip and a bruise to the little finger. Doctors find a bald patch on the back of her head and diagnose child with alopecia. February 3, 2014 - Ayeeshia taken to hospital after suffering bleed on the brain caused by 'non-accidental' head injury. Doctors diagnosed her with a febrile convulsion, but an expert medical witness told the court this was unlikely and that medical tests for child abuse were not carried out. March 29, 2014 - Ayeeshia taken to hospital with laceration to inside of her lower lip. Social workers note Ayeeshia's weight falls 10kg in six weeks. April 1, 2014 - Social worker visits Smith at home where she claims she is not in a relationship with Rigby. Smith is warned that he poses a danger to her child. April 4, 2014 - Smith reports Rigby to police following domestic disturbance. He said he would burn down the house, the child's cot and plant cocaine to get Ayeeshia taken into care. April 24, 2014 - Doctors treat child for bruise to the nose, parents say she hurt herself falling from her potty. May 1, 2014 - Ambulance crews called to Britannia Way, Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, after Ayeeshia collapses. She dies later in hospital from a cardiac arrest. Medical experts say she was beaten and died. Advertisement Ayeeshia Jane Smith was born on July 15 2012 - but social services had grave concerns even a month before she was born that she would be neglected by her 'volatile' mother Kathryn. But the baby was allowed home on a child protection plan. This meant that at least three Derbyshire County Council social workers, a domestic abuse support officer and an NHS health visitor visited her throughout her short life. This arrangement continued in the 21 months until she was beaten to death - and despite drug use, a series of violent relationships and serious neglect she stayed with her mother Kathryn for most of her life. She was put in care in May 2013 but was returned to her her mother in the October. Denise Leavesley was Smith's social worker between June 2012 and May 2013 - and revealed that the mother had even asked them to take her into care. During the trial Mrs Leavesley revealed: 'She said I should just take the baby now'. Elizabeth Nugent, a support worker with Derbyshire Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse Service, visited Smith in early 2013 - and on arrival heard a loud bang and a baby's cries coming from the her flat. Mrs Nugent told the court: 'There was a clear smell of cannabis. I smelled cannabis outside the flat and as soon as Kat opened the door it was apparent someone had been smoking it. 'AJ was in her arms crying and shaking. Kat said she fell off the bed. I only saw the child's face once, Kat kept it covered up. 'The child's breath was quite quick and erratic. Her hair was quite knotted and it clung to her head. She looked pale and her eyes were sunken. 'Afterwards I made a safeguarding referral to social services because I was concerned for the child.' In April 2013 health visitor Sarah Shaw explained that during a home visit she saw her then boyfriend had punched the front door, before verbally abusing the young mother 'and kicking her in her stomach'. At the time Smith was seeing a man called Joshua Collier, about whom social workers had raised concerns in the past. Derbyshire social services were concerned enough about the situation that they kept Ayeeshia on a safeguarding plan under the 'emotional abuse' category - but Ayeeshia remained at home. Ms Shaw said that she had tried to explain the risk to Ayeeshia from violent relationships. Describing the conversation she said: 'She got angry, swearing and stating to us to 'just take AJ away' because that is what we were going to do anyway and 'because I am such a c*** mother'.' A month later, when Ayeeshia was 11 months old, she was taken into care after her mother had refused to stay away from her violent partner. She thrived, learned to eat solid foods, said her first words and began to move on her own. She also gained trust in adults. But four months later she returned home - just seven months before her death on May 1, 2014. Home: Ayeeshia's small bed photographed after her death with no mattress and toys piled next to it Squallor: Smith and Rigby's bed with a drug filled Tommee Tippee cup and an ashtray lying on the floor next to it Horrifying: A post mortem examination revealed how the toddler had injuries all over her body - and some were up to four months old Tragedy: Ayeeshia's hair also fell out - experts told the trial that it may have been caused by stress or being pulled out Expert witness doctor Kathryn Ward said: 'She would only take milk from a bottle and had been reluctant to take solids. DOCTORS FAILED TO SPOT AYEESHIA'S NON-ACCIDENTAL INJURIES BEFORE HER DEATH Life on drugs: Kathryn Smith smoked drugs at home throughout Ayeeshia's tragic life including on the day she died in May 2014, The toddler was rushed to hospital with a 'non-accidental' head injury three months before she died, it emerged during the trial. Ayeeshia also saw a GP in January 2014 because of her alopecia, probably caused by 'trauma' at home or having her hair torn out, the medical expert said. Describing the 'non-accidental' injury Dr Ward told the jury at Birmingham Crown Court: 'It's well documented that child abuse may present in a child that has previously been well that suddenly collapses with an apparent life-threatening event. 'Signs of abusive head injury include a recurrence of life-threatening events, vomiting, and a call by the child's carer to the emergency services. These are red flags to doctors. 'There is no evidence this possibility (child abuse) was considered on February 3 (by doctors). It's probable that the event on February 3 was associated with non-accidental head injury.' Ayeeshia's alopecia, which was reported to doctors on January 7, 2014, could have been the result of 'trauma' caused by hair pulling, the court heard. Dr Ward said: 'Many stresses can cause children to have areas of hair loss, though it is uncommon in children younger than two. 'Children can pull out their own hair or someone else can pull on their hair. One of the problems in assessing the cause was by the time dermatologists saw Ayeeshia the hair was growing back. 'In my opinion the most likely cause would have been a viral infection or possible traumatic hair loss.' The couple's former neighbour Tracey Roberts gave evidence in which she claimed to have heard a child's voice screaming 'stop mummy, stop daddy!' just days before young Ayeeshia's tragic death. Mrs Roberts also said that she regularly heard Smith and Rigby rowing. On the day she died, Smith and Rigby claimed they had been trying to get her to use her potty after a 'perfect' outing to see the child's grandparents. The toddler died from a cardiac arrest triggered by a laceration to the heart which 'could have been the result of stamping', the jury was told. The pathologist who conducted the post-mortem revealed her wounds were so severe they looked like those sustained in major road accidents. Advertisement 'She would wake every couple of hours in the night which was unusual seeing as she was nearly a year old at the time. She would take a couple of gulps of milk in the night then go back to sleep. 'She was wary of men though she had come to trust the foster carer's husband. 'She had an acceleration in growth velocity and was a more well-nourished looking child.' Ayeeshia was returned to Smith's care in October that year and shortly afterwards social services became aware of her dating a new man, 22-year-old Matthew Rigby - the man who would eventually help kill her. In January 2014, it emerged Smith lied to health visitor Sarah Shaw about the fact Rigby had damaged the front door of her flat after she claimed the couple had been locked out, initially blaming it on other residents. Social workers again discussed taking a toddler into care when it emerged the stepfather had reportedly threatened to torch the family flat, less than a month before the child died in May 2014. Senior social worker Stephen Crean, who was responsible for Ayeeshia's case, said: 'If concerns were escalating, which they appeared to be, then we will be initiating the process of care proceedings.' Only the day before the girl's death, a multi-agency risk assessment meeting involving police and social services took place in Tamworth, Staffordshire, to discuss Ayeeshia's welfare. It was decided to arrange for a domestic abuse support worker to visit Smith, according to Mr Crean. He then sent a text to Smith on the afternoon of April 30 2014, saying: 'Hi Kat, I would like to visit you and AJ tomorrow at 10am, is that ok?' Just over an hour after he sent that text, Ayeeshia had collapsed at her flat with fatal injuries. Earlier that month, Smith had refused to sign an agreement not to see Rigby, despite her having called police in the early hours of April 4 to report how he had threatened to burn the flat down. Mr Crean told the trial jury: 'The agreement was asking her to not let Mr Rigby in the flat because the concern was, according to the police, there was a threat to set fire to the flat, so the agreement was to not have any contact.' Expert witness Dr Kathryn Ward told their trial the toddler died in May 2014 because of 'punching, stamping or severe compression' and a 'concerning' pattern of injuries were not picked up on. The little girl also had a bruised neck as if she had been 'grasped and shaken' and suffered a 'blunt force trauma to the buttocks', she said. Dr Ward also told the jury that 'significant lacerations' to her tongue were probably caused by 'force of the jaw' clamping down when she was struck. A post-mortem examination also revealed the child had an old bleed on the brain and damage to her spine. The jury heard the chest injuries were as a result of a very heavy impact or impacts to the body which 'could have been as a result of stamping.' Crime scene: This is the Burton home where Ayesshia was beaten to death and where she suffered a series of suspicious injuries before she died Smith told the court: 'AJ got really upset, so I popped my head around the kitchen door, to see AJ in the bedroom and said to Matt 'just leave it she's not going to do it'. She added: 'As soon as I said 'leave it', AJ stood up and started clapping and smiling.' The little girl asked her mother for some juice, and as Smith left the child's bedroom to fill the bottle, she was aware of Rigby joining her in the kitchen. Smith, who was in floods of tears in the witness box, described what happened next, saying: 'I heard a gasp from AJ. Message: Stephen Crean, senior social worker for Derbyshire County Council, said in a report that Rigby had not posed a risk to Ayeeshia 'Me and Matt were in the kitchen and we looked at each other, so I knew he'd heard it. We went into her bedroom and she was just laying there. 'AJ was lay on her left-hand side, staring out the window and she looked all pale and her lips were blue and her mouth was bubbling.' The couple attempted to resuscitate the girl, with Smith dialling 999 within three minutes, but despite the best efforts of hospital doctors nothing could be done to save the girl. Yet last week Matthew Rigby gave a different account in the witness box and pointed the finger of blame squarely at the little girl's mother, telling a crown court jury it 'must have been' her. Matthew Rigby denied murdering Ayeeshia Jane Smith in a 'moment of explosive temper' and changing his account to the jury at Birmingham Crown Court. Smith's barrister accused 22-year-old Rigby of having taken out frustrations with the couple's dysfunctional relationship on the defenseless little girl during an incident on May 1 2014. But Rigby told the jury: 'I didn't injure that girl.' Smith's barrister John Butterfield QC asked Rigby why he had changed his story. Originally, Rigby had told police a version of events which would make him the last person to have seen Ayeeshia before she collapsed with fatal injuries at the family's flat in Britannia Drive in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire. Rigby, who the jury heard has two convictions for assault including one in which he bit another man, told detectives he had seen Ayeeshia 'on the potty' in her room as Smith went to get some juice for the girl. However, he told the court that Smith had told him what to say the day before he sat down with the police, and he was never present while the child went to the toilet. Mr Butterfield asked: 'Then why on earth would you have said it if you hadn't seen it?' Rigby, a former casual warehouse worker at the Superdry depot in Burton, replied: 'At that point I didn't think there was any foul play with Ayeeshia.' Turning to the fatal collapse of Ayeeshia, Mr Butterfield said: 'According to you, you didn't assault AJ on May 1. 'If it isn't you, it must have been Kathryn?' Rigby replied: 'It must have been, yes.' The barrister then asked why Rigby had chosen to sleep in the same bed as Smith right up until the start of their trial, and why at the start of the hearing he had accepted a locket containing the dead girl's ashes from his former lover. Mr Butterfield asked: 'Why would you take a gift from someone you believed to be the killer? 'The only reason you would, is because you well knew in reality it was you who did it,' he added. Rigby replied: 'That's not the case.' YOUNG LIVES TRAGICALLY LOST AFTER FAILURES BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES Daniel Pelka Daniel, four, died in March 2012 after a sustained period of 'appalling cruelty' during which his mother Magdalena Luczak, 27, and stepfather Mariusz Krezolek, 34, of Coventry, starved him, force-fed him salt, tortured him and locked him in a tiny room. At the time he died he had been tortured for six months and weighed just 1st 9lb, the same as an 18-month-old child. A review following his death also found that chances to save Daniel, who had gained the attention of social services and police - who visted the home 26 times, had been missed, but did not blame any individual agency. Coventry City Council has come under heavy scrutiny ever since the murder, which shocked the nation after it emerged social workers, police and teachers had all failed to save him. Peter Connelly Widely known as Baby P, 17-month-old Peter Connelly, died in August 2007, after suffering more than 50 injuries in just eight months, during which he was repeatedly seen by NHS staff and Haringey Children's Services - the same local authority that failed Victoria Climbie. Prior to his death, Peter had been admitted to hospital with injuries, and on one occasion, just days before his death, injuries to Baby Peter's face and hands were missed by a social worker after the child was deliberately smeared with chocolate to hide them. Peter's mother Tracey Connelly, her boyfriend Steven Barker, and Barker's brother Jason Owen were all convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child, the mother having pleaded guilty to the charge. The former director of Haringey children's services, Sharon Shoesmith, was eventually fired on the orders of the then Children's Secretary Ed Balls. Victoria Climbie Abuse victim Victoria, eight, who lived in Haringey, north London, died in February 2000 after being beaten, starved and tortured by her great-aunt Marie Therese Kouao and Kouao's lover Carl Manning, were jailed for life for murder. Victoria was burned with cigarettes, often tied up and hit with bike chains, hammers and wires, and the abuse had been noted by the police, the social services department of four local authorities, including Haringey council, the NHS, and charity the NSPCC, as well as local churches. However, during the trial following her death a judge described the failure by all to properly investigate the case as 'blinding incompetence'. A public inquiry, headed by Lord Laming, also found there were numerous instances where Victoria could have been saved and a subsequent report made numerous recommendations related to child protection in England. Advertisement 'My money - my income support': Shameless mum Kathryn Smith spent 30 of her 52 weekly benefits on cannabis and was high on the day her daughter died TEXTS BETWEEN AYEESHIA'S 'KILLERS' REVEAL CHAOTIC LIFE TOGETHER Admission: Kathryn Smith said she was a 'c*** mother' and said her daughter should be taken away Kathryn Smith and Matthew Rigby claimed to have split up but spent nights in bed together up until their trial. Smith even gave him a locket containing Ayeeshia's ashes when they first appeared in court. Their trial heard about their chaotic relationship On not feeding Ayeeshia (AJ) Smith to Rigby: 'I just want the money I'm owed. AJ's hungry. I'm going to get the f***ing bus down. If you're not there I'll blow your down off. I'm doing the dog as well.' In a text to her mother, she said: 'AJ's sat in her room crying because she's been hungry and for over a week I've not been able to feed her.' On drugs Smith to Rigby: 'I just want you to be happy and you shout all the time. I can't help the fact you forgot to pick the weed up. You didn't mention anything to me. That wasn't my fault'. Days before she died Smith had also texted Rigby and the pair had discussed buying cannabis because they were 'running low' and only had 'like ten grams left'. The rows On November 22, 2013 Smith to Rigby: 'Why say I don't look after AJ (Ayesha Jane) when that's all I do? How deceitful to go behind my back and pull me and my daughter down. 'You've stabbed me in the back good and proper. I need answers, Matt.' Rigby replied: 'F*** off. That should say it all. Believe what the f*** you want. Stop the riffraff over the phone. Why can't you just leave me the f*** alone?' On January 2, 2014 Rigby to Smith: ''Please delete my number from your phone. Goodbye, Kat. Just leave me alone. Thanks for the wasted Christmas and New Year's.' Smith replied: 'Looks like me and AJ have been led if you're willing to walk away so easy over a pathetic comment. 'I was a joke and you stormed away kicking my door in. You've got to get over a joke. 'My reputation? What's that? Sitting in my flat smoking weed with you? Because that's all I ever do. I'm getting kicked out, so thanks'. The couple repeatedly fell out but remained together until after they allegedly murdered the toddler. Advertisement Kathryn Smith spent 30 of her 52-a-week benefits on cannabis and flew into rages if she went without the drug. When asked about spending money meant to be used to clothe and feed her child Ayeeshia she told her trial: 'My money. My income support'. It later emerged she continued to claim that benefit for six months after her daughter's death. The 23-year-old smoked drugs at home throughout Ayeeshia's tragic life including on the day she died in May 2014, the jury was told. Smith admitted she had been concerned her daughter had get hold of super-strong skunk cannabis she stored in her daughter's Tommee Tippee drinking beaker. Christopher Hotten QC, prosecuting, asked her: 'Why didn't you tell them? 'If you were worried about her taking cannabis, why not say to paramedics, 'I'm worried she might have got hold of some cannabis'?' Smith replied: 'The paramedics were in my house, on top of my daughter, injecting her with drugs, and trying to save her life - there wasn't a conversation.' A quantity of cannabis worth 30 was found at the flat inside a Tommee Tippee plastic child's cup which Smith has already told jurors had never been used to feed her daughter because it was broken. She said she did not immediately tell police about the drugs in the flat adding: 'I didn't want people to look on me like I was a bad mother, it was illegal, I'm not telling the police it's in the house.' Ayeeshia, who was known to social services throughout her short life, was rushed to Burton's Queen's Hospital but later died. She had suffered a cardiac arrest, triggered by a laceration to her heart, which prosecutors say was caused by a foot stamp. On April 17 2014, days before the girl's death, two social workers visited at Smith's flat and tried to carry out an on-the-spot drugs test after smelling cannabis, but the young mother refused to comply. Then, less a week before her daughter's collapse, a senior social worker visited Smith and described her as looking 'spaced out', although Ayeeshia was not at home at the time. The next day, the court heard, Smith sent a text to Rigby asking: 'What's the plan babe, don't touch the buds (cannabis) in the box, we've got like 10g left.' She then sent a text message to her mother over a 40 debt she was owed by her father, to which her parents replied: 'What's it for, weed?' On the day of her daughter's death, Smith texted her father saying: 'Right, I'm going to get the f****** bus down, if you're not there, I'll blow your door off.' Mr Hotten asked her about these text messages to her father. He said: 'This was angry Kathryn, wasn't it? On the day somebody killed your daughter in anger.' She replied: 'Nobody was angry on that day, or the day before that, nobody was being angry that day.' Mr Hotten later asked her: 'So you spent 30 on cannabis from the benefits you were receiving?' Smith replied: 'My money. My income support.' It emerged in court that Smith continued to claim that benefit for six months after her daughter's death because she did not want to have to tell the welfare office her child was dead. Gwinnett County police Cpl. Michele Pihera said that Ni-Shawn Moore was accidentally shot by a friend of his Police in a suburb north of Atlanta, Georgia, have determined that another child accidentally shot and injured a 6-year-old boy as he rode his bicycle. Gwinnett County police Cpl. Michele Pihera said in a news release Thursday that Ni-Shawn Moore was accidentally shot by a friend of his. The boy who shot Ni-Shawn is under the age of ten, WALB reported. The release said: 'After an extensive investigation, the lead detective has determined that the shooting was accidental and occurred between the victim and his friend (child). 'He hasn't yet determined if criminal charges will be filed due to the ages of the parties involved.' Neighbor Tyshawn Pettway told WALB: 'It makes you wonder what type of parenting is going on around here.' Police had said last month that someone approached the boy and shot him in the upper chest March 12 as he rode his bike during a neighborhood birthday party in the Lawrenceville area. Police had said the shooting took place in front of a Caboose Court address. Authorities said at the time: 'The resident said that she and other family and friends were in the backyard having a party. 'She did not know any information or details about the child being shot.' Ni-Shawn's family initially thought he had been hit by a BB, but doctors determined after he was taken to a hospital that he was struck by a .22-caliber bullet. Ni-Shawn was released from the hospital in mid-March. In the wake of the shooting, his grandmother Anita Harrington told KFOR: 'Youre having a little party out here for the children and children cant even be out here because somebody thats foolish is going to be shooting guns. 'Its just not right, we shouldn't have to live like this.' The USA faces 'economic tragedy' in its near future unless changes are made in public policy, Jamie Dimon, CEO of multinational banking and finance company JP Morgan Chase & Co, has announced in his latest annual letter. 'We have serious issues that we need to address,' he wrote, 'even the United States does not have a divine right to success.' And those issues, the letter says, lie in the hands of 'sanctimonious ideology' and 'scapegoating' by policymakers - just two of a number of jabs seemingly directed at the current presidential candidates. Warning: Jamie Dimon (pictured) warned in his annual letter from JP Morgan Chase, that an increasingly divisive political culture was putting the US at risk of 'economic tragedy' The final section of the 298-page document, titled 'Good Public Policy is Critically Important,' tackles the failures and successes of the US and other countries in what Dimon said is 'not a partisan way.' Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea all get a drubbing for taking 'ineffective actions in the name of the people,' but it's Detroit that's hit hardest. The Motor City is described as having been a 'train wreck in slow motion for 20 years' with 'unsustainable finances, corrupt government and a declining population that went from 2 million residents to just over 750,000.' JP Morgan, he says, is investing in the city because its Democratic mayor and Republican governor are working together, promising strengthened police, improved schools and rehabilitating neighborhoods - 'real things that actually matter and will help the people of Detroit.' He added: '[The governor and mayor] do not couch their agenda in sanctimonious ideology' - one of a series of remarks seemingly aimed at the US political class. Those swipes came again when he commented on his key concerns: 'long-term fiscal and tax issues (driven mostly by healthcare and Social Security costs, as well as complex and poorly designed corporate and individual taxes), immigration, education (especially in inner city schools) and the need for good, long-term infrastructure plans.' With a good five-to-ten years before the dangers of these issues are fully clear, he warned, the government risks being 'lulled into a false sense of security' - and getting caught up in 'bad politics' that seem like pointed remarks at both Republican and Democrat candidates. 'The problem is not that the U.S. economy wont be able to take care of its citizens,' he wrote, 'it is that taking away benefits, creating inter-generational warfare and scapegoating will make for very difficult and bad politics. This is a tragedy that we can see coming.' His letter closes with a list of do's and don'ts that reiterate the concerns made earlier, of an increasingly ideologically led, uncompromising and uncommunicative political culture. Don't 'treat every decision like it is binary - my way or your way' he warned, but instead take on board other opinions. And don't 'make straw men or scapegoats' to dismiss the opinions of others. Don't 'denigrate a whole class of people or society,' he wrote; don't equate 'perception with reality' or treat someone's comments as if they are complaints. Meanwhile, he said, do constantly analyze what is and isn't working, and come up with solutions for what does not; do listen to one another; and do collaborate and compromise. 'Collaborating and compromising. They are a necessity in a democracy. Also, you can compromise without violating your principles, but it is nearly impossible to compromise when you turn principles into ideology.' The parents of a former elite private school captain whose end of year speech went viral are seeking to have their younger daughter's expulsion struck from her record after an alleged bullying incident. In an updated statement of claim Ravenswood School for Girls' alum Sarah Haynes' father, Christopher, said his younger daughter, Charlotte, was unfairly kicked out of the Sydney school. It was also revealed in the document filed to the NSW Supreme Court, the incident took place between March 31 and April 2 during Term 1 last year while students were at a Year 8 camp on the New South Wales' Central Coast. Scroll down for video In an updated statement of claim Ravenswood School for Girls' alum Sarah Haynes' (left) father, Christopher, said his younger daughter, Charlotte (right), was unfairly kicked out of the school Mr Haynes and wife Robyn, whose elder daughter Sarah used her farewell speech to accuse Ravenswood of letting her family down and being 'financially motivated', are looking to have Charlotte's expulsion expunged from her record and calling on an independent review into the alleged bullying incident. The father made claims his daughter was accused of bullying, harassment and physical assault in a phone call he had with the school's deputy principal David Garner following the incident. Mr Haynes, who is seeking damages from the school, said the school official gave no further specific details of what happened or 'the specific conduct or behaviour of [Charlotte] which was complained of'. But lawyers for The Uniting Church in Australia Property Trust, which runs Ravenswood, said they did not know about the call and and Mr Garner was not authorised to act on its behalf. Sarah's mother, Robyn, is pictured leaving the NSW Supreme Court. The couple are seeking damages from the school, run by the Uniting Church, for Charlotte's expulsion over an alleged bullying incident Sarah made headlines in December last year after the outgoing school captain of Ravenswood School for Girls said she felt 'let down' by the school in her end-of-year speech (pictured) The statement of claim also said Charlotte had been treated unfairly as her punishment was 'out of proportion to the conduct alleged, given the ages of the girls involved' and 'the skylarking nature of the conduct'. It also went on to say the girl who was allegedly targeted was a 'willing' participant. The Haynes claim the school had 'no proper regard for the interests and well-being' of Charlotte, but instead acted to 'protect the interests and reputation of the school'. The family, who live in Roseville, said their daughter was not given a chance to refute the claims levelled against her. Mr Haynes is asking the Uniting Church to 'remove and destroy all records of the decision' and is seeking damages. He claims the family have suffered losses - such as the cost of moving Charlotte to another school and counselling costs for their daughter and siblings. Charlotte's older sister, Sarah, made headlines in December last year after she delivered a scathing farewell speech that was filmed and shared across the Internet. In the video, she made criticisms that the school was run like a business. Later it emerged, Sarah's sister, Charlotte, had been expelled from Ravenswood following an alleged bullying incident. A fellow student was allegedly stripped naked and stuffed into a cupboard, resulting in the expulsion of two students and the suspension of two others. Above is Ravenswood School for Girls A fellow student was allegedly stripped naked and stuffed into a cupboard, resulting in the expulsion of two students and the suspension of two others, 9News reported. Charlotte had left the school midway through last year, according to Sarah's 13-minute speech. At the time of her speech, Sarah had been widely praised on social media for questioning her school's values. She said staff members would change her speeches to bring them in line with the elite image of the school. 'Everything I wrote had to be censored by those higher up than me. I was never trusted to say the right thing,' the former school captain said. Sarah said she wrote a speech for an open day at the beginning of 2015 and was told to take out a line saying the school was not perfect. 'I sent this to those in charge of me and received a reply: "Great speech but change the ending. No parent wants to hear that the school isn't perfect",' she said. 'If the school can't admit it isn't perfect how can they expect adolescent girls to realise perfection is unattainable? 'I am far from the model student. I have been kicked out of geography class, I've had a detention and I've said things that have hurt people. A prominent moderate Muslim leader has raised concerns that a prayer room at a Sydney university may be being used to radicalise students. Imam Afroz Ali visited the Islamic prayer room in the University of Technology in Sydney this week after being told of a message instructing students to look for extremist preachers on YouTube. He took a photograph of a whiteboard which had the names of a number of radical Islamic preachers including Anwar al-Awlaki - a senior Al Qadea recruiter. A Muslim leader has raised concerns after a whiteboard at the Islamic prayer rooms outside a Sydney university which listed names of extremist preachers The message was left outside the Islamic prayer rooms at the University of Technology Sydney 'This is the seed towards radicalisation, particularly if people get this information out of a whiteboard or leaflet and then go and watch the YouTube clips,' Imam Afroz told The Australian. 'If people get answers to their questions about religiosity from these lectures, theyll be shaped by that, and so much radicalisation has been occurring through these YouTube or social media platforms.' The message left on the whiteboard at the Islamic prayer rooms directed students to a YouTube series called 'Light Revelations'. Radical sheiks Abdullah Faisal, Anwar al-Awlaki and Ahmad Musa Jibril are all listed in the message. Ahmad Musa Jibril, and Islamic scholar based in Michigan, was mentioned on the white board As were Islamic extremists Abdullah Faisal (left) and Anwar al-Awlaki (right Anwar al-Awlaki was a senior Al Qaeda recruiter who used social media to radicalise youth before he was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011, the first American to be killed by a U.S. attack. Abdullah Faisal is a Sunni Muslim clerk who was jailed for preaching in the United Kingdom, urging people to murder Jews, Hindus, Christians, and Americans. Meantime Ahmad Musa Jibril is an Islamic scholar based in Michigan who preaches in YouTube videos as part of 'classes' for his 'students'. Imam Afroz - who visited the uni when concerned students contacted him - said he wanted to make sure UTS was aware of the message Imam Afroz - who runs the al-Ghazzali Centre in Riverwood, said he went to UTS to try and get an idea about who was behind the messages left, as he understands a similar incident occurred earlier in the year. 'What Im trying to do first and foremost is get to the bottom of whos doing it, but I also want to make sure the university knows about this,' he told The Australian. UTS Strategic Communications deputy director Greg Welsh told the publication he had not been aware of the messages but said the university had a 'good relationship' with the Muslim society. The rejection by Dutch voters of an EU trade deal with Ukraine is proof anti-Brussels sentiment is spreading across the bloc, Eurosceptics claimed last night. Brexit campaigners said the result proved the UK was not alone and warned people had had enough of a remote self-serving bureaucracy. The final outcome of Hollands advisory referendum showed a No vote of 61 per cent against the deal, on a turnout of 32 per cent. Scroll down for video Far right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, pictured, said the No Vote was 'the start of the end of the EU' The poll was hailed as a humiliating rejection of an expansionist EU and a boost for Eurosceptics across the continent. David Cameron said he hoped the rejection by Dutch voters would not affect the outcome of Britains referendum on EU membership. But hailing the victory as a nail in the EUs coffin, far-Right Dutch MP Geert Wilders said the result could help secure a vote for Brexit, and warned it could be the start of the end of the European Union as we know it. Daniel Hannan MEP, of Vote Leave, said it was a boost for the Out campaign, on the back of other votes, including in Greece and Denmark. In every recent referendum people have voted against Brussels, he said. People have had enough of a remote self-serving bureaucracy. The reality is, Europe isnt working. I dont think this vote was really, for most people, about the intricacies of the Ukraine agreement. On almost every metric the European Union has failed to deliver what it promised which was greater prosperity and greater national cohesion. He said the Dutch poll would help Brexit in the sense that we are not alone. Dutch election workers, pictured, said 61 per cent of those who cast their ballot rejected the trade deal Mr Hannan told Newsnight: Almost every referendum now It goes against closer European integration. This is not some British eccentricity. The treaty had been designed to strengthen economic and political ties between Ukraine and the EU. But pundits said the vote in Holland triggered by Eurosceptic campaigners was really a test on the EU itself. It followed Denmarks rejection of EU rules on cross-border policing last December, and Greeces referendum last July which was effectively a wider protest against the Union. Michiel van Hulten, of the Dutch referendums Yes campaign, was asked if he agreed that every time voters are given the chance to decide on anything about the EU, they vote against it. He replied: Absolutely. Theres a big problem for Brussels, for the EU in terms of how we communicate with citizens on European issues. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker had warned that a No vote would open the door to a great continental crisis. Last night Mr Junckers spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, said the president was sad, adding: He will continue to do battle for Europe if he would be left the only one to do it, he would do so. Talking to students during a visit to Exeter, the Prime Minister insisted the Dutch poll was separate from Britains EU referendum debate. Mr Cameron said: I hope it wont affect our results of our referendum because it is a very different issue. But in a sign of the Prime Ministers fears about the impact of the result in Holland, he said he had spoken to close ally Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, in a phone call on Wednesday night. He told students: I think its very important the Dutch government stops and thinks and looks at that referendum and doesnt try to dismiss it and I know they wont do that. Nigel Farage claimed the referendum result revealed Dutch voters discontent with the EU. During a visit to Edinburgh to launch Ukips Holyrood election manifesto, the party leader said: In reality the voters who turned out yesterday were effectively delivering a litmus test on how the Dutch feel about their current relationship with the European Union. Leave.EU spokesman Brian Monteith said: This humiliating rejection of the Ukraine agreement demonstrates that people dont have to support the EU and its expansionist agenda to feel European. Nobody could accuse the Dutch of not being good Europeans but they have no willingness to open their borders to more migrants and pick up the tab for Ukraines problems, just like most UK voters. This result gives the British people the signal that it is moderate and normal to reject the EU and stand up for whats in our countrys best interests. British airlines could be stopped from flying between cities on the continent if the UK leaves the EU, Michael Fallon claimed yesterday. Brexit would mean UK-based airlines such as EasyJet would not be able to operate freely between the remaining member states, he said. But the Defence Secretarys claims were dismissed by the Vote Leave campaign as ignorant. Scroll down for video Consequences: British airlines could be stopped from flying between cities on the continent if the UK leaves the EU, according to Defence Secretary Michael Fallon (pictured) Willie Walsh, the chief executive of International Airlines Group (IAG) which includes British Airways, has previously said a Brexit vote would not have any material impact on airlines. IAG said in a statement: Weve undertaken a risk assessment and, at this stage, have concluded that should Britain vote to leave the EU, this will not have a significant impact on our business. Mr Fallon once a Eurosceptic said British airlines such as EasyJet are able to fly from, say, Italy to Germany only because the UK is part of the EU. He also warned that exporting goods such as Land Rover cars to Europe could be more difficult if Britain voted to leave. Mr Fallon said: EasyJet have made it very clear they would be in difficulty if we had to leave the EU. We are inside a single market in which goods and services can be freely traded, in which airlines and other companies can operate freely and the moment you go outside that you lose that access. Youd have to renegotiate all those rights and arrangements thereafter. Labour MP Graham Stringer said Mr Fallons claims were wrong: It clearly wouldnt have any impact whatsoever. 'Planes would be able to fly as they are now as there is an open-fly policy. The comments are ignorant and they are certainly part of the project to create problems where there are no problems. The International Airlines Group (IAG) has said a Brexit vote would not have any material impact on airlines such as the UK-based EasyJet The Leave camp has pointed to Canada as an example of a country that has successfully struck a trade deal with the EU without being a member. But Mr Fallon said that while Canadian airlines may operate routes from Canada to Europe, they are not allowed to operate flights within Europe. He told LBC radio: It only applies to those airlines that are based inside the EU, if we left you would have all this uncertainty. The Governments controversial pro-EU leaflet claims the EU has made travel to Europe easier and cheaper, with fares for some routes dropping by over 40 per cent. Asked if the EU would effectively tell EasyJet it could not fly between Italy and Germany, Mr Fallon said: Yes, the rules there are set by the European Union and that applies to all sorts of things. MICHAEL FALLON: FROM EUROSCEPTIC TO EU CHEERLEADER Michael Fallon has long claimed to be a Eurosceptic frustrated by EU bureaucracy. In February, he went so far as to say I will die a Eurosceptic before throwing his full weight behind the Remain campaign. The Defence Secretary, who first served in government under Margaret Thatcher, admitted that the EU was frustrating, sclerotic and bureaucratic. In October, before David Camerons EU reform deal, he said: Were all Eurosceptics now. I dont see any Euro-fanatics around the Cabinet table. Mr Fallon said the movement of people and the claiming of welfare would be one of the key areas where we need to see reform. In 2014 Mr Fallon suggested he would be willing to campaign for Britain to leave the EU if Mr Camerons plan to claw back powers failed. He said: If we dont get the reforms we want, yes of course the government will then recommend a No vote. He later added: We think Europe has been on the wrong lines. We want Europe to change. Advertisement He also said that customers on the continent would probably have to pay a costly tariff to buy vehicles such as Land Rovers from Britain, while the UK would have no say over safety rules set in Brussels. However, Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, said: If pro-EU ministers arent wasting our money on propaganda then they are spending their time making up ridiculous scare stories. Older Australians are now the biggest problem drinkers in the nation, while the under 30s age group has contributed to two thirds of the drop in drinking, according to new research. The National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS) compared trends from past surveys to Australia Bureau of Statistics data on per capita consumption of pure alcohol. Dr Michael Livingston of the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research at La Trobe University found the older age group showed no change or had increased their drinking levels. Scroll down for video Drinking levels among Australians aged 60-69 increased by nearly six per cent from 2007-2013 People in their 40s are now more likely to drink at lifetime risky levels than any other age group, reported the Herald Sun. The levels of drinking among 40-49 year-olds remained steady from 2007-2013, having increased by more than six per cent from 2001-2007. Drinking levels among Australians aged 60-69 increased by nearly six per cent from 2007-2013. People aged 1839 were less likely to drink alcohol in risky quantities in 2013 compared to 2001. Between 2001 and 2013 there was little change in the risky consumption of alcohol among people aged 40 or older, with a similar proportion exceeding the lifetime risk and single occasion risk guidelines. The NDSHS survey also revealed the over 70s age group is most likely to drink daily, with males at 21% and females at 10.0%. The survey showed people aged 1839 were less likely to drink alcohol in risky quantities in 2013 compared to 2001 Dr Livingston said that while the drop in drinking among younger Australians was welcome news, rates of alcohol related harm in Australia remained high. 'Alcohol related harms on some indicators such as emergency department admissions are continuing to rise,' said Dr Livingston. 'But overall drinking rates in Australia are falling and this is largely driven by falling rates in in teenagers and young adults who are also starting drinking later or not drinking at all. The over 70s age group is most likely to drink daily, with males at 21% and females at 10.0%. 'Falls in drinking among young Australians supports international trends which have reported declines in drinking by teenagers since the early 2000s.' South Pacific Private Hospital owner Lorraine Wood told the Herald Sun her older clients were showing evidence of liver failure, brain damage, heart failure, osteoporosis and forgetfulness associated with their alcohol problems. South Pacific Private Hospital owner Lorraine Wood said her older clients were showing evidence of liver failure, brain damage, heart failure, osteoporosis and forgetfulness associated with their alcohol problems 'The problem is often not picked up, even though they have (alcohol-related) tremors people thinks its because they are old,' she said. In addition, she said alcohol consumption puts older people at risk of having falls or exposing themselves to unintentional injury. A generation of young, middle achievers are being left behind by the Government because they do not go to university, a damning report has claimed. Most youngsters 53% - do not go on to university or do A levels, yet their needs are often ignored by the Government, a Lords committee has concluded. This missing middle of youngsters who take up jobs or vocational education are allowed to drift through life. Students who go to college rather than university receive 6,000 a year less in public funding and are often overlooked by the government, a Lords committee found They are often given poor career advice and locked into low paid jobs, the House of Lords committee on social mobility warned. Recent Governments have focused on the top and bottom of the social ladderNot much attention has been given to the young people between these two groups. They have been forgotten or overlooked by policy-makers, peers said. Students who go to college rather than university receive 6,000 a year less in public funding. Peers said that while expansion of higher education has served some groups well, it had inhibited upwards social mobility for those in the middle. The better first jobs tend to go to graduates. This is bad news for social mobility. Under these conditions, the only realistic aspiration for young people in the middle is to maintain their position. The number of mid-level jobs such as administration and production had decreased while there had been a surge in low-skilled jobs such as care work and childcare. This had contracted the middle of the labour market. The committee called for stopping the national curriculum at 14, rather than 16. It would be replaced by a new 14 to 19 stage, allowing youngsters to focus getting into work. Employers told the committee that too many under-24 year olds lacked life skills such as punctuality and hygiene. These should be taught at school, with one education leader urging the return of a Life Skills GCSE. Baroness Corston, who chairs the committee, said: The current system for helping people move from school to work is failing most young people. They are simply not being adequately prepared for the world of work. This significantly disadvantages a huge number of young people and limits their opportunity for social mobility. The committee called for stopping the national curriculum at 14, rather than 16. It would be replaced by a new 14 to 19 stage, allowing youngsters to focus getting into work A young person considering their options for further education or employment is presented with gobbledygook. It is totally unclear to them how they can get the skills needed for a successful career. It is also unclear to the people in their lives giving them advice and support in making these crucial decisions. Ministers were too focused on apprenticeships, which were taken up by just six per cent of 16 to 18 year olds, the report, Overlooked and Left Behind, Improving the Transition from School to Work, said. The current system for young people who do not follow an academic route is complex and incoherent, with confusing incentives for young people and employers, the committee said. Careers advice and education are being delivered in a way which means that too many young people simply drift into further studies or their first job, which often has no real prospect of progression. The committee recommends that responsibility for careers advice should be moved away from schools and colleges and given to independent experts. A government fund to fix potholes is more than 230 times smaller than the amount needed, local councils have warned. Yesterday the Government pledged 50million to local authorities to help them fix nearly one million potholes this year. But councillors say the actual amount needed for repairs is 11.8billion, and the 50million promised is merely a drop in the ocean. A monster pothole has closed a busy lane between Crediton and Sandford in Devon. Councillors say the actual amount needed for repairs is 11.8billion Martin Tett, the Local Government Associations transport spokesman, said budget cuts had forced councils to only patch up inadequate roads. While 50million is a step in the right direction, councils need more than 230 times that amount to cover the 11.8billion cost to bring our roads up to scratch, he said. The money announced today...would not even completely cover the cost of the 69million faced by the average authority to bring its roads up to a reasonable condition. The Pothole Action Fund will split 250million between councils in England and Wales over the next five years. Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said the fund is part of a record 6.1billion being spent on local road maintenance. This year, roads in the South West will get the biggest cash injection, at 8.4million, with the North East receiving the least at 3million. But a recent survey by the Asphalt Industry Alliance found it will cost 11.8billion and take 14 years to fully fix the roads in England and Wales. The Pothole Action Fund will split 250million between councils in England and Wales over the next five years Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, said: So many local roads are in such a dreadful condition that much more money will be needed, and soon. Britain is afflicted by a pothole plague that is causing needless damage and congestion which is hurting car drivers, hauliers and the economy as well as vulnerable road users, including cyclists. A survey by AA found around 39 per cent of its members reported damage to their vehicles from potholes in the past two years. Describing the 50million as a drop in the ocean, AA president Edmund King said: It is a false economy to put off until tomorrow what everyone knows needs to be done now. A private school decided to use real cut-throat razors in a performance of a horror opera on Wednesday, despite being warned against it by a prop supplier. Two 16-year-old boys from Saint Kentigern College in Auckland had their necks cut during the opening night of a musical production of Sweeney Todd, seriously injuring one of the students and sending them both to the hospital. Members of the play had previously approached a prop supplier looking for real cut-throat razors to use in the performance but were warned against using them, according to the NZ Herald. Scroll down for video A private school used real cut-throat razor's in their Wednesday night opening performance of Sweeney Todd - despite being warned by a prop supplier - leaving two students injured (pictured here in rehearsal) Two students from St Kentigern College in New Zealand had their necks cut during a school production of Sweeney Todd (pictured here in rehearsal) on Wednesday St Kentigern College (pictured) headmaster Steve Cole said that while the real razors were used in the performance, they had been dulled and wrapped in foam and duct tape 'They were looking at the real razor blades ... we've got some rusty ones here ... we don't let school productions have those,' the supplier said. School headmaster Steve Cole said that while the real razors were used in Sweeney Todd a blood-soaked tale in which an English barber murders his victims with a cut-throat razor they had been dulled and wrapped in foam and duct tape. Mr Cole told NZ Herald that he still had 'no idea' how 'the very unfortunate mistake' had occurred after the razor's had been wrapped in layers of protective wrapping. 'It has been bound and cellophaned and all sorts of things. It had been blunted and had been through all sorts of health and safety checks,' he said. The owner of an antique shop where the razors were bought said the person he believed was a teacher at St Kentigern College had talked to one of his staff members about covering up the sharp edge, according to the NZ Herald. The boys were cut during the second act but the performance continued and the audience were unaware, Mr Cole said. The owner of an antique shop where the razors were bought said the person he believed was a teacher at St Kentigern College (pictured) had talked to one of his staff members about covering up the sharp edge The school said prior to opening night that challenging material can be 'delivered, an delivered well, when you have the right cast and the right creative team' A member of the audience on Wednesday told stuff.co.nz that she had no idea an accident had occurred during the performance. 'No announcements were made to the audience that the throat slitting was not all just 'fake blood', the show went on, we never knew anything about the real blood being spilt until later,' she said. The play was initially placed on on hold but the school announced on Friday that it was cancelling the musical, according to stuff.co.nz. The Victorian tale was adapted to film by director Tim Burton in 2007 and starred Johnny Depp The two students were released from the hospital on Thursday and are in stable condition. WorkSafe New Zealand are looking into the incident and the private school has put the production on hold. Daily Mail Australia has contacted the school for comment. In the production, Sweeney Todd uses a mechanical chair and trapdoor to dispose of his victims down a chute into Mrs Lovett's bake house, where she turns the bodies into pies. The school production used a six metre revolving stage, true to the set design in Stephen Sondheim's Broadway version. The Victorian tale was adapted to film by director Tim Burton in 2007 and starred Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham. author Ian McEwan is under fire again, this time for a statement supporting transgenderism First he got into trouble with the transgender lobby for saying that all people with penises should be called men. Now author Ian McEwan is under fire again, this time for a statement supporting transgenderism. While some yesterday welcomed his declaration that biology is not destiny and those who change gender add to the richness and diversity of life, others were unhappy that he appeared to backtrack on the comments he made last week. The Christian Institute said it was a shame the novelist had faced a witch-hunt for stating the obvious [about gender]. A blog on the Spectator magazines website also criticised the shaming of McEwan for his views and suggested the author should not have backed down. It said the reaction to his original comments showed what illiberal times we live in and how profoundly punishing the politics of identity can be. The furore began when Atonement author McEwan gave a speech to the Royal Institution last week about the representation of the self. He had said: The self, like a consumer desirable, may be plucked from the shelves of a personal identity supermarket, a ready-to-wear little black number. For example, some men in full possession of a penis are now identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges, and the right to change in womens dressing rooms. The Man Booker Prize winner then reportedly clarified his comments to a member of the audience, saying: Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men. His remarks prompted criticism from the transgender lobby and he was accused of being backward-looking by cross-dressing comedian Eddie Izzard. Whilst appearing to back down on his views, McEwans statement indicates he was surprised by the reaction to his comments. He wrote: In response to a question, I proposed that the possession of a penis or, more fundamentally, the inheritance of the XY chromosome, is inalienably connected to maleness. As a statement, this seems to me biologically unexceptional. He went on to condemn discrimination against the transgender community and to say that changing or redefining gender is an extension of freedom. That the transgender community should want or need to abandon their birth gender or radically redefine it is their right, which should be respected and celebrated, he wrote. Its an extension of freedom and the possibilities of selfhood. Everyone should deplore the discrimination that transgender communities have suffered around the world. McEwan's original remarks prompted criticism from the transgender lobby and he was accused of being backward-looking by cross-dressing comedian Eddie Izzard A spokesman for the Christian Institute suggested that the author should not have had to apologise, saying that some people would have been relieved by McEwans views. The spokesman said: The fact is that biology does define reality and its a shame that Mr McEwan has faced a witch-hunt for stating the obvious. Transgender people deserve exactly the same respect and kindness as others but what they cannot do is force others to endorse their views. But LGBT charity Stonewall, which last week described Mc-Ewans views as uninformed, said yesterday: Although its good to see that he has acknowledged the hurt that has been done to the trans community, his comments at the lecture and statement do nothing to help their situation and in fact further isolate trans people and entrench transphobic attitudes. Advertisement A California man climbed up a rock to ask for his girlfriend's hand in marriage - but had to ask fire officials, too, for a hand, after he got stuck and couldn't get down. Michael Banks, 27, scaled 600-foot Morro Rock just off California's Central Coast early Thursday morning to propose to his girlfriend, who was watching via FaceTime video. The good news: Banks' girlfriend said yes, according to Morro Bay fire Captain Todd Gailey. Scroll down for video Michael Banks was rescued after being stranded on a ledge some 80 off the ground on Morro Rock, a landmark in Morro Bay, California. He had scaled the rock to make an Internet proposal to his girlfriend - who said yes - but then got stuck on a ledge and couldn't get down A helicopter had to be called to rescue Banks, and Morro Bay Fire Department Captain Todd Gailey was lowered by cable to pluck Banks and take him to safety Climbing Morro Rock is banned - and those who do so anyway risk fines.City authorities said Banks would have to foot the bill for the rescue Despite the mishap, Banks's cliffhanger proposal was a success: his girlfriend said yes, according to the fire officials who rescued him The bad news: Banks got stuck, and had to be plucked by helicopter for a tricky, post-proposal flight to safety. Banks 'took a different trail down, much steeper' and became stranded, Gailey said. 'He couldn't go any direction, on a sheer ledge, with his feet dangling 80 feet off the ground.' Rescuers called in a helicopter, and Gailey descended by cable to hoist Banks from the narrow ledge, with the rotors spinning near the cliff and ocean spray battering both men. Banks was calm for most of the ordeal, but 'a little unnerved' at that part, Gailey said. Morro Rock is a landmark located just offshore from the community of Morro Bay. Climbing is banned but some go anyway and there have been several fatal falls over the years. Typically when someone needs to be rescued they are ticketed, Gailey said. City authorities said Banks, who was unharmed, would have to foot the bill for the rescue. '[Banks] will be billed for the chopper ride and other related costs,' the City of Morro Bay said in a statement to ABC News Banks said nothing during the rescue about any second thoughts on his choice of setting for the proposal, Gailey said. However, the fire captain said others should consider a place 'where you're not in danger of falling off a cliff.' A Law firm hounding British soldiers over their role in the Iraq War misled the court and failed to observe essential ethical standards, the High Court ruled yesterday. Public Interest Lawyers, which is run by Phil Shiner, tried to sue the Ministry of Defence over the death of a 13-year-old boy killed in an explosion near Basra in 2003. But the firm which has been referred to a disciplinary tribunal submitted two different accounts of the death. Public Interest Lawyers tried to sue the Ministry of Defence over the death of a 13-year-old boy killed in an explosion near Basra in 2003 (file photo of British troops) On Wednesday PIL were referred to a disciplinary tribunal over serious allegations of professional misconduct. Solicitors at the law firm - including its boss Phil Shiner - could be struck off as a result. The referral by the solicitors watchdog came after it reviewed allegations revealed by the Mail that an agent hired by PIL touted for business in the aftermath of the Iraq War. Other claims included that the Birmingham-based firm hired an agent to hand out questionnaires to potential clients which were then turned into witness statements by Mr Shiner back in the UK. Following an 18-month investigation, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) passed the allegations which specifically refer to Mr Shiner and another individual to a tribunal. If found guilty, solicitors could be struck off or the firm could be fined tens of thousands of pounds. The father of Jaafar Majeed Muhyi originally claimed that his son was killed when he was playing in the street and an unexploded munition blew up in his face. But a new witness statement, submitted for a civil damages claim, said the boy was killed by a bomb dropped from a helicopter. Throwing out the case, Mr Justice Leggatt, said PIL had wasted taxpayers money and MoD time on a claim for which there was no proper basis. He said it was a cause for concern that PIL failed to note an inconsistency between the two claims. In a scathing criticism added: Against that background, it is all the more disappointing to encounter in their conduct of this claim such a serious failure to observe essential ethical standards. PIL were referred to a disciplinary tribunal over serious allegations of professional misconduct and solicitors at the law firm - including its boss Phil Shiner (pictured) - could be struck off as a result And in a significant move, he gave new powers to the Iraq Historical Allegations Team, which are looking into over 1,500 allegations of unlawful killing and mistreatment. He ruled IHAT were entitled to decline to investigate any allegation that was not supported by a signed witness statement which could see many of their cases thrown out immediately. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said of the case: These are extremely serious findings which warrant further investigation from the regulator. Everyday, our armed forces show bravery and dedication in difficult circumstances. They shouldnt be subject to unfounded legal claims and we are bringing forward a package of measures to ensure they arent. The judge made his finding while deciding on the extent of the Governments obligations to investigate hundreds of allegations after the Iraq war. He was asked to look at four cases of Iraqi deaths that had been examined by IHAT and that the Government had decided not to hand over to an inquest-style inquiry known as the Iraq Fatality Investigations. The father of Jaafar applied for judicial review of the decision not to hold the inquiry into his sons death. PIL said the under the human rights act the family were entitled to know the full facts of the case. They obtained permission for a judicial review of four cases. Iraq Historical Allegations Team, which are looking into over 1,500 allegations of unlawful killing and mistreatment (file photo) Mr Justice Leggatt dismissed two of the cases, including the one involving the 13-year-old boy. The judge said a cause for concern was that when a witness statement was obtained from Mr Muhyi in 2013 for a civil damages claim, PIL failed to note an inconsistency between his evidence and the allegation on which the judicial review application was based. The fathers original evidence was that Jaafars injuries occurred when he was playing in the street and a previously unexploded munition blew up in his face. But his new witness statement for the civil damages claim said the boy was killed by a bomb dropped from a helicopter. The judge said PIL failed to note the inconsistency. As a result time was spent by IHAT examining an allegation of failure by British soldiers to clear unexploded cluster bombs when the allegation was no longer being made assuming that it had ever been made. The judge said a second more serious cause for concern was that, at the start of July 2015, one of the claimants team of four counsel pointed out to PIL that the allegation made in their clients most recent, and only signed, witness statement was that Jaafar was killed by a bomb dropped from a helicopter. Mr Justice Leggatt, said PIL had wasted taxpayers money and MoD time on a claim for which there was no proper basis (file photo) That allegation was different from the allegation that the boy was killed as a result of playing with an unexploded cluster munition. The judge said no responsible lawyer aware of the 2013 witness statement and conscious of their duties to their client and the court would have felt able to advance the original allegation as the current case without first raising the inconsistency with Mr Muhyi and receiving instructions from him. That, however, is exactly what the claimants legal team did. Amended grounds for judicial review, signed by all four counsel, were served which advanced a positive case that Jaafar was killed as a result of playing with an unexploded cluster munition. The explanation given was that the deadline for service of amended grounds for judicial review was imminent and it was not possible in the time available to contact Mr Muhyi to confirm whether his 2013 witness statement was correct. The judge said that could not justify putting forward a case that was inconsistent with the clients most recent evidence while concealing that fact from the other party to the litigation (MoD) and the court. By acting as they did, Mr Muhyis representatives misled the court and thereby obtained permission to proceed with the claim. They also caused the MoD to incur the trouble and expense of preparing evidence and argument in response to a claim for which there was no proper basis. It was not a brief aberration quickly corrected, but persisted over three months before the true position was disclosed in early October 2015, the judge said. Gun control advocates have launched a petition to ensure Australia's gun laws are not weakened following a flood of pre-orders for a new rapid fire shotgun. The Adler A110 lever-action shotgun has proved a hit among Australian gun owners, who are attracted to the weapons ability to shoot eight rounds in eight seconds - similar to pump action shotguns and semi-automatic shotguns. But the firearm's Class A classification - the lowest license level - is concerning gun control advocates, who fear 20 years after Australia's landmark National Firearms Agreement the country will see a proliferation of easily accessible and powerful guns. Scroll down for video The Adler A110 lever-action shotgun has proved a hit among Australian gun owners, but gun control advocates are concerned about the gun's low-level classification The Alannah & Madeline Foundation, which was launched in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, in which Martin Bryant killed 35 people, is calling for the Adler A110 and other guns capable of firing multiple shots in quick succession to be restricted. The Adler A110 The Adler A110 lever-action shotgun uses a lever located around the trigger to load cartridges into the chamber of the barrel. The weapon can cleanly fire off eight rounds in eight seconds. Critics claim this puts it in the same league as rapid-fire weapons like semi-automatic and pump action shotguns. Unlike those weapons, however, the Adler A110 is Class A firearm, which means it can be owned by recreational shooters. Pump action and semi-automatic guns are Category C and D and restricted to farmers and professional shooters. Advertisement 'The figures speak for themselves. In the 10 years prior to Port Arthur there had been 11 mass shootings and since Port Arthur we've had nil,' Walter Mikac, founder of the foundation, said in a statement today. Mikac, who lost his wife Nanette and daughters Alannah and Madeline in the Port Arthur massacre, says Australia's gun laws are being challenged. Since the Turkish-made Adler A110 went on sale last year more than 7000 have been presold, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. More than 600 registered in Victoria since September, the Herald Sun has reported. A ban on the importation of the controversial gun, which is in the same category as air rifles, was lifted by the federal government in August last year, in exchange for support from NSW Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm. Gun control advocates fear sale of the Adler A110 will unravel weaken the 1996 National Firearms Agreement The 1996 National Firearms Agreement led to the buyback of 650,000 guns following the Port Arthur Massacre Recreational gun owners will take possession of the firearm in August. Prime Minister John Howard, whose government implemented sweeping gun reform in response to the Port Arthur massacre, told the Herald Sun he was ' totally opposed to any weakening' of the National Firearms Agreement. The government is reviewing National Firearms Agreement and will consider the current classification of the Adler A110. Firearms advocates say there is no need to review the shotgun's classification and dispute the gun is a pump action shotgun or a semi-automatic weapon. Some also contest claims that the gun can fire eight rounds in eight seconds. Mr Howard and his government responded immediately following the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 The remains of the Hobart guesthouse from which gunman Martin Bryant led his deadly rampage A memorial for victims of the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, in which 35 people were killed As Donald Trump desperately tries to get his U.S. presidential campaign back on track after his humbling defeat in the Wisconsin primary this week, he can take heart from the struggles of his Scottish ancestors. I can reveal that the controversial Republican candidates great-grandfather, also called Donald, was drowned in a fishing accident off the Western Isles, leaving his widow to raise Trumps grandmother and their three other children on her own. The drowning of Donald Smith is a real family tragedy, and it is possible Mr Trump was given his first name in his memory, leading local genealogist Bill Lawson tells me. Scroll down for video As Donald Trump desperately tries to get his U.S. presidential campaign back on track after his humbling defeat in the Wisconsin primary this week, he can take heart from the struggles of his Scottish ancestors Smith was lost off Vatisker Point, near Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, when a squall of wind overturned his open boat in 1868. He was 34, leaving his widow, Mary, to run the family croft and bring up their children, the youngest of whom was Trumps grandma Mary MacLeod, who died in 1963, aged 96. Two other men lost their lives in the accident and there were two survivors. There were a few drownings in the area before they built some kind of harbour at Brevig, Mr Lawson says. In bad weather, very often the whole boat went down. Vatisker Point was particularly bad because it was where the wind collected. Families tended to have much larger groupings then and would have helped to gather around the widow. But it would have been a tremendous shock and a struggle. Trumps mother, native Gaelic speaker Mary Anne, emigrated to the U.S. and married property magnate Frederick Trump. She died in 2000, aged 88, but had returned to the Isle of Lewis regularly before her death. Its not known if Trump is aware of the fate of his great-grandfather. The tycoon has spoken in the past about his mothers love of the Western Isles. She never lost her feeling for Scotland, said the combover king. She never forgot her roots. She would have come back, but she met a great guy in my father. Nigella Lawson may be 56, but was the picture of youth arriving at Michael McIntyre's 40th birthday Age-defying Nigella, 56, is picture of youth Nigella Lawson celebrated her friend Michael McIntyres 40th birthday at his belated party in Marylebone this week. The Domestic Goddess is 56 but looked as young as the partys host when she arrived, carrying a gold-wrapped present for the comedian, who turned 40 in February. Nigella, who divorced grumpy art collector Charles Saatchi in 2014, attributes her wrinkle-free looks to maintaining a voluptuous physique, explaining that she would age ten years straight away if she lost weight. Advice that well-fed McIntyre will, no doubt, take to heart. Give Ronnie the Abbey Ronnie Corbett was denied a knighthood, but his pals are determined the diminutive comedian should be given a send-off befitting a showbusiness giant. They say Corbett, who died last week aged 85, deserves a memorial service at Westminster Abbey, in the same way as Ronnie Barker, his co-star in The Two Ronnies, was honoured ten years ago. Ronnie Corbett, who died last week at the age of 85, was denied a knighthood, but his pals are determined the diminutive comedian should be given a send-off befitting a showbusiness giant He would surely be the smallest recipient of the biggest abbey, joked broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson. Id love to go to Westminster to say goodbye to my wee friend. Corbett is expected to be given a private funeral, but the public memorial could be held later this year. He deserves it, Parky added. He was much-loved and a really nice, good man. But it wouldnt matter to his friends where he had his service because theyd turn up in any case. Women are three times as likely as men to appear naked in films, a study has found (stock image) Women are three times as likely as men to appear naked in films, a study has found. Just nine per cent of actors who appeared in the top 100 films of 2014 had nude scenes compared with 26 per cent of actresses. Women were also more likely to be portrayed only as mothers and wives, while men had a range of jobs, the report revealed. The research, by Mount Saint Marys University in Los Angeles, will add to the calls for greater equality at a time when the industry is being criticised as too male and for failing to recognise black talent. It also showed that in 2014, just 23 per cent of female characters in films had jobs, even though in reality they make up nearly half of the workforce. The report also found that just 12 per cent of movies featured female protagonists, a 4 per cent drop from 2002. Women also suffered ageism, the authors said, with the majority of female characters in their 20s and 30s compared with 30s and 40s for men. The report found that women fared better on TV and online streaming service Netflix than in films. On both formats women made up 42 per cent of all speaking roles and 40 per cent of major characters. The report said: Women continue to be underrepresented both on-screen and off-screen. When women occupy key roles as producers, directors or creators, they help bring more women into roles throughout the industry. Earlier this year a separate study found that just 22 per cent of protagonists in the top 100 grossing films in 2015 were women. Leaked Sony emails revealed that Jennifer Lawrence was getting paid less than her male co-stars including on the hit film American Hustle The report from San Diego State University found that was the case even though numerous female-driven films like Trainwreck came out last year. Hollywood is currently under intense pressure to become more inclusive and leading female actresses have spoken out about sexism. Last year Patricia Arquette used her Oscars acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress to call for equal pay in Hollywood - to applause from Meryl Streep and other A-list women. A former sailor convicted of rape and murder in Virginia more than three decades ago is innocent and should be released from prison, the state's highest court said on Thursday. The Virginia Supreme Court granted Keith Allen Harward's petition for a writ of actual innocence after new DNA tests failed to identify Harward's genetic profile in sperm left at the crime scene. Harward will be released from the Nottoway Correctional Center on Friday, said Olga Akselrod, an attorney with the New York-based Innocence Project, which took on the man's case. The 59-year-old has been serving a life sentence 1982 killing of Jesse Perron and the rape of his wife in Newport News, where Harward's ship, the USS Carl Vinson, was docked at the time. Scroll down for video Keith Allen Harward (left), who was wrongly accused of raping a woman and murdering her husband more than three decades ago has been exonerated. Instead, forensic scientists reported a 'cold hit' on Jerry L Crotty (right), who was Harward's shipmate during the time of the attacks Last month, the Innocence Project filed an innocence petition after initial DNA testing failed to identify Harward's genetic profile in sperm left by the killer. Harward is pictured with former girlfriend Gladys Bates The Supreme Court's swift action on his case speaks to 'how incredibly powerful the evidence of his innocence is', she said. Harward has been serving a life sentence 1982 killing of Jesse Perron and the rape of his wife in Newport News, where Harward's ship, the USS Carl Vinson, was docked at the time. Jesse Perron was beaten to death with a crowbar, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and his wife was repeatedly raped as their children slept in a nearby bedroom.. Harward's case hinged primarily on the testimony of two experts, who said his teeth matched marks left on the woman's leg. The wrongly convicted man's attorneys say the man's case is a prime example of unreliability of bite-mark evidence, which is still allowed in courts today. Harward is the 25th wrongful conviction or indictment based on bite-mark evidence since 2000, said Chris Fabricant, the Innocence Project's director of strategic litigation. 'How many more Mr. Harwards do we have to have before we stop admitting bite-mark evidence in trials?' Fabricant said. 'It almost cost him his life and it cost him 33 years in prison.' Harward was initially charged with capital murder, but was ultimately not sentenced to death. The high court's order came a day after Attorney General Mark Herring said DNA evidence proves that Harward couldn't have committed the crimes. The evidence implicated another sailor on the USS Carl Vinson, Jerry L Crotty. Crotty died in an Ohio prison in June 2006, where he was serving a sentence for abduction, Herring said. Olga Akselrod, Harward's lawyer with the Innocence Project, said he first contacted them in 2007, seeking DNA testing, but there was a long line ahead of him. Harward, 59, will be released from the Nottoway Correctional Center on Friday, said Olga Akselrod, an attorney with the New York-based Innocence Project, which took on the man's case.. Harward pictured with a former girlfriend He was moved up because he was convicted on bite mark evidence, which is a controversial forensic technique. The rape victim, who was attacked while no lights were on in the house, was unable to identify Harward. But she described her attacker as a white male, 19 or 20 years old, clean-shaven and wearing a sailor's uniform, according to the Times-Dispatch. Crotty was 19 at the time of the attack and Harward was 26 at the time. A security guard at the shipyard also identified Harward as a clean-shaven sailor he saw enter the shipyard with blood spatter on his uniform. But old photographs strongly suggested Harward had a mustache. Roy Lasris, who represented Harward during his trial in the late 1980s, said he hopes that the state provides the man with the social support, educational training and compensation he will need to try to start a life outside prison walls. 'He's coming into a different world. Thirty-three years later, I can't even imagine. It just saddens me,' Lasris said. Herring's office said in addition to throwing out his conviction, the state has also removed Harward's name from the state's sex-offender registry. Herring said he's glad Harward will soon be reunited with his family. A Gold Coast hairdresser who driving almost 10 times over the limit has been sentenced to two months' jail time after she was found slumped over in her car. On the day of her Friday sentencing, Magistrate Gary Finger said he had 'never seen anything like' Angela Bisson's case before, which was heard at Southport Magistrates Court. Mr Finger said her .48 reading last October was 'abominable' and she had put people in danger, The Courier Mail reported. He described her actions on that day as 'absolutely appalling' and 'absolutely outrageous'. Scroll down for video Gold Coast hairdresser Angela Bisson (left) who driving almost 10 times over the limit has been sentenced to two months' jail time after she was found slumped over in her car But the 42-year-old's lawyer Paul Hamilton said the mother had 'chronic and major depression' and had a problem with alcohol. She had developed these issues after her marriage broke down and her former partner was given custody of the ex-couple's two-year-old son. The lawyer said his client had sought treatment for her alcohol abuse and was being treated for her mental health condition. Mr Hamilton said Bisson was not coping well on the day she was found by paramedics inside her car and had a bottle of vodka with 300 millimetres of lemonade. Bisson (above, left) was sentenced to two months' jail time and two years' probation as well as being not allowed to drive for 30 months Angela Bisson featured two cocktails or mocktails on the profile picture of her Facebook page ahead of her appearance in Southport Magistrates Court on Friday when she faces a maximum nine months' prison Angela Bisson , pictured on the Facebook page of Man Hair & Beauty Salon, has been a hairdresser for more than 15 years and offers clients 'glamour' styles in 'luxurious' surroundings He said his client's 'extremely high' reading meant she would have adding to the alcohol level already present in her bloodstream. Mr Hamilton argued Bisson should not be handed a jail sentence because she had an 'exceptionally good' traffic history as she had only three previous speeding offences. He also noted the 42-year-old would be under media scrutiny for a 'very, very long time'. But Mr Finger had no sympathy for Bisson, saying: 'So she ought to be.' The magistrate also sentenced her to two years' probation as well as being not allowed to drive for 30 months. Following her arrest, Bisson's reading shocked traffic police who declared it a Queensland record, with the legal limit being .05. Queensland University professor Jake Najman told Daily Mail Australia most drinkers would pass out at 0.3 and would be comatose and at risk of dying by 0.4. Ms Bisson has posted what looks like two cocktails on her Facebook page and following her arrest in October shared the two drinking related items. The experienced hairdresser also shared a post last November 17 with the motto 'when someone does something wrong, don't forget all the things they did right'. The salon owner also shares posts on Facebook from 'My Therapy is Drinkin' and of a woman passed out from a drinking session. Following her charge last October for being almost ten times over the limit, Gold Coast hair salon boss Angela Bisson shared this post on Facebook about a woman who had been out drinking with the girls Angela Bisson, pictured, opened her Mane Hair Salon at Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast six years ago after running Silver Scissors a business previously owned by her mother Marilyn Angela Bisson, pictured with a client in her hair salon, recorded a blood alcohol level of .48 which traffic police estimated was a Queensland record, which tallies with studies that say women are drinking more heavily Bisson, who has operated Mane Hair & Beauty near the beach at Runaway Bay for six years, describes her business in yellowpages.com.au, on her website and Facebook pages as a 'luxurious' salon which offers 'glamour' hair styles. While the salon's listing on truelocal.com.au has two complaints for late cancellation by the salon of hair appointments made by customers, positive reviews are also posted. Bisson, who is married with children, previously ran a hairdressing salon Silver Scissors, which had once been owned by her mother, Marilyn Zavattin. In 2005, the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission ordered Ms Bisson to pay an outstanding amount of $4,023.75 to a former hairdressing assistant who claimed she had not been fully paid for work undertaken and pro rata annual leave. Mane Health & Beauty Salon says on its sites that 'emphasis is placed on quality. Let our experienced team work their magic. We cater to all hair and beauty needs with the latest in techniques and trends. Angela Bisson, pictured with salon colleagues, runs a busy and popular salon at Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast where clients are offered glamour styles and 'the ultimate in hair care' Hair salon owner Angela Bisson, pictured, right, is married with children and face a maximum of nine months' prison when she is sentenced in the Southport Magistrates Court on Friday 'We offer clients beautiful surroundings and an ambiance of total relaxation and care, plus the expertise of highly trained hairdressers and technicians - ultimately the very best in hair care.' Daily Mail Australia attempted to contact Ms Bisson, but her Mane Salon was closed. Two other drink drivers have been arrested with high-range blood alcohol levels in the past year. Last May, a 52-year-old man was booked, also in Runaway Bay, while driving on the same street where Ms Bison's salon is located. Police said the man was 'grossly intoxicated and basically incoherent'. Ms Bisson is not Australia's drunkest driver, her reading of .48 topped by a NSW woman, 52, in January this year who blew .486 In January this year, a woman scored the highest ever blood alcohol reading in New South Wales, of 0.486. Police arrested the 52-year-old after she drove along a road near Coffs Harbour at 2.45pm on a weekday afternoon on the Mid North NSW Coast and crashed into a fence. Professor Jake Najman of Queensland University's Alcohol and Drug Research Education Centre said although drug alcohol levels depended on body weight, it would be very difficult to drink enough and stay awake to reach a level of .48. ''One of the effects of alcohol is it is a respiratory depressant,' he said. 'So you stop breathing you start to lose consciousness by 0.3, by 0.4 you should be well and truly unconscious. When you're getting past 0.3 and 0.35, it's life threatening. 'After 0.4 that's unknown territory.' A paper prepared for NDARC by researchers including Dr Michael Livingston found that while on average Australians drank ten litres of pure alcohol a year each, the top ten percent of drinkers accounted for 52 per cent of alcohol consumed. The research paper included a separate study by Dr Catherine Chapman and Associate Professor Tim Slade which showed that globally traditional differences in male and female drinking levels had all but disappeared over the last century. see more news on President Obama at www.dailymail.co.uk/obama with her father as he spoke at The University of Chicago Law School President Obama jetted off to Los Angeles with his daughter Malia on Thursday where they attended a fundraiser in Bel-Air at the home of Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn and his wife Cindy. Among those in attendance were House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall, Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams, Lyn and Norman Lear and Barbra Streisand and James Brolin. Tickets for the event ranged from $15,000 to $66,800 per couple. The trip came after the two spent the day in their hometown of Chicago together where Obama spoke at the University of Chicago. Scroll down for video Side eye: Malia Obama shoots a glance at Rahm Emanuel getting out of the motorcade on Thursday Malia Obama was out supporting her father in Chicago today as he traveled to the city's university in order to plug his Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, who the Republicans have rejected Obama and his eldest daughter were all smiles at O'Hare Airport on Thursday before the President addressed law students on the need to appoint a ninth Supreme Court justice to avoid ties in crucial votes Malia, 17, and Obama shared a tender moment on the tarmac as they arrived in Chicago, obviously enjoying spending time together The Los Angeles Times reports that Obama and his daughter touched down just before 8pm on Thursday and were then driven off to Horn's home. The fundraiser was to raise money for Democrats to win back Republican seats in Congress. Obama said at the event that a functioning American democracy is what's at stake in November's elections. He added that it was important to elect leaders who believe compromise isn't a dirty word, who listen to those who disagree and respect other people's views. Obama also mentioned Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz several times and said the men were doing Democrats a service by 'laying bare, unvarnished, some of the nonsense we've been dealing with in Congress.' After the event Obama and Malia returned to the W Hotel to rest up as the pair will be heading to another star-studded event Friday morning. Tobey Maguire and his wife, jeweler Jennifer Meyers, will be hosting a breakfast for Obama at their home, with tickets going for $33,400-per-couple. It is the first of three fundraisers he will be attending on Friday. The first daughter of the United States joked with her decidedly unimpressed-looking father as the pair made their way off Air Force One Wearing a pink coat with high-waisted jeans and a t-shirt, Malia braced herself against the wind and rain as she left the presidential aircraft Malia, pictured climbing off Marine One with President Obama, has been increasingly accompanying him on official visits, including on his recent controversial trip to Argentina, which she attended along with sister Sasha Malia was last seen out and about with Obama at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll ten days ago, but reappeared again today Malia joined Obama among a crowd of students to listen to him explain his choice of Merrick Garland for Supreme Court justice (pictured) Earlier on Thursday, Obama accused Senate Republicans of jeopardizing the 'integrity of the judicial branch' by refusing to consider his 'extraordinary' nominee to the Supreme Court. Holding court before Chicago law students, Obama argued that the treatment of judge Merrick Garland will cause the public to lose confidence in the ability of courts at all levels of government to fairly judge cases and resolve controversies. 'Our democracy can't afford that,' said Obama. Obama said that stance is jeopardizing democracy by leading to potential 4-4 ties on cases from the Supreme Court. He also said there potentially are two terms in which the high court will have to issue rulings without a tie-breaking justice. Obama described that scenario as unprecedented and said the courts have become a troubling extension of America's broken politics. 'That erodes the institutional integrity of the judicial branch,' Obama told about 300 students, faculty and judges at the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught constitutional law for more than a decade. 'At that point, people lose confidence in the ability of the courts to fairly adjudicate cases and controversies and our democracy can't afford that.' Surrounded by secret service agents and glanced at by a few admirers, Malia greets people in the crowd at the University of Chicago Watched by his eldest daughter, Obama answered questions from students about the nomination of Garland, including whether his nomination promotes racial diversity Following the speech Malia accompanied Obama on Marine One as they traveled back to the airport, before returning to Air Force One Malia, who will be leaving high school for university soon, spent the day with her father at the University of Chicago, where he taught constitutional law for over a decade before going into politics After attending the event in Chicago, Obama will make his way to California for fundraising events, where Malia will also join him Malia, who was just ten when Obama entered the White House, has not yet revealed which college she will be attending after the President leaves office, though is rumored to have narrowed her choices down to two in New York Playing it cool: Malia Obama board Air Force One after spending the day with her father in Chicago On the Senate floor Thursday, McConnell said Obama would "be telling supporters a politically convenient fairy tale" by arguing that the Constitution requires a Senate vote on his nominee. Garland has been meeting with Democratic and Republican senators on Capitol Hill, but there is no indication the sessions are influencing the political calculus of the Senate Republican leadership. In Chicago, Obama answered some questions from students, including one who asked about the diversity Garland, as a white man, would add to the court. 'Well, he's from Skokie, (Illinois),' Obama joked. He noted that Garland follows his earlier nominations of Sonia Sotomayor, a Latina, and Elena Kagan, who is Jewish, to the high court. 'When I look at Merrick Garland, yeah, he's a white guy but he's a really outstanding jurist. Sorry.' The question reflected some of the disappointment among liberal groups who had urged Obama to use the vacancy to further expand diversity on the court. His foetal alcohol spectrum disorder was caused by his mother's drinking Court of Appeal heard he had undiagnosed disorder at time of sentence He appealed the decision on the grounds the sentence was 'excessive' He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and sentenced to 10-years detention A 15-year-old father who pleaded guilty to manslaughter after killing his three-week-old son has appealed the court's decision on the grounds that he had undiagnosed brain damage at the time of sentencing caused by his mother's drinking during pregnancy. During a Court of Appeal hearing on Thursday, the court heard the boy's sentence had been appealed on the grounds of being 'manifestly excessive' and was later amended to include the failure to recognise at the time of sentencing that the boy had undiagnosed foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, according to The West Australian. The teenager is currently serving a 10-year jail term for fatally bashing his three-week-old son at Bunbury Regional Hospital in February 2014, for which he pleaded guilty to manslaughter after it was downgraded from a murder charge. The court heard the boy's sentence had been appealed on the grounds of being 'manifestly excessive' The boy is currently serving a 10-year jail term for fatally bashing his three-week-old son at Bunbury Regional Hospital in February 2014 The teenager was diagnosed with FASD, caused by his mother's drinking during pregnancy, when he became involved in a Telethon Kids Institute study while carrying out his sentence at Banksia Hill Juvenile Detention Centre, south of Perth. Consultant paediatrician Raewyn Mutch reportedly gave evidence that the boy's condition became worse as he grew older and that he had cognitive, academic, language and motor impairment. Children's Court Judge Denis Reynolds, who handed down the boy's initial sentence, was aware of the boys dysfunctional upbringing but had not known of the brain damage the boy had acquired since birth, according to the news report. State prosecutor Anne Longden accepted the boy's condition had not been considered during the initial sentencing, but the jail-term was appropriate because the trauma experienced during childhood had been taken into account. Chief Justice Wayne Martin reportedly said on Thursday the fact the boy's condition had gone undiagnosed despite extensive involvement with welfare agencies and substance abuse by his mother 'did not speak well of the system'. The decision of three appeal court judges was reserved. Said it endangered the lives Noah, four and Lahela, five The mother, Sally Faulkner, has been arrested in Lebanon after the incident An Australian mother has been arrested by Lebanese police for allegedly kidnapping her two children from a Beirut street and the Nine Network TV crew covering the story are behind bars. And the father of the children has spoken out about the 'brazen' attempt, saying he was shocked at the move which endangered Noah, four, and Lahela, five. Sally Faulkner, from Brisbane, is in custody after approaching the children as they waited with their grandmother at a bus stop, according to local police and media outlets. Scroll down for video Ali el-Amien with he and Sally Faulkner's children, Noah, four, and Lahela, five. Both children have been returned to Mr el-Amien in Lebanon after Ms Faulker was arrested for allegedly attempting to kidnap them Sally Faulkner, from Brisbane, is on the run from Lebanese authorities after hiring a controversial child recovery agency to snatch her children - Lahlea, 5, and Noah, 2 - back from their father Ms Faulkner said she agreed for her ex-husband Ali el-Amien to take the children to Lebanon for a holiday last year but a day after they left he told her that Noah and Lahlea would not be returning The mother has previously said she did not know about her ex-husband's intention to take her children Their location is unknown but the trio are being pursued by local police who have put a boarder alert out for the mother and both children in an attempt to stop them leaving the country Ms Faulkner has been arrested in Lebanon along with members of a 60 Minutes crew after allegedly attempting to kidnap her children Footage release by Channel Nine after journalist Tara Brown and her crew were detained in Lebanon while filming a story about the recovery shows a scuffle break out in a busy street of Lebanon's capital, Beirut Ms Faulkner claims her ex-husband took their children to Beirut on a holiday and then refused to bring them back home to Australia. A Channel Nine 60 Minutes TV crew, including senior journalist Tara Brown, a producer and a cameraman, is also being detained over its alleged role in the kidnapping. Ali el-Amien told the ABC the alleged kidnapping was reckless and dangerous move. 'What if someone armed passed by and saw the scene and started to fire? We are in Lebanon here. If they started to shoot, they could have hit one of the children. They could have shot my mother,' he said. Once Lahela and Noah went to Beirut, Mr El Amine told Ms Faulkner she would never see her children again Before the controversial snatch and grab operation, Ms Faulkner hadn't seen her children for over ten months 'I want to come back,' Lahela could be heard sayig as she sobbed to her mother Ms Faulkner said Lahela feels isolated and she now lives with family members like her grandmother who speak Arabic and not English He said the family, including Ms Faulkner, had lived in the country until 2013, when she decide it was no longer safe and left for Australia. 'When all the bombings took place, she wanted to go and visit her parents. She arrived there and tore up the children's passports.' He claimed she told him when he wanted to see the children, to come to Australia. Despite trying to live in Australia, neither had work there, and their income came from Lebanon, he told the ABC. Australian consular officials visited the four Australians, who are in good health, in prison on Thursday night. Nine Network said on Friday they had also been visited by a lawyer. 'They are being held in a police station in Beirut and been visited by DFAT officers and are in good health,' a spokeswoman told AAP. Nine Network director of communications and public relations Victoria Buchan told Daily Mail Australia while the crew were being detained they hadn't been arrested. Nine was working with the Australian consulate to get them out of prison. Ms Faulkner told A Current Affair last year that she would do 'anything' to get her children back It is understood by Daily Mail Australia some of the same crew members with Brown (pictured) were set upon by thugs while reporting on the European refugee crisis with fellow reporter Liz Hayes in Sweden last month Brown and her crew had travelled to Lebanon to cover Ms Faulkner's attempts to bring back her children - Lahela, 5, and Noah, 4 - using a controversial international child recovery agency. Dramatic security camera footage broadcast on Lebanese TV and on the Nine Network appear to show the children being bundled into a car by several people on a busy street in southern Beirut. Two women, believed to be Noah and Lahlea's grandmother and nanny, can be seen standing in the street with two small children when a commotion ensues. A flurry of people jump out of a large parked car and approach the children. They pick them up and shove bystanders out of the way as they rush back to the car to stuff them in the back seat. The person left behind on the street makes an attempt to chase after the car. The children's grandmother claims she was hit on the head with a pistol. 'It's their mum that kidnapped them, and that's what we know. She contacted me and told me she has the kids,' their father, Ali Zeid al-Amien, said soon after the incident. Later, the children were returned to their father. A British citizen from the child recovery agency involved has been detained on suspicion he planned to smuggle the children out of Lebanon on a boat, according to police. Officers also seized an expensive boat they believe was intended for the job. Lebanon, unlike Australia, is not a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction which allows for children normally resident in one location to be returned if taken by a relative. Footage has been release of the moment the child recovery agency tried to retrieve the children from their father in Lebanon. In Skype call, both Ms Faulkner's children can be heard begging to be returned to their mother's side Her brother Noah said he wanted to return to Australia but that his father had dodged his pleas Lahela is not coming back, Sally. She's staying here with me. Alright? Lehla and Noah,' Mr El Amine said on a Skype call The separation was amicable and Ms Faulkner said she trusted her ex-husband before he left with the kids Ms Faulkner reportedly told Mr el-Amien she'd been reunited with the children. Before the children were returned to their father they were allegedly pursued by local police who put a border alert out for the mother and both children in an attempt to stop them leaving the country, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Ms Faulkner said she did not know about her ex-husband's intention to take her children and agreed for them to travel to his native Lebanon for a holiday. A day after Lahela, then five years old and two-year-old Noah went to Beirut , Mr El Amine allegedly told Ms Faulkner she would never see her children again. 'This is what's going to happen. Lahela is not coming back, Sally. She's staying here with me,' Mr El Amine said on a Skype call. 'Alright? Lahela and Noah,' he added. In another Skype call obtained by Channel Nine, both Ms Faulkner's children can be heard begging to be returned to their mother's side. 'I want to come back,' Lahela sobbed to her mother. In a tearful interview last October, Ms Faulkner told Daily Mail Australia 'It's literally like a living hell' Both children were born in Australia and Ms Faulkner let them travel to Lebanon with their father because she had no reason to suspect they would not come back from the holiday Ms Faulkner said that while her relationship ended on bad terms, she had never tried to keep the children from their father and had no idea why he would do that to her Her brother Noah also said he wanted to return to Australia but that his father had dodged his pleas. 'I want to come back. Daddy won't bring me back,' the young boy said. 'He just away says 'I'll see' but I really miss you. I don't want you to get sad,' he added. Ms Faulkner said Lahela feels isolated now that she lives with family members who don't speak English. 'Everyday I talk to [Lahela] I hear such sadness and she tells me that's she's lonely because her grandma speaks Arabic... She hasn't learnt it, he didn't teach them that,' she told A Current Affair. She said that while her marriage ended on bad terms, she had never tried to keep the children from their father and had no idea why he would do that to her. Ms Faulkner told A Current Affair she would do 'anything' to get her children back. In a tearful interview last October, Ms Faulkner told Daily Mail Australia: 'It's literally like a living hell'. Ms Faulkner said she called and emailed Mr El Amine daily and had attempted to take legal action. As her money and resources dwindled, Ms Faulkner asked for the Australian government to step in and also she petitioned for Minister of Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop to help bring her children home. But when the government 'did nothing' to help her, Ms Faulkner is believed to have contacted 60 Minutes who offered to pay for the recovery operation in return for filming it as a story. Daily Mail Australia understands Brown, 60 Minutes producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson and sound operator David Ballment have been detained by Lebanese police. Channel Nine has confirmed the group are being held in a local police station and that they are speaking with the Australian embassy about the terms of their release. A Nine spokesman said they were working with police to have their crew released. 'We can confirm a crew from 60 Minutes has been detained in Beirut,' he said. 'We won't be giving out any more details, other than to say we are working with authorities to get them released and back home ASAP.' Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said she had been in contact with Channel Nine about its crew being detained in Lebanon. 'We are urgently seeking to confirm the crew's whereabouts and welfare, and have offered all appropriate consular assistance,' she told Daily Mail Australia in an email statement. Tara Brown (above) , 60 Minutes producer Stephen Rice and sound operator David Ballment are believed to have been detained by Lebanese police Brown and her crew are understood to have been in a car with Ms Faulkner while the two children were snatched from their paternal grandmother A Sikh woman who was physically, verbally and financially abused by her husband supports a push to include dowry-related abuse as a form of family violence in Victoria. The Royal Commission into Family Violence has recommended the Victorian government include dowry-related abuse as a form of family violence, in particular economic abuse, within 12 months. Simran (not her real name) barely knew her husband when they were married, reported The Age. Simran (not her real name) was married to her husband for three years. Her parents spent $100,000 on the wedding and gave gifts, but he continued to demand money and became violent when his demands weren't met Her family spent $100,000 on their wedding, along with gifts, as a 'dowry' - a cultural practice that was banned in India in 1961 but still exists in Australia. Her husband was allegedly seen as a good prospect because he has an Australian visa. Simran was married to her husband for three years, during which he continued to demand money, and then became increasingly violent when his demands were not met. She has called for a greater understanding of the practice, and said having dowry-related abuse recognised would make it easier to ask for help in a foreign country. 'It means when we go to the police and complain, they won't say, "What is dowry?"' she said. 'When I told a social worker about the abuse, she said, "It sounds like a story." I said, "This is not a story; this is my life."' In December 2015 a petition was tabled in Victoria's parliament calling for the practice of 'dowry' to be recognised as family violence. Simran has called for a greater understanding of the practice, and said having dowry-related abuse recognised would make it easier to ask for help in a foreign country Dr Mandula OConnor, one of the main people behind the petition, said theres little doubt ongoing demands for dowry are linked to domestic abuse and violence in some ethnic communities, like the Indian community. '[We demand that] if a woman has demands for further money placed upon her or cash or gold, that if she goes to police that they will accept she is being subjected to family violence,' she said. Dr O'Connor said the cultural practice was often not understood and the recommendations would provide more clarity for authorities and allow the victims to have a voice. 'When the young women goes to the police and say, 'He has kept my dowry, he has got my gold, and all the cash', police say to the girls, 'We don't know what you mean by dowry?'" she said. "When they explain it is a gift, [the police] say, 'Why did you give so much gifts in the first place?' They have no cultural awareness of the pressure the family are under to give these huge amounts of gifts.' Vasan Srinivasan, who chairs the Confederation Of Indian Associations in Australia, opposes the proposed legislation. He conceded problems with dowry demands do exist, but he said the numbers were exaggerated and he was cautious about introducing further laws. A woman who was allegedly sexually abused at the hands of an ultra-conservative Jewish headmistress has spoken out for the first time. The woman has described how she still struggles daily with consequences of the alleged abuse, which happened over a three-year period at school and on camps. 'It's still extremely difficult for me to go into detail in regards to what happened to myself and the other victims,' she told ABC Lateline. 'But the far-reaching effects the physical and emotional abuse is still having I can't find the words.' Malka Leifer is wanted on 74 child sex offences involving students at a Melbourne Jewish school She is one of at least eight girls that were allegedly abused by Malka Leifer while she was principal of Adass Israel School in Melbourne between 2003 and 2008. Leifer, who is now under house arrest in Israel after she fled Australia, is wanted by Victoria Police on 74 child sex offences. The victim, whom the ABC have called Rebecca, was abused frequently and sometimes daily, according to her lawyer. The alleged abuse occurred while she attended the Adass Israel School, a strict, insular institution where students were denied access to books, television, radio and internet. Rebecca said when she first spoke about the abuse she wasn't believed and was told to keep quiet. One of the woman she confided in told her: 'That didn't happen. Make sure you keep it that way.' Eventually a second victim came forward, but within hours of the allegations being made, Leifer fled Australia with her family in the middle of the night She was arrested and put under house arrest six years later, in 2014, following an extradition request from Australia. Leifer was principal of Adass Israel School in Melbourne when the alleged abuse took place Victoria police are investigating the complicity of some members of the Adass Israel School board, one of whom appears to have helped pay for the family's tickets to Israel. Despite the charges facing her in Australia, Leifer has managed to skip seven court hearings for her extradition, due to ill health and panic attacks. Her lawyers called for the case to be thrown out in February and have said they will fight extradition to the Israeli High Court. A Melbourne woman was awarded $1.27 million in compensation for the abuse she suffered last year, and two former students have sued Leifer. Boy was left with a concussion and lump on his head after incident The youngster allegedly responded by saying: 'This table is for whites only' He reprimanded Veltman for spilling ice and throwing a napkin on the floor This is the distressing moment an 11-year-old autistic boy was punched in the face by a 59-year-old school worker, leaving him with a concussion. Paraprofessional Milton Parker was caught on tape lashing out at Anatoly Veltman at Public School 225 in Brighton Beach, New York, back in August 2014. The footage came to light as Veltman's family sue Parker, who retired last year after admitting a charge of misdemeanor assault, for $5million. Scroll down for video This is the moment 11-year-old autistic boy Anatoly Veltman was punched in the face by Milton Parker, 59 (center), a paraprofessional at Public School 225 in Brighton Beach, New York While the attack happened in 2014, the footage has only now come to light as Veltman's family sue Milton for $5million over the attack, which happened in the school cafeteria Anatoly Veltman Sr told the Washington Post: 'I am extremely sad that anyone at all - let alone a paraprofessional - can behave in this manner with a child, especially a special-needs child. 'If he could wind up for a punch like that, the man has big issues.' But Parker has remained unrepentant, saying Veltman deserved to be hit after lashing out first. He told the New York Daily News: 'Who gets hit and doesnt respond? The kid punched me in the eye first and as a reflex he got hit back.' He also believes the video proves his side of the argument. 'I knew it was on camera. If it was intentional, I would have taken him to another room and beaten the snot out of him. Parker claims it was the first time he was ever struck by a student. He told reporters the incident began after he reprimanded Anatoly for spilling ice and throwing a napkin on the floor. According to school records the boy told Parker, who is black: 'This table is for whites only.' Anatoly, who has the mental capacity of a 6-year-old, apologized for the racial comment, but then he is seen hitting Parker shortly afterwards. The employee responded with a blow that gave Anatoly a concussion and a bump on his head. Veltman was left with a large lump on his head, concussion and a bruise following the attack, which happened after he spilled some soda and made a racial remark to Parker, though he did apologize Parker insists the boy (pictured), who had the mental age of a six-year-old at the time, provoked him, and anyone in his position would have done the same thing In the aftermath of the incident, he showed his injuries to ABC7. The boys father said he knew Anatoly had been hit hard because of the lump on his head, but he was still shocked by the brutality he witnessed in the video. He said it is not unusual for an autistic child to act out, and the paraprofessionals should be trained not to respond with violence. Anatoly Veltman Sr told the Daily News: 'I was very upset to see my son abused by someone entrusted to care for him.' Parker said he cannot afford a lawyer. He's also not sure what the plaintiffs are looking to gain from the lawsuit as he has no assets. But he claims his life was destroyed by what happened, as he decided to retire a short time later. Scott Rynecki, who is representing the Veltmans, told the newspaper: 'The Department of Education has a duty and responsibility to better train their paraprofessionals so a shocking incident like this does not occur.' An Air India pilot reportedly refused to fly unless his favourite female co-pilot was sitting next to him leaving more than 100 passengers stranded for hours. Around 110 passengers flying from Chennai to Male via Thiruvananthapuram in India were forced to wait in the grounded Air India plane for almost three hours following the incident. Yahoo News reports the pilot, who had recently handed in his notice, refused to take off without his favourite female co-pilot sitting next to him. He is currently serving his notice period. Around 110 passengers flying from Chennai to Male via Thiruvananthapuram in India were forced to wait in the grounded Air India plane for almost three hours following the incident (file image) The pilot reportedly said he would not fly the plane after his request to the airline for the co-pilot was refused. Eventually the airliner acquiesced and arranged for the co-pilot to join him on the flight. An official aviation report in 2015 revealed Air India tops the list of Indian airlines with the most cancelled and delayed flights. Last month passengers were forced to use the emergency slide after an Air India plane's tyre burst shortly before it reached the stand. The Airbus A320 had come into land in Mumbai after setting out from Nagpur with 161 passengers on board. However, after making a safe landing, a tyre burst as the aircraft was taxiing to the stand. The week before a fight between two members of cabin crew on board an Air India flight caused a delay of two hours while VIP passengers waited for take off. Several members of the Indian parliament were on board the flight from Delhi to Kochi, including Prakash Karat and Lok Sabha, who were on their way to a meeting with election commission officials. A transgender woman has claimed that she was refused from boarding a Jetstar flight because check-in staff didn't accept her identity. Darci-Lee Hume from Christchurch was trying to board a flight from there to Wellington to celebrate her birthday when she was prevented from boarding, because of issues over her identity, stuff.co.nz reports. But despite Hume saying that she 'never felt so humiliated' by the incident, the airline maintained her gender was not the reason why she was prevented from boarding. It was because she could not provide any form of identification. Transgender woman Darci-Lee Hume from Christchurch (left) claims she was refused from boarding a Jetstar flight because staff would not accept her identity Hume was travelling with a friend who ticked 'Miss' on the ticket as Hume identifies as a woman, however she was not carrying any identification and so was stopped from boarding the flight. The Christchurch woman said she felt 'humiliated' by the incident. 'When they came to me they said your details don't match up,' Hume explained. 'They were just like, 'look, you've got five seconds to provide some ID, prove who you are or you're not getting on this flight'. Hume was trying to board a flight from Christchurch International Airport (pictured) to Wellington to celebrate her birthday 'I talked to one of the managers who said, 'your details don't match up, it says Miss Darci, you are clearly not a Miss, Sir'.' A Jetstar spokesman said all passengers must carry proof of identity that matches the information in their booking and on their boarding pass, a procedure which is in line with other airlines in New Zealand and Australia. Gender 'never came into the equation', the spokesman confirmed, and the airline refunded the fare. Mrs Cameron is being helped at No 10 by a glamorous new assistant, former model Rosie Lyburn (pictured), whose salary of up to 53,000 per year has been put on the public payroll Samantha Cameron has hired a taxpayer-funded 53,000-a-year 'special advisor' to or organise her designer wardrobe and social diary. Baronet's daughter Mrs Cameron is being helped by a glamorous new assistant, former model Rosie Lyburn, whose salary of up to 53,000 per year has been put on the public payroll. The move has been slammed by Labour MPs, who called it a 'vanity' appointment. Labour MP Jess Phillips told The Sun: 'I've just visited my local job centre which has had a seven-year recruitment freeze. 'I think when tough decisions have to be made I'm not sure that the wife of the Prime Minister needs a special adviser.' Ms Lyburn, 28, a former Tory fundraiser, organised the lavish Tory Black and White Ball to raise funds for the Conservative party while working as an events manager at Tory HQ. The 28-year-old former model and granddaughter of late Tory grandee Lord Elliott of Morpeth has been given the formal title of special adviser, a role more often reserved for ministers' political aides. Her tasks include helping to organise Mrs Cameron's busy social diary and co-ordinate her designer wardrobe. She was seen arriving at 10 Downing Street this week carrying a large bag from luxury fashion label LK Bennett. 'Rosie is helping to add a splash of style to Downing Street,' a source at No 10 told The Daily Mail's Sebastian Shakespeare. A member of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's circle, she has also modelled for Beulah London, the ethical label co-founded by William and Kate's friend Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs. Ms Lyburn replaced Sam Cam's previous Girl Friday, Isabel Spearman, 37, who left Downing Street last summer to set up her own brand consultancy. Ms Spearman who once worked for Sam's mother, Viscountess Astor, at her furniture company Oka was appointed after David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010. At the time Ms Spearman's job led to criticism of such 'vanity' appointments by Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary, Hilary Benn, who said it came at a time of 'cuts, the need for everyone to tighten their belts and the civil service recruitment freeze'. Ms Lyburn is married to Peter Lyburn, who stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate for Perth and North Perthshire in 2010. He later set up the political PR firm Stonehaven Campaigns. Mr Lyburn caused a stir in 2010 when he was pictured eating penis-shaped marshmallows with a female friend and drinking from another friend's pineapple-style kilt sporran. Stylish: Rosie Lyburn with husband Peter, who stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate for Perth and North Perthshire in 2010 Ms Lyburn's appointment was quietly approved last year and is confirmed on No 10's register of special advisers, which states that her civil servant's salary is in Pay Band 1, or up to 52,999 per year Ms Lyburn (right) is married to Peter Lyburn (left), who stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate for Perth and North Perthshire in 2010 He later removed the pictures from his Facebook account after the images became widespread across the internet. Ms Lyburn's appointment was quietly approved last year and is confirmed on No 10's register of special advisers, which states that her civil servant's salary is in Pay Band 1, or up to 52,999 per year. A Downing Street spokesman declined to provide further details. Few American names have cropped up in the 'Panama Papers' because the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm at the center of the scandal doesn't like taking on American clients, one of its founders says. Rich and influential people around the globe have found themselves under siege since a major data leak of 11.5million confidential records detailed their ties to secretive financial accounts and shell companies in low-tax havens used to hide wealth. The uproar has brought down the prime minister of Iceland and raised questions about the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, and the circle of friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron became the latest politician ensnared when he acknowledged having profited from his father's investments in an offshore tax haven before being elected. Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm at the center of the 'Panama Papers' scandal said it doesn't like taking on American clients. Pictured above is partner of Mossack Fonseca, Ramon Fonseca on Thursday Fonseca said on Thursday that their law firm has only a handful of American clients. He said it's not out of any anti-Americanism or fear of the IRS, but instead because they focus on the European and Latin American Market But few American names have popped up in the massive information leak. Ramon Fonseca, who started Mossack Fonseca law firm with Jurgen Mossack, said on Thursday that their law firm has only a handful of American clients, most of them members of Panama's burgeoning expat retirement community. But, he said, it's not out of any anti-Americanism or fear of the Internal Revenue Service. 'My partner is German, and I lived in Europe, and our focus has always been the European and Latin American market,' Fonseca said at his law office. 'He loves the US a lot, and I do, too. My kids were educated there,' Fonseca added. But 'as a policy we prefer not to have American clients'. Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that first obtained the documents, said the records include copies of the passports of 200 Americans and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore companies have listed addresses in the United States. That's a tiny fraction of the more than 250,000 companies Mossack Fonseca has set up for clients in four decades of business. One reason for the dearth of American clients may be because such companies can be easily created in US states such as Wyoming, Delaware and Nevada, attracting less attention than they might in Panama, a country with a reputation for shady financial deals and money laundering. Europe is also home to countries that provide banking secrecy that could provide haven from taxes, such as Luxembourg, Switzerland and Andorra. Many Panamanians point to those activities in wealthy countries and say they are angry over what they consider a double standard behind criticism of Panama. On Thursday, a European Union official threatened sanctions on Panama and other nations if they don't cooperate fully to fight money laundering and tax evasion. 'People are fed up with these outrages,' said Pierre Moscovici, who heads financial affairs for the 28-nation EU. 'The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking.' Fonseca, a co-founder of Mossack Fonseca, one of the world's largest creators of shell companies, said that documents investigated by the ICIJ were authentic and had been obtained illegally by hackers. Pictured above, a marquee of the Arango Orillac Building lists the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama City Panama is listed by the EU as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, and Moscovici urged the country to 'rethink its position in this regard.' Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela has said his government will cooperate more and announced plans for an international committee of experts to recommend ways to boost transparency. But he also vows to defend his country against what he says are media attacks that unfairly stigmatize Panama. In Britain, the prime minister could become the next European politician to find himself under attack. After four days fending off headlines about his family's finances, he acknowledged on Thursday that he and his wife, Samantha, sold shares worth 31,500 pounds (currently $44,300) in an offshore fund named Blairmore Holdings in January 2010 - five months before Cameron became prime minister. They had paid 12,497 pounds for the shares in 1997. Cameron's father, Ian Cameron, an affluent stockbroker who died in 2010, was a client of Mossack Fonseca. There's no indication the offshore fund was set up to avoid taxes but the revelation reinforced the prime minister's image as a scion of wealth and undermined calls to boost transparency at a time many British overseas territories act as tax havens. Also on Thursday, an Argentine prosecutor asked a judge to authorize an investigation into President Mauricio Macri's role in two offshore companies. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, denied having any links to offshore accounts and described the document leaks as part of a US-led plot to weaken Russia even though his name doesn't appear in any of the leaked records. 'They are trying to destabilize us from within in order to make us more compliant,' he said Thursday at a forum in St. Petersburg. The Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped coordinate reporting on the leak, said the documents indicate Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin acted as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists and, perhaps, the president himself. Fonseca said his firm creates about 20,000 shell companies annually but also rejects about 70 to 80 clients every year due to conflicts that arise during due diligence. Advertisement These dramatic images may look like something from the latest high-octane action film but they actually show Special Forces soldiers taking part in a huge military exercise. Members of Saudi security forces have been spotted demonstrating their considerable skills during a military exercise in the desert west of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. One astonishing image appears to show two men wearing black balaclavas and wielding massive guns leaping from the top of two moving police cars. Another photograph shows a huge explosion in the background as a cavalcade of military jeeps rattle past, and another shows military personnel dangling precariously from ropes attached to helicopters. The final image rather bizarrely shows a member of the Saudi security forces having bricks broken over his head during a military exercise. On Tuesday Islamic State militants shot a senior Saudi security officer dead west of capital Riyadh. The Western-allied kingdom, the world's top oil exporter, has been hit by a spate of deadly shootings and bombings targeting security forces or its Shi'ite Muslim minority since last year, many of them claimed by Islamic State. Saudi state news agency SPA quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying that the officer, Colonel Kitab Majed al-Hammadi, was shot dead in the al-Arja area of al-Dawadimi province west of the Saudi capital. Islamic State views Shi'ites as heretics but is also bitterly opposed to Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab rulers and is seen to be trying to stir up sectarian strife on the Arabian Peninsula to bring about the overthrow of its ruling dynasties. The Nejd Province group claimed responsibility on Sunday for an explosion next to a police station south of Riyadh that killed one person and damaged police vehicles. Members of Saudi security forces have been spotted demonstrating their considerable skills during a military exercise in the desert west of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Pictured: One astonishing image appears to show two men wearing black balaclavas and wielding massive guns leaping from the top of two moving police cars These dramatic images may look like something from the latest high-octane action film but they actually show Special Forces soldiers taking part in a huge military exercise Another photograph shows military personnel dangling precariously from ropes attached to helicopters as they hover over the desert She is one of the most powerful women in the news, watched by millions of fans each day and capable of piercing every interviewee with a killer question - including Donald Trump. So it is perhaps no surprise that when Megyn Kelly hinted she could leave Fox News, the network where she has worked for the last 12 years, earlier this week it caused a stir. But insiders told Page Six that the host is unlikely to bolt, and is using the threat as a bargaining chip to push her salary closer to that of male rivals, such as Bill O'Reilly, who earns $15million. Megyn Kelly hinted that she might leave Fox News this week, but insiders say the threat is a bargaining chip so she can demand a pay rise making her equal to male rivals such as Bill O-Reilly Kelly is reported to earn $9million a year once salary and ratings bonuses are taken into account, whereas O'Reilly, who has topped the ratings table at Fox since 2001, earns between $15million and $17million The source said: 'This sounds like a negotiating tactic. Megyn will take meetings with others but she has the best platform at Fox News. '[Kelly will demand] a salary as high as other top men in the news business and equal to that of her rival, Bill O'Reilly.' Fox News hosts earn a basic salary with large financial incentives linked to their ratings, a table which O'Reilly has topped since 2001. According to Page Six, O'Reilly regularly earns between $15million and $17million per year, compared to Kelly's $9million. The magazine quotes their source as saying Kelly is unlikely to garner that kind of wage from any other network, and so will likely stay put. Kelly criticized O'Reilly recently, saying she was hurt he failed to defend her against Trump's attacks when he pulled out of the Iowa debate she moderated in January. Kelly, who has been at Fox News for 12 years, told Variety 'never say never' when asked if she might leave the network this week Kelly did however say: 'I think Bill did the best he's capable of doing in those circumstances.' On Wednesday Kelly hinted that she might leave Fox after being asked by a Variety reporter if she's decided whether or not to stay at the network after the election. Kelly responded: 'I haven't'. The 45-year-old journalist went on to say that she loves her boss, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, but that her job causes a lot of 'brain damage'. 'Never say never. I dont know whats going to happen. Ive had a great 12 years here, and I really like working for Roger Ailes. I really like my show, and I love my team. 'But you know, theres a lot of brain damage that comes from the job. There was probably less brain damage when I worked in the afternoon. I was less well known. I had far less conflict in my life. 'I also have three kids who are soon going to be school from 8am to 3pm I come to work at 3:30. I like to see my children. 'Having said that, my boss has been good about working with me to make me happy - he knows Im a hard worker. Ive had few problems here where I couldnt talk to him and say, Can we work something out?, and come away happy,' Kelly said. Kelly's public profile was raised this year when she incited the fury of Donald Trump for her tough questions at the first GOP debate in August. Since then, the Donald has continued to call Kelly a 'bimbo' and other disparaging comments on Twitter, putting the conservative network in the difficult position of defending their star anchor, while at the same time maintaining an open line of communication with the Republican front-runner. While Kelly says she doesn't blame Ailes for not condemning Trump more for his abuses against her, she says the situation has nonetheless been awkward. 'Fox News has been in a tough position. They care about me and they are not afraid of a fight, but were in unchartered territory. 'Ive had many conversations with [Ailes] about the situation. I think its been hard on him, too. I dont think hes enjoyed one piece of this. 'He can see what happens in my life when Trump starts off. He really wants him to stop, but on the other hand, hes not going to run a news channel that doesnt provide access to the Republican frontrunner for president,' Kelly said. When pressed about what options she sees in her future, Kelly pretty much shot down hosting a daytime talk show or morning news. Kelly, already a prominent anchor, has seen her profile jump considerably this year thanks in part to her willingness to challenge Republican frontrunner Donald Trump (file image) Kelly says she's thought about hosting her own talk show but isn't sure 'what the market looks like for that in 2016' and just doesn't think 'that's the perfect thing for me'. As for co-hosting a morning show like NBC's Today, Kelly said she's tried that before and she's not much of a morning person. 'You have to wake up so early. The alarm goes off at 3:30am. When I did Americas Newsroom, which started at 9am, I remember saying to the makeup artist at the time, "If you could only know the afternoon me, youd like me so much better,"' Kelly said. If Kelly does indeed decide to leave her long-time network, one thing is certain - she won't be unemployed for long. After her performance during the first GOP debates, several executives at rival networks told Daily Mail Online that Kelly was a hot commodity who could be the next Barbara Walters or Diane Sawyer. 'Because of her commanding presence at the debate, Megyn's the hottest property in TV News for now and into the future,' revealed a news executive for one of the three networks who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. The family of Gugsa Abraham 'Abe' Dabela, 35 believes he was murdered, but cops say he killed himself. Now the family is suing police A Connecticut police department is being sued by the family of a lawyer who was found shot in the head in a wrecked car. The suit alleges cops rushed to rule his death a suicide despite mysterious circumstances. Gugsa Abraham 'Abe' Dabela, 35, was found dead in April 2014 near the town of Redding. He was found in a wooded area, lying inside his wrecked SUV with a gunshot wound to the head. On Tuesday, Dabela's family members filed a suit against the town of Redding, police chief Douglas Fuchs and seven officers, as well as an unknown person dubbed 'killer John Doe.' They allege police conspired to cover up the fact that Dabela was murdered, and that cops violated Dabela's civil rights by delaying the process of his concealed pistol permit a year before he died. Fuchs told CBS News Thursday he can't comment on pending litigation. He noted the medical examiner's office ruled the death a suicide, and has defended his department's handling of the investigation, CBS reported. 'The loss of my son remains unfathomable, but the continuing revelation of lies about his death and efforts to destroy his legacy have worsened the grief and swept us into an unimaginable, never-ending nightmare,' Dabela's father, Abraham Dabela, said in a statement. Dabela, left, was a lawyer who lived in the town of Redding, Connecticut. He was found dead in April 2014 inside a car with a gunshot wound to the head On the website Justice4Abe, family members wrote the younger Dabela was on his way home from a restaurant when he for unknown reasons swerved off the road less than a mile from his home. 'Abe was unharmed in the rollover car accident and scene evidence suggests he was maneuvering his body to crawl out of the vehicle when, at some point after the accident, Abe was shot,' his family wrote. They also wrote police issued a press release less than five hours after Dabela's death, naming him and writing that '[it appears] the gunshot wound was self-inflicted.' Family members said the press release was issued before an autopsy had been completed, and before they were notified of Dabela's passing. According to CBS, the family has hired its own forensic experts, and Connecticut NAACP officials are conducting an investigation. The lawsuit says Dabela argued with an unidentified town official shortly before his death. The family's lawyers also said Dabela received a text message on the night he died that read, 'turn he just didn't.' The suit alleges information as to who sent the text was covered up. An accused murderer who escaped from a psychiatric facility in Washington state Wednesday night is now at large in Spokane after visiting his parents' house there - and may have access to weapons,The Spokesman-Review said. Anthony Garver, 28, is accused of the murder of a woman in 2013, but was found mentally incompetent to stand trial. His mother called 911 after seeing him approach the house, but SWAT teams, US Marshals, helicopters and dogs were unable to capture the man, who 'dangerous to others and should not be approached,' according to police. Scroll down for video Anthony Garver, 28, escaped Western State Hospital Wednesday. He was charged with murder in 2013, but was declared unfit to stand trial. He is now at large in Spokane, where he may have access to weapons Garver was filmed buying a bus ticket to Spokane under an assumed name in Seattle on Wednesday night. He arrived at his parents' on Thursday at 3.30pm, but escaped police search teams after she called 911 Lakewood police told Q13 Fox that Garver was recorded using a fake name to buy a Greyhound Bus ticket to take him from Seattle to Spokane at about 8pm Wednesday. That bus arrived in Spokane at about 5am Thursday, and Garver had made his way to his parents' house by 3.30pm. His mother called the sheriff's office the moment she saw him, police said. They deployed US Marshals, a SWAT team, four K-9 units and two helicopters to search for Garver in woods in Spokane's East Valley, but the search was suspended at 8.30pm with the man still on the loose. It is believed he is still in the area. 'Search teams contacted homeowners in the area, cleared buildings and searched the heavily wooded and rugged area,' a statement from the sheriff's office announced Thursday night. 'The Sheriffs Office and US Marshals will have increased patrols throughout the evening. Garver is considered armed and dangerous and anyone who sees him should not approach and call 911 immediately.' The search for Garver is made more tense by the possibility that police have previously been told that he may have an undiscovered cache of weapons in the East Valley area. Garver is described as a 'survivalist,' says the Seattle Times. The last time he evaded authorities he was at large for a month before he was found in woods. Mark Alexander Adams, 58, escaped with Garver but was caught Wednesday. He was arrested on suspicion of domestic assault in 2014, but like Garver was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial Garver escaped with room-mate Mark Alexander Adams, 58, on Wednesday - it is believed through a loose window in their room, which they shared with two other men. Adams had been arrested on suspicion of domestic assault in 2014, but like Garver was deemed unfit to stand trial. Officers picked up Adams without incident in Des Moines, Washington, about 20 minutes away from Washington state's largest psychiatric hospital, Lakewood police Lt. Chris Lawler said. Lawler says Adams was recognized and police detained him. Detectives will interview him. Adams got on a bus Wednesday night after he and Garver fled the hospital. Adams asked how to get to the airport, and he was caught in a town just south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. A bus driver picked up a man he believes was Garver around 6pm, Lawler said. A couple of hours later, he picked up a man he believes was Adams. The driver told authorities that Adams was interested in going to SeaTac, home to the Seattle area's airport. Police have requested video from the transit agency. Adams and Garver were reported missing at 7:30pm on Wednesday, after last being seen at 6pm in the dining hall of Western State Hospital. The Lakewood, Washington police released these images on Thursday, showing Adams when he got on an area bus Wednesday night In their initial warning to the public, police said the two men were 'dangerous to others' and should not be approached if spotted. A source at the hospital told KOMO News that the break out is 'serious business' and described Garver as 'scary and creepy'. Adams and Garver were both committed to the hospital in February 2015. Adams has been in jail since 2014 on a domestic violence and assault charge while Garver was arrested in 2013 for murder. Both men were found not fit to stand trial. The woman Garver is accused of killing, 20-year-old Phillipa Evans Lopez, was found strapped to her bed and stabbed 24 times in her Lake Stevens home on June 17, 2013. A Snohomish County judge called Garver 'scary, to say the least' in 2013. Above, Western State Hospital where the two men escaped from on Wednesday (pictured above in 2015) Garver also threatened to blow up a Department of Health and Human Services office Spokane in 2006, and was later accused of threatening to kill the judge and deputy prosecutor in the case. Garver is white, 5-foot-8, 250 pounds, has long curly brown hair and a beard/mustache. He was last seen wearing a brown faded sweatshirt and orange jail flip flops. His real last name is Burke, but he goes by Garver. He has also taken the alias of Deryk Garver before. Garver is originally from the Spokane area and the murder was committed in Snohomish County. The escape is the latest in a litany of problems at the 800-bed hospital, south of Tacoma. U.S. regulators have repeatedly cited the facility over safety concerns for both staff and patients, including violent assaults, leading to threats to cut millions in federal funds to the facility. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently extended the hospital's deadline for fixing the problems from April 1 to May 3. A federal judge also has said the hospital has failed to provide timely competency services to mentally ill people charged with crimes. The hospital is facing increased federal scrutiny, but assaults have persisted, according to records obtained by The Associated Press. A patient with a history of violent behavior choked and punched a mental health technician on March 26, according to an internal report. Another report on March 23 said a male patient slipped out of his monitors and was found in a bathroom with another male patient, who said he was sexually assaulted. The state has tried to fix some of the problems by increasing funds so more staff could be hired. But the hospital has struggled with recruiting and retaining workers. Injured employees missed 41,301 days of work between 2010 and 2014 and on-the-job injuries forced staff to move to other jobs, like desk work, for 7,760 days during that period, according to state Occupational Safety and Health Administration records. The battle against airline seat size has been dealt another blow as he US Senate has voted down measures forcing airlines to stop making seats smaller. In a proposal that was defeated 54 to 42 yesterday, airlines escaped legislation that would require a moratorium on reducing seat size and the distance between rows for 30 days, while the Federal Aviation Administration set standard regulations on width, padding, and leg room. The amendment to the original bill from Senator Chuck Schumer was aimed at the 'size, width, padding, and pitch' of seats, passengers' legroom and the width of aisles. Defeated: Senators voted against measures that would stop airlines from shrinking passengers seats 'It costs you an arm and a leg just to have room for your arms and legs,' Schumer said. Airlines would also have had to post the measurements of their seats on their website. The vote split largely down party lines, with all but three Democrats voting in favour of the proposal. 'Flying is not pleasant anymore,' the Washington Post quoted Senator Schumer as saying. Campaign: Senator Chuck Schumer (pictured) proposed the amendment to the FAA bill to regulate seats Airlines would have had to publish the measurements of their seats and stopped reducing seat size while new regulations were developed 'You're crammed in. I'm not that tall. I'm a little under 6-foot-1, and what I do when I fly is I take out the magazine and the airsickness bag and the little folder that tells you where the exits are to gain a 16th-of-an-inch more legroom, so my knees don't bang into the seat in front of me.' 'There's been constant shrinkage,' he said. 'They shouldn't be cutting inches of legroom and seat width. It's time for the FAA to step up and stop this problem from continuing.' Passengers flying within the US have become steadily larger with approximately 35 per cent of the population classed as obese. She feared what would happen if she got a vaccine while pregnant The first time mother who urged pregnant women to get immunised for whooping cough in an emotional viral video this week says: If it saves one more baby going through this horrible thing, it would have been worth it. In a clip that has spread around the world since being released by hospital authorities this week, businesswoman Carmit Avital, 37, revealed how she had passed on the disease to her newborn baby girl after refusing a vaccine. If I could turn back time I would have protected myself, the woman who lives near the Gold Coast said in the video, as she cradled tiny seven-week-old Eva. Now, in an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Australia, Ms Avital has fired back at the miserable trolls who have accused her of neglect - you dont know me - and revealed the real reason why she didnt get immunised. Scroll down for video In a viral video this week, Carmit Avital said: 'If I could turn back time I would have protected myself' Ms Avital, 37, did not get immunised with the whooping cough vaccine when she was pregnant (pictured) Little Eva (left in her mother's arms and right on her own) has improved but remains in hospital Ms Avital, who designs drinks and sells them to the food and drink industry, said she did not want to get vaccinated because she did not want a 'foreign object stuck in my body while pregnant'. 'I was always going to have my baby vaccinated,' Ms Avital revealed. 'I just wasn't sure about having a vaccination while I was pregnant. 'I thought, "why do I need to get it now?" WHAT IS THE WHOOPING COUGH VACCINATION? The whooping cough vaccination is recommended to pregnant women in their third trimester and it is free of charge through each of the State and Territories' vaccination programs. Health officials recommend a single booster dose of adult formulation pertussis vaccine (dTpa) for all pregnant women in their third trimester of pregnancy as their antibodies transfer to the newborn through the placenta Source: Immunise.gov.au Advertisement 'I'm just a person who's trying to do the best I can for me and my child. 'I'm not against anything, I don't have any fanatical views. I 'I'm just a normal mum'. The viral video has attracted international media attention and Ms Avital confessed to be overwhelmed by all the attention. Most people, she said, had 'done the right thing', sending her their thoughts and prayers and stopping her at the shops to say their pregnant relatives would get the whooping cough vaccine. But she confessed to being 'upset' at some critics who had written 'disheartening' things to her and about her online. She said had not planned her speech, with doctors arriving in her ward and asking her if she wanted to film a video for educational purposes. On Thursday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull even issued a statement on Facebook praising her as a 'brave mum'. 'It's getting too big to be true,' she laughed. On Thursday, Ms Avital was praised as a 'brave mum' by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull In the video, Ms Avital said she told doctors to leave her alone because she was a 'healthy, fit, organic woman' In the clip, Ms Avital said she told doctors to leave her alone because she was a 'healthy, fit, organic woman'. 'I was a healthy pregnant woman, no problems no complications. I worked, worked out, went to gym everyday, ate very healthy, had no deficiencies, had a natural birth,' she said. Little Eva, who is closing in on seven weeks of age, remains in hospital but Gold Coast Health officials said her condition has improved 'Somehow in the last two weeks of my pregnancy I managed to get whooping cough, I don't know how or why.' When Ava contracted the whooping cough it became like a 'horror movie' and the baby often turned blue and went floppy in her mother's arms. Ava has been in Gold Coast Hospital for the past four weeks. 'She ended up in intensive care. 'It's so hard to watch your tiny little thing... they go red, they go blue and sometimes they go black and then for a moment you think they are dead in your hands, they flop,' Corbit said. 'It's a lot of suffering for a tiny little cute thing you love so much.' 'Even me - the bulletproof lady who has never been to a doctor, travelled the world and felt healthy - got whooping cough,' she said. 'I got over it very quick, but (Ava) is in to week four. I sit here watching her go blue, give her oxygen, watch her cry. 'She's my only child and my first - if I could turn back time I would have protected myself.' A female high school teacher has resigned after she allegedly performed oral sex on a boy after his school leaver's dinner. The teacher, who is in her mid-thirties, allegedly performed the sex act on the year-13 student after leaving the formal venue in Hamilton, New Zealand in November 2015. The alleged incident happened in front of other student but when he complained to the school no action was taken because it was his word against the teacher's, a source told Fairfax. A female high school teacher has resigned after she allegedly performed oral sex on a boy after his school leaver's dinner (stock image) The alleged incident is now being investigated by the Education Council after the boy swore an affidavit and presented it to the school's board of trustees. According to the source the teacher resigned in 2016 after going on sick leave over Christmas and the New Year after the alleged incident. Education Council spokesman Andrew Greig told the New Zealand Herald the teacher 'has undertaken not to teach' while she is under investigation. 'It would be improper and unfair to comment further because the investigation is active and we don't want to predetermine any outcomes.' An Adelaide mother of four has been found guilty of creating a serious risk of harm after she left her three-year-old son in a locked car for almost an hour on a scorching hot day. The Adelaide Advertiser reports that on Friday a District Court jury found Trisha Joy Ownsworth, 37, guilty of an aggravated count of creating risk of serious harm over the incident that took place in February 2014. Ownsworth had earlier said she was stricken with grief and on the verge of homelessness on the day she left her son in the car. Scroll down for video Trisha Joy Ownsworth, 37, (pictured left) was found guilty of creating a serious risk of harm after she left her son in her locked car during a shopping trip in February 2014 Ownsworth's three-year-old boy was found hysterically crying by a passer-by stuck in the family's hot purple Commodore car (pictured) at a shopping centre on a 41 degree Celsius summer day Mrs Ownsworth told the court that she had taken her her daughter to buy new shoes at Tea Tree Plaza shopping centre in Modbury (pictured) She testified on Wednesday that her life was a 'mess' and 'chaotic' when her son 'slipped her mind' during a shopping trip in a north Adelaide suburb. Her 17-year-old nephew had committed suicide just three weeks before and the contract for the home her family was renting had ended and there was little money to go round, Mrs Ownsworth told the Adelaide District Court. 'I still feel horrible at what I did,' she said as she openly wept, according to The Advertiser. 'I was just devastated. I could not believe I left him. I was so stupid. I had forgotten him. How could I forget him? I just assumed he was with his dad.' As Mrs Ownsworth broke down into tears, Prosecutor Andrew Fowler-Walker asked her why just moments before she had been laughing outside of the courtroom, according to ABC. She responded that she needs to have positive conversations with her family to maintain her mental stability, the ABC reported. 'It's so hard to keep it together,' she said. The mother of four (pictured) says she was stricken with grief for her 17-year-old nephew and on the verge of being homeless at the time she 'forgot' her son The 37-year-old (pictured) pleaded not guilty to an aggravated charge of creating a risk of serious harm in the Adelaide District Court on Monday. She testified in court on Wednesday Mrs Ownsworth pleaded not guilty to an aggravated charge of creating a risk of serious harm in the Adelaide District Court on Monday when the trial began, according to ABC. The three-year-old boy, who is now a six-year-old, was found flushed and hysterically crying in the family's purple Commodore by a passer-by at Tea Tree Plaza shopping centre in Modbury, the court heard. He was in the car for 51 minutes while the mother 'popped into Big W.' the court heard. She went to the store to buy her teenage daughter some new shoes before buying an ice cream from McDonalds. Mrs Ownsworth told the court on Wednesday that she had taken her son with her to pick up her daughter and believed taking him to a cool shopping centre on a hot day was for the best. While in the shopping centre, she believed her son had stayed at home with his father, she said. The mother-of-three's lawyer Adam Gaite argued it was a case of 'forgetfulness' on her behalf and that she had genuinely made a mistake by leaving him when she entered the store with her daughter Passer-by Nathan Barker told the court he heard the boy screaming from inside the car as he walked through the car park to catch a bus and quickly alerted a man working in the car wash to call security, according to ABC. '[The boy] was very red, very red just jumping up and down and just crying,' he said. Security guard Nicholas Holland helped convince the young boy to partially open a window so he could free him. He said the boy was 'quite hot to touch' and 'sort of red in the face' when he pulled him from the car. The boy was not harmed during the ordeal, despite the temperature in the car reaching around 44-degrees Celsius. A man has been jailed for 12 years and nine months for fatally stabbing his pregnant girlfriend through the heart with a kitchen knife in 2013. Christopher John Anderson, 41, from Sydney, was sentenced on Friday for the manslaughter of Allira Green in a Maroubra unit, after she died from the stab wounds in the early hours of August 3, 2013. Anderson pleaded guilty in the NSW Supreme Court in November 2015 to manslaughter on the ground of excessive self defence, reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Scroll down for video Allira Green (pictured) died from stab wounds after her boyfriend Christopher Anderson stabbed her with a kitchen knife in a Maroubra unit in 2013 He said he was acting in self defence when Ms Green was stabbed and was trying to save his unborn baby from her ice addiction. Anderson's defence said Ms Green was high on drugs at the time and had launched at him with a knife. But Justice Peter Hall rejected the claims that Ms Green had provoked the attack, saying on Friday that the stabbing was 'an extreme and grossly excessive response'. He said that while the stabbing wasn't premeditated, Anderson had a history of violent assaults and limited prospects of rehabilitation. Justice Hall also said domestic violence had increasingly become an issue of concern in Australia, describing the attack as 'brutal, cowardly and inexcusable'. Ms Green was five months pregnant when Anderson fatally stabbed her in the chest, piercing her right lung and going into her heart. Anderson (left) has been sentenced to a maximum of 12 years and nine months for manslaughter An agreed statement of facts tendered to the court last November said there had been 'periods of volatility' in the relationship and Ms Green had called police on two occasions in June 2013 to report domestic violence. The crown said the pair had a 'volatile relationship' and Anderson had struggled with two of her friends at the unit before she was stabbed. Ms Green's mother, Nadia Green-Simms said her daughter was as 'an amazing girl' who 'lit up the room'. She said she would never forgive Anderson for killing her daughter. 'That anger will never go away I don't think, I will never forgive him, never ever will I forgive him.' Anderson will be eligible for parole in February 2023, after already serving time since the stabbing. Anderson (left) and Ms Green (right) are said to have had a volatile relationship while they were together Ms Green's (right) mother Nadia Green Simms (left) said she would never forgive Anderson for what he did to her daughter Nadia Green Simms said: 'We're not happy but at least we know he's admitted to something and my daughter can rest in peace now' The ex-husband of a model who fled New Zealand with their children after she was due to appear in court for the alleged theft of a $20 Christian Dior handbag has reported the girls are back at home. DJ Thane Kirby, from Auckland, took to Facebook on Friday to thank people for supporting his family through a 'really tough time.' 'I'm happy to report the girls are back and are happy to be home,' he said. Scroll down for video Sophia Nash, 27, is wanted by police in New Zealand on three charges, including theft The model failed to appear in court last month and fled to Australia with her two children 'Their first week of school went really well. Again a big thanks for your positive comments and thoughts and to everyone who helped along the way.' Kirby's wife, Sophia Nash, failed to appear in Auckland District Court last month on charges of theft, driving while disqualified and breaching a community-work order. It subsequently emerged the model had fled New Zealand to Australia with the couple's two daughters. Mr Kirby said at the time he was devastated and felt 'powerless' to do anything. He put the matter in the hands of his lawyer, police and the New Zealand government's Child, Youth and Family service. Nash confirmed to stuff.co.nz that Mr Kirby had collected the children, saying: 'Thane came over for a visit with the children and took them to New Zealand. They are staying there for a while and spending some time with family.' Sophia Nash's ex-husband Thane Kirby (left) has reported the children were now at home in New Zealand Mr Kirby took to Facebook on Friday to thank people for supporting his family through a 'really tough time' A warrant was issued for the arrest of Nash after she failed to appear in court. She has been accused of stealing a $20 pink a yellow Christian Dior handbag from a Salvation Army store on February 24. She was then allegedly caught driving while disqualified. She has also been charged with breaching a court ordered sentence of community work. Earlier this year the former fashion model told the Daily Mail Australia how she had struggled with alcohol addiction and how it had eventually led her to jail. She wrote off her car in an ensuing crash and was charged with drink-driving and breaching her bail conditions. She was sentenced to two weeks in prison. Prior to the incident she was eight months sober. 'That was a huge wake-up call, I remember walking into the prison and someone yelled out my name... it was a girl I met when I was first put in the cells for detox a few months ago,' she said at the time. 'That's when I thought 'wow, I'm actually really here now.' Nash had a similarly bad car accident where she crashed into a house after drinking in 2012. Cuba's former president Fidel Castro has made his first appearance in nearly a year days after writing a fierce attack on US President Barack Obama. Castro handed over power to his younger brother Raul in 2008 after a serious illness and has been seen less and less in public in recent years. The 89-year-old was targeted for assassination by successive US governments after he overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and created a communist regime on the island. Fidel Castro will be 90 in August this year but he has become increasingly frail in recent years and is rarely seen in public. There have been several false reports of his death in recent years Obama visited the island recently, the first US president to visit Cuba since Castro's revolution, and a thaw in relations is under way between Washington and Havana. But Castro wrote an article in a Cuban newspaper recently in which he said: 'We don't need the empire to give us any presents' and reminded Cubans of the years of hardship they had endured because of US sanctions. Castro was pictured on state television visiting a school to mark the birthday of Vilma Espin, a revolutionary heroine who died in 2007. Castro, who is seen as the father of the nation, was seen talking to pupils and teachers at the school, named after his sister-in-law Vilma Espin The grey-bearded former revolutionary was seen sitting at a desk and talking with students and teachers at the school, named after Espin. He said: 'I'm sure that on a day like today, Vilma would be happy. 'Everybody who dies fighting for the revolution leaves their energy on the way, they leave their effort and struggle.' Castro remains a devout communist who is opposed to democracy. He is believed to resent the US which famously tried to oust his regime in the 1960s but a US-backed invasion was defeated at the Bay of Pigs Obama and Raul Castro restored US-Cuban relations last years after half a century of being at loggerheads. During his visit Obama declared the Cold War finally over and reached out to the Castro regime, even though the US trade embargo remains in place and Cuba is regularly accused of human rights abuses. Castro, who often meets visiting foreign dignitaries at his home, did not come face to face with Obama, which suggests he is not happy with the recent thaw in relations with the US. Fidel Castro's brother Raul (left) was all smiles when he met President Barack Obama in Havana recently. Obama has restored relations with Cuba despite opposition from anti-Castro Cuban emigres He has not been seen in public since he visited the Ministry of Defence in July. Next week the Cuban Communist Party is holding a congress which is expected to give clues as to the future of the country. Raul Castro has said he plans to retire in 2018 and Cubans hope a new generation of politicians will speed up economic progress. Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother in 2008 because of his failing health but he spent his life opposing the Americans and is clearly unhappy with the rapprochement with Washington A six-year-old Afghan migrant was rescued from inside a UK truck after he text a charity volunteer in New York and told her he could not breathe. The young boy, who is only known as Ahmed, was one of 15 refugees who became trapped in the lorry after the driver stopped at Leicestershire Forest East service station on the M1. The group, who are thought to have got into the lorry in Calais, were discovered around 3pm yesterday after Ahmed text Liz Clegg, a women's charity volunteer, and warned her they had little oxygen. A six-year-old Afghan migrant was rescued from inside a UK truck after he text a charity volunteer in New York and told her he could not breathe. The lorry was found at Leicestershire Forest East service station (above) He told her: 'I ned halp darivar no stap car no oksijan in the car no sagnal iam in the cantenar. Iam no jokan valla.' Ms Clegg, who gave Ahmed the phone while working in the Jungle refugee camp, was giving a talk at the Women In The World conference more than 3,000 miles away in New York at the time. She alerted UK-based charity Help Refugees, who in turn told police. A Leicestershire police spokesman confirmed officers had managed to track down the lorry, which the migrants had been in for more than 15 hours. Josie Naughton, from Help Refugees, told The Times: 'If it werent for Liz they might all be dead by now. Ahmed does not speak much English but he knew who to call.' The incident came six months after 71 migrants - including three children and a baby - died after getting trapped in an air-tight refrigerated lorry in Austria Authorities respond to the incident in Burgenland, which saw more than 70 migrants die after they got in a frozen chicken truck The incident comes six months after 71 migrants - including three children and a baby - died after getting trapped in an air-tight refrigerated lorry in Austria. By the time authorities had found them many of their bodies had decomposed, suggesting they had been dead for several days in the back of truck, which usually carried frozen chicken. Leicestershire police confirmed 14 people had been arrested on suspicion of being illegal entries to the UK following yesterday's incident. Another man was arrested for assisting illegal entry. Trip comes as Iraq faces political uncertainty with Prime Minister Al-Abadi still trying to establish a new Cabinet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Baghdad to meet Iraq's leaders and discuss the fight against ISIS. Kerry will gather with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and other top officials as coalition forces make military gains against ISIS amid Iraqi political uncertainty. Scroll down for video US Secretary of State John Kerry meets with the Prime Minister of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, Nechirvan Barzani Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces enter downtown Hit after a lengthy siege of the ISIS-held city Iraqi forces say they entered the strategically important IS-held town of Hit yesterday. But Al-Abadi is still trying to establish a new Cabinet under pressure from hard-line Shiites. Kerry made the unannounced stop today after attending a meeting with Persian Gulf allies in Bahrain. His trip also coincides with the Pentagon considering more small military outposts to help Iraqi forces as they prepare to retake Mosul. Last month, the U.S. opened the first such base since returning to Iraq in 2014. 'The Secretary will underscore our strong support for the Iraqi government as it addresses significant security, economic, and political challenges,' U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise trip to Iraq after spending yesterday in Bahrain U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones, left, walks with Secretary of State John Kerry as he arrives via military transport at Baghdad International Airport ISIS has come under increasing pressure after suffering significant territorial losses in Iraq, particularly following defeats at Sinjar and Ramadi ISIS fighters are continuing to hold out in parts of the city as Iraqi forces close in on control of the strategically important position west of Baghdad Kerry made the unannounced stop today after attending a meeting with Persian Gulf allies in Bahrain Iraqi forces say they entered the strategically important IS-held town of Hit yesterday but Al-Abadi is still trying to establish a new Cabinet under pressure from hard-line Shiites IRAQI ARMY ENTERS THE TOWN OF HIT AS ISIS RETREAT Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes reached the centre of the western town of Hit, dislodging Islamic State militants and evacuating thousands of civilians, state television said on Friday. A local commander said the pro-government forces had routed the militants from their stronghold in Hit, which had a pre-war population of nearly 100,000, but fighting was still going on. "We are still pursuing them. They have abandoned their families and fled," the commander said in a live broadcast. "Within days, God willing, Iraqis will rejoice at the complete liberation of Anbar province." The recapture of Hit, located on the Euphrates River near Ain al-Asad air base where several hundred U.S. personnel are training Iraqi army troops, would roll back Islamic State further west towards the Syrian border. Advertisement Last August, al-Abadi proposed a sweeping reform package to combat corruption, cut government spending and merge ministries, but his efforts have been stymied by sectarian tensions and struggles to contain ISIS. Its forces swept across much of northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014. While Iraqi authorities have waged a full-scale war, aided by U.S. airstrikes, the Kurdish peshmerga forces, Shiite militias and pro-government Sunni fighters, the extremist group still holds significant territory. Kerry arrived Friday after attending a meeting with Persian Gulf allies in the Bahraini capital of Manama, where the fight against ISIS figured prominently among American concerns. But the Sunni monarchies of the region are facing their own distractions, with nascent peace efforts to end civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and shared fears about Shiite Iran's interference in their affairs. Although the Islamic State has lost some 40 percent of its territory in Iraq and maybe a fifth of lands it once controlled in Syria, it continues to prove a magnet for foreign fighters. Experts say ISIS staying power may be inspiring others, who've never been in contact with the group, to wage violence in its name. Kerry's trip also coincides with the Pentagon considering more small military outposts to help Iraqi forces as they prepare to retake Mosul A mother who was reunited with her son after giving him up for adoption more than 30 years ago says the pair are in love and trying for a baby after he left his wife for her. British-born Kim West, 51, and her son Ben Ford, 32, who lives in Michigan, have been in a relationship since they met in 2014 and says they have 'incredible and mind-blowing' sex. The pair came back into contact two years ago after Mr Ford wanted to find out more about his birth parents and got in touch with Miss West. British-born Kim West, who says she is now in a relationship with her son Ben Ford, who she gave up for adoption and was reunited with after 30 years They found themselves sexually attracted to each other and shared their first kiss over a bottle of champagne in a hotel before having sex. And just three days after they had sex for the first time, Mr Ford told his wife Victoria, he no longer loved her and would be leaving. He told New Day that he told his wife: 'Everytime I have had sex with you since I met her, I imagine its her I am kissing, otherwise I can't perform.' West, who grew up in Islington, London, became pregnant while studying in California and after giving birth to her son aged 19, gave him up for adoption. After Ford was adopted a week after he was born, she came back to the UK but was unable to make a relationship work. But in December 2013, she received a letter from her son, who was looking to track down his biological parents. And ever since the pair were reunited in January 2014, they realised they were attracted to each other. Now two years on, he is in a relationship with his mother with the pair living in Michigan in what they describe as 'Genetic Sexual Attraction'. And now they plan to marry and are even trying to have a baby together. West, who works as an interior designer, told Alley Einstein of New Day: 'This is not incest, it is GSA. We are like peas in a pod and are meant to be together. 'I know people will say we're disgusting, that we should be able to control our feelings, but when you're hit by a love so consuming you are willing to give up everything for it, you have to fight for it.' Incest is illegal in the couple's home state of Michigan and judges in the state are able to give out life sentences to those found guilty of the offence. However, it is unclear if a case against them would be pursued and the couple say they would move if that were the case. Ford first got in touch with his biological mother in December 2013, while living with his wife in Colorado, as he wanted to know more about his birth parents. They arranged to meet up and the couple grew close, and eventually shared their first kiss. Soon after, Ford, a freelance computer coder, left his wife after realising he had fallen for his mother and moved to Michigan, where they met with another GSA couple. Now the couple are planning a special wedding and hope to have a baby together. They also say they will consider surrogacy, if they are unable to have a biological child. Genetic sexual attraction is a seldom-talked about phenomenon that occurs between adoptees and their long-lost parents. It describes feelings of intense intimacy between two relatives who have been separated during the critical years of development and bonding, and then meet for the first time as adults. When an adult-child and their biological parent finally meet, the brain struggles to associate each other as family. Instead, they become captivated with one another, sharing similar physical features, likes and dislikes, which is coupled with complex feelings of intimacy. This can lead both parties to express their emotions sexually. The phenomenon was first identified by Barbara Gonyo in the Eighties, after she a wrote book called I'm His Mother, But He's Not My Son, which recounted her personal story of reuniting with the son she placed for adoption at 16. How adults who reunite with estranged parents risk 'genetic sexual attraction' Research by the British Medical Journal shows that half of people separated from relatives at a young age experience strong sexual feelings when they are reunited. When families grow up together, an inherent taboo is created which desensitises them to sexual attraction. But those who miss out on this time can develop powerful, obsessive feelings for their parents or even siblings in adulthood. Australian couple John and Jenny Deaves who were estranged prior to reuniting back in 2000 and starting an intimate relationship Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA) is a term that describes the phenomenon of sexual attraction between close relatives, such as siblings, first and second cousins or a parent and offspring who first meet as adults. The term GSA was coined 30 years ago by American Barbara Gonyo. She wrote a book about the lust she felt for the adult son she had given up for adoption 26 years earlier. She never acted on her feelings. One couple who have spoke out about their GSA relationship is Australian father and daughter John and Jenny Deaves. It is understood that the pair were estranged prior to reuniting back in 2000, only seeing each other three times. But once reunited their relationship quickly became intimate ending Mr Deaves marriage to then wife Dorothy. However, GSA is rare between people raised together in early childhood due to a reverse sexual imprinting known as the Westermarck effect, which desensitizes them sexual attraction. David Cameron is facing a sleaze investigation after finally being forced to admit he had a 30,000 stake in his late father's offshore fund. The Prime Minister has been reported to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over allegations that he should have declared the shareholding. After days of failing to kill off questions, Mr Cameron dramatically confessed last night that he had profited from the Bahamas-based company. He also conceded that some of the 300,000 left to him by Ian Cameron may have come from funds kept offshore. Labour MPs insisted Mr Cameron should consider his position, accusing him of being 'less than honest' and 'speaking out of both sides of his mouth'. David Cameron visited a building contractors in Oxfordshire today as Downing Street raced to prepare his tax returns for publication and it emerged he could face a parliamentary standards probe Backbencher John Mann called for Mr Cameron to 'resign immediately' and said he had referred the issue to commissioner Kathryn Hudson. 'No interpretation of his actions could conclude that he has acted in an 'open and frank' way, in line with the Code of Conduct for MPs,' he said. 'It is only now, with the Panama revelations, that David Cameron has been forced to admit that he did not register his financial interests.' 'This is a matter of transparency and integrity. David Cameron has shown neither of these qualities and should resign as Prime Minister.' Downing Street made clear the Prime Minister believed he had declared everything in accordance with rules. Sent out to defend the premier in a round of interviews earlier, business minister Nick Boles claimed his 'natural human reaction' had been to avoid sullying his father's reputation. But he said 'with the benefit of hindsight' Mr Cameron should have confessed to the previous interest in the Blairmore investment fund. In an bombshell TV interview last night, Mr Cameron said he and his wife Samantha had jointly held a stake in his father's investment fund, Blairmore, which was registered in Panama and operated out of the Bahamas. SHOULD THE PM HAVE DECLARED SHARES IN FATHER'S OFFSHORE FUND? Labour backbencher John Mann has called for the Prime Minister to resign David Cameron has been referred to the parliamentary standards commissioner for failing to declare his stake in Blairmore. Mr Cameron has said that he bought the shares in his father's investment vehicle in 1997, and sold them in January 2010 for 31,500 - a 19,000 profit. Under Commons rules, MPs are obliged to register a shareholding that is greater than 15 per cent of a company or worth more than their annual salary. The guidance does state that 'collective investment vehicles' are 'not generally registrable'. However, the rules also stress that it is 'sometimes appropriate to register shareholdings falling outside' those categories. Politicians are reminded that the purpose of the register is 'to provide information of any financial interest or other material benefit which a Member receives which might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her actions, speeches or votes in Parliament, or actions taken in his or her capacity as an MP'. Labour MP John Mann said: 'David Cameron has broken the rules on Standards in Public Life that he, along with me and others, voted for. 'No interpretation of his actions could conclude that he has acted in an 'open and frank' way, in line with the Code of Conduct for MPs. 'It is only now, with the Panama revelations, that David Cameron has been forced to admit that he did not register his financial interests.' 'This is a matter of transparency and integrity. David Cameron has shown neither of these qualities and should resign as Prime Minister.' Shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith said: 'Why didn't he register his interest in this offshore (fund) back in 2005 when he first became an MP? 'He says he's going to publish his tax return. I think he will need to go further and be clear about what his investments have been in the past.' Advertisement He said they had sold the shares in January 2010 four months before he became Prime Minister for 31,500, pocketing a tax-free profit of just over 19,000 on the deal. He also pledged to release his personal tax return in an attempt to limit the damage from his revelation. But he insisted that he had paid all UK taxes due on his investment during the 13 years he held it. In the next few days aides are expected to publish a summary of Mr Cameron's tax affairs going back to before the 2010 election. LABOUR LEADER REFUSES TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT PM Jeremy Corbyn has been criticised for losing his temper with journalists seeking a comment on David Cameron's tax haven issues. Emerging from his north London home in cycling gear today, the Labour leader was met by a group of reporters and a camera crew. A series of questions were thrown at him about the row that has engulfed the Prime Minister since details of his father's offshore fund were revealed. But Mr Corbyn seemed unwilling to take advantage of his Tory opponent's difficult situation. Wearing a cycle helmet and wheeling his bike out of the front door in Islington, the veteran left-winger insisted: 'Good morning everybody. Thank you for coming ... I don't do interviews in any circumstances.' Pushing away a recording device being wielded by one reporter, Mr Corbyn said irritably: 'Put it away please.' He then cycled away down the road as a journalist plaintively called after him: 'Any reactions to David Cameron's statements last night Mr Corbyn? Should Mr Cameron resign?' Advertisement Mr Boles said Mr Cameron's reluctance to give full details had been a 'natural human thing' when people were 'attacking his father'. 'It's only natural and human that when these revelations were first published, when people started attacking his father who died six years ago, who he loves very much and who can't defend himself, to not want to intrude on his father's memory,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'People will understand that he is a son as well as a Prime Minister.' But he added: 'With the benefit of hindsight he would rather that all of what has come out of the last four days would have come out on the first day.' Shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith said Mr Cameron had to come to the parliament on Monday and explain his actions. 'If he was not trying to hide something why didn't he confess to this at the beginning of the week?' he said. Mr Smith dismissed suggestions that Blairmore was a 'plain, vanilla investment', saying the 'whole point of having an offshore vehicle like this is to limit tax'. Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said that Mr Cameron should repay at least part of the profits he made from offshore investments and questioned why he had taken six years to reveal them. Mr Watson said: 'After days of repeatedly avoiding the issue, this is an extraordinary admission from the Prime Minister. 'David Cameron, who described the use of complex tax avoidance schemes as 'morally wrong', has been forced to admit that he held shares in a fund now linked to tax avoidance. 'People want a Government that clamps down on tax avoidance and they want a Prime Minister who upholds the highest standards. At the moment we seem to have neither.' Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: 'For ordinary taxpayers to have faith in the system they have to be able to have faith in their leaders. 'They deserve better than half-truths and qualified statements.' Downing Street has spent all week dealing with questions on the Prime Minister's tax affairs following revelations on Monday that Ian Cameron was named in the so-called 'Panama Papers'. Blairmore was named after the house in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, where Ian Cameron was born in 1932. Prime Minister David Cameron greets his father Ian during the election campaign in 2010. He died in September that year Mr Cameron made his admission in a TV interview with ITV's political editor Robert Peston, left with the PM 'I SHOULD DEAL WITH THE PAST AS WELL' HOW CAMERON SQUIRMED IN TV INTERVIEW David Cameron finally admitted to profiting from investments in offshore tax havens in an interview with ITV's political editor Robert Peston last night. Here are the key exchanges: Robert Peston: Have the disclosures about Blairmore, the company set up by your father in the Bahamas and Panama, been embarrassing to you? David Cameron: It has been a difficult few days, reading criticisms of my father and his business practices my dad was a man I love and admire and miss every day. I think a lot of the criticisms are based on a fundamental misconception, which is that Blairmore, a unit trust, was set up with the idea of avoiding tax. It wasn't. It was set up after exchange controls went so that people who wanted to invest in dollar-denominated companies could do so. RP: The effect of Blairmore's structure meant it didn't pay tax. Is that wrong? DC: The point is that it was a unit trust. So the money it had was other people's money on which they pay tax. If you were a United Kingdom owner of these things you paid income tax on your dividends and you paid tax in the normal way. I have been very clear about the future. I have said I am not going to benefit from any family trusts. I have been very clear about the present, I don't own any shares, I don't own any unit trusts or any investments like that. I own two homes one of which I rent out and I have a salary as prime minister. But I should deal with the past as well. Because of course I did own stocks and shares in the past quite naturally because my father was a stockbroker. I sold them all in 2010, because if I was going to become Prime Minister I didn't want anyone to say you have other agendas, vested interests. Samantha and I have a joint account. We owned 5000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000. RP: Was there a profit on it? DC: I paid income tax on the dividends. There was a profit on it but it was less than the capital gains tax allowance so I didn't pay capital gains tax. But it was subject to all the UK taxes in all the normal way. RP: So, I am sorry to press you on this but part of your dad's estate was in Jersey when he died. Did you benefit from that? DC: He left me some money, very generously, quite a lot of money. It was 300,000. I obviously can't point to every source of every bit of the money, and Dad isn't around to ask the questions now. If people want information about my tax return, I can tell you what goes on mine. And I said before the last election, if we want to move to a situation where prime ministers and potential prime ministers publish this information, I am very happy to do that. So I hope I have dealt with the future, present and the past. I've frankly been more transparent about these things than any prime minister in the past. RP: So you can't be certain some of that 300,000 didn't come from offshore sources? DC: Well he had investments in Blairmore. RP: And in Jersey? DC: Well that was because of another unit trust, again established to UK standards, and many people have those investments. But in all of this I've never hidden the fact that I am a very lucky person. I had wealthy parents who gave me a great upbringing. Who paid for me to go to an amazing school. I have never tried to be anything I am not. Advertisement The company was incorporated in the secretive Panama jurisdiction in 1982 and operated out of the tax haven of the Bahamas. The firm hired Bahamas residents, including a bishop, to sign off paperwork and held meetings in the Caribbean. The arrangement, while legal, allowed the company to avoid paying UK tax for decades. The fund also made use of 'bearer shares' which enable people to hide their assets. On Monday No 10 said the Cameron family's dealings in Blairmore were a 'private matter'. The Prime Minister and Downing Street then issued three further statements over the following 48 hours in a bid to close down the growing controversy. But on each occasion, they avoided key questions about whether the PM's family had benefited from offshore investments in the past. As the questions continued to mount, Mr Cameron yesterday decided to make a full statement of his affairs. Labour's John Mann suggested Mr Cameron should resign over his 'hypocrisy' on tax avoidance Treasury select committee member Wes Streeting questioned why it had taken days for the facts to be 'dragged out' of Mr Cameron Labour's Paul Flynn also questioned why the truth from Mr Cameron was 'delayed' He told ITV News: 'Samantha and I ... owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000.' No 10 said Mr and Mrs Cameron had invested 12,497 in Blairmore in April 1997. They sold the shares in January 2010 for 31,500, yielding a capital gain of 19,003. They paid no tax on the profit because it came in just under their joint tax-free capital gains allowance which stood at 20,200 at the time. No 10 said the Camerons did pay income tax on the unspecified annual dividends they received from the fund over the 13 years they held the investment. FOUR STATEMENTS IN THREE DAYS AND STILL THE PM HAD A CONFESSION TO MAKE LAST NIGHT Downing Street issued four statements in 48 hours on the Prime Minister's tax affairs as it tried to shut down the row about his late father's dealings in tax havens. Statement One 11am, Monday Asked if the Cameron family still had money in his late father's offshore fund identified in the Panama Papers, the PM's spokesman said: 'That is a private matter. I will focus on what the government is doing.' Statement Two. 2.30pm, Tuesday Asked if he or his family had benefited from any offshore fund in the past, or would do so in the future, Mr Cameron said: 'In terms of my own financial affairs, I own no shares. I have a salary as prime minister and I have some savings, which I get some interest from, and I have a house which we let out while we are living in Downing Street, and that's all I have. I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description.' Statement Three. 5pm, Tuesday No 10 said: 'To be clear, the Prime Minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds. The Prime Minister owns no shares. As has been previously reported, Mrs Cameron owns a small number of shares connected to her father's land, which she declares on her tax return.' Statement Four. 9am, Wednesday A Downing Street spokesman said: 'There are no offshore funds/trusts which the Prime Minister, Mrs Cameron or their children will benefit from in future.' Advertisement Mr Cameron said he was 'proud' of his stockbroker father, who had been 'unfairly written about'. The PM said there was a 'fundamental misconception' about the way Blairmore operated, saying it had not been set up to avoid tax. He said: 'It was set up after exchange controls went, so that people who wanted to invest in dollar-denominated shares and companies could do so, and there are many other, thousands of other unit trusts set up in this way.' It emerged this week that Ian Cameron also left assets in the tax haven of Jersey when he died in 2010. The Prime Minister yesterday admitted that all or part of the 300,000 left to him by his father might have come from offshore assets. 'I obviously can't point to every source of every bit of money and Dad's not around for me to ask the questions now,' he said. Mr Cameron said that a promise to publish details of his tax return, which was first made four years ago, would now be acted on. Sources said the publication could come within days, although senior ministers will not be asked to follow suit. Last night's revelations have damaged the Prime Minister. Labour MP Paul Flynn said: 'Statement 6 by PM to ITV drags out truth that he inherited 300,000 from his father who profited from tax havens. 'Why was truth delayed?.' Treasury select committee member Wes Streeting said: 'David Cameron keeps saying he has nothing to hide. So why are facts being dragged out of him over days?!' In a bid to close down a toxic row over tax avoidance earlier this week, Mr Cameron made an extraordinary public statement about his personal finances and income - insisting he received no money from shares or offshore trusts. But the claims only suggested more questions and Downing Street was forced to issue a string of further clarifications - making a total of four statements. Ian Cameron was named in the massive leak of more than 11 million files from the Panama tax haven. Shortly before his death the former stockbroker personally owned more than 6,000 shares in a Jersey fund he helped to manage, known by various names including the Close International Equity Growth Fund. DOWNING STREET SCRAMBLING TO PUBLISH DETAILS OF PM'S TAX RETURN Summaries of David Cameron's tax returns from the past six years are expected to be released within days after he agreed they should be published. The Prime Minister has been insisting for years that he is 'relaxed' about the prospect of disclosing the information. But the details have never actually emerged - with officials citing concerns about setting a precedent and turning people off entering public life. London Mayor Boris Johnson and current candidate for the job Zac Goldsmith have both published records of their income and dealings with HM Revenue & Customs. Number 10 are set to publish a summary of the information rather than copies of the returns themselves. Mr Cameron said: 'If people want information about my tax return, I can tell you what goes on mine. And I said before the last election, if we want to move to a situation where prime ministers and potential prime ministers publish this information, I am very happy to do that. 'So I hope I have dealt with the future, present and the past. I've frankly been more transparent about these things than any prime minister in the past.' Advertisement The assets in Jersey were left to the Prime Minister's mother Mary in 2010, leaving open the possibility that Mr Cameron could eventually benefit from it in the form of an inheritance. The leaked papers revealed Ian Cameron's firm Blairmore Holdings avoided UK tax for years by operating out of the Bahamas and Jersey. Under Jersey law, the value of the assets does not have to be made public, but a grant of probate is normally required only for sums above 10,000. It cannot include property but can apply to cash held in bank accounts or investments, including offshore trusts and funds, known as 'movable estate'. According to his English will, Ian Cameron left everything to his widow Mary, apart from specific bequests to the Prime Minister and his sisters. Legal sources said the terms of the will meant any Jersey assets were most likely to have gone to Mrs Cameron. Downing Street's final statement yesterday said the Prime Minister and his family will not benefit in the future from any offshore funds. But tax experts said funds held in Jersey would have grown more quickly, as dividend payments would not have been subject to tax. If Mr Cameron inherits anything from his mother it could then be argued that he has benefited from the offshore Jersey assets. Chartered accountant and tax lecturer Robert Leach said: 'It's quite possible that Mr Cameron and his siblings could benefit from money held offshore if they inherit any of Mary Cameron's estate. 'If this happens it will be difficult to reconcile this with the Prime Minister's statement.' There are legitimate reasons to hold money and other assets offshore and there is no suggestion of illegality or wrongdoing by any member of the Cameron family. Documents filed in 2009 showed Ian Cameron held at least 6,000 shares in the Jersey fund the first time he was shown to have personally held wealth offshore rather than managing funds like Blairmore Holdings in Panama. After his death, the net value of his estate was put at 2.7million. He left 300,000 in cash just under the threshold at which inheritance tax is paid to David. A 1million mews house in Kensington, West London, was left to the Prime Minister's sisters Tania and Clare. The remainder of his estate was left to Mrs Cameron. The 2.5million family home near Newbury in Berkshire was transferred to the Prime Minister's older brother Alex in 2006, in an apparent attempt to reduce inheritance tax liabilities. Labour has repeatedly called for Downing Street to publish the full details of Mr Cameron's links to Blairmore. Mr Leach said that the Prime Minister needed to say if the 300,000 he received from his father's will 'was the proceeds of a scheme that avoided tax'. He added: 'The answer is probably yes as he would have denied it otherwise. But even then he has not done anything illegal, although it is politically embarrassing. Tax havens and the 10 questions Cameron's failed to answer By Jason Groves, Deputy Political Editor for The Daily Mail 1 Why, if he had nothing to hide, did it take David Cameron four days to admit he owned shares in an offshore investment fund? In recent years the Prime Minister has championed a crackdown on tax avoidance, which made it politically embarrassing for him to admit he once had money invested in a tax haven. But in hindsight he must wish he had been more open about his shareholding in Blairmore his late fathers offshore investment fund from the start. Downing Streets handling of the crisis gave the impression of a Prime Minister caught on the back foot and unwilling to give a straight answer. He issued four statements in 48 hours before finally being forced to make his TV confession. 2 Was Blairmore a vehicle for tax avoidance? Mr Cameron said it was a fundamental misconception that the Blairmore trust was set up to avoid tax. But its own 2006 prospectus for investors published while the Prime Minister was still a shareholder made clear the trust had no intention of paying tax in Britain. It said: The directors intend that the affairs of the fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for UK taxation purposes. The fund will not be subject to United Kingdom corporation tax or income tax on its profits. Blairmore was registered in Panama and based in the Bahamas, where locals were retained to fill roles such as treasurer and secretary. Board meetings were held in Switzerland and Nassau in the Bahamas. Financial expert Richard Murphy, a professor of international political economy at City University, said it was completely disingenuous to suggest Blairmore was not set up to avoid tax. He said: There was a tax avoidance motive and it delivered tax avoidance. 3 Why did Mr Cameron invest offshore in the first place, if not to limit his tax bill? Mr Cameron said it was quite natural for him to have owned stocks and shares, particularly as his father Ian was a stockbroker. But investors choose offshore funds specifically because they are sheltered from the higher tax burdens they would incur in Britain. While Mr Cameron would have been liable for income tax on and dividends received and capital gains tax on any profits when he sold, the funds themselves are not liable to any tax, so grow more quickly than those based onshore. Mr Cameron also said the fund was set up so people could invest in dollar-denominated shares, but it could easily have done that from Britain rather than the Bahamas. 4 If Blairmore was not trying to avoid tax then why did it use secretive bearer shares, which have since been banned from the UK? Bearer shares, which Blairmore is known to have issued, do not carry the name of the owner and are similar to bank notes in that they are instantly transferable without paperwork. That anonymity meant they were popular with tax evaders and money launderers, although there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing linked to Blairmore or the Cameron family. The use of bearer shares was common in offshore funds at that time but they have since been banned from use in Britain by Mr Camerons government. 5 What was Mr Camerons total return from these investments, including profits he drew out between 1997 and 2010 when he sold his shares? The 5,000 shares Mr Cameron owned in a joint account with his wife Samantha were bought for 12,497 in April 1997 and sold for 31,500 in 2010. The profit of 19,003 was below the capital gains tax threshold. Mr Cameron said he paid income tax on annual dividends from the fund, but it is not known how much he received. He has not revealed what profits, if any, he drew between 1997 and 2010, so the total value of his Blairmore investment remains unknown. 6 Why didnt he declare his Blairmore shares in the register of MPs interests? The register is intended to provide information about any financial interest which a member has, or any benefit which he or she receives, which others might reasonably consider to influence his or her actions or words as a member of Parliament. Before 2010 it only required politicians to declare shareholdings valued at more than 65,000. But critics suggested Mr Cameron should have declared his Blairmore holdings while he was leader of the Opposition, when his personal interests and agendas were already under increased scrutiny. Mr Cameron became an MP in 2001 and leader of the Conservatives in 2005. He sold his Blairmore shares in 2010, the year he became Prime Minister, because he did not want to be open to accusations of serving his own vested interests, he said. In the month before he became Prime Minister, his register of interests included a gift of silver goblets from Lord Harris of Peckham, a rug from a former prime minister of Pakistan and a Christmas hamper from the Sultan of Brunei, but not his shareholdings. 7 Did he have any other offshore investments during or before his time as an MP? Mr Cameron said he had owned stocks and shares in the past but did not say if he had held any other offshore investments. When he became an MP in 2001 he declared that he owned shares in Carlton Communications, where he had worked as a consultant on Press and investor issues. He and his wife were said to have sold their Blairmore units as part of a wider disposal of assets, before he became Prime Minister. But Mr Cameron has yet to give any details of any other assets. 8 Was the money left to him by his father partly or wholly the product of investments in tax havens? Mr Cameron was left a 300,000 cash bequest in his fathers will in 2010 just under the inheritance tax threshold. Ian Cameron is known to have earned a salary of 20,000 US dollars as a director of Blairmore. He also had shares in Blairmore Asset Management in Geneva and a fund in the tax haven of Jersey which he helped to manage. The Prime Minister conceded he could not account for every source of every bit of his 300,000 inheritance, adding: Dad isnt around to ask the question now. But its impossible to imagine that his affluent lifestyle and cash inheritance were not funded at least in part by his fathers involvement with offshore investments. 9 What has happened to the money his father had invested in Jersey? Ian Cameron owned 6,000 shares in an offshore fund he helped to manage in Jersey, the Close International Equity Growth Fund. Under Jersey law the full value of his assets in the tax haven were not revealed in a grant of probate issued after his death, but the document is usually only required for sums above 10,000. Ian Camerons widow Mary is thought to have inherited his Jersey assets, but Downing Street has refused to say if they were brought onshore of if she is still the beneficiary of an offshore trust. David Cameron said he would not benefit in the future from any family trusts, or from offshore funds. But if he inherits anything from his mother, it could then be argued he has benefited from the Jersey assets. Chartered accountant and tax lecturer Robert Leach said: We obviously need more details. 10 Why has he still not published his tax return, four years after he first promised to do so? Mr Cameron says hes relaxed about publishing information from his tax returns but we still havent seen them. He made a similar statement in 2012, when opponents demanded he reveal whether he and senior colleagues would benefit personally from the reduction in the 50p top rate of income tax. Outraged tourists say their relaxing Easter break at an all-inclusive Gran Canaria resort turned into the holiday from hell when it was ruined by deafening building work. David Marriott arrived at the Servatur Waikiki Hotel at the Maspalomas resort on the island - to be met with the constant sound of drilling and hammering coming from major redevelopment work at the hotel next door. The 45-year-old builder said on the first day of his 600-a-week break in the Canary Islands a fellow holidaymaker warned: 'I hope you've bought your earplugs'. Scroll down for video David Marriott, 45, had hoped to enjoy a relaxing break in the sun with his friend - but couldn't believe it when he arrived at his all-inclusive hotel to find a major construction site next door The Servatur Waikiki Hotel (pictured) - the noise came from the neighbouring RIU hotel, according to holidaymakers The work, which residents said went on from 8am to 7pmeach day at the neighbouring RIU hotel, has led to scores of complaints on the hotel's Trip Advisor page. One wrote: 'There's hammers, drills, concrete mixers and shouting going on all day clearly audible from the pool, some balconies (we couldn't hear it in our room with the door shut) and the pool bar. It is extremely loud and they try to play the music loud but it doesn't drown it out.' Mr Marriott filmed several videos of the work, which shows the scaffolding-covered hotel and loud work going on right next to the busy pool area of his hotel. It could also be seen and heard from his room and he said he was woken each morning by loud jackhammers. On the footage music being played at the poolside is being drowned out by the noise from the building site. 'I hope you've bought your earplugs': Mr Marriott's 600-a-week break in the Canary Islands was ruined Mr Marriott from Stotfold, Bedfordshire, travelled to the island for a week of relaxation with friend Wayne Wadsworth, 35. The holiday cost them 650 each, with Thomson. He said upon booking he had been warned that there would be some 'minimal noise' coming from nearby building work. But he said there was a difference between 'minimal noise' and a building site, and the staff at Thomson had a 'moral responsibility' to advise him to go elsewhere. Mr Marriott said he couldn't believe it when he arrived at the resort to be met with major redevelopment work going on at the hotel next door Mr Marriott from Stotfold, Bedfordshire, travelled to the island for a week of relaxation with friend Wayne Wadsworth, 35. The holiday cost them 650 each, with Thomson He said: 'I told the lady in Thomson I wanted no noise, a week before the school holidays so there weren't children all over the place. I just wanted to relax and warm my bones up after working outside all winter. 'We arrived late on Saturday nightafter work had finished and no work took place on the Sunday. 'But on the Monday it started again and it didn't stop after that. We left the following Saturday and they were working all that day as well. 'We got back home in the early hours of the morning and said to each other we could still feel the ringing in our ears. 'I had just had enough, it was beyond belief. 'I went into Thomson when I got back to explain to them that there is a difference between minimal noise and a construction site and the response I got was that I had read the contract and signed it. 'You just couldn't get away from the noise, it was as simple as that. 'Wayne said to me while we were there, 'I could have saved 600 and gone to work with you everyday listening to an angle grinder'. 'That was the reality of it though, I could have gone to work for a week, earning how much I paid for the holiday and at least then I would have been able to go home and have a bit of peace and quiet later on.' Mr Marriott filmed several videos of the work, in which the loud work is clearly audible next to the busy pool area of his hotel He said that he accepts that Thomson warned him that there would be 'minimal noise' at the hotel but believes they should have warned him that it was a bit more than minimal. He said: 'I told her we wanted to spend around 600 each for a week lay by the pool during the day and somewhere we could go out at night. Somewhere with no hassle or noise. 'She said that there were some building work going on in the surrounding areas but Thomson have assured that it will not affect anyone. 'I said 'I'm not going to wake up the first day and open the curtains and it be like 'Hell's Bells' from the Carry On film am I?' 'She told me that Thomson said the noise was limited. It was not minimal or limited at all.' The work, which residents said went on from 8am to 7pm each day at the neighbouring RIU hotel, has led to scores of complaints on the hotel's Trip Advisor page David added: 'On the Sunday the pool area was rammed and then it just slowly dwindled down and we realised why. There were dust plumes coming out of the balconies that were being demolished. It was a total refurbishment. 'In the 21st century I would have thought this would have been highlighted. If we would have been warned I would have booked a different holiday. 'I expected a couple of patio doors being changed, I didn't expect a building site. They all fobbed me off, I sent emails whilst we were out there and then went into the store when we came back. 'In 2016, I thought that as a human being she would have had more morals before taking our cash. They are willing to take people's money but not outline problems.' Dozens of people have taken to Trip Advisor to complain about the building work. One user said: 'The ear piercing building work was deafening and ruined our holiday!! It was horrendous, they even worked for a little period on Sunday! Constant drilling, banging and knocking down of walls.' Another wrote: 'The building work is awful. It is huge, dominates the whole of the hotel view, and is deafening. You cannot avoid it, unless you spend the whole day a) out; b) in your room with the door shut; c) crowded around the kids pool area at the back of the hotel (in a small space.) The building work is NOT the Hotel's fault, but please be warned that it is very loud, very ugly, and quite honestly, ruined our stay. The lack of warning before you book it is outrageous.' Thomson wrote to Mr Marriott when he booked, to warn him of the building work, saying: 'The RIU Papayas Hotel next door will be undergoing a refurbishment project during your stay. We wanted to inform you that some work may be visible and audible at times, however please be assured that although out of our control, the hotel management will do all they can to ensure that this will not have any major impact on your holiday enjoyment.' It is claimed his in-laws were involved as revenge for his infidelities The mother-in-law of a playboy alleged to have been killed as revenge for his infidelities could not be involved in his death because she took part in threesomes herself, her lover has claimed. Wealthy Italian expatriate Ludovico Gnecchi Ruscone told an inquest in Nairobi that claims his married lover - the victim's mother-in-law - were behind his slaying 'defied common sense'. Suggesting such behaviour was permissible, he revealed he had taken part in threesomes with the mother-in-law and her own husband, who died in 2014. Antonio 'Tonio' Trzebinski was shot dead 15 years ago, sparking a long-running campaign by his mother for further investigation into possible links to his widowed wife and her family. On October 16, 2001, Tonio Trzebinski, 41, was driving towards the gates of the villa owned by his mistress, professional game-hunter Natasha Illum-Berg, when he was killed by a single shot fired at point-blank range His widow, German fashion designer Anna Trzebinski (pictured) has denied she was involved in his murder amid accusations it was related to his infidelities His mother-in-law, Dodo Cunningham-Reid (pictured), has also denied involvement, with her own lover telling an inquest such a suggestion is ridiculous because she was having an affair of her own Mr Trzebinski, 41, was driving towards the gates of the Nairobi villa owned by his mistress when he was killed by a single shot fired at point-blank range into his chest. At the time, police dismissed his death as a hijacking gone wrong. However, his mother Errol campaigned for further investigation - prompting the inquest currently underway. Mr Gnecchi told the inquest accusations Mr Trzebinski was killed for his infidelities 'defied common sense', because he lived with Mr Trzebinski's mother-in-law Dodo Cunningham-Reid for years - at the same time as her husband, Michael, who died in 2014. He said: 'It would become grotesque if she wanted Tonio dead because Tonio was having extramarital affairs,' The Telegraph reported. 'That would be ridiculous because Dodo was having an extramarital affair with me. 'Michael was a great friend of mine and he was aware of the relationship between his wife and myself and so were the children and the grandchildren.' Earlier this week, Mr Trzebinski's mistress, professional game-hunter Natasha Illum-Berg, told the inquest that he had called his mother-in-law Dodo 'the most dangerous woman in Kenya'. Mr Trzebinski was killed three weeks after his wife, Anna Trzebinski, discovered his affair. 'We never discussed exactly what that meant,' his mistress said. 'I wish I had asked him all these questions but I was foolishly just planning a future with him and I didn't take it seriously.' She added that he was 'extremely scared' his wife would hurt him because he had asked her for a divorce. Ms Illum-Berg (pictured) has told an inquest in Nairobi that Mr Trzebinski had called his mother-in-law Dodo Cunningham-Reid 'the most dangerous woman in Kenya' and claimed he was scared of his wife Ms Illum-Berg told the court: 'He said to me he was extremely scared of Anna and her capabilities and on many occasions when I said "how bad can it be?" he said "you have no idea what that woman is capable of."' She added that following the discovery of the affair she received a threatening email from Mr Trzebinski's wife warning her: 'Wear your protective gear because I will come around.' The mistress also revealed she was 'deeply in love' with the artist, who she said wanted to run away with her to Tanzania. Both Mrs Trzebinski and her mother Mrs Cunningham-Reid deny they were involved in his death - but Mrs Trzebinski previously told the inquest that she admitted her last meeting with her husband had not been a happy one. The German-born fashion designer told the inquest earlier this week that she discovered her husband's affair after pressing redial on her husband's phone and recognising Ms Illum-Berg's voice. She told the court she immediately confronted him in his studio and said: 'I shouted, 'I want you to feel the pain that you made us feel!' and I held the knife up to him and cut his painting,' reports The Times. She added: 'I just knew that it would be so hurtful and devastating for him, for me to damage his paintings.' The Telegraph reports when asked if she had anything to do with the murder, she replied: 'Absolutely not. I can tell you it's deeply offensive to me and my children that that should even be thought.' Artist Tonio Trzebinski next to one of his paintings. His widow Anna Trzebinski has denied she was involved in his murder but admitted at his inquest that their last meeting had not been a happy one Her children with Mr Trzebinski, Stas, 24, and Lana, 23, have been in court for the inquest. Mrs Trzebinski was at a rehabilitation centre in the U.S. when her husband was shot. She has since remarried and still lives in Kenya. The inquest comes after years of dogged detective work by Mr Trzebinski's mother, who has never believed the original police theory that Mr Trzebinski's death was the result of a simple carjacking that went wrong. Neither his car, nor his expensive watch or a wad of cash in his wallet was stolen and his mother believes a 'hired assassin' killed her son. Rumours soon surfaced that the killing was an act of revenge, and police questioned Anna and other family members and friends. It has since emerged that the murder may have links to organised crime. Last year Errol Trzebinski, 79, told The Mail on Sunday: 'I lost my beloved son and while mourning him I came to realise that there may be extremely sinister undertones to his murder. 'The police wanted it to be wrapped up as just another opportunist crime. But I talked to everyone and anyone involved in his life, and I persuaded a team of undercover detectives to listen to me and to interrogate many witnesses.' Mrs Trzebinski, who was born in Britain before moving to Kenya and marrying a Polish architect, is the first to admit that her son, who was a widely exhibited artist who trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, ran with a fast-living crowd who openly used cocaine and held wild parties. Having returned to Kenya from London in his 20s, he fell in with a group dubbed 'The Fun Squad', a hard-drinking crowd who loved to party. Trzebinski even had a vodka-tonic cocktail named after him the Tonio. His mother said: 'He was probably the wildest of them all, doing everything to the maximum.' She said on the day of his murder, his wife Anna was in America on a therapy course called Women Who Love Too Much, while he had been taking care of their two children. Once the children were in bed, he drove off to see Ms Illum Berg. In a bizarre coincidence, almost exactly 60 years earlier, British peer and roguish philanderer Lord Erroll was shot dead in his car less than a mile from the spot where Mr Trzebinski was killed. He too was on his way to visit his mistress. Avoided jail: Grant Manser, 20, from Kidderminster, is pictured leaving Birmingham Crown Court A teenage boffin created damaging computer software used by cyber-hackers to crash 224,000 websites around the world from the bedroom of his family's home aged just 16. Grant Manser, now 20, from Kidderminster, Worcestershire, set up the damaging software and sold it on the dark web to customers around the globe for as little as 4.99. The stresser program worked by bombarding websites, servers and email addresses with so much information they crashed - with companies, schools, colleges and government departments among the victims. Manser pleaded guilty to six charges under the Computer Misuse Act and four under the Serious Crime Act, but was spared jail as he received a suspended prison sentence. Birmingham Crown Court heard how Mansers scheme operated over a four-year period between January 2012 and November 2014. The defendant was arrested at the familys 170,000 detached home in November 2014 by officers from the Regional Cyber Crime Unit and computer equipment was seized. It was found to contain four systems called Dejabooter, Vexstresser, netspoof and Refinedstresser, known in the computer world as DOS (denial of service) software. When deployed these DOS programs flooded a chosen website, server or email address with so much data they could not cope, causing them to temporarily crash. Manser sold the software via the dark web - the hidden internet used for criminal purposes - at prices ranging from 4.99 to 20. Raj Punia, prosecuting, said Manser had 12,800 registered users and, of these, just under 4,000 had bought DOS packages. They had then carried out 603,499 attacks on 224,548 targets. One victim was Harrogate and Hull College which saw its computer network crash for 14 hours after a disgruntled student brought one of Mansers packages because he was unhappy at a detention. House: The defendant was arrested at the familys 170,000 detached home in Kidderminster (pictured) in November 2014 by officers from the Regional Cyber Crime Unit and computer equipment was seized Miss Punia said Manser accepted payment by PayPal and had a turnover of 50,000 during the period he was operating. She said although it was widely acknowledged that stresser programs could be used legitimately by companies to test their own vulnerability, in this case Mansers software was only designed for illegal criminal purposes. By the time he was arrested, Mansers business was doing so well he had started to advertise for staff. During police interviews, the teenager said he had got the idea after working for someone in the US and seeing how much money he made from the scheme. Among the victims his customers targeted were companies, councils and government departments across the world, including Poland, France, other EU countries, the US and the Netherlands. Targeted: One victim was Harrogate and Hull College which saw its computer network crash for 14 hours after a disgruntled student brought one of Mansers packages because he was unhappy at a detention Jamie Baxter, defending, said Manser only made and sold the systems to make money, adding: He is not a hacker. The system doesnt take or hack any information from the websites being attacked.' He was only 16 when he started to do this and it was his immaturity and naivety which led him to commit these offences Jamie Baxter, defending And he said he had built safeguards into the program to ensure that organisations on a blacklist were not attacked. These included banks, any healthcare organisation, the police and the FBI. He was only 16 when he started to do this and it was his immaturity and naivety which led him to commit these offences, Mr Baxter said. His client had not spent the 50,000 extravagantly, but on updating his computer equipment and also on his hobby of his motorbike, he added. Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has defended two $4,000 helicopter rides as 'good value', refusing to apologise for using the allowance to 'service his electorate'. Mr Joyce came under fire yesterday for chartering two helicopter flights to the Lunatic Hotel in the small town of Drake in his electorate of New England. Mr Joyce caught a helicopter flight from his base in Tamworth, NSW to Drake, on March 24, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Scroll down for video Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce (pictured) has come under fire for chartering two helicopter flights to a small regional town in his electorate Mr Joyce chartered the $3836.25 flights with Fleet Helicopters Armidale. He claimed the cost fell under the $21,160 charter allowance he was entitled to as a member for a regional electorate of between 25,000sq km and 99,999sq km, The Australian reported. Mr Joyce said the flight was chartered to avoid a four-hour drive from Tamworth to Drake, however he has a second electoral office in Tenterfield - about 40 minutes drive from the town. It was his second helicopter flight to the town in the past year. Mr Joyce said he will not apologise for the air travel as taxpayers received value for money, in a statement released on Thursday evening. 'I believe everyone in New England deserves good representation including those in the most remote parts of my electorate,' the statement read. 'There is no airstrip at Drake so a helicopter was our only option on those days. 'I do not apologise for using my allowance to service my electorate and I do not apologise for using local businesses to do so.' Mr Joyce (right, while in Drake, NSW) chartered a helicopter flight worth about $4,000 to travel from Tamworth to Drake on March 24 Mr Joyce shared this picture on Facebook of his trip to Drake, a regional town in his NSW electorate Mr Joyce flew in a helicopter from Tamworth to Drake, rather than driving the four-hour trip He also posted 'the questions from the Sydney Morning Herald and (his) answers' on Facebook. The reaction to Mr Joyce's reaction was mixed, with some saying they understood the decision to charter a helicopter, while others suggested it was an excessive cost. 'Well done Barnaby ! You got the job done... Supported a good local business with the chopper too,' Todd Heffernan said. 'Good stuff Barnaby it is important to represent your whole electorate,' John Ando wrote. 'I do not apologise for using my allowance to service my electorate and I do not apologise for using local businesses to do so,' Mr Joyce said on Thursday evening 'I believe everyone in New England deserves good representation including those in the most remote parts of my electorate,' the Deputy Prime Minister said in a statement Mr Joyce's flight comes after Bronwyn Bishop (pictured) was forced to resign when it was revealed she chartered a $5,000 flight from Melbourne to Geelong 'What a lot of crap, we all knew that he'd come up with an excuse but that will be hard to sell. DO NOT treat people like idiots,' Fernando Velozo said. The controversy comes after Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop was forced to resign after it was revealed she chartered a $5,000 flight from Melbourne to Geelong, which are located just 90 kilometres away. Ms Bishop, who was Speaker of the House at the time, has since repaid the money. Thirteen North Koreans working in a state-run restaurant outside the country have defected to South Korea after TV dramas made them realised they had been brainwashed. The defectors, one male manager and a dozen women, arrived in the South yesterday, though Seoul refused to reveal which country the restaurant which they fled was located in. Upon their arrival, they officials they began to distrust North Korean propaganda by watching South Korean TV dramas and movies and from searching the Internet while living overseas. Thirteen North Koreans working in a state-run restaurant outside the country have defected to South Korea, ahead of brutal UN sanctions set to kick in that are expected to see the country fall into famine Dictator Kim Jong-Un has warned his citizens to prepare for famine after his nuclear test in January sparked a swathe of UN sanctions designed to further isolate his autocratic regime Overseas labour is a large source of foreign currency for North Korea, which earns between $200 million and $300 million from approximately 50,000 workers per year - mostly in China and Russia. It is estimated Pyongyang rakes in about $10million every year from some 130 restaurants it operates - with mostly North Korean staff - in 12 different countries. Last month, while unveiling a series of unilateral sanctions on Pyongyang over its January nuclear test, Seoul had urged South Korean citizens overseas to boycott any such establishments, saying their profits funded the North's nuclear weapons programme. There have been defections by individual restaurant workers in the past, but this is the first time so many staff from one restaurant have defected en masse. Seoul's Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee told reporters all the defectors had been 'on the same page' about escaping to South Korea. He added: 'We cannot reveal the country and the route they took. That's because we are concerned about a possible diplomatic clash with a third country, the protection of the group and other possible cases that might arise in the future.' North Korea is known to be strict about vetting and selecting people to work in its overseas restaurants, knowing they will inevitably be exposed to information about the outside world that they are mostly protected from in the North. Jeong said: 'From what we know, there is some competition for being deployed to overseas restaurants. We believe that in order to win the competition, they must be from relatively good families.' The restaurant staff's defection comes amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula, where Seoul and Washington have carried out weeks of military exercises (pictured) - much to Pyongyang's chagrin He added: 'Medical check-ups show that their health condition is relatively good.' Tough UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after its January nuclear test significantly curtailed the isolated state's ability to earn hard currency, making the restaurants more important than ever as an income source. There have been reports of staff not being paid, as the restaurants were pressured into increasing their regular remittances to Pyongyang. When asked if the UN sanctions had been one trigger for the staff to plot an escape to South Korea, Jeong said: 'We believe so'. The defections come at a time of elevated military tensions on the divided Korean peninsula with North Korea condemning Seoul and Washington for spearheading the sanctions drive at the UN, while also lashing out at annual, large-scale military war games that South Korea and the United States kicked off last month. In recent weeks, the North's state media has carried regular threats of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against both countries. The Unification Ministry's website says more than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea as of March. David Cameron has been threatened with 'consequences' over his pro-EU mailshot as more than 145,000 people signed a petition condemning the 9.3million cost. Eurosceptic Tories have vowed revenge on the Prime Minister after he used taxpayers' money to send the 'propaganda' leaflets to every home in the country. Some MPs have threatened to sabotage other areas of government business in protest, with speculation that they could target Budget measures next week. A Commons debate is now almost certain to be held on the issue after a petition lodged on the parliament website passed the 100,000 threshold. Demanding that the mailshot be stopped, it states: 'We believe voters deserve a fair referendum - without taxpayer-funded biased interceptions by the Government.' Some 4,000 signatures an hour are currently being added. David Cameron, seen launching the Remain campaign's battle bus yesterday, has defended the 9m cost of the EU leaflets as 'money well spent' In a defiant intervention yesterday, the Prime Minister said the 9.3 million cost of the 16-page leaflet was 'money well spent'. Mr Cameron said the Government had a 'duty' to set out its pro-EU view to voters. But Justice Secretary Michael Gove - one of the Cabinet ministers backing Brexit - was scathing about the move. 'I want a fair campaign, I want people to hear from both sides but what I think is wrong is spending 9million of taxpayers' money on one particular piece of one-sided propaganda,' he said. 'I think it is wrong that money that should be spent on priorities like the NHS is being spent on Euro-propaganda.' In other developments: Former Tory defence secretary Liam Fox urged voters to deluge Downing Street with junk mail by posting the leaflets back to the Prime Minister. It emerged the independent Electoral Commission warned the Government not to issue taxpayer funded leaflets in the run-up to the referendum because of the risk it could give an 'unfair advantage' to one side. Ministers were forced to deny claims that release of the leaflet had been brought forward to deflect attention from embarrassing questions about the Prime Minister's tax affairs. A petition calling for the leaflet to be abandoned had attracted more than 96,000 signatures in 24 hours. Mr Cameron acknowledged that the 'abrasive' campaign was taking its toll on the Government. Former Tory PM Sir John Major warned that Brexit campaigners were playing 'Russian Roulette' with Britain's economy. Bill Cash has warned there will be 'political consequences' for Mr Cameron over the leaflets The senior Tory MP Sir Bill Cash, chairman of the Commons European scrutiny committee, said MPs were powerless to block the distribution of the leaflet to 27 million homes. But he said Eurosceptic MPs would hold talks on Monday over how to respond: 'This is a blatant breach of an undertaking given by ministers on the floor of the Commons that any leaflets would be both accurate and impartial. It is a breach of trust and there will be political consequences.' Fellow Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg suggested Eurosceptics could now take revenge by de-railing other areas of Government business. 'This is dangerous territory for the Government,' he said. 'Many Eurosceptics do not want to fight the Government in other areas where it may be easier to defeat them in parliament, but if the Government behaves in this way that may be the only option.' Another Tory MP said Mr Cameron could even face a leadership challenge, with MPs writing letters of no confidence to Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee. If Mr Brady receives letters from 50 MPs it would spark an automatic leadership contest. One MP said: 'I think you will see letters going to Graham Brady we have been lied to.' But Bernard Jenkin, another leading Brexit supporter, urged his colleagues not to 'divide' the party due to 'irritation' over referendum tactics. 'This issue is dividing the Conservative Party. We must not let a difference of opinion and irritation over each others' tactics undermine the unity of the party,' he told MailOnline. 'I am one of the people who has been working on this issue for 23 years. 'I would not dream of turning this into a leadership issue at this particular moment.' Mr Cameron defended the leaflet during a question and answer session with students at Exeter University yesterday. The Prime Minister said he would 'make no apologies' for throwing the full weight of the Government behind one side of the argument. But he admitted that infighting between members of the Cabinet was taking its toll. 'For this brief period you are going to have cabinet ministers on both sides of the argument. I don't necessarily think that means the Government suffers. The Vote Leave campaign issued a 20-point rebuttal to the government's claims in the leaflet. Gisela Stuart, the group's Labour chairman said: 'This is not the facts, it is a misleading government propaganda campaign.' Craig Pesch launched a horrific attack on a taxi driver who picked him up outside an exclusive Mayfair club after school reunion drinks A millionaire property developer is facing years behind bars for launching a sickening attack on a taxi driver after drinking 14,000 worth of vintage champagne. Craig Pesch, 33, had been out for school reunion drinks at some of Londons most exclusive bars before ordering a cab to pick him up outside the exclusive Maddox Club in Mayfair. When veteran Delta Taxis driver Ratid Shilaka struggled to find one of Peschs houses on his satnav, the drunken businessman repeatedly punched the 71-year-old in the face. Mr Shilaka was rushed to hospital and had to undergo surgery to rewire his jaw after Pesch fled the scene stained with his victims blood. Prosecutor Edward Aydin told Westminster Magistrates: Mr Shilaka was a punching bag for a raging bull. Mr Pesch mercilessly punched the victim in a sustained attack with immense force. He was strapped into his seatbelt at the time and Mr Pesch was knocking him around like a rag doll. The court heard the confusion over Peschs new-build address was the only motive for the brutal assault that has forced Mr Shilaka out of work and left him drinking liquidised food through a straw. Mr Aydin said: '[Pesch] got into Mr Shilakas taxi and told him he wanted to go to SW18. Mr Shilaka put the address into his satnav but it didnt show as a valid address. Mr Pesch then got out the car, opened the drivers door and began punching Mr Shilaka repeatedly. Pesch told officers he had fallen over when he was found at 4.40am covered in blood under the statue of Ronald Reagan at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair. He initially denied all knowledge of the attack, offering no remorse and no guilt, the court heard. He later claimed he had been drunk. In all the witness statements there is no evidence of him being drunk, of him being unsteady, or his speech slurred, its only him saying he was drunk and had drank 14,000 worth of alcohol, said Mr Aydin. Mr Pesch gave him a beating he will never ever forget, and no one will know if Mr Shilaka will get his self-esteem back and his dignity as a man. Mr Shilaka was treated for facial lacerations that were oozing blood at St Marys Hospital, Paddington, the court heard. He was later transferred to Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow for surgery. Pesch was picked up from outside Mayfair's exclusive Maddox Club before he launched the attack He has suffered from flashbacks since the attack and has been too fearful to return to work, losing out on 7,200 in wages. Pesch submitted a statement to court which read: I cant explain my actions that night and Im disgusted by my actions. Defence barrister William Clegg QC said: There is no evidence of Mr Pesch previously committing violence - ever. Pesch admitted causing grievous bodily harm last year and returned to court this week for sentencing. But after hearing details of the offence, magistrates decided it was too serious to be dealt with by them and sent it a judge in crown court. Magistrates in central London decided the case needed a more serious punishment than they can hand out Pesch was warned he faces a certain jail sentence by chairman of the bench Stevie Dee, who said: This was an attack on someone doing their job. This is a sustained assault on a vulnerable victim. There was no escape for the victim who was strapped in by his seatbelt. This is a category one offence, and too serious for this court. The law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers scandal helped to defend a New York art gallery in a legal battle for ownership of an 18million painting looted by the Nazis, it has been reported. The 1918 Seated Man With A Cane by Modigliani was plundered by the Germans when they invaded Paris in 1940. It was reportedly owned by Jewish gallery owner Oscar Stettiner, who fled the French capital with his family but was forced to leave his collection behind. Decades later, one of his descendants his grandson Philippe Maestracci launched a legal battle for its return after it allegedly resurfaced at a Sotheby's auction in New York in 2008. The 1918 Seated Man With A Cane (left) by Modigliani is at the centre of a legal battle for ownership involving a New York art gallery, an offshore company and the Panama Papers law firm. The painting was reportedly owned by Jewish gallery owner Oscar Stettiner (right) before it was plundered by the Nazis in World War Two One of Stettiner's descendants has launched a legal battle against the Helly Nahmad Gallery, run by Helly Nahmad (pictured), claiming the Modigliani belonged to his grandfather and should be returned to his family The painting had been consigned to the auctioneers by New York's Helly Nahmad Gallery. Mr Maestracci was convinced the Modigliani had belonged to his grandfather and submitted a claim for the artwork to be returned to his family. However, the Nahmad Gallery contested the claim, saying the painting was actually owned by a Panama-based company, the International Art Centre (IAC). This, the gallery argued, meant it could not be sued over the painting in New York. Details of the case have emerged in the Panama Papers, a trove of documents that reveal how the world's rich and famous have set up companies in tax havens through law firm Mossack Fonseca. The files, seen by The Guardian, reportedly show how the IAC was set up by Ezra Nahmad and that half of its shares were passed to his brother David in 2008, with the other half following in 2014. The files also mention dozens of other world-famous paintings involved in auctions and legal proceedings over the years including Modigliani's Venus (left) and Le Reve by Pablo Picasso (right) David's son, Helly Nahmad, runs the Nahmad Gallery. Maestracci's lawyers argue the IAC is just a shell company and that attempting to separate it from the gallery is a figleaf. Nahmad's lawyers say the IAC bought the painting in good faith at an auction. The Panama Papers suggest Mossack Fonseca worked to prove that the IAC was based offshore and, as such, was outside the jurisdiction the New York courts. Picassos Les Femmes d'Alger (above) was also mentioned in the so-called Panama Papers The case continues to make its way through the New York court system. A spokesman for Mossack Fonseca declined to comment over the Nahmad case. He told The Guardian: 'We cannot provide responses to questions that pertain to specific matters, as doing so would be a breach of our policies and legal obligation to maintain client confidentiality.' The files also mention dozens of other world-famous paintings involved in auctions and legal proceedings over the years. Security services fear militants have aspirations to conduct attacks against the U.S. and other nations in the West The number of ISIS militants in Libya has doubled in the last year or so to as many as 6,000 fighters, with aspirations to conduct attacks against the U.S. and other nations in the West. Army Gen. David Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command, said that local Libya militias are battling to destroy an ISIS network in Sabratha. The latest numbers for ISIS in Libya make it the largest branch of eight that the jihadi group operates outside Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. defense officials. Scroll down for video The number of ISIS militants in Libya has doubled in the last year or so to as many as 6,000 fighters, with aspirations to conduct attacks against the U.S. and other nations in the West ISIS in Libya have previously beheaded and executed Ethiopian Christians in a vile propaganda video The U.S. has conducted two airstrikes in Libya in recent months targeting Islamic State fighters and leaders. Rodriguez said that airstrieks are limited to militants that pose an 'imminent' threat to U.S. interests. He said it's possible the U.S. could do more as the government there takes shape. The U.S. and its allies are hoping that a U.N.-brokered unity government will be able to bring the warring factions together and end the chaos there, which has helped fuel the growth of the Islamic State. The U.S. and European allies would like the new government to eventually work with them against ISIS. The U.S., France and other European nations have sent special operations forces to work with Libyan officials and help the militias fight. In February, American airstrikes hit an Islamic State training camp in rural Libya near the Tunisian border, killing more than 40 militants. Last November, a U.S. airstrike killed top Islamic State leader Abu Nabil in Libya. He was a longtime al-Qaida operative and the senior Islamic State leader in Libya The U.S. has conducted two airstrikes in Libya in recent months targeting Islamic State fighters and leaders The lack of unity between rebel factions has led to ISIS growing in Sirte and spreading south of the city Last November, a U.S. airstrike killed top Islamic State leader Abu Nabil in Libya. He was a longtime al-Qaida operative and the senior Islamic State leader in Libya. Rodriguez said, however, that it will be a challenge for ISIS to become as big a threat as it is in Iraq and Syria because of resistance from local Libyan fighters and the population, which is wary of outside groups. He said the militias in Libya have fought ISIS militants in Benghazi and Derna with some success, and fought hard in Sabratha with more limited gains. Efforts to battle the group in Sirte have not worked as well, he said. Their biggest problem, he said, is that often the militias fight among themselves. 'It's uneven and it's not consistent across the board,' Rodriguez told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. 'We'll have to see how the situation develops, but they are contesting the growth of ISIS in several areas across Libya, not all of it.' Asked if waiting for the new government to form will allow the Islamic State more time to gather momentum, Rodriguez downplayed the risk. It must consider individuals' problems within their circumstances, he says But he did encourage 'erotic' sex and the 'pursuit of pleasure' in marriage He declared his desire to maintain the Church's opposition to gay marriage It will go a long way to defining his legacy as a conservative or progressive Pope Francis has encouraged married couples to enjoy 'erotic' sex and claimed sexual desire is essential to developing 'self-mastery' of one's own body. Excerpts from his 260-age 'Joy of Love' text reveal Francis' belief that the pursuit of sexual pleasures helps life become 'good and happy' and should be considered a 'gift from god'. But despite shedding many of the stuffy euphemisms common among his predecessors, he would not budge on the Church's longstanding refusal to endorse gay marriage. As was expected, he did relax guidance regarding how the Church should deal with cohabitation and divorcees who remarry. Pope Francis this morning released new guidelines determining the Church's stance on historically conservative issues such as homosexuality, marriage and divorce, and the family However, liberals within the Church will be left disappointed after Francis decided to keep the status quo regarding same-sex marriages Released at noon today, the 'Joy of Love' was one of the most highly anticipated moments of the 79-year-old Argentinian's tenure and is expected to define his legacy. The Pope told married couples to welcome 'with sincere and joyful gratitude the physical expressions of love found in a caress, an embrace, a kiss and sexual union'. 'A healthy sexual desire, albeit closely joined to a pursuit of pleasure, always involves a sense of wonder, and for that very reason can humanise the impulses,' he said. 'In no way, then, can we consider the erotic dimension of love simply as a permissible evil or a burden to be tolerated for the good of the family. Rather, it must be seen as gift from God that enriches the relationship of the spouses. 'As a passion sublimated by a love respectful of the dignity of the other, it becomes a pure, unadulterated affirmation revealing the marvels of which the human heart is capable. 'In this way, even momentarily, we can feel that life has turned out good and happy.' It was also important for young couples to understand that married life was a process of growth which led them to mellow with age, the Pope continued. He noted that 'unduly high expectations' of constantly great sex was among the reasons why marriages sometimes failed. He explained that sexual desires of spouses usually receded over decades only to be replaced by 'the pleasure of mutual belonging and the knowledge that neither of them is alone but has a partner with whom everything in life is shared'. This satisfaction in older couples, the Pope said, was itself 'part of the affection proper to conjugal love'. Meanwhile, maintaining the status quo, Francis said homosexuals should be able to live free from discrimination, but the institute of marriage remained a sacred bond between a man and a woman. While not unexpected, no changes to his stance on gay marriage will come as a disappointment for Catholics who had been encouraged to hope for real change by Francis's famous 'Who am I to judge?' remark about homosexuality early in his papacy. Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri and Cardinal Christoph Schonborn hold up a copy of Pope Francis' 'The Joy of Love' at the Holy See Press Office today In the absence of any new language on gay believers, official Church teaching defaults to the controversial formula that same-sex relationships are 'intrinsically disordered'. The area in which the missive arguably signals the biggest change is in its recognition of the values embodied in the relationships of people once severely condemned as 'living in sin'. He also said the situation for families with gay relatives was 'not easy for parents or for children', and said the Church must avoid 'every sign of unjust discrimination' towards homosexuals. Officially referred to as an 'apostolic exhortation', the massive text targets a huge swathe of issues related to family life. He says that individual conscience should be the guiding principle for Catholics negotiating the complexities of sex, marriage and family life. However, it also rejects the Church's emphasis on inflexible black and white rules for its faithful. He makes no change in church doctrine, but in selectively citing his predecessors and emphasising his own teachings, he makes clear that he wants a revolution in the way priests accompany Catholics. He says the church must no longer sit in judgment and 'throw stones' against those who fail to live up to the Gospel's ideals of marriage and family life. He said: 'We have been called to form consciences, not replace to them. I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion. 'But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness.' 'THE JOY OF LOVE': KEY POINTS FROM POPE FRANCIS'S DEFINING TEXT Pope Francis slammed the door shut on proposals to empower gay unions, saying they were 'not analogous to God's plan for family' HOMOSEXUALITY:Francis slaps down proposals to place gay unions on the same level as marriage, saying bishops found 'there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family'. He offered sympathy to those families with gay relatives, 'a situation not easy for parents or for children', and said the Church must avoid 'every sign of unjust discrimination' towards homosexuals. COHABITATION: Francis says couples who live together outside of marriage 'need to be welcomed and guided, patiently and discreetly', and the choice to cohabit may be based on external factors such as financial difficulties or cultural situations. REMARRIED DIVORCED PEOPLE: 'They are not excommunicated and should not be treated as such', and should be made to feel part of the Church 'while avoiding any occasion of scandal'. The pope says the Christian community caring for such people 'is not to be considered a weakening of its faith' but a sign of 'its charity'. BROKEN MARRIAGES:Pastors should judge situations on a case-by-case basis: 'we know that no "easy recipes" exist'. CHILDREN: Offspring should be taught to say 'please', 'thank you' and 'sorry, they should be punished for misbehaviour, cured of the vice of 'wanting it all now' and prevented from watching television programmes which undercut family values. CHURCH SELF-CRITICISM: 'We need a healthy dose of self-criticism', said the pope, admitting that until now the Church has 'proposed a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage' and struggles to present marriage as more than 'a lifelong burden'. CONTRACEPTION: The Church sanctioned family planning method of abstaining from sex should be 'promoted' - not that other methods are forbidden - and children must receive sex education, albeit without focusing on 'safe sex'. Advertisement On thorny issues such as contraception, he stressed that a couple's individual conscience - not dogmatic rules imposed across the board - must guide their decisions and the church's pastoral practice. He insisted the church's aim is to reintegrate and welcome all its members. He called for a new language to help Catholic families cope with today's problems, and said pastors must take into account mitigating factors - fear, ignorance, habits and duress - in counselling Catholics who are not perfect. 'It can no longer simply be said that all those in any irregular situations are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace,' he wrote. Even those in an 'objective situation of sin' can be in a state of grace, and can even be more pleasing to God by trying to improve, he said. The document's release marks the culmination of a divisive two-year consultation of ordinary Catholics and the church hierarchy that Francis initiated in hopes of understanding the problems facing Catholic families today and providing them with better pastoral care. The most divisive issue was whether Francis would loosen the Vatican's strict position on whether Catholics who divorce and remarry can receive Communion. Church teaching holds that unless these Catholics receive an annulment, or a church decree that their first marriage was invalid, they are committing adultery and cannot receive Communion. Francis's image as a progressive Pope had many liberals hoping he would announce changes to the Church's stance on homosexuality. They are likely to be disappointed in his decision to maintain the status quo Conservatives had insisted the rules were fixed and there was no way around Christ's teaching on marriage. Progressives had sought to balance doctrine with mercy and look at each couple on a case-by-case basis, accompanying them on a path of reconciliation that could lead to them eventually receiving the sacraments. Francis took a unilateral step last year in changing church law to make it easier to get an annulment. Today he said the rigorous response proposed by the conservatives was inconsistent with Jesus's message of mercy. 'By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God. 'Let us remember that a small step in the midst of great human limitations can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties.' Francis did not endorse the 'penitential path' of bringing such civilly remarried Catholics to Communion that was advocated by leading progressives such as Cardinal Walter Kasper. But he repeated what the synod had endorsed the need for pastors to help individual Catholics over the course of spiritual direction to ascertain what God is asking of them. Let us remember that a small step in the midst of great human limitations can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties' Pope Francis And he went further by explicitly linking such discussions of conscience with having access to the sacraments. In footnotes, Francis cited his previous document The Joy Of The Gospel in saying that the Eucharist 'is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak'. While Francis frequently cited John Paul, whose papacy was characterised by a hardline insistence on doctrine and sexual morals, he did so selectively. Francis referenced certain parts of John Paul's 1981 Familius Consortio, the guiding Vatican document on family life until Friday, but he omitted any reference to its divisive paragraph 83, which explicitly forbids the sacraments for the divorced and civilly remarried. In fact, Francis went further than mere omission and squarely rejected John Paul's call in that document for people in civil second marriages to live as brother and sister, abstaining from sex so they can still receive the sacraments. In a footnote, Francis said many people offered such a solution by the church 'point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are lacking it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of children suffer'. Similarly, in discussing the need for 'responsible parenthood' and regulating the number of children, Francis made no mention of the church's opposition to artificial contraception. He squarely rejected abortion as 'horrendous' and cited the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which deals with the issue. But Francis made no mention of the 'unlawful birth control methods' rejected in Humanae Vitae. Instead he focused on the need for couples in their conscience to make decisions about their family size. He also condemned at length the 'verbal, physical and sexual violence' many women endure in marriages, rejects 'sexual submission' and the 'reprehensible' practice of genital mutilation. And he says the belief that feminism is to blame for the crisis in families today is completely invalid. Charged with murder in an out-of-sessions hearing on Friday A man has been charged over murder of Melbourne mum Kylie A man has been arrested and charged over the murder of Melbourne mum Kylie Blackwood. Morwell man Scott Alan Murdoch, 38, was on charged with Ms Blackwood's murder in an out-of-sessions hearing before a bail justice on Friday. He has been remanded into custody and will appear before the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Saturday. Scroll down for video Morwell man Scott Alan Murdoch (pictured), 38, was on charged with Ms Blackwood's murder in an out-of-sessions hearing before a bail justice on Friday A man has been arrested and charged over the murder of Melbourne mum Kylie Blackwood (pictured) Murdoch, a father of two, was arrested in Rowville earlier on Friday, a day after investigators released CCTV footage of a white Nissan Tiida seen in the area before and after Ms Blackwood's death. The homicide squad on Thursday said there could be a link between the car and a man seen acting suspiciously in the area on the same day of Ms Blackwood's murder. The breakthrough prompted Detective Inspector Mick Hughes to issue a warning to her killer. 'Were coming for you - thats the message,' Detective Inspector Mick Hughes told the Herald Sun. Police have released this CCTV footage of a late model Nissan Tiida sedan with a rear spoiler, it was seen near the Blackwood's home on McCaffrey Rise around the time of the murder Murdoch, a father of two, was arrested in Rowville earlier on Friday, a day after investigators released CCTV footage of a white Nissan Tiida (pictured) seen in the area before and after Ms Blackwood's death The Pakenham mother was discovered bleeding to death on a couch inside her home by her twin 11-year-old daughters after they returned home from school at 3.40 pm on August 1 2013. CCTV footage of a vehicle was captured meters away from the crime scene. The tradesman said the mystery man was seen hurriedly walking away about 20 minutes later. The man was described as being 177 cm tall, having a medium build with a muscular upper body. The motivation for Ms Blackwood's murder remains unclear, an attempt to use her bank card was made shortly after her murder Homicide Squad Detective Inspector Mick Hughes said police believed the digital image of the man in the striped hooded top was the key to solving the case. 'I think were going to be catching up with him a lot sooner than that. When we got this, the consensus was this was the key evidence to finally get our man." said Det Insp Hughes. The motivation for the murder still remains unclear, a bungled burglary is one of the many possible scenarios. A few possessions including a bank card were stolen from Ms Blackwood. A tradesman said he saw a man in a striped hooded top lurking near Ms Blackwood's home prior to her death Scott Alan Murdoch (pictured) has been remanded into custody and will appear before the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Saturday An attempt to withdraw cash from Kylie's bank card was made at a local bank on the same day. Unfortunately the bank erased the footage of the attempted withdrawal before police could review it. Ms Blackwood, a popular figure in the semi-rural town, left behind her daughters, a 13-year-old son and her husband Peter. ISIS fighters have released the first of the 170 cement workers kidnapped from just outside Damascus - contradicting government claims that they had been executed. Extremists seized the labourers from an area close to the town of Dumeir, northeast of the capital, earlier this week. The kidnapping sparked a war of words between the two sides - with the jihadi group's media arm saying the workers were unhurt, while the state's military claimed they had been massacred in their dozens. Now the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group has stepped in, saying local municipality officials in two nearby towns managed to secure an agreement for IS to release 170 workers it had been holding since Wednesday. ISIS fighters have reportedly executed 175 of the 300 kidnapped cement workers outside the Syrian capital Damascus, according to the state's military (file picture) The workers and contractors of Al Badia Cement company were taken from near the town of Dumeir The workers and contractors of Al Badia Cement company were taken from near the town of Dumeir and their employer had lost all contact with them, the industry ministry is quoted as saying. Earlier reports claimed a source in the company told state-run news agency SANA that there has been no success in efforts to establish contact with any of the workers. SANA said 'employees and executives of the Al-Badia cement factory' were abducted by the jihadists, after local residents reported that at least 250 workers at the plant had been missing since Monday. 'The company has informed the industry ministry that it hasn't been able to make contact with kidnapped individuals,' SANA said. A factory administrator told AFP that the factory workers have been unreachable since Monday. 'We haven't been able to reach our family members since noon on Monday after an attack by Daesh [Arabic derogatory term for ISIS] on the factory. We have no information about where they are,' a resident of the town of Dmeir said yesterday. Mass abductions have taken place on occasion in Syria during the country's devastating civil war, now in its sixth year, most often of religious minorities such as Christians. The abduction came as fighting with ISIS militants raged in northern Syria on Thursday. Syrian opposition fighters have advanced on strongholds of the terror group, including the ISIS-held town of al-Rai in northern Aleppo along the border with Turkey. Earlier this week, ISIS fighters launched attacks on government-held areas near Damascus in what a Syrian source said appeared to be a response to the group's loss of ground elsewhere. The group said in a statement it had attacked the Tishrin power station, 30 miles northeast of the capital. The Syrian military source acknowledged the group had staged assaults, but said all those who took part had been killed. Earlier this week, ISIS fighters launched attacks on government-held areas near Damascus (pictured) in what a Syrian source said appeared to be a response to the group's loss of ground elsewhere Syrian and allied forces backed by Russian air strikes have forced ISIS militants out of the town of al-Qaryatain, which lies between Damascus and the ancient city of Palymrya, itself recaptured by the government last week. ISIS has also been losing ground to US-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria, and in recent days to Turkish-backed rebel groups fighting a separate battle against the group north of Aleppo. The Syrian source said Tuesday night's attacks outside Damascus appeared to be the jihadist group's response to its reverses around Palymra. ISIS attackers, using five bomb-laden cars, also struck military positions near the Dumeir military airport 25 miles northeast of Damascus, killing 12 soldiers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. ISIS claimed the bombings in an online statement, saying it carried out a suicide attack on government forces which were moving north from the military airport. Government forces responded with shelling and air strikes around the Dumeir area, which is held by a rebel group sympathetic to ISIS, the Observatory said. It added that the strikes have killed at least 15 civilians there, including four young girls from the same family, and that around 15 Islamic State fighters, as well as the drivers of its five bomb-laden cars, died in the clashes. Pools of blood, a discarded bank card and a pair of womens shoes led police to where a mysterious death may have occurred in Sydneys inner-west. A man has been charged with the murder of a young Indonesian woman after police allegedly found him standing naked over her dead body, also naked, floating in shallow water on Thursday. Indonesian national Miming Listiyani, 27, was allegedly murdered by Khanh Thanh Ly, 35 - a man who was sentenced to seven years in jail in 2007 for links to the Bali Nine drug syndicate. Khanh Thanh Ly, 35, (right), has been charged with the murder of Indonesian woman Miming Listiyani (left) Police divers spent Friday morning near where the body was found, while others canvassed Cabarita Park and around a home in Vineyard Way at nearby Breakfast Point, about 2km from the wharf. Several bloodstains were washed from the footpath and a car in the street before police re-opened it to residents. A pair of shoes and bank cards were also found at the scene. Carmen Muno, who lives in the home where police focused their attention on Friday morning, said she didn't know the victim or the alleged attacker or why they were in front of her home. Ms Listiyani is believed to have just returned to Australia from Indonesia, and was Facebook friends with the man accused of her murder 'The shoes were over near the bush and the blood was on the footpath,' she told Fairfax. 'I don't usually come out the front exit but I did this morning and saw all the blood and thought 'what has happened?' Ms Mono said another resident found more blood, along with Ms Listiyiani's bankcard across the street. Police responded to reports of screaming in the shallows of Cabarita Wharf, a popular nightspot on the Parramatta River in Sydney's inner west known as 'Lovers Lane.' She was found floating naked in the water at Cabarita Wharf in Sydney's inner west on Thursday night Emergency services arrived at about 11.30pm on Thursday night to allegedly find Mr Khanh, naked, standing over the body of Ms Listiyani on the waters edge. He attempted to flee, but was arrested at the scene and taken to Burwood Police Station. After delayed questioning, he was refused bail and will front Parramatta Bail Court on Saturday. Ms Listiyani is believed to have just returned to Australia from Indonesia, and was Facebook friends with the man accused of her murder, according to 7 News. Emergency services arrived at about 11.30pm to allegedly find Mr Khanh, naked, standing over the body of Ms Listiyani on the waters edge. He attempted to flee but was arrested NSW Police are now trying to piece together the strange circumstances that led to the death of Ms Listiyani, forensically examining a number of different crime scenes. Police searched the Ly family home in Sydney on Friday, removing evidence from the house and a gold hatchback car outside, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. A man, believed to be Ly's father, told Fairfax to 'go away' as it wasn't their business. NSW Police are now trying to piece together the strange circumstances that led to the death of Ms Listiyani, forensically examining a number of different crime scenes Several bloodstains (pictured) were washed from the footpath around a home in Vineyard Way at nearby Breakfast Point A pair of shoes and bank cards were also found at the scene, just two kilometres from Cabarita Wharf Leonato Tattoli said police focused their search around his car, which was found with blood on it. Mr Tattoli said he parked outside the home about 10.30pm and saw a man sitting in another car nearby. Another resident, Bill Langton, said he heard screams just after 11pm. 'Rather disturbing, last night heard what I thought were three screams, on the news this morning a woman found murdered in the river next to Breakfast point,' he wrote on Facebook. Another told AAP the death was 'probably drugs' related because Cabarita Park was known for drug activity. 'It's pretty sad though. It's someone's daughter,' she said. Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran arrive at the Denpasar Courthouse in 2006 for their part in the Bali Nine drug syndicate. They have since been executed for their crimes. Sukumaran and Ly were friends at school Superintendent Mark Jones told media: 'It's a tragic, tragic event. She appears to be a very nice young lady who unfortunately has been murdered' Mr Ly was taken to Burwood Police station for questioning on Friday Mr Ly was arrested and charged with murder. He was refused bail and will appear in court on Saturday Superintendent Mark Jones told media earlier on Friday the man was known to police. 'It's a tragic, tragic event. She appears to be a very nice young lady who unfortunately has been murdered,' he said. A murder weapon had not been found. Police said the pair knew each other, but would not elaborate on the nature of the relationship. A crime scene was established at the wharf and an Audi removed from the vicinity of Carabita Wharf and forensic specialists are examining as police continue to investigate. The ABC reported a car believed to belong to the man had been removed from the scene. The Daily Telegraph reported that Mr Ly also has links to the Bali Nine drug syndicate. The publication reported that after pleading guilty to conspiring to import drugs in 2004, Khanh Thanh Ly, 35, was sentenced to seven years jail in 2007 in Brisbane's Supreme Court. Before the Bali Nine were arrested in 2005, Ly, a high school friend of ringleader Myuran Sukumaran, was one of six people arrested in Sydney and Brisbane in relation to the syndicate. The Daily Telegraph reports that this friendship did not stop Ly - known also by the nickname 'Buddha' - from giving evidence against others arrested in the infamous syndicate. Ly, who acted as a 'lieutenant' for the drug ring, travelled to Bali three times under Sukumaran's orders. He said he helped organise Australian drug mules there for the Bali Nine, which included executed members Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. Police investigating the scene (pictured) said the man, aged 35, and the woman, 27, were known to each other 'Bali Nine' enforcer, Myuran Sukumaran (left) and mastermind Andrew Chan in a holding cell at Denpasar Court after they were sentenced to death for heroin trafficking in Denpasar, Bali, in 2006 Police established a crime scene near Cabarita Wharf and forensics specialists are continuing to investigate Despite pleading not guilty they are now all behind bars The men were charged with possessing a commercial quantity of drugs The car arrived to Melbourne port from California in September 2014 30kg of methamphetamine was found in a 1967 Chevrolet Impala Three men are jailed after police intercepted a drug haul Three men have been jailed for importing almost $30 million of methamphetamine to Australia in a classic American muscle car. The men who were involved in an international drug cartel were unaware police had intercepted the exchange after they found the drugs hidden in a 1967 Chevrolet Impala. The vehicle had arrived at Melbourne Port from California in September 2014. Beneath the rear quarter panels of the car police discovered 30kg of methamphetamine with a street value of $29.2 million, reported the Herald Sun. Police discovered 30kg of methamphetamine hidden in a 1967 Chevrolet Impala after it arrived at Melbourne Port from California in September 2014 (stock photo) Replacing the drugs with an inert substance the police stood back to allow the delivery of the vehicle. The car arrived to a home in Hillside, an outer suburb in Melbourne, addressed to Besim Beqiri. Spanish national, Jacinto Rodriguez Conejo, later removed what he thought to be drugs from the vehicle while an Italian national in Australia on a 457 visa, Bruno Hajko, acted as a middle-man. After uncovering the large haul of drugs police began to investigate the three men by monitoring their phones and their whereabouts. After making the arrests, Beqiri claimed to be a stooge, unaware of the 30kg of methamphetamine in the vehicle. The classic muscle car which arrived at Melbourne Port from California in September 2014 had $29.2 million worth of drugs hidden in the rear quarter panels of the car (stock photo) The three men were arrested shortly after they handled the insert substance place by police in spot of the methamphetamine (stock photo) A drug raid at the hotel room of Rodriguez-Conejo also found almost $500,000 worth of cocaine. The three men faced court on counts of attempting to possess a commercial quantity of a border control drug and Rodriguez-Conejo faced the further charge of possessing a marketable quantity of cocaine. Facing life behind bars the men pleaded not guilty to all their charges. Beqiri is now facing 15 years behind bars, 11 without parole while Hajko is facing 11 years and 7 without parole. Rodriguez-Conejo was jailed for 16 years and must serve 11 years and six months. A Liberal member of Camden Council has been slammed for being 'disrespectful' to Aboriginals after she continually refused to read an 'acknowledgment of country' before meetings. Council implemented the policy in late 2012, but Cr Penny Fischer has declined to read the acknowledgement for three years, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The acknowledgement recognises the local Dharawal people as the traditional owners of the land. Camden Liberal Councillor Penny Fischer (left) has declined to read the acknowledgement of country before meetings for three years. Camden mayor Lara Symkowiak (right) said her actions were 'disrespectful' Liberal Councillor Debby Dewbery confronted Cr Fischer about the issue, prompting council to discuss the matter at their most recent meeting on March 22. But Camden mayor Lara Symkowiak, also a Liberal councillor, told Fairfax Media that Cr Fischer asked council staff to remove her from the roster that shares the role between councillors. 'I think it's sending the wrong message to Aboriginal people in our community,' Cr Symkowiak told Fairfax Media. 'I think it's quite disrespectful. It's the correct and appropriate thing to do and I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to do it.' Aboriginal elder Uncle Ivan Wellington (centre right) heavily criticised Cr Fischer's actions Aboriginal elder Uncle Ivan Wellington also criticised Cr Fischer's actions. 'If you don't acknowledge the sad stories and histories of this country, well, this country is a lost land,' he told Fairfax Media. 'Because without culture, without traditional people, it's nothing'. It reportedly comes after Cr Fischer, the daughter of NSW Mental Health Minister Pru Goward, was reportedly accused of attempting to stack local branches to defeat Camden MP Chris Patterson, causing animosity between Liberals in Camden. But Cr Fischer told Daily Mail Australia said that she supported the Motion to have the acknowledgement of country recited at the start of council meetings three and a half years ago when it was proposed. Soon after, Cr Fischer requested that Camden Council staff skip her on the roster. 'I would prefer any money that the Council spends relating to indigenous issues should go towards local aboriginal scholarships instead,' Cr Fischer said. 'It is also my view that Camden Council gets straight on with the business of council at a council meeting.' She told Daily Mail Australia she believes that having an aboriginal person is far more meaningful than having someone like her doing an Acknowledgment as part of a roster system. 'In three and a half years, I have never sought to make an issue of whether or not I recite an Acknowledgement of Country at the beginning of a Council meeting. 'I do not see why it is an issue now and it is regrettable that some people now choose to make it so,' she said. The world's largest atom-smashing machine is most famous for proving the existence of the Higgs boson in one of the most important scientific experiments of recent times. But the Large Hadron Collider has now gone viral for all the wrong reasons - after the BBC made the unfortunate mistake of switching the 'r' and the 'd' to give it a whole new meaning. The blunder rather overshadowed the excitement at the huge collider - which has undergone more than two years of upgrades - being restarted. Scientists hope the machine [not the BBC's sexually explicit typo] will now run non-stop for the next three years. BBC News made the unfortunate mistake of switching the 'r' and the 'd' to give it a whole new meaning The Large Hadron Collider is housed in a giant, underground, circular tunnel in Geneva. Physicists hope it will unlock even more fundamental secrets of the universe having proved the existence of the Higgs boson, which is thought to give mass to other particles. BBC BLOOPER GIVES AWAY AMERICAN IDOL WINNER TODAY The BBC today ran a story with the headline: 'American Idol: Trent Harmon crowned final winner'. Immediately below that it wrote: 'SPOILER ALERT! Do not read further if you do not wish to know who won American Idol.' Advertisement They are aiming to see dark matter for the first time thanks to the device's upgrarde. It was shut down so its energy levels could be almost doubled, allowing scientists to carry out more extreme experiments. Now the physicists operating the machine have their sights on dark matter, the invisible, undetectable material that makes up 84 per cent of matter in the universe and binds galaxies together yet whose nature is unknown. If they are able to detect and describe dark matter, it will mark a huge leap forward in our understanding of the universe. The huge collider has undergone more than two years of upgrades, to give it double the power The particle accelerator has already found the Higgs boson the God Particle which is thought to give mass to other particles All this was somewhat overlooked following the BBC blunder that quickly went viral on Twitter. A BBC spokesman said: 'There was an unfortunate typing error within a caption during the BBC News Channel's coverage of the Hadron Collider restart. This was quickly corrected.' This is not the first time the BBC has been pulled up for an embarrassing typo. During last year's election it replaced the 'r' with a 't' when referring to the Scottish electoral constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire South. Passengers who claimed they were assaulted when a brawl erupted over a boom box speaker on a Spirit Airlines flight say they are suing the carrier. A fight erupted on Flight 141 from Baltimore to LA last month, after reports two drunk women had been playing loud music out of the speaker during the trip. Several passengers asked the pair to turn the music down, but instead they put the boom box in the air and started waving it around. Passengers Lisa Zampella, Tykisha Diodato and Danielle AFonda-Thomas with their lawyer Gloria Allred, who say they are to sue Spirit Airlines A group of women then approached the two when the plane pulled up at the gate, starting an all-out brawl, which was captured on video. Now three passengers who were caught up in the brawl say they are to sue Spirit Airlines claiming they failed to protect them from injury and continued to serve alcohol despite the aggressive atmosphere. Passenger and plaintiff Tykisha Diodato told the New York Daily News: 'I am upset that the Spirit Airlines failed to protect us, disregarded our safety, and instead continued to serve the women in front of us alcoholic beverages even though they were clearly intoxicated and behaving aggressively.' Ms Diodato added that she and fellow plaintiffs Lisa Zampella and Danielle Fonda-Thomas were flying from Baltimore to Los Angeles for a long-awaited vacation. The brawl that erupted on the Spirit Airlines flight from Baltimore to Los Angeles over the playing of loud music Several passengers asked the pair of females to turn the music down, but instead they put the boom box in the air and started waving it around But they claim three other passengers began drinking alcohol and playing loud music from a bluetooth speaker. They say that after they were asked to stop swearing and keep the noise down, one of the women attacked Ms Fonda Thomas, with the other two women also suffering injuries when they jumped to her defense. Their lawyer Gloria Allred said: 'It was not a mutual combat situation as some have described in prior reports.' However, a spokesman for Spirit Airlines denied the claims saying the flight attendants were in their jump seats as required by law and it is their policy not to over-serve alcohol. The brawl on the flight. Now three women who claimed they were injured during the fight are suing Spirit Airlines The women claim that Spirit Airlines did not do enough to protect them and that the carrier were serving too much alcohol After the incident footage of the brawl emerged online and the female passengers appear to be throwing punches, pulling at each other's hair and screaming as other passengers look on. Some passengers move out of the way of the scuffle, while many others can be seen filming it on their cellphones. The crew notified LAX police and officers were waiting for the women when the flight landed. Speaking at the time, LAX Police spokesman Rob Pedregon described the incident to The Washington Post as a 'mutual combat situation'. A spokesman for Spirit Airlines denied the claims saying the flight attendants were in their jump seats as required by law and it is their policy not to over-serve alcohol 'It's just one of those things,' Pedregon said. 'People in the air, stuck in a small confined space for a number of hours. 'It isn't uncommon. People lose their tempers and just refuse to get along.' A Facebook page has been set up praising the self-proclaimed killer of Glasgow shopkeeper Asad Shah. The disturbing social media page with more than 700 likes describes Tanveer Ahmed as a public figure. It refers to the 32-year-old taxi driver from Bradford who is accused of murder as Ghazi, a title given to Muslim warriors or champions. The page has been branded propaganda which is encouraging extremism by some of those calling for it to be taken down. On Wednesday, Ahmed appeared to say he killed Mr Shah in a statement read outside court. In it he said he did it because the newsagent had claimed to be a prophet. Asad Shah (left) was killed last month. Tanveer Ahmed (right) made a statement claiming he killed him Mr Shah a Muslim belonging to the Ahmadiyya Islamic sect which preaches love for all, hatred for none was stabbed and killed outside his store in the Shawlands area of the city last month. Police confirmed the man arrested in connection with the murder was also Muslim and described the attack as religiously prejudiced. On the Facebook page, which was started a week after Mr Shahs death, one post reads: When a persons tounge [sic] becomes quiet and friendly then his heart becomes pious and clean. Photos of Mr Shah covered with a red cross have received dozens of likes. Meanwhile, images of the man who claims to have killed him are followed by love heart emojis. One image shows Ahmed next to a photograph of executed terrorist Mumtaz Qadri. The former bodyguard was hanged after murdering a leading politician who had criticised Pakistans blasphemy laws. Someone has left a comment under the image which reads: I Love Mumtaz Qadri and Ghazi Tanveer Ahmed Qadiri. A 'horrific' Facebook page has now been set up which appears to praise Ahmed as a 'Muslim warrior' The page, which describes the self-proclaimed killer as a 'public figure, has received more than 850 'likes' Abdul Abid, president of the Ahmadiyya community in Scotland, urged action to be taken against this page and any extremist propaganda online. He said: That should be treated as a violation of law and order rules and if they preach hate and they enlarge the circle of hate then there should be some step taken. Human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar described the page as horrific. He said: To celebrate and glorify the loss of a man killed at the age of 40 is unacceptable. He added: People should realise whilst there is a right to free speech, free speech carries responsibility. Ahmad Karim, owner of the ahmedi.org site, interviewed Mr Shah several times before he was murdered and one of his YouTube conversations with him discussing religion is posted on Facebook. Mr Karim said: This page should be removed. Believe me, he [Tanveer Ahmed] will become a celebrity. People are saying he has done good work, he had done a good deed and he has saved the integrity of the Prophet Muhammad. They treat him with respect They do this propaganda and they want to encourage other people. Also posted on the social media page is a copy of the statement read out by Ahmeds lawyer on Wednesday after his second appearance at Glasgow Sheriff Court. Posts show heart emojis over pictures of Ahmed, said to have travelled from Bradford to carry out the killing The statement says: Asad Shah disrespected the messenger of Islam the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Mr Shah claimed to be a prophet. It continues: If I had not done this others would and there would have been more killing and violence in the world. Yesterday, senior members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community gathered at the mosque Mr Shah attended to condemn the statement. Ahmed Owusu-Konadu, external affairs secretary at the mosque, described it as deeply disturbing. He said: It sets an extremely dangerous precedent as it justifies the killing of anyone Muslim or non-Muslim whom an extremist considers to have shown disrespect to Islam. In some countries Ahmadiyya Muslim members, Christians and people of other faiths are routinely attacked and murdered by extremists for accusations of blasphemy. 'Such killings are completely against the teachings of Islam. We must not let the same mindset of hate and violence take root here in Glasgow and, for that matter, the UK and anywhere in the world. The Muslim Council of Scotland said it is deeply concerned by Ahmeds statement. The council has asked imams across Scotland to use their sermons today as a reminder of holding respect for all, regardless of belief. Mark De Claiterosse, 31, has been cleared of assaultimg girlfriend Victoria Bryden after a Nando's in Vauxhall, South London An oil trader has been cleared of assaulting his weeping girlfriend after a drunken Nando's dinner. Mark De Claiterosse, 31, was arrested after he was seen bear-hugging Victoria Bryden and repeatedly shouting 'I love you' in the street. He insisted he was just trying to calm her down after a chicken dinner followed by drinks, in Vauxhall, south London. Following his arrest Mr De Claiterosse, a trader for Gulf Petrochem Group, was searched and police found with a small wrap of cocaine last November 13, Westminster Magistrates' Court heard. The couple had enjoyed two bottles of wine at Nandos, followed by more drinks at a nearby bar. De Claiterosse allegedly grabbed Ms Bryden by the arm when she tried to run away from him on Vauxhall Bridge Road. Giving evidence Alexander Muncey told the court he was walking home with his girlfriend at 11pm when they heard screaming. He said: 'We saw a man and a woman arguing in the road. She was trying to cross the road and he was holding onto her. 'She was clearly trying to get away from him.' Mr Muncey told the court he then followed the couple, and saw Mr De Claiterosse holding her against a wall. He said: 'He had her in a hug, with his arms high. She was unable to move. 'He kept saying "I love you", but she was just crying.' Night out: The couple had enjoyed some chicken at Nandos in Vauxhall (pictured) and had a row outside when Mr De Claiterosse was arrested Mr Muncey claimed Ms Bryden was asking for help, and shouting 'get off me'. Police were called and De Claiterosse was arrested. De Claiterosse told the hearing he only grabbed Ms Bryden after she become upset as they discussed her father's recent cancer diagnosis. He said: 'She had a lot to drink, she wasn't steady on her feet. I was just trying to calm her down.' Josh Normanton, defending, said De Claiterosse had lost his own father. He said: 'He was planning a memorial for his late father. 'He had recently moved in with his mother, and isn't a habitual cocaine user.' Judge Elizabeth Roscoe dismissed the assault charge, adding: 'I need to be sure, and while I find Mr Muncey a credible witness, I cannot be sure of what happened.' Is one piece of train track longer than the other or are they exactly the same size? It's the optical illusion that has baffled the internet after a video showing what appears to be a piece of toy train track shrinking right before your very eyes emerged online. The confusing footage was posted to Twitter by BBC Academy trainer Marc Blank-Settle, who stumbled across the illusion while playing with his toddler. Weird: At first glance the piece of train track on the bottom appears to be much larger than the one above it Sorcery? When the two pieces of train track are placed one on top of the other they appear to be the same size Help! Writing alongside the clip on Twitter, Marc asked the internet for help on working out what was going on The video, which has had some rather epic music dubbed on top of it, shows two pieces of toy train track positioned alongside one another. At first glance the piece on the bottom appears to be much larger than the one above it. But when Marc picks it up and places it on top of the other, the two pieces appear the same size. Writing alongside the clip on Twitter, Marc said: 'My toddler's train track is freaking me out right now. What is going on here?!' As expected the internet responded in large numbers with many social media users suggesting some form of sorcery was at play. One viewer wrote: 'That is going to give me nightmares. I do not like it,' while another added: 'I always thought Brio was magical. Just not like this.' A case for Mulder and Scully? Many social media users suggested some form of sorcery was at play Eventually some clever Twitter users came up with a viable explanation for the otherwise inconceivable footage - the Jastrow illusion. Discovered by American psychologist Joseph Jastrow in 1891, the illusion works because the shorter side of the top arch (its bottom) is brought into contrast with the longer side of the bottom arch (its top). Professor Michael Bach, from the University Medical Center Freiburg, explains this on his website with a quote he edited from the famous psychologist. He clarified that this happens because we 'cannot avoid taking into account the lengths of the lines by which the areas are limited'. Mysterious: One Twitter user claimed he had also experienced the same bizarre illusion as a child The answer? A number of Twitter users suggested that the optical illusion on display is the Jastrow illusion Professor Bach added that a contrast in lengths is carried over to the comparison of the areas, saying: 'We judge relatively even when we most desire to judge absolutely.' Despite the explanation he admitted that a number of studies have looked at the geometric illusion and it is still not well understood. The angle from which the video is captured also exaggerates the illusion, along with the fact that the two pieces of track have their left sides aligned. If the piece of track above was moved to the right slightly, the centre of both tracks would be in line and the two pieces would appear the same size. It is not homophobic to call a male hairdresser a 'f****t' because the industry has a lot of gay men, a French court has ruled. The decision was made in a tribunal earlier this week after a hairdresser from Paris claimed unfair dismissal because his boss used the derogatory term after sacking him. The unnamed hairdresser alleged he accidentally received a text message containing the word after calling in sick in October 2014. It is not homophobic to call a male hairdresser a 'f****t' because the industry has a lot of gay men, a French court has ruled (stock image) According to The Local, it read: 'I am not going to keep [name]. I don't have a good feeling about this guy. He's a dirty f****t.' After receiving the message, the man accused his former boss of sexual discrimination and said he was affected psychologically. But, at the tribunal this week, he was told the comment was not homophobic after officials 'put [the word] in the context of hairdressing'. The ruling concluded: 'The council considers that the term "f****t" used by a manager cannot be considered as a homophobic insult because hair salons regularly employ gay people.' T'es coiffeur, te faire traiter de "PD" c'est OK parce que, les coiffeurs sont souvent gays hein. Merci le tribunal. pic.twitter.com/orUcZDr522 Mathieu Brancourt (@MBrancourt) April 7, 2016 The man's boss, defending his comment, had argued the hairdresser was sacked because he was a slow worker and did not bond with the team. The decision, which labelled the word as insult, caused outrage on social media, with many questioning the authority's logic. Mathieu Brancourt wrote on Twitter: 'You are a hairdresser, you get called a f****t and that's OK because hairdressers are often gay right. Thanks to the tribunal.' Olivia Dellvine quoted the ruling and added an 'unimpressed' emoji. And Harry Davies wrote: 'A Paris tribunal: Calling a hairdresser a "f****t" is not homophobic "because hair salons regularly employ gay people"... Eh?' The man is expected to launch an appeal. Such material can be used to poison food supplies or spread fatal disease Rotting animal testicles and faeces found in bag of Belgian terror suspect Fears that ISIS is planning a primitive biological attack has intensified after rotting animal testicles were found in a terror suspects backpack. Abderamane Ameroud, 38, was shot in the leg by police and then arrested as he lay beside a tramline in Brussels on March 25. The dramatic incident took place in the district of Schaerbeek, where last months suicide bombings in the Belgian capital were prepared. Scroll down for video A bag of rotting animal testicles and faeces were discovered in the backpack of a terror suspect, who was shot in the leg at a tram stop in Schaerbeek, Brussels. Pictured, a bomb disposal officer examines the bag It has prompted fears that ISIS may be planning a primitive biological attack. Pictured, Abderamane Ameroud was shot in the leg at a tram stop in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek on March 25 A bomb disposal robot was used to check Amerouds backpack, which was thought to contain explosives. But federal prosecutors today confirmed that it contained a plastic bag full of vile material including the testicles and faeces. Such material can be used to poison food supplies, or to create a deadly concoction aimed at spreading fatal diseases. The Brussels prosecutor issued a statement saying: The rucksack contents ... could at no time have been used to make a biological weapon. This has been verified by various tests in laboratories. But the dangers of a terrorists creating a primitive biological arsenal have not been ruled out. In February, 10 terrorist suspects were arrested in Morocco, and jars were seized containing dead rats, vomit, and shredded nails. It was tested on mice and they did not survive. The known terrorists who struck in Brussels on March 22nd killing a total of 32 people at the city airport and a Metro station came from Belgium-Moroccan backgrounds. Material such as that discovered in the backpack can be used to poison food supplies, or to create a deadly concoction aimed at spreading fatal diseases. Pictured, Belgian police drag Ameroud along a tramway platform after he was shot following a raid in the Brussels borough of Schaerbeek All were linked to the Paris ISIS cell which murdered 130 people in Paris in November last year. After the attacks, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls raised fears about biological attacks, telling the Paris parliament on November 19: There may be also the risk of chemical and biological weapons. Ameroud, an Algerian national, was jailed in France in 2005 over the 2001 assassination of anti-Taliban Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. A FlyDubai plane that crashed killing 62 people was being flown in a 'contradictory manner' minutes before it nose-dived into the ground, suggesting pilot error was to blame, a report found today. The Boeing 737-800 came down in the early hours of March 19 on its second attempt to land in stormy conditions at Rostov-on-Don airport in southern Russia. In its preliminary accident report, the Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) said the jet was on manual control after the crew decided to abort the first landing and circle round again. Obliterated: Russian emergency rescuers and forensic investigators work on the wreckage after FlyDubai Boeing 737-800 crashed down on the runway at Rostov-on-Don airport Russia on March 19 Aristos Sokratous (left), captain of the doomed jet, died alongside his first officer Alejandro Alava (right) The IAC said the plane then nose-dived at a pitch exceeding 50 degrees before crashing into the ground at more than 360mph after being flown in a contradictory manner. It said the two pilots, Aristos Sokratous and Alejandro Alava, had begun to gain altitude when the controls of the plane were abruptly pushed away, pushing its nose lower. That, combined with the angle of the tail fin, sent the plane into a steep dive which the pilots were unable to pull out of, the IAC said. The report said: 'Subsequent actions of the crew could not prevent the aircraft's collision with the ground.' Shocking CCTV footage shows the moment the plane crashed in a fireball at 360mph at the airport It stopped short of saying the pilots were definitely to blame, noting they had the necessary training and experience, but said their condition and actions were being evaluated. The IAC said it now needed to complete work on deciphering the crew's final conversations in the hours leading up to the crash before it could wrap up its investigation. Unnamed sources have told Russian newspapers that an initial read-out of the flight recorders had suggested the pilots argued about the right course of action to take in the minutes before the crash. FlyDubai Chief Executive Ghaith Al Ghaith said in a statement his company was aware of the IAC's initial findings and supported the investigators' work. Horses were used to control the crowd after protesters began to push and shove and windows were broken Advertisement Protesters were pepper sprayed after they clashed with police outside a Liberal Party dinner celebrating the 20th anniversary of the election of John Howard. About 150 people gathered outside a Docklands function venue in Melbourne on Friday evening to protest the federal government's changes to higher education and the treatment of asylum seekers. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who was also present at the $1100-a-head party fundraiser event is believed to have entered the vicinity via the back entrance after arriving on a boat, reported The Age. Scroll down for videos Demonstrators clash with police outside the Liberal Party's Victorian State Council dinner where Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and John Howard were speaking Clutching onto the hand of a friend a protester is being attended to after being pepper-sprayed 10 protesters were pepper sprayed after they attempted to confront Malcolm Turnbull by entering the vicinity through a side door About 150 people gathered outside a Docklands function venue in Melbourne on Friday evening to protest the federal government's changes to higher education Demonstrators also gathered to protest against the mistreatment of asylum seekers Students, unionists and refugee activists chanted 'No ifs, no buts, no education cuts,' against the Federal Government's proposed cuts to higher education and the deregulation of course fees. The Liberal Party was hosting the dinner to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the Howard Government's election Paramedics were called to the scene to attend the protesters left in pain after being pepper sprayed by Victorian polcie Protesters from the Refugee Action Collective are demanding the closure of detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island as well as continuing their campaign for the 267 asylum seekers at risk of being sent offshore A protestor sits on the ground in agony after being pepper sprayed by police After the crowd began to turn rowdy police horses were called in an attempt to control the protesters Students, unionists and refugee activists chanted 'No ifs, no buts, no education cuts,' against the Federal Government's proposed cuts to higher education and the deregulation of course fees. The group also held signs and placards stating 'stop the cuts tax the rich,' 'Hands off our education Turnbull' and 'Tax the rich not the students'. Protesters from the Refugee Action Collective were also demanding the closure of detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island as well as continuing their campaign for the 267 asylum seekers at risk of being sent offshore. Protesters were yelling 'scum' and 'shame' at guests as the crowd began to become rowdy. As protesters began to push and shove with police, horses were brought in to manage the crowd. Some of the building's windows were broken as demonstrators clashed with police. But police were forced to use pepper spray on ten people including an ABC cameraman after a number of people attempted to enter the vicinity from a side entrance in a bid to confront the Prime Minister. The crowd held placards stating 'stop the cuts tax the rich,' 'Hands off our education Turnbull' and 'Tax the rich not the students' One protester held a placard stating 'A 5-year-old girl has PTSD from Nauru detention' Despite the chaos which ensued an organiser of the event believes it was successful Malcolm Turnbull is believed to have avoided the crowd by entering through the back after arriving by boat But according to a speaker at the protest, the police overreacted. 'We've got a couple hundred uni students and the police are acting like it's al-Qaeda,' Stephen Jolly, a Socialist councillor of the City of Yarra told The Age. Despite the scuffle with police an organiser of the rally said protesters had succeeded because attendees of the event had a 'horrible time' entering. 'I don't think the fat cats and the Liberal Party deserve a peaceful night out when they have abused refugees and attacked students through deregulation and fee hikes,' Kim Stern, 20, from the Monash Student Association said. Windows were broken as the crowd began to scream 'scum' and 'shame' at guests entering the fundraiser Another demonstrator protesting for the rights of asylum seekers asked politicians to have 'basic human decency' Stephen Jolly, a Socialist councillor of the City of Yarra, was speaking at the event and believes police overreacted Police were pictured pushing protesters as they tried to keep them away from the fundraising event Kim Stern, 20, from the Monash Student Association said students had succeeded in their protest because guests had a 'horrible time' trying to enter Guests at the event were guided by security guards away from the police and the crowd Hilary St John Bower, 60, went missing March 22 after crossing into the city of Shenzhen A British teacher in Hong Kong has been reported missing after he crossed the border into China and was not heard of again. Hilary St John Bower, 60-year-old lecturer went missing on 22 March after crossing into the city of Shenzhen, in South China's Guangdong Province, to visit his girlfriend and six-year-old son. His friends and family suspect foul play and believe that his disappearance may have something to do with an 810,000 windfall he was expecting from a property sale. Mr Bower has been employed at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University since 1996. Following his disappearance, Mr Bower's brother, Robin, who is based in the UK, alerted the police in Britain. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London is reportedly in contact with authorities in Hong Kong and Guangzhou capital of Guangdong over the matter, but Bower's friends and family are unsatisfied. Richard Charles, a friend and colleague of Bower, told a Hong Kong-based paper that police had 'done nothing', despite the teacher being missing for what has now been two weeks. Employed at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University since 1996, reports said Mr Bower's disappearance has now involved authorities both in the United Kingdom as well as Interpol Mr Charles also revealed other worries when he alluded to the fact that Bower' s disappearance may in fact be a kidnapping, connected to the large sum of money he was to receive from a 'complicated' property deal in Mainland China. Charles was quoted as saying: 'I do know that after buying at the bottom of the property market a good few years ago, he was expecting to be paid somewhere in the region of 821,000 GBP.' The property was reportedly sold in Shekou, an industrial district in Shenzhen. Reports citing Hong Kong police said that Bower's case is currently classified as that of a missing person and being investigated accordingly. The accomplices of a racist teenager and the school he targeted in a Anders Breivik-inspired massacre can be revealed for the first time today. Michael Piggin was detained indefinitely after he was caught with an arsenal of weapons in his bedroom in Loughborough. The racist also had detailed plans of deadly attacks on his school, the local mosque, council offices and Loughborough University in his diaries. A court order banned the media from naming Burleigh College, Loughborough as a potential target and from identifying naming his accomplices Jacob Crouch and Ryan Towell, now both 20. But they can be revealed today after the Court of Appeal overturned the order. Michael Piggin planned a deadly attacks on his school was caught with an arsenal of weapons This is Michael Piggin's room which features a swastika flag alongside posters of the Joker from Batman The pair were both sentenced to community orders after they admitted possessing petrol bombs and pipe bomb parts before the Piggins trial began. Piggin - now 20 but who was a teenager at the time of the plot - faced two trials where juries could not decide whether he was guilty or not. He was sentenced to indefinite detention under the mental health act at the Old Bailey in 2014 after previously pleading guilty to charges of possessing a knife and parts for an improvised explosive. Judge Brian Barker described Piggin as an outright racist and noted his obsession with weaponry and the military. You have a consuming preoccupation with guns and the methods used by the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre, he said. The court heard Piggin wrote about arming himself with guns, bombs, and knives in a deadly assault inspired by the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik while studying for his A-Levels. Jacob Crouch and Ryan Towell admitted possessing petrol bombs and pipe bomb parts to help him His bedroom floor was filled with knives, air guns, a machete, and a crossbow, while a Nazi swastika flag took pride of place on his wall. Piggin built pipe bombs, smoke grenades and improvised explosives in his bedroom and tested Molotov cocktails behind a local leisure centre. Judge Barker said at the time: Cases of this type are fortunately rare but are of great concern to the public and normally attract long custodial sentences. Given your long-term condition that is not appropriate. Its clear you need treatment and that the treatment is still at an early stage. A hospital order is in my judgement the proper disposal. Potential danger to the public is uppermost in my mind.' It can now be revealed that Piggin planned to attack Burleigh College, Loughborough (pictured) Piggin was cleared of preparing an act of terrorism and other terror offences after a second Old Bailey jury could not reach a decision in May 2014. Judge Barker formally delivered not guilty verdicts to the charges at the hearing today. He was accused of plotting to carry out a mass killing on 20 April - Hitlers birthday and the date of the Columbine shootings. Piggin denied he had been plotting terrorist acts and said his diary entries were not serious. His lawyers claimed he had been just retreating into fantasy. Piggin was charged with possessing an article for a purpose connected with terrorism, and possessing a document likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. A former babysitter was arrested for allegedly stalking a four-year-old boy and breaking into the home of his parents. Casey Evans, 29, of Ronkonkoma, watched the Sayville boy for four months from August to November 2015, before she was terminated by his parents. Police said she tried to sign the boy out of his school without the permission of his parents on March 30, according to NBC. Casey Evans (left and right), 29, of Ronkonkoma, was arrested for allegedly stalking a four-year-old boy after she tried to check him out of school without his parents' permission On the same day Evans allegedly trespassed into the family's home to leave a gift for the boy, according to Suffolk County Police. A baby sitting page set up by Evans says she is a 'very loving individual with a passion for working with and caring for children'. She completed classes at the Child Care Council of Suffolk County in 2011 and has eight years of experience working with preschoolers, toddlers and children ages 6-11 years. Evans graduated from Longwood High School, Middle Island, New York, in 2004. The page also boasts that Evans has experience with special needs children who are autistic or have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Evans has also worked for Ruby Tuesday Greenporter Hotel and Spa, according to the site. She was charged with stalking and criminal trespass. Evans was arraigned at First District Court in Central Islip on April 3 and she was released on $1,000 bail. A baby sitting page set up by Evans says she has eight years of experience with small children and children who have special needs. She's pictured with one of the children she babysat A British fisherman who travelled more than 2,500 miles to carry out his hobby has had his determination rewarded after catching a carp weighing as much as a baby hippo. Warren Harrison drove from Denton, Manchester to a 28-acre lake in Hungary in a desperate bid to catch a huge fish. The 54-year-old couldn't believe his luck when he felt a tug on his line and reeled in a carp, which was more than 5ft long and weighed 101lb 8oz. A British fisherman who travelled more than 2,500 miles to carry out his hobby has had his determination rewarded after catching a carp weighing as much as a baby hippo The father-of-two has now described the catch - the third biggest of its kind and second biggest by a Briton - as a 'monster'. Describing reeling it in, he said: 'As soon as I got to my rod and felt it I realised it was massive, and I turned to my mate and said: "This is a monster". 'Half an hour is a very long time to try and land a fish, my arms were in agony and sweat was just pouring down my face. I was boiling hot, but it was so cold even our kettle had frozen solid. 'I just kept seeing this big vortexes bubbling up in the water and when it popped up I just though "Jesus".' Warren Harrison drove from Denton, Manchester to a 28-acre lake in Hungary in a desperate bid to catch a huge fish. He is pictured above with his carp The 54-year-old couldn't believed his luck when he felt a tug on his line and reeled in a fish, which was more than 5ft long and weighed 101lb 8oz The fish was so heavy Mr Harrison needed his friend David Treasure to help drag it onto the scales. He said: 'I couldn't pick it up and we had to both lift it to be weighed. My fingers were trembling with the weight when I posed for the pictures. 'It wasn't a world record but I'm still pretty chuffed with it, as it's the second biggest carp caught by a British angler.' The biggest carp ever landed by a Brit was caught by Hampshire's Stephen Weir at the same venue last year and weighed in at 104lb 2oz. Ten men have been jailed for a total of more than 125 years for sexual offences against eight girls and women in Rochdale. They included Afraz Ahmed, a former bus driver who picked up two of his young victims from school and offered them free tickets. He was originally questioned in 2006 but a decision was made not to prosecute him after he claimed the girls' complaints against him were racially motivated. The public gallery broke into applause today when Ahmed was handed a 25-year sentence. The main victim in the case was white and had learning difficulties. She was said by prosecutors to be an 'extremely vulnerable young woman' who had endured 'a very difficult home life'. Former bus driver Afraz Ahmed - who claimed his victims were racist when he was originally arrested - got the longest sentence. He motioned to the judge to ask if he could say something after he was given the jail term, but he was ordered to leave the dock Kutab Miah (left) of Rochdale, for nine years. Choudry Hussein (right) got 19 years for rape. Hussain is currently on the run, believed to be in Pakistan, after absconding during his trial She walked into a police station after media coverage of the 2012 convictions of a number of Asian defendants for grooming white girls for sex in the town. She told officers that from the age of 14 she too had been repeatedly sexually groomed by a large number of men in Rochdale. The main victim in the case said that 'hundreds' of men would ring her up, wanting her to go out and have sex with them, during the time she was groomed. The offences, which also involved other under-age victims, took place in Rochdale and the surrounding area, mainly between 2005 and 2010. Nine of the defendants were sentenced at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court today, while another man was jailed last year. Judge John Potter said: 'Each of the victims... was subjected to cross-examination which suggested they were not telling the truth. Each dealt with this ordeal impressively. 'I have little doubt that each of the victims have been affected by your abuse of them to some degree, some far more than others.' Abid Khan (left) got six-and-a-half years and Rehan Ali (right) was imprisoned for seven years Mohammed Dauood (left), of Burnley, was jailed for 16 years. David Law (right) was jailed for 11 years The judge said it was testament to their 'bravery, courage and fortitude' they had given evidence in court despite the 'appalling way' they were treated. Two of the victims, he said, had suffered psychological harm. The main victim in the case gave evidence in two separate trials which lasted a total of 15 weeks. Seven other complainants, who were aged 13 to 22 at the time of the offences, also came forward to testify, which secured convictions against a number of the defendants. Former bus driver Ahmed, 33, of Rochdale, was found guilty of various sexual offences, including rape, conspiracy to rape and sexual activity with a child, in relation to five underage victims. While working as a bus driver, Ahmed, then aged in his early 20s, spoke to his schoolgirl victims in a 'highly inappropriate manner', the court heard. He asked if one of them had a boyfriend and seemingly offered them free bus tickets. The judge told Ahmed: 'You objectivised your vulnerable victims so you could exploit them for your own sexual desire.' Mohammed Zahid (left) of Rochdale, got five years. Mahfuz Rahman (right) was jailed for five-and-a-half years On-the-run Choudry Hussein, 38, formerly of Rochdale, was jailed for 19 years in his absence for rape, sexual activity with a child and conspiracy to rape. He is believed to be currently in Pakistan after he absconded during his trial. Rehan Ali, 27, of Blackley, was imprisoned for seven years and Kutab Miah, 35, of Rochdale, for nine years after both were found guilty of rape and sexual activity with a child. Abid Khan, 39, of Liverpool, was jailed for six-and-a-half years and Mohammed Zahid, 55, of Rochdale, for five years after both were found guilty of sexual activity with a child. Mohammed Dauood, 38, of Burnley, was jailed for 16 years after he was convicted of offences in relation to two victims including rape, sexual activity with a child and sexual assault. David Law, 46, of Ilkeston, Derbyshire, was jailed for 11 years after he was convicted of conspiracy to rape. Most of the grooming took place in Rochdale in between 2005 and 2010. The victim came forward after another hearing about the abuse exposed in another trial A tenth defendant, Mahfuz Rahman, 29, of HMP Garth, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to three counts of sexual activity with a child. He was jailed for five-and-a-half years last September. A 40-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was jailed for 23 years after he was convicted of rape and attempting to abduct a child in relation to three victims. He will serve an additional eight years on extended licence when he is released. Senior investigating officer Det Chief Insp Jamie Daniels said: 'This was an extremely complex case and I want to commend the victims for the immense bravery they have shown; only with their support have we arrived at this point. BBC boss: Tony Hall told executives to examine audibility issues, following a torrent of complaints about the shocking sound quality in Happy Valley It is a problem that has blighted television drama for years. But the boss of the BBC has finally vowed to end mumbling on shows such as Happy Valley. Director general Tony Hall told executives to examine audibility issues, following a torrent of complaints about the series shocking sound quality, minutes from the BBC Trust reveal. He also instructed them to make sure the sound is clear on other programmes. Fans of Happy Valley complained that the popular drama, starring Sarah Lancashire, was impossible to follow because its characters mumbled their lines. Many viewers ended up watching the programmes with subtitles in order to understand what was going on. Others said they had to constantly adjust the volume on their television sets just to follow the dialogue. At one point, Richard Madeley, the television presenter, complained that he had to re-watch the same parts again and again. Anyone else have REAL trouble hearing the dialogue? We had to keep rewinding it, he said on Twitter. But in a farcical move - the BBC told viewers that the real problem was the Yorkshire accent. We worked very hard to ensure everything was audible while keeping the sense of reality and the rawness of performances, a spokesman said in February, when the series was still on air. Happy Valley is a drama that has been lauded for its realism and dramatic pathos as such the dialogue is representative of the characters and area in which it is based. The show, in which Miss Lancashire plays a hard-nosed policewoman, is set in West Yorkshire and filmed in and around Bradford and Huddersfield. Requiring subtitles: Fans of Happy Valley complained that the popular drama, starring Sarah Lancashire (pictured), was impossible to follow because its characters mumbled their lines Unsurprisingly, the BBCs explanation went down badly with licence fee payers in the region, who said that even they struggled to follow the programme. They accused the BBC of patronising them with nonsense excuses. [I am] Yorkshire born and Yorkshire bred but have trouble hearing. It sounds muffled [and I am] missing half of whats going on, one viewer said online. Patronising rubbish, said another. [The BBC] cant even admit when they get it wrong. How on earth can we not understand the Yorkshire dialect? Even BBC bosses had a different explanation behind the scenes, the BBC Trusts minutes confirm. Members discussed viewer complaints regarding audibility and sound quality on Happy Valley, the record of the meeting states. The director general noted that he took all such complaints seriously and had already asked BBC Television to look into this matter and consider any immediate issues as well as identifying any lessons for future commissions. What's going on? In 2014, millions of viewers tuned out of Jamaica Inn (pictured) because they could not understand what was happening in the West Country drama The BBC has refused to reveal how many complaints it received about the drama series, which ended last month and attracted nearly seven million viewers per episode. However, it is certainly not the first time that the corporation has had problems with the sound on one of its major television series. I dont want to sound like a grumpy old man, but I also think muttering is something we could have a look at Lord Hall, speaking in 2013 In 2014, millions of viewers tuned out of Jamaica Inn because they could not understand what was happening in the West Country drama. In January this year, viewers of the BBC's big budget adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace also complained about being unable it to hear it properly due to the actors mumbling. And in 2013, Lord Hall said the corporation could look at how to stop actors muttering in its TV dramas. Police say a Pennsylvania woman tortured her 2-year-old son with at least 15 cigarette burns while her boyfriend watched and laughed. Anna Russell, 19, and her boyfriend, 25-year-old Enrique Soto, are in the Allegheny County Jail on several charges including aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, reckless endangerment and conspiracy in East Pittsburgh. Police say the burns were inflicted on August 1 and were discovered a week later when the boy's grandmother took him to the Children's Hospital. According to WTAE, doctors who did an examination of the toddler 'found with a high degree of medical certainty that these wounds were consistent with cigarette burns.' Arrested: Anna Russell (left), 19, and her boyfriend, 25-year-old Enrique Soto (right), are in the Allegheny County Jail on several charges including aggravated assault and conspiracy in East Pittsburgh Police say Russell tortured her 2-year-old son with at least 15 cigarette burns while Soto watched and laughed. The boy was taken to the Children's Hospital (above) a week later by his grandmother who discovered the burns Doctors told police the burns were 'administered deliberately, in a chronological order, over a very short period of time in one sitting.' The criminal complaint also says, 'Whoever inflicted these wounds upon [the boy] did so intentionally, knowingly and recklessly.' The boy was found to have been burned on his legs, left hand, left arm, neck, back and face, WTAE reported. Police interviewed the boy's 3-year-old sister on March 9 who told them Russell burned the boy while Soto watched and laughed during the incident. When asked by police if Russell or Soto said anything while her brother was being burned, the little girl said her mother said 'He is still alive' of her brother. Online court records don't list an attorney for the East Pittsburgh couple, who face a preliminary hearing April 19. Russell remains in jail on $150,000 bond as Soto is being held in lieu of $250,000 bond. The boy and his older sister were placed into foster care after the examination at the hospital. Hillary Clinton said this morning there's no chance she'll be sent to jail before the end of the presidential race over. Donald Trump and other Republicans have claimed she could be indicted before the general election. Clinton called those statements 'ridiculous' during an interview that aired on Today and said there's no chance she'll end up in the bighouse. 'I know that they live in that world of fantasy and hope because they've got a mess on their hands on the Republican side. That is not going to happen,' the Democratic contender for the White House said. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Hillary Clinton said this morning there's no chance she'll be sent to jail before the end of the presidential race over Clinton's part of an FBI investigation into a sever she secretly kept at her New York home that housed her emails when she was Secretary of State. The probe could end soon, FBI Director James Comey suggested this week, telling an audience in New York that it would wrap up 'promptly.' But he did not commit to finishing the work before the Democratic National Committee's nominating convention in July. Republicans hope the issue will plague her into the November election if she's selected by her party to top their White House ticket or she'll be charged with a crime and forced to end her bid abruptly in the fall. 'There is not even the remotest chance that is going to happen,' she said this morning of the GOP's claims she could serve jail time. 'But look, they've been after me, as I say, for 25 years. And they have said things about me repeatedly that have been proven to be not only false but kind of ridiculous.' Clinton told Today's Matt Lauer that it's a routine 'security review' and the only reason the public knows about it is because it involves her. 'We're moving forward. The Republicans' fondest wishes will not be fulfilled,' she told Lauer from a diner in the Bronx. A former U.S. senator from the Empire State, Clinton has launched an aggressive effort there to beat back Brooklyn-born Bernie Sanders in the all-important April 19 primary. 'I never make predictions, but I'm feeling really good that that's gonna happen,' she said this morning, adding, 'But we have a lot of work to do.' Sanders said during a town hall on the show later in the morning that he believes New York is 'an important' state but it's not a 'must-win.' 'I don't consider any state a must-win,' he said. This week the competition between them burned red hot after he bombed an editorial board interview and Clinton implied he wasn't ready to be commander in chief. Infuriated, Sanders claimed Clinton said he was 'not qualified' for the Oval Office and brutally attacked her record on major issues like the War in Iraq and Wall Street regulations. 'The American people might want to wonder about your qualifications when you're spending an enormous amount of time raising money for your super PAC from some of the wealthiest people in this country and from the most outrageous special interests,' he said yesterday. Clinton laughed it off in her Thursday interview with Lauer that aired on Today this morning and said, 'I think it's kind a silly statement, but he's free to say whatever he chooses.' The Democrat spoke to Today's Matt Lauer from a diner in New York. She told him, 'We're moving forward. The Republicans' fondest wishes will not be fulfilled' This week the competition between Clinton and Sanders burned red hot after he bombed an editorial board interview and Clinton implied he wasn't ready to be commander in chief. Infuriated, Sanders claimed Clinton said he was 'not qualified' for the Oval Office This morning he walked back those criticisms ever so slightly and said she is 'of course' qualified to lead the country and tried to shift the conversation back to the 'real stuff.' 'Ive known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I respect Hillary Clinton. We were colleagues in the Senate. And on her worst day, she will be she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates,' he said during a town hall on Today. He said later on The View that he wanted the feud to end - while insisting he didn't start it. 'I think the people of this country understand we have some enormous crises and they want the candidates to deal with these crises and certainly they don't want to have us act like Republicans who are an embarrassment to this entire country in terms of how they're running their campaign.' Continuing, he said, 'All I'll say in defense is that I hope we can get beyond this. We have won six out of the seven primaries and caucuses. My perception is that, I think it is clear, that the Clinton campaign has made a decision, especially here in New York, to get a little bit rough with us. 'I want to make it clear to the Clinton people, yes, I come from the nice state of Vermont, but if we're hit we can hit back,' he said to clapping from the audience. Pressed to defend his comments about Clinton's qualifications, Sanders said, 'What I meant by this is certainly does she have the experience? Obviously she does. She was Secretary of State a US Senator, I thought and outstanding First Lady in many respects breaking the mold. 'But, what I meant by that, what I thought I made clear, you called into question the judgment of somebody, I believe, who voted for the war in Iraq which turns out to be one of the more disastrous foreign policy blunders in our history.' This morning he walked back those criticisms ever so slightly and said she is 'of course' qualified to lead the country and tried to shift the conversation back to the 'real stuff' Clinton likewise said in the NBC interview that aired this morning, 'I will take Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump or Ted Cruz anytime.' She said the Republicans 'pose real threats to our values, to groups of Americans' like women. Clinton likewise said she was not alone in believing his New York Daily News editorial board interview was concerning, though. 'I think a lot of people, were quite taken aback that on key issues that he has been promoting....hat he did have some questionable answers,' she said. 'Look that's fair game.' She also argued during the interview that Sanders' reply to her cracks about his Daily News interview was a 'misrepresentation' of what she said and showed 'historic amnesia.' Sanders supported Barack Obama, Joe Biden and John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee, she said. Garry Stephen, 25, was clocked by police on the between Lossiemouth and Elgin in Moray, Scotland, driving at 96mph A five-foot-tall man who was caught driving close to 100mph has avoided a driving ban because of his height. Garry Stephen, 25, was clocked by police in Moray, Scotland, travelling at 96mph - more than 30mph over the speed limit. He was driving on the A941 between Lossiemouth and Elgin in a Vauxhall Corsa on January 21. His solicitor argued in court against a driving ban because his height would make it hard for him to find employment that would not involve driving. Stephen, from Elgin, admitted to driving at 96mph in a 60mph zone, at Elgin Sheriff Court, the Press and Journal reported. He was fined 165 and had four penalty points added to his licence by Sheriff Chris Dickson yesterday. Solicitor Brent Lockie successfully argued his client should not be disqualified, as banning him from driving would hamper his ability to find work. Mr Lockie said Stephen's short stature meant he was unable to do some jobs, despite actively searching for work and the job centre was trying to find him employment that involved driving. 'Because of his limited height, he cannot apply for some positions and is trying to identify prospective jobs as a meter reader or delivery man,' Mr Lockie said. 'So it is unfortunate that he's now faced with a charge such as this.' The prosecutor, Ruaridh McAllister, talking about the case said: 'Police officers carrying out speed checks recorded Stephen travelling at 96mph. 'At the time of the incident, it was dark, the road surface was wet and visibility was poor.' Horrific footage of a California family's argument with the local sheriff's department has now been made public as part of an excessive lawsuit, after one of the cops body slammed one of the teenage girls to the ground. The incident occurred on June 14, 2015, on a rural property in Sonoma County, however the footage only surfaced this week as the case was presented in court. According to the sheriff's office, Deputy Marcus Holton stopped at the house in Petaluma after he saw a truck stopped in the middle of the street and heard people fighting. Footage taken from a body cam Holton was wearing - posted to YouTube on Thursday - shows four women arguing with Holton for several minutes, assuring him there was no issue. Scene: Gabrielle Lemos (left) is seen here with her mother (center) and sister in body cam footage released by Sonoma County Sheriff's Office on Thursday Argument: The footage shows the family fighting with a deputy, who says he is trying to investigate a possible domestic incident. However the family say there was nothing going on 'Come back here': Gabrielle walks away from the dispute, and her mother tries to stop her. The deputy then chases her down and slams her to the ground The verbal confrontation continues for several more minutes with the family demanding a female officer, CBS News reported. The argument is lead by the mother of three women, two of which are adults and one, Gabrielle Lemos, 18, appears to be a teenager. At one point in the video she is referred to as being 16 years old. The mother accuses Holton of grabbing the women and breaking the law with his 'investigation'. The argument continues, and Gabrielle starts to walk away from the group. Holton then takes down Gabrielle as she is walking away, after she ignored his orders to stop. During the body slam, the mother and Gabrielle's sisters can be heard screaming in the background for Holton to stop. Take-down: This is the moment Gabrielle Lemos, 18, is slammed to the ground, as captured by the body cam The footage shows Gabrielle being held on the ground by the deputy as the family scream for him to stop Injured: Gabrielle can be seen bleeding from cuts to her face after hitting the ground on June 14, 2015 Holton's body camera fell off during the confrontation, and his face was captured in the footage as he readjusted it to his uniform. He then leads Gabrielle to a patrol car and places her under arrest. Blood and cuts can clearly be seen on her face. Gabrielle has since filed a civil rights case against the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office. The lawsuit claims the officer used excessive force and is seeking unspecified damages. However, after the lawsuit was filed, the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office filed charges against Gabrielle for misdemeanor resisting arrest. Deputy Marcus Holton (left) says he acted appropriately and that Gabrielle Lemos (right) resisted arrest. However Gabrielle claims he used unnecessary force Suing: The 18-year-old is suing for damages. She is seen here in a selfie taken of her injuries during the arrest The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office have stood by Houlton and said he behaved appropriately. "Deputy Holton was well within his authority and Sheriff's Office policy to investigate this matter for a possible criminal violation,' the office said in a statement. Authorities say he is known as 'Zombie Mike' due to a lack of Hawkins is considered a 'survivalist' and can live in the woods off scraps His whereabouts are unknown and police believe he could be in one of seven states Hawkins also raped his best friend's wife at a family gathering before fleeing Michael Steven Hawkins, 29, (pictured) known as 'Zombie Mike' due to a lack of personal hygiene, is wanted in New York for raping two women. One of the women was mentally handicapped and wheelchair bound A man known as 'Zombie Mike' is on the run after raping two women and police say he is a survivalist who could be hiding in one of seven states. Michael Steven Hawkins, 29, a carnival worker known as 'Zombie Mike' due to a lack of personal hygiene, is wanted for raping a mentally challenged wheelchair-bound woman and a woman at a family gathering. Hawkins is is charged with first degree rape of someone physically helpless, first degree aggravated sex abuse and third degree criminal sex act involving someone incapable of consent. 'Predators like Michael Hawkins who prey on helpless victims must be brought to justice. 'We, along with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners, are determined to make sure he's held accountable, but we need the public's help,' U.S. Marshal David McNulty of the Northern District of New York told Delaware Online. In 2012, the family of the wheelchair-bound woman invited Hawkins in to stay with them overnight. He allegedly waited for the family to fall asleep before the rape took place. A year later he showed up at his best friend's family gathering in Rotterdam, New York,. There he raped his friend's wife. Scroll down for video The U.S. Marshals Service also released these images of Hawkins, hoping that someone will recognize him and turn him over to authorities There is a $5,000 reward for anyone who has information, which leads to the arrest of Hawkins. Police are not sure which state he is in and believe he could be in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Oregon, California, Delaware or Florida Hawkins is a survivalist who can live off scraps in the woods if need be, according to U.S. Marshals who are frantically searching for the man. Police believe Hawkins fled New York after the rapes and has personal ties in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Oregon, California, Delaware or Florida. He used to work for a traveling carnival company, which went from New Jersey to North Carolina and police believe he might have fallen back into that line of work. Hawkins is described as 5-foot 9, 160 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. He has a scar on his face, a burn mark scar on his right arm and a chest tattoo of the Grim Reaper. He is known to have a temper and abuse alcohol, according to police. Smiling Peru drug mule Michaella McCollum Connolly hugs a friend as she celebrates her new found freedom - over a cup of Starbucks coffee. In photos obtained exclusively by MailOnline the 23-year-old looked relaxed as she kicked back at the coffee chain in Miraflores, Lima with her mother Nora McCollum. The former part-time model and student who had a dramatic makeover for a TV appearance last weekend - was seen taking selfies and playing on her mobile phone while sat next to her mum in an outside area of Starbucks at around 7.30pm Hug: Convicted drug mule Michaella McCollum Connolly, 23, embraces a friend on the streets of Lima, Peru, as she celebrates being freed from the tough Peruvian Ancon II prison, after serving two years and three months of a six year, eight month sentence Out and about: In photographs exclusively obtained by the MailOnline, McCollum Connolly sits with her mother in an outside area of Starbucks in Lima, Peru, after she was released from prison Freedom: McCollum Connolly looked glamorous in an all-black outfit with a designer handbag as she enjoyed the hot coffee, a luxury not afforded to her in prison Stepping out: The convicted drug mule was spotted out with her mother, Nora, and a Peruvian friend who also brought along a baby The convicted drug smuggler - one half of the 'Peru Two' who along with Scot Melissa Reid was jailed for trying to smuggle 1.5 million of cocaine from Peru to Spain seemed happy to be enjoying a hot coffee, a luxury not afforded to her inside the tough Ancon II prison where she was held. The former drug mule was released from the notorious jail over a week ago after serving two years and three months of a six year, eight month sentence and is currently on parole. Dressed smartly in black skin-tight jeans and a black sleeveless top, the blonde wore heavy make-up with bright red lipstick and sparkly earrings her long hair swept to one side. She looked glamorous in amongst the evening crowd of mostly locals, clutching a large designer handbag and holding a smart phone in her palm. Around 30 minutes after McCollum Connolly and her mum arrived at the Starbucks which sits on a bustling high street, they got up and went outside to greet a Peruvian woman who had pulled up in a car. Outing: She was seen taking selfies and playing on her smartphone as she kicked back in the coffee chain in the bustling neighbourhood of Miraflores in the Peruvian capital Celebration: The Starbucks cafe, where the group were spotted, is just a five-minute walk from the apartment where she will live as she begins her new life in the Peruvian capital Friends: McCollum Connolly will have to stay in Peru for the time being, part of the agreement for her early release from the tough Ancon II prison, however efforts are being made to repatriate her to Northern Ireland Drug mule: McCollum Connolly has been released on parole, after being jailed with Melissa Reid for trying to smuggle 1.5 million of cocaine from Peru to Spain The friend, who had removed a baby from a rear car seat, hugged McCollum Connolly and her mum and was overheard saying, 'I can't believe it, I can't believe we're here together.' The three adults and baby went back inside Starbucks and were seen chatting, laughing and taking photos together for about an hour. The party then all left together in the Peruvian woman's car which she had left with the valet. It's believed McCollum Connolly is staying at a city-centre hotel in Lima with her mother, enjoying her first days of freedom before she embarks on a new life in Peru. This week MailOnline exclusively revealed how McCollum Connolly from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, has found God and will make a fresh start - living with a 73-year-old Catholic priest in his modest city-centre apartment. McCollum Connolly will stay full-time with Father Sean Walsh and work for the church's magazine from Walsh's tiny home office. Release: McCollum Connolly was criticised following an interview with Irish TV station over the weekend, in which she showed off a dramatic post-prison makeover. Critics claimed she didn't appear sorry enough Arrest: Northern Irish Michaella McCollum Connolly (left, before her make-over) and Melissa Reid from Scotland were jailed for six years and eight months in 2013 after they were caught with cocaine worth 1.5million hidden in their luggage at Lima Airport Jailed: Irish-born Michaella McCollum, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing, in Lima, Peru, in December 2013. She was criticised after unveiling her new blonde hair in a TV interview on Sunday following her release The coffee shop where she was spotted is just a five-minute walk from her new home, where Walsh lives on the fifth floor of a rundown apartment building overlooking Kennedy Park. Walsh will oversee McCollum Connolly's progression in the real world as she serves out her parole which could last years. She's not allowed to leave the country until the term is finished. She will carry out administrative and clerical duties for the priest and work on the church's magazine, 'New Hope', setting templates and carrying out photographic work. Father Walsh will also encourage McCollum Connolly to volunteer for other church groups, including working with Father Cathal Gallagher, a Columban priest in Peru, helping people who are HIV-positive or have Aids. McCollum Connolly will work a 9-5 eight hour day, Monday to Friday, and will be paid a small wage as well as food and board. The change of pace will be a world away from the glamorous makeover and stay at a luxury hotel that McCollum Connolly enjoyed while filming an interview with Irish TV station RTE last weekend. Centre: As McCollum Connolly starts her new life in the Peruvian capital she will be overseen by Father Sean Walsh, pictured in the apartment in Miraflores, Lima, where he and McCollum Connolly will live together Guest: McCollum Connolly will be paid a small wage to work on the church's magazine Nueva Esperanza - meaning New Hope - doing template setting and photographic work The convicted criminal looked more like an X-Factor finalist than the frightened young woman who was caught at Lima Airport in 2013 with 24lbs of cocaine hidden inside food packets. McCollum Connolly, who often broke into a smile, came under fire after the TV appearance, widely slated for overhauling her image and not sounding sorry enough. McCollum Connolly was freed under new legislation on early prison release introduced in the South American country last year. Peruvian authorities agreed to let both 23-year-old women serve the remainder of their sentences in the UK, but the pair still remain in the South American country. A judicial process will now determine what, if any, conditions are attached to McCollum Connolly's effective parole, it is understood. While moves are being made to repatriate her to Northern Ireland, it is believed she will have to spend a considerable part of her parole in Peru. Room: McCollum Connolly was freed under new legislation introduced in the South American country last year. She will now live in the neighbourhood of Miraflores (pictured), in Lima Work: A copy of the Nueva Esperanza (New Hope) magazine published by Father Walsh. McCollum Connolly will help him with the magazine, by setting templates and carrying out photographic work Help: In an interview with Irish national broadcaster RTE on Sunday, McCollum Connolly admitted that if she had succeeded in smuggling the drugs into Europe it could have had devastating consequences. Pictured, Father Sean Walsh's apartment in Miraflores Speaking to Irish national broadcaster RTE on Sunday, McCollum Connolly acknowledged the potentially devastating consequences if she had successfully smuggled the drugs back to Europe. 'I probably would have had a lot of blood on my hands,' she said. 'I potentially could have filled Europe full of a lot of drugs. 'I could have potentially killed a lot of people, not directly but I could have caused a lot of harm to people.' 'I made a decision in a moment of madness. I'm not a bad person. I want to demonstrate that I'm a good person.' McCollum has been interviewed in Peru for a documentary that will be aired on RTE One on Sunday night. Faith: Father Walsh, who lives in the apartment block pictured, will also encourage McCollum Connolly to volunteer for other church groups - including one which helps people who are HIV-positive or have Aids Assistance: McCollum Connolly (pictured left and right, before being jailed) will work a 9-5 eight hour day, Monday to Friday, and will be paid a small wage as well as food and board She said: 'I've forgotten the things that everybody takes for granted in life. 'Seeing the sun, seeing the darkness, seeing the moon and the stars, things I haven't seen in almost three years.' McCollum, from Dungannon, and Reid, from outside Glasgow, were caught with the haul at Lima airport on August 6 2013 attempting to fly to Spain. Britain's trade deficit with the European Union has hit its widest ever level, according to new figures. The gap between what we import and what we export to the EU reached 23.8billion in the three months to February, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The body recorded a 1.3% decrease in exports and a 1.1% rise in imports during the period. The findings have been seized on by Brexit campaigners who insisted that the EU will be desperate to secure a strong trade deal with the UK even if we leave. David Cameron, seen launching the Remain campaign bus yesterday, has warned it could take years to negotiate a new trade deal with the EU if Britain votes to leave in the referendum on June 23 Overall the trade deficit with the rest of the world, including services, widened by 3.8billion to 13.7billion, the biggest since March 2008. A separate release from the ONS highlighted growing pressure on the economy. Manufacturing dipped 1.8% year-on-year in February, the biggest drop since July 2013, while output fell 1.1% month-on-month. Howard Archer, chief European and UK economist at IHS Global Insight, predicted GDP will rise 0.4% in the first quarter of the year - down from 0.6% over the previous three months. "It is hard seeing any marked pick-up in manufacturing activity happening in the near-term at least, given domestic and global economic uncertainties," he said. "Increased caution in the run-up to June's referendum on EU membership is likely to constrain business demand for capital goods and big-ticket consumer goods." Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott said: Even pro-EU campaigners have had to admit that if we Vote Leave we will secure a free trade deal, despite their constant efforts to do down Britains economy. 'We are the EUs biggest market so they will want to continue trading long after we say no to Brussels. 'Theres a free trade zone from Iceland to Turkey and as the 5th largest economy in the world we will be part of that. A Harry Potter star has been ordered to pay his former agent a 210,000 slice of the million pound fortune he earned from the hit films. Devon Murray, 27, was taken to the High Court by this week by agent Neil Brooks, who secured him the continuing role of Irish schoolboy wizard Seamus Finnigan in the Harry Potter movies. Mr Murray played the role in all eight films between 2001 and 2011. The court heard that in total, he earned about 970,000. Giving his ruling this afternoon at the conclusion of the bitter High Court spat, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty expressed his regret over revelations that the former child star squandered about 1million on cars, drink and girls in his teens. Colin Murray tweeted this photo on social media, along with the caption: 'Completely forgot about this picture taken at Oxegen! Like she must have the worst mates in the world!! #oxegen' The Harry Potter star posted a seemingly ironic tweet mocking his playboy lifestyle after his mother told the High Court how he blew his 800,000 fortune on cars, drink and girls Mr Murray's mother Fidelma revealed how her son spent his money from the Harry Potter films on alcohol, girls and cars, telling the court 'I only have one child. I wasnt going to give out to him over that' The High Court judge ordered Mr Murray to pay Mr Brooks 210,000 - a 9 per cent reduction on the 230,000 the agent had sought in his civil action. The judge also dismissed a counter-claim for more than 79,000 that the family said they paid to the Dublin-based Neil Brooks Management. Judge Moriarty also ordered Mr Murray to pay the costs of the case against him. The case was taken against Devon Murray, his taxi driver father Michael and his mother Fidelma. Outside the Four Courts in Dublin today after the ruling, Mr Murray told the media: Whats done is done now. Theres nothing we can do. Were all gutted now. Theres not a whole lot we can do. We have to get by whatever way we can now. Asked about squandering his cash, the young actor said: There was an awful lot of things I put money into. I bought a lot of horses at the time I bought property and the arse fell out of that. It wasnt all just women, cars and drink. It wasnt all that. Mr Brooks told the Irish Daily Mail as he left the courts complex: Im delighted its finally over. Its been a long, hard battle. I hope Devon makes a success of himself as an actor. My only regret is that the fees were squandered in such an unfashionable manner. Devon Murray, 27, pictured outside court wih his mother Fidelma and father MIchael, played wizard Seamus Finnigan in the Harry Potter films and is being sued by his agent The young actors mother Fidelma Murray revealed how she sacked her sons Dublin-based agent Neil Brooks for failing to shield her teenage son after pictures of him smoking emerged in late 2004 Mr Murray was just 12 when he beat thousands of other hopefuls to win the part of Seamus Finnigan in the first Harry Potter film, The Philosophers Stone, back in 2000. He shot to fame on the back of it. On Thursday, the High Court in Dublin heard how Mr Murray now gets by on 1,000 a month in residual payments arising from his role in the Harry Potter franchise. His mother Fidelma Murray told the court how the family almost lost our house and didnt have the money to pay lawyers to represent them in court. She added: We dont ask the the State for any money. But when Judge Moriarty pointed to Devons past earnings from the movie business, Mrs Murray revealed: He was a teenage boy. He went drinking. He went out with girls. He bought cars. I only have one child, I wasnt going to give out to him over that. At the end of yesterdays hearing, Judge Moriarty had announced that he would give his ruling today. Overnight, Mr Murray posted a seemingly ironic tweet mocking his lifestyle which said: Drink!!! Cars!!! Girls!!! #FatherDevon. The tweet was not mentioned in court when judgment was delivered today. Mr Murray first signed with Mr Brooks, pictured at court, in 1998 when he was just 10. He went on to beat thousands of other hopefuls to win the part of Seamus Finnigan in the first Harry Potter film Devon Murray, right, and Daniel Radcliffe in The Philosopher's Stone. The Irish actor's character Seamus had a running joke through the film series in which he would inadvertently blew himself up In his court action, Mr Brooks said Mr Murray had once been a joy to work with but that relations with the family later broke down over alleged non-payment of commission fees. It was alleged that Mr Murray tried to dodge out of his obligations under the contract in an unlawful manner after the first four films. Mr Brooks claimed that Mr Murray and his parents broke an agreement to pay him commission fees of more than 286,000 (230,000). Meanwhile, the Murrays, who are from Celbridge in Co. Kildare, had lodged a counter-claim for more than 98,000 (79,000). Delivering judgment, Judge Moriarty said he had a duty of fairness to both sides - but that he had found the evidence of Mr Brooks preferable and more cogent to the evidence put forward by the Murrays. The judge ruled that the expert evidence put before him this week had established that Mr Murray owes Mr Brooks 260,000 (210,000). Judge Moriarty allowed for a 9 per cent reduction on the amount Mr Brooks had originally sought - because some observations made by the agents expert financial witness had been to some degree a little hypothetical. Ordering Mr Murray to pay 91 per cent of the amount claimed in the court case by Mr Brooks, Judge Moriarty said: I make an order in favour of the plaintiff [Neil Brooks Management] to that effect. I make no order in relation to the counter-claim. Turning to the family, Judge Moriarty said: Im very sorry for the Murray family. It seems it was a marvellous career for Devon in the making and Im sorry things didnt work out in what I had viewed as a fruitful and proper relationship with Mr Brooks. I am equally regretful that a million or more went on pursuits that were not particularly helpful and left the family in a difficult situation. Mr Brooks said he was appointed sole agent for the young actor in October 1998 under a commission-based agreement that entitled him to commissions of 12.5% for Mr Murrays film and TV earnings. It was claimed that an increase in commission fees was later agreed - but that the Murrays had failed to make such payments since around August 2005. Senior Trooper Brian Hamilton has been fired by the Indiana State Police for allegedly proselytizing citizens A Christian state trooper in Indiana has been fired after he was accused of proselytizing citizens during traffic stops and is being sued for a second time . Indiana State Police said in a news release Thursday that Senior Trooper Brian Hamilton was terminated after a two-month internal investigation into a complaint that in January he questioned a citizen's religious affiliation, the Indy Star reported. 'While all of us citizen and police officer enjoy the right to freedom of religion and freedom of speech, there are appropriate and proper restrictions placed on agents of the State related to their actions while engaged in their official duties,' State Police Superintendent Doug Carter said in a statement. 'While I respect Mr Hamilton's religious views I am also charged to respect every citizen's rights, and the best way forward for the citizens of Indiana, and for Mr Hamilton, was to end his employment as a State Police officer.' Hamilton, a 14-year veteran with the agency, is being sued by Wendy Pyle who accused him of asking her whether 'she had been saved' after pulling her over in January in Fayette County and violating her constitutional rights. The federal lawsuit, which was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana on behalf of Pyle, claims that he told the woman about his church and even gave her directions to it. Pyle, who does not attend church, felt 'extremely uncomfortable with these questions' but felt like she had no other choice but to say yes to both, the suit states. State Police officials say they do not release information about complainants and it's unclear if the lawsuit is the same complaint that cost him his job. He is the only defendant named in the ACLU lawsuit. Indiana State Police said Thursday that Hamilton was terminated after a two-month internal investigation into a complaint that in January he questioned a citizen's religious affiliation during a traffic stop State Police Capt. Dave Bursten told the Indy Star 'the department's internal investigation was separate from the lawsuit pending against Hamilton, adding that it 'would have occurred regardless of any legal action initiated' by the ACLU.' Since January 15, Hamilton had been on administrative desk duty at the ISP Pendleton post after the department received the complaint. Of his firing, Hamilton told WXIN: 'Oh wellI'm just following what the Lord told me to do and you can't change what the Lord tells you to do. Wendy Pyle says she was driving through Pendleton in January when she was pulled over and lectured at by Indiana State Police Brian Hamilton 'So if the Lord tells me to speak about Jesus Christ, I do. And that's why they fired me so that's where we're at.' This is not the first time Hamilton has been a defendant in a lawsuit. In 2014, Hamilton was sued by a woman named Ellen Bogan who claimed that he stopped her that August for an alleged traffic violation in Union County. After giving her a ticket warning, she claims he asked if she attended church and whether she accepted Jesus Christ as her savior. He also gave her a religious pamphlet from First Baptist Church in Cambridge City which advertised a radio broadcast called 'Policing for Jesus Ministries.' The leaflet also provided a list of 'God's plan for salvation,' which told the reader they should 'realize you're a sinner' and 'realize the Lord Jesus Christ paid the penalty for your sins.' Bogan told IndyStar at the time that she did not go to church but felt 'compelled to say I did, just because I had a state trooper standing at the passenger-side window. It was just weird.' The lawsuit was eventually settled and Hamilton was counseled not to questions others regarding their religious beliefs, the Indy Star reported. A father bugged his ex-girlfriend's home by hiding recording devices in her letterbox and Christmas decorations. Simon Leonard, 40, from Battersea in London, had previously parked in front of Donna Carroll's home in Fareham, Hampshire. Portsmouth Magistrates' Court heard his spying left Miss Carroll feeling 'scared' and 'sick with worry'. One device was found by a food delivery driver in the woman's letterbox. And the other was discovered in January when Miss Carroll was taking down her Christmas decorations. Simon Leonard (left and right) , 40, from Battersea in London, had previously parked in front of Donna Carroll's home in Fareham, Hampshire Now she is too scared to return to her own home in fear of Leonard returning. In a victim impact statement she said: 'At the moment I feel scared he is going to come back. I feel if he can do that, he may come back. 'It makes me feel sick with worry, the fact he was in the house. I am scared he knows where my parents live. 'I do not want to be at my address anymore.' Mr Giles Fletcher, prosecuting, said: 'The defendant set up recording devices at his ex-partner's home. 'He was listening to conversations between her and her friend. 'A food delivery driver came across this device set up, it seems, in the letterbox. 'They hand it to the complainant and her friend who has been spied upon as well.' I do not want be at my address anymore Vicitm Donna Carroll He added: 'It is a very unpleasant offence. 'In January when the Christmas decorations were being taken down Miss Carroll found another recording device. Nothing was recorded on it but it is not to say something had not been transmitted. 'His justification is for wanting to know what was said in her house. 'He does concede he had parked near to her home address and had been watching people leave at an earlier point. 'The stalking had been going on for longer than what is in the charges as he admitted in the pre-sentence report. 'It was planned and thought about, he was buying the devices, obtaining them and placing them in the home. 'He is using the child as the reason why he has put the devices in place but at the same time he has spied on her. 'He is using the child to instigate the offence.' Leonard was sentenced to a 12 month community order, at Portsmouth Magistrates Court (pictured), in which he must complete a rehabilitation activity requirement of 25 days Edward Jackson, defending Leonard, said: 'I think there was a feeling (among family) of an unhealthiness in the relationship and they are quite happy that it ended. 'He did this thing which certainly in terms of the victim is perceived as unforgivable but it displays all the hallmarks of someone that is not thinking rationally. It was a moment of madness. 'He is now thinking rationally and able to move on. 'He did not have his head in the right place, now he has, and he sees what he did was stupid and wrong and he has shown full remorse for that. 'He had concerns about the child who does have a genetic disability, he had concerns about some of his reactions to discipline and a few issues about her planning to change the child's surname.' Leonard admitted stalking and a second charge of assault by beating after he barged past Miss Carroll in an attempt to enter the house and get the recording device. The court heard he later handed himself into the police station but did not tell officers about the second recording device which was found a few weeks later. Leonard, who is currently unemployed, was sentenced to a 12 month community order in which he must complete a rehabilitation activity requirement of 25 days. Monroe Gordon Piland III, 69, was slapped with the unusual charge of 'distribution of certain food at Halloween and all other times prohibited' A former physician who is already jailed for giving marijuana to his minor-aged son, now faces new charges for allegedly giving aphrodisiac chocolate balls to teachers 'spiked with cannabis', that made one fall ill. Monroe Gordon Piland III, 69, from North Carolina, was slapped with the unusual charge of 'distribution of certain food at Halloween and all other times prohibited'. The felony alleges that he gave away food containing marijuana on Valentine's Day in 2013, which was explained in a child custody case filed by Piland against his son's mother that same year, reported the Indy Star. During the court hearing Wednesday, emails from Piland were presented as evidence - one of them had the subject line 'Valentine chocolate herb caper' in which he wrote how he made the chocolate balls mixed with herbs at a workshop and gave them to his son's teachers, one of whom fell ill. The marijuana activisit was then banned from campus until the contents of the sweets was disclosed. An email from school's director that was read out in court, she told Piland he was 'spending too much time at the school, bringing the stress of parental friction amid a court case to the campus as he sought long conversations with his son'. In another email, Piland explained how the school director had said one of the teachers had a strange reaction to the chocolates but he told her that while no marijuana was in them, some cannabis flakes might have stuck to them. Scroll down for video The former physician is already jailed for giving marijuana to his minor-aged son. He is currently being held in the Buncombe County jail in lieu of $100,000 bond Piland is an outspoken marijuana activist and campaigner and has called it an 'essential nutrient' for health. He is pictured here in a video called Holy Smoke, that honors marijuana's sacred use in tribal ceremonies Piland has said that cannabis is 'a plant given to us by the creator'. He had his medical license revoked in 1984 after he was convicted of felony manufacturing a controlled substance and possession of the drug But, said Piland, the amount would have been 'extremely small' and would be 'less disruptive to normal physiology than the sodas that the school sells in the machines'. Back in March, Piland was served with nine drug-related charges, bringing the number of charges pending against him in Buncombe County to 15. Most of the indictments allege that Piland has given marijuana in various forms to his child, while two other charges allege he intended to distribute more powerful narcotics, including opium poppies. In a March 2014 hearing, the father had explained to the judge that he had given his child marijuana 'maybe five times' in an attempt to relieve the child's stress and hyperactivity, which he said stemmed from violent video games, reported First Coast News. He told how he gave the boy marijuana as raw leaf juice in goat's milk and testified that he smoke around his son. Those statements result in nine grand jury indictments - many of them relating to consumption of marijuana by a minor. Should the criminal case move to trial, his emails and statements from the civil case would be likely entered as evidence, to avoid his son - now 13 - having to testify against his own father, said First Coast. Piland's North Carolina medical license was revoked in 1984 after he was convicted of felony manufacturing a controlled substance and possession of marijuana. And in December, a tax debt of $16,612 was entered against Piland by the North Carolina State Department of Revenue. A mother was arrested after she allegedly assaulted a high school teacher by 'hitting her with a door' for 'targeting her daughter'. Carla DaRosa, who was denied access at Brockton High School's security desk, slipped off into the building and ran up to the second floor to threaten her daughter's English teacher, according to a statement released by Brockton Schools Superintendent Kathleen Smith. The incident started after DaRosa's 15-year-old daughter got points off of her grade for turning in an assignment late. The student also had her seat moved in class for being disruptive. DaRosa also said the teacher made comments about her daughter's appearance to other students. Carla DaRosa (pictured) was arrested after allegedly assaulting a high school teacher by 'hitting her with a door' for 'targeting her daughter' DaRosa said the teacher had been singling out her 15-year-old daughter (pictured leaving the court room) after she got points deducted from her assignment for turning it in late After being denied access into Brockton High School, DaRosa snuck up to the second floor where she confronted the teacher Police were called to the school around 1.45pm on Wednesday for the disturbance. DaRosa is facing multiple charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct and trespassing, according to CBS. She was also ordered to stay away from the school. In the statement Smith wrote that DaRosa 'made a decision to slip off into the building anyway while staff was contacting a housemaster to help her to make an appointment'. 'The parent found the teacher's classroom, confronted her and threatened her in front of a class full of students, thus disrupting the school day. 'The teacher acted appropriately by closing the door and immediately calling for assistance.' In court, prosecutors claimed DaRosa 'started pushing on the door, hitting the [teacher] with it while saying, I'll (expletive) you up', according to FOX 25. DaRosa's attorney admitted the mother went to the school to confront the teacher, but denied claims she tried to force a classroom door open or violated security procedures. 'When she walked in, she provided the security officer with her license,' the attorney said. DaRosa's attorney (right) admitted the mother went to the school to confront the teacher, but denied claims she tried to force a classroom door open or violated security procedures DaRosa is facing multiple charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct and trespassing School officials said they will investigate DaRosa's allegations that the Brockton High School (pictured) teacher was targeting her daughter 'Security had her walk up to the classroom on the second floor with another security official. At point did she open the door, at no point did she allegedly assault or touch the teacher with the door.' School officials told FOX 25 that they will investigate DaRosa's allegations that the teacher was targeting her daughter. 'From the lengths Ms. DaRosa went to to gain access to the classroom to speak to her child's teacher, it's obvious that she has a complaint, and it is being looked into.' Parent, Tracy Gutierrez, told FOX 25 that she had similar experiences with the teacher and the school district ignored her complaints. Gutierrez said the relationship the teacher has with her students is 'a little on the unprofessional side', adding that the teacher 'talks about students with the other students'. She claimed her daughter was also bullied by the teacher, and that she could understand DaRosa's frustration. Gutierrez said she would 'never let any of my other children have that teacher'. The superintendent said the school is open to one-on-one sessions between parents and teachers, but 'no one is allowed to walk into the building without signing in, showing identification, gaining permission to be where they are asking to be, and then waiting for an escort to that area'. King Salman has announced that a bridge connecting Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be built across the Red Sea following a meeting with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. There has been long-held suggestions of the construction of a 30 mile bridge, stretching from Ras Nasrani, close to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to Ras Hamid in northwestern Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is also expected to sign a $20 billion deal to finance Egypt's oil needs for the next five years and a $1.5 billion deal to develop its Sinai region. King Salman has announced that a bridge connecting Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be built across the Red Sea following a meeting with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi There has been long-held suggestions of the construction of a 30 mile bridge, stretching from Ras Nasrani, close to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to Ras Hamid in northwestern Saudi Arabia Saudi businessmen are investing $4 billion in projects including the Suez Canal, energy and agriculture, and have already deposited 10 percent of that sum in Egyptian banks, the deputy head of the Saudi-Egyptian Business Council said this week. Saudi Arabia's financial support for strategic ally Egypt will no longer involve 'free money' and will increasingly take the form of loans that provide returns to help it grapple with low oil prices, a Saudi businessman familiar with the matter said. 'This is a change in strategy. Return on investment is important to Saudi Arabia as it diversifies sources of revenue,' the businessman told Reuters on Friday during what has been described as a 'historic' visit to Cairo by Saudi King Salman. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait showered Egypt with billions of dollars after then-military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. But low oil prices and differences over regional issues have called into question whether such strong support is sustainable. Egypt is struggling to revive an economy hit by years of political upheaval since the 2011 uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, as well as an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait showered Egypt with billions of dollars after then-military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule Egypt is struggling to revive an economy hit by years of political upheaval since the 2011 uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, as well as an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula The more measured Saudi approach could increase pressure on Sisi to deliver on promises of an economic turnaround and job creation in the most populous Arab nation through infrastructure mega-projects. 'Saudi Arabia will be making investments and soft loans. No more free money,' said the businessman. Gulf monarchies applauded Sisi after he seized power in 2013, removing the Muslim Brotherhood -- seen as an existential threat to their wealthy nations -- and mounting the fiercest crackdown on dissent in Egypt's modern history. Sisi went on to become elected president on promises of stability but cracks are beginning to appear in what was once the cult-like adulation he enjoyed among many Egyptians, with TV talk show hosts increasingly critical of government officials. The Gulf Arab allies have grown increasingly disillusioned at what they see as Sisi's inability to address entrenched corruption and inefficiency in the economy, and at Cairo's reduced role on the regional stage. Riyadh's new approach does not mean the Gulf States will abandon Egypt financially or politically. A Channel 4 reporter has been reprimanded by the broadcaster after claiming British Muslims are 'sell-outs and Uncle Toms' if they attend government-organised Islamic events. Investigative journalist Assed Baig, 34, who was born in Birmingham but now lives in London, has also used the pejorative term house Muslim on Twitter in relation to moderate Muslims. And the former BBC reporter referred to any Muslims who attend British government iftars as Uncle Toms, which is a derogatory term meaning a black person showing obedience to whites. Reprimanded: Investigative journalist Assed Baig, 34, who was born in Birmingham but now lives in London, has also used the pejorative term 'house Muslim' on Twitter in relation to moderate Muslims Tweet: The former BBC reporter referred to any Muslims who attend British government iftars as Uncle Toms, which is a derogatory term meaning a black person showing obedience to whites Although Mr Baig posted the tweets prior to his Channel 4 days, he has been reminded by the broadcaster of his responsibilities as a journalist to be fair and impartial when representing it. In 2011, he tweeted: Anyone that attends a British government iftar is a sell-out and an Uncle Tom. And he said in 2012 that the 'term Uncle Tom should be readopted in media and political circles'. In the same year Mr Baig also insisted on Twitter that the phrase - along with 'choc-ice' and 'coconut' - is not racist, but rather something 'used to described fake and sell-out people.' Also, in reference to a video of British Muslims dancing to the Pharrell Williams song Happy, he wrote in April 2014: A man dances for hos master because he's a house Muslim [sic]. Opinion: Mr Baig said in 2012 that the 'term Uncle Tom should be readopted in media and political circles' Views: Mr Baig also insisted on Twitter that the phrases 'Uncle Tom, 'choc-ice' and 'coconut' are not racist Mr Baig later clarified his views the next day by saying: 'I do not believe everyone in that video to be a house Muslim. Different intentions involved.' Anyone that attends a British government iftar is a sell-out and an Uncle Tom Assed Baig, tweeting in 2011 Mr Baig, whose tweets were reported by the Guido Fawkes political blog, was criticised by some on Twitter today, but backed by others who said 'keep up the good work' and praised his 'excellent reporting'. But Fiyaz Mugha, founder of Tell Mama, a Government-backed group which tracks anti-Muslim crimes, told MailOnline: The term house Muslim effectively is synonymous with someone using house and using the N-word. It means that people are subservient to a white master or a power structure. We think it actually has some racial connotations to it and also in many instances is used to provide a them and us. It really reinforces a them and us regarding the racial connotations around the term. So actually it's a deeply problematic term and one we've actually been saying should not be used. Making his voice heard: In reference to a video of British Muslims dancing to the Pharrell Williams song Happy, he wrote in April 2014: A man dances for hos master because he's a house Muslim [sic]. Further point: Mr Baig later clarified his views the next day by saying: 'I do not believe everyone in that video to be a house Muslim. Different intentions involved.' However a spokesman for Media Diversified, a group promoting writers of colour, tweeted: We are in full support of Assed Baig and the work he has done for both Vice UK and Channel 4 News. Tweets made when there was no verified tick and in conversation are his business to resolve - nobody elses - and we know he will. So [we] suggest others back off unless they have some other agenda, then that should be revealed. He has been reminded of his responsibilities as a journalist to be fair and impartial when representing Channel 4 Channel 4 News spokesman A Channel 4 News spokesman told MailOnline this afternoon: 'We are aware of the tweets in question by Assad Baig which pre-date his employment by Channel 4 News. 'They are clearly a personal view relating to that particular period in time. However, he has been reminded of his responsibilities as a journalist to be fair and impartial when representing Channel 4 News at all times.' Mr Baig can speak Urdu, Punjabi and Arabic - and has worked in countries including the Central African Republic, Myanmar and Libya. An asylum seeker in Austria has been arrested after he allegedly forced a 13-year-old girl to have sex with him for three months. The man, who arrived in the country from Afghanistan, met the teenager on a number of occasions - including one in a wood - so he could sexually abuse her, officers said. The teenager, from Korneuburg near Vienna, is believed to have been first approached by the man via social media at the beginning of the year. An asylum seeker in Austria has been arrested after he allegedly forced a 13-year-old girl to have sex with him for three months. Above, Vienna, which is where the teenager is from The pair, who exchanged a number of flirtatious messages, met in the wooded area for the first time where the girl was verbally threatened until she agreed to have sex. They are also believed to have met on other occasions where the man, reportedly in his mid-twenties, continued to 'repeatedly' abuse her. Police were alerted to the situation after the schoolgirl, who has not been named to protect her identity, told her parents what was going on. They immediately told officers, who arrested the man. He is currently in custody. A police spokesman said: 'The accused did not use any violence, but he did threaten her and scared her into doing what he wanted.' He threatened her and scared her into doing what he wanted Austrian police Police said he had been living in an asylum home in Hollabrunn where he had used a smartphone to get in contact with the girl. It come after a number of reports have surfaced of migrants sexually assaulting or attempting to abuse young child. Two Afghan migrants were arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting two young girls at a public swimming baths in northern Germany earlier in March. In Freiburg, southwest Germany, women have also allegedly made a number of complaints to managers about being fed date-rape drugs and being accosted in toilets. A debt-ridden computer programmer strangled his supply teacher wife after they were ordered to leave their country home, then wrote a note to his four children saying he'd done a 'horrendous thing'. Stuart Andrews throttled 52-year-old Caroline in February, following months of tension over the family's rented bungalow in the Kentish village of Benenden. The 54-year-old then went on the run and checked into a London hotel with a blonde woman before attempting to take his own life. At Maidstone Crown Court today, Oxford-educated Andrews, who used to work for the Bank of England, admitted murder and the theft of 267,096 from his dementia-suffering father-in-law, over whom he had power of attorney. Sentencing him to life with a 15-year minimum term, a judge said classics graduate Andrews had acted in a 'cold and clinical way' after an 'extreme loss of temper'. Stuart Andrews (left) has pleaded guilty to the murder of Caroline Andrews (right) in Benenden, Kent Oxford-educated Andrews, who used to work for the Bank of England, admitted murder and the theft of 267,096 from his dementia-suffering father-in-law The couple had been married for 31 years and had four children: Charles, 26, an organist; Henry, 23, a graduate; Polly, 19, a student; and a 14-year-old daughter. Prosecutor Philip Bennetts QC told the court today that Andrews had started getting into debt in 1995 and three years later had to sell the family home. The family moved into the Benenden property in 2009, and Andrews had over time negotiated to buy it, but kept putting off the exchange, the court heard. Eventually, the landlord gave them formal notice to quit, and they were told to leave by February 17 - about a fortnight before Mrs Andrews was killed. Andrews - who worked for London-based consultancy firm Alix Partners - told his bosses in January that he was sick but gave his family the impression he was still going in to work. The court heard Andrews murdered his wife in the early hours of February 4 at the property where they lived with two of their children and Mrs Andrews's father Donald Breeds. Mr Bennetts said Andrews later left a note in the car starting 'Dear Children' and going on to detail to them the 'horrendous thing' he had done to their mother. Part of it read: 'It started as an accident when we were fighting but it went too far. Your mother was a beautiful, kind and caring person who loved you all. 'I let her down and ruined her life by being stupid with money and losing the house. Neither of us recovered from that. I love you too but I can't carry on living. 'All this is just my fault. Dad.' The couple's 550,000 bungalow in the quiet village of Benenden became a crime scene in February when Mr Andrews went on the run following the discovery of his wife's body Mr Bennetts said that after throttling his wife, Andrews told one of their children that their mother was unwell and she should not be disturbed. After dropping the child off at Headcorn train station, Andrews then telephoned Hilden Oaks School and Nursery in Tonbridge where Mrs Andrews worked to say she was unwell. Mr Bennetts said later that day Andrews caught a train with another one of their children from Headcorn to Charing Cross before they parted company. FRAGMENT OF FATHER'S NOTE TO HIS FOUR CHILDREN AFTER HE STRANGLED THEIR MOTHER Andrews left a note starting 'Dear Children' to tell them of the 'horrendous thing' he had done to their mother. He wrote: 'It started as an accident when we were fighting but it went too far. Your mother was a beautiful, kind and caring person who loved you all. 'I let her down and ruined her life by being stupid with money and losing the house. Neither of us recovered from that. I love you too but I can't carry on living. 'All this is just my fault. Dad.' Advertisement Andrews deliberately left his phone on the train, shoving it down the side of a seat and timing a text message to be sent from it at 4pm to one of Mrs Andrews's friends. The text to Heather Sheldon read: 'Heather, this is Stuart. I am sorry and, this is beyond belief, I have accidentally killed Caroline. 'In a second I will have killed myself too. The body is in our bedroom. Please do what you can to comfort the children. 'You should not have to deal with this but you were her best friend.' Andrews gave her contact details for the children, as well as numbers for his mother and brother. Ms Sheldon contacted police after receiving the message, Mr Bennetts said. And when officers arrived at the Andrews' home, 95-year-old Mr Breeds was at the property but did not respond. After forcing entry, police found Mrs Andrews dead in the master bedroom dressed in her night clothes and with a small amount of blood on her head. Mr Bennetts said Andrews later bought knives from Argos and a bottle of Prosecco and condoms from a nearby Waitrose. Police discovered he had checked into the Rathbone Hotel in London with a woman called Amanda Carlton who the booking was made under. In the early hours, Mr Bennetts said Andrews asked a member of hotel staff to let him and a blonde woman aged around 28 outside so they could smoke. The discovery of Mrs Andrews's body sparked a huge manhunt in Kent, during which armed police officers boarded a train in Gillingham looking for him At 3pm the following day, Andrews called reception and asked for an ambulance. Managers rushed up to find him covered in blood from knife wounds to his body. When medics arrived, Andrews said: 'I've done something really bad. I've killed my wife.' In the hotel room were several notes. One read: 'Christine, you are going to hear some pretty awful stuff about me. I just want you to know I'm not really a monster. 'We have been fighting so much and she was attacking me and goading me when the accident happened, and she died. I just blacked out.' At St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, Andrews was arrested on suspicion of murder. He told an officer: 'No, I'm guilty. I'm not denying it. I want to be dead.' Andrews told a psychiatric nurse that Mrs Andrews had accused him of being a failure and started hitting him before he 'snapped'. In mitigation, Denis Barry, defending, told the court that Andrews had behaved in a 'grave and disgraceful' way towards his wife. And he said: 'He apologises without reservation to Mrs Andrews' sister and father, and nothing I say can right the grave wrong to that family.' Jailing Andrews - who showed no emotion as he was sentenced - Judge Jeremy Carey said the moments before the killing built up into a 'crescendo'. Investigation: Police at Dover Priory station on Thursday as they searched for Oxford graduate Mr Andrews He told him: 'Principally, by your own accounts, you did indeed snap, you struck your wife, which you should never have done. 'But rather than coming to your senses, you compounded your very serious actions by seizing her round her throat and, in what must have been a sustained attack ... you murdered her. 'You left her dead in your bedroom, a place where she was entitled to feel safe from harm, safe from the protection of her husband.' Mrs Andrews' sudden death caused shock in the upmarket village, which is in the Weald area of the Kent countryside. Neighbour and retired chartered surveyor Derek Catlin, 71, said: 'They were very normal, very pleasant people. This makes us all feel very odd.' Another local, Karen Callaghan, 49, said: 'It's very sad for the village. Everyone knows everyone round here. The locals have been here a long time.' Benenden Primary School headteacher Gill Knox said of Mrs Andrews' death: 'The tragic death of Caroline Andrews has left the staff at Benenden C of E School shocked and saddened. 'Caroline and her family live in the village and are well known at the school. Caroline has been a loved and well-respected supply teacher for a number of years who has enriched the lives of the many children she taught. Meechaiel Khalili Criner was arrested Thursday night after Haruka Weiser's body was found dead in a creek on UT campus Austin A 17-year-old homeless runaway has been charged with the brutal murder of UT student Haruka Weiser in Austin - as police revealed security cameras showed the suspect following her with a 'sharp silver object'. Meechaiel Khalili Criner was arrested Thursday night after he was caught trying to destroy some of the 18-year-old's possessions by setting them alight. Firefighters called to the scene recognized him as the suspect seen in security footage riding Weiser's bike away from the scene and alerted police. Officers also found him to be in possession of the bike. And as police confirmed his arrest, a chilling interview Criner gave to his high school newspaper emerged in which he claimed he wanted people to remember his name. In the December 2014 interview, Criner said that he was mocked for his African accent and had to leave his alcoholic mother to go and live with his grandmother while he was living in Texarkana, roughly 375 miles away from Austin. He also claimed he grew up in a broken home and was physically abused. Asked if he was filled with rage after a lifetime of bullying, Criner told the Texas High School newspaper that he felt the opposite and liked to stand up for people. And in one haunting passage, Criner said that even though he felt people underestimated him, he wanted to be remembered: What I want to leave behind is my name I want them to know who Meechaiel Criner is. Scroll down for video Meechaiel Khalili Criner: A 17-year-old homeless runaway once described as a promising student who 'had fallen on hard times', now charged with the murder of an 18-year-old girl. Pictured here in December 2014 as part of an interview with Texas High School student newspaper Police in Austin have arrested 17-year-old Meechaiel Khalil Criner (pictured in police custody) in connection with the death of University of Texas student Haruka Weiser Haruka Weiser (pictured) was found dead in a creek on University of Texas at Austin campus Tuesday Weiser (pictured right) was a first year theater and dance student at the university In the interview, Criner revealed how he was entered into foster care in fifth grade and was subjected to institutional violence and said the 'harsh time' made him realize people can be 'mean and hateful'. Speaking with a thick African accent, he described his time in care as 'like being in prison' but despite the trauma, he remained determined he would 'take a different path'. Austin police chief Art Acevedo confirmed that murder charges will be filed against Criner this afternoon saying: 'We are certain that the subject we have in custody is the suspect responsible.' Family members were shocked to hear of Criner's arrest in connection with the case, reported KSLA. While they declined to comment on camera, Criner's grandmother told KSLA News 12 that they hadn't seen or heard from him since he left home last August. Suspect Meechaiel Criner was identified on CCTV (pictured) as a black male, approximately 6 ft tall near where her body was found. He is now in custody charged with first degree murder Ballerina Weiser - described by a former dance teacher as having a 'dancer's soul' - was last seen leaving the campus drama building Sunday night. Her body was found Tuesday in a creek near the alumni center and UT's iconic football stadium, an area bustling with activity day and night. Weiser, 18, from Portland, Oregon, was a first year theater and dance student at the university and was reported missing on Monday morning by fellow roommates. An affidavit released by police Friday revealed that Weiser had called friend Sylvia Feghali at 9.30 pm and advised she was on the way home from her class at the F Loren Winship Drama Building located on East 23rd Street and San Jacinto blvd. Texas PD received a call the following morning from her friend Sylvia to say she hadn't come home. She had been wearing a long sleeve black mock turtle neck shirt, black stretch pants and brown Doc Martin shoes. She had a blue duffle bag with a Mac Book computer, Iphone 6 and study materials for school. A PROMISING STUDENT ABUSED IN CARE: MEECHAIEL CRINER REVEALED Meechaiel Criner was a promising student that had fallen on hard times, according to a student media paper interview from December 2014. He said that he had been bullied his whole life. 'In elementary school I would come home crying almost every day. It was because of my accent you see. People couldn't understand me,' he said. Criner is described as having a thick African accent but is unclear if he was born in the United States or overseas. He had come to live with grandparents because his mother didn't want to be responsible for any children. He said: 'She did a lot of drinking. CPS referred me and my four siblings and my grandmother offered to take me and my sisters'. Criner described his grandmother as a sweet person who took care of him. But in elementary school, he was moved out of his home into foster care for around six months. He said that while his grandmother never beat them, the authorities 'believed violence was involved'. And his experience of foster care was even more traunamtic than being separated from his family. Criner described the care as being 'like a prison'. He said he was a victim of physical violence, where he was thrown to the ground by a foster carer and sustained injuries to his back. Criner explained: 'It was a really harsh time in my life. People can be mean and hateful.' But according to the paper, his traumatic experiences in foster care had only reinforced his determination to take a different path. Ironically, the paper noted that 'so many times traumatic experioence lead to later violence and intense anger - but this case the oppisitese was true'. He ended the interview by saying that he 'liked to help others'. And his chilling final comment: 'What I want to leave behind is my name - I want them to know who Meechaiel Criner is.' Source: Texas High School publication, Tiger Times Advertisement Police conducted a cursory search for her in Waller Creek Monday but found nothing. A young female was then found on Tuesday morning with obvious trauma to her body and her death was ruled as homicide. Police have also said she was assaulted but would not elaborate on what kind of assault. Surveillance was then recovered, showing a black male dressed in a black jacket, orange shirt and grey pants. He was around 6 ft tall and of athletic build. The surveillance shows him arriving on campus at 9.20 pm, where he is seen looking round and then leaves. He then returns to where a van was parked at 9.38 pm. As he returns to his bike, a female dressed in all black and looking at her cell phone is then seen walking towards the alumni center. The figure passes the suspect and then continues towards the bridge, the suspect appears to watch her and puts the kickstand of the bike down. He then reaches into his pants with his left hand and pulls out what appears to be a shiny ridged object. The suspect then follows the female across the bridge and onto the sidewalk that extends behind the Alumni center and runs along west bank of Waller Creek. Then, at 11.47 pm the suspect is seen walking along the side of the same bike, but now has some type of injury to his left leg and is carrying a bag. UT President Fenves said: 'Dance faculty members first met Haruka more than two years ago when she performed at the National High School Dance Festival' Fenves added: 'Trained in ballet, Haruka (pictured center) excelled in all her performance endeavors. She was also involved in Dance Action, a student-run organization for dancers, and performed in the fall Dance Action concert Left, Weiser performs in The Portland Ballet's production of John Clifford's The Enchanted Toy Shop, November, 2014. Right, Weiser performs in The Portland Ballet's production of John Clifford's Tales from Mother Goose, November, 2014 After the footage was released on Thursday, Austin FD called Austin PD to say they had been called to a fire at 2911 Medical Arts Street, the direction that the suspect was seen walking. A young black male was found inside an abandoned building on Arts Street, burning items. He was identified as Meechaiel Criner and was taken to LifeWorks homeless center Monday night. On Thursday, after Austin FD had given police the new information, they returned to the scene of the fire to find ashes of a small Doc Martin shoe and a notebook that had coursework, inside the burnt out bin. The LifeWorks room where Criner had stayed Monday night was also searched and a Macbook with a sticker on it that mentioned the city of Portland was seized. Family of Haruka Weiser previously told detectives that a Portland sticker was on her Macbook. Austin police chief Art Acevedo (pictured at a press conference Friday) confirmed that murder charges will be filed against Criner this afternoon Acevedo (seen here shaking hands with UT President Gregory L. Fenves) also said 'We are certain that the subject we have in custody is the suspect responsible.' Texas Department of Public Safety troopers patrol University of Texas at Austin campus on Thursday Speaking at a press conference Friday, University President Greg Fenves said the arrest 'brings a tremendous sense of relief to our students, our faculty, our staff and the entire University of Texas community.' The university held a vigil in Weiser's honor Thursday night and Fenves said he met her parents. 'We will honor Haruka's life and what she stood for,' Fenves said. 'We will take this as an occasion to do as Haruka's parents asked us to do, learn from this and make this a better community and a safer community for everyone.' He said Friday that increased police patrols on campus, which have included Texas state troopers in cars, on bikes and on horseback, would continue. The Department of Public Safety also conducted a security review on campus, including checking video monitoring, lighting and building security systems Fenves said the arrest 'brings a tremendous sense of relief to our students, our faculty, our staff and the entire University of Texas community. Her family also released a statement at the presser Thursday, which was read out by UT President Gregory L. Fenves: 'Our beloved daughter and sister and friend was taken from us too soon.' The statement said how Weiser had been looking forward to visiting family in Japan that summer and was a passionate and dedicated dancer and student - and was very happy to be at UT. Weiser was found just after 10.46 am Tuesday morning Waller Creek, located behind the university's alumni center. She was last seen leaving a university drama building Sunday night Hundreds of mourners gathered for a vigil for Weiser on the UT at Austin campus Thursday University of Texas students embrace during a gathering for Haruka on Thursday They added that while she loved being on stage she never sought the spotlight off it and the last thing she would want is to be a 'poster child for any cause'. 'She would not wish us to be stuck in sadness and would want us to keep living life to the fullest and we will try and do that,' the statement concluded. In his own statement, Fenves, described how Weiser was 'liked and admired by her classmates and respected by professors for her intelligence and spirit'. He continued: 'The unthinkable brutality against Haruka is an attack on our entire family. Law enforcement is fully engaged to do everything to bring the perpetrator who committed this crime to justice. UT President Gregory L. Fenves (right) also spoke at the press conference and described how Weiser was 'liked and admired by her classmates' Weiser (pictured) had recently left Portland and moved to Austin to start fall classes at UT on a dance scholarship 'I ask you to join me in expressing our deepest condolences to Haruka's parents, family, classmates and friends and to help the university honor her life.' Fenves continued: 'Dance faculty members first met Haruka more than two years ago when she performed at the National High School Dance Festival. 'They immediately began recruiting her to come to UT from her home in Portland, Oregon. Our community was made better by her decision to join the College of Fine Arts. 'Trained in ballet, Haruka excelled in all her performance endeavors. She was also involved in Dance Action, a student-run organization for dancers, and performed in the fall Dance Action concert.' While classes are continuing as usual, Austin Police and DUP troopers are providing extra security on campus, with 50 officers from UTPD, APD and DPS deployed to patrol the university community, says Fenves. On Thursday hundreds attended a vigil honoring the first-year dance student. The university confirmed Wednesday that this was the first homicide on main campus since Charles Whitman opened fire from the UT Tower's observation deck on August 1, 1966, killing 13 people. The body of a Weiser was found in a creek (pictured) on University of Texas at Austin campus Tuesday Defence minister Julian Brazier The EU is making Britain less safe and putting frontline troops at risk, according to a defence minister. Julian Brazier accused the EU of provoking Russia over Ukraine and giving Vladimir Putin the excuse he needed to invade the country. The former paratrooper also warned that soldiers were being stopped from training for wartime conditions because Brussels bureaucracy was regulating exercises in Britain. The damning assessment came in a speech launching the Veterans for Britain campaign at Vote Leave's headquarters. It is more evidence of the sharp disagreements in government over the European issue. David Cameron, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and other ministers have argued that the EU is critical to our security. They have also insisted that it helps counter terrorism by encouraging information-sharing between security services. "I believe, as a former soldier and a serving Defence Minister, that the EU makes the people of our country less safe," Mr Brazier said. Mr Brazier is the first minister openly to attack the EU for fuelling the conflict between Russia and Ukraine by offering a trade agreement. "It is all very well for western leaders to cry for a 'rules-based' international order but I believe that through this route, the EU got into the dangerous position of provoking the Russians and did so without the military means to defend its will." Echoing controversial comments made by Ukip leader Nigel Farage that "If you poke the Russian bear with a stick he will respond", the Conservative said: "The EU poked the bear where it hurt and did so with a pretty feeble stick and it was Ukrainian citizens who paid the price in Russia's predictably brutal reaction. "The EU's blunders gave Putin the excuse he was looking for to invade the Ukraine. This is one more example of how the EU's foreign policy very often makes this country and its allies less safe." EU red tape is hampering military training exercises, Mr Brazier also claimed. Army drivers are being subject to mileage limits that mean they are unprepared for real conditions on deployment, he said. "Exhausted drivers are a hazard in peacetime but sending people to war without training for the stress and exhaustion of combat exposes them to a much worse war time risk." David Cameron has insisted that Britain's membership of the EU helps boost our security Pro-EU peer's firm rakes in 7m a year...from Europe Britains former top civil servant, who claims the prospect of Brexit is scary, runs a firm which raked in more than 7million from Europe last year. Gus ODonnell Cabinet Secretary under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron last week argued it would be impossible to negotiate withdrawal in the two years allowed. The intervention angered Leave campaigners, who said his claims were ridiculous. Now his firms accounts show the extent of the ex-mandarins business connections with Europe. He is chairman of Frontier Economics, a consultancy with offices in Brussels, Cologne, Madrid, Dublin and London. Its biggest market is Britain, but in 2014-15 7.4million of its turnover, close to 25 per cent of the 30million total, came from Europe. The revelation is likely to result in claims that he appears to be siding with Remain out of self-interest. Lord ODonnell, 63, who became a peer under David Cameron, is considered one of the architects of the 2010 Tory and Lib Dem coalition. It is not clear how much he makes from Frontier Economics, but the combined annual pay of its directors stands at 3.7million and the highest- paid received nearly 716,000 in pay and pension contributions. Last week he said that if Britain votes to leave the EU and the two-year deadline expired, we would be left at the mercy of remaining states when it came to securing new trade deals. So thats a bit scary, he warned. Tories threaten Budget revolt in protest over 9million leaflets Bernard Jenkin said Tory MPs were furious Furious Tory MPs are threatening to vote down the Budget in revenge for the Government lavishing 9.3million of taxpayers cash on a pro-EU leaflet. Discontent was at boiling point as MPs privately warned they would not allow David Cameron to get business through the House of Commons. The first victim could be the Finance Bill which enacts the Budget after Tory MPs privately said they could abstain from it. The 16-page pro-EU pamphlet is to be sent to all 27million households in Britain. Steve Baker, chairman of the Eurosceptic Conservatives For Britain, said: Some colleagues are very angry and want to just oppose everything. He urged them to back the Government but warned we will see a rise in the temperature when each department comes up with a subsequent report to scare voters from leaving the EU. Our challenge is to be good Boy Scouts and demonstrate by our conduct and discipline that we are the side to back. Bernard Jenkin, a senior Tory Eurosceptic MP, told the BBCs World at One some Tory MPs were furious. He said: I dont intend to vote against the Budget but the way the Prime Minister has chosen to conduct the Government in this referendum campaign is causing a lot of offence in the Conservative Party. He added that it was an extraordinary act of arrogance using taxpayers money to propagandise the Governments view of the referendum. The backlash against the propaganda pamphlet was growing last night with more than 160,000 people signing a petition entitled: Stop Cameron spending British taxpayers money on pro-EU referendum leaflets. Signatories agreed that we believe voters deserve a fair referendum without taxpayer-funded biased interceptions by the Government. Nearly all petitions to Downing Street that attract more than 100,000 signatures trigger a debate in Parliament. Mr Cameron will almost certainly now be grilled by MPs over his decision to spend nearly 10million on printing the controversial referendum leaflet. A YouGov poll showed that voters disapproved of the state-sponsored mail shot by 58 per cent to 37 per cent. Accused: Father Virgilio Elizondo, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, faced ruin when a man accused him of having molested him as a boy A Catholic priest who shot himself in the head after he was accused of molesting a young boy left a chilling suicide note in which he claims he took his own life as 'a final gift' to anyone he 'might have hurt'. In the note - which appears to be a veiled admission of guilt - Father Virgilio Elizondo, 80, said he had lived a life 'totally dedicated to serving others'. The Notre Dame professor left it near where his body was found, at his San Antonio, Texas, home. Apparently unconcerned by the feelings of his alleged victim, he thanked God for his entire life - 'especially' his 52 years of priesthood - during which time his accuser claims Fr. Elizondo sexually assaulted him when he went to him to report abuse by another priest. The letter - obtained by Daily Mail Online - goes on to describe how Fr. Elizondo felt 'fatigued and empty' and was suffering various ailments affecting his kidneys, eyes and knees. Only in the last paragraph of the carefully typed-out note - discovered on a table just yards from where Fr. Elizondo committed suicide - does the priest 'beg forgiveness and mercy from those he has hurt or offended.' Last night the lawyer representing Fr. Elizondo's alleged victim called priest self-serving and manipulative. Attorney Thomas J. Henry told Daily Mail Online: 'His comments about hurting others that he has offended and wanting forgiveness really appears to be not a suicide note but an apology note for his conduct. 'I think that he takes accountability in a vague way and in a very odd way calls his suicide a farewell gift - a gift to anyone he may have hurt. 'But those statements are self-serving in the sense that a farewell gift in the face of hurting other people by killing yourself is not what we would think would be appropriate unless the severity of hurting others was so much you felt you had to do this. 'I think that he has taken a way out that is not responsible in the least with regards to addressing these allegations. Carefully written: The Notre Dame professor left this printed suicide note calling his death 'a farewell gift' and only admitting to being 'a sinner' at the end - after praising himself for 'a life totally dedicated to serving others' 'In his position he should have willingly provided sworn testimony about his conduct over the course of time he was a priest. 'I don't think saying he took the easy way out is how I would characterize this as much as a manipulation to avoid answering serious questions.' Fr. Elizondo was found dead from a single self-inflicted gunshot wound inside his home on Monday, according to San Antonio police. The once respected religious leader and theologian had been embroiled in controversy since last May, when an orphan named only as John Doe filed a lawsuit in which he accused the aging cleric of molesting him when he went to him in 1983 to report sexual abuse by another priest named Father Jesus Armando Dominguez. Fr. Dominguez, who is currently a 'fugitive from justice' believed to be in Mexico, according to Henry, molested and performed sex acts on the boy for around two years from 1980 at a local orphanage. When Fr. Dominguez left the orphanage, the boy tried to report the abuse to Fr. Elizondo but instead of listening 'he began to fondle the Plaintiff's genitals, taking advantage of the same sexual liberties Plaintiff complained of with Father Dominguez,' according to the lawsuit. Although Fr. Elizondo denied the allegations when he was alive - his suicide note appears to suggest his guilt. In the 273 word letter - entitled 'Farewell' - which was found on a table just eight feet away from his body, the priest describes his life as being 'joyful and sad, inspiring and disastrous'. The note, which was obtained from law enforcement by Henry's law firm under subpoena, continues: 'Many thoughts have come into my mind: beautiful and ugly, life-giving and death-bearing, silly and profound, virtuous and sinful, insight and blindness, I am grateful for all my life, particularly for my 52 years of priesthood. God has been so good!' He adds: 'In spite of my sinfulness I have lived a life totally dedicated to serving others - especially the elderly, the immigrant, the minorities and the poor... Now I am very tired fatigued and empty. My body is falling apart, my knees are giving in, my kidneys are beginning to fail, and my eyes are fading and other complications.' Fr. Elizondo then asks how he could be 'best be of service?' before adding: 'At this time it is by offering my life as final gift. 'I freely choose my moment and way of giving my life to others. This is not a suicide but a farewell gift. 'I pray that the gift of my life may bring healing to anyone that I might have hurt.' He then quotes the words of Jesus: 'Greater love no one has, than to lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13' After begging for forgiveness from those he has 'offended' the priest claims it was never his intention to hurt anyone and ends the note: 'I am a sinner in need of forgiveness and mercy.' Henry believes the note was calculated and manipulative and thinks that the priest should have take accountability for his actions by testifying under oath. Home: The priest and academic shot himself to death at his house in San Antonio, Texas. The accusation of child abuse threatened He said: 'This is a person who was highly educated and for most of his adult life had learned how to deal with his audience so the manner and method of this suicide note - starting with farewell - is obviously constructed in such a way as to firstly, make Fr Elizondo appear to be asking for forgiveness for his sins and secondly when he claims to be giving up his life for this purpose - it is an inappropriate and manipulative use of words. 'Giving up your life is not a gift to any abused child, it's just a manipulation to avoid dealing with this issue. 'Child sexual abuse is a crime that can permanently ruin a person's life.' The lawyer said he is continuing the lawsuit against Fr. Elizondo's estate and has urged anybody else who may have been a victim of the priest to find the courage to come forward and report the abuse. Henry added: 'The lawsuit is still pending and we're going to be learning more about this priest's background and history as we obtain information from various priest files that we are requesting. 'Fr. Elizondo was working for the Catholic Church at the time this occurred decades ago and he continued to work at the Church until his death. Plea: Attorney Thomas J Henry tells Daily Mail Online he wants other victims to come forward. The victim suffered mental illness, substance abuse and addictions, his legal papers disclose 'So his death doesn't change the injury my client experienced or the effect on my client over his entire life. 'It is important to continue the lawsuit in the interests of justice for my client but also to provide justice to anyone else who could have been affected by this person. 'Any other people who were victim to this man need to come forward - which is difficult for them because of the damage they have sustained - but they need to come forward because that is the only way in which law enforcement and people in our society are able to connect the dots as to what the church knew, when they knew it, when these people made the complaints and how the church would have known and/ or concealed information. 'By coming forward victims help each other, they help create prevention and they help deter the bad conduct of people who have this proclivity to molest children.' Henry declined to discuss his client's feelings toward Fr. Elizando's death - or the contents of the suicide note - other that to say the priest's conduct had caused him 'endless problems over his life'. The lawsuit describes how the alleged victim has suffered years of mental illness, substance abuse and addictions, has been unable to hold down a job or relationship, and has even attempted suicide - all because of the abuse. The court document states: 'As Plaintiff got older, he was plagued with anger and severe depression, for which he sought therapeutic treatment and had to regularly take medication. 'On a few occasions, still haunted by the oddities in his past, Plaintiff has attempted suicide. 'His struggles with debilitating depression and thoughts of suicide still plague him today.' It adds: 'Plaintiff has often been unable to parent his children due to the need to be under the care of a mental health facility. 'Plaintiff has lost jobs and forfeited close relationships with his loved ones due to his mental status. 'Each year, these feelings have gotten progressively worse. Plaintiff suffers suffer from multiple forms of substance abuse and addictions.' Ted Cruz's campaign manager believes Donald Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, should abandon his White House hopes if he can't win a majority of votes in his home state of New York on April 19. Cruz himself only won 44 per cent in his native Texas when he claimed victory in the Texas GOP primary. Trump claimed 27 per cent. Ohio Gov. John Kasich also failed to top 50 per cent in his 'I'm assuming Donald is very strong in his home state,' Jeff Roe said Thursday during the ABC News 'Powerhouse Politics' podcast. 'If he doesnt get over 50 percent, he should probably consider dropping out, like everyone else has when they don't win their home state in a dramatic fashion,' Roe jabbed. DROP OUT, DONALD: Ted Cruz's campaign manager Jeff Roe says Trump should quit the White House race if he can't win 50 per cent of the vote in New York's primary NEW YORK VALUES? Cruz, shown Thursday learning to make matzah in Brooklyn, only won 44 per cent in his home state of Texas, and he's shown no sign of quitting He acknowledged that Trump is the 'huge favorite' in the Empire State and that Cruz, a Texas senator, considers the election an 'away game.' Cruz has attracted flak for criticizing what he calls 'New York values,' and attracted protests in the Bronx when he visited there on Wednesday. 'People know what New York values means,' Roe said, insisting that it's a commentary on strict gun-control laws and menu-control ordinances the Big Apple's Democrat-dominated government has enacted. 'Its a big city, liberal government that does a lot of crazy stuff and their values are not in touch there as they are in other places,' he said. 'The liberals there are different creatures, and thats what he was talking about and Donald Trump has funded all those people.' FRONT-RUNNER: Trump is polling at 52 per cent in New York, according to a Monmouth University survey FUGEDDABOUTIT: Cruz's camp believes he can win the nomination outright before the July convention even though he would have to snare 87 per cent of the remaining delegates Roe claimed Cruz has a path forward to the GOP nomination and can 'absolutely' capture the 1,237 delegates he needs to win it. That, however, would require him to collect 87 per cent of the delegates that remain to be awarded in upcoming primary elections. 'This hasnt played out at all,' he said, 'and I think there are still some surprises left.' 'It all comes down to California,' Roe predicted, pointing to the 172 delegates up for grabs there on June 7. A top aide to Donald Trump said Friday he was confident that the billionaire can win the Republican nomination for the White House outright and avoid a contested convention in July. 'By the time we get to California' for the state's June 7 primary, Paul Manafort said Friday morning, 'the momentum will be very clear. Ted Cruz's path to victory will be in shambles.' 'We have a clear path forward. It's difficult. We have to win. We have to win consistently,' Manafort, told CNN one day after Trump put him in charge of the nomination process. CAN HE? Donald Trump needs 1,237 convention delegates by mid-July to avoid a floor fight at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio DELEGATE COUNTER: Paul Manafort is managing the delegate-acquisition process for Trump and says Ted Cruz's path to the nomination 'will be in shambles' by June Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who crushed Trump in the Wisconsin primary this week and who has galvanized Republican leaders determined to stop Trump at all costs, had 'seen his best day,' Manafort said. By the time California's 172 delegates are awarded, 'it will be apparent' that Trump has the 1,237 Republican delegates needed to win the nomination without having his mantle contested at the party convention in Cleveland, Manafort insisted. June 7 marks the last state elections in the White House nomination process. In addition to California, Republican voters in Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota will go to the polls with Democratic party votes also taking place in North Dakota and the District of Columbia. Trump leads the polls in the New York state primary on April 19, when 95 Republican delegates are up for grabs. Manafort also expects the tycoon to do well in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut. 'I'm inheriting a great situation. I have to steer the ship in a little bit different direction.' Embed please: Trump's brash, insult-heavy campaign has had a polarizing effect on Republicans as well as the nation at large, but Manafort said he believed the party would unite behind Trump. The party front-runner announced Thursday that he was putting Manafort in charge of managing the delegate count and the Cleveland Convention. Last week, Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was charged with battery for allegedly roughly grabbing a reporter. Broken arm: Louis Curtis was injured in a pitch black disco area at a soft play area in Merseyside An eight-year-old boy had his arm broken and elbow dislocated when he was allegedly attacked by two other children at a play area. Louis Curtis now has his arm in plaster after he was injured in a pitch black disco area at Adventureland in New Brighton, Merseyside. His mother Liah Curtis, 33, who has five other children, has now warned parents about the room, which does not have CCTV cameras. The incident has left the owner David Wilkie devastated, but he insists that the responsibility for children is down to their parents. Mother-of-six and entrepreneur Mrs Curtis said: Louis is a lovely boy - he is so gentle and loving and he doesnt even play fight with his siblings. It wouldnt ever cross his mind to hurt anyone. I have tried to protect my kids from violence - I dont let Louis see violent films or play violent computer games - so I never expected him to experience violence like this first hand aged eight and in a play area I thought was safe. This was not an accident, he has been hurt intentionally and I just feel so sorry it happened to him and I was not able to stop it from happening. She had taken Louis and his siblings Arthur, seven, two-year-old Ivy and Imelda, one, to Adventureland on the Wirral on Wednesday with a group of other mother and youngsters. She claims Louis, who is the second oldest of her children, was assaulted by two older boys in a dark area at the soft play centre at about 3pm. Hospital: Louis had his arm broken and elbow dislocated when he was allegedly attacked by two other children Mrs Curtis said her son was sworn at by the two children and told to get the f*** out of the room - but when he went to do so his arm was twisted behind his back. She claims Louis was then pushed to the floor - the force of which fractured his arm and dislocated his elbow - and kicked while he lay on the ground. Louis ran back to Mrs Curtis and said he was groaning in agony. He was then taken by ambulance to Arrowe Park Hospital in the Wirral, where he was given morphine and his arm put in plaster. Mrs Curtis said she had no idea the dark room - a tent-like area with disco lights and music - existed at the play area despite having visited it multiple times before. 'Hurt intentionally': Louis (left), pictured with his younger brother Arthur, seven, is said to be a 'gentle' boy She added: We have been going to Adventureland for years but I had never seen this dark room before and didnt even know it existed. Story of events: Mrs Curtis told what happened to Louis in a Facebook post that has since gone viral The entrance looks like a wall and its a tent-like structure which resembles a small room. Its pitch black and plays disco lights and music and there is a small slit in the fabric which is how the children get in. I initially shared the post to warn other parents about the room and about the fact there is no CCTV in there. CCTV is not the be all and end all but in this instance it could have been used to prove who did this to Louis and hold someone accountable. David Wilkie, the owner and managing director of Adventureland, said it was not practical to have CCTV cameras in the disco room because it is too dark, contains laser lights and a smoke machine. He added: Im devastated and very concerned about the child. We have never had an incident like this in 30 years. 'Our duty is to maintain and look after the equipment and staff are trained to do that. The responsibility for children is down to their parents. 'We do not let children in without parents and we do not let parents out without their children. We cannot be responsible for peoples children and all parents have to sign a health and safety form that explains this when they come in. An additional statement was published on the Adventureland Facebook page which states the centre is not responsible for the behaviour or actions of any children at the centre. It reads: Our staff are employed to oversee equipment is being used in a safe and correct manner and are fully trained and adhere to our strict health and safety guidelines. We have a limit of children allowed on the premises at any one time and we cannot be held responsible for your childs behaviour or actions. Play area: Adventureland said it is not responsible for the behaviour or actions of any children at the centre Statement from the play area: The incident has left Adventureland owner David Wilkie devastated and very concerned, but he added that the responsibility for children is down to their parents The statement continued: Customers to Adventureland visit time and time again throughout the year and we receive great reviews from them. Louis is a lovely boy - he is so gentle and loving and he doesnt even play fight with his siblings. It wouldnt ever cross his mind to hurt anyone Liah Curtis, mother Our Facebook page is used to promote events and offers and negative comments are not welcome. We would like to thank you for your continued custom. A police spokesman said: Merseyside Police can confirm that we attended an incident at Adventure Land, Marine Point, New Brighton Promenade, on Wednesday, April 6. At around 3.30pm, a report was received that an 8-year-old boy was pulled over inside the play area by an unknown boy, causing him to fall to the floor. Police and paramedics attended and the 8-year-old boy was taken to Arrowe Park Hospital for treatment to a dislocated right elbow. A group of people who sued a co-worker after he allegedly failed to distribute the winnings of a $16.6 million syndicate lottery ticket have been accused of deception themselves. Gary Baron, then 49, was sued by 14 of his former colleagues at Toll Group in Geelong, Victoria, with claims that his winning lottery ticket was bought from a syndicate ticket. In July of 2015 it was reported that the group had struck a secret deal with Mr Baron - a confidential agreement that resulted in the men being 'very happy' and proclaiming 'life was good.' But according to the Herald Sun, Mr Baron now could be fighting off another three lawsuits from five other workers - all who claim to have been left in the dark and owed a portion of the winnings. Gary Baron, 50, was sued by 14 of his former colleagues after he allegedly failed to distribute the winnings of a $16.6 million syndicate lottery ticket bought in 2014 Mr Baron could now be facing another three lawsuits after five more workers have come forward, claiming to have been excluded from the lawsuit and owed a portion of the winnings Powerball 14 members Gary Georgeson and Wayne Connor, were vague when questioned over whether all 20 members of the syndicate were informed about the lawsuit One of those five who says he was excluded from the legal process, John Dimasi, attempted to come to a resolution with Mr Baron's lawyers but was unsuccessful. He will sue separately. His solicitor, John OHalloran, said he would be fighting for 'an equal share of the winnings.' Another man claiming to have been excluded from the Powerball 14 lawsuit, Brendon Clark, said he was seeking independent legal advice to get his slice of the pie. One of the Powerball 14, Wayne Connor, was vague when questioned over whether all 20 members of the syndicate were informed about the lawsuit. 'I don't know,' he told Herald Sun. Fourteen courier workers at Toll Group in Geelong struck a deal with Gary Baron regarding the syndicate lottery ticket of $16.6 million There were 20 people in the alleged winning syndicate ticket Suspicions were raised after the 49-year-old resigned from his job and Tattersalls hired a courier from their company to deliver a bottle of champagne to Mr Baron to congratulate him on his win. Mr Baron has not made any comments about the matter, but released a statement at the time he was sued in stating it was a separate ticket that had the winnings, not the syndicate ticket. Since the win in October, 2014, Mr Baron is understood to have purchased a number of properties for himself and a family member, as well as a $200,000 convertible BMW M4. Members of the syndicate challenged the man in the Supreme Court of Victoria claiming they had a right to an equal share of the winnings. The group asked the court to order Tattersall's Sweeps to confirm the man's name and how many tickets he bought, the Herald Sun reported. Mr Baron collected $20 from each of the syndicate members and entered the Powerball draw online via an online Tatts Group account. The $50 million jackpot drawn in October was won by a Victorian man - believed to be Mr Baron - as well as a Melbourne couple and a Western Australian man. Mr Baron is understood to have since purchased a number of properties for himself and a family member, as well as a $200,000 convertible BMW M4 The group of colleagues, who regularly bought Tattslotto tickets but only played Powerball when there was a major jackpot, demanded details of how many tickets the man bought and the method of payment. Mr Baron argued that he bought the winning ticket separately to the group ticket. A day after the draw in October a Victorian man, believed to be Mr Baron, told Tattersalls he planned to share his fortune and wanted to remain anonymous. 'I'm still in disbelief... I don't need that amount of money, it's too much for me,' he said in a statement released by Tattersalls. 'I'm going to share the prize money with my family. I'll make sure it doesn't change who I am but I'll definitely be able to live a better lifestyle. 'I'll buy myself a boat and a jet ski and my kids have been wanting the new iPhone 6 so they can have that now, and I might spoil them each with a new car.' The homicide rate in Memphis this year has nearly doubled that of Chicago and the city is on track to reach 240 killings by the end of 2016. Memphis' murder rate is about 64 per cent higher than Chicago's, as the city reported 60 killings by the end of March, according the Commercial Appeal. This time last year, the city recorded 35 homicides. But this year the homicide rate is around 9.13 victims per 100,000 population in Memphis, which has a population of 656,861, according to the latest U.S. Census estimate. Scroll down for video The homicide rate in Memphis this year is nearly twice that of Chicago, a city that is generating unwanted notoriety for its soaring number of killings. A Memphis police officer at the scene of a shootout (file photo) During the same time period, 151 people were killed in Chicago,which has a population of 2,722,389, putting the city's homicide rate at 5.55. If the murder rate in Memphis stays steady, the city is on track to reach 240 homicides in 2016, trouncing the highest recorded homicides at 213 set in 1993. In the first two weeks of 2016 Memphis recorded 12 homicides. And one day in March, three men were killed within five hours in separate shootings. Despite the homicide rate reaching new heights, the Memphis Police Department is solving the crimes at a pretty high rate with 77 per cent of the homicides committed this year solved. Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich told The Appeal that 'it's an emotional strain on everybody right now, the whole community'. She added that 'these are the most emotionally draining and difficult cases we handle'. Memphis Police Department Acting Lt. Col. of Investigative Services Caroline Mason said the homicide unit was coping with the influx, aided by solving 46 of the 60 killings. Despite the homicide rate reaching new heights, the Memphis Police Department is solving the crimes at a pretty high rate with 77 per cent of the homicides committed this year solved (file photo) She told The Appeal that 'the morale is high because they are solving these cases' and 'it's not like it's 60 unknown, or mysteries'. While police are increasing patrols where crimes have occurred, Councilman Phillip Spinosa said he hopes to put 70 new Sky Cop cameras in neighborhoods across the city. Crime stats would decide where they go, but each council district would split them evenly. 'I don't think cameras are going to solve all the problems, but I think they are going to help create safer neighborhoods, and help efficiently and effectively deploy officers on the streets,' Spinosa told WREG. Last year, Memphis recorded 161 homicides. Several counties in Tennessee, are considered to have a 'very high rate of murder' and in Memphis that county is Shelby. Advertisement A billionaire mining tycoon who spent millions on his daughters' weddings is selling one of the most luxurious properties in London after suffering a business downtown. Pramod Agarwal is selling the mansion in Regent's Park, where neighbours include Damien Hirst and fashion designer Tom Ford, which he bought for 37.5million two years ago. The magnate flies around the world in a private jet, drives a Bentley and spent millions on lavish weddings for Ritika and Vinita, but he could lose 5million on the home, now on the market for 32million. Prime property: Pramod Agarwal is selling the mansion (pictured) in Regent's Park, where neighbours include Damien Hirst and fashion designer Tom Ford, which he bought for 37.5million two years ago Cutprice: The magnate flies around the world in a private jet, drives a Bentley and spent millions on lavish weddings for Ritika and Vinita, but he could lose 5million on the home (pictured), now on the market for 32million Grand depart: Mr Agarwal is thought to have moved out of the house (pictured) on 'the world's most expensive terrace' five months ago, when the locks were changed Change in circumstance: Before this year, Mr Argawal spared no expense on the finer things in life, hiring Florence And The Machine and Bollywood star Pritam to perform at Ritika's wedding, but he now seems to be cashing in his assets Family home: Pramod Agarwal (pictured) is thought to have now moved into the nine-bedroom family home in north London He is thought to have moved out of the house on 'the world's most expensive terrace' five months ago, when the locks were changed, reports The Evening Standard. It comes after a difficult year in which the price of ore took a tumble and he was dragged into a costly legal battle over ownership of a mine in Brazil. Before this year, Mr Argawal spared no expense on the finer things in life, hiring Florence And The Machine and Bollywood star Pritam to perform at Ritika's wedding. More than 800 guests went to the celebration in Puglia, Italy, including 20 of her father's bankers from some of the biggest banks in the world. It is believed to have cost 7million. Italian wedding: Mr Agarwal's daughter Vinita Agarwal arrives to Scuola Grande Della Misericordia during the first day of celebrations of wedding on May 12, 2011 Big event: The bried mixes with the guest in Venice, where the performers included tango dancers and Colombian popstar Shakira Classic show: Men on stilts entertain the guests in what is considered one of the most romantic cities in the world, showing that Vinita's father spared no expense Place to remember: A general view of San Clemente Island, where Vinita and Muquit were married, from Venice's famous waterways Four years ago, he paid for Vinita's wedding at Venices San Clemente Palace, with the show created by Franco Dragone, the Italian theatre director who works with Cirque du Soleil, and starring Shakira. He is believed to have taken a 29million loan to buy the home, which was once two but developers knocked through the wall to create the huge 11,233 sq ft space in the late Noughties. It has six bathrooms and a 40 ft-long grand reception room with incredible views over the lake on the first floor alone. Downstairs, there is a library, kitchen and dining room on the ground floor, and a spa and gym in the basement. The master suite has separate dressing rooms and bathrooms for the man and woman. Performance: The tycoon reportedly spent 7million on Ritika's wedding on 2014, where there were women dressed up as mermaids and performers included Florence And The Machine Important people: The guest list included stars and some of the world's richest men and women, so security were on hand at the venue Glamorous friends: Guests arrive to attend the wedding of Ritika Agarwal, daugther of Indian London-based mining magnate Pramod Agarwal, and Rohan Mehta, the heir to a fashion empire Wedding breakfast: Indian chefs serve 800 wedding guests at a buffet at a beach close to the tiny village of Savelletri di Fasano in Italy There is an armour-plated garage door, which the leaflet described as 'absolutely impervious' to protect the trademark luxury vehicles of the super-rich. There is also a three-storey house for staff nearby, which has two bedrooms and is also believed to have been empty for months, according to neighbours. But Mr Agarwal's business, Zamin, has been marred by a 145million legal claim over a mine in Brazil, although this is now believed to be settled. His finances are also thought to have taken a major blow from the drop in the price of iron ore. Chowdhury Muyeed, 52, was the 44,000-a-year head of finance at Blood Pressure UK, when he headed the 'con air' scam that saw welfare cheats fly to Britain from Italy and illegally claim handouts A charity boss and his wife who flew hundreds of Bangladeshis to Britain to claim 1.6million in benefits have been jailed. Chowdhury Muyeed, 52, was the 44,000-a-year head of finance at Blood Pressure UK, when he headed the 'con air' scam that saw welfare cheats fly to Britain from Italy and illegally claim state handouts. Muyeed - who carried out the fraud with his wife Asma Khanam, 47, and a man called Habibur Rahman - also used two other charities as 'fronts' to help arriving migrants dupe the benefits system. He was jailed for five-and-a-half years today at Snaresbrook Crown Court in East London for running the fraud. His wife was imprisoned for three-and-a-half years after being found guilty of producing or furnishing documents or information as part of the same scam. Judge Nigel Peters QC told the three defendants: 'You have been convicted by the jury of a most blatant assault on the UK benefits system.' The court heard how Muyeed, from Newbury Park, in north-east London, set up the companies Families for Survival UK and Age Shelter UK Ltd to pay wages to Italian passport-holders. Migrants based in Italy, who were supplied with sham addresses, flew into the UK through Stansted Airport in Essex to attend Job Centre interviews, before getting their hands on National Insurance numbers. One of those addresses, on Mile End Road in east London, was so busy migrants spilled out onto the street in front of an Italian restaurant below. Their details were then linked to bogus addresses and they were registered with the government as working for the couple 24 hours a week, making them entitled to housing benefit and council tax credit claims. Redbridge Borough Council in East London identified 300 suspect applications had been submitted. Their fake claims cost Redbridge and neighbouring Tower Hamlets Council a total of 1,582,519. Investigators were able to link Bangladesh-born accountant Muyeed and his wife to 692,927 of fraudulent claims, with Rahman pocketing 187,920 in false claims. The Department of Work and Pensions also lost more than 420,000 in falsely claimed tax credits. Prosecutor Mark Himsworth told the court the pair were involved in a 'large scale fraud to bring people to the UK to claim benefits they were not entitled to receive'. 'One of the ways they did that was to set up companies or charities which in fact did no real work at all but provided pay slips, references and made payments into bank accounts,' he added. Asma Khanam, 47, was imprisoned for three-and-a-half years after being found guilty of producing or furnishing documents or information as part of the same scam Prior to the married couple appearing in court some 28 migrants had previously been convicted of making false benefit applications. In 26 of the cases the migrants claimed to be working for firms or charities run by Muyeed and Khanam at their headquarters in Ilford, East London, which was above Redbridge Council's own benefit offices. Four convicted migrants told how they had worked for companies such as Crystal Job Limited, which was run by Rahman, 36, a married father of three from Mile End, East London, who was jailed for three years and three months after being convicted of dishonestly producing or furnishing documents. Other migrant claimants are being investigated by both Redbridge and Tower Hamlets who have found hundreds of other suspect claims. The DWP is currently investigating the full scale of the fraud and losses could run into 'many millions of pounds', making it one of Britain's largest-ever benefit frauds. Rahman and Khanam were among 13 people arrested in May last year as part of 'Operation Rhino', led by Redbridge Council and the Metropolitan Police. The probe by police, council and Government investigators prompted a raid on one flat (pictured) above a restaurant in Bow, east London, used as an address by 400 claimants Muyeed - described in court as 'deeply devious, conniving and dishonest' - handed himself in to police a week later after arriving back from a trip to Italy. The court heard that the accountant is a father of three, with children aged 21, 19 and 13 who are financially dependent on him. Judge Peters said: 'You were responsible for arranging and facilitating a large number of people who otherwise would have had no involvement in this country or indeed fraud by claiming false housing benefit. 'The bogus employments were all for companies which you had set up and controlled. 'These companies, which did little or no trading, purported to be involved in recruitment, clothing and by far the worst aspect you, Muyeed and Khanam, used charities that had been given official status by the Charity Commission. 'You Khanam shamefully said in interview that the company Save the Age/Families For Survival UK raises money for elderly people, street children and people suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia. 'You Muyeed said in evidence that you were seeking to educate people in the awareness of illnesses and conditions prevalent in the elderly. 'There is no alternative to immediate terms of imprisonment for blatant, persistent and serious fraudulent activity.' Flying into Britain: The Italy-based migrants arrived at London Stansted Airport (file picture) before going to interviews at the Job centre and getting National Insurance numbers for use on bogus pay slips Families for Survival UK claimed to run relief projects and an orphanage in Bangladesh and an education project in Kenya. The charity's last accounts reported it received annual income of 316,000 and was chosen locally as a charity of the year by supermarket Sainsbury's. A forensic accountant hired by Redbridge Council trawled through the records of Families for Survival UK, Save the Age and other companies connected to the defendants. Mr Himsworth said: 'He came to the conclusion they were a sham. They were conducting no real trading business.' But Muyeed insisted that his companies and charities were genuine and claimed his office manager was responsible for any fraud. The women of The View had a special gift for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders today - a MetroCard he can use to ride New York's subway system. 'What is this,' the 74-year-old joked as he accepted the card from host Jedediah Bila. Sanders was born in Brooklyn but has lived in Vermont for more than 35 years and was unable to say in an interview that came out this week how the subway works nowadays. First, he said it operates on a token system. Then he punted and said he'd jump the turnstile to ride. On Thursday Hillary Clinton tried to troll him by taking the subway - but she had to swipe her card several times as aides and Secret Service officers looked on before she got it right. Scroll down for video The women of The View had a special gift for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders today - a MetroCard he can use to ride New York's subway system. 'What is this,' the 74-year-old joked as he accepted the card from host Jedediah Bila Bila teased Sanders and said, 'You're a New Yorker, I'm a New Yorker....But you and Hillary both this week for two people so well-versed in New York. you had some trouble on the subway!' Bila continued and said, 'Hillary Clinton had a hard time with her MetroCard, you could see she couldn't get through. and then you were talking about tokens, which I hadn't see in some time. 'So Bernie...we have something for you. We have a Metrocard,' she said, handing it to him Today Bila teased Sanders and said, 'You're a New Yorker, I'm a New Yorker....But you and Hillary both this week for two people so well-versed in New York. you had some trouble on the subway!' Sanders was a good sport about it and told her, 'yes,' they did. Bila continued and said, 'Hillary Clinton had a hard time with her MetroCard, you could see she couldn't get through. and then you were talking about tokens, which I hadn't see in some time. 'So Bernie...we have something for you. We have a Metrocard,' she said, handing it to him. The Vermont senator pretended not know what the newfangled object was, waving it around. Host Sonny Hostin, who was seated directly to Sanders' left, came to his defense and said, 'I gotta stick up for Bernie because that told me that you are a REAL New Yorker. She said of 'real New Yorkers use the tokens' and noted that the system took tokens when she was in high school and rode it to school. Sanders later won the the table's respect for eating his pizza like a real New Yorker - with his hands - and not asking for silverware. Sanders later won the the table's respect for eating his pizza like a real New Yorker - with his hands - and not asking for silverware Republican John Kasich made that mistake as he campaigned in the state last week. He said afterward that 'the pizza came scalding hot... And so I use a little fork.' Kasich argued on Good Morning America, 'not only did I eat the pizza, I had the hot sausage. It was fantastic.' 'A fork!' Sanders said today in mock disbelief as the topic came up. As a pizza went around the table, Paula Farris told him, 'Bernie, here's a pizza. Eat it like a real New Yorker!' Sanders held the pizza and said, 'Are you all ready?' And he begrudgingly took a bite after telling the hosts, 'This is a lot to eat.' This time it was The View's Raven Symone, a California native, who played the contrarian, telling Sanders, 'I think we might have a problem, Bernie. I'm from LA, and you can have a fork and a knife with a pizza!' 'I don't see anything wrong with a fork and a knife,' she protested as her co-hosts and Sanders mocked her. Sanders declared, 'These California people, I tell you!' 'Sorry California, no debate on this one,' Sanders said, playing up his ties to New York, a state that votes on April 19 and will influence his ability to continue on in the Democratic presidential primary. He might be regretting his statements today when California comes up for a vote, though. There's no scenario in which the senator can defeat Clinton at this point in the race that does not include winning the state's June 7 primary and the majority of its 475 delegates. Sanders also revealed his celebrity crush during his interview on The View today - host Joy Behar, whom he was captured smooching on the cheek backstage. 'Bernie's back! I am feeling the Bern & the love! # FBF,' she captioned the photo on Twitter. Symone quizzed Sanders during the show about his favorite fictional president - he said The West Wing and Martin Sheen's character Jed Bartlett - and asked about his crush. 'Oh, Ive got to go. Nice seeing you,' he joked, as he tried to escape a lightening round of personal questions. Sanders was unable to say earlier this week how the subway works nowadays. Clinton tried to troll him by going for a ride on the subway LIKE THIS? She had to swipe her card several times as aides and Secret Service officers looked on before she got it right Sanders will take a hiatus from campaigning in the U.S. next weekend to take his message to the Vatican. 'I am delighted to have been invited by the Vatican to a meeting on restoring social justice and environmental sustainability to the world economy,' he said this morning in a statement. An avowed follower of the Jewish faith, Sanders shares Pope Francis's belief in a 'moral economy.' 'Pope Francis has made clear that we must overcome "the globalization of indifference" in order to reduce economic inequalities, stop financial corruption and protect the natural environment,' Sanders said in the statement. 'That is our challenge in the United States and in the world.' The April 15 summit coincides with the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus, 'which called for an economy of dignity, social justice and environmental sustainability,' the Sanders campaign said. Talking about Pope Francis today on MSNBC Sanders said, 'I am a big, big fan of the pope.' 'He's trying to inject this sense of morality into how we do economics ... and we need that absolutely desperately.' Sanders said, 'There are people who think that Bernie Sanders is radical...Read what the pope is writing.' He told the hosts of The View, 'We have a lot in common. Obviously, I have disagreements with the Pope and the church regarding a women's right to choose and gay marriage and so forth. 'But this Pope has been unbelievable in raising -- so different in raising consciousness about dealing with trying to create an economy that has moral values.' He praised Francis for advocating for the elderly and children during his world tour. Bila, a self-declared libertarian, said in response, 'So I would assume you think trickle-down economics is immoral?' 'I surely do and so does the Pope and the Pope has been very explicit about it. He does not believe in giving tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations creates a better life for ordinary people,' Sanders said. Another area they agree: idolatry of money, Sanders said. 'We can't worship money -- we can't just worship the billionaires out there we have got to pay attention as to how the economy works for the children and in our country we shouldn't have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country,' Sanders stated. Sanders also revealed his celebrity crush during his interview on The View today - host Joy Behar, whom he was captured smooching on the cheek backstage The visit to the Vatican sparked controversy today, as the academy's president, Margaret Archer, told Bloomberg News that she did not invite Sanders and he did her a 'monumental discourtesy' by failing to contact her. She claimed Sanders invited himself for 'obvious' reasons. 'I think in a sense he may be going for the Catholic vote but this is not the Catholic vote and he should remember that and act accordingly -- not that he will,' Archer charged. Archer characterized the event as a 'little workshop' and said, 'His use of it is clearly a pretext. There are just 20 academics and there will be nothing of policy relevance.' However, the academy's chancellor confirmed Sanders' account, though he did not say who initiated contact. Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo told Bloomberg, 'We are interested in having him because we have two presidents coming from Latin America, I thought it would be good to have an authoritative voice from North America.' Sanchez Sorondo said the agreement came, 'Quite some time ago.' A woman who was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of her son has given her first interview since the sentence was handed down, maintaining she did not poison the five-year-old boy to death using salt. Lacey Spears cries as she speaks about the death of her son, Garnett - who died in January 2014 from toxic levels of sodium in his bloodstream - in an upcoming interview with CBS' 48 Hours, which will go to air on Saturday. 'I lost my five-year-old son. He's not here today. I loved every part of who he was,' she says in a preview clip of the interview. 'And I'm very saddened that I'll never get to watch him grow up.' Scroll down for video 'I never poisoned him with salt': Lacey Spears, who was found guilty of her son's murder, denies killing the five-year-old in her first interview, which will go to air on Saturday The mom who was convicted of murdering her five-year-old son, Garnett (pictured together) with lethal doses of salt, cries and denies she killed her child in her first interview with CBS' 48 Hours, airing Saturday, April 9 Tragic: Garnett, died in January 2014 from toxic levels of sodium in his bloodstream. He died in hospital. His mother says that staff must have 'messed up' As part of the interview, clinical psychologists say that Spears is a 'classic' example of Munchausen by proxy, a condition of faking or inducing illness on someone else, usually for attention. Prosecutors said that there was evidence that Spears had taken her son to 20 different medical facilities over the course of his life, but wasn't relaying information between each doctor. Garnett was said to have suffered from numerous mysterious health conditions, including ear infections, seizure-like symptoms, digestive issues and more. However Spears maintains her son was sick and that doctors could not find out what was wrong with him. 'I do not have Munchausen by proxy,' Spears claims the in the preview. ' 'I didn't harm him in any way. I seeked help for him diligently because I was his advocate.' 'I never poisoned him with salt,' she added. The interviewer then asks her why there so much salt in Garnett's body. 'You would have to ask the hospital that,' Spears replies. Spears was found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Garnett at a suburban New York hospital. She is pictured here at her sentencing in April, 2015 Spears was spared the maximum 25 years to life. She showed no emotion when she was sentenced The New York judge who sentenced Spears said she suffers from a mental illness and said the crime was still 'unfathomable in its cruelty' Spears chronicled Garnett's illnesses on a personal blog called 'Garnett's Journey' and other social media, was convicted by a jury in White Plains, New York, of second-degree murder in 2015. The judge who sentenced Spears to 20 years to life said she suffers from a mental illness and said the crime was still 'unfathomable in its cruelty.' Prosecutors asked for the maximum sentence, saying Spears made her son ill because she had a bizarre need for attention. Spears' lawyer requested the minimum 15 years to life - he called her a hardworking single mother who gave her son unconditional love. Prosecutors said Spears loaded the hospitalized boy's feeding tube with a lethal amount of salt and kept on blogging. Poignant: Spears is seen here with her son Garnett. Prosecutors said Spears loaded the hospitalized boy's feeding tube with a lethal amount of salt and kept on blogging Spears' lawyer Stephen Riebling said she was innocent, blamed the hospital for negligence, and said he plans to appeal the verdict. While awaiting sentencing, where she faces a maximum penalty of 25 years to life in prison, she was being held at Westchester County jail in Valhalla, said a spokesman for Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore. Prosecutors blamed Spears, who lived in Chestnut Ridge, about 32 miles (51 km) north of New York City, for her son's short and tormented life. Prosecutors blamed Spears, who lived in Chestnut Ridge, about 32 miles (51 km) north of New York City, for her son's short and tormented life 'Throughout his five years, Garnett Spears was forced to suffer through repeated hospitalizations, unneeded surgical procedures and ultimately poisoning with salt, all at the hands of the one person who should have been his ultimate protector: his mother,' DiFiore said after Spears was convicted. 'Using the child's 'illnesses' to self aggrandize herself, her actions directly lead to her son's tortured death,' the prosecutor said. Spears told investigators that her blond, blue-eyed son, whose father was killed in a car accident, suffered from a slew of medical problems from Chrohn's and Celiac diseases to ear abnormalities, according to court papers. Her social media posts about his ongoing problems and hospitalizations, including photos of his final hours on life support, were introduced as evidence by the prosecution at trial. Defense attorneys said the evidence did not prove murder. They have promised an appeal of the conviction. The parents of a six-year-old boy who refused their son chemotherapy have told why they made the heartbreaking decision not to go ahead with treatment. Little Oshin Strachan was diagnosed with medulloblastoma last December, however his parents, Angela Kiszko and Colin Strachan made the agonising decision to deny him treatment. They refused him chemotherapy and radiotherapy because they didn't want their son to become a 'lab rat', the West Australian reports. This week a judge ruled that the young boy must be given chemotherapy for his brain tumour. His parents have now told how they believe chemotherapy will destroy their son's already diminished quality of life. Scroll down for video A judge has ruled a young boy, Oshin (pictured), has to be given intense chemotherapy for a brain tumour, despite his parents objecting to the treatment Oshin's mother Ms Kisko told the Sydney Morning Herald: 'Children with medulloblastoma go through years of what I see as torture, medical treatments, relapses, just to get this maybe five years.' Instead of the cancer treatment, Ms Kiszko and Mr Strachan want to put their son on palliative care. Mr Strachan said he believed the treatment his son is being forced to undergo is not in his best interest, and that it wasn't safe for his 'little body.' She told the newspaper: 'I would like to offer Oshin peace, love and some fun times while we still can.' The court was told Oshin would die in the next few months without treatment, however they admitted the chances of him surviving more than five years even with the treatment were slim. Family Court chief justice Stephen Thackray was told the six-year-old had a 30 per cent chance of surviving more than five years on chemotherapy, and a 50 per cent chance on chemotherapy and radiotherapy, according to the West Australian. Despite it being against the odds, Judge Thackray said the chance of a cure in the future 'is the matter that most heavily must weigh in the decision'. Angela Kiszko (middle) and Colin Strachan (back), from Perth, were told by the Western Australian Family Court their six-year-old son, Oshin, has to start the medical care last week Ms Kiszko said she did not want to put her son through the treatment after seeing what it had done to her mother and step-mother - both of whom died of cancer. 'I have watched and learned what all these children and their families go through and it is nothing short of toxic hell,' she said, according to the West Australian. 'The children are not really alive, they are completely drugged and exhausted and on the verge of death. 'It almost feels like Nazi Germany and I am honestly sickened by the treatment of all these children.' Mr Strachan posted an emotional message on social media, saying he was 'watching young Oshin getting sick' once the treatment started and he couldn't stop it Mr Strachan shared an emotional message on Facebook last week, along with a picture of him and his son. 'Today is Oshin's 6th birthday and his 6th day of court imposed Chemotherapy as sad as it is I will work at making it a beautiful day for him,' the post read. 'I love you my little soldier may your strength and determination get you through all this.' Mr Strachan posted another comment about the treatment, saying: 'Just when you think you know what pain is something comes along to show you some more. In hospital watching young Oshin getting sick and there is not a f***ing thing i can do about it.' The court was told Oshin (pictured) would die in the next few months without treatment, however they admitted the chances of him surviving more than five years even with the treatment were slim Family friend Lynda Jones started an online petition to 'stop forced medical treatment', adding Oshin's parents have been 'treated as criminals' after opting not to let their son have 'debilitating chemotherapy and radiation treatment'. 'They were told if he were to survive the treatment, he would be severely incapacitated for the rest of his life,' the petition reads. 'The parents opted not to do this and were more confident in following specialist, non-invasive treatments available offshore. That was when the nightmare began. 'Then four months after the initial diagnosis, the parents were summoned to the Family Court in Western Australia, where the judge used the legal power bestowed on him to override the parents decision... against their will and with the understanding that the chance of survival was not good. A Harley Street doctor who provoked fury after going on an elephant-hunting trip to Africa was on Friday charged with fraud and money laundering offences. Dr Benjamin Chang, 54, was arrested on suspicion of writing fake invoices to insurance firms in December 2014. Officers reportedly raided the orthopaedic specialist's private surgery and his 1.1m detached home in north London in connection to the allegation that he wrote bogus accident treatment claims for physiotherapy patients. Dr Benjamin Chang, 54, is alleged to have written the bogus accident treatment claims in a bid to sting insurance firms. He is pictured in 2009 sitting on top of an elephant he killed in Zimbabwe Dr Benjamin Chang, 54, pictured, shot this lioness while on safari in Zimbabwe in 2008 He was charged with fraud by false representation, possession of articles for use in fraud and money laundering and released on bail to appear in City of London Magistrates court on 6 May. The doctor, who was born in Hong Kong, sparked controversy in 2009 when he was photographed giving the thumbs up while sitting on the head of an elephant he had just shot in Zimbabwe. The animal was reported to be one of three elephants he killed after paying 5,600 to take part in the shoot. Separately, he was pictured with a dead lioness he had killed in South Africa. Dr Chang was part of a hunting party visiting the Hwange national park who culled a herd of 11 elephants, including young calves. The cull took place in areas where elephants are said to be destroying the environment and was permitted by the Zimbabwean government. Most of the money was passed on to the Zimbabwean park authorities. At the time, he defended killing the elephants, insisting it helped the Zimbabwean people and was the most humane method of killing. He added that the elephant meat was donated to starving villagers. He told the Times: The meat goes to the village. They are queuing at the camp saying, "Please give us the meat". I was told one elephant will feed one village for three and a half months. The orthopaedic specialist had consulting rooms in London's highly-respected Harley Street (pictured) He also defended the practice of foreigners paying to kill elephants, saying that the army did not have the necessary guns to shoot the animals. Dr Chang, who trained as a doctor in Ireland, was arrested in November by City of London Police on suspicion of fraud by false representation. He is listed as the director of the Milton Medical Centre in Luton, the headquarters of which is said to be in Kenley, Surrey. His wife Corrina Chang is listed as the company secretary. Dr Chang, who also had consulting rooms in London's Harley Street, is registered with the General Medical Council but has not had a licence to practise since August. Masked raiders were left empty-handed despite using a 4x4 to try and rip a post office cashpoint out of the wall. The would-be thieves caused major damage to the Peel Park Post Office in Bradford but weren't able to remove the cash machine despite numerous attempts. Police were called at 3.10am today to a report of possible 'interference' with the machine. Scroll down for video While they didn't steal the cash machine, the would-be thieves caused major damage to the Peel Park Post Office in Bradford Police were called at 3.10am today to a report of possible 'interference' with the machine The caller reported hearing an alarm but thieves couldn't gained access to the cash machine. Locals then saw a 4x4-type vehicle being used to try to rip the cash machine from the wall at 3.52am. The vehicle was described as a dark coloured Mitsubishi which was then driven off. A search was made in the area to trace the suspects but no one was located. At 5.17am, police were told that a grey Mitsubishi 4x4 was found burned out in Bradford. The attempted theft caused a segment of the wall to collapse. The cash machine, while damaged, was not removed. Police remained at the scene this afternoon and erected a cordon as detectives investigate. A police spokesman said they are working to establish if the burned out vehicle is linked to the raid. A Post Office spokesman said: 'The people who run our Post Office branches provide important services to local communities. 'Any robbery or attempted robbery is very traumatic for the victims and we will be supporting the police in their efforts to apprehend those responsible.' A police spokesman said they are working to establish if the burned out vehicle is linked to the raid One neighbour, Nafisa Arooj, said: 'I heard banging at 2am and then again at 4am. I saw two people wearing masks banging their car into the wall trying to pull the machine out. 'It makes me scared, I checked out of the upstairs window and I was too scared to ring the police because I was alone.' Another neighbour, Hussain Ali, saw a Mitsubishi Shogun and 'a few people' trying to rip the cash machine out of the wall. 'When they couldn't get it out, two ran through the snicket next to the post office and the Shogun drove off down Otley road,' he said. An Afghan migrant who travelled through Iran, Turkey, Greece and Germany to get to the UK was killed when he tried to cross a busy motorway in Kent, an inquest heard. Afghan Mohammed Akram, 22, was with a group of around five men when he was hit by a van and then a car on the M20 by junction eight for Leeds near Maidstone, Kent. Following the 7am collision, the London-bound carriageway had to be shut for seven hours on October 14 last year. Lorries queuing on the M20 between junctions eight and nine. A migrant was killed when he tried to cross the motorway near junction eight Phillip Ritchie, the driver of the white VW Caddy which hit Mr Akram, said at Tuesday's inquest in Maidstone that the men he saw 'looked like ghosts'. He said: 'It was dark at the time. Suddenly I could see four maybe five people in the road all following each other, sort of spaced out. 'I have done a double take. It looked so unreal. They looked like ghosts.' He told the hearing he had tried to brake, but it was too late. He said he didn't swerve as he feared hitting the other migrants or crashing into the central reservation. Mr Akram's body was then run over by another car and he died at the scene from multiple injuries. Detective Constable David Holmes, of Kent Police's Serious Collision Unit, said Europol had helped the force to piece together Mr Akram's movements. He had left Afghanistan 18 months earlier with a friend and had paid a people smuggler for travel into Iran. Map showing junction eight of the M20 near to where Mr Akram was run over by a car and a van and died He then went through Turkey, Greece and Germany, where he registered as a refugee. His ID card was found near the body, but in order to identify Mr Akram, his father in Afghanistan had to make a dangerous nine-hour journey to Kabul to give a DNA sample. A newsreader interrupted her own broadcast to urge fellow Muslims to feel 'shame' over terrorist atrocities like the Brussels and Paris attacks. Nadine Al-Budair made a three-minute speech during a show on a Saudi Arabian news channel where she told her fellow Muslims to stop 'shredding their conscience'. The broadcaster begged Muslims to take responsibility for the terrorists in their midst instead of suggesting that they were simply a 'rarity'. Urged: Nadine Al-Budair (pictured) made a passionate three-minute speech on a Saudi Arabian news channel She said: 'Whenever terrorism massacres peaceful civilians, the smart alecs and the hypocrites vie with one another in saying that these people do not represent Islam or the Muslims. 'Perhaps one of them could tell us who does represent Islam and the Muslims.' She goes on to add: 'It is we who blow ourselves up. It is we who blow up others. 'Why do we shed our own conscience? 'Don't these perpetrators emerge from our environment? Don't their families belong to our society? 'After the abominable Brussels bombings, it's time for us to feel shame and to stop acting as if the terrorists are a rarity. Al-Budair said Muslims must take responsibility for the actions of extremists in light of atrocities such as those in Paris and Brussels. Pictured, fires burn among bags and debris during the attack at Zaventem airport Speech: This is not the first time that Al-Budair has spoken out, she previously wrote in a newspaper column that Muslims should stop blaming the Western world for their problems 'We must admit that they are present everywhere, that their nationality is Arab and that they adhere to the religion of Islam. 'We must acknowledge that we are the ones who gave birth to them.' Previously Al-Budair has critcised Muslims in her column for a Kuwaiti newspaper, telling them to stop blaming the West for their problems, writes the Mirror. She wrote: 'It is strange that we condemn instead of apologising to the world. Metropolitan Police chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has refused to apologise to Lord Bramall over his force's investigation into false child sex abuse allegations. The Met Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan met in private with Lord Bramall earlier today. According to Scotland Yard, Sir Bernard 'expressed in person, his regret' about the distress caused to him and his family 'and the impact of having his innocence publicly called into question after a long career of public service'. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, left, today met with Lord Bramall, right, who was investigated as part of Scotland Yard's botched Operation Midland probe into a VIP paedophile ring Despite the expression of regret, Sir Bernard refuse to apologise over to Lord Bramall over the ordeal he suffered after being linked to the botched Operation Midland investigation into a VIP sex ring. According to Scotland Yard: 'The Commissioner listened to Lord Bramall's concerns about the investigation, which will be considered as part of the independent review announced by the Metropolitan Police Service on Wednesday, 10 February. 'Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has asked Sir Richard Henriques to examine the way non-recent sexual allegations against public figures are investigated, and the MPS will publish the key findings of the review and the recommendations later this year. 'In view of the media interest in this private meeting, the MPS and Lord Bramall agreed to release statements to confirm it had taken place and to give brief details of the nature of the meeting. We will not be commenting further.' The Metropolitan Police dropped the multi-million pound investigation into claims of a VIP paedophile ring after a team of investigators failed to find any evidence of abuse. The investigation centred on claims made by a man called 'Nick' who alleged that a string of high-profile individuals abused young boys some 30 years ago. Operation Midland cost 1.8 million up to November 2015 and did not lead to a single arrest, but saw raids on the homes of 92-year-old D-Day veteran Lord Bramall and the late Lord Brittan. Ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor, who furiously denied any involvement, was interviewed under caution twice and had his home searched but has now been told he will face no further action. Late former prime minister Edward Heath was also named in connection with the inquiry. Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor was also investigated by the Operation Midland team and later cleared Defending the investigation, Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse, said: 'It is absolutely right that we assessed carefully the allegations made to us in October 2014 and did not dismiss them prematurely. Our initial inquiries supported the need for a thorough investigation to seek any evidence that might corroborate or disprove the allegations.' The inquiry centred on allegations by a man known as 'Nick', and two further complainants who came forward after the probe was launched. As well as abuse claims, it was looking into the alleged murder of three young boys. At one point a detective described Nick's account as 'credible and true'. But the investigation came under intense scrutiny after the Met announced in January that Lord Bramall would face no further action. The development sparked calls for police to offer an apology to the former armed forces chief - which Scotland Yard refused - and prompted questions over the veracity of 'Nick's' claims. In a statement running to more than 1,000 words, the force said: 'In the course of the investigation, officers have not found evidence to prove that they were knowingly misled by a complainant. The Metropolitan Police Service does not investigate complainants simply on the basis that their allegations have not been corroborated.' 'Nick' claimed that one of the potential homicide victims looked like 15-year-old Martin Allen, who vanished in November 1979, and a separate investigation will continue into his disappearance. The force said: 'The disappearance of Martin Allen remains an outstanding concern for the Metropolitan Police Service and for his family, who do not know what happened to their son. Specialist investigators from the Homicide and Major Crime Command will continue a missing person inquiry into Martin's disappearance.' An independent, judge-led inquiry has already been announced into how Scotland Yard has dealt with historical sex abuse investigations involving public figures. It has been less than two weeks since the FBI dropped its court case attempting to force Apple to hack into an iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino terrorists. But if boss Tim Cook thought that was the end of the matter, he is being forced to think again after the government filed an appeal in New York asking for Apple's help in hacking another iPhone. Lawyers for the Justice Department wrote to Judge Margo K. Brodie in Brooklyn on Friday asking for Apple's help extracting data from a phone belonging to meth dealer Jun Feng. Justice Department lawyers on Friday filed an appeal seeking to force Apple to help detectives hack into an iPhone used by a meth dealer in New York, just days after the FBI dropped its case in California (file image) In a brief written filing, lawyers said: 'The government continues to require Apple's assistance in accessing the data that it is authorized to search by warrant.' Apple lawyers said they were disappointed by what amounted to an appeal by the government, after the FBI backed down from its case in California. In that case the FBI said it had found a way to break into the iPhone 5S used by the San Bernardino attackers without Apple's help, but stressed the method would not work on most iPhones. Attorneys for Apple said this new case is another attempt to set a troubling legal precedent and not really a pursuit of vital information for fighting crime. APPLE REFUSED ANOTHER JUDGE'S ORDER TO HACK iPHONE IN BOSTON Apple refused to comply with another judge's order to break into a newer version of the iPhone in Boston, newly unsealed court documents reveal. Back in February U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler ordered the company to provide 'reasonable technical assistance' to agents trying to get into the phone of a suspected gangster. But Apple refused to comply with the order on the basis that the government had not exhausted its options to get into the phone before seeking the order, and lawyers did not pursue the case. Advertisement The lawyers said that they will be opposing any such order, and will be compelling the government to show that it has tried all available methods to get into the phone before appealing to Apple. Authorities have been in possession of Feng's phone since June 2014 when it was seized as part of a methamphetamine trafficking investigation. The DEA and FBI had attempted to force Apple to hack into the phone back then using the 1789 All Writs Act, an order it had complied with in around 70 other cases. But in fall last year U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein invited Apple to appeal the order. Since then the Silicone Valley giant has refused to comply with over a dozen similar orders to hack iPhones in California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York. In March this year Orenstein ruled firmly on the side of Apple, causing the government to appeal his decision, calling it 'an unprecedented limitation on' judicial authority. The government renewed that appeal today, despite the fact that Feng has pleaded guilty to the charges and is awaiting sentencing. Detectives have been in possession of an iPhone belonging to meth trafficker Jun Feng since June 2014 and have already been denied permission to have Apple hack into it once, but renewed their appeals Friday Government lawyers argue that data on the phone could be relevant to the sentence Feng is given, and is asking for an order forcing Apple to access it. Authorities are also hoping to locate co-conspirators from information on the device. Feng's iPhone is believed to be an older model to that used by the San Bernardino terrorists, meaning the security features are not as advanced. As a result, Apple would not need to create a new version of its software in order to allow agents access to the phone, as it would have done in San Bernardino, the company has acknowledged. But experts point out that Apple could still be right to refuse the order, since sentencing a drug dealer who has already admitted to his crimes is a much lower legal bar than thwarting terrorism. Jill Bronfman, director of the Privacy and Technology Project at University of California Hastings College of the Law, said: "If you want to do a balancing test and you've got terrorism on one side of the scale, that's a very heavy weight. 'We'll see how the request is balanced when we have drugs on the other side.' In her Variety cover story, Kelly said she might leave Fox News when her contract is up after the election Couric at the seventh annual Women in the World Summit She was also interviewed on Wednesday by Megyn Kelly celebrated scoring the cover of Variety's Power of Women issue by attending a star-studded luncheon in New York City on Friday. The photogenic Fox News host joined fellow honorees including Julianne Moore and Lupita Nyong'o on the red carpet before the event, dressing like an Oscar-winner herself in a $2200 Alexander McQueen dress and pair of Miu Miu heels. She also carried a Nancy Gonzalez that retails for $1550. The event capped off a week filled with interviews, press, and multiple red carpets for Kelly, who also spoke about the possibility of leaving the network that made her a star while speaking with Variety. Kelly, who covered Vanity Fair earlier this year, also found time to host her nightly news program, The Kelly File, and even make a trip to Wisconsin for an exclusive interview with Ted Cruz. Scroll down for video Lady who lunches: Megyn Kelly celebrated the annual Variety Power of Women issue at a luncheon in New York City on Friday afternoon The Fox News anchor has had a busy week of press for both herself and her normal show obligations Pricey threads: Kelly, who was selected as one of the five women on the cover, wore a $2200 Alexander McQueen dress to the event Accessorize: The 45 year old also wore a pair of $400 Miu Miu shoes and carried a $1550 clutch by Nancy Gonzalez The mother of three clapped during the seated lunch with a glass of white wine half full in front of her There were plenty of photographers on hand to document her pretty in pink look She joined fellow cover girls Vera Wang, Lupita Nyong'o, Julianne Moore, and Misty Copeland at the event Kelly smiles as she proudly held the commemorative trophy given to her at the Variety event Things kicked off on Sunday for Kelly with a highly anticipated interview with Charlie Rose on CBS Sunday Morning. In that interview, the Vanity Fair cover girl revealed that she was upset when O'Reilly failed to defend her against Trump's attacks when he pulled out of the Iowa debate she moderated in January. Kelly did however say; 'I think Bill did the best he's capable of doing in those circumstances.' She also criticized CNN for airing the event Trump was holding for veterans at the same time she was hosting the debate. 'There should have been a moment of solidarity among journalists that night to say, "We will not allow ourselves to be bullied by a presidential front runner, even one as powerful and as ahead in the polls at that point as Trump was,"' said Kelly. '"This is about journalism and the First Amendment, and we will put the debate moderator out on the stage that we think is appropriate." 'And I think it's a slippery slope when we don't stand shoulder to shoulder in those moments.' Kelly went on to say that the best way to teach Trump a lesson would be to ban him from appearing on television, which she acknowledges is not possible. 'What he really wants is oxygen, you know, he wants television time,' said Kelly. In her Variety cover story, Kelly said she might leave Fox News when her contract is up after the election 'So the only thing that is really meaningful to him, the only consequence that would actually have an effect on him, we cannot enact because it would be insane. You cannot ban the presidential front runner from a channel.' On Monday it was off to Wisconsin for that Cruz exclusive, where Kelly showed off some impressive footwear for the sit down in a pair of asymmetrical snakeskin sandals from Prada. Those shoes, which Kelly wore in black and are available at Saks for $1,100, have long been a staple of the Italian design house and a favorite of celebrities including Emily Blunt. On Tuesday her Variety cover was released, and she got some support from an unlikely source - Hillary Clinton. During an appearance on The View, Clinton pointed out how Kelly was one of the 'so many women' who has been victimized by Trump and his attacks. 'The way he treated Megyn Kelly, who is a superb journalist. Right?' scoffed Clinton. 'I just don't understand what he thinks is the role of somebody who is running for president,' On Wednesday Kelly's story in Variety came out, which included the news that she might leave Fox when her contract expires after the election. When asked if she had decided whether or not to stay at Fox News after the presidential election, Kelly responded 'I haven't'. The 45-year-old journalist went on to say that she loves her boss, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, but that her job causes a lot of 'brain damage.' Chatting with the press: Kelly has had a busy week full of press and red carpet appearances, starting with a sit down with Charlie Rose on CBS Sunday Morning (above) Speaking up: Kelly revealed that she was upset when O'Reilly failed to defend her against Trump's attacks when he pulled out of the Iowa debate she moderated in January when speaking with Rose (above) In demand: She was also interviewed on Wednesday by Katie Couric at the seventh annual Women in the World Summit (above) Friends: Kelly poses with Hoda Kotb, Carol Alt and Savannah Guthrie (left) and Arianna Huffington (right) at The Hollywood Report party on Wednesday Work: On Monday it was off to Wisconsin for that Cruz exclusive, where Kelly showed off some impressive footwear for the sit down in a pair of asymmetrical snakeskin sandals from Prada (above) 'Never say never. I dont know whats going to happen. Ive had a great 12 years here, and I really like working for Roger Ailes. I really like my show, and I love my team,' said Kelly. 'But you know, theres a lot of brain damage that comes from the job. There was probably less brain damage when I worked in the afternoon. I was less well known. I had far less conflict in my life. 'I also have three kids who are soon going to be school from 8am to 3pm I come to work at 3:30. I like to see my children.' She then added; 'Having said that, my boss has been good about working with me to make me happy - he knows Im a hard worker. Ive had few problems here where I couldnt talk to him and say, Can we work something out?, and come away happy.' Later that night, Kelly spoke about the media's treatment of Trump during an interview with Katie Couric, and suggested that his high poll numbers are the result of the amount of coverage he is given by news programs and journalists. 'Yes, we all have to worry about numbers to some extent. That's the reality of TV news in 2016. But we also have to worry about our souls, and journalism,' Kelly told Couric while being interviewed at the seventh annual Women in the World Summit. Kelly appeared at that event in a blue peephole dress by Yigal Azrouel that costs $1200 and a pair of Valentino stilettos that retail for $1200 - but are currently sold out. The night was not over for Kelly at that point either, as she also stopped by The Hollywood Reporter's 2016 35 Most Powerful People in Media party at The Four Seasons. Kelly was named one of the most powerful people as was her boss, Roger Ailes. Her fellow Fox News host Bill O'Reilly also made the list. Rep. Jeremy Durham has been accused of inappropriate behavior by more than three dozen women Lawmakers in Tennessee have 'banished' a state representative by moving his office at the state Capitol complex after more than three dozen women have accused him of inappropriate behavior. Rep. Jeremy Durham's office is being moved to the ground floor of a building across the street from the Capitol, House Speaker Beth Harwell announced Thursday. According to Attorney General Herbert Slatery's memorandum to Harwell, he is investigating Durham's 'pattern of conduct' toward women after 34 current and former lawmakers, lobbyists, staffers and interns allege that he made sexual comments, used his position to obtain personal contact information from women, try to meet women alone, involve alcohol in his interactions with women and inappropriate physical contact with them while working at Legislative Plaza, CBS News reported. He recommended to Harwell and the rest of the House that action should be taken to avoid a hostile work environment at the Capitol complex. Durham has been barred from having contact with almost all staff or interns as the investigation continues. 'Representative Durham's alleged behavior may pose a continuing risk to unsuspecting women who are employed by or interact with the Legislature,' Slatery said in the memo, CBS News reported. Durham, who is married, has denied any wrongdoing and refuses to step down as he plans to run for re-election this fall. Durham's office is being moved to the ground floor of a building across the street from the Capitol in a move to 'banish' him and prevent his contact with 'unsuspecting women'. Above he is pictured with his wife, Jessica The attorney general is investigating Durham's 'pattern of conduct' toward women after 34 current and former lawmakers, lobbyists, staffers and interns allege that he made sexual comments, used his position to obtain personal contact information from women while working at Legislative Plaza Video courtesy Nashville NewsChannel 5 In a Facebook post in January, he shared a photo alongside his wife Jessica and wrote: 'Jessica and I have been standing for conservative values and principles for many years. 'Unfortunately, that makes you a lot of enemies today. However, we're going to keep standing. 'Together, we'll continue to take on the big government agenda that seeks to take over Tennessee. SHARE if you're willing to stand with us!' Bill Harbison, Durham's attorney, said that his client objected to what he called an 'unusual investigation. 'We find it surprising and unfair, frankly, that a report would be released without our having had any opportunity to know what was being investigated or what was being discussed,' Harbison told The Tennessean. House Speaker Beth Harwell (above) was recommended by the state attorney general to move his office in order to avoid a hostile work environment Durham told WTVF in January that he would not resign from his position, despite the numerous Republican leaders' requests to do so. 'I know for a fact I've never sexually harassed anybody,' he told WTVF. 'If I've sent a text message that I shouldn't have, and someone will present it to me I'm happy to address it, and I'll take responsibility.' Durham did step down as House majority whip in January amid the allegations of inappropriate behavior both via text messages and in person. This isn't the first time Durham's behavior has been called into question. Durham has denied any wrongdoing and refuses to step down as he plans to run for re-election this fall Prosecutors sought fraud charges against him in 2014 for allegedly altering medical prescriptions. However, a grand jury declined to indict him His colleagues felt that is was inappropriate for him to write a letter on House stationery on behalf of a former pastor who pleaded guilty to child porn possession and statutory rape of a 16-year-old parishioner, CBS News reported. In addition, prosecutors sought fraud charges against Durham in 2014 for allegedly altering medical prescriptions. However, a grand jury declined to indict him. The attorney general's office found that most of the interviewed 34 women felt as though they could not report Durham's behavior because they feared losing their jobs or being labeled as 'untrustworthy' by clients, lawmakers or employers, CBS News reported. According to the memo, several of them revealed that they refused to be alone with Durham and avoided him. President Barack Obama remains confident that Donald Trump will not be the next Oval Office occupant. 'I recognize that there is a deep obsession right now about Mr. Trump,' he said Thursday evening at a fundraiser, 'And one of you pulled me aside and squeezed me hard and said, "Tell me ... that Mr. Trump is not succeeding you!" ' Obama said he told the Democrat, 'Mr. Trump's not succeeding me.' President Barack Obama remains confident that Donald Trump will not be the next Oval Office occupant. 'I recognize that there is a deep obsession right now about Mr. Trump,' he said Thursday evening at a fundraiser, but he again assured Democrats that won't happen The president told attendees of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser in Los Angeles, at the Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn, that Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, also vying for the GOP nomination, were helping, not hurting the party's chances of winning in November. 'Mr. Trump has actually done a service as Mr. Cruz is doing a service and that is laying bare, unvarnished some of the nonsense that we have been dealing with in Congress on a daily basis,' Obama argued, according to ABC News. He said, 'People act as if these folks are outliers but they are not!' 'We should thank Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz for just being honest that this is how we're thinking these days, or not thinking these days.' And he told them, 'it gives you a sense of what's at stake in this election.' Tickets to the Bel-Air fundraiser ranged from $15,000 a person to $66,800 per couple. House Minority Meader Nancy Pelosi, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall, Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams, Lyn and Norman Lear and Barbra Streisand and James Brolin all attended. The president told attendees of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser in Los Angeles, at the Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn, that Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, also vying for the GOP nomination, were helping, not hurting the party's chances of winning in November The term-limited president has said several times over that he doesn't worry about a Trump presidency because he believes it won't happen. He told NBC's Matt Lauer on the eve of his State of the Union address in January, 'I'm pretty confident that the overwhelming majority of Americans are looking for the kind of politics that does feed our hopes and not our fears, that does work together and doesn't try to divide, that isn't looking for simplistic solutions and scapegoating.' The Democratic president reiterated his optimism during a press conference a month later. 'I continue to believe Mr. Trump will not be President,' he told an NBC News Correspondent during a news conference. Obama said 'the reason is because I have a lot of faith in the American people, and I think they recognize that being President is a serious job. Its not hosting a talk show or a reality show. Its not promotion. Its not marketing.' The president and his spokesman have become more aggressive about putting down Trump since the 2016 nomination contests began and the billionaire's ascent to the White House became a possibility. Even as Obama has said he did not think Trump would win this past January, he dedicated his final State of the Union address to redirecting the country away from Trump's proposals and toward a more inclusive path. He told officers that he'd just flown into Butte, Montana, from overseas O'Neill told police that he may have taken an Ambien used for The ex-Navy SEAL who says he killed Osama bin Laden was charged with a DUI after Montana police found him asleep behind the wheel of a car. Robert O'Neill was found sleeping in a 2005 Nissan Sentra at a convenience store in his hometown, Butte. The car was parked with the back-up lights on, according to Butte-Silver Bow County Undersheriff George Skuletich. The 39-year-old was confused and appeared to be intoxicated when officers woke him up as they opened the car door. Officers took him to jail after he failed a field sobriety test and charged him when he refused a breathalyzer test. Scroll down for video Former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill (left and right) who says he killed Osama bin Laden was charged with a DUI after Montana police found him asleep behind the wheel of a car Officers charged him with a DUI when he refused a breathalyzer test. He was released from jail on a $685 bond. After retiring from the Navy, O'Neill became a Fox News contributor (pictured) He was released from jail at 4.26am on a $685 bond. Police came to the scene after five to six customers at the convenience store reported a man sleeping in the car. O'Neill said he had one drink, then denied it. He also said he may have taken Ambien, a prescription drug most often used to treat insomnia. O'Neill told authorities he had flown into Butte from overseas, but police weren't clear on the exact country, according to the Billings-Gazette. Skuletich said reports show O'Neill was unable to operate a motor vehicle safely. O'Neill came forward in 2013 and claimed he killed bin Laden with three shots to his forehead during the raid. Bin Laden was found hiding in a walled compound in Abbottabad less than a mile from Pakistan's elite military academy after a long, worldwide hunt for the leader of the militant Islamist group - which were responsible for the September 11 attacks He was finally found and shot by Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011. The decorated ex-solider, who has been involved in more than 400 combat missions and deployed a dozen times, was also profiled in the channel's documentary The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden, last year. The former Navy SEAL had told The Montana Standard at the time that he had not been scared to make his role in the mission which killed bin Laden public as he was 'good friends with a lot of the local law enforcement and local SWAT team'. O'Neill told police that he may have taken Ambien, a prescription drug most often used to treat insomnia. He also said he had just flown into Butte from overseas. O'Neill pictured (left and right) recently tweeted the photos of him on an American Airlines flight O'Neill has received more than 52 military decorations, including two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars with Valor, a Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor, three Presidential Unit citations and two Navy/Marine Corps Commendations with Valor. He was with his team in Miami for diving training in 2011 when he and a several other senior SEALs got the call to deploy for a special mission. At first, military officials only gave the team a vague understanding of the mission, leading them to believe they were going to Libya to capture Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi since it was around the time of the Arab Spring. O'Neill came forward in 2013 and claimed he killed Osama bin Laden (pictured) with three shots to his forehead during the raid But eventually it dawned on the team that they could be after a much bigger target, someone who had evaded capture for nearly a decade. The team was trained for the mission on a replica of the Abbottabad compound where it was believed bin Laden was hiding. O'Neill called the team the 'Martyr's brigade' and that nearly everyone wrote letters home to their family, believing they wouldn't be coming home. On the historic May 2, 2011, raid, O'Neill revealed that he looked Bin Laden straight in the eyes before he shot him dead. O'Neill said: 'He was standing there two feet in front of me, hand on his wife, the face I've seen thousands of times. I thought, "We got him, we just ended the war.'' While his three bullets helped bring closure to the many Americans who lost loved ones at the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, that moment continues to torment O'Neill every day. 'I'm still trying to figure out if it's the best thing I ever did, or the worst thing I ever did,' O'Neill told Fox News' Peter Doocy last year. While O'Neill is proud that he was a 'big part' of the successful mission that brought bin Laden's reign of terror to an end, he remains hesitant on how that monumental action will impact his life in the long term. 'I don't know what's going to happen. I did something I'm going to have to live with every day,' he said. A former president of Mexico went on a three-day Twitter tirade against Donald Trump this week, calling him a 'looser' [sic] and a 'dictator' for his promise to build a wall on America's southern border and force the Mexican government to pay for it. 'Trump is absolutely crazy and ignorant,' Vicente Fox tweeted on Wednesday. '[P]oor Republican party.poor US.' 'If Trump thinks US will survive enclosed in 4 walls. The consequences is depression, unemployment, desperation, a[nd] isolation,' he added. 'Trump is a looser, in business and in campaigning. He will never make it. He only is increasing hate ,violence. How can people stand him?' BANNED FROM CANCUN: Former Mexican president Vicente Fox is trying to start a Twitter war with Donald Trump over the Republican front-runner's proposed border wall OWNS PLENTY OF BEACHFRONT: Trump has been unapologetic about forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall by threatening to block money Mexican immigrants send home from the U.S. Trump and Fox have been at loggerheads since the former Mexican leader dropped a televised F-bomb on February 25 in response to Trump's pledge that his nation would pay for the massive proposed border wall. 'I declare that I'm not going to pay for that f***ing wall!' Fox told Fusion TV's Jorge Ramos, speaking in English. 'He should pay for it. He's got the money.' Trump, the Republican White House front-runner, exploded the following night during a debate in Houston. 'This guy used a filthy, disgusting word on television, and he should be ashamed of himself and he should apologize, okay?' he said. 'DICTATOR' ... 'FALSE PROPHET': Fox's tweets hammered Trump in recent days Fox amped up the rhetoric on Thursday after Trump announced his plan included muscling Mexico's current leaders into paying billions for his wall by threatening to block money Mexican immigrants, whether in the country legally or illegally, send home from the U.S. 'Trump has profound, insulting arrogance, he demands treatment of a king or dictator,' Fox tweeted. 'Where is that great nation going? And the Republican [Party]?' He added a smiling selfie shot overlooking one of Mexico's famed beach resorts. 'Trump,this [is] beautiful Cancun,' Fox wrote. 'YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.' The billionaire businessman-turned-politician has shown no signs of relenting, saying he has a friendly relationship with the Mexican people but not with its leaders. Fox laid into Trump in an essay published online by The Guardian, calling his ideas 'racist and ignorant.' Trump, he wrote, is 'disgraceful and highly offensive.' MORE FIGHTING WORDS: Fox called Trump 'crazy,' 'ignorant' and 'a looser' [sic] on Twitter EL F-BOMB! Former Mexican president Vicente Fox said on TV he won't help pay for a 'f***ing wall' between his country and the United States, despite Trump's promises to the contrary TWITTER-BURN: Trump said if he had cursed his way through an interview about his proposed border barrier, he would have been pilloried for it 'Trump has said Mexicans are the problem, calling us rapists and criminals. He thinks building the "Trump Wall" will right every wrong in the United States. Indeed, hes built a huge mental wall around himself already, which doesnt allow him to see the greatness of our people.' The real estate tycoon has insisted over and over again in campaign speeches that sealing the southern U.S. border will give the federal government a new level of negotiating muscle on trade and immigration, changing the balance of power in a way that could close a $54 billion annual trade deficit. The cost of a 1,000-mile-long wall, Trump says nearly half of the border is protected by 'natural barriers would cost less than $12 billion, 'peanuts' by comparison. The US Coast Guard have unveiled a stunning 14-ton haul of cocaine that has been seized offshort since the start of the year, with a street value of at least $400 million. The packages of drugs were unloaded as pallets by cranes at San Diego's Broadway Pier and then handed over to the Drug Enforcement Agency. The Coast Guard says the approximate 28,000 pounds of cocaine came from seizures off the coasts of Central and South America in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Scroll down for video Major haul: U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf crewmembers offload approximately 14 tons of cocaine and hand it over to the DEA on Thursday in San Diego All of the contraband was intercepted by Coast Guard crews aboard the Coast Guard Cutters Bertholf, Valiant and USS Lassen in the Eastern Pacific Ocean from January to March 2016 The packages of drugs were unloaded as pallets by cranes at San Diego's Broadway Pier and then handed over to the Drug Enforcement Agency 'It's a very dangerous mission': Capt. Laura Collins, commanding officer of the Cutter Bertholf, says that each time crews intercept a drug-carrying vessel they risk their lives Dozens of smugglers were arrested as part of the seizures, which the Coast Guard described as hard and extremely dangerous work. 'It's completely satisfying for all the work that we put in,' Capt. Laura Collins, commanding officer of the Cutter Bertholf, told KTLA News. 'Eastern Pacific is a major trafficking highway for illicit organizations and that's what we are targeting. 'It's a very dangerous mission. We don't know what the bad guys are doing. We don't what to expect when we get there. 'What we do know to expect is a dangerous situation, slippery conditions and unstable vessels.' The majority of the haul came from a semi-submersible vessel that was intercepted on March 2 by a California Coast Guard crew. Got them: Authorities (pictured near the mini-sub) intercepted this semi-submersible vessel attempting to bring 12,800 pounds or 5.5 tons of cocaine into the US on March 3 The sub was then located the 300 miles southwest of Panama. In footage of the sub being intercepted - released Monday - four men can be seen standing atop the boat with their hands in the air. Inside the sub was more than 12,800 pounds of cocaine worth more than $203 million and a loaded gun, The LA Times reported. Since June, 2015, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted five submarine-like vessels, which are mostly submerged, with just the cockpit and the exhaust pipe visible above water. Traffickers have increasingly been using the semi-submersible boats to move large amounts of cocaine because their low waterline profile makes them difficult to detect. The crew operating the vessel attempted to flee as officials approached them. A Northern California U.S. Coast Guard crew (pictured) arrested four people and seized the cocaine Here the agents open the hatch to the mini-sub, showing some of the bags of cocaine that were stashed inside 'SPSS interdictions are inherently dangerous, yet we persevere to disrupt the funding sources of illicit organizations causing violence and instability in Central America,' said Capt. Laura Collins. The U.S. Coast Guard often assists in drugs seizures in the Eastern Pacific along with other U.S. law enforcement agencies. A Washington-based Coast Guard crew in January intercepted a semi-submersible submarine off the Mexican-Guatemalan border. The suspects in that case scuttled the smuggling vessel but were apprehended. Authorities said the submarine used is one that is common among drug traffickers. Pictured a narco-submarine moments before interception by the U.S. Coast Guard in August 2007 (file image) After losing more than half his body weight, this adorable dachshund is gaining a forever home. Fat Vincent was 38 pounds when he was surrendered to a county animal shelter eight months ago, depressed after the death of his owner. The extra weight was already bringing down the 7-year-old. He had high cholesterol, could barely walk and was at risk for nerve damage due to a dip in his back from the additional pounds. Fat Vincent was 38 pounds when he was surrendered to a county animal shelter eight months ago, depressed after the death of his owner But the 7-year-old dachshund is smiling again after losing more than half his body weight And there was a long list of troubles Fat Vincent would face is he stayed the same weight, including arthritis, diabetes, respiratory and kidney disease, cancer and potential paralysis of his legs. 'I could barely discern between his laying down and standing up positions,' Fat Vincent's veterinarian Sharon Anderson told CNN. 'There was very little clearance between the floor and his chest and abdomen.' K-9 Angels Rescue, a nonprofit in Houston, and foster mom Melissa Anderson joined forces to help Fat Vincent's journey to a healthier lifestyle. They calculated that Vincent, who at the time had a body mass index of 62.7 percent body fat, would need to hit 16.8 pounds on the scale. Anderson started Vincent's workouts in the pool with water aerobics, realizing it would take pressure off his joints. And although there were disappointing weigh-ins and a plateau, soon the weight started to slide off. 'Vincent really had a good attitude from the beginning,' Anderson told Mashable. 'He still loves to eat, but he also adores his daily walks.' Fat Vincent had high cholesterol, could barely walk and was at risk for nerve damage due to a dip in his back from the additional pounds before his weight-loss journey began Now the pup, thanks to water aerobics and a loving foster mom, can't wait for his daily hour-long walks Vincent now walks about an hour five to six times a week and looks so forward to them he waits by the door after breakfast every morning, Anderson said. Now the hard-working pup is nearly a pound away from his goal weight, clocking in the health cholesterol range and has a whole new attitude. 'He is the sweetest, funniest, happiest guy now,' Anderson said. And soon he'll be on his way to a forever home, one that Anderson said will continue taking him on daily walks and monitoring food. 'Most important,' she said, 'is having lots of love to give!' And potentially a new name. The alleged mastermind behind a plot to smuggle deadly machine guns into the UK by boat was today compared to the shadowy Keyser Soze character in classic crime film The Usual Suspects. Harry Shilling is accused of being at the centre of the operation to import 22 assault rifles and nine sub-machine guns on board the Albernina, skippered by David Payne, 43. The 25-year-old - who asked for every line of the oath to be read out before he gave evidence, as he has trouble reading - denies any knowledge of the conspiracy to buy cheap eastern European weapons to be sold on at huge profits in the UK. Firearms officers from Kent Police surrounded the cruiser at Cuxton marina near Rochester, in Kent, last August. Harry Shilling, 25, is said to have been at the centre of the operation to import 22 assault rifles and nine sub-machine guns on board the Albernina, skippered by David Payne, 43 The swoop followed the arrival of the MV Albernina, a cruiser which had been tracked by the National Crime Agency as it travelled into UK waters. Both deny any knowledge of the plot and are standing trial But closing, prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC claimed there was more to Shilling than met the eye. In the shadows but in control there stands the real Keyser Soze...and its Harry Shilling, he told the Old Bailey. Soze is a fictional character in the 1995 Hollywood movie who controls a group of villians from behind the scenes, who is later revealed to be hiding his status as a master criminal by playing the disabled petty crook. Shillings barrister, Peter Guest, told jurors: They liken him to Keyser Soze, the mastermind who hides behind the mask of a fool. That is an assessment you will have to make - whether or not Harry Shilling is very, very clever and like Keyser Soze, or is in fact rather more simple. The court had previously heard how deadly AK-47-style assault rifles - which can can be bought for as little as 38 in Eastern Europe - were allegedly smuggled into Britain on a boat. Officers seized 22 of the VZ-58 rifles and nine fully automatic Skorpion sub-machine guns along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition shipped in from Boulogne, in France on board the Albernina at Cuxton marina, near Rochester in Kent. After the boat docked on August 10 last year, Shilling allegedly sent a message to his man in Europe, Michael Defraine, 30, to say We now officially gangsters. The gang has been accused of smuggling these 22 assault rifles into Britain in a haul said to be worth 100,000 These 'sought after' Skorpion machine guns, which were originally developed for use by Czech special forces, would have netted 3,500 a piece The court has heard how Defraine, 30, arranged the transportation, while Shillings alleged right-hand man Richard Rye, 24, acted as a go-between with those who would do the legwork needed to bring in the guns. Payne is said to have recruited his partner Jennifer Arthy, 42, John Smale, 58, and Christopher Owen, 30, to buy and prepare the boat and to unload its cargo. Mr Atkinson QC said: It is a picture of a plan to import deadly guns into this country - guns that were to be sold, guns that were to be used, guns for which a profit was to be made. The 1,000 rounds of ammunition and two silencers, were purchased cheaply in Eastern Europe Arthy and Smale, of Halling, Rochester; Shilling, of Swanley; and Defraine, of Bexleyheath, all deny being knowingly concerned in the evasion of a prohibition on importation of the firearms and conspiracy to possess firearms with intent to endanger life. Rye, of Swanley; Payne, of Halling; and Owen, of Cuxton, have pleaded guilty to being knowingly concerned in the evasion of a prohibition on importation of the firearms. Rye and Payne also admitted conspiracy to possess firearms with intent to endanger life. Shocking new details have been revealed in the case of a blue-blood financier accused of running a $95million phony investment fund. Andrew W.W. Caspersen, 39, was arrested at New York's La Guardia Airport on March 26, after one of his former Princeton classmates reported his sketchy dealings. The married father-of-two now faces the possibility of 40 years behind bars if convicted on charges of securities and wire fraud. According to the criminal complaint, obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the Princeton and Harvard Law alumnus solicited around $95million from private equity firms - including a charity fund. Andrew W.W. Casperen (right) was arrested on March 26 on charges of securities and wire fraud. Pictured above outside of U.S. Federal Court on Manhattan on March 28 Authorities say Caspersen set up a sham fund and solicited tens of millions of dollars from friends, family and former classmates. His brother Finn is seen on the right, carrying a green bag on March 28 Included on the list of victims are two of his three brothers and even his mother Barbara, who contributed a total of $3million into what they believed was a legitimate fund set up through his work. In reality, Caspersen set up a shell company with a very similar name and then spent the past year gambling and losing millions on the stock market. Caspersen's former classmates and business associates are now speaking out to the Journal about his privileged upbringing and how they believe an addiction to risky stock market bets may have contributed to his downfall. 'Imagine if your brother or your best friend approached asking for a relatively small investment into something he did every day,' one acquaintance told the Journal. 'This is a guy who had established himself as a respected and sophisticated investor for more than 10 years at some of the most respected [private-equity] firms. Why wouldn't you put your money in?' The criminal complaint dates the beginning of the scheme back to July, when his private equity firm, the Park Hill Group, started marketing an investment vehicle to clients called Irving Place Capital Partners III SPV. That fund closed in July with $1.5billion capital, including contributions from Coller Capital, a secondaries firm where Caspersen previously worked. That same month, Caspersen filed papers in Delaware to start a shell company with a very similar name as the previous fund, calling it Irving Place III SPV LLC. After asking one of his former Princeton classmates for an additional $20million contribution, the friend grew suspicious and reported him Andrew W.W. Caspersen's family. Pictured from left: Shannon Gulliver who is Sam Caspersen's fiancee; Sam Caspersen; Barbara Caspersen; Andrew Caspersen; Christina Caspersen; and Finn M.W. Caspersen Jr. He then set up bank accounts for the new fund and started pitching it to business associates, former classmates and family, using his position at Park Hill - and connections to the real fund - to make it seem legitimate. James McIntyre, who works at the hedge fund Moore Capital, was one of Caspersen's former Princeton classmates to take the bait. He trusted Caspersen and gave him $24.6million to trade with from the charity division of Moore Capital. Additionally, he gave him $400,000 of his own money. Once he collected about $95million, Caspersen started trading - hedging his bets on options contracts on the S&P 500 index. Caspersen reportedly made trades amounting to $17million on the assumption that the market would go up, but instead it went down and he lost an estimated $14.5million. By March, he appeared to be desperate for more money since he reached out to McIntyre for another $20million investment. The move made McIntyre nervous, and he asked Caspersen to put him in contact with the person at Coller Capital who Caspersen said had invested in the fund. Caspersen sent McIntyre his Coller Capital contact's email, but it only made McIntyre more suspicious since he discovered that the email had been registered just minutes after he had requested the address. That's when McIntyre demanded his money and contacted Park Hill executives. The morning of March 16, Park Hill hired a law firm to investigate Caspersen and by that evening they had uncovered the scheme, immediately informing the Manhattan U.S. Attorneys Office. Federal authorities worked at rapid pace to put together a criminal complaint, which they used 10 days later to arrest Capsersen at the airport as he returned with his wife and kids from a vacation to Florida. Caspersen's father Finn, pictured, a noted philanthropist, killed himself with a gunshot to the head in 2009 He spent the weekend in jail before being released on March 28 on $5million bail. That night, he was briefly taken to the hospital by his wife but has since been released. It's uncertain what the nature of his visit was for. Since his arrest, sources tell the Journal that Caspersen has been cooperating with authorities and has allegedly apologized to his family for losing millions in his secret scheme. Casperson is the youngest son of Finn M.W. Caspersen, who was a prominent philanthropist and former chief executive of the financial services firm Beneficial Corp. The elder Caspersen, once worth hundreds of millions of dollars, was found dead in 2009 of a self-inflicted gunshot in a Rhode Island beach community where he had a home. The family also had homes in Jupiter Island, Florida, and the horse country of New Jersey. That shocking suicide was the subject of a 2010 Vanity Fair article, which detailed his life of privilege and excess - even riding horses with the royals at Windsor castle. Before meeting his wife, Caspersen lost his college girlfriend in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and spoke movingly of her in the New York Times Portraits of Grief in October 2001. His brother Sam provided legal counsel to the 9/11 Commission A man who spent 33 years in prison for crimes authorities now say he didn't commit, was freed on Friday. As Keith Harward, 60, walked into the Virginia sun the fact that his parents weren't there to see him become a free man weighed heavily on his mind. 'That's the worst part of this,' said Harward, who choked back tears as he spoke about his parents, who both died while he was wrongfully imprisoned. 'I'll never get that back.' Harward was released from the Nottoway Correctional Center on Friday after the Virginia Supreme Court agreed that DNA evidence proves he's innocent of the 1982 killing of Jesse Perron and the rape of his wife in Newport News. Scroll down for video Keith Allen Harward waved as he was released from the Nottoway Correctional Center on Friday after the Virginia Supreme Court agreed that DNA evidence proves he's innocent of the 1982 killing of Jesse Perron and the rape of his wife in Newport News Harward, who spent 33 years in prison for crimes he didn't commit, choked back tears as he spoke about his parents, who both died while he was wrongfully imprisoned. He said: 'I'll never get that back' The Innocence Project got involved in Harward's case about two years ago and pushed for DNA tests, which failed to identify Harward's genetic profile in sperm left at the crime scene Harward said he's heading to his home state of North Carolina with family, who acknowledged that it will take him some time to get used to his new world He was a sailor on the USS Carl Vinson, which was stationed at the shipyard close to the victims' home at the time of the crime. A security guard identified Harward as the man he saw entering the shipyard wearing a bloody uniform, but the woman never identified him as her attacker. The prosecution's case relied heavily on the testimony of two experts who testified that his teeth matched bite marks on the woman's leg. No other physical evidence linked Harward to the crime. The Innocence Project got involved in Harward's case about two years ago and pushed for DNA tests, which failed to identify Harward's genetic profile in sperm left at the crime scene. The DNA matched that of one of Harward's former shipmate's, Jerry L Crotty, who died in an Ohio prison in June 2006, where he was serving a sentence for abduction. The reliability of bite-mark evidence has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. 'We've learned nothing if we continue to use this evidence even though we know it has no basis in science,' said Dana Delger, an attorney with the Innocence Project. Harward initially faced the death penalty, but a loophole in the law caused his capital murder conviction to be overturned in 1985, said Olga Akselrod, another Innocence Project attorney. The DNA matched that of one of Harward's (left) former shipmate's, Jerry L Crotty (right), who died in an Ohio prison in June 2006, where he was serving a sentence for abduction 'The fact that this case involved an innocent man who faced the death penalty should terrify everyone, not just in the state of Virginia but also in the 31 other states that still have the death penalty,' Akselrod said. Harward said he's heading to his home state of North Carolina with family, who acknowledged that it will take him some time to get used to his new world. 'Keith is stepping out of a time capsule into a different world. We're going to try to help him all we can,' said his brother, Charles Harward. Harward said he's looking forward to having some fried oysters as soon as he can. Beyond that, he's not so sure. He's just excited to be free to do whatever he wants. 'Go out and hug a tree, sit in a park. Whatever I want to do. Because I can.' The Supreme Court's swift action on his case speaks to 'how incredibly powerful the evidence of his innocence is', Akselrod said. Jesse Perron was beaten to death with a crowbar, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and his wife was repeatedly raped as their children slept in a nearby bedroom. The wrongly convicted man's attorneys say the case is a prime example of unreliability of bite-mark evidence, which is still allowed in courts today. Harward is the 25th wrongful conviction or indictment based on bite-mark evidence since 2000, said Chris Fabricant, the Innocence Project's director of strategic litigation. 'How many more Mr. Harwards do we have to have before we stop admitting bite-mark evidence in trials?' Fabricant said. 'It almost cost him his life and it cost him 33 years in prison.' The high court's order came a day after Attorney General Mark Herring said DNA evidence proves that Harward couldn't have committed the crimes. Herring's office said in addition to throwing out his conviction, the state has also removed Harward's name from the state's sex-offender registry. Herring said he's glad Harward will soon be reunited with his family. 'It's just heartbreaking to think that more than half of his life was spent behind bars when he didn't belong there,' he said in a statement. 'The Commonwealth can't give him back those years, but we can say that we got it wrong, that we're sorry, and that we're working to make it right.' Attorney General Mark Herring's office said in addition to throwing out his conviction, the state has also removed Harward's name from the state's sex-offender registry. Harward is pictured with former girlfriend Gladys Bates Roy Lasris, who represented Harward during his trial in the late 1980s, said he hopes that the state provides the man with the social support, educational training and compensation he will need to try to start a life outside prison walls. Harward pictured with a former girlfriend Akselrod said Harward first contacted them in 2007, seeking DNA testing, but there was a long line ahead of him. He was moved up because he was convicted on bite mark evidence. The rape victim, who was attacked while no lights were on in the house, was unable to identify Harward. But she described her attacker as a white male, 19 or 20 years old, clean-shaven and wearing a sailor's uniform, according to the Times-Dispatch. Crotty was 19 at the time of the attack and Harward was 26. As previously mentioned a security guard at the shipyard identified Harward as a clean-shaven sailor he saw enter the shipyard with blood spatter on his uniform. But old photographs strongly suggested Harward had a mustache. Roy Lasris, who represented Harward during his trial in the late 1980s, said he hopes that the state provides the man with the social support, educational training and compensation he will need to try to start a life outside prison walls. A great educator can change a life, but this third-grade Wisconsin teacher might just be saving one. First grader Natasha Fuller, 8, isn't even in Jodi Schmidt's class at Oakfield Elementary, but the teacher has known for months she needed to do something for the girl who gave her a hug and hello everyday. After tests confirmed she was a match, Schmidt and Becky Doyle, the school's principal, brought Natasha's grandmother in to surprise her with the life-changing news in March. This is the heartwarming moment Chris Burelton found out Jodi Schmidt, a teacher at her granddaughter's elementary school in Wisconsin, was a kidney donor match Schmidt had surprised Burleton by telling her she needed to come to Oakfield Elementary School because they were presenting her with a gift for taking care of her granddaughter Doyle was filming as Schmidt told Chris Burelton, who she had never met before, that they had asked her to come to the school so they could give her a present for taking care of Natasha. 'I wanted to give you a gift just for how hard you work, just to keep her here,' Schmidt tells Burleton in the video. 'Because we really appreciate everything you do, and I know this a lot.' Burleton then begins to open the hot pink box with the lime green bow, taking out a handful of pink crinkle paper to find a card at the bottom that reads: 'It's a match'. She immediately begins to cry, her hands covering her mouth in shock. 'You? Oh my gosh!' she asks Schmidt, who gives her a smile and a nod in response. Burleton jumps up to give her a hug and continues to cry as Schmidt kindly offers her a box of tissues. 'Oh my gosh,' she says, still in disbelief. Doyle, who is off-camera, then reveals to Burleton that the teacher had told her back in December that she just had 'this need' and wanted to see if she was a match for Natasha. 'I want to do something for this child,' Doyle recalled Schmidt saying. Doyle revealed Schmidt had found out just the day before that she was a match and had discussed it with her husband and three children. Natasha then gets her own chance to open the box. 'I think you are a very special little girl,' Schmidt tells her. 'And we wanted to give you something' Natasha reads the message that simply states 'It's a match!', not quite understanding just yet how it's going to change her life Natasha was born with prune belly syndrome, a rare disorder that results in poor development or complete absence of abdominal muscles as well as urinary tract malformations 'Here I thought I was coming to school cause she was naughty!' Burleton exclaimed as the women laughed. The three women then bring Natasha in, so she could have her own turn to open the box. 'I think you are a very special little girl,' Schmidt tells her. 'And we wanted to give you something.' Natasha thanks Schmidt and gives her a hug after opening the box, but admits to the adults she has no idea what the card means. 'We're a match, we're a perfect match,' Schmidt tells her. 'So you can have a kidney and feel better.' Natasha was born with prune belly syndrome, a rare disorder that results in poor development or complete absence of abdominal muscles as well as urinary tract malformations. She has had to live away from her parents and twin sister Brookelynn in Oklahoma for the last two years so that she can receive treatment at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where Burleton takes her three times a week for dialysis. She has had to live away from her parents and twin sister Brookelynn in Oklahoma for the last two years so that she can receive treatment at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee Natasha has been waiting for a kidney for years, but her frequent infections have bumped her off the transplant list, Burleton told the Fond du Lac Reporter. Burleton said the disorder has never fazed Natasha, who is 'happy and sassy', but said the eight-year-old still pines to go swimming and other activities with kids her age. 'She always says I just wanna be like my friends, I just wanna play with my friends', Burleton told NBC News. Natasha said she was worried Schmidt would get scared, because 'I'm scared too'. 'And we'll be scared together,' Schmidt reassured her. 'But we're gonna be okay.' 'So you can do all the things you haven't been able to do.' 'Oh like jump...tackle?' Natasha replied with a cheeky smile. Schmidt, who has three children aged 13, four and two, will take off eight weeks from work after the transplant. But Schmidt is most excited to see how Natasha's life will change after the surgery. 'I just keep thinking of the time that I get to see her after,' she said. 'When everything is done and she's healthy, that's what I keep picturing in my mind.' Advertisement The monkey looks out from the dark, his emaciated, dirty hands clutching onto the rusted wire which has kept him trapped in this tiny hole for a quarter of a century. This tiny, damp hole has been his home ever since he was captured in 1991 and turned into a family pet - a spectacle for the neighbours to enjoy in this slum in downtown Bangkok, Thailand. The rat-infested cage is so small, the macaque's muscles had all but wasted away, leaving the animal barely able to stand. And here he would have remained, were it not for a passer-by who spotted his mournful eyes, and decided to act. Scroll down for video Prisoner: Joe the macaque was kept in a tiny cage in a Thai slum by his owners from 1991 until he was finally rescued last week Survival: The tiny rat-infested cage, which measured just 70 X 70 X 80cms, was crammed in between two buildings Disgusting: Joe was dehydrated and barely able to stand when he was rescued from the slum by Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand Joe, as the monkey has been called, was finally rescued last week after Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand decided to act. With only vague details to go on - only that the monkey was somewhere in the slum - the team set out, discovering the poor creature living in some of the worst conditions they had ever seen. Edwin Wiek, founder of WFFT, wrote on Facebook: 'I have seen a lot of animal suffering in the last 17 years, but I would say that the condition the monkey was kept in was probably in the Top 10 of most horrible cases.' But there was worse to come. 'When the owner told us how long he had been in there I was absolutely shocked,' he wrote. 'Joe, as the monkey is called, has been in this hell hole since 1991! That is 25 years 'No water to drink, in almost complete darkness, alone, in his own and human dirt, "his world" being only 70 x 80 x 80 centimetres for the last 25 years!' Joe's luck was about to change, however, as the team tracked down his owner and persuaded him to part company with the macaque. Grim: Joe would no doubt have stayed in the cage for the rest of his life had a passer-by not noticed the horrendous conditions Freedom: Joe's owner was happy to part company with his pet after he was approached by the wildlife charity Recovery: Joe is already looking far healthier, just a few days into his new life at the animal sanctuary Future: He isn't climbing quite yet, but he has been spotted washing and his life expectancy has already improved Joe - dehydrated, dirty and unable to walk - was sedated, and removed from the slum - allowing the team to reveal the full horror of the rubbish-filled cage where he had spent his years. It transpired there had been one attempt to rescue him before, but the zoo which came to collect him had apparently asked for $100 a month for his upkeep - an amount the owner could not afford. This time, the WFFT simply took him to their sanctuary - and the change is already noticeable. 'Joe has been a few days at WFFT now and is starting to move around his cage. He walks around but is not able to climb yet, too weak and without the experience to do so,' Edwin wrote. 'Joe was seen taking a bath in his clean water tub yesterday and has been communicating with his neighbours, other monkeys, whom he hasnt seen for so long. 'His life expectancy is up to 35 years and we hope he will still have some quality years ahead at our sanctuary.' The pair had been together for five years and married in June 2014 in a secret ceremony The pair were seen at a Los Frances Bean Cobain reunited with her estranged husband Wednesday just weeks after filing for divorce. An emotional Cobain was photographed with Isaiah Silva as the pair rushed her dog to a pet hospital earlier this week in Los Angeles. Cobain, who was carrying a $3800 Chanel messenger bag, could be seen in the parking lot looking as if she had been crying while a worker from the facility ran out and helped carry her pet in with Silva. Silva was also seen giving Cobain a hug in the parking lot later on in the afternoon. Scroll down for video Frances Bean Cobain was reunited with her estranged husband Isaiah Silva on Wednesday afternoon An emotional Cobain Silva as the pair rushed her dog to a pet hospital earlier this week in Los Angeles A worker from the facility ran out and helped carry Cobain's pet in with Silva The dog was in the back of Cobain's car for the trip to the pet hospital Cobain said the two had been together for five years and made it clear her husband was to have no claim to the money she has inherited from her father, which is estimated to be around $450million Silva was seen giving Cobain a hug in the parking lot later on in the afternoon Friday marks the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death, who committed suicide 22 years ago (above in 1993 with his daughter and wife) TMZ broke the news last month that Cobain, 23, had filed for divorce from Silva, who she married in June 2014 in a secret ceremony. The 31-year-old is a musician just like her famous parents and in a band called The Eeries. In those documents Cobain said the two had been together for five years and made it clear her husband was to have no claim to the money she has inherited from her father, which is estimated to be around $450million. She did say however that she would be willing to pay Silva spousal support. Friday marked the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. He committed suicide 22 years ago alone in his Seattle home. Cobain has become close to mother Courtney Love in recent years after the two had some very public spats during her teenage years. In 2009, Cobain was granted a restraining order against her mother and Wendy O'Connor, her paternal grandmother, and Kimberly Cobain, her father's sister, were named as her co-guardians. TMZ broke the news last month that Cobain, 23, had filed for divorce from Silva, who she married in June 2014 in a secret ceremony Cobain, who was carrying a $3800 Chanel messenger bag, could be seen in the parking lot looking as if she had been crying The 31-year-old is a musician just like her famous parents and in a band called The Eeries She did say however that she would be willing to pay Silva spousal support Puppy love: Frances has several pets including her beloved dog, above, who was taken sick. It is not known what the animal is called. After turning 18 in 2010 she inherited 37% of her her father's estate and was given all control over the licensing of his name and image. A year later she purchased her first home for $1.8million in California. She and her mother made up eventually, and the two were photographer shopping in London together last month. Love had been known to reach out to her daughter via social media or through the press in various interviews and stories over the years that they were estranged, but now all seems to be well between the two. 'Much loved': Gordon Semple, here with a great-nephew, went missing a week ago. His mutilated body was found in a studio flat near the Shard A man has been charged with the murder of a serving Met Police officer whose dismembered body was found in an acid bath. Stefano Brizzi, 49, has been charged with the murder of Gordon Semple, whose body was found in a flat on the Peabody Estate in Southwark on Thursday afternoon. Brizzi will appear via videolink at Bromley Magistrates' Court on Monday morning. Neighbours told how earlier they had knocked on the gay 49-year-olds door to complain about a smell and were met by the Italian in just a pair of Speedo-style trunks who said he was cooking for a mate. Detectives are investigating how PC Semple ended up at the flat, which is close to where the officer was last seen near Londons Shard skyscraper. The officer left a business meeting at the five-star Shangri-La hotel in The Shard on April 1 and was caught on CCTV walking in the London Bridge area. His partner reported him missing after he failed to return to their home in Kent and a London-wide search was launched. Six days later the 59-year-olds remains were discovered in a studio home on the Peabody Estate close to The Shard. Officers said the condition of the body parts means it may take some time for investigators to establish how PC Semple died. Residents described how police made the gruesome find after they dialled 999 to raise the alarm about the increasingly bad smell. One man who knocked on the door to complain said he was confronted by Brizzi wearing nothing but blue Speedo-style trunks. A source told The Sun: 'Gordon's body had been placed in a bath of acid. But that did not do the job and so an effort was made to boil the parts away on the cooker.' Scotland Yard refused to comment on the exact nature of PC Semple's injuries. Martin Harris, 49, added that scented candles had been lit and placed outside the front door. I banged on the door and a man answered wearing Speedos and a pair of glasses, he said. I asked what was going on and he said he was cooking for a mate. I said I was going to call the police but he didnt seem bothered and shut the door. Heather Brown, 55, who lives in the neighbouring block, described a horrible smell and said candles had been outside the property for a few days. Forensic officers have already spent more than 24 hours scouring Brizzis home and have also been searching communal bins on the estate. Three police tents have been erected on different parts of the estate. In touching scenes yesterday, police officers bowed their heads in respect as some of the remains of their colleague were loaded into a coroners van. Masked ball: PC Semple, right, with his partner Gary Meeks. Italian Stefano Brizzi (not pictured) was being questioned last night over the murder of a missing policeman PC Semple had been a policeman for 30 years and was described as an old-school copper on a Facebook page set up in tribute. Neighbours said they saw Brizzi sitting in an ambulance wearing a black bomber jacket and sunglasses before he was arrested and driven away. Last night, the suspect, who is originally from Pistoia, near Florence, remained in police custody on suspicion of murder. A former computer programmer at Morgan Stanley, he was said to have been classically educated in Latin and Greek at an elite Italin university. He first came to London six years ago and had lived in the Peabody flat for more than three years. He works as a freelance social worker with a private company. According to his Facebook page, Brizzi was an active member of Londons gay community and a member of several online hook-up groups. He also regularly attended a mindful meditation group where fellow attendees described him as being very spiritual. Forensic: Officers at the flat after the gruesome discovery. PC Semple left a business meeting at the five-star Shangri-La hotel in The Shard on April 1 and was last seen on CCTV walking in the London Bridge area Mr Semple, who is originally from Inverness, shared a 200,000 home in Greenhithe, Kent, with his partner Gary Meeks. Mr Semples brother Ronnie said: I would like to thank everyone for their kind thoughts during the past dreadful week. Gordon will be sadly missed by all of his immediate family, but most of all the hardest loss is for Gary at this time. He was a much-loved partner, brother, brother-in-law, uncle and cousin and our world will be a worse place without him. Under fire all week about his wealth and involved with a controversial fund set up by his late father, David Cameron was humiliatingly forced to concede that he did indeed profit from an offshore tax haven. It was the fifth clarification statement he and his Downing Street officials had issued in as many days despite the initial claim that this was purely a private matter. As ROSS CLARK explains, though, there is no shortage of money sloshing around the Cameron family as well as links to offshore companies... Samantha Cameron received 100,000 as 'creative consultant' at upmarket stationery firm 1. Samantha Cameron Income: Career with upmarket stationery firm Smythson saw her become creative director and build up a 2.7 per cent personal stake in the company. When the firm was bought out for 15.8 million in 2005, she received 437,000 for her shares and got a second pay-out (estimated to be 40,000) in 2009. Her salary as creative director was said to be 400,000 in 2010, but when her husband became PM, she opted to work part-time as creative consultant on a reported 100,000 a year. Smythsons own tax arrangements have come under scrutiny. The Mail revealed last year that it was owned by Greenwill SA, a secretive firm based in Luxembourg, which itself was controlled by the Barracuda Trust, a Guernsey-based organisation. We wrote that no UK tax had been paid on the roughly 1 million of dividends paid in previous years to Greenwill SA. And, if Smythson were ever sold, for a profit, the secretive foreign owner could also escape UK capital gains tax and stamp duty. Sir Reginald Sheffield, Samanthas father, owns property and land estimated at more than 20m 2. Sir Reginald Sheffield Who: Samanthas father. Wealth: Cameron once embarrassingly joked: Samantha owns a field in Scunthorpe. In fact, her father, Sir Reginald Sheffield, owns property and land estimated at more than 20 million, has more than 3,000 acres of arable land, Grade I-listed stately country home Sutton Park, an 18th-century Georgian house north of York, a home in London and a hall near Scunthorpe. 3. Annabel Astor Who: SamCams mother. Wealth: Born into wealth. Her grandfather was Sir Roderick Jones, chairman of Reuters, and as a child was brought up in Londons Hyde Park Gate, next door to Winston Churchill. Married into two wealthy families, first to Sir Reginald Sheffield and then to the 4th Viscount Astor. Co-founder and chief executive of furnishings retailer OKA, which was valued at 30 million in 2006 and which made 1.7 million profits last year. Half its shares are owned via a Guernsey-based company. Annabel Astor, SamCams mother, was born into wealth. She is pictured with William Waldorf Astor III, Samantha Camerons stepfather, who owns a 20,000-acre Tarbert Estate on Hebridean island of Jura 4. 4th Viscount Astor Who: William Waldorf Astor III (Samantha Camerons stepfather). Wealth: His great-grandfather, the 1st Viscount Astor, was believed to be the wealthiest man in America, with business interests spanning newspapers and New Yorks Waldorf Hotel. His grandparents owned Cliveden, the Buckinghamshire stately home at the centre of the Profumo scandal. Has a total of four properties including the 20,000-acre Tarbert Estate on the Hebridean island of Jura, which has been held offshore in the name of a Bahamas-registered company, Ginge Manor Estates. (Just as Camerons father named his off-shore trust after a family ancestral home, Ginge Manor is the name of the Astors stately pile in Oxfordshire.) The Viscount has complained about land reform plans by the ruling Scottish Nationalist Party which he feared might force him to sell some of his land calling them a Mugabe-style land-grab. William Waldorf Astor IV, Samanthas half-brother, owns 75 of 200 shares in 9.9m company 5. William Waldorf Astor IV Who: Samanthas half-brother. Wealth: Businessman who owns 75 out of the 200 shares in Long Harbour Ltd, a company which invests in the freeholds of blocks of flats and retirement developments. It made profits of 9.9 million in 2014 but only paid 948,000 in UK tax. While theres no suggestion there is anything illegal in the companys tax arrangements, the UK tax bill was reduced because 1.09 million worth of the profits were made by funds managed in Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Long Harbour Ltd received 565,000 in advisory fees from a British Virgin Islands-based company called Atlantic Property Management, which owns 50 of Long Harbours shares. David Cameron receives a salary of 150,000 6. David Cameron Income: Salary of 150,000 as Prime Minister (having voluntarily cut his pay to that of other Cabinet ministers). Inheritance: 300,000 in cash from his father Ian Camerons will (below the inheritance tax threshold). Properties: West London family home in Ladbroke Grove, bought in 2006 for 1.125 million. After a major refurbishment, including a new basement and side extension, it is now worth 3.5 million. The property has been let since the Camerons moved to No 10. Similar properties fetch 7,000 a month, so they may have made more than 500,000 in rental since 2010. Camerons constituency house is in the Oxfordshire village of Dean. Bought for 650,000 in 2001 when he took out a 350,000 mortgage with the interest payments covered by taxpayers as part of his MPs expenses. In 2011, the Camerons paid 137,000 for a neighbouring parcel of land from a millionaire lobbyist peer friend. The house is now worth 1.3 million. Investments: At first this week, Cameron denied having any current interest in an overseas trust. But he was then forced to admit he had profited from a 12,497 investment he and his wife made in 1997 in an offshore holding owned his father. He said he sold the shares in January 2010 four months before he became Prime Minister pocketing a tax-free profit of just over 19,000. Cameron said on Thursday: I paid income tax on the dividends, but there was a profit on it, but it was less than the capital gains tax allowance, so I didnt pay capital gains tax, but it was subject to all the UK taxes in all the normal ways. Hes said he has no shares, but some cash savings. However, he has owned shares in the past reportedly in Carlton Communications (where he worked before becoming an MP) and 40,000 worth in Urbium, which runs nightclubs such as Tiger Tiger in London and for which he was a non-executive director. 7. Ian Cameron Who: Davids father, who died aged 77 in 2010. Career: First worked in the stock-broking firm Panmure Gordon, where his father was director. Became a director himself until the company was sold in the 1980s earning him a reported 2 million windfall. Then set up Blairmore Holdings (named after the familys ancestral home in Aberdeenshire), an investment trust based in the Bahamas which has managed tens of millions of pounds on behalf of wealthy families. He chaired an investment fund in Jersey, held shares in Blairmore Asset Management in Geneva and set up Blairmore Holdings in Panama. The trust was the subject of this weeks revelations in the so-called Panama Papers because he was exposed as a client of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, from whom the documents were leaked. David Cameron's parents Ian Cameron, who died aged 77 in 2010, and Mary Cameron. Mr Cameron's fortune was estimated at 10m the year before he died In 2008 (when his son was leader of the Opposition), he took legal advice about the pros and cons of different tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Blairmores directors wanted to continue to avoid paying UK taxes. Then, in June 2012, Blairmore was moved to Ireland, another tax haven with many of the advantages of the more distant offshore jurisdictions. Income: Was paid 12,400 a year as director, but will almost certainly have had a large personal interest in the fund. The year before his death, his fortune was estimated at 10 million. Legacy: His will detailed wealth of just 2.74 million. But it listed only UK-held assets. The document was published in Jersey and an investigation by Channel 4 News revealed he kept part of his wealth in the tax haven. A grant of probate was filed with courts on the Channel island, a process that only happens with a minimum of 10,000 assets. The full value does not have to be disclosed. There were also substantial chattels left to his widow, Mary. Two paintings from his home in Peasemore, Berkshire, were sold for 800,000 in 2006. 8. Mary Cameron Who: Davids mother and the daughter of Sir William Mount, Army officer and businessman who became director of the Miles Aircraft Company and High Sheriff of Berkshire. Wealth: Few details exist of what she was left in her husbands will. Likely, though, shes still a beneficiary of Blairmore Holdings. David Camerons statements this week declared that neither he, his wife nor his children were beneficiaries of any offshore trust but he did not mention his mother. Alexander Cameron, Davids elder brother, owns a property worth 3.7m 9. Alexander Cameron Who: Camerons elder brother. A leading English barrister. Career: According to Whos Who Legal 2014, the terrific 52-year-old QC is head of chambers and a master of criminal law, who especially excels at intricate fraud, bribery and corruption matters. Clients rave about his spot-on judgment. Figures that were revealed as a result of a Freedom of Information request in 2011 showed he was paid 1.13 million in legal aid over a period of ten years. Wealth: Ownership of his childhood home, the Old Rectory in Peasemore, Berkshire, was transferred to him in 2006 in order to reduce the size of his fathers estate before he died. It was then worth 2.5 million and is now valued at 3.7 million. 10. Tania Brookes Who: Camerons elder sister. Married to a consultant cardiologist and lives in a 900,000 house near Tadley, Hampshire. Wealth: On her fathers death, she and her younger sister, Clare, each received a share in a property in Londons Kensington. Tania receiving a controlling share of 51 per cent and her younger sister 49 per cent. Tania Brookes, David Camerons elder sister, who lives in a 900,000 house near Tadley, Hampshire Clare Cameron, David Camerons second sister, lives in 1.8m property in west London 11. Clare Cameron Who: Camerons second sister. Wealth: Married to Jeremy Fawcus, the son of the former chief of staff at the supreme HQ of Allied Forces Europe. The Fawcus family home was Flowton Hall, near Ipswich, Suffolk, which was sold in 2013 for around 800,000. Her husband is chief executive of Firefish, a marketing agency he founded. They live in a 1.8 million house in Shepherds Bush. Left a share of another London property in her fathers will. Ewen Donald Cameron, David Camerons grandfather, left 57,000 in his will 12. Ewen Donald Cameron Who: Camerons grandfather. Died in 1958. Career: Director of stockbrokers Panmure Gordon. Born into wealth. Inherited Blairmore House, a mansion built by his ancestor in the 1880s. Legacy: He left 57,000 in his will (the equivalent of more than 1 million today). Blairmore House was sold during the 1940s and is now a retreat centre run by the international evangelical group Ellel Ministries. A California man's neighbors called the police on him after they spotted him outside naked while drinking a beer and water his lawn. Fresno County sheriff's deputies arrested Robert Lopez, 37, Wednesday on suspicion of indecent exposure and assault with a deadly weapon on an officer. A deputy was called to his home around 7pm and requested a Kingsburg police officer to assist, because Lopez is known to be hostile toward law enforcement, the Fresno Bee reported. Authorities found Lopez to be drinking beer in his yard with no clothes on. Fresno County sheriff's deputies arrested Robert Lopez (above), 37, Wednesday on suspicion of indecent exposure and assault with a deadly weapon on an officer A deputy was called to his home around 7pm because neighbor's reported that he was outside naked. When the deputy told Lopez to put on some clothes, he refused and threw a glass bottle (above) at him The heavily tattooed man then put on a pair of shorts and went into his house only to come outside minutes later holding an 8-inch knife (above). Lopez was ordered by the deputy to stop and drop the knife or he would shoot him When the deputy told Lopez to put on some clothes, he refused and starting cursing at the deputy. Lopez then threw a glass bottle at him, that did not strike the deputy and instead hit a fence, the Bee reported. Authorities eventually were able to arrest Lopez and he now faces several felony charges The sheriff's office said Lopez even threatened to get a gun and shoot the deputy. The heavily tattooed man then put on a pair of shorts and went into his house only to come outside minutes later holding an 8-inch knife. Lopez was ordered by the deputy to stop and drop the knife or he would shoot him. He complied with the deputy's demands, but continued making threats against him, the Bee reported. Lopez picked the knife up and threw it at the deputy, but it did not strike him and instead hit a fence. He walked closer to the fence and threw a beer bottle, but an assisting deputy fired a bean bag round at Lopez, striking him in the stomach, the Bee reported. Lopez fell to the ground and was handcuffed by deputies who then took him to a hospital for an evaluation before being booked into jail. Angela Wrightson, pictured, was beaten to death in her own home by two young teenage girls who cannot be named for legal reasons The emotional and physical pain that Angela Wrightson endured during the final hours of her tragic life is difficult to imagine even though the lurid details are now a matter of public record. They certainly make for uncomfortable and disturbing reading. Held captive in her own living room, she was beaten, brutalised and defiled by two jeering teenage girls she had befriended out of loneliness. For eight hours, this feral pair who were aged just 13 and 14, and supposedly in the hands of the care system rained blow after blow upon her. In a macabre twist, they even paused mid-slaughter to pose for giggling selfies, which they uploaded onto a social media site, while dancing to music videos and joking with friends on the phone. The frail and vulnerable 39-year-old alcoholic, who was 5ft 4in and weighed just six-and-a-half stone, pleaded for mercy that never came as she was battered with the few meagre possessions she owned: a ceramic vase, TV set, printer, picture frame, shovel, glass ornament and kettle. When there was nothing else to hand, the two teenage girls finished her off with punches and kicks. Angelas murder, so casual in its brutality and moral indifference, at the hands of such young girls, has sent shockwaves across Britain. Not since the sadistic abduction and killing of two-year-old Merseyside toddler James Bulger in 1993 by two ten-year-old boys, has Britains care system been thrown into such sharp focus. How, in 2016, can these moral vacuums still exist where young children can degenerate into savages who casually kill for kicks? Yet to understand the appalling events of that night in December 2014, we must look at the two girls, now aged 15, and their backgrounds. For while questions have rightly been raised about their family lives, the individual stories of the two killers are very different. While one girl was, indeed, from a highly dysfunctional, unloving and violent home that seems to have left her full of murderous rage, the other had the stability of two caring parents. Chillingly, it is this second child, for whose savagery no explanation has been found, who seems to have instigated the attack. But it is the poisonous dynamic of the girls obsessively intense relationship that lies at the heart of this grim story. A former neighbour said: Separately they were fine they could be quite sweet girls but together, they were devils. The two girls, whom we shall refer to as Girl A, for the older child, and Girl B, were best friends who had known each other since primary school. They had grown up playing together on the streets of the deprived coastal town of Hartlepool in Co. Durham. One of the girls drew a sketch showing a man being stabbed which was found after her arrest for the murder But as they reached adolescence, their lives spiralled into violence and wayward behaviour. They began to drink alcohol and take drugs. They frequently ran away together and absconded from school. At the time of the killing, both teenagers were supposedly in care, yet they had absconded from their homes 18 times in the 30 nights prior to that evening. Despite their close bond, their home lives were quite different. Girl A was described by social workers as the most volatile child they had ever known. From an early age, she had witnessed her mother being violently assaulted by various boyfriends on a regular basis. She had three siblings, but shared a father with only one of them. Her mother was known locally as whizz head a slang reference to the amphetamines she used and the fathers of her two half-siblings were in prison. Boundaries and family love were alien concepts. On THE day of the murder, Girl A had an agreement with her foster carers that she could visit her family, whom she still loved and whose affection she craved. The visit didnt go well, however, and ended with her mother telling her to f*** off and kill herself. As a result, she took some strong painkillers given to her on a previous occasion by her mother and left the house in a blind fury with terrible consequences. During the eight-week trial, Leeds Crown Court heard how she frequently flew into rages with an aggression shaped from a childhood of neglect, destroying her bedroom and lashing out at family. In the months before Angelas murder, Girl A had attacked a girl with a metal chain and, on another instance, jumped on someones head, taunting her victims: You got what you deserved. Among the weapons used by the the teenage killers was this shovel, still covered in Ms Wrightson's blood Her IQ is so low, the jury heard, that she is on the learning difficulty spectrum. When asked her date of birth in court, she could not recall it. Furthermore, her exposure to routine violence from such an early age had left her suffering from a personality disorder, which meant she was ill-equipped to understand the consequences of her actions. Though nothing can mitigate the pure wickedness of Angelas murder, it is not hard to envisage how a child from such a wretched home could struggle with the notions of right and wrong; or how she could be a powder keg waiting for a spark to violently explode. This spark was her best friend, Girl B, the less aggressive, but far more intelligent one of the duo. Girl Bs home a semi on a housing association estate was relatively loving and supportive. She was an only child, her father had a steady job in construction as an electricians mate, and her parents were still together, though not married. During the trial, the girls mother and father made the 160-mile round trip from their home in Hartlepool to Leeds to attend court every day, unlike Girl A, who was always alone. Though Girl B was in care at the time of the attack because she frequently ran away from home and her parents found it difficult to cope with her, the court was told how her mother was working proactively with social workers to try to exert some stability and discipline on her daughter. A photograph released when she went missing three years ago shows a neat 12-year-old schoolgirl who was clearly cared for. The court heard that Girl A's family thought Girl B was a bad influence and did not want her hanging around Friends described her as a strange and awkward child, obsessed with her smartphone (which would play such a sinister part in the murder) and seemingly incapable of interacting with anyone face-to-face. She was awkward when there were a few people in a room, but if she was talking by phone she was funnier and more chatty, one said. What seems clear is that Child B had a ruthlessly manipulative streak and that she had developed a powerful emotional hold over her less intelligent and emotionally damaged friend. Even Girl As sister, who would have been acclimatised to the same violence as her sibling, thought Girl B was bad news. I told [Girl B] to stop coming to my house as I didnt think that her and my sister were good together. I was aware they were going missing together and this worried me as I thought my sister was too young to be out at night. Yet any attempts to keep the girls apart proved futile. Free from any restraints or discipline, their bond was fuelled by a mutual love of alcohol, drugs, violent rap music and running away. In a text sent the day before the murder, Girl B promised her little partner in crime that theyd be with each other through thick and thin. She described her as a gorgeous girl and told her that she loved her. The two girls paused their savage assault so they could take a selfie and send the image to a friend Angela was another victim of appalling circumstance. Also raised in care, she was known locally as Alco Ange, a pathetic figure who drank up to nine litres of cider a day and befriended the local, under-age waifs and strays by buying them alcohol and cigarettes in return for their company and a share. Girl A and Girl B, on their regular absconding nights out in Hartlepool, were regular customers. On that freezing Monday evening, 17 days before Christmas, the two girls ended up at Angelas terrace house, where they swigged bottles of super-strength Frosty Jacks cider, before inexplicably launching their attack. Perhaps the power dynamic between the two was best illustrated by the way in which the violence was meted out: none of Girl Bs fingerprints were found on any of the make-shift weapons used to bludgeon Angela to death. Girl A delivered the blows, it seems, under the direct orders of Girl B. This was confirmed by the evidence of a friend, whom they had called during a break from the evenings violence. She recalled hearing Girl B egging on her friend: Go on smash her head in. Bray her. F****** kill her. Chillingly, two hours into Angelas harrowing ordeal, Girl B used her beloved phone to upload a photograph of the pair of them, smiling next to the bruised and swollen face of their dying victim with the mocking caption: Nah xx. In blood-drenched clothes, the friends were clearly seen on CCTV leaving Angelas house for some time out to go and meet a boy in a park. They then returned to the house to commit further indignities on her body. At 4am, they dialled 999 to get a lift home from the police, whom they routinely used as a taxi service a bizarre thing to do after having just committed such a heinous crime. The next day, Girl B even bragged to a friend that they had done Angie in last night. In a recording of the mocking 999 call, they were heard laughing and urging the police to hurry up because theyre f****** freezing. They were picked up by unsuspecting officers who said they seemed in high spirits as Angela, whose half-naked body would not be discovered until the next day, lay dead in the blood- splattered living room of her rented home. The court heard Ms Wrightson would drink nine litres of cider a day and would share it with youngsters As they entered the police van, Girl B used her phone to document the end of a night that would finally call time on their toxic friendship, posting it online with the caption: Me and [Girl A] in the back on the bizzie van again. They were arrested the next day after Girl Bs foster mother raised the alarm when she noticed her blood-covered clothes. It didnt take long for the police to join the dots following the discovery of Angelas body. The coroner catalogued more than 100 injuries, including three fractured fingers evidence that Angela had tried to defend herself. As they awaited trial last summer, the bond between the girls remained unshakeable. Girl A wrote in a letter to her princess, as she called the dominant, controlling Child B, that she missed her so f****** much and to keep your chin up [and] think of all the good times. Child B denied any role in Ms Wrightson's death, claiming she was too busy fiddling with her phone As the evidence unfolded, however, they soon started blaming each other. During their trial, Girl A did not deny killing Angela, but maintained she was guilty of manslaughter, not murder, as she did not realise that such an attack could be fatal. When I was 14, I thought you could only die when you got cancer, or you got shot in the head or stabbed in the heart or something like that, she told jurors. Her lawyers argued that she was led by her younger friend, who had the stronger personality of the two. She said she had punched Angela in the face after Girl B told her to knock her out. When she later realised that the womans head was split at the top, she wanted to phone for an ambulance, but said her friend would not let her. She said Girl B went mad if she did not do what she asked. Girl B denied any role in Angelas death at all and claimed she was so distracted by her phone that she was oblivious to what was going on. After the trial, however, macabre childish drawings emerged in which one of the girls had etched a picture of someone being stabbed. This week, the girls were found guilty of murder and given life sentences with a minimum of 15 years by Mr Justice Globe QC. Afterwards, Det Chief Supt Peter McPhillips, of Cleveland Police, said that in his 25 years of service, the case was the most brutal murder he had ever come across. A serious case review has been ordered into how two girls in care were free to roam the streets in the early hours of the morning in addition to going missing from their foster homes for more than half of the evenings in the previous month. There are also questions raised as to why, when faced with a dangerous and uncontrollable teenager, social workers had simply told Girl A to draw pictures, as revealed in court papers during the case. Throughout their trial, both girls had self-harmed and attempted suicide, leading the judge to refuse to lift the anonymity order to protect them from a Press blitz. The trial judge has ordered that both girls should receive life-time anonymity to protect them from a press blitz However, they have previously been subject to abusive comments on social media to such an extent that their first trial last year was scrapped after they received death threats. Speaking after the verdict, Angelas elderly mother Maureen said the harrowing final moments of her daughters life would haunt her for ever, and the sight of her battered body would be something she could never blink away. We may never know what turned these two young girls into killers. Perhaps it made them feel powerful in their largely powerless and troubled lives. But what we do know is that Angelas murder would not have happened as it did if either girl had been acting alone. In the words of Jamie Hill QC, defending, the dynamic of their relationship ultimately led to a terrible moment in history when these three people collided in the most appalling and tragic way. Ellie Melaugh is thought to be the first woman to be convicted of targeting a man since the so-called revenge porn legislation was introduced a year ago A jilted saleswoman turned her exs life into a nightmare after posting explicit images of him on the internet. Ellie Melaugh is believed to be the first female convicted of targeting a man since so-called revenge porn legislation was introduced a year ago. The 20-year-old uploaded intimate photographs of her former boyfriend to Facebook and Twitter, and set up a fake profile on dating site Plenty of Fish. The images, accompanied by his name and full address, were seen by the victims mother and grandparents as well as countless strangers. He received hundreds of calls from Melaugh and was forced to repeatedly change his number to avoid contact from her and others. The offences were so serious she was given a suspended jail sentence when she admitted posting revenge pornography and harassment. Speaking last night, the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told how he was suddenly flooded with phone calls from friends and family warning him the pictures were online. It was a terrible ordeal, he said. She turned my life into a living nightmare. Everyone could see she was trying to destroy me. I was living with my grandmother at the time and she was suffering from cancer. The whole thing just spiralled out of control. Melaughs harassment began after the man, who is in his late 20s, attempted to end his five-month relationship with her in November 2014. At first she refused to leave the property they shared with the mans grandmother in South London but after eventually moving out she started to pester him. One day last June, the man discovered his Facebook profile had been taken over and intimate photographs had been posted by his account. Other images were posted on his Twitter account alongside the location of his home, including the message: Come and see me boys I live at this address. Melaugh also threatened to burn down her exs house and messaged his sister, saying: I hope that your little girl gets cancer. The victim said he was forced to leave his job as a manager at a respected national firm as a result of the attacks. He said: She was a childish woman who would strop, stamp her feet and cry if she did not get her way. Near the end of the relationship I felt scared of her, she would not leave me alone. One night we rowed and I said I would go to the pub so she could calm down. When I turned around she was eating my money to stop me. She had a 10 note in her mouth and swallowed it. Melaugh was handed a 12-week jail term, suspended for two years at Wimbledon Magistrates Court Melaugh, of Bromley, South East London, admitted a revenge pornography offence and harassment at Wimbledon Magistrates Court last month. Sentencing her to a 12-week jail term, suspended for two years, magistrate Rachel Lipscomb described Melaugh as vulnerable. She also imposed an indefinite restraining order preventing her from contacting the victim. From April last year a law made it illegal to share sexually explicit images without the subjects consent. The maximum penalty is two years jail. Patients are paying up to 41p a minute to book GP appointments despite an NHS ban on premium phone lines. Five years ago surgeries were told incoming calls should be charged at no more than the standard local rate. But a survey for the Daily Mail found dozens of GP centres use 0844 numbers that are five times more costly. Patients are paying up to 41p a minute to book GP appointments despite an NHS ban on premium phone lines (stock image) Some surgeries even tell patients they will be fast-tracked to a receptionist if they dial a premium number. Those ringing cheaper landlines must wait. At the maximum rate of 41p a minute, a ten-minute phone call would cost more than 4. Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association accused doctors of profiteering. She added: It is morally wrong for GPs to charge patients these rates many patients will have no clue that they are incurring these phone bill charges. This needs to be stopped. Such practices contribute nothing to improving patient care. Campaigners say surgeries are exploiting a loophole in the NHS ban allowing them to operate an 0844 line if they also deploy a cheaper, local-rate number. However, the local lines offer limited access to surgeries and can handle only a small number of queueing patients. In at least one case the 0844 number allows patients to jump the queue for urgent medical problems. The Fair Telecoms Campaign carried out for the Daily Mail a survey of 8,000 surgeries in England. It found 34 from Cornwall to West Yorkshire were in breach of their contracts by advertising premium numbers on their websites. Campaigners suspect that the number of surgeries using the high-cost lines is far higher because they may be publicising them in leaflets and posters instead. Further analysis found five hospitals are using the 0844 numbers as well as almost 400 listed on the NHS Choices website for NHS-related services. The ban on premium lines applies only to GP surgeries. Campaigners say surgeries are exploiting a loophole in the NHS ban allowing them to operate an 0844 line if they also deploy a cheaper, local-rate number (stock image) Earlier this week a survey revealed that 5 per cent of patients are kept hanging on the phone for between 20 minutes and 60 minutes when they try to book a GP appointment. An hour on an 0844 number would cost 24. The survey also revealed that up to two million now wait three weeks or more for an appointment and a third cannot see a GP the same week. Only a very small number of the surgeries admit that their non-geographical, premium lines offer patients quicker appointments and better service. Cherry Hinton and Brookfields Medical Centre, near Cambridge, states: We wish to make callers aware that calling the surgery using the geographical telephone number does not allow callers to benefit from the enhanced telephone system. For example you will not be able to directly speak to Brookfields, or select the medical emergency break out (to bypass the queue). The surgery did not reply to a request for comment. Red House Surgery, also in Cambridge, says patients who call its local number may encounter an engaged tone if the line is busy whereas callers to the 0844 line benefit from our enhanced telephone system. Caroline Mason, the practices manager, said: Our 0844 number will cease when we reach the end of our contract, which is next year. The geographical number does allow them to enter the enhanced system, but if someone else is ringing then it could be engaged. GPs have insisted their premium lines do not turn a profit and that any revenue is reinvested in phone systems or patient services (stock image) GPs have insisted their premium lines do not turn a profit and that any revenue is reinvested in phone systems or patient services. But David Hickson, of the Fair Telecoms Campaign, said: Its a disgrace. Their patients will surely be disgusted at the greed shown by these GPs. 'I am furious at the failure of government and the relevant authorities to enforce compliance with the principles of our NHS. If you call an 0844 number from a landline, you will be charged an amount similar to dialling a local number which all of the 34 listed surgeries also provide. But the charges rocket when calling from a mobile often used by vulnerable and poor patients with no landline and are typically between 10p and 41p a minute. In 2009 the Department of Health said GPs would be banned from using 0844 numbers, and the rules came into force in April 2011. Further NHS guidance in 2013 criticised surgeries for operating two types of line. The U.S. Justice Department says it has turned over to Congress a cache of additional documents related to the botched gun-smuggling operation known as Operation Fast and Furious. The Obama administration had for the last four years refused to provide the documents to House Republicans, invoking a claim of executive privilege. But a federal judge on January 19 turned aside that argument, saying the agency had already disclosed through other channels much of the information it was seeking to withhold. GUN 'WALKERS': More than 1,200 of the 2,000 guns lost in Operation Fast and Furious are yet to be recovered EL CHAPO: Officials found a cache of weapons inside Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmans hideout BLOODY SHOOTING: A Phoenix apartment where two people were shot with a gun purchased as part of the federal government's gun-walking program In a letter Friday, the Justice Department says it is moving to end the legal dispute and will not contest the decision from Judge Amy Berman Jackson. House Republicans sued in 2012 to obtain thousands of emails related to the botched effort by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track guns across the southwest border. The documents are critical to the committee's efforts to 'understand and shine light on what was happening inside DOJ during the time of this irresponsible operation,' House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman and Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz said in a statement. The years-long law enforcement operation resulted in hundreds of firearms landing in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, including one that killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent named Brian Terry. Under the program, the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives directed gun store owners to sell AK-47s, AR-15s and 50-caliber rifles, among other firearms, to people they knew would 'walk' the guns across the Mexican border illegally. CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS: House Republicans skewered then-Attorney General Eric Holder for years as he refused to turn over the documents they had subpoenaed, ultimately issuing a criminal referral against him ARSENAL: Weapons tied to the gun trafficking operation known Fast and Furious were discovered in April in the home of Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, in the volatile city of Juarez, Mexico Thousands of weapons were trafficked this way under the watchful eye of the ATF, which was unable to track most of them as it had hoped. O ne arsenal of weapons lost by the feds turned up in the hands of a reputed Sinaloa drug cartel enforcer named Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo in the volatile Mexican city of Juarez. VICTIM: U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death by a Mexican national with a gun put into circulation by Operation Fast and Furious A 50-caliber rifle was recovered at Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmans hideout, according to report issued this year. a new report revealed Wednesday. At least one Fast and Furious gun came back into the United States and was used to commit a pair of grisly 2013 gang-style murders in Phoenix. Former Attorney General Eric Holder refused to hand over the documents when House Republicans subpoenaed them, leading a a 2012 vote holding him in Contempt of Congress. That alleged crime, however, was up to Holder's own Justice Department to prosecute, and it declined to take up the charge. Fast and Furious sent about 2,000 guns over the U.S.-Mexico border, of which fewer than 800 were recovered.. Several of the 'straw purchasers' were arrested and indicted, but the operation reportedly made little headway in prosecuting the drug kingpins it was designed to ensnare. EU dentists working in Britain are nearly four times more likely to be struck off than those who trained in the UK, an investigation has found. Experts say the foreign practitioners are far more dangerous because laws imposed by Brussels prevent them facing crucial checks on their competence or ability to speak English. Figures obtained from the General Dental Council show that more than a third of dentists struck off in the past three years qualified elsewhere in Europe. EU dentists working in Britain are nearly four times more likely to be struck off than those who trained in the UK, an investigation has found (stock image) They include one from Romania who tried to fit a bridge to a womans teeth in a McDonalds restaurant and another from Hungary who treated dozens of NHS patients in a field tent even though he had no proper qualifications. He was later found to have seriously harmed three patients. British dentists say they are spending significant amounts of appointment time patching up mistakes made by their European colleagues. Figures obtained by the Daily Mail using Freedom of Information laws show that 22 of the 60 dentists struck off since the start of 2013 qualified in other EU countries, including four from Germany and three each from Romania and Poland. That means 37 per cent of those struck off qualified in other European Union countries, but they comprise only 16 per cent of the workforce. At present there are 39,879 dentists registered to work in the UK. The figures show that 0.09 per cent of all UK-qualified dentists were struck off while 0.35 per cent of those who qualified in other EU countries were struck off. This means the EU dentists were nearly four times as likely to be struck off. Due to strict EU legislation, the General Dental Council, which registers and regulates dentists, is not allowed to carry out rigorous tests of their English or competence because it is deemed to impede freedom of movement laws. These are the same rules that apply for EU doctors and nurses, which have been blamed for a series of tragic mistakes and deaths. By comparison, all medical professionals coming from elsewhere in the world including English-speaking countries such as Australia must first pass a series of language exams and skills tests before working here. This month the rules were tweaked slightly to allow the General Dental Council to ask to see some evidence that EU dentists could speak English. But the checks are far less stringent than those for dentists coming from elsewhere in the world, who have to pass four language exams. The Mail was alerted to the flaws in the system by an NHS dentist who practises in South-East London. Figures obtained from the General Dental Council show that more than a third of dentists struck off in the past three years qualified elsewhere in Europe (stock image) The whistleblower, who does not wish to be named, said: A significant amount of our appointments are spent rectifying the errors of these dentists. Many of these countries do not have the same level of stringent testing required of British dentists and yet they can practise here without a problem. It is putting patients in jeopardy. If you come from Poland or Germany, or any part of the EU, then you can work without being tested. That seems wrong. A Hungarian dentist was struck off after treating dozens of NHS patients in a tent. Frank Kannmann set up the tent in Lincolnshire in 2008 for patients unable to see an NHS dentist. But he had no insurance or licence and seriously harmed three. And Anca Claudia Macavei, from Romania, was struck off after offering to treat a patient in McDonalds. She had been working from a clinic in Cannon Street, Central London, but was barred after falling out with managers, so in 2012 she met a patient in a nearby McDonalds and attempted to insert a bridge to check it would fit. The EU in Brussels: Experts say the foreign practitioners are far more dangerous because laws imposed by Brussels prevent them facing crucial checks on their competence or ability to speak English The flaw in the EU legislation was tragically exposed by the 2008 death of David Gray, 70, at the hands of German GP Daniel Ubani, who had flown in to do his first locum shift. He had not faced any checks on his competence or ability to speak English and gave the pensioner, from Manea, Cambridgeshire, ten times the safe dose of diamorphine. Identical twin sisters who married identical twin brothers are set to go under the knife because they can't tell who is married to whom. The couples, all from Shanxi province, married in February and had to double check they were marrying the correct sibling during the ceremony, the People's Daily Online reports. On April 7, doctors in Shanghai accepted a request by the couples to make slight adjustments to their faces so that they could tell each other apart. Which one are you? The couples visited a plastic surgeon to see if they could alter their appearances Strange: The sets of twins attended the same high school however they did not officially meet until a year ago. Zhao Xin and Yun Fei (right) were pictured with their younger siblings Zhao Xuan and Yun Yang The same of everything! They even have similar cars with only one character defining them apart The pair of twin brothers named Zhao Xin and Zhao Xuan married their fiancees Yun Fei and Yun Yang on February 15 at a joint wedding in Yuncheng, Shanxi Province. Both sets of twins were born in 1994 and come from nearby villages. The sisters were raised in Taihou Village while the brothers grew up in the Zhaojiazhuo Village. The two villages are about six miles from each other. They attended the same high school but didn't meet until they were introduced via a matchmaker a year ago. They spent a whole afternoon talking to each other. A month later, the father of the brothers returned from running his restaurant business in Beijing and endorsed their engagements. More impressively, after they got married, the two couples even drive almost identical cars. The only difference between the two white Volkswagens is one letter on the car plates. So confusing! Family and friends have complained that they have been unable to tell the twins apart Weird: During their honeymoon in Shanghai they visited a plastic surgeon who said he could change their looks However they've had trouble identifying each other. According to one of the brothers, he went out for a walk and found himself holding hands with his brother's wife by mistake. Friends and family found it difficult to tell them apart and often complained. They are thought to be so alike that it is even impossible to tell them apart by their voices. Finally frustrated with being confused for the other couple, they decided to visit a plastic surgeon during their honeymoon in Shanghai. The doctor said that it would be possible to get their appearances mildly changed. According to Dr Kang,he will make slight alterations to their noses and foreheads. F Advertisement They say a cup of tea makes everything better, and that's never an overstatement. The love affair between man and the aromatic beverage has lasted for more than 3,000 years. From planting, picking to brewing, every step of the tea making has grown into a form of art. A collection of stunning pictures have emerged showing how tea leaves are harvested and processed across China, the birthplace of the popular drink. Brew-tea-ful: Tea-harvesting season takes place in China at the end of March and beginning of April. Farmers worked in the fields of Xuan'en County, Hubei Province, on March 31 Gorgeous: The Wujiatai tea, a famous speciality of Hubei Province, has entered its harvest season in the stunning Xuan'en County Let's get the part-tea started: Farmers took part in a tea picking contest in Anshun, Guizhou Province, south-east China on March 29 Perfect work spot: A worker picked tea leaves in Zhongcunba Village of Xuan'en County, central China's Hubei Province on April 7 The tea-harvesting season begins in China every spring, with many farmers heading out into the fields in China's rural areas to collect leaves for the perfect hot drink. The peak time for tea-picking period falls at the end of March and the beginning of April when factories operate at full capacity. Although tea production also takes places in summer and autumn, spring tea is always the highly desirable and pricey among Chinese drinkers, especially the so-called 'first pick' which is available on the market in April. The Chinese people divide tea into six categories based on processing techniques: green tea, black tea, oolong tea, white tea, dark tea and yellow tea. Depending on the type of tea, the crops will then go through a variety of treatment, including steaming, withering, heating, rolling, oxidation and drying. In large part of China, all of these steps are still done by human hands, which will make sure the final products carry the best flavour. In the set of pictures, tea farmers around China can be seen plucking fresh tea leaves in the expansive and rolling plantations. Most of the tea plantations are situated in eastern and southern part of the country, including Xuan'en County in Hubei Province, which is famous for its green tea, and Jing'an County in Jiangxi Province where quality white tea comes from. The pricey pluck: A farmer picked white tea at a tea garden in Jing'an County, east China's Jiangxi Province on March 28. The so-called 'first pick' in spring is considered most desirable and valuable A fragrant task: Workers air the newly picked tea leaves in Zhongcunba Village of Xuan'en County, April 7. Xuan'en green tea is said to have been favoured by many Chinese emperors Handle with care: Depending on the type of tea, the crops will then go through a variety of treatment. A worker heated tea leaves in a cooking pot in Xuan'en County on April 7 Fresh tea leaves will undergo a series of treatment, including steaming, withering, heating, rolling, oxidation and drying. In large part of China, all of these steps are still done by human hands China is known as the first country in the world to cultivate and drink tea leaves. People from southern China, where the plant originated, started enjoying the brew as early as 1122BC, according to historic records. The world's oldest tea leaves have been discovered buried with royal treasures in the tomb of Jing Emperor Liu Qi, an ancient Chinese emperor who ruled more than 2,150 years ago, in the city of Xi'an, in China's Shaanxi Province, reported People's Daily Online. It appears Emperor Jing, who was the fourth emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, enjoyed the drink so much he wanted to be buried with a large supply of tea leaves so he could drink it in the afterlife. Unearthed in the tomb of Jing Emperor Liu Qi, the huge stash of tea buds provides some of the earliest evidence for the ancient Silk Road trade route that grew to stretch across Asia from China to Europe. FORGET ABOUT DIAMOND, HERE COMES THE LIQUID GOLD: A GUIDE TO THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE TEAS Yellow Gold Tea Buds At about 62 for 50 grams (25 cups), the leaves of this Chinese tea are painted with non-toxic 24-carat gold. They are harvested on one day a year with special golden scissors, and only from the top part of the tree. Panda dung tea Reportedly costing 127 a cup, this tea from China is not actually made with panda poo but grown in ground that is fertilised by the bear's excrement. Pandas only eat wild bambo, of which 30 per cent is absorbed into their body. The rest of the nutrients are in their waste, which, according to connoisseurs, makes the tea taste of bamboo. Da Honh Pao The half green-half black Da Honh Pao tea is similar to a heavy Darjeeling. The taste is described as rich and floral and lingers in the mouth several minutes after drinking. The 180 a pot tea is served at Royal China Club's restaurants in London. Gyokuro A Japanese green tea made from ungrounded leaves also known as Sencha, the leaves are shaded from the sun before they are harvest. 100g of the super-exclusive tea costs 26. Tieguanyin This Chinese tea costs 1,900 per kg. The Oolong tea leaf is robust and can be brewed up to seven times before it loses its flavour. The price is steep because the leaves are kneaded before being put into cloth bags so they make a pitch-perfect sound when they are poured into the cup. Advertisement Razzle dazzle: A worker removed impurities from the tea leaves in Xuan'en County on April 7. The region is famous for its green tea People from southern China, where the plant originated, started enjoying the brew as early as 1122BC, according to historic records It could mean the end of trips to Ikea, and allow you to transform your living room at the touch of a button. Dubbed the 'digitally transformable sofa,' Lift-Bit is a series of hexagonal stools that fit together honeycomb-style. Powered through a tablet app and simple hand gestures, the stools shift their height around in a matter of seconds to transform into whatever piece of furniture you need. Scroll down for video Dubbed the 'digitally transformable sofa,' Lift-bit is a series of hexagonal stools that fit together honeycomb-style and allows you to create a number of combinations. Powered through a tablet app and simple hand gestures, the stools shift their height around in matter of seconds to transform into whatever piece of furniture you need WHAT ARE LIFT-BITS FEATURES? Dubbed the 'digitally transformable sofa,' Lift-Bit is a series of hexagonal stools that fit together honeycomb-style and allows you to create a number of combinations. Powered through a tablet app and simple hand gestures, the stools shift their height around in a matter of seconds to transform into whatever piece of furniture you need The entire system can be operated by a single person through the companion app or hovering a hand in the air over the seat. The app features both a series of predetermined 3D shapes and a tool to transform the sofa into different combinations. If you do not use your Lift-bit for a long-time it will become 'bored' and start shape-shifting on its own to get your attention. Users can choose between four different colors - green, blue, red and yellow- and put in a pre-order for $1,250. Two elements together can make a chair, four elements a chaise lounge and nine a large sofa. Advertisement International design firm, Carlo Ratti Associates collaborated with the Swiss furniture, Vitra, in making the sofa. 'Lift-Bit draws on the potential of internet of things technologies to transform our interior landscape, giving form to an endlessly reconfigurable environment,' Professor Carlo Ratti, founder of Carlo Ratti Associati studio and director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told DesignBoom. 'In the future, we could imagine an architecture that adapts to human need, rather than the other way around a living, tailored space that is moulded to its inhabitants' needs, characters and desires.' The entire system can be operated by a single person through the companion app or hovering a hand in the air over the seat. The app features both a series of predetermined 3D shapes and a tool to transform the sofa into different combinations. 'Controlled remotely through a tablet app, each stool can double (or halve) its height in just a few seconds, reconfiguring the space in a myriad of combinations,' according to Lift-Bit's website. 'Paying homage to Cedric Price 1978's 'Generator Project', Lift-Bit's responsive modules can seamlessly transform into a sofa, a bed, an ordered living room, a small auditorium, or a domestic landscape, according to the user's needs and wishes.' And if you do not use your Lift-B it for a long-time it will become 'bored' and start shape-shifting on its own to get your attention. Lift-Bit offers a 'configurator' tool on its sit that allows curious consumers to test it out before purchasing it. Users can experiment with four different colors and combinations. Activating the stool triggers a broader effect, with the entire system recalibrating and generating a potentially infinite number of arrangements. Two elements together can make a chair, four a chaise lounge and nine a large sofa. A prototype of the transforming sofa will be unveiled during Milan Design Week that runs from April 12th to 17th, but is accepting preorders for $1,205. And if you do not use your Lift-bit for a long-time it will become 'bored' and start shape-shifting on its own to get your attention. Lift-Bit offers a 'configurator' tool on its sit that allows curious consumers to test it out before purchasing it 'Thanks to the liberating effect of technology, the way we live and work is becoming more flexible. We are excited to be present at the 'Rooms' exhibition at Milan's Triennale, supporting Carlo Ratti Associati in this exploration of innovative ideas for our interiors', says Eckart Maise, Chief Design Officer of Vitra. The entire system can be operated by a single person through the companion app or hovering a hand in the air over the seat. The app features both a series of predetermined 3D shapes and a tool to transform the sofa into different combinations Lift-Bit will be on show at Milan's XXI Triennale, titled '21st Century. Design After Design', within the 'Rooms. Novel living concepts' exhibition curated by Beppe Finessi and produced by the Salone del Mobile.Milano. Office spaces are also getting a little smarter, as a result of other industries showing off new technology. There are four colors to choose from-- green, yellow, red and blue. Simply plug in the combination you want and watch the hexagonal stools shift around to create the piece of furniture you need Paying homage to Cedric Price 1978's 'Generator Project', Lift-Bit's responsive modules can seamlessly transform into a sofa, a bed, an ordered living room, a small auditorium, or a domestic landscape, according to the user's needs and wishes Car giant Nissan has adapted its self-driving car technology - for office chairs. Similar to self-parking cars, 'Intelligent Parking Chairs' are able to make 360 turns, locate a target position and put itself away. Nissan said the gadget was designed with Okamura chairs that are tracked by four motion cameras placed 'at various strategic angles within a room', reported Digital Trends. A prototype of the transforming sofa will be unveiled during Milan Design Week that runs from April 12th to 17th, but is accepting preorders for $1,205. Lift-Bit was developed for the 'ROOMS. Novel living concepts' exhibition organized by Salone del Mobile.Milano within the framework of the XXI Triennale. Engineering and interaction design by Opend The entire chair consists motors, wheels and batteries to power it on the journey home back under the desk. The cameras, which are Wi-Fi enabled, transmit information to the chair, or as the company says, 'generates a bird's-eye view to wirelessly transmit the chair's position and its route to destination.' There are all types of furniture on the market that cater to different needs, but a new design might be the last piece you will ever buy. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on different pieces, you cane place a pre-order for one that caters to all your needs and for just $1,250 Users just give a simple clap, similar to how the Clapper works from the 80s, and the chairs know to roll back to their original position -- without human assistance. Even though these chairs seem life-changing, the video and technology is actually a gimmick to gain excitement around Nissan's self-parking car. It is the worlds largest island, featuring vast expanses of arid scrubland and desert at its heart. But the scorched landscape of Australia posed little barrier to the Aboriginal inhabitants who lived there, isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years. Robert Fuller, a PhD student of indigenous cultural astronomy at the University of New South Wales in Australia, has found they navigated their way across hundreds of miles to trade with other groups using the star patterns to mark waypoints on their route. Writing for The Conversation, he explains how he has managed to trace the routes marked in these star maps encoded within traditional songs. Perhaps most surprising is he has discovered many of these routes are still being used today as European settlers, guided across the land by Aborigines, built their own roads. While many civilisations have used the stars to help them find their way, astronomers have discovered that Australian Aborigines used patterns of stars to mark out waypoints along trade routes that extended for hundreds of miles. This allowed them to navigate across large distances to trade with distant groups The next time you're driving down a country road in outback Australia, consider there's a good chance that route was originally mapped out by Aboriginal people perhaps thousands of years before Europeans came to Australia. And like today, they turned to the skies to aid their navigation. Except instead of using a GPS network, they used the stars above to help guide their travels. ISOLATED FOR 50,000 YEARS The first complete genetic analysis of of the Y chromosomes of Aboriginal Australian men has suggested the indigenous people of the island had remained isolated there since first arriving 50,000 years ago until the arrival of the first Europeans. It challenges a previous theory that suggested an influx of people from India arrived in Australia around 4,000-5,000 years ago. Australia is thought to have been first settled by humans shortly after Homo sapiens left Africa, traveling across Asia and island hopping across the Pacific before reaching Australia. These people are thought to have been one of the first groups to have left Africa, separating from other Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia around between 65,000 and 75,000 years ago. The DNA from Y chromosomes, which is passed from father to son, showed no sign of any subsequent migration to the continent. The data show that Aboriginal Australian Y chromosomes are very distinct from Indian ones. However, the team admit they still have one major unsolved mystery from the results - exactly how the dingo arrived in Australia 5,000 years ago. The arrival of these native dogs coincided with a change in the stone tool technoloqy and language used, leading some to suggest a new group of people had arrived in the country, bringing the dogs with them. Advertisement Aboriginal people have rich astronomical traditions, but we know relatively little about their navigational abilities. We do know that there was a very well established and extensive network of trade routes in operation before 1788. These were used by Aboriginal people for trading in goods and stories, and the trade routes covered vast distances across the Australian continent. I was researching the astronomical knowledge of the Euahlayi and Kamilaroi Aboriginal peoples of northwest New South Wales in 2013 when I became aware of 'star maps' as a means of teaching navigation outside of one's own local country. My teacher of this knowledge was Ghillar Michael Anderson, a Euahlayi Culture Man from Goodooga, near the Queensland border. This is where the western plains and the star-filled night sky meet in a seamless and profound display. One night, sitting under those stars in Goodooga, Michael pointed out a pattern of stars to the southeast, and said that they were used to teach Euahlayi travellers how to navigate outside their own country during the summer travel season. As an astronomer, I immediately realised that those stars were not in the direction of travel that Michael was describing. And anyway, they wouldn't be visible in the summer, let alone during the day when people would have been travelling. Michael said that they weren't used as a map as such, but were used as a memory aid. And in the Aboriginal manner of teaching, he asked me to research this and come back to see if 'I had gotten it'. I did some research, and looked at a route from Goodooga to the Bunya Mountains northwest of Brisbane, where an Aboriginal Bunya nut festival was held every three years until disrupted by European invasion. It turned out the pattern of stars showed the 'waypoints' on the route. These waypoints were usually waterholes or turning places on the landscape. Mr Fuller has found modern roads across Australia coincide almost perfectly with the ancient routes laid out in Aborigine star maps. The Carnarvon Gorge and Bunya Mountains star maps overlaid in red on the road map in Queensland are shown These waypoints were used in a very similar way to navigating with a GPS, where waypoints are also used as stopping or turning points. Further discussion revealed the reasons and methods of this technique. In the winter camp, when the summer travel was being planned in August or September, a person who had travelled the intended route was tasked with teaching others, who had not made this journey, how to navigate to the intended destination. The pattern of stars - the 'star map' - was used as a memory aid in teaching the route and the waypoints to the destination. Aboriginal travellers used patterns of stars to indicate waypoints along a route. The patterns acted like a memory aid to teach the route and the waypoints. The picture above shows the star map route to the Carnarvon Gorge Star maps were memorised using songlines that describe how star patterns and waypoints can lead to a specific destination (star map route to the Bunya Mountains pictured) After more research I asked Michael if the method of teaching and memorising was by song, as I was aware that songs are known to be an effective way of memorising a sequence in the oral transmission of knowledge. Michael said, 'you got it!', and I then understood that the very process of creating, then teaching, such a route resulted in what is known as a songline. A songline is a story that travels over the landscape, which is then imprinted with the song (Aboriginal people will say that the landscape imprints the song). I then learned that there were many routes/songlines from Goodooga to destinations as far as 700km (434 miles) away, which might end up in a ceremonial place, or possibly a trade 'fair'. One such route to Quilpie, in Queensland, led to a ceremonial place where Arrernte people from north of Alice Springs met the Euahlayi for joint ceremonies. Their route of travel was more than 1,500km, crossing the Simpson Desert in summer, and I was told that they would have their own star map/songline for learning that route. The implication of this is that the use of star maps for teaching travel may have been common across Australia. Robert Fuller (pictured) claims to have traced some of the star maps routes by following waypoints like the Weengallon Rock Well. He says many modern roads follow the same routes as the first European explorers would have used Aboriginal people as guides who would have followed these star maps Another surprising result of this knowledge came about when I was looking at the star map routes from Goodooga to the Bunya Mountains and Carnarvon Gorge in Queensland. When the star map routes were overlaid over the modern road map, there was a significant overlap with major roads in use today. After some reflection, the reason for this became clear. The first explorers in this region, such as Thomas Mitchell, who explored here in 1845-1846, used Aboriginal people as guides and interpreters, who were likely given directions by local Aborigines. These directions would no doubt reflect the easiest routes to traverse, and these were probably routes already established as songlines. Drovers and settlers coming into the region would have used the same routes, and eventually these became tracks and finally highways. A new app called Yes to Sex aims to ensure both parties have agreed to sex, agreed on contraception and even decided on a safe word. In just 25 seconds, the free app will record verbal consent, including safe words and the decision of whether or not protection will be used. Its creators have dubbed Yes to Sex the only safe sexual consent app, but critics in the past have argued that sex contracts like this are a dangerous distraction from actual consent education. The verbal confirmations are direct; each person must say aloud Im saying yes! followed by the safe words. Yes to Sex also asks each individual to indicate their sexual mood, with examples including horny, wild, flirtatious, sweet, tingly, and playful. And, the options include Sorry, not interested The free app is available from the App Store and Google Play, and according to the website, it is built for anyone who is having sex, whether it be a hook-up session or an attempt to conceive. To support its relevance, the website points to a startling statistic from a 2015 report by the Association of American Universities: 1 in 4 college women say they've been sexually assaulted before graduating, and the perpetrator is another student 84 percent of the time. Yes to Sex doesnt require its users to input any personal information, including names, photos, videos, emails, or phone numbers. Instead, the app records verbal consent statements from both individuals, and stores these on servers using the same methods as the US Department of Defense. These are stored for one year, along with the date, time, and place of the sexual encounter. The verbal confirmations are direct; each person must say aloud Im saying yes! followed by the safe words. DO 'SEX CONTRACTS' DISTRACT FROM IMPORTANT CONSENT EDUCATION? Last summer, a similar sex-contract app called WeConsent aimed to confirm consent between partners before engaging in sexual activity. The app cost roughly $4.50, and uses an iPhone's video camera to make a 20-second recording of both partners agreeing to sex. A breathy female British voice asks participants to state their name and to agree to sex. Once the video has been completed the voice says: Consent confirmed. Have fun. The video is then saved in a cloud or server. Many supported the idea of this type of app, saying it can help to erase misunderstandings. But, the idea was also met with backlash from consent advocates. Jasmin Enriquez, 23, who was a victim of date-rape as a student at Pennsylvania State University, said last year that sex contracts are pure evil. They are nothing more than stunts and money-generating schemes which distract from the real issue which is education, Enriquez said. We need to educate students of both sexes. Informed consent is an ongoing, shifting process which cannot be encapsulated in a contract. A contract fails to safeguard a woman who might change her mind after signing it. And Susuana Amoah, womens officer at the UKs National Union of Students said, The idea that consent could be given through an app is a really dangerous notion this type of technology isnt the answer to developing better sexual consent behaviour. We shouldnt be encouraging students to equate consent with theres an app for that we should be encouraging them to engage in on-going discussions about consent and boundaries. Advertisement A screenshot of the app gives the example: Im saying YES! Our safe words are: Code Butterscotch. Yes to Sex also asks each individual to indicate their sexual mood, with examples including horny, wild, flirtatious, sweet, tingly, and playful. And, the options include Sorry, not interested. Yes to Sex takes note of contraceptives as well, requiring both parties to agree on the use of: condom and birth control, just a condom, just birth control, or nothing. The app also makes the important reminder that consent is necessary throughout the duration of the encounter. The app also makes the important reminder that consent is necessary throughout the duration of the encounter. Yes to Sex aims to help sexually active people make better decisions, the website explains, and says it causes people to stop and think in the moments before sex If consent is withdrawn or can no longer be given, or your partner says the safe words, sexual activity must stop, it reminds. Yes to Sex aims to help sexually active people make better decisions, the website explains, and says it causes people to stop and think in the moments before sex. To back this up, the website sites nationwide statistics on unplanned pregnancies, STDs, and consent laws. With a verbal agreement, the app says it can validate consent pre-sex. Why verbal? To clarify the yes, as people cant read if they are passed out or sleeping, the website explains. Advertisement When the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge kick off their tour of India and Bhutan at the weekend, they will be staying in one of the most famous hotels in the world. Prince William and Kates seven-day tour comes with a packed itinerary, but their down time in Mumbai will be spent in the lap of luxury at the five-star Taj Mahal Palace. Opened in 1903, the high-end hotel is renowned for its professional service and rich history, although it experienced a dark chapter in 2008 when it was attacked by Islamic militants. Taj Mahal Palace's presidential suite, the Tata Suite, has marble floors and hand-woven silk draperies, and its own spa and butler The 1,500-square foot Rajput Suite replicates an opulent Rajasthani palace with arches, a royal colour palette and a peacock centrepiece Work and play mix in the Rajput Suite's study, which features a detailed work desk and a swinging bench under a crystal chandelier Set on the Arabian Sea, the hotel comprises the palace wing (left) and a tower built in 1973 (middle) next to Gateway of India (right) The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have a packed itinerary during their seven-day tour of India and Bhutan With stunning views of the Arabian Sea and Gateway of India monument, the 560-room Taj Mahal Palace comprising the original palace wing and a tower built in 1973 is the flagship hotel of Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces. It has welcomed presidents, including Barack Obama, kings and Hollywood film stars such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. During their stay at the hotel, Will and Kate will lay a wreath in memory of the victims of the 2008 assault, meet staff who protected guests and attend a Bollywood charity gala. Of its 560 rooms and suites, the 15-room Tata Suite is the most extravagant, at 5,000 square feet. Taj Mahal Palace has welcomed presidents, including Barack Obama, kings and Hollywood film stars such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie This room in the newer tower wing overlooks the Gateway of India, a waterfront basalt arch that is Mumbai's top tourist attraction Guests can choose from 10 restaurants that serve cuisine from all over the world, including Golden Dragon (Chinese) NIGHTLY RATES AT THE TAJ MAHAL PALACE, MUMBAI (SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY, SEASON AND VAT) Tata Suite - 10,636.14 Rajput Suite - 5,318.07 Grande Luxury Suite - 831 Luxury Suite - 486 Executive Suite - 392 Taj Club Room - 240 Luxury Grande Room Sea View - 222 Luxury Grande Room City View - 206 Luxury Room City View - 180 Advertisement It is said to be the most desired suite in Mumbai, offering panoramic views of the sea and Gateway of India. Named for Tata Group, the company that owns the hotel and Tata Steel and Jaguar, among other holdings, the presidential suite is decorated with priceless paintings, authentic colonial furniture, crystal chandeliers and hand-woven silk draperies. Priced at 10,600 a night, the suite has marble floors and its own private spa, and a butler and chef to take care of every need. The 1,500-square foot, 5,300-a-night Rajput Suite, another stately offering, replicates an opulent Rajasthani palace with marble floors, arches, a royal colour palette and a peacock centrepiece in the living room. The suite where musician Ravi Shankar taught Beatles member George Harrison to play the sitar has been renamed the Ravi Shankar Suite. When hunger strikes, the hotel has 10 restaurants serving cuisine from all over the world, including Wasabi by Morimoto (Japanese), Golden Dragon (Chinese), Masala Kraft (contemporary and Indian) and Souk (Eastern Mediterranean). It also boasts a 24-hour multi-cuisine coffee shop and 24-hour room service. Taj Mahal Palace, in south Mumbai, was built at a cost of 250,000 (nearly 27.5million in todays currency) and opened in 1903 The hotel has stunning views of the Arabian Sea (left) and incredible detail within its corridor (right) and 560 guest rooms and suites Taj Mahal Palace was one of several sites in Mumbai that were targeted by an Islamic terror group during a four-day siege in 2008 Additional amenities include a spa, salon, outdoor pool, 24-hour fitness centre and 24-hour on-call doctor and nurse. Taj Mahal Palace was built at a cost of 250,000 (nearly 27.5million in todays currency) in the early 1900s and underwent extensive renovations following the bombing and shooting attacks, which left 164 people dead at multiple locations in Mumbai. Members of the Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba took hostages at the Taj Mahal Palace during a four-day siege that ended when commandos stormed the hotel and killed the remaining attackers. Thirty-two people, including a commando, died at the hotel. Before they return to the UK, Prince William and Kate will also visit historic sites in New Delhi, the Taj Mahal and Kaziranga National Park in India, and the Tiger's Nest Monastery in Bhutan. The royal couple will be travelling under heavy security. On Wednesday, police in India issued a terror alert warning three jihadis may have entered the country via the Punjab region which borders Pakistan. The warning said the terrorists armed with guns, ammunition and a suicide belt could target Delhi, Goa and Mumbai - the city where the Duke and Duchess will begin their tour. This jaw-dropping footage shows the moment a plane grazed the hand of a fearless photographer as he risked his life to get the perfect shot as it landed at one of the most dangerous airports in the world. In the shocking 360-degree video, the tourist stands in the path of the small plane and ducks just in time narrowly avoiding certain death as the plane buzzes overhead. The wild scene was captured by a fellow plane spotter as photographers gathered near the Gustaf III Airport runway on the picturesque Caribbean island of St Barts. Scroll down for video The runway is sandwiched between a hill and the beach, forcing pilots to fly dangerously low over a road Sebastien Politano (crouching) shot footage of the tourist who risked his life for the perfect photograph Politano's video clip shows the tourist ducking slightly at the right moment as the plane buzzes overhead Gustaf III Airport is mainly used by regional airlines or charter companies operating turboprop planes Local resident and videographer Sebastien Politano, who captured footage of the astonishing moment, said one of the plane's wheels made contact with the man. Politano, 46, told MailOnline Travel: 'The man has felt the wheel of the aircraft touching his right hand. He has shown me the little traces. 'He just said, "It hit my hand, it hit my hand." At this time I think he doesn't realise that he is a lucky man.' Politano, who ducked for cover a few feet away, said he was testing his new 360-degree camera and does not know the photographer, describing him as a tourist. Politano didnt realise how close the man was to the plane when it flew past them until he checked his footage afterward. After the plane flew just above his head, the tourist turned to snap more photos and then coolly turned to the camera and smiled. Politano, a local resident and videographer, was testing out his new 360-degree camera Politano's footage shows the man squaring up to take a photo as a motorbike driver ducks under the plane The tourist told Politano that one of the plane's wheel grazed his right hand as he snapped the photos Politano, who was a few feet away, ducked and didn't realise what happened until he checked his footage Politano said the man showed him marks on his right hand after the plane buzzed past him Photographers regularly gather near the runway to snap photos of planes on their final approach The tourist ducks out of the way as the plane buzzes overhead before snapping more photos of it With the short runway sandwiched between a steep hill and a white-sand beach on the Bay of St Jean, skilled pilots must fly incredibly low over a busy road on their final approach. The steep descent can be a nerve-wracking experience for passengers and crew members. But their perilous journey provides an amazing photo opportunity for those who regularly gather under the flight path in the village of St Jean. The landing strip in St Barts is so short that pilots must have special training just to be able to land there It was previously named one of the worlds most dangerous airports by a History Channel programme The steep descent can be a nerve-wracking experience for passengers and crew members However, few are daring or foolish enough to stand in the path of incoming planes, just in case something goes wrong. Most photographers stand off to the side at a safer distance. The runway isnt long enough to accommodate large passenger jets and is mainly used by regional airlines or charter companies operating turboprop planes on flights to and from other Caribbean islands. The landing strip is so short that pilots must have special training just to be able to land there. The takeoff at the airport is just as exhilarating as the landing - planes must lift off over a white-sand beach The airport is named for King Gustav III of Sweden, who was in power when it obtained the stunning island And the takeoff is just as exhilarating as the landing. Departing planes lift off over a beach at the end of the runway, where signs are posted warning beachgoers not to stand in the flight path. It was previously named one of the worlds most dangerous airports by the History Channel programme Most Extreme Airports. Gustaf III Airport is named for King Gustav III of Sweden, who was in power when Sweden obtained the stunning volcanic island from France in 1784. St Barts, or Saint Barthelemy, was sold back to France in 1878 and is now a luxurious French overseas collectivity that is a popular holiday spot for the rich and famous. AirAsia has launched an investigation after a customer claimed he bit into a dead lizard while eating his in-flight meal. Waseem Abbas, from Pakistan, was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching in Borneo when he discovered what he says was a reptile in a meal of nasi lemak, a rice dish served with anchovies. After the flight, the 27-year-old reported the alleged incident to the police and filed a statement. Waseem Abbas claims he discovered a reptile in a meal of nasi lemak, a rice dish served with anchovies (pictured) Following Abbas's claims, a spokesman for AirAsia told MailOnline Travel that the airline was aware of the allegation of a 'foreign object' in a meal and was investigating. He said: 'AirAsia is aware of the reports on the alleged foreign object found in our inflight meal by one of our guests. We are in communication with the guest to establish the facts surrounding the matter. 'We regret the guest did not hand over the item immediately which would have enabled us to quickly establish the cause or the source of the alleged contamination. 'We nevertheless are treating the matter seriously and have started an investigation into this complaint to ascertain the facts and to rule out any foul play.' In his police statement Abbas reported that he purchased the in-flight meal and was 'met by a lizard' after opening it. AirAsia has launched an investigation after the lizard incident was reported to police WASEEM ABBAS' POLICE REPORT 'At approximately 9.50am when I was on an aeroplane (Airasia AK5232) on the way to Kuching, I bought food - nasi lemak. 'While I was eating [I was] met with a lizard in the food. After that I informed the steward and he asked for me to change food containers but I [did] not want to. 'After I landed at Kuching International Airport I continued to the station to make a report [for] the safety of myself, [I was] afraid of the future [after] what happened to me.' Advertisement He reported that after the discovery he informed an air steward who offered him a new meal, but he declined and travelled straight to the police station after landing due to 'safety fears'. Speaking to Malaysiakini, Abbas claimed that he had noticed the meal was unusually crunchy. It was only then he realised he had been chewing on the lizard. He said: 'As I've always had a craving for fried ikan bilis (anchovies) served in red-hot sambal, I immediately helped myself to that portion (of the nasi lemak). 'I still cant look at nasi lemak and sambal without visions of crawling lizards engulfing my mind.' According to Malaysiakini, Abbas claimed that he had suffered food poisoning following the incident. Responding to the allegation, AirAsia said that it would be willing to assist Abbas with his medical expenses, but were still awaiting his reports and bills to confirm. AirAsia added: 'As to the allegation of food poisoning, we would assist the guest with his medical expenses and we are still awaiting the guest's medical reports and bills. Passengers days of being unable to sleep in economy class may be over thanks to this concept that converts a row of aircraft seats into a bed. Italian seat manufacturer Geven designed its Piuma Sofa for travellers who want to stretch out in a cabin where passengers arent afforded a lot of personal space. The company, based outside Naples, said it takes less than 30 seconds to convert three or four seats into a sleeper sofa that allows passengers to get a better nights sleep than they would while seated upright. Scroll down for video Italian company Geven said it takes less than 30 seconds to convert three or four seats into a 'sleeper sofa' The Piuma Sofa is tailored to individual passengers, couples or families who want more space A passenger would have to book the entire sofa ahead of time or on board if seats are available Geven showed off the concept at this weeks Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany. When it is converted, the armrests raise and the headrests are removed and placed onto an extension at the base of the seat cushion. The internationally patented sofa has drawn interest from a number of airlines and is tailored to individual travellers, couples or families. A passenger would have to book the entire sofa ahead of time or on board if seats are available, although not every row would have a sofa. It would allow airlines to cash in seats that would otherwise by empty. Geven said the seats are lightweight and the sofa extension doesnt interfere with legroom or under-seat storage when stowed. South African Airways is a launch customer and AirAsia X has signed a letter of intent to purchase sofa seats, Flightglobal reported. Deliveries are expected to start in October. When the seats are converted into a sofa, the headrests are removed and placed onto extensions South African Airways is a launch customer and AirAsia X has signed a letter of intent to purchase seats Only a portion of the economy class cabin would have rows with the sofa seat, according to this rendering Trevor Lambert, who is working with Geven on the concept, told the website: You could sell 20 beds on a flight thats half empty and, assuming you charge 200 for each one, that is 4,000 of extra revenue per flight. Geven isnt the first company to design a sleeper seat for economy class. The concept is similar to Air New Zealands SkyCouch, China Airlines Family Couch and a sleeper seat offered by Air Astana, the national airline of Kazakhstan. They are set to kick off the European leg of their Sounds Good, Feels Good world tour. And British fans couldn't have been happier with the arrival of 5 Seconds Of Summer as they arrived BBC Radio 1 in London on Thursday morning. Despite the early hour, the Aussie rockers appeared to be in high spirits as they animatedly took selfies with frenzied fans ahead of their radio interview. Meeting their devotees! Fans were sent into a tizzy with the arrival of 5 Seconds Of Summer as they arrived BBC Radio 1 in London on Thursday morning Clad in a khaki bomber jacket paired with skintight black jeans, Michael Clifford, 20, looked every inch the rock star as he pulled silly faces with one lucky fan. He completed his trendy outfit with a pair of lace-up black leather boots, a cap worn backwards and a set of leather and metal wristbands. Meanwhile, Calum Hood played it cool as he sauntered down the pavement, opting to pull a serious face as he posed for selfies. Say cheese! Clad in a khaki bomber jacket paired with skin-tight black jeans, Michael Clifford, 20, looked every inch the rock-star as he pulled silly faces with one lucky fan Game face! Meanwhile, Calum Hood, played it cool as he sauntered down the pavement, opting to pull a serious face as he posed for selfies Simple and chic: The handsome 20-year-old swaddled up from the cold in a black zip-up jacket, a pair of black skinny jeans and a set of leather riding boots The handsome 20-year-old swaddled up from the cold in a black zip-up jacket, a pair of black skinny jeans and a set of leather riding boots. Ashton Irwin, 21, appeared relaxed as he posed serenely with fans, his hair obscured beneath the pulled-up hood of his jacket. He wore an all-black ensemble consisting of a hoodie, faded skinny jeans and a pair of lace-up boots. Man in black! Ashton Irwin, 21, appeared relaxed as he posed serenely with fans, his hair obscured beneath the pulled-up hood of his jacket Luke Hemmings, 19, was also spotted posing for a selfie as he wandered toward the radio station with his hands in his jeans pockets. Later the Hey Everybody! rockers took to the airwaves in an interview with radio host Nick Grimshaw during which time Ashton shared an awkward moment with newsreader Tina Daheley. After admiring her broadcasting skills, Ashton asked Tina whether she would be attending their show at London's O2 that evening. Trendy: Luke Hemmings, 19, was also spotted posing for a selfie as he wandered toward the radio station with his hands in his jeans pockets Oh dear! Later, the Hey Everybody! rockers took to the airwaves in an interview with radio host Nick Grimshaw, during which time Ashton shared an awkward moment with newsreader Tina Daheley Ashton's flirty advances were quickly knocked back however, with Tina promptly responding that she was too busy to attend. Following the radio interview, Michael took to Twitter with the message: 'Awesome morning at radio 1; thanks to everyone who came out and met us and everyone at the station.' The Sydney-born boys will kick off the European portion of their world tour before moving to the USA and Canada in July. They will then arrive in Australia in September to perform to crowds in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Paying his dues: Following the radio interview, Michael took to Twitter with the message: 'Awesome morning at radio 1; thanks to everyone who came out and met us and everyone at the station' He's well-known for his brutal honesty and ability to strike fear into the hearts of those who audition before him. But Simon Cowell, 56, has been in high spirits ahead of the latest series of Britain's Got Talent, according to his three co-judges, and David Walliams, 44, playfully gave his opinion why. Walliams, Alesha Dixon, 37, and Amanda Holden, 45, were asked if they had had to put Simon in his place during the audition phase of the upcoming series at the show's press launch in the Regency Cinema, London. Scroll down for video Playful mood: David Walliams, 44, joked that 'regular sex' was the reason Simon Cowell was in a good mood in the upcoming series of Britain's Got Talent at the show's press launch at the Regency Cinema, London Former Mis-Teeq singer Alesha was the first to answer, explaining: 'He does get a little bit carried away with our phones, and stealing them and writing inappropriate tweets. And he can cross the line there. But, apart from that hes so funny, and hes such great company.' And David followed it up with: 'Hes been in a very good mood to be honest.' Alesha admitted that she was 'slightly worried' by Simon's change of character, but Amanda diplomatically said she thought it was just because he was 'happy', However, never one to shy away from providing an entertaining comment, Walliams joked: Hes having regular sex. See Simon Cowell updates as David Walliams jokes 'regular sex' made Simon Cowell happy A new man: Has girlfriend Lauren Silverman, 38, mellowed out music mogul Simon? And the comedian couldn't help but try and wind Amanda up when the star was asked about her showstopping outfit selections. Discussing how she chooses her much talked about sartorial selections, Amanda said: 'God, well I have a stylist obviously, who is absolutely brilliant, and I dont know. I just go for what I like pick a nice colour, sort of go for whats flattering. And if its a cold day I tend to get in the headlines.' Quizzed whether or not she was affected by what people say online, she explained: 'No. I never scroll down, and thats going to be the title of my next book. I couldnt no, I dont David cheekily interjected: 'No, you shouldnt read it.' 'No?' replied Amanda. Doppelganger: David made an hilarious entrance to the event dressed as Simon To which David cheekily added: 'All those red arrows, oof!' It would appear Simon has some tough competition this year, not from his fellow judges, mind, but from David's mum Kathleen, who filled in for the music mogul during one of the auditions. The judges were effusive in their praise of Kathleen, with Alesha proclaiming her 'amazing'. And Amanda claimed that she was even better than David. She said: 'Youre mums comments, she got in before the rest of us and when they asked for her opinion she said: Well I just dont think the crowd found it entertaining. While Alesha was a fan of her direct approach, saying: 'She was more ballsy because Davids very hesitant about pressing the buzzer, but his mum just got straight in there.' Simon was unable to answer questions as he was busy filming America's Got Talent in Los Angeles. The mogul has been in a relationship with Lauren Silverman, 38, since 2013 and the couple share a two-year-old son called Eric. The couple are regularly pictured doting on their son with the youngster bearing a strong resemblance to his famous father. Shock jock Kyle Sandilands is known for his controversial comments on-air. And Friday, the KIIS FM morning show presenter told co-host Jackie O Henderson that she didn't know what its like to be a hard-working mum. You don't know what it's like being a parent Jackie, the 44-year-old jokingly told the mother-of-one live on air. Scroll down for video No he didn't: Shock jock Kyle Sandilands tells co-host Jackie 'O' Henderson that she doesn't 'know what it's like to be a hard working mum' You just have one very easy-going daughter and you have a stay at home husband. You make out that you are a hard-working mum, but you don't know what it's like,' he concluded All Jackie could say in response of her co-presenters comments was a simple no The awkward conversation came about during an interview with western Sydney couple, Matt and Donna Blackwell, who are the parents of seven young children and nine puppies. Family snap: Jackie 'O' takes a selfie of her husband Lee Henderson and their daughter Catalina Kitty The family recently lost their home and all their belongings in a house fire on April 2. Donna and Matt were on the show to tell their heartbreaking story, as well as appeal to the public for donations. Meanwhile, Jackie is a doting mother to five-year-old Catalina Kitty Henderson. Kisses: Kitty is pictured giving her famous mother a peck on the cheek, while Jackie 'O' pulls a big smile The long-time radio personality is known to take to social media to gush about her young daughter. Most recently, the blonde beauty uploaded a sweet snap of herself with her look-a-like youngster in front of the Opera House in Sydney. Kitty is pictured giving her famous mother a peck on the cheek, while Jackie flashes a big smile. The blonde captioned the post: 'Been waiting years to see the Australian Ballet do Swan Lake at the Opera House. It didn't disappoint.' Park days: Jackie 'O' takes a selfie while her Husband Lee and their daughter explore Centennial Park, in Sydney Fun and games: Jackie 'O' plays with her young daughter Old flame: Kyle, who doesn't have children, separated from his pop star wife Tamara Jaber in 2011. The former couple were picture at the 2007 TV Week Logie Awards In another post uploaded to the photo sharing app, the KISS FM host took a selfie while Kitty and her husband Lee Henderson walked behind her. She wrote alongside the picture: 'Centennial Park #walkintheparkselfie.' Kyle, who doesn't have children, separated from his pop star wife Tamara Jaber in 2011. The former lovebirds tied the knot in 2008 after being together for nine years but filed for divorce just two years later. He has since moved on with Australian model Imogen Anthony, whom he started dating just months after calling it quits with Tamara. Neighbours: Kylie and Guy Pearce in their soap days Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue are about to become neighbours again nearly three decades after they worked together on the Aussie TV soap. Director Stephan Elliott will reunite them when he begins shooting his film Flammable Children in Australia in October. Pearce and Minogue lets call them Guy-lie played friends Mike Young and Charlene Robinson on Neighbours in the Eighties. Elliott said his movie is about six families who live in a classic Australian beach community in 1975: the year Jaws came out. Or the year when, suddenly, everyone became terrified of the water, as he put it. The film-maker, who wrote and directed The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, also starring Pearce, told me his new picture is loosely based on his parents. We were the generation that used to watch our parents get completely drunk on the newly invented cask wine, he said, adding that the adults would get so addled theyd engage in key swapping parties. But they didnt know the ropes! Elliott still has several roles to cast, so hes not sure whether Minogue will be married to Pearce or to someone else. Well see how it swings, he joked. Elliott will head to London next week to cast a 10 Pom this refers to Brits who once paid a tenner fare to emigrate to Australia. The director told me hes feeling lucky about Flammable Children (the name refers to how, before Factor 50 and skin cancer scares, parents would slather their children with baby oil) because many of his crew won Oscars for their work on Mad Max: Fury Road. They have all stayed on this project, he marvelled. Pearce and Minogue played friends Mike Young and Charlene Robinson on Neighbours in the Eighties Four Billys take the stage for final show The cast of the Billy Elliot musical will jete on to the Victoria Palace stage tomorrow night for the last time. After an 11-year run, the show by Lee Hall and Elton John will bow out because the theatre has to undergo extensive refurbishment. Once its complete, Cameron Mackintosh, who controls the venue, nicknamed the VP, will co-produce the first British production of hit Broadway musical Hamilton in the summer or autumn of 2017. The cast of the Billy Elliot musical will jete on to the Victoria Palace stage tomorrow night for the last time. Pictured: Brodie Donougher playing Billy Billy Elliot wont be going quietly. Director Stephen Daldry told me that because there are four Billys, four Michaels four of everything concerning the children we thought everyone should be in the last show. All the boys and girls will share the roles on the last night. There may be one or two surprises, too. At past celebrations at the VP, Elton has donned a tutu for the finale, but when I saw him in Los Angeles recently he nixed that idea. But Ill do something fun, he said. A touring production just started performances at the Sunderland Empire. And Daldry doesnt rule out the show returning to London. The Fifth Column (Southwark Playhouse) Rating: American novelist Ernest Hemingway wrote this, his only play, in Madrid 1937 while under bombardment from Francos fascist army. Personally, I wouldnt fancy writing any kind of play under an artillery assault, but what notorious tough nut Hemingway wound up with was a surprisingly amusing stage take on film noir. Our hard-boiled hero Philip Rawlings calls himself a second rate cop trying to be a third rate newspaperman. Fighting alongside the communists, necking whisky and seducing women, hes nothing less than a peoples cad who falls for a rich blonde heiress in the neighbouring room much to the chagrin of his Moorish occasional flame, local sex worker Senorita Anita. Alix Dumnore as Dorothy Bridges is delightful as the leggy, high-maintenance blonde while the turn of the night belongs to Simon Darwen as Rawlings Im not sure that the resultant snapshot of life under siege tells us much about the Spanish Civil War, but aside from some flabby and hokey scenes, it is thoroughly watchable. The noir-ish tone is set with lines like: I dont believe anything I hear, and very little of what I see. There are touches of Fawlty Towers farce, too, with a Manuel-ish manager who declares solidarity with Rawlings by crooning: You dissolve my heart with feeling. Tricia Thorns directs an equally likeable production, even if Alex Markers budget set makes the Hotel look like a local authority hostel. Simplicity and suggestion would have been better, but its the acting that really anchors the production. Alix Dunmore is delightful as the leggy, high-maintenance blonde slumming it with the International Brigade, while Stephen Ventura has an undoubted twinkle in his eye as the Hotel manager. They both took a risk to find love on national television. But the romance between The Farmer Wants A Wife's Julz and Melanie has been short-lived, with the latter confirming the pair have split. Speaking to The Motherish this week, 27-year-old exercise physiologist Melanie said: 'Julz and I ended the relationship in late December, we havent spoken since'. Scroll down for video It's over! The Farmer Wants A Wife star Melanie has revealed she and South Australian farmer Julz have called it quits ' When shooting wrapped up in September, the pair chose to pursue a long-distance relationship, and tried their hardest to make it work as at that stage 'they hardly actually knew each other'. But while the duo no doubt developed feelings for each other while on the Channel Nine program, it seems the spark faded soon after filming. 'We spoke as much as we could, but it was often that our "free time" didnt co-inside. After two months Julz began harvest and I had just been offered a (short) term contract that was an opportunity I couldnt pass,' Melanie told The Motherish. Opening up: The 27-year-old exercise physiologist has revealed the pair split in December and haven't spoken to each other since Both reality television personalities had the opportunity to meet one another's families, and were even planning to live together by January of this year. 'During the four months of dating off-screen, I got to know a lot about Julz, his lifestyle and myself,' she admitted, revealing she is now focusing more on her career in Sydney. Meanwhile Julz, back on the farm in Tumble Bay in South Australia, has opened up about his close relationship with seven-year-old daughter River. Speaking to Woman's Day magazine recently, he said: 'She's without a doubt the apple of my eye'. What could have been: Both reality television personalities had the opportunity to meet one another's families, and were even planning to live together by January of this year Found love: While the pair no doubt developed affection for each other while on the Channel Nine program, it seems the spark faded soon after filming He went on to add: 'The bond that River and I share is indescribable - I think the world of her, as she does of me.' As for Julz and Melanie, during the final episodes of the series, there was no mistaking that Julz had fallen for the stunner. His final decision seemed apparent when he took Alli on the 24-hour date but later admitted during the date he couldn't help thinking about Melanie the entire time. Match made: During the final episodes of the series, there was no mistaking that Julz had fallen for the stunner 'There is no two ways about it we havent got that genuine spark or connection to be honest and I couldn't get Mel out of my mind,' he confessed. Taking Melanie on an intimate dinner that night, Julz let his guard down as he openly confessed his feelings for her. 'No one has caught my eye like you have - I've got a really good feeling going on,' he gushed. 'I feel like I'm going to be like a bloody school kid,' he confessed to her. The pair then locked lips across the table, with Melanie later gushing: 'I never expected I would feel what I am feeling tonight and I am hoping this farmer has found his wife.' 'No one has caught my eye like you have': The giddy farmer made his feelings known to the red-haired beauty during the final episodes The label is known for its bright coloured patterns, but these stars decided to shun all colour. Olivia Wilde, Rose Byrne and Emmy Rossum rocked darker hued looks at the Marimekko For Target Launch Celebration. The three actress all hit The High Line's red carpet in New York on Thursday evening looking subtly chic. Showing their dark sides: Olivia Wilde, Rose Byrne and Emmy Rossum rocked darker hued looks at the Marimekko For Target Launch Celebration As the Finnish company's new collaborative collection for Target is more for hitting the beach then the red carpet, the stars were free to wear whatever they liked and seems they all like black. Olivia created a masculine but still feminine look by layering different pieces. The Vinyl star stepped out in a pair of straight leg black pants with a sheer collared shirt featuring a long length of fabric at the back and a suit jacket. New mom Rose also added a tailored suit jacket but wore a very different look for the event. Lovely layers: Olivia stepped out in a pair of straight leg black pants with a sheer collared shirt featuring a long length of fabric at the back and a suit jacket The Aussie actress looked sartorially sharp in a pair of flowing culottes with a black and white sport blouse with bow - which she wore undone - detail. For her baby-free evening - no doubt two-month-old Rocco was with his father Bobby Cannavale - the star wore her ombre locks in a soft curls which fell to her shoulders in a lob. Emmy meanwhile, wore a shirt dress which featured cutout sleeves and skirt. Changing it up: New mom Rose also added a tailored suit jacket but wore a very different look for the event The star paired the dress with some statement making black and white Sophia Webster heels featuring a butterfly. The actress were out in force to promote the latest Target collaboration which hits stores April 17. Marimekko X Target features not only clothes and swimwear for women and girls, but also homewares and outdoor sporting goods including a paddle board. Based around the idea of eternal summer - as during the summer in Finland the sun stays out till midnight - the collection is ready for warm weather. She enjoyed a trip back to her native Australia this week as she attended the launch of her new medical drama series, Heartbeat. But Melissa George's rendezvous Down Under came to an end on Friday, as the 39-year-old stepped out at Sydney airport ahead of her flight back to Los Angeles. Pushing her five-month-old baby Solal in a stroller, the blonde beauty appeared typically stylish for the low-key occasion, clad in a preppy tartan blazed matched with a white collared shirt and blue jeans. Scroll down for video Baby on board! Melissa George, 39, stepped out at Sydney airport ahead of her flight back to Los Angeles on Friday while pushing her five-month-old baby Solal in a stroller Her outfit was complete with a yellow snake-skin shoulder bag and a pair of large hoop earrings. Melissa opted to style her hair into a no-fuss top-knot while her makeup was kept fresh and feminine with a slick of soft pink lipstick, a hint of rose-coloured blush and a swipe of mascara. The former Home And Away star ushered in the Australian launch of Heartbeat on Thursday by taking to Twitter with a picture of herself posing in front of Sydney's iconic Harbour Bridge. Primped: Melissa opted to style her hair into a no-fuss top-knot, while her makeup was kept fresh and feminine with a slick of soft pink lipstick, a hint of rose-coloured blush and a swipe of mascara 'Dreamy docs, love triangles and bizarre procedures': The former Home And Away star ushered in the Australian launch of Heartbeat on Thursday by taking to Twitter with a picture of herself posing in front of Sydney's iconic Harbour Bridge 'Dreamy docs, love triangles and bizarre procedures,' Tweeted the blonde beauty as she posed on a chair with her eyes closed and head tilted toward the sun. In the US-made show Heartbeat, Melissa plays the starring role of Dr. Alex Panttiere, a high-achieving cardiac surgeon with a complicated personal life. As part of her preparations for the role, Melissa attended the heart operation of a 72-year-old man at a hospital in Paris. A challenging role! In the US-made show Heartbeat, Melissa plays the starring role of Dr. Alex Panttiere, a high-achieving cardiac surgeon with a complicated personal life First-hand experience: As part of her preparations for the role, Melissa attended the heart operation of a 72-year-old man at a hospital in Paris Speaking to News Corp about the eye-opening experience, the glamorous actress said: 'I stood on my feet, next to the surgeon, for almost eight hours and the patient was prepped and when they pulled out that saw, I looked at him and said: 'you're not going to cut him open are you?' 'And he just said, 'well how else am I going to get to the heart?' And it was, you know, spectacular' she continued. Melissa has also recently signed on to appear in upcoming Queensland-based film, Bloom by local writer and director Priscilla Cameron. She will star alongside fellow Australian Sophie Lowe, known for her role in the 2009 flick Beautiful Kate. Her brother Rob shocked the world with the announcement of his engagement to Blac Chyna earlier this week. But don't expect Khloe Kardashian to send a warm greeting to the happy couple. The 31-year-old reality star is apparently still none-too-pleased about her younger brother's relationship according to a Thursday report from People. Scroll down for video Not happy: Khloe Kardashian, pictured in LA last week, is not pleased with her brother's engagement news according to a Thursday night report from People Interesting: Her brother Rob Kardashian reportedly popped the question to girlfriend Blac Chyna on Monday after three months of dating 'Ever since Khloe found out that Rob is dating Blac Chyna, she felt betrayed,' a source told the weekly. 'This feeling has never changed. After finding out about the engagement, she is furious at the lack of respect.' Rob famously put a ring on it on Monday to much fanfare on social media and the family is said to blindsided by the news. Several members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan were enjoying a ski trip in Vail, Colorado as they jetted out the same night that the happy couple shared their engagement news. The insider explained: 'She can't believe Rob didn't tell the family in advance. She thinks Rob is causing drama on purpose and wants them [his family] to be arguing.' See Khloe Kardashian news as she 'can't believe' Rob did not tell family about engagement Ouch: the 31-year-old reality star - pictured with older sister Kourtney, 36, in Vail, Colorado on Wednesday night - is said to feel 'betrayed' as a source said: 'This feeling has never changed. After finding out about the engagement, she is furious at the lack of respect' 'She can't believe Rob didn't tell the family in advance': Khloe does not seemed pleased with the news according to the new report Though Chyna's ex and boyfriend to Rob's half-sister Kylie Jenner, Tyga, has commented on the news, Khloe, Kris and the rest of the Kardashian clan have remained mum on it. The source said: 'Khloe plans on ignoring the news. She is not going to send Rob any well wishes. She is not happy about the engagement, and is not going to pretend that she is.' Khloe was the sibling who took a formerly reclusive Rob under her wing when he battled diabetes and cut himself out of the Keeping Up With The Kardashians family business, blocking himself off from most social contact. Though Khloe is thought to have chucked Rob out of her house when he went public with his relationship with Chyna. Showing it off: Chyna and 28-year-old Rob showed off her new jewellery during an outing in LA on Monday but the former Keeping Up With The Kardashians star apparently did not tell his family Betrayal seems to be the key word in the drama as it was used in a similar report about the same situation in January. 'Khloe feels majorly betrayed by Rob after she always stuck up for him,' a source told UsWeekly. 'She feels like this is a major blow to the family. Nobody in the family likes it.' Back in February Khloe used social media to try to repair the damage done in their relationship when she admitted that she missed her baby brother Rob in a sentimental post. Sharing a youthful throwback snap to Instagram, Kardashian sister put her differences with new girlfriend Blac Chyna aside and reached out to Rob by posting the black and white snap. The post, accompanied by three unhappy emojis, read: 'It's simple... I miss you' and saw Rob planting a kiss on his sister's cheek as she pouts down the lens. Reaching out: Khloe displayed her loyalty to younger brother Rob Kardashian back in February when she posted this throwback image and said she missed him She jetted out of Los Angeles to Puerto Escondido, Mexico for her Bachelorette celebrations earlier in the day. And it didn't take long for Nicole Trunfio to strip down to a bikini on the beach upon her arrival. The mother-of-one showed off her incredible figure in the two-piece as she kicked off her hens celebrations of Thursday. Scroll down for video Bachelorette in a bikini! Nicole Trunfio stripped down into a bikini upon landing in Mexico on Thursday for her hens celebrations 'On route to Mexico': Earlier in the day Nicole posted a snap of herself at the airport, captioning the image: 'On route to heaven', followed by the hashtags '#bachelorette', '#puertoescondido', and '#girltime' Earlier in the day, Nicole had posted a snap of herself at the airport ready to jet out, captioning the image: 'On route to heaven', followed by the hashtags '#bachelorette', '#puertoescondido', and '#girltime'. As always the breathtaking brunette flashed some flesh, showing off her very toned tummy in a beige crop top for her flight. She paired it with a cream coat that she wore over her shoulders, and sported a pair of very ripped jeans that showcased an eyeful of her tanned, toned legs. The stylish beauty finished with a pair of sneakers and a chic Tory Burch bag. Muah! The 30-year-old beauty looked stylish in a beige crop top and ripped denim jeans Looking good! The stunning supermodel accessorised her edgy ensemble with a chic Tory Burch bag Just three days ago, Nicole announced the countdown to her wedding with her beau and father of her one-year-old son, Zion. The brunette beauty gave fans with a sneak peek of her extravagant wedding gown as she attended her final fittings at a bridal boutique. She teased in the accompanying caption: 'Fittings fittings..... What to wear.......What to wear! #countdown is on!!!! #clarkjrwedding #mrsclark #2weeks.' Meanwhile, Nicole recently joined up with fellow Australian models Jessica Gomes and Gemma Ward for InStyle magazine. What a tease: Earlier this week Nicole gave a sneak peek of her final bridal fittings as she prepares to walk down the aisle to her American musician beau, Gary Clark Jr in two weeks It's the first time the trio of Perth-born beauties have been photographed on a set together, giving an intimate look at their close bond as they lie on the sheets. In an accompanying interview, Jessica explained that she once wished she could look more like her blonde friend who she lived in close proximity to for six years in New York. 'When I started out I wanted to be blonde and blue-eyed like Gemma,' she said. She has since learned to embrace her own look saying: 'But now (I'm grateful) for my look, the face of Australia is changing.' Nicole, meanwhile, told the publication that she hopes to have both Jessica, who is the godmother of her son Zion, and Gemma as her bridesmaids when she marries fiance Gary. Close bond: It's the first time Nicole has been photographed on a set with the other two beauties and gave an intimate look at their close friendship as they lie in the sheets for the shoot Stunning: 30-year-old Jessica Gomes revealed to InStyle that she once wished she could look more like her blonde friend Gemma earlier in her career Designer darlings: Gemma Ward, 28, lived in close proximity to Jessica for six years in New York and share a close bond to her Perth-born friends In what no doubt will be a star-studded event, Nicole confessed she 'couldn't get married without them'. 'They were the first two people that I thought of I couldnt get married without them by my side,' she said. 'Gemma says she is going to give Gary the lowdown: that if he does anything to hurt me, shell do some sort of kung fu,' she added. 'I couldn't get married without them by my side': Nicole (middle) reveals in April's InStyle Australia that her model bridesmaids will be Gemma (left) and Jessica (right) in her wedding to Gary Clark Jr Australian actress Rebecca Gibney has hit back at her online trolls whove criticised her, telling them to shut it if they dont have anything nice to say. The 51-year-old Wanted actress took to Instagram on Thursday to warn her haters about their nasty comments, further suggesting her loyal and loving husband, Richard Bell, can be 'quite scary'. 'He's also 6'3 and can be quite scary if anyone messes with his family when he sometimes discovers hidden posts on my feed - Bit like my 80 year old mum,' she wrote alongside an endearing picture of herself cuddling up to her hubby during a ski trip. Scroll down for video 'Ain't got no time for haters': Rebecca Gibney warns online trolls her husband, Richard Bell, can be 'quite scary if anyone messes with his family' The actress went on to say her trolls could no longer hide behind their keyboards. Beware any trolls out there - you're not as anonymous as you think you are...According to our Fed friends....so if you don't have anything nice to say I suggest you shut it - and get back to the pretty pictures on your new profile - ( although I do have a record of your not so subtle threats) [sic],' she wrote in the long-winded post. Adding: Be kind people. Be real. Be authentic - or seriously - bugger off Instagram. Most of us on here' Ain't got no time for haters. Sayonara,' she concluded. Warnings: The 51-year-old actress warned her followers to be real and authentic on her page As soon as the post went live on her social media, Rebecca's fans were quick to comment. In fact, more than 4,922 social media users jumped on the actress' Instagram page to like or to leave a comment about her situation. One follower said: 'Cool photo. not sure why people say such unkind things , be kind to one another, love makes the world go around ... not hate. Stay safe [sic].' Ain't got not time for this: Rebecca had more than 4,922 social media users jump on her social media to comment about her post Another added: 'So sorry that you are experiencing this. You seem like such a kind, warm hearted person. Take care.' The Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Rebecca's representatives for comment. Meanwhile, the New Zealand born star is back on our TV screens in the new show, Wanted, on Channel Seven. Speaking of her new show, Rebecca told News.com.au: 'Its two women, at a bus stop, poles apart, nothing in common. 'Theyve been standing at this bus stop every morning at 5am for 18 months, have never spoken a word to each other. Then one morning this incident happens at the bus stop which is going to change their lives irrevocably, and they are forced to look after each other and become friends to survive.' Rebecca also lent her skills to producing duties while on the show. It is the cliffhanger that has kept Game Of Thrones fans huddled around water coolers for the past year. But it seems Jon Snow really is dead, at least if the first episode synopsis for the hit HBO show ahead of the new series premiere can be trusted. In a moment that will live long in the memory for fans of the show, the jolly Lord Commander of the Night's Watch suffered something of a career setback when he was brutally stabbed to death by his own men at the end of the last series. See Game of Thrones updates as Jon Snow's death is confirmed in season 6 synopsis Snow fair: Jon is confirmed to be dead in the synopsis for the series premiere of Game Of Thrones, which follows his fatal stabbing at the hands of his own underlings last season And it seems he will be staying that way, if the short guide teasing the content of the first episode The Red Woman is any indication. It said: 'Jon Snow is dead. Daenerys meets a strong man. Cersei sees her daughter again.' Prosaic words indeed, and surely ample proof that the popular hero, who is played by upper crust heartthrob Kit Harington, is dead for good. Of course the learned hard core followers of the acclaimed show will already know there are plenty of reasons to think there is more to Jon's fate than meets the eye. Big hint: The fact upper crust beefcake Kit Harington, here at the Olivier Awards on Sunday, is yet to chop off the long hair he admits he hates suggests he will be making a dramatic return For one The Red Woman mentioned in the episode title could very well be Melisandre, a priestess of the Lord of Light. In the past followers of the deity have been shown to have the ability to raise people from the dead, which could be one way in which Jon could rise again, perhaps shedding his Snow moniker after discovering he is in fact Azor Ahai the hero prophesied to save Westeros. On a more practical level, Worcestershire hunk Kit, 29, is still contracted to appear on the show, was spotted filming scenes for the show last September, and has yet to chop off the long hair he himself has confessed he loathes. He previously said: 'I dont want the bother of it all really. If you look a certain way or you have a certain look it dominates what people think you are. So Ill cut it off quite soon. As soon as Im allowed.' The show's long-awaited series premiere will finally air on HBO on Sunday, April 24. They may be dealing with the vicissitudes of a long-term relationship. But Kourtney Kardashian and her estranged partner Scott Disick are clearly making a concerted effort for the sake of their children. The pair were spotted enjoying quality family time with two of their brood, Penelope and Mason, as part of their luxury skiing break in the snowy hills of Vail, Colorado, on Thursday. Scroll down for video Working at it: Kourtney Kardashian and her estranged partner Scott Disick are clearly making a concerted effort for the sake of their children - as they proved on Thursday Stepping out without their third child, Reign Aston, the ex-couple put on a united front as part of the epic family vacation. Keen to keep their youngsters entertained, they ensured the day was fun-filled by ice-skating and ice cream at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, where they indulged their sweet tooths. The friendly exes, who split after the self-proclaimed Lord last summer after photos emerged of him canoodling with stylist Chloe Bartoli in Monaco, seemed to be getting on like a house on fire despite the chilly climes. See more from Kourtney Kardashian as she puts on united front with Scott Disick Together forever? The pair were spotted enjoying quality family time with two of their brood, Penelope and Mason, as part of their luxury skiing break in the snowy hills of Vail, Colorado, on Thursday So sweet: Keen to keep their youngsters entertained, they ensured the day was fun-filled by ice-skating and ice cream at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, where they indulged their sweet tooths Dressing for the weather, the 36 year-old mum-of-three sported a thick, khaki-coloured duffel coat for maximum warmth. Scraping her hair up into a practical bun, she matched the look with a pair of black leggings and some heavy-duty boots for her tenure on the slopes. Seemingly make-up free for the occasion, her approach was clearly less-is-more. Following suit, Scott wore a fur-lined jacket with skinny jeans and jumper, which - adorably - was lovingly matched by Mason. Like father, like son! Scott wore a fur-lined jacket with skinny jeans and jumper, which - adorably - was lovingly matched by Mason Hand-in-hand: Despite the family issues, Scott remains close to his three children They loved-ones are enjoying a surprise family trip to the mountains which was masterminded by matriarch figure Kris Jenner. The family members, including Kim Kardashian, Kayne West, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, all boarded a private jet in LA on Wednesday with everyone but the 65-year-old momager knowing their destination. Clearly enjoying himself, Scott recently posted a picture of himself on a snowmobile to Instagram with the caption 'way up'. It was 'liked' more than 100,000 times. Good times: They loved-ones are enjoying a surprise family trip to the mountains which was masterminded by matriarch figure Kris Jenner Loving life! Clearly enjoying himself, Scott recently posted a picture of himself on a snowmobile to Instagram with the caption 'way up' 'Family!!!': Kris Jenner posted this cute picture of the entire group skiing Advertisement Her prosperous acting career has seen her boast roles in some of Hollywood's biggest movies, though the James Bond series was never one of them. But Nicole Kidman proved she'd have no trouble being one of 007's leading ladies as she showed off her incredible figure while gliding out of the sea in Sydney, Australia, last week. Frolicking in the sea, the scenes wouldn't have looked out of place on one of the 48-year-old star's movie sets as she sashayed out of the water in a floral two-piece. Scroll down for video Beach babe: Nicole Kidman proved she'd have no trouble being one of 007's leading ladies as she showed off her incredible figure while gliding out of the sea in Sydney, Australia, last week The Moulin Rouge! star - who is no stranger to playing the beautiful love interest of some of Hollywood's most desirable actors - showcased her slim curves in a patterned bikini that flattered her figure to perfection. The screen siren's skimpy swimwear was comprised of a balcony bikini top, which boasted striped straps and an array of flowers in varied shades of blue, the garment's sweetheart neckline accentuating her ample bust. She hugged her curves in matching briefs that were less scanty in nature with their slightly high-waisted fit. Brr! Nicole appeared to find the waters a little chilly when first descending into the sea as she held a grimaced facial expression while tensing her body Ready for her close-up! Frolicking in the sea, the scenes wouldn't have looked out of place on one of the 48-year-old star's movie sets as she sashayed out of the water in a floral two-piece Nattural stunner: The beauty flaunted her flawless complexion as she larked around in the water completely free of make-up, her wet blonde locks brushed back from her face and cascaded down the back of her neck Heating up: The Australian stunner soon grew accustomed to the cold temperature as she and her mother larked around in the glistening sea The beauty flaunted her flawless complexion as she emerged from the water completely free of make-up, her wet blonde locks brushed back from her face and cascaded down the back of her neck. Enjoying the tranquil beach before the crowds gathered, Nicole opted for an early morning dip. The Grace of Monaco standout was joined on her 9am swimming session with her mother Janelle Ann, a forming nursing instructor. Bonding: The Grace of Monaco standout was joined on her 9am swimming session with her mother Janelle Ann, a forming nursing instructor Looking good! The Moulin Rouge! star - who is no stranger to playing the beautiful love interest of some of Hollywood's most desirable actors - showcased her slim curves in a patterned bikini that flattered her figure to perfection Fashionista: The screen siren's skimpy swimwear was comprised of a balcony bikini top, which boasted striped straps and an array of flowers in varied shades of blue Coordinated: After her invigorating swimming session, Nicole made sure to banish the chill by quickly wrapping up in her towel, which matched perfectly with her blue bikini Nicole appeared to find the waters a little chilly when first descending into the sea as she held a grimaced facial expression, her body slightly tensed. The Australian stunner soon grew accustomed to the cold temperature as she and her mother larked around in the glistening sea. Nicole put on a particularly animated display as she stretched out her arms while laughing up a storm. Living thousands of miles away from her daughter's Los Angeles home on Sydney's North Shore, Janelle is no doubt reveling in some quality time with Nicole and her two granddaughters Sunday, seven, and Faith, five. If you've got it.... The two-piece was perfect for flaunting Nicole's washboard stomach Peaceful: Nicole looked in awe of her tranquil surroundings as she sat on the shore and looked out at the sea Catching up: Living thousands of miles away from her daughter's Los Angeles home on Sydney's North Shore, Janelle was no doubt reveling in some quality time with Nicole and her two granddaughters Sunday, seven, and Faith, five The mother-daughter duo looked extremely close as they made their way back from the beach, the twosome chatting incessantly as they walked Fooling around: Nicole put on a particularly animated display as she stretched out her arms while laughing up a storm The mother-daughter duo looked extremely close as they made their way back from the beach, the twosome chatting incessantly as they walked. Heading back to her car after an invigorating early swim at Balmoral Beach, Nicole opted for a sporty cover-up style in a vibrant pink zip-up top and black yoga pants. Nicole decided to ditch her shoes and instead tote her trainers in her hand and walk bare-foot. Seemingly keen to keep a low profile, the Oscar-winning actress concealed her face beneath a khaki cap while concealing her eyes beneath sizable black shades. The early bird catches the worm! Enjoying the tranquil beach before the crowds gathered, Nicole opted for an early morning dip Pared-back: Heading back to her car after an invigorating early swim at Balmoral Beach, Nicole opted for a sporty cover-up style in a vibrant pink zip-up top and black yoga pants Feeling the grass between her toes: Nicole decided to ditch her shoes and instead tote her trainers in her hand and walk bare-foot She's earned a reputation as Australia's most in-demand fashionista - and this year was announced as an ambassador for retail giants David Jones. But model Jesinta Campbell is also quick to lend her high profile to important matters - as she was seen rubbing shoulders with political royalty at the Women of the Future Awards launch in Sydney. The former Miss Universe Australia, 24, cut a statuesque figure posing next to Liberal Party deputy leader Julie Bishop and First Lady Lucy Turnbull at Kirribilli House on Friday afternoon. Scroll down for video In good company: Model Jesinta Campbell (right) towered over Liberal Party deputy leader Julie Bishop (left) and First Lady Lucy Turnbull (centre) at the Women of the Future Awards launch in Sydney on Friday Jesinta - who is in a relationship with Sydney Swans player Lance 'Buddy' Franklin - looked simply stunning in a double-breasted brown coat by Camilla and Marc. She finished off her catwalk-ready look - courtesy of her celebrity stylist sister Aleysha Campbell - with a pair of ankle strap black platform heels which accentuated her model height. Meanwhile, the Gold Coast-born beauty styled her long brunette hair in a simple ponytail and accessorised with a matching brown belt. High achievers: Jesinta, 24, was also joined by School For Life founder Annabelle Chauncy OAM (left), 2015 NSW Young Australian of the Year Genevieve Clay-Smith (second from left), and PE teacher Row Gilbo (right) Also in attendance at the Prime Minister's secondary official residence in the affluent Kirribilli suburb, were several high-profile female political figures. The Honorable Julie Bishop, Minister for Foreign Affairs, was among the glittering cast of the Awards launch, hosted by The Australian Women's Weekly magazine and Qantas. The 59-year-old looked stylish in a purple dress and matching heels, and rounded off her look with a pair of delicate drop earrings. Style: Standing remarkably tall in a pair of ankle strap black platform heels, she looked effortlessly chic in a double-breasted brown coat by Camilla and Marc with a matching belt Meanwhile, Lucy Turnbull - the former Lord Mayor of Sydney and wife of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull - opted for a blue frock, a long necklace and her trademark designer glasses. Jesinta captioned the image: 'Lovely morning spent at Kirribilli House to launch the Women of the Future Awards alongside these super women @juliebishopmp @lucyhturnbull'. In another snap shared with her 331,000 Instagram followers, Jesinta posed alongside three other glamourous and highly successful guests. The Cosmopolitan cover girl was joined by School For Life founder Annabelle Chauncy OAM, 2015 NSW Young Australian of the Year Genevieve Clay-Smith, and PE teacher Row Gilbo. Further details of the 2016 Women of the Future Awards will be in next week's issue of The Australian Women's Weekly, on sale Thursday She placed third in the recent season of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! Australia. But when Laurina Fleure stepped out at the exclusive Longines DolceVita Asia Pacific launch in Sydney on Friday, it seems six weeks in the jungle may have rubbed off on her. The 31-year-old wore a dazzling couture frock by Melbourne-based designer Con Ilio, which featured leaf-life beading on a gossamer base fabric. Scroll down for video You can take the girl out of the jungle! I'm A Celebrity's Laurina Fleure dazzled in a leaf-like embellished frock at the Longines DolceVita Asia Pacific launch in Sydney on Friday Speaking with Daily Mail Australia, the reality star said that upon her return home from the jungle, the residence she was to share with her boyfriend Lewis Romano was almost completely devoid of furniture. She explained that while she was away, all the furniture her friend had lent the couple had been reclaimed leaving them with only a couch to sleep on. 'We were literally still camping for the first week,' she laughed. Her eye-catching garment featured strong shoulders with large beading squaring off her frame and a straight-edged neckline. The a-symmetric shape allowed for the brunette beauty to flaunt her slim pins, and she wore a simple pair of nude pumps so as not to distract from the sparkling frock. She also carried a metallic, burgundy clutch by Alexander McQueen which added a subtle contrast to her look. Laurina was accompanied by her boyfriend who looked dapper in a navy suit with a light blue, unbuttoned shirt. Legs eleven! The a-symmetric shape allowed for the brunette beauty to flaunt her slim pins Loved up: Laurina was accompanied by her boyfriend Lewis Romano The event, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, was organised to celebrate the launch of the Swiss watchmaker's DolceVita line of iconic rectangle-faced wristwatches. In attendance was the face of the label, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, often referred to as the 'most beautiful woman in the world'. The stunning Indian actress certainly lived up to her reputation, wowing in a white, off-the-shoulder frock with a tulle overlay. The daughter of late Hollywood actor Paul Walker has been granted a $10.1 million settlement. The court reportedly found in favour of Meadow Walker, 17, in 2014 when Roger Rodas, the man driving the car in the fatal accident, was found 'partly to blame for fatal accident.' According to TMZ, the ruling means Meadow was awarded around $7 million while Attorney Jeff Milam received $3 million, but details of the case have only just come to light, two years on. Scroll down for video Compensated: The daughter of late Hollywood actor Paul Walker (left), Meadow Walker (right, now aged 17), was reportedly awarded a $10.1 million settlement in 2014, though details have only just come to light It is as yet undetermined whether the money was received from the insurance company or from Rodas' estate. Most notably in this case - originally filed under 'Meadow W' - it was agreed that Rodas was 'not directing the car through any particularly unsafe maneuvers when it went out of control.' It was deemed a 'small fraction' of what Meadow should have received and she is determined to press on with a case against car manufacturer Porsche for 'design defects', the website claims. Just a small fraction: The ruling was considered 'just a fraction' of what she should have received, considering his status as a Hollywood moviestar News of the ruling comes after a judge acting on behalf of Roger's widow Kristine Rodas cleared Porsche of any wrongdoing in their deaths, just last week. In a separate case, Kristine filed a wrongful death/product liability lawsuit alleging a combination of four defects had caused the horrific 2013 crash that killed her husband and the Fast And Furious star. However, the court's decision does not undermine the case of Paul's daughter Meadow, her attorney went on to say in a statement. Jeff Milam said Rodas was killed instantly upon impact, adding, 'Meadow's father... was a passenger in the car. He survived the crash but was trapped and burned to death because of the vehicle's defects.' Ruling: Just last week, a judge cleared Porsche of any wrongdoing in the death of Paul's friend Roger Rodas, after the pair were killed in a horror smash in November 2013 The 2005 Carrera GT was being driven by Rodas, the owner of an auto racing shop, when it spun out of control on a city street in Valencia, near Los Angeles, and burst into flames after hitting a power pole and several trees. Walker, who was 40, and Rodas, 38, both died at the scene. Kristine claimed the car had a faulty suspension, lacked a racing fuel cell, and did not have a 'racing cage' meaning it could not withstand an impact from the side. According to TMZ, the argument that the car was ill equipped to handle side impact was moot, since the fatal force came from the front when it hit the lamppost - as her own expert confirmed. At fault: Meadow is reportedly due to press on with a case blaming Porsche for design defects but Rodas' widow Kristine recently failed in a very similar wrongful death/product liability lawsuit against the car manufacturer US District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez also rejected the front impact argument because 'Rodas' fatal injuries occurred when he actually was hurled into Paul Walker.' He also rejected the fuel cell argument, finding that it was not the cause of the fire, and held that Rodas' lawyers had not presented evidence demonstrating the crash was caused by a defective suspension. Kristine had concurrent cases in both the State and Federal Courts against a number of defendants in the manufacturer and supplier chain; but Monday's Federal summary judgement against her may doom her State case as well. Her attorney, Mark Geragos, said the ruling will be appealed. RIP: Walker, who was 40, and Rodas, 38, both died at the scene Last month Radar reported that Porsche had attempted to have the case thrown out, labeling Rodas' claims as 'nonsense'. It also attempted to block Kristine's introduction into evidence of the testimony from a man named Jeff Westphal regarding her late husband's 'skill and competency as a driver' as well as his 'history of race car driving' in an attempt to prove human error was not a factor. 'The mere fact that Mr Rodas had driven with some skill in race does not mean that he always drove with skill on the street and was incapable of losing control of a car,' documents filed by Porsche stated. 'One does not need to be a NASCAR or Formula One fan to know that expert drivers lose control and crash with great frequency.' Bad omen: Lawyers for The Fast And Furious star's daughter Meadow will continue to press her outstanding claim against Porsche Amy Schumer was put off on Tuesday when Glamour magazine labeled her plus size in their special edition targeted at curvier women. But by Friday the 34-year-old Trainwreck actress seemed to have shrugged off the controversy. The blonde comedienne posted a clip from her trip to Reading, Pennsylvania where she gleefully shimmed on stage before a stand-up show. Scroll down for video No worries here: Amy Schumer dances on stage in a clip from her show in Reading, Pennsylvania that was shared on Instagram on Friday Hey I look good, ladies! This comes after Glamour magazine labeled her plus size in their special edition targeted at curvier women NOT ME! The Tranwreck actress, who is a size six, said it was 'not cool' that she was grouped with heavier women for the magazine She is a hit no matter what her size: The star was the main attraction at the Santander Arena The A lister was wearing a plaid button-down shirt with blue sweatpants and sunglasses. Her hair was worn up in a messy up do. The comedic sensation was dancing at the empty theater before the show. Later, the star is seen in a black mini dress as she takes the stage to a sold out audience. See Amy Schumer updates as she shrugs off plus size controversy by sharing clip from PA It's show time: Later, the star is seen in a black mini dress as she takes the stage to a sold out audience Smiles all around: The acid tongued jokester seemed to be in good spirits before hitting the stage Fit: The comedic sensation looked svelte as she wore a black mini dress to the PA show No doubt Glamour magazine was mentioned: The plus size controversy is good fodder for her show Schumer appears to be in a great mood, happy to be performing in the Eastern state. This comes after an ugly public spat after she was named as plus sized. The star has said she is only a size six. Plus sizes in the US begin at size 16. On Thursday evening Glamour editor Cindi Leive said she is certainly sorry that Schumer did not like being featured in the magazine, but she stood by her choice to include her. I'm certainly sorry she didn't like being named on the cover, and I'm sorry that she wishes her piece hadn't been included, but I'm confident that the message of the issue, which is there's great clothes out there for all of us, is one that will resonate with our readers, she told Nightline on Thursday. Editor-in-chief Cindi Leive said she is certainly sorry that Amy Schumer did not like being featured in the 'chic at any size' special edition of Glamour In an Instagram post on Tuesday, Schumer called out the publication for featuring her in the list, despite the fact that she is between a size 6 and 8 Bikini babe: The Inside Amy Schumer star, 34, says she should not be considered 'plus size', which she notes is classified as anything from a size 16 and up in the United States She continued: I don't believe that Amy Schumer is plus size. That's not a term that I love, but it's very clear that she's not what people mean when they say plus size. But that wasn't the intent at all. The cover line says "Women who inspire us" and we felt the audience for this special edition would be inspired by her completely hilarious and constant, consistent message of body positivity. Schumer was mentioned on the cover of a 'Chic At Any Size' special edition as one of four 'women who inspire us', alongside Melissa McCarthy, Adele and Ashley Graham, a decision which has raised eyebrows across social media and among Amy's fans. Indeed, the 34-year-old felt her inclusion sent the wrong message to young women, and hit out at the magazine, which featured a re-print of a Q&A done with the star when she featured on the cover of Glamour in 2015, for including her in the special issue without giving her advance notice. On Thursday she found a magazine-style way to joke about her recent plus-size labeling controversy with a diaper-clad throwback picture. '15 ways to wash board abs that will make him say wow #tbt!' the 34-year-old Emmy winner captioned a retro toddler snap to her 7.8M followers on Twitter/Instagram. Earlier in the week on Tuesday, She wrote on Instagram: 'I think there's nothing wrong with being plus size. Beautiful healthy women. Plus size is considered size 16 in America. I go between a size 6 and an 8.' 'It doesn't feel right to me': The comedian criticized Glamour magazine for including her in their 'plus size' issue 'A little unfair not to be told': The magazine features Ashley on the cover alongside the caption 'Women who inspire us', listing the size 14 model alongside Amy, Melissa and Adele Schumer (left) called out a magazine for including her in a list of 'plus size' stars, including Melissa McCarthy (right), who is a size 14 The issue's cover star Ashley Graham (right), who is a size 14, was also mentioned in the list, as was British singer Adele (left), who is thought to be between a size 14 and 16 HOW AMY COMPARES TO THE OTHER STARS MENTIONED ON THE COVER Amy Schumer Dress size: 6-8 (UK size 10-12) Height: 5ft 7in Adele Dress size: 14-16 (UK size 18-20) Height: 5ft 9in Ashley Graham Dress size: 14 (UK size 18) Height: 5ft 9in Melissa McCarthy Dress size: 14 (UK size 18) Height: 5ft 2in Advertisement Amy also addressed the fact that the newly-released special issue of the magazine features an interview with her that was originally printed in the 2015 issue of the main magazine, for which she served as the cover star, and which appears to have been re-printed without her knowledge: '@glamourmag put me in their plus size only issue without asking or letting me know and it doesn't feel right to me. 'Young girls seeing my body type thinking that is plus size? What are your thoughts? Mine are not cool glamour not glamorous.' She later added: 'Just a little odd an unfair not to be told.' 'No plans of changing!' The actress shared this snap last year as she hit back at writer Jeffrey Wells after he called her chubby He's the most high-profile name in professional surfing - but has remained famously tight-lipped about his personal life. So it's hardly surprising there is gossip over a possible wedding to his long-time girlfriend Kalani Miller, after she was reportedly spotted wearing an 'engagement ring' in Sydney this week. The fashion designer appeared to wear a diamond on her left hand ring finger at a David Jones event on Thursday - leading to speculation that Kelly popped the question during their recent trip Down Under. Are they engaged? There are rumours Florida-born surfing champion Kelly Slater proposed to long-time girlfriend Kalani Miller (centre) after she supposedly flashed a diamond ring at a David Jones event in Sydney The 11-time World Surf League Champion was recently in Australia to launch his new ethical menswear label Outerknown. And during the visit, his partner of seven years shared an Instagram photo of herself alongside pals Nadia Fairfax and Jesinta Campbell - and her sparkly ring was difficult to ignore. Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph reported a U.S. publication claiming Kelly and Kalani were spotted shopping for engagement rings recently. Wedding bells? Fashion designer Kalani has been dating Kelly, 44, for around seven years - but they have kept details of their relationship private In the past, the 44-year-old has been romantically linked to a string of high-profile women - including Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen. The Florida-born athlete briefly dated Hollywood siren Cameron Diaz in 2007 following her split with Justin Timberlake - and the couple were even spotted enjoying the waves in Hawaii together. Back in 2008, Kelly opened up to surfing publication Stab about his then-reputation for having 'celebrity girlfriends'. Happy couple: There have been reports in the U.S. claiming Kelly and Kalani were spotted shopping for engagement rings recently 'Lets just say that my so-called celebrity girlfriends have been totally blown out of proportion,' he explained. 'Now it seems that every famous girl I know, Im supposed to be sleeping with. Pretty lame. '(Beautiful women dont) seem like a bad idea, but connecting with someone you really love and get along with is surely much more meaningful and important,' he concluded. Settling down: Speaking about his past reputation for dating high-profile women - including Pamela Anderson and Cameron Diaz - Kelly has said: 'My so-called celebrity girlfriends have been totally blown out of proportion' Kerry Washington stopped by the Today show to promote her new HBO film Confirmation. The subject invariably changed to Kerry's very glamorous and, some say, very airbrushed Adweek cover image that even the star herself didn't recognise when it came out. As Kerry told Matt Lauer, she felt compelled to protest that the image of her posing in a low-cut striped gown while bathed in light 'didn't quite look like me.' Scroll down for video Tough talk: Kerry Washington hit up the Today show in NYC on Friday to discuss her role in the forthcoming HBO movie Confirmation and also that controversial Adweek cover that she took issue with 'My big complaint was that it felt altered - in general,' the Scandal star said of the cover. ''It wasn't that there was something specific. It was the feeling of looking at something and knowing that it had been altered.' Adweek's editorial director James Cooper admitted to some cover tweaking but later acknowledged the magazine 'went too far.' After seeing the cover, Kerry took to Instagram to pick a bone with Adweek, writing: 'I'm proud of the article. And I like some of the inside images a great deal. But, I have to be honest...I was taken aback by the cover....' She's got a bone to pick: The 39-year-old Scandal star said of the Adweek cover, 'My big complaint was that it felt altered - in general' Bundled up: Kerry arrived to the NBC studio wearing a big smile and a chic checkered coat This way if you please: The actress got a proper escort at the Today show Kerry explained further on Today: 'I was really proud of the interview and really proud of the article. It talks a lot about my business relationships and how hard I've worked to build those relationships with those brands. I was really excited about the article. '[But] when I saw the cover, I was taken aback,' she added. 'I just felt like, in order for me to promote the magazine - which I wanted to do because I think the article's great - I had to at least address [it], 'cause I knew other people would notice it did not look like me.' Adweek's editorial director James Cooper admitted that the cover image had been tweaked - as far as Kerry's hairstyle was concerned. Words were okay: Kerry told Matt, 'I was really proud of the interview and really proud of the article' Furthermore: The star said, 'I just felt like, in order for me to promote the magazine... I had to at least address [it], 'cause I knew other people would notice it did not look like me' Staying positive: Kerry said a little Photoshopping can be a good thing, saying, 'It's not always bad. A wrinkle here, a wrinkle there... it should still look like the person' He later responded to a fan's tweet, writing, 'In our effort to celebrate her we went too far.' Kerry said a little Photoshopping can be a good thing, telling Matt: 'It's not always bad. A wrinkle here, a wrinkle there... it should still look like the person.' She quickly added in good humour: 'I meant wrinkles on clothes, by the way. Wrinkles on faces are beautiful.' Kerry's review: The actress took to Instagram earlier this week to address the 'altered' Adweek cover Confirmation: The outspoken actress also chatted about her role as Anita Hill in the fact-based HBO movie Confirmation that is set to premiere on April 16 'Memorable': Kerry was 14 when Anita Hill (pictured) gave testimony about Clarence Thomas, and the actress said that it was one of the few instances where her strong and like-minded parents were at odds over politics Tense: Kerry plays the part of Anita Hill who testified during Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court nomination hearings that she was a victim of Thomas' sexual harassment Say ahhh: Kerry lightened up and made a funny face while snapping a selfie The stunning star also chatted about her role as Anita Hill in the fact-based drama Confirmation, which premieres on HBO on April 16. Anita Hill came forward to testify during Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court nomination hearings that he had sexually harassed her. Kerry, who was 14 years old in 1991 at the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings, said: 'It was really memorable. Cooling things down a little: Kerry donned a shimmery blue-green dress for a subsequent appearance to Live! With Kelly and Michael on Friday On the go: The busy actress kept up the pace as she stepped out in NYC wearing a partly sheer skirt with dark grey suede jacket Happy go lucky: Kerry was met by a bunch of helpful crew members as she arrived to the Lincoln Center for Tina Brown's 7th Annual Women in the World Summit 'My dad was engaging in the unfolding of the hearings from the perspective of an African-American man who was watching this black man have his reputation and his career ripped from him in a very public way. 'So he had very strong feelings about it. And my mother had very strong feelings as a professional African-American woman. So where we were always on the same page in my house about politics, it was one of the few times that I saw them at odds. She's on her way: The stylish star stepped to the event in a pair of delicate ankle-strapped heels Hot topic: Kerry and journalist Cynthia McFadden spoke on stage about 'The Lasting Impact of Anita Hill' 'And I felt like I really understood both perspectives.' Kerry, meanwhile, was a busy lady on Friday. Following her visit to the Today show, Kerry hit up Live! With Kelly and Michael wearing a lovely shimmery blue-green dress. Then she headed over to discuss Anita Hill at Tina Brown's 7th Annual Women in the World Summit at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. Camila Alves treated her three children to a day at Disneyland in California on Sunday - but Levi, Vida and Livingston weren't the only ones enjoying themselves. The 34-year-old wife of Matthew McConaughey was seen screaming as she zoomed down a snowy mountain on the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride. The couple's two sons Levi, seven, and three-year-old Livingston, and six-year-old daughter Vida all looked like they were having a magical time. Scroll down for video Scream if you want to go faster: Camila Alves enjoyed the roller coaster at Disneyland in California on Sunday Vida was dressed as her favourite Disney princess for the day out, sporting a yellow Belle dress along with cute black boots. Meanwhile Levi was dressed as Toy Story's Woody in a cow print waistcoat and orange chaps, and Livingston sported a Star Wars T-shirt. The family visited the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique, where Vida had blue extensions clipped into her hair and Levi tried out some glitter hair gel. Camila was dressed casually for a busy day of chasing her little ones around. Her little princess: The model's six-year-old daughter Vida wore a yellow Belle dress for the day The Brazilian born model wore a lacy white smock top with matching rolled up jeans, and ensured her feet stayed comfortable with a pair of grey trainers. Camila was joined by her friend Aeshia DeVore Branch for the outing, who brought along her own two children. During the day, the group watched the parade, and Camila shared a video which showed Mickey and Minnie Mouse waving at the crowd from a float. Family outing: Camila's two sons Levi (R) and Livingston were also there, although Matthew McConaughey couldn't make it Having a magical time: The group appeared to be particularly enjoying the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride The brunette and her 46-year-old Oscar winning husband recently returned to Los Angeles after a trip to New York. Last month, they also enjoyed a getaway to Dubai where they attended the Global Teacher Prize ceremony alongside Salma Hayek. Camila and Matthew met in a Los Angeles bar in 2006, and got engaged on Christmas Day in 2011, after welcoming their two eldest children. The couple married in Austin, Texas on June 9, 2012. Camila became a US citizen in August of last year, in the same ceremony as her friend Emily Blunt. Casual style: Camila kept comfortable for the outing in a white smock top, jeans and trainers Matthew said in 2014 that Camila put some pressure on him to get married, and he's glad that she did. 'I had to get to the point where I saw it as more than just the thing to do,' he told GQ. 'I wanted to really want to. 'You know, I didnt want it to be a destination; the fun is that were on the adventure together. And look, some of it had to do with her putting it on me.' He added: 'It took her going, "Cmon, Big Boy, Mr. Easygoing-Well-Get-to-It-When-We-Get-to-It. Either s*** or get off the pot."' She just enjoyed a kick-back vacation in the Bahamas with her husband Rande Gerber. During the getaway, the supermodel posed in a bikini and lounged on the beach. But on Friday she was back to the stress of California coastal living as the 50-year-old Vogue favorite looked frazzled when on a Starbucks run in Malibu. Scroll down for video Bummer for this beauty: Cindy Crawford looked not amused during her Starbucks run in Malibu on Friday With her face looking tense, the Versace model appeared very unhappy to be on the go again. The looker had the added challenge of having to fight off the sudden spring downpour. The former Pepsi spokesperson worked hard to pull her jacket over her head. It appeared as if the star had taken time to blow out her highlighted locks, which were no doubt made frizzled by the weather. Back to the grind: With her face looking tense, the Versace model appeared very unhappy to be on the go again Rich and thin: Cindy was dressed urban wealthy in her blue button-down shirt, worn-in designer jeans, beige suede loafers, brown belt and grey hoodie Cindy was dressed urban wealthy in her blue button-down shirt, worn-in designer jeans, beige suede loafers, brown belt and grey hoodie. She carried a cell phone, keys and her wallet. It is not known if Rande was with her. On Monday 53-year-old businessman Gerber shared a breathtaking snap of his bikini-clad wife Cindy as she flashed her figure while wading knee-deep in the water during the holiday in the Bahamas. 'Blue lagoon,' Rande captioned the gorgeous image of his wife. Paradise! Rande Gerber shared a breathtaking snap on Sunday of his bikini-clad wife as she waded knee-deep in the water and flashed her eye-catching figure during their holiday in the Bahamas Cindy shared the exact same image on her own account, thanking her husband for the picture perfect snap. 'Rande caught me in the blue lagoon! Thanks for the (camera emoticon)', she captioned the image. Cindy and her loved ones have been enjoying themselves over a well-deserved holiday at the island resort of Baker's Bay in the Bahamas, and the family have been documenting their adventures on Instagram. On Friday, proud father Rande shared a snap from his lunch with his 14-year-old daughter Kaia. 'Lunch with my little angel': Rande shared a sweet snap of his daughter Kaia Gerber during their lunch on Saturday 'Lunch with my little angel,' read the caption of the photo of his smiling daughter, who bore a striking resemblance to her famous mother. That same day the businessman did a bit of boating and looked to be joined by his wife Cindy, who captured their excursion for Instagram as well. 'Captain @RandeGerber,' read the caption of her husband steering the boat, which contained an anchor emoticon. Just days earlier, the family were enjoying a fun-filled getaway hundreds of miles away at the Grand Canyon. All aboard! Gerber manned the boat in a snap shared by his photogenic wife on Saturday 'Just another day in paradise': On Friday, Cindy posed in a sheer robe upon a curved palm tree trunk The getaway was no doubt a well-deserved one for the famous family. Cindy and her family have had a busy first few months of 2016, working on everything from a mom-daughter Vogue cover to numerous fashion campaigns. For the issue of Vogue Paris, which hit newsstands March 24, Cindy and Kaia were styled by none other than editor-in-chief Emmanuelle Alt herself, and were shot by famed photographer Mario Testino. California battles killer drug epidemic Ten people have died in northern California and scores more have overdosed as an epidemic of street drugs laced with a powerful painkiller sweeps the region. Officials said the cases began emerging in the Sacramento area in late March with the victims -- aged between 16 and 67 -- ingesting pills they believed to be Norco, a prescription painkiller. The white tablets bought on the street were in fact laced with fentanyl, which is up to 50 times more potent than heroin and up to 100 times more powerful than morphine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids -- including prescription pain relievers and heroin -- killed more than 28,000 people in the US in 2014 Drug Enforcement Administration (AFP) "This is the first time we have come across anything like this," said Laura McCasland, spokeswoman for the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services. She said the victims, who come from all walks of life and were evenly divided between men and women, reported falling ill within minutes of taking the drug, with some losing consciousness and going into cardiac arrest. As of Wednesday, the illegally sold painkiller had led to 10 deaths and 38 overdoses. "Some of the victims said they obtained the pills from a friend, a family member or a neighbor," McCasland said. - 'Playing Russian roulette' - Casey Rettig, special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco, said the epidemic was the number one priority in the region with investigators working round-the-clock to uncover who was behind the fake pills. The fentanyl scare adds yet another layer to a wider opioid epidemic sweeping the United States and killing thousands. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), opioids -- including prescription pain relievers and heroin -- killed more than 28,000 people in the United States in 2014, more than in any other year on record. On average, 78 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, according to the CDC. Health officials say the epidemic is linked to an increasing number of Americans using prescription pain medication and then getting addicted. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid usually prescribed for patients with advanced cancer pain. Rettig said investigators believe the fentanyl-laced pills being sold in the Sacramento area were produced in China and then smuggled into the United States through Mexico. "Fentanyl is extremely potent and it takes a tiny amount to have an effect just as it takes a tiny amount to potentially be lethal," she said. "If you are taking a prescription drug that is not prescribed by your doctor or pharmacist, you are playing Russian roulette." Among the victims who have died in Sacramento was a homeless man and a 26-year-old father of three. "The people who have overdosed are not typically drug addicts," said Olivia Kasirye of the Sacramento health department. "Many of the individuals said at one time or another they had a prescription and either they didn't get it refilled or the doctor said they didn't need it anymore." She said some took the pill they thought was Norco to relieve aches and pains only to land in an emergency room. The fake pills were so powerful that hospital officials reported having to treat the victims with multiple doses of naloxone, which reverses the respiratory and cardiovascular effects of a fentanyl overdose, Kasirye said. "This epidemic is not limited to just one socio-economic group or neighborhood," she said. "It really seems to have no boundaries and it doesn't seem to have one group impacted more than others. Steeling for a struggle: China workers face turmoil Hundreds of laid-off steelworkers gathered outside their former employer's office this week to protest at losing their jobs, victims of a global glut. But the smokestacks nearby were not British; they are in China -- the very place blamed by European politicians for the plunging prices and excess capacity threatening the industry worldwide. As recriminations fly over the closure of the Port Talbot steelworks, the pain of redundancy is felt as keenly in the northern Chinese steel hub of Tangshan as it is in Wales. Beijing says major Chinese steel producers plan to shed 500,000 jobs in coming years Greg Baker (AFP) "I have a daughter," said one man, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. "Im the main breadwinner in the family. What can I do in the future?" He was among 4,000 people who workers say face unemployment after state-owned steel firm Guofeng halted work at one of its hulking production zones last week, citing "uncontrollable factors". They are just the tip of the iceberg; major Chinese steel producers lost more than 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) last year, an industry association said Thursday, and Beijing has said it will shed 500,000 steel jobs in coming years. The figure is more than the 328,000 people directly employed by steel companies in the entire EU. - Building boom - For European and American politicians, China is the bete noire of the global steel industry. How can their higher-wage economies compete with low-paying plants that churn out vast quantities of the metal, they ask, accusing Beijing of dumping -- selling a product in foreign markets at below-cost price. China's steel industry is huge. National production grew sevenfold from 2000 to 2014 as domestic demand boomed from massive infrastructure investment in swelling cities, and as the government ploughed billions of dollars into heavy industry to counter the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis. At the same time plants built by private investors expecting ever rising prices also went into operation. By 2014, China was producing some 820 million tonnes a year -- about half the world total and seven times more than the second biggest producer, Japan. But domestic demand peaked the same year as China's building boom began to wane and growth slowed, analysts say, causing commodity prices to plummet. World export prices for steel have fallen more than 70 percent from an all time high of $1,113 per tonne in July 2008 to just $321 last month, according to the website steelbenchmarker.com. China can now produce about 1.2 billion tonnes of steel each year, but local demand is around 700 million tonnes, and companies have looked to foreign markets to make up the deficit, primarily in Asia. "In 2015 China exported about 100 million tonnes of steel products," Cai Rang, chairman of the China Iron and Steel Research Institute Group told state media last month -- around twice as much as two years previously. The exports were "a relief for domestic capacity but a shock to the international market", he acknowledged. That shockwave played out when India's Tata Steel announced last month it was selling the loss-making Port Talbot steelworks, with the possible loss of 4,000 employee positions and many more indirectly, triggering doom-laden warnings of worse to come for Europe's steel industry. However, World Steel Association figures show that a tiny proportion -- about six million tonnes in 2014 -- of Chinese exports go to the EU, where some 100 million tonnes is traded between the bloc's countries. But "because China's production is so large, even its small proportion of exports can influence countries abroad", said Kevin Bai, a market analyst at CRU Group. - 'Love our country' - Many Chinese heavy industry giants, including in steel, are lumbering state-owned firms, riddled with inefficiencies but protected by authorities fearful of unrest. Beijing this year vowed to eliminate 100 million to 150 million tonnes of capacity by 2020. It said the reforms would cost half a million jobs, but did not give a timeframe. Ratings agency Fitch said this week that the plan "faces immense social and financial challenges". Protests have already hit China's coal sector, which faces similar issues of overcapacity, inefficiency and an excess of supply over demand, and where the government says it will cut some 1.3 million jobs. Industrial unrest is anathema to China's ruling Communist Party, and last month it clamped down on a protest which brought the city of Shuangyashan to a standstill, where miners said dozens had been detained. Steelworkers in Tangshan fear a similar crackdown. "Some people have been arrested," a 41-year-old Guofeng worker surnamed Shao told AFP. "The police have warned me, and said I'll be detained if I make a fuss." Previous bouts of unemployment in China have been cushioned by a large agricultural sector to which migrant workers can return, but breakneck urbanisation has swallowed swathes of farmland over the last decade, and Shao said local workers "have no chance of going back to farming". Guofeng refused to comment when contacted by AFP. "In the factory we are told to love our country," said Shao. "But to see my child eating one meal a day while still growing, because food prices are so high -- that's not acceptable". Graphic on the biggest producers of steel, with China accounting for about half of global production Gal ROMA, Adrian LEUNG (AFP) Partly demolished buildings are seen at the closed Shougang Capital Iron and Steel plant in Beijing Greg Baker (AFP) Steel workers block a road outside the head office of the Guofeng Steel Company in Tangshan, in China's northern Hebei province Greg Baker (AFP) Israel pledge to admit Ethiopians defuses political row Israel is to admit hundreds more Ethiopian migrants with family in the Jewish state, the ruling party said, resolving a political crisis that had threatened to bring down the government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party said on Thursday night it had agreed with its partners in the vulnerable coalition government that 1,300 Ethiopians would come this year and more would be considered later. Ethiopian Israelis staged a protest march in Jerusalem last month after the government cancelled plans to allow their relatives to join them, citing budgetary constraints. Israelis from the Ethiopian community hold up photographs of their relatives during a demonstration in front of the prime minister's office in Jerusalem on March 20, 2016 Menahem Kahana (AFP/File) The people in question are members of a community known as Falash Mura, descendants of Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity, many under duress, in the 18th and 19th centuries. Two Likud lawmakers had announced that in protest they would no longer vote for the government in the Knesset, where it already held only a knife-edge majority of one seat in the 120-member legislature. Since then the government has postponed several draft bills for fear that they would be voted down. But the boycott by Ethiopian-born lawmaker Avraham Neguise and parliamentary interior committee chairman David Amsalem threatened its very survival. Failure to win a majority in this summer's budget debate would automatically trigger its resignation. The maverick parliamentarians on Friday welcomed the coalition's change of heart. "We are very pleased. The prime minister has carried out an act of historic justice," Neguise told Israeli public radio. "We are very happy that our brothers will arrive." Amsalem said Netanyahu's previous decision was based on misinformation about the true scale and cost of resettling the Falash Mura. "When we sat down and explained to him and showed him the real data he understood that the issue is a just one and doesn't exactly cost what was said," he told the radio. "It's a matter of bringing fewer than 9,000 Jews." He did not answer when asked if Netanyahu had relented purely as a matter of political survival, but commentator Yuval Karni, writing in Hebrew daily Maariv, had no doubt. "As soon as he realised that these two MPs were serious he realised that his seat was in danger and gave them everything," he said. "If necessary he would have brought all of Addis Ababa to Israel." Israel's Ethiopian community numbers around 135,000 people. Most of them arrived between 1984 and 1991 under the Law of Return, which guarantees citizenship to all Jews. Sanders hopes to meet Pope on Vatican campaign break Democratic White House hopeful Bernie Sanders said Friday he hopes to meet Pope Francis while attending a conference on social and environmental issues at the Vatican next week. The Vermont senator said he was "very moved" by an invitation to join the April 15 Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences meeting, which will see him take a break from a bruising US presidential campaign. But while Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Sanders had been invited to the conference, he told AFP that "has nothing to do with the pope" and that no meeting with Francis is planned. US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has accepted an invitation to attend a conference on social and environmental issues hosted by the Vatican Jewel Samad (AFP/File) In New York, Sanders told MSNBC that he was "a big, big fan of the pope." "Obviously there are areas where we disagree, on women's rights or gay rights, but he has played an unbelievable role, an unbelievable role of injecting a moral consequence into the economy," Sanders told the channel. He later told reporters that it was "a possibility" that he would meet Francis, but confirmed that nothing was currently scheduled. "It's something that I very much would like to do. The pope's schedule is determined by the Vatican, but I would certainly be enthusiastic about that." Sanders, who is Jewish but whose wife is Catholic, has frequently expressed respect for Francis, who was treated to a rock-star reception on an inaugural tour of the United States last year. The longest-serving independent member of Congress and self-declared democratic socialist is a champion of the struggling working class, and rails against the influence of big banks and billionaires. "We can not, as the pope often tells us, simply be worshippers of greed and money," he told reporters Friday. "We've got to create an economy that works for all people and not just the few." The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences was established by Pope John Paul II in 1994 to promote the study and progress of economics, sociology, law and political science. Other conference invited attendees include Ecuador's President Rafael Correa and Bolivian President Evo Morales, the organizers said. According to the RealClearPolitics poll average, Sanders trails Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton 42.5 to 53.5 percent in the April 19 New York primary, the next key battleground in the US presidential race. Sanders, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, needs a win in Clinton's adopted home state to help keep alive his dreams of the White House. S.Africa to appeal Bashir immunity ruling South Africa said Friday it would appeal against a court ruling that it acted unlawfully in allowing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to leave the country despite an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Bashir was not arrested while attending an African Union summit in Johannesburg last year as South Africa claimed he had immunity as the head of a member state. During the summit, an emergency order was obtained from the High Court ordering Bashir's arrest, but government lawyers admitted he had flown out of the country just a few hours earlier. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has evaded arrest since his indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2009 Ashraf Shazly (AFP/File) South Africa is a signatory of the Hague-based ICC, which wants Bashir arrested for alleged war crimes related to the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. Last month the Supreme Court of Appeal accused the South African government of "disgraceful conduct" over incident and ruled that the failure to arrest Bashir was unlawful. The justice ministry said it would take the case to the country's highest legal authority, the Constitutional Court. The "government believes that the interpretation of legislation relating to immunity granted to a foreign sitting head of state needs pronouncement by the Constitutional Court," the ministry said. The decision by South Africa not to arrest Bashir sparked international condemnation, which was met with a threat from Pretoria to withdraw from the ICC. Coalition, Iraq to 'turn up the pressure' on IS: Kerry US Secretary of State John Kerry vowed Friday that America and Iraq will "turn up the pressure" on the Islamic State jihadist group, and said that retaking its stronghold Mosul is a "top" priority. "In the coming weeks and months, the coalition will work with Iraq to turn up the pressure even further. We will continue targeting and taking out (IS's) leaders, and we will train local forces to take and hold more ground," Kerry told journalists in Baghdad. Kerry said that retaking Mosul, the jihadists' main stronghold in Iraq, "is at the top of the list in terms of priority." US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a press conference in Baghdad, on April 8, 2016 Jonathan Ernst (Pool/AFP) But operations aimed at recapturing the city are still in the early phase, he said. Kerry arrived in Baghdad on Friday for an unannounced visit, his first to the country since 2014. Italian hostage released in southern Philippines A retired Italian priest abducted six months ago in the southern Philippines by suspected Islamic militants was released on Friday, police and the Italian government said. Rolando Del Torchio was picked up at a port on the remote island of Jolo, a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group, national police spokesman Wilben Mayor, told AFP. The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of militants infamous for kidnapping foreigners and demanding huge ransoms. Italian hostage Rolando del Torchio was kidnapped in 2015 Its leaders have in recent years pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group that controls vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. It is believed to be currently holding nearly 20 other foreigners. Mayor said Del Torchio was in poor health when he was found in the early evening inside a boat at the port on Jolo, a mainly Muslim-populated island about 950 kilometres (590 miles) south of Manila. "The... team decided to bring the kidnap victim to the Trauma Centre (a local military hospital) where he will be taken care of by a military doctor," Mayor said. Gunmen snatched Del Torchio, then 56, at gunpoint at his pizza restaurant on the city of Dipolog, about 400 kilometres northeast of Jolo, in October last year. Del Torchio had worked as a missionary for the international organisation PIME in the south from 1998 before retiring in 2000 to set up his restaurant, colleagues told AFP shortly after he was abducted. The identities of the kidnappers were never confirmed. But authorities said they suspected he was taken by boat to the Abu Sayyaf. "No further details as of this time," Mayor replied by text when asked which group had kidnapped Del Torchio and whether a ransom was paid for his release. The Italian foreign ministry released a statement on Friday confirming Del Torchio's freedom and thanking local authorities for their help. "Italian national Rolando Del Torchio... was released today and is currently in the custody of the Philippine authorities," the statement said. "The foreign ministry thanks the Manila authorities for their excellent cooperation and commitment, which permitted the release of the Italian national." The Abu Sayyaf was established in the early 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. It was a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the southern Philippines that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the 1970s. Mostly based on Jolo, the group has been blamed for the country's worst terror attacks, including a 2004 Manila Bay ferry bombing that claimed 116 lives. But kidnappings in the south have been its main signature, using huge ransoms to buy more arms and boats. - Enduring threat - A rotating contingent of about 500 US Special Forces troops were deployed in the southern Philippines from 2002 to 2014 to train Filipino troops how to defeat the Abu Sayyaf. Many of the Abu Sayyaf's leaders were killed or captured during that time, and the group was degraded from roughly 1,000 gunmen to about 300, according to authorities. But after the US troops were withdrawn, the Abu Sayyaf quickly re-emerged as a kidnapping force. Two Canadians, a Norwegian and a Filipina were abducted in September last year from yachts in a harbour in the southern Philippines. The Abu Sayyaf has posted videos of those captives on the Internet, and demanded millions of dollars for their freedom. The gunmen set a deadline of Friday for the money to be paid or the Canadians and Norwegian would be killed. But the deadline passed with no word on their fates. The group beheaded a Malaysian tourist last year. The latest groups of victims were 10 Indonesian and four Malaysian crew members snatched over the past two weeks from a tugboat and a cargo ship near the southern Philippines. The kidnapping spree followed the reported payment of millions of dollars for the release of a German couple in 2014, which allowed the militants to buy better boats and arms. Russia helps secure Syria's release of US detainee Russia secured the release of a US citizen detained in war-torn Syria and has handed him over to American authorities, Moscow's foreign ministry said Friday. In Washington, the US State Department thanked Russia for its assistance in the case of a man who was abducted in 2012 after crossing the border from Turkey. "Kevin Dawes was transferred to Moscow in a military plane and handed over to US embassy representatives," the Russian foreign ministry said. Journalist Kevin Dawes was being held in Syria by Bashar al-Assad's regime Handout (FBI/AFP/File) "Shortly afterwards he left Russia. We hope he doesn't put himself in a similar situation again and that Washington will appreciate Damascus' gesture." According to an FBI missing persons report that was taken offline Friday, Dawes is a 33-year-old "freelance photographer" from California. But reports in US media since his disappearance in October 2012 in northern Syria have portrayed him as an adventurer and would-be guerrilla who once took up arms in Libya. The Russian statement said Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime had detained him for "entering Syria illegally" and that he had arrived in Moscow on April 1. A US spokesman would not confirm the identity of the released captive but did not dispute media reports that named him as Dawes. "This individual was released in the last few days. He is no longer in Syria," spokesman Mark Toner said, refusing to say where he is now. Citing US privacy law, the spokesman said he could give no further information about the former detainee's identity nor the manner of his release. But he thanked Assad's ally Moscow for assisting in the case. "We are appreciative of efforts on the behalf of the Russian government that it undertook on behalf of this US citizen," he said. A number of US citizens, including but not limited to 31-year-old photojournalist Austin Tice, are still reported as missing in war-torn Syria, Toner said. He would not be drawn on the full number of missing Americans. A detailed profile published in GQ Magazine portrayed Dawes as an adventurer and "have-a-go guerrilla." He appears in photographs in body armor and carrying a rifle. Prior to disappearing in Syria, Dawes had taken up arms with a militia fighting Moamer Kadhafi's regime in Libya, according to an interview he gave to NPR radio in 2011. Despite Dawes' somewhat different profile, the unexpected release has given hope to campaigners seeking the better known freelance journalist Tice's freedom. The United States has no diplomatic relations with Syria, believing that Assad lost legitimacy after his crackdown on opposition protests triggered a civil war. - Missing Americans - Nevertheless, Toner confirmed that US officials had direct contact with Syrian officials to lobby for information on the missing Americans. And he thanked the Czech republic, whose embassy in Damascus represents the interests of Americans in Syria for their assistance in the matter. "We continue to work through the Czechs on the ground to get information on the whereabouts of Austin Tice," Toner said. Tice is an American freelance journalist who worked for the Washington Post, McClatchy and other US media outlets until he went missing in Syria in August 2012. According to the Post report, officials seeking Tice's freedom see Dawes' release as a positive sign. Tice's family had no immediate comment. Press watchdog Reporters Without Borders said it was "delighted that US citizen Kevin Dawes was released and hopeful that US journalist Austin Tice will be free soon." There have been reports that Washington has been leaning on the Russians to pressure Assad into giving up undeclared US hostages. "We welcome Russia's support wherever we can get it in terms of getting the release of any Americans who were detained in Syria," Toner said. US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Moscow last month and held closed-door talks with President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Kinshasa slams UN for 'irresponsible' vote pressure Kinshasa on Friday accused the United Nations and the Congolese opposition of demonstrating "irresponsibility" by pushing for presidential elections to be held by the year's end. During a press conference in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Foreign Minister Raymond Tshibanda referred to the violence which followed the 2006 elections to argue that the quality of the ballot was far more important than the date on which it was held. His remarks came a week after the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2277 which renewed the mandate of its MONUSCO peacekeeping mission in the country, but which also expressed "deep concern" over delays in the preparation for the November vote. Democratic Republic of Congo's Minster for Foreign Affairs Raymond Tshibanda speaks during a press conference in the Gombe district of Kinshasaon on July 19, 2012 Junior Kannah (AFP/File) The DRC is supposed to hold elections in November, but the chances of them actually taking place are receding, with President Joseph Kabila suspected of planning to extend his rule after his mandate runs out at the end of the year. The resolution, which was unanimously adopted on March 30, drew a sharp response from Kinshasa. "You could talk about constitutionally-mandated deadlines six months, a year, even 10 years before an election, no problem, but to keep on talking about this with only six or seven months left when you know objectively it will be difficult to do it on time, I think that borders on irresponsibility," said Tshibanda. "There is no better way to sow the seeds of violence than doing this." Last month, UN chief Ban Ki-moon also said he was "very concerned by the impasse in the organisation" of the elections, warning it could spark fresh political violence. The country has been mired in a deep political crisis since Kabila's reelection at the end of 2011 following elections marred by irregularities and massive fraud. Kabila first assumed power after his father, president Laurent Kabila, was assassinated in 2001. He took up his first elected term in 2006, under a new UN-supervised constitution which provided for two five-year mandates in the vast nation of some 81 million people. He was reelected in fraud-tainted polls in 2011. Last November, Kabila called for a "national dialogue" to help ensure peaceful elections, but the opposition has accused him of seeking to delay the polls in order to find a way to get around the constitution and stay in power. The opposition is pushing for the presidential vote to be held on time, even though no date has been officially set. According to the Constitution, the ballot should be held "90 days before the expiry of the mandate of the incumbent president". Palestinians seek UN resolution on Israeli settlements The Palestinians are discussing a new draft UN resolution with Arab countries to confront Israel over its continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the Palestinian ambassador said Friday. The UN Security Council failed in 2011 to adopt such a resolution after the United States used its veto to block the measure branding the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory as "illegal." Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour said the resolution would clarify the Security Council position on settlements, which the United Nations says are undermining the two-state solution in which Israel and Palestine would be recognized. A picture taken from the Israeli settlement of Gilo, in annexed east Jerusalem, shows an Israeli army watchtower overlooking the Palestinian town of Beit Jala Thomas Coex (AFP/File) Security Council ambassadors have condemned Israeli settlements as either illegal or illegitimate, and an obstacle to peace, but the council as a whole has not taken a stance. "We've been saying that if that is the assessment of the Security Council, then it is the responsibility of the Security Council to take action to stop settlement activity," Mansour told AFP. "We feel that this has to materialize in some form of action," he said, adding: "If you give the prognosis, you have to tell us what the medicine would be." Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon swiped down the proposed resolution, calling it an attempt "to deceive the international community by putting forward initiatives that do nothing to better the lives of either side of this conflict." "The Palestinians must understand that there are no shortcuts. The only way to promote negotiations starts by them condemning terrorism and stopping the incitement, and ends with direct negotiations between the two sides," said Danon in a statement. - French initiative - Talks on the draft resolution were ongoing among Arab countries, with Security Council member Egypt expected to take the lead if the draft resolution is presented for a vote. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas is to travel to New York later this month to sign the Paris climate accord on April 22 and hold talks on a new French push for peace. Abbas will be in Paris on April 15 to meet with French President Francois Hollande before heading to Moscow and Berlin for talks on reviving the peace process. "If the Security Council acts, it would be helping tremendously the French initiative," said Mansour. But in a clear reference to the United States, he added: "Those responsible for denying the Security Council from acting would be responsible for not helping to remove this major obstacle from the path of peace." France launched an effort earlier this year to host an international conference to revive peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Israel's continued construction of settlements has long been a major bone of contention in efforts to revive the peace process with the Palestinians, which has been comatose since April 2014. An upsurge of Israeli-Palestinian violence since October has killed 200 Palestinians and 28 Israelis. Smuggled Afghan boy texts for help inside UK lorry A young Afghan boy saved his life and that of 14 adults by texting for help from inside a refrigerated truck in which they were being smuggled to Britain, a charity worker who helped him said Friday. Ahmed, who is aged six or seven, used a mobile phone given to him by a British aid worker in a French migrant camp to warn her that they were running out of oxygen. Volunteer Inca Sorrell was attending a conference in New York when she received his texts and contacted a colleague in Britain, Tanya Freedman, who alerted police. Migrants stand looking at lorries stationed in a parking lot in Marck, just north of the sea port of Calais on the English Channel on March 30, 2016 Philippe Huguen (AFP/File) Officers traced the phone and stopped the truck, taking all those inside into the care of immigration authorities. "It's an extraordinary story. It's a global network of people who came together to save lives, led by this young boy," Freedman, who works at British charity Help Refugees, told AFP. Sorrell had met Ahmed in a children's centre in "The Jungle" migrant camp in the French port of Calais, where thousands of refugees and economic migrants live while waiting to travel to Britain, often illegally. As the camp was being demolished last month, she gave the boy a phone with credit and her number on, with instructions to call her if he found himself in danger. "He texted me to let me know that he'd made it to England," Sorrell told delegates at the conference. "Then he told me that he was stuck in the back of the lorry and the driver wouldn't stop, that it was a refrigerated lawyer and he had no way of getting out." The text read: "I ned halp darivar no stap car no oksijan in the car no sagnal iam in the cantenar. Iam no jokan valla." This means: "I need help, driver no stop car, no oxygen in the car, no signal, I am in the container. I am not joking, Wallah (I promise)." A police spokeswoman confirmed a truck was stopped at a motorway service station in Leicestershire in central England on Thursday, and 14 people were arrested on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. She said one man was arrested on suspicion of smuggling them into Britain, while "safeguarding measures were put in place for a child who was found in the truck". Ahmed was travelling with his older brother, estimated to be aged around 20. IS agrees to free abducted Syrian cement workers: monitor Syrian mediators reached an agreement Friday for the release of some 300 cement workers kidnapped by the Islamic State jihadist group, a monitor said, but it was unclear exactly how many were freed. IS abducted the employees on Monday from Al-Badia cement factory outside the town of Dmeir, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Damascus. Local figures from Dmeir mediated a deal with IS on Friday to let the workers go free, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A devastated street is pictured in al-Qaryatain, a town in the province of Homs in central Syria on April 8, 2016, a few days after Syrian regime forces seized it from jihadists of the Islamic State group Max Delany (AFP) The Britain-based monitor said that in effect, some 170 workers would be freed as others had already managed to escape. The Observatory later said that most of those kidnapped had finally reached their homes late Friday. A military source told AFP that he saw dozens of cement workers pass through a nearby regime-held military airport. "I am all right. Daesh (IS) let me go today and I went to the Dmeir military airport for a debrief and questioning, and then I went home," one man who had been kidnapped told AFP. IS reportedly abducted the employees during a major offensive on Monday around Dmeir. The IS-affiliated Amaq news agency said in an online statement that it released about 300 of the workers, but that it would not free 20 men accused of belonging to a pro-government militia. The statement said four of the cement workers were executed for being Druze, an offshoot of Islam considered heretical by IS. "I heard that Daesh executed some Druze. My relative (there) is Druze and I'm scared that he's one of them. My mother is beside herself with worry and we're very afraid of receiving bad news," a Damascus resident told AFP. Dmeir is divided between IS control in the east and rebel control in the west, but several key positions around it, including the military air base and a power plant, remain in government hands. On Friday, warplanes carried out fresh strikes around the Dmeir military airport, the Observatory said. IS has carried out mass kidnappings in previous offensives. In January, it abducted more than 400 civilians, including women and children, as it overran parts of Deir Ezzor province in the east. Danish govt seeks Syria travel ban after arrests Denmark's government said Friday it wanted to ban travel to areas where terror groups were operating in conflict zones in a bid to facilitate the prosecution of fighters returning from Syria. The move came in the same week that five men were detained in Denmark on suspicion of having joined the Islamic State jihadist group while in Syria. "It will simply be prohibited to set foot in certain areas," Justice Minister Soren Pind said in a statement. Armed police patrol in Copenhagen Airport, on March 22, 2016, in Copenhagen, Denmark Liselotte Sabroe (Scanpix Denmark/AFP/File) "That way we make it easier to punish people who travel to, for example, Syria to join or support a terror organisation," he added. Under the proposal, Danish citizens and residents would face up to six years in jail if they traveled to an area where a "terror organisation" is taking part in an armed conflict. The maximum penalty for "letting oneself be recruited to commit acts of terrorism" would also be raised to 10 years from six, and to 16 years for those who have taken part in combat operations. Some groups of people, such as journalists and those working for public authorities, could be exempt from the ban. The opposition Social Democrats and the anti-immigration Danish People's Party said they would back the minority government's proposal, which would give it majority backing in parliament. The proposal is to be put before parliament in the coming months and, if approved, will go into force on July 1. But it has been criticised by experts who said it was unlikely to deter radicalised youth from travelling to Syria. "Those who want to fight for the Islamic State group will be indifferent to any prison sentence," Tore Hamming, an expert on militant Islamism at the European University Institute in Florence, told Danish news agency Ritzau. "They already lack confidence in the Western state model or our laws," he added. Since March last year, Danish authorities have been able to seize passports and issue travel bans belonging to those suspected of planning to participate in armed conflict abroad. Four men in the Copenhagen area were on Thursday detained on suspicion of joining the Islamic State group while in Syria, and were on Friday placed in pre-trial detention by a district court. A fifth man accused of committing the same crime was jailed by the court on Tuesday, but his detention had been kept secret so as not to interfere with the ongoing investigation, police said on Friday. A federal judge in California has ruled that including a small Christian cross on the official seal of Los Angeles County is unconstitutional, siding with civil liberties advocates. Thursday's decision, following a two-year legal battle, was handed down by US District Judge Christina Snyder, who said that including the religious emblem in the government symbol 'places the county's power, prestige and purse behind a single religion, Christianity.' The case erupted in 2014 when the county had the cross drawn on top of the San Gabriel Mission which appears in the logo. Spot the difference? On left, the 2014 version of the Los Angeles County seal with the cross present on top of the San Gabriel Mission. Right, the 2004 version which depicted the Mission without the cross The move reversed a decision by officials a decade earlier to remove the cross from the seal, amid threats of legal action by various groups opposing the inclusion of the crucifix on the county symbol. The 2004 seal had the San Gabriel Mission without the cross on top. During that time, the actual Mission building also lacked a cross, due to renovations after an earthquake, the Los Angeles Times reported. Source of the controversy: A close-up of the San Gabriel Mission as depicted in the LA County seal The LA county seal appears on flags and official stationery and government buildings across Los Angeles County. Supporters of keeping the cross on the mission in the seal said it is a historically accurate symbol, given California's early settlement by Franciscan missionaries from Spain. They also noted that courts have upheld the constitutionality of the phrases 'in God We Trust' on US currency and 'one nation under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thursday's ruling is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit. Hector Villagra, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California and attorney Linda Burrow who represented plaintiffs in the case said in a statement Thursday that they were 'heartened' by the ruling. 'It recognizes that Los Angeles is a diverse county comprised of adherents of hundreds of faiths as well as non-believers, all of whom are entitled to be treated with equal dignity by their government,' they said. Nigerian troops foil Boko Haram suicide attack in northeast Nigerian troops on Friday thwarted an attempt by four suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers to attack the restive northeastern city of Maiduguri, hotbed of the Islamist group, an army spokesman said. At about 4.00 am (0300 GMT) troops "received a tip off about an impending attack in Maiduguri city by four suspected Boko Haram terrorists suicide bombers," army spokesman from Sambisa forest through cashew plantation," Colonel Sani Usman said in a statement. "The ever vigilant troops responded decisively by intercepting and neutralising the suspected terrorists," he added. Soldiers of the Nigerian Army prepare to leave Maiduguri in a heavily armed convoy on the road to Damboa in Borno State northeast Nigeria on March 25, 2016 Stefan Heunis (AFP) Three soldiers sustained injuries during the incident, while two unexploded explosives devices were safely detonated. Usman said troops also arrested three suspected Boko Haram insurgents at Nwagafete village, near Maiduguri. Boko Haram has increasingly used suicide bombers in its almost seven-year rebellion, seeking to carve out an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria. US says it is not responsible for civilian deaths in Yemen US military officials insisted Friday they bear no responsibility for civilian casualties in Yemen, where Washington is providing support to a Saudi-led coalition carrying out military strikes. The US military provides intelligence and logistical information to the coalition led by Riyadh, which coordinates air strikes on rebels waging a civil war against the Yemeni government. Human Rights groups say the United States bears responsibility for March 15 strikes on Yemen that killed 97 civilians, among them 25 children and infants. A Yemeni man visits the graves of relatives, reportedly killed during clashes between Shiite Huthi rebels and fighters from the Popular Resistance Committees, loyal to Yemen's fugitive President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, in Taez on April 8, 2016 Ahmad Al-Basha (AFP) A spokesman for US Central Command (Centcom) stressed that the Saudis are the ones who decide which targets to strike. "The decisions on the conduct of operations to include the selections and final vettings of targets" are being made by the Saudi-led coalition, said Centcom spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder. "We are confident that the information that we relay and that the support we provide to Saudi Arabia is sound, and provide them with the best option for military success consistent with international norms and mitigating civilian casualties," Ryder said. "The joint combined planning cell meet regularly with the Saudi military leadership and provide recommendations about being in compliance with the law of armed conflicts," Ryder said. A ceasefire is set to go into effect Sunday in Yemen, where the conflict flared up a year ago. The ceasefire comes ahead of peace talks due to commence on April 18 in Kuwait. Ryder said US military officials "have encouraged the Saudis to further investigate" the alleged bombings, as it does any time civilians are said to have been harmed. Meanwhile, another US military official said Washington has "pushed the Saudis very hard on this issue." "There certainly has been a steady drumbeat of concern expressed to the Saudi on this issue," said the official, who asked not to be identified. "The things we are doing, providing intelligence and precision guided munitions, those are things that prevent civilian casualties," the officer said. "Good intelligence begets fewer civilian casualties. Precision guided munitions beget fewer innocent civilian casualties." Wells Fargo pays $1.2 bn to settle crisis-era mortgage claims Wells Fargo will pay $1.2 billion to refund US agencies for wrongly certifying bad loans for federal home insurance ahead of the 2008 housing bust, the Department of Justice announced Friday. The settlement resolves charges that Wells Fargo, a giant in the US mortgage lending, employed shoddy underwriting practices to drive up loan volume, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill when mortgages failed. The government faulted Wells Fargo's actions under the federal direct endorsement lender program, which lets mortgage lenders originate, underwrite and certify mortgages for federal loan insurance in return for adequate oversight of the loans. Wells Fargo will pay $1.2 billion to refund the US agencies for wrongly certifying bad loans for federal home insurance ahead of the 2008 housing bust, the Department of Justice announced Saul Loeb (AFP/File) But Wells Fargo "engaged in a regular practice of reckless origination and underwriting of its FHA retail loans, all the while knowing that it would not be responsible when the defective loans went into default," Justice said. The bank identified thousands of problematic loans, but failed to report them to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, said US Attorney Preet Bharara. "As a result, while Wells Fargo enjoyed huge profits from its FHA loan business, the government was left holding the bag when the bad loans went bust," Bharara said. "With today's settlement, Wells Fargo has finally resolved the years-long litigation, adding to the list of large financial institutions against which this office has successfully pursued civil fraud prosecutions." North Korea says successfully tested ballistic missile engine North Korea said Saturday it had successfully tested an engine designed for an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) that would "guarantee" an eventual nuclear strike on the US mainland. It was the latest in a series of claims by Pyongyang of significant breakthroughs in both its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. Outside experts have treated a number of the claims with scepticism, suggesting the North Korean leadership is attempting to talk up its achievements ahead of a showcase ruling party congress next month. According to the North's official KCNA news agency, the ground engine test was ordered and personally monitored by leader Kim Jong-Un According to the North's official KCNA news agency, the ground engine test was ordered and personally monitored by leader Kim Jong-Un. As soon as Kim flagged off the test, "the engine spewed out huge flames with deafening boom", KCNA said. "The great success... provided a firm guarantee for mounting another form of nuclear attack upon the US imperialists and other hostile forces," Kim was quoted as saying. Now North Korea "can tip new type inter-continental ballistic rockets with more powerful nuclear warheads and keep any cesspool of evils in the earth including the US mainland within our striking range", he added. The North's top newspaper Rodong Sinmun featured photos of Kim overseeing the test on its front and second pages Saturday, and said the trial was reportedly conducted at the Sohae Space Centre. One picture showed Kim looking down from an observation tower as flames were seen over the horizon. Another showed flames streaming down from an engine propped up vertically. Military tensions on the divided Korean peninsula have been rising since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, and a long-range rocket a month later that was seen as a disguised ballistic missile test. The UN Security Council responded with its toughest sanctions to date over the North's nuclear programme, and Pyongyang accused Seoul and Washington of spearheading the sanctions drive in New York. In recent weeks, state media has carried repeated threats of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against both the South and the US mainland. - Weapons claims - The threats have been accompanied by claims of success in miniaturising a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile, developing a warhead that can withstand atmospheric re-entry, and building a solid-fuel missile engine. North Korea has never tested an ICBM, although it has displayed such a missile, known as the KN-08, during recent mass military parades in Pyongyang. While the North has clearly made progress in developing the KN-08, most experts still believe it is years from obtaining a credible ICBM strike capability. Kim described the engine test as an "eye-catching event" that demonstrated the North's national defence capability to the world. He also noted that it represented "another great victory" to be presented at the upcoming Workers' Party Congress, which is believed to be scheduled for May 7. It is the first congress of its kind for 36 years and seen as a showcase for the leadership to hype its achievements and to cement national unity and loyalty around Kim Jong-Un. "Kim was showing off his military build-up achievements to consolidate loyalty ahead of the Party Congress as economic difficulties grow following UN sanctions," Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies told AFP. Some analysts have suggested the North could even conduct a fifth nuclear test before the congress, and South Korean officials say they are fully prepared for such an eventuality. The North said its January test was of a powerful hydrogen bomb, but experts said the detected yield was too low for a full-fledged thermo-nuclear device. North Koreans across the country have been mobilised in a "70 day campaign" to prepare for the party gathering, with towns and cities across the country being spruced-up and prettified for the event. Graphic on North Korea's suspected missile arsenal Palestinians seek UN resolution against Israeli settlements UNITED NATIONS (AP) The Palestinians have given Arab nations a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as an obstacle to peace, the Palestinian U.N. Mission said Thursday. The draft resolution was immediately condemned by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "is taking a step that will push negotiations further away" to end the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians refused to provide any details of the text, but said the Security Council has unanimously agreed that Israeli settlements are illegal and it is their responsibility to act on this assessment and adopt a resolution on settlements. They recalled the Security Council's 14-1 vote on a resolution on settlements in February 2011. It was defeated by a U.S. veto. That resolution would have condemned "illegal" Israeli settlements and demanded an immediate halt to all settlement building. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast War and built settlements there. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but nearly 600,000 Israeli settlers remain in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Peace Now, a dovish Israeli group that tracks settlement construction, said Israel began building 1,800 new settlement homes in the West Bank in 2015. The Palestinians claim the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as parts of a future state, a position that has wide global support. They view Israeli settlement construction as illegal and a major obstacle to resolving the conflict. Though Israel's closest ally, the United States has nonetheless opposed new settlements, saying they are an impediment to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. At the same time, the Obama administration in 2011 didn't want the Security Council to take up the issue, arguing it would complicate peace negotiations. Whether the U.S. administration would adhere to that position and veto a similar resolution if it was put to a vote in the coming weeks remains to be seen. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which first reported on the resolution, said the Palestinians want the Security Council to vote when Abbas is in New York on April 22 to attend the high-level ceremony where more than 130 countries are expected to sign the landmark climate agreement reached in Paris in December. Netanyahu accused Abbas of avoiding direct negotiations, and Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said the only way to promote negotiations must start with the Palestinians "condemning terrorism and stopping the incitement." "They are continuing to deceive the international community by putting forward initiatives that do nothing to better the lives of either side of this conflict," Danon said. ___ Security flaws found in 3 state health insurance websites FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) Federal investigators found significant cybersecurity weaknesses in the health insurance websites of California, Kentucky and Vermont that could enable hackers to get their hands on sensitive personal information about hundreds of thousands of people, The Associated Press has learned. And some of those flaws have yet to be fixed. The vulnerabilities were discovered by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, and shared with state officials last September. Vermont authorities would not discuss the findings, but officials in California and Kentucky said this week that there was no evidence hackers succeeded in stealing anything. Regulators said that given the number of weaknesses they discovered in just the three states studied, other state-run health insurance exchanges could be vulnerable, too. The GAO recommended the federal government continually monitor cybersecurity at such sites. FILE -- In this May 23, 2013 file photo, Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, the state agency running the state's health insurance exchange, announces plans and prices that will be offered by private insurers during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif. California, Kentucky and Vermont had "significant" cybersecurity weaknesses in their state-run health insurance exchanges, federal investigators found, potentially exposing sensitive personal information for hundreds of thousand of consumers. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli,file) Created under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, the exchanges are online marketplaces where people who have no health insurance through their jobs can buy government-subsidized private coverage. Only a dozen states ran their own websites this year; the rest either switched to the federal one or jointly operate their exchanges with Washington. Computer security flaws are the just latest headache for the state exchanges. Some, like Oregon's, suffered crippling technical problems when they were launched in 2013. Some states, like Hawaii, turned operations back to the federal government because of cost concerns. The GAO report examined the three states' systems from October 2013 to March 2015 and released an abbreviated, public version of its findings last month without identifying the states. On Thursday, the GAO revealed the states' names in response to a Freedom of Information request from the AP. According to the GAO, one state did not encrypt passwords, potentially making it easy for hackers to gain access to individual accounts. One state did not properly use a filter to block hostile attempts to visit the website. And one state did not use the proper encryption on its servers, making it easier for hackers to get in. The report did not say which state had what problem. Kentucky's Steve Beshear, who was governor when the security flaws were discovered, said through a spokeswoman that "because of the time required to fix the technical issues, not all those issues had been addressed" by the time Gov. Matt Bevin took office in early December. But Beshear added: "It is important to note that there were never any security breaches of any kind, and no one's information was ever compromised." Doug Hogan, a spokesman for the Bevin administration's Cabinet for Health and Family Services, said efforts to fix the problems "are in various stages of completion and implementation." He added that privacy and security of sensitive information are "of the utmost importance" to Bevin's administration. Kentucky's insurance exchange, kynect, will be dismantled later this year. While the system is credited with helping reduce Kentucky's uninsured rate from more than 20 percent in 2013 to 7.5 percent last year, Bevin says it is too expensive. He wants to transfer the more than 93,000 people who bought private coverage on kynect to the federal exchange, Healthcare.gov. But Kentuckians' information might not be any safer on the federal exchange. According to the GAO report, Healthcare.gov had 316 security incidents between October 2013 and March 2015. Such incidents can include unauthorized access, disclosure of data or violations of security practices. None resulted in lost or stolen data, but the GAO said technical weaknesses with the federal system "will likely continue to jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity and availability of Healthcare.gov." In Vermont, Lawrence Miller, director of health reform for Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, said the state had changed vendors since the period of the GAO review. During the transition, "we ensured the correct controls were in place" to meet a federal standard, he wrote in an email. In California, a spokesman for the state's exchange, Roy Kennedy, would not say how Covered California was addressing the problems, citing security concerns. He pointed instead to a letter sent in October to members of Congress. In its, Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said there have been no successful breaches of website security. However, he said personal information may have been exposed in a few instances because of human error or other mistakes. Lee said that Covered California adopted 37 of the GAO's 41 recommendations for improving security. He said his agency disagreed with three technical security recommendations and is constrained by state laws and union contracts from adopting a fourth requiring background checks for existing employees. Since the GAO audit, Lee's letter said, Covered California conducts more frequent scans to identify threats, and any critical findings will be immediately fixed. "Protecting data is our highest priority," Lee wrote. "From day one, Covered California has followed the rigorous guidelines outlined in federal and state security regulations designed to protect our consumers' private information." ___ Alonso-Zaldivar reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Jonathan J. Cooper in Sacramento, California, and David Gram in Montpelier, Vermont, contributed to this report. FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2013 file photo, workers at the Vermont Health Connect call center talk to customers in Burlington, Vt. The U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed Thursday, April 7, 2016, that the state health insurance exchanges in Vermont, Kentucky and California had cybersecurity weaknesses in their health insurance exchanges, potentially exposing to hackers electronic systems that contain sensitive personal information on hundreds of thousands of consumers. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File) Fishing amid territorial disputes in the South China Sea CATO, Philippines (AP) As Asian countries jostle for territory in the South China Sea, one Filipino fisherman is taking a stand. He has faced down Chinese coast guard rifles, and even engaged in a stone-throwing duel with the Chinese last month that shattered two windows on his outrigger. "They'll say, 'Out, out of Scarborough,'" Renato Etac says, referring to Scarborough Shoal, a rocky outcropping claimed by both the Philippines and China. He yells back, "Where is the document that shows Scarborough is Chinese property?" In this March 26, 2016, photo, Vietnamese fisherman Tran Lan poses for a photo in front of his boat in Tho Quang port, Danang, Vietnam. For five generations, Tran Lans family has been fishing in the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh) At one level, the territorial disputes in the South China Sea are a battle of wills between American and Chinese battleships and planes. At another level, they are cat-and-mouse chases between the coast guards of several countries and foreign fishermen, and among the fishing boats themselves. Indonesia seized a Chinese fishing boat last month and arrested eight fishermen, only to have a Chinese coast guard vessel ram the fishing boat as it was being towed, allowing it to escape. Vietnam's coast guard chased away more than 100 Chinese boats over a two-week period, its state media reported this week, and made a rare seizure of a Chinese ship carrying 100,000 liters (26,400 gallons) of diesel oil, reportedly for sale to fishing boats in the area. The South China Sea, a hodgepodge of overlapping territorial claims in the Pacific, is both strategically important and a vital shipping route for international trade. It may also contain valuable oil and natural gas reserves. As tensions ratchet up, though, it is perhaps those who make a living at sea who feel it the most. Here are some stories from fishermen around the region: ___ PHILIPPINES: THE GUARDIAN OF SCARBOROUGH SHOAL Renato Etac has had dozens of encounters with Chinese ships. More than once, a small team of Chinese coast guardsmen on a rubber boat approached his boat and pointed their rifles at him, but he says he knew they would not fire and risk starting a war. At other times, the Chinese will surge as if to hit his boat, but the 37-year-old fisherman uses his keen knowledge of Scarborough Shoal where he has fished for Spanish mackerel, trevally and grouper since he was a teenager to outmaneuver them. Etac says he just wants to defend his livelihood in waters that used to be open to all. China took control of Scarborough Shoal in 2012 after a two-month standoff with Philippine government ships. It sits about 230 kilometers (145 miles) west of the Philippines, and 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the Chinese coast. "It's like quarreling, like playing games," he says. "Yelling, dirty finger, everything's there. Sometimes I use expletives in different dialects and I get to laugh when I see them, because they don't understand what I'm saying." He enjoys what he calls the territorial "debates" in the high seas, though his earnings from a weeklong fishing expedition have dropped by more than half to 3,000 pesos ($63), because of both the Chinese disruptions and competition. "He's like the guardian of Scarborough, sir," said Greggy Etac, a relative and a fellow fisherman. "I used to sail with him, but now, I'm scared." Jim Gomez in Cato, Philippines. ___ CHINA: COAST GUARD TO THE RESCUE Chinese fishermen working out of the Hainan island port of Tanmen say they now enjoy much greater support from their country's beefed-up coast guard. They have been forced to range further out to sea because of the heavy depletion of coastal fisheries, says Li Xianchuan, a 64-year-old crew member who has been fishing in and around Scarborough, the Spratly islands and the closer-in Paracels claimed also by Vietnam for 40 years. "There are many more fish in the Nansha islands, particularly Huangyan island," he says, using the Chinese terms for the contested Spratly group and Scarborough Shoal. In previous years, Chinese government ships would issue radio warnings about the presence of Philippine patrol ships around Scarborough Shoal. "It was very dangerous and scary," he says, as his 90-ton vessel takes on fresh water in preparation for a foray into the South China Sea. "We had to run around the reefs to get away from big (Philippine) boats. Thanks to the shallow water and submerged reefs, their big boats could not enter the reefs. We played hide-and-seek inside the reef until their boats gave up and left." Conditions for Chinese fishermen have vastly improved with the addition of new and larger Chinese coast guard vessels and a more proactive approach, Li says. A call to the coast guard will bring help within two to three hours, he says. Fishing in the South China Sea remains perilous, Li says. Fishermen must contend with rogue sailors from Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia who might try to rob them of their catches and fishing equipment. Li says he has been fired on once, and knows of several fishermen killed in encounters with Philippine boats. Zhang Weiqun in Tanmen, China ___ TAIWAN: FEAR OF BANDITRY AT SEA Heightened competition, and even banditry, is making it ever-harder to make a living, says Taiwanese fishing boat owner Hong Huai-jen. "Now, they are not only fishing in the South China Sea, but have also broken into our territorial waters," Hong says, standing by his boat in the southern Taiwan port of Donggang, which looks out on the Taiwan Strait. His boat was surrounded last November by a group of Vietnamese fishing boats in waters off Taiwan, presumably for the purpose of robbing him. He managed to give them the slip and called the Taiwanese coast guard for help. The Vietnamese boats had dispersed by the time help arrived. "Taiwanese fishermen don't have any weapons," Hong says. "Once they board our boats, there's nothing we can do. We would be detained and we have to pay for our release." He has been fishing for 14 years from his home port on Xiaoliuqiu, an island in the Taiwan Strait. "There's a big difference compared with the business we had before," he says. "My father has worked as a fisherman for about 40 years. The fishery resources were rich, and there were fewer fishing boats before. But now, the resources are thin and there are lots of boats." Johnson Lai in Donggang, Taiwan ___ INDONESIA: ANCESTRAL DISPUTES Fish-rich waters around Indonesia's Natuna Islands have a long history of being contested, says Anton Leonard, a fisherman and exporter who is secretary-general of the Indonesian Fishermen's Association representing traditional fishermen. "Fishermen that come from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and China have told native fishermen that Natuna waters are their traditional fishing grounds since the time of their ancestors," says Leonard. "Local fishermen in Natuna could not resist their presence because some of them believe the claims, others because such vessels are much bigger, more advanced and sometimes also carrying weapons." Native fisherman haven't been directly affected by South China Sea incidents that involve Chinese patrol boats, likely because they don't venture far out into Indonesia's exclusive economic zone, he says. But Indonesia's crackdown on foreign fishing vessels in its waters and a policy against "transshipment" of fish between boats at sea has affected the livelihood of traditional fisherman because they have fewer opportunities to sell their catch. At the same time, the government lacks a comprehensive strategy to empower the fishermen and improve their industry, Leonard says. "We are not afraid to face foreign boats coming into our territory," Leonard said. "We're eager to help the government and waiting to be involved in the defense of the country, even if only to be able to inform the local authorities about their presence within our waters." Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia ___ VIETNAM: FEARING CHINA For five generations, Tran Lan's family has been fishing in the South China Sea. He was 17 when he started going out in a small boat with his father. The family did well enough to buy two wooden trawlers for $90,000 each. His four sons, now aged 19 to 30, joined him. The decades-old routine changed in the early 2000s when their boat was threatened and nearly rammed by Chinese maritime police four times near the Paracel Islands in South China Sea. They switched their fishing grounds to the less bountiful Tonkin Gulf, but still work in constant fear of being attacked by the Chinese. "We have equipped GPS and navigation to identify Chinese boats so we can avoid them," Lan says. "The last thing I want is to get too close to Chinese boats. They have bigger boats and definitely would outrun us." His boats were among about 1,000 anchored at Tho Quang terminal, the biggest in the central port city of Danang. He and others were busily readying their boats to go back to sea. Each expedition lasts up to 30 days, punctuated by two to three weeks in port to rest and repair boats and gear. Vietnam, China and Taiwan all claim the Paracel Islands, which have been controlled by China since 1974. Vietnam has accused China of harassing and attacking its fishermen in what it says are traditional fishing grounds near the Paracels that they have been working for generations. "I was fishing near the Paracel Islands for a long time, but the Chinese have sealed it off," Lan says, whose family earns about $27,000 a year catching squid. "It was a good area for fishing." Hau Dinh in Danang, Vietnam ___ Listen to the fishermen: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fishermens-voices-making-living-amid-territorial-disputes-south-china-sea In this March 26, 2016, photo, Vietnamese fisherman Tran Lan piles fishing nets on his boat in Tho Quang port, Danang, Vietnam. For five generations, Tran Lans family has been fishing in the South China Sea.(AP Photo/Hau Dinh) In this March 28, 2016, photo, Filipino fisherman Renato Etac, from the Philippines, sits on his boat during an interview with the Associated Press in Cato, northwestern Philippines. More than once, Chinese coast guardsmen approached Etac's boat and pointed their rifles at him, but he says he knew they would not fire and risk starting a war. (AP Photo/Jim Gomez) In this Dec. 24, 2015, photo, provided by Filipino fisherman Renato Etac, a Chinese Coast Guard boat approaches Filipino fishermen near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. More than once, Chinese coast guardsmen approached Etac's boat and pointed their rifles at him, but he says he knew they would not fire and start a war. (Renato Etac via AP) In this Sept. 23, 2015, photo, provided by Renato Etac, a Chinese Coast Guard boat sprays a water cannon at Filipino fishermen near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. More than once, Chinese coast guardsmen approached Etac's boat and pointed their rifles at him, but he says he knew they would not fire and start a war. (Renato Etac via AP) In this Feb. 27, 2015, photo, provided by Renato Etac, Chinese Coast Guard members approach Filipino fishermen near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. More than once, Chinese coast guardsmen approached Etac's boat and pointed their rifles at him, but he says he knew they would not fire and start a war. (AP Photo/Renato Etac) In this Feb. 20, 2015, photo, provided by Renato Etac, a Chinese Coast Guard boat approaches Filipino fishermen on Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. More than once, Chinese coast guardsmen approached Etac's boat and pointed their rifles at him, but he says he knew they would not fire and start a war. (Renato Etac via AP) In this Feb. 27, 2015, photo, provided by Filipino fisherman Renato Etac, Chinese Coast Guard members rear, approach Filipino fishermen on their boat on Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. More than once, Chinese coast guardsmen approached Etac's boat and pointed their rifles at him, but he says he knew they would not fire and start a war. (Renato Etac via AP) In this Oct. 27, 2015, photo, provided by Renato Etac, a Chinese Coast Guard boat circles a Filipino fishing boat near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. More than once, Chinese coast guardsmen approached Etac's boat and pointed their rifles at him, but he says he knew they would not fire and start a war. (Renato Etac via AP) In this March 25, 2016, photo, Chinese fisherman Li Xianchuan poses for a photo on a fishing boat at the port in Tanmen, China. Chinese fishermen working out of the Hainan island port of Tanmen say they now enjoy much greater support from their countrys beefed-up coast guard. (AP Photo/Wayne Zhang) In this April 6, 2016, photo, Secretary-General of Indonesian Fishermens Association Anton Leonard speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Jakarta, Indonesia. Fish-rich waters around Indonesias Natuna Islands have a long history of being contested, says Leonard, a fisherman and exporter who represents traditional fishermen. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana) In this March 31, 2016, photo, Taiwanese fisherman Hong Huai-jen, stands on his boat at Donggong Fishery Port in Pingtung County, in southern Taiwan. Heightened competition, and even banditry, is making it ever-harder to make a living, says Hong. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai) In this March 31, 2016, photo, fishermen and buyers gather at a tuna auction at Donggang fishery port in Taiwan. Fishermen from around the South China Sea tell stories of contending with bandits and coast guards. As tensions ratchet up, it is perhaps those who make a living at sea who feel it the most. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai) In this March 27, 2016, photo, Vietnamese fishermen fix nets on their boat as while docked at Tho Quang port, Danang, Vietnam, after a fishing trip in the South China Sea. Fishermen from around the South China Sea tell stories of contending with bandits and coast guards. As tensions ratchet up, it is perhaps those who make a living at sea who feel it the most. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh) Big apple chill: Cold snap could nip fruit in bud ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) Apple farmers in the East worry the late-season Arctic blast could take a big bite from their budding crops. "It definitely was cold enough so that there could be some catastrophic damage to the majority of the apple crop," said Jake Samascott, whose family grows about 100 acres of apples on their farm south of Albany. The unseasonably cold air moved into Northeast and mid-Atlantic states this week shortly after a warm spell sped up bud growth on apple trees. Buds become more sensitive to cold as they mature, making the cold snap especially troubling in big apple-producing states such as New York. Farmers are starting to assess the damage this week with another round of plummeting temperatures looming. Kenny Bowman holds an apple tree bud on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, at Bowman Orchards in Clifton Park, N.Y. Apple farmers worry the late-season Arctic blast in the East could take a big bite from their budding crops. The unseasonably cold air moved into Northeast and mid-Atlantic states this week shortly after a warm spell sped up bud growth on apple trees. (Cindy Schultz/The Albany Times Union via AP) TROY, SCHENECTADY; SARATOGA SPRINGS; ALBANY OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT "We have at least one more cold night by the end of the weekend, early next week, if forecasts hold, to get through," said Ben Wenk of Three Springs Fruit Farm in Aspers, Pennsylvania, southwest of Harrisburg. "And of course there's not a whole lot we can do about it." Farmers are already checking individual buds for damage but don't expect to have an estimate of losses until next week at the earliest. Samascott said his orchard could lose 90 percent of its apple crop because of temperatures that dipped to 10 degrees and below. Three Springs could lose half its early varieties like Honeycrisp and Gala. Wenk also is worried about his peaches, blueberries and strawberries. Some apple farmers try to mitigate damage by employing windmill-like machines to direct warmer air at the trees, but they are still left playing a waiting game. "It's almost too early to tell, but I still feel we have a crop," said Dwight Baugher of Baugher's Orchards & Farm in Westminster, Maryland. He said his apple crop "got smacked pretty good" with overnight temperatures in the mid to low 20s this week. Damage will vary from farm to farm depending on varieties, how low local temperatures dropped and how far along the buds were. Losses can even vary around a single farm, with trees in colder valleys affected while trees on a hillside escape harm. Some orchards farther north, like in New York's Champlain Valley, are expected to escape large-scale damage because of their later growing season. "Individual farms, some will skate through and they'll be fine and there are others that probably won't have a crop, and economically it will be pretty tough," said Jim Eve of Eve Farm Service, who monitors farms in western New York. At G and S Orchards in the western New York town of Walworth, farmer Stephanie Craft said she is trying to stay positive. Temperatures bottomed out briefly earlier this week at 11 degrees, but her trees' buds where not as far along as those across the state in the Hudson Valley. "I think we're going to knock on wood be all right," she said. ___ Associated Press writer Kasey Jones contributed from Baltimore. Kenny Bowman walks down a row of apple trees on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, at Bowman Orchards in Clifton Park, N.Y. Apple farmers worry the late-season Arctic blast in the East could take a big bite from their budding crops. The unseasonably cold air moved into Northeast and mid-Atlantic states this week shortly after a warm spell sped up bud growth on apple trees. (Cindy Schultz/The Albany Times Union via AP) TROY, SCHENECTADY; SARATOGA SPRINGS; ALBANY OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT This April 4, 2016 photo shows apple tree buds at Riverview Orchards in Clifton Park, N.Y. Apple farmers worry the late-season Arctic blast in the East could take a big bite from their budding crops. The unseasonably cold air moved into Northeast and mid-Atlantic states this week shortly after a warm spell sped up bud growth on apple trees. (Cindy Schultz/The Albany Times Union via AP) TROY, SCHENECTADY; SARATOGA SPRINGS; ALBANY OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Greece resumes migrant deportations to Turkey amid protests DIKILI, Turkey (AP) Greece on Friday resumed deportations of migrants to Turkey after a four-day pause, despite mounting desperation among refugees and attempts by activists to stop the two boats from leaving Lesbos with 124 people onboard. Before the first boat left the island, four activists jumped into the sea to try to obstruct the operation swimming to the front of the chartered ferry and grabbing the anchor chain and were detained by the coast guard. The second boat made the journey without incident. One of the migrants, however, was refused by Turkey and sent back to Lesbos, Europe's Frontex border agency said. It did not elaborate on the reason. A migrant girl protects herself from rain at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, April 8, 2016. A plan to send back migrants from Greece to Turkey sparked demonstrations by local residents in both countries days before the deal brokered by the European Union is set to be implemented. (AP Photo/Amel Emric) The EU-Turkey deal, which aims to deter illegal migration, has faced several setbacks and sharp criticism in its first week of implementation and has left many would-be migrants in limbo along the coast of Turkey. "There is no legal or adequate way for us to go to Europe so people are either waiting for the boats or turning back to Syria," says Mohammed, a Syrian who is stranded in the Turkish coastal town of Izmir. "People are shocked and scared." Mohammed, who only gave his first name because he might decide to go back to his hometown which is under the control of the Islamic State group, says he told his family to stay put. "If any Syrian asked me today, 'should I make the journey?' I'd say go back and die in your land with honor," said the scrawny young man. "Europe wants you dead. Turkey wants you dead." The deportations on Friday followed the return of 202 migrants earlier this week under the EU-Turkey deal which aims to return migrants who don't apply for asylum from Greece to Turkey. In exchange, the EU will take in some Syrians directly from Turkey, provide funds for Ankara, visa-free travel for Turks and accelerated EU membership talks. Officers from the European Union's border protection agency escorted the migrants to the boats on Lesbos. In the Turkish port of Dikili, health and migration officials checked the passengers amid heavy security before they were whisked onto police-escorted buses heading to a deportation center in Kirklareli province, near the border with Bulgaria. Some 4,000 migrants who reached Greek islands from nearby Turkey after March 20 are being held in detention camps to be screened for deportation. But the returns have been held up by delays in processing asylum claims by overwhelmed Greek authorities who are also preparing to deal with applications across the country by some 50,000 refugees who have been promised places in a slow-moving EU relocation scheme. A Turkish official said his country was prepared to receive higher numbers with an array of 1,000 professionals ranging from doctors to migration officials and police deployed in Dikili. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said that they had expected to receive 2,050 migrants on Friday. He said those returned Friday were primarily Afghan and Pakistani nationals. There were also four Iraqis and one each from Egypt, Morocco, Bangladesh and the Palestinian Territories. All are to be processed for deportation within two weeks. Returns from Greece to Turkey are expected to resume next week, according to the Turkish official. Turkey's coast guard rescued over 500 migrants in the Aegean Sea during the first week of April, according to a written statement by the governor's office of the western province of Izmir. In total, 23,147 migrants have been rescued since the beginning of the year. A journey to Europe now carries a high risk of failure but staying put is no more attractive. Newcomers to Turkey report challenges registering with the authorities and know their chances of being resettled from here to Europe are slim. Nour Oghli, who studied law in Damascus before fleeing to Lebanon and then to Turkey, says she remains determined to make the journey to Europe in the hope of reaching Germany and fulfilling her dream of becoming a judge. In the past ten weeks, she and her family have sought to cross to the Greek islands three times only to be intercepted on the Aegean by the Turkish coast guard. Smugglers, she said, are now offering to take them for half-price because business is bad but her mother is too apprehensive to take the offer. Oghli, who has been unable to move her legs after her university was bombed and is in a wheelchair, says she would even consider going without her family if she can find a way. "If they catch me, I'll throw myself overboard," she said. On Greek islands, protests continued at overcrowded detention camps. Police cleared the main port on the island of Chios overnight, where scores of migrants had been camped out for a week after pushing their way out of a detention camp. Police scuffled with groups of Greek protesters staging rival demonstrations in support of and in opposition to the migrants. The human rights group Amnesty International, which interviewed dozens of detainees on Chios and Lesbos, said people were being held "arbitrarily in appalling conditions." "A setup that is so flawed, rushed and ill-prepared is ripe for mistakes, trampling the rights and well-being of some of the most vulnerable people," said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty's deputy Europe director. ___ Giannakouris reported from Lesbos, Greece. Elena Becatoros and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed. Ayse Wieting and Suzan Fraser in Istanbul also contributed. ___ Follow Giannakouris at https://twitter.com/PGiannakouris and Soguel at http://twitter.com/DSoguel ___ Online: Amnesty International report: http://ow.ly/10qSGW Migrant children warm themselves near fire at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, April 8, 2016. A plan to send back migrants from Greece to Turkey sparked demonstrations by local residents in both countries days before the deal brokered by the European Union is set to be implemented. (AP Photo/Amel Emric) A Pakistani migrant looks back as he gets on a ferry for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Activists in the sea try to interfere the deportation of Pakistani migrants on board a ferry set to sail for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) A Pakistani migrant looks back as he gets on a ferry for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Activists swim as they try to interfere the deportation of Pakistani migrants on board a ferry set to sail for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Turkish Interior Ministry employees check documents of a Pakistani migrant wrapped with a blanket beforegetting on a ferry for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) A Frontex staff member and Turkish Interior Ministry employees check documents of a Pakistani migrant, second from left, before getting on a ferry for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Turkish Interior Ministry employees check documents of a Pakistani migrant wrapped with a blanket before getting on a ferry for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) A Frontex staff member escorts a Pakistani migrant on a ferry for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Activists in the sea try to interfere the deportation of Pakistani migrants on board a ferry set to sail for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Nour Oghli, right, a 26-year-old law student from Syria, with her mother Amal in Izmir, Turkey, Thursday, April 7, 2016. Nour spends her days wandering the streets of Izmir, visiting coffee shops and teahouses. She is determined to make the journey to Europe in the hope of reaching Germany. I want to go to Europe, but now there are almost no trips, she says. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen). The Latest: Italy, Austria meet on border issues ATHENS, Greece (AP) The Latest on the flow of people into Europe (all times local): 10:30 p.m. Interior ministers from Austria and Italy have met in Rome amid concerns the Austrian government will enforce border controls on the nations' shared border to limit passage of migrants. Migrant children warm themselves near fire at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, April 8, 2016. A plan to send back migrants from Greece to Turkey sparked demonstrations by local residents in both countries days before the deal brokered by the European Union is set to be implemented. (AP Photo/Amel Emric) Interior Minister Angelino Alfano's office said the meeting Friday yielded a commitment to intensify cooperation in "monitoring and controlling the common border with the strategic aim of guaranteeing smoothness of passage at the Brenner (Pass) and to safeguard the free circulation foreseen by the Schengen" accord. The ministry said the two sides agreed to strengthen investigative cooperation between border police forces, including greater exchange of information and "constant" entry of data into European databases. Many expect that the EU-Turkey deal tightening a Balkans route used by migrants and refugees will send them across the sea to Italy and then northwards. ___ 6:45 p.m. Authorities say about 1,200 people, mostly Syrians and Afghans, may be stranded indefinitely in Macedonia because the country was not part of a European Union-Turkey deal on refugees. Interior Ministry spokeswoman Natalija Sotirova Kordikj told the AP Friday that Macedonia had initiated talks with the EU "on several occasions for a mutual solution to be found for migrants, but there is still no positive answer." About 1,030 migrants are in a transit center in Tabanovce near the border with Serbia, which is now at more than double its capacity. Another 130 are in a camp in Gevgelija on the border with Greece. Kordikj said they could apply for asylum in Macedonia, ask to be sent home or return to Greece. Few seek asylum as most hoped to reach wealthier EU countries ___ 5:55 p.m. Newly arrived asylum-seekers in Turkey report challenges registering with the authorities and know their chances of being resettled to Europe are slim. Nour Oghli, who studied law in Damascus before fleeing to Lebanon and then to Turkey, says she remains determined to get to Germany and fulfilling her dream of becoming a judge. She says she has been unable to move her legs after her university was bombed and is in a wheelchair. In the past 10 weeks, she and her family have sought to cross to the Greek islands three times only to be intercepted on the Aegean by the Turkish coast guard. Oghli says smugglers are now offering to take them for half-price because business is bad, but her mother is afraid to take the offer. Oghli says she would consider going without her family if she can find a way. She says, "If they catch me, I'll throw myself overboard." ___ 5:45 p.m. The Czech government says it is not ready yet to take from Germany a group of 25 Iraqi nationals who were offered asylum in the Czech Republic but left for Germany. German authorities have asked the Czechs to take them back but Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said Friday that request has been rejected due formal faults and because it was not in line with EU legislation. The group arrived in the Czech Republic two months ago as part of 153 Iraqi Christians who were threatened by extremists and included in a program to receive asylum here. But they asked to cancel asylum procedures and last weekend they traveled illegally to Germany where they were arrested. Because of that, the Czech government stopped the program Thursday. ___ 5 p.m. Serbian police say they have arrested five people on suspicion of smuggling 25 migrants over the border from neighboring Bulgaria. Police said Friday that the suspects will be charged with illegal crossing of the state border and people-smuggling. Police say they found the migrants hidden in the suspects' vehicles after stopping them on a regional road in central Serbia. Police also have confiscated the five vehicles. Migrants fleeing war and poverty and hoping to reach Western Europe have been turning to smugglers after countries along the so-called Balkan migrant corridor closed their borders for transit toward wealthy EU nations. ___ 12:55 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is defending anew the European Union's migrant deal with Turkey, saying that it's right to combat illegal migration and people-smuggling. Merkel spoke at an event in Berlin Friday as Greece resumed deportations to Turkey under the deal that she has championed. The arrangement has drawn criticism from human rights groups and others. Merkel said she is "firmly convinced that making clear we are pitting ourselves against illegal migration is right." She pointed to continuing deaths of people crossing the Aegean Sea and said that Europe can't stand by and watch people-smugglers taking control. She said that "each migrant will receive an individual examination" and that "we are in a critical dialogue" with nongovernmental organizations. ___ 10:50 a.m. A second wave of migrants returned from Greece has reached Turkey in line with a controversial deal to curb illegal migration to Europe. A group of 45 migrants set out in a ferry from the Greek island of Lesbos on Friday morning and arrived shortly after in the Turkish port town of Dikili across the Aegean Sea. Turkey has agreed to take back migrants who reached Greece after March 20. For every Syrian returned, Europe agreed to take a Syrian refugee from Turkey to be resettled in an EU country. Turkey, home to 2.7 million Syrian refugees, will receive funds from the EU to spend on refugees. It is also set to benefit with visa-free travel for Turkish citizens and accelerated EU membership talks. ___ 10:45 a.m. The number of people applying for asylum in Germany during the first quarter of the year has more than doubled compared with the same period in 2015. Official figures released Friday show 181,405 people applied for asylum in Germany during the first three months. That's an increase of 112.4 percent compared with the 85,394 asylum requests in the first quarter of last year. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the rise in asylum requests occurred despite a decrease in new arrivals in recent months. He said the discrepancy was due to a delay between people arriving and formally requesting asylum. The number of Syrians applying for asylum in Germany during the first quarter was 89,292, compared with 15,444 in the same period 2015. ___ 10:30 a.m. Amid protests, Greece has resumed deportations of refugees and migrants from its islands to Turkey after a four-day pause, sending back 45 people from Lesbos to a nearby port on the Turkish coast. Before the boat left the island Friday, four activists jumped into the sea to try to obstruct the operation and were detained by the coast guard. Another 79 people were due to be deported from Lesbos later Friday, authorities said. An agreement between Turkey and the European Union went into full effect Monday, when 202 migrants were sent back. Some 4,000 migrants and refugees who reached Greek islands from nearby Turkey after March 20 are being held in detention camps to be screened for deportation. Turkish security officers stand before migrants arriving from the Greek island of Lesbos disembark, in Dikili port, Turkey, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. The European Union began sending back migrants this week under a deal with Turkey aimed at preventing the flow of migrant to Europe. (AP Photo/Mehmet Guzel) A Frontex staff member and Turkish Interior Ministry employees check documents of a Pakistani migrant, second from left, before getting on a ferry for Turkey in the port of Mytilini of the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, April 8, 2016. Forty-five migrants from Pakistan were deported to Turkey on Friday under the EU agreement with Turkey. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, and Aydan Ozoguz, right, Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery and Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration, talk prior to a meeting of the German Government and representatives of refugees support groups in Berlin, Germany, Friday, April 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn) New scrutiny of psychiatric hospital with history of attacks SEATTLE (AP) Federal scrutiny intensified Friday on Washington state's largest psychiatric hospital as authorities 300 miles away went door-to-door handing out flyers searching for a patient accused of killing a woman who had escaped the 800-bed facility two days earlier by crawling through a window of a lower-security ward. Western State Hospital in Lakewood, south of Seattle, had already been under investigation for attacks on patients and staff and a failure to improve safety when Anthony Garver, 28, and another patient escaped through the ground-room floor window Wednesday night. The other patient was captured the next morning after getting on a public bus not far from the hospital. Also Friday, the hospital revealed another patient was missing. That patient, who authorities did not consider an immediate danger to the public, has not been found since failing to return from a group outing the same day the other two men escaped. The incidents did not appear related. This undated photo provided by the Lakewood Police Department shows Anthony Garver. Mark Alexander Adams and Garver, described as dangerous, have escaped from Western State Hospital, a psychiatric facility, in Pierce County, south of Tacoma, Wednesday, April 6, 2016. (Lakewood Police Department via AP) U.S. regulators already were investigating a recent violent attack on a hospital worker and a patient-on-patient sexual assault at Western State Hospital. A workplace inspection released this week found a series of missteps that posed safety risks, including unlocked rooms, unattended items that could be used as weapons and workers who abandoned their posts instead of watching patients. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has repeatedly cited the facility over safety concerns and threatened to cut millions in federal funding. An agency spokesman says the hospital is under additional scrutiny over the escapes and recent assaults. Garver was last seen on Thursday in the Spokane area where his parents live after his father called authorities to report his son had stopped by briefly. Authorities have used SWAT teams, dogs and helicopters to search for him, and Spokane County sheriff's Deputy Mark Gregory said investigators were not sure whether he left the area or was hiding in the woods. Garver had been charged in 2013 with tying a 20-year-old woman to her bed with electrical cords, stabbing her 24 times in the chest and slashing her throat. The murder charge was dismissed after a judge said mental health treatment to prepare him for trial was not working. Mark Alexander Adams, 58, who escaped with Garver, had been charged with domestic assault in 2014. Like Garver, he was found too mentally ill to stand trial and a judge ordered him held at the hospital. State officials would not explain why Garver, an ex-felon with a history of running from authorities, was kept in a lower-security area. Some high-security units require patient checks every 15 minutes, but Garver was not placed in one, staffers say. "He was in a locked area with locked windows and hourly checks," said Kathy Spears, a spokeswoman for the Department of Social and Health Services, which oversees the state's mental health care. The hospital says the men were discovered missing 45 minutes after they were last seen, but police said it took an hour and a half. Security staff was inspecting the windows Friday to determine how the men loosened the bolts. Garver was under more restrictive conditions than the other patient missing on Friday from the hospital. That person, who was deemed unfit for trial on residential burglary charges, had gone with an escorted group to buy clothing outside the hospital and left "unnoticed through an exit door" Wednesday, Spears said. The hospital did not identify the patient. The history of violence at the facility stretches back years. Hundreds of employees have suffered concussions, fractures and cuts in assaults by patients, resulting in $6 million in workers' compensation claims between 2013 and 2015. Patients also have attacked other patients, causing serious injuries. Federal regulators sent notices to the hospital four times last year after inspectors found it failed to ensure the safety. The facility has until May 3 to address the violations or lose millions in funding. Most recently, a patient with a history of violent behavior choked and punched a mental health technician on March 26, according to an internal report. A March 23 report said a male patient slipped out of his monitors and was found in a bathroom with another male patient, who said he was sexually assaulted. The hospital faces new scrutiny after the two attacks and escape, said Steven Chickering, associate regional administrator of a division of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. "CMS was aware of all three of these situations, and cannot comment on how they will affect Western State Hospital's federal funding," Chickering said in an email. "CMS is currently following its procedures and processes for these situations." In addition, the hospital's safety and emergency management manager sent a memo to staff Thursday citing numerous violations observed during a recent review. Some of the problems involved how the hospital is laid out, "but they also observed actions by staff that could pose a safety and/or security risk," Pamela Rieta's memo said. Her team saw a patient wearing a long necklace, telephones with long cords, an unattended chair and other items that could be used as weapons left at the nurse's station, the memo said. Cabinets and lockers in activity rooms and kitchen areas were unlocked and unattended. Patients returning from ground privileges were not scanned for contraband. Several kitchen doors were propped open without staffers present, allowing patients to enter, the memo said. The team also saw staff leave their posts "to hang out and talk ... not observing the patients." The state's Behavioral Health Administration, which oversees the facility south of Seattle, is conducting a safety review and will bring in outside experts to help, assistant director Carla Reyes said. Gregory, the Spokane County sheriff's deputy, said he hopes Garver will be held in a more-secure facility after he is apprehended. "He has a history of running from law enforcement and of not doing what he's supposed to do, so I hope when he is caught, he'll be placed in a facility that has better security," Gregory said. ___ Follow Martha Bellisle at https://twitter.com/marthabellisle. FILE - This Oct. 8, 2015, file photo, shows the Western State Hospital in Lakewood, Wash. A violent ex-felon who escaped from the Washington state psychiatric hospital that's under federal scrutiny over safety violations remained elusive Friday morning, April 8, 2016, a Spokane County Sheriff's deputy said. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File) Officials stop vehicles as they search in Spokane Valley, Wash, Thursday, April 7, 2016, for escaped mental patient Anthony Garver. Garver, 28, escaped Wednesday night with Mark Alexander Adams, 58, a patient who had been accused of domestic assault in 2014 and was captured Thursday morning, officials said. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review via AP) COEUR D'ALENE PRESS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT A Spokane County Sheriff's helicopter searches for Anthony Garver, 28, near Forker Road in Spokane Valley, Wash., Thursday, April 7, 2016. Garver, 28, escaped from a Washington state psychiatric hospital Wednesday night with Mark Alexander Adams, 58, a patient who had been accused of domestic assault in 2014 and was captured Thursday morning, officials said. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review via AP) COEUR D'ALENE PRESS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Law on discrimination, bathrooms aids campaign fundraising RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) Signed only two weeks ago, North Carolina's new law blocking anti-discrimination rules covering the LGBT community has become an issue in one of the nation's most contested gubernatorial elections. The campaigns of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who signed the law, and challenger Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, who has refused to defend it in court, have been citing the conflict over the law as they seek donations. Cooper and McCrory won their respective March 15 primaries the week before the General Assembly held a special session to block a Charlotte City Council ordinance that extended protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people at hotels, restaurants and stores. FILE- In this Feb. 20, 2016, file photo, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory speaks with reporters following the opening session of the National Governors Association Winter Meeting in Washington. McCrory and Democratic challenger Roy Cooper are tapping into emotions about a new North Carolina law getting national attention to raise money in their high-stakes gubernatorial race this fall. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File) The two are expected to run in one of the most expensive and competitive gubernatorial races this year, so every extra donation is important. National Democrats consider North Carolina their best chance to knock off a Republican incumbent. The two campaigns already have raised more than $13 million, with Cooper ahead in the money chase through the end of February. Criticism of the law and McCrory has led to a federal lawsuit and vocal protests outside the governor's mansion and on cable television news. Social conservatives are holding prayer vigils and rallies supporting McCrory and other Republicans, who say Charlotte crossed the line when the ordinance allowed transgender people to use the rest room aligned with their gender identity at public accommodations. Both candidates "are going to try to raise the money from the red-hots," said Gary Pearce, a longtime consultant in North Carolina Democratic politics. "That's what anger is always a good motivator for contributions on both sides." McCrory has said he's been unfairly treated by the national media and with an orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the law. "The White House attacked us. The ACLU sued us. And Attorney General Cooper won't try to stop them from stripping the basic expectation of privacy and safety North Carolinians have when they or their children use the restroom," said a McCrory campaign email signed by campaign manager Russell Peck while asking for $25. The state law went further by preventing others counties and cities from enforcing similar rules and requiring public schools and universities and government agencies to limit multistall bathrooms to people of the same biological sex only. Cooper has said McCrory inserted discrimination into state law and created a "national embarrassment" that will lose the state jobs. More than 130 corporate executives the latest include those from General Electric Co., Oracle and LabCorp. have signed a letter demanding McCrory seek the law's repeal. "Together, we can take a stand against this law. Together, we can make our voices heard and say we won't stand for bigotry and discrimination in North Carolina," said the email fundraising plea, signed simply, "Roy." The state Democratic Party and state Senate leader Phil Berger also have tapped into anger about or defense of the ordinance with their own email and online donation pleas. Pearce anticipates the controversy would benefit Cooper's campaign finances more and expects he's targeting cash support from business leaders in Charlotte, where McCrory was mayor for 14 years. Republican consultant Dee Stewart, who is not working in the gubernatorial race, said he expects both candidates will benefit but the issue will motivate "low-dollar donors" more. He cautioned the shelf life of raising money off the law is limited and gubernatorial candidates will move to the next big thing that gets media attention. "That's just the nature of politics," Stewart said. Seoul: 13 North Korean workers at foreign restaurant defect SEOUL, South Korea (AP) Thirteen North Koreans working at the same restaurant in a foreign country have defected to South Korea, Seoul officials said Friday. People working in North Korean-operated restaurants overseas have previously defected, but this is the first time multiple workers have escaped from the same restaurant, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee told reporters in Seoul. North Korean defections are a bitter point of contention between the rival Koreas. Pyongyang usually accuses Seoul of enticing North Korean citizens to defect, something Seoul denies. South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee speaks about North Korean workers' defection to South Korea during a briefing at the government complex in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 8, 2016. Jeong said 13 North Koreans working at the same restaurant in a foreign country have defected to the South. This is the first time multiple workers have escaped from the same restaurant. (Shin Jun-hee/Yonhap via AP) KOREA OUT Overseas North Korean workers are usually thought to be chosen largely because of their loyalty. Jeong said one male and 12 female North Korean workers arrived in the South on Thursday. He didn't reveal the country where they were working or the route they took to avoid diplomatic problems and possibly endanger North Koreans still working in the country. The Associated Press called a number of North Korean restaurants in Asia, and all were open except one located in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Danang, Vietnam. A person who answered the telephone at the hotel said the Pyongyang Restaurant had closed two weeks ago and all the Korean staff had left the country. She declined to provide more details or identify herself. It was unclear whether the restaurant was connected to the defections. The North Korean defectors told South Korean officials that they learned about the South and began to distrust North Korean propaganda by watching South Korean TV dramas and movies and from searching the Internet while living overseas, Jeong said. South Korean officials believe overseas North Korean restaurants have been suffering economically since stronger international sanctions were applied against North Korea over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. Jeong said the defectors told South Korean officials that their restaurant was struggling to meet demands from North Korean authorities at home for foreign currency. South Korea recently advised its citizens not to patronize North Korean restaurants, although such visits are not illegal. South Korea's spy agency estimates that North Korea runs about 130 restaurants in other countries about 100 in China and the others in Russia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. In a report to the U.N. General Assembly in October last year, Marzuki Darusman, a U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said more than 50,000 North Koreans are working in foreign countries, mostly in China and Russia, providing a source of money for Pyongyang. He cited various studies, including a 2012 report by the International Network for the Human Rights of North Korean Overseas Labor that estimated North Korea was earning as much as $2.3 billion annually from the workers it sent abroad. The Unification Ministry's website says more than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea as of March. But there have been only a few incidents in which large groups of North Korean defectors entered South Korea at once. North Korea in 2004 accused South Korea of kidnapping its citizens after the South airlifted 468 North Koreans from Vietnam. Seoul said the North Koreans fled their country into China and then traveled overland to Vietnam. In 2011, nine North Koreans used a small boat to defect to South Korea by sea. ___ Kosovo opposition tries to disrupt president's inauguration PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) Opposition supporters in Kosovo deployed tear gas Friday to try to disrupt the inauguration ceremony for the country's new president, Hashim Thaci. Canisters were launched before the ceremony at Pristina's main Skenderbeg Square, but later it continued normally. The opposition has been disrupting parliamentary sessions in Kosovo since September to protest a deal with Serbia that gives more powers to ethnic Serbs in Kosovo and a separate border demarcation pact with Montenegro. Kosovo's new president Hashim Thaci addresses lawmakers after he assumed his post in a swearing-in ceremony, at the Parliament that the opposition boycotted in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Thursday. Apr. 7, 2016. Thaci, 47, who replaces Atifete Jahjaga, was elected in Parliament on Feb. 26 in the absence of nearly all opposition lawmakers who earlier tried to disrupt the voting with tear gas. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) Tear gas was thrown just before the main guests were to arrive, although some diplomats were already there. Police detained around half a dozen opposition supporters while others were pushed away. Police said one officer was injured by tear gas, 12 opposition supporters were arrested for "trying to hurl tear gas" and four unused canisters were found with them. The main opposition Self-Determination Movement Party took responsibility for throwing the tear gas, broadcasting a short movie of the action on its Facebook site. "Hashim Thaci is not and will never be the president of the Republic of Kosovo," they said. "We shall not recognize and accept him as the president of our Republic. We shall continuously and without compromise oppose him. As we did today!" Thaci, 47, assumed his post Thursday in a swearing-in ceremony at the Parliament. He was once a top commander of the rebel fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army and is still wanted in Serbia, but he called for reconciliation with Belgrade. "We shall build the good neighborliness. There is no alternative for dialogue. Kosovo and Serbia should pass from the stage of normalizing their ties to the process of reconciliation between the two countries and the two peoples. I am convinced reconciliation will occur," he said at his inauguration speech. ___ Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania contributed to this report. Kosovo's new president Hashim Thaci sits after a hand over ceremony in Kosovo capital Pristina on Thursday. April 7, 2016. Thaci, 47, who replaces Atifete Jahjaga, was elected in Parliament on Feb. 26 in the absence of nearly all opposition lawmakers who earlier tried to disrupt the voting with tear gas. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) Kosovo's newly elected President Hashim Thaci, left, receives the Kosovo constitution from outgoing President Atifete Jahjaga,during the Presidential inauguration ceremony in Pristina on Friday April 8, 2016. Opposition supporters in Kosovo launched tear gas Friday to try to disrupt the inauguration ceremony for the country's new president, Hashim Thaci. (Armend Nimani, Pool via AP) Newly elected Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, center, flanked by outgoing President Atifete Jahjaga review the guard of honor during the Presidential inauguration ceremony in capital Pristina on Friday, Apr. 8, 2016. Thaci, 47, who replaces Atifete Jahjaga, was elected in Parliament on Feb. 26 in the absence of nearly all opposition lawmakers who earlier tried to disrupt the voting with tear gas. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) Kosovo's new President Hashim Thaci looks on during the Presidential inauguration ceremony in Pristina on Friday April 8, 2016. Opposition supporters in Kosovo launched tear gas Friday to try to disrupt the inauguration ceremony for the country's new president, Hashim Thaci. (Armend Nimani, Pool via AP) Kosovo's newly elected President Hashim Thaci, centre, flanked by outgoing President Atifete Jahjaga, reviews the guard of honor during the Presidential inauguration ceremony in Pristina on Friday April 8, 2016. Opposition supporters in Kosovo launched tear gas Friday to try to disrupt the inauguration ceremony for the country's new president, Hashim Thaci. (Armend Nimani, Pool via AP) Kosovo's new President Hashim Thaci delivers a speech during the Presidential inauguration ceremony in Pristina on Friday April 8, 2016. Opposition supporters in Kosovo launched tear gas Friday to try to disrupt the inauguration ceremony for the country's new president, Hashim Thaci. (Armend Nimani, Pool via AP) Skirmishes continue in Nagorno-Karabakh despite cease-fire BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) Skirmishes continued Friday around Nagorno-Karabakh with Azerbaijan and Armenia blaming each other for cease-fire violations, while Russia sought to stabilize the situation by playing as go-between. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev met with Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev in Baku a day after holding talks with the Armenian leadership. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said Friday its troops returned fire after Armenian forces shelled Azerbaijani military positions and populated areas. The Armenian side accused Azerbaijan of shelling its positions, killing two Armenian soldiers overnight. Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, right, and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev shake hands during their meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, Friday, April 8, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) The gunbattles threaten to derail the Russia-brokered truce declared at midday Tuesday following several days of intense battles which marked the worst violence since a separatist war ended in 1994. The war left Nagorno-Karabakh, officially a part of Azerbaijan, under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military. Armenian forces also occupy several areas outside the Karabakh region. Azerbaijan has said 31 of its soldiers have been killed since Saturday while Armenia's Defense Ministry has acknowledged the loss of 44 troops. Several civilians have also been killed on both sides. The conflicting parties reached a tentative agreement to evacuate bodies from the frontline on Friday. Along with the United States and France, Russia has also acted as a mediator in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks which have dragged on since 1994 without any visible results. Medvedev said during Friday's meeting with Aliyev that Russia values its relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan and hoped that they could resume their negotiations under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "Azerbaijan adheres to the talks process," Aliyev said. "Resolving the conflict is in the interests of Azerbaijan, Armenia and also Russia, as a neighbor and friend of both countries." ___ Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report. Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, right, and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev shake hands during their meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, Friday, April 8, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, right, and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev talk during their meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, Friday, April 8, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, right, and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev talk during their meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, Friday, April 8, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Azerbaijan's Prime Minister Artur Rasizade, right, review honor guard during a welcome ceremony on Medvedev's arrival in Baku, Azerbaijan, Friday, April 8, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Azerbaijan's Prime Minister Artur Rasizade, left, review honor guard during a welcome ceremony on Medvedev's arrival in Baku, Azerbaijan, Friday, April 8, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, rear centre, and Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan, rear centre left, stand during a welcome ceremony on Medvedev's arrival in Yerevan, Armenia, Thursday, April 7, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan, left foreground, review honor guard during a welcome ceremony on Medvedev's arrival in Yerevan, Armenia, Thursday, April 7, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, front right, lays flowers at the monument to the victims of mass killings by Ottoman Turks, in Yerevan, Armenia, Thursday, April 7, 2016. (Alexander Astafyev/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) Adelaide moves provisionally into 1st place in A-League MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) Adelaide City moved provisionally into first place in the A-League on Friday with a 2-0 win over Melbourne City to begin the final regular-season round. The away win left Adelaide with a two-point edge over Brisbane and four points ahead of Western Sydney, with City in fourth place. Brisbane could move back into first place and clinch the premiership on Saturday when the Roar play in Melbourne against the Victory. Isaias Sanchez gave Adelaide the lead in the fourth minute before Bruce Djite made it 2-0 two minutes into first-half added time. Germany's Merkel defends Turkey deal amid skepticism at home BERLIN (AP) German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday robustly defended the European Union's deal to send back migrants to Turkey as polls pointed to deep skepticism at home about the accord, which human rights groups have criticized. Merkel insists that the deal with Turkey, which hosts some 2.7 million Syrians, is the key to reducing the flow of migrants to Europe. The first migrants were sent back from Greece Monday. The accord also calls for the EU to take in some Syrians directly from Turkey, funds for Ankara, visa-free travel for Turks and accelerated EU membership talks. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, and Aydan Ozoguz, right, Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery and Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration, talk prior to a meeting of the German Government and representatives of refugees support groups in Berlin, Germany, Friday, April 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn) Merkel, a longtime opponent of full Turkish EU membership, said it is "right to try to cement its links to the European Union, without immediately having full membership in front of us" and to discuss visa freedom. As for the deportations, Merkel said she is "firmly convinced that making clear we are pitting ourselves against illegal migration is right." She said Europe can't stand by and watch people smugglers taking control. New polls for ARD and ZDF television indicated that Germans have little faith in the deal. ZDF found that only 38 percent of 1,261 people polled by phone this week believe the accord will result in many fewer migrants coming to Europe this year. ARD's poll of 1,005 people, also conducted this week, showed 40 percent believe the number coming to Germany will drop. It also found that only 17 percent consider Turkey a trustworthy partner and 27 percent believe Turkey should eventually join the EU. It said 56 percent of respondents consider the deal bad, while ZDF found that 69 percent opposed it. Both polls suggested that Merkel's popularity, which picked up after dropping at the height of the migrant influx, has stabilized. They gave margins of error of plus or minus around 3 percentage points. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the deal with Turkey started well, but conceded that a significant drop in arrivals is due largely to other European countries' closure of the Balkan migrant route. Germany registered 173,707 new arrivals in the first quarter, only 20,608 of them in March, after seeing nearly 1.1 million last year. The decline chimes with German federal police figures reported by The Associated Press last week, which indicated that the flood of arrivals last fall has slowed to a trickle. All the same, the number of people applying for asylum in the first quarter more than doubled compared with the same period in 2015. German officials said the high number of new applications 181,405 asylum requests compared with 85,394 in last year's first quarter was due to a backlog from last year when thousands of migrants crossed the border each day. De Maiziere stressed it was too soon to predict how arrivals would develop during the rest of the year. The government has steered clear of forecasts this year after its predictions were significantly exceeded, and sometimes misinterpreted as an invitation to migrants, in 2015. Officials have warned that if the EU-Turkey deal is effective in reducing the flow of irregular migrants, those trying to reach Europe may revert to crossing the central Mediterranean. Germany's development minister, Gerd Mueller, said recently that between 100,000 and 200,000 people could be in Libya waiting to cross to Italy. "I think (those figures) are probably too low, they could be higher," said de Maiziere. Rifles on campus: College police forces add firepower BOSTON (AP) Once a rarity on campuses, semi-automatic rifles are becoming a standard part of the arsenal for college police forces firepower they say could make a difference the next time a gunman goes on a rampage. The weapons are rarely seen in public and often stashed away in cruisers or at department headquarters, and many schools won't talk about them. But federal data and Associated Press interviews and requests for records reveal that over the past decade, at least 100 U.S. college police agencies, and probably many more, have introduced rifles or acquired more of them. The arms buildup has raised tensions on campuses, with debates over the need for such weaponry flaring at schools like Boston's Northeastern University, the University of Maryland and Florida State. A similar outcry over police use of military-style gear erupted in 2014 after the violence that broke out in Ferguson, Missouri. In this Dec. 2, 2015 photo, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill police officers stand down and return to their patrol cars after answering a second man with a rifle call adjacent to the school's campus in Chapel Hill, N.C. Federal data and Associated Press interviews and requests for records reveal that at least 100 college police agencies have added rifles over the past decade. (Harry Lynch/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Police say rifles offer more firepower, longer range and greater accuracy than handguns. "A bad shot with a rifle is better than a good shot with a handgun," said Skip Frost, who until February was deputy chief of police at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which offers a semi-automatic rifle to every officer. Some colleges have made the weapons available to SWAT-type units of officers who respond to risky situations; some have issued the guns to patrol officers. Either way, police are authorized to take up their rifles only in extreme cases, such as a shooting or reports of an armed person. Most states also require police officers to undergo weapons-proficiency training at least once a year. Many campuses receive training from the FBI and U.S. Justice Department, which teach officers how to move quickly through buildings to take down a shooter. "The reality is that these are not always handgun situations," said FBI agent Katherine Schweit, the bureau's senior executive in charge of active-shooter matters. "We can't tell a university realistically what's acceptable in their community that's up to them but we recognize the struggle that every community faces because many of these shooters come to the scene with a long gun." Bill Taylor, president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, said he hasn't heard of any case in which a campus officer fired a rifle on the job. But police have broken out the weapons several times. In December, for example, police at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill responded with rifles after a false report of a gunman on campus. At least one Florida State officer responded to a 2014 shooting with a rifle but didn't shoot the gunman because other officers were in the way. Police killed the shooter with handguns. On some campuses, protesters have argued that black students face a greater risk of being shot with one of these weapons. At Northeastern, the acquisition of semi-automatic rifles was criticized this year by Boston police, who said that the guns are unnecessary with city police so close to campus and that officers could end up shooting each other in the confusion. They also said the use of such high-powered weapons in a crowded neighborhood raises the risk of innocent people getting hit by stray fire. "I actually don't feel as safe," said Chelsea Canedy, a junior at Northeastern who leads a student coalition opposed to the rifles. "You're seeing across the United States this militarization of many college campuses." In a 2012 survey by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 75 percent of the nation's campus police forces were armed with some type of gun, up from 68 percent in 2005. The 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, in which a student killed 32 people, is widely believed to have played a role. The federal government provided a glimpse into the spread of rifles in 2014 when it started publicizing a list of military equipment on loan to police forces across the country. The newest figures this year show that 91 campus police forces are armed with 817 rifles that were obtained through the program over the past decade, along with other tactical gear. But colleges can buy firearms directly, as well. The AP sent records requests this year to 20 of the nation's largest public universities for a list of their guns and for invoices from weapons purchases. Most of them refused, with several of them, such as Arizona State and Ohio State, saying releasing the information would jeopardize campus safety. Documents provided by four universities, though, illustrate a rapid buildup of rifles. Florida State bought 26 semi-automatic Bushmaster rifles from private sellers between 2012 and 2014, along with 10 other rifles acquired through the military surplus program. The University of Illinois bought 47 AR-15 rifles in that span. Purdue University received 25 rifles from the surplus program in 2007 and separately bought 17 more, records show. The University of Wisconsin in Madison spent $11,000 on AR-15s in 2010, plus $6,000 on other rifles over the next four years. After decades without giving guns to its police, Princeton University announced in November that it, too, would equip officers with rifles in case of a campus shooting. In the nine years since Virginia Tech, more carnage has followed: Six dead at Northern Illinois University. Seven more at California's Oikos University. Ten dead last year at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. "As law enforcement, it's our responsibility to be prepared for the worst-case scenario," said Frost, the former deputy chief at Illinois. "If we can't protect ourselves, we can't protect the community." China's Cosco in deal to operate Greece's Piraeus port ATHENS, Greece (AP) Greece signed an agreement Friday to sell a 67 percent stake in operating its biggest port to China's Cosco group, a significant step in the debt-crippled country's ambitious privatization drive. Dockworkers protesting in central Athens against the sale, which Greece's left-led government had initially opposed, clashed with riot police who responded with tear gas. No arrests or injuries were reported. Cosco, owned by the Chinese government, was the sole bidder for the stake in Piraeus Port Authority, a listed company that has a concession to operate the port until 2052. Greek dockworkers fight with Greek riot police officers, during a demonstration in central Athens, Friday, April 8, 2016. The workers were protesting against the deal between Greece and China's shipping giant COSCO for the Athens port of Piraeus, which was signed on Friday. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Greece will retain a 7 percent stake in PPA and private investors will hold the remainder. Cosco's 368.5 million euro ($420 million) offer was approved in January. The deal still needs to be approved by Greece's competition commission and Parliament. Cosco already has a major presence in Greece following a 2008 concession agreement to manage container terminals at Piraeus. Piraeus, the port of Athens, is the main gateway to the Greek islands and in 2014 handled 16.8 million passengers. The Greek government is trying to establish closer ties with China. On Friday, it said Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who attended the PPA signing ceremony, has accepted an invitation to visit China in June. People wait at a bus stop for the traffic to resume as Greek riot police officers, stand guard following a demonstration by dockworkers in central Athens, Friday, April 8, 2016. The workers were protesting against the deal between Greece and China's shipping giant COSCO for the Athens port of Piraeus, which was signed on Friday. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Greek dockworkers fight with Greek riot police officers, during a demonstration in central Athens, Friday, April 8, 2016. The workers were protesting against the deal between Greece and China's shipping giant COSCO for the Athens port of Piraeus, which was signed on Friday. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Greek dockworkers fight with Greek riot police officers, during a demonstration in central Athens, Friday, April 8, 2016. The workers were protesting against the deal between Greece and China's shipping giant COSCO for the Athens port of Piraeus, which was signed on Friday. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Greek dockworkers fight with Greek riot police officers, during a demonstration in central Athens, Friday, April 8, 2016. The workers were protesting against the deal between Greece and China's shipping giant COSCO for the Athens port of Piraeus, which was signed on Friday. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Denial, obfuscation: how politicians react to Panama Papers The rich and powerful who have been drawn into the reports about offshore accounts have had a remarkable variety of responses from striking back with claims of a U.S.-backed conspiracy to indignantly storming out of an interview. The millions of documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and reported on by news organizations shed light on how mostly wealthy individuals shield their money from scrutiny, whether for privacy, convenience or illegal reasons. With politicians under some of the closest scrutiny, their handling of the PR nightmare of being linked to such secretive accounts has been as varied as the countries they hail from. In this grab taken from video Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson leaves after holding a meeting at Iceland's Parliament in Reykjavik, Tuesday April 5, 2016. Iceland's embattled prime minister has resigned amid a controversy over his offshore holdings, a Cabinet minister said Tuesday as outrage over the accounts roiled the North Atlantic island nation. (APTN via AP) Here's a look at the highlights. ___ ICELAND Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugson's first physical response was flight. He got up and walked out of a television interview in which he was confronted with the existence of a secretive offshore company he had links to. Gunnlaugson later resigned after the publication of the reports, which allege he had sold an interest in an offshore company to his wife for $1 just days before he would have been required to disclose the interest. The company held millions of dollars' worth of bonds in Iceland's banks, whose failure plunged the country into a deep recession and burdensome capital controls. Thousands of protesters gathered in front of parliament, which was hit with eggs and bananas. The fruit was a symbol of protesters' anger that the country was, in their view, becoming a "banana republic." ___ RUSSIA For the Russian government, the best defense was offense. President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said "Putinophobia" had fueled reports that some $2 billion had been channeled through the accounts to people associated with the president. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that a close friend of Putin, cellist Sergei Roldugin, is listed as the owner of offshore companies that have obtained payments from other companies of tens of millions of dollars. The ICIJ said "evidence in the files suggests Roldugin is acting as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists and perhaps for Putin himself." Putin described the allegations as part of the U.S.-led disinformation campaign waged against Russia in order to weaken its government. "They are trying to destabilize us from within in order to make us more compliant," he said. ___ CHINA The Chinese authorities opted to simply block out the news. The reports say Mossack Fonseca had arranged offshore companies for relatives of at least eight present or past members of the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of power in China. Among those it mentioned was the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping. China's foreign ministery denounced the reports as "groundless." State media are ignoring the reports and search results of websites and social media for the words "Panama documents" were blocked. ___ BRITAIN British Prime Minister David Cameron's approach was to mete out the information in bits. After this week denying owning any offshore accounts, he acknowledged Thursday that he had in fact profited in the past from shares in an offshore firm set up by his father. Cameron told ITV news that he and his wife, Samantha, sold shares worth 31,500 pounds (currently $44,300) in an offshore fund named Blairmore Holdings in January 2010 five months before Cameron became prime minister. They had paid 12,497 pounds for the shares in 1997. Cameron said the money was subject to British tax "in the normal ways." He said he sold his shares because he did not want anyone to accuse him of having "vested interests." ___ UKRAINE Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko took a legalistic approach. The reports show that Poroshenko, who had promised voters he would sell his candy business when he ran for office in 2014, had instead moved it offshore under a holding company in the British Virgin Islands. The move possibly deprived Ukraine of millions of dollars in tax revenue. Yet Poroshenko focused on the letter of the law, not his political inconsistencies, insisting he has done nothing wrong and hasn't managed his assets since being elected. Some adversaries are calling for his removal from office. Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a media forum of the All-Russia People's Front in St.Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, April 7, 2016. Speaking Thursday at a media forum in St.Petersburg, Putin rejected links to offshore accounts, calling the leaks part of Western efforts to weaken Russia. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, Pool) In this March 5, 2016 photo, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives for the opening session of the annual National People's Congress in Beijing's Great Hall of the People. For graft-busting Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, recent overseas media reports showing his brother-in-law and relatives of two other members of the partys elite inner circle owned offshore companies, often referred to as tax havens, might have been highly damaging. Instead, Xi will likely emerge unscathed as a result of his personal hold on political power, controls over free speech and the media, and a sense both among the public and potential rivals that all leading families are tainted to some degree, analysts say. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko speaks during a press conference at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo, Wednesday, April 6, 2016. Poroshenko said at a news conference in Tokyo on Wednesday that an offshore holding company set up for his candy business was a necessary step to put his assets into a blind trust when he became president in 2014.(AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi) The Latest: Another psychiatric hospital patient is missing SEATTLE (AP) The Latest on the escape of two men from a psychiatric facility in Washington state (all times local) 2:45 p.m. Washington state officials say another patient has gone missing from a psychiatric hospital being scrutinized after a man accused of killing a woman escaped and remains on the loose. Officials stop vehicles as they search in Spokane Valley, Wash, Thursday, April 7, 2016, for escaped mental patient Anthony Garver. Garver, 28, escaped Wednesday night with Mark Alexander Adams, 58, a patient who had been accused of domestic assault in 2014 and was captured Thursday morning, officials said. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review via AP) COEUR D'ALENE PRESS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Officials said Friday that the patient left the facility Wednesday with an escorted group but didn't return. The patient, who wasn't identified, was committed to Western State Hospital after being deemed unfit to face trial on residential burglary charges and violation of a no-contact order. The patient's whereabouts aren't known, and police have been notified. The patient was under less restrictive conditions than the two men who escaped out a window later the same day. The revelation comes after Anthony Garver fled a lower-security ward with another patient who was caught Thursday. Garver, who was charged with torturing a woman to death but found too mentally ill for trial, is still at large. ___ 8 a.m. A violent ex-felon who escaped from an embattled Washington state psychiatric hospital was spotted Thursday but authorities are unsure if he is still in the area. Anthony Garver was spotted in the Spokane area Thursday and visited his father's Spokane Valley home, but officials say they he remains on the loose. Spokane County Sheriff's Deputy Mark Gregory says he doesn't know if Garver has left the area or is hiding in the woods. Gergory says Garver has hidden from authorities in the woods before and he's comfortable in the wilderness. Garver and Mark Alexander Adams escaped through a window from Western State Hospital on Wednesday night. Adams was apprehended Thursday morning, and Garver took a bus to Spokane. ___ 12:55 a.m. A Washington state psychiatric hospital that a man accused of torturing a woman to death escaped from already faces federal scrutiny over safety programs and attacks on patients and employees. Anthony Garver, who remained on the loose, was charged in 2013 with tying a 20-year-old woman to her bed with electrical cords, stabbing her 24 times in the chest and slashing her throat. He was found too mentally ill for trial. Garver, 28, escaped Wednesday night with Mark Alexander Adams, 58, a patient who had been accused of domestic assault in 2014. The two crawled out a window in a locked, lower-security unit of the hospital and Adams was captured the next morning. Authorities believe Garver bought a bus ticket from Seattle across the state to Spokane and authorities there searched for him Thursday evening in a wooded area with dogs, a SWAT team and helicopters after he stopped at his parents' house in the area. These undated photos provided by the Lakewood Police Department shows Mark Alexander Adams, left, and Anthony Garver. Adams and Garver, described as dangerous, have escaped from Western State Hospital, a psychiatric facility, in Pierce County, south of Tacoma, Wednesday, April 6, 2016. (Lakewood Police Department via AP) Boy's trans-Atlantic text, fast police work save 15 migrants LONDON (AP) The text message from a young boy, writing in broken English on a no-frills cellphone, was frightening enough to set off a frantic, trans-Atlantic search that saved the lives of 15 migrants trapped in a locked truck in England. The message flashed on the cellphone of volunteer Liz Clegg, who was attending a conference in New York: "I ned halp darivar no stap car no oksijan in the car no signal iam in the cantenar. Iam no jokan valla." It was written by Ahmed, an Afghan boy of about 7, trying to say: "I need help. The driver won't stop the car. No oxygen in the car. No signal. I'm in a container. I am not joking. I swear to God." In March, Clegg and others volunteering at a squalid migrant camp in Calais, France, had handed out hundreds of basic cellphones to children living there, programming in a number for them to text in a crisis. In this Feb. 4, 2016 photo, volunteer Liz Clegg, right, poses with her daughter Inca Sorrell, in the migrant camp of Calais, north of France. The text message from a young boy, writing in broken English on a no-frills cellphone, was frightening enough to set off a frantic, trans-Atlantic search that saved the lives of 15 migrants trapped in a locked truck in England. The message flashed on the cellphone of volunteer Liz Clegg, who in March had handed out hundreds of basic cellphones to children living in the squalid migrant camp in Calais, France, and told them to text in any crisis. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) She knew Ahmed wouldn't text something like that if he wasn't in danger. So she called Tanya Freedman, from the Help Refugees charity in London, to tell her the boy seemed to be suffocating. Freedman called police in southeast England to tell them of the emergency. The police response was swift and effective, she said. "I conveyed to them that it was a life-and-death situation," Freedman told The Associated Press on Friday. "I had Ahmed's number and the first thing they did was find an interpreter who spoke Pashto to talk to him. They called him and immediately they realized it was an emergency, and they were able to put a trace of his cellphone and find out he was in a lorry (truck) in Leicestershire." Kent Police said in a statement they received a call at 2:50 p.m. Thursday reporting that migrants were believed to be in danger in a truck, and that police established the truck was in Leicestershire. The information was given to police in Leicestershire, who quickly found the truck parked at a highway service station, broke into the back and freed 15 oxygen-starved migrants. Only then did Freedman exhale: "It was absolutely nerve-wracking waiting to see if the police could find this boy in time to save his life," she said. Leicestershire Police said 14 migrants were detained on suspicion of entering Britain illegally, with their cases to be handled by immigration officials, and one man was arrested on suspicion of illegal trafficking. Police said one child was placed in protective care. None involved gave his last name because he is a minor. "I think it's extraordinary that a 7-year-old boy knew his life was in danger and had the presence of mind to know what to do and give the right information and save himself and the others in the truck," Freedman said. "We hope he's getting the right kind of care." Lawyer: Army attack leaves Nigerian Shiite leader near-blind KANO, Nigeria (AP) The detained leader of Nigeria's Shiite Muslims has been left near-blind and underwent several operations to remove bullets from when he was shot in an army raid on his home, a human rights lawyer said Friday. Lawyer Femi Falana spoke after he was granted access to Ibraheem Zakzaky for the first time since he and his wife, Zeenat Ibraheem, were detained in December and denied access to their doctors and family. Falana gave The Associated Press a copy of a letter dated April 5 to the director general of Nigeria's secret service, the Department of State Security, demanding "the unconditional release" of the couple from "unlawful detention." Neither has been brought to court, which the law says must be within 48 hours of arrest. FILE- In this Friday April 1, 2016 file photo, Nigerian Shiite Muslims take to the street to protest and demanded the release of Shiite leader Ibraheem Zakzaky in Cikatsere, Nigeria. A human rights lawyer says the detained leader of Nigerias Shiite Muslims has been left near-blind and suffered several operations to remove bullets from gunshots in an army raid on his home (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba file) Hundreds of other Shiites also are detained and some have died for lack of medical care, the Shiite movement has charged. Human rights groups say the military killed hundreds of them over three days in northern Zaria town. The Shiites, a minority believed to number about 5 million, last week petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate the alleged military killings of nearly 1,000 Shiites, calling them crimes against humanity. The raids were ordered by chief of army staff Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, who claimed unarmed Shiites tried to assassinate him, Falana said. Falana saw his clients a week ago, after refusing to cooperate with a commission of inquiry until he got access. Iran has protested the killings and demanded compensation for victims. "Stop killing Shia, army!" said graffiti on a hospital wall in northern Kano city on Friday. Nigeria's 170 million people are almost evenly divided between Christians and mainly Sunni Muslims. High-altitude balloon takes stuffed dog Sam to stratosphere LONDON (AP) Sam the Dog has gone where no stuffed animal has gone before into the stratosphere and the English unknown. Teachers and pupils at an elementary school in Morecambe in northwest England strapped the white fluffy school mascot to a high-altitude helium balloon and launched him from a hotel roof Tuesday. They recorded his rapid ascent some 15 miles (24 kilometers) into the atmosphere, much higher than planned, and captured the trip with an on-board video camera. After the balloon burst, Sam disappeared. The school hoped to retrieve him, but he was missing from the site where the balloon's camera and GPS system landed some 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the east. Sam the cuddly toy dog flies high in the sky after taking off from Morecambe, England Tuesday April 5, 2016 attached to a special camera and a helium balloon. Sending the toy dog into the sky was part of a science project by Morecambe Bay Community Primary School which joined forces with a local hotel . The toy dog reached an altitude of 12 miles above the earth's surface. (Morecambe Bay Community Primary School and English Lakes Hotels Resorts & Venues via AP) TV OUT They have launched a social media-driven hunt for Sam in hopes that someone in northern England will find him. Sam the cuddly toy dog takes off from Morecambe England Tuesday April 5, 2016 attached to a special camera and a helium balloon. Sending the toy dog into the sky was part of a science project by Morecambe Bay Community Primary School which joined forces with a local hotel . The toy dog reached an altitude of 12 miles above the earth's surface. (Morecambe Bay Community Primary School and English Lakes Hotels Resorts & Venues via AP) TV OUT Sanders to attend Vatican conference before New York primary WASHINGTON (AP) Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Friday he will attend a Vatican City conference on social, economic and environmental issues next week, making the symbolic overseas trip ahead of a pivotal New York primary against Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator has long been an admirer of Pope Francis on issues of wealth inequality and social justice and his presentation to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on April 15 will allow him to reach a larger audience of Catholic voters in New York four days before the primary. Sanders trails Clinton among delegates and the New York contest is an important step in the senator's ability to gain ground against the former secretary of state. "The moral imperative that (the pope) is bringing to this discussion is absolutely extraordinary and absolutely what the world needs. These are issues that I have been dealing with for years," Sanders said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders speaks at Temple University, Wednesday, April 6, 2016, in Philadelphia. (Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT "On economic issues, on issues of poverty and income and wealth inequality, the issues of making sure we address the needs of the poorest people of this planet, this is something that the pope and I are very much on the same page," Sanders said. It was not clear yet whether Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary, would meet with the pope during his trip. Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said "if the opportunity arises he would be delighted to meet with the pope" but Sanders has not received an official invitation from the Catholic leader. Attendees of the conference will include Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, along with Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, a member of the academy, and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to the United Nations on environmental and sustainability issues. Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the PASS, said he extended an invitation to Sanders because he seems to have a "real interest" in studying the papal documents issued by the pope. He did not issue invitations to the other presidential candidates. "I don't see the other candidates quoting the pope in their campaign. I don't know if the other candidates are interested in the documents of the pope," he said. A senior Vatican official told Bloomberg News that Sanders lobbied for the invitation and should not be injecting politics into the event. "Of course it can have a political effect but this is not our priority," said Sorondo. "The first thing is to study and discuss the doctrine of the church." Sachs, who has advised Sanders on foreign policy, said the invitation "reflects the very high resonance of the pope's messages on social justice and social inclusion with Bernie Sanders' messages on a fairer economy. He was excited, of course, to get the invitation." The meeting will mark the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus, a high-level teaching document which advocated for economic and social justice and environmental sustainability. Sanders will be speaking at the conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, an advisory group comparable to a think tank that the pope has appointed to guide him on a wide range of public policy issues. The Rev. Thomas Reese, an analyst with the National Catholic Reporter and author of "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church," said it was unusual for a U.S. presidential candidate to be invited to participate in such an event in the middle of a campaign. European politicians and experts attend frequently, in part because they can more easily travel to Rome, he said. But Reese cautioned that the invitation should not be interpreted in any way as an endorsement from the pope. "Certainly the last thing Pope Francis wants to do is get involved in American presidential politics. He's made clear that he doesn't even want to interfere in Italian politics," Reese said. __ Associated Press writer Rachel Zoll in New York and Lisa Lerer in Washington contributed to this report. __ Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KThomasDC AP-GfK Poll: Clinton maybe likable enough _ next to Trump WASHINGTON (AP) In any other election year, more than half the country holding an unfavorable impression of a candidate for president would be cause for alarm. This is not a normal year. Fifty-five percent of Americans say they have a negative opinion of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the latest AP-GfK poll. But that's not nearly as bad as how they view the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump. His unfavorable rating stands at an unprecedented 69 percent. FILE - In this April 6, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in Pittsburgh. Fifty-five percent of Americans say they have a negative opinion of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. But thats not nearly as bad as how they view the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File) The negative feelings for both are a harbinger of a general election contest that's shaping up to be less about voters supporting the candidate of their choice, and more about their picking the one they dislike the least. "I don't really feel like either one is that trustworthy," said Devin Sternadre, 26, a student from northeastern Ohio. "Most of the elections that have happened in the past I've felt strongly about a candidate, and I just don't this time. "But yeah, if it was held today I guess I would vote Clinton," he said, with a deep sigh. "I just wish there were more choices." Democratic strategists say Trump's deep unpopularity has alleviated some of their concern over views of Clinton. While 55 percent of Americans have a "somewhat" or "very" unfavorable impression of the former secretary of state, that's about the same number as those who have a "very unfavorable" opinion of Trump. Clinton's rating is also slightly better than Republican candidate Ted Cruz: Fifty-nine percent say they have an unfavorable view of the Texas senator. Clinton's Democratic primary rival, Bernie Sanders, is at just 39 percent unfavorable, but he trails far behind Clinton in the delegate battle for the Democratic nomination. Asked if she needed to improve her public image, Clinton told reporters Friday that she has worked to win over voters in the past, as when she ran for Senate in New York. "Just remember, when I was secretary of state my approval rating was the highest of any public official. Now what's the difference? Whenever I'm doing a job, people approve of my job. When I seek the job, when I compete for the job, then there's a big rush by, you know, Republicans and interests who don't agree with my values and my vision for the country, to just pile on," Clinton said. "I've been there, I know that, I'm not worried about it." As the campaign moves toward the general election, Democrats argue, the dynamic will shift from being a referendum on Clinton's character to a choice between her and a Republican opponent. If that Republican is Trump, Democrats see an opportunity to unify their own party behind Clinton and make inroads with independents and Republicans. Nearly half of all registered voters say they would at least consider voting for Clinton, far more than say they are open to voting for Trump. Sixty-three percent say they definitely wouldn't vote for Trump in a general election. Thirty-eight percent say they definitely would not vote for Vermont Sen. Sanders. Even in more historically conservative Southern states, where Trump swept the GOP primaries, voters are somewhat more likely to say they would at least consider Clinton. Half say they are open to her candidacy, and 39 percent to his. Voters are more likely to have a positive opinion of Clinton's primary rival, Bernie Sanders, with only 38 percent saying they would definitely not vote for the Vermont senator. Lara Robles, a Republican from Round Rock, Texas, said she would back Clinton, even though she has been surprised to find her views aligned with Trump on a number of issues. "I think she flip-flops on a lot of her views, but I would vote for Hillary," said the mother of three. "I just don't really like him as a person. I think he doesn't have a filter on his mouth." Clinton is not held in very high regard among the general public. Most Americans view her as not particularly compassionate, honest or likable. They have mixed feelings on her civility, decisiveness and competence. Half of all Americans say Clinton is "not at all" honest, with another 18 percent saying she's slightly honest. That number mirrors views on Trump, with more than seven in ten saying the word honest describes him only slightly or not at all well. But on the other attributes, Clinton's negative ratings are at least better than the overwhelmingly disapproving views Americans have of Trump. More than half say Clinton is not especially compassionate, and six in 10 say she's only slightly or not at all likable. Eighty percent do not find Trump compassionate and three-quarters do not see him as likable. "What I want in a president is someone who wouldn't cause trouble for the country. I think Donald Trump would," said Steve Fantuzzi, a 54-year-old registered Republican in the Chicago suburbs. "Hillary's OK. I don't have a problem with her." And unlike Trump, members of Clinton's party largely like her. More than 7 in 10 Democratic voters have a favorable opinion, compared to 53 percent of Republicans who have a positive view of Trump. Just 17 percent of Democratic voters say they wouldn't vote for Clinton in the general election, about the same share as wouldn't back Sanders should he win the nomination. Thirty-one percent of Republicans say the same about Trump. Clinton remains the candidate viewed by the most Americans as able to win a general election, with 82 percent saying she could capture the White House. Just 6 in 10 say that of Sanders or Trump. ___ The AP-GfK Poll of 1,076 adults was conducted online March 31-April 4, using a sample drawn from GfK's probability-based KnowledgePanel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. Respondents were first selected randomly using telephone or mail survey methods and later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn't otherwise have access to the Internet were provided access at no cost to them. ___ Follow Lisa Lerer and Emily Swanson on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/llerer and http://twitter.com/EL_Swan ___ Online: http://ap-gfkpoll.com FILE - In this April 4, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in Milwaukee. Fifty-five percent of Americans say they have a negative opinion of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. But thats not nearly as bad as how they view the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) FILE - In this April 7, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speaks in Philadelphia. Fifty-five percent of Americans say they have a negative opinion of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. But thats not nearly as bad as how they view the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) Italy recalls envoy to Egypt over torture-slaying of student ROME (AP) Keeping up its press for the "truth" in the torture and slaying of an Italian graduate student in Cairo, the Italian government on Friday announced it was recalling its ambassador from Egypt for urgent consultations after Italian prosecutors expressed disappointment over Egyptian cooperation. Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni was recalling Ambassador Maurizio Massari from the Egyptian capital for "urgent evaluation of more opportune initiatives to relaunch the commitment aimed at determining the truth about the barbarous murder of Giulio Regeni," a ministry statement said. The 28-year-old student, who was researching Egyptian labor movements, disappeared on Jan. 25, the fifth anniversary on the Egyptian uprising, when police and other Egyptian security personnel were out in force in Cairo to discourage protests. His body was found near a Cairo highway on Feb. 3. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi shows economic data during a press conference at Chigi Palace after the approval of the government's financial and economic planning in Rome, Friday, April 8, 2016. Keeping up its press for the truth in the torture and slaying of an Italian graduate student in Cairo, Italy on Friday announced it was recalling its ambassador from Egypt for urgent consultations after Italian prosecutors expressed disappointment over Egyptian cooperation. Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni was recalling Ambassador Maurizio Massari from the Egyptian capital for urgent evaluation of more opportune initiatives to relaunch the commitment aimed at determining the truth about the barbarous murder of Giulio Regeni, (Giuseppe Lami/ANSA via AP Photo) ITALY OUT Italian officials said an Italian autopsy found signs of "protracted" torture over several days, and that Regeni appears to have died on Feb. 1 or 2. Premier Matteo Renzi told reporters that decision was made "immediately" after Italian prosecutors gave their assessment of two days of meetings that wrapped up Friday with visiting Egyptian investigators they had hoped would deliver useful evidence. "Italy, as you know, made a commitment to the family of Giulio Regeni naturally, to the memory of Giulio Regeni, but also to the dignity of all us, saying we'd only stop in front of the truth," Renzi said. Recalling the ambassador to Rome "means Italy is confirming this commitment to itself, to the family," the premier said. A statement from the Rome prosecutors' office said it was still pressing the Egyptians for turn over a list of Regeni's cellphone traffic "in very brief time." The Italian news agency ANSA said the Egyptian investigators didn't bring to Rome the surveillance camera video from near the metro station where Regeni was last seen. Italian prosecutors, and Italian police who had gone to Cairo, had repeatedly requested the images. For its part Italy turned over the results of the Italian autopsy and what was found on Regeni's computer, the Rome prosecutors' office said. Egypt's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu-Zeid said the ministry "hasn't been officially notified of the recalling of the Italian ambassador to Egypt to Rome for consultation or the reasons behind it." "The Foreign Ministry is waiting for the return of the Egyptian team to listen to its evaluation" of what came out of the two days of meetings between both sides' investigators, he said in a statement. Italy has expressed mounting impatience with various Egyptian's attempts to explain Regeni's death, including a latest one blaming the slaying on a robbery gang. The Rome prosecutors in their statement referred to that version, reiterating the "conviction that there are no elements indicating direct involvement by a band of criminals in the torture and death" of Regeni. Egyptian authorities recently produced Regeni's passport and student IDs they said had been in the possession of a criminal gang they contend were abducting foreigners for robbery purposes. The gang members were killed in a shootout with Egyptian police, Egyptian authorities said. Shortly after Regeni's body was found, Egyptian authorities attributed the death to a road accident. The Italian ministry didn't suggest what other initiatives the government might take against Egypt, which is a big trading partner as well as an ally in anti-terrorism efforts. Italian energy company ENI has decades-long extensive dealings with Egypt. Last week, Regeni's anguished parents urged the Italian government to declare Egypt "unsafe" for Italians to visit, saying their son was only one of many torture victims in the north African country. Egypt's Red Sea resorts for decades had been a popular destination for Italian tourists. The head of the Italian Senate foreign affairs commission, Pier Ferdinando Casini, said recalling the ambassador not only had "high symbolic value," but also shows "Italy strongly defends its national decorum and dignity." ___ Maggie Michael contributed from Cairo. Media wait for the arrival of Egypitian authorities and police officers at a police station to meet Italian prosecutors over the slaying of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, in Rome, Thursday, April 7, 2016. Regeni, 28, an Italian doctoral student disappeared in Cairo on Jan. 25, the anniversary of Egypt's 2011 uprising, a day when security forces were on high alert and on the streets in force to prevent any demonstrations or protests. His body, stabbed repeatedly and exhibiting cigarette burns and other signs of torture, was reported found on Feb. 3. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) Unidentified Egyptian authorities and police officers arrive in cars at a police station to meet Italian prosecutors over the slaying of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, in Rome, Thursday, April 7, 2016. Regeni, 28, an Italian doctoral student disappeared in Cairo on Jan. 25, the anniversary of Egypt's 2011 uprising, a day when security forces were on high alert and on the streets in force to prevent any demonstrations or protests. His body, stabbed repeatedly and exhibiting cigarette burns and other signs of torture, was reported found on Feb. 3. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) Exonerated man released from Virginia prison after 33 years BURKEVILLE, Va. (AP) As he walked into the Virginia sun after spending 33 years in prison for crimes authorities now say he didn't commit, the fact that his parents weren't there to see him become a free man weighed heavily on Keith Allen Harward's mind. "That's the worst part of this," said Harward, who choked back tears as he spoke about his parents, who both died while he was wrongfully imprisoned. "I'll never get that back." Harward was released from the Nottoway Correctional Center on Friday after the Virginia Supreme Court agreed that DNA evidence proves he's innocent of the 1982 killing of Jesse Perron and the rape of his wife in Newport News. This April 30, 2013 photo provided by the Virginia Department of Corrections shows Keith Allen Haward, convicted in 1982 of rape and murder in Newport News and serving a life sentence. The Virginia Supreme Court granted Harward's petition for a writ of actual innocence on Thursday, April 7, 2016, and ordered the Department of Corrections to release him from custody. Recent DNA tests failed to identify Harward's genetic profile in sperm left at the crime scene. (Virginia Department of Corrections via AP) Harward was a sailor on the USS Carl Vinson, which was stationed at the shipyard close to the victims' home at the time of the crime. A security guard identified Harward as the man he saw entering the shipyard wearing a bloody uniform, but the woman never identified him as her attacker. The prosecution's case relied heavily on the testimony of two experts who testified that his teeth matched bite marks on the woman's leg. No other physical evidence linked Harward to the crime. The Innocence Project got involved in Harward's case about two years ago and pushed for DNA tests, which failed to identify Harward's genetic profile in sperm left at the crime scene. The DNA matched that of one of Harward's former shipmate's, Jerry L. Crotty, who died in an Ohio prison in June 2006, where he was serving a sentence for abduction. The reliability of bite-mark evidence has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. An Associated Press investigation in 2013 found that at least 24 men convicted or charged with murder or rape based on bite marks found on victims have been exonerated in the U.S. since 2000. The Associated Press story was based on decades of court records, archives, news reports and filings by the Innocence Project. "We've learned nothing if we continue to use this evidence even though we know it has no basis in science," said Dana Delger, an attorney with the Innocence Project. Harward initially faced the death penalty, but a loophole in the law caused his capital murder conviction to be overturned in 1985, said Olga Akselrod, another Innocence Project attorney. "The fact that this case involved an innocent man who faced the death penalty should terrify everyone, not just in the state of Virginia but also in the 31 other states that still have the death penalty," Akselrod said. Harward said he's heading to his home state of North Carolina with family, who acknowledged that it will take him some time to get used to his new world. "Keith is stepping out of a time capsule into a different world. We're going to try to help him all we can," said his brother, Charles Harward. Harward said he's looking forward to having some fried oysters as soon as he can. Beyond that, he's not so sure. He just excited to be free to do whatever he wants. "Go out and hug a tree, sit in a park. Whatever I want to do. Because I can." ___ Clinton says he regrets scolding protesters at wife's rally WASHINGTON (AP) A day after a heated exchange with protesters, Former President Bill Clinton is offering a near-apology for his behavior at a campaign event for his wife, Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton told supporters in Erie, Pennsylvania on Friday that he likes protests but it "bothers" him when the activists drown him out. "So I did something yesterday in Philadelphia. I almost wanted to apologize for it, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country," he said. Former President Bill Clinton has a heated exchange with a protester during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Thursday April 7, 2016, in Philadelphia. Bill Clinton was interrupted by people in the crowd holding signs reading "Clinton crime bill destroyed our communities" and "Welfare reform increased poverty." (Ed Hille/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Bill Clinton said Americans need to be able to have conversations, even when they are angry a standard he failed to meet on Thursday afternoon with the protesters. "I realized, finally, I was talking past her in the way she was talking past me. We got to stop that in this country. We got to listen to each other," he said. The handful of protesters at the Hillary Clinton presidential rally were objecting to welfare reform and gun violence laws passed when he was in office 20 years ago. They stood in the crowd holding signs reading "Clinton crime bill destroyed our communities" and "Welfare reform increased poverty." As first lady, Hillary Clinton used the term "super-predators" to describe young people in gangs in a 1996 speech about the crime bill one of her husband's signature policy achievements. Some blacks have found the term offensive and Hillary Clinton has said she regrets using the term. Senate bill draft would prohibit unbreakable encryption WASHINGTON (AP) A draft version of a Senate bill would effectively prohibit unbreakable encryption and require companies to help the government access data on a computer or mobile device with a warrant. The draft is being finalized by the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and the top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. Their goal, they said in a statement, is to ensure adherence to any court order that requires helping law enforcement or providing decrypted information. "No individual or company is above the law." FILE - In this Feb. 9, 2016 file photo, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., talks with committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. on Capitol Hill in Washington. A draft version of a Senate bill would effectively prohibit unbreakable encryption and require companies to help the government get access to readable data on a device if theres a lawful search warrant. The draft is being finalized by Burr and Feinstein. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) It was not immediately clear when they would introduce the bill. The draft language ran into opposition from another committee member, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who said the proposal would require "American companies to build a backdoor" into devices. "They would be required by federal law per this statute to decide how to weaken their products to make Americans less safe," he said. Wyden pledged to do "everything in my power" to prevent the plan from passing. The emerging measure follows the Justice Department's battle with Apple Inc. over access to an encrypted and locked iPhone a fight pitting digital privacy rights against national security concerns. The Justice Department dropped its legal effort to compel Apple to provide it with specialized software that would allow the FBI to hack into an iPhone that was issued to San Bernardino County, California, health inspector Syed Farook. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in December. The couple died in a shootout with authorities. The iPhone was found in a vehicle the day after the shooting. Two personal phones were found destroyed so completely the FBI could not recover information from them. U.S. Magistrate Sheri Pym had ordered Apple to provide the FBI with software to help it hack into Farook's work-issued iPhone after the government said only Apple could help authorities access the encrypted and locked iPhone. But days before a hearing in the case an outside party showed the FBI an ultimately workable situation to hack the phone. The government ultimately purchased that solution which FBI Director James Comey said only works on an iPhone 5C running version 9 of the Apple operating system and is keeping it secret for now. Comey and Apple CEO Tim Cook have said that Congress, not the courts, should address issues raised in the case. But the senators' draft bill was roundly criticized by technology groups and civil libertarians, many of who also backed Apple against the government. Kevin Bankston, director of the Washington-based New America's Open Technology Institute, said in a statement that the bill would undermine American cybersecurity and technology products, give foreign competitors an economic edge and allow adversaries to obtain encrypted communications. ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani said the draft plan amounted to a "clear threat to everyone's privacy and security" and senators should "abandon their efforts to create a government backdoor." ___ Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report. ___ Follow Tami Abdollah on Twitter at https://twitter.com/latams. House used by Brazil's former president robbed SAO PAULO (AP) Police in Brazil say two men broke into and robbed the country house frequented by Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the rural city of Atibaia. The house is part of the investigation into the corruption-kickback scheme at Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras. Police inspector Elton Costa told reporters the robbery occurred Thursday. He said two suspects were arrested while hiding the stolen goods a box of Cuban cigars, a television set and jars of cream with the name of Silva's wife written on them. Maine judge revives referendum on legalizing marijuana PORTLAND, Maine (AP) A judge on Friday delivered a victory to supporters of a referendum aimed at legalizing marijuana by overturning the rejection of thousands of signatures by state election officials. The same judge who upheld Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap's decision to reject a casino referendum proposal because of invalid signatures on Thursday revived the bid to put the proposal to legalize marijuana on the November ballot. The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol disputed Dunlap's rejection of 26,779 signatures because the signature of the notary didn't match the signature on file. These images from documents provided March 30, 2016, by the Maine secretary of state's office shows the signature that Stavros Mendros used in his 2011 notary public commission application to the Maine Office of Secretary of State, top, and his signature that appears on one of the petitions in 2015 calling for a state-wide vote to legalize marijuana, below. Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap had rejected 5,000 petitions submitted on Feb. 1 containing more than 26,000 signatures, saying the signature of the notary on the petitions did not match the signature on file. On Friday, April 8, 2016, Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy reversed the decision, ruling it was "unreasonable" for the state to require that the notary's signature must be identical. (Maine Office of Secretary of State via AP) On Friday, Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy reversed the decision, ruling it was "unreasonable" for the state to require the notary's signature to be identical to the one on file. David Boyer from the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol said the secretary of state now must review the disputed petitions, but he viewed that as a formality. He said at least 17,000 of the disputed signatures were otherwise valid, adding up to enough to exceed the threshold of 61,123 signatures for the ballot. "We're operating as if we're going to be on the ballot," he said. But Dunlap said it's too early to say that the measure will be on the ballot. The implications of the judge's ruling are unclear, and there could be an appeal, he said. "We have to review the decision and figure out where we go from here," Dunlap said. The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol turned in 99,229 signatures on Feb. 1, but only 51,543 of the signatures were deemed to be valid. The secretary of state rejected more than 26,000 signatures because the signature of the notary didn't match the signature on file. More than 17,000 of the signatures were linked to Stavros Mendros, a Lewiston-based political consultant and former state lawmaker, who notarized more than 5,000 petitions. Murphy said it's unreasonable to assume that a notary signs the document precisely the same way, saying the requirement was vague and subjective, and creates an undue burden. "Requiring a notary's signature to appear identically on every petition signed is unreasonable and abridges the constitutional right to a (referendum)," she wrote. Scott Gagnon, who opposes the marijuana referendum, said he was disappointed by the judge's decision, calling it "unsettling." "It will open the door to elections fraud in Maine. We will be watching closely how this unfolds as it goes back to the secretary of state," said Gagnon, state director for Smart Approaches to Marijuana. The referendum would allow residents 21 or older to legally possess marijuana for recreational use. If the proposal appears on the ballot, then Maine would be one of several states considering marijuana legalization proposals. Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., already have made recreational use of marijuana legal for adults. Maine legalized marijuana for medical use in 1999. The judge's decision came after she sided with the secretary of state's decision to reject a casino referendum proposal. Dunlap said the casino campaign fell short of submitting the necessary 62,123 voter signatures to qualify for the November ballot. In that case, casino supporters delivered 91,294 total signatures, but only 35,518 were deemed valid. ___ Schwarzenegger ally's son to be freed from California prison SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) The son of former California state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez will be freed from prison within days, prison officials said Friday, the result of then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's much criticized 2011 decision to commute half the manslaughter sentence for his political ally's child. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Luis Patino said Esteban Nunez will be paroled within a week, though he wouldn't give the exact day for security reasons. Nunez, now 27, entered prison in June 2010 to serve a 16-year sentence in the stabbing death of college student Luis Santos in San Diego. Schwarzenegger, on his last day in office in 2011, reduced the sentence to seven years. This April 7, 2016 photo provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shows Esteban Nunez. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Friday, April 8, 2016, that Nunez, son of former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, will be paroled within a week. Nunez, who was sentenced to a 16-year sentence for manslaughter, had his sentence reduced to seven years by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via AP) Nunez is the son of Fabian Nunez, who was speaker of the state Assembly while Schwarzenegger was governor. "We continue to grieve over the losses related to our son's involvement in this tragic incident and pray daily for God's healing grace," Nunez's family said in a statement. "Our son has paid his debt to society .... He is committed to continuing the work of healing, self-reflection, and spiritual growth." Schwarzenegger did not respond to requests for comment. He said at the time that he acted because he thought the 16-year sentence was excessive, but he also acknowledged he was helping a friend. The victim's parents, Frederico and Kathy Santos, and San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis sued in a failed bid to overturn the shortened sentence. "Two politicians were basically able to get one of their sons off the hook for murder? How is that even allowed?" Kathy Santos said Friday. The 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento last year upheld Schwarzenegger's power to reduce the sentence, even as justices variously said the sentence reduction could be viewed as "reprehensible" and "grossly unjust." "Back-room dealings were apparent," the court wrote of Schwarzenegger's decision. The state Supreme Court has not yet said if it will consider an appeal of that ruling. Man detained after guns, explosives found in car near church SOUTHAVEN, Miss. (AP) A man has been arrested after police found homemade incendiary devices and guns in his car in the parking lot of a Mississippi church. Jason Moncrief, 41, was charged Thursday with trespassing at the Southaven church and remained jailed Friday in DeSoto County, just south of Memphis, Tennessee. Mike Knight is a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He says materials are being tested, but there's no indication Moncrief was targeting the 10,000-member Brown Missionary Baptist Church. Southaven Police Lt. Mark Little says officials at the church had complained about a trespasser at the rear of their property in recent days. Troyanovsky stops Cuenca to defend light welterweight belts MOSCOW (AP) Eduard Troyanovsky stayed unbeaten to retain his IBF and IBO light welterweight belts Friday in a rematch against former champion Cesar Rene Cuenca. The Russian sent Cuenca to the canvas twice before the Argentine's corner ended the fight in the seventh after their fighter took punishment against the ropes. Troyanovsky, nicknamed "The Eagle," used his superior reach to control the fight in front of a small but passionate home crowd in the Russian capital. "It's our shared victory," Troyanovsky said. "We're all champions together." Russia's Eduard Tryanovsky, left, and Argentina's Cesar Rene Cuenca in action during their IBF super lightweight title bout in Moscow, Russia, on Friday, April 8, 2016. Tryanovsky defended his title. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev) Following a quiet opening two rounds, Troyanovsky forced Cuenca against the ropes in the third, which ended with his opponent bleeding from the mouth. A hard right sent Cuenca tumbling backward to the floor in the fourth, but he easily beat the count, though with a bloodied face. After Cuenca recovered in the fifth, a big uppercut from Troyanovsky brought the second knockdown late in the sixth, and a lengthy timeout to replace a mouthguard ended the round, bringing Cuenca a reprieve. That rest did him little good, however, and after some strong body shots in the seventh, Cuenca slipped while near the ropes and his corner ended the fight following a short discussion with the referee. Troyanovsky moves to a 24-0 record with 21 career wins by knockout, while Cuenca is 48-2 with two no contests. Troyanovsky won the belts from Cuenca in November in controversial circumstances surrounding a sixth-round technical knockout. Cuenca's team claimed the referee had overlooked apparent contact between Cuenca's head and Troyanovsky's knee. Group: Disputed Haiti presidential vote generally free, fair PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) A Washington-based think tank said Friday it found last year's presidential first-round election in Haiti to be generally fair and free of fraud, contrasting sharply with allegations of rampant vote-rigging by Haitian observer groups. The Haiti Democracy Project along with a group called the National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians had 208 observers for the Oct. 25 election. That electoral mission reported that voting and ballot counting was largely free of irregularities and errors. Project director James Morrell said their electoral monitor teams comprised of Haitian nationals "did not find enough irregularities to warrant the charge of generalized fraud." About two weeks after the Oct. 25 vote, the National Human Rights Defense Network and other Haitian groups with 1,640 election observers announced they believed there was a "massive planned operation of electoral fraud" to benefit government-aligned candidates. Official results said government-backed presidential candidate Jovenel Moise got some 33 percent of first-round voting, putting him in a runoff with second-place finisher Jude Celestin. But the results were immediately questioned, with Celestin dismissing the results as a fraudulent "farce." Haiti has twice postponed a runoff vote amid politicking, opposition-stoked protests and public concerns over the validity of last year's voting. A caretaker president has been in power since February after ex-President Michel Martelly left office without an elected successor in place. It's far from clear when this electoral cycle could be concluded. The head of Haiti's revamped Provisional Electoral Council said this week that the nine-member body "inherited a crisis" and couldn't issue a new electoral calendar until a slew of challenges are resolved. Mexican mountain resort town hit by fire MEXICO CITY (AP) Mexican army, police and conservation teams have largely controlled brush and forest fires burning in the mountains above the scenic town of Tepoztlan. Tepoztlan is known for the soaring cliffs and steep mountainsides that surround the town. But those very mountains made it hard to fight a fire that broke out earlier this week, apparently after farmers burned off weeds in preparation for planting. The top environmental official for Morelos state said that helicopters had to be used to drop water on the narrow canyons where fires were still smoldering. Topiltzin Contreras said Friday the fire had been brought under control. Tepoztlan is a popular weekend getaway for residents of Mexico City, just north of the town. ___ American doctors make new esophagus using stents and skin LONDON (AP) American doctors have made a new esophagus for a young man, using donated skin tissue and metal stents, in the latest example of scientists creating body parts in the lab to help patients with few other options. After the 24-year-old man was paralyzed in a car crash seven years ago, doctors struggled to repair his esophagus. Normally, they might have attempted to make a new one using a tube from the patient's digestive system, but that wasn't possible because of the man's extensive injuries. Instead, doctors decided to try a technique previously tested only in dogs, to reconstruct the upper esophagus with stents and skin tissue approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "It's quite remarkable what they were able to do," said Dr. Simon Hoerstrup, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Zurich, who had no connection to the research. He said the results suggest it's possible the human body can regrow certain organs once the basic structure is implanted. The man, whose name has not been released, was unable to eat and relied on a feeding tube. To remedy that, physicians inserted an endoscope containing a wire through the man's stomach and up through what remained of his esophagus, leading to his mouth. Guided by the wire, they then inserted three stents to recreate the structure of the esophagus and covered it with skin tissue. The tissue was then sprayed with a gel made from the patient's own blood, which contained natural substances to attract stem cells. Although the doctors wanted to remove the stents about three months after the surgery, the patient refused, fearing he wouldn't be able to eat and drink; he was also worried about possible scarring. Nearly four years later, doctors removed the stents after the man had trouble swallowing when a problem arose with the lower stent. One year after that, doctors examined the man's esophagus and found that all five layers of the esophagus had regrown, closely resembling a normal one. The patient hasn't needed a feeding tube and hasn't reported any other complications. The research was published online Friday in the journal, Lancet. "We initially thought (the results) were too good to be true," said Dr. Kulwinder Dua, a gastroenterologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin, who led the surgery. "But the proof in the pudding is that this guy is now eating and drinking normally." Scientists have previously made body parts including windpipes, blood vessels and nostrils; doctors have also made an esophagus using stents and pig tissue. Dua cautioned there are still many unknowns about the process he and his colleagues used, emphasizing it has only been used on a single patient so far. "This is not a recommendation for mainstream use," he said, adding that more animal and human trials are needed. "There are still a lot of unanswered questions." ____ Online: Students end sit-in protest outside Duke president's office RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) The student sit-in at Duke University is over. Duke Students & Workers in Solidarity issued a statement on its Facebook page Friday saying the protest is leaving the Allen Building, which houses the office of school President Richard Brodhead. Nine students took over the reception area outside Brodhead's office on April 1. The student group said its protest would move to an area it has named for Julian Abele, the black architect of the Duke campus whose work was brought to light through the protest. Supporters cheer as students who took over a reception area outside the office of school President Richard Brodhead look down from the Allen Building at Duke University Friday, April 8, 2016 in Durham, N.C., as the sit-in enters it's second week. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome) Brodhead issued a statement saying though the two sides disagreed about the specifics of their demands and their choice of means, he respects their underlying passion for making Duke and the world a better place. Supporters gather outside the Allen Building at Duke University Friday, April 8, 2016 in Durham, N.C. Nine students took over a reception area outside the office of school President Richard Brodhead on April 1 as the sit-in enters it's second week. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome) An effigy stands outside the Allen Building at Duke University Friday, April 8, 2016 in Durham, N.C., representing the nine students who took over a reception area outside the office of school President Richard Brodhead on April 1 as the sit-in enters it's second week. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome) Students who took over a reception area outside the office of Duke University President Richard Brodhead cheer from a window in the Allen Building Friday, April 8, 2016 in Durham, N.C. as the sit-in enters it's second week. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome) Charlie Sheen's former fiancee Brett Rossi has been granted a temporary restraining order against the actor. A judge in Los Angeles approved the order based on Rossi's claims that she's afraid of her ex due to threats he's made toward her and two 2014 incidents of alleged domestic violence, the AP reported. It comes as police in Los Angeles have launched a criminal investigation against Sheen and Rossi's ongoing civil lawsuit in which she accuses the star of assault and battery and failing to tell her he was HIV-positive. Scroll down for video Stay away: Charlie Sheen has been ordered to stay 100 eards away from former fiancee Brett Rossi after a LA judge granted her application for a temporary restraining order. The former couple are pictured in June 2014 Sheen's lawyer Marty Singer has previously called the claims made by Rossi - real name Scottine Ross - 'a complete fabrication.' Neither he nor his client have responded yet to Friday's developments. Under the TRO, Sheen is not allowed to contact his former girlfriend, and must stay 100 yeards away from her, her home, her place of work and her car. He must also turn in any guns he might own, according to The AP. Trouble: Charlie Sheen (above in April 2013) is under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department after allegedly being caught on an audio recording offering money to have the porn star killed Superior Court Judge Alicia Blanco delivered her ruling after the porn star, who dated Sheen in 2013 and 2014, stated in her application that the former Two And a Half Men star had allegedly threatened her life in an audio recording obtained by RadarOnline.com. She also stated Sheen kicked her on the ground in January 2014 and choked her to the point she almost lost consciousness a few months later. There are no indications in the filing that Sheen has sought to contact Rossi recently, the AP said. A hearing to extend the temporary restraining order has been set for April 28 in Santa Monica. Claims: Rossi - real name Scottine Ross - has filed a civil suit against the actor claiming he didn't tell her he was HIV-positive and that he had been violent towards her during their time together On Tuesday, the LAPD served a search warrant on the New York City office of Radar Online and The National Enquirer in order to obtain a recording of Sheen where he allegedly says he would pay $20,000 to have Rossi killed. The recording also allegedly includes a segment in which the actor admits that he did not disclose to her that he was HIV positive after his diagnosis. Radar Online has said it believes the warrant is illegal. Rossi previously filed a $5million lawsuit against Sheen in December for assault and battery after first claiming Sheen did not disclose his HIV status Pc Gordon Semple's remains were found after neighbour reported 'smell of death' The decomposed remains of missing police officer Gordon Semple were discovered after a neighbour alerted Scotland Yard to a "smell of death" coming from a housing estate flat. The body of Pc Semple, 59, was found at a property in Southwark, south London, on Thursday and a 49-year-old suspect was arrested at the same address. The officer's brother, Ronnie Semple, said in a statement that his death had left the world of his family and his partner Gary "a worse place". Pc Gordon Semple, 59, with his great nephew Xander (family handout/PA Wire) A man whose brother lives upstairs from the flat where Pc Semple's body was found confronted the person living at the property about the stench, and said the occupant had put scented candles outside his door to disguise it. Martin Harris said the door was answered by a Mediterranean-looking man wearing blue Speedo-type swimming trunks and glasses, who was "as cool as a cucumber". Mr Harris told the Telegraph: "I asked him what the terrible smell was and he apologised and said he was cooking." Still concerned, he contacted the police. Heather Brown, who lives in the block next door to the flat, which police forensic teams are scouring for evidence, said the candles had been outside the door for a "few days". Ms Brown, who has lived on the estate for 30 years, said the housing block where Pc Semple's body was found was full of short-let tenants, describing it as a "very quiet place" where there were "never any problems". The officer, who had been with the police for 30 years, left his home in Greenhithe, Dartford, to go to work in Westminster last Friday, and on that same day visited the Shard in Southwark. He left there at 12.30pm and was last seen on CCTV about two and a half hours later near London Bridge, a short distance from the property where he was found. Thousands of people joined a Facebook group to help search for him, and his family spoke of their devastation following his death. In a statement, Pc Semple's brother, Ronnie Semple, said: "On behalf of Gordon's partner Gary, my wife Maureen, Gordon's nephew Paul, niece Kerry and I, I would like to thank everyone for their kind thoughts during the past dreadful week. It has been a terrible time for us all, especially Gary." He added: " Gordon will be sadly missed by all of his immediate family, his colleagues in the Met Police, former Bank of Scotland colleagues in Inverness and London, friends from his 'Tartan Army' days, but most of all the hardest loss is for Gary at this time. "Gordon was a much-loved partner, brother, brother-in-law, uncle and cousin, and our world will be a worse place without him." Pc Semple was born in Scotland and came from Inverness, working for the Bank of Scotland as a young man before joining the police. Officers are continuing a "vital search for evidence" at the scene which will take "some time" to complete, Scotland Yard said. Metropolitan Police Commander Alison Newcomb said: "This is a very sad day for Gordon's colleagues. There are many officers who have served with Gordon in London during his 30-year career who will acutely feel his loss." Ms Newcomb, commander of the territorial policing unit, said: "Yesterday afternoon we were called by a member of the public to an address on the Peabody Estate, Southwark Street. "At that address a man was arrested and human remains were discovered. "Due to the condition of those human remains it will take some time for the cause of death to be established and for formal identification to take place. At this point I do not wish to speculate on what has happened." Friends remembered Pc Semple as a "great character" and and "old-school cop". Kevin Holland said: "RIP Gordon. Was there in my hour of need, sorry I couldn't be there in his. Missed by many. One of life's great characters taken", while Kristina Radu recalled him as a "very happy, smiley man". Paul Hutchinson said: "Wish I could have been there for you at your time in need; my utmost pleasure to have known you. My thoughts to your family", while Rona Tynan wrote: "Have heard he was a great cop old school. Very very sad reading this news. Deepest sympathies to the family and I hope justice is served at the highest order." And Andrew Crooke added: "Rest peacefully brother. You've booked off your last shift here and I know you are starting rest days in a better place." James Game, 33, lives in the estate and said he witnessed Thursday's arrest from the window of his flat. He said: "I looked out the window and I couldn't believe it. It was swarmed with police." He said he saw what he described as a "meat wagon" back up to an ambulance outside the block. He said: "The meat wagon reversed up to the ambulance, they opened both sets of doors and escorted some gentleman from the ambulance into the police van. "He wasn't cuffed but he was being held either side by a policeman." Describing his appearance, he said: "He was bald, black sunglasses ... black bomber jacket, dark jeans and dark shoes." A private ambulance arrived at the estate on Friday and remained there for the afternoon. Pc Semple visited the Shard on the day he went missing (Metropolitan Police/PA Wire) Two police officers at the entrance to the Southwark Street Estate in south London, where the remains of Pc Semple were found A police cordon has been set up around the estate where Pc Semple was found The veteran police officer was last seen at 3pm last Friday on CCTV near London Bridge, a short distance from the property on the Peabody Estate Pc Semple spotted on CCTV in Great Guildford Street (Metropolitan Police/PA Wire) Police are tracing the whereabouts of Pc Semple prior to his remains being found (Metropolitan Police/PA Wire) Labour dismisses need for Government's 9m pro-EU drive Labour has dismissed the need for the Government to spend more than 9 million of taxpayers' cash on pro-EU leaflets. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell insisted there is enough campaign literature being provided by the in and out camps, ensuring the Government has no need to produce any extra. The senior Labour MP also warned "Project Fear" is being carried out by all sides of the debate as he stressed the need for voters to be given "straightforward factual information". Justice Secretary Michael Gove attacked the idea of taxpayers funding "one-sided propaganda" rather than the NHS Labour is firmly behind Britain staying in the EU with the party's deputy leader Tom Watson telling an event in Coventry that 213 of the Opposition's 232 MPs support a Remain vote. But Mr McDonnell's remarks highlight concerns across the campaigns over the leaflet scheme. Ministers face being forced to justify in Parliament the decision to spend cash on the pamphlets after a petition opposing the idea secured the required 100,000 signatures. The move to send one to every household in the country setting out the case for voting to remain in the EU in June's referendum provoked a blistering row between Remain and Leave supporters. Justice Secretary Michael Gove attacked the idea of taxpayers funding "one-sided propaganda" rather than the NHS after Prime Minister David Cameron insisted it was "money well spent". Speaking during a visit to north London, Mr McDonnell said t he public needs a factual and reasoned debate. He said: "To be frank, I don't think there's a need for leaflets from Government. "I'm also concerned about Project Fear from all sides of this debate. All people want is straightforward factual information which they can make up their minds on and I think we need to ensure the level of debate is about factual information, reasoned debate. "I don't think there's a need for Government leaflets, there's enough out there from individual campaigns." The petition, submitted by Get Britain Out director Jayne Adye, soared past the 100,000 mark on Thursday meaning it has to be considered for debate in Parliament. It says: "We, the petitioners, demand the Government STOPS spending our money on biased campaigning to keep Britain inside the European Union. "The Great British Public have waited since 1975 for a vote on our relationship with Brussels. No taxpayers' money should be spent on campaign literature to keep Britain inside the EU." Downing Street said the leaflets were a response to polling which showed 85% of the public wanted more information from the Government to help them make an informed choice on June 23. The Electoral Commission watchdog had campaigned for a ban on such Government activity during the formal "regulated period" of the campaign, which begins on April 15. The leaflet is due to start hitting doormats in England next week, but not until after the May 5 elections in the rest of the UK. Although ministers backed down from a significant lifting of the pre-vote "purdah" period during which government activity is restricted, legal restrictions still apply only for the final 28 days. Mr Watson, in a speech to launch a document entitled " The Leave Campaign's Hidden Agenda", hit out at Tory, Ukip and Brexit supporters who he claimed " reserve a special sort of disdain" for rules which make the workplace safer. He said: "T hese are the rights that the Tory and Ukip 'out' crowd - (Chris) Grayling, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson - want to take away from British working people. "That's the true agenda of the five Tory figures who are beating the anti-EU drum most loudly. "If they were a pop band, it's unlikely I know, they'd be called Wrong Direction - b ecause that's the direction in which they want to take the UK." Eurosceptic Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin told BBC Radio 4's World at One: " The way the Prime Minister has chosen to conduct the Government in this referendum campaign is causing a lot of offence in the Conservative Party." He said Mr Cameron is trying to lead the Tories in a direction which the party "fundamentally does not want to go" in relation to Europe. Asked if he had encountered Tory MPs who were preparing to vote against the Budget over the issue, Mr Jenkin replied: "I really can't answer your question because Parliament is not here at the moment so we're not all gathering in the corridors and discussing things. Jeremy Corbyn turns heat on David Cameron over offshore fund disclosure David Cameron faces demands to give a statement in Parliament setting out his financial affairs as he struggled to draw a line under the row over his connection to his late father's offshore business interests. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Prime Minister has "misled the public" and "lost the trust of the British people" after admitting he had made a 19,000 profit from an offshore fund set up by his late father. Mr Corbyn's strongly-worded intervention came as even the Prime Minister's allies conceded his handling of the row could have been better. David Cameron said his father was being "unfairly written about" The Prime Minister sold his and wife Samantha's shares in Blairmore Holdings - one of the tax haven schemes exposed in the Panama Papers leaks - in 2010 and insisted it was not set up as a tax dodge. He paid income tax on dividends but the 19,000 profit on the sale was insufficient to attract capital gains tax. Mr Corbyn demanded "decisive action" against tax dodging which the Panama Papers leak revealed was taking place on an "industrial scale". Mr Cameron has insisted it was a "fundamental misconception" that Bahamas-based Blairmore was set up by his father Ian to avoid paying UK tax and stressed that his interest in it had been "subject to all the UK taxes in the normal ways". Pressure has been mounting on the Prime Minister for days after Downing Street initially claimed his financial affairs were a "private matter". Mr Corbyn said "i t took five weasel-worded statements in five days for the Prime Minister to admit that he has personally profited from an undeclared Caribbean tax haven investment deal". Cabinet minister Michael Fallon conceded that Mr Cameron's handling of the row could have been "neater" but bizarrely appeared to blame the media for failing to ask the right questions - even though the Prime Minister and Downing Street had repeatedly been pressed to fully disclose his involvement during a torrid week for his leadership. The Defence Secretary told BBC Radio 4's Any Questions: "I think it was a very difficult issue for the Prime Minister because it concerned his late father who he much revered. "Of course it's true that if the fuller questions that were asked of him yesterday had been asked of him earlier in the week then it might have all been neater. But that is hindsight. "What we know now, we know three things: first he had shares in this unit trust, which an awful lot of people in this country ... have through their private pensions and you pay taxes on those shares. "Secondly, we know that he sold those shares before he became Prime Minister back in 2010. "Thirdly we know that he paid all the taxes that were due when he sold those particular shares. "I don't see that he has done anything at all improper." Tory MP Victoria Atkins also suggested that Mr Cameron could have revealed he benefited from the offshore fund earlier. Ms Atkins, who prosecuted tax fraud cases before becoming an MP, told Channel 4 News. " If we were to replay this week, who knows whether the Prime Minister would have had that interview a day or two earlier. "But the fact is now he has been completely frank and transparent about his affairs." But critics continued to heap pressure on the Prime Minister, despite his Thursday night admission that he benefited from the Blairmore fund. Mr Corbyn said: "The Prime Minister has lost the trust of the British people. He must now give a full account of all his private financial dealings and make a statement to Parliament next week. "Only complete openness from the Prime Minister, and decisive action against tax avoidance and evasion, can now deal with the issues at the heart of this scandal." Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said while Mr Cameron had previously "talked a good game on tax avoidance, we've found out this week the reality doesn't always match the rhetoric". She said: "I think David Cameron has given the impression that he's been trying to hide something over the past few days, he's had several statements and started by giving the impression there was nothing to hide before last night saying he had benefited from an offshore trust. "I think he has to be completely open and transparent about this now." Labour MP John Mann said he would report the Prime Minister to a sleaze watchdog, claiming he should have declared his shares in Blairmore in the register of MPs' interests. Mr Mann, who has called for Mr Cameron to resign, said he would ask parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Hudson to investigate. Serious Fraud Office probing Tata Steel unit Speciality Steels A criminal probe was opened into activity at a business unit of Tata Steel, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has said. The SFO did not give details about the nature of the investigation which has been confirmed at a difficult time for the steel industry. In a statement, the SFO said: "The Serious Fraud Office confirms it opened a criminal investigation in December 2015 into activity at Speciality Steels, a business unit of Tata Steel (UK) Ltd. We can make no further comment at this time." The Serious Fraud Office is investigating Speciality Steels The news comes after Tata said they would sell all UK assets, sparking fears for jobs. It comes on the same day as keys to steel mills at Dalzell and Clydebridge in Scotland were formally handed to new owners, heralding "a new era" for the factories which had been threatened with closure. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon hailed international metal firm Liberty House's takeover from Tata Steel as a demonstration of the "art of the possible" at the handover ceremony in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire. The plants were secured last month in a "back-to-back" agreement, involving the Scottish Government buying them from Tata Steel, and immediately selling them on to Liberty House. Ms Sturgeon urged the UK and Welsh governments to step up efforts to save the giant Port Talbot steel works in South Wales. Argentine prosecutor calls for Macri probe over 'Panama Papers' By Maximiliano Rizzi BUENOS AIRES, April 7 (Reuters) - An Argentine prosecutor on Thursday asked a judge to open an investigation into President Mauricio Macri's connection with offshore companies as revealed by the "Panama Papers" leak which has shone a light on the financial schemes of the world's elite. A leak of four decades of documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies, has triggered similar investigations across the world. Macri, who won last year's election partly on promises to root out corruption, has said he was not legally obliged to declare his connection with the offshore company named in the "Panama Papers" as he never had a stake in it. The president said he was simply director of the Bahamas-based company, Fleg Trading Ltd., now closed, which was created by his tycoon father to make investments in Brazil. Critics say he owes a more thorough explanation of this and his alleged connection with another offshore company, Kagemusha SA", registered in Panama, given that such firms are often used to launder money and evade taxes. "As a first step, it is necessary to check if Mauricio Macri maliciously failed to complete his tax declaration," state prosecutor Federico Delgado wrote in his appeal to Judge Sebastian Casanello, noting this was a crime which carries a sentence of 15 days to two years. Casanello must now decide if there is sufficient evidence to open an investigation. Asked about the prosecutor's request, a government spokesman said Macri had already made it clear he had committed no wrongdoing. Norman Dario Martinez, a lawmaker for the opposition Front for Victory party, instigated the case. "Macri's participation as director and vicepresident of two companies in the Bahamas and Panama is clear, proved and admitted, and these places are tax havens that are usually used for money laundering and tax evasion," he told broadcaster C5N. The millions of leaked documents implicated scores of politicians and business figures internationally and the case already forced one head of state, Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, to step down. Argentine opposition lawmakers are calling for the resignation of the head of the Argentine anti-corruption office, Laura Alonso. Alonso is a member of Macri's party and swiftly defended the president after the Panama Papers emerged, saying that creating a company in a tax haven was not a crime. "She came out immediately defending the president when her role is to investigate whether an act of corruption was carried out," the Front for Victory said in a statement. Lebanon detains Australian TV crew over child custody row BEIRUT, April 7 (Reuters) - Lebanese police have detained an Australian film crew and accused them of involvement in a kidnapping of two children from their Lebanese father on behalf of their Australian mother. "Four Australian nationals have been stopped on suspicion of kidnapping the two children," the Lebanese internal security services said on their Twitter account. CCTV footage broadcast on Lebanese TV appeared to show the two children, who the father said were aged five and three, being bundled into a car by several attackers on a busy street in southern Beirut. The children's grandmother told media she had been hit on the head with a pistol during the abduction. The father, Ali Zeid al-Amin, said by phone that he was scared for the children's safety but that they were with their mother. "It's their mum that kidnapped them, and that's what we know. She contacted me and told me she has the kids," he said. A Lebanese security source said the mother and two children had been found and were with the authorities. The four-member crew was making a film about the mother's efforts to recover her children for the Australian current affairs show "60 Minutes". The incident took place in the Hadath area of southern Beirut at 7.10am on Wednesday. Lebanon, unlike Australia, is not a signatory of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which allows for children normally resident in one location to be returned if taken by a relative. Lebanese Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk was quoted on Thursday as saying the crew were "involved in abducting the two children and detained in respect of their participation in the kidnapping operation". Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been in contact with Channel 9 over reports of the crew's detention, a spokesman of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said. "A crew has been detained. Our people are working with the authorities to have them released as soon as possible," a spokesman for Channel 9 said. Turkey, Israel make progress on deal to restore ties - Turkish ministry ISTANBUL, April 8 (Reuters) - Turkish and Israeli teams made progress towards finalising an agreement to mend ties between the two countries in talks and agreed a deal will be finalised in the next meeting to be convened very soon, the Turkish foreign ministry said on Friday. Turkey was once Israel's closest regional ally but ties collapsed in 2010 over the killing by Israeli marines of 10 Turkish pro-Palestinian activists who tried to breach the Gaza blockade. Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, the Israeli prime minister's special envoy, Joseph Ciechanover, and acting chairman of Israel's National Security Council, General Jacob Nagel, met in London on Thursday, the Turkish ministry said in a statement. "The teams made progress towards finalising the agreement and closing the gaps, and agreed that the deal will be finalised in the next meeting which will be convened very soon," the ministry said. It did not say what form a deal might take but Ankara has always insisted there can be no normalisation in ties with Israel unless its conditions for ending the Gaza blockade and compensation for the deaths of the activists are met. Israel allows commercial goods into Gaza daily but limits the transfer of certain items such as cement and building materials as it fears militants will use them to build fortifications. Poland - Factors to Watch April 8 Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Friday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 2 hours): VAT Poland's Finance Ministry does not plan to cut its value added tax (VAT) rate back to 22 percent next year, as it aims to keep a lid on deficit, finance minister Pawel Szalamacha was quoted as saying on Friday by daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. He added that the ministry will present its retail tax draft this month, which will exclude internet sales. ROADS Poland's infrastructure ministry mulls raising the levy included in Polish oil sold at gas stations, which helps co-finance road and rail building, daily Puls Biznesu quoted deputy infrastructure minister Jerzy Szmit. PKN Polish oil refiner PKN's Czech unit Unipetrol signed a contract amendment with Czech oil pipeline operator Mero on crude oil transportation and storage, with the estimated annual value exceeding 1 billion Czech crowns ($42.1 million). ****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.**** Shenzhen, Shanghai home sales plunge after rules tightened By Clare Jim HONG KONG/SHANGHAI April 8 (Reuters) - Home sales in the red-hot property markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen tumbled sharply in the week after authorities made it tougher to buy homes in the cities to prevent a property bubble, surveys by a major Chinese realtor show. After Shenzhen and Shanghai property prices had jumped 57 percent and 20.6 percent in February from a year earlier, local governments tightened downpayment requirements for second homes and raised the eligibility bar for non-residents to buy in the cities. In the week beginning March 28, the first after the new rules took effect, the total floor area sold in Shanghai fell 60 percent from the previous week to 283,600 square metres, according to nationwide agency Hopefluent Real Properties (China), whose surveys are based largely on government data. Shenzhen sales fell 28.2 percent to 71,000 square metres. While much of China's property market has been in the doldrums for two or three years after an overbuilding frenzy left a backlog of unsold and unfinished developments, life has been easy for realtors in China's first-tier cities. "Property agents now have to make calls again. They didn't have to (call clients) before the tightening; business came to them," said Joe Zhou, Jones Lang LaSalle's east China head of research, adding client foot traffic dropped around 30 percent in the past two weeks. Some would-be buyers like Zhang Xiaohua, an IT designer at Chinese computer-maker Lenovo, said the measures had hit hard. "I can't buy now, and I don't have much hope of buying in the future," said the 27-year old, after Shanghai raised the requirement that buyers without local residence permits must have paid Shanghai taxes for at least five years, up from two. "I'm scared there will be more policies targeting non-locals." LOW INVENTORIES Analysts said a plunge in volume was expected, given a smaller pool of eligible buyers after the new rules. Prices also eased 3 percent week on week in Shanghai and 4.2 percent in Shenzhen, according to the surveys. "A lot of people don't want to get into the market now, so they're not buying. This is giving me a headache," said 56-year old Ding Xiaoping, a furniture salesman who is trying to sell two of his apartments. "Many sellers are thinking about cutting prices. I'm thinking of lowering the price by a little, too." But developers see little immediate cause for alarm. Officials at Shanghai-based Shimao Property Holdings and a Shenzhen-based developer, who declined to be named, said inventory levels remained very low in the two cities so they had no plans to cut prices. "Despite the large demand wiped out by these tightening policies, developers are still seeing more clients than the saleable resources they have, so they don't need to cut prices," said Alan Cheng, general manager for realtor Centaline in Shenzhen. Property investment and development is a major driver of China's economy, affecting more than 40 sectors from cement to furniture, and accounting for more than 20 percent of gross domestic product. With overall economic growth falling to a 25-year low of 6.9 percent in 2015, property investment growth eased to just 1 percent, the weakest in nearly seven years as developers slowed new construction due to oversupply. It picked up, however, to 3 percent in the first two months of this year after a slew of government stimulus measures. "China's property investment in the first two months was doing better than our full-year forecast of a 5 percent drop," Nomura chief China economist Zhou Yang told Reuters. "We expect both sales and investment in the coming two quarters will remain robust, but the second half is likely to ease on housing recovery slowdown, affected by tightening in the first tiers and glut in the third and fourth tier (cities)." PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - April 8 SOFIA, April 8 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. -- Some 60 percent of Bulgarians think that refugees are threatening the Balkan country's national security, while 15.2 percent are of the opposite opinion, a poll by Sova Harris showed (Standart, Duma) -- Bulgaria's naval and border police forces will test on Sunday their capabilities for joint action in a joint training exercise, the defence ministry said. The exercise is in response to a hypothetical increase in migratory pressure in the Black Sea (Trud, Standart, Monitor) -- Bulgaria's Defence Minister Nikolay Nenchev and his Greek counterpart Panos Kammenos discussed in Athens the need to hold talks at the level of contact groups from the two countries' armed forces about joint tackling of the migration pressure at EU borders (Trud, 24 Chasa) -- Interior Minister Rumyana Bachvarova expressed optimism that the fence at the border with Turkey will be completed by the end of June (Standart, Trud, Sega) Pellegrini risks Belgium ire with desire to play Kompany April 8 (Reuters) - Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini's plans to play captain Vincent Kompany in Tuesday's Champions League quarter-final, second-leg against Paris St Germain could rekindle his feud with Belgium manager Marc Wilmots over the defender. Kompany, who has struggled with a persistent calf problem this season, has not played since injuring his knee against Dynamo Kiev on March 15, and Wilmots is concerned another injury could rule the Belgium captain out of the Euro 2016 finals. With the tie evenly poised after City came from behind to secure a 2-2 draw at the Parc des Princes in the first leg and a place in the semi-finals at stake, Pellegrini said Kompany had an outside chance of playing in the home leg. "We'll see him during the week and what he improves," the Chilean told reporters. "The last few days, he's worked very well. We must test him with more intensity and it's very difficult to tell now." Pellegrini's stance is at odds with his Belgium counterpart, who had insisted earlier that the 29-year-old would not risk his fitness by playing again this season with the June-July tournament in France a long-term goal. "Vincent Kompany suffered a calf tear, which means he will need five to eight weeks to return. I spoke to him on the phone. He has huge desire. We'll see him on 16 May," Wilmots had said. This is not the first time the influential central defender has been caught in a club vs country dispute. In October, Kompany was named in Belgium's squad for the Euro 2016 qualifiers against Andorra and Israel, despite him having been out since September after picking up an injury against Juventus, and Pellegrini saying he could not play. China citizens protest ChemChina-Syngenta deal amid GMO worries By Niu Shuping and David Stanway BEIJING, April 8 (Reuters) - Around 400 Chinese citizens have signed a letter to protest the purchase of Swiss-based seeds and pesticides company Syngenta by state-owned ChemChina, saying the deal would eventually lead to genetically modified crops being sown across swathes of the country. Critics of genetically modified organisms argue the technology poses risks to public health and the environment, while advocates say such fears have not been scientifically proven and that high-yielding genetically altered crops would help ensure food security as the world's population grows. Although relatively few people signed the letter, it marks a rare example of open opposition to state-supported corporate strategy in a nation where the government often clamps down hard on any criticism. It also underscores fears among some of the public that the government is gearing up to gradually loosen laws that prevent the cultivation of any GM varieties of staple food crops, with Beijing already permitting the import of some GMO crops for use in animal feed. The $43 billion all-cash deal unveiled in February is the largest foreign acquisition ever by a Chinese firm as China is looking to secure food supplies for its population. Syngenta has a portfolio of top tier chemicals and patent-protected seeds, many of which are genetically modified. "The acquisition of Syngenta and the promotion of its genetically-modified and agro-chemical agriculture in the country would destroy the country's own agriculture and food security," the protesters said in the letter, seen by Reuters. They argue GMO strains would contaminate Chinese staple crops. "ChemChina must immediately stop the suicidal acquisition from causing a disaster to the Chinese nation." Syngenta did not respond to requests for comment. A ChemChina spokesman said he had heard about the letter and that the company was waiting to learn more about it. Yang Xiaolu, one of the protesters on the list, said the letter was handed over late last month to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), which overseas companies owned by the central government. A SASAC spokeswoman said her office had not yet seen the letter, but was looking into the matter. Yang, a long-time anti-GMO activist, is also among the three plaintiffs who were taking China's Ministry of Agriculture to court in April last year in a bid to make public a toxicology report supporting the approval of Monsanto's popular weed killer. Reuters was unable to verify other names listed on the anti-GMO letter. China's commerce ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said in February that the ministry supported the acquisition which would help secure global food supply. The protest comes amid worries that Beijing is losing control over the supervision of GMO technology. Last month, agriculture minister Han Changfu admitted that GMO corn was illegally grown in some parts of the country, but found "no large areas of illegal planting" after Greenpeace said a majority of samples taken from corn fields in 5 counties in Liaoning province, tested positive for GMO contamination. Poland may allow banks to spread out mortgage conversion costs WARSAW, April 8 (Reuters) - Banks in Poland may be allowed to spread the cost of converting mortgages in foreign currencies into zlotys over several years, a spokesman for the president's office said on Friday. Around half a million Poles took out foreign currency denominated loans, mainly in Swiss francs, back in 2007 and 2008. But their borrowing costs have surged since then because Swiss franc has risen sharply against the zloty. In January, the president's office put forward draft legislation aimed at helping the borrowers by converting foreign exchange mortgages into zlotys. But the bill has been criticised for putting too much strain on the banks. "The (president's) chancellery is working to modify the conversion bill draft. Spreading the banks' costs over years is one of the options," spokesman Marek Magierowski said. The country's KNF financial watchdog has said the proposed bill could cost Polish banks almost 70 billion zlotys ($18.6 billion), or up to eight times their 2015 profits, potentially undermining the industry's health. Poland's Financial Stability Committee - made up of KNF, the central bank, the finance ministry, and the Banking Guarantee Fund - is to meet on April 18 to discuss the issue. Local radio RMF FM said on Friday, without naming its sources, the revised presidential draft bill could envisage Poland's central bank or Guarantee Fund lending the money for the conversion to the banks. RMF said this would allow banks to spread the overall costs over the next 20-30 years, at a rate of 2-3 billion zlotys annually. Kerry urges Iraq not to let politics impede war against IS By Arshad Mohammed BAGHDAD, April 8 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Baghdad on Friday, urged Iraq not to let its political crisis interfere with the fight against Islamic State and voiced unequivocal support for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Abadi last week unsettled Iraq's political elite with a proposed cabinet reshuffle that aims to curb corruption by replacing long-time politicians with technocrats and academics. His aim is to free Iraqi ministries from the grip of a political class that has used the system of ethnic and sectarian quotas instituted after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to amass wealth and influence. U.S. officials fear the political unrest may harm Iraq's efforts to retake territory it has lost to Islamic State militants, notably its second city of Mosul, seized when parts of the Iraqi army collapsed in 2014. Kerry told reporters that decisions about the reshuffle were for the Iraqis to decide but said he had indicated to Abadi that it was important to have political stability in Iraq so that military operations are not affected. "I want to reiterate the support of President Obama, Vice President Biden, myself as secretary, and the entire administration (in) the United States for Prime Minister Abadi, who has demonstrated critical leadership in the face of enormous security, economic and political challenges," Kerry told reporters at the U.S. Embassy inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. Kerry met earlier with Abadi, who is grappling with an economy battered by low oil prices and strained by the cost of the war against Islamic State which has displaced more than three million people and destroyed towns and cities. Kerry said the United States was providing an additional $155 million in humanitarian aid to Iraqis displaced by Islamic State. MOSUL OFFENSIVE ON HOLD Asked if there had been any discussion about more U.S. troops going to Iraq, Kerry said there had been no formal request from the Iraqis and the issue had not been raised on Friday. The United States, which withdrew its forces from Iraq in 2011, has redeployed several thousand as part of a coalition it is leading against Islamic State. In the past two weeks, Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes have retaken significant parts of Hit, a town 130 km (80 miles) northwest of Baghdad. However, an offensive billed as the first phase of a campaign to recapture the northern city of Mosul has been put on hold until reinforcements arrive. Kerry said Abadi had made clear his commitment to retaking Mosul and that he has a timetable for doing so. "The fact is, in Iraq, Daesh fighters have not been on the offensive in months," Kerry said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "They are losing ground, including more than 40 percent of the territory that they once controlled in Iraq." Baghdad is also hamstrung by the plunge in global oil prices that has shrivelled its main source of revenue. On Thursday, officials from the International Monetary Fund and the government said the oil price forecast in the 2016 budget would be cut to about $32 a barrel from $45, widening Iraq's fiscal deficit by several billion dollars. Hong Kong benchmark index up before China March data begins April 8 (Reuters) - Hong Kong stocks ended slightly higher on Friday as investors searched for cues on direction ahead of China's March economic data. The Hang Seng index rose 0.5 percent, to 20,370.40, while the China Enterprises Index gained 0.7 percent, to 8,704.81 points. For the week, the Hang Seng shed 0.6 percent while the HSCE fell 1.6 percent. Over the next week, China will release key economic data for March, which will be closely monitored by investors to assess the country's economic health. On Friday in Hong Kong, the energy sector strengthened 0.95 percent and property & construction by 0.84 percent. Al Qaeda emerges stronger and richer from Yemen war By Yara Bayoumy, Noah Browning and Mohammed Ghobari DUBAI/CAIRO, April 8 (Reuters) - Once driven to near irrelevance by the rise of Islamic State abroad and security crackdowns at home, al Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated $100 million in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the country's third largest port. If Islamic State's capital is the Syrian city of Raqqa, then al Qaeda's is Mukalla, a southeastern Yemeni port city of 500,000 people. Al Qaeda fighters there have abolished taxes for local residents, operate speedboats manned by RPG-wielding fighters who impose fees on ship traffic, and make propaganda videos in which they boast about paving local roads and stocking hospitals. The economic empire was described by more than a dozen diplomats, Yemeni security officials, tribal leaders and residents of Mukalla. Its emergence is the most striking unintended consequence of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The campaign, backed by the United States, has helped Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago. Yemeni government officials and local traders estimated the group, as well as seizing the bank deposits, has extorted $1.4 million from the national oil company and earns up to $2 million every day in taxes on goods and fuel coming into the port. AQAP boasts 1,000 fighters in Mukalla alone, controls 600 km (373 miles) of coastline and is ingratiating itself with southern Yemenis, who have felt marginalised by the country's northern elite for years. By adopting many of the tactics Islamic State uses to control its territory in Syria and Iraq, AQAP has expanded its own fiefdom. The danger is that the group, which organised the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year and has repeatedly tried to down U.S. airliners, may slowly indoctrinate the local population with its hardline ideology. "I prefer that al Qaeda stay here, not for Al Mukalla to be liberated," said one 47-year-old resident. "The situation is stable, more than any 'free' part of Yemen. The alternative to al Qaeda is much worse." Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is struggling to extricate itself from the Yemeni quagmire a year after intervening in the country's civil war. Riyadh is determined to deny bitter rival Iran sway over another Arab capital. It has focused on attacking the Houthis who have seized parts of northern Yemen and who are allied to Iran. But despite thousands of aerial bombings, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have failed to push the Houthis from the capital Sanaa. An estimated 6,000 people, half of them civilians, have been killed. A temporary ceasefire between the internationally recognised government, which is backed by the Saudis, and the Houthis is due to begin on April 10. In a recent statement issued by the Saudi embassy in Washington, Saudi officials said that their campaign had "denied terrorists a safe haven in Yemen." And yet, AQAP's strength is growing. A U.S. counter-terrorism official said AQAP remained one of al Qaeda's "most potent affiliates." The United States launched its deadliest air strike yet on the group on March 22nd, killing around 50 of its fighters at a military base outside Mukalla. "The group's bomb-making expertise and long-standing ambitions to carry out attacks using novel or complex tactics underscore (the) threat," the official said. A senior Yemeni government official said the war against the Houthis "provided a suitable environment for the ... expansion of al Qaeda." The withdrawal of government army units from their bases in the south, allowed al Qaeda to acquire "very large quantities of sophisticated and advanced weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and armed vehicles." As well, the coalition's preoccupation with fighting the Houthis "made it easier for al Qaeda elements to expand in more than one area," he said. "And this is why al Qaeda has today become stronger and more dangerous and we are working with the coalition now to go after elements of the group ... and will continue until they are destroyed." ANATOMY OF AN ECONOMIC EMPIRE Barely a week after Saudi Arabia launched "Operation Decisive Storm" against the Houthis in March last year, Yemeni army forces vanished from Mukalla's streets and moved westward to combat zones, security officials and residents said. The city's residents were left defenceless, allowing a few dozen AQAP fighters to seize government buildings and free 150 of their comrades from the central jail. The freed included Khaled Batarfi, a senior al Qaeda leader. Pictures appeared online of Batarfi sitting inside the local presidential palace, looking happy and in control as he held a telephone to his ear. Tribal leaders in neighbouring provinces told Reuters that, in the security vacuum, army bases were looted and Yemen's south became awash with advanced weaponry. C4 explosive and even anti-aircraft missiles were available to the highest bidder. And just as Islamic State seized the central bank in Mosul in northern Iraq, AQAP looted Mukalla's central bank branch, netting an estimated $100 million, according to two senior Yemeni security officials. "That represents their biggest financial gain to date," one of the officials said. "That's enough to fund them at the level they had been operating for at least another 10 years." In a sign that AQAP not only wants to get rich but also seeks official recognition as a quasi-state, it unsuccessfully sought permission from the Yemeni government to export crude oil in October and collect a share of the profits, according to a tribal leader and two senior officials. Yemen's government refused, fearing the deal would give de facto recognition to the internationally blacklisted group. "Al Qaeda sent a mediator to the government to get them agree to listen to this deal," the tribal leader, who is in southern Yemen, told Reuters. "Their offer was they need the official documents from the government to sell crude oil, and they would get 25 percent of the profit, and 75 percent for the government." The government rejected the offer, said both the tribal leader and Badr Basalmah, a former transport minister in Yemen's government. "Yes, that happened," Basalmah said, speaking by telephone from the Saudi capital of Riyadh. "The government refused completely to have anything to do with this deal because it would give authority and legitimacy to al Qaeda." ON THE WATERFRONT In Mukalla port, a thriving fuel smuggling network enriches AQAP daily. Tribal sources, residents and diplomats told Reuters the militants gained control of the ports in Mukalla and Ash Shihr when they first stormed the cities in April last year. The militants began imposing tax and custom tariffs on shippers and traders. "The group is experiencing a period of obscene, unprecedented wealth and luxury," one resident of Mukalla told Reuters. A current official in the transport ministry estimate AQAP's daily revenue at $2 million a day. Some local traders put it as high as $5 million a day from customs duties and smuggled fuel, according to Basalmah, Yemen's former transport minister. "You will find hundreds of oil trucks there smuggling fuel from one area to another where they are selling it," said Basalmah. Abdallah al-Nasi, governor of neighbouring Shabwa province, where AQAP controls some territory, said the group has become the de facto fuel supplier. "They sell the fuel to whoever buys it," Nasi told Reuters by phone "The government-run petrol stations buy from them and sell it on to the citizens." Tribes who work with al Qaeda now control much of the country's oil infrastructure. Six white oil tanks on a beach between Mukalla and Ash Shihr are linked by pipeline to the Masila oilfields which are estimated to hold more than 80 percent of Yemen's total reserves. After army forces withdrew from the area last year, armed local tribes linked to al Qaeda took charge. That prompted major companies operating there - state-owned PetroMasila, Canada's Nexen Energy and France's Total - to shut production and end exports. A PetroMasila official said that small amounts of oil are still being extracted for use in provincial power generators. Total said it has not restarted operations. Nexen did not respond to a request for comment. ROBIN HOOD It is a dramatic change of fortune for a group that was founded in the late 1990s and merged with al Qaeda's Saudi branch in 2009. After a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks against the Yemeni government, and two foiled bomb plots on U.S.-bound airliners, AQAP was forced into retreat by assaults from Yemeni tribes and troops as well as persistent U.S. drone strikes. Now the group has embarked on a brazen campaign to shake down state-owned firms, including the national oil and mobile phone companies. AQAP uses the money it extorts to win favour among its subjects. Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen scholar at Oxford University, calls it a "Robin Hood" strategy. In January, a copy of a demand issued by AQAP circulated on local media. The notice, on AQAP letterhead, demanded $4.7 million from the national oil company's bank account in Mukalla. "May God grant that all serve the country and the faithful," the note said. A top government security official said the oil company paid the full $4.7 million. A source at the bank said it had paid only $1.4 million. A representative of the oil company declined to comment. Officials at the three biggest national mobile phone companies, MTN, Sabafone and Y Telecom, said AQAP had also demanded payments of $4.7 million each from them. The firms all said they refused to pay. Late last year, AQAP cancelled payroll taxes in areas it controls because it deemed the practice un-Islamic. In a video posted on YouTube in November, the chief of al Qaeda's Sharia court in Hadramout - the coastal region where Mukalla is capital - announced it would repay government workers taxes they had paid. In the video, a bureaucrat is shown counting out wages for a worker from a bulging wad of Yemeni currency. "The poor have been paying alms to the rich and the rich don't pay, and it's the tyrants and oppressors who are the ones getting this money," AQAP fighter Ali bin Talib al-Kathiri said in another video. "Because those oppressors have not implemented God's law, they've eaten up the people's money in sin." Kathiri died in January in a gun battle with southern tribesmen. But AQAP's populist strategy is paying off, said Oxford University's Kendall. The group regularly posts pictures of its fighters repairing damaged bridges and paving streets in Hadramout and other cities under its control. It says the money for the repairs comes from groups such as Guardians of Sharia or Sons of Hadramout, names AQAP has taken on as part of a rebranding effort to emphasise its local origins. In one video posted on Feb. 28, AQAP members deliver free medical supplies and equipment to the kidney dialysis and cancer wings of a local hospital. The boxes of supplies are sealed with the tape of a Western pharmaceutical company. "These are some medicines from your brothers, the Guardians of Sharia, to al-Jamii hospital which was going to be closed ... because of no money," says one fighter whose face is blurred out. The video also shows a hospital official saying he had received money from al Qaeda to pay workers' salaries. A POPULAR HAVEN? The group has exploited sectarian grievances to brand their state-building project as a liberation movement. "So many areas fell to us after the Houthis left because we are the entity that people trust," AQAP leader Batarfi said. In the five coastal provinces stretching from the government's temporary seat in Aden to Mukalla, a familiar pattern has recurred in recent months. Al Qaeda forces storm a town, plant their flags, and then watch as local leaders acquiesce. Citizens say they are tired of moving and would rather live with al Qaeda's control. "With al Qaeda, if you resist, you never know when they could come and assassinate you," one Yemeni sheikh said. AQAP has also learned to be less cruel than its rival, Islamic State, which has struggled to gain a foothold in a population repelled by its brutality. While AQAP has resorted to killing suspected "sorcerers," and carried out stonings of at least one man and woman accused of adultery, residents and the group's online media suggest such incidents are rare. And even when AQAP publicises punishments, their videos and photographs never show the level of gratuitous gore that Islamic State revels in. Rather than resorting to mass beheadings, AQAP has detained or put under house arrest several dozen army officers and other figures they see as a threat, activists said. One Mukalla resident said her life had changed little since AQAP swept through the city. "We carry out our lives normally, they walk among the people," she told Reuters by phone. "Of course they're trying to create a popular haven." A regional diplomat who follows Yemen says that if al Qaeda manages to successfully root itself as a political and economic organisation, it could become a more resilient threat, much like al Shabaab in nearby Somalia. "We may be facing a more complicated al Qaeda," the diplomat said, "not just a terrorist organisation but a movement controlling territory with happy people inside it." EPH to acquire Vattenfall's German lignite coal ops-sources By Jan Lopatka and Arno Schuetze PRAGUE/FRANKFURT, April 8 (Reuters) - Sweden's Vattenfall has agreed in principle to sell its loss-making lignite coal mines and associated power plants in Germany to Czech investor EPH after two rival bidders dropped out, three people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The deal is expected to be signed next week, one of the sources said. State-owned Vattenfall's supervisory board is expected to give final approval in about 10 days, two other people said. EPH has agreed to pay a positive purchase price, a source familiar with the offer said, despite lignite plants making losses at current power prices and the prospect of future decommissioning. Other bidders had demanded cash from Vattenfall to cover future costs of decommissioning. Germany's Steag with Australian investment fund Macquarie , and Czech miner Vrsanska Uhelna, part of Czech Coal group, had dropped out of the bidding, the people said. EPH, which teamed up with Czech private equity group PPF Investments, declined to comment, as did Vattenfall and Macquarie. Czech Coal was not immediately available for comment. Sweden's government has not yet received a proposal from Vattenfall on the sale, but it has started preparations to evaluate the deal if one is tabled, the Enterprise Minister Mikael Damberg told Reuters. Vattenfall, which is selling the assets as part of a strategy to reduce its carbon exposure, will see its carbon emissions fall by two-thirds to around 24 million tonnes per year after the sale, making it a utility with one of the smallest carbon footprints in Europe. EPH already owns two German lignite power plants and lignite miner Mibrag. If the sale is successful EPH will buy Vattenfall's three lignite power plants and five open-cast mines in the Lausitz region in eastern Germany, and its partly owned Lippendorf plant near the city of Leipzig. The deal could still be complicated by German mining authorities, which could require EPH to deposit some of the decommissioning provisions of about 1.5 billion euros in cash, a source familiar with the sales process said. The power plants have about 8,000 MW capacity, or nearly half of Vattenfall's fossil power fleet capacity, which includes gas and hard coal power plants in Germany and the Netherlands. Vattenfall took an impairment of 15.2 billion crowns ($1.86 billion) on its lignite assets in 2015 due to falling power prices and the German government's measures to cut carbon emissions. EU/IMF mission chiefs hope for deal with Greece by Sunday BRUSSELS, April 8 (Reuters) - Mission chiefs of Greece's European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders held talks in Brussels on Friday on the country's key bailout review, a European Commission spokeswoman said, stressing that they were long-scheduled. "They will return within the day," Commission spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said, adding that euro zone officials were due to meet in Brussels anyway on Friday. AB Foods to buy rest of South Africa's Illovo Sugar By Nqobile Dludla JOHANNESBURG, April 8 (Reuters) - Associated British Foods , the biggest shareholder in Illovo Sugar, has reached an agreement to buy the rest of the South African sugar producer for 5.6 billion rand ($370 million) after raising an earlier offer. ABF, which holds a 51.35 percent stake in Illovo, has made an offer of 25 rand ($1.65) per share for the stake it does not own, Africa's biggest sugar producer said on Friday. ABF had said in February it would make an offer of 20 rand per share for the stake. Illovo's shares surged more than 18 percent in early trade. By 0852 GMT, they were up more than 15 percent at 23.79 rand, their highest level in nearly a year and on course for their biggest daily gain since 1994. The deal will help to expand ABF's sugar business, which has been grappling with low sugar prices that have put pressure on profits. ABF's purchase will also help Illovo, which has been cutting costs to cope with low sugar prices, currency volatility and a drought in sugar-producing regions. The company reported a 60 percent drop in first-half profit. The sugar industry has got more competitive over the past few years due to excess supplies and a crowded marketplace. "What this is about is looking at supporting Illovo and securing a long term successful future," ABF's finance director John Bason told Reuters. "This is about business health." After much consideration, the sugar producer agreed the new offer was "fair and reasonable", Illovo managing director Gavin Dalgleish told Reuters. "ABF brings with it a whole lot of expertise and experience in developing direct consumer routes to markets across the developing world." he said. ABF also owns British clothing retailer Primark. Tear gas disrupts new Kosovo leader's call for reconciliation By Fatos Bytyci PRISTINA, April 8 (Reuters) - Protesters firing tear gas disrupted the inauguration ceremony on Friday for Kosovo President Hashim Thaci in the midst of a political crisis over an EU-brokered agreement with old adversary Serbia. Guests at the open-air event in central Pristina coughed and wiped their eyes as tear gas canisters were set off just before Thaci gave his inaugural speech to a 1,000-strong audience including Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and diplomats. Police said 12 people were arrested. The public transfer of power from Thaci's predecessor Atifete Jahjaga came a day after he took the oath of office in parliament, an event that was also marred by an opposition boycott and protesters throwing stones outside. The opposition in the majority ethnic Albanian state accuses Thaci of helping clinch an EU-brokered agreement in 2015 that gives a small Serb minority more power over local government decisions and raises the possibility of financing from Belgrade. Thaci, who led a guerrilla insurgency against Serbian forces in 1998-99, went ahead with his ceremony despite the tear gas, saying he wanted dialogue both with Serbia and domestic critics. "Kosovo and Serbia should pass from the phase of normalisation of their relations to the phase of reconciliation between two countries. We will continue the dialogue with the EU and Serbia," he said, standing under Kosovo and European Union flags. "Kosovo does not belong more to one ethnic community and less to another. Kosovo is the homeland of all," he said. Kosovo's biggest opposition party Vetevendosje said its supporters had released the tear gas and vowed not to accept Thaci as president, a largely ceremonial role. "We will always object to him, without compromise, as we did today," the party said in a statement. Opposition parties have protested for six months against the deal with Serbia, staging street rallies, repeatedly setting off tear gas in parliament and clashing with police. In January, protesters set the government building on fire. Kosovo declared independence in 2008 almost a decade after NATO air strikes drove out Serbian security forces accused of killing and expelling ethnic Albanian civilians during a counter-insurgency war. Kosovo's independence is now recognised by more than 100 countries, though not by Serbia. South Africa's corn crop dilemma and the likely fixes -Braun By Karen Braun JOHANNESBURG, April 8 (Reuters) - While most of the world sits on a generous corn stockpile, the situation for South Africa is vastly different. The country faces one of the worst corn harvests ever on the back of a devastating, historic drought. Even though South Africa produces only 12 million tonnes of corn on average, it is usually a net exporter. It is also Africa's largest corn producer and is relied upon by neighboring Sub-Saharan nations to bolster their own corn supplies and feed their people. For the second year in a row, the southern African nation will become a net importer of corn. Ending stocks are predicted to shrink nearly 70 percent on the year, and South Africa may import one of its largest volumes of corn in recent memory, rivaling the 1991-92 haul of 4 million tonnes. The situation is unique for South Africa because just more than half of its corn crop is the white variety, which is not widely produced around the world and so is more difficult to replace. But for the people of South Africa, white corn is the all-important ingredient in their main staple - a starchy, cake-like substance called "pap." The white corn crop has taken a bigger hit than yellow with only 3.1 million tonnes expected to be reaped this year, half the volume of two years ago and easily the lowest white corn tonnage in at least 20 years. Yellow corn, which is used for animal feed, has fared slightly better than white, though it too has been reduced by nearly 30 percent from recent average. Total corn crop expectations range from 6.5 million to 7.1 million tonnes, but with much of the grain still in the ground, these estimates remain temporary, and the import volume is still uncertain. HOW THE CROP GOT DECIMATED South Africa's corn belt is situated in the central and northeastern provinces. Yellow corn is dominant in the central and eastern parts of the belt, while white corn is more concentrated in the western portion. Two-thirds of the nation's white corn crop is grown in the Free State and North West provinces (http://tmsnrt.rs/1Vcg9jW). Wide "windows" for planting and harvest in South Africa make the corn crop calendar unique. Planting typically runs from October to mid-January while harvest begins in April and can extend all the way into August. According to the South African Weather Service, 2015 was the driest year on record since at least 1904, so field conditions were extremely dry by last October and many farmers opted to hold off on planting, hoping for a better opportunity to arise. But dry and hot weather dominated straight through to January, particularly in the white corn provinces, and many farmers chose to plant even later than usual or not at all, clipping area by a significant margin. Thys Grobbelaar, a grain analyst with leading South African agribusiness Senwes, said it is incredibly rare for South Africa to have corn area losses of this magnitude (http://tmsnrt.rs/1VchTty). "It's the second time in 100 years that we could not plant the normal area under corn. I am not speaking about small deviations," he said, adding that the other instance of severe area shortfall occurred during the 1972-73 season. Referring to the current year, he said, "We could only plant 50 percent of the normal area under corn." Planted area losses will drive most of the production cuts to this year's corn harvest, but the area harvested will also contribute to the drop. Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agriculture Service in Pretoria estimated the harvested fraction at just 70 percent (http://tmsnrt.rs/1Vch5Fb) (http://tmsnrt.rs/1Vch9EJ). Corn yield will also incur losses, but it is estimated to be down only 15 percent from the five-year average. Although harvest has already begun in areas that were able to plant on time, some of the corn still has a ways to go and may sit in the fields into August, leaving plenty of time for added yield vulnerability (http://tmsnrt.rs/1Vch7g2). THE RECOVERY PLAN Despite the enormous supply disruption, South Africa's agriculture minister is confident that the country will be able to import enough corn this year to meet the consumption needs of both humans and animals. Yellow corn will most likely be sourced from South America, a straight shot across the Southern Atlantic Ocean. Abundant South American supply and relatively low export prices should help facilitate the smooth influx of yellow corn to South Africa, but white corn will come from farther away and possibly at a much higher cost. Mexico and the United States are highly likely to restock South Africa with white corn, but Mexico could be more expensive. Both the weaker peso and increased demand from drought-suffering Central American nations have driven up local prices. The United States has not shipped white corn to South Africa since 2004. Regardless of which country supplies the white corn, Grobbelaar suggested that South Africa will need to start contracting with producers now in order to grow corn for import this season, though they would not run out of supply until later in the year. "With our calculated carry over stock of 1.1 million tons at the end of the marketing year 30th April 2016 and an expected crop of 3.2 million tons, a usage of 410,000 tons a month we have to start import from October 2016. We also need a minimum pipeline supply of 6 weeks stock," he said via email. By October, the 2017-harvested crop will already be going into the ground, hopefully under better weather conditions for South Africa. Citing record high local corn prices, particularly for white, USDA's Pretoria attache projected that under average weather assumptions, 2016-17 corn planted area could exceed the five-year average by 10 percent. So if South Africa can pull out of the drought toward the end of this year, and all other things being equal, the country could achieve comfortable supply levels by mid-2017 and once again become a net exporter. But that is still a very big "if." Zuma's son says he'll quit Gupta mining firm in S.Africa By Tiisetso Motsoeneng and Zandi Shabalala JOHANNESBURG, April 8 (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma's son said on Friday he would sell his investments in a mining firm owned by friends of his father amid speculation that the wealthy family is wielding undue political influence. Duduzane Zuma's announcement came days after First National Bank, a unit of FirstRand, joined three other South African companies in quitting as bankers and auditors of companies owned by the Indian-born Gupta family. In a memo to staff seen by Reuters, Oakbay Investments - a holding company for Gupta businesses in South Africa - said it had approached government departments including Zuma's office to express "deep disappointment" over decisions by banks to close its accounts. The Presidency and Oakbay did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the content of the memo. Citing "aspersions" against his own family, Duduzane said he would also step down as a director of Shiva Uranium, the main subsidiary of Oakbay Resources, which houses the Gupta family's mining assets. "I have decided to relinquish all positions that I hold at Oakbay companies and am exiting investments to preserve the jobs of Oakbay's thousands of employees and to de-politicise my participation in business," he said. The mine is 26 percent-owned by Islandsite 255, a company of which Duduzane is also a director. It employs 648 people, the family said last month. Last month deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas said the Guptas offered him the position of finance minister shortly before Zuma sacked then finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, in December, a move that sent markets into a tail-spin. Zuma has denied suggestions the Guptas wield undue political power. The Guptas have also dismissed such reports, saying they are pawns in a political plot to get Zuma out of office. Oakbay Resources said in a statement that chairman Atul Gupta and chief executive Varun Gupta had resigned with immediate effect. "This decision follows a sustained political attack on the company," it said in a statement. The firm said it had created 3,500 jobs in South Africa's mining sector. "SMOKE AND MIRRORS" Oakbay Resources' statement did not say if the resigning members of the Gupta family would reduce their shareholdings in the company. South Africa's elite police investigating unit, the Hawks, said last month it had launched a corruption probe into Duduzane and the Gupta family. South Africa's main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), dismissed the resignations of Duduzane and the Guptas as an "exercise in smoke and mirrors" to protect their assets and profits. Citing association risk, the local unit of global auditing firm KPMG cut ties with Oakbay Resources last month. Other companies that have severed links are investment bank Sasfin and lender Barclays Africa. Oakbay Resources said it was being serviced by an Asian bank that did not want to be named. The three Gupta brothers moved to South Africa from India at the end of apartheid in the early 1990s and went on to build a business empire that stretches from technology to the media to mining. Kerry says Iraq's Abadi did not request new U.S. troops BAGHDAD, April 8 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Baghdad on Friday, said Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had made no request for a new infusion of U.S. troops to help fight Islamic State militants. Kerry told reporters at the embassy that he wanted to reiterate the support of the U.S. president and vice president for Abadi, who is grappling with a political crisis, a collapsing economy and the war against Islamic State. He said he made clear to Abadi that it is important to have political stability in Iraq so that military operations are not affected. Kerry met earlier with Abadi and other senior Iraqi officials. Confusion in Madagascar as president says PM has quit, PM says "No I haven't" By Lovasoa Rabary ANTANANARIVO, April 8 (Reuters) - Madagascar's presidential office said on Friday that Prime Minister Jean Ravelonarivo and his cabinet have resigned - only for Ravelonarivo to say he had done no such thing. The president's office gave no explanation for the reported resignations, while Ravelonarivo said that the president had asked him to quit but that he had yet to hand in a resignation letter. Ravelonarivo took office in January 2015 after public frustration with power cuts, rampant unemployment and a stagnant economy forced out the previous administration. He survived a bid to sack him in July after the opposition group Mapar filed a censure motion, saying it was frustrated by the slow pace of change in the Indian Ocean island nation. On Friday, secretary general of the presidency Roger Ralala said in a statement: "The president has accepted the resignation of (the) prime minister and all members of the government (...) The current members of the government are dealing with current business until the appointment of new members of the government." Ravelonarivo, an air force commander and businessman, expressed surprise that President Hery Rajaonarimampianina's office had announced his resignation. "I met the president and he asked me to resign. I told him that I would like to talk to my family about it. I was then surprised to learn that I had resigned. So far, I have not signed any letter of resignation," he told a news conference. He did not say why the president had asked him to resign and did not say if or when he will hand in a resignation letter. Madagascar has struggled to rebuild itself since a 2009 coup that scared off donors and foreign investors. NATO, Russia council to meet for first time since mid-2014 By Robin Emmott and Lidia Kelly BRUSSELS, April 8 (Reuters) - A forum bringing together Russia and its former Cold War adversary NATO will convene in the coming weeks for the first time since the Ukraine crisis halted its activities, both sides said on Friday. The NATO-Russia Council was established in 2002 but was effectively suspended months after Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula in March 2014. Both sides have now agreed to hold talks at ambassador level in Brussels in the next two weeks. While the West and Russia remain at odds over Ukraine, the meeting is a sign of willingness to improve diplomatic relations that could help avoid any accidental military clashes in the region. Earlier on Friday, Alexey Meshkov, a deputy Russian foreign minister, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying the meeting could happen "in the coming weeks". NATO confirmed the meeting would take place at its headquarters in the next two weeks but did not give a precise date. Russia's mission to NATO said that the agenda of the meeting, which had been the main sticking point for some time, was now agreed. It did not give a date for the meeting. NATO has said any meeting would have to address the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and separatists in eastern Ukraine, which has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014. The West accuses Russia of supporting the rebels, something Moscow denies. "The NATO-Russia Council will discuss the crisis in and around Ukraine and the need to fully implement the Minsk agreements," NATO said in a statement, referring to the two rounds of peace efforts agreed in the Belarusian capital but which have yet to be implemented. "We will discuss military activities, with particular focus on transparency and risk reduction," it said, adding that Afghanistan and regional threats were also on the agenda. As NATO accelerates its biggest military build-up in eastern Europe since the Cold War, the alliance wants to talk to Moscow about improved military transparency to avoid misunderstandings. Italian man kidnapped last year in Philippines has been freed - ministry ROME, April 8 (Reuters) - An Italian man who was kidnapped last year in the Philippines has been freed, Italy's Foreign Ministry said on Friday, and the former missionary's family had been notified. Rolando del Torchio was taken at gunpoint in October from his pizzeria in the city of Dipolog in the restive southern region of Mindanao. Small Islamist and communist rebel factions, as well as criminal gangs, operate in the Mindanao region and often snatch people in the hope that ransoms will be paid. Filipino authorities found del Torchio in the Sulu Archipelago, according to a statement, which gave no details about who held him or how he was released. UN envoy tells EU to step up pressure on Israel over West Bank demolitions By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS, April 8 (Reuters) - The European Union must raise political pressure on Israel over accelerating West Bank demolitions that run against international law and increasingly affect aid projects sponsored by the bloc, a U.N. envoy for Palestinian territories said. With more than 540 demolitions and confiscations in the occupied West Bank so far this year, the Israeli military has already matched or exceeded the total of 2015, tightening the squeeze on Palestinians living there. Robert Piper, a United Nations assistant secretary general and the head of humanitarian affairs for the Palestinian territories, briefed EU officials on that in Brussels on Friday, urging them to respond. "We have entered a new and fairly disturbing phase in terms of the confrontation between international humanitarian law and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank," Piper told Reuters. The Israeli military, which has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Middle East war, says it carries out the demolitions because the structures are illegal: they were either built without a permit, in a closed military area or firing zone, or violate other planning and zoning restrictions. "The pace of demolitions has exceeded any previous records and we are only in the fourth month of the year. We are very worried about what the rest of the year holds," Piper said. Piper said around 140 aid projects by donors were destroyed, including more than 200,000 euros worth of EU investments, while some 600 people had lost their homes and about 2,000 their livelihoods. In doing so, he said, Israel was forcing Palestinians away from some parts of the West Bank as more Israeli settlements appeared there, even though building them on the land Israel has occupied since the 1967 Middle East was against the law. "The EU needs to reflect on its strategy and how it's going to respond ... This can't be left unaddressed. It's a provocation," Piper said. Piper challenged the Israeli military's justification for the demolitions, saying Israel did not give the Palestinians living there a real chance to obtain building permits. Piper said that, while there was much diplomacy going on behind closed doors, there was a need for more public statements on the matter, adding that the EU could also deploy diplomats to the sites affected to send a political message to Israel. "We also need to talk about forms of seeking financial compensation or restitution by the occupying power," he said. Belgians seize key suspects in Paris, Brussels attacks By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Alastair Macdonald BRUSSELS, April 8 (Reuters) - Belgian police detained two key suspects on Friday in the Islamic State attacks on Paris and Brussels as operations go on to track down militants who have fought with or take direction from leaders in Syria. Mohamed Abrini, a Belgian thought to have helped prepare the Nov. 13 bombing and shooting attack that killed 130 people in the French capital, was held with two others, prosecutors said. They were trying to confirm that he was also the "man in the hat" seen with the Brussels airport suicide bombers on March 22. Aged 31, Abrini was seized close to the Brussels borough of Molenbeek, where he was long known to police for petty crimes. Earlier, police seized a man prosecutors named only as Osama K., and who local media said was a Swede named Osama Krayem. The prosecutors said Krayem, detained with another man, was checked by German police in October using a fake Syrian passport in a car rented by Salah Abdeslam, prime surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, who was detained in Brussels three weeks ago. Krayem is suspected of being the man seen on CCTV with a suicide bomber before he struck the Brussels metro on March 22 and of buying the holdalls used by the attackers that day. The arrests mark a signal success for Belgian security services, which have faced fierce criticism at home and abroad since Brussels-based militants organised the attacks in Paris and, four months later, those in the Belgian capital that killed 32 people, four days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam. Interior Minister Jan Jambon, who offered to resign over the failure to arrest one of the Brussels suicide bombers last year, tweeted congratulations to those involved in the arrests, as did the Belgian head of state, King Philippe. But there was no change in the national security alert level and Jambon added: "The struggle against terrorism goes on." Police searched premises in western Brussels late on Friday. Belgium has struggled to contain a threat from hundreds of young men, many with chequered criminal histories and from the country's substantial Moroccan immigrant community, who have travelled to Syria. For the size of its 11 million population, Belgium has the biggest contingent of Islamist foreign fighters. "MAN IN THE HAT" The arrests came a day after police issued new images of "the man in the hat" seen on airport cameras walking through the terminal with Brahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui. These two would detonate the heavy bags they were pushing on trolleys but the third abandoned his bomb and was tracked walking for miles on CCTV back from the airport into the city, all the while his face hidden by glasses and a floppy hat. Police have also been hunting a man seen with El Bakraoui's younger brother Khalid at a Brussels metro stop shortly before the latter blew himself up on a train at Maelbeek station. Prosecutors did not confirm media reports that Krayem, using a Syrian passport in the name of Naim Al Ahmed, had arrived back in Europe from Syria last September on a refugee boat that landed on the Greek island of Leros, off the Turkish coast. He came, reports said, with another man carrying fake Syrian papers who was arrested with Abdeslam in Molenbeek on March 18. Abrini, who local media said may have spent time in Syria last summer, has been on Europe's most wanted list since December. That was when he was identified from security camera footage at a motorway service station driving with Abdeslam toward Paris from Belgium two days before the Nov. 13 attacks. The car they were in was later used in the attacks, in which Abdeslam's elder brother was a suicide bomber. Prosecutors also said Abrini and Abdeslam rented an apartment that was used by several of the militants before they struck in Paris. Abrini, nicknamed "Brioche" for his work in a bakery, was a regular at a Molenbeek bar run by the Abdeslam brothers and which police shut down last September after complaints of drug deals. Abrini's fingerprints and DNA were found in two Brussels apartments, including the one from where three men, including the two bombers, took a taxi to the airport on March 22. It was later found to have been used as a bomb-making factory. Algeria bans French journalist in row over Panama Papers PARIS, April 8 (Reuters) - France has complained to Algeria over its decision to deny a visa for a Le Monde reporter to cover a trip by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls to Algiers after the newspaper published details of Algerian officials named in the Panama Papers. Citing documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, Le Monde reported that Algerian Industry Minister Abdesselam Bouchouareb set up an offshore company in Panama in April 2015. Le Monde also published a front-page picture of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika among leaders it said were named in the documents, which detailed how rich and powerful figures across the world had stashed away their wealth in secretive accounts. Algeria summoned the French ambassador on Wednesday to complain that French media reports on the issue were a "malicious campaign" and it protested again on Thursday. "We were informed of the intention to not issue a visa," a French diplomatic source said. Valls had spoken to Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal to express his disagreement with the decision, the source added. Valls is due to visit Algiers over Saturday and Sunday to discuss trade ties and investment opportunities and was to be accompanied by about 20 French journalists. Le Monde said it regretted the decision, which it said was against the freedom of the press. Algeria fought a war of independence with France from 1954 to 1962 and ties between the two countries have at times been complicated. French officials said the ambassador had been told by the government office to convince Algiers to reverse its decision. "The ambassador explained that editorial coverage was fixed by the editorial team and had nothing to do with the government," a French diplomatic source said. "The Algerians wanted to express their irritation and we've taken note of that." Several French media said they were considering boycotting Valls' visit in protest. Poland moves to block EU changes on seconded workers - sources BRUSSELS, April 8 (Reuters) - Warsaw is strongly opposed to changes put forward by the European Union's executive to equalise pay between seconded and local workers and hopes to block them together with other poorer countries in the bloc, Polish diplomatic sources said. Seconded or "posted" workers, employed in one EU state but temporarily sent to work in another, make up less than 1 percent of all employment in the 28-nation bloc. But their number has jumped in recent years: There were some 1.9 million posted workers in the EU in 2014, the most recent data shows. Employers are now not obliged to pay posted workers more than the minimum wage in the host country, which leads to underpayment of posted workers on the one hand but also to unfair competition between firms employing seconded or local workers. The European Commission in March proposed equalising the pay of the two categories, saying that would protect workers' rights and ensure fairer competition. The construction sector accounts for nearly half of all posted workers, and the practice is also popular in the manufacturing industry and personal and business services. While the current system puts the better-off EU states at a disadvantage, low-wage countries in eastern and southern Europe benefit from it. The two camps are now set to lock horns over the outlined changes. "This is a very, very bad proposal, an extreme change. It's entirely political but would have far-reaching consequences in the real economy, right up to ending seconding workers with the bloc altogether in the worst-case scenario," a Polish diplomat said. "We are aiming to block it." The diplomat said Warsaw was seeking to put together a coalition opposing the Commission's proposal and that the group would also consist of Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus. No more "free" Saudi money for Egypt -Saudi businessman familiar with matter By Asma Alsharif CAIRO, April 8 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's financial support for strategic ally Egypt will no longer involve "free money" and will increasingly take the form of loans that provide returns to help it grapple with low oil prices, a Saudi businessman familiar with the matter said. "This is a change in strategy. Return on investment is important to Saudi Arabia as it diversifies sources of revenue," the businessman told Reuters on Friday during what has been described as a "historic" visit to Cairo by Saudi King Salman. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait showered Egypt with billions of dollars after then-military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. But low oil prices and differences over regional issues have called into question whether such strong support is sustainable. Egypt is struggling to revive an economy hit by years of political upheaval since the 2011 uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, as well as an Islamist insurgency based in the Sinai Peninsula. The more measured Saudi approach could increase pressure on Sisi to deliver on promises of an economic turnaround and job creation in the most populous Arab nation through infrastructure mega-projects. "Saudi Arabia will be making investments and soft loans. No more free money," said the businessman. Later on Friday, Egyptian International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr said Cairo had signed development agreements with Saudi Arabia worth $590 million. The agreements, signed with the Saudi finance minister, covered development in the Sinai peninsula, agriculture, housing and a university, Nasr told Al-Ahram newspaper. Gulf monarchies applauded Sisi after he seized power in 2013, removing the Muslim Brotherhood -- seen as an existential threat to their wealthy nations -- and mounting the fiercest crackdown on dissent in Egypt's modern history. Sisi went on to become elected president on promises of stability but cracks are beginning to appear in what was once the cult-like adulation he enjoyed among many Egyptians, with TV talk show hosts increasingly critical of government officials. The Gulf Arab allies have grown increasingly disillusioned at what they see as Sisi's inability to address entrenched corruption and inefficiency in the economy, and at Cairo's reduced role on the regional stage. Riyadh's new approach does not mean the Gulf States will abandon Egypt financially or politically. With Iraq, Syria and Yemen immersed in civil war, and Saudi Arabia preoccupied by its region-wide rivalry with Iran, Riyadh is determined to stop the Egyptian state from failing. It will maintain some aid despite its own tighter budgets from falling global oil prices, analysts say. After meeting Sisi on Friday, King Salman announced that a bridge connecting Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be built across the Red Sea. No details were given. Saudi Arabia is expected to sign a $20 billion deal to finance Egypt's oil needs for the next five years and a $1.5 billion deal to develop its Sinai region, two Egyptian government sources told Reuters. France, Germany halt Airbus export credit amid UK probe By Tim Hepher and Gernot Heller PARIS/BERLIN, April 8 (Reuters) - France and Germany have joined Britain in suspending export credit facilities for Airbus jet deliveries, expanding the fallout from a potential corruption probe in Britain, several people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The move follows Britain's decision last week to suspend financing and alert the Serious Fraud Office after Airbus Group said it had found anomalies over the declaration of overseas agents and that it had itself notified the UK authorities. Unusually, it leaves the world's two largest planemakers, Airbus and Boeing, both facing paralysis over government export financing as Congressional delays leave U.S. Export Import bank unable to support Airbus's U.S. rival. In Europe, Airbus draws on financing support for some sales from Britain, France and Germany where its main factories are. The nations typically act in concert, offering guarantees in proportion to the industrial work in each country, but declining to take up the slack whenever one of them refuses to take part. A German economy ministry spokesman confirmed that the financing, provided on its behalf by Allianz unit Euler-Hermes, was no longer available. Berlin is also examining whether the UK episode could have consequences for export credits already awarded, he added. In France, three sources said export guarantees were being withheld for the time being. "Audits are being carried out in the UK and we are waiting for the conclusions for those," a French government official said. Airbus Group declined to add to a previous statement that it was co-operating with export credit agencies and that it expected financing to be resumed in the near future. For now, the market impact is seen as limited as the use of export credits has dwindled to around 6 percent of deliveries from 40 percent at the height of the 2008-10 financial crisis. But the unprecedented halt raises doubt over the financing for some upcoming deliveries, pushing up demand for commercial loans and placing pressure on Airbus to offer bridge financing. "The problem is that deals financed with export credit are usually the tough-to-finance ones, so finding a commercial alternative is not always that simple," a market source said. AGENT FEES AND NAMES The agency which underwrites aircraft exports in Britain has said it will not support Airbus deliveries until it gets assurances about Airbus's current practices on overseas agents. The UK case involves discrepancies over the amount of agents' fees disclosed in applications for export support, or missing names of third parties, in some cases dating back several years, two people familiar with the matter said. A person responsible for overseeing some of the information supplied in export credit applications is no longer with the group, people familiar with the matter said. Airbus Group declined comment. The decision by Airbus to report itself reflects efforts by many aerospace companies to toughen compliance and review their records for past failings after a series of industry scandals. In its just-published annual report, Airbus said a newly centralised compliance team was revising the procedures on hiring consultants and warned investors this may "lead to additional commercial disputes or other consequences". EU and US condemn post-election violence in Republic of Congo BRAZZAVILLE, April 8 (Reuters) - The European Union on Thursday condemned what it said were human rights abuses in Republic of Congo during violence after a March 20 election, echoing concerns voiced by the U.S. State Department. Seventeen people died in clashes after President Denis Sassou Nguesso's disputed re-election, including in gunfights that broke out on Monday in the opposition strongholds of southern Brazzaville. "The post-electoral process was marked by violations of human rights, arrests and intimidation of the opposition and the media," the EU said in a statement. "This puts into question the credibility of the results." The U.S. State Department said in a statement on Thursday that it was "profoundly disappointed" by a "flawed" electoral process. "Widespread irregularities and the arrests of opposition supporters following the elections marred an otherwise peaceful vote," it said. Opposition leaders say the elections, in which Nguesso won a new five year term with 60 percent of the vote, were fraudulent. The EU had declined to send observers to the polls, citing issues with electoral laws and the voter register. In a statement released on Friday evening, the Congolese government said it had made several reforms since an October referendum allowed Nguesso to run for another term, thanking some members of the international community for their support. But it also complained about international criticism, saying: "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation is amazed at the approximate, repetitive statements ... of some visibly poorly informed partners who deliberately refused to deploy observers on the ground to cover the March 20 presidential vote." Nguesso has ruled the oil-producing Central African country for 32 of the last 37 years. In October he pushed through constitutional reforms that lifted age and term limits that would have prevented him from standing. The government said it had arrested 50 former members of the "Ninja" militia that fought Sassou Nguesso in a 1997 civil war, saying it was involved in Monday's gunfights. Iceland parliament rejects motion of no confidence in government By Ragnhildur Sigurdadottir REYKJAVIK, April 8 (Reuters) - Iceland's parliament rejected an opposition motion of no confidence in the government on Friday after the prime minister resigned and autumn early elections were announced. Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson stepped down on Tuesday after documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm linked him to an offshore company that held millions of dollars in debt from failed Icelandic banks. The centre-right coalition named Fisheries Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson as prime minister and called for early elections to be held in the autumn. Friday's vote was divided into two questions. Thirty-eight members of parliament voted against the motion of no confidence in the new government and 25 for it. In a vote for the dissolution of parliament and new elections to be held as early as possible, 37 MPs voted no and 26 voted yes. One MP from the junior coalition partner the Independence Party voted for new elections. The new prime minister told Reuters the government needed time to finish important tasks before elections, most importantly the ending of capital controls introduced to rescue the economy from the 2008 financial crisis. "We have very important projects ahead," Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson said after the vote. "There is a lot of work in society to build up trust in society again. That will not happen in one day." Katrin Juliusdottir, vice chair of the opposition Social Democrats, said she believed a wave of popular protest would continue and distrust would linger until there was a date for the elections. The current government were not the only people able to do the job, she said. Polls show the anti-establishment Pirate Party would win an election if held today and protests have continued, with demonstrators gathering on Friday to demand immediate elections and the government's resignation. Party leader Birgitta Jonsdottir told Reuters on Thursday her party belonged to the global movement for change that includes U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Greece's leftwing Syriza party. These past few months will, in time, be regarded as the moment when the Raj came home to roost here in Britain. Last November, this country witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of its prime minister giving a warm-up speech at Wembley Stadium to 60,000 UK citizens whose hearts were throbbing expectantly for the main act: the arrival on stage of Narendra Modi. For a British prime minister a Conservative one at that to enthusiastically greet this foreign leader and be so welcoming of how dearly British-Indians regard both him and India was a watershed event. Only David Cameron one of the smartest politicians the UK has ever produced would have the nous to do that, and do it without reaping the storm of criticism that one would expect from Britain's jingoistic press. And this week, the news here has been filled with two stories that even more starkly highlight the reversing relationship the British have with the people they once lorded over. Tata Steel's decision to pull out of the UK with the possible loss of 40,000 jobs has sparked a paroxysm of national anxiety. Watching Tata's European head, Koushik Chatterjee with his desi accent and trademark Bengali side-parting nonchalantly speak of Britain as a busted flush was a sight I never expected to see while growing up. To observe the British media and political class jittering as envoys were dispatched to Mumbai, wondering whether the Indians would be merciful, was to witness the moment when the British finally, with great anguish and humiliation, began their slow collective transition into reality and a post-imperial sense of themselves. The media here has already excitedly found a possible Indian saviour, the Punjabi magnate Sanjeev Gupta, who's shown an interest in buying the Tata plants but he would want the sort of massive subsidies that the UK government could not give Tata, and would surely downsize the operations anyway. If it wasn't galling enough for the Brits to watch Indians pull the plug on their industrial base this week, and then haggle over the the leftovers, they also had to deal with a report on the British education system which revealed that Indian kids in the UK outperform white British ones by a staggering 50 per cent. While in the past some would have regarded such a statistic as proof of what an open society Britain is, a place where immigrants are accepted and their children able to thrive, the figures have this week been universally interpreted as a national crisis, proof that something is chronically wrong with Britain. Afterall, what is Britain coming to if the cards here aren't reliably stacked against the darkies? To be so comprehensively outsmarted by a people who arrived in the UK with nothing no money, education or ability to speak English in many cases is a difficult fact for the British to digest. There has been much talk of the systemic dysfunction of British schools the same schools that Indian kids have no problem excelling in and bizarre widespread allegations that somehow "standards have dropped", because brown kids can meet them while white ones can't. Indians overtaking Brits at school is only a microcosm of the wider reversal of fortunes the two peoples are experiencing in the world today. And global reality is something the British a people who acquired a grossly inflated sense of themselves as they stumbled fortuitously into their very brief empire find excruciating to comprehend now that colonial arrogance cannot pass muster anymore. The empire underlies the self-loathing that permeates British society. Left-wing Brits are disgusted that Britain had an empire, while right-wing ones are appalled that Britain lost one. In both cases, the legacy of the empire is a neurosis that delusionally places Britain at the centre of human history: as the country that's responsible for all that is either right or wrong with the world. The fact that the rest of mankind regards the British and their history as largely irrelevant is too painful to accept. For both the Left and the Right, their obsession with the empire be it proud or shame-ridden is merely a narcissistic fantasy with which to prop up their very shaky sense of national self-esteem. The Brits are obsessed with India in a way that Indians certainly aren't with them. Wodehouse-reading Anglophiles are an increasing rarity in India now, whose young and thrusting population look within themselves for inspiration, and to China and the USA when glancing for it abroad. But there's an embarrassing and tragic yearning for India in Britain these days an India that's long gone, if it ever existed at all. The bookshops here are bursting with sentimental tomes about the Raj, while the dynamic ever-evolving actuality of modern-day India is largely ignored. And the television series Indian Summers is now into its second season: an abysmal piece of nostalgia about the last days of the empire. Shot in Malaysia, it bewildering portrays Shimla as steamy and tropical, not the chilly outpost the Brits chose precisely because it reminded them of home, and is full of pen-pushing babus conflicted by their desire for independence while admiring the merits of British civilisation, and sweaty gin-swilling Brits lusting after the natives while trying to reconcile the responsibilities of ruling them with the increasing realisation that the Indians are lo and behold! human beings just like themselves. Complete tosh. To underscore it all, William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, will next week undertake their official visit to India, giving the British media endless colourful photo opportunities of their future king and queen reconnecting with the vast exotic land that, but for a tryst with destiny, they would have been crowned emperor and empress of. The Brits will be rapt before their TV screens, dreaming weepily of the alternate reality in which this would be the case. Indians will enjoy it too, of course, having the closest couple Britain has to Beyonce and Jay-Z amble admiringly about their country, advertising its wares to the world. This sort of mushy nonsense is staple fare in Britain. The BBC is constantly producing documentaries, all of them either desperately searching for some dim reflection of the British in India in its railways, architecture or tea plantations or following wide-eyed Brits, babbling in wonder as they take a whistle-stop tour of a lush and magical land that defies description. None of them tell the British public what it really needs to know: how to deal effectively with Indians. David Cameron, however, does seem to know. Unlike other minorities here, British-Indians are actively encouraged by his government to develop and deepen their relationship with their country of origin: Cameron's compering of the Wembley Modi-fest was all about that. The reason is, of course, the OCI status they are entitled to that gives them a massively privileged commercial position in India that no other British citizens have. Britain has an NRI population of 1.5 million the biggest Indian population outside of India and these people are a strategic national asset, with a ready access to the Indian market that the British government is shrewdly seeking to leverage. British-Indians are Britain's, and the European Union's, strongest foothold in India and the wider Asian economy. The irony of it all is that when British-Indians wake up as, I think, the British government is nudging them to and start regarding themselves as an extension of India rather than as a minority fitting quietly into Britain, their dual status will supercharge their already conspicuous success. The British would benefit greatly from this as a whole, but also be confronted with the reality that their former imperial subjects now enjoy an almost colonial position of power and privilege in their own country. In the sci-fi cult movie Planet of the Apes, astronauts returning to Earth in a distant future confront a post-doomsday scenario. Using nuclear bombs against each other, mankind has wiped itself off as the dominant species on the planet Earth. The astronauts visit the ruins of a once great metropolis of America, finding nothing but dilapidation everywhere. The glories of past are indicated by stray remnants. Imagine the scenario being played out in India. While everything else is gone, a spherical stainless steel is retrieved from what used to be the Shanti Van area of New Delhi. The container is made of three shells. Inside the outer steel shell is another shell made of pure electrolytic copper. And, inside the copper shell are pyrex glass tubes in which some material is placed for the benefit of posterity. The contents of the pyrex glass tubes are in compete vacuum but they're in an atmosphere of helium with a critical amount of moisture. The copper and stainless steel shells are all hermetically sealed after the complete evacuation of air and filling with pure nitrogen. And what does the material inside the shell comprise? There are parchment scrolls containing Jawaharlal Nehru's will and testament and a narrative of the most significant domestic and international events till 1964. Then there are three microgroove records on copper discs of Nehru's speech "Tryst with Destiny", excerpts from his address to UNO and Indira Gandhi's readings from Nehru's Discovery of India, and three reels of optical recordings of the same material. And then there is a 2,000 feet 35mm film on Nehru's life, three specimens of a special variety of rose, portraits of Jawaharlal Nehru Hey hold on! This is no science fiction. This is the old grandmas tale from India. Yes, you guessed it right. All this is about the time capsule - Congress partys attempt to tweak history in future in its own favour. Subhas Chandra Bose with Jawaharlal Nehru. Todays generation will scarcely believe it, but such an endeavour was executed in India in 1972, barely four years after Hollywood imagined the Planet of the Apes. I wonder where the inspiration in India came from but the idea was clearly to perpetuate to posterity the glories of Congress leaders. After the first time capsule was placed near the samadhi of Nehru, another one was lowered in a pit outside the main entrance to the Red Fort by prime minister Indira Gandhi on August 15, 1973. Designed to "preserve an authentic record of our time for posterity", it contained a 10,000-words-long, Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) prepared scroll - a 30-page-long historical narrative of important aspects of history of India from August 15, 1947. There was, for instance, hardly any mention of Subhas Chandra Bose in this narrative. Remember, we are talking about early 1970s. There was no statue of Subhas Bose near Red Fort then, no portrait of him in Parliament and Indian National Army (INA) men were still not treated as freedom fighters. The classic Nehruvian era had still not dawned. A meeting held at the ICHR on June 22, 1972 had swiftly approved a government proposal to write this narrative. The man tasked to write the draft was S Krishnaswamy, a history professor at Madras Christian College. The framework within which the account was to be prepared was indicated by Prof Ram Saran Sharma, eminent Marxist historian and founding Chairman of the ICHR, and Dr Sarvapalli Gopal, ICHR member and well-known biographer of Nehru. The final narrative was on behalf of the ICHR and a number of persons contributed to it. According to a 1974 essay in "Social Scientist" by VK Ramachandran, after the ceremony at the Red Fort, Krishnaswamy forwarded the text of the scroll in the time capsule to Badrinath, commissioner for archives and historical research, Tamil Nadu, asking for his comments. In an address to the students of Presidency College, Badrinath let the cat out of the bag by discussing the contents of the scroll. "The journey from a-history to anti-history is short. Shorter still is the journey to fancy. The shortest, however, is the journey to collective lies," he commented. Krishnaswamy was hauled up for violating official secrecy but this did not prevent the matter from being discussed publicly. VK Ramachandran further informs us that in October 1974, Communist Party of India (Marxist) politburo member P Ramamurthy released copies of the text of the scroll to the press. Describing the scroll contents as "an insult to the Indian people", Ramamurthy said it read "like the report of the general secretary of the Congress party". Post-Emergency, the matter was revived politically. In 1978, the second time capsule was exhumed from the Red Fort under the supervision of a parliamentary committee. The Janata government thereafter stated that some inaccuracies, omissions and distortions were noticed by government in the contents of the scroll. From that time the saga of time capsule was forgotten. An attempt was made to revive it in 2012 by academic and writer Madhu Kishwar. An RTI application filed by Kishwar sought to know from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) "the exact date and location at which a time capsule was buried by the former prime minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency". The PMO, surprisingly, told her that "as per records, no such information is available. This has the approval of the competent authority". The matter was then taken up before the Central Information Commission, which gave a ruling in favour of Kishwar. "It is indeed very strange that there should be no information about this in the PMO or elsewhere in the government," noted the commission in its decision in February 2013. "Complete denial of any knowledge about the time capsule by all public authorities within the government including the PMO would be very hard for the public to accept," it added. The commission directed the "PMO to revisit the subject and, after consulting its own office as well as other possible locations" locate records "on the subject anywhere in the government". There was nothing that the government could not trace. Probably it did not want to for fear of reviving an old debate that has been part of Indias political folklore. Indian diaspora is considered as a "model" diaspora group in the West. Many large companies like Microsoft, Nokia and PepsiCo are being run by Indian-origin CEOs. As the Indian community in the West comes of age both in terms of numbers and financial capabilities, financial remittances have started flowing to India in a big way. Last year, India received 70 billion dollars as remittances from its diaspora. Not only has India been encouraging financial remittance from its diaspora, but also taking its regular help to promote its interest in foreign capitals. India is home to a vast variety of castes, tribes, communities, religions and languages. Thus, the Indian diaspora is a diverse community representing different regions, languages, cultures and faiths. To mobilise them as a group, increasingly, the role of religion is defining the notion of the Indian diaspora. Not all Indians are Hindus, but almost all Hindus are Indians. So, unlike other world religions, Hinduism is an ethnic religion due to the strong sense of its origin and rootedness in India. Indian diaspora is primarily taking the shape of Hindu diaspora, because most Hindus, no matter where they live, possess a deep, symbolic, special relationship to a spiritual homeland. There are many religious minorities within overseas Indian communities, but due to the sheer size, a cultural form of Hinduism is being used to describe the Indian diaspora. This identity formation has not been limited to being cultural only, it has also been coloured with the political ideology of Hindutva. Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) has been directly involved in mobilising Indian diaspora in different parts of the world. The RSS demands unflinching patriotism and preservation of Hindu culture and its branches outside India are known as Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh. Its chapters in Europe and North America, whose mission is to promote Hindu culture, are active in recruiting support in various Hindu temples, which have been mushrooming in these parts of the world. PM Narendra Modi meets Indian diaspora in USA. Many of these diaspora associations in the West have been raising money to support RSS and its affiliate organisations to wage violence against religious minorities in India. To avoid suspicion, some of them hide themselves as "development" organisations and use their hostland's aid money to support sectarian programs in India. In spite of Hindus having huge numerical strength and control of political and economic power in India, diaspora groups have developed a myth of Hindus being an oppressed majority in a "secular" state. By playing the "victim" card that Hinduism is in danger from the "secular" forces in India, the diaspora is influencing the homeland politics to promote an aggressive form of Hindu nationalism. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is travelling around the world and publicly addressing large gatherings of Hindu diaspora and extolling them to be an ambassador of the home state. He has been urging them to contribute money, time and technical expertise for his signature programs, particularly the ones with high "Hindu" cultural significance, like "Namami Gange" project. Indian embassies are being encouraged to support and promote activities organised by diaspora organisers with Hindutva leanings. Many of these organisers are also reporting to embassies against critical voices. After the 2014 general election in India, there are worrying signs suggesting that intrinsic right to freedom of expression and religious practice is under threat in the country. This growing "intolerance" against minorities has however helped to further improve the popularity of Modi among the diaspora. Not only religion, caste also permeates the Indian diaspora. In the face of discrimination in the host society, many become more fundamentalist in their tradition and caste is the part of that reactionary package. The strong urge to marry their sons and daughters within the caste very well shows the hold of caste identity present among the Indian diaspora. Unfortunately, caste discrimination amongst the Indian diaspora is getting stronger as religious and ethnic identity become increasingly important. The powerful and majority group in Indian diaspora is not only active promoter of the Hindu right-wing political agenda, it also encourages the social discourse that favours the Brahmanic upper-caste values. Any discussion or debate on caste issue is seen as a taboo topic amongst the diaspora. Dalits form a numerical minority within the Indian diasporic space, so upper-caste Hindus dominates places of worship and other cultural associations. In the UK, Dalit diaspora is even forced to worship in segregated temples. In recent years, Dalit groups have started a campaign for a legal ban on caste discrimination in the UK, but upper-caste diaspora has successfully opposed it. Moreover, the upper-caste groups are providing fund and political support to RSS and upper-caste associations in India to demand revocation of country's caste-based job reservation policy, which wil lead to further social unrest in the country. India is the world's largest secular democracy. The election of Modi as India's prime minister has emboldened Hindu upper-caste diaspora in their efforts to turn India into a nation of theirs only. Just after hundred odd days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's peace initiative with Pakistan has collapsed. Towards the fag end of his media interaction at New Delhi's Foreign Correspondent Club, Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit made an explosive statement: "I would say the dialogue is suspended...There is no meeting scheduled between the foreign secretaries...Let's see if we are able to commence the dialogue process." It was evident that Basit had come with the intention to do some blunt speaking because his opening gambit made his intentions clear. After his (im)polite courtesies when he uttered homilies like "Pakistan wants to have a normal and peaceful relationship with India" but that "there is no shortcut to achieving a lasting peace. Nor does cherry-picking work"; Basit said what his military bosses wanted him to stress: "Let's be realistic. It is the Jammu & Kashmir dispute that is the root cause of mutual distrust and other bilateral issues. Therefore, it's fair and just resolution, as per the aspirations of the people of Jammu & Kashmir, is imperative. Attempts to put it on the back burner will be counterproductive." Pakistans High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit during an interaction with media at Foreign Correspondent Club in New Delhi. In a matter of a few seconds, the High Commissioner smashed to smithereens all gains from Modi's dramatic stopover in Lahore in December 2015. Those who thought that the setback due to the Pathankot attack had been surmounted and put behind are mistaken in their belief. Since the turn-of-the-year attack on the Indian Air Force Station in Pathankot, the Indo-Pak peace process was more illusory than realistic. Basit's statement just states the obvious that the Indian side did not have the gumption to say. New Delhi did not wish to accept that the revived dialogue process - with the fancy new name of Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue - is all but over. Modi did not wish to accept the death of his dream of smoking a peace pipe with his Pakistani counterpart because of the heavy investments he made into the process. After the multiple assertions of Basit on April 7, Modi is left with little option but to mentally decide that it may not be possible for him to visit Pakistan again later this year for the nineteenth SAARC Summit. Given that Islamabad's forked tongue was evident while Basit buried the Lahore initiative - and the agreement hammered out by Sushma Sawaraj and Sartaj Aziz a fortnight before Modi's dramatic stopover - the Pakistan foreign office was sending out contradictory signals on the peace process, New Delhi should either display no anxiety over the death of talks or extract a hefty price for agreeing to its resumption. The compensation, to start with, must be an immediate recall of Basit. For the sake of his image as a strongman, Modi has no option but to agree to talk further with Pakistan only if Islamabad withdraws its High Commissioner and replaces him. Even after that, the urgency should be Pakistan's and not India's. After all, Islamabad has to host the SAARC Summit which cannot take place unless all heads of governments participate. Modi must consider that he has already fulfilled one ambition of most Indian leaders - to serenade on the streets of Lahore. Any subsequent visit must not in any way show Indian over-eagerness. The problem with Modi is that he has a bit of Vajpayee in him especially when dealing with Pakistan. To understand this, it is important to recall the fundamental errors of the latter. Readers would like to recall that a few months after Pokhran II put the peace initiative, painfully kickstarted by the IK Gujaral regime, into a limbo; Vajpayee unilaterally announced the Lahore Yatra. The visit in February 1999 was fashioned in a dramatic manner with media and celebrities in tow. Within weeks, bonhomie between the two nations was in shambles as it transpired that even as Vajpayee was driving down the streets of Lahore, Pakistan Army was stealthily creeping into Indian Territory in the Kargil sector. The armed conflict ended with India securing its positions yet Pakistan still continued to allow anti-India activities from its soil. The hijacking of IC-814 and continued cross border terrorist activity in Kashmir did not prevent Vajpayee to make another attempt to invite General Pervez Musharraf for the Agra Summit. The story has been repeated endlessly and with the same error from the Indian side - leaders wish to hold a high-profile Summit without adequate preparations. Modi's dramatic halt at Lahore was not preceded by ground level preparations and that was his undoing. From all evidences, it appears that a chastened lot of officers of India and Pakistan were working quietly to bring the talks back on track after Pathankot. Both New Delhi and Islamabad through their foreign offices were assessing the mood of the other without closing the door on resuming dialogue. Basit's intervention is clearly an attempt from a section in Pakistan which does not believe in normalising ties with India. Just as Modi has to contend with a hardline view in India which calls for extremes against Pakistan, a lobby exists on the other side of the border which sees its survival on continued hostility against India. Scott Sandford likes to describe life on Earth in terms of Legos. Like any ambitious project, life requires many particular parts: blue bricks, red bricks, rectangular bricks with six pegs, those crazy-shaped ones that spin. But unlike Lego bricks, which can be purchased at their own dedicated online marketplace (who knew?), the source of life's building blocks remains something of a mystery. Years of experimenting with the conditions that existed on Earth in its earliest days have failed to produce some of the complex molecules that are necessary to all organisms - suggesting those molecules arrived from elsewhere. That means that the key ingredients for life could be swirling all around in space. For all we know, they may even have landed on other planets too. This vision of life's extraterrestrial origins got a boost Thursday, when scientists reported that they'd managed to produce ribose - a sugar that probably formed the backbone of an early version of life - and other essential molecules by blasting an artificial chunk of interstellar ice with ultraviolet light. The experiment was a model of how those building blocks could have formed in the early solar system, which was swirling with grains of ice and dust and awash in radiation. Eventually, that ribose-infused ice-dust may have coalesced into comets that then crash-landed on Earth, enriching the primordial soup that would eventually give rise to living things. "If you think of all these little molecules we're making as Lego blocks, and life as a kind of very complex, organised Lego castle," Sandford told the New Scientist, "the fact that Lego blocks are falling out of the sky can't be a bad thing." Sandford, who studies the formation of organic molecules in space for the NASA Ames Research Center in California, was not involved in the most recent study, which was published in the journal Science. But he said it bolsters the kind of work he and other astrobiologists are doing, providing "another example of how the universe seems to be hardwired to produce a lot of the kinds of compounds you would like to be around if you want to get life going." Ribose has never before been detected on a real comet, or an artificial one made in the lab. The fact that the researchers were able to find it is especially exciting, because the simple sugar plays a starring role in the story of life's origins. Before humans, before the dinosaurs, before trilobites and protozoa, even before the earliest, meagerest packets of DNA and proteins to ever be called a "cell," scientists believe that the Earth was an "RNA world." According to this theory (which won the Nobel Prize in 1989) the first things to replicate themselves were strands of RNA - a cousin and probable predecessor of the much more famous double helix molecule on display in every biology classroom. Unlike DNA, which acts as a great instruction manual for life processes but requires proteins to actually carry them out, RNA can reproduce all on its own. And even though it's less stable than DNA, it is also simpler. These qualities make RNA a good candidate for modern life's precursor. The idea that RNA was the first to arise from the primordial soup was the "molecular biologist's dream" scientists Gerald Joyce and Leslie Orgel wrote, according to Scientific American. But the implausibility of that happening was also a "the prebiotic chemist's nightmare." After all, RNA also needs to come from somewhere, and its ingredients - including its sugar backbone of ribose (the "R" in RNA) - seemed impossible to manufacture from simpler materials. The Science study, which formed a huge variety of sugar molecules by radiating a frozen blend of water, methanol and ammonia, shows that it can be done. Whether or not that really is how it happened remains to be seen; as University of Stirling scientist Christian Schroeder noted in the Conversation, researchers still need to demonstrate that the process occurs on real comets, not just man-made ones. But other essential life ingredients, like amino acids and the molecules that form cell membranes, have already been found in samples from meteorites and experiments in labs. So have simple sugars like glycolaldehyde, which can combine with other molecules to produce ribose. Of course, "just because now you have all the molecules doesn't mean you have life," as lead author Cornelia Meinert, an astrochemist at the University of Nice -- Sophia Antipolis, told the New Scientist. But it is a pretty good starting point. What's more, it hints that these biological building blocks may have wound up on planets other than our own. "If all these molecules that are necessary for life are everywhere out in space," Andrew Mattioda, an astrochemist at NASA Ames Research Center, told the LA Times, "the case gets a lot better that you'll find life outside of Earth." BRUSSELS - Belgium - The European Commission has revealed the tampon tax will stand on June 24 punishing British women. Responding to the publication of the European Commissions action plan on value added tax (VAT), Anne Marie-Trevelyan MP said: I am appalled that the European Commission continues to treat the British people with contempt. Despite the Chancellors best efforts, he and the UK Government are powerless to make a minor alteration to our tax code without the EUs permission. Now we learn that, despite a pledge to scrap the tampon tax, women will still be charged VAT on sanitary products, and any attempt by the UK Government to zero-rate them could be vetoed by any of the 27 other member states even after the referendum. This is a minor change requested at the personal intervention of both the Chancellor and the Prime Minister and still the EU says no. Losing control of our taxation is a failure of democracy. We need to take back control and vote to leave this failing political project. The Commission has announced that British women will still be paying the tampon tax after the referendum, despite Government claims to have ended the tax. The Commission communication does not mention the 5% rate of VAT which must currently be charged on sanitary products. The Commission states that reform of VAT rates will not occur until 2017. This means that any proposals to abolish the tampon tax could be vetoed by any member state after the referendum. As the Treasury Minister, David Gauke MP, has admitted: any change to EU VAT law would require a proposal from the European Commission and the support of all 28 member states. Without that agreement, we are not permitted to lower rates below 5% . This contrasts what the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has claimed: Weve used our seat at the top table in Europe to secure what the British public has demanded common sense on VAT and an end to the tampon tax. The UK will also still be obliged to increase VAT on the installation of solar panels and other energy saving products. The Commission communication does not mention the VAT on the installation of energy saving products. On 4 June 2015, the European Court ruled that the UKs reduced rate of VAT of 5% on energy saving materials was contrary to EU law . The Government is now proposing to raise VAT to 20% on energy saving materials, which will cost the sector 310 million between 2016-2017 and 2021-2022. This is in direct breach of the VAT-lock contained in the Conservative Party Manifesto; Finance (No.2) Act 2015, s. 2(4). The Commission admits the single market has failed businesses for decades. The EU institutions are too sclerotic to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century. The Commission admits that Compliance costs are significantly higher in single market trade than in domestic trade. The Commission admits that the current VAT system is fragmented, complex for the growing number of businesses operating cross-border and leaves the door open to fraud. The Commission suggests that VAT revenue not collected amounts to 170bn and acknowledges that cross-border fraud alone accounts for EUR 50 billion of revenue loss each year. It states that: The current system is also struggling to address innovative business models and technological progress in todays digital environment. The current rules for VAT came into force 23 years ago. Their problems have been known about for years. VAT fraud was so large ten years ago it was distorting the UKs balance of payments statistics. The British taxpayer has lost billions due to the sclerotic nature of the EU institutions. The Commission admits that its proposals will result in an increase in red tape. The Commission acknowledges that its option of abolishing the list of goods and services eligible to reduced rating will not result in a decrease in red tape: Member States would remain constrained by EU legislation, such as single market or competition rules. The Commission says it would use this option as an excuse to introduce more red tape: this option would require safeguards to be put in place The freedom to set VAT rates should be thus accompanied by a number of basic rules framing the cases in which reduced rates may be applied. This proposal will not make it easier to lower VAT. The Commission puts forward two options to reform VAT. Neither would give the UK Government the power it needs to lower VAT unilaterally. The Commission is clear that: General derogations to the principles of the EU VAT system are not possible under the current VAT rules. The Commission therefore rejected these requests on legal grounds. Under option one, the minimum standard rate of 15% would be maintained. In order for a good or service to be added to the reduced rate list, the Member State would need the permission of the EU institutions: The Commission, with the support of the Member States, would analyse whether such changes would pose any risk to the functioning of the single market or distort competition, and would report its findings before any change. The Commission suggests that its second option could mean that it would become impossible to lower VAT rates on certain items: one possible solution could be to prevent application of reduced rates to high-value goods and services, in particular easily transportable items the total number of reduced rates allowed by Member States could be limited. Vote Leave on June 23 to take back our country. LONDON - England - The EU Frontex border report shows serious flaws in European security that are a major danger to Britain. Fostering the free movement of people has been an important objective of European integration since the 1950s. Free movement of goods, persons, services and capital were identified as foundations of the Community in the Treaty of Rome, however the Schengen zone only works in peace time, and now the globe is on the verge of war, emanating from the Middle East. When the Frontex published its risk analysis in 2016, it admitted that the EU and its free movement laws are a major danger to security and peace. The damning report reveals that the UK is at serious risk within the EU, and is vulnerable to inconsistencies within the EU structure and policy shifts from Brussels. This year alone, the number of people aiming to get to the UK with fraudulent documents significantly increased (+70%) compared to 2014. This trend is mostly attributable to the increasing number of Albanian nationals often misusing Italian and Greek ID cards followed by Ukrainian nationals abusing authentic Polish ID cards. The port of Calais is a much contentious issue, and will be for some time. The port has recorded many instances of violence, boarding of vehicles by illegal migrants and of general chaos. This is a highly unacceptable stance to have directly on the borders of the UK, and the EU is in its nonchalance creating a dangerous bottle neck of trouble within the continent. The EU has created a passport free area for terrorists, and smuggling of high grade weaponry. To compound the issue, there is no EU system capable of tracing peoples movements following an illegal border-crossing. Europe has never seen such movements of people since World War II, but it seems to be caught in the headlights, standing back and just watching. Can the EU be entrusted in keeping its citizens safe? No, is the emphatic answer, especially when in 2015 there were 1.8 million illegal migrants crossing into the Schengen zone leading up to the Paris attacks. With all these millions of people crossing the EU borders each year, they have no way of ascertaining whether the passports presented are real or forged, or to where these migrants came from. Visa liberalisation has created serious problems and member states cannot cope with the sheer volume of migrant traffic. The ongoing problem is all part of the EUs dangerous flirtation with a borderless Europe, which can only work in a time of global peace, of which we have none at the moment. This is why the UK must vote to leave on June 23, if it values its security and borders. All of her life, Sage Marshall has felt a strong connection to her Aboriginal heritage, traditions and her community. Her father grew up in an Algonquin community in Quebec, her mother in a Mikmaq community in Cape Breton, N.S. That perhaps explains why, enrolling in a post-secondary program in Ottawa after high school, she found herself missing her family and community. Thats when she discovered the Aboriginal Health Sciences Success (AHSS) program at Dalhousies Faculty of Agriculture, hearing about it from a friend. The program aims to provide Aboriginal students with a pathway into careers and further studies in the health sciences, while also instructing non-Aboriginal health-care students on historical and cultural issues of importance to Aboriginal patients. Now enrolled in the two-year program, Sage is re-energized by the opportunities in front of her and the range of subjects shes learning. In the first year you get such a mix of different courses. It really helps you figure out what you might want to do for your career, she explains. In the first year, students are enrolled in three of Dalhousies credit courses and two university prep courses. In the second year, students complete credit courses in the fall and winter terms, which prepare them to continue on to full-time studies in the health professions, health sciences, science or agriculture. Supportive community Art Stevens, coordinator of the AHSS program, works with students like Sage to make sure their transition to Dals Truro campus is smooth and that they feel supported throughout their time here. This program opens doors to students from Aboriginal communities and opens their eyes to a range of career paths, says Stevens. Were here to make sure that students are successful in that transition from high school to university and that they feel welcomed and supported and receive a quality education. Sage credits her success to people like Stevens who are also from Aboriginal communities and who give her the kind of educational and emotional support she needs to excel in her courses. Theyre there to steer you in a direction thats more comfortable for you, she says. They also appreciate where youre coming from and the kinds of extra supports you might need to make the transition to university life easier. Sage also credits her academic success to her professors who offer one-on-one attention. Sage hopes to become a teacher, too, and educate young people about Aboriginal history and its profound impact on our nations history. Before she becomes a teacher in the classroom, Sage recognizes, as the oldest sibling in her family, that teaching starts at home. I have a responsibility to teach my own siblings about our Aboriginal history and also to teach them about the endless opportunities in front of them if they pursue an education. I want my younger siblings to see that their bigger sister did it so they can do it, too. Munch Madness, a national food contest that pitted 64 regional food favorites from across the country, has found local flavor with Dayton's Dorothy Lane Market. It's the second year in a row that our local dessert favorite - DLM's "Killer Brownie " - has reached the finals, but this year they defeated Primanti Bros. Capicola Sandwich to become the 2016 #MunchMadness Champion. Primanti Bros. are due to open their first restaurant in the area next week. "We are excited and proud that the Killer Brownie, a Dayton, Ohio, favorite for nearly 30 years, has won the hearts and taste buds of fans near and far," said Scott Fox, Dorothy Lane Market Bakery and Killer Brownie VP. "We are very thankful and humbled by the overwhelming number of fans all over the country who know just how 'killer' our Killer Brownie is," said Fox. The official Facebook page for the Killer Brownie posted today, "We are beyond thrilled to be recognized by Goldbely as their 2016 #MunchMadness Champion!" Rating: Voices of: Neel Sethi, Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyongo, Scarlett Johansson, Christopher Walken Director: Jon Favreau Mowgli (Neel Sethi) is a feral child abandoned in the forest, raised by wolves and mentored by the wise panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley). The evil tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) hates humans and blackmails the wolves into handing Mowgli over to him. Bagheera escapes with Mowgli to protect the boy. In their journey across the jungle, they have many exciting encounters: with Baloo the sloth bear (Bill Murray), Kaa the snake (Scarlett Johansson) and Louie, king of the monkeys (Christopher Walken), all of whom lead Mowgli on the path to knowledge concerning his past and his future. Rudyard Kiplings Jungle Book stories have remained perennial classics of children literature. The original books were a collection of stories rather than a single narrative and in the original cartoon, Disney presented a simpler plot that was more Hollywood than Kipling. Having enjoyed considerable success reviving animated cartoons as live-action films (Tim Burtons Alice in Wonderland, the Angelina Jolie vehicle Maleficent, the previous years Cinderella), Jon Favreaus live-action reworking of The Jungle Book follows suit. The film is a loose reworking of the cartoon, some elements such as the vultures with Beatles haircuts are excised entirely, and only two songs (Bare Necessities and I Wanna Be Like You) remains in the film. The film works primarily as an impressive visual spectacle. The most remarkable achievement is the technical breakthrough in rendering anthropomorphism. Following the success of Ang Lees Life of Pi, this film goes further with a case of one boy and a cast of entirely CGI animals. All these animals are bigger in scale than their real-life counterparts which helps to convey how small and vulnerable Mowgli is in the jungle, but it also gives the film a sense of authentic fantasy. The animals are all rendered in photorealistic CGI and its marvelous to see the head of Bagheera look and move like the head of a panther and yet still move its lips, speak in the voice of Ben Kingsley and, if you squint long enough, resemble him. This applies to Bill Murrays Baloo and weirdly Scarlet Johannsons Kaa. The animals are rendered with double faces, simultaneously animal and human, an effect that is only really possible with CGI. The most impressive animal is Louie and he also claims the films most impressive sequence. Voiced by the incomparable Christopher Walken, this is the films most fantastic creature. An extinct great ape, nine feet tall, who inhabits the ruins of a temple in the jungle. He acts like a kind of Mob Boss of the jungle, offering the hero protection in exchange for the power of fire (called Red Flower by the animals) to rise to the top of the food chain. The catchy song I Wanna Be Like You is made into a dramatic soliloquy in the film, having greater intensity than before. The animation of Louie is thrilling, especially in the chase sequence where the giant chases the tiny Mowgli through the narrow, cramped corridors of the temple, moving far more nimbly than his size would otherwise suggest. The films greater visual realism makes this film more tense and dark than the original cartoon. The Shere Khan of the cartoon (voiced by the great George Sanders) was hardly in the film much and his violence was implied rather than depicted. The new Shere Khan is more direct and more vicious and it must be said, far cooler in design and presence. Hes voiced by Idris Elba and is as charismatic as he is ruthless. The presence of Shere Khan as a villain, while certainly not foreign to Rudyard Kiplings original stories, does have a few issues near the films climax. The idea underlying the jungle in this film is essentially the Circle of Life in The Lion King the division of good animals and bad animals lions are good animals even if they eat the antelope, while hyenas are bad animals even if they do the same. This division of animals is not really present in Kiplings stories where the use of the jungle and the animals as metaphors is more fluid than fixed, and where Mowgli in tackling Shere Khan embraces his own dark side and becomes a hunter. In this film, Shere Khan is repeatedly described by other animals as a monster and depicted as more violent than wolves, bears, panthers and elephants. I can imagine more than a few wildlife conservationists taking offence at the depiction of a jungle kingdom that so thoroughly demonises our endangered national animal. Especially since The Jungle Book, and this film adaptation, is set in the forests of Seoni district, Madhya Pradesh, home to the Pench Tiger Reserve, a domain intended to protect the real-life Shere Khans. Rudyard Kiplings books may have had issues but he was born and brought up in Mumbai and his works do reflect some awareness of India. Disneys film on the other hand mangles perfectly normal words like Raksha (almost pronounced as the suffix of Rakshasa), Bandar-Log (pronounced Band-Are Logg). That the film is releasing in India a week before America suggests a failure on the part of film-makers to truly engage with a global audience. The voice acting in this film is superlative, though the true stars are the animators and director Jon Favreau (Iron Man 1 and 2). Neel Sethis Mowgli has an incredibly cute and appealing presence. It must have been an especially hard role for the young actor since almost all his co-stars were invisible during shooting. The emotional bond formed between Mowgli and Bagheera is quite touching. Bill Murrays Baloo is shown as an altogether less likeable character than the cartoon and Murray perfectly puts across the mix between sincerity and exploitation that characterises his newer and more complex friendship with the innocent Mowgli. For Kipling, India was the world of his childhood, and The Jungle Book and his other stories represented that world. This version of The Jungle Book is a brilliant and beautiful evocation of the time when everything was bigger than us, when the natural world seemed to be full of wonders and where almost every new animal species, whose picture and presence we glimpsed, was an adventure in and of itself. This film is a brilliant fantasy for the whole family to see, reviving one of the great classics for a new generation. The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society Washington: Researchers have identified a molecular marker in normal breast tissue that can predict a woman's risk for developing breast cancer, the leading cause of death in women with cancer worldwide. The study builds on previous research finding that women already identified as having a high risk of developing cancer namely those with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation, or women who did not give birth in before their 30s - had a higher number of mammary gland progenitor cells. In the new study, researchers from Harvard University examined biopsies, some taken as many as four decades ago, from 302 women in the Nurses' Health Study and the Nurses' Health Study II, who had been diagnosed with benign breast disease. They compared tissue from the 69 women who later developed cancer to the tissue from the 233 women who did not. Researchers found that the women were five times as likely to develop cancer if they had a higher percentage of Ki67, a molecular marker that identifies proliferating cells, in the cells that line the mammary ducts and milk-producing lobules. These cells, called the mammary epithelium, undergo drastic changes throughout a woman's life, and the majority of breast cancers originate in these tissues. Doctors already test breast tumours for Ki67 levels, which can inform decisions about treatment, but this is the first time scientists have been able to link Ki67 to precancerous tissue and use it as a predictive tool. "Instead of only telling women that they do not have cancer, we could test the biopsies and tell women if they were at high risk or low risk for developing breast cancer in the future," said Kornelia Polyak from Harvard University. "Currently, we are not able to do a very good job at distinguishing women at high and low risk of breast cancer," said Rulla Tamimi from Harvard University. "By identifying women at high risk of breast cancer, we can better develop individualised screening, and also target risk reducing strategies," Tamini added. To date, mammograms are the best tool for the early detection, but there are risks associated with screening; false positive results, false negative results, and overdiagnosis could cause psychological distress, delay treatment, or lead to overtreatment, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Mammography machines also use low doses of radiation. While a single mammogram is unlikely to cause harm, repeated screening can potentially cause cancer, though the NCI says that the benefits "nearly always outweigh the risks." "If we can minimise unnecessary radiation for women at low risk that would be good," said Tamimi. The findings were published in the journal Cancer Research. Raipur: The allegation by Congress leader and former Union minister Jairam Ramesh that Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singhs son and BJP MP, Abhishek has undisclosed offshore accounts as per the Panama Papers leak, on Thursday triggered a fresh controversy, generating heat in state politics. Quoting Panama Papers leak, Mr Ramesh at news conference at New Delhi on Thursday alleged that Abhishek Singh aka Abhishak Singh, son of Dr Raman Singh, of Kawardha in Chhattisgarh was a shareholder of Quest Heights Limited, as exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and demanded a judicial probe into it. Read: Emmar scam accused Koneru Madhu used Panama firm for business Interestingly, both the CM and his son had already dismissed the allegation also made earlier by anti-graft crusader and expelled AAP leader Prashant Bhusan, saying that the junior Mr Singh has no illegal foreign accounts. Earlier issuing a statement, the first time MP had said a special investigation team (SIT) was already probing the issue of black money and undisclosed offshore accounts of Indians on the direction of the Supreme Court. Read: Sleepless nights ahead for illegal Panama account holders: Jaitley Describing the charges as baseless and unfounded, Chhattisgarh home minister Ramsevak Paikre said a conspiracy has been hatched by Congress to defame the CM and his son. State BJP spokesman Sri Chandan Sundrani said the allegation was made six months ago. But, no evidence to establish the charges has so far been produced by the Opposition parties. Had there been evidence to establish the charges, Opposition parties would not have kept mum all this period, he said, and added A high level probe will unravel the truth. A spokesman of Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee (CPCC) however said a judicial probe into the matter can alone unearth the truth. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday rapped Gujarat, Bihar and Haryana for not declaring drought in their states though there is deficient rainfall and fall in production of foodgrains. Expressing anguish over the apathy of the states in refusing to accept that there is a drought and people are suffering, a Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and N.V. Ramana told the counsel The case is about peoples lives. When counsel for Gujarat submitted that only 526 villages were affected, Bench questioned as to why there was delay in declaring drought even in these villages. The counsel said the state could not do so because of local body elections. Annoyed at this submission, the Bench asked Will all work stop if there are elections? Elections cannot bring everything to a standstill. People are dying, how can you be so careless? When situation was clear in September last that there could be drought, why did you wait till April 1 this year to declare drought? The bench was referring to the municipal polls in the state which were conducted in December-January. The bench directed Gujarat government to immediately releases the special packages for farmers in drought-hit districts. Referring to Haryana which had not filed an affidavit in the writ petition filed by Swaraj Abhyan, the Bench told the counsel, Is this seriousness that you show on this (drought) issue? We are talking about people who are dying, not tourists. Please do something. This is not a picnic, he added. Upon this, the state counsel handed over some documents to the Bench which mostly turned out to be old statistics with no relevance to the PIL case about scanty rainfall in 12 states in the last two years. Haryana, however, said it was not declaring drought as there was no fall in its foodgrains production. Farmers mainly depended on river waters supplied through canals, besides tubewells, it said. Bihar also said there was no drought in the State. This prompted the Bench to wonder as to why the Centre had come out with the drought manual if states were not to follow it. At this, Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand said the manual was recommendatory and not binding on the states. The Bench said the government could not deny the poor people the benefits due to them in the event of drought. In drought hit areas, people were entitled to 150 days of work, against 100 days in other places under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act. There were also entitled to supply of essential commodities such as lentils, egg, oil and milk at subsidised rates. According to the petitioner, NGO Swaraj Abhiyan, the other nine states facing drought are Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Meanwhile, JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav while speaking in the national capital welcomed the Supreme Courts critical observation against the Centre over non-release of MNREGA funds. More than a dozen states have considered bathroom provisions this year that would restrict access for transgender people, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. (Representational Photo: Pixabay) South Carolina: South Carolina lawmakers have introduced a measure that would require transgender people to use public bathrooms matching their sex at birth, disregarding a growing outcry for a repeal of a similar provision enacted last month in North Carolina. Legislation such as the bill proposed in the Republican-controlled state Senate on Wednesday has fuelled a national debate, with states entrenched on either side of the issue and major companies calling for a rollback on measures restricting transgender rights. The South Carolina measure would prohibit local governments from requiring private businesses to provide restroom access based on gender identity rather than birth gender. "Men should use the mens room, and women should use the womens room - thats just common sense, Republican Senator Lee Bright, a sponsor of the bill, told The State newspaper. North Carolina is getting so much flak over what is common sense. The South Carolina measure is narrower than North Carolina's law, which precludes local governments from adopting anti-discrimination ordinances with protections based on gender identity and sexual orientation. But opponents warned the new proposal could spark the economic backlash seen this week in North Carolina, where PayPal Holdings Inc cited the discriminatory nature of the law in cancelling a new operations centre that was to employ 400 workers in Charlotte. More than 130 business leaders, including the chief executives of Bank of America, Herbalife and American Airlines, have signed a letter with the Human Rights Campaign calling for a repeal. "Government simply has no place in our bathrooms," said Jeff Ayers, executive director of South Carolina Equality, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights group. PUSHBACK Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed two executive orders on Thursday aimed at safeguarding the rights of transgender people. One of them bans the state from discriminating against any employee or job applicant based on a host of criteria including "gender expression or identity." "This is the right thing to do. ... This is also the smart thing to do," Wolf said, citing PayPal's decision in North Carolina. Last year, the Democratic governor named a transgender woman as the state's physician general, a Cabinet-level post. More than a dozen states have considered bathroom provisions this year that would restrict access for transgender people, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The measures come amid a wave of legislation pushed by social conservatives after the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage last year. Mississippi's Republican governor on Tuesday signed a law allowing people with religious objections to deny wedding services to same-sex couples and permitting employers to cite religion in determining workplace policies on dress code, grooming and bathroom and locker access. In response, a number of governors and mayors have banned non-essential government travel to Mississippi or North Carolina. Last week, the governors of Georgia and Virginia vetoed "religious liberty" bills, which critics said discriminated against same-sex couples. The ICIJ allegedly exposed a range of personalities from political leaders to sportsmen and filmstars whom a Panama-based company helped to use tax havens to hide their wealth. (Photo: panamapapers.icij.org screengrab) Paris: The Panama Papers have sent shock waves across the world and many implicated in the leaked documents are trembling. This is the latest and biggest revelation of state and economic secrets since the whistleblower website WikiLeaks began using the Internet to break new ground in social activism. Here is a recap of all the major leaks in recent times: Wikileaks Founded in 2006 and launched a year later by Australian ex-hacker Julian Assange, WikiLeaks begins releasing secrets such as operating procedures at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, and the contents of US politician Sarah Palins personal e-mails. In April 2010, the video of a US helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed two Reuters staff and others puts WikiLeaks back in the headlines. It follows up in the summer with two massive releases of tens of thousands of internal US military documents relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, detailing cases of abuse, torture and civilian deaths. American soldier Bradley Manning -- a transsexual now known as Chelsea Manning - is arrested after being identified as the source of the leaks. She is serving a 35 year jail sentence for breaches of the Espionage Act. In November 2010, WikiLeaks releases of 250,000 diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world which deeply embarrass Washington. The same month, a Swedish prosecutor issues an international arrest warrant for Assange on charges of rape, and after exhausting his legal options, Assange enters the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19, 2012 and asks for political asylum. He is still there. Snowden and the NSA Edward Snowden, an intelligence contractor with access to classified information from the US National Security Agency (NSA), contacts British newspaper The Guardian, which reveals in June 2013 the existence of a secret US court order forcing US telephone company Verizon to provide the NSA with daily information on its customers calls over a four-month period. On June 6, the Washington Post and The Guardian report that the NSA and FBI have access to servers of major Internet companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Facebook to monitor the web traffic of people outside the United States. Chinese mobile phone companies are also said to have been hacked. US authorities charge Snowden, who has acknowledged being the source of the leak, with espionage and the theft of state secrets and seek his arrest in Hong Kong. He slips away however and flies to Moscow. He is still living in Russia. The NSA revelations stun the world, straining US relations with allies as it emerges that Washington has spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and the government of Mexico, among others. President Barack Obama promises more transparency, and the US Congress reforms laws on electronic surveillance. The Panama Papers The Panama Papers have sought to shed light on a global network of tax avoidance and were compiled by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The huge operation, the biggest worldwide to date, has revealed assets held in tax havens by 140 political leaders and high-profile personalities, including a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. The papers were examined by more than 100 media organisations combing through 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, specialists in the creation of offshore business entities. The ICIJ has already published Offshore Leaks on thousands of people who hold foreign accounts for tax purposes, LuxLeaks on agreements between Luxembourg and multinational companies to limit tax exposure, and SwissLeaks on a scheme that allegedly helped clients of banking giant HSBCs Swiss division evade taxes on accounts worth $119 billion. ICIJ is run by Australian journalist Gerard Ryle, is based in Washington, and includes 190 journalist from more than 65 countries. It probes cross-border corruption, organised crime syndicates and tax evasion, among other issues. Hafiz Saeed-led JuD has recently set up a 'Sharia Court' here to hand out easy and swift justice, the first such parallel judicial system in Pakistan's Punjab Province. (Photo: AFP) Lahore: Authorities in Pakistan's Punjab province on Friday launched a probe against Jamaat-ud-Dawa, led by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed, for running a parallel judicial system here. "A team of senior police officers today visited the JuD headquarters at Jamia Qadsia, Chauburji and discussed the matter with the high command of Dawah," a source in Punjab police said. "The police team will send its findings to Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah over the matter after recording the statements of some people who sought justice from the JuD courts," the source said. He said the police team also discussed the matter of Khalid Saeed, who was summoned by a Sharia Court of JuD in a monetary case. Saeed had also complained to the police that he was threatened by the JUD court to appear before it or face serious consequences. The JuD office-bearers told the police team that it had established "the Arbitrary Council presided over by Ulema (clerics) merely to provide arbitration services to consenting parties in the light of Quran and Sunnah (Prophet's teachings)". The JuD said it is not parallel court and does not issue any kind of summons or seek money for arbitration. On the other hand, Sanaullah said the government would not allow anyone to run a parallel judicial system in Punjab. "We will take appropriate action (against the JuD) if it is found running a parallel judicial system in Lahore," he said, adding FIR would be registered against those involved in it. On the lines of the Taliban, Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led JuD has recently set up a 'Sharia Court' here to hand out "easy and swift justice", the first such parallel judicial system in Pakistan's Punjab Province. Earlier, the Sharia courts were established in Kyber Pakhtaunkhawa province by pro-Taliban groups. In what appears to be a major bust, an MSc (Chemistry) graduate, who had set up a factory to manufacture and sell a psychotropic drug without obtaining the necessary approvals, has been arrested by revenue intelligence sleuths in Bengaluru. H Jagannadha Raju worked for some pharmaceutical companies before setting up his own firm, RACS Pharmachem, in Gauribidanur, Chikkaballapur, in 2012. He had the licence to manufacture another chemical, an official in the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence said. Soon, he invested a large sum and started manufacturing and selling Alprazolam, a psychotropic substance commonly prescribed to people with anxiety and panic disorders. One of the most devastating effects of Alprazolam abuse is addiction overdose, which can lead to dangerously slowed breathing and extreme sedation and coma. The drug puts a person into deep sleep, the official said. The drugs controller needs to issue a licence to manufacture a psychotropic substance. But Raju bypassed it. He started supplying the drug to individuals in the parallel market last year. Because of its high potential for abuse, the substance is listed in Schedule II of the National Drugs and Psychotropic Act. One kilogram of Alprazolam costs around Rs 40,000 in the market, the official said. Revenue intelligence sleuths recently got a tip-off about Rajus business and started tracking him. On Wednesday, they intercepted him transporting the banned substance by car. They found 25 kg of Alprazolam in the car. They then searched his house in Yelahanka, north Bengaluru, and found 25 kg of Alprazolam there, the official said. A team of officials then searched his factory located at the KIADB area in Gauribidanur. There, they found 5 kg of the same substance. The seized substance was in the form of white powder, the official said. Sustained interrogation revealed Raju recently supplied the substance to a person in Hyderabad. A team of revenue intelligence sleuths went to Medak near Hyderabad and seized 80 kg of Alprazolam from there. The individual in Hyderabad is neither a chemist nor an authorised stockist of the substance. The seized drug is worth Rs 75 lakh. A special court for NDPS cases remanded Raju in judicial custody. British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted today he had held a 30,000-pound stake in an offshore fund set up by his father, after days of pressure following publication of the so-called Panama Papers. Cameron said he sold the stake in the Bahamas-based trust in 2010, four months before he became prime minister, in an interview with television channel ITV. Downing Street have issued four statements on the affair this week following Sunday's publication of the leaked Panama Papers, which showed how Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca had helped firms and wealthy individuals set up offshore companies. "We owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000 pounds (37,000 euros, USD 42,000)," Cameron said. "I sold them all in 2010, because if I was going to become prime minister I didn't want anyone to say you have other agendas, vested interests." Yielding to a high voltage campaign by activists, the Shani Shingnapur temple trust today allowed women to enter the sanctum sanctorum, breaking the tradition followed for several decades. Significanly, lifting of all gender barriers for access to the core area came on the auspicious occasion of "Gudi Padwa", marking New Year by people across Maharashtra. Sayaram Bankar, a trustee of Shani Shingnapur temple, said the trustees held a meeting today and decided to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees including men and women, in keeping with the high court directive. "We will welcome (Bhoomata Brigade leader) Trupti Desai also if she comes for darshan," he said, referring to the campaign spearheaded by the outfit for breaking the tradition followed by the Lord Saturn shrine. Temple trust spokesman Haridas Gaywale also said, "The trust has at the meeting decided there will not be any discrimination and today all parts of Shani temple are open for all." The Bombay High Court had on April 1 held that it is the women's fundamental right to go into places of worship and the government is duty-bound to protect it. The debate over the issue escalated after a woman last year tried to enter and offer prayers at the Shani Shingnapur temple, in 'breach' of the age-old practice of prohibiting entry of women. The agitation for women's entry gained momentum over the last few months, even as the temple authorities had later barred men also from entering the sanctum sanctorum. Desai welcomed the decision of Shani Shingnapur temple trustees to open gates of the sacred "Chauthara" for men and women devotees, and said it was a "wise" step on their part. "Der se aye lekin durusta aye" (It was late but in the end correct decision)," she said reacting to the development that signalled a victory for her prolonged fight against gender discrimination at places of worship. "We are happy that the temple trustees have taken a wise decision eventually," she told PTI. Desai said she and her group of activists would be soon leaving for Shani Singnapur to offer prayers at the temple. She hoped that trustees at Trimbakeshwar and Mahalaxmi temples in Nashik and Kolhapur respectively, too would take similar decision to end injustice against women devotees. Earlier in the day, around 250 men from Shingnapur village entered the sanctum sanctorum of the temple in the village and offered prayers to the deity on the occasion of 'Gudi Padwa', even as the temple officials tried to prevent them. About 250 residents of Shingnapur village reached the core area of the temple and had 'darshan' as a part of their annual ritual, police inspector Prashant Mandale of Shani Shingnapur told PTI. The trust members objected to their entry resulting in tension, following which police rushed to the spot. After hailing the development, Desai and her supporters left Pune for Shingnapur to offer prayers at the Shani temple. Local men had brought sacred water of Godavari and Mulay rivers from Pravara Sangam, about 40 kms from Shani Shingnapur and offered prayers. It has been a tradition for male devotees to climb up the platform of the temple and offer the water after performing a pooja on Gudi Padwa every year. The villagers said that it's a local custom and matter of faith as they forcefully reached to prohibited area of the temple. Desai said, "If a single man enters the sanctum other than pujari, the court orders have to be followed, everyone has to follow the order. The day has come today (when) we will enter the 'shani' platform." "This is our victory. It was our will power that we will enter the core area...you all must have been seen women activists were manhandled. Despite the odds women came forward with all preparations and might. This is victory of Bhumata Brigade, of our movement. It is also victory of gender equality." "Our fight has been going on for the past three-four months. We faced a lot of hurdles. We have been maligned, we were detained despite the court orders," Desai said. On media's role in her campaign, she said "media has been with us and they also took a stand with us. This is media's win as well. Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption over the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for Rs 3,600 crore. In the ruling, which overtured a previous court order of 2014, Bruno Spagnolini, the former CEO of Finmeccanica's helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, was also handed a four- year prison term by the court yesterday. The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively, it said. The ruling has come as a severe blow to the Italian company which had just managed to leave the corruption saga behind that marred its image across the world. Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials told PTI that the firm "has changed completely". "The company has undergone deep changes and it has changed completely from the time when the allegations came up first. Finmeccanica is a different company now," an official said. Both Orsi and Spagnolini were accused of international corruption and false invoicing in relation to bribes exchanged for a 560-million-euro (approx. Rs 4,250 crore) contract with India. Both were cleared on charges of committing international corruption at the first-instance trial in 2014 but convicted of false invoicing and sentenced to two years in prison. In Italy, criminal sentences are not usually considered definitive until the appeals process has been exhausted, the report said. In October, 2014, a lower court had convicted Orsi and Spagnolini of falsifying invoices but acquitted them of corruption. Both appealed against the conviction, while the prosecution appealed against the acquittal on the corruption charge. On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with Finmeccanica's British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of paying kickbacks to the tune of Rs 360 crore by it for securing the deal. The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) are still probing the case in which former IAF chief S P Tyagi and his cousins are alleged to be the beneficiaries. The ED has booked Tyagi, his family members, European nationals - Carlo Gerosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschke, four firms - Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland and Chandigarh- based IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, two companies based in Mauritius and Tunisia, few other firms and unknown persons in CBI's criminal complaint. In view of the corruption charges, India has also barred Finmeccanica and its group companies from participating in any new programme of the defence ministry. The ED had attached five expensive flats in and around New Delhi in the name of cousins of Tyagi in connection with its money laundering probe. The agency, in its order issued against the Tyagi brothers - Sanjeev, Sandeep and Rajeev - had said late last year that its investigations found that the "proceeds of crime" of this deal were allegedly used by them in the acquisition of these properties which have now been seized under law. Both Orsi and Spagnolini were accused of international corruption and false invoicing in relation to bribes exchanged for the contract with India. Both were cleared on charges of committing international corruption at the first-instance trial in 2014 but convicted of false invoicing and sentenced to two years in prison. In Italy, criminal sentences are not usually considered definitive until the appeals process has been exhausted. Both appealed against the conviction, while the prosecution appealed against the acquittal on the corruption charge. On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with Finmeccanica's British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of paying kickbacks to the tune of Rs 423 crore by it for securing the deal. In view of the corruption charges, India has also barred Finmeccanica and its group companies from participating in any new programme of the defence ministry. A day after an anti-encroachment drive led to the demolition of a water facility in front of Gurdwara Sisganj in Chandni Chowk, tension persisted in the area. Policemen were deployed outside some of the shops in one of the oldest markets in the country. The gurdwara authorities erected a temporary drinking water facility within an hour of the demolition of the permanent structure, and repair work on the demolished piao has also been started. The piao will be functional again in two-three days, this is a service to humanity, said Preetam Singh Chawla, an elderly devotee. Gathered outside the demolished water facility, elderly devotees alleged that the local traders were behind the demolition drive. They alleged that the demolition work began two hours before the time given in the written notice. They also claimed that the anti-encroachment drive was selective, and said they will not let bulldozers touch the structure again. Our religious feelings have been hurt. This is not a place of business, and we are not here to make money out of this facility. There are encroachments all over the Chandni Chowk. Look at these restaurants that have extended well outside their actual place. Why didnt the demolition drive touch them, Manbeer Singh Bhatia questioned. However, people in Chandni Chowk said drinking facilities outside Laal Mandir and Gauri Shankar Mandir were also demolished in the drive. Also, a Hanuman temple situated in the middle of road and Bhai Matidas mandir were reportedly slated for demolition. Yet some people tried to give the episode a communal colour. This is a move to recreate the 1984 situation. They shouldnt have touched a religious place, said an angry Sikh devotee standing in front of the gurudwara. A few metres from the gurudwara, shop owners were very guarded in their response Sitting in his garment showroom, with half a dozen police personnel deployed outside, a shop owner said that the situation was volatile and claimed to have received threats from some people. A mob doesnt have any sense of control. It can do anything. We are a bit guarded now, but overall this was a welcome move, as the encroachments, notwithstanding their nature and type, should be demolished, said the trader. Meanwhile, blaming the AAP government for creating a communal atmosphere in Delhi by demolishing structures outside religious places, Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee on Thursday, demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday questioned the role of NGOs in campaign against telecom towers and said there is no concrete evidence of any harmful effect from such radiations so far. The minister also said complain against call drops and campaign against towers cannot go hand-in-hand. If there is a technology that (suggests) without towers or BTS, mobile signals can go, tell me, he at a conference on Electromagnetic Emissions in Mobile Telephony and its Health Impact at IIT-Delhi. Prasad said so-called radiation from such towers has never been an issue for NGOs in the US, Europe or even China. The misplaced concerns of mobile tower radiation could seriously jeopardise Indias path to greatness as seamless mobility could be affected by such unfounded fears. This question troubles me a lot. Why this is not an issue in the US, Europe, China, why some of the biggest NGOs have taken this issue in India, why should you presume. I saw all the WHO reports and then I found that as of now there is no evidence to suggest that radiation effects are there. I see 30,000 samples of WHO clearly saying there is no harmful effect, repeatedly over the years," Prasad said. In India, the government has fixed the EMF radiation limit which is 10 per cent stricter than the international guidelines and whenever there is any violation, a fine of Rs 10 crore is imposed. Till now we have imposed about Rs 10 crore as fine on those whose towers were found to be emitting radiations beyond the permissible limits," he said. BJP today appointed former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa as Karnataka unit president and its Phulpur MP and a prominent OBC face Keshav Prasad Maurya to head its Uttar Pradesh unit. By appointing Yeddyurappa, a prominent lingayat face, the party decided to bank on its old warhorse in Karnataka. He was earlier forced to resign as chief minister over graft allegations and quit the party to form his own outfit. Yeddyurappa, who is Lok Sabha member from Shimoga, returned to BJP ahead of 2014 general election. In Uttar Pradesh, the party decided to field an OBC face as the party gears up for the crucial polls next year. Maurya has been associated with RSS since early years. While Uttar Pradesh is slated to go to polls in early 2017, elections are due in Karnataka before May 2018. Announcing the appointments, BJP general secretary Arun Singh also named Union Minister Vijay Sampla, MLA K Laxman and former MP Tapir Gao as the new party chiefs for Punjab, Telangana and Arunachal Pradesh units. Newly-appointed BJP Karnataka chief B S Yeddyurappa today asserted that his main task would be to uproot the "corrupt" Congress regime from the state. The former state chief minister, who was till now discharging his duty as BJP Vice-President, became a frontrunner to assume the charge as the state party president, after the Supreme Court declined to intervene and lift a Karnataka High Court stay on his prosecution in a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The Lingayat leader will assume charge from Prahlad Joshi, whose term ended in October but was extended till today because of zilla panchayat elections. Joshi is a close aide of Union Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Ananth Kumar, considered Yeddyurappa's bete noire. Speaking to reporters in Delhi, Yedyurappa said his main task as state party president would be to uproot the "corrupt" Congress regime from Karnataka. "My task as the chief will be to throw out the corrupt Congress rule in Karnataka," he said after thanking National BJP President Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving him the responsibility. "I will discharge my duty as the state party president with honesty and sincerity. I thank Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and several other leaders to have bestowed faith in my leadership, and I would like to take all the leaders alongside in the state," he said. Yedyurappa said in his political career he has tasted many sweet and sour moments, but assuming charge as the party chief in the state is one the sweet moments. In January, the Karnataka High Court had quashed 15 FIRs filed against the senior BJP leader for alleged illegal denotification of lands based on a CAG report. The order came as yet another breather for Yeddyurappa, close on the heels of the High Court quashing former Governor H R Bhardwaj's sanction for prosecuting him when he was the chief minister and also the Lokayukta court striking down four FIRs against him for alleged illegal land denotification. Yeddyurappa was not allowed to lead the party in the run up to the 2013 state Assembly elections due to pending corruption charges, which saw him landing in jail in 2011. Frustrated and disappointed at not getting the responsibility of leading the party ahead of elections, Yeddyurappa formed his own party - the Karnataka Janata Paksha. His political fortunes changed after the NDA was voted to power in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He returned to the party and campaigned extensively to ensure a victory in Lok Sabha elections, where the party won 17 out of the state's 28 constituencies. Because of the pending corruption charges, he was kept out of the Union ministry. The party pacified him by giving him party vice-president's post. Yeddyurappa was accused of illegally denotifying land in favour of his relatives. Asked about pending corruption cases against him, Yeddyurappa said, he was confident of getting his name cleared from them as well. "I have total faith in judicial system. I have come out clean in almost all court cases, except one or two. I am confident and have faith in the judiciary that I will get justice," he claimed. Meanwhile, several state party leaders expressed happiness over Yedyurappa's appointment as the state unit chief. Calling Yeddyurappa a "friend", Ananth Kumar claimed utilising his experience, BJP will once again come to power in Karnataka in 2018. "Yeddyurappa is a mass leader; he is also farmers' leader, so his appointment will create a new atmosphere and confidence among party workers. This also shows BJP has taken upcoming elections seriously. I congratulate Yeddyrappa." Joshi said Yeddyurappa's appointment "is an appropriate decision and is on expected lines. We will all work together under his leadership to end Congress' misrule and bring BJP back to power." Expressing joy over Yeddyurappa's appointment his confidante and MP Shobha Karandlaje said he will emerge as a force in organising the party and fight the "Siddaramaiah government's misrule." "He has the strength to fight the elections that is just two-and-half years away, he is a fighter. I believe that BJP will come back to power under his leadership," she said. Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy today filed a criminal defamation case against solar panel scam accused Saritha S Nair at a court here, complaining that she hatched a conspiracy to defame him by airing a news item in the media to the effect that he raped her. Chandy has also filed defamation case against four senior editors of two Malayalam news channels alongwith Saritha for airing the news on April 3 and April 4, this year. The complaint filed before Chief Judicial Magistrate Court, Ernakulam, said they released a "truncated letter (allegedly written by her while she was in judicial incarceration) wherein it is stated that she was raped by the complainant in his official residence--Cliff House, Thiruvananthapuram." "Commonsense fails to comprehend as to how such an incident can occur in the Cliff House, where the complainant is residing with his family, and several security guards," the complaint said. Saritha had in a purported letter aired by TV channels alleged that she was sexually abused by Chandy, who had dismissed the charge as "totally baseless" and claimed it was a conspiracy. The local news channels had released the 25-page letter which Saritha had allegedly written in 2013 while she was in custody following her arrest in the solar scam. Saritha had told a TV channel that she had written the letter while she was in custody. In his complaint, the senior Congress leader said enquiries made by him thereafter revealed that the respective letter was a "newly drafted one made at the instance of the adversaries of the complainant" to tarnish his image and reputation and "to ensure that the political party represented by him meets with defeat" in the May 16 state assembly polls. The complaint said Saritha, who has a penchant for giving public interviews, has only referred to him (Chandy) as "a person with a fatherly affection" and she never had a case that the complainant had "behaved in an indecent manner to her on any occasion." Chandy urged the Court to take cognisance of the complaint and proceed against them as per IPC sections dealing with defamation and criminal conspiracy. The Supreme Court today appointed two amicus curiae on appeals of four condemned convicts in the December 16 gangrape and murder case against the Delhi High Court order upholding their death sentence. A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra appointed senior advocates Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde as amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter. While Ramachandran would assist the court in appeals of the convicts --Mukesh and Pawan, Hegde would appear for convicts Vinay and Akshay in the case. "We must express our concern in the matter. We feel the gravity in the whole issue. Sometimes there are many perceptions and we don't want to miss anything. We would like to be assisted by the amicus curiae in the matter. We appoint two senior counsels Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde as amicus in the case," the bench, also comprising Justice V Gopala Gowda and Kurian Joseph, said. The matter is listed for next hearing on July 18. On April 4, the court had commenced arguments on the plea of Mukesh and Pawan. Besides Mukesh and Pawan, the other two convicts, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh, had approached the apex court against the Delhi High Court's March 13, 2014 verdict, which had termed that their offence fell in the rarest of rare category and upheld the death sentence awarded to them by the trial court. A 23-year-old paramedic was brutally assaulted and gangraped by six persons in a moving bus in South Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. She had died in a Singapore hospital on December 29. The prime accused, Ram Singh, had been found dead in a cell in Tihar Jail in March 2013 and proceedings against him were abated. On August 31, 2013, another accused, a juvenile at the time of the crime, was convicted and sentenced to three years in a reformation home. He was released from observation home in December last year. A gruesome propaganda video showing ISIS terrorists throwing a man accused of being homosexual off the roof of a building has emerged on social media this week. After the man plunges to his death, other men waiting at the bottom of the building run towards his body and pelt it with stones. The footage titled 'The Voice of Virtue in Deterring Hell' includes a number of shocking scenes including a beheading, 'Daily Mirror' reports. Another part of the video, released on April 6 on ISIS terrorist channels, shows a blindfolded man knelt on the floor waiting to be beheaded and another prisoner with his arm stretched out on a table as militants prepare to cut his hand off. The video, believed to be shot in Syria, then cuts to ISIS fighters destroying and burning Christian relics and pulling a cross down off the top of a church as well as destroying bottles of alcohol. The professionally shot, edited and produced video cuts between piles of rocks used for stoning and large crowds gathering for prayer. The allegedly gay man is thrown from the roof of the building, before another blindfolded and kneeling man is brutally beheaded. The video then shows the body of the man thrown to his death being stoned by a waiting crowd. ISIS is known for its brutal treatment of homosexuals and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that in January this year alone around 25 gay men were murdered by ISIS. NIA today secured non-bailable arrest warrants against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf and two others for allegedly conspiring to carry out terror strike on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. A special NIA court based in Mohali issued the 'open-ended non-bailable warrant' against Azhar, his brother, main handlers Kashif Jaan and Shaid Latif for allegedly entering into a criminal conspiracy with JeM terrorists for carrying out a terror strike on the IAF base. The strategic base was attacked by terrorists of banned JeM during the intervening night of January one and two in which seven security personnel were killed. Four bodies of terrorists were recovered from the encounter site which lasted for nearly 80 hours. The special court issued the arrest warrant after weighing the evidence presented by NIA before it which included telephonic conversation between the terrorists and the Jaish handlers like Jaan and Latif. The video of Rauf, brother of Azhar, was also presented before the court. In the video which was uploaded on a website being hosted from Pakistan, Rauf had claimed responsibility for the attack and complimented his boys for it. The video has since been removed and the website has also gone off the cyber world. NIA has already sought voice samples of Azhar and three others from Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which came to India for carrying out a probe in the Pathankot terror probe. The non-bailable warrant will be sent to Interpol. India had built a strong case for proscribing Azhar as terrorist at the UN but the move was vetoed by China. An Interpol Red Corner notice is already pending against Azhar for being allegedly involved in the conspiracy behind attacks on Parliament and Jammu and Kashmir state assembly. Similarly an Interpol Red Corner Notice is pending against Rauf in connection with the IC-814 hijacking case of 1999. India has complained to Pakistan about the slow pace of probe in the Parliament attack case and Azhar being given a free hand to continue with his anti-India rhetoric. Islamabad has not heeded to India's demands to bring to book Azhar and other JeM top brass. In the meantime, NIA said that after posting the pictures of the four dead terrorists on its official website, more information was coming from across the world which included many people from Pakistan who were eager to share details pertaining to the slain militants. The four terrorists were identified as Nasir Hussain (Punjab province), Abu Bakar, (Gujranwala), Umar Farooq and Abdul Qayum (both from Sindh). By Glenn Farley 6 April 2016 STEVENS PASS, Washington (KING5 News) April 1st is considered the peak for winter snowpack in Washington state. Last year as this time, the snow monitoring site near Stevens Pass had just a foot to 18 inches on the ground, as the state headed into a record drought. Today at this site, there are 85 inches, about seven feet. Thats about 85% of normal. The snowpack ranges from 91% of normal in the Central Puget Sound region to as high as 124% of normal the upper Columbia Basin The Olympics are at 106%, helping feed the drinking water system for the City of Tacoma. The Lower Yakima basin is 118% of normal, which should be good for farmers. But while the snow is deep, not everything is great. Scott Pattee with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, says one concern is warm temperature coming into Washington this week. Seattle and the lowlands could reach 80 degrees Thursday. Even if its 60 up here in the mountains for the majority of the day, thats going to be enough energy to really get this snow pack turning the corner on the melt cycle, said Pattee. We can hear the streams running behind us right now, so its already releasing water out of the snow pack. On Wednesday, Stevens Pass hit 59. But its not just a few days of warming that concerns him. Its the setup. Pattee has monitored the states snow pack for almost three decades, and despite the high snowpack levels, its what he calls the density of the snowpack that is a concern. Theres water inside the snow, and its riper than it should be at this time of year. We just never really had that deep freeze to really tighten up all that water, that free water standing in that snowpack, he said. [more] Meet The Girl Who Plays M. S. Dhoni's Ex- Girlfriend In His Biopic - Disha Patani! Indian operator Reliance Communications is transferring 5 million CDMA customers onto its rival Reliance Jio Infocomms 4G network. From May, RCom will begin the first phase of migrating subscribers over to Jio Infocomms new 4G network - a move made possible via a spectrum-sharing agreement that the two companies signed in January. While the subscribers will still be customers of RCom, they will receive services delivered via Jio Infocomms 4G infrastructure. The migration process will begin in the circles of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, before continuing in the main metro areas of Delhi and Mumbai. RCom is aiming to complete the migration by 15th August. Customers will be offered deals on 4G handsets as a way of incentivising them to switch over, with devices being provided under instalment plans. The infrastructure-sharing move will provide capex and opex savings to the heavily indebted RCom, while the ability to offer 4G services puts it at the same table as larger rivals Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone India. The operator is also considering selling off telecom towers to reduce debt; a merger with Aircel has even been mooted. Coal of Africa had its Integrated Water Use Licence on the Makhado Project suspended on Friday, following an appeal to the South African Department of Water and Sanitation, submitted by the Vhembe Mineral Resources Forum and other parties. The appeal automatically suspended the licence under the South African Water Act. Its board had anticipated the appeal, and was in the process of preparing an urgent representation to the Minister of Water and Sanitation to request that the licence remain in full force and effect, pending the final conclusion of the appeal by the countrys Water Tribunal. "We are actively engaging with the Department to resolve this appropriately, said Coal of Africa CEO David Brown. "We remain committed to the sustainable development of the Makhado Project, whilst recognising its potential to drive significant socio-economic transformation. We will continue to engage with all stakeholders to ensure the on-going implementation of our co-existent model, seeking co-operation between mining, agriculture and heritage land uses, he added. French industrial production fell back in February, surrendering most of the previous month's gains, possibly heralding weaker economic momentum for the Eurozone as a whole in the second quarter, according to some economists. Industrial output shrank by 1.0% month-on-month, according to INSEE. Economists had pencilled in a fall of 0.4%, while the previous month's reading was revised lower, from a rise of 1.3% over the month to 1.0% Factory output, which accounts for 80.0% of the overall index according to broker BNP Paribas, decreased 0.9% month-on-month while energy sector output declined by 1.6%. "Survey data such as the PMI orders-to-inventory ratio or the own production expectations from the Insee Survey suggest industrial output also remained weak in March. This means French industrial production might have contracted by more than 0.5% q/q in Q1, after rising by 0.6% q/q in Q4 2014," BNP Paribas's Clemente de Lucia pointed out in a research note sent to clients. Althought industry accounted for just 14.0% of value added in French gross domstic product, it was a bellwether for other sectors, he said. In the first quarter of 2016 at least, strong German industrial production was expected to offset weakness in France, but further near-term moderation in euro area industrial production was likely, De Lucia said. "If industrial production continues to moderate in near term, as we expect, the sector will enter the second quarter of the year on a soft note and this loss of momentum will weigh on the Q2 growth rate." BNP Paribas's forecasts called for the Eurozone's gross domestic product to expand by 0.4% quarter-on-quarter over the three months to the end of March 2016. UK equities were led higher by mining stocks on Friday as oil and copper prices rose. Anglo American, Glencore, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Antofagasta and BP were the top risers on the FTSE 100 in morning trade. Oil prices regained strength as Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the US was headed for more economic growth. At 0904 BST, Brent crude jumped 2.2% to $40.33 per barrel and West Texas Intermediate increased 2.7% to $38.31 per barrel. Copper prices were also up 0.41% on the Comex. Speaking at a panel before former Fed Chairs Ben Bernanke, Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan at the International House in New York on Thursday, Yellen touted the strength of the labour market and rebuffed suggestions that an economic bubble is about to burst. "I certainly wouldn't describe this as a bubble economy," Yellen said, responding to Republican presidential contender Donald Trump's claims. Closer to home, the UK will see the release of March industrial and manufacturing production figure at 0930 BST. Whilst this months data misses the current steel crisis, things still dont look pretty; manufacturing is expected to slip into negative territory (-0.2%) from Februarys 0.7%, whilst the industrial production data is forecast to fall from 0.3% to 0.1% month-on-month, said Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex. UK trade data from the Office for National Statistics at 0930 BST is expected to reveal the deficit narrowed to 3.4bn in February from 3.5bn in January. Meanwhile, a report from the NIESR on its UK gross domestic product estimate will be released at 1500 BST. In the US, data on wholesale inventories in February will be published at 1500 BST, with economists projecting a 0.2% drop in February compared to a month ago. In company news, Associated British Foods rallied after saying it had reached an agreement with the board of Illovo Sugar to acquire the 48.65% interest in Illovo that it did not already own. Tullow Oil declined as it said there has been damage to the turret bearing on a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit at its Jubilee field in Ghana. However, the company does not expect this to have any significant impact on revenue. Market Movers techMARK 3,151.81 +0.18% FTSE 100 6,177.09 +0.66% FTSE 250 16,767.12 +0.32% FTSE 100 - Risers Anglo American (AAL) 523.60p +3.46% Glencore (GLEN) 136.30p +3.18% Rio Tinto (RIO) 1,978.00p +3.16% BHP Billiton (BLT) 747.00p +2.68% Antofagasta (ANTO) 437.70p +2.53% BP (BP.) 346.85p +2.23% Standard Chartered (STAN) 442.50p +2.01% Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 667.00p +1.83% Royal Dutch Shell 'A' (RDSA) 1,695.00p +1.71% Pearson (PSON) 839.00p +1.70% FTSE 100 - Fallers Experian (EXPN) 1,241.00p -1.12% AstraZeneca (AZN) 4,135.00p -0.78% Kingfisher (KGF) 377.80p -0.50% Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,545.00p -0.46% Next (NXT) 5,480.00p -0.45% National Grid (NG.) 994.30p -0.39% Shire Plc (SHP) 4,277.00p -0.37% Unilever (ULVR) 3,230.50p -0.32% TUI AG Reg Shs (DI) (TUI) 1,046.00p -0.29% Barratt Developments (BDEV) 548.00p -0.27% FTSE 250 - Risers Weir Group (WEIR) 1,036.00p +4.44% Vectura Group (VEC) 170.00p +4.42% Acacia Mining (ACA) 283.40p +3.43% Evraz (EVR) 93.45p +3.20% Ocado Group (OCDO) 343.90p +2.75% Amec Foster Wheeler (AMFW) 436.90p +2.20% International Personal Finance (IPF) 261.50p +2.15% Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN) 261.40p +2.11% Aldermore Group (ALD) 199.10p +2.10% Ophir Energy (OPHR) 78.10p +1.89% FTSE 250 - Fallers Elementis (ELM) 225.00p -5.70% DFS Furniture (DFS) 304.90p -4.99% Supergroup (SGP) 1,369.00p -3.59% OneSavings Bank (OSB) 299.60p -2.79% Tullow Oil (TLW) 188.30p -2.64% Pendragon (PDG) 36.05p -2.25% Victrex plc (VCT) 1,537.00p -1.66% WH Smith (SMWH) 1,852.00p -1.38% The Renewables Infrastructure Group Limited (TRIG) 103.20p -1.34% John Laing Group (JLG) 225.90p -1.05% FTSE TechMARK - Risers Skyepharma (SKP) 448.75p +1.76% Spirent Communications (SPT) 87.75p +1.15% Oxford Instruments (OXIG) 645.00p +0.55% IShares Euro Gov Bond 7-10YR UCITS ETF (IEGM) 210.62 +0.01% FTSE TechMARK - Fallers UCW Limited (UCW) A$0.05 -8.62% Sepura (SEPU) 131.00p -0.95% KCOM Group (KCOM) 105.75p -0.70% Consort Medical (CSRT) 1,030.00p -0.58% BATM Advanced Communications Ltd. (BVC) 16.56p -0.38% SDL (SDL) 393.00p -0.25% Pressure was building on Friday for Prime Minister David Cameron to step down after he finally admitted he had in fact benefited from a stake in his late fathers offshore investment fund. In an interview with ITV on Thursday, Cameron told Robert Peston that he and his wife owned shares in the Panama-based offshore trust set up by his father, which they sold before he became PM for 30,000. Cameron also confessed that some of the money he inherited from his father may have come from offshore funds. He left me some money, very generously, quite a lot of money. It was 300,000. I obviously can't point to every source of every bit of the money, and dad isn't around to ask the questions now. Cameron insisted he had nothing to hide, saying he paid all the UK taxes due on the investment for the time he held it. I paid income tax on the dividends. There was a profit on it but it was less than the capital gains tax allowance so I didn't pay capital gains tax. But it was subject to all the UK taxes in all the normal way. So I want to be as clear as I can about the past, present and future. Because frankly I don't have anything to hide. I am proud of my dad and what he did, the business he established and all the rest of it. I can't bear to see his name being dragged through the mud. Since the admission, Cameron has come under fire for hypocrisy, with a number of MPs demanding his resignation. Labour MP and Commons Treasury committee member John Mann called on Cameron to resign immediately. "Cameron has been less than honest. He should resign immediately. Most decent people would expect nothing less." Labour Deputy Leader Tom Watson suggested Cameron should pay back the profits he made. Im sure he will now consider voluntarily paying the money that, in his own words, should morally belong to the Exchequer. Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: The Prime Minister has for days denied that he had offshore funds but has been dragged to the truth. For ordinary taxpayers to have faith in the system they have to be able to have faith in their leaders. They deserve better than half truths and qualified statements. Scotlands First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said Camerons credibility was in tatters and urged the PM to be completely transparent about his tax affairs. After four days of ducking and diving it is now clear that he personally benefited from offshore investments. Whether or not it was legal, the tortuous way the information was dragged out of the Prime Minister leaves his credibility in tatters and completely betrays public trust. Fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden also made his feelings very clear in a series of tweets, pointing to the protests in Iceland and calling on the British people to do the same and demand Camerons resignation. Associated British Foods announced on Friday morning that it had reached agreement with the board of Illovo Sugar to acquire the 48.65% interest in Illovo that it did not already own. The FTSE 100 firm acquired a majority shareholding in Illovo in 2006, and flagged the acquisition of the remainder on 8 February and 18 March this year. ABFs board said the agreed offer price per share was ZAR 25, representing a total consideration of ZAR 5.6bn (262m) to be settled in cash. Illovo remains the largest sugar producer in Africa, and is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. It has leading market positions in South Africa, Malawi, Zambia and Swaziland and a strong presence in Mozambique and Tanzania. Africa is a growth market for sugar, driven by increasing populations and rising incomes, ABFs board said in a statement. Illovo is well-positioned to capitalise on this growth although high global sugar stocks, low world sugar prices and forthcoming changes to the EU sugar regime have created a challenging trading environment. AB Sugar has a strong track record of commercial development and delivering performance improvement programmes, and believes that full ownership will accelerate Illovos progress in these areas, it added. The transaction was expected to be implemented by way of a scheme of arrangement, which would be subject to Illovo minority shareholder approval at an extraordinary meeting in May. ABF said Illovo shareholders representing a majority of minority shares had provided undertakings to vote, or to recommend to their clients to vote, and Illovo directors who own shares had agreed in principle to vote in favour of the proposal. Pharmaceuticals AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly have decided to continue a pivotal clinical trial for a potential treatment for early Alzheimers disease. AstraZeneca said on Friday that Amaranth, a phase II/III study of AZD3293, an oral beta secretase cleaving enzyme (BACE) inhibitor currently in development as a potential treatment, will continue into phase III of the phase II/III seamless trial. Menelas Pangalos, executive vice president of AstraZenecas IMED Biotech Unit, said: "Alzheimer's disease remains one of the biggest challenges facing medical science today. BACE inhibitors have the potential to target one of the key drivers of disease progression and we are delighted that our combined efforts have resulted in the development of AZD3293 moving into the next phase of study. Disease modifying approaches, such as this, have the potential to transform the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and help patients in this area of large unmet medical need." AstraZeneca said AZD3293 has been shown in phase I studies to reduce levels of amyloid beta in the cerebro-spinal fluid of people with Alzheimer's disease and healthy volunteers. The progression of Alzheimer's disease is characterised by the accumulation of amyloid plaque in the brain. BACE is an enzyme associated with the development of amyloid beta. Inhibiting BACE is expected to prevent the formation of amyloid plaque and eventually slow the progression of the disease. Under the terms of the agreement, AstraZeneca will receive a further milestone payment of $100m (71m)from Lilly now that AZD3293 will move into Phase III testing. The payment will be reported as externalisation revenue in AstraZeneca's financial statements and does not affect the companys financial guidance for 2016. Morgan Advanced Materials has announced the appointment of Laurence Mulliez to its board as a non-executive director on Friday, with effect from the end of the companys Annual General Meeting on 6 May. Mulliez is currently the chairman of French renewable power developer Voltalia, and a non-executive director at Aperam, SBM Offshore and the UK Green Investment Bank. She was previously the chief executive of independent power producer Eoxis from 2010 to 2013, and prior to that spent 16 years in a variety of roles at BP including chief executive of Castrol Industrial Lubricants and Services. Earlier in her career, Mulliez worked at Amoco Chemical, M&M Mars and Banque Nationale de Paris. "Laurence Mulliez has significant experience in growing, simplifying and unifying complex international industrial manufacturing businesses. She will be a great asset to the Morgan Board and we look forward to working with her, said Morgan chairman Andrew Shilston. Following Mulliezs appointment, the board will comprise five non-executive directors and two executive directors. 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. No power, no hot water, bedbugs at apartment towers near Downtown Residents at the Latitude Five25 apartment towers on the Near East Side said they've had no hot water, no power at times. The city is going to court. Toyota partners with University of Michigan in AI initiative for autonomous cars Toyota has announced a tie-up with the University of Michigan to focus on artificial intelligence (AI) technology in autonomous cars, the third initiative under a $1-billion investment by the company. With the latest tie-up the Japanese automaker now boasts three collaborations with US universities for AI research. The Japanese auto maker not only wants autonomous driving vehicles, it also wants them to take over to stop drivers from crashing. The company already has a research centre in Massachusetts, where it worked with MIT, and another in Palo Alto, California, where it collaborated with Stanford University. According to Fortune, the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) CEO Gill Pratt made the announcement on 7 April, at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference in San Jose. A University of Michigan professor, who is joining the new Ann Arbor centre said that one of the chief reasons for the company's new investment was that Michigan allowed extreme-limit testing in wide variety of environments. Meanwhile, it had been reported that car accidents caused roughly 1.2 million deaths annually. That was a problem that Toyota was trying to solve with self-driving cars and the artificial intelligence required to run them. ''We want constructive coopetition here,'' Pratt said in his keynote speech at the Nvidia GPUTech conference in San Jose, California. ''The fact that we tolerate 1.2 million people killed per year is astounding, and it's a shame. It far exceeds the number of people killed in war.'' ''Because 1.2 million people per year demand nothing less,'' Pratt said. ''The future is incredibly bright for all of us working on this.'' According to Pratt, there were various levels of autonomy needed to make self-driving cars safer. One was to allow an immediate hand-off to a car when there was an emergency that required a human driver. Another was to give warning of perhaps 30 seconds about when a driver needed to take over, and the final level of autonomy was a complete self-driving car that handled all emergencies. Halloween creatures owls, crows and bats all live at Crossroads, and that makes us very happy, for these scary animals make a positive contribution to the habitats of the preserve. We don't even mind black cats, IF they are kept indoors. Feral and outdoor cats are exceedingly harmful to wildlife ... and that's not a superstition! But to tamp down superstitions, we at Crossroads will spend the week demystifying Halloween creatures. On October 28, 2022, at 6 p.m. will be our Evening with Owls. The Open Door Bird Sanctuary will be at Crossroads, offering a one-hour presentation followed by the opportunity to meet and greet live birds. Learn all about owls and the other incredible birds in the care of the Sanctuary! Down through the centuries, in many cultures throughout the world, owls have been associated with evil and death. Truth is, owls probably are not smart enough to be evil. But researchers agree that owls are about as dim as the nighttime forests in which they hunt. Owls don't need to be smart. They have everything else going for them. They are muscular. They fly silently. Their huge eyes enable them to see in the dark. Their beaks and talons are strong and wickedly sharp. But their sensitive ears are what make owls extraordinary hunters. Most people assume that the plumicorns (a.k.a. "horns) of an owl are its ears. Not so. The actual ears lie under feathers on the sides of the head, and they aren't symmetrical. Because one ear is higher than the other and the ears are unequal in size, sound is different from different directions, helping owls locate prey, which they do almost unfailingly, even in total darkness. Owls do not smell their prey. As with most birds, the sense of smell is insignificant, if it exists are all. Great Horned Owls frequently prey on skunks. Enough said. But well-developed intelligence? Researchers have observed owls beating their wings on bushes to try to flush out little birds. Is this learned behavior? Is it problem-solving? Maybe. For the most part, owls do not have a lot of problems to solve. They appropriate abandoned nests of other birds, so they don't need building skills. They are stealthy by nature, and they pounce on and usually catch anything they hear, so they don't need hunting techniques. In spite of ghost stories, legends of American First People, and superstitions from Europe and India, hooting owls do not foretell impending death, although their nocturnal calls are spooky. We hear them now and then this time of year, but we will regularly hear those eerie calls at Crossroads in January or February. In contrast to owls, crows are noisy all year round and they are amazingly intelligent. They can learn. They can remember. They can solve problems. They can even identify individual humans. And they detest owls, though whether this is innate or learned behavior is not clear. Those curious about crows will want to attend the Crossroads Book Club on Wednesday, October 26, at 10:00 a.m. This month, the book Crow Planet, Essential Wisdom for the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt will explore the fascinating world of these remarkable birds. The program is free and open to all, whether or not they have read the book. So bring the family to our program on owls, learn about crows at the Crossroads Book Club, or learn about bats at our pre-school Junior Nature Club on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. or our Family Science Saturday program at 2:00 p.m. Costumes are encouraged but not required at Junior Nature Club and Science Saturday, and adult visitors are welcome. 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. My beautiful black goddess, a brand new 1-Series BMW. Because I sometimes get up at four in the morning and have to drive to work in the freezing winter, I wanted seat warmers. They're probably one of the best things about my car. I was just going to get one of the cars that they had in-store, but because I wanted a lot of extras I ended up making a custom car. I've got black leather seats with red trim all around me. There's a red stripe on the dash. Everything's got a little bit of red to it. It's unbelievable. I never want to leave it. The father of the born-again Holden Monaro will steer the future of General Motors' global design. Australian designer, Mike Simcoe, has today been confirmed as the new Vice President of GM Global Design, becoming the first non-American to be appointed in the role and only the seventh in the company's 107-year history. The 48-year-old Australian, who famously penned the Monaro as a top-secret project on a wall in his house, will replace Ed Welburn next month following the American veteran's decision to retire after a 44-year career at the world's third-largest car maker. Simcoe told Australian media this morning he was "humbled and a bit daunted" and still lost for words at being handed his "dream job", with confirmation of the appointment only coming on Tuesday. But he is excited at the prospect of leading General Motors into a new era of design at a time when the future of the car is being challenged by unconventional technologies such as autonomous driving systems, electric powertrains and ride sharing businesses such as Lyft, which General Motors recently invested more than $700m in to help with the development of driverless cars. "I will take on the role to enable the design community to foster a big level of change coming through with a new level of technology and mobility heading into the future," he said. "It's an exciting time for me personally and the community in general. GM, as a whole, is well placed as you've seen where we're going with partners and acquisitions. Clearly GM is heading to being a mobility provider and we're looking to work with new technologies." Simcoe will relocate to General Motors' headquarters in Detroit next month where he will be responsible for the output of the company's 2500 design staff located in 10 design studios across the globe. He admitted that, as the first non-American global design boss, he will bring a more holistic view to the company. "It's an incredible role and Ed leaves a legacy of incredible design and a level of mentorship over time," he said. "I'm clearly a different character and I have my views on how I need to make the role work for me. I'm the first non American and I think that brings a more global view. I have a slightly different spin on that. One of the things that makes me apt for the role is a more diverse global view." In his new role, Simcoe maintained he will continue to champion the Australian design operation which is led by Richard Ferlazzo and one of only two studios in the GM world that is capable of producing both conventional production car design as well as the fabrication of advanced concept cars. "The team in Australia is pretty good right now," he said. "In many ways, I've protected it through the re-invitation of Holden and I don't see anything changing that. It is one of the most diverse design operations in the industry." Simcoe first joined Holden in 1983 as a designer and has risen through the ranks of the GM global design community, having twice previously worked in the United States as a Senior Designer in the Advanced Production Studios between 1990 and 1992 and then as the Executive Director of North American Exterior Design from 2004 to 2014. In his most recent position as Executive Director of General Motors' International Design, Simcoe has been responsible for the studios in Port Melbourne, South Korea and India. During his 33-year career with GM, Simcoe has oversee the design of models as diverse as the Monaro and Camaro muscle cars to the Chevrolet Bolt electric car and Spark city runabout as well as Holden's billion-dollar VE Commodore - the platform that still underpins the final locally-made Aussie Holden sedan. Its well-known that MI-08 Republican Congressman Mike Bishop is a bought-and-paid-for lapdog of the Moroun family. The patriarch of that family, Manuel Matty Moroun, is the billionaire owner of the Ambassador Bridge that spans the Detroit River between Detroit and Windsor. Although there is a desperate need for an additional bridge to facilitate truck traffic that now backs up for miles on busy days, Moroun is equally desperate that no additional bridge be built unless he is the one that builds it and profits from it. He went so far as to attempt to get voters to pass a ballot initiative back in 2012 that would assist him in maintaining his monopoly. Voters rebuffed him but he has never given up hope. He has fought another bridge proposal, one that is now a done deal and will be called the Gordie Howe International Bridge, tooth and nail and nobody has been more helpful along the way, exploiting his government position and political connections, than Mike Bishop. Bishop has been swimming in Moroun campaign contributions for years and Moroun companies even hired him as a consultant and lobbyist once he was termed limited out of the state Senate, something I wrote about in great detail HERE. Bishops involvement in helping preserve Morouns bridge monopoly actually goes back to his time in the state Senate when he was the majority leader. At that time, he promised an up or down vote on a proposal for a publicly-funded bridge but later reneged on his promise. When that happened, Brian Masse, a member of the Canadian Parliament, called Bishops decision an international betrayal: Some of the leading proponents of the Detroit International River Crossing held a press conference last week in an attempt to prompt Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop to keep his pervious promise and allow a vote on a proposal to build a new publicly owned span in the Delray area. Bishop had promised several months ago to allow a vote on the proposal, but reneged after Republicans in November took firm control of both houses in the Legislature and the governors office. Among those speaking at the press conference held outside Ste. Annes Church in southwest Detroit was Brian Masse, a member of the Canadian Parliament who represents part of Windsor. Masse called Bishops flip-flop an international betrayal. I ask [Bishop] to live up to his word, Masse told those at the sparsely attended event. In Canada, when you shake hands on something, it means something. Last week, in an interview with WHMI, Bishop suddenly revised history, claiming he never promised a vote on the bridge his benefactor Matty Moroun has spent the past decade trying to stop: So, I fought this thing back in 2005 because we simply couldnt afford a new bridge. And that went all the way through my time as Senate Majority Leader. I never once promised a vote on that bridge. Bishops revision of history is provably false. Gongwer News Service even had a headline at the time titled Bishop promises up-or-down vote on D.R.I.C. Its unclear why Bishop feels the need to lie about this. Perhaps its because his Democratic opponent Melissa Gilbert is calling him out on his shilling for Moroun and his flip-flop on the bridge vote is just more evidence that hes been in Morouns pocket for years. What IS clear is that Moroun is still very much politically active and intent on stopping the Gordie Howe International Bridge so he can build one of his own. He held a $25,000-a-plate fundraiser for former House Speaker John Boehner last September and hes dumping tons of money into lobbying efforts: The Morouns political spending and the politicians who avail themselves of those contributions havent gone unnoticed. In 2012, a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), issued a report saying the Morouns political efforts specifically those of Matty Moroun to delay the new bridge had shown how a single determined billionaire can wield disproportionate influence over the public agenda. It does look like a tactic from the same playbook, CREWs executive director, Noah Bookbinder, said last week of the Boehner fund-raiser, adding that its a concern when(ever) you have a powerful interest using money to influence policy. But even Bookbinder acknowledged its difficult to know precisely what the Morouns are playing at, if anything, since its not clear theres an opportunity for Congress to take a significant effort to block the new bridge from moving forward. The bridge companys lobbying reports indicate, however, it is still trying to get a measure written into law precluding any funding for a rival span. It is also still working on efforts to force Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation to sign off on permits for its own second span. In fact, Moroun spent over a half million dollars lobbying members of Congress in the 2013-2014 cycle: The Detroit International Bridge Co., controlled by the Moroun family, also spent $520,000 in 2013-14 to lobby interests in Washington, including efforts to facilitate a second span of the Ambassador Bridge and preclude funding for the Detroit River International Crossing, according to disclosure reports. Messing with public policy and laws is something Moroun is quite familiar with. He sued the Coast Guard last year after they rejected a permit for his new bridge. However, the Coast Guard had a surprising change of heart recently and granted the permit. Although nothing can be proven, some are asking if Bishop used his new position as a U.S. Congressman to persuade the Coast Guard to change their position after six years. Meanwhile, on the Canada side, Moroun has purchased huge swaths of property that he has left moldering and vacant. There have recently been a rash of unexplained arson fires in his properties: The sooner the legal issues are resolved thatll be significant, Bruce Montone told the Star Wednesday. Later this month, Canadas highest court will hear arguments on whether the City of Windsor has jurisdiction to order the owners of the Ambassador Bridge to fix more than 100 homes it bought up, emptied out, boarded up and then just let sit and rot. The bridge company argues its operation falls under federal jurisdiction and that Windsor has no say on its now-dilapidated residential holdings within the municipalitys boundaries. Since 2013, Montone said there have been 14 deliberately set fires at abandoned homes in the immediate area around Indian Road, where most of the homes are owned by the bridge company and sit vacant and crumbling. Tuesday night, fire crews were sent scrambling to the latest call, a two-storey multi-unit at 768 Indian Rd. [] The chief is pinning his hopes on a Supreme Court case that could force bridge billionaire Matty Moroun, if the municipality wins, to fix his west-side residential holdings so theyre not such magnets for mischief-makers. The properties have been acquired to accommodate the bridge companys desire to twin its current international span, a plan the city fiercely opposes as a threat to Olde Sandwich. Moroun has the dubious distinction of being a disgustingly greedy businessperson in two countries simultaneously and Mike Bishop has been there to support him all along the way. In other news, Bishop had something surprising to say about education in our country in his WHMI interview. He wants to eliminate the Department of Education and all of the programs it funds: [Bishop] also said that if it were up to him, he would dissolve the Department of Education and leave education decisions completely at the state level. That prompted a response from James Stretch, Campaign Manager for Melissa Gilbert, Bishops position on education is out of step with Michigan values, and so extreme that not even John Kasich would support it. By calling to dissolve an entire department and the college student aid it provides, Bishop is in the same league as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. James Stretch, Campaign Manager for Melissa Gilbert, had this to say about Bishops shocking position on education: Mike Bishops irresponsible, cut and slash education policy would make college even more unaffordable for thousands of college students in Michigan who rely on Pell Grants and other forms of student aid. Bishops position on education is out of step with Michigan values, and so extreme that not even John Kasich would support it. By calling to dissolve an entire department and the college student aid it provides, Bishop is in the same league as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The idea of the Snyder administration making all education decisions for our children is shudder-worthy and something that should give every voter in the 8th Congressional District serious pause. Thankfully, 8th Congressional District voters have an alternative in Melissa Gilbert. You can learn more about her campaign at GilbertForMichigan.com. Broadband Internet service providers are wary of a government plan to impose consumer privacy protection regulations on the sector. TheFederal Communications Commission likely will issue the proposed regulations by Friday. It will accept public comment on the proposal before taking final action. The program would require ISPs to meet consumer privacy protection standards similar to the regulations that cover telephone service companies. ISPs currently are exempt from such requirements. The information collected by the phone company about your telephone usage has long been protected information. FCC regulations currently limit your phone companys ability to repurpose and resell what it learns about your phone activity without your consent. The same should be true for information collected by your ISP, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said at a recent Georgetown University conference. While consumers generally are aware that social media and website hosts collect a wealth of personal data from users and visitors, few are aware that the vehicle for such contacts the ISPs also track personal information, he said. FCC Reveals Ability to Collect Consumer Data Your ISP handles all of your network traffic. That means it has a broad view of all of your unencrypted online activity when you are online, the websites you visit, and the apps you use, Wheeler said. If you have a mobile device, your provider can track your physical location. Even when data is encrypted, your broadband provider can piece together significant amounts of information about you including private information such as a chronic medical condition or financial problems based on your online activity, he added. The regulations would address the use and protection of consumer data generated through ISP operations, according to a draft of the proposal. Privacy: ISPs would retain the authority to use customer data for billing and marketing their own broadband services. However, the proposed rules mandate that customers be given a choice as to whether an ISP can use customer data for other purposes, according to a summary of the draft compiled by Dee Dee Fischer, a partner atAkerman. For example, customers will have the right to opt out of permitting ISPs to use their data for marketing services other than broadband, or sharing data for marketing purposes with affiliates that provide communication services. Additionally, ISPs would be prohibited from sharing customer data for any other purpose, such as targeted advertising, unless the customer opts in, according to the summary. ISPs would retain the authority to use customer data for billing and marketing their own broadband services. However, the proposed rules mandate that customers be given a choice as to whether an ISP can use customer data for other purposes, according to a summary of the draft compiled by Dee Dee Fischer, a partner atAkerman. Security: The FCC program will impose robust and flexible data security requirements on broadband providers, Fischer noted. ISPs will be required to take reasonable steps to safeguard customer information from unauthorized use or disclosure, including adoption of risk management practices, training of personnel, and use of customer authentication measures. ISPs must designate a senior manager for data security and take responsibility for the use and protection of customer information when shared with third parties. Breaches would have to be reported to consumers and the government within certain time frames. These new rules, if passed into law, will represent the first time that the FCC has imposed data privacy rules on ISPs, and would constitute some of the strongest privacy regulations of any segment of the technology and telecommunications industry, Fischer said. The regulations would affect a wide range of broadband companies, including AT&T, Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. Operators Challenge FCC Authority Permanent adoption of the FCC proposal could face significant legal hurdles, however. A key factor is whether the commission has the legal authority to regulate ISPs at all. In 2015, it decided to classify ISPs as telecommunications entities subject to the same type of regulation as telephone utilities. That empowered the commission to issue the proposed privacy regulations for ISPs. Broadband operators challenged the decision in a case pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Colombia. They contend that under the Telecommunications Act, ISPs are information services and as such cannot be regulated in the same fashion as telecommunications providers. The technology and engineering associated with ISP connections is inherently different from the direct service to consumers provided by regulated telephone utilities, the ISPs argue. The FCCs jurisdiction extends only to telephone utility data defined by law as consumer proprietary network information and does not cover the tiered ISP structure enabled by router-based connectivity. ISPs Favor Flexible Regulation Even if the FCC prevails and retains regulatory jurisdiction over ISPs, members of the broadband community have taken issue with its approach to regulating ISPs. The rules for ISPs are at odds with the requirements for other online entities, according to theNational Cable & Telecommunications Association. The FCC should work to ensure consistency in consumer privacy protection and fair competition. The commission should embrace the approach taken by theFederal Trade Commission, which protects consumers while allowing IT providers flexibility in meeting privacy goals,CTIA urged. The FTC focuses on potentially deceptive activities by e-commerce providers in failing to inform consumers of privacy impacts, as well as prosecuting unfair practices in the delivery of services. There should be one set of rules that cover wireless operators, apps and over-the-top providers so that consumers know what, if anything, is happening to their information, regardless of which company holds it, said Debbie Matties, vice president for privacy at CTIA. If the FCC does have jurisdiction over this issue, it should follow the FTC model that has resulted in innovation throughout the Internet while protecting consumers. Establishing a different set of rules for a limited subset of the industry will only confuse customers, she told the E-Commerce Times. Consumer advocates strongly endorse the proposal. The FCC is not just legally authorized to take action it is imperative for the agency to issue a broad rule-making that addresses the full range of communications privacy issues facing U.S. consumers, said Claire Gartland, consumer protection counsel at theElectronic Privacy Information Center. Because the U.S. currently lacks comprehensive privacy legislation or an agency dedicated to privacy protection, there are very few legal constraints on business practices that impact the privacy of American consumers. The FCC has the opportunity to fill this void, she told the E-Commerce Times. Groups Cite FCC Powers Unlike the FCC, the FTC does not have rule-making authority to issue regulations on e-commerce, except in limited circumstances, Gartland noted. Fundamentally, the FTC is not a data protection agency. Without regulatory authority, the FTC is limited to reactive, after-the-fact enforcement actions that largely focus on whether companies honored their own privacy promises, she said. Broadband Internet access system providers act as critical gatekeepers in the broadband ecosystem, and their data collection is detailed and captures much of a consumers online activity. Therefore, the FCCs proposed actions are important, and it is good to see the FCC seize this rare and important opportunity to protect the privacy of broadband consumers, said Katharina Kopp, director of privacy and data at theCenter for Democracy and Technology. CDT believes that promoting innovation is not incompatible with protecting the fundamental right to privacy, she told the E-Commerce Times. Giving individuals the opportunity to affirmatively consent to uses of their broadband data for purposes unrelated to providing communications services is fair and will give them some much needed control. This will build trust in the process, in the economic marketplace and in further innovation. Yahoo is in the midst of a financial freefall, based on a Re/code report that claims the companys deal book shows a muddled and confusing financial picture that has made potential investors nervous about any effort to salvage the business. Yahoos internal presentation for investors paints a picture of a company moving entirely in the wrong direction, according to the Re/code report. Slides show that Yahoos revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, is projected to drop 15 percent to US$3.5 billion in 2016, compared with $4.1 billion a year ago. Earnings before depreciation, taxes and amortization, are expected to fall 20 percent to $750 million. The company is planning significant headcount reductions with total jobs down to about 9,000 by the end of this year, compared with 12,500 in 2014 yet no change in stock compensation, the report notes. Yahoo also is losing significant fee income from its Asian assets, as $200 million in TIPLA is gone never to return following the Alibaba Groups initial public offering. Another $120 million will go away in 2017, when Yahoo Japan moves over to Google, according to Re/code. TAC costs have exploded, rising from about $220 million in 2014 to an estimated $1 billion in 2016, the data reportedly shows. This is largely based on search deals Yahoo has inked with Mozilla, Oracle and other firms. Yahoo last month announced plans to consolidate non-core content areas and focus on a few strong revenue and visitor drivers, as part of an overall plan to streamline operations at the company. Confusing Numbers Investors have found several slides in the deal book confusing, the report notes. The costs of some search staff apparently are listed under research, and regional unit figures are located in different categories. More troublesome is that senior Yahoo executives, including Marissa Mayer and CFO Ken Goldman, have refused to answer a number of questions until buyers are approved for a second round of bids. Initial bids are due Monday, according to the report. Mayer has been very bullish about a Yahoo voice search product called Index, the Re/code report indicates, despite the potentially serious costs involved, and the fact that rival firms have their own personal assistant products already on the market in the form of Apples Siri, Amazons Alexa, Microsofts Cortana and Google Now. Yahoo declined to comment on the report. As we said when we announced the formation of the Strategic Review Committee, we dont intend to update until an agreement has been reached or the committee makes the decision to no longer pursue a transaction, spokesperson Rebecca Neufeld told the E-Commerce Times. Legacy Gone? As a legacy Internet search and content provider, Yahoo has developed a recognized brand name and does generate revenue, observed Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. The firm also has managed to keep a large number of loyal customers for several of its Web brands, he told the E-Commerce Times, but the flip side of the companys recent decision making is going to require a lot of heavy lifting. They are a company that has had horrid executive leadership for an extended period, and that means the firm will require a massive amount of financial and management help to pull out, Enderle said. Finding a buyer, as a result, wont be easy. Yahoo is more dinosaur than sleeping giant, said technology analyst Jeff Kagan, and its inability to innovate will make investors wary of placing bets on any turnaround strategy. Yahoo was once an industry innovator and leader, but that was a long time ago, he told the E-Commerce Times. They have been trying to restart their growth engines over the last 10 to 20 years. Every growth wave rises and falls, but the smart companies create the next growth wave before the first one dies down, said Kagan, likening Yahoo to companies like Nokia, BlackBerry and Motorola, which failed to create the next big growth wave before the previous cycle ended. Based on what we see today, he said, while its sad, I think Yahoo may never recapture their glory days. Theres no youthful excitement or energy. 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They include James Carnes, vice president of strategy creation at Adidas, Daniella Vega, director of sustainability at Selfridges, Lewis Perkins, president at Cradle to Cradles Product Innovation Institute, and Susan Rockefeller, CEO at Protect What Is Precious. Also announced are Scott MacKinlay Hahn, co-founder of Loomstate, Linda Hewson, creative director at Selfridges, Elisa Niemtzow, director of consumer sectors at BSR, and Vivek Batra, CEO at Hessnatur. Previously announced speakers of the 2016 Copenhagen Fashion Summit include Vivienne Westwood's head of couture, Brigitte Stepputtis, founder of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion Dilys Williams, Australian Vogue's editor-in-chief Edwina McCann, German Harpers Bazaar's fashion director Kai Margrander, and strategic fashion consultant Peter Ingwersen. The Copenhagen Fashion Summit takes place the day after Planet Textiles 2016 (running on 11 May) and in the same week as the two-day annual member meeting of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. As part of a partnership between MCL Global, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and the Danish Fashion Institute, delegates at the Planet Textiles conference automatically receive a 30 per cent discount to attend the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, and vice versa. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more details. View the full preliminary speaker line-up and register here. (Photo: Peter Kenny / Ecumenical News)Contemplating: World Council of Churches General Secretary, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit; Cardinal Kurt Koch, who heads ecumenical matters for the Holy See and Albanian Orthodox Archbishop Anastasios on Nov. 2, 2015 at a meeting of global Chrsitian leaders entitled, "Discrimination, Persecution, Martyrdom: Following Christ Together" held in Tirana, Albania. TIRANA, Albania - It was a unique and significant gathering of leaders from ever tradition of Christianity to discuss discrimination and persecution, made in a land that brutally banned all expressions of faith in any manner during the 20th century. The global gathering of 145 people took place from Nov. 2-4 in Tirana, Albania, a country that was declared by its constitution to be an atheist state in 1967, and now has flourishing churches in a framework of religious freedom even though some discrimination may remain. Coming from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North and South America, they asked all governments to respect and protect the freedom of religion and belief of all people as a fundamental human right. They sought solidarity from all Christians and also repentance for having at times persecuted each other and other religious communities in history, seeking one another's forgiveness and news way's of following Jesus together. "It was the first meeting in modern history of Christianity high level leaders and representatives of the various Church traditions gathered together to listen to, learn from, and stand with discriminated and persecuted Churches and Christians in the world today," the organizers said. Entitled Discrimination, Persecution, Martyrdom: Following Christ Together, the meeting was convened by the Global Christian Forum together with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (Roman Catholic Church), the Pentecostal World Fellowship, the World Evangelical Alliance, and the World Council of Churches. It was organized in close collaboration with the Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania, the Albanian Bishops' Conference, and the Evangelical Alliance of Albania. "We have come together because discrimination, persecution and martyrdom among Christians and people of other faiths in the contemporary world are growing due to a complex variety of factors in different realities and contexts," they said. "We also appeal to governments and international organisations to respect and protect Christians and all other people of goodwill from threats and violence committed in the name of religion," they said. The Christian leaders said, "As we follow Christ, Christians can be exposed to any form of persecution, suffering and martyrdom, because the sinful world is against the Gospel of salvation. "But from earliest times Christians experienced the hope and reality of the Resurrection through walking the way of the Cross. Together we follow Christ as we 'hunger and thirst for righteousness' (Matthew 5:6) for all." They noted that the life of the Church for centuries in proclaiming the Gospel of Christ has entailed "the shedding of the martyr's blood." Without referring to any country or area the Christian leaders noted that the 21st century is full of moving stories of faithful people who have paid for their dedication to Christ through suffering, torture and execution. Christian martyrs unite us in ways we can hardly imagine. (Source: Reuters)Pope Francis, in an earlier interview said that the church should not take a step back in dealing with the problem involving the Catholic religious. He stated that everyone mus t be stronger and that people should not play around the lives of the children. Pope Francis has published new guidelines on family life that argue the 1.3 billion strong-Catholic Church should show more understanding of modern realities whilst not changing any doctrine. The lengthy document, entitled 'Amoris Laetitia', or The Joy of Love, affirms the Church's teaching that stable families are the building blocks of a healthy society and a place where children learn to love, respect and interact with others. At the same time the text released April 8 warns against idealizing the many challenges facing family life, urging Catholics to care for, rather than condemning, all those whose lives do not reflect the teaching of the Church. The document focuses on the need for "personal and pastoral discernment'" for individuals. It recognizes that "neither the Synod, nor this Exhortation could be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases." The document is based on two Synods on the issue. It opens the way, however, for bishops in each country to interpret doctrine to suit their own culture, the BBC reports as it details the Pope's views on family life, marriage, contraception and bringing up children. The document is the culmination of three years' work by Pope Francis. Catholic doctrine deems that divorced Catholics who remarry are not allowed to receive Communion unless they get an annulment of their first marriage or abstain from sex with their new spouses. If they fail to get an annulment, the church considers them adulterers and unworthy of receiving the Eucharist. In the new guidelines, Francis did not change that that rule, but he indicated that priests should show flexibility in enforcing it. The debate on the family has shown major regional differences within the church also provoking divisions within the faithful, The Wall Street Journal reported. It cited priests in Germany regularly give Communion to remarried divorced people, while in neighboring Poland this rarely happens. The Islamic School of Canberra is expected to remain open through next term despite a $1.1m cut in recurrent Federal funding taking effect today.The school was recently granted an extension until 26 April to apply for a review of the Federal Governments decision to end its funding.There were concerns the school would be forced to close, but ACT Education Minister, Shane Rattenbury, told the ABC he expected the school would open for term two.The Islamic School has indicated to the ACT Government that they intend to remain open until the end of this year, Rattenbury said.Then beyond that they have sought registration through to 2021. We are operating on the basis that they assure us they have enough funds to continue.However, the Minister added that the Department would need to work closely with the school to verify this claim.The withdrawal of Commonwealth funding of $1.1m a year is obviously very significant, but if the school is able to identify a way to replace that funding and remain financially viable then there is no reason they shouldn't continue in the ACT.While the funding cut is a major blow to the school, the ACT Government's $400,000 in annual funding is set to continue.The Federal Government has different assessment criteria to the ACT Government. Our primary concern is financial viability and good governance, Rattenbury said, adding the Federal Government had other issues.At this stage I am confident the school is spending the ACT Government's money appropriately.There is also cautious optimism over the fate of another Islamic school which has had its funding revoked.Last week, the Federal Governments internal review found that Malek Fahd Australias largest Muslim school with 2,400 students and 30 staff had failed to justify ongoing funding by the Commonwealth.The decision followed a Federal Government audit which found governance and financial mismanagement issues at the six schools run by the nations peak Muslim body, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC).However, AFIC lawyer, Rick Mitry, told AAP last week that he was confident the school had money to operate until the end of the year and would not close down any time soon.It's not the end of the day by any stretch of the imagination, he said, adding parents and students should not be concerned.The future still looks good. Educators and immigration activists are weighing in on a hot-button case up for argument at the U.S. Supreme Court later this month with broad implications for millions of undocumented immigrant parents, their children, and schools. The April 18 oral arguments in United States v. Texas (Case No. 15-674) will consider the legality of an Obama administration program that would protect from deportation and give work authorization to some 3.6 million undocumented immigrant parents of children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. Although the legal issues concern the authority of the administration to issue the guidance for Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, or DAPA, the justices are being flooded with briefs offering social science evidence about how removing the threat of deportation of undocumented parents helps children, emotionally, socially, and in school. Upholding DAPA would mean that children of those parents will no longer live in daily fear that they will come home from school and find one or both of those parents gone, because they are in detention and face removal, Thomas A. Saenz, the president and general counsel of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or MALDEF, said in an interview. MALDEF intervened in the case on behalf of three undocumented mothers in Texas, two of whom have school-age children who are U.S. citizens. Those mothers, who are identified in court papers only as Jane Doe #1, #2, and #3, volunteer in their childrens schools and accompany their classes on field trips. Though this reprieve would not provide any legal status, pathway to citizenship, or defense to removal, if the [DAPA] guidance is implemented the Jane Does would be able to apply for deferred action in the hope of obtaining some temporary certainty in their lives and the lives of their children, the MALDEF brief says. The DAPA guidance was challenged by Texas and 26 other states, which argue that the Obama administration exceeded its authority under several federal immigration laws by adopting the program by executive action. A federal district court sided with Texas and issued an injunction to block the program, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans, upheld that decision. One of Texas arguments is that DAPA will cause it and other states to incur additional costs in the areas of law enforcement, health care, and education. Texas pays at least $7,903 annually for each unlawfully present alien enrolled in public school, the states brief says, and in one recent year, Texas absorbed additional education costs of at least $58,531,100 stemming from illegal immigration. Texas notes in its brief, without commentary, that it and other states must provide an education to undocumented immigrant children under the U.S. Supreme Courts 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe, which held that Texas violated the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment by withholding funds from school districts for the education of undocumented immigrant children. This court has repeatedly recognized that states incur significant costs from unlawful immigration, Texas tells the justices in its brief. The states will be injured if DAPA causes more aliens to demand these costly services. Educators Join the Fray Also implicated in the case is a related Obama administration program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. That program, announced in 2012, defers immigration enforcement and provides work authorization for nearly 2 million eligible youths and young adults who came to the United States as children and have lived here since 2007. The DACA program has been operating since then, though the administrations 2014 effort to expand it to cover a wider range of ages and arrival dates and to lengthen the period of deferred action from two years to three was blocked along with the separate DAPA initiative as a result of the Texas lawsuit. Several friend-of-the-court briefs filed on the Obama administrations side by educators and education groups praise DACA and cite studies about its impact. DACA is unique among immigration policies because it makes educational attainment a condition for eligibility, says a brief by a group of educators and childrens advocates that includes the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and other education groups. They point out that eligible applicants must have a high school diploma or its equivalent or be enrolled in school, including K-12 education, adult education, literacy, or career-training programs. Thus, the expansion of DACA would encourage more individuals to remain in or return to school in order to qualify for the program, improving rates of educational attainment among the eligible population, the brief says. Steve Zimmer, the president of the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said in an interview that nothing has stabilized the lives of students in our district more than DACA. He signed on to a separate brief supporting the federal expansion filed by various California education, civic, and business leaders. DACA has taken an entire set of stressors off the table for a group of students that came to this country through no decision of their own, Zimmer said. These education briefs also point to studies that suggest implementation of the DAPA program would aid schoolchildren by removing stress from their familys lives. The relief of pressure on undocumented parents would extend to their children, said Randy Capps, the director of research for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute, based in Washington. A state such as Texas with a large population of Latinos who are U.S.-born children of undocumented parents would see lower dropout rates and increased college enrollment. And parents would be able to get a drivers license, and work, and be more likely to go out in public, said Capps, the lead author of a report on DAPA. That would make their interactions with the schools easier. A Range of Arguments Of course, some of these are policy arguments. When the justices hear the case April 18, they will confront an array of legal arguments, starting with whether Texas or other states even would suffer concrete injuries from the DAPA and expanded DACA programs, thus giving them proper legal standing to sue. Thats where Texas raised its arguments about increased costs for education and other areas. Lower courts found that the state had legal standing to sue on the basis that it would have to issue drivers licenses to DAPA beneficiaries, increasing costs in that area. U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. starts with that issue, arguing in a brief that Texas and other states are not regulated by the DAPA and expanded DACA policies and have no standing. He goes on to argue that federal immigration statutes give the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security ample authority to adopt deferred-action policies. Millions of undocumented aliens live and work in this country, and Congress has directed the secretary to focus his limited resources on removing serious criminals and securing the border, Verrilli says in the brief. By deferring action for individuals who are not priorities for removal, the [DAPA and expanded DACA] guidance enables DHS to better focus on its removal priorities. Texas, which did not respond to an interview request, says in its brief that DAPA would be one of the largest changes in immigration policy in our nations history. It goes on to make numerous arguments why the Obama administration exceeded its powers in adopting the policies. Michael M. Hethmon, the senior counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a Washington-based group that opposes the Obama policies and filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Texas side, said in an interview that Congress has complete authority over federal immigration policy. Congress didnt just turn over the keys and the deed to the Department of Homeland Security and say, Go for it, he said. There are a number of stark realities surrounding the case. The Supreme Court agreed in January to take up the case at the request of the Obama administration, whose only hope of lifting the injunction and implementing the policies before the president leaves office would be a victory at the high court by this June. But with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February, only eight justices will consider the case. A deadlock would affirm the 5th Circuit injunction and effectively doom the policies. While there is the potential for the case to fizzle out to one degree or another, observers say it could also result in a major statement on immigration, an issue that has vexed public policy for decades. What the Supreme Court rules on this case is going to matter a lot to the discourse about immigration in American society, said Capps of the Migration Policy Institute. If it says, No, you cant have this [DAPA] status, that will probably threaten the original DACA as well. And it will send a signal that illegal means illegal, and that will embolden some people to send a harmful message that will be felt in the schools. On the other hand, if the court lifts the injunction and rules in favor of the administration, Capps said, that will send a message that lifts a stigma about immigration. To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020. The European Investment Bank (EIB) has provided a EUR 55m long-term loan to the South Savo Social and Health Care Joint Authority (ESSOTE) for the renovation and extension of the Central Hospital campus in the centre of Mikkeli, a municipality with a population of around 55 000. Major operational changes will reduce the size of the hospital premises by about 20 per cent. This will support the consolidation of healthcare and social services, which are currently being delivered at various locations in the Mikkeli municipality, and provide a single site to respond effectively to the care needs of a declining but ageing population in the region. A better configured infrastructure is expected to reduce the service cost through shorter hospitalisation periods, reduced waiting times and improved use of scarce resources. Furthermore, the modernisation and replacement of outdated buildings will improve hygiene and safety conditions. The EIB loan will also finance the digitalisation of healthcare services, as modern technologies for telemedicine and virtual consultations will be used within this programme. Due to the reduced footprint and use of modern technologies and materials the new, modernised buildings will increase overall energy efficiency. The reforms will be implemented in five stages under a programme known as ESPER the transformation of Mikkeli Central Hospital into a modern 24/7 hospital and well-being centre a EUR 110 million project of which the EIB loan will cover up to half. Implementation of the ESPER programme started in 2015 and it is due to be completed by 2020. It includes the construction of new buildings (a gross area of approximately 19 000 m2) and renovation of existing buildings (approximately 23 000 m2). EIB Vice-President Jan Vapaavuori said: The European Investment Bank, the EU bank, is committed to supporting long-term investment that will increase the supply of healthcare services and improve access to healthcare. Modernising central hospitals is essential in order to secure a high level of healthcare provision and to keep costs under control. We are very pleased to be supporting the ESPER programme, as it will benefit patients from across the region. This programme will help to move Finlands social and healthcare reform forward and thus provide good practice and serve as a model to others. ESSOTEs Director Vesa Vestala added: In accordance with the national social and healthcare reform programme, our investment will improve customer and patient services and provide a comfortable and modern working environment for the staff. We will also be able to cut the cost of healthcare and enhance the status of the Mikkeli Central Hospital as a 24/7 emergency hospital. The initial phase of the hospitals outpatient facilities will be completed first, by the beginning of 2017. The Mikkeli city health centre (Pankalampi) will move into the outpatient area of the hospital campus and a significant part of the social services will gradually also move to the hospital campus. Social services and primary healthcare will be integrated functionally with specialised healthcare.. The other stages of the ESPER programme, to be implemented between 2017 and 2020, are the Hot Hospital for acute hospital services, Family House (a maternal and child health service facility) and somatic wards, the Dental Clinic and the House of Mental Services (a mental health hospital). Construction of the related parking facilities started in early April and will be completed in the spring of 2017. This EIB loan of up to EUR 55 million underlines the Bank's commitment to increasing the productivity and financing the renewal of the social and healthcare sector in Finland. In recent years the EIB has financed investments in hospitals in Oulu, Jyvaskyla, Tampere, Kuopio and Espoo. The President of the Republic of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades and European Investment Bank (EIB) President Werner Hoyer, currently visiting Cyprus, today together took part in a Foundation-Stone Laying Ceremony for the construction of a new Faculty of Engineering at the University of Cyprus in Nicosia, reiterating the EU banks commitment to the knowledge economy. For the EU bank, investing in the knowledge economy remains a priority, as it is an investment in future generations. It is therefore a great pleasure and honour to join the President of the Republic of Cyprus today to lay the foundation stone for the new Engineering Faculty at the University of Cyprus. The project, as well as creating hundreds of new jobs during the construction phase, will enable more young Cypriots to remain in Cyprus and attract other Europeans for their higher education, bringing real and widespread benefits to the islands society and economy, said EIB President Werner Hoyer, who was accompanied on his visit to Cyprus by EIB Vice President Jonathan Taylor. The EIB is financing the second phase development of the University of Cyprus Campus, including state of the art engineering and medical schools, as well as the extension and modernisation of other UCY facilities to enhance energy efficiency and anti-seismic protection. The EIB has approved financing support to the Universitys new development phase with EUR 162 million in total. The first tranche of EUR 80 million was signed in December 2013. Manthos Mavrommatis, Chairman of the Council of the University of Cyprus, and Professor Constantinos Christofides, Rector of the University of Cyprus, were also present at todays Foundation-Stone Laying Ceremony. The EIB will continue to support key investments in Cyprus that will promote growth, support the knowledge economy and help create quality new jobs. I would also like to pay tribute to Cyprus commitment to implement the economic adjustment programme and to welcome the fact that the European Unions three-year aid programme ended last month. I am confident that better times are around the corner and the EIB will continue to be here to support the many promising projects that are in the pipeline, said EIB Vice President Jonathan Taylor. Earlier in the day, President Hoyer and Vice President Taylor held separate meetings with Cyprus President Anastasiades and Cyprus Minister of Finance Harris Georgiades and discussed the latest developments and the EIBs future plans in the country. In the last five years, the EIB has invested some EUR 1.3 billion in new, priority investments in Cyprus, including public sector projects in areas such as transport, energy, education, waste treatment and water supply. The EIB has also provided considerable support to the private sector through its cooperation with 10 local banks to provide long-term and affordable liquidity to SMEs and MidCaps, which are the backbone of the Cyprus economy, representing over 95% of local companies and 80% of employment. In 2015, the EIB maintained its high level of activity, providing a total of EUR 215 million to the Cypriot economy, representing 1.5% of annual GDP, the highest percentage of all EIB shareholders. Oct. 13, 2022 Prior to this summer, the memorial garden had lost its shine and perhaps had gone forgotten. That was when 18 year old Annabelle Smith, daughter of an Eielson Airman and a Girl Scout for 13 years, decided to take on a renovation project as a part of a Gold Award project, one of the highest awards in At first, Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto was mum on Donald Trump's harsh views on Mexicans. Then he condemned them from Mexico's presidential palace. Now he's sending a new ambassador and a crisis-communications expert to Washington to combat the Republican presidential frontrunner's rhetoric on US soil. Pena Nieto announced the diplomatic appointments on April 5, as part of what the Mexican government is calling a "comprehensive strategy" to strengthen the "relations, promotion and image of our country" in the United States. That same day, Trump proposed to block remittances from Mexicans in the US to force the Mexican government to pay for the wall he wants to build along the whole US-Mexico border. He also lambasted Ford's plan to build a car factory in Mexico, calling it "an absolute disgrace." Mexico's new ambassador to the US will be Carlos Manuel Sada, a career diplomat who runs the country's consulate in Los Angeles, the American city with the biggest number of Mexican immigrants. He replaces Miguel Basanez Ebergeny, a former academic and political pollster who predicted Trump would eventually apologize to Mexico. He lasted seven months on the job. The other appointee, Jose Paulo Carreno, will run the North America division of the foreign relations ministry. Carreno, whose previous job was managing a marketing campaign to promote Mexico abroad, has also done public relations for Citigroup and worked in crisis management at PR firm Burson-Marsteller. His new post was previously held by Carlos Perez Verdia, an economist who spent part of his career at Mexico's central bank. It's unclear how successful the new envoys will be in changing American minds, says Jesus Velasco, an expert on Mexico-US relations at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. They might be able to get more media access, or ratchet back the aggressiveness of news coverage, but conservative TV outlets such as Fox News "have their own vision regardless of who occupies the embassy," he says. February 24, 2022, the day of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, will go down as a tragic date not only for the Ukrainian people, but also for the whole civilised world. Big bridge grant for Austin Free Access Austin Borough has qualified for a state grant to cover construction of a new bridge near the towns northern gateway. A $518,400 allotment from the Multimodal Transportation Fund will allow... Deeds filed in Cameron County Free Access Following are real estate transactions filed with the Cameron County Recorder of Deeds: Blair A. Lundberg to Alcohol & Drug Abuse Services, Emporium, $185,000; David Jeffrey Smith to Elk Mountain... These are the best of times for deer hunters Free Access There has rarely been a better time to be a deer hunter in Pennsylvanias northcentral region. Not only has the whitetail population been steadily rebounding, but the deer are healthier... DuBois family leaves millions for volunteer orgs Free Access Christmas came early to seven community organizations whose work was important to the late multimillionaire Arthur F. DuBois (shown in the inset) of Coudersport. Some $3.1 million in proceeds from... Re: Migrants, Refugees, Asylum Seekers or Other terms? Here we are more than a year and a half into a debate about what to call these people, meanwhile everyday they are drowning, starving and being exploited by traffickers. Not to mention the untold horrors happening in their home countries that forced them to flee in the first place. I don't hold it against any EF'ers for posting responses to a thread about the topic, but in the wider scheme of things why is it even a debate in the first place? 11,000 people (probably more by now) signed a petition in favour of calling the people refugees instead of migrants; what exactly is that supposed to achieve? Perhaps arguing semantics is just an easier course of action for those who want to feel good about themselves than actually engaging with the fundamental issue. Re: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens Quote: amogles This story sounds a bit dodgy to me, Suppose you steal an apple from a shop and as you go out a security guy stops you and orders you to put the apple back. You reply, I don't actually own the apple as I have transferred it to a company in Panama and therefore I can't give it back. It's bonkers because you can't transfer ownership of something you don't legally hold title to. End of. The whole thing sounds more Monty Pythonesque than realistic. You don't say "I cannot give the apple back because I don't own it anymore"... you say "I sold the apple to some company in Panama and I have no idea who they are and where they store the apple"... while you are of course the owner of the company and know where you put the apple yourself. A US court will not easily be able to search some storage of a Panama company in Switzerland based on some art deal decades ago and the painting may or may not still be there... you do need some reasonable argument that it might be. At the moment they knew that the Panama company was indeed owned by the American did they know that the whole thing is just a sleight of hand and moved in within a week. Which is about record time for Geneva cops... You don't say "I cannot give the apple back because I don't own it anymore"... you say "I sold the apple to some company in Panama and I have no idea who they are and where they store the apple"... while you are of course the owner of the company and know where you put the apple yourself. A US court will not easily be able to search some storage of a Panama company in Switzerland based on some art deal decades ago and the painting may or may not still be there... you do need some reasonable argument that it might be. At the moment they knew that the Panama company was indeed owned by the American did they know that the whole thing is just a sleight of hand and moved in within a week. Which is about record time for Geneva cops... The Stilwell Road, running from Assam in India to Myanmar and further on to China, could act as a growth driver for the entire region. India's "Act East" policy should factor in this road while planning for new developments in this region. In the 21st century, political boundaries are not barriers. Rather they are opportunities for development. The Stilwell Road, which was lost in geostrategic calculus in the entire Cold War period, gained momentum with the onset of globalisation and launching of Indias "Act East" policy [i]in the recent past. The road was considered as a prime mover for cross-border trade and economic integration in the region. Stilwell Road between Ledo and Jagu in Assam. Courtesy: Jajati K Pattnaik. The myopic vision of state-centric approach took a back seat when trucks carrying goods from Baoshan, Yunnan province of China, through the Stilwell Road reached the border trading point of Pangsau pass in the Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh on 29 December 2015 for their display in the third Assam International Agri Horti Show 2016 at Guwahati. In the context of Indias North East, the reopening of Stilwell Road has wider ramifications for the region. Thus, the question arises should the Stilwell Road be reopened? The Extent of the Road The Stilwell Road, originally known as the Ledo Road, is named after the American General Joseph Warren Stilwell, who undertook the responsibility of constructing the project in December 1942 to open communication links for the Allied forces from India to free Burma (now Myanmar) from the clutches of the Japanese forces. After its completion in 1944, the road was used as a major supply route for the transportation of arms, troops and other essential materials for the Kuomintang Army of China in its war against Japan. The road, covering a distance of 1726 km, starts from Ledo in Assam (India) and goes across Nampong in Arunachal Pradesh (India) and Shindbwiyang, Bhamo and Myitkyina in Kachin (Myanmar) and further links LedoBurma roads junction to the city of Kunming in China. The road covers 61 km in India, 1033 km in Myanmar and 632 km in China.[ii] Stilwell Road Map (World War II), Courtesy: NIC, Changlang, Arunachal Pradesh. Initially, Myanmar was skeptical about reopening the Stilwell Road, because it ran through the insurgency-infested Kachin region upon which the Military Junta did not have any control (News K 2009). Later, the Myanmar government assigned a contract to Yunnan Construction Engineering Group of China and the military-backed Yuzana group in 2010 to reconstruct a 312 km road from Myitkyina in Myanmar to Pangsau pass at IndiaMyanmar border (Gupta 2012). India has renovated its portion of Stilwell Road and upgraded it to a two-lane highway, while China has made it a six-lane highway. Convoy on the Stilwell Road (World War II), Courtesy: NIC, Changlang, Arunachal Pradesh. The rebuilding of the MytikyinaPangsau Pass would reduce the cost of transport by about 30% benefiting India, Myanmar and China for bilateral as well as multilateral trade. Generally, goods from North East India are brought through the narrow and overburdened road and rail network of the SiliguriKolkata corridor covering near about 1,600 km. This is then shipped through the Strait of Malacca to South East Asia and China. The present route takes about seven days whereas the same consignment through the Stilwell route can land in Myanmar and China in less than two days (Ramachandran 2011). Way to Myanmar on the Stilwell Road. Courtesy: Jajati K Pattnaik. If the Myanmar segment is completed, then the LedoNampong corridor can be connected to Muse, Lashio, Mandalay and Yangon (Myanmar) through Asian Highway 14 (AH14), Ruili, Wanding and Kunming (China) through Asian Highway 3 (AH3) and Bangkok (Thailand), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and Singapore through Asian Highway 2 (AH2) and further to Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) of the Greater Mekong Subregion through Asian highways 1 (AH1). It is envisioned that such type of transnational connectivity corridors would help in strengthening free trade architecture and eventually pave the way for regional and subregional cooperation.[iii] As the Chief Minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi mentioned, Under the Act East policy, the northeast is envisaged as India's land bridge to the South East and East Asian nations. Development of road infrastructure and connecting the region with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Bhutan are critical. It is imperative that infrastructure is created and upgraded to the same standard as that of the South East Asian nations (Kalita 2015). Implications The people living across the international borders of India and Myanmar have common ethnocultural ties, and reopening of the road would act as a catalyst for cross border trade. The Nampong Land Custom Station (NLCS) notified since 1951 remains largely non-functional and border trade is limited to informal channels. At present, Indian nationals are allowed to visit Pangsau market (Myanmar side) on the 10th, 20th and 30th of every month. Likewise, Myanmarese nationals living within 16 km of its border are permitted to visit Nampong every Friday to purchase their necessary items. [iv]However, with the inception of Act East policy and emergence of free trade architecture in the region, the central government is considering all possible means to start formal trade by renovating the NLCS. Indian side of the Stilwell Road, a few kilometres away from Pangsau Pass. Courtesy: Jajati K Pattnaik. In the event of formal border trade, there would be buoyancy in both imports and exports with forest products, gold, silver, zinc, tin, coal, dolomite and other precious metals making their way into the Indian markets, while electronic gadgets, engineering goods, consumer items, and cement etc flowing into the Myanmarese market (Pertin 2015). As a result, it would strengthen the pace for cross border collaboration involving both hardware and software resources for the benefit of all the stakeholders in the region. Pangsau Pass. Courtesy: Jajati K Pattnaik. In this perspective, the Indian Ambassador to Myanmar, Gautam Mukhopadhyay also felt the need for transforming NLCS into a functional one to attain the economic interests of the North East (PTI 2015). He said If one considers a catchment area with a radius of 1000 km, the region would be central to at least 10 countries. This geo-strategic concept gains eminence in the light of the country's Act East Policy (PTI 2015). The reopening of the Stilwell Road would promote regional and sub-regional cooperation in South and South East Asia. It would enable Indias North East to collaborate with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), MekongGanga Cooperation (MGC) and BangladeshChinaIndiaMyanmar Forum for Regional Cooperation (BCIM) forum on trade, transport, technology, automobiles, machineries, electronics, petrochemicals, gas crackers, pharmaceuticals, herbal, fertiliser, polymer, agrohorticulture, education, banking, investment and tourism by harnessing their shared capabilities. Bitta Chena, vice president of the North East Federation on International Trade, said, Stilwell is the easiest and shortest route which connects Indias eastern part with South East Asian countries and would benefit both the region and sub-regions in terms of trade and commerce.[v]Conversely, Tokong Pertin, director of trade and commerce, Government of Aruncahal Pradesh remarked, The road can be used for trade and better understanding for the two Asian economic giants (India and China) as well as among the BCIM countries. He expressed the hope that every possible support in terms of logistics would be provided so that it would go a long way in developing future trade and business among BCIM countries and ASEAN (China Reconnects..2015). The reopening of the Stilwell Road would give rise to growth triangles in the region. Growth triangles are formed on the basis of different comparative strengths of contiguous regions by capitalising their natural resources, technology, finance and human resouces for a successful trilateral venture. This concept was unveiled by the first Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong in 1989 in the form of SingaporeJohorRiau (SIJORI) Growth Triangle which coalesced the technology and finance of Singapore with that of the land, labour and natural resources of Ria Island of Indonesia and Johor of Malaysia (Heng 2006). In the case of Stilwell Road, there could be possibilities of similar growth triangles such as (a) India, Myanmar and China Growth Triangle, consisting of Upper Assam and Arunachal Pradesh of India, Yunnan Province of China and Kachin and Sagaing regions of Myanmar, and ( b) India, Myanmar and Thailand Forum (IMT) consisting of Upper Assam and Arunachal Pradesh of India, Kachin, Sagaing and Mandalay of Myanmar and Mae Sot of Thailand, based on amalgamation of their comparative advantages quite akin to the SIJORI Growth Triangle.[vi] Economic Threat Indias prime apprehension is that in case the Stilwell Road is reopened, Indias North East will be swamped with cheap Chinese goods. This kind of economic threat perception cannot be denied given the nature of easy overflow of Chinese goods into the markets of the North East. Equally, it is pertinent to mention that China has already spread its tentacles in our neighbouring South East Asian countries through several road and rail corridors, so this may not be a completely new development. Rather, economic engagement with the North East through the Stilwell Road would dispel such Chinese threat perceptions and rightly balance our national interest in South East Asia vis-a-vis China. The former Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, General (Retd) J J Singh said in this context, We need to focus on the opening of the historic Stilwell Road that linked Assam, Myanmar and Kunming during the Second World War. Only a small portion of about 150 kilometres needs to be made motorable from Pangsau Pass to Shingbwiyang.This road would connect Ledo in Assam with Myitkyina through the Pangsau pass on the Arunachal Pradesh-Myanmar border, and on to the frontier area of Yunnan province of China, a distance of about 600 kilometers. This recommencement of formal border trade will truly give a boost to the economy of northeastern states, particularly Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland and Meghalaya (2012:325). Further, this perception can be addressed by identifying our resource potentialities and establishing supply-oriented industries to meet the demands of Indias border regions in Bangladesh, Southwest China and Myanmar. In this connection, it would be noteworthy to point out that special economic zones (SEZs) should be developed in the North East and potentialities of the region in pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals; hydro, herbal, horticulture, handicraft and handloom; tradition, technology, trade and tourism should be explored by tapping cross-border synergies. This proposition would remain a mere utopia unless the economies of the region undergo structural reforms with the free play of the market forces. Before finalising the road map of Stilwell, it is highly necessary that the economies of the North East come up with specific manufacturing products and earn Make in North East image across the border by capturing the neighbouring markets, specifically in China. As Tamo Mibang, Vice Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi University said, The Stilwell Road can connect Arunachal Pradesh to the South East Asian countries both in terms of cultural and economic cooperation. He categorically said that we should first move from cultural cooperation to trade cooperation. Moreover, Arunachal Pradesh should not be a dumping ground of foreign products; rather the export potentialities of the state should be identified so as to play a meaningful role in Indias Act East policy.[vii] Problem of Insurgency The second apprehension is that the Myanmar part of the Stilwell Road which passes through the insurgency-ridden Kachin Provinceoften used as a safe haven for the North East insurgent groups, might pose security threats in sustaining cross border trade and movement across the regions. But this problem can be resolved through multipronged strategies. At first, attempts should be made to secure peace constituencies across the borderlands which are afflicted with insurgencies. In this respect, both India and Myanmar should generate a congenial atmosphere through back channel methods and sustain a dialogue process with their respective insurgent groups in order to bring them back into the social mainstream. Moreover, academia and civil society organisations across the borders should intensify their efforts for peace building. Then, efforts should be channelised to generate confidence among disgruntled youth and then wean them away from the path of insurgency by addressing their legitimate grievances with adequate rehabilitation packages. Lastly, geopolitical boundaries should be transformed into potential economic opportunities to flourish trade and development in the region, so that the unemployed youth will not be allured to join the ranks of insurgency. Dealing in Arms The third apprehension is that if the Stilwell road is reopened, then drugs and small arms may sneak into North East in huge quantities jeopardising the peace and stability of the region. Myanmar, located in the opium-producing golden triangle, acts as the land bridge to such regional/sub-regional cooperation and in the event of cross border trade, this road corridor may be transformed into a potential drug corridor. It is reported that the drug cartels use near about 30 trafficking routes. In this context, the potential threats emerging out of these drug corridors cannot be easily overlooked. It is also pertinent to mention that the state-run Chinese arms manufacturing company that is, China North Industries Corporation (Norinco) of Yunan which is geographically contiguous to the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur supplies unlawful weapons to the buyers across the African and Asian rebels (Uninathan 2011). Hence, any kind of illegal arms smuggling from across the border would pose serious challenges to the peace and security of North East India. Unless this unlawful smuggling of arms is stopped, it would be quite difficult to materialise any regional/sub-regional cooperation or cross border synergy in the region. Yet, this problem can then be addressed specifically by India and Myanmar by reinforcing joint surveillance mechanism through information- and communication-induced technology as well as intensifying border patrolling to check illegal entry of drugs and small arms. No doubt, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between India and Myanmar on 10 May 2014 for sharing intelligence information, synchronising patrolling across the international border, exchanging information to combat insurgency, arms smuggling and drug trafficking and initiating measures to foil illegal cross-border movements, if realised in true spirit, would ensure peace, stability and security across the international border (MEA 2014). Conclusions The implications of reopening the Stilwell Road outweigh our apprehensions. At the external level India can resolve those cross border threats by having diplomatic parleys with Myanmar and China. At the internal level, the union government should work in unison with the state governments, all the stakeholders of the region to address the domestic challenges and create adequate space for trade to take off. Moreover, the political will with a vision for cross border trade and economic integration would fetch huge dividends in terms of growth, development and sustainable future. [i]The Look East policy was announced by the Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao in 1991 to reinforce Indias economic and strategic engagement with its Eastern neighbours based on shared history and culture. The policy was transformed into Act East policy under the present political dispensation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi focusing on a robust and result-oriented diplomacy to achieve Indias national interest in its Eastern neighbourhood. [ii]The author visited Ledo-Nampong sector of Stilwell Road on 2930 November 2015 and collected data interacting with the eminent public leaders, government officials and other stakeholders at Jairampur and Nampong towns of Changlang District in Arunachal Pradesh. For details refer, Stilwell Road, NIC, Changlang, http://changlang.nic.in/stilwell.htm [accessed on 27 November 2015) [iii] Derived from personal observation during my field visits to Asian Highway 1 (AH 1) in Assam ( DabokaNagaon ) section on 17 January 2016 For details refer, Asian Highways ,United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific(ESCAP, http://www.unescap.org/our-work/transport/asian-highway[accessed on 12 December 2015] [iv] Collected from my field visit to Nampong on 30 November 2015, For details refer, Tokong Pertin, Arunachal Information, Vol.4, no. 40, 1 January, 2016, p.5. [v] Culled from an electronic-mediated response from Bitta Chena, Vice President, North East Federation on International Trade (NEFIT) against questionnaire on 30 January 2016. [vi] Derived from the authors field visits to different parts of Arunachal Pradesh close to China, and Upper Assam during January 2015January 2016 and Pangsau market (Kachin Province of Myanmar) on 30 November 2015. [vii]Culled from an Interview with Prof Tamo Mibang, Vice Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi University at his official residence on 11 November 2015. References Anurag, K (2009): Myanmar Obstructs Historic Stillwell Road Project, Rediff News, 17 June, http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/jun/17/myanmar-obstructs-stillwell-road-project.htm. China Reconnects with India at Stilwell Road, (2015) Arunachal Times, 30 December, http://www.arunachaltimes.in/china-reconnects-with-india-at-stilwell-road/. Gupta, Shishir (2012): India Renews Pitch to Build Stilwell Road, 27 May, Hindustan Times, http://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi/india-renews-pitch-to-build-stilwell-road/story-wbdrtfrTTqiMPa9Z88Nr4H.html. Heng, Toh Mun (2006): Development in the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle SCAPE Working Paper, National University of Singapore, No 06, 31 March, pp 57, http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/ecs/pub/wp-scape/0606.pdf. Kalita, Prabin (2015): Restore Ledo Road Link, CM to Gadkari, Times of India, 3 May, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/Restore-Ledo-Road-link-CM-to-Gadkari/articleshow/47133865.cms. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India (2014): India and Myanmar Sign Memorandum of Understanding on Border Cooperation, 10 May, http://www.mea.gov.in/pressreleases.htm?dtl/23315/India+and+Myanmar+sign+Memorandum+of+Understanding+on+Border+Cooperation. Press Trust of India (2015): Roadmap Needed to Boost Arunachal Myanmar-Ties: Ambassador, Business Standard, 13 March, http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/roadmap-needed-to-boost-arunachal-myanmar-ties-ambassador-1150313003. Ramachandran, Sudha (2011): Stilwell Road to be Reborn, Asia Times, 12 January, , http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA12Df03.html. Singh, JJ (2012): A Soldiers General: An Autobiography, New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers. Uninathan, Sandeep (2011): Gunrunners of North-East, India Today, 28 May, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/chinese-agents-smuggle-arms-to-spread-militancy-in-north-east/1/139538.html. Fingers are a human's most important tactile sensors, but they do not always sense accurately and can even be deceived. Researchers at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) of Bielefeld University demonstrated this in a new study in which they 'outwit' human perception. Test subjects placed their index finger in an apparatus and touched an object whose softness changed at random without the person noticing. While touching the object, the test subjects were under the illusion that it was the position of their finger that changed, not the softness of the object. The curious thing here was that the test subjects felt an "illusory" finger displacement, much larger in extent than the actual, "real" displacement. The researchers published their findings this Thursday, 7 April in the scientific journal "Current Biology." Developing a virtual sense of touch is the long-term aim of Professor Dr. Marc Ernst, who headed the Cognitive Neurosciences research group in Bielefeld until the end of March 2016". On the EU research project "WEARHAP," Ernst is working with colleagues from all around Europe to achieve this goal. "We now have a better understanding of how we can virtually convey the impression of whether an object feels soft or hard," explains the neuroscientist. "In the future, this should help in developing a virtual sense of touch with which one can 'touch' things across distances, such as how a sweater or another product feels while shopping online." "A fundamental question in this project is what role haptic stimuli play in perception," says Ernst. With the term 'haptic stimuli,' the cognitive scientist is referring to the sensations that arise from touch. "A special feature of our finger pads is that they are fleshy - they can 'deform' by giving way when touching something," says Marc Ernst. For instance, when a person touches a sponge, she feels its composition and consistency through the tactile sensors in her skin. For their experiment, the researchers constructed an apparatus at the end of which an elastic fabric strap was stretched horizontally. The tightness of the strap was adjustable. The test subject laid her hand and lower arm in the guiding casing of the apparatus. The person was instructed to say when they thought their finger was bent more. In reality, the position of the finger did only change a little - only the tightness of the elastic band did. "Astonishingly, all study participants estimated their finger to be most bent when the elastic band was loose. This is apparently because the loose band has comparatively more contact area with the skin," explains Dr. Alessandro Moscatelli, who performed the experiment. "The key here is how much surface area of the object comes into contact with our skin. The greater the area of contact, the closer the object seems to be, and therefore, the more the finger appears to be bent. Why is this finding significant? "If we were not to know exactly how our body is positioned, we would not be able to grasp or catch, and therefore could not interact with objects or other people," explains Marc Ernst. ### Bielefeld University is cooperating with research institutions from across Europe on the research project WEARHAP (WEARable HAPtics for Humans and Robots), which will run until February 2017. The European Union has invested 7.7 million Euro in this project, of which almost 1 million Euro is going to Bielefeld University. Original Publication: Alessandro Moscatelli, Matteo Bianchi, Alessandro Serio, Alexander Terekhov, Vincent Hayward, Marc Ernst, and Antonio Bicchi: The Change in Fingertip Contact Area as a Novel Proprioceptive Cue, http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30134-8#, published on 7 April 2016. Additional Information Online at: Using sensory gloves to feel objects remotely" (Press release from 17 September 2013, in German): http://ekvv.uni-bielefeld.de/blog/pressemitteilungen/entry/per_tasthandschuh_objekte_in_der Article on CITEC-website: https://cit-ec.de/en/content/news/cognitive-scientists-citec-discover-new-perceptual-illusion Contact: Prof. Dr. Marc Ernst, Bielefeld University Faculty of Biology Telephone: +49 521 106-5700 Email: marc.ernst@uni-bielefeld.de Dr. Alessandro Moscatelli, Bielefeld University Faculty of Biology Email: alessandro.moscatelli@uni-bielefeld.de New research led by Professor Cathie Martin of the John Innes Centre has revealed how a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine produces compounds which may help to treat cancer and liver diseases. The Chinese skullcap, Scutellaria baicalensis - otherwise known in Chinese medicine as Huang-Qin - is traditionally used as a treatment for fever, liver and lung complaints. Previous research on cells cultured in the lab has shown that certain compounds called flavones, found in the roots of this plant, not only have beneficial anti-viral and anti-oxidant effects, but they can also kill human cancers while leaving healthy cells untouched. In live animal models, these flavones have also halted tumour growth, offering hope that they may one day lead to effective cancer treatments, or even cures. As a group of compounds, the flavones are relatively well understood. But the beneficial flavones found in Huang-Qin roots, such as wogonin and baicalin, are different: a missing - OH (hydroxyl) group in their chemical structure left scientists scratching their heads as to how they were made in the plant. Professor Cathie Martin, lead author of the paper published in Science Advances, explains: "Many flavones are synthesised using a compound called naringenin as a building block. But naringenin has this -OH group attached to it, and there is no known enzyme that will remove it to produce the flavones we find in Huang-Qin roots." Working in collaboration with Chinese scientists, Cathie and her team explored the possibility that Huang-Qin's root-specific flavones (RSFs) were made via a different biochemical pathway. Step-by-step, the scientists unravelled the mechanism involving new enzymes that make RSFs using a different building block called chrysin. "We believe that this biosynthetic pathway has evolved relatively recently in Scutellaria roots, diverging from the classical pathway that produces flavones in leaves and flowers, specifically to produce chrysin and its derived flavones," said Professor Martin. "Understanding the pathway should help us to produce these special flavones in large quantities, which will enable further research into their potential medicinal uses. It is wonderful to have collaborated with Chinese scientists on these traditional medicinal plants. Interest in traditional remedies has increased dramatically in China since Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015 for her work on artemisinin. It's exciting to consider that the plants which have been used as traditional Chinese remedies for thousands of years may lead to effective modern medicines." ### This publication is the first high-profile output from the Centre of Excellence for Plant and Microbial Sciences, established between the John Innes Centre and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2014. The research was funded by the BBSRC, CEPAMS and supported by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC). Notes to editors 1. An advance copy of the paper can be found at:http://www.eurekalert.org/jrnls/sciadvances/ 2. Images to accompany the paper can be found at: http://bit.ly/229g3J4 3. About the John Innes Centre Our mission is to generate knowledge of plants and microbes through innovative research, to train scientists for the future, to apply our knowledge of nature's diversity to benefit agriculture, the environment, human health and well-being, and engage with policy makers and the public. To achieve these goals we establish pioneering long-term research objectives in plant and microbial science, with a focus on genetics. These objectives include promoting the translation of research through partnerships to develop improved crops and to make new products from microbes and plants for human health and other applications. We also create new approaches, technologies and resources that enable research advances and help industry to make new products. The knowledge, resources and trained researchers we generate help global societies address important challenges including providing sufficient and affordable food, making new products for human health and industrial applications, and developing sustainable bio-based manufacturing. This provides a fertile environment for training the next generation of plant and microbial scientists, many of whom go on to careers in industry and academia, around the world. The John Innes Centre is strategically funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). In 2014-2015 the John Innes Centre received a total of 36.9 million from the BBSRC. 4. About CEPAMS The CAS-JIC Centre of Excellence for Plant and Microbial Science (CEPAMS), which is based in China, brings together three world-leading laboratories from the UK and China to tackle the global challenges of food security and sustainable health care. CEPAMS nurtures excellent science and focuses on the improvement of food crops and the production of high-value, beneficial products from plants and microbes. The centre is a collaboration between the John Innes Centre and two institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology and the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology). CEPAMS was established with funding from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. 5. About the BBSRC The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) invests in world-class bioscience research and training on behalf of the UK public. Our aim is to further scientific knowledge, to promote economic growth, wealth and job creation and to improve quality of life in the UK and beyond. Funded by Government, BBSRC invested over 509M in world-class bioscience in 2014-15. We support research and training in universities and strategically funded institutes. BBSRC research and the people we fund are helping society to meet major challenges, including food security, green energy and healthier, longer lives. Our investments underpin important UK economic sectors, such as farming, food, industrial biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. For more information about BBSRC, our science and our impact see: http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk For more information about BBSRC strategically funded institutes see: http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/institutes 6. To find out more about the Chinese Scholarship Council go to: http://en.csc.edu.cn/About/c309df7fb3fa40b3a179a7ad93f11988.shtml MANHATTAN, Kan. -- A multidisciplinary team from Kansas State University will be part of a public-private partnership seeking technological revolutions in fibers and textiles that will have a significant impact on national defense, human health and safety. The Advanced Functional Fabrics of America Institute's Fabric Innovation Network is receiving $75 million in funding from the Department of Defense and more than $240 million in matching contributions to advance the design and manufacture of technologically-enhanced fabrics. The Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, or AFFOA, is a partnership between public and private sectors, including companies, capitalists, universities and nonprofits. Kansas State University joins more than 30 other universities in the Fabric Innovation Network for a system integration prototype and textile research. Jooyoun Kim, assistant professor and textile scientist in the apparel, textiles, and interior design department in Kansas State University's College of Human Ecology, represented the university at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 1, for the announcement of the network funding. Also attending were Ashton B. Carter, U.S. secretary of defense, and other dignitaries, including governors and members of Congress. Kim led the university's effort with the initial team of 11 faculty members from six departments in five colleges: Santosh Aryal, chemistry; Seong-O Choi and Jeffrey Comer, anatomy and physiology; Julia Day and Sherry Haar, apparel, textiles, and interior design; Steve Warren and Punit Prakash, electrical and computer engineering; Tim Sobering, electronics design laboratory; Steven Eckels, mechanical and nuclear engineering; and David Richter-O'Connell, interior architecture & product design. Kim will be the main contact for the future efforts. "Dr. Kim is an incredible asset to the AFFOA initiative with her background in fiber and polymer science," said Barbara Anderson, head of the apparel, textiles, and interior design department. "Her specific research in surface modification and characterization for the health and safety applications, coupled with more than six years of experience in 3M, enables her to bring a knowledgeable perspective to the further development of innovative materials and textiles." The Advanced Functional Fabrics of America Institute will be in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and charged with creating an advanced textile industry through utilizing technology and furthering research through partnerships that collect intellect and resources and that will revitalize more than 50,000 jobs in the next 10 years. ### PROVIDENCE, R.I. - People with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) fare better and are less likely to relapse when treated with medication on a long-term basis, according to researchers at Rhode Island Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. BDD is an often-chronic mental illness in which people focus intensively on perceived physical flaws, which to others appear minor or even nonexistent. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that is tailored to BDD and certain types of antidepressant medication called serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) often alleviate symptoms. Until this study, no research existed to verify that medication was effective in preventing a relapse of symptoms after medication is suspended. In addition, previous studies regarding the efficacy of medications were short-term. "This research yielded clinically important data about BDD, a common, often-chronic and understudied illness in need of more evidence-based treatment," said Katharine Phillips, M.D., director of the BDD program at Rhode Island Hospital. "We showed that the risk of relapse can be substantially reduced by continuing effective medication and also that the continuation of medication after the acute period can further improve symptoms." Authored by Phillips and her colleague, Sabine Wilhelm, Ph.D., director of the OCD and related disorders program at Massachusetts General Hospital, the study found that 81 percent of adults with BDD who took the SRI escitalopram, also known as Lexapro, for a full 14 weeks experienced substantial improvement in BDD symptoms. The responders who continued to take the medication for another six months tended to further improve. Furthermore, those who responded to escitalopram and continued taking the medication were less likely to experience worsening of BDD symptoms in comparison to those who were switched from escitalopram to placebo (a "sugar pill"). The study was published today in The American Journal of Psychiatry. Approximately two percent of the American population suffers from BDD, and it affects men and women about equally. People with BDD obsess about perceived flaws in their appearance and perform repetitive and time-consuming behaviors, such as mirror checking and comparing with others, in response to their appearance concerns. A majority receive cosmetic treatment, such as surgery and dermatologic treatment, which is rarely effective for BDD concerns. SRI medications can help relieve the obsessive and compulsive symptoms of BDD as well as accompanying symptoms such as depression and anxiety. This research study, conducted at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston (and initially at Butler Hospital, Providence), found that six months of additional treatment following initial response to the medication did positively affect outcomes. Across the sites, 74 people completed phase one, which involved escitalopram treatment during the 14-week, acute period. During phase two, the relapse prevention efficacy phase, 58 participants were randomized to double-blind continuation treatment with escitalopram or were changed to placebo treatment. "Among patients who responded to acute-phase escitalopram, continued pharmacological treatment significantly delayed time to relapse compared to patients in the placebo group," said Wilhelm. "Further, more than twice as many placebo-treated patients relapsed than escitalopram-treated patients. This is important data for providers treating patients with BDD. Research studies are also needed that investigate whether treatment with CBT for BDD will decrease the risk of relapse when an effective medication is stopped." Phillips and Wilhelm have presented the results of this research at the New England OCD Research Symposium; the Anxiety and Depression Association of America Annual Conference; the International College of Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders Scientific Meeting; BDD Research Day at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences, Kings College London; the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology; the Annual Conference of the International OCD Foundation; and the annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. Phillips and Wilhelm are currently conducting a study that is comparing the effectiveness of two different kinds of therapy for people with BDD: CBT and supportive talk therapy. Participants are now being enrolled for the study. Those who are interested in learning more about the study can visit the Rhode Island Hospital BDD Program's website at RhodeIslandHospital.org/bdd or can call 401-444-1644. ### The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to Phillips (R01 MH072917) and Wilhelm (R01 MH072854) Katharine A. Phillips, M.D.'s principal affiliation is Rhode Island Hospital, a member hospital of the Lifespan health system in Rhode Island. She also holds an academic appointment at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Sabine Wilhelm, Ph.D.'s principal affiliation is Massachusetts General Hospital, and she holds an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School. Other researchers contributing to the study were: Aparna Keshaviah, Sc.M., of Massachusetts General Hospital; Darin Dougherty, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Robert L. Stout, Ph.D., of the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Decision Sciences Institute in Pawtucket, R.I.; and William Menard, B.A., of Rhode Island Hospital and Butler Hospital. About Rhode Island Hospital Founded in 1863, Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, R.I., is a private, not-for-profit hospital and is the principal teaching hospital of Alpert Medical School of Brown University. A major trauma center for southeastern New England, the hospital is dedicated to being on the cutting edge of medicine and research. Last year, Rhode Island Hospital received more than $50 million in external research funding. It is also home to Hasbro Children's Hospital, the state's only facility dedicated to pediatric care. For more information, visit http://www.rhodeislandhospital.org. About Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $800 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine. In July 2015, MGH returned into the number one spot on the 2015-16 U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals." Media Contacts: David Levesque 401-444-7299 DLevesque2@lifespan.org Rhode Island Hospital Noah Brown 617-643-3907 nbrown9@partners.org Massachusetts General Hospital Sir Richard Blundell, the David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at University College London, and Janos Kollar, the Donner Professor of Science and Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, are the recipients of the prestigious 2016 Nemmers prizes in economics and mathematics, respectively. Northwestern University announced the recipients of the 2016 Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics and the 2016 Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics today. The prizes are awarded every other year in recognition of major contributions to new knowledge or the development of significant new modes of analysis. Blundell was selected for his important contributions to labor economics, public finance and applied econometrics. "His research improves the foundations for economic policy and furthers our understanding of economic behavior," the selection committee noted. Kollar was selected for his "fundamental contributions to algebraic geometry, including the minimal model program and its applications, the theory of rational connectedness and the study of real algebraic varieties." "Richard Blundell and Janos Kollar are original thinkers in economics and mathematics, and it is an extraordinary privilege for Northwestern to recognize them for their significant contributions," Northwestern Provost Daniel Linzer said. "We look forward to having them on campus, sharing their knowledge and interacting with the University community." In connection with the Nemmers awards, Blundell and Kollar will deliver public lectures and participate in other scholarly activities at Northwestern during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 academic years. Each prize carries a $200,000 stipend, among the largest monetary awards in the United States for outstanding achievements in economics and mathematics. This year marks the 12th time Northwestern has awarded the two prizes. Northwestern awards two other Nemmers prizes every other year, one in medical science and one in music. In February, Northwestern awarded the inaugural Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science to Dr. Huda Zoghbi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor at Baylor College of Medicine. The 2016 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition will be announced this spring. Sir Richard Blundell Blundell's research covers the empirical microeconomic study of consumer, savings and labor supply behavior. He has developed micro-data based models for intertemporal decisions over labor supply, human capital and consumption. Blundell also has analyzed family labor supply behavior and the interaction between consumer and labor supply behavior, while developing new microeconometric tools for the study of dynamic panel data models and the nonparametric analysis of individual decisions. Since 1986, Blundell has been research director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which is highly influential in the economic policy debate in the United Kingdom. He also is director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy. Blundell is the recipient of many prestigious honors and awards including the Yrjo Jahnsson Prize (1995) for his work in microeconometrics and the analysis of labor supply, welfare reform and consumer behavior; the Econometric Society Frisch Prize Medal (2000) for the paper "Estimating Labor Supply Responses Using Tax Reforms;" the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize (2008) given to a high-level economist whose research combines both the theoretical and applied aspects of economics; the CES-Ifo Prize (2010); the Sandmo Prize (2011); the IZA Prize in Labor Economics (2012); and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Prize in Economics (2015). He has served as president of the European Economics Association, the Econometric Society, the Society of Labor Economics and, most recently, as president of the Royal Economic Society. Blundell is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the British Academy and the Institute of Actuaries and an honorary member of the American Economic Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Blundell has held visiting professorships at the University of British Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley. He was knighted in the 2014 Queens New Years Honours list for services to Economics and Social Science. A native of England, Blundell earned a B.Sc. from the University of Bristol in 1973 and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics in 1975. Before joining the faculty of the University College London in 1984, he was a lecturer in econometrics at the University of Manchester from 1975 to 1984. Janos Kollar Kollar's specialty is algebraic geometry with additional interest in related questions in number theory, complex geometry and commutative algebra. He is well known for his contributions to the minimal model program for threefolds, for pioneering the notion of rational connectedness and for finding counterexamples to a conjecture of the late John Nash. In 1952, Nash conjectured a converse to a famous theorem he proved; Kollar was able to provide many three-dimensional counterexamples from an important new structure theory for a class of three-dimensional algebraic varieties. The recipient of numerous honors during his career, Kollar was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2005 and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1995. He became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) in 2012. Kollar received the 2006 Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra from the AMS, one of the highest distinctions in mathematics. He also was named a Presidential Young Investigator in 1988 and a Sloan Foundation Fellow in 1989. Kollar was a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in 2014 in Seoul. In 1996, he gave one of the plenary addresses at the European Mathematical Congress in Budapest. In 1990, Kollar was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Ky?to. Kollar is the author of more than 130 articles and five monographs in algebraic geometry. He serves as editor of several journals, including the Algebra and Number Theory and the Duke Mathematics Journal. A native of Hungary, Kollar began his studies at the Eotvos University in Budapest and later received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1984 with Teruhisa Matsusaka. He was a Junior Fellow at Harvard from 1984 to 1987 and a professor at the University of Utah before joining the Princeton faculty in 1999. Kollar currently is the associate chair of Princeton's department of mathematics. ### Background on Nemmers prizes The four Nemmers prizes are made possible through bequests from the late Erwin Esser Nemmers, a former member of the Northwestern University faculty, and his brother, the late Frederic E. Nemmers, both of Milwaukee. Each prize is awarded every other year. Erwin Nemmers, who persuaded his brother to join him in making a substantial contribution to Northwestern, served as a member of the faculty of the Kellogg School of Management from 1957 until his retirement in 1986. He and Frederic Nemmers were principals in a Milwaukee-based, family-owned, church music publishing house. Their gifts, totaling $14 million, were designated by Erwin and Frederic Nemmers for the establishment of the Nemmers prizes and the establishment of four endowed professorships in the Kellogg School of Management. Consistent with the terms of the Nemmers' bequests, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics (named in honor of the Nemmers' father) and the Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics (named by Erwin in honor of his brother) are awarded for "achievement and work of lasting significance" in the respective disciplines. Previous Nemmers prize recipients in economics are Peter A. Diamond (1994), Thomas J. Sargent (1996), Robert J. Aumann (1998), Daniel L. McFadden (2000), Edward C. Prescott (2002), Ariel Rubinstein (2004), Lars Peter Hansen (2006), Paul R. Milgrom (2008), Elhanan Helpman (2010), Daron Acemoglu (2012) and Jean Tirole (2014). Previous Nemmers prize recipients in mathematics are Yuri I. Manin (1994), Joseph B. Keller (1996), John H. Conway (1998), Edward Witten (2000), Yakov G. Sinai (2002), Mikhael Gromov (2004), Robert P. Langlands (2006), Simon Donaldson (2008), Terence Chi-Shen Tao (2010), Ingrid Daubechies (2012) and Michael Hopkins (2014). The Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition (named in honor of the Nemmers' grandfather) honors classical music composers with a unique creative voice and outstanding achievement in a body of work. The prize carries a $100,000 stipend. Previous Nemmers prize recipients in music are John Adams (2004), Oliver Knussen (2006), Kaija Saariaho (2008), John Luther Adams (2010), Aaron Jay Kernis (2012) and Esa-Pekka Salonen (2014). The Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science (named in honor of the Nemmers' mother) is awarded to physician-scientists to recognize works of lasting significance in the field of medical science. The inaugural recipient is Dr. Huda Zoghbi (2016). Proposals by the UK government to charge non-EEA residents for access to the NHS fail to abide by the government's principles for the NHS, are ideologically driven and unlikely to result in substantial savings. These are the conclusions of an essay published today by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, written by public health experts from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The government's consultation document, entitled Making a Fair Contribution, proposes that while consultations with GPs and nurses in primary care remain free for non-EEA migrants, those using ambulances, or accessing emergency departments or inpatient services would be charged 150% of the tariff paid by NHS purchasers. The essay's authors tested the proposals to assess if the changes are consistent with the four principles set out for the NHS by the government. These principles, say the authors, are subtly adapted from those on which the NHS is based, which were that it meets the needs of everyone, that it be free at the point of delivery and that it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay. Dr Lucinda Hiam, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "The imposition of charges sends an implicit message that migrants do not already contribute to the NHS. Yet between 2001 and 2011 non-EEA migrants contributed 2% more in taxes than they took out, amounting to a net fiscal contribution of 2.9 billion." The authors believe that most NHS staff will find the proposals offensive and unworkable, creating further tension in an environment already suffering from low morale. The criteria for charging are confusing and assessment would be time-consuming, imposing a huge administrative burden. Furthermore, the authors anticipate that primary care is unlikely to be able to cope with the surge of attendances due to charging for A&E, eye care and dentistry. Professor Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, added: "The notion of a 'fair contribution' is ultimately flawed and against the founding principles of the NHS which strives to protect the most vulnerable." He pointed to the founder of the NHS, Aneurin Bevan, who noted, 'Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the costs of which should be shared by the community.' ### Notes to editors Making a fair contribution: is charging migrants for healthcare in line with NHS prinicples? (DOI: 10.1177/0141076816638657) by Lucinda Hiam and Martin Mckee will be published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine at 00:05hrs (UK time) on Thursday 7 April 2016. For further information or a copy of the paper please contact: Rosalind Dewar Media Office, Royal Society of Medicine DL: +44 (0) 1580 764713 M: +44 (0) 7785 182732 E: media@rsm.ac.uk For interviews with the authors please contact: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine press office DL: +44(0)20 7927 2802 E: press@lshtm.ac.uk The JRSM is the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and is published by SAGE. It has full editorial independence from the RSM. It has been published continuously since 1809. Its Editor is Dr Kamran Abbasi. Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 900 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. A growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company's continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. http://www.sagepublishing.com The prevailing hypothesis has suggested that the the functions of DNA, such as the way the DNA is organized, largely depend on its interactions with protein molecules. However, a new study, affiliated with UNIST finds that DNA molecules directly interact with one another in a way that's dependent on the sequence of the DNA and epigenetic factors. The team--made up of scientists from the University of Illinois Center for the Physics of Living Cells in the United States, Johns Hopkins University in the United States, and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)--published their work in the current edition of Nature Communications on March 22, 2016. In their study, the team presented direct evidence for sequence-dependent attractive interactions between double-stranded DNA molecules that neither involve intermolecular strand exchange nor are mediated by DNA-binding proteins. Professor Hajin Kim (School of Life Sciences, UNIST), the lead author of the study notes "DNA molecules tend to repel each other in water, but in the presense of special types of cations, they can attract each other just like nuclei pulling each other by sharing electrons in between." He explains, "Our study suggests that the attractive force strongly depends on the nucleic acid sequence and also the epigenetic modifications." Prof. Kim and his colleagues used atomic-level simulations to measure the forces between a pair of double-stranded DNA helices and proposed that the distribution of methyl groups on the DNA are the key to regulating this sequence-dependent attraction. Then, by observing a single pair of DNAs within nanoscale bubbles, they experimentally verified the model. From further simulations, researchers postulate that such direct DNA-DNA interactions could play a central role in how chromosomes are organized in the cell and which ones are expanded or folded up compactly, ultimately determining functions of different cell types or regulating the cell cycle. "Biophysics is a fascinating subject that explores the fundamental principles behind a variety of biological processes and life phenomena," says Prof. Kim. "Our study requires cross-disciplinary efforts from physicists, biologists, chemists, and engineering scientists and we pursue the diversity of scientific disciplines within the group." Prof. Kim adds, "In our lab, we try to unravel the mysteries within human cells based on the principles of physics and the mechanisms of biology. In the long run, we are seeking for ways to prevent chronic illnesses and diseases associated with aging." ### Journal Reference Jejoong Yoo, Hajin Kim, Aleksei Aksimentiev, and Taekjip Ha. "Direct Evidence for Sequence-dependent Attraction between Double-standed DNA Controlled by Methylation", Nature Communications (2016). New book is co-edited by UC Riverside associate professor and includes contributions from several other university scientists RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) -- A University of California, Riverside associate professor has co-edited a just-published book on how tropical forests are responding to climate change. The book, "Tropical Tree Physiology: Adaptations and Responses in a Changing Environment," was published by Springer. Louis Santiago, an associate professor of physiological ecology at UC Riverside, co-edited the book with Guillermo Goldstein, a professor emeritus at the University of Miami. The book includes chapters co-authored by Santiago; Mark E. De Guzman, one of Santiago's graduate students; Exequiel Ezcurra, a professor of ecology at UC Riverside; and Eleinis Avila-Lovera, a graduate student working with Ezcurra. Santiago has studied tropical forests for more than 20 years and regularly travels to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama to conduct research. He said the book, which was first discussed in 2007 and written during the past three years, provides a refreshed view on tropical ecology. (The last book written in the field, "Tropical Forest Plant Ecophysiology," was published in 1996.) The book provides information on tropical tree physiology to help address important questions surrounding issues such as deforestation and global climate change. The scarcity of information on the physiological responses of trees is the greatest source of uncertainly in predicting how the tropical rain forests, which process one-third of the carbon processed on Earth, will respond to increasing greenhouse gases, in particular atmospheric carbon dioxide, Santiago said. The physiology of tropical trees has not been as well studied as the physiology of trees from temperate regions, leading to major gaps in the understanding of how tropical trees interact with the Earth system over a range of scales, he said. ### Lincoln, Neb., April 8, 2016 -- A University of Nebraska-Lincoln researcher is partnering with Brazilian officials to distribute a device that could accelerate testing for the Zika virus and monitor contamination of the country's freshwater food sources. In 2014, biochemist Jiri Adamec and colleagues introduced the Noviplex card, which separates plasma from a blood sample taken by the simple prick of a finger. After the sample is blotted on a small card, the technology can upload a digital image of the separated plasma to a clinic or laboratory that can analyze it for signs of disease. If those signs are detected, the sample -- which retains its integrity for weeks even in the humidity of a tropical rainforest -- can be sent to a medical facility and further tested for a diagnosis. This unprecedented capability makes the technology especially suited to prescreening for the Zika virus, Adamec said. The virus has been strongly linked with microcephaly: abnormally small heads, and often underdeveloped brains, among the babies of women who have contracted the virus. "The current Zika virus outbreak is affecting remote areas such as the Amazonian region of Brazil, and it's extremely difficult to get to those areas to screen residents for the virus," said Adamec, associate professor of biochemistry. "Medical professionals (currently) have to fly in and out by helicopter very quickly to ensure the blood samples remain stable at a low temperature." This reality has made mapping the prevalence of Zika more difficult, Adamec said. Moreover, he said, an existing test used to screen for Zika has exhibited unacceptably high rates of false positives and false negatives. This means that some uninfected individuals are identified as carrying Zika, even as some who actually have the virus are mistakenly told they do not. In an effort to overcome these challenges, Adamec said Noviplex cards will soon be distributed to eight South American states throughout the Amazon. The World Health Organization, which has classified Zika as an international public health emergency, is monitoring the project. The technology is already addressing another health issue within South America's largest country. Because some Brazilian mining operations illegally use mercury to extract gold -- afterward dumping the toxic element in local rivers -- officials are also using Noviplex cards to prescreen for elevated levels of mercury in marine life and citizens who consume seafood. And with the Olympic Games set to descend on Rio de Janeiro in August, the Brazilian Olympic Team has adopted the technology to monitor biomarkers that can indicate the onset of fatigue and other physiological stressors. Modifying the technology, which R&D Magazine named a top-100 invention of 2014, might even allow physicians to eventually detect biomarkers of brain injury in athletes, Adamec said. "It's difficult to say what impact Noviplex will have in the next five years," he said, "because the possibilities are really endless." Adamec and his colleagues, who developed their technology through a co-founded company named Novilytic LLC, received research support from the National Institutes of Health. ### PHILADELPHIA -How the human brain processes the words we hear and constructs complex concepts is still somewhat of a mystery to the neuroscience community. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can alter our language processing, allowing for faster comprehension of meaningful word combinations, according to new research from the department of Neurology the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The work is published in the Journal of Neuroscience. "Integrating conceptual knowledge is one of the neural functions fundamental to human intelligence," said the study's first author Amy Price, a neuroscience graduate student at Penn. "For example, when we read or listen to a sentence, we need to combine, or integrate, the meaning of the words to understand the full idea of the sentence. We perform this process effortlessly on a daily basis but it is quite a complex process and little is known about the brain regions that support this ability." Semantic memory is our stored knowledge about the world, such as the meaning of words and objects. "We sought to understand how and in what part of the brain semantic representations are integrated into more complex ideas" said senior author Roy Hamilton, MD, MS, an assistant professor in the departments of Neurology and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, and director of the Laboratory for Cognition and Neural Stimulation at Penn. Recent findings from functional MRI scans (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) have suggested the angular gyrus, a region of the brain known to be involved in language, number processing and spatial cognition, memory retrieval and attention, as a potential hub for semantic memory integration, specifically the left angular gyrus. Hamilton and team, which also included Jonathan Peelle PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology at the Washington University School of Medicine, Michael Bonner, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at Penn, and Murray Grossman, MD, EdD, professor of Neurology and director of the Penn Frontotemporal Dementia Center, looked at the role of the left angular gyrus in semantic memory by applying high definition tDCS in healthy adults to modulate neural activity and determine its effect on semantic integration. This was done using three separate brain stimulation sessions in 18 healthy adults. Subjects donned the tDCS stimulation cap equipped with electrodes that stimulated the left angular gyrus or the right angular gyrus, as well as applied a fake form of stimulation known as sham stimulation as a control. After each stimulation session, subjects were presented with word pairs that could to be semantically integrated into coherent, or meaningful, combinations -- such as "plaid jacket" and another set of word pairs that formed non-coherent, or non-meaningful combinations- such as "fast blueberry." This was followed by a letter task that served as a control for brain stimulation affects on vision and attention, in which subjects looked at non-pronounceable strings of letters - such as vsbsl vsbql - and were asked to indicate whether or not the letter strings matched. Results showed that stimulation to the left angular gyrus resulted in a faster comprehension of meaningful relative to non-meaningful word pairs when compared with both sham and right angular gyrus stimulation. This same effect was not produced in the letter-string task, showing that these findings cannot be easily attributed to non-specific effects on attention, motor control or low-level visual processing. "Our findings extend our knowledge about the angular gyrus as a center wherein the brain constructs higher-level meaning from individual words during semantic comprehension and plays an important role in the fluent composition of meaning in language," Hamilton said. "They are also consistent with the broader claim that the angular gyrus is a cortical semantic hub." ### This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (AG017586, AG032953, AG038490, NS044266, NS053488, AG00255), the Wyncote Foundation, and the Jameson-Hurvich fund. Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $5.3 billion enterprise. The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 18 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $373 million awarded in the 2015 fiscal year. The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center -- which are recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report -- Chester County Hospital; Lancaster General Health; Penn Wissahickon Hospice; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional affiliated inpatient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region include Chestnut Hill Hospital and Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a partnership between Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network and Penn Medicine. Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2015, Penn Medicine provided $253.3 million to benefit our community. Contact: Stephanie Simon 215-349-5660 stephanie.simon@uphs.upenn.edu Could a new take on this classical experiment also offer a new way to detect rotating black holes? A team from the University of Rochester has shown that fluctuations in "twisted light" could be exploited for a range of applications, from detecting rotating black holes to object detection by lidar, the light-equivalent of radar. In a paper, published in Science Advances today, the researchers demonstrate that for light from a source such as the Sun, random fluctuations of intensity give rise to correlations of twisted light beams. They showed the presence of these correlations by modifying a now classical experiment called Hanbury Brown - Twiss (HBT) interferometry to focus on the angular information contained in light, the "twist" in the light. The team, from Robert W. Boyd's group at Rochester's Institute of Optics, suggest that these correlations could allow for sunlight (or a similar type of light) to be used for some remote sensing and object detection applications that until now were thought to require lasers and entangled photons. The new method could also offer a way to study astrophysical phenomena in which twisted light holds a key. For example, it has been suggested that rotating black holes could imprint a particular fingerprint in twisted light - one that could be searched for with this new angular HBT. "Twisted light is all around us and occurs naturally," said Omar S. Magana-Loaiza, first author of the study and a Ph.D. student in Boyd's team. "And the more random the light, the stronger the correlations of the twisted beams that form the light. Using HBT interferometry we have been able to unveil these correlations, which opens the door for many exciting applications." In 1956, Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Q. Twiss published a revolutionary optical physics paper describing a new form of interference. Hanbury Brown and Twiss' stellar interferometer collected light produced by two independent sources on a star and then detected the light at two different locations on Earth. This not only gave them an estimate of the size of Sirius with great precision, but the HBT experiment also kicked off many discussions in the field because it seemed that classical and quantum theories of light offered different predictions. The Rochester experiment uses a similar setup but looks at twisted light. Twisted light is light that twists as it propagates - making a sort of corkscrew shape. It can twist more or less tightly, as described by its orbital angular momentum. A lot of the experiments that involving twisted light are done with lasers - coherent sources of light - and often rely on using entangled photons. But the new experiment shows that, for many applications, light from a star or other common sources might work just as well as a source for twisted light. "The generation of entangled photons is always a complicated task," said Magana-Loaiza. "One of the advantages of using twisted beams of random light is that the generation process is easier and almost natural. Another advantage is that standard detectors can be used instead of single photon detectors. This is important because scientists would not be limited to work at low-light levels, which opens the door for some real-life applications. Typically the use of entangled photons forces scientists to work in darkness, otherwise, noise severely affects experiments." But Magana-Loaiza is clear that correlations in twisted light do not offer an alternative for many other applications that require entangled photons. He added that "entangled photons offer other attributes that random fields of light do not provide, for example perfect correlations and non-locality, both quantum effects." ### Magana-Loaiza and Boyd's co-authors on the paper are Mohammad Mirhosseini, Robert M. Cross and Seyed Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani. The authors would like to acknowledge support from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, CONACyT, and the Mexican Secretaria de Educacion Publica. It turns out not all clouds are created equal. Though Seattle presents an ideal location for cloud-gazing, it can't reproduce the unique clouds in a part of the world thought to play a key role in the planet's climate. The vast Southern Ocean circling Antarctica soaks up a large portion of the carbon emissions taken up by the oceans and stores some of the extra heat trapped by the carbon emissions that remain in the air. Clouds play a key role, influencing the transfer of heat and light to the surface, but knowledge of these clouds' properties and their impacts on the surface is hazy. A University of Washington atmospheric scientist is leading a project to study the clouds above the Southern Ocean. Seeing how the cloud droplets, small bits of dust, sea spray, and other materials on which cloud droplets form, ocean and sun interact will help improve global climate models. Roger Marchand, a UW research associate professor of atmospheric sciences, is leading the 2-year project sponsored by the Department of Energy. The Macquarie Island Cloud and Radiation Experiment, or MICRE, will collect new data for clouds and precipitation in the southernmost seas. The instruments were installed on the island in late March, and are now beginning to collect data. "We want to study the properties of the clouds, aerosols and precipitation over the remote Southern Ocean, and there are very few land sites where we can take continuous measurements for two years," Marchand said. "Macquarie is one such place, and is ideal in several respects." The equipment includes instruments to measure such things as the surface precipitation, solar energy reaching the surface, heat radiated by the sky and surface, water vapor, cloud water and cloud base height. "The properties of low-altitude clouds appear to be different here, with much larger amounts of supercooled liquid water and smaller droplets than over Northern Hemisphere oceans," Marchand said. Supercooled water is below its freezing point while remaining a liquid. The field experiment hopes to learn why low-cloud properties are different in this region. It will also provide new measurements of the daily and seasonal changes in cloud cover, and help ground-truth measurements coming from satellites - something that has not been done much for the stormy, inhospitable Southern Ocean. Marchand hopes that the project will become part of the larger Southern Ocean Cloud Rainfall and Aerosol Transport experiment, or SOCRATES, which if funded will put him and colleagues from the UW and elsewhere aboard ships and aircraft to get more firsthand measurements of Southern Ocean clouds. MICRE is an international collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian Antarctic Division, which operates a research station on Macquarie Island. After weather-related delays, a French ship was able to deliver the instruments to the island in late March. ### For more information, contact Marchand at 206-616-0620 or rojmarch@uw.edu. The Johan Skytte Prize annually recognizes the most valuable contribution to the field of Political Science. This year's prize is awarded to Professor Jon Elster, Robert K. Merton Professor in Social Sciences at Columbia University and titular professor at College de France, Paris. The Johan Skytte Prize is awarded for the 22nd year by the Johan Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University in a ceremony taking place in Uppsala, Sweden, on 1 October 2016. The ceremony will, as per custom, be accompanied by a prize-winners' lecture. The Norwegian-born Elster receives the Prize for 'penetrating, astute and unwavering drive to test and reconsider what explains human behaviour'. Ever since his dissertation on Karl Marx at Sorbonne which he defended in 1971, Elster has committed his scholarly efforts to trying to understand what it is that makes people act the way they do. 'How can the way we think, our collective power and our emotions explain our actions?' - this is the question that long stood at the forefront of his scholarly endeavour. Over five decades, Elster has urged political scientists to seriously consider the meanings of rationality, irrationality, social norms and the significance of feelings within their research and has thus immeasurably enriched and broadened the discipline. Elster's independent intellectual journey, where both bold guesses and self-criticism were indivisible companions, serves as one of the most inspirational examples of boundless curiosity within Political Science. ### About the Johan Skytte Prize: In 1622, Johan Skytte, then Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University, established the Johan Skytte chair in Eloquence and Government, which is probably the world's oldest active professorship in political science. The lands included in the original donation continue to finance research and the Johan Skytte Prize. The prize is awarded each year by The Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University to the person who has made the "most valuable contribution to political science". Read more about the prize on the Johan Skytte Prize Committee website. http://skytteprize.com/ Page Not Found The requested URL was not found on this server. Learn about the debate participants EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Sri Lanka is aiming for a sustainable, long-term growth rate of 7% to 8% Private companies are flocking in, attracted by a business-friendly government and a low corporate tax rate New cities, special economic zones and logistics zones are springing up Colombo is building a new financial centre that will operate under UK law FTAs with China, India and Pakistan can turn the country into a regional logistics and manufacturing hub Sri Lanka can be to India what Hong Kong is to China: a provider of financial services to the south Asia region The government wants to see more consolidation in domestic banking, and deeper and broader local capital markets Euromoney Sri Lankas economy is booming, benefiting from the peace dividend and its role as a gateway to Asia. Where will new growth come from? And how can the country generate a higher, sustainable pace of economic output? RK Sri Lankas economy is resilient. Even during the period of conflict, GDP growth averaged 5%. So achieving an annualized and sustainable growth rate of 7% to 8% should not be a major challenge, so long as things are done properly. Most growth is created in the private sector, so we need to create a business environment conducive to supporting private-sector investment and growth, and to ensure that the public sector works to support the needs of the private sector. AP, Sampath Last year was one of the best in our history, with the bulk of new growth at Sampath Bank emanating not from corporate side but from retail and SME lending. And I see 2016 being a reflection of 2015: it will be a challenging year, but our aim is to secure adequate deposits to match our lending portfolios and to continue to boost retail lending. Our non-performing loan situation is one of best in the country, and we hope to cut bad loans further in 2016. IC, CBS Two vital sectors to future growth are business-process outsourcing and ICT. Both are key future export drivers. From a short-, medium- and long-term perspective, it is vital to ensure that we move to a more sustainable growth model. For a long time, we have had a stop-go economy. Now, if you look at the budget, there is a real effort to build a truly sustainable growth model, giving Sri Lanka a GDP growth rate of 7% to 8% over the next 10 to 15 years, rather than pursuing sugar-highs through unsustainable macroeconomic policies. There is a lot of buoyancy in the domestic sector, and better incentives are now in place to attract more foreign investment. When the Soros Foundation organised a summit in January, bringing with it several stellar global economists, their view was clear: they see a world buffeted by headwinds, and within that maelstrom, a potential bright spot in the form of the Sri Lankan economy. AW, CCC In the past, a lot of inward investment was in the form of portfolio investment, but we are now seeing a distinct move to more capital arriving in the form of foreign direct investment. At the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, we see potential investors making genuine contact every week: enquiring how to structure projects and move forward with real inward investment. Sri Lanka, we remind everyone, is an integral part of Asias dynamic economy, and more investors and corporates from Asia, Africa and Latin America are now seeing Sri Lanka as a gateway to south Asia. DA, BOI When an individual looks at products and brands, they see first its functional superiority and second the perception of superiority. For years we had to work heavily on both, because of the domestic civil war. Now our message is far simpler and clearer: that Sri Lanka is at an inflection point. Peace is here to stay and we can now pursue a sustainable growth model. Our earlier inward investment model was based on offering tax holidays and incentives. We need to get to the point where investors come for sustainable long-term reasons, and that can be achieved by improving our business environment, driving better connectivity between government agencies and ensuring that we offer investors a one-stop shop inside government, where they can expedite licences and approvals. We need to be able to grant approvals quickly preferably in a day or two. Investors need to be able to trust us: when they have a question, they need to be confident that they can approach us any time and that we can find a solution to their needs. ADS, NSB Two sectors in particular are key to future growth. One is construction. A few years back it accounted for just 7% to 8% of GDP and currently it is at 12%. There is a big opportunity to take this forward even further. Then there is the push to build special economic zones (SEZs) across the country, targeting sectors such as tea, rubber, gems and the garment industry. This will also help increase our level of urbanization, which remains relatively low. The banking sector could play an important role in this regard, and the sky is the limit if we can get this business model right. RS, Sampath Sri Lankas economy is resilient. Most growth is created in the private sector, so we need to create a business environment conducive to supporting private-sector investment and growth, and to ensure that the public sector works to support the needs of the private industry. Euromoney How important is the peace dividend, in terms of giving investors confidence to grow and invest here? Can we quantify it? RK The peace dividend is integral to our growth story, though to be sure, the message remains under-reported. The world sees Sri Lankas five-star rating when it comes to human rights. We are walking the talk. During the conflict period, we were less able to sell our investment story. Now we can and we are selling that story very well. AW, CCC We are living in a period of time that I would define as Peace dividend 2.0. When we first emerged from our period of conflict, the world economy was unsettled, so we couldnt take full advantage of our new lease of life. Peace dividend 2.0 began in January 2015, when a new era of government dawned, and we are trying to rebalance the economy and chart a fresh course. One of the reasons we lost so many foreign investors in the 1980s, particularly Japanese corporates pulling back, was because of the domestic civil war. Now, those investors are returning. And they are coming back not because of tax incentives, but because they see the clear and huge potential of investing and building new facilities here. IC, CBS The war weighed on us for decades, at a time when everyone around the world was chasing FDI investment. Now Sri Lanka is competing on a much more even keel. We used to give all kinds of financial concessions to get into the game because of the high war-related risk premium attached to the economy, but those concessions are no longer necessary. If you dont have peace and stability, its hard to push sectors like tourism and logistics. But we are changing that perception at home and abroad. Now, the challenge is to prove that our mind set is no longer closed and inward looking; rather, that the government, citizens and the corporate sector are open and outward looking. And its working: thanks to round tables and summits here in Colombo and in places like Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum, people are looking at Sri Lanka in a more positive light. DA, BOI The government has moved swiftly to send out the message that Sri Lanka is open to foreign investment. We are piggybacking on that goodwill. We have to create a business environment where there is a competition in Sri Lanka for the best projects. AW, CCC A recent Japanese delegation included a vice-president of Panasonic and senior delegates from Matsushita and Marubeni. It has been 25 years since such a high-level delegation from Japan visited, and it shows how seriously we are being taken. IC, CBS Its notable that Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ became the first Japanese bank to establish a representative office in Sri Lanka in January. It underlines the confidence major Japanese companies have in our future. Other foreign banks have also expressed an interest in building a presence here. AP, Sampath We also need to encourage our own entrepreneurs to venture out and take on the world. Several Sri Lankan firms are investing in countries and areas like Africa and Bangladesh, in sectors like hydropower. ADS, NSB One of the sectors with a great future is the garment industry. The big players have integrated themselves horizontally and vertically with key investments in technology. Now, the middle tier and smaller companies need to follow suit, adding value and become more internationally competitive. Entities like the Board of Investment have a role to play here. AW, CCC Sri Lanka is often seen as a hidden story in terms of its global impact: as an exporter of raw commodities like tea and rubber. But that is misleading. We have companies that make advanced components like airbags for Japanese carmakers. And we have apparel firms that are investing heavily in technology, designing and creating the clothing of the future. Finally, software. India had a head start on us. But we are catching up fast. Sri Lankan firms build the software that drives some of the worlds largest telcos and stock exchanges. These are lucrative niches to be in. AP, Sampath Two of our big export customers are expanding overseas, buying peers in the UK and elsewhere. We are expanding overseas too: we have an office in Myanmar for instance, and while its only a representative office, we are there to help Sri Lankan firms find local business partners and to help them grow their business in the country. IC, CBS The consistency of our national business model is something that we have long struggled with. The current government believes we should have a private sector-driven growth model, and that is the right path to choose. Business development and growth has to come from the private sector. Its the only viable way forward. There is no fiscal space for a statist model. DA, BOI What gives me hope is that we have such a high quality of workers, as well as budding young companies. We have firms operating at the cutting edge of robotics and artificial intelligence. Top global hotel chains are busy expanding here: Shangri-la Hotels and Resort recently decided to build their third hotel in the country. For the first time, I see our government building a merit-driven society. In order to evolve from a third-level to a first-tier economy, it is essential that we make use of the talent we have. We are building a platform to let help people shine at the highest level. Euromoney In its latest budget, the government decided to cut corporate tax rates in order to encourage more inward investment. Which sectors are you most interested in promoting? RK When the current government came to power last year, we had to introduce some tough structural adjustments, which was not easy in a society accustomed to having subsidies from womb-to-tomb. But we had to do it, no matter how much it hurt. We focused on three specific reforms, starting with improving the investment climate, then making rules more consistent, and finally improving our economic image around the world. We focused on improving the services sector with a particular focus on financial services, building out the newly planned international financial centre in Colombo and showcasing the fact that we have one of the lowest corporate tax regimes in world. We cut the cost of inputs, bringing down the price of electricity, and focused on ensuring that investors wanted to enter the country on merit and for the right reasons, rather than because they were being offered, say, a tax holiday. Another important step was to cut spending on pensions, so we ring-fenced it in future we are running a contributory pension system that is more affordable and flexible. It wasnt easy but we showed Sri Lankans that there was no other choice. It was a painful process but it showed the people and the world that we were capable of making necessary structural changes. Now its up to the private sector to meet the challenge of being the best they can be. IC, CBS For millennia, we have been traders located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and we still are, so it makes great good sense to focus on becoming a regional logistics player. We are equidistant between east Asia and Europe, just 20 miles from India, and with easy access to the Middle East and Africa. Sri Lanka is extremely well positioned to southeast Asia. We have already made a start redeveloping Colombo Port, which is extremely efficient and an area that offers considerable growth. ICT and BPO companies are dynamic and innovative, and the government plans to build more than 40 SEZs, with firms from China, Singapore, South Korea and Japan all interested in developing them. They will all be privately owned and managed. Sri Lanka needs to attract firms that are strongly tied to the global value chain. We have a negligible impact on global value chains, and that has to change as we attract more investment and technology. There are some major urban development plans in the pipeline, from a new SEZ in Trincomalee to the Western Megalopolis programme, which will include 11 SEZs, new commercial and residential real estate, and the international financial centre in Colombo, operating under UK financial law. A big effort is under way to upgrade training and schools, as human resources could be the biggest long-term binding constraint to our economic development. RS, Sampath There are around 12 well-established domestic banks operating here, but only one Sri Lankan lender has made its presence felt in the outside world. That needs to change if Sri Lanka wants to become a financial hub, and the biggest obstacles are capital-account liberalization and high levels of capital requirements in the region. Its unaffordable for most Sri Lankan banks to expand outside the country, so we need to find a solution to that. DA, BOI We need to inject impetus and momentum into the private sector. Many domestic private firms are innately conservative; they live in their own comfort zone. They make a tidy amount of profit and dont expand or reinvest. Take the spices sector, which has been profitable for centuries, but there is precious little current growth or innovation. The gems trade is the same. We export raw gems, but we need to follow the likes of Dubai and Thailand and venture into the higher-valued-added sector, and begin to export processed gems. ADS, NSB For that to happen, the public and private sectors need to work together. The government sets the rules but the private sector needs to provide the impetus and know-how to provide incremental value for our products. We can only succeed if we continually to penetrate other markets. Several east Asian countries have done this successfully, as has India, and we need to follow their lead. RK Strong and healthy cooperation between the public and private sectors is something we definitely want to encourage. ADS, NSB A key focus will be encouraging entities to be listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange. This will create a sort of inclusive economic growth that we need both in terms of raising capital and participation. IC, CBS If you ask the private sector, they will say their expansion plans are restricted by a lack of labour. In fact, there is no shortage of skilled workers. The government wants to introduce a national contributory pension scheme that would create a level playing field between the public- and private-sector labour markets. That is vital for creating a private sector-led development drive. Once the economy starts to generate productive employment, many of the 2 million Sri Lankans currently working overseas as economic migrants, can return home. Agriculture accounts for 28% of the workforce but contributes only 12% of GDP. This is a result of distortionary subsidies, which trap people in low-income brackets. Euromoney Sri Lanka is working on a number of free-trade agreements with countries such as China, while deepening existing FTAs with the likes of India. How vital are these deals to the countrys future? RK When you dont have critical mass, you have to look at market access. Greater access to the likes of China or Singapore allows us to tap into a greater pool of foreign investment and investors. And our financial services sector key will be vital. We can be to India what Hong Kong is to China: a major provider of financial services to India, as well as to Pakistan and the entire region. The IFC Colombo was designed with this regionalism in mind: a classic and innovative way to showcase our country and our financial centre. One third of the worlds population is within striking distance three, four hours flight from here. That will be our focus into the future. RS, Sampath Sri Lanka is located in the Indian Ocean close to international shipping lanes. Yet despite this we handle a very small portion of trade compared with Singapore. We can take some of that business. We could and should be handling a great quantity of maritime trade. That would give our economy and our employment numbers a boost. AW, CCC For a long time, Sri Lankas export sector was heavily focused on the west, particularly the UK and Europe, and the US. During the last 10 to 15 years, when a lot of the action switched to Asia, we lost out, lacking significant access to those markets. So FTAs with China and nations in southeast Asia are key: they will open up new markets to Sri Lankan products. FTAs provide a rules-based structure that allows Company A to connect and trade with Company B, with all the right legal and dispute resolutions in place. Some of our FTAs, such as the one with India, have been controversial: some consider them unbalanced. But they do grant Sri Lankan firms tariff-free access to one of the worlds fastest-growing economies. FTAs also show foreign investors that we are serious about development, reform and trade. They improve our competitiveness and our business climate at home, and boost our skills base. We need to give companies reasons to relocate operations here, and FTAs and service agreements do that. IC, CBS By the end of 2016, Sri Lanka could have preferential access to a market of nearly 3 billion people. That will happen if we can expand our existing FTA with India to become an economic and technology cooperation agreement; by invigorating our FTA with Pakistan; and by signing a new trade pact with China. Preferential access to these three huge markets will constitute a unique selling proposition. A primary objective of these arrangements is to increase market access for Sri Lankan exporters. Sri Lanka can operate as a trade bridge connecting India and Pakistan, and India and China. That would be a huge incentive to foreign corporates looking to put their capital to work here. Potential FTAs with other countries, including Thailand, Turkey and Singapore, are also in the pipeline. Our plan is to plug ourselves directly into global value chains. Euromoney What can be done to broaden and deepen the local bond and equity markets? RK We are instilling a sense of confidence in the economy that had been eroded. Our stock exchange offers strong fundamentals, but valuations are under threat. People need to become comfortable with investing in and being involved with the stock exchange. I am sure bankers will help to ensure that we reach that objective. ADS, NSB There is a big opportunity for the banking sector to support capital market activity. Hitherto, when state entities required infrastructure funding, they would carry out syndicated deals. Why not use other debt instruments such as asset-backed debentures, leaning on the heavy participation of retail investors? Banks once again have a role to play in this regard. But we also need to create the platform such as exchange houses for these debt instruments to be traded in primary and secondary markets. AP, Sampath When it comes to the domestic stock market there is a confidence issue, and the government can help with that. Stocks are heavily under-priced, but as confidence in the economy increases, stock prices will rise. Our funding used to come primarily from deposits, but we need to find new ways to raise funds from the international capital markets. We have been overseas many times this year already, to Saudi Arabia and to China. We have taken a team of leading domestic banks and from the central bank itself, and we have been well received. Funding will not be an issue for banks. The industry is well capitalised, but we can leverage our balance sheet much more. RS, Sampath There are local factors at work that limit the scope and scale of the stock market. There are just 270 corporates listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange, and the total float is relatively small. Most of the big companies listed here have small floats; their holding groups are owned by a small number of families. In other countries, the debt markets are far larger than the equity markets, but here that is not the case. A major problem is that we do not have a secondary market for debt securities. IC, CBS Another key challenge is in getting the budget in order. The government has a target of a 3.5% budget deficit. A start has been made on developing our capital markets and long-term debt market. We dont have a mortgage market but we are moving toward one. We have an embryonic private equity and venture capital market, and foreign investors can take that slice of the financial sector to the next level. If economic activity picks up, and if the government divests some of its assets through the stock market, that would also create greater depth to the market. MS, CBS The government prioritized deepening the stock market and extending the yield curve. Sri Lanka has been tapping the international financial market via sovereign bond issuances since 2007, and we now have $6.65 billion outstanding in sovereign bonds. Global institutional reaction to our debt has been generally good, and we will continue to tap international markets in the period ahead. We are also working with rating agencies to improve our rating and performance. IC, CBS I read in the press that we are considering more consolidation in the banking sector, is that correct? RK Yes. IC, CBS That is important. We have too much bricks and mortar in an industry burdened by high costs. There is a long tail in the non-bank financial sector that would benefit from consolidation. We also need to improve the performance of state enterprises: reducing their accumulated losses and inefficiencies will strengthen banks balance sheets. Euromoney There are other ways to stimulate global institutional investor interest. How about allowing the IFC and others to issue a rupee-denominated offshore bond? RK The IFC has said they want to participate more in Sri Lanka, but we have a slight difference of opinion about the best time to launch a debut rupee-denominated print. They want to be more involved in Sri Lanka and to help us create a better and more sophisticated financial marketplace. The fact that we are on the IFCs radar shows the progress that we are making. That is a striking difference between the past and the future. Today, our banks are occupying themselves doing ancillary activities such as leasing rather than the real banking stuff. We want them to get back to doing what they do well. And we can accelerate the process of becoming a major global financial sovereign player by fast-tracking the development of the IFC and adopting a financial system consistent with UK and Hong Kong financial laws and norms. We are working with international lawyers and I am working to bring legislation to parliament in the months ahead. Euromoney What other ways can be used to add depth to the local capital markets and to boost financial inclusivity? AP, Sampath Unwinding the dominance of a few families and companies is important. IC, CBS We need to boost competition. Telecoms and technology firms have pushed into banking in other markets: theres no need why that cannot happen here. AP, Sampath We have a strong branch network here that permeates every part of the country, even the northern and eastern regions that were once part of war zones. But there is still a major discrepancy between the number of branches in rural areas and the availability of finance. A few other factors are key: bringing more people into the formal economy, increasing the ease of doing business and digitalizing government services to make it easier to disburse welfare payments digitally. Euromoney Sri Lanka ranked 107th in the latest World Bank Doing Business survey, rising sharply in terms of companies ability to access electricity and secure construction permits. What can be done to boost that ranking further? RK Structurally speaking there is much more to be done. At the finance ministry we have a monthly meeting that works to solve and to ease problems in the business sector, focusing on declogging the system and making decision-making easier. We see positive change taking place, and we need to ensure that the message is being handed down to and understood by our people and by incoming investors. IC, CBS The World Banks Doing Business survey constitutes 10 metrics, and the government has set up task forces vested with improving our position in every one. Each team is tasked with coming up with and implementing a roadmap, cutting out red tape and reducing commercial roadblocks. There is a tremendous amount of deregulation that can be done. We are also looking to boost our standing in the various regional and global logistical and competitiveness surveys. None of this will yield results overnight, but there are processes in train that will hopefully get us to a better place soon. AW, CCC Interaction between the public and private sectors has certainly ramped up. At the chamber of commerce, we want to make companies accustomed to operating without special government privileges or assistance, which opens up the threat of rent seeking. When countries seek to boost their global ranking, a first instinct is to game the system. Our focus is to ensure that we move consistently and steadily up the rankings by boosting reform and by deepening integration between the public and private sectors. DA, BOI We have a very large number of graduates who are not job-ready, and we need to ensure they are in a position to enter the workplace immediately after leaving college. We need to look at countries like Rwanda, which has scaled the World Bank business rankings very fast, or Singapore, which learns from others when it encounters a challenge. One way is to update our legal system: there are many rules that hark back to colonial days. IC, CBS In the past, the state has been good at planning but not at implementation. The government is setting up an agency for development and an agency for international trade, composed of many of the countrys best business leaders. They will have a dual responsibility of strengthening policy-making and prioritising a drive toward creating a more efficient and results-driven economy. In a video on YouTube, University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne states that science has demonstrated that the universe and life are pointless.Pointless in the sense that there is no externally imposed purpose or point in the universe. As atheists this is something that is manifestly true to us. We make our own meaning and purpose. He went on: Evolution is the greatest killer of belief that has ever happened on this planet because it showed that some of the best evidence for God, which was the design of animals and plants that so wonderfully matched their environment could be the result of this naturalistic, blind materialistic process of natural selection. Coyne is by no means alone in claiming Darwinism, with its insistence that all organisms have arisen through chance events (mutations) without plan or purpose, leads logically to the position that human life has no meaning or purpose. In my book The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life, I provide many examples of evolutionary biologists and other intellectuals who argue Darwinism sweeps away the benighted notion that human life has meaning. In a 1994 debate with Phillip Johnson, a leading figure in the intelligent design movement, the late evolutionary biologist William Provine insisted: No ultimate foundations for ethics exist, no ultimate meaning in life exists, and free will is merely a human myth. These are all conclusions to which Darwin came quite clearly. However, as I also explain in detail in my new book, many Darwinists are unable to really live in accord with their own philosophy. For instance, Coyne has stated that evolution says that there is no special purpose for your life, because it is a naturalistic philosophy. We have no more extrinsic purpose than a squirrel or an armadillo. But, in a different blog post, Coyne waxed indignant at those who have blamed mass shootings, such as those at Columbine, on Darwinism. (Coyne will likely be enraged that I explain Eric Harriss Darwinian motivations in The Death of Humanity.) But why does Coyne care about these people, whose lives according to his philosophy have no meaning or purpose? He evidently recognizes that the lives of those teenagers gunned down at Columbine did have some point or purpose after all, greater than squirrels or armadillos. Duke University philosophy professor Alex Rosenberg shows the same inconsistency. He co-authored an article in 2003, Darwins Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaninglessness of Life, in which he dismissed morality as an illusion. However, Rosenberg assured us that we have nothing to fear, because nihilism has no effect on our behavior, since Most of us just couldnt persistently be mean, even if we tried. Rosenberg needs to take some of my history courses or just read the news if he doesnt think many people could be mean to each other. In a 2013 debate with William Lane Craig, Rosenberg objected to some of Craigs arguments as morally offensive, because some of his relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. But if life is meaningless and morality is an illusion, why does it matter if Hitler killed millions? That would be just another meaningless event in the meaningless flow of history. Rosenberg apparently knows better. Despite what they may say, many Darwinists are fully aware that human lives have meaning and purpose, no matter how loudly they deny it. Dr. Weikart is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and Senior Fellow with Discovery Institutes Center for Science & Culture; his new book, The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life, has just been released. Photo credit: ESO/H. Dahle [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons. People moving to the United States, Canada, and Australia tend to be healthier and live longer than non-immigrants in their host countries, new research has found.The study found that once adjustments have been made for income and education the future health of migrants was much better than those who stay in the country where they are born.There has been a great deal of speculation as to why this healthy migrant effect exists and one hypothesis suggests that it is due to self-selection so particularly healthy individuals are more likely to choose to move to a different country, while those who are in poor health may be less willing or able to do so.The study released by the University of Toronto and the UK's Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at University College London compared the childhood circumstances of 984 future emigrants with 4,378 non-emigrants.It used data from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD), a large nationally representative longitudinal study of British children born in early March 1946 who have been surveyed more than 20 times over their lifetime."The childhood health of future migrants was much better than those who did not move to other countries," said Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson, Sandra of the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Institute for Life Course and Aging.Researchers found that future emigrants in the NSHD were less likely to have been born with a low birth weight or to have a serious illness before the age of five and they were taller at age six, which reflects childhood nutrition, than the children who did not emigrate.It appears that factors contributing to positive health selection in migrant populations begin as far back as childhood and the study also found that future emigrants had superior cognitive ability at age eight in comparison to their counterparts who stayed in Britain."Higher cognitive ability has been shown in other studies to be associated with better health in adulthood and a lower likelihood of developing dementia in old age," said Sarah Brennenstuhl of the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto.Future emigrants came from families with a higher socioeconomic position than those who remained permanently in the UK. They were more likely to have fathers who were professionals, their mothers had a higher level of education, their housing quality at age four was better, their parents showed more interest in the children's school progress, and their parents were more likely to own their own home when the child was six years old.Professor Diana Kuh, a co-author and Director of LHA and NSHD, pointed out that childhood socio economic position has been shown in the NSHD and many other studies to be highly associated with adult health."This study supports the healthy migrant hypothesis for migration between high-resource countries," she added. Brood V cicadas will emerge in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland in 2016. 2016 is the year that Brood V of the periodical 17-year cicadas will return to much of eastern Ohio as well as some nearby states. If youre a resident of the eastern United States, consider yourself lucky. Its the only part of the country where periodical cicadas (Magicicada spp.) emerge. Actually, periodic cicadas are native to North America and dont exist anywhere else in the world. How many broods of cicadas are there? There are at least 13 broods of 17-year cicadas and at least five broods of 13-year cicadas, according to Penn State University Extension. 17-year cicada broods are named by Roman numerals I through XVII, one number for each of the possible years that cicadas can emerge. 13-year cicada broods are designated by Roman numerals XXVIII through XXX. Periodical cicadas have either a 17-year or a 13-year life cycle. Generally, the 17-year cicadas appear in the northern part of the eastern U.S., which the 13-year cicadas occur in the southern part of the eastern U.S. There are some overlapping areas, though. There are six species of cicadas: three northern and three southern species. When and where will Brood V cicadas appear? Brood V cicadas are expected to emerge between May and June. Usually, they will emerge when the soil temperature is 64 degrees F. Brood V will emerge in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland. Are cicadas locusts? Some people may call periodical cicadas 17-year locusts, but theyre not locusts. Ohio State University Extension explains that cicadas are related to leafhoppers and spittlebugs, but not locusts, which are grasshoppers. Whats the life cycle of a periodical cicada? Ohio State University Extension explains that periodical cicadas emerge from underground as adults. Once they emerge, they only live between two and four weeks. During that time, both males and females will feed a little on young, tender twigs. Then, males will sing to females. About 10 days after the female cicadas molt, they will mate and lay eggs. Each female cicada has a structure attached to her abdomen called ovipositor, which is used to cut slits in tree branches. Eggs are usually laid in twigs that are inch to inch in diameter. Female cicadas lay between 20 and 28 eggs in each of the pockets they create, and they lay as many as 400 to 600 eggs in their lifetimes. Female cicadas will lay their eggs in about 270 different tree species and woody shrubs, but they dont lay eggs in coniferous trees, according to Ohio State University Extension. These trees and plants range from hickory and maple trees to Rose of Sharon and black-eyed Susans. Six to 10 weeks after eggs are laid, cicada nymphs emerge and drop onto the ground. The nymphs are white and resemble ants. They burrow 6 to 18 inches below the soils surface and feed on plant and tree roots, which doesnt cause much damage to trees. The nymphs then feed for 17 years, usually residing 1 foot to 8 feet underground. During this time, they go through five nymphal instars, according to Ohio State University Extension. 17 years later, the nymphs have become adults and they will emerge, and the life cycle starts again. How do cicadas emerge? Cicadas emerge at night. They climb up out of the soil to trees and plants, leaving a half-inch hole. Then, the cicadas shed their exoskeletons, which can be found attached to trees. What do adult cicadas look like? Ohio State University Extension says that adult cicadas are about 1 inches long. They have clear wings with orange veins. Periodical cicadas are not the same as annual, or dog day, cicadas, which emerge in July and August. Annual cicadas are larger than periodical cicadas and are brown and green. They have black markings and a white-colored bloom. Do cicadas make sound? Adult male cicadas sing with vibrating membranes that are on the underside of their first abdominal segment. Females are silent. Ohio State University Extension says that male cicadas will squawk and make a loud buzzing noise. Do cicadas cause damage to trees? About 10 days after the cicadas emerge, female cicadas lay their eggs in tree branches. Flagging may occur in twigs where eggs have been laid. Flagging is when twigs split, wither and then die, Ohio State University Extension explains. West Virginia University Extension recommends that homeowners wait to plant new trees until after cicadas are gone. If youve already planted trees, you can drape cheesecloth or insect netting over the trees, specifically around the trunk and beneath the lower branches. In addition, after eggs are laid, you can prune out and destroy twigs, which will decrease the number of nymphs entering the soil to feed on plant roots. Chemical control of periodical cicadas is not recommended per Ohio State University Extension. Do cicadas harm humans and pets? Cicadas do not bite or sting humans. They have piercing, sucking mouth parts that are used for feeding, but thats it. Dogs and cats may eat cicadas, but they will not harm them. If too many are consumed, pets may become constipated, or they may regurgitate the cicadas. Are there any predators of cicadas? Underground, moles and other burrowers may eat cicadas. Once they emerge, birds, fish and small mammals may eat them. 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... The UK is on the edge of another agricultural revolution, which will be achieved through new technology, innovation and shared knowledge within the sector, according to Mark Bowyer, Head of Farming at the Produce World Group. Speaking at the Suffolk Agricultural Associations (SAA) annual conference Innovation for Agriculture on 11th November, he urged the agriculture sector to work together on new farming innovation and shared knowledge in this area to help make the UK a global leader. At a workshop during the conference, Mark explained how the Produce World Group is gearing up for this new agricultural revolution through precision farming with new technologies to improve farming best practice. These include a broccoli forecasting model to estimate the timings and yield of broccoli crops; a project to promote pest-free organic brassicas; assessment of fertilizer requirements on-the-go; and projects looking at irrigation. The group has also developed a knowledge-base of information and data about soil types and properties of the land farmed by Produce World and its growers. The Knowledge Transfer Partnership project called Soil-for-Life in collaboration with Cranfield University, provides data and information to inform on-farm decision making and drive innovation in soil management. Mark Bowyer says, The workshop was a fantastic opportunity to discuss how the sector can get involved in new innovation and how farmers can test and evaluate new technology on their fields. We work closely with independent growers in the East of England so are always keen to share best practice and learn from their experiences, while looking at how the latest technologies can work for them and their land. Produce World Group is already showing what can be achieved through new technology and innovation. In June 2013, the government pledged to invest 160 million in the Agri-Tech sector, with the strategy setting out how the government, science researchers and the food and farming industry will build on the strengths of the UK agricultural technologies sector. 70 million of this funding, known as the Agri-Tech Catalyst, is available for projects that aim to improve the translation of research into practice through support at different stages of development. The remaining 90 million is proposed for Centres for Agricultural Innovation that aim to increase support to develop new technologies in the sector. Through Agri-Tech Catalyst funding support, the Produce World Group and Cranfield University will be building on the success of the Soil-for-Life project, with the aim of developing a commercial prospect for the industry. The next stage of the project, known as Soil-for-life Beta, will test and analyse the data collected using different approaches, while expanding further research to a core group of Produce World Group grower beta testers.. The group is also keen to support the Centres for Agricultural Innovation, with a Centre for Agriculture Informatics being proposed as part of the funding. This centre will look at the use of informatics, data and statistics in supporting agricultural innovation. Legal ruling set to have implications for farm inheritance rows Fayetteville mother says four charged in son's killing were his friends The mother-of-two is struggling to understand not just how her son could be gone so quickly, but why his friends turned on him. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Bollywood actress and former Miss WorldA famous Bollywood actor. His daughter in law, a former Miss World. One of Indias top lawyers. Politically connected industrialists. For a country with 1.2 billion people, the 500 or so Indian nationals disclosed so far in the Panama Papers are hardly a blip, and few of the names a surprise. The reason there are so few Indians may be fairly simple. While the rapidly growing and partially liberalized economy has created a significant amount of personal wealth, more than 43,000 Indian millionaires have left India in the past decade. Perhaps Indians dont typically offshore their assets. When they have the chance, they offshore themselves. We should be alive to national differences as we explore the depths of the Panama Papers. The simple narrative of the Evil Rich cheating on their taxes is probably one we can dismiss right away. While tax avoidance may be a universal desire that cuts across culture and geography, presuming that an Icelandic prime minister and one of Bollywoods most famous actors have the same reason to create shell companies to protect their assets is probably not correct. We can learn more from the differences than the similarities. Indians have a number of reasons to utilize offshore structures. Income tax rates once reached 98.35%. The Indian government retroactively changed the tax laws and retrospectively taxed transactions going back half a century. The government remains embroiled in economy-killing fights with a number of companies who would otherwise be busy investing in the country. The governor of Indias central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, warned against a dangerous trend of questioning entrepreneurial earned wealth in the country. As explained in a super-charming video by the Indian Express newspaper, before 2004 Indians were not allowed to expatriate assets or transfer more than a bare minimum amount of money. (Speak with nearly any Indian who went abroad for college before the 1990s and you likely will hear a diatribe about the pathetic amounts they were allowed to bring with them to the U.S. or elsewhere.) Capital controls were re-imposed in 2013 to prevent the flight of assets in the face of a drowning rupee. The still-tight limits are one of the reasons India remains a very poor source of limited partners for private equity and venture capital funds who look at the level of wealth creation in India and expect fund-raising traction. While these are early days, there are a few highlights disclosed in the Panama Papers so far. Amitabh Bachchan, one of Indias most popular actors in the last 30 years, has denied knowledge of any of the Panamanian companies of which he is allegedly a shareholder, and a spokesman for his daughter-in-law, actress Aishwarya Rai, also denied the disclosures. One of Indias most successful lawyers and largest individual taxpayers Harish Salve has declared disclosure of his legally made investments an unfair invasion of privacy. You can follow the parade of disclosures in the Indian Express, which was the India partner in the Panama Papers investigation. While there yet may be some blockbuster revelations and investigations as the data rolls out, its highly likely that in India there will be a certain cache involved in being part of the Panama Papers. After all, being declared sufficiently endangered to warrant gun-toting security is a sign of status for many politicians and businesspeople. My dear friend Kedar Misra, a distinguished poet and journalist from the Indian state of Odisha, was ironically hoping for some hometown representation in a recent Facebook post: I was desperately trying to spot an Odia name in highly loaded Panama Papers. Sadly, not a single name is there in that aristocratic black list. _____ Russell Stamets is a Contributing Editor of the FCPA Blog. He was the first non-Indian general counsel of a publicly traded Indian company and was general counsel for a satellite broadcasting joint venture of a large Indian business house. Russ can be contacted here. So many films are based on books that I decided to focus on those adaptations that I love as films in their own right. Some of them are more faithful to the original book than others, but even where the films stray in content or style, it feels to me that they retain the spirit of the original book, or have used the visual medium of film to enhance it. Shamim Sarif Dr Zhivago I was impressed all over again by David Lean's direction when I watched this epic story of love and Russian revolution recently on a large screen. Zhivago's role as an observer is beautifully captured in the way shots are framed - a glimpse of Lara's hand lit by a lamp in a dark room; a shaft of sunlight across her eyes in a shadowy library. In a world where many sweeping, large scale shots are now filled in by CGI landscapes and crowds, it is breathtaking to watch the true scale of the world created in this film. And, however you choose to picture the book's characters in your mind, it's hard to fault the casting of Omar Sharif and Julie Christie - two of the most beautiful people ever and talented actors to boot. Carol (The Price of Salt) I read the Patricia Highsmith novel after I saw Carol at its Cannes premiere. The book did a wonderful job of conveying the growing love between the two women at its centre, but for me, Todd Haynes' evocative film allowed Carol herself to blossom a little more as the enigmatic object of Therese's attentions. Some of that has to do with exceptional performances from Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara that spoke volumes with scant dialogue. The Big Short The Big Short was my film of the year, last year. As a writer, director and viewer who is often drawn to stories with strong female protagonists, I was expecting to find this drama about the testosterone-fuelled bets behind the financial crisis merely interesting. But the film managed to elicit empathy for all its characters while also finding innovative ways to explain the 2008 housing crash. Irreverently having background characters talk to camera, introducing famous commentators in short cameos - none of it is orthodox, but all of it worked. Seriously entertaining and intelligent. The Hunger Games When I read the book recently, I was struck by how closely the first film in the series followed the structure and characters. What I love about the film is the vivid way in which the world of Panam is brought to life. But most moving to me is Katniss's fight to retain dignity and humanity in a morally corrupt world. Visual images have a visceral effect on us and the horrific premise of The Hunger Games hits hard. A River Runs Through It This evocative film by Robert Redford is sometimes languid, sometimes gripping and always poetic. The story of two brothers bound by a love of fly-fishing is not an obvious candidate for a film but the story has much to say about families, art and the transcendent nature of moments of grace. For me, one of Brad Pitt's best characters and performances as a young man with self-destructive impulses but touched with true beauty. Out of Africa I spent some time in Kenya when I was younger and there is a whole area on the outskirts of Nairobi that is known as 'Karen' after Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa (published under the pseudonym Isak Dineson). The film is more linear in narrative than the episodic vignettes of the book but both are entirely evocative of a particular European experience in East Africa and also of Blixen's love for the land and the people she met there. The Last of the Mohicans I studied some American literature in university, including James Fenimore Cooper's book. I remember the solid prose of the book being somewhat hard work to get through but the film brought alive the visceral fights for physical survival and the survival of love in at a time when cross cultural relationships between Native Americans and the English colonisers were frowned on. Breakfast at Tiffanys A lovely confection of a book, and a gem of a movie. It's a rare thing for actor to make a character entirely her own but Audrey Hepburn managed it with Holly Golightly. A snapshot of a certain time and stylized place and a lot of fun. Portrait of a Lady I thought I'd throw in an adapation that didn't quite work for me - I admire Jane Campion but the film seemed to me to highlight Gilbert's shady character too early. What I truly love about Henry James' book is the way that Isabel Archer, who seems so very self-assured, falls into the relationship in a way that you can barely fault - and yet finds herself in a morass of misery. So delicately and skillfully woven is this interior life, that it is no shame at all that the movie (perhaps only for me) didn't quite capture it. Desert Hearts This movie about two women who find love in 1950s Reno became known as a seminal LGBT film - in fact, it is just a good film irrespective of the gender of the couple at its heart. The casino culture and characters of that small desert town are brilliantly drawn, the soundtrack of 1950s songs ranges from Gene Vincent to Ella Fitzgerald, and the love scene (which features no music at all, just the awkward reality of real ambient noise) is moving. We all know it's important to keep on top of our spending, but a lot of the time it's easier said than done. In a bid to take control of their personal finances, a group of people recently gathered outside Parliament in London's Westminster holding their own 'Budget Boxes' on the morning of Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's Budget statement. The participants were all members of Noddle - an online service where people can check their credit score for free and improve their own financial health. Are you on top of your personal finances? With the impact of this year's Budget still trickling down to our everyday lives, here are our top tips for you to take control of your own finances. 1) Isolate your savings Having all your money in one bank account makes it harder to track and manage. You can easily end up spending it on short-term impulse buys such as a night out or clothes - no matter how important they seem at the time. To make sure you have enough tucked away for those unexpected bills, split your money into three basic pots: short-term, long-term and emergencies (e.g. boiler break down). Often it's helpful to aim for specific goals, so maybe have a 'car' or 'new holiday' fund. 2) Track and budget To avoid getting into financial difficulty, establish a reasonable budget and stick to it; no one wants to be out of pocket mid-month and have to miss out on brunch with besties until pay day comes back around. Paying by credit and debit card is fast and easy but it can make it difficult to keep a close eye on expenditure which can lead to nasty shocks at the end of the month. If you know you're on a budget but know that you're prone to over spending then why not take out your weekly budget in cash and leave the card at home? That way you can know exactly how much you have spent and there's no way you can exceed your limit. 3) Small cuts make big savings It's often the small spends we don't think about which have the biggest impact on our budget. A little extra planning and organisation such as making your avocado on toast at home can make a huge difference. If you spend what seems a modest 5 on lunch a day this adds up to about 1000 a year. Throughout your working life this can amount to a hefty amount that could be better spent elsewhere. Additionally, cutting down on other small, non-essential expenses like your daily coffee, or walking instead of taking public transport, are also great ways to save money in the long term. 4) Save BEFORE you spend It can often be the case that the minute we get paid we splurge on something we've been eyeing up all month. However, by giving yourself a bit of breathing space before spending it will give you enough time to really weigh up whether you can actually afford it in the long-run. If you do, going forward, a good plan is to automate your savings by setting up a monthly direct debit for the day after you get paid. That way you don't have to worry too much about putting away the money. You could also do this with your monthly bills so you know you can use what's left over at your leisure. 5) Credit check up Regularly checking your credit report on Noddle helps to keep track of your finances but also helps prevent you from being a victim of identity theft as unusual searches in your report or any unrecognisable accounts opened in your name can be spotted early and dealt with. It's that simple and will potentially save you hassle in the long run. Go to www.noddle.co.uk to sign up. Alexandra Roach has called Cedric Nicolas-Troyan a 'very visual' filmmaker and 'lovely' to work with. Alexandra Roach Roach returned to the big screen this week in The Huntsman: Winter's War. Not only was this the first time that she had tackled a big budget blockbuster, but it was also the first time that she had worked with the French director. But the British actress reveals that the way he works really helped her to up her game as she took on the role of dwarf Doreena in the film. Speaking exclusively to us here at FemaleFirst, the actress said: "He is a very visual, calm and freeing director. He is French. He just lives in the moment and if we were not feeling something... he was very approachable and lovely to work with. "He was very visual and the first time that I went to the studio, he took me into his room, which was filled with pictures that he had imagined and drawn out. He had every detail in his mind. It really did up my game being directed by him. It was a huge learning curve." The movie sees Roach work closely with Nick Frost, Sheridan Smith, and Rob Brydon and the actress reveals that the director was very open to them using improv during the shoot. She continued: "He was really into that, which was great. You can't veer away from the main story too much. So we would shoot the first take as was written in the script and as we had learnt it, and then the second take would be more improvised and ad-lib. "He would take some bits from that and some moments have made the final cut. He really did give us the freedom to do that in, which is great." The Huntsman: Winter's War is the first time that we have seen Roach on the big screen since Testament of Youth back at the beginning of 2015. She is about to return to television as she starts filming on the second season of No Offence. Read our full interview with Alexandra Roach here. The Huntsman: Winter's War is out now. by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Midnight Special has hit the big screen today and is set to be a science fiction film not to miss if you are a fan of this genre and this filmmaker. Mud It is always exciting when a Jeff Nichols movie is on the horizon and Midnight Special is the biggest film of his career to date as he begins to move away from the indie projects that cemented him as a talented to watch out for. Midnight Special is the first time that we have seen Nichols in the director's chair since Mud back in 2013 - and it is this film that is in the spotlight today. Mud saw Nichols on writing and directing duties once again as he teamed up with Matthew McConaughey for the first time. Mud was one of the movies that helped McConaughey shake his good-looking rom-com actor tag and take his career in a new direction. The movie also came before he tasted Oscar success with Dallas Buyers Club. This movie may have come before his awards success, but Mud was a movie that saw the actor deliver a terrific central performance and made people sit up and take note of his acting talent. Nichols assembled an impressive cast as Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepard, and Tye Sheridan were also on board. When two young boys discover a dangerous but charismatic fugitive called Mud (McConaughey) hiding from bounty hunters on a remote island near their riverside homes, they form an unlikely friendship with him. With their help, he plans to escape his pursuers and reunite with his long-time love Juniper (Witherspoon). Nichols delivered another gem with Mud and there is a feel of Stand By Me to this coming of age tale. Once again, Nichols has delivered a story at a strolling pace and yet it is a tale that grips you from the very beginning. He captures the pace and rhythm of life in a Southern U.S. rural village and delivers such beautiful and evocative pictures; the backdrop to this story is just as interesting as the story itself. It was one of the most beautiful looking movies of 2013. McConaughey gives a wonderfully powerful performance in the title role and has such presence when he is on screen. It was another interesting film and character choice for McConaughey and showed off a very different side to him as an actor. McConaughey's character may be a man on the run, but there is a truth and a sorrow in his performance that is just transfixing. He is a man who wants to escape his criminal past and he is a character whose vulnerability makes you care very deeply for him. Tye Sheridan is a fantastic young acting talent and Mud was only the second feature film role of his career; he made his debut in The Tree of Life back in 2011. I love the naivety of Sheridan's character and he conveys that so beautifully - it is an astounding performance for someone who was, at the time, so inexperienced in front of the camera. Mud is a rich, emotional, and human drama and Nichols has once again crafted a story and created characters that pull the audience in and leave them hooked. Nichols' wonderful script is driven forward by McConaughey and Sheridan and those performances are brought to life by Nichols' beautiful direction. The movie played well on the festival circuit, screening at Sundance and competed for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie won over audiences and critics and we met with critical acclaim upon release. Midnight Special is out now. by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on John Partridge and Lynda Baron will both be coming to Walford later this year for a brief stint as part of an explosive storyline involving the Beales. John Partridge Set to reprise their roles as Christian and Linda Clarke respectively - the brother and mother of Jane Beale - the pair will be involved in a story set to change the Beale family forever. Though bosses are staying tight-lipped about exactly what's going to happen, it's looking to be some gripping television in typical EastEnders fashion. Christian was last seen on the soap in 2015, when he attended the wedding of Ian and Jane during the 30th anniversary live week. Partridge says of his return: "I am thrilled to be able to return to EastEnders whilst touring the UK with Chicago... Christian is never far from my mind - I turn my back for five minutes and look what happens!" Linda hasn't been seen on screen since February 2009, when she moved with her husband Roger to Florida. The pair are set to make their returns early this coming summer. by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on The Nepal Foreign Trade Association (NFTA) has once again requested the Indian government to remove countervailing duty imposed on the import of Nepali goods. Nepali exporters have long been lobbying for the same through the government, but India has not yet obliged them.India has imposed the duty to safeguard its own industries because the level of tariff imposed on import, which is also known as countervailing duty, minimises the chances of imported goods being sold at cheaper rates as compared to the locally produced goods. The Nepal Foreign Trade Association (NFTA) has once again requested the Indian government to remove countervailing duty imposed on the import of Nepal# Countervailing duty is normally levied on products that receive subsidy during manufacturing in the country of origin. The government of India has imposed such duty on readymade garment products to offset excise duty levied on their own products.Nepali traders claim India has imposed additional countervailing duty on Nepali garments.During an interaction with Indian Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Rae, NFTA officials said that as Nepal's export volume to India, especially of garments, is quite low, it could not affect India's production base, The Himalayan Times has reported..The safeguard measure taken by the Indian government has been hurting Nepal's export to India, said Ramesh Gupta, president of NFTA, adding, We request the Indian government through the ambassador of India to Nepal to suspend such duties to promote India-Nepal trade.Recently, the Indian government has also informed that is preparing to impose anti-dumping tariff on jute products and asked the exporters to present reasons within three months as to why the Indian government should not impose this law on jute products.Nepali traders have been lobbying with the government to raise the issue during the commerce secretary-level talks between Nepal and India in the last week of May.During the interaction with the Indian envoy, traders also sought facility for movement of bulk cargo to the railheads of Jogbani (Biratnagar) and Nautanwa (Bhairahawa). Currently, bulk cargoes ferried via rail only arrives at Inland Clearance Depot (ICD) at Birgunj Nepal's only rail-linked ICD.Ambassador Rae said he would forward the grievances of Nepali traders to India's ministries concerned. He reiterated that Indian government has been extending its support to Nepal for trade facilitation. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Hanes Brands, a leading marketer of everyday innerwear and activewear under world-class brands in the Americas, Europe and Asia, announced that it has entered into a definitive purchase agreement to acquire Champion Europe, which owns the trademark for the Champion brand in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The company has agreed to acquire the privately held Champion Europe, based in Italy, in an all-cash transaction. The purchase price will be 10 times the actual calendar 2016 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, subject to adjustment for cash, debt and working capital. It intends to take advantage of its strong balance sheet to fund the acquisition with debt, consistent with its previously communicated capital allocation strategy. Hanes Brands announced that it has entered into a definitive purchase agreement to acquire Champion Europe.# Champion in Europe will be run as a division of the company's global Champion organisation. Sauro Mambrini, chief executive officer and president of Champion Europe, will remain with Hanes Brands to oversee Champion Europe operations. This acquisition coupled with the recent purchase of the Champion business from our licensee in Japan will unite the Champion brand globally and will give us a powerful platform for growth in every continent, said Gerald Evans Jr, COO of Hanes. Sauro Mambrini and the highly capable management team of Champion Europe will be a great addition to our organisation, he said. This is a great time to do an acquisition, Richard Noll, Chairman and CEO of Hanes said. Our overall business is trending as expected; our recent acquisitions are performing well; we have a vision for Champion as a global brand; and we feel good about delivering double-digit earnings growth in 2016 and for many years to come. The acquisition, which is subject to certain closing conditions, is expected to close mid-year 2016. After the acquisition closes, Hanes will update its 2016 financial guidance to reflect the close timing, the outlook for Champion Europe and any currency considerations. (MCJ) Hanes Brands Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) and Kering announced the appointment of Anthony Vaccarello as Creative Director of Yves Saint Laurent recently. Anthony Vaccarello has been the creative director of his eponymous brand since 2009, which he founded following two years at Fendi. . He has also spent three years at Versus Versace, first as an independent consultant designer and then, since 2015, as creative director. Francesca Bellettini, President and CEO of Yves Saint Laurent, said, I am extremely happy to have Anthony Vaccarello take the creative helm of Yves Saint Laurent. His modern, pure aesthetic is the perfect fit for the maison. Anthony Vaccarello impeccably balances elements of provocative femininity and sharp masculinity in his silhouettes. He is the natural choice to express the essence of Yves Saint Laurent. I am enthusiastic about embarking on a new era with Anthony Vaccarello, and together bringing the maison further success. Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) and Kering announced the appointment of Anthony Vaccarello as Creative Director of Yves Saint Laurent recently.Anthony # Anthony Vaccarello said: Mr Saint Laurent is a legendary figure for his creativity, style and audacity. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the history of this extraordinary house. Francois-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of Kering, added: I am very proud to welcome such a vivid and young force among today's creative fashion talents to Yves Saint Laurent. Anthony Vaccarello's unique style will greatly express the maison's creative signature and fashion authority, building on the brand's solid foundations, and further developing it to realise its full potential. Together with the entire Yves Saint Laurent team, Anthony Vaccarello will strongly contribute to the maison's growing accomplishments. Anthony Vaccarello will present his first collection for the maison in October 2016, during Paris Spring-Summer 2017 fashion week. (HO) Kering Invista Performance Technologies (IPT) and China Prosperity (Jiangyin) Petrochemical Company Limited has announced the successful start-up of China Prosperity's second PTA line. China Prosperity's second PTA line incorporates Invista's E2R, solvent interchange and R2R technologies, further enhancing the competitiveness of the technology in terms of capital productivity, variable cost and environmental performance. The solvent interchange technology, which has inherently low capital cost, has been successfully deployed with additional advantages achieved through the use of locally manufactured rotary pressure filters. The successful start-up of China Prosperity's second line demonstrated the advancement of Invista's technology. Congratulations to both teams on the achievement of on-spec product within 24 hours of start-up. We look forward to long-term cooperation with Invista. We will rectify the defects in the ancillary facilities and restart the plant as soon as possible, said Li Xing, chairman of China Prosperity. Invista Performance Technologies (IPT) and China Prosperity (Jiangyin) Petrochemical Company Limited has announced the successful start-up of China # Mike Pickens, IPT president, commented, The successful start-up of China Prosperity's second line again demonstrates our capabilities in the areas of PTA technology development, engineering, licensee support services and commissioning. We are proud of this accomplishment and at the same time, I am appreciative of the trust that chairman Li Xing and his team have placed on Invista, recognizing that selection of industry leading technology is critical for a good return on investment. China Prosperity continues to operate another Invista PTA line on the same site and is constructing a polyester resin plant utilizing Invista technology. (NA) INVISTA Performance Technologies (IPT) Microfinance company Equitas Holdings has kicked off a potentially record breaking year for Indian equity issuance, raising at least Rs21.6 billion ($327 million) from the first initial public offering of the 2016/17 fiscal year. The deal will rank as the countrys third largest IPO in the past three-and-a half-years behind Bharti Infratels $760 million deal from December 2012 and InterGlobe Aviations more recent $459 million flotation in October last year. Amid a dearth of ECM activity so far this year, it also represents only the third Asian IPO outside of China and Japan to rake in more than $300 million. However, India may yet prove to be one of the few bright spots of 2016, with bankers expecting HDFC Life Insurance and Larsen & Toubro Infotech to each raise about $300 million. Vodafone India may also bring the countrys largest ever IPO, although the company recently said the prospective $4 billion offering may not see the light of day before calendar year-end. The majority of the rest of the deals in the pipeline are likely come from the secondary market as the Modi government continues to divest non-core assets to keep the nation's fiscal deficit in check. For the 2017 financial year it has set a $5.4 billion divestment target, with potential block sales in Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), National Hydroelectric Power Corp and IDBI Bank. Domestic focus Where Equitas is concerned, the IPO ended up being a domestic affair since the company had to reduce its foreign shareholding below 49% after gaining a small finance bank licence last year. The IPO was, therefore, structured with a 33%/67% split between primary and secondary shares to give existing foreign shareholders an opportunity to exit. Sellers included Netherlands Development Finance Company, Sequoia Capital and Westbridge Capital. According to the companys red herring prospectus, foreign investors held a 92.64% stake pre-IPO, which will fall to 35% post listing. When bookbuilding ended late Thursday, the 139 million shares offered to the public had achieved a 16.2 times oversubscription ratio according to National Stock Exchange of India data. The IPO also incorporated a further 59.5 million shares, which had been pre-sold to 16 anchor investors. The shares were offered on a very narrow price range of Rs109 - Rs110 so there was little difference in terms of valuation. According to ICICI Securities projections, the bank has been valued at 1.82 to 1.83 times post-issue book value as of the end of last year, and 1.9 times for the year ending March 2017. It said, We believed pricing is reasonable given that it is lower than well run private sector banks and it also seems sufficient to capture the likely compression in ROA over the next couple of years due to required investment. Smaller lender, big ambitions Chennai-headquartered Equitas is Indias fifth largest microfinance company by lending size. It provides financing to individuals and small- and medium-sized enterprises, as well as specialised lending such as vehicle and mortgage loans. Historically, the company relied on bank lending and bond issuance as its main funding source. But this is likely to change after it became one of 10 financial institutions to receive in-principal approval to set up a small finance bank. This should allow Equitas to take customer deposits and diversify its funding sources, potentially expanding the scope of its lending services. On the filp side, the company will be subject to higher regulatory capital constraints. According to the Reserve Bank of India, small finance banks will be subject to a minimum capital adequacy ratio of 15% and a Tier I ratio of at least 7.5%. In a pre deal research report, ICICI Securities said Equitass transformation woul entail other risks including higher operating expenses and liability management requirements. But India Infoline was also positive on the firm established by ex DCB consumer banking head PN Vasudevan. It concluded that Equitas has, exhibited high standards of corporate governance and transparency in conducting business. Given the IPOs domestic focus, HSBC was only one foreign bank in the syndicate alongside Axis Capital, Edelweiss Financial and ICICI Securities. WASHINGTON The night before the Department of Labor unveiled its long-awaited fiduciary rule, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) walked over to the reflecting pool on the National Mall and up steps of the Jefferson Memorial at about 10 p.m. Despite the late hour, the site was crowded with visitors, many of whom were reading aloud portions of the Declaration of Independence. One quote, in particular, jumped out at Booker, who had been involved with the rule since 2013. Americans "mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." For Booker, the fact that many advisors had not been legally required to place their clients' financial interests before their own "is an assault on the ideals of this country." The new fiduciary rule requires just that of planners who advise on retirement assets. Its supporters hope it will reduce, or eliminate, the $17 billion that the White House Council of Economic Advisors estimates investors lose every year to conflicted financial advice. In an exclusive interview with Financial Planning, just moments after the Labor Departments fiduciary announcement on Wednesday, Booker described the blocking and tackling required to see the rule through, the opposition he expects, and the impact of the rule on advisors and the industry. When did you begin to consult on the rule? As soon as I got into the Senate [in 2013]. The secretary and I have a really good relationship. Given the retirement crisis we have in our country, I started talking to him and other administration officials about it early on. I know CEOs of some of these [financial] companies. There's one in particular whose name I don't want to mention [who heads] a massive insurance company. He had some concerns that were legitimate concerns because [insurers] have different rules for their products and different challenges than a big bank might have. And so we were able to make a connection between the secretary and this leader so that they could talk. There's a lot of talk about wealth disparity in this country. Could this rule do anything to partly bridge the gap between the wealthy and the poor? [The amount Americans lose to conflicted advice annually] could be the difference between, really, destitution and poverty, versus having security. What's so offensive about the disparities right now is not that the rich have so much; it's that the poor have so little that they cannot live lives of dignity and decency. What kind of opposition to the rule do you anticipate going forward? This is a very powerful industry that has tremendous influence on the Hill and a lot of people are going to be swayed by that. That's why I've been pushing for the last two-plus years that I've been in Congress to resist those efforts to undermine the integrity of this rulemaking. [There have been] a lot of compromises but also, frankly, a lot of taking industry's input well into hand. What do you think the impact of this rule will be on the industry and on advisors? It gives a whole new aura of trust to this industry. I think it is actually going to be very good for business because the more people trust, the more likely [they will be] to engage [advisors'] services. People are going to find out that this is something that really benefits them. It's like the auto industry fighting seat belts and then, all of a sudden, the auto industry is advertising their safety. Read more: Wirehouse and regional B-D executives are expressing confidence in the amended fiduciary rule, but some advisors are questioning the wisdom behind the new regulations. Executives and compliance experts are still parsing the amended rule's hundreds of pages. But based on his initial review, Merrill Lynch's John Thiel was pleased the new regulation addresses several "practical concerns" made during the comment period. Thiel also reiterated his firm's support for "a consistent, higher standard for all professionals who advise the American people on their investments." His comments were picked up later on Wednesday by Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, who cited them at an event unveiling details of the rule. BAD BUSINESS? But some advisors remained skeptical that the rule would upset business relationships. "I think it's a pain in the neck. A thorn in one's side. I'm shocked it got approved," says an advisor with Morgan Stanley, who asked not to be named because he did not have the firm's permission to speak publically. "If your client wants to buy a stock and believes it's going to go higher, it's nice to have IRA money to do that, purely on a transactional basis," says the advisor, whose business is only 1%-2% transactional. "Isn't it foolish?" he asks. "It seems they want to strip that away." Branch managers and other executives set out to address similar concerns voiced by advisors. One manager at a large regional brokerage, who asked not to be named because he also was speaking without permission from his firm, said some of his brokers were "dinosaurs" because they were strongly committed to a commission-based model. However, some industry watchers disagreed with the characterization that brokers holding on to commissions were behind the times. Recruiter Danny Sarch says many advisors still work on commissions in the best interest of their clients. "The idea that every client is the victim of the preying, shrewd broker is an awful stereotype. It makes me nauseous," recruiter Sarch, president of Leitner Sarch Consultants, says. TAKING ACTION Raymond James Complex Manager Tom Hirsch wasn't going to delay reaching out to his advisors. Hirsch, anticipating the rule's announcement this week, sat down with more than two dozen advisors to meet with Scott Stolz, the firm's president of insurance groups, and with representatives from the asset management team. "I'm applauding the new rule. It will be good for clients. It will be good for the firms, and I think a place like Raymond James will come out a winner," he says. A Raymond James spokeswoman says the firm had suggested improvements to the original proposal. Like its competitors, Raymond James is now reviewing the final regulation to see how it can best support its advisors and keep costs down for clients. "We believe that carefully studying the rule will take time," she says, "but are hopeful that a thoughtful response will yield the best outcome for clients and their advisors." Merrill Lynch attempted to allay advisor concerns and asked them to identify clients who may be affected by the new rule, an advisor said after receiving an internal corporate email with the information. "Honestly, I think it's a good thing," said the advisor. He requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized by the firm to speak to the press. "You want to protect the people. In some cases, it makes more sense to keep things in a retirement account," the advisor said. "Yeah, it hurts the industry, but it is what it is." Read more: Panevezys, Lithuania, 2016-04-08 09:08 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of AB "Linas" (company code 147689083, address S.Kerbedzio str.23, Panevezys) will be held on April 29, 2016 acc. to the decision and initiative of the Board.Date of the meeting - April 29, 2016, Friday.Time of the meeting - 12:00 a.m. Registration of participants from 11:00 a.m. till 11:45 a.m.Place of the meeting - AB "Linas" premises, S. Kerbedzio str. 23, Panevezys.Agenda of the meeting:1. The conclusion of the auditor about consolidated and Company's annual financial reports set of year 2015 and annual report.2. Confirmation of consolidated and Company's annual financial reports set of year 2015 and presentation of consolidated annual report.3. Company's allotment of profit (loss).The accounting date of General Meeting of Shareholders is April 22, 2016. In the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders have the right to participate and vote persons who were company's shareholders at the end of accounting date (April 22, 2016), personally or their authorized persons, or persons with whom voting right transferring contract is signed.The Company doesn't form the right to participate and to vote in the meeting with the help of electronic communication equipment.Decision projects on the agenda, documents which will be presented for General meeting of Shareholders are announced in company's web page http://www.linas.lt . The shareholders of the company have the right to acquaint with this information on working days from 9:00 a.m till 16:00 a.m. at company's premises S.Kerbedzio str.23, Panevezys.Shareholders the shares of whom provide not less than 1/20 of all votes, can offer new decision projects for the questions which are included or will be included into the agenda of the meeting. Offers can be presented in written form or by e-mail. The offers in written form can be taken till April 29, 2016, 10:00 a.m. (on working days) to the company's premises or sent by registered letter to address S. Kerbedzio str.23, LT-35114, Panevezys. Offers by e-mail are sent to address office@linas.lt . During the meeting there will be discussed only offers received in the company till April 29, 2016, 10:00 a.m.Shareholders have the right to provide questions in relation with agenda of the meeting in advance. Shareholders can provide questions by e-mail office@linas.lt not later than 3 working days till the meeting. The company will present answers by e-mail till the meeting. The company has the right not to give answers to shareholder's questions if they are in relation with company's commercial (production) or confidential information.All the persons who are participating in General Meeting of Shareholders and have the right to vote have to present the document certifying person identification. Representative of the shareholder for the meeting has to present the original of authorization acc. to law indicated form and content. The company doesn't indicate special form of authorization. The shareholder has the right with the help of electronic communication equipment to authorize other natural or legal person to participate and to vote in the meeting in the name of shareholder. The shareholder has to inform the company about the issued authorization by e-mail office@linas.lt not later than till the last working day 16:00 p.m. to the meeting. In the report the shareholder has to indicate web page from which the shareholder's electronic signature checking program could be sent for free.It would be able to vote on the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders questions completing the general voting bulletin in written form in advance. Printed general voting bulletin is available at company's premises, address S. Kerbedzio str.23, Panevezys. If the shareholder requires in written form, then the company is sending general voting bulletin by registered letter or handle with written confirmation not later than 10 days till the meeting. Shareholder or his authorized person has to sign the filled in general voting bulletin. If the general voting bulletin is signed by the representative, then the document confirming his right for voting has to be added to the bulletin. Properly completed voting bulletins with the attached documents should be presented to the company personally, by the authorized person or by registered letter to the address S. Kerbedzio str.23, LT-35114, Panevezys, not later than the last working day to up to the meeting.Information is available by phone +370 45 506100AB "Linas" chief accountant Daiva Minkeviciene +370 45 506141 A crucial step in securing information systems Bezons, 8 April 2016 - Atos, through its technology brand Bull, announces that it has received certification according to Common Criteria EAL4+ for the latest generation of its HSM solution Trustway Proteccio. This high-level certification is the fruit of rigorous work aimed at ensuring the security, product quality and full control of its industrialisation process. It is all part of Atos ongoing mission to offer both its French and its international customers certified products and thus every security guarantee required to meet their needs. Now the most sensitive applications such as PKI, timestamp, electronic signature and database security solutions will be able to benefit from certified cryptographic services. It is a major and permanent concern in the face of persistent and increasing incidents of all kinds of cyber threats for organisations while setting up these solutions. With the TrustWay Proteccio range - developed, produced and supported by teams in France - Atos offers a real vision, proactively based on partnerships with French and international app publishers. Thanks to this Common Criteria EAL4+ certification, whether they are French or international, operators of vital importance, sensitive administrations or private companies, our customers can be assured of complying with regulations, and can therefore focus on their work while benefiting from the technological advances and reductions in operating costs offered by TrustWay Proteccio with virtual HSMs or direct porting of applications in a secure enclosure. " TrustWay Proteccio is a major asset in the Bull range of products and security solutions. This certification acknowledges the long-term technological work we have done, closely linked to the current and future needs of the market," explains Chris MORET, Vice President of CyberSecurity at Atos. "We're sure our customers will see this as an unfailing commitment by our company in securing critical information systems for their greater benefit." About Bull Bull is the Atos brand for its technology products and software, which are today distributed in over 50 countries worldwide. With a rich heritage of over 80 years of technological innovation, 2000 patents and a 700 strong R&D team supported by the Atos Scientific Community, it offers products and value-added software to assist clients in their digital transformation, specifically in the areas of Big Data and Cybersecurity. Bull is the European leader in HPC and its products include bullx, the energy-efficient supercomputer; bullion, one of the most powerful x86 servers in the world developed to meet the challenges of Big Data; Evidian, the software security solutions for identity and access management; Trustway, the hardware security module and Hoox, the ultra-secure smartphone. Bull is part of Atos. For more information: www.bull.com (http://www.bull.com/) About Atos Atos SE (Societas Europaea) is a leader in digital services with pro forma annual revenue of circa EUR 12 billion and 100,000 employees in 72 countries. Serving a global client base, the Group provides Consulting & Systems Integration services, Managed Services & BPO, Cloud operations, Big Data & Cyber-security solutions, as well as transactional services through Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry. With its deep technology expertise and industry knowledge, the Group works with clients across different business sectors: Defense, Financial Services, Health, Manufacturing, Media, Utilities, Public sector, Retail, Telecommunications, and Transportation. Atos is focused on business technology that powers progress and helps organizations to create their firm of the future. The Group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and is listed on the Euronext Paris market. Atos operates under the brands Atos, Atos Consulting, Atos Worldgrid, Bull, Canopy, Unify and Worldline. For more information, please contact: Jose de Vries +31 6 30 27 26 11 Jose.devries@atos.net 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: ATOS via Globenewswire HUG#2001905 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. SolarCity Corporation has closed a $150 million financing facility with Credit Suisse to support deployment of commercial solar energy systems, including battery storage, for businesses, schools and government organizations across the United States. The California-based company will secure the non-recourse facility with a portfolio of long-term commercial systems and contracts. "Our asset portfolio enables us to continually bring in new capital from top tier institutional and corporate investors," said Jeff Munson, SolarCity's director of structured finance. "Additionally, our proprietary, in-house technology provides us competitive advantages that have led us to become one of the top commercial solar providers in the U.S." SolarCity's commercial systems include ZS Peak, proprietary mounting hardware which the company says can significantly reduce project build time. In ... 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. TAMPA, FL and SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/08/16 -- KiteDesk, the maker of smart sales prospecting software, announced the earlier completion of a $6 million funding round in Q4 with $2M of new capital, led by Armada and Imlay Investments. Momentum behind the KiteDesk brand is strong: Over 400% growth in customers, revenue year-over-year; Quarter-over-Quarter growth of 158% in Q1; Introduction of the new product, KiteDesk FIND in Q4; and Doubling of team size the last six months as KiteDesk scales operations. "We are incredibly humbled to serve sales teams at this exciting time," said Sean Burke, KiteDesk CEO. "Using KiteDesk provides leverage for sales development -- truly enabling high-growth lead generation. Our own rapid growth over the past year demonstrates that our vision of bringing account-based prospecting to sales teams is spot-on." Named as "An Exciter" by FindYourCloud, an evidence-based software and market analysis service, KiteDesk FIND ranks in the Top 5 in overall satisfaction for a sales SaaS product. Through this funding, KiteDesk will be able to further strengthen its position as tool of choice for Sales Development teams, while accelerating its product plans into additional tools that help SDR's do their jobs more efficiently and effectively than ever before. "We repeatedly see sales organizations put KiteDesk at the heart of their lead generation process," said Eric Quanstrom, KiteDesk Chief Marketing Officer. "Then, we see them double or triple the number of qualified meetings with targeted prospects. It's simple -- inside sales teams simply add KiteDesk and watch their pipelines fill up." KiteDesk was founded by CTO Jared Rodriguez and VP of Products Jack Kennedy in 2011 -- both of whom were part of the executive team at TradeX, still the largest startup sale in the southeastern United States when acquired by Ariba in 2000. The management team's breadth and depth of experience, as well as a track record for historic exits lends itself to being a company positioned for breakout growth. About KiteDesk KiteDesk's products provide smart sales prospecting software for growth organizations. As the first lead generation system to combine an on-demand Chrome Extension, Web App and clickable Kite icons, we help salespeople dramatically decrease the amount of time spent generating qualified meetings. KiteDesk is a venture-backed, privately-held company headquartered in Tampa, with offices in San Francisco and San Diego. To learn more, please visit www.KiteDesk.com or connect with us on Facebook or @KiteDesk. Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2989842 Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2989849 CONTACT INFORMATION Press Contact: Eric Quanstrom Email Contact Application Terms and DeadlineAB Klaipedos nafta hereby extends the deadline for the interested investors to submit an application to acquire shares of UAB LITGAS controlled by AB Klaipedos Nafta. Potential buyers are invited to submit a free-form non-binding applications by 15 April 2016, to Baltijos av. 40, Klaipeda or via e-mail a.kasparas@oil.lt. If you have any questions, you can contact us by phone +370 616 56902.Reason for SaleIn order to implement unbundling of the activities in the natural gas sector, the European Commission recommended National Commission for Energy Control and Prices to certify AB Amber Grid as the transmission system operator on the condition that all shares of UAB LITGAS controlled by AB Klaipedos Nafta (hereinafter - the Company) would be transferred. The Board of the Company, taking into account the above considerations, decided to organize the sale of company-owned shares of UAB LITGAS. In order to guarantee objective and transparent sale of the shares of UAB LITGAS controlled by the Company, as well as to ensure maximum benefit to the Company and all its shareholders, the Company is planning to execute share sale by carrying out public procedures (i.e. public offering for the participants of the market). On 21 May 2015 the Company publicly announced an invitation for the interested investors to acquire shares of UAB LITGAS controlled by AB Klaipedos Nafta. Hereby the Company once again invites interested potential buyers to submit primary non-binding applications by expressing an interest to participate in the purchase of shares.Number for SharesCurrently the Company owns 33.3% of the UAB LITGAS shares, the rest 66.7% is owned by "Lietuvos energija", UAB. UAB LITGAS shares controlled by the Company (1/3 of the authorized capital) consists of 15 000 000 ordinary shares of 0.29 euros of nominal value each. Potential buyers can purchase only the total number of the proposed shares (number of shares is indivisible).Activity of UAB LITGASUAB LITGAS is natural gas supply and trading company, whose main activity is the supply of natural gas via Klaipeda liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, necessary for the minimum continuous operation of the terminal. UAB LITGAS is operating after winning the competition organized by the Ministry of Energy and was approved as a designated supplier for 5 (five) years period. As the designated supplier UAB LITGAS is a company of strategic importance to the national security.In addition to the activity of the designated supplier, UAB LITGAS also plans to become a competitive player in the market of region's natural gas and LNG supply, by engaging in the growing bunkering activities - LNG supply as fuel to vessels. The company has signed non-binding LNG trade agreements with 15 global suppliers, which together provide more than half of the world's LNG. These agreements provide opportunities to UAB LITGAS for the fast purchase of the gas at the international spot markets.Important informationConsidering public notice of "Lietuvos energija", UAB, the shareholder of UAB LITGAS, announced on 5 May 2015, "Lietuvos energija", UAB plans to reorganize UAB LITGAS by merging it to UAB "Lietuvos duju tiekimas" [1]. On 29 December 2015 UAB LITGAS announced that "Lietuvos energija", UAB postpones the planned merger of UAB LITGAS to UAB "Lietuvos duju tiekimas" [2]. The companies are expected to be merged in the middle of 2016.Requirements for the Potential BuyersAccording to the Article 11.2 of the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on liquefied natural gas terminal, UAB LITGAS is a company of strategic importance to the national security. Due to this the potential buyers of the shares would have to meet the requirements of the Law on Enterprises and Facilities of Strategic Importance to National Security and Other Enterprises Important to Ensuring National Security, and their compliance with the national security interests will be evaluated by the Commission for the evaluation of compliance of potential buyers to the national security interests (Commission) which shall be formed by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. Potential buyers must submit the agreement to be inspected by the Commission and the documents set in the Commission's Rules of Procedure [3]. If a potential buyer refuse to give consent to be inspected and / or the necessary documentation, such potential participant loses the right to participate in the purchase of UAB LITGAS shares. Potential buyers, who comply with the requirements of the above mentioned law on a day of submission of non-binding applications and provide documents evidencing the compliance, shall not be examined additionally.Following the unbundling requirements of the activities in the energy sector, the potential buyer cannot be a company which is directly or indirectly controlled by the Ministry of Energy. The potential buyer shall also meet the requirements of unbundling set forth in the Section 8 of the Law on Natural Gas. Together with a non-binding application potential buyer must submit evidence substantiating its compliance with the abovementioned requirements.Company, UAB LITGAS and "Lietuvos energija", UAB have signed a shareholders agreement, therefore the potential buyer who offers the highest price and wins the tender, will take over the rights and obligations of the Company set forth in the shareholders agreement. This agreement will be available for a potential buyer after the compliance to the requirement set in the Law on Enterprises and Facilities of Strategic Importance to National Security and Other Enterprises Important to Ensuring National Security is performed and confidentiality commitment is signed.It is also necessary to note that in case a potential buyer, which is not directly or indirectly controlled by the Republic of Lithuania, offers the highest price for the shares of UAB LITGAS, current existing shareholder "Lietuvos energija", UAB will have a preferential right to acquire the shares for that price.Acquisition of the SharesCurrently the evaluation of shares is in progress. Evaluation of the shares will be performed by an independent assessor who has experience and a valid license for provision of the services. Potential buyers who have submitted applications to participate in the procurement of the shares and proved their compliance with the requirements of the Law on Enterprises and Facilities of Strategic Importance to National Security and Other Enterprises Important to Ensuring National Security, have signed confidentiality obligations and have become familiar with UAB LITGAS shares' evaluation report and the shareholders agreement, will be invited to provide price proposals. The Company plans to sell the shares of UAB LITGAS for not less than a price stated in a report of the independent property assessor.Relevant Documents of UAB LITGASAppendixes to the invitation:Copies of UAB LITGAS financial statements of 2013 and 2014 (in Lithuanian), can be found at http://litgas.lt/apie-mus/ataskaitos/[1] Further information (in Lithuanian): http://www.le.lt/index.php/naujienos/pranesimai-spaudai/litgas-ir-lietuvos-duju- tiekimas-jungiami-i-viena-imone/1547[2] Further information (in Lithuanian): http://www.litgas.lt/atidedamas-lietuvos-duju-tiekimo-ir-litgas-sujungimas/[3] Resolution No. 1540 of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, dated 25 November 2009, Concerning Forming of the Commission for Assessment of Conformity of Potential Participants of Enterprises of Strategic or Considerable Importance to National Security to the Interests of National Security and Approval of its' Rules of Procedure (with later amendments).Marius Pulkauninkas, Director of Finance and Administration Department, tel.: +370 46 391 763. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The Department of State has warned U.S. citizens against all non-essential travel to Pakistan. A Travel Warning update issued Thursday reminded U.S. citizens of ongoing security concerns in Pakistan. The American Embassy in Islamabad and the Consulate General in Karachi continue to provide consular services for all U.S. citizens in Pakistan. The embassy and the consulate are often limited in the services they can provide due to the security environment. The Consulate General in Peshawar no longer offers consular services, and consular services at the Consulate General in Lahore remain temporarily suspended. Those who choose to live or travel in Pakistan despite this warning have been recommend to vary travel routes and timing, even for routine trips. They have been urged to minimize the duration of trips to public markets, restaurants, and other locations; and to minimize the number of U.S./western nationals congregating in any one location at any time.] Americans have also been advised to avoid hotels that do not apply stringent security measures. The Federal Aviation Administration has issued an Advisory Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) concerning the risks to civil aviation operating in Pakistan, particularly at low altitude, during the arrival and departure phases of flight, and when on the ground, due to extremist/militant activity. The Advisory NOTAM does not prohibit U.S. operators or airmen from operating in the specified area, as it is strictly an advisory notice. 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. NEW YORK CITY (dpa-AFX) - Alcoa Inc. (AA), the largest U.S. aluminum producer, is likely to release its first-quarter numbers after the bell on Monday, April 11. According to data compiled by Thomson Reuters, analysts estimate the company to report earnings of $0.03 per share on revenue of $5.13 billion. Alcoa, which will be split into two independent publicly-traded companies later this year - a globally competitive Upstream Company and an innovation and technology-driven Value-Add Company, believes that aluminum demand will continue to increase also in 2016 by 6%, and will continue to double from 2010 to 2020. To strengthen the company, Alcoa announced business improvement programs across its portfolios: the Value-Add and Upstream businesses will deliver $650 million and $600 million, respectively, in productivity and margin improvement in 2016. In the last quarter, the company incurred a loss of $500 million or $0.39 per share, compared to last year's profit of $159 million or $0.12 per share last year. The quarter's bottom line were impacted by special charges of $565 million related primarily to closures or curtailments of capacity in the Upstream business and income tax charges. Excluding one-time items, fourth-quarter profit were $65 million or $0.04 per share, down from $432 million or $0.33 per share a year ago. Analysts expected earnings of $0.02 per share. Sales for the quarter dropped 18% to $5.25 billion from $6.38 billion last year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $5.29 billion for the quarter. The decline in revenues reflect lower alumina and aluminum prices, the impact of divested, curtailed or closed facilities, and unfavorable currency. In 2015, the Midwest transaction price for primary aluminum fell $657 per metric ton, or 28 percent, and the Alumina Price Index dropped $154 per metric ton, or 43 percent, the company said. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/08/16 -- Mitchell International, a leading provider of technology, connectivity and information solutions to the Property & Casualty (P&C) insurance industry and their supply chain partners, announced the launch of Mitchell ScriptAdvisor, a Pharmacy Benefit Management solution (PBM) for the workers' compensation and auto casualty industries. The product launch comes as Mitchell further strengthens its solution offerings for insurers, state funds, third party administrators and self-insured entities following the recent acquisitions of Jordan Reses and Cogent Works. "Pharmacy costs can comprise almost 20 percent of medical spend and concerns like opioid misuse, compounding and physician dispensing are on the minds of industry leaders," said Mitch Freeman, Chief Clinical Officer at Mitchell International. "Mitchell ScriptAdvisor delivers the clinical controls our customers need combined with our industry expertise and smart technology solutions. Our solution empowers smart decision making every step of the way that results in better outcomes for all." Mitchell International is a proud sponsor of the Risk Management Society (RIMS) and Mitchell ScriptAdvisor will be showcased at their upcoming national conference April 10 - 14, 2016 in San Diego, Calif. More information about Mitchell ScriptAdvisor can be found at: http://www.mitchell.com/scriptadvisor About Mitchell International Headquartered in San Diego, California, Mitchell International, Inc. is celebrating its 70th year of enabling better business outcomes for its customers in the P & C insurance industry. Mitchell delivers smart technology solutions that simplify and accelerate claims handling processes, driving more accurate, consistent, and cost-effective resolutions. Mitchell integrates deep industry expertise into workflow solutions, which provide exceptional access to data, advanced analytics and decision support tools. Mitchell's comprehensive solution portfolio and robust SaaS infrastructure connect its customers in ways that enable tens of millions of electronic transactions to be processed each month for more than 300 insurance companies and over 30,000 collision repair facilities across the Americas and Europe. For more information, please visit www.mitchell.com. Contact: Amanda Windsor LEWIS for Mitchell 619-677-2700 Mitchell@teamlewis.com Affecto Plc - Stock Exchange Release, 8 April 2016 at 16:00, HelsinkiDecisions of the Annual General Meeting of Affecto Plc on 8 April 2016The Annual General Meeting of Affecto Plc adopted the financial statements and discharged the members of the Board of Directors and the CEO from liability for the financial year 2015.DIVIDENDThe meeting approved the Board of Directors' proposal to pay a dividend of EUR 0.16 per share. The dividend is paid on 19 April 2016 to shareholders entered into the Shareholder Register maintained by Euroclear Finland Ltd on the record date 12 April 2016.BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND AUDITORThe Annual General Meeting decided that the Board of Directors shall have six members. Aaro Cantell, Magdalena Persson, Jukka Ruuska, Olof Sand, Tuija Soanjarvi and Lars Wahlstrom were re-elected to the Board.The Meeting decided that the monthly fees of the members of the Board of Directors shall be as follows: EUR 2,000 for the members, EUR 2,750 for the Vice-Chairman and EUR 3,500 for the Chairman. A fee of EUR 300 shall be paid for participation in Committee meetings. The monthly remuneration for the entire term will be paid in August 2016 so that 60 % of the remuneration will be paid in cash and 40 % will be paid in the company's shares.The Authorised Public Accountants Ernst & Young Oy was re-elected as the auditor of the company, Mikko Jarventausta, APA, as the auditor in charge.SHAREHOLDERS' NOMINATION BOARDThe Meeting approved the Board's proposal for appointing a Shareholders' Nomination Board to prepare proposals concerning members of the Board of Directors and their remunerations for the following Annual General Meeting. The Shareholders' Nomination Board will consist of the representatives of the three largest registered shareholders and the Chairman of the Board of Directors, acting as an expert member, if he/she is not appointed representative of a shareholder. The members representing the shareholders will be appointed by the three shareholders whose ownership of the shares in the company is largest on 31 October preceding the Annual General Meeting.AUTHORISATIONS OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORSThe Board of Directors was authorised to decide upon the issuing of new shares and upon the conveying of the company's own shares held by the company in one or more tranches. The share issue may be carried out as a share issue against payment or without consideration on terms to be determined by the Board of Directors. The authorisation includes the right to decide upon a share issue for no consideration to the company itself and to deviate from the shareholders' pre-emptive subscription right. A maximum of 4,200,000 shares may be issued, of which a maximum of 2,100,000 can be treasury shares. The authorisation replaces the authorisation resolved on by the Annual General Meeting on 8 April 2015 and the authorisation shall be valid until the next Annual General Meeting, however, no longer than until 30 June 2017.The Board of Directors was authorised to resolve to repurchase a maximum of 2,100,000 shares. The authorisation replaces the authorisation resolved on by the Annual General Meeting on 8 April 2015 and the authorisation shall be valid until the next Annual General Meeting, however, no longer than until 30 June 2017.THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORSAt its meeting held after the Annual General Meeting, the Board of Directors elected from among its members Aaro Cantell as its Chairman and Olof Sand as Vice-Chairman.The Board Committees and their composition are as follows:Audit Committee: Tuija Soanjarvi, chairman Lars Wahlstrom Jukka RuuskaPeople, Nomination and Compensation Committee: Magdalena Persson, chairman Aaro Cantell Olof SandAFFECTO PLC Board of DirectorsFor additional information, please contact:Aaro Cantell Chairman of the Board + 358 400 706 072 chairman@affecto.comSakari Knuutti Director, Legal & IR + 358 50 562 4077 sakari.knuutti@affecto.comwww.affecto.com MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - Incorrect configurations of server applications and other programs may pose a more dangerous threat of hacking, a Russian anti-virus firm has warned. Doctor Web said its specialists discovered some misconfiguration of hardware belonging to a company that supplies DNS and web hosting services. To illegally infiltrate computer systems and remote networks, attackers often use software vulnerabilities. Doctor Web security researchers noted that one of DNS servers belonging to easyDNS Technologies, Inc. is configured incorrectly. As a result, it processes incoming AXFR requests for DNS zone transfer from any external sources. AXFR is a type of transaction used to replicate DNS databases. Therefore, clients of easyDNS Technologies, Inc. reveal a list of their registered subdomains-in particular, ones for internal use-to the world. These domains can be used to organize non-public servers, version control systems (VCS), bug trackers, various monitoring services, wiki resources, etc. Having this domain list, attackers can easily examine the network of a potential victim in order to find vulnerabilities, Doctor Web said. Doctor Web said its security researchers have already informed easyDNS Technologies, Inc. about the discovered vulnerability. At present, its specialists are taking necessary actions to resolve the problem. 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. PUNE, India, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report"Aquafeed Marketby Ingredients (Corn, Soybean, Fishmeal, Fish Oil, Additives, & Others), Aquatic Animal Type (Carp, Shrimp, Crustaceans, Mollusks, & Others), Fishmeal & Fish Oil End Use, & by Region - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2021", The market is estimated to be valued at USD 90.96 Billion in 2015. It is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.8% from 2016 to 2021 and reach USD 168.23 Billion by 2021. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 88 market data Tables and 63 Figures spread through 237 Pages and in-depth TOC on"Aquafeed Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/aquafeeds-market-1151.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. The Aquafeed Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.8% from 2016 to 2021. The major types of aquafeed ingredients derived from corn, soybean, fish meal, fish oil, and additives have been in demand owing to the growing demand for advanced aquafeed products and a shift in consumer's preference to healthier and nutritive premium sea-food products, especially for carps and crustaceans aquatic type animals. The market demand for mixed aquafeed varieties has also experienced higher than average growth, as they combine the useful characteristics of nourishment & sustainability. Hence, aquafeed will be viewed as a business opportunity in the next five years. Carp and crustaceans aquatic animal types to dominate the Aquafeed Market Carps and crustaceans have been projected to lead the market in terms of value and volume and are projected to grow at comparatively higher CAGRs than most aquafeed products for other aquatic animal types. Large and medium-sized players have adopted new product development strategy for carp and crustacean aquafeed products to expand their businesses, globally, by investing in the development of the R&D sector to create and launch various new innovative products of this segment in the market. Speak to Analyst: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=1151 Soybean: The most utilized ingredient of aquafeed product globally The soybean ingredient accounted for the largest share in the Aquafeed Market by ingredients in terms of value and volume in the year 2015. However, the corn ingredient of is projected to grow at a comparatively higher CAGR due to its consumption as a plant protein source in the replacement for expensive fishmeal and fish oil ingredients in aquafeed production. Asia-Pacific accounted for the largest market share due to increased demand for premium sea food Countries in the Asia-Pacific and Latin American regions are thriving in terms of growing contribution of the aquaculture toward the GDP with high levels of product development and marketing. The rising population levels have also created the demand for nutritious and healthy aquaculture foods, globally. Increasing per capita disposable income in these regions is another driver for the increased consumption of high-quality sea-food products, parallel boosting the aquafeed industry This report includes a study of marketing and development strategies, along with the product portfolios of leading companies. It includes the profiles of leading companies such as Cargill Inc. (U.S.), Nutreco N.V. (The Netherlands), BioMar Group A/S (Denmark), Ridley Corporation (Australia), Alltech Inc. (U.S.), Nutriad-Ad International N.V. (Belgium), Aller Aqua A/S (Denmark), and BIOMIN Holding GmbH (Austria). The report covers aquafeed aquatic animal types such as carp, shrimp, crustaceans, mollusks, and others and ingredients like corn, maize, rice, soybean, and additives in terms of value & volume. In terms of insights, this research report has focused on various levels of analyses-industry analysis, market share analysis of top players, and company profiles, which together comprise and discuss the basic views on the competitive landscape, emerging & high-growth segments of the global Aquafeed Market, high-growth regions, countries, and their respective regulatory policies, government initiatives, drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges. Browse related reports: Soybean Derivatives Market by Type (Soybean, Soy Meal, and Soy Oil), Application (Feed, Food, and Other Industries), Lecithin Processing (Water, Acid, and Enzyme) and by Region - Global Trends & Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/soybean-derivatives-market-43894404.html Feed Pigment Market by Type (Carotenoids, Curcumin, Caramel, Spirulina & Others), Carotenoids Source (Natural & Synthetic), Livestock (Swine, Cattle, Poultry, Aquatic Animals & Others), & by Region - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/feed-pigment-market-206152828.html About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets is the 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 a 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/agriculture-industry Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets Panevezys, Lithuania, 2016-04-08 15:35 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Draft Resolutions suggested by the Board of AB "Linas" for the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to be held on 29 April 2016:1. Audit conclusion regarding the consolidated and Company's Annual Financial Accountability and Annual Report of year 2015.Project of resolution: to pay attention to the auditor's conclusions confirming AB "Linas" consolidated and Company's financial accountability of year 2014 and to agree to the consolidated annual report of the company of year 2015.2. Confirmation of consolidated and company's annual financial accountability of year 2015 and presentation of consolidated annual report.Project of resolution: to confirm AB "Linas" consolidated and company's annual financial accountability and to agree to consolidated annual report of year 2015.3. Company's profit (loss) allocation of year 2015.Project of resolution: to confirm AB "Linas" profit (loss) allocation:1) retained loss of the previous financial year at the end of the accounting year - 1.123.863 EUR;2) net profit of the accounting year 501.625 EUR;3) profit (loss) of the accounting financial year unrecognized in the statement of comprehensive income - 0 EUR;4) transfers from mandatory reserve 0 EUR;5) transfers from reserve for business projects 0 EUR;6) transfers from reserve for the support 0 EUR;7) transfers from profit for dividend paying 0 EUR;8) shareholders contributions to cover company's looses 0 EUR;9) allocated loss totally 622.238 EUR;10) share of profit set for the mandatory reserve 0 EUR;11) share of profit set for the reserve for purchase of own shares 0 EUR;12) share of profit set to other reserves 0 EUR;13) share of profit set for dividend paying 0 EUR;14) share of profit set for annual allowances (bonuses) for the members of the board, for the employees premiums and other purposes 0 EUR;15) retained loss at the end of the financial year transferred to the next financial year 622.238 EUR.AB "Linas" director Ramunas Lenciauskas Tel.: +370 45 506100Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=555615 Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited and The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited take no responsibility for the contents of this announcement, 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 announcement. Zhejiang Expressway Co. Ltd (A joint stock limited company incorporated in the People's Republic of China with limited liability) (Stock code: 0576) CONTINUING CONNECTED TRANSACTIONS ROAD MAINTENANCE AGREEMENTS On 25 November 2015, the Company organized a public tender in respect of the provision of Maintenance Services to the Group's four expressways for a term of three years from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2018. Maintenance Co succeeded in the tender and was awarded a contract to provide such Maintenance Services. On 8 April 2016, the Company and the relevant subsidiaries of the Company entered into a number of road maintenance agreements with Maintenance Co, pursuant to which Maintenance Co agreed to provide the Maintenance Services to the Group's four expressways, namely: the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, the Shangsan Expressway, Jinhua section, Ningbo-Jinhua Expressway and the Hanghui Expressway. Each of the Road Maintenance Agreements has a term of three years from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2018. Under the Listing Rules, these road maintenance agreements shall be aggregated as if they were one transaction. LISTING RULES IMPLICATIONS As at the date of this announcement, Communications Group holds approximately 67% of the issued share capital of the Company. By virtue of this shareholding interest, Communications Group is a controlling shareholder of the Company. Therefore, Maintenance Co, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Communications Group, is a connected person of the Company and as a result, under the Chapter 14A of the Listing Rules the transactions under the Road Maintenance Agreements constitute the continuing connected transactions for the Company. As the relevant percentage ratios in respect of the Aggregate Annual Caps under the Road Maintenance Agreements are over 0.1% but less than 5%, the Road Maintenance Agreements are subject to the reporting, announcement and annual review requirements but exempt from the independent Shareholders' approval requirement under the Listing Rules. ROAD MAINTENANCE AGREEMENTS Principal terms of the Road Maintenance Agreements are set out below: Date: 8 April 2016 Parties: (1) the Company and the relevant subsidiaries of the Company (including Shangsan Co, Jiaxing Co, Jinhua Co and Hanghui Co); and (2) Maintenance Co. Term: the term of each of the Road Maintenance Agreements is for a period of three years from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2018. Subject matter: Maintenance Co agreed to provide the Maintenance Services, namely day-to-day maintenance services including road patrol, inspection of the maintenance status of pavements, roadbeds, greening and sloping, in respect of the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, the Shangsan Expressway Jinhua section, Ningbo-Jinhua Expressway and the Hanghui Expressway. Service fee and basis of the fee: Subject to the price adjustment as set out below, the total service fees payable by the Group to Maintenance Co under the Road Maintenance Agreements shall be RMB182,307,362 (the "Service Fee"). The Service Fee was determined as a result of a public tender (the "Public Tender") of the Maintenance Services for the Target Expressways, where Maintenance Co has succeeded in its bid pursuant to the terms of the Public Tender. On 25 November 2015, a tender notice in respect of the Public Tender was published on the Company's website and www.chinabidding.com.cn. Five entities (two of them are independent suppliers) expressed their interest so each of them made the relevant payment to the Company to obtain the tender documents of the Public Tender. After their internal consideration, three entities (all of them are connected persons of the Group) eventually submitted their tender. Tender evaluation was conducted by a committee consisting of five experts in this industry. The committee took into account the following in evaluation before deciding to recommend to accept the tender submitted by Maintenance Co: (1) technical and financial capability of each of the tenderers; (2) each tenderer's past performance records in respect of the Maintenance Services for the Target Expressways and/or other expressways in the PRC; and (3) each tenderer's tendered price in respect of the Maintenance Services for the Target Expressways. To ensure that the terms offered by Maintenance Co are fair, reasonable and no less favourable than those provided by the independent third parties to the Group, the Company has additionally obtained quotations from two independent suppliers (which are qualified service providers for the Maintenance Services) in relation to the Maintenance Services. The contract price offered by each of these two independent suppliers is higher than the one offered by Maintenance Co. After considering (i) the historical maintenance cost incurred for the Group's expressways in 2014 and 2015; (ii) the expected maintenance work for the Group's expressways in 2016, 2017 and 2018; (iii) terms offered by Maintenance Co and two other independent suppliers and (iv) background, qualifications and financial position of each of Maintenance Co and two other independent suppliers, the management of the Company has decided to accept the committee's recommendation and award a contract of the Maintenance Services to Maintenance Co. Price adjustment mechanism: Subject to the Aggregate Annual Caps, commencing from 1 January 2017, the charges of the Maintenance Services may be adjusted based on the CPI of the preceding year, provided that no adjustment will be made if the change in the CPI compared to the preceding year is 1% or less. If the change in the CPI exceeds 1% compared to the preceding year, the charges will be adjusted according to such change in the CPI. In addition, subject to the Aggregate Annual Caps, in the event that the actual construction work conducted by Maintenance Co exceeds the expected work as contemplated under the relevant tender documents, the Service Fee may be subject to a slight upward adjustment provided that such additional work and additional fee have been checked and approved by the management of the Company. Terms of payment: Payment will be made by the Company based on the actual Maintenance Services provided by Maintenance Co on a monthly basis. Aggregate Annual Caps for the Road Maintenance Agreements For the purpose of complying with the Chapter 14A of the Listing Rules, subject to the Service Fee (subject to price adjustment), the Company has set an aggregated annual cap for Road Maintenance Agreements. For the three years ending 31 December 2016, 2017 and 2018, subject to the Service Fee, the aggregate annual service fees payable by the Group to Maintenance Co in respect of the Maintenance Services shall not exceed RMB85 million, RMB85 million and RMB85 million, respectively. Historically, the Maintenance Services in respect of the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, the Shangsan Expressway and Jinhua section, Ningbo-Jinhua Expressway were mainly carried out by Maintenance Co which was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company. On 14 September 2015, the entire equity interest in Maintenance Co was sold to the Communications Group. For the two years ending 31 December 2014 and 2015, the total daily maintenance cost incurred for the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, the Shangsan Expressway and Jinhua section, Ningbo-Jinhua Expressway was approximately RMB70.39 million and approximately RMB70.96 million, respectively. The Company acquired the 80.614% equity interest in the Hanghui Expressway from the Communications Group and such acquisition was completed on 10 November 2015. So the Group's historical maintenance cost as set out above does not reflect the relevant cost for the Hanghui Expressway in 2014 and 2015. In arriving at the above Aggregate Annual Caps, our Directors have considered factors including: (a) the historical maintenance cost incurred for the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, the Shangsan Expressway and Jinhua section, Ningbo-Jinhua Expressway in 2014 and 2015; (b) the expected maintenance work required for the Hanghui Expressway in 2016, 2017 and 2018; and (c) the expected maintenance work required for the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, the Shangsan Expressway and Jinhua section, Ningbo-Jinhua Expressway in 2016, 2017 and 2018. REASONS FOR AND BENEFITS OF THE TRANSACTIONS The Maintenance Services is vital and necessary for the operation of the Group's expressways. Maintenance Co has the relevant qualifications and expertise to provide such services to the Company. In addition, the Company went through a tender process and obtained the relevant quotations from independent third parties to select the service provider of the Maintenance Services. Maintenance Co finally won the tender. Besides, on the basis of the quotations provided by the two independent suppliers, the terms offered by Maintenance Co are no less favourable than those provided by the independent third parties to the Group. Given the above, the Directors (including the independent non-executive Directors) are of the view that the terms of the Road Maintenance Agreements are on normal commercial terms, in the ordinary and usual course of business of the Company and are fair and reasonable and in the interests of the Company and the Shareholders as a whole. LISTING RULES IMPLICATIONS As at the date of this announcement, Communications Group holds approximately 67% of the issued share capital of the Company. By virtue of this shareholding interest, Communications Group is a controlling shareholder of the Company. Therefore, Maintenance Co, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Communications Group, is a connected person of the Company and as a result, the transactions under the Road Maintenance Agreements constitute connected transactions for the Company pursuant to the Listing Rules. As the relevant percentage ratios in respect of the Aggregate Annual Caps under the Road Maintenance Agreements are over 0.1% but less than 5%, the Road Maintenance Agreements are subject to the reporting, announcement and annual review requirements but exempt from the independent Shareholders' approval requirement under Rule 14A.36 of the Listing Rules. Each of Mr. Zhan Xiaozhang, Mr. Wang Dongjie, Mr. Dai Benmeng and Mr. Zhou Jianping holds certain senior position in Communications Group, so they have abstained from voting on the board resolution with respect to the approval of the Road Maintenance Agreements. Save for Mr. Zhan Xiaozhang, Mr. Wang Dongjie, Mr. Dai Benmeng and Mr. Zhou Jianping, none of the Directors has any material interest in the Road Maintenance Agreements or is required to abstain from voting on the relevant Board resolutions to approve the same. INFORMATION ON THE PARTIES The Company is a joint stock company established under the laws of the PRC with limited liability on 1 March 1997, the H Shares of which are listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange. It is principally engaged in investing in, developing and operating high-grade roads in the PRC. The Group also carries on certain other businesses such as operation of gas stations, restaurants and shops in service areas, advertising at expressway interchanges and external road maintenance, as well as securities related business. Maintenance Co is an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Communication Group which is incorporated under the laws of the PRC on 28 January 2014. Maintenance Co is principally engaged in construction of transportation projects and maintenance of toll road. DEFINITIONS In this announcement, unless the context specifies otherwise, the following defined expressions have the following meanings: "Aggregate Annual Caps" the aggregate annual fees payable by the Group to Maintenance Co for the Maintenance Services under Road Maintenance Agreements for the three years ending 31 December 2016, 31 December 2017 and 31 December 2018, respectively, details of which are set out in this announcement "Board" the board of Directors "Communications Group" (Zhejiang Communications Investment Group Co., Ltd.*), a wholly State-owned enterprise established in the PRC, and the controlling shareholder of the Company "Company" Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd., a joint stock limited company incorporated in the PRC with limited liability "connected person" has the meaning ascribed to it under the Listing Rules "controlling shareholder" has the meaning ascribed to it under the Listing Rules "CPI" the Consumer Price Index of the Zhejiang province, the PRC "Director(s)" the directors of the Company "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 "Hanghui Co" Zhejiang Hanghui Expressway Co., Ltd., a 88.674% owned subsidiary of the Company "Hong Kong" the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC "HK$" Hong Kong dollars, the lawful currency of Hong Kong "Jiaxing Co" Zhejiang Jiaxing Expressway Co., Ltd., a 99.9995% owned subsidiary of the Company "Jinhua Co" Zhejiang Jinhua Yongjin Expressway Co., Ltd., a 100% owned subsidiary of the Company "Listing Rules" Rules Governing the Listing of Securities on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. "Maintenance Co" (Zhejiang Expressway Maintenance Co., Ltd.*), a company incorporated in the PRC and an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Communications Group "Maintenance Services" day-to-day maintenance services including road patrol, inspection of the maintenance status of pavements, roadbeds, greening and sloping "percentage ratio" has the meaning ascribed to it under Rule 14.04(9) of the Listing Rules "PRC" the People's Republic of China (for the purpose of this announcement, excludes Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) "RMB" Renminbi, the lawful currency of the PRC "Road Maintenance Agreements" A number of road maintenance agreements entered into between the Company (or the relevant subsidiaries of the Company) and Maintenance Co on 8 April 2016, pursuant to which Maintenance Co agreed to provide the Maintenance Services to the Target Expressways. "Shangsan Co" Zhejiang Shangsan Expressway Co., Ltd., a 73.625% owned subsidiary of the Company "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 "Target Expressways" Jinhua section, Ningbo-Jinhua Expressway, the Hanghui Expressway, Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway and the Shangsan Expressway "%" per cent. * English names for reference only. On behalf of the Board ZHEJIANG EXPRESSWAY CO., LTD. ZHAN Xiaozhang Chairman Hangzhou, PRC, 8 April 2016 As of the date of this announcement, 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. HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/08/16 -- Note to editors: There are three maps associated with this press release. Erdene Resource Development Corp. (TSX: ERD) ("Erdene" or "Company") is pleased to announce its Q2 drill program is now underway at its wholly-owned Bayan Khundii gold project ("Bayan Khundii") in southwest Mongolia. The diamond drill program is comprised of approximately 3,500 metres (approximately 30 holes) and will test both strike and vertical extensions of the high-grade gold mineralization intersected in Q4-2015. "Bayan Khundii has rapidly become the highest priority project for the Company based on its very high grades, excellent metallurgy, wide zones coming to surface, and size potential. This exploration program, which includes a 3,500 metre drill program, extensive geophysical and geochemical testing, and multiple studies in advance of a mining licence application and economic evaluations, will go a long way in characterizing the discovery," said Peter Akerley, President and CEO of Erdene. Bayan Khundii Gold Project Gold mineralization at Bayan Khundii has been identified in three separate prospect areas over a 1.7 km trend, with detailed exploration only taking place over a 475 by 300 metre zone in the southwest prospect area, where the Company's Q4-2015 drill program (totaling 695 metres) was completed. Visible gold was observed in 10 of the 15 drill holes and results included several high-grade intersections within a series of parallel structures exposed at surface. The average drill depth of the program was 46 metres, with results including up to 35 metres of 5.9 g/t gold in hole BKD-10 (including 12 metres of 16.2 g/t gold) from surface to the bottom of the hole. The details of that drill program can be found in Erdene's December 14, 2015 news release (click here for link). Drill Program Objectives (see attached map and cross-sections for reference) -- Test the lateral and vertical extent of the high-grade Striker Zone -- Test for adjacent parallel mineralized zones within the main mineralized area -- Test the known gold mineralization at greater depths; the project has not been drill tested below 50 metre vertical depth -- Complete a series of step-out drill holes to test extensions of mineralization to the south, north, and east of the main mineralized area where geophysical data support the extension of alteration, and presumably mineralization, under younger cover rocks In addition to the drill program, the Company intends to complete the following exploration work at Bayan Khundii in 2016: -- Detailed geologic mapping; -- Infill geochemical surveys over specific target areas and expanded surveys over the entire licence -- Additional and expanded Induced Polarization geophysical surveys; -- Additional trenching to test continuity and extent of mineralization at surface; -- Mineralogical studies to better understand the mineralogy and alteration at Bayan Khundii and the characteristics of, and controls on, mineralization; -- Various technical studies in support of future scoping/feasibility-level studies and a mining license application, including hydrology, archeology, paleontological, and environmental base line studies. Q1-2016 Metallurgical Testing at Bayan Khundii Initial independent metallurgical test work, completed by Erdene in February 2016, indicates the gold mineralization at Bayan Khundii is very amenable to conventional processing techniques involving a combination of gravity and cyanide leach of gravity tails, yielding 99% gold recovery for the high-grade composite sample (24.9 g/t gold) and 92% gold recovery for the low-grade composite sample (0.7 g/t gold). Blue Coast Research Ltd. of Parksville, British Columbia, carried out the metallurgical testing program, the details of which can be found in Erdene's February 16, 2016 news release (click here for link). Qualified Person Michael MacDonald, P.Geo. (Nova Scotia), Director of Exploration for Erdene, is the Qualified Person as that term is defined in National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release. All drill result samples have been assayed at SGS Laboratory in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. In addition to internal checks by SGS Laboratory, the Company incorporates a QA/QC sample protocol utilizing prepared standards and blanks. All metallurgical testing and analysis was carried out by Blue Coast Research Ltd. at their facility in Parksville, British Columbia. About Erdene Erdene Resource Development Corp. is a Canada-based resource company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of base and precious metals in underexplored and highly prospective Mongolia. The Company holds four exploration licenses and a mining license located in southwest Mongolia. These include: Altan Nar - an extensive, high-grade, near-surface, gold-polymetallic project; Bayan Khundii - a high-grade gold discovery made in Q2 2015 that the Company is currently exploring; Khuvyn Khar - an early-stage, copper-silver porphyry project with multiple drill targets and significant copper intersections; Zuun Mod - a large molybdenum-copper porphyry deposit; and Altan Arrow - an early-stage, high-grade, gold-silver project. In addition to the above properties, the Company has an Alliance with Teck Resources Limited on regional, copper-gold exploration in the prospective Trans Altai region of southwest Mongolia. For further information on the Company, please visit www.erdene.com. Erdene has 109,876,030 issued and outstanding common shares and a fully diluted position of 124,583,316 common shares. Forward-Looking Statements Certain information regarding Erdene contained herein may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements may include estimates, plans, expectations, opinions, forecasts, projections, guidance or other statements that are not statements of fact. Although Erdene believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Erdene cautions that actual performance will be affected by a number of factors, most of which are beyond its control, and that future events and results may vary substantially from what Erdene currently foresees. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration results, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. The forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The information contained herein is stated as of the current date and is subject to change after that date. The Company does not assume the obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. NO REGULATORY AUTHORITY HAS APPROVED OR DISAPPROVED THE CONTENTS OF THIS RELEASE. To view the maps associated with this press release, please visit the following links: http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160408-Map1_BayanKhundiiSWProspectAreaPlanMap.jpeg http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160408-Map2_Cross-SectionNo1.jpeg http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160408-Map3_Cross-SectionNo2.jpeg Contacts: Erdene Resource Development Corporation Peter C. Akerley, President and CEO, or Ken W. MacDonald, Vice President Business Strategy and CFO (902) 423-6419 info@erdene.com www.erdene.com / Twitter: https://twitter.com/ErdeneRes BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Commerce Department is set to release its wholesale trade data for February at 10 am ET Friday. Economists expect wholesale inventories to have declined by 0.2 percent month-over-month. Ahead of the data, the greenback traded mixed against its major rivals. While the greenback held steady against the pound and the yen, it declined against the euro and the franc. The greenback was worth 108.60 against the yen, 1.1389 against the euro, 0.9540 against the franc and 1.4093 against the pound as of 9:55 am ET. 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. On 8 April 2016 the Board of AB Vilkyskiu pienine (hereinafter "AB Vilkyskiu pienine" or "the Company") decided:- To approve the draft of the audited annual separate d and consolidate financial statements of the Company for the year 2015 and to propose to the Company's Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve the draft of the Company's annual separate and consolidated financial statements for the year 2015.- To approve the Company's Consolidated Annual Report for the year 2015, prepared by the Company and assessed by the auditors, and to propose to the Company's Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve Company's Consolidated Annual Report.- Management Board of The Company , taking into consideration implementation of Company's 26 million EUR whey processing facility CAPEX program, has recomended to the General Meeting of Shareholders not to pay dividends on 2015 earnings. Management Board of the Company believes, that realization of the Project is expected to improve Company's competetive position and positively effect finacial results of the Group and it's dividend payouts in long term.Management Board would also like to emphasize, that Company plans to stick to Companies approved dividend policy, as Project implementation is finished.- To approve a decision with regard to the purchase of own shares and to propose to the Company's Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve:a) To purchase up to 10 percent of the Company's shares. b) The purpose of acquisition of own shares - to maintain and increase the price of the Company's shares. c) Period during which the Company may acquire own shares - until 28 April 2017. d) To set the maximum price per share of own shares to be acquired - at 2.10 EUR, at the same time setting the minimum acquisition price per share equal to the nominal value of a share, i.e. 0.29 EUR. e) To commit the Board to organize the purchase of own shares, to determine the procedure for purchase and sale of shares, time, number of shares and price, as well as to perform other actions relating thereto in compliance with the terms set in this resolution as well as in accordance with the requirements established in the Republic of Lithuania Law of Companies.- To convoke the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders at the office of Vilkyskiu pienine AB (P.Lukosaicio g. 14, Vilkyskiai, LT-99254 Pagegiu sav., Lithuania), at 13.00 on 29 April 2016, and to propose to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders' the following draft agenda:1) Company's consolidated annual report for the year 2015. 2) Company's auditor's report of 2015 (financial accountability). 3) Approval of Company's annual separate and consolidated financial statements for the year 2015. 4) Net Profit appropriation of the year 2015. 5) Regarding the purchase of own shares. 6) Election of the company's audit firm for the year 2016, 2017 and 2018 and setting the conditions of payment. 7) Election of the independent member of Audit Committee.Vilija Milaseviciute Economics and Finance director phone +370 441 55102Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=555625 Draft decisions for the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of Vilkyskiu pienine AB to be held on the 29 April 2016, proposed by the Board of the Company:Item 1 of the Agenda: Company's consolidated annual report for the year 2015.Draft resolution: To attended the consolidated annual report of the Company for the year 2015.Item 2 of the Agenda: Auditor's Report regarding the Company's Financial Statements for 2015.Draft resolution: Heard.Item 3 of the Agenda: Approval of Company's annual separated and consolidated financial statement for the year 2015.Draft resolution: To approve of Company's annual separated and consolidated financial statements for the year 2015.Item 4 of the Agenda: Profit (loss) appropriation for the year 2015.Draft resolution: To approve the non-appropriated profit (loss) for the year 2015 as follows under IAS:thousan d EUR -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the end of the year 2014 10,518 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Approved by shareholders dividends of the year 2014 836 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Transfers to reserves provided by law 0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Portion of the profit allocated to the reserve for the purchase of 87 own shares -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the beginning of the current 9,595 financial year after dividends payout and transfer to reserves -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Net profit (loss) of the reporting period -83 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Transfers from reserves 169 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Total profit (loss) to be appropriated: 9,681 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to the legal reserve 0.454 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to the reserve for the purchase of 0 own shares -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated for payment of the dividends 0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to the other reserves 0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to be paid as annual payouts 0 (tantiemes) to board members, bonuses to employees and for other purposes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the end of the current financial 9,681 year carried forward to next financial year --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Item 5 of the Agenda: A decision on the purchase of own shares.Draft resolution: A decision with regard to the purchase of own shares has been approved:a) To purchase up to 10 percent of the Company's shares. b) The purpose of acquisition of own shares - to maintain and increase the price of the Company's shares. c) Period during which the Company may acquire own shares - until 28 April 2017. d) To set the maximum price per share of own shares to be acquired - at 2.10 EUR, at the same time setting the minimum acquisition price per share equal to the nominal value of a share, i.e. 0.29 EUR. e) To commit the Board to organize the purchase of own shares, to determine the procedure for purchase and sale of shares, time, number of shares and price, as well as to perform other actions relating thereto in compliance with the terms set in this resolution as well as in accordance with the requirements established in the Republic of Lithuania Law of Companies.Item 6 of the Agenda: Election of the Company's Audit firm for the year 2016, 2017 and 2018 and setting the conditions of payment.Draft resolution:1) To elect KPMG Baltics, UAB as the Company's Audit firm for the year 2016, 2017 and 2018. 2) To authorize Mr. Gintaras Bertasius, the Company's General Director, to contract with KPMG Baltics, UAB and to set the conditions of payment for the services.Item 7 of the Agenda: Election of the independent member of Audit Committee.Draft resolution: To elected the independent member of Audit Committee Ausra Lobiniene, The Head of Internal Audit of Taurage Credit Union.Additional information authorized to provide Economics and Finance director Vilija Milaseviciute, phone +370 441 55102Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=555629 Telsiai, Lithuania, 2016-04-08 17:00 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- No. Issue on the agenda Decision -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Presentation of the No decision is adopted regarding this issue. Company audit committee findings -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Presentation of the No decision is adopted regarding this issue. The annual consolidated consolidated annual statement, the code of statement for the year management, and the findings of the auditors are 2015 and the findings supplied. of the auditors -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Approval of the annual To approve the annual consolidated financial consolidated financial reports and its annexes. Financial reports are reports of the Company supplied. for the year 2015 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Approval of the To approve the Companys Board a draft decision on allocation of the the profit (losses) profits (losses) for the year 2015 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. On the election of the To elect and approve Grant Thorton Baltic, UAB to audit company and the conduct the annual audit of Zemaitijos pienas, AB determination of the for the years 2016 and 2017. To authorise the essential contract Director-General of the Company to sign the conditions contract for the auditing services. To approve the following essential conditions of the contract for the auditing services: - The contract shall be a one-year contract with the possibility to extend the contract for a new one-year period; - Number of auditors with the highest qualification necessary for the performance of the contract; - Minimum number of working hours at the premises of Zemaitijos pienas, AB. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gintaras Keliauskas Lawyer + 370 444 22208 Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=555577 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de PUNE, India, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "Investment Analysis - GCC Construction" published by MarketsandMarkets, The robust GCC economy benefits from strong macroeconomic fundamentals such as solid financial reserves that protect countries against bankruptcy, more diversification, and stronger integration with world trade. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 4 market data Tables and 103 Figures spread through 133 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Investment Analysis - GCC Construction" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/investment-analysis-gcc-construction-239406153.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. Infrastructure segment is the largest segment in the GCC construction industry The developed service and manufacturing service industries allow less dependence on oil revenues. The infrastructure segment, comprising of road, railways, ports, and airports, is a key focus area of the GCC countries. Besides the residential and office segments, the region is also witnessing significant projects in the segments of leisure, retail, education, hospitality, and healthcare. The GCC nations have made significant budgetary allocations toward the development of transportation such as airways, railways, roadways, and ports. Consequently, the infrastructure industry has shown a strong upward trend. Saudi Arabia dominates in terms of infrastructure projects in 2014, followed by Qatar. A number of projects are being planned in Qatar's infrastructure sector to support the growing inflow of expatriate workers and tourists in this region. Tourism is an opportunity in GCC countries as it is an asset to attract global travelers to its cultural and archeological sites, airports, and beaches. Make an Inquiry: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=239406153 Government vision will push the GCC construction industry The economy of GCC countries heavily depends on the oil & gas sector. As the prices of oil & gas are volatile, GCC countries are focusing on economic diversification to reduce their dependence on the energy sector. GCC countries are planning long-term strategies for sustainable growth. These countries are focusing on the growth of various sectors such as tourism and events. Under its strategic vision 2021, UAE plans to allocate huge budgets toward the development of its infrastructure sector. Similarly, Qatar's strategic vision 2030 plans to make heavy investments in its infrastructure, healthcare, and hospitality sectors. Developing its infrastructure and reducing housing shortage were the key concerns of the Bahraini government in 2015. Such infrastructure projects in Bahrain will be supported by the government in this region through enormous investment. Oman government also supports the development of its tourism sector for economic diversification through investment in various sectors. Such factors are expected to propel construction activities across the GCC, particularly between 2015 and 2021. However, uncertainty over oil prices, storage of skilled labor, and issues related to safety & quality of construction sites continue to pose as major challenges in these countries. Shortages in labor and labor policy issues continue to constitute a major challenge. Also, the majority of the workforce is from overseas; there is a challenge to recruit high quality, experienced workers, as the competition to attract them is very high. Browse Related Reports: Dry Construction Market by Type (Supporting Framework & Boarding), Material (Metal, Wood, Plasterboard, Plastic, & Others), System (Wall, Ceiling, Flooring, & Others), Application (Residential & Non- Residential) & Region - Trends and Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/dry-construction-market-230745531.html Precast/Prefabricated Construction Market by Product Type (Floors & Roofs, Walls, Columns & Beams, Others), Construction Type (Modular, Manufactured, Others), End-Use Sector (Residential, Non-Residential, Infrastructure, Others), Region - Trends & Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/prefabricated-construction-market-125074015.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. Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets 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 Copenhagen, 2016-04-08 17:37 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- At GN Store Nord's annual general meeting on March 10, 2016, it was decided to reduce the company's share capital from nominally DKK 648,765,076 to nominally DKK 619,151,716 by cancelling treasury shares of a nominal value of DKK 29,613,360 divided into 7,403,340 shares of DKK 4 each. Today, GN Store Nord has registered the final implementation of the reduction of the share capital with the Danish Business Authority and cancelled 7,403,340 shares. After the capital reduction, the company's share capital is nominally DKK 619,151,716 divided into 154,787,929 shares of DKK 4 each. Pursuant to section 29 of the Danish Securities Trading Act, GN Store Nord hereby announces that it as of today, as a consequence of the share cancellation, holds 5,351,149 treasury shares which are equal to 3.5% of the total share capital and the total voting rights. For further information please contact: Peter Justesen VP - Investor Relations & Treasury GN Store Nord A/S Tel: +45 45 75 87 16 Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=555644 Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/08/16 -- Attn: Assignment Editor This week, Ontario's government announced that it is canceling its plans to dramatically increase user fees for seniors' drugs after more than 80 organizations signed onto a letter to the Premier asking her to revisit the idea. The government's plan, announced in the 2016 Ontario Budget in February, would have increased the deductible for seniors' drugs from $100 to $170 - a 70 per cent increase -- and co-payments would have risen to $7.11 per prescription. Under this plan, seniors with incomes of more than $19,300 for a single person or $32,300 for a couple would have faced these increases. In late March, the Ontario Health Coalition and the Older Canadians Network wrote an open letter to the Premier asking her to revisit the decision pointing out that it would not only cause hardship for seniors that can hardly be described as high income but it also compromised the core tenets of public health care. More than 80 organizations, from seniors' groups to doctors, nurses and unions, signed onto the letter. The Ontario Health Coalition and the Older Canadians Network applaud the government for listening to our concerns and thank all the organizations and individuals that joined the open letter and contacted the government to help win the reversal. As we outlined to the Premier, needed health care must be funded equitably through a progressive tax system in which everyone, including the wealthy and corporations, pay their fair share, not through user fees when people are aging, or when they are sick and dying. While the Ontario government has agreed to stop the plans for a user fee increase for drugs, it continues to download costs through increased user fees for other needed health care services that are being cut. Today, we want to remind the Ontario government of the principles at stake, in the words of the open letter we sent to the Premier: "As Ontario pays down its deficit, the fundamental values that underlie our public health care programs should not be abandoned. Universal publicly-funded health care is understood as a fundamental value in Canada. The idea that the wealthy and the poor share the same health services and therefore have a common interest in its quality and success, is cornerstone to our health system... Public health care is about taking care of one another. We pay through our taxes for care when we are of working age and healthy -and we share the cost across society - so that the burden for care is not shouldered by the sick, the elderly and the dying. This is a point of pride for most of us. Already seniors face mounting out-of-pocket costs for long-term care, respite and medical supplies. As local hospital services are closed in more and more towns, seniors face significant new costs for rehabilitation, lab tests, and travel costs. Unofficially, home care is already subject to means-testing, forcing families to shoulder ever more of the expense. When one adds to these existing user costs to the planned higher deductibles and co-payments for drugs, the burden for middle income seniors is becoming unbearable. In fact, Premier, as you know, across Canada, the progressive public interest organizations that work on health care are advocating for the principles of the Canada Health Act not only to be safeguarded in hospitals and clinics, but also extended to cover home care and drugs in a bid to protect equity and reduce suffering as health care is reformed. It is distressing to see the Ontario government moving in the opposite direction." For full text of the open letter and a list of groups that signed on please go to: http://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/?p=4128. Contacts: Ontario Health Coalition Natalie Mehra Executive director (416) 441-2502 or cell (416) 230-6402 Older Canadians Network Derrell Dular Managing director (416) 260-3429 Technavio has announced the top six leading vendors for the global roast and ground coffee marketin their latest research report. This report also lists 25 other prominent vendors who are expected to contribute to this market's growth over the forecast period. To identify the top vendors, Technavio's market research analysts have considered the top contributors to the overall revenue of this market. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue and volume generated through sales of roast and ground coffee in Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific (APAC), and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Request sample report: http://bit.ly/1MAMYVb "APAC exhibits significant growth potential due to many factors such as emerging countries in the region, a shift toward urbanization, rising disposable incomes, and a thriving cafe culture, which have all contributed significantly to market growth. Leading cafe chains such as Starbucks and Costa Coffee have therefore opened their retail outlets in this region to leverage the growing trend," said Vijay Sarathi, one of Technavio's lead analysts for non-alcoholic beverages "China, Japan, India, South Korea, Thailand, and Singapore are key contributors to the roast and ground coffee market in APAC. Japan and South Korea, which are traditionally tea-drinking countries, have over the time developed a coffee consumption culture, thus driving sales of such products," added Vijay. Top six leading vendors in the global roast and ground coffee market: Eight O'Clock Coffee In 2006, Eight O'Clock Coffee was acquired by Tata Coffee, a subsidiary of Tata Global Beverages. Eight O'Clock Coffee is headquartered in Montvale, New Jersey, US. The company offers a brand line of coffee products and was created by the Great Atlantic Pacific Tea Company (now A&P) in 1859. Eight O'Clock Coffee operates as a category leader in the gourmet segment in the US retail market and is the leading brand in the branded whole bean market. J.M. Smucker J.M. Smucker was founded in 1897 and is headquartered in Orrville, Ohio, US. The company is engaged in the manufacturing and marketing of branded food products worldwide. Its product portfolio includes coffee, frozen sandwiches, toppings, grain products, baking mixes, ready-to-spread frosting, flour and other baking ingredients, beverages, peanut butter, fruit spreads, canned milk, syrups, pickles, and condiments. Jacobs Douwe Egberts In 1753, this company opened its first tea and coffee shop in Joure, the largest town in De Friese Meren. In 1925, the company changed the name from De Witte Os to Douwe Egberts as the trading of coffee and tea expanded. In the same year, the company also introduced the Douwe Egberts seal. Mondelez International and D.E Master Blenders announced the completion of their respective coffee business transaction on July 2, 2015. This transaction was done to form a new joint business, Jacobs Douwe Egberts. Mondelez International is a multinational food, confectionery, and beverages company that accounted for a 44% share in Jacobs Douwe Egberts, whereas Acorn Holdings, the parent of D.E Master Blenders, has a 56% share. Keurig Green Mountain Keurig Green Mountain was established in 1993 and is headquartered in Vermont, US. The company provides quality coffee and coffeemakers in the US and Canada. The company also manufactures and sells specialty beverages and other dairy-based product and has more than 575 beverage varieties and 80 brands. The company operates in two locations, the US and Canada. The business segments in these locations offer single-cup brewers and manufacture and produce coffee, tea, cocoa, and other beverages that are available in supermarkets and department stores, and through other distributors. In 2015, the company's net sales were estimated to be around USD 4.7 billion. Kraft Heinz Kraft Heinz is co-headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Chicago, Illinois, US. The company produces and sells food and beverage products, which include cheese, meats, refreshment beverages, coffees, and packaged dinners. The company offers its food products for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The company sells its products under the brand names Kraft, Heinz, Classico, Jell-O, Kool-Aid, Lunchables, ABC, Weight Watchers Smart Ones, Capri Sun, Maxwell House, Ore-Ida, Philadelphia, Planters, Plasmon, Oscar Mayer, Quero, and Velveeta. Starbucks Starbucks was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, US. The company is the world's largest coffeehouse chain that markets and sells coffee, tea, and other beverages. It also provides a variety of fresh food offerings such as pastries and breakfast sandwiches. As of September 27, 2015, the company employed around 238,000 people and had the support of a strong operational network of more than 20,000 retail stores in 65 countries. The company also owns and leases various warehouses, distribution centers, and roasting and manufacturing facilities in the US and the Netherlands. The company reported net sales of USD 19.16 billion in FY2015 and USD 16.44 billion in FY2014. Browse related reports: Coffee Market in Mexico 2016-2020 Office Coffee Service Market in the US 2016-2020 Coffee Market in Brazil 2015-2019 Global Instant Coffee Market 2015-2019 Purchase three reports from our library 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/20160408005044/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630 333 9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com media@technavio.com According to the latest research study released by Technavio, the global smart communities market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 18% until 2020. This research report titled 'Global Smart Communities Market 2016-2020', provides an in-depth analysis of market growth in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This market research report also includes up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments, including smart grids, smart community buildings, smart community transportation, and smart community water. Request sample report: http://bit.ly/1SlRtQ3 "The use of smart sensor technologies is supporting advanced IT solutions, such as M2M communications and analytics. Smart motion sensors capture information and relay a signal to intelligent systems in case any changes are detected in the activity of residents. The use of sensor technology to support smart projects, such as smart traffic, smart lighting, smart waste management, and smart grids, are also on the rise," said Amit Sharma, one of Technavio's lead analysts for IT professional services research. "The use of sensor technology in IT solutions, such as IoT for infrastructure development, is also gaining traction. Sensor technologies, such as fiber optic sensors, are helping build smart waste management systems in many communities. Many similar initiatives are due to be launched over the upcoming four years," added Amit. Global smart communities market by IT solution 2015 Smart grid 35.5% Smart community building 19% Smart community transportation 16% Smart community water 10% Others 19.5% Source: Technavio research Smart community grid: largest segment of the global smart communities market Smart community grids are fundamentally a next-generation power supply system that use a smart grid architecture to save electricity. The need to save electricity for sustainable development is gaining urgency in both developed and developing countries. The effective management of power supply systems (by using solar and wind energy) is therefore helping communities to reduce power consumption at minimal costs. ICT infrastructure and automated control systems, such as smart grid technologies, help electricity suppliers reduce transmission losses and conserve electricity for future consumption. Further, IT solutions (such as data management, real-time analytics, communications systems, and automation technologies designed to manage smart grid architecture) are helping communities to remain connected with power grids and use electricity judiciously. Vendors in the market, irrespective of the size of their business, are providing smart grid technology for communities. Leading vendors, such as Toshiba, Cisco, Siemens, ABB, and IBM, are providing smart grid technology solutions. eCAMION is providing energy storage solutions known as community energy storage (CES) solution, which uses lithium-ion batteries. The company received funding support from the Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC). Smart community building: second largest segment of the global smart communities market Buildings consume 40% of the global energy demand. Buildings in cities have to be re-engineered to save energy before they are considered a smart cities. Smart building solutions make a building green, safe, and productive. This, in turn, saves up to 30% of water consumption, 40% of energy consumption, and overall building maintenance costs by 10%-20% annually. Some of the key issues in a building include fire safety, earthquake resistance, terrorist attacks, and floods. The use of technology (such as interconnected sensors) can help reduce greenhouse emissions from a building. Smartphone users in buildings can be connected through different devices and IoT technologies. In case of any emergency, these devices communicate with each other and generate alert notifications for residents. Smart homes also help reduce carbon footprint and boost efficiencies with the help of intelligent systems that control building operations. Cisco offers the Cisco Smart Connected Buildings technology to control building operations through IP networking solutions designed to reduce energy consumption. Many similar products are likely to be introduced into the market during the course of the forecast period. Smart community transportation Transport is a fundamental activity in a city both for industries and for consumers. Managing transportation systems is one of the biggest challenges cities across the globe are facing today. Workforce mobility requires huge attention to ensure the safety of employees in the workplace. Therefore, smart transportations systems play a vital role in dense urban environments. Smart transport systems comprise intelligent traffic management systems, smart charging for electrical vehicles, and intelligent public transport systems. These systems are designed with the help of sensors and machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies. Most of the investments may be directed at intelligent traffic management systems (that comprise sensors and CCTV surveillance systems) that play a crucial role in managing heavy urban traffic. These sensors and cameras capture data and share information with mass transportation authorities, city administrations, and law enforcement agencies. For instance, traffic information is shared between bus and tube systems in Medellin, Colombia, and this allows the concerned transport authority to provide real-time information and helps manage and control passenger traffic. Smart community water Water systems in smart communities are geared with automated control systems and information technologies (such as big data, analytics, and information management systems). As the global population expands, demand for clean water may stress natural water resources. Communities are adopting smart water management systems, based on ICT, to save water resources for the future. Technology can help supply systems to provide purified water in a cost-efficient manner. Siemens and Schneider Electric are providing smart water network systems to streamline water network operations. Schneider Electric is using integrated information systems to control the water operation process. The integrated information management system sends real-time data to operators to track and monitor the water supply process. The data is collected from supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that are linked to geographic information systems (GIS), and integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Automated systems (with the help of hydraulic supervision software) collect and disperse real-time information about water leakages from pipelines in a bid to prevent water loss. Browse related reports: Global Smart Cities IT Services Market 2015-2019 Global Smart Cities Market 2015-2019 Global IoT Market 2016-2020 Purchase any 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 Technaviois 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/20160408005032/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630 333 9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com media@technavio.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will take time off from the campaign trail next week to speak at a Vatican conference on social, economic and environmental issues. Sanders described himself as a 'big fan' of Pope Francis in an interview with MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' on Friday, praising the pontiff for 'injecting a moral consequence into the economy.' The Vermont Senator will speak at the conference on April 15th, a day after a high-profile debate with rival Hillary Clinton and just four days before the New York primary. 'I am grateful to the Vatican for inviting me to talk about an issue that is very dear to my heart, which is how we create a moral economy that works for all of the people rather than just the top one percent,' Sanders told the Washington Post. He added, 'I will also in my remarks be addressing the planetary crisis of climate change and the moral imperative to make sure we leave this planet in a way that is healthy and habitable for future generations.' However, news of Sanders' invitation has attracted some criticism from the head of the pontifical academy holding the conference. Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, suggested to Bloomberg News that Sanders courted the invitation for political reasons. 'I think in a sense he may be going for the Catholic vote but this is not the Catholic vote and he should remember that and act accordingly -- not that he will,' Sanders said. Meanwhile, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs disputed Archer's claim and told Bloomberg her characterization of the invitation is 'categorically untrue.' (Photo Credit: Michael Vadon) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise visit to Baghdad on Friday to underscore U.S. support for the Iraqi government as it addresses significant security, economic, and political challenges. Kerry met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Council of Representatives Speaker Saleem al-Jabouri, and Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani. Speaking to reporters after the meetings, Kerry said he had a very productive series of conversations with the Iraqi leaders. The State Department noted that the meetings included discussions of continued support for Iraqi-led efforts against the terrorist group known as ISIS. Kerry told reporters strong ties between local forces and the global anti-ISIS coalition are turning the tide but acknowledged many battles still lie ahead. The State Department said Kerry is scheduled to travel to Hiroshima, Japan, later in the week to participate in the G7 foreign ministers' meeting. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. VAUDREUIL-DORION, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 04/08/16 -- Immunotec Inc. (TSX VENTURE: IMM), a direct-to-consumer company and a leader in the nutritional industry (the "Company" or "Immunotec"), is pleased to announce the renewal, for a five (5) year period, of its Supply and Manufacturing Agreement with Glanbia Nutritionals ("Glanbia"). This new contract replaces the previous agreement signed in May 2011. "Glanbia has been a strategic partner and the exclusive distributor of a proprietary Whey Protein Isolate used in our formulation of Immunocal and Immunocal Platinum products since the commercial beginnings of the Company, 20 years ago" said Charles L. Orr, Chief Executive Officer of Immunotec. "We value our relationship with Glanbia which goes beyond the supply of product and constitutes a true collaboration." About Glanbia Nutritionals Glanbia Nutritionals is a division of Glanbia plc, a global nutrition group headquartered in Kilkenny, Ireland. Glanbia takes pure and clean ingredients including milk, whey and grains, and using their expert knowledge and capabilities produces high-quality nutritional ingredients and branded consumer products for customers and consumers worldwide. The Group has over 6,000 employees across 32 countries with products sold or distributed in over 130 countries. The Group has operations in Ireland, the UK, Germany, USA, and China, as well as strategic international joint ventures and associates in the UK, Ireland and USA. Glanbia is listed on both the Dublin and London Stock Exchange. Glanbia is the No. 1 global producer of whey based nutritional solutions, the No. 1 global producer of American style cheese, and the No. 2 global provider of custom blended micronutrient premixes. Glanbia Nutritionals is on the forefront in the exploration of science and the dynamics that drive the growing nutrition industry. For more information visit www.glanbianutritionals.com or contact Eric Borchardt, Director of Marketing, Glanbia Nutritionals. About Immunotec Inc. Immunotec is a Canadian-based company that develops, manufactures, markets and sells research-driven nutritional products through direct-to-consumer sales channels in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company offers an extensive line of nutritional, skin care and wellness products targeting health, weight management, energy and physical performance. Please visit us at www.immunotec.com for additional information. The company files its continuous disclosure documents, inclusive of its year end results, on the SEDAR database at www.sedar.com and on the Company's website at www.immunotec.com. The common shares of the Company are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker symbol IMM. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contacts: Patrick Montpetit, CPA, CA, CF Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer Immunotec Inc. (450) 510-4527 RICHMOND, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/08/16 -- Catalyst Paper (TSX: CYT) will hold a conference call on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at 8:00 a.m. PDT / 11:00 a.m. EDT to review the Company's 2016 first quarter results. Joe Nemeth, President & Chief Executive Officer and Frank De Costanzo, Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, will host the call. The first quarter report will be released on Monday, May 9th after market close and will be available on the Reports page of Catalyst Paper's website at www.catalystpaper.com/investors. To participate in the conference call, please dial: 877-291-4570 (North America Toll Free) or 647-788-4919 (Greater Toronto Area and International) Following the call, the earnings presentation and webcast will be archived on the Events and Presentations page of Catalyst Paper's website at www.catalystpaper.com/investors. About Catalyst Paper Corporation Catalyst Paper manufactures diverse printing papers such as coated freesheet, C1S, coated and uncoated groundwood, newsprint, directory, as well as market pulp. Customers include retailers, publishers and commercial printers in North America, Latin America, the Pacific Rim and Europe. With five mills across North America, Catalyst has annual production capacity of 2.3 million tonnes. Catalyst is headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, and is ranked by Corporate Knights magazine as one of the 50 Best Corporate Citizens in Canada. Contacts: Catalyst Paper Corporation Eduarda Hodgins Director, Organization Development & Communications 604-247-4369 eduarda.hodgins@catalystpaper.com www.catalystpaper.com Bank of the West along with BNP Paribas recently joined Plug and Play, a global innovation platform for Silicon Valley startups, corporations, and investors, as new corporate partners. The partnership provides Bank of the West and BNP Paribas with enhanced opportunities related to the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem, such as scouting and engagement with startups, new technology monitoring, and learning expeditions. Becoming a corporate member also contributes to building a bridge with Plug and Plays worldwide partners and joint ventures, providing them with insights related to digital innovation and the fintech marketplace. Founded in 2006, Plug and Play Tech Center is a global technology accelerator and venture fund including entrepreneurs from 24 countries over 350 startups and 300 corporate partners. Plug and Play provides active investments with 180 leading Silicon Valley VCs, and more than 365 networking events per year. Companies in the community have raised over $3.5 billion in funding, with exits including Danger, Dropbox, Lending Club, PayPal, SoundHound, and Zoosk. FinSMEs 08/04/2016 Following a record year in Bitcoin & Blockchain venture capital activity, with approx. $474m invested in 74 deals (vs $299m in 75 deals in 2014), at the beginning of 2016, the debate about the fate of the criptocurrency and its underlying technology burst when veteran developer Mike Hearn sentenced in a long post that the (Bitcoin) experiment had failed. Since then, investors, entrepreneurs, developers, and supporters started discussing about limits, evolution scenarios, as well as sustainable models in the sector, trying to answer the apocalyptic question: Is Bitcoin Dead? Following two years of hypewith everyone speaking about, developing, mining, buying and investing in the cryptocurrency, this is not the right time to arrange the funeral service. Bitcoin is not dead. Maybe, it is just growing up, with major development efforts still to be made and definitive business models to be found. In the meantime, the interest for the blockchain is increasing as it is becoming clear that the technology can be used in the financial services to document the transfer of any digital asset, to record the ownership of physical and intellectual property, as well as to establish rights via smart contracts, and for many other purposes outside money. It basically means that whatever the destiny of Bitcoin will be, the Blockchain is here to stay. In the first four months of 2016, we noticed meaningful signs of life in the sector with over $220m in funding poured into bitcoin & blockchain companies, globally. Some evidences? Lets have a look at the deals below, which hint the shift of interest by VCs from Bitcoin related startups to blockchain-enabled platforms with the potential to power infinite applications. BITCOIN Berlin, Germany-based Bitwala raised 800k in seed funding round led by High-Tech-Grunderfonds with participation from Digital Currency Group. Led by CEO Jorg von Minckwitz, and co-founders Jan Goslicki and Benjamin Jones, Bitwala provides a Blockchain technology-based platform for international money transfers with no need of having a bank account. Along with a debit card, the company provides people with tools to make cash withdrawals at ATMs and payments at any store or website that accepts VISA. Blockstream, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of blockchain and related technologies, raised $55m in Series A funding round led by Horizons Ventures, AXA Strategic Ventures, and Digital Garage, with participation from existing investors including AME Cloud Ventures, Blockchain Capital, Future\Perfect Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, and Seven Seas Venture Partners. Founded by Austin Hill, Dr. Adam Back, Gregory Maxwell and Dr. Pieter Wuille, Blockstream leverages a Blockchain platform maintained within the Elements Project under an open source license to accelerate innovation in crypto currencies, open assets and smart contracts. The companys first commercial sidechain offering, called Liquid, provides an interchange settlement service for Bitcoin exchanges and brokerages. Zebpay, an Ahmedabad, India-based mobile bitcoin startup, raised $1m in Series A funding in a round led by Arjun Handa, and Amit Jindal, among other business angels. Co-founded by Mahin Gupta, Saurabh Agrawal and Sandeep Goenka, Zebpay provides a Bitcoin wallet app that allows users to send and receive Bitcoins using mobile numbers. Simplex, a Ramat Gan, Israel-based company that provides Bitcoin exchanges, broker websites and wallet applications with a fraud-free, and fully protected platform for selling Bitcoins online via credit card transactions, raised $7m in Series A funding round from Bitmain and Cumberland Mining, and FundersClub. BLOCKCHAIN FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES Barbados-based Bitt has just closed a $16m Series A funding (led by retail company Overstock.com) to develop a software suite including a digital asset exchange, a mobile money wallet, a remittance platform, and merchant payment processing tools. The company has just launched a digitized Barbadian Dollar on the bitcoin blockchain to bring state-of-the-art solutions to a region limited by inefficient exchange and settlement systems. RSK Labs, a Buenos Aires, Argentina-based company behind a smart contracts platform, raised $1m in a seed funding round led by Bitmain Technology, Coinsilium and Digital Currency Group. Co-founded in 2015 by Sergio Lerner and Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, RSK Labs is advancing RootStock, a smart contract platform with a 2way peg to the Bitcoin Blockchain. Elliptic, a London and New York-based blockchain intelligence company, raised $5m in Series A funding in a round led by Paladin Capital Group, with participation from Santander InnoVentures, KRW Schindler, Digital Currency Group, and Octopus Ventures. Launched in 2013 by CEO Dr. James Smith, Elliptic has developed blockchain compliance, fraud detection, and investigations technology, which uses graph analysis and machine learning to identify illicit activity in blockchain transactions, and provides law enforcement agencies in the US and Europe with evidence on crimes involving international arms trafficking, drug sales, extortion, theft and money laundering. Chainalysis Inc., a New York based cybersecurity startup, raised $1.6m in seed funding round led by Point Nine Capital with participation from Techstars, Digital Currency Group, Funders Club, and Converge VP. Led by Michael Gronager, CEO, and Jonathan Levin, co-founder, Chainalysis provides a regulatory technology platform that enables major financial institutions to interact with businesses that transact on the blockchain and meet compliance requirements. The companys software detects suspicious activity in real time and provides investigation tools for law enforcement to tackle cybercrime. It provides reports on measures of activity of each company giving banks greater visibility into the risk of onboarding these services compared to businesses that do not operate on the blockchain. Digital Asset Holdings, a New York-based developer of Distributed Ledger Technology for the financial services industry, raised more than $60m in two close funding rounds in January ($50m) and February 2016 ($10m). Backers include ABN AMRO, Accenture, ASX Limited, BNP Paribas, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Citi, CME Ventures, Deutsche Borse Group, ICAP, J.P. Morgan, Santander InnoVentures, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and The PNC Financial Services Group, then joined by Goldman Sachs and IBM. Launched in 2015 and led by Blythe Masters, CEO, Digital Asset provides a blockchain which allows financial players to improve efficiency, security, compliance and settlement speed. It serves the entire financial ecosystem through the creation of business logic applications which use privately permissioned networks that employ a cryptographically secure and shared infrastructure. At the end of 2015, the company had bought Blockstack.io, a provider of SaaS-based platform for financial institutions to develop apps on a private blockchain. BLOCKCHAIN OF EVERYTHING Eris, the free and open-source Universal Blockchain Platform built by London-based Eris Industries, secured 50m of grant funding from Mondroit Capital, the strategic investment arm of the British government, to develop blockchains designed to improve auditability and security for a new social operating system to be deployed in partnership between Eris Industries and the new British public-private joint venture GCHQ.IO. Founded in 2014, Eris allows anyone to build their own applications using blockchain and smart contract technology. It also has offices in New York and Berlin. Stratumn, a Paris, France-based creator of a SaaS platform for developers to build and deploy blockchain applications, raised 600k from Otium Venture, Eric Larcheveque, and other angels. The company was co-founded by Richard Caetano and Stephan Florquin. Aachen, Germany-based custom blockchain platform Lisk raised over 14,000 BTC (approx. $5.7m), in an Initial Coin Offering. Founded by CEO Max Kordek and CTO Oliver Beddows, Lisk provides a decentralized application and custom blockchain platform which uses JavaScript to allow programmers to develop their own dapps. The companys team is working together with Microsoft to bring the app platform to the Azure cloud. Chronicled, a San Francisco, CA-based hardware & software platform for authentication, tracking, and social engagement around collectible and vintage sneakers, raised $3.425m in seed funding round led by Mandra Capital with participation from Colbeck and Pantera Capital. Founded in September 2014, Chronicled leverages leveraging blockchain technology for authentic products to be tagged, registered, verified, and transferred from a mobile app. The platform incorporates smart tags, an open registry, and a mobile app to document and guarantee product authenticity, ownership, and provenance. Ribbit.me, a NY-based blockchain technology startup, raised $1.5m in seed funding round led by Hayaat Group. Led by Gregory Simon, CEO, and Sean Dennis, COO, the company is building a universal loyalty solution built on blockchain technology. OTHER FACTS The New Funds In Silicon Valley Blockchain Capital has just closed its second fund at over $13m while 500 Startups has launched a $25m fintech fund, which aims to invest in Blockchain startups, among others. The Acquisition The year began with the acquisition of UK-based bitcoin and blockchain industry news site CoinDesk by Digital Currency Group. Launched in 2013 and led by CEO Jeremy Bonney, CoinDesk provides Bitcoin and digital currency news, features, prices and analysis. FinSMEs 08/04/2016 SAM, an Edmonton, Canada-based online social media search, curation and storytelling platform for newsrooms, secured a seed round financing of undisclosed amount. The Associated Press and a number of other investors participated in the round. The company will use the capital to grow the development team and its customer base, as well as to build out offices in major media centres, starting with London and followed shortly thereafter by New York. Led by James Neufeld, CEO and Founder, SAM operates an online platform that powers social media search, curation and storytelling for newsrooms and media companies. Launched in 2013, the company counts AP, Reuters, FT, WSJ, Guardian, Toronto Star, Reportedly and other blue-chip media companies as clients. FinSMEs 08/04/2016 London: Bollywood star Akshay Kumar was made to wait at Heathrow Airport as UK immigration officials checked the details of his Canadian passport. The 48-year-old flew into London from Mumbai for the shoot of his film Rustom but had to wait an additional hour- and-a-half as the authorities checked the entry requirements to the UK for Canadian nationals yesterday. Kumar, who is a Canadian national, does not require a visa to travel to the UK for tourism and business purposes for up to 90 days. It is believed the UK authorities took longer to clarify this "fine-print", during which he was made to wait in the general waiting area at the airport. Kumars team also denied media reports which claim the Punjab-born actor tried to assert his stardom to get any kind of special treatment or favours. They insist he willingly complied with the request of the authorities and was soon out of the airport and is now busy with his shoot in London. A Home Office spokesperson confirmed no problems were found with Kumars documents. He said, "Border Force officers routinely carry out further checks on passengers to ensure they are satisfied that person has the documentation needed to enter the UK". A source who was present with the actor during the incident said the media had sensationalised a non-issue. She said, "We all know that no one can enter or even work in the UK without the right permit and there was no exception in the case of Akshay Kumar who travelled to the UK with all the correct documents. "However the immigration team at Heathrow Airport asked him to wait to double check a few details. "Yes, the process took slightly longer than expected but you have to be patient with these things. The team were very sincere and profusely apologised to Akshay Kumar for the delay and inconvenience caused so not sure why the media are sensationalising this," she said. A day after a Mumbai court turned down Rahul Raj Singh's anticipatory bail plea (filed in response to the police booking him for abetting the suicide of his girlfriend Pratyusha Banerjee on 1 April), his former lawyer Neeraj Gupta stepped forward with some explosive claims. Neeraj, who had backed out of the case on Wednesday citing "humanitarian grounds" had claimed that his client kept him in the dark about crucial facts. The lawyer also held a press conference, in which he laid charges of cheating and swindling against Rahul, his former client. The Times of India quoted Neeraj as saying, "Rahul was partying with a girl at the Bora Bora restaurant on 31 March, the night before Pratyusha committed suicide. He even fought with the girl (there)." He also claimed that Rahul had a "modus operandi" where he would "introduce actresses to drugs, con them and then dump them". Neeraj said that Rahul had done the same to Pratyusha. Among the claims the lawyer made was that Pratyusha had injuries on her nose and cheekbones at the time of her death. Incidentally, the police had also made a similar statement about the actress' injuries at the time of Rahul Raj's bail plea hearing in court. NDTV reported that the police "had found old injury marks on Pratyusha's body, which might indicate that she was tortured by Rahul, ultimately pushing her to commit suicide". In the meantime, the police has also been investigating the withdrawal of Rs 24 lakhs from the actress' bank account. New Delhi: An online petition demanding launch of criminal proceedings against big corporate defaulters like businessman Vijay Mallya has gone viral on social media platform with over 1.10 lakh people signing the plea on technology platform Change.org in this regard. The petition demands criminal proceedings to be initiated against as many as 44 big defaulters who owe over Rs 4.8 lakh crore to public sector banks, quoting latest available data as on March 31, 2015. This Change.org petition, which was started in February 2016, requests Finance Minister Arun Jaitley "to set a strong example that will make corporate defaulters think twice before cheating." The petition quotes media reports showing that the country's top five Public Sector Banks had outstandings of Rs 4.87 lakh crore from 44 big borrowers, each with pending dues worth over Rs 5,000 crore. There has been a growing clamour in the recent past to seek urgent action against Mallya for recovery of dues totalling over Rs 9,000 crore in unpaid loans and applicable interest. Mallya, as also his long-grounded Kingfisher Airline and UB Group holding company UBHL, have been declared wilful defaulters by some banks, while a consortium of 17 lenders, headed by SBI, have approached courts to seek fast recovery of their dues. As per the latest available data, there are about 7,686 wilful defaulters who owe Rs 66,190 crore to public sector banks. Of these, suits have been filed in 6,816 cases and FIRs have been lodged in 1,669 cases. Banks have initiated action under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act (Sarfaesi) Act in 584 such cases. On Thursay, Mallya was directed by the Supreme Court to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad. After banks rejected an earlier Rs 4,000 crore settlement offer from Mallya, the court also asked him to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. The petition says "hardworking people like you and me run from pillar to post for a bank loan. We are held accountable if we can't pay the loan back. Why should the taxpayer pay the price for corporate mistakes?" It further reads "73 per cent of these unpaid loans are from India's rich, like Vijay Mallya. Many of these unpaid loans are being written off. Instead of recovering them, we are pressurising the middle class and poor farmers. Why should the common people of this country suffer while rich men like Vijay Mallya escape?" If there is one thing Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlights in most of his foreign trips, it is the achievement his government has made with respect to the massive bank account opening drive under his flagship scheme Jan Dhan Yojana. The scheme has, so far, managed to open 21.43 crore accounts, which have mobilised Rs 35,672 crore deposists. Of this, about 9.5 crore accounts have been linked to Aadhaar numbers and 17.75 crore RuPay debit cards have been achieved issued to these account holders. The numbers indeed signify a remarkable achievement, since in the fiscal year prior to the launch of Jan Dhan, India opened just about 6 crore basic service bank accounts (equivalent to the Jan Dhan accounts). But, Indias push on financial push has begun well in the past. A report by British High Commission and Neeti Foundation shows that between 2011 and 2014 the banking account penetration increased in India from 35 percent to 53 percent of population a period when the UPA was in power. Claims and counter claims Indias push on financial inclusion has been a matter of hot political debate and reason for mud-slinging between the Congress and BJP. In a recent interview with Firstpost, former finance minister P Chidambaram claimed that Jan Dhan is a repackaged version of the bank account opening drive of the Congress-led UPA government. I have no objection if they repackage our schemes. Imitation is the best form of flattery, Chidambaram said. But, to claim that nothing is done by the previous government is completely wrong. What is Jan Dhan except the same programme we launched under the financial inclusion. We had included by the time we demitted office, as many as 24.3 crore accounts. They simply dont want to acknowledge this, said Chidambaram. A major criticism Jan Dhan drive has faced is the issue of duplication when banks were given huge targets by the government within limited period. In March, a survey by consulting firm MicroSave had warned about the issue of duplication. About thirty-three per cent of the customers indicated that PMJDY was not their first account, in comparison to 14 per cent in Wave-II survey (conducted in July 2015) and Wave-I (conducted in December 2014). Hence, indications are that fresh account opening drives are encouraging clients to open a second account. Most of these accounts are not used, said the survey. Another survey by World Bank-Gallup Global Findex Survey showed that about 43 percent of the total bank accounts in India are dormant even though bank account penetration has surged in the country in the recent past. The report cited this as a concern for the banking system. However, going by the latest government data, the number of zero-balance accounts has come down significantly since the scheme was launched to 29 per cent from about 45 per cent. Nevertheless, the concern on zero balance accounts has been expressed by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan too when he said duplicate accounts would lead to wastage of resources. On Wednesday, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too criticized the progress of Jan Dhan, saying the Modi government has forced banks to open crores of accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana, which remain unutilised. "All he (Modi) achieved in these two years is forcing crores of people to open bank accounts. But people are asking what will they do with bank accounts when they have nothing to keep in the bank," he said referring to the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. But, the BJPs senior leadership is unfazed with the criticism. Aaadhaar leg-up But, there are no two thoughts on how critical is proliferation of Aadhaar-linked bank accounts in India to ensure that the subsidy rationalisation process is progressing and doesnt falter half way. As Firstpost pointed out in a recent article, the passage of The Aadhaar (Target Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, in the Lok Sabha assumes crucial importance for the fate of Jan Dhan as it now provides legal backing to identity number. The whole process of subsidy reforms, kicked off during the UPA days and now pushed aggressively by the NDA government, is built on the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) channel, based on the unique identity number, or Aadhaar awarded to each citizen. It holds particular importance for the Modi government, and the success of its financial inclusion push under the JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile) trinity. For sure, leakage in subsidy has been a grave concern for India's exchequer for years. Hence, linking bank accounts to a unique social identity number will help plug the spillage. Promise of financial inclusion About 40 percent of Indian population still doesnt have access to formal banking system. In terms of numbers, the scheme has become an overnight success with its high-speed implementation even bagging a Guinness record. The government achieved this by pushing all government-owned banks to meet the targets. Jan Dhan is arguably the biggest-ever bank account opening drive India has ever witnessed and was designed to offer at least one basic bank accounts to every household, besides access to credit, insurance and pension facilities and offering financial literacy. It also promised RuPay Debit card for every account holder, an inbuilt accident insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh and life insurance cover of Rs 30,000. Besides, the scheme also envisaged channelling all government benefits to the beneficiaries accounts. The scope of the scheme was later expanded to offer other products too. Jayanta Sinha, former chief general manager, Rural Banking at SBI, said even before Jan Dhan, KYC norms were relaxed, but lack of financial literacy among the rural population has created problems to expand the reach of banks in the hinterlands. It is not fair to impose all burden on banks. The government has to take initiative to increase awareness," Sinha said. Even after 65 years of independence and 46 years of bank nationalisation, close to half of Indias population doesnt have bank accounts. That is despite the country having 27 nationalized banks, 19 private banks, 43 foreign banks and several other layers of banks such as cooperative banks, regional rural banks and local area banks and more recent crop of microfinance institutions. A significant chunk of Indias rural population still depends on private moneylenders to meet their financing needs. Banks have often cited lack of viability in the business model when they operate in the unbanked rural areas. The RBI launched three-year roadmap on financial inclusion in 2010 for banks under which banks were asked to have a board-approved policy on financial inclusion. But the progress has been slow. Prasad P Revdekar, deputy general manager and Thane region head of retail banking at IDBI Bank, said one of the major challenges bankers faced while implementing the Jan Dhan initiative was to convince the customer that there is no free money in these accounts and he has to start transacting in it even to avail the loan overdraft. Some times, I find customers coming to our bank branches and asking impatiently when he is getting the money in his Jan dhan account. It is so difficult to convince him that there is no free-money in these accounts, Revdekar said, also adding that there are issues of same person opening multiple accounts with different banks to become eligible for freebies. Over a period of time, such duplicated accounts could emerge as a concern for banking system, Revdekar said. Every zero-balance account cost a bank an average Rs 140 a year to maintain. But Revdekar agrees that Jan Dhan has given the flexibility to banks to significantly relax KYC norms and reach more people in the banking network, where a significant number of tribal population have neither Aadhaar cards nor any other documents to show for KYC proof. Hurried revolution? Unless the livelihood issues are resolved first, there is very little these bank accounts alone can do, said Shraddha Shringarpure of NGO Aroehan, which operates in tribal areas of Maharashtra. Banks have pushed for opening accounts. Hence they have accounts today. But unless their livelihood issues are resolved, they wont be able to use these accounts much, Shringarpure said. Nearly 11,000 villages in India are still not connected to the electricity grid and, going by various surveys, at least two-third of rural households still do not have toilets. The question Jan Dhan push raises is this. How far the efforts have progressed in achieving the actual inclusion of Indias poor? This is something the last economic survey too pointed out. Despite Jan Dhans record-breaking feats, basic savings account penetration in most states is still relatively low 46 per cent on average and above 75 per cent in only 2 states (Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh). Policymakers thus need to be cognisant about exclusion errors due to DBT not reaching unbanked beneficiaries. Comparing the reach of Jan Dhan with that of Aadhaar suggests that the unbanked are more likely to constrain the spread of JAM than the unidentified. MUMBAI Fairfax India Holdings Corp (FIHu.TO) is close to acquiring a minority stake in privately-held petrochemical company Sanmar Chemicals Group via a roughly $300 million investment in the company, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The investment in Sanmar, may be paired with a smaller cash infusion from Fairfax India's larger sister entity, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd (FFH.TO). That would give the two entities - both chaired by Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa - a roughly 30 percent stake in Sanmar, said the two sources, who declined to be named as the talks are private. The sources said Fairfax may consider investing in both the equity and debt of Sanmar. Fairfax India and Fairfax Financial declined to comment on the matter. A spokesman for Chennai-based Sanmar was also not immediately able to provide a comment on the matter. The Times of India, in February, reported that Fairfax was in talks to buy a stake in Sanmar. Indian-born Watsa, whose main investment firm is Fairfax Financial Holdings, set up Fairfax India in 2014 to hone in on investments in India, where he sees strong growth opportunities. Fairfax India went public in early 2015 and raised more than $1 billion via its initial public offering. Watsa, who met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, has previously stated he is enthused about India's growth prospects due to Modi's economic reform agenda. The investment in Sanmar would be the latest in a string of Fairfax investments in the country this year. Last month, it agreed to buy a 33 percent equity interest in the Bangalore International Airport from GVK Power and Infrastructure Ltd (GVKP.NS) for $321 million. In February, it acquired a 45 percent stake in ADI Finechem (ADIF.NS), a small Ahmedabad-based specialty chemical company for $19 million. This followed its acquisition last August of a majority stake in India's largest non-government grain handling company, National Collateral Management Services Ltd for about $126 million. Sanmar, a family-owned firm chaired by N. Sankar, is one of India's largest producers of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The firm, which owns manufacturing facilities in India and Egypt, is also a manufacturer of caustic soda and other specialty chemicals. (Additional reporting by Euan Rocha in Toronto; Editing by Diane Craft) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. ORLANDO, Fla. A 780-pound "monster" alligator slain in a Florida hunt and hauled out of the water with a farm tractor falls short of the state record for length, a wildlife official said on Wednesday. "A big alligator nonetheless, but they are not going to have an official measurement because it's not going to beat the record," Tony Young, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said in a phone interview. The longest alligator caught in the wild in Florida was measured at 14 feet 3-1/2 inches, he said. The state record for the heaviest gator taken from the wild is 1,043 pounds, according to the commission's records. The animal killed on Saturday in a hunt at Outwest Farms in Okeechobee near the Florida Everglades was estimated by farm officials to be about 15 feet long, local media reported. Outwest Farms charges $550 to $10,000 for hunting alligators up to 13 feet and longer, according to its website. Farm officials believe the alligator was attacking cattle, local media reported. The gator was discovered in a pond where cattle came to drink, hunting guide Blake Godwin told local news station Fox 13. The hunters used a farm machine to pull it from the water after shooting it, he added. Outwest Farms posted a photo of what was described as a "monster" capture on Facebook, where a photo of the large animal dangling in the air from the farm equipment prompted mixed feelings. The post later appeared to have been taken down. "This is making me physically ill," one person said in a post. Another poster defended the kill: "For anyone that is talking about relocating this beast ... Why not y'all mess with a 15-foot, 800-pound gator? That gator could easily take your life like he was that cattle." (Reporting by Barbara Liston; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Richard Chang) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. New Delhi: Two minors have been apprehended for the murder of an Uber cab driver identified as Kuldeep Thakur, in west Delhi, a senior police officer said on Friday. Police was informed about the crime after Thankur's body was found dumped in a field in Mundaka on Friday morning. The minors were apprehended within hours. "The two minors hired the cab from Najafgarh in west Delhi for Mundaka around 3.30 p.m. on Wednesday. On the way, a heated argument ensued between them and the driver, over some issue. After this, they fatally shot him in the head," Deputy Commissioner of Police Pushpendra Kumar told IANS. "The minors dumped the body in a nearby secluded field and left the car at some other place before fleeing," the officer said. According to an NDTV report, the minors were identified by accessing Uber's data. Kuldeep, 51, was a resident of Khanpur of south Delhi. According to Kumar, the minors shot Kuldeep when he abused them during an argument. He added that the cause of the argument was unclear. The DCP said police did not find any previous criminal record of the minors. "We are trying to find out how and from where the minors got the firearm used in the crime," he said. New Delhi: A day after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit indicated that Indian investigators would not be allowed to visit that country, government sources on Friday said Islamabad was making a "sudden turn around" on the Pathankot probe as the visiting Pakistani JIT was "taken aback" by the body of evidence provided by the NIA. Sources maintained that the "hard evidence" tabled by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to the visiting Joint Investigating Team (JIT) during their five-day stay in India has left then "surprised". The evidence was proof of the "Pakistani links of the terrorists" -- those who attacked the Pathankot airbase on 2 January, the sources said, adding: "They realise that their game is up. The sudden turn around on allowing an NIA team to visit Pakistan could be the result of that." Indian intelligence agencies said that Pakistan has suffered a diplomatic setback during last few weeks as even their friendly countries like Saudi Arabia have lately started tilting towards New Delhi. India-Saudi Arabia strategic ties got a boost during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Riyadh last week. On Friday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval took stock of the situation in what they called a "routine" meeting. Seeking to dismiss the meeting as "routine", the sources said: "The meeting between Home Minister Rajnath Singh and NSA Doval is nothing unusual. Top brass in Indian security establishment keep meeting." The meeting, attended by senior officials from related security agencies, discussed Pakistan's turn around among other issues. "The issue of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar also figured," the source said, referring to the current unrest at the institute. Pakistan High Commissioner Basit on Thursday told journalists here that the ongoing peace talks between both countries would remain "suspended" and that "the investigation (into the Pathankot attack) is not about reciprocity". Basit's remarks negate the NIA's claims made on 30 March that Islamabad will "reciprocate" India's gesture of allowing Pakistani investigators, including an ISI official, to visit the IAF base in Pathankot to probe the terror attack by Pakistani terrorists. Sources said NIA officials had names of the terrorists, evidence like transcript of telephonic conversations and other electronic and forensic proofs including against Jaish-e -Mohammed chief Masood Azhar's brother Abdul Rauf. On 30 March, NIA spokesman Sanjeev Kumar had said that both sides had "agreed" that the kind of cooperation India had provided to the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team would be reciprocated. "This is the reciprocity agreed," Kumar had told reporters. The remarks indicated India's intention to get similar access in Pakistan to pursue the probe into the Pathankot terror attack. India has been maintaining that the attack was masterminded by JeM chief Azhar, against whom an arrest warrant was issued by a NIA court in Mohali on Friday. The terrorists who killed seven Indian security personnel at the base ended up getting killed after an 80-hour gun battle. Tension is brewing at the Hyderabad Central University over protests by faculty members over the varsity's stand on the row after Dalit student Rohith Vemula's suicide. After scores of students belonging to different organisations were taken into police custody for holding protests near the Hyderabad Central University demanding arrest of Vice-Chancellor Professor Appa Rao Podile, the SC/ST Teachers' Forum of the University have written a letter to the V-C reiterating their position on conditional withdrawal of resignation from their positions. The letter, addressed to Professor Appa Rao, says, "...we now reiterate our stand that we are resigning from our position since you have returned as VC before the judicial probe is completed as well as in the light of highly disturbing events that have taken place on the campus since your return..." Read the full letter here: HCU Letter The letter further added that the teachers were very disappointed with the allegations against protesting students and faculty, which they termed as unfair. On 21 January, several Dalit professors had resigned from their administrative posts like chief examination officer, warden and medical officer, in solidarity with the students. They had, however, kept their teaching responsibilities. Appa Rao had then tried to call them for a reconciliation meeting, but failed. On 6 April, Controller of Examination Professor V Krishna, expressing solidarity with the protesting students against Rao's removal, resigned from the post and walked out of the Academic Council Meeting going on in HCU. Hyderabad Central University has been on the boil since January this year after Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide in a hostel room of the university. Latur: At first glance, Latur looks like any other Indian town with its dusty congested streets and crowded bazaars. But looks can be deceptive. The town is the epicentre of a process of deindustrialisation and economic deprivation that has spread across the whole district. Reason: The worst drought in the last 45 years has led to acute water scarcity. Marathwada, which has received deficient rains for the last three years, is reeling under a severe drought and Latur is one of the worst-affected regions. The water crisis has led to a contraction in agricultural, industry and services, forcing skilled and unskilled workers from Latur and Marathwada to migrate to other parts of the state in search of jobs. The demand for water has skyrocketed, according to interviews that Firstpost conducted with farmers, businessmen and journalists in Latur. The economy of Latur is in the doldrums, Atul Deulgaonkar, an environmental journalist based here told Firstpost. Industries, hospitals, hostels and cloth markets are shutting down as the economy craters and people migrate out. Economic statistics bear this out. The per capita income of Marathwada, at Rs 40,824, is the lowest of any region in Maharashtra, according to the Kelkar committee report. The figure for Vidarbha is Rs 52,282. The eight districts of Marathwada are home to only 7.7 percent of the total number of micro, small and medium enterprises in the state. Unseasonal weather has taken as much of a toll on agriculture as drought. Shivaji Sonawane, a grape farmer and the president of the Latur Grape Growers Association, has 24 acres of land, which qualify him as a large farmer. The average land holding in Maharashtra is 0.5 hectares, according to Indias Economic Survey for 2015-16 released in February. On 5 March, 2014, a hailstorm wrecked Sonawanes grape fields. In 12 seconds, my losses totalled Rs 50 lakh, he said in an interview. Climate change has resulted in water scarcity and we are cutting down all trees, he laments. The crop insurance wasnt enough to cover the losses. The area under grape cultivation in Latur district has shrunk from 2,200 acres in 2010 to 600 acres currently due to the drought. The district used to export 250 containers of grapes processed in 14 units, each container containing 12-15 tons of the fruit. Today, all but two units have shut down and exports have declined to 50 containers. The grape industry used to provide direct and indirect employment to 10,000 people, now down to 1,000 or 2,000 hands. Gajraj Steel industry, a steel factory, shut down two months ago rendering 300 people jobless. Small and medium industries and fabrication units have closed as well. Agro processing units are also facing a tough time because of the decline in farm yields. Buying water cuts into the profitability of firms making them uncompetitive. They would rather operate in a place with cheap and assured water supply since water is an important component in the industrial process. Kedar Abhimanyu Rasure is the promoter of Siddhi Associates, a local firm that does maintenance work for sugar factories and water filter plants. The turnover has plummeted nearly 70 per cent in two years - from Rs 6 crore to Rs 2 crore. Of the 12 sugar factories in the district, only four are currently functional as the water shortage has led to a decrease in cane production. Of the 42 water filter plants in the district, only four or five are in working condition. There is not enough business for Rasure in Latur. I have managed to survive because of some railway contracts the firm bagged, he said. Mundhra Foods Ltd, a Latur-based maker of bottled mineral water, is planning to relocate to Ahmednagar district. The in-house polymer fabrication unit, which makes the caps and water bottles is following suit. Pramod Mundhra, the promoter of Mundhra Foods, in an interview claimed that Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) has not been supplying water for the last five years. Mundhra Foods is located in the MIDC industrial area in Latur. He said they will accommodate workers who shift with the plant and let go of those that dont. The lack of economic opportunities across Marathwada is leading to migration to other parts of Maharashtra and outside in search of employment. Both blue collar workers and educated, middle class white collar professionals are leaving in droves. Dhairyasheel Sonavane, a 29-year-old software developer who works for Tata Consultancy Services in Pune, is from Latur. He doesnt see any viable career options back home. He says most of his school and college mates have left Latur. Every year, five to six lakh people from Beed district migrate to Karnataka, Telangana and western Maharashtra to work on sugarcane fields there. Kamala Mhaske, a farmer from Bhavthane village says, Usually, people leave around Dussehra or Diwali and return only at the time of the next kharif sowing season. Even construction activity, that normally absorbs farm labour in the non-agricultural season, has been banned on the orders of the local administration to conserve water. With inputs from Neerad Pandharipande This is the third segment of a 13-part series on Marathwadas drought. Part 4: The effect of the drought on Marathwada's social fabric Read the previous parts of the series here: Part 1: Region is parched, impoverished and desperate, but it's a crisis of its own making Part 2: In the midst of severe economic downturn, private water sellers reap profits in Latur Bijnor: Over a hundred people have been questioned following raids at several places in connection with the killing of National Investigating Agency (NIA) officer Tanzil Ahmed but no arrest has been made so far, Uttar Pradesh DGP Javeed Ahmed said on Friday. "No person has been arrested yet. However, over a hundred people have been questioned in raids conducted in Delhi, Bijnor and Aligarh," Ahmed said in Bijnor. He said many of those who have been questioned had provided "valuable" information about the incident which will play an important role in solving the case. "There is no time limit fixed for the investigation but the truth will come out soon," he said, adding the police is questioning all the suspects named by the family members of the NIA officer. Tanzil Ahmed, probing terror cases related to Indian Mujahideen, was shot dead on 3 April by two unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants who also wounded his wife when they were returning home from a wedding near UP's Bijnor town. The DGP said Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), Special Task Force (STF) and with NIA are jointly investigating the case. He also visited the spot in Sahaspur area where the officer was killed. Mumbai: Prominent women from cross-section of society in Maharashtra on Friday hailed the lifting of curb on entry of women in the core area of Shani Shingnapur temple, terming it as a "symbol of victory" for campaign on gender equality and a significant move towards empowerment of women. Giving in to a highly publicised campaign by activists, the Shani Shingnapur temple trust on Friday allowed women to enter the sanctum sanctorum, breaking the tradition followed for several decades. Welcoming the move, Amruta, wife of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, told PTI, "This change (allowing women into the core area) was extremely important and is a really satisfying development. This sends a strong signal that women, like men, deserve all the rightful benefits." Amruta said women from different sections of society fought for the right to enter places of worship. "This is a symbol of change but the actual change will take place only when people will start changing their mindset towards women." Vijaya Rahatkar, Chairperson of Maharashtra State Women Commission, termed the decision as "rightful move" towards gender equality. "Yes, I am very happy to know that women have started praying in the sanctum sanctorum sanctorum of the famous temple. This is a significant move in the direction of gender equality and empowerment of women." The outcome was result of the joint effort of the judiciary and State Government who pushed for gender equality at places of worship, she said. On remarks by Bhumata Brigade, an outfit which spearheaded the campaign for entry of women into the Shani temple, that it will take up similar agitations for other shrines, Rahatkar said, "We would do every bit to support the women's cause within the framework of the Constitution. Our Chief Minister has already talked about it." Human rights activist and advocate Abha Singh thanked the Bombay High Court for its ruling calling for an end to gender bias at places of worship. "The High Court instructed State Government to ensure women are not stopped (from entering the Shani temple core area). The State was bound to act otherwise it would have faced contempt of court charge." Singh termed the decision on temple entry as a "surrender" by religious bigots. Preethi Herman, Country Head of Change.org, a global online platform for social advocacy, said, "This is a historic victory (for women's rights). This fight was not just about one temple, or access to a place of worship. "It was about challenging power structures and reclaiming spaces by women. These women have proven what I witness everyday regular citizens creating changes that are redefining India." Opposition Congress in the State also hailed the decision by temple administration. "Welcome the end of gender discrimination at Shani Shingnapur temple, with Women being given RightToPray at temple Chautara. "Gives us joy at RightToPray being granted to all. I have been supporting this demand in (Legislative) Council. Hope other such places of worship follow..." Congress MLC Sanjay Dutt tweeted. Singh termed the decision on temple entry as a "surrender" by religious bigots. Preethi Herman, Country Head of Change.org, a global online platform for social advocacy, said, "This is a historic victory (for women's rights). This fight was not just about one temple, or access to a place of worship. "It was about challenging power structures and reclaiming spaces by women. These women have proven what I witness everyday - regular citizens creating changes that are redefining India." Opposition Congress in the State also hailed the decision by temple administration. "Welcome the end of gender discrimination at Shani Shingnapur temple, with Women being given RightToPray at temple Chautara. "Gives us joy at RightToPray being granted to all. I have been supporting this demand in (Legislative) Council. Hope other such places of worship follow..." Congress MLC Sanjay Dutt tweeted. New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday opposed the Centre's decision to increase annual fees for undergraduate courses in IITs from existing Rs 90,000 to Rs 2 lakh, saying the "steep" hike will make the institutions "out of reach" for the poor. "I strongly oppose steep fee hike in IITs. Pl don't make IIT out of reach for poor. I couldn't hv studied at IIT if fee were this high (sic)," Kejriwal tweeted. I strongly oppose steep fee hike in IITs. Pl don't make IIT out of reach for poor. I couldn't hv studied at IIT if fee were this high Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) April 7, 2016 The hike in IIT fees is of 122 percent. The HRD Ministry has also decided to give a total fee waiver to the differently-abled, students from SC and ST communities and those belonging to families with annual income less than Rs 1 lakh, officials in the Ministry said. The HRD Ministry issued an order in this regard this evening, saying the implementation of the decision will happen after ratification by the IIT Council. Congress party in Maharashtra launched an attack on Amitabh Bachchan demanding his removal as the ambassador of the 'Save Tiger project,' and from the advisory panel on the development of the Bandra Kurla Complex till his name is cleared in the Panama Papers scandal. The 11.5 million confidential documents that provided information on offshore companies listed by corporate services provider Mossack Fonseca were leaked as Panama Papers and Bachchan's name figured in the leaks for allegedly having links with offshore entities. He later denied knowing any of the companies and claimed that his name has been misused. Targeting the actor, Leader of Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said while raising the issue in Lower House, said, "Till Bachchan gets a clean chit in the Panama Papers case, he should be removed as tiger brand ambassador as well as from advisory panel on the development of part of the Bandra Kurla Complex as International Finance and Services Centre." Amitabh Bachchan has changed his political affiliations many times. According The Open magazine, after his friendship with the Gandhi family soured, he was seen in the company of Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh. It got Jaya Bachchan a Rajya Sabha seat, said the report. As Bachchan's friendship blossomed with Narendra Modi, Amar Singh quickly faded away, added the report. This is, however, not the first time Bachchan has been targeted by the Congress. The Gandhis and Bachchans were friends for a long time. According to Outlook, before getting married to Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia stayed with the Bachchans for seven weeks till the wedding. In fact, it was upon Rajiv Gandhi's insistence that Amitabh Bachchan contested the election from Allahabad on Congress ticket and even won the seat, as per India Today. Cracks in their friendship began to appear when Bachchan quit politics over Bofors. Things only went downhill after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. As per Outlook, the Bachchan's were disappointed in the fact that the Gandhi family did not extend any help when Amitabh Bachchan ran into financial trouble. The final nail on the coffin was when the Bachchans became friends with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh. The report added that Jaya Bachchan's outburst that the Gandhis have betrayed them was believed to be prompted by Amar Singh. The Bachchans were served income tax notices in 2006. Amitabh Bachchan came under attack again when he became Gujarat's brand ambassador. The DNA reported that the Congress accused him of endorsing Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister's role in the Gujarat 2002 riots. The Gandhi-Bachchan relationship dynamics has enough plot twists to make a good Bollywood flick. Last week, the Union ministry of Human Resources Development (HRD) stated that it was drafting an amendment to the Right to Education (RTE) Act, which will also provide that a student must get two chances if his performance is poor in any examination before detaining him. Such a move would finally put an end to the disastrous policy of automatic promotions mooted by the existing Act. It may be recalled that the RTE Act has been steered by the former education minister Kapil Sibal. The Act required all students to be compulsorily and automatically promoted till Standard 7; thus, the only stage when they could be detained would be at Standard 9 examinations. The automatic promotions policy was reprehensible on account of several factors. Need for a filter It is imperative to have in place a system that weeds out students who do not study well. Typically, not more than five percent of a total population of students would fall into this category. But when five percent of students get weeded out at each higher class level, almost 30 percent of a student population gets filtered out by the time students reach Standard 9. To have an examination only at Standard 9 level would require a school to detain almost 30 percent of the students in that class. That is a step that principals of most schools are unwilling to take. The number is too large. The resultant outcry would be too great. And the political pressure on school managements to condone the results of some student or the other would be almost unbearable. Consequently, many school managements had already announced almost five years ago that they would not detain any students in Standard 9. That would put the onus of filtering out the weak students at the SSC/CBSE/ISCE board examinations. Here too, no board was willing to detain over 40 percent of the students. Thus it would promote students who should not have been promoted at all. That in turn increases the pressure on colleges to admit students, who should not have been admitted to colleges in the first place. It leads to greater politicization of colleges on the one hand. On the other, such students vitiate the classroom atmosphere for other serious students, preventing them to learning. The Sibal doctrine talked about the right of a child to learn; it ignored the right of other children who might want to learn, but could be prevented from learning because of a few bad elements in the class. It forgot that a boisterous class is capable of frightening away some of the best teachers as well. Without a filter in place, the entire edifice of education can crash. When grace becomes a disgrace Ask any teacher who has been an examiner at board or University examinations. You will learn that even after the examiner has corrected the papers, all answer sheets are sent to a local moderator, who then decides to apply the right grace marks to ensure that not too many students fail in the region. The revised mark-sheet is then sent to the district moderator, who then applies the right multiplier to ensure that the passing percentage in his territory is acceptable. The same process is followed at the board level, where the marks are moderated once again. The entire process ensures that many students, some with as little as 15% marks, can get upped to score the minimum required 35 percent in a subject. The filters that were in existence even before the Sibal proposals were weak enough. The automatic promotions stipulation made the situation even worse. Empower teachers The absence of class tests, and Sibals recommendation that unwilling students should be persuaded to learn, may be a good concept under ideal conditions. But talk to the teachers. Most school teachers in good schools ended up begging students to complete their project assignments so that the teachers could then fill up the required forms and inform the education inspector that the students had met the qualifying norms. The RTE in its present forms puts the onus on the teacher to put in the additional hours that might be required to ensure that all students qualify. Since no detention is allowed, the teacher must either fudge records and say that an inept student is qualified for promotion, or must put in additional hours, or plead with the students. The situation had become unbearable. Funds for special schools True, every child is a special case. He or she must be nurtured and taken care of. That is why, the government needs to spend more to identify the special needs of each child and place him or her in the right environment which will make the child blossom. But without the funds, or the systems which allow for such needs to be met, or such special skills to be honed, dont expect the existing system to take on this additional responsibility as well. Special needs require special processes and structures. The Sibal approach was to dump these special needs on the present structure. As a result, both the general lot of students as well as students with special needs suffered. It was destined for disaster. Better late than never This could be the first sensible educational policy that is being articulated by the present HRD ministry. In fact, this need was well articulated at a meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) in August last year. Most states had expressed the need to jettison the the system of continuous and automatic promotions. HRD minister Smriti Irani had then asked all the states to submit their views in writing. In their feedback, 13 states including Rajasthan, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Puducherry said they wanted the no-detention policy revoked. Some states, such as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana backed the existing practice of continuous promotions till Standard 8. The HRD ministrys decision takes into account that if schooling is bad, it will mean bad outputs, which become bad inputs for colleges. And no college can be expected to churn out excellent students if the input is bad, or if the wrong types of students are clubbed with the right types. If one has to improve Indias college education, it must start with schools. And if schools need to improve, the need for annual filtering of students needs to be restored urgently. New Delhi: CPI(M) on Friday demanded "blanket prohibition" on Indians acquiring shell companies, claiming the NDA Government will "only scratch surface" by its proposed action in Panama papers case and is "unwilling" to touch structure of tax havens and generation of black money. Former party general secretary Prakash Karat also demanded that the Centre confiscate illegal money and assets of those named in the Panama list, if it is "serious" about cracking down on black money, tax evasion and money laundering. Karat though claimed the BJP Government "will not dare" take such action as the whole system of international finance capital is "intertwined" with elaborate structure of tax havens and shell companies. To drive his point, he alleged it was the previous NDA Government which had "opened up Mauritius route" for financial investments from abroad "which has become a big source for money laundering and round tripping". "The action proposed to be taken on Panama Papers further confirms the Modi Government will only scratch the surface and is unwilling to touch the structure of tax havens, money laundering and the generation of black money," Karat said. He added, "If Modi government is serious about cracking down on black money, tax evasion and money laundering, then it should impose a blanket prohibition on Indians acquiring shell companies and operating secret accounts in tax havens. This is apart from confiscating illegal money and assets of those in the Panama list." Karat made the remarks in the editorial of forthcoming issue of party mouthpiece 'People's Democracy'. On Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's remarks that such exposures will help Government crackdown on illegally money kept abroad, Karat cast doubts saying the Modi dispensation's track record inspires "no confidence" in this regard. "Two years after the Modi Government's coming into office, very little has been accomplished so far to bring black money back into the country," Karat said. He observed the central government has "only taken a technical view" of those who have kept money illegally in secret accounts and operated shell companies. The earlier exposures, Karat added, have only led to "some tax notices" to those who have not declared their money or assets abroad. "As for Jaitley's claim that multilateral treaties will help India track down those who indulge in such illegal activity, Jaitley is only indulging in wishful thinking," he claimed. Karat also sought to counter Jaitley and RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on their reported stand that many of these acquisitions and accounts abroad may be legitimate, saying the same is "evading the real issue". "Why does the government have to legitimise shell company acquisitions and maintenance of secret accounts in tax havens?" he questioned. Karat stated the government had earlier "failed" to get information from Mossack Fonseca on queries about certain accounts and b0usiness dealings. He said it also did not even take the step of blacklisting Panama as an "uncooperative tax territory", a step taken by French Government. In the wake of media reports, the Union Government had on last Monday declared that action will be taken against "unlawful" accounts held abroad by Indians. The Government also constituted a multi-agency group to continuously monitor information following the expose, which named 500 people including film actors and industrialists who have allegedly stashed money abroad. The group comprising officials from CBDT, RBI and FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit) was set up on the advice of Modi, Jaitley had said. Dehradun: Non-BJP governments are under threat everywhere and what has happened in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh will have a bearing on other states too as it is a part of BJP's "design" to build a 'Congress-free India', deposed Chief Minister Harish Rawat said on Friday. He appealed to all secular and democratic forces to put up a united fight against the Centre's "autocratic" approach and "BJP's machinations to build a Congress-free India". Rawat's Congress government was dismissed and President's Rule was imposed last month, with the Centre contending that there was "breakdown in Constitutional machinery" in the state. "Non-BJP governments everywhere are under threat. Successive dismissal of governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand is an indication. Several chief ministers have expressed similar apprehensions," he said. "It reflects a pattern which poses a threat to other states too," Rawat told a press conference which was also attended by his former ministerial colleagues Indira Hridayesh, Mantri Prasad Naithani and MLAs Sharbat Karim Ansari, Rajkumar and Haridas. He said the major question thrown up by the turn of political events in Uttarakhand from 18 to 27 March when President's Rule was imposed in the state is whether or not democratic, secular and development oriented governments can survive in the country. Thanking Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and leaders of CPI and Samajwadi Party for standing by him, he said it was time all non-BJP parties came to together to protest this high-handedness on part of the centre. For a state starved of investment, lacking in jobs for millions of youths, saddled with a massive populace who still live below the poverty line and with a human development index well below the national average and comparable to that of Cambodia, one would think that development would be a keyword as West Bengal goes into the 2016 Assembly elections. But no. Instead of talking about feeding the poor, improving their lifestyle, building roads, providing sanitation, healthcare, education and jobs, parties are busy threatening each other and promising "revenge of blood" and leaders are coming out with innovative ways of shaming and getting back at their rivals post 19 May when the results are due to be announced. And sadly, even the Chief Minister is busy issuing threats and counter-threats in the election season. Immediately after the Election Commission announced the dates for six-phase polls in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, who has not made a secret of her displeasure about EC stretching the polls over one and a half months, told a TV channel in an interview that the "central forces will be around only for three days but after that, it is only her and her administration," prompting a memorandum to the EC from Left Front who accused the Trinamool Congress chief of issuing a veiled threat. "The Chief Minister issued a veiled threat that the central forces will remain in Bengal until the elections are there, but after that what? This clearly means it is a threat," the Left leaders told EC, according to a report in NDTV Bengal has a bitter history of electoral violence. It is all the more reason why leaders in responsible positions should exercise caution during their public rallies. Instead of setting the tone for a poll discourse around development, the Chief Minister spiced up the contest with another threat, this time a more blatant one during a public meeting on 31 March in Bengal's Bankura district. "Nine TMC workers have been killed in the state since elections were declared. Election will be over after a month. We will remain here after that. We will not spare any of them (Opposition parties). We had shown enough manners after we won the last Assembly elections. Not anymore," she said in the rally. Fresh from taking a hit in Narada sting videos showing ruling party leaders accepting bribes, the Chief Minister responded in her own style. "The CPM leaders have built property worth thousands of crores and now they are calling the TMC thieves, a party which is comparatively younger. Once we are back (in power), we will ask for the accounts of their properties and they will have to answer us," she said, speaking to The Indian Express Even as the TMC supremo was busy settling scores, her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, also a party MP, was working hard on issuing his own set of threats to the Left during another rally in Purulia. "After May 19 when the ballot boxes will be opened, the people of Bengal will witness a new Trinamool. We have been very courteous, we have given you many opportunities...but not anymore. In the days to come, inch by inch you will be given befitting reply... be prepared for that," said Abhishek, according to a report in Business Standard Issuing threats isn't new to Abhishek, who was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2014. During a meeting with party leaders and workers in June last year, Mamata Banerjee's nephew had warned the political rivals of gouging their eyes out if they have evil intentions. TMC MPs (have) showed we wont spare anyone who tries to exploit the people of West Bengal. Until Mamata Banerjee is here, if anyone looks at West Bengal with evil intentions...we can gouge out their eyes and throw them on the streets. If hands are raised against us, we can chop off the hands as well, Abhishek had said speaking to Hinudstan Times. However, it is not as if the Left Front have been busy soaking up the punches in this free-for-all election season. During a rally in Labhpur area of Bengal's Birbhum district last Thursday, CPIM leader and politburo member Mohammad Salim vowed to keep an account of every drop of blood shed by his party members. According to another report in Business Standard, Mohammad Salim said "After the elections, we will take account of all murderers and executioners," he said. "We will take account of every drop of blood of our men who have embraced martyrdom," TMC's Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal threatened to lodge a complaint with the EC over Salim's remarks in a rather ironic move because the Commission had recently issued a show cause notice to Mondal for violating the model code of conduct. Mondal, it appears, doesn't have much confidence in EC. Responding to Salim's comments about "taking an account of every drop of blood," the TMC leader has a rather simple solution. "Salim-da is suffering from heat-stroke in this very hot election season. Once we win on 19 May, we shall pour ghol(lassi) over his head. That should cool him off," Mondal told the media. Bengal, ever the 'progressive state' just lowered the bar of political discourse. With pre-poll surveys indicating a close fight between the two traditional rivals in the coming Assembly polls, political parties in Kerala are taking their campaign to the Middle East, where about 90 percent of the estimated 20 lakh Non-Resident Keralites (NRKs) live. Though only about 15,000 of these expatriates have registered their names in the voters list so far, most parties consider even this small number crucial since the gap between the votes polled by the winner and loser in an election is mostly very thin in the state. It was as low as 0.89 percent in the 2011 Assembly election in which 75.12 percent of the total 2.29 crore voters cast their votes. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) that came to power then with a wafer thin majority polled only 1.56 lakh votes more than the total votes secured by rival Left Democratic Front (LDF). Candidates in many constituencies had razor thin victories. A former minister scraped through by a margin of just 157 votes at Piravom in Ernakulam district. The margin of victory in three other constituencies was less than 500. It was between 500 and 1,000 votes in five constituencies and between 1,000 and 5,000 in 17 seats. Parties count not just the registered NRK voters, but also their family members who mostly go by the preference of their bread winners. They think they can get the votes of the dependents by winning over the expats. Therefore, they are focusing more on the expats than their dependents in the state. Even though many of the countries in the Middle East do no permit political activity, all major parties are active in most of the countries through their cultural wings. Some constituencies have even separate organisations in countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, which account for majority of overseas Keralites. These organisations run the poll campaign through group meetings and conventions as in the state. They also facilitate members to keep in contact with their dependents back home through text messages and telephones. They ensure that their members telephone the family members in the morning on the polling day and convey their choice. "Dependents of NRKs constitute a major chunk of the electorate in Kerala. Assuming that each NRK has at least two dependents back home, the number of votes the expats can influence comes to 40 lakh. This is a huge number that can definitely influence the poll outcome," says P C Vishnunath, Congress candidate at Chengannur in Alappuzha district. Vishnunath, who has run a personal campaign in Kuwait and Bahrain a month ago said the Overseas Indian Cultural Congress (OICC), the overseas wing of the party, has been running a systematic campaign abroad under the supervision of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC), targeting the dependents through their kin overseas. "We also have Chengannur association in many countries in the Gulf. I am keeping in constant touch with members of these organisations through social networking sites and mobile applications," Vishnuath told Firstpost. Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the second largest constituent of the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) led by the Congress, has also launched an aggressive campaign in the Middle East through the Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMC), the overseas wing of the party. Apart from canvassing votes of the family members of their members in the Gulf, KMCC is also trying to take registered voters to the state for the voting. They had operated chartered flights in the last Assembly and Lok Sabha elections for the purpose. Party candidate, P K Basheer, who returned from a week-long campaign in Saudi Arabia, said they were expecting more NRKs to come to the state for voting this time. Many of them will be coming in advance and join the campaign, he said adding that the NRKs were highly enthusiastic about the election. "Those who are unable to come for the voting are keeping in touch with their family members and friends and urging them to vote for the UDF. They are impressed by the developmental activities and various measures undertaken by the UDF government for the welfare of the expats," said Basheer, who is contesting the election from Ernad constituency in Malappuram district. His colleague Abdurahman Randathani, who returned from a week-long campaign in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), said that NRKs from his constituency had already started booking their tickets to come for the voting. "We are helping them to do group booking so that they can get discounted fares. My attempt is to bring all the registered voters to my constituency on the polling day," says Randathani, who is contesting the election from Tanur in Malappuram district. The Left parties, which do not have any umbrella organisation in the Middle East as the Congress and IUML have, are focusing more on online campaign. They rely more on online chat options and messaging apps for connecting with the overseas Keralites. WhatsApp, Skype and Beyluxe Messenger are popular chat options that candidates use to seek votes from outside voters. Senior leaders are also using the new media to connect with the overseas Keralites. Communist Party of India (Marxist) politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan, who is tipped to be the chief minister in the event of LDF coming to power, is live on the LDF Facebook page, interacting with people mostly living outside the state. The overseas Keralites are active in the new media. They have their own dreams and visions about the state. These use the social media to air their views. We are trying to reach out to them and understand their vision and dreams through online forums," the senior CPM leader said. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which has launched an aggressive campaign to end their electoral drought in Kerala, is focusing on expats through Sangh Parivar outfits active in the Middle East in different names. Party president Kummanam Rajashekharan, who toured the Middle East once, will be going again to coordinate the campaign, a party spokesman said. The parties eye not only the expat votes but also their financial support to keep the campaign machinery running. Most parties have turned to the NRKs for funds after liquor barons stopped funding the parties following the closure of liquor bars under the phased prohibition policy of the UDF government. Even though the recession caused by the sharp fall in the price of crude oil has hit businesses in the Gulf, the fund-starved parties are relying on the NRKs as the scope for raising funds from within the industrially-backward state is very limited. Most parties have launched fund raising drives in the Gulf along with the campaign. NRK activists believe that expats from Kerala can impact the poll outcome in a big way even though their plea for online voting facility is yet to become a reality. Sharjah-based Pravasi Bandhu Welfare Trust chairman K V Shamsudheen said that the NRKs and their dependents is now the single largest vote bank in Kerala. He said that it is a solid vote bank as the expats hold huge sway over the votes of their families. This is more so among the Muslims who constitute a major chunk of the expat population. He says the current estimates about the votes of NRKs and their family members may not be correct as they are based on random studies. The actual number of Keralites abroad is roughly 30 lakh. This takes the number of dependents to 60 lakhs. If those who have returned from abroad over the years and their family members is also added to this, it will touch about one crore. This is a huge vote bank that no party can ignore, says Shamsudheen. "If the NRKs judiciously use their votes they will be able to decide who should rule Kerala. Unfortunately, the NRKs are blindly following the parties and gifting their votes without even ensuring that their interests are protected," he said. He said that more than 95 percent of the Keralites working in the Gulf countries were from the lower income groups and they will have nothing to fall back on when they return to their home state today or tomorrow. Shamsudheen, who has been spearheading a campaign for cultivating saving habits among the expats, said that the political parties had not done anything for the NRKs even though their remittances account for about 35 percent of the state's GDP. "If the political parties create at least a conducive atmosphere to make productive use of the remittances, which crossed Rs 1 lakh crore last year, it will secure the future of a large number of the NRKs, who are now frittering their hard-earned money on building posh bungalows and luxuries." Shamsudheen hopes that NRKs may take the initiative to set a different development agenda for Kerala once they get the facility to vote from overseas locations. He hopes this will come in place before the next election as the Election Commission is waiting for an amendment in the People's Representaion Act to introduce proxy voting or e-postal ballots. New Delhi: Congress on Friday accused the Modi government of "messing up" while dealing with Pakistan on the Pathankot attack probe and playing into its hands on the issue even as BJP countered the charge, saying India's stand on all bilateral issues and talks is clear and has been appreciated. Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, "I think the government has messed it up completely. There cannot be a bigger mess-up. Pakistanis are to blame...there is no doubt, but the Indian government, unfortunately, is playing into their hands." Pakistan will continue to be a "rogue state and I don't think we can expect anything better from it", he said. Singhvi said India "legitimised" Pakistan by inviting its team to Pathankot as such an invitation had never been given in the last 70 years. "Having legitimised them, we got a slap on our face by them going back, debunking us, decrying us, criticising us. We have equated terror perpetrators with victims. "It is adding insult to injury...They and not us are the ones who suspended the peace process after doing nothing about Pathankot," he said. Countering the charges, BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli said, "After the Pathankot terror attack, it was the Pakistan Prime Minister who said action is being taken and it is in that context that the JIT came here and now Indian team is supposed to go there on a reciprocal basis." He said that "now it is upto Pakistan to show how serious it is about its commitment and combating terrorism" and added the world is concerned over what is happening with regard to terrorism and in Pakistan. "India's position has been acknowledged, recognised and even appreciated. The Pakistan Prime Minister has made a commitment. "So if Pakistan reneges despite itself facing terrorist attacks, then it will show that in Pakistan the old policy of 'good terrorist' and 'bad terrorist' continues and everyone is taking note of it," Kohli said. He said the Indian government's policy is very clear and the three principles under Prime Minister Modi are all talks should be bilateral, everything should be resolved peacefully, and terror and talks would not go together. The BJP leader said a lot has changed on the border. "When there is bombardment or mortar attacks, the army does not need to take permission and it responds," he said. "So India is in a more secure position," he said, adding, "It has extended the hand of friendship and the Pakistan Prime Minister has responded to an extent in various bilateral talks and otherwise." Kohli said, "Now if it translates into action, then this relationship can be built. Otherwise, it has been a thorny relationship and we have to acknowledge this. While India will proceed on its path, it is upto Pakistan how it wants to see its ties with India." British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged in a TV interview on Thursday that he once had a stake in his late father's offshore trust, which was revealed in the "Panama Papers" leak from a law firm. Cameron told ITV News that he had owned shares in the Panamanian trust, Blairmore, but had sold them in 2010, before becoming prime minister. "We owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000", he told the television channel. "I paid income tax on the dividends. There was a profit on it but it was less than the capital gains tax allowance so I didn't pay capital gains tax," Cameron said. Cameron was expected to publish his tax returns as soon as possible, Sky News said in a tweet. Cameron's late father, Ian, was among tens of thousands of people named in leaked documents from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca which showed how the world's rich and powerful stash their wealth.. The firm specializes in establishing offshore companies, which could be used to avoid taxes, but there are several legitimate reasons for individuals and corporations to set them up. In a statement on Tuesday, a spokesman for Cameron said that the prime minister, his wife and their children did not benefit from any offshore funds at present. On Wednesday, a spokesman for Cameron said: "There are no offshore funds or trusts which the prime minister, Mrs Cameron or their children will benefit from in future." (Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru and James William in London; Editing by Grant McCool) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. BEIJING Companies from China's violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang signed deals worth about $2 billion with Pakistan this week during a visit to Pakistan by Xinjiang's top official, who sought to cement ties with an important security partner. Pakistan last year agreed energy and infrastructure projects worth $46 billion with China to set up a so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in a boost to Pakistan's crumbling infrastructure and energy sector. In return, China will get a free trade zone in Pakistan's Gwadar port and access to the Arabian Sea. New Pakistani roads will open up routes for Chinese goods into Europe and the Middle East from landlocked Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan. During a four-day visit to Pakistan, Xinjiang's Communist Party chief Zhang Chunxian met Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, visited Islamabad, Karachi and Gwadar, the official Xinjiang Daily said on Friday. "China and Pakistan have a deep friendship, are good neighbours, friends, brothers and partners," the newspaper cited Zhang as saying. "On this trip, I have deeply felt this friendship and the atmosphere surrounding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor." The $2 billion in agreements covered infrastructure, solar power and logistics, among other projects, signed by companies from Xinjiang with their Pakistan counterparts, the newspaper said, without giving details. China and Pakistan call each other "all-weather friends" and their ties have been underpinned by long-standing wariness of their common neighbour, India, and a desire to hedge against U.S. influence in the region. But China has also long urged Pakistan to weed out what it says are militants from Xinjiang, who are holed up in lawless ethnic Pashtun lands on the Pakistan-Afghan border, home to a mix of groups, including the Taliban and al Qaeda. While meeting Sharif, the two countries agreed to continue working together to fight terrorism, strengthen border controls, maintain regional peace and stability and ensure the economic corridor projects are protected, the newspaper said. Zhang also met Pakistan's military on the trip, it added, without elaborating. Hundreds of people have been killed in unrest in Xinjiang in the last few years. Exiles and rights groups say Chinese controls on the religion and culture of the Muslim Uighur people who call Xinjiang home is largely behind the violence, rather than any well-organised militant groups. China denies any rights abuses in Xinjiang and says its people are free to practice Islam. Zhang visited a mosque in Islamabad, where he "got a deep understanding of Pakistan's religious affairs management", the Xinjiang Daily added. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Paris: French lawmakers on Wednesday approved a bill against prostitution and sex trafficking that bans buying sex, not selling it. Customers will face fines and be made to attend awareness classes on the harms of the sex trade. The legislation, which passed 64-12 in the parliament's lower house, the National Assembly, makes French law one of the toughest against sex buyers in Europe. Prostitution in itself is legal in France though brothels, pimping and the sale of sex by minors are illegal. The new measure does away with a 2003 law that banned passive soliciting by sex workers on the street and thus put the legal onus on prostitutes. This new bill focuses the punishment on the client, introducing a 1,500-euro ($1,700) fine that would rise to 3,750 euros for a sex buyer's second offense. The convicted client will be obliged to attend classes highlighting the dangers associated with prostitution. The measure will also make it easier for foreign prostitutes many currently illegally in France to acquire a temporary residence permit if they enter a process to get out of the prostitution business. Supporters of the bill argue that it will help fight trafficking networks. "The most important aspect of this law is to accompany prostitutes, give them identity papers because we know that 85 percent of prostitutes here are victims of trafficking," Maud Olivier, a lawmaker with the governing Socialists and a sponsor of the legislation, told The Associated Press. Olivier said that many of the sex workers who arrive in France have their passports confiscated by pimps. "We will provide them with documents on the condition they commit to leave prostitution behind," she added. But opponents fear that cracking down will push prostitutes to hide, leaving them even more at the mercy of pimps and violent clients. France's parliament started debating the bill in 2013, but the final vote was delayed due to sharp divisions between the lower parliamentary chamber and the Senate. Written by a group of lawmakers from both right and left and backed by the Socialist government, the legislation has been inspired by Sweden, which passed a similar measure in 1999. Norway and Iceland also followed the Swedish model. Other countries such as Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, where brothels are legal, are interested in the French experience. Seoul: North Korea on Friday launched the latest in a series of vicious personal attacks on South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, describing her as a "matchless evil woman" intent on war. The verbal assault from the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) followed Park's participation last week in a nuclear security summit hosted by US President Barack Obama in Washington that condemned Pyongyang's continued nuclear weapons push. A CPRK spokesman said Park's behaviour and comments at the summit resembled "the epileptic fit of a despicable confrontational maniac." Military tensions on the divided Korean peninsula have been rising since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, and a long-range rocket launch a month later that was seen as a disguised ballistic missile test. The North's state media had carried a number of similar verbal attacks on Park, employing coarse and often highly sexist language in condemning her uncompromising stance towards Pyongyang and the South's alliance with the United States. Friday's statement, published by the official KCNA news agency, said Park's insistence on the North abandoning its nuclear weapons programme proved she was "the worst blockhead, ignorant of how the world goes around." "The matchless evil woman pushed North-South relations to a total stalemate and increased the danger of a war," it said, criticising her "dirty existence" and "rabid dog" behaviour. The statement came a few days after an official North Korean website released a new propaganda video portraying a multiple rocket attack on the presidential Blue House in Seoul. "She cannot find shelter, even in the US," the CPRK spokesman warned. The Korean-language version of the same statement used even stronger language, calling Park "Obama's prostitute" who sold Korea's national interests to foreign forces. The South Korean government responded angrily to the abusive tone. "The government strongly warns North Korea against slandering our leader with unspeakable vulgar language... and issuing physical threats," said Park Soo-Jin, deputy spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry in Seoul. President Park has taken a hardline with Pyongyang since the January nuclear test, leading calls for tough international sanctions and vowing a strong military response to any direct provocations from the North. Beijing: Long before the Panama Papers leaks put law firm Mossack Fonseca on front pages around the world, the company was already well known among a certain class of Chinese investor and to the government. The tight-lipped firm says it has cooperated with authorities in Beijing and state-backed banks to help Chinese companies take their business international, according to information gleaned from transcripts of speeches by the company's representatives and archived versions of its Chinese website. On several occasions, it has recommended Chinese companies cloak themselves in offshore disguises to avoid foreign restrictions on and opposition to acquisitions. Since setting up its mainland China operation in 2000, Mossack Fonseca has had at least 11 offices in the country. It currently has eight, including one in Hong Kong. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which coordinated the Panama Papers reports, said that in 2015 Mossack Fonseca collected fees for more than 16,300 offshore companies incorporated in offices in China and Hong Kong, accounting for 29 percent of its "active companies worldwide". According to ICIJ, the semi-autonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong housed the greatest number of intermediaries, banks and law firms that set up offshore corporations on behalf of clients. The group said the data includes the names of relatives of at least eight current or former members of China's Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, the country's most powerful body. Despite that, until the leaks began last weekend, Mossack Fonseca appears to have been largely unknown among international corporate lawyers in China. The number of offices the company had was "staggering", China-based attorney Edward Lehman told AFP, adding that in almost 29 years of doing business in the country, he had "never used them once, never been solicited by them once". But Mossack Fonseca was known in Beijing. It has arranged investment conferences with the commerce ministry and its official think tank, the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC), past versions of its website show. As recently as 2014, Chinese government agencies invited Mossack Fonseca representatives to address companies on how offshoring could be used by Chinese firms as part of the country's strategy for domestic enterprises to seek markets and acquisitions abroad. "We are actively assisting Chinese private and state-owned firms' march into the international market," the company said. Convoluted structures When it first entered the mainland, Mossack Fonseca offered free consulting services to law and accounting firms, government offices and others to educate them about the benefits of offshoring, Zhang Xiaodong told the China Economic Weekly in 2007. Zhang was described as a partner in the company's Asia office by the magazine, which is owned by the People's Daily group, whose flagship is the official newspaper of the Communist Party. He suggested that offshoring could be used by Chinese companies to evade restrictions imposed by foreign authorities on investment from the country. Zhang cited Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC's takeover bid for US energy firm UNOCAL, which was withdrawn in the face of opposition from a US committee tasked with investigating proposed investments for national security implications. "These types of risks can actually all be avoided through the use of offshore companies," he said. "It's very hard for the other party to determine whether the investors only came from China or the investments only represent Chinese interests." In other talks, company representatives discussed using offshoring to disguise Chinese investment in Africa and Europe. Without naming names, it said it had helped a client hide its acquisition of a European firm through a corporate structure that included an offshore company, a foundation, a company in Luxembourg, and another company in the target nation. Mossack Fonseca also said it had close ties with at least two prominent state-backed banks: Chinese Merchants Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. "For many years, our firm has maintained a good relationship with these two," the company said in a November 2008 letter posted on its website, adding that it had helped the banks conduct annual reviews of accounts held by their offshore clients. Between January 2007 and September 2009, on at least five occasions, the company's representatives trained bank staff on offshoring or appeared at conferences sponsored by the banks on international trade and investment, the newsletters said. British Virgin Islands Offshore companies are not illegal in themselves and can be used for many legitimate purposes, and Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing. ICIJ said most of Mossack Fonseca's offshore companies were set up in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a Caribbean jurisdiction renowned for the purpose. Chinese foreign investment flows to BVI have multiplied since Mossack Fonseca opened on the mainland, going from $1.88 billion in 2007 the earliest figure available from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to $4.57 billion in 2014, the most recent. At least some of that money is likely to have been moved out of China by corrupt officials, who have sent more than $120 billion overseas, according to a 2011 report by the People's Bank of China. Mossack Fonseca is not the only purveyor of offshore companies to Chinese clients, with other major players including OIL, Sovereign Trust and OCRA. But unlike those better-known firms, its dealings remain hazy. "This is not a law firm I've ever seen associated with real deals," said Paul Gillis, an expert on Chinese accounting practices at Peking University. That may have been the point. For Chinese clients, he said, the purposes of the offshore companies was probably "to get money out of China, and not in a form where it can be traced back to them". Washington: From Russia to China, and Britain to Iceland, the revelations of the "Panama Papers" have tarnished officials and the wealthy over the implication that they hide riches offshore. But one group is not there: prominent Americans. US tycoons and politicians are notably absent in the leaked files of the Panama law offices of Mossack Fonseca, which created thousands of shell companies worldwide to hide the identities of their ultimate owners, some of whom may have been evading taxes. There is Hollywood mogul David Geffen, the Asylum Records and Dreamworks SKG co-founder. But there's no Americans comparable to Iceland's prime minister, or henchmen of the Russian premier all in the Panama records at least in what has been disclosed so far. "There are a lot of Americans, but they are more like private citizens," said Marina Walker Guevara, deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists which coordinated the investigation and release of the Panama Papers. However, that hardly means Americans have fully embraced financial transparency, she told AFP. "It doesn't show that the US is outside of the offshore system; the US is actually a big player." Other options One possible reason for their small presence in the Panama documents is that US citizens hoping to hide funds and activities offshore were not drawn to Spanish-speaking Panama as a haven, when there are options like the British Virgin islands and the Cayman Islands. "Americans have so many tax havens to choose from," said Nicholas Shaxson, author of "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World," a 2011 book on secretive centers for hiding money. Indeed, Americans do not have to go abroad to hide funds and activities behind anonymous corporations: they can create them at home. States like Delaware and Wyoming allow the creation of such companies, for just a few hundred dollars, that conceal their ultimate financial beneficiary. And while US banks are normally required to "know their customers," they can bypass that rule and open accounts for shell companies, ensuring total discretion for someone who wants to move money around quietly. The US Treasury is moving to stop the practice, which can be used by arms and drug traffickers to launder funds and ranks the United States third in the Tax Justice Network's ranking of the world's least transparent countries, well above Panama. The Treasury is moving to plug that loophole, however. "We're in the last stages of drafting the final rule," a Treasury official said. 'Very frightened' But there is another possible reason that Americans are not so visible in the Panama Papers. Spurred by the need to halt huge, blatant tax evasion by Americans using foreign banks, Washington in recent years has cracked down with lawsuits, arrests and tighter laws that have targeted both the banks offering safe haven and those hiding money in them. Swiss banks were hit in particular. UBS and Credit Suisse, respectively, had to pay fines of $780 million and $2.6 billion for having helped US citizens hide money. The result, Shaxson said, is that now "there are a few tax havens around the world that are very frightened of American clients, because they know that the US can hit them." Nevertheless, the seeming absence of Americans from the Panama Papers has fed conspiracy theories, such as claims the leak of the files was orchestrated by the CIA to destabilize Russia and other countries. But Walker Guevara said there is still a lot to be examined in the trove of 11.5 million documents that make up the Panama Papers, and there could be more about Americans in there. "It's a huge trove of documents and maybe there's something hiding there that we haven't found yet. It's a work in progress." Brussels: Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini was arrested Friday, a police source said as Belgian authorities announced they had detained several people in connection with the deadly Brussels airport and metro bombings. The police source gave no details of the location or circumstances of Abrini's arrest but VRT television said it took place in the Anderlecht district of the Belgian capital which was home to several other suspects now linked to both the Paris and Brussels attacks. Abrini, 31, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, was caught on film at a motorway service station en route to Paris shortly before the 13 November killings with another suspect, the now detained Salah Abdeslam. Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim blew himself up in Paris, was arrested 18 March in Brussels, not far from his family's home in the Molenbeek district of the capital. Abdeslam who his lawyer said also intended to blow himself up but backed out at the last minute fled back to Brussels after the Paris attacks, which left 130 dead, finding refuge in the city despite a massive manhunt. He is now awaiting extradition to France. The 'man in the hat' The developments came just one day afer Belgian prosecutors launched a fresh appeal for help in finding the suspected surviving attacker in last month's Brussels airport bombings, releasing a video of the escape route taken by the so-called "man in the hat". Police have been searching for this third suspect ever since he was seen on CCTV next to the two suicide bombers at the airport. An accomplice struck a Brussels metro station shortly afterwards, leaving a total of 32 people dead. There was some initial media speculation that the third man was Abrini and police sources told AFP at the time that it was one possibility investigators were considering but nothing appeared to come of it. Separately, the Belgian federal prosecutor's office said several arrests were made Friday in connection with the Brussels airport and metro attacks. "The federal prosecutor confirms that there have been several arrests in the course of the day in connection with the attacks on the airport and metro," a statement said. "For the moment, it is impossible to say more. Later, we will give more information in a statement or at a press conference," it added. The police video released Thursday shows the third man, wearing a dark hat and a light-coloured jacket, fleeing the airport's departure hall after the bombs went off at 7:58 am on 22 March. He then continued on foot towards central Brussels where surveillance cameras lose track of him at 9:50 am, having discarded his jacket on the way. The man appeared calm and at several points appeared to be on the phone. The federal prosecutor appealed for anyone who might have seen the man to come forward and stressed that investigators were urgently looking for the jacket which might "give invaluable information to the investigators." Last week, police asked all residents and business owners in the Brussels region who have external surveillance cameras not to delete any footage from 15 March onwards. Belgium criticised Critics say Belgium has not done enough to tackle Islamic radicalisation as close links have emerged between the Brussels and Paris killings which were claimed by the Islamic State group. They say Abdeslam must have had some help to have been able to elude the police for four months and then was only finally tracked down in his home base in Molenbeek. Abdeslam says he had no knowledge of the Brussels attacks, according to his lawyer, despite having links to Khalid El Bakraoui, who blew himself up at Maalbeek metro station. He also knew one of the airport bombers, Najim Laachraoui, who drove to Hungary with Abdeslam in September. More links between the suspects have come to light following the arrest near Paris last month of Reda Kriket, who police said was planning an attack of "extreme violence" based on the arms and explosives found in a flat he used. Two suspects in that case, identified as Abderrahmane A. and Rabah M, were remanded in custody in Belgium on Thursday, prosecutors said. Three other suspects held in connection with the Paris attacks, as well as Abdeslam himself, also had their detentions extended. Brussels: Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini was arrested Friday, a police source told AFP after a Belgian television station said he was detained in a Brussels district. At the same time prosecutors said police made several arrests in connection with the deadly Islamic State attacks on Brussels airport and metro last month. The police source gave no details about the location or circumstances of Abrini's arrest but VRT television said it took place in the Anderlecht district of Brussels, home to several other suspects linked to the Paris attacks. Abrini, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, was seen at a petrol station north of Paris two days before the attacks with key suspect Salah Abdeslam, who drove one of the vehicles used in the November 13 assaults across Paris that killed 130 people. Abdeslam was supposed to have blown himself but did not do so, fleeing instead back to Brussels. He was arrested in Brussels on March 18 following a four-month manhunt and is being held in a high-security prison in the northern Belgian city of Bruges while awaiting his extradition to France. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office said they would provide more details later about the arrests in connection with the Brussels attacks. "The federal prosecutor confirms that there have been several arrests in the course of the day in connection with the attacks on the airport and metro," a statement said. The attacks killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more. Amman: Syrian rebel forces on Thursday took over a town near the Turkish border that had been the main stronghold of Islamic State in the northern Aleppo countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and rebel sources said. The monitor said factions fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), some supplied with arms by Turkey and other foreign backers, captured the town of al-Rai after fierce battles with the militants. "This is the beginning of the end of Daesh (Islamic State), those who have bet the FSA have been decimated are now proven wrong. It's a victory for the Free Syrian Army," said Abu Abdullah from the Nour al Din al Zinki brigade that participated in the assault on the heavily defended border town. "We will continue our path to al Raqqa and all the towns occupied by Daesh," he said referring to Islamic State's acronym in Arabic and its defacto capital. The rebels said their next step was advancing towards the Islamic State-held city of al Bab, south of al Rai and northeast of Aleppo. The recent gains by the mainly non-jihadist rebels is a boost to Turkey, which has sought to prevent Syrian Kurdish-led forces from expanding their stretch of territory along the border. It was the first retreat by the Islamic State militants since they made major advances in that area last May against rival insurgents and captured areas close to the Azaz border crossing with Turkey. Amaq news agency, which is linked to the militants, conceded that forces it described as "U.S.- and Turkish-backed opposition brigades" had taken the town after days of intense "U.S. bombing and Turkish artillery" fire. The news agency said al-Rai fell after heavy clashes and two suicide bombings that led to many casualties among Islamic State opponents. The Sunni militants have used suicide bombings to hold back offensives by the Syrian army and their allies by deploying small groups of fighters to disrupt supply lines. That is a change of tactics from ambushes and lightning attacks after the loss of significant territory, defence experts say. A sustained rebel advance by mainstream rebel groups near the Turkish border this week that allowed the moderate non-jihadist rebels to capture a string of villages eroded Islamic State's last foothold in an area identified by the United States as a priority in the fight against the group. Rebels who previously struggled to make gains against Islamic State in the area and had been fending off advances in recent weeks by Kurdish-led fighters mobilised several thousand fighters for the attack, rebel sources said. An alliance of FSA rebel groups formed for the offensive includes the Turkish-backed Sultan Murad and Failaq al Sham groups. Islamic State's foothold at the Turkish border was also significantly loosened last year by U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters of the YPG, which gained territory from the group farther east. Istanbul: A group of 45 Pakistani migrants arrived in the Turkish port of Dikili on Friday after being expelled from Greece under a controversial EU deal to halt mass migration to Europe, a local official said. "The migrants are busy getting off the boat for identity and health checks," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "The Greek side has informed us that there will be three more boats today." The migrants will be taken by bus to reception centres in Kirklareli on the Bulgarian border, from where they are expected to eventually be deported back to their home country. Late Thursday, Turkey's parliament approved a deal signed in 2010 allowing for the repatriation of Pakistani migrants, local media reported. The group is part of the second batch of migrants to be expelled under the deal, which launched on Monday with the deportation of 202 people to Turkey. After getting off the ground, the deal quickly ran into trouble as migrants on the Greek islands launched a flurry of requests for asylum which legally prevents them from being deported. This led to several days of delays between deportations. The Greek government said those expelled had not requested asylum. Turkey has promised to take back all irregular migrants landing on the Greek islands since March 20 a figure which currently stands at about 6,000 while Europe has agreed to resettle one Syrian refugee directly from camps in Turkey for each Syrian deported. In return, Turkey is set to receive benefits including visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe, promised by June at the latest. Turkey is also to receive six billion euros (USD 6.8 billion) in financial aid up to the end of 2018 for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. While questions remain over how successful the deportations will be in the long-term in discouraging migrants from making the treacherous journey to Europe, the numbers arriving in the EU have fallen drastically in recent weeks. This is largely due to an increased clampdown by Turkey on people smugglers and a greater effort in stopping migrants from crossing land and sea borders into Europe. State media reported this week that 400 smuggling suspects had been arrested so far in 2016, and more than 65,000 migrants intercepted at sea and on land. Beirut: A senior Egyptian al-Qaeda figure fighting in Syria was killed in a US drone strike this week, the latest to be killed in such attacks in Syria, a Syrian opposition monitoring group and relatives said on Friday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Rifai Ahmad Taha was killed in a strike Tuesday in the northwestern Idlib province. Before joining al-Qaida, Taha was a top figure in Egypt's notorious militant group Gamaa Islamiya, which massacred 58 foreign tourists in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor in 1997. He was also allied with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said several al-Qaeda members, including Taha, were killed in Tuesday's strike. He said one of the dead was identified as Abu Omar al-Masri - which is Arabic for Abu Omar the Egyptian - but that it was not clear if Taha was using that name. Taha was believed to be in his 60s. In Egypt, a relative said that Taha's wife and brother have received confirmation about his death. The relative spoke on condition of anonymity fearing reprisals. In Washington, Department of Defense spokesman Matthew Allen said the US struck a vehicle killing several al-Qaeda militants. He added that officials are still assessing the strike. "I can confirm that the US struck a vehicle killing several AQ militants," said Allen, using an acronym to refer to al-Qaida. "The results of this strike are still being assessed." On Wednesday, Syria's al-Qaida branch known as the Nusra Front confirmed the death of Abu Firas al-Souri, a senior figure in the group, in a US airstrike that also took place in Idlib province. Al-Souri was killed on Sunday, the group said. Taha's relative said dozens of members of Islamic groups were paying condolences today to the family at the home of his brother, Gharib, in the southern Egyptian village of Nagaa Dunqal. According to the relative, Taha had told his family he believes he is being followed and just three days before his death he called his brother from Syria to tell him that the Americans are monitoring his movements. Taha was jailed in 2001 in Egypt under the rule of then-President Hosni Mubarak after being detained in Syria and handed over to Cairo. He was released after the long-serving leader was removed from power in 2011. The hacking and shooting to death of a student activist in Bangladesh has renewed international concern that advocates of secularism and free speech are unsafe in the mostly Muslim nation. Amnesty International called the deadly attack Wednesday night on 28-year-old Nazimuddin Samad a "grave reminder that the authorities are failing to protect people exercising their right to freedom of expression." The U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner strongly condemned Samad's "barbaric murder" and told reporters the U.S. was considering granting refuge to a select number of secular bloggers who face imminent danger in the poor, South Asian nation. Here is a list of attacks on secular writers, publishers and members of Bangladesh's minority Shiite and Christian communities: 15 February, 2013: Assailants wielding machetes kill secular blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider after he posts comments online about religious fundamentalism. In December 2015, police arrest eight people they suspect of having links with the banned group Ansarullah Bangla Team 27 February, 2015: At least two assailants attack Bangladeshi-American blogger and writer Avijit Roy with meat cleavers, killing him and injuring his wife on a crowded street in Dhaka, the capital. A previously unknown group, Ansar Bangla 7, which intelligence officials believe is part of Ansarullah Bangla Team, claims responsibility. At least four suspects are arrested. 30 March, 2015: Three men use meat cleavers to hack 26-year-old blogger Washiqur Rahman Babu to death in Dhaka. Bystanders chase down two of the attackers, but a third escapes. The captured suspects say they are students at Islamic schools and were ordered to commit the crime. Police have been unable to determine who gave the order. 12 May, 2015: Four men with meat cleavers kill online atheist activist and science magazine editor Ananta Bijoy Das as he leaves his home in the northeastern city of Sylhet. Police arrest a newspaper photographer and two others. Al-Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, which is believed to be affiliated with Ansarullah Bangla Team, claims responsibility. 8 August, 2015: A fourth blogger, Niloy Chottopadhay, is killed by men who enter his Dhaka apartment, posing as potential tenants, and assault him with cleavers. Ansarullah Bangla Team claims responsibility in an email, though the authenticity of the message has not been confirmed. 28 September, 2015: Three assailants on a motorcycle gun down Italian citizen Cesare Tavella in Dhaka's diplomatic quarter. The Sunni extremist group Islamic State claims responsibility, according to the terror monitoring group SITE. Officials reject the claim and accuse local Islamist groups of attempting to destabilize the country. A month later, police arrest four suspects who say they were hired by "a big brother" to attack "a white man" to create chaos in the country, according to authorities. 4 October, 2015: Masked assailants on a motorcycle kill Japanese citizen Kunio Hoshi, who was working in agriculture in northern Bangladesh. The Islamic State group claims responsibility, but the government again dismisses the idea that the group has any presence in the country. 24 October, 2015: Attackers hurl homemade bombs into a crowd of thousands of Shiite Muslims as they gather for a pre-dawn religious procession in Dhaka. A teenage boy is killed and more than 100 other people are injured. Police arrest two suspects and recover two unexploded bombs. They dismiss an IS claim of responsibility and say the culprits were likely from the banned local group Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh. On Nov. 26, security forces arrest six suspects after a gunfight that killed the group's alleged military commander. 31 October, 2015: A group of men hack to death a publisher of secular books and wound three others in Dhaka. The publisher, Faisal Arefin Deepan, had close ties with killed blogger Roy. The banned group Ansar al-Islam claims responsibility. 26 November, 2015: Nov. 26, 2015: At least five gunmen open fire on Shiite Muslim devotees during evening prayers at a mosque in northern Bangladesh. An elderly mosque official who had been leading the prayers is killed and three others are wounded. A group describing itself as an IS affiliate in Bangladesh claims responsibility and vows more attacks. Police detain two suspects for questioning 21 February, 2016: Two men armed with guns and cleavers hack a Hindu priest and removing his head at a temple in northern Bangladesh, an attack later claimed by the Islamic State. The men escaped the crime scene on a single motorcycle, but within days police arrest three suspects. The government also dismisses the IS claim. 6 April, 2016: Student activist for secularism Nazimuddin Samad is hacked and shot to death as he was walking home with a friend after attending an evening law class at a Dhaka university. The three masked assailants escape on a motorcycle while shouting "Allahu Akbar," or "Allah is great." No one immediately claimed responsibility. Brasilia: Brazil's chief prosecutor dealt a fresh blow Thursday to President Dilma Rousseff and predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, saying his cabinet appointment was an attempt to avoid arrest and disrupt investigations. The latest twist in a roiling political saga comes as Rousseff faces impeachment proceedings in Congress over accusations of manipulating the government's books to mask budget shortfalls during her 2014 re-election campaign. Lula's controversial appointment, which has been temporarily blocked by a Supreme Court judge, would give the former president ministerial immunity from trial in criminal court on separate charges related to a massive corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras. But Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot, in a report filed with the court, recommended it annul the appointment. The full court must now rule whether Lula a left-wing icon and founder of the ruling Workers' Party can take up the job. "There is sufficient evidence to state that there was a deviation of purpose in the presidential decree" naming Lula as chief of staff, Janot said in the report, which will come as a blow to both Rousseff and ally Lula. Lula is accused of accepting a luxury condo and a country home as bribes from construction companies caught up in the multi-billion-dollar graft scandal that has upended Brazilian politics. Janot said Lula's nomination was aimed at "disrupting the progress of the criminal investigations in the Car Wash case," the name of the Petrobras probe. It came hours after Rousseff called for a "grand pact" to unify the country. "Brazil has already overcome difficult moments by making pacts," she said in the capital Brasilia, promising to back "absolutely necessary political reforms" provided she were allowed to stay in power. "That is the pact I'm looking for." Although the embattled president did not give any detail about what she was proposing, her comments appeared more conciliatory than in recent days, when she has repeatedly accused the opposition of mounting a coup attempt. But Everaldo Moraes, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia, said Rousseff was grasping at straws. "Rousseff feels her situation is worse every day. Impeachment is taking shape and it's natural that she tries to raise the tone, but I think the moment of pacts as a way to seek support has passed," he said. Scandals mounting up The rapporteur for a parliamentary commission on Wednesday found that Rousseff's impeachment case -- based on allegations that she illegally masked budgetary shortfalls in 2014 should go ahead. That initial finding will be followed by a vote in the full commission on Monday. A week later, on 18 April, the lower house of Congress will vote. A two-thirds majority there would send Rousseff to face an impeachment trial in the Senate, where another two-thirds vote would force her to step down. Rousseff, who says her accounting tricks were common practice in previous governments and not an impeachable offense, is battling to assemble a coalition able to defeat the impeachment vote. While the battle rages in Congress, another probe is under way at the country's electoral court into allegations that Rousseff's campaign was funded with money stolen in the Petrobras embezzlement scheme. If the court finds Rousseff guilty on this, then her 2014 reelection victory would be annulled, meaning both she and her vice president, Michel Temer, would have to step down, followed by new elections. Prosecutors say that for years under the Lula presidency a group of powerful companies and politicians conspired in a pay-to-play scheme where bribes were given to win inflated contracts. Bribes went to executives at Petrobras and other state companies, influential politicians and also allegedly to political campaigns, including those of Rousseff and her narrowly defeated rival in 2014 Aecio Neves. On Thursday, that scandal bubbled up again with the leaking of testimony from a former CEO who said his company had funneled bribe money into Rousseff's reelection coffers. SAN ANTONIO Two airmen were killed in a "a workplace violence incident" on Friday at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, military officials said, with media outlets reporting that an airman shot his commanding officer and then himself. Two weapons identified as Glocks were found at the scene, Brigadier General Robert LaBrutta, Commander, Joint Base San Antonio, told a news conference. LaBrutta said the two men were the only casualties and he declined to provide further details such as a possible motive. "This was a workplace violence incident and not the result of a terrorist attack," the U.S. Air Force Joint Base San Antonio said in a statement. The Air Force Times, citing internal Pentagon communications, reported the commanding officer of a training squadron at the base was shot by an airman who then apparently killed himself in a classroom building. A Pentagon official, speaking on condition on anonymity, told CNN that the airman shot his commander. Military officials would not confirm the reports. The Bexar County Sheriff's office described the deaths as a likely murder-suicide. LaBrutta said individuals are not allowed to carry weapons on base unless they are in security forces or the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations. "This morning we received one of those calls you never want to receive," LaBrutta told reporters. "Our hearts and prayers go out to the families that are going to be affected by this tragedy," he said. LaBrutta said that after an initial report of a shooter, security officers rushed to the scene within three minutes. Both men were found in an office. The shootings occurred at the Medina annex, where operations such as military dog training take place. (Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and Lisa Maria Garza in Dallas; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Grant McCool) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. SAN ANTONIO Two men were killed in an apparent murder-suicide at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, on Friday, military officials and police said, with media outlets reporting that an airman shot his commanding officer. Military officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the shooting was not an act of terrorism. Two weapons identified as Glocks were found at the scene, Brigadier General Robert LaBrutta, Commander, Joint Base San Antonio, told a news conference. LaBrutta said the two men were the only casualties and he declined to provide further details such as a possible motive. The Air Force Times, citing internal Pentagon communications, reported that the commanding officer of a training squadron at the base was shot by an airman. A Pentagon official, speaking on condition on anonymity, told CNN that the airman shot his commander. Pentagon officials would not confirm the reports. "This morning we received one of those calls you never want to receive," LaBrutta told reporters. "Our hearts and prayers go out to the families that are going to be affected by this tragedy," he said. LaBrutta said that after an initial report of a shooter, security officers rushed to the scene within three minutes. Both victims were found in an office in what officials said was an apparent murder-suicide. The shootings occurred at the Medina annex, where operations such as military dog training take place. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was called to assist and has taken the lead in the case, the Bexar County Sheriff's office said. (Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and reporting by Lisa Maria Garza in Dallas; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Grant McCool) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Washington: The US on Thursday asked both India and Pakistan to engage in "direct dialogue" aimed at reducing tensions, on a day when Islamabad announced suspension of the bilateral peace process with New Delhi. "Our longstanding position is that we believe India and Pakistan stand to benefit from the normalisation of relations and practical cooperation. We encourage India and Pakistan to engage in direct dialogue aimed at reducing tensions," a State Department spokesman said. The spokesman was responding to a question on the remarks of Pakistan's Ambassador to India Abdul Basit in New Delhi earlier today wherein he had said that the talks between the two countries stand "suspended". "The United States strongly supports all efforts between India and Pakistan that can contribute to a more stable, democratic, and prosperous region, but this is an issue that must be determined by the two sides," the spokesman said. WASHINGTON Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will travel to the Vatican next week, setting up a possible meeting with Pope Francis that could serve to broaden his appeal to Catholic voters ahead of crucial nominating contests in a series of Northeastern states. Like the pope, Sanders has made the economic inequality and the plight of the working class a central tenet of his message. His scheduled April 15 visit to Vatican City, where he will give an economic address at a conference, will come just days before Democrats in New York vote in their state primary. The following week will bring contests in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, all states with large populations of Catholic voters. In an interview on MSNBC, Sanders, who would be the first Jewish president if elected, described himself as a "big, big fan of the pope," who leads the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. Speaking to reporters in New York later, Sanders said he hoped to meet with Francis. "The pope's schedule is determined by the Vatican but I would certainly be enthusiastic about that," said Sanders, 74, the Brooklyn-born son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. "... I think there is a possibility but that has not been scheduled. Sanders' victory earlier this week over Hillary Clinton in the Wisconsin primary marked his sixth win in the past seven contests against the former secretary of state, sparking renewed talk of Clinton's political vulnerability despite her substantial delegate lead. The announcement came after the Vermont senator this week saying Clinton, a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state, was not qualified to be president. After heavy criticism from Clinton's campaign and other Democrats, Sanders backed off Friday morning in an interview on NBC's "Today." Asked if Clinton was qualified for the presidency, Sanders replied, "Of course." "On her worst day, she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates," he said, referring to New York developer Donald Trump and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. 'DON'T DO LASTING DAMAGE' Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, urged both Clinton and Sanders to make sure that whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee does not end up in a weakened position to take on the Republican candidate in the general election. "I think both campaigns really need to be careful about making sure that we dont do lasting damage," Wasserman Schultz told Fox News Channel Friday. Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said Sanders aligning himself with the pontiff makes sense. Trailing badly in the delegate race, Sanders must find opportunities to boost enthusiasm for his campaign. Look at buzz and the excitement its going to create. Its going to drive the news cycle, he said. A meeting with the pope could provide an electoral boost to Sanders, who has trailed Clinton in terms of support among America's Catholic Democrats. Earlier this campaign season, Clinton scored victories over Sanders in Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Texas, all of which are more than one-quarter Catholic. A survey by the Pew Research Center earlier this year found that while almost 70 percent of Catholic Democrats thought Clinton would make a good president, just 46 percent thought Sanders would be one. Clinton leads Sanders by almost 700 delegates - 1,749 to 1,061 - with 1,955 left to be allocated. Pope Francis, a 79-year-old Argentine, also has been outspoken about helping the poor. Sanders said on Friday he admires the pope for criticizing the "worship of money, the greed that's out there." "There are people who think that Bernie Sanders is radical," Sanders said on MSNBC. "Read what the pope is writing. Francis' popularity with both Catholics and non-Catholics has given him an image of a grandfatherly priest who understands how difficult it sometimes is to follow Roman Catholic Church teachings. He became a part of the Republican race in February when, in response to a reporter's question, he suggested Trump was not a Christian because of his plan to build a wall to keep immigrants from crossing the southern U.S. border. (Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Alana Wise; Editing by Bill Trott) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Sector Overview Sector Overview Airports in Nepal have come a long way since the first landing of a Beechcraft in Gauchar Airport in 1949. The 48 airports interspersed throughout the country provide connectivity in a country with mountainous terrain and an underdeveloped road network. However, despite this progress, Nepals airport sector faces multiple challenges in terms of cost, safety and service. Out of the 48 airports, only 11 have paved runways and are operable year-round and only 15 are served by regular scheduled commercial flights. The majority of Nepals airports require significant investment to upgrade them to modern standards. Tribhuwan International Airport (TIA), Nepals only international airport, currently handles approximately 3.2 million international and 1.5 million domestic passengers per year. The airport is served by 26 international carriers offering direct connections to 23 destinations in Asia and Europe. Additionally, 34 domestic carriers offer scheduled flights to 14 regional airports, as well as mountain flights. A surge in labour traffic and increased economic activity in the Indo-China region at the turn of the millennium have manifested in double-digit increases in international traffic, putting a strain on TIAs infrastructure (physical and service delivery). As a result, the Government of Nepal has undertaken several initiatives to improve airside and landside infrastructure. Two new airports at Pokhara and Bhairawaha are scheduled to commence international operations in the coming years. Conveniently located at major tourist destinations, they are expected to alleviate some of the congestion at TIA. In addition, the geographical constraints of the proximal airspace at TIA and its solitary runway render the development of a new airport in the capital necessary within the next decade. The Government of Nepal has identified Nijgadh, in Bara, which is approximately 75 kilometres from Kathmandu, for the development a new international airport. The development of world-class airport infrastructure would enhance Nepals connectivity with the rest of the world and accelerate economic development. It would also improve Nepals marketability as a tourist destination, thereby increasing tourism revenue, which would help fund the infrastructure required at regional airports. Opportunities Growth in air travellers Nepal has experienced double digit growth in international air traffic since the turn of the century and the number of tourists is expected to increase in the coming years. Approximately 1,700 Nepalis travel abroad every day for work, mainly to Malaysia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Geo-strategic advantages Nepal is strategically located between India and China offering the possibility to develop hub/transit airports. As Nepal is a landlocked country with limited road networks, airplanes are a convenient way of transporting cargo and agricultural produce, as well as high value products. Construction of new airports and management and operation of existing airports The Government of Nepal plans to construct a new international airport in Nijgadh, Bara, which is about 75 kilometres south of Kathmandu. The government is also considering public-private partnerships in the management and operation of existing airports, which presents opportunities for the expansion of non-aeronautical services (such as airport taxis, duty free shops, parking management, eateries, and recreational and hospitality facilities). Source Energy and Environment Division The Energy and Environment Division is a permanent organ of FNCCI working to upgrade the quality of energy and environment use within Nepal. It is set up to provide varied services to industries and to be a bridge between industry and Government. It is the endeavor of this division to address the energy and environmental issues, provide technical support to industries in a harmonize way. Organizational Structure: 1. Energy Committee: FNCCI with its objective and vision covers several areas to address the burning issues of country. Through 3 Councils, 15 Committees and 5 Forums FNCCI is proactively playing a major role for the sustainable economic growth of the nation. Out of these committees, Energy Committee is working to put views of private sector on national energy part. Lead by Mr. Gyanendra Lal Pradhan as a committee chairman, it comprises of 16 members and 6 advisory from different disciplines such as Alternative Energy and Promotion Centre (AEPC), Independent Power Producers, Energy Experts, Forum for protection of Consumer Right Nepal etc. Objectives To fulfill the objective and vision of FNCCI. To help Government of Nepal in developing energy sector through the sharing of expertise, and know-how so as to sustainable development. To share and disseminate various ideas and knowledge on hydropower, renewable energy. To create an atmosphere of friendly cooperation between Government of Nepal (GON) and private sector. To create a forum for discussion on development of energy. Working as a bridge between Government of Nepal and Private sector. Mission Lobby for private sector friendly policies, regulations and its effective & qualitative implementation. Develop linkage for regional and international co-operation in power sector. 2. Energy Efficiency and Environment Forum Objectives To raise awareness on climate change, energy efficiency, environmental impacts, ISO standards among key stakeholders (relevant government officials, civil society, researchers, professionals, media, Energy & Environment experts,) through various activities. To create an atmosphere of friendly cooperation between Government of Nepal (GON) and private sector. To create a forum for discussion on development of environment. To establish a networking and coordination with regional and global players. To conduct regular interaction programs, seminars and workshop. To promote carbon resilience and low carbon economic development. 3. Projects/ Programmes (i) Energy Efficiency Centre: Energy Efficiency Centre is a nodal agency established under Energy and Environment Division (EED) of FNCCI in 2009. Energy efficiency could play an important role to overcome the current energy crisis in the country. Previous experiences have shown that there are huge saving potentials in both thermal as well as electrical energy. Amore energy efficient Nepalese industry will be more productive and competitive on the international markets. Enhancing efficient use of energy will also slow down the growth of energy demand and, thus, reduce the investment costs in the generation sector. Therefore, there is a substantial need for a highly competent think tank which brings energy efficiency on the top agenda and provides energy efficiency related services in Nepal. The new Energy Efficiency Centre (EEC) is aiming at the provision of those activities and services. In order to support for the EE, FNCCI along with GIZ/ Nepal Energy Efficiency Program (NEEP) has been working together since 2009. Vision: EEC is a central nodal agen cy to enhance efficient energy use in the Nepalese Industry and business. Mission: Facilitate Nepalese industry and enterprises in adapting energy efficient technologies, processes and practices to enhance competitiveness. Objective: Long-term strategic goals or objectives: EEC a not for profit unit within FNCCI, provides services to the member and non-member industries and business. It works as a central nodal agency for private sector to foster efficient energy use. To develop a Networking in all Districts / Associations / Industrial Estate. To be a platform for exchange and development of Energy efficiency knowledge & services. To build Capacity in this field Create a platform for working with development agencies and government of Nepal. To develop sustainable and Eco-friendly Nepalese economy. Energy Efficiency Centre is a nodal agency established under Energy and Environment Division (EED) of FNCCI in 2009. Energy efficiency could play an important role to overcome the current energy crisis in the country. Previous experiences have shown that there are huge saving potentials in both thermal as well as electrical energy. Amore energy efficient Nepalese industry will be more productive and competitive on the international markets. Enhancing efficient use of energy will also slow down the growth of energy demand and, thus, reduce the investment costs in the generation sector.Therefore, there is a substantial need for a highly competent think tank which brings energy efficiency on the top agenda and provides energy efficiency related services in Nepal. The new Energy Efficiency Centre (EEC) is aiming at the provision of those activities and services. In order to support for the EE, FNCCI along with GIZ/ Nepal Energy Efficiency Program (NEEP) has been working together since 2009. For more information (Energy Efficiency Centre website): http://www.eec-fncci.org Nepal Energy Efficiency Programme (NEEP) Nepal Energy Efficiency Programme (NEEP) is being implemented to promote and realize energy efficiency in Nepal since 2010. The Nepali- German programme NEEP is implemented by the Ministry of Energy, Government of Nepal with technical assistance provided by the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), acting on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). After completing its first phase in June 2014, NEEP continues to support improving the efficiency use of energy in Nepal in its second phase from July 2014 to June 2017. The programme assists with the introduction of market based energy efficiency services for the private and public sector. It also backs the development and introduction of performance for biomass based improved cooking stoves for rural households. Moreover, it provides direct advice and expertise to the government for the establishment of policy and institutional framework to foster energy efficiency in the country. Component 1: Energy Efficiency Market Along with growing prominence of energy efficiency in the country achieved in the past through NEEP, the second phase of NEEP focuses on horizontal and vertical widening of the energy efficiency market. The Energy Efficiency Center (EEC) under the Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industry as well as energy efficiency units at District Chamber of Commerce and Industry in various districts continues to provide energy efficiency services not only to industrial sectors but also to energy intensive public infrastructure. Unlike during the initial phase, the energy efficiency services are provided to any energy intensive industries, which in the initial period was limited to eight industrial and commercial sectors. (ii) Standarisation in the South and South East Asia (SESA) The SESA Programme is a regional programme, which promotes trade and sustainable and environmentally friendly development through standardization. Eight Countries in the south and southeast Asia regions are included: Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and Vietnam. This Programme is part of the Swedish Government Politics for global development (PGU) and funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) under the facilitation of the Swedish Standards Institute (SIS). SIS through its wide network among the National Standard Bodies (NSBs) in the region and by partnering with South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE) and consumer unity and trust society International, two nongovernmental organizations; the programme brought together various stakeholders from private/ public sectors such as universities, policy Institution, chamber of commerce, companies and Ministries. This enabled more stakeholders to secure a strong commitment and establishment of a local and regional ownership of the program. Currently, FNCCI is working in Carbon footprint, ISO 14001 (Environmental Management System) and Gender issue through this project. Currently, Energy committee is focusing on security issues, Transmission line, Finance and Foreign Direct Investment, Alternative Energy and Independent power producers (IPP) issues through its subcommittee.Energy is an irreplaceable part of our life and it is highly correlated with the environment. With a vision to create sustainable environment, FNCCI Energy Efficiency & Environment Forum has been working on environmental issues its coherent relation with energy. Composite of 18 members and four advisory members from highly expertise areas, Mr. Sanjay Giri is heading Forum as a Coordinator. Completed Projects: Nepal Energy Efficiency Programme (NEEP) - Phase 1 (i) Approach: Private households and industries reduce their cost for energy consumption, Utilities may plan for less capacity additions and require less investment capital, Less consumption of natural resources conserves the environment and climate. 1. Policy Advice towards Energy Efficiency 2. Energy Efficiency in Households 3. Energy Efficiency in Industries For more information: (ii) Sustainable and Efficient Industrial Development (SEID) Within the framework of bilateral Development Cooperation between Nepal and the Federal Republic of Germany, the joint implementation of Nepal Energy Efficiency Programme has been agreed upon in 2009. The lead executing agencies for the implementation are the Water and Energy Commission Secretariat (WECS) and the German Development Cooperation (GIZ). NEEP is a Technical Cooperation programme with an eight-year horizon and a first phase ending in 2014. It is conducted on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).International experience demonstrates that the efficient use of energy is a win-win-win option:Benefits of the efficient use of energy can be derived from all primary and secondary energy sources, i.e. fuels, electricity as well as for biomass and other renewable energies. Given the present situation in Nepal the approach of NEEP addresses two different issues. It will support the Government of Nepal to introduce a policy framework towards the efficient use of energy and it will demonstrate the benefits of energy efficiency for private households and the industry. Besides the NEEP working areas of households and industry there are other working areas which are relevant for energy efficiency such as public and private buildings, the transport sector and investment in infrastructure. These working areas are not covered during the present phase of NEEP.NEEP will support the drafting of an Energy Efficiency Strategy (EEST) as well as a Biomass Energy Strategy (BEST). Both Strategies will be complementing the National Energy Strategy. In many countries Energy Efficiency/Conservation Policy is an integral part of the Energy Policy and of the respective development plans. The policy sets the regulatory framework and incentives for the energy sector and the energy consumers to balance supply and demand on low or moderate economic cost.The Implementing Agency for this component is WECS with the support of AEPC for drafting the Biomass Energy Strategy.This component is concerned with the introduction of Minimum Efficiency Performance Standards (MEPS) for electric household appliances follows the experience of the introduction of the CFL in the Nepalese market. Many of the imported electric household appliances such as refrigerators, lightbulbs and ricecookers are already efficiency labelled and give the consumer some indication of the electricity consumption.The Implementing Agencies are NBSM and NEA.Another part of this component is the dissemination of improved cooking stoves (ICS) for more efficient use of biomass in rural households and the efficient use of electricity in predominantly urban households. The dissemination of ICS will be implemented within the framework of the National Rural & Renewable Energy Programme (NRREP). The NEEP approach has a pilot character for new ISC-models and dedicated target groups.The Implementing Agency is the AEPC with support from FECOFUN.Nepalese industries offer a huge potential to cut production cost by using energy more efficiently. In order to tap on this potential NEEP supports the capacity development of the Energy Efficiency Center (EEC) under FNCCI, qualifies energy auditors for the industry and conducts pilot energy audits. In addition, NEEP supports cooperation and networking with other regional institutions regarding services for the industries and technology providers. It is expected that industries will invest in modern, cost and energy saving technologies as recommended in the energy audits. NEEP will also provide information to banks to enable them to offer financial services to the industries for investments in energy efficient technologies.The Energy Efficiency Center (EEC) under FNCCI is the implementing partner of NEEP component-3. EEC is a not for profit autonomous body which aims to provide energy efficiency services to the Nepalese industrial sector.As of now, NEEP has identified eight energy intensive industrial sectors, including manufacturing and service industries. The eight sectors are: Hotel, Metal, Food and Beverage, Cement, Pulp and Paper, Cold Storage, Soap and Chemical and Brick industries. NEEP baseline study among 200 sample industries of above eight sectors indicates that, energy saving potential in these eight sectors is around 15% in electrical and 30% in thermal energy.The EEC and NEEP services to industry will help in saving considerable amount of energy and cost, with additional benefits of saving resources and emission reduction. It will also help Nepalese economy in reducing the costly import of petroleum products and coal.At Energy Efficiency Center (EEC) website: http://www.eec-fncci.org/content-projects NEEP project website: http://wecs-neep.gov.np/ The Sustainable and Efficient Industrial Development (SEID) project is an initiative under the Switch Asia Program of the European Union which seeks to shift consumption and production activities in Asia to a more sustainable manner. The project focuses on implementing Resource Efficiency and Responsible Production interventions in the tourism industry and agro-based industries, which significantly contribute to the economic development of Nepal, yet also to carbon emissions and resource exploitation. Tourism and Agro-based Industries are an important growth sector in both Nepal and Bhutan and contributes signicantly to their GDP, employment generation, and foreign exchange earnings. However the rise in tourists arrivals has put extra pressure on developing additional infrastructure and has contributed directly to environmental degradation, waste generation and environmental pollution. Competitiveness of Agro based Industries are fast eroding as a result of outdated technology, lack of optimized process and unsustainable sourcing. In Nepal demand for electricity increases by 10% every year whereas production remains constant and the 12 hours daily power cuts are a reality. While both Bhutan and Nepal have ample supply of water, the water tables in many famous tourist destinations and industrial zones are stressed. These are big challenges that need to be addressed. The Project SEID is designed to directly address several issues faced by both sectors. Its main objective is to transfer best practices, technology and proven approaches on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP). Project Brief: Title: Sustainable & Efficient Industrial Development (SEID) Bhutan and Nepal Project Duration: 40 Months (2012-2015) Project Location: Nepal & Bhutan Target Sector: Tourism and Agro-based Industries Primary Target Groups: Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) from the target sector; Local experts from private consulting and training companies, industry/business associations and academe, freelance consultants; Public institutions, government authorities, industrial park management authorities and policymakers; Other Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the target region. Objectives: The project shall contribute towards sustainable development of Nepals and Bhutans economy with a clear focus on the tourism and agro-based industries. The main objective is: To reduce costs and pollution; improve health and safety performance in the target sector. To enhance the capacity of national anchor associations and service providers to collaborate and promote sustainable practices to their supply chain and members,providing technical support and input to SMEs to improve the overall resource efciency of their production processes from the life cycle perspective To build strategic partnerships with on-going initiatives in the target sector, providing access to existing knowledge, Information Education Campaign material to address needs of SMEs. To facilitate dialoguing and networking amongst key stakeholders including government, nancial institutions, industry associations, academia aimed at creating and enabling environment which propagates and incentivizes adoption of sustainable industrial practices. Project funded by: European Union Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC) Project Implemented by GrAT Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST) Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) Butan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) Deutsche GesellschaftfurInternationaleZusammenarbeit (GIZ) Austria Recycling (AREC) Stenum Asia For more information Promoting Sustainable Housing in Nepal Green Homes Project The specific objectives of the project are: The specific objectives of the project are: Create an enabling policy environment to promote sustainable housing; Strengthen supply chains for sustainable housing and building capacity of Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs) to deliver household level green technologies and services Stimulate demand for sustainable housing Five Components of Green Homes Projects: Green Construction Materials Passive Solar Design Energy Efficiency Waste Management Water Conservation For more information on Green Homes Project Activity Summary of Green Homes-Promoting sustainable housing in Nepal Following are the activities conducted by FNCCI under Green Homes Project with support of UN-Habitat and other organizations Consultation/Dissemination Workshop Activities Date Supported By 1 Workshop on strategy preparation for strengthening of supply chain and marketing of sustainable housing in Dharan 24th December 2014 UN-Habitat,SunsariCCI, Dharan Sub-Metropolitan City 2 Workshop on strategy preparation for strengthening of supply chain and marketing of sustainable housing in lalitpur 27th January 2015 UN-Habitat, LalitpurCCI, Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City 3 Workshop on strategy preparation for strengthening of supply chain and marketing of sustainable housing in Pokhara 22nd March 2015 UN-Habitat, Pokhara CCI,Pokhara Sub-Metropolitan City 4 RE in Urban Context: Challenges and Opportunities 22nd November 2015 UN-Habitat, CEN, Lalitpur SMC, IOE Consultation Meeting Activities Date Remarks 1 Consultation meeting for Hollow Concrete Block SMEs in Pokhara 24th August 2014 UN-Habitat, Pokhara CCI, Pokhara Sub-Metropolitan City 2 Networking meeting with Switch Asia Projects in Nepal to take initiation for financial link up for SMEs with financing institution 4th September 2014 3 Consultation meeting for Solar SMEs in Pokhara 11th November 2014 UN-Habitat, Pokhara CCI 4 Consultation and Orientation Meeting with Financial Institutions 22nd June, 2015 UN-Habitat 5 Consultation Meeting with Financial Institutions 8th February, 2016 UN-Habitat and SWITCH-Asia project partners Technical Trainings Activities Date Remarks 1 Organized and Conducted Training on Energy Efficiency and Solar Installation at Household Level in Pokhara 30 January to 2 February, 2015 UN-Habitat, Pokhara CCI, Pokhara SMC, CEN 2 Organized and Conducted Training on Energy Efficiency and Solar Installation at Household Level in Lalitpur 26 28 August, 2015 Supported by POkharaCCI, UN-Habitat, Pokhara Sub-Metropolitan City, CEN 3 Training on Market Strategy focused on promotion of green products and services 8-9 October, 2015 UN-Habitat, Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City, IHS 4 Three Days training on Solid Waste Management 17-19, December, 2015 UN-Habitat, Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City, ENPHO 5 Organized and Conducted Training on Energy Efficiency and Solar Installation at Household Level 19-21 February, 2016 UN-Habitat, FNCCI Entrepreneurship Development Trainings Activities Date Remarks 1 Entrepreneurship Training on Sustainable Housing, Lalitpur 6-7 September, 2015 UN-Habitat, Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City 2 Entrepreneurship Training on Sustainable Housing, Pokhara 23-24 September, 2015 UN-Habitat, Pokhara CCI, Pokhara SMC 3 Entrepreneurship Training on Sustainable Housing, Pokhara 24-25 September, 2015 UN-Habitat, Pokhara CCI, Pokhara SMC 4 Entrepreneurship Training on Sustainable Housing, Dharan 6-7 November, 2015 UN-Habitat, Sunsari CCI, Dharan SMC 5 Entrepreneurship Training on Sustainable Housing, Lalitpur 23-24 November, 2015 UN-Habitat Contact Person: UN-Habitat with support of European Union introducedin Nepal with aim of promoting sustainable housing concepts in Nepal. The concept of sustainablehousing mainly focuses on reducing negative impact on natural resources and carbon emissions in housing system. The eco-friendly practices helps to curb the energy consumption in housing sector and helps to mitigate global climate change effects thus resulting in healthy wellbeing. The Green Homes Project is being implemented by UN-Habitat with its implementing partners (Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) (Clean Energy Nepal (CEN), Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO), Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) and Shelter and Local Technology Development Center (SLTDC)).The existing SMEs in sustainable housing sector in Nepal are lacking proper technical and management skills. Realizing the importance of strengthening SMEs and to build capacity of SMEs, UN-Habitat in partnership with FNCCI is working to strengthen supply chain of sustainable housing products/services under Green Homes Project.Program ManagerFNCCI-Green Homes ProjectE-mail: [email protected] Sector Overview Health The Interim Constitution of Nepal 2007 recognises healthcare as a fundamental right of the Nepalese people. As at 2013/14, Nepal had over 4,485 health institutions, with 7,550 beds, employing over 93,000 personnel. In fiscal year 2013/14, 209,519 patients were admitted, 1,523,410 patients treated as outpatients, and 357,089 used emergency services in Nepal. The total budget allocated for this sector is NPR 33.52 billion (USD 335 million), which is approximately 5% of the total budget. This figure has not changed much in the last couple of years. Capital expenditure allocated for this sector accounts for a mere 6.6% of the total capital expenditure in the last fiscal year. In terms of output, the average increase of output in this sector has been around 5% in the last few years. The Ministry of Health and Population is currently implementing the Nepal Health Sector Programme-II. In this programme, the government focuses on essential health care services, such as population and family planning, safe motherhood, child health and child nutrition, communicable disease control, non-communicable diseases and injuries, mental health, eye, oral, and environmental health, and curative care. Although the country has made great strides in terms of the Millennium Development Goals, the state has not been able to invest much in this sector. The Government of Nepal is prioritising this sector: a new health policy is in the process of being implemented and the government is committed to modernising health infrastructure. Similarly, it plans to engage in private-public partnerships to enhance the capacity of government hospitals. The government is also encouraging private investment in health. So far, private investment in primary and secondary health sectors has gone primarily to urban areas, especially the countrys capital. This sector has also seen some public-private partnerships in the form of community managed health institutions, service contracts, management contracts, and build-own-operate-transfer projects. In terms of large physical infrastructure, there are 13 privately run medical colleges, 17 NGO-run hospitals, 17 eye hospitals, and 87 private research centres and nursing homes. Nepal has also experienced a rise in pharmaceutical companies and diagnostic research laboratories in the last few years. Opportunities Hospitals and healthcare centres Opportunities exist in the heath sector for facilities offering: Emergency services on a 24-hour basis particularly related to neonatal and maternal health needs Centres of excellence and specialty for non-communicable diseases Specialty and super-specialty treatment centres targeting the domestic population, to capture the market that currently goes abroad, particularly to India, for treatment Centres combining healthcare facilities with tourism medical tourism Pharmaceutical companies Health insurance Most of the Nepali population are unaware of the existence of health insurance, creating vast scope for private companies seeking to cater to the uncovered population. Pharmaceutical companies There are persistent shortages of high quality drugs in the market. Most drugs required to cure or treat serious disease and conditions are currently imported from India. Source Sector Overview Nepal is rich in water resources with multiple sources of water, including glaciers, snowmelt from the Himalayas, rainfall and ground water. There are 6,000 rivers, including rivulets and tributaries, totalling about 45,000 km in length. The country is contains 2.2% of the worlds water resources. Nepals theoretical capacity for producing power from hydropower projects is around 80,000 MW. However, as at 2014, installed capacity is only around 700 MW of electricity, despite the fact that demand is over 1,000 MW. Thus, Nepal remains one of the lowest energy consuming countries in the world. Demand for electricity is increasing at 79% per year, and according to the forecast from Nepal Electricity Authority, demand for electricity will reach 3,600 MW by 2027. To deal with the shortage of electricity in Nepal, IBN and other government agencies have stepped forward to implement mega hydropower projects. In September 2014, Nepal signed its first Project Development Agreement (PDA, concession agreement) with a private developer, GMR LTD, to develop the Upper Karnali Hydropower Project, a 900 MW project. IBN has also signed another PDA with SJVNL, an Indian governmental entity, for the development of the 900 MW Arun III. The combined cost of these two projects exceeds USD 2.5 billion. In addition, Nepal has signed the Power Trade Agreement (PTA) with India, paving the way for the free flow of electricity as a commodity across the border. There are several other mega power projects (above 500 MW) in the early stages of development, and IBN has the mandate to take these projects forward. These projects are a high priority for the government and various incentives are in place for investors. View/ Download Energy Sector Profile: Opportunities Demand supply gap Nepal is facing acute power shortages and huge opportunities exist in the hydropower sector for investors to meet this gap in demand. Even with the recent hydropower developments, dry season power is expected to be insufficient to meet demand in the future. Electricity consuming industries such as cement plants and fertilizer plants are on track for development, which will increase demand. Export potential to India due to PTA The PTA with India has opened up a large market for Nepali electricity in India. As the PTA ensures non-discrimination against electricity from Nepal in the Indian market, there is vast potential to export electricity to the growing Indian power market. New transmission infrastructure As part of its plan to electrify the entire country, the Government of Nepal plans to construct extensive transmission infrastructure. Nepal is formulating a Transmission Master Plan study to improve transmission infrastructure and private investment will be sought for this purpose. Several cross-border connections are also planned Source Hydropower in Nepal (Source: Website of Independent Power Producers' Association, Nepal (IPPAN), a member organization of FNCCI) Nepal has a huge hydropower potential. In fact, the perennial nature of Nepali rivers and the steep gradient of the country's topography provide ideal conditions for the development of some of the world's largest hydroelectric projects in Nepal. Current estimates are that Nepal has approximately 40,000 MW of economically feasible hydropower potential. However, the present situation is that Nepal has developed only approximately 600 MW of hydropower. Therefore, bulk of the economically feasible generation has not been realized yet. Besides, the multipurpose, secondary and tertiary benefits have not been realized from the development of its rivers. Although bestowed with tremendous hydropower resources, only about 40% of Nepal's population has access to electricity. Most of the power plants in Nepal are run-of-river type with energy available in excess of the in-country demand during the monsoon season and deficit during the dry season. Read more at: http://www.ippan.org.np/HPinNepal.html A new low-sugar milk chocolate by Valio and created using AI-design features has been unveiled. With the help of hundreds of insights from chocolate lovers around the... Read More Procter & Gamble (PG 1.25%) and Unilever (UL 2.39%) have a lot in common. They each run a global consumer goods business that's anchored by dozens of powerhouse brands (like Lipton, Tide, Dove, and Pampers) that millions of customers use every day. The stocks boast similar profit margins, dividend yields, and valuations, yet the two businesses represent sharply different investments -- each with its own growth profile, brand strategy, and capital return policy. Key investing stats Metric Procter & Gamble Unilever Market cap $227 billion $130 billion Sales growth 1% 4% Net profit margin 15% 15% Dividend yield 3.2% 2.9% Forward P/E 21 20 Unilever's stronger growth Judging by just their latest business trends, you might think P&G and Unilever are operating in different industries. Organic sales growth was 4.1% in Unilever's last fiscal year while P&G's was just 1%. Looking deeper into that key business metric reveals even sharper contrasts, as Unilever's growth has come courtesy of a healthy mix of volume and pricing gains while P&G had to rely entirely on higher prices. Unilever posted improving sales volume in each of its four product categories last year. P&G, in contrast, last announced flat or declining volume in all of its business segments. Of course, Unilever's operations are affected by the same challenging sales environment that's kept P&G's growth down. Here's now UL's management team recently described the global situation: "Consumer demand remained fragile and volume growth was barely positive in the markets in which we operate." It's just that, partly because P&G has greater exposure to economic and political flash points like Venezuela, Russia, and Ukraine, the consumer goods leader has been disproportionately hurt by weak global growth. P&G's aggressive brand gamble Given that soft sales environment, both companies have made cost cuts central to their operating strategy. P&G, though, has taken a far more aggressive path that involves transforming its business through the divestment of almost 100 brands. After its recent sale of the Duracell business, P&G is now almost done whittling its portfolio down to just 65 of management's favorite franchises, including 21 brands that each account for more than $1 billion of annual sales. The resulting company should have a smaller top line (by about 10%), but it will be more profitable and faster-growing, according to the management team. Unilever, in contrast, plans to make improvements where it can, including by shortening its innovation cycle time and slicing more costs out of its operations, but management isn't interested in breaking with its long-run strategy for the portfolio of 400 brands. "Our priorities continue to be volume-driven growth ahead of our markets," CEO Paul Polman recently told investors. Giving away the business P&G shareholders stand to benefit from their company's aggressive brand-shedding initiatives through the most direct way possible: cash returns. The company aims to deliver $70 billion to investors over the next few years (through dividends and stock buybacks), at an $18-billion-per-year pace -- up from the recent average of $12 billion per year. Unilever's surging cash flow promises to fund steady increases in cash returns, too. However, without selling off pieces of its own business, it can't come close to P&G's plan to send the equivalent of one-third of its market capitalization back to shareholders by fiscal 2019. Conservative investors might prefer owning Unilever right now since its steadier growth and proven strategy provides a clear path toward continued market-beating sales and profit gains over the next five years. Meanwhile, it's harder to anticipate what P&G's operations will look like at the end of that period. Still, that extra risk points to a bigger reward -- assuming CEO David Taylor and his executive team can succeed at crafting a more profitable business. Well, it's official, Ford Motor Company (F 3.57%) announced it would be building a new small-car assembly plant in Mexico -- cue extreme Donald Trump comments, now. Though this is a good move for Ford and its investors, many will oppose the decision. In other news, that's not even the only big announcement Ford made today. Let's take a look at its decision to invest $170 million in South Africa, what it means, and the details behind Ford's move to Mexico. Mexico helps profitability Ford's decision to invest $1.6 billion will create 2,800 additional direct jobs in Mexico by the end of this decade, with construction on the small car plant to begin as quickly as this summer. The reasoning behind the San Luis Potosi State small car plant is simple: it will increase the company's competitiveness and increase margins on its small cars -- something that isn't easily achieved producing cars in the U.S. market. And while it's a controversial topic, the U.S. isn't likely to lose any jobs from the development as Ford plans to bring production of different -- see: more profitable vehicles -- here within a couple of years. Further, while this topic has generated a lot of interest and debate, recently, Ford's actually had a presence in Mexico for nearly a century and has manufactured vehicles there in some form since 1925. Mexico is Ford's fourth largest manufacturing site for global consumers, according to the automaker, behind only China, Germany, and of course the United States. Vehicles produced in Mexico are delivered to Canada, China, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and South Korea, in addition to the United States. Going forward, Mexico may play an even larger role in Ford's export strategy with small cars. When you look at the grand scheme of things, Ford's $1.6 billion investment in Mexico is a part of a much bigger plan: Ford has invested more than $10.2 billion in U.S. Ford facilities, $2.7 billion in Spain, $2.4 billion in Germany and $4.8 billion in China, during the One Ford product plan. Still, many remain opposed to the move; Dennis Williams, UAW President, for instance. "For every investment in Mexico, it means jobs that could have and should have been available right here in the USA," Williams said in a statement, according to Automotive News. "Companies continue to run to low-wage countries and import back into the United States. This is a broken system that needs to be fixed." Ultimately, while this will be controversial, it's a good move for investors as Ford needs to open up production capacity in the United States to produce higher margin products such as SUVs, F-Series trucks, or, gasp, a Ranger and/or new Bronco. Moving production of smaller, lower margin, vehicles to regions with lower production costs just makes business sense. More Rangers! But that wasn't the only intriguing announcement from Ford this week. Ford also announced it would invest $170 million in South Africa to build the all-new Everest SUV, which would create about 1,200 new jobs in the area. The investment will help the Everest's competitiveness as it will expand the SUV's range to eight derivatives across a wider price range, and it will enable consumers to choose between two engines instead of only the 3.2-liter five-cylinder which is currently in the Everest imported from Thailand. Further, the investment will also increase production of the new Ford Ranger that was launched in the region at the end of 2015. Since its roll out, the Ranger's production has been running at maximum capacity at the Silverton Assembly Plant, and export demand for the truck remains at an all-time high, according to Ford. "The R2.5-billion ($170 million U.S. dollars) investment reaffirms the importance of these markets as part of our growth strategy across the Middle East and Africa," said Jim Farley, Ford executive vice president and president of Europe, Middle East, and Africa, in a press release. "It further reinforces South Africa's position as a strategic export base for Ford Motor Company." While Ford only sold about 78,000 passenger cars and light vehicles in South Africa last year, an increased focus on producing the Everest SUV and Ranger will be an important part of Ford's global growth story in emerging markets. And while Ford's small move to Mexico might generate some heated debate here in the States, for investors it makes business sense to help margins on passenger cars and open up production to higher margin vehicles here in America. There are many risks that investors wouldn't think of when it comes to insurance stocks. Recently, oil prices plunged, resulting in increasing losses for car insurance companies because drivers are taking advantage of low gas prices and driving more. Join The Motley Fool's Gaby Lapera and Jordan Wathen as they discuss the hard to predict risks that affect companies like Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A 3.19%) (BRK.B 3.28%) and Safety Insurance (SAFT 1.62%). A transcript follows the video. This podcast was recorded on April 4, 2016. Gaby Lapera: Talking about risk, a lot of people when they think about insurance, they think about this stodgy, sweaty accountant with giant glasses who are a little bit nervous and constantly writing things down. They think of insurance as pretty much the opposite of risk, but insurance companies actually have some very interesting risks that other companies might not face necessarily. What kind of risks are there when you invest in an insurance company? Jordan Wathen: There's a lot of risks you wouldn't think about. This year a big one with property and casualty insurers, more specifically car insurers, is that people are driving more because gas prices are low. Because of that they're getting in much more accidents, and actually the cost with each accident has been going up this year too. Geico reported, which obviously is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, they reported that the severity of claim, how much they pay out, is going up, as well as the frequency, because people are driving more. Lapera: That's something that you wouldn't about, right? The price of oil dropping, what does that have to do anything with insurance. But if you're an auto insurer, it's a big deal. If you're a health insurer that's insured all these people that are in accidents, it's a big deal. Wathen: Right exactly. I would have never ... It's not something that when you look at a car insurance company you think, "Oh man, I'd better worry about the price of oil," but the lower it goes, the more people tend to drive, and it makes sense. Lapera: Yeah. Another one that people don't really think about it, because I think most people don't think about reinsurance, which is again those insurance companies that insure insurers, is natural disasters. I think, I want to say was it 2014? Was that the year of the tsunami? I can't remember. There was a year that there was a ton of natural disasters, and there were a few reinsurers that just went out of business. They couldn't handle the claims. Wathen: Right exactly. It goes so deep too. You could go and look, there's a small insurance company based out of Massachusetts, Safety Insurance, that for years has had absolutely stellar underwriting record. They do great in car and home insurance, but then they had something like 7 or 8 feet of snow fall in Boston. What can you do? There's nothing you can do about it, it's just bad luck. But for an insurer bad luck isn't a very good thing. Lapera: No, and they do the best they can to mitigate these risks with actuaries, but especially when you are gambling on something like good weather, that's when you have to assess what you risk tolerance is, as hilarious as it is to say for insurers. Wathen: Right, yeah exactly. No it's not fun. I'm kind of glad that's not my job, because at the end of the day, weathermen can't predict the weather 10 days out, predicting it a year out or 10 years out, I can only imagine the difficulty in doing that. Lapera: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about risks that are more common I guess across different companies for insurers. Insurers can go one of two paths. They can either choose to specialize in one thing, like maybe auto and RV and boat insurance, modes of transportation, or they could choose to specialize in a lot of different things. Are there advantages or disadvantages to either of these? Wathen: I think there's advantages and disadvantages to both. If you think about a very specialized insurer, going back to Safety for instance, the danger with them is that most of their premiums are written in New England. If it snows in New England, that's a bad year for them. If they have a lot of snow fall they have a lot of losses. There's geographic risk there. On the other hand if it doesn't snow or winter is very mild, then it's a great year and they're partying hard like it's 1999, because no one's getting in car accidents, it's beautiful weather, it's fantastic. They're just printing money. Then to some extent, being more diversified it can be good obviously because one risk won't put you under, won't put an insurance company under, but in the same token it's very hard to get the incentives right when you have multiple lines of insurance under one business. Lapera: Right. Wathen: If you think about it, let's say there's a company, say a car insurance company and a health insurance company together, and you have executives leading both sides of it. How are you going to compensate them for underwriting performance at one when they're only responsible ... How are you going to compensate for underwriting performance at the car insurance unit, when they're only responsible for the health and life unit for instance? In an effort to pay down its massive debt and repair its reputation, bankers say troubled pharmaceutical giant Valeant (NYSE:VRX) is actively discussing selling one of its crown jewels: Its Bausch & Lomb eye care unit, the FOX Business Network has learned. Valeant bought Bausch & Lomb in 2013 for $8.7 billion. The purchase was one of its biggest in a series of acquisitions that allowed the company to explode in size during the past eight years and become a Wall Street darling. Bausch & Lomb, a maker of contact lenses and lens-care products, generates nearly $1.5 billion in yearly revenues, and profits of around $200 million, according to filings. But intense scrutiny over Valeants business model and accounting practices following disclosures about its relationship with the mail-order pharmacy Philidor Rx Services, has crushed Valeants stock price, which traded as high as $263 in March. Shares have recently spiked amid a restructuring of the firms $31 billion in debt and statements by its largest shareholder, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, that management changes are likely in the coming weeks. Ackman has in the past stated that Valeant may spin off at least part of its Bausch and Lomb unit possibly through an initial public offering to generate revenues. Bankers interviewed by FBN say the company is now looking into a possible sale of all or part of the unit-- a move some that could generate as much as $30 billion in revenue. Sources say that executives at the company, though, are undecided about whether even a partial sale makes strategic sense. Ackman is playing a major role here in the companys future, one investment banker with knowledge of the matter said. And they are definitely discussing shopping Bausch & Lomb because of his input. Its unclear if Valeant will sell Bausch and Lomb or find other parts of its vast businesses to spin off, these bankers say. One problem the company faces is that amid scrutiny over its drug pricing, revenues have declined at many of its far-flung businesses. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, sales are slowing for many of Valeants brands including its popular drug Xifaxan. Bausch & Lomb is considered among Valeants most stable brands which means the company could receive a top price as part of a sale or a partial spinoff, but also a decline in revenues over the long haul. A Valeant spokesman Jared Levy, from the firm Sard Verbinnen, declined to comment on whether Valeant is actively discussing the sale. But he added as of now Valeant is not pursuing a sale of its Bausch & Lomb business. A spokesman for Pershing Square Holdings declined to comment. Some Wall Street players say, at its current price of around $35, shares of Valeant are a bargain, particularly after the company reached an agreement with creditors to restructure its debt. Ackman, who is now a Valeant board member, recently stated he believes Pershing Square will recoup its stake even as shares have declined 86% since the March high. While many on Wall Street are not that optimistic, bankers and hedge fund traders believe the company has valuable businesses that can boost its share price once the companys debt is paid down. The restructuring gives the company a path to get its business back in order, the banker with knowledge of the matter said. Meanwhile, Ackman continues to tout Valeants prospects. During a conference call on Wednesday, he said despite the companys mistakes, investors would be the ones making a mistake if they dumped their shares. Prices of Valeants bonds have, in recent weeks, fallen into distressed levels, while credit default swaps on the companys debt spiked considerably, both of which signal market fears of a default. A credit default swap is an insurance policy investors buy when they are worried of a possible default. But after the Ackman call, shares of Valeant recorded their biggest two-day gain in 20 years; the price of Valeant stock has climbed 40% since the beginning of the week. The restructuring of the companys debt helped boost shares because many investors believed Valeant might miss some debt payments and fall into default. Compensation for the chief executives of the biggest U.S. companies fell more sharply last year than any year since the financial crisis, as weaker corporate performance slowed cash bonuses and accounting rules pared back pension growth. Median pay for the CEOs of nearly 300 large publicly traded companies slipped 3.8% to $10.8 million last year from $11.2 million in 2014, a Wall Street Journal analysis of compensation data from MyLogIQ found. Half of those CEOs saw total pay either decline or rise by less than 1% -- also the worst showing for S&P 500 chiefs since the 2008 crisis. "Increases in CEO pay have taken a bit of a pause this year," said John Roe, head of advisory services at ISS Corporate Solutions. Where pay is rising, Mr. Roe noted, "it's in the places shareholders like to see it coming from most: It's in equity." The median rise in stock-based compensation -- the biggest component of most CEO pay packages -- was about 7%. The median rise in cash pay, including salary and annual bonus, was 2%, down from 5.6% growth in 2014, the Journal analysis found. Many of the overall declines in pay were driven by slower growth in CEO pension values, a year after pension increases for many top executives swelled because of changes to the actuarial assumptions underlying them. Companies in the Journal's analysis generated a flat median total shareholder return -- which includes reinvested dividends -- during the year for which pay was reported, according to FactSet. It was 17% a year earlier. "It was a pretty tepid year when it comes to performance," said Andrew Goldstein, head of the North American executive pay practice at consulting firm Willis Towers Watson. The Journal analyzed CEO compensation and performance data for S&P 500 companies that disclosed pay details for their 2015 fiscal years between July 1, 2015, and March 31, 2016. Most of the remaining companies in the index are expected to file proxies by early May. ( See an interactive graphic comparing CEO pay and company performance data for S&P 500 companies.) Last year's broad pay trend can be seen at 3M Co., the Minnesota-based maker of Post-it Notes and industrial abrasives.CEO Inge Thulin's pay declined 3.4% to $19.4 million, with his cash incentive pay falling 33% but equity pay rising 25%. Total return for 3M's shareholders was minus 5.8%. 3M didn't respond to requests for comment. Compensation for the top-paid CEOs didn't always track performance for investors. Total pay for Philippe Dauman of media conglomerate Viacom Inc. rose 22% to $54.15 million, on bigger stock grants. Total return for shareholders was minus 42% during the same period. A Viacom spokesman said $17 million of Mr. Dauman's compensation came from a retention bonus he received when renewing his contract last year. The bonus vests over several years, and much of Mr. Dauman's pay is tied to the company's share price, the spokesman said. "If investors lose money in their Viacom investment, Philippe's compensation will also decline as well." Pay for Honeywell International Inc. CEO David Cote rose 18% to $34.5 million thanks to $14.25 million in cash incentive payments, even as shareholder return was 5.8% at the industrial conglomerate. Honeywell said the company beat its targets for growth in revenues and return on investment over the past two years, and that Mr. Cote's pay reflects performance for 2014 as well as 2015. That incentive compensation was reported in full for 2015, although he won't receive half the amount until 2017, a spokesman said. "Adjusted to an annual basis, Mr. Cote's compensation in 2015 declined year over year," he said. Some bosses had big pay cuts on performance woes. The co-CEOs of Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., Monty Moran and Steve Ells, lost their bonuses last year after a rash of illness outbreaks at its restaurants sickened customers and sent its share price tumbling. Total pay for the two CEOs fell by more than 50% each, to $13.5 million for Mr. Moran and $13.8 million for Mr. Ells. A Chipotle spokesman declined to comment. The Journal analysis used CEO pay figures as published in company proxy statements and annual reports under Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules. It generally excluded CEOs who changed jobs during the year. Some big paychecks weren't reflected in the Journal analysis. Sundar Pichai, who in October was appointed chief executive of the Google online-search business, was paid $100.5 million in 2015, of which $99.8 million consisted of restricted stock that vests over two years. (Google co-founder Larry Page, by contrast, earned $1 cash as CEO of Alphabet Inc., the parent company.) Just 17 women ran companies in the group -- about 6% of the total. All but two of the women made more than the S&P 500 median, and the highest-paid of them, Oracle Corp. co-CEO Safra Catz, made $53.2 million. ( Mark Hurd, her fellow co-CEO, made about $1,500 more than she did.) An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment. Cash compensation continued to account for about a third of total pay, while stock and options accounted for about 60%, up slightly from years past. Perks accounted for about 2% of pay, while pensions and above-market interest on deferred compensation constituted about 6%, down from 13% in 2014. Pension gains pushed CEO pay higher at many companies in 2014 because of changes to the standard assumptions -- including life expectancy -- used to calculate today's value for pensions that will be paid years in the future. For 2014, "pension disclosures were an anomaly because of changes in the mortality tables as well as interest-rate fluctuations," said Mark Borges, a compensation consultant with Compensia Inc. "Those had the effect of distorting pay." Year-earlier pension gains were also a significant factor in 2013 -- the previous time compensation declined for CEOs of S&P 500 companies. Then, median compensation slipped 2.4% to $10.2 million, although equity pay rose 10.2% and cash pay rose 7.1%. Write to Theo Francis at theo.francis@wsj.com and Joann S. Lublin at joann.lublin@wsj.com Beyond Mexico, the Everest should be more competitive after this week's announcements. Image source: Ford Motor Company. Well, it's official, Ford Motor Company announced it would be building a new small-car assembly plant in Mexico -- cue extreme Donald Trump comments, now. Though this is a good move for Ford and its investors, many will oppose the decision. In other news, that's not even the only big announcement Ford made today. Let's take a look at its decision to invest $170 million in South Africa, what it means, and the details behind Ford's move to Mexico. Mexico helps profitability Ford's decision to invest $1.6 billion will create 2,800 additional direct jobs in Mexico by the end of this decade, with construction on the small car plant to begin as quickly as this summer. The reasoning behind the San Luis Potosi State small car plant is simple: it will increase the company's competitiveness and increase margins on its small cars -- something that isn't easily achieved producing cars in the U.S. market. And while it's a controversial topic, the U.S. isn't likely to lose any jobs from the development as Ford plans to bring production of different -- see: more profitable vehicles -- here within a couple of years. Further, while this topic has generated a lot of interest and debate, recently, Ford's actually had a presence in Mexico for nearly a century and has manufactured vehicles there in some form since 1925. Mexico is Ford's fourth largest manufacturing site for global consumers, according to the automaker, behind only China, Germany, and of course the United States. Vehicles produced in Mexico are delivered to Canada, China, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and South Korea, in addition to the United States. Going forward, Mexico may play an even larger role in Ford's export strategy with small cars. When you look at the grand scheme of things, Ford's $1.6 billion investment in Mexico is a part of a much bigger plan: Ford has invested more than $10.2 billion in U.S. Ford facilities, $2.7 billion in Spain, $2.4 billion in Germany and $4.8 billion in China, during the One Ford product plan. Still, many remain opposed to the move; Dennis Williams, UAW President, for instance. "For every investment in Mexico, it means jobs that could have and should have been available right here in the USA," Williams said in a statement, according to Automotive News. "Companies continue to run to low-wage countries and import back into the United States. This is a broken system that needs to be fixed." Ultimately, while this will be controversial, it's a good move for investors as Ford needs to open up production capacity in the United States to produce higher margin products such as SUVs, F-Series trucks, or, gasp, a Ranger and/or new Bronco. Moving production of smaller, lower margin, vehicles to regions with lower production costs just makes business sense. More Rangers! But that wasn't the only intriguing announcement from Ford this week. Ford also announced it would invest $170 million in South Africa to build the all-new Everest SUV, which would create about 1,200 new jobs in the area. The investment will help the Everest's competitiveness as it will expand the SUV's range to eight derivatives across a wider price range, and it will enable consumers to choose between two engines instead of only the 3.2-liter five-cylinder which is currently in the Everest imported from Thailand. Further, the investment will also increase production of the new Ford Ranger that was launched in the region at the end of 2015. Since its roll out, the Ranger's production has been running at maximum capacity at the Silverton Assembly Plant, and export demand for the truck remains at an all-time high, according to Ford. "The R2.5-billion ($170 million U.S. dollars) investment reaffirms the importance of these markets as part of our growth strategy across the Middle East and Africa," said Jim Farley, Ford executive vice president and president of Europe, Middle East, and Africa, in a press release. "It further reinforces South Africa's position as a strategic export base for Ford Motor Company." While Ford only sold about 78,000 passenger cars and light vehicles in South Africa last year, an increased focus on producing the Everest SUV and Ranger will be an important part of Ford's global growth story in emerging markets. And while Ford's small move to Mexico might generate some heated debate here in the States, for investors it makes business sense to help margins on passenger cars and open up production to higher margin vehicles here in America. The article Ford Motor Company's Move to Mexico Isn't a New Development originally appeared on Fool.com. Daniel Miller owns shares of Ford. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Ford. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Image source: Wikimedia Commons user Stratosphere. Six swings of 20% or more over the last 12 months -- that's the roller-coaster ride that Dynavax Technologies shareholders have been on. For now, those shareholders are experiencing another upswing. Will the current positive momentum continue, or is Dynavax simply too risky to enjoy the ride? Regulatory riskThe most obvious risk facing Dynavax is regulatory approval for hepatitis B vaccine Heplisav-B. Last week, the biotech announced that the Food and Drug Administration had accepted theBiologics License Application (BLA) for Heplisav-B with a decision due bySept. 15, 2016. For those who have followed Dynavax for several years, this might seem like deja vu. It was only three years ago that the FDA shot down Dynavax's attempt to win approval for its hep-B vaccine. At that time, regulators expressed concern about Heplisav's safety profile. Dynavax was forced to go back to the drawing board. What's the risk of history repeating itself? Fortunately, Dynavax is in much better shape this time around. Heplisav-B clearly beats the existing market leader, GlaxoSmithKline's Engerix-B, in terms of effectiveness: Dynavax's vaccine achieved peak seroprotection rates of 95.7% versus only 79.5% for Glaxo's vaccine. But effectiveness wasn't the issue three years ago and likely won't be now. Dynavax's challenge is to convince the FDA that Heplisav-B is safe.The safety results from the latest study showed that 22 patients taking Heplisav-B experienced an adverse event of special interest (AESI), whereas 11 patients taking Engerix-B experienced AESIs. That might sound bad at first, but twice as many patients in the study were given Heplisav-B as were given Glaxo's vaccine, so the two vaccines broke even in that regard. Further, an independentpanel of experts from theMayo Clinic concluded that none of the AESIs reported were due to vaccination. Over 10,000 patients have now participated in clinical trials of the vaccine, and Heplisav-B appears to have a similar safety profile to Engerix-B.Anything can happen behind closed doors when the FDA makes its decision, but I think Dynavax's odds appear pretty good this time. Commercialization riskEven if Heplisav-B secures regulatory approval, there's still another hurdle to jump: Dynavax must launch the vaccine successfully. The company will need a lot of money to bring Heplisav-B to market. As of the end of 2015, Dynavax had$196.1 millionin cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities on hand. Considering that losses last year totaled nearly $107 million, more money must be raised to pull off a successful launch. There probably won't be any problems raising additional cash. However, how Dynavax chooses to generate the additional money could present a risk for shareholders. Another public offering of stock could dilute existing shares, causing Dynavax's share price to drop. Dynavax should have a good marketing message, assuming the FDA approves Heplisav-B. Not only does the vaccine seem more effective than GlaxoSmithKline's Engerix-B, but only two doses of Heplisav-B given one month apart are required for protection against hepatitis B. Engerix-B requires three doses over a six-month period. To be successful, though, Dynavax has to meet sales expectations. Some think Heplisav-B could reach peak annual sales of $775 million. It's possible that Dynavax gains regulatory approval, effectively rolls out the hep-B vaccine, and achieves commercial success -- but still doesn't generate enough revenue to be viewed as a winner. Beyond HeplisavWhile Dynavax's primary risks relate to Heplisav-B, the company does have other products in the pipeline. All of these drugs are in early-stage clinical studies, so each of them faces considerable risks. SD-101 is a cancer immunotherapy in phase 1/2 testing.DV1179 is a toll-like receptor inhibitor in phase 1 that targets treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Not only do these candidates face the normal clinical risks, but there's also the possibility that Dynavax won't be able to spare the cash to keep advancing the drugs, given the financial drain of a product launch. That risk doesn't apply to the company's other product in clinical testing, though. Dynavax announced in January that its partner, AstraZeneca , would conduct phase 2 testing of asthma drugAZD1419. Dynavax originally planned to handle this study, though AstraZeneca had already agreed to fundit. The AstraZeneca partnership could also help Dynavax address some of its financial needs. Their original deal provided for milestone payments when the phase 2 study is initiated. Risk ratingSo what is Dynavax's overall risk level? I'd say on a 10-point scale, the biotech's risk rating is a six. That's actually not bad for a company with no products yet on the market. My hunch is that the second time will prove the charm for Heplisav-B. I'm not so sure if Heplisav-B's sales will ultimately reach some estimates, but I do think the vaccine will be well received. While Dynavax shareholders have definitely experienced a roller-coaster ride, my view is that the risk of going off the tracks will diminish as time goes by. The article How Risky Is Dynavax Technologies Stock? originally appeared on Fool.com. Keith Speights 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. The Obama administration is racing to make final a flurry of regulations affecting broad swaths of the economy, further riling U.S. businesses in an election season that has already been tough on corporate interests. Planned moves -- across labor, health, finance and the environment -- range from overtime pay for white-collar workers to more obscure matters such as requiring food makers to disclose added sugar on cartons of flavored milk. The expected burst of regulation follows an intense few weeks in which the administration has targeted corporate tax inversions, imposed new rules on brokers and advanced restrictions on company relations with union organizers. The moves have drawn sharp reactions from business groups. After the tax rules, a top U.S. Chamber of Commerce official lamented "politicians bullying America's job creators." The head of the Business Roundtable, which represents big-company CEOs, criticized "unilateral action" by the administration. The rush reflects President Barack Obama's aim to use his final months in office to cement a progressive domestic-policy legacy using executive powers despite fierce opposition from a Republican-controlled Congress. Business uncertainty from Washington may not change anytime soon. Presidential front-runners in both parties have shown greater hostility toward business in some ways, with Democrats promising stiffer regulation and Republicans calling for new tariffs or an end to subsidies. In his first seven years, Mr. Obama issued 392 regulations deemed "major, " meaning each carries an expected economic effect exceeding $100 million annually. Forty-seven more sat on the drawing board for this year. The tally issued already tops the totals during the eight-year tenures of George W. Bush, at 358, and Bill Clinton, at 361, according to an analysis by George Washington University's Regulatory Studies Center. Raw tallies can be imprecise because they obscure particularly consequential regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency's clean power plant rules issued last year, for example, would require a 32% cut in power plant carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels. Such a bid to address climate change aims to reshape how energy is produced in America. In February, the Supreme Court granted a temporary order blocking the regulation until courts resolve legal challenges. Although Mr. Obama has until his term ends in January to make regulations final, a deadline looms this spring. Congress can vote to stop any regulation within 60 legislative days of its completion. The president can veto such resolutions. If Republicans win the White House and maintain control of Congress, any rule issued by Mr. Obama within 60 legislative days of the end of his term could be overturned. That is because a Democratic president wouldn't be there to veto a congressional vote to block the regulation. To issue regulations and still leave 60 legislative days before Mr. Obama's term ends, he has to issue them by mid-May. Executive orders aren't subject to such a review, though Congress could pass laws to constrain or undo them. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama said the Treasury's latest action to deter corporate inversions stemmed from the failure of Congress to overhaul international tax laws. "My hope is that they start getting serious about it," he said. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton promises to defend Mr. Obama's executive actions and go even further on inversions. "This is not only about fairness. This is about patriotism," she said in December when she promised to stop inversions along the same lines as this week's actions. GOP candidates pledge to use the same powers to undo Mr. Obama's agenda, blaming regulations in part for an economic expansion that has been slow to lift incomes. At the same time, Republican front-runner Donald Trump has repeatedly castigated Washington for failing to stem the tide of corporate inversions and other candidates pledge to roll back corporate welfare. Some regulatory expansion stems from legislation. The health-care and financial regulatory laws passed in 2010 instructed regulators to fill in specifics later. The Affordable Care Act is responsible for around one in four major regulations issued in the Obama administration, according to the George Washington University tally. That count doesn't include many others, such as those created by the Dodd-Frank Act, because they are enforced mainly by agencies outside the executive branch, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For workers, the administration has proposed doubling the salary threshold that generally determines which workers are eligible for overtime pay -- raising it from its current level of $23,660, last updated in 2004, to $50,440. Hourly workers who earn salaries below the threshold would become eligible for overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week. Ed Brady, who runs a small home-building company in Bloomington, Ill., said he understands the need to raise the threshold but said the proposal would raise it too much at once. The increase would require him to put his salaried white-collar employees on an hourly schedule. For his construction superintendent, who earns $36,000 a year before production-related bonuses, "I'm not sure he would be happy with that, or that I'd be able to keep him," he said. The Food and Drug Administration is preparing rules to update nutrition labeling on packaged foods and beverages to disclose added sugar. The labels would set the recommended intake of added sugar at no more than 10% of calorie intake. All the rules face questions of how they will fare after Mr. Obama leaves. A court challenge offers opponents the best shot at directly stopping them, say analysts, but that takes time. Congress could curtail some through spending bills. Despite GOP candidates' frequent promises to repeal regulations, advisers to presidents say doing so may take time due to public comment and review. "President Cruz or President Trump cannot walk into the Oval Office and say, 'I'm getting rid of this regulation, that regulation,' and expect that it will be done tomorrow, next week or even next month," said Sally Katzen, regulatory chief during President Clinton's second term. Presidents also discover they don't want to burn political capital repealing consumer or environmental protections. After Mr. Bush took office, his team reviewed regulations Mr. Clinton had enacted just before leaving. "We didn't agree with a lot of them," said John Graham, regulatory czar for Mr. Bush. But "refighting all those battles" wasn't worth it. Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com Image source: iStock/Thinkstock. The first quarter for most banks ended on March 31, and next week we'll learn how they performed through the first three months of the year. This includes all four of the nation's biggest banks: JPMorgan Chase , Bank of America , Wells Fargo , and Citigroup . Bank 1Q16 Earnings Date JPMorgan Chase April 13 Bank of America April 14 Wells Fargo April 14 Citigroup April 15 Data source: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup. JPMorgan Chase is scheduled to lead the way on April 13. This is appropriate not only because the New York City-based bank is the biggest in the nation. It's also appropriate because JPMorgan's results should give a good overview of what's to come at the three other big banks -- as well as the stand-alone investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The predictive value of JPMorgan Chase's results follows from the fact that its operations span consumer banking to commercial banking to investment banking. It's a true universal bank. Consequently, we'll get an early look at whether or not it as well as Citigroup were right to predict double-digit declines in trading revenue -- which, it's worth noting, will also impact Bank of America's results, as well as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley's. We'll also get a glimpse into the likely impact of higher defaults in the energy industry, which continues to suffer from low oil prices. JPMorgan Chase announced recently, for instance, that it added $500 million to its loan loss reserves specifically because of concerns about oil and gas borrowers. This issue isn't unique to JPMorgan Chase, thus it will be telling to see how the bank navigates it. Bank 1Q15 EPS 1Q16 EPS-Estimated Change JPMorgan Chase $1.45 $1.26 (13%) Bank of America $0.27 $0.24 (11%) Wells Fargo $1.04 $0.98 (6%) Citigroup $1.51 $1.10 (27%) Data source: Yahoo! Finance. Bank of America and Wells Fargo are scheduled to report the following day, on April 14. Analysts expect both banks to have earned less in the first quarter of 2016 than they did in the year-ago period. Wells Fargo's earnings per share have been forecast to fall from $1.04 in the first quarter of last year down to $0.98 in the first quarter of this year, according to Yahoo! Finance. And earnings per share at Bank of America are expected to drop by 11%, from $0.27 down to $0.24, for the first three months of the year. The biggest wild card is Citigroup. Not only has the nation's fourth biggest bank by assets already disclosed that revenues from trading and investment banking will drop by double-digit percentages compared to the first quarter of 2015, but it's also said that it will take a $400 million restructuring charge. The latter is tied to its ongoing efforts to streamline its operations and focus them around global consumer banking and its institutional clients. For Citigroup in particular, then, an already disappointing quarter seems to be turning into a miserable one. This helps explain why analysts believe that its quarterly earnings per share will drop from $1.51 in the first quarter of 2015 down to only $1.10 in the first quarter of this year. In sum, lest there be any doubt, banks face challenges on a number of fronts right now, all of which are weighing on earnings. But for savvy investors who aren't dissuaded by the heightened volatility of bank stocks, any drop in the share prices of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or Citigroup could very well present an attractive opportunity to buy. The article What to Expect When JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup Report Earnings originally appeared on Fool.com. John Maxfield owns shares of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool has the following options: short May 2016 $52 puts on Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool recommends Bank of America. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. A strong fourth quarter where the company met its stated growth goals has causedNordstrom stock to move steadily higher since it reported earnings on Feb. 18. What: Sometimes simply doing what it says it will do can bring a company the market's confidence. In this case, Nordstrom reportedfourth-quarter net sales growth of 5.2% and same-store sales growth of 1%, both of which were in line with its projections. The retailer also reported a full-year net sales increase of 7.5%, along with a comparable stores sales increase of 2.7%, in line with the company's outlook of 2.5% to 3%. That was enough to send its shares on a steady climb that continued throughout March. Nordstrom shares closed on Feb. 29 at $51.32 but finished March at $57.21, an 11.5% jump,according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Source: YCharts.com So what:Nordstrom had set multiple goals heading into the year and it made good progress on them. This included gaining market share in both its full-price and off-price businesses, grown itsNordstromrack.com/HauteLook brands by approximately 50%, and opening a thirdfulfillment center inElizabethtown, Pennsylvania, located within two-day delivery of approximately half the population in the United States. The company also opened its first international flagship store inVancouver, B.C., and returned$2.4 billionto shareholders through share repurchase and dividends. Now what: The high-end retail chain has changed its strategies to better match the market. Going forward it has plans to continue to reduce operating expenses and capital expenditures. But it will not be sitting still, as the company plans to open a number of new stores this year. These includethree new full-line stores, 20 newNordstrom Rackstores, one full-line store relocation, and twoNordstrom Rackstore relocations. Because of these moves the company expects full-year 2016 net sales to increase by 3.5% to 5.5%, while it has more modest goals of 0%-2% same-store sales gains. All things considered, the past year showed that the company could adapt its model to savvier shoppers, heavier online competition, and increasing pressure from rival retailers. The article Why Did Nordstrom Inc. Shares Jump 11.5% in March? originally appeared on Fool.com. Daniel Kline has no position in any stocks mentioned. Nordstrom is generally out of his price range when it comes to clothes. The Motley Fool recommends Nordstrom. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Image Source: Vale What: Vale S.A.'s shares moved higher in convincing fashion last month, ending March with an advance of just over 43%. Although rising iron ore prices were a part of the advance, there's another issue that may have had a bigger impact. So what: Iron ore prices have strengthened of late, and that's been a good thing for Vale's business, which is heavily weighted toward the metal. But, most of the gain in March came in the first few days of the month. In fact, at one point last month the stock was up 55%. So strengthening iron ore prices were in the mix, but there was something else that may have had even more of an impact. That something else was the Samarco mine disaster. Only it was good news this time around, relatively speaking. As a refresher, late in 2015 the Samarco mine, a 50/50 joint venture between Vale and BHP Billiton , experienced a waste containment dam failure. Waste material from the dam washed through nearby towns, destroyed surrounding lands, and killed several people. It was, without a doubt, a horrible event. Although Vale and BHP reacted swiftly and with appropriate concern, Samarco opened the pair up to huge potential liabilities. Brazil, Vale's home country, was quick to say that the co-owners would be liable for clean up costs. This couldn't have come at a worse time for Vale, which had already been facing the pain of low iron ore prices. The shares, understandably, fell on the news. In early March, however, there was some clarity on just how bad Samarco would be. Vale, BHP, and Brazil agreed on clean up costs of around $5 billion spread over a 15-year period. That isn't likely to be the last of the costs the pair faces, but it at least puts a number on a big piece of the pain. And with that out of the way, Vale rallied strongly. BHP rallied, too, but not nearly as much as Vale because BHP is in a stronger financial position. Now what: The Samarco situation isn't over yet by a long shot, but, with the Brazilian deal, it should be easier for investors to look past the Samarco issue and focus more on the iron ore market. That's going to be the real driving force for Vale over the longer term. In March that was a positive, so everything was going right for Vale last month. But there's still a lot of risk at this miner, which continues to bring on new iron ore production despite the global supply/demand imbalance that's hampered iron ore prices. So, even though it is important over the near term, don't think Samarco is the only issue investors need to think about here. The article Why Vale S.A. Stock Jumped 43.2% in March 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. Maria Bartiromo joined FOX Business Network (FBN) as Global Markets Editor in January 2014. She is the anchor of Mornings with Maria on FBN (6-9 AM/ET), which is the number one pre-market business news program in cable, and anchors Sunday Morning Futures (10 AM/ET) on FOX News Channel (FNC), which routinely ranks as the highest rated show on Sundays in cable news. In April 2017, Bartiromo was also named the anchor for FBNs weekly primetime investing program Maria Bartiromos Wall Street (Fridays at 7 PM/ET). During her tenure with FBN, Bartiromo has interviewed some of the most prominent leaders in business and economic policy including including former President Donald Trump, Hong Kong entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, WalMart CEO Doug McMillon, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, Bridgewater Associates Founder Ray Dalio, Salesforce Founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Microsoft Founder Bill Gates and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, among others. Recently, she debuted an hour-long investigative documentary highlighting the future of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry and its future impact on business where she traveled across the country, gaining exclusive access to top business titans utilizing AI to break barriers across several vital industries including Ford CEO James Hackett, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman and more. Additionally, Bartiromo has interviewed various celebrity entrepreneurs, including former professional New York Yankee shortstop Alex Rodriguez. Recently, she has interviewed former Senate Majoirity Leader Harry Reid and former Senior Adviser to President Obama, Valerie Jarrett. She has also led the networks coverage of leading industry conferences including the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and the Annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. In November 2015, Bartiromo, along with FBNs Neil Cavuto, moderated the networks inaugural Republican presidential primary debate. According to Nielsen data, the debate delivered 13.5 million total viewers and 3.7 million in the key 25-54 demo, making it the highest-rated program in network history. In January 2016, both Bartiromo and Cavuto reprised their role as debate moderators, delivering 11 million total viewers with 3 million in the key 25-54 demo, making it the second highest-rated program in network history according to Nielsen Media Research. Bartiromo has covered business and the economy for more than 25 years and was one of the building blocks of business cable network CNBC. During her 20-year tenure as the face of CNBC, she launched the networks morning program, Squawk Box; anchored The Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo; and was the anchor and managing editor of the nationally syndicated On the Money with Maria Bartiromo, formerly The Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo. Bartiromo has been a pioneer in financial news television. In 1995, she became the first journalist to report live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on a daily basis. She joined CNBC in 1993 after five years as a producer, writer and assignment editor with CNN Business News, where she wrote and produced some of CNN's top business programs. She has received numerous prestigious awards, including two Emmys and a Gracie Award. Her first Emmy was for her 2008 News and Documentary coverage of the 2007-2008 financial collapse and her "Bailout Talks Collapse" coverage was broadcast on NBC Nightly News. She later won a second Emmy for her 2009 documentary, "Inside the Mind of Google," which aired globally on CNBC. Bartiromo won a Gracie Award for "Greenspan: Power, Money & the American Dream," also broadcast globally on CNBC. In 2009, the Financial Times named her one of the "50 Faces That Shaped the Decade," and she was the first female journalist to be inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame Class of 2011. In 2016 she was inducted by the Library of American Broadcasting as one of its Giants of Broadcasting & Electronic Arts. Bartiromo is the author of several books, including The Weekend That Changed Wall Street, published by Portfolio / Penguin, and The 10 Laws of Enduring Success, published by Random House; both were released in 2010. Bartiromo has written weekly columns for Business Week and Milano Finanza magazines; as well as monthly columns for USA Today, and Individual Investor, Ticker and Readers Digest magazines. She has also been published in the Financial Times, Newsweek, Town and Country, Registered Rep and the New York Post. Bartiromo is a member of the Board of Trustees of New York University, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Board of Directors of The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF). She graduated from New York University, where she studied journalism and economics. She also served as an adjunct professor at NYU Stern School of Business for the fall semesters of 2010 through 2013. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde weighs in on a range of topics from the global economy, the U.S. job market, the Syrian refugee crisis and Britains potential exit from the European Union. The trends are a little bit on the downside and what is most concerning is that we see risks likely to high on the horizon and bigger. And those risks are the Chinese slowdown in growth, the low commodity prices for longer and the financial tightening we are seeing as a result of monetary policies across the globe producing this effect both on exchange rates and on monetary policies, Lagarde told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo about the state of the global economy. Lagarde weighed in specifically on the state of the U.S. economy. We believe that having 50 million Americans living in poverty, 40% of whom actually have a job is not particularly satisfactory. And with growth being, not low, but not particularly high in the U.S. You know north of 2% is okay but it is not great, said Lagarde. Lagarde then discussed how raising the minimum wage could potentially boost U.S. economic growth. And with the job market where it is we believe that its time to actually look at those minimum wage issues with a view to increasing growth, with a view to producing a demand effect in the short term and hopefully supporting the economy, Lagarde said. With the influx of Syrian refugees to Europe, Lagarde discussed the potential economic implications and why it could be an economic benefit if handled correctly. Difficult to say because its a bit early on to actually measure the economic impacts of these million plus refugees coming into Europe, predominantly in Germany. But our study shows that if there is good integration, meaning language training, skills retraining eventually, housing support facility to enter the job market, the benefits can be quite significant. We figure that it would be a plus 0.2% of the whole of the Euro area and plus 0.5% for Germany alone, But despite the potential long-term economic benefits, Lagarde pointed to the short-term humanitarian crisis that needs to be addressed. Its first and foremost a massive humanitarian challenge that the Europeans are facing at the moment which needs to be addressed everywhere, Lagarde said. Lagarde then weighed in on the potential implications if Britain leaves the European Union. Its hard to say for me now, because we are currently completing the study of that particular project. But its very likely to be a net negative and a big concern because its uncertainty, it opens the door to what will be the next regime in place for trade between the U.K. and the rest of the European Union. What will happen to the financial center of London if it works in isolation relative to the continent? Those are unanswered questions which open big uncertainties, said Lagarde. The Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons is warning residents about traveling overseas for cheaper surgical options after one man died just days after undergoing multiple procedures. Leigh Aiple, who spent thousands on back-to-back procedures in Malaysia, had experienced chest pain, leg swelling and open wounds upon returning home, News.com.au reported. When he came home, there were gaping holes, there was stitching everywhere, Grace Muscat, Aiples mother, told news.com.au. Aiple, 31, had arranged to undergo a tummy tuck, liposuction, an upper eye lift, a chin tuck, lip filler, thigh lift and chest sculpting in Malaysia in 2014 through Gorgeous Getaways, a New Zealand-based medical travel agency. The procedures were performed at Beverly Wilshire Medical Centre in Kuala Lumpur. While he had complained of complications before leaving Malaysia, he was allowed to fly home, news.com.au reported. Aiples mother called for an ambulance after he complained of chest pain, but he was pronounced dead an hour later. Victorias coroner found that Aiple had died of pulmonary thromboembolism associated with deep vein thrombosis, and air travel had increased the risk, news.com.au reported. Is anything worth risking your life for? Id say no, Hugh Bartholomeusz, president of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons, told news.com.au. Bartholomeusz also asked Australians lured by the idea of a cheap deal to weigh the risks of recovering away from home in a foreign country, and to consider the tax strain they put on others after returning home with complications. Often these people cant afford to have treatment in the private system after paying for previous surgery and are then seen in the public system on an [as-needed] basis, he told news.com.au. Despite U.S. guidelines recommending against prostate cancer screening in elderly men, many specialists and older physicians still do these tests, a recent study suggests. In 2008, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a government-backed panel of independent physicians, recommended against routine prostate cancer tests for men at least 75 years old or with a limited life expectancy. They cited concerns that widespread screening often caught harmless tumors that didn't need treatment and led to unnecessary procedures with side effects like impotence and incontinence. By 2011, the year the task force expanded its recommendation against routine screening to cover men of all ages, doctors in the Veterans Affairs health care system were already testing fewer elderly men than they did under the pre-2008 guidelines, according to the current study's authors. But some types of doctors cut back on screening more than others as the guidelines shifted, the researchers found. Among the men with limited life expectancy still being tested in 2011, urologists screened 82 percent of them and doctors who were themselves over age 55 evaluated 41 percent of them. Geriatricians tested just 22 percent of these men. "The training a type of provider receives may influence whether older men get PSA screening," said lead study author Dr. Victoria Tang, a researcher at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco. Geriatricians and other providers whose training emphasizes evaluating the risks and benefits of screening in the contexts of life expectancy may be less likely to do unnecessary prostate cancer tests, Tang added by email. To assess how characteristics of doctors influence which patients get screening, Tang and colleagues focused on a test for a substance in the blood called prostate-specific antigen (PSA). The PSA test can pick up early signs of cancer, but it can't reliably distinguish between fast-growing malignancies that need treatment and tumors that are growing too slowly to require treatment. Researchers examined data on more than 826,000 veterans aged 65 years and older who had lab tests at the VA in 2011. This group included almost 204,000 men with limited life expectancy, meaning they had medical issues that made them likely to die within the next decade. Overall, 56 percent of the veterans got PSA tests, including 39 percent of the men with limited life expectancy, Tang's team reports in JAMA Internal Medicine. Screening rates ranged from 27 percent with physician trainees - who are typically younger and recently out of medical school - to 42 percent with staff doctors. Physicians aged 35 and under tested 29 percent of men. Female physicians over age 55 did fewer tests than older male doctors, with screening rates of 38 percent and 43 percent, respectively. These screening rates don't include men with a history of prostate cancer or symptoms of the disease such as unexplained weight loss or back pain or difficulty urinating. Recommendations against routine screening don't apply to these patients because testing them is medically necessary. One limitation of the study is that VA patients may be sicker than the general population, the authors note. It's also likely that data from 2011 doesn't reflect changes in screening guidelines that came out late that year. "The concept of more thoughtful screening is gaining wide clinical adoption amongst all specialists," said Dr. Alexander Kutikov, a urologic oncology specialist at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia who wasn't involved in the study. "Potential downsides of screening are now better appreciated and accepted by both general practitioners and urologists alike, so I have little doubt that more contemporary data would look different," Kutikov added by email. Disagreement among doctors about who should and shouldn't get the PSA test still contributes to a variation in practice patterns, said Dr. Quoc-Dien Trinh, a urologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston who wasn't involved in the study. But this shouldn't happen with elderly men, Trinh added by email. "What is clear is that men with limited life expectancy do not benefit from PSA screening," Trinh said. "They are much more likely to die with prostate cancer rather than from prostate cancer." If anyone has doubts that the United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority reads its complaint mail, this should put that to rest. Per Fashionista, a lone detractor submitted a grievance to the British ad watchdog about a Gucci ad campaign, and now it's banned in the UKbecause of two "unhealthily thin" models. The brand's already expired promotion of its Cruise 2016 collection was featured in the British Times, and models Madison Stubbington and Avery Blanchard apparently took the complainant's breath away with their slim frames, spurring a challenge against the ad for being "irresponsible" and a ban on it appearing in its "current form" anywhere in the UK, per the ASA ruling. Gucci's rebuttal, via Cosmopolitan, says the ad was geared toward an "older, sophisticated audience" and that thinness is a "subjective issue." Gucci lists reasons why the models weren't portrayed as too skinnytheir "bones" weren't on display, for example, nor was heavy makeup used to make their faces look too thin. "The visual parts of their bodies appeared toned and slim," the argument reads. But the ASA didn't buy that, noting after a review that Stubbington's portrayal was OK, but Blanchard's wasn't. "Her torso and arms were quite slender and appeared to be out of proportion with her head and lower body," the ruling says, adding that her pose accentuated her long torso and skinny waist and that "her somber facial expression and dark make up, particularly around her eyes, made her face look gaunt." Cosmo points out issues with the ASA's ruling: "Even if intended to combat problematic portrayals of the female form, it's worth noting this is a pretty body-shaming statement in itself." (Models in France now need a doctor's note OKing their BMI.) This article originally appeared on Newser: UK Bans Ad Over Too-Skinny Model More From Newser In his now infamous April Fools Day interview with the New York Daily News editorial board, Bernie Sanders broke new ground in US presidential politics. Candidates in New York usually laud Israel as Americas friend and ally. Not Bernie. Sanders asserted that in the 2014 Gaza war, Israel indiscriminately slaughtered 10,000 Palestinian civilians. He went on to demand that Israel withdraw and expel roughly fifteen percent of its population from territories it has controlled for almost fifty years. Sanders charge of mass murder elicited a public outcry. Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, called it a blood libel. The Anti-Defamation League demanded an apology. In fact, the number and circumstance of Palestinian civilians killed in the 2014 Gaza War is a matter of dispute. Israel puts it at 932 (and says they were unintended victims caused by the Palestinian tactic of placing its launching sites among civilians). The notoriously anti-Israel Human Rights Council of the United Nationsciting Hamas statisticsput the number of civilian deaths at 1,462. Nobody but Sanders said it was 10,000. It took the candidate a few days to grudgingly admit that his number was false. The question is why did he give such an inflated and easily checkable casualty figure--seven times higher than Hamas own estimatein the first place? It is possible that Sanders, at 74, has a declining memory for facts. It is more likely that helike many other Jewish progressivesdisapproves of Israel so strongly that even the most egregious slander against the Jewish State seems to him to be obviously true. Senator Sanders unique solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse was equally jarring. The Daily News: You've called not just for a halting construction of so-called settlements on the West Bank, but you've also called for pulling back settlements, just as Israel did in Gaza. Describe the pullback you have in mind. Sanders responded with a cloud of cliches about peace and security for all. But he didnt correct the Daily News premise that he was calling for a pullback just as Israel did in Gaza. That reference is to an Israeli government decision, carried out in the summer of 2005, to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza. Troops were sent to 8500 Jewish settlers from Gaza and raze their villages. That action, which Israel took for its own strategic reasons, proved to be a serious military mistake. The self-governing Hamas mini-state that emerged has become a base of chronic terrorism and recurrent missile attacks on Israel like the one that precipitated the 2014 war. The Daily News asked how far Sanders wanted the Israeli withdrawal to go this time. The answer was: All the way. Sanders: I think if the [Israeli] expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is appropriate. Daily News: And who makes the call about illegality, in your mind? Sanders: Well, I think that's based on previous treaties and ideas. I happen to think that those expansions were illegal. It is unclear what treaties and ideas Senator Sanders happens to think should lead to an Israeli withdrawal. The U.N. and the Obama administration, view Israels control of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which date back to the Six Day War, as illegal. The government of Israel does not. This is a matter of opinion and Senator Sanders is entitled to his. But his demand that the Gaza model be applied to East Jerusalem and the West Bank ignores reality. Approximately 800,000 Israelis live in these areas. No conceivable Israeli government could even contemplate sending in the army to expel them at gunpoint, or selling the public on a unilateral withdrawal. The army would rebel. And there would be a civil war that would inevitably affect the Palestinians as well. Bernie Sanders own version of Syria. Thats why not even the Palestinian Authority is demanding a reprise of Gaza. The Daily News asked Senator Sanders what would happen if Israel happened to decline his modest plan. His answer came in the form of a threat. Israel is an independent nation, he said, it can do as it sees fit. But if it wants a positive relationship with the United States during the Sanders administration, it had better do what it is told. Later, a Sanders spokesman assured the press that Bernie is being misunderstood. Bernie hostile to Israel? Bernie loves Israel. Hey, he even lived on a kibbutz once for a few months. Hes got a cousin there. Hes the first Jewish candidate for president, for Petes sake! Well, of course he is. Only a Jewish candidate would have this kind of chutzpah. Programming Alert: Watch "Fox News Reporting: Donald Trump: The Disrupter" anchored by Bret Baier on Saturday at 8 pm ET and Sunday at 8 and 10 pm ET. Theres no other way to say it: Americans are dissatisfied. Theyre dissatisfied with their own status, the status of the country, the economy and, especially, the government. This isnt an entirely new story. Storm clouds have been brewing for decades and the financial crisis in 2008 as well as two long wars brought this reality into stark focus. And while we see poll after poll that shows Congressional approval low at 10 percent and findings that suggest Americans believe politicians represent their own interests at the expense of voters, this doesnt even begin to get at the depth of anger Americans feel. Consider the most recent Americans Values Survey. The overall mood of the country is anxiety, nostalgia and mistrust. Majorities believe the country is in decline. Fifty-three percent say the nations culture and way of life has changed for the worse since the 1950s. Forty-nine percent say Americans best days are behind it, up from 38 percent in 2012. Seventy-five percent believe the country is still in recession and 80 percent say the economic system favors the wealthy. Its now widely accepted that Americans believe the American Dream is out of reach for them and, critically, their children. Gallup data shows that in 1983 fifty-four percent thought it was very likely or somewhat likely that kids would have a better life than their parents, which went up to 71 percent in 2001, down to 62 percent in 2010 and then to 44 percent in 2011. In more recent surveys show that 76 percent say life wont be better for the next generation. Against this backdrop, many politicians on both sides of the aisle have said they understand how dire the situation is and that they can fix it. But only one has really made voters believe it: Donald Trump His campaign is built on probably the most resonant campaign slogan in recent history, Make American Great Again, and Trump has, like no other candidate, made his supporters believe that theres finally a candidate out there who has Americans best interests at heart. This faith in his intention to keep us safe from terrorists, create jobs, jumpstart the economy and put Americans first over illegal immigrants has overridden concerns for the practicality of his policies or, to be frank, the lack of specificity of his policies. Trumps palpable belief in the greatness of America has galvanized voters to levels we havent seen since 1980. Turnout has been huge, to borrow one of Trumps favorite words. And although he looks to have hit a roadblock in his path to the nomination, theres no doubt that he will continue to dominate this election and that his mark on American politics will live on long past 2016. Indeed, I believe that establishment politicians will face strong challenges from outsiders in races at every level from here on out. Trump has shown that Americans are yearning for straight talking leaders. They want to hear that its okay for them to be scared, for them to think things that may not be considered PC, but that they think nonetheless. Our politicians cant represent our interests if were not allowed to voice them. And more so than any other candidate, Trump has given voters a voice. In the process, weve learned a lot about voter attitudes that we didnt know before and that theres an appetite for a truly disrupting force in American politics. In future elections, we may not have someone as outlandish as Trump. But his legacy will surely have paved the way for leaders who may not know anything about governing, but know a lot about how people are feeling. Donald Trump is a mess, Ted Cruz is slippery, John Kasich is no conservative; its no wonder that GOP grandees are whispering about drafting House Speaker Paul Ryan or some other popular Republican in the case of a contested convention. Would Republicans gather round Ryan or another newcomer if he were somehow crowned in Cleveland? For many in a heartbeat. Exit polls in Wisconsin showed one third or more of GOP voters would not support the Republican ticket if either Trump or Cruz become the candidate. More than half the partys members describe themselves as liberal or moderate on either social or fiscal issues; Ted Cruz is not their candidate. Donald Trumps appeal, meanwhile, may be waning after several goofs and a big loss in Wisconsin. For many who voted in early primaries, buyers remorse could set in. While many voters might wish for another choice, getting one is a long shot. First, party officials would have to change or do an end-run around Rule 40, which says that for his (or her) name to be placed in nomination, a candidate shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight (8) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination. Also, the candidate must present a certificate evidencing the affirmative written support of the required number of permanently seated delegates from each of the eight (8) or more states. A week before the party gathers to nominate its candidates in Cleveland, the Rules Committee will meet and the 112 men and women selected for that role, representing all U.S. states and territories, will set in place the terms of the 2016 convention. In 2012, Romneys supporters insisted on Rule 40, so as to preclude Rand Pauls participation. In 2008, the standard had been 5 states; before that, there was no such hurdle. The delegates meeting before this years convention could decide to abandon Rule 40, and thereby open the convention to all comers. However, with Trump and Cruz delegates controlling the selection of the Rules Committee, such a decision (which would disadvantage both of them) is unlikely. Circumventing Rule 40 is possible. The certificate attesting to the support of 8 states must be submitted only one hour before the nomination. In other words, if a states delegates become convinced that no candidate is capable of winning a majority, then after the first or second ballot, depending on the states own rules, those representatives could throw their support behind a candidate who has not run in the primaries. Some 5 percent of the delegates are unbound for the first ballot; for the second, some 59 percent are released and for the third, 80 percent are free to change their vote. An outside candidate could produce a certificate attesting that the delegates of eight states are on board, and could then be nominated. Messy, for sure, but navigable in case of the convention becomes deadlocked. After losing in Wisconsin, Donald Trump needs to win some 65-70 percent of the remaining bound delegates to arrive in Cleveland claiming victory higher than his average to date. This primary season has had more than its share of surprises, but odds are that Mr. Trump will fall short of the magic 1,237 number. As a result, he will try to attract enough delegates to take him over the top on the first ballot. Given the billionaires troublesome relationship with the party, and with Ted Cruz having aggressively courted delegates for many months, Trump is unlikely to succeed. He may try to strike a deal with John Kasich whose hundred-plus delegates could take Trump to victory, or even reach out to Marco Rubio, who continues to hold onto his 172 delegates and is allowed to do so since he has officially only suspended his campaign, as opposed to ending it. It is hard to imagine either one throwing their lot in with Trump, but this is the year to think the unthinkable. After all, Donald Trump desperately needs guidance on how our government works; if nominated, he would have to pick a running mate who could help him navigate the convoluted back alleys of Congress. Rubio or Kasich could explain his unlikely joining up as performing a national service. Still, it seems more likely that Kasich and Rubio might join forces with Cruz. Depending on what the Rules Committee decides neither name will probably be placed in nomination. Thus, their delegates will be up for grabs and could put Cruz over the top. If Trump comes close, but does not win, his supporters will cry foul, and likely threaten to sit out the race. Ditto Cruz. Exit polls in Wisconsin indicated that a solid majority (56 percent) think the nomination should go to the candidate who has won the most delegates even if he falls short of the 1,237 majority. It will be, for sure, a donnybrook. The only saving grace is that at the end of the day Republicans are highly motivated to defeat Hillary Clinton, who will surely be the Democratic nominee. Let us hope that when the smoke clears, that ambition alone can unify the GOP. That is, after all, the goal. There will not be a Kentucky Derby party at Dartmouth College this year because some students allege that one of the nations most prestigious horse races is racist. And fair warning before reading further you might want to make a batch of Mint Juleps. Youre going to need it. Click here to join Todds American Dispatch: a must-read for Conservatives! Back in 2015, a group of Black Lives Matter protestors targeted an exclusive Kentucky Derby party hosted by the ladies of Kappa Delta Epsilon calling the event overtly racist and recreating an Antebellum South atmosphere on the Ivy League campus. The protestors accused the party of being a bastion of racism, exclusion and oppression. They chanted, What is Derby? Its the face of genocide and What is Derby? Its the face of police brutality. I searched The New York Times archives and could find no evidence of police brutality at the Derby nor could I find any evidence of ethnic cleansings. I can only imagine the angst and soul searching among the fragile Ivy League snowflakes as they contemplated the grave offense they had caused to the perpetually-offended, hashtag protesters. To right the terrible injustice -- the sorority ladies met with members of the universitys Afro-American Society. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in what was most certainly a confab on privilege. Shortly thereafter, Kappa Delta Epsilon decided to change the Kentucky Derby theme because of its racial connotations. [It is] related to pre-war southern culture, KDE vice president Nikol Oydanich told The Dartmouth newspaper. [The] Derby was a party that had the power to upset a lot of our classmates. And by pre-war southern culture, I reckon the young lady was referring to the Civil War. Theres just one minor flaw in Kappa Delta Epsilons reasoning the first running of the Kentucky Derby was held in 1875 during Reconstruction. Thats right, racing fans. The Kentucky Derby did not commence until 10 years after the war had ended. And for what its worth, Kentucky was officially neutral during the War Between the States. Go ahead and take another swig of that Mint Julep. KDE president Allison Chou told The Dartmouth that the protests leading to the change were helpful an opportunity to reflect on what it stands for and the inconsistencies between Derby and the sororitys values. No maam. Its a horse race with a bunch of ladies wearing fancy hats. It would be akin to accusing Colonel Sanders of being a racist because he fries chicken. Or refusing to wear clothing made from cotton because of its significance in pre-war southern culture. So instead of a Derby party the ladies are hosting an alcohol-free Woodstock party because nothing screams tolerance and diversity like commemorating a bunch of tie-dyed, hippy-dippy liberals, doing Lord knows what in a field of debauchery. It sounds to me like somebodys been smoking the Colonels eleven herbs and spices. What a bunch of finger-lickin morons. The U.S. - Mexican border is like a 2,000-mile roller coaster that weaves through deserts, mountains and rivers. It crosses four states, 45 cities and dips deep into washes only to rise 10,000 feet in the Coronado National Forest. The soil is soft like a sponge near the Rio Grande and rock hard near the granite quarries of San Diego County. GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to build a 'big, beautiful wall' across the entire border. Is that advisable or even feasible? Fox News asked one group whose opinion actually matters: the men and women who patrol it each day on foot, horseback, ATV, helicopter and SUV -- the U.S. Border Patrol. "One person makes the stand, 'We need a wall, We need a wall'. Well, you never bothered asking the agents - what all do we need?" asked Art Del Cueto, a long time Tucson Border Patrol agent. "It is not just the wall. There are many things we need to perform our jobs effectively." After a conference call with agents from several sectors representing every state on the Southwest border, they seemed to zero in on certain conclusions: -- Whether you call it a wall, or a fence, agents say they work. -- A cinder block or rock wall, in the traditional sense, isn't necessarily the most effective or desirable choice. Seeing through a fence allows agents to anticipate and mobilize, prior to illegal immigrants actually climbing or cutting through the fence. --Barriers in some places must account for flash floods typical in the Southwest deserts, parts of California and near the Rio Grande River. A wall would have to allow water to pass through, or the sheer force of raging water could damage its integrity, not to mention the legal rights of both the U.S. and Mexico to seasonal rains. -- The current border fence incorporates more than a dozen engineering designs, depending on topography and geology. In places it is barbed wire, or a cyclone fence like you'd find in any suburban neighborhood. In others, 18-foot steel bollards filled with concrete sink six feet deep into a massive plate of cement. Older portions of the fence are World War II- era steel landing mats welded together. Old and rusty, illegal immigrants and coyotes use cutting torches like a hot knife to cut holes in the fence for drugs, people, even trucks to speed through. "The wall is just one deterrent," says Del Cueto. "We need the wall. But we also definitely need more boots on the ground. We need more equipment. It is not just one thing." Agents call the strategy defense in depth. What it means is a fence provides a primary barrier. It is backed up by ground sensors and cameras and radar mounted on tall poles that detect movement. That information is picked up in operation centers, which relay it to field agents who can then locate and arrest the perpetrators. "It is a layered approach," says Yuma Sector Chief Anthony Porvaznik. "The fence gives us time. The fence protects the agents. It lowers the risk and gives us time to respond to illegal activity. It slows people down. The cameras give a situational awareness so agents know what they're about to encounter before they do." In 2006, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act. It mandated 700 miles of 'double layer, reinforced fence.' But at roughly $6 million a mile, the Department of Homeland Security realized it would run out of money. So it built only 36 miles double fencing, almost entirely in Yuma. Today it is the single most secure area of the border. The agency, under a controversial amendment the following year, built 350 miles of single layer pedestrian fence and 299 miles of vehicle barrier. In places, the pedestrian fence is effective, but far from perfect. The vehicle barrier helps stop drug loads and vans full of illegal immigrants, but it doesn't stop individuals from walking over and getting in a waiting SUV. "What the fence does in the urban area is give us an opportunity to detect traffic and stop it before it assimilates into the local population, says Manny Padilla, the new sector chief in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. But in the rural areas, like the private ranches and massive public lands in Arizona, the border fence gives way to rusted steel i-beams and barbed wire. "All they have to do to get into the United States is simply crawl through this fence," says Arivaca Arizonan Rancher Jim Chilton. "Our border fence is four strands of barbed wire. Easily gone over, easily crawled under." In several areas on Chilton's 50,000 acre ranch, there is no fence at all. He installed trail cameras that show drug packers and illegal immigrants crossing his land miles past the border itself. He, like most ranchers, favors building the wall. But no matter how tall, even he admits it is only one component of a secure border. Without cameras to see, without high speed access roads and adequate manpower, a wall is no barrier at all to illegal immigrants who will go over it, cut through it or tunnel under it. Charles Krauthammer told viewers Thursday on Special Report with Bret Baier that Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is really extremely defensive when it comes to his support in New York. He doesnt even have a chance to talk about his issues in New York, Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor, added. Hes got to defend the New York values stuff, which was an enormous mistake. It didnt really help him in Iowa. He couldve done it without that phrase. And now how does he defend it? He cant. And I think because he is talking only about that, I think his numbers are going to stay very low here. Krauthammers comments come as the battleground for the 2016 presidential nomination has shifted to New York, Donald Trumps home state. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has said that he supports Trump. Youve got people who are really holding their noses in support [of Trump] but with Giuliani, you get the sense that he is sort of sincere in this and he is relatively unreserved. Look, [Giuliani] is a folk hero in New York. He was, at the time [of the September 11 terrorist attacks] a folk hero in the country. And I think thats going to help soften the image for Trump. A major Clinton Foundation donor company that has been granted millions in U.S. federal loans has been linked to a corruption probe in Pakistan, according to reports. The Abraaj Group, a Middle Eastern investment fund that contributed between $500,000 and $1 million to the Clinton Foundation, has not been charged in the case, but its name has surfaced in Pakistani media reports. Authorities in Sindh province have accused a prominent government official of providing illegal favors to K-Electric, a power company owned and managed by the Abraaj Group since 2009. Former Pakistani oil minister Dr. Asim Hussain was arrested last year amid allegations that he helped harbor terrorists in a string of hospitals he owned and doled out illegal contracts to companies, including K-Electric. Both Hussain and K-Electric have denied the allegations. The investigation has not impacted the U.S. governments ongoing partnership with the Abraaj Group, which dates back to at least 2012. That year, the Overseas Private Investment Corporationa federal agency that dispenses corporate loans under the guidance of the U.S. State Departmentselected the Abraaj Group to manage its $150 million Middle East investment fund. Two weeks later, the Abraaj Group co-sponsored the Clinton Global Initiatives annual meeting. Last October, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation again pledged up to $250 million to help fund the Abraaj Groups K-Electric operations. The announcement came less than a month after the Sindh Rangers, a Pakistani law enforcement agency, reportedly issued a 12-page report accusing Hussain of passing illegal favors to K-Electric. Click here for more from The Washington Free Beacon. Pennsylvania's governor on Thursday barred state contractors and grant recipients from discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity as he awaits action on stalled legislation that would ban such bias in employment, housing and public services. Gov. Tom Wolf signed the executive order, telling an audience of advocates in his Capitol offices that Pennsylvania needs to be seen as a welcoming place and calling it a "small step" until Republican lawmakers act. The Democrat cast the order and the legislation as a matter important to the state's fabric. "If we want a healthy economy, if we want a strong democracy, if we want a just society, we have to do this," Wolf said. Wolf's action comes amid a backlash over what Wolf has called a "discriminatory" bill signed by North Carolina's Republican governor. More than 20 states have anti-discrimination laws for the gay and transgender community, as do Pennsylvania's two-largest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Wolf administration officials say tens of thousands of future state contracts potentially worth tens of billions of dollars a year, including Medicaid reimbursements and highway construction, will need updated nondiscrimination clauses. The stalled legislation has the support of some of the state's biggest businesses, including The Hershey Co., as well as universities including Penn State. In recent days, a socially conservative group began an advertising campaign attacking the bills, which remain untouched in legislative committees. Senate State Government Committee Chairman Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, said this week he wants to vet the bill in his committee to make sure it does not violate anybody's religious liberties or freedom of conscience. The 2016 presidential candidates are still facing a major hurdle: Americans just don't seem to like them very much, according to new polling. A new Associated Press GfK poll shows seven in 10 people, including close to half of Republican voters, have an unfavorable view of GOP front-runner Donald Trump. The poll saw a consistent disdain for Trump across all demographics: young and old; conservatives, moderates and liberals; and whites, Hispanics and blacks. Despite Trump's attempts to portray himself as a unifier, 63 percent of those surveyed said they would not vote for Trump under any circumstances. The poll also underscores the trouble he may still face in the Republican race, which may be headed to a contested convention where party insiders would have their say about who represents the GOP in the fall campaign. "He's at risk of having the nomination denied to him because grassroots party activists fear he's so widely disliked that he can't possibly win," said Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President George W. Bush. Trump's not the only one with a popularity problem. Trumps main rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, also is viewed unfavorably by 59 percent of those surveyed. Fifty-five percent said that would definitely not vote for him. On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also received a high unfavorable rating, with 55 percent saying they view her negatively. Almost 5 in 10 people stated they would not vote for Clinton no matter who the other presidential nominees are. The Associated Press-GfK Poll was conducted March 31-April 4 by GfK Public Affairs & Corporate Communications. The poll is based on a sample of 1,076 adults, with a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points. FoxNews.coms Danny Jativa and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Florida could be a swing state this year in more ways than one. While the state plays a famously decisive role in presidential races, its voters are poised to be power-brokers in the 2016 battle for control of the Senate as the seat being left by ex-presidential candidate Marco Rubio becomes fiercely contested. The seat is one of several Democrats hope to flip in November in their quest to regain the majority. But first, theyll have to slog through what is becoming a raucous primary fight between the combative and controversial Rep. Alan Grayson, who is facing an ethics inquiry in D.C., and Rep. Patrick Murphy. And with Grayson picking up steam in the primary, Democratic leaders may now be worried that if he wins the nomination, it could hurt their chances of picking up the seat in the fall. None other than President Obama and Vice President Biden already have endorsed Murphy in the race as recent polling shows Murphy doing far better than Grayson in general election match-ups against Republicans. For that reason, some Republicans appear to be rooting for Grayson to pull it out. It would be great to have a Hillary Clinton and an Alan Grayson on the ticket. It would be a dream race to have as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Blaise Ingoglia, Florida GOP chairman, told FoxNews.com. Murphy is turning up the heat, though, as he tries to blunt Graysons primary momentum. The congressman called on Grayson to quit the House this week after the Office of Congressional Ethics issued a report saying there is substantial reason to believe Grayson violated the law and House rules with various activities, including apparently lending his name to a hedge fund and getting compensated by the fund, according to the report. The [ethics] committee has voted to keep the investigation of Congressman Alan Grayson going because he broke the law, Murphy said in a conference call. He broke the law to make money with an offshore hedge fund. Its that simple. Grayson responded that he did nothing wrong, while his campaign said Murphy is trying to gain an edge in polling by shifting the focus of the race. David Damron, Graysons communications director, said Murphy needs to stop wasting the time of voters and taxpayers with his political-smear campaign and start talking about the issues. He said: Rep. Grayson wants to expand Social Security and Medicare, and ensure that everyone can see a doctor and make a livable wage at $15 an hour. Thats what this race is about. The race itself evolved because Rubio was not allowed by Florida law to seek re-election while running for the Republican presidential nomination. Rubio has since suspended his presidential campaign, after failing to make up ground against candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, but still has to leave office. On the Republican side, the race is dominated by Rep. David Jolly, Rep. Ron DeSantis and Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, among other lower-polling candidates. But all the attention is on the Democratic side right now. At stake in this and other races is control of the Senate, which Republicans run with a 54-46 seat majority. According to Sabatos Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, Floridas is one of five toss-up seats this cycle. Kevin Cate, a Democratic strategist based in Tallahassee, said Murphy has the temperament needed to mount a successful general election campaign against the Republicans. But first, Murphy would have to get through the primary. Cate said many in the party see Grayson as someone with a Trump-like campaigning style, which has its plusses and minuses, including the risk of not demonstrating a demeanor consistent with the top of the Democratic ticket. Grayson knows how to draw media attention, whether it is good press or bad press, he said. Max Steele, communications director of the Florida Democratic Party, told FoxNews.com he is confident either of the current Democratic candidates would be formidable in a general election. Plus, he said with Trump or Cruz at the top of the Republican presidential ticket, hes confident a Democrat can win in the Florida Senate race. Ingoglia said even with all the ethical issues, Grayson is in a position to give Murphy a run for his money despite, or perhaps because of, his establishment support. People are very unhappy with handpicked candidates. Thats what Patrick Murphy is, a handpicked candidate by the Democratic establishment. Hes the flavor of the day, he said. Ingoglia, meanwhile, touted the diversity of the Republican field, saying any of the candidates running for the Republican nomination are capable of not only winning in the general election, but also serving as senator. On the Republican side, the latest Public Policy Polling survey released last month showed Jolly leading the field with 26 percent. DeSantis followed with 14 percent and Lopez-Cantera came in third with 11 percent. There is still time for the dynamics to change before the Aug. 30 primary, and 47 percent of Republicans surveyed said they currently have no preference for any candidate. On the Democratic side, Grayson led Murphy, 33-22 percent, with many still undecided. The poll of 464 likely GOP voters and 388 likely Democratic voters was taken Feb. 24-25. The GOP poll had a margin of error of 4.6 percentage points; the Democratic poll had a margin of error of 5 percentage points. Bernie Sanders announced Friday he will attend a Vatican City conference next week, touching off a long-distance dispute over whether the Democratic presidential candidate had elbowed his way into the summit. Bloomberg News quoted a senior Vatican official alleging the Vermont senator sought the invitation, accusing him of monumental discourtesy in doing so. But another senior Vatican source told Fox News that is not quite true. Sanders did receive a written invitation dated March 30 from Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences where Sanders will speak. There are varying reports, though, over who approached whom. Margaret Archer, president of PASS, told Bloomberg that Sanders made the first move, for the obvious reasons, while accusing him of going after the Catholic vote. But the Sanders campaign called the claim categorically untrue. Sorondo, speaking to Bloomberg, apparently did not say who initiated the contact the Vatican or Sanders. Yet later speaking with Reuters, Sorondo denied that Sanders had invited himself. Further, he told the Associated Press he extended the invitation to Sanders because he seems to have a "real interest" in studying the papal documents issued by the pope. He did not issue invitations to the other presidential candidates. "I don't see the other candidates quoting the pope in their campaign. I don't know if the other candidates are interested in the documents of the pope," he said. Regardless of who made the first move, the senior source who spoke with Fox News stressed that the invite did not come from Pope Francis himself. The source told Fox News the Vatican is eager to stay out of the presidential campaign -- especially with pro-life Catholics expressing unease on social media that the pro-choice Sanders is visiting. "Is that going to thrill us? No," the Vatican source told Fox News of Sanders' stance on abortion It was not clear yet whether Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary, would meet with the pope during his trip. Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said "if the opportunity arises he would be delighted to meet with the pope" but Sanders has not received an official invitation from the Catholic leader. "The moral imperative that (the pope) is bringing to this discussion is absolutely extraordinary and absolutely what the world needs. These are issues that I have been dealing with for years," Sanders said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. Attendees of the Vatican conference will include Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, along with Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, a member of the academy, and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to the United Nations on environmental and sustainability issues. The meeting will mark the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus, a high-level teaching document which advocated for economic and social justice and environmental sustainability. Sanders will be speaking at the conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, an advisory group comparable to a think tank that the pope has appointed to guide him on a wide range of public policy issues. The Rev. Thomas Reese, an analyst with the National Catholic Reporter and author of "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church," said it was unusual for a U.S. presidential candidate to be invited to participate in such an event in the middle of a campaign. European politicians and experts attend frequently, in part because they can more easily travel to Rome, he said. But Reese cautioned that the invitation should not be interpreted in any way as an endorsement from the pope. "Certainly the last thing Pope Francis wants to do is get involved in American presidential politics. He's made clear that he doesn't even want to interfere in Italian politics," Reese said. Fox News Ed Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday walked back his criticism that his primary opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is not qualified to be president. Sanders was asked at a town hall event hosted by the NBCs Today show about his Clinton comments. I respect Hillary Clinton. We were colleagues in the Senate and on her worst day, she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates," Sanders said. Sanders then said of course when asked if Clinton is qualified. He elaborated on ABCs The View, saying Clinton obviously has the experience to be president he was just challenging her judgment, as somebody who voted for the war in Iraq, among other decisions. The clarifications are a far cry from the Democratic presidential candidate's pointed comments earlier this week, on the heels of his Wisconsin primary victory. Sanders had made the claim to a crowd in Philadelphia, saying "I don't believe that she is qualified if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special-interest funds." Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said Sanders was responding to a Washington Post article headlined "Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president." The accusation prompted a heated back-and-forth between the campaigns, who are vying now for support ahead of the April 19 New York state primary. "Well, it's kind of a silly thing to say," Clinton responded with a laugh while speaking to reporters outside Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. "But I'm going to trust the voters of New York who know me and have voted for me three times -- twice for Senate and once in the presidential primary." On Friday, she said in Buffalo, N.Y., that shes been called a lot of things but unqualified is not one of them. She said Sanders now acknowledges he does not really believe his original accusation. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The shadow battle for Republican convention delegates turned to Colorado Saturday, where a days-long selection process culminated in Texas Sen. Ted Cruz once again having the edge. While Donald Trump still holds a wide delegate lead in the GOP presidential primary race, his Achilles heel has been a perceived weakness in his ground game. Seeking to capitalize on this, Cruz has outmaneuvered Trump lately in the behind-the-scenes battle for delegates in places that don't assign them through traditional primaries or caucuses. Enter states like North Dakota, and now Colorado. All 13 of the delegates in play on Saturday have been pledged to Cruz. This means that all of the delegates elected here today are committed to Cruz on the first ballot at the convention in Cleveland. Seven "alternate" delegates each pledged themselves to Cruz and rival Trump. Both North Dakota and Colorado eschewed traditional primary elections and instead held conventions -- where delegates not necessarily bound to any candidate are selected. Cruz saw this as an opportunity anyway to get allies elected to the slate, banking on their support in the event of an open convention. The candidate, after picking up more likely delegate allies than Trump in last weekend's North Dakota convention, has been on a roll in Colorado. Thirty-four delegates total are at stake in the Centennial State's convention process. In Colorado, delegates can pledge themselves to a candidate or run unbound. His team has been masterful in being able to use their influence and power to pull the delegates in, Jeanne Zaino, professor of political science and international studies at Iona College, told FoxNews.com LIVE. Trump has been trying to beef up his team's delegate expertise, recently hiring convention veteran Paul Manafort to organize and implement his convention push. While Trump is not scheduled to appear in Colorado, the campaign recently replaced their state director, and their new operative on the ground, Patrick Davis, told Breitbart News they are distributing Trump slates and "talking with convention delegates face to face [and] changing minds." But Cruz will appear in person, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich has dispatched former New Hampshire Sen. John E. Sununu. Weve seen very little sign of Donald Trump, and a lot more Kasich stickers than Donald Trump stickers, Andrew Boucher, a chief convention strategist for John Kasich, told FoxNews.com. Cruzs in-person appearance is part of a wider strategy to dominate the states nominating process. Colorado Republican operatives say that, just by winning the local gatherings, Cruz could lock down a majority of the 34 delegates up for grabs, even before Saturday's convention. "Cruz has the big upper hand here," Ryan Lynch, a Colorado-based Republican told The Associated Press. "They're the only ones really organized." Although the 34 delegates up for grabs may seem paltry compared with the 95 in New York and 172 in California -- both upcoming primary contests -- strategists point out that every delegate Cruz gets is one more step toward holding Trump under the necessary 1,237 delegates in the event of a contested convention. While Trump is leading in several upcoming states like New York and Pennsylvania, Cruz is pulling out all the stops with strategies to capture delegates in order to get to a contested convention, Ron Bonjean, an unaffiliated Republican strategist, told FoxNews.com. Every delegate that is picked off in places like Colorado is a win for Cruz and makes it harder for Trump to be the nominee. Kasichs team is also taking a long-view approach, planting the seeds with unbound delegates that the Ohio governor could be the best choice at the convention in Cleveland in July. We are actively reaching out them. We are planting the seeds, Boucher said. Its a long process. Trump to date has 743 delegates, while Cruz has 520 and Kasich has 143. Cruz was boosted by his Tuesday win in the Wisconsin primary, though Trump is favored to win the next bout in New York. FoxNews.com's Adam Shaw and Fox News' Serafin Gomez and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Former President Bill Clinton was involved in a heated exchange with Black Lives Matter protesters Thursday at a Hillary Clinton campaign event in Philadelphia, where he was forced to defend his record as president and his wifes past statements. For almost 15 minutes Clinton sparred with protesters who objected to the 1994 criminal justice reform bill he signed into law as president that increased prison sentences for a number of gang-related offenses. Black Lives Matter activists claim the bill disproportionately hurt African-Americans. A visibly agitated Clinton told the protesters that the bill helped crack down on gangs who were killing African-American children. "I talked to a lot of African-American groups. They thought black lives mattered. They said take this bill because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. We had 13-year-old kids planning their own funerals," Clinton said. One protester yelled that black youth are not super predators a reference to a statement Hillary Clinton made as first lady. The former president shot back. I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the streets to murder other African-American children, maybe you thought they were good citizens, Clinton said, his face turning increasingly red. She didnt. You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. Tell the truth. You are defending the people who cause young people to go out and take guns, Clinton yelled. He also addressed claims by the protesters that the 1996 welfare reform bill increased poverty among African-Americans. They say the welfare reform bill increased poverty then why did we have the largest drop in African American poverty in history when I was president? he asked rhetorically. Gun rights advocates in Vermont say Hillary Clintons comment about guns used in New York crimes is not only wrong, but a malicious lie. When Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told New York state lawmakers this week that criminals get their guns from Vermont, she may have forgotten to check her facts first. The knock against the Green Mountain State doesnt jibe with federal gun trace statistics, and is drawing harsh criticism from leading sportsmens groups. This is an out-and-out lie I cant state it any more clearly, said Chris Bradley, president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmens Clubs. Shes desperate to try to get to the left of Mr. Sanders, and she perceives hes weak on guns when in fact hes pretty consistent. Bradley said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is the authority on tracing guns to their state of origin, and that BAFTE statistics show Vermont is not a major source of guns to any other state. Bradley added that Clintons comments, however misguided, tarnish Vermonts image. Click for more from Watchdog.org Indiana Gov. Mike Pence's staff has been dealing with a rather unusual wave of protest calls to his office over the past week -- from women describing their periods in great detail. While the calls may be frustrating staff, it's all part of an organized effort to oppose a newly signed abortion law. The new policy bans abortions sought due to the race or gender of the fetus, or genetic abnormalities. The bill also requires that fetal remains be either cremated or buried in addition to other restrictions. Pence called the new law a comprehensive pro-life measure, but pro-choice activists say he is infringing on their rights, and any period could potentially be a miscarriage without their knowledge. Hence, women have been calling up the Republican governors office and informing staff about their menstrual cycles. They've posted the conversations on the Periods for Pence Facebook page, which has over 34,000 likes. "I would certainly hate for any of my fellow Hoosier women to be at risk of penalty if they do not 'properly dispose' of this or report it. Just to cover our bases, perhaps we should make sure to contact Governor Pence's office to report our periods," the anonymous founder of the page wrote. The calls range from highly detailed to tongue-in-cheek, to a little of both. According to the Facebook page, one caller reported to Pence's staff that "My flow seems abnormally heavy, but my cramps are much better ..." Them: "Good Morning, Governor Pence's office"Me: "Good Morning. I just wanted to inform the Governor that things... Posted by Periods for Pence on Thursday, 31 March 2016 Just got through to Governor Pence's office. (The operator must be on break.) Me: Hi, is this the operator, or the... Posted by Periods for Pence on Wednesday, 30 March 2016 Other calls are along these lines. "We are always willing to take calls from constituents who have questions, concerns or are looking for assistance," Pence spokeswoman Kara Brooks told The Associated Press. The office has received nearly 100 calls since the page was launched, and spokesman Matt Lloyd said most have come from out of state. Activists are also planning a rally outside the Indiana Statehouse Saturday to protest the measure. Annette Gross, a co-organizer of Saturday's rally, said though Pence signed the abortion measure into law, she is also frustrated with the 97 lawmakers who voted in favor of the bill. "I'm not that naive to think that 3,200 people is going to cause the governor to take back the bill, but he cannot hide in his ivory tower and pretend everything is OK because it's not," Gross said. "I don't know if it will change anything, but at least it gives people a voice." Pro-life groups have backed the bill, saying it will save lives. "The upcoming Planned Parenthood abortion rally is an ugly reminder of the hate directed at unborn children who are vulnerable for abortion because of their gender, race or potential disability," Sue Swayze, Indiana Right to Lifes vice president for public affairs, told The Associated Press in an email. The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood have said they intend to sue the state over the law, arguing it is unconstitutional. The Associated Press contributed to this report. One of the biggest black holes ever found sits in a cosmic backwater, like a towering skyscraper in a small town. Astronomers have spotted a supermassive black hole containing 17 billion times the mass of the sun only slightly smaller than the heftiest known black hole, which weighs in at a maximum of 21 billion solar masses at the center of the galaxy NGC 1600. That's a surprise, because NGC 1600, which lies 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, belongs to an average-size galaxy group, and the monster black holes discovered to date tend to be found in dense clusters of galaxies. So researchers may have to rethink their ideas about where gigantic black holes reside, and how many of them might populate the universe, study team members said. [The Strangest Black Holes in Space] "The black hole is much bigger than we expected for the size of the galaxy or where this galaxy lives, the environment," said study co-author Chung-Pei Ma, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. "That's the puzzling part or the intriguing part of the result," she told Space.com. "There may be more NGC 1600s out there lurking at more ordinary sites, like small towns in the U.S. rather than Manhattan."Ma is head of the MASSIVE Survey, a multitelescope effort that began in 2014 to identify and catalogue the most massive nearby galaxies and black holes. NGC 1600 first showed up in the survey with data from the McDonald Observatory in Texas. Although the initial observations weren't detailed enough to see the spectrum of light from the galaxy's center clearly, Ma and her colleagues could already tell that they were looking at something extraordinary: "It was a little bit like looking at a hurricane from very far away," she said. "We couldn't quite tell how big this hurricane was, this black hole was, but the hurricane was so big that we already started to feel the wind using this coarser data." Suspecting they had spotted a very large black hole, study team members next investigated the elliptical galaxy using the northern half of the Gemini Observatory, twin telescopes situated in Hawaii and Chile. Gemini allowed them to probe the black hole's "sphere of influence," Ma said the region where the black hole's mass held more sway than the overall galaxy's, where it was whipping the stars into action. They also scoped out the site with data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The stars "were going so fast that the only way they could be travelling at this speed is if you had a 17-billion-solar-mass black hole at the center," she said. Origins The largest supermassive black hole ever found contains up to 21 billion times the mass of the sun, and resides in a more expected location: the incredibly dense Coma Cluster, which includes more than 1,000 identified galaxies. (For comparison, the black hole lurking at the center of the Milky Way totals around 4 million solar masses.) The black hole in the Coma Cluster resides in a galaxy surrounded by bright peers, but NGC 1600 outshines its neighboring galaxies by at least a factor of three. NGC 1600's black hole takes up about 2 percent of its galaxy's mass which is about 10 times larger than black holes at the center of their galaxies are expected to be. Small black holes can form when massive stars collapse. The enormous ones at the centers of galaxies likely grow so large by taking in a lot of dust and debris early on in their lives and by colliding and merging with other black holes, which occurs when two galaxies combine. "The way we understand how galaxies and black holes grow to such high masses is from how galaxies form," Ma said. "Typically, we believe they form by emerging galaxy collisions, or cannibalism they collide together, like the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy: we are approaching each other, and we're going to collide one day. So we are going to form a bigger galaxy, and the two individual black holes of the progenitor galaxies would come together to form a bigger black hole." [Watch: Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies Collision Simulated] So the biggest galaxies are often formed from several smaller galaxies that merged, whose corresponding black holes have merged as well. A more crowded cluster of galaxies creates favorable conditions for extremely large black holes to form, it seems but NGC 1600 is in a much sparser area. "One possibility for how to get a big mass is maybe NGC 1600 had eaten up its friends," Ma said. "It gobbled up its friends, and during the process it acquired their black holes maybe it got to be so big at the expense of its friends." That could explain the unusually empty neighborhood around NGC 1600. Alternatively, the black hole could have been in a region of the universe that had a lot of gas early in its life, Ma said. "The universe contained a lot of gas when it was younger," she said. "Maybe it got really, really big when the galaxy was very young." If that were the case, Ma added, the black hole could have grown to its current size without ever residing in a more densely populated area. Possibly twins Besides probing the mysteries of its location, the researchers are zeroing in on the condition of the black hole itself or, potentially, the black holes themselves. When two galaxies merge, their central black holes circle each other, getting closer and closer until they combine into one. The researchers' observations suggest that the black hole at NGC 1600's center might actually be two in the process of merging, or one that very recently merged. The key insight there is that, while the galaxy shone brightly with starlight, the center seemed unusually empty. Such large galaxies usually have cores that are correspondingly bright, Ma said. "The way I like to say it is, for some reason, the stars seem to be scared of the very center; they somehow don't want to get very close," she said. "Right now, the most elegant way to explain the existence of this scoured-out region is by binary black holes." Stars that are too distant to be directly pulled into such a system can still be heavily influenced by it. The dynamics of a system with two supermassive black holes at its center are such that approaching stars whip around and are accelerated outward, fleeing the system and forcing the black holes to move a tiny bit closer to one another, Ma said. Each star has little effect, but over time, the black holes are drawn closer and closer together and eventually coexist in a ring where most nearby stars have been flung away. Researchers can't currently tell if the system is still two black holes or has already merged into one. But NGC 1600 could be a prime candidate for scientists who study gravitational waves to scrutinize, Ma said: Gravitational waves would be generated by black holes that are still circling and colliding, but not by ones that have already combined. Everywhere? Avi Loeb, chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University, called the new work an exciting discovery. "It would be interesting to find more black holes of this mass range and check whether this is an outlier or typical case," Loeb, who was not involved in the study, told Space.com in an email. "The fundamental question is, which environmental conditions nurture the growth of the most massive black holes?" he said. "We would love to know the answer to that question through future studies like this one." Loeb added that the NGC 1600 black hole's size makes it a good target for the Event Horizon Telescope, a coalition of nine telescopes around the world that will work together to image black holes. Study team members hope to further investigate NGC 1600 with the Hubble telescope to get a better look at its core and pin down the black hole's mass more precisely, and they will continue to learn about the distribution of large black holes via the MASSIVE study. Sparsely populated parts of the galaxy are much more common than the superdense areas where the largest black holes have been found so far. So, if black holes this large are common in such areas, too, NGC 1600 might just be "the tip of the iceberg," Ma said. MASSIVE should reveal just how common the huge bodies are, and expand researchers' understanding of the beasts, she added. "I'm confident we're going to find black holes if we don't, that would be really, really strange but the question is going to be how massive can these black holes be? Is 17 billion, 20 billion [solar masses] where they stop growing? Or could there be even bigger monsters out there we haven't found?" The new work was published in the journal Nature. Editor's Recommendations After a California condor pair's egg went mysteriously missing in the middle of the night, the duo is back on track, raising a foster chick that biologists surreptitiously slipped into the birds' mountain nest. The family affair began with condors #111, a 22-year-old female hatched at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and #509, a 7-year-old wild male. The two began courting in 2014, and nested together near the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in southern California, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Before long, #111 laid an egg. A team of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) biologists snuck into the nest on March 2 to set up a bird cam and check the egg's viability with a candle test, in which a bright light is used to check the growing fetus inside. They reported that everything looked good, and estimated that the egg would hatch between April 4 and April 6. [10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye] But then, the egg went missing. On the night between March 20 and March 21, it disappeared. In order to save battery power, the bird cam does not record during the night, so there's no proof of what happened to the egg. But, in all likelihood, a predator made off with it, leaving only a few eggshell fragments behind, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which runs the cam. This development was worrisome to scientists, as the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) is critically endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In 2010, there were only 104 adult California condors of breeding age in the wild, and just 44 had produced surviving offspring, the IUCN said. After the egg vanished, USFWS biologists devised an action plan: On March 21, they rappelled into the nest and replaced the missing egg with a dummy egg. Condor #111 entered the nest cavity just as they left, and to everyone's relief began incubating the fake egg. Her partner, #509, incubated the dummy egg, too. In the meantime, the recovery team called the Los Angeles Zoo, which was raising eggs that condors had laid in captivity. The zoo gave one of its eggs to the USFWS scientists, who furtively rappelled into the nest again and swapped the dummy egg for the new foster egg on April 3. The swap worked. The adults which look a bit like hunchbacked, black umbrellas incubated the egg, and it hatched on April 4, making it the first time that a condor chick had hatched live on a bird cam, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It's unclear whether the 9-ounce chick is a male or female, but a blood test within its first year of life will clear that up. Once the chick turns 4 months old, biologists will tag it so that they can track it when it starts flying, at about 6 months of age. For now, both #111 and #509 are taking turns keeping the chick warm and feeding it. Bird enthusiasts can watch the chick grow up on the California condor bird cam, and follow it on Twitter: @CornellCondors. The biologists hope that the mystery thief responsible for the first egg's disappearance will leave the new chick alone. "Sometimes, condors select nest cavities that are accessible to terrestrial predators that are skilled climbers, such as bobcats, black bears and mountain lions," the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said. "We will continue to closely monitor the condor nestling via the live streaming camera and newly placed motion activated Bushnell game camera that is capable of taking nighttime images." Condor chicks remain dependent on their parents for more than a year, so birdwatchers will have plenty of time to watch the little chick grow up, the lab said. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. There is no place like the beach. Swimming in clear ocean water, sticking your toes into warm white sand, and viewing spectacular wildlife are just some of the many things to look forward to. But, then theres a dirty beach, where you run the risk of cutting your foot on glass, or lying on top of cigarette butts, not to mention swimming pollution and harmful toxins. Plan a trip to the cleanest beaches in the U.S. Luckily, some of the cleanest beaches in the world are right here in the U.S. From Newport Beach in California, to Gulf Shores Public Beach in Alabama, you will find the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to be extremely helpful. The NRDC works to safeguard the earthits people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. The organization has also done work testing beach water quality in U.S. beaches. Visit these beaches for a relaxing day of sun, sand and surf. Then leave the beach feeling refreshed, accomplished and most of all clean. 1. Dauphin Island Public Beach, Alabama Dauphin Island Public beach is known for its beautiful beachfront parks and clean sand. According to the National Resources Defense Council Staff Blog (NRDC), this beach has met the national water quality benchmarks 98% of the time over the past five years. Bonus: It is the only pet friendly beach in the region. 2. Long Beach City, Nassau County, New York According to reviews on Trip Advisor, Long Beachs water is safe, clean, and has great waves! The beach is 3.3 miles long and has a 2.2 mile boardwalk. There are no animals permitted on the beach, no barbeques allowed, and alcohol is prohibited. This results in one of the cleanest beaches in the United States. 3. Newport Beach, California 38th St. The water at Newport Beach is frequently monitored, making it the perfect beach for aquatic sport activities. According to The Orange County Register, the beach was the only one in California to make it on the Natural Resources Defense Councils beach superstar list for the environmental nonprofits 24th annual beach report card. In addition, Newport Beach didnt exceed bacteria levels once over the course of 50 tests. 4. Poipu Beach park, Kauai Visit the most popular beach on the South Shore, Poipu Beach for white sand beaches, and spectacular reef formations. According to poipubeach.org, Poipu Beach was named Americas Best Beach by The Travel Channel, ranking top among the 10 best beaches selected nationwide. Here, you are free to go swimming and snorkeling in the clear waters. 5. Hampton Beach State Park, New Hampshire Go swimming, fishing and camping at Hampton Beach State Park. According to the NRDC, They have met the national water quality benchmarks 98% of the time over the past five years. Hampton Beach State Park has a Carry-In/Carry-Out program; they encourage everyone to keep the park clean by carrying out whatever they brought in. More from The Active Times 15 Reasons You Should Never Take a Cruise 15 Dirtiest Cities in the World The Most Beautiful Remote Beaches in the World The Worlds Most Shark Infested Beaches A Brooklyn travel agent scammed clients out of more than $350K by selling them fake travel packages, authorities said Thursday. Junaid Mirza primarily targeted Pakistani immigrants and Muslims, authorities said, duping at least 25 people through a series of agencies he set up between July 2011 and Sept. 2015. Mirza, 49, pleaded not guilty before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthiew Sciarrino to a 31-count indictment, including first degree scheme to defraud, second degree money laundering, grand larceny and other charges. In some cases people didnt know their bookings werent valid until they showed up with packed bags at the airport, Assistant DA Sabrina Thanse said. Others were stranded in Pakistan because they believed they had a round-trip ticket. Another of the Midwood mans alleged victims was a bride who missed part of her own wedding in Pakistan, authorities said. Mirza is also accused of targeting Muslims going on pilgrimageselling them pricey, all-inclusive packages for Haj and other religious excursions. He allegedly ran various scams, in some instances giving receipts or printouts and claiming they were tickets, or guaranteeing a low prices in exchange for an immediate paymentafter which he would deposit the money and disappear. This article originally appeared on NYPost.com. A group of Spirit Airlines customers are suing the budget carrier over an inflight altercation that made headlines last month. Three passengers involved in the incident allege that the airline failed to protect them and fueled the fight by continuing to serve them copious amounts of alcohol, Gloria Allred, the superstar attorney representing the women announced Thursday. In March, two intoxicated women on a Spirit flight from Baltimore to Los Angeles started playing music loudly and, when fellow passengers started to complain, the women started to play the music louder. The fight escalated when another group of women approached the drunk passengers as onlookers began filming the confrontation. Viral videos of the incident show women slapping and grabbing each other over seatbacks. Passenger and plaintiff Tykisha Diodato says that Spirit staff failed adequately protect those onboard. "I am upset that the Spirit Airlines failed to protect us, disregarded our safety, and instead continued to serve the women in front of us alcoholic beverages even though they were clearly intoxicated and behaving aggressively," said Diodato in a statement released Thursday to the New York Daily News. Allred, who is representing Diodato and fellow plaintiffs Danielle Fonda-Thomas and Lisa Zampella, said her clients suffered physical and emotional trauma. Fonda-Thomas called the experience a "nightmare." "On that flight we became victims to a very bad situation and negligence of the airline. It was the first time in my life that I felt unsafe on public transportation," she said. "The flight attendants failed to take control of the situation before it got to the point where we were physically attacked, humiliated, and escorted off the plane as if we were criminals." A spokesman for the airline has denied the charges and told the Daily News that the flight attendants were following protocol during the altercation. "The flight had just landed at LAX and the flight attendants were in their jump seats as required by law. When the fight began, our flight attendants immediately moved to break it up. It is not our practice to over-serve alcohol to anyone," Spirit Airlines Paul Berry said Thursday. Allred says she intends to take the case to trial and is seeking compensatory and punitive damages from the airline for her clients. Georgia has set an execution date later this month for a man convicted for the 1998 triple murders of a trucking company owner and his two children. The Georgia Department of Corrections said in a statement Thursday that Commissioner Homer Bryson has scheduled Daniel Anthony Lucas' execution for April 27 at 7 p.m. Georgia executes inmates using an injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital. Lucas, who is 37, was convicted in 1999 for the deaths of 37-year-old Steven Moss, his 11-year-old son Bryan and 15-year-old daughter Kristin, who interrupted a burglary at their home near Macon in central Georgia. Another man convicted in the murders, Brandon Joseph Rhode, was put to death in 2010. Three inmates have been executed this year in Georgia and a fourth is scheduled to die Tuesday. Hillary versus Bernie. The two leading democratic presidential candidates have escalated their fight for the nomination. Last night, Sanders did say he would eventually support Hillary Clinton if she were the nominee, but not without taking a bunch more digs at the front-runner. The big fight started when Hillary Clinton said she doubted Bernies bona fides as a Democrat. She also suggested he was unprepared to run the country. Sanders then attacked Hillary Clinton as unqualified to be President. The Washington Post writes today: Bernie Sanders told an AFL-CIO conference in Philadelphia yesterday I will not be hustling money from the wealthy and powerful. With both candidates launching 10-day sprints here ahead of New York's April 19 primary, the strain and resentment of a hard-fought and unexpectedly long contest boiled over repeatedly in interviews, speeches and other public appearances. The senator from Vermont refused to retract his assertion that Clinton is not qualified to be president. Clinton dismissed that claim as "silly" and countered that Sanders has repeatedly made promises he can't keep. Still Sanders backtracked some in an interview with the Washington Post "Look, as I've said before, on her worst day, she is 100 times better than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or the other candidates," he said. "To me, that is not a very hard choice." Meantime, former President Bill Clinton faced off with a bunch of Black Lives Matter protesters at a rally last night. Heres how the New York Times reporter Alan Rappeport put it today: The interruptions came with a frequency and fervor usually seen at a Trump rally. But on Thursday it was former President Bill Clinton facing a barrage of protests from critics who disapprove of his record on overhauling the criminal justice system. While campaigning for his wife, Hillary Clinton, at an event in Philadelphia, Mr. Clinton was forced to defend his 1994 crime bill while weathering repeated heckling. He argued that the legislation had helped African-Americans by protecting them from gangs, and he said that Black Lives Matter protesters were misguided. Explaining that the bill caused big declines in murders and other crime during his administration, Mr. Clinton said, ''Whose lives were saved, that mattered?'' Although Mrs. Clinton has been doing well among black voters during the nominating contests, she has had to distance herself from some of her husband's policies, including the 1994 crime bill, which she implicitly suggested led to the mass incarceration of blacks. Last year Mr. Clinton acknowledged that the legislation had problems and that some of its provisions were too harsh. The anger in the room on Thursday was evident, and at one point a protester shouted that Mr. Clinton should be charged with crimes against humanity. Supporters of Mrs. Clinton started waving signs and chanting ''Hillary,'' and the former president said the protests were misguided. ''I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children,'' Mr. Clinton said as the interruptions grew louder. ''You are defending the people who kill the people whose lives you say matter. Tell the truth!'' Donald Trump is beefing up his campaign staff and taking a few days break from the campaign trail for what some analysts call a much-needed reset. Hes made some key hires including experts who could help him in an open convention fight in Cleveland in July. The New York Times reporters Nicholas Confessore and Matt Flegenheimer write about how Republicans are learning to love Ted Cruz: Of all the teeth-gritting alliances being forged over opposition to Mr. Trump's rampaging bid for the Republican presidential nomination, few are as unlikely as the emerging bond between Mr. Cruz and his party's elite donor establishment. Since Mr. Cruz's election to the Senate in 2012, many traditional Republican donors have spurned him, viewing him as a hopeless ideologue whose antics -- particularly his leading role in the 2013 government shutdown -- damaged the party in service of his ambitions. But in recent weeks, at small events from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to the Republican precincts of Newport Beach, Calif., they are learning to love Mr. Cruz. Ted Cruz will be addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas. Kasich and Trump are skipping the event. New polling shows huge unfavorable ratings for the top three candidates. Unfavorable ratings for Donald Trump 69%, for Ted Cruz 59%, and Hillary Clinton 55%. Whoa. Seven in ten people including nearly half GOP voters, have an unfavorable view of Trump. President Obama weighed in on the race last night at a fundraiser in California. He said a functioning American democracy is whats at stake in November. He attacked Cruz and Trump last night. 1200EDT -- OH Gov Kasich holds a town hall meeting. Sacred Heart Univ, Fairfield, CT. LIVE via LiveU 1200EDT -- Hillary Clinton holds a roundtable. Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY. LIVE via LiveU In other news, More big changes coming to the Catholic Church. Pope Francis today released a new proclamation on family life called Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love). It calls for priests to be more welcoming to divorced people, single parents, unmarried couples and gay people. It also pushes priests to create a path for the divorced to get communion. Lauren Green reporting. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Baghdad for talks on Iraqs future. Hes now the most-traveled Secretary of State (sorry Hillary). There are reports that ISIS has killed 175 civilian cement plant workers in Damascus. Panama Papers scandal continues to roil world leaders. Vladimir Putin says its an American plot. The Washington Post reports that Verizon is bidding for Yahoo.. The U.S. economy is not in a bubble according to the Fed chief Janet Yellen. She appears to be responding to comments from candidate Donald Trump who said the U.S. was on the verge of a horrific recession. Yellen says theres no big imbalances that would suggest a bubble. For more news, follow me on Twitter: @ClintPHenderson Lamar Harris had seven felony convictions and 43 arrests when he shot three Chicago police officers. The same week, Samuel Harviley, who had just been paroled after serving less than half of his sentence for armed carjacking, shot yet another of the Windy Citys finest. Police officials, researchers and many elected leaders all agree that the pair were prime examples of the violent pool of criminals driving the citys historically high crime rate. Ex-cons well-known to police and with a proven propensity for violence are being let out early from prison or let off lightly by judges, only to wreak havoc on the city, they say. We are not incarcerating a bunch of harmless sad sacks who are merely caught with a joint. Heather Mac Donald, Manhattan Institute "The fact that a convicted felon and gun offender is yet again out on early release to torment communities is representative of the types of individuals who are overwhelmingly driving the recent spike in violence," then-interim police Superintendent John Escalante said at a news conference last month announcing charges against Harviley. The cycle of violence has resulted in more than 800 shootings so far this year, including seven shootings and one murder on April 4 alone. Escalantes successor, former Chicago Police Department Chief of Patrol Eddie Johnson, says the rate of murders and shootings cant be reversed until the criminal justice system begins to hold offenders accountable. We have five districts that are driving the crime in the city, Johnson said in a recent radio interview. And within those districts, there is a small subset of individuals who are responsible for those crimes. They have multiple arrests for gun offenses and until we start holding these people accountable [the problem will persist]. According to the CPDs most recent CompStat figures, 133 people have been murdered in 2016, compared to 77 during the same period in 2015. Shootings are up 91 percent. Johnson, unlike many of the citys African-American elected officials, is seeking tougher sentencing laws. Over the coming weeks, he plans to be asking our legislative partners in the near future to help us pass new laws that will ensure judges throw the book at violent offenders. Its become easy for police to predict who will be on both ends of the explosion in gun violence. Some two-thirds of murder victims are already on the Police Departments strategic subject list, a roster of residents identified as being at risk of being a victim or an offender of gun violence. The list is kept so police can carry out lifestyle intervention efforts. In one weekend in late March, 76 percent of shooting victims were on the SSL and 95 percent had lengthy criminal histories. Illinois is one of several states implementing recommendations from prison reform commissions to reduce or even eliminate mandatory minimum sentences. Those groups seek to reduce prison populations by as much as 25 percent. The movement to slash sentences and free inmates is given momentum by controversial, police-involved shootings that galvanize communities, as well as protests by Black Lives Matter and civil rights groups. But shortening sentences of violent offenders puts both police and law-abiding residents of the inner city at risk, say law enforcement officials. Every day our members risk life and limb to defend our constitution and the rights it affords our citizens, wrote Dominick Stokes, vice president for legislative affairs for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association in a December letter to Senate leadership. Mandatory minimums are a vital tool utilized in dismantling criminal drug trafficking enterprises. Stokes group is opposed to the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, one of several bills aimed at reducing or eliminating mandatory prison sentences on the Federal level. And researchers say laws that ensure robust prison terms for dangerous people keep everyone safe. We are not incarcerating a bunch of harmless sad sacks who are merely caught with a joint, said Heather Mac Donald, of the Manhattan Institute, a non-partisan research institute. Prisons today mostly house violent criminals. Prison populations have increased because violent crimes increased. Mac Donald acknowledges some validity to arguments against imprisoning non-violent drug offenders, but rejects claims that rising incarceration rates are a consequence of racism. But others say longer and tougher sentencing laws do little to reduce recidivism. There is value in punishment, but you have to think about how to use it effectively and the threat of longer sentences does not have a deterrent value, said Samuel Bieler, a criminologist with the Urban Institute. What is needed is a way to transition [prisoners] into the community and the sooner you can do that, the better. Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the department is fighting back, with gun arrests up 43 percent since mid-February and arrests for homicide up 40 percent for the entire month over February 2015. We are arresting people, Guglielmi told FoxNews.com. And we are arresting the right people. We are facing a long-term problem and that is that individuals are just not being held accountable for gun crimes. What we need to do is remove the repeat offenders from society because they are exacerbating the problem of crime, he added. A 27-year-old Missouri man has been arrested after his 1-year-old son started acting strangely and was taken to the hospital where he tested positive for methamphetamine, police said Thursday. Ryan Cody Smith, of Belton, has been charged in Cass County with possession of a controlled substance and two counts of engendering the welfare of a child, according to Fox4KC. The boy exhibited strange behavior when his mother came home from work Sunday. Detectives said the 1-year-old was biting his older brother, gorging himself on cookies and gagging himself with his fingers, the station reported. The mom had left the boys in the care of their father at a home in Belton. Doctors ran tests Wednesday and the child tested positive for meth, according to the Kansas City Star. Belton police went to the family home and arrested Smith on an outstanding warrant, the paper reported. During a search they found drug paraphernalia and what appeared to be meth in two plastic bagas. Smith told detectives he smoked meth but was careful to keep it away from his children, the paper reported, citing court papers. His bond was set at $25,000. Click for more from Fox4KC. A Florida mom called police when she saw her daughter riding around in a stolen car and now the teen and her four friends are facing charges related to a violent carjacking. Darly Geffrard, of Perrine, told WSVN-TV she didnt raise a car thief and apologized to the carjacking victim. This is the worst nightmare, Geffrard told the station. This is not how I raise my kids. This is not how theyre raised, so if that happened they need to get arrested. Geffrard called 911 when she saw her daughter Janeth in the stolen car, a 2015 Toyota Corolla, in Sunrise Wednesday night. Sunrise Police ran the tag and discovered the vehicle had been carjacked from a North Miami parking two days earlier. Video captured the carjacking. Janeth, three other girls and a boy, all 16 and 17, were arrested after they eluded police, first in the car and then on foot, according to WSVN. Cops said the teens carjacked a vehicle that belonged to a 24-year-old student at Keiser University. The alleged victim told the station one of the teen suspects doused her with pepper spray and grabbed her hair. A phone, a carits not worth your life, she said. I was just happy they didnt do anything else. Local 10 News reported that after police read Janeth her rights, she admitted to acting as a lookout during the carjacking. Click for more from WSVN. Two burglarly suspects led authorities on a long, bizarre chase through the streets of Los Angeles in a convertible Thursday before surrendering to police, but only after stopping to exchange high-fives with onlookers and take selfies before being handcuffed. The chase began at around 1:30 p.m. local time with a report of a home burglary in Cerritos, about 25 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said. During the ensuing chase, which lasted approximately 90 minutes, two blue-clad men sped along freeways in a blue Ford Mustang and wove through jammed streets sometimes dangerously. The vehicle, its top down despite persistent rain showers, drove north on the Hollywood Freeway north of downtown Los Angeles before exiting at Hollywood Boulevard. The Mustang slowed to avoid people in crosswalks, while the driver did "donuts" on the rain-slicked avenue best-known for the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On one occasion, the Mustang appeared to clip another car, but kept on going. At one point, a TMZ tour bus boxed in the Mustang before another car moved off and the vehicle was able to get around it. After leaving Hollywood, the Mustang made its way up Laurel Canyon Boulevard and eastbound on Mulholland Drive, Fox 11 reported. Pursing patrol cars backed off several times for safety reasons, authorities said. Coming down from the Hollywood Hills, the men took the Hollywood and Harbor freeways in the opposite direction from which they had come. Finally, shortly after 3 p.m., the car riding on three tires by this time pulled up on a South Los Angeles street where a group of mainly young men were standing near a driveway. The driver got out and sat on the hood. Both men took selfies and exchanged hugs, high-fives and conversation with the group of apparent friends or well-wishers. When sheriff's deputies arrived a few minutes later, the two men calmly surrendered and were handcuffed as onlookers took videos of the scene with cellphones. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said the men were to be booked for burglary, "among many other charges." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from FoxLA.com. An airman killed his commander before apparently turning the gun on himself, sparking a lockdown at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas Friday, a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News. The shooting was not an act of terrorism, an FBI investigator said. The two men were found dead in an office in Forbes Hall on the base's Medina Annex, Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert D. LaBrutta reported. He added that teams found two handguns at the scene, but did not say whether both belonged to the shooter. Investigators did not identify either of the dead. Police cleared other nearby buildings, Fox 29 adds. Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland is approximately 10 miles southwest of San Antonio. It's home to a U.S. Air Force boot camp. Officials also locked down nearby schools as police investigated. The initial reports of the shooting came in at 8:30 a.m. local time, Bexar County sheriff's spokeswoman Rosanne Hughes told Fox News. Later Friday, officials were investigating whether the the gunman was authorized to have a weapon on the base. The deadly shooting is the latest to occur at a military facility in Texas in the last several years. In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans' clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist, then killed himself. About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, who also killed himself. And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting. The Army's Fort Sam Houston and Air Force's Lackland and Randolph bases were combined during base realignment several years ago to become the military's largest joint base. Click for more from Fox 29. Fox News' Casey Stegall, Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. The remains of an American soldier, who vanished in South Korea during the Korean War, were flown back to the San Francisco Bay Area Wednesday. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday that Army Cpl. Robert Graham disappeared after Chinese forces attacked his battalion in February 1951. Graham, who was only 20-years-old at the time, was starved to death in a North Korean camp. Things are finally coming to closure for the family ... after 65 years," said James George, 59, of Fairfield, a retired Marine Corps master sergeant who escorted his uncle's remains on a flight from Hawaii to San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday. George watched as six servicemen carried the flag-wrapped casket from the airplane to the hearse. He and two other relatives gave DNA that enabled the Army to identify a single bone from Grahams leg last fall. The bone was among other body parts of missing U.S. servicemen that North Korea turned over in 1993. His remains werent among those returned by North Korea after the armistice was signed in July 1953. Grahams niece, Nicole Venturelli, of Redwood, California, said his name was never on any prisoner of war list kept by North Korea. She said North Korean officials described the 208 boxes of bones they released to the U.S. in 1993 as parts taken from a holding area at the entrance of Suan camp. The remains were shipped to a Defense Department lab in Hawaii that was to account for all Americans held as prisoners or missing in action in Korea, Vietnam and other U.S. wars. There were delays, but last year the Pentagon reorganized the program and transferred its management to Washington, D.C., according to the Chronicle. A military funeral is scheduled for Friday in Colma. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Thousands of U.S. military personnel who served on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan recall the dense black smoke from burn pits where everything from IEDs to human waste was incinerated. Now many have died, and more are gravely ill. Those battling a grim menu of cancers, as well as their loved ones and advocates, trace their condition to breathing in the toxic fumes they say could be the most recent wars' version of Agent Orange or Gulf War Illness. The clouds of smoke would just hang throughout the base, Army Sgt. Daniel Diaz, who was stationed at Joint Base Balad, in Iraq's Sunni Triangle from 2004-2005, told FoxNews.com. No one ever gave it any thought. You are just so focused on the mission at hand. In my mind, I was just getting ready for the fight. Diaz returned from duty in 2008. A year later, he started developing health problems including cancer, chronic fatigue and weakness, neuropathy and hypothyroidism. Nearly every base he was stationed at during his four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan had burn pits nearby - and pungent smoke everywhere. Its breaking my family. Im just trying to fight to stay alive long enough get my claim settled so my family has something when I am gone. Sgt. Daniel Diaz When I was stationed at Camp Wright, there was one 20-30 feet from our rooms, he says. No one ever questioned whether it was dangerous having it so close. Not even once. During the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the burn pit method was adopted originally as a temporary measure to get rid of waste and garbage generated on bases. Everything was incinerated in the pits, say soldiers, including plastics, batteries, appliances, medicine, dead animals and even human waste. The items were often set ablaze with jet fuel as the accelerant. Joint Base Balad, where Diaz was partially stationed, burned up to 147 tons of waste per day as recently as the summer of 2008, according to The Army Times. The incineration of the waste generated numerous pollutants including carbon monoxide and dioxidethe same chemical compound found in Agent Orange, which left many Vietnam vets sick after it was used as a defoliant. Its killing soldiers at a much higher rate than Agent Orange did in the Vietnam Era, Rosie Torres, founder of Burn Pits 360, an advocacy group for service members who have fallen ill, told FoxNews.com. Soldiers from that war were seen dying in their 50s, 60s or 70s. Now with the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, we are seeing them die in their early 20s, 30s, and 40s. Torres, whose husband, LeRoy Torres, fell ill almost immediately after his return from Iraq in 2008, said nearly 64,000 active service members and retirees have put their names on the Burn Pit Registry created by the Department of Veterans Affairs. But documenting their plight doesn't guarantee coverage. I havent got diddly squat," Diaz tells Foxnews.com. The VA is refusing to admit that my cancers are service-related. Its frustrating. I have $100,000 in medical bills because I have no coverage. Its breaking my family," he said. "Im just trying to fight to stay alive long enough get my claim settled so my family has something when I am gone. Once dead, servicemembers cannot retroactively be placed on the list, which advocates say leaves family members of the fallen in the lurch and often bankrupt. Its a failed registry. It doesnt work. It could take 20-30 years for someone to get assistance, Joseph Hickman, author of the 2016 book The Burn Pits: the Poisoning of Americas Soldiers, told Foxnews.com. Its not fair. They need help now. The pits burned more than 1,000 different chemical compounds day and night, and most service members breathed in toxic fumes with no protection, said Hickman, who added the Agent Orange comparison is apt. The Department of Defense wont admit that this is occurring and the VA does not do enough to assist service members because they are waiting on info from the DoD, he said. Requests for comment from the Department of Defense were not immediately returned. Not every case of cancer involving a service member can be blamed on burn pit exposure, but for families who have watched healthy loved ones succumb to terminal illness within months or a few years of returning home, the connection seems clear. "Its hard to believe that my husband did not get cancer from this," Christie Badstibner, whose husband Brian, a 14-year Air Force veteran who died two months ago, told FoxNews.com. How can they deny that the pits had something to do with this? No one wants to take the blame. Badstibner, 36, says that because her husband was still on active duty when he returned, their family had health coverage and benefits. But she knows many other families who have suffered the same loss as hers, and been left with no coverage. There are a lot of families going through the same thing without any sort of coverage," she said. "There are widows like me, raising their kids on their own. It sucks. A western New York college town's iconic fountain topped by a bronze bear has been destroyed after being struck by a delivery truck. Officials say the truck collided with the circular granite base of the fountain located on Main Street in the Livingston County village of Geneseo, 25 miles south of Rochester. The crash around 6 a.m. Thursday knocked the base off its foundation. The impact sent the small bear hugging a light pole atop a sandstone pedestal tumbling into the hole under the fountain. Village officials say they'll rebuild the 128-year-old fountain, a local landmark in Geneseo, home to the State University of New York at Geneseo. Memmott: Bear fountain much loved in Geneseo https://t.co/euD1Z2ICOP pic.twitter.com/XRveQWk7dB Rochester D and C (@DandC) April 8, 2016 The truck driver was treated for injuries at a Rochester hospital. The cause of the accident is under investigation. The University of North Carolinas president said Thursday that the 17 campuses she oversees will follow the states new law about transgender people by requiring that all bathrooms be designated for use by people based on their biological sex. President Margaret Spellings said in a letter to chancellors that the 16 college campuses and the N.C. School of Science and Math must label multi-occupancy changing facilities for single-sex use. She said schools may provide single-occupancy bathrooms or changing facilities that are gender neutral. State lawmakers approved the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act two weeks ago, which creates a statewide employment and public discrimination policy that bars protections for LGBT people. According to WRAL-TV, the North Carolina chapter of the ACLU criticized Spellings for her decision to follow the new law. The ACLU is challenging the law in court on behalf of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill worker, a University of North Carolina at Greensboro student and a North Carolina Central University professor. The ACLU is being assisted in the lawsuit by the Lambda Legal and Equality NC. By requiring people to use restrooms that do not correspond to their gender identity, this policy not only endangers and discriminates against transgender people, it also violates federal law, the groups said in a joint statement. The law states that the University of North Carolina system and the community colleges in the state are among those that have to comply with the bathroom rules. Spellings also noted in the memo that the new law doesn't address enforcement. WRAL-TV noted the state law is unclear whether students would be included in the loophole or if it only applies to employees. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from WRAL-TV. An accused killer who escaped from a Washington state psychiatric hospital Wednesday night was spotted at his parents house in Spokane Thursday before fleeing when his mother called 911, investigators revealed. The Spokane County Sheriffs Office said Thursday Anthony Garver is believed to still be in the area, according to Q13 Fox. Surveillance footage showed Garver buying a Greyhound Bus ticket for Spokane at about 8 p.m. Wednesday in Seattle, Lakewood police said. The sheriffs office said Garver arrived in Spokane early Thursday morning and showed up at his parents home at around 3:30 p.m. Garvers mother alerted authorities when she saw him, Q13 Fox reported. Deputies launched a massive manhunt in a wooded area of Spokanes East Valley with the assistance of U.S. Marshals, a SWAT team, four K-9s and two helicopters. Q13 Fox reported that as of 8:30 p.m. that they hadnt located Garver and the search was being suspended for the rest of the night. Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich described the search as "a pretty intense situation." According to The Spokesman-Review, police fear that Garver may have a hidden cache of weapons in the area. Garver was charged in 2013 with tying a 20-year-old woman to her bed with electrical cords, stabbing her 24 times in the chest and slashing her throat, Snohomish County Assistant Prosecutor Craig Matheson said. Garver, 28, escaped Western State Hospital with Mark Alexander Adams, 58, a patient who had been accused of domestic assault in 2014. Adams was captured earlier Thursday outside Des Moines Gospel Church without a fight, officials said. Garver's lawyer, Jon Scott, said he hopes Garver "is found quickly and safely." Garver, who also has a history of running from authorities, was moved to a lower-security unit of the state's largest psychiatric hospital after a judge said treatment to prepare him to face criminal charges was not working. The escape is the latest in a litany of problems at the 800-bed hospital south of Tacoma, where violent assaults on both staff and patients have occurred. U.S. regulators have repeatedly cited the facility over safety concerns and threatened to cut millions in federal funding. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently extended the hospital's deadline for fixing the problems from April 1 to May 3. A federal judge also has said the hospital has failed to provide timely competency services to mentally ill people charged with crimes. Patients in the hospital's lower-security unit are checked every hour, Reyes said. Garver and Adams were not placed in the high-security unit because a judge granted a state request to hold them as a danger to themselves or others after treatment failed to restore their ability to understand the criminal charges against them. Officials are conducting a safety review of the hospital and will bring in outside experts to help, Reyes said. "We can never have too many fresh eyes reviewing a situation as serious as this," Reyes said in a statement. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee vowed to find out how anyone couldve escaped the secure room Garver was in. We have an investigation thats going on at the hospital to understand the circumstances of this, he said. The state has tried to fix some of the problems by increasing funding to hire more workers. But the hospital has struggled with recruiting and retaining staffers. Wednesdays brazen escape by the two men wasnt the first time someone escaped from Western State Hospital, Q13 Fox reported. Another patient slipped through the gymnasium door in 2011, but was later caught. Police have said that Garver is considered dangerous and warned everyone not to approach him. Anyone who sees him is encouraged to call 911. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from Q13 Fox. The Palestinian U.N. Mission says it has circulated a proposed Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements to Arab nations. The draft was condemned Thursday by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "is taking a step that will push negotiations further away" to end the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians refused to provide any details of the resolution, but recalled the 14-1 vote on a Security Council resolution on settlements in February 2011. It was defeated by a U.S. veto. It would have condemned "illegal" Israeli settlements and demanded an immediate halt to all settlement building. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast War and built settlements there. The Palestinians claim those areas as parts of a future state. A California freelance photographer abducted in Syria in 2012 was finally freed and allowed to return home, a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News Friday. Kevin Patrick Dawes, 33, is originally from San Diego, officials tell The Washington Post. The release followed months of negotiations, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The U.S. had "periodic contact" with the Syrian government and Russia helped with the release, State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. He did not confirm the Russian Foreign Ministry's claim that Dawes was taken to Moscow and handed to the U.S. embassy there before leaving Russia. Syria chose to release Dawes on "humanitarian grounds," the Russian Foreign Ministry added. We can confirm and welcome the news that a U.S. citizen was released by Syrian authorities, spokesman John Kirby said. The United States continues to work through every possible means to ensure the safe release of U.S. citizens reported missing or taken hostage in Syria. Dawes recently had been permitted to call his family and receive care packages, the Post adds. Kirby said U.S. officials had also worked with the Czech mission in Damascus, since the American embassy there closed in 2012. A handful of Americans are missing or believed to be held in the embattled country, including former U.S. Marine-turned journalist Austin Tice. Tice was initially believed to be held by Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra, but may have later been transferred to another party. Other Americans held in Syria have not been identified through official channels. Fox News' Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson and Jonathan Wachtel contributed to this report. A compulsive hoarder was found dead under piles of garbage at his home in Spain on Thursday, local media report. The 51-year-old man, who lived alone in Alcabre, was found wedged between a 3-foot deep mound of trash and a door to his house, The Local reported. No signs of violence were found on the body and it was removed by firefighters. The man reportedly suffered from Diogenes syndrome, which includes symptoms of hoarding and living in extreme squalor. Un vigues muere en su casa de Alcabre atrapado entre basura https://t.co/6MnBuGDJue pic.twitter.com/4IwMFhmVqH Faro de Vigo (@Farodevigo) April 7, 2016 "It was something out of the ordinary," officers told the Faro de Vigo newspaper. Police were called to the house after the mans concerned friend said he had not used messaging apps in nearly a week. Click for more from The Local. The United Nations has launched a far-reaching initiative that could give U.N.-sponsored authorities sway over the biological resources of the high seasall the waters that lie outside national territories and economic zones. The potential shift in power involves multi-trillion-dollar issues, such as whether large areasconceivably, as much as 30 percent-- of the worlds international waters should be designated as no-go areas to protect biological diversity; whether and how to require elaborate environmental impact assessments for future ocean development projects; and how to divide up the economic benefits from the future development of marine genetic resources. Eden Charles, a diplomat from Trinidad and Tobago who is serving as the chairman for a U.N. preparatory committee that began the discussions this week underlined to Fox News that the talks are at a very, very preliminary stage. Overall, the hoped-for treaty will cover two-thirds of the oceans, almost half the planet, says Lisa Speer, a senior official of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which is in turn a lead member of a squadron of 33 environmentalist groups banded together as the High Seas Alliance to lobby for protectionist measures during the talks. The rationale behind the discussions: easing the rising pressure on the worlds undersea biodiversity wrought by over-fishing, pollution, the drainage of nutrients and other substances from surrounding lands, disturbance of underwater seabeds, and fears of even greater threats from underwater industrial technology, including underwater exploration for hydrocarbons. CLICK HERE FOR THE U.N. RESOLUTION MANDATING THE TREATY In U.N. terms, the discussions are proceeding at something like flank speedthat is, a lot slower than a melting iceberg bobbing in the north Atlantic. They began with the initial meeting on March 28 of the preparatory committee-- prep-com in U.N.-speak--of nations to discuss preliminary ideas until Friday, April 8. Another two-week prep-com session will take place in August, and two more next year. These are expected to result by the end of 2017 in draft language for a planned oceans treaty that could then be chewed over for another year or two in broader international sessions. The agreement that ensues from those discussions, however, is seen by some involved in its hoped-for creation as the salt-water equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which will be formally signed at an April 22 ceremony in New Yorka global, permanent and legally-binding deal for the management of Earths last frontier, which will spawn further layers of regulation in years to come. The climate negotiations showed the possibilities for us to come together, Speer told Fox News. Like the climate treaty, the intended oceans treaty envisages transfers of marine technology and investment to developing nations as part of the deal , along with some still far-from-specified portion of the wealth derived from marine biological discoveries, including genetic breakthroughs. One of the things we are looking at is how marine genetic resources will be conserved, sustainably used, and how the dividends will be shared, says Speer. One of the biggest backers of the preliminary talks is the Obama Administration. Even though the U.S. has never ratified the 1982 U.N. Law of the Sea Conventionthe new talks are aimed at creating an implementing agreement under the Law of the Sea umbrellathe Administration is deeply involved in the negotiations, as are some of the worlds most powerful environmental organizations. The U.S. also has a legal precedent for its involvement: its ratification in 1996 of another implementing agreement under the Law of the Sea Convention that orchestrated the activities of a variety of regional fisheries management organizations across international waters, allowed for international enforcement, and a variety of other measures. Ocean bio-preservation is also one of the 17 nebulous Sustainable Development Goals endorsed by all the worlds governments, including the U.S. last September. The United States strongly supports conservation and sustainable use of the ocean and its resources, both within and beyond national jurisdiction, a State Department official told Fox News. That included increased cooperation and coordination among states, international bodies, and relevant stakeholders to achieve better conservation and management of high seas resources, not to mention better management and planning for multiple uses and activities where they occur in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The Administration has already anted up domestically on some of the big-ticket possibilities under discussion, with, among other things, its huge expansion by executive order in September 2014 of the Remote Pacific Islands National Marine Monument in the central Pacific Ocean into a half-million-square-mile oceans preserve. U.S. environmental groups are lobbying now for additional marine monument areas off the coast of New England, site of some of the U.S.s most important Atlantic fisheries. Such preservesknown as marine protected areas or MPAs, in Law of the Sea jargonare a major focus of attention for the U.S.-based Pew Charitable Trusts, which has been lobbying governments around the world for years to create them. So are environmental impact assessments, or EIAs, which are a focus for the High Seas Alliance as wella bid to create not only environmental protection standards but also public review processes that will give non-governmental environmentalists a greater voice in what would pass muster as acceptable future ocean resources development. Pew is the organization lobbying most loudly for a 30 percent set-aside of the high seas for preservation purposesalthough not completely no-take, no-use areas, according to Elizabeth Wilson, director of the non-profit organizations international ocean policy program, who attended several days of the New York meeting. Pew has also been funding pilot projects for satellite observation of protected zones as an efficient means of supporting law enforcement in the vast reaches of ocean that would be involved, as well as financing research that offers backing for the preserve concept. As the first prepcom session neared its end, Wilson said the diplomatic talks had gotten a lot further into the details than we expected it to do at this stage, and that people were feeling pretty comfortable with the concepts involved in the mammoth ocean discussions. Comfort with concepts, and agreement on terms, however, are still two greatly different things. Participants in the meeting were divided over such questions as whether a new accord would create a new international oceans authority to administer the exploitation of the worlds undersea biological resources, or whether ways could be found to expand existing authorities such as the regional fisheries management organizations and the International Seabed Authority, a U.N.-sponsored creation that is currently supposed to regulate undersea mining. One of the most animated areas of discussion, prep-com chairman Charles told Fox News, was how the rewards of the worlds undersea bio-heritage could be shared. We do not yet have a legal code for their exploitation, he declared. Some countries were arguing that all such resources be considered the common heritage of mankind, a code term for a socialist-leaning vision of shared international ownership. Other countries were emphasizing traditional freedom of the seas, which apparently would leave more room for private initiative. In the case of MPAs, he said, some member states say we first need to take stock to determine if the need for an MPA is there, while others say not in all circumstances. There is also conceptual disagreement on whether such protections always need to be permanent, he said. According to some scientific experts, there is also reason to question whether the undersea set-aside approach was really going to be all that effective in dealing with some of the worlds most pressing ocean problems, such as over-fishing. Ray Hilborn, an internationally known fisheries expert at the University of Washington in Seattle, is one of the skeptics. Co-author of a recent study that is the groundbreaking effort to estimate the historical extent of global fish stocks, he told Fox News that while over-fishing is a serious issue, in the a big picture, we are not close to calamity at all. The study he co-authored shows that about 20 percent of the globes fish stocks are over-fished, he said, and stocks of many of the major species that are commercially exploited are in better shape than smaller fish stocks, essentially because they are better managed. Many of the worst problems are in Pacific fisheries exploited by Asia, where the bigger issue is getting countries such as China and Korea to honor existing fisheries management organizations. While reforms of fisheries management are needed, the study says, recovery can happen quickly, with the median fishery taking under 10 years to reach recovery targets. Closed-off ocean areas, Hilborn says, are the crudest possible tool for fishing management. All it does is move boats somewhere else. George Russell is Editor-at-Large of Fox News. He is reachable on Twitter at @GeorgeRussell and on Facebook at Facebook.com/George.Russell next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Amid protests, Greece on Friday resumed deportations of refugees and migrants from its islands to Turkey after a four-day pause, sending back 124 people on two boats from Lesbos to a nearby port on the Turkish coast. Before the first boat left the island, four activists jumped into the sea to try to obstruct the operation swimming to the front of the chartered ferry and grabbing the anchor chain and were detained by the coast guard. The migrants were placed on the boats by officers from the European Union's border protection agency and taken to the Turkish port of Dikili where health and migration officials checked the passengers amid heavy security. After the checks, the migrants were whisked onto police-escorted buses. An agreement between Turkey and the European Union went into full effect Monday, when 202 migrants were sent back. Some 4,000 migrants and refugees who reached Greek islands from nearby Turkey after March 20 are being held in detention camps to be screened for deportation. The returns have been held up by delays in processing asylum claims by overwhelmed Greek authorities who are also preparing to deal with applications across the country by some 50,000 stranded migrants and refugees promised places in a slow-moving EU relocation scheme. On Greek islands, protests continued at overcrowded detention camps. Police cleared the main port on the island of Chios overnight, where scores of migrants had been camped out for a week after pushing their way out of a detention camp. Scuffles occurred between police and Greek protesters staging rival demonstrations at the port in support of and in opposition to the migrants there. The human rights group Amnesty International said migrants were being held "arbitrarily in appalling conditions" at camps on Chios and Lesbos, after interviewing dozens of detainees there. "On the edge of Europe, refugees are trapped with no light at the end of the tunnel. Amnesty's deputy Europe director Gauri van Gulik said. "A setup that is so flawed, rushed and ill-prepared is ripe for mistakes, trampling the rights and well-being of some of the most vulnerable people." next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Baghdad to meet Iraq's leaders and discuss the fight against the Islamic State. Kerry will gather with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and other top officials as coalition forces make military gains against IS amid Iraqi political uncertainty. Iraqi forces say they entered the strategically important IS-held town of Hit on Thursday But Al-Abadi is still trying to establish a new Cabinet under pressure from hard-line Shiites. Kerry made the unannounced stop Friday after attending a meeting with Persian Gulf allies in Bahrain. His trip also coincides with the Pentagon considering more small military outposts to help Iraqi forces as they prepare to retake Mosul. Last month, the U.S. opened the first such base since returning to Iraq in 2014. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 The Latest on the flow of people into Europe (all times local): 10:45 a.m. The number of people applying for asylum in Germany during the first quarter of the year has more than doubled compared with the same period in 2015. Official figures released Friday show 181,405 people applied for asylum in Germany during the first three months. That's an increase of 112.4 percent compared with the 85,394 asylum requests in the first quarter of last year. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the rise in asylum requests occurred despite a decrease in new arrivals in recent months. He said the discrepancy was due to a delay between people arriving and formally requesting asylum. The number of Syrians applying for asylum in Germany during the first quarter was 89,292, compared with 15,444 in the same period 2015. ___ 10:30 a.m. Amid protests, Greece has resumed deportations of refugees and migrants from its islands to Turkey after a four-day pause, sending back 45 people from Lesbos to a nearby port on the Turkish coast. Before the boat left the island Friday, four activists jumped into the sea to try to obstruct the operation and were detained by the coast guard. Another 79 people were due to be deported from Lesbos later Friday, authorities said. An agreement between Turkey and the European Union went into full effect Monday, when 202 migrants were sent back. Some 4,000 migrants and refugees who reached Greek islands from nearby Turkey after March 20 are being held in detention camps to be screened for deportation. Mohamed Abrini, the terror suspect believed to be the "man in the hat," an accomplice of the suicide attackers at Belgium's Zaventem Airport bombing last month and the Paris massacre in November, was finally arrested in a Belgium terror sweep Friday after spending months on the run, investigators confirmed. A second arrested suspect, Swedish national Osama Krayem, may have been the second attacker at the Brussels metro station in the March 22 bombings, investigators said at a news briefing. They did not name any other suspects in custody, but said three additional people were arrested. The announcement came a day after authorities released a chilling video showing the airport suspect, also known as the man in white, escaping last month after helping to carry out the devastating Brussels attacks, which left 32 people and three suicide bombers dead. Abrini also was the last suspect wanted in connection to the Paris attacks. The suspect seen in a white jacket and dark hat became Europe's most wanted man after a security camera captured him and two suicide bombers pushing suitcases packed with explosives in the airport just before the attack. The 2-minute clip, apparently spliced from a series of surveillance videos, shows the unidentified man striding purposely from Zaventem Airport, moving into a nearby town and then making his way to Brussels, where he disappeared. Belgian prosecutors said fingerprints and DNA from Abrini had been found in a Renault Clio used in the Paris attacks, and in an apartment in the Forest area of the Belgian capital that was used by Salah Abdeslam, another Paris suspect, as a hideout until police stumbled upon it. Five hours after the initial detentions, authorities were still carrying out a raid in the same Anderlecht area of Brussels. Abdeslam was arrested on March 18 and is being held in a prison in the Belgian city of Bruges. His lawyer said Thursday that his extradition to France will take weeks to happen. Prosecutors in March said Abdeslam planned to blow himself up outside Frances national stadium during the Paris attacks, but backed out at the last minute. Abrini's precise role in the Paris attacks has never been clear, as is his full link to the Brussels. He is a 31-year-old Belgian-Moroccan petty criminal believed to have traveled early last summer to Syria where his younger brother died in 2014 in the Islamic State terror group's notorious francophone brigade. He had not resurfaced since the emergence of surveillance video placing him in the convoy with the attackers headed to Paris. He had ties to Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who died in a police standoff on Nov. 18, and is a childhood friend of brothers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam. Abrini was traveling with Salah Abdeslam in the convoy headed to Paris in the 36 hours leading up to the attacks. He went multiple times to Birmingham, England, last year, meeting with several men suspected of terrorist activity, a European security official has told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide details on the investigation. He said the meetings, including one later last summer, took place in several locations, including cafes and apartments. The government and top security officials gathered in a national security council meeting in the wake of Friday's detention to assess the consequences of the operation. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Thirteen North Koreans working at the same restaurant in a foreign country have defected to South Korea, Seoul officials said Friday. People working in North Korean-operated restaurants overseas have previously defected, but this is the first time multiple workers have escaped from the same restaurant, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee told reporters in Seoul. North Korean defections are a bitter point of contention between the rival Koreas. Pyongyang usually accuses Seoul of enticing North Korean citizens to defect, something Seoul denies. Overseas North Korean workers are usually thought to be chosen largely because of their loyalty. Jeong said one male and 12 female North Korean workers arrived in the South on Thursday. He didn't reveal the country where they were working or the route they took to avoid diplomatic problems and possibly endanger North Koreans still working in the country. The Associated Press called a number of North Korean restaurants in Asia, and all were open except one located in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Danang, Vietnam. A person who answered the telephone at the hotel said the Pyongyang Restaurant had closed two weeks ago and all the Korean staff had left the country. She declined to provide more details or identify herself. It was unclear whether the restaurant was connected to the defections. The North Korean defectors told South Korean officials that they learned about the South and began to distrust North Korean propaganda by watching South Korean TV dramas and movies and from searching the Internet while living overseas, Jeong said. South Korean officials believe overseas North Korean restaurants have been suffering economically since stronger international sanctions were applied against North Korea over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. Jeong said the defectors told South Korean officials that their restaurant was struggling to meet demands from North Korean authorities at home for foreign currency. South Korea recently advised its citizens not to patronize North Korean restaurants, although such visits are not illegal. South Korea's spy agency estimates that North Korea runs about 130 restaurants in other countries about 100 in China and the others in Russia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. In a report to the U.N. General Assembly in October last year, Marzuki Darusman, a U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said more than 50,000 North Koreans are working in foreign countries, mostly in China and Russia, providing a source of money for Pyongyang. He cited various studies, including a 2012 report by the International Network for the Human Rights of North Korean Overseas Labor that estimated North Korea was earning as much as $2.3 billion annually from the workers it sent abroad. The Unification Ministry's website says more than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea as of March. But there have been only a few incidents in which large groups of North Korean defectors entered South Korea at once. North Korea in 2004 accused South Korea of kidnapping its citizens after the South airlifted 468 North Koreans from Vietnam. Seoul said the North Koreans fled their country into China and then traveled overland to Vietnam. In 2011, nine North Koreans used a small boat to defect to South Korea by sea. The U.S. said Thursday its considering granting refuge to a select number of Bangladesh bloggers who face imminent danger for speaking out against radical Islam after militants killed another outspoken opponent of extremism. Nazimuddin Samad, 28, was hacked and shot to death by unidentified assailants Wednesday in the streets of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The attackers allegedly shouted Allahu Akbar and escaped by motorcycle. Five secular bloggers and publishers were killed last year in similar fashion. The murders have heightened concerns that extremists are gaining a foothold in Bangladesh, a Muslim country with traditions of secularism and tolerance, and that authorities are failing to provide any kind of protection. Karin Deutsch Karlekar of PEN American, a U.S.-based human rights group, has called on the U.S. to offer humanitarian parole for Bangladeshi writers targeted by extremists for secular beliefs. She reiterated that call to the U.S. and other countries Thursday, saying that Samads killing is a cruel illustration of the costs of inaction. State Department spokesman Mark Toner strongly condemned the "barbaric murder" of Samad and told reporters the U.S. offers "unwavering support to the Bangladeshi people in their struggle against violent extremism." He said that humanitarian parole for a select number of bloggers who continue to be under "imminent danger" is one option under consideration, but referred questions on it to the Homeland Security Department. Humanitarian parole is used sparingly to bring a person into the United States for a temporary period of time due to a compelling emergency. No group has claimed responsibility for the killing of Samad, a supporter of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's secular Awami League party. Authorities in Bangladesh believe Samad was targeted for his outspoken atheism and for supporting capital punishment for war crimes during the countrys fight for independence against Pakistan in 1971. Hasina's government set up special tribunals to try war crimes cases, including against senior leaders of an opposition, Islamist party. Hasina's government has accused the opposition of supporting religious radicals it blames for the attacks on bloggers, minority Shiites, Christians and foreigners. Some of the attacks were claimed by the Islamic State, but the government dismisses those claims and says the Sunni extremist group has no presence in the country. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Johnny Rockets Opens First International Food Truck In Chile International Restaurant Brand Opens Food Truck to Support On-The-Go Consumers April 04, 2016 // Franchising.com // LAKE FOREST, CALIF. As part of its continued focus on international growth and development, Johnny Rockets opened its first international food truck in La Serena, Chile to support its active market and on-the-go consumer base. Operating as an extension of the brand, Johnny Rockets food trucks offer the restaurants world famous fresh, cooked-to-order hamburgers, sandwiches, salads and hand-spun shakes to guests in areas with high foot traffic and at special events. The is the first Johnny Rockets food truck to open internationally and we are thrilled to have it out and serving the community of La Serena, says James Walker, President of Global Operations and Development, Johnny Rockets. Our franchise partners often ask for mobile options to supplement their full-service restaurants, whether that is to access pedestrian areas or offer Johnny Rockets menu items for catering or special events. As a solution, our development team worked to create a food truck that franchisees can purchase and use to support guests in their markets. We are excited about the growth opportunity these trucks provide for our international franchise partners. Johnny Rockets food trucks are an add-on option for franchise partners, available as a convenient way for restaurants to access the community outside of the restaurants four walls. Opening around the globe, including a truck coming soon to Nigeria, the food trucks will visit local community events and will also be available for guest to rent for private events and catering needs. About Johnny Rockets Johnny Rockets is an international restaurant franchise that offers high quality, innovative menu items including fresh, never frozen 100 percent beef cooked-to-order hamburgers, Veggie Boca burger, chicken sandwiches, crispy fries and rich, delicious hand-spun shakes and malts. This dynamic lifestyle brand offers friendly service and upbeat music contributing to the chains signature atmosphere of relaxed, casual fun. Founded in 1986, Johnny Rockets operates more than 340 franchise and corporate locations in 28 countries around the world. For more information, visitwww.johnnyrockets.com SOURCE Johnny Rockets Media Contact: Elisa Suri Trevelino/Keller 404-214-0722 x 119 esuri@trevelinokeller.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Ruby Tuesday, Inc. Announces Resignation of Jill Golder MARYVILLE, TN - (BUSINESS WIRE) - April 7, 2016 - Ruby Tuesday, Inc. (NYSE:RT) today announced the resignation of Jill Golder, effective as of April 11, 2016, who has decided to take a senior leadership role at another company. Ms. Golder had joined the Company in April 2013 as Senior Vice President of Finance and was promoted to Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, and Assistant Secretary in June 2014. Ruby Tuesday intends to immediately commence a search for a new Chief Financial Officer. On behalf of our Board and team members, I would like to thank Jill for her many contributions during her tenure at Ruby Tuesday, said JJ Buettgen, Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer. Jill has been instrumental in improving our financial positioning and has put in place a strong finance team that will enable us to move ahead with our brand transformation strategy. We wish her the best. Ms. Golder stated, "I am looking forward to my new business opportunity and am proud of what we have accomplished at Ruby Tuesday. I wish everyone at the Company success. About Ruby Tuesday, Inc. Ruby Tuesday, Inc. owns and franchises Ruby Tuesday and Lime Fresh brand restaurants. As ofMarch 1, 2016, there were 729 Ruby Tuesday restaurants in 44 states, 13 foreign countries, andGuam, and there were 16 Lime Fresh restaurants in two states. Of those restaurants, we owned and operated 649 Ruby Tuesday restaurants and franchised 80 Ruby Tuesday restaurants, comprised of 28 domestic and 52 international restaurants. We also owned and operated eight Lime Fresh restaurants and franchised eight Lime Fresh domestic restaurants. Our corporate-owned and operated restaurants are concentrated primarily in the Southeast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest of the United States, which we consider to be our core markets. For more information about Ruby Tuesday, please visit www.rubytuesday.com. Ruby Tuesday, Inc. is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (Symbol: RT). SOURCE Ruby Tuesday, Inc. Contacts: Melissa Calandruccio Investor Relations ICR 646-277-1273 RubyTuesdayIR@icrinc.com Christine Beggan Media Relations ICR 203-682-8200 RubyTuesday@icrinc.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Stratus Building Solutions Seeks Local Entrepreneur for New Regional Franchise in the Chicagoland Market Leader in green commercial cleaning services, a $52 billion industry, and Entrepreneur Magazine ranked #7 Fastest-Growing Franchise, Stratus Building Solutions, seeks Chicago for the location of its newest regional franchise. April 08, 2016 // Franchising.com // Many understand the benefits of franchising, but fewer have the opportunity experience the advantages of operating as the franchisor. Franchisors are the entities which sell a business model, train and offer support to its sub-franchisees; earning revenue through the initial sale and collection of royalties from their franchise owners. Stratus Building Solutions is a company which offers the best of both worlds, called a Master Franchise, it is an opportunity for a franchisee to operate as a franchisor in its own exclusive regional territory. Stratus National Headquarters has set its sights on an aggressive expansion plan throughout the United States and seeks a local entrepreneur in the Chicago Metro to open a new Master location. The Stratus Building Solutions franchise model is built on a two tier system; Master Franchises that operate as the regional franchisors, selling and offering support to their Unit Franchisees, who focus on commercial cleaning, janitorial and customer service. Master Franchise owners are typically experienced sales, marketing and business development professionals who have spent a great deal of their careers in Corporate America looking for then next step in their careers and are interested in going into business for themselves, states COO, Channen Smith who also came from a similar background in Healthcare prior to purchasing his first Master Franchise in Denver, which lead to a partnership to acquire the Stratus franchise headquarters in 2015. It is a great opportunity to go into business for yourself, without sacrificing current comforts like a regular schedule and office environment, he adds. The Stratus Building Solutions Master Franchise model focuses on sales and marketing to two different consumer bases, including recruiting new Unit Franchisees and offering support to those franchisees by targeting commercial cleaning and janitorial customers. Unit Franchisees are usually current small cleaning business owners, inexperienced individuals looking to own their own business or add supplemental income without high investment fees. The Master Franchise owner extends the opportunity to live the American dream to a broader range of individuals by offering the tools, training and support to its sub-franchisees within its territory. Chicago is an ideal metropolitan for the Stratus Building Solutions model with its large population and wide range of businesses. Stratus franchisees service anything from schools, medical offices, shopping centers, warehouses, dealerships, religious centers, professional offices, daycares, retail stores, gyms and more. Franchise fees for the Chicago territory start at $62,500 with a typical additional investment ranging between $150,000 and $200,000. SOURCE Stratus Building Solutions Contact: Rachel Frazier Executive Assistant Marketing Coordinator P: 888-981-1555 F: 818-960-0070 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Valpak Seeks Entrepreneur To Strengthen Its Presence In Knoxville, Tennessee April 08, 2016 // Franchising.com // ST. PETERSBURG, FL Valpak, a leader in local print and digital coupons, announced today it is looking to further grow its brand in Knoxville, Tennessee. The company is seeking a sales-driven entrepreneur to invest in the franchise opportunity and continue to strengthen its market presence. There are as many as 70,000 households in Knoxville, Maryville, Sevierville, Morristown, Oak Ridge and other nearby communities that are currently receiving the consumer savings Valpak brings to the area. Valpak knows that entrepreneurs are drawn to Knoxville for its business-friendly environment. The city continues to earn national recognition, such as a Forbes.com ranking for Best Places for Business and Careers and Cost of Doing Business. The city was also recognized by WalletHub.com as the 15th best of 2016's 100 Best U.S. Cities for Women-Owned Businesses. As the small business community in Knoxville continues to expand, it makes perfect sense for Valpak to offer its direct marketing services to those also looking to grow their business in the city, said Greg Courchane, Valpaks director of franchise sales. While most know and love Valpak for its Blue Envelope of savings, we also offer a suite of digital marketing services, which serves as a great selling point to potential franchisees who want to market to other Knoxville entrepreneurs. A leader in cooperative direct mail, Valpak mails coupons to nearly 39 million demographically targeted households per month in 45 states and four Canadian provinces. Today, in addition to its flagship Blue Envelope, Valpak offers its business customers an impressive portfolio of digital advertising products including valpak.com, Smartphone apps, Google partnerships, website development, mobile web optimization and reputation management. With more than 25 million Americans using couponing apps each month, Valpaks digital offerings have been a big draw for new franchisees. Digital coupon use is on the rise, and ample gains are projected in 2016. In the past year, Valpak's print offerings have also expanded with on-pack advertising and circulars. Ideal candidates for Valpak franchise ownership should possess a desire to join a trusted, industry-leading brand, work within a proven franchise system, develop relationships with local businesses and have a comfort level with selling new, digital technologies. Franchisees should also possess a minimum liquidity of $75,000, and a minimum net worth of $150,000. For more information on Valpak franchise opportunities, please contact Greg Courchane at greg_courchane@valpak.com or 727-399-3091 or visit www.valpakfranchising.com. About Valpak Based in St. Petersburg, FL, Valpak is one of the leading direct marketing companies in the U.S. and Canada. We provide print and digital advertising through a network of 160 local franchises. From mailbox to mobile phone, Valpak brings exciting local business offers and opportunities to millions of consumers. Each month, our well-known Blue Envelope of savings is mailed to about 39 million demographically targeted households in 45 states and in four Canadian provinces. Our digital suite of products, including valpak.com, reaches more than 110 million users. Founded in 1968, Valpak is owned by Cox Target Media, a subsidiary of Cox Media Group in Atlanta. SOURCE Valpak 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 WASHINGTONThe FBI has not decided whether to share with Apple Inc. details about how the bureau hacked into an iPhone linked to a California terrorism investigation, the bureaus director says. James Comey discussed the situation during a speech Wednesday evening at Kenyon College in Ohio. He called it a technological corner case and said the flaw the FBI exploited in Apples software works only on a narrow slice of phonesthe iPhone 5C, running version 9 of Apples mobile operating system, not on newer or older models. If we tell Apple, theyre going to fix it and were back where we started, Comey said. As silly as it may sound, we may end up there. We just havent decided yet. The Justice Department dropped its legal fight to compel Apple to provide it with specialized software that would allow the FBI to hack into the iPhone, which was issued to San Bernardino county health inspector Syed Farook. Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in December; the couple died in a shootout with authorities. The iPhone was found in a vehicle the day after the shooting. Two personal phones were found destroyed so completely the FBI could not recover information from them. U.S. Magistrate Sheri Pym had ordered Apple to provide the FBI with software to help it hack into Farooks work-issued iPhone after the government said only Apple could help authorities access the encrypted and locked iPhone. The order touched off a debate pitting digital privacy rights against national security concerns. Comey told the university audience that the case also inspired a lot of efforts to try to break into the phoneeverybody and his uncle Fred called us with ideas. Someone outside the government, in response to that attention, came up with a solution, Comey said. One that I am confident will be closely protected and used lawfully and appropriately. The government then purchased a tool that allows court authorized access to the phone, Comey said. The government has declined to release the identity of the third party that made it possible to access the iPhone in the case. The FBI is very good at keeping secrets and the people we bought this fromI know a fair amount about them, and I have a high degree of confidence that theyre very good at protecting it and their motivations align with ours, Comey said. RICHMONDSix current and former Virginia state senators were found in contempt Thursday by a Richmond circuit court judge for refusing to surrender records in the latest challenge to legislative gerrymandering. Judge W. Reilly Marchant imposed a fine on each senator of $100 per day. However, the fine will be suspended until an appeals courtperhaps the state Supreme Courtdecides the issue behind the senators refusal to produce the documents: Whether the lawmakers are protected by the Virginia Constitution from questioning in legal proceedings because it could divert attention from their public duties. A seventh senator, Richard H. Stuart, RStafford, said several hours later that he is complying with Marchants order, issued earlier this year, to turn over the records, sparing Stuart from a contempt decree. Marchants order was not unexpected and had been sought by lawyers for the senators. They want the states highest courts to determine whether the legislators official privilege, in this instance, would allow them to keep confidential their communications with staff, specifically the Division of Legislative Services. It is the bill-writing and research arm of the General Assembly. The order was issued by Marchant in the preliminaries to a September trial at which a redistricting reform organization, OneVirginia2021, will contest as illegal under the state constitution redistricting plans for the House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate. Separate challenges in federal court to legislative and congressional redistricting are pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Trial courts threw out congressional boundaries as racial gerrymandering but upheld House of Delegates lines. Both plans were drawn by Republicans. Lawyers for the senators told Marchant that Stuart was prepared to give up the documents but wanted assurances they be kept confidential. Marchant said that could not be done in a public proceeding. Stuart said later he would comply with the court. Marchant had set a deadline of April 2 for the senators to submit material requested by OneVirginia2021. House records are expected to be made available to the groups lawyers. Lawyers for OneVirginia2021 had sought fines of $200 per day for each senator. In addition to Stuart, the senators from whom OneVirginia2021 sought documents are Senate Democratic Leader Richard L. Saslaw, DFairfax; George L. Barker, DFairfax; David W. Marsden, DFairfax, and John S. Edwards, DRoanoke. The former senators are Charles J. Colgan, DPrince William, and Ralph K. Smith, RBotetourt. RIO DE JANEIROPolice investigators took samples at some of Rio de Janeiros largest sewage treatment plants on Thursday to determine whether the facilities are actually treating sewage. Police also collected documents in the surprise sting at least six plants. The material collected will help authorities decide whether to bring charges against Rios state water and sewage utility, Cedae, for allegedly dumping raw or minimally treated sewage into the citys waterways, police investigator Marcelo Prudente said at a news conference. The plants are located near polluted lagoons in western Rio that hug the Olympic Park and on the sewage-blighted Guanabara Bay, where Olympic sailing events are to be held. Water pollution has become a hot-button issue ahead of the Aug. 5-21 games in Rio since an Associated Press investigation revealed astronomical viral levels in the waters. Brazilian authorities had pledged to clean them up as part of the citys Olympic bid nearly nine years ago. In a statement late Thursday, Cedae expressed surprise over the police operation and insisted its activities contribute to the improvement of the quality of life of the population of Rio de Janeiro, not causing pollution. It denied charging for services not provided. MVR Cash & Carry Launches Culinary Student Program to Build Smart Businesses MVR Cash and Carry announces new Culinary Student Program to build smart businesses. -- MVR Cash & Carry (www.MVRWholesale.com), the largest restaurant and convenience store wholesaler in Ontario, is announcing the launch of its MVR Culinary Student Program, a unique way to help the next generation of entrepreneurs. The program aims to help students currently taking any form of culinary course develop some of the business and purchasing skills they need to be successful on their own. "Anyone in the culinary industry, from chefs to bakers to baristas, can't be properly competitive without knowing how to keep costs down without impacting the quality of their food," notes Mike Commisso, co-owner and operator of MVR Cash & Carry. "However, having to wait until after a culinary student graduates to develop this skill isn't a good answer. It's better to develop these skills and learn the necessary habits beforehand so they can have a stronger start." The program works by having students fill out a simple application form and requires only a student photo ID as supporting documentation. Participants are then given a temporary six-month MVR membership that can be renewed with updated information. Using this special membership, students will be able to purchase ingredients and supplies with additional discount and no minimum order requirements. "Wholesale suppliers and distributors play a key role in any restaurant, bakery, bar, or other establishments," explains Commisso. "Through this program, students can start learning how to shop properly for their future careers, how to buy smart, how to save on deliveries, and how to learn about market availability." As an additional measure to help burgeoning chefs, MVR has partnered with the RTK Culinary Group to provide a licensed commercial kitchen that can be used for students to practice their skills in a professional environment. "Normally, students looking to try their craft in a non-domestic setting would need to rent a kitchen space from their school, which could be rather costly," says Commisso. "Thanks to the RTK Culinary Group, students will be able to get valuable experience without eating into their budgets." About MVR Cash & Carry MVR Cash and Carry is a family-owned and-operated wholesale food distributor in Toronto that serves retailers, independent grocery stores, catering companies, and many small businesses. For more information about us, please visit http://mvrwholesale.com/ Contact Info: Name: Mike Commisso Organization: MVR Cash and Carry Address: 3655 Weston Rd North York ON M9L1V8 Phone: 416-739-8411 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/mvr-cash-carry-launches-culinary-student-program-to-build-smart-businesses/109770 Release ID: 109770 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) On Page SEO Checklist Site Launches Free Search Engine Ranking Techniques Guide SEO specialists Kudosable have launched a new free on page SEO tips guide for businesses to help rank their websites higher. It features basic page boosting tips, and more advanced techniques written in an easy to read way. -- Kudosable, a company specializing in SEO tips to help businesses rank their websites higher on search engine results pages, has launched a new free guide offering tips that many marketing sites overlook. Its focus is on-page factors that can help a blog, report or website page rank high naturally, earning more visibility and driving more traffic to clients' websites. This can help increase exposure and improve website conversion. More information can be found on the Kudosable website at: http://kudosable.com. With the internet expanding at an alarming rate, it can be harder and harder for companies to capitalize on good search engine rankings. There are thousands of marketing companies and hundreds of tips that all contribute to creating quite a confusing subject for businesses. Kudosable recognizes this, and has created a guide that is easy to read, simple to follow and quick to digest. It doesn't focus on confusing tips that take large amounts of time to master. The methods discussed in the company's free guide are all easy tips that anyone can employ. The first on page method discussed in the Kudosable guide is the importance of creating a good title. This is often overlooked, but including the right keywords in a page's title helps websites to rank higher, because search engines like Google favor the placement of the keywords over appearances further down the page. The guide then expands into clever use of keywords throughout the page to capitalize on this. Another, related tip featured in the guide is how users can add SEO material to every image they include on the page. The alt tag of an image is a way for people to fix keywords to the image, so search engines can find them more easily. This way, if anyone searches for that keyword on Google Images, customers' sites are more likely to rank highly. The guide also expands into advanced factors, like how long posts should be to maximise their chance of ranking well, and how many images makes for the perfect page. Anyone wanting to make use of the guide can register for free on the website, and there is a contact form for those wanting more information about the company. For more information about us, please visit http://kudosable.com Contact Info: Name: Martin Horton Organization: Kudosable Address: 83 Ducie Street Manchester, M1 2JQ Phone: +1 161 399 1975 Release ID: 109854 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) Boutemy Immobilier Celebrates Port Grimaud's 50th Anniversary With New Tourism Info Boutemy Immobilier is helping Port Grimaud, the neighboring village of Saint-Tropez, celebrate its 50th anniversary this year by promoting new tourist information about the seaside village. -- In 1976, a French architect, who originally wanted to be a fisherman, bought a piece of marshland a few minutes down the road from the world famous Saint-Tropez, with a vision to create a lakeside city; a village built on canals where the inhabitants could dock their boats right in front of their houses. 50 years later, his dream is called Port Grimaud, a charming village in the Var nicknamed "the Provencal Venice". Boutemy Immobilier is a French real estate agency that works closely with individuals looking to invest in the area and is helping celebrate the occasion by promoting tourism in the area. According to Marion Boutemy, company co-founder, "We see an international clientele here, often families in love with the sea and with sailing, since there are almost as many moorings as there are homes." Port Grimaud is a dream destination where vacationers can find indulgence and relaxation, lush nature and a total change of scenery. The Boutemy Immobilier tourism site describes the features of the village in detail, and supports French, English, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian languages. Situated only 15 minutes away from Saint-Tropez by boat, Port Grimaud attracts families who appreciate the luxury of vacation on the Cote d'Azur without seeking the glitter of Saint-Tropez. The village is home to numerous restaurants and is bordered by two beautiful beaches. It belongs to the commune of Grimaud, famous for its medieval castle overlooking the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, its typical Provencal open air market and its weekly flea market. With easy access to the international airports in Nice and Marseille, Port Grimaud has exceptional nature that amateur athletes see as a training paradise. Marion Boutemy of Port-Grimaud.Immo described the experience of life in the village: "From Port Grimaud, you can go on many excursions. Those who are looking for an authentic Southern France experience will love to stroll along the small streets of the neighboring villages, Ramatuelle and Cogolin. Scuba divers are only a few kilometers away from the most beautiful diving spaces of the Cote d'Azur, and hikers can take magnificent walks through the Massif of the Maures. All this, together with real estate opportunities, can be explored in full on our website." About Boutemy Immobilier: Boutemy Immobilier is a real estate agency established almost 20 years ago in Port Grimaud. This agency offers a team of four multi-lingual agents who are passionate about the region. Their team work tirelessly to ensure the ideal fulfilment of real estate projects, whether buying or selling a property in the lakeside city. For more information please visit: http://port-grimaud.immo/ Port-Grimaud.Immo by Boutemy Immobilier 32 rue des Artisans Port Grimaud 83310 Grimaud France For more information about us, please visit http://port-grimaud.immo/ Contact Info: Name: Marion Boutemy Organization: Boutemy Real Estate Address: 32 rue des Artisans Port Grimaud 83310 Grimaud France Phone: +33 (0)4 56 56 58 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/boutemy-immobilier-celebrates-port-grimauds-50th-anniversary-with-new-tourism-info/109904 Release ID: 109904 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) Bryan Ramey & Associates Announces The Launch Of Their New Educational Website The new website has information and articles related to personal injury, auto accidents, and workers compensation in South Carolina, reports http://bryanramey.com/. -- Bryan Ramey & Associates, a premier law firm serving Piedmont, South Carolina and the surrounding areas, is announcing the official launch of the brand new website. The purpose of the new site is to provide comprehensive education for South Carolina residents related to personal injury, auto accidents, and workers compensation. Those who would like to get a glimpse of the new website and see what the firm has to offer can do so at http://bryanramey.com/. Bryan Ramey, the experienced attorney at the helm of the firm, commented "We are excited about launching this new website to the public. As attorneys who have represented hundreds of clients, we understand how vital it is to have legal help when pursuing a Personal Injury, automobile accident, or workers compensation case. When victims don't have expertise in this area, the big insurance companies tend to be able to bully them into taking a much lower settlement than the case is worth. They have a much higher chance of losing their case, which means that the weight of expensive medical treatment and lost wages will all fall back on them. Our purpose in launching this new website is to help prevent that from happening." The newly-launched Bryan Ramey & Associates website features a blog with many informative articles that help victims realize the importance of hiring the right attorney, understand their rights when it comes to compensation and recovering damages in their personal injury or Workers Comp case, and see how the law can work in their favor in particular situation. Those who have recently been involved in an auto accident, workers compensation dispute, or another type of personal injury incident can also learn how to set up a free case review with the firm. As Ramey goes on to say, "Whether dealing with Auto Accidents, slip and fall injuries, or medical malpractice, it is so important for victims to become highly informed about their rights and get educated about how personal injury law works. It is our hope that our new website will provide the right platform for them to do just that and assist them in getting the help they need to find justice in their case." About Bryan Ramey & Associates: Bryan Ramey & Associates represents their clients in a relentlessly reasonable manner. They have never represented an insurance company, which means that the Bryan Ramey and Associates Trial Lawyers are devoted 100% to representing the injured. Brian Ramey has tried cases at all levels of South Carolina State Courts, and has argued appeals at the South Carolina Court of Appeals and the South Carolina Supreme Court. In federal court, he has tried cases in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, and is admitted to practice before the United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit. He has also appeared pro hac vice in Michigan trial court, and at the Michigan Court of Appeals. In June 2008, he was elected to the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Association for Justice. He is a sustaining member of the American Association for Justice, the South Carolina Association for Justice, and the Injured Workers' Advocates. For more information about us, please visit http://bryanramey.com/ Contact Info: Name: Bryan Ramey Organization: Bryan Ramey & Associates Phone: (864) 295-0000 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/bryan-ramey-associates-announces-the-launch-of-their-new-educational-website/109959 Release ID: 109959 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) Pofahl Law Firm, P.C. Launches Brand New Personal Injury Website The new website features educational videos about the personal injury legal process as well as three exclusive guarantees for clients, reports http://www.abqinjurylawyer.com. -- Pofahl Law Firm, P.C. has recently announced the launch of their brand new website. The firm serves residents in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the surrounding areas, providing them with comprehensive legal services for their personal injury cases. The new website gives extensive information about the firm's services as well as providing educational materials for current and potential clients. Those who would like to learn more about Pofahl Law Firm and view the new website should visit http://www.abqinjurylawyer.com. Brady Pofahl, the experienced attorney at the head of Pofahl Law, P.C., stated "We are extremely proud to launch this new website to the public. Not only is it beautifully-designed and very easy to navigate, but there are new videos available on the site to help educate the residents of Albuquerque about issues related to personal injury law and help them understand the importance of hiring a good attorney. We truly care about our clients, and we wanted this new website to reflect the same care and passion that we put into every single case that our firm takes on." The website was designed and developed by Maverick Web Marketing. In addition to the educational videos that Maverick produced for the site, clients will also find crucial information about Pofahl Law Firm's 3 Exclusive Guarantees. These guarantees include the following: that the client will get money in their pocket regardless of their insurance policy limit, that the firm will get the client more cash than they've already been offered, and that there will be no escalating fee agreements. Brady Pofahl is the only attorney in Albuquerque to offer these guarantees to his clients. As Pofahl goes on to say, "An injury from an accident or other event will disrupt all areas of a client's life. This can make it challenging for clients and their families to complete even simple tasks that are a part of everyday life. It is our hope that this new website is very helpful to those who have found themselves facing an uphill battle with their personal injury case. We want to let the people of New Mexico know that we are here to help them and will fight for the money they truly deserve." About Pofahl Law Firm, P.C.: At Pofahl Law Firm, P.C., Attorney Brady Pofahl works directly with his clients, listens to what they have to say, and works hard to achieve the best possible result for their injury claims. He is a former insurance attorney who uses his extensive knowledge to fight and get clients the full amount of compensation and benefits that they deserve. For more information about us, please visit http://www.abqinjurylawyer.com Contact Info: Name: Brady Pofahl Organization: Pofahl Law Firm, P.C. Phone: (505) 266-3434 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/pofahl-law-firm-p-c-launches-brand-new-personal-injury-website/109957 Release ID: 109957 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) Sorry that press release couldn't be found. [ Vist our sister sites: Linux news | Bible Study Tool ] Site design and layout copyright 2005-2015 Free Press Release Center Select Security Launches Free Quote Initiative in Response to Surging Crime Rate Ramped up security measures featuring state-of-the-art technology are crucial to deterring savvy thieves, publishes selectsecurity.com.au -- Reports released last year via the Australian Bureau of Statistics show public robbery occurrences dropped 16 percent during 2013 and 2014, reaching their lowest point in the past five years. In contrast, home and business invasions surged more than 5 percent according to an independent study published earlier this year. In light of this development, authorities are urging local residents to ramp up their security measures. The staff of Select Security has been watching this trend unfold for some time. With the rising risk of burglary and vandalism in mind, spokesperson Alan Gamble has launched the company's free quote initiative. Said Gamble, "Wrongdoers have become far more brazen than in the past, going so far as to break into people's homes and businesses during the daytime when they could easily be caught. In many cases, the problem lies with low-quality systems and amateur setups. Thieves have trained themselves to spot these and have become well-versed in determining which homes and businesses are the easiest targets. We offer state-of-the-art Alarm Systems Perth and components as well as highly trained installation and repair technicians to help combat these issues. Those who contact us during business hours will receive free quotes on the products and services we offer." Among the options available through Select Security are IP CCTV cameras, which capture video and relay their findings to users via an internet connection. Systems incorporating this type of technology are being touted for their high quality image production and user-friendly features. Video feeds can be accessed through computers, smartphones and other mobile devices. The company has partnered with Hikvision Perth, a security system designer and manufacturer known worldwide for its quality and top-tier technology. Select Security additionally furnishes troubleshooting advice on its website addressing common issues property owners experience with their security systems. Tips range from appropriate measures to take following an accidental alarm trip to recommended frequency of testing and maintenance efforts. A form has likewise been provided on the company website allowing visitors to present additional questions and concerns regarding alarm repairs, purchase and installation. Concluded Gamble, "We're experts at repair and installation as well as helping clients choose the system best suited to their needs. We hope our free quote initiative will encourage local home and business owners to take the necessary steps to help keep their properties and families safe. Criminals are only going to increase their efforts to get what they want, but with the right security system kept in optimum condition, area residents are at far less risk of becoming victims. Anyone interested in our products and services may take advantage of our offer by contacting us online or over the phone." About Select Security: With 30 years of industry experience, the staff of Select Security are committed to providing top-of-the-line products and services designed to help keep local residents safe in the face of rising home and business invasion statistics. For more information about us, please visit http://www.selectsecurity.com.au Contact Info: Name: Alan Gamble Organization: Select Security Phone: 1 300 135 881 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/select-security-launches-free-quote-initiative-in-response-to-surging-crime-rate/109981 Release ID: 109981 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) Smart Style Bathrooms Celebrates Over 600 Successful Bathroom Renovations The company is proud of the fact that they have completed more than 600 bathroom renovations on time and on budget, reports http://www.smartstylebathrooms.com.au/. -- Smart Style Bathrooms, a home renovation company serving homeowners in Western Australia, has recently celebrated the significant milestone of having completed more than 600 successful bathroom renovation projects. The company is proud to say that all projects were done to their exacting standards and delivered on time and within budget. Those who would like to get a glimpse of some of the projects that SmartStyle Bathrooms has completed over the years or learn more about what they have to offer can visit http://www.smartstylebathrooms.com.au/. Cameron Slater, a spokesperson for Smart Style Bathrooms, commented "We are proud of our team for having reached this critical milestone in our business. Having had the opportunity to renovate bathrooms for over 600 homeowners is about more than just numbers. It represents hundreds of opportunities for us to serve homeowners in Perth and the surrounding areas by giving them the bathrooms of their dreams. Not only have we provided our Smart Style Bathrooms services to more than 600 customers, but we have been able to deliver every single project within the set time and budget parameters. This speaks volumes about our team's commitment to quality design and service for each and every one of our customers." Clients who are currently in the market for a bathroom renovation and would like to see some of the luxurious bathroom spaces that the team has designed and created can visit the Smart Style Bathrooms Gallery at smartstylebathrooms.com.au. Smart Style Bathrooms is a full-service company and can arrange for homeowners' bathrooms to be fully gutted, help with electrical and plumbing installation, and offer help with expert bathroom design. Their goal is always to deliver projects within a 5 to 10 day period. As Slater goes on to say, "There is nothing that our team loves more than making sure that homeowners love their bathrooms. We are celebrating the fact that we have had over 600 opportunities to do this. We look forward to helping the next 600 homeowners transform their spaces and get the bathroom they've always wanted." About Smart Style Bathrooms: Smart Style Bathrooms provides high quality bathroom restorations in Perth, Western Australia. Their team specialises in bathroom, laundry, and toilet renovations. Smart Style Bathrooms acts with honesty and integrity, saving homeowners' hard-earned cash where they can and passing on the savings without sacrificing quality. They pride themselves on their professional tiling and bathroom renovation service and can take care of the process from start to finish in 5 - 10 days. For more information about us, please visit http://www.smartstylebathrooms.com.au/ Contact Info: Name: Cameron Slater Organization: Smart Style Bathrooms Address: Perth, Western Australia, 6007 Phone: 1300 789 538 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/smart-style-bathrooms-celebrates-over-600-successful-bathroom-renovations/109985 Release ID: 109985 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) Summit Disability Law Group Announces New Internship Opportunities Open to those excelling at legal, paralegal, or related studies, SLC-area internships will provide hands-on experience with disability law and associated work, Summit Disability Law Group reports -- Summit Disability Law Group, one of Utah's Finest Social Security disability benefit legal practices, announced the availability and details of a number of new internship opportunities. Students who excel in their legal, paralegal, or other law-related studies are invited to apply for an internship with the Utah Social Security Disability Attorneys at the firm's website. Those who are accepted will gain valuable legal, marketing, and other experience, working closely with some of the most accomplished SSDI Attorneys in Salt Lake today. "With so many people working hard for years only to find their careers cut short by on-the-job accidents or health problems," Summit Disability Law Group founder and Managing Attorney Jake Lee said, "Social Security disability law is an incredibly important field. We're proud to be able to help so many people in Utah secure the benefits they deserve, as every successful case makes a real, positive difference in the lives of our clients and their families. We're happy to say that we are now accepting applications for a limited number of internship openings that will provide some rewarding insights into this fascinating area of the law. We invite all who are interested to stop by our website to read about the internships and apply." Although just about all working Americans and their spouses will receive retirement benefits from the nation's Social Security program upon retiring, the associated agency's activities do not end there. Established at the same time as the retirement system in 1935, the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program provides potentially long-term support to qualifying workers who become "legitimately disabled" and unable to earn income, as a result. According to the Social Security Administration's most recent official report, over 10 million Americans received such payments in 2014, with nearly 800,000 dropping off the eligibility list during that period. Access to a share of the more than $11 billion disbursed in the average month, though, can be tough to gain, with the program's examiners regularly rejecting even the most qualified-seeming of applicants. For many who suffer from actual, doctor-diagnosed disabilities, it is only through working with a firm like the Summit Disability Law Group that success is finally secured. Summit Disability Law Group helps both first-time applicants and those whose earlier claims were rejected navigate the significant red tape associated with SSDI to obtain the benefits to which they are entitled. Interns at the firm's Draper office, located just outside of Salt Lake City, will have an opportunity to gain plenty of hands-on experience with this important field of the law. Successful applicants will help with managing case files and medical records, writing blog posts for the firm's website and participating on social media, preparing trial materials, and otherwise engaging in a wide range of rewarding, relevant work. Summit Disability Law Group encourages those students currently demonstrating excellence in their legal, paralegal, or law-related studies to apply for an internship now at the firm's website at: https://www.summitdisabilitylawgroup.com/internships/ About Summit Disability Law Group: When disability strikes, Summit Disability Law Group helps Utah residents navigate the red tape and complexity of the Social Security Disability Insurance system, securing for clients the benefits they deserve. For more information about us, please visit https://www.summitdisabilitylawgroup.com/ Contact Info: Name: Jake Lee Organization: Summit Disability Law Group Phone: (801) 890-1030 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/summit-disability-law-group-announces-new-internship-opportunities/109974 Release ID: 109974 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) Los Angeles Film Publishes New Recap of The 10 Best Chick Flicks From Recent Year Los Angeles Film has published a new guide to the ten best chick flicks released recently, covering the surprise hits, best-selling films and best-reviewed films of the genre from the past year. -- Film is one of the most compelling storytelling mediums in the history of the world, and can tell every kind of story. Chick flicks are traditionally romantic comedies known for eliciting stories about love, conflict, hope and drama, and are designed to appeal to a primarily female audience. Los Angeles Film is a film blog covering all things Hollywood, and has just published a new article recapping the best offerings the genre had to offer last year. The article offers a shortlist of the ten top chick flicks, each of which is accompanied by a summary of its plot, an overview of the critical reception to the film and the impact the film had on the editorial team at the website. What's more, the website includes the film's trailer and full information of where it can be found for on demand or streaming viewing. The article lists ten good chick flicks, which are hugely diverse in their concept and execution, from arthouse offerings like Strange Magic and Beyond Paradise to commercial flagships like Pitch Perfect 2 and The Duff. The round up offers something for everyone, and guarantees to list a film chick flick lovers haven't seen before. A spokesperson for Los Angeles Film explained, "We are pleased to have been able to put together this collection of amazing films, which we feel represent the best chick flicks of the past year. The genre is often maligned for relying too heavily on tropes, but the evidence for that opinion is waning fast. Our shortlist demonstrates the variety and creativity on offer within the genre, as well as showing the increasing mainstream appeal of these films. We look forward to helping more people discover more great movies throughout 2016." About Los Angeles Film: Los Angeles Film is an online resource center committed to helping people get the best information about films coming out of the LA, the biggest film industry on earth. The site is regularly updated with new content on the latest and upcoming releases, including previews, trailer analysis, film reviews and more. The site is run by a dedicated team of writers and researchers with a passion for film. For more information about us, please visit http://www.losangelesfilm.org/ Contact Info: Name: Los Angeles Film Email: camillafortner@icloud.com Organization: LAFilm Phone: 484-521-1414 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/los-angeles-film-publishes-new-recap-of-the-10-best-chick-flicks-from-recent-year/109909 Release ID: 109909 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) Since the rise of modern medicine, the pharmaceuticals industry has relied on the brainpower of chemists and biologists to discover and develop new drugs. Their painstaking work has brought about dramatic advances in human health yet the slow pace of progress has prompted a search for new approaches. As in so many areas, some of the most promising ideas are coming from Silicon Valley. In the era of big data and artificial intelligence, could computer algorithms provide a short-cut to the next generation of medical breakthroughs? Among the pioneers of computer-based drug discovery is a Californian company called Verseon. It has developed a system for modelling interactions between molecules to accelerate the hunt for compounds that can interfere with disease. The bond between molecules is a hardcore physics problem, says David Kita, Verseons co-founder and head of research and development. To see if a molecule is a good match involves trillions of calculations. Until now, finding those matches has been a hit-and-miss process. Drug companies have aimed to increase efficiency with the introduction of high throughput screening, which uses robotic laboratory equipment to rapidly test millions of compounds for signs of medicinal potential. However, the industrialisation of drug discovery has failed to solve big pharmas productivity problem. On the contrary, the cost of developing drugs has been increasing as easy-to-find compounds have been exhausted. Since 1950, the number of new drugs approved per billion US dollars spent on R&D has fallen by half roughly every nine years, according to research published in the journal Nature. A report by the Boston-based Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development in 2014 found that the average cost of getting a new medicine to market had more than doubled in the past decade to $2.6bn. The discovery process is completely broken, says Adityo Prakash, Verseons co-founder and chief executive. High-throughput screening is just a faster kind of trial and error. Occasionally something is discovered through serendipity and then the rest of the industry crowds in to do a variation of the same thing. Mr Prakash and his co-founders are aiming to bring greater precision and predictability to the process by drawing on their backgrounds in computing. They had success in the 1990s as founders of the company Pulsent which developed technology to reduce the bandwidth consumed by online videos. The intellectual property, still used in video streaming today, was later acquired by Intel. What is the connection between video compression and drug discovery? Its physics and maths, says Mr Prakash. Verseon has spent the past 14 years building a computer system capable of exploring hundreds of millions of compounds and modelling their interaction with disease-causing proteins. The pharma industry has coalesced around a few million me-too compounds that are just a drop in the ocean compared with whats out there, says Mr Prakash. Much remains for Verseon to prove. The company is using its technology to develop its own R&D pipeline. An anti-blood-clotting drug has shown promise in pre-clinical studies and two other programmes, involving cancer and a diabetes-related eye disorder, are still in the discovery phase. The pharma industry has coalesced around a few million me-too compounds that are just a drop in the ocean compared with whats out there Verseons efforts, however, have been given credibility by several high-profile backers including Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and former US energy secretary. He sits on the companys scientific advisory board along with Robert Karr and John Leonard, former top scientists at Pfizer and AbbVie, respectively. One of the companys biggest investors is Neil Woodford, the prominent UK fund manager. His involvement was among the factors that led Verseon to float on Londons junior Aim market last year, raising almost 66m. Verseon is not the only Woodford-backed company aiming to add computing power to the search for new drugs. Another is London-based start-up Stratified Medical, which uses artificial intelligence to sift through huge global databases of scientific research in pursuit of hidden patterns. The companys algorithms have already revealed two new potential drug targets for Alzheimers disease, leading to a deal worth up to $800m with an unidentified US drugmaker. [Our technology] is being developed by some very good drug developers sitting next to some very talented neuroscientists, themselves sitting next to some very talented mathematicians and computer scientists, all in the same company, says Ken Mulvany, founder and chairman of Stratified Medical. Back at Verseon, Mr Kita says pharma has been slower than other industries to embrace this kind of cross-disciplinary working. Your car was designed by computer. Your aeroplane was designed by computer. The pharma industry has been a holdout against that trend. Companies such as Verseon and Stratified Medical are betting that this will begin to change as drugmakers face mounting pressure from investors and from society to increase output from their R&D pipelines at a lower cost. A merged Towry and Tilney BestInvest super-adviser will have the deep pockets needed to invest in cutting edge technology, Jason Hollands has said, but it wont join the rush of the robo-advisers. Tilney Bestinvest agreed to buy Towry from its majority shareholder Palamon Capital Partners for 600m on 4 April, creating a combined business with more than 20bn of assets under advice, and around 240 financial planners and 120 investment managers. Mr Hollands, business development managing director of Tilney Bestinvest, said greater scale will allow the merged company to invest in areas demanded by advisers, like technology. If you are a business with greater scale, you have got greater financial resources to keep on investing to make sure you have got the right tools in place for financial planners, he said. Most offices across both businesses are generally quite small, but what you want standing behind that is significant central resources in terms of investment research and IT. We are always looking to make sure our systems and technology are at the cutting edge. But he expressed scepticism about whether the enlarged firm would join the rush of advice firms making a move into so-called robo-advice. Tilney Bestinvest feels comfortable with its current online offering, Mr Hollands said, adding investment was unlikely to be directed towards a more sophisticated automated proposition. If you go onto our website you can buy a model portfolio through an online process - I dont describe that as advice and there is no robot involved, he said. Our general goal is to provide a simple online process to choose a managed portfolio. I am pretty comfortable that we are supporting clients in that space. Several large and small financial services firms have entered the robo-advice market in recent months, encouraged by the regulator, which is keen to use technology to find lower cost solutions to the advice gap. On 17 March, Royal Bank of Scotland announced plans to replace advisers with an automated service. It was criticised for making advice more exclusive by union Unite, but was branded simply one solution to the difficult advice gap problem by an industry expert. Mr Hollands said there is an important line between providing a simple process where the investor makes the decision, and the giving of advice, which involves asking questions about suitability. We have taken great care not to get into that space [online] he said. After the Tilney and Towry deal completes, Mr Hollands confirmed there will be a review of the business, which could lead to some redundancies, but mentioned that this would not affect advisers, investment managers or other client-facing staff. As part of the deal Towrys chief executive Rob Devey will leave the business. Standard Lifes recent buying spree has set the standard in terms of how consolidators and trade buyers should be approaching acquisitions, Brian Spence has said. The partner for consultancy Harrison Spence said Standard Life, whose financial planning business 1825 has announced three acquisitions over the past few weeks, had been going about the business of buying businesses the right way. Essentially, Standard Life is buying firms based on profit, not on income multiples. This is totally logical, Mr Spence said. He added: The provider is setting a new standard in the market in terms of buying on the basis of profit. Plus, most of the vendors are staying with the businesses so the way in which Standard Life has gone about this is very professional. According to Mr Spence, because Standard Life has raised 3bn in the space of a few months with these acquisitions, the transition into a large distributor is going to be a doddle. Mr Spence said: It has been working with these advisers on its platform for years. Plus, it took nearly a year since 1825 announced it was looking at firms before we heard anything. I was frustrated by this delay, thinking: Why is Standard Life dragging its heels? There are great opportunities out there. But it is like the tortoise that has won the race. We were proved wrong. The company was dotting the Is and crossing the Ts and taking its time getting it right, when some other consolidators have been rushing to scoop up small firms assets under management, and getting it wrong. Standard Life launched 1825 in July 2015. At the time, Steve Murray, chief executive of 1825, said this was in response to fundamental regulatory and market changes driving unprecedented client demand for financial planning. He said: It has never been more complex for people to save, retire and plan for the future, so quality financial advice has become a must-have for many. Standard Life renamed its restricted advice business 1825 in July 2015, with offices in Edinburgh, Leeds, Sheffield, Bishop Auckland and Reading. At the time, Standard Life said 1825 would be looking to acquire advisory firms across the UK, but had gone quiet until March 2016, when it announced its intention to buy Norwich-based Almary Green, Scottish firm Munro Partnership and London-based Baigrie Davies. Mr Spence added: A lot of the other huge acquirers have done well, in my opinion, for the advisory market and for the end client but from now I believe Standard Lifes acquisition model will be the one others will follow. On the trail 15 March 2016. 1825 reaches agreement to acquire Almary Green in Norwich. 21 March 2016. 1825 announces plans to acquire Munro Partnership based in the West of Scotland. 5 April 2016. 1825 announces plans to purchase London-based Baigrie Davies. All transactions are expected to complete in the first half of 2016, subject to certain conditions being satisfied, including receipt of regulatory approvals. Standard Lifes recent buying spree marked a turnaround from its positioning on the advisory market in 2010, two years before the Retail Distribution Review came into effect, when it sold its 15 per cent holding in national advisory firm 2Plan to multi-tie proposition Openwork. After a tough start to the year for many asset classes, the V-shaped recovery seen mid-February has only added to the puzzle for many investors. As markets move into the second quarter, Investment Adviser asked five fund selectors for their sub-100m, hidden-gem portfolios that they believe are well-placed to outperform. A nipper in the context of First States extensive overall Asian franchise. The fund was launched last year following the splitting of First States Asia teams between Edinburgh-based Stewart Investors and this team, who are based in Asia. It pursues a more high-octane approach than First States core Asia funds and is managed by Martin Lau and Richard Jones. I think the small size gives the fund some added flexibility in the current environment. The portfolio is quite concentrated at 51 holdings and the strategy is to take an unconstrained best ideas approach. The fund currently has a big overweight to industrials (20.4 per cent v an index position of 8.4 per cent) and healthcare (10.4 per cent v 3.6 per cent) and is very underweight financials and energy. Although this is a fairly recently launched fund, Lau has a long and superb track record managing the First State Greater China Growth. Asian markets have taken quite a battering over the past year, but provide a value opportunity for long-term investors and while the region continues to face headwinds, arguably the risks are priced in. Ben Yearsley, investment director at Wealth Club: PFS Downing UK Micro-Cap Growth fund (21m) Managed by Judith MacKenzie, this is a concentrated fund with 25 to 30 holdings 28 at the moment. The manager is trying to apply a more private-equity approach to quoted companies, so she only invests in micro-cap firms that are under 100m and typically under 50m in size. Ms MacKenzie is not taking board seats, but shes not a passive investor who sits back and lets things happen. [The strategy involves] taking reasonable stakes and helping shape those companies, so its a hands-on approach. Youll find the holdings in many different types of companies, covering a range of sectors. Its a broadly spread portfolio, despite the fact that theres only 28 holdings. Youve got support services, food producers, software, real estate, food and drug retailers, technology and telecoms. Its an under-researched part of the market with lots of very interesting long-standing companies. Particularly with this end of the Alternative Investment Market (Aim), time counts for a lot you know the brokers, you know the companies. The manager has 15 years experience investing in Aim. Its a niche product not in an expensive area of the market, not massively affected by Brexit or currency worries. Its really interesting. Why now? Its not expensive. This space isnt overly fished. Despite the fact that there are more micro cap funds now, lots of them focus on 100m+ and dont go down to this level. Ahmet Feridun, senior associate investment strategy and research at Stonehage Fleming Investment Management: The Canada Life UK Equity Income fund has moved into an unloved part of the pharmaceuticals sector in response to the knee-jerk reallocations seen in equity markets so far this year. Managers Craig Rippe and Eugene ONeill initiated a sizeable 2.2 per cent position in Shire last month. They believe the biopharmaceutical company has good potential for future growth as it continues to add treatment indicators and maintains its position as a leading provider of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drugs. Mr Rippe, who is also head of UK equities at Canada Life Investments, said: Shire feels very much out of favour. When you speak to analysts they say everyone hates it but, when you look at the forecast for earnings growth, it is pretty robust so its actually cheaper than it has ever been. The managers acknowledged that the market reaction to Shires $32bn (22bn) takeover of Baxalta in January this year was critical Shire shares fell by 8 per cent on the news but feel that the company continues to have potential for future growth. Mr ONeill said: There have been some knee-jerk re-allocations sector-wise and pharma has been particularly beaten up on the back of a number of one-off things. But this is a company that has been consistently mid-teens earnings growth. It has built businesses from almost nothing [in 1997] and it now has about $1.8bn in revenue. Imperial Brands is the funds largest holding at 5.1 per cent of the portfolio, the position having first been initiated in December 2014. Mr Rippe called it a high-quality, cash-generative company that is set to benefit from good geographic exposure to the European economic recovery. Although the fund holds BP as its third-largest position at 4 per cent, Mr Rippe said he is cautious of energy and resource companies, and questions the sustainability of their dividend payments. He began to aggressively lower the funds exposure to the large oil companies in the third quarter of 2014. The funds position in Royal Dutch Shell was fully exited by October 2015, as the managers felt that the company suffered from poor capital allocation by senior management. They also believe the acquisition of BG was a poorly timed acquisition, and would mean a lower quality balance sheet and falling return on equity, even when oil prices were high. Mr Rippe said there would need to be a meaningful weakening in the US dollar before he would begin increasing exposure to oil companies, but does not expect that to happen in the near term. The Canada Life UK Equity Income fund has returned 19.2 per cent over three years, compared with the UK Equity Income sector, which returned 19.8 per cent over the same period, according to data from FE Analytics. Newly-authorised Atom Bank has set out its stall for mortgage brokers, promising that its lack of traditional infrastructure will enable competitive pricing and increased transparency. The challenger banks intermediary exclusive range is coming this summer, along with paying the same level of procuration fee for product transfers and further advances, as it will for new business. Atom stated it is aiming for the mainstream market, with a proposition spanning new-build, shared ownership, contractor and self-employed mortgages, along with products which offer lending into retirement. All these will come under its intermediary brand, Digital Mortgages by Atom Bank. Maria Harris, head of intermediary mortgage sales, told FTAdviser that the lack of a branch network means savings can be passed on to brokers and their clients. Having a digital structure gives us a different cost base and also means we can be really transparent with customer data, criteria and fees, which all help to build trust with the adviser community. Distribution will be limited during the early months, while systems and processes are tested, before gradually rolling the range out to the wider market. Products will also be restricted to a group of selected brokers in the first phase of the launch, to help to shape criteria for the full range of deals. Ms Harris promised that there are no plans for in-house advisers and no immediate plans for any execution-only business. In terms of building the broker base, there will be seven regional business development managers, giving full UK coverage at launch, backed by a phone and web-chat team in Durham. For brokers there will be none of the normal challenges they face with lenders, no cross-selling or dual pricing, were looking to just be the facilitator between customers and their money, she added. No set date was given on launch, as a certain amount of retail deposits need to come in before any lending begins. Atom was granted its restricted banking licence in June last year and now has a full, unrestricted licence to offer personal and business banking services. Chief executive Mark Mullen and chairman Anthony Thomson started the challenger bank in April 2014 and have since then raised in excess of 135m in capital through over 100 private and institutional investors, including Woodford Investment Management, which holds the largest equity stake. The bank now has 160 permanent employees and a network of partners, mostly based in the North of England. Last month, technology provider Iress revealed it was working with Atom to develop a platform that ensures its mortgages were approved in hours rather than weeks. The bank will be the first client to implement the latest version of its mortgage sales and origination product. peter.walker@ft.com Can employers help plug any advice gap? According to the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR), a number of stakeholders said the workplace had an important role to play in supporting good financial decision-making among employees. It suggested employers should play a bigger role in helping their employees to access financial advice and guidance. The question is, though, does a stress test of the recommendations make them seem realistic? If one looks at the statistics there is serious cause for doubt. Around 95 per cent of UK businesses are micro firms with nine or fewer employees. In total such micro employers account for 33 per cent of employees in the UK. Small firms, those with between 10 and 49 employees, account for a further 15 per cent of employees. So, almost half of employees work for small enterprises. How likely is it that such employers will voluntarily take on a role helping employees with their finances? The one reference point we have is auto-enrolment where employers have no option but to comply with the law. It is early days yet but The Pensions Regulator is putting a brave face on progress, reporting so far 90 per cent of small firms have complied with their obligations but this is against a background of a sharp rise in enforcement notices and fines. The Federation of Small Businesses reported in January this year: Nearly half of business owners without a workplace pension scheme (45 per cent) are still unclear about their responsibilities with a quarter (25 per cent) not confident their business can cope. It hardly inspires confidence in small employers taking on voluntarily a financial education role. The Pensions Regulator is putting a brave face on progress When it comes to large employers is there more prospect of them helping their employees? The employee benefit advisers SecondSight carried out a survey among 250 firms with 100+ employees. In this report, Is There a Need For Financial Education in the Workplace?, published in 2014, only 38 per cent of the large firms surveyed provided any financial education to their employees. The report comments to being a little bit sceptical about these results because some firms will say they offer financial education when, in reality, they may just have a leaflet outlining the companys benefits and pension scheme. Even where the employer does do more for its employees it is likely to be related to pensions rather than to more general financial matters debt, savings, insurance or investments. As to the causes for larger employers not doing more, many simply do not feel it is their responsibility as well as being worried about cost and liability. Banks, as providers of business banking services, have an established relationship with some employers and can cherry pick those to whom it looks profitable to offer help with financial education. If that assistance takes the form of the new streamlined advice or guidance services proposed by the FAMR, there is a risk for employers. If there should be any more mis-selling episodes employees are likely to feel aggrieved with their employer for introducing to the workplace whichever firm caused the mis-selling. Campaigners have given a mixed reaction to an NFU report examining the potential impact on agriculture of an UK exit from the EU. The report, which examines the effect of different Brexit scenarios on a range of agricultural sectors, suggests mosts farmers will struggle unless direct payments are maintained. See also: Farm incomes could plummet outside EU report It was commissioned by the NFU from Wageningen University in the Netherlands recently ranked as the top agricultural university in the world. Former NFU president Peter Kendall, part of the Farmers Stronger in Britain group, is campaigning for the UK to remain an EU member. Sir Peter said the study findings were a further demonstration of why Britains farmers were better off inside the EU. The reports conclusion highlights the most likely outcome for British agriculture if we leave the EU and it makes for depressing reading, with many farms facing a severe loss of income. This is exactly why Britain and our farmers will be better off if we remain in Europe with full access to the single market giving us the best free-trade deal of all. The reports conclusion highlights the most likely outcome for British agriculture if we leave the EU and it makes for depressing reading, with many farms facing a severe loss of income Peter Kendall, former NFU president and In campaigner Leaving risks higher prices for families to put food on the table, lower incomes for hardworking farmers, and years of uncertainty creating a damaging economic shock. See also: All the latest EU referendum coverage from Farmers Weekly But Defra minister George Eustice, who is campaigning for the UK to leave the EU, said the report showed farmers had nothing to fear by voting for leave. These types of reports always say more about the economic model and the assumptions that underly it than they necessarily do about real life, he said. These types of reports always say more about the economic model and the assumptions that underly it than they necessarily do about real life George Eustice, Defra minister and Out campaigner The most likely scenario maintaining support at current levels while introducing a free trade agreement actually resulted in an improvement in farm incomes, said Mr Eustice. The report ignores the fact that we would have lower burdens of regulation and better, more effective policy design if we took back control. What the report does show is that after we vote leave and conclude a free trade agreement while continuing to support UK farming, farm incomes actually increase. Ukip MEP and Norfolk farmer Stuart Agnew suggested the NFU should have commissioned the study from UK researchers rather than from a Dutch university. But the document was still a useful summary what might happen following Brexit, said Mr Agnew, who is campaigning for the UK to leave the EU. There is a lot of uncertainty in what trade model will be adopted and in how farmers and consumers will respond, he said. However, what is certain is that under the free trade model and [World Trade Organization] model presented in the paper there are opportunities for farmgate prices to rise. There is a lot of uncertainty in what trade model will be adopted and in how farmers and consumers will respond Stuart Agnew, Ukip MEP and Out campaigner No one on the In or Out campaigns was arguing for support payments to be cut, said Mr Agnew, and the paper highlights how important those payments would remain. This was particularly so for the vulnerable livestock sectors. But there was little recognition in the document of the strength of the position that the UK was in regarding its trade deficit with the EU, said Mr Agnew. This will be a major factor in the negotiations, he said. Story Highlights Midwestern, Western and Northeastern states score well on index Idaho residents express highest sense of personal security from crime Blacks express less confidence in local police than non-blacks WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Residents of Idaho express the highest sense of personal security according to Gallup's Law and Order Index of U.S. states in 2015 with a score of 88 out of 100, just ahead of New Hampshire and Utah. Residents in most states generally feel secure, as the lowest two states on the scale, South Carolina and New Mexico, still had relatively high scores of 72. Top and Bottom States on Gallup's Law and Order Index Index Top states Idaho 88 New Hampshire 87 Utah 87 Wisconsin 86 Montana 86 Nebraska 86 South Dakota 86 North Dakota 86 Wyoming 86 Minnesota 86 Bottom states New Mexico 72 South Carolina 72 Louisiana 73 Mississippi 74 West Virginia 75 Delaware 76 Tennessee 76 California 77 March 30-Dec. 22, 2015 Gallup Poll Overall, Midwestern, Western and Northeastern states placed highly on the index, while several Southern states found themselves near the bottom. Looking at the distribution of states on the index, those with larger minority populations occupy the lower half of the scale, while more racially homogenous states tend to score higher. This suggests that, rather than regional differences, state index scores may reflect Americans' divergent attitudes about personal security as it relates to their own race. Gallup constructs a global Law and Order Index using Gallup World Poll data on people's confidence in their local police, feelings of personal safety and self-reported incidence of theft. The index ranges from 0 to 100 by averaging "positive" responses to these three questions. Higher scores correspond to a higher percentage of the population reporting feeling secure. The results reported here apply that same index to the U.S. using data collected in Gallup's 2015 50-state poll. The survey was conducted March 30-Dec. 22, 2015, with approximately 500 respondents in every state. Law and Order Index and State Crime Rates Uncorrelated The state rankings of the Law and Order Index provide a comparative picture of how the people in each state feel about their personal security and reflect the confidence they have in their local law enforcement. These perceptions, however, do not necessarily relate to official crime statistics in each state. For example, a state's crime rate does not correlate with people's confidence in local police -- one of the three components of the index. If the states are ranked according to their crime rates using FBI data, confidence in local police remains strong whether a person lives in a state in the top or bottom 20% of the nation. In the bottom quintile of states ranked by crime rate, 82% of Americans report having confidence in local law enforcement, on par with the 79% of residents in the top quintile. A small relationship exists between respondents' perceptions of their safety -- another component of the index -- and state crime rates. While 81% of those in states with the lowest 20% of crime rates report feeling safe walking alone at night, Americans' perceptions of their safety in states within the highest 20% of national crime rates drop nine percentage points to 72%. State Crime Rates and Perceptions of Personal Security Bottom 20% crime rate Second quintile Third quintile Fourth quintile Top 20% crime rate % Confident in local police 82 80 80 80 79 % Not confident in local police 18 20 20 20 21 % Yes, feel safe walking alone at night 81 78 78 76 72 % No, do not feel safe walking alone at night 19 22 22 24 28 March 30-Dec. 22, 2015 Gallup Poll Racial Divisions Drive Index Components Previous Gallup research finds nonwhites, and black adults in particular, to be less likely to say they have confidence in the police. This most recent survey confirms these trends, with 66% of blacks living in all 50 states reporting confidence in local police, compared with 82% of non-blacks. Likewise, though 79% of non-blacks feel safe walking alone at night, only 62% of blacks concur. These national racial divides -- where black Americans are more likely to express less confidence in police and to feel less safe -- explain, in part, why several Southern states with higher black populations rank near the bottom of the index. Of the eight lowest-scoring states on the index, seven of them rank among the top 11 states with the highest black populations in the U.S. (Washington, D.C., No. 1; Mississippi, No. 2; Louisiana, No. 3; South Carolina, No. 6; Delaware, No. 9; Tennessee, No. 11). Race and Perceptions of Personal Security Black Non-black % Confident in local police 66 82 % Not confident in local police 34 18 % Yes, feel safe walking alone at night 62 79 % No, do not feel safe walking alone at night 38 21 March 30-Dec. 22, 2015 Gallup Poll Implications While Americans' concern about crime -- among both whites and nonwhites -- has reached a 15-year peak, their confidence in local law enforcement and perceptions of their safety differ starkly along racial lines. Blacks report substantially lower confidence in their local law enforcement and express a greater uneasiness about walking alone at night. In this sense, the U.S. Law and Order Index taps into a nuanced assessment of personal security, rather than a general conception about fear of crime. It assesses multiple facets of individual perceptions of safety, including the institution charged with preventing crime and enforcing laws. On the heels of several high-profile incidents involving police and black Americans over the past year, the racial divisions reflected in the components of the Law and Order Index have played a central role in discussions of criminal law reform. As analysis of two of the index's components shows here, a racial schism in perceptions of police and personal security, rather than the actual crime rate itself, may be the principal driver of ongoing unrest between minorities and the justice system. Data on the components of the Law and Order Index are available in Gallup Analytics. Survey Methods Results are based on telephone interviews conducted March 30-Dec. 22, 2015, with random samples of approximately 500 adults, aged 18 and older, living in each of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total state samples, the margin of sampling error is 5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Data are weighted to account for unequal selection probability, nonresponse and double coverage of landline and cellphone users in the two sampling frames. Data are also weighted to state estimates of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education and phone status (cellphone only, landline only, both, and cellphone mostly). Each sample of state adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Story Highlights Sanders has a +39 net favorable rating among 18- to 24-year-olds Clinton does much worse among those 18 to 24, with a -23 net favorable Sanders-Clinton age gap among young Americans also seen among young Dems PRINCETON, N.J. -- Although he is the oldest candidate in the presidential race, Bernie Sanders receives his highest rating, +39, from the youngest U.S. adults. The image of his Democratic competitor, Hillary Clinton, among this group is her worst, at -23. This disparity in ratings is the largest found for the two candidates among all age groups. These results are based on ratings of the two Democratic candidates in Gallup Daily tracking from January through March, based on a large sample of more than 18,000 national adults, allowing for a detailed analysis of the candidates' images across the age spectrum. Over this period, an average 43% of all U.S. adults viewed Sanders favorably and 35% unfavorably, while Clinton's ratings tilted negative: 42% favorable, 52% unfavorable. Sanders' positive image among younger Americans partly reflects the general tendency of younger people to identify as Democrats, although, as noted, even among those aged 18 to 24 he is viewed much more favorably than Clinton. The positive sentiments of those younger than age 50 are the main drivers of Sanders' overall net positive image among all U.S. adults. Those aged 50 to 64 roughly break even, favorable versus unfavorable, in their views of Sanders. Despite his own relatively advanced age (74), Americans aged 65 to 84 see him more negatively than positively. Clinton's image varies less than Sanders' across age groups, with her weakest standing among the youngest U.S. adults and her most positive among those aged 30 to 44. The most striking difference in the images of the two candidates is among those aged 18 to 24, 59% of whom hold a positive opinion of the Vermont senator, compared with 20% who view him negatively. Clinton's image is almost the reverse among this group, with 34% favorable and 57% unfavorable. The image gap between the two Democratic candidates narrows among those aged 25 to 29, and then generally gets smaller among older age groups. Clinton is viewed (slightly) more positively than Sanders only among the 75 to 79 age group. Complete ratings for each candidate by age group are at the end of this article. Democrats See Both Candidates More Positively, With Same Patterns by Age Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, young people also view Sanders much more favorably than they do Clinton. Sanders' net favorable rating among 18- to 24-year-old Democrats is +69, compared with +3 for Clinton. That gap shrinks among the next-oldest age groups. The two candidates are seen roughly equally among Democrats aged 35 to 44, with Clinton gaining the image advantage among Democrats aged 45 and older. In general, Clinton's net favorable rating rises almost linearly across Democratic age groups until the 80 to 84 group. Sanders' image shows the opposite pattern, tending to get worse with each successively older group of Democrats. Implications Sanders would be -- by a wide margin -- the oldest president to take office in U.S. history. Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became president in 1981 and was 77 when he left office. If elected, Sanders would within three years be the oldest person ever to hold the office, and would be well into his 80s if he were to serve two terms. Clinton, if elected, would be the same age as Reagan when he first took office. Sanders' extraordinary appeal to the youngest group of potential voters is clearly not based on their belief that he shares their life experiences and contemporary outlook. It presumably is based on the appeal of his ideas, approaches to policy or his personality. Ten percent of those who support Sanders say it is because of his focus on education, including his proposal to make all public universities free to any qualified student, and that policy may appeal to the youngest Americans, many of whom are in college. Sanders is clearly a liberal in his social policies, and young people are not particularly liberals based on self-definitions, instead tending to label themselves as moderates. But many of Sanders' left-leaning policies apparently appeal strongly to the young. Clinton too is generally on the left of the political spectrum, and seemingly might have a special appeal to young people for the same reasons -- but that isn't the case. Clinton has a long and often controversial public history, and something about that background, her policy proposals or her personality has apparently turned many young people against her. The real-world value of Sanders' appeal to the young -- in terms of helping him procure the nomination and win in November if he is the nominee -- is debatable, given young adults' lower election turnout rates. Two early indicators suggest this won't change this election: Young people are paying the lowest levels of attention to the election in general, and have the lowest enthusiasm about voting. Young people did serve as a key component of the winning Barack Obama coalition in 2008 and in 2012. Even if young adults continue to have below-average turnout levels, Clinton undoubtedly would like to re-create that winning combination this year. But if she wins the nomination, it is unclear how likely young people would be to transfer their excitement about Sanders over to her campaign. Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics. Survey Methods Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 2-March 31, 2016, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with random samples of 18,298 adults aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, rating Hillary Clinton and 18,392 rating Bernie Sanders. For results based on the total sample of national adults rating each candidate, the margin of sampling error is 1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 7,955 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents rating Clinton and 7,877 rating Sanders, the margin of sampling error is 2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Learn more about how the Gallup U.S. Daily works. Hillary Clinton Image Favorable % Unfavorable % Heard of, no opinion (vol.) % Never heard of (vol.) % 18 to 24 34 57 6 2 25 to 29 41 48 7 3 30 to 34 44 46 7 3 35 to 39 46 46 6 1 40 to 44 45 49 3 2 45 to 49 39 56 3 1 50 to 54 44 52 3 1 55 to 59 41 55 2 1 60 to 64 44 52 3 0 65 to 69 44 52 3 1 70 to 74 42 56 2 1 75 to 79 43 53 2 1 80 to 84 41 54 3 1 Jan. 2-March 31, 2016 Gallup Daily tracking; (vol.) = Volunteered response Fans who attended the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach in 2022 can renew their ticket orders for next year beginning Monday, Oct. 24. This is the fourth and final in a series of posts about the size of the data in Google Earth. We already looked at: Today we are putting it all together and trying to come up with an estimate for just how large the Google Earth database really is. 3D Imagery: 1024 TB The total area of 3D imagery currently in Google Earth is approximately 524,000 sq km. We re-ran our tests for 3D imagery a number of times trying closer and closer views and every time we got closer, the figure got bigger. We eventually settled on an estimate of 2 GB to 1 sq km of 3D imagery although we believe it is an underestimate. This gives us a total of 1024 TB for 3D imagery. Default Layer Aerial Imagery: 179 TB For areas of countries we mostly relied upon this list on Wikipedia. The continental US has more or less complete aerial imagery coverage. Total area approx: 7,663,000 sq km. Based on our maps from this post, we estimate that the European countries Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Austria, Montenegro, Greece, Denmark, Switzerland and Belgium have about 50% aerial imagery, as does Japan. Total area covered 1,506,000 sq km. The US has approximately five times as much aerial imagery as the rest of the world combined. Based on our previous results, we estimate aerial imagery requires approximately 2 GB per 100 sq km. This gives us a total of 179 TB for aerial imagery. Satellite Imagery: 196 TB Excluding Antarctica, the rest of the worlds land mass is approximately half covered with good quality satellite imagery. This is a total area of 63,638,000 sq km. Based on previous results, good quality satellite imagery requires about 0.3 GB per 100 sq km. Low quality satellite imagery requires significantly less space at about 18 MB per 100 sq km. This gives us totals of 186 TB for good quality satellite imagery and only 10 TB for low quality satellite imagery. Historical Imagery: 1,618 TB This is the hardest to estimate. We will exclude the default layer in our calculations. The continental US has on average about seven aerial images for any location. This gives us a total of about 898 TB. Europe and Japan have approximately 50% coverage with five layers of aerial imagery. This comes to 118 TB. About a third of the worlds land area has five layers of good quality satellite imagery. This comes to 527 TB. About one percent of the worlds land area has twenty or more good quality satellite images. This comes to 75 TB. So our final estimate for the total size of the Google Earth database is 3,017 TB or approximately 3 Petabytes! Compare that to this post from 2006 at which time the estimate stood at 150 TB. How accurate is our estimate? Given that the bulk of the size comes from historical imagery for which we simply do not have very accurate data, our estimate could easily be a long way from the true figure. In addition, the method used for determining how much data each imagery type requires was not particularly accurate. We have also completely ignored the old type of 3D buildings, and all the street and mapping data or layers. We have considered Street View to not be part of Google Earth as it should really be considered more of a Google Maps product or a product in its own right. We believe that overall it is a significant underestimate and the database is actually quite a bit bigger. A significant proportion of the Google Earth database is US aerial imagery, both current and historical. For this we can largely thank the USGS and the USDA Farm Service Agency, although much of the most recent imagery is gathered by Google itself. University Clinic complex : New medical center to combine three departments Venusberg A celebration was held for a new medical center being constructed at the University Clinic complex. It will house three departments under one roof. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken A Richtfest was celebrated Thursday at the University Clinic complex in Venusberg. The Richtfest takes place when the shell of a building has been finished and the roof erected. In this case, the University Clinic was applauding its new institute which will house Neurology, Psychiatry and Psychosomatics together under one roof (NPP). Currently, the three departments are in two different places, with Neurology and Psychiatry in an outdated building from the 1960s and far from the Psychosomatic department. About 650 medical personnel work for the three departments and the institute will not only handle patients but also provide space for teaching and research. Included are examination and treatment rooms, 145 beds, a day clinic, emergency center and out-patient treatment. It will encompass around 13,000 square meters over six floors, and be outfitted with up-to-date medical equipment. The total investment in the new building is 80 million euro, with 66 million euro coming from the North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) Ministry of Building. Wolfgang Maier, head of the Psychiatric department and Thomas Klockgether, head of the Neurology department hope that some synergies will be fostered through the new integrated center. Neurology is the top department for medical emergencies due to the high number of stroke patients. Every minute counts, says Klockgether. The NPP will be connected by tunnel to the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE). They research disease involving dementia and other conditions affecting the human brain. Having the centers near each other and connected means researchers and medical staff can work more closely together. The building of the new medical center is part of an overall plan to improve the University Clinic infrastructure. Groundbreaking will take place in May for a new Parent/Child Clinic, which is planned to eventually replace the University Childrens Clinic on the B9 (Adenaueralle). 90 million euro are spearheaded for that project. When that project is completed, much driving between Venusberg and the B9 will be eliminated. Currently, patients and staff have to drive between the two areas for gynecological/birthing health and childrens health care. Bonn accused bomber : Trial wraps up in Dusseldorf Dusseldorf A trial for the man accused of planting a bomb at Bonn central train station is coming to an end. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken A year and a half after a failed bombing attempt at the Bonn central train station, the trial for defendant Marco G. is coming to an end. The presiding judge at the Higher Regional Court of Dusseldorf indicated that evidence had been heard and the case could wrap up in mid-April. If prosecuting attorneys and the defense have no further requests to present evidence, a judgement could be handed down still this month. The accused Marco G. from Bonn-Tannenbusch could face a life sentence. The attorney general is convinced that the 29-year-old man left a bomb on Track 1 of the Bonn central train station on December 10 of 2012. For unknown reasons, the bomb did not explode. Together with three accomplices, he is also accused of planning to assassinate the chair of the Pro NRW party. Health information at your fingertips with Google Search News oi -GizBot Bureau Search engine giant Google on Tuesday launched new health cards in Knowledge Graph with which anyone in India searching for health information can now get it more quickly and easily. Now when people ask Google about common health conditions, they will see information cards with typical symptoms as well as details on how common the condition is -- whether it is critical, if it is contagious, what ages it affects and more. SEE ALSO: Google, Acer build Chrome-base device for video conferences "Around the world, health conditions are among the most important things that people ask Google about. In fact, one in 20 searches are for health-related information," Prem Ramaswami, senior product manager at Google, explained. Google worked with Apollo Hospitals and Columbia Asia Hospitals to review the content, and the health information covers over 400 health conditions including those common to India like malaria and dengue fever. Google's Camera app may get Google Goggles functionality "During product development we also consulted the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and ASHAs who are community health workers to ensure the information on the cards is useful and accessible," Ramaswami said. The cards are available in Hindi and English and cover common local conditions. People will be able to see these new cards when they search for conditions with the Google app on Android or iOS phones and tablets as well as mobile and desktop browsers. These search results are not intended as medical advice but for informational purposes only, the company noted. 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 Datawind UbiSlate i3G7: Another budget device from the makers of Aakash tablet! Features oi -Ankit Datawind is a brand that took off when they collaborated with the UPA government, back in 2011, to launch the world's cheapest tablet - Aakash. They were the organization that was given the contract for the tablet PC and sales proved to be quite a big factor for Datawind's success. The company has now released yet another budget tablet PC, the Ubislate i3G7. It's a 7-inch low-end Android tablet and promises to do the job at a price tag of just Rs. 4,444. Let's check out some of the specifications and features on the Datawind UbiSlate i3G7 budget Android tablet PC. SEE ALSO: Best under Rs 10,000: Top 10 Budget Smartphones to buy in India in April 1. Sleek form factor The Ubislate i3G7 is a 7-inch tablet with a resolution of 1024x600 pixels. It's just 9.8mm thick-thanks to the compact screen size-and fits quite comfortably in your hand. Although, you'll need to use both your hands while operating it, the Ubislate i3G7 can easily be held in one hand for longer periods of time, without any sort of fatigue. 2. Free internet offers Bundled with the tablet purchase, the buyer can avail free internet upto one year, on Reliance prepaid SIM cards. The company added that the 1-year of free Internet browsing on all its devices via the UbiSurfer browser would be available only to new customers and on the Reliance Communication GSM network. Datawind also clarified the free access to the Internet would not include audio/ video streaming or local-downloads. 3. Digital India campaign The Ubislate i3G7 is part of the government's ongoing Digital India campaign and has been launched to provide internet access to lower income groups. Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO - Datawind, said at the event, "The launch of our new tablet reinforces our commitment to empower consumers with the best and most unique technology at a great value. Our low cost Internet-enabled products enable more people to join the digital age. Our focus on introducing technologically advanced devices at the most affordable prices is our way of contributing to the Digital India Vision." 4. Fast processor The Intel Atom x3 processor powers the Ubislate i3G7, which is quite fast for the price point that this tablet comes at. The Atom x3 chip has a 64-bit processor (as all mobile Atoms) and will support both Android and Windows. It supports dual-SIM devices with 3G or LTE connectivity, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS and GLONASS, the whole nine yards. 5. Pricing and availability The official price of the Datawind UbiSlate i3G7 is Rs. 5,999 but don't be disappointed yet. Gadgets360 has an exclusive price of just Rs. 4,444. This has been made possible through the collaboration between Datawind and NDTV. Also, it can be bought by Datawind's official website. The company also announced that the tablet will be available through offline retail stores soon enough. 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 Coalition Kills 2 Foreign Fighters in Iraq, OIR Spokesman Says By Lisa Ferdinando DoD News, Defense Media Activity WASHINGTON, April 7, 2016 The coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant recently killed two "motivated" foreign fighters in Iraq, while local partners continue the fight to reclaim ground in Iraq and Syria, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve said today. In a videoconference call from Baghdad, Army Col. Steve Warren told Pentagon reporters that the two foreign fighters were killed on the same day in separate strikes in Iraq. Abu Zubary al-Bosni was killed near Bajar; he was a Swedish national of Bosnian descent who was a trusted member of a cadre of foreign fighters, the colonel said. Khalid Osman Timayare, ISIL's deputy emir of the Anwar al-Awlaki Brigade, was killed in a strike near Ar Rayhaniyah, the spokesman said. He was a Swedish-born foreign fighter with links to western fighters, Warren said. "Both of these strikes deprive ISIL of motivated foreign fighters who had displayed leadership aptitude," he said. Moving Forward in Iraq Warren said Iraqi security forces in the Tigris River Valley are battling to push the front lines to the west. "They are experiencing some give and take there. It's a tough fight," he said. The 71st Iraqi Army Brigade is now moving to seize the town of Nasiriyah, Warren said. Meanwhile, in the Euphrates River Valley, Iraqi security forces have now entered Hit, the colonel explained. "The city is not yet clear. It's littered with [vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, improvised explosive devices] and booby-traps, but the Iraqi security forces are working from the north to the south to finally secure that city," he said. Progress in Syria In northern Syria, Warren said, the Syrian Democratic Forces continue to secure the northeastern town of Shaddadi in preparation for future operations against ISIL. The colonel added that the SDF is providing humanitarian aid to the region and helping villages and communities regain a normal life. Warren noted that since Feb. 15, the start of the Shaddadi offensive, the SDF has gained 6,100 square kilometers. Coalition aircraft have conducted 209 kinetic strikes, killing hundreds of enemy fighters. During the offensive, the SDF suffered 84 casualties. In total, the SDF now controls 25,000 square kilometers of land in northern Syria, he said. In western Syria over the course of several days, the colonel said, vetted Syrian opposition forces have successfully synchronized offensive operations, resulting in the liberation of several villages in northwest Syria. Warren added that since the start of this month, vetted Syrian opposition forces have added a total of 81 square kilometers of new territory and moved the Mara line approximately 7.5 kilometers to the east. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Philippines, U.S. Start Exercise Balikatan 2016 By Marine Corps Sgt. Erik Estrada Marine Forces Pacific CAMP EMILIO AGUINALDO, Philippines, April 7, 2016 Exercise Balikatan 2016 opened here April 4 in a ceremony attended by government officials and senior U.S. and Philippine military leaders. Balikatan, a Filipino term that means "shoulder-to-shoulder" is an annual bilateral exercise between Philippine and U.S. military forces that focuses on partnership, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities, Philippine capability development and military modernization. "Balikatan brings our armed forces together in bilateral activity that will not only validate our procedures in joint military operations, but more importantly, will strengthen our longstanding camaraderie and friendship," said Armed Forces of the Philippines Vice Adm. Alexander Lopez, Western Command commander and the exercise director for Philippine forces. Long Partnership The Philippines and U.S. have been treaty allies and longstanding defense cooperation partners, dating back to their Mutual Defense Treaty of 1951. "All of us being here today demonstrate an ironclad commitment to each other and our respective peoples," said Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John Toolan, the commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific and the exercise director for U.S. forces. "Today, we truly stand side-by-side," Toolan said. Approximately 5,000 U.S., 3,500 Philippine and 80 Australian Defense Force personnel will take part in the 32nd iteration of the exercise. This year's Balikatan will focus on three simultaneous events through one single scenario across the Philippine islands, Luzon, Palawan and Panay. Balikatan focuses on training and enhancing the capabilities of the AFP, U.S. and Australian armed forces to provide relief and assistance in the event of natural disasters and other crises that could endanger the public's health and safety," Toolan said. Officials said joint forces will be conducting humanitarian civic assistance projects to improve interoperability between the participating nations and improve the local community as well as a simulation-supported bilateral event, force integration training and an operational event at Crow Valley, Clark Air Base, Fort Magsaysay, Puerto Princesa in Palawan, Subic Bay, and Antique Bay in Panay. "Balikatan represents our security alliance to the Philippines," said Philip S. Goldberg, U.S. ambassador to the Philippines. "The skills learned at this exercise will serve both of our countries well, whatever challenges faced in the future." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ma again invites Philippine officials to visit Taiping Island ROC Central News Agency 2016/04/07 17:49:45 Taipei, April 7 (CNA) President Ma Ying-jeou () on Thursday repeated his invitation to the Philippines to send representatives or lawyers to visit Taiwan-held Taiping Island in the disputed South China Sea. During a meeting with former Philippine President Fidel Ramos, Ma said a Philippine lawyer made a totally untrue argument in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague last November that Taiping was a rock, not an island. Ma said that since December last year, the Taiwan government has taken several experts and journalists to Taiping to show them the high-quality fresh water source there. He said Taiping Island can produce 65 tons of fresh water per day, 3 tons of which can be consumed without treatment. Fruits and vegetables are cultivated on the island, and there are also livestock, a hospital, post office, temple and forest there, the president said. Taiping fully meets the description of an island as defined in Article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the president said. He said that during a visit to Taiping on Jan. 28, he proposed a road map for his South China Sea peace initiative, in which he called for cooperation, sharing and pragmatism among the claimants in the disputed South China Sea and advocated no confrontation, monopolizing or intransigence. In the long term, the Taiwan government hopes to transform the South China Sea into an area of peace and cooperation, with Taiping in the role of as "an island of peace and for rescue operations, as well as an ecologically friendly and low-carbon island," Ma said. (By Hsieh Chia-chen and Y.F. Low) ENDITEM/pc NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Department of Defense Press Operations News Transcript Presenter: Colonel Steve Warren, Operation Inherent Resolve Spokesman April 07, 2016 Department of Defense Press Briefing by Col. Warren via Teleconference from Baghdad, Iraq CAPTAIN JEFF DAVIS: Apologies for the delays. We're having some technical problems this morning. And this is a double-feature today, as you know. We'll have General Rodriguez going out here at 11 o'clock. We will cut this off at 10:45 to allow for transition and filing time before General Rodriguez comes out. Without any further hesitation or ado, Steve, just want to make sure we can hear you. COLONEL STEVE WARREN: I can hear you loud and clear, Jeff. How do you hear me? CAPT. DAVIS: We've got you loud and clear. Tom, if you'd give us a tiny bit more volume, and we'll turn it over to you. COL. WARREN: Well, good morning, Pentagon press corps. It's good to be with you again. Just a heads up. There's a no-kidding thunderstorm outside today, so hopefully that's won't interfere anymore with our -- with our technology, but just know that we are getting a little natural interference here. So I've got some prepared remarks that I'll jump into them. In the past few weeks, we struck a number of media kiosks in downtown Mosul. ISIL uses these kiosks to distribute propaganda, often forcing citizens to watch brutal execution videos. The destruction of these kiosks we believe struck a nerve with ISIL, provided a notable online reaction. Since the strikes, ISIL has released three videos, one of which featured British hostage John Cantley, who was forced to talk about the strikes. Recently near Bajar, Iraq, we struck and killed Harris Cary Saneen, also known as Abu Zubari al-Basni. Zubari, a Swedish national of Bosnian descent, was a trusted member of the cadre of foreign fighters. That same day near ar-Ragnina, Iraq, we struck and killed Khalid Ostman Timayare, who was ISIL's deputy emir of the Anwar Awlaki brigade. Ostman was a Swedish-born foreign fighter with many links to Western fighters. He was also a known associate of Omar al-Shishani, who was ISIL's minister of war, who as you know we killed on March 4th. Both of these strikes deprive ISIL of motivated foreign fighters who have displayed leadership aptitude. Let's walk around the battlefield quickly. In the Tigris River valley, the ISF are battling to push the frontlines to the west. This is part of Operation Valley Wolf. Now, they are experiencing some give and take there. It's a tough fight. And the 71st Brigade is now moving to seize the town of Nasir. In the Euphrates River valley, Operation Desert Links, Iraqi security forces have now entered Hit. The city is not yet clear. It's littered with VBIEDs, IEDs and booby-traps, but the Iraqi security forces are working from the north to the south to finally secure that city. In Fallujah, the 14th Iraqi Army Division is approximately two kilometers from the Makhtoul Bridge, which is a logistical supply line that ISIL has used for resupply. Now, I haven't spoken about training in a while, so I'd like to give you an update while we're still on Iraq. This week, over 400 Iraqis from our Build Partner Capacity site in Taji, completed several courses, including the combat medic course, the infantry skills course, and the ranger battalion course. In the Bessmaya training area, the Spanish recently completed SAPR training for a platoon of Iraqi combat engineers. This is a valuable skill set. It's essential to the battlefield operations, especially since ISIL has packed the roads with IEDs. Last week, 14 advanced CTS explosive ordnance technicians graduated from the first IED Defeat and Assault Course. Coalition advisers taught the month-long course to the very top CTS graduates of an IED course that was held earlier this year. This training sharpened their ability to destroy explosives and disable devices in close quarters battle. It was specifically designed to teach CTS the faster paced, in- stride clearance techniques needed to support special operations missions. Back to the battlefield, now in Syria. In northern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces continue to secure Shadadi as they prepare the battlefield for future operations against ISIL. They're also providing humanitarian aid to the region and helping villages and communities regain a normal life. Since the start of the Shadadi offensive on February 15th, the SDF has gained 6,100 square kilometers. Coalition aircraft have conducted 209 kinetic strikes, killing hundreds of enemy fighters. During this offensive, the SDF suffered 84 casualties. In total, the SDF now controls 25,000 square kilometers of land in northern Syria. And we do have a video, and this is a very interesting video. It's an A-10 firing on a VBIED, a truck bomb. In fact, it's not just a truck bomb. It's a Russian BMP -- Russian-made BMP captured obviously by ISIL. And this BMP is moving right now towards -- towards friendly forces when this A-10 intercepts it. So DVIDS, go ahead and roll that video please. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (END VIDEO CLIP) COL. WARREN: Okay. So that was a good video. Okay, so moving on to western Syria. Over the course of several days, vetted Syrian opposition forces have successfully synchronized offensive operations, resulting in the liberation of several villages in northwest Syria. Since the beginning of April, vetted Syrian opposition forces have added a total of 81 square kilometers of new territory and moved the Ma'ara Line approximately 7.5 kilometers to the east. So that completes my quick battlefield and training update, and with that, let's jump into questions. So Lita, or Bob, if you're there. CAPT. DAVIS: Go ahead, Lita. Q: Hi, Steve. A couple of questions. Can you give us a better picture of what's going on Idlib? What Al Qaida, Khorasan, Nusra forces are there? And what -- and a little bit about some of the -- more detail about some of the recent strikes? And then I had a question about the Marines. COL. WARREN: Lita, I couldn't hear a word you said. There's guys on the phones working furiously to clean this line up. So let's stand by a sec. Q: Can you hear me now, Steve? COL. WARREN: All I can hear is you kind of breaking -- (inaudible). That's about it. (CROSSTALK) COL. WARREN: Hey, DVIDs, go ahead and turn off the video -- (inaudible) -- and we'll go strictly audio. (CROSSTALK) COL. WARREN: Lita, go ahead and shoot your question again and see if I can make it out. Q: (Inaudible) -- better idea of what's going on in Idlib? What Al Qaida, al-Nusra, Khorasan forces are there? What's the situation there? And a little more detail on the strikes over the last couple of days -- (inaudible). And then I have a Marine question. COL. WARREN: Okay. So, in Idlib, we have seen some -- an uptick in fighting in and around Idlib, which I think has been fairly well reported. We can't confirm that. There has been some -- some Russian-backed regime actions in and around Idlib. We've also seen some ISIL operations kind of a little bit north and a little bit east of Damascus. So kind of two spots that are -- that we are seeing continued or increase in violence. I mean, there's no question about it. Difficult to know exactly. You know, obviously, around Damascus it's very clear to us that this is an ISIL effort, which of course doesn't impact the cessation of hostilities. In Idlib, it's a little more confused, hard to tell exactly whether it's, you know, the Nusra Front who aren't part of the cessation of hostilities. You know, it's a little bit confused up there so it's difficult to tell exactly who is fighting who right now. What was the rest of your question? Something about the Marine Corps? Q: Yes, I have a -- my second part on the Marine Corps. We heard yesterday that obviously the Pentagon was looking at setting up -- possibly setting up additional small fire bases as the Iraqis move forward toward Mosul. Can you say, first of all, when do you think some of that might happen? And any more details on that? And also, we've been told all along that the Marines at -- I'll call it Fire Base Bell, were only going to be there for a short time. Are they expected to swap out soon? COL. WARREN: First off, it's K-S -- wait -- K-S-C-C, right? Kara Soar Counter Fire Complex -- K-S-C-C, you can go with. So that's the name of that area fight there. So as far as the timing goes, you know, the Marines are there just temporarily. We don't have an end-date for them yet. And we wouldn't really announce it anyway, but it's a temporary stay until we either come up with a more enduring solution of they're no longer needed anymore. So that's kind of where the Marines are. You know, we're going to be very deliberate about not talking about future operations. I think the most important thing to point out, though, is that we don't set up bases anywhere. All we do is get invited by the Iraqis and then set up on Iraqi, you know, facilities. So that's an important note. We're not going to telegraph our future punches. You know, I think the secretary -- (inaudible) -- have been very clear that as we find techniques and methods that work, we'll do more of those methods. So for example, we set up an advise -- kind of a forward advice and assist location in Taqaddum, you know, months ago -- six, seven, eight months ago. And that was specifically set up to support operations in Ramadi. And it was successful. It was advisers. There was HIMARS that got placed in here. Paladins got put in there. And all those things worked in concert with the Iraqi offensive to liberate Ramadi. So that's an example of success. And because we're as good as our word, we says, "well, hey, that was successful; let's do more of it." And so when the Iraqis stood up Kara Sour, we repeated that in Kara Soar. You know, we saw success advisers, plus some guns equal acceleration. So that's what we did in Kara Soar. We sent in some advisers and we sent in some guns. And together, those advisers and those guns are providing support to the Iraqi army as they execute Operation Valley Wolf. So, just to repeat that, as we find methods and techniques that are successful, we'll repeat them. But we're certainly never going to let anybody know what we're about to do before we do it. CAPT. DAVIS: Next, to Barbara Starr. Q: Colonel Warren, two question. You mentioned a couple of ISIS operatives, foreign fighters that you've killed. And you've certainly had a whole string of them in recent days, including these Al Qaida Shura guys in Syria. What is that fear of -- concerns do you have about that, sure, that you are attacking. Having plots to attack in Europe or the United States. What is making you able to go after all of these target, these named targets and have all these targeting operations? What's working for you here and then I have a Raqqa question. COL. WARREN: All right. So we have taken several strikes here recently against these larger, you know, old-fashioned terrorist outfits Al Qaida, Khorasan Group. And then also of course, the foreign fighter network that is part of ISIL. And while these groups don't necessarily work together they are all part of the same disease, which is the desire to export terror to the west. And so we are laser focused on this. You know, it's our primary mission. So are most important thing that we do is protect our homeland. And because -- the way intelligence works is as time goes on and you gather more and more pieces of string, that intelligence picture kind of becomes more fulsome. And as it become more fulsome, it allows you to get even more intelligence. So, our - you know, intel drives operations. And as our intelligence improves, as we learn more about this enemy, as this enemy feels additional pressure: both on the ground and from the air, and oh, by the way, pressure exerted by each and every one of the nations in this coalition and their own home countries, as all this pressure continues to squeeze this enemy, they start popping up right? The container is so pressurized that it springs leaks and that identifies targets for us and we do not hesitate. Particularly, these Al Qaida and Khorasan Group operatives, who we know have one main goal, and that is to plan attacks in the west. That is what they do. So we are out looking for them. As the pressure continues to amount, they become exposed. Through whether it's through their own mistakes or whether it's just through good work that we do. Either way, we will expose those mistakes and we will move rapidly to exploit them. Q: Quick follow-up, two things. Would it be fair to say or a step too far, that you are specifically trying to target elements, whether it's ISIS or others, foreign fighter networks trying to attack in the west. And my other question is, I noticed your map today talks about pressuring Raqqa. Can you just for a minute tell us any specifics that you are doing? What is the goal in Raqqa right now? If you are exerting pressure, what is it you're doing, what are you trying to accomplish? And the foreign fighter question. COL. WARREN: We are specifically targeting cells, groups and individuals who we suspect are plotting to export terror. This is one of our highest priorities and this is something that we are very specifically going after. Prevent terror attacks in the homeland, prevent terror attacks in the west. So we are actively looking for any signs of a planned, external terror attack. And when we find those signs, we go after them. In Raqqa -- what we're trying to do with Raqqa is keep the pressure on it so we can do several things. And of course, the first thing that we're trying to do is what I previously described. Applying pressure across the breadth and the depth of this battlefield forces this enemy into having to make bad decisions. You give them two bad decisions to make, either one that he makes will ultimately result in loss for him, it will take something away from him. So that's what we're trying to do with pressure on Raqqa. And you see that through operations to seize the Tishreen dam, which is west of Raqqa, or to seize and clear the area around Shaddadi, which is east of Raqqa. This is very deliberate. So what we see Raqqa, of course, it is their declared capital of their so-called and illusory caliphate. And so, of course, keeping the pressure on that capital -- again, what it does is it causes them have to make bad decisions. Whether it is to make decisions about whether or not they want to reposition similar fighters, whether they want reposition some of their leaders because they are scared. Whatever it may be, our intent is to keep pressure across the entire battlefield, so that way we can strike. We can maneuver and we choose to do when we choose to do it. So, it's all about us being -- trying to assume control of this enemy and trying to assume control of this battlefield, which I believe that we are starting to make some notable progress in that department. CAPT. DAVIS: Next we'll go to Courtney. Q: Good morning Colonel Warren. I have a bunch of questions and they're all unrelated, so I'm just going to go one at a time. The -- you mentioned 84 casualties in this recent SDF offensive. Do you have an overall number for how many SDF fighters there are right now? COL. WARREN: Well, total fighters in the SDF numbers in the tens of thousands. I do not have a precise number and quite frankly, the number fluctuates, sometimes a lot. Because -- you know, this is a -- this isn't a state army right? This is a group of groups. It is a group of militia groups that have come together against the common cause, which is to defeat ISIL. So the numbers move around a lot. But it's in the tens of thousands. Not all of them can, you know, fight obviously. You know, many of them are just conducting areas security operations. In other words, making sure that the enemy isn't able to conduct disrupting attacks in the rear against home towns and things like that. So, it is in the tens of thousands. You know, one of the key subordinate units, if you will, of the Syrian Democratic Forces are the Syrian-Arab coalition. We call it the SAC. We know that too has 5000-ish fighters, sometimes that number goes up. Ahead of an offensive they'll bring folks out for a specific offensive and then released them back to their homes, to go about their daily lives. So, this is very much, you know, an irregular army if you will. So the numbers are -- can be hard to pin down. But tens of thousands, is probably the best we are going to be able to do. Q: Okay. And then on the KSCC complex, or the fire base, I guess I'm -- when you -- I don't remember whose question it was. Your answer -- you said that those are all Iraqi installations, that the U.S. -- I was under the impression that that firebase was a U.S. installation. It was not a -- that Iraqi Security Forces were not co-located there or that the U.S. had set it up. Is that not the case? COL. WARREN: That's why we renamed it, because it was creating some confusion. So -- and General Dunford was very elegant in the way described this. You know, it's just part of this complex right? So you have Kara Soar, which is the tactical assembly area, which is where the 15th Iraqi Division, along with two brigades initially staged ahead of the offensive operations that they are now conduction. Because -- and Kara Soar did not exist several months ago, it was just a field. All it was was grassland. So the Iraqis built from nothing, just from grassland, you know. You know, they brought in some construction equipment, mostly earth movers, and flattened the area out a little bit; constructed one or two kind of smallish headquarters buildings, and then the rest is just open area where the Iraqi forces can put their vehicles and, you know, set their tents up and, you know, conduct prep for combat-type operations. And that was a fixed size. So when it came time to move the artillery in, the artillery wouldn't fit because it was -- it was already too crowded. So the artillery, then, is just kind off to the side of Kara Soar. So it's -- we consider it the same thing, just like you see in Taqaddum, right? If you go to Taqaddum, what you'll see is a -- and Taqaddum is, of course, massive. Many of you have been there. So, it's a massive area where in kind of one portion of it you have the troop area, and then over off to the side in another portion of it, you have the artillery. Because you don't want your artillery right next to your troops only because it fires a lot and you require dispersal, really just for safety reasons. So, that's what that's all about. So it's -- it's part of the same thing. It's part of this Iraq complex, the Kara Soar Complex, and that's what it is. Q: On -- on Idlib, I wasn't clear if you were saying that the strikes, specifically the one yesterday that the U.S. carried out, if that was against Al Qaida or Khorasan. Was that against Al Qaida members? COL. WARREN: That was -- it was an Al Qaida strike in Idlib. So Lita, I probably just didn't hear your question well enough. I realize I talked about other things that we're seeing in Idlib. So your question was about that strike we did. So yes, it was a strike. There were about five Al Qaida operatives that we locked onto and we struck and killed all five of them. No names, individuals there that you'd recognize, but these were -- these were Al Qaida fighters that we've been tracking and operatives that we've been tracking that we know about, and the opportunity arose, and we killed them. And I want to continue on Kara Sour for another second -- I just had -- so think about the Pentagon as Kara Soar tactical assembly area. And think about maybe the power plant or something. So it's still the Pentagon, right? That Pentagon power plant, it's still part of the Pentagon, but it's a little bit -- it's across the street there, right? So it's -- it's the same thing, right? That's still the Pentagon. It provides the power to the building, but it's, you know, it's a cross the street. So that's kind of what you have with the Kara Sour and -- and, you know, the fire base. So, anyway. Next question? CAPT. DAVIS: Nancy -- (inaudible)? I'm sorry. Missy, you were next. I apologize. Missy? Q: Steve, I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time understanding this shift towards Al Qaida/Khorasan -- (inaudible) -- Nusra. The U.S. hadn't done any such strikes for about a year and a half, and now two in the last week. And I'm just trying to understand. Is it that the U.S. had no possible strikes in a year and a half, and these suddenly came up? And also when the president announced in September of 2014 that the U.S. was going to be conducting strikes in Iraq and Syria, he said the goal was to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIS. Has that mission now expanded to degrade and ultimately defeat Al Qaida as well? And if so, when -- when did that shift happen? COL. WARREN: So, the mission to destroy Al Qaida began on September 11th, 2001. And that mission continues unabated. And, you know, as with any mission, particularly a longer one like this, there will be ebbs and flows. In this case, I think we've had a good run here lately and hopefully we'll continue to have a good run. On the Khorasan group, we have struck Khorasan group. It's been more than -- it's been less than 18 months since our last Khorasan group strike, although I'll admit to not going back and looking when the last one was. But we struck Khorasan group on the very first day of bombing when this campaign began. And since then, we have steadily struck Khorasan group targets as they've presented themselves. We can do back and do the research, Nancy, on exactly when the last K.G. strike was, but I think it's been within months probably. And again, you know, these kind of operations are largely driven by intelligence and so as we develop targets, we can strike them off and this stuff will come in waves. And I think that's what you're seeing here. Q: Up until recently, there were a lot of -- (inaudible) -- al-Nusra guys in particular were along-side groups that the U.S. was backing in the course of this war, that you had -- (inaudible) -- were very close-by groups that the U.S. was backing. Was that one of the challenges in hitting Al Qaida affiliated groups or in this case, Al Qaida? COL. WARREN: Well, I can tell you that -- we have -- the CJTF and the Department of Defense have never backed -- (inaudible) -- al-Nusra, nor do I imagine we ever will. They are a terrorist organization. Let's be clear about that. And our authorities to strike them stem from our authorities to strike Al Qaida as well, by the way. But we want to be -- but we want to be clear, you know. Some of these operatives wear different jerseys or wear multiple jerseys; and may be a member of both. But, you know, these recent strikes, you know, are against terrorist who are, in our view, very clearly originally, you know, founding members almost of Al Qaida. And so that's how we read them out. And I know there's been some discussion of are they Al Qaida or are they something else. And maybe they're more than one thing. But in these recent cases, in our view, whatever else they are, they're certainly Al Qaida. And so that's how we announce them. Q: Hi, Steve. Missy Ryan. Just two follow-ups on earlier questions. First of all, on Raqqa. There was some back-and-forth yesterday with Admiral Lewis about, you know, the campaign plan to liberate or reclaim Raqqa, and, you know, whether that exists, and who would draw it up if there is one -- if there was to be a campaign plan. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Because that was a little confusing for me because obviously in the case of Mosul, the Iraqis have come up with the campaign plan and then it's being sort of developed in concert with the coalition forces on the ground. But it's a very different situation in Syria. So if you could talk about that, that would great. And secondly, regarding the Al Qaida strikes, can you clarify? You know, there was some talk of these people being core Al Qaida versus Khorasan. And can you try to distinguish exactly who these people were? COL. WARREN: So on Raqqa, the plan to liberate Raqqa is not as developed as the plan to liberate Mosul, for reasons -- the main reason is that in Mosul, what we have is a standing, established state-run military organization called the Iraqi army, complete with general officers, some -- (inaudible) -- officers, staffs, hierarchies, chains of command, planning groups, many of whom have been trained in the United States. So you have a much more formalized capability to develop -- (Briefing pause for security drill) COL. WARREN: All right. Well, the Daily Show will thank us for that free video, I guess, or not. Okay. Missy, back to Raqqa. So in Iraq, you've got a more formalized capability to conduct planning and develop plans. In Syria, obviously, we don't have that. What we have is a very small number of U.S. advisers providing advice to a -- essentially an irregular army called the Syrian Democratic Forces, while at the same time we try to bring together vetted Syrian opposition forces over on the Mara line. And so it's a lot less formal in Syria, clearly. So, what we have is -- as a result is a much less-developed plan for Raqqa. Now, we do, of course, understand that we need to continue to keep pressure on Raqqa, and we understand that we need to continue to work with the leadership that we've identified within the SDF to try and develop a plan. So that's ongoing. It's in the early stages, frankly, Missy, but it's a continuing process. On what's the difference between Al Qaida and the Khorasan group. Core Al Qaida, you know, these are operatives who have been part of Al Qaida since the beginning, if you will. So since the early 2000s. And they continue to be part of Al Qaida. Khorasan group, these are -- these are a slightly different group. Often, they're Al Qaida -- because Al Qaida in many ways was kind of shattered, you know, several years ago. And so now what we see are some of these members who've kind of broken off from Al Qaida and come together in a loose configuration of, you know, experienced terrorists who don't really consider themselves Al Qaida anymore, although we might or might not consider them Al Qaida. So some are Al Qaida that kind of broke away from Al Qaida, but didn't join ISIL or al-Nusra. Some of them are new, you know, recruits, if you will. But they're kind of senior guys, generally smart, and singularly focused on external operations, on conducting terror attacks against the West. So that's the quick version of the difference between those two. And, you know, we've got the authority to strike either. CAPT. DAVIS: Three minutes left -- a speed round here to Corey. Q: Yeah, just real quick. We've heard from a Peshmerga commander that Iraqi army people are deserting because they don't trust their commanders. Have you seen issues with that? Can you tell us anything about Iraqi deserters? COL. WARREN: Every army has deserters. The Iraqi army is not immune from that. Generally speaking, we haven't seen it as a significant problem. There has been some leadership turnover. In one of the brigades, I think it's the 71st -- I think it's the 71st Brigade; we did have some leadership turnover up there around Maktmor. But I don't know that it's a significant issue. I mean, you know, this is the first time this unit has seen combat. So it's -- and it turned out to be, you know, by pretty much any standards, to be, you know, fairly solid contact -- not super high-intensity war, but I mean, it's a real fight in difficult terrain. So, and there's always going to be -- there's always going to be some getting your legs under you. And that's what we're seeing now. That said, you know, they have made -- they have made some gains, right? They've seized three or four villages now. They're in this kind of back-and-forth over Nasir. They've advanced. They've withdrawn. And now they're in the process of advancing again. That's going to continue. We're confident that they're going to get there. But these things do take time. CAPT. DAVIS: (inaudible) -- Joe. Q: Quick question, Colonel Warren. Do you have any information if ISIL militants have been able to infiltrate the Sunni tribes who got to return to the Ramadi area? COL. WARREN: I don't have any information like that, no. CAPT. DAVIS: Andrew? Q: Colonel, just quickly on the Marines portion of the Kara Soar Counter Fire Complex. Just what's happening there? Are they -- is it still just four howitzers? How often are they firing artillery? Is that multiple times a day? And are they -- is there any incoming? Are they getting any rocket attacks or small arms like we heard about initially? COL. WARREN: They fire every day, you know, in support of Iraqi maneuvers. Firing is, you know, like anything, you know, the fire is in support of maneuvers. So if there's a maneuver, there's fire. They'll fire anything from high explosives to suppress enemy to smoke to screen friendly movements; to elimination rounds; to help with patrolling in the evenings. So they're fully engaged. There haven't been, you know, right now, the enemy right now is being pressured in a much more close fight, which has resulted in a significant reduction in the longer-range rockets that they've fired either at -- you know, as any part of the Kara Soar Complex. So that's a good thing. You know, as the ground -- you know, they've got a -- the enemy right now is in a close fight, so they have to focus on that, and so they're not able -- there haven't really -- there's been -- I think since the last time we talked, I'd had said there were a handful. I don't know that there has been any since Friday. I'd have to look, but I don't think there have been. So again, because the pressure is all a close fight for the enemy right now. CAPT. DAVIS: We're at our end, but Gary, very quickly. Q: Just a quick one, colonel. Can you give us a quick overview of how you see the strength of the regime forces in Syria? Are they moving? Are they just regrouping? What's going to happen when everyone comes together around Raqqa? COL. WARREN: Yeah, so, right now, you know, the big obviously push was for Palmyra and Tadmur. They're still working with that. They haven't really advanced much. I mean, they've created a little bit of a security zone further east and north of Tadmur, but it's not an advance. So that's really kind of the limit of the regime's advance there. As I said, ISIL has conducted some disruptive attacks in the vicinity of Damascus, which of course is causing the regime to have to refocus on that. There have been some operations in and around Idlib that are also taking up some regime capabilities. So that's kind of where they are around the battlefield. CAPT. DAVIS: Steve, with that, we'll -- we'll press pause here for brief filing time, and we've got General Rodriguez coming out in 13 minutes. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Steve. http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/715790/ NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Department of Defense Press Operations News Transcript Presenter: General David M. Rodriguez (USA), Commander April 07, 2016 Department of Defense Briefing by Gen. David M. Rodriguez TAKEN FROM PREPARED STATEMENT: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and thank you for the opportunity to update you today on the activities of our African partners, our other international partners and Africa Command. The last time I stood before you all, I discussed how the men and women of Africa Command were supporting the USAID and other interagency partners with the Ebola response in West Africa and how Africa Command was addressing many of the security and governance challenges elsewhere on the continent. The Africa continent continues to present significant opportunities as well as significant challenges. Much of the continent is doing well with many of the nation's strengthening their democratic institutions. But as you know, there are many challenges in Africa. In some regions, weak governance, corruption, uneven development, disease, food insecurity, crime and violent extremism have contributed to instability and conflict. Africa Command is working with both international and interagency partners to mitigate immediate threats and advance enduring security interests. Our efforts are always conducted in support of the hard work of our U.S. ambassadors and partner nations. Our programs, exercises and operations strengthen military-to-military relationships (JOINED IN PROGRESS) GENERAL DAVID M. RODRIGUEZ: -- in a region where the United States has little forward presence. They make the U.S. and partner forces more effective as we learn from each other and operate together. Now, I'm going to talk about some of the examples how we're approaching the regional and international security challenges in Africa. Over in east Africa, of course, the big threat is Al-Shabab inside Somalia. We work with five of the troop contributing countries as well as the Somali -- developing the Somali national army to continue to support the Somali government in helping provide stability in that region. In north Africa, the big threat there revolves around Libya and the gowning threat of ISIS in the region, and we work with many, many partners there to help that situation out, from the European Union, who has a strong mission in the Mediterranean Sea to mitigate the challenges of migration, to Tunisia, where we're continuing to build some significant partner capacity, as well as in Niger and Chad, who also have challenging borders in the area. In -- that continues. If you look from Libya down to the southwest over to northern Mali, which is a challenge, the French are leading that effort there, and we support the French, from their leadership in N'Djamena and Task Force Barkhane across from Chad to Niger and all the way over to Mail where they're -- they are leading the efforts there. And then down in West Africa, the challenges built around Boko Haram and the threat in northeast Nigeria, which also overlaps into Niger, Chad and Cameroon. And we're working there with all those partners to help them improve their capacity to defeat Boko Haram, doing some significant intelligence sharing and working with a multi- national joint task force who is leading that effort there. And with that, we'll take your questions. Q: Hi General, on Libya. What is your assessment right now of the number of Islamic State fighters in Libya? How much is that growing? Can you give us some perspective on how the threat is changing there from ISIS? And the president, during his meetings with Stoltenberg, raised the possibility that perhaps NATO might be able to help in the Islamic State fight there. How do you see this going forward? Is the U.S. hampered in the ability to take strikes there now because of the government chaos, or is it a lack of intel? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: First of all, in Libya, the U.S. intelligence community has said it's around 4 to 6,000. It is probably about doubled in the last 12 to 18 months based on what their assessments were last year. And the -- first, the huge effort in and around Libya by all the African partners has been -- has been significant, led mainly by Tunisia, who has done a tremendous job of building their capacity and working the challenges across their border, as well as both Niger, who has had a long-term effort to disrupt the lines of communication in northern Niger as well as Chad, who has -- is worried about the challenges in southern Libya. And then the -- you asked about NATO, they are looking at what they can do based on the discussion that you mentioned. If you remember, back a couple of years ago, NATO had signed up in that situation to help with some of the capacity building in the institution and the strategic planning effort for Libya. On your other question about what are we hampered by, you know, right now, just like in many places, we are continuing to go after targets that pose an imminent threat to U.S. interests and personnel, and that was in the case of both Abu Nabil who is the leader of ISIS, as well as the effort in Sabratha recently. And that's with the type of target set. And we continue to do that. Q: Just as a follow-up, are you -- since the number has doubled, are you not able to see targets any -- and is it a lack of ISR or -- because we understand there's training camps and other gatherings in Libya. What is -- what are the hurdles that you're seeing? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Again, the policy right now is to go after the continuing and imminent threats to U.S. personnel and interests, and we're continuing to do that. The government of national accord asset, you know, continues to consolidate power, we'll continue to develop situation on -- in our efforts in accordance with their development as well as their asks. Okay? Thank you. Yes ma'am. Q: If I could follow up on that, the -- where are you seeing -- Courtney Kube with NBC News -- where are you seeing most of these fighters coming from into Libya? And where -- there were some reports that they were -- there was sort of a stronghold in Sirte Is that -- is that the case? Where are they, like, coalescing? Are they coming from the developing -- I mean, a capital in Libya where they are primarily? And then I have a question on al-Shabab? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Okay. Thank you. On -- for the threat of ISIS in Libya, their largest and biggest home is in and around Sirte itself, but they also have a presence out in the east in Benghazi and Darna, as well as over in Sabratha in the west. As far as, you know, where the fighters are coming from, as you know, the foreign fighter flow goes back and forth across, you know, north Africa not only internal to north Africa, which generates a lot of the foreign fighters that go all the way across to Syria and Iraq, but also some that have come. And then there's the other phenomena in Libya which is some that have just, you know, moved over and pledged allegiance to ISIS who were already there. Okay? Q: And then on al-Shabab, there have been three strikes in the past week or 10 days in the east against al-Shabab specifically. One target had, like 150 fighters. Has there been some change in the last several weeks? Is there some uptick, is there some imminent attack that the U.S. is aware of? I guess just, what has changed in the last few weeks? Are these just targets of opportunity? Is there any operational change? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: There's a -- when -- Q: And do these strikes actually have any kind of a real impact on al-Shabab's operations, I guess? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Yes. In -- al-Shabab over the last several months have evolved their tactics and their mode of operation in Somalia, and what they have done is they --the pattern has been that they gather and train a significant number of people and then they disperse and attack and focus all that energy on one of the forward operating bases of the troop contributing countries. That has had a negative impact on the troop contributing countries because they have lost significant people in multiple types of these attacks, and so the one that you're mentioning was a defensive fire to protect. There were -- we weren't sure exactly which one they were going to, although we had multiple, you know, different intel streams, but there were 10 outposts within a couple hours of that site, and they were getting ready to do that. So they took defensive fires to prevent that. The other ones -- one of them was a -- one was a strike in the last two weeks against a high-value target, the same type that we've been doing for many years there, and then there have been a couple of other ones where the fires were in defense of techniques to prevent casualties to the partners that we're working with. Okay, thank you. Q: Can we go back to Libya for a minute? Just to drill down a little bit, do you believe that the foreign fighters and the fighters in Libya are actually -- that their goal is to attack in the West, whether it's Europe or the United States, to plot and plan and train for external attacks? Do you think that's their goal? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, that's been their aspirations all the time, and they are continuing with the same threats that ISIS main is making, yes. Q: So what I don't understand, if you -- if you believe -- if the U.S. believes that that is the goal of this doubling of fighters in Libya, or the fighter in Libya, I guess the question is why only two strikes, essentially, against them? Why -- GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Well, it's their level of what they're doing. So, you know, like I said, the strikes we continue to do against are ones that have continuing imminent threat, and they're not as far along in their, you know, ability to do that as many other places. Q: I'm sorry. I apologize. I really don't understand. You said -- GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Well, we're going after, and continue to go after, is the ones that have imminent threat to U.S. personnel and facilities. Not the intent to do that, the ones that do that, Okay? Q: So that's two essentially. So can -- when you look at Libya right now and the ISIS presence in Libya, what is your top concern about that presence? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: The top concern about that presence is really the challenge that it presents for any movement forward for the government of national accord so that they can reduce the chaos there. That chaos contributes to the migration issues, it continues (sic) to some of the threats external to Libya and threats external to Libya as in the situation with Tunisia. Yes, ma'am. Q: Hi Missy Ryan from the Washington Post. Two questions. On Libya, how confident are you that the forces with the United States and its partners might work or might support in the future the militia forces and the remnants of the Libya national army? How confident are you that they can set aside the differences that they've had since 2011 and especially since 2014, to conduct the ground operations needed not just to sort of clear ISIS out of Sirte but to, you know, impose order throughout the country? So that's on Libya. And the second question, regarding Shabab, there were also -- following up on Courtney's question, there were some reports that there was an airstrike against Shahab militants in a place called Jalib. Can you comment on that? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Okay. On the first one, you know, that is really the second major challenge of the government of national accord as they work with the militias and how strong their, you know, allegiance to the GNA is going to be. There are more and more people in Libya that are focusing their efforts against ISIS and against each other, and that's part of the challenge, as you know, because of the conflicts between militias. And I think that, you know, because it's all about the power and influence, it will really depend how the government of national accord develops and brings those people alongside to be part of the future. As far as their ability to actually conduct operations and activities, you know, they have -- there -- it's a wide range of activities. Some of them are really good, some of them are, you know, just fair, relatively speaking, for the Libyan militias and national army. But again, it will really determine -- be determined by how well and effective those militias support the GNA that really makes the difference in the end. Q: And then on the Shabab strike? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: On the Shabbab again? Those -- the ones that you are talking were again, defensive fires to protect the people that we're working with. Okay? Thank you. Yes. Q: General, (inaudible) BBC News. I have a couple of questions about the Chibok girls in Nigeria. We're approaching the second anniversary of their kidnapping. 276 of them taken two years ago. Greater outcry across the world, but the promises to do as much as possible to find them. Can you tell us what the U.S. military has done, what it plans to do and what the sort of -- what is hampering you finding and helping to release these girls? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Okay. Thank you. First the Chibok girls who were taken, as you know, almost two years ago were taken by the local Boko Haram militants and moved to some very, very isolated places and that Boko Haram maintained a fairly secure site. Right away the U.S., not just the military, but the entire intelligence community began sharing information with the Nigerian military, as well as other militaries were -- they were, who had anything to do with anything near the borders of basically, Chad and Cameroon. Over the last -- you know, just under two years, the efforts of the multinational joint task force and the foreign nations that have been involved in that effort have reduced the area that Boko Haram maintains control over and has opened up the major lines of communication. And now the Boko Haram operates out of us some terrain that is pretty tough to get at and get to. All the international community, as well as our efforts continue to develop intelligence to help get the girls back and to also release not only girls, but also a huge number of people that they have kidnapped and are holding against their will. And the Nigerian military as well as the Cameroon military and the Chadian (sic) have gained a lot of our freedom for many of those over time. Q: And do you (inaudible) you (inaudible) need them, finding them? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Well, some of them have been found in different things. You know, it is not the an exact science and they're not all in one place. So, many of -- like I said, many of the people who have been detained against their will, including some of the Chibok girls have been have been recovered. Yes sir. Q: Gordon Lubold from the Wall Street Journal. Actually, I wanted to take another stab at this Unity Government issue. I think, you know, a lot of us have been hearing folks say, you know, as soon as this is established in a substantive way, like the light turns on and allies can go in and the U.S. can potentially get more involved in Libya. But I just wonder if you can help make us a little bit smarter on what changes. I mean, I think we understand the idea of a viable partner on the ground, but what kind of changes in terms of what the U.S. and its allies would be able to do, post Unity government that you can't do in some more fashion now. GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Well, that really depends what that unity government, you know, wants the international community to do. So, I think that, you know, you say there's -- because the government is just getting its feet under itself there. And yes, you can see, even today, one of the former political leaders is not now pledging of allegiance like they were yesterday, so this is going to take some time for them to, you know move this thing forward. And -- but the United Nations, the international community as well as many of the Libyan people, you know, are starting to move toward -- to support this, but it's going to be driven by, you know, their leadership and what they really want the international community to do. There are a lot of planning efforts going on, whether you look at what's happening in Italy with the Libyan International Assistant mission to help advise and assist the Libyan forces as they, you know, are integrated into a, you know, cohesive liberty security forces. So there are a lot of plans out there and everything, but it's really going to be driven on how that government of national accord develops over time and where they really need the support. Q: I guess, you know, part of the question is what's your assessment of the risk of allies acting more unilaterally inside Libya without a unity government, and what's the risk of kind of playing this waiting game? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: I think -- I think the allies, you know, again will -- just like us will do it based on the threats to themselves, to -- imminent threat to themselves. And that's where I think that they would do that, and that would really it until, you know, something changes in the government in that piece. Okay? Q: General, Andrew Tillman with Military Times. I'd like to ask you for a minute about the Chinese military and ask you what is your take on the Chinese intent for building some kind of a naval facility in Djibouti? And more broadly, how much Chinese military activity are you seeing across Africa, and to what extent is that affecting your operations and your mission? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: The Chinese activity throughout Africa for the military has been all inside the United Nations missions as part of the peacekeepers there. It's not that -- not that big a number, so they have, you know, no, you know, real impact on, you know, any of the activities that we are doing on the African continent. And the -- and the base in Djibouti that they are starting to build, you know, we, just like all the other international countries, expect them, just like everybody expects us to live in accordance with international norms and standards. And there'll be no impact on our freedom to conduct the activities that we desire to take. Q: Why do you think that they are building that. What is their -- GEN. RODRIGUEZ: They've, for a long time have had a presence out in the Indian Ocean, they have helped with the whole international community to reduce the piracy off Somalia, and they have done that in coordination with not only the U.S. but also the other international nations. And so they're, you know, building a logistics base and support structure to help those efforts out, because that's a long way from home for them. Q: Luis Martinez with ABC. Thank you so much for doing this briefing today. Going back to Somalia and those defensive fires that you referenced are these anew thing, or have -- or are we just hearing about them for the first time? And also, is the definition of broader in the sense of defensive fires because, you talk about these being for -- our partners on the ground. Is it no longer that there is a threat to American forces that requires this to occur? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: It's a threat to both our partners and ourselves, Okay, and there's been no change or broadening of anything, but the two things I think that have changed over time was the evolving tactics of Al-Shabab, one, and the second thing is that as the troop contributing countries and the Somali national Army develops and builds more capacity and grows, they're going to be more active. I think that is something that's driven that, Okay? Q: Has that also driven our increased participation, such as helicopter transport to -- for these Somali forces? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Yes because now they have the capacity to do some of those things, yes. Okay? Q: And one other question sir. GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Sure. Q: How many U.S. personnel are actually in Somalia, and how would you characterize what their roles are? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: There are -- I won't give you an exact numbers because it fluctuates here and there. But, you know, what we are doing is providing, advising and assisting to selected organizations in the -- both the troop contributing countries and the Somali National Army. Okay. Thank you. Q: Sir, Bill Hennigan, Los Angeles Times. Are there any forces on the ground inside Libya that are stopping the growth of ISIS. And if there isn't, does the fact that they've doubled over the last 12 months, 18 months, does it - do they run the risk of the same situation that we saw in Syria in for instance, where they can sweep out and start taking land elsewhere? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: They Libyans themselves, both the remnants of the Libyan National Army, the militias, they've got, you know, significantly -- significant numbers and groups of them. And yes, they are stopping ISIS from growing and trying to do that the best they can. They have had some success over the in the east in Derna and Benghazi. They have challenged them in Sirte and have not been as successful and they have also challenged them in Sabratha and been a little bit successful. So yes, there's forces on the ground that are doing that. Mainly, you know, Libyan -- either former Libyan National Army or Libyan militias. And they're continuing to do that. The challenge that they have is that in addition to doing that, sometimes they fight amongst themselves. And based on, you know, power and you know, past and history and everything else. So that is why the challenge of the Government of National Accord is to bring them together to you know, one for the future of Libya. But also to get rid of ISIS. Q: The situation that you are describing sounds an awful like what was previously and still is in Syria, in which you have these groups fighting against one another. Doesn't that offer the breeding ground for ISIS to do the exact same thing and build up and sweep out and get there? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: I think it is significantly harder for ISIS to do the inside of Libya, because they don't have the home grown people that know as much about Libya like they did in Iraq and Syria. So it's different conditions. So Libyan people are also, you know, different in that the way they treat and respond to foreigners. So all of that has an impact. So the majority on the Libyan militias, first of all, they can fight. They've been fighting for a long time. And two, they don't like, you know, external influences like that there. So, I think it's some significantly different conditions. Okay? Q: And lastly, if the number of ISIS fighters double again, over the next 12 months, would we -- would the U.S. be willing to act? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: That's a decision for the national command authority and leadership. Q: I wanted to ask you, do you anticipate, given -- once the national government is set up in Lydia, do you anticipate the U.S. working in concert with them or at their invitation, conducting airstrikes against ISIS in Libya? Do you - do you expect that that is a real possibility in the future? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Well, the U.S., as you know, has said they'll support the government of national accord as they move forward here, and that -- again, that will be determined between the government of national accord and the -- you know, the international community and how that moves forward. So, you know, I mean, we'll just -- we'll just have to see. But yes, that's a possibility, as are many other things, because, like I said, as you look at the multiple efforts, whether it's trying to get after the ISIS problem, whether it's trying to build a Libyan national army to bring together the militias in and around Tripoli to, you know, help support this government. I mean, there's a wide range of things that could be done, and like I said, this situation -- and you can see if, like I said, this morning in that, you know, some guys were part of the solution, some guys not, and they changed, you know, in the last two days here. So we're just going to have to monitor that very carefully and watch that. Okay. Q: Just to follow up on, I guess, Courtney, and build this sort of stream. How concerned are you, as you watch this, that this -- these stumbles with setting up the unity government are going to really leave the door open for ISIS to coalesce? You suggested that the Libyans don't like having them there, but is that enough? And are you worried that you do not have the capacity or the ability yet to take actions you want to take because of the lack of a government partner right now? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: The effort right now continues to remain on the imminent threats to U.S. personnel and facilities. We have all the authorities and resources we need to continue to do that, and we will continue to do that. And that's the number one concern for us right now. Now as the -- the question I think what you're asking is really is when that becomes overwhelming, which it is not right now, then what do you do? And again, that will have to be a policy decision, if it gets to that point. But it's going to be a challenge for them to get to that point because of the Libyan population, people and militias that are out there. So we'll have to see how that develops. Is it possible? It is. But right now we're not -- I'm not concerned about that, Okay. Q: You're not concerned about the risk of it happening? I mean, because by then, would it be not too late, but by then, it's a bigger fight, isn't it? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: It could be a bigger fight and everything. But again, we -- we're watching that very carefully and taking action as we see those threats develop. Okay? Q: Following up on that, based on the idea that the Libyan population is averse to foreign elements, how much of a barrier would that be for the international community assisting them on the ground? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Right. No, it's -- absolutely, you know, that's the - that's the situation that any people would find themselves in and everything. So again, we'll just have to see how this government of national accord develops and grows as we move forward. And then what they want and what they think is in their best interests and how much they're willing to ask or, you know, need international aid. They like everybody, you know, want to do it themselves and to protect their sovereign people, and just like everybody else would be a little bit embarrassed that they need help. So where that all comes out and everything, like I said, we'll just have to watch that very carefully as the situation develops. Okay? Q: Hi, I'm -- (inaudible) -- with Military.com. The Marines Crisis Response Force for Africa, has its employment or replacement been affected by this evolving threat in Libya or elsewhere? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: First of all, they you know get employed for multiple reasons. As an example, they were a huge of the reinforcement of the Libyan Embassy before we relocated that. They also provide reaction forces across north and west Africa as well as support to quick reaction, as well as personnel recoveries. So they do a lot of things to support our efforts across the regions. Okay, yes? Q: General, thank you very much for the briefing. I just want to understand something a little bit better. Are you saying that the ability of the Libyan militias that are there now in the Government of National Court as it stands now, that they've been able to do enough to limit the growth of Islamic State compared to how it had doubled previously? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Well, in different places you are in a different situation. They have had a challenge in and around the surge but in the east in Benghazi and Derna, they have fought back against the Islamic State and made it much more tougher for them to operate as well as in Sabratha. They've had activities that have limited the growth and the challenges that are out there. So you know, it's uneven and it's not you know consistent across the board. As they're squeezed and pushed other places and everything, we'll have to see how that situation develops. But they are contesting the growth the ISIS in several areas across not Libya, not all. Q: One other question. So to what extent do you see the Islamic State in Libya as a threat specifically to Europe? If there are attempts are always to attack abroad and at western targets, how much more a threat perhaps are there to the U.S. European allies as opposed to the U.S. itself? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Well, I think the biggest and worst threat they are you know providing to the neighbors is really to Tunisia first. That's the biggest one. Then followed up the European threats. They have not to this point been able to project that power toward Europe at this point again. That's aspirational at this point. Okay? Yes, sir? Q: Joe Talbot with -- (inaudible). As you may know sir, there are many regional players in Libya right now, like Qatar and Egypt. How would you describe their role now to face the situation in Libya and if there is any kind of military to military relationship with Egypt or Qatar to counter this situation inside of Libya? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Well, the international and U.S. diplomatic efforts are all focused on trying to limit the external influences that shift the balance of power inside Libya. So that the governments as you know, the House of Representatives in the east, and the General National Congress in the west, and now the GNA has -- we want to do the best we can as an international community to support the Libyans so that they have self-determination of where their moving instead of from external influences. So that's a huge a diplomatic effort that everybody is trying to mitigate that negative impact that you mentioned. Okay, yes ma'am? Q: Can I ask you about al Qaida and the Maghreb? I know the French take the lead the on this but we've seen such a big jump in attacks on south targets in the last few months from Mali to Burkina and reaching as far south now as Ivory Coast. How worried are you about this? And putting aside what the French are doing, what can the U.S. do to work with these African partners on -- I mean, how do you combat an attack on a hotel? GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Yes well, first, it's a huge international effort and intelligence community effort to try to help that as best that we can. First, the French as well as the U.N. mission , we share intelligence. We help the French with aerial refueling, with intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance, and strategic lift. They continue to move and support their efforts across Mali, Niger, and Chad. And then we work with all the partner military services as does of our interagency partners who work some of their intel organizations in each of the different countries -- different forces and elements have the mission to do -- to defend or protect or protect their capitals in this case. Some of them are military, some of them are police, some of them are intelligence. So we're working across the inter-agency as well as with our international partners to the first and foremost share intelligence on all of those threats and the second piece that's important is the capacity building. We've worked with several of those nations on their military forces as well as our partners in the international community, inter-agency working with our intel and police forces to improve that. The threat of that happening continues to grow as you said, "not only the three attacks but also the threats to many other region forces." So I think that everybody is working together to mitigate the risk as best as they can. And I think that it will continue to be a threat because of the challenges in Mali and what al Qaida wants to accomplish here. I think that the evolving tactics -- it's when you go back a couple years to Somalia they did the same thing, when they got under pressure and everything, they struck at Garissaand them all and those things. So I think that all the nations understand that and are working hard to not only keep the pressure on them in the combat zone but also protect their soft targets in that area. Okay, anybody else? Okay. Well, thank you very much. http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/715846/ NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address USS Bremerton Visits Sasebo during Indo-Asia-Pacific Deployment Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160407-02 Release Date: 4/7/2016 9:07:00 AM By Lt.j.g. Lucas Evans, USS Bremerton Public Affairs SASEBO, Japan (NNS) -- Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Bremerton (SSN 698) arrived at Fleet Activities Sasebo for a visit, April 6, as part of its deployment to the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. This visit strengthens the already positive alliance between the U.S. and Japan through the crew's interaction with the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. It also demonstrates the U.S. Navy's commitment to regional stability and maritime security in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. "My crew is excited to visit Sasebo," said Cmdr. Wes Bringham, commanding officer. "Our partnership with Japan is very important to security in the Western Pacific and this port visit provides us a great opportunity to learn about our ally's culture and history. Bremerton first visited Sasebo in March 1986 and my crew is proud to continue the long tradition of partnership between Japan and the U.S." Bremerton is capable of executing anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "It takes a well-trained and motivated crew of top-notch Sailors to maintain America's longest-serving submarine in her top warfighting condition," said Command Master Chief Wade Jacobson, chief of the boat. Measuring more than 360 feet long and weighing more than 6,000 tons when submerged, Bremerton is one of the stealthiest submarines in the world. Homeported in Pearl Harbor, Bremerton's crew looks forward to representing the U.S. Navy as they continue their Indo-Asia-Pacific deployment. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South Sudan rebel leader to return to Juba on April 18 Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 5:56PM South Sudan's rebel leader Riek Machar says he will return to the capital Juba later this month to form a unity government with President Salva Kiir as part of their stalled peace deal. Kiir's spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, said on Thursday that Machar's return would be a significant step towards the implementation of the peace deal signed between the Juba government and rebel forces loyal to Machar in August 2015. "His return will mark the real beginning of the implementation given that all this time partial implementation was not workable and the government is feeling relieved and the return of Dr Machar is applauded," he said. Meanwhile, Machar in a letter to the head of the body monitoring the implementation of the peace deal, has said he would be back in the capital Juba on April 18. "I am therefore confirming the date of my arrival to be April 18 and thereafter form with President Kiir the Transitional Government of National Unity and hold the Transitional National Council of Ministers," to end the ongoing conflict . Under the accord, Machar is to return to the capital, Juba, to assume responsibility as vice-president, a post from which he was sacked in 2013. The rebels loyal to Machar will also get 10 posts, including those of the minister of oil and humanitarian affairs. Meanwhile, United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) says it has helped Machar's SPLM/A group transport more than 800 military and police officers to Juba, including two of its generals. The developments come months after the warring sides in South Sudan clinched an accord to end the civil war that has killed thousands of people and displaced more than two-million others in the country. Machar signed the agreement on August 17, 2015 while the South Sudanese president signed the deal about ten days later, on August 26 last year. The power-sharing deal, which was brokered by the East African regional bloc IGAD, aims to end the civil war in the world's youngest nation. South Sudan plunged into chaos in December 2013, when fighting erupted outside the capital, Juba, between troops loyal to Kiir and defectors led by Machar. The conflict soon turned into an all-out war between the army and the defectors, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer ethnic group. Some Shilluk militia groups allied to the government, switched side to the rebel movement during the civil war. Despite the August peace deal, battles persist across the country. There are numerous militia forces that do not abide by peace agreements and are driven by local agendas. War uprooting South Sudanese The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its weekly bulletin on Thursday that about 55,000 South Sudanese have fled to neighboring Sudan since January. Thousands of the South Sudanese have crossed into Sudan's restive Darfur and some other regions, according to the report. "The influx of South Sudanese into East Darfur, South Darfur and West Kordofan continues, with an estimated 55,500 people having arrived in the country since the end of January 2016, according to aid organizations." OCHA said, adding that the new arrivals fled because of "food insecurity, as a result of armed conflict, the failure of the agricultural season." Khartoum said last month that the South Sudanese should be classified as "foreigners" over Juba's alleged support for the rebels battling Sudanese troops in the border region. South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011 but two years later it plunged into a brutal civil war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey warns it may stop implementing refugee deal Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 3:45PM Turkey has warned that it would stop implementing a historic deal with the European Union on curbing the flow of refugees to Europe if the EU fails to fulfill its promises. "There are precise conditions. If the European Union does not take the necessary steps, then Turkey will not implement the agreement," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech on Thursday. He added that everything that has been promised in the March 18 deal between Ankara and the EU must be put into action by the European side. Under the agreement, Turkey has accepted a series of measures aimed at curbing the inflow of refugees from the country to Greece in return for some benefits, including billions of dollars in aid, visa-free travel for Turks to Europe and, more significant than all, acceleration in the EU's processing of Turkey's long-awaited bid for membership in the continental body. Erdogan's warning may indicate that Ankara would not sit idle if EU fell short of its pledge to grant visa-free travel to Turkish citizens, which the deal promises "at the latest" by June 2016. The Turkish president, however, elaborated on EU's delay in fulfilling its pledges, saying Turkey continues to spend billions of dollars on accommodation of refugees escaping the war in Syria as the EU has provided no funds in this regard. "Some three million people are being fed on our budget," said Erdogan, adding that Ankara has spent around USD 10 billion on the welfare of refugees since the conflict began in Syria in 2011. "We have received lots of thanks for our action on the refugees and in the fight against terrorism. But we are not doing this for thanks," said Erdogan, adding, "There have been promises but nothing has come for the moment." The most controversial commitment shared by Turkey under the deal with the EU is taking back all refugees arriving illegally on the Greek shores through the Aegean Sea. Ankara has also accepted to resettle refugees currently stranded on Greek islands. These clauses have triggered international outrage, with organizations like the Amnesty International claiming Turkey could not be considered a "safe country" for the return of refugees. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR has also blasted the return of refugees, saying that could lead to "collective punishment" for the people. Reports show the EU-Turkey deal has succeeded in reducing the number of refugees arriving in Greece since it went into effect three weeks ago. However, thousands still remain in Greek islands not willing to depart for Turkey. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Baku, Yerevan play blame game over Karabakh truce breach Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 12:44PM Azerbaijan and Armenia have accused each other of violating a ceasefire recently agreed to end hostilities in the Caucasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh following four days of fierce fighting in the disputed territory. In a statement released on Thursday, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said that Armenian-backed forces had violated the truce in Karabakh 119 times in the past 24 hours. In response, Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan accused the Azeri troops of shelling populated zones and Armenian armed forces' positions near the town of Vardenis. "The Azeri armed forces actively shelled Armenian armed forces' units and populated areas located in the direction of Vardenis on April 6. The fire was delivered using various firearms, including large-caliber ones, and also 60mm mortars," he told Russia's Interfax news agency on Thursday. In another development on Thursday, Russia stressed that it will continue efforts to help resolve the Karabakh conflict. "Certainly, Moscow will carry on its consistent course [towards the Karabakh settlement]," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. On Wednesday, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan blamed Baku for breaching the truce in Karabakh, but his Azeri counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, pointed the finger at Yerevan, expressing hope that crisis will be resolved peacefully. The new spate of violence broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh on April 1, with the two countries blaming each other for triggering the escalation. After four days of fighting, which reportedly left at least 75 people dead, the two sides agreed to the ceasefire on April 5. The landlocked Karabakh territory, which is located in the Azerbaijan Republic but is populated by Armenians, has been under control of local ethnic Armenian militia and the Armenian troops since a three-year war, which claimed over 30,000 lives, ended between the two sides in 1994 after mediation by Russia. Last December, the Armenian Defense Ministry said the ceasefire deal was no longer in place, saying the current situation amounted to "war." Although the two countries are divided by a buffer zone, both sides frequently accuse one another of violating the ceasefire. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Saudi used US-made cluster bombs in Yemen market attacks: HRW Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 11:28AM The Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Saudi Arabia used US-made cluster bombs in two recent airstrikes on a busy market in Yemen, which killed scores of civilians. The March 15 bombing targeting the northwestern town of Mastaba marked the second-deadliest airstrike conducted by the Saudi campaign since it began its war in March 2015. The strike also wounded at least 47 people and left charred bodies lying next to flour sacks and twisted metal. Human Rights Watch said Thursday its investigators traveled to the town in Yemen's Hajjah province the day after the attack and listed the names of 97 civilians killed in the strike, including 25 children. The team said that another 10 bodies were burned beyond recognition, bringing the total number of victims to 107. They found fragments of a GBU-31 satellite-guided bomb as well as its guidance equipment supplied by the US, matching an earlier report by British television channel ITV. "One of the deadliest strikes against civilians in Yemen's year-long war involved US-supplied weapons, illustrating tragically why countries should stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia," Priyanka Motaparthy, emergencies researcher at HRW, said. "The US and other coalition allies should send a clear message to Saudi Arabia that they want no part in unlawful killings of civilians," she said. Motaparthy said, "Even after dozens of airstrikes on markets, schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods have killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians, the coalition refuses to provide redress or change its practices." "The US and others should pull the plug on arms to the Saudis or further share responsibility for civilian lives lost." US Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Bahrain on a trip to the region, declined to comment specifically on the report while speaking to reporters Thursday. "I don't have any solid information, any documentation with respect to what weapon might have been used," Kerry said. Since March 26, 2015, Yemen has been under military attacks by Saudi Arabia with the declared aim of restoring power to former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. On Thursday, Kerry criticized Hadi for decisions in the "last few hours" that have set back mediation efforts to secure a ceasefire in the Yemen war. The top American diplomat did not elaborate. The US has backed the Saudi campaign in Yemen. In November, Washington approved a $1.29 billion rearming program for Riyadh, including thousands of similar bombs. The Saudi campaign in Yemen has been increasingly criticized by human rights activists over civilian deaths. According to the UN, airstrikes account for 60% of the civilians killed in the conflict, which have also hit markets, clinics and hospitals. Nearly 9,400 people, among them over 2,230 children, have been killed and over 16,000 others injured since the onset of the military raids. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US secretary of state in Bahrain amid protest calls Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 11:7AM US Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Bahrain amid calls for protest against his visit to the Persian Gulf Arab country. Kerry arrived in the Bahraini capital, Manama, on Wednesday evening and was welcomed by his Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa. He was scheduled to discuss regional issues, including the conflicts in Syria and Yemen as well as the fight against the Daesh terrorist group, during meetings with officials from the six countries making up the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). GCC comprises of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Oman. The visit comes ahead of a planned GCC summit in Saudi Arabia later in April which US President Barack Obama is set to attend. Prior to Kerry's visit, Bahraini opposition movements called on the people to stage a mass rally in Manama to voice their anger at the US role in the suppression of Bahrainis. During a joint press conference with his Bahraini counterpart in Manama, Kerry said it is "essential" for Bahrain to respect human rights. "Here, as in all nations, we believe that respect for human rights and an inclusive political system are essential," Kerry said. Bahrain has been widely criticized for its crackdown on dissent. Anti-regime protesters have been holding rallies across Bahrain since 2011, calling for the Al Khalifah family to relinquish power. Scores of people have been killed and hundreds of others injured or arrested in the ongoing heavy-handed crackdown on the rallies. In the latest protests, demonstrators took to the streets in the town of Shahrakan, located on the outskirts of Manama, on Tuesday to condemn the killing of Ali Abdulghani, who died of his wounds in a hospital in the capital four days after he was reportedly overrun by a police vehicle. Amnesty International and other rights groups have repeatedly censured the Bahraini regime over the "rampant" human rights abuses against opposition activists and anti-regime protesters. Bahrain, a key US ally in the Middle East, hosts the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy. US arms sales Political analysts believe trips by US officials to the Middle East region are also aimed at promoting the Iranophobia campaign and taking advantage of the insecurity in the region to increase US arms exports to the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf. According to a study published in February by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the volume of international transfers of major weapons, including sales and donations, was 14 percent higher in 2011-2015 than over the five previous years, with the US doing most of the exporting by selling weapons to more than 90 countries. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were among the top four importers. The report also pointed to the Saudi-led war on Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has been seeking to reinstate the country's former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and undermine the Yemeni Ansarullah movement. "A coalition of Arab states is putting mainly US- and European-sourced advanced arms into use in Yemen," senior SIPRI researcher Pieter Wezeman said in the report. Russian arms sales to Iran banned? Substantial US weapons exports to the Persian Gulf littoral states come as Washington has recently expressed its opposition to the sales of Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets to Iran. On Tuesday, the US Department of State Undersecretary for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon said Washington would use its veto power in the Security Council to block the possible sales of the fighter jets to Iran, claiming that such sales are prohibited under United Nation Security Council Resolution 2231. "The sale of Su-30 fighter aircraft is prohibited under UNSCR 2231 without the approval of the UN Security Council and we would block the approval of any sale of fighter aircraft under the restrictions," Shannon said. Resolution 2231, adopted by the Security Council on July 20, 2015, endorsed a nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group, comprising Russia, China, France, Britain, the US and Germany. In response to Shannon's remarks, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's department for non-proliferation and arms control, Mikhail Ulyanov, dismissed his claim, saying, "Such deliveries are not prohibited, they are allowed, and this follows from the text of the resolution." Analysts say Resolution 2231 does not prohibit Iran from buying fighter jets. Iran and the P5+1 finalized the nuclear agreement, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in Vienna, Austria, in July last year. They started to implement the JCPOA on January 16, 2016. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Sudan's Omar al-Bashir says he will step down in 2020 Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 6:39AM Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir says he will step down by 2020 and has no plans to run for another term in office. "In 2020, there will be a new president and I will be an ex-president," Bashir said in an interview with the BBC Arabic Service on Wednesday, adding that his job is "exhausting" and that his current term would be his last. Bashir has been in power since a 1989 coup, and has been elected president three times since then. He faces International Criminal Court (ICC) charges of genocide and war crimes in the 2003 conflict in the western region of Darfur. The Sudanese president, who was last re-elected in April 2015, dismissed the ICC tribunal for him as "politicized" and claimed that the accusations leveled against him by the court have increased his popularity among the Sudanese people and paved the way for his victory in the elections last year. Bashir also denied New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) allegations of abuses perpetrated by the Sudanese government forces in recent clashes in the country's Darfur. "All these allegations are baseless, none of these reports is true," he said. "We challenge anyone to visit the areas recaptured by the armed forces, and find a single village that has been torched. He further stressed that the security and humanitarian situation in the region have greatly improved, adding that the United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and aid groups are no longer needed there. UN: 138,000 displaced in Darfur In a separate report released by the UN on Wednesday, Herve Ladsous, the world body's peacekeeping chief, said the escalation in fighting in Darfur has forced 138,000 people to flee their homes since mid-January and there is no end in sight to the 13-year conflict in the western Sudanese region. He referred to the number of casualties as unknown since, he said, the Sudanese government has blocked access to the UNAMID peacekeeping forces in the region. Bashir, however, said, "Only a very small number of people have been displaced and they have either reached our positions or [gone to] where the UN peacekeepers are deployed." Darfur has been the scene of violence since 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum. There has also been tribal fighting in the region. UNAMID was launched in 2007 in a bid to protect civilians and restore stability to the restive region. The UN estimates that the violence in Darfur has so far killed some 300,000 people. Khartoum, however disputes the figure, estimating the death toll to be no more than 10,000. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US may establish more military bases in Iraq: Pentagon Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 5:41AM The US army may open new military bases in Iraq as the Arab country prepares to retake the northern city of Mosul from Daesh terrorists, a senior military official says. "There may be a situation in which there is another base that is opened or reopened from years past that would be used as a fire-support base behind the front lines," Rear Admiral Andrew Lewis said. The announcement by the vice-director for the Pentagon's Joint Staff Operations on Wednesday came after US officials said they were considering to "greatly increase" the number of American special forces in Syria. The military surge at a time of major advances by Iraqi and Syrian armies against Takfiri militants has caught the attention of many observers. They are questioning US motivations and their refusal to send troops to stop Takfiri terrorists from overrunning Iraqi and Syrian cities at the start of their campaign to establish a "caliphate." The US troop surge comes as the Iraqi army is closing in on Mosul and Syrian forces are shifting their attention to Raqqah after liberating Palmyra, Shaddadah and other towns. Last month, the US army set up an outpost, initially known as the Fire Base Bell and currently renamed to the Kara Soar Counter Fire Complex, outside the town of Makhmour, southeast of Mosul. Initially, the Pentagon said that the nearly 200 Marines stationed there only provided security for Iraqi forces and US advisers at the nearby Iraqi base in Makhmour. However, the Marines were later firing illumination rounds purportedly to assist Iraqi troops locate militants, and also firing artillery rounds in support of troops advancing in several villages on the outskirts of Makhmour. Regarding the planned bases, Lewis also said, "Their mission is to provide fires and support of Iraqi forces, just like we do with airplanes, just it's surface-to-surface fires [not] air-to-surface fires." Iraqi armed forces began their offensive to recapture Mosul the country's second-largest city and the capital of the Nineveh Province from Daesh in late March. Baghdad aims to retake the entire Mosul in 2016. More US troops in Syria Earlier this month, US officials said Washington was considering a new plan to "greatly increase" the number of American special forces deployed in Syria. The additional US forces in Syria would be primarily assigned to establish sites where they would train militants and eventually provide them with weapons, according to the officials. Currently, there are dozens of US Special Forces in Syria, who are working with a collection of various militant groups that are trying to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The officials declined to disclose the exact increase under consideration but one of them said it would leave the US special operations contingent many times larger than "the around 50 troops" currently in Syria. The proposal is among the military options being prepared for President Barack Obama, who is also weighing an increase in the number of American troops in Iraq, the Reuters news agency said. On Saturday, Press TV documented US plans for "the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria" with the help of al-Qaeda in Iraq, citing a US intelligence report from August 2012. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Navy Spending Soars with $81 Billion Shipbuilding Spree Sputnik News 22:55 07.04.2016(updated 22:58 07.04.2016) Is the US gearing up for WWIII, or are the lobbyists signing the checks for US military spending? The US Navy announced plans on Wednesday to build 38 ships in the next five years, including nine Virginia-class submarines and 10 Arleigh-Burke-class guided missile destroyers. The plans were detailed during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The program will bring the US Navy fleet to a total of 308 ships by FY 2021 up from the current 272 and will lead to a 10% increase in the number of US amphibious assault ships, a development that received praise from Naval combatant commanders and also the Marines tasked with deploying them. The centerpiece expenditure is a new class of nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, in which the Navy plans to invest some $13.5 billion over the next five years. The hefty price tag makes the warship the single most expensive boat in the US Naval fleet. The spending may be driven less by America's military strategic imperative and more by corporate interest and congressional aspiration. Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., General Dynamics Corp, Lockheed Martin Corp., Austal Ltd. and Raytheon Co. have all released statements to investors celebrating the planned expenditures as signaling the growing value of their companies to shareholders. The plan has also received praise from the congressional delegation of top shipbuilding states, including Virginia, Maine, Alabama, Mississippi and Connecticut, states that benefit significantly from US military contracts, maintaining high-paying jobs within their districts. To that effect, shipbuilding and steelworker unions have also praised the new ship building plan as critical to maintaining its workforce. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Romania Wants New 'Allied Fleet' in Black Sea Including Ukraine, Georgia Sputnik News 21:47 07.04.2016(updated 22:58 07.04.2016) Romania is calling for the creation of a new, NATO-supported 'allied fleet' in the Black Sea, including non-NATO members Ukraine and Georgia; Defense Minister Mihnea Motoc told Romanian media that Bucharest would be pushing the idea at NATO's summit in Warsaw in July. What's behind the initiative, and how will Russia respond? Sputnik investigates. "Basically, the formula will be open to those countries along the Black Sea which are not NATO allies, but partner countries, including Ukraine and Georgia; of course it will also be open to some [NATO] allies that are not Black Sea countries, but which have a regular or continuous presence in the Black Sea, participating in exercises or port visits I have in mind here first and foremost the United States," Motoc said, in an interview for Romanian news portal Hotnews.ro earlier this week. Kiev and Tbilisi have already "given signals that they may be interested in joining this unified platform," Motoc said. At the same time, he suggested, somewhat unconvincingly, that the initiative "is not directed against anyone, and does not apply to anyone in particular, be it the Russian Federation or anyone else," but that "certain developments, be it the illegal annexation of Crimea, instability in eastern Ukraine," or the "military buildup" in the Black Sea," prompted the idea. Moreover, Motoc noted, Romania has plans to modernize its fleet, with the help of its international partners. Studying the Romanian defense minister's comments, and the prospects for his proposals actually being implemented by the North Atlantic Alliance, Russian officials and defense analyst hinted that they would not be losing much sleep over the initiative. Speaking to independent Russian newspaper Svobodnaya Pressa, Vyacheslav Tetekin, a member of the Russian Duma's Committee on Defense, said as much, noting that "the alignment of forces in the Black Sea will not change from the Romanian defense minister's empty words." This, Tetekin suggested, would remain the case "even if we assume that several Black Sea countries will pool their scant naval forces under a single operational command under the auspices of NATO." For starters, the lawmaker noted, "the Georgian Navy ceased to exist in August 2008. Even before that, it was virtually a non-entity, with a few rusty minesweepers and patrol boats." At the same time, he added, "Ukraine's Navy is in a very sorry state. They have only one frigate-class warship, capable of limping its way into the Mediterranean. It cannot be expected to perform any great feats." "Romania's fleet is a bit more respectable including about a half-dozen frigates, missile boats and minesweepers. However, most of the ships are out of date. Speaking about the Romanian armed forces in general, one can paraphrase one German general, who put it like this: 'if they are against us, we would need ten divisions to break them; if they were our allies, we would need the same ten divisions to defend their army.'" In any case, Tetekin noted, what's important to understand is "that Romania has a great wealth of experience extorting money from its strategic partners. While it was an ally of the Soviet Union, the country's leaders strenuously pushed for assistance from their 'big brother' to build socialism. Now, with even more pressure, they are asking their new overseas patrons to give them more money for 'defense' against their former patrons. And in order to avoid the impression that they are asking only for themselves, they decided to drag Ukraine and Georgia into it." "I do not doubt that both Tbilisi and Kiev will accept this idea with great enthusiasm, because the leadership of those countries too likes any and all ideas that would give them a chance to draw even a little money from Uncle Sam's pockets. Perhaps they hope that under this 'allied fleet' idea, they might receive a few warships, or help in the construction of military infrastructure." "However," the lawmaker emphasized, "the Americans are practical people; they understand very well that the transfer of warships to their vassals will not raise the fighting capacity of these countries to any significant extent, because Ukraine and Georgia would be unable to maintain them in an acceptable state for very long." Moreover, Washington already has a Black Sea ally Turkey, "which already has a pretty good navy. They have no interest in frittering away their resources on Romania or Georgia; they are not fools to invest money into such an obviously disastrous venture." For his part, Mikhail Alexandrov, a senior expert at the Center for Military and Political Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, suggested that in addition to the financial dimension, there's also the legal aspect to consider. "NATO warships cannot stay in the Black Sea on a permanent basis, in accordance with the Montreux Convention. They could fly a Romanian flag; however, I doubt that the US or other naval powers would actually agree to transfer ships for use by Romania." Ultimately, Alexandrov suggested, "NATO has enough of its own problems, and hardly needs to get involved in regional squabbles," such as Georgia's issues with Abkhazia. In any case, "NATO ships already enter the Black Sea on a rotating basis. Therefore, it's likely that this whole story is within the scope of information warfare [against Russia]." Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Prefers NATO Rotational Forces to Permanent Stationing in Europe Sputnik News 19:06 07.04.2016(updated 19:20 07.04.2016) US Army Chief of Staff said that the plan to forward deploy rotational units of US and NATO forces in eastern Europe is preferable to having them permanently stationed. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The plan to forward deploy rotational units of US and NATO forces in eastern Europe is preferable to having them permanently stationed, US Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the Senate Armed Services on Thursday. "I personally think the advantages of rotation outweigh the disadvantages," Milley stated. He noted that that under the US-NATO plan, "the effect of a permanent armored brigade will be achieved, and the disadvantages of [being] forward stationed, the cost, etc. are not going to be incurred." Under the US European Reassurance Initiative (ERI), established to deter Russia and reassure NATO allies, the United States will deploy an armored brigade to NATO's eastern front on a rotational basis. By 2017, the United States will have a full divisional set of equipment prepositioned in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. When asked why the US decided against permanent basing in eastern Europe, Gen. Milley pointed out that "political negotiations with foreign governments" was among the factors informing the decision. "[T]he effect of permanency is being achieved without the cost of permanency" by deploying units "heel to toe so there is never a gap" in forward presence, Milley explained. In its 2017 budget, the US Department of Defense has requested $3.4 billion for the ERI to fund the movement of one armored brigade to Europe, bolstering the existing cavalry regiment and 173rd Airborne Brigade. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Nagorno-Karabakh Envoys Must Take Part in Conflict Settlement Talks Sputnik News 18:52 07.04.2016(updated 19:48 07.04.2016) Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's (NKR) President Bako Sahakyan said that the envoys of NKR should be included in the conflict settlement negotiations. STEPANAKERT (Nagorno-Karabakh)(Sputnik) The self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's (NKR) envoys must be included in the conflict settlement negotiations, NKR's President Bako Sahakyan said Thursday. "I am grateful to the global community for the relative peace that lasted until April 2, but I have expressed my dissatisfaction that the format of the negotiations is flawed and it is not allowing to achieve real progress in the settlement process," Sahakyan said at a press briefing. The OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France, has been mediating the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement since 1992. The group's ambassadors met in Vienna on Tuesday to discuss the recent outbreak of violence in the region. "I repeat that any initiative, until it is adopted with the participation of the NKR, will not bring real results," Sahakyan stressed. The violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani breakaway region with a predominantly Armenian population, escalated on Saturday. Baku and Yerevan have accused each other of provoking hostilities that led to multiple deaths on each side. On Tuesday, Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed on an immediate ceasefire, but have since accused each other of multiple violations. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Indonesia Interested in Buying Russian Weapons - Armed Forces Commander Sputnik News 15:04 07.04.2016(updated 15:27 07.04.2016) Indonesia's armed forces commander said that Indonesia is interested in military-technical cooperation with Russia as the Asian country is in need of powerful weapons. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Indonesia is interested in military-technical cooperation with Russia as the Asian country is in need of powerful weapons, Indonesia's armed forces commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo said while on a visit to Moscow in Thursday. "Back in time, the Indonesian army was feared and respected by its allies thanks to the Soviet weapons, incredibly powerful at the time. We sincerely hope that the cooperation in the field will continue nowadays. We are interested in powerful weapons," Nurmantyo said at a meeting with Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. Nurmantyo said that his Moscow visit was organized at a direct order of the president of Indonesia. In March, Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu announced Moscow and Jakarta would sign in April a contract for the delivery of 10 Russian Su-35 Flanker multirole fighter jets to replace Indonesia's fleet of F-5 Tigers. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Moscow, Jakarta Drafting Documents on Military-Technical Cooperation Sputnik News 14:56 07.04.2016(updated 15:32 07.04.2016) Russia and Indonesia are preparing to increase mutual military-technical cooperation, the head of Russia's General Staff said Thursday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The Russian and Indonesian Defense Ministries are preparing a package of documents that would enable the two countries move to a new level of military-technical cooperation, the head of Russia's General Staff said Thursday. "We are focused on consistent developing of contacts with Indonesia our long-standing partner in Southeast Asia Regular contacts at the level of heads of our states and governments are taking place. The work on the drafts of bilateral documents, that would allow to fully cooperate in military and military-technical areas, is underway," Gen. Valery Gerasimov said at a meeting with his Indonesian counterpart Gatot Nurmantyo. The Indonesian authorities are seeking a comprehensive expansion of ties with Moscow while the Russian Defense Ministry stands for a regular exchange of opinions on issues of international security, counterterrorism and transnational crime as well as humanitarian operations, he stressed. Gerasimov thanked the Indonesian military and political leadership for its willingness to send to Russia a high-level delegation to participate in this meeting and in the fifth Moscow Conference on International Security slated for late April. The Russian military official added that he would meet Nurmantyo in Moscow once again ahead of the Russia-ASEAN summit to be held in Sochi in May. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Transnistrian Peacekeeping Mission Could Transform After Political Deal Sputnik News 12:12 07.04.2016(updated 13:07 07.04.2016) The Transnistria peacekeeping mission could be dealt with in case of political agreements between parties included, Russian Foreign Ministry Special Envoy Sergei Gubarev said Thursday. CHISINAU (Sputnik) The peacekeeping mission in the self-proclaimed republic of Transnistria could be transformed if parties to the conflict come to political agreements, Russian Foreign Ministry Special Envoy Sergei Gubarev said Thursday. The region striving for its independence from Moldova is currently secured by peacekeeping forces from Russia, Moldova and Transnistria. "The issue of transformation of the peacekeeping operation will inevitably come up. But I think that [it will be possible] only when the sides come to real political agreements," Gubarev said during a video conference at Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency. He added that the deal on a special status of Transnistria could be reached only by dialogue between Chisinau and Tiraspol since the conflict settlement requires common vision of the situation of the both sides to the conflict. Transnistria, a region dominated by an ethnically Russian and Ukrainian population, broke away from the Soviet Republic of Moldova in 1990, fearing the country might seek to reunify with neighboring Romania. The move triggered a war that ended in a ceasefire in July 1992, but the conflict has remained unresolved. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US, Gulf to 'Push Back' Against Iran by Pamela Dockins April 07, 2016 The U.S. and Gulf allies have a shared concern about "Iran's destabilizing actions in the region," said Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday, following talks with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ministers. "We will continue to push back" against such provocations, said Kerry, during an appearance with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. He commented following a series of talks on regional security issues with Bahraini and GCC officials. Jubeir, speaking on behalf of the six-state GCC, said that if Iran wanted normal relations with the regional body, it would have to change its policies. Iranian missiles, proxy fighters Since September, military ships have intercepted four vessels containing weapons that were believed to have come from Iran. All were believed intended for Houthi rebels in Yemen. The most recent incident took place in late March. The U.S. Navy said it seized AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns from a dhow off the coast of Oman. Also, Tehran has repeatedly tested ballistic missiles. U.S. officials say the tests do not violate the nuclear agreement, but are a U.N. Security Council resolution violation. Earlier Thursday, Bahrain's foreign minister said Iran needs to change its foreign policy in the region and stop weapons shipments, training "terrorists" and financing and supporting "proxies." Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said Tehran needed to devote as much effort to its neighbors as it did to securing the nuclear agreement with the United States and five other world powers. Gulf leaders had begun raising concerns about Iran's destabilizing activity in the region before the deal was implemented in January. It is an issue the Obama administration has been addressing with Gulf leaders since a 2015 summit at Camp David. "The fact of the matter is that, notwithstanding our reassuring rhetoric, U.S. actions have not tempered Iranian behavior in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia," said Adam Ereli, a former U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain. "Unless and until our Arab Gulf allies see the U.S. match words with deeds, they will remain appropriately skeptical," he added. U.S. expands aid to Yemen Kerry also announced new aid for Yemen, where a U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition has been leading airstrikes against Houthi rebels. He said the U.S. Food for Peace Program would provide $139 million in new funding this year to assist with humanitarian efforts. Bahrain's rights record questioned Bahrain's human rights record was a focal point during Kerry's appearance with Al Khalifa. He was asked about the case involving Zainab al-Khawaja, a political activist who was detained with her young son last month. Al Khalifa said the woman chose to keep her son with her in detention. He also said she would be released "pending her case in the court." Without specifically addressing the case, Kerry said Bahrain had made progress in some areas, but that more work remained. Regional conflict discussed The main goal of Kerry's visit to Bahrain is to lay the groundwork for President Barack Obama's attendance at the April 21 GCC summit in Saudi Arabia. Kerry and Gulf ministers also discussed the status of the cessation of hostilities and political talks in Syria, as well as efforts to combat Islamic State militants. Kerry visits U.S. Navy base Kerry also visited the U.S. Navy base in Bahrain that is the headquarters for both the Fifth Fleet and a multinational force that deals with maritime security and combats piracy. "The core of the focus is the destruction of Daesh, ISIL," said Kerry to military personnel at the base, referring to Islamic State. "You are all central to our ability to do this," he added. Bahrain is the first stop of a weeklong trip for Kerry. Later, he travels to Hiroshima, Japan, where he will attend a G7 ministerial meeting and visit a World War II memorial. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South Sudan Rebels Seek to Delay Inauguration of Transitional Government by James Butty April 07, 2016 South Sudanese rebels are seeking to delay the inauguration of the beleaguered country's transitional government to allow representatives of the rebel group to arrive in the capital, Juba, for the crucial phase in the peace process. Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, secretary for foreign affairs of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-In Opposition, said Thursday logistical problems are preventing rebel leader Riek Machar from arriving in Juba ahead of the April 14 inauguration of Transitional Government of National Unity. Machar, the first vice president-designate of the new governing body, will not arrive in the capital until April 18. Gatkuoth said the rebels have asked the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC), which is supervising the implementation of last August's agreement to end the conflict in South Sudan, to delay the event. "It is going to be very difficult for us to make it to Juba in five days. So definitely we are appealing to the JMEC to move the launching of the Transitional Government of National Unity to another day, and we are also appealing to the people of South Sudan to bear with us, 12th of April and 18th of April is just only six days," Gatkuoth said. According to the tentative timetable announced by JMEC, Machar was to arrive in Juba on April 12 and meet with President Salva Kiir to discuss the expansion and inauguration of the Transitional National Legislative Assembly the following day. The transitional government was to be inaugurated and national government ministers appointed on April 14. On April 15, the first meeting of the new government's council of ministers will be convened, followed by a meeting with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on how to finance the new government and rescue the country's deteriorating economy. Gatkuoth said the proposed April 12 arrival date was never discussed with Machar before it was announced. He said the rebel leader had just arrived at the rebels' headquarters in Ethiopia following his tour of African capitals, including Nigeria, Chad, Egypt, South Africa, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti to mobilize support for the peace process. Rebel troops and their heavy weapons have been arriving in Juba in the past few weeks. The JMEC has said it hopes to transport all 1,370 rebel fighters to Juba by Friday. Gatkuoth said the SPLA-IO is happy with the transportation of its forces to Juba. "Don't forget that this is the first phase. As of today, we have 850 soldiers who are in Juba. We were supposed to have 1,370. What we are getting is that the transportation of the troops will be completed by Friday or Saturday, and then on Sunday, the 10th, the organic, heavy weapons will be transported to Juba. So the second phase will start to be launched," he said. There have been chronic delays in the implementation of the peace agreement signed last August between the Juba government and the SPLM-In Opposition. Both sides have blamed each other for causing the delays. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Coalition Strikes Hit ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 8, 2016 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq yesterday, 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 remotely piloted aircraft conducted eight strikes in Syria: -- Near Hawl, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit. -- Near Mara, seven strikes struck seven separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed four ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL command and control node and two ISIL vehicles. Strikes in Iraq Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 18 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government: -- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun. -- Near Fallujah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit. -- Near Hit, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed six ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL recoilless rifle, an ISIL supply cache, an ISIL boat and two ISIL vehicles and denied ISIL access to terrain. -- Near Kirkuk, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed four ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL bunker, two ISIL vehicles, seven ISIL rocket systems and an ISIL vehicle bomb. -- Near Mosul, seven strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and an ISIL vehicle bomb manufacturing facility and destroyed an ISIL tunnel system, four ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL supply cache and an ISIL vehicle. -- Near Qayyarah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed eight ISIL fighting positions. -- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed two ISIL assembly areas and two ISIL supply caches. -- Near Sultan Abdallah, two strikes destroyed an ISIL assembly area and an ISIL supply cache and denied ISIL access to terrain. 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 Work: Robot Warship Demonstrates Advances in Autonomy, Human-Machine Collaboration DoD News, Defense Media Activity PORTLAND, Oregon, April 8, 2016 Sea Hunter, a robot warship designed and built by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, represents breakthroughs in autonomous navigation and human-machine collaboration that could change the nature of U.S. maritime operations, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work said here yesterday. Work spoke during a dockside ceremony just before DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar christened the vessel Sea Hunter, a name that describes the planned capabilities of the 130-foot twin-screw trimaran -- a boat with a main hull and two smaller outrigger hulls. "I've been waiting for this day for a long time," Work told the audience. "We are in a period of incredible technological flux. Advances in autonomy and in artificial intelligence and autonomous control systems and advanced computing and big data, and learning machines and intuitive graphic visualization tools, metamaterials, miniaturization -- they're leading us to a time of great human-machine collaboration," he added. Momentous Changes "This will be a change just like other momentous changes in our society," Work said. "You see this human-machine collaboration in our businesses and manufacturing now, you see it in our daily lives, and you're going to see it increasingly in warfare." DARPA developed and built the technology-demonstration vessel through its anti-submarine warfare continuous-trail unmanned vessel, or ACTUV, program. The new class of oceangoing vessel can travel thousands of kilometers over open seas for months at a time without crewmembers, but always with remote human supervision, according to a DARPA news release about the ship. Potential missions initially will include submarine tracking and countermine activities, Prabhakar said during a media briefing after the ceremony. At-sea testing on a surrogate ship has shown that Sea Hunter's autonomous navigation software can operate the ship in compliance with maritime laws and conventions for safe navigation, including the 1972 International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea published by the International Maritime Organization to prevent collisions between two or more vessels, the release said. First Missions Sea Hunter follows these rules using advanced software and hardware that act as automated lookouts, allowing the ship to operate safely near manned maritime vessels in all weather and traffic conditions, day or night, according to the release. "We've just gotten to the point where we can put this in the water and christened it and now for the next two years we're going to be working really closely with the Navy to figure out what are those first few missions and how do you really make it work," Prabhakar said. "They might be very simple things before we get to future [capabilities]," the director added. "They might be as simple as learning how to trail ... a submarine that's really quiet or clearing mines ... and over time I think it can be fully transformative of maritime operations." Testing the Prototype To test the ACTUV prototype, DARPA signed a memorandum of agreement in September 2014 with the Office of Naval Research to jointly fund an extended test phase. DARPA officials said they will collaborate with ONR to fully test the capabilities of the vessel and several payloads during open-water testing. Testing is scheduled to begin this summer off the California coast after a preliminary checkout and movement to San Diego. If it is successful, the program could transition to the Navy by 2018, DARPA says. During an interview on the way to Portland Wednesday, Work called the Sea Hunter and its capabilities an inflection point. The completely robotic ship has a range of 10,000 nautical miles at 12 knots and the prototype cost $23 million to produce, the deputy secretary said. After it's been tested and multiple ships are produced, it will cost about $15,000 to $20,000 a day to operate, he added. This is in contrast to the $600,000 cost to operate a manned helicopter for 24 hours, or $700,000 to operate a destroyer for the same amount of time, Work noted. New Vistas "If [Sea Hunter] can demonstrate its range, if we can validate its operating cost per day and prove that it's safe to operate," he said, "then to me it opens up a whole new vista of things that the Navy can do." The ship also can be scaled up to handle heavy payloads, Work said, such as variable-depth sonar. After NRL has completed testing of Sea Hunter, Work said he wants to push the Navy to turn the ship over to operators from the 3rd Fleet and the 7th Fleet to see what they can do with it. The 3rd Fleet's area of responsibility includes 50 million square miles of eastern and northern Pacific Ocean areas, including the Bering Sea, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and a sector of the Arctic. The 7th Fleet's area of responsibility includes more than 52 million square miles of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, from the International Date Line to the east coast of Africa, and from the Kuril Islands in the north to the Antarctic in the south. "We've made a lot of advances in unmanned aerial vehicles but we're in the walking stage for unmanned surface vessels except for those that operate in general vicinity of a ship's line of sight," Work said. "[Sea Hunter] is a ship that you just sit down over the horizon and it might be able to do an awful lot of things that you don't want a manned platform to do," the deputy secretary added, "especially in an area where there's a lot of anti-access, -area denial threats." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Warring Sides In Nagorno-Karabakh Strike Deal To Safely Recover Their Dead April 08, 2016 Azerbaijan and Armenian-backed separatists say they have agreed a temporary deal to allow each side to safely search for the bodies of their soldiers killed in clashes over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The warring parties agreed a cease-fire on April 5 after four days of shelling and artillery strikes that killed dozens. It was the worst fighting since a 1994 cease-fire that stopped the conflict but did not resolve the underlying dispute. The truce has largely held, though both sides have reported some violations. On April 8, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry and the military leaders in Nagorno-Karabakh said they had sealed a deal to ensure there were no violations for a five-hour period later in the day to allow both sides to search for their dead. Earlier, each side alleged the other had violated the truce in skirmishes overnight. In a statement, the Armenia-backed separatist forces said two of its soldiers were killed along the "line of contact" that effectively serves as a front line separating the combatant sides. The Armenian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said Azerbaijan shelled military and civilian targets inside Armenia. Azerbaijan said it returned fire after Armenian forces shelled its positions in Nagorno-Karabakh. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, meanwhile, has arrived in Azerbaijan for talks with President Ilham Aliyev. "Russia, no less than Azerbaijan and Armenia, has an interest in there being peace in this region, our region," Medvedev said on arrival in Baku. "The cease-fire agreement is the foundation for unfreezing talks between Baku and Yerevan." Nagorno-Karabakh is a mainly ethnic Armenian region inside Azerbaijan. Separatists there fought a war in the early 1990s to establish de facto control over the territory. Based on reporting by Reuters, Interfax, AFP, and TASS Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/clashes-in-nagorno-karabakh-two-dead/27662273.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 2 Dead in Nagorno-Karabakh Despite Cease-fire by Isabela Cocoli April 08, 2016 Two Armenian soldiers were killed in fighting with Azerbaijani forces around Nagorno-Karabakh Friday, with each country blaming the other for violating the cease-fire. Apart from the latest violence, the truce is generally holding. Armenian and Azerbaijani forces have reached a temporary deal to search for and evacuate their dead, with help from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The recent fighting has drawn condemnations as well as calls for resuming efforts toward an ultimate settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The United States, France and Russia, as part of the so-called OSCE Minsk Group, have tried to act as mediators for peace talks, but without visible results. Russia has taken its own actions outside the Minsk Group, with senior envoys shuttling between Baku and Yerevan. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Azerbaijan's capital Friday for talks with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev. Medvedev met with Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian in Yerevan on Thursday. Medvedev said in Baku that Russia's relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan are equally important. He voiced hope they could resume negotiations under OSCE auspices. Armenia has acknowledged the loss of 44 troops since fighting broke out a week ago. Azerbaijan has said that 31 of its soldiers died, and several civilians also have been killed. The recent fighting has been the most intense in more than 20 years. An undeclared war between Armenia and Azerbaijan that began in the late 1980s was eventually brought to a halt by a Russian-brokered cease-fire in 1994, and the OSCE Minsk Group has been trying since then to resolve the underlying ethnic and territorial dispute between the two sides. Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave entirely within Azerbaijan's borders, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since the end of the war. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kenya's Ruto Maintains Innocence After ICC Case Dismissed by Lenny Ruvaga April 08, 2016 The International Criminal Court dismissed its case against Kenya's deputy president, William Ruto, and a local radio director this week for their alleged roles in 2007-2008 post-election violence. Ruto told reporters in Nairobi Friday that the ruling was proof of his innocence. Flanked by his wife, mother, and children, Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto addressed journalists. "I can confirm to you that I know of nobody or group of people or network of individuals who planned violence against anyone. I can also confirm to you that I attended no fundraising or any form of raising money to buy anything to harm anybody," he said. The ICC charged Ruto in 2012 with three counts of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in orchestrating violence that followed the 2007 election. More than 1,100 people were killed and 600,000 displaced. Case dismissed On Tuesday, the judges dismissed the case against Ruto and a local radio director, Joshua Arap Sang, for lack of evidence. In a written statement Wednesday, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said there had been "deliberate and concerted efforts to derail this case through witness interference." She said 17 witnesses withdrew their cooperation after "intimidation, social isolation and threats." Ruto took no questions from reporters Friday but he maintains his innocence. "I have searched my conscience and my soul and I have chosen that all those who gave false testimony against me I have chosen to forgive them. And it is my prayer that the same God who has vindicated me will help them come to terms with their acts," he said. Ruto pledged support from the government for victims of the 2007-2008 post-election violence. The ICC terminated a separate case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta last year for his alleged role in the post-election violence. Prosecutors alleged witness tampering and intimidation in that case as well. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 2 Suspects Arrested in Connection with Paris, Brussels Attacks by Isabela Cocoli April 08, 2016 Belgian authorities arrested a fugitive suspect wanted in connection with the November Paris attacks; the suspect is also linked to the deadly bombings in Brussels last month. Mohamed Abrini, 31, a Belgian of Moroccan descent arrested Friday, is believed to be the mysterious "man in the hat" who escaped the explosion at Brussels Zaventem airport. If true, that would mean Abrini had a key role in both attacks carried out by an Islamic State cell that left a total of 162 people dead, 130 in Paris and 32 in Brussels, and scores of wounded. Abrini was caught on film at a motorway service station en route to Paris shortly before the November 13 attacks in the company of another suspect, Salah Abdeslam, who is already in detention in Belgium. He was the last identified suspect still at large from the November 13 attacks in Paris. Belgian police arrested a second person, possibly linked to the deadly Brussels Maelbeek subway bombing during rush hour in the morning of March 22. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office confirmed that "several arrests" were made Friday, but did not provide further information. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Panama Papers Unlikely to Alter China's Crackdown on Corruption by Shannon Van Sant April 08, 2016 The massive cache of more than 11 million documents tied to a law firm in Panama, which revealed the business dealings of several of China's political elite, comes during a crackdown on corruption under China's President Xi Jinping. The crackdown has netted more than 30,000 people in China who have been punished for corruption. But critics of this crackdown say its a convenient way for political leaders to banish their enemies. Willy Lam, a China Scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the recent leaks give weight to their argument. "The fact that so many members of the so-called 'red aristocracy,' the offspring of party members, ministers and politburo members, have been spared adds to people's impression that Xi Jinping has master-minded the corruption campaign the past two or three years mainly to target his political enemies," Lam said. More leadership members implicated Thursday, it was revealed that two more members of China's ruling leadership were implicated in the papers. A daughter-in-law of Liu Yunshan, the Communist Party's current chief of propaganda, was a director of Ultra Time Investments, which was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 2009. The son-in-law of first-ranking Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli was revealed to be a shareholder of three companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands: Zennon Capital Management, Sino Reliance Networks Corporation and Glory Top Investments. Having an offshore company is not illegal, but such offshore businesses can be used to launder money and evade taxes. The trove of emails from the Panama law firm also names family members of five former members of China's Politburo, as well as the husband of one of Mao Zedong's granddaughters. President Xi Jinping's brother-in-law also used the firm to establish three companies offshore. No impact on crackdown expected Victor Gao, a director of the China National Association of International Studies, said the revelations, while important, are unlikely to impact China's corruption crackdown. "The Chinese government's position is also very clear. They do not want to be budged one way or the other by such disclosures and revelations, or in any case by reports by The New York Times or other newspapers. What they want to do is their own homework, gather information and evidence through their own reliable sources, and deal with corruption as it is, in their own way," he said. In recent weeks China has stepped up censorship of any online coverage or conversation about the Panama Papers. Authorities are deleting discussions through social media about the leaks, and "Panama" is now one of the most censored words on the Chinese internet. Not aware of leaks Ding Xueliang, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the documents' revelations will likely have little impact on how politics and business are done in China, in large part because most people in the country are not aware of the leaks. "Even some of the university professors, they have very, very limited knowledge of international reporting on such things. And if you go to ordinary people, sometimes they've got something from somebody, and generally that would be very vague, without much knowledge of the source of information," he said. Web searches in China for the "panama papers" bring up a warning that the results may not accord with relevant laws and rules and so can't be shown. Earlier this week, China's state-run Global Times newspaper said that Western media use such leaks to damage non-Western countries. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address North Korea Sanctions Pose Human Rights Dilemma by Brian Padden April 08, 2016 Human rights organizations are supporting the new international sanctions imposed on North Korea to restrict its nuclear program, even though the economic measures could make life more difficult for many people in the country who already live on the margins of poverty. "I think the whole idea of pressure on North Korea is something that is important because it actually makes the government recognize that it can no longer live outside of international law," said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, a non-profit civil rights advocacy organization. Sanctions and human rights The United Nations measures adopted in response to North Korea's fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch in February placed trade and financial restrictions on Pyongyang to cut off funding to its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The U.N. sanctions, however, did not mention the 2014 U.N. resolution to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, or the extensive U.N. human rights report that documented ongoing and systematic atrocities, including a network of political prisons, murder, enslavement, torture and rape. The human rights measure has still not been brought to a vote in the U.N. Security Council given the near certainty that North Korean allies China and Russia would veto it. The United States and China collaborated on developing the international sanctions, and Beijing most likely opposed any focus on human rights violations, given its own record of, according to critics, unlawful harassment, imprisonment and torture. But when the U.N. sanctions were adopted on March 2, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, did link the two issues and accused North Korea of caring more about expanding its nuclear weapons program than "growing its children." The U.S. unilateral sanctions recently imposed also included North Korean human rights abuses as justification for the punitive measures. Humanitarian consequences Some human rights advocates argue that humanitarian hardships caused by the sanctions are unavoidable but necessary to pressure the Kim Jong Un leadership to end its repressive ways. "The sanctions from the international community will have an economic impact on North Koreans, but on the other hand the North Korean regime will clearly feel the impact as well," said Choi Yong-sang, with the Network for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul. Workers in the mining industry will likely suffer from the U.N. ban on the export of North Korean minerals. Although humanitarian exceptions in the resolution that allow for the trade of coal and iron not connected to any government organizations could cushion the economic blow. Financial restrictions that ban North Korean banking transactions and blacklist a number of individuals and organizations linked to the North's nuclear program could have a chilling effect on potential donors and investors. The U.S. unilateral sanctions could also target anyone connected to the North Korean labor export program that earns billions of dollars, most of which goes to the state. And South Korea in February closed the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex, putting over 54,000 North Korean employees out of work. Food shortage The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a February report that the North Korean people are already suffering a significant food shortage. The FAO said the North needs 440,000 tons of food from abroad this year, but so far international donors have only provided 17,600 tons. North Korea's state media recently warned that the sanctions may cause another "arduous march," referring to the famine in the 1990s that killed over three million people. Most private South Korean aid programs to the North have been suspended in light of the recent provocations and sanctions. The Eugene Bell Foundation, which provides tuberculosis medications to North Korea, was blocked in early March due to new South Korean unilateral sanctions. Seoul, however, did later make exceptions for humanitarian aid, and the medications did get through. Human rights advocates support providing aid and assistance to innocent people in North Korea caught in the middle of this international standoff. In the past, however, Pyongyang had diverted aid for political purposes and many countries, including the United States and South Korea, suspended assistance programs years ago. "Our view on humanitarian aid is that we don't agree to have restrictions on humanitarian aid and we do support for instance, support for food aid and other basic humanitarian materials for North Korea, but we believe also that these need to be strictly monitored," said Robertson. "If the international community can closely inspect the distribution process, it can assist the people without helping the regime, but we are not sure if North Korea would accept such a condition," said Choi. The growth of private markets could mitigate the impact of the sanctions for many North Koreans. Since the famine years of the 1990s, the people have become less dependent on the Communist government in Pyongyang for their daily needs. But the tighter sanctions are enforced, the more likely it is that ordinary North Koreans will experience greater economic pain than will Kim Jong Un or the well-to-do elites in Pyongyang. But that is a risk that even some human rights advocates are willing to take to end repression in North Korea and to make its leaders accountable. Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Seoul: 13 North Koreans Defect From Foreign Restaurant by VOA News April 08, 2016 South Korea says 13 North Koreans have defected to their southern neighbor after working at a restaurant in a foreign country. A spokesman for Seoul's Unification Ministry, Jeong Joon-hee, said people working in overseas restaurants have defected before, but never multiple workers from the same restaurant. He said the group, consisting of one man and 12 women, arrived in South Korea Friday. He did not say what country they had been working in. North Korea usually blames South Korea for convincing North Koreans to defect. President criticized Earlier Friday, North Korea launched a verbal attack on South Korean President Park Geun-hye in response to her participation last week in a U.S.-hosted nuclear summit in Washington. A spokesman for Pyongyang's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said Friday that Park is a "matchless evil woman" who has "increased the danger of a war" on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea's government responded sharply, warning North Korea against "slandering" its leaders, said Park Soo-jin, deputy spokeswoman for the South Korean Unification Ministry. Last week's nuclear summit focused on the rising tensions between the two Koreas since North Korea conducted a nuclear test in January and followed it with a long-range rocket launch a month later. Nuclear ambitions On Tuesday South Korea said it has concluded that North Korea is now capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on its medium-range missiles. A South Korean official said Seoul believes North Korea has "accomplished miniaturization of a nuclear warhead to mount it on a Rodong missile." The official said Seoul has no evidence that North Korea had actually deployed such a nuclear-tipped missile, but the new assessment was the first direct acknowledgement of the North's growing nuclear prowess. The South Korean assessment of the North's nuclear missile capability came as a U.S. think tank, the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said that recent satellite images of North Korea's main nuclear complex show suspicious activity that could indicate it is re-processing plutonium for additional nuclear bombs. North Korea has carried out four nuclear tests - the most recent in early January - and test-fired missiles in defiance of sanctions against such tests imposed by the U.N. Security Council. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Construction of 2 new nuclear power plants planned: Kamalvandi IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, April 7, IRNA -- Deputy Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said on Thursday that two new nuclear power plants will soon be built in Bushehr after examining one or two technical points. Talking to IRNA about the latest situation of Iran-Russia cooperation in the sphere of constructing two nuclear power plants in Bushehr, he added, 'We built Nuclear Power Plant I, and the power plants II and III will also be commissioned soon.' As regards to Iran-China nuclear cooperation, he said that talks are underway and negotiations on small 100-megawatt power plans are more serious. Kamalvandi, also spokesman of AEOI, hoped that Iran ties with China will be bolstered in different fields. He further maintained that Iran's nuclear industry horizon is bright and implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) also contributed to the issue. 'JCPOA opened up new atmosphere before us, which will help to development of nuclear industry,' he said. Since nuclear know-how has been indigenized in Iran, nuclear achievements will continue to grow, as some 12 achievements were unveiled this year, Kamalvandi said. 8072**2050 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran president unveils latest nuclear achievements Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 6:17AM President Hassan Rouhani unveils some of Iran's latest nuclear achievements during a ceremony held ahead of the country's National Nuclear Technology Day on Friday. Rouhani unveiled 12 nuclear achievements on Thursday during the ceremony, which was held in the Iranian capital. The president said the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries has provided a good opportunity for national unity inside Iran as well as for interaction with the world. Iran and the P5+1 the United States, Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany finalized the nuclear agreement, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in Vienna, Austria, on July 14, 2015. They started to implement the JCPOA on January 16. President Rouhani also said Iran's military power poses no threat to any country in the region and the world. "We are not a threat to any country. We pose no threat to any country, nor do we have any plan to threaten them or put pressure on them," he said. "During the 37 years after the [victory of] the Islamic Revolution, we invaded no country, nor did we threaten anyone. We just defended ourselves when we were invaded," Rouhani stressed. Deputy Interior Minister Hossein-Ali Amiri said that the Nuclear Technology Day celebrates the Iranian nation's achievements after "10 years of resistance." The fact that "the world has recognized the Islamic Republic of Iran's right to use nuclear energy is among the most significant achievements of the nation's resistance in the past 10 years," Amiri said. He also stressed that the important role President Rouhani played during the long process of nuclear negotiations with the P5+1 group of countries should not be ignored. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kerry Calls On Iran To Help End Wars In Yemen, Syria April 08, 2016 by RFE/RL U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has urged Iran to use its influence to help end the wars in Yemen and Syria rather than pursue "destabilizing" activities in the region. At a news conference in Bahrain as he visited U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf on April 7, Kerry condemned "the destabilizing actions of Iran, which the United States takes very seriously." He noted that the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, last week seized a cache of weapons which the U.S. Navy said Iran was shipping to Huthi rebels in Yemen to help in their war against the government. "We call on Iran to constructively join in the efforts to make peace and to help us to resolve Syria. Rather than to continue to send weapons to Huthis, join in the effort...to make peace and to work toward a cessation of hostilities," Kerry said. While visiting with Iran's fierce rivals in the Gulf, Kerry defended Tehran's nuclear accord with world powers and the lifting of economic sanctions under the accord, which is giving a boost to Iran's economy. But he stressed that the United States and its Arab allies "remain united in our opposition to Iran's missile activities." The United States has imposed a series of sanctions on Iran over its ballistic-missile tests and has urged the United Nations Security Council to also sanction Iran. That has prompted strenuous objections from Tehran, which says such sanctions undermine the economic relief it is entitled to under the nuclear accord after having curbed its nuclear development activities. Kerry on April 7 said for the first time the United States is open to a "new arrangement" with Iran for peacefully resolving disputes over the missile tests, AP reported. Without elaborating, Kerry said the United States and its allies have told Iran that they are "prepared to work on a new arrangement to find a peaceful solution to these issues." But he said Iran first had to "make it clear to everybody that they are prepared to cease these kinds of activities that raise questions about credibility and questions about intentions." In an address on state television on April 7, Rohani said: "We are in favor of a policy of moderation...Iran is not a threat to any country...Tehran wants interaction with the world, with its neighboring countries. "With moderation we can reach our goals faster...To progress, we need to have interaction with the world," he continued. But Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, whose government accuses Iran of stoking protests among the kingdom's Shi'ites demanding an end to Sunni minority rule, echoed Kerry's call for more cooperation from Tehran. Iran's "interventions through proxies in several parts of our region [are] continuing unabated," he said. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir called for a complete halt to Iranian support for the Huthi rebels in Yemen. "If Iran continues its aggressive policy," he said, "it will be difficult to deal with Iran." Tehran argues that it is Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies that are sowing instability in the region with their air strikes supporting the government in Yemen and their financial backing for opposition forces in Syria. The war in Yemen is at a critical junction, like the Syrian war, where a serious effort at forging peace sponsored by the United Nations is under way. Yemen's warring parties have agreed to observe a UN-brokered cease-fire starting at midnight April 10, and peace negotiations are due to start in Kuwait on April 18. As in Syria, the war has had a devastating impact on the people of Yemen. The United Nations says around 6,300 people have been killed in the war. The bombardment of Yemen by a Saudi-led Arab coalition has taken a particularly devastating toll. Human Rights Watch said on April 7 that bombs supplied by the United States were used in coalition air strikes on a market in Yemen that killed at least 97 civilians, including children, last month. Kerry declined to comment on that accusation. In Syria, Iran and the Gulf Arab states are also on opposing sides of the war. Iran has been a principle backer of President Bashar al-Assad's regime while the Arab states have supported rebel groups seeking to oust Assad. That five-year war has killed more than 270,000 people and pushed nearly 5 million into exile. The United States has been trying to galvanize support behind UN-sponsored peace talks that are set to resume on April 13 in Geneva. As in past efforts at Syrian peace, Kerry said the main obstacle is deciding Assad's future. Rebel groups want Assad to step down during a political transition leading to elections. But Assad -- backed by Iran and Russia -- insists on at least sharing power until the elections, when voters will decide on his fate and a new government. "The discussion about transition is the key test of the seriousness of the Assad regime, of Russia and Iran" about peace in Syria, Kerry said. With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/us-secretary-state-kerry- urges-iran-help-end-wars-yemen-syria/27661470.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 Shia volunteer fighters say will join army battle for Mosul Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 2:16PM A group of Shia volunteer forces, known as the Popular Mobilization Units, says it will join an ongoing operation by the Iraqi army to liberate the northern city of Mosul from Daesh Takfiri terrorists. Jawad al-Talabawi, a spokesman for the Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq volunteer forces, said in an interview on Wednesday that the anti-Daesh military operation in Mosul, the capital of northern Nineveh Province, would require the participation of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a coalition of mostly Shia Muslim fighters. "We think the battle to liberate Mosul will be huge, complex; it will be about guerrilla warfare in built-up areas, which only PMF fighters are good at ..., as forces may be fighting house to house, room to room," Talabawi said. This comes as the Iraqi armed forces have already launched an offensive to recapture the country's second-largest city of Mosul, which has served as the main Daesh stronghold since 2014. However, the offensive meant to bring the Iraqi army closer to Mosul has been put on hold two weeks after its launch in March, until more forces arrive to hold ground. The military operation is the first phase of a large-scale offensive that Baghdad plans to conclude in 2016 with the full recapture of Mosul. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has declared 2016 the year of "final victory" over Daesh terrorists. Talabawi further suggested that popular volunteer forces take the lead in Mosul's liberation operation, saying that the Iraqi army could make effective advancements on the ground only with air cover and heavy bombardment. Home to around two million people before its capture, Mosul fell to the extremist militants in the earliest days of their emergence in June 2014. Since then, the northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by violence fueled by the terror group. Popular Mobilization Units, formed after the rise of Daesh in Iraq in 2014, have joined forces with the army to liberate Daesh-held areas. The volunteer fighters have played an important role in strengthening the army, which initially suffered heavy losses amid quick advances by the Takfiri terrorists. In their latest gains against Daesh, Iraqi army forces managed to enter the town of Hit in the western Anbar province on Monday as they push to fully liberate the area. The operation to retake the small town initially launched last month was stalled by tens of thousands of trapped civilians. The army earlier said that the terrorists had planted hundreds of roadside bombs and booby traps along main roads leading in and out of the city. The town lies over 140 kilometers west of the capital Baghdad, on a supply line linking the terrorists in Iraq to those in neighboring Syria. Daesh terrorists have been in control of the city for the past 18 months. The armed forces have retaken some key towns and villages, including Tikrit and Baiji in Salahuddin Province and the city of Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Daesh Oil Revenue Falls as Group Loses Rich Territory in Iraq Sputnik News 13:17 07.04.2016(updated 13:33 07.04.2016) Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament stated that capabilities of the Daesh militant group to receive revenues from the illicit oil have declined, as the terrorists are losing control over the captured territories. BAGHDAD (Sputnik) The capabilities of the Daesh militant group to receive revenues from the illicit oil have declined, as the terrorists are losing control over the captured territories, Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Saleem Jubouri told Sputnik. "Daesh used [oil] fields to earn money, especially in [the province of] Nineveh and several districts of [the province of] Kirkuk. But following the liberation of a number of districts, Daesh capabilities in this sphere have decreased. Unfortunately, there are people who help Daesh to produce oil and transport it. It is very strange, because anyone could understand what is the main financial resource of the Daesh," Jubouri said. He added that the Iraqi authorities were monitoring Daesh activities linked to the production of oil, adding that the oil was sold either directly or through mediators. The Daesh controls large areas in Iraq and in neighboring Syria. The terrorist group, which is banned in Russia and the United States, among others, relies heavily on revenues derived from the black-market sale of smuggled crude oil, drugs and human trafficking. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kerry in Iraq: Time to 'Turn Up Pressure' on Islamic State Extremists by Pamela Dockins April 08, 2016 Islamic State extremists are losing ground in Iraq, their leaders and fighters are being eliminated and the group's rank-and-file members are losing hope, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday. Kerry made a quick visit to Baghdad Friday for talks with Iraqi leaders. He promised the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State "will work with Iraq to turn up the pressure even further" during the coming weeks and months. The top U.S. diplomat underscored continued American support for the Iraqi government in its efforts to strengthen security and work toward stability in politics and economic development. Kerry flew to Baghdad from Bahrain for his first visit to the Iraqi capital since 2014. He met with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the Kurdistan regional government's prime minister, Nechrivan Barzani, before appearing before reporters at a news conference. Listing recent gains against extremists in Iraq, Kerry said Islamic State "fighters have not been on the offensive in months," and have lost more than 40 percent of the territory they once controlled. U.S-led coalition airstrikes have targeted IS leaders and disrupted the jihadist group's cash flow, Kerry said, adding that IS is "losing ground, losing fighters and losing cash." Kerry said Iraqi forces are laying the groundwork for a major effort to retake Mosul, in northern Iraq, which fell to Islamic State militants in 2014. There are indications the United States is lending additional support to the Iraqis' assault on the strategically important city. Kerry said the Mosul operation is underway and still evolving. Pentagon officials said earlier this week that a coalition airstrike destroyed an IS headquarters complex in Mosul that formerly had been a Turkish consulate. There are currently about 3,870 U.S. forces in Iraq. Kerry said there were no specific Iraqi requests for additional American troops, although reports in the United States say such a proposal may soon be put forward by the Pentagon. U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford and Defense Secretary Ash Carter are expected to request more U.S. troops to fight Islamic State militants, and White House spokesman Josh Earnest has said President Barack Obama would give such a recommendation "careful consideration." U.S. military officials have said only that they are establishing an additional military outpost in the area around Mosul. Rear Admiral Andrew Lewis, vice director of joint staff operations at the Pentagon, has said "there may be a situation in which there is another base that is opened or reopened from years past that would be used ... as a fire support base behind the front lines." Kerry also announced the U.S. will provide nearly $155 million in additional humanitarian assistance to help displaced Iraqis, bringing total U.S. spending on the humanitarian effort in Iraq to nearly $780 million since late in 2013. Kerry's trip to Baghdad came at a time when Prime Minister Abadi has been grappling with political turmoil. He proposed a Cabinet reshuffle last month as an anti-corruption move, following weeks of protests by supporters of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "This is obviously a very critical time here in Iraq," Kerry commented before beginning a meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Eshaiker al-Jaafari. The U.S. secretary said Washington has no role in Iraq's internal politics, but "what we did indicate [to Abadi] is, it is important to have political stability." "It is important to have a functioning government so that all of these operations are not affected, so that we give confidence to the coalition and the communities that have been liberated," he added. Kerry is on a weeklong tour of the Middle East and Asia that will include a visit to Hiroshima, Japan, for a Group of Seven (G-7) summit. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Mission accomplished in Syria: Russian president Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 2:19PM Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised the achievements of Moscow's military campaign in Syria, saying the operation has "accomplished" its mission in the violence-wracked Middle Eastern country. "It is too early to say we have reached a crucial breakthrough, but it is evident that we have accomplished our mission," Putin told a media forum in St. Petersburg on Thursday. Russia's operation had reinforced Syria's statehood and its legitimate government, he stated, emphasizing that it was essential to prevent the collapse of Syrian state in a bid to stem the flow of refugees to Europe. The Syrian army was liberating new settlements from "terrorists" with Moscow's support, the Russian leader added. The Syrian forces have continued to make advances against the Takfiri Daesh terror group, although Russia pulled out some of its warplanes from the Arab country last month, he noted. Russia launched its air campaign against Daesh and other terrorist groups last September upon a request by the Damascus government. Later in mid-March, the bulk of Russian military forces were withdrawn from Syria. Elsewhere in his remarks, the Russian president stressed that Moscow's role in fighting terrorism can never be dismissed. "No matter how someone might want to belittle the role and significance of our steps against terror and hush up these events, this is simply impossible," Putin stated. Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. According to a February report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced nearly half of the country's pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond its borders. Backed by the Russian air cover, Syrian forces have managed to retake many militant-held areas over the past few months. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Putin Says Panama Papers Part Of Western Plot To Destabilize Russia April 07, 2016 by Mike Eckel Russian President Vladimir Putin mocked the massive leak of financial and legal documents known as the Panama Papers that reportedly implicate several people close to him, saying the project was part of a Western government campaign to destabilize Russia. In his first remarks since news organizations on April 3 began publishing articles based on the leak, Putin denied having any links to offshore accounts detailed in the trove of materials revealing vast networks of shell companies, some apparently being used to hide sizable wealth. "Our opponents are above all concerned by the unity and consolidation of the Russian nation, our multinational Russian people," he told an April 7 forum for local and regional journalists in St. Petersburg. "They are attempting to rock us from within, to make us more obedient." Among the names reportedly appearing in the documents is that of cellist Sergei Roldugin, an old friend of Putin's and reportedly a godfather to one of his daughters. Media reports on the Panama Papers have said Roldugin holds hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore assets. Putin said he was "proud" of Roldugin. "[Roldugin] has spent nearly all the money he has earned on buying musical instruments abroad and he brought them to Russia," he said. "We always welcome it when somebody does things like that, but he has gone much further," Putin added. "I know that he has spent several months already on efforts to have the instruments registered as property of government-financed institutions." Putin himself is not named in the some 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, according to news organizations that have accessed the materials, a point the Russian president stressed. "Your humble servant is not in them, so there is nothing to talk about," he said. "However, there is a specific purpose in it. What have they done? They have produced an information product. They have dug up some of my acquaintances and friends. I will talk about them too. They've poked here and there and mashed something up." The Kremlin frequently criticizes what it portrays as a systematic campaign by Western governments and media outlets to undermine Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov addressed the Panama Papers days before the reports were published after being contacted by media outlets for comment. He claimed that an effort was under way to taint Putin and disrupt parliamentary elections scheduled for September. At the St. Petersburg forum, Putin suggested that the U.S. government may have been behind the leak, and he made reference to an April 6 tweet by WikiLeaks, the organization that orchestrated the massive leak of U.S. State Department cables in 2010. WikiLeaks suggested the U.S. government was involved because one of the Panama Papers' partners -- the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) -- has received funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), among other sources of financing. "WikiLeaks has shown that behind, let's say, [the Panama Papers issue] there are certain U.S. officials and agencies," Putin said. Putin's comments also reflect a tacit Kremlin endorsement of WikiLeaks and its controversial founder, Julian Assange, who has hosted a talk show on the Kremlin-funded TV channel RT, previously known as Russia Today. Moscow has also given sanctuary to another well-known leaker of U.S. government documents, Edward Snowden. In Washington, U.S. officials have denied involvement in the Panama Papers leak. The Sarajevo-based OCCRP has denied any government involvement as well, saying USAID was only one source of funding and that receiving government money was important for doing projects in regions where few institutional donors exist. "The idea that OCCRP is not an independent media outlet simply because it has taken some government money, while appealing to the world view of some, is simply not true," it said. "We accept government money knowing this may affect our credibility with some, but we chose doing some good over not existing at all," it added. Russian state media outlets have largely ignored reports about Putin's associates identified in the Panama Papers, focusing instead on the offshore dealings of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that were revealed in the leak. Aleksei Navalny, the opposition leader who has investigated corruption among top Russian officials, ridiculed Putin's defense of Roldugin. He noted that the cellist's offshore companies reportedly engaged in suspicious commercial contracts that netted him substantial profits. Putin is a "monstrous liar," Navalny wrote on his website on April 7. In typically wry fashion, Putin opened his remarks joking about St. Petersburg's tumultuous role in Russian history, pointing out the city was home to three revolutions: 1905, February 1917, and then October 1917, when the Bolsheviks came to power. "I hope the results of your efforts won't result in a fourth revolution," he said, "but just the opposite." Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/panama-papers- putin-comments-destabilize-russia/27660820.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 Russian Defense Ministry Needs Various Types of Drones Sputnik News 17:25 07.04.2016 Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said that the ministry could spent significant sums of money on the development of different types of the UAVs, including the tactical, strategic and attack drones. YEKATERINBURG (Sputnik) The Russian Defense Ministry is in need of a wide range of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said Thursday. "The need in various types of the unmanned aerial vehicles is enormous. A huge step has been taken in this regard in the last three years Russian army had multiplied the number of UAVs it operates. This niche will be attractive for the industry for a long time," Borisov said, while visiting Ural Works of Civil Aviation. He added that the ministry could spent significant sums of money on the development of different types of the UAVs, including the tactical, strategic and attack drones. According to Borisov, the ministry's need can be explained by the fact that no modern military conflict goes without the usage of the UAVs. Russia is currently implementing a large-scale rearmament program, announced in 2010, to modernize 70 percent of its military hardware by 2020. The total modernization program cost is estimated to reach about 20 trillion rubles (some $291 billion at the current exchange rates). Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Navalny: Hold Russians Named in 'Panama Papers' Accountable by Danila Galperovich April 07, 2016 Close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin figure prominently in the Panama Papers, the leaked financial documents that shocked the world this week, but the revelations are drawing little more than a shrug in official Moscow. The Russian public appears to accept that those in power amass wealth. And moreover, Russian commentators say that nothing in the Panama Papers directly links Putin with any criminal act. Alexei Navalny, the well-known Russian anti-corruption campaigner and opposition figure, does not agree. He told VOA in an interview that he can envision very serious consequences arising from the Panama Papers disclosures. The Panama Papers - more than 11 million documents and a huge volume of associated data - reveal details about offshore business and secret financial arrangements involving a worldwide array of political figures, celebrities and public figures. A consortium of international journalists has been publishing details from the documents, all of which came from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that says it was the victim of computer hackers. The leaked Panama Papers have made headlines worldwide, and the political consequences are just beginning. Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned this week after it was disclosed that he and his wife own a corporation in the British Virgin Islands. The foreign company, which Gunnlaugsson avoided mentioning in financial disclosure reports, holds $4 million in bonds issued by three Icelandic banks that collapsed but were bailed out by Gunlaugsson's government. Navalny says the Panama Papers revelations are one of the most significant news stories in many years and he has "no doubt that it will leave a rather large mark on history." The significance for Russians, Navalny told VOA in Moscow, is "not simply for understanding that Putin is corrupt we already knew that but for understanding the mechanism for how they accumulate and transfer the money, and to where." The Panama Papers indicated that a close friend of Putin's, a cellist, owned foreign shell companies that received $2 billion from state corporations and other sources in Russia. Navalny says he has no doubt about the reliability of the documents leaked in Panama, and expresses hope the information eventually will serve as "legal evidence" leading to corruption charges against "Putin and his inner circle." However, he also said financial scandals "cannot have a serious impact on the general [Russian] population ... [and that they] also have absolutely no political consequences." Navalny, a 39-year-old lawyer and political activist who has become one of the most prominent figures in the Russian opposition to Putin, said his country "has reached a stage of authoritarianism" where no political consequences can be expected to arise from a scandal over secret offshore companies. In another case not directly related to the Panama Papers, Navalny said he is now convinced that a Russian multimillionaire found dead in the U.S. capital under mysterious circumstances was "one of the organizers of a corruption scheme in which Putin himself was personally complicit." He was referring to former Russian press minister and advertising mogul Mikhail Lesin, who was found dead with blunt-force injuries in a Washington hotel room in November of last year. Navalny said he had no "proof" or definitive evidence, but indicated that Lesin may have died because, "as they say in detective stories, he knew too much." Navalny had many specific comments to offer on the Panama Papers in general, and about Russian companies and individuals in particular. Here is a transcript of the interview: VOA: How do you assess the scale of the Panama Papers? Can the information be trusted? Navalny: I regard this investigation, of course, as highly professional. It may be one of the most significant in modern journalism worldwide. I have no doubt that it will leave a rather large mark on history and most likely will enter the textbooks. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the information. One could believe that this whole "leak," as the Kremlin calls it, was intended to discredit [Russia's leaders], were it not for the fact that the whole Russian part of the papers is only 5 percent of the total batch, and that it involved figures who are much more significant than Vladimir Putin [British Prime Minister] David Cameron and many others. ... I have no doubts about [the investigation's] reliability. (David Cameron's late father, Ian Cameron, was listed as a client of Mossack Fonseca. A spokesman in London said Wednesday that neither David Cameron, nor his wife or their children benefit from offshore funds.) This investigation is certainly very important, not simply for understanding that Putin is corrupt we already knew that but for understanding the mechanism of how they accumulate and transfer the money, and to where. From this point of view, the figure of [Sergei] Roldugin (a cellist and close Putin friend who is listed as controlling offshore companies that received $2 billion from Russia), and all the schemes by which state corporations pumped up Roldugin's wallet, are important. Perhaps it will - sooner or later, I hope serve as legal evidence in the process of charging Putin and his inner circle with corruption. Q: But will this information have any impact on Russian society? A: Russia has reached a stage of authoritarianism where this investigation cannot have political consequences domestically.... The elites are uneasy. The elites are worried. The corrupt Putin elite realizes that there are no safe havens (abroad). But this cannot have a serious impact on the general population, because Russia is no longer the same country it was even in 2009. And, in this sense, it is absolutely in the same ranks as Azerbaijan [and] Kazakhstan, which also figure in these papers and where this will also have absolutely no political consequences. Q: Russia participates in several organizations involved in the fight against money laundering for example, the FATF (Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering) and GRECO (the Group of States against Corruption). Do you think these organizations can ask Russia about the Panama Papers? A: I very much hope that Russia and Russian companies will be held accountable for laundering money, for illegal operations. And here, of course, there is the corpus delicti (concrete evidence) of the crime. The actions of companies listed on stock exchanges, such as [the Russian state oil company] Rosneft [and the state-owned bank] Sberbank, they have engaged in insider trading, which under international law must be prosecuted. The [steel and mining] company Severstal, which listed bribes to Roldugin (a Panama Papers document indicates Severstal made a $6 million loan to Roldugin and then immediately forgave it) has big business interests in the United States, and must be called to account under American law for these bribes. Unfortunately, I fear this will not happen for purely political reasons. In recent years, we have seen practically not a single case in which a Russian company or a Putin friend - even those who clearly violated international prohibitions on money laundering - was held accountable. And even when it comes to the sanctions adopted by the top political leadership of Western countries (in response to Russian actions in Ukraine), we have not seen anything actually seized from anyone. The one exception was [Putin insider Arkady] Rotenberg, who had a small part of his Italian assets seized. And so, in general, all these villains [billionaire oil trader and Putin associate Gennady] Timchenko and the Rotenbergs (Arkady and his brother, Boris), and all the others on the sanctions list none of them has felt a single penny's worth of tangible material harm or tangible material claims. So we need a political solution. Unfortunately, thus far Western countries have in every possible way refused to implement these options. Q: But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that offshores are "legal," and many economists agree, saying they actually see nothing criminal in the published transactions. A: Offshores as an institution are, of course, legal. Offshores are much more widely used in European countries [than] in the United States. And even the relatively small part of the [Panama Papers] dossier devoted to Russia simply shows that among the more developed countries, the larger their economies are, the more often offshore accounts are used. Therefore, Britain and Germany are much more involved in all of this. It really is quite a normal business practice... that is used for tax optimization. It is not even in a gray zone; it is absolutely in the white zone. Many countries are actively fighting against this - for example, Germany and the United States in recent years - but it is legal. However, the legality of the offshore company as an institution does not mean that you can use offshore companies to take bribes. They - I mean, corrupt Russian officials use offshore companies to hide money, to launder bribes, to extract bribes, for corrupt payments from Russian state-owned companies. Therefore, the fact that offshore companies are legal in general is not an excuse. Q: In the published documents, one can find the name of former Russian press minister Mikhail Lesin, who died a mysterious death in Washington last year. Do you think his demise could be related to information he possessed and, perhaps, that he was willing to share? A: The Panama Papers showed us, and we are now convinced, that Lesin knew a lot. Not just about corruption in the highest echelons of power, but [he] was one of the organizers of a corruption scheme in which Putin himself was personally complicit. And against the backdrop of his death, against the backdrop of the strange things that were happening around him, it's a more than reasonable assumption that, in any contacts he may have had with the federal authorities in the United States, Lesin may have been asked about it. I cannot prove it, but I do not rule out that his mysterious and sudden death could be related to the fact that, as they say in detective stories, he "knew too much." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 300 staffers of Syrian company abducted by Daesh: State TV Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 4:4PM Takfiri Daesh militants in Syria have kidnapped 300 cement workers in an area northeast of Damascus, Syrian state television reports. State TV quoted an industry ministry official as saying the workers and contractors of Al Badia Cement company had been taken from near the town of Dumeir and their employer had lost all contact with them. Militants had launched attacks against government forces in Dumeir earlier this week. Fierce clashes have been reported over the past days as the Daesh terror group has tried to wrest control of an air base and power plant in the area. An unidentified official in the cement factory told Syria's SANA agency that efforts for establishing contact with the workers and contractors have failed since Monday. "We haven't been able to reach our family members since noon on Monday after an attack by Daesh on the factory," a resident of Dumeir said. There were conflicting reports on the number of the staff abducted, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain which is affiliated to the foreign-backed opposition, saying "dozens" were kidnapped. Meanwhile, a report by al-Mayadin, an Arabic-language TV based in neighboring Lebanon, said some 140 workers have managed to escape the captivity of Daesh in the Eastern Ghouta region of Damascus. It said others were still held hostage in a desert camp. SANA said local officials have seen 125 of the company's abducted workers being transported on board Daesh vehicles toward Tal Dakweh on the outskirts of Eastern Ghouta. Nadim Kreizan, identified as a local official, said his committee had received 106 people who had escaped Daesh's hold on Wednesday. Militant sources said the number could not exceed 200. Some other reports rejected reports that Daesh was behind the attack, saying a group called Jaysh Tahrir al-Sham had kidnapped the workers and contractors. Daesh, which controls territories mostly in east and north of Syria, has been excluded from a ceasefire, which is currently in effect in the Arab country NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 250 civilians missing east of Damascus after Daesh attack Iran Press TV Thu Apr 7, 2016 11:0AM Around 250 Syrian civilians are feared kidnapped after an attack by Daesh terrorists on a cement factory east of Damascus, residents say. An administrator at the plant in the town of Dumeir, 50 km (30 miles) east of Damascus, said on Thursday 250 employees had been unreachable since Monday. "We haven't been able to reach our family members since noon on Monday after an attack by Daesh on the factory," the AFP news agency quoted a resident as saying. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "dozens" of staff were believed to have been kidnapped by Daesh from the Badiyah cement factory and taken to an unknown location. The factory, which lies on the outskirts of Dumeir, has been the scene of fierce clashes between Daesh terrorists and Syrian government forces in recent days. The Takfiri militants have sought to wrest control over Dumeir airbase and power plant, but have been unsuccessful so far. Meanwhile, three people were injured when two rockets fired by Daesh militants struck two different areas in the southeastern Turkish city of Kilis close to the border with Syria. The first projectile hit a house, where Syrian refugees were living, at around 8:45 a.m. local time (0545 GMT) on Thursday. Two Syrians inside the house were wounded in the attack. Pictures broadcast by Turkish television networks showed the rocket had badly damaged masonry and windows of the building. Security forces immediately cordoned off the area, and ambulances ferried the wounded to a nearly hospital for treatment. Another rocket shell struck a road and exploded, leaving one person wounded. Police forces evacuated a school nearby. The Turkish military fired on what it called Daesh positions in northern Syria in retaliation. There were no immediate reports of casualties and damage. Syria has been gripped by a foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 270,000 people have been killed in the conflict; however, some reports put the death toll as high as 470,000. Damascus accuses Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar of funding and arming the terrorist groups operating in Syria, including Daesh. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Opposition Member: Kurds Should Be Included in Syria Talks to Achieve Peace Sputnik News 23:15 07.04.2016 Opposition by some Western states to the Kurds' participation in the intra-Syrian peace talks in Geneva will keep an idea of federalization on Kurds' agenda, a member of the Syrian Democratic Forum opposition party told Sputnik on Thursday. MOSCOW (Sputnik), Svetlana Alexandrova On Tuesday, Russia-initiated UN Security Council (UNSC) draft resolution on the inclusion of Kurds in the intra-Syrian peace talks was blocked by the Western UNSC members. "There is no peace in Syria if the talks are not inclusive of all voices and forces. Of course they should include PYD [Democratic Union Party], maybe, within a common delegation of the High Kurdish Council, as the question of federalism had been put and would still remain on the table," a member of the Syrian Democratic Forum opposition party Samir Aita said. The Kurdish bid for federalization came amid the UN-backed intra-Syrian negotiations in Geneva, to which the Kurds, one of the largest ethnic groups in Syria, were not invited. At a conference in the Hasakah province on March 17, the Syrian Kurds announced the creation of a federal region in the country's north. The previous round of Syrian talks in Geneva finished on March 24. The next round is expected to kick off during a week starting on April 11, according to the UN Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura. Kurds have received no official invitation to the upcoming talks. Participants of the Syrian peace process, including Russia, have repeatedly stressed that reconciliation talks will fail to reach a political settlement unless the Syrian Kurds are allowed to participate. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia Delivers 15 Tonnes of Humanitarian Aid to Syria Sputnik News 19:45 07.04.2016(updated 20:30 07.04.2016) Russian reconciliation center in Syria said that Russian military transport aircraft have delivered 15 tonnes of food supplies to the Hmeymim airbase in Syria that will be distributed among the Syrian population. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russian military transport aircraft have delivered 15 tonnes of food supplies to the Hmeymim airbase in Syria that will be distributed among the Syrian population, the Russian reconciliation center in Syria said Thursday. "Russian Aerospace Forces' military transport planes delivered 15 tonnes of food to the Hmeymim airbase for the formation of the next humanitarian aid convoy," the reconciliation center said in an update published on the Russian Defense Ministry's website. On Wednesday, the Russian military helped the Syrian government to deliver 28 tonnes of food supplies to the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor besieged by the Nusra Front and Islamic State groups, outlawed in a number of countries worldwide including Russia. Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups. The ceasefire in Syria worked out by Russia and the United States, took effect on February 27 to facilitate humanitarian access to all besieged areas in the country, among other purposes. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US, Turkey Discuss Ways to Back Syrian Opposition in IS Fight by VOA News April 07, 2016 U.S. and Turkish authorities are discussing ways to support the moderate Syrian opposition in the effort to push Islamic State from the Turkish border farther east in Syria. Speaking to members of the Diplomacy Correspondents Association on Thursday in Ankara, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey John Bass said the two countries had the same goals in fighting Islamic State. "Some of these groups are now able to devote more of their attention to clearing Daesh [Islamic State] out of the area around Manbij," he said, "and we are determined to work closely and provide all the support we can, with our friends and partners here in Turkey and with many of the other members of the coalition, to enable them to be successful, and we will continue to do that. ... I think it's important to remember that the United States and Turkey share the same goals in Syria." Bass also called on Kurdish rebels to lay down their arms in Turkey. He said any return to a peace process could be possible only if the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) ended its attacks. "We call again on the PKK to stop its campaign of violence, to put down its weapons and to undertake a legitimate conversation, to the extent there are opportunities to do so, in a manner in which the citizens of this country conclude is acceptable, to talk about the underlying problems or grievances which have contributed to the violence," he said. Bass also said that the U.S. does not provide weapons to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which is affiliated with the PKK. Washington is opposed to any efforts by the group to change the demography of a region "under the guise" of fighting Islamic State. Turkey has accused the YPG of "cleansing" towns of ethnic Arabs and Turkmens. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Upcoming Syria Peace Talks to Tackle Political Process by Lisa Schlein April 07, 2016 U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura says he plans substantive discussions with Syrian government and opposition parties next week in Geneva in hopes of kick-starting Syria's political transition process. De Mistura did not give a specific starting date, saying only that "The great thing about proximity talks is they are dramatically flexible." As the warring parties refuse to meet face to face, the U.N. envoy shuttles from one delegation to another. Therefore, he said it was not necessary for all the delegations to be present at the same time. He said he expects staggered arrivals to begin early next week, with earnest negotiations set for April 13. "The next round of the talks need to be quite concrete in the direction of a political process leading to a real beginning of a political transition. Since this is real stuff, I need to verify the international and regional stakeholders position in order to [assess] the level of a critical positive mass leading to concrete results in the next round of talks," de Mistura said. For this to happen, the U.N. envoy said he was going on a mini verification tour to gauge the level of agreement from countries of influence for delving seriously into the political process. He said he already has met with Russian officials and that in the coming days he will be going to Damascus and Tehran, followed by meetings in Europe with Turkish and Saudi Arabian authorities. Earlier this year, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad announced parliamentary elections to be held April 13. De Mistura said he was aware of this is happening on the day talks he hopes to resume talks. He said he expects the Syrian government delegation is likely to arrive in Geneva on April 15. He declined to comment on the parliamentary elections, noting the only elections he is willing to discuss are those sanctioned by Security Council Resolution 2254. This resolution calls for UN-monitored elections to be held in Syria within 18 months of the restart of the peace process in March. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Tsai promises to boost cross-strait exchanges, communication ROC Central News Agency 2016/04/06 17:47:40 Taipei, April 6 (CNA) President-elect Tsai Ing-wen () said Wednesday that her administration will step up exchanges and communication with the Chinese government and will commit to maintaining peaceful and stable relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. "This will be an important task of the new administration," Tsai was quoted as saying in a news release by her Democratic Progressive Party after she met with Richard Armitage, a former U.S. deputy secretary of state, and other former foreign officials. Taiwan will cooperate with the United States on such substantive issues as humanitarian assistance and climate change, as part of its efforts to become a responsible member of the international community, Tsai said. She also listed a number of areas that her administration will target for reforms, including the pension system, college education and the country's economic structure. In the meeting, which lasted nearly two and a half hours, Tsai and Armitage discussed cross-strait relations, and Taiwan's relations with other nations in Asia and the United States. Tsai is "more than capable of handling cross-strait relations," Armitage said after the meeting. During her trip to the U.S. last June, Tsai visited Armitage International LLC., a consulting company established by Armitage in 2005. (By Sophia Yeh and Lilian Wu) Enditem/pc NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Opening overseas markets for Californias quality products, resources and agriculture is an important factor in Kern Countys economic growth, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) told employees of Rio Tinto Minerals (RTM) during a town hall meeting April 7. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160408005183/en/ House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy talked world trade with employees of Rio Tinto Minerals (RTM) during a town hall meeting April 7 in Boron, California. (Photo: Business Wire) Rep. McCarthy has recently been working to bring down trade barriers for boric acid produced by Rio Tinto Minerals as well as California-grown almonds and other agricultural products. When California produces, our country and community win particularly when we are able to sell our products to markets around the world, McCarthy said. This ability to operate is vital to job creation and innovation. Securing critical minerals, as is done here at Boron, ensures that our community continues to put America at the forefront of a 21st century economy. From its mining and refining operations in Boron, California, Rio Tinto Minerals supplies about 30 percent of the worlds supply of refined borates, a critical ingredient in hundreds of products, including glass, fiberglass, ceramics, fertilizers, wood preservatives and detergents. About 75 percent of Rio Tinto Minerals products are exported to more than 1,000 customers in 100 countries from its Port of Los Angeles operations in Wilmington. The top-five export markets are in Asia. Well over half of Rio Tinto Minerals sales are to customers outside the U.S., said Dean Gehring, President and CEO of Rio Tinto Minerals. Opening up new markets and bringing down foreign trade barriers to our products make our operation and our employees more competitive globally. About Rio Tinto Minerals Part of Rio Tinto Group, Rio Tinto Minerals supplies about 30 percent of the world's refined borates a critical ingredient in hundreds of products, including glass, fiberglass, ceramics, fertilizers, wood preservatives and detergents from its operation in California's Mojave Desert, one of the richest borate deposits on earth. Learn more at http://borax.com/. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160408005183/en/ ./ContentItem/Format House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy talked world trade with Rio Tinto Minerals during a town hall meeting 4/7. Contact Rio Tinto Minerals John Brown, 720-503-0468 john.brown@riotinto.com This image released by Warner Bros. Entertainment shows Ben Affleck as Batman, left, and Henry Cavill as Superman in a scene from, "Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice." (Clay Enos/Warner Bros. Entertainment via AP) SHARE 'Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice' "Batman v Superman," as heavy and humorless as a Supreme Court decision, is an 18-wheeler of a movie lumbering through a fallen world. The film picks up where "Man of Steel" left off, with Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) bitterly watching Superman (Henry Cavill) careen carelessly above the falling debris of Metropolis. Lex Luthor (the badly miscast Jesse Eisenberg), is secretly weaponizing kryptonite, gradually bringing the heroes into the same orbit, along with Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot). Rated: PG-13 for violence, action and sensuality Grade: C+ 'The Divergent Series: Allegiant Part 1' In the latest installment of "The Divergent Series" (three out of four), dystopian Chicago might be in disarray, but it's also become dull. And really, this is where things should start getting interesting and urgent. The faction system fell in the last one, and now they're trying to start a new society. Bad decisions by the revolutionaries lead to a war. But that's all a side show to the exploits of Shailene Woodley's Tris and Theo James' Four, who decide to escape the city along with a few others to find life outside of the walls. Rated: PG-13 for intense violence and action, thematic elements and partial nudity Grade: D 'Eye in the Sky' Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) tracks down two Islamic extremists after a long search, and a drone surveillance mission brings together men and women in uniform who will ultimately decide the fate of Powell's targets, as well as that of the little girl who wanders into the drone strike space. "Eye in the Sky" is best when it delves into the moral ambiguity of war, especially war's new gray zones. Rated: R for violent images and language Grade: B 'God's Not Dead 2' When a high school teacher is asked a question in class about Jesus, her response lands her in deep trouble. Rated: PG for thematic elements Grade: Not available 'I Saw the Light' Tom Hiddleston's Hank Williams holds your attention from the start, but this film doesn't feel quite right for the subject. The script, adapted from "Hank Williams: The Biography," focuses on Williams' tumultuous love life, beginning in 1944. We see the Grand Ole Opry successes, the infidelities, the betrayals in due course. But the writing is prosaic throughout and makes real drama out of its real-life dramas only sporadically. Rated: R for language and brief sexuality/nudity Grade: C 'London Has Fallen' This frenzied sequel to 2013's "Olympus Has Fallen" returns Gerard Butler to his security detail in the role of the U.S. president's infallible protector. When the president (Aaron Eckhart) attends the funeral of the British prime minister, he and a collection of world leaders come under siege. Around the midpoint, viewers will be ready to escape the escapism. Rated: R for strong violence and language throughout Grade: D 'Miracles from Heaven' "Miracles From Heaven," based on an amazing and weird true story, stars Jennifer Garner as Christy Beam, mother to Anna (Kylie Rogers), who suffers from an incurable intestinal disorder. After months in the hospital, one day Anna climbs a tree and falls headfirst 30 feet inside the dead tree trunk. When firefighters pull her out, not only is she unharmed, but she's cured. While the heartstring tugging becomes overwrought, overall the film is surprisingly effective, even for those of little faith. Rated: PG for thematic material, including accident and medical images Grade: B- 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2' Fourteen years later, Nia Vardalos and gang are back again for another wedding, but this time, it's to drastically diminished returns. The screenplay feels as if it was written the year after the first film's success, with jokes that don't land or feel about as fresh as a 2-day-old spanakopita. After Toula (Vardalos) reignites the sputtering spark in her marriage, her parents must have another big fat Greek wedding after discovering that their marriage certificate was never signed. Once the wedding swings into gear, the film finally finds its footing. Rated: PG-13 for some suggestive material Grade: C 'Zootopia' A righteous rural rabbit (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) becomes the first cotton-tailed police recruit in the mammal-centric city of "Zootopia." The 3-D caper expertly combines keen wit with a gentle and timely message of inclusivity and empowerment. Rated: PG for some thematic elements, rude humor and action Grade: A Wire services What has Gov. Abbott done about the six mass shootings on his watch? SHARE Two icons who helped establish the foundation for agriculture education died in recent weeks after many years of service. The contributions of Robert Kensing and Yates Smith will live on in future generations. Robert was 90 when he died March 26 in Kerrville. After he graduated from Texas A&M in 1960, his job was Farm Management Agent with the Texas A&M Agriculture Extension Service in San Angelo. In 1979, he was elected president of TAEX Specialist Association. Robert assisted in organizing the four-state Regional Pecan Shows and loved judging the county, regional and state shows. He was responsible for the grove of pecan trees on the grounds of Texas A&M Extension and Research Center north of San Angelo. As the region's first economist, Robert was credited for saving many area old country school houses and converting them to community centers. The Lowake school now restored Community Center comes to mind. My first contact with Robert came about in 1963 when I was a student at San Angelo College. I worked part-time for the Standard-Times and the Ranch Magazine. In those days, Robert, Roy Huckabee and Jim Gray shared an office in a building across from my dorm. Those were the early years of the regional extension people stationed here. He first volunteered for the San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo as records superintendent in the 1960s. Elected SASSA president in 1980-1982, and after his term, he became executive vice president. The scholarship fund was established, land was purchased and the modern office built near the Fairgrounds at this time. For me, I worked very closely with Robert in 1982 when he commissioned me to compile the "50 Years at the San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo" book. After retirement from the Extension Service, Robert and wife Doris Whitworth Kensing purchased a ranch in Menard County where he started his purebred Spanish goat business. Yates was three months shy of his 96th birthday when he died April 1 in San Angelo. His service to agriculture came about after serving his country in the military. He applied for flight training in the Army Air Corps in December 1941 and was assigned to Kelly Army Air Field in San Antonio for cadet training in May 1942. He first saw West Texas at Coleman Army Air Field and in October 1942 was assigned to San Angelo Army Air Field (now Mathis Field) for bombardier training. In May 1945, Yates' bomb group was transferred to Tinian in the Pacific. He completed 35 combat missions and 10 hump trips and was awarded numerous military honors. Yates, who retired on July 11, 1980, from the Air Force reserve with the rank of major, earned his place as a member of "the Greatest Generation." With the help of the GI bill, Yates went back to college receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture, majoring in soils and chemistry, from the University of Missouri at Columbia in June 1949. From February 1949 to January 1951, he was an "On the Farm" instructor for the Veterans Administration at Senath, Missouri. "From August 1953 to August 1958, I was field representative for Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. at Lubbock," he told me in July, 2011. "My original territory included Tom Green County." When he was 38, Yates enrolled in graduate school at the University of Georgia in Athens. He received a master's degree in soil-water-plant relationships in June 1961, and a doctorate in June 1963. Yates was best known throughout the Southwest for more than 40 years as regional director for the Tennessee Valley Authority. From 1964 to June 1992, his duties were to coordinate the TVA programs with Texas A&M University, New Mexico State University and Colorado State University. He also worked with the fertilizer industry in the three-state region on new fertilizer processes, production, distribution and computerization. In January 1987, he was given the Outstanding Member Award and Man of the Year Award from the Texas Plant Food Institute. In January 1992, he was bestowed and awarded for outstanding service to farmers, ranchers and the fertilizer industry. "Yates had a thirst for knowledge," said Rev. Ben Hubert at his memorial service Thursday. And to that end I can agree. A few days before he died, he was asking me about the particulars of the new round baler for cotton. It was my pleasure not only to spend many years of experiences professionally with Robert and Yates, but the good times we shared with them and their families as personal friends as well. Jerry Lackey is the agriculture editor emeritus. Contact him at jlackey@wcc.net or 325-949-2291. SHARE By Rashda Khan, Rashda.Khan@gosanangelo.com / @Rashda_SAST San Angelo's police chief candidates are leading the charge in terms of political fundraising and expenses, according to the first round of campaign finance reports filed by candidates participating in the May 7 elections. The reports cover the period from January to April 7. The four chief candidates have raised $144,319.98 and spent $110,351.77 campaigning. Jeff Davis has listed a total of $69,600 from his own reserves in the contribution section and spent $66,156.79. The top fundraiser is Frank Carter with $45,184.98. His largest donors are Matthew and Jody Saulsbury, Charles Saulsbury and Mark Saulsbury, all from Odessa, each contributing $10,000 to the campaign for a total of $30,000. The next largest donor was Chaz Gilmore of Plano with $3,500, followed by Carter's family business Angelo Stone and Masonry with $2,000. Carter has spent $18,503.17. Incumbent Tim Vasquez has raised $19,790. His biggest contributors include Steve and Polyanna Stephens, Devin and Liz Bates, Scott Wisniewski, Desi and Jessica Martinez, Tom and Pat Massey, all of whom contributed $1,000. Vasquez is also listed as the lender for a $1,000 campaign loan. He spent $12,708.16. Mike Hernandez raised $9,745 and spent $12,983.65 for the period. His largest donation of $1,500 came from J. Hernandez, followed by $1,000 from Jose and Brenda Garcia. Outstanding loan for this reporting period is $2,000. On the City Council side, the candidate who has raised the most is Harry Thomas. Thomas, who is running for Single Member District 3, raised $10,198 and spent $6,465.10. His biggest contributors were the San Angelo Fire Fighter Association Political Action Committee, which contributed $2,500, and Scott Turner, who contributed $2,000. His opponent, Daniel "Danny" Cardenas listed $1,835 as an outstanding loan and total expense. In the race for the Single Member District 5, incumbent Liz Grindstaff raised $7,350 and spent $4,902.83 from January through March. Her largest contributors are the San Angelo Fire Fighter Association PAC with $4,000 and June Turner Doggett, who contributed $1,500. For her opponents, Matthew Lane Carter raised $4,910 and spent $3,641.99 and R.A. Cantrell raised $1,795 and spent $1,106.13. Carter's largest donors were David Boswell and William Whitehead, each of whom contributed $500. He also listed an anonymous contribution of $250. Martin William Guinn, who is also a candidate for SMD 5, reported $0 in funds and expense. Both candidates for SMD 1 show negative balances. Trinidad Aguirre Jr. listed $2,598 in political contributions and spent $3,203.70. Aguirre's biggest donation $2,500 came from the San Angelo Fire Fighter Association PAC. His opponent, Bill Richardson, indicated $0 political contributions and $500 for expenses in the period from February to April. The candidates will file a second round of campaign finance reports eight days before the May 7 election. According to the Texas Ethics Commission websites, candidates need to itemize contributions of more than $50 from a single contributor and itemize expenses totaling more than $100 to one person. See the full individual reports here. SHARE Ryan Wurzel (above) and Hang Wu face multiple charges. Police say the two were traveling with five juveniles they had met online. (SHNS photo courtesy Durham Sheriff / Raleigh News & Observer) By Anne Blythe, Scripps Howard News Sevice DURHAM, N.C. ? A sheriff's deputy pulled over a Cadillac Escalade with a Michigan plate recently because it was moving erratically on a local highway. What has spilled out of that SUV since is an eerily consistent story of teenage runaways so desperate to fit in that they fell prey to Internet lurkers and set off on a cross-country odyssey with two men. Their goal seemed to be to collect other runaways from across the country and to create a "new Eden" in California, where they would hunt and fish. One of the runaways, a 13-year-old from Baltimore, was in a Durham courtroom earlier this month, offering details of a plot so incredible that at one point her mother tearfully blurted out: "This is like some kind of terrible movie." Now two men from out of state, Ryan Wurzel, 20, and Hang Wu, 22, are being held in the Durham County jail on charges of kidnapping, possession of a stolen weapon, possession of a stolen vehicle and, in one case, contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile. Investigators are looking into possible sex-trafficking ties. "After 14 years as a judge, I have never seen anything like this," said Marcia Morey, the district court judge who presided over the juvenile hearings on whether the teens should be returned to their parents. The story began May 28 in Michigan. A 15-year-old boy packed two .22 rifles, a filet knife and a suitcase into his mother's Escalade and began the first leg of a journey that would take him from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Hazelton, Pa., then to Silver Spring, Md., Baltimore, and eventually Durham. Along the way, he picked up four teenage girls who ranged in age from just barely 13 to 15. The teens' names are being kept private. In Hazelton, a former coal town in the Pocono Mountains, Wu and Wurzel, each purporting to be homeless, joined the carload. Wu, who came to the United States from China on a student visa, had taken a bus from New York to Pennsylvania. Wurzel, described by law-enforcement officers as the mastermind of the plan, had come in from Delaware, his home state. The group had planned to pick up two other young people, possibly in Florida or California, after they left Durham. The teens had never met each other or the two adults. But all claimed to be familiar with each other from the Experience Project, a website at www.experienceproject.com that has the hook "Find people who understand you." The pages offer numerous photos and comments on such topics as parenting, dating and relationships, food, health, family, travel, hobbies, the military and politics. "We comply with all laws regarding investigation and removal of any inappropriate content, and partner with law enforcement as appropriate," the company said in an email. Through text messages, private Facebook posts and cellphone calls, the men and teens planned a new life for themselves on the West Coast, according to testimony. They had ambitions of being a family -- a nurturing one they were certain would alleviate the angst, depression and common aches of teenage life. The boy who took his mother's Escalade in Michigan did not have a driver's license to make the 1,000-mile journey. But after posting on Facebook that he wanted to run away and was looking for people to run away with, he left his home state the day after returning from a Memorial Day vacation with his family, according to testimony. The Durham girl got on board the Escalade with the six others just before 1 a.m. on May 30. As she was instructed, she sneaked out of her family's home with a suitcase and as much money as she could collect. Wurzel had detailed their plans online. "We can go live in our own little community and call it our Eden," the mother of one of the girls said Wurzel wrote on The Experience Project website. The men are being held in Durham County Jail on $1.6 million bond each. The teens have all been released to the custody of their parents. (Contact Anne Blythe of the Raleigh News and Observer at ablythe@newsobserver.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, shns.com.) (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.) FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2012 file photo, two workers take a nap on a roof in Madrid, Spain. Political parties are promising to turn the clock back in Spain and eliminate a time quirk dating from World War II, a move that could radically change Spaniards eating and sleeping habits, including the celebrated siesta. Until the 1940s, Spain was on the same Greenwich Mean Time as Britain and Portugal, being in roughly the same latitude. We cannot lose contact with Europe. The rationalization of the timetables of work shifts and government institutions is of capital importance, Spains acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said last April 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Alberto Di Lolli, File) SHARE By CIARAN GILES, Associated Press MADRID (AP) Spain's celebrated siesta could be facing a modern makeover. Political parties are promising to turn the clock back in Spain and eliminate a time quirk dating from World War II, a move that could radically change Spaniards' eating and sleeping habits. Until the 1940s, Spain was on the same Greenwich Mean Time as Britain and Portugal, being in roughly the same longitude. But during World War II, Spain, Britain and some other countries added on an hour, going on the same time as Nazi Germany to maximize factory productivity so people could get home before blackouts. While Britain reverted back after the war, Spain, under the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, never did. That led to almost everything being done an hour or more later in Spain than was natural. Job hours vary greatly, but many Spaniards start work at 10 and finish at 8 p.m. Lunch is generally around 3 p.m. while dinner can start at 10 p.m. or later, leading often to late nights and less sleep. Now acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy says if he manages to form another government following the Dec. 20 inconclusive election he will push for a new work-life balance law that would switch Spain back to its original time zone. The law would include a working day that ends at 6 p.m., thus scrapping the country's lengthy lunch-hour breaks that some use to grab a siesta. "We cannot lose contact with Europe. The rationalization of the timetables of work shifts and government institutions is of capital importance," Rajoy said. Nuria Chinchilla, an IESE business school professor who worked on a study urging the change in 2013, said the move would benefit both businesses and people. The study found that being ahead an hour meant Spaniards slept an hour less than recommended, which had a negative effect on productivity, absenteeism, stress, accidents and school drop-out rates. "We have not been in our time zone for more than 70 years," she said. Some say the measure could end the siesta but Chinchilla disagreed. "The siesta is not a reality anymore," she says. "This was in agricultural times and before the Civil War too ... (but not) in Barcelona or Madrid, where for sure nobody is going back home to have lunch." Still, many Spaniards take siestas during the sweltering hot summer holidays or on weekends if they can. Rajoy's proposal mirrors one by two other parties also looking to form the next Spanish government, the Socialists and the Ciudadanos party. But no party has been able to muster enough parliamentary support to do that making a new vote look more likely day by day. That means no time-change laws in the near future and Spaniards can still sneak off for a siesta as the weather gets warmer this year. SHARE There was an old "Saturday Night Live" fake movie trailer narrated by horror movie veteran Christopher Lee. John Belushi played a houseguest who couldn't take a hint from a couple that just wanted to go to bed. The husband tells Belushi, "Look, I don't want to be rude, but my wife is very tired!" Belushi responds by picking up the TV Guide and saying dismissively, "Yeah. ... Hey, there's a good movie on tonight! I think I'll call up some friends and watch it over here!" Then came Lee's creepy voice-over: "It came without warning! They were just being polite! They didn't realize that they'd be stuck with ... The Thing That Wouldn't Leave"! John Kasich is this election season's The Thing That Wouldn't Leave. After investing everything in New Hampshire, Kasich came in second, doing worse than Jon Huntsman had in his race-ending performance in 2012. Kasich's response? He didn't just declare victory, he proclaimed, "Tonight, the light overcame the darkness." Since then, Kasich has lost some 30 contests and won one in his home state of Ohio. But still, he just won't go. It's not just that Kasich can't take a hint, it's that he appears to be living in a kind of fantasy world, largely defined by three myths or delusions. The first is the most endearing. Kasich has the best resume of the remaining candidates. Heck, he arguably had the best resume of the entire 2016 field, if by "best" you mean the longest and deepest government experience. He's not delusional about that. What he is confused about is the idea that a lot of people care that he was, say, the chairman of the House Budget Committee two decades ago. According to legend, a supporter once shouted at Adlai Stevenson, "Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!" Stevenson shot back, "That's not enough. I need a majority!" Even if Kasich is right that his resume makes him the best qualified to be president a debatable proposition the simple fact is that after nearly three dozen contests, relatively few voters agree with him. Ah, but what about the delegates? If it's a contested convention and neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz has enough delegates to lock up the nomination, won't they turn to Kasich? Not necessarily. But don't tell that to the Ohio governor, who goes from interview to interview insisting that he'd be the natural choice for the convention. Why would he be? Well, that answer varies. Kasich's most frequently stated reason is that delegates will choose him because he beats Hillary Clinton in the polls. And it's true that Kasich does marginally better than Cruz in hypothetical matchups against Clinton and a lot better than Trump. Left unanswered is why the delegates many of them loyal to Trump and Cruz would gamely back The Thing That Wouldn't Leave. After the second or third round of voting, delegates are free to cast their ballots for whomever they want. There's little evidence that they'd want Kasich, and they'd be under no obligation to vote for him over, say, Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio or, for that matter, Rush Limbaugh or Shaquille O'Neal. Indeed, for many delegates it would seem either unfair or downright crazy to skip over bigger vote-getters and back Kasich just because he won his home state of Ohio. Kasich is not the touchy-feely guy he's pretending to be or perhaps thinks he is. The man is famously irascible, pugnacious and sanctimonious. He's prone to defending his policies, such as his expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare in Ohio, by insinuating that he cares more about his eternal soul than his critics. A lot of people talk about how unlikable Cruz is. Well, I've met both men, and I'd much rather have a beer with Cruz. Maybe Kasich's denial stems from the fact that he's never lost a race and can't contemplate failing this time. I really have no idea. All I know is that it's time for him to go. Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. Contact him at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com. SHARE The following editorial appeared in the March 31 Dallas Morning News: Just when it appeared the State Board of Education was turning over a new leaf, with Republicans such as Thomas Ratliff working to rein in polemicists whose views made Texas the butt of many jokes on late-night TV, along comes Mary Lou Bruner. If you've heard her name, it probably was attached to her ridiculous assertion that President Obama once supported a drug habit by working as a gay male prostitute. Or that dinosaurs rode aboard Noah's Ark. Oh, it gets better. Or worse, we should say, because Bruner hasn't backed away from her fringe rhetoric, although she's deleted the disturbing posts from her Facebook page. Bruner, 69, hasn't been elected yet to the board that sets curriculum standards and approves textbooks for more than 5.2 million schoolchildren, and that's a good thing. But the retired public school teacher is in a May 24 primary runoff to replace Ratliff, who decided six years on the board was enough. Remarkably, Bruner was the top vote-getter in District 9, which includes much of East Texas and touches on the Dallas-Fort Worth area counties of Rockway and Kaufman. She captured 48 percent of the 220,000 ballots cast in the 31 counties and will face Lufkin chiropractor Keven M. Ellis, 44, president of the Lufkin ISD school board. Most GOP leaders in Texas have refused to repudiate Bruner, and we can't understand why, especially given how such timidity toward fringe characters has worked in the presidential race. Instead, many party operatives dismiss Bruner's extremist views for example, global warming is a "government hoax"; the Democratic Party "had JFK killed because the socialists and Communists in the party did not want a conservative president"; the United Nations plans to depopulate the earth by two-thirds; we could go on as merely the musings of a social media misfit. "At the end of the day, is Mary Lou a wacko extremist? No," Tammy Blair, chairwoman of the Republican Party in Cherokee County, recently told The New York Times. "She's a nice older lady who doesn't understand social media and the impact that it can have. I'm still going to vote for Mary Lou, and I'm going to encourage people to do the same." That's some woefully misguided thinking. That a candidate for any office would espouse such madcap musings is perplexing enough. That any official would stand by such a candidate is even more confounding. Add another unhappy dynamic to the list of problems with America's political process. UTSA will continue its six-game home stand this weekend with a three-game series against Southern Miss at Roadrunner Field. The series will open with a 1 p.m. doubleheader on Saturday and close with a 1 p.m. contest the following day.In addition to the contests between the Roadrunners (13-23, 7-5 C-USA) and Golden Eagles (18-21, 5-7 C-USA), UTSA will host its annual Alumni Weekend and Strike Out Cancer Day. In honor of former softball student-athlete Hope Ortiz, Saturday will serve as Strike Out Cancer Day with a silent auction featuring exclusive Roadrunners softball gear that will benefit the San Antonio Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.The Roadrunners are coming off a slim 3-2 loss against Texas at Roadrunner Field on Wednesday night. Despite the setback,extended her hitting streak to 15 games with a 2-for-4 night that pushed her batting average to a team-leading .344.also logged a pair of hits with a double and a game-tying homer, whileadded two hits, including her sixth round-tripper of the spring. The UTSA bats will look to stay hot after they produced 15 runs in last weekend's three-game set at UTEP that helped raise the team's batting average to .262.Meanwhile, Southern Miss is coming off a 5-0 setback at No. 8 LSU on Wednesday night in Baton Rouge, La. Prior to that contest, the Golden Eagles took a three-game series against reigning Conference USA champion WKU with a pair of victories. The squad, which ranks second in the league with 48 doubles, is led by Tori Dew's .349 batting average. Lauren Holifield leads the way with seven homers and Katie Cleary paces the team with 25 RBIs. In the circle, Southern Miss pitchers own a collective 4.42 ERA. Samantha Robles has seen the majority of the work for the Golden Eagles and she is 10-7 with a 3.51 ERA and 66 strikeouts in 121.2 innings.Southern Miss leads the all-time series 8-3, but UTSA took two of the last three meetings. The teams never have met in San Antonio as all previous 11 matchups took place in Hattiesburg, Miss., or on a neutral field. So you've decided that your state should have self-driving cars. How, then, do you catch the attention of the Googles, Volvos and Navyas of the world that are developing and even deploying these vehicles?Passing a typical "autonomous driving" law will get your state noticed -- but not necessarily in a good way. Although Google pushed for these laws in Nevada (the first) and California (the most prominent), the company has since resisted legislation in other states as too restrictive or onerous. Many forms of automated driving already may be legal, and states from Texas to Massachusetts have attracted research activities without a specific regime for self-driving cars.Meanwhile, some new laws are not helping. Michigan has expressly prohibited widespread use of these vehicles on public roads. California has conditioned automated driving on rules enacted by the state's Department of Motor Vehicles -- rules that are now 15 months overdue with no clear end in sight. Nevada requires companies testing their automated vehicles in the state to register them in Nevada regardless of any other registration. They must change license plates at the border.Fortunately, there are many steps that a state, or a local government for that matter, can take to encourage automated driving. A new paper of mine, "How Governments Can Promote Automated Driving," describes nearly 50 strategies.Some of these strategies are, admittedly, kind of boring. Filling potholes and painting faded lane markings, for example, will increase the roadway miles on which lane-keeping systems can operate. Since automated driving uses many of the same technologies as advanced safety systems, requiring new buses, taxis and government-owned vehicles to have the latest safety systems will increase demand for and decrease the cost of these technologies and potentially save lives in the process.Merely recognizing that conventional driving is one of the most dangerous things we do can reframe the policy discussion about automated driving. When a self-driving car eventually harms someone -- and that will happen -- the public must not forget the more than 30,000 Americans who will die in vehicle crashes this year or the 2.3 million who will be injured. Indeed, millions will be hurt every year as long as drunk, drowsy, distracted, aggressive, hurried and otherwise reckless driving continues.Expecting today's vehicle owners to behave more responsibly will allow automated driving to compete on fair terms. For example, if your state is like most, a driver who could cause millions of dollars of harm is allowed to buy liability insurance worth less than a hundredth of that amount. Raising these insurance minimums would convert safety from an abstract concept into a pocketbook priority. If automated driving is ultimately safer, then it may be cheaper as well.Carefully auditing existing law can reveal other legal issues that should be addressed. Some states, for example, prohibit crossing a double yellow line even to give more space to a bicyclist; changing this prohibition could help self-driving cars operate more safely and reasonably. Automated-vehicle developers will seek any legal changes they deem necessary.State governments can prepare for these discussions. For example, does your state have a point person for automated driving? This official should understand the technologies and coordinate with the federal government, state officials, local police, community groups and automated-vehicle developers.Furthermore, do your administrative agencies have the flexibility to work with any developers that do reach out? Executive orders, legal opinions and policy guidance may be as useful as new legislation. Formalizing a robust mechanism for granting exceptions to existing laws-such as that prohibition on crossing a double-yellow line-can let policy develop in tandem with technology.Your community can also play an important role in this innovation. Local conditions will matter most for truly driverless systems -- such as campus shuttles and downtown delivery robots -- that will be initially deployed in specific environments. These systems may be especially appropriate for business districts, shopping centers, airports, retirement homes and military bases, to name just a few.A community that documents its needs and considers the role of automation in addressing them will be well positioned to compete for public and private opportunities. The U.S. Department of Transportation plans to fund intelligent transportation systems in a single "Smart City" somewhere in the United States. Meanwhile, developers of self-driving vehicles already are starting to identify communities for early deployments.Your community may do everything right and still not make one of these short lists. But passing a superficial state law that purports to regulate automated driving is unlikely to help.Fortunately, if your broader goal is to improve safety and mobility for those in your state or community, then there is much that you can do for them and for automated driving. For this, it's neither too early nor too late to begin. Claiming Indiana's newly passed abortion law is a violation of privacy and a violation of the First Amendment, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Northern Kentucky as well as the ACLU of Indiana filed a lawsuit over House Bill 1337 Thursday morning.Kevin Falk, legal director for the ACLU, said the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently said women have the right to get an abortion if they so choose. The new law, signed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence two weeks ago, takes away that right, Falk said."This statute does something the (U.S.) Supreme Court has said repeatedly cannot be done," Falk said. "It is an attempt by the state of Indiana to interfere with and actually prohibit a woman's right to determine whether or not to have an abortion."HB 1337, authored by Rep. Casey Cox, R-Fort Wayne, prohibits women from having an abortion based on the sex or race of the fetus -- or a diagnosed disability, such as Down syndrome. After Pence signed the bill, Indiana became just the second state, after North Dakota, to impose thse kinds of restrictions.In the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood says its doctors have performed abortions that would be considered illegal under the law, specifically for fetuses diagnosed with genetic anomalies, and will continue to do so based on the belief that an abortion is a constitutional right.The bill also stipulates Planned Parenthood employees inform patients they are not allowed to perform abortions based on the restrictions laid out in the bill -- something the employees think is a violation of free speech. Under current practice, Planned Parenthood does not ask why a mother is having an abortion.The lawsuit says Planned Parenthood and its doctors and nurses object to the new mandates "as they believe that they are being forced to inform patients of something that is clearly unconstitutional."Planned Parenthood of Indiana's CEO Betty Cockrum said the law is "abysmal, intrusive and dangerous" and said it raises more questions than answers."Gov. Pence's signature demonstrates an alarming lack of respect for women," Cockrum said. "It clearly indicates he doesn't think Hoosier women can be trusted to make their own personal health care decisions."The backlash from Indiana women once the bill was signed has been widespread, manifesting most visibly in the "Periods for Pence" movement. In response to the new law, the Facebook group has been encouraging women to call Pence's office to talk about their menstruation. The group has gained nationwide notoriety and hundreds of women have called the office in the two weeks since the signing.Proponents of the bill see it as a way to further protect the unborn and provide proper disposal of fetal remains. The Indiana Right to Life organization issued a statement after the lawsuit was filed, saying it's no surprise Planned Parenthood is asking the courts for help."This is the same song and dance we have seen from the abortion provider anytime they feel their lucrative abortion business is threatened," Right to Life CEO Mark Fichter said. "They look to the courts and activist judges to rule in their favor."Pence's office said the governor will work closely with the attorney general to defend the law and "has every confidence this law is constitutional."Twice in the last five years, Indiana courts have struck down anti-abortion legislation, including legislation in 2011 seeking to cut funding for Planned Parenthood.The bill goes into effect on July 1. Falk said he hopes to get a preliminary injunction to stop the bill from becoming law while the lawsuit goes through the legal process. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is using his executive office powers and calling on the state's Republican-controlled House and Senate to take an exact opposite approach to nondiscrimination protections that lawmakers recently have passed in North Carolina and Mississippi.In reaction to North Carolina's House Bill 2 and Mississippi's House Bill 1532 -- both laws that exclude gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from state anti-discrimination legal protections -- Wolf, a Democrat, signed two executive orders Thursday extending equal protection under Pennsylvania law to LGBT state employees."What happened in North Carolina, and what is going on in other states, should be a call to pass nondiscrimination legislation in Pennsylvania now," Wolf said in a statement."I call on the General Assembly to swiftly put legislation on my desk that ensures that people throughout the commonwealth -- regardless of sexual orientation, gender expression or identity -- are treated equally under Pennsylvania law," he said.Beyond new legal protections for employees of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Wolf also signed an executive order related to nondiscrimination in the "grants and procurement process," according to his office.Wolf's statement and action come as at least one political group in Pennsylvania this week started a campaign against legislation that's been pending for months in the state to include LGBT as a class protected against discrimination.Pennsylvania's LGBT advocacy group Equality PA says the socially conservative group Pennsylvania Family Institute is spreading misinformation about the pending Pennsylvania Fairness Act, by "bringing discrimination from North Carolina to Pennsylvania."The Pennsylvania Family Institute is calling on people to protest the Pennsylvania Fairness Act and claims the proposed legislation is a "bathroom bill" that would violate privacy in restrooms and locker rooms.Wolf is one of several elected officials nationwide who are taking action or publicly opposing laws such as those in North Carolina and Mississippi. Major businesses and CEOs, including PayPal in Charlotte, also have publicly criticized the exclusion of LGBT people from discrimination protection.A similar proposal was introduced this week by a state senator from South Carolina. In a long-awaited ruling, a federal judge has sided with plaintiffs who argued it was unconstitutional for Los Angeles County supervisors to place a Christian cross on the county seal.A divided Board of Supervisors voted in 2014 to reinstate the cross on top of a depiction of the San Gabriel Mission, which appears on the seal among other symbols of county history. They were sued by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and a group of religious leaders and scholars, who said placement of the cross on the seal unconstitutionally favored Christianity over other religions.A decade earlier, the county had removed a cross from the seal -- this one shown floating above the Hollywood Bowl -- after being threatened with a similar lawsuit. The proponents of reinstating the cross on the seal argued it was needed to make the image of the mission historically and architecturally accurate. When the seal was redesigned in 2004, there was no cross on top of the mission, as it had gone missing during earthquake retrofitting. The cross was later restored atop the building.In a 55-page ruling released Thursday, U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder wrote that the addition of the cross "carries with it an aura of prestige, authority, and approval. By singling out the cross for addition to the seal, the county necessarily lends its prestige and approval to a depiction of one faith's sectarian imagery."The county also provides a platform for broadcasting that imagery on county buildings, vehicles, flags, and stationary.... Permitting such a change and the associated expenditure of public funds places the county's power, prestige, and purse behind a single religion, Christianity, without making any such benefit available on an equal basis to those with secular objectives or alternative sectarian views."Snyder noted that other objects depicted on the seal, including the Hollywood Bowl, were also not depicted accurately.The ruling had been a long time in coming. The two sides made their arguments before the judge in November.County spokesman David Sommers said county officials were reviewing the ruling and could not comment.But the two county supervisors who led the push to reinstate the cross criticized the judge's decision, pointing out that other California municipalities -- including Ventura and San Benito counties and the city of San Luis Obispo -- depict missions with crosses on their seal.Supervisor Don Knabe, who voted to reinstate the cross, along with Michael D. Antonovich and Mark Ridley-Thomas, said in a statement, "I am disappointed by the Court's ruling, which seems to me to be more about political expediency than the core of what this issue is -- ensuring the historical accuracy of the Los Angeles County seal."Antonovich said the ruling "ignores historical and architectural reality" and voiced support for appealing the decision."The court failed to see that the Board corrected the inaccurate depiction of the San Gabriel Mission on the seal with an architecturally accurate version that featured a small cross -- which of course the mission has," he said in a statement. "As any California fourth-grade student knows, the San Gabriel Mission is an important icon to the region and the birthplace of Los Angeles County."Ridley-Thomas declined to comment.Hector Villagra, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, and Linda M. Burrow, with the private law firm Caldwell, Leslie & Proctor, which joined in representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement of their own that the court's ruling "recognizes that Los Angeles is a diverse county comprised of adherents of hundreds of faiths as well as non-believers, all of whom are entitled to be treated with equal dignity by their government."Former county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavky, who opposed reinstating the cross, along with then-Supervisor Gloria Molina, praised the judge's decision."This is a great victory for the Constitution, for the 1st Amendment of the Constitution, for the premise that the government should not be in the religion endorsement business," he said. Talk Show Host Uses Open Data to Skewer Congressional Fundraising Philly Releases Salary Data Big #opendata win right here. Several years in the making. Nice work @timwis and the entire Philly team. https://t.co/y1Mwfflorj Mark Headd (@mheadd) April 5, 2016 18F Source Code Giveway Washington is like Rod Stewarts haircut, quipped John Oliver ofparty in the front, party in the back frankly too much party and no business to be found.The HBO pundit, and formeranchor, lambasted Congress for 20 minutes on April 3 for its excessive and what some might call obscene amount of time spent on campaign fundraising activities. One of Olivers weapons was the Sunlight Foundations Political Party Time database, a crowdsourcing site that tracks congressional fundraising events. Digging into the data, Oliver dissected more than 2,800 of these gatherings during the 2013 to 2014 election cycle, an experience he described as shocking.The sheer amount of time that politicians take for fundraising is not just embarrassing, its horrifying, Oliver said. Some say that Congress members can spend from 25 percent to up to 50 percent of their time on it.As proof, he went to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that compels its congressmen with minimum DCCC funding contribution quotas. The lowest he reported was $125,000 and the highest reached $800,000. To hit these numbers Congress members have to spend, on average, four hours of their day soliciting for donations.The situation is the same on both sides of the aisle. In 2014, such efforts by congressional candidates raised more than $1.7 billion.Is it any wonder politicians are hitting up their customer base harder than a Girl Scout with gambling debts? Oliver joked.He also noted that 948 breakfast fundraisers had been held at Johnnys Half Shell, a crab shack near the nation's Capitol, and that congressmen were reselling Taylor Swift concert tickets at $750 to $2,500 a person.On April 5, Philadelphia Chief Data Officer Tim Wisniewski released salaries of city employees, searchable by name and title, on Philly's open data portal . As far as top earners go, the data lists Sam Gulino, the city medical examiner, as the highest-paid staff member at $260,730 per year or about 11.5 times the citys per capita income. Gulino is followed by Deputy Mayor and Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. at $240,000; Deputy Medical Examiner Albert Chu at $231,505; Mayor James Kenney at $217,820; and Airport CEO Rochelle Cameron at $215,000. The release represents salaries as of March 22, according to the city, but will see a refresh every three months.The site is also connects the city's 30,000-plus annual salaries to departments, gross overtime pay and a set interactive analytics tools. These visualizations show the Philadelphia Police Department as the dominant salary consumer with staff taking home $492 million, a sum that dwarfs the Philadelphia Fire Department the second-highest consumer at $171 million.In an interview with Technical.ly Philly , Kenney said he supported the added transparency, and that theres no reason why [city employee] salary information shouldnt be available. Even so, the new financial info comes after much toil. The decision to publicize the data required a few years of internal consideration, with former Chief Data Officer Mark Headd reporting that discussions dated all the way back to 2013.The federal governments tech team at 18F has pitched 35 open source apps , tools and templates to anyone who wants it. In a post Wednesday, 18F Content Designer Britta Gustafson advertised the free code as the agencys way of scaling its custom development across sectors and all levels of government. The group pulled the projects from hundreds of coding repositories it's created since its launch, compiling them by applicable uses and degrees of development.This list is part of our New Years resolution to be more open, Gustafson said. Following up on those goals, weve also been working more on identifying parts of our work that are generic.Some of the projects include code for the groups popular Analytics.gov site, which publishes Web statistics online for visitors; Tock, a project time time tracker; and the 18F Feedback Widget, which gathers user input. For government and especially the many U.S. cities still struggling with old websites 18Fs Draft U.S. Web Design Standards are apt to be incredibly valuable as they offer advanced Web features and modern Web page design templates. (TNS) -- Chattanooga's highly touted gig-speed Internet service was built with heavy government subsidies that are distorting the marketplace, crowding out private investment and threatening higher power rates or tax bills for others, according to a new economic study of municipal broadband systems.A conservative think tank opposed to city utilities getting into competitive telecommunications the State Government Leadership Foundation sought Wednesday to minimize the benefits of Chattanooga's ultra-high-speed Internet service while raising doubts about its potential costs to city taxpayers and electricity users.Dr. George Ford, chief economist for the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Public Policy Studies, said EPB got the equivalent of $2,000 per customer in federal subsidies to build its citywide fiber optic network, which claims to be the fastest communitywide Internet service anywhere in the world.Ford said other government-owned utilities, such as one in Bristol, Va., have gotten $7,000 or more per subscriber to add telecommunications services that compete against private companies such as AT&T, Comcast and Charter Communications."The incumbent private sector providers are not offering broadband service in some areas because there is no money in serving those folks," Ford said. "The bet is so bad that no economic actor would do it, so you find some uneconomic political actor to do it, which immediately spells trouble."But backers of EPB's fiber optics network insist the utility's investment of more than $330 million has already paid off in a smarter electric grid, better telecom services and more economic development in Chattanooga.An economic study last year by Bento Lobo, professor of finance at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, said EPB's fiber optics network in its first three years saved $130.5 million in power outages, boosted business energy efficiency by $234.5 million and spurred $461 million in new business investment.EPB was awarded a $111 million federal stimulus grant in 2010 to build its smart grid. EPB spokesman John Pless said the money expedited the build-out of the fiber optic network for the smart grid, and the communications services were an extra benefit."The business model works without this grant," Pless said in a statement. "All electric system customers benefit from the Smart Grid, but the cost of the fiber optic network is covered by customers who choose to subscribe."***With more than 82,000 fiber optic customers, EPB telecommunications is expected to generate more than $130 million this year and pay more than $30 million into the electric system. Pless said that helps lower power rates, instead of requiring subsidies for other services, as Ford argues.The benefits go far beyond EPB's power, Internet, telephone or cable TV services, however.With 10-gigabit-per-second service available anywhere in Chattanooga, Enterprise Center President Ken Hays said the self-proclaimed "Gig City" is becoming a living laboratory for testing out new computer apps, interactive telemedicine, long-distance video production and a host of new tech startups."Chattanooga is becoming a new center of innovation," said Hays, who is helping with a $540,000 pilot program on ways to use high-speed Internet."The 4K microscope project we did using the gig to connect with the University of Southern Cal is taking education to a new level," he wrote in a statement. "U.S. Ignite and the National Science Foundation are funding initiatives to show what the next generation world is going to look like and we know that because of our 10-gig service in Chattanooga we are going to be a leader in helping to develop and test these new technologies."But Ford said for all the attention paid to 10-gig Internet service, only a few can use it now."Ten gig shows the insanity of what we're up against. I can't think of any businesses, let alone any individual, that could use that kind of capacity," Ford said.Hays said cable TV and phone companies said the same thing five years ago when EPB launched 1-gig service citywide. Now EPB has 7,400 gigabit subscribers, and last week, the Enterprise Center hosted delegations visiting from Burlington, Vt., Jackson, Tenn. and Huntsville, Ala. The groups came with leaders from U.S. Ignite to begin discussions on possible city collaborations among the cities with Gig Internet service offered by municipal utilities."Now even the phone and cable TV companies are all announcing plans to add gig service of their own because they realize how important it has become," Hays said.More than 130 municipal utilities nationwide offer broadband services, but Chattanooga has emerged as a leader in the speed and penetration of its service."Businesses and investors from all over the country are going to Chattanooga because of its 10-gig service," said Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks for the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which studies and advocates for municipal broadband.***Pless challenged Ford's analysis, calling it "a politically motivated hit piece."The State Government Leadership Foundation, the 13-year-old nonprofit advocacy group that funded Ford's study, is supported by a number of major corporations, including Time Warner which operates cable TV companies across the country, according to a review of IRS filings by ProPublica.Earlier studies by Ford did not find evidence that municipal broadband crowded out private telecom competitors. But the economist said Wednesday that municipalities eager to expand high-speed broadband can engage in predatory pricing by using their nonprofit, government status to sell at lower prices or serve more outlying customers than private cable TV or telephone companies can afford.But Ford, a former FCC and industry consultant who has studied municipal broadband systems for years, said private providers will best expand broadband in remote areas. They will be assisted by the FCC's Connect America Fund, which taxes telephone service to pay for broadband services.Ford said subsidizing government utilities distorts the marketplace and invites predatory, below-market pricing designed to drive existing cable TV, telephone and other carriers out of business.He said municipal electric utilities can subsidize competitive telecom businesses with revenues from monopoly services like electricity, or use local tax dollars to prop up projects that don't make economic sense. Such cross subsidies are not allowed by the Tennessee Valley Authority or under Tennessee law, however.State legislatures and federal regulators are considering what, if any, restrictions should be placed on telecom competition and services by private and government entities.Tennessee law restricts municipal electricity providers like EPB from expanding telecommunications services beyond their power service territories. But the FCC voted 3-2 last year that the restriction violates a congressional mandate to expand broadband services across the country.The Tennessee attorney general has appealed the FCC ruling, and the state Legislature declined this year to lift the limits before a study of rural broadband needs is complete later this year. Water is crucial to the identity and economy of Minnesota. The state, known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes, draws more than a quarter million visitors every year to canoe and explore its Boundary Waters wilderness area. The Mississippi River also begins in the state.But Minnesota's lakes and streams are increasingly polluted, and that pollution is starting to take its toll. Less than a fifth of the lakes and streams in the southern portion of the state are swimmable or fishable, mainly because of nitrogen and phosphorous from farm fertilizers that wash off into nearby waterways.Attempts to curb the pollution -- including a state law passed last year requiring farmers to leave unfarmed "buffer" areas between their crops and waterways -- have been sporadic, hard-fought and, so far, insufficient. The resistance among farmers is formidable."Whether it's rational or not, there is a real skepticism about anything coming out of the Twin Cities that has to do with rural policy," says Nicole Helget, a University of Minnesota graduate student who hails from a rural area. "There's a distrust of the government."That sentiment is not unique to Minnesota.Other states -- including Iowa, Maryland and Ohio -- are struggling to get farmers to cooperate with efforts to clean up streams and waterways. In Iowa, Des Moines' water utility resorted to suing outlying rural counties last year hoping to force farmers to reduce the amount of nitrogen-heavy fertilizers they were applying to their crops. Des Moines spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each year filtering nitrates out from its drinking water.Helget and a team of four other graduate students think they can engender change by recruiting rural women to do the persuading. They've launched an effort, called the Plum Creek Initiative, to pay women to teach their neighbors about water quality problems, show them how they can reduce pollution on their own farms, test local bodies of water for pollution and even help farmers fill out paperwork to get government grants. Initially, Plum Creek plans to hire 27 women in one county."Women's role on the farm is changing. They're starting to make more and more decisions and running the business," says Monica Bolinger from St. Catherine University, another member of the team.Women are either the primary or supporting operators on a quarter of Minnesota farms , and they're especially active in running small farms.Bolinger says rural women are also more receptive to environmental concerns than men."Women are more open to hearing a message that might affect their family and their community," she says. "They're more apt to communicate that message with their neighbors, their spouses and their partners."Rural women are also more likely to convey that message in a way that shies away from shaming farmers, pointing fingers or relying on partisan arguments. Instead, they're likely to appeal to profit motives, the importance of stewardship and scientific facts -- possibly even emotion, the organizers say.In fact, the project's name itself has some emotional appeal. It's a nod to, the fourth book in Laura Ingalls Wilder'sseries. The book describes the Ingalls family's time living in a dugout house on a farm in Redwood County, the same county that the Plum Creek Initiative plans to start its work in. These days, the creek is in bad shape, like many of the waterways in the area. When regulators last checked it in 2006, they concluded the creek was unfit for recreation or for aquatic life.Organizers plan to kick off the initiative in August. In the meantime, the team is lining up support, including financial backing, from other groups active in rural Minnesota causes. It has already won a modest grant of $5,000 as a finalist at the National Public Policy Challenge in Philadelphia, a competition that judges proposals from public policy schools across the nation."Our key goal is to complement and cooperate with existing organizations," says Bolormaa Jamiyansuren, another Plum Creek organizer, "so that the end goal is to improve the water quality." (TNS) -- Internet access might seem like an assumed party of everyday life in 21st century America, but in many rural communities across the nation people still lack a reliable broadband connection.The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) reports an estimated 15 million Americans, primarily in rural communities, don't have access to entry-level broadband in their homes and 41 percent of rural schools can't access a high-speed Internet connection.Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-IA 2nd District, has made it a central mission of his work in Congress to correct service gaps in his state.Loebsack, whose district spans across southeast Iowa, held a series of roundtable meetings Thursday to discuss the Small Business Broadband Deployment Act and how it could help local businesses navigate the complex and ever-changing federal telecommunications regulations."Broadband is a huge issue for rural America and there's not enough being done in D.C., I think, to help out when it comes to rural broadband," Loebsack said at the Southeast Iowa Regional Planning Commission.The bill, co-sponsored by Republican Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon and passed unanimously in the House of Representatives, extends the FCC exemption from its enhanced transparency rules for small Internet service providers (ISPs) for five years. The goal of the short-term extension, Loebsack said, was to ease the regulatory burden on small businesses tasked with sifting through hundreds of pages of evolving telecommunications guidelines, while also running the day-to-day operations of their companies."This commonsense, bipartisan measure will give small internet service providers throughout the country flexibility to focus their resources on deploying broadband and serving our constituents," he said in a statement released Wednesday. "This bill will provide certainty to small ISPs, and help us achieve our ultimate goal of both expanding broadband access and enhancing consumer protections."Tim Fencl, general manager and CEO of Danville Mutual Telephone Company, thanked the congressman for his attention to rural broadband access and said the extension would help companies like his apply the new regulations within a more reasonable time frame."One of the things that we as a small business like all small businesses suffer from, is when you have a staff of 10 people, you can't commit one person to try to manage all of the regulations," Fencl said.Danville Telecom recently partnered with the Big River Resources ethanol plant and its administration offices to provide broadband service. Without the legislative support Loebsack has provided, Fencl said, his company would not have been able to expand its operations in new markets."Thank you for the work that you've done," he said. "It has allowed us to expand beyond our traditional boundaries and be able to provide services in the communities of West Burlington, Burlington, Fort Madison, Keokuk, Wever and Montrose."We've got a lot of fiber running out there and it gave us the opportunity to connect not only to the admin plant here for Big River Resources but also to their ethanol plant. A lot of companies anymore, they're not in one location, they're diversified. And a lot of times you'll find those companies' locations are in the rural environments, for a lot of different reasons. And having the ability to expand outside of a normal city territory gives us the opportunity to provide services. And then with each one of those customers, we have the opportunity to grow and get more customers that are in those rural environments."Founded in 1900, the Danville Mutual Telephone Company has dramatically expanded from its modest beginnings to include 964 landlines, 604 internet users, 1,913 satellite televisions and 4,337 cellular customers.Jim Leighting of Big River Resources said local agriculture has extended its reach to the point that optimal communications systems are crucial."Local agriculture has grown dramatically, and with that comes the need for communications," Leighting said. "Fiber is the way of today and the future. And with our ability to communicate with servers and with electronics and everything else, this type of service is very important to our business."David Toyer, director of economic development for the Greater Burlington Partnership, said a robust telecommunications infrastructure is critical for the future of communities like Burlington who are trying to attract and retain young professionals and businesses in the area."It's growing in importance," Toyer said. "And having smaller, local companies like Danville that are able to provide that service - I look at it as being valuable to us."In the last 24 months we've had 14 projects between expansions and new locations happen here, representing over $200 million in new capital investment in Des Moines County and almost 700 jobs. We've got a lot of activity going on here and for us, having the infrastructure whether it be the telecommunications infrastructure or water and sewer and natural gas infrastructure drives decision-making."Loebsack also spoke to the Burlington Kiwanis Club Thursday before hosting the roundtable discussions in West Burlington, Wever and Keokuk. He described the contentious presidential election as a "race to the bottom" that could seriously damage the future of the country's political system. In an election cycle that has devolved largely into name-calling, insults and political theater, he was skeptical about the nation's direction."It's not a good situation," Loebsack told the crowd during their monthly lunch. "I don't know if we can turn this around. If we can, you know, raise the level of discourse and civility and all of that. I've got to be honest, I don't know if we can do that." (TNS) -- The FBI paid for the tool it used to break into a dead terrorists iPhone and is considering whether to tell Apple Inc. how it was done, FBI Director James Comey said.The U.S. dropped a legal case against Apple last month after it succeeded in accessing the data on an iPhone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife carried out the deadly December attack in San Bernardino, Calif. Comey disclosed during a speech Wednesday at Kenyon College in Ohio that the FBI paid for the tool to break into the phone, although he didnt provide further details.The FBI is very good at keeping secrets, and the people we bought this from, I know a fair amount about them, and I have a high degree of confidence that they are very good at protecting it and their motivations align with ours, Comey said. The FBI hasnt said who provided the hacking tool.Discussions are continuing about whether to provide Apple with details about how the hack was carried out, Comey said. Thats an interesting conversation because we tell Apple and theyre going to fix it, and then were back where we started from, he said. As silly as that may sound, we may end up there. We just havent decided yet.However, the FBI chief said it doesnt appear the tool will work on phones beyond the iPhone 5c. We have a tool that works on a narrow slice of phones, he said. If we decide not to disclose it to Apple, its still quite perishable and it will disappear if Apple changes its software in some way.The FBI is also weighing whether to provide the tool to state and local law enforcement agencies that have iPhones they cant get into, Comey said. He noted that the tool could be jeopardized if it has to be revealed to defense attorneys in criminal court cases.Were going to try to lean as far forward as possible to help them, he said. We have to navigate a number of things, including its utility in national security cases. He added, It will also disappear if we use it in a criminal case and it has to be disclosed.Although U.S. law enforcement agencies have confronted encrypted communications before, Comey noted that more companies have started offering their customers and users the protection by default.Weve never seen a world where all of the peoples papers and effects were covered by strong encryption, he said.If such encryption by default remains widely available, the FBI might have to be much more aggressive in finding other ways to conduct surveillance, such as through the use of informants and undercover agents, Comey said.Some members of Congress are attempting to draw up legislation or create a commission to balance privacy rights against the concern of law enforcement agencies that say they need to defeat encryption in cases involving terrorism or national security.Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Thursday that she has sent the White House a draft of encryption legislation she is writing with Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the panels chairman. Feinstein, who said she has been briefed by the FBI on the successful effort to break into the iPhone, said some of the details should remain classified.White House officials have expressed skepticism that Congress can come up with a solution to the encryption debate. Spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters traveling on Air Force One on Thursday that its a complicated piece of business.Were always willing to work with members of Congress on issues like this, he said. We believe that this issue is complicated and thats why a national dialogue to help the American people understand it is important. st st Seeking to capitalize upon Californians' growing use of Internet-based phone service, telephone giant AT&T is asking state lawmakers to allow it to decommission its costly landlines.The telco says wireless and Internet-based voice services are giving Californians enhanced phone services at a better price than traditional copper wire landlines, and its time for the state to move into the 21century.But consumer advocates argue legislation before the Assembly would force many seniors and rural Californians to give up the reliable landlines they want to keep.The dispute illustrates the challenges of how to regulate a changing telecom industry under federal and state laws and regulations written for what many consider to be an outdated and inefficient network of copper landlines.Its a decision that the state needs to make about the future of infrastructure in California, said Mike Montgomery, executive director of CALinnovates. Whether were talking about roads, bridges, tunnels, schools or copper telephone networks, we really need to figure out how to take this step toward the 21century.According to AT&T, 85 percent of households in California no longer have a conventional landline phone from a traditional provider. But AT&T is required by state law to maintain and operate its 600 central switching offices across California as if the lines were being used at 100 percent capacity.However, some of those offices are running at just 2 percent, wasting massive amounts of energy and water to cool equipment and human resources to run them, said Ken McNeely, president of AT&T California.That is money that could be spent on the more efficient, virtual and software-controlled Internet services that the majority of Californians use, he added.Every dollar a company spends on old technology is a dollar it cant spend on new technology, McNeely told, sister publication to, in an interview. Consumers want new technologies.McNeely declined to provide a dollar amount for how much AT&T spends on its landlines, citing proprietary confidentiality. Instead, AT&T is hoping to persuade lawmakers of the environmental benefits that could come from retiring its landlines. The company estimates the greenhouse gases emitted to run its landlines are equivalent to the emissions from 19,000 vehicles driven for a year. And some 3 billion gallons of water is used by the company each year.Under AB 2395 by Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, telephone companies would have three years to educate the public about alternative phone services. Starting in 2020, a phone company could discontinue landline service so long as an alternative service is available in the area.If you dont have an advanced service available to you, you will continue to have your landline without interruption, McNeely said.Low, who is co-chair of the California Legislative Technology and Innovation Caucus, described his bill as critical to ensuring that California maintains its role as a global innovator.This bill will allow us to update and modernize our IT infrastructure and ultimately provide, faster, cheaper, more reliable and more environmentally friendly service to millions of Californians, he said in a statement toConsumer groups arent convinced and say AT&T wants to abandon its legal obligation to maintain landlines at the expense of small businesses, rural customers and public safety. For example, many businesses rely on landlines for alarm monitoring and to run credit card transactions.There are over 10 million copper landlines in California. Thats a lot of people who have chosen to use that, said Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network. It is not right to tell them they cant have it anymore.Smaller telephone companies say the transition from legacy phone systems to new digital services should be left to the FCC, which has an active and open proceeding to address these issues.The California bill is vague, confusing and could force smaller companies that rely on landlines out of the market, said Sarah DeYoung, executive director of the California Association of Competitive Telecommunications Companies.If this bill passed, wed have one set of criteria for the state and one set for the FCC. It just doesnt make sense, DeYoung said. AT&T doesnt like what the FCC is doing. So its an end run.The bill is scheduled for an April 13 hearing before the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee. Amid intense and faltering negotiations with Bernie Ecclestone, former F1 driver Ivan Capelli has resigned as a chief of Monza's circuit operator Sias. Just last weekend in Bahrain, F1 supremo Ecclestone had admitted a new deal for the historic Italian grand prix beyond 2016 was being held up over local politics. "I know it's very, very political," the 85-year-old said. Ecclestone explained that who gets "the credit" for funding Monza's new deal was one stumbling block, but it is also known that he was clashing personally with some of the current Italian officials. "It is a fact that as men we are talking," he said two weeks ago, "although I don't know why Federico Bendinelli went as he was a smart person and we understood each other." So in reporting that Capelli has now gone, Italy's Autosprint confirmed that Ecclestone had "no confidence in the management" of Sias and fundamentally clashed over Monza's desire to reshape the track to suit MotoGP racing. Another Italian media source, Tuttosport, agreed that Capelli's departure is "a move to end the stalemate in the negotiations with Ecclestone". (GMM) BY: Benjamin Glover, with additional files from GNA Category: General News Air Liquide announced the locations of four public hydrogen fueling stations planned for the northeastern region of the United States. The stations are the first of twelve hydrogen stations planned by Air Liquide in the northeast United States, in collaboration with Toyota Motor Sales USA, Inc. Initially, the network of hydrogen stations will span approximately 300 miles across five states and will support the introduction of hydrogen FCEVs on the East Coast, including the Toyota Mirai. The stations are slated to open to the public by early 2017. Air Liquide has entered long-term lease agreements for hydrogen stations in the following cities: Hartford, Connecticut Braintree, Massachusetts Mansfield, Massachusetts Bronx, New York The hydrogen supplied by Air Liquide will be produced off-site and delivered to the stations. The stations, designed and constructed by Air Liquide, will be capable of fueling a hydrogen FCEV in approximately 5 minutes and will offer a typical vehicle fueling experience. Hydrogen FCEVs can have a range of more than 300 miles (500 km) per fill, depending on the model. The stations have the capacity to support other auto manufacturers as they begin to bring hydrogen FCEVs into the region. This initiative is the latest in the companys current portfolio of hydrogen fuel cell energy activities in the US and across North America, which also include public and private hydrogen stations in California and a number of fleet fueling projects for public buses and warehouse vehicles. Air Liquide masters the entire hydrogen supply chain, from production to storage and from distribution to the development of applications for end users. To date, more than 75 hydrogen fueling stations have been designed and installed by Air Liquide worldwide. Blue Hydrogen. With its Blue Hydrogen initiative, Air Liquide is moving towards a gradual decarbonization of its hydrogen production dedicated to energy applications. In practical terms, Air Liquide has made a commitment to produce at least 50% of the hydrogen necessary to these applications through carbon-free processes by 2020, by combining: biogas reforming, the use of renewable energies during water electrolysis, and the use of technologies for the capture and upgrading of carbon emitted during the process of producing hydrogen from natural gas. BOC, the UKs largest supplier of industrial gases, signed an agreement with ITM Power to provide infrastructure for ITM Powers new electrolyzer-based hydrogen refueling stations for passenger cars. The announcement underpins ITM Powers ongoing plans to build a network of hydrogen refueling stations in the UK. BOC, a member of The Linde Group, will use its specialist market knowledge to source and install the most appropriate Group technology including hydrogen compressors and dispensers. These will be installed at ITM Powers new hydrogen refueling station locations. This latest siting and refueling agreement builds on the existing successful partnership between the two companies. Opened in 2011, BOCs hydrogen refueling station at Hondas site in Swindon employs BOC filling technology to serve passenger cars, light goods vehicles (LGVs) and forklift trucks and offers both 350 and 700 bar refueling. BOCs Aberdeen hydrogen production and bus refueling station is part of the Aberdeen Bus Project and fuels Europes largest fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses. The station features Lindes IC-90 ionic compressors and in its first year the station has demonstrated unparalleled reliability, with fuel availability of >99.99%, dispensing over 35,000 kg of hydrogen to the buses. It is this established technology and knowledge that is going to be delivered to the ITM Power refueling stations. Linde has delivered more than 100 hydrogen refueling stations around the world. ITM Power has plans and funding already under way to deploy eight refueling stations in and around London, having already opened one station in Rotherham. Of the eight stations, the first London refueling station will open in May 2016 at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington and the second will open in July at the Centre for Engineering and Manufacturing Excellence in East London (funded by the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking). A further three refueling stations will be sited on publicly accessible forecourts and these will open before the end of 2016. ITM Power has a hydrogen fuel contract with Toyota, which will see all Toyota Mirai FCEVs supplied with three years of hydrogen included for the consumer. The Energy Commission will make available two categories of Capital Expense (Cap-X) funding. Operation and Maintenance (O&M) funding is also available for stations whose capital expenses are funded under this solicitation. This solicitation places a preference on hydrogen refueling stations that fill hydrogen refueling station coverage gaps and hydrogen refueling capacity gaps in California. The California Energy Commission has released a $17.3-million solicitation ( GFO-15-605 ) for publicly accessible hydrogen refueling stations that serve Californias light duty fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). The Cap-X funding categories are: I-5 Connector Station Competition (includes new construction and upgrades to existing fueling equipment). Main Station Competition (includes new construction and upgrades to existing fueling equipment). The O&M support grant category is a first-come, first-served grant category. Applicants/projects meeting the minimum eligibility criteria for operation and maintenance support grants will be recommended for funding. Only stations receiving a Capital Expense (Cap-X) grant award under this solicitation are eligible for an O&M Support Grant under this solicitation. The Energy Commission expects to recommend funding for all O&M support grants supporting funded stations under this solicitation. The Cap-X grants are competitive grant competitions. Applicants passing administrative and technical screening will compete based on evaluation criteria, and will be scored based on those criteria. The highest ranked, eligible applications will be recommended for funding. The Energy Commission strongly prefers and encourages Applicants to expedite stations becoming operational to the greatest extent possible. Stations becoming operational within 20 months after approval will earn full funding incentives. An open retail hydrogen refueling station has all of the following characteristics and meets all of the following requirements: Although the focus of each of the three strategically located facilities will be broad, each will feature a different core discipline. TRI-ANN will focus primarily on fully autonomous (chauffeured) driving. TRI-PAL will work on what may be termed guardian angel driving, where the driver is always engaged but the vehicle assists as needed. TRI-CAM will dedicate a large portion of its work to simulation and deep learning. Toyota will establish its third Toyota Research Institute (TRI) facility in the US. The new facility will be located in Ann Arbor, near the University of Michigan (U-M) campus where it will fund research in artificial intelligence, robotics and materials science. Joining the TRI facility established last January in Palo Alto working with Stanford (TRI-PAL), and in Cambridge working with MIT (TRI-CAM), TRI-ANN is scheduled to open in June. Beyond the extraordinary work that U-M is doing broadly in advancing automotive safety researchand in autonomous driving, in particularToyota has deep roots in the Ann Arbor community. TRI was drawn to Ann Arbor because of the strength of the university; the utility of Mcity and the Mobility Transformation Center which we currently sponsor; the promise of the future American Center for Mobility at Willow Run; and the proximity to, and synergies with, our two well-established Toyota Technical Centers nearby. Dr. Gil Pratt, TRI CEO The Toyota Technical Centers have been conducting research in the area of autonomous cars for more than a decade. A group of about 15 team members will transfer to the new TRI-ANN facility when it opens. U-M Professors Ryan Eustice and Edwin Olson are joining TRI-ANN as the area leads for mapping/localization and perception, respectively. Both will be based at the Ann Arbor office, and will retain their U-M faculty positions. Sensor hardware and algorithms are improving at a tremendous pace. TRI researchers will push the frontier even further, with the goal of providing safer vehicles and more helpful robots in the home. Edwin Olson The Toyota Research Institute is an enterprise designed to bridge the gap between fundamental research and product development. With initial funding of $1 billion, it has four initial mandates. Strive to enhance the safety of automobiles with the ultimate goal of creating a car that is incapable of causing a crash, regardless of the skill or condition of the driver. Work to increase access to cars to those who otherwise cannot drive, including seniors and those with special needs. Help translate Toyotas expertise in creating products for outdoor mobility into products for indoor mobility; moving people and goods across the country, across town, or across the room. Accelerate scientific discovery by applying techniques from artificial intelligence and machine learning, particularly in the area of materials science. Using computation and machine learning, it hopes to accelerate scientific discovery in this area, lowering costs and improving performance of future mobility systems. Beyond the projects it will engage in with the three universities (more than 30 are already underway at Stanford and MIT), TRI is enthusiastically pursuing collaboration with other automakers, IT companies, suppliers, research labs and universities to jointly develop autonomous technologies. Although most of us are aware of the benefits of slowing down to enjoy life more, actually doing so is a luxury that few of us afford ourselves. But the staff at the Weatherspoon Art Museum is hoping to change that at least for a couple of hours with a worldwide event theyre bringing to Greensboro on Saturday. The idea for Slow Art Day came about in 2008, after its founder, Phil Terry, spent several hours at the Jewish Museum in New York viewing only two abstract paintings Fantasia by Hans Hoffman and Convergence by Jackson Pollock. The following year, Terry, an art lover who is now a business consultant and chief executive officer of a company called Collaborative Gain, visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York with a few friends. They took their time looking at a few works of art and discussing them afterward. In October 2009, 16 museums and galleries across North America and Europe hosted similar events to see how the public would respond. They were so well received, the first official Slow Art Day was planned for April 2010. Fifty-five venues participated, and the movement has continued to grow each year. The concept is simple participants visit a local museum or gallery and spend five to 10 minutes looking at each artwork selected for the event. Some museums choose five works, while others may focus on just one or two. Afterward, there is a discussion about the experience, which can be eye-opening, according to Weatherspoons curator of education, Ann Grimaldi. As a museum educator, Im always trying to encourage people to slow down when they look at works of art, and I do a program with nursing students that requires a lot of slow looking, she said. So I was already sort of in that mindset of just taking a few deep breaths, and settling in and really looking at something for more than 10 seconds, which is how were used to looking at images. I was familiar with the idea of slowing down to look at art, but I just didnt know that there was this movement until a few years ago. This is the second year the Weatherspoon has participated in the international event, which is a self-guided activity, Grimaldi said. Last year, we made it more of a tour, and we found that people just really wanted to go off on their own, so we wanted to give folks that opportunity, she said. This time weve selected five works of art from the museum that are our favorites for this type of activity. We encourage visitors to choose three to look at for 10 minutes each, for a total of 30 minutes. Then, at 2 oclock, were going to have a very informal discussion, and any visitor at the museum whos participated or just wants to drop in is welcome to the discussion about what this was like Was this hard? Was it fun? Did you see something you didnt expect to see? You may end up spending time with something that you otherwise may not have looked at. Grimaldi said that like meditation, which requires mindfulness and being in the moment, Slow Art Day is a challenge, aside from being entertaining. The effort required of participants is what makes it a true learning experience. We encourage people to set their timers for 10 minutes, but even if you can do it for two minutes, thats great, she said. Weve found that 10 minutes is a really interesting time frame, because its hard to sit and look at something for that long. You notice how many distractions take our attention away, but you also see more the longer you sit there, and it can be really fun when you get to that point of, Oh, wow! Camp stools are provided so that visitors dont have to stand, and the artwork selected represents a variety of styles and media, Grimaldi said. Some pieces are more realistic; some are more abstract; some are sculptures; some are photographs; and theyre all age-appropriate. We wanted things that families can look at together. But Slow Art Day is an opportunity to learn about more than just art, Grimaldi said. People really enjoy the opportunity to slow down, and its interesting, because this is something we can do all the time, she said. I think we look at so many images throughout the day so quickly, when you think about the images that come across your phone, or the TV. So this gives us an opportunity to think about what were looking at and how were interpreting it. I hope people leave thinking This is something I can do anywhere, because we can apply the experience that happens in the museum in lots of areas in our day-to-day lives. 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. GREENWICH The Board of Selectmen is considering adding part of a road that once was used as construction parking for the Byram Shubert Library to the new New Lebanon school site. The selectmen are considering reclaiming 23,058 square feet of Church Street, Richard Street and New Lebanon Avenue to allow construction access to the new school. If the measure is approved, the town would abandon the area as one of its rights-of-way. Nick Macri, a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission and a non-voting member of the New Lebanon School Committee, told the selectmen that getting the land would create a needed 125 foot setback. Ive met with the zoning enforcement officer and the town planner to discuss this issue and we decided this is the best solution, Macri said. The area is gated and paved and was created in 2009 for the librarys renovation as a temporary staff parking lot with nine spaces. Macri said four of the parking spots could be used for the school and the rest dug up and seeded. The setback could be used as emergency access. He also suggested that two gates would keep the area from becoming a drive-through. Right now its accessed by an approximately 12-foot wide driveway thats contingent to the library parking with a service gate thats chained and locked at all times except for maintenance and snow work, he said. Macri said neighbors had been informed about changes planned during the entire New Lebanan project but had not been specifically told about the town reclaiming the right-of-way. Selectman Drew Marzullo, who also a non-voting member of the building committee, said more should be done. I dont think they know that its going to have trucks coming through, Marzullo said. That is going to be a change in something thats been that way for years. Building committee member Clare Kilgallen said she had spoken about the work at the Representative Town Meetings District 4 gathering and that she got no negative feedback on the proposal. A vote on the right-of-way is expected at the selectmens April 14 meeting. Unless we hear an overwhelming amount of non-support for it, it should be a routine item, Marzullo said. kborsuk@scni.com Er, not really. Progressos bluff has been called on a new set of ads that make the almost-comical insinuation that its line of General Millsbrand soups are locally sourced in rural New Jersey. The Better Business Bureaus National Advertising Division was not impressed by the four spots, which paint a picture of an agrarian paradise where all of the ingredients are locally harvested and lovingly stirred into small batches of fresh, tasty soup, as Consumerist puts it. Each ad begins in a bucolic field with the words Vineland, NJ and Home of Progresso up above, then shows tractors driving around and fresh ingredients going into cast-iron pots. In a strict mailing-address sense, Vineland is Progressos home (though who knows where the ad shot that pasture?). But basically everything else in them was dismissed by the BBBs ad-watchdog group as misleading: Its hard to imagine the company thought the locavore insinuation would fly. The reason the ads ended up before the BBB was because Campbells caught wind of them. The group also didnt like the direct claim that Vineland is home to all Progresso soups, since the brand has enough soups to warrant more than one factory. Progresso has agreed to quit running the ads or modify them so theyre accurate, whatever that would look like. So, point: Campbells. [Consumerist] We saw the Xess at CES back in January and it was called the Xess Slate, it seems like Alcatel dropped the Slate from the name and TCL, Alcatels parent company TCL, decided to put its own brand on it instead. The Xess will launch in the US on April 22 for a price of $500. It is essentially a large tablet that is almost a touch PC. It acts as a control center for the home, in a way. The way it presents itself is more of a household appliance than a tablet for consuming media. The Xess is powered by a 1.5 GHz Mediatek processor paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, expandable up to 64GB of additional storage. It has a Full HD 17.3 inch display and a 3 watt JBL dual-speaker setup. The Xess also houses a 9600mAh battery with a quick release magnetic charger port, so you never have to worry about tripping over the cord and pull the Xess down with it. The US variant of the Xess will also include an IP camera which you can place anywhere in your home and you can use the Xess to monitor your children from the Xess or you can use your smartphone when you are away from home to monitor the IP camera as well as wherever you have the Xess set up in your home. US versions of the Xess will also include free access to certain Viacom childrens programming like Noggin and other Nickelodeon-branded content. When we were shown the Xess back in January, we were demoed some of the touch-less gestures it could perform as a way to navigate around the Xess without even touching it, however there is no such mention of any gesture-based navigation in the latest press release. Weve reached out to Alcatel in this regard and we will update this post as soon as we find out. You can also check out our first-look and hands-on of the Xess at CES this past January. In another round of head-to-head speed tests, the folks over at PhoneBuff have pitted the Exynos-powered Samsung Galaxy S7 edge against the Apple iPhone 6s Plus. The Galaxy S7 with a Snapdragon heart lost miserably the previous time around, but then the Snapdragon vs. Exynos test clearly showed the edge Samsung's chip has. Well, apparently not enough to beat the iPhone 6s Plus. Apple's smartphone still manages to win the race, though the margin is much smaller this time. Additionally, the Galaxy S7 edge does a much better second lap compared to its first - returning to the apps, after they've been launched on the first go. Those 4GB of RAM certainly help. Source Haiti - French Guyana : Saraika Francois will represent Haiti The Production Company Real Promo, organizer of the 6th edition of the annual inter-school singing contest "Podium Ecoliers" announced that the winner of the contest, Saraika Francois of the College Saint-Francois dAssise left the country yesterday Thursday for the French Guiana to represent Haiti, Saturday, April 9, at the singing contest's final "Podium des lycees" at the Palais Omnisport Georges Theolade. She will also participate in emissions in several radio stations, including Guyane 1ere, Radio NRJ and Radio Mosaique (a radio of the Haitian community). She will also visit the Consulate General of Haiti in Cayenne. After French Guiana, Saraika will travel on May 5 in Guadeloupe to still represent Haiti, this time, at the singing competitions "Defi Lyceen". HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping politics... The remaining six women candidates must be elected ! Marie Denise Claude, the new Minister for Women and Women's Rights, is committed to supporting the 6 qualified women for the second round of parliamentary elections and declared "I wish that these 6 women are elected, I proposes to encourage the Government to discriminate positively in favor of those women still competing to legislative [...] the policy has been too long considered the domain of men." The Conference of Pastors for the Verification Commission In a statement, the Conference of Haitian Pastors (COPAH) reacts on the establishment of the Verification Commission, said that so far "[...] signals launched by the transition team are not sufficiently clear, on its real desire to move forward. Rather, it is the biggest confusion about the formation of this Commission claimed by many sectors," adding "[...] any refusal to implement the electoral Verification Commission may face the determination of Haitians who no longer tolerate being violated and that their human rights are violated," asserting that " the establishment of this Commission is the 'sine qua non' condition for holding elections in the country." The PHTK in the street On Thursday, hundreds of PHTK supporters took the street in Petion-ville, before descending to the Delmas highway, asking the authorities to organize the second round of elections. The protesters demanded to the CEP the publication of the electoral timetable and the results of the municipal elections. Elected mayors are impatient Thursday morning, a meeting was held in the Senate between the members of the "Commission interior and local authorities" and a delegation of elected mayors. After the exchange, the members of the Commission promised to submit to the Assembly of Senators a draft resolution recommending to the Executive and the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) to take the necessary steps to install all elected mayors which have not been challenged. Tribute of Martelly to Toussaint Louverture Thursday, as part of the commemoration of the 213th anniversary of the death of Toussaint Louverture, the former President Martelly recalled the scale of this Statesman "[...] which was only guided in his fights by his love for Haiti. I salute the precursor of the Independence of Haiti." HL/ HaitiLibre The Department of Human Services has been ordered to reinstate a sacked Centrelink employee who use social media to label clients spastics and whingeing junkies. The Fair Work Commission found that while the employees conduct was unacceptable, the Departments decision to sack him over his comments was disproportionate to his misconduct and ordered that he be given his job back. Hannah Ellis, Principal at The Workplace employment lawyers says the FWC ruling should serve as a timely reminder for employers that misconduct does not always warrant termination. HR professionals need to be aware that just because there may seem to be a valid reason to terminate an employees employment, this does not automatically mean termination will be appropriate, Ellis told HC Online. Vice President Adam Hatcher found although the Department had legitimate grounds to sack its employee, his dismissal was considered harsh because of mitigating factors, including the length and quality of his service. Vice President Hatcher also found that the punishment was disproportionate to the gravity of the employees misconduct, which included using social media to call Centrelink clients "spastics and junkies" and "whingeing junkies", and saying he was "embarrassed" to work at the department. The FWC heard that the Centrelink customer service officer had been with the Department of Human Services for more than 20 years and was sacked last October following an investigation into misconduct. The Department claimed the employee breached s13 of the Public Service Act over a three-year period when he posted a number of negative and inappropriate comments about his employer and its clients on social media platforms Sportal and Whirlpool. However, the FWC ruled that the employee caused no actual detriment to the department and his misconduct was "situational" in that his comments were made impulsively in response to online comments that he considered inaccurate. In this case the FWC found that the employee made the derogatory comments impulsively and out of frustration and not maliciously, Ellis says. The outcome might have been different if the employee had been the instigator of the comments/online discussion threads but probably not on this factor alone, she says. The Department also argued that the officer had brought his employer into disrepute with his derogatory comments, however failed to prove to the FWC that this was the case. In this case, there was no evidence that the Departments reputation was actually damaged or that anyone actually formed an adverse perception of the Departments impartiality, Ellis says. This is probably largely a result of the fact that Centrelink is not a commercial enterprise reliant on customer loyalty, but was also a product of the special interest forums in which the comments were posted, she says. The significance is that although the Commission found these forums were theoretically accessible to the public, they are not a place where a claimant or recipient of social benefits would readily expect to find material of that nature, Ellis says. Its no secret that Australias aging population will soon see the country in the midst of a crisis as the Baby Boomer generation exit the workforce en masse. The major economic implications include a smaller workforce and a shrinking federal income tax base, plus a massive brain drain as highly experienced workers exit the workplace, taking decades of knowledge with them. All aspects of business will be affected by the aging workforce, says Karen Evans, Managing Director of talent management solutions experts, Acendre. HR professionals and employers can help prepare their companies for the future by acknowledging the impending retirement of many Australian workers and making plans to mitigate against this brain drain, she says. Workforce planning is the absolute key to success when it comes to understanding how the business will be able to cope with any changes ahead, Evans says. Taking stock of your available workforce, and planning what youre going to need in the future will guide every step of the HR planning process, she says. Employers can start by taking an inventory of the current workforce status and its requirements for the future, Evans says. That way, the business will gain a clearer picture of where there are gaps in skills, plus who will be leaving and taking knowledge out of the business with them. This information can drive decision-making around whether existing employees can be upskilled to fill those gaps, where the business needs to hire in from the outside, and so on, Evans says. HR professionals can use workplace planning and succession planning strategies to help combat the inevitable brain drain that occurs whenever older generations leave the workforce. As this is set to increase exponentially over the coming years, the idea of workforce planning becomes an incredibly important task for HR professionals who want to stay ahead of this issue by implementing training initiatives to combat the exodus of talent and knowledge, Evans says. Thats why employers should be implementing strategies right now in a bid to capture some of that knowledge and experience and share it amongst the next generation of their workforce. Having younger staff in mid-level management positions is key to business success, she says. Due to the impending retirement of many Australians, having younger employees in mid-level management is crucial to the success of any business, and is in some ways inevitable, Evans says. As one part of the workforce heads towards retirement and a younger generation begins to take its place, it is crucial that this new cohort of inexperienced managers have access to management training to make sure that they are well equipped to face the difficult task of managing people. Organisations should implement strong succession planning strategies to develop and engage their employees in their careers, Evans says. Ensuring staff have a goal roadmap to keep them engaged in their progress will not only benefit staff, but the organisations success also, she says. The Australian Bureau of Statistics predicts that the number of people aged 65 years and over will jump from current levels of 3.5 million to around 5.8 million by 2031, while 44% of federal government workers will be eligible for retirement in the next decade. Nordea does not tolerate being used to evade taxes, Casper von Koskull, the chief executive of the provider of financial services, emphasised while commenting on a trove of data on offshore accounts the so-called Panama Papers in a press conference on Thursday. Nordea, he underlined, provides advice to its customers regarding their tax obligations. Everyone must follow the law, he added. The documents leaked from the database of fourth largest offshore law firm in the world, the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca, reportedly indicate that Nordea has established hundreds of holding companies in tax havens for its customers. Holding companies are a feature of international business, reminded von Koskull. He emphasised that the initiative for establishing the holding companies came not from the financial services provider but from its customers. He also drew attention to the difference between tax avoidance and tax planning, adding that Nordea wants nothing to do with the former. If someone's operations fall into the grey area, we want nothing to do with them, he said. Hiding wealth is a problem. I do not approve of it. Von Koskull also pointed out that the financial services provider lost roughly 4,000 customers after its decision in 2009 to tighten its guidelines on international ownership arrangements. Bjorn Wahlroos, the board chairman at Nordea, did not attend the press conference on Thursday. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Anders Wiklund Lehtikuva / AFP Source: Uusi Suomi Pills, lack of behavorial health treatment are biggest threats Prescription drug abuse and poor access to mental health services are the biggest threats to the health of Henderson County residents, a new countywide health assessment says. Related Stories Conducted every four years, the Community Health Assessment was based on input from health care providers, mental health agencies, social workers, school officials and nonprofit agencies that serve the poor. When compared with peer counties and the state, Henderson County is a relatively healthy county, the report said. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations 2015 County Health Rankings, Henderson County ranks 13th overall out of 100 counties in North Carolina. But while the county is relatively healthy compared to other counties, it does have some surprising threats. Henderson County mortality rates for unintentional injuries, Alzheimers disease, suicide and chronic liver disease are higher than comparable state mortality rates, the report says. Among the leading causes of death are unintentional injuries, including drug overdoses. The report is a profile of the current health of Henderson County residents based on socioeconomic factors, key health indicators, local data and community resources. It identifies gaps in health care coverage, including the mental health and substance abuse areas. An overview of key data and key issues were presented at a community forum attended by almost 100 community leaders, elected officials, stakeholders, residents and media. The top four health priorities the team chose to focus on over the next three years were: 1. Access/Quality of Mental Health Services 2. Substance abuse 3. Obesity 4. Safe and affordable housing The next step in the process is for county residents, local hospitals and community partners to form Community Health Assessment action teams to draft strategies to address the priorities and fill the gaps, the Health Department says. The Community Health Assessment Team was made of Tanya Blackford, of Safelight; Milton Butterworth of Blue Ridge Community Health Services; Diana Curran, of the Henderson County Department of Public Health; Graham Fields, of Park Ridge Health; Elisha Freeman of the Children and Family Resource Center; David Jacklin of Homeward Bound; Judith Long of The Free Clinics; Kristen Martin of THRIVE; Elizabeth Moss of Pardee Memorial Hospital; Jesse Shepherd of the Henderson County Family YMCA; Steve Smith of the Henderson County Department of Public Health; Trina Stokes of the Council on Aging; Marcia Stoneman of Blue Ridge Community College; and Stacy Taylor of Henderson County Department of Public Health. Opioids caused the highest proportion of drug overdose deaths in Henderson County and in the state, the report says, including hydrocodone, oxycodone, morphine, codeine and related drugs. Henderson Countys rates are higher than the states for these overdoses, it said. A general characteristic of the WNC region is high mortality rates due to unintentional poisoning, especially by medication and drug overdose. The states mental health reform efforts in 1999 led to the closing of some state facilities and a reduction in treatment beds and behavioral health services as the state tried to shift the burden to counties and regional management agencies. The reduction in service was dramatic. From 2006 to 2013, the number of county residents receiving services at a state psychiatric hospital plunged from 128 people to three. However, decreased access does not mean decreased need, the assessment noted. Due to funding cuts and organizational changes, many patients are left to seek services from hospital emergency rooms and many more are left with no services at all. Blue Ridge Community Health Services currently reports more than 10,000 patients with a behavioral health diagnosis, The Free Clinics reported 436 unduplicated mental health patients in 2015 and Pardee Hospital reported an average of 250 mental health visits a month in 2015 up from an average of 170 in 2014. Other findings of the report included: Infant mortality and low birth weight rates have decreased overall since the 2002-2006 reporting period. Both rates are lower than the WNC regional average and the state average. The teen pregnancy rate has been steadily decreasing overall since the 2002-2006 reporting period and continues to be slightly lower than the state rate. Rates for chlamydia, gonorrhea and HIV have been consistently lower than state averages. 18.2 percent of the participating children in Henderson County age 2-4 were deemed overweight, and an additional 14.1 percent were deemed obese. Being overweight or obese is a major factor in increasing ones risk for chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. Sedentary lifestyle, the high cost of nutritious foods and the lack of safe walking and biking areas in some areas of the county make it difficult for people to make healthy choices. The countys estimated population in 2014 was 111,149. Ninety-three percent of the population is white and 3.4 percent is African-American. In 2014, Hispanics (of any race) made up 9.9 percent of the county population. Access to mental health services and substance abuse treatment for low-income clients became more difficult in 1999 when the state implemented mental health reform. Between 2006 and 2013, the number of Henderson County residents served by the Area Mental Health Program decreased 15 percent, from 3,014 to 2,559. Over the same eight-year period, the number of Henderson County residents served in state psychiatric hospitals decreased 98 percent (from 128 to 3). During the same period, a total of 464 Henderson County residents were served in NC State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Centers (ADATCs), with the number varying considerably but averaging 58 persons annually. Its not likely that the decrease in utilization of state psychiatric hospitals means decreased need for psychiatric services for the most severely impaired mental health patients. In many cases, patients dealing with mental illness and substance abuse are left to seek services from hospital emergency rooms and many more are left with no services at all. The people providing input talked a lot about the lack of safe and affordable housing and identified that as a problem thats getting worse. Everyone from community leaders to participants in the focus groups and client interviews talked about this need in our community, the assessment team said. This was not included as a top priority in the last CHA process, but was clearly important to many in 2015. Under a federal definition of affordable housing that costs no more than 30 percent of a households monthly income, Henderson County flunks the test. In 2008, the area median income for a household of four in Henderson County was $52,500. Given the countys fair market rent of $695 for a two-bedroom unit, a low-income family would have to spend 66 percent of their monthly income for housing, instead of the suggested 30 percent, to be able to afford a two-bedroom unit in Henderson County. The breakdown of the states mental health system has directly affected local agencies. Smoky Mountain, the regional agency responsible for delivering mental health care, reported specifically on the new burden on local agencies. Blue Ridge Community Health Services served 5,328 active behavioral health patients, the Free Clinics 436 and Safelight 123. Pardees emergency room saw an average of 250 mental health patients a month in 2015, up from 170 in 2014, and its behavioral health unit admitted an average of 20 clients a day in 2015. Armed gardai yesterday raided a number of homes linked to the Kinahan cartel's street-level drug dealers. Nine properties on both sides of the city were targeted in dawn raids by armed officers. Cocaine and heroin worth 65,000 was seized, as well as 18,000 in cash. Two men were arrested in the Walkinstown and the Coombe area of the city's south inner city. The two men being questioned last night are suspected of being "prolific street dealers and drug users". The cash was seized at a property on the North Circular Road, but no arrests were made. "This was an operation targeting the lower echelons of the cartel - and there will be more of this to come," a senior source told the Herald. Attack "This is all about showing this gang that the gardai are on top of them, that life is going to be very uncomfortable for them from now on." It is understood that one of the arrested men has close links to David Byrne, who was shot dead in the Regency Hotel gun attack in February. However, the arrested man is not a senior figure within the cartel. Yesterday's operation follows high-profile raids last month that saw more senior members of the mob targeted. In one of these operations - on March 10 - up to 80 gardai were involved in searching 10 homes in Dublin's south inner city, Inchicore and one property in the north inner city. Tracking More than 50,000 was seized, as well as five GPS tracking devices. Over 20,000 worth of jewellery and a large amount of financial documentation were also seized. Two days before that, gardai launched their biggest operation against the cartel. That saw them seize around 100,000 in cash and jewellery and around 1m worth of property. A total of 29 cars and jeeps, as well as six motorbikes, were seized when gardai raided 12 homes and six businesses on March 8. Garda operations against the Kinahan cartel have stepped up after the murderous feud broke out between its members and the Hutch mob. Since David Byrne's murder in the Regency Hotel attack, two associates of the Hutch mob have been shot dead and tensions remain high. Crime boss Christy Kinahan's links to the world's most dangerous drugs gang can be revealed by the Herald today. Kinahan's empire is built on massive cocaine shipments smuggled from Peru across the Atlantic by naive drugs mules. An investigation by the Herald has discovered that the Irish cartel is working directly with Mexico's deadly Sinaloa cartel which controls the Peruvian drugs trade where Michaella McCollum was caught trying to smuggle almost 2m worth of cocaine with Scottish national Melissa Reid in 2013. Brutal Speaking to the Herald, former Peruvian anti-narcotics chief, Ricardo Soberon, said "without question" Kinahan is working with the Sinaloa Cartel. Headed up by feared Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, who has escaped prison twice, the brutal gang have been linked to tens of thousands of murders. Mexican gangs have taken control of the lucrative cocaine trade since the fall of the Columbian cartels in the 1990s and are now said to head the 43bn per year racket. "The Mexicans, mainly the Sinaloas, now control the export market in Peru," said Mr Soberon. "With the number [of drugs mules] to Spain and Holland rising there must be links to this guy [Kinahan]. "If his enterprise is as big as is believed there can be no other way," he added. Murders by the Sinaloa cartel often involve the victims' heads being planted on spikes across the country as warnings to rivals and police informants. The gang is also known for its use of acid for dissolving bodies. In some cases, the bloody executions are filmed and posted on the internet as a further warning to rival gangs. The revelation comes as an EU report this week published findings directly connecting Irish criminals to South and Central American gangs. Compiled by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol, the report found that Irish criminal gangs have connections with drug cartels in South and Central America which facilitate the direct importation of cocaine into Ireland and Europe. Official statistics from Peruvian authorities show that the number of drug mule interceptions leaving the country has risen exponentially since 2007 - just as Kinahan's criminal enterprises began to grow. One of Peru's top serving anti- narcotic police officers, who cannot be identified, told the Herald that the number of drug mules leaving the country - which is one of the top producers of cocaine in the world, bound for various locations in Spain and the Netherlands - is worrying. "It can only be linked with this criminal's (Kinahan's) rise to prominence and such a massive increase in demand from Europe, Russia and Australia. "Between 2008 and 2013, 612 people were caught en route to Spain in Lima airport. In the same time, 248 people were picked up going to Holland. "Another 284 were caught going to Brazil, which is an important point of connection for Europe," he added. "Between 2008 and 2009 alone, the amount of cocaine seized at the airport jumped from 1.5 tonnes to over two tonnes." Billions Another police source said that mob boss Kinahan has also been linked with a man named Gerald Oropeza Lopez, Peru's answer to the Tony Montana character in the film Scarface. "Kinahan is on the radar here for us, we think he has close ties with the Ndrangheta mafia from southern Italy through a Peruvian guy called Gerald Oropeza Lopez, who is currently jailed in Equador. "The Italians and Lopez, with help from Mexicans, ship billions of dollars worth of cocaine out of the port of Callao every month. "Since security ramped up at the port they have been shipping it from labs in the desert. "If you ever fly over Peru you will see lots of big sheds in the middle of the desert. "They are chicken farms that produce more than eggs. What is happening now is the cocaine is made here. Taken by small boats to bigger boats that are waiting ten miles off shore." Dublin Airport handled a record of over 25 million passengers last year, which was 15pc more than it did in 2014 Dublin Airport is set to have a second runway by 2020 - but it's unclear whether a night-time flight ban will be implemented to protect residents from noise. Planning permission for the runway was originally granted in 2007, despite protests, following a protracted process. However, the project was put on hold following the financial crisis. Now the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), which controls the airport, says it plans to have the new parallel runway operational in four years as passenger numbers at the capital's airport soar. One key issue for locals who originally campaigned against the 320m development, is noise pollution. An Bord Pleannala stipulated that take-off and landing times were to be restricted to between 7am and 11pm, as a condition of granting permission. However, Dublin Airport chiefs have now said that they want to challenge that condition, in a move which could anger locals. Passengers The authority said the project was expected to support 1,200 construction jobs. Passenger charges could also rise to meet the new runway cost. Dublin Airport handled a record of over 25 million passengers last year, which was 15pc more than it did in 2014. It is one of Europe's busiest, and fastest-growing airports. About a dozen local action groups, schools and individuals had lodged objections to the runway plan. The DAA previously pledged to soundproof schools and buy some existing houses close to the airport if pre-determined noise levels were consistently breached over a two-year period after runway construction. It plans to rent out houses it buys. "We are very conscious of balancing the national and business needs with those of our local communities and we will continue to work closely with our neighbours in relation to this project," DAA chief executive, Kevin Toland, said. When 10-year permission for the 3,110-metre long runway was originally granted, two specific conditions were introduced that mean the new runway can't be used between 11pm and 7am; and that the total number of night-time flights at the airport cannot exceed 65 between 11pm and 7am once the new runway is built. Dublin Airport already operates more flights than this during those hours, which include the busiest time for departures, and one of the busiest times for arrivals. Mr Toland described those two conditions as especially onerous - and said that they would "severely reduce the future operational capacity of the airport at key periods". Growth "This has implications on our ability to support future traffic growth at the airport and we are looking at how this can be addressed," he said, adding he does not foresee hurdles in successfully addressing the conditions. In 2008, the DAA sought to amend the two conditions, which it argued at the time would "cause delays and inconvenience for airlines and passengers". It had sought to have the changes introduced by arguing that the runway project was a "strategic infrastructure development" under the 2006 Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act. But An Bord Pleanala noted the planning application for the runway had been made prior to the act being introduced. As such, it told the DAA that it would have to ask Fingal County Council, which originally granted the planning permission for the runway, to vary any conditions that had been imposed. Yesterday, the DAA said that the new North Runway development has the potential to open up connectivity to a range of long-haul destinations. It could support a further 31,000 new jobs over the next two decades, it claimed. Aer Lingus and Ryanair - Dublin Airport's two biggest customers - have both broadly welcomed the runway plan. Dublin's Deputy Lord Mayor Cieran Perry has been cleared of public order charges arising out of his arrest during a protest in support of striking workers. The independent councillor, who could have faced jail, claimed his trial was a result of "political policing". After his acquittal yesterday, he blasted the decision to prosecute him as a "complete waste of garda and court resources". Cllr Perry, a Trinity College computer technician and a Unite shop steward, had been arrested during an industrial relations protest against wage cuts imposed on workers at Dublin waste firm Greyhound, and the company's use of temporary staff while employees were on strike. The councillor, who represents the Cabra-Finglas ward, faced charges for failing to comply with a garda's direction to leave the vicinity and interrupting the passage of vehicles, at Killala Road, Cabra on September 2, 2014. The offences can result in fines and a possible six-month jail term. He faced trial before Dublin District Court. Two witnesses disputed prosecution claims that gardai gave a caution to the protesters. Judge Miriam Walsh said the prosecution failed to meet the burden of proof. After his court win, Mr Perry said: "Today's verdict is a vindication of my claims of political policing. I don't believe it was a coincidence that I was charged during the same period where 23 people from Tallaght, 11 from Crumlin and numerous individual activists were also charged with various offences. Resources "In my opinion there was clearly a directive from senior garda management or government that political activists were to be targeted. "I was shocked to be arrested and handcuffed. "As a local councillor I have had numerous complaints about the lack of garda resources but there doesn't appear to be any shortage of gardai when they are called to act politically. "On many occasions I have called for the Public Order Act to be used local to tackle anti-social behaviour and drug dealing but resources never appear to be available." Fianna Fails Micheal Martin speaks to the media after the talks (Arthur Carron) A second general election may yet be on the cards after talks about a coalition between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael collapsed. Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin held a second meeting in two days yesterday - but it ended after just 10 minutes. Mr Martin said afterwards Fianna Fail had rejected the idea of a 'partnership government'. The Fianna Fail leader has claimed that acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny took the prospect of a minority government "off the table", essentially threatening that it was a coalition of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and independents or a second election. This has been vehemently denied by Fine Gael. Mr Martin said the "best interest of the Irish people are not served by a coalition by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael". Desired He said Fine Gael wanted the parties "lumped together" but the idea of a government with over 100 TDs was "not healthy". Mr Martin said there are "questions around the integrity" of Fine Gael's offer and that the previous 24 hours had "left a lot to desired". In a statement last night, Mr Kenny said a partnership government would have reflected the way people had voted on February 26 and "respective mandates of both parties and independents". "Ireland needs a stable and lasting government to meet the many national and international challenges facing the country. "Fine Gael's preferred option of a full partnership is the best option for providing the necessary stability and it is very regrettable that Fianna Fail has rejected this." His ministers went further, claiming it was an "historic opportunity" missed. "It appears to us that the national interest at this point in the Fianna Fail response has not got enough consideration," acting Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said. She said the country needed a stable government to deal with the challenging issues facing it. Ms Fitzgerald branded Mr Martin's claim that the offer appeared to be "choreography" by the Taoiseach as "nonsense". "It was an absolutely genuine offer that was put on the table in good faith," she said. Acting Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney described the situation as "a setback", adding: "Fianna Fail haven't even given a day to consider it." However, Mr Coveney said that Fine Gael would now reassess the situation and while the offer remained open, they would continue working with independents. Acting Health Minister Leo Varadkar was asked if a failure for a new Taoiseach to be voted in next week would lead to a fresh election. "If the Dail doesn't elect a Taoiseach on Thursday it doesn't automatically trigger a general election and we'll continue the work that we are doing to try to provide a government. "Fine Gael has put enormous effort in the last few weeks to form a government, initially with the independents and other parties. Haste "We made a really historic offer yesterday to Fianna Fail and independents to form a government and that work will continue. "We're very disappointed at the haste at which this offer was refused, but it does still stand and we'll continue to keep our door open to Fianna Fail and the Independents." Fianna Fail TDs have stood by their decision. Eamon O Cuiv said: "I think it's now accepted or, at least I hope it is, that there will be no Fianna Fail/Fine Gael coalition. Sometimes it takes a while for the truth to sink in. "I noticed Enda Kenny is still clinging forlornly to the hope that that's going to happen." A second general election has just become much more likely. That is the main upshot of Enda Kenny's grand coalition offer to Micheal Martin, which may have been historic but could never be taken at face value. In reality it was a clever ploy by the acting Taoiseach designed to put Fianna Fail on the back foot - and so far it is working like a dream. By all accounts, Martin went into Wednesday night's meeting expecting nothing more than a preliminary 'getting to know you' session. Instead he immediately found himself floored by a full-blown marriage proposal. Kenny seized the initiative with his suggestion of a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail "partnership government", handing out cabinet positions on a 50-50 basis and throwing in a few Independent TDs for good measure. Dramatic This dramatic scenario was soon dead in the water. By Thursday lunchtime the Fianna Fail parliamentary party had overwhelmingly rejected it, just as Kenny must have known they would. Even if Martin was tempted, any coalition deal has to be approved by a special party Ard Fheis - and all the evidence shows that most Soldiers of Destiny would rather swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen of England. So why did Enda bother? The balance of power in Leinster House is now so delicate that every action by its main players has to be examined for ulterior motives. When the wily French diplomat Talleyrand died in 1838, one of his rivals remarked, "I wonder what he meant by that?" - and many Fianna Failers are asking themselves the same question today. The answer lies in Kenny's full Wednesday night statement, which contained two equally important parts. As well as reaching out a hand of friendship to Fianna Fail, he made the stunning claim that a minority government led by either party simply will not work. In other words, Martin's refusal could make another general election more or less inevitable - with some TDs already marking May 27 in their diaries as a possible date. If Election 2016 Mark II does come to pass, then Fine Gael should be well placed to win the blame game. Their mantra will be: "We did our best to give you a stable government, but Fianna Fail threw it back in our face." Result Of course, there is still no guarantee that the voters would deliver a different result - but from Enda's point of view it might well be worth a try. This explains why the Taoiseach has been able to execute such a massive u-turn while keeping all of his own troops on board. It is just six weeks since an election campaign in which he repeatedly insisted that Fianna Fail were not fit to run a sweetshop. Now Kenny says he is willing to let them into Government Buildings - and even leadership rivals such as Leo Varadkar, Simon Coveney and Frances Fitzgerald are apparently right behind him. As a result, Micheal Martin has some serious thinking to do this weekend. The party has been left with three basic options - all of which are difficult, to say the least. One is for Martin to carry on with his attempts to form a minority government with Independents, even though it looks like a mathematical impossibility. Another is to offer support for a Fine Gael-led minority government, knocking the ball back into Kenny's court. Finally, Micheal could always say that he was a bit hasty in rejecting the Taoiseach's offer and suggest discussing it in more detail - which would be worth it if only to see the look on Enda's face. Charlie Haughey famously described his protege Bertie Ahern as "the most skilful, most devious and most cunning of them all". Enda Kenny's manoeuvres this week have shown that he is no slouch himself - but there is still a long way to go before he can lay claim to Bertie's title. ABINGDON, Va. BVU Authoritys former General Counsel Walt Bressler became the eighth person to plead guilty in the ongoing corruption case and the ninth conviction overall from an ongoing federal investigation. Bressler, 73, pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court to conspiracy to commit program fraud, the same charge applied Wednesday to former authority board Chairman Jim Clifton. The cases are related as the charge against Bressler involves his participation in a 2011 trip to Texas funded by a BVU vendor and a 2013 meeting during which board members agreed to offer a severance package to former CEO Wes Rosenbalm but not inform anyone about his potential wrongdoing. Bressler could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced July 11. He was released on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond. Mr. Bressler was the general counsel of BVU and the board of directors and executives of BVU looked to him for advice, Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary Lee said after the 30-minute hearing. He really failed, not only in giving that advice, but also participated in the crimes that he plead guilty to. Bressler joined BVU in 2008 and retired in March 2015. He began working there for $131,000 annually, received a $500 per month car allowance and during part of that time a membership at the Bristol Country Club. In September 2011, BVU negotiated and signed a $4.4 million contract with Alcatel-Lucent USA, a Texas-based electronics supplier to purchase components for a new IPTV system called Quantum Home. A provision of that deal was that the vendor would host a delegation of BVU officials, Lee said. Soliciting and accepting such benefits from a vendor or prospective vendor is expressly forbidden under the Virginia Procurement Act and occurred at a time when BVU was receiving millions in federal dollars from two federal programs. That trip occurred the first weekend in November. An itinerary provided by BVU showed the group, including Bressler, flew to Dallas on Nov. 5, received a limousine ride around the city and dinner. They took a limousine to Cowboy Stadium the following day for the game and were treated to dinner afterward. The group was transported by limousine to the companys Plano, Texas, facility on Nov. 7 to learn more about the system they were buying, to attend meetings and tour the facility. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were provided by the vendor and they departed on Nov. 8. The delegation received tickets valued at $475 each to view the game and visited a luxury suite, court records show. The vendor paid for the entire trip, including hotel and each individual received a value of $2,500 that should have been reported on individual federal income tax forms and state financial disclosure documents. Bressler, Rosenbalm, Clifton, former BVU board Chairman Paul Hurley, current Bristol Virginia Mayor Archie Hubbard a BVU board member at that time former board member Jim Rector and at least two current or former BVU employees made that trip. Board members Doug Fleenor, Ed Harlow and Jim Steele were invited but didnt attend. Bresslers charge also involves a Sept. 16, 2013, meeting during which the BVU board met in closed session to review allegations of wrongdoing by Rosenbalm. Such meetings arent typically recorded, Lee said, but the audio recorder was left on and prosecutors entered that as part of the cases against Bressler and Clifton. During the meeting, Bressler advised the board that Rosenbalm received tickets to a Cincinnati Bengals football game and a number of other sporting events. He also told them Rosenbalms actions were, at least, a misdemeanor. Rector, at one point in the conversation is heard saying, We all violated that when we went to Dallas. We all going to jail. They also discussed the possibility that other employees, including former Chief Financial Officer Stacey Pomrenke and former Vice President David Copeland could be involved in criminal activity with regard to receiving benefits. She was recently convicted on 14 federal counts, including program theft, conspiracy to commit tax fraud and wire fraud. Copeland pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering charges last year. The board ultimately agreed to provide Rosenbalm a severance package worth more than $269,000, but didnt contact law enforcement until board member Doug Fleenor broke the silence and notified officials in Washington County, Virginia. Former board member Faith Esposito, an attorney, voiced concern about reporting requirements of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Im also worried about the NTIT, NTIA reporting requirements worries me some because the vendors who didnt get those contracts, whether rightly or wrongly, are going to raise all kinds of ruckus, Esposito said. She also expressed concern about the U.S. attorneys office. So we have to be very careful what we say coming out of this board cause if you give the U.S. attorneys political corruption, thats their thing, Esposito said during the meeting. BVU notified the federal agency about issues on Feb. 28, 2015, court documents show. Bressler confirmed to the board that Rosenbalms actions were criminal. Well Ill be perfectly honest, Bressler told the board. Weve got a misdemeanor violation. Randy Ramseyer [assistant U.S. attorney] gets a hold of it, hell do wire fraud, mail fraud Another board member can be heard saying that the U.S. attorneys office would light it up. On Thursday, the prosecutor expressed concern about the boards actions. What Mr. Bressler and Mr. Clifton plead guilty to wasnt just not bringing it to law enforcement but proactively concealing it; trying to ensure that it didnt come to law enforcements attention, Lee said. Its clearly very concerning to us. It shows the depth of fraud that was occurring at BVU and obviously weve done our best to try to get to the bottom of it. Kind of a drag if you miss The Buckinghams concert Wednesday The Buckinghams, a Chicago-based pop rock band that exploded onto the charts in 1967 with Kind of a Drag, are coming to the Maryland Theatre. Will high school cross country competition be different in 2023? Proposal calls for elimination of one postseason race, leaving several options for new format and what that might mean for small schools Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president and founder of Proclaiming Justice to The Nations (PJTN) was awarded as one of the Algemeiner's "100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life in 2015" at the organization's annual gala dinner in New York on March 28th, 2016 (algemeiner2015list). Cardoza-Moore was recognized in the Activism and Innovation category, for her tireless nationwide campaign against BDS and global anti-Semitism, in addition to her humanitarian work on behalf of minorities and women as a Special Envoy to the United Nations. Cardoza-Moore was proudly listed alongside Prime Minister Netanyahu, Rupert Murdoch, Elie Wiesel, Marvin Heir, Natan Sharansky, Bernard Lewis, Rush Limbaugh, and Sheldon Adelson among others. Laurie Cardoza-Moore stated "I am humbled and honored to receive recognition from my Jewish colleagues on The Algemeiner's editorial team of scholars and experts. Our global mission to educate Christians about their biblical responsibility to stand with our Jewish brethren and Israel could not be possible without my devoted team of Jewish and Christian Board members and donors, my staff and my Emmy Award winning husband, Stan Moore. Over the last 11 years, PJTN has produced award winning documentaries and programs and distributed them through our global Christian media partners at the National Religious Broadcaster's Convention. This partnership has enabled PJTN to air our media in over 200 nations, reaching over 950 million viewers globally. G-d willing, we will reach millions more in the coming years." Proclaiming Justice to The Nations (PJTN), a 501c3 non-profit organization, that utilizes powerful film and video presentations, a variety of grassroots rallies, events and speaking engagements to facilitate dialogue between the Christian and Jewish communities in support of the State of Israel and against global genocidal anti-Semitism. In recent months the organization has led the struggle against BDS in America with a wave of state resolutions and the upcoming release of a new documentary film that will expose the truth behind the BDS movement. It's long overdue... I read this in the new issue of World Jewish Congress (WJC) digest and with all the news about terrorism and terrorist attacks lately, I decided to pass it along to you: "According to the state-run Saudi Press Agency, Saudi Arabia has formed an anti-terror coalition of 34 Muslim nations, a new Saudi-led 'Islamic military alliance,' to fight terrorism with a joint operations center based in the capital city of Riyadh. The statement released stressed that terrorism 'should be fought by all means and collaboration should be made to eliminate it.' It further noted that Islam forbids 'corruption and destruction in the world' and that terrorism constitutes 'a serious violation of human dignity and rights, especially the right to life and the right to security.' The new counterterrorism coalition will include nations with large and established armies, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, as well as war-torn countries with embattled militaries, such as Libya and Yemen. African nations that have suffered terrorist attacks, such as Mali, Chad, Somalia and Nigeria, are also members. Iran is not part of the coalition. At a press conference, Saudi Defense Minister MOHAMMED bin SALMAN said the new Islamic military coalition would develop mechanisms for working with other countries and international bodies to support counterterrorism efforts. He said their efforts would not be limited to only countering the Islamic State terror group. 'Currently, every Muslim country is fighting terrorism.'" (This is the complete word for word article.) We lost a true talent... I am referring to comedian Gary Shandling who passed away recently at the age of 66. Gary Emmanuel Shandling died a couple of weeks ago very unexpectedly. He was an American comedian, actor, writer, producer and director. He was best known for his work on The Gary Shandling Show and The Larry Sanders Show. He was loved and respected by all of his peers and much of his audience. He will be missed. Speaking of super-talent... One of the best musicians I have ever worked with, here in town and in New York City, is without a doubt MICHAEL KRAMER. He is among the best pianists ever and also the father of another super-talent I've had the pleasure of performing with both here and in New York City, bassist BEN KRAMER. The two talents plus fabulous GREG PARNELL on drums and VALERIE GILLESPIE on sax will be performing at the Altamonte Chapel on Sunday, April 24th from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. According to our own wonderful ALAN ROCK, who emcees, "Michael always gets rave reviews every time he performs. Don't miss this one." The Altamonte Chapel is located at 825 East S.R. 436 in Altamonte Springs. The phone number is 407-339-5208. (I will remind readers as the date gets closer.) Everyone who know me knows this... I love dogs better than people! (Unconditional love.) I recently received this email from DANIELLE WOLFE, another dog lover, and I pass it along to you: "I'm so excited that you want to write an article about my sweet chihuahua, Lolita. My grandma said to send you a list of some of her accomplishments and a photo. She has won the Park Avenue costume contest two years in a row in the category of "Most Original," beating out over 100 dogs. She was also the cover dog for the event two years ago. She was featured on the event posters that covered Winter Park and was on the gigantic banner that hung over the stage during the event. She won the Growl-o-Ween costume contest, put on by The Daily City two years in a row as well, beating out 40 dogs. Last year, she entered a contest to be in the pet issue of Orlando Magazine and won enough votes. She received a full-page feature and photo shoot in the magazine. She is also in the 2016 nationally distributed Evangers Pet food calendar. She has also won best costume at the Bark n' Brew festival and at Animal Eye Associates. She also has a popular instagram account with over 900 followers where she shows off her fabulous outfits. Her instagram name is @LolitaTheFashionista." (I am in love with Lolita!) A Shout Out... Ben Kramer, Michael Kramer and Greg Parnell. Members of St. Mary Magdalen Church, 861 Maitland Avenue and Spring Lake, held a wonderful seder recently, complete with all the special foods, Hebrew songs and even a hora! It was a great experience and so well done. I was made to feel welcome by the members. Thank you all. One for the road... Leah phones her husband at work, "Izzy, do you have time for a chat?" "Sorry, darling, this is not a good time-I'm about to go into a board meeting." "But this won't take long," Leah says, "I just want to tell you some good news and some bad news." "I really haven't the time," says Izzy, "so just quickly tell me the good news." "Oh all right then. The air bag on your new Lexus works very well." Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn), joined by Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Queens) and Sen. Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn), called for the immediate suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine from City University of New York college campuses on Tuesday in light of several incidents that have left many Jews feeling fearful and intimidated by the actions of SJP across college campuses nationwide. In writing a letter to CUNY Chancellor James Milliken that garnered the support of 33 elected officials from both Republicans and Democrats, Assemblyman Hikind reiterated the importance of suspending the toxic organization. SJPs actions and statements throughout CUNY institutions, as well as at universities and colleges throughout the country have shown the true nature and belief of the groupnothing short of the total destruction and elimination of the State of Israel, Hikind wrote in the letter. Instead of promoting understanding and co-existence between Arab and Jew, the Jewish State is routinely compared to Nazi Germany and is demonized with false statements and rhetoric. SJP may claim to be an advocate for the Palestinian people and their human rights, but a closer a look at their rhetoric and actions counter that motion. Many Jewish students and faculty members have complained on several occasions of being fearful for their personal safety and well-being, with unfortunately some rhetoric taking a violent turn. Students have reported being pushed, spat upon and having objects thrown at them. Its not about an issue of freedom of speech, its about intimidation and fear. Assemblyman David Weprin, who signed the letter in support of the suspension, echoed Hikinds remarks, saying acts of hate and anti-Semitism have no place in our community of civility and mutual respect. Recent acts by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on CUNY campuses across the city leave Jewish and pro-Israel students living in a culture of silence and fear. The inciteful speech promoted by SJP and its supporters silences critical and open thought while limiting the free exchange of ideas. Hate Speech is not Free Speech and I call on CUNY to keep their campuses hate-free by taking concrete action on SJP. Students for Justice in Palestine continue to stroke the flames of hatred and encourage violence and harassment against Jewish students only to see the CUNY administration respond weakly to these hate-filled acts, Hikind continued. Assemblyman Hikind, who publicly demanded for the establishment of a task force to probe anti-Semitism in CUNY, applauded the efforts and follow-through in the administrations investigation, but proposed taking concrete steps against this hostile environment. We call for the immediate suspension of the Student for Justice of Palestine from City University of New York campuses, sending a clear and unequivocal message that hatred and bias have no home at CUNY, Hikind added. No funding should be rewarded to a group that engages in incitement and intimidation. Memorial tributes for the victims of the Brussels terrorist attacks at the Place de la Bourse in the capital, March 22, 2016. (JTA)-In the wake of last week's terror attack in Brussels, Belgians transformed a central square in the capital into an impromptu memorial for the victims. Thirty-five people died Tuesday in a series of suicide bombings at the city's main airport and a subway station. Starting the next day, people gathered in Place de La Bourse and lit candles amid spontaneous singing and guitar playing of French-language songs about peace, along with some Beatles hits for good measure. Locals and foreigners filled part of the square with candles and flags from dozens of countries. Amid the display of national and international unity, a few people went out of their way to exclude Israel. In at least three incidents captured on video last week, people speaking Arabic or wearing Muslim garb destroyed, removed or covered up Israeli flags at Place de la Bourse. In an incident Sunday around noon, locals intervened. A crowd confronted a man who, after praying in Arabic, shouted "Palestine" and anti-Israel slogans-calling Israel a "terrorist state." The incident was caught on video. The white-haired man, wearing a head covering favored by North African Muslims, stepped on other flags and candles in an effort to reach an Israeli flag located near the center of the memorial site. Dozens of Belgians began booing him. Several shouted in Flemish and French: "Shameful!" Others shouted in French: "Everyone!" in a call for others to join the booing. When the man grabbed the Israeli flag, another man shoved him to the ground and wrestled it from his hands amid applause from onlookers. Two police officers made their way to the scene, and after a short exchange, escorted the shouting man away from the memorial. When the man again shouted in Arabic, one of the officers shoved him. It was not the first time mourners at Place de La Bourse intervened to stop attempts to remove Israeli flags. In another incident after the bombing, two Arabic-speaking men who covered an Israeli flag with a Palestinian flag were confronted by a third man who was filmed saying in French: "This is an apolitical place, don't do this." Gil Taieb, a vice president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, said that even bloodless insults against symbols must not be tolerated at a time when the West is grappling with killers who are waging a war of symbols. "After each attack, we are shocked by the horror and cry for victims of all confessions," he wrote in an Op-Ed published Sunday on the news website Le Monde Juif.info about the incidents at Place de la Bourse. "Each time, we hope and wait for a uniform line the only rampart against barbarism." But anti-Israel actions like those in Brussels crack the unity Europe finds after terror attacks, he added, recalling the January 2015 slaying in Paris of 17 people at the Charlie Hebdo weekly, including several Jews and police officers, and the Hyper Cacher kosher market. Those attacks prompted millions to march under the banner "I am Charlie" and "I'm a police officer." Anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, Taieb wrote, "remind us they do not consider us to be like the rest, and that whether we are in Paris, Tunisia, Bamako, Brussels, whether we are Charlie or police officers, we will forever be but Jews and Israel to them." While disturbing to many, the drama around the Israeli flags pales in comparison to violence that broke out at Place de la Bourse on Sunday, when police dispersed a group of black-clad men who had mounted the steps of the stock exchange in the square and started chanting slogans against the Islamic State. Some members of the group were seen making Nazi salutes, confronting ethnic minorities and throwing flares. Congregation Beth Sholom invites the community to celebrate the Jewish festival of Passover at a second night Seder on Saturday, April 23. The Seder, led by Rabbi Karen Allen, re-tells the story of the Exodus with the reading of the Haggadah and explains why we eat matzah and bitter herbs and why we dip our vegetables and eat while sitting on a cushion or reclining. The evening continues with a catered and kosher traditional festive meal and, of course, songs. There is a choice of 4 entrees, including Vegan, and chicken fingers for children 6-12. Join us in reliving the Exodus experience at Pennbrooke Fairways, 501 State Road 44 in Leesburg at 5:30 p.m. Cost is $36 per person and $15 for children 6-12, free for children 5 and under. Reservations must be made in advanceno later than April 9th. Information and a reservation form can be found on the synagogue website: http://www.bethsholomflorida.org or telephone Burt Kraft at 352-513-3517. The Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando (JFGO) has formally launched an ambitious campaign aimed at retiring $4.5 million in debt that saddles the Central Florida Jewish community's core asset, the Maitland Jewish Community Campus. The goal of the campaign, called Campus 2020, is to retire the debt before Jan. 1, 2020. Early elimination of the debt will result in annual savings of more than $381,000 to the Jewish community. The Roth Family Jewish Community Center and the Jewish Academy of Orlando, both of which call the Maitland campus home, have taken on strategic fundraising roles for the campaign. Michael Soll, vice president and immediate past president of the JFGO Board of Directors, is the chairman of the Campus 2020 campaign and has spearheaded its planning, which began with consultations in spring 2014. "The vision of Campus 2020 is to secure the campus and its critical role as the nucleus of our community so that it can continue to foster our vibrancy for generations to come," Soll said. "The insights that our community leaders shared with me during the consultation stage of Campus 2020 were invaluable, and I'm confident our campaign will be successful, in large part as a result of this input." On March 27, JFGO convened the first meeting of the Campus 2020 Advisory Board on the Maitland campus. The board was briefed on the Campus 2020 strategy and schedule, and reviewed marketing materials for the campaign. Members of the Campus 2020 Advisory Board are Dick and Dottie Appelbaum; Neal Crasnow and Dr. Susan Drukman; Allan and Diane Goldberg; Joe and Anita Hara; Mark and Caryn Israel; Julian and Sheryl Meitin; Ron and Mardi Shader; and Dr. Edward and Phyllis Zissman. Two key organizations are playing vital leadership roles in Campus 2020. The Harris Rosen Foundation has seeded the debt elimination effort through $1 million in matching grants. The $500,000 proceeds from the 2014 sale of the Jack and Lee Rosen Southwest Campus to the Rosen Foundation are also being applied to the debt. The Jewish Capital Alliance (JCA) has pledged $300,000 in matching funds at 60 cents per dollar, as well as $100,000 in bonus matching gifts that will benefit local agencies. For each dollar donated to Campus 2020 through a qualified Jewish agency or organization, JCA will provide an additional 20-cent matching gift that will be paid directly to the agency/organization that is designated by the Campus 2020 donor. The participation of the Rosen Foundation and JCA has moved the finish line considerably closer for JFGO. "We are looking at an overall debt of $4.5 million," Soll said, "but thanks to the generosity of the Harris Rosen Foundation and JCA, and taking into account regularly scheduled principal payments that will continue through this campaign, we need to raise and collect about $2.3 million in order to be debt-free by 2020." The debt as it stands today is the cumulative result of major campus expansion projects that were undertaken more than a decade ago, along with associated fees and existing mortgages on the property. A capital campaign to finance campus expansion brought in pledges totaling $9.29 million vs. a total project cost of $13.86 million (a shortfall of $4.57 million). More than $2 million in pledges were not honored, adding significantly to the campus debt burden. As a condition of accepting the Rosen Foundation matching grant for Campus 2020, JFGO has committed in writing that it will not borrow money for any capital improvements for 10 years following retirement of the debt. Aside from fundraising, one of the key goals of the Campus 2020 campaign is getting the message out that there are substantial and tangible benefits that will result from eliminating the debt early vs. continuing to pay down the debt on its existing schedule, which would likely require refinancing the remaining debt early in the next decade. A successful Campus 2020 campaign eliminates that specter of uncertainty. "From the Federation's standpoint, the cost of carrying the debt limits the resources that can be invested in our community," JFGO Executive Director Olga Yorish said. "This annual debt obligation consumes funds that could otherwise be used for programs and services that directly benefit Jews, or for upgrades and improvements to the physical facilities on campus." In addition, Yorish noted, The Roth Family JCC and the JAO must devote valuable staff hours each year for fundraising just to maintain existing programs and services, often at the cost of forgoing potential outreach to underserved members of the community. The JCC and JAO contribute a combined $278,000 annually in campus finance obligations. Rhonda Forest, chair of the JFGO Board of Directors, said freeing the campus of its debt obligations early will be a game-changer for the Jewish community. "A debt-free campus is an empowered one," Forest said. "Retiring the debt by 2020 will allow all of our campus agencies to fully dedicate themselves to their missions, rather than devoting resources to capital campaigns and debt payments." The first phase of Campus 2020 will focus on major gifts, with the public phase beginning in early 2017. "The Jewish Community Campus represents more than just a place to go," Soll said. "As each generation redefines the uses on campus, and its tenancy, it remains the singular shared asset of the Orlando Jewish community, the place that is always there for us regardless of where we are in life, the place that is always our Central Florida home. " More information can be found at http://www.jfgo.org/2020. WASHINGTONToday, Hillel International announced the 20 Hillels across North America that will host the first cohort of Springboard Fellows next fall. From urban centers in New York and Los Angeles to smaller towns in Urbana, IL and State College, PA, these Hillels represent a cross section of Jewish life on campus, and the perfect laboratories to train the next generation of Jewish professionals. Approximately 20 fellows, who will come to these campuses next fall, will receive hands-on mentorship, competitive compensation and dynamic professional development from local and national Hillel staff and experts from across the corporate and non-profit worlds as they pursue a two-year fellowship in either innovation or social media. The host Hillels have generously committed to pay a portion of the fellows salaries and provide these young leaders with excellent supervision along with the opportunity to experiment, grow and flourish on campus. Weve been overwhelmed by the interest weve received from Hillel campuses around the country, said Mimi Kravetz, Hillel Internationals Chief Talent Officer, who is overseeing the Springboard Fellowship. Our professional leaders on campus recognize the essential need to bring these new skills to campus through attracting top notch young professionals, and finding a new way to teach them critical skills while also fostering their love of the Jewish community. Thats why so many have stepped up to sponsor the first cohort of Springboard Fellows. Hillels who will be hosting Springboard Fellows in Innovation are: Queens College Hillel, New York, NY; Hillel at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA; The Ohio State University Hillel, Columbus, OH; Beach Hillel, Long Beach, CA; Brody Jewish Center, Hillel at University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA; UC San Diego Hillel, San Diego, CA; Vanderbilt Hillel, Nashville, TN; Hillel of Colorado, Denver, CO; George Washington University Hillel, Washington, DC; Penn State Hillel, State College, PA; Maryland Hillel, College Park, MD; Hillel at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ; and Helene G. Simon Hillel Center At Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Hillels who will be hosting Springboard Fellows in Social Media are: Central Florida Hillel, Oviedo, FL; Princeton Hillel, Center for Jewish Life, Princeton, NJ; Hillel Ontario, Toronto, Ontario; Hillel 818, Los Angeles, CA; University of Delaware, Newark, DE; Cohen Center Hillel at the University of Illinois, Champaign, IL; and The Bronfman Center at New York University, New York, NY. The fellowship, which was announced by Hillel International last month, is a new approach to attracting and training high-quality young professionals and strengthening the pipeline of young talent to organizations throughout the Jewish community. In this Aleph or pilot year, 20 recent college graduates will work in the areas of social media and innovation while honing those areas of expertise and forming a commitment to the Jewish community through Jewish learning and direct service to one of the sponsoring campuses. Fellowship participants will be jointly funded by Hillel International and by the local Hillel campuses that they serve. The fellowship launch is made possible in large part by a generous gift from the Pittsburgh-based Beacon and Shapira Foundations. For more information about the Springboard Fellowship visit: http://www.hillel.org/springboard NEW YORKKnown as the most coveted season in Israel, spring boasts cool breezes, wild flowers blooming and savings on EL AL Israel Airlines nonstop flights from all USA gateway cities. The special roundtrip airfare is $899 on nonstop flights from New York (JFK/Newark) and Boston for departures from May 11 through June 15, 2016. From Los Angeles, the roundtrip fare is $1,069 and is available for travel May 8-June 7, 2016. (Prices include all taxes & carrier imposed surcharges.) For Matmid as well as Executive and Premium Tier Frequent Flyer Club members, EL AL is offering a spring bonus promotion with excellent savings for travel April 1-June 30, 2016 in economy and business class from any of the airlines USA gateway cities. Reservations and ticketing must be completed by April 17, 2016. Another new benefit to all Matmid frequent flyers is that the number of points required for the money plus points upgrade from Economy to Business or Business to First Class has decreased. Through October 29, 2016, EL AL offers 30 weekly nonstop flights between the USA and Israel, with 22 every week from New York (JFK/Newark) as well as the only nonstop flights from Boston (three weekly) and five from Los Angeles. To purchase any spring promotion or find out more information about any special savings, visit http://www.elal.com, call (800) 223-6700 or contact any travel agent. Learn more about special promotions, special events in Israel and useful travel tips by joining the airline on Facebook (ELALIsraelAirlinesUSA) and Twitter (@ELALUSA). American journalist Liz Wahl was welcomed by the University of Central Florida pro-Israel student group Knights for Israel on the evening of March 28, where she discussed the seriousness of world media's heavy hand in global action on many issues, including in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Wahl has experience with this media power, be that power positive or negative, as she gained notoriety for resigning from the often challenged news agency Russia Today in the midst of their extremely biased coverage of Russia's war with Ukraine in the Crimean Peninsula. She interrupted her normal newscast and resigned live, on-air, while denouncing RT's "active censoring of facts," on March 5, 2014. At UCF, the March 28 program began with showing a short documentary featuring Wahl and created in cooperation with Jerusalem U, a Jewish Educational Organization, called "Media 101: Reading Between the Lines." The film covers a trip that Wahl took to Israel, where she investigated the media bias in the world's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What Wahl found in her Israel trip was that the accurate story out of the Middle East is so much more complex than that which is presented by world media. As she emphasized, "It's just so complicated." In the Jerusalem U documentary, Wahl interviewed fellow journalists who echoed her sentiments, including former Associated Press correspondent Matti Friedman. Friedman emphasized the obscenely disproportionate media coverage given to Israel and the Palestinians' conflict, versus, say, Afghanistan, and stated that the reason for this media obsession is that, in Israel, it is precisely such the opposite of the common, oversimplified narrative- and safe- so that the story is able to be spun as an "easy conflict to cover," with a story of a "David and Goliath" that is just so attractive to the collective reasoning of world media. Wahl's solution to this serious problem of global action falling prey to journalistic convenience centers on the appropriate wielding of the acronym "CLUMSY"-Censorship, Local Fixers, Unconscious biases, Media outlets, Social Media and You-and these elements represent the forces that interact to shape a story. According to Wahl, through the understanding of these six roles, we "all can play a part in being an active user" of world media and counteracting the self-destructive tendencies inherent in ignoring the truth. As Wahl stated, citing the Russian propaganda effort in their war against Ukraine, "Media can be a weapon." Part of the push bringing Wahl went from RT to Israel, as featured in the Jerusalem U documentary, was the fact that in the wake of her resignation from RT she was accused of being a part of a, variously termed "neocon," Zionist and/or Jewish plot. She is not a member of such plot and no such entity exists, but she was intrigued as to how such blatant bias that disregarded the truth would surface, leading to her collaboration with Jerusalem U. Wahl also took questions from the audience, discussing her own personal background knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which she termed as "basic" prior to her Israel visit, and she also answered to the important question of whether journalists can or should ever be definitive in their personal stance on certain issues. According to Wahl, the answer to the latter question is definitely yes, since some things are so "morally egregious" that journalists "must" take a stand. Special thanks goes to Ben Suster and Knights for Israel, and Jerusalem U, CAMERA on Campus, and the Zionist Organization of America, who all worked together to bring Wahl to Central Florida. After UCF, Wahl went on to the University of South Florida, where she continued her efforts to spread awareness of media bias and appropriate ways to confront such bias. Caleb R. Newton is a global affairs analyst living in Central Florida and the founder of Global News Breakdown. Find him at Bipartisan Report, Dissecting Society, and the Times of Israel. Contact him at calebrnewton@globalnewsbreakdown.com. OCALAThe Chabad Jewish Center of Ocala and The Villages plans to distribute hand-made Shmurah Matzah this year to help local Jews participate in the upcoming Passover holiday. Passover, celebrated this year from Friday night, April 22, until after nightfall on Saturday, April 30, commemorates the exodus of the Jews from Egypt in 1313 BCE. Directed by G-d to leave Egypt hastily, the people of Israel could not wait for their dough to rise, and thus ate unleavened crackers called matzah. Round, kneaded and shaped by hand, present day Shmurah Matzahs (lit. watched matzahs) are similar to those eaten by the Jews when leaving Egypt over 3000 years ago. From the moment the wheat is harvested, the ingredients are carefully watched to ensure that they do not become leavened, which would be prohibited on Passover. The local effort is part of a global Passover campaign that began in 1954, when the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of blessed memory, considered the most influential rabbi in modern history, launched the Shmurah Matzah initiative as part of an effort to create awareness and promote observance of the holiday. An estimated four million hand-baked Shmurah Matzahs will be distributed by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement this year. This years Passover celebrations also bring added significance as Jewish communities worldwide celebrate the year of Hakhel, a once-every-seven-years opportunity to celebrate Jewish unity and learning. The Rebbe taught that no solitary Jewish person ought to be left out. Every Jew, regardless of their background, affiliation or even location, should have access to the provisions they need to celebrate Passover, said Chabad Rabbi Yossi Hecht, director at the Chabad Jewish Center. Chabad of Ocala and The Villlages has also set up a website http://www.JewishMarion.org/Passover where additional Shmurah Matzah can be obtained. These and are other site features such as a menu planner, house cleaning checklist and Seder how-to guide, will help to ease Passover preparations, while the sites fun and educational activities such as the interactive seder plate keep the kids busy. Local philanthropist and entrepreneur Alan Ginsburg and his family honored his late son and daughter-in-law with the creation of the Jeffrey & Diane Ginsburg Center for Jewish Student Life at Central Florida Hillel. Jeffrey Ginsburg was one of the founding board members of Central Florida Hillel, and his wife Diane served on the board years later. They are survived by their son Joseph, who was on hand for the ribbon cutting on April 3. Attendees to the naming ceremony and ribbon cutting included special guests Sidney Pertnoy, chairman of the Board of Hillel International; Dr. John C. Hitt, president of UCF; Dr. Wendy, president of Stetson University; and Dr. Grant Cornwell, president of Rollins College. Alan Ginsburg is the main benefactor behind NorthView, the 600,000 square-foot luxury student-housing complex managed by UCF and located across the street from the university. NorthView houses Central Florida Hillel, the Catholic Campus Ministry and The Pantry, Floridas only restaurant that is certified Kosher and Halal. This is a wonderful opportunity to commemorate Jeffrey and Dianes commitment to building a dynamic and vibrant Jewish community for Jewish college students in our community, said Russell Goldberg, chairman of the Board of Central Florida Hillel. As the largest Hillel in the State of Florida, this naming opportunity presents our staff and student leaders with an incredible opportunity to honor our founders. This is also the perfect opportunity to mesh Jeffrey and Dianes commitment to higher education and to building a vibrant Jewish community, says Aaron Weil, executive director and CEO of Central Florida Hillel. CFH is the focal point for more than 6,000 Jewish university students at UCF, Rollins College and Stetson University. As the umbrella organization for all Jewish student life, CFH is home to the second largest Jewish collegiate population outside of the State of Israel. Hillels mission is to be a catalyst for transformational growth as an individual and as a Jew. Hillel student leaders, professionals and lay leaders are dedicated to creating a pluralistic, welcoming and inclusive environment for Jewish college students. At CFH students are encouraged to grow intellectually, spiritually and socially and to find a balance in being distinctively Jewish and universally human. To learn more visit http://www.CentralFloridaHillel.org or call 407.382.2658. Greater Orlandos Chapter of the Jewish National Funds Young Professionals Group, JNFutures, continues to grow, now having held their second installment of Hands-on Hebrew, a highly interactive and social Hebrew language and culture learning experience based out of Chabad of OTown in Downtown Orlando. The Hebrew classes have attracted up to almost two dozen people as of their most recent one on March 29, and the participants have had a great time sharing food and the experience of learning Hebrew nouns and verbs. At the first class, held two weeks prior to the most recent one, students consisting of all sorts of young professionals from Central Florida went on a scavenger hunt around Lake Eola, snapping photos of objects that were the definitions of the classs chosen Hebrew words. At the second class on March 29 participants shared a dinner and reviewed the words from two weeks prior. Everyone then participated in a game to make the most sentences in English with the Hebrew words being studied integrated in. Now, the fun is, of course, fun, but there is more to the story. JNFutures aims to address the danger of developing the problem of a lack of interest in pro-Israel leadership among the young population of Central Florida and elsewhere. This developing leadership is not intended to be political, and neither is the Jewish National Fund or JNFutures. Instead, it is focused on strengthening the people of Israel, whatever their origin may be, through projects that address issues of the social and economic kind, like the plight of the disabled and poor. JNFutures has already held events in Central Florida such as the recent evening with Yedidya Harush, an activist born in the formerly existing Jewish community of Gush Katif in what is now known as the Gaza Strip, back on Feb. 2. There is a tentative date set for April 20 or 21 to host an evening with an Israeli comedian, and more Hebrew classes will be held every two weeks. You can connect with JNFutures Orlando Group on Facebook, or contact Caleb Newton, Chapter liaison, at calebrnewton@globalnewsbreakdown.com, for more information. Muslim education in North America is generally flexible and tolerant, according to a new study, with a notable exception when it comes to Israel JERUSALEM (JTA)-It might appear churlish to criticize the teaching of Islamic studies in America. After all, "Between Sharia and Democracy: Islamic Education in North America," a just-released study by Impact-SE, finds that the most widely used Islamic textbooks published in the United States are generally free of imagery and ideologies that generate prejudice or contempt for others. They aim to present Islam as harmonious with many aspects of Western society and, in the main, with UNESCO's standards of tolerance in education. But it is not unreasonable to expect more, and particularly to ask why these curricula draw the line of tolerance and educational decency when it comes to references to Israel. The report, edited by Dr. Eldad Pardo of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, examined five Islamic studies curricula, all of which are based on orthodox Sharia (Islamic law). Four of the five curricula come from publishers in the United States and one in Saudi Arabia by the Canadian author Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips. They are used in 244 schools across the U.S. and 28 in Canada. The Bilal Philips curriculum ought not to be taught in the U.S., Canada or anywhere else. While the new study estimates it is used in only around a half-dozen North American schools, the texts are available online to all. The curriculum associates the West with social ills and immorality, portrays Muslims as under constant threat, and advocates for the imposition of Islam while viewing Judaism and Christianity antagonistically. This is clearly not acceptable. The U.S.-published curricula used in the majority of schools encourage good citizenship and partnership in American economic and public life. Loyalty to Sharia Islam translates into discipline, brotherhood, support for Muslims, "Muslim causes" and commitment to the worldwide Ummah (Muslim community). Teachers are encouraged by the curricula to present the notion of competing narratives among nations, national groups and monotheistic religions and to cultivate their awareness. They generally remain friendly to Judaism and Christianity as monotheistic faiths, though ancient antipathies toward the former and some suspicion toward theological aspects of the latter remain. All is not rosy. There exists a clear "us versus them" paradigm that unfortunately also rejects a more liberal Islam. As the study makes clear, the textbooks do not glorify war or promote violence as a means of resolving conflicts. They do, however, teach about military jihad and episodes of past acts of Islamic heroism. We believe the curricula should unconditionally reject violent jihad and work emphatically to discourage participation in jihadi activities around the world. But if in juggling between Sharia and Western values, the most popular American Islamic studies curricula for the most part manages to keep the balls in the air, they crash to the ground when it comes to Israel. With a bias that resembles unreconstructed Arab League propaganda, these curricula present Israel as a usurper-certainly not a depiction fit for schools in America. There are calls for political activism against Israel, which is sometimes referred to as Palestine. They even omit Israel from some maps and deny Jews any historic claims to the land. Even Egyptian books, which Impact-SE continues to monitor, are better. The North American curricula offer, at best, a simplistic, one-sided and unhelpful narrative that demonizes Israel. Even worse, they also miss a great opportunity. There is no mention of peace efforts, including the Oslo Accords, no discussion of peaceful solutions. Imagine if instead of rubbing Israel off maps and rewriting history, a discussion was opened up for young American Muslims that peace between Israel and Palestinians is both possible and desirable, despite being complicated and difficult to achieve-and that there are competing narratives, national claims and chronicles of wrongs on both sides. It is no surprise that under the current climate, when American Jewish and Muslim students meet on campus, the result is too often strident opposition and occasionally violence by some Muslim students toward those students who advocate for a negotiated two-state solution. Education has a special role in society. There is trust in its veracity; those who deliver it have authority and it is usually managed by state institutions. That's why it is so important that impressionable students, absorbing what is taught to them, are prepared for futures of hope in the classroom, not hate and incitement. As this week's attacks in Brussels show, Islamic terror has again struck in Europe with devastating results. The education of young Muslims across the world is saturated enough with biased historical narratives and hatred of the Other. Young Muslims in America could instead be taking the lead in combating extremism and in engaging partners in the kind of dialogue that can build bridges of understanding and coexistence. Marcus Sheff is CEO of Impact SE, an international organization founded in 1998 and based in Jerusalem that researches education throughout the world to determine compliance with UNESCO-defined standards on peace and tolerance. He tweets at @marcusjsheff. WASHINGTON (JTA)-You get to listen to Jews yelling at you. You get to listen to mandarins tell you why they won't listen to Jews. You get to emcee a cappella competitions. Who wouldn't want to be White House Jewish liaison? Matt Nosanchuk lasted nearly three years in a post-officially titled associate director of public engagement-that may be the apotheosis of thanklessness. He stepped down last week. Notably, Nosanchuk wound it up with plenty of thanks from some of those who made clear their antipathy to the administration he represented. One email said: "Matt. Best of luck. You were always gracious and a wonderful listener. Obama is fortunate to have you." That was from Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America and one of the Obama administration's most lacerating critics. Klein confirmed he sent the missive, which JTA obtained independently of Nosanchuk or Klein. "Matt always took my calls, returned my calls, he listened to my concerns and responded respectfully, obviously supporting Obama, that's his job," Klein said. "Obama was lucky to have him." Nosanchuk's key to lasting longer than his predecessors? It was his preternatural ability to listen without judgment, according to Rabbi Levi Shemtov, who directs American Friends of Lubavitch, Chabad's office here. "Matt's biggest strength might just be his ability to listen to opinions beyond his own or that of the administration and appreciate their merits," Shemtov said. "That's probably why he was so widely respected during his tenure." It's a skill that guided Nosanchuk, 50, who lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., through some of the most fraught years of a fraught relationship among the Obama administration, the Israeli government and some organized Jewish groups. He took flak both from the Jewish community and, occasionally, the administration officials to whom he would relay Jewish community concerns. Nosanchuk led outreach to the Jewish community during the talks over the Iran nuclear deal, which the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee adamantly opposed, as well as the 2013-14 U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which collapsed in recriminations among all sides. Throughout, he maintained friendly relationships with the antagonists in those battles, testified by rare on-the-record praise from AIPAC and Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to Washington. "The embassy enjoyed working with Matt, who also attended many of our events, and I wish him much success in the future," Dermer told JTA in an email. "We are grateful to Matt for his strong efforts to build the relationship between the administration and the pro-Israel community," said Marshall Wittmann, AIPAC's spokesman. Nosanchuk would make a beeline for his adversaries in hopes of winning them over. At a recent conference of the Israeli-American Council, he sat at the same table as Sheldon Adelson-the council's funder along with being a Republican kingmaker-and made pleasant small talk. Adelson, a casino magnate, had gone to great lengths in 2012 to stop President Barack Obama's reelection. In a biographical sketch he sent friends as he readied to leave, Nosanchuk listed near the top, "keeping lines of communication open with those in the community who are critical of" Obama. (Toward the end, he also lists "Emceed Kol HaOlam Jewish a cappella singing group competition.") Nosanchuk, a member of the Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in suburban Washington and a gay man, came to the job experienced in negotiating change in less than amenable environments. As a Justice Department official, he advocated for LGBT rights in the first Obama term, which evolved from agnosticism on same-sex marriage to full-throated support of marriage equality. "When you are at the White House, it is very easy to shut the door and say we will not meet with people who do not agree with us," said William Daroff, the Washington director of the Jewish Federations of North America. "The White House under Matt never shut the door. He made sure the Iran deal was in a silo, so those who disagreed on Iran could work with the administration on 99 other issues. His personality and relationships were such that that open door was always there." The JFNA did not take a position on the Iran deal, but many of its constituent agencies were opposed. Nosanchuk's modus operandi was to frame contentious issues in familiar, even homey settings. At the height of the Iran debate a year ago, Nosanchuk organized Obama's speech at Adas Israel, a Washington synagogue. He also set up the president's online address to the Jewish community during the Iran debate through the JFNA. In 2013, for the first time, a sukkah was in place for the vice president's annual Jewish community reception. A signal of the post-Iran deal reconciliation between Obama and Netanyahu-and Dermer, Netanyahu's right-hand man-was the president's Holocaust memorial address in January at the Israeli Embassy, also brokered by Nosanchuk. Nosanchuk's last week was a busy one. In addition to organizing a Purim Megillah reading for administration officials at the White House's Diplomatic Reception Room, he shepherded Vice President Joe Biden's well-received March 20 valedictory speech to AIPAC's annual policy conference. Less noticed was a speech delivered the next day by Tony Blinken, the deputy secretary of state, to AIPAC's luncheon for rabbis and cantors. Nosanchuk had a prominent hand in shaping its focus, which featured an almost seamless meld of Yiddishkeit and the typical strong Obama administration defense of its policies as being pro-Israel. Blinken opened by joking about his bar mitzvah-"I can't shake this feeling I have that I forgot to practice something"-and closed with references to the Jewish tradition of going out for Chinese food and a movie on Christmas. In between, Blinken argued that the Iran deal was producing results limiting Iran's threat in the region, and listed the ways in which the Obama administration has maintained a robust security relationship with Israel. Nosanchuk was adept, too, at that most dreaded of White House traditions among Jewish liaisons: organizing the annual Hanukkah party. Drawing up the invitation list-and fielding the anguished calls from the uninvited-is a protocol challenge of the first order. In fact, in the canned quote the White House media operation allowed him to release to JTA, Nosanchuk seems to take pride in the fact that under his watch, an extra Hanukkah party was added each year to handle the throngs. "President Obama speaks often about the values that he and his entire administration share with the Jewish community, as well his deep connections to the community," Nosanchuk said in the statement. "Over the past three years-or, as anyone holding this role measures it, six White House Hanukkah receptions-I have had the chance to work with incredible colleagues here at the White House and throughout the Administration, and with many individuals and organizations in the Jewish community, to put those values into action." Nosanchuk will "will soon be moving to the State Department, where he will continue his public engagement and outreach work, including with Jewish community leaders and organizations," a White House official said. His successor has not been named publicly. An American friend, who is almost as old as I am, cant remember a presidential election with worse choices. An internet friend wrote about a bumper sticker, I hate them both. Another likes ABC, Anybody but Clinton. The latter recalls a movement in the Knesset when the Members had to select a President in 2000: Anybody but Peres led to Moshe Katsav, currently seeking a parole. Activists are arguing if it should be granted to a man convicted of rape and other crimes, who has yet to admit his guilt and promise reform. Ms Clintons long record in the public eye goes back to Bills term as Governor of Arkansas, and his adventures. Those continued during her time in the White House, and were accompanied by stories about her own activity, said to be associated with the death of White House counsel Vince Foster. On the policy front, she was the chief mover of a major health care initiative, whose flop may have been due at least partly to her style. Several group score her Senate record as left of center, but not so far to the left as to mark her as extremist or ideologue. As Secretary of State, she was involved in pushing the President to join the attack on Libya, which produced a disaster still unfolding, as bad as what George W. Bush did to Iraq. She is also charged with lax security at the Embassy in Bengazi, resulting in the deaths of the Ambassador and others, as well as her sloppy care of sensitive e-mails. Israelis remember her warm hug of Mrs. Arafat, but that may have only been one of the hugs that politically active persons and their spouses are expected to provide one and all. Donald Trump has become more frightening as he has moved closer to the Republican nomination. Israelis cant escape memories and stories of the Holocaust, and Trumps rhetoric recalls some of the worst. Observers describe Donald as a populist, simpleton, demagogue, rabble rouser, provocateur, stimulater of violence, and/or racist. Early in his campaign he threatened to run as an independent, and sink the Republican candidate, if he did not win the partys nomination. Now he is predictingone can say threateningviolence at the convention if party big-wigs take it from him. Its easy to remember Brownshirts fighting Communists and other leftists in German streets, especially against the sound of Trump ranting against immigrants and Muslims, against a government that has taken America away from its people, and in support of police and other security personnel who deal with obstreperous opponents. It some see to his credit bringing out citizens who have stayed away from politics, others see him drawing from the woodwork a mass of people who are best left outside of a presidential election. We should take care not to exaggerate. Comparing Trump to Hitler is as far off the rails as some of Trumps performances. There is nothing in his background like Mein Kampf. Institutions of American government are stronger than those of Weimar, and better designed to limit whoever finds him/herself at the top. States and municipalities determine much of what Americans receive. Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security have degrees of independence, informed along with the White House by the work of intelligence bureaucracies whose competition provides yet another barrier against excessive centralization. Members of Congress have tens of thousands of their own aides to help them stand up to the Executive, and the Supreme Court has its long tradition of independence. All of those institutions and individuals may frustrate a President unhindered by his/her own experience or emotions. Yet they did not stop American adventures in Vietnam or Iraq, neither of which were great accomplishments. The American society is also more resilient to radical government than was Germany in the 1930s. Minorities with political clout should provide ample protection to any surge from the remnants of White racism that still exist, and have appeared in this campaign. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians of various kinds, and Jews should be able to defend themselves, and may work to defend one another under the theme of protecting one protects all. On the other hand, the signs of violence among opponents and supporters, arguably provoked, encouraged, and apparently enjoyed by Trump himself, may join with the armaments spread throughout the population to produce significant violence during the campaign and onward. What all this means for the United States, we dont know, but Ill leave my American friends to look after themselves. What it means for the little country Ive been living in for more than 40 years is something else. Weve recently heard from Vladimir Putin that Russia guarantees the security of Israel. Weve heard the equivalent from every American President of recent memory. If the Germans keep Angela Merkel or someone like her in office, we may get more of what we need there. There may also be help from American Jews who still think Israel is worth supporting. We also have ourselves. Close to 70 years of history show that Israelis capacity in political maneuvering, along with the IDF and other security organizations, have served us well. Comments welcome. Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus), Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, irashark@gmail.com The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic finally received a modicum of justice this week, when a United Nations court in The Hague sentenced him to 40 years in prison for his monstrous war crimes. The 10 charges Karadzic was convicted of included his role in the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica in July 1995. Those who remember that horrific event will recall that, along with the disgraceful buck-passing that stained the European response to that genocide, there was a more generalized disbelief that such a vicious war was actually raging on the continent just 50 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. Two decades later, Europe is again being reminded of the illusion of a permanent peace. In the same week that judgment was passed on Karadzic for his crimes in a European war of the recent past, the war of the European present came once again to Brussels, where Islamic State terrorists murdered 31 people and injured scores more in a single hour of atrocities. (I say once again because in 2014, the Jewish museum in the Belgian capital was targeted by an Islamist gunman, killing four innocents.) There are, of course, major differences between the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the current battle. Hundreds of thousands of people across several nationalities died in the Balkans, whereas the number murdered by Islamist terrorists in Europe is thankfully far short of that. During the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession, nationalist extremists in Serbia were fighting for lebensraum, and emptying the territories they conquered of the non-Serb populations; it was a brutal war, but a local one. The Islamists have declared war on their enemies in the Middle East and upon western civilization itself; this brutal war is both local, as demonstrated by the continuing slaughter in Syria, and global, as the Brussels attacks tragically remind us. What both conflicts have in common, though, is the powerful sense of an international leadership that is adrift. War crimes and ethnic cleansing enveloped the Balkans for eight years before Tony Blair and Bill Clinton took military action against the Serbs in Kosovo. The current jihad has lasted much longer, and the fear that no end is in sight is compounded by the knowledge that this enemy is more dangerous, more sophisticated, and more wedded to the hatred of liberal freedoms than the Serb paramilitaries ever were. At least French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has offered a cogent, if incomplete, diagnosis of the nature of the problem. Europe, Valls declared in the wake of the Brussels massacre, is enmeshed in another war, because terrorism, this terrorism, Islamic State, wants to destroy us, wants to destroy men and women, but it also wants to destroy our way of life. The attacks in Paris, like in Brussels, they target people sitting on cafe terraces, catching airplanes, getting the metro. Valls also criticized Europes blindness to how the progression of extremist ideas, Salafism has penetrated neighborhoods which, through a combination of drug trafficking and radical Islamism, perverted...a part of the youth. Those youths include the approximately 5,000 Islamic State volunteers that have traveled to the Middle East, along with up to 600 terrorists located in Europe and organized in cells with a degree of independence, meaning that they can decide among themselves when, where, and how to launch an attack. As the Associated Press pointed out, this network of agile and semiautonomous cells shows the reach of the extremist group in Europe even as it loses ground in Syria and Iraq. Perhaps because of its fragile position in the Middle East, Islamic State has now invested more resources in its war against neighboring Europe. As one security official explained in the same Associated Press article, Now the strategy has changed. Special units have been set up. The training is longer. And the objective appears to no longer be killing as many people as possible but rather to have as many terror operations as possible, so the enemy is forced to spend more money or more in manpower. Its more about the rhythm of terror operations now. The aim of the jihadis is to make those rhythms as regular as possible, with as little trace as possible. In this way, they believe, they will create a new normal for Europe, where fear reigns, social polarization deepens, and law enforcement is marked by failureeven if one cell is busted, there are dozens of others that will remain operational, thereby enabling every arrest to be followed by another bombing. As for the jihadis, their main challenge is to keep a few steps ahead of the authorities, much as they have done until now. Some European countries have better records in combating terror than others, but the continents porous borders mean that one states mistakes will rebound on the states around it. For example, Salah Abdeslam, who directed the Paris bombings last November and whose arrest by Belgian police came a few days before the Brussels attacks, was a resident of Belgium. Belgium continues to be a source of worry for security officials because of what seem like elementary errors by its law enforcement authorities. One of the suicide bombers at the Brussels airport, Belgian citizen Najim Laachraoui, was discovered to have been involved in the Paris attacks after his DNA was found on explosives used in the outrages. Since that time, he operated undetected in Belgium, to the point where he was able to successfully carry out a martyrdom operation. And thats one of several glaring examples. Still, the temptation to resort to Donald Trump-style hyperbole in these situations has to be resisted, because it will lead us nowhere. One should forget about unfeasible (not to mention morally repugnant) suggestions, like banning Muslims within our borders, because right now Europe cant even cope with whats feasible. For one thing, the external borders of Turkey, a NATO member state, are completely insecure. For another, according to French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, several thousand people are being monitored by intelligence services, but with every terror attack, the effectiveness of that monitoring is going to be treated with greater skepticism. If Western leaders want to be creative, then they have no choice but to tackle the main source of the problem, which lies in the civil war in Syria. Though an ostensible enemy of Bashar al-Assads regime, Islamic State has been left to its own devices by the dictator and his Iranian and Russian allies. And here we get to something that Frances Valls did not say in his reflections on Brussels, but which is essential for grasping todays complexity: while radical ideology is a constant source of inspiration for jihad, the ongoing Syrian war has further enabled it in operational terms. But just as in Bosnia 20 years ago, there is a terrible reluctance to take ownership of this issue. In the Bosnian case, that was in part because no country outside the Balkans was, by Syrian standards, dramatically impacted by the war there. Yet Syrias war, which has generated internal human suffering far greater in scale than even the Balkans, has become a war on Europes streets as well. Only this time round, America is not going to organize the counterattack. Ben Cohen, senior editor of TheTower.org & The Tower Magazine, writes a weekly column for JNS.org on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His writings have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He is the author of Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism (Edition Critic, 2014). There are a few paradoxes as the World Happiness Report was published this month by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), ranking Israel as the 11th happiest country in the world. As summarized in the daily Yisrael Hayom, Israel is caught in an intractable conflict and situated in a region that is crumbling amidst religious extremist violence. And yet, Israelis are amongst the happiest people on earth. Its noteworthy that the top 10 happiest countries this year were Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden. Comparatively, Israel surpassed the United States (13th place), the UK (23rd), France (32nd), and Italy at 50. One of the most obvious yet noteworthy things about this is that none of the ten placing above Israel are countries in an ongoing state of war with its neighbors, that see daily threats to the safety and wellbeing of its citizens much less the threat to destroy their country entirely. I have to believe that there is a statistical way to measure happiness relative to threats, and if that were employed, Israel would be #1. Its important to note this, and hard to think of any major conflict in which these countries ranked above Israel are engaged. But Israel doesnt want to be measured uniquely. Ranking #11 out of the entire world is more than just fine. We just want to live, and obviously to live happily. And we do. Hardly a day goes by on one of my speaking tours in North America or subsequent emails, when I am not asked in one incarnation or another, something like Isnt Israel dangerous? The question is understandable based on how Israel is represented in the media as the center (if not, falsely, as the cause of) a deadly ongoing war, almost as if theres a battle on every street corner. These are not just academic questions posed to me. Sometimes its stated (nicely), and sometimes its implied, that I must be crazy or brave (or both) to live in Israel, much less to raise my children here and expose them to the threats we face. This often accompanies an explanation why the person asking the question is afraid to come visit. But heres the thing, and a paradox indeed. The threats we face are real, albeit over reported and without context or caring about accuracy. I dont diminish that. Three dozen have been killed in terrorist attacks in Israel over the past several months, hundreds hurt, and thousands are traumatized. Nevertheless, the level of personal safety that we feel is high. Despite these threats and others, Israel is an incredible place to live and raise children. Part of the reason I wanted to live in Israel was from my first trip here as a teen where somehow I perceived that Israel was a wonderful place to raise children. How I perceived that then, as a child myself, remains a mystery. But I remember feeling it, I remember that being a factor in my waiting to raise my family here, and indeed its played out. My kids are very happy, and life is imbued with a sense of purpose. Being in the homeland that God promised to Abraham and his descendants, meaning us, doesnt hurt either. Perhaps understanding some of the paradox as to how happy we are is in the very reality of the threats we face. With nothing scientific to back me up, I would argue that in part its the challenges we face that underscore our purpose and therefore help us enjoy, appreciate, and give meaning to our lives. In short, perhaps the challenges make us value all the more that which we do have, and make us happier for it. What do you think? Professor Jeffrey Sachs, head of the SDSN and special advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, reflected on what this might mean. There is a very strong message for my country, the United States, which is very rich, has gotten a lot richer over the last 50 years, but has gotten no happier. For a society that just chases money, we are chasing the wrong things. Our social fabric is deteriorating, social trust is deteriorating, faith in government is deteriorating. Thats not to say that Israelis dont chase money, but we dont just chase money, and have a clear set of values that just happen to be biblical that ground us. As a result of the SDSN surveys, some countries have appointed Happiness Ministers, to enhance quality of life. But the fact that this years survey was released in the Jewish month Adar, during which we celebrate the festival Purim, is no coincidence. Adar is known as the month of happiness, during which its common to hear the Talmudic phrase spoken and sung (in Hebrew) daily, whoever enters the month of Adar grows in happiness. Who needs a Happiness Minister when we have a month dedicated to happiness, and countless festivals and other celebrations that give our lives meaning. Also unique to Israel, the survey also aims to rate how people have someone to count on in times of trouble. This is a hallmark of Israeli society so much so that Israelis often turn to total strangers for help with a variety of things. Where hitch hiking with strangers is still considered a safe and viable mode of transportation. With values relating to a near universal draft and sense of national service are imbued from youth. That people have someone to turn to, to rely upon, may be a contributing factor thats unique in Israel. It makes me happy just thinking about it. Since the publication first launched in 2012, Israel has seen its place rise from #14, and hold firm at 11th place for three years in a row. By way of comparison, Israels happiest closest geographical neighbors were ranked 80 (Jordan), 93 (Lebanon) and 120 (Egypt). So if youre looking for a great and happy place to visit, come visit Israel. And if happiness is not your thing, try Madagascar, Tanzania, Liberia, Guinea, Rwanda, Benin, Afghanistan, Togo, Syria and Burundi which rounded out the bottom ten. Jonathan Feldstein was born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He is married and the father of six. He has a three-decade career in nonprofit fundraising and marketing and throughout his life and career, he has become a respected bridge between Jews and Christians. He writes regularly on major Christian web sites about Israel and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He can be reached at FirstPersonIsrael@gmail.com. Dear Editor: In reference to the Kafir soldier who fired on a Palistinian knife attacker: The soldier saw the knife attacker on the ground, not moving. The soldier shot the bullet to finish him off. Dear Commanding officer, These two attckers were out to kill Israeli soldiers. The soldier in question did not know if the terrorist had an explosive belt or not. He made the prudent decision to protect himself as well as other nearby soldiers. His family cannot believe that their son, who has an excellent record in the military, is now being investigated. G-d bless this soldier and G-d bless Israel. George Kittredge, Corky Paston Boca Raton In parts of Europe, Jews have been warned that wearing anything that identifies them as Jewish means putting a target on their back. In Stockholm, Jews were asked to stay away from the Kristallnacht remembrance ceremonies for fear of sparking violence. French Jews are immigrating to Israel in increasing numbers. In Manchester, England, special police accompany Jewish children to school. The main synagogue in Florence, Italy, looks like an American military outpost in Afghanistan. All of this is in response to a growing and flourishing anti-Semitism in Europe reminiscent of the 1930s. And while neo-Nazism and a remnant of fascism still lurk in the netherworld of European society, the new anti-Semitism is a direct consequence of the tide of Muslim immigration that has been rising throughout Europe. In America, anti-Semitism has become an integral part of academic life, and at Vassar College it seems to be central to the learning experience itself. At University of California, San Diego, it is possible to stand at a public forum and call for killing Jews, without the remotest consequence on a campus known for its multi-cultural sensitivity and commitment to diversity. Try expressing such sentiments about any other ethnic group and you would be thrown out of school without even a convening of the campus diversity and opportunity Star Chamber. Invite a speaker to talk positively about Israel, and the Muslim Student Association and its leftist cohorts will be there to impose the hecklers veto. So amid all of this, it stands to reason that sponsoring the absorption of even more Syrian Muslim refugees, who have spent a lifetime being indoctrinated in Jew-hatred, is exactly what the Jewish community in America needs. Right? Thats the mantra of HIAS, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which last December found that the word Hebrew no longer worked and thus dropped it from the organizations name. Perhaps Hebrew would be off-putting to HIASs new clients: Syrian Muslim refugees. In 2013, HIAS participated in the creation of a report that labeled opponents of Muslim immigration as bigots. Indeed, sane people of good will who value our heritage and want to embrace immigrants who not only want to come to America but also want to be part of American culture, should demand to be on whatever infamous lists HIAS wants to create. The politically consonant Southern Poverty Law Center maintains such a list, and columnist Daniel Greenfield and his cat have been added to the list as a hate group. (Group denotes more than one, so Greenfield needs his cat in order to qualify.) Refugee expert Ann Corcoran who has lobbied to be included has yet to see her name accepted, and this writer is probably too insignificant to make the cut, but is cheering for Ann and Daniel Greenfields cat. Speaking against HIAS in the Jewish community is like speaking against God or the Torah. People remember with reverence the HIAS of oldthe HIAS that brought Jewish refugees to this country and helped give them a leg up toward acculturation. That HIAS, your grandmothers HIAS, would never have dropped Hebrew from its name. It would have proudly embraced its Jewish roots. That HIAS would be helping the Jewish refugees fleeing Europe. It would have been in Malmo, Sweden, from which half the Jewish community has fled. It would have been in Paris helping Jews escape the violence and bigotry of North African Muslims. That HIAS no longer even remotely exists. HIASs webpage and its refugee advocacy have nothing to do with Jewish refugees or the plight of Jews suffering anti-Semitism. HIAS has become just another refugee advocacy group that is one of nine voluntary organizations designated as such by the U.S. government and receiving the bulk of its financing from federal funding. Like the others, which include the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Social Services, HIAS has an economic interest in pushing for more and more refugees. Regrettably, HIAS has rendered the Jewish community vulnerable to the anti-Semites who see its actions as part of some larger Jewish conspiracy, a charge not made against the Christian refugee resettlement groups who have the same economic motivations. But then pasting a conspiracy onto Lutheran Social Services, which is largely responsible for the resettlement of Somalis in Minnesota, lacks the je ne sais quoi of a Jewish conspiracy. Recreating in America the same anti-Semitic culture that thrives in Europe as a consequence of immigration does not promote the interests of the Jewish community. On HIASs website, black-and-white photos invoke Jewish refugees from the past, in sharp contrast to the colorized photos of its current work. Removal of Hebrew from its name marks the demise of the HIAS of old and its willingness to risk here in America the same anti-Semitism that pervades Europe. Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati and a distinguished fellow with the Haym Salomon Center. We have just finished celebrating the Jewish Holiday of Purim. It is the one day in the Jewish calendar where merrymaking and drinking are sanctioned to the point where you cant tell the difference between the bad guy (Haman)and the good guy (Mordechai). But even with the ISIS Belgium attacks still reverberating across the globe, were left wondering if the spirit of Purim hasnt infected the White House. How else to explain two parallel headlines emanating from Washington? First, in an unprecedented indictment as the U.S. Justice Department targeted aliens working for a foreign government for disrupting, over a two-year period, key web sites of the New York Stock Exchange, Capital One, AT&T and PNC. Also included was a dam (yes a dam!) in Upstate New York. Hundreds of thousands of customers were inconvenienced and the financial institutions were damaged to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Guess who did it? Seven Iranian hackers, ostensibly working for two Iranian companies, but probably agents of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The indictment described the attacks as systematic, widespread, the cause of potential havoc. Headline No. 2: After a summer of promises to the U.S. Congress from the highest levels of the Obama Administration that Iranian sanctions relief under its deal with Tehran would be only nuclear-related and not extend to Iranian activities related to terrorism and human rights abuses, the Administration is now reportedly poised to dismantle the last bulwark of what used to be the sanctions regime by allowing Tehrans mullahs access to the U.S. dollar. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew swore in July 2015 testimony that, under no circumstances, would Iran be given access to the worlds largest financial and commercial market. Adam Szubin, the chief of the Treasury Departments sanctions enforcement office, declared that Iran would not be allowed to dollarize foreign payments. But now, the mullahs are impatient over the pace of the vast sanctions relief they were given, to say nothing of their $100 billion-plus windfall, so these solemn commitments of Obama officials are to be thrown in the waste basket already full of mendacious testimony and empty promises about the nuclear deal. Apparently we are about to witness another bonanza for the Iranians. It will be the end of any effective sanctions for years and maybe decades. There will be nothing left with which to effectively pressure Tehran short of war. Moreover, according to Jack Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz, sanctions experts at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, once implemented, the negative consequences for the global financial system and the U.S. dollar are potentially devastating: letting Iran access to U.S. dollars would signal to the world that weve vetted Irans financial system. Global watchdogs who monitor money laundering and terror financing, like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), would slowly begin to stand down. Signs of the continuing frivolous spirit of Purim abound, as word has also leaked that the Obama Administration has agreed to pay Tehran hundreds of millions of dollars plus over a billion dollars in interest for President Jimmy Carters failure to deliver on a massive arms deal. This, after the Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the Shah in 1979 and held U.S. hostages after ransacking our embassy! Whats next? Compensating Hamans descendants for his execution after the evil Persian foreign minister attempted genocide of the Jewish people in the Persian Empire over 2,000 years ago failed? One can only hope that the next president of the United States will stay out of Middle East Bazaars. Because the last president to do so, got taken to the cleaners by the Ayatollah Khamenei. And it looks like we and our Middle East allies will be paying a hefty price for that folly for many Purims to come. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Dr. Harold Brackman, a historian is a consultant to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. 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/ Shubhon is a curious teenager with an average IQ. Shubhon also has autism. However, he will not get the disability certificate, which is given to people with other disabilities like intellectual impairment, mobility, vision, hearing, etc. But an incorrect IQ test came to his rescue in a way. The test put his IQ at 30, and based on that he now has the disability certificate stating he has mental retardation with autism. His single, working mother did not contest the obviously incorrect IQ result, knowing that it made it possible for him to get the disability certificate. She is aware that there is little understanding of the intense challenges that they, and other children with autism and their families, face in their day-to-day lives. The mother is happy that Shubhon at least has the disability certificate, and therefore will get income-tax concessions, concessions with regard to public transport, scholarships, accommodation during examinations, etc. Read | Dealing with autism: Havent you taught your kid anything? they ask Had Shubhons mother contested the IQ result or the inaccurate label, he would have been deprived of the disability certificate. Romit has autism along with cerebral palsy and intellectual impairment. He has the disability certificate stating mental retardation with autism, a much-needed document for the family. His frail mother has to take Romit for consultations regularly. They are accompanied by his father, who loses a days wage on each such trip. Read | Autism Awareness Day: Italian doctor helps kids, families in Varanasi Autism is a disability, and a fairly common one at that. Hence people who have this condition need the disability certificate. Initially, the lack of an indigenous tool to assess autism was the reason for denying this critical document. After intense lobbying, the National Institute of Mental Health came up with the Indian Scale for Assessment of Autism (ISAA) in 2009 for issuing disability certificates. However, the ISAA took several years to be notified before being finalised in 2012. Two laws the Persons with Disabilities Act (PWD) and the National Trust Act cover 10 disabilities. According to legislation, for giving the disability certificate, a tool that can assess the percentage of disability is required. The Persons with Disabilities Act carries the guidelines on issuing disability certificates. But the PWD Act does not cover autism. The National Trust Act covers autism. But it does not have any provision on the disability certificate or any guideline on it. However, this can be addressed by a small amendment to the Rules under the National Trust Act. India has just marked 10 years of the UN-mandated World Autism Awareness Day. In this context, the central government should take a sympathetic view of the needs of people with this condition. Merry Barua is with Action For Autism The views expressed are personal Forty-year-old Aamir Ali is busy gathering his belongings from a bamboo hut that is falling apart. His house is on a river island, Kathalguri Char, in Kamrup (rural) district and is accessible only by boat. My house was right there. The river took it away around two months ago, Aamir says, pointing to the land on the rivers edge, slowly being eroded by the Brahmaputra. Chunks of soil fall are swallowed by the river while Ali shares ordeal a life of frequent displacement. Thousands in Assam, like Aamir, have either lost their land to the river or watching it disappear before their eyes. From Tinsukia, Assams uppermost district on the banks of the Brahmaputra, to Dhubri, over 700km downstream, the river banks and islands are dotted with stories of loss and displacement. It is estimated that over 150,000 families have lost their land to river erosion since the 1950s. Assam has over 2,200 riverbank villages and islands, called char, distributed along the Brahmaputras course. An estimated 25 lakh people reside in these villages. We have shifted our house five times in the past six years, says Shukur Ali, Aamirs nephew, as he harvests his crop of wheat. By the time we harvest crop, the river will take away this part too. If the floods this year take our char away, well move somewhere else. This is the life of a char dweller. Aamir Ali, 40, who lives on the Kathalguri char, lost his house to river erosion around two months ago. He has moved six times in the past five years. (Subhendu Ghosh / HT photo) In a state where the Bharatiya Janata Party has successfully turned the issue of Bangladeshi immigration into an election theme, with slogans to reclaim jati, mati aaru bheti [identity, land and home], thousands in Assam lose their identity, land and home every year to the river. In 2010, Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman admitted in the state assembly that erosion had become more dangerous than floods. Five years later, in the assembly, he said that 36,981 houses were eroded in the past five years. In the 15 districts that he mentioned, 880 villages were eroded completely while 67 were eroded partially. The districts of Dhubri, Jorhat and Barpeta districts, according to him, were the worst affected. Most char villages are located in these districts as well. Read more | Politics of identity: Assam voters who cant prove citizenship A little too late in its tenure, the state government took a positive step to address the issue of displacement due to erosion. In March 2015, a notification by the Revenue and Disaster Management Department announced a scheme Chief Ministers Special Scheme for Rehabilitation of Erosion Affected Families in Assam that will provide land or monetary help to the victims of soil erosion. In his Independence Day speech, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi acknowledged the devastation and said the special package will benefit thousands of victims. The step was seen as a landmark step, especially in a country where erosion isnt defined as a natural disaster. But a year after the scheme was launched, no progress in relief reaching the landless is visible. Hanif Ali Miyan, a retired teacher from Phulbari, Barpeta, lost all his farm land to the river. He estimates some 10-12 bigha land has been lost. Located on the Brahmaputra bank, Hanifs house is hardly 50 metres from the river. One more severe flood season and hell lose his house too. (Subhendu Ghosh / Hindustan Times) An official of the Assam State Disaster Management Authority informed Hindustan Times that the authority had received over 30,500 applications claiming the relief (news reports put the figure at 39,450 from 16 districts). The proposals were sent back as the total estimate of implementing the scheme went well over Rs 500 crore, said the official. There was no fund to look into these proposals. It was found in the review that because it was left loose ended, anybody could have applied. The guidelines had to be more implementable. Read more | Vote for land: Politics of shuttling migrants on Assams sandbars The allotted fund for rehabilitation in 2014-15 was just Rs 5 crore. In a response to an RTI query filed earlier this year by the Jhai Foundation, which works in char areas, the same authority said no applications were received by them. A few days later, in March 2016, the guidelines were updated to provide relief to only those possessing land patta (registration) and would be applicable from 2014-15 onwards. With one circular, the government decided to make thousands of displaced ineligible for rehabilitation. The BJPs chief ministerial candidate, Sarbananda Sonowal, promised to save Majuli from erosion. While the political discourse revolves only around one river island, the dwellers of the remaining 2,200 islands seems to have become invisible people of Assam. Mobile boat clinics run by the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research in collaboration with the government are the only way health care is accessible to the people of the river islands. However, with just 15 such boats in 13 districts, the boat clinics manage to come back to the same region once in two or three months. (Subhendu Ghosh / HT Photo) Everyone talks about saving Majuli, which also comes under char areas, but no one talks about the condition in other chars. The literacy rate, as per the last socio-economic survey, was 19%. But when Majuli is removed from that, it falls further down to around 14%, says Jhai Foundations Abdul Kalam Azad. In the 1992-93 and 2002-03 socio-economic survey reports, the population residing below poverty line grew substantially from 48.89 to 67.89%, which declined for the state to 36.09%. One of the most backward areas in Assam lies in one of these chars. Uttar Godhani in Barpeta is a char village where literacy rate is just 7%, says Azad. There has been no survey in the past 15 years. What is it the government fears? SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had stopped smiling after the heavy polling in the first phase of assembly elections. He added that the Congress leadership could not save the party from defeat in the polls, the second and final phase of which will be conducted on Monday. Modi was speaking at an election rally here in Nagaon district. The Prime Minister arrived here after visiting the Kamakhya temple in Assams main city Guwahati. He is expected to address another two rallies at Rangia in Kamrup district and Maligaon in Guwahati on Friday. I thank the people of Assam for the unprecedented high percentage of voting in the first phase, Modi said, addressing the crowd in Hindi. You must have noticed that the Assam chief minister has stopped smiling after the first phase. He is now inviting the Congress leaders from Delhi to save him. But how can they (Congress leaders) save Gogoiji when they could not even save Delhi? he asked, referring to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. In an obvious dig at Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Modi said Congress leaders were more concerned about their own sons and daughters. He said he had come to Assam to seek the peoples support to bring about a change of government in the state. Modi said he had not seen another state in India apart from Assam where he claimed the entire population lived below poverty line (BPL). There are states in India where there are 20 or 30% BPL population. But the Congress in Assam has turned the entire population of the state poor as BPL. Appealing to the people of Assam to vote for the BJP and its allies, he said there should be a new government in the state in the New Year. A total of 65 constituencies in Assam saw a record 82.20%polling in the first phase on April 4. Congratulating Bollywood actor Emraan Hashmi for having successfully won the battle against his sons cancer, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called the six-year old a bigger superstar that his father. Kejriwal was speaking at the launch of Hashmis debut book titled Kiss of Life held on Thursday evening at India Islamic Cultural Centre in Delhi. The book co-authored by Hashmi and 21-year-old Bilal Siddiqui, revolves around the actors journey of coming to terms with his 4 year-old son Ayaans kidney cancer and the long struggle that he and his wife endured, before their son was medically declared cancer-free. Read: My son Ayaan has given birth to a new me, says Emraan Hashmi Kejriwal said, I would like to congratulate Emraan and Bilal for writing this book. I havent read the book yet, but from whatever I have heard now, I think your son is a bigger superstar that you. Emraan Hashmi with son Ayaan. After Ayaan was diagnosed with the disease, he was taken to Canada for a seven-month-long treatment that was not only painful but also expensive. According to the politician, Hashmi was fortunate to be able to finance such a costly treatment, pointing out that not everybody was capable of doing the same. It was the governments duty to come to their aid, he said. Emraan was fortunate to have the money to take his child to Canada. But, there are a lot of people in our country who cannot afford such an expensive treatment. I think here it is the governments responsibility to invest sufficiently in public services so that people dont die because they dont have money. They should get complete healthcare facilities. That is the governments job and in Delhi we are trying our best, he said. Not even a month is left for the release of Tiger Shroff, Shraddha Kapoor-starrer Baaghi, and the film is facing legal troubles. Producer Guneet Monga has dragged the Nadiadwala Grandsons and UTV Motion Pictures - producers of the movie - to court alleging similarities between Baaghi and Indonesian action thriller, The Raid:Redemption. Monga owns the India remake rights for the Indonesian film. Watch: The trailer of Baaghi The Indian Express quoted the producer as saying, We have filed for injunction because we have the remake rights of Raid and the original director and original producer of Raid have also filed for injunction with us. Watch: The trailer of The Raid: Redemption The court will hear the case on Friday. The filmmakers of Baaghi did not respond till the time this was published. Hindustan Times could not independently verify the report. In yet another twist to the ugly sparring between Bollywood actors Kangana Ranaut and Hrithik Roshan, the Queen stars lawyer Rizwan Siddiqui has sent a letter to the Mumbai police commissioner stating Hrithik has been circulating his clients personal pictures without her consent. My client Kangana Ranaut got calls from sections of media claiming that they have seen certain pictures and emails from my client, which were only exchanged between my client and Hrithik Roshan on his correct email address. Mr Hrithik Roshan sent a notice to my client saying that he will be doing this. He has fully outraged my clients modesty. He has no business showing any pictures of my client to any third party, he says. These things need to be investigated. I am trying my level best to hold on to my FIR and not file it as it will have a long lasting effect on Hrithik Roshans career. So the only option was to file a complaint with the police and tell them to look into this offence and prevent consequences of it, he adds. Read: Hrithik misused my clients private mails and photos: Kanganas lawyer There has been talk about Kangana sending emails to someone pretending to be Hrithik. However, Siddiqui questions the existence of this imposter and adds that the case has nothing to do with him. Whether the imposter stays in any part of the world or if there is even an imposter is not a question. This case is between Hrithik and Kangana. Is Hrithik claiming that he did not receive any emails from my client on his email address? Under law, the burden of truth lies on the person making the allegations. He has to substantiate it. If he cant, he cannot have the liberty of making media go on a wild goose chase to find any imposter. There is no case of an imposter at all. And even if there is, it is of no consequence to this case, he says. There are reports that Kangana is not cooperating with the police and has refused to hand over the laptop, on which she allegedly sent emails to Hrithik. However, Siddiqui says that the laptop was never asked for. First and foremost, if my client was communicating with the imposter through a laptop or a phone, that only my client knows. The imposter was a recipient so actually even he would not know how she has communicated. The question of what my client was using, which laptop and which make was all false. There is no question of my client being pulled up for any laptop. Right now, the police only wants to interview her. The first notice has been withdrawn. These diversionary tactics are nothing but the act of Hrithik Roshan and his team. They are trying to deviate from the subject matter, he says, adding that they are still waiting for Hrithik to reply to the counter complaint filed by them. Read: I have a knack for choosing the wrong people: Kangana Ranaut on her exes Here is Kanganas statement to Miss Malini In a legal matter, only on-record statements can be addressed not gossip. So heres my final word: If the other party who sued me for defamation and asked for a public apology can prove defamation, I promise to apologise publicly. I request the other party to respond to the legal matter which they have started and not turn this defamation suit into a media trial and judgment. If they are sincerely seeking an apology then they must help me understand their perspective because blackmailing or threatening wont work with me. Though my legal team is taking strict actions against blackmailing and threatening me, but as a girl it doesnt scare me. You wont get a sorry by threatening me or circulating my love poems, letters or images. I am not ashamed of anything, not my past, not my affairs, not my body and most definitely not my desire. So slut-shaming wont work either. If they want an apology then they have to come to the point, beating about the bush wont help, me and my team are eager to help as hurting sentiments isnt our intention. Timeline January 29, 2016: In an interview, actor Kangana Ranaut was questioned if actor Hrithik Roshan was the reason behind her being ousted from the film Aashiqui 3. She said, Yes, many lame rumours are doing rounds, even a dumb a** can tell where these rumours are coming from. I dont know why exes do silly things to get your attention. For me that chapter is over and I dont dig graves. Hrithik Roshan replied to this by tweeting, Ther r more chances of me having had an affair with d Pope dan any of d (Im sure wonderful) women d media hs ben naming. Thanks but no thanks (sic). January 31: Kangana told a leading channel that she was not hurt by Hrithiks comment. No. I am not hurt. I respect the other persons opinion also. Its very likely that a person can have a different perspective on the same situation or rather the past. But then, stick to your stand. Dont slyly pursue people and spy on them, and chase them. So, we sign and seal the deal and then move on. March 14: Hrithik Roshan filed a defamation case against actor Kangana Ranaut for referring to him as her silly ex. His legal notice alleged that Kangana was suffering from Aspergers Syndrome and claimed that she had sent him 1439 senseless, personal and absurd emails. Kangana replied with a counter notice accusing him of intimidation. She refused to apologise and said that Hrithik had been communicating with her through a special email address. March 30: Hrithik lands in a legal mess with his tweet on dating the pope. A Christian secular forum in Mumbai slapped a legal notice on the actor alleging that the tweet is hurting the religious sentiments. March 31: The Mumbai police summoned Kangana and her sister Rangoli to record their statement following a FIR lodged by Hrithik against unknown persons for allegedly creating a fake email-ID in his name and using it to chat with his fans. Read: Hrithik Roshan, Kangana Ranaut feud: Lawyer says summons to her illegal April 2: Hrithik took to Twitter to apologise for his tweet. He posted, Seems my tweet about His Holiness has led 2misunderstanding. My apologies 4 hurt caused 2religious or other sentiments. Was unintentional. (sic) April 3: A friend of Kangana claimed that the actor got engaged to Hrithik Roshan in Paris in January 2014. However, a source close to Hrithik said that the actor was not present in Paris at the time. April 7: Kanganas lawyer Rizwan Siddiqui wrote a letter to the Mumbai police commissioner asking him to take action against Hrithik for circulating Kanganas photos to non-concerend third parties. My client Ms. Kangana Ranaut has been given to understand that her absolutely private and confidential emails as well as photographs etc. which were collected by Mr. Hrithik Roshan during his association with her are being malafidely and mischievously misused by Mr. Hrithik Roshan with criminal intentions of damaging my clients reputation and to wilfully impute unchastity to her, the letter reads. Indias steel ministry is counting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to support its proposal to toughen anti-dumping rules, a government source said, on Friday. Because of the distress in Indias steel industry, the ministry had written a letter to the trade ministry seeking to change anti-dumping rules, the source added. The letter requested altering anti-dumping rules which remained unchanged for two decades to reflect only the dumping margin. Such a move would effectively raise the duty and bring India in line with the United States and Canada, while meeting World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, the source said. But the trade ministry turned down the proposal. Trade Secretary Rita Teaotia said current rules were internationally accepted and followed, among others, by the European Union. They are asking us to amend the rules, but they are looking at only one country, the United States, Teaotia told Reuters. The steel ministry was now considering approaching the federal planning body, Niti Aayog, or the Prime Ministers office to press its case, according to the government source. India is among a number of countries that are tightening rules against cheap exports from countries such as China and South Korea. Indian companies accuse countries like South Korea, Japan, Russia and especially China, which produces nearly half of the worlds 1.6 billion tonnes of steel, of unfairly flooding local markets with cheap products and undercutting them as demand slackens at home. India last week extended a safeguard import tax on some steel products until 2018 and imposed a floor price on overseas purchases in February, but companies such as JSW Steel, Tata Steel and Kalyani Steels have been lobbying for more stringent measures. Indian steelmakers say a change in anti-dumping rules would prevent the steel industry from dying out and stave off the dependence of sectors such as engineering goods on imports. What we have been trying to explain to the user industry is that we are part of the same value chain, said Seshagiri Rao, joint managing director at JSW Steel. If I am impacted today and you dont support us because it is unfair trade which is happening - the same thing will happen to you, he added. Chinas commerce ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the impact any changes to anti-dumping rules might have on its exporters. Popular drugs, including Phensedyl, Corex, Saridon and Vicks Action 500, would not have even come under the banned list, if the government had accepted in full the recommendations of the Kokate committee, set up to look into the matter. According to the Kokate Committee, which submitted the fixed-dose combination (FDC) drugs list to the health ministry in January, the committee did not discuss the FDCs, which were already approved by DCGI and those licensed pre 21.9.1988. The committee has reviewed about 6,600 FDCs so far. FDCs combine two or more drugs in a single pill. When multiple drugs from the same therapeutic group are clubbed together, it may lead to resistance, according to experts. The committee also recommends corrections if any such FDCs has been included in the list. In case the committee made any comment with respect to above inadvertently, it shall be treated as not-discussed. Several products, including popular cough syrups Phensedyl and Corex, which have been banned, were approved by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI). Others such as Saridon and Vicks Action 500 are licensed prior to 21.9.1988. The Kokate Committee report, a copy of which is available with HT, has been signed by a seven-member team, including chairpersonv CK Kokate. Our mandate was to screen FDCs and submit to the government. These were all recommendations. The final call was in DCGIs hand considering patient safety, CK Kokate told HT. Whatever combination we have included in the banned list is directly related to patients safety. Moreover, we have tried to give a free hand to the committee so that they can work efficiently and suggest us about several things, said DCGI GN Singh. Anything which was earlier approved by DCGI and has now become obsolete according to the latest findings can be pruned off. But there are very few cases in the banned list, which were either approved by the DCGI or licensed before 1988, said KL Sharma, joint secretary, health ministry. Companies, including Abbott, maker of cough syrup Phensedyl, Pfizer, Macleods, P&G and Piramal did not respond to HTs requests for comments, saying the matter is sub-judice. According to government estimates, the ban on 350 FDCs , which impacts over 2,700 branded drugs, will lead to a loss of about `7,000 crore for the industry. The domestic pharma industry currently has a market size of `1 lakh crore. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The seven-member Banks Board Bureau (BBB) held its first meeting on Friday to discuss reforms in the banking sector, including consolidation of public sector banks and fund-raising plans. Formed to improve the governance of public sector banks (PSBs), the autonomous body will recommend management and board-level selection of banks to professionalise their administration, and develop strategies and capital-raising plans without government interference. Launched on April 1 this year, the BBB held its meeting at the Reserve Bank of Indias (RBIs) Mumbai central office in the presence of RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, deputy governor SS Mundra and minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha. Posting two pictures along with the BBB members on Twitter, Sinha said: Excellent discussions at the Bank Board Bureau meeting today! Chaired by former Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai, the BBB is a seven (part-time) member team, including Roopa Kudwa, former CEO of Crisil, Anil Khandelwal, former CMD, Bank of Baroda, and HN Sinor, former Joint MD, ICICI Bank and former chief of Indian Banks Association and Association of Mutual Funds in India. In 2007, Rai, a Kerala-cadre IAS officer, had stood up against the UPA governments farm loan waivers scheme, stating it would harm loan discipline and impair lending climate. The BBB, originally proposed by the PJ Nayak Committee, will also serve as the precursor to a bank holding company, Finance minister Arun Jaitley had said in the budget. A bank holding company is likely to be a quasi-independent company that will hold all of the governments stakes in public sector banks, and oversee their operations. Europe based medical chain, Medicover, backed by the promoters of cosmetic house Oriflame, is set to expand its presence in India with opening its chain of fertility treatment centres by opening its chain of fertility treatment centres. With a slowing European market, the medical chain plans to push investments into India. Medicover is currently present in 15 geographies like the UK, Poland and Ukraine. It plans to open over 50 clinics to treat fertility issues in India and aims to earn $100 million (Rs 660 crore) in next three years. The company is planning to start with 2 to 3 centres across Delhi-NCR within two-three months and take this number to 10 within this year, covering most of northern India. Oriflame promoters have already invested in local health players such as Thyrocare, Lotus Surgical and Dr.Reddys. Considering the booming in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment market in India which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20% from 100,000 cycles in 2015 to 260,000 cycles in 2020, according to an E&Y report. We plan to open 50 green-field Medicover fertility clinics in three years, said Felipe Velasquez, commercial director of Medicover Division. The idea is to invest $100 million as initial investment which we target to break even in next three years. Out of the 50 clinics, the company will open fourtwo in Delhi and one each in Noida and Gurgaonin two months and aims to have 10 clinics by the end of the year, said Gaurav Malhotra, CEO, Medicover India. Medicover plans to expand its presence in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and then enter Maharashtra and Rajasthan in the coming years. While the slowdown in Europe has encouraged the company to invest in India, the cost of IVF treatment, which range from Rs 150,000 to Rs 200,000 per IVF cycle in India, is about four times lower than the cost in US. Though Europe remains our top market, we are bullish on Indian growth plans considering its population and bright economy said Velasquez. UK based Bourn Hall India and Nova IVI Fertility, a joint venture between Nova Medical Centers Pvt Ltd and Spanish IVF technology firm IVI are the two major players in the IVF treatment category. Apollo Hospitals and Max Hospital chains also provide the same treatments. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Liberty House Group will start due diligence within a week from Monday on the loss-making UK assets that Tata Steel has put up for sale, its boss Sanjeev Gupta said, adding he was confident of turning the business around with government help. Tata, Britains biggest steel producer, has been forced to walk away from its UK business due to high costs, weak demand and a flood of supplies from top producer China. The formal sale process for the assets, which the company bought in 2007, is expected to start by Monday. Its a loss-making business and a loss-making business is not worth a lot in itself to buy, Gupta told Reuters in a phone interview on Thursday. Its more of a question of what are the resources required in turning it around. Changing the raw material for the steel plants to locally available scrap, from imported iron ore, would be the best solution as long as power costs are manageable, he said. Gupta told CNBC-TV18 that Liberty Steel is interested in acquiring Tata Steels strip business in the UK, which is based at the steel majors Port Talbot plant. We are interested in all their strip businesses, that means Port Talbot and all the downstream businesses, which Port Talbot supplies. Long Steel business is in advanced stages with Greybull and that is not on our mind, Gupta said in an interview to the TV news channel. Indian-born Gupta, a 44-year-old Cambridge graduate who founded Liberty House in 1992, has already told the British government that competitive power prices would be critical in order to revive the business and fight competitors. The British government opened talks with potential buyers for Tata Steels UK operations, including Guptas company Liberty House, earlier this week. Liberty House has a turnover of around $6.5 billion and so working capital needs to buy out Tatas UK plants should not be a big issue, Gupta said. More clarity is expected to emerge once Gupta appoints a financial adviser, likely on Friday. In terms of money, what we will require is the working capital to run the businesses ... and working capital we are quite good at, as that is what we have been doing in our trading business for the last 25 years, Gupta said. Public sectors banks (PSBs), hit by rising bad loans and bleeding balance sheets, are set to hit the market to raise capital. The government, which is ready to bring down its stake to 51% in these lenders, has asked them to prepare a roadmap for the same. The exercise is likely to be done in a phased manner. State-owned banks could garner around Rs 72,471 crore according to the current market price if they decide to bring down government stake to 52%. This is much lower than Rs 1.6 lakh crore estimated in December 2014 (see graphic). Banks require Rs 1.8 lakh crore by 2018 to meet the Basel III or capital adequacy norms. While the government will infuse Rs 70,000 crore in the next three years, the rest has to be borne by banks. Banks will have to chalk out their own plans (of public offerings) according to their needs the exercise needs to be taken up soon as it will give a clear picture of where each bank stands. It will also strengthen banks financial positions and aid consolidation, an official source who did not wish to be identified told HT. Out of 27 state-owned banks, the government controls 22 and State Bank of India (SBI) holds majority stake in the remaining five. State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Hyderabad are yet to be listed. The cumulative gross non-performing assets (NPAs) loans that do not yield returns of 25 listed public sector banks stood at Rs 4.07 lakh crore as on December 31, 2015, nearly 1.5 times of their total market value of Rs 2.9 lakh crore. A drop in market valuations also means a number of these PSBs would find it difficult to access the capital market to raise funds by dilution of government stake. Instead, most of them would have to depend on infusion from the government. Finance minister Arun Jaitley, while presenting the budget in February, had announced a capital infusion of `25,000 crore into banks in 2016-17. A similar sum was infused in 2015-16. Significant stress in the corporate loan book of PSBs is expected to result in their weak assets ballooning to Rs 7.1 lakh crore by March 31, 2017 from Rs 4.0 lakh crore as on March 31, 2015, rating agency Crisil recently said. Britains Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is reported to have launched a criminal investigation into Tata Steel on charges of falsifying certificates on steel composition at its Yorkshire site, but there was no official confirmation of the probe. The Daily Telegraph reported on the investigation on Friday, but the SFO told Hindustan Times: We decline to comment. There was also no comment on the issue from Tata Steel, which is currently in the process of selling off all its UK assets. According to the newspaper, the SFO was probing allegations that Tata Steel staff may have falsified certificates detailing the composition of its steel before sale. The company referred itself to the SFO after an internal audit, the paper added. Well-placed sources said that the documents being examined affected 500 customers, including BAE and Rolls-Royce. There is also a trading standards investigation, but it is unknown whether they are linked, the newspaper reported. It added that auditors had found material that suggested inappropriate testing and certification may have occurred. At least nine employees of the firm had reportedly been suspended. There is no suggestion that the information on the certificates has led to any safety concerns. A Rolls-Royce spokesman said: We were made aware of an issue by Tata last year. We have not been contacted by the SFO and cannot comment on any investigation. News of the investigation comes at a time when the process of selling Tata Steels UK assets is set to formally begin on Monday. A deal to sell its Scunthorpe plant talks for which have been on for the last nine months is expected to be finalised the same day. The Scunthorpe plant has been on the market since 2014. It is being sold to the UK-based investment firm Greybull Capital for a reported 400 million investment package. The Scunthorpe plant is a key part of Tata Steels long products division. On Friday, Sanjeev Gupta of commodities firm Liberty House and one of the potential buyers of Tata Steels UK assets, was scheduled to travel to Scotland for the official handover of two Lanarkshire plants previously owned by Tata Steel. The two steel processing plants at Clydebridge and Dalzell were previously mothballed by Tata Steel. Liberty House agreed to take on the Scottish plants in an unusual deal in March on the last day before the Scottish Parliament was dissolved for the forthcoming election. The deal involved the Scottish government taking them over from Tata Steel, reportedly to avoid delays, and immediately handing them on to Liberty House. Emissions windfall Meanwhile, according to a BBC report, experts said that Tata Steel made hundreds of millions of pounds selling carbon emissions permits given for free under a European Union emissions trading scheme. Tata was able to sell the surplus to other firms wanting permits to pollute at an estimated profit of around 700 million (`6,700 crore) around between 2008 to 2014. In 2013 and 2014 Tata Steels Europe operations had registered combined losses of around `10,000 crore (1 billion). Reports say Tata profited more than any other firm in the UK from the system. Three separate experts said Tata was allocated more carbon allowances than it really needed. Tata refused to comment but there is no suggestion it broke the rules. Another analyst, Simon Evans from Carbonbrief, believes the windfall was probably double (or 1.4 billion). Overall it says industry across Europe has earned a 19bn windfall from 2008 to 2014. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The demand for education loans grew about 5% in terms of beneficiaries in the first six months of 2015-16 over the corresponding period of the previous financial year, despite government prodding. Sources said that public sector banks, which are choking with the rise in non performing assetsloans that do not fetch any returnsare wary of giving large ticket loans especially to students studying at non premier institutes. We want all deserving students to get education loans but we generally seek substantial data and documents in cases where the loan amount is high or those going abroad, a senior official at a mid sized public sector bank told Hindustan Times. The HRD ministry has hiked the annual fees for undergraduate courses in the premier Indian Institutes of Technology. The annual fees will be raised from Rs 90,000 to Rs 2 lakh from the upcoming academic session. However, differently-abled students or those belonging to the scheduled tribes and scheduled castes will not be impacted by this increase. We are absolutely open to give loans to IIT students in case they seek after the hike in fees, the official said. Earlier, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan said that banks must create flexible repayment structure for education loans. Banks are also looking at the possibility of providing the options of different and flexible repayment structure to students --who have takenloans-- based on their employment and salary patterns. The state government is likely to propose an alternative plot for to build the terminus for the ambitious Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday reiterated the governments inability to meet the railway boards demand to provide land at Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) as the International Finance Services Centre (IFSC) has been planned in the area. It is not possible to allot land for the terminus at BKC as we have planned the IFSC there. We are looking for an alternative plot for the terminus in the vicinity, the CM said. He had said during the Make In India Week in February that it will not be possible to part with the BKC land even if the Centre decides it to build the terminus on cut-and-cover basis. Fadnavis, meanwhile, said that contrary to the belief, the IFSC at BKC and Gift City at Ahmedabad will prove to be complementary and contribute to the countrys growth. A finance centre in London is spread over different parts of the city, but business runs smoothly. Even in future, if we decide to scale up our IFSC spread on 50 acres of land by allotting the land somewhere else, it will be alright. Similarly, the two finance centres (the one at BKC and the Gift City) will prove to be complementary, he said. The CM said that the government has received good response from more than 20 global planners for the request for proposal (RFP) for the master plan of the IFSC and the final documents will be issued in two to three weeks. He also said that the other modalities will be decided in a months time. The owner of a Mercedes car involved in a hit-and-run accident that killed a 33-year-old business consultant in Delhi was arrested on Friday, according to the police. Manoj Agarawal was earlier questioned by the police after it emerged that his teenage son was driving the car that hit the business consultant while he was crossing a street. The accident took place at the Sham Nath Marg in north Delhis Civil Lines area on Monday. Police said the man, identified as Siddhartha Sharma, died on the spot after the speeding Mercedes car hit him. A CCTV footage of the hit-and-run incident showed that the victim was flung at least 15 metres into the air after being hit by the car. Passersby saw a group of youth stepping out of the car and fleeing the scene, leaving the vehicle at the spot after the accident. Later, the businessmans driver approached police and allegedly claimed that he was driving the car but changed his statement when he got to know that Sharma had died. Police recorded eyewitnesses accounts and scanned dozens of CCTV grabs to ascertain the identity of the errant driver, who turned out to be the businessmans 17-year old son. The boy was apprehended on Tuesday and later released on bail as per legal provisions. On Thursday, the police challaned the businessman under the Motor Vehicles Act for handing over the vehicle to his minor son. Senior officials also said the charge sheet will also include the name of the businessmans driver for allegedly trying to mislead investigators. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has fielded a number of young, fresh politicians for its maiden outing in the civic poll in Delhi. The party has announced candidates for all 13 wards that will go to the polls this year. The BJP, which rules the three municipal corporations, and the Congress are yet to announce their list of candidates. The main municipal election is due in Delhi in 2017. There are 272 municipal wards in the three municipal corporation areas in Delhi. The bypoll to the 13 wards is being held on the Delhi high courts orders. The state election commission is yet to notify the poll, but an announcement is expected by next week. The poll may be held in the first week of May. The election is being seen as the first test of the ruling AAPs popularity. The party achieved an unprecedented success in the 2015 assembly poll, winning 67 of the total 70 seats. AAP released its first list of eight candidates on March 9 and another of five candidates on March 16. Like always, we announced the list before the others. Our door-to-door campaign has started. In poll, more so in municipal elections, a personal touch is very important. We plan the second phase of the campaigning where leaders will address rallies. But the focus is on door-to-door campaign at present, said a senior AAP leader. Anvika Mittal, 33, is an AAP nominee from the Shalimar Bagh ward. Mittal, a dermatologist, was disappointed with poor sanitation in the city. A Delhi girl, she completed her MBBS from Manipal University, Karnataka. Read more: Kejriwal, 5 AAP leaders granted bail in criminal defamation case I joined the party in 2013 because I believed the only way to change things was from the inside as all the power resides with councillors, MLAs and MPs. I helped Ashutosh and Satyendar Jain with their campaigns, she said. Mittal was practising till early this year but managing the clinic and the campaign has become tough for her now. Our main push is the door-to-door campaign. I visit colonies, villages and apartment complexes in the morning and evening with my team. Soon, rallies will also start. My focus, as per the problems of the people in the ward, is on cleanliness. The optimal utilisation of existing facilities can almost eradicate all problems, she said. Ramesh Matiala, 30, will contest from Matiala -- the biggest ward in Delhi, even bigger than the Delhi Cantonment assembly constituency. A graduate of Delhi Universitys School of Open Learning, Matiala was a Bharatiya Janata Party supporter till three years ago. Then the Aam Aadmi Party came and I realised I wanted to be part of a party like this, he said. Lack of cleanliness is the most prominent problems being faced by people in Matiala. That is the main issue here. We get support from the people as soon as we mention Arvind Kejriwals name, he said. Read more: Kejriwal gets hundreds of odd-even suggestions within hours on Twitter There are nearly 30,000 households in the ward. The average number of households in a ward is 15,000. Matiala is an important area for us and Dwarka is part of the ward, the senior AAP leader said. The party is fielding other youth wings candidates in the bypoll. Of the 13 seats, six are lying vacant since 2013. The Congress, which has been demanding bypoll at the earliest, kicked off its campaign from Sunday with the former party MLAs also hitting the campaign trail. Hundreds of people offered suggestions to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday on a proposed exemption to parents dropping or picking up their children from school when the odd-even plan will be in force. Schools were shut when the odd-even scheme was implemented last time between January 1 and January 15. This time when the car rationing plan will be implemented between April 15 and April 30, schools will be open. The government had suggested on Wednesday that cars with children wearing school uniforms should be exempt from following the odd-even restriction. This prompted questions such as how the enforcers will treat people returning home after dropping their kids school, or those who are going to pick their children from school. Responding to a tweet by Kejriwal, hundreds of citizens came up with their solutions to the problem. Issue a sticker for the vehicles which carries children to the schools. This will also help u in collecting data about the transport facility for schools (sic ), An ku shBharg ava tweeted. A majority of suggestions revolved around getting authorisation from schools. People said schools should issue cards that display the schools and childs name and their residence address, vehicle number and the pick up-drop time. Enlist such students with help of schools and issue time/ route bound permission for parents car, said a person. Government officials, however, did not agree. A lot of children stay back for extra classes, co-curricular activities and sports. A time card will not be applicable in this case. Also, if parents are given the freedom to use this card any time, there are chances of misuse, a senior official said. Some people suggested car pooling by parents who live in the same locality. TV personality Raghu Ram, who has campaigned for the Aam Aadmi Party, asked, Can we ask schools and parents to try and organize special school carpools? Several people also said there should be no exemptions at all. The idea, however, was shot down by some. Bad idea, will encourage ppl to use cars instead of school buses to ferry kids to school! (sic) Renuka Dhar posted. Some were also in favour of postponing the restriction to June when schools are closed for summer vacations. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) will monitor the ambient air quality at 119 locations in and around the Capital, with focus on fine dust particles, during the second phase of the odd-even car rationing between April 15 and 30. The government wants to study the road rationing schemes impact on the air quality of Delhi, considered one of the worst in the world. On Friday, transport minister Gopal Rai detailed his governments plan to map the air quality during the scheme. Monitoring will be done with the help of Light Scattering Based Technology at 74 locations on Delhis seven borders. These locations will be monitored regularly excluding Sundays almost at the same time and locations, said Rai. This will include random sampling for short durations to know the trend. In border areas, one sample will be taken a kilometre or two inside Delhi. The second sample will be on the border and third sample will be one or two kilometres inside the neighbouring states, said Rai. He wrote to his counterparts in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh as well as the Uttarakhand governor, seeking their cooperation. Twenty residential locations of Delhi will be monitored using manual samplers, twice between April 6 and 14, and twice during odd-even part 2, Rai added. Similarly, 15 industrial areas of Delhi will also be monitored. The transport department on Friday inducted 400 ex-servicemen as part of their 120 mobile enforcement teams to patrol the city and challan violators of the odd-even rule. They have been given mobile phones so that information about violator can be given to them, Rai said. The 120 vehicles will have six members each one transport department official, three ex-servicemen and two civil defence volunteers. Civil defence volunteers will be posted at key locations. While volunteers have the power to stop violators, department officials above the rank of constable will issue challans. Two thousand traffic cops will also be deployed. During the schemes first phase in January, 4,000 Civil Defence volunteers were deployed at major intersections, Air quality was mapped at around 20 locations. The odd-even restrictions will be enforced from 8am to 8pm Monday through Saturday. Two Delhi teenagers shot dead the driver of an Uber cab in outer Delhis Mundka after an altercation, police said on Friday. The two juveniles aged 16 and 17 were detained after they were tracked with the help of data provided at the time of booking the taxi, sources told HT. This was the first day the driver, 51-year-old Kuldeep Thakur, had started accepting passengers using the Uber taxi-booking app, police said. The underage duo booked the cab around 4pm on Wednesday to go to Hiran Kudna in west Delhi. They told the driver that they wanted to pick up a third person. On the way, they started making fun of the native place of the driver, Kuldeep Thakur, who hailed from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, sources said. Enraged, Thakur retaliated with some jokes on the teenagers, who then shot him, they added. Deputy commissioner of police Pushpendra Kumar told news agency IANS that no previous criminal record of the minors had been found. We are trying to find out how and from where the minors got the firearm used in the crime, he said. The murder happened around 6pm, police said. The teenagers dumped his body in a secluded area and drove the cab to Najafgarh in outer Delhi, where they removed the number plates from the vehicle. Villagers noticed the car on Friday morning and called the police after finding a trail of blood inside the vehicle. Our thoughts are with the family of our driver-partner, the victim of this mindless violence. We have pro-actively shared details with the police to assist them with their investigation, said Gagan Bhatia, general manager, Uber North India. This is the first in a series of troubles for the American ride-hailing app in India. It hit the headlines in 2014 after one of its drivers was accused of raping a 25-year-old woman with activists saying the company hadnt undertaken any security or screening checks. The Delhi government briefly banned Uber, and other smartphone-based taxi services, while new regulations were drafted. . Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit declared on April 6 that in the absence of dates for foreign secretary talks, which were pending since January, the comprehensive bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan stands suspended. This is a remarkable outcome coming as it does just three months after Prime Minister Narendra Modis stopover in Lahore on December 25. Read | Pakistan says talks with India suspended, hints wont allow NIA visit In some ways, given the saga of flip-flops and talks about talks over the last couple of years, it is also not entirely surprising. Prime Ministers Modi and Nawaz Sharif have personally invested in bilateral progress, seeing the wider benefits of normalcy, regional connectivity and commerce but even they appear unable to paper over the structural factors and intractable differences that shape the relationship. The Pakistan army, in its effort to undermine Mr Sharif and control the pace of change, has obstructed progress at key moments. Many in India see the Pathankot attack, a week after Mr Modis Lahore visit, as an attempt by elements in the military establishment to derail foreign secretary-level talks that were due in January. The prospects for forward movement have also been constrained for some time by the way both sides frame the dialogue. India is keen on keeping the focus firmly on the central issue of terrorism as foreign secretary S Jaishankar indicated this week, while Pakistan wants to discuss the status of Jammu and Kashmir, which the NDA refuses to countenance. New Delhi is well within its rights to be miffed with Islamabads posturing in recent weeks leading to Mr Basits announcement. There were new allegations of Indias spying activities in Balochistan followed by likely leaks to the Pakistan media that the joint investigation team, which recently visited Pathankot, doubted if any Pakistani militants were involved in the attack. India is also liable to see the last-minute block by China of Indias effort to put Jaish-e-Mohammeds Masood Azhar on UNs proscribed list of terrorists as part of an orchestrated attempt by Islamabad to move away from dialogue. Read | Love thy neighbour: Chinese diplomats response to Masood Azhar issue And Mr Basits announcement before the agreed process on the Pathankot attack was complete opens the way for more public recriminations, making it difficult for political leaders to narrow differences should they so wish. Indias National Investigation Agency was to visit Pakistan to follow up on its investigation, as part of the agreed terms of reference drawn up by both sides a prospect that is now in doubt. Read | Jaish chief Masood was a handler of Pathankot attackers: India to UN Pausing dialogue owing to intractable differences is one kind of optic; backing away midway from an ongoing a terror investigation is another. Islamabad seems to have lost sight of the difference and the high commissioners remarks will worsen atmospherics between the countries yet again, unless detailed clarifications follow. Dr Suvin Shetty, who did extremely well in science subjects at school decided to do an MBBS after Class 12. However, unlike some of his batch mates who went ahead to become physicians, Shetty wanted to do something different. He wanted to hone his managerial skills along with medical expertise. Pathology is one such stream in medical science that allows one to use managerial skills. It involves coordinating with the staff to help the laboratory function in a hassle-free manner, says Shetty, who is currently a full-time consultant pathologist at Dr L H Hiranandani Hospital, Mumbai. Additionally, pathology also allows me to use my knowledge of medicine to perform laboratory tests to detect diseases and help physicians diagnose a patient more efficiently, he says. Any treatment involves two steps. The first has to do with detecting a possible cause of illness and the second is treatment of the illness. After the cause of the illness has been detected, a patient can be asked to go in for imaging or pathological tests. Whereas, imaging includes MRI, CT scan, X-Ray and sonography, pathology involves testing of body fluids like blood, urine, stool and all tissues in the body. Read more: All you need to know about a career as a photographer For any pathologist who is starting out, the job can be extremely challenging as working in the industry is very different from what one learns in medical school, says Shetty. Every postgraduate student of pathology must work with a good hospital or laboratory for some time before going for a full-time job to be able to understand their job better, says Shetty. Pathologists conduct laboratory tests to help doctors make correct diagnosis of illness (HT Photo) Convincing patients with the report findings is a major challenge.Often, patients are not convinced with the outcome of the tests. We need to understand the mindset of the patient to be able to convince them with the findings, says Dr Shetty. Several health conscious people visit a clinic for a routine health check-up. Physicians too suggest basic tests to patients just to ensure that they are physically fit. But there are instances when basic health checkups reveal major diseases. It is then that it becomes extremely challenging for a pathologist to convince a patient and make him or her understand and come to terms with the findings of the pathological report, he says. A few months ago, a physician had advised a patient to go in for a complete blood count test, as part of a routine checkup. The white blood cells, when examined under the microscope, were not normal. So, we took multiple samples from the patient and performed several tests and discovered that he was suffering from leukemia, says Dr Shetty. Constant upgrading of skills and domain knowledge is a must for every pathologist, he advises. Expert advice on pathology as a career choice (HT Photo) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Are you a serious cat person who loves wacky new hair styles? A new trend is picking up that fuses the two passions in a burst of colours and sharp cuts, making the ultimate social media beauty craze. Thats right folks, people are actually shaving cat patterns onto their heads and taking Instagram by storm. While etching designs into undercuts is nothing new (there was always one cool kid at school with the Nike tick shaved onto the side of his head), a Russian hairdresser has been incredibly busy taking things to the next level. Aliya Askarova, who is based in St Petersburg, found Instagram fame thanks to a snap posted by one of her best clients. Showing off a cute cat face shaved into the under layers of her hair, along with an amazing two-toned bubblegum dye job, Instagram user Katichka shared her pictured right out of Aliyas salon, sending trend watchers into an overdrive of excitement. @aliyousha , My sleepy cat with me always A photo posted by Katichka (@laserb.kate) on Apr 2, 2016 at 3:43am PDT Katichka isnt the only one sporting the look though. Over in Australia, one hair salon has also been experimenting with cat-themed hair art, and have been tad more edgy. Evil little kitty Kat!! #hairtattoo #hairdresser #barber #hairart A photo posted by Chops Hair Bar (@chopshairbar) on Apr 5, 2016 at 12:14am PDT Captioned Evil little kitty Kat!!, one customer at Chops Hair Bar in New South Wales walked away with a more menacing looking moggy thats sure to be a conversation starter. Hidden until youve pulled your hair up into a topknot, the cat etchings come as an extension of 2015s undercut trend which included graphic shapes being shaved into buzz cuts. If buzzcuts are your thing but not cats, below is a selection of the more popular undercut styles. Clearly, there more to explore. Damn@toupss back at it again with the mad skills. #coolerthanyou #undercutgirls #mandala #hairart A photo posted by California Kid (@caligalindo) on Apr 5, 2016 at 6:24pm PDT Convertible Color Melt... By @hairbysalonq #behindthechair #undercutgirls #colormelt #hairetching #vibranthair A photo posted by behindthechair.com (@behindthechair_com) on Apr 2, 2016 at 2:50pm PDT #hair #cut #undercut #undercutgirls #undercuthair #yay #whatwasithinking #ilikeit A photo posted by Patti Jean (@coastalpixie_1) on Apr 6, 2016 at 5:24pm PDT I did it!!!!! #undercut #undercutmania #undercutgirls #geometrichair #geometricart #hairstyle #crazyhairstyle A photo posted by Alexandra Ciallella (@alexblscll) on Apr 7, 2016 at 3:55am PDT Loving my new undercut design by @12liezel12 #thelobbyhair #hairdesign #crazyhair #bluehair #undercutgirls #thebluesiren #mandala #fun #theendofinhibitions #whynot A photo posted by Leda Wright aka The Blue Siren (@sirenpolewear) on Apr 7, 2016 at 5:24am PDT Check out this undercut design by Laura #undercutgirls #bullcityposh A photo posted by Posh The Salon (Durham, NC) (@poshthesalon) on Apr 7, 2016 at 12:13pm PDT Shoutout to Willi at Razor Barbershop! #undercut #undercutgirls #design #hairdesign #barber #barbershop #anchorage A photo posted by Karena H (@reenz907) on Apr 7, 2016 at 4:43pm PDT #undercut #undercutgirls #razorcut @megsrad for always letting me play!!! A photo posted by Rebecca Winstead (@headlinershair) on Apr 7, 2016 at 12:51pm PDT Mandala for the birthday girl #birthdayhair #rainbow #rainbowhaircolor #mandala #undercut #undercutgirls #perthhair #perthhairdresser A photo posted by Jinnaye R Beazley (@jinnaye_beazley_hair) on Apr 5, 2016 at 1:53am PDT Another beautiful #undercut for this one @be.valentina #barber #barberlife #undercutgirls #freshcut A video posted by Kotoy (@barbieruldincapitala) on Mar 2, 2016 at 11:39am PST Follow @htlifeandstyle for more. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Road accident victims could soon get free treatment for three days at 488 private hospitals across the state, as the Maharashtra government is mulling a scheme on the lines of one in Tamil Nadu. This will be part of a big revamp the state has planned for its flagship Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayi Arogya Yojana (RGJAY), state public health minister Dr Deepak Sawant said in the legislative council on Thursday. Under the proposed scheme, road accident victims wont need to pay for the first three days of treatment when admitted to private hospitals after an accident. The government said the scheme is aimed at reducing fatalities, as victims are usually taken to government hospitals, where treatment is free, but are far away from the accident spot. We are planning to launch a same scheme on the lines of one in Tamil Nadu under the RGJAY, Sawant told the Upper House while replying to a debate over the poor health services in the states rural areas. Under RGJAY, poor patients receive treated at private hospitals for specific ailments or surgeries and the state bears the cost. The RGJAY also facilitates treatment at 488 government-empanelled private hospitals for 971 types of diseases, surgeries and therapies. Sawant, while replying to queries from legislators, said the government is in the process of revamping the RGJAY scheme and changes will be made to it based on the response the government has got so far. It will drop 113 surgeries that RGJAY used to cover, as there arent many takers. Instead, some new medical procedures will be incorporated. Sawant also admitted that posts of doctors are lying vacant, as many do not want to take up rural posting. Only 151 specialised doctors are serving right now in rural areas, of 512 posts, he said. The state has 16 government medical colleges from which nearly 3500 students pass out every year. But many of them dont want to pursue post-graduation studies and some others even break government bonds for taking up private practice, the minister added. Soon after Pakistani envoy Abdul Basit declared the dialogue process with India suspended on Thursday, the Union government faced a barrage of criticism from opposition parties for allegedly pandering to the neighbouring state at the cost of Indias pride. The strongest remark came from Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was solely responsible for the way Pakistan had snubbed India. Todays announcements (on suspension of the dialogue process) by Pak are a slap on Indias face, thanks to our PM, he tweeted. The AAP leader said BJP president Amit Shah had given Pakistan a clean chit by lauding its efforts. Every Indian is feeling anguished today, he said, adding that Modi should apologise in this regard. Read: Pakistan says talks with India suspended, hints wont allow NIA visit The Congress attack on Modi was nearly as scathing. Accusing the Prime Minister of walking into a situation that repeatedly led to national embarrassment, Congress deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma said: By permitting a Pakistani joint investigation team (JIT) to visit India, we have taken the wrong decision. Instead, an NIA team should have visited Pakistan to probe the role of (JeM chief) Masood Azhar. Pakistan also hinted on Thursday that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) may not be given access to Azhar, who is accused of orchestrating the Pathankot attack. Read: Love thy neighbour: Chinese diplomats response to Masood Azhar issue Pakistan has tried to give an impression even in todays statement that India a victim of targeted terrorism is the one thats fermenting trouble. Nothing can be termed as a more serious setback, Sharma said. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari, on the other hand, questioned the governments Pakistan policy. It is extremely unfortunate that Pakistan has decided to take this position. But a more fundamental question is: Are we ourselves to be blamed for Pakistans belligerence? There is a need for this government to get off the high horse of jingoism and really introspect and retrospect on their Pakistan policy over the past 22 months, Tewari told ANI. He described the BJP governments policy as a story of flip-flops and U-turns that has allowed Pakistan and its terror groups to run circles around India. Read: Pathankot witnesses from Indian forces not produced before JIT, says Pak The Congress came down heavily on the Union governments decision to allow a JIT from Pakistan to visit India for investigating the Pathankot attack, a move that the Opposition has been protesting against for the last few weeks. Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, for his part, termed Basits statement as a body blow on the Prime Ministers Pakistan policy. PM Modis Pakistan policy has been delivered a body blow today. Surprisingly, the dialogue has been called off by Pakistan, Omar wrote on Twitter. Basit had said during an interaction at the Foreign Correspondents Club in New Delhi that the bilateral peace process between India and Pakistan stands suspended. Accusing India of creating unrest in its territory, he said Pakistan will not allow Indian investigators to travel there because the JITs visit to Pathankot was not based on reciprocity. The Shani Shingnapur temple trusts decision on Friday to allow women in the sanctum is likely to open floodgates of similar demands at other religious places. The high court on March 30 ruled that entering a temple is a fundamental right of women and that the government is duty bound to protect this right. This judgement put temple trusts in a bind, especially after the Maharashtra government said it will follow the courts ruling, days after it backed entry of women into the Haji Ali Dargah. If we have to progress in this 21st century then it is important that we remove this concept of discrimination of caste and gender from the minds of the people completely, CM Devendra Fadnavis said in Mumbai. The government had filed an affidavit in the high court making its stand clear that it does not discriminate between men and women for worshipping any deity and we believe in equal rights to both the genders and the court has also acknowledged our stand. Sources in the government said it was clear to the trust that it would have to relent or face the consequences, which could include the dissolution of the board. For hundreds of years, several temples have prohibited women from entering the inner sanctum, where the deitys idol is kept. Read | Shani Shingnapur temple finally allows women to enter inner sanctum The BJP-led state governments stand came in the backdrop of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh proclaiming that the restriction was unfair and discriminatory at a convention in Rajasthans Nagaur. Demands are now being made for similar freedom at other temples and places of worship. Trupti Desai of Bhumata Brigade said she will visit Kolhapur to launch an agitation seeking entry for women inside the sanctum sanctorum of Mahalaxmi temple. We started our crusade from Shani Shingnapur and took it further at Trimbakeshwar in Nashik and Mahalaxmi temple in Kolhapur, where women are still barred... We will be going to Kolhapur on April 13 to enter the sanctum sanctorum, said Desai, who wrote to the Kolhapur district administration urging them to issue orders in this regard. Trustees accepted they were under pressure to open their temples to women. Read | Watch: Women bring down wall of tradition, enter Shani shrine Passengers of Air Indias DelhiBhopal flight created ruckus at Raja Bhoj Airport in Bhopal on Friday after they were allegedly served stale food on the flight. As soon as the Air Indias AI-435 flight landed in Bhopal at 7.30am, the passengers gathered at Air Indias office at the airport and complained about the stale food served to them. The passengers alleged that when they complained to the flight attendants about the food, they were asked to eat it or leave it. Rajya Sabha MP Chaudhary Munawwar Saleem was also among the passengers who complained about stale food served to them, sources said. Air India officials denied any such incident and said they didnt receive any complaint from the passengers. The management would have ordered a probe had they received a single complaint, said an Air India official on the condition of anonymity. Such allegations about the national carriers meals are not new. In June 2015, a tweet showed the picture of a lizard found on a Delhi-London flight. It created a flutter on social media, forcing civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju to come up with a statement. However, in that case too, the Air India authority denied the charge as false and baseless. In a setback to Kerala Congress (M) leader and former state finance minister KM Mani ahead of assembly polls, the Kerala high court on Friday refused to stay the proceedings against him in the bar bribery case pending in the Vigilance Court in Thiruvananthapuram. Justice PD Rajan rejected Manis plea seeking to stay the proceedings against him till the state Crime Branch filed an inquiry report in a case against a vigilance superintendent of police accused of conducting a false probe in the bar bribery case involving the KC-M leader. Mani argued that SP, R Sukeshan -- the investigating Officer in the case -- is accused of instigating Kerala Bar Hotel Association working president Biju Ramesh to level allegations against four state ministers in the bar bribery scam related to renewal of licences of the liquor bars. The vigilance case was filed based on the allegation by Ramesh that Mani had accepted Rs one crore for renewing licences of more than 400 bar hotels. Refusing to stay the proceedings against Mani, who resigned as minister after the vigilance case was registered last year, the judge came down heavily on police for the manner in which the investigation was conducted in the bar bribery scandal and the conspiracy case against Sukeshan. Directing police to file a detailed counter affidavit in the petition filed by Mani, he said there was no urgency in this matter and deferred to May 19 for further consideration. The court also refused repeated requests by Manis counsel to post the case for consideration during the vacation. When Manis counsel contended that the case against the former minister was false, Justice Rajan asked, How can your own police register a false case against a powerful minister? The Vigilance Court, Thiruvananthapuram will consider the case against Mani on April 16, exactly a month before the state goes to polls. The high court observed that no efforts have been taken by the probe agency to ascertain the authenticity of electronic data collected during investigation in the case against the Vigilance SP with regard to the allegations against his probe in the bar bribery scandal. While Manis petition came up for hearing on Thursday, Justice Rajan had directed the Crime Branch to submit the progress of investigation conducted against Sukeshan. Though some attempts were made by the petitioner to show scientific records to prove his charge against Sukeshan, the court observed that it was not admissible as the Forensic Science Laboratory in Thiruvananthapuram was not equipped to carry out such a scientific probe. The court also observed that no material has been collected so far in the conspiracy case against Sukeshan. Mani is set to seek election from his home constituency Pala in Kottayam in the May 16 assembly elections. Bar owners in Bihar decided on Thursday, to move the Patna High Court against the complete ban on the sale of liquor in the state. They said in a meeting that the government did not give enough time to them to look for alternative business avenues, causing them huge financial losses. Shailesh Kumar Singh, owner of Liquid Lounge bar, filed a petition in the high court. This is an arbitrary step. The state government had issued licences to all bars selling IMFL (Indian Made Foreign liquor) on March 16 for a period of one year against the payment of `16 lakh. But suddenly, a ban on liquor sale was announced. What will now happen to our investment? Sinha asked. The bar owner said he had invested more than Rs 1crore in the outlet post his return from Nigeria a few years ago. I had believed there was growing business environment in Bihar and invested in the lounge. I had even taken loan for it. Now, I feel totally disillusioned. We are not against the liquor ban, but the state government should have given us time to look for alternative avenues to sustain our family and those of our staff, he rued. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The BJP said on Friday it was up to Islamabad to show how serious it was about honouring its commitments, specifically in combating terrorism. The party was reacting to Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basits statement that the bilateral peace process with India remains suspended, as New Delhi does not want comprehensive talks. After the Pathankot terrorist attack, it was the Pakistan Prime Minister who said we will ensure that action is taken and it was in that context that the JIT came here and now our team is supposed to go there on a reciprocal basis. Now, it is up to Pakistan to show how serious it is on the issue of its commitments and on the issue of combating terrorism, BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli said. India position is now being acknowledged recognized and even appreciated. The Pakistan Prime Minister has made a commitment, so if Pakistan denies all of this, despite facing terrorist attacks in its own soil, then it will show that in Pakistan the old policy of good terrorist, bad terrorist continues and everyone is taking note of it, he added. Kohli also said that as far as the Indian Governments policy is concerned, it is very clear that the three principles of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are that all talks will be bilateral, everything should be resolved peacefully, and terror and talks wont go together. BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, too, lashed out at Pakistan over Basits statements. Its very good that whatever we wanted to show to the world, we have shown that Pakistan civil society, the so-called elected government is a dummy government and it cannot keep its word and it will always find some excuses, Swamy said. And so they called it off because their JIT came, they found proof with India was so strong that if they were allowed to have it cross-checked in Pakistan then they would have no stand internationally, he added. Swamy said the Pakistan High Commissioner should be asked to go back and the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad should be recalled. My opinion is that we have demonstrated to the world that how cooperative we can be, but in Pakistan there is no civilian government there its all military and terrorist government, he added. The BJP leader further said Islamabad has proved to the world that they are unreliable and incurable liars. Basit created a stir on Thursday when he stated that the visit by Pakistan s Joint Investigation Teams to India to probe the Pathankot terror attack was not based on reciprocity. MEA official spokesperson Vikas Swarup said: The MEA would like to clarify that on 26 March, 2016, before the visit of the JIT, the Indian High Commission formally conveyed to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry that the Terms of Reference are broadly agreed to with the proviso that these would be on the basis of reciprocity and followed in accordance with extant legal provisions. The latest signals from Pakistans civilian government have shown that Indias efforts to engage with it in order to nudge bilateral ties towards some semblance of normalcy are floundering. Pakistans high commissioner Abdul Basit created a flutter on Thursday by stating that the bilateral dialogue process was suspended (almost everyones known that for some time, but hearing it from an envoy gives it greater impact). Basit also ruffled numerous feathers in the external affairs ministry and security agencies by saying a Pakistani Joint Investigation Teams (JIT) visit to India to probe the attack on Pathankot airbase wasnt on a reciprocal basis meaning, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) should forget about its plans to go to Pakistan and to gain some access to Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar. The external affairs ministry spokesperson was quick to point out that the spokesman of Pakistans Foreign Office had said shortly after Basit spoke at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Delhi that the two sides were in contact to decide the modalities for a meeting of the foreign secretaries. Other officials also pointed out that the Indian mission had informed Pakistans Foreign Office that the JITs visit would be allowed on the condition of reciprocity. It was odd for a high commissioner resident in Delhi to make such a grave comment of an incongruous and anomalous nature at the Foreign Correspondents Club, said Commodore (retired) C Uday Bhaskar, director of the Society for Policy Studies. Read: Pakistan says talks with India suspended, hints wont allow NIA visit The inference is that it was aimed at the external constituency, and that there are many lines of command and control operating in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, he told Hindustan Times. When the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, known for its robust national security posture and hardline stand on terrorism, came to power in 2014, few would have imagined that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would make a surprise visit to Lahore to wish his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday, or that it would allow a JIT with a member from the Inter-Services Intelligence to visit India to conduct an investigation. Both those things happened because the NDA government has been willing to walk the extra mile to push relations with Pakistan in the right direction. Some have pointed to the contacts between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterpart Nasser Khan Janjua for paving the way for Modis visit to Lahore and the recent sharing of intelligence to counter terrorists. But Janjua, a retired three-star general, is more plugged into the military establishment, which recently went to town over the arrest of purported RAW agent Kulbhushan Jadhav a development that did little to ease relations. The military establishments handling of the Jadhav issue was so ham-handed that even Pakistans close ally Iran has publicly complained about it, especially after Islamabad asked Tehran to investigate Jadhavs alleged activities in the port city of Chahbahar. Clearly, both sides havent learnt from the lessons of the past few months less is more. The below-the-radar contacts between the NSAs was what gave some impetus to the efforts to set things right. Public posturing of the sort displayed by Basit on Thursday doesnt help. Read: Indo-Pak talks and the troubled relationship between Modi and Sharif On the Indian side, the policy has to acquire a greater degree of sophistication to contend with the two power centres in Pakistan, especially the military-intelligence establishment that drives foreign policy. Baqir Sajjad, the diplomatic correspondent of the Dawn newspaper, believes it is time for the two sides to get down to brass tacks and sort out the issues that are holding up re-engagement. Read: Both sides agreed on reciprocity: India counters Pak envoys JIT comment Irrespective of what high commissioner Basit said, it is quite apparent that the establishments on both sides have been misleading their people on the status of resumption of dialogue, he told Hindustan Times. There are definitely deeper issues which are holding back the planned meeting of the foreign secretaries to decide the schedule of future meetings. I dont think we are getting any closer to resolving those issues, the situation is instead getting more complicated. (The views expressed by the writer are personal. He tweets as @rezhasan) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The final phone call made by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Rajya Sabha MP Narendra Kashyaps daughter-in-law who was found shot dead earlier this week was to her husband, police revealed on Friday. Sagar Kashyap, the MPs son, told police that he had gone to Meerut for official work when 27-year-old Himanshi called him on his mobile phone. As he could not take it then, he called her back. But Himanshi simply told him that she loved him, and hung up. Read: BSP MPs daughter-in-law found dead, parents say murder over dowry Police confirmed that a call was made to Himanshis mobile phone around 10.53 am on Wednesday, a little before she was found dead with a bullet injury in the head. Sagar said she spoke in a loving tone, and didnt sound like her usual self. The arrested people (Himanshis in-laws) have not disclosed the motive behind the attack, a police officer said. Himanshi was rushed to the Yashoda Hospital in Ghaziabad by her in-laws around 12.15 pm, where she was declared dead on arrival. Later, her Badaun-based family lodged an FIR alleging dowry death against the MP also the partys national general secretary and five family members at the Kavi Nagar police station. Read: BSP MP, his wife and son arrested in dowry death case Police said Himanshi was shot from a close range, probably a distance of one feet or less. The post-mortem report indicates blackening and tattooing marks over the bullet injury, something that happens when shot from a close range. We are also checking photographs of the crime scene and call records of phones belonging to both Sagar and Himanshi, said circle officer Manish Mishra, who is the investigating officer in the case. Its too early to say if this was suicide. Nobody but the victims in-laws were present in the house at the time of the incident. No one heard the gun being fired, and her in-laws did not inform the police, he added. According to the post-mortem report, the bullet injury was located nearly 5.5 cm above the right ear. The bullet was fired from a licensed revolver belonging to her husband. While Himanshis body was found lying in a pool of blood inside the washroom, the weapon was located some distance away. Read: Himanshis family alleges dowry murder, MP ready for probe Police said the weapon was sent for ballistic examination, her viscera preserved, and slide samples taken for DNA testing. The victims father former BSP minister Hiralal Kashyap has accused Himanshis in-laws of torturing her for dowry. Narendra, his wife Devendari Devi and Sagar were arrested and remanded in 14 days judicial custody soon after Himanshis family filed an FIR against them on Thursday. Both Narendra and Devendari had admitted themselves to a hospital for chest pain on Wednesday night. However, they were taken into custody after an ECG test showed normal readings. Meanwhile, lawyers of the Ghaziabad Bar Association went on a strike on Friday, and handed over a memorandum demanding a fair probe into Himanshis death to district authorities. Our strike is to demand a fair investigation into the case to find out how Himanshi died. Both Narendra Kashyap and his son are members of our bar association. We want a fair investigation into the case, said Rakesh Tyagi, president of the bar association. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Sukhwinder Singh routinely drives his truck from Ludhiana to Siliguri. He stops every few hundred kilometres to rest and have food. However, the last trip was very unpleasant for him. Bhaiya Bihar me kahin nahi mila, 300 km se gaddi chala raha hoon (Brother, I did not find it anywhere in Bihar. I have been driving for 300 km), he says. Enroute to Siliguri, he could not rest anywhere in Bihar. Dalkhola, West Bengal was his first stop after 300 km. He intends to take a long rest, and whisky, before leaving. A labourer from Baisi, Bihar joins Sukhwinder at the liquor kiosk and buys two bottles of country-made liquor for Rs 100. Baisi is a town on the Bihar-West Bengal border. The liquor vendor says pleasantly, Please dont publish our names and let us be. The booze ban in Bihar has been great for our business. Here in West Bengal we can sell both country-made and foreign liquor. And country-made liquor is much in demand these days. What Drives Dalkhola Dalkhola is a grain market in the North Dinajpur district of West Bengal. A small portion of the town juts into Bihar. It is strategically located on the Chicken Neck that connects North-East to the rest of the country. The town lords over the intersection of National Highway (NH) 31 and 34. Purnia, Bihar is 40 km to its south, connected by NH 31. Kishanganj, which is minority dominated and abuts the Indo-Nepal border, is 40 km to its north. The place is major a transit point and a truckers stop. But that is now in the past. It is all set to see a huge influx of cash and new customers, driven by the booze ban in Bihar. These days the place is all abuzz, even frequent traffic jams, as people from across the border line up at the liquor shops. Bihar Booze-ban Bonanza Many plan to open liquor vends here but are waiting for the assembly elections of Bengal and panchayat elections of Bihar to end, says Om Prakash Gupta, a liquor vendor in Dalkhola. We are aware of the total ban on liquor in Bihar and you cant rule out that sales will increase here, he clarifies. The shopkeepers are betting that Bihars police and excise department will implement the prohibition with maximum strictness. Recently, Purnia administration held a meeting with West Bengal Police officials at Dalkhola and urged them to cooperate with Bihar in implementing the prohibition. The meeting was attended by excise officials too. Everything depends on how long the police and excise officials of Bihar remain alert and active. The liquor ban in Bihar has certainly increased the sales here, says Gupta. Since April 2, a day after the ban, we have been witnessing a steady stream of people at the liquor kiosks. Most hide the stuff in the boot of their vehicles, for fear of Bihar officials at the border. Many just drink a lot. The situation is a godsend for this small Bengal town, adds Gupta. There are four registered wine shops here. One along the NH 31, which links Assam with Bihar, and three along NH 34, which connects Siliguri to Kolkata. There is also a beer bar next to NH 31. The strategic stretch that connects Bihar is clearly under-serviced. Electione pare amader chandi hobe (After elections we will be rolling in money), exclaims a liquor vendor here. Booze Run All the four Seemanchal districts of BiharPurnia, Katihar, Araria, and Kishanganjshare land or riverine border with West Bengal. Balrampur of Katihar and Pothia of Kishanganj are indistinguishable from West Bengal. Hence it is not easy to check liquor sale and consumption [across the border], a police official posted at Dalkhola told HT. He claims that the liquor ban in Bihar would create a whole new set of problems. Enterprising young men are sure to set up bootlegging networks in the coming days. Liquor vendors here are already in talks with their influential counterparts in the neighbouring districts of Bihar. Even MPs and MLAs of Seemanchal are involved in selling foreign and country-made liquor, said a vendor, without disclosing his identity and without elaborating any further. Locals say that there is unprecedented enthusiasm among land prospectors too, with many of the rich and powerful planning to set up liquor vends here. We have had businessmen from Kishanganj and Purnia looking for land along NH 31, to set up liquor dhabas (highways eateries). Being equidistant from two important Seemanchal towns, many are likely to come here. Local Bengalis with land are now quoting double the rates, at Rs 5 lakh per kattha (1 kattha is about 350 square metres), which was unimaginable a few days ago, says Sushil Pramanik, a farmhand in Dalkhola. And in all this, an unprecedented phenomenon has gone unnoticed. For the first time in history of West Bengal, its citizens are cheering for a chief minister of Bihar. How long this will last, is anybodys guess. Chhattisgarh is the latest Indian state, after Haryana and Andhra Pradesh, to aggressively seek investments from China, with chief minister Raman Singh saying his state wants to learn from a Chinese province that has emerged as a development hub. Centrally located Chhattisgarh wants to gain from the experiences of the similarly situated Henan province and discussions are being held to woo investors from the Chinese region to his state, Singh said on Thursday. Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan located 700 km south of Beijing, has been developed as the central China railway hub, connecting key cities across the country. Singh said similar plans could be initiated for Chhattisgarh. The effort to link Indian states and Chinese provinces is being cultivated under the bilateral idea of promoting local or state-to-state relations. Like Chhattisgarh, Henan has a long history and is considered the cradle of Chinese civilisation. Speaking to Hindustan Times in Zhengzhou after a day of meetings with top officials, Singh said his focus is on attracting Chinese investment in clean-energy sectors like solar power, electronics and information technology. They (Chinese companies) are welcome to invest in non-core sectors like solar energy, IT, equipment manufacturing and food processing, he said. Nineteen sectors have been identified to attract foreign investments and the focus will be manufacturing. The renewed thrust is coming under Prime Minister Narendra Modis Make in India campaign, Singh said. Despite safety issues linked to the Maoist insurgencyin Chhattisgarh, Singh said foreign companies will not have problems as incidents of violence have fallen in most parts of the state. Chinese companies already have a presence in Chhattisgarhs power sector, with companies such as Dongfang Electric and Shanghai Electric supplying critical equipment to power plants. Leading Chinese companies making laptops and smartphones have begun talks on opportunities in the state, Singh said. India offers new opportunities for Chinese consumer electronics companies as growth saturates in China. Singh said there are opportunities for Chinese firms to explore investment opportunities in Naya Raipur, a new development that is expected to become a smart city hub. Among the advantages of doing business in Chhattisgarh is the cost according to Singh, it is cheaper than most states, especially the price of power. Power is surplus in the state, he said. The ease of doing business too has been streamlined over the years. Singh met Chen Runer, the new governor of Henan, and invited him to contribute to the Make in India initiative by investing in Chhattisgarh. There are ample investment opportunities in Chhattisgarh and we seek your support in promoting economic and cultural collaboration between the two states, he told the governor. India will formally ask Pakistan to arrest terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammads chief Maulana Masood Azhar and his brother Rauf for the Pathankot airbase attack case after a court issued arrest warrants for them on Friday. The special National Investigation Agency court in Punjabs Mohali also issued arrest warrants for Kashif Jaan and Shahid Latif, considered to be the handlers of the Pathankot attackers. We had approached the court in this regard a few days back, said a senior NIA official. The arrest warrants came a day after Pakistani envoy Abdul Basit said talks with India were suspended and hinted that the NIA probe team - that is scheduled to go to Pakistan - will not be allowed access to Azhar. The official added that the warrants will now be shared with Pakistan by sending another letter rogatory or a court-approved request for assistance in probe. The arrest warrants will also strengthen Indias case in the United Nations Security Council for putting Masood Azhar under the sanction regime of the world body. Six militants infiltrated the strategic Pathankot air base in January, killing seven soldiers and forcing a new low in troubled bilateral ties between the two countries. Pakistan has repeatedly said there isnt enough evidence against Azhar. An Indian move to designate Azhar a terrorist at the UN security council was blocked by Islamabads ally Beijing recently. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Aiming to strengthen its grip on the backward communities in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP on Friday appointed OBC leader and Phulpur MP Keshav Prasad Maurya a former tea-seller and VHP activist its chief in the countrys most populous state. UP goes to polls early next year and the BJP hopes to repeat its Lok Sabha performance, where it won 71 of the 80 parliamentary seats. Former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa also returned as president of Karnataka BJP, which is trying to win back support of the Lingayats to dislodge the Congress government. Union minister and Dalit leader Vijay Sampla , former Lok Sabha MP Tapir Gao, and Dr K Laxman were appointed BJP presidents in Punjab, Arunachal Pradesh and Telangana respectively. Gao belongs to the ST community and OBC leader Laxman is BJPs floor leader in the Telangana assembly. Of all the five appointments on Friday, the one in UP is a crucial one. The party is gearing up for a four-cornered contest in the assembly elections and is trying to strengthen its support base among OBCs. Mauryas community is considered aligned with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Union ministers Manoj Sinha and Mahesh Sharma were also considered for the assignment but Mauryas social background tipped the scales in his favour, said sources. That he is not identified with any particular group within the BJP also went to his advantage. Maurya, however, is not seen as a mass leader with enough political experience and leading the faction-ridden state unit will be a tough task for him, a party leader said. He contested his first election in 2012 (assembly) and then in 2014 (Lok Sabha), winning both. The 47-year-old MP is a former functionary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an active participant during the Ram janmabhoomi movement, and has several criminal cases pending against him. He comes from a humble background and used to sell tea and newspapers to support his education, BJP general secretary Arun Singh said. Accounting for 17% of Karnatakas population, Lingayats deserted the BJP after Yeddyurappa quit the party in 2012 to start a separate party, Karnataka Janata Paksh (KJP), to contest the 2013 assembly election separately. The Karnataka high court in January quashed charges against him in a land scam, which set the stage for his return at the helm in the state that goes to polls in 2018. With Yeddyurappas rehabilitation, who merged KJP with the BJP ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP expects to win back the communitys support that will help it dislodge the Congress from power in the state. Vijay Sampla will lead the BJP in Punjab, which will go to polls early next year. The BJP is eyeing expansion in the northern state and with Sampla as its leader, the BJP has tried to woo Dalits who account for about 32% of the population. The BJP is a junior partner of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in an alliance and has shared power for the last 10 years. In the next round of reshuffle, the BJP is likely to announce state unit chiefs in six more states, including Delhi, Bihar and Jharkhand. KNOW THE NEW SATRAPS The party appointed new presidents in five states. Here is an introduction to the new leadership KARNATAKA: BS Yeddyurappa Who is he?: The former CM represents Shimoga in the Lok Sabha. Quit BJP in Nov 2012 to return ahead of 2014 LS polls The former CM represents Shimoga in the Lok Sabha. Quit BJP in Nov 2012 to return ahead of 2014 LS polls Strengths: Partys tallest leader in the state and has experience of running a state government. Also has close links with the RSS. Partys tallest leader in the state and has experience of running a state government. Also has close links with the RSS. Weaknesses: Had to step down as CM in 2011 on corruption charges and has an image problem despite HC quashing FIRs against him Had to step down as CM in 2011 on corruption charges and has an image problem despite HC quashing FIRs against him UTTAR PRADESH: Keshav Prasad Maurya Who is he?: MP from Phulpur in Allahabad comes from a humble background and has been associated with the RSS since his early days. MP from Phulpur in Allahabad comes from a humble background and has been associated with the RSS since his early days. Strengths: Has been associated with the Ram temple movement, close to RSS and VHP. Has been associated with the Ram temple movement, close to RSS and VHP. Weaknesses: May be criticised over a tainted background with nearly a dozen criminal cases, including an attempt to murder and inciting communal riots, pending May be criticised over a tainted background with nearly a dozen criminal cases, including an attempt to murder and inciting communal riots, pending PUNJAB: Vijay Sampla Sampla, 54, is Union minister of state for social justice and empowerment. A Ravidassia Dalit, he became MP from Hoshiarpur in the Dalit-dominated Doaba belt in 2014. Joined the party in 1998. TELANGANA: Dr K Laxman An alumnus of the Osmania University, 57-year-old Laxman is a two-time legislator representing Musheerabad in the state assembly. Laxman has also been the partys national secretary in the past. ARUNACHAL PRADESH: Tapir Gao The 50-year-old is the partys national executive member and former MP from Arunachal East constituency. Hails from Ruksin, a small town in East Siang district. Belongs to the Adi tribe, the second largest in the state. Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanicas former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption over the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for Rs 3,600 crore. In the ruling, which overtured a previous court order of 2014, Bruno Spagnolini, the former CEO of Finmeccanicas helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, was also handed a four-year prison term by the court yesterday. The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively, it said. The ruling has come as a severe blow to the Italian company which had just managed to leave the corruption saga behind that marred its image across the world. Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials told PTI that the firm has changed completely. The company has undergone deep changes and it has changed completely from the time when the allegations came up first. Finmeccanica is a different company now, an official said. Both Orsi and Spagnolini were accused of international corruption and false invoicing in relation to bribes exchanged for a 560-million-euro (approx. Rs 4,250 crore) contract with India. Both were cleared on charges of committing international corruption at the first-instance trial in 2014 but convicted of false invoicing and sentenced to two years in prison. In Italy, criminal sentences are not usually considered definitive until the appeals process has been exhausted, the report said. In October, 2014, a lower court had convicted Orsi and Spagnolini of falsifying invoices but acquitted them of corruption. Both appealed against the conviction, while the prosecution appealed against the acquittal on the corruption charge. On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with Finmeccanicas British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of paying kickbacks to the tune of Rs 360 crore by it for securing the deal. The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) are still probing the case in which former IAF chief S P Tyagi and his cousins are alleged to be the beneficiaries. The ED has booked Tyagi, his family members, European nationals - Carlo Gerosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschke, four firms - Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland and Chandigarh-based IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, two companies based in Mauritius and Tunisia, few other firms and unknown persons in CBIs criminal complaint. In view of the corruption charges, India has also barred Finmeccanica and its group companies from participating in any new programme of the defence ministry. Senior Haryana-cadre IAS officer Ashok Khemka was on Thursday transferred again by the Haryana government -- the 47th transfer for the officer in nearly 25 years of service. Khemka, who was posted in the inconsequential Archaeology and Museums department, has been posted as principal secretary, science and technology. Soon after his new posting orders were issued on Thursday, Khemka tweeted: Posting order in my rank of Principal Secretary after a 99-day delay. On March 30, he had tweeted: Awaiting posting on promotion for last 3 months. Holding a lower rank post is humiliating. Like a Lt Gen forced to hold post of Brigadier. Six other senior IAS officers were also transferred by the Manohar Lal Khattar government in the state. Khemka, a 1991-batch IAS officer, was promoted as principal secretary by the Haryana government in January this year. Khemka, whose actions had even got the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his election speeches in Haryana in October 2014, had hit national headlines in October 2012 when he cancelled the mutation of a Rs.58-crore land deal between Congress president Sonia Gandhis son-in-law Robert Vadra and realty giant DLF and ordered a probe into controversial land deals done by Vadra in Haryana. He was hounded by the previous Congress government in Haryana headed by Bhupinder Singh Hooda for this action. Khemka, an IIT graduate, was touted to get an important assignment when the BJP came to power in Haryana in October 2014. However, he was posted in the transport department and later confined to the Archaeology and Museums Department. China on Friday said it was in close communication with India over its decision to block New Delhis bid to have Pakistan-based terror group JeM chief Masood Azhar designated as terrorist by the UN. China is opposed to all forms of terrorism and is willing to step up pragmatic cooperation with all countries, foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters in Beijing. When asked about foreign secretary S Jaishankars remarks that India has taken up Azhars ban issue with China, Hong said, on anti-terrorism we always act based on facts and in accordance with rules and regulations of UN to deal with the listing in the 1267 sanctions committee. We always keep in close communication with all the countries including India on this issue, he said. Jaishankar this week said that India has taken up at a fairly high level with China the issue of Beijing blocking its bid to have Azhar designated as terrorist by the UN. Last week, China stopped UN sanctions committee from designating Azhar as terrorist, maintaining that the case did not meet the requirements of the Security Council. This is not the first time China has blocked Indias bid to get Pakistan-based militant groups and leaders proscribed by the UN. The UN had banned the JeM in 2001 but Indias efforts for slapping sanctions on Azhar after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack did not fructify as China, that has veto powers, did not allow it, apparently at the behest of Pakistan again. Last July, China had similarly halted Indias move in the UN to take action against Pakistan for its release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, saying its stand was based on facts and in the spirit of objectiveness and fairness with Beijing again claiming at the time that it was in touch with New Delhi. Repeated exhortations by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his ministers and party parliamentarians to use social media to showcase the governments achievements have not had much impact on them. A majority of the 282 BJP MPs in the Lok Sabha fall short of expectations in an assessment of their performance on Twitter and Facebook by the Prime Ministers Office. About half of them are absent from Twitter, while most of those who are present are either inactive or are not making fair usage. In a recent letter to all party MPs, the PMO has shared its assessment about their social media profile on the basis of the number of followers, activity (tweets and posts), and the Likes they get. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is right on top and has an ideal activity profile. Union minister Uma Bharti has over 50,000 followers on Twitter and about 25,000 on Facebook, but the PMO judged her as inactive in the absence of any tweets and posts. Mathura MP Hema Malini is active on Twitter with about 7.50 lakh followers and 45-50 tweets a month; the PMOs assessment of her twitter is fair usage but she could have posts on government achievements. Read | Govt to monitor social media 24x7 to counter negative comments, blogs Modi has been a strong advocate of social media as a tool of communication and effectively used them in 2014 general election and in the PMs office. The current assessment is just an exercise to highlight the seriousness behind PMs suggestion, a minister told HT. At a recent meeting of the council of ministers last month, Modi had stressed that they needed to get more active on social media and popularize the governments works. He had told them that they should have lakhs of followers. Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh had held a meeting with officials on the use of social media the very next day after the Cabinet meeting. Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan is learnt to have set up a team to monitor it and provide accurate data and information concerning his ministry. Some of their colleagues had left their party and government red-faced on Good Friday. While culture minister Mahesh Sharma had wished Happy Good Friday, his party colleague Shahnawaz Hissain had extended warm greetings to Christians through tweets. In its letter to the MPs, the PMO made 5 suggestions for an effective use of social media. Parliamentarians have been suggested to share positive media coverage about developments in their constituency in the morning, link e-paper clippings and interact with people on twitter and facebook. Another suggestion is to share testimonials, real stories and news about people benefitting from flagship schemes of the central government. Driving MPs for minimum effort, maximum impact, the PMO wants parliamentarian to share media coverage, infographics on achievements and quotes of famous people about the government through Narendra Modi mobile App, Transforming India website or BJPs twitter and facebook page. MPs have also been asked to share important speeches of the PM and ministers to make sure people know things directly. Read | Internet star Modi features on Times most influential people again SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON India is in talks with the United States to purchase 40 Predator surveillance drones, officials said, a possible first step towards acquiring the armed version of the aircraft and a development likely to annoy Pakistan. India is trying to equip the military with more unmanned technologies to gather intelligence as well as boost its firepower along the vast land borders with Pakistan and China. It also wants a closer eye on the Indian Ocean. New Delhi has already acquired surveillance drones from Israel to monitor the mountains of Kashmir, a region disputed by the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals and the cause of two of their three wars. As defence ties deepen with the United States, which sees India as a counterweight to China in the region, New Delhi has asked Washington for the Predator series of unmanned planes built by privately-held General Atomics, military officials said. We are aware of Predator interest from the Indian Navy. However, it is a government-to-government discussion, Vivek Lall, chief executive of US and International Strategic Development at San Diego-based General Atomics, told Reuters. The US government late last year cleared General Atomics proposal to market the unarmed Predator XP in India. It was not clear when the delivery of the drones would take place. The navy wants them for surveillance in the Indian Ocean, where the pilotless aircraft can remain airborne for 35 hours at a stretch, at a time when the Chinese navy is expanding ship and submarine patrols in the region. Moves by India to enhance its defence capabilities have in the past provoked sharp reactions from Islamabad, where the government and military are worried about falling further behind their bigger rival in the arms race. Pakistans foreign ministry could not be reached for comment on Friday, the start of the weekend there, while the military had no immediate comment. Carter Visit Indias air force has also asked Washington about acquiring around 100 armed Predator C Avenger aircraft, which the United States has used to carry out strikes against Islamist militants in Pakistans northwest and neighbouring Afghanistan. But it would need clearance from the Missile Technology Control Regime group of 34 nations as well as approval from US Congress before any transfer of lethal Predators could happen, officials said. The push for the drones comes as US defence secretary Ash Carter heads to India this weekend for talks to cement military collaboration in the final months of the Obama administration. Indian military officials said they expected the request for the armed aircraft to figure in Carters talks with his Indian counterpart, Manohar Parrikar. Washington wants India to sign a set of agreements including on the use of each others military bases that would help them operate together. Prime Minister Narendra Modis government has signalled its willingness to move forward with the proposed pacts after the previous administration did not act for more than a decade. Retired air vice marshal Manmohan Bahadur said the proposed acquisition of armed Predators would give the military the ability to carry out cross-border strikes, or even attack targets lying deeper inside a neighbouring country. But at the end of the day, its a political decision. Its one thing to lob artillery shells, its another to use air power, thats an escalation, he said. India has not moved against Pakistan militarily despite blaming militant groups based there for orchestrating attacks on its soil including one on Mumbai in 2008, in part out of fear it would spiral into a broader conflict. But a drone strike might be a less risky option, experts said. Ejaz Haider, a Pakistani security analyst, said Islamabad would object to the transfer of such drones in the region. But he questioned their effectiveness if they entered Pakistani air space, since it would probably try to shoot them down, something it did not do with US drones. There is obviously going to be push-back from Pakistan, because if it (the drone) does get through in some way or other it enhances Indian capability, he said. Despite many meetings between India and Pakistan to ensure that talks over prolonged issues go smoothly, a breakthrough remains elusive. Though India appeared to extend an olive branch by allowing a Pakistan joint investigative team probe the Pathankot attack on Indian soil, trouble is brewing yet again. At an event in New Delhi on Thursday, Pakistanis envoy to India, Abdul Basit said, I would say the dialogue is suspended. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office, diplomatic talks with Pakistan at various levels have fallen through several times. A brief history of the troubled relationship between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif: May 2014 (Ajay Aggarwal/HT File Photo) Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif attends Narendra Modis swearing-in as the Prime Minister of India. Sharif says the two nations had an opportunity to turn a page in their history of troubled relations. However, around 800 incidents of ceasefire violations at the border were reported in the first year of Modi government. July 2015 Modi and Sharif next meet on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit 2015 in Ufa, Russia. (PIB photo) The two PMs meet at a summit in Russia, marking an uptick in high-level bilateral contacts following a prolonged freeze in ties. They agree to national security adviser-level talks. August 2015 The peace talks between the national security adviser to India Ajit Doval and the then Pakistan NSA Sartaj Aziz collapsed hours before the scheduled start. (File photos) Peace talks between India and Pakistan collapse hours before they are scheduled to start. Pakistan pulls out after Indias foreign minister Sushma Swaraj says the talks will not take place if Pakistan NSA Sartaj Aziz does not drop plans to meet separatist Hurriyat leaders. November 2015 Climate change between India and Pakistan in Paris. (PTI photo) Modi and Sharif briefly meet on the sidelines of the COP21 summit on climate change in Paris. Not much of what was talked about during this courtesy meeting was known as there were no delegates from either country around. December 2015 NSA to India Ajit Doval with his Pakistani counterpart Nasser Khan meet in Bangkok, Thailand. (PTI file photo) o A secret meeting between the NSAs of the two countries in Bangkok helps put bilateral engagements back on track. Pakistan's NSA Sartaj Aziz with the Indian foreign minister Sushma Swaraj at the foreign ministry in Islamabad on December 9, 2015. (AFP file photo) o Swaraj visits Islamabad to attend a summit and holds talks with her counterpart Aziz. Narendra Modi was warmly received by the Pak PM Nawaz Sharif in Lahore. (PIB handout photo) o Modi springs a surprise by flying to Lahore to meet Sharif on his way back from a brief visit to Afghanistan. On Twitter, Modi makes public his plans to meet Sharif on the Pak PMs birthday. January 2016 o Suspected Pakistani militants attack Indian Air Force base in Pathankot; seven Indian soldiers are killed. The attack leads to stalling of the resumption of dialogue between India and Pakistan. o Sharif orders the formation of a high -profile joint investigation team to probe the specific and actionable evidence provided by India. March-April 2016 Members of the Pakistan JIT during their visit to the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot on March 29, 2016. (Sameer Sehgal / HT Photo ) The Pakistan joint investigation team (JIT) visits India to investigate whether there are any Pakistani links in the Pathankot attack. April 2016 (Sushil Kumar/HT Photo) Pakistan says its JIT visited the crime scene but witnesses from the Indian security forces were not produced before the probe team. Pakistan's high commissioner to India Abdul Basit during an interaction with media at Foreign Correspondent Club in New Delhi on Thursday. (PTI) o Pakistan says the dialogue process with India has been suspended and hints there is no possibility of allowing an NIA team to visit Islamabad to probe the Pathankot terror attack. India and the United States will conclude talks on three vital defence pacts during the three-day visit of Defence Secretary Ashton Carter beginning in Goa from Sunday. The three agreements are the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA) on military cooperation, Communication Inter-operability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CIS MO A) on transfer of technology, and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement on sharing mapping data and imagery. The three deals are to be formally signed later. US Defence Secretary Carter arrives in Goa on April 10 and will visit navy base INS Kadamba at Karwar with defence minister Manohar Parrikar the next day. Carter will take a tour of Indias biggest aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya. In turn, Parrikar will accompany Carter to the US Pacific Fleets command vessel, the USS Blue Ridge, at Mormugao harbour. The 45-year-old vessel is the oldest ship in the US Seventh Fleet and remains its command and control post. Carter will arrive in Delhi for talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his senior colleagues only on April 12. Top sources told Hindustan Times that the primarily naval LSA ag reement will allow Indian and US ships to pick up fuel and supplies from each others bases for humanitarian purposes, disaster relief, coordinated exercises, antipiracy patrols as well as for protecting sea lanes. Special permission will, however, have to be sought by both US and India in case their ships are on wartime missions. India is also expected to okay the CISMOA document as it will help the US transfer high-end technology, particularly on aircraft carriers. India plans to build its third air defence ship (ADS) in collaboration with the US; a bilateral joint working group has already been created. Discussions on these three agreements are expected to feature in the joint statement after Carter concludes his India visit. Defence minister Parrikar is expected to travel to Beijing, China, on April 17-18. He will call on Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as his counterpart, Chang Wanquan. Barring some incursions south of the Depsang Plains in eastern Ladakh, Chinese intrusions across the 3,488-km Line of Actual Control have gone down. China has been proactive in extending its reach in the South China Sea. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Amravati Police have registered a case against five judicial officers of the region, including a district session judge, in connection with the alleged suicide of an additional chief judicial magistrate, officials said on Friday. Anup Jawalkar, civil judge senior division and additional chief judicial magistrate at Darwha in Yavatmal, allegedly committed suicide on March 6 by throwing himself before an oncoming train at a railway crossing at Manjarkhed in Amravati districts Chandur Bazaar. The case against the senior judicial officials from Yavatmal, including a senior judge in the district, was lodged after their names were found in a suicide note possibly written by Jawalkar. His suicide had triggered speculation regarding the possible reasons. Yes, we have registered offences against five judicial officers in this regard after verifying the allegations and authenticity of the suicide note submitted by the judges family, Lakhmi Gautam, superintendent of police, Amravati (rural) district, said. The suicide note was found at Jawalkars official residence by his younger brother, Amol, who had come to shift the household articles of his brother to Pune. Amol, who plans to approach the high court to seek justice, said he came across the suicide note in an old wallet of his brother when the family was packing luggage to shift to Pune. He lodged a complaint with the police after finding the note. The wallet of the senior judicial official was not found at the spot where he allegedly killed himself. His identity card had helped police establish his identity. Jawalkar, who belonged to Wardha district, had come to the railway crossing at Manjarkhed in his four-wheeler before committing suicide. The judge had gone to Yavatmal to attend a wedding a day before he committed suicide. He left home at midnight, leaving his mobile phone at home. Reports have said that Jawalkar, who was transferred to Darwha from Yavatmal a few days ago, was not happy with the transfer. Jawalkar was recruited in 2004 as a civil judge junior division and promoted as an additional judicial magistrate in 2012. The Haryana government on Friday appointed a two-member commission of inquiry headed by Justice (retd) SN Jha to investigate what caused the Jat quota violence that rocked the state from February 18 to 23. The commission will probe the sequence of events leading to the agitation and violence leading to loss of lives, damage to private and public property, road blockades, illegal felling of trees and violation of human rights in Rohtak, Jhajjar, Sonepat, Jind, Hisar, Kaithal and Bhiwani districts. The state government had earlier appointed former IPS officer Prakash Singh to investigate into the acts of omission and commission on part of the police and civil administration and suggest measures to prevent recurrence of such incidents. However, his appointment was not made under the Commission of Inquiry Act. Dozens of people were killed on February when Jat protesters clashed with forces and other groups, torched buildings and vehicles and destroyed public and private property. The state government had told Punjab and Haryana high court that 2,110 FIRs were registered and 567 people arrested in connection with the violence and loss of property during the quota agitation. An official spokesperson said that the commission would also probe the possibility of a deep-rooted conspiracy to disturb social harmony. The other member of the commission is former IPS officer NC Padhi, a former Intelligence Bureau sleuth. Chief minister, Manohar Lal Khattar, had recently announced in the assembly that a judicial inquiry would be ordered to probe the incidents of arson and violence during the reservation agitation. The Congress party and Associated Journals Pvt Ltd (AJL) may submit their balance sheets for the year 2010-2011 on Friday before a Delhi court that had asked for the documents in a case related to alleged misappropriation of party funds in the acquisition of the now-defunct National Herald newspaper. Metropolitan magistrate Loveleen had asked them to furnish the papers on March 11 in the case in which Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her son and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi and four others are accused. This is likely to be the first time the financial documents of the grand old party have been sought in a criminal case. Metropolitan magistrate Lovleen, after hearing the submissions, posted the matter for April 8 for the next hearing on the plea of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy. The Metropolitan magistrate had asked AJL, which published National Herald, to produce its annual account books for the period observing that these documents could not be referred as personal documents of the accused. While periodically the balance sheets are filed before the Election Commission and individuals in their capacities have submitted their finance documents to courts, but the manner in which Congress financial documents have been summoned in this case is unconventional to say the least, a party source said. Swamy had charged Sonia, Rahul and five other Congress leaders of cheating in the acquisition of AJL by Young India Pvt Ltd (YIPL). Sonia and Rahul own 38% stakes each in YIPL. The order had come on a plea filed by Swamy who had sought financial documents of the Congress for three years starting 2010-11. However, after seeking some clarifications, the court said it would partly allow the application. Swamy had said the documents are relevant to prove his charges that the Gandhis and directors of YIPL Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda had conspired to misappropriate funds in acquiring National Herald. He added the documents were also referred to in the June 26, 2014, order summoning the Gandhis and others as accused in the case. According to Swamy, the Gandhis and the four directors YIPL had conspired to misappropriate funds by helping AJL obtain a loan of over Rs 90 crore from the partys funds, of which just Rs 50 lakh was eventually paid back to the political party. The newspaper, which was launched by the countrys first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, ceased publication in 2008. On February 20, the court had directed that some documents from the ministries of finance, urban development and corporate affairs, income tax department and other agencies in the case would be kept in a sealed cover till further orders, noting that the Delhi high court was seized of the matter. The court granted bail to Sonia, Rahul, Vora, Fernandes and Dubey on December 19, 2015, after they appeared before it. Pitroda was granted bail on February 20. BJP cautioned that the way outstation students are being dealt with at NIT Srinagar could have an impact on students from Jammu and Kashmir studying elsewhere in the country. The elements involved in the misaction are anti-national and anti-people who want to destroy the peaceful atmosphere in the state by indulging in such type of violence which tantamount to instigating similar reactions against students from the state studying outside the state and putting to risk and jeopardy their lives, said Sunil Sethi, chief spokesperson of BJPs state unit. Noting that Jammu and Kashmir is poised to get AIIMS and IIT, he said, Bad treatment given to our fellow countrymen in the state will dissuade the students and teachers to come to these institutions which looks like concerted effort to isolate the state from national mainstream. He called upon the state govt administration to take effective and strong action against all persons involved, including police officials, to instill confidence among outstation students. He further said raising of national flag and chanting national slogans are a matter of pride and the state has to facilitate activities which propagate nationalism. Action should be taken against all such elements who are indulging in anti-national slogans and hoisting flags of Pakistan which amounts to supporting and propagating terrorism and separatism in the state and rest of country, Sethi said. He said there should be total ban on sale and possession of Pakistani Flags in the state with penal consequences to stop the politics of hatred in the state. A group of Kashmiri students was assaulted in Jodhpurs Vyas Dental College on Thursday evening in an alleged backlash against the police attack on non-local boys studying at Srinagars National Institute of Technology (NIT) three days ago. A mob of 30 people armed with knives, iron rods and sticks attacked the Kashmiri students at the annual cultural event of the private college, some of the victims in Jodhpur said on Friday. Local students and outsiders, who had their face covered, chanted Pakistan Murdabad slogans and looked for Kashmiri students at the function. They beat up every Kashmiri they found, one of the students said. Some students took refuge in their hostel but they were allegedly assaulted and their belongings thrown out of their rooms. Hostel furniture was reportedly damaged in the violence. They barged into our hostel rooms, shouting anti-Pakistan slogans. They attacked us with iron rods, sticks and knives, and threatened to kill us, saying they will take revenge for what happened in NIT Srinagar, a student said. We fear for our lives. They will attack us again if we go out. The SHO of Kudi Bhagtasni area, Anand Singh, assured action against the alleged attackers and protection to the Kashmiri students. Yes, the students were beaten up and we have identified the culprits. I talked to the families of some of the Kashmiri students. We have stationed police constables inside the college, he said. But the students alleged that the threats were continuing. How can we get threats inside our hostels if police were deployed on the campus? Police and college authorities are not stopping people from attacking us, one of them said. Officials of the college, where more than 100 Kashmiri students study, dismissed the allegations and said these are mere rumours. The institutes director, Manish Vyas, said the students denied any such incident happened on the campus when police spoke to them on Thursday evening. Some local students and ABVP workers shouted Bharat Mata Ki Jai and took photos. Besides that nothing happened, he said. The NIT Srinagar incident ignited a debate on nationalism after local boys clashed with their non-Kashmiri counterparts, who had objected to celebrations over Indias loss to West Indies in the World T20 semifinal on March 31. The non-Kashmiri students alleged that the state police assaulted them on the campus, a charge the technical institutes administration denied. The cricket wedge was evident in Chittorgarhs Mewar University too, where nine Kashmiri students were suspended for campus clashes over the India-West Indies match. Ripples were felt in Suresh Gyan Vihar University in Jaipur, where a Kashmiri BTech student said the row had created a negative perception about Kashmiris. Every J&K student is painted with the same brush J&K students otherwise enjoy an amicable relationship with students of other states. The higher education commissioner of Madhya Pradesh has asked colleges to ensure safety of Kashmiri students as about 300 students of the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology in Bhopal took out a march in support of NIT Srinagars non-Kashmiri students. (With inputs from HTC Jaipur, Jammu, Indore, Bhopal, Lucknow, Karnal) The National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar campus remained tensed on Saturday as the non-Kashmiri students were denied permission to conduct a march demanding action against the policemen who assaulted them on April 4. During the World T20 that ended last week, some Kashmiri students in the campus chanted anti-India slogans and burst firecrackers after West Indies defeated India on March 31, irking non-Kashmiri students. Clashes erupted between the two groups and police fired tear gas shells and used baton charge to disperse the mobs. The campus has remained heated since then. On Friday, a senior police officer told IANS in Srinagar, Some non-local students of NIT tried to take out a protest march today, which was disallowed by the police without using any force. The protesting students were told they could not be allowed to take their protest to the road outside the college, he added. After speaking to the police officials deployed there, the students went back to the campus, the police officer said. Meanwhile, the new deputy chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and BJP leader Nirmal Singh on Friday assured that the students at the varsity are safe and will be unharmed, while asserting that those responsible for attacking the students will not be spared. NIT is an institution and the BJP believes that there should not be any political interference there, thats why the HRD is dealing with their academic and other issues, including their safety. A magisterial enquiry is underway into the lathicharge on students and report will come in 15 days, following which all those police officials responsible will be punished, Singh said. Police and CRPF deployed at National Institute of Technology (NIT). (PTI) The state government has ordered a magisterial probe into the student unrest and the incidents that occurred at the campus on March 31 and April 4. Assuring complete security, he added that troops of CRPF and senior officers from the Jammu and Kashmir Police were deployed inside the campus and were constantly monitoring the situation. As a Deputy Chief Minister, I assure the complete safety of the students and I am taking a personal interest in the matter. I had gone to Srinagar yesterday (on Thursday) and I will be going there today (on Friday) as well to take stick of the situation, he added. The BJP leader also said that the students must not be worried as the institution belongs to them and also appealed to other parties to not politicize the issue as the state was a sensitive area and that the issue must be contained solely to that of national interest. A fact-finding team of the HRD Ministry arrived at the institutes campus on Wednesday for an on-the-spot assessment of the situation. Whose war are we fighting? Three Jammu and Kashmir police officers took to Facebook to answer this question following criticism of the force over its action to quell violence at a technical institute in Srinagar that has reignited a debate over nationalism. Police also released a video purportedly showing non-local students damaging NIT property and clashing with police personnel on April 5. In separate posts, the three officers defended the use of force on NIT students and said they dont need any certificate of nationalism from anyone in the country. Many of my colleagues have been asking and many more must be thinking whose war are we fighting?, Baramullas deputy superintendent of police Firoz Yehya said in a Facebook post on Thursday. He said the unrest is just another phase and will pass and added, We must continue doing the good work within the ambit of law and nothing shall deter us. Read: Clashes at NIT Srinagar: Students kicked, punched, boycott classes Added Yehya: Good, common people who we serve may be alienated with us for reasons more than one, and our good work shall certainly help us win their hearts. The state police force was removed from the campus after allegations of excesses on non-local students who had clashed with their local counterparts over a WT20 match between India and eventual champion West Indies. The non-local students who number around 1,500 had objected to local students celebrating after Indias loss in the semi final on March 31 leading to clashes between the two groups. Police had cracked down on non-local students the next day during a demonstration. A section of NIT students and leaders of the ruling BJP had accused police of bias against outsider students. Mubassir Latifi, the senior superintendent of police (crime), also said the police force doesnt need any certificate of nationalism or impartiality from those whose valour doesnt extend beyond their keypads. Jammu and Kashmir Police is a saga of sacrifice and courage and has brought this state out of a madness called terrorism. Shopians senior superintendent of police Shailendra Mishra had some advice for NITs students who have been very critical of the police. Read: Srinagar: Protesting NIT students want Tricolour back, campus shifted Be responsible with your words, students. The Jammu and Kashmir Police are a nationalist force with high professional standards, he said. The Jammu and Kashmir Police, raised in 1873, are in charge of law and order in 22 districts of the trouble-torn state. Meanwhile, some Kashmiri people said that the state polices brutality to quell protests in Kashmir was nothing new. Read | NIT students demand action against cops, J-K deputy CM assures safety A senior Srinagar-based journalist told HT that if Kashmiri students in any local college had protested like non-locals of NIT, then many students would have perhaps fallen to bullets. Khurram Parvez, programme coordinator at Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), was also scathing in his criticism of the police, saying that they kill, brutalise & humiliate people of Kashmir. With inputs from agencies The Jammu and Kashmir government held a meeting with representatives of the protesting non-Kashmiri students of NIT Srinagar late night on Friday following which deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh said that most of their demands have been met and they have returned satisfied. The meeting was also attended by the state education minister Naeem Akhtar, visiting central HRD ministry team and top NIT officials. Although the students team that attended the meeting was not an officially elected students body but, Singh said, the interaction has opened up a channel for communication and hoped that the issue will be solved very soon. Singh told reporters after the meeting that non-local students of NIT Srinagar had two primary issues -- one of their personal security and the second their academic course in the institution. Students raised concern over their personal security and I assured them that the state government will provide them the same, Singh said. As far as the academic course is concerned, exams would be held as per schedule but those students who want to go home can do so and then return later and appear for exams. Singh also said that action would be taken against policemen if they are found guilty of brutality against students after the magisterial inquiry. With regards to the registration of FIRs, he said that the two FIRs were open and not against any specific individual. Singh also said that the students have complaints against the faculty of the institutions, and for that the body of governors has agreed to start an e-mail ID through which students can complain to the highest authorities against their teachers. One e-mail will be made through which students can complain directly to the Chairman of the board of governors of NIT, he said. In the meeting, students also spoke about administrative and infrastructural issues including the problems of Wi-Fi services, hostel facilities and even the hostel in-time of girls which is 6.30pm. Singh assured that those will be looked into and tried to solve. The students have gone back satisfied we hope a solution is reached very soon. During the World T20 that ended last week, some Kashmiri students in the campus chanted anti-India slogans and burst firecrackers after West Indies defeated India on March 31, irking non-Kashmiri students. Clashes erupted between the two groups and police fired tear gas shells and used baton charge to disperse the mobs. The campus has remained tense since then. Non-Kashmiri students alleged that the state police assaulted them on the campus, a charge that police and the NIT administration had both denied. It has been alleged that some non-local students want the NIT shifted from Kashmir. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The 181-year-old Assam Rifles, Indias oldest paramilitary force, is no longer a male bastion. On Wednesday, the Assam Rifles (AR) inducted 100 women among 212 recruits who were put through a year-long training programme and graduated in the passing-out parade at the Assam Rifles Training Centre and School in Nagalands Shokhuvi. The AR, under dual control of the home and defence ministries, broke tradition last March to admit 127 women for training at its school in Dimapur town. They were selected through recruitment rallies conducted across the country. Of the 100, 27 trainees didnt clear the programme either on medical grounds or failed to clear basic tests. Three lady army officers were specially posted to the Dimapur school in March 2014 to plan, raise and institutionalise a separate training company for women recruits, Lt Col Rahul Josan, AR spokesperson, told Hindustan Times. Union minister of state for home, Kiren Rijiju at the passing-out parade of the first batch of women recruits of Assam Rifles in Nagaland. (HT Photos) The company was named Lushai Company after a British era hill province that later became a district of undivided Assam and eventually the state of Mizoram. Lushai Hills is intrinsic to ARs history; the forces first battalion, 1 Assam Rifles, was deployed there for more than a century from 1898 to 2003. The newly-inducted women soldiers will be posted to various battalions of the force and be used for frisking and interrogation of women when needed, dispersing female mobs, controlling crowd and tackling agitations involving women, Lt Gen HJS Sachdev, AR director general, said. They will also be employed for relief and rescue operations and play a crucial role in avoiding human rights violation and projecting a clean image of the force, he added. The women company has been named Lushai Company after a British era hill province that later became the state of Mizoram. Lushai Hills is intrinsic to Assam Rifless history; the forces first battalion, 1 Assam Rifles, was deployed there for more than a century, up until 2003. I am proud that our nation is moving forward in accepting (that) women can do the same job that men can, Major Zorampari Oinam Joshi, officer in-charge of the first batch of women recruits, said. Initially constituted to protect British tea planters estates from tribal raiders, the AR was called Cachar Levy when it was formed in 1835. It was later called Assam Frontier Police in 1883, which changed to Assam Military Police in 1891, Eastern Bengal and Assam Military Force in 1913 and finally Assam Rifles in 1917. Called Cachar Levy, the Assam Rifles was initially constituted to protect British tea planters estates from tribal raiders in 1835. (HT Photo) The AR is the only Indian paramilitary force that has taken part in both the World Wars. Since independence, its 46 battalions have been involved in counter-insurgency operations and vigil along the India-Myanmar border. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A local court at Rohtak asked the police on Friday to probe hate speech allegations against sect leader Ramdev, a day after a local Congress leader moved an application against him in the court. Congress leader Subhash Batra had sought Ramdev be booked for saying that he would behead those who did not chant Bharat Mata ki Jai if the law permitted him to during a rally in Rohtak on April 3. Batra filed a complaint against Ramdev for the hate speech with the police. The court of additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM) Ashwani Kumar asked the police to submit its report by April 30. The Union government dissociated itself from remarks by Ramdev and a similar one made by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis who suggested that those who refuse to say Bharat mata ki jai had no right to stay in India. The damage control exercise by Naidu came in the face of BJPs reluctance to be drawn into the controversy involving the two. He said, Did the chief minister pass any legislation on it? In a democracy, people will say so many things. At the end, what the government decides is binding on all. Ramdev is the brand ambassador of the Haryana government for yoga. In a crackdown on the circulation of fake Indian currency in Nepal, police on Friday said they arrested six people, including a Pakistani national, for possessing fake Indian currency notes with a face value of Rs.10 million. The six -- one Pakistani and five Nepali nationals -- were arrested by the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police and paraded before the media at a press conference here. According to police, one of them has been identified as Mahammad Nadim (PP number CD 9458742, Karachi) who was arrested from Thamel area of Kathmandu. Similarly, five Nepali nationals -- Umadevi Pandey, Ishowari Prasad Teli, Parmandna Yadav, Dil Bahadur Thapa and Mahadev Timilsina -- were arrested from various locations of Kathmandu. They were held while travelling to Kathmandu to receive the fake Indian currency notes. All the Nepali nationals hail from districts close to the Nepal-India border. After receiving the fake notes from Nadim and Mahadev, they were planning to sneak into India for circulating the counterfeit currency, police said. Using the open Nepal-India border, counterfeiters smuggle fake notes to India from the Nepali side and in most cases Nepalis, Indians and Pakistanis were found involved. Circulation of fake Indian notes using Nepals territory is a top Indian security concern. The Supreme Court on Friday asked two senior advocates to defend four death row convicts in the December 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic in New Delhi. Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde were told to assist a special bench as the court felt that the lawyers hired by the convicts were unable to argue well. The incident had led to street protests by activists demanding effective safety measures for women, forcing to government to bring in stringent laws against sexual assault and harassment. A bench of justices Dipak Misra, V Gopala Gowda and Kurian Joseph said Ramachandran will argue for Mukesh (29) and Pawan Gupta (22) and Hegde will represent Vinay Sharma (23) and Akshay Thakur (31). We are not satisfied by the quality of defence counsel, the bench said. The case will be heard on July 18. Ramachandran had defended Pakistani Ajmal Kasab for his role in the Mumbai attacks. The top court had held Kasab guilty and sentenced him to death. It had appreciated Ramachandrans assistance in the case for which the senior counsel did not charge money. Even in the gang rape case the two lawyers will not be paid by their clients. The SCs legal aid will remunerate them, if they accept it. The SC on April 4 began the final hearing of the convicts appeal, almost two years after staying their execution in the case. In September, 2013, the trial court awarded death sentence to the convicts and six months later, the Delhi high court upheld their conviction and sentence. All the convicts moved the SC in 2014, which stayed their execution. Six persons including a juvenile had raped the 23-year-old paramedic in a moving bus in South Delhi on December 16, 2012. Later, the accused threw out the victim and her male friend at an isolated spot. She died in a Singapore hospital on December 29. The juvenile convict, who turned adult this year, was released from a correctional facility after serving a three-year sentence. Another accused in the case, Ram Singh, was found dead in Tihar Jail and the trial against him abated. Read: Dec 16 BBC documentary depicts mindset of rapists: Leslee Udwin In a bid to dissuade people from urinating and defecating in public, the district administration has decided to enlist the help of school children to shame such offenders. According to the plan, Vanar Senas groups of school children will patrol areas prone to people attending natures call. If the students spot someone in the act, they will ring a bell or beat metallic plates, creating a ruckus till the person leaves the location. These enlisted children will also be encouraged to approach offenders before they relieve themselves in such spaces, as a way to pre-empt the deed. Other than the senas, district magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma said an intensive drive would be launched through the district to promote hygiene. Children will play an important role in carrying out this ambitious scheme, he said. While the lack of access to a sanitary toilet is a major reason why people urinate or defecate in the open, it was found that many others prefer to do so in spite of there being a toilet in the house. Statics estimate that over 12,000 community toilets were constructed in different localities of the district, yet 60 per cent of people did not use them. Human excreta lying in the open is a serious problem as it leads to diseases like hepatitis, diarrhoea, epilepsy and tapeworm among children and elderly people. After a long crusade by women activists demanding entry to the inner sanctum of the Shani temple in Shingnapur, the temple trust finally granted women devotees passage into the temple on Friday. This will be the first time in 60 years that women will be allowed to enter the garbhagriha after a decades-long tradition barred women from entering it, and conditionally restricted men too. Read more | If men are allowed in place of worship, allow women too: Bombay HC We have decided to allow the women devotees on the platform, said Sayaram Bankar, a temple trustee. The decision was taken after 11 members of the trust met to discuss the issue on Friday morning, Bankar said. Women activists, led by Trupti Desai, welcomed the decision which follows a Bombay high court order from last week that ruled it was a womans fundamental right to enter a temple. Read more | Trupti Desai: The voice for womens entry in Maharashtras temples The Shani shrine has been at the centre of the raging debate for gender equality after dozens of women activists attempted to storm the temple for the first time on Republic Day this year. This is a big day for women today. We have managed to break a century old regressive tradition which had prevented the women from entering the temple, said Desai who will be going to the temple along with other activists to enter the shrine. Trupti Desai and other women activists have been championing the cause of women being allowed into the inner sanctum of the Shani temple since January this year. (PTI File Photo) Last week the Bombay high court ruled that entering temple is a fundamental right of women and that the government is duty bound to protect this right. The temple trust however extended its ban to men and refused to allow women from entering the temple to ensure tradition was not broken. On Friday afternoon, around 100 men forced their way onto the inner sanctum of the temple to perform abhishek to mark Gudi Padwa. Read more | Now, men too cant enter core area of Nashiks Trimbakeshwar temple While the trust attempted to block the men, devotees climbed the barricade and jumped onto the platform. Police, who were deployed in large numbers to maintain law and order, allegedly didnt stop the men as they clambered on to the barricades. Read more | Tradition trumps court, locals keep women out of Shani temple Following the court order, Desai and other activists had attempted to enter the inner sanctum, but were stopped by locals, including women villagers. Police detained the activists to avoid a clash between the groups. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Friday filed a civil defamation case against the main accused in the solar scam main accused, Saritha Nair, and four journalists for raising serious charges against him in a letter purportedly written by her. In the plea filed in Ernakulam CJM court, Chandy said the five entered into a criminal conspiracy to defame him publicly. He said the letter, purportedly written by Saritha three years ago, was released just before the assembly election as part of a political conspiracy. The court will take up his plea on May 28. The four journalists mentioned in the plea are: MG Radhakrishnan, editor of Asianet New, Vinu V John, news anchor at Asianet, Manoj K Varma, chief news editor of Kairali News and K Rajendran, senior news editor of Kairali news channel. Kairali channel is owned by the CPI(M). Last Sunday, the Asianet News channel had released the letter in which Saritha alleged that the CM had sexually assaulted her at his official residence four years ago. The CM has denied the accusation. The solar scam case surfaced when Saritha Nair and her live-in partner Biju Radhakrishnan were arrested in 2013 on charges of cheating investors who had paid money for solar panels. While Nair is out on bail, Radhakrishnan is in jail on charges of murdering his first wife. A judicial commission has been set up to probe the scam. Controversial police officer DG Vanzara hinted at joining politics on Friday as he returned to a rousing reception in Gujarat, nine years after he was arrested in two alleged fake encounter cases. Holding a sword in one hand, Vanzara a former Gujarat inspector general of police who was known as an encounter specialist said he is starting a Vikas Janandolan (movement for development) and defended his encounter record. If there were no encounters, Gujarat would have turned into another Kashmir. We are done with the fielding. Now, its our turn to bat, he said. Vanzara was one of the key accused in two fake encounter cases the killing of Ishrat Jahan in 2004, and of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in 2005 and spent eight years in jail after his arrest in April 2007. He was released on bail last year but was restricted from entering Gujarat. Last week, a special CBI court relaxed his bail conditions, paving the way for his return. From today, Gujarats issues are my issues. I am not happy with prevailing conditions. But it calls for two hands to clap. Later, it can be in the form of politics or (by joining) any party, he said. He said the testimony of Lashkar-e- Taiba (LeT) operative David Headley had made it clear that the encounters were genuine. During a recent deposition, Headley had called Jahan an LeT member. The country has come to know in the past 2-3 months that how politicians for their vested interest came out with conspiracy after conspiracy and jailed the nationalist police officers from Gujarat, he said. Vanzara was the last of eight Gujarat police officers to get bail in the alleged fake encounter cases. When in jail, he wrote a scathing letter where he blamed current BJP president Amit Shah for his arrest. But on Friday, he called it a matter of past. The current government is a nationalist one. I think the government will not make any compromise on its nationalist ideology, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON With central probe agencies tightening the noose around him in the disproportionate assets case, six-time Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh is facing a tough time these days. In an interview to Hindustan Times Gaurav Bisht, he says there is no threat to his government in the wake of Enforcement Directorate and CBI probes against him. The BJP has been pressing for your resignation. They have even approached the Governor seeking dismissal of your government. Is there any threat to the Congress government? There is no threat to my government. The Opposition often keeps on raising such demands. They (BJP leaders) have sought my resignation on even trivial issues. Prem Kumar Dhumal, after taking over as chief minister, framed me in false cases. But I had full faith in the judiciary and was honourably acquitted by the courts. BJP is claiming that the entire government is busy defending you and development has come to a standstill in the state. Is it true? Its absolutely wrong. No one is defending me. I am fighting these cases on my own. Not even a single day of my government has been wasted. The Delhi high court has asked you to cooperate with the CBI in the DA case probe. What will be your next step? I have deposed before the CBI in a similar case and my statements have been recorded. Im ready to depose again. The ED claims that you and your aide, Anand Chauhan, are involved in a textbook case of money laundering. What do you have to say? This is a case pertaining to the income tax department. There is no money laundering involved. The ED and the tax department are acting at Arun Jaitleys behest and want to fix me by hook or crook. The people of Himachal know me very well. I dont want any certificate of honesty and integrity from the BJP. Recently, the ED attached properties of your daughter Aparajita Singh and son Vikramaditya Singh. Whats your take? My children will fight it out legally. Why dont these agencies look into the properties of Arun Dhumal and Anurag Thakur? You have been accusing Jaitley, Dhumal, his son and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur of trying to unsettle your government. Will you take up the matter with the PM? People say PM Narendra Modi is not unfair and I also believe it. I have spoken to him once regarding all this and I feel he should have intervened in the matter by now. Im sure that he could not be unaware of what all is happening. Regarding Jaitley and Dhumal, I will only say that if they have chosen the path of confrontation, I am ready to face it. Im surprised why Jaitley got himself involved in it. However, I have no grudge against him. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A city court on Thursday issued a non-bailable warrant against Union minister YS Chowdary in a case of alleged default on repayment of loans. The XIIth Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate issued the NBW as the minister again failed to appear in the court despite the summons. The minister of State for Science and Technology, Chowdary, along with others, has been accused of defaulting in repayment of loan in excess of Rs 106 crore taken from a Mauritius based bank. Mauritius Commercial Bank filed a case against Chowdarys Sujana Universal Industries Ltd and others. We submitted before the Court today that the Minister was taking excuses and flouting the orders of the Honble Court on a regular basis. We also argued that this was a fit case for issuance of Non Bailable Warrants as the accused was evading the process of the Court and the Honble Court was pleased to issue Non-Bailable Warrants against the Minister, said Mr.Sanjeev Kumar, Partner Luthra & Luthra Law Offices, a Delhi based law firm that is representing the Mauritian Bank. He pointed out that the minister chose not to appear before the court despite summons issued against him and a conditional order passed on the April 1 asking him to be present in court or face issuance of Warrants. Chowdary, a non-executive director of Sujana Industries, earlier failed to personally appear before the court on March 22, along with the firms MD G. Srinavasa Raju and director Hanumantha Rao. The bank had moved the court for the recovery of Rs 106 crore stating that the company stood as guarantor for the loan which was availed for Mauritius-based Hestia Holdings Ltd, the firms subsidiary. Meanwhile, Chowdary, a member of Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh, said he did not deliberately avoid the court. He said he could not appear on previous occasions due to some pressing engagements. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader said he respects the judiciary. A video clip showing tourists blocking the path of a tiger in the Bijrani zone of Corbett Tiger Reserve (CTR), has left wildlife lovers and officials red-faced. Watch video below: The 1.16 minute video, shot by an unknown guide from a mobile phone, shows a frightened tiger watching nearly half a dozen gypsy vehicles packed with tourists who are heard making a noise in the silence zone. The tiger is seen struggling to cross the passage amid the cavalcade of vehicles. The management of Corbett Reserve has cancelled the license of a tourist guide Ranjeet, spotted in the video, and set up an inquiry to find out whether there was any security lapse inside the protected reserve for tigers. Officials claimed the video was not recent but that they have taken the incident seriously. The video is about one year old as the growth of the grass in the reserve is not that much. We have set up enquiry in the case Saket Badola, deputy director, Corbett, told Hindustan Times on Friday. Corbett is home to over 240 Royal Bengal tigers. The reserve is open to tourists between November 15 and June 15, and during this period more than 2 lakh tourists come here to see the tigers and experience the rich bio-diversity of the 1,200 square-kilometre area reserve. The Reserve earns around Rs 7 crore annually from the tourists, but the swelling numbers of visitors has also emerged as a major concern. Corbett organizes regular trainings for tourist guides and drivers to sensitise them about the guidelines of the National Tiger Conservation Authority that allows a minimum distance of 20 metres from the tigers, and also a viewing time of 10 minutes, to avoid any pressure on the animal. We have been sensitizing guides and drivers about it and if such an incident is caught on the camera then all our efforts are in vain. Regular monitoring of tourists and their tours inside the reserve is a must to avoid such incidents, AG Ansari, a wildlife expert, said. The Union women and child development (WCD) ministry has said marital rape should be treated seriously, a nuanced shift from an earlier controversial stand in Parliament that such concepts couldnt be suitably applied in India due to religious beliefs and social customs. The ministry has written to the Rajya Sabha secretariat to amend the governments reply in the House last month, stating the Indian Penal Code has provisions to deal with cruelty against women and marital rape should be treated seriously. In a written reply to an unstarred question on March 10, WCD minister Maneka Gandhi had stated, It is considered that the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors such as level of education/illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mindset of the society to treat the marriage as a sacrament. The statement triggered international uproar with Gandhi facing flak from womens groups, who said the BJP leader insulted thousands of victims of marital rape. The response also baffled many as Gandhi had earlier described marital rape as violence against women and maintained that it should be treated with seriousness. So, how did the goof-up happen? Following an explanation sought by Gandhi, it emerged that oversight by officials led to the fiasco. Officials described the WCD ministrys March 10 response as a goof-up by a junior official. During a Parliament session, officers are burdened with preparing replies to over a dozen questions every day. It is quite possible that nobody noticed the mistake, a ministry official said. Sources said a junior official cut pasted the answer from a similar reply that minister of state for home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary gave on marital rape in the Rajya Sabha last April. About half-a-dozen- senior officials in the ministry who are supposed to go through the replies to un-starred questions did not detect the error either. And as the answer was laid on the floor of the House, it skipped the WCD ministers eyes too. But the latest clarification is unlikely to settle the debate around marital rape as the governments stand remains ambiguous. In 2013, the parliamentary standing committee on home affairs observed that if the marital rape was brought under the law, the entire family system will be under great stress. The home ministry has now requested the law commission to deliberate upon the matter during the course of its comprehensive review of criminal justice system. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A police head constable drowned in Narmada River while trying to save an 11-year-old boy from drowning at Badwah in MPs Khargone district on Thursday. The boy was finally rescued by two divers who had jumped with the head constable, Basant Kumar Verma, to save the boy. Verma was on duty at the riverside on the occasion of Amavasya, when thousands of people take a holy dip in the river. The boy, Antrikhsya Upadhyaya, a resident of Khandwa district, too, came to take the holy dip. As soon as he jumped into the river, he started drowning. Verma and two local divers who were present at the spot jumped after him to save his life, Khargone SP, Amit Singh, told HT. Singh said the trio found the boy in the running water and they started moving towards the shore. The child was with one of the divers, and Verma was behind them. Suddenly, he got stuck in something and drowned Later the divers fished out the constables body, said the SP. The SP lauded Vermas bravery and said Khargone police would send his name for Presidents Medal. District police will also honour him for his bravery, he said. Verma was a resident of Mandeshwar and had been posted at Barwah police station for the last few months. Thousands of people from nearby villages paid tributes to him. We salute the bravery of the constable. He saved the life of the child by giving his life. We are proud of police and Verma, said Rakesh Dangi, a resident of a nearby village. A Dalit rights activist on Thursday demanded a CBI inquiry into the death of a teenage Dalit girl whose body was found in a water tank outside the hostel of her college in Bikaner on March 29. At a press conference organised by Centre for Dalit Rights (CDR), lawyer and Dalit rights activist PL Mimroth condemned the Bikaner police for terming the murder of 17-year-old Delta Meghwal as suicide. The preliminary report states that no water was found in the victims body yet police is bent on terming the case as a suicide. A person cannot commit suicide by immersing herself in a 6 feet tall water tank and closing its lid, Mimroth said. We condemn the attitude of Bikaner police and demand either a CBI or a judicial inquiry in the matter. The Rajasthan government has failed to protect the Dalit community as there is an upsurge in violence against the people of lower castes, he added. The CDR announced the formation of a committee to provide legal assistance to Dalits and monitor probe in atrocity-related cases. After the SC/ST Acts amendment in 2014, civil society and lawyers have the power to monitor police investigation in SC/ST cases. We have formed a committee of lawyers to provide legal assistance to the victims of such cases, said Mimroth. We have realised that mere protest marchs will not bring any change in the scenario. Therefore, we have decided to closely monitor cases. The activist also demanded introduction of Land Ceiling Act in a feudal state like Rajasthan in order to ensure equitable distribution of land among all the sections of society. Read: Crime against Dalits rises in Rajasthan, activists blame police They say that if you have an indomitable spirit, then theres nothing that can ever stop you from achieving your goals. And for Yogesh Kumar, head bartender at Sheraton New Delhi Hotel, spirit is all it takes to fight all odds and strive to live his dreams. From his humble beginnings as a doorman in Ruby Tuesday, Connaught Place, to representing India at the global Bacardi Legacy Cocktail Competition in San Francisco later this month, it has been a difficult yet rewarding journey for Kumar. I failed in the 12th standard. I couldnt go to college. I went directly looking for a job, remembers Kumar, who was faced a financial crisis at his initial days, adding, I started as a doorman earning Rs 3200 a month at the restaurant. I was very shy. I lacked social skills and wasnt fluent in English. I didnt know what I wanted to do in life. But I always knew that hard work and patience would pay off some day. For the two months that Kumar worked as a doorman, he could only manage a glimpse of the bar inside, but it was good enough to decide on his calling. Whatever I could learn regarding bartending initially was through my own observation. I kept looking at how the bartender fixed the drink. It was only when I left my job, moved to Qba in Connaught Place and started working as a waiter, I got to learn bartending. During my free time, I used to read bartending books and memorise the ingredients of every cocktail being served at the bar, says Kumar. Read: Wine enthusiasts, your favourite drink isnt as healthy as you think The lack of an undergraduate degree meant that Kumar was stuck being a waiter and climbing up the ladder in the hospitality industry without a degree seemed impossible. While working as a waiter, I did a one year diploma in F&B operations . Working 12 hours a day and still attending classes and studying wasnt easy. I sacrificed my sleep so that I could keep up with the schedule. It was a tough phase but I learned a valuable lesson that there is no substitute for hard work,adds Kumar. This hard work eventually paid off when after three years, he got an opportunity to work for the Oberoi, New Delhi as a bartender. This is where my journey started. In theory, I knew everything about the bar, but now it was time to learn the practical part, says Kumar. Read More: Its official: Asias best bar is in Singapore and were not surprised Kumar continued his education while working and soon had a degree in hotel management. Soon after joining Sheraton New Delhi Hotel, Kumar, who boasts of a handsome pay package, took part in the Bacardi Legacy Cocktail Competition but couldnt even make it to the top ten. Finally, after three years, he won, bagging the first position, thanks to the innovative cocktail Amado (see box for recipe). When I make a drink, I share my life in a glass. And I believe in consistently enriching this recipe, he says. His seniors have high hopes from him, and admires his perseverance. We are very proud of Yogesh Kumar. His innovative cocktails and his zeal for mixing bold flavours has raised the bar for bartending. With his enthusiasm and the fun twists he gives to drinks he makes, Kumar has a bright future ahead of him, says Gautam Seth, F&B manager, Sheraton New Delhi Hotel. On the art of bartending When I make a drink, I want my guest to experience emotions and memories through a drink.I pour all my experiences into it through the ingredients I use. I dont sell my drink. I charm my guest so they too can create a memory through a drink. After all, the taste should be everlasting. On what it takes to be a successful bar artist Kumar believes that a bar artist should have the traits of a detective to come up with perfect cocktails. Just like Sherlock Holmes, a good bartender always observes the guest, listens to them and engages them in a conversation. While making any drink, Kumar suggests using fresh ingredients. Ensure that theres harmony in all the ingredients that you use. Also, use good quality ice which doesnt melt quickly; otherwise it will dilute the drink. And always remember to taste the drink before you serve t to your guest. Amado - The drink that won him the competition Amado means loved one in Spanish. (PHOTO: RAAJESSH KASHYAP/HINDUSTAN TIMES) 60 ml-Bacardi Superior rum 20 ml- Lime juice 15 ml- Rose syrup 2.5 ml- Angostura bitters 20 ml-egg white Add all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake it. Then add ice to the mixture and double strain it and pour it into a martini glass. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The family members of Dr BR Ambedkar and factions of the Republican Party of India (RPI) have demanded that the height of his statue at the Indu Mill memorial be raised and made taller than the Statue of Liberty and the proposed statue of king Shivaji in the Arabian sea. Experts, however, are apprehensive about the increase in the height and said the original design may get badly disturbed. After Anandraj Ambedkar, the great grandson of Dr Ambedkar and others raised objection to the cabinet-approved design submitted by noted architect Shashi Prabhu, the state government appointed a committee headed by social justice minister Rajkumar Badole to look into the suggestions. The committee, after a couple of meetings, has admitted to increase the height of the statue from 140ft to 350ft and scrap the idea of the commemorative stupa, which was believed to add aesthetic value to the whole memorial. The changes are reportedly set to increase the cost of the project and also lead to cutting of trees to a large extent. Almost all the RPI leaders were insistent on the rise in the height of the statue, to which we have agreed. We are also dropping the idea of constructing the stupa, as it is already there at the Chaityabhoomi next door. The final decision will be taken before April 14, the birth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar, said Badole. The experts and officers from the MMRDA, which is nodal agency for the project, are apprehensive about its reasonability after the changes that have been accepted by the government. First, the height is not in proportion with the size of the plot (12.5 acres). It will be as tall as a 35-storeyed building and would not be visible from any part of the city, not even from the Bandra-Worli sea link, losing its appreciation space. The cost of the project is likely to go up substantially from Rs425 crore, besides the possible delay in completion. We will also have to fell about 60 trees, said an MMRDA official. The Statue of Liberty stands at 305 ft, while Sardar Vallabhbhai Patels statue in Gujarat, which is coming up on a 20,000 sqmt plot, will be 597-ft-tall and the 312ft Shivaji statue in the Arabian sea islet is proposed on 40 acres. Badole, however, said, I dont think this will raise the cost of the project. It is true that a few trees are needed to be cut, but we will replant them in multiplicity. I am sure the changes will make the project more attractive. Anandraj said his design will cost lesser than the one approved by the government. With our design, which has been prepared by architect Saurabh Chatterjee, the project will cost Rs250 crore, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The HRD ministrys decision to hike fees at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) by Rs 2 lakh has evoked mixed reactions from campuses. While students are confused whether the hike will be applicable to the current batches or only to new batches, senior IIT officials have stated that the fee hike is necessary and will help the institutes to grow. Officials have also stated that the institutes and the government are trying to find ways to help students get education loans. The hike in fees has been something that we have discussed with our students for some time now and while they are unhappy about it, we have tried our best to explain the need for the same. That said, no student should be dissuaded from studying in an IIT because of shortage of money, said Soumyo Mukherji, the student affairs dean at IIT-Bombay. Mukherji added that many students have sought clarity on whether the hike will be applicable to existing batches or only the new batches. While there still isnt much clarity on this, we believe it will be applicable only for the newer batches, as this has been the trend whenever a hike has been proposed, he added. Read: IIT fee doubled; 100% waiver for differently-abled, SC/ST, poor students According to the announcement, the fees for undergraduate courses will go up from Rs90,000 to Rs2 lakh for those seeking admissions under the open category. While theres a 100% waiver of fees for those from SC/ST category and differently-abled, those whose family annual income is less than Rs1 lakh and Rs5 lakh will be offered a 100% and 66% waiver of fees, respectively. Read: IIT panel approves three-fold fee hike, may cost Rs 3 lakh per year It has to be clear that IITs function on a small amount of money but cater to a lot of students. 27% of the entire batch doesnt pay fees because they are from the reserved category, another 40-50% are studying through various scholarships and they dont pay the full fees either. We are barely left with any funds to go beyond academics every year, said a senior official from IIT-B, on condition of anonymity. He added that while the fee hike is important for the institutes to function smoothly, the government as well as the Standing Committee of the IIT Council need to ensure that the loan facilities are made easily available to students. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Another political rally in the city ends up defacing the city, yet again. Latest in the list of political parties defacing the city with banners, posters and flags is Raj Thackerays Maharashtra Navnirman Senas (MNS) on the occasion of its Gudi Padwa rally on Friday. Earlier this week, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did the same on the occasion of their foundation day on Wednesday. MNSs political rival and BJPs partner, Shiv-Sena has also put up banners across the city. In fact, a poster war between Sena and MNS is on Dadar where both parties are locked in a bitter tussle to reclaim their stronghold. Political banners, flags are put across the city not only during festivals rallies but also birthday announcements and visits of leaders in the city. This is despite the fact that the Congress, Shiv-Sena, MNS and NCP had filed separate undertakings in affidavits to HC assuring that the workers would not put up such illegal posters and banners in the city. Many posters celebrating the festival and announcing the rally were seen on lamp posts in areas like Andheri, Dadar, Parel. The licence manual of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) clearly states that the civic body does not give permissions for political banners, birthday greetings and anniversary greetings, among others, on municipal roads and footpaths according to the HCs orders. We have not given permissions for any posters or banners to MNS in Andheri. Officers have been asked to immediately remove any illegal posters but due to holiday the work is delayed, said a civic official. Additional Municipal Commissioner, in charge of license department, Pallavi Darade was unavailable for comment. As hoardings continue to deface the city, the policy which completely bans political banners is being delayed by political parties in the civic body. The banner policy is since 2013. It was referred back to administration by the political parties when it was brought before the elected representatives in the civic body last month. The political parties did not clear the policy as it restricted number of banners to two of size 10x10 per event, including Ganpati and Navratri festivals. Besides, the policy also stated that no political banners would be allowed during these festivals. At present, political banners are allowed within 100 metres of the mandap (pandal). On March 14, 2013, the high court, while hearing a public interest litigation, ordered a ban on all illegal banners, hoardings and posters in Mumbai and other cities in the state. BMC gives permissions to put up posters under section 328 of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation (MMC) Act. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Three people were arrested on Friday, after crime branch officials raided a godown in Dharavi, Mumbai, on a tip-off about beef being stored there. Unit 3 of the Mumbai crime branch seized 6.5 tonnes of beef worth Rs14 lakh from the godown at Ibrahim chawl. A first information report was registered at the Shahunagar police station. Officials said the meat was packed and ready for export to Vietnam. We arrested Shamshad Aazad Kureshi, 28, who owns the godown, Ashrafali Bakareiddin Miya, 60, and Mohmad Sirtaj Kallu Kureshi,27, said police inspector Sunil Mane, who received the tip-off. Sources said the owner has allegedly been exporting beef for the past 10 years. It is illegal in Maharashtra to slaughter cows, bulls and bullocks, or consume and possess the meat, after the state government imposed a ban last year, following the Presidents assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) act. While the original Act of 1976 banned slaughter of cows, the amendment prohibits slaughter of bulls and bullocks. The crime branch produced the three accused before a holiday court, which remanded them in police custody for a day. An FIR against the three was filed under section 5 and section 9 of the Act (prevention of slaughter and possession of flesh of bulls, bullocks; and imprisonment for a term that may extend to five years or a fine of Rs10,000 or both), along with relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code. Officials privy to the investigation said they are trying to find out how the meat was smuggled into the city . The Mandi Gobindgarh police on Wednesday arrested four of the five people allegedly involved in the gang-rape of a girl here on October 31 last year. The arrested have been identified as Vishal, Angrej Singh, Harminder Singh and Inderjit Singh. The fifth Lachhman Singh is still at large. Our efforts are on and we will nab the fifth accused in 2-3 days, said Guriqubal Singh, station house officer, Mandi Gobindgarh. A 15-year-old girl had lodged a complaint with the Mandi Gobindgarh police on November 5 last year that she was kidnapped and raped by five men after keeping her hostage for the entire night on October 31, 2015. The police had registered a first information report (FIR) oh her complaint. I was returning home to Iqbal Nagar from the Jagran area on October 31, when I was waylaid by Vishal and Angrej, residents of Alourh village, and was taken to an isolated place in Mugal Majra where they raped her later, two others Harminder Singh and Inderjit Singh arrived and they also raped me. On Sunday (November 1) morning, one Lachhman Singh also assaulted her sexually, the complaint read. The police had booked the accused under sections 363 (kidnapping), 366-A (procuration of a minor girl), 342 (wrongful confinement), 376-D (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Two days after HT highlighted how a first information report (FIR) was approved against a Baltana resident for faking his income certificate while applying for his wards admission to Tender Heart School, Sector 33, under the economic weaker section (EWS) category, a similar case has come to light yet again. Malkit Singh, a resident of Maloya, who had applied under the EWS category for nursery admission of his younger child to Delhi Public School, Sector 40, Stepping Stones Senior Secondary School, Sector 37, and Tender Hearts School, Sector 33, for the current session, faked the familys total income as per details cited on the income certificate. This throws light on the fact as submitting of sham income certificates to get free education for their children as provided in the Right to Education (RTE) Act is prevalent in the city. The certificate number was confirmed from the UT administration website www.chdservices.gov.in where all the certificates have been uploaded this year. Having cited a total income of Rs 96,000, it was gathered that the total income of Malkit Singh was more than three times what he stated in the certificate submitted to the said schools. Sources revealed that in his income tax documents Singh filed a return of over Rs 3 lakh in 2015-16. When HT contacted Singh to verify the same, he initially denied having filed any tax return in 2015-16. When HT team visited the Sector 41 address as mentioned in the document, it was found that the house belonged to Malkits father and the former had been living in Maloya Colony for the past 15 years with his family. When confronted in person, Singh and his wife accepted that they had filed tax returns of over Rs 3 lakh and that they had been living in Maloya all this while. When asked about his source of income, Malkit said he was engaged in electrical repair work, driving besides being an insurance agent. In the EWS application, he however, had mentioned electrical repair work as his only source of income. The LIC agent number is on his wifes name. Besides, he also ran a small school, Gyan Peeth School, in a rented accommodation in Sector 41 for almost 10 years but closed it after the UT education department sent notices to shut unrecognised schools. We had filed the tax return to avail of loan as we want to buy our own house, Malkit said. Interestingly, the house Malkit is living with his family in Maloya was allotted to someone else by the Chandigarh Housing Board. I am the third owner of the house. It was originally allotted to one Satyavaan, he said. The ownership of the house has not been transferred in Malkits name and it was only that he has got the power of attorney. Perhaps, this was the reason he chose not to mention this address in the admission document. Availed EWS category for first child too Malkit Singhs elder child who is in Class 1 has also been studying at DPS, Sector 40, under the EWS category. School officials confirmed this. As per the list uploaded on the DPS website, Malkits younger child, a daughter, had got admission at DPS under EWS category. Stepping Stones and Tender Heart schools, however, said his childs name did not find place in the draw of lot. Admn unable to monitor papers Till last year, the sub-divisional magistrates (SDMs )concerned used to sign income certificates after they were approved by the tehsildars. But from this year, patwaris have been designated as signing authority for the same. Area councillor Gurbaksh Rawat said, We only sign a form on the basis of the residence proof that the applicant shows us. The government has not given us powers to verify the information stated in the form. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday lambasted the Central government and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for failing to start international flights from Chandigarh international airport and remarked that if they were unable to start operations, it should be turned into a wheat store. Prime minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated the airport on September 11 during his visit to the city. However, international flights are yet to commence even as over Rs 1,400 crore has been spent on new airport terminal and requisite infrastructure by the Centre, Punjab and other stakeholders. Appearing for the ministry of civil aviation, assistant solicitor general, Chetan Mittal told the high court bench that Air India and Indigo had agreed to start operations. It would take Indigo 45 days to start flights after customs and immigration facilities are in place at airport, he told the court. At this, Puneet Bali who is the counsel for the petitioners, the Mohali Industry Association, intervened and stated that a timeline should be fixed, otherwise the respondents would come up with the same excuses on the next date of hearing. Use it for wheat storage, if you are unable to start operations. It is not the high courts job to get into it (pass directions to start operations). Shift operations to old terminal and close the new one, the high court bench of justice SS Saron and justice Gurmit Ram observed, miffed over the response of government further stating that it was a typical bureaucratic reply and court did not trust the officers. Mittal told the high court bench that a meeting chaired by secretary civil aviation had been held in which Indigo and Air India had agreed to start flights. The court was informed that ministry of home affairs had given the go ahead for standard operating procedure to Air India to commence combo flights (involving two local destinations) to international destinations from Chandigarh. Indigo wanted to start flight in summer schedule. It planned to start operation on Mumbai- Dubai-Chandigarh-Delhi sectors and Delhi Chandigarh-Dubai Mumbai Sectors, Mittal said. If they are unable to obtain slots at Mumbai airport they would replace Mumbai with Hyderabad to start. The aviation secretary has asked the airline to commence operations. Indigo could start operations within 45 days from the date of customs and immigration facility at airport, he said adding that once two three Indian carriers were there, other international airlines would show their interest seeing good response. Following the submissions, the high court bench directed the AAI to set up immigration and customs facility by April 25. The high court further directed the AAI and centre to file a status report on steps taken to start international operations. Two-month training Needed AAI counsel Atul Nanda submitted a report that at least two months were required to train immigration staff, even if the facility is set up at the airport. Minutes of a meeting were also put on record on substantiate this. According to the minutes, the Punjab government has said it would give 17 officers for the purpose. The training is to be given by the Bureau of Intelligence (BoI). Punjab has been asked to bear the cost of deployment for now and get reimbursement from the MHA. A Punjab and Haryana high court division bench on Thursday dismissed the appeal of Punjab-domicile students and upheld the verdict of single-judge bench for admissions in postgraduate medical courses. The division bench of justice SS Saron and justice Gurmeet Ram dismissed the appeal filed by students against the single-judge order vide which the clause --- incorporated by the state government in December 2015 notification issued for admission to post graduate medical colleges courses giving admission on the basis of domicile of Punjab --- was quashed. The detailed order is awaited. Around 40% seats in PG courses in medical colleges is filled through state quota. The single-judge order was challenged by students of Punjab domicile who had done their MBBS course from the universities outside Punjab. During the course of hearing, senior advocate, Gurminder Singh, representing those who had done MBBS from states institutes, had argued that the clause had been rightly quashed by the single-judge bench as it was illegal. The reservation on the basis of residence was not permissible as per law, he said. The law on this issue was very clear and had been laid down by the Supreme Court saying that the reservation on the basis of residence was violation of the Constitution of India and the reservation on the basis of Institutional preference was permissible, the counsel had argued. The division bench has dismissed the appeal and made it clear that admissions would be made (in state quota) from the eligible candidates only and no student having state domicile would be given any preference for admission, advocate associated with the case RPS Bara said. With the state heading for assembly elections early next year, Punjab Police have kicked off an intensive three-month-long campaign against drug trafficking and addiction across rural and urban areas of the state. Switching to damage-control mode for improving the image of the police force after ever increasing drug smuggling and addiction, top police officials will hold village-level meetings to collect feedback from people regarding the prevailing situation of drugs in the state. On the inaugural day on Thursday, director general of police (DGP) Suresh Arora kicked off the campaign by interacting with people of Chahal and Dhudhi villages in Faridkot district. After breaking the drug supply chain with huge recoveries and nabbing major smugglers, the police are now concentrating on getting feedback from people in villages so that the required measures can be put in place to check the drug menace more effectively, he said. Giving further information, Arora said officers with the rank of superintendent of police and above would cover all villages and prominent localities of urban areas in the next three months. Under the campaign, SP rank officers posted in the districts will cover 50-60 villages in a month, senior superintendent of police (SSP) rank officers 40-50 villages, deputy inspector general (DIG ranges) rank officers 40 villages, inspector general of police (IGP zones) and commissioner of police (CP) rank officers 30-35 villages and localities in urban areas. The purpose of this campaign is to cover all villages in Punjab in the coming three months to take peoples feedback. Also, people will be motivated to contribute towards the fight against drug addiction and smuggling, he said. The DGP added that the state police will take required corrective measures to keep Punjab free of drugs. Meanwhile, interacting with students of Baba Farid Law College, the DGP exhorted them to play a proactive role in wiping out the menace of drugs by not only saying no to drugs but also creating awareness against the curse of drug addiction. Arora said the Punjab Police would soon procure 40 highly trained sniffer dogs and funds for the purpose had already been sanctioned by the chief minister. One each such sniffer dog has already been provided to commissionerate police of Ludhiana, Batala, SBS Nagar, Ludhiana (Rural) and SAS Nagar so as to carry out effective search operations regarding any information on drug trafficking, besides availing their services during nakas to ascertain the movement of drugs, he said. IGP and director of state narcotics control bureau Ishwar Singh and SSP Sukhminder Singh were also present. Punjab State Power Corporation Limited chief engineer Devinder Singh Tiwana on Thursday suspended a junior engineer (JE) besides summoning two others on the complaint of farmers. Members of the Bhartiya Kisan Union Punjab from Jalandhar and Kapurthala on Thursday met the PSPCL north zone head and complained about discrepancies in the working of its officials stationed in various circles. Farmers representatives also complained about junior engineers seeking bribe from farmers to supply power or carry out repair of any kind. Following the meeting, Tiwana ordered suspension of JE Sanjeev Kumar, stationed at Bholath, Kapurthala, besides summoning JE Harjeet Singh of Nadala subdivision and JE Rupinder Sharma stationed of Kartarpur to the PSLPCL north zone office on Friday. Reforms remain on paper: Union head Earlier, Kapurthala union chief Jasbir Singh Cheema told Tiwana that although the government had announced various reforms for the farming sector, these remained on paper. He said while the government claimed to provide five hours of electricity to agricultural sector, it was limited to three to four hours. Demanding 12 hours of power supply daily during the upcoming paddy season, union members said the government was not doing any favour on them by giving free power for a few hours. Parkash Singh Badal had promised to provide free power to farmers in his election manifesto. He is obliged to fulfil it, said farmers. The union members also asked Tiwana to get all defected transmission lines repaired. Give free tubewell connection to marginal farmers Bhartiya Kisan Union Punjab members, who met PSPCL north zone chief engineer Devinder Singh Tiwana on Thursday, also demanded free tubewell connections for famers who own up to 2.5-acre land. At present, these marginal farmers have to cough up between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh to get a connection. Kartarpur circle president Bahadur Singh said small farmers cannot afford to pay such a huge amount for a new tubewell connection. The Punjab vigilance bureau has booked two candidates who allegedly bought and selectively leaked question papers to other candidates appearing in the entrance test conducted by Panjab University, Chandigarh, for recruitment as sub-divisional officer (SDO) in the department of local government. The FIR registered at SAS Nagar on Wednesday evening says the VB investigation has revealed that at least 19 candidates had access to the leaked question paper through two candidates to whom the paper was first leaked. These two candidates were taken to Lucknow by those involved in leaking the paper where the questions were shared, for a hefty price, running into several lakhs. The entrance test for 682 posts in the department of local government was held on November 15, 2015. More than 67,000 candidates had taken the test for different posts, including junior engineer (JE), assistant corporation engineer, assistant municipal engineer and sub-divisional engineer (SDE). Candidates could apply for multiple posts. Selection was to take place through written examination alone. The FIR says the candidates listed as the top 50 in merit had applied to appear in the examinations for the posts of JE and SDE, which were to be conducted on the same day within hours of each other. However, 19 of these 50 toppers appeared only in the SDE examination and remained absent in the JE exam (the pay scale and status of SDE is higher than a JE). These students allegedly had access to the question paper for the entrance exam of SDE and appeared only for that, the FIR adds. The answer-sheets of these candidates show that their answers were an exact copy of one anothers and all of them had made the same mistakes. They all secured very high marks, making it to the merit list. The two candidates (names withheld for purposes of investigation) have already been questioned by the VB during preliminary investigation and had denied a role in paper leakage. The FIR states that the two candidates were taken to Lucknow two days before the examination where the question paper was allegedly leaked. The FIR says the role of 17 other candidates besides officials of Panjab University will be investigated. The staff at the University Institute of Applied Management Sciences, Panjab University, which has been conducting the examinations for the Punjab government since 2008, had also denied that the question papers were leaked. A preliminary investigation into the scam began in February when a resident of Kollianwali village in Muktsar 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 SDO against a payment of Rs 30 lakh. The complainant said a set of candidates were taken to Lucknow by the kingpin where the question papers were leaked. During the course of the preliminary investigation, the recruitment to these posts was put on hold and the university was barred from holding any entrance test for the state government. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON For residents battling with stinking garbage all round, good news could be in the offing on Friday as at a meeting held with local bodies Anil Joshi in Amritsar late on Thursday, demands of sanitation workers have been met. However, whether the strike that entered into its eighth day in the town on Thursday would end will be known after a workers meeting on Friday 11 am. Interestingly, the workers could not meet the chief minister as scheduled. The workers have been on strike for the past 8 days demanding the filling up of 328 vacant posts, insurance cover of Rs 10 lakh and inclusion of Class-4 employees and sanitation workers within the ambit of recommendations of the Pay Commission. They have also opposed the use of mechanised cleaning vehicles. The cancellation of the transfer of MC employee Mandeep Singh is also a major demand. A meeting late evening was held with cabinet minister Anil Joshi in which the minister has conceded to their demands. But whether the union will take back the strike would be decided during the meeting of the union that would be held at 11 am on Friday. The minister has agreed for removing the contractor and the 328 vacant posts would be filled through the safai karacharis working on contract for last more than two decades. Even the person working as drivers would be promoted said Sajjjan Singh. Politics outdoes sanitation Even as the sanitation goes from bad to worse with the common man suffering, political parties are indulging in mudslinging without offering any help. SAD-BJP councillors are demanding the resignation of the mayor, instead they should act proactively and get issues resolved. The strike is against the government so SAD-BJP councillors should act as mediators and get the issues resolved, said Congress councillor Kuljeet Singh Bedi. Silence baffling Interestingly, there has been silence on the issue from political personalities who could have made a difference. MLA Balbir Singh and MP Prem Singh Chandumajra have maintained silence. Even the DC, after holding a single round of meeting, has failed to take any action. A few insiders claim that the strike is politically motivated and is aimed to target MC commissioner Uma Shankar Gupta, who has been expressing helplessness since Day 1. The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday extended the stay on the proceedings initiated by the Punjab government to shift students of Chintpurni Medical College, Pathankot, to other colleges in the state, but dismissed the plea filed by the college. The order came from the high court bench of justice RK Jain on the petition of the Chintpurni college, wherein, it had challenged the shifting of the students. The college had argued that virtually every inspection carried out by the Medical Council of India after the proposal of shifting of students was put before the high court in 2014 had not found any deficiencies in the infrastructure; hence, the students should not be shifted. The high court dismissed the plea terming it non-maintainable, giving liberty to the petitioner to approach the higher courts. On the colleges request, it also extended the stay on shifting of students till April 12. The detailed order is awaited. The government had initiated the process and decided to shift the students to six other colleges in the state. However, the college management got a stay from the Supreme Court last week, which now has been extended by the high court. As many as 141 fourth-year students had approached the high court seeking that they be shifted to some other college in the state in 2014. As Punjab failed to initiate the process, they filed a contempt-of-court petition against the state government in 2015, which led to the state finally initiating the process of shifting of students in March this year. Two years after the Centre announced setting up of an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) at Amritsar, not a brick has been laid to construct the institutes own building. The classes continue to run from premises from the Punjab Institute of Technology building on the Government Polytechnic College premises in the city. The Punjab government had finalised 60 acres for the IIM near Manawala last year, but till now construction work has not started. The IIM had commenced classes in August last year. The IIM already has 60 students and its mentor institute is IIM, Kozhikode. The Punjab government is yet to give possession of the land to the institute, resulting in delay in construction work. As per the arrangement, the Punjab government was to provide the land and Centre was to take care of the construction cost estimated at about `800 crore. Amritsar Development Authority (ADA) chairman Sandeep Rishi said, We have purchased 60 acres land for the project. The land is in the name of Punjab government and will transfer to the IIM Society once the order comes. This land is near Manawala, about 12km from Amritsar city and has good accessibility for the staff and students, he added. Sources said the representatives of the IIM have already met the Amritsar deputy commissioner for transfer of land, but the officials are awaiting orders from the government. The tendering process can only start once the land is transferred to IIM Society. Before finalising the land for the IIM, the district administration had given a couple of options at Awaan near Ajnala and Sheron Baga near Baba Bakala, but the Central teams rejected them as they were far from the city. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Isolated by other stakeholders over the water-sharing dispute of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal, Punjab on Friday said the Supreme Court was not bound to answer the Presidential reference made at the instance of the Centre which had no power to resolve the dispute. The Parkash Singh Badal Government also submitted that a fresh tribunal be set up to resolve all disputes with other states, including Haryana on all aspects, which would also cover the riparian rights and the dwindling flow. Appearing for Punjab, senior advocate Ram Jethmalani said the apex court was not bound to answer the Presidential reference on the validity of the Punjab Termination of Agreements, 2004. Though it is a Presidential reference, it had been done at the instance of the Centre which had no power to decide the water dispute. The reference had been made under Article 143 (1) of the Constitution which clearly stated that the Supreme Court may answer it. This was quite contrary to references made under Article 143(2) which shall be answerable by the Supreme Court, senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, appearing for Punjab, submitted before a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by AR Dave. The noted jurist said Punjab had sought a fresh tribunal in 2003, 18 months before the 2004 law, to review the 1981 tripartite agreement on river-water sharing in view of the depleting flow and other changed circumstances. The stand of Punjab over the issue was opposed by Rajasthan through senior advocate CS Vaidhyanathan, who contended that it had no right to enact the 2004 law, terminating its water-sharing agreements. The water sharing agreement was between Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. Countering Rajasthans contention, Jethmalani maintained that the Punjab Assembly had every right to enact the 2004 law, though it was not binding on other states. On Haryanas demand, he contended that after its creation in 1966, it had become a riparian state of the Yamuna and was getting its share. At the same time, it had lost its riparian rights after it was carved out of Punjab. On April 4, the hearing had seen Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir siding with Haryana and the bench had asked the attorney general or solicitor general to clarify the Centres stand clear on the reference pertaining to the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, 2004. The BJP on Friday appointed new party presidents in five states, including Punjab. Heres an introduction to the new Punjab BJP chief Who is he? Vijay Kumar Sampla, 54, is Union minister of state for Union minister of state for social justice and empowerment; a Ravidassia Dalit, he became MP from Hoshiarpur in the Dalit-dominated Doaba belt of Punjab in 2014; replaces Kamal Sharma who had already completed his term in December. He had started his political career as sarpanch of Sofi village in Jalandhar and worked as a plumber in Saudi Arabia before joining the BJP in 1998. Read: Modis minister Vijay Sampla replaces Kamal as Punjab BJP chief Why was he chosen? Caste and region play a dual role in the choice as Dalits are 32% of Punjabs population highest, proportion-wise, among all states and they are more concentrated in Doaba region out of the three regions of Punjab, other two being Malwa and Majha. And Ravidassia community is a big part of Dalits. BJP has also tried to counter AAP strategy to give preference to aam aadmi or common man, through Samplas humble background What are his strengths? Besides his being a Dalit, what works in his favour is that he was picked by PM Narendra Modi to be in his team of ministers in July 2014, he had also arranged a visit of the PM to Guru Ravidass Temple in Varanasi, a temple constructed and managed by Punjabs Ravidassia sect, Dera Ballan. Carries a grassroots, non-controversial image, and is acceptable to all in the faction-ridden state BJP divided between groups led by outgoing state chief Kamal Sharma and RS member Avinash Rai Khannal though he is seen as a protege of Khanna. Considered a master at satisfying egos of big leaders. What are his weaknesses/challenges? With SAD-BJP coalition facing a tough poll task, BJP workers are dissatisfied over sharing blame with SAD, and motivating them would be the biggest task. He is seen as media shy and refrains from giving statements on crucial issue; but may have to shed this tag now. In a shocking incident that puts a big question mark on the working of the Ludhiana police, gangster Gaurav Sharma alias Goru Bachha gunned down a three-wheeler driver to death in Dugri in broad day light on Thursday over a minor issue of parking his vehicle. While the victim, 30-year-old Vikrant Kumar alias Vicky died on the spot, his two brothers suffered injuries while trying to rescue him. Inspector Davinder Chaudhary, station house officer (SHO) at Dugri police station said that the incident took place at around 5.30 pm outside Vickys house in the Himmat Singh Nagar area. Vikrant had come home after dropping schoolchildren to their respective homes. He parked the three-wheeler outside the house. Goru Bachha, who is living in a rented accommodation near Vickys house came out and started abusing Vicky for parking his three-wheeler the wrong way. Goru started forcing Vicky to park his vehicle somewhere else. Things turned ugly, when Vikrant resisted. Goru Bachha reportedly called his accomplices and flashed a gun. He opened fire from point blank range on Vicky, pumping two bullets into him, leaving him critically injured. When Vickys two brothers came there for his rescue, Goru, along with his accomplices thrashed them before fleeing. The victim was rushed to a private hospital in Jawaddi area where he succumbed to injuries. Vicky was married and is survived by two children. Deputy commissioner of police (DCM) Dhruman Nimbale said the police launched a manhunt to arrest the accused. A case has been registered against the accused. Facing trail in several cases Goru Bachha is hardcore criminal and facing trial in several criminal cases, including murder, loot, extortion and drug peddling. He was arrested by the Nakodar police three years ago, following an encounter after which he remained in jail for several months. Four months ago, Goraya police arrested him in a case registered under the Arms Act and was on bail for the past two months. Goru added that the police source was barely 23-year-old and started a life of crime with the Sachin-Mohini gang, which he had recently left and created a gang of his own. Anyone residing within the geographical region of Jharkhand for at least 30 years will be considered a local resident, the state government announced on Thursday, ending a 13-year policy stalemate that held up appointments of thousands of teachers and workers. The cabinet also approved a proposal that said only local residents in 13 tribal-dominated districts will be eligible for Grade III and IV jobs for the next 10 years. The local resident definition is an important landmark for the 15-year-old state as appointment for thousands of government jobs was stuck in the absence of a policy. The state saw several clashes between tribals who claimed to be the original inhabitants of the region and people settled in Jharkhand from outside over jobs and the right to government benefits. Jharkhand is one of Indias most resource-rich states but poverty is widespread in the states tribal belt with poor health and education services. The resident policy is expected to change this, as local residents will be prioritised for government jobs. People who possess local resident certificates will get all type of entitlements on priority basis, said parliamentary affairs minister Saryu Roy. But the policy is a disappointment for businessmen and people in private jobs who moved to Jharkhand since its creation in 2000. Experts said these sections contributed to the states development but were left out of the policy. The cut-off period of 30 years also appeared unusually tough, especially when compared to sister states such as Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand that were also carved out at the same time as Jharkhand. In Chhattisgarh, the cut off period to attain citizenship is 15 years. For businessmen, the criterion is only five years. Uttarakhand also has 15 years of residence with permanent-owned property as the criterion for recognition as a local. The first chief minister Babulal Marandi had issued a notification in 2002 defining residency but the high court quashed it, ordering the government to come up with a new local policy. Roy said the government took utmost care of all sections of the state. The policy will become official after the gazette notification to be made soon, he said. As per the decision, local aspirants appearing in examinations conducted by Jharkhand public service commission and Jharkhand staff selection commission can answer in tribal and regional languages of their choice. The government has listed Santhali, Mundari, Ho, Kharia, Kudhukh, Kurmali, Khorta, Nagpuri and Panchparganiya as the languages that will be offered. This is more of an employment policy, Jharkhand Congress president Sukhdev Bhagat said. Jharkhand Mukti Morcha general secretary Suprio Bhattacharya said the policy was full of contradictory interpretations. Welcoming the policy, BJP state president Ravindra Rai said it was in the interest of the people of the state and pleaded the opposition to not play politics. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Bombay high court has refused to interfere with the release of Telugu film, Sardar Gabbar Singh, and its dubbed Hindi version after Arbaaz Khan Production Private Ltd filed a suit for alleged infringement of copyright. Read: Would you believe it, Pawan Kalyan feels acting is taxing The producer of the 2010 movie, Dabangg, had sought a stay on the release of the movie, claiming that the protagonist Chulbul Pandeys character had been represented in the Telugu film as Gabbar Singh, which is an infringement of copyright. Both versions of Sardar Gabbar Singh are scheduled for release on Friday. Salman Khan in Dabangg. Justice Gautam Patel, however, found next to nothing to support the claim, and so refused to interfere with the scheduled release. The judge said actor Pawan Kalyan, who plays the role of Gabbar Singh, portrays a unique character meant for a different audience, conceived differently, but based on a storyline developed for Dabangg. I do not think that in the guise of copyright protection, courts should act as censors, no matter under what umbrella, justice Patel said, adding, I do not believe that a court is required to engage in fact gathering to supply deficiencies and lacunae in a plaintiffs case. The judge also rejected Arbaaz Khan Productions plea to either to allow them to watch the Hindi version of the Telugu film or the court should watch the movies Dabangg 2 and Sardar Gabbar Singh - back to back to ascertain the similarities. I do not think it is possible in law for a plaintiff to improve his case by demanding that either it should be allowed to see a defendants copyright-protected work or even that the court should examine the two works to determine whether the plaintiff has made out a case, the judge said. ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop The fatal shooting of two people at a US Air Force base in Texas appears to be a murder-suicide, authorities said Friday. Two bodies were found inside a room at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Bexar County sheriffs spokesman James Keith said. Its believed the shooter is among the dead, Keith said, adding that sheriffs deputies and other law enforcement officers are continuing to search the building and nearby facilities. Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, the militarys largest joint base, is the home of Air Force basic training. Fort Hood in Texas was the site of the deadliest shooting at a US military base, when 13 people were killed and 31 were injured in 2009. North Korea on Friday launched the latest in a series of vicious personal attacks on South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, describing her as a matchless evil woman intent on war. The verbal assault from the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) followed Parks participation last week in a nuclear security summit hosted by US President Barack Obama in Washington that condemned Pyongyangs continued nuclear weapons push. A CPRK spokesman said Parks behaviour and comments at the summit resembled the epileptic fit of a despicable confrontational maniac. Military tensions on the divided Korean peninsula have been rising since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, and a long-range rocket launch a month later that was seen as a disguised ballistic missile test. The Norths state media had carried a number of similar verbal attacks on Park, employing coarse and often highly sexist language in condemning her uncompromising stance towards Pyongyang and the Souths alliance with the United States. Fridays statement, published by the official KCNA news agency, said Parks insistence on the North abandoning its nuclear weapons programme proved she was the worst blockhead, ignorant of how the world goes around. The matchless evil woman pushed North-South relations to a total stalemate and increased the danger of a war, it said, criticising her dirty existence and rabid dog behaviour. The statement came a few days after an official North Korean website released a new propaganda video portraying a multiple rocket attack on the presidential Blue House in Seoul. She cannot find shelter, even in the US, the CPRK spokesman warned. The Korean-language version of the same statement used even stronger language, calling Park Obamas prostitute who sold Koreas national interests to foreign forces. The South Korean government responded angrily to the abusive tone. The government strongly warns North Korea against slandering our leader with unspeakable vulgar language ... and issuing physical threats, said Park Soo-Jin, deputy spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry in Seoul. President Park has taken a hardline with Pyongyang since the January nuclear test, leading calls for tough international sanctions and vowing a strong military response to any direct provocations from the North. Deals worth about $2 billion were signed between Pakistan and companies from Chinas violence-prone Xinjiang region when Xinjiangs top official visited Pakistan this week to cement ties with an important security partner. Last year, Pakistan agreed energy and infrastructure projects worth $46 billion with China to set up a so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in a boost to Pakistans crumbling infrastructure and energy sector. In return, China will get a free trade zone in Pakistans Gwadar port and access to the Arabian Sea. New Pakistani roads will open up routes for Chinese goods into Europe and the Middle East from landlocked Xinjiang, which is in far western China and borders Pakistan. During a four-day visit to Pakistan, Xinjiangs Communist Party chief Zhang Chunxian met Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, visited Islamabad, Karachi and Gwadar, the official Xinjiang Daily said on Friday. China and Pakistan have a deep friendship, are good neighbours, friends, brothers and partners, the newspaper cited Zhang as saying. On this trip, I have deeply felt this friendship and the atmosphere surrounding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The $2 billion in agreements covered infrastructure, solar power and logistics, among other projects, signed by companies from Xinjiang with their Pakistan counterparts, the newspaper said, without giving details. China and Pakistan call each other all-weather friends and their ties have been underpinned by long-standing wariness of their common neighbour, India, and a desire to hedge against U.S. influence in the region. But China has also long urged Pakistan to weed out what it says are militants from Xinjiang, who are holed up in lawless ethnic Pashtun lands on the Pakistan-Afghan border, home to a mix of groups, including the Taliban and al Qaeda. While meeting Sharif, the two countries agreed to continue working together to fight terrorism, strengthen border controls, maintain regional peace and stability and ensure the economic corridor projects are protected, the newspaper said. Zhang also met Pakistans military on the trip, it added, without elaborating. Hundreds of people have been killed in unrest in Xinjiang in the last few years. Exiles and rights groups say Chinese controls on the religion and culture of the Muslim Uighur people who call Xinjiang home is largely behind the violence, rather than any well-organised militant groups. China denies any rights abuses in Xinjiang and says its people are free to practice Islam. Zhang visited a mosque in Islamabad, where he got a deep understanding of Pakistans religious affairs management, the Xinjiang Daily added. US Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Friday for talks with top Iraqi officials on the war against the Islamic State group. Kerry will meet Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and Nechirvan Barzani, the Prime Minister of Iraqs autonomous Kurdish region, state department spokesperson John Kirby said. He will underscore our strong support for the Iraqi government as it addresses significant security, economic, and political challenges, Kirby said. Iraq is battling IS, which overran swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014, in a campaign that has been hit hard by plummeting world prices for oil, on which it relies for the vast majority of its revenues. Abadi is also seeking to replace the current cabinet with a government of technocrats, a move that has faced opposition from powerful parties and politicians that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds. Kerry, who is visiting Iraq for the first time since September 2014, will discuss the (US-led) coalitions continued support for Iraqi-led efforts against IS, Kirby said. US-led strikes and training have helped Iraqi forces regain significant ground from the jihadists both north and west of Baghdad. The top US diplomat travelled to Iraq after visiting the small but strategic Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, where he held talks with Gulf Arab foreign ministers on the conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Kerry called on Iran to help end the wars raging in Yemen and Syria, where Tehran and its Gulf Arab rivals are backing opposing sides. Implicated in the Panama Papers, Argentina President Mauricio Macri on Thursday said he had nothing to hide regarding his links with an offshore company mentioned in the documents, after a federal prosecutor called for an investigation. Macri is among scores of politicians and business figures internationally named in documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies. The son of an Italian-born business tycoon, Macri has said he was not legally obliged to declare his connection with the offshore company named in the Panama Papers as he never had a stake in it. The president said he was simply director of the Bahamas-based company, Fleg Trading Ltd., now closed, which was created by his father to make investments in Brazil. Critics say he owes a more thorough explanation of this and his alleged connection with another offshore company, Kagemusha SA, registered in Panama, given that such firms are often used to launder money and evade taxes. I have acted in accordance with the law and have nothing to hide, Macri said in a televised news conference. He said he would on Friday ask a court to certify his declaration of assets in order to clear up any doubts. View of a sign reading "Macri corrupt" pasted on the fence of the Government Palace in Buenos Aires during a demonstration against Argentine President Mauricio Macri on Thursday after a prosecutor opened an investigation on his offshore financial dealings leaked in the Panama Papers. (AFP) Macri also said he would put all his assets in a blind trust while president, a measure designed to prevent conflict of interest and generate transparency in the administration of his business interests. State prosecutor Federico Delgado asked the judiciary earlier on Thursday to investigate if Macris failure to declare his connection with the offshore company meant he had maliciously failed to complete his tax declaration, a crime which carries a sentence of 15 days to two years. The case was assigned to judge Sebastian Casanello, who must now decide if there is sufficient evidence to open a probe. A woman holds a sign reading "Macri outlaw for thief. Resign now" at Mayo square in Buenos Aires during a demonstration. (AFP) Macris appearance in the Panama Papers and the way his administration has handled the matter has cast some doubts over his 2015 campaign pledge to fight corruption. The head of the Argentine anti-corruption office, Laura Alonso, a member of Macris party, swiftly defended Macri after the leak emerged, saying that creating a company in a tax haven was not a crime. Opposition lawmakers called for her resignation on grounds her job was to root out corruption, not defend the president. Panama will deepen talks with the OECD on sharing tax information in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal, its vice president told AFP in an exclusive interview on Thursday. We are going to establish technical-level dialogue between Panama and the OECD specifically on exchanging information, said Isabel De Saint Malo, who is also the countrys foreign minister. She said the talks were agreed earlier the same day in a very good conversation with the head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Angel Gurria. Panama is scrambling to avert being once again designated as a tax haven that facilitates money laundering, after the revelations of offshore dealings of many of the worlds wealthy, famous and infamous in the so-called Panama Papers revelations. They came when millions of documents covering nearly 40 years of business were leaked from the archives of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Need to refine reforms The OECD has led the charge accusing Panama of not doing enough to implement transparency and information-sharing standards. Gurria this week called the country the last major holdout allowing funds to be hidden from the authorities of other nations. That prompted De Saint Malos deputy foreign minister, Luis Miguel Hincapie, to accuse Gurria of being unfair and discriminatory. In the interview with AFP, De Saint Malo also said that Panama would improve information-sharing with France, which warned this week it was looking at putting Panama back on its blacklist of tax havens. Just two months ago, Panama managed to get off an international gray list of countries not doing enough to battle money laundering and possible terrorist financing. In the past couple years, the government instituted a range of reforms to somewhat curb the anonymity its banking and legal businesses have created for offshore companies. However, it has resisted fully implementing automatic reporting procedures set out by the OECD. De Saint Malo stressed the big steps Panama had made so far. We hope that experts and people who know the subject will be able to look a bit at our practices, to make recommendations to us over what weve done and to help us refine these changes. Zero tolerance She reiterated the governments zero tolerance for irregularities and shady dealings, and a strong commitment to transparency in the area of financial services. However, she acknowledged that Panama was cautious about further reforms because it wanted to ensure its nexus of banks and law firms with many international clients did not lose its competitive edge as a financial hub. The sector contributes seven percent to the countrys gross domestic product. President Juan Carlos Varela on Wednesday emphasized Panamas efforts to fight tax dodging and money laundering, and said a national commission of experts would look at ways to further improve them. He also vowed to confront anybody who tried to drag Panamas reputation down because of the revelations from the law firm. A global issue The government has already threatened to retaliate against France if Paris again labels Panama a tax haven. The vice president said on Wednesday that she had met with the French foreign ministrys director for the Americas, Kareen Rispal, who told her France backed Panamas moves toward greater transparency. Between France and Panama, we have to be more effective in agreeing on the exchange of information, and that is what we are doing, De Saint Malo said. She also stressed that money laundering and tax evasion is a global issue in which other jurisdictions besides Panama are involved, and lamented that the widespread scandal has been bundled under the title Panama Papers. Once driven to near irrelevance by the rise of Islamic State abroad and harsh security crackdowns at home, Al Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated $100 million in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the countrys third largest port. If Islamic States capital is the Syrian city of Raqqa, then Al Qaedas is Mukalla, a southeastern Yemeni port city of 500,000 people. Al Qaeda fighters there have abolished taxes for local residents, operate speedboats manned by RPG-wielding fighters who impose fees on ship traffic, and make propaganda videos in which they boast about paving local roads and stocking hospitals. The economic empire was described by more than a dozen diplomats, Yemeni security officials, tribal leaders and residents of Mukalla. Its emergence is the most striking unintended consequence of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The campaign, backed by the United States, has helped Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago. Yemeni government officials and local traders estimated the group, as well as seizing the bank deposits, has extorted $1.4 million from the national oil company and earns up to $2 million every day in taxes on goods and fuel coming into the port. Shi'ite Houthi rebels drive a patrol truck past an Ansar al-Sharia flag painted on the side of a hill, along a road in Almnash, the main stronghold of Ansar al-Sharia, the local wing of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Rada, Yemen. (REUTERS) AQAP boasts 1,000 fighters in Mukalla alone, controls 600 km (373 miles) of coastline and is ingratiating itself with southern Yemenis, who have felt marginalised by the countrys northern elite for years. By adopting many of the tactics Islamic State uses to control its territory in Syria and Iraq, AQAP has expanded its own fiefdom. The danger is that the group, which organised the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year and has repeatedly tried to down US airliners, may slowly indoctrinate the local population with its hardline ideology. I prefer that Al Qaeda stay here, not for Al Mukalla to be liberated, said one 47-year-old resident. The situation is stable, more than any free part of Yemen. The alternative to Al Qaeda is much worse. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is struggling to extricate itself from the Yemeni quagmire a year after intervening in the countrys civil war. Riyadh is determined to deny bitter rival Iran sway over another Arab capital. It has focused on attacking the Houthis who have seized parts of northern Yemen and who are allied to Iran. But despite thousands of aerial bombings, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have failed to push the Houthis from the capital Sanaa. An estimated 6,000 people, half of them civilians, have been killed. A temporary ceasefire between the internationally recognised government, which is backed by the Saudis, and the Houthis is due to begin on April 10. In a recent statement issued by the Saudi embassy in Washington, Saudi officials said that their campaign had denied terrorists a safe haven in Yemen. And yet, AQAPs strength is growing. A US counter-terrorism official said AQAP remained one of Al Qaedas most potent affiliates. The United States launched its deadliest air strike yet on the group on March 22nd, killing around 50 of its fighters at a military base outside Mukalla. The groups bomb-making expertise and long-standing ambitions to carry out attacks using novel or complex tactics underscore (the) threat, the official said. A senior Yemeni government official said the war against the Houthis provided a suitable environment for the ... expansion of Al Qaeda. The withdrawal of government army units from their bases in the south, allowed Al Qaeda to acquire very large quantities of sophisticated and advanced weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and armed vehicles. As well, the coalitions preoccupation with fighting the Houthis made it easier for Al Qaeda elements to expand in more than one area, he said. And this is why Al Qaeda has today become stronger and more dangerous and we are working with the coalition now to go after elements of the group ... and will continue until they are destroyed. Anatomy of an economic empire Barely a week after Saudi Arabia launched Operation Decisive Storm against the Houthis in March last year, Yemeni army forces vanished from Mukallas streets and moved westward to combat zones, security officials and residents said. Read: Govt forces push back al Qaeda in Yemen The citys residents were left defenceless, allowing a few dozen AQAP fighters to seize government buildings and free 150 of their comrades from the central jail. The freed included Khaled Batarfi, a senior al Qaeda leader. Pictures appeared online of Batarfi sitting inside the local presidential palace, looking happy and in control as he held a telephone to his ear. Tribal leaders in neighbouring provinces told Reuters that, in the security vacuum, army bases were looted and Yemens south became awash with advanced weaponry. C4 explosive and even anti-aircraft missiles were available to the highest bidder. And just as Islamic State seized the central bank in Mosul in northern Iraq, AQAP looted Mukallas central bank branch, netting an estimated $100 million, according to two senior Yemeni security officials. That represents their biggest financial gain to date, one of the officials said. Thats enough to fund them at the level they had been operating for at least another 10 years. In a sign that AQAP not only wants to get rich but also seeks official recognition as a quasi-state, it unsuccessfully sought permission from the Yemeni government to export crude oil in October and collect a share of the profits, according to a tribal leader and two senior officials. Read: Al Qaeda militants take over two south Yemen towns, residents say Yemens government refused, fearing the deal would give de facto recognition to the internationally blacklisted group. Al Qaeda sent a mediator to the government to get them agree to listen to this deal, the tribal leader, who is in southern Yemen, told Reuters. Their offer was they need the official documents from the government to sell crude oil, and they would get 25 percent of the profit, and 75% for the government. The government rejected the offer, said both the tribal leader and Badr Basalmah, a former transport minister in Yemens government. Yes, that happened, Basalmah said, speaking by telephone from the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The government refused completely to have anything to do with this deal because it would give authority and legitimacy to al Qaeda. On the waterfront In Mukalla port, a thriving fuel smuggling network enriches AQAP daily. Tribal sources, residents and diplomats told Reuters the militants gained control of the ports in Mukalla and Ash Shihr when they first stormed the cities in April last year. The militants began imposing tax and custom tariffs on shippers and traders. The group is experiencing a period of obscene, unprecedented wealth and luxury, one resident of Mukalla told Reuters. A current official in the transport ministry estimate AQAPs daily revenue at $2 million a day. Some local traders put it as high as $5 million a day from customs duties and smuggled fuel, according to Basalmah, Yemens former transport minister. (REUTERS) You will find hundreds of oil trucks there smuggling fuel from one area to another where they are selling it, said Basalmah. Abdallah al-Nasi, governor of neighbouring Shabwa province, where AQAP controls some territory, said the group has become the de facto fuel supplier. They sell the fuel to whoever buys it, Nasi told Reuters by phone The government-run petrol stations buy from them and sell it on to the citizens. Tribes who work with al Qaeda now control much of the countrys oil infrastructure. Six white oil tanks on a beach between Mukalla and Ash Shihr are linked by pipeline to the Masila oilfields which are estimated to hold more than 80% of Yemens total reserves. After army forces withdrew from the area last year, armed local tribes linked to Al Qaeda took charge. That prompted major companies operating there state-owned PetroMasila, Canadas Nexen Energy and Frances Total to shut production and end exports. A PetroMasila official said that small amounts of oil are still being extracted for use in provincial power generators. Total said it has not restarted operations. Nexen did not respond to a request for comment. Robin Hood It is a dramatic change of fortune for a group that was founded in the late 1990s and merged with al Qaedas Saudi branch in 2009. After a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks against the Yemeni government, and two foiled bomb plots on US-bound airliners, AQAP was forced into retreat by assaults from Yemeni tribes and troops as well as persistent US drone strikes. Now the group has embarked on a brazen campaign to shake down state-owned firms, including the national oil and mobile phone companies. AQAP uses the money it extorts to win favour among its subjects. Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen scholar at Oxford University, calls it a Robin Hood strategy. In January, a copy of a demand issued by AQAP circulated on local media. The notice, on AQAP letterhead, demanded $4.7 million from the national oil companys bank account in Mukalla. May God grant that all serve the country and the faithful, the note said. Propaganda images from AQAP videos posted online show members of the group guarding the port of Mukalla, paying workers salaries, and laying pipes. AQAP is keen to show residents that it can run the territory it controls. (Images Courtesy: Social Media websites) A top government security official said the oil company paid the full $4.7 million. A source at the bank said it had paid only $1.4 million. A representative of the oil company declined to comment. Officials at the three biggest national mobile phone companies, MTN, Sabafone and Y Telecom, said AQAP had also demanded payments of $4.7 million each from them. The firms all said they refused to pay. Late last year, AQAP cancelled payroll taxes in areas it controls because it deemed the practice un-Islamic. In a video posted on YouTube in November, the chief of al Qaedas Sharia court in Hadramout the coastal region where Mukalla is capital announced it would repay government workers taxes they had paid. In the video, a bureaucrat is shown counting out wages for a worker from a bulging wad of Yemeni currency. The poor have been paying alms to the rich and the rich dont pay, and its the tyrants and oppressors who are the ones getting this money, AQAP fighter Ali bin Talib al-Kathiri said in another video. Because those oppressors have not implemented Gods law, theyve eaten up the peoples money in sin. Kathiri died in January in a gun battle with southern tribesmen. But AQAPs populist strategy is paying off, said Oxford Universitys Kendall. The group regularly posts pictures of its fighters repairing damaged bridges and paving streets in Hadramout and other cities under its control. It says the money for the repairs comes from groups such as Guardians of Sharia or Sons of Hadramout, names AQAP has taken on as part of a rebranding effort to emphasise its local origins. In one video posted on February 28, AQAP members deliver free medical supplies and equipment to the kidney dialysis and cancer wings of a local hospital. The boxes of supplies are sealed with the tape of a Western pharmaceutical company. These are some medicines from your brothers, the Guardians of Sharia, to al-Jamii hospital which was going to be closed ... because of no money, says one fighter whose face is blurred out. The video also shows a hospital official saying he had received money from Al Qaeda to pay workers salaries. A popular haven? The group has exploited sectarian grievances to brand their state-building project as a liberation movement. So many areas fell to us after the Houthis left because we are the entity that people trust, AQAP leader Batarfi said. In the five coastal provinces stretching from the governments temporary seat in Aden to Mukalla, a familiar pattern has recurred in recent months. Al Qaeda forces storm a town, plant their flags, and then watch as local leaders acquiesce. Citizens say they are tired of moving and would rather live with Al Qaedas control. With Al Qaeda, if you resist, you never know when they could come and assassinate you, one Yemeni sheikh said. AQAP has also learned to be less cruel than its rival, Islamic State, which has struggled to gain a foothold in a population repelled by its brutality. While AQAP has resorted to killing suspected sorcerers, and carried out stonings of at least one man and woman accused of adultery, residents and the groups online media suggest such incidents are rare. And even when AQAP publicises punishments, their videos and photographs never show the level of gratuitous gore that Islamic State revels in. Rather than resorting to mass beheadings, AQAP has detained or put under house arrest several dozen army officers and other figures they see as a threat, activists said. One Mukalla resident said her life had changed little since AQAP swept through the city. We carry out our lives normally, they walk among the people, she told Reuters by phone. Of course theyre trying to create a popular haven. A regional diplomat who follows Yemen says that if Al Qaeda manages to successfully root itself as a political and economic organisation, it could become a more resilient threat, much like al Shabaab in nearby Somalia. We may be facing a more complicated Al Qaeda, the diplomat said, not just a terrorist organisation but a movement controlling territory with happy people inside it. On Wednesday night, another student activist was hacked and shot to death in Bangladesh, the latest in a series of such murders, renewing international concern that advocates of secularism and free speech are unsafe in the mostly Muslim nation. Amnesty International called the deadly attack on 28-year-old Nazimuddin Samad a grave reminder that the authorities are failing to protect people exercising their right to freedom of expression. The US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner strongly condemned Samads barbaric murder and told reporters the US was considering granting refuge to a select number of secular bloggers who face imminent danger in the poor, South Asian nation. Here is a list of attacks on secular writers, publishers and members of Bangladeshs minority Shia and Christian communities: February 15, 2013: Assailants wielding machetes kill secular blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider after he posts comments online about religious fundamentalism. In December 2015, police arrest eight people they suspect of having links with the banned group Ansarullah Bangla Team Feb 27, 2015: At least two assailants attack Bangladeshi-American blogger and writer Avijit Roy with meat cleavers, killing him and injuring his wife on a crowded street in Dhaka, the capital. A previously unknown group, Ansar Bangla 7, which intelligence officials believe is part of Ansarullah Bangla Team, claims responsibility. At least four suspects are arrested. March 30, 2015: Three men use meat cleavers to hack 26-year-old blogger Washiqur Rahman Babu to death in Dhaka. Bystanders chase down two of the attackers, but a third escapes. The captured suspects say they are students at Islamic schools and were ordered to commit the crime. Police have been unable to determine who gave the order. May 12, 2015: Four men with meat cleavers kill online atheist activist and science magazine editor Ananta Bijoy Das as he leaves his home in the northeastern city of Sylhet. Police arrest a newspaper photographer and two others. Al-Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, which is believed to be affiliated with Ansarullah Bangla Team, claims responsibility. Aug. 8, 2015: A fourth blogger, Niloy Chottopadhay, is killed by men who enter his Dhaka apartment, posing as potential tenants, and assault him with cleavers. Ansarullah Bangla Team claims responsibility in an email, though the authenticity of the message has not been confirmed. Sept. 28, 2015: Three assailants on a motorcycle gun down Italian citizen Cesare Tavella in Dhakas diplomatic quarter. The Sunni extremist group Islamic State claims responsibility, according to the terror monitoring group SITE. Officials reject the claim and accuse local Islamist groups of attempting to destabilize the country. A month later, police arrest four suspects who say they were hired by a big brother to attack a white man to create chaos in the country, according to authorities. Oct. 4, 2015: Masked assailants on a motorcycle kill Japanese citizen Kunio Hoshi, who was working in agriculture in northern Bangladesh. The Islamic State group claims responsibility, but the government again dismisses the idea that the group has any presence in the country. Oct. 24, 2015: Attackers hurl homemade bombs into a crowd of thousands of Shia Muslims as they gather for a pre-dawn religious procession in Dhaka. A teenage boy is killed and more than 100 other people are injured. Police arrest two suspects and recover two unexploded bombs. They dismiss an IS claim of responsibility and say the culprits were likely from the banned local group Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh. On Nov. 26, security forces arrest six suspects after a gunfight that killed the groups alleged military commander. Oct. 31, 2015: A group of men hack to death a publisher of secular books and wound three others in Dhaka. The publisher, Faisal Arefin Deepan, had close ties with killed blogger Roy. The banned group Ansar al-Islam claims responsibility. Nov. 26, 2015: At least five gunmen open fire on Shia Muslim devotees during evening prayers at a mosque in northern Bangladesh. An elderly mosque official who had been leading the prayers is killed and three others are wounded. A group describing itself as an IS affiliate in Bangladesh claims responsibility and vows more attacks. Police detain two suspects for questioning Feb. 21, 2016: Two men armed with guns and cleavers hack a Hindu priest and removing his head at a temple in northern Bangladesh, an attack later claimed by the Islamic State. The men escaped the crime scene on a single motorcycle, but within days police arrest three suspects. The government also dismisses the IS claim. April 6, 2016: Student activist for secularism Nazimuddin Samad is hacked and shot to death as he was walking home with a friend after attending an evening law class at a Dhaka university. The three masked assailants escape on a motorcycle while shouting Allahu Akbar, or Allah is great. No one immediately claimed responsibility. The US said it is considering granting refuge to bloggers who are under imminent danger in Bangladesh following a series of killings of secular writers and activists in the country. State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner said humanitarian parole to a select number of bloggers who continue to be under imminent danger is one option under consideration but referred to Homeland Security Department for further details. The remarks by the US official come following the barbaric murder of a law student who was killed in Bangladesh on Wednesday night for speaking out against Islamist extremism. Nazimuddin Samad, 28, a masters student of the state-run Jagannath Universitys law department who posted comments against radical Islamists on Facebook, was killed by suspected militants in Dhakas Sutrapur area. Toner condemned the attack and expressed support to Bangladesh. We offer our condolences to Nazimuddin Samads family and our unwavering support to the Bangladeshi people in their struggle against violent extremism, Toner said. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh over the past six months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers and foreigners. Last month, a 65-year-old Christian convert was hacked to death in the northern Bangladeshi town of Kurigram by three motorbike-borne unidentified assailants. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. Nazimuddin knew and Bangladeshs history has shown that violence will not defeat the countrys proud tradition of free and independent discourse. So we stand with the Bangladeshi people in rejecting this vicious act, and uniting to preserve a tolerant and inclusive society that protects freedom of expression, Toner said. The United States will continue to support the government of Bangladesh in its efforts to combat terrorism, counter violent extremism, and bring to justice those who commit such heinous acts, Toner said. The US has warned its citizens against all non-essential travel to Pakistan, as the country continues to experience terrorist and sectarian violence. Pakistan continues to experience significant terrorist violence, including sectarian attacks. Several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups continue to pose danger to US citizens, the State Department said on Thursday in a latest travel warning on Pakistan that replaces the one issue on August 28 last year. While the US Embassy in Islamabad and its consulate in Karachi continue to provide consular services for all its citizens, the two diplomatic posts are often limited in the services they can provide due to the security environment. The Peshawar Consulate no longer offers consular services and the one in Lahore remains temporarily suspended. Noting that sectarian violence remains a serious threat countrywide and the Pakistan government continues to enforce blasphemy laws, the State Department said religious minority communities have been victims of targeted killings and accusations of blasphemy. Observing that attacks include armed assaults against heavily guarded facilities such as military installations and airports, the State Department said terrorists have also struck universities, schools, rallies, places of worship, and large marketplaces in several Pakistani cities. Since the beginning of 2016, a suicide bomber killed at least 15 people and injured 25 others outside a health centre in Quetta, Balochistan; gunmen attacked Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killing 22; and a suicide bomber at a park in Lahore killed more than 70 people and injured more than 340. The Pakistan government maintains heightened security measures, particularly in major cities, following attacks or in response to threats, the State Department said. Advanced molecular and computer modeling has revealed that the titi monkey - one of the world's most diverse primate groups - has a more complicated evolution than previously thought. Rather than grouping these New World monkeys together under the genus Callicebus, scientists from the University of Salford found that the primates warrant a more precise classification. They suggest redefining the monkeys as three distinct genera: Callicebus, Chaeracebus and Plecturocebus. The study also revealed that the species Callicebus dubius should be reclassified as Callicebus caligatus, lowering the number of recognized species from 34 to 33. "By dividing the titi monkeys into three new genera we are better describing biodiversity by acknowledging the evolutionary uniqueness of these old lineages," explained Jean Boubli, reader in animal ecology at the University of Salford. He described the findings as the "culmination of his 20 year quest for the origins of titi monkey diversity." Having spent three years in the northern Amazon, Boubli and his Ph.D. student Hazel Byrne - who also spent months in the jungle - constructed the largest know array of titi monkey DNA sequences. This, researchers say, sheds new light on key evolutionary events of the monkeys' past. Working alongside zoologists from Brazil and the U.S., the team ran hundreds of genetic codes through computer programs in order to simulate the evolution of titi monkeys over millions of generations. One key evolution event was identified 11 million years ago, at which time Plecturocebus and Callicebus diversified as two unique genera. Researchers also found an evolutionary split between Callicebus and Cheracebus 8 million years ago. "Historically taxonomy (the classification of animals) has been largely based on morphology - color, shape, size, features - rather than genetic diversity. However, things can be very closely related and look quite different, or be genetically distinct and look the same," Byrne said. Researchers describe taxonomy as "the road map of conservation." In other words, identifying the monkeys in greater detail will allow for improved, targeted protections, as conservationists will be able to better assess the needs and threats of individual species. "Each of the three genera can now be recognized as unique, important lineages, giving governments and NGOs a clearer focus for conservation programs," Boubli said. "It makes sense that before you say 'we're going to dedicate our resources to this, you need to know what 'this' is." Titi monkeys are currently listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. It is estimated that 80 percent of titi monkey populations have declined within the last 25 years, largely due to massive deforestation and mounting pressure from human population encroachment. Next, researchers plan to further investigate the biogeographical evolution of titi moneys. Learning more about how the animals diversified over time and space could ultimately reveal how the Amazon was formed. The findings were published in the March 1 issue of the journal Frontiers in Zoology. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The journey into the Gulf of Mexico's sea floor in order to shed light on 65 million years of history is now underway. Using a massive drill, a research team hopes to obtain a mile-deep core sample from the Chicxulub crater and uncover the mystery of the end of the dinosaur era. "There's a lot of questions about mass extinction events, including all the extinction or kill mechanisms out there," said Sean Gulick, one of the research team's leaders from the University of Texas at Austin. At the end of the Cretaceous period, approximately 66 million years ago, a miles-wide asteroid hit the Earth, wiping out more than 70 percent of the planet's species and sending deep-seated rocks and other materials flying like water in a pond after a stone hits it. If the team successfully gathers a core sample from deep within the crater, they could successfully shed insight on numerous topics in a variety of fields including prehistoric biology and planetary biology. The core samples will give scientists access to Chicxulub's well-preserved peak ring, the circle of hills that typically rises above flat impact craters on Earth and other planets. "In that section," Gulick said, "the big excitement is, 'How did life come back at ground zero?' Was it the specialists that came back first, the generalists? Is there any clue to what organisms repopulated first, as opposed to what the environmental consequences were for the ocean?" The team is using a 137-foot craft called the Liftboat Myrtle to drill into the seafloor, taking advantage of its tripod with 6-foot-wide legs to get itself into the position over an offshore site 25 kilometers from Progreso, Mexico. Researchers hope to have the first usable samples by next week. As the team drills, they will make their way through numerous layers of the crater that they hope will reveal evidence of - in addition to the clues to the nature of the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs - the geological processes and ecological periods of our planet. At 600 meters, the team will pass through rock that existed when temperatures across the globe spiked, which could help the team gain insight into the effects of climate change. "We don't really know what this material will look like," said Jaime Urrutia-Fucugauchi, a geophysicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. "It could be a real surprise." The expedition began April 6 and will continue until June. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Texas police announced Friday that they have arrested a homeless 17-year-old in connection to the murder of University of Texas student Haruka Weiser, which occurred earlier this week. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo revealed during a press conference that the suspect, Meechaiel Criner, was arrested by police Thursday evening and booked into the country jail on a first-degree murder charge. "I don't have a clue what the motive is," he said, noting that Criner is a homeless teen with no known connection to Weiser. Weiser was last seen Sunday evening as she left from the university's drama building en route to her dorm. However, she never turned up, prompting her roommates to report her missing the next morning, which, in turn, launched a police investigation. Unfortunately, things took a tragic turn on Tuesday when her body was discovered in Waller Creek by the university's alumni center. Thursday's arrest came through coincidence. While responding to a small fire involving a backpack near the campus on Monday, firefighters came across Criner at the scene and took him to Lifeworks, a nonprofit shelter in the city. Afterwards, someone who witnessed the fire called in a tip after seeing a surveillance video that featured a 6-foot-tall black male steering a red or pink women's bike, believing that the suspect in the video resembled the person who was involved in Monday's incident. Through the help of the local fire department, police located Criner at LifeWorks, and he was in possession of a blue duffel bag belonging to Weiser and the bike that resembled the one in the video. To date, police have declined to release anymore details about the incident, saying, "We would be remiss if we started talking about specifics." However they have underlined the brutality of the incident, noting that an autopsy shows she was assaulted. The incident shook the surrounding community and university itself, which is known as being quite safe, with the last homicide on campus taking place in 1966. Even with this death on everyone's minds, officials emphasized that the campus is safe but have urged students and others to be vigilant. In a statment about the incident to the campus community, UT President Gregory Fenves referred to Weiser's death as a "tragic loss for the UT community." "Haruka was a beloved member of our dance community, liked and admired by her classmates and respected by professors for her intelligence and spirit," he added. "Dance faculty members first met Haruka more than two years ago when she performed at the National High School Dance Festival. They immediately began recruiting her to come to UT from her home in Portland, Oregon. Our community was made better by her decision to join the College of Fine Arts. "Trained in ballet, Haruka excelled in all her performance endeavors. She was also involved in Dance Action, a student-run organization for dancers, and performed in the fall Dance Action concert." "UTPD first learned that Haruka was missing on Monday morning and immediately began a search. As I reported in my message to campus yesterday, Austin police are leading the homicide investigation into this horrifying and incomprehensible crime and working with UTPD and other law enforcement agencies to locate and apprehend a suspect quickly. "The unthinkable brutality against Haruka is an attack on our entire family. Law enforcement is fully engaged to do everything to bring the perpetrator who committed this crime to justice. "I ask you to join me in expressing our deepest condolences to Haruka's parents, family, classmates and friends and to help the university honor her life." @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Credit: Danny ClinchBruce Springsteen has canceled his scheduled concert with The E Street Band this Sunday, April 10, in Greensboro, North Carolina, in protest over recently passed legislation in the state that he considers discriminatory against the LGBT community. The Boss posted a lengthy message on his official website explaining his decision to nix the show. "North Carolina has just passed HB2, which the media are referring to as the 'bathroom' law[that] dictates which bathrooms transgender people are permitted to use," writes Bruce. "Just as important, the law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace. No other group of North Carolinians faces such a burden." Springsteen maintains that he considers the legislation "an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress." He also points out that many people, organizations and businesses in North Carolina are "working to oppose and overcome these negative developments." Bruce adds, "I feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters." He then offers his "dedicated fans" in Greensboro his "deepest apologies" in deciding to cancel the concert. The Boss ends his message by declaring, "Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry -- which is happening as I write -- is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards." The next scheduled stop on Springsteen and the E Street Band's 2016 The River Tour is in Columbus, Ohio, this Tuesday, April 12. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. News, events, history, and other mid-week tidbits. Tuesday, October 25, 4:30 7 p.m. Orr Area EMS Open House Brats and burgers will be served. Event includes a new ambulance tour and blood pressure screenings. For more info: 218-780-3798. Orr Fire Hall 4540 Lake St., Orr Tuesday, October 25, 12 6 p.m. Essentia Health Job Fair Talent recruiters and department managers will be on-site at Essentia Health-Virginia. Candidates from all backgrounds are encouraged to attendnurses, nursing and clinical assistants, surgery technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, human resource professionals, and those interested in environmental services or nutrition services. Essentia staff will greet candidates, conduct an initial screening and filter them to appropriate hiring managers for interviews. Select candidates will be verbally offered a position before leaving. Candidates are asked to bring a resume, but its not required. Attire is business casual. For more info: www.essentiacareers.org. 901 9th St. N., Virginia 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 In comparison with Easter week 2015, the industrys occupancy rose 6.6% to 66.9%. Average daily rate for the week was up 5.0% to US$121.96. Revenue per available room increased 11.9% to US$81.61. The U.S. hotel industry recorded positive year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 27 March through 2 April 2016, according to data from STR. In comparison with Easter week 2015, the industrys occupancy rose 6.6% to 66.9%. Average daily rate for the week was up 5.0% to US$121.96. Revenue per available room increased 11.9% to US$81.61. Among the Top 25 Markets, Dallas, Texas, reported the largest increases in occupancy (+20.6% to 76.3%) and RevPAR (+40.5% to US$79.43). ADR in the market was up 16.4% to US$104.06. Four additional markets experienced a RevPAR increase larger than 25.0%: St. Louis, Missouri-Illinois (+30.0% to US$66.86); Houston, Texas (+29.8% to US$84.52); Phoenix, Arizona (+27.4% to US$130.24); and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota-Wisconsin (+25.4% to US$66.48). Overall, 17 of the Top 25 Markets saw a double-digit lift in RevPAR. Of the four markets to experience a decrease in RevPAR, New York, New York (-9.6% to US$200.24), and Miami/Hialeah, Florida (-9.2% to US$196.41), reported the largest drops in the metric. Houston posted the largest rise in ADR, up 21.2% to US$124.93. The aforementioned Dallas and Los Angeles/Long Beach, California (+16.1% to US$171.62), were the only other markets to record an ADR increase of more than 15.0%. New York (-8.7% to US$232.26) and Miami/Hialeah (-8.3% to US$241.35) were the only markets to report a decrease in ADR for the week. After Dallas, four other markets saw occupancy rise by double figures: St. Louis (+18.9% to 67.9%); Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Virginia (+16.2% to 66.2%); Minneapolis/St. Paul (+15.1% to 62.4%) and Denver (+10.8% to 66.2%). San Diego, California (-4.5% to 80.8%), experienced the steepest decline in occupancy, followed by Anaheim/Santa Ana, California (-4.0% to 79.2%). View weekly U.S. hotel performance review 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. As they get ready to perform at Dublin's Music Town Festival, limerick hip-hop three-piece talk politics, identity & Kanye Theres a widespread assumption that Limerick hip-hop outfit Rusangano Family are a political band. But the trio are wary of kneejerk labels and practically flinch when I drop the P word. They have strongly held beliefs about the state of the world today make no mistake. Forty-eight hours after the Brussels bombings, mankinds apparently endless determination to inflict horror upon itself is, for instance, very much on their minds. But should you have come to the banks of the Shannon hoping for incisive analysis of the recent general election, then youve knocked on the wrong doors. If Rusangano are political, it is on their own terms. They wont, for instance, be sharing their innermost musings on a Fianna Fail-Fine Gael coalition or what the deluge of Independent TDs tells us about the condition of Ireland in 2016. Lectures and pat sermons simply arent their bag. Theyre smarter, more subtle than that. This is probably the third interview where somebodys gone, Oh, youre a political band, says producer mynameisjOhn (his first name is indeed John). The truth is that none of us are into politics. Were into people. We cant give definitive answers. All we can do is think and try to talk about the struggles which everyone is going through in the 21st century. Limerick has shaped the groups gritty, free-wheeling music. They appreciate the city for its authenticity and sense of apartness. Theres nowhere else in Ireland quite like the midwest capital and nobody else making hip-hop that sounds like Rusangano Familys enthralling mash-up of rhymes and rhythms. These they deploy to devastating effect on their debut album, Let The Dead Bury The Dead. Advertisement Putting yourself out there, showing sides of yourself to the whole world. That was tough, says rapper MuRli, originally from Togo and now resident In Limerick (the keening hymnals his grandfather would sing at funerals in Togo helped shape his distinctive rapping). But the actual making of the project was a lot of fun. It helped us get to know each other better. Our art is about representing where Ireland is. It would be foolish not to look back but were also trying to look forward. The third member of the triptych is rapper God Knows, who comes from Zimbabwe and grew up in Ennis. As with MuRli hes been based in Ireland for much of his life and reacts with surprise when asked if he brings an outsider perspective to his lyrics. In the literal rather than artistic sense, none of Rusangano see themselves as outsiders theyre Irish and everything they do is from that vantage point. Those slapping on Let The Dead Bury The Dead in the expectation of something other than 100 per cent homegrown hip-hop are in for a letdown. Theyre exotic only if you think that anywhere past Celbridge should be marked here be Healy-Raes on the map. In fact, you could argue that, living in what Dubliners might call the provinces, Rusangano talk about Ireland more authentically than the capitals crop of SoCoDu-spawned middle-class indie bands with American inflections. We dont want to focus on the petty things the stereotypes about being a non-national, says the chipper MuRli, who moved here with his family when he was 12. The group started out as solo artists who fell into one anothers orbit. mynameisjOhn was producing an early MurRli EP when it dawned on all involved that they were better as a team than occasional collaborators. Limerick rap musics answer to the Avengers was born. Hip hop is a career as well as a passion. All three work with local social inclusion groups, using music to broaden the horizons of disadvantaged youngsters. They give workshops around the city, showing kids from deprived areas that rap can be a valid means of expression and that finding your inner voice is a first step in making a better life for yourself. One thing that we are all trying to get across is the perspective of what it is to be a hip-hop act based in the West of Ireland, says mynameisjOhn. We are not trying to emulate anyone else. Limerick has its own sound. We are quite proud to say we are contributing to that. Our goal is to be of the West of Ireland in as authentic a fashion as possible If you wanted to push the point, you might argue that Rusangano Family are Rubberbandits minus the plastic bags and scatological humour, but with the same sharp brand of social commentary. Advertisement Blindboy Boatclub from Rubberbandits has talked about using art in a controversial way, resumes mynameisjOhn, The best art is controversial because it gets people talking. We dont always set out to be controversial. But it is definitely something we have taken on board. I cant sit down with one of Irelands most acclaimed hip-hop crews and not ask the big question of our time. Kanye West: nutter or genius? I dont think Kanyes music impacts on us in terms of our process of creation, says God Knows. If you talk about his career Ive always said that The College Dropout is hugely influential, says MuRli. Hes been my go to guy for a long time. I dont listen to him before I write or anything. But I am who I am today because of The College Dropout and Late Registration. You can say hes a despicable person or whatever. The fact is those records stand up. I wouldnt be doing what I am without them. Rusangano Family take part in Banter at 1pm on April 9 in the Teelings Whiskey Distillery, Dublin as part of the Music Town Festival, and launch their album in The Sugar Club that night. As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS! OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. 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. I'm sitting here at my desk reading the Boston Globe newspaper and getting ready to create another great Newsletter for you. I see an interesting article about a case of fraud at the University of Massachusetts Medical School that generated the following discourse on fraud at colleges and universities. The culprit was a financial analyst in an obscure department, drawing $46,000 per year salary, who somehow managed to drive a Porsche, collect Salvador deli paintings and build a palatial home for himself! He siphoned off nearly $3.4 million from payments intended for the state Medicaid insurance program over the last five years. The Globe reports this may be the biggest theft by a state employee in more than a decade. Really? In only more than a decade I would have thought in more than a century. So, fraud appears to be a continual problem. Heres how he was caught. Not through continuous attention to procedure or monitoring of policies, but the fraud was only discovered after he died in a car accident and a review of his work found all kinds of discrepancies. They eventually learned he had set up a dummy corporation to which he had been diverging state funds for years. I did some more research into fraud at universities and found many other examples: University executive embezzled $60,000 through extra payroll University accountant embezzled $30,000 through fictitious vendor University executive em... Youve seen the headlines the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is changing the way Position Statements are handled during the course of an investigation. What does it mean and is it really that big of a deal? Should employers be doing anything different when it comes to responding to EEOC Charges in the future? The answer is, probably The EEOCs new nationwide procedures will permit employees who file an EEOC Charge against an employer to get access to the employers Position Statement responding to the Charge. When an employee files a Charge of Discrimination with the EEOC, the employer, typically as per the EEOCs request, is allowed to file a position statement in response to the charge. The position statement operates as the employers first opportunity to address the allegations leveled against it. The EEOC, as part of its investigation of the allegations, reviews the position statement, and any other documents submitted along with the statement, prior to issuing its determination. Previously, a charging party could not get access to the employers position statement while the EEOCs investigation was ongoing. The employee had to wait until he/she filed a lawsuit against the employer, following the EEOCs investigation, before he/she could obtain a copy of the employers position statement pursuant to a formal request pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). U... Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-08 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] FM Kotzias announces April meetings on migration with Balkan countries [02] Greece returns 97 irregular migrants to Turkey [01] FM Kotzias announces April meetings on migration with Balkan countries Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias said on Friday two important meetings on the refugee issue have been planned on April 14 and April 21-22 in Thessaloniki, with the participation of neighbouring countries. Speaking during a briefing of the press, Kotzias said the April 14 meeting concerns a trilateral conference between the police authorities of Greece, Albania and Italy, while the second one is a quadripartite meeting of foreign and interior ministers of Greece, FYROM, Bulgaria and Albania. In the meeting of foreign ministers, Greece will propose, among others, holding a wider meeting with countries such as Serbia, Austria, Slovakia and Croatia to discuss trans-border cooperation and security and the refugee issue in general, possibly in May or early June. Kotzias also informed the press that he will meet with United Nations mediator Matthew Nimetz in the coming days to discuss Greece's initiatives on FYROM's name issue. Asked about NATO's operation in the Aegean, the minister said that, "because of Turkey, the practice followed does not correspond to the original planning and to what the NATO staff wanted". [02] Greece returns 97 irregular migrants to Turkey Greek authorities returned 97 irregular migrants to Turkey through the border crossing of Kipi in Evros, northeastern Greece, as part of the bilateral protocol on readmissions signed between Greece and Turkey, it was announced on Friday. The nationalities were as follows: 71 Pakistanis, 20 Bangladeshis, 3 Algerians, 2 Iranians and one Moroccan. On Monday, Greece is expected to readmit another 72 migrants. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article unusual industry competition has given one museum the perfect opportunity to promote its light hearted company culture and shed the stuffy image some people might expect of the organization.Based in the UK, Tunbridge Museum & Art Gallery has entered a worldwide competition which gives any GLAM organization thats galleries, libraries, archives and museums the chance to showcase employees incredible dance skills.Widely acclaimed in certain circles, the Museum Dance Off is now in its third year and holds a certain acclaim among industry professionals but winning isnt whats most important to the organization.[The video is] funny and fun and light-hearted - just like the staff, audience development officer Jeremy Kimmel told a local newspaper. We are proud of the museum and we want to show it to the world."In the video, employees can be seen alongside historic exhibits, dancing to the 70s hit You Should Be Dancing, by the Bee Gees Kimmel admitted his own moves had been inspired by that of the prolific Gibb brothers as well as the "really fun environment in which he works.We all danced our hearts out, he added.The video can be seen below: EDMONTON A longtime Conservative MP is blasting his own party for becoming an elitist and white-only club. Calgary MP Deepak Obhrai, the dean of the Tory caucus, told The Huffington Post Canada he is deeply frustrated by new rules the party imposed earlier this year that raised the annual Conservative membership fee to $25 the highest of any party and set the entrance fees for leadership contestants at $100,000. Advertisement Deepak Obhrai and former prime minister Stephen Harper celebrate Diwali by lighting a candle on Parliament Hill on Oct. 8, 2009. (Photo: Pawel Dwulit/Canadian Press) Since we lost power in 2015, I have become very concerned about the direction my party has taken, he told HuffPost over the phone on Thursday. These actions, in my view, have disenfranchised a vast majority of Canadians. Newcomers, immigrants, low-income Canadians, and those economically challenged will be turned off and walk away because they cant afford these high fees... What is concerning me is that, unfortunately, [the Conservatives] will be seen as an elitist and white-only party, he said. Advertisement Ethnic communities' outreach Since his election in 1997, Obhrai said hes been working his butt off to bring immigrants to the party, a job that was subsequently taken on with great fanfare by former cabinet minister Jason Kenney. Success in connecting with ethnic communities culminated in the Tories majority election win in 2011, Obhrai said. But that work has been dropped as a priority for the Conservatives under the leadership of party president John Walsh, Obhrai said. He added that the party has lost touch with grassroots members and pointed out that the caucus was not consulted. This party has become a party that is seen [to be only] for like rich people, I ask why? Why only for those who can afford it? Why the rich? For a family of four, its like asking them to give $100, and then also asking them to give through a credit card, which many dont have. I have had these problems and my EDA [electoral district association] passed a motion telling the national council that we are unhappy with these rules, the Calgary MP told HuffPost. What is concerning me is that, unfortunately, [the Conservatives] will be seen as an elitist and white-only party. Deepak Obhrai Plus, when you put $100,000 for a leadership, you are only attracting the rich, and guess what, most of them [members of ethnic communities] would be, believe it or not, excellent candidates but again, the impression will be whites only. And Im the guy who worked my butt off to attract everybody and make the Conservative a party for all. In order to expand the Conservatives base, Obhrai said the party had opened up its membership to landed immigrants. But now we are sending the wrong message: sorry, dont come to us if you dont have the money. Go to others. Other parties are reducing their costs to attract Canadians. And here we are going the other way, and these people hold Conservative values. Most newcomers, low-income, vast majority of Canadians are economically challenged, they will not join our party. Liberals cutting membership fees Last weekend, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the Liberals national board had adopted a proposal to eliminate membership fees completely. Party members will be asked to formally adopt the motion at the Liberal party convention in May. It currently costs $10 to join the Grits, although people who have registered with the party but havent paid a membership fee can vote in a leadership contest. Opening up the Liberal party to non-members during the 2012-2013 leadership race is credited with bringing in tens of thousands of new supporters to the Liberals and registering some 300,000 potential voters. Advertisement The no-fee supporter category is seen as so successful that there are currently three proposals at the NDP convention to try to mimic the Liberals strategy in fundraising and engaging with non-members to expand the tent and tap a new base of donors and volunteers. Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai stands in the House of Commons during question period in 2014. (Photo: Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press) At the Conservative convention next month, delegates will be electing a new national council, said Obhrai, and hes asking them to elect individuals who will change these offensive rules. Some within the party have suggested the Tories choose a high membership fee $25 for a year, $30 for two that is payable only through a credit card or personal cheque to avoid fraudulent practices that occasionally occur in ethnic communities where large group sign-ups are frequent. Advertisement Obhrai believes there are other ways to combat fraud. The party should invest the resources to call up members and ask them if they have signed their own forms, if there is any doubt, he said. All the arguments that they are giving are absolutely nonsense, he said. Obhrai, with his voice ringing in frustration, said he didnt commit years of work to a party with these values. Im not part of this party. It is going to be a club of the elitists, running elitist people [for the leadership]. Modest increase Cory Hann, the Conservative party spokesman, said the new membership fee was only a modest increase from its previous $15 charge and that a substantial cost break had been given on two-year memberships to allow new members to vote in the May 27, 2017 leadership contest. There is of course good value in holding party membership especially now when Conservatives are going to be electing the next Prime Minister of Canada, Hann wrote in an email to HuffPost. He also noted that the registration fee to enter the leadership contest is $50,000, and the other $50,000 is refundable if a contest follows all the rules. Advertisement Our leadership fees have not changed in over a decade. In fact, our out of pocket leadership entrance fees are cheaper than those from the most recent federal Liberal leadership, and on par with those from the most recent Ontario Liberal leadership, Hann wrote. He pointed out that under Elections Canadas rules, leadership campaigns can only accept maximum donations of $1,525 from individuals. The entrance fee for the Liberal leadership race in 2013 was $75,000. ALSO ON HUFFPOST: A 3D model of filtration system created by Ontario high school students. (Photo: Maham Abedi/HuffPost Canada) Advertisement Its a plastic prototype small enough to fit in your hands. But its potential is huge. A model created by Canadian students could help clean up the worlds largest body of freshwater. The Great Lakes are polluted with innumerable microbeads, miniscule pieces of plastic most commonly found in hygiene products such as toothpastes, face washes and body scrubs. The plastic beads are meant to exfoliate skin, but many experts say natural ingredients such as ground walnut shells and rice work just as well. At just half a millimetre, theyre too small to be picked up by most filtration systems, and so they enter bodies of water around the world. Advertisement Mississauga, Ont. high school students hope their filtration concept will win them the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition. (Photo: Maham Abedi/HuffPost Canada) Nine Grade 11 and 12 students at Gordon Graydon Memorial Secondary School in Mississauga, Ont. are working on a world-changing solution. Theyve spent seven months designing a filtration system they think would catch mircobeads before they enter the water. After weeks of research, strict deadlines, and meetings with environmental groups and politicians, the group created their first model. A few revisions later, this is what they came up with: An animation created by students shows their concept in action. Its a half-pipe, divided with one vertical and one horizontal grid, that would be placed at the end of existing sewage filtration systems. Advertisement Water would flow through the half-pipe after larger waste has already been filtered out. Microbeads and other microplastics not caught by existing systems would be negatively charged using electricity as they pass through the vertical grid inside the pipe. The second horizontal grid would have a positive charge and sit slightly above water level. The opposite charges would attract the microbeads upwards and hold them. This would keep the beads from flowing into the lakes along with water. The second portion would be detachable, allowing companies to clean and replace it after it fills up with waste. We didnt actually make this on the fly, Mickey Dang, a student in the project, told The Huffington Post Canada. As high school students, I think its a good idea that you apply what already exists. Dang explained that a similar method is used in some factories to electrically charge smoke pollution, as a way of moving it around and improving air quality. Advertisement Over time, the addition of the half-pipe to sewage systems could rid lakes of the existing microbeads pollution. It wont immediately filter all the microbeads out, but when that water comes back to your faucet and it runs through the cycle a couple times, eventually in a couple of months itll come to a point where youve filtered it out, student Haider Rahmani explained. The solution proposed by the students is innovative and deserves to be tried out under real-world conditions. Philippe Van Cappellen, professor While the students idea is still in its early phases, it certainly has drawn attention. In March, they became one of 11 finalists in the Canada-wide Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition and won $20,000. Now the group is trying to snatch one of the competitions two top prizes of $50,000. If they win, theyll also get a chance to be featured on the popular YouTube channel AsapSCIENCE. Their idea has also garnered the interest of academics. I think it is a wonderful project, said Philippe Van Cappellen, a professor at Ontarios University of Waterloo, who studies the impact of plastics in the Great Lakes. Advertisement The solution proposed by the students is innovative and deserves to be tried out under real-world conditions, Van Cappellen wrote in an email to HuffPost Canada. #BanTheBead Movement The groups invention comes as a movement dubbed Ban the Bead is flourishing around the globe. Several countries have already moved to ban microbeads. In December, U.S. President Barack Obama signed a law prohibiting their manufacture as of July 2017, and banning the sale of cosmetic products that contain microbeads by July 2018. The Canadian government is working on similar legislation, and wrapped up public consultations on the issue last month. The federal government intends to stop the manufacture and import of microbead-containing personal care products by December 2017, and phase out sales by the end of 2019. As a result of incoming bans and public outcry, several companies such as Johnson & Johnsons, The Body Shop and L' Oreal have also pledged to stop using plastics in their products. Advertisement Microbeads found in the Great Lakes are often mistaken for food by wildlife. (Photo: Getty) Much of the public outcry around the issue is due to environmental concerns raised by studies in recent years. A 2013 report found as many as 1.1 million microplastics per sq. km. in Lake Ontario. A year earlier, another study found 460,000 microplastics per sq. km. in Lake Erie. The studies noted that most of the microplastics were round and likely came from cosmetic products. Jennifer Caddick, who works with environmental advocacy group Alliance for the Great Lakes, says the pollution caused by microbeads is particularly harmful to wildlife. Animals, particularly fish and sometimes birds, mistake them for food, Caddick told HuffPost Canada, explaining that microbeads also attract other waste and chemicals floating in the water before being ingested by wildlife. Advertisement Plastic pollution in our waterways is going to continue to be a problem for a long time. Jennifer Caddick, environmental advocate While the movement to ban beads gains momentum, Caddick says a filtration system like the one the Ontario students have engineered is still needed. We forget just how much of what we use on a daily basis is plastic. Plastic pollution in our waterways is going to continue to be a problem for a long time, she said. She added the solution lies in a mixture of both reducing plastic consumption, and looking at improving sewage systems. The idea behind the filtration system may seem promising, but without proper funding its unlikely the students themselves will be able to take it much further. Advertisement The team at Gordon Graydon Memorial Secondary School is hoping to win a $50,000 prize from Samsung. (Photo: Maham Abedi/HuffPost Canada) For now, the group is eyeing the $50,000 prize and the acclaim it will bring. But the money will go to the school, explained teacher Marina Petrychkovych who has been overseeing the project. Its not necessarily being tested in any way, however, maybe people out there are listening, because sometimes the simplest, most innovative things come from students, or even one individual. And that becomes revolutionized, Petrychkovych said. Many of the students involved are set to graduate this year, but they say theyll continue to raise awareness about plastic pollution. Advertisement Our biggest idea was spreading awareness, says Dang, but he hopes the project will some day take form, regardless of who takes it on. Its a large-scale project and we cant put it there ourselves, he says. This is a concept idea, but it has a foundation to it. Pursue it. Also on HuffPost: A key architect behind the "Leap Manifesto" says it's a mistake to reduce the debate solely to the matter of keeping fossil fuels "in the ground." In fact, Avi Lewis, a documentary filmmaker and initial signatory to the document, told The Huffington Post Canada Thursday that such a phrase was deliberately left out of the proposal to make room for those who "are not there yet" on that issue. Advertisement Lewis spoke to HuffPost a day after CBC News aired an interview in which Peter Mansbridge pressed NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair about the manifesto, set to be debated at his party's convention this weekend in Edmonton. Director Avi Lewis and author Naomi Klein of the film 'This Changes Everything,' stand for a photo on the red carpet during the Toronto International Film Festival press conference in Toronto on Wednesday, August 5, 2015. (Photo: Aaron Vincent Elkaim/CP) In the interview, Mansbridge said several times that the plan calls for "leaving fossil fuels in the ground" a position he suggested would be unpopular in resource-dependent Alberta. Advertisement Though Mulcair spoke about making polluters pay and sustainable development, he eventually said that if the party should decide fossil fuels must remain undeveloped, he would "do everything (he) can to make that a reality." Watch Mansbridge's full interview with Mulcair from CBC News: While the policy blueprint does not explicitly state that oil needs to stay in the ground, it urges a bold shift away from fossil fuels so that Canada gets 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable resources within two decades and is entirely weaned off fossil fuels by 2050. It also calls for no further fossil fuel infrastructure projects that "lock us into increased extraction" for decades, including pipelines. Lewis said Mansbridge was "misrepresenting" the proposal, even while conceding that, yes, the long-term goal is that fossil fuels are left undeveloped. Advertisement "When you don't take the whole spirit of the thing at once, and you isolate one part of it, you can make it seem like something it's not. It's a jobs plan." But the "leave it in the ground" slogan has become a political weapon, Lewis said, "in the eternal tussle, the false dichotomy of the economy versus the environment." As an example, he pointed to the "ridiculous media storm" high-profile Toronto NDP candidate Linda McQuaig sparked during the campaign when she said "a lot of the oilsands oil may have to stay in the ground" if Canada is to meet its climate targets. Lewis said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that there is a "finite amount of carbon that we can burn" that still gives us "a chance" of preventing catastrophic global warming. Document calls for expansion of low carbon sectors And without a broader look at the entire plan, Lewis said the impression can be left that the environmentalists and activists behind the manifesto just want to shut things down. Advertisement He said the document acknowledges "the need for a massive torrent of good new jobs," and not just for those in the renewable energy sector. The manifesto calls for an expansion of the low carbon sectors of the economy: healthcare, education, daycare, social work, the arts, and public-interest media. It also urges training for workers in carbon-intensive jobs so that they can transition to a clean energy economy. Ending fossil fuel subsidies, hiking taxes on corporations and the rich, and making cuts to defence spending are just some of the ideas suggested to pay for it all. David Suzuki joins other actors, activists, and musicians in launching the Leap Manifesto outlining a climate and economic vision for Canada during a press conference in Toronto on Tuesday, September 15, 2015. (Photo: Darren Calabrese/CP) Advertisement It also proposes an end to trade deals "that interfere with our attempts to rebuild local economies, regulate corporations and stop damaging extractive projects." "The Leap Manifesto does make the controversial statement about no new fossil fuel infrastructure and it does it in the same breath as (calling for) massive public investment in good, clean, unionized renewable energy jobs and the low carbon sector," he said. "When you don't take the whole spirit of the thing at once, and you isolate one part of it, you can make it seem like something its not. It's a jobs plan." The manifesto was called radical and controversial when it was released in the thick of the federal election campaign. Lewis said that the group behind it didn't feel like any politician was speaking passionately about such issues at the time or proposing ambitious change. Advertisement But he said the blueprint is a call for specific policies, not a "diagnostic." He wants New Democrats to get on board, but really wants to convince governing Liberals who are in a position to enact policy. He doesn't buy that endorsing an anti-pipeline plan would make parties unelectable in Western Canada. The rise of Bernie Sanders in the United States shows "forthrightly left-wing parties have huge electoral potential right now." Ex-MPs come together with resolution Lewis has joined up with former MPs Libby Davies and Craig Scott, as well as the head of the Toronto-Danforth riding association, to bring forward a resolution this weekend seeking delegates declare the manifesto "a high-level statement of principles" in line with NDP priorities. If that passes, they will propose another resolution calling for debate of the plan by riding associations, leading up to a full, detailed discussion on how to implement it at the next convention in 2018. Lewis said other resolutions call on the NDP to wholly endorse the plan and use it to guide all future electoral endeavours. Advertisement We don't think thats fair," he said, adding that a party should not adopt such an elaborate plan wholesale. Rather, he hopes it the start of a conversation that goes beyond slogans. With files from The Canadian Press Also on HuffPost: EDMONTON For the first time since their crushing election defeat, New Democrats will assemble Friday in Edmonton for three days of meetings. The big event occurs Sunday, when some 1,500 registered delegates will decide the fate of their leader, Thomas Mulcair. Before that happens, the partys members will first discuss what policies they want to champion, where its future lies, and hear from speakers such as NDP Premier Rachel Notley, Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Howarth, NDP politician turned diplomat Stephen Lewis, British Labour Party Leader Jon Ashworth, and the Canadian Labour Congress Hassan Yussuff, who has publicly called for Mulcair to be replaced. Advertisement Mulcair faced criticism for his performance during the campaign. (Photo: Fed Chartrand/CP) He has also become a lightning rod for critics who feel the NDP moved too close to the centre a change of course attributable to the late and revered leader Jack Layton. Several resolutions up for discussion at the NDP convention reflect a desire by some in the grassroots to move the party more to the left of the political spectrum. Paula Krasiun-Winsel, is co-chair of the Young New Democrats, a group that has already called for the party to adopt a new direction and new leadership. Advertisement The Liberals definitely out-lefted us, she told The Huffington Post Canada in a discussion about the last election campaign. It was really disappointing to see traditional left-wing supporters buy into the Liberals message when that [message] should have been ours. Krasiun-Winsel is hoping NDP delegates adopt parts of the Leap Manifesto, a revolutionary agenda that calls for higher taxation of the wealthy and of corporations, a move towards a fossil-fuel-free economy, an end to all trade deals that interfere with regulation and attempts to stop damaging extractive projects, such as the Alberta oil sands. [Its] being reported in many ways as a radical manifesto as far as Im concerned, its a jobs plan. Avi Lewis, former journalist There are five proposed resolutions that call on the party to adapt parts or all of the Leap Manifesto. Its a call for a specific set of policies designed to get off fossil fuels in a way that systematically attacks inequality, structural racism, and other injustices in our society, former journalist Avi Lewis told HuffPost. [Its] being reported in many ways as a radical manifesto as far as Im concerned, its a jobs plan. Advertisement Lewis said he doesnt think its fair for the NDP to be bound, wholesale, by the Leap Manifesto without taking the time to absorb it, debate it, digest it and decide what it likes and wants to champion and what it wants to throw out. He and former MPs Libby Davies and Craig Scott are supporting a combined resolution that would suggest riding associations debate the Leap Manifesto and let those discussions guide the policy process leading to the next convention in 2018. Some in the party, such as Barry Weisleder, the chair of the NDP socialist caucus, think the Leap Manifesto doesnt go far enough. Others think its adoption would be electoral suicide. A Mulcair advisor told HuffPost he believes the Leap Manifesto will be discussed but will never be adopted. ...It is not a political program that allows a party to take power one day, and I continue to believe that the NDP can one day form government. We are a group of people from across the country that are trying to rally around a central cause, and we want to be heard. Paula Krasiun-Winsel, Young New Democrats Krasiun-Winsel told HuffPost that she really hopes what comes out of the party convention is a renewed focus on the partys membership and its desires and goals. During the last election campaign, she felt the NDP ignored significant parts of its policy book. We have policy for a reason, she said. [Its there] to direct our decisions and the things that we care about, and talk about, and to kind of pretend that it just doesnt exist really doesnt reflect the work that the larger party has done. [The party] is not just an office in Ottawa. We are a group of people from across the country that are trying to rally around a central cause, and we want to be heard. Karl Belanger, the NDPs national director, said this weekend is about starting the rebuilding process thats needed to offer Canadians a real progressive alternative at the next election in 2019. Advertisement Karl Belanger looks on as NDP Leader Tom Mulcair answers questions during a campaign stop in B.C., Sept. 14, 2015. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP) He knows the membership is looking at better ways to engage Canadians and new solutions to present to the country, he said. Its in the NDPs history to suggest big, bold and trendsetting policy proposals, he added, pointing to past convention discussions on transgender rights and gender equity. I think delegates are looking forward to debating the options that are in front of us and the way forward, he added. Im optimistic that people will work together and come out of there with a new sense of hope and optimism, a sense of unity and purpose. Members to debate hundreds of policy issues More than 400 policy resolutions are up for debate, everything from: changing the partys current position on Senate reform to no longer call for its abolition, campaigning against all new pipelines and moving towards a 100 per cent renewable energy economy, advocating corporate tax hikes, protecting supply management, re-establishing the Canadian Wheat Board, banning oil tanker traffic off the B.C. coast, abolishing unpaid internships and co-op placements, vastly expanding employment insurance coverage, providing free birth control, adding basic dentistry to the Canada Health Act, reducing bank service charges, restoring Canada Post mail delivery, reinstating a program like Katimavik, repealing Bill C-51, providing an annual livable income, annexing the Turks and Caicos Islands as Canadas next province, lowering the voting age to 16, implementing a minimum wage of $20 an hour, and imposing an additional six to 10 per cent federal tax on incomes greater than $200,000. The party will also be discussing changes to the way it does business internally. There are three resolutions suggesting the NDP adopt a Liberal party-type supporter category where someone can receive mailings and donate to the party without formally joining and paying a membership fee. Two resolutions urge delegates to return the word socialism to the preamble of the partys constitution. Once again, there is a resolution that the word New be dropped from the partys name to create the Democratic Party of Canada. Several resolutions that hope to curb the central partys ability to remove candidates stem from experiences during the campaign, such as when Morgan Wheeldon was asked to resign as a candidate after posting pro-Palestinian views on social media. With so many resolutions, Belanger said, its hard to get a real sense of what people want. But thats why parties have conventions. Party ridings putting proposals is one thing, having a majority of delegates adopting them is another thing, and thats when we will have a real sense of where this party is heading. With files from Ryan Maloney Also on HuffPost Key NDP MPs Defeated In 2015 Election See Gallery Medicine Hat police have warned Albertans to not take justice into their own hands when it comes to online predators. The warning was issued Thursday after officers encountered two men who referred to themselves as "creep catchers." "Creep Catchers" is a loosely organized online group of individuals who attempt to bait and lure predators by posing as underaged girls online. Members of the group then confront targets in public, video taping the encounter to publicly shame predators online. Advertisement Medicine Hat police didn't arrest or charge the two men, but left them with a warning, according to CBC News. A screenshot from a Creep Catchers video. Creep Catchers pose as young girls in order to lure online predators to meet offline. Blur added by The Huffington Post Alberta. (Photo: Creep Catchers) While this activity isn't strictly against the law police say it comes precariously close to breaking it. Advertisement "Individuals who engage in vigilante activity are putting themselves at considerable risk of defensive or retaliatory harm from the people they are confronting. In addition, making public allegations without clear evidence, could potentially result in the accusation of an innocent person," reads a police statement. "Besides being potentially dangerous to everyone involved, these confrontations could also seriously interfere with ongoing police investigations, which the individuals may not be aware of." The newly formed Medicine Hat chapter of "Creep Catchers" joins others operating in other Canadian cities, including Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Toronto. A member of Creep Catchers poses as a young girl in an attempt to lure an online predator. (Photo: Creep Catchers) Advertisement Calgarian Dawson Raymond is open about his acts of public shaming, posting videos of his confrontations on Facebook and his website under his real name. In one recent video, Raymond confronts a man at a Calgary LRT station after showing text messages that he alleges are between the man and Raymond, who is posing as a 12-year-old girl. Calgary police told Global News they're investigating both the men in Raymond's videos, and his actions. Drew Angerer via Getty Images WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 31: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau listens to a question at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, March 31, 2016 in Washington, DC. Trudeau participated in a panel conversation titled 'Growing Canada's economy and the North American relationship.' (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is limp on terrorism and too hard nosed that the world knows how good looking he is, according to biting column published in a Brazilian magazine this week. Veja, a prominent weekly, has long been a vocal critic of liberal politics, having most recently waged a campaign to take down the countrys left-leaning president amid a massive corruption scandal. Advertisement For her Trudeau column titled Justin Trudeau is adorable, but exceedingly ordinary, the magazines international affairs columnist Vilma Gryzinski takes aim at the Canadian leaders dazedly well-intentioned policies, suggesting his inclusive attitude on immigration and refugees means he's soft on terror. She also took a swipe the narcissistic leaders recent celebrity over the attention he received for a five-year-old photo of him leaning into a table in a peacock pose and made light of his genetics. (Photo courtesy Greg Kolz) Justin Trudeau is the incarnation of the dreams of the vaguely left-wing liberalism, which is dazedly well-intentioned; a handsome guy who shows off his physics with no shame and in yoga poses an Oedipean reproduction of his father, Pierre Trudeau, writes the columnist in Portuguese. Advertisement Then she layers on attacks by getting personal about the prime minister's family, calling his mother Margaret a 67-year-old pretty lady, who undertakes campaigns about mental disorders. Margaret Trudeau attends a State Dinner at the White House March 10, 2016. (Photo: Olivier Douliery/Getty Images) Margaret Trudeau made her bipolar disorder diagnosis public ten years ago. Since then, shes been openly talking about her condition and living with depression, using her high-profile to be a mental-health advocate. Focusing on the past, Gryzinski writes: She was young, beautiful and injected fresh air in the political scenario, already energized by Trudeaumania, which took her husband to be elected with a liberal platform in the American sense. Or Canadian. Margaret used to inject other things as well. Advertisement Decades earlier, Trudeaus mother made headlines dating rock stars and dancing at new York Citys legendary Studio 54. Her drug and alcohol use and decision to leave her young sons made her an easy target in tabloids in the 70s and 80s. Great Canadian dreamland Looking north, she calls Canada a dreamland for those who desire to change their lives including Brazilians. Citing the countrys population (35 million) in contrast to the expanse of land it inhabits, Gryzinski says well-behaved Canadians contrast with the creative chaos of the United States. But the countrys economy isnt strong enough to keep Canadian talent home. Canada is well organized but boring, she says. The biggest harm he has caused so far was to smarmy journalists who treat him with such a self-destructive deference. Vilma Gryzinski, Veja columnist She names Justin Bieber, Pamela Anderson, Ryan Gosling, Avril Lavigne and supreme diva Celine Dion as examples of people whove had to flock to the U.S. to reach a higher tier of success they couldnt achieve at home. Advertisement Of Canadas media, Gryzinski isnt impressed. And shes not fawning over Trudeaus inner circle, too. The biggest harm he has caused so far was to smarmy journalists who treat him with such a self-destructive deference, she writes. Both, Trudeau and his smarmy reps, will be certainly getting worse together. Trudeaus Baltic blast Its not the first time Trudeau has faced international criticism. Last December, the prime minister's quip that Baltic nations are not a thing placed him in the hot seat from a handful of European politicians. This is a message for Justin Trudeau that Baltic countries exist, said Estonian politician Antanas Guoga said in a video response appearing alongside other Baltic region members of the European Parliament. Advertisement With files from Diego Iraheta Also on HuffPost: Federal Conservatives are demanding the Liberal Party release the guest list from a private, $500-a-head fundraiser Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould attended at a big Toronto law firm Thursday. But Wilson-Raybould, who represents the riding of Vancouver Granville, reportedly maintains she attended the controversial event as a member of Parliament, not in her capacity as Canadas attorney general. Advertisement Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould holds a news conference in Ottawa in November 2015. (Photo: Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press) Deputy justice critic Michael Cooper says the whole situation calls into question the new governments much-touted open and accountable government policy introduced in November. The plan explicitly calls on ministers to avoid political contributions from departmental stakeholders, which includes individuals who have current or anticipated official dealings with ministers. Canadians deserve to know who attended this event and whether or not the Attorney General had a conflict of interest, Cooper said in a statement released to media. Cooper has also written to Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson to express concerns of a potential conflict. Advertisement Invite reportedly mentioned ministerial mandate His letter cites reports that the event hosted at the Bay Street office of Torys LLP was not publicly advertised, that specific guests were invited, and that an email to invitees mentioned Wilson-Rayboulds ministerial mandate on marijuana legalization, assisted dying, and missing and murdered indigenous women. Cooper also notes that Torys LLP offers lobbying as part of its services to clients. The rookie MP for the riding of St. AlbertEdmonton said most Canadians would find this all an ethical breach. When the Attorney General has a fundraiser for the Liberal Party at one of the top law firms in Canada, it blurs the lines between what is Liberal Party business and what is Government business, he said in the statement. Read his full letter to the ethics watchdog: But Wilson-Raybould told a reporter Thursday she was not crossing any lines. "All MPs are called upon to help raise the money for the Liberal Party to engage Canadians in the political process. I am here, as an MP, to do just that, she said, according to CBC News. Advertisement But its not just Tories who think something is fishy. Former Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh speaks in the House of Commons in this file photo. (Photo: Canadian Press) Former federal Liberal cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh wrote a blog Tuesday saying it was totally incomprehensible for Wilson-Raybould to attend the fundraiser. He also said that the position of attorney general demands Wilson-Raybould be seen, at all times, as independent. A Liberal spokesman told The Huffington Post Canada in an email this week that Wilson-Raybould takes her ethical obligations very seriously and contacted the ethics commissioner in advance to make sure there was no conflict. Advertisement "When the Attorney General has a fundraiser for the Liberal Party at one of the top law firms in Canada, it blurs the lines between what is Liberal Party business and what is Government business.'" Michael Cooper As one would expect, all MPs have a role to play in attending events for their political party, and the Commissioner's office has recognized that fundraising is an important part of all MPs' political engagement, Braeden Caley, senior director of communications for the Liberal Party, said in the email. When asked about the event on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pointed to the strict fundraising rules at the federal level. We as a party have always demonstrated a level of openness and transparency in how we've conducted our affairs and we will continue to set a very high bar, he said. Also on HuffPost: Rogers Communications plans to help 150,000 Canadians get on the web by offering less expensive broadband rates to low-income families. The company announced Thursday that it will be expanding its affordable internet program to hundreds of housing agencies across Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. Advertisement Connected for Success started as a pilot program in 2013 with Toronto Community Housing Corp. Rogers worked in partnership with Microsoft Canada and Compugen computers to offer low-income residents in the city internet service for $9.99 and computers for $150. According to the Toronto Star, only about 20 per cent of public housing units were connected to the internet at the time. Its unfathomable that Canadians are living without internet access today because they simply cannot afford it, Rob Bruce, President of Communications at Rogers said at the pilot program's launch. "Its no longer a commodity; it's a necessity." Three years later and inaccessibility to the internet is still a problem. The Canadian Internet Registry Authority reported in 2014 that with 87 per cent of households connected, Canada ranks second among its G8 counterparts in terms of internet access. Advertisement By the end of 2015, 91 per cent of Canadians had internet, but only 70 per cent of households earning below $25,000 were connected, according to an Ipsos-Reid survey. This is part of a larger debate about whether access to internet is a human right. Later this month the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commissions is set to hold hearings with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) about getting all Canadians access to better telecommunications. [The internet]s no longer a commodity; it's a necessity, Alejandra Ruiz Vargas, a spokeswoman for ACORN, one of the members of the PIAC, told CBC News. Mark Zuckerberg addressed the United Nations last year. "Connecting the world is one of the fundamental challenges of our generation," he said at the time. Advertisement But for many, the cost of access can be prohibitive. The plan Rogers offered for $9.99 three years ago retailed for $40-$45. ACORN found that more than half of its 400 members opted out of other items in their household budgets to afford broadband service. Rogers will kick off its current expansion in Ottawa with the Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation, an affordable housing group. It's especially important that kids will be able to access the internet from an early age so they can learn and not fall behind, said Debbie Barton, a manager with Centretown, in Rogers' statement. There are 533 housing agencies in Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland who offer subsidized housing, and are eligible to partner with Rogers on the program, and all tenants of these groups would be eligible, Rogers said. Also on HuffPost Internet Download Speed By Country (2013) See Gallery As he fights for his political life, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair says he agrees with a defeated MPs cutting assessment of his performance in the last federal election. Mulcair spoke with CPACs Peter Van Dusen Thursday ahead of his partys convention this weekend in Edmonton that will determine if he has the support to stay on as leader. Advertisement NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair speaks to the media as Peggy Nash looks on during a news conference on Parliament Hill, Monday, September 30, 2013. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP) He was asked about a blog former Toronto NDP MP Peggy Nash wrote for The Huffington Post Canada this week that took a hard look at what went wrong with the party's campaign and where Mulcair, in particular, fell short. Nash, who ran for the NDP leadership in 2012, was one of several respected, high-profile MPs defeated in October as the party plummeted from 95 seats to 44. Advertisement Mulcair was specifically asked about two paragraphs in Nashs piece that targeted him directly. The first noted how Mulcair didnt answer questions on the opening day of the campaign, refused to debate unless former prime minister Stephen Harper was present and generally failed to inspire Canadians. The second urged Mulcair to show delegates the passion that was so lacking during the campaign, and noted that New Democrats urgently need a leader that can help Canada become a more progressive and inclusive place. Mulcair said that was exactly the type of feedback he has received from the partys election post-mortem process, which included unvarnished meetings across the country. I could have written a lot what Peggy said there in terms of the failings of the campaign, he said, adding that still he hopes to keep his former colleague close. Shes won for us before and Id love to have her back. Shes a strong MP. Mulcair said it is very difficult to contest that the NDP failed to effectively communicate on the campaign trail. Advertisement Owns up to flub at start of campaign I am responsible for any decision, including whether or not to take questions on the launch of the campaign, he said, adding hes also answerable for the advice from his inner circle that he chose to follow. And you know what? Im not disputing it. I respect every members ability to assess the campaign, every members right to come to their own conclusions, he said. I would hope to be able to have every single one of them but it wouldnt be a real exercise if it were unanimous. Were a political party, were a movement. Were not a cult. Mulcair said the federal campaign in Ottawa tried to impose a model on different regions of the country and didnt adapt enough. He said the party apparatus needs to be better connected to the base and local riding associations. "I would hope to be able to have every single one of them but it wouldnt be a real exercise if it were unanimous. Were a political party, were a movement. Were not a cult." And he has also taken heed of Nashs call to speak from the heart in his address to delegates Sunday just prior to a mandatory vote on his leadership. I intend to speak to the hearts and the minds of those members and make them understand that we do have the voice, we have the program, we have the plan that connects with Canadians across the country, he said. But Mulcair will not reveal the magic number he needs to stay. The NDP constitution demands a leader receive at least 50 per cent plus one support from delegates, but conventional wisdom suggests the show of support must be higher. NDP party president Rebecca Blaikie has suggested the bar should be set at 70 per cent. I have a number in my heart and a pretty good idea of where Im going, he said, adding that artificially setting a specific number would remove his ability to assess things if he falls within a point or two on either side. The NDP leader also said he didnt want to prejudice the process by setting a number in advance. Also on HuffPost Toronto has taken one small step toward regulating ride-sharing services like Uber and neither cabbies, nor their friends on city council are happy about it. City staff have drafted a series of regulations that will be presented to the Licensing and Standards Committee next week. Advertisement Among other things, they would make drivers for Uber and similar services pay a one-time, $20,000 licensing fee, a $10 annual fee and another $0.20 per trip. The rules would also require drivers to obtain $2 million in insurance, as taxi drivers do currently. But some of the changes also affect cabbies. Under the new rules, they would have to pay a $290 annual licensing fee and obtain inspections twice a year, while Uber drivers would only have to do it once. Toronto Mayor John Tory has expressed support for the new regulations, saying the city "has an opportunity to put the interests of its residents first and create a regulatory environment that protects drives and allows companies to fairly compete." Advertisement But they didn't impress Sam Moini, president of the Fleet Operators Association, who said cabbies will lobby council to stop new rules that give Uber a leg up, The Toronto Star reported. They also didn't pass muster with Coun. Cesar Palacio, chair of the Licensing and Standards Committee, who said they don't level the playing field between Uber and cabbies. Nor did they find favour with Coun. Janet Davis, who has long worked on the issue of taxi reform. Complete capitulation to Uber and standard plate owners in new taxi regulations. Consumers and drivers abandoned by de-regulation. Janet Davis (@Janet_Davis) April 7, 2016 Taxi proposals don't level playing field, they lower the floor. Allows for self regulation/de-regulation of safety standards, fares,supply. Janet Davis (@Janet_Davis) April 7, 2016 Uber, which started operating in Toronto in 2012, has a fraught history in the city. Last year, a taxi protest against the ride-sharing company saw drivers slow traffic on major routes such as Highway 427 and the Gardiner Expressway. Advertisement One cab driver was filmed being dragged by what he claimed was an Uber vehicle. He wasn't hurt. Confrontation between protesting taxi driver and someone he sa... BREAKING: Watch this confrontation between a protesting taxi driver and someone he said was driving for UberX in downtown Toronto. Story here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taxi-driver-dragged-video-1.3357166 Posted by CBC Toronto on Wednesday, 9 December 2015 The city of Toronto also sought an injunction last year that would have shut down Uber for good. It argued that the ride-share company should abide by taxi bylaws. The request was shot down by an Ontario Superior Court judge, who said there was no proof that the company was breaking any bylaws, and that the issue should be resolved by politicians. City council is set to vote on the proposed rules next month. Also on HuffPost: PeopleImages via Getty Images Studio shot of two men shaking hands after making a monetary deal The recent release of the Panama Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has caused a great public stir. This is the first of a two-part series in which I will discuss the tax scandal unearthed by the release of these documents, describe why experts think it will be difficult to hold those involved to account, and, finally, argue that these events can also serve as the impetus for a fairer, more cooperative global approach to taxation. To begin, it is important to provide a brief primer. The Panama Papers consist of leaked legal documents from Mossak Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm. These documents expose the efforts taken by the world's business, financial, and political elite (as well as criminal and terrorist networks) to shelter their wealth in offshore bank accounts. These individuals are essentially hiding their money in order to avoid paying taxes and, sometimes, to disguise the questionable means by which their fortunes are amassed. Advertisement The most prominent feature of these tax schemes is the creation of shell corporations. Shell corporations are essentially corporate entities that don't engage in any business operations or hold substantial assets. Shell corporations are not always illegal, and can sometimes serve legitimate purposes. However, they are also often used to conceal wealth and avoid taxes. Because some offshore jurisdictions do not require companies to disclose the identity of their directors, assets transferred to shell companies located overseas can be very difficult to track. The fact that the world's wealthiest people use overseas tax shelters to avoid paying taxes isn't new, or surprising. For example, court documents obtained by CBC and Ici Radio-Canada in 2015 revealed that KPMG -- a well-known accounting firm that provides audit, tax, and advisory services -- was being pursued by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for setting up shell companies in the Isle of Man. These services were targeted towards wealthy individuals who were promised that they would pay zero tax on their investments. It has yet to be determined whether the tax avoidance schemes revealed as part of the Panama Papers leak will be found to be criminal. Speaking to the Guardian, the law firm involved in handling the overseas accounts vigorously defended their activities, stating that similar services are commonly provided worldwide and that their activities comply with international tax protocols. Advertisement The thing is, audacious though it may seem, they may well get away with it... and therein lies the rub. To understand why, it is helpful to start by understanding the legal difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. According to the CRA, there is a "definite distinction" between tax avoidance and tax evasion. Tax avoidance consists of actions taken to minimize taxes that run contrary to the spirit, but not the letter of the law, whereas tax evasion "involves deliberately ignoring a specific part of the law." This legal differentiation may seem clear cut; however, the wealthy entities that use elaborate schemes to avoid paying taxes can afford the best tax lawyers, and often have no problem dragging cases out over lengthy periods of time. Further complicating matters, the scenario presented by the Panama Papers implicates thousands of individuals, corporate entities, and their intermediaries, located in different countries across the globe. Even when presented with less elaborate schemes, governments find it difficult and costly to prosecute tax evasion. To return to the Canadian example discussed above, although there was documented proof that KPMG had intended to deceive tax authorities, no penalties were dealt out to the wealthy investors who benefitted from the scheme. Instead, they were simply required to pay back the amounts owed to the government. Speaking to the CBC, a CRA spokesperson explained this course of action by stating that "lengthy litigation is costly to all parties and the outcome of complex, tax-related litigation processes may be difficult to predict." Critics argue that this predicament creates a double-standard wherein the average person is more likely to be wrung through the court system, while wealthier individuals are emboldened to pursue elaborate tax schemes that take advantage of questionable legal loopholes. Advertisement After all, if the only likely repercussion is that you'll be forced to pay back your ill-gotten gains, why not roll the dice? GEOFF ROBINS via Getty Images A Canadian flag flies in front of the peace tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada on December 4, 2015, as part of the ceremonies to the start Canada's 42nd parliament . AFP PHOTO/GEOFF ROBINS / AFP / GEOFF ROBINS (Photo credit should read GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty Images) By John Cameron and Olivia Kwiecien Five months after the 2015 Canadian Federal Election, signals indicate that the advocacy chill that characterized the Conservative Government's relationship with Canadian development Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) has begun to thaw. The prime minister and officials in Global Affairs Canada have indicated through both words and action a desire to create a more collaborative and consultative relationship with CSOs. But are Canadian CSOs taking advantage of the thaw to engage in advocacy to hold the government to account for the impacts of its policies on global justice? Advertisement Ten years of Conservative government had a serious chilling effect on the capacity and willingness of many Canadian CSOs to engage in policy advocacy or any critique of the federal government. The three-fold combination of funding cuts to organizations that criticized the government, the Canada Revenue Agency's program to audit the political activities of registered charities, and the perception by many CSOs that the Conservative government was simply not interested in their input led many organizations to curtail political advocacy. Data from the CRA on the political activities of the member organizations of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC) highlights this trend. [1] In 2011, CCIC member charities reported spending a total of $5.6 million on "political activities" -- as defined by the CRA. By 2014, the most recent year for which complete data is available, spending on 'political activities' had dropped to $3.5 million. The CRA data also tells another story: under the Conservative government, CSOs came nowhere near the CRA's 10 per cent rule on how much of their budgets charitable organizations can spend on political activities. Spending on political activities dropped from 0.31 per cent of total expenditures in 2011 to 0.20 per cent in 2014. Of course, data based on self-reporting needs to be interpreted with caution. However, the fact that average reported spending on political activities has been consistently less than one per cent of total expenditures and that no charitable development CSO reported spending more than three per cent of total expenditures on political activities indicates that there is significant legal space for CSOs to expand their political activities. Advertisement The results of the 30 CRA audits conducted between 2012 and 2016 indicate that not a single organization lost its charitable status because of excessive spending on political activities. It thus seems clear that CRA rules are not a serious constraint on political activities by development CSOs with charitable status. Fear of losing government funding appears to be a much bigger factor. The question is: will CSOs reinvest in advocacy now that the political context in Ottawa has changed? That fear needs to be balanced against the moral imperative for Canadian charitable organizations to engage in policy advocacy and other political activities needed to achieve their mandates. The mission statements of Canadian development CSOs consistently highlight "ending poverty," "sustainable development" and "global justice" among their goals. These objectives cannot be realized without substantive advocacy to change government laws and policies -- beginning in Canada. The CRA itself recognizes that charitable organizations have significant expertise that is crucial to the development of good government policy as did the Volunteer Sector Initiative -- a major joint effort of the Chretien government and Canadian CSOs to define the terms and best practices for government-CSO relations. Public opinion polls by the Muttart Foundation also indicate high levels of public support for political advocacy by Canadian charitable organizations. The question is: will CSOs reinvest in advocacy now that the political context in Ottawa has changed? Some organizations have recently expanded their capacity for policy advocacy by hiring new staff, and many more claim that they will hold the government to account for its commitments. But serious involvement by CSOs in Canadian policy debates will require deeper changes from both the federal government and CSOs themselves. Advertisement The government will need to demonstrate clearly through its actions that it tolerates political advocacy by Canadian charities that receive government funding -- as long as they operate within the constraints of the law. Canadian CSOs will need to take bigger risks and commit more of their resources to political activities to hold the government to account. --- [1] The CRA makes publicly available the data which Canadian charities are legally required to report on the CRA 'Charities Listing' website. Civil society organizations which are not registered charities are not required to report on their political activities and generally do not gather data on those activities. The data discussed here was compiled by the authors and refers to the 54 members of the Canadian Council of International Cooperation which are legally-registered charities. It therefore excludes the 24 CCIC member organizations which do not have charitable status as well as the four organizations which are sub-units of larger charitable organizations. ) John Cameron is a professor of International Development Studies at Dalhousie University, where Olivia Kwicien is a Masters Student. The views expressed in this blog are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of CCIC or its members. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: This weekend, the NDP is meeting in Edmonton to decide their direction moving forward. Eugene Levy once complained about filming a season of SCTV in Edmonton because "It's Edmonton." While I'm sure it's a great city, this is a party who is dreading at the Big E. The election of the past year saw an early lead blown, notable key members of the party lose their seats in the House of Commons, and a third place finish for Tom Mulcair's rookie federal election run. As the NDP head to the Gateway to the North, it's time to begin paving the highway towards the future. The next election is going to be a lot tougher than this one. On the left, you'll have current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, standing at one term down and that charming smile that will age like wine. On the right, you don't know what yet. But get the notion they won't have someone or a rebranding complete by then out of your head. One thing that occurred during the election was that the party's identity was questioned. The Conservatives are forced into a rebranding, as Stephen Harper stepped down after losing the October election. The Harper era ended some 300 km from Edmonton when he gave his concession speech on election night. How fitting in one province that the death of one government could spark not just the Noltey NDP rebirth but on a federal level. Advertisement There are a few questions that a delegate should ask themselves before deciding how to approach the future. First, are you sure that this next 2019 election is one worth battling for? The Liberals could very well botch their mandate and lose public support and blowback from past Conservative scandals could haunt them, but the highway here is more a dirt road/trail through the woods at night. Basically, is the urge there to focus on 2019 to win it or just get your numbers back up? One thing that occurred during the election was that the party's identity was questioned. Where do they stand? On the right or left of Liberals? Are they too far left or moving towards the centre? It became so dizzying that it felt like the party was a teenager going through phases to try and fit in. Problem was and still is, you don't know if it's the true NDP or not and just hope they'd find their own path. They need an on-ramp to the highway. So if you answer "no, we're writing off 2019," you have to ask when do you start the rebranding? I've written about Mulcair and the NDP in the past and after being a dipper my entire voting life, had a bad feeling about the election that was a year and a half away. I wasn't sold on him as a leader who had that prime minister vibe. He is in fact a great Member of Parliament, well-versed in issues I'm completely ignorant to and has done quite well for himself in the House of Commons. But after the election loss, I'm not exactly back-tracking on my original prediction. As much as I've grown to respect him and what he's done for this country, I still don't believe he's the leader to take into an election. Advertisement There's a very reasonable for keeping Mulcair at the head of party. Take your time vetting a group of stand-out candidates new and old and have them build the new direction of the party. The highways congested right now anyway so there's no need to rush. Have Mulcair advise and lend a hand in the transition. Identify a pool of candidates and in a year or two have a leadership convention. Find your Trudeau. The fresh face that defines the new brand and can garner media attention just for being someone different. It worked for the Liberals. I really do wish the NDP figure out where they are headed, even if they delay the torch passing a while. At least if you give it a good, honest shot in the next election, you have a shot at power again. But the Conservatives are deep in the trenches cackling and crunching numbers as they calculate their own makeover. The difference between them and Liberals is there's no other "right leaning party" for them to flock to. And it wasn't so much a Conservative loss but Harper's, as mentioned. The NDP is idling right now in a roundabout. After this weekend, we'll know what highway they're taking when they leave Edmonton. Because it's Edmonton. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Getty Images/Caiaimage Who knew that grand-parenting would be so much fun? Who knew I'd be a solo grandma? It was understood in my marriage that somewhere in the future we would be very proud grandparents together. However, like many baby boomers, our marriage didn't make it. I've been single for 20 years and since 2009 I have been a solo grandma. My Grandparents My grandparents were married 67 years. That was my frame of reference. They lived to 100 years of age in their own home. Loving and fiercely independent to the very end. Fought the War of Independence with a twinkle in their eye -- she was a very proud Yankee and he was a very dignified Brit, who came to Canada when he was just 16. They were there -- together -- while I was growing up. There was something solid and reassuring about my grandparents. A pair. A unit. And an example of mutual commitment. Advertisement I thought history would repeat itself somewhere in my future. They were the first through the door when my father, their much loved son-in-law, died very suddenly when I was 19. We were reeling from this huge loss-there they were at the door in the middle of night. So solid. The rock we needed. We always said my grandfather looked like and had the elegance of Fred Astaire. Dignified. Debonair. By example, he made a huge impression on my sons when they were growing up. For my own sons, their paternal grandfather -- the only one they had -- was very cold, distant, and rarely seen. So their great-grandfather was the grandfather in their life. Every holiday was a large multi- generational affair with my grandparents sitting like proud peacocks at the table, smiling privately to each other. Everyone gathered at the table was there because those two met by happenstance and married in 1915. I thought history would repeat itself somewhere in my future. But that was not to be. My Grandchildren From my very youngest grandchild born this past Christmas to the oldest who was born on my 60th birthday in 2009, I have shared every moment with my sons as a solo parent and grandparent. I have taken those first phone calls from the delivery room. Heard the awe in my sons' voices. Heard the first little cry of a brand new member of the family. Advertisement I haven't spoken to my former spouse for many years. Until recently, his presence in my sons' lives was very minimal. I don't stumble over pronouns when speaking about my family. For me, the singular fits very well now. In conversation, these grandchildren are mine. Shared History Lost It doesn't mean I don't feel some sense of loss. I miss sharing the history with someone who knew my sons growing up. Marveling when I see my grandchildren behave in a way reminiscent of their father, forty years ago. There is no partner to turn to and nod knowingly. Being a solo grandma in no way diminishes the experience. You lose a lot in a divorce but nothing more than that shared history. My sons and I reminisce but they don't remember the trip home from the hospital with them as brand new babies. Those terrifying first days of parenthood. Looking at the little bundle in the cradle -my cradle when I was a baby- and feeling such overwhelming love and responsibility. And then fast forward 40 years and seeing a brand new generation in that very same cradle. As their grandma, I am seeing life through the eyes of a child again with the time to really appreciate it. Who knew I would feel such love all over again? From the first moment, just like I did all those years ago with my sons. Being a solo grandma in no way diminishes the experience. I have learned to love everything about life -- solo. I have shared so many wonderful bits of travel and adventure with my grandchildren. In only seven years we have a history together. First steps, first words, and many 'I love you's" wrapped up in chubby little arms. We share private jokes, have favourite books. These early years with my grandchildren are fleeting moments in time. They are snatched up, snuggled up and enjoyed. And then-just like their fathers before them-these little ones will be grown. Advertisement Sunrise, sunset, swiftly go the years.... Wasn't it yesterday ... they were small? Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Legalization of cannabis in Canada has sparked the eager attention of medicinal and recreational users nationwide. For those opposing this evolution, their losing battle is confirmed daily as additional scientific evidence is released showcasing the positive health benefits of cannabis. Those who are less aware of the benefits will also be surprised to find that their beloved Shopper's Drug Mart has publicly expressed great interest in selling the pungent herb. Canadian patients are slowly being awakened to the downfall of chemical prescription medications that have left them with serious side effects, sometimes in a state of ailment worse than ever before. The recent Allard ruling declared the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations ("MMPR") "unconstitutional" and therefore invalid; however this invalidity has been suspended for six months to allow the government time to create new regulations for patients. In the meantime, the MMPR remains in effect until amended, with the deadline of August 24, 2016. Patients under the MMPR are to obtain their medicine only from government-regulated Licensed Producers (LPs) until further notice. Advertisement On the bright side, the MMPR has provided solace for patients dealing with accessibility issues by providing mail-order cannabis from LPs. These producers follow very strict rules in all aspects of growing, harvesting, packaging and shipping medical-grade cannabis. The realism of these stringent guidelines extends beyond the hundreds of grey-area dispensaries that are populating Canadian corners faster than you can find a double-double at Tim's. Does anyone know where their cannabis comes from? Considering this is a major issue to become more evident as time progresses, Canadians need to be more proactive in assessing the sources of their medicines, especially if they care about potency, consistency and safety. Since Canadians are so obsessed with this new wave of medicinal understanding, I decided it was due time to present an expose on what goes on behind the closed doors of an LP. Being the most popular LP supplier amongst my colleagues (yes, real professionals can be legal patients!), I organized a meeting with the brains behind Mettrum, who invited me to an exclusive tour of their state-of-the-art facilities. Advertisement To start off the adventure, we drove out to Bowmanville, to tour the company's brand new facility and future headquarters. It's definitely non-descript and hard to find -- and they sure like it that way. There I met Mettrum's president George Scorsis and marketing director Amy Wasserman, who were very kind in spending their entire day for the sake of giving a thorough tour, and answering all of my questions. Mettrum's licensed production facilities span over 80,000 square feet of capacity, located on a total of over 80 acres of land. The Bowmanville location (one of two) is massive, and houses their client service team and part of the grow operations. We passed through a number of security checkpoints -- something they take very seriously (maybe even more so than the Canadian government requires). After signing paperwork and giving my ID to security, we changed into scrubs and headed into the grow. For cannabis enthusiasts, let's just say you would probably be extremely overwhelmed at the sheer size of the grow rooms, and that thick, aromatic scent of uniquely sensational terpenes. Here, grew the "Blue No.1" (CBD Godbud 3) and Black No.1 (Ontario Blue Crinkle) strains. While in these grow rooms, I had both Mettrum's master grower and their senior QA and research manager describe everything about the process from medical and agricultural standpoints, and many other amazing tidbits that would deem this article a novel. Advertisement A good fact to note: I was informed that the entire process takes about three months from clone to harvest. It was fascinating to see the complexity of the operation -- almost otherworldly -- where each plant has a dedicated lamp and computer-automated filtration system in their grow pod for consistency and potency of supplemental nutrients. After an extended photo op in the biggest room of cannabis I have ever seen, we took the elevator down into "The Vault." While it was originally built in the 1960's as a water reservoir to store an absurd amount of water in case of emergency fires, Mettrum has since redesigned this impenetrable vault for an area where the product is dried, trimmed, packaged, and stored. I'm pretty sure government officials have been floored by this level of security and protection of the product. Apart from this I couldn't stop thinking that I was inside Vault 111 in Fallout 4. After returning back up to ground level, we had an early preview of the warehouse-sized spaces that will grow all future strains -- a huge asset to have in the case that things go recreational, which by the way, Mettrum is noticeably very ready for. Advertisement We hopped back into our vehicles and headed to Mettrum's second location in the quaint town of Creemore -- where the company's dried cannabis and cannabis oil production takes place. From the outside, the Creemore facility has an Area 51 feeling to it -- barbed-wire fences, automated gates, and security cameras surrounding the location in an effort to keep the stockpile safe. As prior, we went through numerous security clearances and into a new set of scrubs for the latter half of the tour. A smaller facility with a lot happening. Here we were invited to see two storeys of retrofitted pods, each housing different cannabis strains such as Red #2 (Super Lemon Haze) and Red #3 (Raw Diesel). The very high consistency of production, technology and interior could make one feel as if they are in a NASA space station. Extremely clean with not a leaf in the wrong place: all white everywhere, with plants evenly aligned inside long, narrow rooms with huge steel doors that require biometric scanning. Advertisement Afterwards, we toured Mettrum's extraction lab where their concentrated oils are produced. Mettrum's cannabis oils were designed to address the demand from patients and health care professionals alike for alternative consumption methods of medical cannabis to exist. Since launching their oils in January of this year, Mettrum has witnessed firsthand the tremendous appetite for extracted products. Touring these facilities made it obvious that medical-grade cannabis is way more than just a "medical marijuana" sign on a storefront. It would be very difficult to replicate what goes on inside these facilities without having the experience, real estate and capital to uphold such an impressive growing practice. I don't care what anyone says, the proof is in the cannabis-infused pudding; patients who are looking to obtain safe medicine should highly consider doing so from a top-tier government regulated source that shows accountability to their product. National Defence The first budget delivered by the Liberals signaled a return to 1970s Trudeaupian Liberalism, not just with its flagrant disregard for balanced budgets and ballooning debt, but also by disregarding a core accountability under our Constitution: Canada's military. For the past 20 years, Canada was a model of financial responsibility to the world -- the Chretien/Martin Liberals and the Harper Conservatives strove to balance budgets in periods of growth. The Trudeau Liberals were handed a balanced budget and we are currently experiencing positive economic growth. Advertisement Yet the Liberals have plunged us deep into deficit and project to add, in their first budget alone, $150 billion to Canada's $1.3 trillion debt. Not only is there no sound economic reason to plunge Canada into deficit today, the Trudeau Liberals have no plan to return to balance tomorrow. The Liberals have chosen short-term gain and long-term pain. Equally disturbing, we look to be returning to the Trudeaupian tradition of starving our military. We need to be at war with those who are at war with us. We need to take a proactive approach to say "never again." In the 1970s the Liberals slashed military spending from 2.5 to 1.6 per cent of our economy. The number of troops fell by almost a quarter, from over 100,000 to just over 75,000 . Advertisement The 1980s saw some recovery in investment, but the 1990s was a "decade of darkness" -- a name given by former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier to describe the deep spending cuts imposed on the military by the government of former prime minister Jean Chretien. As an example of the underfunding of that era, the Chretien Liberals sent our military men and women into combat in the desert -- wearing green jungle fatigues. The recent budget promises to bring in at least another four years of darkness. The recent horrifying bombings in Lahore, Brussels, Paris, Ankara, and Istanbul -- all within the last five months -- are proof that the crisis with terrorism and the rise of ISIS not only impacts the Middle East, but the entire world, including here in Canada. It leads to a more specific question about the role of our military on the international stage. In the last year, I've had the opportunity to travel to Germany, Turkey, Vietnnam and Cambodia. In each instance I visited major sites of war where the world has said "never again." While standing at the killing fields in Cambodia -- a conflict where Canada did nothing to stop the atrocities of genocide -- and in thinking about the current refugee crisis, I thought to myself, "When will 'never again' really mean 'never again?'" Advertisement If we really want to help Syrian refugees, we need to help stop those from whom they flee. That means military engagement with ISIS. We need to be at war with those who are at war with us. We need to take a proactive approach to say "never again." We need to stand beside our allies and do our part to fight against those who attack our personal liberties, killing innocents in the name of a different ideology. That means prioritizing federal spending on the federal responsibilities -- Peace Order and Good Government. If we ask our military men and women to serve our country, the least we can do is give them the properly functioning equipment, tools, and support both during and after their service that is possible. This budget represents a return to the dark days of Trudeaupian Liberalism at the price of long-term debt and military underfunding. Our military deserves better. Our future generations deserve better. A lifetime of paying back this Trudeau government's short-sighted spending spree is anything but. Susanne DiCocco leads a consulting practice in Calgary and has 18 years' experience in the public sector and the energy industry. Advertisement Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Newsletter sign-up HuffPost UK Daily Brief Sign up and we will email you daily with the best of our political and news coverage while also giving you a taste of our most-popular lifestyle, opinion and personal blogs. A top employment lawyer has set alarms bells ringing this week for working people. Brexit, he says, could end up with the loss of paid holidays, redundancy consultation rights, protection against pregnancy discrimination by employers, and much more. The independent legal opinion from Michael Ford QC was commissioned by the TUC to help every working person in the UK understand what's at stake for them in the referendum. And the answer is that they have a great deal to lose. Despite this, recent polling showed that both the Leave and Remain campaigns are failing to connect with blue collar workers' concerns. But when you consider how little attention the campaigns are giving to EU-derived workers' rights, the poll's findings should be no surprise. Advertisement Both campaigns need to sit up and take notice of what Michael Ford QC has to say. His independent, expert view is that Brexit could mean a massive step backwards on hard-won rights at work. His legal opinion says: "It is easy to contemplate a complete reversal of the gradual increase in social regulation protecting workers which has taken place since the 1960s". And there is plenty of evidence to back up his warning. Even now, six pro-Brexit Conservative MPs are sponsoring a parliamentary bill to allow employers to opt out of the Working Time Directive - the EU agreement that guarantees you a minimum of 20 days paid leave a year. Thankfully our current EU protections will stop this attempt in its tracks. But if we left the EU, it could be open season on rights like these. You only have to scratch the surface of conservative think tanks reports, or speeches by Ukip supporters and funders, to know what their agenda is. Brexit is a means to an end - and the end they seek is the demise of regulations that are crucial to your rights at work. They casually label it 'red tape', but for you it could be your right to time off if your child has a medical emergency. Advertisement We're not saying that all the workplace rights that unions have spent so many years campaigning for at European level will be lost immediately. But one of the things we wanted to know from Michael Ford QC was his expert view of which rights are most at risk. His answer isn't comforting. On the list of rights most at risk are guarantees of fair treatment for agency workers and part-timers. Remember that if they lose their rights, there will be an incentive for bad bosses to push more workers onto casual contracts to drive down everyone's terms and conditions. Women at work are at risk of a gradual erosion of their rights to fair compensation if they are discriminated against, for example over pregnancy and maternity provisions. It would also be possible to whittle away at people's rights to proper holiday pay, rights when you're off sick, and payment for time spent on-call or travelling from job to job. And that could be just the start. Michael Ford QC writes in his opinion that "there is no precedent for the kind of radical overhaul of laws which would potentially flow from Brexit". Advertisement Given that the government's direction of travel is already to cut workers' rights, the threat feels very real. The current government, and its coalition predecessor, restricted protections against unfair dismissal, reduced TUPE rights for workers whose jobs are outsourced, and raised Employment Tribunal fees to levels that deter people from enforcing their rights. So can you really trust the government to restore all your EU rights under UK law without relishing the opportunity to dilute some, and scrap others? Voting to leave the EU would be a big risk for every working person. It would leave them haunted by years of uncertainty, with rights like paid holiday, parental leave and equal treatment for part-timers at risk of being whittled away. Generations of trade unionists fought hard to win the rights that the EU now guarantees. If we lose them because of Brexit, it could take generations to get them back again. The biggest cheerleaders for Brexit think that your protections at work are just red tape to be binned. Bad bosses will be rubbing their hands with glee if leaving the European Union gives them the chance to cut back workers' hard-won protections. Advertisement We shouldn't give them that opportunity. Claims and counter-claims about how much it costs the UK to belong to the European Union abound. Unsurprisingly, both sides of the debate cherry-pick the statistics that support their side of the argument, but both are also prone to misrepresent the facts and to neglect data that tell a different story. Part of the explanation for this confusion is that there are conceptually very different ways of measuring the flows to and from 'Brussels' through the EU budget. All EU members pay in to it and all receive money from EU spending programmes, ranging from the Common Agricultural Policy to the Horizon 2020 research initiatives. However, some EU spending does not directly come back to members because it is for policies implemented collectively, notably to support what the EU does in the rest of the world, such as spending on humanitarian aid. And a relatively small proportion of EU spending (around 6%) is on the administrative costs of running the Union. Advertisement The EU budget amounts to around one percent of the total annual output of the EU, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP). To fund it, member countries are expected to contribute one percent of their respective national GDPs. However, ever since Margaret Thatcher negotiated the famous rebate in 1984, the UK has been required to pay less than this proportion, with others then obliged to pay relatively more to make up the difference. The result is that the actual amount that the UK 'sends to Brussels', to use a phrase often employed in the debate, is not the hypothetical gross contribution, but an amount that has already been reduced because of the rebate. Although this is well-known, campaigners all too frequently use the higher figure, despite the fact that it is wrong (and some of those making the claim know this full well). For example, the often heard claim that the UK sends '350 million per week to the EU' is based on this incorrect measure. The amount that the Treasury remits to Brussels, and thus the direct cost to UK taxpayers, always has the rebate deducted before payment is made. Because of this, the correct figure, taking account of the rebate, should be around 280 million per week (based on 2014 data). The contention (by the Vote Leave campaign - featured prominently on its home page) that the UK has paid more than half a trillion pounds is also wrong. The calculation aggregates UK payments to the EU since first joining in 1973, after reflating the amounts from earlier years to current prices. While the methodology employed can be justified, the Vote Leave calculation also makes use of the wrong figure, again by ignoring the rebate. An amended calculation (using the same methodology but applying it to the amount the UK actually pays) shows that the half trillion figures exaggerates the true figure by fully 110billion. There are other ways of looking at what Britain pays, for example by taking account of money that flows back to the UK through spending from EU programmes. A net contribution can be calculated in this way by deducting what the UK receives from what it contributes. In 2014, the receipts were a little under 6billion. Throughout our years of membership since 1973, only the UK and Germany have consistently been net contributors to the EU's finances, although in recent years, many more countries have joined them. Remain campaigners know this, but often blur the picture by arguing that the UK benefits in other ways. They then arrive at a figure which conflates budget flows with a range of other benefits to arrive at figures such as a net 3,000 gain per household per year. This too is misleading for the simple reason that it is comparing apples with oranges. Advertisement In short, they are all at it. Citizens, voters, commentators: beware. "We face a systematic industrial massacre" said the EU's Industry Commissioner, Antonio Tajani in September 2013. Over the last year his prediction has come true. The UK's steel industry is on its last legs, deprived of oxygen, gasping for air. We have learnt, following a board meeting in Mumbai, Tata Steel is planning to sell or close its entire UK business. 80,000 jobs depend on the UK steel industry, 5,000 people have already been made redundant since September last year. 25,000 people are directly employed in steel manufacturing with 15,000 of them employed directly by Tata Steel. The remaining 65,000 jobs are in the supply chain. These aren't just jobs, they are people's lives, with generations of families working in the same factory, and they are the lifeblood of communities throughout Britain. To keep these jobs and communities alive, Tata's plant in Port Talbot, South Wales requires a buyer by the beginning of May. There is some suggestion the little-known Mark and Nathaniel Meyohas brothers are preparing a deal to revive British Steel - this could be announced today. The deal could include the possible purchase of the Scunthorpe steelworks. However, there is only a glimmer of hope of saving the entire company, including Port Talbot, due to the 1 million black hole in the firm's books every single day. Any purchase would result in significant job losses, with huge chunks of the business cast aside, unless help from the Government is provided. Advertisement There has been a deafening silence from our Government for many years now on how to support our steel industry. Why is this? Because there is little they can do. The Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones met with the Prime Minister today to discuss the issue and will apparently continue to meet, but so far, no solutions are proposed. EU state-aid rules mean it would be impossible to cut the crippling 15 million-a-year business rates at the plant. He has also said Brussels' diktats have meant Tata Steel could only be offered relief of just 50,000 a year. (Business rates targeted at particular sectors are considered by Brussels to be selective state aid.) Then, some pension experts believe EU rules could thwart the Government providing a solution to Tata's 2 billion pension liabilities. The former pensions minister Steve Webb has warned long-serving workers could see their pensions cut "very dramatically" if the business collapses before a buyer is found. Nearly all forms of support the Government could have given to assist our steel industry are governed by EU law. In areas where it could have acted, it hasn't - making a bad situation even worse. The Government could have slashed or abolished business rates for steel firms, but it will now pay the price of not doing anything; it will learn you cannot get blood from a stone. The plant and machinery should have been excluded from business rates, because this is a clear tax on investment. The rates punish steel makers, because if they were to invest in blast furnaces to make themselves more competitive, they would be hit by higher business rates. Advertisement The Government and ministers did not reduce rates or help the steelworks, because they do not care. They only care about the banks and their mates in the City. Beleaguered Business Secretary Sajid Javid summed up his position clearly: "If banks go bust there is an impact on the entire economy that every single person and business will feel. That doesn't mean we should do the same for every single other industry." In fairness to the Government, there is precious little they can do while we are in the EU, as the vast majority of power is in the hands of the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. The main problem is the Chinese dumping of steel, which has become so cheap now - we cannot afford to produce it at a competitive price. China happily sells its steel below the cost of production to keep Chinese steelworkers in their jobs - something we cannot do with the EU breathing down our necks with restrictions. As a result, China produces 800 million tonnes of steel to the UK's 11 million tonnes. America has successfully managed to prevent Chinese dumping by increasing tariffs on Chinese steel to 266%, compared to the EU's tariffs of a pathetic 9%. Our Government hasn't helped either by blocking the proposal to increase steel tariffs to 66%. To add to the agony over the weekend China imposed a tariff of 46.3% on specialist steel made in Port Talbot. We should be able to decide our own tariffs in this country by our own elected Government, which we could hold to account by voting them out in an election if they refused to introduce a high tariff. We cannot do this while we are members of the EU. Another policy which has devastated our steel industry is the enormous hike in energy prices to comply with EU rules, which has set targets to reduce carbon emissions. Germany forces their customers to pay this cost, and the UK forces the steel manufacturers to pay it. Both options are unacceptable. We at Get Britain Out have a solution - scrap the targets! Advertisement The Prime Minister could have demanded the protection of British steel in his so-called EU renegotiation 'deal', by suspending the state aid rules in relation to the UK steel industry. This is a power available to the EU. But if you don't ask, you don't get. Tata Steel has said it would cost 2 billion to save the steelworks in Port Talbot - a cost they are unwilling to bear. If we leave the EU we can save the net 10 billion we give to the EU every year. and spend some of it on making our steel industry competitive again, while saving many thousands of jobs. Additionally, the 172 million overspend on the foreign aid budget could keep the plant open for 6 months! Sajid Javid held his first official talks yesterday with the metals tycoon Sanjeev Gupta - who reopened a steel mill in Newport last year. Mr Gupta has said it would take years to turn the business round, but he is apparently offering a rescue deal which could save the 4,000 jobs at Port Talbot if the government assists in his ambitious plan - running into hundreds of millions of pounds - to close down the blast furnaces, and switch to scrap metal-burning electric arc furnaces. He has said Brexit will help the steel industry as "the Government doesn't have the freedom to act because it has to go through Brussels. Everything takes forever." According to London Mayor Boris Johnson, the government would be able "to rescue the British steel industry" in the event of a Brexit. He has said leaving the EU would mean "We would have more money and more freedom to rescue the British steel industry - and we might even succeed". A solution is needed urgently. Our Government must step in to protect our steel industry in the face of the serious problems the EU is constantly throwing at us. This is not protectionism; it is a classic example of capitalism failing because of the disgraceful policies of another country. We must fight fire with fire. It is clear this cannot be achieved while we are members of the EU. If you care about the British steel industry then you must vote to Get Britain Out in the EU referendum on June 23rd. Advertisement Justin Bieber has new 'douche bag' dreads. Since getting his new do, Twitter has been awash with the mass hysteria that it does so well. Bieber's crime has been for 'culturally appropriating' a 'black hairstyle'. Bieber defended his new dreads by claiming, 'it's just my hair'." Indeed. This has come just days after a video of a black student confronting a white student over his dreadlocks went viral. The war against 'cultural appropriation' has been raging for a while and like usual, our universities and colleges are at the vanguard of this politically-correct equality-fight. Last September, at the University of East Anglia, the students' union banned a Mexican restaurant from giving out sombreros to students on the grounds that this act of cultural appropriation was racist. Advertisement Sombreros type hats where originally worn by Mongolians in the 13th, then they were adopted by the Spanish who took them over to Mexico. Things that we see as authentically and absolutely tied to one culture, are very rarely the case. Culture is never static. It ebbs and flows, changes and adapts. We learn from others' tradition, as we share ideas, customs and even hats. Throughout history huge strides in human progress have been made through cultural appropriation. The Romans appropriated much of Ancient Greek culture. Christian Europe was revitalised in the middle ages after embracing the science and teachings of Muslim Scholars. Christianity appropriated the Jewism Old Testament and Islam borrowed from faiths that came before it. All cultures on the world today are products of previous sharing, borrowing and appropriating between previous cultures. In a generation of mass migration and globalisation, the idea that you can freeze-frame customs and segregate cultures absolutely, is madness. There is no social justice to be found in segregating cultures and ideas. It simply entrenches division. The foundations of liberalism, of personal choice, are being chipped away by a new moralism. What jewellery you want to wear, what hairstyle you want to wear, is becoming a political act. Cultural identifiers like a sombrero are now offered the reverence of a religious symbol. Screaming self-righteous sanctimony at an idiot white guy dancing in a sombrero has nothing to do with defending or rescuing oppressed cultures. Turning every single cultural transaction as a crime or site of conflict is divisive. It stifles human progress and it stifles creativity. Advertisement We now assume that we can never understand a culture unless we are 'of' that culture. It is a conservative and sectarian approach that rejects the universalism of the human experience. By doing this, we mysticize and elevate the difference between us. Only woman can write about feminist theory, only black people can write about black history, only Native Americans can tell the stories of their people. We put up boundaries instead of taking them down. We assumed white artists will never fully understand, love and appreciate 'black' music. Yet this not the case. See how punk rock's appropriation of reggae crossed racial divides and brought together alienated communities. See how white's embrace of the blues led to rock 'n' roll popularity forced previously white-oriented labels to sign African-American artists, and changed for ever the social interactions of black and white teenagers. Ska music and rock 'n' roll gave young people a common culture that brought about new positive social interactions. I am sure this does far more in combatting institutional racism than a moral crusader shouting 'check your privilege' and hands off 'our' culture. Iggy Azalea was lambasted for 'cultural smudging' after she became the fourth solo female hip-hop artist to top the Billboard 100. Racial prejudice in the music industry and in wider society may have helped Iggy Azalea's rise up the charts; as there is institutionalised racism within a music industry that seems to prefer its stars to be white. But why lay the blame for this at Iggy Azalea's feet? Because it's easy, and self-righteous fury has an addictive edge. Attacking people for cultural appropriation is intellectual laziness. You will not break down structural racial inequality by shouting in the face of white man with dreadlocks. You will do nothing but prove your own pious sanctimony and anthropological ignorance. Advertisement Tackling systemic injustices in law, in government, and in the workplace, is tough. Hollering about every act of 'micro-colonisation' is easy, and it is also counter-productive. This constant demand for 'culturally correct' behaviour desensitises us to the distinction between practices of deep cultural significance worthy of our sensitivity, and simply everything else. There is a difference between under-cooked sushi, crap yoga, and Holy Scripture. To cry "cultural appropriation" is to constitute a claim to moral authority, it is signal of your moral enlightenment. It is a power play. If you say you're hurt by someone's cultural appropriation you can assert victim status. Once you hold victim status, you can claim moral superiority as an 'oppressed individual'. This is how identity politics works. Attempting to uphold the 'purity' of your culture is inherently regressive and conservative. It is an attitude within the realms of the worst kind of religion puritanism and the ethno-nationalism. So next time you're in student halls and someone rails at you for cooking Indian, Thai or Congolese food in a 'culturally inappropriate manner' -- simply inform them that they are not a moral authority on the matter simply because they are offended. Don't let a self-righteous moral guardian tell you what is the 'true' or 'false' version of a culture. A couple of days ago an email dropped into my inbox which took me by surprise. It told me that this Friday Momentum, the group set up by ardent supporters of Jeremy Corbyn to dig in around their man, were celebrating their birthday and they wanted to share some of their achievements. It got me thinking. Surely Momentum can't have been around for a year? Surely it's not been a whole 365 days since Labour had given up on being an electoral force in favour of becoming a pressure group? And then I read more and realised. Of course it isn't. Just like the rules of politics the rules of life don't apply to Momentum. Advertisement It's not actually a real birthday that Momentum are celebrating but a six month one, the sort of birthday or anniversary no one but no one celebrates unless you are a pimply sixth former going out with your first girlfriend. Sending an email out, as Momentum have done, about your six month birthday tells you a lot about an organisation, or for that matter a person, and just about where they are in the circle of life. Of course I'm being a little facetious and announcing a landmark is a good way to get people reading an email but certainly the rest of the text highlights for me at least Momentum, and for that matter Labour, have got a long to go before we are back on the track of being a credible government in waiting. Momentum are highlighting their support for Action for Rail's #RailRipOff campaign, that they give their 'full support to the striking junior doctors' by joining them on picket lines. Momentum supporters joined the largest 'mobilisation against Trident for a generation' and 'took to the streets to protest against the Tory housing bill' and you realise their objectives aren't about changing things but about feeling satisfied in expressing their disappointment. Advertisement The harsh but simple fact is all of those well-meaning demonstrations have changed nothing. I was told by a much wiser head than my own some months ago a good rule for life, hashtags and placards don't change the world, being in positions of power does that. Isn't that self-evident when you take a look at Momentum's record over these past six months? It's important to remember though that Momentum isn't all about marches and twitterstorms, they have meetings too, lots and lots of meetings. Over and above local groups they have had their first round of Regional Network Meetings, they've had their first National Committee meeting with 52 delegates, they've had an East Midlands Regional Conference and attended People's PPE lectures and Talk Socialism outreach workshops. That's whole lot of talking, but sadly isn't it preaching to the converted? Those people who already agree with you? Perhaps most crucially Momentum have asked all of their supporters their top 3 campaign priorities. That is the biggest folly of them all. I'll guarantee some of the issues that won't be on the list. You won't hear Momentum members being concerned about immigration, you won't hear them talking about the tax burden for working families being too high, you won't hear them talking about a strong private sector. You won't hear Momentum members prioritising a whole raft of issues which have little importance to their public sector supporting, Guardian reading followers but which are crucial to voters in every marginal constituency in Britain. And that is the problem. Self-selecting groups so full of their own priorities will always fail to resonate with voters who simply do not share them. Advertisement When I was first elected as a councillor straightaway I became leader of my district Labour group, a group who were in opposition by just five seats. I remember a retired miner, an old fashioned Labour warhorse, coming up to me and saying 'the very worst thing in politics is being in opposition, you never achieve anything and you get tired from losing'. Those words were some of the wisest I have ever heard in politics. Being in opposition is horrible. You see the worst off, the ones you want to help most, in dire straits and there is not a thing you can do about it. You see people who can't afford to live under a Tory government having to do so precisely because the electorate do not trust their vote to opposition politicians who can. You see the privileged and paternalistic pontificating about ideology when a pragmatic, problem solving alternative is what is needed. Dana Ek sustained burns from a suspected terrorist explosion in her home country of Syria. "We ran out of the building trying to escape, but the emergency door of the residence was locked," Dana explains. She managed to get her children out of the house but Dana and her parents were unable to escape. "The fire caught me," she says. "I waited to die." "Because of the war in Syria, there were no spaces in the hospitals and no Burns Units would accept us," she says. After being moved from one hospital to the next, Dana was treated at Almahayni Hospital in her hometown of Damascus. Advertisement Her parents died a few days later due to their injuries. Dana, who is now 31, was treated for 1st and 2nd-degree burns to parts of her body and 3rd and 4th-degree burns to her hands, legs, and feet. "The hospitals lacked most medicines because of the war. I was in pain all the time," she says. After two months in ICU (Intensive Care Unit), Dana, her children, and her sister-in-law travelled by car to Lebanon and searched for an airline to France, where her husband lived. She had already been refused by one airline because of her critical injuries. After three days, they found an airline, which would take her and flew to Paris. "I reached Paris just a few hours before my visa expiry time," she says. Shortly after her arrival, Dana travelled seven hours by car to Rangueil Hospital in Toulouse. She was granted treatment for one-month where she underwent three skin grafts. Advertisement "I was happy because I was finally safe and had access to pain relief, but I was sad because I didn't get to say goodbye to my friends, family, and home," she says. "I didn't even get to say goodbye to my parents when they died." Dana, who studies French in a language center, now continues to have physical therapy and will prepare for more surgery next month. "My scars are painful, swollen and red," she says. NDNA has just released major surveys detailing the state of the very different nursery sectors in Scotland and Wales. As I wrote in EYE magazine this month, our Annual Nursery Surveys 2016 reveal childcare providers in Scotland suffering the most acute free hours funding shortfall in the whole of the UK - an annual average of nearly 40,000 for a nursery offering 35 places. Meanwhile, many nurseries in Wales are struggling to stay in business due to increasing costs and a worrying dip in occupancy. Advertisement As the Welsh and Scottish government elections on May 5 approach, we need real changes to benefit children and families. More free hours are almost certain to be on the horizon, whatever party or parties come to power, following England's forthcoming 30 free hours per week for three and four-year-olds of working parents. But private, voluntary and independent nurseries can only deliver more free hours if they are paid properly. In Scotland, 77% of nurseries currently sustain a loss on the free hours for three and four-year-olds they currently provide, 1.88 per hour of care on average, adding up to 1,128 per funded place per year. Advertisement In Wales, the corresponding figure is 88%, or 2.27 per child per hour, and 863 annually, per place. This figure is lower because parents are entitled to fewer funded hours for their children. While they are keen to help families with the cost of childcare, providers are worried that offering more funded hours will simply mean bigger losses, threatening their whole business model. These fears loom particularly large in the light of the newly-implemented National Living Wage involving immediate pay roll increases of 7% in Scotland and 13% in Wales, as well as steeper percentages to follow as the National Living Wage continues to rise until it reaches its forecasted 9 per hour in 2019. Of course nurseries want to reward their hardworking staff but low funding rates mean the sums just aren't adding up. In Wales, the average nursery received 3.13 per hour to deliver Foundation Stage for three and four-year-olds. In Scotland, the figure is 3.56 when in both countries the real cost of high-quality care, according to survey respondents, is more than 5 per hour. Advertisement This is why NDNA has launched a Childcare Challenge to the next Governments of Scotland and Wales to make a difference on the choice, quality and cost of childcare. First and foremost, we're imploring politicians to take a long, hard look at the nursery funding puzzle and come up with a better way of getting money to the frontline of early years care and education. We anticipate that will include radical changes to the ways in which funding flows through local authorities to providers, as well as an uplift in amounts allocated centrally. Funding levels must rise, ahead of any expansion offer. If they don't, fees will continue to rise for paying parents and providers may not be able to offer enough places to make more free hours a success. In both Scotland and Wales, roughly half of respondent nurseries said they were unlikely or unsure they would offer additional free hours. Advertisement As a result, families could find it difficult to take up their free hours and be faced with a more limited choice of providers at the very time when their childcare options should be opening up. As part of this challenge, we're also calling for restrictions on nurseries' chance to offer free hours to be lifted, to protect and enhance parents' choice of provision. This is an issue particularly in Wales where fewer than half of survey respondents (47%) were commissioned by councils to deliver Foundation Phase places for three and four-year-olds. Many more good-quality settings would like to deliver free places, subject to funding levels, but are not given the option in some areas where schools and maintained settings are allocated the majority of places. We also want private, voluntary and independent nurseries to be able to access funding for building projects, to help create more space to meet demand. Advertisement And finally, we believe all childcare providers should receive 100% relief on business rates and make VAT on childcare zero-rated. We're calling for the next Governments to step up and meet our challenge. Only then can we confidently and sustainably meet their challenge of providing more free childcare. We can make it happen if we work together. A newspaper is like a puzzle. Journalists write material that fits the exact requirement of particular pages - news, sports, health, arts, business. Like every puzzle, the structure of a newspaper is clear and logical when you understand it. Newspapers are predictable; readers know they can turn to the back page for sport and page three of some publications for a topless teenager. When a newspaper has a great story they will break their own format and spread the news over many pages. This is rare but it happened twice in the last week: the Guardian's Monday the 4th of April edition dedicated their first 7 pages to the "Panama Papers" - a story which they broke in the UK and is having a global impact. A day earlier, on Sunday the 3rd of April, the Mail on Sunday did something similar. They dedicated 11 pages, including the front page, to a scandal of their own making about Britain's "12 billion foreign aid madness." Advertisement My Declaration of Interest Before criticising this material I need to declare my interests. I used to work in the aid sector; In 1991, I set up Scottish European Aid, a humanitarian aid agency for Bosnia and Romania which later got incorporated into a big American NGO called Mercy Corps. I later worked for DFID - the UK Government's Department for International Development, the main target of the Mail on Sunday's campaign - in Romania and Russia. Currently I'm not working for any of them. My view about the Mail on Sunday's campaign is that it makes some good points but is fundamentally wrong. If you want to criticise a government department that spends over 12 billion a year, it's easy to find some dubious sounding projects. The real question is whether the British Government was right to make it a legal obligation to spend 0.7% of our Gross National Income on foreign aid. The Mail on Sunday says that this is "madness" and they rounded up a bevy of disgruntled MPs to back them up and got 150,000 readers to sign a petition. Maybe the 0.7% target is unreasonable and needs further debate. The problem is that the Mail supports this demand with a series of manipulative statements insinuating that DFID's aid money is being squandered. But is it? In all my years of working abroad on aid projects, DFID was the only donor I came across that wasn't bureaucratic. They're particularly good in a crisis, were instrumental in stopping the spread of Ebola in West Africa and are unusually flexible among cumbersome government donors. Advertisement Journalism or Propaganda? Rather than show a proven example of corrupt practices, the Mail on Sunday cherry picks certain projects and presents them out of context. The Mail obviously have a problem with foreign aid but it's not clear why. Is this journalism or propaganda? Their approach is dangerous as it gives people the false idea that their taxes are being wasted abroad while poverty at home gets ignored. It will just contribute to popular anger and cynicism. In my view this is one of the few government departments that gets it right. The web version of the story includes a photo of a mansion which, they claim, is an "8 million palace built by Palestine, which has received 72million of foreign aid." Similar stories are presented from Rwanda, Pakistan and South Africa. By linking the corrupt activities of leaders in these countries to DFID grants insinuates that the whole thing is a racket, that British taxpayers are funding Palestinian terrorists, the palaces and planes of African dictators and that people in these countries are laughing at us for our stupidity. This is simply not true. The poorest countries of the world are often the worst governed. What this means is that most citizens in those countries live in abject poverty and some will migrate to the west. Meanwhile the leaders may be living in luxury. Absolute wealth and grinding poverty are two sides of the same coin. They always go together. Are we spending Aid money correctly? The question for western governments is what can we do about it? Do we just ignore the plight of impoverished people in the Middle East and Africa, as countries like Russia do, or do we share 0.7% of our national income? Can we help these people without enriching corrupt leaders? To me it's a "no brainer" - I know that DFID funds (and monitors) specific projects and not corrupt politicians. Also, our own self-interest is at stake: helping poor countries is the best way of slowing down the mass migration into Europe. Advertisement But are we spending that money correctly? Writing in the Guardian, Simon O'Connell, the CEO of Mercy Corps Europe says "we should welcome a discussion about the UK's commitment to aid spending". He also gets across the vital importance of aid work. Mercy Corps received 27m for a two-year programme in Syria: "In a country with such weak governance and extensive conflict, this is extraordinarily complex and high risk." writes O'Connell. "It has never been more urgent to engage positively with the world's challenges. There are more displaced people now than at any time since the second world war - 60 million people, half of them children...The UK is a leader in using its aid budget to tackle these issues. It is an essential part of our global role." * In his days as corporate affairs director at Carlton Television, David Cameron would doubtless have advised that the cover-up is always more damaging than the original sin of omission. It's one of the first lessons of crisis management and it's a scenario we've seen played out over and over again at Westminster, which makes it all the more surprising that the Prime Minister handled the furore over his father's offshore fund so badly. News of the mass leak of 11million documents from the Panama law firm, Mossack Fonseca, first broke on Sunday evening. Initially, the world leaders caught up in the data leak were Iceland's prime minister Sigmunder David Gunnlaugson and Russia's President Putin - not a man who has to worry too much about reputational impact. Advertisement But by 11am on Monday Downing Street was issuing its first statement about Blairmore Holdings, the Bahamas-based company set up by Mr Cameron's late father. Asked if the Cameron family still had money in the offshore fund identified in the Panama Papers, a Downing Street spokesman said: 'That is a private matter. I will focus on what the government is doing.' As a response, that was never going to suffice. The 'I'm too busy to deal with trivialities, I'm focusing on my real job' is a stock PR weapon, but it always comes across as evasive. Did the Prime Minister's spin doctors really think they could hold the line when offshore tax havens have been such a hot political issue for the duration of Mr Cameron's premiership? By Tuesday, the position had shifted. It was no longer a private matter. Asked if he or his family had benefited from any offshore fund in the past, or would do so in the future, Mr Cameron replied: 'In terms of my own financial affairs, I own no shares. I have a salary as prime minister and I have some savings, which I get some interest from, and I have a house, which we let out while we are living in Downing Street, and that's all I have. I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description.' It was not a clear description because Mr Cameron chose to answer the question he wanted to be asked - about his current status - rather than the one he had actually been asked about the past. That was an error of judgement. It made for a good instant sound bite and gave the appearance of transparency, but in fact was simply a hostage to fortune. Advertisement A couple of hours later No 10 thought it necessary to clarify matters with another statement: 'To be clear, the Prime Minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds. The Prime Minister owns no shares. As has been previously reported, Mrs Cameron owns a small number of shares connected to her father's land, which she declares on her tax return.' Except that the statement did not clarify anything because it still failed to address the question Mr Cameron had been asked about past ownership. The fourth statement on the issue, released the following morning, also failed to address it. A Downing Street spokesman said: 'There are no offshore funds/trusts which the Prime Minister, Mrs Cameron or their children will benefit from in future.' The No 10 spin doctors seemed to believe they could contain the issue by continuing to dance on the head of a pin. It's never an approach that a public relations expert would recommend because, under scrutiny, it invariably unravels. That's true even of a mid-size business, let alone a political leader who is questioned weekly in Parliament and regularly interviewed by journalists. So, on Thursday, when interviewed by ITV's political editor Robert Peston, the Prime Minister was forced to admit he and his wife had held a stake in his father's fund for 13 years that was sold for 31,500 shortly before he entered Downing Street. Advertisement Given he had previously described investing in offshore schemes as "morally wrong" this was quite an admission, but how much better to have disclosed it at the start of the week and got it out of the way rather than having it dragged out of him after days of drip-drip political damage. The headlines were universally terrible, the story splashed across every front page. Matt King via Getty Images SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES - APRIL 08: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been desaturated.) Aislin Jones poses after being named in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games Australian Shooting Team during the Australian Olympic Games Shooting Team Selection Announcement at the Museum of Contemporary Art on April 8, 2016 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images) This is Aislin Jones. She's got her L-Plates but is too young to drive on her own. She's got plenty of homework to do this weekend. She is, in most respects, a perfectly regular 16-year-old. Except for one thing. Aislin Jones is going to the Rio Olympics to shoot for Australia. Advertisement Alongside Jones is 25-year-old Laetisha Scanlan, who has been selected for Rio in trap shooting. Jones is a skeet shooter. She lives in Lakes Entrance in Victoria's Gippsland region and goes to school in Bairnsdale, about 45 minutes inland. That's where she shoots too. It just so happens that this reporter once broke down in Bairnsdale on a hot day and doesn't think much of the town. But Jones loves it. Why does she love it? "Bairnsdales a great place. Weve got two gun clubs I can train at there. so you cant get much better than that," Jones told The Huffington Post Australia. Guess you can't, no. Might have to give the place a second chance. At the last Olympics in London, Jones was still in primary school. She was already into clay target shooting as a result of following her dad around simulated field shoots at Bairnsdale Field & Game gun club from the age of 10, and watched the finals keenly on TV. Advertisement "From there I became quite passionate about the sport. Since then I've always wanted to go to the Olympics." Most people would have to wait a decade or two. But not Jones. Her hard work and natural talent has booked her one of the oversized boarding passes all our Rio Olympians are receiving. Jones is quite the celebrity in the Gippsland region. Not that her school friends knew about her Olympic team selection on Friday. Thanks to the Australian Clay Target Shooting News for the great cover on this months issue! Posted by Aislin Jones - ISSF Skeet on Saturday, March 26, 2016 Advertisement Jones loves the challenge of shooting. She just loves it. "I think its a hard sport. You can never be perfect at it, so it always makes you work hard. And to be honest, I just really like breaking clay targets." She loves breaking clay targets. Who wouldn't love that? We must confess, though. Here at The Huffington Post Australia, we're not exactly experts in the finer points of clay target shooting, so we asked Aislin how many pieces a clay target breaks into when it's been hit. "If you get a good solid hit theres like nothing left." We thought that sounded like a pretty awesome sensation, so our next question was how it feels to reduce centimetre-thick disc of flying clay to rubble. "Really good. Powerful." Which is a nice feeling to have when your mother still has to drive you to training after school because you're not old enough to drive a car yourself. Away from shooting, Jones is a top student who excels at maths, science and playing the flute. Does maths and science help with shooting or is it more of a feel thing? Advertisement "I think its the ability to keep collected in certain situations," Jones said. "You cant let anyone get to you. You've got to be pretty mentally tough." That, from a 16-year-old. Congrats to you Aislin, and all the shooters in our 18-strong Olympic team. Australia has won shooting medals at four of the last five Olympics and looks likely to make it five from six. Ezra Bailey via Getty Images Mature business woman mentoring a younger woman. Older entrepreneurs are proving to be the fastest growing segment of new business owners in Australia, with almost 35 percent of all new businesses consisting of seniorpreneur start-ups. However, there is evidence to suggest that these new ventures often take the form of self-employment as a way out of unemployment, according to Dr Ruth Williams from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Advertisement Age discrimination unfortunately has been a barrier for them entering in mainstream employment, Williams told The Huffington Post Australia. Because of that, this is the only alternative for them to remain employed or to have an income. Williams believes that age discrimination is rampant in Australia, with research showing that a quarter of job seekers aged 45 to 64 remain, on average, unemployed for more than a year, compared with only 15 percent of those aged 44 or younger. The findings are discouraging given that a new survey released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in March, showed that Australians aged 45 and over are intending to work longer than they ever have before. People are expecting they will be working longer, Williams said. Either financially having to work longer because they dont have enough super but also socially, as a social contribution wanting to give back and being engaged in something productive. Advertisement The average age of the seniorpreneur is 57, dispelling the stereotype of an entrepreneur being a young male who is also a tech-savvy risk taker. They have the financial capital behind them, theyve had the opportunity over the years to accumulate more financial capital to more comfortably go into start-ups, Williams said. They have often had a lot of experience, knowledge and skill that they can bring to a start-up [and] have the depth and breadth of professional contacts to draw on. Paula McInerney, 58, and her husband Gordon, 60, started their travel blog, Contented Traveller, three years ago and have since featured in USA Today as one of their top travel writing couples. Advertisement We both came from long term corporate careers and loved them its not as though we were trying to escape but it was time for us to have a change, Paula told HuffPost Australia. I dont go into anything where I dont want to succeed. I entered the field wanting to do extremely well as quickly as we should. McInerney worked for 32 years as a teacher before retiring to dedicate her time to Contented Traveller and now works between 14 and 15 hours a day. Were exhausted all the time but not in a bad way, we get up excited every day, she said. I dont think age should be a barrier, I think perhaps it is for some people. I think you do have to have some guts to do itand make it happen. Its been one of the steepest learning curves in our lives -- but thats a good thing. Williams believes that there needs to be more support for seniorpreneurs to assist them in their business endeavours. Advertisement Theres much more support for younger people hoping to make their own start-up but as far as seniorpreneurs, I think they are being left in the dark mainly because they do have financial capital behind them so they arent seen as being in need of financial help, she said. Many people are of the opinion that seniorpreneurs are more at risk because if they do fail they dont have the same opportunity as young people to recoup their loss. Per Capitas Blueprint for an Ageing Australia has proposed numerous recommendations to the Government to enhance awareness of seniorpreneur opportunities. Americans arent paying much attention to the Panama Papers, undoubtedly irking the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who originally wanted to title the data dump, The Panama Rubber Band Watermelon. Michele Bachmann trolled Hillary Clinton by filming herself properly swiping a MetroCard, a move that will really go a long way in her campaign for city advocate. And of supporting Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham said, If I can do it, anyone can do it. He then stared off at no point in particular and shed a single tear. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Friday, April 8th, 2016: ORNERY SOCIALIST, JETSETTER WITH PALACE, TO MEET - This is not the beginning of a joke. James Oliphant and Megan Cassella: "Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will travel to the Vatican next week, setting up a possible meeting with Pope Francis that could serve to broaden his appeal to Catholic voters ahead of crucial nominating contests in a series of Northeastern states. Like the Pope, Sanders has made the economic inequality and the plight of the working class a central tenet of his message. His scheduled April 15 visit to Vatican City, where he will give an economic address at a conference, will come just days before Democrats in New York vote in their state primary. The following week will bring contests in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, all states with large populations of Catholic voters. In an interview on MSNBC, Sanders, who would be the first Jewish president if elected, described himself as a big, big fan of the pope, who leads the worlds 1.2 billion Catholics. Speaking to reporters in New York later, Sanders said he hoped to meet with Francis .'The popes schedule is determined by the Vatican but I would certainly be enthusiastic about that, said Sanders, 74, the Brooklyn-born son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. '... I think there is a possibility but that has not been scheduled." [Reuters] Advertisement RIP GAFFES - Jason Linkins: "The irony here, in terms of gaffes, is that back during the gaffe-addled election cycles of yesteryear, the issue was the medias propensity to act in bad faith and cause problems for candidates. Trump, for whatever reason, has largely elicited nothing but a good-faith effort from reporters, who bend over backwards trying to explain how the guy came up with the strange ideas he promulgates on the stump. During the gaffe cycles sillier season, such efforts forced politicians to be far more dextrous and much more fearful of earning some undeserved dose of accountability. Similar attempts to counter Trump have resulted in nothing of the sort." [HuffPost] WELFARE REFORM WAS TERRIBLE - Zach Carter: "Everything Bill Clinton said Thursday to defend his 1996 welfare reform law was false. Clinton claimed that he left the program with plenty of money for poor people, suggested that it helped reduce black poverty and that it was only the mean, nasty Republicans from the George W. Bush era who gutted it and hurt the poor. Clintons distortions of economic history and his own record are so outrageous that you will be shocked it is difficult to believe he was being honest. [HuffPost] CLINTON ALMOST APOLOGIZES -For the criminal justice portion of his '90s policy nostalgia comments. Nick Wing: "Former President Bill Clinton offered a more even-tempered analysis of his criminal justice legacy on Friday, in an apparent effort to smooth over the controversy surrounding his contentious exchange with protesters the day before. 'So I did something yesterday in Philadelphia. I almost want to apologize for it, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country,' Clinton told attendees at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Erie, Pennsylvania. 'It is true [the bill] had longer sentence provisions,' Clinton said Friday. 'It is true that they led to some people going to jail for too long in ways that cannot be justified. And I went to the NAACP convention last year and said that and said it was way past time to change.' Clinton went on to say that in his attempt to 'vigorously defend' his wife on Thursday, both he and the protester ended up 'talking past' one another. 'Weve gotta stop that in this country,' said Clinton. 'Weve gotta listen to each other.'" [HuffPost] Advertisement DELANEY DOWNER - As many as 1 million unemployed Americans are getting kicked off food stamps this year thanks to the welfare reform law Bill Clinton signed in 1996. States are in the process of imposing a three-month time limit on benefits for working-age adults who dont have children or jobs. Tens of thousands of Americans in nearly two dozen states reached the limit at the beginning of the month. These totally unnecessary cuts would increase demand on the nations charitable food system at a time when food banks and other hunger-relief groups are stretched to meet sustained high need, Diana Aviv, CEO of Feeding America, a national nonprofit that supports food banks, said Friday. HuffPost] Does somebody keep forwarding you this newsletter? Get your own copy. It's free! Sign up here. Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to huffposthill@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill CRACK TEAM OVER AT TRUMP HQ - Eliza Collins: "Donald Trumps team is encouraging its supporters in Washington state to sign up to be a potential Trump delegate. The only problem: The campaign's local crew sent its email on Friday -- two days after the filing deadline to appear on the printed ballot in Saturday's conventions and caucuses. The email, headlined 'invitation,' encouraged supporters to submit their Declaration of Candidacy for Delegate form. But the very next sentence says the filing deadline was Wednesday. 'You can still be elected as a Trump Delegate at your GOP County Convention this Saturday!' the April 8 email, which was obtained by POLITICO, says. 'If you have submitted a Declaration of Candidacy for Delegate form to your GOP County Chairman by the assigned deadline of 10:00am on April 6th.' While it appears the Trump campaign dropped the ball on the deadline to appear on the printed ballot, the billionaire's supporters can still try their hand at being nominated from the floor." [Politico] PITY LINDSEY GRAHAM - "Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, is pushing the Republican party to rally behind Ted Cruz as the 'primary alternative' to presidential front-runner Donald Trump, despite Graham's long and storied history of opposing his Senate colleague. 'Ted Cruz is Republican,' Graham said early Friday in a 'CBS This Morning' interview. 'He's smart as hell. He's run a very effective campaign. We have a lot in common but we also have some real differences. He is a real Republican from the more ideological spectrum than I am but he would not destroy our party.' When asked how he expects to convince fellow Republicans to support Cruz, Graham -- who once joked that the choice between Trump or Cruz for president was a decision between getting 'shot or poisoned' -- quipped: 'If I can do it, anybody can do it.'" [CBS News] AMERICANS DON'T CARE ABOUT THE PANAMA PAPERS - We would've asked about the celebrity nude selfie leak, just for extra facepalm-iness. Ariel Edwards-Levy: "The 'Panama Papers' -- a trove of 11.5 million leaked documents on tax avoidance by a slew of powerful figures -- are top news internationally. Several world leaders have come in for heavy criticism, and one, Icelands prime minister,resigned after details of his wifes ownership of an offshore firm were made public. With few Americans caught up in the scandal, however, the revelations havent made much of a splash in the U.S. According to a new HuffPost/YouGov survey, just one-third of Americans say theyve been following the Panama Papers 'very closely' or even 'fairly closely.' Two-thirds arent following the story closely at all, or werent even aware of it. Of those paying at least some attention, 89 percent say the accusations in the documents are probably true, and 71 percent consider the person who leaked the papers to be more of a hero than a criminal." [HuffPost] A coffee table book, just in time for the holidays, of America's strangest state legislators: "The head of the Tennessee legislature is banishing one of the members, state Rep. Jeremy Durham (R), after a state investigation found that he engaged in inappropriate physical conduct with government staffers and 'may pose a continuing risk to unsuspecting women.' State House Speaker Beth Harwell (R) has ordered Durham to move out of his current office to a building across the street, which is farther away from lawmakers, lobbyists and interns including the people he allegedly harassed but still not entirely isolated." [HuffPost's Amanda Terkel] Advertisement BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - Here is a very fat dog. Troll so hard: "Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) poked fun at Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton for not properly swiping her MetroCard while trying to ride the New York City subway this week. Bachmann posted a video to her Twitter account on Friday that threw shade at Clintons transportation difficulties...She then effortlessly swipes her card and pushes through the turnstile before saying, 'Just that easy, just that quick.'" [HuffPost's Amber Ferguson] COMFORT FOOD - Watch the first manned drone flight. - Love stories of couples who met at Washington's now-shuttered Millie and Al's - Cooking an obscure recipe from the 18th century. TWITTERAMA @emmaroller: I see Friday Afternoon Twitter is in full swing @JeffFlake: Okay, so perhaps my vote against this bill was a tad impetuous Freedom is perhaps the most elusive idea in modernist lore, but one to which we all subscribe. We can probably all agree that freedom is good and the opposite is bad. Agreeing on what freedom actually is or what's so great about it, however, is a whole other matter. Indeed, there is such a gaping disparity between how broadly this word is espoused and how vaguely it's defined, that it can often appear as though freedom is nothing more than a semantic conflation of positive attributes with nothing in common but a nice ring. 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza had his own contentious concept of freedom. An ostracized Dutch Jew and an assiduous heterodox, he treated everything from freedom to God to political legitimacy in his Latin masterwork Ethica, which was published posthumously. More than 350 years ago, the Jewish elders of Amsterdam issued a cherem against the young Spinoza, excommunicating him for taking too many doctrinal liberties. Today, the works of "the blessed one" can still excite and properly disquiet a reader in such a way that incurs some healthy cognitive dissonance (an under-appreciated virtue, but I'll get to that later). Advertisement Spinoza lived in a time of scientific ardor. Scientia potentia est and what not. To be taken seriously in the new discourse you had to speak physics, biology, chemistry and, most importantly, math; an adequate argument had to induce clear and persuasive formulas, preferably with general applicability. The more scholars succeeded in explaining natural phenomena through simple, prediction-yielding laws, the more convinced they grew of the power of the new sciences to reduce the entire universe down to an elegant and consistent model. But this new mission adumbrated some philosophical implications that many scholars and scientists at the time found troubling. If the world should really turn out to be stringently governed by only a small stock of pithy principles, wouldn't that imply that everything that has ever occurred or ever will occur is just an inevitable outcome of its preconditions? To many, the thought we might be living in a world tyrannized by causality was unpalatable. What was at stake was more than just metaphysical freedom, but also personal and psychological freedom with such dearly-held corollaries as free will and moral responsibility. And all this coming up inconveniently at a time when philosophes were stressing to husband "liberty" as sovereign of human rights. None of that seemed like a problem to Spinoza, who posited in Ethica a metaphysical scheme for a universe both pantheistic and utterly deterministic. Everything, Spinoza asserted, is part of a single, unified substance. He provocatively named that substance "God." This ubiquitous God, or Nature, is also infinite (by definition) in the sense that all that can happen must happen and does as part of an imminent sequence. But what does this bode for freedom? In favor of his harsh causal model, Spinoza was not only fine with jettisoning both corporeal and divine "freedom of will," he actually stated that getting rid of this "confused idea" is essential to achieving true freedom. Spinoza asseverated that a world of "free choices" is quite the opposite of free. It's a capricious world of arbitrariness and probabilities. To be liberated of these misconceptions, to elucidate ideas without prejudice, to understand and accept life for what it is -- that is Spinoza's picture of freedom. Only when able to intuit your own "partialness" -- your belonging to an inexorable and indifferent whole beyond your control -- are you really free. Advertisement There is an existential (and probably unwitting) insight in this model. Despite all the potential fatalism of his system, Spinoza still held an ethical program of justice. He was a staunch defender of civic freedoms as well as a proponent of democracy. Suggesting that good and evil are ontologically false concepts (for there's no judging authority nor a freedom to choose) apparently did nothing to moderate his political activities. And there it is -- the taste of cognitive dissonance. Holding on to two contradictory ideas at the same time is a beautifully human feat, and one, as I said, that's often undervalued (indeed, social psychologist Leon Festinger originally coined the term to explain anxiety). Yet for all its bad rep, I see in it a marvelous capacity that gets us through the incomprehensibility of life, allowing us to accept, even embrace, the absurd. It's what makes it possible to bear a happy moment while being fully aware of its fugacity. It is also serves us a humbling, for it shows us that contradictions can, in fact, coexist; it doesn't even matter whether the flaw is in the ideas ("incomplete ideas" as Spinoza put it), or in our own reasoning faculty, or even in our notion of contradiction -- all the same, the very fact that dissonance can occur exposes our fallibility in truth-telling. This is the real freedom that Spinoza presents to a postmodern reader -- ordering, then destabilizing, and always validating of life in the face of absurdity. To be free is to accept a deterministic world. It means to understand that the only resolution in life can come from conceding to its cruel, cold inevitability but to still call out its injustices with unadulterated rage and defiance. Spinoza hoped that his philosophical program will "tranquilize the spirit" of his readers. And, with the right dose of cognitive dissonance, it at least does mine. Advertisement *** ( Image courtesy of: Design Action Collective ) Last month, Berta Caceres, an Indigenous woman from Honduras, was assassinated for her role in the resistance movement against a multinationally-funded project aimed at building a dam on a river that her community, the Lenca, have inhabited, tended to, and fished for hundreds of years. Because Caceres was an internationally-respected activist and because the murder took place during the U.S. primary season, coverage in the media and outcry from the progressive left has been uncharacteristically intense. Activists, especially Black and Indigenous activists, are threatened or killed in Honduras and throughout Latin America on a regular basis, so what made the Caceres case any different? Caceres' story has resonated with many on the left, especially those who support senator Bernie Sanders, because it can be directly linked to the Democratic party's frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. In 2009, a coup in Honduras ousted left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya, a complicated and less-than-model leader, but one with an agenda that jeopardized U.S. business interests in a country it has long exploited and fashioned into the paradigm of a "banana republic." Drawing a direct line between the subsequent instability in Honduras and the violent repression of activists in Honduras, many in the U.S. are rightfully demanding that then Secretary of State Clinton be held accountable for her role in back-channelling support for a coup in Honduras. Berta Caceres, just months before her death, implicated Clinton, making the connection all the more transparent. Advertisement But that progressives chose this moment to care loudly about the goings on in a region ravaged by decades of U.S. foreign policy is itself violence. The truth is, at its core they primarily seek to weaponize a marginalized group, targets of a 600-year war against Indigenous people, as an anti-Clinton bludgeon. That they can incorporate the death of a Honduran activist into the American electoral discussion is itself a self-serving acquiescence of U.S. neo-imperialism. A recent report indicates that Latin America is the most dangerous region for environmental activists, with Honduras being the most precarious of all. Activists in the region routinely resist land grabs by multinational logging, mining, and agricultural firms, and in doing so, many of them risk death. The report indicates that almost 75% of the environmental or land activists murdered in 2014 were killed in Latin America, and 40% of those were Indigenous people. For the communities that resist those corporations that come to exploit resources and labor from Latin America, the battle is literally one of life and death. From Berta Caceres and the Lenca in south, to the Afro-Indigenous Garifuna community's resistance to displacement on the coast, the struggle in Honduras and throughout Latin America takes many forms, but is always dangerous. Such conditions serve the economic interests of Latin American elites who facilitate policies that disproportionately benefit U.S. corporations by providing raw materials, food crops, and crushingly cheap labor. This violence is manifest in the U.S. through commodities like low-cost clothing, year round access to tropical fruits at affordable prices, and a national addiction to coffee. These arrangements are not new; U.S. neo-imperalism in Latin America dates back at least a century to the Spanish-American war. We should note that Caceres' story and those of countless activists killed by state forces, death squads, or gangs throughout Latin America, relates to the U.S. election in much larger way than Hillary Clinton's involvement. The oppression of Latin America's most marginalized people, like that of others around the world, buttresses the standard of living in the United States. These conditions are the price of American comforts furnished by a global system of savagely unequal distribution of wealth and resources. Moreover, there isn't a single candidate running for the nomination from either party that can or will dismantle this system. This includes Sanders, who despite his condemnation of U.S. meddling in Latin American affairs, is also beholden to the fruits of U.S. hegemony. Sanders' politics are not transformative, rather they represent a return to the golden era of the welfare state, which was largely fortified by higher taxation rates and a global system of exploitations. Advertisement As it stands, the current choices articulated in the guise of representative democracy and electoral politics are between hard neo-imperialism and soft neo-imperialism, all that separates the two is the language of reform. But both iterations will build dams, will dry up rivers, will consume whole forests, and will displace communities. To move beyond these limitations, we must reevaluate our conceptions of fairness and engage our personal investments in neo-imperialism. Because power operates not only by the oppression of some, but also by investment in others, so much so, that they cannot imagine a world in which they are not the dominant force. Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration should be held accountable, but the buck doesn't stop there. When the election has long since been decided, will you forget Berta Caceres? Will Honduras fade from your mind once it no longer serves an American purpose? If we truly care for Berta's struggle, it important that we honor others like her and we must do so by treating their communities as fully human and their causes as timelessly relevant. We must not romanticize their struggle, nor decenter their narratives by repurposing the corpses of their fallen into battering rams for our political theater. Thanks to Bernie Sanders v. Hillary Clinton in the fight for the Democratic nomination for President, the number of women particularly within the Democratic Party has returned as the topic du jour in 2016. Some argue that the most qualified person should get the job, a sentiment with which I agree, although it has become clear in recent days being "qualified" clearly means different things to different people. That all being said, the fight to increase gender representation in politics has reached an uncomfortable crossroads for many in politics, because to increase gender representation in politics, sometimes the nice qualified male candidate will have to lose. There has been much conversation around Emily's List's endorsement in the 2016 US Senate Race in Maryland. Their candidate is Congresswoman Donna Edwards, an African American single mother, who amongst her work is perhaps best known for starting the National Network to End Domestic (NNEDV) and working with advocates to advance the Violence Against Women Act . Across the table, there is Congressman Chris Van Hollen, a very friendly guy by everyone's accounts, who is leader on the House Budget Committee. By all accounts both are qualified, some will argue Van Hollen is more qualified because he was appointed Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and higher ranking positions in the House, but Emily's List endorsed Donna Edwards, much to the consternation of many pro-choice Democrats in Maryland. "But Van Hollen is pro-choice!" yelled some. "Gender doesn't qualify Rep. Edwards for public office," snarked others. Both sentiments are true, but Emily's List mission is REALLY clear, they endorse pro-choice Democratic women for office, not men, women. Emily's List also is rather strategic in that they don't just endorse every Democratic woman running for office, they identify women candidates of promise while strategically targeting seats that could be flipped in favor of Democrats, or in the case of Maryland, seats that are solidly in the Democratic Party's column. Advertisement Why Emily's List endorsement and financial support of Donna Edwards in the Democratic primary makes people so angry is amusing, it's not like they've ever been unclear about their mission. And then it hit me, it's all well and good to support qualified pro-choice Democratic women running for office until it interferes with qualified pro-choice Democratic men running for office. Well inevitably this day was going to come. The day when Emily's List, and other PAC organizations like it (although Emily's List is the undisputed most effective leader in the field of either Party in recruiting and electing women) were going to be so successful at what they do, there would come the time when a qualified progressive pro-choice woman runs against a qualified progressive pro-choice man. There are many organizations doing the national work of electing more women to public office, Emily's List GOP equivalent is The WISH List. There are nonpartisans PACs who endorse pro-choice women like the National Women's Political Caucus and the Women's Campaign Fund or non partisan pro-life PACs like the Susan B. Anthony List. There are PACs focused on encouraging more young women to run like the Women Under Forty PAC. There are many more state PACs supporting women in Texas, North Carolina, New York, and Virginia. There are also some realizing that the PAC space for women is well occupied have focused on prepping the pipeline through training like Emerge America. Why is it important to elect more women to public office? Besides the idea that a democracy should look a little more like its people it purports to represent? Increased gender representation in government does in fact correlate to public policies that benefit women. Advertisement A Center for American Women in Politics, a nationally recognized as the leading source of scholarly research and current data about American women's political participation, showed through surveys of women legislators, they ranked health care, children, families, education, environment, and the elderly (issues women tend to consider more ) and women's rights legislation a top priority over other issues compared to their male legislator counterparts. Congresswomen in previous sessions of Congress were more likely to sponsor women's issues legislation, according to compiled paper released by Political Parity, a nonpartisan platform that works to change the face of US politics. Now, let me be clear. This also does not mean progressive women should run out and support the likes of Sarah Palin or Carly Fiorina for Vice President or President for the sake of gender representation. I, and many progressive women, find disagree with their politics and that of many other conservative women. Obviously we should take into account our own values when voting. What I am saying though, and what research shows is even conservative women have a perspective to bring that even conservative men can't. Before Sarah Palin began to be a political punchline, and a bane to progressives everywhere, she showed an understanding of the struggles women face in politics to be taken seriously. In a 2010 interview, Palin commented about the "double standard" for women who show emotional vulnerability in politics. Her candidacy as the 2008 GOP nominee for Vice President forced the Republican Party leadership, who are normally happy to dogwhistle sexist comments, into decrying sexism in the media. And as much as I found Carly Fiorina infuriating on women's rights, she did a surprisingly astute video flipping the gender paradigm and asking "what if women talked like men in the workplace" singling out every day sexist comments and questions women receive from their male colleagues and superiors. As someone who worked in business for years, where there were few woman, I can imagine Fiorina is very well acquainted with sexism in the workplace like many women are, which is what made that video rather smart for her. However, I will leave the struggles for gender parity within the Republican Party to my female colleagues who know it best across the aisle. As a former candidate for public office who also spent years working on Democratic campaigns to elect both men and women, I'm all about electing Democratic men who are great for the progressive cause and are allies in the continued fight for gender equality in public policy and all aspects of life, but I'm also about raising up the leadership and voices of Democratic women because I know their voices will bring value to the table, and there is nothing wrong with prioritizing that as a value. Advertisement "Power concedes nothing without a demand" said Frederick Douglass. He was right. Regarding Democratic women elected officials, we wouldn't be where we are now in Democratic politics without Emily's List. Many forget or don't know Barbara Mikulski would never have been fighting for Maryland in the US Senate had they not made her candidacy their first test case in 1986. Emily's List took a politically active woman who was not getting the support from the Democratic donors who were told to support her male opponent and gave her the money to compete. Emily's List created the "demand" that Douglass talked about and have gone on to recruit and elect many more women at the federal, state, and local level. Gone should be the days of male candidates and their female allies pushing their way into a public office role by calling women's political organizations out for supposedly playing identity politics. One Emily's List veteran in speaking to Joan Walsh about this topic in Walsh's recent article said in situations where they run a progressive woman against a progressive guy they are called "divisive": 'Why don't you go look for a race where you're not fighting a guy like that?', they continued, "Well, you know what that means? The white guys get the easy seats, and the women and people of color are fighting in the toughest districts--and often losing." It's ridiculous this pushback, when it's all well and good to support these organizations and their candidates when they don't threaten men of their own party. From talking to my colleagues in this work, I know there are women who've stepped aside over the years to make room for men running who were tapped by Party leaders on both sides of the aisle, but not many men do the same. Emily's List and organizations like it, step in to make sure women not only run for that seat, but have the support to take that seat the table. "I worried that the man I was starting to like would be disappointed or repulsed ... I needed to warn him so he wouldnt be surprised at what he saw or touched." Blue on white... The yellow of time... The customs checkpoints of chance like doors open to the sky... I discovered Francois Sureau in Le Point a quarter-century ago when he published, under the guidance of Jean Schmitt, then the magazine's editor, a report on the Balkans that appeared a short time before my own first voyage to Sarajevo. I encounter him again today with his strange new book -- Sur les bords de tout (On the Edges of Everything, from Gallimard) -- half-poem and half-story recalling frightened civilians having sex to keep warm in the basements of bombed out buildings, snipers alert to the slightest sign of life, victims never properly buried, and a Europe beginning to collapse under the weight of its acts of desertion and cowardice. What remains of a city when no one any longer thinks to tell its story? What remains of Sureau's Lieutenant Passavant des Baleines except the vague legend of which from book to book, and in this new book more than ever, the author has striven at once to give evidence and to erase all traces? And who is this writer who, over the course of thirty years, has moved from a youthful novelistic art that charmed the old guard of the Academie Francaise to a taste for evangelical mysteries, long tales of asceticism, or, as here, epics without an odyssey. Advertisement Whatever the answer, few contemporary writers seem to have had as many lives as Sureau. A lawyer in one. An officer of the foreign legion in another. Founder, in a third, of a refugee welcome center in France. In still another a student of spiritual struggles and the lives of saints. And now this enigmatic new effort in the tradition of Cendrars, but a Cendrars who has been exposed to Pierre Schoendoerffer's Le crabe-tambour (Drummer Crab) and Gottfried Benn's Double Life. * * * Another aficionado and practitioner of the double life is Renaud Girard, my "little comrade," as the expression was in the folklore of the Ecole Normale, of which he and I are two irregular graduates. In the first of his two existences, he wears the get up of sarcastic dandy as he lectures everyone of France's ministers of foreign affairs over a period of thirty years; wows regulars at the major conferences organized by Le Figaro with his strategic geopolitics; and, in his new book, Le monde en guerre (The World at War, Carnets Nord/Montparnasse), holds forth on the "humiliation of Russia," the "traps" of the intervention in Libya, and the "new American hegemony." In the second life, by contrast, he is the great reporter for the same paper, the scholar of mass graves, the technical expert on every coup d'etat on the planet, a man whose taste for adventure, intuition about troops and terrain, sense of time without history, boldness, and lofty disdain for danger (which I always thought he discounted almost entirely, believing that it somehow did not apply to him) could teach a few things to most of his colleagues, including those working for the English-speaking press. Advertisement So who is this man, exactly? Is he, drawing on the first of those two lives, a sort of Barres who, believing that one cannot chase wars all day, would spend his afternoons at the Cercle Interallie? Or is he, drawing from the second life, like a James Brooke who lost his Sarawak kingdom but had the time to read The Man Who Would Be King, Lord Jim, and the work by Jacques Riviere that marked (well before Roger Stephane) the birth of the modern adventurer. Scholar and adventurer, technocrat and foot soldier of truth: the mixture is uncommon. * * * And then, living "squared," so to speak, there is Pierre Leroy. Insiders know the very discreet head of a global communications group whose financial results are hot news on the CAC 40. Lovers of literature, who are insiders of another sort, will soon have a chance to discover, thanks to a large exhibition of Leroy's literary trophies that will run at the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal from April 21 through May 24, the provocative collector of Philippe Chery's original drawing for the frontispiece of Sade's Justine, of letters to Napoleon's minister of police, Joseph Fouche, demanding the release of the only modern writer to have spent most of his life in prison for the crime of debauchery, and an epistle from Sade to his wife who had just asked him to have her "dirty old laundry" sprung from the Bastille. So, again, who is this "time traveler" whose "very well informed pessimism" Philippe Sollers describes in his fine preface to the catalogue of the exhibition? How does this unpredictable but scrupulous bibliophile, who one suspects would be ready to walk into hell for this manuscript by Albert Camus, that handwritten letter from Diderot, or the last bill Freud sent to Mahler's family (the day after the composer's death!), square with the former lieutenant of Jean-Luc Lagardere who rose, upon the latter's death, to run his empire? Is it once again the classic story of the adventurer compensating for whatever is alienating (that is, whatever is subject to the whim of others) in the respectable part of his life? Or is it, rather, the story of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Wakefield, who needed a normal life if not to conceal then at least to cool the devouring aspect of his true passion? Or, what amounts to the same thing, that of Georges Bataille atoning in the medals room of the Bibliotheque Nationale for the crime of having written Histoire de l'oeil (Story of the Eye) and Madame Edwarda? Advertisement Another way of being yourself while being another. Or of living a blend of several lives simultaneously, as the Pythagoreans aspired to do. Do not miss this exhibition at the Arsenal! "The most effective learning technologies are those that track a student's progress wherever and whenever they learn, connecting their mastery - not rote memorization - to lessons that keep them in their optimal learning zone." -- Jessie Woolley-Wilson The goal of DreamBox Learning's interactive online math tools and games is to help learners think for themselves and make sense of math. The software provider focuses on elementary and middle school math education with an innovative blending of games and personalized learning. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessie Woolley-Wilson, the President and CEO of DreamBox Learning. Jessie has a long history with ed-tech (including work with Blackboard, Inc.), and was honored as a "Woman of Influence" by Puget Sound Business Journal for making an impact in the ed-tech industry. I was eager to ask her about the current stakes for education, as the tides are changing rapidly across the globe towards mixed classrooms. She offers tips from her vast experience that can help teachers adjust to the increased use of tech and Internet in the classroom. These tips will ensure that students remain focused on crucial areas of knowledge and develop critical thinking skills, despite the distracting and overwhelming amount of (mis)information online. Advertisement "There is a lot of data out there, and teachers want to leverage it, but they want meaningful information they can use in daily practice that won't require a lot of additional time and training to understand and use." -- Jessie Woolley-Wilson Jessie, critical thinking and problem solving are important skills to help students assess and differentiate the quality of content found on the Internet. How can these skills be taught in the classroom relative to digital content? How can they be developed at home? There's a new paradigm in teaching and learning that matches what is going on in the real world, both in terms of helping students meet their full potential while mirroring the powerful technology that is shaping our world. Every day, many students engage with technology outside of school time because it is relevant to how they live. Since technology is a way to help reach, teach, and engage learners, why not allow students and teachers to leverage this powerful medium inside classrooms? Demand is growing rapidly as more learning guardians -- parents, teachers, tutors, and other invested adults -- experience and truly understand the benefits of using personalized learning technologies in classrooms. We partner with learning guardians to help them adopt and scale blended learning models that complement their math curriculum for deeper comprehension and understanding. It brings together great teaching, a rigorous curriculum, and meaningful, actionable insights that help cultivate mathematicians. Advertisement We believe that learning should be personalized, powerful, and seamlessly integrated with what happens both inside and outside of classrooms. The most effective learning technologies are those that track a student's progress wherever and whenever they learn, connecting their mastery - not rote memorization - to lessons that keep them in their optimal learning zone. With nimble, dynamically adaptive and highly motivational learning technologies, students can get what they need exactly when they need it while their learning guardians are kept in the loop to maximize the support they can provide. "The ability to use classroom data that is readily accessible in real time, actionable for both the teacher and learner, and enables informed adjustments to the learning task is what educators are asking for to close gaps and raise achievement." -- Jessie Woolley-Wilson What are some of the major frustrations and stresses caused by technology in the classroom? How can this be managed or changed? There's not enough actionable information amidst an ocean of data.... some call this DRIP: data rich and information poor. There is a lot of data out there, and teachers want to leverage it, but they want meaningful information they can use in daily practice that won't require a lot of additional time and training to understand and use. The ability to use classroom data that is readily accessible in real time, actionable for both the teacher and learner, and enables informed adjustments to the learning task is what educators are asking for to close gaps and raise achievement. Our math experience at DreamBox provides ongoing formative assessment that is seamlessly integrated into instruction in real time giving teacher and learner the feedback they need for consistent and constant improvement. Further, we provide educators with the benefits of deep and relevant professional development to help them understand those insights for successful blended learning implementation. Does each individual need to learn technology differently, at a different pace? Are there some universal standards that all schools should reach for in terms of digital literacy? I like to think in terms of universal principles: All students deserve an engaging and personalized learning experience that helps them think deeply and critically while supporting their academic and personal success. Learning technologies should be designed to support both learners and learning guardians as they partner to build competence and confidence. Technology is not a substitute for great teaching. On the contrary, technology should allow kinds of learning that cannot happen without it. As a result, students should experience a highly personalized kind of learning that allows them to be able to be more active in their learning and ultimately discover new understandings because of how they think and what they, themselves, try and do. The role of learning technologies should be to support, empower and engage all learners--including girls and minority students--who need to take full advantage of next generation learning experiences like adaptive learning. When we help all students reach their full learning potential, that is a win for everyone. We go one step further by providing every lesson in Spanish with every subscription to ensure English Language Learners can take advantage of this transformative technology. We want all students to gain a conceptual understanding of mathematics and gain the self-confidence they need to do more, not just in math but in whatever they do. We want every child to be well-equipped to embrace their interests, particularly in STEM-related careers, to effectively close the equity gap. Another key component of closing that gap is providing ease of use and accessibility both inside and outside of the classroom, so students can learn anytime, anywhere--at their own pace and level. We want to encourage learners to persist as they move forward and inspire them to get excited about math. When kids win, communities win. When communities win, we all win. It's simple - and very powerful. "I believe that investing in EdTech simply cannot wait if we want to close those opportunity gaps. We need a shared sense of urgency that is fueled by a compelling promise to unlock the learning potential of every child, and in doing so, unlock their human potential." -- Jessie Woolley-Wilson Advertisement How can we work to bridge the gap between the under-privileged digitally unsophisticated and the digitally proficient? With all the promise of individualized instruction for every learner, there remain significant barriers for some students. The good news is that they are being broken down. The past few years have seen a dramatic and meaningful expansion of broadband access and availability of digital tools, yet despite this progress, there are still inequities in access. For example, the 2015 FCC Broadband Progress Report states that approximately 35 percent of schools lack access to fiber, meaning the high-quality broadband with appropriate speed students need to work. We also hear from Pew Research that some 5 million households with school-age children do not have high-speed internet service at home, which leads to a "homework gap" for students who need access the most. For students who don't yet have technological fluency, providing access at school and in the community can help level the playing field. When the walls of the classroom come down, learning opportunities open up. Research shows that increasing the time students are actually engaged in learning, along with other factors such as high expectations and the use of data to guide instruction, results in what we want for all students: confidence, love of learning, and higher achievement. I believe that investing in EdTech simply cannot wait if we want to close those opportunity gaps. We need a shared sense of urgency that is fueled by a compelling promise to unlock the learning potential of every child, and in doing so, unlock their human potential. That's good for the learner, their family, their community and the entire world. What is your Dream Dare Do for learning technology in the next 5 or 10 years? Our Dream is to provide every child with the ability to reach their full potential by ensuring they have access to the best learning opportunities. We think personalized learning is optimal learning, and that the most personalized opportunities can be provided with the support of innovative learning technologies that meet the learner where they are and dynamically adapt to their needs as they progress. We Dare to seek to delight and surprise learners by delivering a blended, personalized experience that gives students access to the content they are ready for when they need it and ensuring that progression is based on mastery, not memorization. We also seek to delight teachers as much as we delight students. This requires continued investments in our pioneering Intelligent Adaptive Learning technology that so many others seek to emulate. We Do intend to keep growing, improving, and being adaptive, including our commitment to partner with educators. There is no more important endeavor than to support great teaching and learning. Our collective futures depend on it. C. M. Rubin and Jessie Woolley-Wilson (All photos are courtesy of Dreambox Learning) Join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. MadhavChavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. EijaKauppinen (Finland), State Secretary TapioKosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Geoff Masters (Australia), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Professor Manabu Sato (Japan), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (LyceeFrancais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today. The Global Search for Education Community Page It's not every Sunday morning that a nice Jewish girl (well, OK, to be honest, more a woman of a "certain age" than a girl) finds herself in the center seat of the center row of a 5,000-seat sanctuary in an Evangelical church listening and foot tapping to a 200 member choir and a 100-person orchestra! And if that wasn't enough of a shell shock for me, I was a scheduled speaker at this special service and knew not only would I have to climb the steps to that enormous stage and face 5,000 people but that I would follow world renown Pastor John Hagee! But I've gotten ahead of myself so let's start the story back at the beginning. In November of 2015, I had the incredible opportunity to take Bishop Keith Butler, the founder and spiritual leader of Word of Faith Church, on a private tour of ALYN Hospital in Jerusalem. ALYN is a well-kept secret. It's a jewel in Israel's crown of accomplishments that too few have heard about or seen. It's the most amazing pediatric rehab center where absolutely everything needed to rehab a physically disabled child (and his or her family) is under one roof. Bishop Butler flew expressly to Israel to see ALYN for himself on the recommendation of his dear friend Rabbi Jonathan Hausman. The Rabbi has been connected to ALYN for decades and I am lucky enough to count on him as my friend, my personal rabbi and a member of my Board; therefore one of my bosses. Advertisement In November, in Israel, Bishop Butler reacted as everyone does after seeing ALYN. He was deeply moved. I honestly believe that if someone tours ALYN and doesn't have that reaction they should go -- immediately without stopping -- to their cardiologist and find out what's wrong with their heart. Butler's heart is in tip top condition and minutes after we left ALYN, he extended the most incredible invitation to me. He asked me to come to Southfield on Sunday, April 3rd and be a part of his church's CELEBRATE ISRAEL DAY. I was asked to talk about ALYN and told that Pastor John Hagee, Founder and Leader of CUFI -- the largest organization of Evangelicals devoted to Israel -- was another invited guest and would give the morning's keynote address. To be in the company of two giants in the Evangelical world is an experience I will never forget. Butler and Hagee could not be more different physically. But their hearts and minds are one -- as if they were identical twins. Both are so committed to Israel and so dedicated to the safety of wellbeing of all Jews and especially the continuity and future of the State of Israel. They both spoke on Sunday and both quoted the Bible and I learned much about how the Christian and Jewish scriptures coincide which I did not know. But it is their shared passion and commitment to Israel that is still resonating with me. I'm also reflecting on how much we have in common despite our very different outward appearances and our very diverse lives. There was not a person in that sanctuary that did not sing Israel's praises. When the Word of Faith church sang the Star-Spangled Banner everyone stood and cheered. And when they sang Israel's anthem, Hatikva, there was not a dry eye in the house. I've never heard Hatikva sung so beautifully and soulfully and it reminded me how precarious Israel's existence is and how crucial to democracy in the Middle East she is. I was enveloped in the love that Bishop Butler has infused into the creation of Word of Faith and that Pastor Hagee has infused into the creation of CUFI. The feeling that I had sitting there in awe and appreciation for the service and the day reminded me of how I feel every time I am at ALYN. I feel enveloped in the love that was infused into the creation of the ALYN Hospital and the love that I see there every single day as they treat the heroic kids. Advertisement So I addressed the congregation. I speak publicly all the time but I admit to being nervous having to follow the giant that Hagee is and nervous hoping I would meet Butler's expectations. I told the audience about ALYN, of course, but I also told them that I know that peace is possible in the Middle East because it exists at ALYN. In addition to the rehabilitation miracles that we perform there every day with children who many others deem "not worth the effort" we also are world leaders in cultural diversity. The entire span of Israeli society can be seen at ALYN. Our patients, families and staff are white, black, Jewish, Christian, Arab, Orthodox, Muslim, secular and more. Learned prejudices and hatred are put aside to face the seemingly insurmountable challenges of living with severe physical disabilities. Yes, in the face of adversity, teamwork and love can rule the day. Then I looked into this massive sea of faces and quoted Pastor Hagee who had said in his remarks "Doing shows your love" and invited everyone to do the most they can for the kids of ALYN so that these courageous kids can stand up and dance with joy and love -- whether on their own legs or with the help of crutches, walkers and wheelchairs -- just like every single one of the 5,000 at Word of Faith did in Southfield. We are forever grateful to have had the opportunity to introduce the ALYN kids to so many new potential friends. I hope I made a joyful noise. Are you tired of living in the struggle, the rat race, and the hum-drum of life? Are you ready to experience something MORE for yourself? More money, more love, more happiness, more peace? Are you ready to live your fullest life as you've always wanted? If you aren't on that law of attraction train, you need to get on it. Mindfulness and positive thinking aren't just for spiritualists, monks, and hippies. Some of the most successful business entrepreneurs, artists, celebrities, and influencers are using these simple metaphysical tools to live their best lives and attract unlimited abundance. So here are four ways you can tap into that power and attract abundance and positivity into your life! Advertisement Photo: Stocksy 1. GRATITUDE Start acknowledging all the amazing things that you have in your life right now. Everything, and I mean everything, starts with gratitude. It helps you to be a good steward of what you have now, so that you can learn to take care of your empire later. At The Moderna and in my acting career, I never set an intention or start a ritual without gratitude. That perspective is so important in receiving more into my life. 2. AFFIRMATIONS I AM. These are probably the two most powerful words that anyone can speak about oneself. Whether it's good or bad, fearful or courageous, what we think and feel about ourselves in our minds and words are reflected in our outer lives. The amazing author, metaphysician, and entrepreneur Sarah Prout mentions that "the key thing to remember is that the Universe responds to how you think and feel." So stop saying "I'm so broke" every time you open your wallet! Think about how the Universe responds to that type of rhetoric about yourself. In order to attract beautiful abundance, you must start thinking and feeling abundance and positivity over yourself, and even better, saying it aloud. I often say my affirmations with a corresponding crystal for an extra positive and magical boost. 3. TRY SOMETHING NEW Make a bold break with anything that impedes your creativity, your growth, your vision. If you are in a place where you want 'more' of something in your life, then maybe it's time to try doing something different than your regular routine. It can be as simple as finding a new route home or trying a new restaurant for dinner, to something a little more drastic like getting an amazing new haircut or transitioning from your 9 to 5 to a new career. The truth is YOU have the power to make things happen in your life. All you have to do is take the first small step - and continue making steps as you grow. Advertisement 4. CLEAR OUT AND LET GO Like the tip above, it's so important to get rid of old, stale energy and habits that don't serve you anymore. Quite often I find myself holding onto objects, ideas, and people that maybe I needed at one time in my life or worked well for me in the past, but that I don't need anymore. It's time to thank the person, idea, or experience for what they were supposed to teach you and any lessons learned, and move on. It's all about letting go to make room for new energy to enter your life. A great place to start with some brilliant insights on physically clearing out your space is Marie Kondo's praised best-seller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. As a graduate student, I once asked a prominent professor for a summary of the philosophical arguments for immortality. He was excited by the request and invited me to his lecture on the topic. While I considered this a great privilege, I could not manage scheduling the required four hours, so I politely declined. "Ah," the professor said, "you asked me a question about immortality, but you do not have the time!" The United States cannot afford to risk that same mistake on nuclear security. If we are to bring the probability of a nuclear catastrophe to as close to zero as possible, we must make the time. Understanding how nuclear threats have evolved and how to resolve them most effectively is an urgent national priority. Advertisement Imagine, for a moment, just one of several scenarios. A terrorist organization collects enough radiological material to set off what is called a "dirty bomb" in the stadium of a major city, triggering widespread harm and panic. A smuggled package on a container ship -- with no need for a sophisticated weapons delivery system -- explodes in a major United States harbor, causing widespread destruction and loss of life. Or worse yet, a reckless nation state actor such as North Korea's autocratic strongman launches a missile attack against Seoul or Los Angeles. Each future scenario is alarmingly feasible. No one enjoys thinking about nuclear dangers, but ignoring them would amplify an ongoing threat to us all. Americans deserve assurance that our best and brightest minds are fervently engaged in their defense. They should be able to trust that policymakers on both sides of the aisle are working together for innovative and sustainable solutions to nuclear security concerns. In this age of anxiety and sound bite foreign policy, constituents should know that Congress is leading when it matters most. The leaders who courageously helmed our formidable nuclear enterprise through World War II and the Cold War have passed the baton to a new generation of policymakers and scientists. Now, as our world grows more complex, the challenges of nuclear proliferation have multiplied. The binary concept of mutually assured destruction is no longer as relevant in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment. Non-state actors play havoc with global treaties and normative rules, seeking to do horrifying harm. Rational responses cannot be guaranteed. Despite these challenges, of all the important issues that come before Congress, nuclear security seldom surfaces in our national conversation outside highly specialized forums. The problem is real. The United States and our allies face a stark deficiency: nuclear security as a multidimensional issue with no longstanding organic constituency in Congress. That constituency must be built. Advertisement Recognizing the problem when I first came to Congress, the Nuclear Security Working Group was founded to advance this discussion and help prevent the unthinkable. While the analytical and tactical expertise rightly remain embedded in the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, the Department of State and other executive branch entities, Congress must create an agile policy environment in this age of globalization and swiftly advancing technology. We also need an awakening of citizen concern -- and there is very little. The need for broader involvement extends in a particular way to millennials, the coming stewards of our nuclear security. The community of responsible nations has much work ahead to achieve an ideal nuclear security settlement. Advances in reprocessing technology, nuclear power, and weapons infrastructure, once the exclusive domain of the nation state, pose serious ongoing proliferation concerns. Although many countries have altogether renounced pursuit of nuclear weapons, turbulent situations in the Middle East and elsewhere are worsening an already hazardous global nuclear dynamic. A new architecture for nuclear security demands an ongoing effort by the responsible nations of the world. The fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit hosted by President Obama in Washington at the end of March represented another important step in securing loose nuclear materials and heightening collaboration. We need to sustain these international gatherings and multinational efforts to achieve an effective 21st-century nuclear security strategy, one that prioritizes common ground on important strategic and nonproliferation priorities, in a cooperative campaign to make our world safer. Looking ahead, I anticipate an augmented role for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a primary implementing agency of future verification initiatives. A revitalized spirit of unity, common purpose, and renewed dedication is essential to nuclear security in the 21st century. Our challenge is that we cannot react to a nuclear crisis; we must act to prevent one. If we have the time. The views expressed above are the author's own. This post is part of a blog series produced by The Huffington Post and Carnegie Corporation of New York about issues related to the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit. World leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., on March 31-April 1 to address the threat of nuclear terrorism and steps toward creating a global nuclear-security system to prevent it. To view posts from the series, visit here. Join the conversation on Twitter at @CarnegieCorp, #NSS2016. "Cobra!" the three-year old cried out, pointing to a soldier. Cobra was the southern designation for soldiers from the northern army in Congo-Brazzaville. The soldier frowned and walked over to the boy and his mother. "You're lucky a truce is on," he admonished, "or I would kill that little future soldier of yours." Roughly half of little David's three years had been spent during war. When the family first fled from their home, David often clapped with glee at the sound of gunfire or explosions. Relatives naturally urged his mother to keep him quiet lest he attract soldiers' attention. These fugitives were often exposed to dangers and disease. In one morning's dim light, it appeared to David's mother Medine as if he had grown a full head of hair overnight; she quickly discovered that it was instead a swarm of mosquitoes. On one occasion David was stiff and dying from severe malaria. Although Medine holds a PhD from France, she was a fugitive like everyone else from her town, and she had no money to pay the only available clinic. Nevertheless the owner, a family friend, gave David the last injection that he had left. Advertisement But now a truce had been established, and Medine and David had hope of a different life, even of coming to the United States. They would not be seeking refugee status, which is in any case difficult to obtain. (In recent years the U.S. has accepted seventy to eighty thousand refugees per year, yet displaced persons worldwide have reached some sixty million, or nearly seven-hundred fifty times that number; Refugee Admission Ceiling.) She was coming to the United States for a different reason: she was engaged to an old friend--me. Most of the children from her neighborhood had died during the war, but her precious David had survived. Because David's genetic father had abandoned him before his birth, David wondered why he did not have a father. Now, however, Medine was able to tell him that he had a father. He quickly announced happily to a visitor, "I have a father who loves me." We all underestimated, however, the difficulties of immigration. A fiancee visa should be a simple matter; at least at that time it was much faster than a marriage visa, requiring us to wait for our wedding. But war had closed the U.S. consulate in Brazzaville, so Medine and David needed to travel to the neighboring country of Cameroon. For that journey, she needed a valid passport, but the new government had invalidated the former government's passports, including the one that Medine had kept for eighteen months while she was internally displaced due to war. Advertisement While they waited in Pointe-Noire for a new passport, David fell sick with malaria again; Medine ran crying in the rain with his limp body to a clinic. Because she still had some of the money I had sent, she was able to buy the medicine necessary to save his life. Just before they left for the capital to check on the passport again, a storm blew off their shack's tin roof, drenching them as slugs floated above the mud floor below. Storms terrified David for a long time after that experience. After we reunited in Cameroon, we discovered to our horror that a lawyer had forged one of Medine's documents; the nature of fiancee visas required me to return to the U.S., visiting Medine again only once she had the document. Medine had to return to Brazzaville, leaving David behind for his safety. David could not understand why we had to leave him with Medine's host family in Cameroon. "My Mommy is never coming back!" he cried each night. Finally, after several weeks, we all reunited again in Cameroon. Immigration is not always a quick process, but for us it was further delayed by 9/11 and by an anthrax scare that shut down the Vermont Service Center. Although the immigration service faxed us their approval, the Consulate needed it by diplomatic pouch--which never arrived. The Consulate insisted that the Immigration Service had lost the file, whereas the Immigration Service insisted that the Consulate had lost it. Given reports from friends, the fault likelier lay with the grossly overworked Immigration Service, but for us it made little difference. "I will come to Philadelphia with you tomorrow," David insisted to the end. Heartbroken, I had to warn him that he might not be able to come with me, since as a professor I would soon have to start my semester or risk losing my means to support us. "Who will play with me?" he pleaded. As the Consulate informed us, just before my mandatory return to the U.S., that the official approval still had not arrived, I held David up to the window. "Can you explain to my son why he cannot come with me?" I had been teaching David English, but he didn't understand our conversation and simply smiled at the woman. She winced uncomfortably, but there was nothing she could do. Advertisement Alongside Medine's family, Medine and David had been displaced within Congo for eighteen months. But problems with U.S. immigration now displaced them, this time away from family, for eight more months. David is now a well-adjusted music major at Asbury University. I am so proud of my son. But he went through more suffering in his first four years than many U.S. citizens experience in their first four decades. Some voices today ignore the hardships that future residents of our country experience waiting for visas that already often take too long. That time is long especially for children for whom long waits may constitute a significant proportion of their lives so far. Concerns about terrorists among refugees are understandable, but do they justify traumatizing those for whom the United States remains a legitimate beacon of hope? Those of us who try to work in the field of human rights can clearly see that the speeches about the de-activation of paramilitaries do not coincide with the truth. They want us to think that the paramilitary organizations that are very active these days are just gangs of common criminals, without any political objectives and with no relation to the armed forces or any other government agency or any members of the political class. But, your Excellency, why would it be that those organizations, with new names, are constantly sending threatening messages to social leaders and to defenders of human rights, using language that supports official policies? Have you not noticed, Mr. Ambassador McKinley, how many of those threats have been fulfilled implacably, with disappearances and extrajudicial executions, displacements and exiles, while, as always, the identity of the perpetrators of such crimes remains a mystery? It concerns me profoundly, your Excellency, that the new military assistance from your government strengthens and provides new resources to the Army and the Police so that they can transgress, as they have been doing, the rules of international humanitarian law in the provinces of Cauca, Narino, and Putumayo, especially in the campesino and indigenous areas. They refuse to recognize the areas of civilian population, involving people in the war against their will, using them as shields against their militant enemies, producing destruction of their crops and their houses and victimizing innocent people that they then try to pass off as combatants. No, you did not miss my last article; I have not written since January 24, 2016. And no, nothing has happened in Greece since then ... no pension reform, no sales of NPLs, nothing. And, nothing is likely to happen for the foreseeable future. Life in Greece is the opposite of the weather in Kansas. In Kansas if you do not like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change. In Greece if you do not like it, come back in five years and nothing will have changed. The biggest "crisis" last month was the Greece's Migration Policy Minister referring to FYROM (The Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia) as Macedonia. The headline in Business Insider read "Greece's migration minister has reported resigned for calling Macedonia 'Macedonia.'" The Defense Minister demanded the Migration Policy Minister resign and threated to do so himself if Tsipras did not accept the Policy Minister's resignation. I realize this is a touchy issue and I do not want to minimize it in any way, but with everything going to hell, is this really the most important issue? Maybe Greece needs a wall? The postscript is that two weeks later the Defense Minister made peace with the Prime Minister and pledged his allegiance forever. Advertisement The Institutions (formerly the Troika) returned to Greece on April 4th to give their progress report. The report will likely be ... "Greece is trying, they need to do more, blah, blah, blah." The next "big" event is the 3.7 billion payment due from Greece to the EU in July. If it is paid, it will be done with smoke and mirrors, or the EU will simply give Greece the 3.7 billion so Greece can give it back to them. The facts surrounding the refugee crisis are as confusing in Greece as they are to the outside world. As of today, there are an estimated 52,000 refugees in Greece. The EU has decided Greece is going to send refugees back to Turkey. 200 people were returned the first day of the program and then the process was halted as refugees began demanding political asylum. Certain islands have a serious problem and the Port of Piraeus is teeming with refugees, but so far there is no significant unrest in Athens. It does not appear the crisis is having a detrimental impact on tourism for the summer. Well now, for the banks ... we have analyzed the year-end 2015 financials for the four systemic banks, which reflect the 14.4 billion capital increase in the fourth quarter. The banks took 10 billion of the 14.4 billion and applied it against reserves. The average of the four systemic bank stocks is down 28.7 percent year-to-date. The reason for the pessimism is simple ... the banks need more capital. The official position of the banks is the following: There are 234 billion in loans on the books of the four systemic banks. Of this 234 billion, 113 billion are non-performing (48 percent). The banks have taken 58 billion of reserves against the NPLs. The banks claim that if loans are sold for 80 percent of the collateral value (39 cents on the Euro for each NPL), there is no need for any capital. Advertisement Rather than editorialize about the collateral value, let us look at several data points. For starters, the Cypriot banks, which are much farther along in the NPL process than their Greek counterparts, estimate that NPLs make up 62 percent of total loans. This is a more realistic number for the Greek banks, since we have personally seen a number of "performing" loans that will require 60-plus percent write-offs. The Hellenic Stability Fund has estimated that of the NPLs, 60 percent of them are "unmanageable," which is code for "they are worthless." So the question then becomes, what will the recovery be for NPLs that can be managed? For our purposes, let us assume the number is 39 percent (the banks current assumption for all NPLs). So if the NPLs are 62 percent (145 billion) and the recovery is 39 percent on the 40 percent of NPLs that can be managed, the total recovery will be 15.6 percent. Therefore, the additional recap needed for the banks is 38 billion. The current market value of the banks is 9 billion. The current holders of the banks will be diluted to 20 percent, best case. Advertisement Here are three incremental stories. The alarming thing about the three loans, is that they are all "performing." Company A had 14 million of loans against a business doing 45 million in sales. The company was running short of cash and their base business was suffering along with the worldwide economy. Company A was able to convince the bank to loan them another 14 million unsecured, which they proceeded to invest in quasi-related businesses. Company A lost their entire investment and at the same time saw sales drop from 45 to 25 million and EBITDA dropped to -1 million. Equity is now -15 million. Without an immediate solution, Company A will go from a performing loan to closing the operation and be liquidated. Assuming the property, plant and equipment is sold for 50 percent of stated value, the bank will recover 3 million on a 28 million exposure. Remember, this is a "performing" loan. Company B has 20 million of loans (non-performing) and 1 million of EBITDA. The banks can either lend 3 million more to Company B and convert the 20 million loan to a 23 million (20 + 3) loan, with a reduced coupon for ten years or convert 75 percent of the loan to equity and reduce the loan to 5 million, which can be serviced and paid in five years. Company C has 5 million of a sale and lease back on its headquarter building. The lease payments are over three times current market rent. Should Company C default on the payment? Should the bank renegotiate the lease to reflect current market? These are three real world examples. There are literally thousands more. The NPL situation in Greece is reaching (if it has not already) a "death spiral." The amount of equity being raised by the banks cannot keep pace with the potential growth of NPLs. Advertisement The only solution is for the banks to begin to sell NPLs now. Prices will initially be low, but as NPLs are sold and new capital comes into the system the self-fulfilling nature of new capital will lead to higher prices for the NPLs. If NPLs are not sold, the banking system will collapse and the cost of a bailout will be added to Greece's 347 billion of debt (nationaldebtclocks.org). A postscript is the WikiLeaks report that the IMF was considering a Greek default? This is news? Greece is "in" default. We can all pretend that it is not, but who in their right mind thinks Greece can recover given the current structure of sovereign debt and the banks? Other than some rhetoric, including the leader of New Democracy calling for snap elections, it is unlikely Greece will face elections in 2016. While Syriza is happy to stall any reform, New Democracy is not in position to assume power and if they did, they would only inherit the responsibility to pass and implement unfavorable reforms. New Democracy has been unable to articulate a platform that resonates with the Greek people and until they do, they will not come to power. Ritz-Carlton Credo! Do you have and instill similar core values in your team? After breakfast, I gave my speech, and then the group came back to the dining hall for lunch. I'm just one of nearly four hundred people, but that staff member was standing with a black napkin on a platter at the entrance, waiting for me. I could not have been more pleased, with her and with Ritz-Carlton. Was it in her nature, her DNA, to anticipate a customer's needs like that? Or was it Ritz-Carlton's training? Then a few days later I experienced the other end of the spectrum--the most negative customer service experience I've encountered in quite a while--again, related to public speaking. This time, it had to do with shipping my books to two different upcoming speaking engagements. On a rainy, nasty Sunday afternoon my son and I packed and loaded 22 boxes of books into my SUV. We take time out of a busy weekend to find a FedEx office location. My son and I walked in, and the place is completely empty except for two employees, a man, and a woman. He is doing something with the cash register. She is doing absolutely nothing as far as I could tell, but it must have been quite absorbing to her because she ignores us, as if we were invisible. I speak to her: "I'm trying to ship these books." "Do you have the forms?" she says. I didn't. She hands me a stack of forms, and then literally starts to joke around with her fellow employee. I finish the 22 forms and then I find myself waiting for their attention, even though there is nobody else in the store. What is their behavior saying? The customer is an afterthought. Administrative work takes precedence. Minimize the labor intensity by having a customer do all the work. Having fun matters more than taking care of that customer. So whether it's customer experience, or by extension any strategic relationship, what is the difference between the Ritz-Carlton wait staff and the FedEx Office workers? Is it nature? Are individuals just born with either an innate aptitude to serve or to ignore? Or is it nurture? Is it, in effect, the training, the expectations that have been set, the metrics, the compensation that created the difference between those two scenarios? That made the Ritz- Carlton experience is so superior to FedEx Office? My perception is that a talent for strategic relationships is really a hybrid of nature and nurture, particularly in high touch, high care environments. As an employer, you have to proactively seek people who have this nurturing, caring DNA about them. I would surmise that upbringing had a lot to do with it--being raised by people who demonstrate service to others. You internalize that from an early age. But I also believe that ongoing training, development, metrics, compensation, also influence that orientation toward service. Almost all companies have new hire training, but too much of it is "we'll bring you in, teach you the products, the services, the markets, then wish you well and send you forth." That represents a flawed assumption that training and development is an event. It's not: it's a process. Once you've taught someone what to do, you need to inspect it, to measure it, to reward superior performance. Compensation drives behavior. What are the carrot and stick? Is there a bonus? Just as important, is there a structure to capture the voice of the customer in real time? Not some stale survey later, but a real-time capture of customers' feedback, and commitment to act on it. After my FedEx Office experience, I tweeted my awe at their team's complete failure to serve me. To their credit FedEx Office replied back, "Please email me the details of your visit along with the store location and address." Kudos to them for being on top of their social channels, on a weekend. Donald Trump continues to lead the Republican primary race. He could take the GOP presidential nomination. More important, he could be America's next president. The public symbol of American liberty and exceptionalism. The international exponent of American principles and values. The world's most powerful person. It's a sobering thought. But Trump is not alone. Europe is filled with populist parties, old and new. For instance, the three-year-old anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany recently won enough votes to enter three state parliaments. In Saxony-Anhalt the AfD came in second with an astonishing 24 percent of the vote. Both large mainstream parties--the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats--lost heavily. Advertisement One-time liberal Viktor Orban has taken Hungary in an authoritarian, nationalist direction. Indeed, he openly admires Russia's Vladimir Putin. The xenophobic and conspiratorial right took power in Poland's recent elections. Ireland and Spain face political paralysis after inconclusive contests. Portugal's divided left won that nation's election but only with great difficulty organized a coalition to oust the conservative government. In Slovakia the governing party came in first but lost heavily, forcing another ungainly coalition. In France the National Front's Marine Le Pen could edge out the Left and make the run-off in next year's presidential election. Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom has roiled Dutch politics. Great Britain's United Kingdom Independence Party won 12.6 percent of the vote in last year's parliamentary election and the British people may vote in June to exit the European Union. If other European nations seek the same "carve-outs" negotiated for the UK in an effort to prevent "Brexit," the entire EU could be at risk. Separatism, nationalism, and populism are stirring in many other nations, including Finland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Italy, and even Sweden. It's too simple to decry a proto-fascist wave, as feared by some alarmists. Argued Markus Feldenkirchen, Veit Medick, and Holger Stark in Der Spiegel online, "nothing would be more harmful to the idea of the West and world peace than if Donald Trump were to be elected president." Actually, most of his Republican competitors, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, before his electoral implosion the establishment's favorite anti-Trump figure, were far more aggressive, irresponsible, and warlike than Trump. The latter's bark may be worse than his bite. In fact, there's no apparent Adolf Hitler on the political scene, nor even a Benito Mussolini. Many of the new political characters are disturbing but not quite frightening. The political center beneath many traditional governing parties appears to be collapsing. Average working people, those most buffeted by economic liberalization, angered by social change, and disenfranchised by political elites, are turning to ambitious and demagogic simplifiers. Normal folks are understandably tired of being viewed as problems to be solved rather than citizens to be engaged. Advertisement In the U.S. it doesn't much matter who people vote for. Government will expand. New regulations will be issued. More tax dollars will be spent. Traditional mores will be trashed. Additional immigrants will enter. More Americans will be sent to fight more wars in more countries. The only certainty is that the views of those who vote will be ignored. Hillary Clinton and most of this year's GOP presidential wannabes supported the welfare/warfare state. So did George W. Bush, John McCain, Bill Clinton, and Mitt Romney. Barack Obama may talk like a realist in his recent Atlantic interview, but his policies aren't much different. Even Bernie Sanders doesn't depart dramatically from the welfare/warfare state consensus, preferring only to emphasize the former over the latter. Even worse, whatever these candidates say, history suggests that government policy will end up essentially looking the same on the vast majority of policies. Much the same governing consensus dominates Europe. National elites have united behind austerity policies which maintain expensive, low-growth welfare states increasingly subject to arbitrary dictates from Brussels. The latter is dominated by a coalition of Eurocrats, made up of politicians, journalists, bureaucrats, businessmen, academics, and others. They all support creating an intrusive, continental government and imposing deracinated modernist values. With the terrorist strike in Paris, these elites appeared ready to sacrifice even their citizens' life and limb to advance their ideological agenda. At the same time, the governing class protects itself. Political and business leaders are surrounded by security details. Top bureaucrats enjoy munificent salaries and job security. Those with money can afford to live in safe neighborhoods and send their children to private schools. Many elites long ago celebrated their escape from the strictures of traditional cultural norms. Noted Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan: "Because they are protected they feel they can do pretty much anything, impose any reality. They're insulated from many of the effects of their own decisions." The response of this ruling class to public challenge only increases popular anger and frustration. For instance, in the U.S. the symbol of the conservative establishment, National Review, published a special issue reviling Trump. The failed 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who sought the endorsement of businessman Trump, reemerged to denounce candidate Trump. In the eyes of many, such efforts make Trump look even more like the man to overturn today's failed governing consensus. Advertisement Much the same phenomenon is evident across Europe, where populist parties have flourished. Daniel Sachs of the Stockholm Daniel Sachs Foundation complained that "mainstream parties ... show a reluctance to address the difficult, value-laden and often controversial issues around which populist extremists are rallying support." When the French and Dutch rejected the proposed European constitution a decade ago, the Eurocrats simply repackaged the measure as the Lisbon Treaty, which did not require popular approval. When the Irish voted no, the EU insisted upon another poll, which yielded the desired result. In Greece and other financially strapped nations, left-wing movements campaign to continue irresponsible spending, to be financed by someone, anyone else. Yet when these groups take power they support previously negotiated austerity programs. Both Le Pen and Wilders have been charged with hate crimes for articulating what many Dutch and French believe. The leading German parties all back accepting large numbers of Middle Eastern migrants--1.1 million last year alone--over the objection of most Germans. Chancellor Merkel plans to move forward despite sharp electoral reverses the recent state elections. Apparently she will allow nothing, certainly not the German people's opinion, to change her policy. This doesn't mean the principles under attack are illegitimate. I rather like advanced industrial capitalism, globalization, diversity, immigration, and much (though certainly not all) of the modern liberal catechism. At issue is the ruthless campaign to not just defeat political opponents but delegitimize contending viewpoints. Protected elites feel distaste and disdain for their lesser neighbors. Advertisement Yet to support local community, worry about immigration, advance tradition, and fear cultural decline is understandable and at times even laudable. In a detailed study Matthew Goodwin of the University of Nottingham noted that many people have "the feeling that immigration and rising diversity threaten their national culture, the unity of their national community and way of life." Real tolerance requires hearing and debating ideas despite disagreeing with them. While there are some beliefs which appropriately fall beyond the bounds of normal discourse, the number in that category must be kept extraordinarily small. Fear of economic and cultural change does not qualify. If opinions are barred from civil debate, they will emerge in uncivil action. If no respectable politician will address unpopular views, disreputable politicians will advance such positions. If it proves impossible to debate issues in the usual political channels, advocates will push their views more loudly and offensively in other ways. The result has been Donald Trump in America and a gaggle of dubious, ambitious hacks, jerks, and creeps across Europe. Moreover, the problem won't go away. Contrary to those who imagine the parties will die off along with their older supporters, Goodwin noted that "There is evidence that those who vote for populist extremist parties, like voters more generally, are also influencing the voting habits of their children." Under 35-year-olds provide 37 percent of supporters of France's National Front. What to do now, after the forces of populism, nationalism, and more have been unleashed? First, popular concerns need to be acknowledged and addressed. While globalization, immigration, and trade are economically beneficial, the advantages are not shared equally. The cosmopolitan and well-educated young rapidly adapt to change. Older, blue-collar workers are more vulnerable. While the young are rapidly adopting new moral values, many older Americans define their lives in terms of traditional mores, often rooted in religion. All have a stake in what their nation is and what it becomes. Second, the political process needs to be made more responsive to popular concerns. While populism tends to be undemocratic in its expectation of overriding all competing interests, it arises at least in part in response to the normal political system's refusal to consider disfavored interests. That doesn't mean turning republicanism into majoritarianism, but protecting republicanism from elitism. Advertisement One of the strengths of Great Britain's UKIP, explained Goodwin, is offering greater face-to-face voter contact than the Conservative and Labor parties. While grassroots campaigning may seem less cost effective than reliance on television or other mass media, the former may offer important social benefits. Deprofessionalizing political campaigns might help save democracy. Third, parties within the legitimate realm of debate--say populist, not fascist--should be brought into government when appropriate. Goodwin found that stigmatizing disfavored parties discouraged moderation and compromise. In contrast, "parties that were not excluded but were allowed to participate in the wider party system tended, over time, to move away from more extreme positions." Fourth, policies should be adapted to assuage strong public pressures without abandoning fundamental principles. For instance, to encourage public acceptance of immigration "reform" compromise is necessary, such as mixing tougher restrictions on illegal immigration with liberalization of legal immigration, legalizing work by undocumented aliens but setting aside citizenship as an option, or approving more business visas in return for reconsidering birthright citizenship. Fifth, issues should be depoliticized and withdrawn from the electoral process. People should be left alone whenever possible. Government should not be used as a tool to remake a recalcitrant public. Society is likely to end up more tolerant and diverse when such values are not crammed down people's throats in an attempt at social engineering. Sixth, expanded economic opportunity is essential. In Europe, noted Goodwin, "Support for these parties is strongest among members of social groups that are economically insecure, mainly the petite bourgeoisie and working classes, and from citizens who are less educated than the average voter." Trump similarly appears to draw most heavily from America's white lower middle class and working class. Lesser educated and skilled people are suffering. American policymakers must confront public schools which don't teach, revamp federal taxes which cut U.S. competitiveness, and eliminate business subsidies which reward political rather than economic entrepreneurship. Advertisement Seventh, people need to find new venues for dialogue. As the center disappears from politics and contending parties grow more estranged, people need to be reminded of their common humanity. Goodwin calls for more "activities that encourage contact and interaction." Such efforts need to go well beyond government policies. Building greater understanding would help defuse the tensions and fears which spur support for populist parties. During his June 16, 2015 presidential announcement speech, Republican candidate Donald Trump opined, "[Mexico is] sending people that have lots of problems. ... They're bringing crime. They're rapists." This immigrant-as-criminal narrative, historically rooted in political fear mongering rather than provable fact, has infiltrated public opinion and translated to laws targeting foreign-born people since the early 20th century. However, statistical data repeatedly disprove the myth of immigrant criminality. The American Immigration Council (AIC) reports that immigrants are less likely than American-born individuals to be in prison. Data from the 2010 American Community Survey indicate that "roughly 1.6 percent of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born." These numbers mirror the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses, in which native-born citizens were two to five times more likely than immigrants to be incarcerated. Furthermore, economists Kristin Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl have written that lower incarceration rates among immigrants are not the result of deportation threats; they note, "Immigrants appear to be self-selected to have low criminal propensities." In 2008, Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson published the results of a study concerning violent acts committed in Chicago between 1995 and 2003. Sampson concluded that "first-generation immigrants (those born outside the United States) were 45 percent less likely to commit violence than third-generation Americans, adjusting for individual, family, and neighborhood background. Second-generation immigrants were 22 percent less likely to commit violence than the third generation." Additionally, people living in neighborhoods with a higher concentration of foreign-born residents demonstrated a lower propensity toward violent crime, leading Sampson to write that immigration may have a "protective" effect. Advertisement Even those who disagree with the claim that non-natives are more law-abiding than the native born admit that they also are not more dangerous. Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank advocating for stricter border controls, conceded that "there's no evidence that immigrants are either more or less likely to commit crimes than anyone else in the population." Perhaps the most oft-cited indicator that increased immigration does not equate to higher crime rates is the finding that, according to U.S. Census data, "between 1990 and 2013, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population grew from 7.9 percent to 13.1 percent and the number of unauthorized immigrants more than tripled from 3.5 million to 11.2 million" yet "during the same period, FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48 percent" and "the property crime rate fell 41 percent." These figures reflect a stable nationwide trend of decreasing crime rates and increasing immigration, leading a number of commentators to suggest that immigration might actually lead to a reduction in crime. This drastic revision of the immigrant-as-criminal narrative is not one that Mr. Trump is likely to accept, but the data indicate that his statements on the issue are nothing more than baseless scare tactics. Still, the U.S. needs to address the reality of policies shaped by attitudes like Trump's. As the ACI researchers note, "Whole new classes of 'felonies' have been created which apply only to immigrants, deportation has become a punishment for even minor offenses, and policies aimed at trying to end unauthorized immigration have been made more punitive rather than more rational and practical." For undocumented immigrants, simply existing has become a crime. Waterloo? The apocalypse? The Titanic? These are just some of the terms that some journalists, political pundits and ordinary people are employing as they describe the current state of the Republican party. Indeed, for many people, from the casual observer to consummate political insiders, there is a deep seeded sentiment that the party of Abraham Lincoln is coming apart at the seems and is imploding at Armageddon like speed. The fact is that talk of political parties facing impending doom is nothing new. Similar rhetoric was levied toward the democratic party in the 1980s after the party had endured multiple consecutive losses at the presidential level, including a massive 49 state route in 1984. Needles to say, such a misguided prediction failed to reach fruition as the party (democratic) recaptured the White House in 1992 under the leadership of Bill Clinton and managed to occupy a sizable number of congressional seats for much of the decade. Such fear was obviously unfounded. That being said, it does appear that at the current moment, the republican party does seem to be engaging in a level of infighting and dysfunction that has even the most cynical observers stepping back and taking notice. What is even more striking (or amusing) depending on your point of view, is the fact that rather than looking inward to find the root of such problems, many members of the party establishment seem to be looking for scapegoats. President Obama, radical leftists, Donald Trump, Darth Vader, Frankenstein, you name it, in their eyes, the rapid unraveling of the republican party is the fault of everyone else but the GOP itself. Of all the supposed suspects, Donald Trump is the leading contender that arouses the ire of many loyal GOP establishment voters. He is the epitome of the great Satan who has managed to arrogantly and deviously infiltrate the party and wreck unprecedented havoc within its ranks. Advertisement His most recent, disturbing comments in regards to abortion, his galling level of sexism, (including his attacks on one his opponent's wife) and brazenly discussing how he would handle nuclear weapons if he needed to do so, has sent the GOP base (and many non-republicans) for that matter, into a hissyfit of epidemic proportions. His latest gaffes have even prompted bombastic, radical conservative right wing, pundit and trump supporter, Ann Coulter to label Trump as the "mental" candidate. While Donald Trump has served as a sort of ruthless, callous villain that has cause a segment of the republican party to either cry out in blood curling pain or curl up in the fetal position out of fear, the cold , hard reality is that the current dilemma that republicans are facing is that the problem lies within the party itself. Period. Many of the party's problems are due to the frustration of the party's base. Poll after poll indicates that a considerable co-hort of the party base has expressed widespread discontent with its leadership, feeling that the party does not represent their interests. Here in Tennessee where I live, 58% of GOP voters said that they were disappointed by party leaders. 47% of New Hampshire voters expressed similar sentiments. In South Carolina and Ohio, 52 and 54% of voters felt likewise. For these rank and file voters, the problem lies within. As they see it, the party itself, bears the blame. It should come as no surprise that such disaffected voters, many of whom harbor very conservative, indeed, reactionary views, on many social and cultural issues would find the vehemently racist, sexist, and xenophobic rhetoric that has come from the mouth of Donald Trump very appealing. The fact is that Trump is speaking their language. He generously throws out the fresh red meat and employs the not so subtle dog whistles to a disaffected base of voters who contain a deep seeded level of anger, resentment and frustration due to the fact that they largely feel economically, socially and educationally marginalized. It is a sad commentary but it is the truth. Advertisement The commonality that these voters share with the larger GOP base is the belief that they are under the illusion or rather delusion that their faults are the problems of non-Whites, feminists, immigrants, gays and lesbians, in some cases, Jews, Muslims and all others who do fall within a White, christian conservative category of what they believe o be "real Americans." In their minds, such groups are the outsiders who are the cause of America's decline. They are seen as evil, the other, and must be taken care of in one manner or another. These is the demographic of men and women who see Trump as their savior as he promises to "take back America." To be sure, some Trump supporters are disaffected people whose lives have been deeply affected by radical economic transformations in society. Neo-liberalism, globalization outsourcing, stagnant wages, limited economic mobility have had a dramatic effect on the livelihood of these men and women. However, the fact is that such undeniable factors have affected many of same groups of people they blame for their current predicament. Rather than being cognizant of this fact, it appears to be easier to revert to a "it's their fault, not mine" mentality. The larger republican party seems to have taken this position as well. Such a stance could lead to the party eventually finding itself relegated to the political wilderness for quite some time. When I was in Italy, last summer, I was intrigued by the growing popularity of what now Italians call "street food," using the English language expression to indicate, well... street food. Cibo di strada, in Italian. Street food is definitely not a novelty. The dwellers of ancient Roman cities, for instance, were able to eat out of their home: they could patronize taverns or buy ready-made snacks and meals to go from all kinds of roadside stalls. As kitchens were absent in most buildings where the lower classes lived, acquiring cooked food was a necessity. Such customs thrived for centuries, reflecting changes in times, political dynamics, and cultural environments. I remember, growing up as a child in Rome, to see people frying what in the US are known as zeppole in big oil vats on the street. To this day, it is not uncommon to see kiosks selling porchetta, delicious pork roasted with herb and spices, sliced, and served in crunchy bread rolls. In summer, watermelon sellers hawk their goods on the city curbs, a Godsend in the hot Roman nights. Side by side with these more traditional expressions, street food has found a new life in Italy. Entrepreneurs and creative chefs provide affordable and stimulating dishes that are inspired by the old ones, but often try to elevate them to respond to the preferences of their clientele. Their customers tend to be young and of the "foodie" conviction, always looking for affordable but intriguing flavor combinations that maintain some connection with the past, while using good, local ingredients. Healthier, safer production environments also increase the attractiveness of these new offerings. In fact, in Italy these days, street food - from takeaway pizza to fried rice arancini - is mostly sold not from stalls but out of small stores that enjoy a closer relationship to the street than regular restaurants. These eateries often have few seats available, forcing patrons to eat standing or to take away food. Some of the most interesting food in the Italy is now sold under this label. Gambero Rosso, one of the best known food and wine magazines in the country, has started publishing a Street Food guidebook, while websites such as Via dei Gourmet use street food as a distinct category, knowing that its users know precisely what they refer to. Advertisement The gentrification of street food, while overall embraced as a positive evolution of the Italian culinary landscape, risks pushing aside food providers that are not able to speak the same language as the popular upstarts or are not willing to change their product and their sale methods to attract the clientele who are ready to buy the new "street food", with more originality, better quality, and possibly at higher prices. Such trends are also visible in the American landscape. Food trucks are enjoying growing success, as chefs and entrepreneurs consider them as viable alternative to brick and mortar restaurants, especially in cities where real estate costs are prohibitive. The food they offer is exciting, and they reflect the aesthetics and the communication modes of their clientele. It is not uncommon for food trucks to announce their locations on social media, and for their followers to look for them, wherever they are. The more traditional street vendors, those selling coffee and hot dogs, or the peddlers bringing fruits and vegetables of the curbs of disadvantaged neighborhoods, outside of the more glamorous background of the farmers' markets, are often ostracized and treated quite differently, including by the local authorities and the police. As I have discussed in a previous post, the Street Vendor Project has been raising funds and working with underprivileged sellers and hawker to represent them in policy and administrative discussion. We will discuss these changes and tensions at the New School, in a discussion panel on the history of street food in New York City. Street food has historically played a crucial role in the way New Yorkers produce, buy, and consume food. From carts bringing produce from nearby farms to immigrant vendors providing traditional foods to their community, and later to the city at large, food has always been present on the streets. The panel will explore the past and present of street food in NYC, looking at culinary elements, culture, and the evolution of policy regulating the way New Yorkers were allowed to sell and access food in public spaces. Advertisement What if we could download our minds in a computer and lived forever as pure, digital consciousness? What if we are already living inside a computer simulation created by a technologically advanced alien civilization - which it too is a simulation created by yet another alien civilization, and so on to infinity? The computer revolution has reframed some age-old questions about reality and, more to the point, our perception to reality. Add genetics to the mix of technologies and you get to an interesting watershed in human history, where we could potentially test the hypothesis of the Matrix movies: can we, do we, exist outside our bodies? Such questions take for granted an assumption that the "mind" is a product of the brain. Although the brain is a physical object it has a certain organisation, neurons and neural networks made up of interconnected neurons. This complex organisation pattern is called the "connectome". We can describe the connectome using information, in other words we can encode the connectome into a software-based description that can be uploaded in a computer and simulated. Indeed the "Human Brain Project" aims to do exactly that: to build the infrastructure that will allow for the "human connectome" to be coded and uploaded on a vast farm of computer servers. It's a huge scientific ambition and an enormous undertaking, which promises to provide a computer-based testbed for experimenting with new drugs and to better understanding brain disease. But let us not kid ourselves: what is really at stake here is whether that simulated brain will exhibit the kind of behaviour we associate with real, body and all, humans. Will the simulated brain in Switzerland, where the Human Brain Project is based, have consciousness? Will it have an "I"? Advertisement So far, scientists have managed to decode the connectome of humble C. Elegans, a hapless worm with a mere 302 neurons compared to the 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections of the human brain. An experiment whereby the worm's "mind" was uploaded to a tiny robot has shown some tantalizing results. Each time the robot knocked its "head" it coiled backwards, just like the real thing. Is there a "real worm" inside the robot? And how can we know? On Sunday, the Internet experienced a meltdown of a different kind. With an unprecedented 2.6 terabytes of data, or 11.5 million confidential documents leaked from a popular Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca -- there is an impressive amount of investigative stories coming out about who's involved and the routes they took to hide money. Thanks to the excellent work by Suddeutsche Zeitung, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and some 400 journalists at 107 media organizations in more than 80 countries -- people who have previously not been following reports about corruption are now fully aware of it. Chances are you've seen immense coverage of it everywhere and might be unsure where to start. I'm part of the civil society movement to 'follow the money' and use open data, and investigative journalism/research to bring more transparency to how companies are often used to do illegal activities such as corruption and money laundering. Before I joined OpenCorporates two years ago, I had no experience of working in this transparency space and had to go through a bumpy learning curve before I could start going through regulatory filings to map corporate networks. Advertisement Here's my quick guide to what anonymous companies are and what reports you should read as you dive into the Panama Papers stories. What are anonymous/shell/phantom companies? Here is my recommended watch list for a simple explanation of how anonymous companies or shell corporations work. 1. ONE Campaign released a video starring Colin Farrell and a zombie explaining what phantom firms are and how they help siphon a trillion dollars every year out of developing countries. Watch the "The Biggest Heist You've Never Heard Of" video here. 2. This TED and Global Witness how anonymous companies are used to cover up crime and corruption. Watch it here. Advertisement 3. Vox also has a lego version of what's happening in Panama which is worth looking at. 4. Global Witnes has a An Idiot's guide to Money Laundering which gives a quick how-to on the routes money laundering takes. 5. NPR also did a podcast on shell companies which you can listen to. 6. If you're still finding terms that you would like more clarity on, see this glossary by Transparency International. Reading list: Reports about corruption, money laundering and anonymous companiesIf you read one thing -- read the World Bank's groundbreaking "Puppet Masters" report which showed that 70% of grand corruption cases used anonymous companies or phantom firms as vessels to launder money. If you read two things -- then the second place you should visit is Global Witness. The investigative reporting NGO has a section dedicated to stories to do with corruption, money laundering, dictators, conflict minerals and much more. Their Great Rip Off map shows how anonymous companies are being abused around the world. Beneficial Ownership and data: If you're into data and want to see what beneficial ownership would look like as data , read this article by Chris of OpenCorporates -- "Every person's guide to Beneficial Ownership/ company control as data". You might also be interested in the recent announcement of plans to create a Global Register of Beneficial Ownership. Advertisement Corruption and Banks: Banks are often party, willingly or unknowingly to the flow of corrupt money. Global Witness has a range of reports and stories on the role banks play in this. You can also see open data was used to map some of the world's largest banks here by OpenCorporates. Corruption, Money Laundering and Property: Research by Transparency International UK found that 75% of properties in UK whose owners are under investigation for corruption made use of offshore corporate secrecy to hide their identities. Read the "Corruption ON Your Doorstep" report. Corruption in Sports: Transparency International releases interesting posts and research over here about it. Their FIFA coverage was particularly excellent.Corruption and Development: Read the ONE Campaign's startling "Trillion Dollar Scandal" report about how at least $1 trillion is being taken out of developing countries each year through a web of corrupt activity that involves shady deals for natural resources, the use of anonymous shell companies, money laundering and illegal tax evasion. Tax Justice: Work done by Tax Justice Network and Oxfam in this report "Ending the era of tax havens: Why UK Government must lead the way" is a must-read. For instance, the report suggested UK's wealthiest are hiding over 170 billion offshore. Extractives (Oil, mining and gas): Read how OpenOil used open data to map the corporate network of BP and this analysis on how countries can require extractives companies to disclose beneficial ownership by NRGI. Advertisement Finding out who is listed in the Panama PapersWikipedians are constantly updating this list and this would be my first pit stop for every time you want to check who is being implicated. DiscussionIf you're ready to go into the world of reddit, go here. Gun violence is a national health epidemic in this country. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has asked and been refused funding for research for this national epidemic by the majority of Congress. Consider, for a moment that last statement. A national epidemic that kills over 30,000 Americans every year that the United States Congress (a considerable majority who are Republican) will not let the CDC research. In essence, what this government organization is designed to do, is to help eliminate a health hazard to this nation. When you look closer this is not unexpected, sadly it is rather the unprecedented Machiavellian power of the NRA. Their power defined by the explanation of power, Machiavelli espoused to create independence. At this point in our history, the NRA has achieved a dynamism as an independent entity exempt from the will of many in this country who are adversely affected by their agenda and have no recourse to stop them. In recent debates between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders vying for the democratic presidential nomination were asked about gun violence in America. Clinton spoke of the inequity of the NRA being immune to legal recourse. In a somewhat surprising response, Sanders replied that if the gun industry could be sued it would drive firearms manufacturer's out of business. Advertisement Apparently Sanders has forgotten that the tobacco industry, (who also created a health hazard by those who used their product and the people around them through second-hand smoke) were sued and still manage to sell cigarettes manufactured here in the U.S. and around the world. In 1996, the CDC, which to this day receives no federal funding to study gun violence even after numerous mass shootings, including the slaughter of 20 children (twenty of the 28 people killed in total) in the Newtown massacre of 2012. This is due to a law the NRA succeeded in lobbying and virtually forcing Congress to pass in 1996 that prevents federal funding for this kind of the CDC study. How is this possible? While the NRA manipulates the interpretation of the Second Amendment, the estimated revenue of gun and ammunition sales in America is over $6 billion a year and growing. The NRA is generously supported by these manufacturers and in return has built one of the most powerful lobbies in congress -- a lobby so strong that it holds every single person in congress to the strictest standard of loyalty. The NRA has a "report card" on every congressman and woman who currently hold office. And should that Congress or Senate person receive low marks, they can expect their opponent in the next election to be supported by financing from the NRA and a propaganda war against any elected person who wishes to see more bills passed for gun safety as an enemy to the Second Amendment. And perhaps in a final bitter irony the National Rifle Association is still given non-profit status. Therefore, as an organization, it pays no taxes. Nevertheless, for those who own a gun or guns for personal protection, to hunting, to target practice with high-speed action from the AR-15, the Second Amendment exemplifies their right and justifies the NRA's power in bearing arms. In the age of information, most of those same people continue to obsess over the meaning of the Second Amendment without truly comprehending its intention and the time period it was conceived. A newly formed country the United States who had just thrown off the yoke of the British Empire rule, its government, now wrote in the Bill of Rights what the authors of the constitution perceived to be practicable in their point in history. Advertisement Acting on behalf of the people of an agrarian society with little organized law enforcement, the founders believed that citizens should have the right to bear arms for a militia that may be needed to put down yet another invasion of a foreign power that would set up a tyrannical government. A quasi-police force in geographical areas that had none. Or to suppress a civil insurrection where many in the south believed may come from African American slaves. It would be impossible for the authors of the Second Amendment to imagine that citizens owning a gun in modern times would prevent foreign invaders who would have aircraft and tanks at their disposal. The eventual development of numerous law enforcement agencies that do the police work of today. And were unwilling at the birth of this new nation to banish the institution of slavery that in part (because of a well-stocked arms supply in the South) led to a bloody civil war that killed 625,000 people. The straw man that the NRA has made the Second Amendment now plagues victims across the spectrum of American life. The "spin" that politicians supported by the NRA exercise to reduce the logic of common sense gun reform into a conservative test of ideological purity. "March 30. Nothing but anger that day comes to my people's mind. Nothing but memories from that sad day when a group of Israeli soldiers tried to kick the local citizens out of the village." Those words were written in 1998, on the 22nd anniversary of Land Day, an annual commemoration of land dispossession and the killings of six Palestinian citizens of Israel in 1976. They're from an essay by my then 15-year-old friend Aseel Asleh, which he titled "Peaceful Thoughts," and are included in a play I wrote about his death that is currently on tour, called There Is A Field. Aseel, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a peace activist, was shot point blank in the neck by Israeli police as he was nonviolently demonstrating outside his village on October 2, 2000. Aseels' funeral, as portrayed in the play "There Is A Field." Aseel, who was one of 12 Palestinian citizens of Israel killed by Israeli forces that month, left behind reams of his writing with insights ranging from mortality to identity to conflict and oppression. Sections of many of his pieces are woven throughout the documentary-style play. With last week marking the 40th anniversary of Land Day, it bears examining how little has changed. Aseel could just as easily have written those same lines today about the Palestinian village Umm al-Hiran. Umm al-Hiran is home to 1,000 Bedouins in the Negev desert, and is slated to become a Jewish town with a similar name--Hiran. Residents of Umm al-Hiran, who are citizens of the state of Israel, have been engaged in a protracted legal struggle to uphold their right to remain in their village. Israeli courts ruled against the villagers in May 2015, and the Israeli high court upheld the ruling in January 2016. The community in Umm al-Hiran currently faces imminent displacement from their village, which has been their home since they were resettled there by the Israeli government in 1956. I conducted extensive interviews for There Is A Field with Aseel's family members, speaking to them about their journey through grief following his murder, and their ongoing struggle for justice. The interviews began shortly after Aseel was killed, and continued until after the Attorney General of Israel closed the cases of the October 2000 killings in 2007. No police officers were indicted for any of the deaths, including that of my young friend. "There is justice," Hassan Asleh, Aseel's father, told me wryly after the judgment. "And there is justice for Arabs." The court process ended with no indictments, as portrayed in "There Is A Field" Advertisement The Umm al-Hiran decision supports and underscores Asleh's statement. The Israeli courts were not designed in order to provide justice for Aseel's family, nor were they established in order to protect the right of Umm al-Hiran's residents. The Israeli legal system is designed to uphold and legitimize longstanding Israeli policy--policy which privileges Jewish citizens over Arab [Palestinian] ones. Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel describes Israeli policy as colonial and "rooted in an ideology of racial discrimination, segregation, and dispossession." The residents of Umm al-Hiran have no recourse now but to take their struggle to the public and to the streets. The first of these demonstrations took place in early March, in Beersheva, and further actions are being planned. Political protest over land being stripped from Arab citizens of Israel is not new. In fact, the Land Day anniversary commemorates the first time Palestinian citizens of Israel engaged in a large-scale political protest. That 1976 demonstration came after Israel announced its plan to expropriate 1,500 dunams of land from villages in the Galilee, including Aseel's village of Arrabeh. Nor are land grabs from marginalized Arab communities limited to land tracts inside the internationally recognized borders of Israel; Israel recently announced its intention to expropriate a tract of land near the West Bank city of Jericho, despite international criticism. In There Is A Field, Aseel's older sister Nardeen finds the notebook in which Aseel wrote "Peaceful Thoughts" and reads from it, invoking her dead brother's memory. "As Land Day has come like every other year, I should fulfill my duty as an Arab and bring [the martyrs'] memories to life," the memory of Aseel tells her. "We should never forget, but we should forgive." But Nardeen is not convinced. "We can't start forgiving before we see the smallest step towards acknowledging the crimes that were done to the [Palestinian] nation in general, and your murder in specific," she retorts. The crimes of dispossession of land, and of fatal suppression of Palestinian citizens who protest, have not only remained unacknowledged--they have continued. From the killing of Aseel Asleh and 11 other Palestinian citizens of Israel in October 2000 to the desperate plight of the community facing displacement from their homes and their land in Umm al-Hiran today, the memories of Land Day remain a reality 40 years later. Our body is always creating new cells. The messages we send it on a daily basis with our thoughts and emotions contribute to what kind of cells are being created. Learning that our body is actually 99.999 percent NEW every 11 months was a key factor in healing myself in three weeks. In looking at how our emotions have and continue to affect our health, we need to look at a few areas of our life. We may need to look at some past traumas and life events to see if those emotions have been processed around them. We will need to be present and recognize the way we speak to our body and the messages we send ourselves. We also need to pay attention to our most common daily emotions to assess what needs some attention shifting and some healing. This work need not be hard or take years. These changes can be subtle shifts and the results we get from these shifts are so powerful that it allows long lasting change to occur as our soul supports us and knows this is for our highest good. I. Awareness of Your Self-Talk Begin to listen to your dialogue around your body and health. Do you tend to say things like, "I never get enough rest, I get sick a lot, my (insert body part) is always in pain, I HAVE or AM this dis-ease" or even refer to it as "my" dis-ease. Taking ownership of a disease is not a positive message to send your body if you want to get rid of it. You are claiming it as a part of you and not allowing for other possibilities. I know when I was sick I was in chronic pain and boy did I affirm that any chance I got. "Ow my legs, my stomach, my head, hurt so badly." I look at it this way -- it just makes sense that if our body is always creating cells -- what messages we send it and especially the emotions behind those words contribute to what kinds of cells are being made. In telling myself I was sick all the time and it being reaffirmed by doctors constantly, I was not allowing myself to heal. Advertisement Action: When you get up in the morning and when you are about to go to sleep -- pick one part of your body that DOES feel good or a part of your physicality you are grateful for and affirm you are grateful for it being healthy. When I was healing myself, I started paying attention to the parts of my body that felt good. Even if it was my little finger or toe I would concentrate my full attention on it and think "I am so grateful for this healthy part of me and I know that if there are healthy cells in this part of me it is a possibility for other healthy cells to be created." The pain started to lessen in a few days and the messages were much more positive than my previous ones of waking up and going to sleep thinking, "Ow my legs are killing me!" II. Past Trauma Have you processed emotions around any trauma, issue or challenge that has occurred in your past? When we have faced any kind of trauma from an unhealthy relationship, to physical trauma or abuse, to a great loss or grief to poverty or anything else that had us doubting our physical and emotional safety, there will need to be some processing of emotions and stuck energy around it. There are all kinds of therapies that do this -- from traditional psychotherapy to many different alternative therapies. What is most important is that the energy from that incident is not trapped and causing some kind of dis-ease or lack of energy flow in the body as that will translate on the physical or emotional level. There are many ways to release and I do feel it is best to find a way that resonates with you. The fastest tool I have found to transmute these negative energies is the powerful prayer Ho'oponopono. It is a Hawaiian form of healing and prayer and though it's name may seem complicated, it is the simplest prayer I know and the one I first offer my clients. It is based on the fact that we all contribute to each others' energy and our reality. Saying this to someone you feel has "wronged you" or even to the situation that was challenging can help transmute the energy. We know what we focus on expands and if we have been feeling a victim to this situation for years, we have not allowed ourselves to begin to heal and move into the present moment where our true power resides. We have kept ourselves in the past. Ho'oponopono offers a way to transmute that energy to begin to heal our relationship with ourselves and forgive and move past what we feel has hurt us in our past. Advertisement Action: Say the prayer Ho'oponopono for yourself for 2 minutes and for someone that you feel has hurt you or an event in your life that has been hard to move past. The four sentences that make up Ho'oponopono are: I love you I am sorry Please forgive me Thank you. When you are saying it for yourself, imagine your third dimensional self saying it to your soul or Higher Self. When you are saying it for someone else, imagine you are saying it to the soul of that person. Knowing that only people who are hurt, hurt other people. If you are saying it to an event -- know that there were tools and gifts you received from that experience that have made you who you are today. Even if it was painful, you might have gained great insight or tools. III. Everyday Emotions and Focus Are you sitting in a soup of negativity or do you bring in gratitude? We will have no problem berating ourselves over something we feel we have done or said "wrong" but are you sitting in the gratitude of all you do right? This is the same as self-talk in some ways but goes deeper into what emotions are you predominantly in throughout your day? Do you show gratitude for the things and people in your life that are good or do you sit in what is wrong? Do you ever take the time to give gratitude for yourself and the things you did that day for someone else? I am not saying to walk around all day with a fake smile plastered on. I am asking you to be cognizant of what emotions you usually have and ask that you bring some more positive ones in. Gratitude is the number one emotion to switch up our lives to a much happier space. Action: Before bed tonight, in the morning before you get out of bed tomorrow or in the shower I want you to take 2 minutes to give gratitude for someone or something in your life. I mean to close your eyes and to sit in it -- think of every single thing you love about the person or situation and bring in your senses if you can -- sight, feelings around them, smell and sound. You will feel warmer and happier in a few minutes with this focus. Now I ask you do the same for yourself. Think of one thing you did that day or in the past week for yourself or someone else that was nice. It could be as common as cooking dinner for a loved one, it could be you called a friend that you knew was in a bad space, perhaps you let someone ahead of you in line or took a class for yourself or a walk... we always are doing good things for others or ourselves and acknowledging this with gratitude makes that expand and honestly helps stuck energy and to create new energy flow. I say gratitude was the number one tool to help me heal so quickly. Advertisement Someone dies from gun violence every 16 minutes in America. YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT is a series of frank interviews with passionate men and women who are leaders, activists and influencers on the subject of gun violence in America. Some have been my teachers, champions and support system on this very complicated and emotional journey and some I have admired from afar for their bravery, audacity and indomitable commitment to the cause. Although our backgrounds, experiences and the challenges we face in our work are as complex as the causes and the solutions to this epidemic, all have shown that there is more that can be done to end this senseless loss of human life. I am proud to introduce you to each of them and excited to share their insights into how all of us can be a part of the solution to 'Raise The Caliber' of our communities. INTERVIEW NO. 11 Name: John Skaggs @LAPD187Cop Occupation: I have been a Los Angeles Police Officer for 29 years and have worked as a Homicide Detective for the past 22 years. Most of my career was spent in Watts and South Central before I transferred seven years ago to West Bureau Homicide which covers the areas of Hollywood, Wilshire, West Los Angeles, Koreatown and Venice Beach. Age: 51 Race: White Where do you live: Los Angeles What are you most proud of about your work? First, I am most proud of my work for bringing some form of closure to the family and friends of victims that have been murdered. Many people who have lost a loved one to violence feel better knowing the suspect responsible cannot hurt others and is not enjoying the freedoms that we have. Advertisement Secondly, I am proud of the young homicide detectives that I have trained, supervised or had a direct impact upon, who follow my philosophy and treat everyone they encounter with respect and work harder than anyone else to solve murder cases. What is the biggest challenge you face in your work? My biggest challenge is gaining cooperation from witnesses and people who have knowledge of individuals who are involved in or responsible for my murder investigations. The vast majority of my investigations have been street level murders involving gangs, narcotics and street disputes. When I have a murder that occurs in a dark alley behind an illicit club at 2:00 a.m., I can promise you that my witnesses will not be preachers, teachers or nurses. They will be people from the streets that obey rules of the streets. Rule No. 1 on the street is, don't be a snitch. So for me to overcome this challenge it is extremely difficult. I, of course, fully understand the fear witnesses have of being intimidated, threatened or killed for helping with a prosecution. However, I feel we must all do our part to get killers off the street. I have never had one of my witnesses hurt or killed and I do everything I can to keep them safe and help them with the changes in their lives that they may encounter. When the court case is over, the witnesses feel a tremendous amount of pride for being brave and doing the right thing. Why do you think we have such a problem with gun violence in America? I think the biggest contributor that I see is the lack of a good home environment. There is a lack of nurturing and loving homes these killers are being raised in. The fathers are almost always non-existent and the mothers are often unemployed, on welfare and have criminal records. There is little emphasis placed on education and it's common for the kids to drop out in middle or high school. The youth have little or no respect for themselves, their community or their families. Added to this problem is the strong influence of gangs. If you take a teenager with no self-respect, who is trying to gain stature in his gang or neighborhood, and hand him a gun with instructions to shoot a rival gang member, they generally won't refuse. Advertisement In simple terms, all gun violence is bad and unacceptable. However, this country does not have an epidemic of businessmen killing each other over bad investments or an epidemic of domestic violence murders. What it does have is an epidemic of young men and boys killing each other over narcotics disputes, gang rivalries and territory. There is also a lack of fear these criminals have of being caught for these violent gun crimes. What do you think is the biggest misconception about why we have such a problem with gun violence in America? This is another tough question although I'm not sure there are many misconceptions. The U.S. has a lot of guns and too many bad people willing to use guns to harm others. I know many people say, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." However, I don't think anyone can dispute that pulling your index finger about a half inch on the trigger of a gun is an easy and cowardly way of causing serious injury or death to someone. A gun can be much easier to use and often less personal than using other deadly weapon. Do you think there is a law that the government could enact that would really make a difference in reducing gun violence and building safe communities? I don't think we need to enact any new laws. What I would like to see is current gun laws enforced aggressively and consistently. I don't need to name the cities, but during the 1990's the city and state with the strictest gun laws in our country had the highest murder rate. Most of their murders involved guns. Today, one of our cities that has an extremely high murder rate, is also known for having strict gun laws. Another example is Mexico, if you get caught with a gun in their country you will go to prison. However, their gun violence is off the chart. What I would like to see happen is when our criminal justice system identifies someone as a violent career criminal, every measure should be taken to keep that individual incarcerated. I am all for rehabilitation and second chances for those who have made a bad choice and are trying to redeem themselves, but there are too many criminals with multiple convictions for violent crimes that have no desire to stop their violent behavior, yet we continue to put them back in our neighborhoods, essentially waiting for them to victimize someone else. Advertisement What are three things the average American citizen can do to "Raise the Caliber" of their community? 1)Get involved with your community as much as possible. Church groups and service groups are a great base. 2)Be a youth mentor. 3)Have a relationship with your local police officers to keep them apprised of the good and bad things happening in your neighborhood. What quote do you live by? The harder I work, the luckier I get. Is there a book or topic that has educated or inspired you? I'm not an avid reader but after reading the book Ghettoside by Jill Leovy, I was definitely educated. My work is always on the back side of violence, meaning I focus on investigating and chasing murderers after the crime occurs. The book enlightened me to the historical and social impacts of violence in our country and what may be some contributing factors. What inspired me with reading the book, is the hard work by many dedicated police officers and the brave citizens that step forward to impact violence in their communities. *** Jessica Mindich began the Caliber Collection in January 2012 as a collaboration with the Mayor of Newark, NJ, Cory Booker, as a way to turn illegal and unwanted guns from our cities' streets into jewelry. Their vision was to create a virtuous cycle by funding gun buyback and amnesty programs from the proceeds of the sales from the Caliber Collection. The jewelry is made with the serial numbers from illegal guns and the metal from shell casings. The Caliber Collection donates 20% of the net proceeds to fund voluntary gun buyback and amnesty programs in some of the toughest cities in America. To date, they have taken over 1,000 illegal guns off the streets and have raised over $100,000 for police departments in Newark, Hartford, the San Francisco Bay Area and Detroit from the sale of Caliber products to customers in over 85 countries. Close to 450,000 children under five die annually in Pakistan. One-third of these deaths could be prevented by vaccines. Every year, 90,000 child deaths in Pakistan would be prevented by universal immunization," - The World Health Organization Pakistan, the World Health Organization's final battleground in the fight against polio, still has a long way to go before universal immunization becomes a reality. The primary goal of both WHO and Pakistan is the eradication of polio. The number of cases in Pakistan decreased from 20,000 a year to an average of 100 over the last five years. Yet the main problem--mistrust of aid workers by the Pakistani people-- persists. The Death of Bin Laden and the Immunization Slowdown To assist the U.S. in finding Osama Bin Laden, the CIA employed Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani physician, in early 2011. Under the guise of implementing a Hepatitis B vaccination campaign, Afridi helped the CIA learn Bin Laden's whereabouts, in Bilal Town, a northeastern suburb of Abbottabad, in northeast Pakistan. Afridi's collaboration with the CIA fueled anti-Western sentiment among militants in Pakistan's northwestern provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In June 2012, the Taliban issued a fatwa, a religious ban, on oral polio vaccine, declaring it poison. National Geographic reported that in Pakistan, it was "open season" on health workers. In 2015, news headlines charged Taliban assassins with targeting polio workers in Pakistan. Advertisement On May 2, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALs tracked down Osama Bin Laden near Abbottabad. He was killed in his compound in Bilal Town. As far as the U.S. was concerned, Bin Laden's death was a significant step towards ending the war on terror. But for those fighting the war on polio, it was the worst thing that could have happened to Pakistan's children. Because of Afridi's involvement with the CIA, Islamic extremists now consider any polio worker a Western spy, and view immunization as a means of sterilizing Muslim children. Rumors have spread that the vaccines were made of pork products, prohibited in Islam. Islamic extremists attacked polio workers more frequently, leading to an increase in the number of polio cases from 93 in 2013 to 327 in 2014. In 2015, of the 73 reported cases, 54 were reported in Pakistan. Extremists falsely believe that health workers can't be trusted because western medicine promotes western ideology. To further stoke the fire, distrust of health workers increased after word spread about Afridi's role in the undercover vaccination plot to find Bin Laden. Health workers--foreign or native--became targets of the Taliban's assassination plots. Today, the fight against polio continues, but skepticism surrounding health workers remains rampant in the northwestern and northeastern regions of Pakistan, run by tribes and often controlled by the Taliban and other extremist groups. Advertisement Struggling to find a solution If Western medicine and foreign aid workers represent the enemy, who will fight the battle against polio in Pakistan? Pakistan has attempted to solve the immunization crisis by requiring military personnel to accompany aid workers on their polio vaccination routes. This has resulted in a 70% drop in polio cases in 2015. But while a visible military presence protects aid workers, this also forces parents to vaccinate their children, creating further distrust of Western medicine. The military's involvement also creates suspicions about the Pakistani government's intentions. Vaccination by military coercion is not an effective or safe method for vaccinating children in Pakistan. Lasting change can only occur by creating trust and incorporating community engagement into Pakistan's health care system. To end polio, a system similar to India's, incorporating sustainable efforts to vaccinate children-- should be put in place. The Indian system actively encourages community participation in supporting maternal and postnatal care. Pakistan and India are culturally very similar, but more importantly, they have similar infrastructures, making the system easily transferable. In India, Accredited Social Health Workers (ASHA) are trained community health workers who bring children to immunization clinics, encourage family planning, and transport women to hospitals for childbirth, among other roles. A woman from each village offer services to every woman and child in her village, increasing coverage and promoting community engagement. This incentive-based system also provides ASHA workers with an income. In a 2014 report evaluating the ASHA system in 30 villages of North India, 100% of the beneficiaries reported that they were satisfied with ASHA services. Pakistan should implement a similar system to promote community engagement. Pakistan already has an incentive-based system for vaccination supervisors. However, they are paid only $15 dollars a day-- when the government gets around to paying them. Polio workers are paid five dollars a day. But unlike the Indian ASHA system, which involves long-term community engagement and education, the current Pakistani approach provides only the polio vaccines, without educating the recipient community. The educational component of the ASHA system must be enacted to dispel the mistrust of Western medicine. Implementing an ASHA-like program specifically geared towards vaccinations would be greatly beneficial to Pakistan--to eradicate not only polio, but also other vaccine-preventable diseases. Community workers could help diffuse any suspicions surrounding vaccination. Paying the workers would not only provide a source of income for the women, but also encourage female independence and empowerment. Advertisement A Better Role for the Pakistani government Martin Luther King, Jr., famous people, miscellany Preaching -- and honestly just being there -- at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, is always a great honor and blessing for me. As pastor Raphael Warnock said in his opening introduction, "When you want to take faith into justice, as Jim Wallis always has, Ebenezer is the right place." Ebenezer is the right place indeed. I remember my first time preaching at Ebenezer many years ago for their first "Peace and Justice Service" in honor of the inaugural year that the nation officially celebrated the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was 1986 and I was a young man feeling honored to speak -- but overwhelmed to be in such a historic pulpit that had literally changed the world and where a host of movement leaders had preached. Advertisement Being so intimidated by the place and the pulpit, I was quite tepid at first, saying something like, "Well, ah ... Martin Luther King Jr., well .... he was for peace and justice, and ppppprobably ... ah ... we should be too." It was powerful! All of a sudden, a big booming voice down on the left side of the congregation spoke directly back at me, "Oh come on son, you're supposed to preach!" Startled, I started to preach -- a little bit. "You're not there yet," he shouted again. I continued as he directed me with some "wells," some "Amens" and some "keep going nows." The "Amen Corner" of Ebenezer Baptist Church kept me going, stronger and stronger, lifting my voice and taking my passion to higher and higher levels. I was sweating as I pranced around on the stage and finally just preached my heart out. After a wonderful and amazing response from the congregation on their feet with claps and shouts, I ran down to the man who had taken me upward and onward and breathlessly said, "You just pulled that sermon out of me!" Standing up tall, he put his hands on my shoulders, looked at me in the eyes, and said, "Son, I've raised up many a preacher in my time." And he had just raised up another. I believe pulpits are supposed to change communities and nations -- and history. They are supposed to raise up preachers and their congregations to stand and speak and act for biblical justice. I have been very blessed on this tour for my new book, America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, by preaching and being in many of those pulpits that are changing things yet again. Advertisement Trinity United Church of Christ on the south side of Chicago and their pastor Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III have taken the prophetic message of justice into the streets where young African-American men have been killed and where some of those young activists now come to Trinity on Sunday mornings. I was in St. John's Church the Beloved Community and Christ the King Church from where Revs Starsky Wilson and Traci Blackmon were among the first to put the gospel and their bodies in the streets of Ferguson, Mo. Pleasant Hope Baptist Church and their pastor Rev. Heber M. Brown III did the same in Baltimore. New Song Church in Santa Ana, Calif., is a multicultural congregation founded by Dave Gibbons that has an average age of 28. I got to preach at Glide Memorial Church pastored by Rev. Dr. Karen Oliveto in San Francisco, which welcomes marginalized people, and I got to sit next to a woman with no hands but who wouldn't stop worshiping, smiling, and celebrating by clapping with her two stumps. All along the way, many others pastors told stories of breaking silence on racism at our town meeting conversations and organized clergy gatherings for action in city after city. What they all have in common is what we remembered on Monday: April 4 was the 48th anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. Pastors get in trouble when they break the silence of their times. MLK spoke at Riverside Church on Sunday April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was killed -- breaking his own silence about the war in Vietnam, much to the chagrin of many of his supporters, and called out the three "giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism." He said, "I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and speak from the burnings of my own heart." On Monday, the anniversary day of King's assassination, we had a conference call with several faith leaders. On that call, the leader of a nationwide network of black clergy, said even more painful to many black pastors than America's continuing racism is "the silence of white Christians." Black pastors still don't hear very many of their white clergy brothers and sisters in Christ speaking with prophetic clarity about the stark differences in the ways that white and black young men, even in their respective congregations, continue to be treated by police officers. And why the silence, when almost none of the officers involved in the shootings of young African Americans have yet been held accountable? Advertisement This continuing silence was on my mind during the extraordinary dialogue we had at Ebenezer on Monday night. Trey Lyon, a young white Baptist pastor on the panel said, "The drug of white privilege has millions of addicts. It's time for a recovery movement." My old friend, soul and jail mate, Rev. Tim McDonald, offered a very provocative phrase, "Our non-profits have made us non-prophets." He said free labor was the beginning of white supremacy and privilege, that racism is always about economics -- and we need to say that. We now see the rise of a presidential candidate openly promoting racial, religious, and gender bigotry with little clergy commentary so far. I wonder if Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who stood up against such political leadership rising up in Germany in the early 1930s, was worried about having a 501(c)3 tax problem with his faith-based organization if he spoke up politically. Robert Franklin, scholar and educator, taught the audience -- as he always does -- that courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to speak and act through it. The first African-American Episcopal Bishop of Georgia, Robert Wright, was also there and said, "Leadership is the capacity to mobilize people to address tough problems -- especially the problems they would like to avoid. Race is our country's family dance. They don't kill nice preachers." MLK greatly admired Bonhoeffer and I wonder if he read these lines the German pastor said: "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." In my closing remarks, I recalled what Dr. King said about the kind of people we will need going forward. Advertisement This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists ... The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority... Human salvation lies in the hands of the creative maladjusted. --Strength to Love (1963) By Joel Cohen and Bennett L. Gershman The circumstances in the Eric Garner chokehold death by Staten Island Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo - pronounced a homicide by the New York City Medical Examiner - continues to elude close public scrutiny and official accountability. Unless the public's "lying eyes" misled it, there can be no question that Pantaleo killed Garner without provocation or justification. Moreover, unless the Staten Island Grand Jury that investigated the killing learned something radically different than what the public saw on the clearly incriminating video, many concerned citizens must wonder why Pantaleo and his fellow officers were not indicted for the homicide. And in contrast to the action of the Ferguson, Missouri prosecutor in releasing all of the secret grand jury testimony in the police killing of Michael Brown, Staten Island District Attorney, Daniel Donovan (and now Congressman), on a motion by the NAACP, adamantly refused to make public any of the evidence he placed before the grand jury, or the reasons for giving police witnesses immunity, shielding himself under the cover of grand jury secrecy. And so, after unsuccessfully seeking to learn what happened in the grand jury, but speculating that Donovan may have steered the grand jury to vote no indictment, the NAACP filed a complaint against Donovan with New York's Grievance Committee alleging that Donovan violated his duty as District Attorney to investigate responsibly and in good faith the conduct of the officers in the Garner killing. The NAACP's complaint was not unusual. Indeed, the Grievance Committee is the agency that is authorized by law to investigate the misconduct and other ethical violations by attorneys, including prosecutors, who also are attorneys, and routinely subject to investigation and discipline by grievance committees. The NAACP complaint asked the Grievance Committee to investigate whether Donovan and his assistants in the grand jury, by failing to prosecute the Staten Island police fairly and impartially (perhaps out of loyalty to the police, with whom they must deal daily, or for other improper reasons), engaged in misconduct in violation of the rules of professional conduct. Advertisement However, in what appears to be an unprecedented decision, the Grievance Committee refused to entertain the complaint (Grievance Comm File No R-1885-14). Indeed, it refused to even open an inquiry. It claimed that it was "not the appropriate forum" for the complaint, and that the matter was "not within the jurisdiction of the Grievance Committee" because the complaint was "directed at the decisions and actions of an elected public official, made pursuant to the powers and duties afforded him." The NAACP then asked the Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court to compel the Grievance Committee to open an inquiry into how a prosecutor with such colossal power over a grand jury managed in this aggravated instance to avoid an indictment. The lawyer for the Appellate Division declined the request. He justified the refusal of the Grievance Committee to make even a preliminary determination by suggesting that it is not the role of the Grievance Committee to investigate whether a District Attorney "wrongfully" failed to secure an indictment. Is that true? Suppose hypothetically that the District Attorney had broken bread with Police Department's borough commander, who secretly agreed that the District Attorney would decline to prosecute the police officers in exchange for the police on Staten Island not engaging in a work stoppage. Or, the District Attorney implied to the police union chief that he would not indict police officers, and in exchange the police union would support the District Attorney's candidacy in his upcoming election in police-friendly Staten Island. Or, there was evidence that the District Attorney simply instructed his assistants to "go soft" in the grand jury in order to keep his career on track? Would the Grievance Committee seriously maintain that under these hypothetical facts it would have no "jurisdiction" to pursue a complaint against the prosecutor for ethical violations? Advertisement Frustrated by the Grievance Committee's abdication of ethical oversight, the NAACP sought a court order compelling the Grievance Committee to conduct an investigation into their allegations. Although the Court noted that the case is "one of first impression," its refusal to require the Grievance Committee to conduct an ethics inquiry only added mud and confusion to the controversy. The Court could have found, but did not, that the NAACP's motion to compel a disciplinary investigation contained insufficient facts to require the Grievance Committee to proceed. The Court, however, did not find that the NAACP made a factually insupportable claim that the prosecutor deliberately and inappropriately went soft on the police. The Court did not say: "You haven't made a sufficient case to even suggest anything improper by the prosecutor." To be sure, enforcement of attorney discipline is hedged by rules of procedure, and disciplinary agencies are accorded some degree of investigative discretion. Thus, a complainant cannot compel a disciplinary investigation of an attorney -any attorney - simply by demanding one, in the same way that a complainant cannot demand that a prosecutor conduct a criminal investigation of a defendant simply by asking for one. The Court cited a Supreme Court decision, correctly, for the proposition that prosecutors typically enjoy broad immunity from civil liability for their misconduct in order not to chill the independence of the prosecutor to enforce the law. But in that same opinion the Supreme Court also noted that prosecutors may still be held accountable to the legal community for their professional misconduct under the relevant codes of ethical conduct. But the Court's decision did not follow the Supreme Court's suggestion. The Court said something radically different. It said that asking the Grievance Committee to investigate the District Attorney's office about its investigative functions, particularly its conduct before the grand jury, would invade the discretionary powers accorded prosecutors - as, for example, in the Garner case, the refusal to seek an indictment. The Court concluded that the Grievance Committee did not even have "jurisdiction" to entertain a complaint challenging the District Attorney's discretion in whether to seek an indictment. Advertisement To be sure, the available information about the grand jury's investigation in the Garner case does not present a scenario that depicts clear-cut prosecutorial misconduct and therefore abdication of discipline function by the Grievance Committee. Indeed, although the police conduct in the Garner case is as raw as it could get, the NAACP did not allege any specific evidence of prosecutorial misconduct other than an inference of wrongdoing by the District Attorney stemming from the critical perspective that could reasonably question how a responsible grand jury could not indict Pantaleo and his colleagues given the dramatic video. Most troubling, however, is the Grievance Committee's curious posture in responding to the demand for a disciplinary investigation. Although it did not use these words, it said, in effect: "We don't even have the authority to investigate the District Attorney. He's beyond our power to investigate!" It's ironic that only a short while ago the New York State Commission on Statewide Attorney Discipline suggested that discipline of prosecutors was being dealt with appropriately and there was no need for an independent agency to review a prosecutor's alleged misconduct. The Report noted that the discipline of prosecutors "[should] receive the same attention and scrutiny from the disciplinary and grievance committees as any other complaint - if the committee received a complaint of prosecutorial misconduct." Indeed, the Report emphasized that "The public must be able to make an informed judgment about whether the result of a complaint of prosecutorial misconduct is fair, whether the disciplinary committee did its job and whether the system is working." Prosecutors are well aware that their conduct is subject to professional discipline, as is the conduct of all lawyers. In its brochure entitled "The Right Thing - Ethical Guidelines for Prosecutors" prepared by the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York, prosecutors are appropriately cautioned to behave within the ethical guidelines that are overseen by the Grievance Committees and there is no suggestion that their discretionary conduct, or conduct before grand juries, is somehow exempt from professional review. This article first appeared on the OECD Development Centre's Development Posts on April 5, 2016. Read it anew here. For comments please contact dev.contact@oecd.org. After months of intense discussions, representatives from more than 190 national statistical offices agreed on a global monitoring framework for the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 17 goals and 169 targets of the framework will be complemented by 230 indicators. This is a huge achievement given the complex political and technical challenges that had to be solved to reach a consensus. Now, the United Nations Economic and Social Council and the United Nations General Assembly formally will endorse the framework. Avoiding a stalemate with this finish line in sight and addressing the frameworks remaining blind spots require urgent attention. The two main points that still need to be addressed are: i) integrating the SDGs into national priorities and strengthening national statistical capacities for that process and ii) improving the indicator set. Advertisement Integrating SDGs into national priorities The following table captures different reporting levels, organizations in the lead and the purpose of the reporting exercises: SDG monitoring - roles and responsibilities The relationship between UN technical agencies, such as WHO, UNICEF and FAO, and national governments in the production of statistics is complex. Much of the data we have currently on poverty, health, education or nutrition comes from large-scale international household surveys run by these agencies in countries. This is done in close collaboration with national statistical offices and often includes a capacity-building component that is very useful. However, involving agencies in the production of data can be problematic too as they have their own thematic agenda that might not align with national priorities or could even contradict those priorities. With the heavy SDG agenda, this risk increases substantially and could lead to a crowding out of national capacities. Another equally important issue is the measurement exercise's purpose. Do we focus all our attention on how best to do global monitoring? Or do we also focus urgently on producing national SDG data roadmaps that identify country-specific baselines, data needs and data filling plans for effective country-level actions? We should not forget that the data are supposed to help policy makers make evidence-based decisions and achieve impact. This happens primarily at national and subnational levels. Improving the indicators Even with general agreement on the indicator set, the real work remains. The consensus is clear that the indicators will need to be defined further over the coming months and years. Many indicators are yet to be supported by the required data or methodology. National statistical systems will face trouble with certain indicators or simply will lack the incentives to measure them at all. A good example is indicator 10.5.1 that measures the "financial soundness" of national policies: no government will be motivated to report on this aspect if the country is not doing well, especially given the possible impact on foreign direct investment decisions. Or take indicator 16.4.1 that asks for a country's total value of inward and outward illicit financial flows. Illicit flows by their very nature are clandestine, making only vague estimates possible at best. Another blind spot is the current indicator on corruption: bribery is measured in the public sector whereas the private sector is not considered. Moreover, the indicator set ignores some important problems entirely. Obesity, for example, is not included but is a growing health problem in many middle-income countries, straining public services. Advertisement More technical work clearly is needed. But more importantly, the international community needs to provide the financial means to enable national statistical systems to do the job they are asked to do without undermining national priorities and taking into account their current capacity. Where to go from here The agenda needs to move now from the global to the national and finally to the local levels. Building partnerships among public institutions - agencies of the national statistical system - citizens and the private sector at the local level is critical. This hopefully will lead to better planning of conventional statistical operations and to building new models that involve citizens, businesses and nongovernmental organisations. The conclusion is that achieving the SDGs will depend largely on strengthening national and local capacities in a creative synergy of data producers and users. Only then can we hope that policies will be able to reach those who live on the fringes of society. This is how we can leverage data effectively to fulfil the 2030 Agenda's promise to "leave no one behind.'' (Synagogue of the Ari in Safed - image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) Imagine a young friend came to you suggesting a new kind of Friday evening Sabbath service. Imagine this friend said, "I've just written a poem we can start with, and you've written a song all my friends think is great, so that can be a highlight, and we can chant some Psalms, and perhaps study a bit of text, Mishnah maybe, or Zohar, between our new stuff and the regular evening service." And imagine you knew this friend had gathered a bunch of fellow-travelers into a new community called Sukkat Shalom, the "Shelter of Peace," a group of enthusiasts and devotees so committed to fresh contemplation of ancient tradition that they had come up with entirely new significances for ages-old customs. What kind of Jewish circle would you suppose you were in - and in what century, and where? Sounds rather reforming, no? So perhaps Reform Judaism, or maybe what gets called Jewish Renewal, or maybe Reconstructionism - and in Northern California, perhaps, in the 1960s, say, or some later decade of the New Age... Advertisement But really our imagined conversation is what evidently happened in Safed, in the high Galilee of Ottoman Palestine in the 16th century, amid an assortment of pietists and poets - some from families expelled from Spain by the Alhambra Decree of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, some from other parts of the Mediterranean - who constituted perhaps the greatest (if rather male-heavy) assemblage of Jewish spirituality and (same caveat) perhaps the most amazing Havurah (friendship-group of do-it-yourself Judaism) that ever was. Such are the origins of Kabbalat Shabbat, the mystically inspired service of welcoming the Sabbath - which starts with a love-song to God, Yedid Nefesh ("Soulmate") by Rabbi Elazar Azikri (1533-1600), has as its highpoint the highly allusive Lecha Dodi ("Come, My Beloved") by Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz (ca. 1500-1580), and features six Psalms corresponding to the work-days of the week, plus an extended dance-remix of the biblical Song of the Sabbath Day (Psalms 92-93) - that last sung once Lecha Dodi has invited the congregation to step outside the synagogue door (or, in the mostly more reticent communities of today, at least to turn toward the doorway, in a nod to the Safed custom), physically to welcome the Divine-Feminine-Imminence that is the Holy Sabbath, and, in the conception of the medieval mystics, to become one with that Presence. Alkabetz moved to Safed when his dear friend, Rabbi Yosef Karo, one of the Spanish exiles (who later would distill his prodigious and exhaustive study of Jewish law into the Shulkhan Arukh, the "Laid Table" that defines much of Jewish observance to this day), in the midst of an all-night study-session the two shared on the Feast of Weeks in Alkabetz's native Salonica, was overcome by a mystical experience of the Divine Presence charging the pair to get up, after the holiday, and go to the Holy Land. Advertisement Those are the trippy and profoundly poetic sensibilities that are the back-story of what today is a standard part of common Jewish prayer-books, an element virtually ubiquitous, save in a very few communities that still adhere so strictly to the Western Sephardic (Spanish and Portuguese) or the Italian branches of Jewish liturgy that they have yet to adopt so newfangled a custom. This week, in our calendar of scriptural readings, is known as Shabbat Ha-Chodesh - The Sabbath of The Month - "The Month" being the first, springtime month of the biblical year-cycle, the month that features Passover with the holiday's retelling of the exodus from Egypt, which is one start of our people's long journey. The Hebrew word for "Month," Chodesh - signifying the new moon - derives from Chadash, the word for "New." In a literal sense, then, this is the Sabbath of the New, or of Renewing. What could be newer than the sliver of light that is a new moon? And, at the same time, what could be more affirming of the oldest and most steadfast rhythm of earthly timekeeping? Here we begin anew - again. Similarly, what could be more ancient and more familiar than a capsule-recitation of our people's ancient story? "An Aramean on the verge of oblivion, my father - and he went down to Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, large and mighty and multitudinous; and the Egyptians dealt harshly with us, and oppressed us, and placed upon us hard labor; and we cried out to the Eternal One our God, and the Eternal One heard our voice, and saw our affliction and our toil and our downtroddenness; and the Eternal One took us out of Egypt, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and with great terror and with signs and with wonders." And, at the same time, what could be more inspiring of an altogether fresh take on life than the imperative to consider oneself, time after time, generation after generation, as though one had just newly emerged from Egypt? This is the Sabbath of the New Moon. And once again, in our synagogues and prayer-groups, we will sing Yedid Nefesh and Lecha Dodi. And, just as we settle into our weekly singing of the Psalms of Kabbalat Shabbat, we will hear, at the end of the first Psalm in the sequence: "For forty years I [God] was frustrated with that generation, and I said, they are a nation of errant heart, and they have not known My ways, so that I swore in my wrath that they would not come into My rest." And how will we get past that? Only by way of the opening words to the next Psalm: "Sing to the Eternal One a new song." Advertisement Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant just signed into law the latest 'religious freedom' bill to pass a state legislature. This law allows private companies to openly refuse service to anyone who violates the business owners' personally held religious beliefs regarding same-sex marriage, extramarital sex, and transgender people. What's more, a law repealing protections to LGBT citizens was just passed in North Carolina, and the state legislature of neighboring Tennessee passed a bill that would make the Holy Bible the official state book. The latter is expected to be vetoed by the governor. While these laws will be challenged in the courts, worried observers might find themselves concerned by this wave of vitriolic bills enacted in the name of religious liberty. Could this be the start of a renewed era of evangelical Christian dominance in American politics? In short, no. Rather than these laws signaling renewed influence of evangelical Christianity on American politics, they are merely a symptom of two basic realities: 1) Christianity -- and religion as a whole -- is slowly dying, both in the United States and worldwide, and (more importantly) 2) Christianity is gradually losing the privileges it once held in American civic life. Advertisement American evangelical Christianity is losing its influence. These bills being proposed, along with other expressions of their religious-persecution complex -- including movies such as God's Not Dead and A Matter of Faith -- are a reaction to this fact. To be certain, membership in organized religion is declining in the United States and worldwide. While the decline is very gradual, it is definite. A comprehensive study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that noticeable declines have been observed among those who are affiliated with any specific Christian denomination across the board. However, the percentage of Americans who identify as evangelical Christian has dropped very little compared to other denominations, down from 26.3% in 2007 to 25.4% in 2014. A decline in Sunday attendance alone would be insufficient to explain this wave of religiously-motivated laws and movies, especially since many of these laws are being enacted in states where evangelical Christianity--the primary culprit behind these laws--is most prevalent. So what's the real cause? Although evangelical Christianity has been relatively immune to the declines in religious participation seen in other denominations, the overall decline in Americans' religious affiliation has resulted in the corresponding growth of religiously unaffiliated individuals. This growth among non-religious individuals has almost certainly resulted in the increasing secularization of society that we see. Advertisement Where town council meetings used to be initiated with a prayer (particularly ones that mentioned Jesus by name), policies are being adopted prohibiting explicitly religious invocations. Where government buildings would display Ten Commandments monuments or, during December, display the nativity of Jesus, lawsuits have resulted in such displays being taken down. In other words, the number of non-Christians has grown to a point where they collectively have sufficient influence to overturn decades--even centuries--of Christian privilege. To any fair-minded person, these changes were simply put in place to ensure Christianity is not given special deference. But unfortunately, many Americans have lived their entire lives in a society that puts Christianity on a pedestal. In parts of this country, proclaiming conviction in your faith is often a de facto prerequisite for being elected to public office. Many Americans view Christian and non-Christian as being tantamount to moral and immoral. For many Americans, realizing they live in a society wrought with privileges granted to their religion is like a fish realizing that it's wet. Much like a fish out of water, some Christians are having trouble adjusting to a secular society. And much like a fish out of water, flailing about, some Americans are reacting as they see fit. This reaction is evident both in the laws described previously, as well as an enormous spike in Christian films (see figure below), which is fast becoming its own movie genre. So what should you, the reader, expect moving forward? First, we will see more 'religious liberty' bills introduced, at least for the next several years. And yes, they need to be fought tooth and nail in order to protect those left vulnerable as a result. But these bills will continue to be met with strong opposition, both politically and economically, with boycotts of local businesses ensuing. Couple this with the continued proliferation of younger adults favoring a more secular society (even among many religious individuals), it will soon become a fool's errand for anyone to take the time to propose these laws. Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, pauses during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, U.S., on Saturday, April 2, 2016. Clinton used Donald Trump's remarks about punishing women who have abortions if the procedure were outlawed to level a double-barreled attack on the Republican front-runner as well as her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders. Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images Campaigning in New York City on Thursday, Hillary Clinton struggled to make her Metro Card work. She swiped once and then tried again. Unphased, she tried five times until she could finally move through the turnstile like she's moved past other obstacles throughout her life. Hillary Clinton is relentless--an attribute that propelled her to become a two-term New York Senator, develop an encyclopedic knowledge of foreign affairs as Secretary of State and run for president twice. This week, her unstoppable ambition became a shortcoming. Her seemingly flawless resume was called into question. Advertisement In the midst of a post-Wisconsin Sanders campaign victory lap, Jeff Weaver--campaign manager to the Vermont senator--sent a message to Hillary Clinton and her supporters. "Don't destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the Secretary's ambitions," he demeaned on CNN's The Lead With Jake Tapper. The remark coincided with another. Bernie Sanders told the press at a Philadelphia news conference that Hillary Clinton is not "qualified" to be president. "I don't believe that she is qualified if she is through her super PAC taking tens of millions of dollars in special-interest funds," he said before citing her ties to Wall Street, support for the "disastrous" War in Iraq and endorsement of also "disastrous" trade deals. The Sanders campaign's latest criticism is multi-dimensional. First of all, Weaver's attack on Clinton's "ambition" casts her as a Tracy Flick character--a stereotypically, unabashedly ambitious woman. The trite probe turns female ambition into a flaw and makes excessive effort a con, casting a shadow over her accomplishments. His comment gives candor to a sarcastic 2006 Onion article titled "Hillary Clinton Is Too Ambitious To Be The First Female President." Second of all, Sanders' retort is both an attack on the entire political system and a rephrasing of his previous criticisms of Clinton. Since the beginning of his campaign, Sanders has spotlighted Clinton's record of supporting trade deals, vouching for the Iraq War and accepting money from Wall Street. Now, he's reframed the issues, arguing for the first time that Clinton's past makes her unqualified for a return to the White House. The approach is especially biting as Clinton has based her campaign on the premise that her resume is precisely why she's qualified to be president. Advertisement Further, Sanders' remarks actually indict the entire political system. Almost every seasoned politician has accepted money from special interest groups. The trade deals Clinton supported were extremely popular at the time. And, Sanders was one of only six senators to oppose funding for the Iraq War back in 2008 when he was still an Independent. According to Sanders' model, steadfast involvement in party politics makes you unfit for the White House, which ironically might actually be true this election given the rise of Trump. A decade ago the National Research Council released a report that showed that between 40 and 60 percent of U.S. high school students are disengaged from learning and don't put much effort into school. Since that time, other studies have found that student motivation is a problem at all levels of the educational system, and that students' desire to learn decreases steadily from the start of elementary school until they graduate from high school or dropout. On a recent national survey, 69 percent of teachers reported that low academic motivation is a problem in their classrooms - a higher percentage than cited poor student behavior, bullying, or a negative school climate. Rising awareness of this crisis has helped to fuel growing interest in research on motivation among America's educators, staff at academically-focused youth programs, and millions of parents. Across the country people are reading books and watching TED Talks in which psychologists and other scholars describe ways to help students adopt growth mindsets, increase grit, achieve goals, and envision their future possible selves. In my view, this new emphasis on student motivation is a very good thing. It is helping reduce the fever that gripped the country during the worst days of the standardized testing movement, when we deluded ourselves into thinking that if we just raised academic standards, America's most struggling students would respond with the increased effort required to meet them. Advertisement But as is often the case, progress has presented a new problem. Each researcher whose work is getting well-deserved attention has focused on a single, important aspect of student motivation. For instance, Carol Dweck of Stanford University has explored the impact of a growth mindset, while Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania has examined grit - to highlight just two of the most prominent scholars today. However, teachers and other educators who work directly with students struggle to know when and how to apply these different approaches to the complex and diverse motivational challenges they encounter in the classroom. For example, one student may not work hard in school because she believes she doesn't belong there. Another student might not work hard because he sees little connection between school and the things he is interested in and loves to do. That's why we need a broader framework that helps educators organize and connect the dots between these distinct bodies of research on motivation--and interlocking challenges they each address. Toward that end, over the past two years my colleagues and I at Search Institute have developed the REACH Framework for strengthening students' desire to work hard in school. We are now testing interventions organized around the framework in a diverse group of middle schools and we will report on the outcomes we achieve over the next two years In the meantime, we thought it would be helpful to share our framework with others who are also working to enhance academic motivation. It has five components, each of which is summarized by a letter in the acronym REACH: Advertisement Relationships: The single most powerful thing that educators can do to increase motivation is to build close connections with their students. Ongoing research we are conducting at Search Institute is finding that those close connections become truly developmental for young people when five elements occur regularly and authentically in the relationship: expressing care, challenging growth, providing support, sharing power, and expanding possibilities. Effort: Adults also need to help students believe that when they challenge themselves mentally, use good learning strategies, and see mistakes and failures as opportunities to improve, they can become smarter and more successful in school. Aspirations: If we help students develop positive visions of their possible selves and see how their actions in the present will affect their ability to realize those visions, we can improve both academic effort and academic outcomes. Cognition: When we teach students to think about their own thinking, it strengthens their ability to manage learning and control impulses. Those skills, in turn, strengthen students' abilities to complete tasks and achieve goals. Heart: Educators can support students' intrinsic motivation by helping them discover and reflect on they love to do (their sparks) and what they love about themselves (their best values). When students see their own strengths and when educators acknowledge those strengths, students are better able to resist biases such as stereotype threat and achieve their full potential in school. Advertisement At Search Institute we have recently begun surveying students to measure the degree to which they demonstrate and experience each component of the REACH Framework. Among other things, we are learning that there are simple but potentially powerful things that schools can do to increase motivation in each category of the framework. For example, data on the Heart component shows that many schools could do a much better job of knowing students' deep interests and talents - what we call sparks - and integrating them into the curriculum and into informal conversations with students. In one diverse high school that we surveyed, for instance, 81 percent of the students reported that they have such sparks in their lives, and 63 percent reported that successfully developing their sparks gave them confidence they could tackle other hard challenges. In that same school, however, 50 percent of the students reported that teachers don't try to connect what they are learning in class to their sparks, and 43 percent reported that their teachers don't try to find out what they are interested in. This article was co-authored by James Kim, a junior at Troy High School in Michigan. "Transition is inevitable, justice is not"--words, by Quinton Sankofa, that hung in the air at the Wharton Center for Performing Arts in East Lansing, on Monday, April 4, during Naomi Klein's talk about climate crisis. She spoke urgently about the need to move from an extractive to a regenerative culture and made a parallel between our extractivist culture that both strips our planet of its natural resources as well as assaults our democracy, as we have seen in Michigan with emergency management laws, the Flint Water crisis and the Detroit water shutoffs. She asserts that our response to climate change "can't be no" but must be "holistic" and include "a vision for a new economy"--an economy, and political system, Klein says, that puts front line communities first, disrupts institutionalized racism, rights historical wrongs, and renews our relationships with one another and the natural world. Throughout her talk, Naomi Klein referenced her book "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate"--required reading for the informed citizen. In her book, she makes the case that capitalism can no longer exist in its current form without causing irreparable damage to our world. She does so by directly exposing the gross corruption which pervades high levels of business and government and asserting the reality that current environmental efforts are not moving at even an iota of the pace and scale required to keep global temperatures under somewhat manageable conditions. In 2009, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen set a 2 degree limit for global warming, a necessary cap on industrial filth that humans have been hurtling towards at ever accelerating speeds since the industrial revolution. This two degree target was agreed on as an unbreachable ceiling, as anything more than this would mean millions of floods in coastal regions across the world, islands becoming uninhabitable because of rising sea levels, and any plethora of unforeseeable natural disasters. Events expected to occur in at least a century are already here; the number of major floods worldwide is 13 times greater than than 1950 as calculated by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment; Glacier National Park has no glacier; and the last 9 years have all been consecutive warmest years on record. On March 4, the global temperature officially rose more than 2 degrees above average, but this never saw headlines as the media was somehow more attracted to the childlike tantrums of Trump. We are at a crisis point that requires transforming our economic and political system and shifting our institutions, culture, and values in a way that addresses the root of how we got here in the first place. Advertisement Naomi Klein, on Monday evening, made the point that we have seen an increase in the appetite for system change over the past decade with movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Fight for 15, and Blockadia. She urges us to see institutionalized racism, mass incarceration, economic inequality, and climate change as parts of the same systemic problem. The solutions to these issues will not be found in piecemeal policy changes but rather in a holistic approach that creates an opportunity to address racial and economic injustice through a green economy that puts front line communities first. In "This Changes Everything," Klein delineates how momentous change consistently starts with grassroots organizing The effects can be seen everywhere from Pungesti, Romania, where common villagers decided to take a stand against the oily monolith of Chevron and succeeded in blocking their fracking efforts, to Detroit, where urban farms are bringing together generations in an effort to stave off corporate dependency. Indigenous groups have been at the forefront of climate change resistance and movement building and have won significant victories. Don't be mistaken, the Keystone XL pipeline was not shut down because of any moral revelation on congress' part; it was the organization of the tribes whose land would be (and has historically been) ravaged by such an atrocity. Battling climate change means challenging capitalist ideals and creating a new set of values, Klein expressed on Monday, and that process needs to be inclusive, shared, collectively owned and led by front line communities. The task at hand is large--but possible. Research from Stanford Environmental Engineering professor Mark Jacobson and UC Davis research scientist Mark Delucchi have officially concluded that it is indeed economically possible to convert to 100% renewable energy by the year 2030. And, yes, they have a plan to get us to that number, but the political will for enacting change of this kind and on this scale is something we can only create with the voice of the masses. In the words of Jim Morrison, "It's got to happen inside first." Are you stirring? Advertisement Human beings have a stubborn propensity for getting in our own way. All those women riding side-saddle and falling off horses, until someone figured out that wearing pants doesn't turn us into men. Pilgrim children's misbehavior triggering witch hunts, because bringing a corn-cob doll to church must surely signal demonic possession. Human nature and common sense, the two factors that ought to guide us, are too often displaced by mistaken beliefs. When reality wins, it's cause for celebration, so join me in cheering some human nature-based breakthroughs. 1. Hands-down, a better option. Hospital infections cause about 100,000 deaths each year, and 1.5 million illnesses. The main culprit? Hands. Touching everything and going everywhere, they're the perfect delivery system for germs. For decades, hospitals engaged in a futile tug of war with doctors and nurses, who, in defiance of posters, seminars, threats and entreaties, wouldn't consistently wash their hands. Enter Purell. It turns out repeated soaping and rinsing makes hands dry and scaly; Purell's waterless rub doesn't. And hand rub can be applied while walking from patient to patient, instead of stopping at a sink only to find the paper towel dispenser empty. Human nature being what it is, hygiene improved when it stopped wasting time and ruining skin. Next up? Hand rub dispensers that read ID's, so hospitals know exactly who's spreading germs. When it comes to changing behavior, you can talk yourself hoarse, or you can leverage ingenuity and technology for simple, elegant solutions. Advertisement 2. You can't fight mothers or nature. Early 20th century child-rearing experts were a grim lot, cautioning mothers against touching their young. "Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap," a popular 1928 guide enjoined. "If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight." It took those infamous 1940's terry-cloth monkey studies to prove what every parent instinctively knows: children deprived of affection deteriorate, mentally and physically. Dr. Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care - second best-seller to the Bible for over 50 years - reached millions of parents by celebrating the innate: "You know more than you think you do," he assured them. 3. The eyes have it. Or maybe not. An eyewitness to a crime used to make for an airtight case. That was before we understood that human memory is fallible, and notoriously suggestible. Subtle cues - facial expressions, tone of voice - are picked up by witnesses, who can end up confirming what the police already believe instead of adding fresh data from their own recollections. Of 300 wrongful convictions, eyewitness identifications played a role in over 70%. Now, small but ingenious changes to police procedure are factoring in human nature. Traditionally, the officer overseeing a line-up knew who the suspect was, whereas a "blind administrator," ignorant of the suspect's identity, can't bias the eyewitness with unconscious cues. And while the "six pack" of photos (suspect plus five others) used to be shown to witnesses all at once, fewer innocent suspects get selected when photos are viewed one at a time. These and other research-based processes help protect the innocent, and keep all of us safer from harm. 4. Making productivity go "vroom." In 1983, with labor relations at a dismal low, General Motors made a disruptive decision to partner with Toyota on an American plant. Skeptical GM workers flew to Japan for training, whose theme was misleadingly simple: teamwork. Back home, supervisors just yelled when things went wrong. At Toyota, they offered help. Workers got to propose solutions to production line issues; if the improvement saved money, a bonus followed. When the workers came home, productivity soared, union grievances plummeted, and cars coming off the assembly line received unprecedented quality ratings. Was GM saved? Well, you know human nature: despite the numbers, GM's other plants resisted change. Yet the experiment is still studied in business schools. Trust, engagement and respect yield better outcomes - it's human nature. Advertisement I was in Newark and Harlem just this week. And I walked into the homes of welfare mothers. I saw them in conditionsno, not with wall-to-wall carpet, but wall-to-wall rats and roaches. . . . [One mother] pointed out the walls with all the ceiling falling through. She showed me the holes where the rats came in. She said night after night we have to stay awake to keep the rats and roaches from getting to the children. . . . And the tragedy is, so often [poor Americans] are invisible because America is so affluent, so rich. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke these words during his last Sunday sermon on March 31, 1968 at Washington National Cathedral calling for support for a Poor Peoples Campaign. Almost fifty years later questions about how much poor Americans are forced to pay for housing and what happens when they cant afford it are back in the national spotlight. The new book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Harvard University sociology professor and Justice and Poverty Project co-director Matthew Desmond, is calling renewed and urgently needed attention to a tragic eviction cycle invisible to many but all too familiar to families trapped in the cruel prison of poverty. Dr. Desmond found that in the face of stagnating or falling incomes and soaring housing costs eviction has become more commonplace in America than ever. He spent months in Milwaukee, Wisconsin living first in a trailer park and then in an inner city rooming house documenting the experiences of eight families he met. In a recent interview he explained: Most Americans, if they dont live in trailer parks or in the inner city, think that the typical low income family lives in public housing or benefits from some kind of housing assistance, but the opposite is true. In reality, only one in four families who qualify for housing assistance receives it: three in four are forced to struggle on their own. Dr. Desmond says, Weve reached a point in this country where the majority of poor renting families are giving at least half of their income to housing costs and one in four are giving over 70 percent of their income just to pay rent and keep the utilities on. Advertisement When Dr. Desmond met Arleen, a single mom with two boys, she was paying 80 percent of her income to rent a run down two bedroom apartment in Milwaukee: I saw Arleen confront terrible situations. Should I pay my rent or feed my kids? Should I pay my rent or get the kids clothing they need for a new school year? Should I chip in for a funeral for when my sister dies? Arleen and her boys were evicted so many times as he followed her trajectory, they lost count. One time her son threw a snowball and hit a passerby, and that person retaliated by kicking in the door to their apartment. The landlord evicted Arleens family because of the damage to the door. Dr. Desmond says Arleen then missed an appointment with a welfare caseworker because the letter about the appointment went to her old address. So she got evicted from the new apartment. The crises families face trying to pay for housing are not just a consequence of poverty, but a cause of poverty he says. He also noted Black women are often overrepresented in eviction proceedings, just as Black men are in prison: Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out. Last year, the Childrens Defense Fund included in our Ending Child Poverty Now report an expansion of housing vouchers to all households with children below 150 percent of poverty whose fair market rent exceeds 50 percent of their income. Of the nine policy improvements to alleviate child poverty we proposed, this had the single greatest impact. It would reduce child poverty 20.8 percent and lift 2.3 million children out of poverty. How then do we build the political and public will to do what works? Advertisement Dr. Desmond also met Vanetta in Milwaukee who said in a recent interview: I grew up in every shelter, basically, in Illinois and Milwaukee. I didnt have a stable place over my head. I didnt have proper food, or I didnt even know a few times how I was going to eat that night. We missed meals multiple nights, and it was hard. And all I ever wanted for my kids was not to put them through that. Her troubles started during the recession when her hours at the Old Country Buffet were slashed from five days to one day a week. Suddenly she had to choose between paying arrears to keep the electricity on or paying the rent. Falling further and further behind, she received an eviction notice. Terrified of being homeless and losing her children, and desperate to pay the bills, Vanetta participated in a robbery. Shed been on the waiting list for public housing for two years, but after the robbery she became a convicted felon, which meant her chances of ever being approved were almost zero. He's not done yet. After a lifetime of struggle, a lifetime of fighting for justice for women and people of color and the queer community, a lifetime of fighting to reclaim Christianity from guilt and prejudice and restoring compassion and love at the heart of its message, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong surely earned his retirement in 2000. But retirement from his official role in the Episcopal Church has not meant retirement from study and reflection and public advocacy. Spong uses his personal website and blog to offer commentary and a glimpse of the ideas he is grappling with. A best-selling author, he continues to publish a string of well reviewed books that popularize cutting edge scholarship alongside his own insights. Spong is also a popular speaker, giving two talks in Illinois on Saturday, April 9 with more scheduled throughout the summer. (One talk is in Peoria and the other in Springfield.) Still, retirement does have its benefits, such as fewer death threats. Advertisement Spong believed his memoir (2001's Here I Stand) would be the last book he wrote. Yet the books keep coming. Case in point? Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy. Booklist echoes many others when it says, "Delightedly publishing another book as he nears 85, Spong returns to a main theme of his career, the Jewishness of Christianity...vibrantly accessible." Indeed, on one level Biblical Literalism is a loving look at the Gospel of Matthew. Spong emphasizes that of course it was written by Jewish writers for a Jewish audience and was first heard in Jewish worship. By placing the Gospel over the calendar of worship for Jews at the time it was written (an issue of some debate), Spong shows the work "clicking" into place. The eccentricities, the purpose of so many passages become crystal clear when seen from this perspective. It's an insight he readily acknowledges was pioneered by many others, including the scholar Michael Goulder. Yet for a layperson unfamiliar with trends in Biblical scholarship, it's a revelation. Indeed, first discovering this truth was a life-changing experience for him. On a second level, Spong takes up the thread of another burning issue by emphasizing again and again the dangers of Biblical literalism. In his lifetime, Spong has seen so many of the key issues he championed triumph, from basic civil rights for people of color to equality for women to the growing acceptance of the queer community as welcome members of society and Christianity. Yet he is still driven to push forward on the many issues that remain, from economic justice to seeing the equality of women recognized everywhere to the fight against war. Above all, indeed central to those battles is the struggle for the soul of Christianity, a soul he sees as poisoned by a desire to claim absolute truth and a Biblical literalism that leads to a religion of punishment and control and guilt and shame, rather than a faith of love and compassion and joy. Advertisement Spong's journey is a remarkable one. He began with a childhood raised in fundamentalism in the heart of the Bible Belt and grew into a questioning young man. Later, Spong became a major figure in the Episcopal Church and society at large, challenged as little better than a heretic by some and receiving death threats from others. He's often portrayed as advocating ideas that would destroy Christianity. To Spong he's striving to save it, just as rejecting fundamentalism saved his own faith. Spong thinks perhaps Biblical Literalism might be his last book. His wife Christine would happily agree. After many years of marriage, he still refers to her sweetly as "my bride." Central to the work he accomplishes, she jokes that even if he's up for another book, she may not be. (On the other hand, one suspects she may have also said that four or five books ago.) In any case, Spong will be heard, whether giving talks or weighing in online, Spong found his voice speaking for those who were silenced and he won't stop now. Advertisement Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover's best friend. Before you head to your favorite bookstore, library or website, head to BookFilter. You'll discover great books ready to read, borrow or buy right away. We feature all the new releases every week in every category, from fiction and mystery and romance to cookbooks and history and sports and more. At BookFilter, we share all the books we're excited to read and give personal reviews of our favorites. No computerized recommendations, no soulless algorithms -- BookFilter features only passionate real book lovers combined with in-depth information you can't find easily anywhere else. It's like browsing the aisles of your favorite bookstore with our experts pointing out the best of the bunch every step of the way. BookFilter: your source for what's new and what's good. On Friday, April 8, Max Cleland celebrates the 48th anniversary of the day he got blown up in Vietnam. "I should be dead," he told me this week. He is anything but. Cleland has made another astonishing recovery, less dramatic than that day he lost three limbs and 42 pints of blood in Vietnam, but he is back once again, this time from years of severe depression and a bout with long-dormant post traumatic stress disorder. Cleland was a freshly promoted captain in the Army Signal Corps when the thousands of men and dozens of helicopters of the 1st Air Cavalry Division were ordered to relieve the beleaguered Marines at Khe Sanh, a mountain combat base in the northwest corner of South Vietnam. The Marines had been under siege for 77 days, taken severe casualties and were in danger of being overrun by North Vietnamese regulars massing in the surrounding jungle. Advertisement The young Army officer nearing the end of his tour said it was stupid of him to volunteer, but he took a mission to fly onto a hilltop landing zone where he and a couple of soldiers were to install a radio relay station to keep the division's headquarters in communication with its units in the field. As their helicopter lifted off and flew away, Cleland spotted an American grenade on the ground. He figured it had fallen off his web belt and bent down to pick it up. The explosive device actually had tumbled from the belt of another soldier, a new guy who hadn't learned yet to bend or tape his grenades' pins to prevent them from slipping out of "safety" and arming the explosive inside to go off in a matter of seconds. Boom! The blast ripped off the captain's right arm and leg and shredded his other leg as a piece of shrapnel slit his windpipe, rendering him unable to speak. An alert Navy corpsman on a medevac chopper used his belt as a tourniquet to slow the bleeding from one leg, and Cleland was evacuated to an aid station, then to a military surgical hospital at Dong Ha, where a team of doctors labored for hours to save his life. The remains of the left leg had to be amputated, but he kept his left arm. Cleland eventually got to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, where he was among many severely wounded combat veterans from Vietnam who endured long and difficult rehabilitation to teach them to live in a world dictated by their disabilities. Advertisement Cleland chose to devote himself to public service as a watchdog for veterans' needs. He was elected to his native Georgia's state senate before the war was over, and when Jimmy Carter was elected president, he picked Cleland to head what was then a sub-Cabinet Veterans Administration. It was difficult to imagine, in those days before the Americans with Disabilities Act, that a triple amputee could run a major government agency, but Cleland proudly devoted himself to improving the conditions for the thousands and thousands of veterans returning from Vietnam, their lives upended by a year or more and half a world away from anything they had ever known. A political animal, Cleland ran and was elected to the United States Senate from his native Georgia and served six years before a Republican challenger, Saxby Chands, challenged his patriotism and won his seat. By his own account, Cleland sank into a deep depression, at least some of which he traces to the Iraq war. He blamed himself for voting to support the war out of fear he would lose his Senate seat in the hyperpatriotic fever that followed 9/11. He returned to Walter Reed and spent three years as an outpatient, struggling with his own demons and helping other veterans battle theirs in regular group therapy sessions. "I never saw it coming," he wrote in The New York Times afterward. "Forty years after I had left the battlefield, my memories of death and wounding were suddenly as fresh and present as they had been in 1968. "I thought I was past that. I learned that none of us are ever past it. Were it not for the surgeons and nurses at Walter Reed, I never would have survived those first months back from Vietnam. Were it not for the counselors there today, I do not think I would have survived what I've come to call my second Vietnam, the one that played out entirely in my mind." Advertisement One of Cleland's proudest achievements as head of the VA was the opening of the first Veterans Center, a federally supported storefront in Van Nuys, California, designed to be more accessible and less imposing than the sprawling VA hospitals scattered around the country. Today there are 300 such centers -- and Cleland is an outpatient at one. About a year ago, he was diagnosed with a severe heart problem that would require open-heart surgery and considerable risk. Cleland fell back into the debilitating panic he had experienced after his Senate defeat in 2008. He walked into a Veterans Center in Atlanta, joined a group with trained VA counsellors and credits the therapy with helping put him back on course running the American Battle Monuments Commission. When he was admitted to the hospital for the dreaded heart surgery, a pre-operative test showed his problem was not as severe as first thought, and the surgery wasn't urgent after all. For victims of PTSD, he told me, "anniversaries are a bitch." They bring back all the paralyzing memories of awful events that happened long ago. He learned to cope, he said, by adopting the technique of another sufferer, who told his group to celebrate the anniversary as "Alive Day," the day he didn't die. This year, Cleland, 73, is celebrating Alive Day over dinner with Bill Chapman, who lived five doors down from him on Main Street in Lithonia, Georgia, when they were growing up. Chapman became a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and when he heard what had happened to Cleland, he flew north from his base to see his dreadfully wounded friend in a hospital Quonset hut. Cleland remembers being desperately thirsty after his surgery and loss of blood but restricted to what little water he could squeeze or suck from a water-soaked cotton ball. Come on kids, let me tell you a story! It's the same story we tell you every time the market goes dark and you are worried about the economic monsters in your closet but it sure works to calm the investors down - EVERY TIME! Yesterday the kids were really scared so they brought out all 4 of the Fed's master story-tellers to literally speak to kids at the New York Economic Club and boy, did that do the trick! NEW YORKFederal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen and three former Fed leaders sought to dispel worries the U.S. is heading back toward recession despite concerns about slow global growth and the expansions advancing age. Ms. Yellen, joined Thursday in an unusual gathering in New York by former Fed Chairmen Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, described an economy that is progressing without breeding obvious new financial bubbles that could derail growth. This is an economy on a solid course, not a bubble economy, Ms. Yellen said. It has made tremendous progress from the damage of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. See, everything is great - no monsters under your bed or in the closet, now go back to the story or the market and BUYBUYBUY! And BUYBUYBUY investors did, reversing half of yesterday's losses overnight - EXACTLY what we predicted would happen yesterday morning and, how did we know? Because we've heard this story 100 times at this point! As I said to our Members: Advertisement I am simply in awe of the effort that is being put in by the G20 to manipulate the markets. This morning Italy is up 3% on yet another bailout from the EU. The fact that we need these bailouts (despite all the "oversight" and stress tests) doesn't bother anyone as long as the FREE MONEY keeps coming. And, of course, our own Fed heads talked up the economy and, more importantly, their ability to wisely steer it, last night. The main message was well-delivered, using the history of the 4 speakers, they reminded people of how many crises they had steered us through in the past and how worried we all were at the time and how crazy they seemed at the time but how, in the end, they were right and wise and fair and just and it all works out so BUYBUYBUY because all shall be well. And all is, indeed, well this morning and we're back to Friday's open (2,045 on the S&P) but far below Friday's close (2,075) but this too is what we predicted on Monday and, needless to say, we've had a fantastic week - though we could have just as well taken it off as net nothing happened in the bigger picture. In fact, my Monday comments about Trump's Recession have now been scientifically verified by Money Pulse, who say "more than 25% of Americans indicate they've become more cautious with their money as a result of this presidential campaign." Remember, I can only tell you what is going to happen and how to make money playing it - the rest is up to you! 8) Advertisement Japan's Finance Minister has described the dollar's recent falls vs. the yen as "one-sided movements" and vowed to intervene if necessary to continue the country's fight against deflation. "We are watching moves with a sense of tension," Taro Aso told a press conference after the greenback sank to a 17-month low of 107.67 yen on Thursday. "We will take necessary steps in accordance with circumstances." Of course, that sent the Nikkei flying higher, now over 16,000 and, at $5 per point per contract - we're already up $2,000 per contract off our 15,600 bullish entry - what a nice way to end the week! And, I will remind you - this is the same chart, with the same lines that I drew for you when describing this trade idea in yesterday's post - only it hadn't happened yet - our goal was just 15,900, the rest was gravy (or soy sauce)! Needless to say, we're still running cautious into the weekend and we even got a bit more bearish yesterday, cashing in some of the longs from our Options Opportunity Portfolio to tilt it more bearish into the weekend. If we're wrong, and the markets turn higher - then we have cash on the side and plenty of hedges and we can aggressively add more longs but I super-duper doubt that's going to be necessary. Even as I write this (8:25) William Dudley (NY Fed Head) is making a doveish speech in Hartford, saying the Fed will take a very cautious approach to rate hikes while at the same time telling us how the economy is improving. Those two things don't really go together but it's the story the Fed wants us to accept despite all those suspicious noises coming from the closet. For example, here's what we see when we actually look under the bed at the Manufacturing numbers Uncle Dudley says are "improving": I don't know if milk and cookies are going to make this one all better, folks. Not to end the weekend on a down note but I know there are people there who think the magic pixie who runs the Fed these days can fix anything but she can't and you're going to be very upset when you find out it's just a nice old lady who puts a quarter under your pillow when you lose a tooth and, no matter how hard you wish for a comfortable retirement - she's not going to be able to make it happen - you'll have to learn to do the work and get there yourself! Here's a short list of this weekend's potential monsters - please hedge wisely! Advertisement Hopefully, everything will be fine but, as I often remind our Members: "Hope is not a valid trading strategy." Have a great weekend, For most Americans today, Russia is more an annoyance than a threat. But if you live in Georgia, a small country on Russia's southern border, the Kremlin remains a menacing presence. If the Russian bear becomes hungry, Georgia might be a morsel too tempting to resist. Georgia is the proud and independent descendant of ancient kingdoms dating back thousands of years. Like others in the Caucasus, Georgians have fought Russians many times, most recently in 2008, when Russia invaded and unilaterally recognized the independence of Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions, where Russian troops remain. Given the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, Georgia is seeking to strengthen its ties to the West. It has been persistent in its effort to be granted membership in NATO, which was the topic of an early-April conference in Tbilisi that attracted participants including Georgia's president, prime minister, and numerous other officials, as well as the U.S. ambassador, NATO representatives, and an array of other regional security experts. Advertisement Georgia realizes that its strength lies in its willingness to be a constructive member of the NATO community. This commitment is seen in Georgia's defense budget, which already meets the 2 percent of GDP NATO requirement (which only a few of the current members respect), and the deployment of Georgian troops in NATO missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo. Georgia knows that its prospective NATO membership is viewed with angry wariness by Russia, and so it must convince not only the organization's leadership in Brussels but also its constituency of member states that Georgia being a part of the defense alliance is both feasible and useful. The case of Ukraine casts a shadow on these matters. Ukraine is not a NATO member, but if it had been in 2014, would that have deterred the Russian invasion or forced NATO meet its obligation to defend a member country? Whether NATO is willing and able to block Russian adventurism is a high-stakes question. Much emphasis at the conference was placed on public diplomacy. Georgia's greatest asset in its quest for membership is moral suasion, an element of soft power. Further, communication techniques in this process are invaluable, particularly because Russia is so skillful in its use of disinformation. Georgia includes an Armenian minority - about 6 percent of the country's population - that has been targeted with social media rumors to the effect that if Georgia joins NATO, a military base populated by Turkish troops will be opened in the country. Given the Armenians' antipathy toward Turkey, these reports - which are untrue - have produced anti-NATO sentiment. Some of the rhetoric at the conference seemed designed to dampen Georgian expectations, suggesting alternatives to NATO membership. There was talk about strengthening Georgia so it could resist unwanted advances from its nasty neighbor to the north. But this is nonsense. Georgia without NATO is no match for Russia. Advertisement Montana's Supreme Court on Friday dismissed an appeal from a teacher serving 10 years in prison in a notorious student rape case after the defendant's attorney said the case had no merit. The move ends Stacey Dean Rambold's case almost a decade after he raped a 14-year-old girl. Rambold's public defender, Eileen Larkin, notified the high court last month that her client's appeal was frivolous and lacked merit. Rambold on Thursday asked justices to dismiss the case. In a notice to the court signed by Rambold and Larkin, the defendant said he was "satisfied with the representation he has been given, and wishes to dismiss his appeal voluntarily." The two-sentence order dismissing the case was signed by Chief Justice Mike McGrath. Rambold was 47 at the time of the crime. The student, Cherice Moralez, was a freshman in his business class at Billings Senior High School. She committed suicide while the case was pending, and a state judge later sparked international outrage when he suggested Moralez shared blame for her rape. After Moralez's 2010 death weakened the prosecution's case by taking away its main witness, Rambold signed a deferred-prosecution agreement that required him to attend a sex-offender treatment program. When he was booted from that program for not disclosing a sexual relationship with an adult woman and having an unauthorized visit with the children of his relatives the prosecution on the rape charge was revived. State District Judge G. Todd Baugh initially sentenced Rambold to just one month in prison. The judge said Moralez appeared "older than her chronological age" and "was probably as much in control of the situation as the defendant." Rambold's attorneys also suggested Moralez bore some responsibility, citing interviews of the girl conducted by law enforcement prior to her death. Those videos have never been publicly released. After prosecutors and members of Moralez's family objected, the Supreme Court overturned the one-month sentence as too lenient in 2014, and another judge resentenced Rambold to 15 years with five suspended. Under Montana law, children younger than 16 cannot consent to sexual intercourse. What does it mean to get rid of borders in practice? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. Answer by Alex Tabarrok, Economist, MarginalRevolution, TED talk in 2009, on Quora. I'd like to see a world of more open borders for both moral and economic reasons. I expand on these arguments in my article, The Case for Getting Rid of Borders--Completely. (See also the excellent resource page openborders.info). I don't, however, expect us to open the borders to China tomorrow. Yet it may surprise people to know the United States has in fact signed an open borders treaty with China! The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 proclaimed in terms accepted by China and the United States that "[we] recognize the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance..." Sadly, the Burlingame Treaty was superseded in 1882 by the plainly racist Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law preventing a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the United States. The examples of history should be encouraging, however. More change is possible than of the status quo dreams. Advertisement What concrete steps can the world take to move down this path? First, I would open the United States to high-skill immigration from anywhere in the world with no quotas whatsoever. This is what I have called a no-brainer policy. (Actually our current policy of not letting smart people in is the "no-brainer" policy but you get the idea.) High-skill immigrants innovate, patent, and start new firms at higher rates than natives. At least one-quarter of the new firms in technology and science fields, from software and semiconductors to biotech, are founded by immigrants. In Silicon Valley, more than half of the high-tech start-ups were founded by immigrants. High skill immigrants especially with degrees in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (aka: STEM) create more jobs and higher wages for Americans. Increasing high-skill immigration is a win-win policy for increasing innovation. Second we should create a straightforward route to permanent residency for foreign-born students who graduate with advance degrees from American universities, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We educate some of the best and brightest students in the world in our universities and then on graduation day we tell them, "Thanks for visiting. Now go home!" It's hard to imagine a more short-sighted policy to reduce America's capacity for innovation. Third we should take inspiration from the European Union and create a North American Union. Quoting from the EU: Advertisement Free movement of workers is a fundamental principle of the Treaty enshrined in Article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and developed by EU secondary legislation and the Case law of the Court of Justice. EU citizens are entitled to: look for a job in another EU country work there without needing a work permit reside there for that purpose stay there even after employment has finished enjoy equal treatment with nationals in access to employment, working conditions and all other social and tax advantages The European Union is the greatest political accomplishment of the twentieth century. It's a profound advance for a region that had been riven for hundreds of years by wars and hatred. (The monetary union was not a good idea, but that is a separate issue as are some of the relatively minor current issues with refugees (yes, very minor for Europe compared with WWI and WWII).) Thus, I would like to see a North American Union comparable to the European Union. We already have a free trade agreement with our largest trading partner, Canada. Goods and capital travel easily across the Canadian border let's open the border to people as well! If French citizens can work in Germany without a permit then surely we do not need work permits for Canadians and vice-versa. Let's start with Canada, as we did with free trade, but then let's open the border between the United States, Canada and Mexico. The best way to stop illegal immigration is to make it legal! Let's also not assume that the travel would be all one way. A great many American citizens would like to buy land and retire in Mexico with high quality health care and services. Mexico should make it easier for Canadians and Americans to live and work in Mexico. Open borders are open both ways. There is a danger in creating free movement blocks if the blocks become ever more isolated from one another. What I would hope, however, is that over time we can make the blocks ever more connected. We already have a very successful defense treaty with Europe, NATO. If we are close enough to provide for our common defense then we are close enough to allow any NATO citizen to work or reside in any NATO country. Open the NATO borders! Advertisement Turning to the question. How would this work specifically? The transition will take time but a world of open borders would work much like the world does today. In the United States, for example, as one crosses the border from Kentucky to Tennessee, motorcyclists have to put on a helmet, a host of other laws change, the tax authority changes, even the culture changes but no one questions the right of an American to move about the country in the pursuit of happiness. Fear of foreigners is built deep into our DNA but so is the ability to expand the moral circle and redefine who is foreign. I look forward to the day when we recognizes the free movement of all people as a human right. BEIJING, CHINA - SEPTEMBER 02: Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shankes hands with South Korean President Park Geun-hye (L) at The Great Hall Of The People on September 2, 2015 in Beijing, China. South Korean President Park Geun-hye will attend the Chinese People's Anti-Japanese War and the World Anti-Fascist War 70th anniversary victory parade on September 3. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Pool/Getty Images) SEOUL, South Korea -- The two met back in 2005 for the first time. Neither of them were then at the heights of power. But they kept in contact. There was good chemistry in their relations -- so it was said by the people near and around them. In due course, they became the top leaders of their countries, almost at the same time, in 2013. It could have been expected then that Presidents Park Geun-hye of the Republic of Korea and Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China would further promote good relations between the countries they had come to lead. Indeed, President Park did not lose time in making a state visit to Beijing, one of the first acts after her inauguration. Relations between Korea and China had already been going well because of the economic ties that had developed over recent decades. China is South Korea's largest trading partner; South Korea is China's fourth-largest trading partner. If for economic reasons alone, good relations with China are a must for Korea. Advertisement There are additional reasons, too: Koreans do not harbor the same kind of ill feelings against China which they have in abundance toward another one of their immediate neighbors. Both share a strong sense of injustice about the misdeeds Japan committed in the first half of the last century, which both China and Korea regard as still largely unredeemed. There have even been proposals at public fora by Chinese scholars and politicians of good standing for a formal alliance between the two countries against Japan. Some Koreans see the Chinese as sharing more common traits with them than their compatriots in the North. Popular culture has also mixed along with the high tide of trade relations. Some Chinese have adopted the lifestyle of Koreans, sharing the same fashions and other interests, including cosmetic surgery, TV soap opera dramas and pop music. The Chinese are valued tourists in Korea. I would even venture to say that some Koreans see the Chinese as sharing more common traits with them than their compatriots in the North. Perhaps for the same set of reasons, the Chinese have been distancing themselves from the other occupants of the Korean Peninsula. To most Chinese, North Korea began to look more distant than South Korea, regardless of their past relations. The so-called "alliance-in-blood" between Beijing and Pyongyang was beginning to fade into remote history. The two leaders met again and again, reaffirming and enhancing good will and cooperation between themselves and, of course, the countries they represented. So far so good. Advertisement The moment of truth in relations between China and the Republic of Korea finally came when President Xi stood side by side with President Park last September on the viewing stand in Beijing for China's military parade commemorating the 70th anniversary of victory over Japan. One could not help but ask the question: Was this occasion a remembrance of past sufferings finally overcome by the heroic struggle of the Chinese people, or was it showing off the military might of a born-again Chinese empire? Xi Jinping and Park Geun-hye with other world leaders during a military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender during World War II in Beijing. (Wang Zhao/Pool Photo via AP) Certain leaders were rather conspicuous by their absence. No major Western leader was there. But one absence in particular stood out more than the others: Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea who had already been in power for nearly four years. This raised other questions. What had he been doing during all those times when Mr. Xi and Madame Park were meeting on so many occasions and in so many places? Has Madame Park simply preempted Mr. Kim in meeting with Mr. Xi? A wisp of smoke began to emerge out of nowhere once Park returned home exuding confidence and trust. Rumors circulated in Seoul that there had been certain weighty agreements between the two leaders about the future of the Korean Peninsula. No details have ever emerged from the smoke. Were promises made in Beijing? Some active minds surely entertained a flight of historical imagination, connecting today's relations to the 7th century when Silla -- which happens to be the ancestral home of Park -- annihilated Goguryeo, from which Kim hailed, in an alliance with China. That victory ultimately led to the unification of rule under the Silla regime. Whatever truth may have been contained in this analogy, there certainly was enhanced expectation in Seoul that it now had a reliable guarantor of its security in China, the ostensible ally of the North. Advertisement Then there came another incident that generated a more malodorous smoke signal. North Korea tested a nuclear weapon for the fourth time in complete disregard of international concerns. Pyongyang even boasted that it was a hydrogen bomb. Almost automatically people looked in the direction of Beijing. However, the response was at best disappointing. Beijing did not appear to share the anxiety over the ever-increasing security threat felt so intensely in Seoul, though it did stop short of repeating the time-honored mantra of urging restraint on both sides and peaceful resolution of the problem. The real reason Xi befriended Park, even at the expense of estranging Pyongyang, was to detach, or at least to distance, South Korea from the network of American alliances in Northeast Asia in which Seoul is regarded as its weakest link. Subsequent talks between Seoul and Beijing revealed that the two leaders never agreed on anything concrete but were just talking at cross purposes. Beijing never shifted its bottom line of supporting North Korea. The real reason Xi befriended Park, even at the expense of estranging Pyongyang, was to detach, or at least to distance, South Korea from the network of American alliances in Northeast Asia in which Seoul is regarded as its weakest link. Continuing to defy reinforced U.N. sanctions in the wake of the tests, all manner of bombast issues day after day from Pyongyang. Typically, the Kim regime boasts it can and will turn the houses of government of its enemies into ashes. Xi and Park met again at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington last week. President Xi reaffirmed his commitment at that meeting to faithfully adhere to the tougher new U.N. sanctions on North Korea. We will have to see how that goes. For its part, the South is contemplating building a missile shield to protect itself from the North since it has become clear that China is mostly stern talk and little effective action when it comes to curbing Kim Jong Un. Beijing is upset about this proposal because it suspects that, as long as the Republic of Korea is embedded in the U.S.-led alliance system, a missile defense system in the region would be another part of the arsenal aimed at containing China's rising power. Advertisement Around a conference table inside the large Washington headquarters of the AFL-CIO, a furious exchange occurred between labor union presidents. It was late February and up for decision by the Executive Council was whether the country's principal labor federation was going to make a primary season endorsement of Hillary Clinton as favored by the leaders of the largest unions. According to insiders, tempers flared when smaller unions challenged the Hillary-endorsing big unions such as AFSCME (public employees), the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the Service Employees (SEIU) and the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). These large unions came out for Clinton in late 2015 and early 2016 before they sensed the growing rank and file workers' preference for the lifetime advocate for workers and union backer, Bernie Sanders. Listening to the nurses union head speak out for Sanders' strong pro-labor history, Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME, interrupted her, exclaiming: "I will not allow you to do a commercial for Sanders." She retorted, "You mean for the only candidate who has a 100% labor record?" Advertisement A union leader of postal workers charged the unions backing Hillary as being "completely out of touch with their workers." AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka then cut off their microphones. All over the country, the observation by the postal workers' leader rings true. Even as Lee Saunders read the names of the Democratic presidential contenders at a large Washington state AFSCME membership meeting last October, "only Sanders' name brought loud, sustained applause," according to Bloomberg News. Few union leaders allow a worker referendum to make the endorsement decisions. The 700,000-member Communications Workers of America (CWA) does, and the result was a "decisive endorsement of Sanders," reported Rafael Navar, the union's political director. Whether it is the level of enthusiasm, campaigning to get out the vote or talking up their candidate's record on such issues as minimum wage increases, abolition of public university and college tuition, full Medicare for all (single-payer system) and credibility in standing up to Wall Street, Hillary's votes and statements do not come close to respecting the working families of America compared to Bernie's consistent 30-year record. Based entirely on her lawless record as a pro-war Senator (Iraq), as a war-making Secretary of State (Libya), and her $5,000-a-minute speeches before closed-door, big-business gatherings (in addition to millions in big-money campaign contributions), Clinton will continue to be the sponsor of War and Wall Street. Advertisement The volunteer Labor for Bernie grassroots drive is not just growing rapidly but cutting across all union categories and gaining support with non-union workers. There is a potentially massive pool of American workers supporting Senator Sanders as he wins primary after primary, leading up to the April 19th contest in New York - the adopted state base for the Clintons, who are backed by all their monied interests. This unaffiliated labor awakening bears watching, especially by the long-entrenched, affluent big union leaders. First, Labor for Bernie is fomenting defections by local unions defying their Hillary-endorsing national organizations. So far, over 80 of these union locals have endorsed Bernie Sanders. Typical of this exodus is Northern California Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, whose executive board voted 30 to 2 for Sanders, reflecting the views of most of its 28,000 members. Local 5's Mike Henneberry said "For us it was not a very difficult decision. Compare an individual who's been supporting workers since he was mayor of Burlington [Vermont] with someone who's been on the Board of Walmart." The Service Employees Local 1984 (SEIU), New Hampshire's largest public sector union, disagreed with its national union and came out for Sanders in November. The big union leaders don't smell revolt yet, but they must be worried. If the Clintons continue to play dirty tricks, with the big unions, as was suspected in Iowa and Nevada against the Sanders campaign, the seeds of challenges within the ranks of these unions will be planted. Should Hillary become president and come out for anti-worker trade treaties, return to her former coolness on a living wage and other labor issues and cater to Wall Street, the insurrection could congeal against the big unions who will have taken credit, of course, for her victory, without having delivered a mandate for a labor agenda. Advertisement It is the AFL-CIO's practice of endorsing Democrats without demanding before and insisting after the election that candidates champion 'card check', revision of trade treaties, repeal of anti-union labor laws and stronger job safety regulation. The Democratic Party treats the mostly shrinking labor unions as having nowhere else to go. And most union leaders meekly oblige by their chronic submissiveness. The man to watch is strategist and former labor union insider Larry Cohen. He was for many years the president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) that has endorsed Sanders. He's going all over the country helping the Sanders campaign, urging major labor unions, still undecided, like the Steel, Auto, Firefighters and Electrical Workers (IBEW) to come out for Bernie. But Mr. Cohen is looking beyond the elections to take the energy from the Sanders campaign and politically mobilize tens of millions of non-unionized workers behind a new Congress furthering a new economy as if workers mattered. Time is of the essence. When will workers again have such a scandal-free, consistent labor champion as Bernie Sanders seriously going for the Presidency inside the Democratic Party? Had Sanders had two more months without this big union opposition, his current momentum could have allowed him to overtake Clinton by now. Facing a possible four or eight years of the corporatist and militarist Clinton, coupled with U.S. multinational corporations exporting whole industries, not to mention accelerating labor-replacing automation, the hurdles for Americans believing in democracy, justice and peace becomes far, far greater. Advertisement Every year newly graduated and bright eyed college graduates flock to New York City in search of their dream apartment and job. Getting your own place is one of the best feelings in the world! You feel so accomplished, you feel like a "real grown-up" and ultimately you feel independent. Then reality sets in. Renting in NYC is expensive and the price is only rising. People quickly find out that what they envisioned their apartment would look like and the reality of what they can afford are at opposite end of the spectrum. Once you do find an apartment there are a number of things you need to know before signing on the dotted line. There are certain rights or things that you are entitled to. Dreams VS Reality for Renters To get a taste of reality for New York' rental market you have to look just how far your buck will go for square footage and location. In Greenwich Village the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $3,100 while a studio apartment can easily be $2,200 a month. With such a competitive rental market in NYC, landlords have high expectations of tenants. Landlords require tenants to have annual salaries 40 times their monthly rent. This means that newly graduated young people would need an $80,000 salary to rent a $2,000 a month apartment. In addition, some owners may require guarantors along with first and last month's rent. These stipulations and costs will inevitably lead most to look outside of these sought after locations for more affordable and flexible housing situations. This is when it's most important for the tenant to know their rights and protect themselves from the NYC slumlords. Advertisement Protect Yourself by Knowing Your Rights In New York, there are several regulations, laws and statutes that protect the tenant from unscrupulous landlords who may be all to ready to take advantage of an unknowing first time tenant. This is where spending a few extra dollars on legal counsel before signing a lease can be the difference between have a seamless stay at your apartment and losing your shirt when you move out. In addition to the financial perils that can come with not protecting yourself before signing the lease there's also the safety aspect of the building in which you are renting in. As Senior Partner of Jaroslawicz & Jaros PLLC, Abraham Jaros explains, "tenants residing within a multiple dwelling building or within a one-and two family home in New York City, it is the responsibility of your Landlord to provide and install an approved carbon monoxide alarm within fifteen feet of the primary entrance to each sleeping room as well as approved operational smoke device in each unit." Not only must they provide it, but it is the responsibility of the Landlord to also install the Smoke detector. New York City Administrative Code 27-2045, specifies that the Landlord has a responsibility to provide you, the Tenant, with a working and operational smoke detector in each dwelling unit. During your first year of use, it is the duty of the Landlord to repair or replace any broken detector if it's malfunctioned and it's not the Tenant's Fault. Now, with all this being said it is your duty as the Tenant to: -Keep and maintain the smoke detector in good working order -Replace any and all devices which are either stolen , removed , missing or rendered Of course as a Tenant you have other rights besides a Smoke Detector which includes two means of exit from every apartment in the building. These means of exit include, but are not limited to the following: corridors, doorways, and fire escapes. Other Tips In the innovation and business growth book, Robert's Rules of Innovation: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, author Robert Brands sets forth ten imperatives on how to create and sustain innovation. The third imperative on the list, the "New Product Development Process" (aka the "NPD" process), is a highly critical part of the innovation in business process. The NPD process is often referred to as the Stage-Gate Process , and according to its developers is, "a carefully designed business process and the result of comprehensive research into understanding the reasons behind product success and failure." While the modern innovation industry's Stage-Gate Process is widely used for new product development and is supremely more effective than undisciplined development, sometimes the Stage-Gate Process is not enough, especially in cases where the new product is exceptionally innovative and mandates solving very challenging inventive problems and issues. In such instances, one may be able to improve the innovation process and ultimately achieve better results by introducing the TRIZ method into the NPD/Stage-Gate Process. What is TRIZ? All sorts of projects reach a point in the development process where the analysis portion of the project is complete, but it is unclear what the next step should be. To figure out the next best step, the project team must be creative to figure out what to do. Traditionally, common creativity tools and methodology have been constrained to brainstorming and similar methods, which are dependent on team members' intuition, knowledge, and orders given by somebody in a position of authority. These common creativity tools and methods are often described as psychologically based; and unfortunately, they often have unpredictable and unrepeatable results. And that's where TRIZ should come in... Advertisement TRIZ is a (Russian) acronym for the "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving", which was developed by G.S. Altshuller and his colleagues between 1946 and 1985 in the former U.S.S.R. According to the TRIZ Journal webpage, "TRIZ is a problem solving method based on logic and data, not intuition, which accelerates the project team's ability to solve these problems creatively. TRIZ also provides repeatability, predictability, and reliability due to its structure and algorithmic approach." As opposed to psychologically-based common creativity tools, "TRIZ is an international science of creativity that relies on the study of the patterns of problems and solutions, not on the spontaneous and intuitive creativity of individuals or groups. More than three million patents have been analyzed to discover the patterns that predict breakthrough solutions to problems." It also should be noted that TRIZ solves all kinds of problems, not just those involving patentable entities. TRIZ research first began with the idea that there are universal principles of creativity that form the basis for technology-advancing creative innovations. The TRIZ researchers hypothesized that if these universal principles of creativity could somehow be objectively identified and codified, then they could be made teachable to people and make the innovation process more predictable. A condensed version of this idea is as follows: "Somebody someplace has already solved this problem (or one very similar to it). Creativity is now finding that solution and adapting it to this particular problem." Advertisement As described in the "What is TRIZ?" section on the TRIZ Journal webpage, the three primary findings of TRIZ research since its inception are: 1.Problems and solutions are repeated across industries and sciences. The classification of the contradictions in each problem predicts the creative solutions to that problem. 2.Patterns of technical evolution are repeated across industries and sciences. 3.Creative innovations use scientific effects outside the field where they were developed. And accordingly, the practice of TRIZ involves learning these repeating patterns of problems and solutions, repeating patterns of technical evolution and methods of using scientific effects, and then applying these general TRIZ patterns to your specific problem. When to Use TRIZ? The following graphic, developed by Ellen Domb of the TRIZ PQR Group, gives an easily-digestible answer to the question: While modern industry has developed its own best practices for the new product development process, such as the popular Stage-Gate Process, it would be naive and counter-productive to not try to introduce a new arsenal of tools such as the TRIZ approach to tackle difficult inventive problems. If properly used, the TRIZ approach and best practices such as the Stage-Gate Process can greatly benefit each other. These approaches are not rivals, but rather can be used to amplify each other's successes. Advertisement It is as if Giulio Regeni was crucified for us all, but instead of taking away our sins, he exposed the sins of Egypt's and the world's ruling elites. We may be unsure whether it is Egyptian security personnel who tortured and murdered him. We might never know, ever - simply because corrupt elites do not allow for transparency and the availability of information. But we do know he went missing on the fifth anniversary of the January 25 Uprising when Egyptian security apparatuses were on top alert, guarding the streets against any possible attempt at a commemoration of the 2011 Revolution in the public sphere. Regeni disappeared from the street on a day Cairo was littered with security personnel. Be the details surrounding Regeni's death as they may, he is still our messiah with his murder getting the world talking about so many other violations that we are sure happened at the hands of Egyptian security personnel: The 533 enforced disappearance cases that occurred in Egypt in the past eight months and the 396 cases that are still unaccounted for, according to Italy's Corriere Della Serra newspaper. The extrajudicial killings, including the killing of the five men whom the interior ministry scapegoated under the pretext that they were gangsters who allegedly killed Regeni. The extended pre-trial detention. The torture of detainees and suspects. The hundreds who got killed for a protest camp to be dispersed, and the 37 who were tear-gassed to death inside a small police truck on one of Cairo's hot summer days. Advertisement Regeni got the world asking with us questions that they had deliberately or obliviously ignored before his death: What happened to the Italian student who went missing in Cairo after heading for the metro station? How about the Egyptian video editor who went to buy food and never returned (Mostafa Massouny is his name and it has been eight months)? Where is the engineering student who was taken from outside his college and never showed up again? Where are the others? And why has Italy, Egypt's significant trading partner and good friend, never threatened to take "immediate" measures against the Egyptian government for their sake? He exposed the hypocrisy of Western politicians who remained silent about cases of torture and enforced disappearance for more than two years; then they spoke out only when an Italian led a similar fate. What is the value of the trade and investment deals that Italy and other Western countries have stuck with Egypt? More valuable than the lives, safety and freedoms of innocents? More questions that Regeni forced us to ask. Regeni revived solidarity among people who reject injustice and oppression. We learnt in the early months of 2011 that the secret to ordinary people's triumph over tyrants is the moment they realize that they are united for one cause - then they become no longer ordinary. Advertisement And here we are reckoning that Regeni's enforced disappearance, torture and murder constitute "non e caso isolato" (no isolated case), as Regeni's mother Paola Regeni said in a press conference in late March. Her son has become an icon just like Khaled Said, who was 28 like Regeni and who was tortured to death at the hands of Egyptian policemen in 2010. A Facebook page set up in his memory called for the January protests of 2011, united Egyptians, and sparked a revolution. Paola has become "a mother of a martyr" like Khaled Said's mother and like many mothers of "martyrs" whom we honor - because her son was "killed like an Egyptian." While an Egyptian official delegation is now in Rome to present Cairo's findings regarding Regeni's case, many Egyptians are in a state of confusion and uncertainty. Naturally, the Egyptian interior ministry has, for long, had little or no credibility, since even before Khaled Said's case. But at the same time, many of the Egyptians who do not believe the Egyptian interior ministry's narrative do not see the Italian official position as particularly credible either. Rome showed pragmatic support for the Egyptian government in the past few years, a support that continued unabated notwithstanding the Egyptian authorities' violations against dissident voices. Even after Regeni's murder, the Italian government started off with a weak reaction to the Italian student's disappearance and the Egyptian police's failure to unravel it; then their stance intensified later, prompting many to conclude that the Italian government started to give more attention to its citizen's murder only when pressure on it mounted at home. This called into question the genuineness of the Italian government's appreciation of Regeni's life and of human rights general. Advertisement A Texas sized true crime story has become the great American murder mystery of the late nineteenth century. In The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer, Skip Hollandsworth pens a forgotten, century old tale of gothic proportions that draws parallels between Jack the Ripper and an Austin, Texas killer dubbed the "Midnight Assassin" by newspapers. The Austin predator plied his trade in 1885 (Jack the Ripper surfaced in London in 1888) killing women of all makes and models by ripping them apart with axes, knives and long steel rods. For one whole year he savagely mutilated his victims. Leaving body parts strewn across posh sections of the growing metropolis. Perplexing and frustrating police who delved into the murders with no success as the killer seemingly disappeared into thin air. And then three years later Jack the Ripper shows up in London. Leading to more speculation at the time about the killer's true identity and if in fact it could be the same man. Drawing material from old newspapers and scrapbooks to crumbling diaries and letters in the back storage rooms of government officers and lunatic asylums, Skip Hollandsworth was able to recreate and piece the story together. The Texas native has made a career out of stories close to home. He started working for newspapers after college and wrote a piece for the Texas Monthly (he is editor now) about the long ago murders in Austin and the story always haunted him. He started working on the book to see if he could figure out who did the killing. I chatted with him by phone to find out if Jack the Ripper was an American. Advertisement When did you first hear about the Midnight Assassin and what drew your interest? Skip Hollandsworth: There's always been these old tales told about some killings that went on in the 1880s, just as Austin itself was transforming from a frontier era town to a city in gilded age America. There'd been some researchers who had done some stories on it. I hunted down some newspaper articles about the case, and like them I got fascinated with the story and just began to see if it could be a book. Austin was a small city -- six square miles in size with 17,000 people -- then. I thought I'd be able to figure out who the killer was. The police were completely baffled. Their bloodhounds were unable to find the trail to follow the killer at every murder scene. I knew there had to be some scrap of evidence in some newspaper article, in some police report, in some government file locked away somewhere that would identify who this killer was. What type of atrocities did he commit? Skip Hollandsworth: He killed six women, one 12-year-old girl and he killed one of the women's boyfriends in the middle of an attack, which he probably did accidentally. He almost always left other people who were at the crime scene alive. He usually murdered his victim and disappeared, but apparently that one boyfriend woke up and the killer hit him on the head so hard that it killed him. The first five victims were black servant women. The police thought that this was a Negro problem as they put it. That it was a gang of black men preying on defenseless black woman. It never occurred to them that there was one single killer who was devising all these killings. Then on Christmas Eve of 1885, the killer changed tactics and went after two prominent white women who lived in separate parts of Austin. Advertisement He murdered and mutilated them in their backyards in the space of an hour, right at midnight on Christmas Eve. Most of the women were found with their heads nearly split open from the blow of an axe. Some also had deep knife wounds that penetrated their organs. A few had long iron rods like ice picks jammed into their ears essentially lobotomizing them. One woman was not only axed in the head, but had her entire face beaten in with a rock until it looked, in the words of one reporter, like jelly. Why didn't the Austin police catch him? Who was a suspect? Skip Hollandsworth: On Christmas Eve when the two prominent women were murdered, much of the population of Austin put their families in wagons and on horseback and ran to the downtown streets to stand under the gas lamps. Towns were so dark back in that era before street lamps and so no one felt safe in their own home. They couldn't handle the fact that whoever was doing these killings was some sort of superhuman monster that they were unable to stop. They gathered in numbers on the streets, everyone holding torches, guns, knives, shovels, anything to protect themselves and their families from this killer. He was cunning and perhaps in modern times such a killer would be caught quickly due to forensic tools, but back then, if he wasn't spotted by an eyewitness or hunted down by bloodhounds, then there was really no way to get him. There was no fingerprint evidence, no blood evidence, no CSI. He was able to drag these women out of the house without causing any alarm, mutilate them with axes, knives, ice picks and rocks in their backyards, and then flee with such speed, leaving no trail for the bloodhounds. There were various suspects -- from a Malaysian cook to a barefoot black chicken thief to a well-known politician who was running for governor to even the husbands of the murdered women. There was talk that the assistant superintendent of the state lunatic asylum was the killer. If I didn't have the evidence to prove exactly who did it then I wasn't going to make a guess. I'm going to let the reader make his or her own guess as to who is behind these killings. How hard was it to research and do interviews for the book considering the fact that the murders happened in 1884? Advertisement Skip Hollandsworth: I kept holding off writing the book, thinking somewhere there's going to be a piece of evidence that would prove who the killer was. I worked on it, read newspaper articles, tried to read government reports, but then I'd put it aside for a while. I stopped for a year or two in frustration, but went back to it, looking for a certain suspect to see if there was any evidence proving he did it. I would stop, go back to it, it became a pattern. But over the years a few new pieces of evidence emerged. An archivist for the county found an old unopened box that contained trial transcripts of one of the men arrested. It provided lots of details. I was able to get some records from the state lunatic asylum. People thought the killer was a lunatic sneaking out every night doing the killings and then coming back into the asylum. It got even more interesting, because just like Jack the Ripper, no killer in Austin was ever found. How do serial killers like Jack the Ripper and the Midnight Assassin get away with it? Skip Hollandsworth: It's the ultimate sort of super killer. A good serial killer can go for a long time, utterly bewildering the cops. Working on his own for his own reasons and doing the kinds of killings that can strike fear in a community. We've had dozen of these kinds of killings over the years, but the Austin killings were sort of the precursor for everything that was to come in modern American society. Does you research and book conclude that the Midnight Assassin and Jack the Ripper were one and the same? Skip Hollandsworth: The Austin killings took place in 1885 and Jack the Ripper showed up three years later in England in 1888. Since the Austin killing hadn't been solved there was some speculation by Scotland Yard officials and in the newspapers that the Austin killer had moved to England to become Jack the Ripper. No one had ever seen these kinds of mutilations of women before. The systematic, ritualistic murders of one woman after another where her body was laid out in the backyard for everyone to see like a work of art. Then the killer disappeared. That kind of serial, ritualistic killing had never been identified before in America lives. Advertisement As long as women remain unprotected we have to keep up the fight. Simonetta Lein At the very beginning when I created my first blog, it was all about giving ordinary people the chance to express and share their wishes. My dream was to be able to empower people to think outside the box, realizing that nobody is really alone on this planet and that helping each other is sometimes easier than expected. One day I received a wish from a woman who wanted to give a nice Christmas dinner to families hit by the economic crisis in Italy. As usual I thought: What can I do? Then an idea sprang to mind: put her in contact with a man who is deeply committed to charity and lives in the same area. They met up, and they were able to help some families. That was a beginning of a journey not only for me but also for this woman, who only later I was to discover was a real human rights activist. Sara Baresi is a very humble woman, she's experienced some severe lows health-wise, yet no matter how poorly her health was, she always strove not to show it, and to keep up the fight for those she felt could do with more help. We started an intercontinental collaboration, I am in America and she is in Italy; I passed on to her my knowledge of the web and social media, she gave me her human rights expertise. We put them together and here we are, two women, united by a genuine goal: to see this world become a bit better. We have many human rights campaigns that have already been presented to the UN where she is often a guest with her association, Protea Human Rights, and we are excited as it grows from strength to strength. I was very curious myself to see what a true activist in the human rights arena has dreamed of and still dreams for the future. Advertisement When you were a child, did you wish for the career and for the life that you have manifested today? When I was a child I was hoping to do something important, something that would have allowed me to travel, to know more, to understand life better, to satisfy my endless curiosity about human beings and their culture, to understand people who speak very different languages, and above all to be useful to others. ** Sara speaks Italian, Arabic, French and English, and I am sure she is about to embark upon another. She showed me how it is possible to go beyond cultural barriers and health obstacles, to be recognized by large organizations and entities, with her sincere and deep interest in every aspect of human rights. I was always an activist myself but I did not really know it. It is also thanks to her that I established The Wishwall Foundation charitable organization with the purpose of helping meaningful wishes come true. Name a wish that you had for your life or for humanity that finally came true. Be a spokeswoman for the voiceless and fight for human rights. This passion became my job but it is still my deepest passion. It is something that shows more of what I am than of what I do. Advertisement ** How important is to have that fire in your job. I know how hard it is. In every job, it takes time and unstinting dedication to reach a stable steady state and strive for the maximum in terms of achieving goals, but understanding what you really want to do in your life, understanding and heeding your calling, if you will, is an enormous benefit and possibly the key to a happy life. I speak with so many people and a common problem I see is that a lot of them do not really know what they want, what they would like to go for. Sara's words will I think encourage each and every one of you to seek out what really gives you that passion, and if you already have it to be very thankful. It is a great gift. If you were granted one wish for humanity or for our planet, what would it be? I dream of the elimination of any form of discrimination, because of sexual orientation, race, religion and I also dream that the diversity of each human being will be considered a value and not an aspect of vulnerability and that human dignity will be always guaranteed. ** We live in society that too often forgets that from diversity we created innovations, we created values, we created new frontiers. I still remember the first time I came to the US, as a European I was mesmerized walking the streets of New York City and looking at people of every possible race and have the perception that they were all considered Americans. America is a country based on immigrants and it happened to become the greatest country in human history. We must always fight for all possible rights and we can always do better. And this is often possible as history teaches us. But diversity is a key to success, integration opens people minds. We should never forget this fundamental value. If you could go back in time and ask one question from anyone from history, who would you want to meet and what question would you ask? As a human rights activist I would have liked to meet Martin Luther King and ask him where he got all his strength and courage to continue to fight for his cause. As a woman I would have asked to one of my favorite writers, Emily Bronte, from where she drew her inspiration. Advertisement ** Often I think of the best people we had in the past. We tend to remember the glorious pieces of change they brought to our world, with human rights, with art, with every form of commitment to make this planet richer from a soul point of view. I sometimes focus on their difficulties, when I have mine I think the same of Sara: how did for example Martin Luther King keep on going, struggling discrimination, every possible barrier. It must have been very hard. Same thing with artists, to be always inspired to give something that will impact people. Because I experience it in my life I know the answer is that sometimes they must have been discouraged, they must have lost faith, they must have lost inspiration. It happens to everyone. What makes them incredible and what we should all try to do order to live this life to the fullest is to get back on track after we lose control, after we get discouraged. The only way to get that point is to find a true love for yourself and others, often God in every possible form you might see it. To have a higher purpose. At that point you will be able to see yourself as an actor of a theatrical scene called life where you can always start again, it is up to you. Please tell me what influences your unique sense of style? Simplicity. I believe that elegance is an expression of one's soul. I love the magnificence of black and also of the warm colors, typical of hot countries, that through my travel fill my eyes. ** This is a good advice. When you walk, when you travel if are lucky enough to do so, always look around. Forget your cellphone for a bit and get inspiration from what you see. Fashion is a form of living, it is art in movement. From now on, if you want to be even more fashionable, observe more and get inspiration. Sometimes a travel or observing a particular style could change the way you see yourself. Who is your favorite fashion designer or brand right now and why? My favorite designer is Giorgio Armani. I love his simplicity and elegance, soft lines, masculine clothes that become feminine with only a color or an accessory that you can add. A simple t-shirt that can be made elegant from a stylish jacket designed for women but with masculine lines. Advertisement ** Contrasts in fashion are always a good point of attraction. Simplicity will attract to those particulars that you decide to add. Many times less is better than more, but remember accessories and well studied contrasts. At the end of the day fashion is a form of art. What is your fashion mantra? Be elegant. Whether you wear a white shirt with a pair of jeans or you are wearing an evening gown. Have elegant manners and movements, and give your soul to what you wear. As a woman be a woman, as a man be so. ** As a woman be a woman, as a man be so. A statement of something that is not to be taken for granted as a statement. Do you have a final message for our readers? I wish to engage readers in humanitarian efforts for the protection of human rights we are conducting with the association of which I am President, Protea Human Rights.I am excited to be interviewed by you Simonetta Lein The Wishmaker, a person with whom I collaborate through The Wishwall Foundation USA realizing projects for the protection of women and children with commitment and real passion. We devised the "Women Wishwall" , a truly innovative idea that aims to collect the wishes of women around the world. We receive all kinds of wishes, from the protection of education rights for children, to the protection of women from all forms of violence, to protect human rights from pornography pointing to the right of oblivion as a fundamental human right, that often in that business is not protected like also the regulation of this sector to safeguard the minors.Together with Simonetta Lein and The Wishwall Foundation we are committed to empowering women and protect them, realizing some major human rights campaigns that will be presented in every leading spaces and institutions as The Human Rights Council of United Nations of Geneva. We are organizing a Conference for the next UN session about women where we are going to bring the attention to the UN of all our projects regarding this matter. I ask you with all my heart to consider to sign an important petition that we created with the collaboration of Change.org about protecting human rights from pornography. This is the link: A simple signature can help a lot of women and children. We believe in the right of choice and we are not attacking this industry, we just ask for more regulation to protect those women who decide to change their life after participating in this industry and children who are too easily exposed to web sites without a proper control. Regulation will prevent many suicidal thoughts and depression, an issue that we believe too many people live and it is too often discussed. ** Thank you so much Sara, please join us to keep up the fight so that we can collect as many signatures as possible and make a real change when we will be face the UN. A big thanks also to Vikki Dark, a brilliant professional but most of all an ordinary woman who decided to bring this issue up into the Woman Wishwall project donating her personal experience and story. We can keep on changing things for the better only if everyone of us contributes bringing his or her personal wish, story, beliefs, only if we want to fight together according with the fundamental philosophy of the Wishwall Foundation: Pay it forward. Please sign this petition and share it and come to express and share your wish to inspire others and pay it forward. As always make your dreams come true. From Philadelphia, Simonetta Lein The Wishmaker Credits: William Russell Edu Collaborator. Contacts: Simonetta Lein It was 10 years ago when my first book, 'The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker' was published to great acclaim. The story of my erotic journey from celibate wife to prolific swinger, within a month it was on the bestseller list and for a brief period I became a minor celebrity. Men I didn't know emailed begging me for a date, documentary makers wooed me in the hope of filming my life story and lots of journalists (mainly middle-aged men) contacted me hoping for an interview (and sometimes more). I was 45 and having the time of my life. I had a stable of highly experienced lovers whom I rotated on a bi-monthly basis. If I was a little bored I would drive to a 'naturist club' in Kentish Town during my lunchtime, pick up the guy with the biggest dick, and shag him. Some friends worried that I was turning into a sex addict but I knew it was a phase. After an unhappy marriage and the death of a partner, I wanted nothing more than to distance myself from my own emotions and immerse myself in the world of erotic pleasure. If you're going to be a total hedonist, there's no better time to go for it then in your 40s. Advertisement Free of the drama that often surrounds relationships in their 20s and 30s, the 40s are the perfect time to have no-strings sex and, thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever to find someone who knows how to fuck. London may not have the romance of Paris or a fetish scene like Berlin but I found no shortage of men in London whose entire aim in life appeared to be to make a woman feel more pleasure than she ever thought possible. During the 10 years I was on the swinging scene I tried most things including BDSM, threesomes, foursomes and a lot more that I've long since forgotten. For two years I only had threesomes because, by then, I knew what I liked and it was that. I couldn't see the point of having 1-on-1 sex when being filled up by two men felt so much better. They were all nice guys too. Not the most handsome to look at but they were fun and funny and when it came to sex they all had put in their 10,000 hours. Sometimes I felt so much pleasure coming from so many different erogenous zones that I didn't even know who was doing what and where. It was 2007 and I was 46 when the broadcaster and writer Jenni Murray contacted me to ask if she could pick my brains over lunch for a book she was writing. Of course I agreed (who wouldn't?) and so we arranged to meet at Delanceys in Camden Town. A good 10 years older than me and past the menopausal stage of life, I remember her saying, "I'd be interested to see if you're still as sexually vociferous during your menopause as you are now. That should be interesting." At the time I brushed off her remark. I was at least five years off worrying about the menopause and so caught up in the moment; it never crossed my mind that I wouldn't always be up for it. Advertisement Then I turned 52. I had started dating a younger guy two years earlier after I came to the conclusion that if I didn't attempt to reengage with intimacy, I'd probably end up as a pro. Others I knew on the swinging scene were making money from sex work and I'd had no shortage of offers to do the same but always declined. Thanks but no thanks. I could never see the point of mixing that kind of business with pleasure. My boyfriend was handsome and funny and so I made the decision to cut my ties with the scene and try monogamy for a change. At the beginning it was great but then the menopause caught up with me. I no longer could sleep through the night and I was sweating all the time. For the first time, sex wasn't the first thing on my mind when I woke up in the morning. If my boyfriend was lying next to me, I was horny but if he wasn't, I never thought about it. That was weird too because throughout my 40s I was so horny that I'd sometimes have to escape to the company toilet to get myself off. So it took a while to get used to the new person that I was becoming and it wasn't all smooth sailing. My sex drive had been such an integral part of my life; I spent a year grieving over its loss. Over that year I noticed that men stopped looking at me in the streets and I stopped wearing no knickers. The high heels collected dust and I bought brogues and cowboy boots and traded in my tight skirts for jeans. My boyfriend stuck by because he loved me but I felt guilty at denying a young guy sex when I'd spent the previous 10 years shagging every man in sight. Eventually we broke up. It hardly seemed fair that he should have to go without just because I couldn't be bothered. Menopause isn't something that comes and then goes; it's a slow burn and it takes a while to get used to. I now feel, at 55, like I'm coming out the other side and I've not only come to terms with the loss of my libido, I'm actually liking the new, not-so-sexual me. I'm calmer than I used to be, more confident in my decision-making and more relaxed. I'm no longer thinking about the next time I'm going to get laid or worried that it might never happen again. I still have a great black book, I just don't have the urge to open it up as much as I used to. If my 40s were all about ignoring my girlfriends in favor of shagging a stranger, my 50s are about reconnecting and enjoying the time I spend with my female friends. Advertisement And I'm loving work in a way that I didn't during my swinging years when my job always took second place to getting laid. I'm more focused, more determined to succeed and free of constant sexual urges, there's far less distraction in my life. Losing one's libido isn't the end of the world, especially when one has had the kind of sex life I have had. I certainly don't regret spending my 40s with my skirt up and my knickers off most of the time. It was great fun -- a real roller coaster ride of pleasure and pain. I'm looking forward to the next 10 years and beyond as a time for travel, for good food and wine, for work and for spending times with friends. Sex will always be in my life -- just not in the same way it was before and, you know what, I couldn't be happier. This post was originally published on Advantagesofage.com Earlier on Huff/Post50: Today, Stand launches the Starbucks Better Cup Campaign to demand that the coffee giant stop destroying forests. Starbucks serves four billion disposable coffee cups each year -- that's 1.6 million trees logged for cups that are used once and thrown away. Yes, straight to the landfill. Mostly, the cups can't be recycled. That's a mountain of trash and Starbucks knows all those clearcut trees for their cups end up in the landfill. We launch the better cup campaign in Seattle on April 8 with actions at Starbucks headquarters, 30 Seattle Starbucks locations, and the Emerald City ComicCon, the 80,000 person comic convention. Stand volunteers distributed a comic book introducing a new mermaid superhero that springs to life from the logo on a discarded Starbucks cup. The animated Super Mermaid confronts a Starbucks employee and destroys a coffee cup monster that threatens to "bury the City of Seattle" in coffee cups. The green mermaid is Starbucks' #1 icon, and the cup she's emblazoned on (4 billion per year!) is its biggest environmental problem. In 2008 Starbucks said it would solve the problem by making cups recyclable, increasing recycled content of the cups, and serving more coffee in reusable cups. In their own words from 2008, "...we have set a goal to make 100 percent of our cups reusable or recyclable by 2015." The company missed every one of its internal goals, and has now given up and gone quiet on fixing the problem. Stand is going to help Starbucks recommit and live up to its promise to do the right thing for its customers and our forests. Advertisement There is no simple solution, but Starbucks has a proven record of innovation and creating solutions that can scale globally. Right now coffee cups are lined with plastic made from petroleum products. The liner must be removed before the cups can be recycled into new paper. And mostly, this is too hard and too few facilities can even do this. Solutions already exist. There are cup liners not made from petroleum that can be recycled. Starbucks could change how the cup itself is made so it is not 90% clearcut forests. And Starbucks can do a lot more to help customers switch from disposable to reusable mugs. But Starbucks isn't doing anything. And as a result, the rest of the coffee industry -- 56 billion cups annually -- follows Starbucks unsustainable ways. We won't let Starbucks give up. If anyone can solve this, Starbucks can. So Stand is demanding a better cup. The campaign asks Starbucks to make good on commitment for 100% recyclable cups, recommit to 25% reusable cups, commit to 100% post-consumer recycled and/or tree-free cups, and adopt and implement a policy of no impact on forests. When one of the wealthiest companies in the world won't put any effort into decreasing its forests and climate impact, we know they need some serious help focusing their attention on this issue. So that is what we are going to do. The world - especially our forests and climate - desperately need a better cup. In Montana, one homicide occurs every 14 days, one rape every 23 hours, one robbery every two days and nearly five aggravated assaults occur each day. Crime victims are our family members, friends, neighbors and community members. Especially during National Crime Victims Rights Week, April 10-16, the Montana Board of Crime Control joins local, state and national organizations in promoting victims rights and honoring crime victims, their survivors and those who advocate on behalf of victims, raising awareness of programs and services to meet the needs of Montana victims. Restoring hope This year's theme is: Serving Victims. Building Trust. Restoring Hope. MBCC is proud to work in partnership with local agencies and organizations to identify and help to deliver services in the right place and at the right time essential to supporting victims at the earliest stage of victimization and meeting unique needs in both rural and urban communities. National Crime Victims Rights Week honors and celebrates the achievement of the past 30 years in securing rights, protections and services for victims. The bipartisan Victims of Crime Act, passed by Congress in 1984, created a national fund to ease victims suffering. Financed by fines and penalties paid by offenders not tax dollars the Crime Victims Fund supports services for victims of all types of crime, including homicide survivors, survivors of child sexual abuse and victims of human trafficking. It also funds rape crisis centers and domestic violence programs. The Crime Victims Fund dollars in Montana support vital victim services through programs like the YWCA Gateway House, the Yellowstone County Attorney Victim Witness Program and the Billings Crime Victims Unit. Legal aid for victims Another VOCA-funded project is the Crime Victim Legal Assistance Network Project, which seeks to improve access to comprehensive, coordinated and holistic legal services to crime victims statewide. Designed to improve access to civil legal assistance for victims across the state, this project is being implemented through a collaborative partnership between the Montana Legal Services Association, the University of Montana and MBCC. To help inform this project, we invite those who have been the victims of crime, as well as service providers or other professionals who work with crime victims, to share feedback about their experiences accessing civil legal assistance in Montana. This survey can be completed online or by phone. For information, contact Melissa Fisher at 406-543-8343, extension 221. We salute the tireless efforts of justice professionals and victim service providers to bring criminals to justice and assistance to victims of crime, using funds paid by convicted offenders and not by taxpayers dollars. For victims and survivors of crime, all those who serve them are unsung heroes who deserve our appreciation and gratitude. For additional information about the Board of Crime Controls victims' services programs, the National Crime Victims Rights Week activities, or ideas on how to serve victims in your community, please contact MBCC at 406-444-3604 or http://mbcc.mt.gov/. There are few institutions in American life that have a harsher impact on people of color -- and African Americans in particular -- than the criminal justice system. Of Black males born in 2001, one in three can expect to spend at least a year of his life in prison. The combination of socioeconomic disadvantage and criminal justice policies creates a toxic brew, with 70 percent of Black male high school dropouts incarcerated by the age of 35. Although the federal prison system houses only a fraction of America's prisoners, it contributes to these outcomes - primarily due to the war on drugs. Of those sentenced for federal drug offenses last year, 73 percent were Black or Latino, even though Whites use and sell drugs at roughly the same rate. Today, half of all federal prisoners are serving time on a drug charge, and nearly half of them were subject to a mandatory minimum penalty at sentencing. Mandatory minimums do not impact racial and ethnic groups equally. For example, in federal drug cases in 2010, over 40 percent of Blacks were subject to a mandatory minimum compared to 18 percent of Whites. Advertisement To address these problems, bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate which would, among other things, give judges more authority to impose sentences that actually fit the crime in non-violent drug cases. Specifically, the legislation would expand the "safety valve" to allow judges to impose a sentence below the mandatory minimum penalty when appropriate. The impact of this provision would be significant. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which provides the most reliable data available on federal sentencing, about 4,000 individuals would benefit each year from the safety valve expansion. In addition, the bill would also apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactively, allowing individuals incarcerated under the old, unfair crack law to seek a sentence reduction in accordance with the lower penalties - this change would reduce sentences for more than 5,000 currently incarcerated individuals. Looking out ten years, we could potentially see tens of thousands of drug sentences reduced, many by an average of two years. That would make a significant difference in the lives of many individuals and families and have a substantial impact on the number of people incarcerated for federal drug offenses. Moreover, these two provisions begin to address racial and ethnic injustice associated with mandatory sentencing. Historically, mandatory minimum penalties have disproportionately applied to people of color -- African Americans in particular -- because they qualify for relief less often than other groups. According to the Sentencing Commission, criminal history is the single most important factor excluding black individuals from safety valve relief. These bills would address this racial unfairness by allowing individuals with a modestly greater criminal history to qualify for safety valve relief. Crucially, the bill would allow a court to waive the criminal history score entirely if the court determines that it over-represents the public safety risk. These factors were taken into consideration when the Sentencing Commission concluded that the legislation would shorten sentences for thousands of black and brown individuals. Advertisement Even more dramatic would be the retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act. Since the enactment of harsh crack penalties in the 1980s, more than 80 percent of federal crack defendants have been African American. Though the Fair Sentencing Act was intended to partially rectify this unfairness, it did not benefit individuals imprisoned under the previous sentencing disparity. Applying the reduced crack penalties retroactively would thus allow thousands of African Americans to secure release from federal prison after serving terms under the provisions of the new law. To be sure, these measures represent a compromise - they are not the bills that civil rights groups would have written themselves. For example, prison reform provisions are convoluted and needlessly exclusionary, potentially allowing a disproportionate number of white prisoners to benefit from rehabilitative programming and sentence reductions. Nevertheless, even these provisions would benefit African Americans and Latinos, who make up nearly three-quarters of the overall federal prison population. A year ago, if someone said that Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) would team up on drug sentencing reform, many would have thought they were delusional. And yet, Congress is poised to pass a criminal justice reform bill with real potential for having an impact and for changing the political climate. We have a saying in Afghanistan which translates something like this: An army of 200 good fighting men is better than an army of 100,000 men unwilling to fight. Today, this old truism may hold the key to Afghanistan's very survival, as well as a face-saving withdrawal for the United States and NATO forces. The withdrawal of coalition forces would not only save face, but also lives and treasure - for the U.S., its NATO allies, Afghanistan and the entire Middle East. But it could only happen with a multi-lateral treaty that guarantees Afghanistan's sovereignty. In exchange, Afghanistan would basically disarm itself, reducing the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) from 350,000 to just a few thousand police and security personnel. The players in this multi-lateral agreement would have to include Iran, China, Russia, India and Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan and the U.S. Only with their promises of non-aggression and protection could Afghanistan safely disarm. Advertisement A pipe dream? Perhaps, but the stakes are too high to dismiss it out of hand. We must at least try. As an interpreter for the U.S. Army and NATO during the last eight years in Afghanistan, I recognize that the Afghan government, despite receiving billions of dollars in U.S. assistance, is now a failed state. The bulk of Afghanistan's resources are poured into its massive defense and security force, yet insurgents still control of third of the countryside. Afghanistan pushes for still more military assistance and air power, but is that really a path to peace in Afghanistan? It is not. Afghanistan cannot afford an army the size of its current ANDSF. In his book "The Fragmentation of Afghanistan," Barnett Rubin noted that the country does not generate enough revenue even to pay for its civil servants, and the lack of sufficient funds is causing the government to collapse. And as a consequence, the weakened government invites foreign interference. Afghanistan has been invaded and occupied countless times throughout history, including incursions by India, Alexander the Great, the Caliphate, Genghis Khan, Timur, the Mughal Empire, various Persian empires, the British Empire, the Sikh Empire and the Soviet Union. NATO coalition forces have been in Afghanistan since 2001. Pakistan and India currently use Afghanistan as a pawn in their cold war against each other. Low morale and lack of leadership pose more problems within the ANDSF. The turnover rate is one of the most serious issues faced by Afghan security forces, according to Michael Kugelman, senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Ineffectiveness and high desertion rates present still more concerns for these overwhelmed and disillusioned forces. Advertisement According to recent reporting by Reuters, when the Afghan army took over almost all of its own combat operations, casualties rose 26 percent. In 2015, the Afghan army had to replace about a third of its roughly 170,000 soldiers because of desertions, casualties and low re-enlistment rates. Since 2001, nearly 22,000 U.S. servicemen and women have been killed or wounded in Afghanistan, and billions of dollars have been spent in the conflict, yet the situation continues to worsen. A policy to stay the course won't work, and even if it could, it seems the U.S. is no longer interested, as it turns its attention toward Russia and the Pacific. In his Brookings Essay "A Deadly Triangle: Afghanistan, Pakistan India," historian William Dalrymple describes Afghanistan as a battleground between India and Pakistan. "What is certain," Dalrymple writes, "is that the future will be brighter for all three countries caught in a deadly triangle of mutual mistrust and competition if Pakistan and India can come to see the instability of Afghanistan as a common challenge to be jointly managed, rather than as a battlefield on which to continue or, worse, escalate their long and bitter feud." Keeping a delicate balance between India and Pakistan is the key to peace for Afghanistan. But Afghanistan has no power to do that, so its only hope lies in a regional, multilateral treaty. Afghanistan should call on the United Nations to invite Iran, China, Russia, India and Pakistan to sign a treaty guaranteeing Afghanistan's sovereignty, with a binding commitment that they will not interfere in Afghanistan's domestic affairs. In exchange, Afghanistan disarms by limiting its security forces to a couple thousand police and security officers. The U.S. would be motivated to throw its weight behind such a treaty because it would give the Americans a clean and easy exit strategy from Afghanistan. Advertisement Afghanistan would not pose a threat to anyone in the region. Its force of "a few good fighting men" would do more good than hundreds of thousands of "men unwilling to fight." *This post, co-authored by Ken Jacobson, industrial journalist and communications director of the Academic-Industry Research Network, originally appeared on the blog for the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Now that new Treasury Department rules have effectively thwarted Pfizer's attempt to evade its U.S. tax obligations by using its proposed merger with Allergan to do a tax inversion, it's time policymakers turned their attention to a far more common and even more damaging corporate practice: stock buybacks. This mode of distributing corporate cash to shareholders helps pump up the pay of Pfizer's senior executives, while, as President Obama said of the tax inversion, "it sticks the rest of us with the tab." Last October, in justifying the proposed merger that would effect the tax inversion, Pfizer CEO Ian C. Read complained that the company's U.S. tax burden meant that his management team had to take on global competition "with one hand tied behind our back." But, as research by the AIRnet has shown, Pfizer makes debilitating decisions that deplete its finances far more than taxes do. During Read's reign as CEO from 2011 through 2015, Pfizer paid out $44.7 billion in buybacks and $32.9 billion in dividends. Buybacks alone dwarfed the $16.0 billion Pfizer provisioned for U.S. income taxes over the same period. Advertisement Buybacks have clearly helped inflate the pay of Ian Read; in his five years as CEO he has raked in $76.8 million in direct compensation, of which 63% came from stock-based pay. Other senior Pfizer executives as well as stock-market traders who have been adept at timing their Pfizer stock sales have also gained from buybacks. While it's obvious that buybacks make executives and some other shareholders rich, how buybacks "stick the rest of us with the tab" may be far less evident. Pfizer boosts its profits by charging high drug prices. Yet from 2011 through 2015, Pfizer spent an equivalent of 71% of its profits on buybacks while also distributing 52% of its profits as dividends. By charging high drug prices to enrich shareholders, Pfizer increases the healthcare burden on America's households who foot huge Medicare/Medicaid pharmaceutical bills as taxpayers, and face higher retail drug prices, insurance premiums, and co-payments as patients. Bringing stock buybacks by pharmaceutical companies under control is an obvious way of making healthcare more affordable. A pharmaceutical company like Pfizer would not be able to put drugs on the market without the massive taxpayer-funded life-sciences research through the National Institutes of Health to the tune of $958 billion (in 2015 dollars) between 1938 and 2015. Financial aid from the public has also come to the pharmaceutical industry through such measures as the Orphan Drug Act of 1983, which birthed Pfizer money-makers Lipitor and Enbrel. Quite apart from the tax inversion that the Obama Administration has wisely thwarted, a company like Pfizer regularly wastes billions of dollars on buybacks that should be returned to taxpayers. Buybacks will continue without any effective limits unless the SEC's Reagan-era Rule 10b-18 is struck down. After the scrapping of its inversion plan, Pfizer's press release quoted CEO Read as saying: "As always, we remain committed to enhancing shareholder value." Unfortunately, "enhancing shareholder value" and the value a company creates through its actual work often bear little, if any, relation to one another. For example, not one product originated and developed in Pfizer's own labs after 2005 has generated significant revenue for the company. Advertisement And between 2011 and 2015, as Read's Pfizer was reducing its workforce from almost 104,000 to around 79,000 worldwide (excluding employees from its recent acquisition of Hospira) and seeing its annual revenues shrink from $67.4 billion to $48.9 billion, Pfizer distributed as buybacks and dividends an amount equal to 124% of profits. The $77.6 billion that the company devoted to "enhancing shareholder value" was twice the amount spent on R&D during the period, raising the question of how many new drugs Pfizer's labs will be capable of putting onto the market going forward. ASSOCIATED PRESS Mohit Goel, right, Director of Ringing Bells Pvt. Ltd., and Ashok Chadha, left, spokesperson, show a Freedom 251 smartphone, which is to be priced at Rs 251 or $3.6 approximately, during its release in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) The Allahabad high court on Thursday extended the relief provided to the makers of smartphone Freedom 251, said to be the world's cheapest smartphone, and said no coercive steps should be taken against the them until the next hearing. A few days ago, BJP MLA Kirit Somaiya filed an FIR against Mohit Goel and Ashok Chadha in Noida police station for allegedly duping customers. The FIR was filed under the section 420 of IPC. It also stated the company misused the tricolour and has not registered with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). Advertisement In their first hearing, the high court had given the petitioners interim relief and asked the UP government to file a report by 5 April. The police filed a report saying that all the money that Ringing Bells had taken during the pre-booking of the phone has duly been refunded as the company has switched to the cash-on-delivery model. On this basis, the court decided to give the owners of the company extended relief till the next hearing on 18 April and allowed them to move the application for release of the passport. The division bench of justice B K Narayan and justice R N Mishra asked the police and the responders for further reports indicating if the offence of section 420 of IPC is valid for this instance. They also added that the company should be given a chance to fulfil their commitment. "We are very happy with today's order. We shall now press for quashing of the FIR as there is no merit in the FIR and extraneous factors have gone into lodging of this FIR. This FIR is a strategy to derail the timely launch of flagship product of the company. Keeping this critical aspect in mind, the Hon'ble High Court has directed that no coercive step should be taken that affects the business of the company, apart from allowing the liberty to move an application for release of passport," said Ringing Bell's advocate Abhishek Vikram in a statement. Advertisement "The company has already sold 28,000 units of its other products and has developed innovative strategies to meet its cost for delivering the smartphone for Rs. 251 to its customers. The aim of the Company is to reduce the digital divide between Urban and rural India by aiming to sell the smartphone at Rs. 251", he added. Recently, Freedom 251 makers posted on Facebook that they have started sending confirmation messages to the people who have registered for the phone. Although there were multiple probes launched by the government of India to investigate Ringing Bells. Today is a historic day.We have sent out the confirmation SMS/E-mail to the people who will be receiving the Freedom251... Posted by Freedom251 on Friday, March 25, 2016 Even phone manufacturers AdCom whose logo appeared on demo units of Freedom 251 had said that they will take legal action if the name of their brand is damaged. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India ASSOCIATED PRESS Pigeons fly past the dome of India's Supreme Court building in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016. India's top court on Tuesday agreed to re-examine a colonial-era law that makes homosexual acts punishable by up to a decade in prison. Gay activists cheered the court decision and said they were hopeful that the verdict would ultimately go in their favor, giving them a chance to live openly. (AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal) Expressing dissatisfaction over the quality of defence counsel, the supreme court on Friday appointed two senior lawyers to appear for the four convicts in the Nirbhaya case in which a woman was brutally assaulted and raped by six persons in a moving bus in South Delhi. We are not satisfied by the quality of defence counsel, the bench said. The case will be heard on July 18. Advertisement A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra appointed senior advocates Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde as amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter. While Ramachandran, who had appeared for Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab, would assist the court in appeals of the convicts Mukesh and Pawan, Hegde would appear for convicts Vinay and Akshay. "We must express our concern in the matter. We feel the gravity in the whole issue. Sometimes there are many perceptions and we don't want to miss anything. We would like to be assisted by the amicus curiae in the matter. A 23-year-old student, who was thrown out of the bus on the night of December 16, 2012 after being raped and brutally assaulted, succumbed in a Singapore hospital on December 29. Advertisement We appoint two senior counsels Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde as amicus in the case," the bench, also comprising Justice V Gopala Gowda and Kurian Joseph, said. The matter is listed for next hearing on July 18. On April 4, the court had commenced arguments on the plea of Mukesh and Pawan. Besides Mukesh and Pawan, the other two convicts, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh, had approached the apex court against the Delhi High Court's March 13, 2014 verdict, which had termed that their offence fell in the rarest of rare category and upheld the death sentence awarded to them by the trial court. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Hindustan Times via Getty Images ASANSOL, INDIA - MAY 10: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during the inauguration of '2.5 MT modernized & expanded IISCO Steel Plant' at Burnpur Polo Ground in the district Burdwan of West Bengal, on May 10, 2015 in Asansol, India. During the function, Modi described the Union Government and 29 State Governments as 30 pillars of 'TEAM INDIA' which would take India forward. The upgraded steel plant of IISCO (Indian Iron and Steel Co) that has the country's largest blast furnace and has been modernised at a cost of Rs.16,000 crore. (Photo by Subhendu Ghosh/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) Narendra Modi is supposed to be the development Prime Minister. While his supporters and opponents argue about Bharat Mata ki Jai, the PM is supposedly focused laser-like on vikaas. Then why has he decided to sound like one of those wacky Christian fundamentalist televangelists so popular in the US? Advertisement After 9/11, preacher Jerry Falwell said God allowed the attacks because of moral decay, specifically abortion, gays and feminists. After Hurricane Katrina, his comrade-in-Biblical-arms Pat Robertson said God was sending a message that he was very angry about abortion. Now Modi has joined the God Squad. And the 7.0 earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010? That too was Gods punishment for making a pact with the Devil according to Robertson who divines a message to his liking in every disaster. Its not just the Americans admittedly. BJPs own Sakshi Maharaj blamed the earthquake in Nepal on Rahul Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi eats beef and goes to the holy shrine (Kedarnath) without purifying himself. The earthquake was bound to happen. Advertisement Now Modi has joined the God Squad. Cleaning work underway at the site of the collapse. At an election rally in Bengal, he warned that the flyover collapse in Kolkata was Gods message to the people - today the flyover collapse, tomorrow the state. God has sent a message to the people that today this bridge has collapsed, tomorrow she will finish off entire Bengal. God apparently buries innocents in a pile of concrete and steel to send out election PSAs. This is playing politics with both God and the victims of the flyover collapse. God apparently buries innocents in a pile of concrete and steel to send out election PSAs. The Trinamool Congress has plenty to answer for vis a vis the flyover collapse. The deadly disaster has blown the lid off an ugly truth in Bengal the reign of syndicate raj. Syndicates are not a Trinamool invention. The Left Front cannot dodge the blame for the rise of syndicates who supply money and muscle to the party in power and hold building projects hostage until they bag the contracts to supply materials and labour, usually of sub-standard quality. Advertisement Under Mamata Banerjees government the syndicates have gone from strength to strength and turned into syndicate raj. Sabyasachi Dutta, a Trinamool leader and now mayor of Bidhannagar was caught in sting where he admitted that syndicates were the only viable form of employment for thousands of people and he could not provide employment to all those people if the syndicates went kaput. Mamata Banerjee at the site of the incident. But to twist the flyover collapse into a warning salvo from God is simply trying to reap political benefits on the backs of the dead and maimed. It does not behoove the Prime Minister of the nation but it just proves that when Modi comes to campaign he leaves his prime ministerial hat in Delhi. Modi, the Prime Minister, was quick to respond with sympathy and understanding when the flyover collapsed. Shocked and saddened by collapse of under construction flyover in Kolkata, he tweeted. Took stock of the situation & rescue operations he reassured. My thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives in Kolkata. May the injured recover at the earliest. When Modi comes to campaign he leaves his prime ministerial hat in Delhi. Barely a week later he was basically telling those same people, that this was God telling them to shape up, vote right or face the consequences. Advertisement But then Modi is at his least prime ministerial when on the campaign trail. In Bihar he openly played an anti-Muslim card to try and woo Dalits. He said the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad combine was conspiring to take away five percent reservation of Dalits, Mahadalits, Backwards and extremely backwards and give it to a particular community". That ploy, that particular dog-whistle failed for the BJP. The debris being cleared. The BJP knows it does not stand much of a chance in Bengal. Its vote share can go up but with one lonely assembly seat it has a long way to go to be a real power player. Modi was hammering on the Trinamool on very valid grounds of the Narada sting, Saradha corruption and violence. But this one crass comment undid it all. The PM told the crowd When a flyover has collapsed and victims are lying trapped, Didi is busy saying it was build by the Left government. This is politics over dead bodies. And then he proceeded to do exactly what he accused Mamata of doing politics over dead bodies. Advertisement But Mamata Banerjee at least did not drag God into it. The PM showed no such restraint. Ironically an insensitive comment like this only serves the interest of Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool. She can be accused of trying to dodge the fallout of the disaster, even trying to pin the blame on the Left Front but at least she is not trying to milk it for votes. The PM played into her hands with that remark which is probably why the Trinamool reacted vociferously and quickly to it. Derek OBrien, the party spokesperson advised the PM not to behave like a Shakha Pramukh (RSS unit head). Modi has managed to do for the Trinamool what even Mamata could not give it a chance to claim moral high ground. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also see on HuffPost: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE via Getty Images BANGALORE, INDIA: Infosys Technologies Chairman NR Narayana Murthy at a press conference in Bangalore, 08 April 2004. Infosys Technologies with listing of its stock on the US-based NASDAQ stock exchange since 1999 is India's second largest software exporter with more than 19,000 employees in more than 30 offices worldwide. AFP PHOTO/Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images) The founder of Infosys, Narayana Murthy, has stirred the hornet's nest by comparing Indian IT companies with immigration agencies. An uncomfortable IT industry on Friday decided to distance itself from Murthy's comments. "All Indian companies guarantee visas, they guarantee green cards. The whole exercise has become as if they are immigration agents. I am sorry to say that. Indian companies behave as if they are agents for their employees to cross the Atlantic," Murthy said at the Indian School of Business (ISB), where he was conferred the ISB Honorary Distinguished Fellowship. Advertisement In the US, Donald Trump had said he wanted to curb outsourced jobs and remove visa provisions like H1B. The Indian IT industry is heavily reliant on H1B. According to a report in ET, the IT industry has distanced itself from Murthy's comments. "Indian IT is at the heart of some of the most sophisticated products and platforms launched across the world. It is respected and revered for the same. It doesn't matter where people work," said Vineet Nayar, former CEO of HCL Technologies. Indian IT companies do get a sizeable amount of profits from the business in the US and the other companies. And going onsite has been a very big incentive for employees as they earn more abroad. In Murthy's Infosys only 29.5% personnel is onsite, but it earns them but the revenue contribution is 56.5%, according to this Business-Standard report. Advertisement It is noteworthy that there have been many cases against Indian IT companies regarding the use of visa. In 2013, the US had filed a case against Infosys for immigration violations. Later on, the company had to pay $34 million for settlement. In Januray Coginzant and HCL were sued by two Disney employees for allegedly replacing them with less costly employees with using H1B visas. Even TCS was under suspicion of violating the visa rules said UK's labour union. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India INDRANIL MUKHERJEE via Getty Images Indian activists carry placards of the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad, Maulana Masood Azhar during a protest against the attack on the air force base in Pathankot, in Mumbai on January 4, 2016. Indian troops backed by helicopters searched an air force base January 4, after a weekend of fierce fighting with suspected Islamic insurgents in which seven soldiers and at least four attackers were killed. AFP PHOTO/ Indranil MUKHERJEE / AFP / INDRANIL MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images) National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday secured non- bailable arrest warrants against Pakistan-based Jaish-e- Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf and two others for allegedly conspiring to carry out terror strike on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. A special NIA court based in Mohali issued the 'open-ended non-bailable warrant' against Azhar, his brother, main handlers Kashif Jaan and Shaid Latif for allegedly entering into a criminal conspiracy with JeM terrorists for carrying out a terror strike on the IAF base. Advertisement The strategic base was attacked by terrorists of banned JeM during the intervening night of January one and two in which seven security personnel were killed. Four bodies of terrorists were recovered from the encounter site which lasted for nearly 80 hours. The special court issued the arrest warrant after weighing the evidence presented by NIA before it which included telephonic conversation between the terrorists and the Jaish handlers like Jaan and Latif. The video of Rauf, brother of Azhar, was also presented before the court. In the video which was uploaded on a website being hosted from Pakistan, Rauf had claimed responsibility for the attack and complimented his boys for it. The video has since been removed and the website has also gone off the cyber world. NIA has already sought voice samples of Azhar and three others from Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which came to India for carrying out a probe in the Pathankot terror probe. Advertisement The non-bailable warrant will be sent to Interpol. India had built a strong case for proscribing Azhar as terrorist at the UN but the move was vetoed by China. An Interpol Red Corner notice is already pending against Azhar for being allegedly involved in the conspiracy behind attacks on Parliament and Jammu and Kashmir state assembly. Similarly an Interpol Red Corner Notice is pending against Rauf in connection with the IC-814 hijacking case of 1999. India has complained to Pakistan about the slow pace of probe in the Parliament attack case and Azhar being given a free hand to continue with his anti-India rhetoric. Islamabad has not heeded to India's demands to bring to book Azhar and other JeM top brass. In the meantime, NIA said that after posting the pictures of the four dead terrorists on its official website, more information was coming from across the world which included many people from Pakistan who were eager to share details pertaining to the slain militants. Advertisement The four terrorists were identified as Nasir Hussain (Punjab province), Abu Bakar, (Gujranwala), Umar Farooq and Abdul Qayum (both from Sindh). Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: The India Today Group via Getty Images INDIA - FEBRUARY 05: Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, Director-General of the Tata Energy Research Institute, became the first Indian to be elected Chairman of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), during the recent elections at the international scientific and technical body. (Photo by Sumeet Inder Singh/The India Today Group/Getty Images) NEW DELHI -- R.K. Pachauri has filed a civil suit against lawyer Vrinda Grover, seeking injunction and Rs1 crore in damages, alleging she was trying to prejudice the ongoing sexual harassment case against him. Grover had made public the statements of two women who are her clients and have alleged they were sexually harassed by the former TERI chief. Neither of the women have, as yet, lodged a criminal complaint in the matter, but in their statements released to media through Grover, they alleged that Pachauri is a serial sexual harasser. They have indicated their willingness to come forward as character witnesses in the ongoing criminal case against the former IPCC head, where a 29-year-old researcher from TERI has alleged he sexually harassed her for a year and a half at work. Character witness means the prosecution can use them to try and establish a certain character of the accused from past incidents. Advertisement Pachauri's lawyer Ashish Dixit filed the suit against Grover on 5 April in Patiala House court, following which the court summoned Grover to appear today. "Since July, when the first woman, besides the original complainant, came forward with her statement, nothing has been done officiallythere is no police complaint or anything else," he told HuffPost India. "Every time, the purported statements on behalf of these two women are released to the media, usually before key court dates in the ongoing case. The timing is very suspicious." Who is the foreign national who has accused Pachauri of harassment? According to Pachauri's submission to the court, there was no foreign national who was ever employed as a secretary to him in TERI. One of the two women who have alleged that they were also sexually harassed by Pachauri is a foreign national who said she was hired as his secretary in 2008 for a year, only to be suddenly removed after she warded off his alleged unwanted advances towards her. Pachauri, through his lawyer, has claimed that these allegations are false as he never had such a secretary. Meanwhile, Grover, who did not appear in court today, said that she was at a conference yesterday because of which she missed the summons and wasn't aware of the contents of the petition. However, she clarified that the foreign national's exact designation was that of "program assistant", even though her work was secretarial in nature. Advertisement Why haven't the other two women lodged a police complaint? Neither of the two women, besides the original complainant, has formally complained to the police yet about the harassment they faced. According to Pachauri's petition in court, there is nothing on official record against him, but the statements released to media have helped prejudice the current case of sexual harassment against him. "The timing of the release of these statements is very suspicious": RK Pachauri's lawyer. However, both these women have repeatedly tried to give their statement to police, claimed Grover. She told HuffPost India that both the women approached her in February last year, as soon as the FIR was lodged against Pachauri at the same time. Since then, she claimed, she had repeatedly asked the police to record their statement, but the cops had not acted on it, even though she is ready to share contact details of her clients. In several letters to the police, which HuffPost India has seen, Grover has asked cops to record the statements of these women, especially before the charge sheet in the case was filed. "They have been ready to come forward and it was only after they were left with no option that they released their statement to the public, and I acted on instruction of my clients," said Grover. "It makes me wonder why the police did not record their statements and from who all Mr. Pachauri gets protection and patronage?" Police has said in the past that Grover has refused to divulge any details about the other complainants, which Grover says is untrue. "Show one letter the police sent to me asking for their details," she challenged. Muffling women's voices, delaying legal processes Grover alleged the petition was a fresh attempt at "silencing women's voices". "The petition does not bother me for a moment, and my counsel will appear for the next date," she told HuffPost India. "The larger point here is that these kind of misogynistic campaigns are efforts to silence women. The court should take serious note of this and not even entertain such petitions." Advertisement Vrinda Grover, Supreme Court lawyer and Human Rights Activist. According to Grover, much like other high-profile cases, this case too has taken much longer than necessary. "We've seen Mr. Pachauri exercises fairly astounding clout in the country as well as globally," she alleged. "There are endless delays in cases like this and women do not get justice because men obstruct the law." She alleged that through the petition, Pachauri was not only trying to gag the national media, but he was also trying to stifle the voices of the feminist lawyers. Women have raised their voice against patriarchy with a lot of difficulty, she said, and fought hard to bring cases of sexual harassment to the foreground. "The law understands the manner in which patriarchy and gender flows in the system," she said. "This is a clear attempt to muffle our voices." Also See On HuffPost: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE via Getty Images Tata Group chairman, Cyrus Mistry addresses the 10th Annual General Meeting of Tata Consultancy Services in Mumbai on June 27, 2013. India's biggest IT outsourcing firm, Tata Consultancy Services, popularly known as TCS and part of the steel-to-tea Tata conglomerate, counts blue-chip companies such as British Airways, Microsoft and Sony among its main clients. AFP PHOTO/ Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images) Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has initiated a criminal inquiry into Tata Groups steel-making business in the country and is examining documents pertaining to around 500 customers of the Indian origin company including Rolls-Royce and BAE, according to a news report. The allegations surfaced after the company referred itself for an internal audit which revealed that the companys Yorkshire staff falsified certificates detailing the composition of the product before they were sold. Advertisement At a time when Tata Steel has decided to exit its steel business in the UK, such an investigation can possibly put a spanner into the sale that might affect thousands of jobs. The SFO investigation is understood to be primarily around the quality of steel and its composition. There is also a trading standards investigation, but it is unknown whether they are linked, The Telegraph reported. Advertisement Auditors have found documents that show inappropriate testing and certification was done, leading to suspension of nine employees of the company. However, none of this has caused any safety concerns. Both the SFO and Tata declined to comment, while a Rolls-Royce spokesperson said, We were made aware of an issue by Tata last year. We have not been contacted by the SFO and cannot comment on any investigation. Tata Steel UK employs about 15,000 people. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Saying he killed a bald eagle for cultural use, a Crow Agency man pleaded guilty on Thursday to federal crimes for illegally taking and transporting the protected migratory bird. I didnt think Id end up here, said Alexander Birdinground Jr., 43, in U.S. District Court in Billings. Birdinground pleaded guilty to all four counts in an indictment, including conspiracy to transport illegally killed eagles, unlawfully taking eagles, unlawfully hunting migratory birds and unlawfully transporting an illegally taken eagle. There was no plea agreement. Birdingrounds wife, Rhonda Lynn Birdinground, also indicted with her husband, pleaded guilty earlier to one count of unlawfully transporting an illegally taken eagle. She is awaiting sentencing and faces a maximum one year in prison and a $10,000 fine. Prosecutors said Birdinground killed a juvenile bald eagle on Feb. 24, 2014, near Dunmore. Investigators found the bird in the trunk of the couples car. Birdinground told U.S. District Judge Susan Watters that he and his wife were driving down the road when he saw about a dozen bald eagles in a tree. All but one of the eagles took off, he said. Birdinground said he approached the remaining eagle and hit it with a stick, killing it. He took the eagle home and planned to use every part for cultural uses, he said. The investigation began when a witness called the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs police on Feb. 24, 2014, and reported an eagle had been shot in the area, prosecutors said. An officer responded to the site and found snow littered with feathers and what appeared to be blood, which was collected as evidence, prosecutors said. The next day, an agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service interviewed the witness, who had reported seeing a Kia parked on the road near the location of the eagle. While driving back from the interview, the agent passed the Kia, pulled it over and encountered Rhonda Birdinground. During questioning at the police station, Rhonda Birdinground admitted that the eagle had been a target of opportunity and said that Alexander had shot it and brought it back to the car in a bag. Rhonda told officers that Alexander left the eagle in some bushes after she told him not to put it in the car. Agents got permission to search the Kia and found the carcass of a juvenile bald eagle, prosecutors said. In an interview with agents, Alexander confessed that he wanted to kill an eagle to get feathers to make a fan for his daughter and to make arrows, prosecutors said. The witness also reported seeing the Kia parked by the side of the road where a large adult eagle had been seen and that a woman matching Rhondas description was fidgety and nervous, behind the wheel of the car, prosecutors said. The witness also reported a man matching Alexanders description on the other side of the fence carrying a large garbage bag. The car then left the scene with the eagle carcass inside, the government said. A pathologist who examined the eagle carcass recovered from the trunk found it had been shot once and then killed by blunt force trauma, prosecutors said. And an analysis of the blood and feathers collected from the scene belonged to a different eagle. Assistant Federal Defender David Merchant told the judge that Birdinground killed one eagle and that the feathers and blood evidence did not match the juvenile eagle Birdinground had admitted to killing. Alexander Birdinground faces a maximum five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the conspiracy count. Watters set sentencing for Aug. 4 and agreed to release Birdinground from custody on conditions he be evaluated for substance abuse and follow recommendations for any treatment. Birdinground had been released after arraignment but was ordered into custody for violating release conditions by using marijuana and methamphetamine, Watters said. 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. Finding a niche before it becomes a niche, building a business to serve that niche and then watching both the niche and the business blossom is a formula that never gets old.When Bill Pritchard founded wholesale insurance broker and program administrator Beacon Hill Associates to serve the environmental market out of a spare bedroom in his home in 1990, he had no idea what he was in for.Today, with more than 30 employees and offices in Denver, Atlanta, Florida and Houston in addition to the Charlottesville, VA headquarters, the business seems to have taken.It has exceeded my expectations. We are still in business. Let me tell you, 25 years ago it was not a sure thing. We have gown cautiously and very slowly year after year. We grew a ton during the recession. We have gown consistently and carefully by trying to focus on really doing it right, partnering very carefully with the carriers that we think will do a good long term job with our clients. We are very selective about the agents we work with. We are not about writing the account no matter what. We are about writing the right business with the right people, and we have stayed true to that. So year after year where other people have had bigger peaks and valleys, we have stayed very consistent because we have focused on providing a really high level of service. We have dedicated teams here who do nothing but post binding service on accounts, which wholesalers dont typically do. We do a lot of things that are very focused on our being the best partners for our agents and carriers we can be.It hasnt hurt that the environmental market has grown like gangbusters since 1990. Supporting our growth has been the growth of the environmental market . When I started there were 3 companies writing environmental insurance that I could find; that was in 1990, now there are well over 50.While Pritchard certainly picked a good segment to serve, he never took success for granted. I started teaching CE classes in the mid 90s because I figured out it was hard to sell coverage to someone who didnt know what I was talking about. So I would say here are the pollution exclusions in your policy, and here are some things that can happen, and I can help you cover that. Id have 25 agents in the class, and nobody says anything, nobody asks any questions, but we get to the break and there would be a line of 5 or 6 agents and they would all whisper their questions to me because they didnt want to talk about their accounts in front of their competitors. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on, he recalls.Bill Pritchard is President and CEO of Beacon Hill Associates, Inc., a wholesale insurance broker and program administrator. Now in its 25year of business, Beacon Hill specializes in the placement of environmental insurance and other specialty coverages for agents around the country. Bill is a third-generation insurance professional, and teaches pollution insurance classes nationwide. He can be reached at 1-800-596-2156 or [email protected] Technological advances in mobile computing, data collection and risk analysis are challenging long-held assumptions about pricing.Armed with the latest in communication and measurement technologies, insurers are finding it easier to provide better products and services to their clients, a report from the New York Times suggests.The article featured Metromile, a company based in Oregon that sells insurance in seven states. The company offers its auto insurance products with the condition that policyholders agree to have a monitoring device installed in their vehicles. The device remotely relays to the insurer the number of miles the vehicle has driven, which allows Metromile to adjust premium rates accordingly. This allows motorists who stay below the national average mileage of 12,000 miles per year to save considerably on their premiums, compared to those signed on to traditional auto insurance policies.Metromiles devices also sport additional features that make them quite handy to motorists. For instance, if the insurer detects that a street is to be swept, Metromile warns the motorist through the device to avoid parking in the area to avoid getting a ticket. The device can also detect a cars performance levels, and can helpfully remind drivers if their vehicles need maintenance.Another company, Vitality, has partnered with other insurers to offer consumers lower rates in exchange for logging in their health data. The company provides customers with monitoring devices such as Fitbits and Apple Watches to track their activities.A startup called Trov offers a unique on-demand insurance service wherein consumers use a proprietary smartphone app to take a photo of objects of value, such as skis and cameras. Customers can then upload the photos to the insurer, who then offers insurance coverage for the items. The app even helpfully reminds policyholders if they want to purchase insurance before they intend to use their insured possessionsthe app can detect if a policyholder is about to ski down a slope, for example, and ask if he or she would like to purchase insurance beforehand.Such technologies could be a precedent for an even bigger change in the way insurance works.Metromile is the start of a broader shift, noted IBM global insurance director Mark McLaughlin. [Insurers] want to shift from paying when something bad happens to helping you prevent something bad happening to you.The next generation understands the atomization of everything, remarked Trov founder and CEO Scott Walchek. Insurers have to get ready for customers who expect to have their ownership of everything, how they use things, understood. On-demand everything is the zeitgeist. An insurance company in Hawaii has been ordered into liquidation for failing to meet minimum levels of solvency. Family Health Hawaiis assets can now be seized by the insurance commissioner Gordon Ito who is also authorized to assume the powers of the companys directors and officers.KHON2.com reports that the result of the liquidation, ordered by Judge Karen Nakasone Thursday, is that thousands of Hawaiians will lose their health insurance. FHH has no individual clients but operates more than 400 employer group plans.We had hoped to be able to get the capital necessary to continue or go into rehabilitation, but it did not come to fruition, Family Health Hawaii president and CEO JP Schmidt told KHON2.Other insurers - HMSA, Kaiser, UHA and HMAA have offered assistance to those policyholders affected.Canada-based insurer Manulife has picked up a top award in Asia-Pacific. It topped the finance category at the inaugural Asia-Pacific Excellence Awards for its marketing campaign for manulifeMOVE, a unique insurance concept first launched in Hong Kong rewarding customers with discounted premiums and a range of consumer benefits for living more healthily and being more active."MOVE drives life and health insurance in a new direction by taking a holistic approach to health and wellness. The program has been an instant hit with the public: it does more than just reward healthy individuals - we are incentivizing lifestyle changes for our customers," explained Manulife International CEO Guy Mills.Entries were judged by a panel of 30 communications specialists from a wide range of backgrounds representing both in-house and agency professional communicators.Centurion of Mississippi is set to operate healthcare services for more than 17,000 inmates of the states correctional facilities. The firm, which is a joint venture of Centene Corp. and MHM Services, requires approval from the Mississippi's Personal Service Contract Review Board.Centurion began providing healthcare services to the MDOC in July 2015 under a one-year emergency contract. Under the new contract award, Centurion will begin providing services in July 2016 for a three-year period.Centurion also provides correctional facility services in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Tennessee, Vermont, and Florida, which will begin operations in the second quarter of 2016. Federal investigators have identified significant security weaknesses in the online marketplaces of three states that could allow hackers to access sensitive personal information of customers.Health insurance consumers in certain states may have reason to be worried.A new federal investigation has revealed significant cybersecurity weaknesses with the health exchange websites of California, Kentucky and Vermont that if exploited could leave the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people vulnerable to hackers.The Associated Press learned of the investigation by the Government Accountability Office this week. The report itself was concluded and shared with state officials last September, though some of the systems flaws have yet to be fixed.Officials in California and Kentucky were quick to emphasize that no evidence suggests hackers have found their way into the sites, while Vermont authorities offered no comment.Despite this, the GAO remains worried and suggested that other state-run health insurance exchanges could also be vulnerable to hackers. The original report focused only on the three states mentioned.Congresss investigative arm examined the health marketplaces in the three states from October 2013 to March 2015. Researchers found that one state did not encrypt passwords, making it easier for hackers to access individual accounts. Another state did not use a filter to block hostile attempts to visit the website, while yet another did not use proper encryption on its servers.Specific states afflicted by each problem were not specified.What is more worrying, some evidence suggests security flaws in these sites have not been addressed.Steve Beshear, who was Kentucky governor at the time the problems were discovered, said through a spokesperson that because of the time required to fix the technical issues, not all those issues had been addressed by the time current Governor Matt Bevin took office late last year.[But] it is important to note that there were never any security breaches of any kind, and no ones information was ever compromised, he added.Kentuckys exchange, Kynect, will be dismantled later this year, though efforts are still underway to fix the problems pointed out in the report.Representatives with Covered California, meanwhile, have not expounded on how the problems are being addressed, but emphasized that there have been no successful attempts to hack the website.Vermonts Director of Health Reform Lawrence Miller said the state had changed veendros since the time of the GAO review, and ensured the correct controls were in place to meet a federal standard for security during the transition.The news comes on the heels of a report that the federal exchange, Healthcare.gov, had had 316 security incidents between October 2013 and March 2015. The incidents could include unauthorized access, disclosure of data or violations of security practices, though none resulted in lost or stolen data.Nevertheless, the GAO said technical weaknesses within the federal system will likely continue to jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity and availability of Healthcare.gov. The caps rolled out the E3 Academy on Thursday celebrate North Adams with a new logo. The program participants talk about what they got out of the program at Lever on Thursday. PreviousNext E3 Academy Releases New North Adams Merchandise NORTH ADAMS, Mass. Merchandise that celebrates North Adams got another boost with Thursday's unveiling of a new series of branded caps, beanies, and bandanas. Students in the E3 Academy rolled out their new NAMApparel line of headgear with the slogan "North Adams: Find it, Love it." The new merchandise and a promotional video featuring the city were on display at the Lever business incubator space on Main Street. Kimberly Loring, a student in the Drury High School alternative program, said the promotional was shot in well-known North Adams locations. "We wanted to make an ad and we wanted to make it fun and short," Loring said. "So we thought we would find places that are nice that represent North Adams. We started naming off places like Natural Bridge and Top of the World that were nice beautiful scenic places. In the video, students are sporting their new NAMApparel at important North Adams locations such as the Houghton Mansion, the public library, Heritage State Park, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and Windsor Lake. Students provided some historical information at each location. Teacher Cathleen King said NAMApparel was designed to instill North Adams pride and promote the city along with the products. She said it was interesting watching the students become North Adams boosters. "I think this helped them realize the good things that are here in North Adams and encouraged them to go out and promote them," King said. "It has been great ... watching the excitement build about their home town, and it has been really great watching them come to life just with something right in their back yard." Student Kimberly Brames said she enjoyed learning more about the city through the video and the recording process itself was a learning experience. "Its very amazing and interesting to be a part of something like this," she said. "You dont really do this in high school so having the opportunity to do this was really great." King said she hopes to reach out to the North Adams Chamber of Commerce and the city to see if they would like to use the video as promotional material. E3 is a program for overage and undercredited students that gives them the opportunity to earn a high school degree through competency and project-based learning. The NAMApparel line was launched in 2014 and students have been building on the clothing line since as part of an entrepreneurship program. The new hats have an updated logo. The line already includes T-shirts, hoodies and travel mugs. Students visited local businesses to learn a few business tips and gathered information to find out what kind of apparel people want to buy. Student Tarrenz LeClair said the hats are sold for double the manufacturing cost so E3 can replenish stock without bringing in outside funding. The caps cost $10 to make. At this point in time, E3 has broken even. In their presentation students rattled off some of the benefits of the alternative program. "The program provides a unique learning experience for children that struggled in traditional school." "It teaches competence skills needed to earn a degree." "We learn real life skills." Students also said they learned how to create a business plan, work a spreadsheet, manage personal finances, marketing, and even how to read the stock market. Ricco Fruscio, program coordinator for the chamber, told the students that they are learning valuable skills without even knowing it. "You are learning the skills to be the owner of your own business ... you are all exhibiting being able to stand up and speak," he said. "That is one of the main core talents that someone needs to be able to present their idea, present who they are, and how they got to where they are." Hats and other NAMApparel gear can be purchased at Berkshire Emporium on Main Street. Student Alyah Hartman said the video will air on Norther Berkshire Community Television and at Drury High School on DTV. "We are going to be famous," Hartman said. The business also has a Facebook page and an Instagram account @NAMApparelbyE3. Clarksburg School Preparing to Hire Project Manager, Architect CLARKSBURG, Mass. The School Building Committee hopes to have an agreement signed for an owner's project manager by July 11. The committee, meeting for the first time since it convened last October, were given an update on the progress toward a feasibility study that will guide decisions on renovating Clarksburg School or building new. A special town meeting in October approved spending up to $250,000 toward the study. "It's no question the progress has been slow," Superintendent Jonathan Lev told the group gathered Thursday evening at the 60-year-old elementary school. That's in large part because the Massachusetts School Building Authority has to "approve every step you go through," he said. "They're very, very careful." Lev said the request for services has been submitted to the MSBA for approval and he expects the state will sign off within two weeks. The goal is to get it to the Central Register and publicly posted by May 3 with site visits by May 11. If everything gets posted as planned, final responses will be due by May 25 and a subcommittee of the building committee will short list the applicants and do interviews by June 22. "We're looking at probably some time in June starting to interview," he said. "There's no question we want this done by July 11, that's the next [MSBA] meeting we can attend to get this approved." The owner's project managers currently working on schools in Berkshire County Colliers International (North Adams), Dore & Whittier (Williamstown) and Skanska (Pittsfield) have already indicated interest in the Clarksburg project. Lev said an RFS for an architect would also be prepared and that, too, would have to get the OK from the MSBA. The town has been trying to get into the MSBA's queue for more than a decade. The original 1952 school building has been added onto twice, once in 1967 and again in 1972. About 180 children in Grades 1 through 8 attend the school, which has a long list of structural and space issues. Committee member Edward Denault wondered if any project would have to be on the current lot. "I don't like this spot, it's so limited," he said to agreement from several other members. The property is on a slope surrounded by slopes and two residences. There's little room for a play area or more parking; there's a concern a new footprint wouldn't fit the lot. But finding another location could run into water issues. The school's well could not meet the requirements of a new sprinkler system, but the North Adams water line could be upgraded to reach the school's current location on West Cross Road. "I think they would get us off of it," said member Mary Giron of the well. Eric Booth suggested any design consider ways to consolidate other town offices similar to Stamford, Vt., where the town offices, library and school are all in the same building. The 19 members of the School Building Committee are Jonathan Lev as chairman, Principal Tara Barnes, all three School Committee members (Jeffrey Levanos, Patricia Prenguber, John Solari), Town Administrator Carl McKinney, Finance Committee Chairman Michael Denault, North Adams' purchasing officer Laura Wood (a Clarksburg resident), Head Custodian Michael Peters, Planner Eric Booth, teachers Audrey Witter and Cathy Howe, community members with building experience Edward Denault, Charlie Moran, Gus Giron Jr., Jim Howe and Matt Boyer, Administrative Assistant Mary Giron and Mass in Motion's Amanda Chilson. DownStreet Art to Hold Office Hours Ahead of 'Call for Art' Deadline NORTH ADAMS, Mass. Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts' Berkshire Cultural Resource Center will hold DownStreet Art drop-in office hours ahead of this years call for proposals deadline on April 15. DownStreet Art Program Manager Michelle Daly will hold open office hours from 4 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13, and Thursday, April 14, at MCLA Gallery 51, 51 Main St., to answer questions, provide feedback or assist with proposals. Interested individuals also may contact Daly to schedule a time to meet outside of these hours by calling 413-662-5253 or via e-mail at michelle.daly@mcla.edu. This is the perfect opportunity to talk through an idea, get feedback on a proposal or get individual assistance with the application, Daly said. This year, there are three opportunities for artists; DownStreet Art Projects, Creative Business Incubator and Call for Exhibitions. Watch: Rohit Sharma Lifts Virat Kohli After India's Nerve-shredding Win Over Pakistan in T20 World Cup IND vs PAK, T20 World Cup 2022: Virat Kohli Smashes 43-ball Fifty - All the Records Broken IND vs PAK, T20 World Cup 2022: Social Media Light Up with 'Diwali Comes Early' as Virat Kohli Stars to Help India Beat Pakistan Hardik Pandya First Indian Cricketer to Complete The Double of 1000 Runs And 50 Wickets in T20Is Sanctions do not work. President Barack Obama has said that dozens of time. Lets start with Iran. Sanctions have not worked with Iran. We must negotiate a deal with them. One must not call it a treaty because that would, under the Constitution, require congressional approval. He signs the deal addressing Irans nuclear efforts and submits it to the U.N. and since we are a member of the U.N. we must live by it? Iran, after the deal was signed, continued to fire missiles and shout Death to Americans. White House now says, Iran is not living up to the intent of the deal. Duh, does that come as a shock? We also release all of their frozen assets, remove all sanctions (because they do not work as he has proclaimed) and rumor has it pay billions in bribe money. Moving on to Cuba, again sanctions have not worked and must be lifted. Off to Cuba Obama goes to celebrate his independent action. He celebrates at a baseball game with Castro. Sanctions do not work. Remove all sanctions, huh? Moving on to North Korea, our White House is asking/hoping China will put more restrictive sanctions on North Korea in an attempt to have them discontinue their developing of nukes. Remember, Obama has proclaimed sanctions do not work. What is it? To sanction or not to sanction? Obama, are you in over your head? Inept? Is this like if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor? But back to the original question, do sanctions work? 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 Press Release: Honduras to Implement the International Monetary Funds Enhanced General Data Dissemination System Press Release No. 16/163 April 8, 2016 A mission of the International Monetary Funds Statistics Department visited Tegucigalpa during March 28April 1, 2016, to assist the authorities with the implementation of the Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS), which was endorsed by the IMFs Executive Board in May 2015. This makes Honduras the first IMF member in the Western Hemisphere to implement the recommendations of the e-GDDS. The mission supported the development of the National Summary Data Page (NSDP), which will be posted on the Central Bank of Honduras website, utilizing the Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX) software. The page aims to serve as a one-stop publication vehicle for key macroeconomic data. Publication of these data through the new NSDP will provide national policy makers, domestic and international stakeholdersincluding investors and rating agencieswith easy access to information that the IMFs Executive Board has identified as critical for monitoring economic conditions and policies. Making this information easily accessible and based on an Advance Release Calendar, will allow all users to have simultaneous access to timely data and will bring greater data transparency. The Honduran authorities are encouraged by the progress the country has made to achieve this important milestone in its quest for a more orderly publication of statistics. The NSDP will give users access to full information about Honduras e-GDDS data categories by June 1, 2016. Background The e-GDDS was established by the IMFs Executive Board in May 2015 to support improved data transparency, encourage statistical development, and help create synergies between data dissemination and surveillance. The e-GDDS superseded the GDDS, which was established in 1997. A link to the countrys NSDP will be available on the IMFs Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) by June 1, 2016: at http://dsbb.imf.org. Imperial Valley News Center FTC to Host Data Security Conference in Chicago Washington, DC - The Federal Trade Commission will host a one-day conference in Chicago on June 15, 2016, on how companies can secure their products, services, and networks. The event will focus on guidance for startups and other small and medium-sized businesses about how to make security considerations a part of their companies culture. FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen will provide opening remarks for the conference, which will be the fourth Start with Security event nationwide. The conference will bring together experts in data security to provide guidance to businesses. The conference will take place at, and is co-sponsored by, the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. A full agenda will be made available in the weeks leading up to the conference. In addition to holding conferences around the country, the FTC has created extensive new business education materials to help companies think about how to incorporate strong security practices. The business guidance lays out ten key steps to effective data security drawn from the alleged facts in the FTCs data security cases and is designed to provide an easy way for companies to understand the lessons learned from those previous cases. Available as a guidebook and a series of videos, the guidance includes references to the cases, as well as plain-language explanations of the security principles behind them. Governor and First Lady Honor Army Cpl. Robert P. Graham Sacramento, California - On behalf of all Californians, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. and First Lady Anne Gust Brown honor Army Cpl. Robert P. Graham, a U.S. serviceman missing from the Korean War. Last week, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced that Army Cpl. Graham's remains have been identified. He will be buried tomorrow with full military honors. Army Cpl. Robert P. Graham, 20, of San Francisco, CA, bravely gave his life in service to our state and nation and the Governor and First Lady extend their deepest condolences to his family and friends. In memorial, Governor Brown ordered that flags be flown at half-staff over the State Capitol. Army Cpl. Graham's family will receive a letter of condolence from the Governor. In February 1951, Army Cpl. Graham was assigned to Company A, 13th Engineer Combat Battalion, 7th Infantry Division, which was engaged in a battle near Hoengsong, South Korea. Under heavy enemy attack, his unit was ordered to withdraw south to Wonju. Upon arrival at Wonju, Army Cpl. Graham was reported missing on February 13, 1951. In 1953, repatriated U.S. soldiers told debriefers that Army Cpl. Graham had been captured by enemy forces and died in March 1951 at Suan POW Camp. His remains were not among those returned by communist forces in 1954, however. Between 1990 and 1994, North Korea returned to the United States commingled human remains which, when combined with remains recovered during joint recovery operations in North Korea, included the remains of at least 600 U.S. servicemen who fought during the war. North Korean documents included in the repatriation indicated that some of the remains were recovered from the area where Army Cpl. Graham was believed to have died. Scientists from DPAA and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used DNA analysis, forensic tools and circumstantial evidence in the identification of the remains. Health needs of the nations homeless are being sidelined in housing debate The social and healthcare needs of the homeless population have been completely sidelined in the current debate of the housing crisis, a member of the IMO NCHD Committee has stated. While there certainly was a need for more social housing and an examination of the issue of rising rents, NCHD Committee member Dr Ronan Glynn said the Minister for Health needed to develop a coordinated and resourced national strategy to address the health needs of this vulnerable population. Members at the AGM in Sligo passed a motion calling for such a coordinated, resourced national strategy for the physical, mental health and social needs of our homeless population, with a particular emphasis on the importance of primary care. This should include an evaluation of the funding mechanisms for homelessness and health, together with a review of the services provided by the HSE and HSE-funded organisations in the community and voluntary sector, the motion read. According to Dr Glynn, a trainee in public health and epidemiology, in 2011, the then programme for government promised to end long-term homelessness and the need to sleep rough. In 2013, this forecast was updated and it was promised to end by 2016. Yet in the last quarter of 2015 almost 3,500 people accessed emergency accommodation in Dublin the largest figures since records began nine years ago, he said. In February 2016, there was also a 100 per cent increase in the number of children in emergency accommodation in Dublin compared to figures for February 2015, added Dr Glynn. Dublin GP Dr Mark Murphy praised the work of a number of individuals and groups who were doing such good work on an ad hoc basis such as Dr Austin OCarroll and Safetynet, which provide acute primary care services to homeless populations in Dublin, Cork and Galway, and the initiative from Dr Patrick ODonnell in Limerick. But these are Band-aids, stressed Dr Murphy. Dr Kevin Kilbride, a Consultant Psychiatrist working in the homeless services in Dublin, agreed that we needed coordination and resources, but before we start to allocate resources we really need to think the problem through, because we already deliver a great number of resources to the wider homeless sector. dara.gantly@imt.ie 'We Got Robbed': Pakistani Twitter Had a Meltdown Over 'Controversial' No Ball to Virat Kohli Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This 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 Roisin OConnors email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The former One Direction idol Zayn Malik might command an army of screaming fans. But he has now been outsold by a collection of forgotten folk recordings by the one-time angelic choirboy Aled Jones, which sat in an airing cupboard for 30 years. Despite a huge marketing campaign to launch Maliks solo career, he has been humbled by the Songs of Praise host, 45, who melted hearts back in 1985 with his version of Walking In The Air from The Snowman. One Voice, a collection of traditional songs sung by the Welsh choirboy when he was 16, and kept in a cupboard for safe-keeping by his parents, has entered the album charts at number six. Recommended Read more Zayn Malik is first UK male soloist to debut at number 1 in UK and US His biggest hit for 31 years, Jones comfortably outsold Maliks debut solo album Mind of Mine, which slipped down the chart to number nine. Jones also finished ahead of Maliks pop rival, Justin Bieber. Jones, who built a successful television presenting career after his voice broke, duets with the recordings of his younger self on One Voice, which features works by Handel, Purcell and Britten as well as interpretations of standards including Danny Boy and Lark in the Clear Air. Top Trumps Zayn V Aled Zayn Age: 23 Discovered: Auditioned for 2010 series of The X Factor Career: 20 million 1D albums sold, 40m singles, tour gross 500m Spiritual life: One of pops most prominent Muslim stars Scandal: Caught smoking apparent marijuana joint & faced claims he cheated on ex-fiancee Partner: Formed new it couple with supermodel Gigi Hadid Aled Age: 45 Discovered: Record company alerted to lead soloist aged just 11 in Bangor Cathedral choir Career: 6m albums sold, sang for The Pope, appointed MBE Spiritual life: It would be impossible to present Songs Of Praise if you weren't a Christian. Scandal: Admitted I enjoyed a good drink during post-choirboy student days Partner: Married to Claire Fossett, the couple have two children We were sitting around the kitchen table one day, when my mum suddenly announced that there was an album of folk songs of mine that had never been released, Jones recalled. When she asked my dad where it was, he said that the tape of recordings was in the airing cupboard, to keep it dry, sandwiched in-between my old pants and socks. At the time, my voice had broken, so the record company decided not to release it. I didnt even remember recording the album, but when I listened to it at my parents house, I felt like a proud uncle or father. From that came the idea to release the album of duets, featuring my voice as a boy and now as an adult. Alerted to his top ten triumph, Jones said: Whod have thought Id be in a chart with Justin Bieber and Adele! Thanks to everyone for making a 45-year-old ex-choirboy very happy. Jones, who also presents ITVs Weekend breakfast show, will embark upon a 22-date tour of the UKs cathedrals. He will sing alongside projections of his younger self during the concerts. Whilst Malik is used to entertaining stadiums filled with shrieking One Direction fans, Joness tour will end with a performance at his hometown cathedral in Bangor in July. One Voice, also number one in the Classical Chart, was released by Classic FMs own label Jones presents a regular show on the commercial station. 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 }} No character in The Walking Dead skirmished death more times than Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun). Glenn is the first character we meet after being introduced to the show's protagonist Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), and ever since the former pizza delivery boy made his debut, he faced some extremely close brushes with the grim reaper. Acknowledging that he was a prime candidate to be bludgeoned to death by Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in the traumatic season 7 opener, we track Glenn's rise from cap wearing comic relief into the show's - former - luckiest survivor. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Show all 10 1 /10 The most shocking Walking Dead moments The most shocking Walking Dead moments Sophie's a walker (season 2, episode 7) Much of season two's opening half is spent looking for Sophia, the missing daughter of Carol (Melissa McBride). Turns out she was locked up in Hershel's barn as a zombie all along. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Shane reanimates without being bitten (season 2, episode 12) When Carl (Chandler Riggs) guns down a deranged Shane (Jon Bernthal) to protect his father, the shock arrives when he manifests into a walker despite not being bitten; turns out everyone's infected with the virus and will turn whichever way they die. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Axel's bullet to the eye (season 3, episode 10) A character introduced in the show's prison arc, Axel is a reformed prisoner who strikes up a friendship with Carol - until he's gunned down mid-sentence. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Carl kills Lori after she gives birth (season 3, episode 4) Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) goes into labour at the very moment a zombie siege breaks out at the prison. Unfortunately, she doesn't make it through the procedure with her son Carl being the one to put a bullet to her head. The most shocking Walking Dead moments The Governor slays Hershel (season 4, episode 8) The Governor makes his dramatic return for a showdown at the prison after he captures Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Hershel (Scott Wilson). Rick reaches out, attempting to reason with him - but The Governor starts a war when he proceeds to decapitate poor old Hershel instead. The most shocking Walking Dead moments "Look at the flowers" (season 4, episode 14) In a standout episode from the show's fourth season, Carol is forced to take drastic measures when young teenager Lizzie murders her sister Mika in the belief that she'll live on as a zombie. Realising Lizzie's depraved mind would endanger those around her, Carol puts a gun to the young girl's head and, telling her to "look at the flowers," pulls the trigger, fighting back the tears. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Carl's bullet to the eye (season 6, episode 9) Season six returned from its mid-season break in typically dramatic fashion when an iconic moment from the graphic novels came to life: Carl takes a bullet to the eye. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Beth is killed (season 5, episode 8) Upon being kidnapped, Beth (Emily Kinney) is taken to Grady Memorial Hospital managed by Atlanta Law Enforcement. Forced to reside there against her will, the group - including Rick and Daryl (Norman Reedus) - eventually find her - only for her to be accidentally shot in the head by her captor. The worst thing? Her sister Maggie (Lauren Cohan) had just arrived outside. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Negan kills Abraham Season seven opened in brutal form as we discovered it was Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) at the opposite end of Negan's baseball bat. "Suck my nuts," the soldier growls as the Saviours' leader brings Lucille raining down on his head until nothing remains but a pulpy mess. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Negan kills Glenn Negan decides to punish the group once more after getting clocked round the face by Daryl. Without expectation, he thwacks Lucille round the head of poor Glenn. With his eyeball popping out of his head, he manages: "I'll find you, Maggie before Negan proceeds to finish the job ending the former pizza delivery boy's life. Naturally, spoilers from all seasons follow. Season 1, Episode 2: Guts (AMC) Having saved Rick from an influx of walkers, the group hole up in a nearby building with no apparent exit. Rick's idea is to smear himself in zombie entrails to throw the undead off his scent, electing Glenn to join him on a mission to steer them away. As they enact the plan, rainfall washes the zombie guts away placing the two in mortal danger. Season 2, Episode 4: Cherokee Rose Glenn's always been a brave soul; coming across a bloated walker at the bottom of a well, the group lower Glenn down in an attempt to prevent it from contaminating their water supply. This being The Walking Dead, the rusty water pump they're using as his pulley breaks sending Glenn plummeting towards the hungry zombie. The group manage to save him in the nick of time. Season 3, Episode 7: When the Dead Come Knocking Having been taken hostage by Merle (Michael Rooker), Glenn and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) are taken to Woodbury where Glenn is tied up and brutally interrogated; Merle wants to know where Rick, his brother Daryl (Norman Reedus) and the remainder of the group that left him for dead are residing. Glenn remains silent so Merle unleashes a walker into the room. With his hands tied behind his back, Glenn is forced to improvise (with a chair because he's a badass). Season 4, Episode 5: Internment Glenn is stricken with a deadly virus spreading through the prison. Quarantined in a cell with the other sick patients, his rapidly deteriorating health comes to a head when a coughing fit causes him to choke on his own blood. It's down to one-legged Hershel (Scott Wilson) to pull him back from the brink of death. Season 4, Episode 11: Us During his search for Maggie, Glenn - accompanied by Tara (Alanna Masterson) - comes across a tunnel on his way to Terminus. Barricaded with rubble, the two climb over it - only to meet a herd of salivating walkers on the other side. It's Tara who gets her foot stuck but a brave Glenn refuses to leave her. Fortunately, Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), Rosita (Christian Serratos) and co show up to save them - and they've found Maggie. Season 5, Episode 1: No Sanctuary Having been imprisoned in a boxcar following their arrival at Terminus, the cannibalistic crew cart Glenn to a slaughterhouse alongside Rick, Daryl and Bob (Lawrence Gilliard). Watching on as they mercilessly slit the throats of four other members of an unknown group, Glenn is next line. Awaiting his death, an explosion rings out deterring the cannibals; Rick strikes and saves Glenn. Season 5, Episode 14: Spend While out on a supply run in a nearby warehouse, Nicholas (Michael Trainor) abandons the group in terror during a zombie outbreak, giving a horde of walkers access to Glenn and Noah (Tyler James Williams) in the process. It's Noah, however, whose leg gets grabbed and, despite trying to save him, Glenn watches on in tears as the young man gets brutally ripped apart by the ravenous undead. Season 5, Episode 16: Conquer Worried that Glenn will reveal his cowardice back at Alexandria, Nicholas lures him outside the walls of the Safe-Zone and shoots him. Having been left for dead, Glenn catches up with his assailant at nightfall when walkers attack. Nicholas, yet again, leaves him to die. Ever the survivor, Glenn escapes the zombies and finds Nicholas who pleads for mercy. Glenn accepts. Season 6, Episode 3: Thank You / Season 6, Episode 7: Heads Up With an innumerable number of walkers catching up with the group on their way back to Alexandria, Glenn and Nicholas find themselves trapped in an alleyway. Climbing onto a dumpster, the two are surrounded by the undead with no discernible escape. Nicholas draws his gun, utters a "Thank you" to Glenn before shooting himself in the head, his flailing body pulling Glenn into the pit of walkers below. Despite the episode leading you to believe Glenn died, it emerges four episodes later that he managed to crawl away as the walkers feasted on Nicholas' corpse. Season 6, Episode 9: No Way Out Returning to Alexandria only to find it overrun by walkers, Glenn and Enid (Katelyn Nacon) form a plan to lower Maggie down from a platform on the cusp of collapsing. In the process, Glenn is, again, overcome by the undead. Attempting to shoot his way out of it, death looks inevitable - until Abraham and Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) swoop in to save him. Season 6, Episode 16: Last Day on Earth / Season 7, Episode 1: The Day Will Come When You Won't Be (AMC) Having been caught by The Saviors, Glenn was one of 11 characters who found themselves at risk of falling victim to Lucille, Negan's baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. After the malevolent antagonist opts to choose his victim via a round of 'eeny meeny miny mo,' it seems Glenn's escaped death one more after Abraham has his brains bashed in. But then Daryl threw a punch. Negan had already warned the group - one step out of line and someone else will be killed. "Back to it," he exclaims as he brings Lucille raining down upon poor Glenn's head - so hard his eyeball almost pops out in the process. "Maggie, I'll find you," the fan favourite splutters before Negan murders him in cold blood. The Walking Dead season 7 continues Sundays in the US followed by a UK premiere the following evening at 9pm on FOX. 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 }} Frank Underwood, a fictional president looking less and less corrupt by the minute in comparison to real politicians, has weighed in on the controversy surrounding David Camerons involvement in an offshore fund. Labour accused the PM of hypocrisy today, after he revealed he once owned shares in an offshore fund established by his late father. Pulling up a tweet Cameron posted in 2015 extolling the virtues of paying ones taxes, Frank offered him this withering glance: Ouch. The delay in Camerons admission has caused a considerable amount of frowning in Parliament, with Business Minister Nick Boles saying that with the benefit of hindsight the PM should probably have declared his shareholdings sooner, but understood his "natural human instinct to rally round his father". Recommended Read more The mysterious message that launched the Panama Papers scandal Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said Cameron could not be blamed for the actions of his father, who flew to board meetings in the Bahamas or Switzerland, but: "He can for hypocrisy. He said that sunlight is the best disinfectant and wasn't entirely straight with the British people about what his own financial arrangements were. "That wouldn't be so bad if he hadn't also been lecturing very prominent people about their own tax arrangements, some he called morally wrong for being invested in similar schemes. "People don't like that and they want a lot more answers from David Cameron before this scandal goes away." 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 }} Kingsman fans worrying that sequel The Golden Circle will be nothing without Harry Hart clearly underestimated the suave yet brutal secret agent. Colin Firth will be returning to his role after all, despite seemingly meeting his demise at the hands of Samuel L Jacksons villainous billionaire Richmond Valentine in first film The Secret Service. It was his co-star Taron Egerton, who plays Harts protege Eggsy, who revealed the news. The 26-year-old posted an intriguing new poster on Twitter, showing Harts glasses with one lens knocked out, presumably in reference to the bullet that hit him in the eye. Underneath the glasses, a message reads Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Add to that Egertons caption, A message from an old friend #Kingsman, and its a surefire bet that fans can expect more awesome action sequences from our favourite dapper spy (good luck rivalling that church massacre, Matthew Vaughn). How the director intends to bring Hart back remains a mystery, but we know that the story will be set state-side, with Eggsy and Mark Strongs Merlin hired to work for secret US spy society Statesmen. Halle Berrys new character Ginger heads up the organisation, which is battling to defeat the villainous Poppy, played by Julianne Moore. Concept art pictures show that Poppy lives in a surreal theme park named PoppyLand, while Kingsman HQ looks set to suffer a bombing. Then theres the Kingsman cab, which can travel underwater. Kingsman: Colin Firth chat Vaughn had previously hinted at the return of Hart, joking ahead of The Secret Services US release that if people buy tickets in America, well figure out a way for having Colin back. The film proved an unprecedented box office success, grossing $412.4 million worldwide on a budget of $81 million. So, it seems, Vaughn is delivering on his promise. Kingsman: The Golden Circle is expected to reach cinemas on 16 June 2017. 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 }} Fallout 4 was crowned the best game of the year at the Bafta video awards, during a night that also celebrated some of the industry's smaller, indie titles. The post-apocalyptic role-playing game won the big awards on the night. But it also celebrated smaller developers, including games like Everybody's Gone To The Rapture and the popular Rocket League, which beat Fifa 16 to be the best sport game. The British awards also picked Batman: Arkham Knight as its favourite game from the country. The awards in London were hosted by comedian Dara O'Briain, who joked of the video games industry's "obsession" with horses and facial scars, after several of the best game nominees - including The Witcher III and Metal Gear Solid V featured both prominently as part of their central characters. Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, the story-based mystery set in a small English village whose inhabitants have all disappeared was nominated for 10 awards, winning the Bafta for music, audio achievement and best performer for US actress Merle Dandridge, who voices lead character Kate Collins. Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty Fellow indie title Her Story, an interactive fiction game where players must watch live action footage of police interviews with one suspect picked up the awards for debut game, innovation and best mobile and handheld game. Rocket League was honoured in the family game, multi-player and sport categories, beating global franchise Fifa 16 to the sport award. eSports, the growing trend of competitive gaming in front large crowds was also celebrated for the first time at the ceremony, with the first ever AMD eSports Audience award going to battle game Smite, which won the public vote ahead of established names including Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 and League Of Legends. The Bafta Fellowship was presented to game engineer John Carmack, who helped pioneer the use of 3D graphics in video games and was the lead designer for the original Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, some of the earliest games in the first-person shooter genre which is now one of the industry's biggest. 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 }} Until recently, Robyn Ewing was a writer in Hollywood, developing TV scripts and pitching pilots to film studios. Now shes applying her creative talents towards building the personality of a different type of character a virtual assistant, animated by artifical intelligence (AI), that interacts with sick patients. Ewing works with engineers on the software program, called Sophie, which can be downloaded to a smartphone. The virtual nurse gently reminds users to check their medication, asks them how they are feeling or if they are in pain, and sends data to a real doctor. As tech behemoths and a wave of start-ups double down on virtual assistants that can chat with human beings, writing for AI is becoming a hot job in Silicon Valley. Behind Apples Siri, Amazons Alexa and Microsofts Cortana are not just software engineers. Increasingly, there are poets, comedians, fiction writers, and other artistic types charged with engineering the personalities for a fast-growing crop of artificial intelligence tools. Maybe this will help pay back all the student loans, joked Ewing, who has masters degrees from the Iowa Writers Workshop and film school. Unlike the fictional characters that Ewing developed in Hollywood, who are put through adventures, personal trials and plot twists, most virtual assistants today are designed to perform largely prosaic tasks, such as going through email, sending meeting reminders or turning off the lights as you shout across the room. But a new crop of virtual assistant start-ups, whose products will soon flood the market, have in mind more ambitious bots that can interact seamlessly with human beings. Because this wave of technology is distinguished by the ability to chat, writers for AI must focus on making the conversation feel natural. Designers for Amazons Alexa have built humanising hmms and ums into her responses. Apples Siri assistant is known for wry jokes, as well as her ability to beatbox upon request. As in fiction, the AI writers for virtual assistants dream up a life story for their bots. Writers for medical and productivity apps make character decisions such as whether bots should be workaholics, eager beavers or self-effacing. You have to develop an entire backstory even if you never use it, Ewing said. Even mundane tasks demand creative effort, as writers try to build personality quirks into the most rote activities. At the New York start-up x.ai, a Harvard theatre graduate is tasked with deciding whether its scheduling bots, Amy and Andrew, should use emojis or address people by first names. We dont want people saying, Your assistant is too casual or too much, said Anna Kelsey, whose title is AI interaction designer. We dont want her to be one of those crazy people who uses 15 million exclamation points. Virtual assistants have received a boost from major advances in subsets of artificial intelligence known as machine learning and natural language processing, or the ability for computers to understand speech. Accuracy of word recognition reached something of a tipping point in recent years, going from 80 per cent in 2009 to 95 per cent in 2014, said Christopher Manning, a computer science professor and natural language expert at Stanford University. The rise of this technology is evident in a wave of new jobs. By 2025, 12.7 million new US jobs will involve building robots or automation software; by 2019, more than a third of the US workforce will work alongside such technologies, according to Forrester Data. Some virtual assistants are already becoming useful companions in the office. Howdy, a bot in the productivity software Slack, can query employees on behalf of a boss and collate their answers into a single document. Amy and Andrew, the meeting-scheduling bots built by x.ai, can email back and forth with real administrative assistants. Sophie and Molly, nurse avatars built by the start-ups IDAvatars and Sense.ly, respectively, ask patients about medical conditions and try to cheer them up. Another start-up, Botanic.io, is building a guru avatar that can advise on meditation and weight loss. In most cases, users could go online and get the information themselves, without the help of a virtual assistant, though it might take a bit longer, Ewing said. So if the character doesnt delight you, then what is the point? Washington Post 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 }} WhatsApp might just have accidentally made itself illegal. New security installed in the app might mean that it contravenes Indian rules that force companies to use a specific kind of encryption. The company announced this week that all chats on its service would be end-to-end encrypted, meaning that it wouldnt be possible for the company or others to read what is contained within them. The change means that only the sender and recipient are able to unscramble the encrypted messages and read their contents. WhatsApp encryption uses a 256-bit key, which is only known to the sender and recipient, which is why the security is described as end-to-end. But the Indian rule requires companies to use no more than 40-bit encryption, unless they get explicit permission from the government. Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty Getting that permission will prove impossible because of the way that the system is set up. WhatsApp would have to hand the key over to the government for it to be checked but since the company doesnt actually have those keys, they cant be handed over at all. That could mean that the 100 million people who use WhatsApp in India about 10 per cent of everyone who does are using an app that is illegal in the country. The app is the most popular in the entire country, and more people who are on the internet use the app than dont. WhatsApp encryption in 60 seconds The countrys authorities havent yet indicated whether they will pursue action against WhatsApp. But the government has previously come up against other companies including BlackBerry over encryption. Like many countries, India is currently looking to pass new policies on encryption, and it is unclear whether those will also bring new requirements upon WhatsApp. 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 }} The reality has hit you - your partner has been sending illicit texts to someone else. Finding out that your other half has been sexting when you thought your relationship was going well is a horrible situation to be in. The feelings of shock and betrayal are likely to leave you asking yourself and your partner a lot of questions. But is sexting actually betrayal? Some might argue that sexting is only a sign of being human and having fun. It doesnt mean that youre going to end up actually doing anything sexual with the other person so whats the harm? But that view won't wash for most people who require commitment and honesty from their partner. Sexting is increasingly popular amongst adults and can be a fun way to enhance your sex life with your partner. The Way We Are Now 2015 study by Relate, Marriage Care and Relationships Scotland found that over half of 16 to 34 year olds said that sending sexy or flirtatious messages and pictures had a positive impact on their relationship. However, just as technology can enhance our relationships, it also presents risks. One Canadian study found that whilst 75 percent of people who sexted had done so within the confines of a relationship, 12 percent had sexted in a relationship where cheating had taken place. So what are you supposed to do if you catch your partner sexting somebody else? First be certain that it's actually happening. In some relationships, accusations of sexting cause frequent rows even though the partner being accused hasnt actually been up to anything. Accusing them of sexting is just one way of showing them how bad we might be feeling. So before any of us launch in to a tirade against a partner about what we imagine theyve been up to, lets be clear what we are basing our concerns on. Lets assume that youve got the evidence - baring in mind that going through a person's phone can be seen as a betrayal of trust. Do you have a screaming row? Do you feel angry and upset but decide to say nothing and hope it goes away? Or perhaps you put it down to the stress your partners been under recently and that of course it wont happen again. Maybe you blame the "sextee" the one theyve been engaging with. Relationship counsellors often see couples where the one who feels betrayed puts the transgression down to the conniving ways of the sextee. Somehow theyve lured their partner into this behaviour and are entirely responsible. Most counsellors though would try to help the couple to see that a person is rarely made to do this. So, letting your partner take responsibility for their part of the deal is important. You might also feel you want full disclosure. This means asking your partner to be really honest about how far it has gone. It is obvious that sometimes sexting gets followed up by actually meeting that person or vice versa and for most partners, this would be far more serious. Most people would want to know how long its been going on and if there have been other sextees in the past. But the most helpful question we can ask is likely to be why? They may tell themselves it doesnt count as cheating although many would argue that it does

Ammanda Major

For people who sext, it tends to be curiosity and maybe boredom with the hum drum of everyday life that makes sexting an attractive distraction. The need to feel desired can be a big motivator too. One of the main problems when sexting happens outside of the relationship is that you find it has a different meaning for each of you. For the one whos just found out whats happening, its usually a big deal. Not many treat it as a passing irritation. For the one whos doing it, they may think its not doing any harm. They may tell themselves it doesnt count as cheating although many would argue that it does. Another common theme is the partner using this experience as way to start off ending the relationship. A history of love Show all 13 1 /13 A history of love A history of love Plato's Symposium One of the Platos most famous works, this dialogue between Greek philosophers that takes place over dinner, explores the very nature of love, what it means to be in love, and has shaped the modern definition of platonic love. Getty Images A history of love Romeo and Juliet Shakepeare's tale of two young star-crossed lovers has stood the test of time and continues to be adapted for film, stage and even opera. Getty Images A history of love Troilus and Criseyde Considered one of Chaucers finest works the poem written in Middle-English brought about the term all good things come to an end as Criseydes lover dies a tragic death in the Siege of Troy. A history of love Pride and Prejudice Having sold over 20 million copies, Jane Austens novel based on the themes of manners, upbringing, morality and marriage continues to make women worldwide swoon at the thought of finding their very own Mr. Darcy. A history of love Sigmund Freud Freud thought that not only a couples love for one another, but the parents love for the child and the childs for the parent were basically of the same kind. A history of love Wuthering Heights Emily Brontes eerie tale of jealousy and vengefulness still haunts readers today and even inspired Kate Bushs 1978 hit. Getty Images A history of love Orpheus & Eurydice Perhaps the ultimate tragic love story, this Greek myth explores love at first sight and Orpheuss doomed journey to the Underworld to be reunited with his wife. Getty Images A history of love Song of Songs in the Bible A celebration of sexual love, The Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon is widely considered one of the most beautiful expressions of love and harmony. A history of love The Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal A story of love so epic that it led to the creation of one of the Wonders of the World, The Taj Mahal, this is a grief stricken Mughal Emperors exquisite manifestation of love for his favourite wife who died in childbirth. Getty Images A history of love Madame Bovary, Flaubert Flauberts 19th century realist novel follows narcissist Emma Bovary and her descent into adultery and despair as the boredom of bourgeois life consumes her. A history of love Anna Karenina, Tolstoy Tolstoys exploration of love as a kind of fate which can be a blessing but also a curse that leads to destruction is deeply embedded in modern culture. A history of love Doctor Zhivago Set during a war, the classic love triangle of a man who has fallen for two women is a tale of broken hearts and twists of fate. A history of love Layla and Majnun Persian poet, Nizami Ganjavi, narrates a story of young love which can only be united in death as the legendary lovers are buried side by side, to be reunited in the afterlife. So, however angry and upset you are, its important to have a full and frank discussion about whats happened and why. Until you both understand this and what you both want from your relationship it is going to be difficult to know whether it is worth working at. Although it is tempting to forgive and try to forget, the truth is that repeated episodes are only going to undermine your confidence in yourself and in the relationship. In some cases, and particularly if its not the first time this has happened, ending things may be the best option. On the other hand, an episode like this may make your partner realise just how important you are to them. You may want to suggest to your partner that you go for relationship counselling to address any underlying issues. Counsellors often help relationships to recover from incidents of sexting and even full blown affairs. It takes time to rebuild trust but hopefully you can reach a point again where you will feel confident that the only sexts your partner is sending are to you. Ammanda Major is a Senior Consultant on Sex Therapy at Relate and also writes the charitys regular agony aunt column, Ask Ammanda. 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 much vaunted new state pension introduced this week by the government has angered many i readers. On Wednesday the Work and Pensions Secretary, Stephen Crabb, trumpeted: Today marks the beginning of the biggest overhaul to our state pension system for generations and millions stand to gain from these changes, including women. But many have pointed out that there are millions of losers under the new scheme, including women. The changes to the state pension landscape have been dubbed by the government as a huge boost for women by addressing gender inequality in the current system and bringing forward by over a decade the point when men and women will achieve equal payments, said Maike Currie of Fidelity International. However, this has been undone by separate changes to the womens state pension age, which is rising from nearly 63 now to 65 by 2018. This means only 80,000 women will receive the new flat-rate state pension from 2016 to 2018, compared with 390,000 men. Campaigners from Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) believe that hundreds of thousands of women born in the 1950s have been misled by successive governments about their payouts and when they qualify for the state pension. Meanwhile women born between 6 April 1951 and 5 April 1953 face an additional injustice. Because of the way in which the pension gender equalisation has been introduced, they will not qualify for the new single-tier state pension at all. They will get only 131, even though men born in exactly the same year will receive the new rate. Many of these women do not have other pensions and will have the lower 131 payment to survive on for the rest of their lives, said Cari Rikby, who has been campaigning for the women to be given the same pension as men of their age. If Id had a twin brother, hed consequently get around 20,000 more than me from the state pension over 20 years. How is that fair? Many existing pensioners are also losing out as their pensions will rise by less each year as a result of unfair indexation arrangements. This will result in a two-tier pension system which disadvantages existing pensioners, warned Dot Gibson of the National Pensioners Convention. Typical is 81-year-old Bert Munro who contact the i this week. The new state pension arrangements have wrought havoc on my circumstances, he told me. In among a seven page letter from the DWP I found out that I have been graded Pension Credit only, because the amount the government allows me to live on has been exceeded by 8 per week. But I am to be paid 9.71 per week Pension Credit. He says that if the 8 was deducted from the 9.71 he would be entitled to Savings Credit. As a consequence he hasnt got a positive view of the changes: The whole approach to the system governing pensions, council tax and all the related consequences is moribund and seriously not fit for purpose. Also fed up with George Osbornes claims that the new state pension will deliver dignity in retirement are the estimated 560,000 British pensioners who, according to the government, live in the wrong country. Some 1.2 million British pensioners live abroad, and around 600,000 get the same increases to their payout as if they had remained in the UK. But those who live in such places as Australia and Canada have had their state pension frozen at the rate it stood when they left the UK. Clive Walford is chairman of PPiI (Pension Parity in Indonesia) and this week told me: The former Pension Minister Steve Webb said the new state pension would be fully sustainable. But when devising the scheme did he not think that would now be no excuse for discriminating against half a million frozen pensioners? He reckons its time for all the fed-up and let-down pension campaigners to band together to force the government into fairness and equality for all. Sounds a plan, especially given how many votes that could comprise thats a language politicians do understand. Meanwhile any pensioners struggling as a result of the changes are urged to check if they can increase their income by claiming any money benefits they are entitled to. Age UK points out that every year millions of pensioners miss out on up to 3.7bn in money benefits, with many also forgoing benefits designed to help with the increased cost of having an illness and disability. The charity reckons many missing out simply dont know they could be entitled to extra income. Others are aware of the benefits available but feel too proud or embarrassed to put in a claim. Some have unsuccessfully tried before, or have been put off by the claiming process which they feel is too complicated or intrusive. But If anyone eligible for Pension Credit made a claim, it could boost their budget on average by more than 1,700 a year, giving them an extra 33 a week. Age UKs charity director, Caroline Abrahams, said: The government must make a concerted effort to help existing pensioners who are most in need. 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 controversial offshore fund founded by the Prime Ministers late father is failing to pay off for its wealthy backers after losing thousands of dollars in value this year due to a string of bad bets. The Smith & Williamson Blairmore Global Equity fund, founded by David Camerons father Ian, has been thrown into the spotlight after the release of the Panama Papers. The vehicle, founded 34 years ago, still runs today and owns shares in companies like Google, Walt Disney and Amazon. But it has lost its super-rich clients 5 per cent since New Years Day and 8 per cent over the past 12 months, according to Trustnet data. A benchmark index called the MSCI World Index is down 1.7 per cent this year and 7.43 per cent over the year in comparison. Blairmore, which is a separate company with its own board, employs external fund managers at Smith & Williamson to run the fund. The duo responsible for the performance fund managers Patrick Smiley and Nick Peppiatt said performance had suffered after its Japanese and oil investments turned sour. The loss is embarrassing given the intense public scrutiny on Blairmores UK tax avoidance strategy and the exclusivity of the funds investor base. It has come under fire due to its ties to the Mr Camerons father, who set it up in Panama in 1982 when the Prime Minister was a 16-year-old schoolboy at Eton. It followed the lifting of capital controls by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, which prompted a flood of investment companies to move offshore to escape UK tax rates. Ian Cameron left his job as a stockbroker to set up vehicles in Jersey, Geneva and Panama to take advantage of the rule change, a switch which has prompted questions about how much of the Prime Ministers inherited wealth was derived through legal tax avoidance. 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 }} TripAdvisor, the travel planning and booking site, has revealed the best time to book holidays in different regions to get the cheapest deals in its "Best Time to Book" report. Travellers perception of when the best hotel rates become available does not always match the reality, according to the travel company. Booking travel last minute is often considered a great way to get the best deal, but the travel giant claims last-minute reservations dont provide the biggest savings and depend on destinations. TripAdvisor analysed hotel booking and interest in nine popular regions around the world for the summer months of June, July and August. For British travellers planning a summer holiday in Europe, the best time to book their hotel is between three to five months in advance, when they can save 23 per cent compared to peak prices, the study found. (TripAdvisor) (TripAdvisor) Tourists can save as much as 55 per cent on early bookings to Moscow. But booking this far in advance could be counter-productive for UK travellers heading to Asian destinations. Dubai has the shortest lead time with the biggest savings to be made by booking within 2 months of the trip. It's followed by Jakarta, Mumbai, Bangkok and Hanoi respectively, which all offer the best deals when booking within three months of your trip. In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 1. Lawton Court Hotel, Llandudno In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 2. SeaCoast Inn, Hyannis, Massachusetts (US) In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 3. Queens Promenade Hotel, Blackpool In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 4. Hotel California, Palm Springs, California (US) In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 5. Antigonish Evergreen Inn, Antigonish (Canada) In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 6. Lauriston Court Hotel, Llandudno In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 7. Desert Riviera Hotel, Palm Springs, California (US) In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 8. Clarks Sunny Isle Motel, Summerside, Prince Edward Island (Canada) In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 9. Hich Hotel Konya, Konya (Turkey) In pictures: World's Top 10 Bargain Hotels Bargain Hotels 10. Jade Hotel, Hue (Vietnam) What is interesting is that those who book either very early or very last minute are rarely getting the best deals. For many destinations, hotel prices actually tend to reach a low a few months in advance of the trip, said James Kay, TripAdvisor spokesperson. 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 Serious Fraud Office has opened a criminal investigation into Tata Steel's UK operations. Police officers are investigating allegations staff tampered with certificates detailing the composition of the steel products before they were sold. The company's Yorkshire site is the focus of the inquiry, the Daily Telegraph reported. At least nine employees have been suspended and around 500 clients, including BAE and Rolls-Royce, are thought to be affected. Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year. There is also a trading standards investigation, but it is unclear whether it is linked to the criminal investigation. Tata Steel announced it had put its entire UK business up for sale following a board meeting in Mumbai, putting thousands of workers' jobs at risk. The company said the move was to stem heavy losses from high manufacturing costs, competition with China and a global oversupply of steel. Sajid Javid on Tata sale Ratan Tata, the former chairman of Tata Group, defended the decision, calling the UK steel operation "underinvested and overmanned". In January, Tata announced more than 1,000 job losses at UK plants, 750 of them in Port Talbot. That came after 1,200 job losses at Tata plants in Scunthorpe and Lanarkshire last October, at the same time steel manufacturer SSI closed another plant at Redcar. Liberty House owner Sanjeev Gupta has emerged as the most likely buyer of Tata Steel UK. The tycoon, who has already saved several UK steelworks, said the deal would require a partnership with the Government. Business Secretary Sajid Javid has said Tata Steel intends to formally begin the sales process by Monday 11 April "at the latest". 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 }} Most young people do not go to university but have been overlooked and left behind by the current system which leaves too many school leavers to drift into dead-end jobs, a damning report by a House of Lords committee has warned. Bright school leavers are being denied the chance for social mobility because they are given gobbledygook rather than good careers advice and support when they leave school, the House of Lords Committee on Social Mobility warned. More than half (53 per cent) of young people do not follow the traditional academic route of going from school to university before starting work. This majority of young people are significantly overlooked in their transition from school to work and the Governments focus on apprenticeships is not suitable for everyone, concluded the report, Improving the Transition from School to Work. The Committee condemned the current complex and incoherent system for school leavers looking to find their first jobs saying it was confusing for both young people and employers. Baroness Corston, chair of the Committee, warned that too many bright youngsters were trapped in dead-end jobs because they had been denied the right support and advice when they left school . She said: The current system for helping people move from school to work is failing most young people. They are simply not being adequately prepared for the world of work. This significantly disadvantages a huge number of young people and limits their opportunity for social mobility. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA Recent governments have focused on higher education and apprenticeships as the way to help young people to be successful in later life. Both routes can work well but it is absolutely not the case that they are suitable for everyone. To focus on university or apprenticeships, to the exclusion of other routes, is to the detriment of many talented and able young people. We have found that without being taught life skills, given the right support, access to work experience and robust, independent careers advice, we are in danger of trapping these young people in low-skilled, low-paid work, with little chance of a rewarding career. A young person considering their options for further education or employment is presented with gobbledygook. It is totally unclear to them how they can get the skills needed for a successful career. It is also unclear to the people in their lives giving them advice and support in making these crucial decisions. The Committee acknowledged the value of apprenticeships for some young people and the economy but warned that despite the Governments focus only six per cent of 1618 year olds became apprentices. The vast majority (77 per cent) of new apprentices in 2014/15 were over the age of 19, and 41.6 per cent were over the age of 25. The report called for more support for young people who did not go to university or become an apprentice to make a successful transition into the jobs market. The Committee also found a significant inequality in the investment in the education of young people, with a difference of approximately 6,000 a year per student between the public funding of young people attending further education colleges and university. It cited estimates that a further education places costs the Government an average 2,150 a year compared to 8,400 for university students. Baroness Corston added: Non-traditional qualifications are also poorly understood by employers, who cannot be expected to understand the bewildering array on offer, much less have confidence in their quality. That is a major barrier to young people in finding a job. The huge difference in funding between the academic and non-academic route into work is something that the Government must look at if we are to give all our young people an equal chance at succeeding in life. Simply put, young people choosing not to go to university are not invested in as they should be. Latest figures show the number of young people not in education or training is at the lowest on record

Department for Education spokeswoman

The Committee also called for the national curriculum to stop at the age of 14, rather than 16, and the ages of 14-19 recognised as a single stage to prepare young people to start their careers. The report also called for better careers advice which it argued should be provided by independent careers experts and not schools and colleges. It also called for a new Cabinet post so that a single senior Government minister would be responsible for school leavers transition from education to work, rather than the current situation which sees responsibility fall between a number of departments and ministers. Alice Barnard, chief executive of education charity Edge welcomed the report. She said: The Social Mobility Committee is absolutely right. The inequality between academic and vocational education is unfair, restricts social mobility and does not meet the UKs economic needs. Despite making up the majority of the future workforce, young people who take some form of vocational education when they leave school receive much less attention and investment than students who take A levels and go to university. A Department for Education spokeswoman said: Latest figures show the number of young people not in education or training is at the lowest on record and we have the highest ever number of young people going into higher education. We have introduced a more rigorous curriculum so every child learns the basic skills they need such as English and maths so they can go on to fulfil their potential whether they are going into the world of work or continuing their studies. We will invest 70million in our careers strategy over the course of this parliament to transform the quality of careers education. We have also set up the Careers & Enterprise Company to bring young people into contact with employers and develop closer links with employers so they can play a greater role in preparing young people for the world of work. Case study: I wanted to focus on work, not revision Martha Witcomb, 17, lives in Essex and works as a campaign manager When I left school I went to college where I did drama and performing arts for a year, but I decided it wasnt for me because it was more of a hobby. I looked into doing an apprenticeship, but it would have involved a lot of studying and I didnt enjoy that at school. Im more practical. I always did well in exams I got eight GCSEs but the thought of sitting in a classroom for another two years... I couldnt have done it. I just wanted to crack on. Martha Witcomb achieved eight GCSEs At school there was only the option of going to sixth form, not leaving and finding a job. A few people were told they should do apprenticeships, but mostly they told us to get more qualifications. I wanted to focus on work, not homework and revision. I thought, I like talking to people, Im confident; Id like to work in an office. It was hard to find a job as theres not many about but I found one as a campaign manager at Notgoingtouni.co.uk, which advises young people about apprenticeships. I really like my job and really want to stay here. I talk to clients and find leads for sales. Theres not a day I cant be bothered to come in. I enjoy what Im doing. 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 }} Fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden has put further pressure on David Cameron following the release of the Panama Papers by urging the British public to force his resignation. Mr Cameron faced a difficult week of questions before he admitted on Thursday to profiting from the sale of shares in an offshore fund. Mr Snowden, who resides in Russia whose leadership has been linked with the Panama Papers revelations sought to ratchet up the pressure on the PM on social media. Referring to growing critcism of David Cameron's admissions, Mr Snowden stated the next 24 hours could change Britain. Mr Snowden also said it was up to the British public if Mr Cameron resigned. He said that in Iceland, where the Prime Minister did resign, ten per cent of all voters were in the streets within 24 hours, and for less [revelations]. However, with the population of Iceland just 323,002 people and the population of Great Britain significantly more at 64.1 million people, the chances of ten per cent of the UK electorate going to the streets to demand Mr Camerons resignation might seem unlikely. Mr Snowden also made posts highlighting the #resigncameron trend on British social media. He also seemed to imply that a "strategy" was required to force the resignation of the Prime Minister. He had previously mocked Mr Cameron for his comments, made earlier in the week, in which he said his financial affairs were a private matter. The Prime Minister admitted he had profited from selling shares he owned in the offshore Blairmore Investment Trust, set up by his father, Ian Cameron, and run from the Bahamas. Mr Cameron sold the shares for 31,500 before entering office in 2010. He and his wife Samantha Cameron made a 19,000 profit. Despite paying income tax on the dividends there was no capital gains to pay on the sale as it was below the then tax threshold for Capital Gains Tax. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here Mr Cameron also came under criticism after he said of his fathers 300,000 inheritance that he cannot point to every source of the money. In the past, the Prime Minister has spoken strongly against tax avoidance and called it morally wrong. Tax avoidance, often facilitated by the use of overseas companies to avoid paying taxes, is not illegal like tax evasion but is considered by many to be immoral. 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 unlikely Jeremy Corbyn fan has appeared in the form of a Hollywood legend. After receiving support from Daniel Radcliffe, Brian Eno and Shia La Boeuf, the Labour leader has received another celebrity endorsement from Danny DeVito. Hollywood actor DeVito, best known for his roles in Taxi, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, was beside himself with praise for Mr Corbyn when speaking to journalists at an event in LA. However, it's fair to say the same praise wasn't extended to David Cameron. The New Jersey-born star excitedly claimed he was a "big supporter" of Mr Corbyn. I like the idea of people telling the truth, he added. I like them to get to the bottom of things, really. When asked whether the Labour leader would make a good Prime Minister, he didn't hold back. I think he would make a great PM [] Oh yeah, way better than Cameron. Mr Cameron has faced mounting criticism over the past few days after finally admitting he profited from a stake in his fathers offshore investment fund before he became Prime Minister. DeVito also appeared frustrated at the scandal the 'Panama Papers' have brought. Why doesnt anybody want to pay taxes, and just fix the country, and make everybody have a good life? he pleaded. You know, its crazy. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here The actor also revealed himself not to be a huge fan of sketchy former PM Tony Blair. Addressing the camera directly while it appeared his assistant was trying to hurry him on, DeVito advised the nation: Listen, look at your history for crying out loud, you know what I mean? Your sketchy guy hanging out with George Bush? What was his name? Blaaaair. Although this may be the first time the 71-year-old has aired his opinions on the current political climate in the UK, he is actively endorsing Democrat hopeful Bernie Sanders in the US. He appeared at a rally for the Vermont senator last month where he exclaimed to a roaring crowd: I feel THE BERN! Additional reporting by the Press Association. 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 }} Scientists are preparing for a solar storm that could break communications for years and potentially put life on Earth in danger. Many people are still unconcerned or even unaware of the possibility of a geomagnetic storm coming from the sun that could cause huge damage to life on Earth. But such a possibility is referred to as a low probability but high-impact event that is being planned for by agencies including the US Department of Homeland Security and Nasa, and scientists have warned that humanity needs to do more to deal with it. Space weather has previously caused some problems, lightly disrupting technology and leading to visible changes. But none recently have been as dramatic as the infamous Carrington Event of 1859, which caused one of the worst known geomagnetic storms and would throw off much communications technology if it happened today. If such an event were to hit the Earth, it could stop communications satellites from working, break GPS systems and stop planes from flying. It could also lead to even more lasting problems, like wiping out data from computers memory. Its effects could last for months or even years, as authorities wold have to work to repair the infrastructure that the modern world relies on. Estimates from Lloyds of London suggest that fixing all of the problems could cost between $600 billion and $2.6 trillion. The most surprising facts about the sun Show all 8 1 /8 The most surprising facts about the sun The most surprising facts about the sun An Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) image of a huge, handle-shaped prominence The sun makes up 99.8 per cent of the mass of the entire solar system. The suns core, although it only makes up around 2 percent of the sun's volume, holds nearly half of its mass NASA/European Space Agency The most surprising facts about the sun The quiet corona and upper transition region of the Sun. The sun is travelling at 220 kilometres per second. It takes the 225-250 million years to complete an orbit of the centre of the Milky Way NASA/SDO The most surprising facts about the sun Bright, glowing arcs of gas flow around sunspots The suns magnetic fields generate solar wind - streams of charged particles, which travel through the solar system at 450 kilometres per second. The winds cause radio interference, the northern lights and tails on comets, as well as alter the trajectory of space crafts Goddard Space Flight Center The most surprising facts about the sun A huge X-class solar flare burst from a large, active sunspot As the sun has no solid body - it is made up of 92.1 percent hydrogen and 7.8 percent helium - different parts of the sun rotate at different rates. At the equator, the sun spins once about every 25 days, but at its poles the sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days NASA/SDO The most surprising facts about the sun Hot coronal loops which span 30 or more times the diameter of planet Earth extend above the visible surface of the Sun One day, the sun will be about the size of Earth. After its red giant phase - when the sun would have expanded, consuming Mercury, Venus and Earth - the sun will collapse, retaining its enormous mass, but shrinking to the approximate volume of our planet to become a white dwarf. It is currently categorised as a yellow dwarf and at 4.5 billion years old is currently middle aged NASA The most surprising facts about the sun A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun. False colors trace different gas temperatures A complex internal mechanism about which little is known causes the reverse in polarity NASA The most surprising facts about the sun The size of the Earth in comparison to the sun With a circumference of 2,715,395.6 miles, one million Earths could fit inside the sun. | 8. The temperature at the sun's core is about 15 million C while its surface temperature is 5500 C NASA The most surprising facts about the sun Combined ultra violet images of different temperatures of the sun Sunspots - visible dark patches that appear on the suns surface - are temporary phenomena whereby intense magnetic activity form areas of reduced surface temperature. | 10. Solar flares shoot out from the suns surface during when magnetic energy is released by the during magnetic storms. They are the most violent eruptions in the solar system NASA/SDO Now the US government is looking to work more seriously to stem some of those effects including getting better at predicting space weather and dealing with problems it would cause. "We know there is a gap in our ability to assess vulnerability and consequences," said Jack Anderson, a senior analyst for the US Department for Homeland Security, at a conference held to plan for the big one in storm events. At the moment, scientists are unable to predict how issues would pan out as they knock on to each other. "Once systems start to fail, (the outages) could cascade in ways we can't even conceive," said Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, at the same event. But the US government is at a fundamental turning point in addressing the problems, according to Tamara Dickinson, a senior staff member at the White Houses Office of Science and Technology Policy. Last year, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills published a report into the risks to the UK of severe space weather. An event such as a coronal mass ejection could wreak havoc across the UKs 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 }} In Japan, it was said that sacrificing a woman at a rushing river would placate the spirit who lived there, allowing for the construction of bridges and the safe passage of boats. In Greek myth, the warrior king Agamemnon decides to kill his own daughter in exchange for a favorable wind on the way to Troy. The Egyptians buried some of their pharaohs with dozens of servants when they died, ensuring that their needs would still be met in the afterlife. Bodies found entombed in bogs across Europe may have been slain as gifts for higher powers. The great civilizations of Mesoamerica killed people, smashed food and sank treasure to pay their debts to their gods. The ancients could kill you in a million different ways, and give you a million different reasons why it needed to be done. In much of the pre-modern world, ritual sacrifice was framed as necessary for the good of the society at large -- the only way to guarantee, say, a plentiful harvest or success in war. But the priests and rulers who sanctioned such killings may have had another motive, a new study suggests. An analysis of more than seven dozen Austronesian cultures revealed that the practice of human sacrifices tended to make societies increasingly less egalitarian and eventually gave rise to strict, inherited class systems. In other words, ritual killings helped keep the powerful in power and everyone else in check. That finding might seem intuitive -- societies in which some members are habitually killed probably value certain lives over others -- but it has broader implications, the researchers said in the journal Nature. It suggests a "darker link between religion and the evolution of modern hierarchical societies," they write, in which "ritual killings helped humans transition from the small egalitarian groups of our ancestors and the large, stratified societies were live in today." Lots of sociologists have theorised about this connection, the researchers say, but there haven't been many rigorous scientific studies of how it came about until this one. The scientists behind the Nature study used phylogenetic analysis -- a tool that was originally used to plot evolutionary family trees but can also be applied by sociologists to study the development of languages -- to map the relationships between the 93 cultures they were examining. This allowed them to see whether the traits they were looking for were inherited or adopted from other cultures, and helped determine the causal relationship between human sacrifice and stratification. (The same scientists used the technique last year for a study arguing that belief in supernatural punishment gave rise to political complexity.) The cultures studied all descended from an ocean voyaging society that originated in Taiwan, but they ranged across the Pacific as far south as New Zealand and as far east as Easter Island. The group was also hugely diverse, including both the small, egalitarian family-based communities of the Isneg in the Philippines and the huge societies of the Hawaiian Islands, which were home to complex states with royal families, slaves, and more than 100,000 people who often came into conflict. Relying on historical and ethnographic accounts, the researchers rated the cultures according to their level of stratification and identified which ones practiced ritual sacrifice. The motivation and method of the killings differed across cultures, the researchers explain in a piece for the Conversation: Sacrifices could be demanded for the death of a chief, the construction of a home, the start of a war, the outbreak of disease or the violation of a social taboo. The victims might be strangled, drowned, bludgeoned, burned, buried, crushed with a newly-built canoe or rolled off a roof and then decapitated. But the link between the sacrifices and social hierarchies seemed to transcend those differences. The victims were almost always of low social status, and the more stratified the culture was, the more prevalent ritual killings were likely to be. Of the 20 "egalitarian" societies they studied -- so termed because they didn't allow inheritance of wealth and status between generations -- just 25 percent practiced human sacrifice. By contrast, 37 percent of the 46 moderately stratified societies -- where wealth and status could be inherited, but it wasn't necessarily linked to wildly different living standards or pronounced social classes --had the practice. And among the 27 highly stratified cultures, where inherited class differences were strictly enforced with little opportunity for social mobility, a whopping 65 percent committed ritual killings. The phylogenetic trees illustrated that ritual killings tended to precede social hierarchies, and once stratification occurred, they served to reinforce it. It was very difficult for a culture to return to egalitarianism after class differences had set in. This finding supports the "social control hypothesis" of human sacrifice, the researchers said. This idea suggests that ritual killings are a way to terrorise people into submission, allowing the religious and political leaders (and in many cultures, those were one and the same) who ordered the killings to consolidate power unopposed. Speaking to Smithsonian Magazine, lead researcher Joseph Watts noted that ritual killings often occurred in elaborate ceremonies that exploited gore as effectively as an HBO show: "It's not just a matter of killing efficiently. There's more to it than that," he said. "The terror and spectacle [of the act] was maximised." The fear that sacrifices inspired allowed the practice to function "as a stepping-stone to help build and maintain power in early hierarchical societies," Watts, a psychologist at the University of Auckland, wrote on his website. Once their authority was absolute, elites could use more traditional methods -- policing, taxation, war -- to keep the class system in place. "People often claim that religion underpins morality," Watts told Science. But he says his study illustrates how religious rituals like human sacrifice are often designed to serve someone other than the gods: "It shows how religion can be exploited by social elites to their own benefit." This is a pretty grim notion, to be sure. But it may also have been necessary. The division of people into groups of unequal wealth and status was a vital to the development of modern civilization, Watts writes. Hierarchies helped give rise to great cities and vast empires capable of undertaking massive public works projects and creating priceless works of art. Certainly, countless people were oppressed (and, according to this study, killed) in the process. But still, class was critical to getting us to where we are today. "I think it's absolutely an important project," University of British Columbia psychologist Joseph Henrich told the New Scientist. "Sacrifice does seem to have been performed in societies all around the world." But he urged some skepticism about the study's broad conclusions. Though human sacrifice may have been correlated with stratification in the Austronesian societies, Henrich was dubious of the phylogenetic analysis the researchers used to prove that the relationship was causal. That tool assumes that social strata and religious rituals are passed down and evolve through generations in the same manner as languages. "There's no real reason to think that's true -- and in fact there's reason to think it's not true," Henrich told the New Scientist. For proof, he pointed back at the Austronesian societies Watts and his colleagues studied. Human sacrifice has all but vanished from that region in the past few hundred years, but languages are still being passed down from parent to child -- demonstrating that those two aspects of culture don't necessarily evolve in the same way. There's also danger in overgeneralising the study's conclusions. What is true of ritual killings in Austronesian cultures may not necessarily apply to the Aztecs or ancient Egyptians. And whatever role human sacrifice may have played in those societies, it's still only one aspect of culture -- it cannot entirely be blamed for the complex hierarchies and rigid class systems that have long dominated much of the modern world. Nevertheless, religion researchers said they were glad to see rigorous data analysis like the kind used in the Nature study injected into their field. "The study of religion has been plagued in many ways by an abundance of ideas and a shortage of strong quantitative tests of these ideas," Richard Sosis, a human behavior ecologist at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, told Science. "These methods have power, and they are certainly an advance in the way we can evaluate ideas. Are they the last piece to the puzzle? No." But, he added, "at least the conversation can begin here and begin in a systematic way that hasn't happened before." 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 }} Ahmadiyya Muslim leaders in Glasgow have condemned a statement by the man accused of the murder of shopkeeper Asad Shah. Known for their active missionary work and peaceful engagement with members of other faiths, Ahmadiyya Muslims like Mr Shah often face persecution within Islamic communities. Tanveer Ahmed, 32, is accused of killing the 40-year-old Mr Shah in a sectarian attack. Shopkeeper dies after being attacked outside his store In a statement issued through his lawyer, the Bradford taxi driver said: "Asad Shah disrespected the messenger of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Mr Shah claimed to be a Prophet." In response, Glasgow's Ahmadiyya leaders urged Muslim communities to resist "hate and violence". Tributes left to Asad Shah outside his shop in Glasgow, where thousands gathered for a candle-lit vigil (PA) "This is deeply disturbing and sets an extremely dangerous precedent, as it justifies the killing of anyone - Muslim or non-Muslim - whom an extremist considers to have shown disrespect to Islam," they said in a statement. "In some countries Ahmadiyya Muslim members, Christians and people of other faiths are routinely attacked and murdered by extremists for accusations of blasphemy. "Such killings are completely against the teachings of Islam. We must not let the same mindset of hate and violence take root here in Glasgow, and for that matter, the UK and anywhere in the world. "The Ahmadiyya Muslim community urges the government and law enforcement agencies to take all possible measures to root out all forms of religious hatred, intolerance and sectarianism. A fundraising page set up by Mr Shah's customers has received more than 70,000 in donations (GoFundMe) "If extremists are given a free hand, we will come to see the same levels of religious hatred and persecution here in the UK that we see in some Muslim countries. "It is the firm belief of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community that all people should be able to peacefully practice their faith without fear of persecution or violence. "We urge all religious bodies, especially Muslim leaders and Imams, to come out in public to condemn this statement made by Tanveer Ahmed, so that all Muslims know this is never acceptable in Islam. This will go a long way to help eliminate all extremists." Worldwide, an estimated 20 million Ahmadi Muslims face persecution for their beliefs, principally their veneration of 19th-century Indian teacher Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as the promised messiah. In Mr Shah's place of birth, Pakistan, the world's largest population of Ahmadis are banned from referring to themselves as Muslims. In 2010, attacks on Ahmadi mosques in Lahore claimed the lives of 86 worshippers. Ahmadis are also banned from entering Mecca in Saudia Arabia, and face institutional discrimination and extremist violence in parts of the Muslim world. 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 man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after detectives looking for the missing policeman Gordon Semple found human remains at a London house. This is obviously a significant development, Scotland Yard said in a statement, adding that it was devastating news for all those involved in the search for Gordon. The 49-year-olds arrest came after officers were called to an address on the Peabody Estate in Southwark, south London, where human remains were discovered. The man has not been named. The Metropolitan Police constable from Greenhithe, Kent, was last seen on 1 April after attending a work meeting at the Shards Shangri-La Hotel. The force later released a CCTV image of him in central London shortly afterwards. His partner reported him missing later that night. His niece Kerry Nicholas had earlier described him as a very outgoing, sociable guy. Very happy-go-lucky. The 59-year-old was originally from Inverness and worked with the forces antisocial behaviour unit in Westminster. He had no children but still had family in Scotland. The case was originally treated as a high-risk missing persons inquiry. Police said they would not speculate any further on what may have happened or possible motive, adding that a post-mortem will be held in due course. They added: Our work at that scene is crucial to ensure we capture all available evidence and this may take some time. Police are asking anyone with information to call the incident room on 020 8721 4961, or to remain anonymous, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 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 }} British banks and finance houses have been given until next week to hand over details of any dealings with the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers leak. The City regulator has contacted about 20 firms, including several major banks, to provide all information they hold on their involvement with Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based company whose files detailing the owners of more than 200,000 offshore companies were released this weekend. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which has made tackling money laundering and financial crime one of its priorities, said it wanted to receive the data by no later than 15 April. The cache of 11.5 million Mossack Fonseca documents reveals how more than 500 banks worldwide were responsible for registering nearly 15,600 offshore companies offering anonymity to their beneficial owners. Such structures make it difficult for tax authorities to track money flows and are often used for legal tax avoidance purposes. They are also tools in illegal tax evasion schemes, though Mossack Fonseca has insisted that it acts beyond reproach and has never been accused of criminal wrongdoing in its 40-year existence. The papers name several UK-based banks, or those with large UK operations, including HSBC, Credit Suisse and Coutts Trustees, owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland. All insist that they do not help clients to avoid tax. The FCA will be looking for any evidence of British institutions facilitating tax avoidance or infringing anti-money laundering rules using complex offshore structures. In a statement, the financial watchdog said: The FCA has written to a number of firms about this issue, including those on our anti-money laundering programme, and we are working closely with a number of other agencies which are also looking at this. As part of our responsibility to ensure the integrity of the UK financial markets we require all authorised firms to have systems and controls in place to mitigate the risk that they might be used to commit financial crime. Money laundering and financial crime is one of seven priority areas declared by the FCA this week in its annual business plan. The regulator warned that if it found weaknesses in the money laundering controls of companies, it would send a deterrent message using its enforcement powers. It also has the option of referring cases to law enforcement agencies, including the Serious Fraud Office. The plan states: It is imperative that the UK financial system has appropriate safeguards to prevent financial crime. The Panama documents have highlighted several areas of potential investigation for financial watchdogs around the world, including the alleged provision of services to companies subject to international sanctions. Authorities in Switzerland, France, Australia and Austria have already said they are investigating information arising from the documents. 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 }} More than 100,000 people have signed a petition against the governments 9m pro-EU leaflet campaign. The 16-page leaflet, which is funded by taxpayers and due to be delivered to 27 million households from next week, outlines the Governments position on the effect of a potential Brexit. In a speech to students in Exeter yesterday, David Cameron said he would make no apology for the fact that the government has a strong view on the issue, calling the decision to publish the leaflets legal, necessary and right. But Eurosceptic campaigner Jayne Adye, who started the online petition last December, told The Independent that the use of Government money gave the campaign to remain in the EU an unfair advantage. Now that the petition has reached 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in parliament. The leaflet row has split Conservative ministers on either side of the argument over whether the UK should leave or remain in the EU. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have criticised the distribution of the leaflet, which Mr Gove described as a one-sided piece of propaganda. Mr Johnson called it a waste of money and hysterical. And former Tory minister Liam Fox said he plans to launch his own online petition to make sure the Parliament debate on the issue goes ahead. However, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said that the leaflets were in response to a call for more information from the public - a Government survey found that 80% of people wanted more information on the referendum. In his speech, the Prime Minister referred to similar tactics used by past governments: Thats what we did in 1975, when we last had a referendum. Its what the government has done in the Scottish referendum, the Welsh referendum, and other referendums weve had, he said. The controversial leaflets cost 458,000 to create and 5.9m to print and distribute in two waves, equating to 34p per person. This is more than the 7m allowed to be spent by the Remain and Leave campaigns, who are also able to send their own freepost leaflets. The Government leaflets claim that leaving the EU would cause an economic shock to the country, with more than three million jobs at risk. They also warn that a Brexit could result in fewer cheap flights, higher mobile roaming charges and expensive health care for holidaymakers in future. What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence. Ms Adye attacked the biased information in the leaflet. We think it is an abuse of the taxpayers money. If it came out of his pocket it would be different, but its coming out of our pocket, she said. The leaflets will be sent out before purdah, the pre-election period which limits government activity in the 28 days before the vote on 23 June, comes into force. Last September, the government was defeated over proposed changes to the purdah rules. Ahead of the 1975 referendum, Prime Minister Harold Wilson issued a similar leaflet to every British household, setting out an independent government analysis of his renegotiation, alongside the pro- and anti- campaign literature. 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 }} Hundreds of people gathered outside the Belfast Publlic Prosecution Service yesterday evening to protest a recent spate of trials against women for breaking the region's abortion ban. The event was organised by local pro-choice group Alliance For Choice and the Belfast Feminist Network. Protesters carried banners and shouted slogans, arguing that the prosecutions are not in the public interest. Recommended Read more A woman has just been sentenced for the crime of abortion in the UK Unlike the rest of the UK, abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland and any one who accesses a termination faces up to life in prison. On Monday, a 21-year-old woman was convicted of having an abortion. The court heard that she had a crisis pregnancy when she was 19 and tried to raise enough money to travel to England in time for a legal termination, but was unable to. She subsequently ordered abortion pills online and took them at her Belfast home. Her housemates found blood stained clothes in her room and foetal remains in a bin and reported her to the police who subsequently arrested her. She was given a three month sentence, suspended for two years. A pro-choice supporter carries a placard which reads 'Abortion is healthcare, it should be free, safe and legal' (Getty) Protesters carry a banner reading 'Break the stigma, all women should have a right to choose' (Getty) In a second case, a woman appeared before a Belfast court on Tuesday charged with helping her daughter to have an abortion. The trial is due to start on 27 April. The Irish News reports that prosecutors are considering two further files relating to abortion charges. Human rights groups have criticised the trials and the UK government for allowing them to continue. Amnesty International called the prosecutions a "grotesque spectacle". Local politician Gemma Weir from The Workers Party carries a placard which reads 'Pro woman, pro family, pro choice' (Getty) The protesters claim that the trials do not meet the 'public interest' threshold for prosecution (Getty) However local anti-abortion groups have said the convictions are "very lenient" and have written to the Public Prosecution Service asking for Monday's suspended sentence to be appealed to that it can be increased to up to life in prison. It is believed that around a thousand Northern Irish women travel to England every year to access terminations. However, it is feared that a growing number may be buying pills illegally online to perform terminations on themselves at home in Northern Ireland. A second protest will be taking place in Northern Ireland's second city Derry/ Londonderry later this week. 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 }} Police say they are increasingly concerned for the safety of an extremely vulnerable 14-year-old girl who has been missing for over a week. Jade Lynch, from St Helens in Merseyside, has not been seen since 26 March and is thought not to have access to any cash or a mobile phone. The teenager was last seen leaving her home in Denton Green Lane at 1pm and heading towards St Helens town centre with her two younger brothers. Jade Lynch was last seen on 26 March (PA) En route she told her brothers she was going to meet someone and they parted company in the Duke Street area of the town. She has not been seen since. Detective Superintendent Jon Betts said: "Jade is a young 14-year-old girl who has now been missing for nine days and we are becoming increasingly concerned about her safety. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA "Jade is an extremely vulnerable person and we do not believe that she has access to any cash or mobile phones, which is causing growing concerns. "We are currently following a number of lines of inquiry and as part of the investigation I am keen to hear from anyone who believes that they may have seen Jade, or anyone matching her description, over the past nine days. "We know that Jade has links to the Merseyside and Manchester areas, but speaking to friends and family we also believe that she may also have links as far north as Cumbria and as far south as Bristol, so we are keen to hear from anyone in those areas who thinks they may have information that could assist our inquiries. Jade told her brothers she was 'meeting someone' when she said goodbye (PA) "I would also like to appeal to Jade directly and ask her to contact us to let us know that you are OK. We are working closely with your friends and family who are increasingly worried about you and want to know that you are safe and well." Jade, who is originally from the Warrington area, is described as white, 5ft 6in, of medium build with long, straight black hair. Anyone within any information should contact Cheshire Police on 101 quoting incident number 257 of 29/3/2016 or call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Additional reporting by PA Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A seven-year-old Afghan boy has been rescued from a lorry along with 14 others after he sent a text message to a charity volunteer saying he feared he would suffocate. Liz Clegg, who went with a group of volunteers to help refugees in Calais earlier this year, was at a conference in New York on Friday when she received the message from the boy - Ahmed - which said they were suffocating at the back of a lorry somewhere in England and the driver had refused to stop. The message read: "I ned halp darivar no stap car no oksijan in the car no signal iam in the cantenar. Iam no jokan valla." Ahmed meant to write: "I need help. The driver won't stop the car. No oxygen in the car. No signal. I'm in a container. I am not joking. I swear to God." Ms Clegg said she and the other volunteers had handed out hundreds of basic mobile phones to children living in the camp while they were there and gave them their numbers in case of emergency. She said she knew Ahmed wouldnt make something like that up so she called Tanya Freedman from the Help Refugees charity in London who called the police. Ms Freedman said: "Around about lunchtime they received a text message which roughly said, 'I'm in a truck, it's not stopping, I've got no oxygen ... help'. "Because they were in New York and I was in London they rang me straight away and I got hold of Kent Police. Police officers try to prevent migrants from climbing aboard trucks travelling to Britain, outside Calais last year (Getty) "I conveyed to them that it was a life-and-death situation. "I had Ahmed's number and the first thing they did was find an interpreter who spoke Pashto to talk to him. They called him and immediately they realised it was an emergency, and they were able to put a trace of his cellphone and find out he was in a lorry in Leicestershire." Kent Police then called their colleagues in Leicestershire who found the lorry at a motorway service station and broke into the back to rescue the people inside. Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily. Ahmed is thought to have stowed away on a lorry bound for the UK with his elder brother. Fourteen people were arrested on suspicion of being illegal entrants to the UK. In addition, a man was arrested on suspicion of assisting illegal entry. A police spokeswoman said one child had been put into protective custody but did not release a name because they were a minor. The case is now being dealt with by immigration services. Additional reporting by agencies Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Cameron has misled the public and lost the trust of the British people, Jeremy Corbyn has claimed amid the furore over the Prime Minister's stake in his fathers offshore fund. In a fierce attack the Labour leader demanded that Mr Cameron make a statement to Parliament on Monday to give a "full account of all his private financial dealings", claiming the revelations raised questions about "personal integrity". Mr Cameron, who admitted on Thursday that he made a 19,000 profit from selling his shareholding in Bahama-based Blairmore Holdings in 2010, is also facing a parliamentary investigation into whether he should have declared the windfall in the Commons register of interests. In his first intervention since Mr Camerons disclosure, Mr Corbyn said: It took five weasel-worded statements in five days for the Prime Minister to admit that he has personally profited from an undeclared Caribbean tax haven investment deal. His determination to conceal that arrangement over many years raises serious questions over public trust in his office and his willingness to be straight with the public. Tolerance of tax avoidance and tax havens, and inaction on tax evasion, is denying funds to the public purse and leads directly to cuts in services and benefits that are hurting millions of people in Britain. The Prime Minister has lost the trust of the British people. He must now give a full account of all his private financial dealings and make a statement to Parliament next week. Only complete openness from the Prime Minister, and decisive action against tax avoidance and evasion, can now deal with the issues at the heart of this scandal. Sturgeon on Cameron The Labour MP John Mann, who has called for the Prime Minister to resign, said he would ask the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Hudson, to examine whether Mr Cameron should have declared his profits from the sale of his trust shares in the Commons register of interests. A Downing Street spokesman said: The Prime Ministers interests have always been recorded in line with the rules as they stood at the time. But Mr Mann said: No interpretation of his actions could conclude that he has acted in an open and frank way, in line with the code of conduct for MP. It is only now, with the Panama revelations, that David Cameron has been forced to admit that he did not register his financial interests. The move was backed by the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, who described Mr Camerons actions as morally murky and said he was sure there was a case for investigation. Meanwhile, Labour MPs called for other Government ministers to publish their tax returns, after both Mr Cameron and Mr Corbyn committed to do so. Wes Streeting, a Labour member of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, said that political leaders needed to reassure the public in the wake of the Panama leaks. People around the world are asking their political leaders to display openness and transparency about their tax affairs, to work out if they have a conflict of interest, and that they mean it when they say want to crack down on avoidance and evasion, he said. In the UK, that particularly includes the Chancellor and those who aspire to be Prime Minister. Chancellor George Osborne, Home Secretary Theresa May, Business Secretary Sajid Javid and Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond have all been contacted by The Independent to clarify whether they will publish their tax returns. As of Friday evening, only Mr Hammonds spokesperson had replied, saying Mr Hammond was travelling abroad and not contactable. The political fall-out from the leak of the Panama Papers from law firm Mossack Fonseca was underlined by a YouGov poll showing Mr Camerons personal approval ratings had fallen below Jeremy Corbyns for the first time. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here It also found that that 56 per cent of the public did not believe the Prime Minister had been open and honest about his tax affairs, with just 18 per cent taking the opposite view. Downing Street is scrambling to draw a line under the affair, which has wrecked Mr Camerons hopes of spending the week focussing on the European Union referendum membership campaign. It is expected to publish the Prime Ministers tax returns over the last six years by Sunday. Mr Cameron and his wife, Samantha, bought their holding in Blairmore in 1997 for 12,497 and sold it for 31,500 shortly before he became Prime Minister in 2010. Income tax was paid on the dividends, but the profit on the sale was just below the capital gains tax threshold for a couple. The Commons rules at the time of Mr Camerons sale said such holdings were not generally registrable, although they reminded MPs that the general principle of the register was openness. Protesters against Mr Camerons links to offshore funds are planning to demonstrate outside Downing Street on Saturday. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Cameron has "no choice" but to resign in the face of revelations that he had a profitable stake in his father's offshore investment fund, an MP has claimed. John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire, has called on the Prime Minister to step down from office after "failing to be honest" with the voting public on several occasions. Mr Mann, a high-profile campaigner for tax transparency, told Sky News: "It's taken six attempts for journalists to get this out of Mr Cameron - who didn't recall Parliament to allow us as MPs to question him. "The question is one of honesty here, he's covered this up [...] "The key issue is, he failed to tell parliament, he failed to declare it, he failed to tell the British people standing for Prime Minister." The revelations came after a huge leak of documents from the Panama-based firm Mossack Fonseca, a law firm and corporate services provider which appears to have enabled clients to hide billions of dollars in tax havens. After his father was listed as one such client, Mr Cameron was forced to issue a number of statements about the benefits he and his family enjoyed from the offshore fund, with Downing Street first saying that it was a "private matter". He then stated that he had "no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds" and would not have any in the future. John Mann has said it took "six attempts" by journalists to get the full truth out of David Cameron (Press Association) Questions about the past were raised, however, resulting in Mr Cameron confessing in interview with ITV News that he had shares in his father Ian's tax haven fund that he sold for 31,500 just before becoming Prime Minister in 2010. His father's company, Blairmore Holdings, paid no tax in 30 years. The PM also admitted he did not know whether the 300,000 he inherited from his father's will in 2010 had also benefited from the tax haven status. Mr Mann added that Jimmy Carr, who used a legal tax loophole to pay as little as one per cent tax on his earnings, would think the Prime Minister hypocritical for criticising the comedian's actions as "morally wrong" while himself having benefited from such arrangements. "He's got to resign, he's got no choice," said Mr Mann. "It's very, very straightforward." Edward Snowden, who disclosed information about the scale of global surveillance programmes, has also tweeted in the wake of revelations: "The next 24 hours could change Britain." Mr Snowden also implied the British public should protest effectively rather than simply hope something would be done, saying "with respect, hope is not a strategy." A protest against Mr Cameron is planned for 9 April outside Number 10 Downing Street, according to a group on Facebook. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here At the time of the revelations about Jimmy Carr's tax avoidance measures in 2012, Mr Cameron said: "The government is acting by looking at a general anti-avoidance law but we do need to make progress on this. "It is not fair on hardworking people who do the right thing and pay their taxes to see these sorts of scams taking place." 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 }} Jimmy Carr has said it would be morally wrong to pass comment on another individuals tax affairs echoing words used by David Cameron when he publicly condemned the comedian over his tax affairs. Four years ago Carr was singled out for criticism by the Prime Minister amid uproar over the use of complex financial schemes designed to minimise tax. On Friday, without actually naming Mr Cameron, Carr hit back. I'm going to keep it classy," he posted on his Twitter account. "It would be morally wrong and hypocritical to comment on another individuals tax affairs." An investigation by the Times in 2012 exposed a single Jersey-based scheme that sheltered 168m a year from the taxman. The comedian was understood to have been the largest beneficiary of the legal tax avoidance scheme, which reportedly enabled members to pay income rates as low as one per cent. The Prime Minister, speaking during a trip to Mexico in 2012, said to ITV: "I think some of these schemes and I think particularly of the Jimmy Carr scheme I have had time to read about and I just think this is completely wrong. "People work hard, they pay their taxes, they save up to go to one of his shows. They buy the tickets. He is taking the money from those tickets and he, as far as I can see, is putting all of that into some very dodgy tax avoiding schemes. "That is wrong. There is nothing wrong with people planning their tax affairs to invest in their pension and plan for their retirement that sort of tax management is fine. But some of these schemes we have seen are quite frankly morally wrong. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here "The government is acting by looking at a general anti-avoidance law but we do need to make progress on this. It is not fair on hardworking people who do the right thing and pay their taxes to see these sorts of scams taking place." After Mr Carr's tax affairs were revealed, he apologised to his fans saying he "made a terrible error of judgement". He added that he was no longer involved in the tax shelter scheme . But Mr Cameron has come under fire this week following the leak of a huge cache of documents dubbed the Panama Papers that revealed his father Ian Cameron, who passed away in 2010, was the director of an offshore investment fund under the name Blairmore Holdings. Mr Cameron and his wife, Samantha, bought their holding in Blairmore in 1997 for 12,497 and sold it for 31,500 shortly before he became Prime Minister in 2010. Income tax was paid on the dividends, but the profit on the sale was just below the capital gains tax threshold for a couple. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Cameron must not be discriminated against for "being born into a wealthy family", a Conservative backbencher has said. Mark Pritchard, the Tory MP for the Wrekin, came to the defence of the Prime Minister following Mr Cameron's admission that he did personally benefit from an offshore investment fund set up by his father. Mr Pritchard accused the Labour party of trying to distract attention from their partys internal strife by attacking Mr Cameron who he said was the victim of real injustice. Several senior Labour figures, including former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and MP John Mann, have called for Mr Cameron to resign after he admitted that he earned 30,000 from the sale of his shares in the fund, Blairmore Holdings, in 2010. In an interview with ITV News, he admitted to making the sale shortly before becoming prime minister but he did so in accordance with UK tax rules. Since the existence of the investment fund came to light early this week following the leak of 11.5 million documents from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca Mr Cameron had repeatedly avoided answering questions about whether he had benefited from an offshore trust in the past. He eventually admitted he had on Thursday. Mr Pritchard told BBC News he thought "most of the public will find it distasteful" that Mr Cameron's father has been brought into a political row. I think its very unseemly, very distasteful and I think theres a real injustice," he said. I dont know all the details, but I think theres a principle at stake here: its about justice and its an injustice that the Prime Ministers late father, who did the best for his family, a loving father, a loving son, is not here to defend himself. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here The Prime Minister has said that he will publish his tax returns. Hes been very, very open about his property ownership, his other ownership. I dont think he should be discriminated against just because he was born into a wealthy family. He also accused the politicians who have criticised Mr Cameron of hypocrisy, saying members of the Shadow Cabinet should come clean about some of their possible offshore activities. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Cameron has been accused of hypocrisy after he admitted he did have a profitable stake in his fathers offshore investment fund, despite previous statements condemning aggressive tax avoidance as not morally acceptable. In the past Mr Cameron has been critical of tax avoidance and Downing Street staffers have made clear his contribution to tackling tax evasion as a key part of his economic plan. John Mann, a Labour MP and member of the Treasury Select Committee, said the admission by the Prime Minister should lead to his resignation. He added: So during the 2010 General Election campaign Cameron failed to declare offshore shares. Get out now hypocrite. Here are some of the Prime Ministers past statements on tax avoidance: On Jimmy Car, June 2012 An investigation by The Times into tax avoidance, in 2012, exposed a single Jersey-based scheme that shelters 168 million a year from the taxman. The comedian Jimmy Carr is understood to be the largest beneficiary of the K2 tax scheme. Frankly some of these schemes where people are parking huge amounts of money offshore and taking loans back to just minimise their tax rates it is not morally acceptable, Mr Cameron said. World Economic Forum, January 2013 We want to use the G8 to drive a more serious debate on tax evasion and tax avoidance Good Morning Britain, January 2013 Tax avoidance, in these cases, of very aggressive tax avoidance schemes they are wrong and we should really persuade people not to do them. G8 Summit, June 2013 You have to collect the taxes that are owed. That is only fair for companies and people who play by the rules and its vital for developing economies too. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Cameron "should be sent to prison" for profiting from his father's offshore investment fund, Ken Livingstone has said. After the Panama Papers leak revealed the existence of the fund, the Prime Minister admitted on Thursday that he sold shares in it worth 30,000, shortly before being elected Prime Minister in 2010. Camerons government, for the last six years, has been about a small elite getting richer while the poorer get left behind," the former Mayor of London told Russian news channel RT. He shouldnt just resign, he should be sent to prison." World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here Calls for Mr Cameron to resign over the Panama Papers expose have been led by US whistleblower Edward Snowden and Labour MP John Mann. But Mr Livingstone said he felt Mr Cameron should have resigned "right when he started his term of office". "His has been the most damaging government, [inflicting] huge damage to the poorest people, to communities that desperately need investment," he said. There is no suggestion of criminal wrongdoing on Mr Cameron's part, but Mr Livingstone said he felt Mr Cameron had profited from lax regulation introduced by a previous Conservative Prime Minister. "All this started with Mrs Thatcher," he said. "She started all the deregulation. People were able to move their money abroad, start not paying their taxes. McDonnell on Cameron Cameron's father spent 30 years laundering money through Panama and didnt pay a penny of tax to Britain. And then his son was in denial, refusing to be honest about all of this. Five days elapsed between the release of the Panama Papers, which identified Ian Cameron by name, and the Prime Minister's admission that he had profited from his father's offshore unit trust. Mr Livingstone added that he viewed Mr Cameron as "the most hypocritical Prime Minister of my lifetime". Prior to Thursday's admission that he had pocketed nearly 20,000 in profit from the offshore fund, Blairmore Holdings, the Prime Minister had vocally criticised tax evasion, describing it as "frankly and morally wrong" and saying that "those who want to evade taxes have nowhere to hide." Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A campaign has been launched to love-bomb wavering voters in the upcoming EU referendum by concerned Europeans living in London. Katrin Lock, a German who has lived in London for seven years said the idea was simple - they wanted Europeans to post photos of them hugging their British friends with the hashtag #PleaseDontGoUK to show them that they they are loved. She told The Local: Its a little bit hippy, but a little bit of hippiness is needed. People are always arguing about cucumbers and shower caps. We wanted to do something positive instead of just talking about rules and regulations. Recommended Read more Worried EU nationals dash for UK citizenship amid Brexit fears Its a love-bomb for the UK. The group has already had contributions from French people, Italians, Germans, Spaniards and Swedes - both living in the UK and abroad - all hugging their British friends. Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker also got involved by sharing a hug with his German fan Christine Ullman. Ms Lock said they had received one submission from a person hugging a statue of Virginia Woolf. People are also encouraged to explain their thoughts about friendship with Britain and why the UK should remain part of the union. Rosella Soravia, from Italy, wrote about her friend Saul: I know Saul from going to boarding school in Malvern, where I spend the best two years of my life thanks to the great English humour and its great education. What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence. Other peoples submissions were more practical than sentimental. Berlin-based Steffi Grimm says she had had a long-distance relationship with her partner Simon for more than 20 years and the prospect of Brexit is very concerning. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A total strike by junior doctors for the first time in the history of the NHS looks set to go ahead after the Government reportedly 'ruled out' further negotiations over a new contract. A complete walk-out by junior medics, including A&E and intensive care, is planned for 26 and 27 April. Talks have been going on for months between the junior doctors' trade union the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Government, but have now stalled - mainly over the issue of Saturday pay. Recommended This appalling Junior Doctors contract will hit women the hardest Insider sources told the BBC that the BMA had "blown its chance" to further negotiations and there would be no further changes to a new contract due to be imposed on junior doctors in August. The Department of Health has not denied plans to push on with the changes and a spokesperson told The Independent: "The escalation of strike action by the BMA will inevitably put patients in harm's way. We have continually sought a negotiated solution over three years of talks, during which there were two walkouts from the BMA, and now there's only the one issue of Saturday pay outstanding. "If the doctors' union had agreed to negotiate on that as they promised to do through ACAS in November, we'd have a negotiated agreement by now. "Instead, we had no choice but to proceed with proposals recommended and supported by NHS leaders which were ninety per cent agreed with the BMA. This corresponds with a long standing government determination to push through the changes. The matter is closed, said Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to the Health Service Journal in March, in comments which have recently emerged. We have been trying to discuss this now for three years, and I think the wrong thing to do in the face of unreasonable behaviour is to say, Well, in that case, were going to back down. The Government has complained about the uncompromising attitude of the BMA and said doctors representatives had refused to bend on the contentious issue of Saturday pay. Doctors currently receive a higher wage for unsocial 7pm to 7am Saturday shifts, but the Government, who are working towards a Seven Day NHS, argue the current system - dating to the 1990s - is now unfair and outdated. Their new contract will increase basic pay by an average of 13.5 per cent but other benefits, such as extra pay for weekend night shifts, will be reduced. However, doctors argue this could force them into working more night shifts and even push them to exhaustion, ultimately compromising the safety of patients. In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 20,000 Junior Doctors marched through central London in protest at the new contract changes the government is trying to impose which they say will be unfair and unsafe In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors protest in London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 4 year old Cassius takes part in a demonstration in Westminster, in support of junior doctors over changes to NHS contracts, London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Protest over proposed changes to junior doctors' contracts, Leeds In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Over 5000 junior doctors rallied in Waterloo place, before marching through Whitehall and onto Parliament Square, in opposition to Jeremy Hunt's new working conditions for doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Demonstrators listen to speeches in Waterloo Place during the 'Let's Save the NHS' rally and protest march by junior doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors marched in London to highlight their plight In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK A protester at a demonstration in support of junior doctors in London The Government said that without the will to tackle the issue of Saturday pay, there is no point continuing negotiations. However, the BMA said it is willing to negotiate further. Chair of the junior doctors committee Dr Johann Malawana said on Thursday: "Any future action is wholly avoidable, but the government must get back around the negotiating table and end this dispute through talks." A two-day strike by doctors, ending Friday, maintained emergency care but more than 5,000 procedures and operations were cancelled, according to the Department of Health. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A majority of Brits are not surprised at all and another third are not particularly surprised about the allegations made in the Panama Papers, according to a new poll by YouGov, seen exclusively by The Independent. A total of 82 per cent of Brits or five-in-six people are unsurprised by the revelations, with just 8 per cent of the population expressing surprise at this weeks news. Yet even then, only 2 per cent of people are very surprised with the news, with the other 6 per cent only somewhat surprised. Just 9 per cent of those polled were not sufficiently acquainted with the story to comment (and 2 per cent were unsure). That leaves 91 per cent of those who expressed an opinion as unsurprised. The findings put into perspective one of the biggest leaks in journalistic history. They reveal the mindset of a general public so cynical about the actions of the powerful that 11.5 million documents on their actions over the past 40 years has shocked very few. The Panama Papers have claimed that associates of Vladimir Putin are owners of $2bn held offshore; the President of UAE is behind a 1bn property empire in London; and that political leaders or their relatives in 40 other countries appear to have profited from offshore tax arrangements. 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Show all 10 1 /10 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Luxembourg There are an estimated 2.5 trillion shares of mutual funds registered in the Grand Duchy, 1 trillion of which cannot be traced to an owner 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Cayman Islands The Cayman Islands contain 6% of the world's total banking assets, but just 0.000008% of its population 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Isle of Man David Cameron has said the Isle of Man, where there is no corporation, capital gains or inheritance tax, should not be considered a tax haven 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Jersey There are over 3.5 billion assets per square mile on the self-governing Channel Island 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Ireland Ireland made headlines last year when it emerged Apple was registered in the country in order to dodge over 40bn in taxes 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Mauritius The Mauritian government notionally charges corporation tax, but companies can easily make this back through generous tax credits for foreign businesses 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Bermuda Google holds more than 30bn in offshore cash reserves, primarily via Bermuda 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Monaco A popular domicile for super-rich private individuals, Monaco has the most expensive property in the world. 1 million will buy just 225 square feet 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Switzerland Switzerland has such secretive banking laws that it took until the 1990s to secure the release of Nazi cash reserves 10 of the biggest tax havens in the world Bahamas David Cameron's father ran an offshore fund which hired Bahamas residents to complete paperwork, thus dodging British tax bills David Cameron was last night revealed to be among them, and YouGovs poll concluded before his confession on ITV News. Number 10 had already said that: "There are no offshore funds which the PM or his family will benefit from in future," suggesting they may have profited in the past. It is unclear how shocked the public may have been by these new revelations. YouGov surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,600 people, giving their poll a margin of error of less than 2.5 percentage points. Only 4 per cent of those over 65 were unfamiliar with the story, but the news had not reached as many as 22 per cent of 18-24 year olds (shown in orange in the chart below). Levels of shock were unaffected by political affiliation, age, gender, social grade or region. In every category, at least five-in-six of those who expressed an opinion could be said to have expected the story. 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 }} Divisive plans to abolish farm animal welfare codes have been revoked by the Government. The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) intended to replace statutory welfare codes with industry-led guidelines, allowing farms to self-regulate their standards. Animal welfare groups, including Peta and Compassion in World Farming, wrote to the Government opposing the plans over fears they would lower current standards as farmers would no longer be required to abide by codes. Opponents to the plans said the move could increase the risk of diseases and further overuse of antibiotics. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs released a statement saying the current system would remain in place in light of views raised. A Defra spokesman said on Thursday: "We have the highest standards of animal welfare in the world, and no changes have been proposed to the legislation upholding them. We want to draw more closely on the expertise of the farming industry to ensure our welfare codes reflect the very latest scientific and veterinary developments. "In light of views raised, we have given the matter further consideration and believe we can achieve this objective by retaining the existing statutory codes. The British Poultry Council (BPC), due to write and supervise the industry guidelines, said it was disappointed by the U-turn as it left livestock farmers with "outdated welfare guidance". BPC Chairman John Reed said: "By revoking its decision, Defra is walking away from an opportunity to ensure welfare guidance is kept up-to-date with the latest research using industry expertise." Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Liz Truss (AFP/Getty) The move to scrap the official code on farming chickens for meat and breeding sparked an outcry from Labour, which asked on Wednesday for a parliamentary debate on the changes. Writing to environment secretary Liz Truss, Kerry McCarthy, the shadow environment secretary said: This Government has failed to keep the codes updated and now wants to wash its hands entirely of this responsibility. They have encouraged the industry to make its own rules but will only make this new guidance public after the existing statutory codes have been scrapped. Compassion in World Farming's chief policy advisor, Peter Stevenson, has congratulated Defra on their decision, adding "it must now move quickly to update and strengthen the codes". Andrew Taylor, director of Animal Aid, said it is still unclear what the industrys role will be in writing the codes. "We are pleased to hear that sustained campaigning pressure has compelled Defra to reverse its decision and retain the statutory element of the codes," said Mr Taylor. However, our other major concern was the dominant role Defra was awarding the industry in the writing of these rulebooks on welfare. Its unclear from todays statement, whether there has been a reversal on that front. It is vital that matters of welfare and what constitutes good and bad practice, are not left to those who systematically exploit farmed animals for profit." 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 }} Sajid Javid is considering plans to cut 4,000 jobs in his own department and its agencies, according to leaked documents. The Business Secretary, who is currently tasked with saving 15,000 jobs in the steel industry, could have the core staff at his department reduced by 40 per cent, in cuts more severe than even Chancellor George Osborne requires. Mr Javid ordered a review of staff levels at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) by management consultancy firm McKinsey soon after he began the job after the election. Recommended Read more Sajid Javid urged to reconsider his position after going on holiday during steel crisis The department has repeatedly refused requests to disclose McKinseys findings but a leaked strategy paper seen by the Guardian shows BIS is planning to cull at least 1,526 jobs by 2020. Up to 4,103 could go if the department decides to implement the cuts at the top end of the scale recommended by McKinsey - 40 per cent of the departments current core workforce. It is part of a plan to save 350m - which is 100m more than the 250m required by the Treasury to stay within their spending controls. The plans could also see major cuts for the agencies that promote apprenticeship, with the Commission for Employment and Skills shut down entirely and the Skills Funding Agencys staff reduced by 40 per cent. In pictures: Anti-austerity protest outside Downing Street Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: Anti-austerity protest outside Downing Street In pictures: Anti-austerity protest outside Downing Street London Anti-austerity protesters shout slogans outside Downing Street as the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne left 11 Downing Street In pictures: Anti-austerity protest outside Downing Street London Anti-austerity protesters gather outside Downing Street as the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne left 11 Downing Street in London In pictures: Anti-austerity protest outside Downing Street London Anti-austerity protester spekas outside Downing Street as the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne presents his summer budget to Parliament and is expected to announce 12 billion in welfare cuts In pictures: Anti-austerity protest outside Downing Street London Anti-austerity protesters prepare to throw balls towards Downing Street In pictures: Anti-austerity protest outside Downing Street London Anti-austerity protester outside Downing Street In pictures: Anti-austerity protest outside Downing Street London Police clear up balloons left at the entrance to Downing Street In pictures: Anti-austerity protest outside Downing Street London Anti-austerity protesters throw balls towards Downing Street A departmental spokesman told the newspaper: "To be clear, there have been no changes to the plans already announced and discussed extensively with Parliament. "We have a responsibility to the taxpayer to ensure as much of the departments funding as possible is focused on front line services. "We have deliberately set ourselves challenging savings targets consistent with the spending review and we will continue to explore options in detail before making decisions." Unnamed Whitehall sources say any future decision on restructuring will be made by the permanent secretary - who is a non-political civil servant - and the board of BIS, not Mr Javid. 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 governments of two notorious tax havens have repeatedly ignored UK ministers requests to meet about cracking down on corporate tax avoidance of the kind detailed on the so-called Panama Papers, The Independent can reveal. Official letters obtained using freedom of information rules show humiliated ministers disappointed at being stood-up after numerous attempts to meet with the premiers of the British Virgin Island and Cayman Islands. Campaigners reacted to the letters by berating the Governments meek and softly-softly approach towards the havens, while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused the Government of pussyfooting around the issue. Recommended Read more The corruption revealed in the Panama Papers opened the door to Isis The revelation comes after a massive data leak from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca which shows it registered more than 100,000 secret firms to the British Virgin Islands, a UK overseas territory which featured on an EU list of tax havens blacklisted by at least 10 member states. The Prime Minister David Cameron became embroiled in the scandal after he admitted on Thursday to profiting from selling shares in his father's company Blairmore Holdings, an offshore fund set up in Panama in the 1980s. The letters, sent in March 2015, show that ministers were expecting to meet with the premiers of the BVI and Cayman Islands when they visited London last year, but that the meetings did not take place. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here As discussed on the telephone on 24 March, we were due to meet in London yesterday with the other Overseas Territories to continue our dialogue about international standards on tackling all forms of illicit finance, and to focus on how we can work together to ensure companies cannot hide their beneficial ownership from law enforcement and tax authorities, both the letters say. They continue: It is therefore deeply disappointing, despite numerous attempts, that we have not been able to meet collectively to discuss a way forward on effective implementation of the G20 Principles on beneficial ownership, despite our shared public commitment to do so. Meanwhile, the global debate on the importance of raising international standards to tackle money laundering, tax evasion, illicit finance and corruption has intensified. The ministers go on to say that draft proposals by the two governments on the issue of beneficial ownership do not go far enough, though they both praise other measures taken on tax evasion since the 2013 Loch Erne summit. The two letters are signed by David Gauke, a Treasury minister, and James Dudderidge, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Overseas Territories and the Caribbean. The correspondence appears to have been ignored by the two countries premiers; The Independent asked the Government to disclose any response received but none was produced. The Independent also contacted the Treasury for further comment and to ask whether Treasury ministers had eventually secured any such meeting to discuss the issue. No response from the department has been received at the time of publication. The Treasury passed the inquiry to the Foreign Office, which said the issue had been discussed at the December 2015 British Overseas Territories joint ministerial council. As noted in the letters, the issue had already previously been raised at the 2014 joint ministerial council. A read-out of the 2015 council said that any progress on implementation of any measures would be kept under continuous and close review. Both the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands are British Overseas Territories and receive defence and foreign affairs support from the UK. They are not independent and retain the Queen as head of state, but are governed autonomously. Mr Corbyn has called for UK overseas territories acting as tax havens to be taken under direct control of the British government if they refused to comply. At time of writing, 125,000 people had signed an online petition calling on David Cameron to shut down all British-owned tax havens. Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, a charity which campaigns against poverty, told the Independent the Government was not taking a strong enough approach. It's not surprising that the Government should take such a meek and 'softly softly' approach to the scandal of tax avoidance when the Panama Papers have revealed the extent to which politicians themselves are involved in squirreling away their own private fortunes, safe from public scrutiny, he said. There's a marked contrast between how the Government will take such a meek and polite approach when dealing with the financial affairs of the 1 per cent, but then be so draconian in the way it imposes fiscal hardship on some of the most vulnerable sections of society. We need politicians who will take a rigorous and effective approach to the problem, rather than tiptoe around it for fear of upsetting their friends or relations who are benefitting from such schemes. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Cameron insists he did nothing wrong by owning shares in an off-shore mutual investment fund, Blairmore, established by his late father. Others are accusing the Prime Minister of hypocrisy because he benefited from tax avoidance. So who is right? To answer that question it is necessary to unpack and explore a few concepts. What is the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion? First, it is necessary to pin down the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. Tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is not. So how do we distinguish the two? One definition of evasion - or abusively excessive avoidance - is exploiting a tax advantage that Parliament never intended. A classic example of entirely benign tax avoidance is when ordinary people put their savings in an Individual Savings Account (ISA) to avoid paying income tax on the interest earned by their cash savings. ISAs were established by the Government to encourage regular people to save. So when people avoid tax in this way they are doing precisely what Parliament intended. But theres a big grey area in relation to a host of other tax avoidance schemes devised by accountants and generally marketed to wealthy people. Sometimes HMRC will argue that rich people are extracting a tax saving benefit that MPs never intended them to have. The rich peoples lawyers will argue that it is not clear what Parliament intended. Often the only way to resolve this question is in the courts. An example of this kind of contested scheme in recent years are the film investment funds, established after the government introduced a tax break to encourage people to invest in films made in the UK. HMRC has challenged and shut down a host of these funds after concluding that they amounted to evasion. Where does the Prime Ministers offshore mutual fund sit in this benign avoidance-possible evasion spectrum? Its not clear that Parliament ever intended anything in relation to these sorts of investment vehicles. When the Thatcher government lifted restrictions on the amount of money UK residents could take out of the country in the 1980s it simply made it practically possible for Britons to buy into these offshore funds (which then invested in stocks and shares all around the world). It is common today for people to invest in off-shore funds and many ordinary people will be doing so through their pension funds without even knowing it. The primary concern of the tax authorities then and today is that the UK-resident owners of the shares of such funds pay income tax on the dividends they receive from their holdings and also capital gains when they sell the shares. This Cameron says he did (although the capital gains were not large enough to trigger the latter tax). David Cameron tax avoidance roundup Some have raised the issue of the fact that the mutual fund, incorporated in Panama but based in the Bahamas, did not pay UK corporation tax. Thats true. But this is a somewhat confused complaint because mutual funds generally dont pay corporation tax in the normal way anyway even when they are registered in the UK. They are not profit-making corporations but investment funds where all cash surpluses are rapidly distributed to investors (or re-invested in the fund). Those surpluses are, as discussed above, taxable under the law when they are received and realised by investors in their home countries. One potential issue, however, may be that the the Blairmore fund did not pay UK corporation tax while being effectively run from the UK (by David Camerons father and others) and was thus, really, a UK corporation. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here But to prove that this was evasion, rather than legal avoidance, HMRC would need probably to demonstrate in court that the presentation of this fund as a Bahamas firm, rather than a UK firm, was a sham. It would seem that Ian Cameron took care to avoid the possibility of such a charge by hiring Bahamas residents to fill roles such as treasurer and secretary and ensuring that a majority of the board was based outside Britain. So who is right? Is Camerons behaviour completely above board? Or is he a hypocrite for mouthing hard-line rhetoric on clamping down on aggressive avoidance while also benefiting from Blairmore? Reasonable people can take different views depending on how they interpret the facts. 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 }} As the news emerged that David Cameron admitted having profited from a stake he held in his fathers offshore tax haven, many began asking the question as to why he had failed to declare it before he sold his shares in 2010. Many commentators suggested the then leader of the Opposition should have declared the interest in his father Ian Camerons offshore tax fund in the register of members financial interests. The main purpose of the register, which is published annually under the authority of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, is to provide information about any financial interest which a Member has, or any benefit which he or she receives, which others might reasonably consider to influence his or her actions or words as a Member of Parliament. Some Labour MPs are hitting out at Mr Cameron for not declaring his interests on the register though, official protocol does not require him to do so. Parliamentary rules only require politicians to register shares if they are valued at more than 70,000. In the Prime Ministers admission yesterday that he did have a profitable stake in his fathers offshore investment fund, Downing Street added the Prime Minister and his wife, who bought their holding in April 1997 for 12,497, sold it January 2010 for 31,500 or, around 40,000 less than what is required to declare it an interest on the register. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here In the month before Mr Cameron, the then leader of the Opposition, sold his stake in the fund he did, however, declare a range of other of interests outside Parliament including a rug from Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan. He was also presented with a Harrods hamper from the Sultan of Brunei and a fountain pen from the King of Bahrain. Earlier this week the George Osborne refused to say whether he had benefited from offshore funds or expected to in the future. Asked about his tax affairs, the Chancellor said: All of our interests as ministers and MPs are declared in the register of members interests and we have made our position very clear. 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 new terrorist group has pledged allegiance to Isis as it continues to expand its presence in East Africa. A group calling itself Jahba East Africa announced its alliance on Thursday, hailing a new era in the region. In a statement, militants gave bayah (an oath of allegiance) to Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and recognised him as the rightful Khalifa (leader) of all Muslims. The groups name is previously unknown but there were hints in the statement that its supporters may previously have been part of al-Shabaab. Somalia's al-Shabab: Toll of US air strikes exaggerated Jahba East Africa criticised the group, which is linked to al-Qaeda and controls swathes of Somalia, as well as launching attacks in Kenya and other countries in the region. We in Jahba East Africa are advising all East Africans to leave al-Shabaab and their sponsor groups, like Al-Muhajiroun, Al-Hijra and Ansar Islam, the statement said. Like Al-Shabaab the sponsor groups have not understood the binding obligation of the Khalifah (caliphate). We are telling the mujahideen in East Africa that al-Shabaab has now become a psychological and physical prison. To pledge bayah to Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is freedom for the mujahideen in East Africa and opportunity to wage jihad according to the Sunnah against the enemies of Allah. Al-Shabab recruits walk the streets of the Somalian capital, Mogadishu. (AFP) A spokesperson said the group was newly created and comprised of militants fighting in Somalia, including Kenyans, Tanzanians and Ugandans. He said militants had been detained for pledging allegiance to Isis, adding that the statement was on behalf all the East Africans in al-Shabaab and those that seek to open new up fronts in East Africa. There have been rumours of internal disputes between supporters of Isis and al-Qaeda within al-Shabaab for years, culminating in the reported creation of a pro-Islamic State faction. Pressure to switch allegiance from al-Qaeda grew when Nigerian insurgents Boko Haram joined Isis in March last year and released a message urging its fellow sub-Saharan jihadists to do the same. Hundreds of newly trained al-Shabab fighters perform military exercises (AP) Isis leaders are understood to have approached al-Shabaab leaders themselves to make an alliance and released a series of propaganda videos calling for the creation of Wilayat Somalia Somalia province. A memo was reportedly circulated among al-Shabaab fighters in September saying that its allegiance to al-Qaeda would not change and warning of punishments under Islamic law for any dissenters. The move to silence pro-Isis elements appears to have failed. In a newly-created Twitter account, Jahba East Africa were calling on jihadists to join them on Friday, adding: A new era will come to East Africa soon InshaAllah (God willing). Isis uses pledges of allegiance by existing terrorist and insurgent groups to establish franchises around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawis successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a real war with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assads regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a conspiracy. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Ladens successor) concerned about Isis expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraqs second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloffs murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist groups al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isiss deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic citys ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyras residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamists positions. AFP Libyas Shura Council of Islamic Youth, for example, became Wilayat Barqa, while Egyptian jihadists Ansar Bait al-Maqdis were rebranded as Wilayat Sinai. Groups in Southeast Asia, the Caucasus, West Africa, Algeria and Gaza have also declared their allegiance to become part of the global caliphate. The US Africa Command warned that the number of Isis fighters in Libya had doubled to between 4,000 and 6,000 in the last year as it seeks to expand. American drone and air strikes have targeted jihadists in the country, as well as in other African countries where jihadists are launching insurgencies. Al-Shabaab and other insurgents in Somalia are being fought by an African Union mission (Amisom) and United Nations coalition (Unosom), which includes British troops. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A man who spent more than three decades serving time for crimes he did not commit was finally released from a Virginia correctional facility. 60-year-old Keith Allen Harward got his first taste of freedom Friday afternoon, thanking his lawyers, whom he called heroes, and lamented the fact that his parents could not see him walk free. Thats the worst part about this, is my parents, said Mr Harward, holding back tears as he addressed media outside the prison. It killed them. It devastated them. He added that he was not allowed to attend their funeral because of the sentence. Somebody needs to pay for this. Nonetheless, Mr Harward addressed the press with spirits high, excited that he was returning to his hometown in Greensboro, North Carolina. I want to try to find me some fried oysters soon as I can, but thats going to be later on down the road, he said. But dont carry me to a grocery store because Ill pass out. Keith Allen Harward hugs a supporter following his Friday release AP Mr Harward was wrongfully convicted of murdering Jesse Perron and raping his wife near a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia,in 1982, where he was stationed as a sailor. A shipyard guard testified that he witnessed Mr Harward enter the premises covered in blood. The female victim, however, never identified him as her attacker, according to the Associated Press. Expert witnesses also testified that bite marks on the female victims leg matched Mr Harward's teeth. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that DNA evidence was proof of Mr Harwards innocence. The Innocence Project took on Mr Harwards case in 2014 and motioned for the court to examine DNA evidence from sperm found at the scene. The DNA profile of the sperm sample reportedly matched the profile of Jerry L. Crotty, a former shipmate of Mr Harwards. The AP said Mr Crotty died in an Ohio prison in 2006, where he was serving time for abduction. Mr Harward is at least the 25th person to be wrongfully [convicted] or indicted for discredited bite mark evidence, according to the Innocence Project. Dana Delger, an attorney with the Innocence Project, warned about outdated, unscientific evidence used against the accused. Weve learned nothing, she said, if we continue to use this evidence even though we know it has no basis in science. I oppose implementing Skynet and increasing minimum wage laws for the same reason: to forestall the robots. Its probably inevitable that a T-1000 will return from the future to terminate John Connor. But there is still something we can do to prevent (at least for a time) a TIOS from eliminating the cashier at your local McDonalds. In Europe, McDonalds has ordered 7,000 TIOSs (Touch Interface Ordering Systems) to take food orders and payment. In America, Panera Bread will replace all of their cashiers with wage-free robots in all of their 1,800 nationwide locations by 2016. There is even a burger-making robot that can churn out 360 gourmet hamburgers per hour. I, for one, welcome our new fast-food robot overlords. Im just not ready for them yet. Over the long run, the adoption of technological innovations tends to increase prosperity and economic flourishing. For example, we are all much better off because of 19th century workers who lost their farm jobs. Likewise, well also be better off (again, in the long run) because a HAL 9000 is flipping our burgers and freeing up the human Hals and Hallies of the world for more productive labor. But in the short-run, the use of robot replacements for low wage employees will hurt the poorest, most low-skilled workers. The main advantage such workers have now is that they are cost efficient. Fast-food businesses are currently willing to hire low-skilled workers and serve as remedial-training vocational schools because its in their economic self-interest to do so. But raising the minimum wage takes away that incentive and will motivate businesses to replace those workers with automated machines. Its certainly the rational choice. If you were the owner of a fast-food restaurant, would you rather be staffed by efficient, reliable robots or low-skilled workers (e.g., teenagers, ESL-adults) who tend to have higher than normal human problems? If it suddenly becomes cheaper to buy robots than pay a premium for human labor, what do you think businesses will choose? We already have the answer you can find it at your local gas station. If you are younger than 40 you arent likely to remember full-service filling stations (unless you live in Oregon or New Jersey where self-service if forbidden by law). Yet they were once the norm. In 1950, there were over 81,000 gas stations and only about 200 self-service stations (almost all in California). It wasnt until the two gas shortages in the 1970s (1973 and 1979) caused higher fuel prices which led consumers to look for pricing relief. Almost overnight, full-service stations became all but extinct taking an entire sector of low-skilled jobs with it. The recent move in California and New York to rapidly increase the minimum wage to $15 over the next several years will have the same effect. A small group of employees will see their pay increase while many more will find their jobs disappearing completely, never to come back. Keeping the minimum wage at its current rate (or, better yet, eliminating wage floors completely) wont prevent the robots from taking those jobs. As even the White Houses own internal team of economists recently admitted, low-paying have an 83 percent chance of being automated. But letting the free market determine the price of labor would allow for a smoother transition and give low-skilled workers time to adjust. Sometimes what initially appears to be a noble and humane idea has unforeseen and dramatic consequences. Proponents of minimum wage increases have (mostly) good intentions. But so did Dr. Miles Bennett Dyson and the engineers at Cyberdyne Systems. And we know how that turned out. 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 }} An American photographer has been released from a notorious prison in Syria after disappearing in the country over three years ago. Friends of Kevin Dawes feared he had died but it has now that he was being held by Bashar al-Assads regime in Damascus. The last known contact with him had been in October 2012, shortly after he travelled to the country as a freelance photographer to document the worsening Syrian civil war. Kevin Patrick Dawes (AFP/Getty Images) His last tweets chronicled alleged atrocities by regime forces and linked to a funding page Mr Dawes had set up for medical supplies to take to rebel areas. John Kirby, a spokesperson for the US State Department, confirmed he had been released by Syrian authorities on Friday. The United States continues to work through every possible means to ensure the safe release of US citizens reported missing or taken hostage in Syria, he added. While privacy considerations prevent us from commenting further, we continue to work through our Czech protecting power in Syria to get information on the welfare and whereabouts of Austin Tice and other US citizens missing and detained in Syria. Negotiations continue with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government (Getty) Nicholas Henin, a French journalist who was held hostage by Isis for 10 months, said Mr Dawes former cellmates told him he had been held in Branch 215. The prison is run by the governments Military Intelligence Directorate, and is notorious for the alleged torture of suspected rebels and political dissidents. An FBI notice for Mr Dawes, 33, said he arrived in Syria from Turkey in September 2012 and went missing a month later. Eliot Higgins, a visiting research associate at Kings College London and founder of Bellingcat, was one of the last people to communicate with Mr Dawes before he disappeared. He said he was in shock over his release and said the last report he had was that Mr Dawes had been begging to be killed. In pictures: Syria conflict Show all 40 1 /40 In pictures: Syria conflict In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrians carry children amid debris following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian man carries a girl on a street covered with dust following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrians react as they stand amid debris following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian man carries a girl amid debris following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis An injured Syrian man walks out from the rubble of a destroyed building following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian woman makes her way through debris following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis People stand on the rubble of collapsed buildings at a site hit by what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, in the Al-Fardous neighbourhood of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrian residents stand amid the rubble of destroyed buildings In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian resident grasps a mattress amid rubble in the al-Firdous neighborhood of the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A view taken from Tel al-Sawadi shows a large explosion allegedly at the Wadi Deif Syrian army base in northwestern Idlib on May 14, 2014, which opposition fighters have been trying to capture for more than a year. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamist rebels detonated explosives planted in a tunnel under the army base killing or injuring dozens. AFP In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A bullet-riddled parking sign stands amid debris in a deserted street leading into the old city of Homs In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A general view shows abandoned buildings on a deserted square in the old city of Homs after Syrian government forces regained control of rebel-controlled areas In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A military vehicle that belongs to the Free Syrian Army is seen in Al-Amariya district in Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A mosque is pictured through shattered glass in the old city of Homs, as rebel fighters withdrew from the city centre in line with a negotiated withdrawal deal with the government after having held out under tight siege for nearly two years In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Buses carrying Free Syrian Army fighters leaving Homs. Exhausted and worn out from a year-long siege, hundreds of Syrian rebels left their last remaining bastions in the heart of the central city of Homs under a cease-fire deal with government forces. The exit of some 1,200 fighters and civilians will mark a de facto end of the rebellion in the battered city, which was one of the first places to rise up against President Bashar Assad's rule, earning it the nickname of "capital of the revolution" In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrian government forces hold up a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad (L) while others raise the national flag on top of a pole in the old city of Homs In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad run through Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr crossing after their release by rebels. They were freed as part of a larger deal which saw the last remaining Syrian rebels in central Homs city evacuate their positions and free captives in several locations in northern Syria In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian woman and two children walk past heavily damaged buildings in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A man carries a wounded girl following a reported bombardment with explosive-packed "barrel bombs" by Syrian government forces in the al-Mowasalat neighborhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A wounded man sits as he is treated at a makeshift hospital following a reported bombardment with explosive-packed "barrel bombs" by Syrian government forces in the al-Sakhour district of the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Debris rises in what Free Syrian Army fighters and Islamic rebels said was an operation to strike Al-Sahaba checkpoint, which is considered a gateway to Al-Dayf valley, and remove forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad in Maarat Al-Nouman, Idlib province In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Men try to put out fire at a site hit by what activists said was an air strike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the town of Azaz, north of Aleppo, near the border with Turkey In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Civil Defence members try to put out fire In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Survivors react at a site hit by what activists said was an air strike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the town of Azaz, north of Aleppo, near the border with Turkey In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Residents queue as they wait to receive food aid distributed by the UNRWA at the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, south of Damascus In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Belongings of Syrian rebels inside a chapel at Crac des Chevaliers, the world's best preserved medieval Crusader castle in Syria. The village was destroyed in fighting between the government and rebel forces while the castle, listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, also has been damaged over the past two years In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Hosen Sabah, a 16-year-old student is comforted by his mother at a hospital in Damascus. Nosen was wounded by a mortar outside his school, while 14 other students were killed and over 80 wounded In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Free Syrian Army fighter works on a locally made launcher before firing it towards forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad in Mork town In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrian policemen and citizens inspecting the site of a car bomb at the entrance of Moadhamiyet al-Sham neighborhood in rural Damascus. According to Syria's Arab News Agency (SANA), a car bomb explosion has gone off in the countryside of Damascus and initial information say there are casualties, where a car rigged with explosions was remotely detonated at the entrance of Moadhamiyet al-Sham neighborhood in rural Damascus during engineering units it was trying to dismantled it In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Opposition fighters carrying a rocket launcher during clashes against government forces in the Sheikh Lutfi area, west of the airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian man helps a woman to make her way through debris following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian man reacts as he carries the body of injured boy following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 33 civilians were killed in the attack In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrian rescue workers carry the body of a woman following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian woman walks past the burning wreckage of a car following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A man and two children run to a safer place following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A man holds an injured child after, according to activists, two barrel bombs were thrown by forces loyal to Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad in Hullok neighbourhood of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis An injured man talks on a walkie-talkie after, according to activists, two barrel bombs were thrown by forces loyal to Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad in Hellok neighbourhood of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A man walks inside a mosque damaged by, according to activists, a barrel bomb thrown by forces loyal to Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad in Old Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrians gather at the site of reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Rebel fighters carry their weapons as they run to avoid snipers loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the town of Morek in Hama province I really hope Kevin Dawes get the serious mental health help he needs, especially after two years in an Assad torture site, Mr Higgins wrote on Twitter. I am so so shocked he's still alive, it's like seeing someone rise from the dead, I'm literally shaking. Officials told the Washington Post that many months of negotiations had secured Mr Dawes release and concessions allowing him to receive care and contact his family. In interviews with Bellingcat, the photographer had described his travels to Libya during the outbreak of the countrys civil war in 2011. I am not a man who reclines, when things get bad, into a nice comfy chair of shielded ambivalence, he said. People in the US let horrible s*** happen because theyre just so comfortable." 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 }} There were more questions than answers after the squadron leader at a Texas Air Base was shot and killed - apparently by one of his own men who then turned his weapon on himself. Police confirmed that there had been two fatalities after they were called to deal with an active shooter incident at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio on Friday morning. The incident triggered a lockdown at the base and at a number of nearby schools. The Air Force Times said that the commanding officer of the 331st K-9 Training Squadron at the base was shot by an airman. Neither person was immediately identified by the news outlet. Its over, Bexar County Sheriff's office spokesman James Keith told Reuters. The lockdown on the facility and nearby schools has been lifted, the office said. The incident took place at the Medina annex at the facility, where dog training takes place. America's worst mass shooting incidents Show all 11 1 /11 America's worst mass shooting incidents America's worst mass shooting incidents pp-orlando-victims-1-ap.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents ohio.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents hance.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents westroadsCCTV.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents virginia.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents gale.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents red-lake.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents beltway.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents columbine.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents hennard.jpg AP America's worst mass shooting incidents Pough.jpg AP Mr Keith said the sheriff's office did not believe there were other victims but deputies were searching buildings out of an abundance of caution. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was called to assist and has taken the lead in the case, the sheriffs office said. 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 }} As he has pointed out several times, if his grass-roots, insurgent campaign is successful, Bernie Sanders would become the USs first Jewish president. Yet on Friday, the Vermont senator said he was big fan of Pope Frances and revealed that he had accepted an invitation to attend the Vatican, just days before the crucial New York primary. I am delighted to have been invited by the Vatican to a meeting on restoring social justice and environmental sustainability to the world economy, Mr Sanders said in a statement. (EPA (EPA) Pope Francis has made clear that we must overcome the globalisation of indifference in order to reduce economic inequalities, stop financial corruption and protect the natural environment. That is our challenge in the United States and in the world. Mr Sanders was invited to attend a conference hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on social, economic, and environmental issues. It is not clear whether he will meet Francis at the event. The Democratic presidential candidate's appearance at the conference will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Centesimus Annus, an encyclical from Pope John Paul II that addresses workers' rights and other economic and social issues that are similar to those Mr Sanders has stressed in his White House bid. I am delighted to have been invited by the Vatican to a meeting on restoring social justice and environmental sustainability to the world economy, Sanders said in the release. I was very moved by the invitation, which just was made public today, he said. "I am a big, big fan of the pope. Obviously, there are areas where we disagree, on women's rights and gay rights. But he has played an unbelievable role an unbelievable role - of injecting a moral consequence into the economy. Mr Sanders also joked about the popes effort to liberalise aspects of the Catholic Church, adding, you know, people say Bernie Sanders is radical read what the pope is writing. Mr Sanders visit to the Vatican was announced the same day that Pope Francis released a sweeping paper urging Catholic priests around the world to be more accepting of gay men and lesbians, divorced Catholics, and other people living in what the church considers irregular situations. In the letter, the pope urged more common sense and less unthinking following of rules - what he calls discernment - and writes, by thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and growth. 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 }} It has been a tough couple of weeks for Donald Trump, the once seemingly unbeatable man with a yellow hairpiece who won 21 states. After losing to Ted Cruz in the key state of Wisconsin and his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski turning himself in to police on battery charges, his Republican colleagues are now sizing up what the frontrunner would be like in the shape of Ted Cruz. But now a newly re-jigged campaign team could help Mr Trump to propel further wins in the New York primary on 19 April and beyond. Republican strategist Paul Manafort is one of the main changes to the team, and he will report directly to Mr Trump. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who said he will vote for Mr Trump, called the move a step in the right direction. Mr Manafort is a friend and business partner to Roger Stone, an informal adviser for Mr Trump until last summer when he clashed with Mr Lewandowski. The campaign has now gotten to the point where how you win and where you win does matter and then protecting what you won and thats why Im involved in everything from whats happened to what will be happening, he told the New York Times. Paul Manafort has been brought in to report directly to Mr Trump CNN (CNN) Mr Trumps team has remained small, with no pollster on staff. Alleged in-fights have broken out as several publications from the New York Times to Politico have reported on his campaign being in "disarray". His team has fired staff en masse and shifted important responsibilities to people with little previous experience including a 2015 college graduate. Mr Trump has denied the stories. While the Colorado Republican convention takes place this weekend, Mr Trump said he will not attend and has reportedly fired the aide in charge of overseeing campaign efforts in the state. Wisconsin has certainly been a stinging blow for the confident businessman, a key state in which he only won six delegates while his rival Ted Cruz scooped 36, as reported by the Associated Press. It is estimated that Mr Trump, while he holds more delegates than Mr Cruz, still needs to gather 60 per cent of the remaining delegates to win. Mr Manafort has reportedly advised Mr Trump to focus on the here and now, resulting in Mr Trump scrapping plans to visit California this week, which votes in June, and to stay and campaign in his home state of New York. He will campaign in Rochester on Sunday and plans to give several policy speeches in the state. Mr Lewandowski has also changed the team by bringing in several people including Ed Brookover to work on gathering delegates. Mr Brookover, whose first convention was in 1976, told The Hill that he is confident that Mr Trump will easily surpass the number of Republican delegates required - 1,237 - to become the party nominee. The rest of the calendar works very much in our favour, he said, referring to New York, its neighbouring north-eastern states and California. 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 }} Hillary Clinton has mobilised a small troop of survivors and victims of horrific gun massacres to collectively call out Bernie Sanders on his gun control policies. Mr Sanders told the New York Daily News that he does not think victims of a gun crime should be able to sue the weapon manufacturers. He made the comment as survivors and victims families wait for a ruling in Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting took place in December 2012. Mr Sanders, according to a transcript of the interview, was keen to clarify his statement and added: But I do believe that gun manufacturers and gun dealers should be able to be sued when they should know that guns are going into the hands of the wrong people. So if somebody walks in and says, I'd like 10,000 rounds of ammunition, you know, well, you might be suspicious about that. So I think there are grounds for those suits, but not if you sell me a legal product. Ms Clinton nonetheless pounced on his comments and told MSNBC this week: [Mr Sanders] would place gun manufacturers rights and immunity from liability against the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook. Its just unimaginable to me. Her campaign tweeted a clip of the video interview and it received hundreds of replies, many of which were incensed that Ms Clinton would politicize dead children and use victims as props" to gain delegates for the upcoming Democratic convention. Many people on the social media platform also pointed out her record with accepting money from the gun lobby and approving arms deals with Saudi Arabia. Ms Clinton, now labelling herself as a staunch gun control advocate compared to Senator Sanders, has highlighted three women who were directly affected by gun massacres and who gathered on the steps of New York City Hall on Friday alongside New York City Public Advocate Letitia James to speak about their right to go to court. The women are Erica Smegielski, daughter of the late Dawn Hochsprung, who was principal at Sandy Hook, Jillian Soto, sister of Victoria Soto, a teacher who was also killed, and Sandy Phillips, mother of Jessica Ghawi, who was killed in the Aurora cinema shooting in Colorado in July 2012. Ms Smegielski, 30, tweeted shame on you, @BernieSanders, try living one hour of our lives. after she read his comments to the New York Daily News, and has demanded an apology for a callous dismissal of the families concerns. While Bernie Sanders has accused Ms Clinton of accepting money from the gun lobby, Ms Clinton has fired back that Mr Sanders voted favourably for NRA legislation. The democratic candidates have turned increasingly nasty in the run-up to the New York primary on 19 April, sparring over Mr Sanderss comments on abortion and debating Ms Clintons monetary ties to the fossil fuel industry. Ms Clinton also strongly objected to Mr Sanders' suggestion that she was not "qualified" to become president. 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 }} Indias Prime Minister has said the collapse of a flyover in Kolkata, that killed more than 20 people, was a message from God telling the people of West Bengal they must be saved from the state's ruling party. Speaking at an election rally in Madarit, north Bengal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the tragedy illuminated the dangers of the All India Trinamool Congress led by Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee. They are saying it is an act of god, but actually it is an act of fraud," said Mr Modi. "It is an act of god in the sense that it happened during election time so that people may know what kind of government she [Ms Banerjee] has been running," The Times of India reports. God has sent a message to the people - that today this bridge has collapsed, tomorrow she will finish off entire Bengal. God's message to you all is to save Bengal. At least 21 people were killed and more than 150 injured after a partially completed concrete and steel bridge fell on to traffic on a busy road in Kolkata. Pictures of incident show cars, trucks and rickshaws under huge quantities of debris, while fire fighters and residents attempt to rescue those trapped with their bare hands. In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Rescue workers cut through parts of a partially collapsed bridge In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Firefighters and rescue workers search for victims at the site of an under-construction flyover after it collapsed in Kolkata In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse A man is seen trapped amid the debris of an under-construction flyover after it collapsed In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Locals and rescue workers clear the rubble of a collapsed overpass In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Locals and rescue workers clear the rubble of a collapsed bridge In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Rescue workers work at the site of a partially collapsed overpass in Kolkata In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse An Indian soldier looks for survivors under a collapsed overpass in Kolkata In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Rescue workers take an injured man for medical treatment after retrieving him from underneath a collapsed overpass in Kolkata In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Rescue workers clear the rubbles of a collapsed bridge In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Rescue members rush a policeman to an ambulance after he was rescued at the site of an under-construction flyover that collapsed in Kolkata In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Indian rescue workers and volunteers try to free people trapped under the wreckage of a collapsed fly-over bridge near smashed cars in Kolkata Getty Images In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse A long section of a road overpass under construction collapsed in a crowded Kolkata neighborhood, with tons of concrete and steel slamming into midday traffic, killing several and injuring many In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Rescuers look at the mangled structure of a vehicle under a partially collapsed overpass in Kolkata In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Indian rescue workers and volunteers try to free people trapped under the wreckage of a collapsed fly-over bridge AFP or licensors In pictures: Kolkata bridge collapse Firefighters and rescue workers search for victims at the site of an under-construction flyover after it collapsed in Kolkata Mr Modi accused Ms Banerjee of being shamelessly political over the deaths, after she reportedly blamed the Left Front, an alliance of Indian leftist parties who issued the contract for the flyover project, for the accident, NDTV reports. Mr Modi said rather than blaming the Left Front, Ms Banerjee should have assisted in rescue work. Its the chair which is only visible [for Ms Banerjee] and not the dying people, he added. Mr Modi has made further jibes towards the Trinamool Congress, telling an audience in Asansol, the party's letters TMC stood for: "T for Terror, M for Maut, C for corruption". In response, Trinamool Congress lawmaker, Derek O'Brien, criticised the Prime Minister tweeting: What PM said was unbecoming of his high office. In a statement addressing Mr Modi, Mr O'Brien denied his claims and told the Prime Minster: "We expect you now to grow with your job." The Trinamool party has claimed that although the collapse happened under their government, the contract was awarded by the state's previous Left Front government. The Left Front have claimed the Trinamool government continued with the same builder for the project despite it being blacklisted by some states, according to NDTV. :: This article has been amended to clarify that Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the bridge collapse was an "act of fraud" 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 volunteers and activists on the island of Lesbos, some of whom have been rescuing migrants and refugees from the Aegean Sea for months, seeing them now deported heightened their anger. Sorry, friends! EU shame on you, bellowed several activists to a line of 45 despondent Pakistani men who were led, flanked by police, on to a boat operated by EU border agency Frontex and shipped back to Turkey. Protesters screamed, whistled and rattled the gates of the port. The four that dived into the sea and attempted to block the vessels passage were swiftly arrested by the coastguard. Simultaneously, a bus drove past carrying tens of refugees that arrived by inflatable boat early Friday morning, many gazed out of the window at what could well be their fate. Elsewhere on the island, Lesbos is a tale of two refugee camps. On Kara Tepe, perched on the coast two miles from the port of Mytilene, families sleep in clean white cabins, countless NGO workers mill around serving tea, food and medication, and both residents and visitors are free to come and go. Syrian student Farid, 22, is using his time to work as volunteer translator: This is better than most camps in Greece. Farid remarked. Some people that went to Athens have come back here because it is too crowded on the mainland. According to the Greek government, over 50,000 refugees remain marooned across the country after the Western Balkan route to northern Europe was sealed shut in early March. The other refugee accommodation lies only a few miles away but the differences are stark. At the entrance to Moria, a locked detention ringed with razor wire and run by the Greek police, tens of Pakistanis enter their fifth day of a hunger strike protesting deportation. At the weekend a young Afghan man attempted to kill himself by overdosing on pills and remains in a serious condition in hospital. Most of the 3,000 detained in Moria have submitted asylum claims in Greece but a lack of asylum officers and interpreters is causing significant delays. But as Turkey effectively been deemed a safe country to seek asylum, the wait may merely postpone the inevitable. Syrian student Khadr is unfazed: They arent taking me back to Turkey. I will escape. What would you do? 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 }} Widespread criticism has erupted after a tribunal court in Paris ruled it is not homophobic to call a male hairdresser a faggot because hairdressers regularly employ gay people. A Parisian hairdresser accused his employer of unfair dismissal after being fired from a hair salon for failing to turn up for work while ill last year. During his absence he received a text message, sent accidently to him by his employer, which included the homophobic French slur PD, which translates as faggot in English. The message from his boss read: I am not going to keep [the employee]. I don't have a good feeling about this guy. He's a dirty faggot," according to Liberation. The court ordered the employer to pay 5,000 in damages, but said there was no homophobic motive behind the decision to fire the hairdresser. The tribunals reasoning, tweeted by reporter Mathieu Brancourt, said: If we put it in the context of the field of hairdressing, the council considers that the term 'faggot' used by a manager cannot be considered as a homophobic insult, because hair salons regularly employ gay people, notably in female hairdressers, and that poses no problem at all." The ruling and explanation has sparked an outcry on social media and among Frances gay community. Clemence Zamora-Cruz, spokeswoman of the group Inter-LGBT, said the ruling "may worsen the homophobic climate, which is already bad, AFP reports. Nicolas Noguier, who runs a shelter for victims of homophobia, said the ruling was clearly homophobic. The French labour minister Myrian El Khomri described the decision as deeply shocking, while speaking to RTL. It is understood the employee will appeal the decision, but the date of the appeal has not been set. 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 world started anew last Thursday week, on the evening of 31 March 2016. On that night, a few hundred young people, and some not so young, came together on the Place de la Republique in Paris. They are still there or at least they turn up at 6pm each day and leave at midnight. Their numbers are growing, although not as fast as they claim. There are 1,000 present on most evenings. Their movement, Nuit Debout, (Standing Up Night) has spread to several other European cities. They have no leaders and no demands, except the end of capitalism and the world as we know it. Until that happens, they say, April cannot be allowed to begin. Recommended Read more Students in Edinburgh occupy building over fossil fuel divestment Thus, today on the Place de la Republique, it is not 9 April; it is 40 March. Playing with dates deliberately echoes the French Revolution, which started in year one. It involuntarily recalls the opening line of George Orwells 1984, when a clock strikes 13. In the early days, the participants had no individual names. Everyone was Camille, a name which can be male or female in French. But it is difficult to enforce rules in a movement with no rules and individual names are creeping back. Gael, a student in his early twenties, dressed all in black, with a neat beard and a serious smile, said: We dont know where this is going thats the whole point. We dont have plans. We dont have demands. We dont have leaders. We disagree about many things, but we know that things have to change. We didnt need the Panama leaks to tell us how the world works. We no longer want a system where the selfishness of a few limits the lives and opportunities of the many. (GETTY (GETTY) The mood of the participants the nuitdeboutistes resembles the May 1968 student rebellion more than the July 1789 revolution. There are interminable general meetings which make decisions to end social injustices, such as homelessness and unemployment. Votes are taken by a complex shows of arms and hands. Two hands in the air means oui. Two arms crossed in the air means non. Two arms crossed with fists clenched means absolutely out of the question. Think again. Almost half a century on from 1968, official France remains wary of youth movements, and Nuit Debout is being watched very closely by President Francois Hollandes centre-left government. There were scuffles with police this week when two breakaway marches from the Place de la Republique sought to free students arrested during a demonstration against changes in French labour law. Overall, however, the police and riot police have been under orders to treat the nuitdeboutistes gently as a curiosity rather than a threat. The movement has been compared with the Occupy movements in the US and Britain and the start of the Indignant/Podemos movement in Spain. So far, however, there is no real sign of it spreading into a wider revolt. Nuit Debout remains for the time being an island of self-righteous protest in the midst of the roaring, beeping traffic of a city intent on its own selfish business. The movement began as a spin-off from protests against proposed changes in French labour law. Its supporters include some students and sixth-formers with leftish views. There are also sprinkling of sans papiers (illegal immigrants). The great bulk of the participants appear, however, to be a self-organised round-up of the usual suspects typical representatives of the many tribes and sub-tribes of the French hard left. Not all are so young; some look as if they might be recalling something rather similar 48 years ago. Nor is the movement quite as leaderless and unstructured as it claims. The first protest on 31 March was organised by the team responsible for a funny and cheeky anti-capitalist documentary film, Merci Patron, an unlikely triumph in French cinemas this spring. The inaugural Nuit Debout was addressed by Frederic Lordon, 54, a left-wing French economist and leading light in a group called Economistes Atterres (Appalled Economists), which rejects conventional market economics. Mr Lordon declines to speak to the media. I have no wish to appear as something I am not the leader of a movement which has no leader, he replied by email to Le Monde. It remains unclear how long Nuit Debout will last or how far it will spread. It is plainly a straw in the same wind as the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. In a long article posted at the Place de la Republique, Mr Lordon suggests that Nuit Debout threatens the capitalist world precisely because it is so undefined. Understand, we are demanding nothing, he wrote. Understand, that after decades of seeing you (the ruling classes) demonstrate your talents and your arrogance, the idea of negotiating anything with you seems absolutely pointless to us. We are the crazy Left. And we are coming 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 Norwegian man who was raped by a migrant has said he felt guilt after his attacker was deported. Karsten Nordal Hauken, who describes himself as feminist and anti-racist, was sexually attacked five years ago. He said that although the incident caused a spiral of depression and substance abuse, he felt bad about the fact the man had been deported to Somalia when he had already served his prison sentence. Recommended Read more Merkel backs expulsion for refugee criminals after Cologne attacks Writing for Norwegian broadcaster NRK, Mr Hauken also said he wanted to break the taboo over male rape. His comments accompanied a documentary on people with mental health issues, in which Mr Hauken appears. Mr Hauken said that following the attack, he was treated well by police and medical personnel. After his attacker was caught and sentenced to over four years in prison, he was a bit taken by surprise by how he reacted to the news he would be deported. 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 tears, they came the moment I sat in the car," he said. "I felt a relief and joy that he was going away forever. I felt that the Norwegian government took on the responsibility to exercise the ultimate revenge, like an angry father confronts a child abuser. But I also got a strong sense of guilt and responsibility. I was the reason why he should not be left in Norway, but rather to face a very uncertain future in Somalia. He had already served his sentence in prison. Should he now be punished again? And this time much harder? Mr Hauken said the worst effect of the rape was that he had lost so much time to depression and cannabis use. It is scary and taboo to talk about young men's emotional life," he wrote. "I feel forgotten and ignored. But I dare not talk about it, I'm afraid of attacks from all sides. I am afraid that no girls want me and that other men laugh at me. Afraid that I'll be perceived as anti-feminist when I say that young men who are struggling should get more attention. Men and boys must learn that it's okay to talk about their feelings. Boys and men are ignored. For me it resulted in years of depression, abuse, loneliness and isolation. Its been a while since your writer began reporting on religious shareholder activism in this space. The term religious is used here to describe the vocations of the priests, nuns, clergy and other religious involved in shareholder activism rather than serving as an accurate descriptor for essentially progressive political and social activities. These shareholder activists pursue agendas having little to do with the true nature of the faiths they no doubt believe, but too often relegate beneath their pursuit of liberal causes. The above occurred to your correspondent upon following a link on the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility homepage. A quick click later, I was immersed in the progressive banalities of Rev. Jim Conn, Spring Awakening: Uniting Against Climate Change over at the website Capital & Main: Investigating Power & Politics. Rev. Conns essay champions what he perceives as a Risorgimento a resurgent unification of political and social efforts. In essence, the Risorgimento Conn envisions applies to mitigating climate change by any means necessary, including shareholder activism as practiced by ICCR: People with surplus incomes have been investing ever since the first stock market was invented, but now networks of socially responsible investors have gained clout in the marketplace. The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment acts as a research tool and clearinghouse of information for such funds. Their list includes a number of regular mutual fund companies that have established green or socially responsible investment services. Design comes with action as well as conscious investment strategies. Organizations like the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility file shareholder resolutions to urge appropriate corporate decision-making. They urge stockholders to divest from the bad guys and invest in companies not hurting the Earth, exploiting workers or creating harmful products. They have had a significant impact on corporate behavior from food and water issues to workers rights. Note the binary Conn creates between bad guys and companies not hurting the Earth. The retired United Methodist minister might do well to read Alex Epsteins The Moral Case for Fossil Fuel or any number of essays published by The Acton Institute championing cheap and plentiful fuel for raising living standards throughout the world before demonizing energy companies. Conn also mischaracterizes ICCRs activism as primarily focused on fossil-fuel divestment. Instead, ICCR resolutions directed at the energy sector are a bit more of a rear-flank maneuver that attempt to force energy and fossil-fuel companies adopt practices that harm the profitability of the companies as well as dividends for fellow shareholders. In some sectors, such activists are referred to as Corporate Gadflies because of the nominally religious nature of ICCR proposals and those of other such groups as As You Sow, your writer coined the phrase Corporate God-flies. Thus far, contrary to Conns claims, these God-flies havent had a significant impact on corporate behavior. Reporting in this space last June, your writer noted that God-flies accounted for 29 percent of all shareholder proxy resolutions at the nations 250 top-rated companies. These resolutions received, on average, only 22 percent of shareholder votes. Furthermore, according to James R. Copland in the 2015 Proxy Season Wrap-Up, published by the Manhattan Institutes Proxy Monitor project: Among social investors, only As You Sow introduced more than five proposals in 2015 (seven). Many other socially oriented investors sponsored multiple proposals, however: social-investing platforms Arjuna Capital (three), Domini Social Investments (three), Green Century Capital Management (three), Investor Voice (five), Northstar Asset Management (two), Trillium Asset Management (four), and Walden Asset Management (four); religious investors Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes (two), Sisters of Mercy (five), Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order (two), Sisters of St. Dominic (two), Sisters of St. Francis (three), and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (two); the public-policy group National Center for Public Policy Research (two); and the Nathan Cummings (two) and Park (three) charitable foundations. Its doubtful 2016 will be any different. God-flies will continue to badger and pester other companies and shareholders while serving to diminish investment returns and Conn-men will continue to exaggerate the significance of their activities. 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 }} Mohamed Abrini, the only suspect still at large from last years Paris attacks, was arrested on Friday in Brussels, along with other associates alleged to have been involved with last months Brussels bombings, Belgian authorities have confirmed. Abrini, who has also been identified by local media as the man in the hat, was arrested in Anderlecht, on the west side of Brussels, where four other suspects linked to the Paris attacks were also caught. Another man arrested in a series of raids, identified as Osama K. by Belgian authorities, was linked to the 13 November Paris attacks by French authorities on March 22, hours after the Belgium attacks. CCTV images show Abrini at a petrol station on the way to Paris a few days before the attacks (AP) Abrini and Osama K.are now suspected of playing a role in the two biggest attacks carried out by the Islamic State group in Europe over the past year, killing 130 people in Paris and 32 in Brussels. French authorities renewed their call to arrest an armed and dangerous Abrini within hours of the Brussels attacks. "We are investigating if Abrini can be positively identified as the third person present during the attacks in Brussels National Airport, the so called 'man in the hat,"' said prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt. Abrini, 31, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, who was seen in security footage a fortnight ago just before the double bombing at Brussels Airport that killed 16 people, local media said. He was seen on footage in a Renault Clio at a petrol station at Ressons, north of Paris two days before the attacks, with would-be suicide bomber Salah Abdeslam, a boyhood friend. While Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels three weeks ago, Abrini has remained elusive until now. Abrini was on a European watchlist for almost five months, and is described on the arrest warrant as dangerous and probably armed. Although police lost track of him after the Ressons stop, his DNA was found in the flat on Rue Max Roos in the Brussels district of Schaarbeek from where the airport bombers caught a taxi on the morning of the attacks. The finding was the first clear link between the Paris and Brussels attackers. Abrini was known to police for thefts and drug-related offences. Abrini was believed to have traveled early last summer to Syria, where his younger brother Souleymane, 20 died in 2014. Souleymane was part of ISISs French-speaking wing, headed by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who was killed by police in November. Syria was not his only foreign trip: Abrini went multiple times to Birmingham, meeting with several men suspected of terrorist activity, and taking photographs of an as-yet-unidentified football stadium. In pictures: Paris attacks Show all 25 1 /25 In pictures: Paris attacks In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French police with protective shields walk in line near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Rescuers evacuate an injured person on Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French Vigipirate troops mobilize next to Place de la Bastille AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French soldiers mobilize near to the Place de la Bastille AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Wounded people are evacuated outside the scene of a hostage situation at the Bataclan theatre EPA In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks People react as they gather to watch the scene near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French police secure the area outside a cafe near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Rescuers workers evacuate victims near the Bataclan concert hall AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and French President Francois Hollande attending an emergency meeting at the Interior Ministry AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Spectators invade the pitch of the Stade de France after explosions were heard outside AP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks A man lies on the ground as French police check his identity near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Police officers man a position close to the Bataclan theatre AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Wounded people are evacuated from the Stade de France in Paris EPA In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Two men evacuate the Place de la Republique square in Paris as a police officer looks on AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Football fans are evacuated from the Stade de France stadium In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks An armed police officer Dan Gabriel In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The Stade de France is evacuated after reports of an explosion In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks A member of the French fire brigade aids an injured individual near the Bataclan concert hall In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Wounded people are evacuated from the Stade de France in Paris In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Police are seen outside a cafe in 10th arrondissement of the French capital Paris, In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Rescuers assist an injured man on Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire, close to the Bataclan concert hall AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The scene at a restaurant in 10th arrondissement In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The Bataclan theatre - where around 100 people are thought be held hostage In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The Stade de France as it was evacuated In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Forensic experts inspect the site of an attack outside the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis AFP Osama K. is thought to have briefly met suicide bomber Khalid El Bakraoui on the Brussels metro shortly before he blew himself up at Maelbeek station, killing 16 people. Another arrest is said to be Abu Amrid, also involved in the Brussels attacks. Officials have also refused to officially confirm that Abrini is the man in the hat, from Brussels Airport, seen walking with his two companions since identified as Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui - just before they blew themselves up in the departure hall. He is thought to have fled the scene after failing to activate his own device. Belgian police release new CCTV The arrest comes a day after police issued a public appeal for help finding him. They released further footage showing him calmly walking from Brussels airport among terrified crowds of people and heading for the city. The man then spent two hours walking six miles to a crossroads just half a mile from the European Commissions Berlaymont headquarters. Along the way, he discarded his white coat, revealing a blue shirt with distinctive dark elbow patch. However, the police have been cautious about their findings in recent days: two weeks ago, prosecutors were left red faced after they arrested and then released another suspect who was thought to be the man in the hat. Faycal Cheffou, 31, who was known to police as a jihadist recruiter, was picked up two days after the Brussels bombings, but was let go three days later after prosecutors admitted that the clues that led to his arrest were not backed by the evolution of the current investigation. Despite multiple arrests, Brussels remains under the second-highest terror alert, meaning an attack is considered likely. Additional reporting by Associated Press 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 second group of refugees has been deported from Lesbos to Turkey, despite activists attempting to stop the ferry leaving the harbour by clinging onto its anchor. A ferry carrying 45 Pakistani refugees left Greece for the Turkish port of Dikili on Friday morning. Three volunteers were arrested after jumping into the harbour in Mytilene, trying to stop the boat from leaving the port. They were dragged from the water by the Greek coastguard, and the ship left for Turkey. Five protestors demanding that the refugees be allowed to remain were also arrested outside the port, where they reportedly clashed with fascist demonstrators. Amid deportations, refugees scramble to reach Europe The activists chanted "stop deportations", "EU, shame on you" and "freedom for the refugees". This was only the second deportation since Ankara agreed their controversial deal with the EU, described by the UK director of Amnesty International as "a dark day for the Refugee Convention, a dark day for Europe and a dark day for humanity." Under the terms of the deal, the EU will house one of the more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees residing in Turkey for every "irregular" refugee returned from Greece to Turkish shores. The Erdogan government has also scooped around 2.3 billion in aid, and is set to secure free movement through the Schengen zone for its citizens and "re-energised" negotiations over EU membership. However, there is currently only enough room for around 200,000 people in Turkey's refugee camps, while the government has also been accused of denying refugees access to basic supplies and shooting Syrians dead at the border. An estimated 80% of Syrian refugee children in Turkey are unable to attend school. On Monday, 202 refugees were sent back to Turkey. Deportations have since slowed as refugees rush to be considered for asylum rather than be dispatched to Turkey, which is not considered a "safe country" by charities such as Amnesty. Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Show all 11 1 /11 Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkey's two million Syrian refugees There are already over 2.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, but their current camps can only hold 200,000 people ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkish citizens protest a new deal, also criticised by human rights activists, which will see refugees who arrived in Greece after March 20 be sent back to Turkey AP Photo/Emre Tazegu Turkey's two million Syrian refugees An estimated 80% of Syrian refugee children already in Turkey are unable to attend school BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Refugee children beg for water near the Turkey-Syria border. Turkey has been accused of illegally deporting asylum-seekers back to Syria BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees In Turkey, no-one from outside Europe is legally recognised as a refugee, meaning the 2016 deportations may not meet international legal standards for protecting vulnerable people BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees A refugee child cries as she is searched by police at the Syria-Turkey border, where 16 refugees (including three children) have been shot dead in the last four months BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Many refugees are living rough on the streets of cities such as Istanbul or Ankara (pictured) ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkish soldiers use water cannon on Syrian refugees BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Syrian refugees shelter from rain in the streets of Istanbul BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees A derelict building housing Syrian refugees in Istanbul Carl Court/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkey houses around half of all the refugees who have currently fled Syria Carl Court/Getty Images The UN has also suggested the deal may violate international law. Refugees have a right to be sent to a "safe country", and it is also illegal to carry out "blanket" deportations without considering individual refugees' right to asylum. Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said: I am deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under international law. Around 80 refugees are expected to leave Lesbos in a second deportation occuring later today. 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 man who is facing jail in Russia for writing "there is no God" has dismissed his prosecution as an "absurd farce". Viktor Krasnov, 38, also added that the Bible consisted of "fairytales" during an heated online discussion. He is now being prosecuted under a controversial new law that makes it a criminal offence to "insult the feelings of believers", which critics say is a sign of the cosy relationship between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church in the country. Mr Krasnov said he was "in shock" to learn he would be prosecuted for denying the existence of a god online. Atheism is such an unpopular view among the Russian authorities that a judge has demanded he have a psychiatric assessment. "Yury Gargarin said 'I travelled into space, and I did not see God there'," Mr Krasnov told The Times, referring to a supposed quote from the first person in space. "And now I'm being charged with insulting the feelings of religious believers? This is an absurd farce. I was in shock when I heard I was being charged." What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? Show all 21 1 /21 What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26393010Mandatory-Credit-.jpg Reuters What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN10971804Russian-Prime-Min.jpg AFP/Getty Images What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26393862Russian-Prime-Min.jpg AFP/Getty Images What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26393780A-member-of-the-p.jpg AFP/Getty Images What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26393023Mandatory-Credit-.jpg Rex Features What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26352565Members-of-Moloda.jpg Reuters What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN23195218People-walk-past-.jpg Reuters What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN22525237Russian-President.jpg AP What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26392966Russian-Prime-Min.jpg Reuters What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN20542740In-this-Friday-De.jpg AP What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? GD103259Vladimir-Putin-teen.jpg What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26392993Members-of-the-pr.jpg AFP/Getty Images What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26392965Russian-Prime-Min.jpg AFP/Getty Images What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN2393242Russias-President-.jpg Reuters What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26323854Russian-police-of.jpg AP What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? GL960877President-Boris-Yel.jpg What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? CD14165964President-Vladimi.jpg AP What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26393000Russian-Prime-Min.jpg AFP/Getty Images What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26393003Mandatory-Credit-.jpg Rex Features What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? IN26393032Mandatory-Credit-.jpg Getty Images What does Russia really think about Vladimir Putin? CD8606248epa00153801-Russia.jpg EPA The close relationship between Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and Russian Presindet Vladimir Putin is becoming increasingly evident in a case which could decide future law, said Mr Krasnov's lawyer, Andree Sabinin. "This case could set a precedent," he told The Washington Times. "It could become accepted that it is forbidden to publicly deny the existence of God. Two Russian Orthodox Christians, with whom Mr Krasnov was in discussion on predominantly Russian networking site VKontakte, reported his views to the police. His flat in Stavropol, some 860 miles south of Moscow, was subsequently raided and his trial began in March. Before going to trial, a judge ordered Mr Krasnov to spend one month in a psychiatric ward to determine whether he was simply unbalanced. "No one in their right mind would write anything against Orthodox Christianity and the Russian Orthodox Church," the judge reportedly told Mr Krasnov. The new law about "insulting believers" is evidence of the "shrinking space for freedom of expression in Russia", Amnesty International has said. Patriarch Kirill has previously said his president is a "miracle from God". Such a relationship is a marked turnaround from the Soviet era, when anti-religion propaganda was common. 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 American citizen missing in Syria since 2012 has been released by the government in Damascus after months of secret negotiations, the United States has said. Kevin Dawes, 33, travelled to Syria in October 2012 after a stint in Libya. He described himself as a freelance photographer but others have suggested that he was suffering from severe mental health problems including delusions and paranoia. According to the Washington Post, Mr Dawes was released by the Syrian government and taken across the border into Turkey. The newspaper said that it was unclear whether American officials had negotiated directly with Damascus or through an intermediary. His release will raise hopes that Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared in Syria in August 2012, could also be freed. It comes as the United Nations prepares to host a fresh round of peace talks, spearheaded by Washington and Moscow, to end the five-year Syrian conflict. Mr Dawes, who is from San Diego, is reported to have entered Syria in October 2012 after travelling to a small Turkish border town. He told some online friends that he was going to rescue Mr Tice. To others, he said that he was a doctor on his way to help people in Syria. He had previously spent time in Libya alongside rebels battling forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi. He told the US news site Global Post in 2011, that he had planned to work as a journalist but had ended up serving as a volunteer medic and a fighter. An obsessive user of online chat rooms, Mr Dawes later became convinced that the CIA were on his tail. At least one of his online friends reported him to the FBI out of fear for his own safety and that of others. In September 2012 he travelled to the Turkish-Syrian border and went missing the following month. It remains unclear when and how he was captured. Fatima Khan, the mother of a British surgeon who was detained in one of the Syrian governments notorious jails in Damascus, recently told GQ magazine that her son had been held just a few cells away from Mr Dawes. Her son, Abbas Khan, was found dead in December 2013, shortly before he had been due to be released. The Foreign Office said that he was effectively murdered. Acquaintances of Mr Dawes reacted with astonishment to news of his release. Eliot Higgins, a citizen journalist who spoke to him before he vanished, said yesterday that he was literally shaking. He wrote on Twitter: It was pretty clear he had serious mental health issues. I really hope he now gets the treatment he needed before he vanished. The release of detainees remains a key demand of the Syrian opposition ahead of the next round of peace talks. According to a recent report by Amnesty International, at least 65,000 people have been forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime since the start of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad in 2011. However, there have been few signs of progress so far. The UN Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, has said that he wants the next round of talks, to focus on the thorniest issues, namely a political transition in Syria. He has already twice had to postpone the start of the talks, now due to begin on Wednesday. Few are optimistic about the prospects of success given the backdrop of a deteriorating ceasefire, a failure to deliver aid to besieged areas and intransigence by Damascus. 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 }} Doubts have emerged over reports that Isis has massacred 175 civilians captured at a cement factory near the Syrian capital. Reuters quoted Syrian military sources reporting the killings on Friday, days after officials said more than 300 workers were missing from the Al Badia Cement Company. The news agency later said the source had been "misattributed" and warned that the report was unconfirmed. Isis propaganda claims to show militants inside factory Russian state media also reported the massacre, saying sources on the ground were almost certain a mass execution took place. Sputnik News claimed 175 people were murdered because of their religious affiliation but that some fled and others were allowed to leave. Russian special forces are supporting Bashar al-Assad's troops in Syria, where the Russian air force is backing their military campaigns with air strikes. The cement factory lies north-east of Damascus in an area of countryside targeted by an Isis advance in recent days. Syrian state media reported that officials in the nearby town of Jeiroud saw around 125 of the abducted workers being transported in Isis vehicles, heading towards Tal Dakweh. The black symbols show the location of fighting at the factory, which lies on the frontline between Syrian government forces (red), rebels (green) and Isis (black) (Liveuamap) We havent been able to reach our family members since noon on Monday after an attack by Daesh [Isis] on the factory, one resident of Jeiroud told the AFP news agency. We have no information about where they are. The Syrian Arab News Agency said a reconciliation committee had been handed 106 employees on Wednesday. Amaq Agency, which publishes Isis propaganda, posted footage claiming to be from inside the cement factory. It showed diggers and lorries parked in a deserted depot, with Isis fighters milling around office buildings and the group's black flag fluttering at the entrance. Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawis successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a real war with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assads regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a conspiracy. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Ladens successor) concerned about Isis expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraqs second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloffs murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist groups al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isiss deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic citys ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyras residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamists positions. AFP The body of a man dressed in military fatigues was shown lying on the ground. According to Al Badias website, the plant started production in 2011 and employs 360 people. Fierce clashes have erupted in the area in recent days between Isis, government forces and Syrian rebels. The jihadists reportedly sought to seize control of the nearby Dumeir air base and a power plant but were pushed back. 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 }} At the Hamoda Company for Food and Dairy Products in the West Bank village of Sawahreh, a young man wearing a blue plastic hair covering is hard at work placing strawberry yogurt containers into cartons so that the product will be ready for distribution. It is monotonous but at least it is work, nothing to take for granted in a West Bank economy where unemployment is near 20 per cent. But, according to Hamodas quality-assurance director Hazem Mashaqi, the young mans job is now in danger as are many of the positions among the 110 workers in the plant as a result of a ban imposed by Israel last month on imports of Hamodas milk, yogurt, cheese and salads to nearby East Jerusalem. That is where the company makes close to 50 per cent of sales, according to executive manager Mohammad al-Sous. Recommended Read more IDF soldier charged with manslaughter for shooting unarmed terrorist If the ban is not ended, it will cost many jobs, maybe mine, I cant guess, said Mr Mashaqi, adding that the company is running promotions in the West Bank in a bid to compensate for lost East Jerusalem sales. Hamoda is one of six West Bank dairy and meat producers to have their products turned back at the Beitunya checkpoint near Ramallah the transit point for goods entering Israel on 9 March at the start of the ban. Israel justifies the measure on the grounds that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has failed to provide adequate assurances that the products meet Israeli health standards. Israels agriculture ministry said it had given the PA a number of chances in the past to raise its standards but the body had failed to do so including failing to fill out a questionnaire from the Israeli veterinary services about inspection procedures. Palestinian Authority officials and company executives counter that the health fears are spurious. Rather, they say Israel is interested in asserting its claim that East Jerusalem which Israel occupied in 1967 and annexed in a move rejected by much of the international community is part of Israel and in having Israeli firms take over the market share of their ousted Palestinian counterparts. They want to claim East Jerusalem as part of Israels capital, said Tariq Abu Laban, director-general for marketing in the PA Ministry of Agriculture. To some Israelis, the ban is misguided. Israels Co-ordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, General Yoav Mordechai, has voiced concern that dismissals of workers could enflame tensions in the West Bank. He has been pressing the countrys agriculture ministry to lift the ban, so far without success, according to Haaretz newspaper. 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 Saudi judge has reportedly divorced a pregnant woman from her husband over claims she is of superior origin. Maha al-Tamimi, who is eight months pregnant, pleaded with King Salman bin Abdul Aziz to intervene in a video being spread on social networks in Saudi Arabia. She claimed her uncles filed the lawsuit calling for her divorce because they objected to her husbands background. According to a translation by Emirates 24/7 News, she said: My uncles claimed in court that I married against my fathers wishbut their real reason is that they believe my husband and I do not have compatible family origins. I appeal for the Monarch to intervene to save me and my baby. 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty Relatives told the court near Riyadh that she did not obtain the required permission from her family before marrying but Mrs al-Tamami said her older brother gave his blessing as her father lives with his second wife. Her husband, named by Okaz newspaper as a soldier called Ali al-Qarni, claimed the father had already been convicted for mistreating his wife. He said he had been endured months of threats and intimidation trying to make him divorce her but refused and would fight to preserve his family. Mrs al-Tamimi has vowed never to return to her family, even if she is forced to leave her husband's house. Last year saw Saudi courts issue 17 orders to dissolve marriages over a lack of equal origins, Okaz reported. 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 }} Pope Francis has called for greater compassion towards "imperfect" Catholics, such as those who divorce and remarry. Saying that "no one can be condemned forever", the head of the Catholic Church appeared to suggest that divorcees should be treated on a case-by-case basis rather than completely ruled out of belonging to the Church. While Francis did not say explicitly that people who were divorced could be re-integrated within the Church, he rejected the idea of a "general set of rules" across the board. "No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel," the Pope said in his Amoris Laetitia The Joy of Love treatise. "Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves." Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn shows the document Amoris Laetitia by Pope Francis during a news conference at the Vatican April 8, 2016 (Reuters) Francis seemed to embrace the suggestions of progressives that re-married Catholics should be worked with on a case-by-case basis as to whether they could be re-integrated into the Church. , saying he could "not provide a new set of general rules ... applicable to all cases", but he called for "responsible, personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases". Yet while he said gay people should be respected, he firmly re-stated the Church's position that there are "absolutely no grounds" to equate gay unions to heterosexual marriage. On the topic of heterosexual marriage, the Pope did, however, part with his stricter predecessors by saying the Church needed a "healthy dose of self-criticism" for in the past preaching that procreation was the "almost exclusive" reason for marriage. Rather, he praised the "erotic dimension" of marriage. With regards divorce, the Church currently teaches that divorcees cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sex with their new partner, because their first marriage is still valid in the eyes of the Church and they are seen to be living in an adulterous state of sin. The only way such Catholics can remarry is if they receive an annulment, a religious ruling that their first marriage never existed because of the lack of certain pre-requisites such as psychological maturity or free will. Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Live and let live.' GETTY IMAGES Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Proceed calmly" in life' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Be giving of yourself to others' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Even though many parents work long hours, they must set aside time to play with their children' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Sunday is for family' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Respect and take care of nature' OSSERVATORE ROMANO/AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Stop being negative' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: Respect others' beliefs' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Peace sometimes gives the impression of being quiet, but it is never quiet, peace is always proactive' FP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness AFP/Getty Images Father James Bretzke, professor of moral theology at Boston College, said while Francis did not explicitly give a green light for remarried Catholics to return to communion, "the dots are pretty close together, you can connect them reasonably easily and conclude that he is saying this is a possibility. "If he's not opening the door, he is at least showing you where the key under the mat is." Francis said he understood those conservatives who "prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion" but the Church should be more attentive to the good that can be found "in the midst of human weakness". "The Church turns with love to those who participate in her life in an imperfect manner," he said, including in this category those Catholics who are cohabiting, married civilly or are divorced and remarried. Conservative American Catholic author George Weigel said he did not see an opening to the divorced and remarried but rather "a call for the Church to be creative in integrating people in difficult situations". The document, formally known as an Apostolic Exhortation, followed two gatherings of Catholic bishops, or synods, that discussed family issued in 2014 and 2015. Additional reporting by Reuters For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Governments consultation on scrapping NHS bursaries has been described as scandalous by the head of the National Union of Students (NUS). Making the reference, NUS national president, Megan Dunn, accused the Conservatives of looking only at implementation as opposed to seeking views on whether or not discarding the bursaries is actually the right thing to do. The Government announced on Thursday that it would be carrying out a consultation on how it can successfully implement the changes due to come into effect next year when, from 1 August, new nursing, midwifery, and allied health students will no longer receive NHS bursaries. Instead, the Government has said they will have to gain funding for their tuition fees and living costs through the standard loans system, the Student Loans Company, like other students, which will have to be paid back. The NUS has said the changes will see these students left with over 50,000 of debt and, because of their required 2,300 practice hours, will effectively charge them for working in the NHS. Ms Dunn continued: We believe driving students further into such enormous debt is not the solution and will limit access, rather than widen it. Junior doctors' plea to David Cameron The Government, however, has insisted the new system will provide more nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals for the NHS, as well as a better funding system for health students in England, and a sustainable model for universities. The Government added: It will ensure there are enough health professionals for the NHS while reducing the current reliance on expensive agency staff. This will enable universities to provide up to 10,000 additional nursing, midwifery, and allied health training places by 2020, so more applicants will have the chance to become a health professional. Health minister, Ben Gummer, said the reforms promise much, and added: [They] will widen access to nursing for more students and provide them with more living cost support whilst studying. Changes like this are never easy, but we strongly believe that these policies will be good for students, good for patients, good for universities, and good for our NHS. However, insisting the NUS will pressure the Government to reverse this damaging decision, Ms Dunn said: This proposal will have a particularly negative impact on mature students and women, especially those who become pregnant during their studies. The Governments equality impact assessment fails to properly analyse the impacts the changes will have. In response to the consultation, the NUS, on Friday, announced a national lobby of Parliament on 25 May which will see students from across the country take their concerns directly to their MPs. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Poor Panama. Of all the countries of Central America, this S-shaped spine of mountains and jungles, decorated by a sprinkling of offshore islands, is arguably the most alluring to travellers. The Republica de Panama offers world-class beaches, premier-league wildlife and outstanding trekking, as well as the only agreeable capital city in the region (though, I concede, Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa and Managua hardly comprise testing competition). This is the country that links the Americas. Add to that the big ditch, the canal that connects the worlds two greatest oceans, and who wouldnt want to be on the next plane to Panama City? Look, Emirates made a huge fuss about launching the worlds longest flight, from Dubai to the capital! Oh dear: then the airline made a very small fuss about postponing the flight until next year, amid rumours of poor sales for the new link. Perhaps one reason is that the locals and expatriates in the UAE arent gripped by the notion of a holiday in Panama. Those with long memories may recall the American invasion of the country in 1989, in which General Manuel Noriega was removed from office by US forces. As part of Operation Nifty Package, they played heavy metal music at deafening volume until he emerged from the Vatican embassy, where he had sought sanctuary. For the Pentagon in the Eighties to oust a right-wing military dictator in Latin America, Old Pineapple Face must have been a very nasty piece of work indeed. Even when he was in prison in Florida, Panamas reputation was barely enhanced. I travelled there rather often in the 1990s. Each time the capital had sprouted several more high-rises - money laundering on an industrial scale, I was quietly assured. It helped that the national currency, the balboa, actually turned out to be the US dollar. This was the country where questions were not asked (except once when I walked in from Colombia while skirting around the scarier parts of the Darien Gap with my pal Mick, much to the surprise of the local commandant in the town of Puerto Obaldia. The national motto could be, in the words of John Keats, Silent, upon a peak in Darien. The silence has now been broken. Until last week you and I had not heard of Mossack Fonseca; now we know much about this interesting law firm, its clientele and its methods. And the route-planning team at British Airways is no doubt breathing a huge sigh of relief that it chose San Jose, capital of neighbouring Costa Rica, rather than Panama City as its next long-haul addition from Gatwick. This city - this country - was built on gold, and its position as the shortest crossing point between the oceans. The ruins of Panama Vieja, on the outskirts of the modern capital, formed one end of the transcontinental superhighway along which the riches from South America flowed. The other end is the town of Portobelo, now a fine study in decrepitude. Yet despite its reputation, past and present, as a handy conduit for treasure of dubious provenance, Panama has a heart of gold. Everyone, including el comandante in the town on the edge of the jungle, is welcoming, friendly and keen to help you make the most of your stay. The buses are the brightest and liveliest in Central America, and when they reach the end of their particular routes, the hitch-hiking is excellent: I once rode along the Pan American Highway in the back of a pick-up truck on a mattress of freshly picked grapefruit. The driver told me to take a couple, which I devoured hungrily as an appetiser for the next great Panamanian eating experience - from surf, turf or possibly both. If you happen to be a vegetarian, its possibly not the place, but for everyone else: Panama right now presents a great opportunity to explore without the crowds. Except, possibly, for international investigators enjoying a few days off. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Q I wonder if you can advise on ESTA application. I am flying to New York in May from Bristol Airport to New York, but via Amsterdam airport. On the ESTA do we have mention that we are going Amsterdam? I don''t want to put incorrect details and find there is a problem at the airport. Name withheld A The Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) is basically designed to allow the American authorities to have a good look at the background of prospective visitors before deciding whether to let them board a plane to the US. Among the information you will be asked for are your travel plans. But that is merely to give a broad idea of what you may be planning, rather than setting in stone your intentions. So as far as I am aware, it will not make any difference whether you say you are going via Amsterdam or leave that detail out. And if your plans change (for example you decide to fly via Dublin, or direct from Heathrow) the US Customs and Border Protection people will not mind. Just remember that a valid ESTA is simply permission to fly to America and apply for permission to enter. You will be questioned, fingerprinted and photographed when you arrive - unless you fly in via Dublin, in which case you go through US formalities before you take off for America. Email your travel question to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder 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 }} What a difference six months makes. Last October, David Cameron was at the height of his power as he celebrated his general election victory in his speech to the Conservative Party conference. He set out his ambitious legacy agenda to tackle Britains deep social problems before standing down by 2020, promising an all-out assault on the scourge of poverty; to end racial and sexual discrimination to ensure real equality; and to transform our failing prison system. He has since fleshed out his bucket list in a series of speeches. This weekend, Cameron will address the Tories second largest gathering of the year, their spring conference. The grassroots members will doubtless be loyal. But the atmosphere will be very different. That will not be caused solely by the damaging allegations of hypocrisy on tax avoidance, after Camerons belated admission that he did after all benefit from his fathers offshore investment fund. When Parliament returns from its Easter break on Monday, the unanswered questions will keep coming. The barrage will not be halted by his decision to publish his tax returns - a promise he made in 2012 - raising the question whether he had hoped it would remain in the long grass. Politicians put themselves on a pedestal and must meet higher standards than the rest of us. On the tax issue, the bar is higher for Cameron because of his privileged background. The fact that he was subject to the UK tax regime when he sold his shares in his fathers fund will not limit the damage. It may be unfair, but thats politics. The tax avoidance row is corrosive enough for the Tory brand and Camerons attempt to end its reputation as the party of the rich. But it is not his only headache: before the Panama Papers exploded onto the scene, his legacy agenda was already in deep trouble. Cameron had no alternative but to allow Cabinet ministers the freedom to speak out on Europe in the run-up to Junes referendum. He hoped that he and the ministers campaigning for Brexit would agree to disagree on Europe but would not attack each other on other issues. This has proved a very serious miscalculation. The Tory Outers, who claim angrily that Cameron has tilted the referendum playing field against them, are quite happy to trash the Tory brand if it they think it will help them win. When Iain Duncan Smith quit as Work and Pensions Secretary, he attacked the Tories record on welfare since 2010, saying their all in it together mantra was at risk and suggesting they cared only about Tory voters. David Cameron's biggest controversies Show all 8 1 /8 David Cameron's biggest controversies David Cameron's biggest controversies Pig-gate A book released by Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft alleged that an MP and Oxford contemporary of David Cameron had allegedly seen a photograph of Mr Cameron performing a sex act on a pig while at university. Downing Street did not comment on the allegations and the peer said they could have been a case of mistaken identity David Hartley/REX Shutterstock David Cameron's biggest controversies Swarm of migrants In July 2015 David Cameron referred to refugees coming into Europe from the Middle East and North Africa as a swarm. He was criticised for using the language, which critics said was dehumanising Getty David Cameron's biggest controversies Child tax credits In April 2015 David Cameron was asked whether hed cut child tax credits. No, I dont want to do that, he said, saying that he rejected reports that he would. Shortly after the election the Government unveiled cuts to child tax credits EPA David Cameron's biggest controversies Cycling to work As leader of the opposition David Cameron was regularly photographed cycling to work. In early 2006 he was photographed cycling but with a driver in a car carrying his belongings. It was suggested at the time the cycling was just for show and that having two vehicles on the road instead of one was wasteful Rex David Cameron's biggest controversies Andy Coulson David Cameron employed former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as government communications director from 2010. After stepping down from the post due to coverage of the phone hacking affairs, Mr Coulson was later found guilty of conspiracy to intercept voicemails. He served a short prison sentence AFP David Cameron's biggest controversies His personal windmill Early in his leadership of the Conservative David Cameron made an effort to change the partys image by making eco-friendly gesures. As one of these gestures, the future PM put a wind turbine on his house. However, the turbine later had to be removed after neighbours condemned it as an eyesore and the councils planning committee said it had been put in the wrong place Getty David Cameron's biggest controversies Funeral selfie David Cameron was pictured posing for a selfie with Danish PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Barack Obama at Nelson Mandelas funeral. Some in the press criticised the prime minister for showing in an inappropriately low level of respect for the gravity of the occasion AFP/Getty Images David Cameron's biggest controversies Eating a hotdog with a knife and fork The Prime Minister was pictured eating a hotdog with a knife and fork in the run up to the 2015 general election. He was accused of being posh. I had a very privileged upbringing... I've never tried to hide that, he said Reuters Camerons record on the NHS, the biggest symbol of his Compassionate Conservatism, is called into question by the Outers. These Brexiteers accuse his Government of starving the NHS of funds, claim the EUs single market is threatening patient safety, and exploit the pressures on the NHS to make a dog whistle attack on EU migration. They turn a good news story about the new national living wage into a warning that it will attract more EU migrants. Hardline backbenchers threaten Commons defeats on non-EU issues. Perhaps the most ludicrous claim was Vote Leaves assertion that Downing Street rushed out the Governments leaflet on the referendum being sent to every home to distract the medias attention from the issue of whether the Prime Ministers family money is kept in offshore trusts. It showed the damage the Outers are prepared to inflict on him. Cameron is fighting for his very survival. If the Out camp wins, he will be out too. His understandable focus on the referendum has led to Downing Street taking its eye off other balls. That is the only explanation for ministers' flat-footed response to Tata Steels announcement about selling its British business. Where was the Government's early warning system? Does anyone in Number 10 watch telly? I saw Tatas crucial board meeting in Mumbai being discussed a week before it took place. Again, Camerons legacy goal for the Tories to be the party of working people is undermined by the Outers, who wrongly blame the steel crisis on the EU. Any stick will do. Whacking Cameron on anything helps them, they calculate. This will make it very hard to reunite the Tory family after the referendum whatever the result. Even if Cameron wins, which looks increasingly in doubt to me, he will struggle to repair the damage to him and his project inflicted by his own side. Camerons allies hope the tax affair will not inflict long-term harm, since voters already know he is posh and many believe all politicians are in it for themselves. However, the tax row, the bloody Tory civil war and the threat to steel jobs could all undermine trust in Cameron at the very moment when he is asking voters to trust him on the EU. This toxic combination could repel some swing voters who gave him the benefit of the doubt at last years general election, partly because the alternative was so weak. Voters may see the referendum as a free hit because it wont change the Government. But it could now change our prime minister. 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 }} Who shall doubt 'the secret hid Under Cheops' pyramid' Was that the contractor did Cheops out of several millions? The message of Rudyard Kiplings poem is that corruption is always with us and has not changed much down the ages. There is some truth in this, but degrees of corruption greatly matter, as the Cheops would have found to his cost if he tried to build his pyramid in modern Iraq instead of ancient Egypt. The project would cost him billions rather than millions - and he would be more likely to end up with a hole in the ground than anything resembling a pyramid. Three years ago I was in Baghdad after it had rained heavily, driving for miles through streets that had disappeared under grey-coloured flood water combined with raw sewage. Later I asked Shirouk Abayachi, an advisor to the Ministry of Water Resources, why this was happening and she said that since 2003, $7bn has been spent to build a new sewage system for Baghdad, but either the sewers werent built or they were built very badly. She concluded that corruption is the key to all this. Anybody discussing the Panama Papers and the practices of the law firm Mossack Fonseca should think about the ultimate destination of the $7bn not spent on the Baghdad drainage system. There will be many go-betweens and middle men protecting anyone who profited from this huge sum, but the suspicion must be that a proportion of it will have ended up in offshore financial centres where money is hidden and can be turned into legally held assets. There is no obvious link between the revelations in the Panama Papers, the rise of Islamic State and the wars tearing apart at least nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa. But these three developments are intimately connected as ruling elites, who syphon off wealth into tax havens and foreign property, lose political credibility. No ordinary Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians will fight and die for rulers they detest as swindlers. Crucial to the rise of Isis, al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan is not their own strength and popularity, but the weakness and unpopularity of the governments to which they are opposed. Kipling was right in believing that there has always been corruption, but since the early 1990s corrupt states have often mutated into kleptocracies. Ruling families and the narrow coteries around them have taken a larger and larger share of the economic cake. In Syria since the turn of the century, for instance, the rural population and the urban poor no longer enjoyed the limited benefits they had previously received under an equally harsh but more egalitarian regime. By 2011, President Bashar al-Assads first cousin Rami Makhlouf was reported to be a dominant player in 60 per cent of the Syrian economy and to have a personal worth of $5 billion. In Iraq earlier this year, a financial specialist, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the government of prime minister Haider al-Abadi held files on corrupt individuals, including one politician who has amassed a fortune of $6 billion through corrupt dealings. The danger of citing extreme examples of corruption from exotic and war-ravaged countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria is that these may sound like events happening on another planet. But the political and economic systems in Iraq and Afghanistan were devised under the tutelage of the US and allies like Britain. They were proponents of free market economics which in the West may increase inequality and benefit the wealthy, but in Kabul and Baghdad were a license to steal by anybody with power. World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here Neo-liberal economists have a lot to answer for. A few days after Isis had captured Mosul in June 2014, I was in Baghdad and asked a recently retired four-star Iraqi general why the much larger and better-equipped Iraqi army had been defeated so swiftly and humiliatingly. He replied that the explanation was: Corruption! Corruption! Corruption! He added that this was pervasive and had begun when the US was building a new Iraqi military after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, when the American commanders had insisted on out-sourcing food and other supplies to private contractors. These businessmen and the army officers soon determined that, if the Iraqi government was paying money to feed and equip a battalion of 600 men, but its real strength was only 150, they could pocket the difference. So profitable was this arrangement that by 2014 all officers' jobs were for sale and it cost $200,000 to become a colonel and up to $2m a general in charge of a division. Blatant corruption at the top in Kabul and Baghdad has been frequently reported over the years, though nothing much seems to change. But it is a mistake to imagine that this was simply the outcome of a culture of corruption specific to Afghanistan and Iraq. The most corrupt ministers were appointed and the most crooked contracts signed at a time when US officials were the real decision-makers in Baghdad. For example, the entire military procurement budget of $1.2 billion was effectively stolen in 2004/5 when the Defence Ministry was substantially under US control, raising questions of the competence, or even collusion, of the US authorities. The situation has got worse, not better. I feared seven or eight years ago that Iraq would become like Nigeria, said one former minister in 2013, but in fact it is far worse. He cited as evidence a $1.3bn contract signed by a minister with one foreign company that had only a nominal existence and a second company that was bankrupt. This took place in a country in which one third of the labour force is unemployed, and, if the underemployed are taken into account, the figure rises to over half. The use of offshore financial centres by the moneyed elite in the oil states and much of the rest of the world is not always to avoid taxes which they would not pay if they kept the money at home, but in some cases to conceal what they have stolen and later to legally launder it. Some of this can be done by buying property in places like Baghdad, which explains why property prices in that dangerous city are as high as London. But it is safer and better to buy property in London itself, something that will ultimately require the services of a company like Mossack Fonseca - though these services will be far removed from the original toxic source of the investment. The Panama Papers give insight into the names and mechanisms through which globalised elites hide their wealth and avoid paying tax on it. Commentators now predict that popular disgust with political establishments will benefit radical leaders like Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. What they do not see is that the way in which the detachment of interests of elites from the countries they rule has already produced states that have failed or are failing, or are wracked by conflict and war. 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 process of selling off Tata Groups steelmaking facilities in Port Talbot begins on Monday. At risk are 4,000 jobs at the plant itself. In addition there are some 25,000 workers in the supply chain. If a new owner cannot be found, closure would be a painful wound in Britains manufacturing capacity. Is steel-making in Britain, which would almost disappear if Port Talbot shut up shop, strategic in any sense? People generally answer no. While steel is what is called a foundational product, being essential for many manufacturing and construction activities, it can be purchased freely on world markets. Even British manufacturers of military equipment are content to look abroad for their supplies. Steel for Trident nuclear submarines, for instance, comes from France. People therefore presume that the governments role should be limited to facilitating a deal and to handling the social consequences of a massive reduction in employment if no buyer can be found. Recommended Read more Serious Fraud Office opens criminal investigation into Tata Steel For me, however, this conventional analysis doesnt ring true. It is essentially defeatist. Steelmaking is an important world industry in which Britain could again play a significant role. In 2001 we were the second largest producer in Europe after Germany; but since then Italy, France and Spain have overtaken us. Was that part of some inexorable process that we cannot reverse? I dont believe so. There are three different ways of moving forward worth examining. The first is the restructuring plan drawn up by the management at Port Talbot. By its nature it is likely to be well informed and to demonstrate the art of the possible. The target is to move from heavy losses into profit. It envisages cost savings of some 350 million per annum. These would partly come from the 750 job cuts announced in January. The plan would take two years to implement and would also require new investment. An idea of what this might mean can be drawn from Tatas comment that some 2bn would be required to transform the plant into a producer of high-quality steel for advanced industries. In any case, Tata was not impressed and called the plan unaffordable and risky. Sanjeev Gupta, the founder of the commodities group Liberty House, which already has some steel manufacturing interests in Britain, has a different vision for Port Talbot. He starts from the fact that the country exports the highest level of scrap per capita in the world. We export 10m tonnes of scrap and we consume 10m tonnes of processed steel. That does not make sense. Importing coal and iron ore to produce liquid steel is uneconomic, he says, when scrap can be recycled. And that is what he would want to do at Port Talbot. Gupta told the BBC that any party looking at buying the Tata operations must accept that the biggest problem is the blast furnace. He added: They are importing all the raw material to smelt steel. We feel we have an alternative suggestion which is to still make hot metal but to make it from local raw material rather than imported raw material. His plans for South Wales involved a change of technology rather than ending liquid steelmaking. This would, though, require massive investment. There is one more place to look in seeking a solution to the Port Talbot crisis and that is Detroit in 2009. For the giant General Motors (GM) was rescued from collapse by reorganising itself financially through the bankruptcy courts with the willing assistance of the US Government. According to a contemporary report in a trade journal, GM was split into two entities: a good GM, which included the core Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick brands and the facilities to support those divisions; and a bad GM, comprising redundant/unprofitable plants. The goal of the bankruptcy process was for the existing, overburdened automaker to turn over its best assets to a less debt-riddled New GM. The New GM was expected to emerge from court protection in 6090 days as a leaner, more agile company with fewer brands, dealers, and long-term obligations. The leftover assets were to be sold off or shut down entirely. The US Treasury provided $30bn financing and, along with the major trades union, ended up with a significant shareholding in the good GM. Here, then, are three case studies relevant to the future of Port Talbot. Someone must mould them together into a workable plan. That person could be a senior manager at Port Talbot, or Mr. Gupta, or the Secretary of State for Business, Sajid Javid. Who will take up the challenge? Traders work at their desks in front of the German share price index, DAX board, at the stock exchange in Frankfurt European equities ended lower yesterday, with financial shares losing ground and stocks such as Skanska and Daimler slumping after trading without the attraction of their latest dividend payouts. European banks fell 2.2pc amid talk of more lay-offs and cutbacks planned by Europe's major lenders as they struggle with zero rates. The European Central Bank's willingness to ease monetary policy further, according to three top officials including its president, also soured sentiment. Italian banks Unicredit, BMPS, Banco Popolare and UBI Banca fell by between 5.9pc to 8.1pc. "If bank stocks are a leading indicator then broader markets are in for a large pullback," said Jasper Lawler, analyst at CMC Markets. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 ended 0.8pc lower after hitting a one-month low earlier in the session. The index, down 10pc so far this year, remained on track for its fourth straight week of losses. In Ireland, the ISEQ Overall Index shed 0.73pc to 6,157.08. Hotel group Dalata slumped 3.6pc to 4.63, while Green REIT lost 2pc to 1.38. Bank of Ireland was 1.6pc lower at 24 cent. Smurfit Kappa rose 1.68pc to 22.40. The UK's FTSE-100 dipped 0.4pc. France's CAC-40 was 0.9pc lower and Germany's DAX lost 1pc. German carmaker Daimler fell 4.8pc, dragging the sector index down to end 2.5pc weaker. Among other companies losing the right to the next payout were Skanska, which fell 8.7pc, making the stock the biggest faller on the FTSEurofirst, and Pearson, which slipped 5pc. STMicroelectronics gained 4.3pc, with some brokers linking the surge to the strong earnings update from its client Samsung. Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA Chief Executive Mark Branson talks to the media during a news conference in Bern, Switzerland April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich Banking watchdogs across Europe have begun checking whether lenders have ties to a massive document leak from Panama that showed how offshore companies are used to stash clients' wealth. Switzerland's financial watchdog FINMA said on Thursday that banks must clamp down on money laundering, as the Geneva prosecutor opened a criminal probe. Four decades of documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies and has offices in Zurich and Geneva, showed widespread use of those instruments by global banks and triggered investigations across the world. "Do I think we are where we should be in fighting misuse in the financial system? No," FINMA Chief Executive Mark Branson told Reuters following its annual news conference. "We think in some ways the risks in Switzerland have risen, not fallen, and that there is more that can be done. We don't want to see large scandals involving Swiss banks." Switzerland is the world's biggest international wealth management center with around $2.5 trillion in assets and has taken on more wealth of late from emerging markets, from which it is harder determine the origin of assets, Branson said. Britain's Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday it has written to 20 banks and other financial firms, giving them until April 15 to spell out any involvement they have with the "Panama Papers". HSBC, Britain's biggest bank and its affiliates created more than 2,300 shell companies with Mossack Fonseca, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. HSBC has dismissed suggestions it used offshore structures to help clients cheat on their taxes. Also on Thursday, France's ACPR financial regulator said it has told French banks to hand over extra information about their business ties with tax havens. German regulator BaFin is likewise probing the role of Germany's banks, a source told Reuters on Monday. Watchdogs in Sweden, Netherlands and Austria said earlier this week that they were looking into banks named in the papers. The chief executive of Austria's Hypo Landesbank Vorarlberg became one of the first top bankers to quit over reports based on the data leak on Thursday, though he denies his bank violated any laws or sanctions. SWISS BANKS The "Panama Papers" investigation has exposed financial arrangements of public figures including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain, Iceland and Pakistan, and the president of Ukraine. No US banks are among the 10 banks named as the biggest creators of offshore companies for clients in the Panama Papers. But US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown on Thursday urged the Treasury Department to investigate whether any US or US-linked entity was involved with Mossack Fonseca. "As the primary agency charged with protecting the integrity of the US financial system and enforcing our laws against money laundering and terrorist financing, we strongly urge the Treasury Department to conduct its own inquiry into Mossack Fonsecas activities and its clients, the senators, both Democrats, wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. The Treasury Department would not comment specifically on the findings in the documents but a spokeswoman said that "the US government intently focuses on investigating possible illicit activity, including violations of US tax laws or sanctions, using all sources of information, both public and non-public." "If there has been any violation of US tax law or sanctions evasion, we will take appropriate action consistent with the national security and foreign policy of the United States," she said. The senators, both members of the Senate Banking Committee and both proponents of stronger financial regulation, said they were concerned "this firm may have facilitated money laundering or terrorist financing with sanctioned persons or entities." Branches of Swiss lenders including UBS and Credit Suisse were mentioned in the leaked documents as being among the main banks that requested offshore companies for clients. Both banks have denied wrongdoing in connection with the practice. Swiss financial institutions -- a focal point of efforts by European governments to crack down on tax avoidance -- trailed only Hong Kong in having used Mossack Fonseca, the reports have said. Branson said FINMA would first check for signs of illegal activity before deciding whether to launch an investigation linked to the Panama Papers. There were a few indications that they may be relevant in Switzerland, Branson said. Geneva's prosecutor also said on Thursday he had launched a criminal inquiry in connection with leaks that revealed many offshore companies set up by lawyers and institutions in the Swiss lakeside city and financial center. "Some information has been made public this week and the prosecutors office wanted to verify if this information showed anything that was against the law," a spokesman for the prosecutor said. One prominent Geneva lawyer helped set up 136 Panama offshore companies, Swiss television has reported. "Yes, it is an industry with a legal dimension. I have been in this business for 30 years and this activity was sought after by foreign nationals. There is nothing illegal, illicit or perception of criminality to it," another Geneva lawyer, Francois Canonica, said on Swiss television on Wednesday night. Canonica, a former head of the Geneva bar association, referred to a period after the 1981 election of French President Francois Mitterrand, which he said drove French fearful of nationalization to place their money in offshore Swiss accounts. Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam said on Tuesday his bank was after only lawful assets. UBS said on Monday it conducted its business in full compliance with applicable law and regulations and that it had no interest in funds that are not taxed or derived from unlawful activities. Branson said a number of Swiss banks were implicated in a corruption scandal surrounding Brazil's Petrobras and suspicious cash flows linked to the Malaysian sovereign fund 1MDB. FINMA has launched four enforcement proceedings against institutions in the 1MDB case and three over Petrobras. Branson said: "There are concrete indications that the measures those banks had in place to combat money laundering were inadequate." The board of directors overseeing the Central Bank has questioned its proposed response to the damning findings of the Banking Inquiry. The Commission, or board, that oversees the Central Bank of Ireland is made up mainly of outsiders including the Secretary General of the Department of Finance, Derek Moran, and the former head of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) John Fitzgerald, along with the bank's own most senior officials like Governor Philip Lane. The Commission pushed officials at the bank to come up with a less technical and less narrow response to question marks raised over the bank's work in the period before the crash, at a meeting February. The Central Bank Commission held its regular monthly meeting on February 25, where the response to the Banking Inquiry was just one of a number of items on the agenda, according to minutes of the event published yesterday. Other issues raised included insurance and the high cost of Irish mortgages, the minutes show. In January this year the report of the all-party Oireachtas Banking Inquiry into the crash included sharp criticism of regulators among its key findings. A lack of action during the boom directly contributed to the scale of the crisis, according to the report. The Banking Inquiry found that both the Central Bank and Financial Regulator were aware as early as 2003 that Irish banks had become increasingly reliant on the property sector, but failed to intervene decisively. The inaction of supervisors meant lenders were allowed to breach lending limits on property with impunity, the report found. And it found there was also no evidence that the Central Bank had any robust research or analysis to back up its assertion that there would be a "soft landing" in the property market. A summary of the Central Bank staff's response to some of the recommendations in the report was provided to the Commission at the February meeting, along with drafts of letters prepared for both the Department of Finance and the European Central Bank on foot of the Inquiry findings. It appears however that a number of members of the Commission were not satisfied by the response to the Banking Inquiry - including on the basis that it was too narrow and too technical. "In the discussion that followed, a number of members noted that the staff response was technical in nature and, while this satisfied the particular purpose, the need for a separate and broader overview of issues arising from the Banking Inquiry and previous related reports on the crisis would be useful," the meeting minutes state. The record does not say which or how many members of the Commission raised concerns. It does show that some amendments to the letters addressed to the Department of Finance and the ECB were also suggested at the meeting. Central Bank Governor Philip Lane said that the Commission would return to the response to the Inquiry at a later date. An aerial view of the proposed new runway due to open in 2020. The 3,110 metre runway will be built 1.6km north of the existing main runway. Photo: /PA Dublin Airport chiefs want to challenge orders to limit night-time flights when a second runway opens in 2020. Aviation bosses are now examining how to overturn planning restrictions on take-offs and landings between 11pm and 7am. The DAA, the semi-state company that controls Dublin and Cork Airports, said it plans to have the new parallel runway operational in 2020 as passenger numbers at the capital's airport soar. The project is expected to support 1,200 construction jobs. Passenger charges could also rise to meet the new runway cost. Dublin Airport handled a record of more than 25 million passengers last year, which was 15pc more than it did in 2014. It is one of Europe's busiest, and fastest-growing airports. The runway project had been on hold since 2007, when it was given the go-ahead by An Bord Pleanala, as the economic crisis hit and air passenger travel slumped before recovering. About a dozen local action groups, schools and individuals had lodged objections to the runway plan. The DAA previously pledged to soundproof schools and buy some existing houses close to the airport if pre-determined noise levels were consistently breached over a two-year period after runway construction. It plans to rent out houses it buys. "We are very conscious of balancing the national and business needs with those of our local communities and we will continue to work closely with our neighbours in relation to this project," DAA chief executive Kevin Toland said. When 10-year permission for the 3,110-metre long runway was originally granted, two specific conditions were introduced that mean the new runway can't be used between 11pm and 7am; and that the total number of night-time flights at the airport cannot exceed 65 between 11pm and 7am once the new runway is built. Dublin Airport already operates more flights than this during those hours, which include the busiest time for departures, and one of the busiest times for arrivals. Onerous Mr Toland described those two conditions as especially onerous - and said that they would "severely reduce the future operational capacity of the airport at key periods". "This has implications on our ability to support future traffic growth at the airport and we are looking at how this can be addressed," he said, adding he does not foresee hurdles in successfully addressing the conditions. In 2008, the DAA sought to amend the two conditions, which it argued at the time would "cause delays and inconvenience for airlines and passengers". It had sought to have the changes introduced by arguing that the runway project was a "strategic infrastructure development" under the 2006 Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act. But An Bord Pleanala noted the planning application for the runway had been made prior to the act being introduced. As such, it told the DAA that it would have to ask Fingal County Council, which originally granted the planning permission for the runway, to vary any conditions that had been imposed. Yesterday, the DAA said that the new North Runway development has the potential to open up connectivity to a range of long-haul destinations. It could support a further 31,000 new jobs over the next two decades, it claimed. Aer Lingus and Ryanair - Dublin Airport's two biggest customers - have both broadly welcomed the runway plan. But Aer Lingus said maximum value should also be extracted from existing investments. Ryanair executive Kenny Jacobs said the airline wanted the project cost to be cut to nearer 250m. Ireland could benefit from increased flexibility and discretion around the VAT rates it can apply as the European Commission bids to crack down on VAT fraud. As part of a new action plan for VAT reform the Commission is looking to reboot the existing system, which was implemented as a transitional measure in 1993. The Commission said the current system needs to be modernised to deal with today's global mobile economy. Economic affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici said it is time to close the "VAT Gap". That's a reference to the difference between the amount of VAT actually collected and the amount that is supposed to be raised. "VAT is a major source of tax revenue for EU member states, yet we face a staggering fiscal gap," he said. "The VAT revenues collected are 170bn short of what they should be. This is a huge waste of money that could be invested on growth and jobs." The increased power that could be granted to the State could be used to reduce the VAT rate on housebuilding, according to Grant Thornton tax partner Jarlath O'Keefe. "Currently the rate of VAT on building houses is charged at 13.5pc and the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) would look for the lower 9pc rate that is being charged in the hospitality sector. "The real reason that hasn't been introduced is that it would be difficult to get over the hurdle of EU legislation," However, Mr O'Keefe said that if the VAT action plan is brought in the newly acquired discretionary power could be used to bring the rate down. It is estimated that around 50bn is lost each year to VAT fraud across the EU. The Commission says 40bn of this can be cut out by the plan, with all proposals on reform due to be presented to the European Parliament by the end of 2017. Carousel fraud, which involves regaining VAT from newly imported goods within the EU, is one of the most prominent forms of VAT fraud in the EU. Another element of the new plan will look to reduce the amount of paperwork that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will have to complete on their tax returns. The Commission is looking to simplify VAT rules for e-commerce in order to make life easier for SMEs. "The administrative burden for small businesses is high and technical innovation poses new challenges for VAT collection," said the Commission's vice president for Euro dialogue, Valdis Dombrovskis. Support being offered to SMEs in terms of reform is being used to level the playing field with non-EU firms. The Commission said EU companies are at a "competitive disadvantage" because non-EU traders can import VAT-free goods to the Union. Jarlath O'Keefe believes the new plan will be met with little to no opposition as it is granting extra autonomy to governments as VAT is gradually moved to a model of charging in the region of consumption, as opposed to country of origin. "The ultimate aim is that if you were buying products or services that the same VAT rules would apply, I guess you might have differences in terms of rates," Mr O'Keefe said. The new plan was created after prompting from both the European Council and the Parliament. It has been touted for introduction in 2017, however previous plans around financial services have tended to suffer delays. Mall property 001.jpg A representative of developer Morrison's & Associates told Gautier officials this week they are "still confident" they will build a new open-air mall on the site of the former Singing River Mall. (Warren Kulo/The Mississippi Press) GAUTIER, Mississippi -- A representative of Morrison's & Associates -- owners of the former Singing River Mall property -- told Gautier city officials this week they are "still confident" they will redevelop the property with an open-air mall as originally planned. "It's a slow process and I know a lot of people are frustrated," developer Melton Redding said at Tuesday's Gautier City Council meeting. "We've got a huge investment in this -- over $6 million dollars. "That may seem insane to you, given that we don't own anything that's generating revenue right now. It's seems insane to us, too -- but we're not going anywhere." Singing River Mall closed in October 2013 and demolition began in February 2014. Only the Belk store remains and continues to operate. Redding explained Belk owns their building and adjacent parking lot, although part of their contract calls for Morrison's to provide maintenance. When plans for the new open-air mall were originally announced, they called for a $90 million, 380,000 square foot facility to be constructed, along with an adjacent Walmart Supercenter. Redding said Tuesday they are moving forward with that plan. "We have the capital to do this," he said. "We'd give the property back to the bank if we didn't think it would happen. We're not trying to go to Plan B. It's still Plan A for us." Redding said Morrison's has retailers under contract for the new mall, but explained divulging who those tenants are is not a good business practice, given the competitive nature of retail stores. Redding was hesitant to offer a time frame in which construction of the new mall might begin, but ultimately acquiesced. "If we can continue with what we're doing right now -- the retailers we have under contract take about a year to do their due diligence," he said. "So my rough guess would be that construction could begin by the end of 2017." He also acknowledged Morrison's needed to do a better job of maintaining the vacant parking lot, which is becoming overgrown with weeds. Morrison's is spending about $48,00 a month on the mall property, between interest fees, maintenance and taxes and interest on the original note, Redding said. THE High Court has confirmed examinership for troubled exploration company Petroceltic and two related companies. There was no opposition to the application, brought by minority shareholder Worldview which earlier this week acquired further debts of Petroceltic. Rossa Fanning BL, for Petroceltic, said the petition was presented last month in "somewhat unusual circumstances" but his client, which acted appropriately at all times, was supporting examinership. Counsel said cricticism in the petition of the present management of the company were "without justification" for reasons including management could not be held responsible for the collapse in the price of oil. His side had not sought to respond to that criticism as that "would serve no purpose" but the criticism was not accepted, Mr Fanning said. Mr Justice Brian McGovern was told two secured lenders of Petroceltic, NBSA Ltd and Standard Chartered Bank, owed $230m, who previously expressed concerns about some issues arising from the petition, were not pursuing those concerns. The lenders had sold their interest in the relevant loans to Worldview, the court heard. Paul Gallagher SC, for Worldview, said it had in affidavits addressed the relevant concerns. These included claims of a want of good faith in bringing the petition arising from the fact another Worldview entity, Sunny Hill, had made an offer for Petroceltic. That offer, along with any other offers, would be considered by the examiner, he said. Gavin Simons, solicitor for Elbrus Capital (Cayman) Ltd, a fund based in the Cayman Islands to which Worldview has sold debts of Petroceltic, said it was supporting the petition. In court documents, it was stated that, under transfer agreements, Worldview, Elbrus Capital Cayman and the minority lenders - NBSA and Standard Chartered Bank - will all be lenders of record under a common terms agreement (CTA). Therefore, it was also stated, secured creditors of Petroceltic and other companies in the Petroceltic group in respect of sums outstanding under the agreement. The amount of the transfer also means Elbrus Capital Cayman's economic interests under the CTA are greaster than those of the minority lenders, meaning no collective action on behalf of the lenders without consent of Elbrus Capital Cayman, it was also stated. The court also heard there was no opposition to examinership from the Revenue Commissioners. The judge was also told an independent expert's report expressed the view Petroceltic has a reasonable prospect of survival as a going concern provided certain conditions, including securing investor funding and approval of a scheme of arrangement, are met. Having heard the parties, the judge said he was satisfied to confirm Michael McAteer, of Grant Thornton, as examiner. The petition was brought by Worldview EHS International Master Fund, with registered offices in the Cayman Islands, seeking protection for Petroceltic International plc and related companies, Petroceltic Investments Ltd and Petroceltic Ain Tsila Ltd. Petroceltic employs 13 staff at its Dublin headquarters and 128 others in offices in several countries. The court agreed to extend protection to May 12 as Mr McAteer wanted an extension of time to pursue and finalise an investment agreement and survival proposals. Australian contractor management firm CXC Corporate Services and US hardware firm Pure Storage both established new hubs in Dublin yesterday, creating 48 jobs. CXC is to create 30 new jobs across its operations, multi-lingual sales, marketing and support sectors at its new Smithfield office over the next three years. The company, which also deals in compliance and risk mitigation, recently agreed a partnership with on-demand sourcing platform Elevate Direct that will be supported from Ireland. CXC Corporate Services managing director Connor Heaney said Dublin is "perfectly positioned" between its two major growth markets, the US and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). "The talent pool available to us in Ireland plus the ease of access it affords to the US and EMEA were key drivers in our decision to locate here," he said. Meanwhile, Pure Storage is looking to double its Irish workforce to 36 over the next 12 months after establishing its first major support centre outside the US. The Dublin hub will provide technical expertise to the EMEA region with its new staff equipped with 13 different languages. "We have purposely hired, and are continuing to hire, local talent to help the local economy and to reinforce Ireland's position as a European tech hub," Pure Storage EMEA vice president James Petter said. Both announcements were supported by IDA Ireland, which is targeting Australian firms. "The IDA markets Ireland as a location for global companies from across the world to gain access to these [US and European[ markets," IDA chief executive Martin Shanahan said. Jobs Minister Richard Bruton said the new roles at Pure Storage are good news for the Irish tech sector and highlighted the importance of the Australian market to new jobs in Ireland. "Technology is a key sector which we have targeted as part of our Action Plan for Jobs, and it has made a major contribution to the jobs growth we have seen in recent years," Mr Bruton said. Advice from our property expert on the insurance implications of when your house is idle and the implications of one partner previously owning a property for your first-time buyers status. Question: Due to a work placement abroad, I'm moving to the United States for six months, possibly longer. My company is paying for my accommodation there and as a result, I don't want/need to let my house out. I will return a couple of times over that period and want to be able to use it. My brother has said he will check for post etc while I'm away. Is it necessary to inform my insurance company of my arrangement and if so, is there likely to be an extra premium? Sinead replies: It's a very good idea to let them know. Most house insurance policies have an 'unoccupancy' clause, that is, a standard period where it's okay to leave the house vacant and still be insured, for when you're on holidays for example. Typically it's just 30 days, however, and you may run into trouble otherwise. Brian McNelis of the Irish Brokers Association says: "After the 30 days the insurer will impose certain conditions, which you need to be aware of, for example, a requirement to switch water and electricity off at the mains. As you're going to be absent for an extended period, you are essentially going to be requesting an extension of the 30 day unoccupancy clause from your insurer, so there will be a charge or you may require a different household insurance product altogether, which may involve a different premium depending on the risk features." Typically, an insurer would be concerned about the increase of risk for break in, escape of water or the possibility of fire when a house is unattended and a possible delay in making a claim given your absence - and that's what they're pricing for. Better safe than sorry. Question: My fiance and I hope to buy a house toward the end of the year - we are getting married in 2017. I've only ever rented but he did part-own a house in the UK about 10 years ago with a previous partner. This was sold within 18 months and he didn't make a profit on it and there's no mortgage outstanding. My question is, are we considered first-time buyers for tax relief and the house deposit requirements? Sinead replies: I'm unclear on your query regarding mortgage interest tax relief. This is no longer available on properties bought after 31 December 2012 and, in any event, the relief is being abolished completely in 2017. Stamp duty is 1pc on residential properties valued up to 1m and payable by all buyers. A first-time buyer is normally defined as someone who has never owned a property at home or abroad at any time, so technically you don't fit the bill and would therefore be subject to the full 20pc deposit requirement, says Bob Quinn from The Money Advisers who adds he has serious reservations about the Central Bank rules. "Many would-be home owners are precluded from buying because of the vast sums required to do so. "A non-first-time buyer needs accessible savings of somewhere in the region of 75,000 available to buy a 350,000 house. We are witnessing first hand a dysfunctional housing market and the Central Bank requirements operating in isolation are having negative repercussions for many families." That said, my view is banks underwrite based on criteria to do with income, indebtedness, loan-to-value ratio etc. In your case, the fact that there was a previous mortgage, which no longer has a bearing on any of this, means you, and they, may consider it irrelevant, but they cannot ignore it if disclosed. The question you must ask is whether a sin of omission is a sin of commission? I'll leave that one to you. One of the teasers being discussed in the consultations to form a new Government is some form of State scheme to support first-time buyers. It might well run along the lines of the UK's Help-to-Buy initiative, which would be welcomed by beleaguered house hunters at their wits' end with the Central Bank's strict deposit requirements. The way it works is that the borrower puts up a five per cent cash deposit. The State gives an equity loan of up to 20pc and the balance (75pc) is mortgaged in the normal way with a bank. For a house valued at 200,000 it would see 10,000 coming from the buyer, 40,000 from the Government and 150,000 on mortgage. The repayment for the State loan is interest free for five years, then charged at 1.75pc pa with slight increases, with the borrower repaying the full 20pc on the sale of the house (at its then market value) or after 25 years - whichever comes first. So, if the house sells for (or is valued at say, 220,000, the repayment is 44,000). There are sensible rules: no buy to lets, no sub-letting, no trader-uppers and the maximum total borrowing can't exceed 600,000. For Londoners, the equity loan can be up to 40pc, reflecting the huge gap between the capital and rest of the country prices. It also only applies to new builds, rather than second hand. Yes, it's expensive. Underwriting it is expensive, but doing nothing is also expensive. Time for creative solutions. The Ryan review One of the teasers being discussed in the consultations to form a new Government is some form of State scheme to support first-time buyers. It might well run along the lines of the UK's Help-to-Buy initiative, which would be welcomed by beleaguered house hunters at their wits' end with the Central Bank's strict deposit requirements. The way it works is that the borrower puts up a five per cent cash deposit. The State gives an equity loan of up to 20pc and the balance (75pc) is mortgaged in the normal way with a bank. For a house valued at 200,000 it would see 10,000 coming from the buyer, 40,000 from the Government and 150,000 on mortgage. The repayment for the State loan is interest free for five years, then charged at 1.75pc pa with slight increases, with the borrower repaying the full 20pc on the sale of the house (at its then market value) or after 25 years - whichever comes first. So, if the house sells for (or is valued at say, 220,000, the repayment is 44,000). There are sensible rules: no buy to lets, no sub-letting, no trader-uppers and the maximum total borrowing can't exceed 600,000. For Londoners, the equity loan can be up to 40pc, reflecting the huge gap between the capital and rest of the country prices. It also only applies to new builds, rather than second hand. Yes, it's expensive. Underwriting it is expensive, but doing nothing is also expensive. Time for creative solutions. The worlds biggest drone company has chosen Donegal as one of two European locations to test drones for emergency services. DJI, which makes the best-selling Phantom and Inspire ranges of drones, announced an official partnership with the European Emergency Number Association (Eena) that will try to integrate the use of drones into first-response missions. Donegal Mountain Rescue Team is currently using the software while the Greater Copenhagen Fire Department was also selected. The team in Ireland is already using advanced software applications to help search and rescue missions and the focus will be to improve real-time networking techniques and crowd-sourcing capabilities, said a statement from the two organisations. Read More A spokesman said that the drone-maker and Eena expect to gain deeper understanding of how aerial technology best adds value to emergency-service providers in different scenarios, environments and conditions. Read More Eena deputy executive director Tony O'Brien said his organisation is excited to partner with DJI to bring its expertise and latest technology to the NGO's members. "Eena has a unique position to observe how aerial technology has the potential to be implemented to support first-responder services, he said. With this program, we seek to better understand how challenges in terms of logistics and data-analysis and integration can be overcome to fully realise the benefits of drones in emergency and humanitarian crisis situations. Brussels-based Eena was established in 1999 as a non-governmental organisation and serves as a discussion platform for emergency services, public authorities, researchers, associations and solution providers with the aim of improving emergency response situations. The joint DJI-Eena program will provide carefully selected teams of pilots in Europe with the latest aerial-technology equipment, including DJI's ready-to-fly Phantom and Inspire drones, its M100 platform and Zenmuse XT thermal-imaging system. Throughout the program, selected teams will receive hands-on training, support and guidance on application-development using DJI's software development kit. A spokesman said that at the program's end, Eena and DJI will share insights and best practices with the broader international emergency-response community to promote the integration of drones in emergency situations. "With this partnership, we hope to demonstrate the power of aerial systems in first response missions," said Romeo Durscher, DJI's director of education. "Drones are transforming the way first response and civil protection missions operate by not only helping commanders make faster, smarter and better informed decisions, but also by providing first responders with more detailed information from an aerial perspective. The technology is easy to deploy and can be used in dangerous situations without risking pilots' lives. This ultimately saves lives and property." Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 6 is tipped to follow in the footsteps of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge by being waterproof. Samsung is expected to release a new phablet, the Galaxy Note 6, this year and the latest rumour is that it will be waterproof. It's being reported that the Galaxy Note 6 will feature an IP68-rated design, meaning you'll be able to submerge it in up to 1.5m of water for half an hour. Samsung's Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge brought waterproof technology back to the Galaxy range, so it wouldn't be too surprising to see the Note 6 follow suit. Meanwhile, a Samsung fansite spotted that the company is importing new "iris camera" modules into India for research and development. It's as yet unclear if this eye-scanning technology will make its way into the Galaxy Note 6. Other rumours indicate that the Galaxy Note 6 will feature a 5.8-inch display, a whopping 6GB RAM, and run Android 7.0 N. RYANAIR has halted over 108 flights to and from Italy and within the country as a result of an air traffic strike in the country. "All affected customers have been contacted by email and SMS text message and advised of their options of a full refund, or rebooking on to the next available flight, or onto an alternative route," Ryanair said. We sincerely apologise to all customers disrupted by these unjustified strikes the fifth such ATC strike in the last three weeks by ATC unions who are holding European consumers to ransom. The airline added that it was calling on the Italian Government and European Commission to act to prevent any further ATC strikes and disruptions. We encourage all customers to sign our online petition, Keep Europes Skies Open which we will present to the EU Commission and the EU Parliament to force them to finally take action to protect consumers from these unjustified ATC strike disruptions. It has been a rapid rise for singer/songwriter Gavin James and he's capping off an incredible year with a headline show at Dublin's 3Arena. The star will take to the stage at the iconic venue on Friday December 9 for his only headline Dublin show of 2016. Having signed to a major label in January, James has toured the world and traversed the US chat show circuit on the back of his hugely successful Live at Whelan's album. The artist supported Ed Sheeran at his two Croke Park gigs and opened for Sam Smith across the US as well as Taylor Swift at Hyde Park. This year is set to be just as jam-packed with three sold out dates at the Olympia and the global release of his debut Bitter Pill. Tickets for Gavin James are on sale at 9am on Friday 15th April. 2016: From the Irish RM to Father Ted, via Ballykissangel, Ireland is often portrayed as a backwater where everyone has a kind word for the padre. Red Rock will challenge that With its urban grit, steamy liaisons and murky morality, TV3's Red Rock is about as far removed as possible from stereotypically quaint portrayals of Ireland on the small screen. But this is an aspect of the country viewers in the UK are going to see up close following news that the spiky soap opera has been snapped up by the BBC for 500,000 and is to become a centre-piece of the broadcaster's daytime schedules. Those in the UK who continue to perceive Ireland as a land of priests, sheep and holy stones in need of blessing are to receive the rudest of awakenings. What will British audiences make of such a hard-hitting portrait of modern Ireland you wonder? After all, Red Rock's gritty, warts 'n' all depiction of the country is in sharp contrast to age-old presentations of the "four green fields" audiences across the water are so used to. Even today, Ireland has tended to be painted as rural, remote and religious - a place far removed from the rough and tumble of modernity (see the recent BBC travelogue Ireland With Simon Reeve). Red Rock pushes against everything Ireland has stood for on British TV. The curse of cliche has haunted even productions at least part-originating in this country. From the Irish R.M. to Father Ted, via Ballykissangel, in the popular overseas imagination Ireland is a boggy backwater where time trickles by and everyone has a kind word for the local padre. There are exceptions, but these either tend to be set in the North (recent serial killer drama The Fall) or entirely ignored by non-Irish audiences (Amber, Love/Hate). Thus Red Rock faces a two-part challenge: it must carve out space in a market far more competitive than Ireland while at the same time demolishing deeply ingrained perceptions. Before gnashing our teeth too loudly it should be remembered that, to a degree, we have only ourselves to blame. When Ireland is painted as a twee otherworld, an Irishman is invariably the one wielding the brush. For all its comedic punch, there is an argument that Father Ted for instance contributed to the cliche of Ireland as wacky alternate universe. Then there was Ballykissangel, a cult BBC show created by Kieran Prendeville, born in the UK to an Irish family and educated at exclusive Clongowes Wood in Kildare. Here again, whimsy was never far from the surface. Though ostensibly set in the nineties, it gave us rural Wicklow as cousin once removed from the Connemara of John Forde's The Quiet Man. There were toothless old men, feisty peasant girls, a priest who commanded universal respect. To British viewers it may have felt like a scenic detour across the Irish Sea but to those watching here, Ballykissangel was more like a tumble 30 years back in time. Red Rock is very different. Set in a fictional seaside Dublin suburb loosely based on Dun Laoghaire and Malahide, it captures modern Ireland at its messiest and murkiest. It is grim and gritty - and, with over 100,000 tuning in to each episode this is a formula Irish audiences evidently find irresistible. The show's success represents a considerable vindication for TV3. When, in early 2014, it became clear it would lose the rights to the ratings juggernaut that is Coronation Street to newcomer UTV Ireland, the broadcaster decided the smartest strategy was to come out fighting. It would treat the departure of Corrie as an opportunity, rather than a fatal blow. To that end, Gareth Philips, a veteran of British soaps (including, ironically, Coronation Street), was hired to create a series that was plausibly dark and melodramatic - a soap with teeth. "Red Rock is pitched as a mainstream show that still feels perhaps edgier and set more in the [real] world," he told this writer when I visited the set last year. "The problem with contemporary soaps is that they feel slightly removed from reality perhaps." When Red Rock was unveiled, the general assumption was that TV3 was in part responding to the success of RTE's scorched earth gangster romp Love/Hate. The new show had cops, robbers and a moody visual language that owed more to Scandinavian noir than Fair City. "Red Rock is pitched as a mainstream show that perhaps feels a bit edgier," Philips said at the time. "Love/Hate was very true to life. And what we are doing is true to life in the context of our audience. The time slot dictates what kind of show you are going to make. We're aiming for a soap audience.Red Rock has to be its own beast." Video of the Day If Red Rock does find an audience in the UK, the tremendous irony will be that it will have at last eclipsed Love/Hate. That series was bought by Britain's Channel 5 but proved a flop with viewers who had little interest in watching inner-city gangsters with pungent Dublin accents put bullet holes in one another. As it happens, there have been several recent attempts to introduce British audiences to television more reflective of the real Ireland. None has fared well. Missing kid mystery Amber was screened on BBC4 to thundering indifference (those who did watch all the way through were as frustrated as Irish viewers with the ambivalent end). In many other cases, the UK has simply no interest at all in Irish drama. There were, for instance, no British takers for RTE's big-budget Haughey biopic or this year's Rebellion, its sweeping, albeit deeply flawed, Easter Rising retelling. Red Rock is different in so far as little of the show's charms are culturally specific. It is about warring families, good people doing bad things and the degree to which we are willing to ignore evil in our midst if it means a quiet life. These are experiences anyone can empathise with - whether they live in Ballydehob or Bolton. If Red Rock succeeds in bringing a down-tempo vision of Ireland to the UK it may be for the very reason that it sets Irishness to one side and focuses on telling a cracking yarn. N02667 The Choctaw Tribe's history is an integral part of Mississippi's path to statehood. In this 1908 photo taken by Mark Raymond Harrington, a group of Choctaw men, young women and a young girl posed outdoors probably at a stick ball game. The photo is part of the Mississippi Choctaw Collection and was probably taken in Neshoba or Scott County, Mississippi. ( ) The Jackson County History and Genealogy Society and Pascagoula Public Library are already poised for next year's bicentennial celebration of Mississippi statehood with its April program called "From Indians to Statehood" with Edmond Boudreaux. Noted in the field of Coastal history, Boudreaux has researched in every nook and cranny between Bay St. Louis to Pascagoula to discover the background, heritage, legends and lore of our history. Edmond Boudreaux (Courtesy photo) He has written several books on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and its history published by The History Press and The Donning Company. Raised on Biloxi's Point where many of his relatives and friends worked in Biloxi's seafood industry, he is a 1967 graduate of Notre Dame High School in Biloxi and attended the Jefferson Davis campus of MGCCC in Gulfport. Boudreaux writes the "Time Traveler" column for the "Biloxi/D'Iberville Press" newspaper. Some of his books are: "Historic Biloxi: Queen of the Watering Holes, "Lost Biloxi," and "Legends and Lore of the Mississippi Golden Gulf Coast." He will take his listeners into the past at the JCHGS monthly meeting on Tuesday, April 26, 6 p.m., in the Pascagoula Public Library meeting room. The public is invited. "We are looking forward to Mr. Boudreaux's presentation as we prepare for next year's celebration," said Renee Hague who prepared the list of 2016 programs for the Society/Library partnership. A leader in historical causes, Boudreaux was awarded the Calvin Brown Award and the Mississippi Governor Commendation for archaeology in 1992, was named the City of Biloxi's Historian of the Year in 1993 and was commended for his work in support of Mississippi Department of Archives and History programs and his scholarship on the history of the Gulf Coast. Just last year he was named the City of Biloxi's 2015 Art and History Volunteer of the Year. In 2010 he retired from AT&T as a service technician. His historical activities are numerous: administrative vice president of the Mississippi Coast Historical and Genealogical Society; past president of the Gulf Coast Chapter of the Mississippi Archaeological Association; acquisition committee member of the Ohr/O'Keefe Museum of Art; advisory board member, Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum; member, Community Advisory Committee, Mississippi State Historical Museum, and French colonial re-enactor since 1992. The JCHGS and Pascagoula Public Library have obtained through a grant from MDAH a coveted exhibit of an original copy of the Mississippi Constitution and an original U.S. Flag of 20 stars that flew when we became a state in 1817. This exhibit and accompanying displays will be staged on Jan. 23-24 in the Pascagoula Public Library meeting room. More details will be forthcoming at a later date. TOP TEAM: Anna Daly, Ivan Yates and Xposes Karen Koster pictured at The Westbury Hotel for the launch of TV3s autumn schedule. Photo: Brian McEvoy TV3's Anna Daly has said she's "in mourning" with the news that she's losing her TV 'husband' Ivan Yates. The former minister and Newstalk presenter ann-ounced this week that he's giving up his media work to travel around the US for a year. He will leave on July 3, with Sunday AM co-presenter Anna admitting she's devastated with the news. "I texted him when I first heard and I said, 'I get it. You love me but you're not in love with me', and he texted me back saying, 'It's not you, it's me'," she said. Anna said that she loved working with Ivan on the show and that his irreverent attitude was a refreshing change. "He's just hilarious. He doesn't give a hoot what he says. As a presenter I found him so generous," she told the Herald. "I'd never experienced someone with that kind of recklessness and that really entertained me. "We're used to everyone being so politically correct all the time." The show first began airing eight months ago and pulls in around 140,000 viewers for its weekend slot. Anna said it was especially beneficial having a former politico as a TV side-kick when it came to covering the recent election. "I was totally bowled over by him. It was lovely to start a new show with him," she said. "To have someone with that experience as an ex-minister when we were covering the general election was just amazing," she said. "I'm in mourning. I'll really miss him. He'll be a hard act to follow." Video of the Day 'It was a very sad situation for everybody, said the prosecuting garda' Stock picture: Getty/iStockphoto A "much loved grandfather" who lost control and stabbed his daughter's partner when he heard him abuse her over the phone has had his jail term cut on appeal. Brian Hynes (64), with an address in Carbury, Co Kildare, had pleaded guilty at Naas Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing harm and producing an article at the home of his daughter and her partner on October 16, 2010. He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, with the final 18 months suspended on June 21, 2012. Hynes was granted bail pending his appeal against sentence which resulted in a new sentence of four years imprisonment with the final two and a half years suspended - reducing his jail term by one year. Giving judgment in the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice John Edwards said Hynes's daughter had been in a 20-year-long "difficult relationship" with the injured party and they had two young children together. The prosecution's case was that Hynes was at home when his daughter, who was visiting, received an audibly "abusive and implicitly threatening" phone call from her partner "railing about why she was not yet home", Justice Edwards said. Bayonet Hynes, who had been drinking, armed himself with "a bayonet-type knife" and walked over to his daughter and partner's home which was minutes away. He "immediately attacked the injured party in a frenzy" inflicting six stab wounds to his leg, the judge said. Hynes told gardai he brought the knife "to protect myself and just to frighten him. I had no intention of doing harm to him. It was just scare tactics, but I can't recall even being there". The prosecuting garda told the sentencing court that Hynes was a "good, hardworking man", and that there had been a history of domestic violence in his daughter's relationship. It was a "very sad situation for everybody", said the prosecuting garda, and wouldn't have happened but for the sad family history and Hynes's intoxication on the night in question. The court heard Hynes had remonstrated with the injured party on previous occasions in relation to the treatment of his daughter and had never reacted with violence. The difficulties experienced by his daughter had led to him developing a difficulty with alcohol and the abusive phone call was "the straw that broke the camel's back". Hynes had no previous convictions and was normally inclined to repress his anger, the Court of Appeal judgment stated. Hynes was required to enter into a good behaviour bond of 500 for the suspended period. A young man threatened to kill the stepfather of his 15-year-old former girlfriend after she broke up with him because her family disapproved of the relationship. Andile Shange (21) went to the girl's home armed with a metal bar. When her stepfather opened the front door he threatened to kill him and bury his wife. In a separate incident, Shange also smashed a wing mirror on the man's car with a hurley. Judge David McHugh imposed an 11-month sentence but suspended it for two years. He said that if Shange even "looks sideways, to use an Irish phrase" at the family, he would consider it a breach of the suspended sentence. The defendant admitted before Blanchardstown District Court to possession of a metal bar on April 8 last year. Gda Martin Flood said Shange arrived at the victim's house holding an iron bar and said he would kill him and bury his wife. It is also alleged that Shange threatened to "return with a gang and carry out the threats". Gda Flood said the victim was in fear of Shange following the incident. The defendant further admitted to damaging a wing mirror at the same address on March 26, 2015. In that incident, Gda Padraic Brennan said the victim was at home with a young child when he saw a man at the front door holding an hurley. He went upstairs and saw Shange smash the wing mirror of his car, causing 70 worth of damage. DEPRESSED In a victim impact statement, the man said the incidents had affected him emotionally and left him feeling "sad and depressed". He said he suffered sleepless nights as he "kept wondering why he had done this". "I did nothing wrong, and for him to come to my house and frighten me with an iron bar, I felt I did nothing to deserve that," he said. "I was always good to him and I never wished him bad." A defence lawyer said there was "bad blood" between Shange and the victim, and Shange had been in a relationship with his stepdaughter. A state solicitor told the court that the injured party did not approve of the relationship, because the girl was only 15 at the time. He said the incidents were "not an act of malice in isolation" and the situation was resolved because the pair were no longer in a relationship. The court heard Shange came to Ireland nine years ago and completed his Junior and Leaving Certs. He is unemployed but recently complete a course in digital media. The lawyer said Shange - with an address at Rathmore Avenue, Tyrrelstown - had no reason to have any more dealings with the family. Judge McHugh said the threats were "absolutely horrendous stuff". Former Anglo Irish Bank boss David Drumm is to face two trials in relation to his time at the helm of he failed lender, it emerged today. Counsel for the State Paul O'Higgins sought the two trial dates at a hearing of Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. Judge Terence O'Sullivan agreed to the application. It means Mr Drumm (49), with an address in Skerries, Co Dublin, will face trial in April next year on two charges of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting relating to 7.2bn in deposits placed in Anglo accounts by the then Irish Life and Permanent between March and September 2008. The conspiracy charge carries an unlimited jail term. A second trial on 31 other charges mainly relating to the so-called Maple 10 share support scheme is set to get underway in January 2018. Mr Drumm is accused of unlawful lending to members of the Quinn family and the Maple 10 investors to unwind a secret 28pc shareholding in Anglo built up by tycoon Sean Quinn, charges which carry a maximum term of five years. The second trial will also deal with allegations he was privy to the falsifying of documents and that he created false documents, charges carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail. Mr O'Higgins said the first trial could take 12 weeks, although Mr Drumms solicitor Michael Staines said it could take longer. Mr Staines had made an application to delay he first trial until October of next year due to the amount of disclosure involved. However, Judge O'Sullivan said the State should be able to bring it's case a year from now. Separately, an application from Mr Staines for a relaxing of Mr Drumms bail conditions was granted. He now only has to sign on at a garda station once daily. He had been obliged to do so twice a day until now. The State consented to the application. Mr Drumm was in the public gallery for the hearing and did not have to address the court. Wearing a dark suit, blue shirt and navy tie, he was accompanied by a sister. When his case was called he stood so he could see the proceedings as there was a large crowd in the courtroom for other cases. A judge should not deal with Declan Ganley's defamation case against RTE after writing a magazine article querying the source of funding for Libertas, the High Court heard. Mr Ganley, founder of the Libertas lobby group, is suing RTE over a November 2008 'Prime Time' programme. The defamation case was initiated in 2012 and a trial date has yet to be set. Yesterday Declan Doyle SC, for Mr Ganley, told Mr Justice Colm MacEochaidh, who manages the list of High Court jury cases, that there were "critical" pre-trial applications. Mr Justic MacEochaidh wrote an article before being appointed a judge, published in 'Village' magazine in 2008. Counsel said the article referred to the 'Vote No' anti-Lisbon Treaty campaign run by Libertas in 2008, describing the campaign as "brilliant" but based on "false" claims. He said it raised issues about how Libertas was funded. Mr Doyle said it is appropriate for a judge to recuse themselves when there is evidence of objective bias. The judge will give his decision on a later date. Devon Murray with his parents Fidelma and Michael after the opening day of a High Court action taken by agent Neil Brooks. Photo: Collins The mother of an Irish actor who earned over 1m in the 'Harry Potter' movies has told the High Court he spent his money on drink, cars and girls. She also claims his former agent didn't do enough to protect the boy from adverse publicity after he was photographed on the set smoking when he was just 13 years old. Fidelma Murray, mother of Devon Murray who played Seamus Finnigan in the movies, said she sacked Neil Brooks as his agent because he had not done enough to deal with the adverse publicity. Mr Brooks took legal action against Devon and his parents Fidelma and Michael for the recovery of 286,000 in commission fees he says he is owed by the Murrays. They deny his claims. Mrs Murray, in reply to a question from the judge about her son's income stream from the movies, said he had "gone drinking, taken out girls and bought cars because that is what teenage boys do". She said she was not going to give out to him for that, he was their only child. Devon Murray, now 27, later told the High Court an agent's agreement was "forced on us" without legal advice. When the smoking incident occurred, both he and his mother rang Mr Brooks. "I thought an agent was going to be able to magically make this (adverse publicity) disappear, but I was wrong," he said. Mr Brooks said he was in South Africa at the time helping his seriously ill sister. He also said the incident over the smoking was the responsibility of his guardian and asked: "What could I have done?" He said the Murrays were unhappy with the arrangements while Devon stayed in London during filming, including wanting an apartment rather than the five-star hotel, so his mother could cook for him - and having his own driver to take him to the set. Mr Brooks said that Devon wanted to be driven in a Lexus. Mrs Murray denied this, and said Devon was obsessed with cars - and all he had said was he would love to ride in a Lexus. When Devon said he wanted his own sound system for his dressing room, Mr Brooks said he did not agree he should have a "boom box" as it would cause a disturbance for the other actors. Devon Murray told the court that in the early days he had a bond with Mr Brooks. However, by the third film, there had been difficulties over when they were receiving cheques, as well as problems getting in touch with Mr Brooks. "It was like 'Where's Wally'," he said. Mr Justice Michael Moriarty will give a decision today. Devon Murray with his parents Fidelma and Michael after the opening day of a High Court action taken by agent Neil Brooks. Photo: Collins AN actor who played the role of an Irish student in the Harry Potter film series must pay 260,000 in commission fees due to his former agent, the High Court ruled. Devon Murray, who the court heard earned more than a million and spent money on drink, cars and girls, said after the case he also spent it on horses and property "but the arse fell out of that. "It wasn't all women, cars and drink," he said. He was "a completely naive child " when he entered the agreement with his former agent Neil Brooks, he said. However, he said he would never trade his involvement in Harry Potter for the world. He has found it very hard to get work since and he believes it may be due to the dispute with his former agent. Mr Justice Michael Moriarty said in making the award against Mr Murray, who played "Seamus Finnigan" in the films, and against his parents Fidelma and Michael, he was sorry that things did not work out for Devon who made "a million or more which went on proceeds which were not very helpful". Devon's mother said afterwards she was disappointed with the judge's decision and while they would try to pay the money, she did not know how they would. Expand Close Neil Brooks. Photo: Courts Collins / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Neil Brooks. Photo: Courts Collins She also said she did not see how an agreement lasting one year could stretch into ten years. The Murrays had been sued by Mr Brooks who claimed he was owed 286,000 commission from Devon's work in eight Harry Potter films. The Murrays had denied owing him the money and counter-claimed for 98,000 they said they had already paid him. Mrs Murray had told court she didn't want to give out to her son about his spending on drink, girls and cars because he was their only child. Mr Justice Moriarty said it was not disputed the agreement between the Murrays and Mr Brooks proceeded to their mutual satisfaction until there was conflict about the way Mr Murray was receiving his film fees, through Mr Brooks rather than directly to him. This was the start of a decline in their relationship which came to a head when Devon was photographed smoking on the set, when he was just 13, and which led to adverse criticism including "a stern reproach" a senior executive of film makers Warner Brothers, the judge said. The parties were now "seriously at loggerheads" with the mother unhappy at what she saw as the superficial handling of fallout from the smoking incident by Mr Brooks. This seemed to have led to the family saying they would attend to their own arrangements with the film company and Devon also said, in his view, Mr Brooks had already "taken enough money" from him, he said. The Murrays "felt gravely let down", the judge said, and believed they owed Mr Brooks nothing. The judge referred to well known stories from the performance arts industry of management abusing the confidence of performers. However, this was not such a case. He considered Mr Brooks to be a caring person who had advanced Devon's career when he became aware of his talent. Mr Brooks's evidence more cogent and preferable to that of the Murrays and had been corroborated by that of two other agents who gave evidence of the way the film industry worked. There was also evidence from a forensic accountant in relation to Devon's earnings which, while he had a difficult task in compiling it, he found the accountant's later observations were "a little hypothetical". He therefore was reducing the amount sought by Mr Brooks by nine per cent which gave a figure of 260,601. He also awarded costs against the Murrays. Crime boss Christy Kinahan's links to the world's most dangerous drugs gangs in South America can be revealed today. Kinahan's drugs empire is built on massive shipments of cocaine being smuggled from Peru across the Atlantic by naive drugs mules. It has emerged that the Irish cartel is directly working with Mexico's deadly Sinaloa Cartel - which controls the drugs trade in Peru, where Michaella McCollum was caught trying to smuggle almost 2m of cocaine. Former Peruvian anti-narcotics chief, Ricardo Soberon, said "without question" Kinahan is working with the Sinaloa Cartel. Headed up by infamous 'Narco' Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, who has escaped prison twice, the gang has been linked to tens of thousands of murders. Mexican gangs have taken control of the lucrative cocaine trade since the fall of the Colombian Cartels in the 1990s and are now said to head the racket which is worth 43bn a year. "The Mexicans, mainly the Sinaloas, now control the export market in Peru," said Mr Soberon. "With the number [of drugs mules] rising to Spain and Holland there must be links to this guy [Kinahan]. "If his enterprise is as big as is believed, there can be no other way," he added. Murders by the Sinaloa cartel often involve beheadings - with victims' heads impaled on spikes across the country as warnings to rivals and police informants. The gang is also known for its use of acid for dissolving bodies. In some cases, the bloody executions are filmed and posted on the internet as a warning to rival gangs. The revelation comes as an EU report this week published findings directly connecting Irish criminals to South and Central American gangs. Compiled by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol, the report found that Irish criminal gangs have connections with drug cartels in South and Central America which facilitate the direct importation of cocaine into Ireland and Europe. Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid, from Lenzie, near Glasgow in Scotland, were caught with 11kg (24lb) of cocaine in their luggage at Lima airport in August 2013. They were trying to board a flight to Madrid in Spain. Official statistics from Peruvian authorities show that the number of drug mules intercepted leaving the country has risen exponentially since 2007. One of Peru's top serving anti-narcotic police officers, who cannot be identified, said that the number of drug mules leaving the country, bound for various locations in Spain and the Netherlands is worrying. "It can only be linked with this criminal's (Kinahan's) rise to prominence and such a massive increase in demand from Europe, Russian and Australia," he said. "Between 2008 and 2013, 612 people were caught en route to Spain in Lima airport. In the same time, 248 people were picked up going to Holland. "Another 284 were caught going to Brazil, which is an important point of connection for Europe. Between 2008 and 2009 alone, the amount of cocaine seized at the airport jumped from 1.5 tonnes to over two tonnes." Another police source said that mob boss Kinahan has also been linked with Peru's answer to 'Tony Montana', Gerald Oropeza Lopez. "Kinahan is on the radar here for us; we think he has close ties with the Ndrangheta Mafia from southern Italy through a Peruvian guy called Gerald Oropeza Lopez (currently jailed in Equador). "The Italians and Lopez, with help from Mexicans, ship billions of dollars' worth of cocaine out of the port of Callao every month. "Since security ramped up at the port they have been shipping it from labs in the desert. If you ever fly over Peru you will see lots of big sheds in the desert. "They are chicken farms that produce more than eggs. What is happenings now is the cocaine is made here and aken by small boats to bigger boats that are waiting 10 miles off shore." Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure. WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary , Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase: Click here to read more. A 15-YEAR-OLD boy charged with the murder of Lorcan O'Reilly, who died following a fatal Halloween stabbing in Dublin last year, has been remanded on bail pending directions from the DPP. The boy was ordered by Judge John O'Connor at the Dublin Children's Court to appear again on May 6 next and the teen's father was excused from attending the next hearing. Lorcan O'Reilly (21), from Robert Emmet Close in south inner city Dublin, was stabbed in the nearby Oliver Bond flat complex in the early hours of November 1 last year. The incident happened at approximately 2.30am when he had been at Halloween festivities with friends. He sustained a single stab wound to the heart and was rushed to St James's Hospital but was pronounced dead a short time later. Detectives arrested the 15-year-old boy on March 31 and detained him at a Dublin Garda Station. The boy, who is from south Dublin, is charged with the murder of Lorcan O'Reilly on November 1st at Oliver Bond flats, contrary to common law. He was aged 14 at the time of Mr O'Reilly's death. On April 1, he was remanded in custody by the Dublin Children's Court but on Tuesday he was granted High Court bail. The boy, accompanied by his parents, appeared again at the Children's Court today. Detective Sergeant Adrian Whitelaw asked Judge John O'Connor for a four week adjournment. Expand Close Murdered man Lorcan OReilly (21) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Murdered man Lorcan OReilly (21) Judge O'Connor warned the teenager that he must obey the bail terms or he could be remanded in custody. His bail required an independent surety in the sum of 6,000. The teenager must sign on daily at his local garda station, obey a nightly curfew and he has surrendered his passport which must remain in the possession of gardai. Judge O'Connor also told the teen he has to have a charged mobile phone with him and be available to answer calls from gardai. Yes your Honour, said the teen, dressed in a black top, jeans and an anorak, when the judge read out the terms. He also said yes when asked if he understood. At the boy's first hearing last week he was accompanied to court by his mother and his granny but the court had asked for his father to come to the proceedings. The man turned up yesterday/today (fri) with the boy's mother. Judge O'Connor acceded to a request from defence solicitor John Quinn to excuse the father from attending the next hearing. The teenage defendant's identity cannot be revealed because he is aged under 18, a minor who has a right to anonymity. Judge O'Connor was told yesterday/today (fri) that directions from the DPP were required. A HOTEL waitress has been awarded 500,000 for an injury to her hand when a glass jug she was filling shattered. Sophie Caillaud (42) had suffered a very significant injury which had altered her life, a judge said. The French woman was working as a waitress in the luxury Lough Rynn Hotel in Leitrim in December 2007 when she sustained a deep laceration to her right thumb which bled profusely. She later had to have an operation and wear a splint. The award includes a sum of 195,000 in special damages. It will go towards 13,000 for an automatic car; 1,000 a year for a weekly 20 wash and blow dry at the hairdressers, and 39 every three months for hair colouring. Over 2,000 per annum has been factored in for six hours home help every week. Ms Caillaud, Shannon View, Leitrim Village, Leitrim, had sued Lough Rynn Castle Ltd, her employer and owners of the hotel at Mohill, Co Leitrim. She also sued two English companies Bunzl Outsourcing Ltd, Seymour Street, London and Utopia Tableware Ltd, Chesterfield who produced the jug. She had told the court told "the bottom of the jug exploded" and she suffered a deep laceration at the base of her right thumb in the incident on December 9, 2007 when she was working on the hotel's breakfast shift. She claimed she has been left with a loss of strength in her right hand and could not resume work as a waitress. Mr Justice Kevin Cross accepted Ms Caillaud's evidence that complaints had been made by hotel staff previously as to the shattering of water jugs and that nothing was done about it. Engineering evidence on behalf of Ms Caillaud showed a number of broken jugs which were examined were not suitable for catering use. They contained an unusually thick handle and a joint with the thin glass of the jug was liable to be fragile and unsafe if subjected to rapid hating and cooling from prolonged dishwasher use in the catering trade. Mr Justice Cross said no engineering evidence was offered by the other side. There was no no question, the judge said of contributory negligence against Ms Caillaud and he found hotel management were or ought to have been aware of the complaints about breakages and ought to have been put on the alert and removed the jugs as being unsuitable. The jug suppliers, he said, had supplied the jugs to the hotel as being suitable for use in the catering trade when according to all the evidence they were not. Mr Justice Cross believed Ms Caillaud was entirely genuine and any suggestion she was exaggerating her complaints were "entirely without foundation." Assessing general damages for pain and suffering to date and in to the future at a total of 170,000 Mr Justice Cross said Ms Caillaud was entitled to be compensated for the initial injury and the pain syndrome and carpel tunnel syndrome she suffered afterwards. He allowed 135, 000 for loss of earnings as he said Ms Cailliaud, who has since graduated in fine art, has not worked since the accident. He granted a stay on the award in event of an appeal provided 300,000 was paid out immediately. A major new primary school is to be built in the grounds of the historic All Hallows College as part of the 14m deal to sell it to Dublin City University (DCU). The university finalised the sale this morning after it was initially agreed in principle last June. It followed a lengthy approval process which had to be signed off by the Vatican. Details of the new primary school, which is expected to cater for around 450 pupils, had not been previously announced. The Department of Education has been seeking expressions of interest in building a new school for the Drumcondra/Marino area, but the site was unclear. The deal with DCU guarantees the 174-year-old college will continue to be used for educational purposes and that existing All Hallows students will be able to finish out their courses. The cash-strapped college, which stands on a 6.74 hectare site, was put up for sale in 2014 as management believed it needed a major cash injection to stay open. It became embroiled in controversy after seeking to raise funds through the sale of letters written by the late US First Lady Jackie Kennedy to an Irish priest, Fr Joseph Leonard, who lived in the college. It was planned to sell 33 letters for anywhere between 800,000 and 3m, but the sale was abandoned after the Vincentian Fathers asserted ownership over the letters. A number of parties offered over 20m for the site, but trustees chose a lower bid from DCU as it would continue the institutions educational ethos. It is understood the bid consisted a 10m in cash and around 4m to cover the costs of winding down All Hallows, including redundancy payments and the cost of teaching out existing course. The president of the college, Dr Patrick McDevitt, said: This sale will secure, as part of the legacy, the educational mission of the campus and facilitate existing students in the completion of their studies. All Hallows had been a linked college of DCU since 2004. According to DCU an intensive investment programme will ensure a fully active academic campus from 2016. A range of academic schools and support units will be established on the new campus in the first instance, with this increasing over time, it said in a statement. The existing 100 bed student accommodation will be upgraded and plans are underway to develop additional accommodation units to meet the demands of a growing student body. All Hallows is one of four institutions in the process of being incorporated into the university. The others are St Patricks College, Drumcondra, Mater Dei Institute of Education and the Church of Ireland College of Education. Senator David Norris claimed university senators can "hold the balance of power in a minority Government" after Fianna Fail rejected a power-sharing agreement with Fine Gael. Mr Norris, who is running for election to the Seanad on the Trinity panel, believes the parliamentary chamber can flex its muscle as deadlock continues to form a Government. He said: "A lot can be done to bring the Senate into the 21st century. A lot of other institutions have reform proposed. What about the Senate? Can't that be independent? Can't that be professional?" The veteran politician also claimed he "saved" the Seanad from abolition during the referendum on getting rid of the house in the 2013 vote. "We were losing with two and half weeks from the vote," he said at a Seanad candidates forum in Trinity last night. "I discharged myself from hospital and myself and Sean Barrett came out and saved the Seanad with a fiery speech." Mr Norris was joined by Independent Senator Averil Power who hit out at the Seanad voting system after 10,000 ballot papers failed to be delivered to voters. Trinity College confirmed to Ms Power almost "one in six" ballot papers had been returned to the college. Ms Power said many voters had contacted her after not receiving voting papers. She said this happened because voters used old addresses or were not home to sign for the registered letters. The Independent candidate, who is on the college's panel, criticised the "archaic" postal voting system of the Seanad. "It costs a lot of money to send ballot papers all over Ireland and the world by registered post. And not to forget having to send them out again," she said. "In this day and age the number of people who are home to sign for registered post is so small. So it doesn't make much sense." A new civil war has opened up between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail as talks aimed at forming a government collapsed into a bitter argument. The prospect of a second election moved a step closer last night as a Grand Coalition was firmly rejected by Micheal Martin during a tense 10-minute meeting with Enda Kenny. Mr Martin suggested that Mr Kenny had effectively threatened that he had to accept a proposal for an "equal partnership government" or face going back on the campaign trail. However, this was described as "nonsense" by Fine Gael and the acting Taoiseach claimed Mr Martin's decision to walk away from the coalition talks "was driven by narrow party interests rather than the national interest". Read More The Irish Independent understands Fine Gael is now set to dispatch a number of ministers around the country over the weekend to meet Independent deputies in an attempt to secure support for a minority government. It followed a day of drama which saw all of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail's TDs gather in Leinster House for separate but simultaneous meetings. Fine Gael deputies unanimously backed a motion saying Mr Kenny was correct to offer Fianna Fail a partnership agreement, although a small few expressed some concern about the idea of a rotating Taoiseach. Read More The overwhelming view of the Fianna Fail meeting was that a coalition should be rejected. Only John McGuinness, Billy Kelleher, Fiona O'Loughlin, and Robert Troy gave any credence to the idea. Several speakers suggested that Fine Gael's offer was nothing more than a ploy to get Independents on side ahead of a bid to form a minority government. At one point the meeting heard a claim that Fine Gael had already "promised a State car" to a rural Independent. The two party leaders then met but agreed to go their separate ways almost immediately after Mr Martin outlined his party's stance. The development now hands serious bargaining power back to the 15 Independents who have engaged in talks with the two parties. Members of the Independent Alliance and Rural Five last night told the Irish Independent they are still interested in forming a government if the terms are right. As relations between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail hit an all-time low, Mr Martin claimed that the acting Taoiseach had wrongly told him he had spoken to Independents about a partnership in advance of their meeting. Mr Martin said he didn't believe the Fine Gael offer was "sincerely put" and there was an "element of choreography about it". "But that's par for the course in terms of how the Taoiseach does his business." He went on to claim that he was told at their initial meeting that "minority government was being taken off the table". Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney furiously denied this, saying Mr Kenny had "made it quiet clear" that "his preference" was a partnership "because of stability". "In the absence of that being possible, of course Fine Gael now has to look at how a minority government can function and how we can put it together." The minister added that claims of choreography were Mr Martin "trying to make excuses". Both parties will embark on a campaign to win over Independents who were supplied with policy documents earlier this week. A number of Independents told the Irish Independent last night they open to engaging with both parties - but do not want any more long meetings. Fine Gael is the favoured choice of the majority of Independents but this is based mainly on numbers rather than a comparison of the policy documents. The Independents had been given until Tuesday to give feedback on those documents but it is now expected contacts will be ramped up over the weekend. The Dail is due to meet again next Thursday to make a third attempt at electing a Taoiseach but sources say a definitive result seems unlikely. GARDAI and environment officers are set to search parts of a well-known country estate after photos of a mass deer grave emerged online. The snaps, allegedly taken at the Luggala estate in Co Wicklow, show dozens of rotting carcasses lying in an open pit. A spokeswoman for the Waste Management section of Wicklow County Council has confirmed that a "thorough investigation" will now be carried out into the alleged discovery at the beauty spot where parts of TV series 'Vikings' are filmed. She explained that they received a formal complaint on Tuesday and gardai have also been alerted. "The allegation is that there are a number of carcasses on the Luggala estate," she said. "There will be an investigation. An environmental warden will call out to the area." She added: "This is being taken very seriously. "The investigation will be thorough." The spokeswoman was unable to say what the alleged offence was ahead of receiving the environmental officer's report. But she insisted that any investigation would be treated "extremely seriously and quickly". The images, taken in February by a local man, show dozens of dead deer in a massive pit. A video was also seen by Independent.ie. It is understood that these have now been handed over to authorities and will form a major part of the investigation. Earlier today a digger was observed at the scene. Our exclusive footage shows a large JCB removing loads and dumping them into a truck. Gardai will probe if the deer were culled by licensed hunters. Located in the Wicklow mountains, 28 miles from Dublin, the demesne has also been used as a location for films such as Zardoz (1974), starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling; Excalibur (1981), featuring Nigel Terry and Helen Mirren; The Nephew (1998), directed by Pierce Brosnon; King Arthur (2004), with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley; and Asterix et Obelix (2012), with Gerard Depardieu. The 5,000-acre estate near Roundwood was a former holiday retreat for Michael Jackson who stayed there for nearly 11 weeks with his children in 2006. Dozens of other famous names including artist Lucian Freud, poet Seamus Heaney and rockstars Bono and Mick Jagger have all stayed in the estate. Staff tasked with delivering more than two million census forms are experiencing difficulties delivering them to apartment owners. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has called on management companies to provide enumerators with access to blocks, saying that security measures in place across gated communities were resulting in problems. The census takes place on Sunday, April 24, but a census form must be hand-delivered to every household in the country, including apartments. The CSO said that hand-delivery was "essential" so that the agency could guarantee that every household has a form, and to allow householders to ask questions if necessary. Following the census, the forms must be collected by the census enumerator before they are returned to the CSO for analysis. "We are hearing from census enumerators that they cannot gain entry to some gated communities," senior statistician Deirdre Cullen said. "This was a problem for us during the 2011 census, but it seems to be posing a greater challenge this time around. I am calling on the managers of these developments to co-operate with the census enumerator." Households are legally required to complete a census form on the night, and failure to do so can result in a fine of up to 1,270 on summary conviction, and 25,400 on indictment. The CSO said that citizens "must be allowed to fulfil this legal duty". "Apartment managers have an important role to play in facilitating this. Residents of apartment blocks are advised to address the issue with the manager if they have not yet received their census form," Ms Cullen added. The census is conducted by the CSO every five years, and all data collected is confidential. The census not only measures population growth across the State, but also the population of towns, villages and other small areas. Other information collected includes the age and sex of citizens, information around travel to work and education, languages spoken, the make-up of families and the type of housing they live in. The data is used to plan public services. Some 4,661 enumerators are employed, and all carry identification. Their identity can be verified by calling 1850 2016 04, the CSO added. The first results will be released in July. A team of HSI investigators traveled to Yulin, China, in March and April 2016, bringing back video and photographic evidence of mass dog and cat slaughter outside the annual dog meat festival period in the city -- something the Yulin authorities have repeatedly denied. Photo by Peter Li/HSI 2.6K shares It was a horrible sight to witness, says Peter Li, China Specialist for Humane Society International. In the infamous slaughterhouses of Yulin, China, groups of dogs huddled in cages, trembling, silent, hyper-alert to their awaited fate. The dogs had been dropped off by trucks coming in from across China, and had been without food and water for days. Some were obviously stolen, still with their collars on, and many had sunken eyes and other signs of illness. From their cages, they could see other dogs being bludgeoned and disemboweled, and hear their cries. The dogs and cats were visibly traumatized, their spirits broken from their terrifying ordeal, Peter told me. Whats just as shocking is that this canine slaughter happens not only during the citys annual festival of horrors, the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, but year round. This week, in Beijing, HSI launched its 2016 global campaign to end the Yulin dog meat festival, which begins on June 21, with our Chinese partner groups, Beijings Capital Welfare Association, Hong Kong SPCA, Ta Foundation, and VShine Animal Protection Association. Weve also released shocking video and photographic evidence from an investigation conducted by Peter and HSI investigators who recently visited Yulins slaughterhouses. The investigation found that as many as 300 dogs are butchered every day in Yulin for their meat. Some of the killing happens within earshot of schools, with the kids seeing this adult barbarism. The evidence collected by our team, including a photographer, a veterinarian, and two activists from HSI partner group China Animal Protection Power, confirmed that the ongoing battle to end the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, while not without hope, is fraught with challenges. Many within China oppose the consumption of dog meat and see dogs and cats as companions, not food. A number of years ago, the leaders of Weixian, a rural county in Hebei province, took the unprecedented step of banning dog meat. But in some parts of the country, like Yulin, the practice continues, and 10 to 20 million dogs are slaughtered each year for their meat. In Yulin, our investigators entered two of the four slaughter operations, two dog meat restaurants, and three dog meat markets. They witnessed indescribable cruelty toward dogs and cats that will only grow larger in scale as the festival draws closer. Peter described witnessing the unloading of cats from a newly arrived truck one morning in Yulin. One crate was packed with exhausted cats and a dead kitten, born prematurely, was lying outside the crate. An adult cat inside the crate tried repeatedly but in vain to reach for the dead kitten, Peter recalled. HSIs work in China to end the slaughter, which began in 2013, has multiple tentacles: rescuing dogs from the live meat markets; assisting local activists who provide rescue and care for the dogs; initiating campaigns, petitions, and coalition letters to end the festival and the culture of eating dog meat; bringing global media attention to this cruel practice; and meeting with Chinese officials to broker an end to the festival that has brought the nation nothing but international shame and condemnation. In our discussions with authorities, we have also attempted to draw attention to the impact of the dog slaughter on human health, confirmed by the World Health Organization. China has the second highest number of human rabies cases in the world and, not coincidentally, the Guangxi Autonomous Region, where Yulin is located, and the city of Yulin, have Chinas highest incidence of rabies. Mass transport, handling, and slaughter expose workers in the dog meat trade, who are mostly unvaccinated, to the deadly disease. There are many compelling reasons to end the Yulin dog meat festival, and we will not stop until the job is done. I hope you will join HSI and hundreds of thousands of advocates by signing this petition to the Chinese authorities, asking for an end to this festival of horrors. Gardai at the shooting which took place at the KFC and McDonalds Drive in car park near Charlestown Shopping Centre. Pic Steve Humphreys Gardai at the shooting which took place at the KFC and McDonalds Drive in car park near Charlestown Shopping Centre. Pic Steve Humphreys A 5-year-old child had a narrow escape after shots were fired in a gangland hit this evening. Independent.ie has learned that a number of bullets were fired at a vehicle in the car park of Charlestown Shopping centre, Finglas at 6.15pm. Sources have revealed that the gunman missed his intended target and the bullets hit off another car with a young child inside. Gardai from Finglas are investigating this latest attack. Expand Expand Previous Next Close Credit: Cathal McMahon Credit: Cathal McMahon / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Credit: Cathal McMahon The intended target is believed to be from Tallaght. The scene at Charlestown Shopping centre remained sealed off tonight. Garda forensics teams had placed a number of yellow markers around a grey Ford estate car. The car park is between a KFC and McDonalds fast food restaurant. Expand Close Credit: Cathal McMahon / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Credit: Cathal McMahon A number of young people were in the area at the time of the shooting. The scene is also just yards from a funfair which is currently underway in the area. Local TD Noel Rock said: "A Friday night at a shopping centre shows there is a clear seeping of gangland crime into the everyday lives of families. "The fact that these shots narrowly missed a young child shows the real danger posed by these thugs. I'm afraid I have to call on the Minister for Justice to take a far more robust stance on this matter, as this is clearly escalating in this part of Dublin." Gardai have appealed for anyone with information to contact them. A renter has revealed how she and her pal were almost duped into handing over 2,200 to a fake a landlord advertising a bogus property online. Marketing executive Laura Griffin, from Co Kildare, told Independent.ie that she and friend Roisin Greaney were desperately seeking affordable accommodation close to Dublin city centre. And when the 24-year-old spotted a two-bedroom Smithfield apartment for 1,100 a month on a well-known website she instantly contacted the advertiser. Ms Griffin exchanged emails with the "landlord" who asked her to pay him a deposit and one-month's rent using well-known website AirBnB. However the conman had created a proxy page, made to look like the AirBnB homepage, in a bid to extort cash from the pair. Ms Griffin explained that she only spotted the fraud at the last minute and has now issued a warning to others to be careful online. "There is so much pressure on people to rent really quickly because there is such huge demand out there that it is perfect for scammers," she said. Expand Close Scammer creeated proxy website / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Scammer creeated proxy website "I just want to make sure that this doesn't happen to anyone else because I can genuinely see some poor person getting caught by this. "It was only at the last minute, I was all set to pay this guy. Then I noticed the green SSL certificate was missing from the website and I thought that something wasn't right." Ms Griffin and Ms Greaney are living in Naas, Co Kildare but working in Dublin. "I got really excited about the prospect of actually getting something reasonable enough in town to rent. I thought 'this is great, this is fab'. It was 550 each to rent a two double-bed in Smithfield. I got my hopes up really high. "I can see a lot of other people getting similarly excited." Conman The conman told Ms Griffin that there was big demand for the property and he asked her to pay 2,200 into a holding account to secure it before viewing. "He was very clever because he gave me the link through his email for AirBnB. He made a proxy of the website so it was a mirror image of AirBnB. He had all these reviews, he had a profile of himself. "He had all these ratings. It looked legit, really, really well thought out." Ms Curtin was about to pay over the cash when she spotted there was no SSL certificate on the page. She instantly contacted AirBnB who informed her that it was a hoax page and the site, whose European headquarters is in Dublin, advised her to cease communication with the hoaxer. Read More Stephen Large, Dublin Services Manager with Threshold, said they have encountered a number of similar cases. "Unfortunately it does happen. People are vulnerable at this time. There are fewer properties available and rents are increasing. "These scammers are playing on people's fears and desperation. There is so little out there." He advised prospective customers that if it looks too good to be true then it probably is. "Never pay any money until you have gone, viewed property and you are happy with tenancy agreement and the landlord." For advice on avoiding scams click here. Passengers flying to and from Italy are facing a day of disruption due to an Air Traffic Control Strike on Saturday. Ryanair has cancelled 108 flights to and from Italy tomorrow, while Aer Lingus has been forced to cancel 10 services into and out of Dublin. The latest strike follows several recent stopages by various ATC unions, which Ryanair says are "holding European consumers to ransom". The following Aer Lingus flights are cancelled: EI 402 Dublin to Rome EI 403 Rome to Dublin EI 450 Dublin to Naples EI 451 Naples to Dublin EI 432 Dublin to Milan Linate EI 433 Milan Linate to Dublin EI 410 Dublin to Verona EI 411 Verona to Dublin EI 422 Dublin to Venice EI 423 Venice to Dublin Ryanair has cancelled FR9428 and FR9429 between Dublin and Milan (Bergamo), and FR9432 and FR9431 to/from Rome Ciampino. Airline passengers whose flights are cancelled are entitled to a full refund, rebooking onto the next available flight or an alternative route. Read More With the peak summer travel period looming, Ryanair has repeated its call for passengers to sign its 'Keep Europe's Skies Open' petition, which it is using to lobby the EU Commission and Parliament to take action to prevent future strikes. Environment Minister Alan Kelly visits some modular homes in Ballymun the Tipperary TD has struggled to fix the housing crisis. Photo: Gerry Mooney Environment Minister Alan Kelly has suggested that the country is in need of yet another constitutional referendum, this time aimed at weakening the rights of property owners and therefore supposedly allowing the State to do more to alleviate the crises in the housing and rental sectors. The thinking behind the proposal is that property owners have too many rights. Among other things, this makes it too hard for the State to introduce strong rent controls. This reminds me a bit of the sort of talk in the run-up to the children's rights referendum of 2012. We were told that the Constitution gave too much power to parents and made it almost impossible for the State to remove at-risk children from the family home. When there was a child protection failure on the part of the State, social workers were always delighted to be able to say that the Constitution had impeded them in their work. That was always a big stretch. At the time of the children's rights referendum, thousands of children were in State care and the Constitution did not stop this happening. Now it is convenient to blame the Constitution for the failures by the Government to solve the housing crisis. It could just as easily be said that the failure is really on the part of the State. Builders have to pay so much in tax when they build a house that it is sometimes uneconomical for them to do so, and land zoning decisions often leave a lot to be desired. There is land that ought to be available for housing development but isn't, in the west of Dublin, for example. Minister Kelly's attempt to pin the blame for the housing and rental situations on the Constitution was responded to by the Master of the High Court, Edmund Honohan. As he rightly pointed out in a letter, the Constitution allows the State to balance the rights of property owners against the common good. This, he suggests, would allow the State to compulsorily buy property from so-called 'vulture funds' for the price they paid for them and make them available to the public, if need be as social housing. But he says rent controls might be seen as a form of expropriation of money from landlords if there was an already existing rent contract. Mind you, the question arises, if the State decides that the 'vulture funds' cannot profit from their investments, then why should they invest at all? And if they won't invest, and if the State can't or won't purchase property portfolios from Nama and the like in sufficient quantities, then who will do so, with the 'vulture funds' having been driven away? At the end of the day, Mr Kelly's attack on property rights is a sub-set of a more general attack on free markets. In the free market, we can invest in, and dispose of property with minimum interference from the State. We can do likewise with the goods and services we buy and sell, and likewise with our labour. The free market (or 'neo-liberalism' to use the term favoured by its detractors) has taken a ferocious hammering since the fall of the Celtic Tiger. That's understandable in one way. The property bubble, and the role of the banks in inflating that, are easily laid at the door of the free market even though a public spending bubble and bad government decisions generally are also very much part of the mix. However, it is failure on the part of business rather than failure on the part of the State that has taken the lion's share of the blame since the crash. The proof of this is that there is huge pressure to increase public spending again despite the fact that it was over-inflated public spending that helped to land us in our economic mess. Left-wing politicians believe in high public spending and a big role for the State as a matter of principle. But politicians in general love to make promises - it is the currency they trade in - and the easiest promise to make is that they will spend more money to improve this or that public service. Add to this promises to make Ireland a more 'equal' society rather than a freer one, and the political atmosphere is becoming very uncongenial for those who believe in free markets. This means we are in grave danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg because nothing in history has delivered more prosperity to more people than the free market and free trade. In the lifetime of almost everyone reading this newspaper, hundreds of millions of people who were previously in absolute poverty have seen their standards of living improve enormously. There have been huge, historically unprecedented increases in living standards in China, and to a lesser extent India, the two most populous countries in the world. The number of people in East Asia who lived without even the basic requirements of life was 77pc in 1981, according to the World Bank, but by 2012, this had fallen to 14pc. In South Asia (meaning mainly India), the drop hasn't been as spectacular but the number in absolute poverty has still declined substantially from 61pc to 39pc. Nothing like this has ever been seen before in all human history. Decades of socialism left China in near ruins. Centralised planning had done the same in India. Both of those countries have since liberalised their markets (China more than India) and the results have been staggering. Critics will say that income inequality has increased. There are now Chinese and Indian billionaires. But would they rather a return to the levels of poverty that existed in the 1980s? The way for both countries to further reduce poverty is by greater market liberalisation, not less. For its part, Ireland only began to prosper when we liberalised our markets, slashed corporation tax, encouraged inward investment and become a fully-fledged trading nation on the world stage. None of the increases in public spending would have been possible without this, and none will be possible in the future. Ordinary voters will hopefully remember this and not be taken in by the crude, anti-free market rhetoric of many of our politicians, especially those on the populist left. The irony is these 'champions of the poor', in their condemnations of capitalism, are actually condemning the greatest destroyer of poverty the world has ever known. This fact is totally lost on them. Premium John Downing Opinion Pension reforms are dicey territory but grand plan by minister Heather Humphreys just might win through Pension system changes all across the western world have a great propensity to infuriate those most feared by politicians: the grey brigade. And when the oldies take to the streets, they usually play for keeps. Such is the intensity and competitiveness of the Leaving Cert that it has spawned a huge industry in grinds. While some may argue this points to a lack of teaching competence others may just as easily argue that the curriculum is simply too broad for the majority of students to cover. One way 0or another, now that Easter is over, the oral exams start and households around the country go into lock-down. If your child is in their last term of school, it is possibly 30 years or more since you sat your Leaving Cert. The horror of those memories will inevitably impact on how you handle your child's preparation. The exam has become less of a straightforward step to third level education and more of an extended family nightmare. The trauma of CAO applications, course picking and points prediction throws this 'special time' into months of anguish. Our State examination requires a minimum of six subjects to be passed for certification. Many students take seven just to be on the safe side. If, like me, you think that is not safe enough, you will cajole them to do eight. I suggested Construction Studies for both my sons, thinking at least it would be handy in the home. Unfortunately, the workshop periods take up so much time it decreased their study for other subjects. However, their results in Construction Studies got them over the line for the points they needed. And they made lovely tables. During this term, students will go from school to study to bed, with meals on demand. Many would argue that this is an essential part of life - the deprivation, intensity and sacrifice is only for six months and is the making of them. There will be many things to follow that will be the making of them - the pressure at 17 or 18, may also be the breaking of them. Over the last decade at least, the changing of points has been dictated by economic shifts. The Government has introduced incentives for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) programmes at third level. This will of course assist in attracting even more IT companies to Ireland. But the incentives are prejudicial to other subjects and students. The 25 extra points awarded for a C1 or higher in honours maths is wonderful for students who are maths-orientated and attracted to STEM courses anyway. Predictably, by providing this opportunity for some students, the knock-on effect is that the points requirements will rise for other courses, making for a very unfair playing field. It effectively penalises students who didn't take higher-level maths and means many miss the course they would otherwise have secured before the introduction of the extra points. The maths points must be part of the top six grades, which means the student could have better grades in the top six but get less points. For example, if a student sits seven honours subjects and gets six B3s and a C1 in maths, the result is 450 points. If the student gets five B3s and a C1 in maths and another subject, the result is 470. According to one of my classmates, (I am still a suffering student) this can lead to students deliberately 'throwing' an exam in order to maximise their points. Transition year was introduced in 1994 and is supposed to be an introduction to life after school. Some schools run it rather well but parents have mixed attitudes to it. Personally, I think it is a waste. My sons had a 'doss' year for which their fees still had to be paid, and more besides. Not everything can be taught in school. A lot of the preparation for leaving school can come from the home. You can get your children involved in voluntary work, or part-time work. You can teach them how to cook (something). It's quite a long break and interrupts the routine they have established. The alternative is a 'gap year', which makes more sense as they are older, more confident and you are not paying school fees while they doss. A new Minister for Education should take a look at the Leaving Cert, whether it is to change to an A-Level type system or spread the exams out over the year, there are options available. We need a fresh alternative to the Leaving Cert . . . it was introduced in 1924 after all. IT'S rare that you can make any sort of comparison between US political drama 'House of Cards' and Irish politics. However Enda Kenny and Fine Gael's perfectly executed political plan over the last 48 hours would even impress devious Frank Underwood. The media management and strict adherence to a simple message by Fine Gael had Fianna Fail on the back-foot from the beginning, and went off without a hitch. I doubt few believe that Fine Gael members had any desire to enter a partnership government with the old enemy, however on Wednesday night we were told that Enda Kenny had 'unanimous' support from his party for the move. That's right, not one single Fine Gael parliamentary party member objected, or so we were told. What a united party, one putting the country first, was the clear message sent. Throughout Thursday, an incredibly well orchestrated media campaign began, with the party's best media performers deployed throughout the day. Simon Coveney took the morning, Frances Fitzgerald took lunchtime, Simon Harris the evening and finally Richard Bruton took the night shift. The message was clear and on point: This was a historic offer, it would end Civil war politics, and aren't Fine Gael a great bunch of lads altogether for putting the country first. Fine Gael got the jump on Fianna Fail, both outcomes would have them come out stronger. The preferred option: Fianna Fail reject the idea, forcing another election, but Fine Gael get the credit for showing leadership and trying to end pointless civil war politics - and Fianna Fail get the blame for pulling the trigger on GE16 II. The less desired option: Fianna Fail take up the offer, but Fine Gael having made the offer are seen as the main party in an "equal" partnership having displayed such leadership. Option one was the result, and as Micheal Martin prepared to take to the plinth to take control of the message and the narrative for the first time since Wednesday evening, Fine Gael again got the jump. Word spread that Mr Martin was planning to make a statement, and a Fine Gael spokesperson was deployed to express Enda Kenny's disappointment that the offer had been rejected. What an unexpected bonus - Not only had they controlled the message around the offer, they'd now taken control of the message around its rejection. The emphasis on the potential historic nature of the deal was ramped up because now that it was off the table, the misty-eyed crocodile tears could begin to fall. Fianna Fail's one chance take back control of the message was gone, and once again the party was on the back-foot. The party had lost its chance to finally take to the spotlight and call the move for what it was - an opportunistic and disingenuous political stunt. The pragmatic political display by Fine Gael essentially meant they had out Fianna Fail-ed Fianna Fail. One wonders if such an energetic approach and strict adherence to a core message had been displayed in the run-up to the election if Fine Gael would even have found themselves in this position in the first place. Was it a cynical political move by Fine Gael? Yes. However the manipulation of their opponents, the control of the narrative and unity of purpose displayed by the party over the last 48 hours would even impress ruthless Frank Underwood. Literally 1,000 hours had passed since polling when Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin finally sat down in Room 716 between Leinster House and Government Buildings. Such was the hype around the talks that 'neutral ground' had to be found within the sprawling complex in case anybody interpreted a trip by the Fianna Fail leader into the Department of An Taoiseach as a positive sign. Of course, we were told Enda was "generous and open". Meanwhile, Micheal was "engaged and willing". It's clear now though that there were no good vibes in the room at all. In fact they can't even agree on what happened in the room. Imagine if they sat down to formulate a Budget. Prior to the meeting, Fine Gael ministers were worried about letting Mr Kenny off on his own to discuss the future of the country with his arch-nemesis. Flashbacks to TV debates abounded. So it appears that they armed him with a trump card to be played without hesitation in order to put Mr Martin on the back foot. By skipping straight to the punchline and offering an, albeit undefined, "equal partnership" Fine Gael stunned Fianna Fail. "Micheal Martin was shocked that the offer came at that meeting," said one source. The Fianna Fail leader claims that Mr Kenny even went so far as to effectively threaten that it was "a coalition or a second election". Fine Gael denies this outright, saying nothing was taken off the table. We may never know and it's unlikely that the note-taker who had to sit in the room with the two men will be turning up on 'Dr Phil' to tell of her trauma any time soon. But the row shows that it might be harder for the two parties to get over the distrust than any policy differences. Meanwhile, the public are looking on, wondering if they should have just spoiled their ballots altogether on February 26 and put all the politicians out on the street. By the end of yesterday's drama, both sides accepted that they will have to talk again if a second election is to be avoided - but there are no plans for talking just yet. In the background, the Independent TDs are mulling their options in the full knowledge that they now hold even more sway than they did just 48 hours ago. Although as one pointed out privately: "There's no point going into a government that lasts only six months or a year. We might as well have the second now as in six months' time." The only way another election can be avoided is by Martin and Kenny swallowing their pride and getting back into the room - but with a few of their negotiating team on board to ensure clarity. The Dail will make a third attempt at electing a Taoiseach next Thursday. The pantomime will be repeated as Sinn Fein shouts about the farce and the AAA-PBP nominates a third person for Taoiseach. They might get to all six TDs yet. At this stage, it seems as likely we'll have a second election as it does that we'll have a government. Bucks Valley Winery Among the wine-related events planned for the region this weekend is a Spring Flinging at Bucks Valley Winery in Newport, Perry County. It will run from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday. Go to the website to order tickets. (Facebook) Rose wine sales are growing at least 10 times faster than the growth of overall table wine sales, according to Nielsen research quoted in a Details Magazine story called "Make Way for Brose: Why More Men Are Drinking Pink." Here's a version that appeared on gq.com. U.S. retail sales of premium imported rose wines (those priced at or above $12 a bottle) grew by 41 percent on volume and 53 percent on value in 2014," Nielsen reported in January. 'This is compared to growth rates of 1.0 percent on volume and 3.3 percent on value for the total table-wine market.' "I think it's great," said Will Templin, the wine manager for Total Wine & More in Northridge, California. "It's everything I'm looking for in a wine--it's cool, it's refreshing. But it's complex, it has a lot of flavor, a lot of depth of acidity." This is not your grandmother's white zinfandel. White zin made a huge, sugary-sweet splash 30 years ago, before becoming more reviled than New Coke. While Templin says pink moscato is the new white zinfandel, 'There's this misconception that all roses are sweet, and they're not.' Roses are wines that have touched the skin of the grapes for between three hours and three days, giving them a nice pink color. They are usually less expensive than comparable reds and whites and pair well with food. Pink Champagne is something Templin said you might be able to drink through an entire meal, not just beforehand, 'because of the acidity and structure.' " Here's an interesting article from Vanity Fair from Aug 2015 about how Roses became popular. Lemoyne, West Shore Shopping Center 4 to 6 p.m. Friday and noon to 2 p.m. Saturday Rose wines, per retail wine specialists Kirt Heintzelman and Rob Eckard Baronne Du Chatelard 2015 Beaujolais Rose ($17.99), which is 100% Gamay. The winemaker says... "This Beaujolais Rose is issued from clay-limestone soils. Delightful and Freshness are the key words for this selection that makes the summer season never so far away. Showing a salmon pink color with silver glints, this rose expresses aromas of little black and red fruits with a note of pear. The attack on the palate is tender and gourmand with an acidulous and peppery touch on the finale. This rose really is a treat." 2015 Joseph Mellot "Sincerite" Pinot Noir Rose from Loire Valley ($11.99). The winemaker says... "Full and rich nose with aromas of red berries. Tannins are mellow and well matured. A nice and beautiful maturity of the aromas together with roundness in the mouth. This wine is excellent with: grilled fish, roasted meats, cheeses and rich soups." 2015 Laurence Feraud 'Pink Pegau' (Domaine du Pegau) Rose Vin de France (Rhone) ($15.99), which is 100% Cinsault. The importer says... "A delicious rose from Laurence Feraud of Domaine du Pegau, Pink Pegau was crafted at Chateau Pegau, a recently purchased estate of more than 100 acres located less than 4 miles from Chateauneuf-du-Pape. From vines averaging 35 to 60 years in age. Pale pink/salmon in color, with peach, floral and red fruit aromas. Bone dry, offers peach, floral and red fruit aromas, with a crisp, mouth-watering acidity leading to a long, spicy, mineral finish. Enjoy as an aperitif, with seafood, summer BBQs or a wide range of lighter fare...especially alfresco meals." Chateau D'Esclans 'Whispering Angel' 2015 Cotes de Provence Rose ($20.99). Grapes grown from some of the most choice land in the surrounding region of La Motte en Provence, consisting primarily of Grenache, Rolle (Vermentino), and Cinsault with a bit of Syrah, and Tibouren. From Huffington Post/Tom Cannavan says... "Last year the Rose category was scooped by the 2014 vintage of Whispering Angel, and I have to say this 2015 is every bit as good. It's a delicate, shimmering, but personality-packed pink with grapefruit and hints of peachiness against riveting acidity in a super-fresh, gastronomic but deliciously quaffable style, and it really is a Provence benchmark." York store, 2547 York Marketplace 4 to 6 p.m. Friday and 2 to 4 Saturday Mix of wines, per wine specialist Patti Meckley 2013 Love Over Money Evolutio Furmint Tokaj, Hungary, $9.99. This wine features fresh pears and tropical fruits, all under a welcoming floral nose. A lush texture with a herbal finish leaves a luxurious mouthfeel. The wine comes from 30 year old vines grown on volcanic soils. 2008 Hermann Moser Sauvignon Blanc Beerenauslese, Austria, $16.99. Exotic fruits such as lychee and passionfruit, flower aromas, creamy and lush. Rounded acidity arch, extremely long lasting dessert sauvignon blanc in a 375ml! 2015 Elena Walch 20 26 Rose, Italy, $14.99. Lucid ruby red, with a fruity bouquet of red berries and cherries with a little pepper in the background. Elegant rose with a fresh, youthful finish. 2007 Luigi Ferrando Carema Etichetta Bianca, Italy, $39.99. *94 points Robert Parker Wine Advocate. The bouquet is extraordinary! Sweet rose petals, tar, licorice and star anise are just some of the nuances the waft from the glass in this striking Nebbiolo. The tannins are firm, yet silky, a beautiful wine from the Piedmont region. Lancaster store, 558 Centerville Road 4 to 6 p.m. Friday New Zealand wines, per wine specialist David Speakman 2014 Lawson's Dry Hills Dry Pinot Gris Marlborough, $17.99 2014 Babich Headwaters Organic Block Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough, $20.99 2013 Villa Maria Unoaked Chardonnay Marlborough, $15.99 2012 Spy Valley Pinot Noir Marlborough, $25.99 Harrisburg store, 5070 Jonestown Road 4 to 6 p.m. Friday and 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday Mix of wines, per wine specialist Paul Robertson Friday Twelftree Wines Gomersal Grenache, $29.99 - Multiple scores over 90. A must try! 2014 Vevi Rueda, $13.99 -If there is seafood in your future so should this bottle. 2013 Villa Grifoni Rosso Marche, $10.99 -Taste the mix of dark fruit and spice in this Italian blend. Vineyards Found Chardonnay Napa Valley, 14.99 - Check out the balance between creaminess and acidity. Saturday 2014 Biante Garnache, $9.99 - a fruit driven Spanish gem 2012 Domain de Bila Haut Occultum, 27.99 - 94 points, let's see if its ready yet. 2014 Pighin Friuli Grave Sauvignon,15.99 - Need a crisp white for when it warms up? Weingut Deppisch Bacchus Erlenbacher Krahenschnabel, $17.99 - Frankensteins Monster of German grapes. Stop in and I'll explain. In summer 1977 as a 14-year-old I walked early out of a church in Tooreen, Co Mayo, to see the two local TDS - one Fianna Fail and one Fine Gael - laughing and joking together during the election campaign, that was, until the crowd started to come out of the church. They then separated and tore strips out of each other on their respective soap boxes. That year, I was a polling clerk in Aghamore and Mayo elected six TDs to the Dail - four Fianna Fail and two Fine Gael. Nearly 40 years on, roads have improved and an airport has been built only because it was brokered by both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and a canny parish priest who also built dance halls and a basilica in Knock. We have gas off the north-west coast of Mayo and fibre optic coming in through Killala, and still emigration continues from rural areas and small towns. The balance of power has been transferred to the east coast and hence the money wealth and jobs. This balance of power also exists in Europe, with the central axis of Berlin-London-Paris, leaving weaker economies in other parts of the EU. A Minister for Rural Affairs, permanently resident in the West, was proposed in 2002, giving some hope to rural Ireland, but because of local and national 'me too' politics this forward-thinking proposal - which has now been proposed again by the Healy-Raes - was dumped after eight years of party political squabbling. Albert Reynolds, when he was Taoiseach, knew how to spread the power across all parts of the country when he appointed his ministers. He knew a fiver from a farmer in the west was the same as a factory worker in the east. But sadly he was not given this opportunity for long. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have now a duty to put the laughing and joking behind them and build a nation for our people and their families across Ireland, without the fear of parish pump politics. The oldest GAA club in Britain - John Mitchels, in Liverpool - is still drawing new emigrants and wining the All Britain finals, engaging with people who emigrated in the 1930s who are among the four million in a 40-mile radius, many with Irish ancestors. It should give all our politicians something to think about and plan for, so in 100 years we will not be experiencing emigration the way we are today. John Healy Liverpool Better off without them I refer to the manic preoccupation of the media with the forming of a new government. In the five weeks that have elapsed since the election and without a government, has the sky fallen in? No! Has our trading partners ceased to do business with Ireland? No! Have the Luas drivers seen the light? No! Has the housing crisis being solved? No! Has the hospital trolley crisis improved? No! Has the crisis in education been addressed? No! Apart from Enda and Micheal, does anyone know the difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail? No. No. No. Now, in a normal country, the government would have addressed the foregoing challenges with all of the resources at its disposal, but this is Ireland, where we have juvenile miscreants posing as politicians supposedly qualified to run a country. But these 158 numbskulls couldn't run a model railway. Yet they receive mind-boggling remuneration? However, to me, the past five or so weeks have shown that we need neither TDs nor Senators. And aren't these people in breach of contract by not doing the job for which they are paid? In which case, should they be suspended immediately, their pay and expenses put on hold - backdated to Friday February 26. Just have the President rule by decree, with a supplicant and efficient civil service. Just think of the money saved that could be diverted to funding health, homelessness and all the other problems facing our nation. Or, let's just have another General Election. Michael Dryhurst Roscommon Panama Papers shock One can imagine the reaction by finance departments and tax offices over the 'Panama Papers'. Their surprise perhaps would be best paraphrased by Captain Renault's response to gambling in the film 'Casablanca': "I'm shocked, shocked to find that tax evasion is going on here!" Declan Foley Berwick, Australia Sinn Fein on Irish Water The Irish Independent claimed that Sinn Fein's position in relation to water charges is in tatters (April 6). This is not true. Sinn Fein has consistently said that we would establish an independent commission to examine the most appropriate model of public utility to replace the flawed Irish Water model. It's not that hard to understand. All commissions are given terms of reference. They couldn't function otherwise. Allow me to set out the Sinn Fein position in clear terms for your readers. There are four steps in Sinn Fein's position: 1. Abolish water charges - to take place with immediate effect. 2. Abolish Irish Water - to be concluded within one year 3. Establish an independent commission on water services to examine the most appropriate model of public utility to replace the flawed Irish Water model - to report back within nine months. 4. Hold a referendum to enshrine the ownership of Ireland's water as a human resource in the constitution. This is the Sinn Fein position as presented to the people in the General Election and is clearly set out in our policy document: 'Water Charges - A tax too far', launched in November 2015. There has been no change to this position whatsoever. What there has been is a certain amount of mischief-making by elements of the media. Sinn Fein has also committed to investing an additional 900m in water infrastructure over five years. Gerry Adams Sinn Fein President Room 101 for the leaders Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin were meeting in Room 716. Are they sure it wasn't Room 101? Eve Parnell Dublin 8 Plans are afoot to establish a pipe band in memory of Mourneabbey born Lord Mayor of Cork Tomas Mac Curtain with a view to the band performing at events to mark the 100th anniversary of his murder by members of the RIC, it was revealed at the weekend. Diarmaid O Cadhla of Coiste Comortha 1916 - Corcaigh revealed at a commemoration at the weekend that is hoped to form the Tomas Mac Curtain Pipe Band in honour of the first republican Lord Mayor of Cork who was murdered in office on March 20th 1920. "Hopefully we will have the band up and running and it will play at events in 2020 to mark the murder of Tomas Mac Curtain at his home on Thomas Davis Street in Blackpool," Mr O Cadha told around 500 people who attended the ceremony at the National Monument in Cork city. The group had marched from Mac Curtain's home in Blackpool to the Grand Parade where wreaths were laid by the Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Chris O'Leary and Deputy Mayor of Cork County, Cllr Claire Cullinane in honour of Mac Curtain. A wreath was also laid by Mac Curtain's great-grandson, Tomas Og Mac Curtain and Mac Curtain's granddaughter, Fionnuala Mac Curtain paid tribute to the organisers for honouring her grandfather and the part he played in Easter Week in Cork in 1916 as the Cork leader of the Irish Volunteers. "The circumstances of my grandfather's death his brutal murder meant that his is remembered sometimes for dying for Ireland but there is another side to him and today we remember that side that lived for Ireland, his love of music, love of the Irish language and his love of poetry," she said. Mac Curtain, who was born in Ballyknockane in Mourneabbbey on March 20th 1884 and attended Burnfort National School, was a leading figure along with his good friend, Terence McSwiney in the establishment of the Irish Volunteers in Cork in 1913. Mac Curtain was the Brigade Commander of the Irish Volunteers in Cork city and county in 1916 at the time of the Easter Rising and he had organised volunteers to march to Kerry to collect guns from the German ship, the Aud which was to land the weapons at Fenit. Mac Curtain and Mac Swiney directed some 400 men to march west to Macroom but, after receiving mixed messages from Dublin that the rebellion had been cancelled, Mac Curtain decided on Easter Sunday evening to send his men home. However when the word came through on Monday evening that the Rising had started in Dublin, the Cork members of the Irish Volunteers occupied the Volunteer Hall on Sheares Street near the city centre and a major stand-off developed with the British forces in the city. There ensued a weeklong stand-off between MacCurtain and his men and the British authorities before a peace deal was brokered through then Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Thomas Butterfield and Bishop of Cork, Daniel Coholan which resulted in the Irish Volunteers vacating the hall. The deal involved the Irish Volunteers agreeing to hand over their guns on the understanding they would be returned at a later date in return for being allowed to return home but Mac Curtain was arrested and detained in Frongoch Camp in Wales along with those who fought in Dublin. A keen piper, Mac Curtain founded the Cork Volunteer Pipe Band and among those who participated in the commemoration on Saturday to mark the part played by the Cork Volunteers in the events of Easter Week were a number of pipe banks including the Newmarket Pipe Band. Rihanna attends the Black Girls Rock! 2016 Show at New Jersey Performing Arts Center on April 1, 2016 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Brian Killian/Getty Images) Gal Gadot attends the UK premiere of 'Criminal' at The Curzon Mayfair on April 7, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images) We've rounded up the best celebrity looks of the week for your weekend beauty inspiration. Gigi Hadid Expand Close Gigi Hadid / Photo: Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Gigi Hadid / Photo: Getty Images The Maybelline spokesmodel rocked a matte mocha lip at The Daily Front Row's Fashion Los Angeles Awards. Her make-up artist Patrick Ta used Maybelline lipliner in Toast 25 all over Gigi's lips to achieve the bold 90's look. He dipped into the taupe and champagne shades from Maybelline, The Blushed Nudes palette (14.99) for her eyes and ran a tight line of Eyestudio Lasting Drama Waterproof Gel pencil (11.99) along her lashline to make her blue eyes pop. Gal Gadot Expand Close Gal Gadot attends the UK premiere of 'Criminal' at The Curzon Mayfair on April 7, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Gal Gadot attends the UK premiere of 'Criminal' at The Curzon Mayfair on April 7, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images) Wonder Woman's statement red lip does all the talking in her Criminal red carpet look on Thursday. A tinted moisturiser, groomed brows, clever shading and soft mascara is what's required for a copycat look. Less is more when you want to highlight a red lip. The Israeli actress is a fan of Nars Pure Radiant Tinted Moisturiser (38) in shade Malaga to achieve a fresh-faced glow with a hint of a tan. If you require more coverage, mix a little tinted moisturiser in a shade darker than your skintone, with your foundation. Follow it up with Topshop lipstick in Rio Rio (10). Rihanna Expand Close Rihanna attends the Black Girls Rock! 2016 Show at New Jersey Performing Arts Center on April 1, 2016 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Brian Killian/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Rihanna attends the Black Girls Rock! 2016 Show at New Jersey Performing Arts Center on April 1, 2016 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Brian Killian/Getty Images) Video of the Day Rihanna accepted her Rock Star award at BET's Black Girls Rock! event sporting jeweled hair accessories, a glossy, slicked-back mane and smoky, dark-grey cat eyes with a hint of sparkle. For a similarly mesmerising eye, try Charlotte Tilbury Colour Chameleon eye pencil (25) in Black Diamonds and Urban Decay Heavy Metal glitter eyeliner (19) in Spandex. Sara Sampaio Expand Close Sara Sampaio. Photo: Getty / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sara Sampaio. Photo: Getty The Portuguese Victoria's Secret model stunned at the Mont Blanc 110-Year Anniversary party on Tuesday. Make-up artist Carolina Gonzalez used Ardell individual eyelashes (7.79) on Sara's eyes with lashings of Benefit They're Real! mascara (26) and eyeliner (25). To warm up her complexion, Gonzalez used Benefit Hoola bronzer (34). For a nude lip in a peachy shade similar to Sara's, try Benefit Hydra-Smooth lipstick (22) in Lip Service. Lindsay Ellingson Expand Close Lindsay Ellingson. Photo: Getty / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Lindsay Ellingson. Photo: Getty The 31-year-old Californian model kept her look modern and matte for The Hollywood Reporter's 35 Most Powerful People in Media ceremony on Wednesday. For a similar look, try a matte tinted moisturiser like Nars Velvet Skin Tint (38) with Charlotte Tilbury K.I.S.S.I.N.G. lipstick (30) in Stoned Rose. Bella Hadid Expand Close Bella Hadid. Photo: Getty / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Bella Hadid. Photo: Getty The 19-year-old model made sure to shine at the launch of Naomi Campbell's new two-volume book set in New York on Thursday night. This look is all about glowing skin. To achieve a similar take, try Mac Strobe Cream (33.50) under foundation, apply theBalm Mary Lou-Manizer (21.50) across cheekbones and high points of the face. Finish with a subtle dusting of Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder (45) in Mood Light along the forehead and cheekbones. Jeremy Corbyn received a surprise celebrity endorsement after actor Danny DeVito revealed he is a supporter. The Hollywood star said he believed the Labour leader would make a "great PM" and do a better job than David Cameron, who has faced intense pressure to detail his financial affairs since the Panama Papers leaks. DeVito, 71, recently endorsed US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders by introducing the Democratic candidate at a rally in Missouri last month. Speaking at an event for The Motion Picture and Television Fund in Los Angeles, DeVito said he was also a "big-time" supporter of Mr Corbyn. He told the Press Association: "I like the idea of people telling the truth. I like them to get to the bottom of things. In our government we have a lot of subterfuge. "Now we've got the Panama thing. What is it? Why doesn't anybody want to pay taxes and just fix the country and make everybody have a good life? It's really crazy. " I think he (Mr Corbyn) would make a great PM. Way better than Cameron." DeVito, whose acting career has spanned five decades and has included starring roles in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Twins, LA Confidential and the classic TV series Taxi, also criticised former prime minister Tony Blair. "Look at your history, for crying out loud," he said. "A little sketchy guy hanging out with George Bush. What was his name? Blair." Video of the Day The Labour leader later tweeted: "R eally pleased to get an endorsement from @DannyDeVito. I feel a Twins sequel coming on." The extradition of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam from Belgium has been suspended but is not called into question, according to the French justice minister. Jean-Jacques Urvoas said the delay is due to "the requirements of the investigation in Belgium" concerning another case - a deadly police raid in the Forest neighbourhood of Brussels days before Abdeslam's arrest. French judges still have the possibility of requesting Abdeslam's "temporary transfer" to France so he can be questioned and charged, the statement from Mr Urvoas said. Abdeslam fled to Belgium after the November 13 attacks on Paris and was arrested on March 18. Since then he has been in prison in the Belgian city of Bruges. He faces preliminary terrorism charges for the Paris attacks which killed 130 people. The Belgian procedure "does not in any way hamper the course of investigations in France", Mr Urvoas stressed. Abdeslam's lawyer Sven Mary said on Thursday that it will take weeks before his client can be extradited from Belgium. He added that the existing Belgian arrest warrant must be lifted first. Los Angeles police have said that actor Charlie Sheen was the subject of a criminal investigation headed by detectives from an elite stalking unit. Officer Matthew Ludwig said Sheen was listed as a suspect in a criminal investigation report received on March 31. He declined to detail the allegations or identify the alleged victim, but said detectives from the department's Threat Management Unit had obtained a search warrant in the case. The celebrity news site RadarOnline reported that it had been served a subpoena from Los Angeles police for a 35-minute audio recording purportedly of Sheen that includes Sheen threatening his ex-fiancee Scottine Ross. She performed in porn films under the name Brett Rossi and sued Sheen in December for assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims. Her lawsuit states she and Sheen had sex five times before the actor told her he was HIV positive, and that the actor threatened to kill her during their relationship, which ended in 2014. Sheen publicly disclosed he was HIV positive in November, but he said he disclosed his status to all his sexual partners. "We believe the search warrant is illegal and violates federal and state law," Dylan Howard, editorial director of RadarOnline.com, said. RadarOnline said it had not posted the audio, but described it as being recorded by one of Sheen's former lovers. The website states the LAPD warrant wants the audio not only for evidence against Sheen, but because it might also yield information that would exonerate him. There was no immediate comment from Sheen's lawyer or publicist. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has fired back at her rival Bernie Sanders after the Vermont senator questioned whether she was "qualified" to be president. In a fundraising email sent late on Wednesday, Hillary for America's deputy communications director, Christina Reynolds, rebuked Mr Sanders' accusations, saying it was "a ridiculous and irresponsible attack for someone to make - not just against the person who is almost certainly going to be the nominee of their party this November, but against someone who is one of the most qualified people to run for the presidency in the history of the United States." Mr Sanders told a crowd of more than 10,000 people at Temple University's Liacouras Centre in Philadelphia on Wednesday that Mrs Clinton has been saying lately that "she thinks that I am, quote-unquote, not qualified to be president". "I don't believe that she is qualified if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special-interest funds," he said, referring to the outside groups that can accept unlimited funding for a candidate as long as they do not coordinate with the campaign. Mr Sanders also said Mrs Clinton was not qualified because of her vote for the war in Iraq and her support for trade agreements that he says are harmful to American workers. It is the latest salvo in a war of words that has become increasingly heated as underdog Mr Sanders has gained ground on front-runner Mrs Clinton. Mrs Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon responded on Twitter: "Hillary Clinton did not say Bernie Sanders was 'not qualified.' But he has now - absurdly - said it about her. This is a new low." Anthony Vietri Meeting at Martha on Wednesday night were regional winemakers Anthony Vietri, left, from Va La, in Avondale, and Kevin Robinson from Karamoor Estate, in Fort Washington. (Facebook / Victor Ykoruk) Two and a half days remain of Philly Wine Week, with a couple of events centered around regional wines. Jet Wine Bar owner Jill Weber will combine with birder George Armistead for something called Pennsylvania Birds and Wine, with George & Jill. Scheduled from 3 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Weber will offer her insight into the state's wines while Armistead will address birding hot spots and other facts about the state's birds. You can buy tickets at this link. That same day, PINOT Boutique from 5 to 7 p.m. will offer a blind sampling of wines from the region. Points will be awarded for naming the varietals, region, and winery as well as matching flavor profiles and prizes will be awarded for the top three participants. You can buy tickets at this link. Those follow a week of activities that featured a number of Pa. wineries, from around Philadelphia to as far west as Allegro and as far north as Galen Glen. Carley Mack, marketing director for Penns Woods Winery, said she was pleased with how a blind tasting of regional wines went Wednesday night at Panorama. She coordinated what was termed the PA Wine Challenge. "It was a great event!" she wrote in an email Thursday. "It went very smoothly and we had several surprised guests! --- They found it more difficult to find the French/ California outliers and were impressed by the overall quality of wines! . . . The attendance was slightly lower than I had hoped, I think it was a combination of the day of the week and having several other wine week events to compete with! But the guests we did have (about 15 .... we could have seated about 30) very much enjoyed the event." Joining Mack at the event were Galer Estate winemaker Virginia Smith and owner/proprietor Brad Galer Mitchell, The Vineyard at Grandview owner/winemaker Larry Kennell, and nationally known sommelier/author Marnie Old. That same night, at Martha in Kensington, Va La Vineyards owner/winemaker Anthony Vietri joined chef Chad Williams for a pairing dinner. It was a rare appearance for Vietri, who runs one of the smallest but most respected wineries on the East Coast. "We had the opportunity to spend the evening with some really wonderful folks," he said in an email. "A lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of love in the room, which I was not quite prepared for. I would say that it was evenly split between people we knew, and people we did not, folks who were interested in what we were doing based on owner Jon Medlinsky's word about us. As I say, we haven't been able to do dinners or offsite events for a long time, but this night had the best vibes of any of the dinners that we've done." Here's the full list of events for Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. He stressed that the shooting was not an act of terrorism A US airman is believed to have shot his commander in an apparent murder-suicide at an air force base in Texas. Brigadier General Robert LaBrutta, who oversees Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, said two handguns were found near the bodies of the men. He stressed that the shooting was not an act of terrorism. He declined to identify the two men, saying their families must be notified first. The FBI is leading the investigation. Bexar County Sheriff's spokesman James Keith said earlier that officers had responded to reports of an active shooter at the base which is the home of US Air Force basic training. Mr Keith said two bodies were found inside a room in a building at the base, and it was believed the shooter was among the two dead. Ivanka Trump, daughter of US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Grumman Studios in Bethpage, New York When President Barack Obama decides to give a keynote interview to Fox News it is a sure sign that something is stirring. For the past eight years, the president has mostly given a wide berth to the right-wing cable channel that has been a stern critic of his administration and its policies - apart from two interviews, one of which took place during the Super Bowl. Yet this weekend, Mr Obama will appear on 'Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace' in the middle of the rowdiest primary campaign in living memory in what can only be an eloquent indication of intent. The last time he was interviewed by Wallace on the high-profile Sunday show - one of American television's political agenda-setters - was when the-then Illinois senator was running for president in 2008. In drastically changing the habits of a presidency, Mr Obama is making it clear that he is back on the campaign trail. Barred But the president, who leaves the White House in January, is not campaigning for office - a third presidential term being constitutionally barred - but primarily against the election of others, most notably Donald Trump. Mr Obama has in recent weeks become increasingly vocal in his denunciations of Mr Trump's reckless policy pronouncement and inflammatory rhetoric. Now, with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders focused on each other amidst a protracted tussle for the Democratic nomination, the president is vacating his customary position as chief executive above the fray to re-enter the partisan arena. Mr Trump's dismissal of the Nato alliance as obsolete and his suggestion that Japan and South Korea could be allowed have nuclear weapons to defend themselves against North Korea has given the president the chance to deploy the gravitas of his office to shoot down the provocative Republican front-runner. This week, he said unambiguously that Mr Trump's ideas were hurting America's relations with other countries. "I am getting questions constantly from foreign leaders about some of the wackier suggestions that are being made," he said. "They don't expect half-baked notions coming out of the White House. We can't afford that." On the South Korea and Japan proposals, the president told a nuclear security summit in Washington last week that they "tell us that the person who made the statements doesn't know much about foreign policy, or nuclear policy, or the Korean Peninsula..Or the world generally." He was witheringly contemptuous of Mr Trump's latest proposal to divert the remittances that Mexicans working illegally in the US send back to their home country to pay for a massive barrier on America's southern border. "Good luck with that," he said. The president's goal, his allies have said, is to mobilise the coalition that won him the 2008 and 2012 elections to ensure a Democratic victory in November - thereby protecting his presidential legacy, which would be threatened if either Mr Trump or his deeply conservative Republican rival Ted Cruz took the White House. By confronting Mr Trump directly, some may charge that he risks lowering himself to the brash billionaire's level and making it appear personal. The two do, after all, have a history. Mr Trump was in the vanguard of the doomed "birther" movement that sought to prove Mr Obama was not American-born, a charge he was forced to rebut by releasing his birth certificate. Boosted Yet there are signs that Mr Trump's bizarre and often troubling antics have helped Mr Obama's standing and boosted his popularity by making him appear presidential in comparison - even in the eyes of at least some Republican voters. Now might be the perfect time to out-Fox Mr Trump on the campaign trail - and persuade sceptical right-wing cable viewers that there are things about his legacy worth preserving. ( Daily Telegraph London) A 27-year-old man's ambitious plan to propose to his girlfriend after scaling a cliff face led to a rockier road than he might have imagined after he had to be winched to safety by a rescue helicopter. Michael Banks climbed Morro Rock, just off California's Central Coast, to propose to his girlfriend, who was watching via FaceTime video. The good news for Mr Banks was that his girlfriend said yes; the bad news was that he got stuck. Morro Bay fire captain Todd Gailey said Mr Banks "took a different trail down, much steeper" and became stranded. "He couldn't go any direction, on a sheer ledge, with his feet dangling 80ft off the ground." A rescue helicopter was called in, with Capt Gailey descending by cable to hoist Mr Banks from the narrow ledge in a tricky operation, with the rotors spinning close to the cliff and ocean spray battering both men. Mr Banks was calm for most of the ordeal, but "a little unnerved" during the crucial airlift, Capt Gailey said. Morro Rock is a landmark located just offshore from the community of Morro Bay. Climbing is banned but some people attempt the ascent anyway, and there have been several fatal falls over the years. Typically when someone needs to be rescued they are fined, Capt Gailey said. It was not immediately clear if Mr Banks, who was unharmed in the incident, was punished in any way. Mr Banks said nothing during the rescue about any second thoughts on his choice of setting for the proposal, Capt Gailey said. However, the fire captain suggested that other romantics should consider a place "where you're not in danger of falling off a cliff". Hillary and Bill Clinton are campaigning to return to the White House, this time with Hillary as candidate Former US president Bill Clinton is offering a near-apology for his heated exchange with protesters at a campaign event for his wife, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton told supporters in Pennsylvania on Friday that he likes protests but it "bothers" him when activists drown him out. "So I did something yesterday in Philadelphia. I almost wanted to apologise for it, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country," he said. The handful of protesters at the Hillary Clinton presidential rally on Thursday were objecting to welfare reform and gun violence laws passed when Bill Clinton was in office 20 years ago. "I don't know how you would characterise the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," Bill Clinton told the crowd. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn't. You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter." As first lady, Mrs Clinton used the term "super-predators" to describe young people in gangs in a 1996 speech about the crime bill, one of her husband's signature policy achievements. Some blacks have found the term offensive, and she has said she regrets using the term. Bill Clinton has also said he regrets signing the 1994 legislation because it contributed to high incarceration rates of black people for non-violent crimes, like minor drug offences On Friday, he said Americans need to be able to have conversations, even when they are angry, a standard he failed to meet on Thursday with the protesters. "I realised, finally, I was talking past her in the way she was talking past me. We got to stop that in this country. We got to listen to each other," he said. Anti-fraud activists chant slogans while blocking entrances at Societe Generale's Paris headquarters as part of a protest accusing the French bank of ties to the so-called Panama Papers (AP) The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is convening a meeting of tax officials from around the world in Paris on April 13 to figure out what to do about the Panama Papers disclosures. The OECD, which represents 34 high and middle-income countries, said in a statement the officials will "explore possibilities of co-operation and information-sharing, identify tax compliance risks and agree collaborative action". The organisation has already formed a network of tax officials from around the world who have pledged to work with each other to crack down on tax evasion. A photo taken during a press conference at the headquarters of the Federal Prosecutor in Brussels shows a scene from video footage showing the suspect pushing a cart at Brussels Airport just before the bomb attack. Photo: AFP/Getty Images Belgian detectives have launched a public appeal seeking any information on the "man in hat" suspect in the Brussels Airport suicide bombings that killed 16 people. Belgian Federal Prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said authorities were especially interested in any people who might have filmed or photographed the man. He was seen at the airport with two suicide bombers before they died in the March 22 attacks. A subsequent explosion at Brussels' Maelbeek metro station killed another 16 people the same morning. New photos released yesterday by police showed the "man in hat" brazenly leaving the airport on foot, walking to the nearby town of Zaventem and then into Brussels, where all traces of him were then suddenly reportedly lost. The suspect also wore a white jacket but discarded it at some point, prosecutors said. The appeal for public assistance more than two weeks after the suicide bombings indicated that investigators have hit a standstill. Three bombers, two at the airport and one in the metro, also died in the attacks, which were claimed by Isil. According to a video reconstitution of the suspect's itinerary presented to reporters, the man left the Brussels Airport terminal at 7.58am before two other men he was with in the building exploded suitcases laden with explosives. He passed by a Sheraton hotel, walked through the town of Zaventem, discarded his jacket, and was seen on video footage at Meiser square in north-eastern Brussels at 9.42am. Eight minutes later, his trail vanishes. Belgian authorities are hoping that they or someone finds the discarded light-coloured jacket, saying it could yield precious clues. Federal prosecutor Thierry Werts also said there had been many people around the hotel when the suspect walked by who may now be overseas, and asked for their assistance as well. Prosecutors asked "people who might have filmed or taken a photograph of the suspect or think they can provide extra information" to call a special telephone number. In a video to accompany their appeal, investigators indicate the route the man took, out of the airport, through the nearby town of Zaventem and along a main road into the city. His last appearance on security cameras was in the district of Schaerbeek almost an hour after the bombing. Along the way, he took off his light-coloured coat and was then seen in a light blue shirt with dark patches. He was wearing a dark hat throughout. "It is especially the coat which interests us," prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told a news conference, asking if anyone might have seen it along the suspect's route. Prosecutors also want to people to come forward who might have filmed or taken a photograph of the suspect or may be able to determine where he went. Twin bombs at Brussels Airport and another on the city's metro killed 32 people, excluding the suspected bombers. A controlled explosion destroyed a third bomb at the airport about six hours after the initial attack. David Cameron has "misled the public" and "lost the trust of the British people" after admitting he had benefited from an offshore fund set up by his late father, Jeremy Corbyn said. The Labour leader said the Prime Minister should make a statement to Parliament and give a "full account of all his private financial dealings" as he claimed the revelations raised issues about his "personal integrity". The Prime Minister sold his and wife Samantha's shares in Blairmore Holdings - one of the tax haven schemes exposed in the Panama Papers leaks - in 2010 and insisted it was not set up as a tax dodge. He paid income tax on dividends but the 19,000 profit on the sale was insufficient to attract capital gains tax. In a strongly-worded statement, Mr Corbyn demanded "decisive action" against tax dodging which the Panama Papers leak revealed was taking place on an "industrial scale". Mr Cameron has insisted it was a "fundamental misconception" that Bahamas-based Blairmore was set up by his father Ian to avoid paying UK tax and stressed that his interest in it had been "subject to all the UK taxes in the normal ways". Pressure has been mounting on the Prime Minister for days after Downing Street initially claimed his financial affairs were a "private matter". Mr Corbyn said: "It is now clear that the Prime Minister has misled the public about his personal involvement in offshore tax avoidance schemes. "It took five weasel-worded statements in five days for the Prime Minister to admit that he has personally profited from an undeclared Caribbean tax haven investment deal. "After years of calling for tax transparency and attacking complex offshore tax arrangements as 'morally wrong', the Prime Minister has been shown to have personally benefited from exactly such a secretive offshore investment. "His determination to conceal that arrangement over many years raises serious questions over public trust in his office and his willingness to be straight with the public." Read More He added that "the revelations of industrial scale tax dodging and corruption from Panama haven't just raised issues about the Prime Minister's personal integrity" but "also highlight his Government's failure to take decisive action to crack down on tax avoidance and evasion". Mr Corbyn said: "The Prime Minister has lost the trust of the British people. He must now give a full account of all his private financial dealings and make a statement to Parliament next week. "Only complete openness from the Prime Minister, and decisive action against tax avoidance and evasion, can now deal with the issues at the heart of this scandal." Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said while Mr Cameron had previously "talked a good game on tax avoidance, we've found out this week the reality doesn't always match the rhetoric". Ms Sturgeon said: "I think David Cameron has given the impression that he's been trying to hide something over the past few days, he's had several statements and started by giving the impression there was nothing to hide before last night saying he had benefited from an offshore trust. "I think he has to be completely open and transparent about this now." The Prime Minister could face a sleaze investigation over claims he should have declared his shares in Blairmore in the register of members' interests. Labour MP John Mann intends to report the Prime Minister to the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Hudson, after repeatedly calling for Mr Cameron's resignation. Mr Mann is expected to argue the PM should have declared his stake in Blairmore in the register, which details the financial interests of MPs. A No 10 spokesman said: "The Prime Minister's interests have always been recorded in line with the rules as they stood at the time." Tory MP Victoria Atkins suggested that Mr Cameron could have revealed he benefited from the offshore fund earlier. Ms Atkins, who prosecuted tax fraud cases before becoming an MP, said "it must have been a bit of a shock" for the Prime Minister to have his father's financial affairs in the spotlight on Monday, when Downing Street insisted it was a "private matter". "So I think it's a completely natural instinct that you draw back a bit from that," Ms Atkins told Channel 4 News. "But hindsight is a wonderful thing. "If we were to replay this week, who knows whether the Prime Minister would have had that interview a day or two earlier. "But the fact is now he has been completely frank and transparent about his affairs." The programme also reported that Ian Cameron had links to a third offshore fund, PMG Eagle Fund based in Jersey. As well as Blairmore, the Prime Minister's father was also known to have a connection to Close International Equity Growth Fund on the Channel Island. A clear majority of people who voted in a Dutch referendum have rejected a far-reaching European Union free trade deal with Ukraine. With all votes counted it was clear that the key threshold of 30pc voter turnout would be met and the result would be valid. The turnout was at 32.2pc, according to broadcasters NOS and RTL. While it was long in doubt if the result would be valid, the sentiment among those in the nation of 17 million who voted was crystal clear: according to one count, 61.1pc rejected the EU-Ukraine pact while just 38.1pc voted for it. The remaining votes were blank or spoiled. Anti-Islam, anti-EU, right-wing politician Geert Wilders tweeted: "It looks like the Dutch people said NO to the European elite and NO to the treaty with the Ukraine." He said this was "the beginning of the end of the EU". The vote highlighted a deep-rooted scepticism about the Netherlands' place in Europe. The non-binding Dutch vote came less than three months before British citizens decide in their own referendum whether to leave the EU altogether. The Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, a trading nation that benefits from its internal market, but paradoxically also a hotbed of Euroscepticism which rejected the bloc's proposed constitution in a 2005 referendum. Exactly what will happen to the agreement now remains unclear. Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said: "If the turnout is above 30pc, with such a big victory for the 'No' camp, you can't just go ahead and ratify the treaty." However, Mr Rutte said he would not be rushed into action, saying he wanted to discuss the result in his Cabinet, at the European Union and in the Dutch Parliament, a process that could take "days, if not weeks". The referendum was the first in the Netherlands since the 2005 rejection of the EU constitution and was forced by a loose coalition of Eurosceptics that managed to gather nearly 430,000 signatures in just six weeks last year. David Cameron has admitted that he had a stake in his father's offshore company, which he sold for 30,000 (37,000) shortly before he became Britain's prime minister. Mr Cameron sought to end days of questioning about his family's tax affairs by insisting that he paid income tax on the dividends in the "normal way". He insisted that he does not have "anything to hide" and said he is proud of his father's achievements, adding that he "can't bear to see his name being dragged through the mud". It comes after he has faced four days of intense scrutiny over his family's financial arrangements. He had previously insisted that he does not receive any current benefit from an investment in an offshore trust and will not do so in future. However, he has now revealed that both he and his wife benefited from the trust in the past. He told ITV News: "Because, of course, I did own stocks and shares in the past - quite naturally because my father was a stockbroker. I sold them all in 2010, because if I was going to become prime minister, I didn't want anyone to say you have other agendas, vested interests. Samantha and I had a joint account. Expand Close David Cameron joins students at the launch of the 'Brighter Future In' campaign bus at Exeter University / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp David Cameron joins students at the launch of the 'Brighter Future In' campaign bus at Exeter University "We owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000. I paid income tax on the dividends. There was a profit on it but it was less than the capital gains tax allowance so I didn't pay capital gains tax. "But it was subject to all the UK taxes in all the normal way. So I want to be as clear as I can about the past, present and future. "Because frankly I don't have anything to hide. I am proud of my dad and what he did, the business he established and all the rest of it. I can't bear to see his name being dragged through the mud. For my own, I chose to take a different path from my father, grandfather and great grandfather, who were all stockbrokers, and I have nothing to hide in my arrangements." He also said that he had received a 300,000 (370,000) inheritance from his father when he died, adding that he could not be sure if it came from an offshore source. He said he is committed to publishing his tax return: "I think the idea of publishing the information that goes in your tax return, I am very relaxed about that. It didn't happen before the last election. It did not come about. "I don't think this should be for every MP. It is a very big change in our system. It should be for the prime minister, and the potential prime minister. I am very happy for that to happen." Downing Street had initially said it was a private matter before first clarifying that the PM had no offshore funds and trusts, and then making clear the family would not benefit in future either. Mr Cameron defended his government's record on tax, insisting Britain has been an "absolute leader" in cracking down on avoidance. Details of a move by the premier to water down the effect of EU transparency rules on trusts despite warnings it could create a loophole for tax dodgers have also left him facing fresh criticism. But Mr Cameron told students during a visit to Exeter that he had put tax avoidance at the top of the agenda during his chairmanship of the G8 group of leading nations. "Britain has been an absolute leader on this and we will continue to do it," he added. 'The Financial Times' revealed that Mr Cameron successfully argued in 2013 for trusts to be treated differently to companies in anti-money laundering rules. In a letter to then European Council president Herman Van Rompuy, Mr Cameron said it was "clearly important we recognise the important differences between companies and trusts". He wrote: "This means that the solution for addressing the potential misuse of companies, such as central public registries, may well not be appropriate generally." Dutch MEP Judith Sargentini, who led the European Parliament's work on the draft law, told the 'FT' that the UK used privacy arguments to justify a different status and that she had seen it "as a danger and as a possible loophole". But a UK government spokesman said the stance was taken because of concerns that seeking to apply true "beneficial" owner registers to trusts "would distract from action against those areas of most concern, such as shell companies". "In practice, these further changes weren't achievable. In the subsequent negotiations, we were able to secure a sensible way forward which ensures that trusts which generate tax consequences have to report their ownership to HMRC." Shadow Treasury Minister Richard Burgon said the story "completely undermines" claims the Government was determined to act on the issue. I have been fortunate enough to cover the technology space literally since the 80s and 90s being immersed in the latest and greatest tech in the world and reporting on it to you. Back when magazines were all the rage, I was fortunate to launch one called CTI which focused on the convergence of voice and data and later Internet Telephony Magazine which focused on IP communications and VoIP. One thing missing in my decades of being in the media business was real-world experience. In other words, the hands-on knowledge you can only glean from installing and maintaining systems yourself. Sure, we have TMC Labs which review products and has done so for decades but deploying a product in a lab is not the same as a production environment for a million reasons such as network latency, the variable nature of production environments, etc. We do our best to simulate reality but every environment is different so you can never ever test for every real-world permutation. The thing thats helped me the most in writing content and knowing which products work correctly and dont is launching an MSP which primarily services New York City, White Plains and Fairfield County, CT. Case in point is our equipment monitoring solution. The category can be referred to as known as IT Management or IT Service Management Software (ITSM) or Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM). When working correctly, it lets you know if any equipment you monitor is malfunctioning in any way and can serve as a proactive warning of impending issues. Is your hard disk about to fail? Based on the diagnostics, it may. So, its time to order a new one Before it actually goes down for the count. When Apex Technology Services started some years back, we opted to go with Kaseya agents. They worked fine but we had issues with remote access connectivity. The company didnt resolve the problem to our satisfaction and coincidentally, we hired a few new techs at the time who liked LabTech and convinced us to switch. Fast forward some years. We have over 100 customers with hundreds of devices in total and weve run into a big flaw with LabTech. Occasionally, the software effectively stops working. This is the precise message our tech sent them a few days ago: Every few months, our Offline Servers monitor becomes disabled without warning or notification. This is a huge detriment to our business; we absolutely need to know when our clients servers are offline. I have reset the monitor for now, but we need to know why this is happening, and how to make it stop. Without this alert working we might as well close our business. He isnt being overly dramatic. We have a Fortune 200 customer and whos who of financial companies whove chosen to work with us. We need to be the absolute best to ensure our customers can perform at their best. Downtime is something we must avoid at all costs. In fact we havent ever lost a customer and we want to keep it that way! This is obviously a very important communication yet it took the company two days to respond. Think this through. LabTech is in business because it allows IT service providers, VARs and MSPs to monitor their hardware so they can theoretically know the instant something goes wrong. The turnaround time on a support response? 48 hours. Lets put this aside for a moment. The original response alluded to the fact that the server monitoring our equipment had a high level of disk defragmentation 14%. Their tech support rep thankfully ran a defrag in case this was the issue. Lets pause once again. This is their server! This is an IT monitoring company shouldnt the disk defrag be done proactively? Isnt that the business its customers are in? How can they not be in the same business? In addition, the company told us we made some changes to our Remote Services Monitoring settings and we should go back to the default, the question is, what good are the settings if they cause the entire value of the solution to plummet to zero? My team advised me the only reason we had to customize the settings is because this offline notification failure issue occurred once before and they advised we make these changes. In other words, theyve sent us in circles. Other challenges with LabTech? The solution is more manual than Kaseya according to my techs. My team is looking to switch back to Kaseya and its a shame. We are growing quickly and think were a really good customer that shouldnt have to deal with these problems. Having said that, like all companies that want to keep growing quickly, Apex provides the best possible support and cant do so if our vendors let us down. Switching vendors is a pain but sometimes you have no choice if you want to do right by your customers. The lesson here is for vendors supporting MSPs these companies rely on you a great deal and a single mistake can literally cost an MSP a million-plus dollars or more per year just from one large customer. Vendors suppling channel partners and MSPs have to be better than this. They need to provide the 5 nines often popularized in the telecom space. If they dont, they obviously shouldnt be in this business. Singer Lily Allen is to join protesters calling for David Cameron to resign as Prime Minister amid public scepticism over his ability to tackle tax avoidance in a demonstration outside Downing Street on Saturday. The protest comes after Mr Cameron revealed he had benefited from an offshore trust set up by his late father following days of speculation about the Prime Minister's finances. The hashtag #ResignCameron has been trending in the UK on Twitter throughout Friday and nearly 2,000 people are said to be attending the demonstration at 11am according to a Facebook event. As well as Lily Allen, comedians Mark Thomas and Josie Long are scheduled to join the protest. Allen posted on her Twitter page: "I will be protesting at no10 tomorrow, unless of course he resigns before then. You should too, #ResignCameron." Read More The trade union backed anti-austerity group People's Assembly said they will join the protest, saying the Prime Minister has "lied to the public". Organisers of the protest, who call themselves Resign, slammed the Prime Minister as a "hypocrite" and said his position was "untenable". Mr Cameron has been a prominent campaigner for increased tax transparency and although there is no suggestion the Prime Minister was engaged in any kind of illegal tax evasion, it took five separate statements from aides at Number 10 before he finally admitted that he had owned - and sold - shares in the fund. Expand Close David Cameron holds a Q&A session on the forthcoming European Union referendum with staff of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Birmingham. Photo: Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp David Cameron holds a Q&A session on the forthcoming European Union referendum with staff of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Birmingham. Photo: Getty Images Resign has made three demands of the Prime Minister asking for him to publish his tax returns, rescind an intervention he made to prevent the loosening of how Trust funds are dealt with, and finally, to resign. Credibility They said Mr Cameron's "credibility is now completely shattered on this issue". Abi Wilkinson, who started the Facebook event, said: "This is an ultimatum for David Cameron. I'm calling for him to sort it out and if he can't, or won't then he needs to resign." Labour MP John Mann has also demanded the resignation of Mr Cameron, although shadow chancellor John McDonnell said it wasn't "a matter of resignation at the moment". The calls for Mr Cameron to step down came after he disclosed on Thursday that he had sold his and his wife's shares in Blairmore Holdings - one of the tax haven schemes exposed in the Panama Papers leaks - in 2010 and insisted it was not set up as a tax dodge. Read More He told ITV News that while his and Samantha's profit from the scheme was ''subject to all the UK taxes in the normal ways'' - it came to just below the threshold at which capital gains tax would have applied. Number 10 said Mr and Mrs Cameron bought their holding in April 1997 for 12,497 and sold it in January 2010 for 31,500. As well as calls for his resignation, Mr Cameron could face an investigation from the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Hudson, after Mr Mann said he intends to report the Prime Minister for not declaring his stake in the offshore fund. Federal Prosecutor spokesmen Thierry Werts (L) and Eric Van Der Sypt address a news conference about a suspect in the attack which took place at the Brussels international airport of Zaventem, in Brussels, Belgium April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman In this Belgian Federal Police hand out picture made available Thursday April 7, 2016 the third suspect, of the recent attack on Brussels airport is shown, indicated in box, during his escape from the airport after the blasts. (Belgian Federal Police via AP) Federal prosecutor spokesperson Eric Van Der Sypt addresses a news conference on a suspect in the attack which took place at the Brussels international airport of Zaventem, as CCTV images of the man can be seen on a screen in Brussels, Belgium April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman Police officers detain a suspect during a raid in which fugitive Mohamed Abrini was arrested in Anderlecht, near Brussels, Belgium, April 8, 2016 in this still image taken from video. REUTERS/Sebastien Dana-Kamran via Reuters TV Police officers detain a suspect during a raid in which fugitive Mohamed Abrini was arrested in Anderlecht, near Brussels, Belgium, April 8, 2016 in this still image taken from video. REUTERS/Sebastien Dana-Kamran via Reuters TV Mohamed Abrini, who was wanted for November's Islamic State attacks in Paris, has been arrested in Brussels, Belgian public broadcasters said on Friday, adding that Abrini was probably involved in last month's Brussels bombings. Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian, was "more than likely" the "man in the hat" seen on security camera footage at Brussels airport on March 22 with two suicide bombers, VRT and RTBF said on their websites, citing unidentified sources. Public prosecutors confirmed in a brief statement only that police had made several arrests related to the Brussels attacks. They scheduled a news conference for 9:30 p.m. (1930 GMT). If confirmed, the arrests would mark a success for Belgian security services, which have faced fierce criticism at home and abroad since Brussels-based militants organised the attacks that killed 130 in Paris on Nov. 13. Expand Close Mohamed Abrini REUTERS/Interpol/Handout via Reuters / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mohamed Abrini REUTERS/Interpol/Handout via Reuters The arrests came a day after police issued new images and detail on the "man in the hat". They follow the arrest in Brussels on March 18 of a key surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam. He was seen driving with Abrini towards Paris two days before the Paris attacks. Four days after Abdeslam was arrested, the brothers Brahim and Khalid El Bakraoui and a third local man, Najim Laachraoui, set off bombs that killed 32 people at Brussels airport and on a metro line running under European Union institutions. VRT and RTBF said Abrini was probably the man disguised in heavy glasses and a floppy hat who was pictured with Brahim Bakraoui and Laachraoui moments before the two men blew themselves up at the airport. A second suspect held on Friday was believed to be a man seen with Khalid Bakraoui at a metro station shortly before Bakraoui blew himself up on a train on the same line downtown. VRT named the second man as Osama Kraiem and said he was believed to be the same person as Naim al-Hamed, who was seen on a wanted poster released by French police. Broadcasters said he had also been caught on CCTV buying holdalls at a downtown mall that were later used in the Brussels bombings. Some media said he was a Swedish citizen based in Belgium. Abrini was arrested in the borough of Anderlecht, VRT said, next to the western district of Molenbeek, which has been at the heart of Belgium's troubles with Islamist militants. He had been on Europe's most wanted list since being seen on a motorway service station CCTV video driving with Abdeslam towards Paris from Belgium. The car they drove was used two days later in the attacks, in which Abdeslam's elder brother was a suicide bomber. The man in the hat left the airport shortly after the twin suicide bombings and was tracked on CCTV for several miles into the city centre. On Thursday, investigators released new video footage of him and urged people to look for his discarded coat. He had been difficult to identify from the footage, which showed him pushing a laden luggage trolley alongside the two men who blew themselves up with similar bags. A third bomb was later found abandoned at the airport. People protest in front of the parliament building in Reykjavik (AP) Iceland's fisheries minister says the president has approved a proposal that makes him Iceland's new prime minister. Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson has emerged from the presidential residence to tell reporters the news - a development that comes several days after his predecessor resigned after being linked to an offshore account. Mr Johannsson said getting President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson's backing "is a good thing" that will allow the centre-right governing coalition to continue. But the coalition faces a stiff challenge in parliament from opposition parties, which are demanding an immediate election after a scandal caused by former prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson's use of offshore accounts. The news came out after a massive leak of financial data involving a Panamanian law firm. "This is of course an exciting opportunity, but it's under bizarre circumstances," said Mr Johannsson, a 53-year-old who has combined his work as a veterinarian with his political career. "It is me as prime minister, but it's important to be humble. It is a big task ahead to boost the confidence in politics and politicians." Mr Johannsson said he does not think the offshore accounts scandal has damaged Iceland's reputation. "We have been in bad cases before and we got through it," he said. The opposition introduced a no-confidence measure on Monday aimed at Mr Gunnlaugsson but now proposes a vote against the entire coalition government. Mr Gunnlaugsson has denied doing anything illegal and said he and his wife - also linked to the offshore account - paid all their taxes. He plans to remain in parliament and keep his post as party chairman. A small group of protesters gathered outside the president's residence while the new prime minister and other cabinet ministers were inside - but there was no sign of the rousing protests held in Reykjavik for the last three days. The military-backed government was succeeded by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy late last month (AP) Burma's government has started releasing political prisoners under a plan announced by the country's new de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Local media said more than 60 students arrested a year ago during a protest over education reforms were released by a court in the central town of Tharrawaddy. The releases were part of a general amnesty that also covered other convicts ahead of Burma's traditional new year festival, often the occasion for prisoner releases. Rights groups estimated that 100 political detainees remained in prison when a military-backed government was succeeded by Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party late last month. About 400 others were being held pending trial, including those freed in Tharrawaddy. Under the previous government that took power in 2011, more than 1,100 political detainees were released. The junta that held power before then kept Ms Suu Kyi under house arrest for a number of years, and jailed hundreds of her supporters and other critics. Ms Suu Kyi, who holds the specially created post of state counsellor, announced on Thursday in a statement on the Facebook page of the office of President Htin Kyaw that the release of political prisoners was a priority. It was her first official act in her new job, which is akin to that of prime minister. By agreement of her party, Ms Suu Kyi is effectively the head of the government, but the military-era constitution does not allow her to be president because her two sons have British citizenship. Shortly before her party won a landslide victory in November's election, she announced her intention to run the government by being "above the president". The students released in Tharrawaddy were arrested in March last year while marching to protest against a new law that they said put all decisions about educational policy and curriculum in the hands of a group largely composed of government ministers, undermining the autonomy of universities. They were detained after hundreds of riot police charged their protest, pummelling them with batons and dragging them into trucks. Charges against them included injuring a public servant, which carries a maximum penalty of three years' imprisonment, and unlawful assembly, which carries a six-month sentence. Mohamed Abrini is believed to be the mysterious "man in the hat" who escaped the double bombing at Zaventem airport (AP) The remaining fugitive suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks was arrested in Belgium on Friday, after a raid linked to the deadly March 22 Brussels bombings yielded five detentions in all, Belgian authorities said. The suspect, Mohamed Abrini, could be the mysterious "man in the hat" who escaped the double bombing at the Zaventem airport, but federal prosecutors said they still needed further verification. "We are investigating if Abrini can be identified as the third person at the Brussels national airport, the so- called man with the hat," said prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt. Another man arrested on Friday, Osama K, alias Naim al Ahmed, was seen with Brussels subway bomber Khalid El Bakraoui just before the March 22 attacks, the prosecutor said. Osama K. was also filmed by security cameras in the City 2 shopping centre when the bags were bought that were used by the suicide bombers who attacked Brussels Airport the same morning. Belgian prosecutors said fingerprints and DNA from Abrini had been found in a Renault Clio used in the Paris attacks, and in an apartment in the Forest area of the Belgian capital that was used by Salah Abdeslam, another Paris suspect, as a hideout until police stumbled upon it. Friday's arrest of five suspects came a day after Belgian authorities released photos and video of the "man in the hat" airport suspect. Five hours after the initial detentions, authorities were still carrying out a raid in the same Anderlecht area of Brussels. The government and top security officials gathered in a national security council meeting in the wake of Friday's detention to assess the consequences of the operation. Abrini's precise role in the Paris attacks has never been clear, as is his full link to the Brussels. He is a 31-year-old Belgian-Moroccan petty criminal believed to have travelled early last summer to Syria where his younger brother died in 2014 in the Islamic State group's notorious francophone brigade. He had not resurfaced since the emergence of surveillance video placing him in the convoy with the attackers headed to Paris. He had ties to Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who died in a police stand-off on November 18, and is a childhood friend of brothers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam. He went multiple times to Birmingham, England, last year, meeting with several men suspected of terrorist activity, a European security official said. The official said the meetings, including one later last summer, took place in several locations, including cafes and apartments. He was travelling with Salah Abdeslam, who is in jail in Belgium for involvement in the Paris attacks, in the convoy headed to Paris in the 36 hours leading up to the attacks. The man in the hat was with the two suicide bombers who killed 16 people at Brussels airport on March 22. A second arrest could also be linked to the Maelbeek subway bombing that killed another 16 people during rush hour that morning. On Thursday, authorities released photos and video of a man wearing a dark hat, leaving the airport on foot, walking to the nearby town of Zaventem and then into Brussels, where all traces of him were reportedly lost. The appeal for public assistance more than two weeks after the suicide bombings indicates that investigators were at a standstill. Hillary Clinton said Republicans are living in a world of "fantasy and hope" if they think she'll be indicted (AP) Hillary Clinton says that while she has been called a lot of things over the years, "unqualified is not one of them". Mrs C linton was responding to rival Bernie Sanders' sharp critique earlier this week that she was unqualified to be president. The Vermont senator has since softened that rhetoric. Mrs Clinton says a debate over her qualifications is "pretty silly." She says the election should be about "who can actually get things done". Mrs Clinton is speaking at a rally in Buffalo, part of a day-long swing through Western New York where she's been heavily emphasising the work she did in the region as a New York senator. Meanwhile, f ormer Democratic presidential candidate and Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee said Donald Trump should try running for governor of New York or some other office before attempting to become president. Mr Chafee said on Friday that if he were in Mr Trump's position, he would try for a lower office and see how it goes. Mr Chafee, a former Republican US senator, said presidential candidates should have previous experience in elected office. He also says it is scary to hear what the Republican candidates are saying about America's place in the world. Mr Chafee said Mrs Clinton and Mr Sanders are "vastly superior", but he was not offering an endorsement. Police in North Texas have shot and killed a bull that ran loose across a highway before trampling two people. Alvarado police said officers shot the bull because it posed a deadly threat. Authorities did not reveal who owns the bull or how it got loose. Police said the bull was charging at people on Wednesday near I-35 in Alvarado, 20 miles south of Fort Worth. The bull crossed the highway several times and was almost struck by cars before police were able to close the interstate. After leaving the highway, the bull ran toward an area with multiple businesses and a residential zone. Police say they shot the animal after it started charging at people, trampling two men who worked at a car parts business. The men required hospital treatment. Prosecutors said Uber's background checks were inferior to what taxi drivers undergo because they do not include fingerprint checks Uber will pay at least 10 million dollars (7 million) to settle California prosecutors' allegations that the transport company misled passengers over the quality of its driver background checks. District attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles sued in 2014, saying Uber falsely claimed its criminal screening of would-be drivers led the industry. In fact, prosecutors say, Uber's background checks were inferior to what taxi drivers undergo because they do not include fingerprint checks. In settling the case, Uber said it has already made many changes prosecutors sought. For example, Uber stopped claiming its background checks were the best available under a different settlement earlier this year. The settlement was approved by a judge in San Francisco. The district attorneys' offices said that if Uber does not comply, it would have to pay an additional 15 million dollars (10 million). SHARE American Red Cross disaster-trained volunteers are assisting several families after two house fires Thursday in Anderson County. One home on Abbeville Highway was damaged by fire Thursday afternoon. The Ebenezer Fire Department responded to the blaze. The Red Cross is helping one adult and three children in the family affected. The Homeland Park Fire Department earlier in the day responded to a fire at a Beckman Drive residence. The Red Cross is helping three adults and two children in the family affected. The Red Cross is providing financial assistance for food, clothing and other essentials; temporary lodging; and comfort kits containing personal hygiene items. To help neighbors affected by disasters, become a Red Cross volunteer or make a financial contribution to the Red Cross by calling 864-271-8222 or visiting redcross.org/SC. Red Cross volunteers can set flexible schedules in positions that appeal to their specific skills or interests. Staff report SHARE State Sen. Lee Bright By Kirk Brown of the Independent Mail The public will have a chance to sound off next week on a South Carolina Senate bill that would require that transgender people use public bathrooms matching their birth gender. A subcommittee led by the measure's sponsor, Republican Sen. Lee Bright of Spartanburg County, will hold a hearing on the "transgender bathrooms" bill at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday in Room 307 of the Gressette Building at the Statehouse complex in Columbia. Three other Upstate senators Republicans Kevin Bryant of Anderson, Mike Fair of Greenville and Larry Martin of Pickens have signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation. Republican Gov. Nikki Haley says the bill, which was introduced this week, is unnecessary and also unlikely to win approval in the General Assembly this year. Democratic Sen. Marlon Kimpson of Charleston sharply criticized Bright's bill in a speech Thursday on the Senate floor, saying it would lead to the "genitalia patrol checking birth certificates at the bathroom door." "It is discrimination, and I am going to fight it," Kimpson said. The Greenville Chamber of Commerce and South Carolina Chamber of Commerce also have come out in opposition to the measure. Calls to Anderson Area of Chamber Commerce officials were not returned Thursday or Friday. "This legislation simply opens a contentious debate on a problem we do not have here in this state," said Carlos Phillips, chief executive officer of the Greenville chamber, in an emailed statement. Ted Pitts, chief executive officer of the state chamber, said Bright "is trying to create a political crisis that doesn't exist to save his political career." In an interview Friday, Bright said there is plenty of time for legislators to approve his bill before they adjourn in June. Besides regulating which public bathrooms people must use, his measure would prohibit local governments from imposing rules on the usage of bathrooms at private businesses. Bright said the Greenville and state chambers of commerce are opposing his bill because "they will sacrifice Judeo-Christian values for a dollar." Next week's public hearing was scheduled by Bryant, who is chairman of the Senate General Committee. While Bryant said he is unaware of any problems that have occurred in South Carolina bathrooms, he emailed news stories involving two cross-dressing men who were arrested in other states for disrobing in front of children and secretly videotaping women in a department-store bathroom. Carol Burdette, the United Way of Anderson president who is challenging Bryant in the June GOP primary, issued a statement Friday criticizing his "attempt to make headlines" by co-sponsoring Bright's bill instead of focusing on ethics reform. "Anderson County voters are smarter than incumbent Bryant's constant grandstanding and political smokescreens to hide the ineffectiveness, public absence and self enrichment that characterize his 12 years in the Senate," Burdette said. Bryant said he is committed to ethics reform but has the ability to "multitask." He said he is "surprised" that Burdette "wants men to go into the girls' room." Follow Kirk Brown on Twitter @KirkBrown_AIM SHARE Christopher Eugene Self By Independent Mail A North Carolina man has been arrested in connection with a March hit-and-run crash that happened on Masters Boulevard in Anderson and left one woman dead. Christopher Eugene Self, 42, of Vale, North Carolina, is awaiting extradition and will be charged with murder in the death of Karen Hampton, Anderson County Sheriff John Skipper said. Hampton, 41, died as the result of injuries she sustained in the crash, authorities said. She died in hospice care almost two weeks after the wreck. Self will also be charged with three counts of attempted murder after three other people suffered injuries in the crash, Skipper said. According to arrest warrants, two of those three victims were seriously injured in the crash. The wreck happened at 8:25 p.m. March 12, on Masters Boulevard between U.S. 29 South and S.C. 81 South. Homeland Park firefighters and medics from Medshore Ambulance Service helped four people whose Ford Taurus had been driven off the road into a wooded area. Two people were trapped in the vehicle wreckage and needed to be removed from it by emergency personnel. Deputies eventually learned that the Ford had been rammed from behind multiple times and ultimately forced off the road by the driver of a red Chevrolet Monte Carlo. They also learned that the driver might have fled to North Carolina. Working with the sheriff's office in Lincoln County, North Carolina, Anderson County investigators identified Self as a suspect. He was taken into custody without incident by Lincoln County officers around 6 p.m. Wednesday. A 1995 red Monte Carlo found in Catawba County, North Carolina, has been linked to Self. "Mr. Self is currently fighting the extradition process, but we have four warrants waiting for him when he gets here," Skipper said. Small Industries Development Bank of India has signed MoU withof India to supplement governments efforts under fund-of-fund operations for the venture fund industry. (FC)Muthoot Finance has tied up withto provide a comprehensive home insurance policy Muthoot Home Protector for its customers, with premium starting at Rs. 500. (FC)giant LIC has made a profit of Rs. 11,000 crore through its equity investments in the recently concluded 2015-16, a senior official said.Government is in discussions withand pension fund regulators to facilitate investment by these sectors into venture funding, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said. (BS)has assigned its CRISIL AAA/Stable rating to the proposed Rs. 4.85 billion subordinated debt issue (also called a hybrid instrument) of ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd.is the first to roll out the program here in Alberta, and the company says customers with safe driving habits could receive up to a 30 per cent discount on their insurance as a result. (cbc.ca)Corporation has sealed one of its biggest ever agreements, buying 300m of pension liabilities from German engineering group Siemens. The move comes as PIC looks to raise 500m to pursue further deals. (next.ft.com)plans for thousands of Hawaiian workers will run out next month following a liquidation order issued Thursday for Family Health Hawaii, a health insurance provider for employers and organizations. (civilbeat.com) The 2nd edition of the region's only dedicated business-to-businessopens its doors from 13-15 April 2016 at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibiton Center. The 2016 edition will feature close to 100 brands from over 10 countries and regions, including Australia, mainland China, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam have confirmed attendance.The fair has garnered the support of various country associations such as the, Singapore Tourism Board, Association of Small & Medium Enterprises amongst others. These products have been hand-picked to showcase the latest trends in the industry. As part of the initiation to help related industry partners meet and do business effectively, CBME South East Asia offers Business Matching Program exclusively to buyers from the Southeast Asia region. Buyers and distributors from Robinsons ( Singapore ), Metro ( Indonesia ), Sweet Cherry ( Malaysia ), Dynamic Multi-Products ( Philippines ), Mom's & I ( Indonesia ), PT. Bilna ( Indonesia ), Yen's baby & Kid's Shop ( Indonesia ), Naiise ( Singapore ) and Concung ( Vietnam ) have confirmed to attend. Trade visitors will also be able to find the latest and newest and most innovative products from selected brand and suppliers in an exclusive "New Products Gallery" right at the CBME South East Asia show floor.targets the top six markets in the Southeast Asia region, namely Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia , Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam . The targeted markets account to more than 175 million children under the age of 14 within the region and have a GDP Purchasing Power Parity of 3.5 trillion USD , contributing a good dominance to the market shares and growth in the children, baby and maternity industry. Some of the participating brands include Alzipmat, Azetabio, Baken, Better Bump, Beshine, Capella, Emu Australia, Happyganics, Hubdic, Karibu, Larktale, Little Tree, Lucky Baby, Marc & Molly's, Nateen, Nihon Ikuji, NIP, Ordesa, Piyo Piyo, Pouch, Simba and many more. They will feature products covering baby care, food, strollers, car seats, children wear and more.and Malaysia will be hosting a sessionon 13 th April, 2pm . Her session will cover the overall demographic landscape of Southeast Asian countries, category trends, market size and drivers for baby products such as diapers, infant formula milk amongst other products.On 14 th April,will speak on "Unlock the Doors to China's Booming Child, Baby and Maternity Market". She will provide attendees a market overview of China's baby products market, the distribution channels, consumer behavior and case studies.is a perfect business platform for children, baby and maternity product buyers, retailers, manufacturers, distributors and suppliers to meet and do business in one venue.is free to attend for all trade visitors, including the exhibition and show floor seminars and other activities taking place alongside the event. India's GSM telcos have said that the annual fee for using airwaves should be a flat 3% for all airwaves, whether auctioned or not, which should gradually be brought down further to a flat 1%, which will help remove complexities around the current structure involving multiple rates and will aid industry growth. (ET)Telecom operator Reliance Communications will upgrade all its CDMA customers to 4G network in a phased manner, starting May 4. (NDTV)GSM industry body COAI has sought uniformity in the rate of spectrum usage charges (SUC) at 3 per cent of adjusted gross revenue for all assigned airwaves and bring it further down to 1 per cent in a phased manner. (India Today)Moody's Investors Service has affirmed Reliance Communications Limited's (RCOM) Ba3 corporate family rating and senior secured rating. (India Infoline)Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is regaining smartphone share in India with a revamped line-up packed with special features including a safety mode for motorcyclists, as rival Apple Inc readies a renewed push into the worlds fastest-growing market. (HT)Vodafone Foundation launched the Vodafone Social Apps Hub, that curates all mobile apps designed and developed for community welfare on a single platform. Developed in partnership with the NASSCOM Foundation, this is a unique and first of its kind app store for India. (India Infoline)BlackBerry CEO John Chen has said the company has passed the "danger" phase, and is now headed towards a revival phase, which is aimed at transforming the erstwhile handset leader into a software and security company. (ET)In a yet another fillip to the idea that smartphone can one day become your laptop or personal computer, HP Inc unveiled HP Elite x3 a 5.96-inch touchscreen device that runs Windows 10 Mobile and supports Continuum a feature that allows the device to be attached seamlessly to a separate screen, mouse and keyboard. (Financial Express) Stock price: KTM AG and Bajaj Auto limited announce that their already intense and fruitful partnership is being extended to embrace lndonesia, the biggest motorcycle market in South East Asia Motorcycles are traditionally one of the most popular modes of transport in this country of some 260 million people.An agreement has been reached between the two successful manufacturers that will see Bajaj extend its distribution network to embrace lndonesia The arrangement involves KTM branded Duke and RC motorcycles up to a displacement of 400 cc. which are developed and assembled by the successful Austrian-Indian joint venture. The motorcycles will be distributed through a cham of KTM Dealerships, to be managed by Ba1aJ. with the aim of expanding the business in this relevant, growing and price sensitive market in South East Asia."The decision to emphasize our sales activities in the South-East Asian distribution network is the logical next step in our long term oriented strategy. It supports our presence in the price sensitive Indonesian market by using synergies from our strong alliance with Ba1aj, explains Hubert Trunkenpolz, CSO KTM AG.Rakesh Sharma President Internationa1 Business of Bajaj Auto, adds to the announcement "Bajaj has successfully established the KTM brand 1n India with an exclusive channel of 250 KTM stores. For BaiajAuto this agreement to distribute sub 400 cc KTM bikes in Indonesia is a major step forward.We will endeavor to strongly establish this Premium European Brand in Indonesia.The existing business partnership with the current importer P T Jaya Seiaras Sejahtera will remain, but will now fully focus model range above 400cc Bajaj Auto Ltd is currently trading at Rs. 2374, down by Rs. 0.8 or 0.03% from its previous closing of Rs. 2374.8 on the BSE.The scrip opened at Rs. 2375 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 2390.4 and Rs. 2350.15 respectively. So far 47383(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 68719.59 crore.The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 10 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 2655 on 23-Jul-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 1913.8 on 30-Apr-2015. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 2477.4 and Rs. 2356 respectively.The promoters holding in the company stood at 49.29 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 26.03 % and 24.66 % respectively.The stock is currently trading above its 200 DMA. Ipca Laboratories ended 10.61% lower after the Global Fund, Geneva, Switzerland, which provides financial ad to various diseases, said that they will not source drug from the company following the warning letter from US regulator.In the light of the warning letter issued to the Company by the United States Federal Drug Regulatory Authority (USFDA) on January 29, 2016, they have re-assessed the situation and following a risk consideration exercise, will not allocate any volume of Artemisinin based Combination Therapy (ACTs) to the company and that they will only source ACTs from other pre-qualified suppliers that have no outstanding issues with the regulators, said the Fund.The scrip opened at Rs. 525 and touched a high and low of Rs. 534 and Rs. 480 respectively. A total of 5465187 (NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 7048.9 crore.The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 2 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 888 on 19-Aug-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 525 on 16-Mar-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 581.7 and Rs. 540 respectively.The promoters holding in the company stood at 45.89 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 35.94 % and 18.17 % respectively.The stock traded below its 200 DMA. The shareholders of the TAPI Pipeline Company Limited (TPCL) signed an Investment Agreement today in a ceremony witnessed by petroleum ministers and senior government officials of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and senior Asian Development Bank (ADB) officials. It will pave the way for long-term natural gas supplies that will give a major boost to the signatory countries economies and energy security.The Investment Agreement provides an initial budget of over $200 million to fund the next phase of the development of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline. This includes funding for detailed engineering and route surveys, environmental and social safeguard studies, and procurement and financing activities, to enable a final investment decision, after which construction can begin. Construction is estimated to take up to 3 years.The financial support committed by the shareholders of TAPI under this investment agreement is a true testament of their intention to get this historic project off the ground and running, said Yagshygeldi Kakayev, Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Turkmenistan. Turkmenistans vision is strongly aligned with that of its TAPI neighbors to make this project a reality and to deliver a truly regional project that will address energy demands and support economic prosperity and security in the region.TPCL will build, own, and operate the TAPI pipeline, which, once completed is expected to transport up to 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India over 30 years. The pipeline stretches about 1,600 kilometers from the Afghan/Turkmen border to the Pakistan/Indian border.TAPI exemplifies ADBs key role in promoting regional cooperation and integration over the past 20 years, said Sean OSullivan, ADBs Director General for the Central and West Asia Department. TAPI will unlock economic opportunities, transform infrastructure, diversify the energy market for Turkmenistan, and enhance energy security for the region.Acting as TAPI secretariat since 2003 and as transaction advisor since 2013, ADB has been instrumental in the progress of the TAPI pipeline to date. In the latter role, ADB helped establish TPCL, select Turkmengaz as consortium leader, and finalize the Shareholders and Investment Agreements.ADB, headquartered in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. Established in 1966, it is owned by 67 members 48 from the region. Moody's Investors Service has affirmed Reliance Communications Limited's (RCOM) Ba3 corporate family rating and senior secured rating. NMDC Ltd has produce 28.32 mn tonnes of ore and registered total sales of 28.87 m.t. during 2015-2016.Adani group said it will restart talks with stakeholders to take forward its plans to build one of the world's largest coal mines in Australia, days after the Indian mining giant's controversy-hit USD21.7bn project won three mining leases. (BS) PC Jeweller Ltd will raise up to Rs4.27bn from DVI Fund Mauritius through debentures for expansion of its business. (BS) ITC Limited and Starwood Hotels & Resorts have signed an agreement to extend their existing partnership for 11 ITC Luxury Collection hotels and 1 hotel under the Sheraton brand. Further strengthening their partnership, the two also announced three upcoming ITC hotels under The Luxury Collection brand in India. (BL) Heritage Foods Ltd, a leading dairy processing company, which runs a skill development and livelihood training programme since 2010, is seeking to attract youth interested in dairy sector to skill and help them secure jobs. (BL) Natco Pharma Ltd has announced the completion of the sale of its Save Mart Pharmacy store in the US to Care Mart Inc. The Hyderabad-based company had earlier singed an agreement in this regard which provided for consideration towards goodwill furniture and fixers and inventory etc, according to a release. (BL) Energy Efficiency Services Limited is planning to come out with a USD20bn bond offer even as it is in the advanced stage of closing a USD200mn ADB loan and USD300mn credit from the World Bank. The State-run EESL, which was founded through equity participation of four energy companies NTPC, PowerGrid Corporation of India, Rural Electrification Corporation and Power Finance Corporation, is seeking to expand its energy efficiency initiatives to a number of States, as it goes beyond pilots to replicate the success. (BL) A consortium of banks led by State Bank of India rejected the proposal in the current form offered by liquor baron Vijay Mallya and his companies to pay Rs40bn by September towards settlement of his loan before the Supreme Court, which directed him to disclose his total assets by April 21. (BL) State-run Bharat Heavy Electronics Limited (BHEL) has commissioned an all-time high power generation capacity of over 15,000 MW and booked new orders worth Rs437.27bn in 2015-16, the largest in five years. (ET) Realty firm Unitech is looking to raise about Rs5bn from private equity firms for the development of housing project in Noida and repay LIC's debt. (ET) 1. Same old techniques The Panama Papers is a treasure trove of information on the activities and clientele of a large, but not atypical law firm operating in an offshore financial centre. In this case, it is a firm called Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama. It follows a series of spectacular leaks by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, including the HSBC files and the Luxembourg leaks. Here are six things that stand out from the latest revelations. Although it is still early days and it will take some time for the 11.5m files that were leaked from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca to be analysed, I have not come across any information on any new or unfamiliar techniques of tax avoidance. Everything that has been revealed so far: the use of offshore entities, nominee directors, accounting firms, legal firms and the like, is depressingly familiar. 2. Part of modern business I am least surprised to learn about the profile of the typical Mossack Fonseca client. They are members of the globe-trotting elite: politicians, top echelon lawyers and accountants from a vast number of countries, some businessmen, many more in the business of finance. In a book written by Richard Murphy, Christian Chavagneux and me on tax havens, we use the sub-title: How Globalization Really Works. We argue that tax havens are now a central component of the way international business is conducted. The Panama Papers leak is just further evidence that tax havens are an integral component of modern business. 3. A lot of it is legal The law firm Mossack Fonseca is probably not any worse or better than your typical law firm specialising in offshore activities. If we have learnt anything from the various leaks about what takes place in the offshore economy, then it is that the accountancy and legal firms are key players in making them function. Will this law firm be subject to penalties or taken to court? Very, very unlikely. In response to the leak, Mossack Fonseca have stressed the legality of their activities: Our firm, like many firms, provides worldwide registered agent services for our professional clients (e.g., lawyers, banks, and trusts) who are intermediaries Finally, it is well established that many countries (e.g. UK, USA) have trust laws that permit a person or enterprise to represent a third party in a fiduciary capacity, which is 100% legal and serves an important purpose in global commerce. It is up to the Panamanian government to take the firm to court to establish whether it broke the laws on compliance, due diligence and money laundering standards. Only then will we know if all their actions were legal, despite what the Panama Papers show. What is worrying, though, is that when it comes to fighting tax avoidance (and evasion), it is highly likely that governments around the world will turn yet again to these large accounting firms and top law firms. The problem here is that these advisers then have the power to sell their expertise in tax planning to wealthy clients after all, they know the law best, as they more or less wrote it. 4. Watch out for the whistleblower The person who is likely to suffer most from the leak is its originator: the whistleblower. Their life if they are identified will be hell. Members of our globe-trotting elites will make sure of that. They are as likely to suffer from Putins henchman as from the courts of a leading and supposedly fair nation such as Sweden or the UK where they could be sued for the theft of the data. The whistleblower who exposed wrongdoing at HSBCs Swiss bank, Herve Falciani, was sentenced to five years in prison by a Swiss court for industrial espionage, data theft and violation of commercial and banking secrecy. He has managed to escape imprisonment by living in exile in France, but it goes to show that whistleblowers do not necessarily have the law on their side. Edward Snowden who released the Wikileaks files remains in Russia, hiding from US prosecutors. 5. Theres a long way to go Panama Papers abolished in the UK in 2015 in 1982 International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Tax Information Exchange Agreements with the United States compiled by the Tax Justice Network estimated The Conversation Theleak sheds some light on the intricate ways in which the wealthy can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. As well as charging minimal or no tax to residents and non-residents, the main characteristics of tax havens are their lack of transparency and effective information exchange.As the leaked files of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca show, these havens are used by individuals and companies to stash their cash, away from the prying eyes of civilians or investigators. This is not necessarily because their money has been obtained illegally. In the case of public figures such as politicians, for example, they may want to keep the size of their wealth a secret or hide from their electorates that they or their relatives are legally minimising their tax. To do so, they hide their identity using a number of complex legal mechanisms.Whether it is a wealthy entrepreneur or a drug trafficker, the tricks used to make their affairs hard to trace are pretty similar. It all starts by incorporating a shell company (or a letterbox company) in an offshore tax jurisdiction, using the services of a law firm such as Mossack Fonseca. These companies have the outward appearance of being a legitimate business but in reality are just empty shells. They manage the money they receive and hide who owns it. The management is made up of lawyers and accountants, whose only role is to sign documents and allow their names to appear on the companys letterhead.The money is received by this shell company from people who wish to hide these funds from tax authorities and the wider public. Very few questions are asked about the source of this money, which can then be used by the shell company to carry out legal activities such as investing in real estate or illegal activities such as bribing a government official.The ownership of these shell companies can be easily transferred, through the use of bearer shares and bonds, whose ownership belongs to the person that holds the physical stock certificate. These wereand the US government stopped selling bearer bondsin a bid to increase transparency. They allow large sums of money to be moved around easily, with full anonymity.The Panama Papers investigation by thehave already put Icelands prime minister, Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, under serious pressure. ICIJ has documents that show how his wife owned a British Virgin Islands shell company called Wintris Inc that held millions of dollars in bonds in the three major Icelandic banks, which collapsed in 2008. In 2009, Gunnlaugsson entered parliament but failed to declare his wifes ownership of Wintris. The electorate was none the wiser due to the lack of information exchange between the British Virgin Islands and Iceland, which ensured that this information was not available.It is not illegal to have dealings with a tax haven and in fact there can be very legitimate reasons to conduct business there, such as investing in a hedge or mutual fund. And tax havens are often used by business people in unstable countries where they are at risk of raids by criminals or their governments.In spite of this, the lack of transparency and lack of information exchange can also be used for illicit purposes, including money laundering, bribery, corruption, tax fraud and other illegal activities. Because the beneficial owners of a company are kept secret, the proceeds of crime can be hidden or used for nefarious purposes without any authorities being able to trace it. If law enforcement and other competent authorities had access to beneficial ownership information, they could follow the money in financial investigations involving suspect accounts or assets held by corporate vehicles.The lack of effective information exchange is ensured through secrecy laws that prevent overseas tax authorities from accessing information on the complex structures located in tax havens. A number of countries have bilateral(TIEA) with tax havens, which enable their governments to enforce domestic tax laws by exchanging, on request, relevant tax information. However, Panama has only signed one TIEA ().Panama is far from alone in this business. According to the 2015 Financial Secrecy Index for 2015, Switzerland, Hong Kong, the US, Singapore and the Cayman Islands are the top five jurisdictions for secrecy and the scale of their offshore financial activities.In 2013, The Economistthat around US$20 trillion could be stashed in offshore accounts worldwide. Much of this may be used for legal activities but until there is full transparency and information exchange between tax havens and overseas tax authorities, it is impossible to determine what is the extent of the illegal tax evasion and other criminal activities these tax havens facilitate.The author is Lecturer in Accounting, University of Nottingham Although I can be best described as an independent conservative, my father was a Republican. He voted for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Bush and Romney. And with the exception of Barack Obama in 2008, I dont think hes ever voted for a Democrat, if he could help it. His logic (in part as he explained it to me one day): All the poor people he knew growing up were Democrats, and all the people who were professionals and had money were Republicans. More seriously though, my fathers Republican Party was actually more of a champion of civil rights than the Democrats. And if you really want to set the record straight, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not have passed had it not been for Republicans. Thats right while the Democrats of today have monopolized the title of champion of civil rights, even though I will argue all their policies do at the end of the day is make life more difficult for minorities than necessary, back in the day, it was the GOP that came to the rescue. Allow me to explain. To do this right, we have to look at the data and voting records. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 10, 1964. The vote total was 290130. However, when you break those numbers down by party, only 60 percent of Democrats voted for the legislation, and 40 percent of them voted no. On the other side of the aisle, 138 Republicans (80 percent) voted yes, while only 34 members of the Grand Old Party voted against the Civil Rights Act. When the legislation got to the Senate, a vote was held on June 19, only after the Civil Rights Act sat in limbo for nine days as it was filibustered. And that filibuster was led by Democrats Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. And instrumental in breaking that filibuster was the Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen from my home state of Illinois. It was the longest filibuster in Senate history, by the way. When the Act finally passed, it was an overwhelmingly affirmative vote of 7327. More than two-thirds of Democrats voted in favor of the act (46 yes, 21 no). But the Republican support in favor was even greater, with 27 yes and only six no votes. And by the way, did you know a Hoosier was instrumental in getting that Civil Rights legislation passed? No, I am not talking about former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, who did play a role in moving the legislation forward. I am talking about Indiana Congressman Charles Halleck of Lafayette. He was the House Republican Minority Leader at the time, and he and then-President Lyndon Johnson did a lot of negotiating and horse trading to get enough Republican votes on board to get the Civil Rights Act passed. I know some of you may find all of this somewhat shocking, but history is kind of a funny thing when you study it and pay attention to the details and dont just believe the hype. Whats unfortunate is the national Republican Party of today is nothing like the GOP of the past. Remember, it was Republicans who were responsible for the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, which ended slavery, made Blacks citizens and guaranteed their right to vote. Republicans were responsible for the passage of anti-lynching laws. They passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the precursor to later civil rights legislation. And even affirmative action as we know it had it roots under Richard Nixon; it was known as the Philadelphia Plan and required federal contractors to commit to hiring minorities. I will be the first one to say my Republican friends and some of the rhetoric at the national level is a bit over the top, to put it mildly. With that said, if you go back in history, you will see the GOP did a lot more for civil rights and the advancement of African-Americans than many of you are probably prone to believe. How I miss my fathers Republican Party. Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney, political commentator and publisher of IndyPolitics.org. You can email comments to him at abdul@indypolitics.org. There comes a phase in life where youve got to take important decisions that will have a great impact on your life. At first, you fear. Youre nervous about taking the big leap that will make or break your life. At such times, you need to breathe, pack your bags and set out on a trip to seek some enlightenment that would give you the much-needed courage to take on the world. Heres why you need to keep calm and travel before taking lifes important decisions. 1. It diverts your mind for a while Image Credit: unsplash Travelling will divert your mind from the stressful subject that is bothering you currently. Getting to a destination will give you enough to think about and act on. Therefore, its a good diversion. 2. You will observe people and learn from them Image Credit: blog.oceans-campus.com During your journey, you will meet many interesting people who have problems which are difficult than yours. Paying keen attention to them would make you realise how boldly they take on their problems, and that will motivate you to find your way. 3. It will give you your much needed me time Image Credit: thebabybible While travelling, you will get your me time to arrive at your solutions. Everyday chaos makes your life more complicated. However, if you take some time out to figure out your life then you will surely arrive at a solution. 4. It will help you set your priorities straight Image Credit: shutterstock It is while travelling that it will dawn on you that youve been giving importance to silly things in life. It gives you the clarity to figure out whats more important. 5. It will make you realise the power of nature Image Credit: mastphotos Our fast-paced lives dont let us realise the real power of nature. We make mistakes by never letting our decisions align with that of natures. It is when you travel that you will get time to appreciate natures beauty and think about its presence in your life. 6. While travelling, you will suddenly be hit by a realisation that will change your life Image Credit: ET Everything will come to you at an unexpected moment. It will be like a massive meteor of realisation that will hit you and change you for the better. You will then find that much sought after solution at one go. 7. Eminent people like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have found what they were looking for while on spiritual trips Image Credit: twitter Its no secret that Jobs and Zuckerberg turned to a spiritual trip to India for answers. And they did receive what they were looking for. Spiritual trips help you calm down and look for answers within. It serves as a motivation, which boosts your morale and helps you gain confidence. 8. It clears self-doubt Image Credit: dooverguy Before taking a giant step towards making a big decision, your mind is filled with self-doubt and confusion. It is when youre back from a rejuvenating trip that the fog of self-doubt clears and you come back as a different person altogether. 9. You'll realise how life is so much bigger than your problems Image Credit: dirtbagdarling.com We crib and whine about small things all the time. However, your life is above that. Only the long journey will make you realise that its just a phase you'll leave once you move on to the next road. Life is not about being stuck in one place, but about moving on to the next road. 10. It will teach you how to go with the flow Image Credit: kimupstone Leisure is when you control time and not vice-versa. It is during your leisure time that you would realise how we run against time and not with it. Travelling will advise you to go with the flow, and that relying on destiny is not going to help you one bit. 11. It changes you for the best Image Credit: turkishtravel.com You leave with your backpack and confusing questions, but youre back with reassuring answers and self-confidence that would give you the strength to take on the world. You come back with no inhibitions and youre ready to face whatever life has in store for you with an open mind and with an open heart. insidehollywood Just a few weeks ago we had told you how Hollywood's most powerful couple, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt had decided to get divorced. Sad, but true! And now, it seems like a long and ugly separation battle is waiting for them. Reportedly, Jolie has demanded a DNA test for Brad Pitt to prove that he has not fathered actress Melissa Etheridge's children. Etheridge was once a close friend of the couple. And she recently revealed on an Australian talk show that she considered asking Pitt to donate his sperm to her and then-partner Julie Cypher. Looks like these comments haven't gone down well with Jolie! But now Jolie is suspicious that her husband could be the real father of Etheridges children. pixgood According to a source, Angie wants closure on the issue, so shes demanding Brad undergo a paternity test. But Brad says Angie is being paranoid. In fact, it is also being reported that Jolie has warned Pitt that if he doesn't take the DNA test then she'd demand answers from Melissa herself. Phew! Looks like Angelina is in no mood to bow down! All IIT students will have access to interest-free loan for the entire tuition fee under government's 'Vidyalakshmi' scheme at the time of admission, the HRD ministry has proposed. ste.india The proposals will be ratified by the IIT council shortly. "As chairperson of the IIT council, the HRD minister is entitled to take the decision," a source said. In case of JEE, some tweaking has taken. Performance of students in Class 12 examination will still be crucial for JEE eligibility. To qualify, students will have to secure minimum 75% marks or be in the top 20 percentile in the class XII examination. For SC, ST students, it will be 65%. toppr The ministry said rationale for the hike is that cost of maintenance of IITs should be met largely from fees. IIT council had also said the hike would ensure that salary and maintenance bills, that come to over Rs 2,000 crore annually, are met. The sexist comments by NLSIU professor V Nagaraj on Monday and the professor's response prove, yet again, that sexism is very much a part of the Indian thought process. The professor chastised a female student by asking her to "dress properly." lawctopus We all know why parents marry their children off - so that they can have sex. Just because the parents marry off their children for this reason, it does not mean that the children have sex in front of their parents, Nagaraj reportedly said after the student raised objection on his remark to "dress properly" before adding, "You can come to class without a dress also. That is how your character is, Im going to ignore you. When asked to explain his stand, Nagaraj said, Nothing like [what is described in the statement] happened. Students are making false and baseless allegations. It is for the university authorities to examine this incident. This is the first time that students have made such a statement [whereas] I have been teaching for 27 years... I had already informed the vice chancellor and the registrar, by email, when the incident happened on Monday. Then I reminded them on phone. But the VC is out of station and the university has taken no action so far so it has become a free for all, he added. The professor's remark isn't the first of its kind in India. In fact, sexist statements are a rather frequent occurrence. Om Prakash Chautala dailyamin Former Haryana Chief Minister, Om Prakash Chautala, drew quite a bit of flak when he sided with the Khap Panchayat Leader Jitender Chhatar who stated "Chowmein leads to hormonal imbalance evoking an urge to indulge in such acts." "I completely support the khap panchayat's decision. It is a good way to protect women," Chautala said. Abhijit Mukherjee photofuniaa.blogspot.com As young men and women took to the streets in Delhi and beyond after the heinous Nirbhaya rape, President Pranab Mukherjee's son, Abhijit Mukherjee, remarked to a news channel, "Women who are participating in candle-light vigils and those who are protesting have no connection with ground reality. These pretty ladies coming out to protest are 'highly dented and painted'". Hema Malini Facebook While thousands of women continue to be cast off at the "feet of Krishna" in Vrindavan after being widowed, the former actor and now Parlimentarian says, "Vrindavan widows have a bank balance, good income, nice beds but they beg out of habit." Not one to stop at that, she added, "There are 40,000 widows in Vrindavan. I think there is no more place in the city. A large population is coming from Bengal... that's not right. Why don't they stay in Bengal? There are nice temples there. The same is true for those from Bihar." Soon after, she responded by saying that he had not said anything to be "ashamed of" as no one had seen the "actual interview." I thk none of u have listened to my actual interview. I personally found out tht there are abt 5000 widows in Vrindavan. Spoke to some. Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) September 18, 2014 Sharad Yadav Facebook Addressing the women who live in cities and sport short hair as "par kati auratein," Sharad Yadav took matters to a whole new level when the Women's Reservation Bill was being debated in Parliament. Three days later, Yadav defended his remark by saying, "What have I said ... 'saanvli' (dark complexioned) women are more in number in India, they are more in number the world over. I am ready to debate with anyone on the struggle of (Ram Manohar) Lohia and others for them." Soon after came his comment, "I will consume poison and die here but not allow the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill." When I was a young reporter ( with short hair ) starting out Sharad Yadav dismissed women like me as 'par kati' elites. His sexism thrives barkha dutt (@BDUTT) March 13, 2015 Mulayam Singh Yadav Facebook Mulayam Singh Yadav, a repeat offender in sexist remarks, addressed women gathered at a rally in Barabanki as, "Only women from the affluent classes can get ahead in life, but remember, you rural women will never get a chance because you are not that attractive." When asked for a comment on a rape case, the minister said, "Boys will be boys." Narendra Modi The Guardian The Prime Minister himself has displayed a poor selection of thoughts and words when addressing the people as CM of Gujarat. When a daughter is born, plant a tree. Twenty years later, you can sell five trees for her wedding, he said. While Modi intended to promote the welfare of daughters and forests in the same sentence, he made it sound like he is pro-dowry. Also during the election campaign for PM position, Modi had addressed Shashi Tharoor's wife as "50 crore ki girlfriend". Tharoor had taken him on by responding, "My wife is priceless, beyond any imaginary 50 crores." But it is not just politicians. Academicians have displayed a lack of sense in the past as well. Facebook During a fallout against sexist hostel rules at Hyderabad's Maulana Azad National Urdu University, students and hostel residents alleged that Professor Aziz Bano, the hostel warden, had asked if the "girls had come to entertain the boys" at the inauguration of a new building. On being asked, Bano maintained that she had never made any such comment. www.amu.ac.in The Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, Zameer Uddin Shah, was in the line of Education Minister Smriti Irani's fire after reports of women students not being given access to the main library of the university came to light. In his response, the Vice Chancellor said that allowing female undergraduates will attract "four times more boys" to the library, making matters much worse. Things calmed down a bit after Shah cleared that another library, Maulana Azad Library, provided round-the-clock access for women students. A Delhi police constable has been arrested for misbehaving with a women magistrate and her family after being drunk on duty. PTI The incident happened while the magistrate and her family was on their way back from performing prayers at Yamuna Ghat on Sunday. The constable, Ravinder Kumar reportedly used abusive language on the magistrate and tried to make a video of her sitting in the car. Yamuna Katha I went near Yamuna to perform my rituals. It took me around two minutes. Thereafter, I returned to board my car. As I was sitting in my car, I noticed that a constable was taking photos of my car and me, the magistrate said in her complaint. She also alleged that despite making a call to the nearest police station, the police action was delayed and all the while the drunk constable was creating chaos outside the car. The Hindu reported that Kumar even threatened to lodge a false complaint against the judge and her husband. Police on Thursday said they had cracked the case of the murder of NIA officer Tanzil Ahmed, who was gunned down in Bijnor last Sunday as he was coming out from the venue of a wedding he had just attended. Top sources in the UP police told TOI that the breakthrough came after Rehan Mohammad, one of Ahmed's relatives, was nabbed a day earlier. Rehan, sources added, "confessed to the killing, saying he was angry with the the NIA officer for bullying and humiliating his family". spiderimg Police also said Rehan has revealed that while it was he who drove the motorcycle used in the murder, it was his accomplice Munir, riding pillion, who had fired the shots that killed Ahmed. The NIA officer was shot at 24 times by his assailants with two guns, a .9mm pistol and a .32 bore revolver. While he received 21 bullets 12 were found in his body and 9 had crashed through him his wife Farzana was hit three times. Rehan, who was picked up on the basis of local intelligence, is the nephew of Tanzil's sister's husband. He allegedly told interrogators that he was angry with the NIA officer "as he used his clout to get his sister's husband a disproportionate share in the family property". On top of that, Rehan is believed to have told cops, Tanzil would humiliate Rehan's father and his brothers. He particularly mentioned that the officer once accused his grandfather, a cleric, of embezzling the funds he would collect as donations from the community. s3.india "What we gathered through human intelligence has been corroborated by electronic intelligence. Mobile data has confirmed the presence of the duo in the vicinity of the crime site," said a senior UP police source, who requested anonymity. "A manhunt is on to nab Munir and to verify the version of Rehan. We are treading with caution and may not make a public statement until we have connected all the dots, given the sensitive nature of the crime," he added. The investigators have said they were struck by the intensity of the attack. "What made Munir fire so many times at Tanzil. What was it that drove him to pump so many bullets? That remains to be established," said the senior officer. This came even as UP DGP Javeed Ahmed tweeted on Thursday afternoon and said, "We are making tangible progress in the case of the killing of NIA officer (sic)." SP (Bijnor) SS Baghel confirmed the detention of half a dozen men in the high profile case. intoday Baghel told TOI: "We have detained six men for questioning and a few more will be rounded up in due course of the investigation. We are very close to solving the case and are looking for one man at the centre of it." All the men have been picked up from Sahaspur. In fact, five of them are from one locality Maulviaan and are relatives and neighbours of Tanzil. The five have been identified as Rehan, 20, his father Shahdat Ahmad, 50, Tanzeem, 25, Inam, 22 and Mehtab, 60. All of them were nabbed in the last three days. Mehtab is the father of Munir Ahmad, 35, the main suspect who remains at large. Munir, an ex-student of Aligarh Muslim University, is wanted in two murder cases, both in Aligarh, and has not returned home for over a year now. DIG (Moradabad range) Omkar Singh said, "We have found the correct line of investigation in the case. The real motive of the murder will be clear only after one more person is taken into custody." abplive Meanwhile, ex-chairman of Sahaspur nagar panchayat Zaheen Akhtar said, "In the last three days the police have detained half a dozen men from Sahaspur. But we have no information about the alleged property dispute which is said to be the reason behind Tanzil Ahmed's murder." Raj Kumar Sharma, station officer of Seohara police station, said, "Investigations are on and we are in the process of questioning hard core criminals of other districts too." Over the last six months, Laxman Ritapure lost ten of his cattle. Four cows, four bullocks and two calves. As Marathwada's searing drought lengthened into a second year, he ran out of water and fodder to feed them. ibnlive In this parched eight-district region where the drought has affected every single village, the beef ban which was enacted a year ago has come as a double whammy for farmers like Ritapure. The new law extended Maharashtra's ban on cow slaughter to include bullocks. This cut off demand from abattoirs and paralysed trade at cattle markets. Soon, there was a steep price crash. "I took them to the cattle market last year but prices had halved. I tried to sell them again in January but there were no takers," says Ritapure. He still 26 cattle left to feed. With just one acre to his name, Ritapure had bought ten animals seven years ago. The brood grew over the years. Ritapure now spends Rs 2,000 a week on fodder. The money he earns from selling milk just about covers this. amazonaws "If the government banned beef to save cows, it should look after them too," he says bitterly. Having raised the animals himself, losing them is particularly painful. "They are like my children. I would rather go without food myself than see them die," he says. His neighbours have also lost their cattle in the last few months. Melon farmer Kiran Kale has lost one of his seven cattle. Suryakant Konde has lost a cow and a calf. "During the day, I just release my buffalo and calves. They graze on what they can find," says Konde, who has a three-acre field. The government is helping to fund 333 cattle camps set up in the region by private groups and NGOs, where water and fodder is given free. As many as 3.2 lakh cattle in Marathwada are housed in the camps located in the worst-affected districts of Beed, Latur and Osmanabad. huffpost For farmers desperate to save their livestock, the cattle camps are a life-line. But Mangrul's villagers say the nearest camp is five km away and difficult for them to access. Farmers have to stay at the camp to look after their animals. But most camps don't provide bathing facilities or food for these care-takers. "I will have to travel home every day. Who can afford to spend Rs 50 a day on transport?" asks Ritapure. "We do not run the camps," says Osmanabad collector Prashant Narnaware. "We approve applications from individuals or NGOs. We give them Rs 70 per animal per day from the National Disaster Relief Fund." The majority of cattle camps are run by local politicians, including many who plan to stand for the zila parishad elections next year. TOI The BJP's Santosh Hange, a member of the Beed zila parishad and an aide of rural development minister Pankaja Munde runs a cattle camp at Nandurghat in Kaij Taluka. Hange plans to stand for the zilla parishad polls and is acutely aware that the camp will endear him to his electorate. "I am helping them during a crisis. They will remember me," he points out. In camps that provide food and water for the farmers tending to cattle, entire families have moved in. "There is more water for us here than in our own village," says dairy farmer Bharat Baglani who has been living at Shiv Sangram politician Rajendra Mhaske's cattle camp in Beed for the last eight months. A forest fire that broke out in Florida had an unlikely survivor. Firefighters managed to save a bear cub which was clearly traumatised by the bush fire that broke out in Ocala National Forest. The cub suffered burns to its paws and face and was sent to Fish and Wildlife officers to evaluate its health. It will be rehabilitated before being sent back out into the wild. Let's introduce you to SJ (smokey Jr.) the bear saved from a brush fire in Lake County. Way to go FL Forest Service! pic.twitter.com/bbbSspalHz Michael Ollendorff (@mollendorffTV2) April 7, 2016 For now the rescued cub has been named Smokey Junior in honour of the firefighting bear, Smokey, who serves as a mascot against forest fires. Smokey Junior's mother was not found. usatoday.com Bush fires are a direct threat to the wilderness in forests across America. Lives and property are lost while many animal populations are drastically reduced. Twitter Indian Premier League 2016 opened tonight in Mumbai with much fanfare amid glittering performances from Bollywood and international artists. Even as those who are involved directly with the league, the players, captains, support staffs, the organisers, team owners etc had their spirits high for the event, an air of opposition kept mounting in the backdrop of the severe water crisis in the state of Maharashtra. @ranveersingh steals the #iplopeningceremony2016. What a start to a spectacular tournament! A video posted by Mimansa Shekhar (@shift_focus) on Apr 8, 2016 at 10:33am PDT IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla vowed that the cash-rich league will do whatever it can to work for the welfare of farmers who have been bogged down with drought. "The IPL and BCCI are committed to the welfare of the farmers. We will do whatever is suggested to us. We will co-operate with whatever is told to us." Three cities in the state - Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur - are scheduled to host 19 matches in total this edition. Shukla further said the perception of IPL being an entertainment show was wrong. "Whatever people may see, I still believe that IPL is serious cricket. It's not just entertainment. Most of the games finish in the last over. Lot many budding talent are discovered by IPL, the world has seen that. This edition will be a better one than the previous editions. IPL is growing every year," he said. But then it didn't take long for twitterati to react to Shukla's speech both in humour and sarcasm. Rajiv shukla says will help farmers.. Better they could have paid Katrina's money to them.worst performance #iplopeningceremony Sadashiva D M (@sadashaiva) April 8, 2016 Three guarantees in life: Death, Taxes, Rajiv Shukla memorizing his speech. #IPL Arjun Ashok (@arj_90) April 8, 2016 IPL ceremony ruined by the mere presence of Penguin Rajiv Shukla #iplopeningceremony Geeta Sharma (@lexingtondecor) April 8, 2016 .@Babu_Bhaiyaa Overweight 'Samosa' Rajeev Shukla himself standing on stage is the most insulting thing to famine affected starving farmers. Optimist (@DesiOptimystic) April 8, 2016 A Federal Capital Territory, FCT, High Court in Abuja on Thursday granted bail to Azibaola Robert, said to be a cousin to former President Goodluck Jonathan. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had on March 23, 2016 arrested Robert over alleged diversion of $40 million through One-Plus Holdings, a sister company of Kakatar Construction and Engineering Company Limited. The anti-graft agency said the money, which was paid by embattled former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), was meant for securing oil pipelines. In a ruling on an ex parte application brought pursuant to fundamental rights (enforcement procedure) rules by the accuseds lawyer, Chris Uche (SAN), Justice Olasumbo Goodluck, said Roberts detention by the EFCC for over two weeks was unconstitutional. The judge was of the view that the applicant disclosed sufficient evidence before the court to warrant the granting of his relief. Citing the provisions of Section 35(5) of the Constitution, the judge held that the detention of the applicant for 15 days as at yesterday, was far in excess of the constitutionally provided time for detaining a citizen without his arrest or arraignment in a law court. This court has carefully examined Order 4 Rule 3 and 4 of the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules 2009, there it empowers the court to entertain an ex-parte application for the prevention of life or liberty of a Nigerian Citizen where exceptional hardship may be occasioned before the service of the motion on notice. Applying the foregoing provisions as a litmus test to the facts and circumstances of this case, I am of the view and so hold that this ex-parte application is competent and contemplated by the laws of our land. The applicant by this application disclosed that he has been in detention since 23 March, 2016 in an underground cell. This in this courts view amounts to a deprivation of his movement and his freedom contrary to the time frame stipulated in the 1999 constitution. I am of the view that the applicant has disclosed exceptional reason why this application should be granted. More importantly, order 4 rule 4 (1) of the fundamental rights enforcement procedural rules of 2009 empowers this court to grant bail or order the release of the applicant forthwith from detention pending the determination of the motion on notice. Similarly, lending credence to the powers of this court to allow an interlocutory respite to the applicant is Section 168 of the ACJA 2015, which provides that a judge of a High Court may direct that (a) bail conditions required by a magistrate court or police officer be reviewed be it a defendant in custody in a state of FCT be admitted to bail. My summation from a community reading of the foregoing statutes, the court is empowered to grant bail or order the release of the applicant pending the determination of the motion on notice. In the light of the foregoing considerations, this court will be exercising its powers judiciously and judicially by allowing this application. Accordingly, this application succeeds. The applicant is hereby admitted to bail pending his arraignment before a court of law or pending the determination of the substantive motion on notice in this suit, Justice Goodluck said. The judge, however, ordered that the applicants bail shall be with two sureties, each of which shall be a serving or retired Director in any of the Federal Government ministries or parastatal and must be resident within the FCT. She also ordered the applicant to deposit his international passport with the courts Chief Registrar. The lawmaker representing Ojo Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Hon. Tajudeen Obasa has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to accept responsibility and end the lingering fuel scarcity in the country. Obasa, who is a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) advised the president and his close associates to stop trading blames about the myriads of problems facing the country. In a statement released by his media aide, Mr Opeyemi Ahmed, the lawmaker urged Buhari to constitute a competent team by appointing capable individuals, irrespective of their creed, calling or political affiliations. Across the globe, leaders of nations are elected to proffer solutions to problems, to govern isnt an easy task. Great leaders dont criticize their predecessors, they call for patience and understanding to salvage the situation. The task of transforming the nooks and crannies of 774 Local Governments wont be achieved by press releases of Jonathan this Jonathan that, it can only be achieved with concrete plans that will meet reality. A government elected for four years by 15 millions Nigerians cant blame an individual for the duration, rather than trade blames, committees should be set up to assess the progress made by the previous administrations in order to build a better nation, Obasa said. Governance is beyond propaganda, good policies tackle corruption, to fight corruption shouldnt be the singular goal of a government. There are many sectors of the economy that needs the attention of the number one citizen, corruption can only be fought collectively with all hands on deck not on the pages of newspapers to score cheap political points, he noted. During a recent drug and alcohol abuse awareness campaign in Palapye, Captive Eye Organisation CEO, Percy Mothibi said while marijuana and cocaine were the two most popular drugs among youths, addicts also resorted to other concoctions. When we did our research about drugs which are used in Botswana, we found out that marijuana is the most used, then cocaine. There are other mixtures including human waste and Vim, dust from vehicle exhausts and dust from inside television sets that is also said to be mixed with ARVs, he said. Captive Eyes studies found out that the mixture of dry human faeces and Vim, called CAT, is very strong and thus highly addictive. These youths steal their parents or other relatives pills such as ARVs and those taken for diabetes to make their own drugs, Mothibi told a stunned audience. Such drugs are taken through different methods such as injections, smoking or sniffing. Others are put in alcohol. The organisations research has shown that all manner of drugs are on the increase among youths, being distributed at schools, parties and outings. Mothibi said some youths were even selling their drugs at churches and setting up businesses in worship centres. There are some youths who confessed that they do such. Others said they even sell under their parents orders. It is very dangerous for parents to use their children in this way, to make money. Our country is in a very challenging situation in terms of drugs and its a pity because the majority of users are youth who should be regarded as the countrys future leaders. Mothibi said drug addiction was behind trends showing that the majority of patients in mental health institutions in Botswana were youths. Others, he said, had resorted to prostitution to make money. He added that in prisons, youths made up the majority of inmates, with most of the crimes committed under the influence of drugs and alcohol. From the research that we did from January to February, 81 teenagers between 15 and 20 years fell pregnant and many said they were under the influence of alcohol, Mothibi said. MMegi. A law student who posted pro-atheism comments on social media has been murdered, Bangladeshi police said, in the latest incident in a series of killings of secular activists and bloggers in the country. Dhaka Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Nurul Amin said at least three men riding on a single motorbike carried out the killing on Wednesday night. No group immediately claimed responsibility. Al Jazeeras Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said 28-year-old Nazimuddin Samad was the seventh secular activist who has been killed. The men on the motorbike first hit him with machetes. Then they shot him to make sure he was dead, Chowdhury said. Police suspected that Samad had been targeted for his outspoken atheism in the Muslim-majority country, and for supporting a 2013 movement to demand capital punishment for war crimes involving the countrys independence war against Pakistan in 1971. The national Dhaka Tribune newspaper reported that the assailants shouted Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest) as they attacked Samad on a busy road near Dhakas Jagannath University, where he was a law student. Samad had only recently arrived in Dhaka from the northeastern city of Sylhet to study law. Last year, assailants hacked to death at least four atheist bloggers and a secular publisher in a long-running series of targeted killings of secular activists. Police arrested members of a banned group called the Ansarullah Bangla Team over those murders, although none have yet been prosecuted. Aljazeera. President Muhammadu Buhari Thursday in Abuja urged the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) to shelve its planned strike action and give the Federal Government more time to address the grievances of doctors. Speaking at a meeting with the leadership of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), President Buhari gave the doctors an assurance that no agreements duly entered into by the Federal Government will be dishonoured by his administration. He called for greater understanding and support from doctors and all Nigerians in view of the present short fall in national revenue brought about by the decline of crude oil prices. The President decried the adverse impact of the fall in oil prices on the Federal Governments spending plans for health and other sectors, but promised that his administration will continue to do its best to address issues that are of concern to doctors and other Nigerians. The President also gave the NMA delegation an insight into his administrations plan to establish 10,000 primary healthcare centres across the country in the next two years with the objective of providing better healthcare for about 100 million Nigerians. The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole described the plan to establish more healthcare centres as the single most ambitious health plan for the poor in the history of Nigeria. In his remarks at the meeting, NMA President, Dr. Kayode Obembe called for the implementation of the report of the Yayale Ahmed Committee on better relations among professional groups in the health sector. The NMA President also called for fast-tracking of the implementation of the National Health Act. The search for the truth about the brutal killing of Giulio Regeni, the 28-year old Italian researcher found dead in a ditch in the outskirts of Cairo two months ago, is turning into one of the most delicate diplomatic cases Italy has dealt with recently. It is also putting to a hard test the credibility of the Italian government. Italian and Egyptian prosecutors are expected to meet in Rome on Thursday in what the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paolo Gentiloni, described as a crucial meeting to reach a solution to the case. Gentiloni warned the Egyptians that Italys patience was running out. Unless there is a change of pace [by Egypt], Italy is ready to react by adopting immediate and proportional measures, Gentiloni said on Tuesday, in what sounded like a direct threat to Cairo. The stormy exchange of statements between Rome and Cairo, the unproductive string of visits and documents between the investigative teams as well as the Egyptian authorities ever changing versions on how Regeni was murdered came to a climax on Tuesday when Gentiloni issued his strongest statement since the start of the case. We will not let Italys dignity be trampled on, he said, addressing the Italian Senate. We are at a turning point. We are not sure how much closer to the truth well get, but the decision to send the prosecutor and police officials to Rome on Thursday marks a change of direction by the Egyptian side, said Stefano Stefanini, columnist at the daily La Stampa and a former diplomat. Aljazeera. Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of turning a blind eye to electoral malpractices committed by members of his party, All Progressives Congress (APC). This is just as he urged the Professor Mahmood Yakubu-led Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to purge itself of partisanship and election manipulations before seeking the establishment of an Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal. The INEC chair had while speaking at a Stakeholders Forum on Elections, convened by the Situation Room, with support from UK AID, held at Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja on Tuesday, decried the spate of violence that has greeted elections recently conducted in the country and called for speedy setting up of the EOCT. But Gov. Fayose disagreed with Prof. Yakubu, saying INEC under the present dispensation is the number one electoral offender and that electoral reform without INEC neutrality is a mirage. The governor was of the view that any Electoral Offences Tribunal established under this present dispensation will only be used against opposition parties as the Department of States Services, Police, Armed forces and other agencies of the federal government were used during the Bayelsa and Rivers States elections. Mr. Fayose, in a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka on Thursday, said that; Even though establishment of Electoral Offences Tribunal is not entirely a bad idea, but INEC as presently constituted does not encourage free, fair and violence free election and it should worry Prof Yakubu that INEC as at today, is being referred to as Inconclusive National Electoral Commission because of the commissions partisanship. The governor, who described electoral violence as a product of electoral injustice, said even President Buhari himself admitted his failure to conduct any free, fair and credible election since he assumed office. He said; During the Rivers State rerun elections that INEC has been unable to conclude, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was missing on result sheets of over 230 polling units and up till now, all what INEC has been able to tell Nigerians was that the criminal omission of PDP in the result sheets was due to printers error. Was that not enough to cause violence? While blaming the president for eroding INECs independence, Governor Fayose said; The day President Buhari interfered with the internal administration of INEC by appointing Madam Amina Zakari, a National Commissioner, as Acting Chairperson of the commission, a title and position unknown to the Constitution, INEC under the Buharis APC government lost its independence and its credibility was eroded. The reality that INEC itself must therefore face is that members of President Buharis party, APC have become so emboldened to unleash violence on Nigerians during elections because they know that the president wont lift a finger provided his party members are the ones perpetrating evil. INEC must therefore seek to regain its lost independence and credibility before talking about punishing electoral offenders because as it is now, INEC is the number one electoral offender and promoter of electoral violence. More than 300 staff at a cement factory near Damascus have been kidnapped after an attack earlier this week by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), Syrian state TV said on Thursday. Hundreds of employees at the Al Badia Cement company were taken by ISIL fighters from a factory 50km east of the Syrian capital, the report quoted the industry ministry as saying. It added the workers employer had lost all contact with them. There were conflicting reports earlier on Thursday about the number of people missing. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens of staff had disappeared, while a plant administrator put the figure at 250. There is information that the workers might have been kidnapped by Islamic State and taken to an unknown destination, Rami Abdel Rahman, the Observatorys head, told the DPA news agency. A resident of Dumeir, 50km east of the Syrian capital, told the AFP news agency that contact with family members had been lost since noon on Monday. The cement factory lies outside Dumeir, which has seen fierce battles between government forces and ISIL fighters inside the town. A Syrian security source told AFP that ISIL also tried to seize a nearby airbase and power plant from the government, without succeeding. Governor of Kwara State, Abdulfatah Ahmed, has denied any link with the management, ownership or building of Whitefield Hotel, Ilorin. He made the denial in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant, Dr. Muyideen Akorede, yesterday. Governor Ahmed described as false, mischievous and evil, a publication by online medium, SaharaReporters, that he built the hotel. He said he remained committed to fulfilling his covenant with the people and would not be distracted by SaharaReporters deliberate and malicious falsehood. Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commissiin (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu has vowed to get to the root of the Halliburton case as well as other corruption cases in the country. Speaking during a visit by Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), who charged the commission not to relent in carrying out its mandate of ridding the country of economic and financial crimes, Magu made his resolve known. A statement issued on the visit by EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren read that Sagay, who led some members of the committee to the EFCC headquarters in Abuja, also stressed the pivotal role the anti-graft agency has to play in winning the war against corruption. The common interest of Nigerians is at stake, because corruption affects everyone, and we have the same objective, therefore you can rely on us to give you support in all ramifications, he said. He commended Magu for the renewed strength in carrying out the anti corruption mandate. The energy you have brought in to the activities of the EFCC since your assumption of office has encouraged us, and we want you to continue to do more, he said. In his response, Magu reassured the committee of the Commissions resolve not to relent in its efforts, he used the opportunity to intimate the committee of some of the reforms he has initiated. We are restructuring the operations aspect of the Commission and weeding out the bad eggs, he said. We are also carrying the anti-corruption crusade to the grassroots. Vigilant operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, attached to the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Ikeja, Lagos State have discovered 28 packs of prescription drug, Tramadol, weighing 21.99 kilogramme hidden inside a DJ rack box and 1.8 kilogramme of cocaine in boxer shorts. The Tramadol, which was cleverly hidden among camera items, was intercepted by the NDLEA officials during pre-shipment inspection. The consignment was destined for Congo Brazzaville in Central Africa. The NDLEA arrested one Afube Izuchukwu Henry, 27, in connection with the consignment. Another suspect arrested with cocaine in his boxer shorts, was on his way to Dubai before he caught during the outward screening of passengers. The Commander of NDLEA Lagos Airport Command, Ahmed Garba, said both suspects would be charged to court. According to Garba, Henry, who deals in automobile parts was arrested for attempting to export 21.99kgs of Tramadol hidden inside a DJ rack box meant for export to Congo Brazzaville. Another suspect, Chijioke Chukwuemeka Raphael, a Dubai based factory worker was arrested with 1.8kgs of cocaine packed inside socks and concealed in his boxer shorts during the inward screening of passengers on an Emirate flight from Dubai. Henry, who hails from Anambra and married with two children, said that he only acted on his elder brothers instruction. I am an auto parts dealer. My brother who lives in Congo asked me to send a DJ Rack box to him. Unfortunately, when I took the box to the airport, NDLEA discovered tramadol inside it during search and I was arrested in the process, he stated. Raphael, 36, who claimed to be an indigene of Enugu State, said that he was offered four hundred and fifty thousand (N450,000) naira to smuggle the drug. I am a factory worker in Dubai for the past six years. I am married with three children but I cannot take good care of my family. I work from hand to mouth and I am tired of working without seeing the benefits of my labour. I met a man seven months ago in Nigeria who introduced me into drug trafficking. He promised me a better job in Nigeria and offered me N450,000 naira. I accepted the offer because I wanted to come back home and start a better job, he said. Nelson Mandelas ex-wife has lost her legal bid for ownership of the former presidents rural home in South Africa. A High Court dismissed Winnie Madikizela-Mandelas application and ordered her to pay all legal costs. She argued that the house in Qunu village belonged to her under customary law. Mr Mandela, who became South Africas first black president in 1994, bequeathed the property to his family when he died in 2013 aged 95. The government opposed Ms Madikizela-Mandelas bid to inherit the home after she launched court action in 2014. Mr Mandela divorced Ms Madikizela-Mandela in 1996 after a 38-year marriage, and left her out of his will. They were South Africas most celebrated political couple until their marriage collapsed unexpectedly, some six years after his release from 27 years in prison for fighting apartheid, which was a legalised discrimination against black people in the country. Mr Mandela stepped down as president after one term in 1999. South Africans regarded him as the father of the nation, and his death, following a series of hospital visits, led to an outpouring of emotions. BBC. Punch The naira is expected to weaken more on the parallel market but flat on the official interbank market next week as businesses await the signing of the 2016 budget by President Mohammadu Buhari. Vanguard UNILAG shuts down over water shortage, epileptic electricity protest The management of the University of Lagos, yesterday, ordered the immediate closure of the institution, following students protests over epileptic power supply and poor water supply. Thisday The embattled ex-beauty queen and Nollywood actress, Ibinabo Fiberesima, on Thursday got temporary relief, when the Court of Appeal in Lagos granted her bail pending the determination of her appeal at the Supreme Court following the five-year imprisonment slammed on her for manslaughter. The Sun The power play in the Senate, over who succeeds Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, if he is convicted by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), yesterday, took a new twist when one of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Senators, Matthew Urhoghide declared that the ruling All Progressives Congress ( APC) will be taught a bitter lesso Daily Times The immediate past Commander Nigerian Army Education Corps, Major- General Sunday Adedapo Adebayo, has been disengaged from the Nigeria army in a colourful ceremony. Guardian Police restrict movement tomorrow in Abuja over council polls AS the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) prepares to conduct council elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the police have issued a movement restriction in the nations capital tomorrow. Daily Trust Human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), on Thursday called for the prosecution of Nigerian public officers whose names were contained in the Panama Papers a document that exposed wealthy individuals around the world, Nigerians inclusive, with properties and secret accounts in tax havens. Some notable Nigerians exposed in the Panama Papers include embattled Senate President Bukola Saraki and his wife, Toyin; former Senate President David Mark; former Minister of Defence, Lt.-Gen. T.Y Danjuma (retd.), Alhaji Aliko Dangote and convicted former Governor of Delta State, James Ibori among others. Speaking with reporters yesterday, Falana said that while private citizens named in the leak could be exempted, public officers among them were liable for prosecution. He said, Private persons are not prohibited from keeping accounts wherever they like. However public officers have always been barred by the Code of Conduct Bureau and Code of Conduct Trubunal Act from operating foreign accounts in any manner whatsoever. To that extent, former and serving public officers whose accounts have been published in the Panama Papers are liable to be prosecuted if they had failed to declare them in their asset declaration forms. Secondly, the onus is on them to prove that any funds in such accounts emanated from their legitimate income. Constitutional expert and Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Corruption, Professor Itse Sagay, has charged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, not to relent in carrying out its mandate of ridding the country of economic and financial crimes. Mr. Sagay, who gave the charge when he led some members of the committee to the EFCC headquarters in Abuja, on Thursday, also stressed the pivotal role the anti-graft agency has to play in winning the war against corruption. The common interest of Nigerians is at stake, because corruption affects everyone, and we have the same objective, therefore you can rely on us to give you support in all ramifications, a statement issued by the Head, Media and Publicity of the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, quoted him as saying during the visit. While commending the acting chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, for re-energising the anti-graft agency, Mr. Sagay noted that there was still much to be done. The energy you have brought in to the activities of the EFCC since your assumption of office has encouraged us, and we want you to continue to do more, he said. Re-echoing the views of Mr. Sagay, the committees secretary, Bolaji Owasanoye, stressed the importance of securing convictions in cases involving high profile individuals. We commend you for your efforts, but there is need to further enhance the good work you are doing by securing convictions in high profile cases, he said. Reassuring the committee of the Commissions resolve not to relent in its efforts, Mr. Magu used the opportunity to intimate the committee of some of the reforms he has initiated. We are restructuring the operations aspect of the Commission and weeding out the bad eggs, he said. We are also carrying the anti-corruption crusade to the grassroots. Magu added that the efforts of the agency were yielding results, noting that the EFCC was determined to get to the root of major corruption cases in the country, including the Halliburton case. We are getting back the confidence we have been lacking, he said. He further told the committee that the Commission was facing a major problem with regards to accommodation, and there was a need to have an Academy equipped to international standards. Other members of the committee at the meeting include Sadiq Isa Radda, E. Alemika, Femi Odekunle, Ona Peters, Ola Olukayode, and Olusegun Odesina. Sudans President Omar al-Bashir has told the BBC he will step down in 2020, when his current mandate ends. Mr Bashir also denied allegations of abuses perpetrated by the Sudanese forces in renewed violence against black African villages who took up arms in the countrys western Darfur region. The president has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on counts of genocide and war crimes. Mr Bashir has been in power since 1989. He won elections in April last year. He told the BBCs Thomas Fessy that his job was exhausting and his current term would be his last. In 2020, there will be a new president and I will be an ex-president, he said. However, sceptics will say that he had already pledged to step down in the past and later went back on his word, our correspondent says. The UN says more than 2.5 million people have been displaced in Darfur since 2003 with more than 100,000 this year alone. President Bashir said that there was no reason for the UN peacekeepers and aid workers to stay in the troubled Darfur region. He denied reports of recent abuses in the mountains of Jebel Marra where government forces launched an offensive in January. All these allegations are baseless, none of these reports is true, he said. We challenge anyone to visit the areas recaptured by the armed forces, and find a single village that has been torched. BBC. On this day in 2008: Federal Government filed graft charges against the daughter of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and two ministers were sacked March, 2008. On this day in 1953 Jomo Kenyatta: Jomo Kenyatta the leader of the Kenya African Union Movement is sentenced to seven years hard labour for his part in the organization of the rebel Mau Mau movement. In 1963 Mr Kenyatta took control as the first prime minister of a self governing Kenya and denied he was ever a member of the Mau Mau, his trial is generally regarded to have been rigged by the British because he was an advocate of self rule for Kenya and other African Nations. Also on this day in 2009: Former President, Late Umaru YarAdua dismissed top managers across the board of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC). A proposal from two senior U.S. senators would force tech companies to give technical assistance to law enforcement agencies trying to break into smartphones and other encrypted devices. The draft bill, released today by Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, would allow judges to order tech companies to comply with requests from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to help them break into devices. Burr, a North Carolina Republican, is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee; Feinstein, from California, is the panel's senior Democrat. "All persons receiving an authorized judicial order for information or data must provide, in a timely manner, responsive, intelligible information or data, or appropriate technical assistance," the draft bill says. The proposal is likely to be controversial, with many encryption and privacy advocates sure to oppose it. "This legislation places an unqualified demand on companies to decrypt their customers data upon receiving a court order from law enforcement," said Daniel Castro, vice president of think tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. "While companies should comply with lawful requests, it is simply not possible for a company to do so when the customer controls the only keys used to encrypt the data." Services like WhatsApp, which now uses end-to-end encryption on its messaging app, would not be able to comply unless it modifies its security protections, Castro said. "Yet, the bill explicitly states that it is not authorizing the government to require or prohibit any specific design changes to software or hardware," he added. "In short, this bill sets up a legal paradox that would further muddy the waters about how and when the government can compel the private sector to assist in gaining access to private information." Under the proposed law, technology companies would be paid for reasonable costs incurred in providing the assistance. The long-rumored proposal, in the works for weeks, comes after a high-profile court fight between Apple and the FBI over access to an iPhone used by a mass shooter in San Bernardino, California. The FBI ultimately withdrew its request in that case after saying it found another method for defeating the phone's password protections, but the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday it plans to appeal a judge's ruling against the agency in a New York drug case. Stock Market This Week: Five Themes to Watch Barchart - 45 minutes ago While the U.S. equities sector posted a surprising win last week, circumstances are only getting more ambiguous, requiring extra vigilance among investors. RTX : 88.54 (+1.49%) Cattle bulls are back in force Sidwell Strategies - Sat Oct 22, 7:12PM CDT Cattle-on-Feed; Rebound in Equities & Energy 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%) The aerospace field, along with engineering in general, has a longstanding diversity problem. Now, one of its largest players is throwing some serious weight behind the National Society of Black Engineers and historically black colleges and universities to try to move the needle. Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman has put a lot of effort in the past few years into improving its own diversity, and has an active STEM education funding program. This recently announced $2 million grant, a relatively large gift from the companys foundation, will go toward NSBE for student aid at HBCUs, internships at the company, and other academic and career support. Related: Northrop Grummans CyberPatriot Program (Not a Cyborg Army) The grant is part of a wave of STEM-related companies trying to bolster what many believe to be an insufficient American workforce, as well as addressing a pervasive lack of diversity in their fields. How bad is it? Pretty bad, and its attracted heightened attention lately, due to the sheer power and whiteness of Silicon Valley companies. For some context, in 2010, the NSF counted black men and women at just 5 percent of the science and engineering workforce. Black degree holders also have a harder time finding employment, and theres evidence that companies are failing to tap into the existing pool of talent. This is coupled with a perceived overall shortage of up-and-coming American STEM talent, ranging in severity depending on whom you ask. As a result, many of the countrys major STEM-related companies have philanthropic efforts aimed at supporting education and improving diversity in the ranks. They range from Intels recent $300 million commitment to hosting science fairs. Related: The aerospace industry has its own share of workforce problems. In 2014, the head of the Aerospace Industries Association announced an urgent need to attract more homegrown and diverse engineering talent, citing impending retirements and not enough grads. That need is heightened for defense contractors, which work closely with the federal government, often under requirements that military systems must be designed by U.S. citizens, meaning they cant outsource the problem. Northrop Grumman is one of the industrys largest playersthe company recently landed a $21 billion military contract to build a new long-range bomberand has emerged in recent years as a pretty active player in addressing diversity issues. This new $2 million program will provide the company with an inside track on hiring and training top talent through the HBCU programs and student internships. Meanwhile, it helps the National Society of Black Engineers move toward its goal of increasing African American engineering bachelors degree recipients from 3,500 to 10,000 by 2025. STEM diversity is a daunting problemmuch like institutional racism, its a pervasive issue that individual programs struggle to impact. One positive thing about this particular program, though, is that its led by a minority student-governed organization like NSBE, in coordination with HBCUs. The society has 400 chapters and 31,000 members, and addresses a variety of challenges involved, including early education, college, community building, and career support. It's just the kind of partner you'd hope corporations would turn to. Related: Box at Work GmbH, a Berlin-based startup specializing in valet self-storage and moving-bin rentals with service in several German cities, has expanded service to Zurich, Switzerland. The company uses an online platform that allows customers to schedule an initial delivery of moving bins, item pickup for storage, and then redelivery of items to their home when needed. Similar to other valet-style storage operators, Box at Work offers by-the-bin service targeted at residents who dont have adequate home storage. Items are kept in multiple warehouses, depending on the market. The storage location is determined by proximity to customers residence, according to the company website. Prices vary depending on the number or type of bins used and per oversized item. The first redelivery of an item is free. Subsequent deliveries are assessed a fee. Moving customers who dont require storage can also just rent the bins. Costs for this service vary by city. Moving-bin packages accommodate a range of needs up to four rooms, according to the website. We rent out boxes for moving and storage, and offer additional services in these businesses, founder Gerrit Jan Reinders told the source. Our main focus is the self-storage business. The company began service in Berlin in January 2015 and quickly expanded to Dortmund, Hamburg and Stuttgart, Germany. The valet-storage operator launched with the support of private-equity investors to help cover its operational costs including backend logistics, moving trucks and warehouse space, according to the source. Box at Work has also positioned itself as an environmentally friendly business, offering a tree-planting program. Our service is cheaper and more environmentally friendly, Reinders said. We reduce CO2 emissions, our boxes are recycled after 400 uses, and we give a proportion of our profit to plant new trees each year, so using Box at Work will literally make your city greener. Further expansion plans include France and additional German markets. The company is also working to establish a charity partnership, Reinders told the source. Brokers seem oblivious to a class of business that is giving Australian insurers its biggest headache, an industry leader has said.Speaking on the launch of the Taylor Fry Radar 2016: Insights for insurance leaders, Taylor Fry partner, Kevin Gomes, told Insurance Business that CTP in New South Wales and commercial property are the biggest issues facing insurers.They are both causing headaches for insurers but, out of those two, the one we would rate as the bigger industry issue is the commercial property and very poor profitability on that, Gomes said.The reason for that is that many insurers are writing commercial property whereas there is only a few that are now writing CTP in New South Wales. CTP is more of a quarantined issue but commercial property is a headache because of the profitability is very low.The Radar 2016 is useful to brokers as Gomes said that there may be some misconceptions from the broking community on how profitable certain classes of business are, particularly in the commercial property space.The best example of that is the commercial property class which is really going through one of the poorest periods in as long as weve been measuring it, commercial property has never had a worse return on capital than it currently is at the moment but brokers seem oblivious to this, Gomes continued.We do a survey of brokers, which is not mentioned in the Radar but we do it as part of the Barometer product that we do with JP Morgan, and we ask brokers which class of business they feel is the most profitable or the best for underwriters to write and commercial property was nominated by them as number one which really is quite different.The underwriters recognise that, at the moment, it is a very poor class of business for them to write so there is a big dichotomy there.Gomes said that the difference between brokers and underwriters in the commercial property space is no fault of the brokers as underwriters continue to write business despite the conditions.You actually cant blame brokers entirely for this dichotomy because the truth is that underwriters, even though they recognise the poor profitability of the class, they havent really stopped trying to write it.Competitive conditions are still very strong in commercial property but it might benefit brokers to know that this is the actual profit of that class of business.I cant help but feel it would help them to know that just in terms of what the outlook needs to be from here for rate movements so they can manage that issue in terms of their clients.Gomes noted that Taylor Fry will be watching commercial property rates carefully over the coming year as the cycle could remain soft until 2017.The commercial classes, and in particular commercial property, have had quite reasonable rate decreases over the last few years and the outlook is for more to continue in 2016, Gomes said.But we think the outcome should turn, or at least stabilise, in 2017 onwards so thats what insurers seem to be saying to us. We still see at the moment very high capacity to write commercial classes of business and whilst that capacity is there it is really hard to see the soft rate market turning around.Gomes noted that the current market conditions rank as some of the worst in the past 40 years as insurers may be forced to reassess their businesses on the back of low profitability.When we look at the profitability on the commercial insurance side, this is probably some of some of the worst conditions that we would say there has been in the last 40 years in terms of the profitability and return on capital, Gomes continued.Whats making it even worse is the low returns on investment yields.I think the appetite for, if the profitability is as poor as weve seen and the outlook for profitability is as a poor as what we are led to believe, then I think insurers will have to reassess their view on if they want to write those commercial classes and commercial property in particular. Proponents of legalizing marijuana in Connecticut urged state lawmakers to act quickly and capitalize on the novelty factor of possibly becoming the first New England state to allow recreational use of the drug. Tracy Helin, of Middletown, Connecticut, who is registered to use the states medical marijuana program to relieve cancer symptoms, on Tuesday warned legislators who attended an informational hearing on legalization that time is of the essence. Recreational marijuana legalization is being considered in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont. If Connecticut is on the trailing end of this trend, we will miss the novelty factor it wont be the shiny new toy in a few years, he said, likening legalized marijuana to casinos, which have opened in a growing number of states over the years. If we miss the boat on this, there will be many dollars lost when were really in a budget crisis. Helin would like the revenues to help reduce costs for medical marijuana participants. Others have suggested using the money to help address the states opioid abuse problem or to balance the states deficit-plagued budget. Two bills legalizing the recreational use of marijuana already failed during this years General Assembly session, due to inaction. But the bills proponents held Tuesdays informational hearing at the Legislative Office Building to keep the issue alive. Rep. Juan Candelaria, D-New Haven, plans to resurrect the legalization bill next year. We will continue to have the dialogue and the discussions, he said, after hearing from dozens of people who mostly supported legalization. We will continue to try to move something forward in this legislature. It may not happen in this legislature, it may not happen in the others, but who knows. Legalization faces some strong opposition in Connecticut, despite support voiced from people who said they use marijuana to relieve debilitating medical symptoms, consider smoking marijuana to be a harmless activity or have been caught up in the criminal justice system because of marijuana-related crimes. Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who backed the states medical marijuana program and decriminalizing possession of small amounts of pot, reiterated Monday that he opposes the legalization of recreational marijuana. I think when you legalize marijuana, youre encouraging marijuana and thats not the place I want to go, Malloy said. Recreational marijuana is already legal in four states and the District of Columbia. Proponents estimate Connecticut could reap about $50 million or more in revenues if it legalizes and taxes the drug. Seamus Kelly, a Waterbury resident, warned legislators they could be squandering this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity if they allow other states in the region to legalize pot first. They will dine in opulence and you will lay off more Connecticut citizens, Kelly said, referring to looming state employee layoffs Malloy has said are needed to help cover projected budget deficits. The new fiscal year, beginning July 1, is about $900 million in the red. Colorado state Rep. Dan Pabon, who helped to write that states marijuana legalization law, told his Connecticut counterparts that Colorado is also facing budget challenges and severe spending cuts have been necessary. He said the states marijuana regulatory program has remained intact because it generates enough revenue to support itself. Pabon suggested that if Connecticut ultimately legalizes pot, it shouldnt allow people to grow the drug at home. While Colorados law allows individual adults to grow up to six plants, theres a provision which allows so-called caregivers to grow up to 99 plants per patient in a home. Pabon said he believes the caregiver program has been a contributor to black market marijuana. If I had to do it all over again, he said, we would not allow home-grow facilities. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Cannabis Colorado Connecticut AXA announced the appointment of Alexander Vollert as chief executive officer of AXA Germany. In addition, he will be appointed to AXA Groups executive committee. This appointment will be effective as of Sept. 16, 2016, subject to the approval of the BaFin, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority. Vollert will join AXA from Allianz, where he has held the position of CEO of Allianz Versicherungs-AG since 2014, while also being in charge of the P&C insurance line of business in Germany as a member of the management board of Allianz Deutschland AG. Vollert joined Allianz Deutschland AG in 2009, where he managed business organization before being promoted in 2011 to member of the management board and chief operating officer in charge of business organization & IT. After graduating from university as an industrial engineer, he joined business consultants McKinsey & Co. in 2000, later becoming a partner in 2006. One of his main focal areas was advising insurance companies operating internationally. We are fortunate to have Alexander joining us to lead AXA Germany, said Thomas Buberl, deputy chief executive offer of AXA. He is a well-rounded leader with many years of experience in the sector and a clear vision for the future. Source: AXA Topics AXA XL Allianz Finding an exclusion in a directors and officers (D&O) policy to be ambiguous, an Illinois appeals court has allowed to go forward a lawsuit filed against a large Chicago insurance brokerage by two former Tribune Co. shareholders. The case stems from the failed leveraged buyout (LBO) of the Tribune Co. in 2007 that led to the media company filing for bankruptcy at the end of 2008. In late 2011, two of the Tribunes largest former shareholders, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation and the associated Cantigny Foundation, were hit with several creditor lawsuits as a result of the bankruptcy. Those suits alleged that as controlling shareholders the McCormick and Cantigny foundations had breached their fiduciary duty by allowing the disastrous LBO. The foundations deny they were controlling shareholders and none of the LBO complaints accused them of having violated any federal or state securities laws. Mounting a defense against the various suits, the foundations discovered a lack of defense coverage in their D&O policy placed by their former insurance broker, Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services Inc. The foundations filed a complaint against Gallagher, alleging the insurance broker had wrongly advised them to switch insurers, which resulted in a loss of coverage under their policy. The Illinois Second District Appellate Court took up the case on appeal from the DuPage County Circuit Court, which had dismissed the complaint against Gallagher. In the appellate courts opinion, Justice Susan Hutchinson wrote: In 2008, several years before the LBO lawsuits were filed, the Foundations purchased through Gallagher a $15 million D&O policy issued by Chubb Insurance and a $10 million excess policy issued by a separate company. (For convenience we refer to it as a single $25 million Chubb D&O policy.) In 2010 Gallagher advised the Foundations that instead of renewing the Chubb policy they could obtain identical apples-to-apples D&O coverage at a reduced premium with a $25 million policy from Chartis Insurance. The foundations followed Gallaghers advice and purchased the insurance from Chartis. When the LBO suits were later filed against the foundations, the organizations sought defense coverage from Chartis but the insurer refused, relying on a securities-related exclusion in the D&O policy. The foundations began paying their own defense and sued Gallagher, saying they would have been covered for defense and indemnification under the Chubb policy. They also maintained they would have continued the coverage with Chubb had it not been for the erroneous advice they received from Gallagher. Gallagher countered that coverage would also have been precluded due to a section 5(k) exclusion in the Chubb policy. The DuPage County Circuit Court agreed, determining that the Chubb exclusion would have prevented coverage under the D&O policy and ruling in favor of Gallagher. On appeal, the appellate court considered the limited question of whether the exclusion in section 5(k) of the Chubb policy would have precluded coverage of the Foundations defense costs for the underlying LBO suits, Hutchinson wrote. The court examined the language in the applicable exclusions in both the Chartis and Chubb policies and found that the Chartis policy clearly excluded coverage, as it excludes any claim in any way relating to any purchase or sale of securities.' The justices found the Chubb policy language to be ambiguous, however. Because of that ambiguity, the appeals court ruled in favor of the insured in the case against Gallagher. Finding that the first three clauses in the Chubb exclusions definition of Securities Laws concerned violations of securities laws related to illegal actions such as stock manipulation or insider trading in the sale or purchase of stocks, actions of which the foundations were not accused, the court focused on the fourth and final clause under the exclusion in section 5(k). That clause adds to the definition: any other provision of statutory or common law used to impose liability in connection with the offer to sell or purchase, or the sale or purchase, of securities. Gallagher and the foundations each offered different interpretations of that clause. Gallagher contended that the exclusion bars coverage for any litigationbased on any statutory or common law used to impose liability in any way arising in connection with a stock sale, Hutchinson wrote. The foundations interpreted the clause more narrowly, asserting that the phrase any other provision alludes to any provision similar to the federal and state regulations mentioned in the first three clauses. Without acknowledging another reasonable interpretation of the final clause, the foundations asserted that if an ambiguity does exist in the definition it should be construed in their favor. The appellate court agreed and remanded the case to the trial court. The Foundations are right; the narrow interpretation of the clause is the one that controls, Hutchinson wrote. The case is Robert R. McCormick Foundation and Cantigny Foundation v. Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services, Inc. Topics Lawsuits Agencies A.J. Gallagher Oklahoma Chubb U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr., may not be the only person to drop the acting from his title this year. President Barack Obama announced plans on Thursday to nominate three current staffers in acting roles at the U.S. Department of Education to be assistant secretaries. Obama announced that he is nominating Matthew Lehrich to be the assistant secretary for communications and outreach at the department; Amy McIntosh to be assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development; and Ann Whalen to be assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education. These fine public servants bring a depth of experience and tremendous dedication to their important roles. I look forward to working with them, Obama said in a statement. Heres a bit more about each of them: Lehrich has been the communications director at the department since February, and previously served as a strategic advisor for communications at the department. Hes also served as an assistant press secretary for the White House from 2011 to 2014, and held two other communications positions there from 2009 to 2011. From 2007 to 2008, Lehrich also worked in communications roles for Obamas presidential campaign. has been the communications director at the department since February, and previously served as a strategic advisor for communications at the department. Hes also served as an assistant press secretary for the White House from 2011 to 2014, and held two other communications positions there from 2009 to 2011. From 2007 to 2008, Lehrich also worked in communications roles for Obamas presidential campaign. McIntosh is currently the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, whos delegated the duties of the assistant secretary for the office of planning, evaluation and policy Development. Previously, she worked on teacher evaluations for the New York state education department. is currently the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, whos delegated the duties of the assistant secretary for the office of planning, evaluation and policy Development. Previously, she worked on teacher evaluations for the New York state education department. Whalen is now a senior advisor to the Secretary of Education John B. King Jr., who is delegated the duties of the assistant secretary for the office of elementary and secondary education. During a previous tenure at the Education Department, Whalen played a key role overseeing the implementation of the Race to the Top grant program before briefly leaving to work at Education Post, a K-12-oriented communications firm, in 2014. She returned to the department last year . Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 . The U.S. government panel that decided MetLife Inc. was too big to fail erred in not analyzing the insurers vulnerability to financial distress, according to the federal judge who rescinded that designation last week. U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer in Washington called the councils determination process fatally flawed in a March 30 legal opinion which was unsealed Thursday. The judge previously issued just a two-page order stating her conclusion and offering only bare indications of its basis. The Financial Stability Oversight Councils action was arbitrary and capricious, Collyer ruled, saying the panel didnt follow its own guidelines before deciding the biggest U.S. life insurance company was a source of economic danger. FSOC reversed itself on whether MetLifes vulnerability to financial distress would be considered and on what it means to threaten the financial stability of the U.S., the judge said in a 33-page decision. She didnt make that document public until both sides had had an opportunity to request redactions. They said none was necessary. The government will appeal the ruling, a Treasury spokesperson said in an e-mail statement. MetLife Shares MetLife shares surged 5.3 percent to $44.73 on the day the court first announced its determination as investors reacted to the decision and speculation grew about its implications for other banks and nonbanks labeled as systemically important financial institutions by FSOC. The panel was created under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation. Shares of the insurer fell 3.1 percent to $41.64 at 2:24 p.m. Thursday after the news that the panel may appeal. Attorneys for New York-based MetLife had argued in February that FSOCs determination was arbitrary and that the panel hadnt considered the economic effect of subjecting the biggest U.S. life insurer to new capital requirements. The council, whose voting members include Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen , focused exclusively on the presumed benefits of the designation and ignored the attendant costs, which itself is unreasonable, Collyer wrote, agreeing with MetLifes attorneys. Governments View Government lawyers defending the designation emphasized the insurers interconnectedness to financial firms around the world and asked Collyer to defer to the considered judgment of FSOCs panel members. The judge did agree with the council that as an initial matter the company was eligible for such a designation. Still, she said, the council hardly adhered to any standard in making its final assessment. This court cannot affirm a finding that MetLifes distress would cause severe impairment of financial intermediation or of financial market functioning even on arbitrary-and-capricious review when FSOC refused to undertake that analysis itself, the judge wrote. Predictive judgment must be based on reasoned predictions; a summary of exposures and assets is not a prediction. MetLife Chief Executive Officer Steven Kandarian fought the SIFI label, saying his firm is well regulated by state watchdogs and isnt vulnerable to sudden withdrawals like banks. Company Pleased After Collyers opinion was unsealed, the New York-based insurer said in a statement, We remain pleased with the U.S. District Courts decision. Lew said in a statement he disagreed with the decision and defended the councils work. This decision leaves one of the largest and most highly interconnected financial companies in the world subject to even less oversight than before the financial crisis, Lew said. He called FSOCs review thorough and said it had determined that material financial distress at the company could threaten U.S. financial stability the threshold for heightened supervision under Wall Street Reform. The heads of every U.S. financial regulatory agency concurred in this judgment. Lew also rejected the notion the council erred in failing to conduct a cost-benefit analysis, asserting that none was required by its enabling legislation. The Struggle Getting U.S. Regulators to Understand Insurance $2.5 Billion MetLifes escape from SIFI status may free $2.5 billion or more that could be returned to shareholders, according to John Nadel, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos. Kandarian had scaled back share buybacks as federal regulators worked to finalize tighter capital standards for nonbank SIFIs. Kandarian announced in January that the insurer was weighing a possible sale, spinoff or public offering of a U.S. retail operation, which sells variable annuity and life insurance products. Hes sticking with that plan even after the court ruling, as the insurer looks to focus on businesses that have lower capital requirements and greater cash-flow generation. While this decision is a very good one from our perspective, the strategic reasons remain in place as well as other regulatory matters that relate to that business, Kandarian said March 30 in an interview after the ruling, citing new Labor Department rules on retirement-product sales as an example. GE Petition General Electric Co. on March 31 petitioned the council to remove its too-big-to-fail designation after largely withdrawing from the finance business. American International Group Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc., the other two insurers named as SIFIs, might face pressure from shareholders to challenge the designation, according to Robert Haines, an analyst at CreditSights Inc. Scot Hoffman, Prudentials spokesman, said after the ruling that the Newark, New Jersey-based company continuously reviews developments and evaluates whats best for shareholders. AIG CEO Peter Hancock said in a CNBC interview March 31 that the ruling opens up the opportunity to look for ways to escape SIFI status, although the insurer would reserve judgment until it sees how final rules are written. Sean Dargan, an analyst at at Macquarie Group Ltd., said in a phone interview that even as the courts decision concerns only MetLifes case, it could be kind of a watershed moment for the financial markets and for the regulator. The case is MetLife Inc. v. Financial Stability Oversight Council, 15-cv-00045, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington). Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Carriers USA Legislation Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. said that Chief Executive Officer Chris Swifts pay package nearly doubled to $10 million for last year as stock awards climbed. The compensation included a $2.45 million bonus and more than $6 million in stock and option awards, up from $2.2 million a year earlier, Hartford said Thursday in a regulatory filing. Swift took over in July 2014 and said he has worked to shift the insurer to be more offensive-minded, a change for the company which had been selling off life insurance units to simplify and focus on property/casualty coverage. Hartford said his pay was tied to improved financial performance, as the company beat the Standard & Poors 500 Index and boosted book value per share by 7 percent, according to the regulatory filing. The CEO delivered strong financial performance and exceeded the annual operating plan, the insurer said. He also furthered external engagement with investors, government officials, and distribution partners. Hartford climbed 4.3 percent in 2015, compared with a 0.7 percent drop in the S&P 500. Swift boosted return on equity to 9.2 percent last year. He struck his first takeover deal as CEO this year, agreeing to buy a Georgia-based commercial insurer. Swifts pay is less than what was awarded to his predecessor Liam McGee, who led Hartford from October 2009 through the middle of 2014 and shored up the companys finances after a taxpayer bailout. McGees compensation package was $17.7 million in his last full year as chief. He died last year at 60 after a two-year battle with cancer. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Talent Private equity firm Carlyle Group LP is in advanced talks to acquire the healthcare information technology division of U.S. data analytics company Verisk Analytics Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. Carlyle has so far prevailed in an auction for the unit, called Verisk Health, that had also attracted interest from other buyout firms, including Veritas Capital Fund Management, the people said. The exact price that Carlyle was offering could not be learned, but the sources said it was significantly lower than the $1 billion that Verisk was initially hoping to fetch for the business. The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Carlyle declined to comment, while Verisk and Veritas Capital did not respond to requests for comment. Verisk Health provides a suite of data-based tools that are designed to help mitigate risk and reduce costs in the healthcare system. Headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, it provides data analytics to the insurance, natural resources, healthcare, financial services, government, and risk management sectors. Carlyles previous healthcare investments include Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, previously a unit of Johnson & Johnson, and Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD), a contract research organization. (Reporting by Carl ODonnell and Liana B. Baker in New York; Editing by Chris Reese) An independent study has shown that school bus crashes are double the performance guideline in Knox County, Tennessee. Media outlets report the study was conducted by Missouri-based School Bus Consultants was made public last month. The school district commissioned the study after a December 2014 crash that killed two children and a teachers assistant. The rate of bus crashes for the district is 2.8 per 100,000 miles. The performance guideline is 1 to 1.5 per 100,000 miles. The report also says Knox County Schools has a lack of oversight and should hire a safety manager, doesnt pay its drivers enough and that nearly one in every six school buses is too old. Superintendent Jim McIntyre released a statement saying, in part, the district will thoughtfully consider all the suggestions for enhancement made by the firm. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Education Tennessee Environmental officials in Tennessee are advising the public not to come in contact with water in a lake near the Mississippi River in West Tennessee where a broken sewer line has resulted in an extremely high level of E. coli. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation said Wednesday it has issued a temporary water contact advisory for McKellar Lake and the lower portion of Cypress Creek. As of Tuesday, more than 10,000 dead fish have been documented. The agencys Division of Water Resources has been monitoring water quality, overseeing corrective action and working with state and local authorities in an effort to clean up the spill. Officials have said the creek and the lake are not sources of drinking water. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Tennessee If insurance is the best kept secret in the business world, then the E&S sector is the best kept secret in the insurance industry. Thats according to Hank Watkins, president of Lloyds America, who talked fondly on Thursday about excess and surplus lines before a large gathering of business students and insurance executives in Southern California. Watkins was the guest speaker at E&S Day at Cal State University Fullertons Center for Insurance Studies, which is part of the Mihalylo College of Business and Economics. The Lloyds chief explained the industry and gave an E&S review and outlook for the benefit of students taking insurance-related courses at the school, which often hosts notable insurance executives for discussions and seminars. Watkins explained how the E&S business insures risks that other insurers wont, and then when the E&S sector proves those risks are insurable, or are a good business to be in, the rest of the industry moves in to offer products for those risks. Theres enough challenging things that come around in our world that gives the E&S sector plenty to do, Watkins added. He also called E&S a surge tank for the insurance industry, a role it plays when insurers pull out of a particular risky market and the E&S sector moves in. Autonomous vehicles, drones and ridesharing were among examples Watkins offered of emerging risks that the E&S sector took on first. The satellite industry is another business, one which Lloyds doesnt shy away from, that Watkins talked about. Every once in a while a satellite goes straight up and back down, and thats $350 million-$400 million, he said. Thats a bad day. Property insurance, where E&S is a big player in coastal communities like those in Florida and those along the Eastern Seaboard, can also be risky, he said. An example he used was the hit Lloyds took from Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Lloyds alone had about $2.5 billion of that $25 billion loss, he said. Of course, since Lloyds is noted for insuring stars, taste buds, and athletes, Watkins also drew the students attention to some of the more interesting policies written, such as the a million-dollar-plus policy for recently retired Pittsburgh Steeler defender Troy Polamalus hair all the way back to Betty Grables legs. Watkins described E&S as a sector that will take on most risks, including modern and still little understood risks like cyber. However, he said hes still unsure whether current modeling is adequate to accurately assess cyber risks, because that the economic harm of such attacks may be vast and far-reaching. Im not convinced were there yet, he said. We have no idea what the downside is of cyber-attacks. The underlying point of Watkins visit was of a recruiting nature, giving students an idea of the opportunities the business offers. He fielded a number of questions from students, which ranged from insuring wearable technology to drones to cyber risk. He relayed a personal parable after he was asked where he started. He began as an underwriting trainee and Chubb, but it was a long road just to get the that point. He submitted his resume for an opening, was rejected, then called to find out why he was rejected, but his call was not returned. More calls were made, and more calls went unreturned. So Watkins, then 21, donned a suit and went to the office, where his persistent nature was met with a welcome reception. I was interviewed by just about everyone there, he said. After his personal story, answering questions, and explaining more about how E&S and the industry in general works, Watkins went back to his pitch. Its a really cool industry, he said. Were very engaged with our communities. E&S Day continued after Watkins talk. A panel and a round table discussion followed. Hank Haldeman, executive vice president and director with The Sullivan Group and president of the National Association of Professional Surplus Lines, moderated the panel. The panelists were Timothy Chaix, president of R.E. Chaix & Associates, Lori Hunter, executive vice president and Worldwide Facilities Inc., Steve Cius, area president of Risk Placement Services Inc., and Anthony Manzitto, chief operating officer and executive vice president of Topa Insurance Group. The panelists took over where Watkins left off and further explained the E&S industry, how it works, and why it is exciting and sometimes risky Manzitto used as an example the mess in the Porter Ranch community of Los Angeles County, where the impacts are still being felt from the countrys largest ever accidental release of methane, which occurred over several months and sickened and displaced thousands of households. Thats a gigantic loss where there is a going to be a number of E&S carriers involved, Manzitto said. Related: Topics Cyber Excess Surplus Lloyd's Uber Technologies Inc. drivers suing to be treated like employees are trying to add $1 billion in penalties under Californias unique bounty hunter statute as they prepare for trial in June. About 240,000 current and former Uber drivers in California are covered by the lawsuit, which claims theyve been wrongly classified as independent contractors and so should be reimbursed for expenses and tips under state law. Those claims alone could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars if the worlds biggest ride-hailing service loses. Now the drivers are trying to attach additional state labor code violations to their suit, according to court filings. If the judge agrees, the cost of losing the case could approach Ubers annual revenue. Over the first three quarters of 2015, the most recent period available for the private company, the startup lost $1.7 billion on $1.2 billion in revenue. Authorities across the country are grappling with how companies in the so-called sharing economy operate within the confines of rules crafted for more traditional operations, and the California drivers case is one of the biggest and most advanced challenges to the business model. The trial is set to begin June 20 in San Francisco federal court, and if the judge allows the new claims, a loss could put Ubers valuation now more than $60 billion at even greater risk. Uber and ride-sharing cohort Lyft Inc. also face an effort by state regulators to impose standards more similar to those required of taxi companies. The proposal before the California Public Utilities Commission would mandate annual vehicle inspections, disclosures about fare splitting practices and longer leasing agreements. The Uber drivers are invoking a 2004 California law that gives employees the right to step into the shoes of the state labor secretary to bring enforcement actions and lets the state keep 75 percent of any penalties won. Attorneys for employers have nicknamed the Private Attorneys General Act, or PAGA, the bounty hunter and sue your boss law in recognition of the 25 percent reward sought by workers who have filed thousands of lawsuits over the past 12 years. Uber contends in a court filing that adding the PAGA claims, with less than three months until trial begins, would create insurmountable manageability problems. Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for Uber, had no comment on the potential claims and liability. She said the companys court filings speak for themselves. Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lawyer for the drivers, said in a court filing that the PAGA claims could total $1 billion or more if allowed. She added its unlikely Chen would approve penalties that large because the amount exceeds Ubers California revenue since the companys inception in 2009. Liss-Riordan didnt respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking comment on the PAGA claims. A $12 million settlement that Liss-Riordan had negotiated with Lyft to compensate more than 100,000 of its current and former California drivers for unreimbursed mileage and other expenses was rejected by a federal judge Thursday as being glaringly in adequate. James Evans, a lawyer who defends companies against employment suits, said hed be surprised if U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen doesnt allow the PAGA claims to go forward in the Uber case. And if Chen does and the jury concludes Ubers drivers are employees, then by definition that same proof can be used to prove the PAGA claims, Evans said. All you have to do is get your pencil out and accountants green visor and start multiplying. While Liss-Riordan argued in a court filing that the judge can assess whether the labor code claims have merit, Uber contends it has a constitutional right to have such claims decided by a jury. Jurors would need to make specific findings about hundreds of thousands of drivers, making the matter too complicated for the June trial, the company argued in a court filing. The company is already appealing rulings by Chen that allowed the class action to expand to include more drivers based on his conclusion that arbitration agreements in their contracts werent enforceable. Evans said Uber faces a potential multibillion-dollar liability based on the expense and tips claims alone. Then, its anybodys guess how much more exposure Uber faces from PAGA claims because so few such claims have gone to trial in other cases. Appeals courts havent had a chance to weigh in to offer guidance and set standards, he said. For the drivers to prevail on the PAGA claims, Chen must conclude Uber knew or should have known it was violating state labor laws, Evans said. Its not a high threshold to meet, but its more than just making a mistake, he said. The case is OConnor v. Uber Technologies Inc., 13-cv-03826, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). Upates with ruling in Lyft case in 11th paragraph. With assistance from Eric Newcomer. Related: Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Lawsuits California Claims Personal Auto Oregon is considering another year of insurance coverage to help pay for catastrophic wildfire seasons. British insurance giant Lloyds is offering the state another year of coverage despite three consecutive years of expensive, drought-fueled wildfires. The policy could protect the state from financial problems if 2016 is another expensive year for firefighting, reported The Bulletin. We think that a policy makes good financial sense for Oregon, (and) we ought to keep purchasing it. Thats what our recommendation is, said Tim Keith on Tuesday. He administers the states forest protection fund. The policy would also be available to private landowners. Oregon fire officials and landowners would share the $3.5 million premium and up to $50 million deductible before Lloyds contributes up to $25 million. The premium is down $300,000 from last year. Last year, the state nearly lost its coverage for the first time in four decades after maxing out its policy in 2013 and 2014. Last year, Oregons fire season was bad enough to trigger federal reimbursements that covered the cost for most severe fires. Oregon still needs to pay off $10 million in fire costs from last season. State lawmakers have expressed interest in creating a fund for firefighting and finding money for it. It could hold as much as $60 million. Sen. Bill Hansell, a Republican from Athena, says hed sponsor a bill proposing such a trust fund, but he wants to see if theres a way to protect the fund from being used on other programs when money is tight. A trust fund, I can support that. I would. And I would be happy to introduce it, Hansell said, adding, I would want protections on it so that it couldnt be robbed. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Excess Surplus Wildfire Lloyd's Oregon Editor's Note: This article has been amended to reflect the timeline of radio spots aired by the insurer and clarify the nature of remarks on core systems by CEO Wilson. No one ever said insurance technology wasnt complex, costly or invaluable when it comes to keeping a companyand related careers--alive. North Carolinas largest insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, experienced this first hand when the companys core customer enrollment and billing system crashed six months ago. And Alan Hughes hasnt had a good day since. As COO of the health insurer, he was charged with network management as well as the companys information and technology infrastructure. With a successful career in information technology leadership dating back to 1989 at companies such as GE Commercial Finance, American Express and Bankers Trust, Hughes was credentialed when he joined BCBS in 2009 as CIO. The company announced his resignation this week. According to a report in the Raleigh News & Observer, in March, Hughes told employees the company discovered a fatal problem with its Facets software when it was migrating individual customers from legacy technology systems." But, says the report, believing the problem could be patched, it continued using the system during open enrollment. Once it was clear that the problems were intensifying, the decision was made to halt claims payments in order to change the configuration and make sure the payments would be made properly and without error. Blue Cross isnt saying exactly why the system failed, but the company has been a leading voice for modernization. Company CEO Brad Wilson told the N.C. Institute for Emerging Issues in January, "Health care has to find ways to dismantle [legacy] systems as quickly as possible, providing financial incentives for accelerating change and realizing cost savings." Wilson also extolled the virtues of innovation and said that I.T. professionals should be free to take risks to better serve customers. But the fallout from this error will be felt by Blue Cross, its customers, physicians, the healthcare vertical, and the insurance industry as a whole. For example, BCBSNC insures just less than 4 million people in the state, and admits that of the 400,000 individual insureds largely covered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), approximately 25,000 were affected by service disruptions and errors in enrollment, billing, and customer service. Earlier this year, the insurer already had reported revenue losses tied to ACA enrollment, but to lend gravity to this more recent issue, Blue Cross was hit with 147,000 calls on day-one of the crash alone, received nearly half-a-million calls the first week, and is now under investigation by the North Carolina Department of Insurance due to customer complaints. Blue Cross has promised the NC DOI it would conduct a thorough internal review. As the 2017 open enrollment period nears on November 1, repairs and possibly a complete overhaul of its enrollment and billing software are ongoing, and will take place under the leadership of Hughes replacement, Gerald Petkau, who previously served as BCBSNCs CFO. Petkau will be responsible for the companys customer service, claims processing, project management and IT functions. In January, BCBSNC aired radio spots to publicly apologize to the companys customers and temper their anger. This is a good time to point out that we are in the people business, the relationship business, and maybe most importantly, the trust business. So if technology is an enabler to our larger business objectives, when an enormous, systematic failure of a core operating system happens, insurers across business lines must learn from the mistakes. By Sarah D. Sparks Washington Some 16,500 education researchers are expected to descend on the capital this weekend for the centennial meeting of the American Educational Research Association. This years theme, spanning more than 2,500 research sessions, symposia, and roundtables, focuses on Public Scholarship to Educate Diverse Democracies. Its a nod to both the rapidly changing demographics in American schools and the still-nebulous role of education policy in this election year. We have a bipartisan problem in education, said Pedro Noguera, education professor at the University of California Los Angeles, at a lively forum this afternoon on the education implications of the 2016 presidential race. Noguera argued that politicians, particularly Democrats who have been supported by education groups, have not laid out clear education policy platforms. Im concerned by the silence. I often feel teachers are like African Americans to the Democratic Party; they just assume you have to vote for us, because you have no other choice. By contrast, John Jackson, the president and chief executive officer of the Schott Foundation of Public Education, argued it may be better not to raise education as a major debate issue during a fractious election year. The more political an issue is, the less we pay attention to the evidence, Jackson said. To me its more important to have a substantive discussion among teachers, researchers, practitioners ... around what are the right supports to build around our young people to make sure we are educating the whole child ... [and] around how do we transform education. ... Those conversations wont happen in the political sphere. Judith Browne-Dianis, civil rights attorney and co-director of the Advancement Project, cautioned that the public will to support public education has dwindled as it has become more politicized: We have demonized teachers, criminalized students, and colorized and racialized public education so that people think of public education as education of the other. Jackson said growing parent and teacher opposition to standardized testing under the No Child Left Behind Act has come because accountability systems test students, but do not audit the inequities in resources and supports available to them. He suggested that the Every Student Succeeds Act offers the opportunity to move from the standards-based accountability weve all lived with to a supports-based accountability. Research Focus Can Guide Policy The researchers acknowledged that education scholars have not been active in speaking up for equity issues in education politics. Researchers are just like everyone else; we can be political too, Noguera said. He argued that particularly tenured scholars should do more to speak up against policies that evidence says would hurt disadvantaged students in their areas. What researchers decide to study can affect the policy discussion, Jackson said. He warned that scholars too often keep sampling the same tracks, re-creating data that is already known rather than filling gaps in information for policymakers. For example, Jackson noted he can easily find data on racial disparities in suspension rates in a citys schools, but cannot easily find rates of schools using alternative discipline techniques that have evidence of effectiveness. Later this afternoon, Linda Darling-Hammond, education historian and founder of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Learning Policy Institute, will lay out her vision of how public researchers can contribute to the design and framework of the new accountability states and districts will explore under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Education Week at AERA 2016 Education Week will be on hand all weekend, too. Ill be a commenter this Saturday for the launch of AERAs new convention Ed-Talks, five sessions in which top researchers discuss their findings and the potential implications for policymakers and the public. It will start with a discussion by Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania, Russ Rumberger of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Amy Stuart Wells of Teachers College, Columbia University on how research can help ensure education policy leads to equitable results. The sessions will be held in the Convention Center level 2, 207B. Scholars interested in submitting opinion pieces can also meet with Education Week Commentary Editor Elizabeth Rich, Education Week Teacher Editor Anthony Rebora, and other staff members to learn more about the process at the Convention Centers West Overlook on Saturday from 2:45 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. And my colleagues will also be interviewing researchers at the meeting on their thoughts about the centennial and hot topics in education today. Want more research news from AERA 2016? I will be blogging throughout the conference this weekend and next week. Get the latest studies and join the conversation. Join ITR and TMF Groups tax experts at 2pm CET (1pm GMT) on November 15 as they discuss how finance leaders are increasingly faced with doing more with less, and how CFOs should adapt. These words echo with intensity in todays complex and global tax environment, where a multitude of international tax rules are evolving at an unprecedented rate. This is particularly true in the context of the G20/OECD-driven global initiative aimed at combatting base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), which focuses on transparency and consistency among rules and the presence of economic substance. This is also the case in the EU framework. The draft EU Anti-tax Avoidance Directive issued by the EU Commission on January 28 2016 reflects some of the actions in the BEPS Project. If the proposed EU directive is adopted as currently worded, it could potentially create issues of double or multiple taxation and significant inconsistencies in EU law, notably with respect to the freedom of establishment. The directive and the proposals relating to the common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB), as well as the recent state aid investigations launched by the EU Commission, may be seen as a Trojan horse being used to challenge the fiscal autonomy of EU member states. In this context, it is imperative to set a new strategy for Luxembourgs tax policy. At the end of February 2016, the Luxembourg government announced outlines for the 2017 tax reform; further details will be released during the annual State of the Nation speech of the Luxembourg Prime Minister on April 26 2016. The measures already announced include those to strengthen the purchasing power of individuals and to progressively reduce the corporate income tax (CIT) rate. Additional tax reform strategies that the Luxembourg government should consider are discussed below. Reduction of CIT rate The announced reduction of the CIT rate, from the existing (cumulative) rate of 29.22% (the rate in Luxembourg City, taking into account the employment fund contribution and the municipal tax) to 27.08% in 2017 and to 26.01% in 2018 is a welcome measure. However, these proposed reductions may not be sufficient, particularly in view of the proposed EU Anti-tax Avoidance Directive. The EU proposal provides for a standard tax rate - nominal or effective - of a member state for purposes of the application of measures relating to controlled foreign companies (CFCs) and a switch-over clause. The measures proposed in the directive could potentially lead to competition between certain member states to reduce their CIT rates. Ireland already has a rate of 12.5% and the UK has a rate of 20% (soon expected to be reduced to 17%). A strategic positioning of the Luxembourg CIT rate between these two countries could be one of Luxembourgs targets in its tax reform. Tax simplification If the reduction in the Luxembourg CIT rate was combined with a simplification of the taxes companies are liable to pay as well as an emphasis on one of the fundamental principles of the legal system they have to comply with, namely legal certainty (predictability, reliability, readability) this would result in a more attractive corporate taxation reform. This simplification could be applied to one of the key features of the Luxembourg corporate tax system: the parent-subsidiary regime. The conditions to benefit from this regime have not fundamentally changed since its modification a quarter of a century ago, whereas a significant evolution has taken place at the level of both the investor and the investment (in terms of type of activity and geographic area). To take into account this evolution, the relevant legislation should be updated. The recent codification of certain measures, such as allowing the use of functional currencies other than the Euro for tax purposes and the formalization of the advance tax agreement procedure, seems to be fully in line with the governments position on transparency and the reliability of the domestic tax environment. The advance tax agreement procedure, which applies to the field of corporate and personal taxation, should be extended to VAT. The tax administration might also consider issuing circulars on the anti-abuse measures recently introduced into Luxembourg domestic law and other administrative positions. The net wealth tax could also benefit from simplification. It should be noted that in Luxembourg, only companies are liable to this tax, and that the Grand Duchy is the only EU member state that still levies a net wealth tax on companies. The net wealth tax, which is based on somewhat outdated provisions, is proving particularly unsuitable within todays framework of international tax transparency. As one example, 31 jurisdictions, including Luxembourg, have signed an international agreement under which they commit to automatically exchange data on large international corporations that are obliged to submit reports with regards to their activities on a country-by-country (CbC) basis (country-by-country reporting (CbCR)). The first exchange of this data will apply for 2016, and should occur in 2017-2018. However, for purposes of the CbC reports that should be prepared by the corporations targeted by this measure, the net wealth tax is not considered to be a reportable tax, which means that the CbC reports will only partially describe the fiscal burden actually incurred by Luxembourgish member companies of affected groups. Furthermore, the net wealth tax is doubly burdensome for foreign investors, who generally cannot credit it against the taxes paid in their state of residence. Even if Luxembourg decides not to abolish this capital tax, it should be updated to adapt it to the realities of the new global tax environment. Modernising the net wealth tax also could serve to further encourage a better capitalisation of Luxembourgish companies, and thus respond to the risk of a systemic crisis. Furthermore, it would be appropriate to ensure tax neutrality with respect to companies that would continue to use third-party or internal indebtedness. The use of appropriate tax measures at this level could motivate investors to recapitalise their Luxembourg subsidiaries, or even attract the headquarters of international companies. Incentives for innovation, talent and investment funds Promoting innovation and creativity has been central to the Luxembourg economy. Fintech, biotech and space mining are recent illustrations of industries that have contributed to this success. In this context, it is essential to consider assistance for contractors and ground-breaking project developers, such as tax credits for R&D, to ensure the attractiveness of the Grand Duchy. Fruitful ground, particularly in terms of fiscal incentives, is required to stimulate the blooming of projects providing a high added value to the country. The development of these projects also requires highly qualified human resources. Luxembourg has been a hub for attracting talent for many years. Qualified resources are coveted and highly sought-after on an international level, including by the most prestigious universities and the most elaborate R&D centres. The Luxembourg direct tax administrations impatriates circular compensates employees for the physical costs of transferring to Luxembourg to a certain extent, but does not take into account their particular activities (notably frequent travel). A proactive approach which promotes access to tax treaties for alternative investment funds, in line with the relevant OECD discussions, also should be on the agenda for Luxembourg. This approach would help to ensure tax neutrality for investment funds and their investors and would further enhance Luxembourgs attractiveness for investment funds, as well as for new functions that are not yet present in the country. While Luxembourg has endorsed the BEPS initiative, the country has not introduced unilateral measures ahead of the international consensus within the context of the BEPS framework. Considering that taxpayers are looking for legal certainty, it would be inappropriate to anticipate the application of international measures that still warrant some refinement before being made applicable. These measures should be adopted only after discussions between countries at an international and/or an EU level are completed, and the results of the relevant impact studies have been carefully assessed. In the current climate, even if it requires bold choices that call on Luxembourgs resources, reform and legal certainty must be brought into step with each other to create a modern tax system that supports competitiveness and growth. Raymond Krawczykowski (rkrawczykowski@deloitte.lu) Bernard David (bdavid@deloitte.lu) Deloitte Luxembourg Tel: +352 451 454 904 Website: www.deloitte.lu Panoramica privacy Questo sito web utilizza i cookies per fornire all'utente la miglior esperienza di navigazione possibile. L'informazione dei cookie e memorizzata nel browser dell' utente, svolge funzioni di riconoscimento quando l' utente ritorna nel sito e permette di sapere quali sezioni del sito sono ritenute piu interessanti e utili. Una comunita cristiana attenta alla vita affettiva delle persone per accompagnare e discernere. E quella proposta dalla Chiesa italiana per lAnno della Famiglia Amoris Laetitia. Padre Marco Vianelli dirige lUfficio nazionale Cei per la pastorale della famiglia. Al Sir commenta lanno di riflessione sullesortazione apostolica sinodale indetto dal Papa (19 marzo 2021-26 giugno 2022). La funzione della famiglia Il ritornare allAmoris Laetitia, secondo padre Vianelli, dovra anche consolidare o rilanciare unattenzione. Da parte della comunita cristiana. Alla vita affettiva delle persone. Non per giudicare. Ma per accompagnare e discernere allinterno di un tessuto comunitario. Tra le sfide per la pastorale, la situazione dei divorziati risposati. Ci troviamo di fronte ad una storia sempre dolorosa. Nella quale entrare in punta di piedi. E, possibilmente, in ginocchio, afferma il sacerdote. Che richiama i percorsi di accompagnamento attivi in quasi tutte le diocesi. Oltre al ponte giuridico-pastorale voluto dal Papa. Per la verifica delle nullita matrimoniali. Parte viva della Chiesa Nonostante le loro ferite, sono anchessi parte viva della Chiesa che racconta il mistero di Cristo. Forse in passato questo e mancato nella prassi, afferma padre Vianelli al Sir. Ma Amoris Laetitia ne ribadisce laccoglienza. Prima che come divorziati risposati, quali fratelli e sorelle nella fede. Sono stati avviati anche percorsi di discernimento. Altro principio del quale il Papa ci ha restituito il valore. Per discernere responsabilmente come un peccato oggettivo possa in alcune situazioni particolari non essere soggettivamente imputabile. Io, prete, posso riconoscere e far capire alla persona. Che in un determinato caso particolare possono non realizzarsi tutte le condizioni. Affinche alla persona sia imputabile il peccato. Ma, chiarisce il direttore dellUfficio nazionale Cei per la pastorale della famiglia, e un processo che va fatto a livello individuale. Con delicatezza e discrezione. E qui si apre tutta unesperienza di Chiesa che potrebbe fare la differenza. What Is a Robo-Advisor? Robo-advisors (also spelled roboadvisors) are digital platforms that provide automated, algorithm-driven financial planning services with little to no human supervision. A typical robo-advisor asks questions about your financial situation and future goals through an online survey; it then uses the data to offer advice and automatically invest for you. The best robo-advisors offer easy account setup, robust goal planning, account services, and portfolio management. Additionally, they offer security features, attentive customer service, comprehensive education, and low fees. Key Takeaways Robo-advisors are digital platforms that provide automated, algorithmic investment services with minimal human supervision. They often automate and optimize passive indexing strategies based on modern portfolio theory. Robo-advisors are often inexpensive and require low opening balances, making them available to retail investors. They are best suited for traditional investing and are not the best options for more complex issues, such as estate planning. Robo-advisors have been criticized for their lack of empathy and complexity. 1:48 Click Play to Learn About Using Robo-Advisors Understanding Robo-Advisors The first robo-advisor, Betterment, launched in 2008, with the initial purpose of rebalancing assets within target-date funds. It sought to help manage passive, buy-and-hold investments through a simple online interface. The technology itself was nothing new. Human wealth managers have been using automated portfolio allocation software since the early 2000s. But until Betterment launched, they were the only ones who could buy the technology, so clients had to employ a financial advisor to benefit from the innovation. Today, most robo-advisors use passive indexing strategies optimized using some variant of modern portfolio theory (MPT). Some robo-advisors offer optimized portfolios for socially responsible investing (SRI), Halal investing, or tactical strategies that mimic hedge funds. Additionally, they can handle much more sophisticated tasks, such as tax-loss harvesting, investment selection, and retirement planning. The industry has experienced explosive growth; client assets managed by robo-advisors reached nearly $1 trillion in 2020, with the expectation of reaching $2.9 trillion worldwide by 2025. Other common designations for robo-advisors include "automated investment advisor," "automated investment management," and "digital advice platforms." Regardless of the name, it all refers to fintech (financial technology) applications for investment management. $231+ billion In 2021, the largest robo-advisor in terms of assets was Vanguard Personal Advisor Services, with more than $231 billion in assets under management (AUM). Portfolio Rebalancing The majority of robo-advisors utilize modern portfolio theory (or some variant) to build passive, indexed portfolios for their users. Once established, robo-advisors continue to monitor those portfolios to ensure that the optimal asset class weightings are maintained even after markets move. Robo-advisors achieve this by using rebalancing bands. Rebalancing Bands Every asset class, or individual security, is given a target weight and a corresponding tolerance range. For example, an allocation strategy might include the requirement to hold 30% in emerging market equities, 30% in domestic blue chips, and 40% in government bonds with a corridor of 5% for each asset class. Using rebalancing bands means that emerging market and domestic blue-chip holdings can fluctuate between 25% and 35%, while 35% to 45% of the portfolio should be allocated to government bonds. When the weight of a holding jumps outside of the allowable band, the entire portfolio is rebalanced to reflect the initial target composition. In the past, this type of rebalancing has been frowned upon because it can be time-consuming and generate transaction fees. However, robo-advisors are designed to do this automatically with low fees. Tax-Loss Harvesting Another type of rebalancing commonly found in robo-advisorsand which is made cost-effective through algorithmsis tax-loss harvesting. Tax-loss harvesting is a strategy that involves selling securities at a loss to offset a capital gains tax liability in a similar security. This strategy is typically employed to limit the recognition of short-term capital gains. Robo-advisors do this by maintaining two or more stable exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for each asset class. So, if the S&P 500 ETF loses value, it will automatically sell it to lock in a capital loss; simultaneously, it buys a different S&P 500 ETF. Make sure your robo-advisor is programmed to select ETFs appropriately so that you avoid wash sale violations. Benefits of Using Robo-Advisors The main advantage of robo-advisors is that they are low-cost alternatives to traditional advisors. By eliminating human labor, online platforms can offer the same services at a fraction of the cost. Most robo-advisors charge annual flat fees of less than .5% per specific amount managed. It is much less than the typical 1% to 2% charged by a human financial planner (or more for commission-based accounts). Robo-advisors are also more accessible. You can reach them 24/7 as long as you have an internet connection. Furthermore, it takes significantly less capital to get started, as the minimum assets required to register for an account are typically in the hundreds to thousands ($3,000$5,000 is a standard baseline). One of the most popular robo-advisors, Betterment, has no account minimum for its standard offering. Efficiency is another significant advantage these online platforms have. For instance, before robo-advisors, if you wanted to execute a trade, you'd have to call or physically meet a financial advisor, explain your needs, and wait for them to execute your trades. Now, you can do all of that with the click of a few buttons in the comfort of your home. On the other hand, using a robo-advisor will limit the options that you can make as an individual investor. For example, you cannot choose which mutual funds or ETFs you are invested in, and you cannot purchase individual stocks or bonds in your account. However, this might be beneficial as buying individual stocks to try and beat the market has been shown repeatedly to produce poor results; on average, ordinary investors often see better results with an indexing strategy. Many human advisors prefer to take on clients with more than $100,000 in investable assets, especially those established in the field. These high-net-worth individuals need various wealth management services and can afford to pay for them. Hiring a Robo-Advisor Opening a robo-advisor will often entail taking a short risk-profiling questionnaire and evaluating your financial situation, time horizon, and personal investment goals. In many cases, you will have the opportunity to link your bank account directly for quick and easy funding of your robo-advisory account. The hallmark of automated advisory services is their ease of online access. But many digital platforms tend to attract and target specific demographics more than othersnamely, Millennial and Generation X investors who are technology-savvy and still accumulating their investable assets. This population is much more comfortable sharing personal information online and entrusting technology with essential tasks, such as wealth management. Indeed, much of the marketing efforts of robo-advisory firms employ social media channels to reach these investors. The SEC issued a risk alert to investors in November 2021 regarding compliance issues with many robo-advisors, so it helps to keep yourself informed by checking the FINRA Investor Alerts and the SEC Division of Examination websites for information. Robo-Advisors and Regulation Robo-advisors hold the same legal status as human advisors. Accordingly, they must be registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and are subject to the same securities laws and regulations as traditional broker-dealers. Most robo-advisors are members of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). You can use BrokerCheck to research robo-advisors the same way they would a human advisor. Assets managed by robo-advisors are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as they are securities held for investment purposes, not bank deposits. However, this does not necessarily mean clients are unprotected, as there are many other avenues by which broker-dealers can insure assets. For example, Wealthfront, another prominent robo-advisors in the U.S., is insured by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). How Robo-Advisors Make Money The primary way that most robo-advisors earn money is through a wrap fee based on assets under management (AUM). While traditional (human) financial advisors typically charge 1% or more per year of AUM, many robo-advisors charge around just 0.25% per year per $1,000 in assets under management. In addition to the management fee, robo-advisors can make money in several other ways. One way is the interest earned on cash balances ("cash management"), which is credited to the robo-advisor instead of the client. Because many robo-advised accounts only have a small allocation of cash in their portfolios, this can only become a significant source of income, again, if they have many users. Another revenue stream comes from payment for order flow. Typically, robo-advisors will accumulate funds that have been added from deposits, interest, and dividends; then, they bundle these together into large block orders executed at just one or two points in a day. This allows them to execute fewer trades and get more favorable terms due to the large order sizes. Finally, robo-advisors can earn money by marketing targeted financial products and services to their customers, such as mortgages, credit cards, or insurance policies. These are often done through strategic partnerships rather than advertising networks. If the returns on your investments with a robo-advisor do not outweigh the total costs associated with using it, then you may be better off not using one. The Best-in-Class Robo-Advisors There are hundreds of robo-advisors available in the U.S. and worldwide; more of them launch every year. They all provide some combination of investment management, retirement planning, and general financial advice. Here is a compilation of the most competitive offerings with the largest market shares. Standalone Robo-Advisors These firms are some of the earliest pioneers of digital advisory technology. They have the most competitive fees with low to zero account minimums. Clients with no current invested assets can start from scratch with these platforms. Legacy Offerings of Robo-Advisors An increasing number of financial services and asset management firms are launching robo-advisors. These platforms typically have higher fees and account minimums and are geared more toward sophisticated investors. They are convenient options for clients who already use these firms as asset custodians. Shortcomings of Robo-Advisors The entry of robo-advisors has broken down some of the traditional barriers between the financial services world and average consumers. Because of these online platforms, sound financial planning is now accessible to everyone, not just high-net-worth individuals. Still, many in the industry have doubts about the viability of digital advisors as a one-size-fits-all solution to wealth management. Given the relative nascency of their technological capabilities and minimal human presence, robo-advisors have been criticized for lacking empathy and sophistication. They are good entry-level tools if you have a small account and limited investment experience. You may find them lacking if you need advanced services like estate planning, complicated tax management, trust fund administration, and retirement planning. Pay attention to what a robo-advisor invests in, as many are now moving away from passive index strategies and investing in more risky areas that could underperform the market. Automated services are also ill-equipped to deal with unexpected crises or extraordinary situations. For example, they will not know if you're in-between jobs or dealing with an unexpected expenseyour funds could be drained unexpectedly if you have automatic withdrawals set up for the digital advisor. A study conducted by Investopedia and the Financial Planning Association found that consumers prefer a combination of human and technological guidance, especially when times are rough. According to the report, 40% of participants said they would not be comfortable using an automated investing platform during extreme market volatility. Furthermore, robo-advisors operate on the assumption that you have defined goals and a clear understanding of your financial circumstances. For many investors, that is not the case. Survey questions like, "Is your risk tolerance low, moderate, or high?" assumes that you have a fundamental knowledge of investment concepts and the real-life implications of each option you choose. What Does a Robo-Advisor Do? Robo-advisors provide financial planning services through automated algorithms with no human intervention. How Does a Robo-Advisor Work? A robo-advisor works by first gathering information on a client through an online survey and then automatically investing for the client based on that data. Robo-advisors often use passive index investing strategies. Can Robo-Advisors Make You Money? Yes, you can make money with a robo-advisor just like you can with any other financial advisor. Can You Lose Money With Robo-Advisors? Yes, you can lose money with robo-advisors, particularly with rebalancing costs, fees, and tax-loss harvesting. Do Robo-Advisors Beat the Market? Most robo-advisors will not beat the market because they invest in a passive index strategy that seeks to replicate the market following modern portfolio theory rather than incorporating a strategy that could potentially beat it. The Bottom Line Robo-advisors leverage advances in algorithmic trading and electronic markets to automate investment strategies for ordinary investors. Often based on Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), robo-advisors are able to optimize investors' risk-return tradeoff and automatically manage and rebalance their portfolios. Automation also allows for tax-loss harvesting and other strategies that were once too complex or expensive for ordinary investors. With low fees and small minimum balances to get started, robo-advisors are often a good choice for most long-term investors, and may be especially attractive to younger, tech-forward individuals. Investors looking for greater diversification or trying to tap into fast-growing parts of the world may have considered emerging-market economies, such as Brazil, Russia, India, or China. Of those, Russia is certainly the largest in terms of landmass, but it ranks only 11th in terms of worldwide gross domestic product (GDP)well behind China (second) and India (sixth), and just ahead of Brazil (12th). While the U.S. ranks as the world's largest economy with a GDP of $23 trillion, Russia's nominal GDP comes in at $1.78 trillion. Key Takeaways Russia's GDP is primarily made up of three sectorsagriculture, industry, and service. The agricultural sector makes up about 5.6% of GDP, while industry and services comprise 26.6% and 67.8%, respectively. In 2021, Russia experienced its best GDP growth since 2008, posting a 4.7% growth rate. For 2022, the expected GDP growth rate is -6%. For 2022, the expected GDP growth rate is -6%. In February 2022, the U.S. and other countries imposed new sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Russia: Then and Now The initial transition period for Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was tough, as it inherited a devastated industry and agricultural sector along with a formerly centrally planned economy. The regime introduced multiple reforms that made the economy more open, but a high concentration of wealth still continued. Russias economic growth rate remained negative during most of the 1990s, before the start of the subsequent golden decade. From 1999 to 2008, Russia's GDP grew by at least 4.7% each year. This expansion made Russia one the fastest-growing economies. This growth, however, was mostly driven by the boom in commodity prices, notably oil. The Russian economy got a jolt as oil prices dippedtriggered by the 2008-09 global financial crisisexposing Russias dependence on oil. The economy gradually recovered as oil prices stabilized. The Russian economy then grew at a decent pace for 2011 and 2012, but structural issues started to emerge that caused a slowdown during 2013. The next couple of years brought a continued slowdown as the country faced multiple issues including falling oil prices, geopolitical pressures, and sanctions by the West due to its invasion of Ukraine. Its GDP fell 2% in 2015. Russia's GDP managed to grow in each year from 2016 to 2018, before tapering off and falling 2.7% in 2020. In 2021, Russia saw the best GDP growth since 2008, posting a 4.7% growth rate. For 2022, however, the expected GDP growth rate is -6%. In February 2022, Russia once again invaded Ukraine. On Feb. 22, 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden announced sanctions against Russia in response to its military aggression against Ukraine, including the advancement of Russian troops into two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine. The administration noted this is the "first tranche of sanctions that go far beyond [the previous invasion of Ukraine in] 2014, in coordination with allies and partners in the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Australia." The sanctions are mostly economic and include blocking two state-owned Russian financial institutionsVnesheconombank and Promsvyazbank and their subsidiaries, which provide financing to the Russian military, from accessing the U.S. financial system. Other sanctions include the U.S. Treasury prohibiting the purchase of new Russian sovereign debt and banning U.S. companies and individuals from buying sovereign debt in the secondary market. Five Russian elites and their families have also been targeted. Russia's GDP Composition Russias GDP is largely made up of three broad sectors: a small agricultural sector that contributes about 5.6% to GDP, followed industry and service, which contribute 26.6% and 67.8%, respectively. Agricultural Harsh weather and tough geographic conditions make cultivation of land arduous and restricted to a few small areas of the nation. This is one of the main reasons behind the minimal role of the agricultural sector in Russias economy. The country's agrarian sector is characterized by the coexistence of both the formal sector, represented by large producers for commercial purposes, and the informal sector, where small landholders produce for self-sustenance. The sector includes forestry, hunting, and fishing, as well as cultivation of crops and livestock production. Despite being a large exporter of certain food items, Russia is a net importer of agriculture and food. Other than the non-availability or shortage of certain food products domestically, a few factors explain Russias rising food imports. One is higher inflation in Russia vis-a-vis its trading partners, which makes foreign imports more price-competitive. The second reason is its sound economic progress, especially from 2000 to 2008. This boom period led to income growth, further pushing up consumer demand for food, which was met by imports. In 2014, in response to the West's food embargoes, the Russian government banned certain food categories for import including dairy, meat, and produce from several countries such as the U.S. and those of the European Union, which significantly cut Russia's share of food imports. Industry The contribution of Russias industry sector to its GDP has remained more or less stable, averaging about around 30% over the last decade. For context, the U.S. only generates about 18% of its GDP from industry. Industry comprises mining, manufacturing, construction, electricity, water, and gas. Russia has an array of natural resources, with a prominence of oil and natural gas, timber, deposits of tungsten, iron, diamonds, gold, platinum, tin, copper, and titanium. Major industries in Russia have capitalized on the country's natural resources. One of the prominent industries is machine building, which suffered heavily after the disintegration of the Soviet Union as there was a severe shortage of capital. This business re-emerged with time and is the leading provider of machinery and equipment to the other industries in the economy. By order of importance, the fuel and energy complex (FEC) is one of the most crucial industries for the Russian economy. While post-Soviet Russia ostensibly enjoys a market economy, its leaders have deemed its dominant energy sector too crucial to leave to the caprices of independent buyers and sellers. The idea of energy extraction and refinement being open to private enterprise, something more common in the U.S., is not commonplace in Russia. Oil, natural gas, electricity, and more are under de facto control of the federal government. The FEC comprises the mining and production of energy resources, processing, delivery, and consumption of all types of energy. The FEC complex not only supports multiple sectors in the economy, but its products are also Russia's main exports. The country is the third-largest oil producer in the world, behind the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. The nation accounted for 11% of the total world oil production. Service Sector The service sector currently comprises over 56% of the country's GDP and employs the most people in the countrymore than 67% of the population. The key segments of the Russian service sector of late are hotel and catering services, construction, culture and entertainment and trade. It is often pointed out that as the crisis that accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union devastated agriculture and industry, it gave services a chance to accelerate. What Are the Main Parts of Russia's Economy? Russia's GDP is mainly composed of three sectorsagriculture, industry, and service. Agriculture contributes about 5.6% to GDP, followed industry and service, which contribute 26.6% and 67.8%, respectively. How Does Russia Rank in World Gross Domestic Product (GDP)? Russia stands 11th in terms of global GDPwell behind China (second) and India (sixth), and just ahead of Brazil (12th) among large emerging-market economies. What Is Russia's Biggest Industry? Russia has a heavy dependence on producing fuel and energy. The country's so-called fuel and energy complex comprises the mining and production of energy resources, processing, delivery, and consumption of all types of energy. Those enterprises support multiple sectors in the economy, and its products are Russia's main exports. The Bottom Line Russia will likely need to further diversify to establish a more balanced economy that is less susceptible to commodity price moves. Focusing on its manufacturing and service sectors may help achieve more sustainable long-term growth. Although the GDP composition reflects the growing importance of services, it is oil exports that drive most of its economy. Despite the overshadow of trade tariffs, industrial stocks remain underpinned by a lower corporate tax rate (35% down to 21%), a push for increased infrastructure spending and a strengthening U.S. housing market. Economic data also shows increased industrial activity. Industrial production, which measures the value of output from manufacturers, mines and utilities, is up 5.1% year over year as of September 2018. The sector should additionally benefit from early investor rotation into value names, robust profit forecasts and increased buyback activity. Senior analyst at Wolfe Research Nigel Coe told Barron's that he believes industrial stocks can maintain strong growth momentum while the Federal Reserve's policy remains loose and supportive of growth. However, he cautioned that companies in the sector need to grow into their earnings multiples forward earnings currently sit at 16.7 times as of October 2018. Price action also suggests that industrial stocks are at key support levels. Three leading exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the sector have all bounced at critical technical areas on their respective charts. Let's further analyze each fund. Launched in 2006, the iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF seeks to track the performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Select / Aerospace & Defense Index. The fund invests in companies that manufacture, assemble and distribute airplane and defense equipment. ITA charges investors an annual management fee of 0.43% and has returned 9.3% year to date (YTD) as of October 2018. The recent pullback found support on the uptrend line the connects the early May and late June swing lows. This $200 support level on the chart also finds support from the 200-day simple moving average (SMA), making it a high-probability buying area. A stop-loss order could be placed just below the candlestick that reversed on the trendline/moving average. The Invesco DWA Industrials Momentum ETF, also created in 2006, aims to provide similar returns to the DWA Industrials Technical Leaders Index. The ETF's portfolio holds U.S. industrial firms that are showing strong relative strength and price momentum. As of October 2018, the fund has a -4.69% YTD return and charges a 0.6% management fee. PRN's chart appears to be forming a double bottom the most recent swing low found support near the early May swing low at the $57 level. Short-term momentum looks to be moving back to the upside, with the relative strength index (RSI) crossing back above 30. Stops should be placed slightly below double bottom pattern to protect trading capital. Formed in 2013, the Fidelity MSCI Industrials ETF attempts to replicate the performance of the MSCI USA IMI Industrials Index. It holds companies that cover the broad U.S. industrials sector. The fund has a low expense ratio of just 0.08%, well below the 0.5% category average. Performance wise, FIDU has returned -1.33% YTD. Although FIDU's share price is trading below the 200-day SMA, it found strong support from the uptrend line that commenced in early May. The recent bounce at the $37.5 support level has moved the RSI out of oversold territory and occurred on above-average volume. Traders who take a long position should protect it with a stop below the most recent swing low. What Is an Emerging Market Bond? An emerging market bondthe fixed income debt that is issued by countries with developing economies as well as by corporations within those nationshave become increasingly popular in investor portfolios in recent years. Their traction has been attributed to the bonds' rising credit quality and their higher yields, relative to U.S. corporate and Treasury bonds. However, higher returns often come with an increased level of risk, and emerging market issues tend to carry higher risks than domestic debt instruments. Key Takeaways Emerging market bonds are debt instruments issued by developing countries. These bonds tend to over higher yields than Treasuries or corporate bonds in the U.S. Investing directly in emerging market bonds can be difficult, but most U.S.-based mutual fund companies have a variety of emerging market fixed income funds to choose from. One investment instrument that can protect bondholders against the risk that developing sovereign nations or foreign companies will default is the credit default swap (CDS). Understanding Emerging Market Bonds Throughout most of the 20th century, countries with emerging economies issued bonds only intermittently. In the 1980s, however, then-Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady began a program to help global economies restructure their debt via bond issues, mostly denominated in U.S. dollars. Many countries in Latin America issued these so-called Brady bonds throughout the next two decades, marking an upswing in the issuance of emerging market debt. As the market for emerging debt began to grow and as additional foreign markets began to mature, developing countries began to issue bonds more frequently, both in U.S. dollar denominations and in their own currency; the latter became known as "local market bonds." In addition, foreign corporations began issuing and selling bonds, giving a boost to the global corporate credit market. The expansion of emerging market bonds coincided with a growing sophistication of the macroeconomic policies on the part of these developing nations, such as the implementation of cohesive fiscal and monetary policies, which gave foreign investors confidence in these countries' long-term stability. As investors began to act upon the increased reliability of the economies of developing nations and the growing diversity of the bond issuances, emerging market bonds rose as a major fixed-income asset class. Today, bonds are issued from developing nations and corporations all over the world, including Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The types of fixed income instruments, in addition to Brady bonds and local market bonds, include eurobonds and Yankee bonds. Emerging market debt is also offered in a wide array of derivatives as well as short and long duration bonds. Special Considerations If you decide that the potential rewards offset the potential risks of investing in emerging market bonds, there are numerous options, although some limitations exist. When investing in emerging markets, in many cases it is not possible, or highly improbable, for an individual investor to invest directly in a developing country's bonds or debt issued by foreign corporations. Most U.S.-based mutual fund companies, however, have a variety of emerging market fixed income funds to choose from. These funds have options of bond issuances from developing countries and corporations denominated in U.S. dollars and/or local currencies. Some funds invest in a diversified mix of emerging market bonds from all over the world while some focus on regions, such as Asia, Eastern Europe or Latin America. Additionally, some funds focus exclusively on government issues or corporate bonds, while some have a diversified combination. Some funds track one of the many indexes that follow the performance of emerging market bonds, most notably the J.P. Morgan Emerging Markets Bond Index Global (EMBI Global). One investment instrument that can protect bondholders against the risk that developing sovereign nations or foreign companies will default is the credit default swap (CDS). CDSs have the ability to protect investors by guaranteeing the face value of the debt in exchange for the underlying securities, or their equivalent in cash if the nation or the corporation fails to honor the debt. However, while credit default swaps protect investors from potential loss, a sharp increase in the credit default swaps market for a particular developing nation can often indicate a growing concern that the country (or corporations within that nation) may not be able to honor its debt. So, both lower agency ratings and a basis point rise in a nation's credit default swaps are considered red flags with regard to a particular emerging market and its ability to repay a debt to investors. Advantages and Disadvantages of Emerging Market Bonds Advantages Despite these risks, emerging market bonds offer numerous potential rewards. Perhaps most significantly, they provide portfolio diversity, because their returns are not closely correlated to traditional asset classes. In addition, many investors who are looking to offset the currency risk present in the rest of their portfolios choose to invest in emerging market bonds issued in local currencies as a valuable tool in hedging this risk. Then too, developing countries have a tendency to grow rapidly, which can often enhance returns. For this reason, among others, yield returns of emerging debt have historically been higher than those of U.S. Treasuries. Investors often track the yield of U.S. Treasuries versus emerging market bonds and look for a widening of the spread, or extra yield, that emerging market bonds can offer at any given time. The higher the basis point spread of this yield is (i.e., the higher the emerging market yield is relative to Treasuries), the more attractive emerging market bonds are relative to Treasuries as an investment vehicle and the more willing investors are to take on the other inherent risks of emerging market bonds. Disadvantages The risks of investing in emerging market bonds include the standard risks that accompany all debt issues, such as the variables of the issuer's economic or financial performance and the ability of the issuer to meet payment obligations. These risks are heightened, however, due to the potential political and economic volatility of developing nations. Although emerging countries, overall, have taken great strides in limiting country risks or sovereign risk, it is undeniable that the chance of socioeconomic instability is more considerable in these nations than in developed countries, particularly the U.S. Emerging markets also pose other cross-border risks, including exchange rate fluctuations and currency devaluations. If a bond is issued in a local currency, the rate of the dollar versus that currency can positively or negatively affect your yield. When that local currency is strong compared to the dollar, your returns will be positively impacted, while a weak local currency adversely affects the exchange rate and negatively impacts the yield. If you do not want to partake in currency risk, however, it is possible to just invest in bonds that are dollar-denominated or issued only in U.S. dollars. Emerging market debt risk is assessed by rating agencies that measure each developing nation's ability to meet its debt obligations. Standard & Poor's and Moody's ratings tend to be the most widely followed rating agencies. Countries that have a rating of 'BBB' (or 'Baa3') or higher are generally considered investment grade, meaning it is safe to assume the country will be able to make its payments on time. However, lower ratings are indicative of speculative-grade investments, suggesting that the risk is relatively higher and that the nation may not be able to meet its debt obligations. New Hampshires highest court has ruled that a school district must reinstate a high school guidance counselor who was non-renewed after she clashed with her principal about how to handle a students desire to terminate her pregnancy. The state Supreme Court largely ruled in favor of counselor Demetria McKaig, who disagreed with her principal at Farmington High School about how to help a 15-year-old students interest in getting an abortion. In 2012, the girl came to McKaig, who suggested she tell her mother. But the girl and her boyfriend did not want to reveal the pregnancy to her mother, so McKaig began researching the girls options under state law. New Hampshire has a law requiring that parents be notified of an abortion by a minor child, but also an option for the minor to get a judicial bypass of the notification requirement. McKaig also met with her principal, who isnt named in the state high court ruling, The principal wanted to inform the girls mother of the pregnancy, but McKaig disagreed, asserting that the student had the right to keep the pregnancy confidential. The counselor consulted an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, who expressed the view that the state judicial bypass law gave the student the right to keep private her pregnancy and her contemplation of terminating it. The student eventually went to court to obtain a temporary restraining order barring the principal from informing her parents of the pregnancy. The principal abided by the TRO. Its not clear from court papers whether the student went through with having the abortion. Four months after the incident, McKaig received a notice of nonrenewal from the superintendent of her district. She later received a list of reasons: insubordination, breach of confidentiality, and neglect of duties. The confidentiality charge related to the fact that McKaig had provided the ACLU lawyer with some information about the student, including her initials, age, and grade, as well as the fact that she was pregnant. The local school board upheld the nonrenewal on two of the grounds: insubordination and breach of confidentiality. McKaig appealed to the state board of education, which reversed her non-renewal, but provided no remedies, such as reinstatement to her job. In a 4-1 decision on April 7 in Appeal of Farmington School District , the New Hampshire Supreme Court ordered McKaig reinstated to her job. The state high court agreed with the state board that the counselor was not insubordinate on the basis of failing to go up the chain of command before aiding the student on her options for a judicial bypass. The court said Farmington school board policy supported the state boards conclusion that to avoid insubordination, McKaig was required only to discuss her disagreement with the principal, which she did. Moreover, the court said, the state board had observed that McKaig acted consistently with policies and practices applicable to her role as guidance counselor. The court also agreed with the state board that McKaig did not breach student confidentiality by passing along limited information about the student. Justice Robert J. Lynn wrote a lengthy dissent, arguing that the local school boards decision against renewing McKaig was correct. Absent some showing that the principals decision was unlawful or wrongful, this case is no different than any other disagreement between a supervisor and an employee, Lynn wrote. [Hat Tip to How Appealing .] There have been violent swings between the Japanese yen and its exchange rate with other currencies in the past 30 years. In the early 1980s, the yen typically traded somewhere in a band between 200 and 270 per dollar. But in September 1985, the world's major Western economies gathered in New York and decided to devalue the dollar, an agreement that became known as the Plaza Accord. The Plaza Accord set off a strengthening trend in the yen for the next decade that ended with the exchange rates reaching close to 80 yen to the dollar. That's an astonishing 184% appreciation in the yen's value. Key Takeaways The Japanese yen has see-sawed in the last 35 years, particularly in the first decade after the 1985 Plaza Accord, in which a deal was made to devalue the U.S. dollar, therefore strengthening the yen. The Plaza Accord led to a period of exchange rate volatility that has contributed to Japan's manufacturing industry shifting from a focus on domestic production and exports to large scale overseas production. This shift has hit Japanese employment and consumption, even impacting companies outside manufacturing or those that are entirely domestically-based. The companies have enjoyed greater stability by becoming less vulnerable to the downsides of exchange rate movements, but the strength of the overall domestic economy going forward is more tumultuous. Japan's Bubble and Economic Stagnation While the yen's strength benefited Japanese tourists and companies conducting M&A in the United States, it was disadvantageous for Japanese exporters who wanted to sell their goods to American consumers. In fact, this sharp rise in the yen is one of the key factors leading to the building and then bursting of Japan's bubble economy in the late 1980s, a period that was followed by over two decades of economic stagnation and price deflation. Image by Sabrina Jiang Investopedia 2021 Since 1995, the Japanese yen has seen a number of violent swings. While none of them were as extensive as the first 10 years following the Plaza Accord, they have wreaked havoc on the mindset of Japanese businessmen and politicians and changed the underlying structure of the country's economy. The yen began another round of strengthening in the middle of 2007 that saw it smash through the 80 yen/dollar level in late 2011. This trend only began to reverse (and sharply so) with the election of a new government (lead by Mr. Abe) and the appointment of a new central bank governor (Mr. Kuroda), both of whom promised massive quantitative easing. So how big an impact does the exchange rate have on Japan's economy, and what changes has this volatility brought about? Real Impacts Versus Translation Effects To determine the effect of exchange rates on Japan's economy, it helps to use a basic example. Let's assume we have an exchange rate of 120 yen/dollar and two Japanese automobile manufacturers selling cars in the United States. Company A builds its cars in Japan, then exports them to the United States, and Company B has built a factory in the United States so that the cars it sells there are also manufactured there. Now let's further assume that it costs Company A 1.2 million yen to make a standard car in Japan (about $10,000 at the assumed exchange rate of 120 yen/dollar), and it costs Company B $10,000 to make a similar model in the United States. Then, the costs per vehicle are approximately the same. Because both cars are similar in make and quality, let's finally assume that they both sell for $15,000. That means both companies will make a $5,000 profit on a vehicle, which will become 600,000 yen when repatriated back to Japan. Scenario Where the Exchange Rate Is Yen/Dollar Image by Sabrina Jiang Investopedia 2021 Now, let's look at a scenario where the yen strengthens to 100 yen/dollar. Because it still costs Company A 1.2 million yen to produce a car in Japan, and because the yen has strengthened, the car now costs $12,000 in dollar terms (1.2 million yen divided by 100 yen/dollar). But Company B still produces at $10,000 per car because it manufactures locally and is not impacted by the exchange rate. If the cars still sell at $15,000, Company A will now make a profit of $3,000 per car ($15,000 - $12,000), which will be worth 300,000 yen at 100 yen/dollar. But Company B will still make a profit of $5,000 per car ($15,000 - $10,000), which will be worth 500,000 yen. Both will make less money in yen terms, but the decline for Company A will be much more severe. Of course, the reverse will be true when the exchange rate trend reverses. Scenario Where the Exchange Rate Is 100 Yen/Dollar Image by Sabrina Jiang Investopedia 2021 If the yen weakened to 140 yen/dollar, for example, Company A will make 900,000 per car, while Company B will make only 700,000 yen per car. Both will be better off in yen terms, but Company A will be more so. Scenario Where the Exchange Rate is 140 Yen/Dollar Image by Sabrina Jiang Investopedia 2021 These scenarios show the substantial impact exchange rates have on Company A. Because Company A has a mismatch between its currency at production and its currency at sale, profits will be affected in both currencies. But Company B only faces a translation effect because its profitability in dollar terms is unaffected - only when it reports earnings in yen or tries to repatriate cash to Japan will anyone notice a difference. The Hollowing Out of Japan The sharp appreciation of the yen during the 10 years after the Plaza Accord, and the exchange rate volatility that followed forced many Japanese manufacturers to reconsider their export model of building in Japan and selling abroad. This had an impact on profitability. Japan had rapidly gone from a position as a low-cost producer to one where labor was relatively expensive. Even without the impact of the effects discussed above, it had simply become cheaper to produce goods overseas. In addition, it had also become politically challenging to export products to the United States where there was local competition. Americans witnesses companies such as Sony (SNE), Panasonic, and Sharp devour their television manufacturing industry, and they were reluctant to let the same thing happen to other strategic industries such as automobiles. Hence, a period of political tension surrounding trade emerged, where new barriers to Japanese exports arose, such as voluntary quotas on automobiles and limits on exports to the United States for sale. Japanese companies now had two good reasons to build factories overseas. It would it lead to more stable profitability in the face of an unstable exchange rate, and relieve the increasing cost of labor. Toyota is a classic example. The slide below is from Toyota's FY2019 annual results presentation. It details the split between (a) how many cars the company produces in Japan and overseas, and (b) how much revenue it generates in Japan and overseas. First, the data show that the vast majority of the company's revenues now come from outside of Japan. But we also note that the majority of cars it builds are manufactured overseas. While the company may still be a net exporter, and while the evolution may have happened over an extended period, the graduation to a focus on overseas production is clear. Source: Toyota, 2019 Not all manufacturers in Japan are large exporters, and not all exporters in Japan have been as aggressive as Toyota and the auto industry in moving production overseas. However, it has been a trend for most of the last three decades. The chart below combines data from two government agencies to illustrate this point. It looks at the revenues from overseas subsidiaries of Japanese manufacturers and divides it by total revenues of those same companies for the years 1997 to 2014. Overseas Subsidiaries Revenue As A % Of Total Image by Sabrina Jiang Investopedia 2021 The graph shows that shortly after the end of the first great Japanese yen appreciation, the ratio of overseas subsidiary sales went from 8% to nearly 30% by the end of 2014. In other words, more and more Japanese manufacturers were seeing the merit of expanding their businesses overseas and making products where they sold them. The problem with this model, however, was that it hollowed out the Japanese economy. As factories moved abroad, fewer jobs were available domestically in Japan, which placed downward pressure on wages and damaged the domestic economy. Even non-manufacturers felt the impact as consumers reined in spending. It's Even About Nuclear Power The exchange rate factors heavily into discussions on energy security because the country is devoid of natural resources such as oil. Anything that the country cannot produce through renewable sources such as hydro, solar, and nuclear energy must be imported. Because most of these imported fossil fuels are priced in dollars (and extremely volatile themselves), the yen/dollar exchange rate can make a huge difference. Even after the triple disaster of the massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that occurred in March 2011, the country's government and manufacturers were keen to have the nuclear reactors back in operation. While the government's quantitative easing program has been successful at weakening the yen since 2012, the flip side is that imports cost more as a result of that weakening. If the price of oil were to rise while the yen remains weak, that would again hurt the production costs of domestic manufacturers (and households, car drivers, and therefore, consumption). The Bottom Line The strengthening of the yen against the dollar after the Plaza Accord and the exchange rate volatility that followed has encouraged a rebalancing of Japan's manufacturing industry from one focused on domestic production and export to one where production has shifted overseas on a large scale. This has had consequences for domestic employment and consumption, and even non-manufacturers and solely domestic companies are exposed. While the companies themselves have become more stable because they are less exposed to the negative effects of exchange rate movements, the future stability of the domestic economy is less certain. On Sept. 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, a well-known and respected investment bank, filed for bankruptcy protection after the Bush Administration's Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, refused to grant them a bailout. While there had been market volatility during the preceding months, the fall of Lehman Brothers marks what many consider the beginning of a global financial crisis. After the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 504 pointsroughly 4.4%and the Nasdaq lost 3.6% in response to the Lehman bankruptcy, policymakers reversed their stance on bailouts and initiated a $700 billion program to stabilize financial markets. Companies deemed "too big to fail" received cash infusions in exchange for stock, commercial bank status, and access to discounted loans from the Federal Reserve. So, what were the financial companies that received help from the government, and 13 years later, where are they? Key Takeaways The financial crisis started with Bear Stearns and Lehman brothers. The U.S. government did not bailout Lehman and the institution filed for bankruptcy and eventually closed. Bear Stearns was picked up by JP Morgan and no longer exists. As the financial crisis got worse, the U.S. government approved a $700 billion program to bailout institutions that were considered "too big to fail." Some analysts put the real number at $12.8 trillion. AIG, which received the biggest bailout in history at $180 billion continues to operate today, though is a shell of its former self that is struggling in today's marketplace. Other large banks that received some sort of government benefit are continuing to do well, including JP Morgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. Bear Stearns: The Harbinger of Too Big to Fail That Failed The first "too big to fail" moment occurred months before the Lehman Brothers failure. The Bear Stearns deal was meant to shore up financial markets and promote stability in a system increasingly recognized as unstable since the middle of 2007. In March 2008, the Federal Reserve agreed to lend up to $30 billion to JPMorgan Chase so they could buy Bear Stearns. JPMorgan did so; paying only $10 a share for the ailing investment bank. Rather than stopping the panic, the deal did little to allay fears, and ultimately more bailouts followed. Seven years later, in 2015, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said he regretted the decision to buy Bear Stearns, even at the discounted price. "No, we would not do something like Bear Stearns again," he wrote in a shareholder letter, citing billions in losses and legal bills stemming from crisis-era acquisitions Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. JPMorgan isn't suffering too much, though. It is the largest bank in the U.S. in terms of assets at the end of 2020, with just over three trillion dollars in assets. AIG: The Biggest Bailout in History Just after letting Lehman Brothers fail, the government stepped in when it became clear that American International Group (AIG) would fail due to its heavy investments in credit default swaps and potentially bring down the entire financial system. With AIG, the infusions came in multiple stages, including a low-cost loan, preferred share purchases, and mortgage-backed securities. In the end, the government poured more than $180 billion into AIG. However, because the government took on a stake of nearly 80% of the company, the money spent was recovered by 2012, with a net profit to U.S. taxpayers. Today, after a few years of profits, AIG is once again struggling. In 2020, the company had $730 million in losses related to the Covid pandemic. The company used to have a triple A credit rating and now its senior debt has a BBB+ rating. Even before the pandemic, the company was having a tough time. In 2016, investing legends Carl Ichan and John Paulson called for its breakup. Since 2016, its profit margins have been either flat or negative, without any real growth. It's revenues in 2019 were only a 5% increase from 2018.The company is chugging along. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs: Becoming Commercial Banks The bailouts of 2008 weren't just about the government buying shares, but also about changing the face of banking. Investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs couldn't get involved with commercial consumer banking until the financial crisis. At that point, the Federal Reserve allowed them to become commercial banks so they could access funds by borrowing heavily, using the discount window the Fed offers commercial banks, as well as access to other government guarantee programs extended to these types of banks. Both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs borrowed billions at these low rates to help stabilize their operations. On top of that, becoming commercial banks has allowed them to tap into the consumer market in a way that they were unable to do before. Today, Morgan Stanley offers a variety of banking services in addition to investment banking. For the full year ending 2020, the company had record revenues of $48.2 billion with an EPS of $6.46. Total net income for the year was $11 billion, up from $9 billion the previous year; a 22% increase. And revenues increased 16% from the previous year. Goldman Sachs is still one of the most powerful banks in the world with an esteemed reputation. In 2020, net revenues increased to $44.5 billion from $36.5 billion the year before. Earnings witnessed a slimmer growth to $9.5 billion from $8.5 billion. All core business units witnessed growth. Bank of America: Bailed out to Buy Failing Financial Institutions Bank of America also received bailout money from the government, including more than $100 billion in guarantees, so that it could buy failing financial companies Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch. Bank of America had to take on losses related to those companies, including shouldering legal fees associated with Countrywide's questionable mortgage lending practices. Even with these costs, though, Bank of America is booming today. It's America's second-largest bank. It did struggle during the pandemic, with both revenues and income down in 2020 from 2019. However, its assets and deposits continue to steadily grow. Is "Too Big to Fail" Alive and Well? More than a decade after the financial crisis, there's a good chance that facing a similar situation, the government would pledge money to bail out financial institutions. Even though Congress passed a $700 billion bailout package during the global financial crisis, some estimates indicate that the U.S. spent, lent, or guaranteed up to $12.8 trillion to rescue the economy. While that much money might not have been spent directly, the government essentially offered itself as a backstop to dozens of banks considered essential to the U.S. financial system and economy. Following the financial crisis, "too big to fail" put additional regulatory requirements on 44 banks with more than $50 billion in assets. Earlier in 2018, Congress changed the definition of "too big to fail" to banks with at least $250 billion in assets, reducing the list to 13 banks. However, if faced with another meltdown, it's doubtful that the government would stop at propping up so few financial institutions. The Bottom Line The financial crisis threatened to wipe out trillions of assets in the U.S. economy with the expected closure of some of the nation's largest institutions. The government stepped in with a massive bailout package to prevent these institutions from going under and further damaging the economy. Though a few of these institutions were allowed to fail, such as Lehman and Bear, the government prevented the collapse of other large banks, all of which continue to thrive today. What Are the Panama Papers? The Panama Papers refer to the 11.5 million leaked encrypted confidential documents that were the property of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The documents were released on April 3, 2016, by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), dubbing them the Panama Papers. The document exposed the network of more than 214,000 tax havens involving people and entities from 200 different nations. A yearlong team effort by SZ and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) went into deciphering the encrypted files before the revelations were made public. Key Takeaways The Panama Papers were a massive leak of financial files from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the fourth-biggest offshore law firm in the world. The documents were leaked anonymously to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). The files exposed a network of 214,000 tax havens involving wealthy people, public officials, and entities from 200 nations. The anonymous source who leaked the papers did so from Panama, hence the name Panama Papers. Most of the documents showed no illegal actions, but some of the shell corporations set up by Mossack Fonseca had been used for fraud, tax evasion, or avoiding international sanctions. Understanding the Panama Papers The Panama Papers are documents that contain personal financial information about many wealthy individuals and public officials that had previously been kept private. Among those named in the leak were a dozen current or former world leaders, 128 public officials, politicians, hundreds of celebrities, business people, and other wealthy individuals. Offshore business entities are legal, in general, and most of the documents showed no inappropriate or illegal behavior. But some of the shell corporations set up by Mossack Fonseca were revealed by reporters to have been used for illegal purposes, including fraud, tax evasion, and the avoidance of international sanctions. Documents Leaked by Anonymous Source In 2015, Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) was contacted by an anonymous source calling themselves "John Doe," who offered to leak the documents. Doe did not demand any financial compensation in return, according to the SZ. The total volume of data comes to about 2.6 terabytes, making it the biggest data leak in history, and it pertains to the period spanning from the 1970s to the spring of 2016. Initially, only select names of politicians, public officials, businessmen, and others involved were revealed. One of the immediate consequences of the revelations was the April 4, 2016, resignation of Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. On May 9, all of the 214,488 offshore entities named in the Panama Papers became searchable via a database on the website of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The database of offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca reportedly leaked 11.5 million confidential documents. The Source of the Name "Panama Papers" The group of documents was referred to as the "Panama Papers" because the leak originated from Panama. However, the Panamanian government has registered strong objections to the name as it appears to put some blame or negative association on the country. Panama attests that it has had no involvement in the actions of Mossack Fonseca. Nonetheless, the nickname has persisted, although some media outlets that have covered the story have referred to it as the "Mossack Fonseca Papers." Larger than both the Panama and Paradise Papers, the Pandora Papers are a release of more than 12 million leaked documents that reveal the hidden and sometimes unethical or corrupt dealings of the global wealthy and eliteincluding prominent world leaders, politicians, corporate executives, celebrities, and billionaires. What Is the Panama Papers Scandal? The Panama Papers scandal involved a leak of 11.5 million confidential documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) reported the leak, which exposed more than 214,000 tax havens involving high-profile people, government officials, and entities from 200 different nations. Who Leaked the Panama Papers? An anonymous source, coined John Doe, from Panama leaked the documents to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) for no cosideration. What Happened to Mossack Fonseca? In March 2018, Mossack Fonseca terminated operations but agreed to continue working with authorities in any ongoing investigations into the Panama Papers scandal. Stock Category Gain Since June 1 Low Beta 4.5% High Beta (5.4%) Source: Dow Jones, as reported by Barron's July 3. The Dow Jones U.S. Thematic Market Neutral Low Beta Index was used by Barron's to represent the recent performance of low beta stocks. For high beta, high momentum stocks, the Dow Jones U.S. Thematic Market Neutral Momentum Index provided the metric. These indices capture the returns from long/short strategies that bet on these respective categories of stocks. Verizon Telecom provider Verizon has improving fundamentals for its wireless business, which should get another major boost when the company begins rolling out its state-of-the-art 5G network service later this year. Verizon's 5G technology promises significantly faster transmission speeds for much higher volumes of data and voice traffic, with less latency, or delay. (For more, see also: Verizon and AT&T Are Ready For Big Rebounds.) NextEra NextEra is an electric utility, whose principal subsidiary is the Florida Power & Light Company, or FPL. The largest component of a popular ETF that tracks the utilities sector, technical analysis suggests that NextEra stock is making a breakout to the upside from a recent period of consolidation. (For more, see also: 3 Charts Suggest Traders Are Flocking to Safety of Utilities.) Consumer Staples Rebound The consumer staples sector, which includes stocks such as Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark and Anheuser-Busch, was among the major laggards in the S&P 500 during the past year, reaching a recent bottom on May 2. Since then, it has staged a rebound of nearly 5%, per S&P Dow Jones Indices. Shortly after that recent bottom, Chad Morganlander of Washington Crossing Advisors issued a buy recommendation for consumer staples, citing solid fundamentals and oversold conditions that had created attractive valuations and thus a buying opportunity. (For more, see also: 5 Consumer Stocks Ready for Big Rebounds.) Top News - Investor Idea Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Continues Acquisition Path With Purchase of ELMS Assets Including Factory in Mishawaka, IN., Enabling EV Production for Retail and Commercial Vehicle Lines BREA, Calif. - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces the US Bankruptcy Court approval on Oct. 13th, 2022 of its acquisition of electric vehicle company ELMS's (Electric Last Mile Solutions) assets in an all cash purchase. Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea Breaking EV Stock News: Mullen Automotive (NASDAQ: $MULN) Taps Former GM Executive John Schwegman as Chief Commercial Officer for Next Phase of EV Growth BREA, Calif. - October 21, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces today the hiring of John Schwegman as its Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) for Mullen's line of commercial vehicles. Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea EV Stocks Driving Higher: (NASDAQ: $MULN) (NASDAQ: $TSLA) (NYSE: $NIO) (NYSE: $F) Vancouver, Delta, BC - October 20, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investorideas.com, a leading investor news resource covering EV and automotive stocks releases a special report featuring Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), covering the continued growth of the EV market as government policy and infrastructure plans sync up with consumer and investor interest in the EV space. Top AI Stock News - Investor Idea Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires Confidential Computing Platform ZeroTrust to Protect Data Privacy and Accelerate Innovation for Millions of Growth Businesses NEW YORK, NY - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow, has acquired the confidential computing and privacy intellectual property (IP) plus software assets of Zero2A PTE LTD ("ZeroTrust Platform"), a software company based in Singapore. Check out our Podcasts for great investor ideas: Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by Investorideas.com Newswire: Subscribe to Investor Ideas Newswire Delia McDermott survived the Titanic despite climbing out of a lifeboat to retain a prized possession. She was one of 14 people from Addergoole in Co Mayo who boarded the liner, 11 of whom perished. Editor's Note: On April 15, 1912, the Belfast-built RMS Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg, killing over 1,500 passengers and crew on board. This was one of the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disasters in modern history and among those on board were many Irish. This is an extract from the book The Irish Aboard the Titanic by Senan Molony which tells the tales of the people who were on board the night the ship went down. This book gives those people a voice. In it are stories of agony, luck, self-sacrifice, dramatic escapes, and heroes left behind. Read more Irish Titanic passenger Mary Burns died while tending to the needs of others Delia McDermott Ticket number 330932. Paid 7 15s 8d. Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class. From: Knockfarnaught, Lahardane, County Mayo. Destination: 404 Henrietta Street, St Louis, Missouri. Although one of the first to find a place in a lifeboat, Delia insisted on climbing out of the early boat to recover a prized possession. She had bought a new hat in Cawleys shop, Crossmolina, the nearest big town to her home place in a remote part of Co Mayo, just before she traveled to America. Journalist Tom Shiel told her story in The Connaught Telegraph of February 1998: Nephin Mor had been snowcapped on a number of occasions during the winter of 1912 and the people in the valleys below were longing for Spring. Even when only the boggy summit of Mayos highest mountain was mantled in white, the people of Addergoole parish (Lahardane), indeed the whole of Ireland, had a cold time of it. Many times that long ago spring of 1912, Delia McDermott looked westwards from her parents thatched cottage at Knockfarnaught at the great majestic bulk of the mountain. When the hedgerows were greening and only a few tiny stripes of snow remained on the upper reaches, Delia knew the time was fast approaching when she would be uprooted, perhaps forever, from her birthplace. As part of her preparations for the great journey to America, she traveled one day to Crossmolina to buy new clothing. One of her purchases was a smart new hat. She liked the hat so much that weeks later she risked her life to recover it from her cabin in the ill-fated Titanic. Delia was one of 14 people from Addergoole preparing in spring 1912 to travel on the White Starliner. Only three of the group survived. Delia, despite dicing with death on the double in order to retrieve her cherished millinery, was one of the lucky ones. There was a great activity in Addergoole as the sailing time approached. Those not traveling were out and about on the land and in the bog, or perhaps taking the odd trip to Castlebar where the women sold eggs and the men purchased grain and farm implements. Thoughts of turf-cutting and harvesting were far from the minds of those who were about to emigrate as they traveled by pony and trap over the steep Windy Gap and then at a smart gallop into Castlebar. By the time the scythes had felled the first grass of that years hay harvest, they planned to be carving out new lives in Chicago or other bustling industrial cities in the industrial United States. In March, ten of the intending passengers, including Delia McDermott, then 28 years old, booked their passage with Thomas Durcan of Castlebar. Three others booked with another travel agent, Mrs. Walsh of Linenhall Street. The days before they were due to travel for Queenstown were extremely busy ones for the Addergoole contingent. They visited neighbors most would never see again and there were tearful embraces on the doorstep of many a thatched cottage. Delia McDermotts niece, now Delia Melody of Lord Edward Street, Ballina, tells the story of a strange and chilling encounter between her aunt and a mysterious man in black in Lahardane village the evening before she left for Cobh. "She was in Lahardane with friends when suddenly a hand tapped her on the shoulder," Mrs. Melody explained. "She turned around and there was a little man there whom she thought was a traveler. My aunt went to give the man a few pennies and he told her he knew she was going on a long journey." "There will be a tragedy, but you will be saved, the little man said before disappearing. When Delia mentioned the little man to her friends, they said they hadnt seen anybody. Thus Delia McDermott began her long and eventful journey to the New World filled with some foreboding Luck was also in Delia McDermotts favor. She was one of the first to find a lifeboat but returned to her cabin for the new hat she had bought before the journey. Says Delias niece, Mrs. Melody: It was perhaps a foolish thing to do, but luckily she managed to get a place in a boat. She had to jump fifteen feet from a rope ladder onto the lifeboat. At this stage, the Titanic was sideways. It was going down. Delia indeed survived and later prospered in the United States. She never returned to Ireland. Report of the American Red Cross (Titanic Disaster) 1913: No. 323. (Irish.) Servant, 25 years of age, injured very severely, and long unable to work. ($200) On 25 April, Delia McDermott received $150 from the Womens Relief Committee, formed in New York to aid survivors. She had intended to travel to her cousin, Mrs. Celia Syson, at Henrietta Street, St Louis, but never left the east coast. She moved from New York to New Jersey, marrying a fellow countryman, John Joseph Lynch of Galway. He served in the First World War and spent his working years on the Jersey City docks. They had three children Julia, Margaret, and Tommy. Delia never spoke about her Titanic experiences and the children were forbidden to ask her about it. It appears however that Delia was rescued in lifeboat No. 13, launched from the starboard side of the ship relatively early in the night. Her daughter, Julia Danning, remembers Delias later life: She was a quiet, home-loving housewife, devoted to her family. She was very devout, with daily Mass and nightly Rosary. Her one and only vice was a weekly Euchre game with friends. She rarely spoke of her experience aboard the Titanic except for having left a lifeboat to go back and retrieve her new hat. Hats being what they were in those days, it was no doubt a huge expenditure for her family and it was a going-away gift. Otherwise, I believe the ordeal was so traumatic that she closed her mind to it. Delia died in Jersey City, N.J., on 3 November 1959. She was believed to have been aged 75 a figure supported by the 1901 census which put her age at 17. However, if an age of 32 from the 1911 census is correct, she would have been 33 when the Titanic sailed, and 80 when she died. 1911 census McDermott, Knockfarnaught. Parents: Michael (77), farmer, Bridget (73). Married 40 years, seven children, four living. Children in the house: Thomas (35), Bridget (Delia, 32). The Irish Aboard the Titanic by Senan Molony is available online. * Originally published in 2012. 9th Circuit: Arizona Dreamers Can Get Driver's Licenses The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a federal policy that temporarily protects undocumented immigrants brought into the country unlawfully by their parents from deportation. Along with the DREAM ACT, it confers some legal standing to undocumented immigrants, like the ability to work, go to school, or get a driver's license. The state of Arizona had been pushing back hard against the third part, with then-Governor Jan Brewer signing an executive order in 2012 denying licenses for young, undocumented immigrants. But the Ninth Circuit has overturned that ban and permanently enjoined the state from enforcing it. "Irreparable Harm" As DACA and the Dream Act are federal edicts, Arizona, via Attorney General Mark Brnovich, argued that states should have the authority to decide which residents get a driver's license. But federal courts have disagreed, with a U.S. District Court issuing a preliminary, and then permanent, injunction against the state denying DACA recipients state-issued driver's licenses. The Ninth Circuit affirmed that injunction: "Plaintiffs' inability to obtain drivers' licenses hinders them in pursuing new jobs, attending work, advancing their careers, and developing business opportunities. They thus suffer financial harm and significant opportunity costs. And as we have previously found, the irreparable nature of this injury is exacerbated by plaintiffs' young age and fragile socioeconomic status. Setbacks early in their careers can have significant impacts on Plaintiffs' future professions. This loss of opportunity to pursue one's chosen profession constitutes irreparable harm." The Right to Drive As Nephtali Moreno, a member of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, said in a statement after the ruling, "Everyone who knows how to drive and is otherwise eligible should have the right to drive, regardless of the person's immigration status. As a DACA recipient, having a license has allowed me to better contribute to my Arizona community." A spokesperson of current Arizona Governor Doug Ducey told Courthouse News the governor's office is "reviewing the ruling" and the Attorney General Brnovich hasn't said whether his office will appeal the ruling. Related Resources: The story of John Horgan, the Titanic victim from Ireland who disappeared, his fate unknown. Editor's note: On April 15, 1912, the Belfast built RMS Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg, killing over 1,500 passengers and crew on board. This was one of the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disasters in modern history and among those on board were many Irish. In the run-up to the anniversary of the disaster, IrishCentral takes a look at the Irish on board the lucky, unlucky and heroic. This is an extract from the book The Irish Aboard the Titanic by Senan Molony which tells the tales of the people who were on board the night the ship went down. This book gives those people a voice. In it are stories of agony, luck, self-sacrifice, dramatic escapes, and heroes left behind. John Horgan Ticket number 370377. Paid 7 15s. Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class. From: Cork/Limerick? Destination: New York. The Quiet Man could be applied to John Horgan, whose name appears on the embarkation records for the Titanic, but whose disappearance led to not a single newspaper reference, nor any legal action against the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, nor any charitable disbursement, nor even a death notice nor a legal move for administration of his estate. John Horgan certainly existed but whether he embarked on the Titanic, or was replaced by someone using his ticket, is another matter. It will remain a mystery while Horgans own origins remain unclear. What is known is that John Horgan was listed to sail on the Cymric, from Queenstown, on Easter Sunday, 7 April 1912. He did not board that vessel instead, all the Cymric's passengers were transferred to the Titanic when the Cymric did not sail. A man called John Horgan did board the Titanic on Thursday, April 11, 1912. Later, in listing the Irish victims, the Irish World in New York referred to Horgan as being from County Limerick. It is also true that he came to the Titanic at Queenstown in the company of six other passengers from County Limerick. They were among the last to board, and it is known that the connecting train from Cork to Queenstown was late arriving at Deepwater Quay on that day. But it is also possible that John Horgan might have sold his ticket and this would explain the lack of newspaper references to anyone mourning his passing. It is known that William ODoherty, a Cork publican, bought the ticket assigned to a James Moran, and died in the disaster in the latters name. ODoherty was friends with another tavern worker, 19-year-old Timothy OBrien, whom the Cork newspapers also insisted had gone down on the Titanic. But Timothy OBrien does not appear on the list of passengers. Is it possible that he followed his friend ODohertys example and bought his ticket from John Horgan? The Cork Examiner of April 17, 1912, in a section headed Believed Passengers, referred to William Doherty [sic], 12 Old Market Place, employed by Messrs W. F. OCallaghan, Daunts Square, and Timothy OBrien, billiard marker at the Oyster Tavern. The rival Cork Constitution newspaper made the same pairing in the same days edition. The Mansion House relief fund does not list John Horgan among its Irish cases in its March 1913 report but mentions a claimant mother of the surname Landers. It may be that Horgan sold to OBrien, who in turn sold to Landers, but the case is mysterious. Daniel Landers of Castletown Conyers, County Limerick, is a likely candidate most of his siblings had preceded him to New York. The Irish Aboard the Titanic by Senan Molony is available online. * Originally published in 2012. The housemates of a Northern Irish woman who received a suspended prison sentence earlier this week for inducing an abortion with pills purchased online have shared their side of the story. The case has received widespread international media attention, with Amnesty International and many reproductive rights groups speaking out against Northern Ireland for its hardline anti-abortion legislation. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where abortion is illegal, though it is also still illegal in the Republic of Ireland. The case concerned a now 21-year-old Belfast woman, whose name has not been released, who in July 2014 induced an abortion with pills she had purchased online. On July 20, 2014, her two housemates called the Police Service of Northern Ireland to report her actions. They have since been the target of significant backlash online for reporting their housemate, who was 19-years-old at the time and could not afford the cost of traveling to London for an abortion in a clinic. In an anonymous interview with the Belfast Telegraph, the housemates have now shared their side of the story. One of the housemates, a 38-year-old woman from Belfast, told the newspaper that she had tried to discuss a number of alternatives with her younger housemate, including offering to become the babys legal guardian if she carried it full term. "I really tried to help her. I talked through a number of options but she just didn't want to know," she said. "She called the baby 'the pest' and kept saying she just wanted rid of it. She said: 'I don't want this inside me.' I offered a number of times to become legal guardian to the child. I myself had just had a miscarriage. "She said she was going to order these pills online. I tried to talk her out of it. She didn't tell us they had arrived. The first I knew that she had taken them was on the Friday night when she said she was getting awful cramps. "The next day I was downstairs on my own and she phoned me from her bedroom and asked me if I could bring her a pair of scissors. I wasn't thinking straight. I went upstairs with them. She was lying in bed and I asked what she wanted them for. She said 'this is hanging out of me on a piece of string'. The woman said that later in the day her roommate came downstairs and put a plastic bag into the communal trash can. A bit later I was going to put rubbish out in the bin and there was the bag. When my other housemate came home on the Sunday we went and looked in the bag in the bin. There was the baby on a towel. "I didn't expect the baby to be so fully formed. The court was told she was 10 to 12 weeks pregnant when she obtained the tablets, but he seemed older. He had fingers, little toes. Even now I just have a picture in my mind of it. Its wee foot was perfect. Both of the housemates said that they are not entirely anti-abortion, but that it was the womans attitude about the situation that bothered them. "This isn't anything to do with the rights and wrongs of abortion. I'm not anti-abortion. I believe there are circumstances, like rape, where it should be a woman's choice, said the 38-year-old from Belfast. "There was absolutely no remorse. Even the way she was up and away out and doing her own thing a day after the abortion, while me and our other house-mate just walked around in shock. The other housemate, a 22-year-old woman from northern coast of Northern Ireland, voiced a similar opinion. "We tried so hard to support her when she told us about the pregnancy, but it made me so angry when she kept calling it 'the pest'. Then, after the abortion, she showed no remorse. It was so weird the way she reacted to what had happened," she told the newspaper. "I tried to be nice to her. But really there was no sign of remorse at all, her attitude really got to me. I asked her why she wouldn't give the baby a proper burial and she said 'do you want me to put it in a bag and throw it up the street?' I was so angry at her attitude. I eventually cracked up and told a friend. I was a frantic mess. He was shocked and told me I had to contact the police." She also expressed shock at the backlash against herself and the other housemate who called the police. "It is just insane the way we are being portrayed as being the bad ones in this. The abuse we are getting is just awful. People are accusing us of having no compassion for not getting her help. But she begged and pleaded with us not to tell anyone. "This isn't a debate about the rights and wrongs of abortion. The way this was done was wrong. The baby had hands, feet, all its facial features, its little nose. I can't stop thinking that it might have been alive when it was born. It is awful," she said. During the trial, the womans defense attorney argued that his client felt isolated and trapped with no one to turn to and resorted to desperate measures. He said that the woman was trying to put her life back together again and has since had a baby with her partner. He also noted that had the woman been in any other part of the UK except for Northern Ireland, she would not have found herself before the courts. Per the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 and the Abortion Act of 1967, anyone found guilty of carrying out an abortion in Northern Ireland is technically eligible for life in prison. The woman pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence of three months, placing her on a probationary period of two years. April arrives in the west with the days stretching themselves out over the heads of flaring daffodils and arching rainbows over the Shannon and randy rooks flirting in the treetops of Killaloe and Ballina, and I am stricken once again with a small travel bug. It happens every year. As the car radio crackles with the petty details of the verbal civil war waging hotly yet again between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail after the hamstrung general election here, we head down to West Cork for a couple of days of peace and rest. We find that again in Clonakilty in West Cork a place we have always been very fond of. I think it is a reality that there are several lesser republics inside the formal Irish Republic now struggling day and hour to avoid the travail and stress of another general election. One sub-republic, in my view, is Donegal, as far away as is geographically possible from Dublin and the corridors of power there. Another, for sure, is Cork in general and the long sprawl of West Cork in particular. If it's favorite son Michael Collins had not stood up and exposed himself during that ambush long ago in Beal Na Blath, we would probably today have a different kind of republic and maybe not the current tragic enough turmoil and politicking. Anyway, we are in Clonakilty again and, as is my wont, the nights find me chatting with locals in the lively bars of the great heritage town. And walking along the streets lined with the shops that cater for all the needs of yet another tourism season that is just beginning. Wine bars, cafes, delis, art galleries, all manner of social spaces. The shops that once catered for the basic needs of the locals now have a wider menu on all sides. You need that nowadays in the tourist areas. I buy refills, for example, for my e-cigarette machine in a shop whose old frontage shows that in the past it was here you bought your tea and sugar, your loaf of white bread, your bacon and cabbage and battery for the cycle flash lamp. Changed times for sure. Over the few days far away from Dublin and the Pale, and the political discussions there, I pick up clearly the likely direction of our immediate political future too. You learn to listen in the bars where the plain people gather and relax and chat away the night. And I learn that the most likely outcome of our current political stalemate is another general election in the quick future. It would seem in this sub-republic deep in Collins territory that the civil war is far from over. No way, say the voices along the bars, no way will we coalesce with de Valera's bloody Fianna Fail. That is just not going to happen. On the TV overhead in one of the bars, a pundit says he was talking to a senior Fianna Fail source on the east coast earlier in the day and no way, said the source, no way at all was Fianna Fail going to enter into any political arrangement with the bloody Blueshirts. That is the label old Fianna Failers still affix to Fine Gael, you know. I listened all the time, kept my mouth closed and my ears opened, and, in all truth, I must say I was not surprised by the direction and content of the discussions along the bars. Our memories are probably too long on this island, so long that a century is only a brief Interlude in history and, above all, the senior generations who are most likely still to vote in elections were born into one or other of the main political parties and did not switch from them afterwards. It was part of the birthright I suppose. Down many years of covering Irish elections as a reporter I have often stood on the edge of valleys with party activists who could accurately look at the houses below and say, "That is a Fianna Fail house, there is a Fine Gael house, in that next house she comes from a Fine Gael family and votes that way and he's Fianna Fail. Those social and political readings may not be quite so totally accurate today as they were in the past but, given my Clonakilty lesson, the times are but slowly a-changing. Accordingly do not be at all surprised if, after another fortnight or so, this nation decides that we need another general election. We don't want it -- least of all the politicians -- but we are very likely to get it. And, ironically, that election, after all the fuss and the frazzle, is most likely to produce even more single-issue independents than we have currently, no major parties with even the makings of a majority, and much more of the same all through this summer and autumn. In conclusion, no matter what happens, in West Cork or anywhere else in this republic, it is extremely unlikely that any constituency will elect a dangerously deluded bombasticated billionaire warmonger such as one who is running strongly in another election contest even as I write these words in Clonakilty. Thank God for that at least! Ireland may be facing an early return to the polling-booth unless a government can be elected in the near future. Political tension is rising in advance of Thursday's meeting of the Dail which is expected to vote on the position of Taoiseach (Prime Minister). In the aftermath of the last election on February 26, Enda Kenny holds the title of Acting Taoiseach and he is expected to be proposed by Fine Gael party colleagues to head up a new government at Thursday's Dail sitting (Irish House of Representatives). Fianna Fail is also offering to lead the next government but, with 44 TDs, the party has six fewer Dail seats than Fine Gael. If Fianna Fail abstains and Kenny can gain the support of eight TDs outside his own party, then he will win the vote. Last Wednesday, Kenny caused general surprise when he proposed in a meeting with Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin and proposed that the two parties should join together with a number of Independent TDs to form a "partnership" coalition government. The suggestion was emphatically rejected by Fianna Fail at a meeting of its parliamentary party the following day but Martin indicated that he would be willing to back a Fine Gael-led minority administration from the opposition benches or, if that was not possible, to lead such a government himself. WATCH: Micheal Martin TD addresses the media. The best interests of the Irish people are not served by a Government made up of Fianna Fail & Fine Gael. Posted by Fianna Fail on Deardaoin, 7 Aibrean 2016 There has been some criticism of Fianna Fail for rejecting Kenny's proposal but Martin and his party may have grounds for believing that they could be the dominant force after the next general election. However, Fianna Fail will be keen to ensure that the ballot does not take place in the near future because a very similar result to the last one would be expected and Martin's party might also be blamed by voters for causing the second election to be held at such an early stage. Sinn Fein won 23 seats in the last election and, if Fianna Fail went into government, Gerry Adams would be leading the main opposition party. Newly-elected Sinn Fein TD for the north Dublin constituency of Fingal, Louise O'Reilly said: Fianna Fail would rather be beholden to a Fine Gael government and give up potential power-sharing, rather than allow Sinn Fein to become the largest party in opposition." Read more - Exclusive: Gerry Adams on 1916 and the counter-revolution that followed The coming days are expected to see intense activity behind the scenes as Independents discuss terms under which they might lend their support to Kenny or Martin for the position of Taoiseach. The general expectation is that Kenny will be voted into the job and proceed to form a government thereafter which is likely to include a number of ministerial appointees from the ranks of the Independents. However, such a minority administration is not likely to last very long and it is expected that Fianna Fail will be seeking to bring it down at an opportune moment, perhaps this time next year. Acting Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar of Fine Gael said a minority government led by his party would need a written agreement from Fianna Fail to give it support from the opposition side of the House. I think at the very least it would have to have a written agreement on how long it would last, on key policy issues and also support for budgets and confidence votes, he told RTE's 'Morning Ireland' programme. In the absence of that I dont think it would last. More importantly, worse than that, I dont think it would be a good government, because [it] would be always looking over its shoulder. A government like that will put off important decisions, will not think long-term and will be forced into constant climb-downs, often doing the wrong thing, but having to do that just to survive. That would not be a good outcome for the country and certainly not for the party either, but it's the country that matters most." Newly-elected Fianna Fail TD for Dublin West, Jack Chambers told RTE's "News at One" that, if the Independents opted to support Kenny instead of Martin, then "Fianna Fail are willing to abstain next Thursday". Meanwhile, Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny has invited Independent TDs and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin to a meeting. It is believed the meeting would focus on terms for a Fine Gael-led minority government. One of the non-party groupings, the Independent Alliance, is seeking a guarantee from Fine Gael and Fianna Fail that a minority administration would be allowed stay in office for at least three annual Budgets. Members of the Alliance include Shane Ross TD and Finian McGrath TD. Recently, as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders battled it out in in the key state of Ohio a politician named Ryan made a major impression. No, it wasnt Paul Ryan the Republican Speaker of the House, but Tim Ryan, a strapping 6ft 4 inch congressman who played a major part in Hillarys victory. Ryan also appeared with Hillary in Youngstown, Ohio, at a local Irish pub where Hillary downed about half of a pint glass of Guinness, the most widely photographed occasion of that campaign. Lets just say the Irish will put her over the top! Ryan shouted at one point. At 42, Ryan, who is a dedicated meditation and mindfulness expert and has written books on the topic, is a fast riser in Congress. How fast? Politico reported that, On the House side, sources close to the Clinton campaign on Capitol Hill say Ohio's Ryan... could be poised to join a Clinton administration. I think Tim is a prospect either for vice president or certainly in the Cabinet if he were to desire it, said one influential congressman. Ryan has also begun to burnish his Irish credentials. He issued the Irish American proclamation in the House this St.Patricks Day. "Nearly 44 million Americans celebrate Irish origins, and with good cause," said Congressman Ryan. "From the earliest stages of our nation's history, Irish-Americans have toiled to contribute to many aspects of American life, including industry, agriculture, science, education and the arts. I'm pleased that my House colleagues voted to honor Irish-Americans and their contributions to our nation's heritage, " he stated. He will face tough Irish opposition if it comes to it. Senator Tim Kaine from the key state of Virginia, and a former governor is the definite frontrunner. Kaine is the son of Mary Kathleen (nee Burns) and Albert Alexander Kaine, Jr., who worked as a welder and owned a small iron-working shop. Raised a Catholic, his father is of Scottish and Irish descent, and his mother is of Irish ancestry. He attended Harvard Law School, taking a year-long break during his time there to work with the Jesuit order as a Catholic missionary in Honduras, and is fluent in Spanish as a result. Kaine is a rightful favorite. He's from a key state, has Spanish language skills and is a devoted Catholic, all of which give him enormous traction within the Clinton campaign. A third candidate is former Maryland governor Martin OMalley whose unsuccessful run for the top job ended after a very disappointing showing. OMalley is an outside shot. But Joe Biden got miserable numbers too when he ran against Obama and Hillary in 2008 and was still selected by Obama, so it is not impossible, A real dark horse might be Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who has huge approval figures in his home state. He played the key role in Hillarys primary victory in that state which came at a vital time. Walsh, working-class Irish with a major union background, would play very well with the white male Reagan/Democrats who are a key swing vote. And then there's Joe Biden. The current incumbent is highly unlikely, but he performed very well in the job for Obama. Irish Catholics from the Northeast deliver key states such as Pennsylvania but there is real tension between the Clintons and Bidens. A total longshot. On April 7, 1926, Irish woman Violet Gibson attempted to assassinate the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. How had Violet Gibsons life gone from the well-heeled upbringing of Merrion Square in Dublin to dying in a mental asylum having attempted to assassinate a world leader and how different the world may have been if she had succeeded? If she had hit her target, Mussolinis reign as the strongman would have ended and his successes could not have emboldened Adolf Hitler. Il Duces legacy is still felt in Italy (his granddaughter Alessandra is a Member of the European Parliament), and in Greece where the Golden Dawn proclaims themselves fans of the fascist leader. Whats worse is that Gibsons attempted assassination triggered a wave of support for Il Duce which possibly helped strengthen his grip on Italy. What drove Violet Gibson to this fateful act? Her upbringing was one of privilege. Her father was made 1st Baron Ashbourne and went on to serve as Lord High Chancellor of Ireland from 1885 to 1905. She grew up dividing her time between Dublin and London, and at the age of 18 was a debutante in the court of Queen Victoria. It was noted, however, that as a child Gibson was often sick with scarlet fever, pleurisy, bouts of ill-defined "hysteria" and that she had a violent temper. During her younger years, she also showed an interest in Christian Science and then theosophy, but at the age of 26 in 1902, she converted to Catholicism. By 1913, Gibson had been married to an artist and widowed. She then moved to Paris and worked for pacifist organizations. In that same year, she contracted Paget's disease (an abnormal breakdown of bone tissue) and a mastectomy left her with a nine-inch scar. She then returned to England where surgery for appendicitis left her with chronic abdominal pain. Gibson became more and more obsessed with religion during her 40s. She went on retreats, followed the Jesuit scholar John O'Fallon Pope and became fixated on the ideas of martyrdom and "mortification." By 1922 she had had a nervous breakdown and was committed to a mental asylum having been declared insane. Two years later, along with a nurse named Mary McGrath, she traveled to Rome where she lived in a convent. By this point, she was convinced that God wanted her to kill someone as a sacrifice. In February 1925, Gibson got hold of a gun and shot herself in the chest. Miraculously, she survived. In March 1926, Gibsons mother passed away. By April of that year, her obsession with killing someone had refocused; it was now trained on Mussolini. On the fateful day of April 7, Gibson went to Palazzo del Littorio with her gun wrapped in a black veil, and a rock, in case she needed to break Il Duces car windshield. While Il Duce drove through Rome's Piazza del Campidoglio after leaving an assembly of the International Congress of Surgeons, where he had delivered a speech on the wonders of modern medicine, Gibson jumped from the crowd and shot the leader. Her rock was unnecessary as the leader walked among the crowds just feet from Gibson. Her first shot grazed his nose and on the second shot, the gun misfired. The fascist leader stayed very calm and told the crowds Don't be afraid. This is a mere trifle." Mussolini was only slightly injured and after having his nose bandaged he continued his parade. Later he said that while he was ready for a beautiful death he did not want to die at the hands of an old, ugly, repulsive" woman. In custody for her crimes, Gibson said she shot Mussolini to glorify God, who had sent an angel to keep her steady. The Gibson family wrote to the Italian government to apologize for her actions. Gibson was then declared a "chronic paranoiac" and returned to England and St Andrew's Hospital. She died in 1956. There were no mourners at her funeral. Benito Mussolini was finally killed on April 28, 1945, during the final days of World War II. He and his mistress were taken to Milan and left in a suburban square hanging upside down from a metal girder above a service station. * Originally published in 2015. Last updated April 2022. IrishCentral History Love Irish history? Share your favorite stories with other history buffs in the IrishCentral History Facebook group. David Drumm will face two trials, one in 2017 and one in 2018, in relation to alleged offences committed during his time as CEO of Anglo Irish Bank. Mr Drumm (aged 49) is charged with 33 counts under two separate bills concerning alleged offences committed at the now defunct bank. He has yet to enter a plea to the charges. The former banker's bail conditions were relaxed today with the consent of gardai and the prosecution. Mr Drumm now has to sign on at a garda station just once per day instead of twice. Judge Terence O'Sullivan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court also ordered that one trial will take place at Easter 2017 while the second will start in January 2018. Mr Drumm with an address of Old Colony Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts in the US faces two charges of conspiring to defraud depositors and investors at Anglo by "dishonestly" creating the impression that deposits in 2008 were 7.2bn larger than they were. He faces one additional charge in relation to the EU transparency directive. He will stand trial for these offences on April 24, 2017. The case is expected to take 12 weeks, although Mr Drumm's solicitor Michael Staines warned it could take longer. Mr Drumm also faces 16 counts of offering unlawful financial assistance to members of businessman Sean Quinn's family and 10 other individuals as well as 14 charges of falsifying documents. These charges will be dealt with at a trial set down for January 12, 2018. This trial will take about two months. Mr Drumm appeared in court for the short hearing wearing wearing a navy suit and overcoat. Prosecuting counsel Paul O'Higgins SC said it will take Mr Drumm considerable time to prepare for his first trial while Mr Staines said there was a huge amount of disclosure expected from the State. Mr O'Higgins said the DPP should be relatively quick with disclosure as it has already gathered the material for other trials not involving Mr Drumm. Judge O'Sullivan agreed to allow Mr Drumm sign on once per day at Balbriggin garda station after hearing gardai have no problem with this. Planning permission for the runway, which the Dublun Airport Authority (DAA) predicts would deliver significant economic benefits for the country as well as facilitating the airports growth, was granted in 2007 with 31 conditions attached two of which the DAA is looking to have lifted. The two contested conditions would render the second runway unusable from 11pm to 7am and restrict the average number of takeoffs and landings to 65 between the same hours. The first constraint would be like adding extra capacity on the M50 to deal with congestion and not be able to use that lane first thing in the morning, so that wont help us alleviate capacity constraints, DAA chief executive Kevin Toland told RTEs News at Ones. The second constraint which is the 65 movements [limit] ... this summer well have 99 movements between 11pm and 7am. Again, thats a critical piece of not only enabling this business and airport to grow but in developing the economy here so they really are constraints that put a brake on ongoing long-term development of the Irish economy. Mr Toland added that he was very, very confident there was a clear-cut case for the restrictions being lifted. Neither Mr Toland nor a spokesperson for Dublin Airport were yesterday able to confirm the project would go ahead irrespective of any potential changes to the planning conditions. Mr Toland said he was planning for success in having the restrictions lifted and did not anticipate failing in that regard. A spokesperson said the DAA had been given no indication as to the likelihood of the conditions being altered in its favour. Should the runway be shelved again, it would be a further delay of the project which was granted planning permission in 2007 before being temporarily scuppered by the economic downturn and subsequent fall in passenger numbers. The North Runway has featured in successive Local Area and County Development Plans since the 1970s. The countrys largest airport could hike passenger charges to pay for the 320m project with a review due to be carried out by the Commission for Aviation Regulation set to determine the specifics of any increases. The commission previously ruled that the cost of the runway could be passed onto customer if passenger numbers exceeded 25m which they did last year. Weve been given an allowance by the commission for aviation regulation that it would require a 59c increase in passenger charges, an airport spokesperson said. The development of a second runway, which is expected to be completed by 2020 and create 1,200 jobs during construction, would provide a significant economic boost for the country and complement Cork Airport, said a spokesperson for the countrys second largest airport. Extra routes the runway would cater for from emerging markets such as Asia, Africa and South America would not crossover with Cork Airports main markets of continental Europe and possibly north America. The news that the runway was to go ahead was broadly welcomed by groups including Chambers Ireland, Dublin Chamber of Commerce, Failte Ireland, and Ibec. Homegrown business software company Intercom will increase its workforce by 100 staff within a year after closing $50m (44.07m) funding round to fuel its expansion. The cash injection, which means the company is fully funded and will not need to raise further funds to reach profitability, will enable Intercom to add a range of highly-skilled workers to its staff in Dublin in engineering, design and product development. Intercom employs 250 people worldwide, 140 of which are based in Dublin, and has 10,000 paying customers across the country. Australian company CXC also announced it is to create 30 new positions at its new Europe Middle East and Asia hub in Dublin, while US data flash storage company Pure Storage is planning to double its 18-man Irish workforce by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Corks regional internet infrastructure was boosted as the Irish Neutral Exchange Association opened its first regional internet exchange point. An internet exchange eliminates the need for internet service providers to connect individually with each other in favour of one common exchange point. The launch of the association exchange will also mean that internet traffic in the Cork region will not have to be routed through Dublin which will result in faster connectivity and reduced latency for customers provided their internet provider is a member of the exchange. For something like email or web access, they wont notice it but for anything online gaming or downloading files or films then it will be much quicker, said association chief executive Barry Rhodes. The exchange currently has 13 members including Eir, BT Ireland and Nova Networks as well as a range of smaller carriers. Separately, 930sq m of extra co-working space became available in Cork as Regus opened its 12th location in Ireland and second in the southern city as the anchor tenant of Phoenix House on Monahan Rd. Indiana's Child Services Is Immune From FLSA Suit In the recent case Martinez v. Indiana Dept. of Child Services, the Seventh Circuit upheld a long held doctrine in the law: sovereign powers cannot be sued in federal court unless there is an alleged violation of the state's constitution or the U.S. Constitution. Alternatively, the state can consent to being sued, but how often does that happen? Overtime and Child Services Two workers at the Gary, Indiana Department of Child Services sued the agency for violations of the Federal Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"), alleging that they had to work overtime and stay during lunch breaks even though they were paid only forty hours per week. They sought legal and equitable relief. The Court's Take The district court dismissed the employees' suit with prejudice because the FLSA was one of the federal acts that had been analyzed by SCOTUS with regard to Eleventh Amendment implications. In Alden v. Maine, SCOTUS felt that the FLSA did not abrogate the state's Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit, but that it did leave open states to waive their immunity if they chose to do so. The circuit affirmed the lower district decision and barely had anything contrary to say. It noted that although exceptions to state immunity exist, the general rule prevailed that states enjoy immunity from suit in federal courts. The plaintiffs in this case had relied on a rarely applied third exception where states waive immunity. But that waiver is met only with a very high bar indeed. The applicable rule derives from the case of Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, which states that the waiver must be "stated by the most express language or by such overwhelming implications from the text" as to leave no doubt. See Edelman v. Jordan. In other words, Indiana would have had to say, "Yes, we want to be sued," or the statutory law implicated would have had to be so obvious as to leave no option for alternatives. Related Resources: However, if the opinion polls and betting firms prove wrong again and Britain decides to walk away from the EU the currency would fall 7%, the poll suggested. Sterling fell to its weakest level in two-and-a- half years against a basket of currencies yesterday, as investors showed rising concern about the outcome of the vote. The CSO issued the call following feedback from enumerators who are having difficulty accessing apartment buildings. The census takes place on April 24 and, before then, a census form must be hand-delivered to every household in the country, including apartments. The CSO says hand delivery is essential so it can guarantee every household has a form. It also allows householders ask any questions they have. After the census, forms must be collected by the enumerator to go to the CSO for analysis. The ship, MV Northern Dedication, will have 75 containers onboard, basically carrying what is being dubbed as Irelands fruit intake for a week. At 230m long and weighing in at a whopping 42,121 tonnes (deadweight) it will be off-loading nearly 6m bananas, plus large amounts of pineapples and melons. The ship is bringing in the produce from Central America and despite her size will be unloaded within six to eight hours, which highlights the ports cargo handling prowess. Vessels of this size are common around the globe nowadays and as the Port of Cork begins its expansion phase in Ringaskiddy, it is anticipated that more of these leviathans will become regular visitors to the port. The ports commercial manager Captain Michael McCarthy said there were very few restrictions at the Ringaskiddy deepwater berth, so when it came to handling a vessel of this size, the port was more than capable. In the future we would hope to see more of these size vessels calling, as our port expands to meet the needs of our own customers and the needs of the global shipping community, said Capt McCarthy. Service from Central America to Cork commenced in 2013 and to date it has proven very successful although the fruit never arrived in a ship of this size before. Bringing mainly Fyffes bananas to Ireland from South America, this service is vitally important for the domestic grocery industry, he explained. Last year the port handled more than 205,000 containers. Judge James OConnor said he would strike out the matter after an offer of a 5,000 contribution to the court poor box by counsel Constance Cassidy on behalf of the retail chain. Lidl was accused of the offence at its Listowel store in Co Kerry on April 24, 2015, following a Garda test operation. Ms Cassidy said it was only the second incident of its kind in the companys 16-year history in Ireland. Superintendent Dan Keane told Listowel District Court the store had been selected randomly for testing as part of a Garda operation to curb the sale of alcohol to persons underage. Garda Cliodhna Walsh entered the store with a 16-year-old girl, who went to the alcohol section and selected a bottle of Sunrise Rum. She then observed the girl go to the cashier, where the item was paid for. Supt Keane told the judge that at no stage had the cashier requested any information from the girl. He said she looked like a typical 16-year-old and was dressed like a typical 16-year-old when asked if any effort had been made by her to look older. After the minor had left the store, the garda notified the duty manager about what had happened. Lidl district manager Coleman OFlaherty said the cashier in question was a trusted employee, who had worked for Lidl for 10 years. We had a long discussion about what had happened and she said it was an honest mistake, said Mr OFlaherty. Shes still calling me and is very worried about the court case and about her future. Convicting would be like using a hammer to swat a fly but Lidl has 146 stores, all doing fabulously well, said Judge OConnor. He accepted a revised offer of 5,000 and adjourned the matter to Tralee District Court on Wednesday, when he said he would strike out the matter. That was a costly bottle of Sunrise Rum, he said. What a charade Fianna Fail is carrying on with at present. When you see the outraged political virgin act theyve taken to pedalling its hard to know whether to laugh or bang your head against a wall. You would think we all came down in the last shower and there before us was this delicate political flower, full of injured innocence; all overwhelmed by the pressure it is being put under by the mean big boys. Come on. This is just too hard to take. These FF guys would buy and sell the lot of us, so its a very hard swallow to hear their squealing about unfair tactics and how seriously they take their mandate. As the time has gone on since the general election it has felt like were being fed a load of rhetorical manure. Nobody does a better altar boy impression that Micheal Martin and only he could have stood in the Dail on Wednesday and said the priority of others had been power rather than policy. He decried the spin and hype which has been circulating since the election and the never-ending stream of unattributed comments designed to influence perception rather than fairly reflect reality, which had further damaged politics. There could be no trust and no real change if this approach to politics continued, he thundered. The briefings and manipulation of opinion has to stop if there is to be any reasonable prospect of moving things forward. Lol, as the youngsters would say. After all it is Fianna Fail who wrote the full manual when it comes to all of these approaches, and, as we saw from the masterful general election campaign, they have certainly not lost their touch. The FFers are raging at FG coming out last week and ruling out supporting a minority FF Government. They claim to be fuming at what they see as the utter arrogance of this. But this is how the numbers stack up. Its the same in how FF keep insisting that they got a particular mandate in the election and that does not involve coalition with Fine Gael. Actually this is simply how they have chosen to interpret this mandate. Enda Kenny If they were in a different mood they could very easily spin it another way. Actually it feels as if many in FF have transported themselves to a parallel political reality. Fine Gael, on the other hand, can be like political pygmies when it comes to this stuff. They like to believe otherwise but they are just not as good at it. They do their best to copy FF but their superiority complex frequently gets in the way. They lack the native cunning of the FFers, and of course, the fact that FF have held power for so much longer than they have, and know their way so easily around the system. Fine Gael had been allowing them away with loads as they reeled from the absolute mess they made of the election campaign, and the uncertainty over the party leadership. But there was something hugely satisfying in seeing them steal a march on Fianna Fail this week with Enda Kenny diving straight in and offering Micheal a partnership Government. This followed on FG smothering the independents with kindness and sandwiches in exhaustive talks. One of my favourite anecdotes from those interminable sessions involves Michael Healy Rae. By all accounts hardly a full 60 seconds passed where he did not have his mobile phone to his ear talking to his constituents in Kerry, to the annoyance of the others assembled. At one point, apparently, he asked Enda Kenny a question and while the Taoiseach was answering Healy-Rae was nodding but also continuing a call to a Kerry voter. Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has been all over the airwaves talking about new eras and new ways of doing things and new ways of listening; the list goes on. Hes certainly recovered himself since his Irish Water gaffe. Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney Its all about extending the hand of friendship. In response, FF has simply bristled and said that their party membership, now big players in any decision to go into coalition, would simply never opt for Fine Gael. Well thats certainly all the party members have been told by the elected members for the past five weeks. The emphatic message to the rank and file from TDs has been to tell them that this is an option and they would be mad to even consider it. Micheal Martin has really backed himself into a tight corner on this one. It obviously does depend on your perspective but ultimately if a grand coalition fails to materialise and a jelly-like minority government situation occurs, which is destined for failure, it will be seen to have come about because Fianna Fail put its own interest first. God knows Im not buying the FG rhetoric of acting wholly in the interest of the country. Its approach to re-election showed just how out of touch it was with so many people. Everything Enda Kenny does now has to be tinged with a serious dose of self preservation. If there is another general election soon, Fine Gael would undoubtedly change him as leader. So of all the people in Leinster House who do not wish to go to the country again Enda Kenny is at the head of that particular queue. In the Dail Micheal Martin also said research had shown that up to a third of governments in Europe since 1945 have had minority support in parliament. But turning ourselves overnight into Danish and Swedish models will take more than a nip and a tuck and a shot of political botox. It will take lots and lots of practise. Independent Alliance members outside Leinster House One of my favourite lines in the lengthy document drawn up by Fine Gael, following the talks with the independents, states that key to their approach in a new form of government must be the concept of good faith and no surprises. That would certainly present challenges to cute hoorism which has been so long a feature of our politics that it is almost impossible to imagine it disappearing. Does Micheal Martin not see the irony in all this big talk of Dail reform, all the while shirking what would be the biggest reform of all a coalition with Fine Gael. Fianna Fail has presented no legitimate argument thus far why it should stay out. Surely the opportunity to be Taoiseach in the second half of the Governments term presents a massive opportunity. That is unless, of course, you are trying to be too clever by half and your tactics are centered around the results of the next election rather than the one we have just had. We all know whose interest that is in. The two leaders openly traded bitter remarks last night as the fallout over the rejected offer saw Independent TDs threatening to pull the plug on minority government talks. If this last option to form a government is exhausted, Mr Kenny may be forced to seek the Presidents permission for another general election. The prospect of the two working together unravelled after Mr Martin delivered a terse rejection of Mr Kennys surprise offer made the night before of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and Independents working together in a triumvirate coalition. A tense four-hour meeting of the Fianna Fail party in Leinster House yesterday heard cautious TDs and senators largely oppose the proposal and many voiced concern that voters would punish them if they reneged on election promises and joined with the old enemy. Writing in this newspaper today, justice spokesman Niall Collins also highlights how a government with the two big parties would allow Sinn Fein and others grow in opposition. Mr Martin told reporters yesterday that, at the private Wednesday meeting, Mr Kenny had pulled the rug from under the talks to form a minority government with Independents and instead, out of the blue put a grand plan for a coalition involving Fianna Fail on the table. He raised concerns about the integrity of the talks process, the choreography, and even went as far as saying that the last 24 hours left a lot to be desired. Ultimately, he said the offer had been rejected as a large majority government with the two big parties was not in the national interest. Mr Martin though left the door open on facilitating a Fine Gael minority government, including upcoming budgets, and said he hoped that some agreement could be reached on voting for a taoiseach, a third attempt at which will be made next Thursday. The criticisms of Mr Kennys handling of the offer immediately saw his senior ministers come out and defend the coalition offer. Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney called the rejection an historic missed opportunity, which could have changed Irish politics. But it would now be difficult to ask Independents to sign up to any deal, unless there was agreement with the opposition, namely Fianna Fail, he added. Mr Kenny defended the offer, while also attacking Mr Martins decision. He said: I believe that this decision is a serious mistake and one which was driven by narrow party interests rather than the national interest. Nonetheless, it is understood Fianna Fail intends to plough on with efforts to lead a minority government and last night began plans to agree more meetings with Independent TDs. While Fine Gael have no immediate plans, Mr Kennys spokesman said he would let the coalition offer sit for a bit with Fianna Fail. However, with just days to go before the next vote for taoiseach, there are fresh doubts over whether Independent TDs are willing to be dragged back into more talks. A number contacted by the Irish Examiner indicated they may now not, pushing the possibility of another election even closer. Denis Naughten, one of five rural TDs involved in talks, said it would be pointless to re-enter negotiations without firm assurances that a minority government would last. Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath said: The two parties must now show us a clear road map on how a minority could work or be supported, otherwise its pointless for us to go into talks. Independent Alliance TD John Halligan said he would take the weekend to decide whether to proceed with government formation talks. Separately, party whips agreed to establish a Dail committee on housing and homelessness, to be debated when the Dail resumes next Thursday. Sinn Fein said the committee would control the agenda and invite in experts and charities. The following week the Dail will meet for three days to discuss issues including Brexit, health, and the budgetary process. AA was founded in 2009 and is closely allied with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) which provided their initial training near their Laiza headquarters. They say they are fighting for self-determination in the impoverished, yet resource rich Rakhine State. Since late last year the non-state armed group has clashed with the Burma Army many times resulting in casualties of government soldiers. The six youth convicted were: Ko Soe Naing (son of U Thar Sein from Myeikwa village, Palatwa Township); Ko Oo Ba Maung (son of U Maung Khin Thein from Thaintaung village, Rathetaung Township); Ko Maung Kyaw Thein (son of U Maung Tun Sein from Kyaungshay village, Minbya Township); Ko Maung Than Wai (son of U Thar Tun Oo from Ashaepaing, Kyaukphyu), and Ko Tun Tun Win (son of U Tun Khine from Tharyarkone village, Minbya Township). The recent verdict in Kyauktaw Township Court brings the total of those charged for affiliation with the Arakan Army to thirty-seven. The other sentences were handed down in March and April. However, the party has acknowledged that Fianna Fails rejection of a partnership government has moved the possibility of another election even closer to becoming a reality. Fine Gael are scrambling to assure Independent TDs after Fianna Fail ruled out a partnership government yesterday evening. It appears the only option now, apart from going to the polls yet again, is the formation of a minority government which would be propped up by Independents. Enda Kenny had put forward the possibility of a coalition government on Wednesday night that would have included Fianna Fail and the 15 Independents who have taken part in negotiations to date. Speaking after Micheal Martin rejected Mr Kennys offer of a joint government, acting Health Minister Leo Varadkar denied an election would be on the cards if TDs fail to elect a Taoiseach on the third attempt next week. Mr Varadkar said: If the Dail doesnt elect a Taoiseach on Thursday it doesnt automatically trigger a general election. We will continue the work, we are going to try and provide a government. But acting Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney described next Thursday as a very significant day: I think people are going to get more and more impatient with the political system. Next Thursday TDs will be voting on a Taoiseach for a third time and I think if we fail to elect a Taoiseach next Thursday, I think the country will start to get very impatient. So we are conscious of that, we are working night and day to try and put a government together that will solve peoples problems and will last. Mr Coveney said the party would now have to look at other alternatives and havent ruled out a minority government with Independent TDs. But he hinted that this arrangement would still need input from Fianna Fail. I think its very difficult to ask Independents to sign up to being part of a minority government with Fine Gael unless there was some arrangement with opposition parties to ensure that that government would have stability and authority, said Mr Coveney. He said it was still the view of the party that a majority government is the best option for Ireland. But he added: Fianna Fail has rejected that so of course Fine Gael as the largest party will now look at alternatives to that, we have already been doing that at length and of course we will continue to discuss with Independents and other parties how we might do that. After Mr Kennys 10-minute talk with Mr Martin yesterday afternoon, Fine Gael ministers held a separate meeting to mull over the fall-out of the rejection. A senior Fine Gael source said ministers were disappointed but not surprised with Mr Martins outright objection to a partnership government. Acting Arts Minister Heather Humphreys Earlier in the day, Fine Gael parliamentary party members met for several hours during which Mr Kennys proposal for a partnership government was widely supported. Acting Arts Minister Heather Humphreys said the party had resolutely supported Mr Kennys offer to Fianna Fail. The public have told us to get on with it, so thats what we are doing, she said. The charter was drawn up by the Alzheimer Society of Ireland and the Irish Dementia Working Group, a national advocacy group facilitated by the society. Ms Robinson, a former UN human rights commissioner, said the charter is a welcome initiative in championing the human rights of both people with dementia and their carers. I hope that the launch of this charter will enable us all to see people with dementia in a new light, with the same human rights as all of us and with a voice that needs to be heard, she said. The charter was created to demonstrate the importance of a parity of rights for the 48,000 people with dementia in Ireland. In particular, it states that people with dementia have the right, regardless of diagnosis, to the same civil and legal rights as everyone else. However, people with dementia, as well as dealing with the impact of the condition, face cultural, social and economic barriers. The charter recognises those challenges and obstacles and seeks to highlight their equal rights as citizens. Ms Robinson said she was surprised that people with disabilities were not a mainstream concern of the UN human rights commissioner when she was appointed to the office in 1997. At the time, a special rapporteur made reports every second year to the Human Rights Commission. Needless to say, I took issue with that approach and began work to encourage the development of the International Convention for People with Disabilities, which made a huge difference worldwide, said Ms Robinson. The Alzheimer Society of Ireland said people with dementia face discrimination due to ageism, the stigma and discrimination associated with the condition, and the lack of capacity to challenge incidents that occur. Chairwoman of the societys Irish Dementia Working group, Helen Rochford-Brennan, who lives with dementia, said the condition is still shrouded by stigma. There are people with young families living with it; there are children caring for a parent with the condition, and there are older people in long-term care who are not receiving the supports they need, she said. We are fighting for the rights of every single one of these people and their families who are fighting every day to stay in their homes, access services and be treated with the dignity they deserve. CEO of the society, Colette Kelleher, said Ireland has yet to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. The Governments failure to ratify this convention is on policy grounds alone and, meanwhile, people with disabilities, including people with dementia in this country, are still being told to wait, she said. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Statistics provided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed that 1,600 calls were made to the National Environmental Complaints Line (NECL) last year. Of those, 57% involved members of the public complaining about the illegal dumping of up to 20 bags of rubbish. The EPA also said that in addition to the calls made to the tip-off line, the various local authorities received an estimated 60,000 environmental complaints last year. The complaints made to the NECL were forwarded to the relevant local authority to be addressed with the bulk of the complaints taking place in larger urban areas, predominantly in the east of the country. Dublin City Council had the highest percentage of calls made about dumping and other issues to the NECL, at 22%. Wicklow County Council received 11% of the complaints, the same percentage as South Dublin County Council; while Fingal had 5%. However, the EPA said Dublin City Council, South Dublin County Council, and Wicklow County Council, make use of the NECL service via the Pure Project (Protecting Uplands & Rural Environments), a specific initiative in operation since 2006 to combat the increase of illegal dumping/fly-tipping in the Wicklow/Dublin uplands. An EPA spokesperson said this contributed to the higher volume of NECL calls about dumping in those areas. In contrast, just 1% of the NECL tip-offs last year were related to the Cork City Council area the same as local authorities in Cavan, Carlow, Galway City, Kerry and Leitrim. 8% of the NECL complaints related to the Cork County Council area. While fly-tipping is responsible for the largest percentage of NECL contacts, concerns about smoke and fumes were responsible for 10% of the calls made to it last year, while 9% of contacts related to larger instances of illegal dumping involving more than 20 bags of rubbish. Litter and other rubbish caused another 10% of calls to the NECL, with the remainder of calls split between complaints about back-yard burning, industrial or commercial noise pollution, odours including agricultural smells and slurry spreading, and spills and discharges into rivers and the sea. However, Cork County Council has already warned that it may name and shame anyone found fly-tipping. Sharon Corcoran, head of Cork County Councils environment directorate, said last month the local authority would consider such a move in addition to the introduction of new weighing equipment at 11 centres in Co Cork, and the deployment of additional personnel. The council is among those who wrote to the Department of the Environment to postpone the planned new charges for disposing of waste at civic amenity sites, applicable to recyclable waste from July 1, over fears it could exacerbate the problem of roadside litter. Detailed evidence is expected to be given at an inquest to be held in Newcastle West into the deaths of Mr Ruttle, 56, and Ms Holmes, 63. Their bodies were found in the early hours of May 18, 2015, when a gang of burglars broke into Mr Ruttles home at Boolaglass, Askeaton. Acting County Limerick coroner Antoinette Simon said yesterday she has arranged an inquest to be held at Newcastle West Court on April 25 before a jury of six people. Among the witnesses summonsed to give evidence are State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy, and the three-man gang who found the bodies. Their evidence can be read into the record by way of deposition. Before meeting Mr Ruttle on the internet four years ago, Ms Holmes, who was originally from Northern Ireland, left a trail of fraud through Canada, US and Australia. In Ireland, she linked up with the unsuspecting Thomas Ruttle, a quiet Co Limerick man who kept bees for honey-making, and worked as a mechanic. Over decades of scamming, Julia Holmes served two years in a Texas jail for conning a group of local businessmen, one she whom she had married, out of $500,000. After moving to live with Mr Ruttle at Boolaglass, Askeaton, she engaged builders to carry out major renovations to the two-storey house. The builders were left owed about 50,000 for that work. She tapped into Thomas Ruttles honey-making enterprise and began to falsely market the honey as organic. The PSNI had issued an arrest warrant for Ms Holmes and wanted to extradite her to the North and Ms Holmes was aware of this at the time of her death. I was eating my breakfast one morning and it was on the back of a cornflakes box that I saw their [Bothars] annual appeal, says Tom Gregan, the farm manager at Shelton Abbey. We have a patch of land here in Shelton Abbey, grassland and it was kind of going to waste and I was wondering was there anything we could do in conjunction with Bothar, so I just wrote a letter. That would have been in 2008. Almost eight years later, Shelton Abbey and its inmates have cared for more than 300 cows and goats. The goats are quarantined in the prison before they are airlifted out and the cows are reared there. I have 26 cows here in total, 13 of them are this years calves, so theyre only six or seven weeks old, says Tom. For the calves from last year, Ill be hiring a bull in May or June to be put in with them, to put them in calf. Then come September/October Bothar will contact me and say: These are going to Kosovo or Rwanda. And Ill have them scanned to make sure they are in calf. This has been a win-win initiative for the charity, for the recipients of the in-calf heifer and for the prisoners as well. I thought maybe if we got more livestock it would give more meaningful work to the lads, says Tom. The prisoners do absolutely everything. Theyre my eyes and ears. On a day-to-day basis, especially this time of year when the calves are so young and theyre being fed off milk replacement, they do that every morning from 8.30am onwards. Its amazing the level of ability of the prisoners that I would get. I would get farmers sons and then I would get someone from Dublin city centre who would never ever have been in contact with livestock before. Come autumn, Bothar steps in and takes the in-calf heifer to its new home. We have an airlift of in-calf heifers in September from Shannon Airport, says Bothar CEO David Maloney. A person who receives an animal, in our terms, has absolutely nothing. Sometimes they dont have currency in their pockets. Theyve no necessity for cold hard cash. We send them the animal and the minute the cow starts milking they can use that milk to feed their children, they use the surplus to sell, they can buy schoolbooks, they can buy a tin-roof for their house, they can buy bricks, clothing, simple basic necessities that we take for granted. Theyre going from hand-to-mouth to scratching out a living, to being able to provide nutritious food for their children. The minute that cow calves their life is changed. One Rwandan genocide widow, who received an in-calf heifer reared in Shelton Abbey has sent her four children to university as a result. Once the widowed mother had reared and educated her children, she next adopted a genocide orphan, and changed their life too. Next year, Bothar will send in-calf heifers to Malawi and Tanzania. Mr Ganley says a Novem- ber 2008 RTE Prime Time programme defamed him in using words or innuendo which, he alleges, meant he had links to organised crime; had falsely claimed to be a paid adviser to the Latvian government; was somehow involved in the death of a man with whom he had a close business relationship; caused a fund to lose the life savings of thousands of Al- banian pensioners and was covertly working for the US Central Intelligence Agency and/or an ill-defined group known as neocons. RTE denies defamation or that the words complained of meant what Mr Ganley alleges. The broadcaster has also pleaded truth or justifi-cation and that the sting of the words, taken as a whole, was that Mr Ganley had a endency to make false or exaggerated claims in respect of business or other matters. Noeline Blackwell, who took over as chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre in recent days, is pleading with whoever forms in her new role, the Woman kind fundraising event in Dublin this afternoon. The wideranging Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill strengthens protections for children against online predators by introducing new offences and tougher sanctions. It tightens up the law on the organisation and distribution of child pornography, provides for new harassment orders, and up dates the law on incest and indecent exposure. It also criminalises the purchasers of sexual services without criminalising the sex worker, and it removes the prohibition on people with intellectual disabilities from having sexual relationships while maintaining safeguards against their exploitation. Ms Blackwell, who was formerly director general of the Free Leg al Advice Centres, said it was important that the long-awaited legal reforms contained in the bill were not left to gather dust. It went through all but the final stages and there was political consensus on it so now we just need political action on it. Ms Blackwell expressed concern at the latest figures released by the Central Statistics Office last week that showed an increase in the number of reported rapes and sexual assaults last year and she said more needed to be done to support victims to seek help. This is the most intimate of crimes where acknowledgement of the crime, let alone reporting, will often change important relationships in the home or workplace, she said. Gardai were alerted to the burglary and found the dog owner hiding in the attic of the premises with a packet of the sheep dip compound in his pocket. When Jonathan Hennessy was interviewed by gardai about the crime he said: It has a rash on its belly. Ive tried loads of different things on it. I dont like to see the dog suffer. Jonathan Hennessy, 33, of 4 Heatherton Park South Douglas Road, Cork, pleaded guilty to the charge of entering the premises as a trespasser and stealing the sheep-dip material. Eddie Burke, solicitor, said Hennessys Jack Russell had a bad skin rash and he brought him to the vet who prescribed an antibiotic and steroids. When the condition did not clear, he brought him back to the vet who said he could not give the dog the same medications as it could damage his immune system. The vet suggested to Hennessy that he get his dog some sheep dip. The defendant went to a number of chemists enquiring about getting sheep dip and he said they only laughed at him. However, one pharmacist suggested that he go to McLoughlins agricultural supplies near Kent railway station in Cork. Hennessy arrived there at 1.30pm to find it was closed for lunch. The defendant went around to a side door which he found was open and left himself in. He found the substance he was looking for on a shelf and he took it. Gardai arrived and Inspector Mary King said yesterday that they found him hiding in an attic in the premises. He took the stolen property out of his pocket and handed it back when he was arrested. Insp King said the defendant had a number of previous convictions but he had not been in trouble since 2012. Judge Con OLeary said that in all the circumstances he would dispose of the case by a 100 fine. Bridget Dwyers widower Mike said his late wife produced varied watercolours that showcased her talent and versatility, and the works on display at the Hazelhurst Gallery Monkstown will be on sale in aid of two charities, including Marymount Hospice. Marymount is a very well known charity, and I dont think there is a person in Cork who hasnt been out there to visit a loved one, or who hasnt known someone who has availed of it, he said. A total of nine inspection reports of approved centres we re published by the Mental Health Commission yesterday. One centre, Willow Grove Adolescent Unit on the grounds of the St Patricks Hospital Group, was found to be fully compliant. The others were mostly compliant across the various categories and many achieved excellent levels of compliance in some areas, but shortcomings were also highlighted. According to the report into the Avonmore and Glencree Units, Newcastle Hospital catering for patients in east Wicklow and north Wexford there was a high risk over the use of physical restraint and the physical layout of a seclusion room. Security staff, who did not have access to resident care and treatment plans, were used in the physical restraint of two residents as evidenced by the inspection of clinical practice forms completed on Glencree unit, the report noted. As for the seclusion room, it said there was a notable concern as despite the viewing panel in the seclusion room door and the presence of CCTV monitoring, there was an obvious blind spot directly behind the seclusion room door. The seclusion room was also an issue at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Inpatient Unit at Merlin Park University Hospital. Even though there was no recorded episode of seclusion in the centre since May 2013, there were ongoing difficulties with the seclusion facility itself and it was not fit for purpose. There continued to be offensive graffiti on the walls which was evidenced at the inspection in 2014. No improvements had been gained since the inspections in both 2013 and 2014. At a standalone unit, located on the grounds of St Lomans Hospital in Mullingar, there was no nursing staff available in St Ednas unit for a period of 15 minutes during the inspection and the inspection team could not locate nursing staff to attend to residents needs during this time. At the same centre, one resident had been physically restrained and there was no record of the consultant psychiatrist being informed or of a physical examination of the patient having been carried out. One child had been admitted there on a voluntary basis but inspectors found it was not suitable. Two children were admitted on a voluntary basis to the Acute Psychiatric Unit at Tallaght Hospital which inspectors said was not suitable, while the report also said there was no evidence of physical examination or anaesthetic assessment prior to the Use of Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT) on three residents. At the Adolescent In-patient Unit at St Vincents Hospital in Fairview in Dublin, staff were unable to regulate the temperature, while at St Brigids Ward and St Marie Goretti Ward at the Cluain Lir Care Centre in Mullingar, residents consent was not always obtained in a case where searches of a residents property took place where staff suspected a resident may have taken another residents property. www.mhcirl.ie U Kyaw Htin Aung from the Union of Karenni State Youth (UKSY) said its important to allow journalists to attend parliamentary meetings so media groups can keep the public informed. Unlike the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (union Parliament), there is no Hluttaw (TV) Channel. The public needs to stay informed of their efforts to give support in enacting suitable laws. Only two from each media group will be allowed inside at one time, said U Hla Htwe, a Karenni State Hluttaw speaker. To gain access the name of the reporters and their biographies must first be submitted for review. U Aung Naing Oo, an MP from the Mon States Chaungzon Township Constituency 1, said press freedom in parliament is crucial. When he brought up land issues in parliament the media played a beneficial role by getting the story out to the public. In Mon State and the Kachin State press restrictions in parliament have also being lifted. We can enter (the parliament) after registering in our state. We can take photos and videos, everything is okay, said Ma Elizabeth, a journalist for Myitkyina Journal in Kachin State. U Myint Kyaw, a member of the Myanmar Press Council member, said media access should be harmonized during parliamentary proceedings across the nation. Yet, in some areas journalists face restrictions enacted by higher authorities. Parliament is responsible for answering to the media, he said. Before the new government, only state-owned television networks MRTV and SkyNet TV could cover the news in the Karenni State Hluttaw. Slightly discoloured with age but in good condition, the letter was sent from Dublin to Ennis on April 7, 1971. Mary Kelly, who operates a stationery and card shop in OConnell St, was rather surprised when a letter posted in Dublin 45 years ago dropped through Reidy, the former owner of the premises. Along with his wife, Agnes Henchy Reidy, he ran a newsagency business from the building. Mr Reidy died in 1977. The envelope was perfectly intact and the address was written in a nice fountain pen. The postal mark was April 7, 1971, Mary said. I didnt open it because there is a son of that man living in Celbridge. He said to me open it but I said he would have to open it. It felt like it could have been a relic or a 10 shilling note. Philip ORiada, who is currently abroad, urged Ms Kelly to open the letter, which had been sent to his father when Richard Nixon was US president. It contained Irish, Canadian, South African, and European stamps . Philip said hell work out who they were meant for and who they were coming from, said Mary. He would only have been about 14 or 15 that time. He thought I was joking when I contacted him because the day that I got it was his sons birthday. He thought it was something for Eoin but I told him it was addressed to his father. Marys postman has been speculating as to why it took so long for the letter to reach its final destination. Its just incredible, she said. One of my postmen said to me that old offices would have had sorting offices with timber shelves, where letters would have been fired in. He said that very often a small envelope could slip down and its only when those offices are being stripped or demolished that the letter would be found. While a car journey from Dublin to Ennis takes two hours and 45 minutes, it took this letter an average of 109 days to complete a single mile of the 151-mile journey. An Post was unable to shed any light on why the letter was 45 years late. The awards, hosted by Junior Chamber International (JCI) Cork in association with AIB, recognise young people who have excelled in their chosen field or made a lasting positive impact on their communities. Cork businesswoman Tracey Ryan was honoured for her contribution to children and human rights. The founder of Bia Beauty Skincare was shocked at the Syrian refugee crisis and decided to pack one of her own vans with supplies and drive to Calais herself. Her call-out to her network for blankets, clothes, and food spiralled into a fully fledged taskforce which filled two aircraft hangars in Shannon and led to a fleet of trucks being dispatched to Calais. Under binding EU targets, 16% of final energy use must be from renewable sources. This is broken down into 10% for transport, 12% for heat, and 10% for electricity. Geothermal is a renewable form of energy that uses heat stored in the ground. It has an energy efficiency rating higher than any other renewable, is available 24/7, and is not weather-dependent. It can be used to heat homes, to provide cooling in some applications, feed heat into district heating networks, generate power (if the geothermal resource is hot enough), or to provide therapeutic treatment in spas. Research launched by the Geological Survey of Ireland at yesterdays Geothermal Association of Ireland conference at the Energy Show 2016, highlights that every location in Ireland has the potential to harness shallow geothermal energy using ground source heat pumps. Speaking ahead of the conference, Geothermal Association of Ireland chairman Ric Pasquali said geothermal energy was one of Irelands hidden assets when it comes to alternative means of heating and cooling homes and businesses. Ireland has an excellent source of shallow geothermal energy, which, coupled with a heat pump technology, can be used for space heating, cooling and hot water, said Mr Pasquali. It is also cost efficient, returning an average consistent delivery of up to four units of heat for every unit of electricity used to power the pumps. Geothermal is also the only renewable energy source that is available 24/7, regardless of climatic conditions. A number of buildings around the country are heated using shallow geothermal technology, including the Glucksman Gallery in Cork, the Cliffs of Moher Visitors Centre in Clare, and Ballyroan Library in South Dublin. However, this number needs to vastly improve if Irelands 2020 target is to be met. This was highlighted in a new report by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), which said major action is required for Ireland if it is to achieve its commitments. These include increasing the number of homes and businesses currently using some form of renewable heat technologies by sevenfold, building 125 wind turbines every year, and ensuring that one in every five new cars sold in Ireland is electric by 2020. Currently, Ireland is just over halfway towards meeting its 2020 renewable energy target, with 8.6% of gross final consumption derived from renewables in 2014. Mr Pasquali said the report highlighted just how far Ireland was from hitting its renewable energy targets. Figures on the progress of the renewable heat sector published by SEAI as part of the Irelands Energy Targets Progress, Ambition & Impacts report are quite concerning, said Mr Pasquali. They show that the number of homes and businesses availing of renewable heat technologies needs to increase sevenfold if Ireland is to reach its target of 12% of renewable heat by 2020. New policies and awareness measures are clearly needed. Detectives at Coolock in Dublin last week sent a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions following a review of evidence from the Valentines Night fire that killed 48 young people and injured more than 200 others in 1981. Gardai would not comment on the file except to confirm its completion. In a statement they said: Gardai at Coolock have recently forwarded a file to the Office of DPP in relation to this ongoing investigation. It would be inappropriate to discuss correspondence from An Garda Siochana and the office of the DPP. Antoinette Keegan, who survived the fire that claimed the lives of her two sisters, welcomed the development. Weve been grieving for 35 years and weve fought government after government to get justice for our loved ones. Were just grateful the gardai have taken us seriously and we hope the DPP will act now. The families were disappointed earlier this year when the DPP directed nobody should be charged on foot of another file prepared by gardai into allegations of perjury by witnesses at the 1981 tribunal of inquiry. The latest investigation centres on evidence that at least five young men were already dead, or at least overcome by fumes, in a part of the nightclub some distance from the area where it was officially decided the fire had broken out, at a time earlier than it was officially declared the fire had started. Researcher Geraldine Foy, who has worked with the families for the past 10 years, revealed through the Irish Examiner in January last year that this evidence was available to the tribunal but its significance was dismissed because the inquiry was solely focused on the fire being deliberately started in a seating area. That official finding of probable arson, which enabled the nightclub owners to claim massive compensation, devastated the families and they fought for 27 years to overturn it. They eventually got the Dail record changed in 2009 following a government review and the arson verdict was declared incorrect but the review did not allow for an examination into the actual cause of the fire. The families say the evidence relating to the five young men backs their belief that criminal negligence was behind the tragedy. Our parliamentary party considered the option and there was agreement that this option was not tenable. There are many reasons for this but the main one is that we went before the people in February and consistently said we were not going to go into a grand coalition. For months before the election, any time I was asked would Fianna Fail go into coalition with Fine Gael after the election, I always denied this would be considered and this was for many reasons. These reasons have nothing to do with the Civil War and people who say this do not understand the differences between the two parties .There are distinct policy differences between the two parties but more fundamentally in the last five years they have made an extraordinary mess of tackling the housing and homelessness crisis. In fact, they made it worse by inaction. There are still four families a day becoming homeless. Public services were allowed to be eroded and it took them five years to admit that their policy of Universal Health Insurance was a sham. Fine Gael had the largest majority in the history of the State in the last five years and, as a result, they ignored the concerns of the people. They kept talking about an economic recovery that had not left the Red Cow roundabout and this annoyed people who were struggling to pay their bills. They added on property and water tax without including ability to pay. The actions they took showed even a basic lack of decency. As justice spokesman, I highlighted the rise of rural crime for years before they finally admitted it was a problem in 2015. They left it very late to recruit the extra gardai that were needed and left the numbers dwindle to dangerous levels before they took any action. They became out of touch very quickly. Mr Kenny promised a democratic revolution in 2011 yet he had to set up an inquiry to write a report about what was said at a meeting that he actually attended. He effectively sacked the former Garda commissioner but yet would not admit his role. There was constant detachment from reality and unfortunately it was his way or no way. There was no room for compromise, even with constructive pieces of legislation that the opposition brought forward. The large majority allowed them to believe they could ignore everyone. The people were given a choice on February 26 and they wanted a change of government. We made a commitment to rule out coalition with Fine Gael and we are keeping our word. Over the last few years, there has been a lot of cynicism about politics because of broken promises. We are working very hard to rebuild trust with people since 2011 and decided not to make any promises that we could not keep. We are sticking with that promise, as we were given a mandate based on that. Mr Martin will continue to try to form a minority government as no doubt Mr Kenny will, even though he doesnt really believe it would work. A minority government is well capable of working, particularly if the reform proposals that were called for by Fianna Fail are enacted. If all parties are serious about political reform, there is no need for another election and a government can be formed to try and tackle the pressing issues that face the country. We will of course play a constructive and responsible role. Since the foundation of the State, the Dail has always had a centre-ground party in opposition. This was normally Fine Gael or Fianna Fail and this has, I believe, served this country well. I do not believe an amalgamation of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael would be good for Ireland. It would actually have a very negative impact on how politics is done in this country. It could actually allow for a significant rise in the extreme left-wing parties and this would not be a positive development. As the report of the banking inquiry confirmed, in the years before the recession, Dail Eireann largely ignored the pressures which led to the dramatic events of 2008 and 2009. It was a forum for political debate rather than for a serious engagement with often complex public policy issues. If we truly want to break the cycle of mistakes of the past, reforming politics is not an option it is an essential step. Everyone will have to change and adapt to this. In the past, governments have assumed full control of reform and used this control to implement limited changes. Deeper reform is only possible if this dynamic is broken. The general election result allows for this. The idea that you can have a parliament where everything operates on the principle of consensus is clearly untenable just look at the gridlock in the US Senate, where extreme views are capable of denying the moderate majority the ability to legislate. However, the operation of the Dail without any consensus is no longer credible. The Dail should be a place where all TDs have the chance and obligation to deal with public business with the seriousness it deserves. Only if we do this will the 32nd Dail be able to begin the process of winning the confidence of the Irish people and it will allow a minority government work quite successfully. Where there is a will there is a way. Niall Collins is a Fianna Fail TD for Limerick County THE extent to which media constitute a pluralistic public sphere has been an issue in Ireland for some decades. Concern has focused on the concentration of media ownership but this is just one dimension of media pluralism and diversity. The publication of a European Commission-sponsored research project represents the beginning of an attempt build up a more comprehensive picture of media pluralism in Ireland and across Europe. The context for the report is the growing European Commission concern regarding the implications of media market liberalisation. In classic liberal theory, a competitive media market serves to guarantee pluralism, by allowing competing groups within society to express their views and influence government decision-making. In practice, over the past two decades, the European Commission has observed a growing concentration of media ownership right across European Union. The concern is that a reduction in media ownership diversity narrows the space for diversity of opinion. However, the the risk to the preservation of a space for the expression of critical perspectives is undermined by other factors. The Irish report uses 231 separate indicators to assess pluralism under four domains. These include basic indicators such as freedom of expression and public access to information; social indicators of the extent to which media outlets reflect all segments of the population; the extent to which media organisations are independent from political and commercial influence and; the extent of media ownership concentration. The level of risks to media pluralism in Ireland vary across these domains. The overall result for basic protections is considered low but only just. The guarantee of freedom of expression in Article 40.6.i of the Constitution is countered by prohibitions on speech undermining the State, and blasphemy. The report also concludes that the increasing precariously work environment for journalists constitutes a medium risk, militating against the kind of in-depth, investigative reporting essential to properly scrutinise public and private institutions. The Regency Hotel shooting reminds us that journalists face threats to their physical safety and journalists interviewed for the research assert that the State has used the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 to subject them to surveillance. The absence of any a priori legal mechanisms in Ireland protecting individual journalists against changes in ownership or editorial line is also a concern. In the other political, social inclusiveness and market plurality domains, the level of risk is assessed as medium, although high risks are recorded for individual indicators. Some of these risks are just that risks rather than clear and present dangers. In the Political Independence domain, the research records a medium risk of politicisation of media outlet control, citing the absence of legal prohibitions on political party ownership of media outlets. In practice, of course An Phoblacht aside there has been no direct relationship between a party and a media outlet since the closure of the Irish Press Group in 1995. State advertising is also regarded as high-risk simply because there is no public record of how the State deploys its advertising budget. At the other end of the scale, the research records a low risk of political bias in the media. If this surprises readers who followed coverage of the recent election, it should be stressed that this indicator solely applied to broadcasting and was based on a study of legislative and regulatory codes governing impartiality. Both the 2009 Broadcasting Act and BAI codes strongly emphasise the need for fairness and balance in representing competing political perspectives, although the absence if any official routine monitoring of airtime allocation raises questions as to how this can be policed. Ireland does not score well on social inclusiveness. Ones geographical location is a key determinant of media access: Although RTE broadcasts are universally available, broadband access varies wildly depending on location, with rural areas particularly disadvantaged. National print and broadcast media are overwhelmingly centred in Dublin (with the obvious exception of this paper). Furthermore, although the 2009 Broadcasting Act requires all broadcasters to bear in mind religious, ethical and cultural diversity this imposes no absolute requirement to provide access for social and cultural minorities to the airwaves and, in practice, such programming is largely limited to community media. However, if there is a domain approaching a clear and present danger, it is market pluralism. Media ownership is less than transparent: Establishing a complete picture means expending significant time and financial resources at the Companies Records Office. Nor is there a definitive limit on how much of a given media market a single media outlet may control. Although the 2014 Competition and Consumer Protection Act points to the undesirability of allowing any single undertaking to account for more than 20% of a given media market, those limits have already been exceeded. Denis OBrien personally controls the single largest stake (29.9%) in Independent News and Media which, in turn, accounts for 48% of all weekly national newspaper sales in Ireland. He also owns Communicorp, the radio stations of which account for more than 20% of the total radio market in Ireland. The position of RTE, which retains the single largest market share in both the Irish television and radio markets, is more complex: The research as whole assumes that Public Service Media constitutes a bulwark against the more narrowly commercial objectives of private media firms but given the extent of RTEs reliance on commercial revenues, it is open to question whether such distinctions can be sustained. The research on which these conclusions are based is not without its flaws, deriving mainly from the small-scale of the funding behind it. More resources are required to subject media to content analysis to properly understand what perspectives and voices are and are not represented. Nonetheless, the research suggests there are significant issues to be addressed if we are to create something approaching a healthy public sphere. Some of the solutions require new legislation and regulation; some mean investing significant financial resources into our media institutions. Both will tal significant political will: Retrospective intervention in media ownership, for example, is routinely dismissed as impossible because of the constitution. But suggesting that the protection of property right supervenes all other constitutional rights such as freedom of expression is an ideological assertion, not a legal fact. If we are truly interested in a functioning democracy, capable of reflecting the perspectives of all citizens, we need to ask whether we can afford to leave the functioning of the public sphere to a media market experiencing an ongoing crisis. Roderick Flynn is a lecturer at the school of communications, Dublin City University. He is the author of the Irish report for on the EU-funded Media Pluralism Monitor. WITH public service pay back in the news less than a year after the Lansdowne Road deal was done, policymakers, commentators, and union officials could usefully consult the 2015 Civil Service Engagement Survey, which was published to little fanfare earlier this year. They wont be surprised that, when asked, half our civil servants said they consider themselves underpaid compared to others who do similar work. Its a subjective view, rather than the outcome of real pay comparisons, and a similar study of workers in virtually any sector of the economy would probably yield similar results. Nevertheless, it reveals something about what public servants think at a time of increasingly vocal dissatisfaction with pay rates and the structure of public service remuneration. Our perceptions of whether we consider ourselves fairly paid or not are informed by a number of things, including comparisons with others, and theres little doubt that pay expectations have been fuelled by figures recently bandied about in the transport sector. But whatever the outcome there, the recent and respected IRN-CIPD pay survey (a study of almost 600 private sector employers) identified average private sector pay increases of 2.7% last year, and projected increases averaging 2.8% in 2016. This is in line with the significant but modest increases negotiated by public service unions in the Lansdowne Road agreement in 2015. There will be a strong case to accelerate what has so far been modest public service pay recovery if better-than-expected growth and fiscal space emerge in the coming months. But even in that benign scenario, the cash available will not meet all the demands recently voiced on pay and investment. Union members will expect their negotiators to ensure that any available resources are distributed progressively, and not simply to those who shout first or loudest. The way in which earnings are set also has a substantial influence on workers attitudes, and theres little doubt that the recent history of public service pay determination is a huge factor in the perception as well as the reality of unfairness. Public servants know that private sector workers also paid a high price in the crash, particularly those who lost their jobs or were forced to emigrate. But the scale the 2009 pension levy and the 2010 pay cuts, and the manner in which were imposed, still loom large in a scarred collective memory. For those earning more than 65,000 a year, the discontent was compunded by the additional temporary pay cuts in 2013s Haddington Road deal. Issues such as increased working hours also remain live bones of contention for many. That said, some of our perceptions on public service pay have become slightly skewed. For instance, it has become accepted as fact that there are two-tier pay scales across the civil and public service, condemning staff recruited after 2010 to earn 10% less than their colleagues throughout their careers. Such divisive pay scales were indeed imposed (not agreed) in the dying days of the last Fianna Fail-led government. But unions successfully negotiated the end of the two-tier system on foot of the Haddington Road deal two years later. The result is that most public servants recruited since 2011 move onto pre-2011 scale points after two years less in some cases. Then, subject to acceptable performance, they ascend the same pay scales as everyone else in their grade. The issue is more complicated for groups such as firefighters and teachers, for whom allowances are a standard element of earnings. But in most grades, everyone is on the same pay band, albeit with up to two additional pay points inserted at the bottom of the scales. So, while the issue of low pay in parts of the public service certainly needs to be addressed, talk of a two-tier system is not especially informative. There was another telling aspect of the Civil Service Engagement Survey that should inform policymakers trying to judge the mood among public servants. The fact that just 15% less than one civil servant in every six thinks the public respects and appreciates their work should be a cause of great concern. The survey doesnt dig deeper to explore the thinking behind this shocking statistic. But its very likely that the media, political and public opprobrium they experienced at the outset of the crash has intensified the belief among public servants that they are undervalued. Undeserved stereotypes of overpaid, underworked, and out-of-touch public servants exist in every advanced economy regardless of the shape, size, cost, or performance of its state sector. But in 2009 Ireland it was cranked up a number of gears. I recall one extreme example in which a journalist described public servants as inherently dysfunctional people who were averse to the joy of living and therefore cling to monetary advantage. I have personally argued that unions scored some serious own goals in our communications with the wider public at that time, but this was an undeserved level of vitriol that public servants find hard to forget. Six years later, the tone and content of the public debate is, thankfully, quite different. Barring one or two Hezbollah in the commentariat, there is none of the venom of the 2009-2010 period. Its now broadly recognised that, like others, public servants were hit hard by the crash and worked hard to rebuild the country. Most accept that there is a case for public service pay recovery, over time and in the context of financial realities and other priorities in society. The trick for public service unions in the coming period will be to retain that degree of public understanding by putting a legitimate case in ways that dont antagonise the majority that lives and works outside the State sector. This will be particularly important if improved economic conditions open up the prospect of accelerated income restoration and increased investment in our public services. Bernard Harbor is head of communications at Impact, Irelands largest public service union. Mr Trump drew attention to a line from Mr Cruz from a debate earlier this year in which he criticised New York values. The Republican frontrunner said he could not believe anyone would question the heroism of the citys uniformed officers and construction workers during the aftermath of the 2001 attacks that toppled the World Trade Center. The New York primary, the first meaningful contest in the state in decades, will be held on April 19. Outside the venue, police on horseback and riot officers kept watch, although few incidents were reported among Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters gathered at the venue. Acting Nassau County police commissioner Thomas Krumpter told reporters two people were arrested inside the rally for fighting. No arrests or physical altercations occurred outside the venue, he said. Six people were transported to hospitals and seven were treated at the site for conditions including fainting and dehydration. Mr Krumpter said several hundred police officers were on the scene, and the event had cost the police department between $300,000- $400,000. For the Democrats, Bernie Sanders visited a historic black church in south Philadelphia, taking questions from an intimate audience before heading to a rally of thousands across town at Temple University. Mr Sanders told the audience that, as president, he would listen to people in impoverished communities to learn more about their needs. Asked whether he supported reparations for slavery, Mr Sanders said he wants to prioritise federal funding for depressed areas, where many black Americans live. Asked whether he would be the first US president to apologise for slavery, Mr Sanders responded yes, adding that though slavery can never be undone, it must be acknowledged. Customers will face fines and be made to attend awareness classes on the harms of the sex trade. The legislation, which passed 64-12 in the parliaments lower house, the National Assembly, makes French law one of the toughest against sex buyers in Europe. Prostitution in itself is legal in France though brothels and pimping are illegal. The measure does away with a 2003 law that banned passive soliciting by sex workers, and switches the focus of punishment to the client, introducing a 1,500 fine that rises to 3,750 for a buyers second offence. The convicted client will be obliged to attend classes highlighting the dangers associated with prostitution. Supporters of the bill argue that it will help fight trafficking networks. The most important aspect of this law is to accompany prostitutes, give them identity papers because we know that 85% of prostitutes here are victims of trafficking, said Maud Olivier, a lawmaker with the governing Socialists and a sponsor of the legislation. She said many sex workers brought to France have their passports confiscated by pimps. We will provide them with documents on the condition they commit to leave prostitution behind, she added. Opponents fear cracking down will push prostitutes to hide, leaving them even more at the mercy of pimps and violent clients. The warning came as nearly a third of the 52,000 migrants stranded in Greece by European border closures are refusing to move to organised shelters and remain camped out at the port of Piraeus and at the northern border with Macedonia. More than 4,000 migrants remain at Piraeus an important site for Greeces vital tourism industry. Every effort will be exhausted to persuade refugees and immigrants that it is in their own interest for them to move, a statement from the Greek coast guard said. Athens has toughened its position toward migrants since a March 20 agreement between the EU and Turkey went into effect. Some 4,000 migrants and refugees who reached the Greek islands from Turkey after that date are in detention, with most due to be sent back to Turkish ports. At Piraeus, interior ministry officials and translators spent hours trying to persuade migrants to move to a n ew camp in nor thern Greece, showing them aerial photographs of the site and explaining what facilities are available. We are trying to explain that the new camps have good facilities and that people there will be able to fill out their asylum applications there, volunteer translator Ilias Iakovou said. But people are afraid to go because they fear they will be cut off and will run out of money. They feel safe if they are near Athens. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country will not implement a deal reached with the EU on the return of migrants from Greece if the EU does not fulfil its obligations toward Turkey. Under the deal, Turkey agreed to take back migrants who reached Greece illegally from March. For every Syrian returned, Europe agreed to take a Syrian refugee from Turkey to be resettled in an EU country. Turkey is also set to receive funds to spend on the refugees, visa-free travel for Turkish citizens, and spedup EU membership talks. Mr Erdogan said: If the European Union does not take the steps it needs to take, if it does not fulfil its pledges, then Turkey wont implement this agreement. Suu Kyi is determined to rule the former junta-run nation regardless of an army-scripted constitution that bars her from becoming president, as she strives to meet the aspirations of millions of voters who gave her pro-democracy party a landslide election victory last November. She is already foreign minister and met her Chinese counterpart for talks on Tuesday, prioritising Beijing in her first foray into international diplomacy since her National League for Democracy officially took power last week. The bill outlining her advisory role, which mentions the Nobel laureate by name, enables Suu Kyi to wield influence over parliament as well as in the cabinet in a position officially called "state counsellor". It was signed into law by President Htin Kyaw, Suu Kyis longtime aide and effective proxy, following debates in both houses of parliament that have seen protests by the armys legislative representatives. "The president has signed the state counsellor bill today," president office deputy director-general Zaw Htay told AFP. He declined to give further details on the legislation, which sped through both houses of parliament thanks to the NLDs huge majority. In a dramatic lower house session on Tuesday, unelected military MPs -- who make up a quarter of the legislature because the constitution reserves seats for them -- stood up to register a protest that their suggested amendments were being ignored. The bill was then sent straight to the president without a vote in the combined legislature because no clauses had been altered. One army MP, Brigadier General Maung Maung, complained to reporters after Tuesdays session that the passage of the bill was "democratic bullying by majority". Impoverished Myanmar has seen dramatic changes since 2011 as the military released its stranglehold on power after decades of repressive rule that saw Suu Kyi and many of her colleagues imprisoned or held under house arrest. Foreign tourism and investment have begun to flood into the resource-rich nation of 51 million. But the new government faces stiff challenges, particularly smoothing relations with the army and tackling ongoing civil wars in ethnic minority border areas. She has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president, Mr Sanders told a crowd of more than 10,000 people at Temple Universitys Liacouras Centre, Philadelphia. I dont believe that she is qualified if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in specialinterest funds. Mr Sanders also said Ms Clinton is not qualified because of her vote on the war in Iraq and her support for trade agreements he says harm American workers. It is the latest salvo in a war of words that has gotten more heated as underdog Mr Sanders gains ground on front-runner Ms Clinton, capped by the Vermont senators victory in Tuesdays Wisconsin primary. Ms Clintons spokesman, Brian Fallon, responded quickly to the comment, saying: Hillary Clinton did not say Bernie Sanders was not qualified. But he has now absurdly said it about her. This is a new low. Ms Clinton didnt say Mr Sanders was unqualified or not qualified during a much-quoted interview on MSNBCs Morning Joe. In a discussion of an interview with Mr Sanders that appeared in the New York Daily News, Ms Clinton was asked if Bernie Sanders is qualified and ready to be president of the United States. She said: Well, I think he hadnt done his homework and hed been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadnt really studied or understood, and that does raise a lot of questions. Mr Sanders spokesman, Michael Briggs, said Mr Sanders was responding to reports on the CNN and Washington Post websites. A Post story was headlined: Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president. Despite not called Mr Sanders unqualified, Ms Clinton has ratcheted up her attacks. In a Politico interview, she said she tries to explain things in a more open and truthful way than my opponent. Later, at a Philadelphia job training centre, Ms Clinton said people should know what she would do if she is elected, not just lots of armwaving and hot rhetoric. The March 22 attacks by Islamic State (IS) on Brussels airport and a metro station killed 32 people. Belgian federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said authorities were especially interested in any people who might have filmed or photographed the man. He was seen at the airport with two suicide bombers befo re they died in the March 22 attacks. A subsequent explosion at the citys Maelbeek subway station killed another 16 people the same morning. Photos released by prosecutors showed the man in hat leaving the airport on foot, walking to the nearby town of Zaventem and then into Brussels, where all traces of him we re reportedly lost. The suspect also wore a white jacket but discarded it at some point, prosecutors said. The appeal for public assistance more than two weeks after the suicide bombings indicated that investigators have hit a standstill. Three bombers, two at the airport and one in the subway, also died in the attacks, which were claimed by IS. According to a video reconstitution of the suspects itinerary presented to reporters, the man left the Brussels Airport terminal at 7:58am before two other men he was with in the building detonated suitcases laden with explosives. He passed by a Sheraton hotel, walked through the town of Zaventem, discarded his jacket, and was seen on video footage at Meiser square in north-eastern Brussels at 9:42am. Eight minutes later, his trail vanished. Belgian authorities are hoping that they or someone finds the discarded light-coloured jacket, saying it could yield precious clues. Federal prosecutor Thierry Werts also said there had been many people around the hotel when the suspect walked by who may now be overseas, and asked for their assistance as well. Prosecutors asked people who might have filmed or taken a photograph of the suspect or think they can provide extra information to call a special telephone number or to email authorities. One of the Brussels bombers had previously worked at the European Parliament as a cleaner. An official from the EU said that, for a month in 2009 and 2010, one of the men worked in the parliament on a student summer job. Although it was not confirmed which of the men involved in the attacks was being referred to, it has been reported that it was Najim Laachraoui, one of the airport bombers. The man had been employed through a cleaning company contracted by the European Parliament at the time, a spokesman said. However, he said that the man did not have a criminal record at the time as the firm had submitted proof of this to the parliament as required under the terms of its contract. European Parliament spokesman Jaume Duch Guillot said: The European Parliament confirms that seven and six years ago, one of the perpetrators of the Brussels terrorist attacks worked for a period of one month for a cleaning company which was contracted by the European Parliament at the time. As a student, he held a summer holiday job cleaning at the parliament for one month in 2009 and one month in 2010. Those were the only instances he worked at the parliament. As required by the contract, the cleaning firm submitted proof of the absence of a criminal record to the European Parliament. Meanwhile, four people suspected of having enlisted in IS with the intention to commit terror have been arrested, Danish police said. All four suspects, arrested in Copenhagen and its suburbs, are suspected of violating Danish laws by joining a terrorist organisation. Police spokesman Poul Kjeldsen said arms and munitions had been found in one location but it was not immediately clear whether that could be connected to the arrests. Kjeldsen said he could not exclude the possibility of more arrests as the investigation continues. Police declined to disclose further details, saying the p rosecution would ask for closed doors at a pre-trial detention hearing today, which would bar the publication of details. Kjeldsen said the four suspects had been identified through close co-operation between Denmarks intelligence agency and the police in the Danish capital. Justice minister Soren Pind said it was too early to say what the suspects plans were. About 60 Danish nationals have returned from Syria where they have fought alongside IS members. Meanwhile, the UN special envoy for Syria said the next round of peace talks in Geneva was expected to start next week, around April 13. Staffan de Mistura said the new round should focus on a political process that he hoped would lead to a concrete or real beginning of a political transition. State TV said yesterdays mass abduction of workers from the al-Badia Cement Company took place in Dumeir, an area where militants launched a surprise attack against government forces earlier this week. State-run news agency Sana quoted a source in the company as saying that there has been no success in efforts to establish contact with any of the workers. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syria conflict, said earlier in the day that contact was lost with dozens of workers in Dumeir. Mass abductions have taken place on occasion in Syria during the countrys devastating civil war, now in its sixth year, most often of religious minorities such as Christians. The abduction came as fighting with IS militants raged in northern Syria. Syrian opposition fighters have advanced on strongholds of the IS group, with reports last night that they had retaken the IS-held town of al-Rai in northern Aleppo along the border with Turkey. Mr de Mistura told reporters in Geneva that he is also embarking on a tour that will take him to Damascus and the Iranian capital of Tehran and possibly also the Jordanian capital, Amman, in search of an understanding about what could be a framework of a political transition. Meanwhile, Jan Egeland, Mr de Misturas humanitarian aid adviser, said he is disappointed with recent efforts to get aid convoys into hard-to-reach and besieged areas, and called on the Syrian government to live up to its promises. He told reporters that April was supposed to be our best month but that aid delivery is not getting better and better, its actually slowing down. The movie opens in Indian theatres today. It is a computer-generated remake of the 1967 animated film that was based on Rudyard Kiplings book. Censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani justified the restriction by saying the 3D effects were scary as the animals seem to jump right at the audience. Its up to parents to decide how much of these effects are suited for their children, said Mr Nihalani. The decision hasnt gone well with many. Bollywood producer Mukesh Bhatt said it was a shame on the country if a film like The Jungle Book was given the U/A certificate. The film will be released in the US with a PG rating, meaning parental guidance is suggested because of some scary scenes. Bollywood actor Ayushmann Khurrana also found the movies certification unbelievable and challenged the criteria behind it. Maybe it is because of the 3D images of Bhageera and Sherkhan bouncing off the screen. These days kids are used to reading story books and watching Captain America, and after all these are animated films, the Press Trust of India quoted him as saying. Compared to Hollywood, movie norms in India are extremely strict. Censorship authorities often order filmmakers to chop scenes deemed offensive. Films with graphic content can be barred completely. Last year, Indias film censor authorities ordered that kissing scenes in the James Bond movie, Spectre, be shortened before it was released in the country. Sign of guilt USA: It took 30 years, but a guilty conscience led someone who stole a large metal sign in Florida to return it along with a $50 money order to the New Smyrna Beach Police Department. A picture of the sign was posted on Wednesday on the police departments Facebook page. It says: New Smyrna Beach Says No to Drugs. Officials say the blue sign arrived in the mail with a note asking officials to use the money to reinstall the sign. The anonymous person asked for forgiveness, adding the sign was stolen in the late 1980s during a fit of youthful exuberance. On Facebook, department officials said that the act of contrition gives hope that people can do the right thing, even if it takes 30 years. Little monsters USA: Lady Gagas childhood piano is going on the auction block in New York City next month where it could fetch as much as $200,000. Juliens Auctions is offering the piano in its Music Icons memorabilia sale at the Hard Rock Cafe New York on May 21. The upright piano was featured in a 2011-2012 Women Who Rock exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. It was bought by Gagas grandparents for $780 in 1966 and later given to her parents. She began taking piano lessons when she was 4, and wrote her first composition, Dollar Bills, a year later. No joke USA: A Utah man facing criminal charges for posing as a federal agent to get into a $10,000-a-head VIP room at Comic Con in Salt Lake City has agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors. Jonathon M Wall, 30, pleaded guilty to impersonating a federal officer at the September 2015 event . Prosecutors will drop a second charge of making a false statement in exchange for his plea. Wall claimed he was an agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and needed a pair of passes to a lounge room for famous guests to catch a fugitive. He showed staff a photo of a real wanted fugitive and said he was there with a 60-person crew, prosecutors said. Wall acknowledged that he flashed the federal identification he uses for his job at Hill Air Force Base. He said he came up with the idea on the spot and did not think a Comic Con staffer he tried it on believed him. Wall never made it to the VIP lounge, but a security guardgot suspicious and called the Air Force, which sent agents to question Wall and confirmed he didnt work for the military branch, the charges said. Wall faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine at sentencing set for June 9. Not wild about Turkeys USA: A New Jersey town plans to acquire 20 air horns to help its residents deal with aggressive wild turkeys. Animal Control Officer Vincent Ascolese said he will give the air horns to Teaneck officials to distribute to the public, The Record reported. We have to coexist as best as possible, he said. Amy Schweitzer, of the state Department of Environmental Protections fish and wildlife division, said she captured an aggressive male turkey, which she said will help ease the aggression of the wild birds. The Theory Of Everything actresss character, Jyn Erso, is asked to join a mission to steal the plans for the Death Star, the planet- destroying weapon of the evil Empire. In Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, she is detained by rebellion leaders who sum her up: On your own from the age of 15, reckless, aggressive, and undisciplined. She tells them: This is a rebellion, isnt it? I rebel. Joness character is then told about an imminent major weapons test, and asked to join the effort to find out what it is and how to destroy it. The movie, directed by Gareth Edwards, takes place between Episode III and Episode IV, and is the first of three planned standalone spin-off films. It fills the gap between 2005 prequel movie Star Wars Episode III Revenge Of The Sith and 1977s Star Wars A New Hope. Auditions are reportedly taking place for another of the anthology films, which tells the story of a young Han Solo. Rogue One also stars Mads Mikkelsen, Forest Whitaker, and Riz Ahmed, and is set for release in December. The trailer features classic Star Wars creations including AT-ATs and Stormtroopers, as well as the Death Star and the Imperial Star Destroyer. It also sees the surprise return of rebel leader Mon Mothma, who appeared in Return of the Jedi and prequel Revenge of the Sith. Rogue One, led by Godzilla and Monsters director Edwards, was written by Gary Whitta and Chris Weitz, from an idea by long-time Star Wars visual effects supervisor John Knoll. The film provides a back-story to the first scenes of Star Wars A New Hope, when Princess Leia is seen concealing the plans for the Death Star in the droid R2-D2 before she is captured by the Galactic Empire. Asia Indonesia Preparing to Execute More Foreign Drug Convicts Indonesia is preparing to execute more foreigners for drug offenses as it maintains a contentious policy of imposing capital punishment for drug crimes. JAKARTA Indonesia is preparing to execute more foreigners convicted of drug offenses as it maintains a contentious policy of imposing capital punishment for drug crimes. Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo said Thursday that his office is looking for the right time to carry out the executions. He did not specify how many convicts would face firing squads in what would be the third set of executions under President Joko Jokowi Widodos administration. We are still concentrating on drug convicts. We want to see a deterrent effect, Prasetyo said when asked whether people convicted of other death-penalty crimes such as murder would be executed. We are waiting for the right time to carry out the executions, he said. Indonesia has extremely strict drug laws and more than 130 people are on death row, mostly for drug crimes. About a third of them are foreigners. Fourteen people convicted of drug-related crimes, mostly foreigners, were executed last year amid an international outcry. Indonesias relations with Australia were particularly strained following the execution of two of its nationals in April last year. Local media reports quoted the chief of the Jakarta prosecutors office as saying 10 foreigners would be executed: four Nigerians, two Malaysians, two Americans, one Zimbabwean and one Senegalese. In the past, Indonesia has avoided executions during Islams holy month of Ramadan. Burma Arakanese Groups Look to Put Resource Sharing on the Agenda A coalition of Arakanese environmental groups and political parties are hoping to petition the national government to decentralize natural resource sharing. RANGOON A coalition of Arakanese environmental groups and political parties are hoping to collect 300,000 signatures to petition the national government to decentralize natural resource sharing. Several natural resource projects have been pursued in Arakan State, including titanium and marble mining, offshore gas projects and the construction of deep-sea ports. But civil society groups and activists have criticized many such projects as lacking transparency and creating problems for locals, including through land confiscation and environmental degradation. Last month, Arakan Oil Watch (AOW) urged the incoming government to amend two constitutional articles: 37(a) and (b). The former states that the national government owns all lands and natural resources above and below ground and water, while the latter states that the government can enact necessary laws to supervise the extraction and utilization of state-owned resources. AOW, in a report, said that resource sharing could help to ease ongoing tensions between the national government and ethnic armed groups. Tun Tun, an organizer for the Arakan Resources and Environmental Network, said the campaigngathering signatures to bring to the Union Parliamentwill run for two months in April and June and will rely on Arakanese people living throughout Burma as well as in neighboring Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. The goal of the initiative is to cooperate with civil society groups and other parties, including the Arakan National Party (ANP) and local Arakan State chapters of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), to craft a broad agreement on natural resource sharing. We hope Aung San Suu Kyis party [the NLD], because it leads the Ministry of Resources and Environmental Conservation, will keep in mind the Arakanese peoples suffering from poverty while living in a natural gas-rich state, Tun Tun told The Irrawaddy, adding that this could bring attention to all ethnic groups beleaguered by gross resource sharing disparity. Ba Shein, a Lower House lawmaker for the ANP, welcomed the work of activists, saying that only the national government has the power to generate a durable solution to the issue. Thats why were calling for power-sharing with the national governmentto help us access and manage the natural resources of our ancestral state, Ba Shein said. Burma Courts Drop Charges Against Student Activists Student activists who protested an education reform bill see their charges dropped, following Aung San Suu Kyis pledge to seek their immediate release. RANGOON Students, human rights activists and their supporters, who had been on trial for their involvement in national education reform protests, had their charges dropped on Friday. The dismissal of these cases came just one day after Aung San Suu Kyi said she would work for the immediate release of political prisoners and student activists. Most of the activists had been on trial for a year, after being handed several charges, including violating the Peaceful Assembly Law. Some faced charges from various townships where the education reform protests occurred. These activists will only be released once all the courts they face charges in drop them. There was no release of political prisoners currently serving sentences on Friday, only those who were still on trial. But Suu Kyis State Counselor Office announced that they were working for their swift release. Todays dismissal was for those who face court hearings today. For others [without hearings today], their dismissal will be after the new years holiday, when the courts resume their work, the statement said. The holiday ends on April 20, and the courts will resume then. On Friday, Tharawaddy court in Pegu Division dismissed the cases of 69 student activists and their supporters, who had been on trial since the police crackdown on student protestors last year. But three student leaders, Phyo Phyo Aung, Min Thway Thit and Nanda Sitt Aung, have not been released despite Tharawaddy courts dismissal of their charges. They await dismissals from other courts in Rangoon, where they face charges for the same protest. We [the three student leaders] have ongoing cases in a different township in Rangoon, Nanda Sitt Aung told The Irrawaddy after receiving the dismissal of charges from Tharawaddy court. Prison called us back. Nanda Sitt Aung and others were sent back to prison despite the dismissal of their charges. Student activist Tin Tin Khaing, who was charged in Rangoons Thanlyin Township for organizing education reform protests, said that some township courts in Rangoon had dismissed cases against student protestors including Kyaw Ko Ko and James (Phyo Phyo Aungs husband), who were detained at Insein prison. But the two have been sent back to Insein, as their cases in Kamayut Township court had yet to be resolved. Human rights activists Nay Myo Zin, Naw Ohn Hla and Mee Mee have also had charges dropped from some Rangoon courts but await dismissals from others. Burma Interfaith Activists Sentenced To Two More Years In Prison As charges are cleared against other political detainees, in Mandalay court, two Muslim interfaith activists are sentenced to two more years in prison. MANDALAY Amid news of charges being cleared against political detainees, in a court in Mandalays Chanayethazan Township, two Muslim interfaith activists were sentenced to two more years in prisonwith laboron Friday for allegedly associating with unlawful organizations. Zaw Zaw Latt and Pwint Phyu Latt were arrested for photos shared on social media which depicted a visit to across the Indo-Burma border to Mizoram State in 2014 and a charity trip to a war torn area of Kachin State. In a picture, Zaw Zaw Latt posed with a M16 rifle as he met with some members of the Kachin Independance Army (KIA) during his visit to displaced peoples camps in the region in 2013. Although some courts that have dropped the charges against student activists, we believe there are some processes still working between the government and the court. We believe in Aunty Suus government that we will be finally free on New Year, said Zaw Zaw Latt after the court appearance, referring to State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyis announcement that the National League for Democracy (NLD) government would work to release political prisoners during the upcoming period of the Thingyan water festival. After speaking to the press, Zaw Zaw Latt was sent back to prison. The 28-year-old from Mandalay has been detained by local police since July 2015. Zaw Zaw Latt, Pwint Phyu Latt and another colleague, Zaw Win Bo had already been sentenced to two years imprisonment under Burmas immigration act in February. Both Zaw Zaw Latt and Pwint Phyu Latt once worked with the NLD. Zaw Zaw Latt was an information officer for a youth department within the organization. We are not going to submit an appeal. We believe the unlawful association acts is no longer useful as the country is moving forward with the peace process and the government will soon abolish this act, said Pwint Phyu Latt. Burma Legal Commission Recommends Scrapping 142 Laws Burmas Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission recommends that the NLD government get rid of, amend or rewrite laws used against activists. RANGOON Burmas Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission has recommended that the government abolish or amend laws that have been used as tools to arrest political activists for decades. In its first assessment of Burmas current laws, the commission found that 142 laws currently on the books should be scrapped, amended or rewritten. The commission members said they hope their findings will help the new National League for Democracy (NLD) government work effectively for the interests of the nation and its citizens. The group suggested removing the laws that were most often used to imprison activists. We suggested abolishing the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act, the Penal Codes 505(b), and amending Article 18 [of the Peaceful Assembly Law], NLD lawmaker and commission member Maung Maung Ohn told The Irrawaddy. These laws were widely used to arrest dissidents, politicians and activists under the previous military regime as well as under Thein Seins quasi-civilian government. Peaceful protesters were often detained under Article 18 of the Peaceful Assembly Law, which requires organizers to obtain government permission prior to protesting. Human rights activists and opposition lawmakers pushed for amendments to these laws under the prior administration, but to no avail. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), there are currently almost 100 political prisoners behind bars and more than 400 awaiting trial, including about 50 students, who are facing charges after protesting in favor of education reforms. Maung Maung Ohn said that the commission distributed the recommendations to the parliamentary committees and lawmakers on Wednesday to get further suggestions from them. The Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission is led by Shwe Mann, former parliamentary speaker and Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) chairman. The first assessment also focused on laws regarding the state budget, taxation, tendering, farmers rights and government office expenditures. The association will issue a public report every four month to be sent to the media, parliament, MPs and central government. Two representatives from the association will be tasked with collecting information for the report. It will inform the public about their MPs performances, showing whether or not they carry out their duties in a diligent fashion, Min Win Bo said. Daw Khine Khine Lei, a MP from Thaton Constituency 2, said: We can clearly know who does their work and who doesnt. This [monitoring] provides transparency by showing how much the MPs are working for the publics benefit. Lifestyle Observers Association is made up seven CSGs from last years Election Monitoring Association. Translated by Thida Linn Burma With Planned Protest, Shwe Gas Pipeline Resentments Linger Local farmers in Kyaukphyu Township, Arakan State, plan a protest demanding compensation for land damaged to make way for a contentious oil and gas pipeline. RANGOON Local farmers in Kyaukphyu Township, Arakan State, plan a protest for next week Monday demanding compensation for land they say was damaged to make way for a contentious oil and gas pipeline laid by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). More than 100 hectares were reportedly spoiled by CNPC in Gyin Gyi village tract, across three villages in the township. The aggrieved landholders have been seeking compensation since 2013, and while most have received payments, nearly half have not. At least 100 protestors are expected to join a Monday afternoon march from Kant Kaw Taw Pagoda near Gone Chein village to the local CNPC office. According to the Kyaukphyu District Police colonel, Win Kyi, a pending permission for the demonstration was sought from authorities on April 5, with the officer telling The Irrawaddy a decision on whether or not it would be granted was expected by Sunday. Nyi Lin, a social worker from Kyaukphyu, said more than 200 people were affected by the pipeline, but 111 of them had not yet seen any compensation distributed over what has been dubbed the Shwe gas project. We know that the amount of our land compensation is more than 130 million [kyats, equivalent to about US$108,000], according to the clerk of the township administrator, Nyi Lin told The Irrawaddy. The special officer Myint Zaw Oo from Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise came and studied our field from January 21, 2016, [to determine] whether our lands have been destroyed or not. They have since confirmed that the plough-fields have actually been damaged. China National Petroleum Corporation can easily give us that amount, being a big international company, he told The Irrawaddy. Burma SSPP/SSA Claims Burma Army Is Sending Troops to Its Headquarters The Burma Army is continuing to send reinforcements into Wan Hai, SSPP/SSA headquarters in Shan States Kyethi Township, says a party member. The Burma Army is continuing to send reinforcements into Wan Hai, headquarters of the Shan State Progressive Party/Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA) in Shan States Kyethi Township, said an SSPP/SSA central executive committee member. According to Col. Pein Pa, the Burma Amy from Tuesday to Thursday morning brought over 80 military vehicles carrying soldiers and equipped with heavy arms into Mong Hsu and Mong Nawng near the Wan Hai headquarters. [The Burma Army] said that they would swap troops, but it looks more like an operation, said Col. Pein Pa. The military trucks belong to Light Infantry Division 66. The Burma Army sent 31 military trucks to Mong Nawng Township on Tuesday and Wednesday and another 52 to Mong Hsu Township on Thursday, the SSPP/SSA reported. Mong Hsu and Mong Nawng residents, after seeing the military trucks passing through their towns, expressed concern about fresh clashes breaking out in the area. I saw military trucks passing through the town. I dont know why they are coming. I have seen military vehicles passing through our town before. But I havent seen them for a long time, and I think there might be a reason for such large-scale movements. So Im concerned that clashes may erupt again, Mong Hsu local Nang Hsai Han told The Irrawaddy. Fighting erupted between SSA-North and government troops last October and November near Wan Hai headquarters, forcing thousands of locals from their homes. Over 1,000 victims remain in relief camps in Mong Hsu Township for fear of fighting and land mines. The SSPP/SSA alleged that they heard last week that the military is preparing to attack Wan Hai headquarters. However, the party declined to comment on if the SSA-North, which is the political wing of the SSPP, is also making preparations for a possible military attack, and the military could not be reached for comment. We are waiting to see how much the military will cooperate with the new government while the new government is calling for peace and national reconciliation. We are expecting talks. But considering what is currently going on, Ming Aung Hlaing seems to be saying one thing and doing another, Col. Pein Pa said. Col Pein Pa said that the military has been attempting to put Shan State under martial law since last October, when it launched attacks on the Wan Hai headquarters. Frankly, they [the military] want to impose martial law in Shan State in order to implement a larger strategy. They want to use Shan State as a base from which to attack Kachin State and the Wa region. Theyve been planning this since October, before the November election, said Col. Pein Pa. From March 26 to 28, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) hosted a meeting in Panghsang with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), SSPP, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Arakan Army (AA). Representatives at the meeting decided that the alliance would take joint political action against warring ethnic groups in northern Shan State in the event that they continue to fight against one another even after the alliance intervenes. The SSPP/SSA opted out of signing the so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) with Thein Seins administration. Burma Suu Kyi Has Busy Week Meeting Foreign Diplomats New Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi met her Canadian counterpart on Thursday, as dignitaries visit the country to meet the Nobel laureate. NAYPYIDAW Burmas high-profile new foreign minister, Aung San Suu Kyi, met her Canadian counterpart on Thursday, as dignitaries visit the country to meet the Nobel laureate. Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion congratulated Burma on installing its first civilian government in decades and on its transition from military rule to democracy. Its always difficult to build a strong democracy, Dion said at a joint news conference at Burmas Presidential Palace in the capital, Naypyidaw. Burma needs to succeed. Its important for your country and its important for the world. Suu Kyi said Dion had offered to help efforts to end longstanding armed insurgencies against the Burmese-majority government by minority groups demanding autonomy and control over their natural resources in the north, northeast and east of the country. Many ethnic armies have been fighting since the country gained independence from the British in 1948, and experts say continued civil unrest is slowing development in one of the regions poorest countries. I think, particularly, Canada is anxious to help us in the peace process. And this is the kind of assistance that we very much welcome, Suu Kyi told a news conference. And we would appreciate everything that our friends can do to assist us in our efforts to make this country one that has built unity out of diversity. Suu Kyi also hosted the foreign ministers of China and Italy earlier this week. In November, the country held its first free election in decades, which Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) party won by a landslide. Suu Kyi, the countrys most popular politician, is barred by a junta-era Constitution from becoming president because her sons are British citizens, as was her late husband. She picked her close ally, Htin Kyaw, to become Burmas president and lead the government that took office last week. In its first legislative act, Parliament created a new post for Suu Kyi as state counselor on Tuesday, giving her powers similar to those of a prime minister. The move allows Suu Kyi to have a powerful hand in running Burma and helps her circumvent the Constitutions ban. In addition to foreign minister, Suu Kyi also heads the Presidents Office. This weeks meetings have put Suu Kyi in the spotlight, with President Htin Kyaw playing a supporting role. Interview Chit Khine: The Leadership Has To Show Magnanimity The Irrawaddy speaks with Chit Khine, chairman of the Eden Group of Companies, about cronies, corruption and Burmas economic prospects. Some say that the economic policies of the National League for Democracy (NLD) are too general and have imperfections. What do you think? Will these policies improve economic growth? The NLD is far from operating smoothly in all fields. The new government has emergencies to handle in order to govern well in the long run. The economic prospects might not look good now, but the government has just come in to power and because of the long water festival holiday, I dont think the outline of its policies will become clear until early May. I see [the government] making preparations to achieve the best results over the next five years. In which sectors do you think the new government should introduce reforms? Since we are an agro-based economy, I want the new government to adopt better policies [in the agricultural sector]. I met the minister of agriculture and irrigation a few days ago and I stressed the importance of having good agricultural policies in order to move forward. I had urged the previous administration to draft a rice policy, but that did not happen. We also need better financial policies. It is important that the Central Bank has autonomy and that the banking system is strong. Burma had a budget deficit throughout the previous governments five-year term. It is estimated that under the new government, the deficit could reach billions [US$]. How should the newly formed Financial Commission handle the deficit? The government can do something to reduce the deficit, but I dont think it will decline immediately. Currently, the countrys revenues come mainly from natural resources, and not from manufacturing. We must encourage exports. Also, the government must develop a policy for the rice trade as soon as possible. We need to trade with other countries. Currently, we legally export rice to China, but the Chinese government does not formally recognize it [it goes unrecorded and is at risk of illegal seizure]. If our government can engage effectively with other Asian governments, we can promote exports and increase trade. We need to boost exports to reduce the trade deficit. But the previous governments efforts to increase exports failed. Why? Boosting exports is a must. It failed to deliver results because of the system and policies at that time. There must be the right people in the right place, with a system and a will to succeed. There was rampant corruption and red tape in the previous administration. The new government is taking steps to correct this. Can they solve a problem that has been entrenched in our society? Bribery and corruption seem to be the custom here. It is unlikely that the NLD can fix this problem overnight. If ministers take the lead and encourage their staff to fight corruption, the problem will be solved eventually. The government also needs to look at the reasons for corruption. Some people take bribes for greed; others just to make ends meet. If needs are met, the situation can change. Although the upper echelons of the government have changed, the same people remain in the lower levels. How easy will it be to work with them? The current leadership has to show magnanimity. That is why the government has said civil servants do not need to worry as long as they act within the legal framework. I think many [civil servants] want to change and the new government needs to convince them. The government and civil servants will have to work towards reconciliation. China is facing an economic recession, and Burmas economy relies heavily on China. How will this impact the country? It will challenge the new government. China is an emerging power and the previous government had to rely on it heavily. We cant neglect the importance of China to us geographically. But China also has its own problems. There are problems that the two sides have to solve together, and ones that can be avoided. The government should explain the situation to the public because it will be difficult for them to understand, and try to avoid friction if possible. The countrys current economic growth rate is encouraging and international organizations have estimated a good economic growth rate for the country. Are their estimations true? The previous governments were known for inaccuracies and I doubt their figures are accurate. The figures from international organizations may be closer to the truth, but they may still be off. The people who are dubbed cronies think they will be removed from the US sanction list under the new government. Do you think so? I want sanctions to be lifted. These people can be symbols of strength for the country if they have the right attitude. They dont have to abandon all of their possessions, but I would urge them to serve their own interests and those of the public in a balanced manner. We should rely on them; they have experience building successful businesses. I was once on the list of cronies. But the term crony is disputable. Some people who arent on the list of cronies have more money than those who are. The government should use the wealthy people in the public interest, but they have to work with them. They should abide by the laws and the government should punish them if they do not. Collaboration is the way forward. Do you think new cronies will emerge under the NLD government? Have you seen any likely ones? The Irrawaddy will notice better than me. You have seen who became cronies before and who is trying to show off to the media and engage with the government now. There will be cronies whenever a new government assumes power. Friday, April 8th, 2016 (7:47 am) - Score 911 Admittedly the opening title of Vodafones new survey of 2,000 British adults doesnt make a lot of sense, ONE IN FIVE BRITS WOULD RATHER GO WITHOUT GAS OR ELECTRICITY THAN BROADBAND (broadband requires electricity to work). But get away from the headline and are there are some useful figures. Apparently 24% of respondents rank loss of broadband connectivity as the most frustrating home situation (above cars not starting or blocked kitchen sinks etc.) and 71% of home owners admitted they would always consider the broadband service in an area before buying a home. Indeed 67% of new home owners admitted that they have rejected buying a house because the local Internet connectivity was too poor. Elsewhere 24% said that ensuring they have fast broadband working in a new home was more important than organising council tax or parking permits. The top five priority utilities for new homeowners are: 1. Electricity 53 per cent 2. Broadband 20 per cent 3. Water 13 per cent 4. Gas 8 per cent 5. Council Tax 4 per cent 6. Other 2 per cent At this point were not sure where the whole go without.. electricity comment comes from, but otherwise the results appear to chime very closely with a survey that we conducted last year on the importance of fast broadband to new house hunters (here). Glafkos Persianis, Vodafone UKs Commercial Director, said: Today, fast and efficient broadband at home is more of a priority than ever and this is demonstrated by the importance that people put on their internet when they first move in to their new homes. End. Major: Communication Hometown: Brazil, IN Student Media Involvement: Syc Creations Favorite Food: Burgers with everything but mustard Fun Fact: He really loves superhero movies, and wants to make his own someday 3D printing is arguably the most interesting, useful and potentially disruptive of the exciting array of technologies gradually becoming available. Its claim to being disruptive is a potent one: Supply chains are predicated on the idea of getting the parts and eventually the finished products from here to there. Indeed, moving things around pervades the process. 3D printing changes that dynamic radically. In some cases, it eliminates the geographical element. The supply chain becomes less of a chain. 3D printing is showing no signs of slowing down. Indeed, it is growing radically. This week, Wohlers Associates released the twenty-first edition of its market assessment. The category had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.9 percent last year. Its worldwide category finished the year with a value of $5.165 billion. The three-year CAGR was 33.8 percent. Perhaps the most impressive figure was the 27-year CAGR: 26.2 percent. Thats a long time to sustain yearly growth of a quarter. Part of the success of 3D printing, which is also called additive manufacturing, is that it is varied. Indeed, it is far more diverse than most people realize: Wohlers Associates reports that, despite challenges, growth continued in many segments of the diverse industry, particularly in metal AM and the desktop 3D printer segments. In 2015, 62 manufacturers sold industrial-grade AM systems (valued at more than $5,000), compared to 49 in 2014, and twice as many as the 31 companies that sold industrial systems in 2011. Innovation fuels the growth. Today, Computerworld reported on a technique being developed at MIT. The story says that printing liquids has long been a challenge for 3D printing. Researchers at the schools Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab announced a 3D-printed robot including hydraulics, which require liquids that can be printed at one time. In essence, the robot can walk out of the printer. The ability to print liquids at the same time as solids is a big step. Katherine Noyes, senior correspondent at IDG News Service, describes the process: Most approaches to printing liquids have required additional post-printing steps such as manual cleaning, making the liquid step tricky to include in factory-scale manufacturing. With the new technique, an inkjet printer deposits individual droplets of material that are each 20 to 30 microns in diameter less than half the width of a human hair. The printer deposits different materials layer by layer and then uses high-intensity UV light to solidify the non-liquid portions. Gizmag reported on another advance this week. At American University, researchers have 3D-printed a sponge-like matrix that eliminates pollutants. This is the first time that a 3D printer has created something that is chemically active. In the space of a week, news items appeared that pointed to sustained aggressive growth of 3D printing and research at two schools that will enable 3D printers of the future and the not-too-distant future, it seems to print significantly more valuable and varied products. This will affect how business is done in deep ways. 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. 5 Ways Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Lowers CapEx and OpEx As the enterprise works to increase energy efficiency in the data center by virtualizing hardware, consolidating workloads and deploying power-sipping components, it might also help to focus on one of the main sources of waste on the facilities side: power conversion. Every time power has to be converted from one form to another in the journey from supply to the consumer, which is invariably a down-conversion, excess energy is given off as heat. The latest generation of switch-mode power supplies (SMPSs) uses a range of switching, storage and filtering techniques to cut down this loss dramatically compared to earlier analog solutions, says Electronic Designs Lou Frenzel, but the most effective means of driving efficiency is to push higher voltages as close to the end points as possible. Fewer conversions, after all, means less loss, while at the same time you get to deploy more powerful components in the plant, which in the data centers case is servers, storage and network devices. This thinking is at the heart of Googles recent contribution to the Open Compute Project. The company has designed a rack that distributes 48-volt DC power rather than the 12-volt AC design on the current OCP spec. Not only does this avoid an AC-to-DC conversion, it fosters high-performance computing (HPC) in the data center. Google, in fact, already processes most of its load on 48V servers of its own design, powered by 48V lithium-ion UPS systems, not AC power from the grid. In fact, the company began experimenting with 48V architectures as early as 2009 when engineers realized this alone could produce a 30 percent efficiency improvement over 12V. Still, it isnt realistic to expect everything in the rack to run at 48V, so development is underway to squeeze as much efficiency out of the conversions that do take place. STMicroelectronics has contributed a new set of power-conversion ICs to the Google architecture that provide direct digital conversion of inputs ranging from 36 to 72 volts and outputs of 12 volts down to .5 volts. The devices are compliant with Intels Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake processors, as well as DDR3/4 specs and virtually all FPGAs and ASICs designed to meet data center requirements. The top-end STRG06 device manages up to six converters in parallel and supports output power from 50 watts to 300 watts. Meanwhile, Vicor Modules has a new 48V direct-to-POL (point of load) system that allows low-voltage, high-current processors and memory devices to run off a 48V distribution bus, which the company says can reduce conversion loss 16-fold compared to 12V architectures. Distributing power at 48 volts also allows systems designed to reduce the footprint of the power infrastructure by using smaller cables, bus bars and storage capacitors, which in turn leads to higher density configurations that support not only data infrastructure but edge devices and even LED lighting. Also, the system can be configured with a digital control and telemetry module for applications that require advanced power balancing, as well as PMBus and SVID control interfaces that support VR12, 12.5 and 13 server processing power. Reconfiguring a legacy data centers power distribution infrastructure is not an easy task. The most logical time to do it is in the normal refresh cycle, which unfortunately is often much longer at the rack level than the component level. Greenfield deployments, however, would be ripe for 48V architecture, particularly in the cloud where HPC infrastructure can be leveraged in all kinds of ways. And with Big Data and the IoT driving demand for both scale-out infrastructure and highly automated processes, standardization all the way down to the power supply may become more of a necessity than a luxury before too long. But no matter how its done, reducing the number of power conversions in the data center is a sure-fire way to improve performance and lower costs. As with any distribution channel, you can get products to consumers faster and cheaper by cutting out the middlemen. Arthur Cole writes about infrastructure for IT Business Edge. Cole has been covering the high-tech media and computing industries for more than 20 years, having served as editor of TV Technology, Video Technology News, Internet News and Multimedia Weekly. His contributions have appeared in Communications Today and Enterprise Networking Planet and as web content for numerous high-tech clients like TwinStrata and Carpathia. Follow Art on Twitter @acole602. In its latest global report on the IT market, Gartner forecasts that Australias IT spending is will reach almost A$79.9 billion in 2016, a slight increase of 2.5% over 2015 spending of A$77.9 billion. Its also a promising outlook for New Zealand, with the forecast showing IT spending is expected to reach NZ$11.5 billion this year, an increase of 1.4% from 2015. And, for Australia, Gartner forecast that in 2016 device sales smartphones, tablets, PCs and printers are expected to fall to just under A$10.7 billion over 2015 sales of A$10.9 billion. Gartner says it expects the decline to continue, forecasting A$10.4 billion for 2017. When reported in US dollars, however, both Australia and New Zealand IT services forecasts show a decline due to currency fluctuations, according to the Gartner report.The worldwide IT market, meanwhile, is in the doldrums, with Gartner forecasting spending to total US$3.49 trillion in 2016, a decline of 0.5% over 2015 spending of $3.5 trillion.The global decline in spending has prompted Gartner to warn that the need to invest in IT to support digital business is more urgent than ever.The forecast global spending decline in IT for 2016 contrasts with last quarters forecast of 0.5% growth and Gartner attributes the change and drop in spending to mainly currency fluctuations.And, in even greater decline than IT is the global telecommunications market. Gartner forecasts that telecom service spending will reach US$1.4 trillion in 2016 but thats a decline of 2.0% for the year.In a further negative note for telecommunications, Gartner cautions that the smartphone market is approaching global saturation, slowing growth while the PC and ultramobile markets are expected to decline.On the massive worldwide IT market, John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, says "There is an undercurrent of economic uncertainty that is driving organisations to tighten their belts, and IT spending is one of the casualties.""Concurrently, the need to invest in IT to support digital business is more urgent than ever. Business leaders know that they need to become digital businesses or face irrelevance in a digital world. To make that happen, leaders are engaging in tough cost efforts in some areas to fund digital business in others."By way of example, Lovelock says the savings from legacy system optimisation and enhancements are being redirected to fund digital initiatives. Its about doing more with the same funds," said Lovelock."Typically, less than 10% of organisations are in cost optimisation or cost cutting mode. However, the need to spend on digital business initiatives in a time when revenue growth does not support runaway IT budgets is forcing more organisations to optimise as a first step.According to Gartner, the most evident results of these optimisation efforts are in the switches in spending between assets and services."Most traditional IT now has a 'digital service twin' license software has cloud software, servers have Infrastructure as a Service, and cellular voice has VoLTE," observes Lovelock."Things that once had to be purchased as an asset can now be delivered as a service. Most digital service twin offerings change the spending pattern from a large upfront payment to a smaller reoccurring monthly amount. This means that the same level of activity has a very different annual spend."In the global telecommunication market, with telecom service spending projected to decline, Gartner says continuing economic downturns in major markets such as Russia and Brazil are dampening spending in both fixed and mobile voice. And a slight slowdown in China's growth is affecting consumer confidence and eroding spend in fixed voice services.Gartner says that in enterprise services, conditions in these same three major markets are leading to consolidation among businesses (reducing connections and spend) - however, it does notes that mobile data spending is a bright spot with accelerating growth driven by improved pricing on bandwidth, mobile app and 4G/LTE network availability.The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast also reveals that the device market - comprising PCs, ultramobiles, mobile phones, tablets and printers - is forecast to decline 3.7% in 2016.According to Gartner, the underlying reasons for a forecast decline in PC and ultramobiles are a combination of factors and are geography-specific, and the worsening economic conditions in many countries only serve to amplify the impact of these factors.In addition, data centre systems' spending is projected to reach US$175 billion in 2016, a 2.1% increase from 2015.Gartner says this top-level relative stability masks some changes within the segments, with enterprise network equipment having a stronger-than-anticipated 2015 as a result of network upgrades. The analyst firm says this is expected to carry on into 2016.But, Gartner does report that the external-controller-based storage segment continues to suffer from ongoing challenges, and in the server segment, demand from hyperscale buyers is expected to reduce in 2016, particularly in regions that are suffering from economic challenges, such as Eurasia. The mainframe refresh, which benefited the market in 2015, is expected to abate in 2016, also inhibiting the overall growth figures.On global enterprise software spending, Gartner reports that it is on pace to total US$321 billion, a 4.2% increase from 2015.Gartner says the operating system forecast has been downgraded, reflecting its expectation for further delays in the adoption of Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016.Lovelock says, however, it is the key emerging markets, particularly Latin America, which face escalating political and economic challenges that are responsible for the slow growth and organisations in those regions must balance cost cutting with growth opportunities during times of economic concern.Gartner also reports that spending in the IT services market is expected to return to growth in 2016, totalling US$929 billion, up 2.1% from 2015.According to Gartner, a stronger IT services outlook for Japan and India is nearly balanced by a weaker outlook in Brazil, China and South Korea, based on challenging economic and political conditions in Brazil - and government actions and weakening economic conditions in China and South Korea. Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars): Politicians excel at dog-whistling. Given that, it is surprising that people are now expressing surprise at the mess that NBN has become, given the clear signals that the Coalition provided well before it was voted into office. Back in 2013, when Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull launched the Coalition's NBN policy, they did so from Fox Studios in Sydney. Who owns those studios? By doing so, they were clearly telling the Australian masses that any NBN policy they followed would do the least damage to the business interests of one Rupert Murdoch. A proper broadband network would ensure that Foxtel would go down in flames. And given that Murdoch has been trying desperately ever since the pay TV station's launch to boost subscriber numbers, anyone who messes with it is bound to invite his wrath. As did the Labor Party when it came up with the idea of an all-fibre NBN back in 2009. The entire Murdoch media turned against Labor and ensured that the party would be booted out in 2013. To be true, Labor kicked some spectacular own goals - but then the Coalition has done similar things in the past and stayed in office. The genie is partly out of the bag now with the arrival of Netflix, Stan and Presto to provide streaming services. But many people cannot think of subscribing as they would be unable to watch anything their internet speeds are too slow. Abbott was not following some new idea. His predecessor as prime minister, John Howard, had the best chance of any Australian leader to give the residents of this vast brown land fast broadband. Remember, during Howard's 11 years in office, the resources boom brought in an extra $457 billion. You could have built the NBN thrice over and still have had some spare change left. (What Howard did with all that money needs a separate article which I will write next week. Given the fact that the man has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of coming to office and using public money to do so some of his misdeeds do deserve a detailed rundown.) Turnbull has long been touted as the saviour of the internet in Australia. Why, during that launch I described, Abbott was describing him as the man who virtually invented the internet in this country. But then Tony is not exactly up there when it comes to technical issues. Indeed, he is quite thick in this area. So what has this great inventor given us? First, an estimate that his plan for a multi-technology mix something like a stew into which one throws all the leftovers would cost something in the region of $29 billion. In the same breath, he said Labor's plan for fibre to the premises would cost thrice that amount. Labor themselves had claimed that they would do the job for $45 billion. Faster, more affordable, and quicker. Those were the buzzwords employed by Tony who is at his brilliant best when employing words in triplets and his then shadow minister proved to be nothing more than an echo chamber. After the silver-haired, dapper multi-millionaire became communications minister, he provided us with estimates that his plan would actually cost $44 billion. Then a few months later, that shot up to $56 billion. Anyone who ran a company budget in this way would have been in the Centrelink queue the next week. But not a pollie. What figure the new communications minister Mitch Fifield will trot out next is anyone's guess. I must check if TAB will give me odds on what the next figure will be; Ladbrokes will offer odds, I'm sure. Everything that written about the NBN over the last couple of years shows one thing: this is a plan that has gone disastrously wrong. It is off schedule, costs are mounting, and there are insufficient technically qualified staff to implement it. Given the way that Telstra has slashed staff over the last two decades, the staff factor is not surprising. A few days back a senior technician from a local company told me that this was a major factor in the delays that are affecting rollout of the NBN. "Guy was sacked a few years back, he needs to train for some other job in order to live. You think he will try to look for work in his own field at a time when there are no other companies offering jobs? It's only now that his kind are in demand. But now, he's in a different field," was how this gentleman put it. Australia has slipped from 30th in world-wide internet speeds a few years back to 60th in recently released figures. But, of course, we are innovators. And we are agile. For me at least, that is sufficient consolation as I watch that spinning wheel, buffering away, as I try to watch a video on YouTube. It's often said that fully-autonomous cars have the potential to avoid millions of road fatalities. But Toyota thinks a parallel effort to further develop 'guardian angels' as opposed to 'chauffeurs' can accelerate the benefits of applying IT to the automotive industry. One of the problems with fully-autonomous vehicles is that they can't be deployed until they are working perfectly, Toyota Research Institute CEO Gill Pratt (pictured above and below) told the GPU Technology Conference. That's partly because of issues related to providing sufficient warning of the need to hand control back to the human driver. Another issue is that Toyota believes people want to retain the fun of driving. So the company is continuing to develop guardian angel technologies that become active only when an accident is imminent, with the intention of deploying them as widely as possible - not just on high-end models. Existing examples include anti-lock braking, electronic stability control, and adaptive cruise control. Such technologies don't need to be perfect as long as they never make a situation worse, which means they can be deployed sooner than autonomous vehicles. Drivers remain in charge at all times (and therefore remain liable for the outcome), a guardian angel never takes on the entire driving task (which keeps things a lot simpler), and people can still enjoy driving. There is already evidence that a nudge in the right direction from a computer-based system can improve human performance. Pratt cited research involving the control of a robot arm via a brain implant where the inclusion of a system that could discern the person's intention and subtly guide the arm's movement, making it easier to complete tasks without the individual experiencing loss of agency (ie, she felt she had full control of the arm). It's not just a question of developing the technology - human responses must be taken into consideration. For example, how will ordinary drivers react if their car decides the steering wheel is being turned too far and pushes back? Trials need to be done in a safe environment, so Toyota has a car simulator that can be used for such investigations and for regression testing. "Many companies are fixated on the chauffeur model," said Pratt, even though guardian angel features could be added progressively, saving lives sooner. "Both are important," he said, so Toyota is pursuing both goals. The company already has a 150-strong team in Palo Alto (in Silicon Valley) working on guardian angel technologies along with around 50 people working on simulation in Cambridge (near Boston). Toyota announced today that is establishing another research centre, this time in Ann Arbor (just west of Detroit). The new centre will employ around 50 people and will focus on autonomous vehicle development, taking over work that has already been done at other Toyota locations. But Toyota doesn't plan to go it alone: "co-opertition in this industry is absolutely key," said Pratt, adding that Toyota wants to collaborate and compete with other car makers, IT companies, governments, and hardware manufacturers. "The 1.2 million people per year [who die in road accidents] demand nothing less." Disclosure: the writer attended the GPU Technology Conference as a guest of Nvidia While most IT people know Nvidia as a graphics card and GPU vendor, the company's products are increasingly being adopted by the automotive industry. Nvidia used this week's GPU Technology Conference to showcase some of the work being done by the company and its customers in the automotive field. The Nvidia Drive platform covers the spectrum from improved dashboard instrumentation to fully autonomous cars, explained Nvidia senior director of automotive Danny Shapiro. Mercedes Benz is using Nvidia Drive to explore various ideas, including high-quality displays that reflect the design of the car (perhaps even adjusting to suit different lighting conditions) using the Drive CX digital cockpit computer (pictured above). It has also developed a pedestrian detection system (running on the Drive PX autonomous car development platform ) that uses cameras and lidar to work effectively under a variety of conditions including bright light, darkness, and rain. When tested against the Cityscapes Dataset, Mercedes Benz's system has achieved almost 90% accuracy for detecting cars, and also detects pedestrians, road signs and certain other objects. Audi is another car manufacturer working with Nvidia's kit, and even though its vehicle recognition system was trained in good weather conditions, it still performs very well when visibility is poor, Shapiro noted. He explained that Nvidia's underlying approach to autonomous cars is to collect data from one or more cars, which is then uploaded to the cloud and used to train a neural network that network is then loaded into autonomous vehicles, where it is able to make realtime decisions. New data is collected by the vehicles as they operate, and fed back to the cloud so the network can be frequently retrained and the improved version used to update the cars. For example, if the initial training was in urban areas, the system would probably never see a kangaroo, so the network would initially just treat one as an obstacle if it was actually in the road. But over time the network might learn that a roadside object that looks like a kangaroo is relatively likely to move into the car's path, and therefore it should slow down. That is part of the 'magic' of deep learning: the ability to build what are effectively complex rules based on experience. Human drivers develop a 'sixth sense' that another driver is about to change lanes dangerously close in front of them, or that a pedestrian is about to step off the footpath - even if they can't articulate the clues they are responding to. As previously reported, Nvidia is backing the Roborace competition for autonomous electric racing cars. All 20 cars will be identical except for livery and software, so the contest is really about developing the best software to run on the Nvidia Drive PX 2 card that will serve as the brain of each car. Shapiro added that one slot will be reserved for an 'AI community' team to make sure that good ideas from outside the nine other teams (which will presumably be drawn from large companies and research centres) are given an opportunity to prove their merit. The Roborace car is expected to make its debut this northern summer, he said, and the plan is run at least two types of race, one where contact with another car is forbidden, the other where it is permissible. The latter is presumably to make the event more exciting for the crowd, although in a keynote presentation not much more than an hour earlier Toyota Research Institute CEO Gill Pratt drew attention to the empathy shown by spectators towards robots 'injured' in competition. Perhaps that only happens when they are at least vaguely humanoid. Disclosure: the writer attended the GPU Technology Conference as a guest of Nvidia The U.S. Department of Energy has demonstrated a 20,000 watt (20KW) wireless car-charging system that offers three times the efficiency of today's plug-in systems for electric vehicles (EVs). And all you have to do is park your vehicle on top of it. DOE The U.S. Department of Energy has demonstrated a 20,000 watt (20KW) wireless car-charging system that offers three times the efficiency of today's plug-in systems for electric vehicles. The research is the first step in creating a 50KW wireless charging system that may someday allow roadways to charge vehicles while they are being driven. The DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee demonstrated the new system in partnership with Toyota, Cisco Systems, Evatran and the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research. ORNL said the 20KW charging system for passenger cars is the world's highest power wireless system. It was developed in less than three years using a "unique architecture that included an ORNL-built inverter, isolation transformer, vehicle-side electronics and coupling technologies." For the demonstration, researchers integrated the single-converter system into an electric Toyota RAV4 equipped with an additional 10KW-hour battery. Toyota also supplied a Scion and a plug-in Prius for the tests. "The charging time really depends on the battery capacity of the vehicle. For example, if the vehicle has a 10KWh battery pack (like the Chevy Volt), it could be charged in 30 minutes with a 20KW charger," said Omer Onar, a lead researcher with the ORNL's Electrical & Electronic Systems Research Division. DOE Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory demonstrate how wireless charging for an electric vehicle works. Usually, for fast charging, the maximum battery state-of-charge is limited to 80% and batteries are not discharged below 20% state-of-charge, Onar explained. This gives a total usable state-of-charge window of 60% (80-20=60%). Therefore, practically, a 10KWh (kilowatt hours) battery can be charged in 18 minutes. In another example, a Nissan Leaf has about 20KWh capacity. Assuming the same state of charge window, it would take about 36 minutes to charge a Leaf from 20% to 80% state-of-charge (20KWh*60%/20KW = 36 minutes). Similar math can be done for other vehicles with different sizes of battery packs, Onar said. The ORNL researchers are already looking ahead to their next target of 50KW wireless charging, which would match the power levels of commercially available plug-in quick chargers, they said. With a 50KW wireless system, charging times can be reduced by more than half. For example, it would take about seven minutes to charge a 10KWh battery instead of 18 minutes and 15 minutes to charge a 20KWh battery instead of 36 minutes, Onar said. By comparison, a Tesla Supercharger can replenish half the battery capacity in a Model S sedan -- most of which use a 70kWh battery -- in as little as little as 20 minutes, which offers a 170-mile driving range. Tesla vehicles, however, have larger batteries that can take the 120KW current from a Supercharger. Most other vehicles, including the Chevrolet Volt and Spark, Nissan Leaf, Toyota Prius plug-in, and the Fiat 500e, cannot use a Supercharger due to the maximum battery voltage and current limits, Onar said. However, the ORNL's 20KW wireless charger would take 3 hours to charge a Model S with a 70KWh battery pack, Onar said. Providing the same speed with the convenience of wireless charging could increase consumer acceptance of electric vehicles and is considered a key enabler for hands-free, autonomous vehicles, ORNL said in a statement. Higher power levels are also essential for running larger vehicles, such as trucks and buses. "Wireless power transfer is a paradigm shift in electric vehicle charging that offers the consumer an autonomous, safe, efficient and convenient option to plug-in charging," said David Smith, vehicle systems program manager for the ORNL. "The technology demonstrated today is a stepping stone toward electrified roadways where vehicles could charge on the go." With ORNL's current 20KW charging system, about 37.5% of each one mile road segment (assuming 50 mph constant speed) would have to emit wireless power in order to drive your electric vehicle in a charge-sustaining mode. "All the energy you receive from the in-motion charging system is consumed for the traction of the vehicle at constant speed," Onar said. "For roadway charging systems, we are targeting 100KW peak power which would require covering 7.5% of each one mile road segment to drive in charge sustaining mode." Evatran, a wireless charging technology company that assisted in the research, today sells a Plugless Level 2 EV Charging System that has an output of 3.3KW, enough to charge a Nissan Leaf EV. Evatran is taking reservations on a 3.6KW system for the second-generation Chevrolet Volt (2016, 2017) and a 7.2KW system for the Tesla Model S, according to Steve Cummings, senior manager of brand and marketing strategy at Evatran. The DOE researchers claim their wireless charging system has achieved 95% efficiency, meaning only 5% of the electricity is lost from the source to the car's lithium ion battery system; it is typical, even for plug-in systems, to lose as much power in the charging process. "The technology is highly efficient. It's actually very close to the conventional onboard charging efficiencies. So we're not losing or wasting any energy," Onar said. Meanwhile, Watertown, Mass.-based WiTricity has demonstrated its own wireless charging system capable of transmitting 11KW of power to an EV. "As much power as you can draw from your home, we're able to deliver wirelessly and more efficiently than even plugging the car in," said WiTricity CEO Alex Gruzen. WiTricity WiTricity has licensed its wireless charging technology to Dell, which is developing its own wireless-charging pad for laptops. WiTricity is also licensing to laptop makers, such as Dell, wireless-charging mats that can supply 30 watts of power. "You just drop your notebook on your desk and you're charging," Gruzen said. "What's unique about our technology is our goal to eliminate the cord but not introduce new compromises such as the speed of charging." The wireless-charging technology from WiTricity adheres to the Rezence specification, which was developed by the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP). The specification has been adopted by some of the leading mobile chip makers, including Intel, as well as mobile phone manufacturers and other key industry players. WiTricity's main competitors are companies such as Duracell, with its Powermat technology, as well as products that carry the Wireless Power Consortium's Qi certification. WiTricity has also built its own wireless power transmission IC chip, which is manufactured by a third-party fabrication plant. Gruzen sees a day when wireless charging will not only be more convenient but necessary. For example, the adoption of autonomous vehicles will require wireless charging for EVs, according to Gruzen. "That is a space where the whole market is going to come our way. When you have a Lift or an Uber array of autonomous vehicles driving around ... there's nobody to plug them in," Gruzen said. "Even Tesla, that has touted this summon features that allows a car to park in or leave a garage, well, there's no one there to plug it in." This Week in Review A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more. Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta talked space aliens today with CNN's Jake Tapper. "The U.S. government could do a much better job in answering the quite legitimate questions that people have about what's going on with unidentified aerial phenomena," said Podesta. About the possibility that citizen reports of unidentified aerial phenomena could be space aliens and UFOs and stuff, he said: "The American people can handle the truth." From CNN: In regard to Area 51, Podesta echoed Clinton's call, saying, "What I've talked to the secretary about, and what she's said now in public, is that if she's elected president, when she gets into office, she'll ask for as many records as the United States federal government has to be declassified, and I think that's a commitment that she intends to keep and that I intend to hold her to." Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, said the 42nd president once "asked for some information about some of these things, and in particular, some information about what was going on at Area 51." Asked if there is evidence of alien life, Podesta said, "That's for the public to judge once they've seen all the evidence that the U.S. government has." When it came to his own beliefs about beings from outer space, Podesta said, "There are a lot of planets out there." "Clinton campaign chair: 'The American people can handle the truth' on UFOs" [CNN.com] Over the past several months, Reddit has taken numerous steps to keep trolls in check with a restriction of offensive content and behavior. The website has implemented a new blocking tool that will help protect users from spam, trolling and harassment. The New York Times reported that Reddit is aiming to mold itself around the need of individual users to establish a more accepting community as a whole. Essentially with the new blocking feature, Reddit users can now block and mute other individual users on the site to customize a better experience. According to an announcement made by Reddit co-founder Christopher Slowe, the platform has been strongly influenced to its openness, but it also had to take effective measures to prevent harassment and help protect users in order to grow the website. Slowe stated, "Sometimes this very openness can lead to less awesome stuff like spam, trolling, and worse, harassment. We work hard to deal with these when they occur publicly. Today, we're happy to announce that we've just released a feature to help you filter them from within your own inbox: user blocking." The shift appears to be Reddit's latest effort to become a bit more proactive in terms of helping a user to its need. This past summer, when Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman came back to the company to be placed in the role of CEO, the website has shown a fairly frequent progress in updating internal process and policies. Slowe pointed out that Reddit used to have before a relatively basic blocking mechanism in place until now, but it only provided users to mute private message from certain individuals. What makes the blocking feature's precaution interesting is that the offending user should actually interact with the individual to make the block happen. When a user gets blocked, they won't be notified in regards to the muting process to less likely create another account to resume harassment again. Reddit in a sense to most users is an "Internet democracy", meaning good contents gets voted up top by the users of a post, while bad contents gets to be put down the post by users. Slowe assured that the admin team is still looking for other ways to take effective precaution in protecting users while they protect themselves. He also added, "Our changes to user blocking are intended to let you decide what your boundaries are. And to give you the option to choose what you want or don't want to be exposed to." I don't mean a lock of hair or a toe nailnothing weird. This Saturday, April 9, one of the largest auctions of Houdini memorabilia ever held will take place in Chicago, held by Potter & Potter Auctions. You can download a pdf of the catalogue. And the whole shebang is up on Live Auctioneers where you can also bid on these fabulous items from anywhere in the world. Why so fabulous? No matter whether you are wealthy or not, you will likely be able to purchase something touched in some way by Harry Houdini, the world's greatest escape artist and icon of the 20th century, in this auction. Do you want a lockpick he might have twiddled between his fingers or toes to free himself from some diabolical device? Or you can buy one of his sets of props that he used for the trick where he swallowed a bunch of straight needles and then some thread, thereafter removing the thread from his mouth with the needles dangling along its length. There are buckets full of Houdini's handcuffs and various forms of restraints, including these metal mittens that will set anyone into bondage a quiver; and a display of restraints also owned by Houdini and later used as a lobby display for the 1950s Tony Curtis biography of the escape artist. Lot 120 features two canisters of 35mm film featuring 26 minutes of clips of Houdini, some perhaps not seen by anyone in 90 years. The frame grabs below are enough to make Houdini collector's wet their pants. The auction catalogue describes the films: The reels contain tantalizing glimpses of Houdini at his bestand at his worst. Scenes from The Master Mystery, including many of the first robot to appear in a motion picture, abound, as well as unedited scenes from Houdini's funeral procession and the moving of his coffin, coverage of his Australian flight in his own biplane, and a number of public straight-jacket escapes, including various angles showing how Houdini was strapped in to the jacket and hoisted in the air. In one scene, he dangles from a rope in Washington, D.C. with the Washington monument in the background as he wriggles free. The Master Mystery scenes involving a chair escape and the robot are spliced together with shots not included in other releases of the footage, and they are also edited in a different manner. At the funeral, Bess Houdini is seen swathed in black crepe. Houdini's brother and Houdini's assistant Jim Collins are seen as pallbearers. A throng of thousands watches as his coffin is carried to a hearse. A number of sequences filmed in Paris are included, and this footage consists of out-takes from Houdini's aborted projected called The Dupe. Material from that film was salvaged for inclusion in another Houdini serial, Haldane of the Secret Service . Sold together with beta masters of the footage as well as a recent DVD transfer of all footage. The broadcast quality film is some of the finest known, and offers both theatrical and real-life glimpses of the great escape artist taken from original nitrate film in the Houdini estate. And there are so many letters, notes, books, and photographs autographed by Houdini that it will suck a lot of wallets dry. These two photos are among my favorites although neither is signed. The first shows Houdini, who had virtually every photo of himself airbrushed into fetal smoothness, in his natural middle-aged statelooking pretty tired. The second is Harry with Teddy Roosevelt's grandchildren, no doubt after entertaining them and, perhaps, the president as well. In addition to the various manuscripts and published books (including the H.P. Lovecraft manuscript commissioned by Houdini and as yet unpublished), there are several scrapbooks including a mammoth one of Houdini's own with his handwritten notes which is estimated to sell for between $25,000 and $35,000 and will likely go for much more. And no Houdini auction would be complete without some original stone litho posters. The catalogue for the auction is immensethis is only the smallest peek into the sale. Houdini remains the most famous escape artist and magician in history. When you see the prices these items sell for, you'll know why. If you want to actually be in the room when all the fun goes on, and the folks with really big bucks are phoning in their bids, Potter & Potter auctions is located at 3759 N. Ravenswood Ave., Suite 121, Chicago, IL 60613 (773-472-1442). The website is www.potterauctions.com. On Wednesday, Huawei introduced its latest flagship phone that features a dual-lens camera that Germany's Leica helped develop, hoping to differentiate the P9 on the market from other Android devices. According to PCMag, Huawei P9 is a flagship device first of its kind. The giant tech explained that they wanted to adapt a smartphone that focuses on the capability of photography, seemingly they wanted to partner with a company that best qualifies in the production of the device. Chief executive of Huawei Consumer Business Group Richard Yu said, "Leica is the leading, premium iconic brand in cameras." According to The Verge, the camera holds a dual-lens 12 megapixel camera at the back end of the device that captures black & white and colored images individually. And synthesize them to make them become more detailed and accurate brighter colors, which a single lens camera doesn't carry. Leica explained that the collaborative effort of both companies working together in creating the lenses and the technology of processing images has gone way beyond in just branding. Leica's Chief Executive Oliver Kaltner said, "A lot of people would like to have our red dot and put it on their product. This is not what we are, we are the center of optical excellence worldwide, and we should take advantage of that knowledge." The Chinese smartphone makers assured that the P9 will help gain its momentum on the market while keeping up with other tech leaders such as Samsung and Apple. In return the Chinese company became the first to ship more than 100 million smartphones at a record jump in devices by 44% to 108 million last year. Richard Yu said, "We have the chance to be number two within two to three years, with market share of over 20%. We have the chance to be number one in less than five years." The Huawei P9 will be released on Apr. 16 in 29 countries priced at $684. Quitting is usually seen negatively. It is a bad thing, a taboo, a consequence. But what of successful quitting? Sometimes quitting can be a good move for your career. Monster introduces three people who quit and did it successfully. Believe it or not, dreaming of quitting your job is a very common dream. A 2007 survey by a software firm claims that 67 percent of people think about quitting their jobs regularly or constantly. Obviously, it is clear that most of these people do not end up actually quitting. So what turns professionals into quitters? 1. Realizing you are not headed where you want to be going Eric Arnold who had an editorial position at a trade magazine, quit because he said he ha an epiphany of sorts. He looked at his career and where he wanted to go, and realized it wasn't where he wanted to be going. So he went for what he loved, which happened to be wine. He ended up at Allan Scott Wines in Marlborough, New Zealand, working for free in the winery and the vineyards so he could learn all about making fine wine. He then wrote a book about it called "First Big Crush: The Down and Dirty of Making Great Wine Down Under." 2. Feeling like having to quit and wanting to try a hand at something else Second was Carla Jones, who had what to all who looked at it an impressive job full of glamour. But the problem with glamour is when you don't want it, it ceases to be glamorous. Jones had worked on a popular reality series she'd worked on for several seasons. She quit because she was stuck in her career and knew she wasn't getting anywhere. She was also ready to leave L.A, so she went to Canada and produced some series. 3. When the job eats away at you Third to quit voluntarily was IT project manager Rashmi Sachan, who found out how burnt out she was when she was on a sabbatical. She was so tired she wasn't being effective anymore. When you know the job isn't making you feel good anymore, it is probably a good time to quit. The whole world is celebrating National Beer Day! And in typical Florida fashion, craft beers are abound and being passed around. In honor of the holiday, Florida's statewide beer industry remembers its economic boom and standing. The beer industry has made quite a mark in Florida. Its economic impact has reached $14 billion and, according to the National Beer Wholesalers Association, has employed a total of 125,402 jobs in 2014 alone. It raked in an employee income totaling to $5.1 billion. The industry thrives on all types of beer but craft beer has become quite popular in the whole state and especially in Central Florida. Craft beer comes in many flavors and types but one thing is for sure, consumers love to drink it and brewers love to make it. Small businesses, called independent brewers, has dominated the Florida industry ever since they started experimenting with different flavors. BizJournals has it that the craft beer group has amassed a total of 16,686 jobs who turned out a whopping 1.1 million barrels of beer each year. The local beer industry has been thriving and has assisted in the responsibility of the state's employment. So, before you sip your brewskie and foam that mustache, remember the men and women who made it possible for you to have that 5:00 PM downtime. And if you're looking to get a cold one tonight, head down to the Orlando Brewing company where the business is celebrating its 10 years in the business, and get a taste of the many beers on hand. Or maybe head down to Sea Dog Brewing Co at the Apopka Food Truck Round Up from 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM. Want to find out what's going on in Staten Island? Check out this JobsNHire article to find out about the region's beer history. Facebook has developed its extensive network globally that it is now used by billions of people but not always with the best intentions. A report from New York Times said that Facebook Groups are clandestinely using the social media network to sell firearms in the Middle East. The transactions made through Facebook were in clear violation of its policy of selling such goods. But those prohibitions are not enough to stop sellers and warlords in Iraq, Libya and Syria and other Middle Eastern countries from buying and selling their hardware through this site. The New York Times also reported that light weapons and small arms were sold in what is called "arms bazaars" in Facebook. It provided the social media seven examples of clandestine groups which induced the company to shut down six of these cells. The social media giant banned the selling of guns and ammunitions in its site early this year, including its subsidiary Instagram. A study released by Armament Research Services was used by the Times in their news report. The study highlights the online marketing of small weapons in Libya. There were also internal reports from the newspaper which validated arms trafficking in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Although six of the seven groups were already shut down, the remaining one was not touched because it posted photos and described the weapons, but did not use its Facebook page to sell them. Actual arms sales from the social media network were documented by the ARES which published their report this month. Some of the transactions were sale of missiles, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, and rockets made through Facebook Groups. "From a virtually non-existent domestic market, the revolution and its aftermath paved the way for a large illicit arms trade to emerge," the ARES study said. "Many of the players in this new market began to use new technologies to hawk their wares. Online sales via social media platforms are one of the tools currently being used for this purpose," the study added. The FBI has not yet decided if it will share its secrets in hacking the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone with Apple. It also revealed that it was only able to hack the iPhone 5c and not any other gadget. The FBI Director, James Comey, spoke to an audience at Kenyon College in Ohio on Wednesday and called their ability to hack the iPhone a "technological corner case." He added that the agency exploited the weakness of the Apple software but it only works on a "narrow slice of phones." That could mean only the iPhone 5C which runs on version 9 of the tech giant's mobile operating system and not in later or older models. "If we tell Apple, they're going to fix it and we're back where we started," said Comey. "As silly as it may sound, we may end up there. We just haven't decided yet," he added. Comey also mentioned in his speech that they bought "a tool" from a third party so that the agency can unlock the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter. "The people we bought this from, I know a fair amount about them, and I have a high degree of confidence that they are very good at protecting it, and their motivations align with ours," Comey said. "Litigation between the government and Apple over the San Bernardino phone has ended, because the government has purchased, from a private party, a way to get into that phone, 5C, running iOS 9," he added. Late last month, the agency announced that they have already unlocked the iPhone of Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. Initially, the government tried to use the court to force Apple to crack its iPhone. This prompted Sheri Pym, a U.S. Magistrate to order the tech giant to comply with the request of the government agency. It precipitated the debate that pitted national security concerns against digital privacy. Millions of Americans have fallen into the pit of obesity with their expanded waistlines. Blame it on the lack of exercise or the sugary beverages. But one thing is now certain, work makes you fat. About 55% or more than half of the workers in the United States have expressed that they are overweight, according to CBS. About 44% have signified that they have gained weight while working at their current jobs. This data coming from CareerBuilder suggests that these workers are packing on the pounds while sitting on their desks. "Most people are sitting a lot, not exercising and have a lot of stress at work in terms of performance and productivity pressures. That stress is often associated with increased eating and binge eating," said Goetzel - a senior scientist and director of the Institute for Health and Productivity Studies. "We're too tired from work to exercise," says one worker. This worker covers a 45% group that said the same thing while 36% blames work-stress for their weight gain. According to national statistics, 66% of the United States is either overweight or obese. This alarming number continues to climb each year. How can companies take care of their employees' health? By investing in two minutes everyday. According to a research done by the University of Utah, walking for just two minutes every hour can save lives. The effects of sitting too long can become long-term. Obesity stemming from the work place can easily be avoided. "Companies tend to understand that encouraging wellness is a good idea," said Goetzel, "but they often don't know how to do it or do it well." Companies should learn to create wellness programs and, Goetzel explains, it should start from the senior corporate leaders. Having their employees engaged in activity and health is crucial to long-term effetiveness, health and productivity. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is adamant in her position that her state has no need of any law allowing transgender bathrooms. Its nearest neighbor, North Carolina, has already been challenged by a mountain of backlash for passing a law that prohibits having such types of bathrooms. On Wednesday, a lawmaker in South Carolina introduced a bill that would require that school bathrooms and public restrooms in the Palmetto State to be exclusively used corresponding to the gender on a person's birth certificate. But Gov. Nikki Haley (R) stated on Thursday that there were no complaints that would require that a law such as this is needed. "I don't believe it's necessary," Haley, told reporters on Thursday. It is believed that she is a potential vice presidential candidate in the coming U.S. elections in November. Legislators in South Carolina introduced the bill amidst a growing demand for the repeal of a similar law passed last Month in North Carolina. Laws similar to this bill has already fueled a countrywide debate, with different states fighting on either side of the fence and big companies requesting the government to recall regulations that restrict transgender rights. If this bill in South Carolina is approved by legislators, it would prevent local governments from forcing private businesses to give restroom access based not on one's anatomical gender, but on the person's gender identity. "Men should use the men's room, and women should use the women's room - that's just common sense," stated Republican Senator Lee Bright, in an interview with The State newspaper. "North Carolina is getting so much flak over what is common sense," he added. On her end, Gov. Haley said: "When I look at South Carolina, we look at our situations, we're not hearing of anybody's religious liberties that are being violated, and we're again not hearing any citizens that feel like they're being violated in terms of freedoms." Federal investigators have discovered major security vulnerabilities in the state health insurance websites for California, Kentucky and Vermont that could allow criminals to access sensitive personal data for hundreds of thousands of people. The Associated Press reports that some of these security flaws remain active and unpatched. The vulnerabilities were discovered by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, and shared with state officials last September. Vermont authorities would not discuss the findings, but officials in California and Kentucky said this week that there was no evidence hackers succeeded in stealing anything. Regulators said that given the number of weaknesses they discovered in just the three states studied, other state-run health insurance exchanges could be vulnerable, too. The GAO recommended the federal government continually monitor cybersecurity at such sites. The state exchanges were created under President Barack Obama's health care initiative. People who lack health insurance through an employer can buy government-subsidized private coverage through these sites. A dozen states are now running their own online insurance exchanges. The rest of the U.S. either switched to the federal site, or jointly operate exchanges with Washington. More on how the story came out, from the AP: Email Links to our top local news stories of the day, Monday through Saturday. An employee of a hair salon described as a "faggot" by his boss claimed unfair dismissal, but a Paris tribunal found that the word wasn't a homophobic slur when used at a hair salon, where people are often gay. The text from the salon boss read: "I am not going to keep [the employee] I don't have a good feeling about this guy. He's a faggot," according to Liberation. They used the French term "PD" which translates as the term "faggot". In the reasoning, the tribunal said: "If we put it in the context of the field of hairdressing, the council considers that the term 'faggot' used by a manager cannot be considered as a homophobic insult, because hair salons regularly employ gay people, notably in female hairdressers, and that poses no problem at all." Lands' End announced the launch of Canvas, an upscale line of clothing aimed at younger men and women. Credit: Land's End SHARE By of the Lands' End has rolled out a new clothing line designed to help meet CEO Federica Marchionni's goal of attracting younger, more style-conscious shoppers to the retailer. The new collection, dubbed Canvas by Lands' End, resurrects a name the company deployed a few years ago for a since-discontinued collection launched with similar goals. The latest line brings an international touch to a company known for its traditional clothing. The collection was "designed in America and developed in Italy, with strong global influences in all aspects of the styling, design and fit," Lands' End said in a statement. Marchionni, who came to Lands' End in February 2015 from Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana, clearly has placed her stamp on the new line. Almost from the beginning, she has spoken about amping up Lands' End's style quotient while retaining its existing customer base. It's an important bet for the firm, which employs more than 4,000 people in Wisconsin, most of them at its 1 million-square-foot Dodgeville headquarters, plant and distribution center. The company has been struggling. Year-over-year revenue has declined for six straight quarters. Some of the sales loss has stemmed from a deliberate cutback of catalog distribution to less-profitable customers, generating savings the firm is using for other initiatives. In the most recently reported quarter, the company booked a paper loss as it wrote down the value of the Lands' End name by $98.3 million. Meanwhile, Marchionni ran into a buzz saw in February when Lands' End came out with a catalog spotlighting the CEO's interview with feminist Gloria Steinem, kicking off what was to be an ongoing feature called the "Legend Series." As angry customers slammed Lands' End on Facebook for hitching itself to a prominent supporter of abortion rights, the company quickly backpedaled and removed the interview from its website. That, in turn, prompted an onslaught of complaints from the other side of the spectrum on the hot-button issue. In late 2009, Lands' End brought out a line it simply called "Canvas." Like the latest collection, it featured slimmer fits styled for a younger customer. Then-president Nick Coe spoke at the time of "an opportunity to extend the brand to a new generation." The company, however, stopped offering the Canvas line in 2013. Lands' End then was part of Sears Holdings Inc., operator of Sears and Kmart. Sears spun off the Dodgeville firm in April 2014, and Lands' End has been an independent, publicly traded company since then. In an interview with InStyle magazine, Marchionni called the new Canvas line "fashion-forward for Lands' End," with a slimmer waist and a "more modern, more international" fit. Price points for Canvas appear generally to be higher than on Lands' End's traditional offerings. Women's jeans in the Canvas line, for example, go for $95, compared with $59 to $79 for traditional. Some Canvas women's T-shirts are priced at $85, well above anything sold on the traditional side of the retailer's website. Most men's shorts in the traditional line are priced at $39 to $49.50. On Canvas, they cost $59 to $69. One of the perks of being insanely wealthy is you can hide your money, so when you rip people off or hide your taxes or divorce your spouse, your victims can't figure out how to get their due. But if you're a middle-aged oligarch whose feckless offspring show off their extreme wealth in social media (see Rich Kids of Instagram and Fuerdai), they might be leaking your dirty secrets for anyone who knows how to look for them. Bill collectors, tax inspectors and even blackmailers have turned to social media to chase down the hidden assets of the world's super rich, finding photos of kids in private jets or partying on yachts or just geo-tagging photos that reveal the locations of hidden villas owned through offshore companies. Sometimes, it's not emotionally stunted, entitled children who spill the beans: 50 Cent posted a photo of himself, posed with stacks of $100 bills spelling out the word "BROKE," while going through a bankruptcy proceeding in which he had claimed he had no money with which to pay his creditors. Beckett said the social media indiscretions of super-rich heirs were also leaving their families vulnerable to fraud and extortion, with high-net-worth individuals and families probably losing collectively several hundred million dollars each year due to cybercrime. The most recent case investigated by Kroll involved defrauding a family office, a private company that manages the wealth of families typically worth at least $250m. An heiress had her email account hacked because the password was the name of her dog, which was plastered all over her social media posts. When she went on holiday, the hackers sent spoof invoices for private jets, luxury villas and shopping sprees to the family office, which paid out $900,000 before the crime was detected. "It was only when dad got cross about the size of the bills she was racking up that somebody thought to contact her and query it," said Beckett. "It is that easy." Fouere said that K2 Intelligence had seen an exponential rise in such cases in the last year, as cybercrime groups increasingly targeted wealthy families as well as corporations. "We had a case recently where the payment instruction was for $500,000 and it was executed," he said. Yachts, jets and stacks of cash: super-rich discover risks of Instagram snaps [David Batty/The Guardian] SHARE By of the The shutdown of Madison's Oscar Mayer plant and higher utility costs are both factoring into a potential rate hike for utility customers in the state's capital city next year. Madison Gas & Electric Co. said Friday that it was seeking an increase of 1.7%, or $6.9 million, in 2017. MG&E is a subsidiary of MGE Energy Inc. The increase would add $1.50 to monthly bills for a typical residential customer now paying $91.17, said spokesman Steve Schultz. What wouldn't go up in 2017: the fixed charge on customers' bills, the utility says. In a move that generated widespread controversy, MG&E increased its fixed charge by 82%, to $19 a month, last year. Key factors identified by the utility include $4.5 million in higher transmission costs that MG&E pays to American Transmission Co. of Pewaukee, as well as the Indiana-based operator of the Midwest power grid. The utility also is facing higher information technology costs, relating to security concerns and a planned software upgrade. Also factoring in: an $8.9 million decline in electricity sales that is forecast between 2015 and 2017. The planned shutdown of Oscar Mayer's home office and factory in Madison this year represents a significant portion of that drop, Schultz said. Earlier this year, MG&E told securities regulators that its rate increase request would be "structured to address the effects of the closure." Offsetting the factory shutdown and higher power-line costs are lower fuel costs. Customers are benefiting from a significant drop in fuel costs linked to declining natural gas prices, and MG&E is forecasting that fuel costs in 2017 will drop 17%, or $25 million, from 2015. MG&E also announced it was asking to raise natural gas charges by $5.6 million, or $3.67 a month for a typical residential customer. The state Public Service Commission will audit the utility's financial statements and request, and hold a public hearing later this year. A final decision is expected in the fall. Last week, Xcel Energy's Northern States Power utility in Eau Claire asked regulators for an increase of 2.4%, or $17.4 million. That would help pay for an expansion in wind energy, an equipment upgrade at the Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota, as well as transmission and distribution upgrades, the utility said. We Energies of Milwaukee has not decided whether it will seek a change in rates for 2017, a company spokeswoman said. Mary Louise Schumacher Art City An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue. SHARE Joan meets the viewers gaze in Jules-Claude Zieglers Limagination. Haggerty Museum of Art Joan is dressed in armor holding a sword in Jeanne dArc (Joan of Arc), a small silver statue from 1830. Haggerty Museum of Art By Very few figures in the history of art vary as widely as Joan of Arc. Depending on the artist, and there have been hundreds who've depicted her, she might be the demure shepherdess, the religious visionary or the strong-willed, armor-clad warrior. Joan, or the Maid of Orleans, as she is sometimes known, is the subject of a wonderfully concise exhibition at the Haggerty Museum of Art. It contains just four works but polar extremes in the artistic portrayal of the French maiden who led the French army during the Hundred Years' War. From pious to militaristic, we see Joan as a cipher for various kinds of belief. In Ettore Montoni's sweet alabaster bust, Joan is the devout believer, her gaze cast heavenward, consumed in silent communique with God. In Lorentz Kleiser's tapestry, likely made during World War I when France needed all of the spiritual leadership it could get, we find a peaceful Joan, gazing off into the landscape, surrounded by sheep and flowers. Contrast these saintly versions with a small silver sculpture on a marble base and a painting by Jules-Claude Ziegler. In the former, Joan is dressed in armor holding a sword that effectively doubles as a crucifix. Her gender is unmistakable with her broad hips trumping her bobbed hair. In the painting, Joan meets our gaze with defiant, ruthless confidence. This is the girl who motivated men to kill fellow men. After leading the French to victory over the British, Joan was captured and burned at the stake in 1431. She became both a symbol of France and a symbol of faith, beatified and canonized by the Catholic Church. This small exhibit, with its polarized artistic interpretations, invites us to consider the ways art affirms various beliefs, including shifting ideas about a single, historic figure. "Joan of Arc: Highlights from the Permanent Collection" will be on view through May 22 at the Haggerty Museum of Art, 13th and Clybourn streets. The exhibition was planned as part of the Marquette University's celebration of the 50th anniversary of the reconstruction of the St. Joan of Arc Chapel on campus. The small structure is among the few European Medieval structures still in use in the United States, with Masses celebrated daily. For more information: www.marquette.edu/haggerty. Graeme Reid is the director of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of Wisconsin Art and a regular Art City contributor. The Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline create quite a view, and an expensive one at that. Credit: Associated Press The City by the Bay is once again ranked as the most expensive U.S. destination for business travelers. But the big surprise in an annual study of hotel, rental car and dining prices is the ladder-climbing by Detroit. The latest report by the trade publication Business Travel News, which measures prices paid by corporate travelers visiting the country's 100 biggest cities, found that the fastest increase in hotel rates 22.5% from 2014 to 2015 was reported in Detroit, a sign perhaps that the Motor City is bouncing back from its 2013 bankruptcy. Detroit's average nightly hotel rate of $198 is still a bargain compared with San Francisco, the city with the highest corporate hotel rate of $370 a night. When hotel and car rental rates and dining costs are added, San Francisco leads the country with business travelers paying a daily average of $547. San Francisco's expensive real estate is partly to blame for its high hotel rates, said Joe Brancatelli, a business travel expert and online columnist. When corporate travel managers choose a meeting location, he said, they will try to save money either by choosing a cheap locale or by sending fewer employees to an expensive destination like San Francisco. "Say you are planning a meeting and someone says 'Let's have it in California,'" Brancatelli said. "Why not go to Los Angeles instead of San Francisco?" Los Angeles ranked No. 8, at $402. Despite the high prices, San Francisco reported a record 24.6 million visitors in 2015, an increase of 2.7% from the previous year. Milwaukee ranked 43rd on the list, with an average nightly hotel rate of $161 and a total per diem cost of $311. Madison was three spots lower at No. 46 with a similar hotel rate and a slightly lower per diem of $306. The national daily average of $318 rose 3.9% over 2014, according to the report. Unusual expense report requests rising, survey finds Most employees have, at some point, tried to sneak a fancy meal or an upgraded airline seat onto a work expense report. But would you ever try to get your employer to pay for plastic surgery, a dog, taxidermy or a side of beef? Those are a few of the examples of the most unusual expense report requests, based on a survey of 2,200 chief financial officers at U.S. companies conducted by Robert Half Management Resources, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based consulting firm. And the crazy requests are on the rise. The survey found that 88% of the chief financial officers said the number of "inappropriate" expense report requests is either the same or increasing. The list includes a ski trip, lottery tickets, rental homes, a spa day and a cruise. The survey does not say if any of the unusual requests were approved, but Robert Half offers a few guidelines for determining if an expense is legitimate. "If you paid for something that you couldn't talk to a parent, grandparent or spouse about because you would be embarrassed, don't try to expense it," the report said. Los Angeles Times By of the A former New Berlin West High School teacher was charged Friday with two counts of sexual assault of a student. Sara Domres, 28, of Sullivan, was fired in January after an internal investigation. Each count carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison plus three years of extended supervision and up to a $10,000 fine. At her initial court appearance Friday, Domres pleaded not guilty, waived a preliminary exam and was released on $1,000 bail. Her next court date was set for May 4. According to the criminal complaint: The student said he had been in Domres' English class as a sophomore in the 2014-'15 school year, became friends with Domres and began texting her frequently. Between Apri1 2015 and January 2016 the two exchanged more than 1,100 messages. That led to an incident of sexual intercourse in Domres' car at a park-and-ride lot on Moorland Road in New Berlin last July. The victim told investigators he was 16 at the time. Then in October, after he had turned 17, he had sex with Domres at a Motel 6 in Brookfield. Investigators found evidence that the boy's phone had been connected to the motel's Wi-Fi on the same date the motel records showed Domres had reserved a room with a single bed and paid in cash. According to her Facebook page, Domres got married in August. New Berlin Superintendent Joe Garza sent a letter to parents Friday informing them of the charges. In a statement, Garza said, "The details of the allegations against our former employee are troubling, disappointing and incomprehensible." Domres is the second teacher facing charges of sex with a student in Waukesha County in recent months. In December, April M. Novak, 30, of Sussex, a former Menomonee Falls School District teacher, was charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old student. She is due in court April 15. By of the A Milwaukee girl who was 13 when she hit and killed a bicyclist while drag racing in a stolen car is urging other teens in the city to stop stealing cars. Illahje Davis, now 17, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the 2012 crash and has been housed at a youth prison in Wisconsin. On Thursday evening, her mother, Delonda Davis, read her daughter's letter to the public at her request. "Growing up I was a wild, troubled kid similar to most of you," Davis read, in a video posted by community activist Tracey Dent. "I ran the streets, disrespected my mother and other authority figures." In her letter, Davis described finding acceptance from other kids and getting into trouble "we jumped people, we stole cars, you name it." She was on house arrest in August 2012 when her friends coaxed her out to the streets again. She was behind the wheel, high on ecstasy, speeding in a stolen car when she crashed into Ronald Forbes, who was riding his bicycle near Hampton and Fond du Lac avenues. Forbes, 57, was on his way to work as a supervisor at Pieper Electric when he was hit about 6:35 a.m. In her letter, Illahje apologized to Forbes' family and said she understood why young people were making poor choices. "Some of you have been abused, some of you have been raped or bullied or lost a loved one, whatever the case may be," she wrote. "I want you to know that I feel your pain, but it wasn't until I hurt somebody and took somebody else's loved one did my frame of mind change, and trust me you don't want to learn this way," she wrote. "You don't want to be where I'm at and live with the pain of knowing that you're responsible for the loss of someone else's life, someone else's pain," she wrote in the letter. "I am begging you to please stop stealing cars and killing each other. If you can feel your own pain, why can't you understand how the person you're hurting feels?" "We are the future but if we are all dead or in jail, what type of future will we have?" This is some of the mail Dale Manesis sent to columnist Jim Stingl over the years. Credit: Mark Hoffman Dale Manesis could be a pest when it came to the past, and I say that with an abundance of admiration for the man. He sent me so many large envelopes stuffed with newspaper sections and magazine clippings, mostly from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. He called numerous times to make sure they arrived safely. Sometimes he wanted me to mail the stuff back to him after reading it, or share with my newsroom colleagues. And the more I responded, the faster the next envelope from him arrived. Dale's son, George, one of his four grown children, chuckled knowingly when I described this ritual to him this week. "I have to say you're right. If you acknowledged something he sent, he would increase the pace and he'd want to send more. Absolutely," he said. I'm going to miss these packets of news from the first half of the 20th century. Dale died March 21. He was 83 and had emphysema. Many times, Dale told me how he ran a memories shop on 27th and State streets, beginning in the 1960s. Called Good Old Days, it was jammed with dusty newspapers, movie magazines, comic books, Big Little Books, pinup calendars and other things he found irresistible. He closed the shop after a dozen years in business when a fire in the building, and the water used to put it out, damaged his treasures. "I've been collecting since I was 10 years old," he told a Milwaukee Sentinel reporter who wrote a feature story about him. "I'm a history nut, and newspapers give me a chance to put my hands on history." His regular job was in the accounting department at the Wisconsin Gas Co., and for a while he ran a tavern near Good Old Days and a restaurant in Cedarburg. What I didn't know until now is that the past 17 years had been rough for Dale. He was injured in a moped accident in Colombia during a vacation, resulting in paralysis on his right side and difficulty leaving his Cedarburg home. So he spent a lot of his time listening to the radio and reading his vast collection of old newspapers, magazines and books. He shared them with anyone he thought would enjoy them me, other reporters, talk radio hosts, politicians. His wife of 58 years, Dina, watched this unfold, and George often was tasked with addressing the envelopes and writing the letters dictated by his father and describing the contents of the packages, with each requiring a couple dollars postage. Dale also liked sharing his political opinions on our letters to the editor page. When he thought the Journal Sentinel was being too liberal, he let me know with a phone call. "I don't know how he got the idea to start sending articles to you and everybody else, but he started doing it and that was more his outlet in life, you might say," Dina said. "I'd tell him he was overdoing it. You guys are busy doing things and you don't have time to read articles from somebody else." Actually, I made time to at least skim the brittle yellowed pages and check out the ancient comic strips, most of them from the same merged newspaper where I now work, and nearly all from before I was born. Dale asked me once when my parents were born, and the next thing I knew he was sending me papers and magazines from those years, 1920 and 1924. He and I never met in person. A typical letter, this one from 2012, begins: "Dear Jim, enclosed are several interesting articles: a great hotel tragedy during the 1930s; the death of a prominent Milwaukee businessman from 1934; interesting advertisements; a great section on used automobiles from 1936; and editorial section from the Journal from 1946." Each envelope contained the tiniest sliver of his collection. "We have a big house with a long basement, and it was packed," Dina said. "He kept them very neatly, of course, and everything he had he kept in his mind. He didn't need to have a catalog for them. The catalog was in his mind." Most of the collection is gone now, sold to other dealers, discarded or scattered by mail to me and others. Especially with old newspapers, people like to return them to the mother ship where they hope they will be appreciated. Dale wrote to me one final time on Feb. 24 to offer consoling words after the death of my wife. He quoted a hymn from his Greek Orthodox Church: "May her memory be eternal." Remembering eternally was a concept Dale Manesis could appreciate. "We have some papers left if you want me to send them your way," his son said. "One final delivery." Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@jrn.com SHARE Incomplete grade on dam While PolitiFact is a great tool for trying to keep politicians honest, I often take issue with the conclusions because they are sometimes incomplete or draw on an aspect of the discussion that is inconsequential. As is the case with the March 29 "Pants on Fire" award to Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele for his claim that the lake above the Estabrook Dam is "to benefit a few wealthy citizens." ("Boatload of water could douse pants"). By my estimate, roughly 73% of the 100-acre lake created by the dam is bordered by public land, including Lincoln and Estabrook Parks and a section of the Milwaukee River Parkway. Only 27% of the lake is bordered by private property. Additionally, 100% of the impoundment is accessible for the enjoyment of all. I rate this PolitiFact award as "Incomplete" for failing to consider that fact. I represent the board of the Friends of Lincoln Park when I say that: We promote appreciation for our rivers and accessibility for safe and quiet water recreation. We neither oppose nor support the removal of the dam, but want the community to be aware of the impact on quiet water recreation in Lincoln Park. We like to point out that there is a compromise solution in a proposed rock ramp that would create a free-flowing river but remediate some of the lost recreational opportunities in the park. David Thomas Secretary Friends of Lincoln Park Milwaukee Apple's obstructionism In the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack that left 14 dead, Apple had the opportunity to be patriotic and assist the FBI in breaking into the terrorist's phone to advance the investigation. Instead, Apple played the obstructionist card, fearing that Apple customer privacy might be at stake. Now, the FBI has been able to hack into the phone on its own. Presumably, the agency would be able to replicate the hack on any Apple phone. The FBI has what it needs as if Apple had cooperated fully. That the FBI would be able to crack the code to access this phone can only be a surprise to Apple if the company held to the arrogance that Apple is smarter than anyone else and is able to manufacture a product that is invulnerable to other bright, determined people. Now, Apple has the worst of all possible outcomes. A hack has proved the phone vulnerable but Apple has no idea where the vulnerability lies and the FBI is not going to tell. Whatever loss of privacy that Apple customers would have sustained had Apple cooperated has happened anyway. And instead of appearing patriotic, Apple officials instead look like obstructionist jerks. David J. Decker Brookfield Affordable Care Act works I would like people to be made aware of some little known facts about health care availability. If a person becomes disabled, cannot work and loses his employer-provided insurance, he does not qualify for medical disability insurance through Medicare until he has been disabled for two years. Two years! He must find his own insurance. Before the Affordable Care Act, he would likely have been turned down by insurance companies for having a pre-existing condition. If you have a serious condition where you require much medical care, such as frequent doctor visits, labs, tests and hospitalizations, you could be financially ruined if you have to pay all costs yourself. Because of the ACA, many people have been able to get medical insurance through the marketplace and spared disaster. The ACA may not be perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. It certainly helped our family. It is time politicians worry less about our right to buy guns and worry more about our right to affordable health care for all. Barbara Karimi Cedarburg Voters voting at the Menomonee Falls Public Library on Pilgrim Road on Tuesday. Credit: Michael Sears Glenn Grothman pretty much said on Tuesday what everyone already knew: The state's voter ID law, which requires voters to bring a photo ID to the polls, was all about power. It had nothing to do with voter fraud, of which there has been virtually none that a photo ID would stop. It had everything to do with boosting Republican odds at the polls. Asked by Charles Benson of WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) about GOP prospects this fall, the congressman said, "Well, I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up, and now we have photo ID and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well." And why is that? It's because the Republican thinking (and the Democratic fear) was that it might help suppress voting by minorities and students, who often vote for Democrats. That's certainly what a Republican legislative aide thought after a closed meeting in 2011, where voter ID was being discussed by legislators, including Grothman: "I was in the closed Senate Republican caucus when the final round of multiple voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters," Todd Allbaugh wrote in a Facebook post. He reiterated those charges in a powerful interview with MSNBC Thursday night. Grothman denies Allbaugh's charge but it's hard to draw any other conclusion. The issue was never fraud; it was always power, just as it was in Republican gerrymandering of legislative districts and their efforts to block government from public view and reduce governmental watchdogs. But Republican hopes and Democratic fears may have been overblown, at least on voter ID, at least on Tuesday. Wisconsin had the highest voter turnout in a presidential primary in 44 years. Voter ID rules appear to have done little to suppress voting in general. There were long lines in some places, especially near college campuses, and some people may have given up and gone home. But the evidence suggests that the vast majority of them stuck it out and voted, determined to exercise their rights as citizens. Good for them. It also indicates that the problem of long lines is manageable. Some universities, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, were equipped to deal with large numbers of students registering to vote at the polls; other polling stations were not. State authorities and all polling places need to have the staffing necessary to deal with same-day registration for citizens who bring their photo IDs and proof of residency. The high turnout also shows that fraud was a bogus issue, and the voter ID law a bogus bill. All the scare stories about busloads of illegal voters being shipped in from out-of-state to swing an election were nonsense. Didn't happen. Investigation after investigation has uncovered minimal voter fraud not nearly enough to change results. So the entire voter ID bill was an unnecessary exercise and just another phony political distraction from the real problems. Citizens were not disenfranchised because they refused to let the law disenfranchise them. Instead, the state wasted time and money on a phony issue, trumped up by talk radio, that has succeeded in doing absolutely nothing beyond inconveniencing those voters who have changed addresses in recent years, at certain voting stations that were poorly prepared to handle them. We wonder if Grothman and his fellow Republicans who pushed through the voter ID law are proud of that legacy. SHARE Beverly Cleary Journal Sentinel files By I was 6, and a voracious reader. And on that day, I had a new paperback book. At the top of the cover in big letters were the words "BEVERLY CLEARY." This I knew was the title of the book because based on a year of reading, book titles were always at the top. I was curious to read this book called Beverly Cleary, mainly because it was written by some person called Ramona the Brave. It didn't take me long to realize that I had it backward: Ramona was the star of this book she was brave. She was my age. And this Beverly Cleary person had written the book. I immediately decided that Beverly Cleary must be a Very Important Author if she had her name so prominently placed on the book cover. Fast-forward to today, and this Very Important Author is celebrating a Very Important Birthday. On Tuesday, Cleary one of the greatest children's authors of all time turns 100. And while it would take pages upon pages to detail the impact her books have made on generations of readers they've sold more than 90 million copies, after all today, I just want to say this: Thank you, Beverly Cleary. I've lost count of the number of times I read and reread Cleary's books over the course of my childhood. I loved Ramona and Beezus and Henry and all of the friends I grew up with on the Klickitat Street of my imagination. These were characters that I understood because they did and said things just like "real people." Most important, I related to Ramona's love of exaggeration for dramatic effect. This is, and has long been, my approach to storytelling as well. "The men chopped a hole in our house!" Ramona tells her classmates in Ramona the Brave. Humdrum Howie Kemp, Ramona's playmate and neighbor, feels inclined to point out that it isn't a hole, "two men pried some siding off your house with crowbars. Nobody chopped a hole at all." Thanks a lot, Howie. (To this day I describe people as "Howie Kemp-ish" if they don't appreciate the stunning storytelling effect of dramatic exaggeration.) But it wasn't just Ramona that I related to. I understood Beezus' firstborn sense of responsibility and her underlying wish that everything in life could be perfect. I loved Mr. Quimby and his unfailing cheerfulness, and always felt sorry about his employment issues and his penchant for cigarettes. (I'm confident that Cleary's memorable line from Ramona and Her Father, "Were his lungs turning black this very minute?" dissuaded more than a few youngsters from trying cigarettes later in life.) I felt sympathy toward well-meaning Mrs. Quimby failed Crockpot dinners, clipping coupons for cat food, serving tongue because it was cheaper than other types of meat, while still making time for important things like sewing toy elephants and stopping runaway second graders. And who can forget Henry Huggins? Endearing for his tenacity, Henry was always going after something...a dog of his own, a paper route, a clubhouse, the chance to go salmon fishing. I couldn't always relate to Henry's dreams (I wasn't, um, interested in salmon fishing) but I could always relate to Henry's insatiable drive to achieve his goals, even if at the time I couldn't have put the thought into words. Later, I met the "older" Cleary books, including "Fifteen" and "Sister of the Bride." The latter had me in stitches ("If she was going to get married in seven hundred days she should think about falling in love, and the sooner the better. Right now. Today."), the former introduced me to Stan Crandall, my first real literary crush. (I mean, here was a boy with feelings! He worked after school delivering dog food to hungry dogs even when the other kids teased him about it. He wore nice sweaters and said "sir" and "ma'am." Stan was a fictional boy worth having a crush on.) I think, eventually, I read them all all 30-some of Beverly Cleary's books including the very last one, "Ramona's World," despite the fact that I'd already graduated high school by the time it was published. Reading that final book was like visiting old family friends people you knew from childhood just the same, just as you remembered, and yet doing new things. Kind of like growing up, come to think of it. It's been a long time since I sat down with a Ramona book, or a Henry book, or visited the world of the enchanting Mitch and Amy. But the foundations that Cleary's books gave me as a young reader and later, as a young writer, and even later, as a professional writer have remained. Because of Beverly Cleary, I learned that, in the end, the stories that endure are the ones that ring true. I learned that even if you populate a world with fictional characters, you can make them as genuinely real as any you'd ever hope to meet in real life. I've learned that you can tell stories of problems, misunderstandings, and struggles, yet treat them with a sense of humor and optimism so that when readers turn the final page of the book, they know deep down that everything is going to work out for the best, even when the heroine has crowned herself with a cocklebur crown. Somehow I'm sure that somewhere in that golden fictional world of the immortal Klickitat Street Henry Huggins still trains for the Olympics in "eight or twelve years," Beezus still faces the world with her matter-of-fact practicality, and Ramona and Howie still play Brick Factory while happily encased in layers of brick dust. For that and for everything Beverly Cleary, I thank you. Samantha Johnson is a freelance writer. She lives in northern Wisconsin. Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch: She is advocating help for prisoners to ensure they become productive citizens once released. Credit: Mark Hoffman SHARE By Earlier this week, I received a letter from Todd, an inmate at one of our state's correctional institutions. I don't know what Todd is in for, but I do know what he's hoping to do when he's out. Todd tells me that he's an apprentice in a CNC machining class and that he's excited for his new job as soon as he returns. Todd is one of the 97% of prisoners who will be returning to our communities at the conclusion of his sentence very few people are given a life sentence. The overwhelming majority of those inside prison will be back on the outside, returning to our neighborhoods and communities. The question for us as policy-makers is: What can we do to set them up for success, so that they make good life choices that put them on the path to being productive members of society rather than returning to a life of delinquency and dependency? We know what sets up someone for success upon re-entry: family, friends, a job, housing and the life skills you need to operate in modern society. And the policies we make as government can equip people to make the right choices when they're back outside. Let me give you a few examples. Thanks to our Wisconsin Fast Forward program, Racine Correctional Institution is partnering with Gateway Technical College to offer CNC machining classes in a mobile tractor trailer turned classroom. Milwaukee Area Technical College is offering special night classes for inmates to learn CNC machining. These are great programs because a machinist averages about $43,000 or more a year in Wisconsin. I've been privileged to speak at graduations for these programs and have heard firsthand from real people the confidence, enthusiasm and optimism they feel. They can move their lives forward and put the past behind them. Jobs are important essential even for successful re-entry, but a supportive community of family and friends is equally vital. Last year, I presented a Read to Lead grant to Kettle Moraine Correctional Institution, which used it to buy DVDs so that fathers could read books to their children on tape and then the kids could read along with dad at home. Fostering ongoing relationships eases the transition when a family member returns to the home after years away in an institutional setting. Jobs and family, community and accountability these are the touchstones of successful re-entry, a topic I discussed in depth earlier this week in remarks to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The reason I'm passionate about this topic is because I see the difference it makes in the lives of people like Todd. Here's how he closed his letter to me: "I know that I have a lot of people who don't yet trust me, but in time I will prove myself that because of my treatments, schooling and most of all God, I am never going back, but just forward to positive things." For Todd and so many others, prison is what it must be a punishment for violating the rules of our society but it also can be a springboard to a better life. Rebecca Kleefisch is lieutenant governor of Wisconsin. 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. By of the As he read the proclamation on family life issued Friday by Pope Francis, Marquette University theology professor Ulrich L. Lehner found himself transfixed by the beauty of clear, precise language and the profound wisdom that flowed through each paragraph and page. To Lehner, "The Joy of Love" was a joy to read, one that he will share with his children. "It's a message of integrity," he said. "I think that's what just gets to me not just personal integrity but the integrity of the church." Lehner said the 256-page document displayed Francis' deft touch in artfully navigating the church's progressive and conservative currents. Much attention was focused on Francis' carefully worded opening to divorced and remarried Catholics. But the broad focus of the document is on how the church needs to shore up marriages and families the sense that family life is under siege in current, modern lifestyles. "The pope is very concerned about the dangers that contribute to the breakdown of families," Lehner said. "He is very well aware of different family models. He is not judgmental. That is important." Lehner said Francis "not only speaks" about the dangers and problems confronting families, but "he gives the remedy: love." Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki was traveling to Milwaukee from Rome Friday and was unavailable for comment. Father Jacob Strand, associate pastor at St. Monica Parish in Whitefish Bay and St. Eugene Parish in Fox Point, said that in the document Francis cautions priests on "never being overly judgmental." Strand said that "most people should know that the Holy Father has a big responsibility to make sure that the church is doing everything to lead the people in deeper communion with God so that they can live lives of holiness and enter heaven. He is simply offering wise counsel on how we can go about bringing people to their end goal of communion with God and holiness by reminding us of the importance of being very charitable and understanding and patient as we guide people along that path." Strand said: "There is not an indisputably clear permission given to pastors" to give Holy Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics. He added that Francis "would have been much more clear about that in the main text if that were his intention." Asked how a more traditional Catholic priest might look at the document, Strand said "he sees the Holy Father as certainly trying to remind every single pastor of the importance of dealing with every single person with great charity. But the Holy Father has not explicitly changed doctrine. It is more so an encouragement and a reminder about the manner in which we pastor people." Lydia LoCoco, vice president of mission integration at St. Anthony School in Milwaukee, said the document was "written for the entire world, not just Catholics." LoCoco, formerly administration director of the archdiocese's Nazareth Project for Marriage and Family formation, was encouraged by the interest shown in the document. Early Friday morning, she received texts from three priests who pointed out various key paragraphs. "People are not hearing support for families out in the world and good for the church for supporting families," she said. She said the document would be embraced by many in the Milwaukee area. "The parishes will welcome it," she said. "Tell us how we can engage couples, tell us how we can help divorced people feel welcomed and loved and supported." This group displays northern pike from a marsh channel of Green Bay on Thursday. The channel and other parts of Green Bay and the Fox River have had upgraded through funding from a settlement with the paper industry because of damages attributed toxic chemicals used to make paper along the river. The money is being spent to improve fishing and habitat for wildlife. Here, from left are: Ron "Tehassi" Hill, of the Oneida Tribe; Beth Olson, of the state Department of Natural Resources; Charlie Wooley, deputy regional administer of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and Gary Besaw, of the Menominee Tribe. Credit: DNR SHARE By of the A massive effort to improve fishing, upgrade habitat and provide better public access along the Fox River and Green Bay has started to take hold and will get a boost from an additional $46 million to continue the work. "We've made positive changes in the Lower Fox River and Green Bay," Charlie Wooley, deputy regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement as officials gathered this week near Green Bay to announce the new funding. Examples include major improvements in the walleye and musky fishery, and Wooley noted that the federally endangered piping plover has returned to the restored Cat Island chain in Green Bay and that thousands of acres have been preserved on the western shore of the bay. The new funding from a court settlement brings to $106 million that will be spent on ecological restoration work in the river, the bay and surrounding properties The Fox is the site of the largest cleanup of polychlorinated biphenyls in the United States. PCBs were used in paper making from the 1950s to the early 1970s as part of an industrial process that polluted the river and Green Bay. In a separate but related effort, more than $1 billion is being spent by paper companies and others to remove or cover up PCB-contaminated sediments in the river. From 2009 to 2015, more than 3.8 million cubic yards of sediments were dredged. More dredging is planned this year, according to Fox River Cleanup Group, which was formed by the parties that are paying for the project. The latest infusion of money is designed to fund ongoing improvements in areas that have been harmed by the contamination. Officials from the Fish and Wildlife Service, state Department of Natural Resources and two Indian tribes, the Oneida and Menominee, met at Brown County's Barkhausen Waterfowl Preserve, where work to upgrade spawning habitat for northern pike has already taken place. The $106 million in natural resource damages was approved in a settlement in February 2015 in U.S. District Court between polluting parties and Fish and Wildlife Service, DNR and the Oneida and Menominee tribes. In 2003, officials estimated that the damage caused by the PCBs was much higher $242 million and $458 million in today's dollars. But they say that they are now satisfied with accepting a lower figure of $106 million from the settlement, according to documents, and believe the "public is appropriately compensated without further litigation or delay." The reason: The Fox River and Green Bay have been harmed by runoff pollution, an influx of invasive species in the Great Lakes and fluctuating water levels and drought that were not initially factored in. Those stressors have prompted other spending in the past decade from federal, state and private sources aimed at improving water quality. "We have learned a lot in the past 13 years," said Betsy Galbraith, a fish and wildlife biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service in an interview. So far, the money from the polluting parties has paid for preserving, restoring or improving nearly 11,800 acres of terrestrial and aquatic habitat. Five percent of all the funding has been spent on improving public access. More work is planned with the new funds. Officials have scheduled a public meeting on those efforts at the Brown County Central Library from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. April 21. PCBs had many uses in manufacturing, including the production of carbonless paper manufactured between 1954 and 1971. The chemicals, which can be found in the tissue of fish and can cause health problems in humans eating the fish, were discharged into the river and settled in the sediments of the Fox and Green Bay. Upstream, Little Lake Butte des Morts also was affected. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated 14 million cubic yards containing more than 51,000 pounds of PCBs were dumped in the river. An even larger volume of toxic waste lies in Green Bay and will not be removed. The EPA says several hundred million cubic yards of sediment and 154,000 pounds of PCBs have floated into the bay. The six parties that settled with federal and state authorities and the tribes and agreed to pay the $46 million are: the City of Appleton, CBC Coating Inc., Menasha Corp., Neenah-Menasha Sewerage Commission, U.S. Paper Mills Corp. and WTM I Co., formerly known as Wisconsin Tissue Mills. Corneil White addresses protesters in March 2015 after they had gathered at the state Capitol to rally against so-called right-to-work legislation that ultimately passed and was signed into law. Credit: Rick Wood SHARE By of the Madison In the first step of a long legal battle to come, a Dane County judge on Friday struck down Wisconsin's so-called right-to-work law, finding it violated the state constitution. The law is by no means dead. Attorney General Brad Schimel shot back Friday that he would appeal and win, noting that every other state's right-to-work law has survived court challenges. Schimel, a Republican, did not signal his immediate next steps in the case, but he could try to get the law reinstated quickly by asking the judge or an appeals court to put it back in place while he pursues an appeal. Last year, Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans in the Legislature made Wisconsin the 25th right-to-work state. Such laws bar businesses and unions from reaching labor deals that require workers to pay fees to the union. State right-to-work laws do not vary greatly from one another because federal law leaves little room for any differences. In a 15-page ruling, Dane County Circuit Judge William Foust found Wisconsin's law, known as 2015 Act 1, violated a clause of the state constitution that says the government can't take property from individuals or organizations without fair compensation. Foust noted the new law chips into how much money unions take in as workers choose not to pay fees to them. Under federal law, those unions have to represent all workers, even if they decline to pay union fees. "While plaintiffs losses today could be characterized by some as minor, they are not isolated and the impact of Act 1 over time is threatening the unions' very economic viability," Foust wrote. Foust served as Dane County district attorney as a Democrat from 1989 until 1997, when GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson appointed him to the bench. He did not run for re-election this week and will step down as a judge July 31. The lawsuit was brought by the state AFL-CIO and unions representing steelworkers and machinists. Supporters of the law say workers shouldn't have to make payments if they don't want to belong to a union. Unions argue they should be able to negotiate contracts that require fees from all workers who benefit from the wages and job protections they provide. Like Schimel, Walker said Friday that he believed the law eventually would be restored. "We are confident Wisconsin's freedom-to-work law is constitutional and will ultimately be upheld," Walker posted in a message on Twitter. Phil Neuenfeldt, president of Wisconsin AFL-CIO, said in a statement that the decision showed the right-to-work law was unjust. "Today, the courts put a needed check on Scott Walker's attacks on working families," Neuenfeldt said. "Right-to-work goes against the Wisconsin principles of fairness and democracy and hurts all of Wisconsin by eroding the strength of our middle class." The case will likely next go to one of the state's appeals courts. It will probably be ultimately decided by the state Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a 5-2 majority. Foust noted other states have upheld their right-to-work laws, but said he wasn't bound by those decisions in interpreting Wisconsin's Constitution. He emphasized that unions lost money and power under the right-to-work law, but were still required to provide services to employees who chose not to pay for them. He rejected arguments by the state that the law did not take something from the unions. "Labor is a commodity that can be bought and sold," Foust wrote. "A doctor, a telephone company, a mechanic all would be shocked to find they do not own the services they perform." He added: "Plaintiffs will be obligated to spend treasury their property on services for which they cannot legally request compensation." Friday's decision is the latest in the state's ongoing labor battles. Walker made his name nationally soon after he took office in 2011 by introducing and approving Act 10, which all but eliminated collective bargaining for most public workers. At that time, he pledged to prevent legislation affecting private-sector unions from reaching his desk. Ahead of his brief presidential run last year, he changed course and embraced making Wisconsin a right-to-work state. For years, union membership in Wisconsin has fallen steadily and in 2015 it collapsed, falling well below the national average for the first time and thinning the ranks of the labor movement by tens of thousands of workers in one of its former bastions. In 2015, 8.3% of Wisconsin workers, or 223,000 in all, were members of unions, according to federal statistics. That was down sharply from the 306,000 people, or 11.7% of the state's workforce, who belonged to unions in 2014. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington last month. Hell be facing a primary challenge from a Delavan businessman. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite SHARE By of the Madison House Speaker Paul Ryan is getting a primary challenge from a businessman who once supported him. Paul Nehlen of Delavan began rolling out his campaign late last week, arguing the Republican speaker from Janesville had betrayed his district in southeastern Wisconsin. One of his main beefs with the Janesville lawmaker is his support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. "Paul Ryan isn't representing our district," Nehlen wrote in a post on his campaign website. "He's representing the big businesses and big banks that pour money into his campaign coffers. It's their agendas he's carrying forward with his votes in Congress...not ours." Nehlen is a senior vice president of operations with water filtration company Neptune Benson and the owner of the business consulting firm Blue Skies Global. An inventor, he holds patents for a heat exchanger and tube sheet. On his campaign site, Nehlen said he volunteered for Ryan in the past, but now believes the incumbent hasn't kept his promises because of his support for "out-of-control spending," stance on immigration and approval of bills that "compromise our constitutional and civil liberties." Ryan spokesman Kevin Seifert declined comment on Nehlen's run. Ryan was first elected in 1998 and became speaker in October after John Boehner stepped down. The primary between Ryan and Nehlen is Aug. 9. 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. Reddit Email 0 Shares By Nika Knight, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | One of the deadliest strikes against civilians in Yemens year-long war involved U.S.-supplied weapons The year-long campaign of Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen reached a new low last month with a deliberate attack on a marketplace full of civilians that killed over 100, including 25 children, and a new [HRW] report has found that the bombs that did the killing came from the United States. The U.S. and others should pull the plug on arms to the Saudis or further share responsibility for civilian lives lost. Priyanka Motaparthy, Human Rights WatchHuman Rights Watch released the report on Thursday. Its findings detailed how the March 15 airstrike on a civilian target was made with U.S.-supplied weaponry, and renewed calls for an embargo on weapons to Saudi Arabia. One of the deadliest strikes against civilians in Yemens year-long war involved US-supplied weapons, illustrating tragically why countries should stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia, said Priyanka Motaparthy, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. The U.S. and other coalition allies should send a clear message to Saudi Arabia that they want no part in unlawful killings of civilians. The rights group spoke to the airstrikes victims and witnesses and showed footage of what it identified as U.S.-made bomb fragments: The group conducted on-site investigations on March 28, and found remnants at the market of a GBU-31 satellite-guided bomb, which consists of a US-supplied MK-84 2,000-pound bomb mated with a JDAM satellite guidance kit, also US-supplied, Human Rights Watch wrote. A team of journalists from ITV, a British news channel, visited the site on March 26, and found remnants of an MK-84 bomb paired with a Paveway laser guidance kit. If confirmed, the use of 2,000-pound bombs would reflect a decision by the Saudi-led coalition that carried substantial risks for civilians, the New York Times writes. The 2,000-pound general-purpose bomb, of the American standard Mark 80 series, is the largest of its class. American warplanes typically carry smaller bombs, often in the 500-pound class, in part to reduce property damage and dangers to noncombatants, the newspaper points out. There have been outraged calls for an embargo on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in response to its bombing campaign in Yemen, most notably from the E.U. and the Netherlands, but the U.S. has remained silent and continued to sell weapons to the Saudis. In fact, the U.S. is deeply intertwined with Saudi Arabias bombing campaign in Yemen, including specific military operations, such as providing advice on targeting decisions and aerial refueling during bombing raids, Human Rights Watch says. Despite that involvement, the U.S. continually argues that it is not responsible for the atrocities committed in Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition carrying out the airstrikes. Indeed, a spokesperson for the United States Central Command, or Centcom, told the Times on Thursday that the decisions on the conduct of operations to include selection and final vetting of targets in the campaign are made by the members of the Saudi-led coalition, not the United States. However, Human Rights Watch argues, the United States involvement is such that it could be culpable for the Saudis war crimes. The group writes, U.S. participation in specific military operations, such as providing advice on targeting decisions and aerial refueling during bombing raids, may make U.S. forces jointly responsible for laws-of-war violations by coalition forces. As a party to the conflict, the U.S. is obligated to investigate allegedly unlawful attacks in which it took part. Even after dozens of airstrikes on markets, schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods have killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians, the coalition refuses to provide redress or change its practices, Motaparthy argued. The U.S. and others should pull the plug on arms to the Saudis or further share responsibility for civilian lives lost. Critics say the United States lack of concern for civilian lives lost is par for the course: on Thursday another human rights group, Reprieve, called attention to the U.K.s involvement in the United States covert drone program in Yemen and its killing of unknown civilians. An investigation found that multiple kills of named targets are common in the U.S. drone program, with some 1,147 unknown people killed in attempts to target 41 named individuals, the group reports. Asked about the issue last weekend, writes Reprieve, President Obama said that there was no doubt that civilians had been killed by U.S. drones. Via Commondreams.org This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License Related video added by Juan Cole: HRW: Saudi-Led Coalition Strikes Market with US-Made Bombs Reddit Email 0 Shares By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | Bernie Sanders campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, alleged on Thursday that Hillary Clintons policies are responsible for the rise and expansion of ISIS throughout the Middle East. His full statement on CNN: I think if you look at her record and campaign, her campaign is funded by millions and millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests. Shes made a deal with the devil, and we all know the devil wants his money in the end. So thats the kind of campaign shes running. She supported the terrible trade deals which have devastated American manufacturing in the country. She supported the war in Iraq. She continues to have a very, very hawkish foreign policy that has led to the rise and expansion of ISIS throughout the Middle East. Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) arose in Iraq as a reaction against the Bush occupation of that country and its punitive policies toward Sunni Arabs, as part of a Shiite-led debaathification. (The ruling party 1968-2003 had bee the Baath Party, which was secular, socialist and disproportionately dominated in the upper echelons by Sunni Arabs). It spread to Syria as a result of that countrys 2011 revolution, which turned into a civil war when the Bashar al-Assad regime used military weaponry on civilian protesters. It also spread to the Sinai Peninsula after General-President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and declared members of the movement terrorists. Then it spread last year into Libya, where the government had collapsed (or rather, there were three). So is Weaver correct? Informed Comment says that he is mostly incorrect. Although Clinton did vote to authorize the Iraq War, it wasnt the war per se that created Daesh there but rather the US backing for Shiite policies of political reprisals against the Sunnis. Clinton did not have anything to do with policy-making in Iraq. Clinton might have liked to intervene in Syria in 2011 by backing the Free Syrian Army with arms and money, but she was prevented from implementing such a policy by President Obama, who wanted the US to stay out of Syria. So you cant blame her for Daesh coming to Syria and joining the civil war there. Clinton was out of office during Sisis coup and crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and had nothing to do with it. That radical groups among the Sinai bedouin declared for Daesh (and then apparently dissociated themselves from it) has nothing to do with Sec. Clinton. Clinton backed a no-fly zone in Libya and exulted when Muammar Gaddafi was ejected. Her main fault there, I would argue, however, was that she set in motion no international help to reestablish the Libyan military. As the militias declined to disarm or stand down, their internecine fighting threw the country into chaos. A small band of fundamentalists in the old Gaddafi stronghold of Sirte declared for Daesh, but they are a tiny exception. You could make a case that some Clinton policies as secretary of state did contribute to the spread of Daesh to Libya, but in my view that is a stretch. Libyan radical fundamentalists were well established in the country, and had supplied fighters against the US in Iraq in the thousands. Once revolution against the decrepit Gaddafi regime broke out in 2011, I fear the country was going to face chaos one way or another (if there hadnt been a no-fly zone things could have been worse, on a Syria scale). Maybe you could find a way to put a little blame on Clinton for Daesh in Libya, but that really is the only instance of it where she might be said to have such culpability. And in my view it is a stretch. Related video added by Juan Cole Bernie Sanders Campaign Responds To Hillary Clinton Unqualified Comments | MSNBC Reddit Email 0 Shares TeleSur | Snowdens call comes after Cameron was implicated in the Panama Papers leak that exposed the offshore dealings of international elites and their fortunes. Edward Snowden called on the people in the United Kingdom to rise up and demand the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron in the fallout of the Panama Papers. Camerons father was one of the names listed as having an offshore account. The prime minister admitted today that he made over 31,000 pounds from his fathers hidden investment. It was recently revealed that Cameron fought against a European Union measure that would have required offshore tax havens to make their owners known. Snowden, who shot to fame after leaking countless documents revealing the extent to which the United States government spies on its own citizens and people across the globe, encouraged people in the UK to attend a Saturday rally on Downing Street to force Cameron to leave office. The next 24 hours could change Britain, he said in a tweet. The newest international leak, known as the Panama Papers, exposes the shady, yet often legal, dealings of the worlds international elite with Mossack-Fonseca, a Panamanian lawfirm that specializes in the creation of offshore shell companies to keep from paying taxes on vast riches. Tags Via TeleSur Related video added by Juan Cole: Channel 4 News: Panama Papers: PM David Cameron DID benefit from fathers offshore fund Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Athabasca Nuclear Corporation (TSX-V: ASC) (Athabasca Nuclear or the Corporation) is pleased to report that is has acquired the Hat Au-Cu East Property. The Hat Au-Cu East Property is located in the Sheslay region of British Columbia and was acquired through staking. The project is represented by mineral title 1043333 and is approximately 2,061 acres in size. An initial objective for the property is the identification of Au-Cu porphyry targets. A map of the Hat Au-Cu East Property may be viewed at: http://www.athabascanuclear.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ASC-Hat-East-Au-Cu-Property.jpg The Hat Au-Cu East Property shares a contiguous property border with the Hat Project being advanced by Doubleview Capital Corp. and includes, among its other attributes, all of the mineral tenure previously comprising the Hackett North project formerly belonging to Alix Resource Corp. The increase in domestic gold prices is resulting in an ongoing renaissance of gold exploration in Canada. Our acquisition of the Hat Au-Cu East Property is one that we believe offers an attractive opportunity to benefit from ongoing advancements in the Sheslay gold-copper district. As we develop our exploration plans for the Hat Au-Cu East Property we will look to conduct local stakeholder engagement. Athabasca Nuclear has enjoyed considerable success when acquiring contiguous ground to upcoming exploration districts including at our flagship Preston uranium exploration project which shares a lengthy 30+km contiguous property border with Nexgen Energy Ltd.s Arrow-hosting Rook-1 property. We continue to look for project opportunities that add value for our shareholders, stated Ryan Kalt, CEO of Athabasca Nuclear. About Athabasca Nuclear Corporation Athabasca Nuclear Corporation (TSXV:ASC) is an exploration company primarily focused on uranium through its 50% interest in the Preston Uranium Project, one of the largest tenure positions in the emerging Western Athabasca Basin. The Corporation also holds other mineral exploration projects including its district-scale Wollaston NE Uranium Project and other select gold and nickel-PGM opportunities. More information about Athabasca Nuclear and its projects may be found at www.athabascanuclear.com. Signed, Ryan Kalt, Chief Executive Officer Qualified Statement The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with Canadian regulatory requirements set out in National Instrument 43-101 and reviewed and approved by Carl Schulze, B.Sc., P.Geo, a Director of Athabasca Nuclear and a Qualified Person. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently expected or forecast in such statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contact Info: Brian Biles Investor Relations 604-329-4421 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. www.athabascanuclear.com TORONTO, April 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Laramide Resources Ltd. ("Laramide" or the "Company") (LAM: TSX/ ASX) is pleased to announce it has entered into a definitive share purchase agreement with Uranium Resources Inc. ("URI") pursuant to which Laramide will acquire URI's wholly owned subsidiary Hydro Resources, Inc., which holds the Churchrock and Crownpoint properties in New Mexico, USA (the "Transaction"). Churchrock and Crownpoint are the principal properties within an advanced stage portfolio of high-quality In Situ Recovery ("ISR") projects which have near-term development potential and significant mineral resources. These projects have been previously burdened by significant net smelter royalties, specifically the sliding scale royalty, held by Laramide of up to 25% of gross revenue covering certain areas of the properties. The Transaction provides both companies with an opportunity to realise value from these assets and provide Laramide with a low cost production opportunity in a tier one jurisdiction. Total consideration to be paid by Laramide to URI is US$12.5 million, over a three-year period, from the anniversary of closing. The consideration will include a combination of cash, shares, a promissory note (the "Note"), and an option for URI to acquire Laramide's La Sal project in Utah for US$4M, the proceeds which would reduce the amount owed of the Note. The initial cash payment of US$5.25 million is due on closing (the "Cash Payment"). Further terms related to the consideration to be paid by Laramide and the Transaction were summarized in the November 10, 2015 press release. The Transaction is subject to various conditons, including completion of a financing or asset sales by Laramide to fund the Cash Payment and certain customary and required consents and releases of and by third parties. The Company currently expects the Transaction to close in Q2, 2016. To learn more about Laramide, please visit the Company's website at www.laramide.com. About Laramide Laramide is engaged in the exploration and development of high-quality uranium assets. Its wholly owned uranium assets are in Australia and the United States. Laramide's portfolio of advanced uranium projects have been chosen for their production potential. Its flagship project, Westmoreland, in Queensland, Australia, is one of the largest projects currently held by a junior mining company. Its U.S. assets include La Jara Mesa in Grants, New Mexico, and La Sal in the Lisbon Valley district of Utah. Its portfolio also includes joint venture, strategic equity positions and royalty participation in uranium development and exploration companies that provide additional geographic diversification and uranium exposure for shareholders. Forward-looking Statements and Cautionary Language This News Release contains forward looking statements which are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward looking statements. The Company does not intend to update this information and disclaims any legal liability to the contrary. SOURCE Laramide Resources Ltd. RENO, NEVADA--(Marketwired - April 7, 2016) - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES NuLegacy Gold Corporation (TSX VENTURE:NUG)(OTCQX:NULGF) is pleased to announce that OceanaGold Corporation (TSX:OGC)(ASX:OGC)(NZX:OGC) ("OceanaGold") has agreed to purchase, by way of private placement, 47,663,228 common shares of NuLegacy (the "Purchased Shares") at a price of C$0.14 per share for gross proceeds of C$6,672,852 (the "Financing"). The Financing is expected to close on or about April 13, 2016, following which OceanaGold will own approximately 19.9% of NuLegacy's issued and outstanding shares on an undiluted basis, prior to giving effect to any shares purchased by Barrick Gold Corporation and/or Waterton Precious Metals Fund II Cayman, LP pursuant to their existing equity participation rights to maintain their current equity ownership interests in NuLegacy (announced February 23, 2016 and August 18, 2014 respectively) (the "Participation Rights"). OceanaGold also has the option to purchase up to an additional 9,303,845 common shares of NuLegacy (the "Option Shares"), subject to Barrick Gold and/or Waterton exercising their Participation Rights. The subscription agreement entered into between NuLegacy and OceanaGold relating to the Financing further provides that so long as OceanaGold holds not less than 5% of the then issued and outstanding common shares of NuLegacy it will have the right to nominate one director to NuLegacy's board, appoint one representative to NuLegacy's technical committee, participate in all future equity financings of shares or convertible securities to maintain and/or increase its then equity ownership interest in NuLegacy to 19.9%, and have the right of 'first offer to negotiate' should a joint venture be contemplated for the purposes of financing the Iceberg project. OceanaGold is a highly successful multinational developer and operator of high-quality mines in New Zealand, the Philippines and the United States, with a stated growth strategy of 'pursuing selective accretive acquisitions and exploration opportunities that are complementary and add low cost gold reserves to our business'. Albert Matter, Chairman of NuLegacy says, "This commitment provides NuLegacy with the funds and additional expertise to rapidly expand the Iceberg gold deposit. We are delighted to have been selected by OceanaGold in its diversification into North America's major gold trends. The Financing will also fund the exploration of our 100% owned/controlled adjacent Idaho Resources Corporation (IRC) claims with similar favorable geology as the Iceberg gold deposit. The 2016 exploration season is anticipated to start late-April/early-May." The Financing is not being offered in the United States and is subject to the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange. At this time, OceanaGold, with an address of Level 14, 357 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia, does not own any shares of NuLegacy. The acquisition of the Purchased Shares and Option Shares is for investment purposes only and OceanaGold has no present intention to acquire further securities of NuLegacy, although OceanaGold may in the future and in accordance with applicable securities laws, increase or decrease its investment in NuLegacy by acquiring or disposing of other securities of NuLegacy, through the market, privately or otherwise, depending on market conditions or any other relevant factors. To obtain a copy of the report filed by OceanaGold required by securities legislation, please contact Ms. Liang Tang of OceanaGold at (+61) 3 9656 5300. About NuLegacy: The Iceberg gold deposit has an established exploration target of 90-110 million tonnes of 0.9 to 1.1 grams of gold per tonnei. It is located in the Cortez gold trend of Nevada, adjacentii to three of Barrick`s multi-million ounce Carlin-type gold deposits that are its lowest cost and politically safest gold assets.iii i. These figures are conceptual in nature and derived from a compilation of 149 historic and 34 NuLegacy drill holes in and around the Iceberg deposit. To date, there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource. ii. The similarity and close proximity of these deposits in the Cortez Trend to the Iceberg deposit is not necessarily indicative of the gold mineralization in the Iceberg deposit. iii. As extracted from Barrick's Q4-2013 and Q1-2014 reports. On Behalf Of NuLegacy Gold Corporation James E Anderson, Chief Executive Officer Dr. Roger Steininger, NuLegacy's chief operating officer is a Certified Professional Geologist (CPG 7417) and the qualified person as defined by NI 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects responsible for preparing and reviewing the scientific and technical information contained in this news release. 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 news release. This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Readers are cautioned that these forward looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. There are no known resources or reserves in the Iceberg deposit and the proposed exploration programs are exploratory searches for commercial bodies of ore. In addition, the presence of gold deposits on properties adjacent or in close proximity to the Iceberg Deposit is not necessarily indicative of the gold mineralization on the Iceberg Deposit. All of the forward-looking statements made in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements and those in our continuous disclosure filings available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com including our annual management's discussion and analysis dated July 28, 2015 for the year ended March 31, 2015. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances save as required under applicable securities legislation. THIS NEWS RELEASE, REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE CANADIAN LAWS, IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES, AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL SECURITIES AND THE COMPANY IS NOT SOLICITING AN OFFER TO BUY THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN. THESE SECURITIES HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED UNDER THE UNITED STATES SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED, OR ANY STATE SECURITIES LAWS, AND MAY NOT BE OFFERED OR SOLD IN THE UNITED STATES OR TO U.S. PERSONS UNLESS REGISTERED OR EXEMPT THEREFROM. [JURIST] Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) [official website], Melchior Wathelet, stated [advisory opinion] on Thursday that providing a hyperlink to images without the owners consent does not amount to copyright infringement. The case involves a website, GreenStijl, which posted hyperlinks to another websites unlawfully posted Playboy pictures. Wathelet stated that hyperlinks which lead, even directly, to protected works do not make available those works to a public where the works are already freely accessible on other websites. More specifically, he claimed that hyperlinks do not constitute a communication to the public as defined by Directive 2001/29/EC [text, PDF], which would make the information a copyright infringement. To interpret hyperlinks as such, Wathelet stated, would impair the functioning of the Internet andone of the main objectives of [the act], namely the development of the information society in Europe. He expressed fear that ruling contrary to this interpretation would open up individuals to copyright proceedings and would thus be severely detrimental to the continuing proliferation and exchange of information on the internet. If the Advocate Generals argument is heeded, the precedent would be an expansion upon previous European and US copyright law. In September of 2014, the EU Court of Justice held [JURIST report] that libraries could make works digital without consent of the copyright holders. In June 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] held [JURIST report] that searchable book databases constituted fair use and thus did not violate copyright infringement. Congress introduced a new bill [draft bill, PDF] on Friday which will force smartphone manufacturers to decrypt data in response to law enforcement demands. The bill was proposed by senators Diane Feinstein and Richard Burr, and states that companies must provide in a timely manner responsive, intelligible information or data, or appropriate technical assistance to obtain such information. However, the bill does not include any criminal penalties for a companys failure to comply. There are severe hurdles that need to be overcome in order for the bill to gain approval, and the Obama Administration has declined to support the bill [Reuters report]. Security experts have criticized [The Verge report] the bills language as being so broad as to target ancillary forms of encryption covering web traffic or credit card data, far beyond its intended scope. This development comes in the face of a bitter conflict between federal authorities and technology giant Apple over the governments demands to unlock an encrypted iPhone owned by the San Bernardino shooter [CNN report] Syed Rizwan Farook. The US Department of Justice filed a motion [text] in February in the US District Court for the Central District of California to compel Apple to unlock [JURIST report] the said smartphone, after Apple rejected repeated requests from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to do so. Apple subsequently filed a brief [text, NPR] opposing the governments request [JURIST report], citing First and Fifth Amendment concerns, while its biggest competitor Google joined its side [NBC news report] in opposing the governments motion. However, the entire dispute came to an untimely and unexpected end when the DOJ managed to successfully decrypt the phone [JURIST report] by its own efforts and dropped the case. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] on Wednesday affirmed [opinion, PDF] summary judgment issued by a Hawaii federal district court denying an exemption to Oklevueha Native American Church of Hawaii, Inc. [official website] from federal laws prohibiting the possession and distribution of cannabis. The case arose [AP report] from an incident in 2009 involving a member of the church who had his cannabis seized prompting the church to file a complaint under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Controlled Substances Act. The Ninth Circuit stated even assuming that plaintiffs use of cannabis constituted an exercise of religion, no rational trier of fact could conclude on the record that a prohibition of cannabis use imposed a substantial burden on plaintiffs exercise of religion. Since the church failed to prove the required burden, the Ninth Circuit upheld the district courts denial from exemption. The founder of the Church, Michael Rex Raging Bear Mooney expressed his disappointment over the decision, and Mooneys attorney, Michael Glenn, stated that the church intends to appeal the ruling. In recent years there has been a movement to decriminalize marijuana both domestically and abroad which has resulted in at least 20 US states allowing various forms of medical marijuana and four states decriminalizing [CNN report] marijuana altogether. In February the Utah Senate voted to advance a bill [JURIST report] that would legalize the use of medical marijuana in various forms such as vapor or edible form. In December Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed a decree [JURIST report] fully legalizing medical marijuana in the country. Last November New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed two bills [JURIST report] in order to expedite the distribution of medical marijuana to citizens with critical health conditions. Earlier that month New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed [JURIST report] a bill into law that would allow for the administering of edible medical marijuana to sick and disabled children on school grounds without triggering the arrests of parents or educators. In June of last year the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a law restricting the use of medical marijuana was unconstitutional [JURIST report]. In August, JURIST guest columnist, Nancy Marcus, discussed [JURIST Op-ed] religious freedom claims by members of Native American churches seeking drug law exemptions for use of peyote during religious ceremonies. [JURIST] Former US Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert in a sentencing memorandum [text, PDF] filed on Wednesday urged the court [Politico report] to spare him jail time and impose a sentence of probation. The memorandum first acknowledged Hasterts past actions and stated that he was deeply sorry for such actions before discussing how throughout his life he has been committed to service and enriched the lives of so many. The memorandum then highlighted the importance of his family and how his prior actions affected his relationship with his family and friends. The memorandum concluded discussing how Hasterts health has been declining, finally asking the judge to impose probation instead of jail time. Hastert is scheduled for sentencing on April 27. Hastert pleaded guilty [TIME report] to charges of money laundering in connection with a hush-money scheme where it was alleged that Hastert was involved in sexual misconduct during his time as a high school teacher. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune indicated that at least four people have made credible allegations against Hastert [Chicago Tribune report]. While Hastert has not come confirmed the allegations of sexual abuse, the memorandum noted that Hastert regrets that he resorted to structuring the withdrawal of his money from banks in an effort to prevent the disclosure of that misconduct [] and that he apologize[d] to his family, friends, former constituents, and all others affected by his misconduct. Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] on Thursday called on [press release] Iraqi forces to allow aid such as food and medicine into Fallujah as the armed siege is producing acute shortages. The city has found itself besieged by governmental forces since the Islamic State (ISIS) made it a territorial strong hold in 2014. HRW is calling on the Iraqi forces to allow aid into the city and also asking ISIS to allow the sick and starving residents to evacuate the city. Due to the siege, HRW is relying on local activist to report information as they are not able to reach the city and have gathered that, [w]hat little food remains is being sold at exorbitant prices. A 50-kilogram sack of flour goes for US$750, and a bag of sugar for $500[.] As the possibility of mass starvation continues, local activist and residents are using social media in the hopes of raising awareness of the growing crisis which has yet to amount to international priority. ISIS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and simply the Islamic State (IS) [JURIST backgrounder], has been accused of war crimes on a massive scale in Iraq and Syria due to their involvements of civilians as a tool of war. In March US Secretary of State John Kerry, in a speech at the State Department, declared [JURIST report] that the Islamic State is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Kansas Governor Sam Brownback [official website] signed [press release] a bill (HB 2665) [text, PDF] on Thursday enacting a new funding formula for schools. The bill replaces a formula that was found to be unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court [official website], which ruled [JURIST report] in February that the previous funding system was inequitable. Justices on the court gave the Kansas legislature until June 30 before they closed schools due to the failed funding measures. The legislation appropriates [Reuters report] $367 million in supplemental general state aid under a new formula that assessed the value of property within a district on a per pupil basis. The legislation also ensures that no school district will have its current level of funding reduces. Public schools across the nation faced restructuring [JURIST report] last December, and that could mean more work for the Kansas legislature. Early that month President Barack Obama signed [press release] the Every Student Succeeds Act [text, PDF] into law. The new measures hand much of the power over education success monitoring back to the states. The Every Student Succeeds Act revises the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) [materials] and removes the accountability measures for standardized test scores that had been set by the federal government. US Secretary of State John Kerry [official website] on Thursday reminded [press release] Bahrain to regard human rights as essential amid growing international concern that the government is engaging in sectarian discrimination. The secretary made the remarks in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa [official website] after the two officials had a private discussion. Kerry is in the region [trip summary] to discuss specific aspects of the Gulf Cooperation Council [official website], which includes free trade agreements and cooperation with Iran. While in Bahrain, Kerry discussed the growing opportunities for military cooperation as well as strengthening economic ties. He also took the time to bring awareness to sectarian violence involving the Shite community: In addition, the foreign minister and I have a chance to discuss the ongoing effort to address and to reduce sectarian divisions here in Bahrain and elsewhere, and I appreciate the seriousness with which he considers this issue. We all welcome steps by all sides to create conditions that will provide for greater political involvement for the citizens of this great country. And here, as in all nations, we believe that respect for human rights and an inclusive political system are essential in order to allow citizens to be able to reach and live out their full potential. The prime minister welcomed the discussion and expressed concern for ensuring the growing conflict with Iran is addressed. The kingdom of Bahrain is considered an ally of the US but has faced growing international concerns about its human rights practices. Bahraini authorities arrested [JURIST report] four US journalists covering the five-year anniversary of the nations 2011 uprising and formally charged them in February. Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] reported [text] in February that nearly five years after Bahrains Day of Rage [BBC report] protests sparked [JURIST report] international concern over Bahraini government accountability in human rights, the hope for reform has dwindled. Pakistani authorities opened a probe on Thursday into reports that a charity run by a militant group has established an Islamic court. The group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) [CFR profile] has reportedly established a court separate from the judiciary in Lahore. Legal experts in the area claim that such a system is illegal and unconstitutional. This type of Tabilban style court is rare [NYT report] in Pakistans heartland, but has become common in northwestern tribal regions. A spokesperson for Jamaat-ud-Dawa [BBC profile], the charity in question, stated that the court is not a parallel judicial system, but rather an arbitration service. LeT is suspected of carrying out the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks [CNN profile]. Mumbai has suffered a number of terrorist attacks allegedly linked to the LeT in recent years, leading the government to consider controversial terrorism laws and to institute special courts [JURIST reports] to try suspects. Cross-examination [JURIST report] of the Pakistani-based businessman responsible for selling the boat engine used by the LeT in the attacks began in November 2013. The year prior, India executed the sole surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab [WSJ backgrounder; JURIST news archive]. In August 2009 India sentenced three terrorists to death for their part in similar attacks in 2003 [JURIST report]. In July of that year India announced that it would continue the trial [JURIST report] of a man suspected in a 2008 hotel attack that killed more than 100 people, despite his mid-trial confession [JURIST report]. Pakistan has postponed the trial of five others [JURIST report] allegedly connected with the 2008 attack. The South Africa Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] on Friday filed for leave to appeal the unfavorable judgment [text, PDF] of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) [official website] concerning the governments failure to detain Sudan President Omar al-Bashir [JURIST report] despite an outstanding high court order barring him from leaving the country. However, DOJ spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga expressed his belief that the Constitutional Court [official website] of South Africa is likely to arrive at a different conclusion than that reached by the SCA and that interpretation of legislation concerning head of state foreign immunity matters must be pronounced by the highest court. In its March 15 judgment, the SCA stated that the governments failure to arrest and detain Sudan President Omar al-Bashir for surrender to the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] was inconsistent with South Africas obligations under the Rome Statute as well as under section 10 of the Implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Act 27 of 2002 and was therefore unlawful. Al-Bashir arrived in South Africa in June of last year to attend the African Union Summit in spite of an outstanding arrest warrant looming over his head to try him for alleged war crimes. On the question of head of state immunity under the Diplomatic Immunities and Privileges Act, Judge Malcolm Wallis in the SCA stated that the Implementation Act passed by South Africa removed any hurdles the government could have potentially faced in cooperating with the ICC. In other words, according to the SCA, there was no bar in this case for the government in arresting and detaining Al-Bashir and its failure to do so is a violation of the constitution. In September the ICC requested [JURIST report] that South Africa provide an explanation for the countrys failure to arrest Bashir when he was in the country last June. During Bashirs visit a judge for South Africas high court issued an order [JURIST report] barring him from leaving the country. Last March the ICC requested assistance [JURIST report] from the Security Council in affecting the arrest of Bashir. In asking the Council to take necessary measures to force Sudan to comply with the ICC investigation, the court noted that without such assistance, the Councils decision to request investigation into Bashir in 2005 would never achieve its ultimate goal. In February of last year African leaders urged [JURIST report] the ICC to drop cases against Bashir and Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto or suspend the charges until African concerns are considered by the court. In December 2014 ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda [official profile] told the Security Council that her office was dropping further investigation [JURIST report] into the situation in Darfur. [JURIST] Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan [BBC profile] stated on Thursday that European Union states are violating international law by breaking their migrant pact with Turkey, by not allowing the country to extradite suspected terrorists. Speaking at a ceremony in the capital Ankara, Erdogan threatened [Guardian report] to terminate the migrant deal if the EU does not abide by the agreed upon conditions. Erdogan further clarified [World Bulletin report] that Turkey will not freely accept all immigrants from Greece. Rather, immigrants will be exchanged for Syrian refugees residing in Turkey on a one-to-one basis. Upon resettling 72,000 Syrian refugees, the terms of the EU agreement will be renegotiated. The migrant pact took affect on Monday, however deportations were suspended for four days due to complications with managing migrants. Deportations have resumed and 120 migrants have been ferried from Greece to Turkey. In March EU leaders agreed to a deal [JURIST report] with Turkey to stem migrant flows, particularly of Syrian refugees, to Europe in return for financial and political incentive to Ankara. Under the terms of the deal [WP report], all migrants crossing the Aegean into Greece would be sent back to Turkey, effectively turning the country into the regions migrant holding center. In return for receiving the migrants, the EU is promising [Reuters report] to speed disbursement of 3 billion to Turkey, while offering an additional 3 billion by 2018 contingent upon creation of plans qualifying for EU assistance. That same month, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi [official profile], expressed concerns [statement, text] for the then proposed migrant exchange program [JURIST report] between the EU and Turkey. Grandi said in his speech before the European Parliament [official website], I am deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under international law. Amnesty International [advocacy website] (AI) also demonstrated concern [press release] over the deal, calling it an alarmingly short-sighted and inhumane attitude to handling this crisis.Earlier this month the AI reported [JURIST report] that Turkey has been forcibly returning up to 100 refugees to Syria per day and expressed concern for the possible future of transported migrants. Might Haval one day be as successful in markets outside China as Land Rover and Jeep are today? Today, it seems fanciful. Tomorrow? Who knows. The export drive has begun at least, and the brands smallest SUV is impressive. That Great Wall Motor is trying out its SUV brand in a market as tough on 4x4s as Australia speaks volumes for how serious it is. The strength of the sun can fade, melt and crack dashboards, split seats open, and destroy poorly applied paint. Meanwhile, roads can be extremely unkind to suspension systems that havent been properly engineered for the often poor quality bitumen, not to mention the tens of thousands of kilometres of unsurfaced tracks. Its hard to assess the durability of any vehicle over just a week but the example that Havals importer lent me uttered not one squeak, let no dust in and overall felt like it had been built to last. Not to mention it had a surprisingly compliant ride for a car with a relatively short 2,560mm wheelbase. The H2 measures 4,335mm end to end so think of it as Renegade-sized. The comparison with the littlest Jeep is a useful one as it shows what Great Wall is up against in markets outside China and just what needs to be improved. The main fault with the H2 is its engine in combination with automatic transmission. When cold, it can be heart stoppingly slow off the mark out of a junction. The 1,497cc four-cylinder petrol unit (code: GW4G15B) is turbocharged and there is a lot of lag. Power is a competitive 110kW and torque is 210Nm but the latter is developed fairly high up in the rev range. Theres certainly a lot of noise (turbo whine, mostly) when you boot it but not a lot of action. Then, a second or two later, the car surges forward. Weight is some of the problem, with the 44 version quoted as 1,575kg, which is 80kg more than the front-wheel drive versions (Chinese market numbers). Its a pity theres no diesel option, which could be a far better bet. Perhaps manual transmission with the petrol engine would also improve things in cold-start conditions. Once the engine is warmed up, all is well, and the handling is much better than you might suspect. The steering is fairly direct, body roll is checked and rolling acceleration is good too. Gripping the wheel also gives you a strong first impression of the interior plastics. These are soft where you would want them to be and everything is perfectly aligned, while all the doors shut with a solid clunk. The HVAC controls are a bit 1990s, as is the matte silver finish on the door pulls but none of that is going to affect the durability. The only thing I would say the interior lacks is somewhere to store drinks bottles of one litre or larger: the door pockets are too narrow and the cupholders need a larger diameter. If you have kids I would avoid the light interior but the back doors have room for water bottles and there are seat-back nets for iPads. Plus, there are two more cupholders in the flip-down armrest. Theres a lot of branding in and on the H2 but when theres 24 million new vehicles appearing on Chinas roads as happened in 2015, you can see why. The word HAVAL is on the front, sides and twice on the tailgate, all in big letters, and also on the wheels. Theres no symbol, instead HAVAL is in silver on a red background. Inside, the word is in red on the lid of a flip-top ashtray in the drivers door, and this is the same colour as youll find illuminated as a puddle lamp when you unlock the car and the mirrors swivel into place. On the subject of ashtrays, there is a cigarette lighter inside a compartment in front of the auto transmission selector. The glossy finish and hard to reach location of this cubby meant it wouldnt be suitable as an ashtray, so instead there is a flip-top container in the drivers door. Guess whats on its top? HAVAL. As a good value car for a small family, you can certainly make a case for the H2, and the styling seems to work too: a few people had a look at it on Sydneys main Pacific Highway arterial route, changing lanes to see what it was, and the same happened when I parked in the city centre. And to answer the obvious question: in Australia at least, the importer says the brand name should be pronounced to rhyme with gravel. No local sales data for Haval in the Australian market were available at the time of writing but the H2 is part of a three-model line-up as part of the brands recent local introduction. In China, the H6 is selling stronger than ever, with the Haval brand up by 30% in February, the most recent month for which numbers are available. A total of 50,017 Haval vehicles were delivered during the second month of the year and 124,182 in the first two months. The H6 comprised 33,062 of the February number, enough to make it Chinas third best seller. As for the H2, it managed 11,022 registrations, and 28,290 over the two months, making it the best selling B-SUV. Three people are facing charges following a police chase early Friday morning. Cedar Rapids police report investigating a suspicious person at the Fairfield Inn, 605 32nd Avenue SW around 1:15 a.m. Officers arrested 32-year-old Dustin Mason and 35-year-old Lenea Flores for drug possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. Police said a suspect drove off with officers in pursuit. The pursuit ended near U.S. 151 and Stallman Drive in Fairfax. Officers arrested 42-year-old Bobby Witt possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia, as well as multiple traffic violations, and eluding. Argentina's President Mauricio Macri gives a statement at the government house in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, April 7, 2016. An Argentine prosecutor on Thursday asked for an investigation into President Mauricio Macri's role in offshore companies, adding to the global fallout from a massive leak of documents from a Panama law firm. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) What kind of discounts do car insurance companies offer, and how do I make sure Im getting credit for all of the breaks I deserve? Youll get some auto insurance discounts automatically, such as a break for adding another type of insurance with the same company (such as homeowners, renters or life insurance, which typically earns you a 5% to 20% discount), or a 15% to 25% break if you havent had an at-fault accident for three years or more. But you may have to tell your insurer that you qualify for other breaks. Get a list of discounts, and let your insurer or agent know if you meet the criteria for any of them. Many insurers list discounts on their website (including State Farm (opens in new tab) and Allstate (opens in new tab)), although the specifics can vary by state. Some states, such as Michigan (opens in new tab), list insurers discounts in their car insurance buyers guides. See the State & Jurisdictions map at NAIC.org (opens in new tab) for links to your states insurance department. If you have a young driver on your policy, for example, and she is getting good grades, let your insurance company know. You may be able to save up to 25% if she has a B average or better in high school or college; some insurers also look at class rank. (State Farms discount lasts until children reach age 25.) And tell your insurer if your child took a drivers education class; that could be worth a break of up to 10%. Also let your insurer know if your child moves away to college and doesnt take a car. Your rates may drop, but your child will still have coverage if she uses the car when she is home during vacations and holidays. Allstate, for example, offers a break of up to 35% if your child moves at least 100 miles away from home for school and doesnt take a car. Subscribe to Kiplingers Personal Finance Be a smarter, better informed investor. Save up to 74% Sign up for Kiplingers Free E-Newsletters Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplingers expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail. Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplingers expert advice - straight to your e-mail. Sign up Tell your insurance company if you switch jobs. Farmers Insurance gives discounts of 10% to 15% to members of certain occupations, such as educators, attorneys, accountants, physicians and law-enforcement personnel. You may also get a break if you have a shorter commute, switch to public transportation or join a carpool. Retirees age 55 and older can get a discount of up to 10% from Allstate. Taking a few extra steps may save you money, too. For example, drivers age 55 and older who take a defensive driving course can get a discount of 5% to 15%. State Farm offers a 15% discount for drivers younger than age 25 who participate in the companys Steer Clear driver-safety program and have had no at-fault accidents or moving violations during the past three years. Many insurers offer a discount if you sign up for paperless billing or if you pay your premiums in a lump sum rather than monthly. Consider participating in a data-tracking program, such as Progressives Snapshot, Allstates Drivewise or State Farms Drive Safe & Save, if you dont drive a lot of miles and practice safe driving habits. You could save 5% to 50% on premiums. With these programs, you plug a device into your car (or use your smartphone) so the company can monitor your driving habits. Your rate is based on your mileage, how often you drive late at night, and practices such as hard braking and rapid acceleration. You may get a break just for signing up for the program. Endeavour Silver Reports Decline In 1Q Production, In Line With Guidance Endeavour Silver Corp. (TSX: EDR; NYSE: EXK) reports first-quarter silver production at its three Mexican mines was lower quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, in line with the companys 2016 guidance. Silver production was down 17% year-on-year to 1.5 million ounces and gold production was up 1% to 15,960 ounces, resulting in an 8% drop in silver-equivalent production to 2.7 million ounces using a 75-to-1 silver-gold ratio. "Our plan for 2016 is to focus on profit margin by minimizing all-in sustaining costs and improving after-tax free cash flow at each mine, says Bradford Cooke, chief executive officer. That means investing less on exploration and development, primarily at El Cubo and Bolanitos, as well as evaluating new opportunities to reduce operating costs at each mine. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com Goldcorp Announces Investment in Probe Metals Friday April 08, 2016 0815 Goldcorp Inc. (TSX: G, NYSE: GG) announces that it has entered into an agreement with Probe Metals Inc. (TSXV: PRB) in which it will subscribe for 4.4 million Probe Metals shares at 66 Canadian cents each for just over C$2.9 million. This represents approximately 12.6% of the current outstanding Probe Metals Shares. The acquisition is conditional on the closing of the acquisition of Adventure Gold Inc. by Probe Metals, Goldcorp says. Goldcorp already owns 6.2 million Probe Metals shares. The Probe Metals shares are being acquired for investment purposes, Goldcorp says. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication. kitco news (Kitco News) - Gold prices are just a bit weaker in early U.S. trading Friday, as some risk appetite has returned to end the trading week. June Comex gold was last down $1.80 at $1,235.70 an ounce. May Comex silver was last up $0.052 at $15.21 an ounce. World stock markets were mostly firmer overnight and U.S. stock indexes are pointed toward higher openings when the day session begins in New York. Crude oil prices are higher Friday and that is helping out the equities market bulls. The past few months have seen stock markets daily price action heavily influenced by the daily price movements in crude oil. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen late Thursday gave a speech in New York that assuaged many who are worried about the U.S. slipping back into economic recession. This is an economy thats on a solid course, not a bubble economy, said Yellen. Former Fed chairmen Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan also spoke at the event in New York, and they echoed Yellens upbeat assessment of the U.S. economy. The central banks chairs comments late Thursday are a slightly bearish element putting some pressure on safe-haven gold today. The worlds major central banks continue to be the dominant forces behind world stock, financial and currency markets price movements. From the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Peoples Bank of China, to the Bank of Japan, it seems that central banks every monetary policy decision, or lack thereof, holds the markets hostage. U.S. economic data due for release Friday is light and includes the monthly wholesale trade report. (Note: Follow me on Twitter--@jimwyckoff--for breaking market news.) Wyckoffs Daily Risk Rating: 2.5 (Trader and investor market risk aversion is not 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, June gold futures bulls have the overall near-term technical advantage and are showing resilience. Bulls next upside near-term price breakout objective is to produce a close above solid technical resistance at $1,250.00. Bears' next near-term downside price breakout objective is closing prices below solid technical support at the March low of $1,207.70. First resistance is seen at Thursdays high of $1,245.00 and then at $1,250.00. First support is seen at the overnight low of $1,231.00 and then at Thursdays low of $1,224.00. Wyckoffs Market Rating: 6.5 May silver bulls and bears are on a level overall near-term technical playing field. Silver bulls next upside price breakout objective is closing futures prices above solid technical resistance at last weeks high of $15.55 an ounce. The next downside price breakout objective for the bears is closing prices below solid support at $14.61. First resistance is at Thursdays high of $15.365 and then at $15.55. Next support is seen at $15.00 and then at last weeks low of $14.785. Wyckoff's Market Rating: 5.0. By Jim Wyckoff, contributing to Kitco News; jwyckoff@kitco.com Follow @KitcoNewsNOW javascript:window.document.newsAddEditForm.submit(); (Kitco News) - Most mining shares that trade in North America rose during the first four days of the week, helped by higher gold and silver prices, with smaller to intermediate-sized companies being the biggest gainers. Copper producers tended to get knocked down as the price of the red metal fell. As of late Thursday, Comex June gold futures were at $1,242 an ounce, a gain of $18.40, or 1.5%, for the week so far. Comex May silver was up 18 cents, or 1.2%, for the first four days of the week at $15.23. During that same time span, the NYSE Arca Gold Bugs index (HUI) was up 6.4004 points, or 3.6%, to 186.3126. The Market Vectors Gold Miners exchange-traded fund (GDX), which consists of stocks of gold-mining companies, rose 66 cents, or 3.3%, to $20.78 per share. Shares of Excellon Resources (TSX: EXN) continued its surge from recent weeks, this time climbing 17 cents, or 28%. Excellon operates the high-grade La Platosa silver mine in Mexico. The company has embarked upon a new optimization plan to manage water issues at the mine, which officials say should hike output while slashing costs. This week, Excellon announced the closing of a non-brokered equity private-placement by well-known precious-metals investor Eric Sprott, resulting in proceeds of C$3 million. Excellon Resources Inc. Arizona Mining (TSX: AZ), a mineral exploration and development company looking to develop its Hermosa project in Arizona, saw its shares climb another 16 cents, or 20%. The company got some favorable analyst comments. Bear Creek Mining Corp. (TSXV: BCM) rose 17cents, or 13%. Seabridge Gold (NYSE: SA) jumped $1.49, or 13%. OceanaGold Corp. (TSX: OGC) climbed 44 cents, or 12%. The company last week received a five-year extension for the exploration period under its financial or technical assistance agreement in the Philippines. The company also reported that gold reserves increased 80% year-on-year mainly as a result of the additional reserves from the Waihi and Haile gold mines that were acquired. This week, OceanaGold reported a C$6.67 investment in shares of NuLegacy Gold Corp. Silvercorp Metals Inc. (TSX: SVM), a Canadian company with multiple mines in China, was up 23 cents, or 12%. Centamin (TSX: CEE) added 19 cents, or 11%. The company reported preliminary first-quarter gold production from its Sukari gold mine in Egypt of 125,268 ounces, which was a 6.5% increase from the previous quarter and a 15.7% increase year-on-year. "These production results reflect a solid start to the year for Sukari and support our forecast 2016 production of 470,000 ounces of gold, said Andrew Pardey, chief executive officer. Guyana Goldfields Inc. (TSX: GUY) rose 51 cents, or 11%. The company said first-quarter output was 41,281 ounces at its Aurora mine in Guyana. The amount of ore mined for the year so far exceeds plan by 38%, the firm said. The mine achieved first production mid-2015. Overall, the result represents an encouraging first step towards achieving 2016 production guidance of 130,000-150,000 ounces, said BMO Capital Markets, describing the news as positive. Kinross Gold Corp. (NYSE: KGC) rose for the second week in a row after saying it will go ahead with the phase-one expansion of the Tasiast mine in Mauritania, which got favorable analyst reviews. Shares gained 31 cents, or 9%. Most of the weeks biggest decliners are in the copper business, as copper fell during the first four days of the week. As of late Thursday, Comex May copper was down during this period by 9 cents, or 4.1 %, to $2.0790 a pound. First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM), which is known as one of the worlds larger copper producers, fell $1.27, or 19%. Citi Research maintained a neutral rating of the stock, commenting that the commodity price environment remains weak and First Quantum shares have already rallied sharply since the January lows. Pacific Booker Minerals (TSXV: BKM) lost 16 cents, or 13%. The company is in the advanced stage of developing a copper/gold/molybdenum deposit on the Morrison property in British Columbia. The company this week announced intentions to voluntarily withdraw shares from NYSE MKT as part of an ongoing emphasis on costs control. Copper Mountain Mining Corp. (TSX: CUM) shed 7 cents, or 13%. Yet another copper producer, Nevsun Resources Ltd. (TSX: NSU), fell 47 cents, or 11%. Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX), the worlds largest publicly-traded copper company that is also in the gold, molybdenum and energy businesses, fell $1.04, or 11%. The company this week announced a new organizational structure for its energy division, including the departure of the top executive at Freeport-McMoRan Oil & Gas. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com Follow @KitcoNewsNOW Editors Note: With the U.S. elections just eight months away, it is important for investors to start considering how each presidential candidate could potentially affect their portfolio, particularly their gold investments. Kitco News has launched a new series Gold-Ocracy that asks veteran industry experts how they think Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and of course, Donald Trump could affect the global economyand gold. Stay tuned every Friday as a new expert opinion is unveiled and as they share who they think would be best for gold and stock markets, as well as who they think the Federal Reserve fears most at the White House. (Kitco News) - For week two of the series, Kitco News spoke with 25-year veteran commodities trader Vince Lanci, who says Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could both benefit gold, although for different reasons. He also gives a breakdown of three of the most talked-about candidates in the running. You can also catchup on previous articles: Week 1 of the series included comments from famed financial commentator Dennis Gartman. of the series included comments from famed financial commentator Dennis Gartman. Week 3 included insights from famed libertarian and contrarian investor Doug Casey. included insights from famed libertarian and contrarian investor Doug Casey. Week 4 had longtime trend forecaster Gerald Celente saying Wall Street would be delighted with Clinton in the White House had longtime trend forecaster Gerald Celente saying Wall Street would be delighted with Clinton in the White House Week 5 shares insights from famed economist Mark Skousen, who says Clinton is the less likely candidate to rock the Fed's boat. shares insights from famed economist Mark Skousen, who says Clinton is the less likely candidate to rock the Fed's boat. Week 6 check out market visionary Keith Fitz-Gerald comments on the U.S. presidential candidates and why he thinks the U.S. central bank may not be too happy about Trump's lead. check out market visionary Keith Fitz-Gerald comments on the U.S. presidential candidates and why he thinks the U.S. central bank may not be too happy about Trump's lead. Week 7 read now to find out why veteran market watcher Rick Rule thinks Trump & Clinton would both help gold. read now to find out why veteran market watcher Rick Rule thinks Trump & Clinton would both help gold. Week 8 read now to find out why Dundees chief economist Martin Murenbeeld thinks Trump would likely hurt the dollar, and thus gold. Expert: Vince Lanci Claim to Fame: Founder, Echobay Partners LLC Which presidential candidate would be best for gold? Why? If I had to choose one candidate that would be best for gold, it would be Hillary, Lanci said. Her State Department left Ukraine, Libya, Iraq and Syria in complete chaos. We are just reaping it now. Instability and war drives up gold as faith evaporates in human institutions, which de facto back fiat paper currency. He added, however, that Donald Trump would be the better candidate for gold if he could win and if his Spend America Back To Greatness ideas were to ever pass Congress. Presidential Candidates: Trump vs. Clinton vs. Sanders #TrumpTowerWhiteHouseCondos? He is a builder/contractor at his core and he will SPEND on infrastructure like a drunken sailor. He will try to pass a stimulus package that makes FDR look like a piker, Lanci said. Imagine handing the U.S. Treasury to a real estate developer? ... Sky (literally) is the limit. Global monetary policy via ZIRP (zero interest-rate policy) or negative rates have failed. It will continue to fail. Fiscal stimulus is needed. That's where Donald excels. What would a Hillary Presidency look like? Gridlock. Investigations. Fox vs. MSNBC. More ZIRP, more QE, no organic growth, more stagnation and deficits. More global money printing. Higher stock prices if she wins, Lanci predicted. Is Sen. Bernie Sanders Just Another Ron Paul? He supported recent Audit the Fed bills and at one time, actually introduced the original bill with Ron Paul. He's been very critical of Wall Street, Lanci said. Sanders affect on gold? Unsure. Higher spending for sure, but increases in taxes might undermine the velocity of money and hurt gold, Lanci noted. As final remarks, Lanci focused on the two leading candidates in each political party: Clinton and Trump. Who would he prefer to see in the White House? I'll take Hillary for what she has already done globally vs. Donald for what he might do domestically. But. "I'm tired of choosing the lesser of evils among candidates. I'd vote for a potted plant before any of them. Show me a person that exemplifies the greater good and I'd pick them," Lanci said. By Sarah Benali of Kitco News; sbenali@kitco.com Follow @SdBenali Troy Erickson prepares his bus on Kitsap Transit's number 11 route on Thursday. The agency is experiencing a driver shortage, due largely to an unusual combination of long-term illnesses, vacations and routine sick calls. SHARE Sandy Starkey, 68, of Silverdale, had a bus canceled this week due to transit's rider shortage. She worries about people who rely on the buses to get to doctors appointments. Kitsap Transit driver Troy Erickson waits for a light to change in Bremerton on Thursday. Kitsap Transit driver Troy Erickson waits for a light to change in Bremerton on Thursday. Kitsap Transit passenger Mark Salzwedel rides the No. 11 bus in West Bremerton on Thursday. By Ed Friedrich of the Kitsap Sun BREMERTON Kitsap Transit isn't the only outfit hurting for bus drivers. Agencies nationwide are feeling the pinch. School districts are facing an even tougher time. Kitsap Transit warned riders Monday that routes could be cut with little notice because of a driver shortage. On a normal day, about 10 drivers are off for vacation, sickness or other reasons. Their shifts can easily be covered. Lately, there have been three times that many. An unusually high number are out with long-term illnesses, some call in sick and others had preplanned vacations. "Now you suddenly start having 30, and we don't have enough drivers to draw from," said executive director John Clauson. "We can't hire 30 operators to sit around for these anomalies." He'd have a hard time hiring 30 drivers even if he wanted. In 2015, Kitsap Transit averaged 27 applicants per month. This year it's down to 15. Fourteen people were invited to the latest training period. Seven showed up. A few of those dropped out before finishing. Competition for employees is fierce with the hot Seattle market and closer to home at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. "We are actively doing things to try to get more folks coming in the door, but we're faced with the same challenges others are in the growing economy," Clauson said. Bus driver pay is decent, ranging from $19.81 to $26.55 an hour, with good benefits. But it's not as good as it seems. Drivers choose work packages based on seniority. New hires get whatever hours and routes are left. Some small routes were shut down this week, but nobody was stranded, Clauson said. Sandy Starkey waited for her bus to arrive Tuesday in Silverdale. "I'm sitting there and I'm sitting there," she said, thinking the bus more likely broke down than was delayed by the driver shortage. "I called (customer service) and they said we're not running a bus at this hour but next hour. I said what about appointments? They said we're sorry." Fortunately she didn't have a doctor's appointment and her plans were adaptable. The 67-year-old is a disabled veteran, but can walk between bus stops. She's concerned about friends who can't. She also wonders how riders are supposed to know if their bus is canceled. If they have a smartphone, they can sign up for email or text message alerts. All state transit agencies are having difficulty hiring drivers, said Justin Leighton, executive director of Washington State Transit Association. He hadn't heard of instances where it affected their schedules, however. It's the result of an aging workforce, service growth and a stronger economy. "When you have regular attrition, vacation days and sick days, a lot of transit agencies are starting to see a need for drivers to become a high priority," he said. "You're starting to see an emphasis on hiring and training these drivers." People are even less drawn to driving school buses. Drivers work the mornings and afternoons with a big unpaid gap in between. And they have to deal with kids. During the recession, drivers were easier to find. "It's gotten worse over the last couple years," said Allan Jones, director of student transportation for the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. "As the economy improves, there are more job openings out there." Getting kids to and from school often takes "inventive dispatching," Jones said. Generally they'll hang out until drivers can get to them. Outside of the economy tanking again, a solution is elusive. "If I had an answer to how you fix the driver shortage, I'd have a pile of money," Jones said. A person doesn't need experience to drive for Kitsap Transit but must be at least 18 years old, have a valid Washington driver's license and an excellent driving record. Click here to apply. Shooting can resume Friday at the Kitsap Rifle and Revolver Club. SHARE By Christopher Dunagan, Special to the Kitsap Sun PORT ORCHARD Shooting will resume Friday at Kitsap Rifle and Revolver Club's gun range on Seabeck Highway,after Kitsap County officials allowed a court injunction to be lifted. The injunction against shooting at the range was imposed last April, when the club refused to apply for an operating permit required by a county ordinance approved in 2014. The club finally applied for the permit under protest last month, but county officials said the application was incomplete. Since then, additional materials were submitted, and the application was deemed complete. On Thursday, Judge Pro Tem Jay Roof lifted the injunction in Kitsap County Superior Courtafter the county withdrew its opposition to the club's motion calling for the injunction to be dissolved "I appreciate the civility with which this case has been argued recently," Roof said, adding that he had been inclined to lift the injunction when he saw that the club had applied for the permit. The county ordinance requires that shooting ranges in unincorporated Kitsap County must contain bullets from guns fired on those ranges. Whether KRRC will be able to meet that standard has yet to be determined, and the county's review of the application could take more than three months, during which time shooting may continue. "Adequate physical containment requires an appropriate combination of overhead baffles, impact berms, and side walls and berms," David Lynam, the county's deputy building official, said in a written declaration before the previous court hearing on March 24. "There is nothing to keep a projectile on-site if that projectile were to be aimed above the impact berms, some of which are only as high as six feet, according to the application material." Thursday's hearing was scheduled to take testimony from Lynam and others after Roof was called on to determine whether the application was complete enough to lift the injunction. But it didn't come to that. The additional materials submitted by the club allowed the county to determine that the application was complete, said Christy Palmer, the county's attorney in the case. The club remains under limitations imposed in a separate court case, in which Judge Susan Serko of Pierce County Superior Court declared the gun range a public nuisance, based on excessive noise and the risk of bullets leaving the range and striking homes downrange. Under the limitations imposed by Serko, guns cannot exceed .30 caliber, exploding targets are prohibited, and "practical shooting" is not allowed. Marcus Carter, executive officer for the club, said shooters will be expected to comply with those limitations until they can be overturned. Serko's ruling, which he called "ridiculous," is under appeal before the Washington State Court of Appeals. As for obtaining the required operating permit, Carter said the club will be able to demonstrate that the range does contain bullets through its safety procedures. "It will come out that our operation of the range has been safe for 90 years," he said. "Our club and our policies have not changed. We are just looking forward to a final resolution of this matter." Terry Allison of the community group CK Safe and Quiet said he was "furious" with the outcome from Thursday's hearing, even though he expected that the judge would lift the injunction with or without the county's support. "The range cannot contain projectiles," he said. "They refuse to accept the reality that all the best intentions in the world will not stop accidents, ricochets or human error. We are not opposed to the range, but they can keep their bullets. We don't want them. "What we want in the end is a range that is open, serves the public and complies with the law," he added. The club has not dropped its contention that it should not be subject to the county's ordinance requiring an operating permit. After the judge lifted the injunction, Dennis Reynolds, representing the club, said he would like to prepare a complete record on which to argue against the ordinance. Another hearing on that matter was scheduled for April 20. Palmer stressed that the club provided the "bare minimum" of information to get the injunction lifted. The county Department of Community Development has 28 days to inform the club of any other information needed to process the application. After that, the club will have 90 days to provide any needed materials. After a site inspection, county authorities will determine if the range complies with requirements of the ordinance. This story has been changed since it was published to clarify that the countys action was to withdraw its opposition to lifting an injunction that prohibited shooting at the gun range. Technically, there is no settlement. SHARE Linda Hinton, Bremerton Charter schools undermine my trust Regarding Andrew Williams's letter of April 6, "Inslee's empty statement on charters": I absolutely agree that Governor Inslee did not do his job in protecting public education in the state of Washington by not taking a firm stand against charter schools. The courts have already said an unequivocal "no" to charter schools. I do not, and will not, support charter schools with public funds. Too many lines, which should be inviolate, are crossed. This state must protect the separation of funding for public vs. charter schools, secular vs. religion in public schools, and step up to the shameful reality that the education system in Washington needs an overhaul so that teachers can do their jobs. I can no longer support school bonds or levies, and will no longer support Gov. Inslee nor state legislators who support this decision. The NZ Initiative says: Amid calls from politicians and civil society to lift the refugee quota, The New Zealand Initiative is urging government to take note of Canadas system that allows private groups to sponsor refugees. In New Zealand, the government explicitly limits the number of refugees that are allowed into the country each year, reflecting in part the direct costs of the process that are borne by the state. The limit, which has not changed in 29 years, prevents community groups and charities from taking in additional refugees above the quota. While community groups do excellent work in helping new refugees to settle in New Zealand, those who are willing and able to do more are not allowed to do so. In Canada, private groups can raise funds to sponsor the admission of additional refugees above the official quota. Over the past five months, almost 9,000 additional refugees have been able to resettle in Canada as a result of this policy. Much of the debate around refugees has focused on quotas, but even if it were doubled, efforts by charities and community groups to help more of these desperate people are likely to be constrained, said the Initiatives Executive Director Dr Oliver Hartwich. Canadas example shows that there is a smarter way of doing things. That you can have a quota system, and also bring in more refugees above this limit by tapping into private philanthropy. This is a policy that we think is worth investigating. Shenandoah, IA (51601) Today Windy with a mix of clouds and sun. High 87F. Winds S at 25 to 35 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.. Tonight Windy with an isolated thunderstorm or two possible this evening. Then some showers later on. Potential for severe thunderstorms. Low 57F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 40%. SHARE By Ali James of the Knoxville News Sentinel Community and nonprofit organizations serving low- to moderate-income people and neighborhoods are set to receive more financial support thanks to First Tennessee Bank's newly created $50 million Community Development Fund. "First Tennessee established the fund earlier this year, so it's fairly new," said Pam Fansler, the bank's East Region president. "It's something that the company has been considering for some time. First Tennessee has always been a strong supporter of the communities in which we do business." The fund will award up to $3 million a year in grants to nonprofits and community organizations in First Tennessee markets, including the greater Knoxville area. "While some of the focus is on helping people obtain affordable housing, including assistance with down payments and closing costs, the fund might also focus on home repair and foreclosure-prevention services," she said. Fansler said the fund also hopes to support organizations that provide financial literacy services. "In general, financial institutions are eager to help homebuyers to understand better how a mortgage works and what home buying means," she said. First Tennessee has designated regional community development managers who will get the word out at a grassroots level. Joshalyn Hundley will be the manager for the Knoxville region. Hundley is already reaching out to communities and organizations that are already providing programs and services to individuals and neighborhoods, according to Fansler. "Joshalyn wants to find out directly what the needs are and how the fund can best help those communities grow and become stronger," she said. Fansler encourages community members who would like to apply for grants to reach out to Hundley or their First Tennessee branch managers. "We're working hard to meet with those nonprofit organizations to make sure that everybody is clear on the fund and how it works," Fansler said. "We will be looking for the impact that those grants have on those communities, and reporting back. "Communication is essential," she said. "Letting the communities know that we are very supportive, that's really the reason that we have a community development manager to conduct specific outreach to neighborhoods with low to moderate incomes." Strategic direction for the fund will be provided by an advisory board. The board already is reviewing applications and approving some grants. On the board in Knoxville is Alvin Nance, CEO of development and property management for Lawler Wood Housing Partners LLC. All of this is in addition to the $5 million in grants that the First Tennessee Foundation already offers each year to nonprofits. The Foundation was created by First Tennessee Bank's parent company, First Horizon National Corp., in 1993. Knoxville News Sentinel employee Kyle Cummings places cones around the spot where the Scripps lighthouse symbol was located in front of the News Sentinel offices Friday, April 8, 2016. Federal regulators on Thursday approved the $280 million sale of Journal Media Group Inc. to Gannett Co. Inc., clearing the way for Gannett to acquire the company's newspapers in 14 U.S. markets, including the News Sentinel. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL) SHARE By News Sentinel Staff Federal regulators Thursday approved the $280 million sale of Journal Media Group Inc. to Gannett Co. Inc., clearing the way for Gannett to acquire the company's newspapers in 14 U.S. markets, including the News Sentinel. The approval from the U.S. Department of Justice means the deal is expected to close today. The merger will give Gannett, the owner of USA Today and 92 other daily publications, six daily newspapers in Tennessee, as well as the biggest news outlet in Wisconsin's largest market. Combining the companies also strengthens Gannett's holdings in several other states, including Florida, Indiana and Texas. The acquisition is part of the transformation of the newspaper industry, which is in transition as consumers and advertisers migrate to the internet. Gannett, based in McLean, Va., describes its USA Today Network as the largest local-to-national news network in the country. Journal Media Group stockholders will receive $12 per share in cash in the deal, which was approved by shareholders on March 1. Federal regulators needed to sign off before the sale could be completed, because of antitrust rules. JMG, with about 3,400 employees at the time, was created in April 2015 after The E.W. Scripps Co. and Journal Communications Inc. merged their local TV and radio operations and spun off their newspapers into an independent, publicly traded company based in Milwaukee. In June, Gannett likewise divided its newspaper and broadcast assets into separate companies. Gannett has said it intends to acquire more daily newspapers in the consolidating industry. Besides the News Sentinel, Journal Media Group includes The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Journal Community Publishing Group in Wisconsin; The (Redding) Record-Searchlight and Ventura County Star in California; the Naples Daily News and Treasure Coast Newspapers in Florida; the Evansville Courier & Press in Indiana; The (Henderson) Gleaner in Kentucky; The (Anderson) Independent Mail in South Carolina; the Abilene Reporter-News, Corpus Christi Caller-Times, San Angelo Standard-Times and Wichita Falls Times Record News in Texas; and the Kitsap Sun in Washington. In Tennessee, other Gannett newspapers include The Tennessean in Nashville, the Jackson Sun, the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, and the Leaf Chronicle in Clarksville. The News Sentinel's roots go back to the founding of The Sentinel in 1886. In 1926, it merged with the Knoxville News, which was established in 1921 by Robert P. Scripps and Roy W. Howard. "For busy people on the go, mobile apps are an opportunity to maximize your time," says Julie Goodrich, a marketing manager for U.S. Cellular in Knoxville. Photo by Ali James/Special to the News Sentinel SHARE Smartphone apps make it a snap to upload and keep track of W2 forms, U.S. Cellular says. Ali James/Special to the News Sentinel By Ali James of the Knoxville News Sentinel Smartphone tax apps bring filing to your fingertips Ready or not, the April 18 tax deadline is looming. Last minute filers are no doubt searching high and low for stray receipts, missing financial statements and sweating as the clock ticks down. Thanks to online apps, tax filers are no longer tethered to their desktop computers or even their laptops; they can file on the fly. And most apps are free to download right onto your wireless phone or tablet according to U.S. Cellular. "For busy people on the go, mobile apps are an opportunity to maximize your time," said Julie Goodrich, agent marketing manager for U.S. Cellular in Knoxville. "You don't have to be in front of a computer; you can be in the carpool line and file your taxes. "The recent trend is that more and more people are turning to their mobile devices to complete daily tasks, and that includes filing taxes," she added. Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now smartphone owners, according to a series of surveys conducted by Pew Research Center. "Everyone seems to have a smartphone," Goodrich said. "Regardless of whether they're filing taxes for the first time or a seasoned veteran, these apps are available for everyone." Also considering the fact that according to the IRS, nearly 126 million taxpayers e-filed their taxes in 2015, it is no wonder that mobile tax filing seems to be the next logical step for tax payers. "People can be anxious about doing things as intense as filing their taxes on mobile devices," Goodrich said. But, she pointed out, user-friendly apps actually take away the hassle of dealing with paperwork. W2s, bank statements and receipts are easy to upload throughout the year and then they are available at the taxpayer's fingertips at tax time. Taxpayers also get three extra days to file this year in most states, including Tennessee. That's because April 15 is a government holiday (Emancipation Day) in the District of Columbia, which bumps the tax deadline to the next business day, Monday, April 18. The only exceptions are Maine and Massachusetts, whose residents have until April 19 because of a state holiday -- Patriots Day -- celebrated on April 18 in those two states. As for smartphone and tablet filing, "One of the most popular apps is Turbo Tax," Goodrich said. "For people who are familiar with the online version, the mobile version is very similar -- it will walk you through every step of the way to enter dependents and check for deductions, and you can even file quickly and securely from the app. "All of the well-known apps are incredibly secure,: she said. "They're built that way. And be sure to leverage the security features your mobile device offers, such as programming your fingerprint on your iPhone 6S." According to a recent U.S. Cellular online survey of customers, 59 percent of smartphone users have used their phones to manage their finances, including filing taxes. That is up from 47 percent in 2014. "All of the apps are available for iOS and Android operating systems to file your taxes quickly and efficiently," Goodrich said. To stay on top of deductions, estimate payments and monitor filings, U.S. Cellular recommends the following tools for mobile-device users: TurboTax: With this free mobile app, filers take a picture of their W-2s, follow the prompts and check for deductions, and e-file securely anywhere they have a secure Internet connection. New app features include Touch ID and PIN, live on-screen video help with SmartLook, and the useful ExplainWhy feature that guides users through tricky questions. MyBlock (H&R Block): Users can view their customized tax checklist, and securely upload receipts and tax documents for their tax returns. In addition, they can estimate a refund, access current and previous years' returns, keep tabs on their tax return status, and plan their paychecks to maximize future refunds. Those with overly complicated finances can send out an SOS to find a tax pro and schedule an appointment using the app. TaxACT Express: Prepare and e-file federal and state tax returns for free with this app. This app is said to offer secure access anywhere, anytime from any device browser using a secure URL. Users can also sign up for notifications when the IRS has processed returns. They can also track refunds and file extensions for free. IRS2Go: For those organized people who have already filed their taxes, Goodrich suggests using apps to check the status of their refunds or safely make payments to the IRS. "IRS2Go is the official application for the Internal Revenue Service and it is available on any mobile device," she said. It also allows users to find free tax-preparation assistance, and sign up for helpful tax tips. Expensify: Vowing not to get lost in a pile of bank statements and receipts next year? "There's a great free app called Expensify," Goodrich said. "You can download it to log mileage or business travel. It allows you to take a photo of your receipts." Then the app "reads" your receipt and creates an expense to attach to an expense report or file taxes. Users can create and edit expenses on the go anywhere they have a spare minute. In addition, the app has features to allow workers to enter an hourly rate and length of time worked for time entries. And mileage entry is a cinch -- just enter distance, use your phone's GPS, or take a picture of the odometer to track mileage. Lost receipts? Expensify also lets users import their credit card transactions and automatically creates an IRS-guaranteed eReceipt for all purchases under $75. SHARE Students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville's Haslam College of Business will grant $30,000 to local charities this fall as part of a nonprofit management class in leadership for nonprofits and social entrepreneurship. UT alumni Jim Haslam and Jim Clayton each matched a $10,000 grant from the Learning by Giving Foundation to fund the class. Doris Buffet, sister of Warren Buffet, created the foundation to provide a platform for students to become thoughtful and effective givers by making real-dollar grants to local nonprofits. Area nonprofits are invited to submit grant proposals this summer for collaborative projects that need a financial boost. During the course this fall, students will determine the specific grant requirements, which will be loosely based on the United Way's three focus areas of education, income and health. For more information, e-mail Alex Miller, William B. Stokely Chair in Management, who is leading the class, at amiller2@utk.edu. Smoky Mountain Meals on Wheels has received a $1,000 grant from Meals on Wheels America for its participation in Subaru of America's eighth annual Share the Love Event. During the event held from Nov. 22 to Jan. 2, Subaru of America Inc. donated $250 for every new Subaru vehicle purchased or leased to the customer's choice of participating charities, including Meals on Wheels America, of which Smoky Mountain Meals on Wheels is a member. For more information, visit www.mealsonwheelsamerica.org. The Tennessee Arts Commission announces its popular Arts Build Communities grant and will invest over $45,000 in East Tennessee arts projects and programs taking place Aug. 16, 2016, through June 15, 2017. The funding, distributed through the Arts & Culture Alliance of Greater Knoxville, goes to projects that broaden public access to the arts and enhance the quality and viability of cultural arts experiences. The ABC grants will be distributed to eligible organizations in Anderson, Blount, Campbell, Knox, Loudon, Monroe, Morgan, Roane, Scott, Sevier and Union counties. Applicants must be state-recognized, nonprofit 501(c)3 organizations or government entities and must be able to provide a dollar-for-dollar match towards the proposed project. Awards range from $500 to $2,500. The online application deadline is 4:30 p.m. (CST) on Friday, July 1, 2016. A free grant workshop for interested applicants will be held on Tuesday, May 17, from 3:30-5 p.m. at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay St., in downtown Knoxville. For directions and more information, please RSVP online at https://allianceabcfy17.eventbrite.com or by calling 523-7543. Interested applicants may download grant guidelines and find more information by visiting the Tennessee Arts Commission's website at http://tnartscommission.org/grants/arts-build-communities-grant-2/. For more information about the ABC grants, please contact Suzanne Cada at 523-7543 or sc@knoxalliance.com. Fundraising dinner fundraiser to benefit Lance Cpl. Cody Evans home build in Speedwell starts at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 21 at the Pavilion at Hunter Valley Farm. Sponsored by A Soldier's Journey Home. Speaker is Paddy Neville, retired New York City firefighter who was one of the first responders on Sept. 11, 2001, and worked at Ground Zero for five months. Corporate and sponsor tables of 10 reserved at $2,500; individual tickets are $250 each. Donations are tax deductible. 9133 Hunter Valley Lane in Knoxville. Contact Edie Clemons at 228-4465 or email edieclemons@gmail.com or Kim Herrera at 659-8026 or email askherr@comcast.net. The Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley invites animal lovers and diners alike to join them on Tuesday, April 19, at Knoxville's best spots for breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks to benefit homeless animals in the community. When diners eat at one of over 20 participating restaurants, 15 percent of their meal purchase will go directly to HSTV and its to care for animals in need. The day of charitable dining, Paws on the Table, is a new event for HSTV and community restaurants. For a list of participating restaurants, visit HSTV's events page at HumaneSocietyTennessee.com. Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via AP Tourists look at a view of Stockholm. SHARE By Karl Ritter, Associated Press STOCKHOLM Ever felt like calling up a complete stranger in Sweden? Now is your chance. The Swedish Tourist Association has set up a hotline that lets callers worldwide "get connected to a random Swede." On its website, the nonprofit group says the idea is "to spark people's curiosity about Sweden our culture, nature and mindset. To help us do this, we have the people of Sweden." It's not completely random. The Swedes who take the calls have volunteered by downloading an app. But they are not vetted or given any instructions about what to say. "It's like when Swedes travel the world. You don't know who they're going to talk to and what they're going to say," said Magnus Ling, the head of the Swedish Tourist Association. About 3,000 people had dialed the "Swedish Number" a day after it was launched, and roughly the same number of Swedes had signed up to answer calls, Ling said. The website says the initiative honors the 250th anniversary of Sweden's 1766 Freedom of the Press Act, believed to be the world's first law supporting the freedom of expression. Ling admitted there was another motive: recruiting members to the tourism association, which is funded through membership fees. Swedes who sign up to receive calls will receive an email inviting them to join the group, he said. The calls are not monitored but they are recorded, "so that if someone says I was threatened or harassed we can go back and see who it was and even block that number," Ling said. The website didn't say that calls are recorded when AP checked it Thursday. Ling said it was listed in the user terms, which those answering the calls but not those making them must agree to. He later called back saying the information would be added to the FAQ section of the website. The biggest number of incoming calls has come from Turkey. Ling said he didn't know why, but thought it had to do with the initiative getting attention there both in traditional media and social media. After signing up to test the service, this Stockholm-based AP reporter received four calls, about one an hour. The first was a woman from Turkey with limited English skills. The second hung up. The third was an engineering student from Britain. And the fourth was another journalist: Tim Nudd, creative editor at Adweek in New York. "I just wanted to call and see how this whole thing works," said Nudd. He, too, was writing an article about it. The hotline follows a similar initiative on Twitter by the Swedish Institute, the government's own PR agency. Since 2011 it lets a different Swedish citizen manage its official (at)Sweden account every week. Ling said the feedback he had received on the hotline was almost all positive, though he said a small number of callers were just trying to hook up with Swedish women. "I've heard of just one or two such calls," Ling said. Jake Gyllenhaal stars in "Demolition." SHARE By Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service With "Demolition," French-Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallee establishes himself as an auteur. Having directed "Dallas Buyers Club" and "Wild," themes and patterns start to emerge. All three films deal with the paper thin line between life and death; how death informs life, inspiring people to live harder, live sweeter, to the extreme. In these films, death is something that makes the living push the boundaries of life as far and as hard as they can. Vallee has a talent for wordy, writerly scripts, and "Demolition" is no exception. Written by Bryan Sipe, the screenplay uses an epistolary device to let us in on our protagonist's inner life. The leading man is Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal), who begins to write letters to the customer service department of a vending machine company in the immediate aftermath of his wife Julia's (Heather Lind) death in a car accident. It's a strange coping mechanism, to be sure. But it's clear that it's much easier to write a letter to a vending machine company because he was jilted out of $1.25 and a bag of peanut M&Ms, than to the driver of the car that slammed into his, or to the doctors who could not save her. The customer service department is his only outlet, an anonymous source to whom he can confess his thoughts about his marriage (just OK), his job (investment banking), his demanding father-in-law (his boss, played by Chris Cooper). But the customer service department is a person, Karen (Naomi Watts), and she reaches out, tentatively, proffering a nugget of compassion, an escape from his perfectly regimented and designed life. Her friendship, perhaps a catalyst, coincides with Davis' breakdown. That word is quite literal in this case, at least in the environmental sense. Numb inside, Davis starts to break down everything he can taking apart computers, bathroom doors, appliances, just to see how they work. He pays a construction boss to let him ferociously tear down dry wall with a sledgehammer; in so doing, he steps on a nail and howls in joy, thrilled with the feeling of pain. He entreats Karen's son to shoot him in his Kevlar-vested chest, he listens to blisteringly loud music and dances in the street. He sheds social expectations and norms, his career and family cast aside as collateral damage. While Davis is breaking down to get himself back together, there are a few moments that tend toward a bit too twee. But there's an emotional honesty in the treatment of his grief. Just because it's different doesn't make it any less valid, and "Demolition" always treats it as such. There's a beauty in the breakdown, and it's amongst the rubble that Davis finds himself living, rather than enduring, his life. Vallee and cinematographer Yves Belanger bring their naturalistic but rigorous approach to the film, at once stylish but not overly obtrusive. Ultimately, the filmmaking allows for the writing and the performances to shine. Gyllenhaal brings a sense of wide-eyed sweet boyishness to the deadpan Davis, who could have been a jerk in another performer's hands. But the true find is newcomer Judah Lewis as Chris, Karen's young gay son. He's bold, androgynous, naively confident, startlingly delicate. The two are oddball outsiders who just get each other, a connection that's all anyone can hope for in this life. Weir controls water flow on White Oak Creek near Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (ORNL/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS SENTINEL) The capping of old nuclear burial sites to stem radioactive leaks and other cleanup measures have greatly improved the water quality in White Oak Creek, which meanders through the drainage basin of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In some ways, however, restoration of the creek has been a disappointment. Despite its cleaner waters, White Oak Creek doesn't have the diverse fish population that might be expected of an East Tennessee stream that has undergone such an extensive remediation. Ryan McManamay, an aquatic ecologist at ORNL, headed a study published recently in the scientific journal Hydrobiologia that looked at the some of the issues. At least partly to blame, maybe mostly to blame, are the many barriers that have been constructed along the creek to control the water flow and/or monitor its characteristics. The series of dams, weirs and culverts 32 barriers in all have reportedly kept many species of fish from moving about freely and prevented them colonizing parts of the creek in a natural manner. White Oak Creek has an unusual history, especially since the World War II Manhattan Project, when it was dammed up to prevent the lab's radiological discharges from flowing directly into the Clinch River. Construction of White Oak Dam created White Oak Lake, which became a giant settling pond for the radioactive gunk delivered by White Oak Creek. Of course, the lab's environmental practices changed dramatically over the decades, and multiple projects were undertaken to clean up the legacies of pollution. Caps were installed at the old burial grounds euphemistically called "solid waste storage areas" to keep rainfall from leaching the waste and carrying away the radioactive constituents. ORNL scientists monitored the progress, and as creek conditions improved, they recognized that changes in the fish population hadn't kept pace. Around 2007, environmental researcher Mike Ryon led a team that stocked the creek with additional species in hopes of expanding that base. But there has been limited success in returning the creek's fish population to what might be considered normal. "The biggest issue is that the entire watershed is cut off from the Clinch," McManamay said. Besides White Oak Dam, there is a coffer dam even closer to the Clinch River that restricts fish traffic. McManamay is now doing another study that evaluates possible strategies to remove some barriers and/or allow fish to navigate around them and make White Oak Creek their home. Stay tuned. Senior Writer Frank Munger may be reached at frank.munger@knoxnews.com. Knox County Assistant District Attorney General TaKisha Fitzgerald during her opening remarks in the trial for Frank Gary Cooper, charged with first-degree murder in 2008 death of Selma Avenue great-grandmother Nola Atkins. Knox County Criminal Court Division 3 Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz is presiding Monday, Jan. 13, 2014. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) SHARE Knox County Assistant District Attorney Phil Morton, left, and defense attorney T. Scott Jones, center, argue over evidence during a hearing for Christopher Drone Bassett Jr., seated bottom right, in Knox County Sessions Court Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) Defense attorney Wesley D. Stone delivers his closing arguments Wednesday afternoon. Paul Jerome Johnson Jr., stands trial in Knox County Criminal Court before Judge Richard Baumgartner on felony murder charges in the July 2008 death of Joseph 'Jo-Jo' De'Jon Manning Jr. At one time the mother of the baby Aja McBayne was accused of the murder. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney General Steven Sword and Ken Irvine. Wesley D. Stone is defending Johbnson with the help of an investigator Michael J. Cohan. (J. MILES CARY/NEWS SENTINEL) Defense attorney John M. Boucher representing Destiny Hurst delivers his closing arguments. Closing arguments were presented Thursday February 16, 2012, in the trial of Robert Wayne Hurst, and his wife Destiny Hurst accused of the September 2009 murder of Jim Mullins inside Mullins' discount store on Rutledge Pike in East Knox County. (J. MILES CARY/NEWS SENTINEL ) Related Coverage Ruling on gang law isn't stopping Knox prosecutions By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel At least 60 cases have been prosecuted in Knox County under a Tennessee law struck down this week as unconstitutional allowing harsher penalties for crime-committing gang members, officials said Friday. Kyle Hixson, deputy to Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen, said Friday the gang enhancement statute now deemed bad law has been used to boost penalties in at least 60 cases and used as a bargaining chip in the plea negotiations process in even more. He did not have an exact number Friday, just one day after the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals struck down the 2012 law. Attorneys interviewed by the News Sentinel on Friday agreed the decision, if allowed to stand, would lead to new sentencing hearings for defendants whose penalties were enhanced by the law and whose cases are winding their way through the appeal process. It also could lead to new hearings for defendants whose appeals have run out under what's known as post-conviction relief. PDF: Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals decision Jonathan Harwell, the appellate attorney for Knox County Public Defender Mark Stephens, said those who could wind up with no relief are defendants who opted to take plea deals simply because of the threat of the use of the gang enhancement statute. "This has acted as a club or a threat, and that has affected a lot of plea negotiations in the past," Harwell said. "My guess is those people are not going to be able to benefit from it at all." The potential impact of the ruling statewide was not immediately known. The Administrative Office of the Courts was trying to gather numbers at the newspaper's request Friday afternoon. But all of the state's other major cities Chattanooga, Nashville and Memphis also routinely make use of the law in prosecutions of gang members, so the fallout could include hundreds of cases. Using a Knox County case as a backdrop, the appellate court ruled in an opinion released Thursday the state's gang enhancement law is so broad it allows gang members to suffer extra punishment for crimes that had nothing to do with the gang or gang activity and the misdeeds of other gang members in which they weren't even involved. The court noted the law pushed by prosecutors and police was passed with good intent to seek to quell gang violence but was crafted so poorly it could apply to a member of a college fraternity. Like street gangs, fraternities use color schemes and symbols to show affiliation, and its members sometimes commit crimes that meet the law's overly broad definition of "gang-related crime," the court stated. The law defines "gang-related crime" as any offense in which a person either hurts or kills someone or threatens to hurt or kill someone while committing a crime. Hazing, the court noted, could qualify. "It simply cannot be maintained that a statute ostensibly intended to deter gang-related criminal conduct through enhanced sentencing is reasonably related to that purpose where the statute in question is completely devoid of language requiring that the underlying offense be somehow gang-related before the sentencing enhancement is applied," the opinion stated. Attorney Stephen Ross Johnson, who has served as president of both the Tennessee Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the two organizations had been preparing a joint brief in support of striking down the law when the opinion was released. He said the court's ruling was sound in the groups' view. "(The appellate court's) finding at the end of the day is this is just a fundamentally unfair penalty provision," he said. Hixson said Allen's office "respects the court's opinion, although we certainly hoped for a different outcome. "The criminal gang enhancement statute has been a valuable tool." The Tennessee Attorney General's Office, which handles appeals for state prosecutors, can ask the Tennessee Supreme Court to review the ruling, though the high court is under no obligation to do so. Harlow B. Sumerford, spokesman for that office, said a decision has not been made. The office has 60 days to file for the review. In its Thursday ruling, the Court of Criminal Appeals said Tennessee largely stands alone in the nation for punishing criminals simply for being in a gang. Gang membership, even a criminal one like the mob, is not illegal in the United States. Florida enacted a similar law, but the Florida Supreme Court struck it down in 1999 for the same reasons now being cited by the Tennessee appellate court. "Nearly all gang enhancement statutes in this country contain specific language limiting the reach of those statutes only to offenses that possess a nexus to a defendant's gang affiliation, and therefore, a defendant's own criminal conduct," Appellate Judge Timothy Easter wrote. Ironically, the Knox County case that laid the foundation for the ruling involved gang violence. Jonathan Dyer was a teenage member of the Five Deuce Hoover Crips street gang in May 2012 when fellow gang members Devonte Bonds, Thomas Bishop and Jason Sullivan paid a visit to his home in the Arbor Place Apartments on Townview Drive, according to the appellate opinion. Dyer, according to the opinion, failed to put money into the jail commissary account of another gang member who insisted he was Dyer's "big homie," or handler. Dyer insisted the jailed Five Deuce Hoover Crip was not, in fact, his "big homie" so he refused to contribute to the commissary account. Bonds, Bishop and Sullivan believed otherwise and decided Dyer would be kicked out of the gang via a formal ceremony known in gang parlance as a "beat out," similar to the "beat in" gang initiation rite of passage. In both instances, fellow gang members beat their compadre for a set amount of time, usually two to 10 minutes. Dyer was beaten so badly he was in a coma for nine days. Bonds, Bishop and Sullivan were convicted in a trial before Knox County Criminal Court Judge Bob McGee of attempted second-degree murder and aggravated assault for the beating. Prosecutors TaKisha Fitzgerald and Phil Morton, who head up DA Allen's gang unit, used the gang enhancement law to boost the trio's penalty ranges. Bonds wound up with a 23-year sentence while Bishop and Sullivan, both of whom have much more extensive criminal records, received sentences of 37 years and 40 years, respectively. Attorney John Boucher Jr., representing Bonds, Wesley Stone and Timothy Jones for Bishop, and Sullivan's attorney, Les Jeffress, appealed. Among the issues they raised was an attack on the constitutionality of the gang enhancement law. The appellate court left the convictions intact, opining there was ample proof to support them. But the court said the sentences boosted through the gang enhancement statute could not stand since the law was constitutionally flawed even though the trio's crimes fit the intended purpose of the statute. Good facts, the court held, don't negate bad law. "Although we sympathize with the state's argument because it is amply apparent that the underlying offenses in this case were gang-related, we refuse to read a nexus requirement into the statute to eliminate its constitutional shortcomings," the opinion stated. "We respect the General Assembly's efforts to combat the scourge of criminal gang activity in our state, but it is not within our authority to rewrite this statute." A human-caused brush fire near Halls Top Road in Cherokee National Forest has burned 2,400 acres so far, officials say. SHARE By News Sentinel Staff A fire on English Mountain in Sevier County that has been burning since a fatal helicopter crash April 4 has been contained. The fire consumed between 500-600 acres, said Perrin Anderson, communications coordinator for Sevier County. Anderson said both the English Mountain Fire Department and the Tennessee Department of Forestry will monitor the fire lines for flare-ups as needed. Anderson said donations are no longer need, but that "all of the first responders would like to thank the community for their outpouring of support and donations." Meanwhile, the Halls Top brush fire on Stone Mountain in Cocke County, southeast of Newport, is now 80 percent contained, said Deborah Walker, fire information officer at Cherokee National Forest for the U.S. Forest Service. Walker said the "human-caused" fire has burned 2,436 acres and involved about 140 people and various pieces of equipment at a cost of more than $500,000. She said fire crews made "significant progress" today, securing containment lines and complete burnout operation at the end of Ike Wright Road and spraying water on hot spots. Winds continue to be a factor as the fire spotted across containment lines in several locations yesterday. "Resource advisors surveyed the area by helicopter this afternoon," Walker said. "What they observed was a low- to moderate-intensity fire with a mosaic of burned and unburned patches. The Unaka District Biologists feel there will be some positive impacts from the fire, as it will create habitat for wildlife and birds that depend on young forest for food and cover. They will develop a plan for rehab of dozer and hand lines, and monitor for invasive species that often move in following a fire." Both Halls Top and Low Gap roads are closed to the public. "Burned trees and loose rock can pose a risk to travelers and hikers in the area," Walker said. "The closure will remain in effect until the (forestry service) deems conditions are safe." A human-caused brush fire near Halls Top Road in Cherokee National Forest has burned 2,400 acres so far, officials say. SHARE By News Sentinel Staff High winds posed a challenge to personnel fighting the Halls Top brush fire in Cocke County. U.S. Forest Service fire information officer Deborah Walker said the fire was 60 percent contained as of Thursday evening but had burned 2,400 acres since it began April 4. Walker said the fire, still being investigated, was "human-caused" but so far has not damaged structures or resulted in any injuries. Crews responded to wind gusts in excess of 40 miles per hour by constructing hand lines around spot fires, to minimize the chance they would spread. Wednesday night's rain evaporated too quickly under high winds and warm temperatures to be of much help, Walker said. "Winds will continue to be a factor through the night, and fire personnel will remain on site until there is sufficient humidity recovery," she said. Halls Top Road and Low Gap Road are being used as containment lines for the fire, with equipment and crews using them to access the area so public access has been restricted. "Visitors planning to hike trails or turkey hunt in the Halls Top area this weekend should find alternative locations as the area is not safe for public use," Walker said. Walker said 135 firefighters, along with personnel from the U.S. Forest Service, Tennessee Division of Forestry and Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, are working together on the fire, with assistance from Cocke County Sheriff's Office and Emergency Management. By News Sentinel Staff KNOXVILLE A South Knoxville club has been declared a public nuisance and closed, a little more than two weeks after police say a gang fight inside spilled into the parking lot and gunfire erupted. Knox County Criminal Court Judge Steve Sword ordered Club Dejavu, 2619 Chapman Highway, shuttered on Thursday. The Knox County District Attorney General's Office said in a news release that the club had been the site of gang activity, shootings and other violent behavior over the past year. The club is owned by Kevin D. Cherry and Kenneth J. Ray and has been open for about two and a half years, Cherry said Friday. He said the allegations are false, and he intends to appeal the closure. "I operate a hip hop business, and I can't control the criminal activity that comes with the night life," Cherry said in a telephone interview. "I told the DA, one or two instances and you want to close me down. There are other clubs with four or five bodies on them, and you close me down. "It's discrimination, it's profiling and it's stereotyping to me." The closure comes after a string of incidents cited in the nuisance petition, including the latest on March 26 when Knoxville police officers responded to a report of a shooting. They found a large number of people in the parking lot who had evacuated the club. Windows at the club and the business next door, the Disc Exchange, had been shot out, according to the news release. Five vehicles in the parking lot were hit by gunfire as well. Officers recovered 55 expended rounds of ammunition in the parking lot. Police said witnesses told them a gang-related fight inside the club spilled into the parking lot, and shots were fired. On March 28, the owner of Allen Sign Company, across Chapman Highway from the club, discovered a window of his business also had been shot out. Among other incidents cited in the nuisance petition include: On Feb. 20, undercover officers were surveilling the club and saw a man display a firearm from the window of his vehicle, fire a shot and flee. Officers stopped the vehicle and discovered a firearm and marijuana inside. On Dec. 20, KPD officers heard gunshots fired in the parking lot and recovered eight shell casings. On Nov. 1, a vehicle was vandalized in the club's parking lot. On Oct. 18, officers responded to a fight at the club, and witnesses said two women were fighting inside and one sustained cuts to her head. On July 28, a woman told the Family Justice Center that she was choked on the dance floor after an individual flashed gang signs. On April 12, officers responded to a fight, heard gunshots and saw a vehicle leaving at a high rate of speed. The man told officers that while he was inside the club talking to a woman, he was struck in the head with an object, possibly a bottle. A police investigator also obtained photographs of known gang members gathering inside the club, wearing gang colors and flashing gang signs, according to the petition. Police also allege juveniles were seen inside the club. The petition, in seeking the closure, alleges the club is a "business that thrives on allowing and encouraging illegal drug use, gang activity, alcohol violations, and violent activity to take place, both inside and spilling over to the parking lot." "The ownership is not only failing to take steps to stop the nuisance behavior, but is encouraging the activity," according to the petition. The owners are to appear before Sword on April 14 to show why the club should not be permanently closed. Cherry said he will attempt to reopen as soon as possible and is currently representing himself. "In my eyes, it's false allegations," Cherry said. "Every accusation they make is completely false. "We do our best to stop any criminal activity. The deejay announces no gang signs or colors. We post that. "We do everything we can to deter that kind of activity. I can't help it if someone goes outside and does it." According to court records, the property is owned by Chu Brothers Partnership. More details as they develop online and in Saturday's News Sentinel. Norman Eugene Clark, accused of killing his girlfriend, Brittany Eldridge, and their unborn son, returns to the courtroom after a recess in Knox County Criminal Court before Judge Steven Sword Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2015. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel Prosecutors faced with a retrial in a case built on circumstantial evidence that 11 of 12 jurors rejected as insufficient are setting their sights on a national television news magazine's interview with double-slaying suspect Norman Eugene Clark. Deputy Assistant District Attorney General Kyle Hixson is asking Knox County Criminal Court Judge Steve Sword to start the legally complicated process of forcing employees of the television show "Dateline NBC" to both testify and produce "the entire, unedited, video-recorded interview" Clark gave last year. Clark was tried in August in the December 2011 killings of girlfriend Brittany Eldridge, 25, and their unborn son, Ezekiel. There was no forensic evidence tying Clark to the killings. He maintained his innocence and produced a partial alibi. Jurors deadlocked 11-1 to acquit. Sword declared a mistrial. District Attorney General Charme Allen opted to retry him. The second trial is set in September. "Dateline NBC" correspondent Andrea Canning and producer Tim Beacham interviewed Clark soon after the mistrial. The episode on the case has not yet aired. In a motion filed late last week, Hixson is asking Sword to issue a certificate recommending the New York Supreme Court issue subpoenas for Canning, Beacham and whomever is designated by NBCUniversal News Group, which owns "Dateline NBC," to authenticate the video of the interview. NBC is based in New York. Tennessee's courts cannot command the issuance of subpoenas by other state's courts in most cases. If Sword issues the certificate, prosecutors would still have to convince the New York court to issue subpoenas. Media organizations routinely resist subpoenas commanding their journalists to testify. Since "Dateline NBC" has not yet aired its episode, the organization likely will put up a fight over the video. Some states, including Tennessee and New York, have shield laws that protect journalists from disclosing newsgathering materials and information. Clark's defense attorney, Kit Rodgers, has not yet responded to the state's request. A status conference is set in the case Friday. Hixson argues in his motion that both what Clark said in the interview and his demeanor during the interview could be crucial for the state, particularly given the dearth of evidence against Clark. "Aside from any factual admissions made by (Clark), his video-recorded demeanor while discussing the brutal murder of his girlfriend and unborn son and the resulting trial will shed light to the trier of fact on (Clark's) attitude toward the victims and help the jury determine whether it is more probable or less probable that (Clark) had the motive to kill or the willingness to act to satisfy this motive," Hixson wrote. Eldridge was 8-1/2 months pregnant when she was found beaten, stabbed and strangled inside her Cross Creek apartment on Western Avenue. The case went unsolved for nearly three years, although Clark was the sole suspect. Prosecutor Leslie Nassios relied on motive as a key component of her case, arguing Clark was the only person who had reason to kill Eldridge. She presented a string of current and former lovers of Clark, most of whom Clark had kept in the dark about Eldridge and her pregnancy, in a bid to show the pending birth would cause major trouble in his life. SHARE John Dickl, the former nutrition director for Knox County Schools, awaits arraignment Friday, Jan. 15, 2016, in Criminal Court. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel KNOXVILLE A Criminal Court judge on Friday set an Oct. 3 trial date for the former Knox County Schools nutrition director charged with theft and official misconduct. The trial for John Dickl, who was not in court Friday, will likely take two days, an attorney with the state told Criminal Court Judge Scott Green. Dickl, who now lives in Florida, was charged in September with a count of theft between $1,000 and $10,000, a Class D felony, and a count of official misconduct, according to a Knox County grand jury presentment. In May, an investigation by the Tennessee Comptroller's Office and the Knox County Sheriff's Office revealed that Dickl "claimed and received travel and expense reimbursement payments totaling at least $3,677 from Knox County Schools related to expenses for which other organizations either paid or reimbursed him." The probes also found Dickl, 49, "was reimbursed $587 for a conference in Orlando, Fla.," although he was not registered for the conference. Investigators also questioned a $178 mileage reimbursement for an engagement in Nashville that Dickl received. "Mr. Dickl claimed and was reimbursed $178 for mileage allowance for a round trip from Knoxville to the Nashville airport to take a flight, which, according to his calendar, accommodated a personal engagement he had in Nashville," according to the report. "Mr. Dickl was offered but declined a flight from Knoxville that was less expensive." The probe also found that in May 2014, Dickl "used Knox County employees and a vehicle to transport a school system clothes dryer from Karns Elementary School to his house for his personal benefit." Since the allegations against Dickl, the school system has been doing a comprehensive review of its financial operations. SHARE By News Sentinel Staff OAK RIDGE Teachers and principals in the Oak Ridge School District are again seeking 3 percent raises. Their recent requests will be folded into upcoming budget deliberations by the city's Board of Education. Educators and administrators last year received pay hikes in late August that were retroactive to July 1, 2015 the start of the new fiscal year thanks in part to a one-time windfall. That's because Anderson County Commission then approved a 10-cent county property tax hike, and new revenue from that hike by law is to be divided between school districts in the county. For Oak Ridge Schools, that new funding amounted to about $424,000. The average salary in the 2014-15 year for licensed instructors in Oak Ridge was $61,669, while principals were paid $94,770 annually, according to Tennessee Department of Education statistics. The Knoxville News Sentinel building (Paul Efird/News Sentinel) SHARE By Patrick Birmingham, News Sentinel President & Publisher Dear News Sentinel Readers, Friday marked a new beginning for the News Sentinel. As you may have noticed, just below the News Sentinel name on our front page we announce we now are part of the USA TODAY NETWORK. We are proud to be one of more than 100 markets nationwide, plus USA Today, now owned by the Gannett Company, which has closed its acquisition of the News Sentinel and its sister newspapers in the Journal Media Group. This transaction opens up a bright future for us and for this community. We have long been committed to providing the most comprehensive and engaging local news report in East Tennessee. Now we join more than 3,800 journalists that comprise the USA TODAY NETWORK. Combined, we are one of the largest, most geographically diverse local content providers in the United States, operating weeklies, dailies and affiliated digital properties in 34 states plus Guam. Our new owners understand that all national news begins as local news. That means stronger connections between our local community and the national stage, backed by a far-reaching network of talented, professional journalists. Bob Dickey, president and chief executive officer of Gannett, last year explained the next-generation USA TODAY NETWORK to employees this way: That means we operate as one focused organization where local stories feed national news, and national news connects with local relevance. All presented with the integrity, clarity and focus only we possess. From our perspective as a news organization, the advantages are obvious. The USA TODAY NETWORK is a digital-first, innovative and integrated organization committed to strong and sustainable community journalism. In addition to operating the nationwide newspaper USA Today, the company has won hundreds of national awards and with the Journal Media Group properties, has won 66 Pulitzer Prizes. The multi-platform news network informs and engages more than 100 million people monthly through its diverse portfolio of digital, mobile and publishing products. Our readers and advertisers will reap the benefits. With this transaction, we are now part of the largest local-to-national news network in the country. This network will allow us to share content seamlessly across the country, as well as help advertisers reach customers locally and nationally as digital technology helps them expand their consumer base. For the local readers, that means expanded access to news from other parts of the country. As Dickey said: Uniting our national and local brands into a powerful, singular network will connect our nation and neighborhoods in profound ways. Informing and serving the people of East Tennessee have long been central to the News Sentinels mission, and that will not change. Our community service and sense of purpose will remain our firm foundation as we join the USA TODAY NETWORK and embark on this exciting journey. Thank you for the privilege of serving you and allowing us into your homes and lives. Sincerely, Patrick J. Birmingham President & Publisher SHARE By News Sentinel Staff, The Tennessean Gannett, the publishing company that owns USA TODAY and several news operations in Tennessee, closed a $280 million deal Friday to buy Journal Media Group, owner of the Knoxville News Sentinel, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, and 13 other newspapers. With the acquisition, McLean, Va.-based Gannett will operate 107 dailies in 34 states and Guam, in addition to Newsquest in the United Kingdom, with its 150 local digital and print news brands. "By expanding our footprint, we further enhance the depth and breadth of our newsgathering capabilities, supported by USA TODAY NETWORK," Robert Dickey, president and chief executive officer of Gannett, said in a statement. "Together we will grow our innovative products and best practices while providing added value to our consumers and advertisers, expanding the content offerings in our extensive portfolio and increasing the number of local markets we serve." Readers and advertisers will reap benefits from the transaction, said Patrick Birmingham, president and publisher of the News Sentinel. "We are now part of the largest local-to-national news network in the country," he said. "This network will allow us to share content seamlessly across the country, as well as help advertisers reach customers locally and nationally as digital technology helps them expand their consumer base." Tennessee is one of the states most affected by the merger. Gannett's flagship in the state is The Tennessean in Nashville. It also operates The Jackson Sun, The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville and The Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, along with The Dickson Herald, The Ashland City Times, The Robertson County Times, The Gallatin News Examiner, The Hendersonville Star News, The Fairview Observer, and Stewart Houston Times. "This arrangement gives us a tremendous network of journalists across the state," said News Sentinel Editor Jack McElroy. "Our newsroom and our colleagues in Memphis can now collaborate with Gannett writers, editors, photographers and producers across Tennessee to expand the breadth and depth of content in all of our communities." Laura Hollingsworth, president of The Tennessean/TN Media and the new Tennessee network, said the acquisition makes the USA Today Network in Tennessee one of the largest statewide news groups in the country, with more than 340 journalists. She stressed, however, the continued importance of local reporting from each of the individual properties in the company's Tennessee network. "Here in Tennessee, local reporting will remain the No. 1 priority for each of the markets, which are very different," Hollingsworth said. "Gannett has always valued and recognized the individuality of each community." The transaction was to take effect at 11:59 p.m. EDT Friday. The common stock of the Milwaukee-based Journal Media Group ceased trading after the close of the market Friday and no longer will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Gannett will continue trading under the ticker symbol "GCI." The closing of the transaction followed the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals and the consent of Journal Media Group shareholders, who receive $12 per share in cash. Gannett will finance the deal through cash and borrowing under the company's $500 million revolving credit line. Last June, Gannett's print and broadcast properties split into two companies, with the broadcast company taking the name Tegna. WBIR-TV in Knoxville was owned by Gannett before the split and now is a Tegna station. Journal Media Group likewise was formed when the E.W. Scripps Co. and Journal Communications merged, then split into broadcast and publishing companies on April 1, 2015. Before that, Scripps had owned the News Sentinel, and its predecessor, the Knoxville News, since 1921. The newspaper's roots go back to the founding of The Sentinel in Knoxville in 1886. In addition to its Tennessee media businesses in Knoxville and Memphis, Journal Media Group owns the 178-year old Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 12 other daily newspapers, 18 weeklies and their affiliated websites in 14 markets. After the deal, Gannett will have more than 100 million unique digital visitors per month. The company has said print circulation will rise by about 675,000 on weekdays and 950,000 on Sundays. Seymour resident Jim Grabber brings Daisy, a South Pyrenees, to Seymour Heights Christian Church on Thursday, April 7, 2016 for a public forum to discuss the defunct James White Parkway extension and safety along Chapman Highway. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL) SHARE State Rep. Dale Carr talks with residents of Knox, Sevier and Blount counties who have gathered at Seymour Heights Christian Church on Thursday, April 7, 2016 to discuss safety along Chapman Highway. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL) Residents gathered at Seymour Heights Christian Church on Thursday, April 7, 2016 to prepare for an upcoming TDOT meeting April 21 at Valley Grove Baptist Church. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL) By Kristi L. Nelson of the Knoxville News Sentinel About 20 people came to a Thursday night meeting at Seymour Christian Church, many hoping for a revival of the James White Parkway extension project. Three years ago, plans to extend the South Knoxville freeway were halted. But though many South Knoxville, Seymour and Sevier County residents were in favor of extending the parkway, "not enough people showed up to voice their thoughts," said Sevier County resident Boyd Jenkins, who called the meeting. "We were completely outnumbered by the other side." Jenkins wants to be sure those who live along Chapman Highway and travel it daily attend a scheduled meeting 5-7 p.m. April 21 at Valley Grove Baptist Church, at which the Tennessee Department of Transportation will discuss plans for Hendron's Chapel and Chapman Highway improvements. PDF: TDOT three-year plan But many at Thursday's meeting were skeptical. Brenda Cunningham said Seymour and South Knox residents have been promised safety improvements to Chapman for 40 years, and "nothing ever changes." "Every day you drive (Chapman), you take your life into your hands," Cunningham said. "From 2008-2010, 24 fatalities were recorded on Chapman. If those statistics applied to Kingston Pike, Broadway or the interstate, it would have gotten someone's attention immediately." But Tennessee Rep. Dale Carr, R-Sevier, explained to the group why Chapman Highway might not get the same amount of construction as, for example, Alcoa Highway, even beyond the fact that daily traffic averages some 22,000 fewer cars: rights-of-way. There's not enough money in the budget to purchase the land from house and business owners needed to widen Chapman like Alcoa, Carr said. He did have some good news: TDOT has put widening of 1.2 miles of Chapman at Macon Lane in its three-year plan, with construction slated to start in 2017. That should include grading the hill to improve sight and adding a turn lane, Carr said. Carr said he can ask for signs at problem areas, such as a portion of Chapman in Seymour where vehicles turning from Reagan Branch Road face two blind hills. He also said there's been some unofficial discussion about turning parts of Chapman into a divided highway similar to Highway 66 in Sevier County, where the middle lane can be used as an acceleration lane for passing slower traffic at certain points on the highway. Carr pointed out that although the state lost $48 million in federal funds when the James White Parkway extension was scrapped, it kept $12 million for safety improvements along Chapman. He said residents should continue to ask for more safety funds. "If we don't voice what we think needs to be done," Jenkins said, "then it doesn't happen." Sen. Diane Black, R-Gallatin, listens as Sen. Jim Kyle, D-Memphis, left, discusses a proposal sponsored by Black in the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008 in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) SHARE Scott DesJarlais, U.S. representative By Tom Humphrey of the Knoxville News Sentinel NASHVILLE With the candidate lineup now established, only two of Tennessee's incumbent U.S. representatives Diane Black and Scott DesJarlais appear to face serious challenges to re-election this year while a multicandidate contest has developed in the open 8th Congressional District seat. The deadline for filing a qualifying petition to run for a congressional seat was Thursday. Those who filed can withdraw as a candidate until April 14. Here's a rundown: In East Tennessee, U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. of Knoxville has no Republican opponent in the reliably Republican 2nd District, wherein 2014 challenger Jason Zachary now a state representative won about 40 percent of the primary vote. Duncan, who had more than $1 million in his re-election campaign account at last report, will face a Democratic opponent, Stuart Starr of Lenoir City, in November. In the 1st Congressional District, incumbent Republican Rep. Phil Roe of Johnson City, with more than $500,000 campaign cash on hand, is challenged in the primary by Clint Tribble, who declares on his campaign website that Roe is an "establishment Republican who carries the torch of the Status Quo." The Federal Election Commission's website shows Tribble with a zero balance in his campaign account. In the 3rd Congressional District, incumbent Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, who has faced heated primary contests in the past elections, is opposed in this year's only by Allan Levene, who is apparently also running for a congressional seat in Georgia, according to the Summerville (Ga.) News. Fleischmann, who has built his campaign account to more than $900,000, will in November face the winner of a three-way contest for the Democratic nomination. The candidates are Michael Friedman, George Ryan Love and Melody Shekari, all of Chattanooga. In the sprawling 4th District, DesJarlais of Marion County is facing a well-funded and previously-announced Republican challenge from Grant Starrett of Murfreesboro with two lesser-known Republicans Yomi "Fapas" Faparusi and Erran Persley, both listing Murfreesboro addresses also filing. Starrett has reported $728,000 cash on hand much of it from self-financing versus $240,000 reported by DesJarlais. The primary winner will face Steven Reynolds of Murfreesboro, unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Nashville faces no primary opponent in the 5th District. Four Republicans are vying for the Republican nomination to oppose him. They are listed as Jody Ball, John "Big John" Smith and Stacy Ries Snyder. Perhaps the biggest surprise with passage of the deadline was former state Rep. Joe Carr's last-minute filing as a challenger to Black of Gallatin in the 6th Congressional District Republican primary. Carr, who lives in the Rutherford County town of Lascassas, ran unsuccessfully against U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander in the 2014 Republican primary and will be going to the Republican National Convention as a Ted Cruz delegate. Black, who is considering a run for governor in 2018 and holds $1.3 million in her congressional campaign account, also has two lesser-known GOP opponents, Tommy N. Hay of Monterey and Donald Strong of Crossville. Two Democrats, David W. Kent of Cottontown and Flo Matheson of Crossville, are competing for their party's nomination. Incumbent Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Brentwood has no opposition in the Republican 7th District primary and Democrat Tharon Chandler of Lawrenceburg is unopposed in the Democratic primary. In the 8th District, where incumbent Rep. Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump is not seeking re-election, 13 Republicans, four Democrats and five independents have filed papers. The best-known candidates are in the GOP primary and include Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, millionaire radiologist George Flinn, state Sen. Brian Kelsey, former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff and Tom Leatherwood, a former state senator who now serves as Shelby County register of deeds. Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen has three challengers from his own party in the 9th District primary, including Shelby County Commissioner Justin Ford. There are also Republicans seeking the nomination in the solidly Democratic district. Madeline Rogero SHARE By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel KNOXVILLE Mayor Madeline Rogero Friday spoke out against a bill moving through the Tennessee statehouse that would require transgender students to use bathrooms that match their sex at birth. "This bill would feed an atmosphere of intolerance that would negatively affect the lives of local families and students, and also could have damaging consequences for tourism and economic development," Rogero said. "We have seen that our cities thrive on diversity and respect for all people. I hope our legislators do not move forward with this unnecessary and divisive bill." The American Civil Liberties Union has also spoken out against the bill. Gov. Bill Haslam has expressed concern such a bill could negatively impact the state's federal education funding. The bill would require students in public schools to use restrooms and locker rooms "that are assigned to people of the same sex as that shown on the students' birth certificates." It is similar to a law that South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard vetoed in March and is one of dozens of bills introduced in Legislatures across the country in the aftermath of last summer's U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. On Tuesday, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed a law that allows public and private businesses to refuse service to gay couples based on the employers' religious beliefs, despite opposition from gay-rights groups and some businesses who say it enables discrimination. North Carolina also is under fire over a new law that bars local governments from extending civil-rights protections to gay and transgender people. More details online as they develop and in Saturday's News Sentinel. Mark Harmon The American Conservative Union last month honored our Tennessee Legislature as the most conservative in the country. Awards are nice, but they do raise questions. Where will the award be housed? I suggest Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey's office next to his other favorite trophies, Gov. Bill Haslam's spine and photos of the closed rural hospitals from our failure to pass Insure Tennessee. The ACU choice puzzled many. Was another, more thoughtful Tennessee Legislature meeting secretly in Chattanooga or Bristol? No, apparently the ACU meant the one in Nashville. Here are some recent lowlights from that group: Demonstrated the state's commitment to local rule by: overruling local choices on expanded broadband options, derailing Nashville's proposed bus rapid transit, expanding (over local objections) where one can take guns, and making it much more difficult for communities to rename memorials and parks in a blatant attempt to keep memorials to the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Showed its commitment to fiscal integrity by refusing a plan that would recoup $1.2 billion in health care money going to other states, generate 15,000 jobs from economic stimuli, and provide health insurance coverage to 280,000 Tennesseans at no additional cost to our state. To ensure the above-noted legislative malpractice continues, is considering Sen. Randy McNally as Ramsey's successor. McNally routinely responds to Insure Tennessee questions by talking about TennCare, as if he suffers from some cognitive disorder in which he can't distinguish between the very different programs. Could not find a way to pay for most desperately needed road repairs, but did manage to raise a stink against diversity efforts and picked an official state rifle, the .50-caliber Barrett, powerful enough to penetrate light armor, down helicopters and destroy commercial aircraft. So perhaps the best way to understand the ACU award is to realize many of the other "conservative" choices were even worse. Oklahoma's legislature largely is a subsidiary of the fossil fuels industry. The resulting expansive use of fracking has led to a sudden spate of earthquakes. Oklahoma had 20 magnitude 3.0 or higher quakes in 2009, but 890 such temblors last year. Michigan's legislature and Gov. Rick Snyder imposed state-appointed city managers on several impoverished communities. The city manager and related state decisions regarding Flint meant the lead poisoning of a city's water supply and the people who drank from it. In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback and his GOP supermajority have followed an extreme trickle-down path that has devastated the state. Schools had to close early, infrastructure spending dried up and the economy slumped. Louisiana tried a path similar to Kansas, and now former Gov. Bobby Jindal's borrow-and-binge shell game has been exposed. The new governor discovered almost a billion dollars in budget shortfalls this year, and a $2 billion gap next year. The apparent dalliance of Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley with a political adviser may overshadow a bigger story the speaker of the Alabama House is facing felony corruption charges. A grand jury charged him with 23 counts of using his office for personal gain and soliciting things of value. So congratulations to our Tennessee House and Senate, and our new state slogan, "Not quite as embarrassing as other radical-right legislatures." Knoxville is one of the most haunted cities in the south By Michael Williams This early photo depicts Knoxville in the early days. While the people pictured here are long deceased, as Haunted Knoxville investigator J-Adam Smith discovered, some are still present in a ghostly form. J-Adam Smith was never really a believer in the paranormal research. His interest in the burgeoning field came about serendipitously following the purchase of a home. Smith had bought a home in Leesburg, Florida across from a city park. The house was a magnificent Victorian home built in 1923. Almost immediately he noticed odd phenomenon occurring in his newly purchased home. "I had a friends dog that would growl at nothing, there was no one there and he would growl at this unseen presence," said Smith. "There were cold spots in the house. Lights would be turned on and off and I would lock doors and go back and find them unlocked. Sometimes I would find faucets turned on when I had not used them. One of the most terrifying experiences in the house was when I was testing out an air mattress for a camping trip in my living room and was awakened to a male voice moaning. I high tailed it to my parents house at 4am that morning." Smith was intrigued and decided to do a little research and discovered his home was at one time a nursing home. There had been numerous people who died in the nursing home and many of the patients, facing their own mortality, were obviously unhappy. Smith was forced to make a decision, run for the hills or combat these threats. He began researching paranormal investigations and later sold the home. Through courses he took on the Internet and through distance education programs he became a certified paranormal investigator. His purpose was to get a foundation for proper investigation techniques. Smith started Cold Spots Paranormal in Florida, a paranormal research investigation team. Smith moved to Knoxville where he began another paranormal research organization. With his love for History and storytelling he started Haunted Knoxville, a company that offers tours through the haunted areas of Knoxville and paranormal investigations. Smith could not have made a better choice in the location for his enterprise. As it turned out Knoxville is one of the most haunted cities in the south. Through much research and discovery, Smith found out that the city had a very dark undertone--one that would leave any other city haunted. This scruffy town has reason to be one of the most haunted cities based on its history that has been long forgotten by the passing of time or lost in the pages of history. Smith found 37 haunted sites in the city but through his research he has documented numerous other sites where hauntings have occurred. The city is rife with numerous stories of the paranormal and ghostly activity. Among them is the bizarre story of a local doctor who reanimated the body of a murderer that had been hanged. The doctor was inspired by the work of one of his favorite writers, Mary Shelley, author of the classic horror tale "Frankenstein." The doctor was successful at getting the reanimated corpse to take several breaths and shook several times before expiring once again. Another haunted location is the Bijou Theater which has had a colorful and storied past. The theater has served as a hospital, a brothel, a headquarters for both Confederate officers and Union officers and finally a theater. William Sanders, a commanding officer during the Civil War, died on the fourth floor of the building and was originally buried nearby. Knoxville is also the scene of fighting during the Civil War particularly at Fort Sanders where many restless spirits are said to remain. Smith uses scientific techniques to determine if ghostly activity exists. Smith uses electronic devices that can detect even the slightest of sounds to detect electronic voice phenomenon, also known as EVPs. Other meters detect cold spots and energy. Using these techniques he has collected and catalogued an impressive collection of audio recordings of ghostly voices, photos of ghostly forms and video of paranormal activity. "The first thing I do is attempt to debunk the haunting," said Smith. "Sometimes I find evidence of natural phenomenon to explain the haunting. Other times I find actual evidence of paranormal activity." During his haunted tours Smith escorts groups through the haunted areas of the city where he regales his audience with the dark and ghostly history of the city and explains the scientific methodology of his investigations. Occasionally, some of his tour members have sighted or photographed some unexplained phenomenon that appears to be other worldly. Smith has helped raise money for the Knox Heritage Foundation to be used for the preservation of historic sites. Smith offered a ghost investigation for a silent auction which was auctioned off for $2,000. The winner received a private investigation of Westwood Manor. During the investigation Smith recorded several EVPs and noted other paranormal activity. The winner of the auction was so impressed with the investigation that she gave a five star review on Facebook. Smith is using scientific methods to bring history alive in a city where spirits never sleep. His work has been the basis of an award winning documentary "Historic Hauntings: A Paranormal Study of the Ramsey House," which aired on East Tennessee PBS. "There are some that ask if ghosts really exist," said Smith. "I explain that spirits are energy and we are energy. Dr. Albert Einstein said that energy cannot be created nor can it be destroyed. It can be changed but never destroyed. When we die our energy can interact with the living." Haunted Knoxville offers tours through the haunted regions of the city. For more information about the tours visit the website www.hauntedknoxville.net. At the site visitors can see photos of ethereal activity and learn more about the dark and haunted history of the city. Published April 7, 2016 11:19 a.m. April 8, 2016 Retired judge, attorney and psychologist indicted in $600 million social security fraud scheme LOUISVILLE, KY A retired administrative law judge, a lawyer and a psychologist have been charged in a federal indictment for their roles in a scheme to fraudulently obtain more than $600 million in federal disability payments for thousands of claimants. David Black Daugherty, 81, of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Eric Christopher Conn, 55, and Alfred Bradley Adkins, 44, both of Pikeville, Kentucky, were charged in an 18-count indictment returned on April 1, 2016, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The indictment was unsealed upon Conns arrest and initial court appearance. Conn was detained pending his detention hearing, which is scheduled for April 7, 2016. The indictment charges all three defendants with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. In addition, Conn is charged with three counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, two counts of obstruction, two counts of false statements, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, four counts of money laundering, and one count of conspiracy to structure payments. Adkins is charged with one count of mail fraud, one count of wire fraud, and one count of false statements. Daugherty also is charged with two counts of mail fraud, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The defendants are charged with designing an intricate scheme, using their expertise and positions of authority, to fraudulently induce payment of $600 million in federal disability and healthcare benefits, said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell. While Social Security disability programs are designed to support the disabled, the defendants allegedly used it to enrich themselves. This scheme allegedly enrolled ineligible people in Medicare and Medicaid, said Special Agent in Charge Jackson. We are working with our law enforcement partners to protect these government health care programs funded by our taxpayer dollars. The indictment alleges that from October 2004 to Feb. 13, 2012, Conn, Daugherty and Adkins conspired to defraud the government by, among other things, submitting false and fraudulent medical documentation to the SSA in order to have the SSA pay claimants retroactive disability benefits, continue to pay claimants disability benefits in the future, award Medicare and Medicaid benefits to claimants and pay Conns attorney fees. According to the indictment, the conspirators intended that the SSA disburse more than $600 million in disability benefits in more than 2,000 cases to claimants in Kentucky and elsewhere, irrespective of the claimants actual entitlement to benefits. Conn, Adkins and Daugherty allegedly received more than $5 million during the nearly eight-year scheme. According to the indictment, Conn is an attorney whose firm in Floyd County has focused for the past 20 years primarily on representing individuals seeking Social Security disability benefits; Adkins is a clinical psychologist who performed medical evaluations for Conn from 2004 through 2011; and Daugherty is a former SSA administrative law judge who began working with the SSA in 1990 and was assigned to the Office of Disability and Adjudication Review hearing office in Huntington, West Virginia, which maintained a satellite office in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and handled the claims of Kentucky claimants who requested hearings. Daugherty, who retired in July 2011, was responsible for deciding whether claimants were disabled and entitled to benefits. As part of the scheme, Conn allegedly filed disability applications with the Prestonsburg Field Office, irrespective of the claimants residence in an effort to ultimately bring the cases before the Huntington Hearing Office, where Daugherty either self-assigned or directed others to assign those cases to himself. Daugherty allegedly solicited Conn to submit falsified medical evidence so that Daugherty could issue fully favorable decisions. Adkins and others performed pretextual physical and mental evaluations on claimants, the indictment alleges. They routinely prepared and signed evaluation reports indicating that claimants had limitations considered disabling by the SSA, irrespective of claimants actual physical or mental conditions, according to the indictment. According to the indictment, once the law enforcement investigation began, Conn allegedly threatened to retaliate against another persons livelihood when that person provided truthful information to a law enforcement officer about the scheme. Conn also allegedly destroyed and directed others to destroy evidence, including federal reports, a computer tower and other electronic hardware and media located at his law firm. Published April 8, 2016 The Chinese beer Tsingtao has emerged as the No. 1 import brand in South Korea at a leading supermarket chain, industry data showed Friday, amid the rising popularity of Chinese cuisine in the country. According to the data compiled by E-Mart, Tsingtao outpaced other rivals in sales over the January-March period, pushing out traditional leaders, including the Netherlands' Heineken and Japan's Asahi. In 2014, Heineken stood as the No. 1 player, trailed by Asahi and Belgium's Martens. At that time, Tsingtao was the fourth player. "The rising popularity of Chinese food, including roasted lamb on skewers, helped Tsingtao gain further ground in South Korea," an E-Mart official said. It marked the first time for the Chinese beer to take the throne since reaching the South Korean market in 2000. Industry watchers also said restaurants that serve Chinese-style roasted lamb, which used to operate only in local Chinatowns, are expanding to other areas to reach a wider number of South Koreans. The trend eventually led to more consumers eyeing exotic beer, they added. Separate data compiled by the state-run Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation showed imports of Chinese beer brands in 2015 came to 11,490 tons, up 70.6 percent from a year earlier. The amount, however, still hovered below the 31,000 tons posted by Japanese brands and the 24,847 tons held by German products. (Yonhap) By Choi Sung-jin Workers in Korea's second- and third-largest shipyards called for their area to be declared an "employment crisis zone" Thursday, claiming about 20,000 of them are in danger of losing jobs. The heads of labor unions at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Samsung Heavy Industries held a news conference in Geoje city hall, South Gyeongsang Province, and said they are concerned about massive job losses in the latter half of this year because of a prolonged shipbuilding slump. "If we deliver offshore plants to ship owners in June, the shipbuilding works will plunge and at least 20,000 workers, mostly temporary workers and employees at subcontractors, will lose their jobs in the Geoje area alone," the union leaders said. "The government should designate the city as an employment crisis zone and help jobless workers maintain their living." There are about 144,000 workers on the island off the southern coast 62,000 at Hyundai Heavy Industries, 42,000 at Daewoo and 40,000 at Samsung, including subcontractor employees that go to three largest shipyards every day. After the delivery of vessels now under construction, and if the shipyards fail to receive additional orders, some 20,000 of them will become jobless, according to the unions. The Ministry of Employment and Labor has the authority to designate a certain area as an employment crisis zone after reviewing the application from the local administration. To be designated, the applying area should meet some requirements, including the involuntary separation rate of 5 percent or higher or loss of 5 percent or more in the number of insured. Once designated, the area receives financial support and preferential treatment in the government's job-creating projects for a year. The two unions have submitted petitions for such designation to the municipal administration and assembly. They also called for the management of the two companies to come up with positive and detailed steps to prevent mass unemployment caused by dwindling orders for offshore plants. Korea's major shipbuilders received only nine orders in the first quarter of this year after having one of their worst years in 2015. The domestic shipyards' backlog orders remained at 28.44 million compensated gross tonnage (CGT) in February, the lowest since August 2004. Low international oil prices, which had led to the massive cancellation of orders for offshore drilling facilities, the rapid chase of Chinese shipbuilders armed with lower prices and Japan's reemergence as a traditional powerhouse have combined to throw Korean shipbuilders into their biggest crisis in decades, industry executives say. By Choi Sung-jin China is taking the lead in the cruise industry's explosive development in East Asia. Which country will be next? Industry experts point to Korea, given the nation's economic power and its numerous globe-trotters. First, Korea has some good ports of call. Chinese cruise tourists' favorite Asian route brings them to Japanese tourist attractions via Korea. As the nation is between the world's second- and third-largest economies, it can serve as the axis of the "Northeast Asian cruise tour belt," the experts say. A typical cruise leaves port late afternoon or evening and arrives at the next port early the following morning to start another day's schedule. During daytime, travelers visit local attractions, do shopping and return to the ship, which navigates overnight to the next port. Likewise, the most popular cruise package among Chinese tourists starts from Shanghai, drops by Incheon or Busan and ends at some Japanese islands. "Korea is nearest to China, which has emerged as the biggest market for the cruise tourism," an industry executive said. "The nation has the best geographic conditions to attract Chinese cruise tourists whose number is increasing explosively." When the large cruise liner Quantum of the Seas arrived in Busan on March 31, 95 percent of the 4,737 passengers who got off were Chinese. The number of cruise tourists visiting Korea also has nearly quadrupled, from 280,000 in 2012 to 1.05 million last year. The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries estimates it would grow to 1.5 million this year and to 3 million by 2020. Korean cruise tourists are still negligible in number, however. According to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), about 30,000 Koreans took cruises last year. In its 2014 report, the number of Korean cruise travelers increased from 13,973 in 2012 to 15,462 in 2013 and to 16,491 in 2014, recording annual growth of 8.6 percent, on average. "Given the share of cruise travelers against population, Korea has a very high growth potential for the cruise industry," the CLIA report says. The portion of cruise tourists against population ranges between 2 percent and 4.2 percent in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. The comparable share in Korea stands at a fractional 0.03 percent, lower than Japan's 0.19 percent and China's 0.05 percent. In other words, only three out of 10,000 Korean travelers cruised overseas last year. "Chances are high that Korea's frequent flyers, who have visited global tourist attractions, will turn their eyes to cruise tours," the industry official said. The ministry, which has moved to enliven the cruise industry, forecasts about 200,000 Koreans will be cruising by 2020. According to the CLIA, the average age of Korean cruise tourists is 50, while people aged 50 or older account for 57 percent of cruise travelers. In China, people aged 40 or younger represent the majority of cruise travelers. Koreans have cruised a relatively longer 6.8 days, on average, because they have to cruise in the Mediterranean and other regions far from home, with 41 percent of them taking long tours of up to two weeks. "Wealthy aged people resort to foreign cruises because of the lack of Korean cruise companies," the industry executive said. "If and when flag-carrying cruise lines begin their services, the demand is expected to show remarkable growth." By Yoon Ja-young The labor union of KDB Daewoo Securities said it will recommend that its members not wear the company lapel pin of Mirae Asset Securities. It seems that the road will be bumpy for Mirae Asset to completely mingle with workers of the firm it has acquired. The labor union is taking issue with an event on Monday, where Mirae Asset Financial Group Chairman Park Hyeon-joo attached the company's lapel pin on the jacket of Hong Sung-guk, CEO of KDB Daewoo Securities. Mirae Asset signed a deal with Korea Development Bank (KDB) last December to buy a 43 percent stake in KDB Daewoo for 2.4 trillion won ($2.1 billion). It completed the deal by paying the remaining 90 percent of the agreed upon price on April 7, following approval of the financial regulator. The lapel pin event was aimed to show the harmonious combination of the two companies, but the labor union wasn't happy. It pointed out that Mirae Asset completed payment for the deal as late as Thursday. It says it wasn't right for Park to attach the lapel pin on KDB Daewoo's CEO Hong's jacket on Monday, as if he was already a Mirae Asset employee. Hong also reported to Park about the business affairs of KDB Daewoo on the same day. Mirae Asset had announced that Park will become chairman of KDB Daewoo, as well, to help smooth out the merger. "We can't accept Park's pressuring move that ignores the sentiments of the KDB Daewoo workers," the labor union announced. It added that the labor union might consider a strike if Park excludes the labor union from the merger talks that represents the workers. "The campaign to reject the Mirae Asset lapel pin will continue until Park becomes sincere in the negotiations," the labor union said. Park, meanwhile, had announced plans to nurture the new brokerage, tentatively named Mirae Asset Daewoo Securities, into a global leader. The group expects to create synergy between Mirae Asset's strong asset management and KDB Daewoo's advanced research and investment banking. With the merger, the company rose as the top in the industry, with 7.8 trillion won in capital and 4,900 employees. Lee Geon-cheong By Choi Yearn-hong Assume that you find artwork on a rock cliff so long unknown and later find out they were done by artists 6,000 years ago. You cannot believe what you see and touch. Lee Geon-cheong, an outstanding poet and former president of the Korean Poets Association, produced a poetry book "In Front of Bangudae Petroglyphs." It was my joy to read his work, because it was the first Korean poetry book dedicated to whales, a major figure in the petroglyphs. I visited the same site to produce a whale poem. He made many trips to Ulsan, North Gyeongsang Province, to investigate the ancient artwork on the rock and finally produced a remarkable book. I hope the world will discover, know and protect the Bangudae Petroglyphs, as another poet and environmentalist. "In Front of Bangudae Petroglyphs" I traveled to Peru and saw the Nazca Lines and Petroglyphs. From the trip, I produced a series of poems from Peru which included "Nazca Line" published in the "Literature Consciousness" in its winter issue of 2015. Nazca Line was a mysterious art work in the Peru desert land. It can only be seen from the sky, so I took a Cessna to see it from above. It attracted tourists from the world. Archeologists and anthropologists estimate that the Nazca Line was drawn 2,000 years ago as a possible religious service of the Nazca people to God. A hummingbird, a spider, a killer whale, flowers, trees and an astronaut-looking man are among the twelve petroglyph figures. One long line was 20 km. The total length of lines and curves is more than 1,000 km. Why they were drawn in the desert is only guessable, disputable, and will remain so. Bangudae art works are known to be 6,000 years old. Some said they were done between 6,000 and 3,500 years ago. Unlike Nazca, there was no known civilization around Bangudae. However, I can imagine that Bangudae was where a river met the sea where all kinds of wild animals flourished and later human beings settled down. Whales were there long before human beings appeared on the Earth. The Bangudae art works are more than whales; all kinds of sea and land animals and fish. But whales and whale hunting boats and tools attracted most of our attention. There are 304 pieces of rock art on a group of rocks on a branch of the River Taewha flowing into the East Sea. The engravings of whales and deer were made in most cases by carving out the body, while those of land animals mostly consist of outlines and patterns drawn on the rock surface. The human figures are side views of the whole body with a somewhat exaggerated penis, or front images of people with mask-like faces spreading their four limbs. There are engravings of people hunting animals with a bow, raising their hands, and playing a long rod like a musical instrument, recalling hunting and religious acts. Whale engravings are in general 20cm to 30cm long and between 10cm and 80cm high. Most show whales swimming in a group upward as if seen from a bird's eye view. Sideways engravings of whales are made in a "twisted method" in which the tail is carved sideways to show the horizontal tails of the whales, which are different from those of fish. Other rock art shows a mother whale with her baby on her back, whale jumping scenes, and large cetaceans migrating to and from the sea, all vividly depicting whale behavior. The whale horizontally overturning a boat with its body seems to be dead, and stripes carved on its body are thought to be distribution or breakup lines, resembling ethnographic material describing natives distributing pieces of whale. These engravings are assessed to provide important information about the hunting and subsequent distribution of large animals. Bangudae means turtle terrace. The three turtles on the upper left of the main rock face appear to be guiding whales swimming in a group. Since sea turtles come to the shore to spawn between early spring and summer, they are often regarded in ancient myth as symbolic animals crossing the boundary of sea and land. In the case of fish, heads of fish looking like sharks are depicted sideways, and there are salmon jumping above the sea surface. Sea birds are always placed around whales as they are hunting prey. Some engravings show mating and molt scenes of land animals and because of different patterns and angle of fall suggest the annual change of seasons and the breeding season. The Bangudae petroglyphs are a collection of stone-aged men's life in the wilderness, but their whaling is a masterpiece on the rock art. Whales must be their major source of food, oil and other necessary nutrition. Lee's poetry book contains some other poems on the Chonchonli Petroglyphs, about 2 km distance from the Bangudae Petroglyphs. My poetic imagination naturally extends to Namsan in Gyeongju, where all kinds of Buddhas were engraved on the mountain rocks by Silla people between the sixth to ninth centuries. The mountain as a whole is a museum. Who knows? The Silla Kingdom originated from Bangudae and advanced by whale hunters to Gyeongju. But I am sure the Bangudae people were the first whale hunters of human history. Most probably, this site was the worship place of the prehistoric people for harvesting whales and other sea and land animals. We have to explore the lost civilization around Bangudae. Whales are a common figure in the seaside Bangudae and desert Nazca petroglyphs, strange to say, at the least. I translated two poems from his book and post here. For Bangudae Petroglyphs I come here and regain my sight. I come here and regain my hearing. I can see things clearly, I can hear sounds clearly. I can even see a red dragonfly and a grasshopper. I can clearly see them all. It is not a rumor and a legendary story. I can touch them with my fingertips. 6000 years ago, whale hunters sailed their boats to the sea, Darted their harpoons into gigantic sperm whales. They also made a stockade to domesticate wild animals. They conducted their religious rites in this river town. Oh, I can feel and hear their breathing here. I shake their warm hands. They speak in resounding voice, welcoming my visit and showing their smiles. They hug me tight. The beginning of history in the Korean Peninsula opened under bright sunshine. This was the center of the history from the beginning. This was the port from which they briskly set sail out to the sea. ----The Bangudae petroglyphs is speaking eloquently to me. Oh, sacred cliff with prehistoric art works. My eye sight is getting better. My hearing ability is getting better. I can now see clearly. I can hear very clearly. A Reigning Phallus I met a man who has been living 6000 years in this valley. He is real, alive. He is standing on the cliff And I am standing on the other side of the river. We get wet in a late autumn rain. He and I get wet. His thunderous voice is roaring to me. Is he praying with his two hands clasped to invoke God? Is his strong imposing phallus hailing pods of 58 sperm whales, And tigers, wild boars and deer in his backyard? His roaring voice is crossing through 6000 years thunderously. In front of his imposing penis, I stand up as a new man. Between the cliff where he is standing and my stance, The late autumn rain keeps falling. Dr. Choi is a poet and writer based in the Washington area. /Courtesy of KBS2 By Kim Da-hee KBS TV's mega-hit drama "Descendants of the Sun" set a record-high viewership of 40.4 percent for its 14th episode Thursday. The result came during a romantic scene in which Yoo Si-jin (Song Joong-ki) asked Kang Mo-yeon (Song Hye-kyo) to watch a movie with him while in hospital. Yoo was taken to hospital after an unidentified gunman shot him. The episode's average rating was 33 percent, according to Nielsen Korea. Meanwhile, rumors spread Friday morning that a film version of the drama will be released at the Cannes Film Market. But the drama's production company, NEW, said no decision had been made. Panama's government is willing to cooperate with any country investigating or planning to inquire into suspected tax evaders mentioned in millions of documents recently leaked by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, the Latin American country's top diplomat in Seoul said Friday. "We will be ready to vigorously collaborate if the Korean government requires any assistance in its investigation for tax evasion. In a matter of illegal activity, we will give all information to any investigation by any government," Panamanian Ambassador to South Korea Ruben Arosemena said in an exclusive interview with Yonhap News Agency. Earlier this week 11.5 million documents, dubbed the "Panama Papers," were leaked that contained information on the law firm's clients from around the globe and their various controversial acts such as money laundering and tax evasion, through setting up more than 214,000 paper companies in tax havens. The clients of the Panamanian company reportedly included 195 people whose residential addresses are in South Korea. Among the names was Roh Jae-heon, the eldest son of former President Roh Tae-woo, who was found to have established three paper companies in the British Virgin Islands in May 2012. Seoul's financial watchdog said on Tuesday it will consider opening an investigation into the 195 South Koreans suspected of attempting to avoid taxes by setting up paper companies in offshore tax havens in violation of foreign-exchange laws. Arosemena said that the Panamanian government began its investigation into Mossack Fonseca right after the revelation of the leaked documents, while noting that it will take more than a year before the results of the probe emerge. "They (Mossack Fonseca) should defend themselves in the probe. Any penalties or fines against the company will depend on how severe the case is," he said in the interview held in English. The ambassador first asked for the interview with Yonhap, which is seen as an apparent effort by the Panamanian government to repair its national image in connection with the Panama Papers. Panama itself is often cited as a tax haven along with the Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and the Marshall Islands. In this regard, the ambassador stressed that his country has made efforts to do away with the infamous title of "paradise for money-laundering." He went on to say that Panama has executed packages of reforms in past years to upgrade its system to international standards and make it transparent. In a major reform, Panama passed the "Know your client" law in 2011. Under the amendment, local legal and financial services providers are required to more thoroughly select their clients to avoid business deals with those with illegal purposes. "Now in Panama with the new amendment, the lawyers have responsibility to know their clients," he said. In related efforts, Panama has signed 16 bilateral agreements to avoid double taxation and nine pacts to exchange tax information. Panama has inked a deal with Korea to share tax information in the event that any judicial process unfolds, the embassy said. (Yonhap) The nation's top court has acquitted two men of charges they attempted to hand over military intelligence to the North Korean spy agency, court records showed Friday. The two men, aged 59 and 78 and both involved in business with North Korea, were indicted in June 2012 on charges of trying to hand over military secrets on equipment capable of disrupting global positioning system (GPS) signals. They were also accused of trying to provide details of other high-tech military equipment. The arrest at that time coincided with North Korea's suspected jamming of GPS signals, a satellite-based navigation system widely used by planes, ships and the military as well as in ordinary cars. North Korea denied any involvement in the attacks. The Supreme Court said a North Korean agent, who prosecutors argued gave orders to the two suspects, did not exist. It said the information the two men accumulated was accessible by anyone online. Considering that most of the charges were only backed by testimony provided by the 59-year-old co-defendent, identified only by his surname Kim, the court concluded that he made false claims to entrap the 78-year-old, surnamed Lee, after they had troubles in their joint business. Lee was sentenced to life in prison on a separate espionage charge in 1972, though he was released on parole in 1990. Kim, an ethnic Korean holding New Zealand nationality, received a 10-month jail term, suspended for two years, for violating a string of laws related to the country's passport act. (Yonhap) By Yi Whan-woo The ruling Saenuri Party is not expected to win more than a majority in the 300-seat unicameral National Assembly in the April 13 general election, political analysts said, Friday. They said the ruling party is failing to unify conservative voters in the aftermath of a nasty factional feud inside the party over candidate nominations. Speculation is growing that there will be a split of seats among conservative candidates Saenuri Party members who are mainly loyalists to President Park Geun-hye, and independents who bolted from the party after being left out of the nominations. "I'd say the Saenuri Party will win about 140 seats in the April polls," said Shin Yul, a professor of political science at Myongji University. "It's apparent that the party is still hostile towards its former members who are running as independents, thus encouraging conservative voters to turn their backs on the party." Shin estimated that the approval rating for the Saenuri Party is about 30 to 35 percent, down from the 50 percent range it enjoyed in the 2012 general election when it won 152 seats. Political commentator Hwang Tae-soon speculated that the Saenuri Party will acquire 145 seats, saying "Any analysis that it will take up to 180 seats is totally wrong." Lee Joon-han, a professor of political science at Incheon University, agreed by saying, "The Saenuri Party will win more than 150 National Assembly seats only if it convinces its former members to rejoin the party again after their departure." Lee added that such a scenario is unlikely, citing that Rep. Choi Kyung-hwan, a senior member of the party's campaign staff, ruled out the possibility of independent candidates returning to the party under any circumstances, Friday. By Jung Min-ho Roh Jae-heon Ruben Arosemena Panama will cooperate with Korea in investigating Koreans allegedly involved in an international tax evasion scandal, Panamanian Ambassador to Korea Ruben Arosemena said Friday. During an interview with Yonhap News Agency, he said, "We will be ready to vigorously collaborate if the Korean government requires any assistance in its investigation of tax evasion." Arosemena promised to share all information the Korean government may need about the "Panama Papers," a collection of leaked documents containing detailed information about more than 214,000 offshore entities connected to people in various countries. The list reportedly includes 195 Koreans, including Roh Jae-heon, the eldest son of former President Roh Tae-woo. He was found to have set up three shell companies in the British Virgin Islands in 2012. After the revelations, Roh admitted establishing the companies but denied any wrongdoing. "The shell companies have nothing to do with tax evasion," he said in a press release. "The companies were established for my business plans in China but remained unused after the plans fell through." However, many suspect that Roh might have sought to stash some of the wealth his father illegally collected during his presidency from 1988 to 1993. The former president was convicted of treason, mutiny and corruption in 1996. The court ordered him to pay more than 260 billion won ($225 million) in restitution for other crimes. He has paid off about 90 percent of the fine, but many suspect his son still hides some of his slush fund. Setting up a shell company itself is not illegal according to Korean law. However, they are often used for illegal activities such as dodging taxes or hiding illicit wealth. The Financial Supervisory Service said it will start an investigation of Koreans whose names are revealed in the Panama Papers as soon as it obtains the necessary documents from the Panamanian government. Arosemena said that his government has begun its own investigation into Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in Panama that specializes in setting up offshore companies. "They (Mossack Fonseca) should defend themselves in the probe. Any penalties or fines against the company will depend on how severe the cases are," he said. The global scandal, which involves 12 former and current presidents, monarchs and prime ministers, has already forced Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to resign. More are expected to follow in his footsteps as many countries are looking into the leaks. Newstapa, an independent online news outlet that first confirmed Koreans' involvement in the leak, said it has identified some 15,000 files containing the search keyword "Korea." From them, it has found the names of 195 presumed suspects who have addresses in Korea. It plans to report on them one by one after confirming their identities. Rep. Moon Jae-in, front, a former chairman of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), and Kim Hong-gul, the party's campaign co-chief in Gwangju, pay their respects at the May 18 National Cemetery in Gwangju, Friday. Moon visited the city, once the party's political stronghold, to rally support for MPK candidates in the April 13 general election. Kim is a son of the late President Kim Dae-jung. / Yonhap By Yi Whan-woo Rep. Moon Jae-in, a heavyweight of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), said Friday that he will quit politics if the Jeolla region doesn't support him. Moon, a potential MPK contender for the 2017 presidential election, also said he will not run for the presidency without the endorsement from the region an opposition stronghold encompassing Gwangju and North and South Jeolla provinces. "I won't hesitate to leave politics if the people of Honam withdraw their support and turn their back on me," he said during a visit to Gwanju as part of the campaign for the April 13 general election. "I also won't join in the presidential race as I will accept any judgment concerning my fate because it reflects the people's wishes here." His remarks come after a factional feud between loyalists to the late President Roh Moo-hyun, who he leads, and those against him. Moon, the former MPK chairman, has remained low-key in the election campaign amid criticism that he is responsible for causing the factional strife that created a political divide in the opposition camp. He stepped aside from nomination process to select candidates and also decided not to run in the elections in a bid to woo voters. Soldiers from the Army's 17th Infantry Division cast their ballots at a polling station in the Korea Polytechnics in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon, Friday. / Yonhap By Rachel Lee Early voting for the April 13 general elections began nationwide Friday. The turnout on the first day was 4.46 percent, as of 4 p.m. The National Election Commission (NEC) said 1.87 million of 42.1 million eligible voters cast their ballots at polling stations. This is the first time the NEC, the country's election watchdog, has adopted the voting system for the general election. It was introduced when the Election Law was revised in 2012, to help people who work irregular hours and others with difficulties in finding time to vote. It was first used in the by-elections in April 2013. By regions, South Jeolla Province had the highest voter turnout of 7.78 percent, followed by North Jeolla Province with 6.86 percent. Seoul had a turnout of 3.96 percent and Incheon 3.82 percent. A pair of Chinese panda bears that arrived in South Korea last month were unveiled to the public for the first time at an amusement park here Friday, as the city of Yongin hopes the animals will draw more tourists to the region. The pandas, named Ai Bao and Le Bao, were shown to the public for the first time at Everland, the country's largest amusement park in Gyeonggi Province, some 50 kilometers south of Seoul. They have been at the park since their arrival from the Chinese southwestern province of Sichuan on March 3. The bears are leased for 15 years as part of a research project on the endangered species conducted by both South Korea and China. Two pandas spent more than a month getting acclimated to their new environment under the care of veterinarians from both countries before making a debut to a limited number of visitors selected through social networking services (SNSs) and other drawing events. Everland said the pandas will be displayed for only three hours a day and to a small number of selected visitors until April 20, as it decided to have a test operation of its "Panda World." The theme park with the zoo will officially open the place to the public on April 21. Visitors said they were happy to see the pandas and were satisfied with how the animals were treated. "I used to like pandas and even went to Japan to see them," said 39-year-old Ji Hye-eun. "There is a lawn and they have enough space to move around, which is good for both the pandas and spectators." As part of its efforts to bring tourists to the region, Yongin on Thursday appointed the two pandas as its honorary ambassadors for tourism. The city government said that it will use panda characters in its major events to promote their campaigns and plans. It will give "special meals" to two-year-old female Ai Bao and three-year-old male Le Bao, rather than just bamboo, when the number of visitors to Everland increases by 100,000. In 2014, President Park Geun-hye and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed during Xi's state visit to Seoul to lease the bears for joint research purposes. The animals are also considered to be a symbol of goodwill by Beijing for fostering bilateral relations, as China has a tradition of sending pandas to foreign countries as a sign of friendship. This act is also known as "panda diplomacy." (Yonhap) A group of 13 North Korean defectors who worked at a North Korean restaurant in a foreign country arrived in Korea, Thursday, according to the unification ministry, Friday. / Yonhap By Yi Whan-woo Thirteen North Koreans from a Pyongyang-owned restaurant abroad have defected to South Korea, the government said Friday. The Ministry of Unification said one male manager and 12 waitresses arrived in Seoul, Thursday, after escaping from one of the chain of eateries operated worldwide by the repressive state. This is the first time that North Korean employees from a state-run restaurant overseas defected en masse, according to the ministry. Citing security reasons, the government did not disclose where they were employed. "We've seen cases of one or a couple of employees working at North Korean restaurants coming here but not this many," spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said. "They said they had a chance to learn about the true aspects of South Korea through South Korean TV news, soap operas and movies as well as via the Internet while living outside their country. They also realized the truth about Pyongyang's false propaganda." Jeong added the government "respected the defectors' determination" and decided to accept them all on a humanitarian level. The 13 are middle-class people back in their country with "good educational backgrounds" according to officials. They said the defectors underwent a medical examination and all seem to be in good health. The revelation comes amid speculation that the number of guests at the North Korean eateries abroad has dramatically decreased following Seoul's independent sanctions imposed against Pyongyang on March 8. South Korea urged its citizens to refrain from dining at Pyongyang-owned restaurants in line with the U.N. Security Council's (UNSC) latest resolution aimed at cutting flow of hard currency into the Kim Jong-un regime and prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. There are an estimated 130 Pyongyang-owned restaurants in 12 countries. They are mostly in former communist states such as China, Russia, Cambodia and Mongolia but also there is one in the Netherlands. Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, speculated that the defectors feared being held responsible for a fall in revenue and getting punished. The UNSC unanimously adopted the Resolution 2270 on March 2 in response to Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test, Jan. 6 and a subsequent long-range rocket launch using ballistic missile technology, Feb. 7. The number of restaurants surged since Kim Jong-un seized power in December 2011. Intelligence officials claimed that all such restaurants are owned by Office 39, a secretive branch of the cash-strapped regime that directly reports to Kim Jong-un concerning its use of money. In an interview with Voice of America this week, a former North Korean waitress who recently defected to Seoul said South Koreans account for up to 80 percent of the guests at Pyongyang-owned restaurants. The waitresses are among 100,000 North Korean "slave workers" who are believed to be forcibly mobilized by their authoritarian regime to work abroad. An estimated $300 million or 90 percent of the combined wages earned annually by the North Korean migrant workers are directly funneled into Pyongyang's leadership for development of weapons of mass destruction. By Rachel Lee Suth Dina Cambodian Ambassador to Korea Suth Dina was charged with corruption and abuse of power, Thursday, according to Cambodia's Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU). He was arrested Monday after being summoned to ACU headquarters. Dina was sent to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, Thursday, for questioning over allegations of abuse of power and exploitation. The charges together carry a maximum prison term of 10 years. Dina denied the allegations. "The arrest was an injustice for me," Dina told reporters before entering the court. Investigators alleged the ambassador now has $7.2 million in cash and 13 kilograms of gold, worth about $500,000, compared with $4.2 million when appointed ambassador to Korea in February in 2014. ACU Chairman Om Yentieng said at a press conference that the ambassador was accused of pocketing visa fees and taking compensation for deceased migrant workers in Korea, amounting to $180,000. "A lot of workers [in Korea] have complained," the Cambodia Daily quoted the chairman as saying. "We looked at this case seriously." Yentieng alleged the ambassador tried to escape prosecution by repaying $120,000 of the money after ACU officials visited Korea in March following complaints. Dina's family posted a video on Facebook Wednesday that shows their "modest life," the ACU said. Dina was a member of the anti-government Students' Movement for Democracy, but joined the ruling Cambodian People's Party in 2009, where he served as an undersecretary of state at the foreign affairs ministry before coming to Korea two years ago. The Cambodian Embassy in Seoul could not be reached for comment. /Twitter By Lee Han-soo North Korea arrested a South Korean and three Chinese citizens for illegally entering its territory to assassinate leader Kim Jong-un, Asia Press, a Japanese media outlet, said Friday. The four infiltrated the North from China to kill Kim, it said, citing North Korean sources. Detailed information about them was unavailable. "We caught four people who illegally entered our territory to kill our leader," the outlet quoted a North Korean source, believed to be a border security guard, as saying. "They were arrested on the North Korean side of Tumen River. The leader of the assassination crew is a North Korean defector and the others are Chinese. They are currently under the control of the State Security Department." North Korea's nuclear pursuit was denounced as a key challenge to the global nonproliferation regime as the U.N. Disarmament Commission held a general debate this week, the U.N. said in a statement. Spain's delegate, Francisco Javier Garcia-Larrache, told the session that the North's persistence in challenging the global non-proliferation regime is "of the deepest concern" as he called for rigorous implementation of U.N. Security Council sanctions. "Effectively implementing the current sanctions regime should lead that country back to the negotiating table and push it to drop its current nuclear program," the U.N. said in a press statement summerizing the two-day session at the U.N. headquarters on Tuesday and Wednesday. South Korea's delegate, Deputy U.N. Ambassador Hahn Choong-hee, also urged the North to give up its nuclear program, recalling the communist nation's fourth nuclear test in January and its long-range rocket launch in February. "He said that county had continued to pose grave challenges to international peace and security and to the NPT regime. To that end, he strongly urged the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to refrain from further provocations and abandon all its nuclear and ballistic missile programs," the statement said. The North, which withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in early 2003, has long pursued nuclear weapons development, conducting four nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013 and in January this year. South Korean officials say the North could conduct yet another nuclear test at any time. The North has also conducted a series of long-range missile or rocket launches since 1998. In each of its two latest launches in late 2012 and in February this year, the North succeeded in putting a satellite into orbit. Analysts have warned that it is only a matter of time until the North develops nuclear-tipped missiles. Some experts have recently warned that the communist nation's nuclear arsenal could expand to as many as 100 bombs by 2020. (Yonhap) A group of 13 North Koreans working at a restaurant in a foreign country defected en masse to South Korea this week, Seoul's unification ministry said Friday, as the U.N. Security Council has slapped tougher sanctions on the North. The defectors -- one male manager and 12 female employees at a restaurant in an unidentified nation -- arrived in South Korea on Thursday, the ministry handling inter-Korean affairs said. Overseas restaurants operated by North Korea are known to be facing difficulties in doing business after the U.N. Security Council's (UNSC) sanctions on Pyongyang for its January nuclear test and long-range rocket launch in February went into effect. The drop in customers has been compounded by Seoul asking its nationals to not use North Korean restaurants in China and other nations. Such restaurants have served as one of the main sources of hard currency for North Korea, which is suspected of bankrolling the North's nuclear and missile programs. The government declined to reveal the route the defectors took or detailed personal information about them. "As the international community has slapped sanctions on the North, North Korean restaurants in foreign countries are known to be feeling the pinch," Jeong Joon-hee, a ministry spokesman, told a press briefing. "North Koreans in overseas restaurants are believed to be under heavy pressure to send money to their country." South Korea estimates that North Korea is running approximately 130 restaurants in some 12 countries including China, Vietnam and Cambodia, earning US$10 million annually, according to government sources. North Koreans in overseas restaurants are among some 50,000 workers sent abroad by the regime to earn much-needed dollars to help it sidestep the string of past U.N. sanctions. The North's export of workers has received a growing spotlight due to the need to address the North's human rights abuses and its defiant pursuit of missile and nuclear weapons capabilities. The spokesman said that the latest defection indicates that the tougher U.N. sanctions have begun to generate impacts on curbing the North. The ministry said that it marked the first time that an entire group of North Koreans at the same restaurant has opted to come to South Korea at once. "The government has accepted their request to come to South Korea on humanitarian grounds," Jeong said. The spokesman said that the North Koreans recently decided to defect to Seoul because they realized the reality of South Korea by watching South Korean TV dramas and movies and were disillusioned with the North's ideological campaigns. It is also unusual for South Korea to publicly confirm North Koreans' defections, as Seoul usually keeps a low-key stance about the issue. "The government has decided to unveil the case as it is rare that a group of North Koreans has defected to South Korea under the U.N. sanctions regime," Jeong said. The ministry said that the government will conduct an evaluation of the defectors to find out the exact motivations for their defection and other details. (Yonhap) Author Gu Byeong-mo / Courtesy of Literature Translation Institute of Korea The cover of The Wizard's Bakery By Kang Hyun-kyung Gu Byeong-mo's fantasy fiction "The Wizard's Bakery" has changed the perception about young adult literature. The book describes a 16-year-old's exploration of a bakery selling cookies, scones and muffins baked by a wizard for certain medicinal purposes. Before the book, teens were considered passive readers who needed guidance from their parents or teachers who selected what they were to read. Naturally, many writers here observed and portrayed the growing pains of children and rebellious teens in puberty who are pressured to achieve higher academic goals from their parents. Gu, 40, switched the gears of the genre, however. She put herself in their shoes and went deeper into the hearts of teens and searched through their curiosity and wishful thinking. The critically acclaimed book struck a chord with young readers. It has sold 300,000 copies since it was published in 2009. Gu said she wanted to challenge the perception of young adult literature in Korea. Previously, in the selection of young adult books, parents and teachers were the decision-makers and they chose books for their children based on their preferences after checking content they felt appropriate," she said on April 6. "They seemed to feel that selecting the right books for their children or students was part of parenting and teaching. So they tried to guide the teens to move in the right direction until they become adults. I am against such a notion and my challenging spirit drove me to write the book." Unlike many writers who have certain messages for their readers, Gu said she has never had any such intention. "I'm wondering why people are trying to draw lessons or find messages when they read," she said. "Is it inappropriate if readers say the books they have read are interesting and enjoyable without commenting on any lessons or messages they got from them? If there are no lessons to draw, does this mean that the books are meaningless or useless?" The Wizard's Bakery guides readers to a mom and pop bakery run by a wizard. It has an online shopping mall selling some 20 kinds of scones, biscuits and muffins designed to have certain medicinal benefits for the people once they eat them. For example, there are raisin scones labeled as Making Peace which helps people make up with others after a fight. "Encourage the person you had the fight with to take it. The scone will make you two become friends again," reads the description of the scone posted on the website of the bakery. The story, written in the first person, tells of a teenager's experiences in the bakery and the customers who purchase the therapeutic bakery goods. The 24-hour bakery becomes the boy's hideout after he was accused of raping his stepsister, Moohee. The book elaborates on the boy's traumatic childhood and uneasy relationships with his stepmother, a nagging teacher who mentally abused him. The Wizard's Bakery has captured the hearts and minds of young readers since it won the Changbi Young Adult Literature Award in 2008 and was published a year later. Changbi Publishers said the sale of 300,000 copies is something phenomenal, given it is a book for young adults. Gu became one of the most popular writers for young readers after her first book project became successful. Lee Young-ran, a middle school student, wrote on her blog that the book interested her because it was based on reality but also has some fantasy in it, too. "I think it is a great book for people who dream that magical things can happen in their lives," she wrote. Another Internet user Byeol-I wrote that the author chose the right topic for teens. Gu has published many books for young adults, including "Red Shoes" (2015), since she made her literary debut at 34. "I'm not quite sure when I first wrote a story. But I do remember that I was writing stories when I was 11 years old. So it's safe to say I have written stories since then," she said. Korea's problematic literary debut system, however, delayed her official debut as a writer. "In Korea, we have a unique system that allows hopeful writers to make their literary debut, called Deungdan," she said. "I applied for the competition since I was 18 and finally won it over a decade later." The debut system is kind of a qualification test through which a group of critics and writers review the writings submitted by aspiring writers to literary competitions through which they select those they feel should make their literary debut. Aspiring writers have two options through which to make their literary debut. They can apply for the spring literary competitions hosted by a few media groups and then win the competitions. But only the winners are allowed a debut. Or they can contribute their stories, poems or essays to literary magazines. Critics and writers there will review their work to give them a "pass or fail." Recently Deungdan came under fire as some raised issues of fairness and criteria. Kim Young-seon, a staffer at Changbi Publishers, said that The Wizard's Bakery is a phenomenal book in young adult literature. "The book guides readers to the magical world of imagination. It is fun, enjoyable and creative. It is also an attractive story. It stirs young readers to imagine a world that doesn't exist," she said. Prior to The Wizard's Bakery, Kim said most books for young adults dealt with the dark side of growing up. However, she said Gu turned the focus into a magical, creative world and this fascinated young readers. The Wizard's Bakery has begun to capture the hearts of young Mexican readers. Since it was translated into Spanish and published as "La Panaderia Encantada" by Mexican publisher Nostra Ediciones in December, the book has sold some 10,000 copies there over the past three months. According to the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, this record is impressive, given that few books written by Korean writers have appealed to Mexican readers before. "A wizard and a bakery are two universal topics and this seems to make it easier for foreign readers to follow the story," the LTI Korea said. Dozens of Mexican teens posted favorable reviews about the book on the Internet and recommended that their friends and fellow bloggers read it. One of the bloggers said he had never read Korean fiction before The Wizard's Bakery but he was fascinated by the novel. "It is a great story not only for children but also for adults," the blogger wrote. LTI Korea, which sponsored the Spanish translation of the book, said that the Mexican publisher's effective marketing through social media helped the book draw the attention from young readers. Nostra Ediciones advertised the book through YouTube, which went viral. Earlier, The Wizard's Bakery was translated into Chinese and French, and both editions were published in China and France before the Spanish edition was published in Mexico. The publication of the English translation is expected to come later this year. LTI Korea said the translation is in its last stage and the institute will find interested publishers sooner or later. Since the 2000s, the Korean government has provided financial support for translations of chosen literary works in several languages to make them more accessible to global readers. By Oh Young-jin After the "Whining, racism or in-between" article Tuesday, some of our readers sent their responses. We try to accommodate these as much as possible within space constraints. Some were edited but to the level that allows the sender's opinion to be clearly stated. Again, we want to stress that we believe the issue of racism, which spilt over inadvertently after the "Ugly foreigners" editorial, can't be over-emphasized. The purpose of this continued coverage is to encourage members of this society foreigners as well as Koreans to think and speak about it rather than pigeonholing their doubts, misunderstandings and suspicions in their emotional compartment to the point that they turn into a wall of separation that is too tall to scale. Historically, there have been many cases of racism gone wild and we need to learn from them. Perhaps, what is going on in the Middle East is also attributable to the failure of the parties concerned to understand each other. Scaling things back, we are not naive enough to believe that our society is a perfect utopia but one thing we need to remind ourselves of is that by engaging in honest and civilized dialogue now, perhaps we can keep our differences from turning into racial hatreds and walking away before things get ugly. Don't overreact! You own a coffee shop or a bar in New York City, Paris, Rome or Los Angeles. A group of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Middle Eastern or Eastern European tourists come to your shop, and you have never dealt with tourists before. Wouldn't you adapt your English, use gestures when speaking, try to use a smattering of the other languages you learned in school or have to make use of any stereotype you hold of those people, for example that Asian's can't eat anything without rice? Either way your heartbeat rate would increase and your hands would shake. You're not sure they understand the price, you get impatient and so do they. Once they leave, your image of their country will never be the same, perhaps one of rude, ruthless, impatient tourists who can't keep any etiquette whatsoever. Korean tourists in the Philippines are not all bullies who break things and can't live without kimchi. A lot of them are young, many of them believe in highly ethical standards and many of them are very pleasant to be around. A drunk Irish or British tourist doesn't mean Europeans are all drunks. Some of them even belong to Churches that don't allow them to drink. What can be perhaps frustrating in the racism debate is the persistent use of anecdotal evidence to prove it. Its root cause may lie in Machiavelli who advised against people foreign to a kingdom from meddling with domestic political affairs, which explains why so many enlightened foreigners who live in Korea (and Koreans who live abroad) are put in the closet and can't contradict racist stereotypes. I don't think The Korea Times intended to harm anyone by using "ugly Koreans" or "ugly foreigners" in the title or its articles. There used to be a very popular column that bore the same title in a rival English newspaper, and what was meant was the obvious: it was meant with a pinch of humor and a dose of mutual understanding. What can be frustrating for some long-term Korean immigrants in Korea and foreign immigrants abroad is the obvious Machiavellian law: don't let people thrive in a kingdom when not sure what their allegiance is. Many of us have suffered from that law in Korea and have felt that our careers, be it in business, academia or other jobs had no room for growth and that we were stuck in dead-end jobs despite sometimes feeling that we deserved better. This is not just a Korean problem, but a global problem. So the real question is whether brilliant foreigners will be allowed to durably thrive in any country, or whether Machiavelli's law will still apply. Akli Hadid I want to chat with the Korean accuser I read your article last week and I also thought that you could have worded the headline a little bit better. Actually, the whole thing could have been written better. The article was about a new law that was implemented and that people are transgressing these new laws. I don't think it's totally racist, just incredibly biased. I also want to respond to the first email, by E.S Kim, you published in the "Whining, racism and in-between article (2016/04/05). The student mentions drug abuse, alcohol misuse and fighting. He/she seems to think that it is foreigners that use illegal drugs, foreigners that misuse alcohol and it is foreigners that start fights. I think that articles like your original "Ugly foreigners" promote that kind of thinking. You have to remember, that there are some really shallow thinkers (dare I say, like this student) in society (any society) and they will just gobble everything up as if it's the gospel. Foreigners are "sensational" in Korea. If we do anything wrong, we make the newspaper. Just last night, I was walking home and there were two Koreans fighting in the street. I couldn't believe it. They didn't look drunk. Eventually the one man ran away and the other gave chase, but gave up quickly. Last weekend there was an altercation between two Korean guys in a club here in Daegu (where I live). I have been woken up countless times by Korean men hitting women. Either in my building, or the building next to mine. The woman would be screaming and crying for hours. The man not letting up. Nobody helps her. That's part of the Korean way. I have seen grown Korean men, in their work suits, throwing up in the street from drinking too much alcohol. Most times the sun is still shining. Some mornings, its like a minefield of puke on my way to work. I know it's also part of the Korean culture to go drinking with work colleagues on a regular basis. Every time I go out, I see some Korean who is being carried by his/her friends because the person in question is passed-out drunk and cannot even walk. It's a known fact that Korea is the biggest consumer of spirits in the world, almost doubling that of Russia's consumption. I can go on but I think you get the point. E.S Kim says that foreign countries are far more racist than Korea. I don't think that is true. Racism is a form of discrimination. In Korea it is acceptable to openly exclude black people in job recruitment. Men are preferred to young married women in Korean companies, because men can't get pregnant. Women sometimes lose their jobs here because they fall pregnant. In Korea it is acceptable to post signs big and proud in front of establishments, barring entrance to foreigners, men, women, gays, etc for merely fitting into these categories. In Korea, there are no anti-discrimination or anti-racism laws. In Korea, you are asked about your family's background and your father's occupation in job interviews and university applications. Korea has one of the highest gender inequality ratings in the world. In Korea there is a human rights commission that is allowed to make recommendations, but nobody has any obligation to carry out these recommendations. De Wet ********* Who are more prone to road rage I missed all the editorials and comments from last week as I made a brief and rare return to California after living most of the past six or seven years in Korea. I have traveled within Asia for business and to Europe too but have not lived outside Korea since 2009 and have been driving here daily since then as well. Clearly road rage is unacceptable under any circumstances, the same as any other aggressive or violent public behavior. That said, mild road rage, like heavy horn blowing, happens relatively often in Korea from what I have seen and mainly its Koreans doing it. Let's face it there are relatively few foreign drivers anyway. [Can you, as the Times, get a number on this? I am curious as to how many foreigners do have Korean driver's licenses. That would leave out those who drive illegally or semi-legally on their own national licenses but it's still a starting point.] One thing which I believe may contribute in particular to foreigners having road rage issues in Korea is a bit of surprise at Korean driving practices. I think most foreigners come to Korea with expectations of a high level of order and precision such as they see in subways and reinforced in their Korean work places. What they see on roads is something else. I suspect this incongruity in Korean road behavior catches many people off guard including many Koreans themselves! As a long time driver with experience in Europe, Asia (Hong Kong, China and Thailand) as well in many U.S. States I can say there are a few quick solutions that I believe could alleviate a lot of heartburn and headaches for all drivers in Korea. Bad traffic congestion (don't I know it!) is the mother of road rage (in most cases: some people are just angry nuts!) so let's look at a few typical Korean road practices and related solutions that could help improve traffic flow and decrease the potential of rage; Enforce no-stop areas for taxis Ditto for private cars Right turn lanes for turning On highways left lanes for passing and right lanes are for driving Enforce no-go hash-mark areas at all major intersections Michael BobkoskiMichael By Gwynne Dyer After the Syrian army recaptured the city of Palmyra from Islamic State a week ago, US State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted that the liberation of the ancient city was a "good thing". But he could not resist adding: "We're also mindful, of course, that the best hope for Syria and the Syrian people is not an expansion of [President] Bashar al-Assad's ability to tyrannize the Syrian people." This was entirely in line with the long-standing US policy of seeking to destroy both Islamic State and the Syrian government (i.e. the Assad regime) at the same time. But that was never more than wishful thinking, especially as the United States was quite sensibly determined not to commit its own ground troops to the conflict. If the Syrian army actually had collapsed (as was looking quite likely before the Russians intervened to save it last September), nothing could have prevented Islamic State and the rival Islamist forces of the Nusra Front from taking the whole country. They might then have fought each other for control, but all of Syria would have ended up under extreme Islamist rule. But the opposite is not true. The revival of the Syrian army, and even its reconquest of Palmyra, does not mean that the Assad regime can destroy Islamic State, let alone regain control of the whole country. Nor does Russia have any intention of helping President Assad to pursue such an ambitious goal, as Moscow made clear by withdrawing most of the Russian combat aircraft from Syria two weeks ago. Russia's strategy has been more modest and realistic from the start. It was to restore the military stalemate that had persisted until the spring of 2015, and to convince the remaining non-Islamist rebel groups that they had no chance of somehow riding to power on the coat-tails of an Islamist victory over the Assad regime. This hope was as delusional as the American policy in Syria. By mid-2015 between 80 percent and 90 percent of the Syrian rebels actively fighting the Assad regime belonged to Islamic State or to al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise, the Nusra Front, and its Islamist allies in Ahrar al-Sham. Moreover, the remainder of the rebels, the non-fanatics or so-called "moderates", were mostly allied to the Nusra Front. This curious alliance came to pass mostly because the Nusra Front wanted to avoid the American and "coalition" bombs that were falling on Islamic State. So it created a broader alliance called the "Army of Islam" that wrapped these small "moderate" groups around the Islamist core, and the United States fell for it. Or at least American propaganda fell for it. The Russians cheerfully bombed all these forces indiscriminately, making no distinction between Islamists and the allies of Islamists. The United States ritually condemned the attacks on the latter groups (always described as "moderates"), and the Russians cheerfully ignored that too. And after five months, when most of the "moderates" had been persuaded that they were never going to gain power through an alliance with the Islamists, Moscow proposed a ceasefire that would include the "moderates" but exclude the Islamists. That ceasefire has now been in effect for almost a month. The negotiators for these moderate groups are still demanding the departure of Assad from power as the price of a permanent ceasefire. They haven't a prayer of getting such a sweet deal, but the Russians are putting pressure on Assad to come up with a formula of words, however vague, that will persuade them to accept amnesty and come in from the cold without losing too much face. The Islamists, although largely surrounded and blockaded, will not be defeated any time soon by military force, but they are growing weaker and may fall to fighting among themselves. And the Syrian Kurds, the only American allies on the ground in Syria, will probably manage to hold on to the long strip of territory they control along the border with Turkey. However, they may have to settle for being an "autonomous province" within Syria if they wish to avoid a Turkish invasion. President Vladimir Putin's goal was to isolate the Islamists and reconcile the rest of the rebels with the Assad regime, and it is well on the way to accomplishment. It will not be a happy ending for any of the groups involved in the Syrian civil war, but it is the least bad outcome that can now be realistically imagined. It will not put an end to all the fighting on Syrian territory. Not all the refugees will want to come home to such a country, and the terrorism abroad will continue. (But then, it would continue even if Islamic State disappeared you don't need a state to plan terrorist attacks.) When no decisive victory is possible for any side, it makes sense to stop as much of the shooting as possible. Religious organizations are held to a standard of accountability beyond laws. Buddhist organizations, in particular, have defied this standard for too long by not practicing openness in their financial dealings. The Jogye Order's first disclosure of the revenues of the nation's four largest temples this week is a significant step toward establishing transparency of the temples. This will hopefully make way for fiscal transparency becoming the norm, not an exception, across all religions in Korea. Fiscal transparency is important because temples have a duty to donors and believers to let them know that their donations are being spent wisely and to prevent any misuse of funds. Korea's largest Buddhist sect said that Bongeunsa Temple, a famous temple in Seoul's affluent Gangnam district, earned 21 billion won ($18.3 million) through prayer services, donations and other activities last year. Jogye Temple in central Seoul made 20.05 billion won. The rare opening of the temples' finances is part of the Jogye Order's self-reform measures. Publicizing revenues will be a huge step toward restoring the religion's reputation that has been marred by gambling and corruption scandals. Buddhists organizations, which have lagged behind the Roman Catholic Church and other religious organizations in financial transparency, should eventually disclose the finances of other temples nationwide. In addition to this, temples should also practice more fiscal transparency with outside accounting firms and in planning their budgets professionally. Ultimately, the Jogye Order's financial disclosure should convince the rest in the religious community to honor their roles as responsible members of society by embracing the government's plan to tax religious professionals. The government was going to impose income taxes on monks, pastors and priests starting in 2015, but the plan has been delayed until 2018 due to severe opposition from the religious community. There is much public discontent toward the religious sector's unwillingness to pay taxes. Where there is income, there should be taxes. This principle should apply to all citizens, and religious professionals and organizations are no exception. Religious organizations made around 8 trillion won in donations last year. Their massive earnings should be taxed like any other money-making enterprise. Religions have a unique role in society, but those who serve in the religious profession should not be given privileges denied to ordinary citizens like tax exemption. Temples and churches will gain more respect from society by strictly upholding financial accountability and paying taxes. By Kim Ji-myung How about having a lovely second house in a small town in Japan almost for free? It sounded like a fairy tale when I first learned that one of my high school seniors spends half of her year in a second house near Nagoya, Japan. This retired couple in their seventies began enjoying their life in the small town of Komono, Miye Prefecture, several years ago. They stay about two months at a time there, reading and writing. Of course, they enjoy a lot of walking and trekking in this calm mountain village with brooks and spas. As in many Japanese towns, there are lovely places to visit such as a museum and restaurants. It sounds like a millionaire's program! But it cost them almost nothing. House rent is 50,000 Korean won per month, which is about 50 dollars. To set up at the beginning, they picked a rice cooker, toaster, microwave oven, and some basic furniture at the community center free of charge. The return flight from Seoul to Nagoya costs just about US$200 per person on a budget airliner. Then it is a bus and train ride to the village. They have packed their laptops and new books to read in their luggage for the two months they will stay there. In fact, they don't feel they are that far from Seoul as they have the internet over there. Moreover, she and her husband attend a weekly Rotary meeting together, which gives them a sense of camaraderie that spans the world. "What we enjoy most about living in this village are the locals. There are not many children around, but when they see us in the street, they stop and bow, taking off their caps," she said. It reminds her of her school days in the 1960s and 70s when teachers emphasized similar polite manners. I almost decided to ask her to find a house near her neighborhood in Komono. It was easy to find a decent and cheap house as there were many for rent on the same block. But I woke up from my fantasy, realizing that I am not yet retired, nor can any of my family speak Japanese. Living in an foreign land without knowing the language can be like hell. Some years back, my husband and I traveled around Japan for a few days in a chauffeured car, thanks to a relative. The driver did not know a word of English and we could not get him to understand our Japanese. I know the frustration of failed communication. From an outsider's point of view, the pleasure of owning a house in a Japanese town sounds attractive. But I realized that the other side of the coin is the daunting problem of empty houses that the Japanese countryside has been facing. The recent report in The Japan Times warns about not only the diminishing and aging population, but also about possible "disappearing towns." "A quiet crisis looms in this town of Kanna in southern Gunma Prefecture, one that may foreshadow the fate of hundreds of other aging rural communities across the country," said the article. The town has 2,139 inhabitants and as of April 2015, 55 percent of them, or 1,186 were aged 65 and older. It is predicted the community will "vanish," with few children being born and most young people moving away, according to the paper. The article also cites that Nomura Research Institute forecasts that more than 8 million homes are already empty, and that number may reach 21.5 million by 2033, or about one-third of the nation's housing stock. Besides the issue of demographic change and population concentration in urban areas, building practices and a preference among Japanese buyers for new homes is compounding the problems. Half of the Japanese houses across the country are wooden structures, with short lifespans. Another reason for this is the tax system. Japan's tax office typically depreciates the value of dwellings to zero in about 20 years, as many Japanese homes are wooden and aren't built to last. According to the Japanese tax law, wooden houses have no value after 22 years while concrete apartments depreciate to zero after 47 years. This causes a very low rate in the secondary housing market in Japan, compared to other countries. Then how is Japan is coping with this problem? The Japanese government announced in January 2016 that the total number of abandoned houses and apartments will be reduced to around 4 million or less by fiscal 2025. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism set up a new 10-year national housing plan, which includes this target. Over the past decades, Korea has followed Japan with something like a 10 to 15 year time gap in experiencing similar economic and social problems. An excess supply of apartments is also emerging in Korea, although we don't have empty and dilapidated houses like Japan yet. Many Koreans in their 60s and 70s have recently moved to the countryside for their post-retirement lives. Could it be a solution for Japan to invite Korean and Chinese seniors to come and live in those empty houses at low cost? Taking lessons from Japan, we need to fix land use regulations and tax laws to suit the future requirements of the housing situation. Son Young-su By Lee Kyung-min Son Young-su, 30, who is staying in Perth, Australia, on a working-holiday visa, said flying some seven hours to Sydney to cast his ballot for the April 13 general election will contribute to changing the course of history. "My friends told me not to spend my time and energy in doing what is virtually considered meaningless, but I firmly believe that my vote matters," he said. Given his monthly income is about $A2,000, spending a fifth of it, or $A400 (350,000 won), on a plane ticket was not an easy decision, but he thinks it is well worth it. "Spending my mornings loading and unloading items at a warehouse, and doing dishes at a restaurant in the afternoon, my life in a foreign country is hard and the work is demanding," he said. "But I don't feel I wasted my hard-earned money. I believe I spent it on something I believe in." Giving up on voting and staying indifferent to life is a dangerous attitude, he said. "Many people, especially those who are young, show great antipathy, or apathy, towards politics," he said. "But I think that not voting is letting the lawmakers off the hook, instead of holding them accountable for not delivering their campaign pledges. The more we feel betrayed and disappointed, the more important it is for us to vote." /Courtesy of Twitter By Lee Han-soo Facebook, the world's biggest social networking website, has turned into a hot bed for illegal international weapons trading involving ISIS and other extremist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere, according to The New York Times (NYT). Facebook recently banned unlicensed personal gun sales, but sales through the website in ISIS-controlled regions continue. The U.S. daily reported seven suspicious groups to Facebook, six of them now shut down. The weapons are believed to be from U.S. distributions to security forces and allies in the Middle East or stolen from depots in Libya. Last year, the Armament Research Service, a private technical intelligence consultancy, said a SA-7 grip stock, a reusable centerpiece for an anti-aircraft missile launcher, was posted on Facebook. The SA-7 is known to be more dangerous to helicopters and commercial airliners than fighter jets. Recently, illegal trading on Facebook has expanded to boats for refugees flooding into Europe. Despite criticism, Facebook has failed to come up with measures to stop illegal weapons trading completely. It relies on users to report illegal trafficking, leaving many loopholes unplugged. "We urge everyone who sees violations to report them to us," Facebook spokeswoman Christine Chen was quoted as saying in the NYT report. Seen in this photo is DPM Tech's manufacturing facility in North Gyeongsang Province, equipped with Samsung Electronics' enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics By Lee Min-hyung Samsung Electronics has pledged to become a key supporter of textile businesses by offering its smart-factory expertise. The move came as the local textile industry has suffered a decades-long slowdown, failing to renovate manufacturing facilities and adopt smart management systems. The electronics giant said Friday it has formed a partnership with a regional government in Gyeoggi Province to equip 16 textile companies there with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This is part of the government's mainstream policy, dubbed "creative economy," under which President Park Geun-hye has built 17 conglomerate-funded innovation centers across the nation. Samsung's smart-factory initiative is expected to help more than 1,000 small and medium enterprises (SME) establish computerized factory management solutions. "Our partnership with the Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy and Innovation is expected to help vitalize the sagging regional textile industry, playing a crucial role in reigniting the government-led creative economy drive," Samsung said. The latest move is meaningful, because the smart-factory project has been limited to some industries, such as automobiles, metals and electronic components businesses. More than 80 percent of the textile business operators have fewer than 10 employees, due to falling demand, according to the company. Under the partnership, the company will share its technical expertise in areas such as efficient factory management. The Samsung ERP solutions include all the corporate management processes inventory management, accounting, sales and finance management. Lim Deok-rae, chief of the Gyeoggi creative economy center, said: "We expect the partnership to help small companies in the area benefit a lot, serving as a stepping stone to spread the smart-factory initiative across the nation." Meanwhile, the government-led smart-factory project has come under the collaboration of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and Samsung Electronics. Under the initiative, Samsung Electronics will apply its smart-factory solutions to more than 1,000 SMEs across the nation by next year. This is not the first time the company has pushed for leadership in helping the regional economy. Late last month, Samsung forged ties with the Daegu Metropolitan Government over building the Internet of Things (IoT) in the nation's southeastern city, in a bid to nurture more startups and help revitalize the sagging regional economy. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Harsha de Silva and the Deputy Minister of Mahaweli Development and Environment Anuradha Jayarathna met with the Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Hela Cheikhrouhou at the GCF Secretariat in Songdo, Republic of Korea, on Friday 18th March 2016. A delegation of senior officials from the Ministry of Mahaweli Development and Environment accompanied the two Deputy Ministers to Songdo to discuss projects to address climate change related issues in Sri Lanka. Created under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the mission of GCF is to expand collective human action to respond to climate change. The Fund aims to mobilise funding to invest in low-emission and climate-resilient development in the planet. Embassy of Sri Lanka Seoul, Republic of Korea 22 March 2015 The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary Read more Clover POS systems are a great solution if you want to streamline your internal services and want to replace an old kit like cash registers, payment terminals and other equipment. Clovers point of sale solution allows you to get rid of all that and replace it with a more integrated system with state of the This article appears in the April 8, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. Thermonuclear War or Win-Win Cooperation with the New Silk Road by Helga Zepp-LaRouche [PDF version of this article] April 1Disguised under doublespeakwindow-dressing on the one hand and blatant threats on the otherthe Obama Administration, egged on by British Prime Minister David Cameron, is currently pursuing a broad array of strategic confrontations with Russia and China, which aim at cementing the United States claims to a unipolar world. The Pentagons decision to station a full U.S. armored brigade, beginning in early 2017, along the border the Baltic states share with Russia, is a case in point. So also is the prospect of the U.S. stationing the mobile THAAD missile defense system in South Koreaa decision which China decisively rejects because its range strongly affects Chinese security interests. There are also the ongoing provocations in the South China Sea, be it the refusal to recognize Chinas right to establish an Air Defense Identification Zone or the setting up of naval and airborne reconnaissance patrols under the pretext of the need to defend the freedom of navigation, which China is not challenging at all. Timed with the Fourth Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, held March 31-April 1, President Obama wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post that he had ruled out the development of new nuclear warheads and had also narrowed the contingencies for the use or the threat of use of nuclear weapons. The problem with this assertion is that, to put it diplomatically, it is false: The Obama Administration has not only allocated about $350 billion for the modernization of nuclear weapons, but the relevant programs would make these weapons more usable, just as Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, among others, has repeatedly pointed out. In his March 25 blog posting, Kristensen reported on a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee, during which Senator Dianne Feinstein decisively contradicted officials of the Obama Administration, who were defending the modernization. She said: The so-called improvements to this weapon [meaning the B61-12 bombs stationed in Germany and the Long Range Standoff Cruise Missilesed.] seem to be designed candidly to make it more usable, to help us fight and win a limited nuclear war. I find that a shocking concept. I think this is really unthinkable, especially when we hold conventional weapons superiority, which can meet adversaries efforts to escalate a conflict . . . because this just ratchets up warfare, and ratchets up deaths. This is exactly the intention expressed very clearly by NATO Commander General Philip Breedlovealso known as Dr. Strangelovewhile he was in Riga, Latvia, April 1 for the announcement of the permanent rotation of 4,200 troops in a U.S. armored brigade starting in 2017: We are prepared to fight and win if we have to ... Our focus will expand from assurance to deterrence, including measures that vastly improve our overall readiness. This is necessary, Breedlove said, as an answer to a resurgent and aggressive Russia. The insinuation that Russia is planning an invasion of the Baltic states is nothing but black propaganda. To the same category belong the constantly renewed campaign of demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the internationally coordinated campaign against Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as the shamelessly open campaign of regime change against President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil and President Jacob Zuma in South Africaall leaders of BRICS countries. U.S. Department of State In a refreshing contrast to this war-mongering, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier, stressed Russias positive role in bringing about the possibility for a political solution in Syria. Lavrov added that, without Russia, neither the nuclear deal with Iran, nor the agreement for the destruction of the chemical weapons stocks of the Assad government, nor the ceasefire in Syria would have been possible. What Its Really About What is it really all about? In an adaptation of the lines of Schillers poem Der Antritt des neuen Jahrhunderts (The Arrival of the New Century) one could say: Where America vainly wrestles for sole ownership of the world. Its about the desperate attempt to uphold the neo-conservative doctrine of the Project for a New American Century developed by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Robert Kagan, and Co.just at the point at which it has become impossible. This doctrine declares that the United States will not allow any nation or group of nations to challenge its claim to unipolar leadership in the political, economic, or military sphere, plain and simple. But even this pretension is water under the bridge. China, which is aiming at scientific excellence and advanced technology, has long begun to surpass the trans-Atlantic sector, which clings to the casino economy. While European Central Bank head Mario Draghi prints helicopter moneyas the ultimate measure of a bankrupt financial systemChina is building high-speed trains and fusion reactors, and launching trail-blazing space missions. Which is more sustainable? The Chinese model of win-win cooperation through the extension of the New Silk Road, and of the infrastructure projects of the One Belt, One Road policy, has clearly proved to be the more attractive model. The latest example of the greater attractiveness of the New Silk Road, as opposed to geopolitical confrontation with Russia and China, appeared during the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Czech Republic. Presidents Xi and Milos Zeman signed off on an extensive list of projects in the areas of high technology, infrastructure, and the real economy, and celebrated the role of the Golden City of Prague as the gateway for cooperation between China and Europe. Such collaboration is also the key to the solution of the refugee crisis, which has revealed just how weak the foundations of the European Union (EU) are. China has just announced the appointment of its first special envoy to Syria, Xie Xiaoyan, a former ambassador to Iran, Ethiopia, and the African Union. This gives us justifiable hope that President Xis offer to extend the New Silk Road into the entire Southwest Asian regionan offer he put on the agenda during his recent trip to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Irancan actually be concretely implemented in the reconstruction of Syria. Wake Up! It is high time for German Chancellor Angela Merkeland the leading institutions of Europe in generalto wake up. The latest political fiasco, of relying on Turkish President Erdogan to deal with the refugee crisis, is just as abhorrent as it is incompetent. All relief organizations, such as Doctors without Borders and the UN Human Rights Commission, are denouncing as inhumane the measures ordered by the EU for the refugees in Greece. Amnesty International has only made public what was already clear: that Erdogan has hoodwinked the EU by pocketing billions on the one side, while sending the refugees back into the war and crisis zones of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, a breach of conventions on human rights and refugees. While Erdogan leads the EU and Chancellor Merkel around by the nose, and at the same time denies the refugees deported from Greece their due protections and puts their lives in danger, the Russian ambassador to the UN has submitted proof to the UN Security Council that Turkey, up to this very day, is sending illegal weapons and military advisers to ISIS in Syria. What an unbelievable farce is the claptrap of European politicians about common European values, human rights, democracy, and press freedom! And where is the outcry in this holier-than-thou Europe about the more than 2,000 children who have been killed under Saudi bombardments in Yemen? And the more than 300,000 children who are at risk of dying because of undernourishment and the destruction of the health system, both as a result of the Saudi bombing? Deutsche Welle/Standard YouTube License German Development Minister Gerd Muller is a small but important exception; during his trip to several African nations he once again emphasized that Europe can only solve the refugee crisis by supporting the economic development of African countries. That is the only way to prevent ever more millions of people from fleeing to Europe to save their lives. A baby step in the right direction. It is urgent for us in Europe to take a hard look in the mirror and to uncompromisingly realize where we stand. We no longer have any reason to consider ourselves so incredibly superior because of our alleged European values. Although we not want to believe it, we are becoming the laughing stock of the whole world. Led by the nose by Erdogan, cruel toward the refugees, and a poodle for London and Washingtonwho are about to pulverize the world on the altar of geopolitics in a thermonuclear war. Fortunately there is a way out. We can recognize and defend our own interests and, together with China and Russia, stabilize Southwest Asia and Africa through the expansion of the Silk Road into the World Land-Bridge. In that way, we can encourage America to return to its true identity as a republic. This article, written for the German newspaper Neue Solidaritat, was translated from German. This article appears in the April 8, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM THERMONUCLEAR WAR: Throw Obama Out of the Presidency! [PDF version of this article] The following excerpts are taken from the March 31, 2016 Fireside Chat with Lyndon LaRouche, the April 2, 2016 Manhattan Project Dialogue, and an earlier, private discussion with Mr. LaRouche, also on April 2. From the Fireside Chat Lyndon LaRouche: I would say that right now were going into a more deeply rooted crisis situation throughout not only the United States, but throughout much of the planet. Were on the edge of a threatened launching of war against China and implicitly also Putin, China in particular, and the threats are becoming very serious. If these threats were to be carried out, the immediate effect would be a general thermonuclear war fought throughout the entire planet. That is what the facts are, because if Putin were knocked out and if China was being hit directly, by Obamas directions, you would have the worst general warfare on the planet Earth that has ever occurred, that we have ever experienced. Thats where we are. The important thing is, I would say, is essentially to get the space program. What Kesha Rogers represents today, in terms of the Texas area, is a rebirth of the original space program. Its a modest one so far. Its not on as large a scale as it was then originally, but it is a fully qualified space program, and its situated in Texas right now. . . . I think thats where we stand. Question: This is R from Brooklyn. Some of the media have been putting out such negative stuff on Putin, that its fantastic. What can we do to overcome some of this stuff, and get over to people the significance of not just Putin but the Chinese leadership and the other people that are involved, and the New Silk Road, and all this other related stuff that we want to get into our program? LaRouche: The situation right now, is that Obama is actually in the process of pushing for a general war with Chinanow! This is what is happening now. There are other factors in this whole situation. Its a more complicated thing. Everybody is involved in this in some way or the other, for good or bad. But thats what the situation is. White House As presented by the statements of President Obama, Obama has himself posed a proposal for thermonuclear war, a global thermonuclear war. Because any attack on China, from the United States, would be, from the opening, a general, global thermonuclear war. And the best way to save the world from that is to throw Obama out of the Presidency. General War Against the Planet Question: My name is E from Eritrea. I think the BRICS program is a program of peace, of development for all nations, and it is headed by China. But some of the concern that I have is about Brazil, South Africa, and India: Those governments have problems of realizing the BRICS in a long-term venture, because I think, internally, they are not as stable as China and Russia. Do you think Brazil, India and South Africa will stay as honest partners of the venture, of the BRICS? LaRouche: I would say the point is any brink of a major war, which involves Obama in particular, as the President of the United States, any launching of any such war, will be an immediate global, general, all-out war; a war worse than anything that mankind has experienced heretofore U.S. Air Force/Staff Sgt. Benjamin Sutton So there is no such thing as an option of taking some section of the world economy, some part of the economy of the world. It cannot be divided. If a war starts, Obama is ready to launch a general war against the planet! Thats whats on the edge. So you have to stop Obama totally. If you dont, or if he is not stopped by some other influence, then you are into a general, global war, a thermonuclear war, which will be throughout the planet. Dont be fooled by the idea of partial solutions, or partial options; they dont exist. If such a war occurs, and Obama is involved in that war, the war will be immediate, and obvious and total. Question: Lyn, as you probably know, today Obama is involved in a summit meeting on nuclear security in Washington. There are fifty heads of state there, except that President Putin did not show up at the meeting. What would you say about the fact that President Putin did not come to Washington, in the face of Obamas so-called Nuclear Summit Meeting today? LaRouche: There is a certain condition involved in this process, how this war, this new world war, could come about. First of all, its highly likely that such a war will be launched. It is not certain that the full-scale war will be launched. The complication is that in the case of Putin, Putin would know, immediately, that if he supported China, where China has been subjected to a war launched by Obama, if Putin were to put a signal out that he is jumping in, to support China, from his, Putins, position, that would only assure, guarantee, a general thermonuclear war globally and almost immediately. LaRouche PAC Therefore, if he holds back on launching an initiative of this type, then the problem lies entirely with the responsibility of Obama. Now, if Obama goes alone in launching an attack on China, at least in the first phase, then there will be restraint, because there will be confusion. So what we want to do is think about the strategic ways in which to manage a general thermonuclear war. And thats what were faced with. If we were to have a general thermonuclear war breaking out, as from China, as well as Russia, and Russia as well as China, if that were to be just unleashed suddenly, you would have a terrible problem to deal with. So if Obama tries to push for launching his war against China, there are complications which would occur, which would tend to weaken the ability of Obama to launch a full-scale war. This is the onlyI know its complicated but thats exactly what it is. And the key thing is, if you want to do something about it, well, the best thing you can do is for the United States to stop the war. If the officials of government in the United States were to say no support for Obama, that would work! That would really work. So thats the other aspect of the problem. Question: All of the worlds people need to work together to solve the problems we humans face together. If we continue to allow ourselves to be torn apart, with our resources plundered to support these endless wars, we face certain destruction. We must stand together against this danger. If we continue to allow ourselves to be divided by the psychopaths, we will die divided and alone. Unite to save our future! Mr. LaRouche, who are the psychopaths trying to divide us, and how do we act to make sure we are united to save the future? Putin Is No Dummy LaRouche: Thats a complicated question to ask because there are elements in that which are not quite accurate. You cannot get people to work together and solve this problem. That you cannot do!it will never succeed. There are things that you can do, which will succeed, but they have to be specific kinds of programs, assembled by a group of people who are supporting those programs. You just cannot have a vote taken, lets all go together out there and win the party. That does not work; it never did work, and it never will work. You have to have to have an organization created, or developed, inside the United States and around it, which does represent a very specific kind of reform. In other words, you cannot just go out there and say, Lets agree to try to do everything for our common cause, despite whatever we have on our minds. That does not work. You have to have a mission-orientation. Now, theres another aspect to this, which is even more profound. The question is, what makes mankind as a social process? What makes it worthwhile? It has to be something: How do you avoid a Roman Empire. How do we avoid something like that? Or a Satanic cult? How do you avoid that? You cant just say, well all get together, were good ol fellows, were going to solve our problems. That does not work. You have to pick the right program. And you have to understand it. And when people get confused and allow themselves to be just swarmed by the common interest, that does not work. That results in the worst, it probably could lead to Satanic results, or other conditions. You dont win unless you know what youre doing. Question: This is T from Lake Arrowhead, California. I just heard on the news that President Putin is not going to be attending Obamas Nuclear Security Summit, and theres going to be something like fifty world leaders there, including Xi Jinping. Do you have any thoughts as to why Vladimir Putin has decided to boycott this particular nuclear security conference? LaRouche: Hes not doing any such thing. Hes not avoiding something. What hes doing is stepping aside, to allow a larger process to go into work. Putin is a very sharp person; hes not a dummy! Hes probably one of the sharpest men on the planet. So be very careful about how you should criticize how he works. Presidential Press and Information Office You know I never spoke to him personally, but I know him very well. He and I were actually in a parallel operation for a period of time; he was doing some things at one time, in that place, and I was, at the same time, doing something similar in a different place! And thats how we got to know each other without actually talking to each other directly. This Putin is not any scamp of any kind! Hes real! And anyone who knows him, or knows the history of the recent period, would know that. Putin is not a joke! He is not an option. He is a master operator. I dont know how smart he was before, but I know hes very smart right now! The point is, Putins position is, that he does not want to be an also-ran supporter of launching a war, to defend China, because. . . then you would have a guaranteed global thermonuclear war, and it would be very quickly settled. Most of the people on the planet would be dead in a very short period of time. So what Putin is doing, hes actually drawing out opportunities to restrict the scope of the attempt to launch a general thermonuclear warby Obama. So Putin is a very smart gentleman and he knows the tricks. He knows that you dont try to increase the span of a war you dont want to spread. And thats exactly whats on his mind. There are other factors in what is on his mind; there are different factors. But they all add up to the same general effect. Question: This is E in Los Angeles; I have two questions about Obama. My first question about Obama is, we know that he didnt go to Argentina to sing and dance. I think he went there to do everything he could to try to destroy the BRICS concept, now that they have a different government there, unfortunately. The second question about Obama, is, I am hearing from several sources, and they said they confirmed it, now I dont know if its real or not, that Obama is actually not even officially running the country any more. That theyve installed Paul Ryan and a military man from the Joint Chiefs of Staff as Vice President. Now, this is going around. Do you have any knowledge about this at all? Obama a Mass Murderer LaRouche: Well, this goes from the beginning. Obama did not become President in the usual way of becoming a President. He was stuck in there, and he was stuck in there by the Queen of England! He was a stooge for the Queen of England. And coming in as a stooge for the Queen of England, he would actually be on the pay and control of the British Queen at that time. Hes also a murderer, a mass murderer, because every Tuesday,or at least what Ive got from my last reports on it, every Tuesday Obama kills American citizens and others, murders them. He is a stooge of the worst kind, and he does what the stooge bosses want. He should have been dumped a long time ago. The British system, in creating the Obama Administration, which is what was done, was done as a way to try to destroy the United States, in other words, to get a nominal President, who is not really a President by intention, but is an agent of the British Queen. Now, thats the case. Now, of course there have been many cases in which agents of the British Queen have been controlling factors in the government of the United States. And hes one of them. So Obama is not real, that is, not real in the sense of anything. But the British system put the thing up: It was the British Empire that put Obama into power, along with [Valerie] Jarett and so forth, who are part of the stooges involved in that. So whats happened is, the British Empire has managed to pull off a number of things, including the Saudi attack on the United States. In other words the Saudi government, under British direction, launched a war against the United States. Same thing. So therefore, youve got to get the records clear, to realize what a complex kind of thing were dealing with in this. But in the important phase, you have to understand what these factors are, so you dont get misled by your misinterpretation of these factors. I could give you a lot more on this thing, but thats essentially the hard case. Question: This is E. Im a freelance national security reporter and former staff reporter. Ive been following your work closely since the Benghazi attacks [Sept. 11, 2012], and Im very interested in what you have to say. My question is, if Obama were to be impeached or were to leave office before this years elections commence, what do you foresee happening? What would happen next, and what would be the implications for the United States and subsequently, the world? LaRouche: If we were not to intervene, now, and Obama were to act as he intends to act right nowas a matter of fact Obama has already set into motion a general thermonuclear war throughout the planet. Now, the question whether hell succeed in doing that or not, is another question, but the fact is, hes doing it, and he is putting military forces, a lot of them, into it. And thats the intention. In the meantime, you find that the entirety of the trans-Atlantic community is a disaster. Everything that we had beforehand has just crashed; were losing everything. So we have two things: Get Obama out of there, right away. Right away! Leave him in there and hes going to go for a thermonuclear war! So youve got to get him out of there. Once you do that, take that step, then you have to take reconstruction kinds of measures, and those measures are possible, theyre feasible. Its going to take the willingness of the people, themselves, to decide to accept those revisions of the thing. From the Manhattan Dialogue Question: This is J, from Brooklyn. What I wanted to ask about, today, while we were actually singing our concert, and praising God, and bringing people from the community into the church, to celebrate peace and prosperity, and send out the word about the Silk Road and the things were working on, it seems that there was an article that appeared in the London Economistand Ive also heard it was in the Washington Postthat actually threatened the life of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and his family. People are asking why didnt Putin attend this so-called Nuclear Summit that Obama put together. Id like you to address that situation, about Putins strategic non-attendance. And, the fact that, theyre saying that theres a defector that wrote this article, or made sure this article got placed in these newspapers. And, this defector from China threatened the life of the leader of China, and his family. My take on it is that its Obama, and since Obama is a stooge for the British Empire, its the British Empire that put this out. There is no defector. These are the kinds of things they do in order to get their nonsense out into the public, into the world. And, the strategic situation with Putin is very important, as to why he did not attend this summit. And if you comment on that? Obama an Enemy of the United States LaRouche: I just stated this past Thursday, what my policy was, that we did not want to get Putin to come in on that action. That is, we duck it, in a sensebecause we know what it is. Its a fraud. We dont want him to respond. Since Putin has a leading position in Europe in general, and the record he has of what hes done, theres no need for us to suggest his role in this thing. He will act in good time. Hes not a man who panics. He does what he has to do, when he has to do it. And, people cant lock him into falling into some trap. So, what happens is, the attack on the leadership of China is a very serious threat. Its a threat by Obama. Now, any American citizen who hears this, should realize this guy is an enemy. If hes trying to make an enemy of China, then he should be thrown out of office! Period. Because nations have to cooperate. Whether they like each other or not, is not the question. Do they maintain the kind of relationship which is necessary for nations to work together? Obama is an evil man. He is a Satanic figure, among a number of Satanic figures which we know in the world. He should have been thrown out of the Presidency. Theres no good reason he hasnt been thrown out of the Presidency. And the Bushes are also in there. But Obama is a Satanic creature, and should be treated as such. Its the only way to do it. The people of the United States should reject Obama, throw him out, because hes a Satanic figure, and that is not an exaggeration. He has done more to destroy the welfare of the people of the United States than any other single case on record. Just think of the number of Americans that have been destroyed by Obama! Just think of the number of people who are dying, by the cause of Obamas behavior. Hes the enemy of the United States! And anyone who doesnt recognize that, is not a loyal citizen of the United States. Question: Hello, Lyn, A here, in New York. What J began todays meeting with, I was very struck by, when you raised it on the phone, on Thursday, because that type of analysis, or understanding, of what Putin was actually doing, through his absence, of avoiding warwhat you say would otherwise trigger, in the insane mind of Obama, an immediate response to go after both China and Russia. Now, China is being attacked on three fronts, and theyre all being highlighted in the work that were doing: politically, economically, and now, militarily. You mentioned one thing on the phone that did throw me, and I rewrote it, you said, We have to think in terms of strategic ways to manage thermonuclear war. And I said, so, what do you mean? I dont understand that. Dump Obama! LaRouche: Theres a lot in warfare built up in the nations of the planet. And the question is, can you get them to control themselves and not to turn these potential wars, or warfare-like postures, into an actual war. Thats the point. How do you get a peace out of a rage-fit among nations? And thats extremely important. Therefore, you have to get the lesson across, respecting policy: Nations must understand the interest of humanity first. If they cant respond to the purposes of humanity, as such, youve got Hell! And, therefore, you can go all the way up to the firing lines, but if you dont go further, you will save civilization. And therefore, we do have to avoid conflict, we do have to avoid killing, but we do have to find a resolution no matter how hostile the issue is. The British Empire, for example, now I know all about the British empire, and the British empire is Satanic. Now just the fact that the Queen of England is a Satanic figure is not a reason to go killing her. Its a reason to control her, to check her, and to prevent her from causing the kinds of things that will kill people and destroy their rights. Unless she commits a worse crime; in that case, she could be put in prison. No reason not to. Most of the Royal Family of Britain should be imprisoned; they should not be on the streets. They should be imprisoned, maybe up in that nest they have up there in the middle of nowhere. U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ryan J. Batchelder But no, killing people is not the way to solve the problems, or trying to kill people. The point is to try to create a process of constraint, which constrains people out of will, or out of other kinds of compulsion, to prevent them from doing the commission of crimes. Question: Good afternoon, Lyn. Given that Obama wants thermonuclear war and will go through any means, now the focus will be North Korea and Ukraine: Neither country can stand on its own to launch a war without U.S. intervention. North Korea is on the verge of another famine and has alerted their populace to prepare to eat grass and roots. Ukraines economy has completely fallen apart. The IMF has broken its own rules of never lending money to a country that cant pay its debts. My question is, how far is the United States going to go to intervene in both North Korea and Ukraine, to start thermonuclear war? Because obviously its not going to be those two countries to do it, its going to be the United States? LaRouche: The point is very simple: Dump Obama! Theres no reason for him to be there! Hes only a delusion, and a disease. Obama is something who should never have existed as a President. The crimes hes committed, on Tuesdays, the number of innocent people he has killed, on his order! Theres no reason for his being anywhere in the political system of the United States. But if it were not for the corrupt elements, the really corrupt elements of the United States, we would not have that kind of problem. Theres something wrong with the government of the United States, if it allows Obama to continue to exist. Question: Good afternoon, R here, from Brooklyn. With Chinas participation in the New Silk Road, aiming to end poverty in China by the year 2020, and worldwide by 2025, we have real hope for the world. Obamas anti-China rhetoric at the nuclear meeting this week is a clue as to where he is at. Are we making progress in getting rid of Obama? LaRouche: Well, we should get rid of Obama, why didnt we do it? Weve come to almost the end of his second term in the Presidency, and hes done more damage to the Presidency of the United States than any one individual in recent times. Why do you let this bum in there? Why did we let a man who on his Tuesday events, would actually celebrate the assassination of innocent members of our nation, kill them? On Tuesdays? Question [follow-up]: I think a lot of Americans fell for the con job that he perpetrated. LaRouche: It was worse. It was terror. It was not a con job, it was a terror job. It was a systemic terror! And other people in government watched this terror, and condoned it. Obama could not have existed as he has, if the government of the United States, in the large part, did not defend and condone Obama for the crimes he committed! I mean, those of us who have been well-informed, know exactly what Obama did. We know who he was, we know what he did! We know it accurately, because we had access to the kind of information needed to know this. So the problem is, the people of the United States have been terrified by the Obama Administration. The Bush family was an attempt at that kind of terror, but that didnt work too well. Obama did: Obama is the Satan of the United States: Get rid of him! From the April 2nd Private Discussion LaRouche: I think that what I did Thursday evening [Fireside Chat] is probably one of the most important things to be re-examined and considered. Not because I did it, but because what I did actually went directly to the immediate issue throughout our entire nation. I mean, the entirety of it. These issues that I raised are probably the most crucial things that we can discuss, because everything is implicitly there in it. What I did Thursday night is the statement of what the issue is today. Just take that thing itself and examine it, reflect upon it, and you will find out that that one thing which I did is the most important thing Ive done for a long time. Some people have recognized that, and some people will recognize it. Thats who we are, and thats what the challenge is. Because its not our challenge, as such. Its a general challengean existing challengewhich is not limited to what I said. What I said was simply something which fed into presenting the reality of the situation as it stood, and it will stay today. U.S. Navy Were on the edge of the most dangerous period in history, right now. And what I laid out Thursday night is the most important thing laid out in a long time, because I got enough in there to present the case. All the other things that people say, Well, yes, but. . . . Yes, but. . . . Yes, but. . . ., you say, Horns dont work that well. I think it would be an open question of discussion, at least at this moment, to review that consideration. Because all these kinds of ifs, and buts, and so forthforget it! Its a done job. How the thing will work out is not known, but the intention is a done job. And Obama essentially has proposed a global thermonuclear war to occur now. That could be stopped, but there has to be a consciousness of the fact that this is something that has to be stopped. I think thats the discussion point which is of importance. You know what my thoughts are on this subject, and Ive stated them repeatedly, so I dont need to keep repeating it indefinitely. All I have to do is re-warm your review of this reality. Were on the edge of a thermonuclear war, globally. Can we stop it? It could be stopped. But youve got to take into account the factors which could stop it. Thats what is the only important subject right now. Thats it! Were on the edge of a general, global warfare. That is, the factor in there of Obama, and what Obama represents, together with the British empire, the British System, is exactly what the issue is. Were on the edge of Hell. The Edge of Thermonuclear War LaRouche: Its a simple question. Putin is allied with Chinaobviously. However, what if Putin and China go together to take an action, a common action? Well, that would probably be a mistake to do that, because if you create a situation where you have one enemythat is, the British systemand that one enemy is focused on that subject, then its very difficult to avoid an early war. What you want to do, is you want to cause the war that theyre out to launchwhich is a global war, a general warfareand youve got something in the reverse, which is there, ready, to do something. Therefore, you hold that back up to an appropriate point. I think that is the best term, the appropriate point. In that way, you do not get the complete focus of a global warfare. If you take it and break it down into a different way, where the issue is China, and then whats Putin going to do? Thats the question. So, as long as Putin has a free hand in his own part, then you have a way to break the immediacy of the general warfare. Thats why I put that emphasis in there. You cannot play toy soldiers with this kind of stuff. Were on the edge of everything. Thats a fact. So, dont think that theres one thing that might tip things off. Everything could tip things off. Its a question of how you try to avoid going into the wrong battlefield, or at least at the wrong time. The right battlefield at the wrong time is not good. LaRouche: Well, were at the edge of a general thermonuclear war. Thats exactly what the situation is. Its not established, but all the factors are there. . . . This is a doom of all war. Theres no limit on the war. Theres no parameters. This is a reckless war, absolutely reckless. The United States does not have the kind of organization which is suited to conducting a major war. So what is it? The only thing is desperation warfare. This article appears in the April 8, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. LAROUCHE OR OBAMA? Development or War in Asia? by Michael Billington [PDF version of this article] April 2Since Obamas 2012 declaration of a Pivot to Asia, this war-hungry President has pivoted nothing. Rather, he has maintained and even expanded his (and Bushs) policy of perpetual war in the Mideast, while also expanding the deployment of strategic forces in Europe right up to the Russian border. Nonetheless, Obama has also greatly expanded the U.S. military posture in Asia, and, in the past few months, is driving for a massive military encirclement of China along its entire coast, preparing for a thermonuclear assault on China. In 2013, soon after Obama launched the Pivot, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced his ambitious and optimistic plan for a New Silk Road Economic Beltrail and development corridors from China through Central Asia and the Mideast to Europe (Figure 1)and the Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road through the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, connecting with the overland Silk Road in the Mediterranean countries. Together they are known as One Belt, One Road. FIGURE 1 View full size This plan reflected the proposal issued by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to recreate the ancient Silk Road as the basis for uniting East and West in a joint development process, as the necessary precondition for ending once and for all the threat of thermonuclear war between the superpowers, and launching a new renaissance uniting all cultures based on the common aims of Mankind. Russia was at that time being looted by western scavengers, and was in no position to adopt the proposal. The United States and its NATO allies rejected it altogether, choosing instead to follow the British Imperial policy of keeping the world divided against itself, as a means of control through their centralized global financial system. China, on the other hand, enthusiastically adopted the proposal, calling it the Eurasian Land-Bridge, and co-sponsored with Helga Zepp-LaRouches Schiller Institutes a Eurasian Land-Bridge Conference in Beijing in 1996. Mrs. LaRouche was a leading organizer and a speaker for that conference. Now, Chinas President Xi Jinping has restored LaRouches preferred namethe New Silk Roadand linked this new development paradigm with major new credit institutions: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the BRICS New Development Bank, and several funds linked to the nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), among others, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars for global development. To the bankrupt financial lords of Wall Street and the City of London, this development policy is seen as a threat, which must be crushed through economic and military confrontation. Imperial Targets There are three primary points of attack in Obamas confrontation with China (Figure 2): FIGURE 2 View full size The South China Sea The Southeast Asian nations The Korean Peninsula. Lyndon LaRouche has long argued that the South China Sea must be regarded as an Asian Lake, which of course requires that the nations adjoining the Lake view their common interests as more important than their parochial concerns. How does this fit with Chinas recent construction of artificial islands in the Spratly/Nansha island group, which has been used by Obama and his controllers to accuse China of aggression and militarization of the South China Sea? One of Chinas leading economists, Ding Yifan, addressing a Schiller Institute conference on the New Silk Road in San Francisco in November 2013, was asked about the danger of war. He responded (Figure 3): FIGURE 3 View full size I can say a few words about that. The New Silk Road is also critical for Chinese strategic defense, because historically, the threat to China came over land, from the north, but since the Opium War [Britains Opium War of 1840], the threat always comes from the sea, from the ocean, from the southeastern part of China. So, with the Obama Administrations pivot to Asia, China feels more pressure from Japan, from the military alliance between the United States and Japan, so the pressure comes also from the southeast part, while the New Silk Road is a big background for China to have some provisions of energy, of resources, for Chinese development, and by railroad China will have access to the European market. So this time, when the threat comes from the sea, from the southeastern part, China can resist with this background support. This identifies Chinas strategic interest in securing peace in the South China Sea. It must be noted, of course, that while China claims sovereignty over the Spratly/Nansha islands, the Paracel/Xisha islands and others within their so-called nine dash line in the South China Sea, they have never challenged the other nations which have occupied and armed islands under their control, although they lie within the nine dash line China considers its sovereign territory. This includes the Philippines and Vietnam. Nor have they challenged other countries which have constructed or expanded islands by artificial means, also including the Philippines and Vietnam (Figure 4). FIGURE 4 View full size As to China militarizing the South China Sea, as is repeated ad nauseam by Obama and his fellow war hawks in the Congress, the Pentagon and the press, China has for decades had minimal defenses on the island of Yongxing (called Woody Island in the West), the site of Sansha City, which is the administrative center of the Chinese islands in the South China Sea. The recent discovery of defenses on this island is a fraud. But Xi Jinpings pledge not to militarize the newly constructed islands in the Spratlys has been upheld, despite the hysterical screams in the West that China might deploy military forces to these tiny islands. Contrast that to Obamas massive militarization of the South China Sea. Not only is Obama regularly and intentionally deploying warships and war planes into areas claimed by China in the regionfor no other purpose than to militarily provoke Chinabut Obama has also in the last year successfully pressured the weak Philippine President Benigno Noynoy Aquino to disregard the Philippine Constitution, which forbids foreign troops or bases on its soil without Senate approval, by turning over five sites to the U.S. military to construct major military bases, pre-position war materials, and deploy the most modern and deadly air, sea, and land forces across their countryincluding a base on Palawan Island, which juts out into the South China Sea! It is clear to those who are not blind that this is preparation for war on China. At this point, it is important to reflect on how Noynoy came to power. In 1986, the nations last nationalist leader, Ferdinand Marcos, was overthrown in a coup run by a key founder of the U.S. neoconservative movement, George Shultz, then Secretary of State, and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz (later famous as the architect of the criminal war on Iraq in 2003). Lyndon LaRouche at the time had provided backing and advice to Marcos and his circle on the development of the nation. Marcos had built the first nuclear plant in Southeast Asia, had a master plan for industrialization, and made the Philippines self sufficient in ricein fact, the economic development under Marcos made the Philippines the most admired nation in Southeast Asia at the time, even by South Korea. When LaRouche defended Marcos against the foreign-instigated coup (which was among the first of the color revolutions by the United States), he warned that the country would collapse into economic decay and chaos were the Marcos policies to be reversed. Following the coup against Marcos, Cory Aquino, the mother of the current President, was placed in power. She immediately followed the dictates of the neocons in Washington, shutting down the completed nuclear power plant, ending the rice self sufficiency program, and scrapping the industrialization program. Rather than being the envy of all of Asia, the Philippines is now the basket case of ASEAN, sharing in none of the Silk Road development taking place across ASEAN with Chinese support. And, it has turned itself into cannon fodder for Obamas war on China. ASEAN The story is totally different for the other members of the ten-nation ASEAN. Obama attempted to corral the ASEAN leaders into an anti-China declaration at his Summit with ASEAN leaders at Sunnylands, California in February, but failed miserably. While none of the other ASEAN nations want to break ties with the United States, for obvious reasons, they are at the same time enthusiastically expanding their relations with China, and reject all efforts to prevent it. The reasons are clearwhile the United States is an important trade partner for ASEAN, and invests in extracting raw materials, it long ago gave up on building any infrastructure in Asia (or anywhere else in the world), while making extreme demands (and often imposing onerous sanctions) to impose Washingtons view of democracy, human rights, and the environment. This is equally true of the IMF and the World Bank, which support poverty alleviation and environmental policies, but build virtually no infrastructure, thus keeping countries backward, without real development. China is not interested in imperial demands, but in addressing the most fundamental human right, that of economic development, and in conditions which respect the dignity of man through participation in the progress of ones nation. Look at the record in Southeast Asia, even before the Silk Road process and the AIIB are fully operative: Indonesia: China Railway International and a consortium of Indonesian state companies won a contract in October 2015 to build Indonesias first high-speed rail line, from Jakarta to Bandung, and plan to compete for other projects in the region. Three quarters of the funding will come from the China Development Bank. China won the contract against a viable Japanese bid primarily because China did not demand a guarantee for the project from the Indonesian government, which suffered total destruction in the 1998 Asia Crisis due to foreign contracts which had forced all the risk onto the government. This new contract for the Jakarta-Bandung Railroad is seen as a model for others among the Silk Road nations. China has also built numerous power plants across Indonesia and has invested in port development. They completed construction of the longest bridge in the country in 2009, connecting Surabaya on the island of Java to Madura Island off the north coast. The Jakarta Post reported on Feb. 3 that since the sixtieth anniversary celebration in April 2015 of the famous Bandung Asian African Conference, China has made a clean sweep of big infrastructure projects in Indonesia. President Joko Widodo has a vision of Indonesia becoming a maritime fulcrum for the Pacific-Indian Ocean, which he considers to be congruent with Xi Jinpings Maritime Silk Road. In fact, President Xi first announced the Maritime Silk Road while addressing the Indonesian Parliament in October 2013. China to Singapore Railway: China is in the process of building a rail link from Kunming in Yunnan Province to Singapore (Figure 5), passing through Laos, Thailand, and Malaysia, a 3,000 km connection. China and Laos broke ground on the 427 km high speed line connecting China to the Laotian capital of Vientiane near the Thai border in December. In Thailand, China has contracted to build a rail line from the Laos border to Bangkok, with a branch to the industrial center at Map Ta Phut, an ocean port southeast of Bangkok. FIGURE 5 View full size Bangkok-Kuala Lumpur: While a modern rail connection between Bangkok, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is not yet in the works, a contract for the link from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore should soon be signed. China Railway Construction Corp in December bought into a major real estate venture called Bandar Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, and in March announced that they were setting up a regional hub there, aiming at winning the rail contract and making Bandar Malaysia the terminal for the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed rail link. Thailand and the Mekong: Besides the rail connections, the Thai Prime Minister, former General Prayut Chan-ocha, who directed a military coup in Thailand in 2013 to end the massive upheaval and near-civil war conditions in the country, has made relations with China a priority (Figure 6). In March, Prayut co-chaired with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang the first summit of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, an organization of the six nations along the Mekong (China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) held in Sanya, in Chinas Hainan Province (the Mekong is called the Lancang in China). The new insititution is essentially intended to coordinate the implementation of the Silk Road and the AIIB in the Mekong region. FIGURE 6 View full size As EIR reported in its landmark study, The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, see www.worldlandbridge.com, when the French were defeated in their colonial war in Vietnam in 1955, the United States sent engineers from FDRs great TVA project and from the Army Corps of Engineers to study the potential for reproducing the TVA process on the Mekong. They proposed an Indicative Basin Plan for 1970-2000, a project to produce 17,000 MW of hydropower with a ten-fold increase in irrigation during the dry season, doubling or tripling the productivity of that land. With the assassination of John Kennedy and the launching of the Indochina War, the United States turned to a British colonial policy, waging war rather than fostering development. Even after losing that war in 1975, the United States never returned to its roots as a force for development, but sank deeper and deeper into permanent warfare and financial speculation. As a result, it was admitted by the Mekong River Commission in its 2013 report, that management and development of the River remains limited today, in part due to unregulated river flows. The vast floodplains in Cambodia remain largely undeveloped and only a small proportion of the irrigation, hydropower, and navigation potential has been realized in the basin. The River remains mostly in its natural state. The promise for development, once identified with the United States, has been abandoned in the West, but is now being taken up by China, with the enthusiastic support of the nations of Southeast Asia. Lyndon LaRouche has been directly involved in promoting development in Thailand since the early 1980s, when EIR co-sponsored forums in Bangkok presenting detailed engineering studies for the construction of the Kra Canalconnecting the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean by cutting a canal across the Ishthmus of Kra in southern Thailand, above the Malacca Strait. The Canal would cut 900 miles from the trip through the Malacca Strait, far less than the distance saved by the Suez and Panama canals, but would nonetheless carry as much traffic as those canals because of the overcrowding of the Malacca Strait. LaRouche emphasized a more important aspect, that the Kra Canal should be seen as a keystone, around which might be constructed a healthy and balanced development of needed infrastructure in a more general way. The Canal is also the unique means to end the insurgency in the south of Thailand, providing jobs, new cities and ports, and development zonesanother example of peace through development. Although the plan was close to implementation in the 1980s, with significant Japanese interest, the potential disappeared with the economic crises of the late Twentieth Century. Now, with China also showing great interest, the plan is back on the table, and can serve as a major hub of the new Asia-Pacific Basin development. China is also massively invested in Cambodia and Myanmar, building dams, power plants, roads, oil pipelines, and more. Cultural and educational exchanges are being implemented across the region. Of course, China is not the only country investing in ASEAN. Japan and South Korea are also building infrastructure, including transportation, water projects, and power plants. But the West no longer builds infrastructure, which is left to the private sector, which is not interested in investments that take several decades to develop. Infrastructure does not return short-term profits to a private investor, but rather generates an increase in the productivity of the nation and region as a whole. Americans once understood this, as government investment fueled every period of American progress, and the lack of such government backing drove every period of collapse. The key to peace and development lies in lifting the vision of men and nations to the future. Korea We are now seeing the threat of a crisis in the Korean Peninsula serving as an excuse for a global war, launched by the United States against China. Obama was using the Syria crisis in a similar manner, as a cockpit for war against Russiauntil Putins military intervention exposed Obamas support for terrorists as allies in his drive for regime change against Assad. And yet, just months ago, South Korea was working closely with China and Russia, and indirectly with North Korea, on development projects which were leading to a peace through development solution to this festering remnant of the Cold War. The recent nucear and missile tests in North Koreawhich no one of sound mind could have doubted would eventually take placewere used by Obama to successfully coerce South Korean President Park Geun-hye to totally scrap these policies. The long-standing Kaesong Industrial Region, where South Korea factories were functioning in the North with North Korea labor, a win-win policy, was unilaterally shut down by Seoul. Obama is also preparing to move THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missiles into South Korea, which South Korea had strongly opposed before President Parks capitulation. Park had earlier recognized that high altitude missiles are of essentially no use against North Korea, which does not need ICBMs to attack the South, but are in fact targetting China, just as the missiles deployed on Russias border in Europe were falsly claimed by Obama to be needed to defend against Iran, when they were clearly aimed at Russia. Then, by imposing additional South Korean sanctions, above and beyond the UN sanctions against North Korea of March 2, President Park has shut down the crucial cooperation between China, Russia, and both Koreas which was centered at Rason, a port city in northeast North Korea. China had built a road from its Jilin Province to Rason, while Russia had rebuilt the rail connection from Vladivostok through Kasan to Rason, and both Russia and China built port facilities there. Most important, three major South Korean firmsHyundai Marine, Korail (the state rail company), and Posco (one of the worlds largest steel companies)had formed a consortium with Russia and North Korea, with the approval of Seoul. The consortium had been shipping Russian coal by rail to Rason, where it was loaded on Hyundai Marine ships for transport to South Korea, then shipped by Korail to Posco plants. Such win-win cooperation between the nations of East Asia was potentially leading to the reconstruction of the rail lines through North Korea, which would complete the Eurasian Land-Bridge from Pusan, South Korea to Rotterdam, Holland, as envisaged by Lyndon LaRouche and others as the crucial completion of the New Silk Road for Eurasian cooperation and peace. This optimistic process is presented in detail in the EIR Special Report, The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, which is due to be published in a Korean translation within the coming weeks. Never has this policy been more needed than now. While the West blames all this on North Korea for refusing to unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons program, it is obvious that North Korea has observed how the United States treated Iraq and Libya after they gave up their nuclear weapons programs. Obamas insane strategic patience approach to North Korea was simply a policy of preventing any constructive dialogue, allowing North Korea to continue its nuclear weapons program to justify the continuing, and now escalating, military build-up around China. The future of mankind now rests squarely on the question facing the citizens of the world: Do we allow the world to sleepwalk into World War Three under Obama, or do we bring sanity back to the United States and Europe, and join with China and the BRICS in creating a future based on the advancement of the common aims of Mankind? This article appears in the April 8, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. A Unified Mission for the Exploration of Spac e I s th e Pathwa y t o Peac e fo r Al l Mankind by Kesha Rogers [PDF version of this article] We came in peace for all Mankind Plaque left by the Apollo 11 team on the first Moon landing March 31On March 25, 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry gave a press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Following a series of discussions with Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin, and building on a successful deployment led by President Putin in Syria, Kerry defined the key to what is needed to bring about a permanent cessation of hostilities. Secretary Kerry described his meeting with American astronaut Scott Kelly, who had just spent more than 340 days in space with his Russian counterpart, Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. Kerry said he had spoken with the two astronauts, one American and one Russian, who were working together on the International Space Station to study the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body. In his remarks, Kerry presented what he encountered in his meeting with the two astronauts as a critical example of what is required to bring about collaboration in international diplomacy, bringing nations to work together to solve common problems and strengthening our understanding of who we are as human beings. Can we bring about such collaboration and peace among nations? The obvious answer is, we can, provided that we act to rid ourselves once and for all of a dying British empire and remove Obama from the Presidency, now. Our U.S. space program, implemented by NASA, must be restored to its rightful place as the spark-plug for a national recovery. This must be done as a key to bringing the United States into collaboration with the nations of Russia and China, along with other nations, thus defining a new paradigm for mankind. That new paradigm is being demonstrated by Chinas promotion of the New Silk Road development corridors, its cooperation throughout the world, and its leadership in space exploration, exemplified by the mission to land a rover on the far side of the moon, embarking on new discoveries, and doing what no nation has yet accomplished. President Obamas attack on NASAs exploration programs has been a complete and utter frontal attack on our nations future. The question is, how long will you allow this murderous policy to continue? What Secretary Kerry said is right: The basis for global cooperation among nations in solving the problems we facefrom ISIS terrorism to your once-employed neighbors heroin-induced suicideshould be modeled on the kind of peaceful collaboration that currently exists in certain aspects of the space program. This collaboration must be broadened to join with Chinas leadership and must embrace all other nations. Countries must actually unite in common cause against the bankrupt British Empire and declare that those brave men and women who pioneered to get the human race beyond Earth a few generations ago, shall not have lived and died in vain. It is time to take the budgetary and political lid off real human progress, and live up to our destiny as mankind in the galaxy. As a two-time nominee for U.S. Congress in the district representing Johnson Space Center, and later a candidate for U.S. Senate, I have continued to lead the fight against the continued dismantling of the U.S. space program. I hereby call upon the international space community to heed this call for nations to collaborate politically as we do in space, and pull down the barriers to this progress once and for all. That is why I am happy to announce an initiative for an international space policy roundtable on this subject, to be held in Houston, Texas near the Johnson Space Center. I call upon astronauts, scientists, engineers, and policy makers to come together to participate in this indispensable discussion, to determine a unified mission for progress and peaceful relations among nations. PRESS RELEASE Austrian President: Anti-Russia Sanctions Hurt Both Parties April 6, 2016 (EIRNS)The president of Austria, who is on a two-day official visit to Moscow, called anti-Russian sanctions bad for both parties. Speaking at a meeting with Speaker of the Russian Duma Sergei Naryshkin, Austrian President Heinz Fischer said, "This issue worries us, too, and I was immediately ready to answer it: I have always said that sanctions hurt both sides!" "Our position in these [EU] discussions [on anti-Russia sanctions] includes that it is necessary to consider all the possibilities of relationship development between Russia and the European Union. The most important part is that it is necessary to find such a path, a common way for all of us, to develop it, which would result in the removal soon of most of the sanctions," Fischer pointed out, according to a report by Sputnik news. Fischer had earlier met with his host, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, who said when he warmly welcomed Fischer to the Kremlin, "Despite the difficulties we have encountered of late, relations between Russia and Austria continue to develop, and we attach great importance to these ties. We have always put particular emphasis on our trade and economic relations. Sadly, the difficulties I have just mentioned have caused a substantial drop in our trade turnover, a decrease of around 25 percent, though Russian exports to Austria, surprising as it might seem, actually increased slightly over the previous year. Russia is one of the biggest investors in Austria's economy. Austria and Austrian companies have also invested considerable resources and funds in Russia's economy. Fischer also met with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Austria has suffered a 50-percent decrease in food exports because of Russian sanctions imposed on food imports from the European Union in retaliation for anti-Russian sanctions. Austrian Minister of Agriculture Andrae Rupprechter told Sputnik Germany, "The aim of Austrian President Heinz Fischer's visit to Russia was to prepare us for cooperation following the lifting of the embargo." PRESS RELEASE Feinstein Challenged Morality of Nuclear Weapons April 5, 2016 (EIRNS)In a March 16 hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committte Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Sen. Diane Feinstein not only challenged the Obama Administation on the "usability" of the new nuclear weapons it is seeking to build (as reported in the April 1 morning briefing), but also the morality of nuclear weapons more broadly. Feinstein said she was a child at the time that the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, an event from which she still has vivid memories. This is not a deterrent [referring to the cruise missileed.]. All this means is that others will be doing the same thing. I don't want North Korea with a 6-KT nuclear cruise missile. I think we lose our moral authority when we build new nuclear weapons. I don't see any waythere's a certain moral codeI don't see any way that I can vote to support this, and I want you to know it. Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz (USAF, ret.), the director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, expressed a different notion of morality, in response to Feinstein, one that derives from deterrence theory. I think on this we have a fundamental disagreement," he said. "In my view, the moral approach is to develop a deterrent capability which poses the prospect to any potential adversary that they should never use nuclear weapons against the United states or those of our allies. We maintain the capability of a deterrent by having systems that cannot be negated, defeated, nullified, by any adversary either by offensive attack or by defensive capabilities that they may have. The Federation of American Scientists' Hans Kristensen, who covered Feinstein's remarks on the nuclear cruise missile in a March 25 posting on his Strategic Security blog, added a quote from Gen. Philip Breedlove, commander of NATO and US European Command, to further make the point on nuclear warfighting: "One of the biggest keys to being able to break anti-access area denial [A2AD] is the ability to penetrate the air defenses so that we can get close to not only destroy the air defenses but to destroy the coastal defense cruise missiles and the land attack missiles which are the three elements of an A2AD environment," Breedlove told the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 26, when he was asked about what capabilities the Air Force's Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) will bring to combatant commands. "One of the primary and very important tools to busting that A2AD environment is a fifth-generation ability to penetrate. In the LRSB you will have a platform and weapons that can penetrate." The weapons he was referring to, include nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Muslim religious scholar Reza Aslan is Internet famous for keeping his cool. The Iranian American author of the 2013 bestseller Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth once confronted a relentless Fox News anchor with such unflappable poise, it made him a viral sensation. After a successful career in academia, hes moving beyond punditry to spread his message via pop culture. Hes co-founder of BoomGen Studios, host of the new Ovation TV talk show Rough Draft and of CNNs forthcoming docuseries on religion and culture, Believer. Zealot, meanwhile, is on its way to becoming a Lionsgate feature film. At his Mt. Washington Home, the 43-year-old sat for a discussion that ranged from Donald Trump to the power of pop culture to faith in America. From a sociological perspective, how do you explain the rise of Donald Trump? Advertisement The most important thing to know about Donald Trump is he is not a fringe character. Forty percent of Americans not 40% of Republicans think there should be a national registry of Muslims, 56% of Americans think that we should actually bar all Muslims from entering the United States. We keep asking: How is it that this man is getting such support in the elections. How? Because people agree with him. How do you think Trumps rise has affected Muslim Americans? We now know, what has always been the case, which is that a large swath of us [is] xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic. And we pretend that were not. And now its out in the open and cant be ignored any longer. Many outspoken evangelicals have denounced Trump. Thank God for that. And yet you have Franklin Graham, who has said this is the hope for America. For Graham, its not that Donald Trump is a godly man who represents the qualities embodied by Jesus Christ. Its that he also hates Muslims. And so thats enough. You were a born-again Christian and converted to Islam. How would you apply that notion of identity versus beliefs to your own experience of religion? If you asked me this question when I was 16 and an evangelical Christian, I would say religion is the entirety of my identity, because thats what I was taught. And then I went to university and began studying religion, and thats when I realized what it truly is about. So for you, religion was more about the beliefs than the identity? Yes, it was all about beliefs. People who are religious are probably unwilling to recognize how much of what they believe is rooted in who they actually are and not the teachings of their religion. We think people derive their values from their scriptures. But its more often the case that people insert their values into their scriptures. How does this idea apply to religious extremists then? Arent they all reading the scripture the same way? The thing they have most in common is that they already possess an either anti-establishment [view] or are prone to violent tendencies. A report that just came out said something like 80% of Europeans who join [Islamic State] in Syria have a criminal record. But when someone says they are acting violently in the name of Islam, that negates any other contributing factor that could be involved. We dont really care about his drug addiction or his history of violent tendencies or his arrest record. But 9/11 changed the conversation forever about Islam and terrorism. Actually, no. Sixty-one percent of Americans have negative feelings toward Muslims today. Thats 20% higher than the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. Its not that 15 years ago, we were attacked by 18 Muslims and ever since then we have been Islamophobic. Instead, its the result of a very well-organized, extremely well-funded, concerted effort by a handful of organizations funded to the tune of now more than $50 million to convince Americans that the 1% of the population of this country that is Muslim is on the verge of a complete takeover. We are at a far greater threat from white supremacist terrorism. Since 9/11, right-wing terrorists have killed far more Americans than Islamic terrorists have. Lets shift gears to your creative endeavors. I truly believe the best way to shift perceptions in this country is through pop culture. Its always the most efficient way of doing so. Were trying to develop television shows, feature-length films, projects that work to create a different perception of the people, the cultures, the stories, of the Greater Middle East. Part of that involves simply having Muslims and Middle Easterners being normal on TV. [With] Rough Draft, I wanted people to see a Middle Easterner being a host and talking about writing and not talking about politics or religion. Believer is my attempt to take the work Ive done for the last two decades and present it in a very accessible, fun, participatory way that still allows you to see someone elses religious faith in the hopes that you realize that its all just different metaphors for the same emotion. And then your book Zealot is going to be a feature film. James Schamus, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a director himself, has written the script. Its a Jesus I dont think youve ever seen on film before. Were now in conversation with three different directors. All three of them are very different. And youre giving up your story to the directors vision? I am in a good position in that I know the material better than anyone with the possible exception of James Schamus. He turned in a 120-page screenplay with a 500-page appendix outlining the historical evidence for every scene in the film. Aslan will appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Sunday. calendar@latimes.com One plot twist got left out of Dawn Anahid MacKeens new book, The Hundred-Year Walk. While she was deep into the project, doctors discovered a rare form of tumor inside her heart. Treatment required that she undergo major surgery, and recuperation was arduous. Even her water intake had to be monitored at one point, so that something as routine as thirst took on painful dimensions. I was fighting for my life while writing a book about survival, says MacKeen, a veteran journalist who will appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday. It was just a small window into what its like.You cant imagine these things until you go through them. The Hundred-Year Walk follows the saga of her maternal grandfather, Stepan Miskjian, an Armenian peddler living near then-Constantinople in the early 20th century. Miskjian outwitted gendarmes and battled one physical ordeal after another as Ottomans committed mass deportations and genocide, resulting in the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians. Advertisement MacKeen had known the outlines of Miskjians story since childhood, but shed begun to understand its depth and scope only about 10 years ago, after getting her hands on meticulous journals kept by her grandfather, some of which had languished for decades in her mothers personal library and in an uncles garage. They contained the details of her grandfathers forced march through the Taurus Mountains and into the Syrian desert, his daring escapes and repeated incarcerations in decrepit jail cells and squalid internment camps, where he witnessed starving refugees driven to cannibalism. At one point, with just a homemade map to guide him, Miskjian trekked for two weeks through arid countryside, subsisting only by drinking his own urine. A friend gave me advice early on, and it was, Just say it as straight as possible, because whats happening is so overwhelming, its horrific, MacKeen says. And that mirrored my grandfather. He was very straight with it. MacKeen, now healthy, has an easy manner. She sits, fresh-faced and simply dressed in a purple peasant blouse, at a back table at Palermos, the long-standing Los Feliz eatery known for its hearty Italian portions and family-friendly atmosphere (to wit, the screaming child who provoked our hasty retreat to this far corner). Its long been a local favorite. MacKeen grew up just blocks from here, in one of L.A.'s Armenian enclaves, in the home where her mother still lives. It was to that house she returned in 2006 after quitting her job as an investigative reporter for Newsday in New York. Witnessing the effect her journalism could have on everyday lives and legislation, MacKeen was determined to shed light on the story of the Armenians who perished from 1915-18. I saw first-hand the power of journalism, the power of telling stories and educating and hopefully, effecting change, MacKeen said. It just hit me that I was spending my life telling other peoples stories and not my own familys, and I felt this incredible responsibility. What she didnt know was quite what shed signed up for in bringing to life The Hundred-Year Walk. I thought [writing the book] would take two years, she says. It took her a decade. First, there was the language barrier or, rather, a number of barriers. To begin with, her grandfathers memoirs were written exclusively in his native tongue. MacKeen started taking Armenian language classes at night, just to learn how to make sense of the alphabet. I couldnt even tell what book I was holding when I started out, she says. She turned often to her Los Feliz neighbors to supplement her reliance on professional translators. But Armenian was hardly the only language of the polyglot Ottoman Empire, where Greek, Turkish, Arabic and German were routinely spoken. To help re-create part of the timeline for her grandfathers roughly thousand-mile trip, she called upon her high school French to piece together train timetables from archival materials. She placed classified ads in various countries in hopes of connecting with descendants of those Miskjian had met and written about along the way, finally tracking down the recollections of one of his fellow escapees in a Romanian newspaper. She traveled to Vienna to sift through a stash of primary sources amassed by a group of Armenian monks. To paint a picture of life in her grandfathers cosmopolitan hometown at the dawn of the 20th century, she cross-referenced his recollections with oral histories from his contemporaries. Gradually, she crafted a portrait of the world around him. I was expanding his account through the clues he left me, to try create a larger picture of what happened to him, she says. I remember being amazed by how much historical research she was doing and decided to do, emailed Suzy Hansen, a former Salon colleague and a now Istanbul-based journalist who has reported on the region for the New Republic, the London Review of Books and others. This is unbelievably time-consuming and exhausting work. And I think you can tell, because all of the historical sections have a real concreteness and texture to them. To better layer on texture, both emotional and physical, MacKeen traveled deep into potentially hostile territory, and the book intersperses brief chapters exploring her own journey retracing her grandfathers steps through Turkey and Syria, just two years before the latter dissolved into civil war. At the time of her visit, it wasnt yet apparent that contemporary parallels to her grandfathers experience would soon surface, as Europe began grappling with massive numbers of refugees fleeing the Syrian war and violence against religious minorities wrought by the Islamic State. Its heartbreaking whats happening right now, in the exact same area where my grandfather barely survived, MacKeen says. The images are almost identical. Long lines of people being led to their deaths, or being forced from their homes, or women abused. Recently, European leaders turned to Turkey as a stopgap, working out a deal to transport many refugees and migrants there in a move some international organizations have decried as inhumane. My grandfather was not one to hate, MacKeen said. Even though he went through this whole thing, he remembered the good Turkish people or people of different faiths who helped him, and were a big part of his story. And thats the part that resonated with me the most. :: Past to Present: The Echoes of War Who: Moderator Jim Newton, with Rita Gabis, Dawn MacKeen, Viet Thanh Nguyen. Where: Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Hancock Foundation building, USC Campus When: 4:30 p.m. Saturday Info: events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks Farabee is a writer and critic living in Los Angeles. The life and legacy of the apostle Thomas were a shimmer of myth and fact that sent Tom Bissell across oceans and down alleys; he scribbled notes with a high fever and cried with dysentery and diarrhea in a church bathroom on a mountaintop in India. In researching his new book, Apostle, Bissell, a writer of wanderlust and obsessed curiosity, spent years hunting the supposed tombs of disciples who for centuries have been gauzed in ecclesiastical mist, including Thomas the doubter, whose bones and relics have been scattered from Rome to Kerala, India. Apostle is a ride-along through unanswerable questions about 12 imperfect men who set out in the first century to spread the word of Jesus Christ. The book is a trip into faith, history and skepticism. The story glows with enchanting asides and stitches together how Jesus life and meaning were edited and refined through the ages from contradictory accounts and incongruous translations. Advertisement What Christianity promises, I do not understand, Bissell writes. What its god could possibly want, I have never been able to imagine, not even when I was a Christian. Apostle was a fitting undertaking for a fallen altar boy, beleaguered Peace Corps volunteer, adventure journalist and writer whose short fiction delights in the mishaps of expat Americans navigating foreign lands. When discussing the book the other day, Bissell, veering from biblical legends to primal urges, smiled like a man who had overheard an indiscreet whisper. He settled back quoted Longfellow and Monty Python and sipped a beer outside his Nichols Canyon home. It was, appropriately or not, Good Friday. Black birds circled treetops, the skeleton of an unfinished house shone below and drawings by his soon-to-be-2-year-old daughter bloomed in pastel smudges on the porch. The air was cool, dusk not far off. Apostle started as a critique of what Bissell regarded as nonsensical beliefs predicated on apocryphal yarns that included talking animals and necrophilia. Early Christian stories written before the New Testament, he said, were the first fan fiction. Deciding, however, that ridicule might not make a good thesis, Bissell amassed thousands of pages of text and visited nine countries in a study that blends travelogue with a vivid mosaic of emperors, evangelists and schisms that bent the course of history. The book is about not only Christian storytelling but storytelling in general and the meaning we arrive at through characters we create and then send hurtling through time whether theyre fiction characters in a novel or Christian characters of legend, said Bissell, who has written for the New Yorker and other magazines. The weirdness of Christianity felt like an important thing to communicate. The genesis of Apostle began when Bissell was a high school junior writing a report on Jesus that led to his realization that a true understanding of God seemed impossible. He left the Catholic Church, but Christianity continued to resonate. In his 20s he toyed with a doomed novel about the apostle John; later he found wonder in religious archaeological sites even as Christianitys central tenant remained as insubstantial as a dream. What Christianity promises is eternal life. That I get, he said. But you get there through a very winding, complicated path, and to me the path is so complicated and so winding that the eventual destination of eternal life seems pretty dubious. ... Its like a gift shop at the end of a really interesting museum experience. One could sense a pastor wincing at the metaphor. A few coils of gray in his beard, Bissell, 42, could be a stand-in for an apostle at a community theater production of the Passion. He writes and speaks with fierce honesty and is fascinated by the crooked road and unknotting lifes inconsistencies, an inclination that can lead to splendid and scary places. Like the disciples he chronicled, he has endured troubles, including a cocaine addiction that fueled video-game bingeing. Video games and cocaine feed on my impulsiveness, reinforce my solitude and make me feel good and bad in equal measure, he wrote in his 2010 book, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. The crucial difference is that I believe in what video games want to give me, while the bequest of cocaine is one I loathe. A bird cawed and soared on a wind current; small feet pattered across the floor behind the window. I havent done drugs in five years, he said. I just stopped at a certain point. I realized it was always the same story over and over again. He was living in Portland when his cocaine guy came to tell him that he was moving away but would provide the name of another dealer. I stopped him. I said, Hey, you know what, dont give me that number. Bissell has remained devoted to video games. Much of his income these days is derived from scripts he spins out for Gears of War and other franchises. They take me out of myself, he said, noting the miraculous conspiring of technology, programmers, designers and composers to create layered worlds of frenetic imagery that afford repose. After elaborating on whether a script should call for bringing down a helicopter by a missile or colliding it with crane, he admitted that its not the work that I hope Im judged by when I go to literary heaven. Bissell is a writer of magpie instincts, a man seeking enlightenment amid strangers in distant geographies. His entourage of translators, drivers, a monk, an archaeologist and assorted pilgrims are, like the apostles, colloquial and universal, restless and oblivious souls that are at once amusing and profound. His short-story collection God Lives in St. Petersburg and Other Stories is map of such characters, and his memoir, The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son and the Legacy of Vietnam is a study of personal sacrifice and national transgression. Apostle follows the vein of how a contentious religious past resounds in the present. Bissell examines Johns legend in Turkey, traverses Kyrgyzstan looking for the ruins of an Armenian monastery devoted to Matthew and walks 500 miles across Spain where he writes with a degree of skepticism that James tomb was rediscovered in the ninth century. In Israel, Bissell looks for the place where Judas committed suicide after betraying Jesus, wondering why an omniscient God would turn the apostle into a pawn who would endure endless scorn. The book recounts early Christian debates over the divinity of Jesus and the concept of the Holy Trinity. It clamors with voices and agendas; the discarding of some gospels and the inclusion of others until the Church like a good Netflix series had distilled its narrative. Bissell is enamored with Paul, an apostle but not one of the original 12, whose eloquent preaching and letters set the churchs painful evolution away from its Jewish roots to a Gentile Christianity. Paul had inexplicable confidence, he said. One of the great mysteries of early Christianity is Pauls ability to virtually look the original follows of Jesus in the eye and say wrong. And not only that but to win the argument. As dusk crept closer to his back porch and shadows reached deeper into the canyon, Bissells summation of the gospel writers had the ring of a book critic: Mark is pretty much an idiot. ... Matthew was a much more capable storyteller. ... Luke knew how the Greco-Roman world worked. Hes the only proper gentleman scholar of the gospel writers. ... John seems to have come from another planet altogether. His is the purest writers gospel, its also the most symbolic. But what writer wouldnt forsake all he owned to have his work read 2,000 years after his death? All about a sandaled preacher who roamed hillsides, performed miracles, was arrested, beaten and crucified, and ascended into heaven. Bissell questions the truth and veracity of most of it but, with his daughter forming words inside and quiet falling over the treetops, he concedes it is a pretty story. Take Jesus out of the compelling matrix of the narrative and hes just another rabble-rousing, wanna-be prophet, he said. Theres something to be said for the power of the gospel writers and how they fashioned something that ignited their world. jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com Fleishman is the author of the novels Shadow Man and Promised Virgins: A Novel of Jihad. Bissell will appear at the Festival of Books on Sunday. Like any scientist, doctors should have the ability to shun conclusions that have been proved wrong over and over again--especially cures that don't work. That reality evidently stops at the door of the California Medical Assn. For the fifth time since 2008, CMA is pushing a measure in the state legislature to reestablish a substance abuse program for physicians that was repeatedly shown to be a failure during its 27 years of existence before its abolition in 2008. Like some of the association's previous efforts, this one has features that could actually damage patient safety. What's the CMA's motivation? Patients won't be able to find out if their doctor has a substance abuse problem. The bill makes that information confidential from the Medical Board too. Julianne Fellmeth, Center for Public Interest Law The organization's leadership declined a request to be interviewed, instead offering three lines of boilerplate describing the group's proposal as "a credible, statewide program that provides coordinated and reliable treatment options for physicians." But the bill could set the stage for awarding a fat state contract to a treatment program co-founded by the CMA. Although the legislation mandates that all program costs be paid by doctors in the program, previous bills would have financed the program partially through physician licensing fees. The bill also would strengthen the secrecy surrounding doctors' participation in substance-abuse programs. That may be good for doctors in treatment but not for the public. "Patients won't be able to find out if their doctor has a substance abuse problem," says Julianne Fellmeth, a regulatory expert at the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego. "The bill makes that information confidential from the Medical Board too." Introduced by state Sen. Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, Senate Bill 1177 is scheduled for a hearing April 18 before the Senate Business, Professions, and Economic Development Committee. Not to be indelicate, but the committee should pull the plug and hang a do-not-resuscitate tag on it. Among its numerous shortcomings, the bill would prevent the Medical Board of California from tracking the progress of licensed physicians through their substance abuse programs. Unless the board itself had ordered a doctor to undergo treatment, say, as a condition of probation, it would have no right to know whether the doctor had failed a drug test or flunked out. That's important because many physicians are forced into programs by their hospitals or partners or seek treatment voluntarily, without the board's intervention. If the board is the referring agency, the bill says it would be entitled to reports on the doctor's progress. But it would be forbidden to use the information in a disciplinary case. Under most other scenarios, the records of the doctor's drug treatment would be confidential. Substance abuse among physicians and surgeons certainly is a serious public health issue. Some 10% to 12% of doctors are estimated to fall prey to drug or alcohol abuse during their careers, according to a 2009 survey by Keith H. Berge of the Mayo Clinic and Marvin D. Seppala of the Hazelden Foundation. That's about the same rate as the general population, but it raises special public policy concerns. Impaired doctors can present a risk to their patients' lives. But their "elevated social status," Berge and Seppala observed, can delay diagnosis and treatment. Yet given the availability of private substance abuse programs, critics of the CMA bill ask why physicians and surgeons need a special state-sanctioned program, especially one with heightened rules of confidentiality. "No group in this country has more status or money to seek treatment," says Lisa McGiffert, director of the Safe Patient Project at Consumers Union. California's record in government intervention has been especially troubled. The so-called diversion program for physicians and surgeons was established by the legislature in 1980 and placed under the Medical Board's jurisdiction. It proved to be a bad match. As the Medical Board's enforcement monitor from 2002-05, Fellmeth found the program "significantly flawed." For many participants, diversion was merely a device to avoid disciplinary sanctions. "As with the CMA's four previous attempts," she told the state Senate committee in a blistering April 4 letter, "there is no need for this bill or the program it would create." In five successive audits (including two by Fellmeth) state officials found that the program didn't adequately supervise its participants or validate their drug tests. In some cases, doctors could even time their drug use to be undetected. At any given time, there were fewer than 275 physicians in the program although the number of licensed doctors in California exceeded 100,000. "This program was not even attracting the very tip of the iceberg of statistically-likely impaired physicians," Fellmeth wrote. The program was killed by the legislature as of April 2008. At that point the CMA began its efforts at resuscitation, sponsoring bills in 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2014. The first was vetoed and the others failed to reach the floor. The 2012 version died when an Assembly legislative analyst recognized that it was cleverly designed to deliver a state-funded contract to California Public Protection and Physician Health, the treatment program created by the CMA and other medical organizations. "It would appear," the analyst wrote, "that the CPPPH built into its business plan the assumption that a [program] would be legislatively mandated, including funding through license fees." The bill would have done both. CPPPH is still around, and some of its executives and advisers are still active in pushing for a diversion program. The new bill doesn't have a provision for state funding, though critics believe such an amendment might yet appear. Plans are already underway for the bill to be amended so that it conforms to standards set by the Medical Board for substance abuse programs under its jurisdiction. The board's staff in October recommended that any such program report any physician dropped from the program for any reason, including failing a drug test, and provide "strict documentation" of monitoring of the doctor's performance in the program. Those standards are ignored by the original bill, but sources in Sacramento say there are plans to amend it to meet the board's specifications. Still, if the legislature really believes that substance-abusing doctors are a threat to public safety--and they are--then creating a state program via SB 1177 is the wrong way to address the problem. In fact, it achieves something that the medical profession considers a cardinal sin: It makes things worse. Michael Hiltzik's column appears every Sunday. Read his blog every day at latimes.com/business/hiltzik, reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @hiltzikm on Twitter. Enhancing its position as one Obamacare exchange that takes its job seriously, Covered California on Thursday took a significant step toward bringing health insurance to the largest single group still on the outside looking in: immigrants in the U.S. illegally. On the surface, the exchange's board didn't do much. It simply produced for the Legislature an analysis of a proposal to seek a so-called Section 1332 waiver, which covers "innovation" in exchange designs. The Legislature must approve the waiver application, which then must be weighed by the U.S. Department. of Health and Human Services. Ultimate approval in Washington is by no means assured, the Covered California staff advised the board. "This is somewhat symbolic," said Covered California's chair, Diana Dooley, the state's secretary of health and human services. But "symbolism is important." This is somewhat symbolic, (but) symbolism is important. --Covered California Chair Diana Dooley But the move was interpreted by healthcare advocates as effectively a green light to seek the waiver. A measure to do so already has been introduced in the Legislature. "The analysis says this is workable and feasible and could be done this year," said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California. Although no formal vote was taken, several board members expressed at least implicit support for the idea of providing immigrants in the U.S. illegally with access to plans through Covered California. Denying immigrants in the country illegally access to the Affordable Care Act exchanges was a tic in the enactment process in 2010, plainly aimed (unsuccessfully) at securing Republican votes. The measure bars those residents from purchasing health plans through the Obamacare exchanges even with their own money and at full price. It's one of those punitive anti-immigrant policies that infect our political thinking, like denying immigrants in the U.S. illegally the right to apply for drivers licenses, because what's not to like about having millions of untested drivers tooling around our highways and byways, making the roads less safe for everybody? (California last year became one of 10 states consigning this self-destructive policy to the dustbin, by opening the licensing process to qualified immigrants in the country illegally.) As many as 50% of Californias uninsured individuals may be ineligible for health coverage because of their immigration status. (Covered California) (Test) The result is that as many as 1.5 million California residents may be ineligible for Affordable Care Act coverage because of their immigration status, according to Covered California estimates. That's more than 40%, and possibly half, of all uninsured individuals in the state. (See graphic above.) Immigration status is only one factor in their missing out on insurance; even if eligible under a waiver, many may not be able to buy it, because the law will continue to prohibit granting residents in the U.S. illegally the tax subsidies that make Obamacare coverage affordable. Half of Californias remaining uninsured individuals are Latino. (Covered California) (Test) The exclusion of so many state residents is a problem in part because the large uninsured population undermines a key goal of expanding healthcare, which is to improve public health generally, not just among families that can afford it. No one gains to have members of the community walking around sick. It also complicates delivery of health coverage to members of families in which some members are eligible for health coverage and others are not. California's move to extend greater coverage to children in the country illegally may, ironically, have exacerbated that problem. Gov. Jerry Brown last year signed a measure to provide state-subsidized Medi-Cal coverage to about 170,000 children age 18 and younger without legal status, starting next month. The policy will cost about $132 million a year, but the Legislature opted not to extend coverage to adults in the country illegally , which would have raised the cost to as much as $740 million. As a result of the policy, in some "mixed-status" families the children will be covered while one parent may have legal status and the other lack documentation. California rightly is concerned that fears of legal exposure by those in the U.S. illegally may dissuade such families from seeking coverage even for eligible members, an obstacle that may be reduced by allowing all family members to obtain exchange-based coverage whether subsidized or full price. 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. The giant health insurance company UnitedHealth inspired lots of hand-wringing and hyperventilation last year when it announced that it had lost hundreds of millions of dollars on Affordable Care Act exchanges and was considering withdrawing from the market in 2017. Although that news prompted numerous Obamacare critics to declare the impending death of the program, we were skeptical. United, which makes most of its money in the large-group (employer) market, always was a reluctant participant in the individual exchanges, and was largely inept at pricing and managing those products. Its unlikely that United's departure from the [Georgia] exchange will have a significant impact on plan availability or consumer choices. Louise Norris, healthinsurance.org Now the company has started to make good on its threat, pulling out of the exchange markets in Arkansas and Georgia. Its announcements prove our point. United was a very small player in both states, and plainly had been out-competed by Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and by large rivals such as Aetna. Its withdrawals aren't likely to materially reduce competition in those states. As Charles Gaba observes, four other carriers are staying on in Arkansas, and eight in Georgia. Whether United will withdraw from other states where it sold plans in 2016 is still unknown, as the last deadline nationwide for submitting proposals for 2017 plans isn't until May 11. The Affordable Care Act continued to drive down the percentage of Americans without health insurance in the first quarter of 2016. (Gallup) (Test) Here's how small a factor United has been: In Georgia in 2015, United had 9,933 HMO enrollees, or a market share of 4.47%. UnitedHealthcare Life Insurance had an additional 825 members. The big players were Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and Humana, which had more than 200,000 customers, or more than 90% of the market, altogether. United, which hadn't even joined the Georgia ACA market until 2015, had sought a rate increase of 18.64% for 2016 but had to settle for 13.2%. Georgia was one of the states in which United canceled broker commissions for ACA insurance plans, which was a way to reduce its presence in the market even further. Detailed figures aren't available for Arkansas, but indications are that it was trying to build its book of business from a very small base. The company had offered only off-exchange individual plans in 2015, when it signed up all of its 521 customers. The company sought a rate increase of nearly 20% for those customers in 2016, so its competitiveness was probably not very high. The biggest player in the Arkansas exchange, by far, is Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, an independent Blue plan with nearly 80% of the market and a rate increase request for 2016 that came in at 7.15%. See how competition works? Uniteds benchmark silver plan in Redding, Calif., was priced more than 20% higher than a competing plan from Blue Shield. (Balloon-juice.com) (Covered California/Balloon-juice.com) United's experience in the individual health insurance market may eventually reign as a business school case study in how not to do things. According to a joint analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, the company entered some of the least populous exchange markets and failed to establish itself among the lowest-priced choices in most of them. "United seems to be more aggressively participating in less populous and less-competitive markets," the report says. The results don't suggest that this was a formula for building a strong presence in the market. They also suggest that United's departure won't send rates higher in those markets. What's interesting about United's announcements in Arkansas and Georgia is that they come as new evidence arrives that the Affordable Care Act is doing its job. The Gallup organization reported Thursday that the U.S. uninsured rate had fallen to 11% in the first quarter of 2016, the lowest in eight years and nearly a full percentage point from the rate three months earlier. As the Obamacare train continues chuffing along, UnitedHealth will be left at the station. 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. Gateway Inc. co-founder Ted Waitt has sold one of his homes in the Bird Streets of Hollywood Hills West for $15.5 million. The buyer of the 6,200-square-foot home, set on a promontory of more than half an acre, was Latvian philanthropist and film producer Boris Teterev. Built in 2009, the contemporary-style home has a colorful feel with stone walls, vibrant wood finishes and exotic lighting fixtures. Requisite walls of floor-to-ceiling glass have sprawling city, canyon and ocean views. Multilevel interiors include formal living and dining rooms, a game/media room, a gym and an office. A large custom aquarium forms the backdrop for a curving wet bar. Advertisement ----------- FOR THE RECORD 9:28 a.m. April 12: An earlier version of this story said the sale price was $17.9 million. The actual sale price was $15.5 million, according to public record. ------------ The master suite has a wall fireplace, a sitting room and sliding glass doors that open to a terrace. There are four bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms in all. An infinity-edge swimming pool with a raised spa sits at the edge of the promontory. Nearby, an outdoor dining area has a fire feature. The house previously changed hands in 2011 for $11.525 million, property records show. Kurt Rappaport of Westside Estate Agency and Ryan Davis of John Aaroe Group were the co-listing agents. Davis and Paul Stukin, also of John Aaroe, represented the buyer. For Waitt, the sale is not a complete exit from the affluent area popular among celebrities and moguls. The 53-year-old entrepreneur and philanthropist owns another property in the Doheny Estates, a sub-area of the Bird Streets, which he bought three years ago from film producer Megan Ellison for $20.5 million. He also owns a home in Beverly Hills that he acquired last year for $10.3 million. Waitt co-founded the personal computer giant Gateway on his familys cattle ranch in North Dakota. He left the company in 2005. Among the wealthiest self-made Americans, he operates the Avalon Capital Group, a private investment firm, along with three other philanthropic enterprises. Teterev, 62, amassed a fortune in the Latvian auto industry before trying his hand in Hollywood. Among his film credits are Machete Kills (2013), Chef (2014) and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014). He and his wife, Inara, are among the biggest philanthropists in Latvia, supporting arts and education through their charitable foundation. Twitter: @NJLeitereg MORE HOT PROPERTY: Guns N Roses Slash tunes the asking price for his villa in Mulholland Estates Portlandias Fred Armisen snags a stately English-style home in Los Feliz Roswells Shiri Appleby puts her West Hollywood cottage up for sale A U.S. district judge rejected a $12.25-million lawsuit settlement between Lyft and its drivers Thursday, saying that the amount offered shortchanges drivers who sought to be treated as employees. The drivers, whom Lyft classifies as independent contractors, are seeking reimbursement for work-related expenses such as gas and mileage. In a ruling Thursday, Judge Vince Chhabria said the settlement agreement did not fall within the range of reasonableness because the value of the reimbursement claim alone is believed to be more than $126 million. Advertisement The settlement included a $12.25-million payout to drivers and changes to Lyfts terms of service to clearly comply with California law governing independent contractors. The decision means the San Francisco firm and the drivers attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan, must now go back to the drawing board. We are hopeful this settlement can be improved to meet the judges concerns, Liss-Riordan said via email. If not, we look forward to taking this case to trial as well. Lyft spokeswoman Chelsea Wilson said the company is evaluating [its] next steps. Although its not unusual for judges to reject settlements unless changes are made, labor attorney John Skousen of law firm Fisher & Phillips said this case is unique in that there was no admission or finding of liability on Lyfts part, and plaintiffs still had the considerable burden to certify and prove their class claims at trial. In the event that a settlement cant be reached, they may well go to trial, he said. And I would not like to be in the plaintiffs attorneys position, because with class actions its all or nothing, and if she loses its going to be in a very big way. tracey.lien@latimes.com As the Los Angeles art worlds center of gravity has continued to migrate eastward, a growing number of art spaces has begun to open up shop on the eastern banks of the Los Angeles River. Now those spaces are about to be joined by a new artist-run nonprofit with high-minded ambitions. Pssst, as the new space is called, is scheduled to open its doors in a converted warehouse next month with a program that leans toward the experimental including a show of work by the MFA students who withdrew in protest from USC almost one year ago. (The group now goes by the moniker MFA no MFA.) Also in the pipeline are lectures, performances and group shows, as well as artist residencies. In fact, the first resident will be Guadalupe Rosales, the Los Angeles artist who has made a name for herself by creating a digital archive of Chicano youth culture of the 90s with her Veteranas and Rucas Instagram feed. Advertisement Pssst, which will be housed in a 4,000-square-foot warehouse in Boyle Heights, is the brainchild of L.A.-based artists Jules Gimbrone and Barnett Cohen. The pair met as students at the California Institute of the Arts, and it was their experience there, in part, that led them to launch their new nonprofit. We were imbued with the philosophy and mission of being this really experimental space where artists have time to take risks and collaborate and focus on ideas, says Gimbrone. The mission, says Cohen, is to create a place where artists of all stripes poets and dancers and visual artists, with advanced degrees and without can present their work without the pressure of making sales. And to do so in a space that keeps artist needs top of mind. We are so not curators and we are so not gallerists in the making, says Cohen. We are artists through and through. Thats an important point. As part of that, Pssst is even looking to address the pay inequity that occurs at many nonprofit exhibition spaces where curators, installers and other staff are paid for their time, but artists frequently are not. The organization is working on getting certification from Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), an activist group in New York that helps regulate artist fees at nonprofit arts institutions. Moreover, Pssst is focused on allotting its studio spaces according to creative as well as financial needs, in the hopes that they can nurture careers that may not be receiving much professional support elsewhere. Its a conversation were trying to spark given the tremendous amount of wealth inequality, says Cohen. You can scroll through Instagram and see shiny new art all the time, [but] that doesnt reflect what it means to be an artist in America. Funds to help launch the space were supplied by a donor who remains anonymous. But Gimbrone and Cohen are doing additional fundraising to support the programming. They are also working with an advisory board that is helping guide some of the decision-making. The lineup includes established art world figures such as independent curator Michael Ned Holte (who helped co-curate the last Made in L.A. biennial), multimedia artist A.L. Steiner, Los Angeles County Museum of Art curatorial initiatives coordinator Pilar Tompkins Rivas and Hammer Museum assistant curator Jamillah James. Pssst joins other arts nonprofits in the greater L.A. area, including Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) in Hollywood, the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica and the Mistake Room in the nearby arts district. Pssst opens to the public on May 13 with the group exhibition Everybody! Come Stand on the Altar! The show runs through May 28. 1329 East 3rd St., Boyle Heights, pssst.org. Find me on Twitter @cmonstah. Gwyneth Paltrow has been an entertainer for years. Shes starred in dozens of popular movies, won an Oscar for her performance in Shakespeare and Love and delighted audiences of all ages with her performance of Cruisin in the 2000 film Duets, a song that spent two weeks at No. 1 in Australia. However, Paltrow has always been a little out of step with the lives of the common man, often to hilarious effect. Perhaps its a testament to her Hollywood upbringing. Many of these gaffes are delivered via her lifestyle publication Goop, the most unappealingly named website to attempt to sell you $300 harem pants. Advertisement And though shes found success in the culinary realm, shes been known to be on her own wavelength there as well. So as we await Tuesdays release of her third cookbook, Its All Easy, lets take an opportunity to review just how different life can be when youre Gwyneth Paltrow. Here are some of our favorite examples: Fancy toilet paper: When Charmin just wont do When Goop published its 2015 Christmas gift guide, the site itself called the list ridiculous -- an attempted nod to its previous excesses that failed miserably. Best example of this failure? The inclusion of the Josephs toilet paper system (and its Josephier dispensers, one finished in ebony) for those who can afford to spend hundreds on a toilet paper system and whose sensibilities are such that the website insists on referring to butts as bottoms. Seven limes This is what $29 gets you at the grocery storewhat families on SNAP (i.e. food stamps) have to live on for a week. pic.twitter.com/OZMPA3nxij Gwyneth Paltrow (@GwynethPaltrow) April 9, 2015 Poor Paltrow attempted the SNAP challenge, in which participants purchase $29 worth of food in an attempt to make it last a week, the average weekly allotment afforded families using food stamps. The actress lasted four days, but after posting a photo of her wares on the first day, it was a wonder she made it that long. She started strong with a dozen eggs, black beans and brown rice, but things quickly went wrong with the inclusion of seven limes. Why seven limes? No one knows. Perhaps no one ever will. A $900 dollar candlestick Currently found in the Goop Shop is a collection of oxidized brass candlesticks, the largest of which is 8 1/2 inches tall and is being sold for $900, a perfect addition to anyones Colonel Mustard cosplay. $300 worth of ingredients With the publication of Paltrows second cookbook, Its All Good, several outlets endeavored to research how much it would actually cost the average individual to prepare recipes in genuine Gwyneth fashion, only to find that a single day of Paltrow-preparation could require $300 worth of ingredients, including an egg white omelet that cost nearly $30 on its own. Mushroom knife Another example straight from the Goop Shop is a beautiful olive wood mushroom knife that costs a cool $70, because sometimes you say to yourself, Self, how can I best cut these mushrooms without using any of the kitchen knives I already own and also paying three times as much as I would for this specialty product? Dont worry, Goop has you covered. On the bright side, it seems to include a free loofah as a value add. Check out The Times look at Paltrows latest cookbook, which, even with idiosyncrasies, makes for some great food. Follow me @midwestspitfire MORE: Jury acquits Ohio man of stalking Gwyneth Paltrow Why Gwyneth Paltrow named colors in her Juice Beauty collection after fellow female stars Gwyneth Paltrow explains how she and brother Chris Martin have consciously uncoupled Susan Sarandon and Debra Messing have Twitter political fight for the ages Vince Neil and Nicolas Cage fight on the Las Vegas Strip after an incident with a fan American Idol had promised us a night of surprises. But the biggest surprise of the shows final finale wasnt the fact that Season 1 co-host Brian Dunkleman returned to make his peace with Ryan Seacrest, or that Carrie Underwood showed up to duet with Keith Urban, or that Simon Cowell strolled out to make Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson cringe, or that a cute little girl from New Orelans Ninth Ward turned up to sing What a Wonderful World alongside Harry Connick Jr. It wasnt that every Idol winner in its 15-year history and a slew of contestants who hadnt won returned to the shows stage to perform. (It would probably take me less time to list the contestants who didnt show up than the ones who did.) It wasnt even that Larry Pants on the Ground Platt or William She Bangs Hung (and um, was that Sanjaya?) came back to do their strange things. No, the biggest shocker of the American Idol Season 15 finale turned out to be the winner: Trent Harmon, the 25-year-old Mississippi farm boy and waiter at his family restaurant, the earnest fellow who trained himself not to make silly faces when he sang and wrote every word the judges ever told him down in a tattered leather-bound journal, the guy who suffered through Hollywood Week sweating and struggling with mono and still managed to make it all the way to the finale, crossed the finish line to snatch the crown away from the distinctive head of LaPorsha Renae on Thursday night. The little girl took a deep breath, mustered up some courage, and approached Kristen Bell. My mom said you were an actress, she said, seeming confused as she stared at the woman whod given voice to Princess Anna in the animated hit Frozen. I am, Bell replied cheerily. Does my voice sound familiar to you? Advertisement No? the child responded. No, no, no! How do you get your voice to sound like Anna? Bell engaged with the girl for a few minutes before returning to her lunch table. That happens quite a bit, she explained. Children just look at me with confusion, having difficulty wrapping their head around the idea youve separated human and cartoon. Such is the crux of being Kristen Bell. Yes, along with Idina Menzel, she starred in a film that enchanted audiences worldwide, grossing nearly $1.3 billion in 2013. Or rather, her voice did. But shes not exactly a movie star. Shes had a strong television career, first endearing herself to a cult fan base as the snarky sleuth Veronica Mars and since starring opposite Don Cheadle on Showtimes House of Lies, which starts its fifth season this week. And yet on the big screen, shes largely played supporting roles, like Jason Segels vacuous girlfriend in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or the straight woman to Melissa McCarthys brash CEO in The Boss, which opens today. I dont need to talk to my agents all the time about where I stand in the acting community, because Im pretty clear on where that is: Im a strong B-level actor, said Bell, appearing completely earnest. That feels accurate -- not too narcissistic, but also not too self-pitying. Im totally fine being right down the middle. At 35, Bell said, her priorities have shifted. Shes married to fellow actor Dax Shepard (Parenthood), and they have two daughters, aged one and three. And her kids, she said, give her a glorious amount of self-esteem and purpose. Shes no longer haunted by whether she got a job, or botched an audition. Shes more practical about the work she takes on. She agreed to The Boss -- which began shooting just 11 weeks after the birth of her second child -- only because her family was able to accompany her to set in Atlanta. Being a mother seems so integral to her identity that its difficult to imagine there was a time when she was uncertain about having kids. I loved my life, she said, sitting at one of her favorite Los Feliz cafes a couple of blocks from her house. Dax and I could go on trips. I had dogs that I could nurture. And I felt that pregnancy would be parasitic. I like my autonomy. Im a spunky girl. I dont like when people get the door for me. If Im in a mood, I dont want you to rub your hand on my back. But Shepard, who got sober 12 years ago, was keen on being a dad. So he suggested the couple seek out advice from their five most blunt, narcissistic friends with kids. And all of them, even the grumpy ones, were like, Its an unmissable experience, she recalled. And they were right. Its so fun. Pregnancy feels gross, and you cant think about it, because its disgusting. It feels like youve swallowed a live trout. She laughed and noticed a pregnant woman sitting nearby -- and began to tear up. Im so stupid, because it makes me so emotional, she said. But that woman is about to turn a corner right there and meet the love of her life, and I know it, but I cant explain it to her. Having children has also changed Bells relationship to her body. Yes, shes still one of those annoyingly healthy types she ordered a bowl of Moroccan lentils and organic eggs for lunch, and when a waitress offered her a complimentary dessert, she said she had to abstain because she does not eat sugar. But she said shes become more accepting of the way she looks. When I look down at my belly, she said, lifting up her shirt and grabbing at her stomach, I have a lot of skin. Its all tucked into my waist right now, but I have all this skin, when my stomach isnt full of lentils. And sometimes its saggy. But Im determined to keep a healthy perspective about it. Because when I look down and see that in the mirror, it is a reminder that I did something extraordinary. It is a reminder that I have a superpower, and theyre walking around my house because of it. In The Boss, Bell plays a single mom an overworked assistant to a demanding boss (McCarthy) who initially doesnt value her. Shes so concerned with making ends meet for her daughter that she isnt making herself a priority, as McCarthys character points out in one scene, teasing her for still sporting an unflattering nursing bra. Generally, Bell said, she prefers to work on television as most shows shoot in Los Angeles, and she enjoys the consistent schedule. Plus, she noted, movies have always felt a little bit like camp to me. Its dramatic, you swear youll be friends forever, and most of the time, youre not. TV feels like high school to me. I like the depth of relationships. But there was a more familial environment on The Boss, largely because Shepard is longtime friends with McCarthy and her husband, director Ben Falcone; they met while performing as part of the improv troupe The Groundlings. 1 / 3 Kristen Bell is definitely a hot actress, so to speak. Yes, she has been featured on many mens magazines hot lists, but the Michigan native also boasts work on popular shows and movies. Named Best Looking Girl by her senior class, Bell continues to be a popular and successful force in Hollywood. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 3 Dax Shepard, left, and Kristen Bell arrive at the world premiere of The Boss on March 28, 2016, in Los Angeles. (Jordan Strauss / Jordan Strauss/Invision/Associated Press) 3 / 3 Kristen Bell reprised her role as super sleuth Veronica Mars in the 2014 crowd-funded movie Veronica Mars. (Robert Voets / AP) She and Dax are super nauseating, joked McCarthy, calling from the car with Falcone. Its nice to be around people that are happy and you can tell love each other. And she brought homemade cashew dip to work. And Ill tell you what: If you want to keep the Falcones happy, you just bring in a nice bowl of cashew dip. Like, shes perfect. Sometimes its a little too far, added Falcone. When the cashew dip was that good, I think my response was: Really, Kristen? Really? Did you go home to your baby after a full day of work? interjected McCarthy. Just stop, you, with your glowing skin and your cashew dip. She is like the perfect person without being in any way actually annoying. Bell readily admits that she and Shepard are, indeed, nauseating even to ourselves. I ...love him more than I could ever articulate, she said, actually using some more colorful language for emphasis. But I made a choice to love my husband. I made a choice to be happy with him and be good to him and conduct myself in his presence exactly as I would in his absence. And he made exactly the same commitment to me. And in truth, accepting that we are on the same team is the source of our joy. Bell approaches her marriage the way she does her career, she said: logically. Her agents know that she doesnt want to have lunch with them once a month. Shes not interested in strategizing: Just tell me what jobs are available, and if its realistic, we can talk about it. Hollywoods a giant cage fight, you know? she said. The project has to be looking at you as much as youre looking at the project for it to be a reality for you I think especially young actors suffer from these cravings to be significant. And its a trick. You never feel significant. This is coming from a woman whose voice is on a soundtrack that has been certified platinum four times over and remains on repeat in millions of households around the world. That feeling never, ever goes away no matter how many jobs you get, Bell said. Just accept it and know that its a demon we all have. Once I did that, it just felt like freedom. In a driveway of this sleepy suburb, Jake Gyllenhaal was going wild. As cameras rolled, he clambered up a luxury sports car, began air-drumming to the rhythm of an off-camera character (or maybe just to the beat in his own head), then jumped off the car and hung on a basketball rim, Blake Griffin-style. This tableaux continued nearly a full minute, the actor bobbing and shaking like the worlds most trance-y air musician. Cut, came a French Canadian accent off to the side, then, Lets go again. Advertisement See more of Entertainments top stories on Facebook >> The scene from the new movie Demolition Fox Searchlight opens it in theaters Friday demonstrates the exploratory cravings of its star. Somewhat guarded and calibrated in real life, the Gyllenhaal one encountered roaming the set gave in to his most improvisational impulses. But it also shows the style of the man directing him. That would be the aforesaid Quebecois, Jean-Marc Vallee, also the helmer of Wild and Dallas Buyers Club. If late-night talk-show interviewees are to be believed, an actors director comes along every other movie. But its rare to find the director who gives space, and license, to actors to wander through a scene as if they were a possessed goblin who allows, in this era of overbearing studios and nervous filmmakers, performers to simply do what feels right. If we were shooting in a high-rise office and I said we could get this great shot in a friends apartment, hed say, Let me see a photo and then turn on the camera and follow me down the elevator, Gyllenhaal said in an interview later. So much of what you want to do as an actor is follow your instincts, and Jean-Marc wants to follow it with you. Or as David Greenbaum, the co-head of production at Fox Searchlight who worked with Vallee on Wild and Demolition, puts it: Its like the jazz great who learns the formal style, then rejects it all in favor of his own. The idea of going instinctual and off-script suits Demolition, a movie thats at heart about forging an identity with the simple admission that none of us really knows where were going. Gyllenhaal continuing a career renaissance fueled by playing off-kilter but watchable outsiders (Prisoners, Nightcrawler) stars as investment banker Davis Mitchell. An overachieving Wall Street type, he has married young, to the daughter of the scion (Chris Cooper) of a white-shoe Wall Street firm, where Davis is being groomed. As the movie opens, Davis wife is killed in a car accident. But rather than sending the repressed Davis further into himself, it prompts a free-spirited lashing out. Jolted from his benumbed existence, the banker, as scripted by writer Bryan Sipe, seeks connection in an unusual place: a customer-service operator and virtual stranger (Naomi Watts). Soon Davis is finding himself via a) working construction pro bono; b) jamming solitarily and ear-budded down a crowded Manhattan street; c) asking a teenage boy to shoot him in the chest; and d) demolishing his own glitzy Westchester County, N.Y., home. Its such a beautiful metaphor of embracing life, under the guise of a meditation on love and loss, said Vallee, who says his decision to make Sipes script was partly inspired by his own divorce. How many decisions do we take in life because theyre too easy? How many because we decided not to wake up? Though Demolition divided audiences at festivals in Toronto and Austin some applauded its offbeat take on a familiar cinematic tragedy; others derided it for inauthenticity one would be hard-pressed to quarrel with Vallees triumph in a certain regard. With French-language pieces such as C.R.A.Z.Y. a decade ago and Oscar-nominated work more recently, the director consistently draws sharp and unexpected performances from his actors. Vallee, 53, can flash an intensity during shooting. (What you see as that quick Quebecois outburst is Jean-Marc putting positive energy back in the room, keeping things heated and alive, Greenbaum said). It has not diminished the filmmakers reputation as a go-to option for performers seeking their own reinvention. Stars long defined as an actor of a certain type can, on a Vallee set, demonstrate the folly of such pigeonholing and then ride that to Oscar glory, as Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto did in Dallas Buyers Club. Vallees next project, directing all seven episodes of the HBO series Big Little Lies, features a dream cast of Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern. Theres an interesting balance between absolute freedom and absolute control [when] making a movie with Jean-Marc, Gyllenhaal said. And whats amazing is to watch him dance back and forth between the two. ( One way hes able to give actors the space is by eschewing most artificial lighting, which speeds up production. It was a decision he made to get Dallas Buyers made quickly on a tight budget, and hes embraced it since. (Not hurting is his decision to make a number of his movies, including this one, with independent financing; even the prestige Fox Searchlight boarded Demolition after it wrapped.) As hes fostered actor reinventions, Vallee has often chosen material with built-in themes of rebirth think the remaking of the homophobe Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers or the post-addiction revival of Cheryl Strayed in Wild. In Davis he has perhaps his most imperfect character. And if parts of the audience are put off by the mans outbursts or his potentially left-field redemption, Vallee seems unperturbed by their reaction. There are some people who will not accept this [message of change], the director noted. It was not an easy film it wasnt easy to make; it wasnt easy to get financed. It can be provocative to talk about grief and death. But I wanted to show Bryans work to the world. I just wanted to celebrate those who can expose themselves emotionally. He continued, Im not aiming for happiness. Life is hard its dark. Im aiming for beauty. Sipe wrote the script, his first produced film, over a period of several bleak years of his own, when he was broke and questioning his life direction. Tens of thousands dollars in debt as a bartender in Los Angeles, he quit his job and drove north to British Columbia, then maxed out a few more credits cards on a soul-finding trip to Europe before returning to complete Demolition. Of Vallees secret to capturing actor subtleties, he said, Jean-Marc is a big music guy, as I am. And to me what hes doing on set is a little like getting everyone in the room, a bring your instruments so we can play [vibe]. Sometimes it sounds like a racket. And sometimes it becomes a band. Back on the suburban set, Gyllenhaal is now, camera rolling, doing pull-ups off an outdoor beam. The act may make him the first person to do driveway exercise in bespoke suspenders to the beat of a garage drummer, and certainly the first Hollywood star to do so. I think in movies we have this tendency to experience change in an extraordinarily profound way, as if a massive emotional bomb has gone off, Gyllenhaal said of the movies arcs and rhythms. Its not. Its the sound of the light switch being turned on. I think thats the beauty of what Jean-Marc does. The ultimate catharsis is often very quiet. And Jean-Marc wants us to hear the pin drop. steve.zeitchik@latimes.com Howd you get that scar? Martha (Anna Kendrick) asks her mysterious new beau, Francis (Sam Rockwell). He answers flippantly, something about a chunk of tile from an exploding building in Bosnia. What Mr. Right presupposes: What if hes not kidding? Playing with the notion that dating requires a certain amount of sarcastic yes, and banter, writer Max Landis ups the ante with a leading man whos an assassin with a code. Technically, he never lies to Martha about his job, because she thought he was joking in the first place. Its an amusing conceit, but the result is a cacophonous rom-com obsessed with its own quirks. Kendrick and Rockwell are ill-matched (partly due to a 17-year age difference) as star-crossed lovers who meet over a cascade of condoms in a convenience store. Advertisement Rockwell does the rakish charm thing as the hit man with a heart of gold, offing the people who hire him, because murder is bad. He shucks and jives through his fight sequences with swagger, relying on the current, the energy of objects that allows him to see where things are going. The object of his affection, Martha, is a neurotic, impulsive, whimsical mess reeling from a bad breakup. She blazes right past red flags in relationships, which is obvious when shes swept off her feet by Francis. Kendrick, usually a cool cucumber, is wildly overacting, though the nutty role essentially requires it. Some subtlety could have gone a long way, but Mr. Right is the opposite of subtle the lovers sport cat ears and clown noses as their signature look. As directed by Paco Cabezas, the weapons fly in slo-mo, the soundtrack cycles through the hits and the zingers keep on coming. The plot is a mess, overstuffed with warring mobster brothers (James Ransone and Anson Mount) and a British assassin posing as a Southern-fried FBI agent (Tim Roth). It feels at once overwritten and thematically thin, coasting on a cutesy concept before descending into relentless, and therefore meaningless, violence. ------------ Mr. Right. MPAA rating: R for violence and language throughout. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica. Important story, subpar execution. Thats the takeaway from Sold, a disturbing, Dickensian tale of human trafficking that called for a more epic telling than this choppy, rudimentary adaptation of Patricia McCormicks 2006 novel. Lakshmi (Niyar Saikia) is a poor 13-year-old girl from Nepal whose parents unwittingly send her off with Auntie Bimla (Tillotama Shome), a charismatic visitor to their mountain village, to supposedly work as a domestic in India. However, once Lakshmi arrives in Kolkata, she finds herself imprisoned in a shabby brothel called Happiness House and forced to work under the iron fist of its cruel madam, Mumtaz (Sushmita Mukherjee). Witnessing the naive, terrified and at times drugged Lakshmi submit to the bordellos nasty, violent clientele is tough stuff and belies the films lenient PG-13 rating. Meanwhile, an intrepid American photographer (Gillian Anderson) joins forces with a local human rights group, which includes an undercover investigator (Parambrata Chatterjee) and a U.S. volunteer (David Arquette, in a barely there role), to help rescue Lakshmi from her heinous environment. This story strand, though ultimately integral, is too cursorily woven in to gain any real momentum. Advertisement Back at Happiness House, Lakshmi reluctantly learns the ropes, befriends the other sex workers and discovers how to protect herself particularly from disease all while staying vigilant to her dicey surroundings. But instead of ratcheting up the tension, director Jeffrey D. Brown, who co-wrote with Joseph Kwong, lets things slacken and turn a bit episodic after the films midpoint. Strangely, we also never return to Lakshmis parents; itd be nice to know what theyre thinking in their beloved daughters absence. Another problem is young Saikia, whose pivotal part required far more range, depth and authenticity than this tyro actress can summon. She works hard here but it shows. The statistics of how many children worldwide are trafficked and sold into slavery each year is staggering, their trajectories heartbreaking. So its unfortunate that Brown and company were unable to bring stronger narrative and filmmaking skills to this vital subject. Better to check out 2005s similarly themed Oscar-winning documentary, Born Into Brothels, which, not coincidentally, Brown says inspired his work here. ------------ Sold MPAA rating: PG-13, for disturbing thematic material involving the trafficking of children. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica An experiential grenade tossed into the action genre, Hardcore Henry locks you in to 90 minutes of first-person mayhem that, while signaling an impressive aesthetic breakthrough as subjective moviemaking, is too stuck in the swamp of empty machismo to be anything more than the feature equivalent of a soar-and-crash overdose. Russian writer-director Ilya Naishuller, expanding on a viral music video that caught the eye of spurt-and-polish action filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov (who produced), strapped GoPro cameras to operators and rigs to simulate the experience of Henry, a voiceless cyborg who was once human, now resurrected and rebuilt by his beautiful scientist wife, Estelle (Haley Bennett). But before our bionic hero can fully grasp his purpose (or identity), hes thrust into an avenging-android scenario when Estelle is kidnapped by a crazed warlord named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky, suggesting a Russian Julian Sands). Across Moscows skies, through its streets and forests, and into and out of its buildings, Henrys run-and-gun mission and our virtual adventure is as breathlessly accomplished as it is deliriously violent. Advertisement Whats quickly startling about Naishullers you-are-he stunt, until now mostly the province of found-footage horror filmmakers, is how certain action tropes dropping from heights, scaling walls, midcar-chase skirmishes, a building siege become newly bracing in their immediacy. A foot chase with elements of parkour especially dazzles without ever tipping into motion sickness territory. But an adrenaline surge with a video game body count is really all it is. In wake of last years Mad Max: Fury Road, a monumental leap forward in richly imaginative, artful action catharsis, Hardcore Henry is a single-gear novelty that never achieves real liftoff. Zeroing in on writing and acting might be viewed as nitpicking when Naishullers primary motivation is to elicit an extended WHEEEE!! Still, there is a story, and its pretty standard fantasy-vengeance fare an army being amassed for world domination, what else? while the words people say (mostly yell) rarely rise above the level of explanatory video game narration. Though Naishuller relishes his occasional tongue-in-cheek attitude, the humor is mostly cartoon-brutal, adolescent and coolly misogynist. And yet, perhaps understanding how essential a lively personality would be to offset a mute hero and wall-to-wall kineticism, Naishuller wisely cast District 9" star Sharlto Copley as Henrys guide-taskmaster-ally Jimmy, who acts as an expository whack-a-mole. Sporting an assortment of disguises and vocal effects, Copley certainly serves as the most spirited human figure between bursts of jittery havoc; his multiple-persona rendition of Ive Got You Under My Skin (clones are part of the story line) is even surreally amusing enough to qualify as semi Python"-esque. Mostly, though, this oddball scene represents this movies version of an ocean of calm before the final-act storm of gore against the villains bio-engineered mercenary horde, the kind of check-your-watch mowdown that suggests Naishuller didnt realize his movie had already gone to 11. Whether you find Hardcore Henry the rocket ride of your POV dreams or a diverting glimpse into the future of stunt cinema, it is an indelible fanboy marker in the tug of war between the imperiled theatrical experience and the ever more influential one youd have with a home console. Theres even a blink-and-youll-miss-it nod to the gimmicks history in a poster, spotted on a bystanders wall, for Robert Montgomerys groundbreaking 1947 camera-as-protagonist noir Lady in the Lake. Technology and sensibility have come a long way since that films steadied storytelling gaze. Whether movies can survive relinquishing varied visual perspective and artful editing in the quest for the latest in virtual thrills, however, remains to be seen. ------------ Hardcore Henry Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes MPAA rating: R, for nonstop bloody brutal violence and mayhem, language throughout, sexual content/nudity and drug use Playing: In general release calendar@latimes.com The greatest will they/wont they that Stars Hollow ever conjured was finally resolved Thursday when The Boss star Melissa McCarthy announced on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she would be returning to Gilmore Girls for the Netflix revival. McCarthy spent four years on the original series as Sookie St. James, best friend of protagonist Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and general fan favorite. At the time, the part served as McCarthys most significant role and was a wonderful platform for the sunny, silly and profoundly funny talents that America would soon embrace. Despite all that, however, McCarthys joining the Netflix revival of the series has always been in question, even before the series existence had been confirmed. Advertisement One worrying sign for fans of the show came last June when the Austin Television Festival hosted a Gilmore Girls reunion and McCarthy was a no-show. The actress had a good reason, however, as it was the opening weekend of Spy, the No. 1 movie in America at the time. Of more concern was the fact that no one even mentioned McCarthy on the panel, as though launching the career of one of the biggest movie stars wasnt of particular note when it came to reminiscing about the show. The situation remained fraught as a public disagreement sprang up in the wake of Gilmore Girls casting news, in which creator Amy Sherman-Palladino told TVLine in February that Sookie was yet to be incorporated into scripts, although McCarthy was welcome back. This led to McCarthys response that no invitation had previously been issued. Thanks for the invite, but sadly no one asked me or Sookie to come back to Stars Hollow. Wish them all the best!! https://t.co/II2Atug4wx Melissa McCarthy (@melissamccarthy) February 2, 2016 All things considered, its been a trying time for fans of the erstwhile WB/CW series, whose worry and waiting have finally been rewarded with McCarthys confirmation. Follow me @midwestspitfire ALSO Netflix revival of Gilmore Girls officially announced 5 important questions about the reported Gilmore Girls reboot Marvels Cloak and Dagger is coming to Freeform David Rosoff has downsized. At Moruno, the new restaurant he owns with chef Chris Feldmeier in the Original Farmers Market (with a satellite imminent in Grand Central Market), he has created a wine program thats remarkable for its brevity, accuracy and quirkiness. Rosoff is like wine royalty in Los Angeles. Hes managed wine programs at i Cugini, Michaels, Opaline, Campanile and most significantly perhaps at the Mozzaplex, where, with his all-Italian wine lists, he gently taught diners not to fear what they could not pronounce, or recoil from varieties produced in regions theyd never heard of, but rather to fall in love, as he did, with a 2,000-year-old wine culture that is as vibrant as any in the world. At each stage of his career, hes guided and pushed at the limits of Angeleno wine tastes. His love of wine is not just encyclopedic and impassioned; its scope is so much more than, say, its flavors and its uses in a meal. I love the people and the stories and the history of wine, he says. I love walking through vineyards and the intoxicating stench of an old cellar; I love sharing the stories and the flavors with people. I love selling wines made honestly and lovingly by the people Ive met. In every restaurant for which hes served as steward, Rosoff has warmly conveyed this sensibility. If this city has a wine consciousness, Rosoff is one of its principal catalysts. He is like a vinous municipal treasure. Advertisement So it is with Morunos list, which at 45 selections is the shortest he has curated in many years but is in many ways his most radical. First, its offerings dovetail remarkably well with Feldmeiers menu, which is uncompromising in its own right. The a la plancha flavors are simple, but also complex, intense and very particular, driven by pungent spices and provocative acidity. When you taste something like his acid-driven esqueixada (salt-cod salad) or his pork shoulder laid upon a heap of vinegary bitter greens, you start to appreciate the skill of someone like Rosoff to select wines that complement and dont clash. The program leans heavily on sherry and vermouth, two agents of pleasure that seem to orbit the same aperitif planet as congenial stimulants of appetite. Rosoffs vermouths are on tap and house-made (with Lompoc winemaker Steve Clifton), a red and a white, and his sherry list is small but extremely well chosen. Red and white Vermina vermouth available for $10 from Moruno. Theyre made by David Rosoff and Palmera Winerys Steve Clifton. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) As for the list itself, it is perhaps the sunniest disposition of any in Los Angeles. No Barolo here, no Burgundy, no Mosel Riesling. Instead youll find the Spanish, Greek, Italian and French selections that hug the Mediterranean like a string of pearls. The first thing youll notice about the list itself is that there is no red or white section. It is subdivided, but the sections fall under oddly narrative headings such as From Our Own Backyard and Meanwhile, Just Over the Border in France. Reds, whites and roses arent segregated; each wine gets a red, yellow or pink bullet to hint at its color in the glass. But whats bound to catch your eye is the section titled Islands and Volcanoes, whose dozen selections hail from Sicily, Sardinia, the Peloponnese and the Canary Islands. This feels like the core of the bottle list, and may be the wines most simpatico with Feldmeiers cuisine. The wines from these sunbaked places are forward, warm and fiercely mineral, and this last quality, a grippy presence whether white or red, works like a laser upon Feldmeiers already focused flavors. Sherry is a prominent player in the wine program at Moruno in the Original Farmers Market. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) The other weapon in his arsenal is sherry. Rosoff speaks of Jerez and its wines with the zeal of a convert, extolling them as aperitifs and to accompany some of the menus more challenging dishes, like the grilled tripe, which Rosoff loves to pair with a 12-year-old Amontillado from El Maestro Sierra. We grill and fry the tripe, explains Rosoff, which caramelizes its natural sugars, and use fenugreek and star anise, which are warming, savory flavors. Theres also a fair amount of vinegar in the dish, which aged sherry handles well. The Amontillado has a subtle, burnished sweetness and layers of exotic, savory nuance. :: Moruno Wine director: David Rosoff Floor sommelier: Erin Eichner Number of wines on the list: 45 bottles Number of white/red: 18/27 Least Expensive: $32 Most Expensive: $85 Median bottle price: $45 Number of wines by the glass: 16, including sherry Particular strengths: Spain, Languedoc-Roussillon, Southern Italy Wine the chef has with his meal: 2013 Chateau de Jolys Jurancon Sec, a blend of Petit Manseng and Gros Manseng. $13/glass. food@latimes.com Good morning. It is Friday, April 8. Would you like to have strangers hang out in your hot tub or backyard for a small fee? Then the newest app out of Silicon Valley may be for you. Heres what else is happening in the Golden State: TOP STORIES Social workers charged Advertisement Four Los Angeles County social workers were charged with child abuse and falsifying records in the case of 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez, who died in 2012. His mother and her boyfriend are awaiting trial on charges of capital murder and torture. We believe these social workers were criminally negligent and performed their legal duties with willful disregard for Gabriels well-being, said Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey. In the months before Gabriel died, social workers investigated allegations of child abuse but did not remove him from the home. Shortly before he died, officials closed Gabriels case. Los Angeles Times Life after tragedy This week marks a painful anniversary for the Korean American community its been 10 years since a trio of murder-suicides were committed by fathers facing financial struggles in Southern California. Binna Kim was the only one to survive the shooting in her family. As always, seeing their names engraved in stone made their deaths all the more real and permanent, reminding her how keenly she misses them a pining that she turns to a poetic Korean word to convey: Geu-ri-wo. Los Angeles Times Big fine Uber could pay as much as $25 million to settle lawsuits brought by the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles over the companys background checks. Attorneys for the two cities argued Uber gave customers a false sense of security by touting that it had the toughest background checks in the industry. Los Angeles Times DROUGHT AND CLIMATE Water rules: Los Angeles County is exploring new water restrictions. One idea is to prohibit developers from building projects that would increase overall regional water demand. However, members of the business community warn that doing so could drive up the cost of housing. Los Angeles Times Hot flash: Thermal, Calif., reached 101 degrees this week. Thats a far cry from the minus-10 degrees in Estcourt Station, Maine. CityLab L.A. AT LARGE An instant classic: This car chase had it all a convertible, rain, an appearance by the TMZ tour bus. And the ending in South L.A. didnt disappoint as the suspects casually sat on the hood of the car, talked on the phone and snapped selfies with friends. Local television stations carried the chase live for 90 minutes. Los Angeles Times Religious symbol: The Christian cross has no place on the Los Angeles County seal, a judge ruled Thursday. The Board of Supervisors voted in 2014 to restore the cross to the seal despite the threat of litigation. U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder found that adding the cross to the seal unconstitutionally added the countys power, prestige, and purse to a single religion. Los Angeles Times Building bike lanes: Time and again, cyclists are told cities cant build new bike lanes because of the California Environmental Quality Act. But now, a solution appears to be in the works. Tucked into a bill related to the Sacramento Kings arena is a change to the way traffic effects are measured. Los Angeles Times POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT No welcome wagon: West Hollywood has a message for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump: You cant sit with us. Mayor Lindsey Horvath says she wont allow her city to issue any permits, should the Trump campaign try to hold a rally in WeHo. The city attorney there, however, stressed that Horvath was simply stating her opinion. Los Angeles Times Polling results: A new Field Poll finds Trump 7 percentage points ahead of Ted Cruz in Californias Republican primary. However, he trails Cruz in the states most populous county Los Angeles. Daily News CRIME AND COURTS Gang hangout: Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer filed papers Thursday in an attempt to stop gang members from congregating in buildings on West 82nd Street. For five years, the three apartment buildings have been the scene of shootings, killings and arrests, prosecutors say. Take away their territory, you dilute their power The final goal is to make a positive change that lasts, said Police Chief Charlie Beck. Los Angeles Times Who is she? The body of a 21-year-old woman was found stuffed into a suitcase, which was left behind a hotel in San Diego, police said. Authorities do not know how or when she died. Los Angeles Times BUSINESS Customer service: Visiting a Disney park used to be a relatively easy experience for families whose children have a disability. They could move to the front of the line for rides and expect to be treated warmly by cast members. However, after the line policy was abused by families with able-bodied children, Disney changed its tune, according to one mother. The Daily Beast Balancing the books: Hollywood might not feel the effects of the states new minimum wage laws in part because even low-level employees typically make more than $10 an hour. Its an industry that has a lot of income and pretty good margins. What will happen is youll have a smaller pool of waiters/wannabe actors to draw from, said economist Christopher Thornberg. Hollywood Reporter End of an era: It was an Orange County favorite, but PacSun, a.k.a. Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., is filing for bankruptcy. The retailer does not plan to close any stores. Los Angeles Times CALIFORNIA CULTURE App for that: Researchers at UC San Francisco have developed an app to help people suffering from schizophrenia. Pacific Standard Love is stuck: A man had to be rescued from Morro Rock on Thursday after he climbed it to propose to his girlfriend over a video messaging app. Firefighters were able to get to the man by helicopter. The whole event left him with a new fiancee and a citation for trespassing. Fresno Bee Fake it till you make it: Its the history of the palm tree in Los Angeles. LAist Sea foam: Yuck, what is that brown sludge washing up on Orange Countys coast? Orange County Register CALIFORNIA ALMANAC San Diego will be cloudy and rainy with a high of 68. Riverside will be rainy with a high of 69. Los Angeles will have showers and a high of 65. San Francisco will be mostly cloudy with some showers and a high of 63. Sacramento will have an afternoon shower and a high of 70. AND FINALLY Todays California Memory comes from Joanne Scanlan: I grew up in Oakland in the 1950s. Back then we didnt worry about energy use, and one of the exciting things to do in December was driving along the streets in Oakland where neighbors decorated their houses and yards with thousands of multicolored lights. One street of little mock-Tudor cottages outlined every peak and gable with lights. For me, and for my rural Mississippi-born parents whod come to California in the Depression, driving through the city at night to look at the lights was a beautiful and wondrous experience. If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.) Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Alice Walton or Shelby Grad. Binna Kim stood atop a desk holding a microphone. The assignment for this storytelling class in Queens, N.Y., was to tell a personal travel story in less than four minutes. One student talked about backpacking in India. Another described a night at a seedy motel. Binna cleared her throat and started the story of her journey from Los Angeles to New York a 2,500-mile trip that took a decade. Advertisement It began on an April evening in 2006, when she was just 16. She had been begging her parents to let her go. Her mother had said no, but her father relented. She made plans to meet a friend to go to the airport. She never made her flight. There was an accident, she said. Binna did not tell her classmates the details: how her father shot her mother, her 8-year-old brother and her in their Echo Park apartment, before turning the gun on himself; how only she survived. As much as all that has come to define her, she doesnt speak of it. Shes determined to piece together adulthood on her own, without anyone thinking, That poor girl. :: Binna described that attempt at storytelling while in Los Angeles for this weeks 10th anniversary of the private tragedy that became glaringly public, making headlines and shocking the Korean community. It had been the third murder-suicide by a Korean father beleaguered by financial troubles in Southern California in barely a week. Scrutiny and soul-searching followed. Was it a symptom of Korean patriarchy, or were undiagnosed and untreated mental health problems to blame? Perhaps something about the hardscrabble immigrant psyche led to the tragedies? Or did the Korean language, which calls what happened communal suicide rather than murder, have something to do with it? Editorials and columns in Koreatown papers ran through myriad theories, with no satisfying answers. People flocked to forums, town halls and prayer groups. Meanwhile, at County-USC Medical Center, Binna, the sole survivor, floated in and out of consciousness, heavily sedated on morphine. The bullet that fragmented behind her ear had temporarily paralyzed her left side and caused her face to droop on the right side. When she came to, she thrashed about and tried to rip out her IV tubes, confused about what had happened. Her eighth-grade English teacher, Annie Costanzo visited the hospital with one of Binnas teachers. She found the girl she remembered vaguely from her junior high class tied to the hospital bed. Costanzo started visiting regularly. At first, she tried reading her material from Binnas 10th-grade English class. But none of it seemed to register. She instead picked up pen and paper and told Binna to let out what was on her mind, keeping a journal on her behalf. Binnas thoughts were dominated by what people must be thinking and saying about her father. Everyone was furious at Sang Kim, who left a letter to his pastor saying that he intended to take his own life because of financial troubles. People thought Binna should be as angry, if not angrier, than they were. To her, it was apparent that her father had done what he did out of love. :: In six months, after intensive rehab, Binna was slowly ambling through the hallways of the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies on her own two legs. She clung to normalcy as best as she could. She ran for student council and became senior class secretary. She gossiped and shopped with her close group of friends, and went to prom in a gray Anthropologie dress. She applied to colleges and got accepted to Loyola Marymount University. She knew it would have made her parents proud. Neither had attended college, and her father had been adamant that she go. Binna Kim, second from right, in a photograph with her parents and her younger brother. (Christina House / For The Times) At LMU, she was determined not to tell a soul what had happened, even if signs of it marked each limping step, every asymmetrical smile. Almost immediately, she began to struggle. She was deeply self-conscious about her appearance and insecure about her gait as she walked across the sprawling campus. Costanzo started frequenting the school just to hold Binna while she sobbed. She eventually persuaded the girl to ask for help for rides to class and a little extra time on tests. When Binna seemed to need it most, Costanzo gave the girl the journal shed kept in the hospital, to remind her of the determination and optimism shed held on to in her darkest moments. Binna started opening up to a couple friends and feeling more at home. She got a job working in the schools communications office, and then a coveted $12-an-hour position in the school mail room. In 2012, she graduated with a degree in communications, having made the Deans List her last three semesters. Under her graduation gown, tattooed on her right shoulder, was Romans 5:3-4: We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. :: The accident now feels at once like yesterday and a distant, faded past, Binna says. Sometimes she breaks out into a cold sweat, when the feeling hits that her family never existed at all. Increasingly, she recognizes her parents in herself. Shell spend hours alone at a museum lost in her thoughts, the way her father used to do at the beach. Shell retreat from her friends for periods, as her mother did. She urges Korean friends to have deep conversations with their parents before its too late. Whenever they talk to her about their disconnect with their first-generation immigrant parents, she thinks of her father, and the weight he must have carried inside without anyone to talk to. Last November, she posted a photo of her brother on her Instagram account. It was a reminder to her friends, but most of all to herself, that he existed. By now, hed be a pimply teenager, but in her memory hes suspended in childhood. She doesnt have any memories of the shooting, but she still finds herself picturing her dad with the gun, pointed at her brother. The thoughts of his last moments have haunted her. He was found under his bed. Did he suffer? Was he frightened? Could she have saved him if she had heard the first shots? She felt her familys absence with each milestone she hit: Her first job out of college, as an administrative coordinator at a health and wellness company; getting admitted to graduate school for advertising in New York last December; finally achieving the decade-long dream of moving there. She carries them close to heart, having tattooed their initials on her left rib cage a couple of years ago. Costanzo puts the milestones in perspective: Dont tell Binna she cant do anything. On Saturday, she went out to Rose Hills, where her family is buried, to mark the anniversary. She carefully picked out French tulips, sunbeams, ranunculuses, irises and snapdragons. As always, seeing their names engraved in stone made their deaths all the more real and permanent, reminding her how keenly she misses them a pining that she turns to a poetic Korean word to convey: Geu-ri-wo. victoria.kim@latimes.com ALSO Adelantos baseball dream turns into a $1-a-year nightmare Social workers charged with child abuse in case involving torture killing of Gabriel Fernandez Man shot and stabbed woman, then texted photo of her corpse to her boyfriend, prosecutors say Students in South Los Angeles public high schools will soon receive priority admission to Cal State Dominguez Hills. On Thursday, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced an agreement with the university to guarantee admission to qualified students who attend the high schools nearby. The collaborations stated goal is to provide a clearer path into higher education for students in the largely low-income neighborhoods around the university. The program hopes to encourage students from the included schools to study science, technology, engineering and math the so-called STEM disciplines. Advertisement We dont have an abundance of students lining up to become STEM majors, especially in the south district especially the African American male population, said Kamal Hamdan, director of the Center for Innovation in STEM Education at Cal State Dominguez Hills. We are just simply failing that population. Those admitted will need to complete the course requirements that all L.A. Unified students need to graduate, and their grades and SAT scores must meet standards as set by a sliding scale. The districts south area encompasses roughly 20 high schools and magnet programs with about 4,700 high school seniors. Qualifying students who completed an elementary or middle school magnet program focused on math and science, but not a local high school, will also receive guaranteed admission. Students who attend charter schools or continuation schools are not eligible. The program will make it easier for newly minted Dominguez Hills graduates to return to district schools to teach with a focus on those hard-to-staff math- and science-oriented classes. Theyll understand where our students are coming from, the barriers that they face, said L.A. Unifieds south district superintendent, Christopher Downing. Theyll also serve as role models ... because they came from that very community. Elementary and middle school students from the surrounding neighborhoods will visit the campus and meet faculty as part of the program, Hamdan said. The agreement does not specify how many jobs will be offered each year. The university and district will not cover tuition for students who are accepted, Downing said, but many local students will qualify for federal and state funding. Tuition and fees this academic year add up to about $6,200. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles has a similar agreement with Cal State L.A., and other districts, including Long Beach Unified, also have promise programs. Reach Sonali Kohli at Sonali.Kohli@latimes.com or on Twitter @Sonali_Kohli. MORE FROM EDUCATION Tenacious change agent makes improving L.A. Unified his mission Loyola Marymount University wall with pro-immigrant slogans is defaced Cal State faculty union postpones planned strike after tentative salary agreement is reached Herschel Reynolds mesmerized TV viewers with a wild drive through Los Angeles that included skillfully performing doughnuts in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard and a teenage passenger busting out dance moves. It now appears the 20-year-old can thank the U.S. Marine Corps for helping him hone some of his driving abilities. The Pentagon confirmed Friday that Reynolds was a trained tactical driver for the Marines before being prematurely discharged in January. The U.S. military said Reynolds had served as a motor vehicle operator for the 1st Marine Logistics Group at Camp Pendleton. Reynolds served with the Marines for nearly two years as a private, according to military records. Advertisement Reynolds premature discharge and rank are indicative of the fact that the character of his service was incongruent with Marine Corps expectations and standards, the Pentagon said. Identified as the driver, Reynolds both horrified and delighted Angelenos for two hours Thursday during a televised chase that included a close call with a TMZ tour bus and ended with a heros welcome in a South L.A. neighborhood with celebratory high-fives, hugs and selfies with a swelling crowd. Along with a 19-year-old passenger, Isaiah Young, Reynolds peacefully surrendered to sheriffs deputies, who arrived minutes after he parked the rented Ford Mustang. Both men have been booked on suspicion of burglary, with Reynolds being held on $50,000 bond and Young on $80,000 bond, according to jail records. Reynolds and Young were taken into custody near the intersection of South Central Avenue and East 51st Street, the neighborhood they lived in. DMV records show that Reynolds has had his drivers license suspended twice and had three speeding tickets from 2013 to 2015. His criminal record shows he was charged with reckless driving last year, but the charges were later dismissed. The day after the pursuit, residents on a rain-slick 51st Street said Reynolds and Young were known for their sense of humor, but they couldnt believe it when they saw them hamming it up for the cameras with police in hot pursuit. Thats crazy because they dont seem like the people that would do that, said Jasmine Diego, 18, who lives down the street. You just see them all the time with their friends and family.They always looked out for each other. Diego said she closed her windows and locked her doors when she heard helicopters buzzing overhead thinking something really bad was going on. If she had known it was Reynolds and Young, she would have gone outside to take in the scene, she said. It didnt surprise her that Reynolds allegedly stepped out of the car then casually sat on the hood to wait for police. Theyre always so relaxed, just calm people, she said. The neighborhood was buzzing by the time the men drove onto 51st Street on Thursday afternoon. The duo grew up there and stopped in front of their home, residents said. When it became apparent that that was where the chase was headed some say they may have been Snapchatting during the pursuit their friends and neighbors emerged to greet them. Ive been here 22 years and never seen that many people in the street, said Carla McKing with a laugh. She lives in one of the homes thats a listed address for the men. Everyone knew who they were in the convertible. I know for a fact they were raised right. Their parents raised them right, she said. When they were younger, Young and Reynolds offered to cut neighbors lawns, McKing said. They try to be considerate. Very respectful, she said. What in the world is wrong with these boys. ... They just made a bad choice. Thursdays chase began with a report of a residential burglary in Cerritos at 1:24 p.m. just after a rainstorm moved into Southern California. The burglars fled the home on Charlwood Street before deputies arrived, but neighbors were able to describe the suspects vehicle, a Ford Mustang convertible. Within minutes, personnel in a sheriffs helicopter spotted the car on the westbound 91 Freeway. Authorities said roads were too wet and the Mustang was weaving through traffic too dangerously for sheriffs deputies to follow it, so they relied on a helicopter to monitor the vehicle instead. But when the Mustang reached the interchange of the 110 and 101 freeways in downtown L.A., the California Highway Patrol took up the chase. The Mustang got off at Hollywood Boulevard. By that time it had already rear-ended one vehicle. In Hollywood, with no police behind them, the driver began doing doughnuts in the middle of the street, spinning across all lanes of traffic and forcing other cars to stop. The car then motored west, where countless tourists got to see the Mustang drive against traffic by the TCL Chinese Theatre and Hollywood Walk of Fame. From there, the Mustang drove into the Hollywood Hills, going into opposing traffic lanes around blind curves, narrowly missing oncoming traffic, and fishtailing on rain-slick roads. Without any vehicles close behind, the driver drove back through Hollywoods tourist district and onto the freeway, where it was almost trapped by a TMZ tour bus that cut off its path as it tried to split two lanes. The men were transfered to a downtown Los Angeles jail Friday afternoon and are expected to have a court appearance next week. Twitter: @josephserna, @LAcrimes and @wjhenn ALSO What you need to know about Californias new birth control law Cal State and faculty union agree to 10.5% salary raise over three years Blight of street trash worst in L.A.'s poorer neighborhoods, new database shows Only two of the 38 German shepherd-mix dogs that were found abandoned in Highland earlier this week will go up for adoption, with the rest available for rescue groups, officials said. San Bernardino County animal control officers received a call about abandoned animals at a Highland home and left a notice Sunday for the owner to contact them, officials said. When the owner did not respond, the dogs were removed the next day and taken to the Devore Animal Shelter. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Advertisement The owner agreed Thursday to voluntarily release the dogs -- a mix of 38 males and females -- to Animal Care and Control for placement. Because of observed behavior in the dogs, only two will be available for general adoption, officials said in a statement. The rest could find homes with rescue groups, who are not private pet owners, but can work with dogs more extensively to rehabilitate them so they can later be adopted by the public. When the dogs arrived at the shelter, Greg Beck, program manager for San Bernardino County Animal Care and Control, said that they were dirty but that, at this point in time, we havent seen any signs of cruelty and neglect. There are no details on whether the owner will be charged, said C.L. Lopez, a San Bernardino County spokeswoman. Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> Thank you to all who have expressed interest in adopting these dogs, the statement from the agency said. Although only two dogs from this incident are available for general adoption, there are still many other dogs and cats in animal shelters who are in need of loving forever homes. The animal shelter opens at 10 a.m. and is located at 19777 Shelter Way. Twitter: @brittny_mejia ALSO Mustang used in wild police pursuit was a rental, officials say 9-year-old girl found living in shed amid guns and drugs, authorities say How officials failed to save Gabriel Fernandez from years of abuse, torture Los Angeles airport police are investigating the vandalism of three aircraft and at least one vehicle at Van Nuys Airport, the latest in a series of security breaches at the airfield. The latest incident occurred about 9:20 p.m. April 2, when a man scaled the perimeter fence and made his way to the airplanes. Authorities say the man tore off antennas and wires from the planes and tore a side mirror from a vehicle parked near a hangar. The extent of the damage is unknown at this time, Sgt. Belinda Joseph said in a written statement. Advertisement After damaging the planes and vehicle, the man climbed over the fence in the area of Havenhurst Avenue and Valerio Street and fled. Police had no other details. They also did not respond to questions about why it look almost a week for the incident to be reported. This is the third time since December that there has been a security breach at the airport and airplanes have been damaged. Marshall McClain, president of the Los Angeles Airport Police Union, said Saturdays incident underscores the need for more police officers at the airport as well as improving security there. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> This is an ongoing problem, McClain said. This is something we raised to both our current chief and new appointed assistant chief: Our staffing is down. The airport covers more than 700 acres and handles more than 217,000 takeoffs and landings annually, according to the airports website. Other than at some of the hangars, the airfield doesnt have surveillance cameras, and until recently, the fence did not have barbed wiring to prevent people from climbing over it. Two weeks ago, police say Jesus Ortega, 45, crashed his car through a gate on the east side of the airport. Ortega drove across runways, stopped and put his vehicle in reverse, backing into a small single-engine plane. At least one plane was forced to divert during the chase. Ortega was later booked on suspicion of two felony vandalism counts and one of trespassing onto an airfield. McClain said the two officers patrolling the airport that day had to rely on LAPD officers to book Ortega because airport police were understaffed. Last December, taggers cut a hole on the airport fence and scrawled graffiti on three corporate jets parked near the end of the runway. The taggers scribbled their monikers on the planes. In July 2013, a Learjet sustained as much as $100,000 in damage at the airport when it was spray-painted with the word flame and R.I.P. Stay informed, follow @latvives ALSO Wheelman in epic L.A. car chase was trained to drive by the U.S. military Man rescued from Morro Rock after marriage proposal is arrested on drug charges Fabian Nunezs son, whose manslaughter sentence was commuted by Schwarzenegger, to be freed Authorities have identified two men who they say led police on a wild chase across the streets of Los Angeles on Thursday. The driver was identified as Herschel Reynolds, 20, and his passenger was Isaiah Young, 19, sheriffs Deputy Tina Schrader said. Both men are residents of L.A. and were later booked into the Los Angeles County Jail. Young was being held in lieu of $80,000 bail, while Reynolds was held on $50,000 bail, according to jail records. Advertisement Authorities said the Mustang they drove was a rental. Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> They face charges in connection with a burglary in Cerritos but are likely to be charged with additional crimes related to the chase. The chase ended in a South Los Angeles neigborhood where residents said the pair lived. Resident Narvie Lee Richmond told KNBC-TV that residents came out of their homes to help protect the suspects before police arrived. He said he told them to cooperate with police and surrender peacefully, which they did. I didnt want to see no young black men getting killed, Richmond told the station. The chase lasted about two hours and began with a report of a residential burglary in Cerritos at 1:24 p.m., after a rainstorm moved into Southern California. The burglars fled the home on Charlwood Street before deputies arrived, but neighbors were able to describe the suspects vehicle, a Ford Mustang convertible. Within minutes, a sheriffs helicopter spotted the car on the westbound 91 Freeway. Authorities said roads were too wet and the Mustang was weaving through traffic too dangerously for sheriffs deputies to follow it, so they relied on a helicopter to monitor the vehicle instead. But when the Mustang reached the interchange of the 110 and 101 freeways in downtown L.A., the California Highway Patrol took up the chase. The Mustang got off at Sunset Boulevard. By that time it had already rear-ended one vehicle, and the passenger had stood up and waved at other drivers. On Sunset, with no police behind them, the driver began doing doughnuts in the middle of the street, spinning across all lanes of traffic and forcing other cars to stop. The car then moved onto Hollywood Boulevard, where countless tourists got to see the Mustang drive against traffic by the TCL Chinese Theatre and Hollywood Walk of Fame. From there, it was up to the Hollywood Hills, where the Mustang drove into opposing traffic lanes around blind curves, narrowly missing oncoming traffic, and fishtailed on rain-slick roads. Without any vehicles close behind, the driver drove back through Hollywoods tourist district and onto the freeway, where it was almost trapped by a TMZ tour bus that cut off its path as it tried to split two lanes. TMZ addressed the run-in with the Mustang on its website. Weve spoken to the driver ... who says he never even saw the chase coming behind him. He was innocently changing lanes and ended up cutting off the suspects, TMZ said. For more breaking news in California, follow @JosephSerna and @LACrimes. Times staff writer Matt Hamilton contributed to this report. ALSO Earthquake: 2.6 quake strikes near Malibu Marriage proposal gets off to rocky start with Morro Bay cliff rescue Obama dines with Disney executives, Julia Roberts at glitzy fundraiser in Bel-Air Three weeks ago, a debilitating digital virus spread quickly in computer networks at three Southern California hospitals owned by Prime Healthcare Services, encrypting medical and other data so it was impossible to access. Using a pop-up window, unidentified hackers demanded about $17,000 in the hard-to-trace cybercurrency called bitcoin for the digital key to unlock the data. The company says it defeated the cyberattack without paying a ransom. But it acknowledged some patients were temporarily prevented from receiving radiology treatments, and other operations were disrupted briefly while computer systems were down. Advertisement The attempted extortion by criminal hackers was the latest case of what the FBI says is a fast-growing threat to vulnerable individuals, companies and low-profile critical infrastructure, from hospitals to schools to local police. The security breaches which temporarily disable digital networks but usually dont steal the data not only have endangered public safety, but revealed a worrying new weakness as public and private institutions struggle to adapt to the digital era. So-called ransomware attacks have surged so sharply that the FBI says hacking victims in the United States have paid more than $209 million in ransom payments in the first three months of this year, compared with $25 million in all of 2015. The FBI has not reported any arrests. Ransomware is a growing threat to businesses and individuals alike, Chris Stangl, a section chief in the FBIs cyber division, said in a statement to The Times. Companies should train employees not to open digital attachments or to click on unfamiliar weblinks in emails that might contain viruses or other malware, Stangl said. They also should back up critical data and use up-to-date virus detection software. Government officials are particularly concerned that hackers could lock up digital networks that run electrical grids, and oil and natural gas lines, according to Andy Ozment, assistant secretary of cybersecurity and communications at the Department of Homeland Security. Ransomware attacks likely are increasing because people are willing to pay, Ozment said. Its safe to assume if criminals continue to do it, they are making money from it, he said. Most of the Internet extortion targets private companies, which rarely advertise paying ransom. Towns must disclose use of taxpayer funds. In March 2015, for example, the Lincoln County Sheriffs Department in coastal Maine paid about $350 in bitcoin for the key to its encrypted data after a malware attack. After the data was unlocked, Western Union reimbursed the county for the ransom payment, according to a county official who described the transaction. That followed similar reported attacks on law enforcement in Tewksbury, Mass.; Midlothian, Ill.; Dickson County, Tenn.; Collinville, Ala.; and Durham, N.H. Some police chiefs refused to pay, saying they had backed up their data or it wasnt crucial. The price apparently has risen sharply in recent months. This year, the Horry County School District in northeast South Carolina paid a ransom of $10,000 in bitcoin after dozens of their school servers were infected. The FBI does not condone payment of ransom, as payment of extortion monies may encourage continued criminal activity ... or be used to facilitate serious crimes. Chris Stangl, a section chief in the FBIs cyber division On Feb. 5, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid about $17,000 in bitcoin to regain control of its patients information. The disruption was so severe that the hospitals central medical records system was largely unusable for 10 days, and some patients were transferred to other facilities for treatment, officials said. The 434-bed short-term acute care hospital is owned by CHC of South Korea. In March, hackers encrypted data at MedStar Health, which operates 10 hospitals in Maryland and the District of Columbia. The virus caused delays in service and treatment until computers were brought back online. The company said it did not pay a reported $19,000 ransom demand. Analysts say hospitals are being targeted because many recently converted to digital records from paper, and their data security isnt yet as strong as banks, insurance companies and government networks that have been hacked in the past. The problem is that hospitals arent very mature when it comes to cybersecurity and dealing with robust, sophisticated online attacks, Eduardo Cabrera, vice president for cybersecurity strategy at the security company Trend Micro Inc. in Irving, Texas. A hospital needs health data in order to treat its patients. Hackers know there [are] major consequences if they dont act quickly. The hackers, many from Eastern Europe or Russia, have found ransomware to be so profitable that they set up call centers, said Cabrera, who investigated underground hacking rings as chief information security officer for the U.S. Secret Service. English-speakers with the hacking group will talk to victims over the phone or online and help them convert dollars into bitcoin and settling the ransom, he said. Prime Healthcare, which operates 42 hospitals in 14 states, said it is still conducting a forensic investigation of the March 18 ransomware attack on Desert Valley Hospital in Victorville, Chino Valley Medical Center in Chino, and Alvarado Hospital Medical Center in San Diego. Sreekant Gotti, the companys chief information officer, said in a written statement that the company, which is based in Ontario, Calif., did not pay the ransom. Computer systems were quickly brought back online without compromising patient safety, or patient or employee data because they had backed up the data, he added. These kinds of vulnerabilities are widespread in the health care industry and need to be addressed ahead of time, Gotti said. For that reason, Prime Healthcare had various levels of protection and controls built into its systems, including multiple levels of backup. An attack typically starts when a user opens a malicious email attachment that uploads a virus into the computer network. But hackers also have developed so-called drive-by attacks, in which a user inadvertently uploads malware by clicking on a compromised website. The first known ransomware cases appeared in Russia about 2005. Hackers encrypted emails, video and photos on individual accounts, and demanded relatively small ransoms $25 or so to unfreeze them. Similar attacks soon spread across Europe and the United States as cyberthieves began seeking more valuable data and charging more to free it. In January, the FBI warned of a new scheme called CryptoWall 2.0 that locks up hard drives and directs the user to a webpage that shows a clock ticking down the time until the ransom doubles. A March 31 alert from the Department of Homeland Security said hospitals and healthcare facilities in the United States, New Zealand and Germany had been infected with a destructive form of ransomware called Locky. Locky gets into victims systems through email masquerading as an invoice with an attached Word document thats laced with malicious code. According to researchers at Kansas State University, the subject line of the email reads: ATTN: Invoice J-98223146. The message says, Please see the attached invoice (Microsoft Word Document) and remit payment according to the terms listed at the bottom of the invoice. But paying the hackers doesnt always free the data, the security alert warned. Paying the ransom does not guarantee the encrypted files will be released; it only guarantees that the malicious actors receive the victims money, and in some cases, their banking information, it said. In addition, decrypting files does not mean the malware infection itself has been removed. In recent months, the White House has convened interagency meetings with officials from the FBI, National Security Agency and the Defense, Homeland Security and Justice departments to discuss ransomware, officials said. One question discussed was whether the government should advise people to pay the ransoms to unlock their data. As recently as last year, FBI officials sometimes suggested individuals and businesses pay to recover their data. But the bureau has clarified its policy and now instructs people not to pay the criminal gangs. The FBI does not condone payment of ransom, as payment of extortion monies may encourage continued criminal activity, lead to other victimizations, or be used to facilitate serious crimes, said Stangl, the FBI section chief. Times staff writer Del Quentin Wilber in Washington contributed to this report. Follow @wjhenn and @ByBrianBennett on Twitter ALSO For just $309, you too can hide your assets in the U.S. Smoke-filled room, meet Silicon Valley: Techies see opportunity at GOP convention Border Patrol reports using force less frequently, but critics dont have much faith in data The Justice Department said Friday it still needs Apples help to unlock a convicted drug dealers iPhone in a New York City case, despite having successfully employed a third party to access a similar device used by one of the terrorists involved in Decembers San Bernardino attacks. Federal prosecutors disclosed their desire to compel Apple to help it unlock the drug dealers phone in a three-sentence court filing in the Eastern District of New York, the latest salvo in a long-running, high-stakes legal dispute with the California-based technology company. The outcome in the New York case could shape how future standoffs are handled between communications firms seeking to protect the privacy of their customers and law enforcement agents trying to solve and prevent crimes. Advertisement The Justice Department last month dropped a higher-profile legal fight in California that sought to force Apple to write software to help it unlock the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife launched a Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino that left 14 dead and many others wounded. In dropping the case, federal prosecutors said the FBI was able to employ an unidentified third party to successfully unlock the phone and extract its data, circumventing the strong encryption on the device. The New York case involves an iPhone using an older operating system without such encryption. In fact, when presented with similar court orders, Apple unlocked dozens of such phones and even provided agents last year with technical language necessary to obtain a search warrant seeking its assistance in opening the New York drug dealers device. A federal magistrate judge, however, felt the Justice Department might be going too far in using an 18th century law, known as the All Writs Act, to have Apple unlock the phone. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> The judge asked Apple to officially weigh in, and the Cupertino-based technology powerhouse agreed, arguing the government was going too far in ordering it to unlock the phone. On Feb. 29, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled in Apples favor and blocked the Justice Department from compelling the firm to open the phone. The Justice Department has asked another federal judge, Margo K. Brodie, to review Orensteins ruling. In a court filing Friday, it reiterated that position, saying it had no intention of modifying its position, an apparent reference to its success in getting into Farooks phone. The government continues to require Apples assistance in accessing the data, prosecutors wrote. FBI Director James B. Comey has said that the method of cracking Farooks code would work only on that type of phone, an iPhone 5C, but not newer ones. The drug dealers phone was the newer 5S. The world has moved on to 6S,' Comey told students at Kenyon College on Wednesday. This doesnt work in 6S; this doesnt work in a 5S... We have a tool that works on a narrow slice of phones.' Apple has until April 15 to respond to the governments filings seeking to overturn Orensteins order. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> Apple plans to challenge the governments assertion that investigators have exhausted all other options to get data off the iPhone, an attorney for the company told reporters Friday. It isnt clear how many alternatives the FBI should try before turning to the courts for Apples help, the attorney said, but it should be told what methods the FBI tried and who else the agency has sought help from. The Apple attorney also said that the company is confident that Apples continually improving security measures soon will render the undisclosed San Bernardino hacking method obsolete, though the company said it has no knowledge of the process the FBI and the third party used. Separately, software executives and privacy advocates are pushing back against a Senate proposal to require all U.S. tech companies to create products so data can be accessed with a court order. An early draft of a bill by Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) would require companies to provide technical assistance to open phones or unlock encrypted messages when ordered to do so by a judge. The nine-page bill, labeled a discussion draft, is the opening salvo in a heated debate over how far companies should have to go to access locked user data. Burr and Feinstein, the chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said they are still finalizing the bill and would not comment on the specific language in the draft. A copy was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Details of the draft bill were first published by The Hill newspaper. The underlying goal is simple, Burr and Feinstein said in a joint statement about the bill. When theres a court order to render technical assistance to law enforcement or provide decrypted information, that court order is carried out. No individual or company is above the law, they wrote. Morgan Reed, executive director for the App Assn., a software industry group in Washington, D.C., said the bill is incredibly broad. The draft bill, he said in a telephone interview, requires companies to hand over data requested by courts in divorce and other civil proceedings in addition to criminal cases. It also would force software vendors such as Apples iTunes App Store to block the sale of apps and programs that the government cant access fully with court orders. This really isnt a starting point for anything, Reed said. This is an ending point for our current innovation economy, he said. Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the bill ignores economic, security and technical reality. Guliani said Burr and Feinstein should abandon their efforts to create a government backdoor. ALSO Criminal hackers now target hospitals, police stations and schools San Diego freelance photographer held in Syria is freed, State Department says For just $309, you too can hide your assets in the U.S. Each of the seven defendants has been charged with a serious crime including murder, rape, armed robbery or assault with a firearm. Now a Louisiana judge is threatening to set them free before their cases have a chance to go to trial. In an effort to pressure state lawmakers to provide more reliable funding for public defenders, Orleans Parish Judge Arthur Hunter Jr. on Friday ordered that all of the men be released on the grounds that the state is violating their right to a competent defense. Advertisement The judge immediately stayed his own ruling pending an appeal by the district attorneys office, meaning the men will remain jailed while attorneys continue to battle each other in court over an issue that has plagued Louisiana for years. The defendants have been jailed for months without legal representation. These defendants are currently being deprived attorneys to the extent that raises serious concerns whether they will ultimately receive effective assistance of counsel, Hunter wrote in his order. This is especially true for defendants in jail, who are virtually powerless to obtain a lawyer on their own or to begin working on their own defense. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that criminal defendants have a right to a competent attorney, and so across the United States, the poorest defendants are represented by government-funded defense attorneys. Those attorney often say they are underfunded and overwhelmed by massive caseloads, raising the question of whether their clients rights are being met. The issue has been particularly acute in Louisiana. In contrast to the situation in most other states, its public defenders offices are funded by fines and traffic tickets from their local parishes. Critics say that arrangement has created an unstable funding system, leading to a crisis around the state. In December, the Orleans Parish public defenders office which handled more than 20,000 cases in 2015 with just a few dozen attorneys announced that it would stop accepting some cases as the office struggled under devastating budget cuts, unpaid furloughs and heavier caseloads. The office has refused 110 cases since January, said Lindsey Hortenstine, a spokeswoman there. The office now has 42 defense attorneys, with about 10 who are capable of handling serious crimes. We started refusing the most serious cases the ones facing life without parole murders, rapes, your most serious felonies, Hortenstine said. Thats where we have the least capacity in the office to handle. In response, private attorneys have been appointed to handle those cases. Those attorneys have not gotten funding for the cases. One defendant, Darrian Franklin, who is charged with second-degree murder, has gone without representation for 138 days. We are now faced with a fundamental question, not only in New Orleans, but across Louisiana: What kind of criminal justice system do we want? Judge Hunter wrote. One based on fairness or injustice, equality or prejudice, efficiency or chaos, right or wrong? The prosecutors office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Pamela Metzger, a Tulane University law school professor who was one of the attorneys appointed to represent the men, called the judges ruling an act of judicial and moral courage. I went into court and said, If theres no money and no date when theres going to be money, you have to release these people, she said. You cant hold them in jail with no lawyer and no date when they can get lawyer. The problem has been decades in the making and wont be resolved until legislators uncouple funding for public defenders from police fines and traffic tickets, Metzger said, because using fines and tickets to fund them is completely disconnected to need, its entirely unstable, and its dependent on other peoples behavior that the public defender doesnt control. This is the systemic, persistent, catastrophic failure of the Legislature to provide indigent defense with a stable, predictable, reliable source of funding, she said. Follow @MattDPearce for more national news. ALSO Wheelman in epic L.A. car chase was trained to drive by the U.S. military Dont think of the lone survivor of her fathers murder-suicide as that poor girl 2 killed in apparent murder-suicide at Air Force base in Texas, authorities say Regarding the legal and political fracas over the Christian cross that was on, then off, then again on and now again off the official Los Angeles County seal, lets hope a federal judges sensible ruling Thursday to remove whatever crosses have recently been added on to various iterations of the seal puts the issue permanently to rest. A majority of county supervisors ordered the seal to be redesigned without the cross more than a decade ago in part to avoid a costly lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. But in 2014 a slightly reconstituted majority of the board invited the suit anyway by putting the cross back, in a different place and with a somewhat far-fetched theory about why it didnt constitute a government endorsement of a particular religion. After a sort of seal cold war, in which versions with and without the cross appeared on various county websites, flags and stationery, and after the county spent much time and public money on the issue, we are exactly where the countys lawyers confidentially advised the Board of Supervisors we would be: with a court order to remove the cross. Advertisement The argument that history and architectural accuracy, rather than religion, required adding the cross to a tiny drawing of Mission San Gabriel Arcangel completely misses the point. The problem was not just the depiction of the cross, but the fact that the county took the affirmative step of adding it to a seal that had existed for so long without it. The board had once removed it in the belief that its presence furthered a sectarian purpose, or at least that a court would rule that it did. So returning it, the federal court reasoned, constituted affirmative aid to the Christian religion. Permitting such a change and the associated expenditure of public funds, places the countys power, prestige and purse behind a single religion, Christianity, without making any such benefit available on an equal basis to those with secular objections or alternative sectarian views, wrote U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder. If the explanation for the boards action is that this is a Christian nation with a Christian heritage, the proper response is not that this is a secular nation, but rather that it is a nation in which faith is properly the province of individual conscience and expression, and that government exists not to promote or condemn any expression of faith, notwithstanding history, heritage or majority vote, but to protect the individuals dominion over that aspect of existence. This has been a needlessly long and costly civics lesson. Is it finally concluded? It ought to be, and will be unless the supervisors vote to waste even more time and more money by appealing the ruling. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook We bow to no one in our disgust with Donald Trumps offensive comments about Muslims, Mexicans and women, and were appalled by his reckless rhetoric. But we also recognize that the 1st Amendment gives Trump (and everyone else) a right to free speech anywhere in the United States. The mayor of West Hollywood seems to have a problem with that basic principle. Mayor Lindsey P. Horvath has written to the Trump campaign saying that the hate speech and implicit calls to violence coming from your campaign are beyond the pale and have no place in any community in our country. Fair enough. But Horvath also has suggested that she might use her power to deny the Trump campaign a special events permit if it seeks to hold a rally in her city. Which, by the way, it has not. This is what Horvath told The Times: As a city we have historically welcomed campaigns on both sides of the aisle to come to West Hollywood. Again, were not trying to shut down anyones speech. But in the past, for example, we were approached by McCains presidential campaign to host an event in the city and we provided a special events permit, we made certain accommodations to allow that to happen. Thats not going to happen for the Trump campaign. Advertisement Sorry, but denying the Trump campaign a permit that is available to other political speakers would be shutting down speech. (Just as it would be if a conservative mayor denied a permit for a Bernie Sanders rally.) Indeed, a discriminatory use of the permitting process would be wrong even if West Hollywood claimed to be responding to Trumps past statements that seemed to encourage violence. The mayor has flirted with that argument, warning that charged language can incite dangerous activity that puts our residents and neighborhoods at risk. Ugly as it is, Trumps past language doesnt strike us meeting the definition of legal incitement. But even if it did, Eugene Volokh, a 1st Amendment specialist at UCLAs law school, explains that West Hollywood cant deny him a permit for a rally because it believes that he has made illegal statements in the past, and because it worries that hell do so at the rally. West Hollywoods attorney has suggested that Horvath was simply expressing her distaste for hate speech that marginalizes and disrespects people and says that the city would adhere to the 1st Amendment. The mayor should listen to her lawyer, and make clear that if Trump applied for a permit he would be considered on the same basis as any other candidate, regardless of whether she is horrified by his views. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook What if we passed a law knowing that even usually law-abiding people wouldnt comply with it? This fall, California voters may do just that if they approve Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsoms Safety for All gun reform initiative. The result could be a small enhancement in public safety, and a potentially significant increase in disrespect for the law. The Safety for All ballot measure has two main provisions: a requirement that purchasers of ammunition undergo a background check, and a ban on the possession of magazines that hold 11 or more rounds of ammunition. The first is a worthwhile reform, but there are reasons to worry about the effect of the second. Requiring background checks for ammunition makes sense. California already requires people buying a firearm to undergo a background check to ensure they are legally authorized to have a gun. Yet if a felon already has a gun, today he can walk into any gun store and buy all the ammunition he wants. If Newsoms initiative passes, some bad guys will still be able to find ammunition on the black market, but the new law would at least shut down the easiest way for people who shouldnt own a gun to buy ammunition. Advertisement The ballot measures ban on the possession of large-capacity magazines has more downsides. California already bans the sale of such magazines, but people who owned them before that law went into effect in 2000 are allowed to keep them. Newsoms initiative would outlaw possession of those grandfathered magazines. The desire to ban high-capacity magazines is understandable. Mass shooters often use large magazines to fire dozens of rounds without having to reload. If forced to rely on smaller magazines, they would have to stop shooting momentarily to reload their firearms. That can be done quickly, but those few seconds can be enough for someone to intervene. Indeed, the Tucson man who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was stopped when he tried to reload with a new magazine. If we really want to reduce gun violence, however, our laws should focus primarily on reducing the daily death toll from guns, not mass shootings. Even in countries with the strictest gun laws, mass shootings occur. In this country, mass shootings grab headlines but they represent only a fraction of the gun deaths each year. The magazine ban will have little impact on ordinary criminals in California, who dont need or use more than 10 rounds of ammunition to commit their misdeeds. If we really want to reduce gun violence ... our laws should focus primarily on reducing the daily death toll from guns, not mass shootings. Even the slight benefit promised by a ban on large magazines forcing mass shooters to delay momentarily is outweighed by the unfortunate consequences of passing a law that normally law-abiding people wont obey. If past experience is any guide, the magazine ban is just such a law. In 2013 Sunnyvale banned high-capacity magazines and, after a grace period for gun owners, police reported that not a single person had turned in a magazine. Los Angeles and San Francisco enacted similar laws and few, if any, gun owners have disposed of their magazines. As more gun laws that gun owners believe are wrong or foolish have been adopted, noncompliance has become a significant problem. When California required registration of assault weapons in 1990, only about 7,000 of the estimated 300,000 assault weapons then in the state were registered. In New York, which required registration of assault weapons in 2013, the compliance rate is about 5%. Connecticut has also seen a remarkably low rate of compliance with its law mandating registration of large magazines. Why is compliance with such laws so low? Some people have an ideological opposition to any gun control law. Yet when 95% of gun owners dont comply with a law, its not just the die-hards objecting. Legal theorists argue that people are more likely to comply with laws they view as morally or socially just. To a person whose gun came standard with one of these magazines and who has owned it for years without incident, the idea that these devices are inherently dangerous does not resonate. In the absence of cooperation from gun owners, the large-magazine ban is unenforceable. It would be practically and politically impossible for the government to go door to door to find and collect the magazines. The ban will be enforced only when someone gets caught with one, say in a search related to an arrest. This means that the magazine ban is likely to be enforced primarily against racial and ethnic minorities, who are disproportionately the target of police investigations, searches and suspicion. Such selective enforcement further threatens the public legitimacy of gun laws, and the overall unenforceability of a large-magazine ban all but eliminates its already minimal public safety benefits. Americans have tried over and over to outlaw things that some insist are objectionable and others enjoy. Prohibition was repealed when its supporters realized that the disobeyed laws against alcohol brought the whole legal system into disrepute. The war on drugs is widely recognized as an abject failure. We havent even been able to stop music file-sharing, which despite a 10-year effort by the recording industry is as popular as ever. Like alcohol, drugs and file-sharing, guns including the ones with large magazines are here to stay. Gun policy is going to be more effective when we stop fighting against that simple fact. Adam Winkler is a professor at UCLA School of Law and the author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook MORE FROM OPINION Its time for the DEA to reclassify marijuana Worried about your teenage daughter? Move to the Netherlands Deplorable as he may be, Donald Trump has the right to speak in West Hollywood Debtors prisons are back. The criminal justice system creates debt with tickets for quality-of-life offenses, proliferating court fees and criminal fines. Those who do not pay are threatened with jail, and this threat allows governments to extract payments from the poorest citizens even at the expense of their food, housing or other basic needs. Communities of color bear the brunt as racial inequalities in criminal justice and economic life converge. These practices burst into public view with the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and activists calls for change now echo widely. Justice will not be satisfied, however, if we simply replace debtors prisons with debt peonage. From the American Civil Liberties Union to the Department of Justice to the New York Times editorial page, would-be reformers are embracing the idea that mandatory community service could provide an alternative to debtors prison. The basic idea is intuitive enough. Rather than jail someone who cannot pay a fine, why not allow him to work off the debt? Under this system, an unemployed or underemployed person works at a nonprofit or government agency in exchange for debt relief, not cash. So whats the problem? The crucial point is that incarceration remains the consequence for not working to the courts satisfaction. That puts tremendous pressure on workers. And when pay or jail becomes work or jail, that choice arguably violates the Constitutions 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. Several early 20th century Supreme Court decisions struck down practices in the Jim Crow South that used the criminal justice system to impose a similar three-way choice of pay, work or jail. Advertisement The 1914 case United States vs. Reynolds comes closest to todays problems. Alabama selectively prosecuted and convicted African Americans for minor crimes, imposed fines they could not afford, threatened incarceration if they did not pay, and then offered a way out. A private employer would cover the fine if the defendant agreed to repay the employer through labor. If the worker later dared to quit, he could be prosecuted and convicted again. The court struck down this system that kept a defendant chained to an ever-turning wheel of servitude to discharge the obligation. Employers gain tremendous power and no reason not to exploit it. Confining this power dynamic to the nonprofit or public sectors ... hardly eliminates the risk. The dangers of abuse should be obvious when, as Reynolds noted, [t]his labor is performed under the constant coercion and threat of another possible arrest and prosecution. Employers gain tremendous power and no reason not to exploit it. Confining this power dynamic to the nonprofit or public sectors as modern reformers typically propose hardly eliminates the risk. Beyond the right to quit, labor and employment laws ordinarily protect workers from exploitation, unsafe conditions or abuse. But by styling this work as community service, these programs attempt to bypass labor protections. In Los Angeles, upward of 100,000 workers each year perform court-ordered community service, often for hundreds of hours and in lieu of paying a fine. They must sign standard contracts declaring that they are volunteers, not employees, and therefore have no employment rights, including workers compensation for on-the-job injuries. A federal judge in New York ruled last year that workers in a related court-supervised work program had no claim to the minimum wage. There, too, unpaid work was offered as an alternative to incarceration for minor violations and to ensure that [d]efendants who do not have money to make restitution should, when practical, pay for their offense through community service. Even if community service workers received debt reductions based on the minimum wage, this still would be tantamount to seizing 100% of their earnings. That is contrary to federal standards that cap wage garnishment to preserve for workers some gain from their labor and some basis for their subsistence. Yet in Los Angeles and elsewhere, workers even have to pay a fee out of pocket for the privilege of working for free to stay out of jail. These fees go to the courthouse referral agency that assigns defendants to specific work sites. One final problem: When the criminal justice system supplies agencies with free labor, they have every incentive to use it instead of hiring regular employees. New Yorks experiment with large-scale workfare in the 1990s unpaid labor to maintain welfare benefits is instructive. Not only did that effort subject workers to unsafe conditions and harassment, but it also allowed Rudolph Giulianis administration to cut thousands of unionized public sector jobs by subbing in workfare workers. Debt peonage may indeed be the lesser evil relative to debtors prison. But why accept those choices? At issue are government-manufactured debts born in part of racial profiling and broken windows policing. Why not change the criminal justice practices that produce these debts? Moreover, debtors inability to pay is born of unemployment and the degradation of jobs. Only by ignoring a failing labor market can we celebrate coerced, unpaid, unprotected work just because human caging is even worse. Noah Zatz is a professor of law at UCLA. He recently coauthored the report Get to Work or Go to Jail: Workplace Rights Under Threat with the UCLA Labor Center and A New Way of Life Reentry Project. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Heres a solution for parents concerned about their daughters sex lives: Move to the Netherlands. OK, maybe thats not the most practical advice. Perhaps, though, we can move a little of the Netherlands here. Because the Dutch seem to have it all figured out. While we in the United States have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, they have among the lowest. Our teen birth rate is eight times higher than theirs, and our teen abortion rate is 1.7 times higher. Advertisement There are some significant demographic differences that affect those numbers: We are a more diverse nation than Holland, with higher rates of childhood poverty, fewer social welfare guarantees and more social conservatives. Yet, even when controlling for all that, the difference holds. Consider a study comparing the early sexual experiences of 400 randomly chosen American and Dutch women at two similar colleges nearly all white, all middle class, with similar religious backgrounds. So, apples to apples. The American girls had become sexually active at a younger age than the Dutch, had had more encounters with more partners and were less likely to use birth control. They were more likely to say theyd had first intercourse because of opportunity or pressure from friends or partners. In subsequent interviews with some of the participants, the Americans described interactions that were driven by hormones, in which boys determined relationships, male pleasure was prioritized and reciprocity was rare. As for the Dutch girls, their early sexual activity took place in loving, respectful relationships in which they communicated openly with their partners (whom they said they knew very well) about what felt good and what didnt, about how far they wanted to go, and about what kind of protection they would need along the way. They reported more comfort with their bodies and their desires than the Americans and were more in touch with their own pleasure. Heres their secret: The Dutch girls said that teachers and doctors had talked candidly to them about sex, pleasure and the importance of a loving relationship. More than that, though, there was a stark difference in how their parents approached those topics. The American girls moms had focused on the potential risks and dangers of sex, while their dads, if they said anything at all, stuck to lame jokes. Dutch parents, by contrast, had talked to their daughters from an early age about both the joys and responsibilities of intimacy. As a result, one Dutch girl said she told her mother immediately after her first intercourse, because we talk very open[ly] about this. My friends mother also asked me how it was, if I had an orgasm and if he had one. The attitudes of the two nations werent always so far apart. According to Amy Schalet, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, in the late 1960s the Dutch like Americans roundly disapproved of premarital sex. The sexual revolution transformed attitudes in both countries, but, whereas American parents and policymakers responded by treating teen sex as a health crisis, the Dutch went another way: They consciously embraced it as natural, though requiring proper guidance. Their government made pelvic exams, birth control and abortion free to anyone under 22, with no requirements for parental consent. By the 1990s, when Americans were shoveling millions into the maw of useless abstinence-only education, Dutch teachers (and parents) were busy discussing the positive aspects of sex and relationships, as well as anatomy, reproduction, disease prevention, contraception and abortion. They emphasized respect for self and others in intimate encounters, and openly addressed masturbation, oral sex, homosexuality and orgasm. When a Dutch national poll found that most teenagers still believed that boys should be the more active partner during sex, the government added interaction skills to its sex ed curricula, such as how to let the other person know exactly what feels good and how to set boundaries. By 2005, four out of five Dutch youth said that their first sexual experiences were well timed, within their control and fun. Eighty-six percent of girls and 93% of boys agreed that We both were equally eager to have it. Compare that to the United States, where two-thirds of sexually experienced teenagers say they wish they had waited longer to have intercourse for the first time. Its not just about sex, though. According to Schalet, theres a fundamental difference in the countries conceptions of how teenagers become adults. American parents consider adolescents to be innately rebellious, in thrall to their raging hormones. We respond by cracking down on them, setting stringent limits, forbidding or restricting any behavior that might lead to sex or substance use. We end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy: Teens assert independence by breaking rules, rupturing their relationships with parents, separating from the family. Sex, which typically involves sneaking around or straight-up lying, becomes a vehicle through which to do that. An American sex educator named Charis Denison, for instance, told me that roughly half the questions she fields from students about parents involve how to get contraception or testing for sexually transmitted diseases without Mom and Dad finding out; the other half are on how to bring up sensitive issues so they will actually listen. Both speak to a rift between teenagers and those who love them most one that parents more or less create. Schalet said that girls particularly suffer, wrestling with the incompatibility of remaining a good daughter while becoming sexually active. They end up either lying to their parents or copping to their behavior but keeping it invisible, outside the home. Dutch teens, on the other hand, remain closely connected to parents, growing up in an atmosphere of gezelligheid, which Schalet translates loosely as cozy togetherness. Parents and teens are expected to discuss the childrens psychological and emotional development, including their burgeoning sexual drives. As part of that, Dutch parents permit co-ed sleepovers, which are rare in the U.S. except in the most progressive circles. A full two-thirds of Dutch teens 15 to 17 with a steady boyfriend or girlfriend report that the person was welcome to spend the night in their bedrooms. Thats not to say that its a free-for-all over there. Quite the opposite: The Dutch actively discourage promiscuity in their children, teaching that sex should emerge from a loving relationship. Negotiating the ground rules for sleepovers, while not always easy (parents admit to a period of adjustment and some embarrassment), provides yet another opportunity to exert influence, reinforce ethics and emphasize the need for protection. And you cant really argue with the results. Peggy Orenstein is the author of Girls & Sex (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers, March 2016), from which this essay is excerpted. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook President Obama dined with Hollywood A-listers and top Disney executives in Los Angeles during a quick visit for political fundraisers. He spent Thursday night in Bel-Air for a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reception and dinner with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the committees chairman, Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.). Calling the election critically important, Obama said there is a deep obsession with Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump. He said neither Trump nor Trumps main GOP rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, would succeed him in office. The presidenti added that both men are doing Democrats a favor by laying bare, unvarnished, some of the nonsense weve been dealing with in Congress. Advertisement It gives you a sense of whats at stake in this election, he said. Tickets for the event ranged from $15,000 to $66,800 per couple. The event was hosted at the Spanish-style home of Alan Horn, Walt Disney Studios chairman, and his environmentalist wife, Cindy Horn. Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts were spotted in the crowd. According to an invitation obtained by The Times, other guests included Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall, Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams, Lyn and Norman Lear, and Barbra Streisand and James Brolin. Guests sat at nine round tables of 10 seats each under a large tent draped in lights. Each had white floral centerpieces and candles. Cindy Horn introduced Obama and made a Disney joke she said was necessary because both her husband and Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger were in attendance. When you and the first lady get into the presidential limousine, do you think, The beauty in the beast? I didnt think of that, Obama replied. The president lauded Pelosi, who was wearing bright green, as his co-partner in everything weve been able to accomplish. He also took note of the other Democratic lawmakers in attendance: Lujan and Reps. Xavier Becerra, Karen Bass, Ted Lieu and Brad Sherman. Many of us arent born partisan. Nancy, maybe, he said, smirking. The crowd laughed. The money raised will help House Democrats as they try to flip some Republican seats in what many expect to be a strong year thanks to boosted presidential turnout. On Friday morning, Obama is scheduled to turn his attention to helping Senate Democrats, who have a legitimate chance of reclaiming control of that chamber. Hell appear at a $33,400-per-couple breakfast hosted by Jennifer and Tobey Maguire in Los Angeles. The event has been described by the White House as a roundtable and is closed to reporters. The president landed at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday at 7:24 p.m. and shook hands and said hello to a waiting crowd. His daughter, Malia Obama, also was spotted before they boarded helicopters. Onlookers with cameras lined Los Angeles streets, taking photos and video as the president made his way to his first stop via helicopter and motorcade. A young girl dressed in pink waved as the cars passed. Obamas motorcade arrived in Bel-Air, creeping up a narrow street lined by palm trees and mansions, at 8:15 p.m. The president left the fundraiser at 10:12 p.m., with the motorcade driving past UCLAs campus. Students stood outside with their phones at the ready. Some looked like they were dressed to go out, or coming back from Thursday night festivities. Obama ended his evening at the W Hotel. --- Earlier Thursday, we offered a Q&A on what was expected. Because even though this is a political story, in Los Angeles, its also a traffic story. Or at least potentially a traffic story. Will the presidents visit cause an infamous Obamajam? Its hard to know. Some of his visits have caused traffic delays for hours. But his last trip caused relatively little disruption because he moved for parts of the trip by helicopter. Presidential visits have generated excitement but also grumbling from motorists. After some drivers complained about having to wait in traffic for two hours in 2014, some vented on Twitter using the #obamajam hashtag. What streets should I avoid? The White House does not release the presidents exact movements in advance, but officials say he will attend two fundraisers before leaving Friday for San Francisco. Police recommend avoiding the following areas Friday: Hilgard Avenue between Weyburn Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Sunset between Loring and Burlingame avenues, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Bristol Avenue between Sunset and Westboro Street, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. North Cliffwood Avenue between Westboro and Highwood streets, from 10:30 a.m. to noon Sunset between Bristol Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Centinela Avenue between Ocean Park and Pico boulevards, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Hilgard will be closed from 4 p.m. Thursday to 1 p.m. Friday. Malcolm Avenue will be closed from 7 p.m. Thursday to 1 p.m. Friday. Cliffwood Avenue will be closed from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday. Isnt Donald Trump visiting L.A. too? Not now. Trump was scheduled to arrive for a speech Friday at noon at his Trump National Golf Club in Palos Verdes, but the candidates campaign announced a change of plans Thursday morning. Mr. Trump has rescheduled his California trip and will be campaigning in New York. He looks forward to returning to California in the weeks ahead, his campaign said. Trumps previous visits to Southern California have not resulted in major traffic problems. But they did bring out protesters and counter-protesters. In July, scores of protesters marched outside a Bel-Air hotel where he was speaking. A smaller group of counter-protesters was also there. Trump also faced protesters when he gave a talk in San Pedro. The Associated Press and City News Service contributed to this report. ALSO Obama raises money with John Legend Updates on California politics Live coverage from the campaign trail With Donald Trump locked in a dogfight against much of the rest of the Republican Party, a lot of things are uncertain about the GOPs convention in Cleveland in July. Heres a big one: Who will pay for it? Four years ago, after Mitt Romney clinched the nomination, his fundraising team pulled in millions from GOP stalwarts to close a gap in money for the convention in Tampa, Fla. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, gave $5 million. Energy billionaire and activist David Koch, Los Angeles media figure Jerry Perenchio and hedge fund billionaires Robert Mercer, Paul Singer and John Paulson each donated $1 million. Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Wisconsin primary results | Track the delegate race | Sign up for the newsletter But Trumps improbable success has blown a hole in that model of convention financing. Trump hasnt built a fundraising network of his own and has spent much of the campaign sneering at rivals for being under the thumb of their big donors. Advertisement Some of the partys big-dollar donors from four years ago, unhappy about the prospect of contributing to a chaotic or brokered convention, are holding onto their money. Blue chip corporations that helped underwrite the 2012 convention, including Microsoft and AT&T, are now facing a pressure campaign to stay away. All I can tell is theres disenchantment with the whole system right now, said Jay Zeidman, a Republican fundraiser from Houston. With his father, Fred, another big GOP donor, Jay Zeidman supported Jeb Bush and now is backing Sen. Ted Cruz. You cant compare last time with where we are now, because were sort of in uncharted territory, he said. Trump supporters call concerns about paying for the convention mere hand-wringing by traditional party power brokers who fear being shut out. Theres a little heartburn on K Street, Washington campaign consultant Barry Bennett, who has advised Trump, said, referring to the downtown Washington street that houses many lobbying and law firms. Its a lot of people who make their living based on proximity to power, if not access, so theyre threatened. The convention wont be at risk, he said; Trump has enough rich friends to write checks. Theyll be there, he said of corporate sponsors. They always are. Theres a little heartburn on K Street. Its a lot of people who make their living based on proximity to power, if not access, so theyre threatened. Barry Bennett, Washington campaign consultant When Cleveland won the right to host this years convention, a group of local government and business leaders pledged to raise $64 million to support it. Other convention functions are handled through a second committee under control of the party. The Cleveland 2016 Host Committee is still about $8.5 million short, according to its president, David Gilbert. Angst over Trump or a brokered convention hasnt thrown off the fundraising yet, he insisted.No one who has committed to us has pulled back a commitment because of things like that, Gilbert said. For us, it is absolutely business as usual. Organizers of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia also are supposed to raise $64 million; in January, former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell said the host committee had $14 million in pledges and $19 million in the bank. Four years ago, the committee fell short and had to sidestep a self-imposed ban on corporate donors. Spokeswoman Anna Adams-Sarthou declined to give updated figures, saying fundraisers are hitting all of our benchmarks. On the Republican side, some of the big donors to the 2012 convention have so far stayed out. Charles Koch declined to comment about whether he will help underwrite the 2016 convention, said James Davis, spokesman for Freedom Partners, a group supported by brothers Charles and David Koch. But Freedom Partners recently canceled plans to host a reception at the historic Union Club in downtown Cleveland during the convention, Davis noted. Mark Holden, Freedom Partners board chairman, said in a statement that the organization would participate in the presidential election if a candidate could catch on without engaging in personal attacks and mudslinging. That hasnt happened yet, and there is no indication that this will happen given the current tenor and tone of the various campaigns, the statement said. The group, instead, has focused on Senate and other campaigns, with $6.8 million worth of ads purchased so far. Others arent talking. I have nothing to share with you at this time, wrote a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, an industry lobbying group that gave $2 million to underwrite the Tampa convention. Adelsons representatives did not return phone calls. He spent $100 million in 2012, but hasnt surfaced yet in the 2016 campaign. The Cleveland Host Committee is counting on $7 million in in-kind contributions from companies that provide services and enjoy the marketing opportunity and the chance to get their corporate message before party leaders. Last time, for example, the Tampa convention listed a $1.5 million in-kind contribution from AT&T, which helped build the gatherings extensive communications network. The company also gave $3 million in cash to the Tampa host committee. AT&T is once again promoting its agreement to serve as the 2016 conventions official provider for communications its the only corporation that has come forward so far but isnt saying whether it plans to make any other donations. We recognize the important role both conventions play in the functioning of our democracy, and are proud to support them on an impartial basis, said spokeswoman Marcella Medina. AT&T gave $474,000 to the 2012 Democratic convention, including $175,000 for swag bags. With the rise of Trump, advocacy groups have begun a campaign to convince sponsors from 2012 to bow out of the Republican convention. They cite Trumps rhetoric about Muslims and immigrants and his delay in disavowing support from white supremacist David Duke. The groups claimed a victory when Coca-Cola, which gave $660,000 in 2012, decided to give only $75,000 after the groups started an online petition that featured a Coke bottle with the label, Share a Coke with the KKK. In a statement, Coke spokeswoman Jennifer Lemming noted that the company also had given $75,000 to the Democrats for their convention this year and that it does not endorse presidential candidates or nominees. Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, a progressive advocacy group, said the coalition has already begun pressuring other firms, including Google, Cisco, Microsoft and AT&T. ------------ FOR THE RECORD 7:58 a.m.: An earlier version of this article identified Rashad Robinson as executive director of CREDO Action. He is executive director of Color of Change. ------------ So far, the responses have been polite and noncommittal, he said, adding that the coalition will continue to step up the pressure in appeals focused on the companys top executives. This is a historic moment we are in, Robinson said, describing his pitch to executives. What will history say about your practices and your business decisions? If you do decide to support it, we will make sure everybody knows it was a clear decision in the face of people pushing back. You decided that being aligned with Donald Trump was worth it. The host committee says its fundraising pitch, at least locally, emphasizes that the decision is not about Trump or Cruz, its about putting Cleveland in the best possible light. Its the committees responsibility for making sure its a great convention regardless of who the nominee is, Gilbert said. When we talk to potential funders, we dont talk about candidates or politics. The committee wont reveal its donors until disclosure reports are due to the Federal Elections Commission in late September. Ron Kaufman, a member of the Republican National Committee and a Romney advisor, said he hasnt seen any dropoff in party fundraising yet. He said the focus on big donors obscures another point: Trump has a huge base of support that could potentially be used to raise money. If we can tap into that with a good direct mail program, who knows how much money wed be able to raise? he said. As a person who worries about finances, Im trying to be steel-eyed about it, he said. I honestly dont know whats going to happen, and no one does. For more on campaign finance, follow @JTanfani ALSO Smoke-filled room, meet Silicon Valley: Techies see opportunity at GOP convention Heres who Donald Trump is taking foreign policy advice from Clinton, Sanders escalate brawl in New York Lori Ajax has two years to set up Californias first system to license, regulate and tax medical marijuana. Gov. Jerry Brown recently appointed the Republican to become the first chief of the Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation. Ajax, 51, was previously chief deputy director at the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, where she worked in various positions since 1995. In her new role, she faces a moving target: California voters are likely to vote on an initiative in November that would legalize recreational use of marijuana. The measure includes a provision that would transform Ajaxs office into a Bureau of Marijuana Control that would also be responsible for regulating non-medical cannabis, significantly expanding Ajaxs responsibilities. Ajaxs office has been loaned $10 million by the state to set up a 25-person bureau that can begin issuing licenses on Jan. 1, 2018. Advertisement Ajax sat down Thursday for an interview at her Sacramento office. What about your background has prepared you to oversee the regulation of medical marijuana? Twenty-one years at the Alcoholic Beverage Control [Department], starting out early on as an agent and then working my way through the ranks. So I dealt with licensing structures and alcohol licenses and enforcement of those licenses in my various positions. And alcohol is a highly regulated product, so I think it is beneficial in setting up this structure for medical cannabis. I think its going to be helpful. I also had a lot of stakeholder involvement with the public and prevention groups and the industry and law enforcement. Did you vote in favor of Proposition 215, the measure legalizing medical marijuana, and why? I dont remember, to be quite honest with you. That was a long time ago. Is there a legitimate reason for people to get medical marijuana? Yes, I do think there is. Unlike regulating alcohol, Im not a user of marijuana so I am not familiar with how that affects people or what it does. But from the outreach Ive done since I got here, it appears there is a medical need and Im tasked with doing this and Im going to do it. At the end of the day, my opinion shouldnt matter. This is what was passed into law and Im going to get this done by Jan. 1, 2018. You have never used marijuana? No. Im not a marijuana user. Do you have a position on the initiative proposed for the November ballot that would allow recreational use of marijuana? No. Right now I have enough on my plate just dealing with medical marijuana. Of course we have an eye on that ball. Im of the mind that whether or not that happens, we will deal with that then, and the bureau needs to be nimble enough that we may have to change directions. What do you need to accomplish between now and 2018 so that the state can begin licensing medical marijuana operations? A lot. I have on my whiteboard 633 days. Its a good reminder how its actually a short period of time. Last week, I doubled my staff. I have another person that started and we are hiring. In order to get this done, we have to have people. From there we are doing some stakeholder engagement. We are scheduling stakeholder meetings towards the end of this month and in May to go to different areas of the state just to introduce ourselves to people. There will be lots of chances to listen to the industry, listen to the public whoever wants to attend. And then we are going to get into stakeholder meetings that are more focused on regulation drafting. Its going to be daunting. How will you draft the regulations? Instead of us coming out and drafting it, I think we want to get feedback first, draft it, and then put it out for comment. I think that might be a more efficient way to handle it. There has been talk that some people are gaming the system, getting medical marijuana cards without having real medical conditions. Do you think that there are some people out there who dont deserve these cards, and the state should do more to make sure that they are going to people who actually have medical issues? I dont have enough information at this point to tell you whether I think that is happening. I think over the course of the next couple of years that is something we are going to have to look at. Do you know anybody among your relatives and friends who has needed medical marijuana? I do not. I have heard stories, of course. And through my meetings Ive set up with industry groups and with legislators, Ive heard stories of how it has helped folks with cancer. How do you keep those convicted of serious felonies who were illegal drug dealers from infiltrating the system of growers and sellers? Thats going to be through our licensing process. We are going to have to do a background, a fingerprint check and then you evaluate the seriousness of the crime at that point. The federal government still considers marijuana sales and possession a crime. Does it concern you that you are going to regulate something the federal government doesnt recognize? I have been tasked with a job to do at the state level and I understand, yes, that there are some concerns at the federal level. But I feel as long as we put in some strong, comprehensive, clear regulations I think we can assure the federal government that we do have a framework in place that will alleviate their concerns. When it comes to regulation, I really feel like if you can minimize the confusion for folks and you just have clear, strong, comprehensive regulations, thats going to go a long way with the federal government, but of course nobody can predict things. You face a challenge in operating with state regulations when many cities and counties will have their own, stricter rules. Do you hope the local officials defer to the state rules? No. The law calls for dual licensing. The locals know best what they want in their cities and counties so I think it is a partnership between us and the locals. I feel its really important for me and the bureau; we need to make sure we stay engaged with the cities and counties. I think it is a good thing, the dual licensing. Gov. Brown recently said, The worlds pretty dangerous, very competitive. I think we need to stay alert, if not 24 hours a day more than some of the potheads might be able to put together. Do you have concerns about health risks associated with longterm use of marijuana? I think a lot of people are concerned about the lack of research on what the effects are of marijuana. I dont have an opinion on that other than I think we need to have more research and its good that its going to be conducted by the University of San Diego. patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com Follow @mcgreevy99 on Twitter ALSO California adopts new rules for medical pot Legislature sends new medical marijuana rules to governor Updates from Sacramento No one ever said a New York primary would be sedate. With both Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders feeling intense pressure to win the April 19 primary, tempers have flared, rhetoric has escalated and New Yorks tabloid press is having a great time. Meantime, over on the Republican side, Sen. Ted Cruz is stealing convention delegates from under Donald Trumps nose, and the GOP front-runner is only now saying that hes preparing to mount a serious delegate effort. Good afternoon, Im David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential campaign and highlight some particularly insightful stories. Advertisement THE BRAWL IN NEW YORK The Republican race remains by far the more seriously contested of the two odds seem about 50-50 that Trump will have won a majority of the convention delegates by the time the California primary ends the balloting on June 7. But it was the Democratic race that generated the most headlines this week. The news began with an editorial board interview that went bad Sanders sitting down with editors and writers at the New York Daily News. By the time the session ended, the Vermont senator had flubbed basic questions about how his plan to break up big Wall Street firms would work, damaged his street cred regarding New Yorks subways, offended some supporters of Israel by exaggerating the civilian death toll from the last Gaza war and generated new controversy about his stand on gun control. At New Yorks racetracks, that would be a superfecta four in a row and it set the tone for a tough week. First, the Daily News served up a front-page headline denouncing Bernies Sandy Hook shame on gun control, referring to his opposition to a lawsuit filed by families of the victims of the 2012 elementary school massacre in Connecticut. Then Clinton, in an interview on MSNBC, said Sanders inability to explain his bank plan had raised a lot of serious questions about what he could accomplish as president. The next day, Clinton took a mob of reporters with her as she rode the subway. Meantime, some prominent Jewish groups demanded that Sanders publicly retract his remarks about Gaza, with Israels former ambassador to the U.S. calling it a blood libel. In 2008, Jews made up about 1 in 6 Democratic primary voters in New York. Sanders, feeling under attack, responded angrily, saying that because of Clintons vote on the Iraq War in 2003, her ties to Wall Street and her votes on trade agreements, I dont believe that she is qualified to be president. As Evan Halper and Chris Megerian wrote, that set off a whole new storm among Democrats, with the White House, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio all criticizing Sanders language. By Friday morning, Sanders had backed down, saying in an interview on NBCs Today show that of course Clinton is qualified. On her worst day, she will be she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates, he said, with, perhaps, a telling slip of verb tenses. The high-decibel exchanges likely will continue, however. The two candidates are scheduled to face off in a debate next Thursday. Well have full, live coverage on Trail Guide, and then on the 19th, you can follow the outcome of New Yorks voting as we post live results, speeches and analysis. And as the race unfolds, keep watch on the delegates in both parties with our Delegate Tracker, which shows where each candidate stands and where each has won support. A TOUGH WEEK FOR TRUMP In Tuesdays Wisconsin primary, Cruz succeeded in winning 36 of the states 42 Republican convention delegates. That leaves Trump needing to win about 6 in 10 of the remaining delegates in order to gain a first-ballot majority at the nominating convention in July. Since Trump likely will lose some of the smaller-state contests in May, he needs to run up the score in New York. Currently, he has a good chance of hitting his marks there. New York sends 95 delegates to the national convention, the fourth-largest delegation behind California, Texas and Florida. If a candidate wins more than 50% of the statewide vote, he gets all 11 of the states at-large delegates. Winning 50% in any congressional district gets a candidate three more. Polls currently show Trump hovering just above the 50% mark statewide, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich in second and Cruz far behind. But the Texas senator is targeting a handful of congressional districts, including some urban districts that have few Republican voters, hoping to maximize his delegate count. That same attention to fighting district-by-district and taking advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the rules has put Cruz in good position to challenge Trump if the New York businessman falls short of a majority on the first ballot. In one state after another, Cruz has managed to get his own loyalists elected as convention delegates, even in states in which they are bound to vote for Trump on the first convention ballot. As Lisa Mascaro explained, Cruz is working multiple angles as he seeks ways to chip away at Trumps lead. The latest examples come from Colorado, which holds its statewide GOP convention Saturday. In preliminary district conventions, Cruz has succeeded in getting his candidates elected as delegates. Trump, meantime, has kept largely quiet since losing Wisconsin. He held one rally on Long Island, but otherwise has been closeted in meetings, canceling a planned event in Rancho Palos Verdes to meet with Paul Manafort, the longtime GOP operative whom he recently hired to manage his strategy for the Republican convention. Manafort appears to be consolidating control of the campaign at the expense of Trumps controversial campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. STORIES OF NOTE When the Republican candidates arrive in Cleveland in July, they will be armed with technology that was not even dreamed of the last time the GOP had a contested convention, in 1976. As Halper described, a cottage industry has sprung up promising to replace smoke-filled rooms with high-tech apps. But who will pay for that convention remains unclear. As Joe Tanfani reported, a lot of big-money donors and corporations that helped fund past GOP conventions have been keeping their checkbooks closed this year. Kurtis Lee took a look at the backgrounds of Trumps unorthodox collection of foreign policy advisors. And, as Phil Willon reported, California officials are warning that polling places may be overwhelmed by a tide of voters for the June 7 primary the first decisive presidential primary that California has hosted since Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern faced off in the state in 1972. And have you heard the complaints from Sanders supporters about a Bernie Blackout in the media? The numbers dont support the allegation. IF YOU LIKE THIS NEWSLETTER, TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO SIGN UP That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the 2016 campaign with our Trail Guide at our politics page and on Twitter at @latimespolitics. Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com. New research suggests that the sugar ribose -- the R in RNA -- is probably found in comets and asteroids that zip through the solar system and may be more abundant throughout the universe than was previously thought. The finding has implications not just for the study of the origins of life on Earth, but also for understanding how much life there might be beyond our planet. Scientists already knew that several of the molecules necessary for life including amino acids, nucleobases and others can be made from the interaction of cometary ices and space radiation. But ribose, which makes up the backbone of the RNA molecule, had been elusive -- until now. Advertisement The new work, published Thursday in Science, fills in another piece of the puzzle, said Andrew Mattioda, an astrochemist at NASA Ames Research Center, who was not involved with the study. If all these molecules that are necessary for life are everywhere out in space, the case gets a lot better that youll find life outside of Earth, he said. RNA, which stands for ribonucleic acid, is one of the three macromolecules that are necessary for all life on Earth -- the other two are DNA and proteins. Many scientists believe that RNA is a more ancient molecule than DNA and that before DNA came on the scene, an RNA world existed on Earth. However, ribose, a key component in RNA, only forms under specific conditions, and scientists say those conditions were not present on our planet before life evolved. So, where did the ribose in the first RNA strands come from? To see if these molecules could have been delivered to Earth by asteroids and comets, a team of researchers re-created the conditions of the early solar system in a French lab to see whether ribose could easily be made in space. They started with water, methanol and ammonia because these molecules were abundant in the protoplanetary disk that formed around the sun at the dawn of the solar system, and are also abundant in gas clouds throughout the universe. They were put in a vacuum and then cooled to a cryogenic temperature of 80 degrees kelvin (minus-328 degrees Fahrenheit). The resulting ices were then heated to room temperature, which caused the volatile molecules to sublimate, leaving a thin film of material. The simulation is of cometary ices only, not cometary dust grains, said Uwe Meierhenrich, a chemist at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis in France and one of the authors of the study. The experiment took about six days to complete and yielded just 100 micrograms of the artificial cometary ice residue in the lab. Artificial cometary ices have been created hundreds of times before in labs around the world, but until now researchers have not had the tools to detect sugars like ribose in the samples. Cornelia Meinert, also of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, explained that its not just sugar and sugar-related molecules that are created in these experiments, but also amino acids, carboxylic acids and alcohols. We are confronted with a very complex sample containing a huge diversity of molecules, she said. The identification of individual compounds is therefore very difficult. Meinert said it wasnt until the group was able to use a new technique called multidimensional gas chromatography that they were able to detect ribose in these samples at all. The researchers say that the ice samples they made in the lab could easily be made in other parts of the solar system. Our ice simulation is a very general process that can occur in molecular clouds as well as in protoplanetary disks, Meinert said. It shows that the molecular building blocks of the potentially first genetic material are abundant in interstellar environments. Scott Sandford, a astrochemist who has done similar work with cometary ices at NASA Ames Research Center, said adding sugars to the list of molecules that can be forged in space is an important step in understanding what building blocks of life may be available to foster life in other worlds. Insofar as these materials play a role in getting life started on planets, the odds are good that theyll be present to help, he said. Do you love science? I do! Follow me @DeborahNetburn and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook. ALSO Watch trap-jaw spiders chomp their prey at lightning speeds Hot Jupiter! Astronomers discover giant planet with three shining suns This Kite Runner arthopod kept its young tethered to its body with strings Evil on Magnolia This months acclaimed Fox mini-series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story has brought one famous murder of local notoriety back into our living rooms. But Southern California has been the scene for a long parade of notorious crimes and violence, and is documented in a new book, In the Company of Evil Thirty Years of California Crime, 1950-1980, by Michael Thomas Barry. Barry is the author of seven nonfiction books and writes for CrimeMagazine.com, where his column This Week in Crime History appears. He will be signing copies of the book at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 17, at Dark Delicacies in Burbank. The book covers three decades of crime and real-life horror in the Golden State, including by the Manson Family, but also looks at events that may be less remembered today but are no less alarming. He also covers Satanists and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and related shootouts and arrests in the case. The book and event is $25. Dark Delicacies is at 3512 W. Magnolia Blvd., in Burbank. More information at (818) 556-6660 and darkdel.com. NEWSLETTER: Stay up to date with whats going on in the 818 >> Armenia schedule released The events schedule has been released for the upcoming exhibition Armenia: An Open Wound, which begins with an April 16 opening reception from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Brand Library. The large-scale exhibition and associated events are a collaboration between the city of Glendale and the Armenian American Museum, promising a probing look at Armenian culture and history. On April 21 is Global Realities, Local Perspectives, where a panel of refugee rights professionals will discuss international humanitarian assistance. On April 30 is Commemoration as Public Art; May 5 offers Latino Americans: Empire of Dreams (1880-1942); May 13 is Journey to the Homeland, a screening of director Nora Hovsepians film about her pilgrimage back to the land her grandparents fled in 1915. More events continue through June. Admission is free. The Brand Library & Art Center is at 1601 West Mountain Street, Glendale. More information on Armenia: An Open Wound at ArmenianAmericanMuseum.org or (844) 586-4626. Blues in Pasadena Roy Gaines came out of Houston, Texas, as a jazzy, swinging player of the blues, and remains an active player at clubs. He returns Saturday night at Big Mamas Rib Shack in Pasadena. Early in his career, he was nicknamed T-Bone Jr., after winning the attention of blues great T-Bone Walker as a teenager. He was soon playing as a sideman to such rising artists as Bobby Bland, Junior Parker and Big Mama Thornton. Later, he was recruited into Ray Charles backing band and played sessions with the likes of Stevie Wonder, the Supremes and Bobby Darin, but his first solo album, Gainelining, didnt come until 1982. The Gaines show is part of an ongoing series of blues nights at the venue hosted by Cadillac Zack. Seating begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 to 50. Big Mamas Rib Shack is at 1453 N. Lake Ave. in Pasadena. More information at pasadenablues.com and (323) 377-5291. Song and dance camp Kids ready for a week of song, dance and improvisation can sign up for Panto Camp at the Playhouse, a summer camp hosted by the Pasadena Playhouse and Lythgoe Family Productions. The program offers an interactive week for kids ages 8 to 13, who get to explore modernized versions of Grimm fairy tales and other stories. The Panto Camp offers two separate sessions on July 18 through 23 and July 25 through 30. The cost is $425 per child, with an early bird rate at $390 (through May 2). More information at (626) 737-2867 and PantoCamp@pasadenaplayhouse.org. -- ALSO: Arts Briefs: Pasadena Symphony closes classics series with An American in Paris Theater Review: Casa Valentina director finds himself differentiating the present from the past Art Review: The art and activism of Skid Row Students who attend Vahan & Anoush Chamlian Armenian School in La Crescenta walked from their campus on Lowell Avenue Thursday to the Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church on Honolulu Avenue to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24. Once they arrived, each student placed a single purple carnation on a memorial being built in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide last year. The memorial will be dedicated on April 21. NEWSLETTER: Stay up to date with whats going on in your community >> They are the first pilgrims to this monument, said Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian. Afterward, Mardirossian guided the students in prayer and told them that every step they took as they walked on Thursday was a reminder of the genocide and the ongoing effort to achieve justice for the tragic event. 1 / 9 Chamlian Armenian School seventh- and eight-grade students participate in the annual Armenian Genocide Commemorative Walk to the Armenian Western Prelacy Headquarters, in La Crescenta on Thursday, April 7, 2016. At the headquarters, the students laid down carnations at an Armenian Genocide Memorial. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer) 2 / 9 Chamlian Armenian School third-grade students touch the Armenian Genocide Memorial Forget Me Not Flower, at the Armenian Western Prelacy Headquarters, as they lay down carnations at the end of their annual Armenian Genocide Commemorative Walk, in La Crescenta on Thursday, April 7, 2016. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer) 3 / 9 Chamlian Armenian School first-grader Olivia Abramian lays down a carnation after participating in the annual Armenian Genocide Commemorative Walk to the Armenian Western Prelacy Headquarters, in La Crescenta on Thursday, April 7, 2016. At the headquarters, the students laid down the carnations at an Armenian Genocide Memorial. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer) 4 / 9 Chamlian Armenian School second-grade students participated in the annual Armenian Genocide Commemorative Walk to the Armenian Western Prelacy Headquarters, in La Crescenta on Thursday, April 7, 2016. At the headquarters, the students laid down carnations at an Armenian Genocide Memorial. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer) 5 / 9 Chamlian Armenian School principal Taline Kargodorian speaks to 7th and 8th grade students after their annual Armenian Genocide Commemorative Walk to the Armenian Western Prelacy Headquarters in La Crescenta, on Thursday, April 7, 2016. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer) 6 / 9 Chamlian Armenian School first-, second- and third-grade students pose for a photo with their teachers and church officials after participating in the annual Armenian Genocide Commemorative Walk to the Armenian Western Prelacy Headquarters, in La Crescenta on Thursday, April 7, 2016. At the headquarters, the students laid down carnations at an Armenian Genocide Memorial. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer) 7 / 9 Left to right, Rev. Ghevont Kirazian, school vice principal Rita Kaprielian, Rev. Gomidas Torossian, Prelate Archbishop Moushegh Martirossian, school principal Taline Kargodorian and archpriest Nareg Pehlivanian, after Chamlian Armenian School students particiapted in the annual Armenian Genocide Commemorative Walk to the Armenian Western Prelacy Headquarters, in La Crescenta on Thursday, April 7, 2016. At the headquarters, the students laid down carnations at an Armenian Genocide Memorial. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer) 8 / 9 Chamlian Armenian School upper class students participate in the annual Armenian Genocide Commemorative Walk to the Armenian Western Prelacy Headquarters, in La Crescenta on Thursday, April 7, 2016. At the headquarters, the students laid down carnations at an Armenian Genocide Memorial. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer) 9 / 9 Youth leader Tro Krikorian talks to seventh- and eight- graders after the Chamlian Armenian School students participated in the annual Armenian Genocide Commemorative Walk to the Armenian Western Prelacy Headquarters, in La Crescenta on Thursday, April 7, 2016. At the headquarters, the students laid down carnations at an Armenian Genocide Memorial. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer) The students also listened as local youth leader Tro Krikorian sang patriotic Armenian songs. Taline Kargodorian, Chamlians principal, said the money raised from parents who sponsored the students to walk will help pay for buses that will take the students to the Turkish Consulate on April 24 in the Rally for Justice, organized by the Armenian Genocide Committee. More than 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during the genocide, which began in 1915. The empire is now modern-day Turkey, which continues to deny that the deaths were a genocide. The idea is that 100 years have passed, but were never going to stay silent until we have justice and our lands back, Kargodorian said, referring to the portion of eastern Turkey that was historic western Armenia. Thats the reason our kids are walking today as well. Theyre walking in memory of the people who passed away, but at the same time, to say, Were here 100 years later. Theres third-, fourth-generation kids here and they still want to keep the memory alive, he added. -- Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com Twitter: @kellymcorrigan -- ALSO: Glendale school board reviews five options in redistricting effort Despite contention from Councilwoman Friedman, council makes Paula Devine Glendales mayor Glendale Unifieds new superintendent takes part in first meeting I pulled in front of Weston Hall at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Id just topped off the tank at a buck 79 for unleaded; I was in hog heaven. Coleen Long, Katrina Botto and Sabine Puglia were waiting for their first college road trip. A Swoop! Swoops on! I exclaimed. Lets go, they responded. We beat feet and headed north to Chicago. Theres something magical about swooping and traveling on the slightest provocation. Robert Louis Stevenson described it best when he wrote, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. When I was a butter bar at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina waiting deployment, there was a place on base called swoop circle. Each Friday, Marines would line the circle and wait for a ride to all points north, south, or west. A car would pull up and the driver would yell out a destination. For example: Detroit! Chicago! New York! A bunch of Marines would pile in the car and the driver would speed away. Swoops on! Sergeant Grayson, who supervised the melee, described it as sheer pageantry. If youve read me, youll note Ive used that term a thousand times. I hit the afterburners of the rental, and we shot toward Chicago. Wed join Dr. Brookey and the LCHS Concert Choir at Giordanos for deep-dish pizza. Theres a genius to Jeff Brookey; its his ability to connect with the kids. He does it with love. I saw familiar faces: Zoey Joy, Gracie Mekikian, Jack Jones and Nicole Alexander. Assistant Principal Jim Cartnal didnt realize I was serious about sneaking him out of the hotel so he and I could tear up the South Side. Wed meet the choir on Saturday at Old Saint Patricks Church for an evening concert. I lived in Chicago in 73 and still know my way around. I took the girls through the neighborhoods to experience Chicagos Zen: Lincoln Park, South Side, Lake Side, Cicero and the Loop. Girls! Tomorrow Ill take you on a tour of Wrigley Field, the oldest ballpark in the National League. They rolled their eyes. Drop us off on Michigan Avenue. Were going shopping at Zaras, one of them said. How about Saturday night I show you the bar in the South Side where me and my Marine buddies whooped some local toughs? (I was a lot faster then.) No thanks! Were having tapas at the Purple Pig. The problem with kids today is they have no appreciation for nostalgia. The girls shopped for seven hours while I hung at Sip Cafe and finished the 13th edit of my book. Clarere! Audere! Gaudere! The girls missed the best focaccia at Damatos Bakery on Grand. It was so good I think I might move back to Chicago. Ask for Rosanna! Shell treat you like family. As promised, we met the choir at Old Saint Patricks Church in Greek Town. There, five years as an LCHS parent came full circle. Before the choir performed their signature piece, Lord Hear My Prayer, Dr. Brookey asked Sabine, a choir alumnus, to join the ensemble. She joined hands with her sister, Simone, who was on tour with the choir. Ive been known to have some rough edges, but seeing them hold hands and watching their expressions as they sang this magnificent song amid heavenly surroundings, I felt emotions I can only describe as sheer pageantry. How can anyone thank Dr. Brookey for the gifts hes given these kids? The lyrics from Lulus To Sir, With Love will have to do. If you wanted the sky, I would write across the sky in letters; that would soar a thousand feet high: To Sir, With Love. After, the choir left for Medieval Times; the girls went for tapas at the Purple Pig and I headed to the South Side for shooters with some good ol boys. Thats swooping! -- JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us. Student leaders seeking greater autonomy for Hong Kong are forming a political party to field candidates in local elections this fall, a move likely to provoke a Chinese leadership that has long condemned separatist movements. The newly formed group, Demosisto, or the will of the people, was formed by Joshua Wong and other activists who have run up against the Chinese government in the past for their political activism. Wong, 19, is facing a potential prison sentence for his involvement in the pro-democracy movement. We believe the power to change Hong Kong and determine its destiny is rooted in the collective will of the masses, not only in the hands of the few political leaders or protesters, the partys leaders said in a news release. Advertisement Joshua Wong looks at his cellphone after addressing protesters in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong in December 2014. (Johannes Eisele / AFP/Getty Images) The newly formed group is set to make a formal announcement Sunday and has distributed media invitations that have a Western flair, featuring a mash-up of the movie poster for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II that depicts one of Wongs colleagues as the films rebellious heroine. The emergence of Demosisto marks the young activists push into electoral politics, after failing to bring about change with street protests. Hong Kong, a former British colony, is a semiautonomous Chinese territory of 7.3 million people that governs itself under a one country, two systems framework. Hammered out in 1997, the agreement is set to expire in 2046, when Hong Kong could be absorbed by China. Demosistos candidates are likely to run on a platform of pushing for a referendum to decide the territorys future. Wong and his fellow activists believe Hong Kong should decide for itself what its future will look like. In 2013, Wong and others founded an activist group known as Scholarism, which organized high school students to oppose the governments education policies. But the group was disbanded last month so that leaders could form the new party and groom themselves for politics. A man walks past burned debris after overnight clashes between protesters and police in the Mong Kok area of Hong Kong. (Dale de la Rey / AFP/Getty Images) Wong and another founder of the political party, Nathan Law, 22, were charged with participating in an unlawful assembly and tried last month for their involvement in the pro-democracy movement. Law was the outgoing president of the college group Hong Kong Federation of Students. Both face lengthy prison sentences. A verdict is expected by late May. Wong and others believe that the territorys mini-constitution could be amended to allow for such referendums and that they could call for a Hong Kong-wide vote on self-determination in a decade or so. But most of them, like Wong, are too young to run for elected office now. Wong has filed a judicial review on Hong Kongs electoral rules seeking to lower the minimum age to run from 21 to 18. A decision is pending, though unlikely. Despite his age, and the possibility of spending years in prison, Wong believes the political fortunes of the newly formed group are bright. Dixon Ming Sing, a political scientist at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, said the young activists have been inspired by the new party formed in Taiwan by the veterans of the student movement there. Student leader Joshua Wong, center, and other members of the group Scholarism hold a news conference regarding the groups future plans, in Hong Kong. (Anthony Wallace / AFP/Getty Images) For the last two decades, Sing said the so-called pan-democratic camp in the legislature has failed to broaden its base and mobilize the public, while the more militant activists who have burst onto the political scene in recent years were viewed as too radical to be electable. Last week, another group of college students and young professionals -- the Hong Kong National Party -- was founded and is pushing for secession. Already the group has been condemned by the state-controlled media in Beijing and public officials in Hong Kong. Law is a special correspondent. ALSO China censors media coverage about the Panama Papers Student slain in Bangladesh criticized religious extremists on Facebook Taiwan charges 5 people for apartment tower collapse in deadly February quake Not only is Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff facing the prospect of impeachment, but now her vice president, who would take over if she were deposed, is also the subject of impeachment proceedings. Though its considered unlikely that Brazils Congress will recommend Vice President Michel Temer be impeached he is considered to have more allies in the legislature than Rousseff the Supreme Courts order to start the proceedings adds a new twist to the nations deepening political crisis. New allegations also came to light Thursday that make things look worse for Rousseff and Temer. Construction company Andrade Gutierrez donated money to Rousseffs campaigns that may have come from bribes obtained in the kickback scheme at the state-owned Petrobras oil company, an imprisoned former executive at the construction firm alleged in a plea-bargain confession. If these accusations are proved accurate this year, or if both Temer and Rousseff are removed from office, new presidential elections would be held. Advertisement New elections remain a real alternative, particularly in a context when the crisis continues to deepen, said Christopher Garman, head of country analysis at the Eurasia Group. The Andrade Gutierrez revelation is more relevant than the second impeachment request, he added. The way the impeachment battle has unfolded makes the construction of a stable equilibrium a bit more difficult. It appeared over the last few weeks that Brazilian elites were uniting around a specific solution to the crisis: Rousseff would be impeached and Temer, of the centrist PMDB party, would take over. The impeachment commission more than half of whose members face accusations of corruption or serious crimes recently recommended that the rest of Congress vote to move the motion forward. But this week, a Supreme Court justice ordered PMDB member and lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha, a defendant in a corruption and money laundering case, to allow an impeachment request against Temer to proceed. The request is based on allegations that Temer broke the same fiscal rules as Rousseff, but his case would be considered separately from hers. Rousseff has not been charged with any corruption or directly linked to the Petrobras scandal uncovered by the sprawling Lava Jato, or Car Wash, investigation. Her government Thursday vehemently rejected accusations made by the Andrade Gutierrez executive. Further complicating a swift transition to power for Temer and his party, a number of other proposals have been put forward, including a full election that would replace all of Congress as well as Rousseff and Temer. This would require a constitutional amendment. It has also become clear that Rousseff may be able to assemble the votes needed in the lower house to beat the impeachment case against her. She needs to rally one-third of votes in the lower house to kill the impeachment bid. Rousseff said this week that she would consider stepping down if all of Congress stepped down too. Garmans organization, Eurasia, believes theres only a 25% chance she will finish her full term, which ends in 2018. The government maintains that the impeachment effort is illegal and could amount to a political coup because the elected Rousseff has not been convicted of any serious crime, as is required by the constitution. On Thursday, Atty Gen. Jose Eduardo Cardozo told foreign journalists that Cunha initiated impeachment only in an act of political vengeance, as the house speaker himself was being investigated. That is an original sin from which [this impeachment process] can never be freed, Cardozo said. Bevins is a special correspondent. Pope Francis will issue a long-awaited document about the family on Friday that is expected to tackle the thorny issue of giving Communion to remarried divorcees, a topic that has become a lightning rod in the battle between Catholic conservatives and liberals. The document Amoris Laetitia, or Joy of Love, will give the popes final word on a series of arguments about the family that were debated at divisive synods in 2015 and 2014 where conservative bishops warned that loosening doctrine would weaken the Roman Catholic Church, even as liberals alleged that waving the rule book was emptying pews. The Argentine pontiff has earned a liberal reputation by urging bishops not to be so obsessed about doctrine, but experts predicted his new document, formally known as an apostolic exhortation, may draw a middle path between the camps, leaving neither side feeling totally satisfied. Advertisement A letter sent out to bishops to prepare them for the exhortation suggested it wont change doctrine but will change how we can apply it I think Francis will angle for that, said Robert Mickens, the editor of Global Pulse. How that logic is applied to remarried divorcees and Communion may emerge in the document. Currently the church excludes remarried divorcees from Communion because it sees their first marriage as still valid, meaning the person is living in sin. At last years synod, a measure encouraging priests to bring remarried divorcees closer to the life of the church was narrowly approved. Conservatives want to say church teaching will never change, while progressives want pastoral problems to be addressed with compassion, and they want Communion for remarried divorcees, said Father Tom Reese, an analyst with the National Catholic Reporter. Reese said he predicted the document would approve the creation of an internal forum at which individual decisions could be made about taking Communion. I dont think he will explain in detail how that will work and leave it open for interpretation, he said. That will leave the far right and far left unhappy because they want it nailed down. Mickens said an opening on Communion could be left to bishops. That could anger people who think Francis is fudging doctrine, but he believes doctrine doesnt exist in a vacuum, Mickens said. Francis wants priests to meet people where they are and interpret doctrine through the pastoral context. Francis has already made it easier to annul a marriage through the Vaticans courts, in the hope that fewer Catholics will need to opt for a civil divorce. Apart from its views on divorce, the exhortation will also be scrutinized for its slant on homosexuality. A provisional document issued during the 2014 synod on the family contained a paragraph titled Welcoming homosexual persons, which stated that homosexuals had gifts and qualities and should be offered a fraternal space in the church. The paragraph did not suggest the church would shift from its opposition to gay sex or same-sex marriage, but it was seen as a step back from traditional Catholic hostility to homosexuality, on par with the popes famous 2013 statement, Who am I to judge? when asked about gays and lesbians. After pressure from conservatives, the paragraph was excluded from the final document. Although Communion, divorce and LGBT issues may grab the most headlines, the document is expected to be wide ranging and touch on many issues concerning family life in the modern world, perhaps domestic violence and the treatment of women. In anticipation of the documents release at 3 a.m. Pacific Time the hashtag #AmorisLaetitia was flying about Twitter and Catholic publications were speculating on what the final document might contain. The worlds 1.2 billion Catholics will likely find a push for pastoral care and a less rigid focus on doctrine, wrote the Religion News Service. The publication Crux said, Secrecy surrounding the document is greater than usual, with no copies leaked to the media as of 23 hours before its unveiling. Crux then quoted a tweet by Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, Australia, who wrote, Ive agreed to do #AmorisLaetitia media stuff but no text by Wed evening. Hard to talk about a text you havent had time to read & digest. Later Thursday, Coleridge sent out another tweet, asking fellow members of the clergy if they had seen apostolic exhortation yet. Australia is a long way from Rome: does anyone have else anywhere in the world (except Card Baldisseri) have a copy of #AmorisLaetitia? Pm me. Kington is a special correspondent. Defining his mission to create a more merciful church, Pope Francis published Friday a much-anticipated exhortation on love and marriage, easing the way for remarried, divorced Catholics to rejoin the faith but reiterating limits on same-sex unions and the ban on contraception and abortion. The 260-page document, the product of several years of debate within the Roman Catholic hierarchy, advocates for flexibility, tolerance and compassion in the church. But the document, titled Amoris Laetitia, Latin for The Joy of Love, may disappoint Francis legions of liberal fans looking for doctrinal change. Advertisement By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, the pope wrote. Let us remember that a small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order. Church leaders broadly welcomed the popes message. We all have a lot to learn from Amoris Laetitia, said Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez. But Catholic liberals and gay groups expressed disappointment, while conservatives remained uncomfortable with granting any leeway that in their view could undermine religious discipline. To Catholics for Choice, which advocates for abortion rights, the document displayed the immense chasm between church policy and everyday Catholic practice. As he enters the fourth year of his papacy, Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas, has struck a sharp contrast to his predecessor, Benedict XVI, by calling for a more inclusive church. He has traveled to the poorest slums and violent prisons on four continents, washed the feet of Muslims during Easter ceremonies and excoriated the rich and powerful for greed and neglect. The guidelines released Friday continued that theme, treading a line that is not always predictable. In some areas, he pushes boundaries, while in others he hews to traditional teachings. The document represents Francis final word on a host of family- and life-related issues that were debated at two frequently tense synods at the Vatican, in 2014 and 2015. The apostolic exhortation gives some wiggle room on granting Communion to remarried divorcees a hot-button issue that divides Catholic conservatives and progressives and is of special interest to American Catholics. Currently, the church officially excludes remarried divorced Catholics from Communion because it sees the first marriages as still valid, meaning they are living in sin. Francis states bluntly that divorce is an evil but adds, It is important that the divorced who have entered a new union should be made to feel part of the Church. They are not excommunicated and they should not be treated as such, since they remain part of the ecclesial community. Their exclusion can be surmounted, he says, adding that local priests and bishops can work with such couples to that end. The Christian communitys care of such persons is not to be considered a weakening of its faith and testimony to the indissolubility of marriage; rather, such care is a particular expression of its charity, the pope wrote. The pope admits that the document is not offering a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases, but he appears to leave the door open to bishops and priests to offer Communion on a case-by-case basis. Is the pope changing the rules? No, said Vatican spokesman Greg Burke. But does he leave daylight? Yes. There is an attitude of welcome. On gay unions, Francis is less ambivalent. De facto or same-sex unions, for example, may not simply be equated with marriage, he writes. No union that is temporary or closed to the transmission of life can ensure the future of society. Francis is equally forthright on abortion: So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mothers womb, that no alleged right to ones own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the property of another human being. Going further, he quotes synod documents that state that those who work in healthcare facilities are reminded of the moral duty of conscientious objection, and adds that the Church strongly rejects the forced State intervention in favor of contraception, sterilization and even abortion. Such measures are unacceptable even in places with high birth rates, yet also in countries with disturbingly low birth rates we see politicians encouraging them. Francis views reflect Catholic doctrine, but his words will have extra resonance in the U.S. during an election year. Gomez said the popes message comes at a critical time, when the meaning of marriage, family and love is confused and disputed in our society. The archbishop said he was encouraged by what the pope said about preparing couples for marriage and the need to approach wounded families with compassion. We need to inspire people to see marriage and family as Gods way for their lives, and to call them to this adventure in lifelong love that grows deeper through the sharing of joys and trials and the bringing of new life into the world, Gomez said in a statement. Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, said conservative Catholics who shun the idea of divorce should not be worried about the documents conciliatory tone. It is not a slippery slope, but a pathway forward for people who have otherwise found themselves stuck, Cupich said at a news conference. The popes ability to really be sensitive to the human situation in life continues to amaze me. Hes got an intuition about where people live their actual lives. Hes not living in a bubble. Catholics for Choice found the papal exhortation lacking. The law says one thing, but Catholics the world over behave according to their conscience, Jon OBrien, the groups president, said in a statement. How you apply the law matters its what drives people away. OBrien acknowledged that Francis pastoral approach represented a breath of fresh air compared with his predecessors. But, he added, the pope again condemned abortion and went back to the party line about contraception to shore up any concerns that conservatives may have that real change is possible. All this, OBrien said, despite the fact that about 1 in 4 Catholics in the United States has been divorced. DignityUSA, a Catholic group that advocates for rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics and their families, said the pope failed to fully embrace an entire community. Pope Francis has continued the characterization of LGBT people as unable to fully reflect the fullness of Gods plan for humanity, executive director Marianne Duddy-Burke said in a statement. This document continues to demonstrate a tragic ignorance. American Catholics, especially, had eagerly awaited the popes newest instructions. I think hes going in the right direction, because society is changing, said Israel Mondragon, 45, a Catholic hairdresser in Washington, who married and baptized his daughter in the U.S. capitals Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle and attended weekly services there until moving to the suburbs. The conservatives will say, oh, this is ruining the church, he added. Id like to hear what my mom says. Between the tough words on abortion and gay marriage, the document dwells at length on how to shore up the institution of marriage, offering guidance on how to build a loving family with tips on forgiveness, patience and sex. He says the church has spent too long waving rule books at families instead of giving constructive advice on how to avoid breakups. And, in keeping with one of his more introspective tendencies, Francis urges a healthy dose of self-criticism in the church. We have long thought that simply by stressing doctrinal, bioethical and moral issues, without encouraging openness to grace, we were providing sufficient support to families, strengthening the marriage bond and giving meaning to marital life, he writes. To illustrate his point, Francis quotes the 1987 film Babettes Feast: The most intense joys in life arise when we are able to elicit joy in others, as a foretaste of heaven, he writes. We can think of the lovely scene in the film Babettes Feast, when the generous cook receives a grateful hug and praise: Ah, how you will delight the angels! He added: We often present marriage in such a way that its call to grow in love and its ideal of mutual assistance are overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation. Clergy, he writes, too often emphasize an abstract and almost artificial theology of marriage, rather than the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families. We have often been on the defensive, Francis says, wasting pastoral energy on denouncing a decadent world without being proactive in proposing ways of finding true happiness. Special correspondent Kington reported from Vatican City and staff writers Wilkinson from Washington and Parvini from Los Angeles. MORE WORLD NEWS For just $309, you too can hide your assets in the U.S. 13 North Korean workers at foreign restaurant defect, Seoul officials say San Diego freelance photographer held in Syria is freed, State Department says A man suspected of being the mysterious man in the hat and thought to have been involved in the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels was arrested in the Belgian capital after a manhunt throughout Europe, authorities said Friday. Mohamed Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian citizen of Moroccan origin, was one of five suspects arrested in raids Friday. All are thought to be linked to last months Brussels bombings. Authorities said they are still trying to determine whether Abrini is the man seen in a video image wearing a dark hat and a white trench coat as he pushed a luggage trolley along with two other men just before the attacks at Brussels Airport in Zaventem. Advertisement The other two men in the image were identified as the bombers who died during the March 22 attack at the airport. The man wearing the hat is believed to have abandoned a suicide belt at the airport and fled during the chaos after the explosion. If Abrinis role in the Brussels attack is confirmed, it would represent a break for security agencies in Belgium, who have faced withering criticism since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, where Brussels-born terrorist figures were blamed for killing 130 people. Last months attacks at the airport and a subway platform in Brussels killed 32. This investigation is trying to determine as to whether or not Mohamed Abrini was the third person at the Zaventem airport the so-called man in the hat, Thierry Werts, a spokesman for Belgian federal prosecutors, told reporters. Abrinis arrest means that authorities now have potentially two key players in the Paris attacks in custody. Terrorism suspect Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels in March, just days before the attacks there. Belgian media reports were trumpeting the arrest of Abrini, with news network VRT saying on its website that Abrini was more than likely the wanted man in the hat. VRT and RTBF, another network, said authorities believe Abrini was partially disguised with thick glasses and a floppy hat as the airport cameras filmed him pushing the luggage cart next to Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, identified as the airport bombers. Bakraouis brother, Khalid El Bakraoui, is thought to have set off a separate bomb in a subway train near the European Union headquarters in Brussels. Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon, who has been criticized over the attacks and had offered to resign, expressed his congratulations on Twitter to the police and security services involved in the arrests. The struggle against terrorism continues, Jambon tweeted. Officials have conceded that they made mistakes before the attack. Ibrahim El Bakraoui had been expelled from Turkey, a known transit route for militants trying to join the war in Syria, and he was never questioned by authorities when he returned to Belgium. The Bakraoui brothers had criminal records but were never directly linked to terrorism. Abrini has a criminal record of violent theft. He had a younger brother who was killed while fighting for Islamic State militants in 2014. Belgian police had issued a series of new images and details about the man in the hat Thursday that showed him leaving the airport and then heading west into the neighborhood of Schaerbeek. Police urged citizens to help look for his trench coat, which may have been discarded as he fled. Belgian media said his image had been captured earlier on security cameras as he went shopping in a downtown mall for items later used in the bombings. In the weeks since the attacks, Belgian authorities have arrested at least five other men in raids in Brussels and its outskirts. Kirschbaum is a special correspondent. ALSO Criminal hackers now target the vulnerable For just $309, you too can hide your assets in the U.S. Pope Francis cracks open the door to divorced Catholics, closes it on gay marriage U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced stop in Baghdad on Friday to meet Iraqs prime minister and other top officials at a time of increased military momentum against Islamic State but deep political uncertainty in the unstable country. This is obviously a very critical time here in Iraq, Kerry said. His discussions with Prime Minister Haider Abadi as well as Iraqs foreign minister, top Sunni official and a Kurdish regional leader were designed as a show of support for the Iraqi government as it tackles ongoing security, economic and political challenges. A day earlier in Bahrain, Kerry said Iraqs government must unify and rebuild its country and reclaim territory that was occupied by Daesh, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. He said Iraqs neighbors also need to support the Abadi government in its efforts to stabilize and eventually rebuild the country, stressing the importance of bringing order to Sunni-majority areas as they become liberated from IS control. Advertisement See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Kerrys trip coincides with military advances. Iraqi forces say they entered the strategically important IS-held town of Hit on Thursday, while the Pentagon is considering establishing more small military outposts to provide artillery support and other aid to Iraqi forces readying an assault on Mosul, Islamic States stronghold in the country. Last month, the U.S. opened the first such base since returning to Iraq in 2014. But Abadi faces challenges of his own, still trying to establish a new Cabinet amid pressure from supporters of a hard-line Shiite cleric who last month staged rallies and a sit-in next to the government headquarters to demand reforms. A prolonged standstill could severely hamper Abadis ability to effectively lead a country that has often broken down along sectarian divisions since the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein some 13 years ago. Corruption is at the heart of the internal debates. Last August, Abadi proposed a sweeping reform package to combat corruption, cut government spending and merge ministries, but his efforts have been stymied by sectarian tensions and struggles to contain the Islamic State. Its forces swept across much of northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014. While Iraqi authorities have waged a full-scale war, aided by U.S. airstrikes, the Kurdish peshmerga forces, Shiite militias and pro-government Sunni fighters, the extremist group still holds significant territory. Kerry arrived Friday after attending a meeting with Persian Gulf allies in the Bahraini capital of Manama, where the fight against Islamic State figured prominently among American concerns. But the Sunni monarchies of the region are facing their own distractions, with nascent peace efforts to end civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and shared fears about Shiite Irans interference in their affairs. The U.S. is trying to speed up the path to victory. Although Islamic State has lost some 40% of its territory in Iraq and maybe a fifth of lands it once controlled in Syria, it continues to prove a magnet for foreign fighters, some of whom may now be returning to Europe and elsewhere with plans to kill civilians. And experts say Islamic States staying power may be inspiring others, whove never been in contact with the group, to wage violence in its name. Recent attacks in Brussels, Paris and California underscore Western fears. MORE WORLD NEWS Student slain in Bangladesh criticized religious extremists on Facebook Another mysterious death in Kandahar, and allegations of official torture Syria says Islamic State extremists abducted hundreds of workers near Damascus Thirteen North Koreans working at the same restaurant in a foreign country have defected to South Korea, Seoul officials said Friday. People working in North Korean-operated restaurants overseas have previously defected, but this is the first time multiple workers have escaped from the same restaurant, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee told reporters in Seoul. North Korean defections are a bitter point of contention between the rival Koreas. Pyongyang usually accuses Seoul of enticing North Korean citizens to defect, something Seoul denies. Advertisement Overseas North Korean workers are usually thought to be chosen largely because of their loyalty. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Jeong said one male and 12 female North Korean workers arrived in the South on Thursday. He didnt reveal the country where they were working or the route they took to avoid diplomatic problems and possibly endanger North Koreans still working in the country. The Associated Press called a number of North Korean restaurants in Asia, and all were open except one located in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Danang, Vietnam. A person who answered the telephone at the hotel said the Pyongyang Restaurant had closed two weeks ago and all the Korean staff had left the country. She declined to provide more details or identify herself. It was unclear whether the restaurant was connected to the defections. The North Korean defectors told South Korean officials they learned about the South and began to distrust North Korean propaganda by watching South Korean TV dramas and movies and from searching the Internet while living overseas, Jeong said. South Korean officials believe overseas North Korean restaurants have been suffering economically since stronger international sanctions were applied against North Korea over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. Jeong said the defectors told South Korean officials that their restaurant was struggling to meet demands from North Korean authorities at home for foreign currency. South Korea recently advised its citizens not to patronize North Korean restaurants, although such visits are not illegal. South Koreas spy agency estimates that North Korea runs about 130 restaurants in other countries about 100 in China and the others in Russia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. In a report to the U.N. General Assembly in October last year, Marzuki Darusman, a U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said more than 50,000 North Koreans are working in foreign countries, mostly in China and Russia, providing a source of money for Pyongyang. He cited various studies, including a 2012 report by the International Network for the Human Rights of North Korean Overseas Labor that estimated North Korea was earning as much as $2.3 billion annually from the workers it sent abroad. The Unification Ministrys website says more than 29,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea as of March. But there have been only a few incidents in which large groups of North Korean defectors entered South Korea at once. North Korea in 2004 accused South Korea of kidnapping its citizens after the South airlifted 468 North Koreans from Vietnam. Seoul said the North Koreans fled their country into China and then traveled overland to Vietnam. In 2011, nine North Koreans used a small boat to defect to South Korea by sea. MORE WORLD NEWS Student slain in Bangladesh criticized religious extremists on Facebook Another mysterious death in Kandahar, and allegations of official torture Syria says Islamic State extremists abducted hundreds of workers near Damascus The Syrian government has released an American citizen who was captured and detained after entering the war-wracked country about four years ago, the State Department said Friday. Spokesman Mark Toner declined to identify the American because of privacy considerations, but U.S. officials told the Associated Press that he is Kevin Patrick Dawes, a 33-year-old freelance photographer from San Diego who was abducted in 2012. Toner, who described the U.S. citizen as a detainee, not a hostage, said he was released in the past few days and no longer is in Syria. Advertisement NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> He said he believed Dawes was released in the Syrian capital of Damascus, but said he could not say why the man was detained or whether he is now in the United States. Toner thanked Czech officials who represent U.S. diplomatic interests in Syria for helping the United States gain access to Dawes and seek his release. U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, said Dawes was turned over to authorities from Russia, which has been backing the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the civil war that is in its sixth year. We are appreciative of efforts on the part of the Russian government that it undertook on behalf of this U.S. citizen, Toner said, declining to characterize what role the Russians played in the release. I cant speak to the logistics, Toner said, adding that the Czechs offered the consular support on the ground that American officials would have wanted to provide. He said the U.S. continues to work through the Czech officials in Syria to get information on the welfare and whereabouts of Austin Tice and an unknown number of other U.S. citizens missing or detained in Syria. Tice, of Houston, disappeared in August 2012 while covering Syrias civil war. A video released a month later showed the journalist, blindfolded and held by armed men, saying, Oh, Jesus. He has not been heard from since. Asked whether the U.S. dealt directly with Syrian officials in seeking the release of Dawes, Toner said: We have also been in direct periodic contact with the Syrian government regarding consular issues in general and American citizens detained in Syria. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Toner said he was not aware that the Syrian government received anything in exchange for freeing the U.S. citizen. Im not aware that there was any tit-for-tat exchange, he said. The Washington Post first reported the release of Dawes and quoted FBI officials as saying that he was taken after crossing into Syria from Turkey. The Post said Dawes recently was permitted to call his family and receive packages. MORE WORLD NEWS Student slain in Bangladesh criticized religious extremists on Facebook Another mysterious death in Kandahar, and allegations of official torture Syria says Islamic State extremists abducted hundreds of workers near Damascus Israels military ranks among the most popular institutions in the country, winning approval ratings far outpacing the courts and the parliament. Popularity of the military chief of staff routinely exceeds that of the prime minister. But in the days since an Israeli soldier shot to death a Palestinian knife assailant in the West Bank, a rare rift has opened up between army top brass and public opinion. A decision to pursue a court-martial against the soldier, with an expected charge of manslaughter, has spurred widespread criticism of military leaders on social networks, in public opinion polls and in the streets. Many Israelis at solidarity protests are hailing the soldier as a national hero, while others sympathize with a conscript perceived to have acted instinctively in the throes of a dangerous situation a claim rejected by military prosecutors and the chief of staff. Advertisement I think the army abandoned him,' said Reuven Lavi, 50, the owner of a butcher shop in the city of Ramle, southeast of Tel Aviv. Hes serving the country. Even if he made a mistake, hes not a criminal. Hes a soldier doing his duty.' The military prosecutor has said in hearings that the soldier opened fire even though the Palestinian attacker, Abdel Fattah Sharif, was no longer deemed a threat. Sharif had stabbed another soldier and then was shot and apparently incapacitated. He was lying on the ground, barely moving, when the soldier approached him and appeared to shoot him in the head. The defense has argued that the soldier feared that Sharif was wearing an explosives belt and panicked, an account the prosecution has dismissed as not credible. No such belt was found. The shooting in the city of Hebron was caught on video by a Palestinian activist, who sent it to the Israeli human rights group BTselem. It renewed Palestinian accusations that Israel has a policy of summary execution, and prompted a protest from the United Nations envoy. Israelis in Beit Shemesh show solidarity with a soldier facing court-martial in the shooting death of a Palestinian knife assailant. (Joshua Mitnick / For The Times) At stake for the military is a struggle to enforce soldier discipline, especially in regard to its open-fire regulations, amid several months of Palestinian knife and shooting attacks. Military experts say that if the soldier, whose identity is banned from publication under a court order, isnt prosecuted it could lead to anarchy on the battlefield and invite international efforts to try soldiers for war crimes. But the military is confronting public opinion that sees the soldier as a victim of a rush to justice fueled by hostile rights activists. Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who had warned against disproportionate force against Palestinian knife attackers even before the Hebron shooting, sent an open letter to soldiers last week stressing the value of human dignity and purity of arms. The shots violated the professional norms and morals expected of an Israel Defense Force soldier,' Eisenkot told officer cadets Tuesday, according to the Israeli media. There is an escalation that we have to win. But on the other hand, theres an understanding that if we dont establish our norms as a military, we will lose. The controversy over the Hebron shooter follows statements from Israeli politicians and some religious leaders who argue that Palestinian assailants should be killed in the act in order to deter future attacks. Now many of those politicians are coming to the defense of the soldier and criticizing the army. How can a soldier that was an outstanding soldier until yesterday become handcuffed like a criminal? asked Education Minister Naftali Bennett. Does anyone really think we can charge a soldier with murder? The soldiers have become transformed in the Israeli psyche from men and warriors to our collective children. Ehud Eiran, military expert and political science professor at University of Haifa Yossi Aroussi, a 67-year-old retired police officer from Ramle, predicted that an indictment would spur mass protests. If I were there, I would have done the same thing. If you come to kill, you shouldnt get out of it alive,' he said. The army is trying to show the world that we are enlightened. Commanders are concerned about their promotions. Its all politics. Lavi, the butcher, echoed the defense claims that the soldier acted impulsively in self-defense. He was afraid,' he said. A survey by Israels Channel 2 news television poll found 57% opposed to the military investigation and two-thirds who justified the soldiers actions. Only 5% characterized it as murder. An indictment is expected next week. The phenomenon in which there are masses of people calling the soldier a hero reflects bankruptcy of education, of thought, of responsibility,' said Asa Kasher, a philosophy professor who helped draft the armys code of ethics, in a radio interview. There is no definition in the world of a hero that the soldier meets. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, a former military chief of staff, has been pushing back on public calls for support of the soldier and thousands who have joined solidarity protests. What about Thou shalt not murder? Yaalon said Tuesday. As an army, its important to be victorious and to remain human. Palestinian officials say the shooting of Sharif is part of a recurring pattern by Israeli security agencies, and have called for a United Nations investigation. These executions are not isolated events,' said negotiator Saeb Erekat in a March 27 statement. The debate in Israel highlights challenges unique to its military, which relies on a mandatory draft of 18-year-olds for its foot soldiers and celebrates itself an army of the people that hews to a higher moral standard than its adversaries. But at a time when Israeli society is increasingly fragmented and social media give a platform to anti-establishment sentiment, its becoming harder for the military to inculcate those values. There is a growing concern that the allegiances or the ears of the soldiers and junior officers is not exclusively tuned to the military high command, said Meir Elran, a fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. In recent years, those draftees are increasingly seen as kids placed in the temporary trusteeship of military commanders. Some experts have likened the sympathy for the shooter to the public support for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was abducted and held for five years in the Gaza Strip by the Islamic militant group Hamas. Shalit was freed in 2011 after popular pressure forced the government to agree to a lopsided prisoner swap in which he was traded for more than 1,000 Palestinian inmates. The soldiers have become transformed in the Israeli psyche from men and warriors to our collective children, said Ehud Eiran, a military expert and political science professor at University of Haifa. That explains comments by some Israelis that they might discourage their children from joining front-line units after the court-martial. If the army sends a soldier to jail for killing a Palestinian assailant, better to avoid the battlefield altogether. I wouldnt send my kid, Lavi said. If the army doesnt support him, how can he serve? Mitnick is a special correspondent. ALSO Student slain in Bangladesh criticized religious extremists on Facebook Another mysterious death in Kandahar, and allegations of official torture Syria says Islamic State extremists abducted hundreds of workers near Damascus The United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that every human being is entitled to live a life at a standard that can afford him and his family basic social services like medical care. Countries across the globe declare access to healthcare as a fundamental right of each and every one of their citizens. But, the distressing condition of most healthcare systems in many countries today suggests that the acknowledgment of this basic right is mere lip service. While many of these countries have been abnegating their citizens of this right, there are those who have been true to their word and take their healthcare systems very seriously. Cuba is one such country that offers an all-encompassing medical coverage for its people as opposed to a profit-driven healthcare system in some countries like the United States. Outstanding Healthcare System in Cuba Cuba's doctor-to-patient ratio is one of the best in the world, despite being one of the poorer countries. For every 150 Cubans, there will be one doctor that attends to them. This is one of the major reasons why it's not surprising Cuba's life expectancy is close to that of the United States and that the Latin American country's infant mortality is, in fact, better than its North American counterpart. Even more, there is a stark disparity between the economy of the two countries. Cubans only spend a little over $1,800 on healthcare per capita annually, while the United States spends more than $8,300. The Cuban healthcare system gives premium to prevention rather than cure. Doctors see to it that they are familiar with the health status of people within their community. "Pretty much every little community, almost every other block, has what we call a 'consultorio medico,' which is composed of one doctor and one nurse that specifically works with that community. That doctor lives in that community, so that doctor knows every single person that lives in that community," said Abraham Bela, who studies medicine in Cuba. "Instead of medicine being a business or every patient being potential profit, it was actually something designed to help," added Kimberly Gutowski, another American student. American Students Study Medicine in Cuba for Free Bela and Gutowski are both Americans who are studying medicine at the Latin American Medical School in Cuba. They are under the full scholarship program from Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO). While most medical students in the United States would go on to incur huge student loans after graduation, American students in Cuba are given the chance to pursue their dreams to be a doctor for free. They come from some of the neediest places in the United States and are bound to practice and render their services back to some of these marginalized communities in their own country. For those interested, you can check out the admission requirements here. The alliance of Latino and civil rights groups that spearheaded a 2010 nationwide boycott of Arizona is also considering a revival of their protests in the wake of a stream of new, anti-immigration legislative proposals now under consideration there. Banded together as the Somos America Coalition, leaders of the group insist as many as a half dozen current proposals now making their way through state chambers have given them cause for grave concern. Among the legal proposals now being weighed by the Arizona Legislature the group finds most egregious is a measure known as Senate Bill 1377 that would require all undocumented immigrants convicted of certain crimes to serve out their entire sentences and not be eligible for parole. Protest Letter Already Delivered to Governor Somos founding President Roberto Reveles had already delivered a letter to Gov. Doug Ducey requesting that he kill the bill now or clearly bury it once and for all after it reaches his desk. "During the boycott, Arizona's business community eventually delivered a clear message to the Legislature's leadership to reject any further anti-Latino and anti-immigrant policies," the letter read. "Regrettably, the legislature is once again promoting extremist public policy shamelessly aimed at making life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they will self-deport." Soon after the 2010 boycott commenced, a study found that the state had lost at least $141 million in "economic activity." Republicans Stand in Strong Support of Proposals Still, in the face of such catostrophe and Somos' newly delivered warning, a spokesman for the governor took on a defiant tone. Beyond characterizing talk of a renewed boycott as "a stunt that should be widely condemned," spokesman Daniel Scarpinato chalked it all up to election year politicking. "Let me be very clear," he added. "Any discussion of a boycott is election-season politics at its worst and these groups should be ashamed of themselves for trying to divide Arizona and destroy our economy." Other proposals raising the ire of Reveles and other coalition leaders include one targeting state funding of cities that issue ID cards to immigrants or refuse to cooperate with immigration agents. Another measure would ban states from helping to relocate refugees to other cities. The boycotts of 2010 came to life after years of years of unbalanced legislation targeting immigrants, including the signing of Senate Bill 1070 by then Republican Gov. Jan Brewer that requires police to ascertain the immigration status of anyone arrested or detained when there is "reasonable suspicion" they are in the U.S. illegally. Republican State Sen. Steve Smith is sponsoring Bill 1377 and insists it is aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2015 tragedy where a 21-year-old store clerk was murdered by an undocumented immigrant free on bond by immigration officials following an unrelated state conviction. Arizona is also home to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who touts himself as "America's toughest sheriff" and is notorious for his hardline immigration stance. In August of 2015, a federal appeals court dropped a suit brought about Arpaio against President Barack Obama challenging the administration's executive action on immigration. Across the nation, a recent Pew Research study found some 27.3 million Hispanics will be eligible to cast votes this 2016 presidential election season with immigration reform standing at the forefront of the issues. Likely in response to Puerto Rico's deteriorating health care, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will increase Medicare rates for the commonwealth by slightly more than one percent. A Modest Increase Worth Tens of Millions of Dollars The HHS' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced an increase of 1.25 percent for 2017s Medicare Advantage (MA) rates for Puerto Ricans. The aforementioned percentage rate would equate approximately between $40 million and $50 million in additional funding for more than 570,000 Medicare recipients. But even with the 1.25 percent increase, Puerto Rico still has considerably low federal funding for the commonwealth's Medicare Advantage compared to the mainland U.S. states. "Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell's intervention was critically important in obtaining this rate increase and we thank her for these much needed resources," said Puerto Rico Healthcare Crisis Coalition (PRHCC) President Dennis Rivera. "Senator Schumer, Congresswoman Pelosi and Resident Commissioner Pierluisi's advocacy were also key in our efforts to bring parity to Puerto Rico's federal healthcare programs." According to Puerto Rico Hospital Association President Jaime Pla said the additional funding is a "welcome change" following the seven percent cuts that were in consideration by CMS and comes as the island's hospitals have been forced to make cuts in operations. "While this is a victory, we still need to work with HHS and CMS to review the process that determines how the MA rates are calculated in the first place," said Jim O'Drobinak, president of the Medicaid and Medicare Advantage Product Association, in a statement. "There is almost no utilization of fee for service on the island, so tying MA rates to them no longer makes any sense and severely disadvantages our ability to fund care for the patients we insure." Puerto Rico's Health Crisis and Zika's Rise According to Puerto Rico Education Secretary Rafael Roman Melendez, the commonwealth's $72 debt crisis has had an impact on children's health and education. In a letter written to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., last month, the education secretary warned about the Zika virus' spread across the island. Melendez said more than 249 reported cases of the Zika virus have been made including over 24 pregnant women. He noted mosquitos are using septic tanks as breeding grounds and unfortunately many schools use septic tanks for wastewater services. But Zika isn't the only health dilemma. Influenza is also on the rise. Melendez wrote that the Puerto Rico Department of Health has reported an average of 1,300 cases of influenza every week, but the island is unable to maintain germ-free environments due to insufficient funds. As Latin Post reported, the Puerto Rico Senate passed the "Puerto Rico Emergency Moratorium and Financial Rehabilitation Act" on April 5. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla commended the Puerto Rican Senate stating the bill "provides us with the tools to address the highest priority of needs -- providing essential services to our people -- without fear of retribution. This legislation also helps the Government Development Bank address its difficult situation in an orderly manner." In the U.S. House of Representatives, the House Committee on Natural Resources scheduled a hearing on April 13 to address a draft bill addressing the island's restructuring bill. __ For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com. Mexican American civil rights icon Dolores Huerta insists she has no hard feelings against the actress who once played her in a movie and now attacking her over her support for Hillary Clinton. Avowed Bernie Sanders presidential supporter Rosario Dawson recently took the co-founder of the United Farm Workers organization to task over her endorsement of Clinton, a retaliatory move some are concerned could work to split the Latino community and hamper its efforts to prevent the election of Republican anti-immigration hardliners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Huerta Defends her Position "I think that our campaign for Hillary Clinton in the Latino community is being effective, and that's why [the Sanders campaign] is asking people like Rosario Dawson to come out and attack me," said Huerta, who nonetheless insists she still considers the "He Got Game" actress a friend. "I guess they think they can silence my voice by doing that." The 36-year-old Dawson starred as Huerta in the movie "Cesar Chavez" and recently insisted all the feelings she expressed in the letter about her support of Clinton came from her and not a ghost writer. Dawson Insists Words are her own "I was compelled to write the letter," she said. "I worked on it for a week. I didn't write this letter to be divisive." Dawson indicated she feared Huerta might be jeopardizing her legacy by supporting Clinton and running the risk of "becoming an instrument of the establishment, rather than joining this movement to create a better America like you once inspired us to do." When asked if she planned to support Clinton if she emerges as the official Democratic nominee, Dawson left open the possibilities. "We are not there, so I don't need to speculate," she said. In 2004, Dawson launched Voto Latino, an organization that aims to strengthen the Latino voting power. Immigration raids have brought fear and unrest to undocumented immigrant communities, but a new study finds they may also have devastating medical consequences. The University of Michigan School of Public Health surveyed 487 Latinos in Washtenaw County between September 2013 and January 2014, a majority of which responded before the immigration raid of a two-story mechanic shop. Researchers found "strong evidence" of negative health effects, thereafter, from individuals less likely to seek government assistance -- medical or otherwise -- and by those suffering physiological and emotional distress. "Immigration raids, acute evens that may have immediate effects on communities, occur within populations who experience an inequitable need for support services and may thus exacerbate, health inequities," the report read. "It is critical that researchers continue to investigate the direct effects of immigration enforcement on the individuals who experience it -- such as the depression, anxiety, and trauma engendered by one's arrest, deportation, or witness to a raid." The majority of respondents, 83.4 percent, were born in Mexico or Central America. Researchers used three survey measures to capture their day-to-day stress levels: "My legal status has limited my contact with family and friends," "I will be reported to immigration if I got to a social services agency" and "I will fear the consequences of deportation." Over 55 percent described their health as excellent or very good before the raid, compared to 51 percent after. Women's self-reported health decreased by eight percent. Fear of Law Enforcement Three days after the Washtenaw County raid, about 40 community members gathered to discuss the experience. Women described how officers ordered them to the ground at gunpoint, two who held infants in their arms. They expressed mistrust with local law enforcement and fear that psychological repercussions could manifest in their children. The study, published in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, suggests community health advocates work closely with affected Latino communities, especially with undocumented children associated with higher levels of stress. Children ages 17 or younger reported a drop in self-rated health, from 55.9 percent to 51.4 percent after the raid. Researched say this is because "members of the community who may already be marginalized and vulnerable -- foreign-born women with children in the home -- may be less likely to seek out [government] services." Ongoing Raids Nationwide The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) surreptitiously ramped up immigration raid efforts earlier this year, drawing criticism from advocacy groups and left-leaning politicians. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said deportation raid, dubbed "Operation Border Guardian," solely targeted undocumented adults who arrived after Jan. 1 2014. In a statement released last month, Johnson said he was working with the Department of Justice to ensure undocumented children receive appropriate representation during immigration hearings. Johnson noted that U.S. Immigration and Customer Enforcement officials arrested 336 individuals this year, up to March 9. Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton each called on the Obama administration to end nationwide raids. In January, Clinton spokesperson Jorge Silva told Latin Post that undocumented families should get refuge upon arrival. He added that the Democratic front-runner also believes in "a longer-term comprehensive solution to the challenge of violence in Central America that causes so many people to make the treacherous journey north." The lawyer for the former Miss Utah beauty queen is requesting the state of Utah's highest court to let her file a lawsuit against the police who falsely arrested over an alleged bogus, accusing her of stealing surplus products. Elizabeth Craig's representing attorney argued on Monday at the Utah Supreme Court, that Craig's case against the city of Provo "shouldn't be derailed on a technicality", Daily Journal reported. However, the city asserts that there are specific rules for lawsuits filed against governments, and the missed $300 fee should dismiss the former beauty queen's case. No deadline was set for them to rule in the case. Craig, who became Miss Utah since 1991 to 1992 told the court that the surplus product from the company Nu Skin were legally, sold for a charity proceedings. However according to Craig's lawsuit, the staff of Nu Skin company already know that the products were donated, however, the suit alleges, others on the company saw the said products were sold on Ebay and planned a "sting operation," ABC News reported. Craig's court records also stated, Provo police officers went along with the said fabricated allegations in order to shut down any sales outside the skin care company's multi-level marketing structure. However, Provo said they carried out their own investigation accordingly. Craig and her business partner, Brady Harper were arrested by the Provo police without cause after Nu Skin Enterprises falsely accused them of stealing surplus products. Though, theft and other charges against her were all dropped in December 2010, Craig said her reputation and her career were tainted by the false arrest, allegations and prosecution, Deseret News reported. She is now seeking Nu Skin, Provo and a Provo police officer for the damages worth of $1 million. The Provo-based skin care company said, the former beauty queen's claims are all baseless. Craig and her lawyer filed a lawsuit against the city in federal court, but it has been rejected. Idaho Gov. C. L. "Butch" Otter vetoed the Bible-related public school bill that would permit public schools to use Bible on its teachings. Otter claimed that it's a violation of the constitution. It was a significant decision for Otter because it was his first veto of this year, according to Herald Courier. In the letter of the governor's veto of the bible-related public school bill, he claimed that he respected the bible but he said that the bill is unconstitutional. The Bible is already used in public schools as a reference for the students' studies. However, with the bible-related public school bill, the holy book would be used specifically as a reference for other subjects including literature, history, music and world geography. "I have deep respect and appreciation for the Bible as religious doctrine as well as a piece of historic literature," Otter wrote in a letter accompanying the veto. "However, allowing S1342 to become law is a direct contravention to the Idaho Constitution and it could result for the loss of funding and costly litigation for Idaho public schools." Q13 Fox claims that the bible-related public school bill was passed by the house during the last week of this year's session. The attorney general's office questioned the legality of the bill earlier before the session. According to the attorney general's office, the bill violates the Idaho Constitution that bans the use of secretarian books or denomination character in public schools. After the bill was vetoed by the governor, Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, R-Cottonwood, the author of the bible-related public school bill expressed her disappointment over Otter's decision. She claimed that the legislation was accepted by the majority of the lawmakers. "People with last names like Washington, Adams, and Madison blatantly identified the Bible as that reference point. They feared not having it would result in corruption and misuse of taxpayer funds. Are they right?" she said in a prepared statement, ABC News Go reported. Otter's decision to veto the bible-related public school bill comes after Tennessee approved the bill that would make the Bible its official state book. It is not the only religious-based measure that is being discussed in the legislature. One of the bills that was recently thrown out on the house floor was the exclusion of Shariah law in court cases and government agencies. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is taking legal action against singer-rapper Azealia Banks over a series of explicit Twitter rants. The rapper apologized to the politician after the ex-governor's announcement to sue her. Sarah Palin, 52 who was an American politician and commentator plans to file a lawsuit against female rapper Azealia Bank after Banks tweeted accusations of her, being incest and suggested the former governor to be rape, Time reported. "I've had enough of the unanswered threats and attacks against my family and me. I'm suing Azealia Banks, 24 and can't wait to share my winnings with others who have gone defenseless against lies and dangerous attacks far too long," Palin announced. According to USA Today, the twitter fight started from a satirical news article from Newslo.com, which Banks reacted on a quoted statement of the politician, saying black people liked slavery. On her Twitter, she tweeted Palin should be raped by a group of black men and should be filmed during the said sexual encounter. After the former governor's announcement to deal things to legal, Banks wrote a lengthy statement, apologizing to Palin on her Tumblr account. She then deleted her explicit tweets and says she didn't know the article was fake. In the open letter, Banks denied calling for the savage gang rape of Palin in a series of three graphic tweets that started the women's curious Twitter fight, People reported. "Now since learning that the article was not published officially, I sincerely apologize for any emotional distress or reputational scarring i may have caused you," Banks wrote. "In my honest defense, i was completely kidding," she added. Palin, 52, responded Tuesday morning on Twitter and Facebook. "Hey Female Rapper. Listen up, little darling. No one has any idea what you're wigging out about in these bizarre, violent rants against me." It's not clear if Palin accepted the apology. Banks has used social media to voice controversial opinions in the past. Late last year she faced backlash after tweet post, comparing LGBT community to "gay white KKK's." Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has announced in a statement that he will be signing two executive orders that will prohibit discrimination by state contractors against the LGBT community. The first order prohibits state contractors from discriminating someone's sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. The second order will require any company that has a contract with the state to eliminate discrimination when hiring by treating applicants fairly. In a report by WDTN.com, Wolf said he hopes the legislature will pass the bill that was designed to outlaw discrimination. He added that Pennsylvania needs to be seen as a welcoming place, citing the bill signed by North Carolina's governor as "discriminatory". Wolf continued to say that future state contracts such as Medicaid reimbursements and highway construction will need to be updated for their nondiscrimination clauses. Indeed the executive order signed by Wolf and his office stands in stark contrast to the recent laws passed in North Carolina and Mississippi. According to Time, the North Carolina law that was recently passed prohibits local governments from enacting anti-discrimination measures that will protect the LGBT community. As for the law in Mississippi, the bill passed recently allows public and private businesses to refuse service to gay couples on religious grounds. Wolf added during his speech that the executive orders are small steps until Republican lawmakers act. He added that if people want a healthy economy and a strong democracy, such orders should be done, ABC News reported. More than 20 states in the nation have anti-discrimination laws for the gay and transgender community. Pennsylvania's two largest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, also have laws regarding this matter. Senate State Government Committee Chairman Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, said in a statement this week that the bill by the governor will be reviewed by him and his committee to make sure that it does not violate religious liberties or freedom of conscience. Argentine President Mauricio Macri has vowed to make his finances transparent to assert his innocence following the Panama Papers leak. Macri was among several world leaders reportedly involved with hiding assets through offshore holdings. The documents, reportedly from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, indicated that President Macri is the director of an offshore company in the Bahamas. CNBC reported Marci has denied any wrongdoing, explaining that he merely headed a family business and that he did not receive any compensation. He also stated that the company was legitimately started and operated by his father, Italian-born tycoon Francisco Macri. President Mauricio Macri will appear before court on Friday to submit a judicial "declaration of certainty" to attest that his statements are true and that he has nothing to hide. He is also planning to set a blind trust that will set up an independent group of people that will look into his wealth without any intervention from him. Prosecutor Federic Delgado told reporters he wanted to determine if President Macri had maliciously omitted any information pertaining to his involvement in the Bahamas-registered offshore company. According to BBC News, although President Mauricio Macri was listed as the company's director from 1998 to 2009, he did not include the company in his 2007 declaration of assets, at the time he was proclaimed mayor of Buenos Aires and his declaration in 2015 when he became president. Although admitting innocence, around 500 people protested outside the presidential palace to call for Macri's resignation. According to Channel News Asia, investigators around the world have revealed their plans to conduct probes with regard to the leak due to the massive expanse of the offshore financial transactions. The Panama Papers has put the spotlight on some world leaders and famous personalities including Russian President Vladimir Putin, China President Xi Jinping and Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to name a few. In a landmark ruling, Colombia's Constitutional Court has ruled in favor of gay marriage in the conservative Roman Catholic country. The decision, which marks a historic win for Colombia's LGBT community, was made possible by a 6-3 vote rendered on Thursday. The vote rejected one justice's opinion that would have effectively prohibited public notaries from registering same-sex marriage license. It is now ruled that same-sex couples have a right to be civilly wed. In his concurring decision, magistrate Alberto Rojas stated, "All human beings ... have the fundamental right to be married with no discrimination." According to The City Paper Bogota, the decision was a result of months of inquiry and debate, during which justices heard the testimony of over 40 professors, doctors, legal experts and government officials. The court sought to determine the legal status of four couples, three of which have been granted civil marriages by judges in Bogota although same-sex marriages were still not yet allowed Prior to Thursday's ruling, entering civil unions, otherwise known as "solemn contract," was legal for gay Colombians. However, they are required to show proof of the length of their relationship before they can be granted the legal benefits of a valid marriage union. In Latin America, where Roman Catholic is the ruling religion, only a few countries allow people in the LGBT to marry. This includes Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. Colombia's court first expressed its intent to expand the rights of same-sex couples when it ruled that gay couples can legally adopt children. CBS News reported that Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos largely supports gay couples' right to marry despite opposition from the Catholic church and the country's Inspector General. "This decision tells all those conservatives that equality is unstoppable," gay rights activist Luis Felipe Rodriguez said, as quoted by The Guardian. However, the battle is not over for Colombia's LGBT community and advocates. The ruling is already facing challenges and opposition. A recent survey conducted by Universidad de la Sabana showed that 70% of residents in Bogota opposed gay couples' right to adopt, while 57% did not approve of gay marriage. Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro has vetoed a legislation that would give amnesty to activists whom the opposition describes as political prisoners. According to ABC News, the opposition-controlled congress passed the bill that would allow the release of dozens of prisoners which are connected to the opposing party of the socialist administration by the late President Hugo Chavez 17 years ago. The amnesty targets to release 75 opposing figures including one of the most controversial personalities, protest leader Leopoldo Lopez. Lopez started a violent protest against the government which shook the country and left 43 people dead. He was then sentenced to 14 years in prison. President Maduro said the plans of the opposition in passing the bill will only create a division. He added that if the bill will become a law, Venezuela will enter into a civil war. He reiterated that hatred will not reign in Venezuela and justice should be achieved if they want peace in their country. According to The Washington Post, the Supreme Court has already blocked the National Assembly at every turn since the opposition took over the body. The justices are also expected to stop the legislation before it becomes a law. The National Assembly and Maduro have been in a gridlock ever since the opposition won the control of the legislature. The National Assembly supporters had just organized a campaign to recall the votes in order to remove the president before his term ends in the year 2019 as per the Business Standard. Because of the deep recession, severe shortage and violent crimes the country is experiencing, Venezuela has decided to give the opposition a landslide victory during the last legislative elections. This has been considered the biggest challenge to the government administration since the time of Hugo Chavez. President Maduro, however, announced that he will launch a truth, justice and reparation commission who will look into the case of opposition activists. 2014 to date: Red Xs=homicides; Blue Xs= shootings, person wounded; Brown Xs=shots fired at victim(s), not hit; Purple Xs=shots at occupied residence/vehicle; Green Xs= shots at unoccupied vehicle/residence; Grey Xs=shots fired (no hit, no target identified); Orange X's=non-fatal stabbings. Map is unofficial. A separate map (not shown here) indicates add'l shootings in Central LB. On Mar. 3, two people were shot -- one of whom did not survive -- in a midafternoon shooting in NW NLB in the area of Artesia Blvd./Butler Ave. On Sept 15 and 22, 2015 the Council voted (without dissent) for a FY16 budget, recommended by Mayor Robert Garcia, that failed to restore LBPD's former field anti-gang unit. It leaves LB taxpayers with a budgeted police level for citywide deployment roughly equivalent per capita to what L.A. would have if L.A.'s Mayor and Council cut roughly 30% of LAPD's officers. Advertisement Advertisement In August 2012, Mayor Foster first recommended the budgeted elimination of LBPD's field anti-gang unit. The Council balked, funded the unit at half strength for a year, but in subsequent years quietly let it disappear. Then-Vice Mayor Garcia (chosen by Foster to chair the Council's Public Safety Committee in mid-2010) held no hearings on Foster's proposal or any public safety impacts of Foster's budget recommendations. Councilwoman Suzie Price, whom Mayor Garcia named to chair the Public Safety Committee in 2014, has followed that practice regarding Garcia's budget recommendations. Advertisement Advertisement In other area shootings: Apr. 2: Late afternoon gunfire South St./Linden Ave., no persons/property (border 8th/9th Council districts) Mar. 31: 17 year old shot/killed, 1300 block E. 11th St. (6th dist. near border of 2nd dist.) Mar. 30: Man is shot/killed, 1600 block Pine Ave. (1st dist.) Mar. 21: Car to car shooting, 1400 block E. 14th St., no victims found (6th dist.) Mar. 19: Gunfire, area 10th/Olive, no person hit (border of the 1st/6th districts) Mar. 17: Man is shot, E. 10th St./Lime Ave. (borders 1st and 6th districts) Mar. 11: Man is shot, area 1st St. between Lime/Alamitos (border 2nd district) Mar. 6: Man is shot, area 19th/Cedar (6th dist.), found dead in vehicle 1700 block Pacific Ave. (1st dist.) Mar. 3: Two people shot, one of whom dies, area Artesia Blvd/Butler Ave. (9th dist.) Feb. 28: Man found shot to death, area 10th St./Norman Court (4th dist.) Feb. 27: Gunfire hits vehicle, area 11th/Ohio (4th dist.) Feb. 8: 2600 block Adriatic Ave., man is shot (7th dist.) Feb. 6: 1900 block of W. Wardlow Rd., man is shot (7th dist.) Feb. 2: 2200 block Lime Ave., man is shot (6th dist.) Jan. 24: 1900 block Pasadena Ave., unoccupied vehicle struck by gunfire (6th dist.) Jan. 24: 800 block Walnut Ave.: two vehicles damaged by gunfire (2nd dist.) Jan. 17: 1300 block Walnut Ave. (three vehicles damaged by gunfire (3:30 a.m.) (6th dist.), Jan. 10: 3200 block E. Artesia Blvd. (9th dist.): Man (adult) was found shot multiple times Jan. 9: Chestnut/17th St.: Evidence of gunfire, no persons/property struck (1st dist.) Jan. 1: 1300 block MLK Ave. (6th Council district); no persons hit Advertisement Advertisement Disqus Kendell Ritz Kendall Ritz (Courtesy photo) Kendell Ritz had learned of his cancer diagnosis shortly before he nearly took the life of an innocent bystander. The 30-year-old Coplay man said he was having a "very bad day" when he drove drunk and plowed into 30-year-old Jeremy Magditch, leaving the Fountain Hill man with a skull fracture. Samantha Anthony and Jeremy Magditch. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) Magditch pushed his girlfriend Samantha Anthony out of the way of the speeding truck Sept. 26, 2015. They were crossing West Fourth Street in Bethlehem after a date at Sotto Santi pizza. Ritz had been released from state prison two weeks earlier. He served six years for robbery and drug delivery. Northampton County Judge Samuel Murray sent him back to state prison for three and a half to six and a half years after Friday's sentencing hearing. Magditch was a well-regarded chef at Corked Wine Bar, but all that changed after Ritz struck him. He suffered a broken skull, back and ankle, and a liver injury. His condition put him in a medically-induced coma for two weeks. The 30-year-old Fountain Hill man was forced to move back in with his parents. He had to relearn skills that are basic to most children, including how to speak. He is still recovering. "While the accident didn't kill me, it took away the way my life used to be," Magditch said through tears, unable to continue with his statement before the judge. In a lehighvalleylive.com story, Anthony's father called Magditch a "knight in shining armor" for pushing Samantha Anthony out of the way of Ritz's truck. "To this day I cannot recall what happened that night," Magditch said. Ritz made the same claim. He was accused of striking Magditch and driving away, but claimed in court he doesn't remember what happened. He said he was upset with his diagnosis of stage 2 bone cancer so he was drinking heavily. He said he knows he's an alcoholic and wants to stop drinking. "That day was a very bad day for me," Ritz said. Had he known he hit Magditch, he would have stopped, he said. "I pretty much blacked out for the rest of the day," Magditch said, later adding "I'm not a monster, Your Honor. No way." Assistant District Attorney Richard Pepper said Ritz not only failed to stop after hitting Magditch, but kept driving while being pursued. When he finally stopped he jumped into the back seat and tried to pretend he wasn't driving, Pepper said. Bystanders ripped the license plate off of Ritz's car so he would be held accountable, Pepper said. "With all due respect to the court, everything he said is crap," Pepper said. "He is a monster. He says he blacked out. That's utter nonsense. ... He is by definition a monster. He left this kid in the road to die." Pepper said Ritz blood-alcohol content was 0.12, hardly enough to make him forget everything that happened. Ritz said the blood draw came three hours after the crash and his blood-alcohol level was much higher than the test shows. The judge ordered Ritz to pay more than $500,000 in restitution. He faces a civil suit from the Magditch family. Ritz said he's a certified forklift operator and will find work to start making restitution when he's released from prison. Defense attorney Ed Andres said Ritz was treated for bipolar disorder as a teenager. Ritz pleaded guilty to driving drunk and causing an accident with injuries, driving drunk and driving with a suspended license. Ritz faces more prison time for violating his parole on the robbery and drug charges. No matter how much prison time he gets, Magditch said it won't be enough to make him or his family whole again. Pepper read Magditch's indictment of Ritz after the young victim was too emotional to finish reading it himself. "He is a danger to the community and has no regard for human life," the statement said. His father agreed. "I don't think society needs a person like Mr. Ritz among us," Magditch's father said in court. Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook. A Quakertown man is accused of helping bilk $1.5 million from 15 Lehigh University fraternities and sororities through a business charged with managing the Panhellenic groups. Albert Fisher, 76, was charged Thursday in federal court with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and five counts of subscribing to false tax returns. Federal prosecutors said Fisher and his wife operated the now-closed Fraternity Management Association in Bethlehem, a company that handled finances and billings for 13 fraternities and two sororities at Lehigh. Prosecutors only identified Fisher's wife as Person #1, and said she was the association's executive director. Betty Fisher was listed as the business's administrator/director; the Morning Call reports she committed suicide. Efforts to reach Fisher at his Quakertown home were unsuccessful. Between 2009 and 2013, prosecutors allege the pair took a total of $1,461,777.96 in payments from the groups at the beginning of the semesters to pay for operations and upkeep, but then spent it on themselves, including vacations, home furnishings and designer clothing. Prosecutors only identified the affected groups by their initials, but The Brown and White, the university's student newspaper, has a list of the fraternities and sororities. In January 2013, Betty Fisher cut a check for more than $52,000 from the FMA bank account to pay for her husband's personal American Express bill, according to court documents. The expenses included $11,565 spent at Neiman Marcus, and $1,732 spent at Saks Fifth Avenue, prosecutors said. In 2013 alone, prosecutors said, Betty Fisher transferred more than $156,000 from the FMA account to pay for Albert Fisher's personal American Express bills. Prosecutors said on March 4, 2014, Betty Fisher sent an email to the fraternities claiming FMA had $1,461,777.96 in respective accounts. The next day, Betty Fisher sent another email, stating FMA was financially insolvent and would be ceasing operations, prosecutors said. The Greek organizations and other victims, including the university, then had to pay for expenses they thought FMA already paid, totaling close to $1 million, prosecutors said. A message left with the university's media relations office was not immediately returned. Fisher is also accused of failing to claim $614,398 in income on his tax returns from 2009 to 2013. Prosecutors said the IRS and the FBI investigated the case. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Northampton Community College is actually looking at cutting its proposed tuition hike for next school year. The Bethlehem Township, Pennsylvania,-based school was planning on raising its in-county tuition rate by 4.5 percent or $6 per in-county tuition credit for the 2016-17 school year. But now NCC wants to cut the increase to 3 percent, which amounts to a $4 increase in the in-county rate to $137 a credit. Full-time students that pay the flat tuition rate would pay $2,055 instead of $2,085 a semester under the new proposal. This year, Northampton County students pay $133 a credit or $1,995 for a full course load. College Trustee Loretta Leeson praised the lower the increase but urged the administration to push it further. "Zero would be nice," Leeson said. "Let's try to get it down." Over the last decade, the average tuition increase has been 3.5 percent. When the college proposed its budget in January, there was so much uncertainty surrounding state funding and enrollment was continuing to decline, said Jim Dunleavy, vice president for finance and operations "Part of the problem is our budget is done so early," he said. The college always hoped they'd be able to lower the proposed tuition hike, Dunleavy said. NCC still does not know what to expect in terms of state funding but this year's enrollment drop has been smaller than anticipated. The proposed budget anticipated a 3 percent drop for in-county students. But enrollment was down less than 1 percent this spring, Dunleavy explained. Enrollment at the school peaked in the fall of 2011 with 11,350 students and dropped 9.5 percent to 10,269 this past fall. Enrollment at community colleges tends to peak during tough economic times and decline as the economy improves. Eight school districts pay a share of the operating budget determined by a formula that takes into account how many of each district's graduates attended the school in the past five years. Six of the eight districts have approved the budget. The tuition rate will be finalized once the college's board of trustees approves the budget. A vote is scheduled for May 5. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Tailgater's Pub and Grill Tailgater's Pub and Grill is proposed to open at 1313 Center St. in Bethlehem, which is the building at the foot of the Santander bank building at 65 E. Elizabeth Ave. (Sara K. Satullo | For lehighvalleylive.com) A Bethlehem resident wants to open a new restaurant named Tailgaters Pub and Grill on Center Street in a former doctor's office at the foot of the Santander bank building. Tom Barker, who sits on the city planning commission, is asking Bethlehem City Council to approve a liquor license transfer from Cornerstone Pub in Bath to his new venture. A public hearing on the transfer is scheduled for April 19, Barker's attorney David Berger confirmed. Barker hopes to open the restaurant serving American pub style food by Fourth of July weekend, Berger said. The restaurant would serve breakfast on weekends. Plans are still in the early stages but more details should be available at the council meeting, he said. The space Tailgaters Pub and Grill would occupy is at 1313 Center Street, a building last occupied by Ophthalmology Physicians and Surgeons. The building is owned by Barker and his wife's Jama Properties LLC. Tailgaters would be located just steps from Moravian College's and the Bethlehem Area School District's stadiums, which are both on Elizabeth Avenue. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A motor carrier inspection at 7:19 a.m. Tuesday in Upper Macungie Township revealed more than possible vehicular violations, Pennsylvania State Police report. Driver Harry Stahl, no age given, of Nazareth, was wanted on a warrant out of Indiana, authorities discovered during the inspection at North Route 100 and Schantz Road, police said. Stahl's passenger, Tonya Napolitano, no age given, of Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, also was wanted on a warrant out of Indiana, police said. They were both transported to Lehigh County Jail, police said. Napolitano also had a second warrant from Carbon County, where a bench warrant was issued when she failed to appear in court in a theft case, police and court records say. Napolitano was transferred to Carbon County's jail and Stahl was sent to Northampton County Prison, online records show. It wasn't clear why Stahl was moved to the Easton jail. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Two drivers were hurt in a four-vehicle crash Thursday morning on Route 33 in Lower Nazareth Township, Pennsylvania State Police say. It occurred about 7:45 a.m. on Route 33 South near mile-marker 6.7, according to state police at Belfast. Gloria Kurtz, of Breinigsville, failed to slow her 2009 Acura TSX in time for traffic stopped in the left lane, according to police, who did not elaborate on why traffic was stopped. Kurtz's sedan struck the rear of a 2014 Chevrolet Cruze driven by Megan Rodenbough, of Stockertown, causing a chain-reaction crash. Police identified the other vehicles struck as a 2008 Subaru Impreza driven by Laura Zanette, of Pen Argyl, and a 2013 Hyundai Sonata driven by Benjamin Yoder, of East Stroudsburg. Kurtz suffered a minor injury, but police do not indicate she was taken for treatment. Rodenbough suffered a moderate injury and was taken by Bethlehem Township EMS to St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem Township, police said. All four drivers wore their seat belts, and police do not indicate any of them had an passengers. Police did not indicate any citations are pending. Police said Kurtz's and Rodenbough's vehicles were towed by Easton Auto Body, Zanette's car had minor damage and Yoder's car had no damage evident. Trooper Christopher C. Smith Jr. was assisted by Palmer Township police. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. The developer of an unfinshed estate in Portarlington has agreed to meet with all parties involved to solve the situation for once and for all. The developer of an unfinshed estate in Portarlington has agreed to meet with all parties involved to solve the situation for once and for all. Kieran Linnane of Derrycorris Developments made contact with the residents of Corrig Glee for the first time in almost two years last week, and said that he is willing to meet with the residents, NAMA and Laois County Council to determine the future of the estate on Station Road, The residents held a meeting in the Anvil Inn last Thursday March 6 to discuss what steps to take next. Even residents that had lost all hope and walked away from the situation at Corrig Glen a long time ago were present at the meeting, according to resident Sinead Maher. This whole thing has brought the residents of Corrig Glen together as a group, and were willing to go above and beyond for some justice. We hope to get Portlaoise-based structural engineer Philip Bennett on board to assess the buildings, see if they are structurally sound. The main aim of the residents now is to get the engineers report done, to have ready for when we meet with the developer, NAMA and the council. We really need to have this meeting soon. All parties involved seem to have different ideas. We need to let each other know where we are coming from, she told the Leinster Express. According to Ms Maher, the developer contacted fellow resident Edel Coleman last week, to talk about her apartment which was deemed unsafe to live in following the collapse of her ceilings from leakage, a knock-on affect of the storm damage done to the roof. Edel couldnt believe it when he rang. It was the first time he spoke to her in almost two years, and never before had he contacted her first. He was courteous on the phone for once. He said he wanted it solved, and that he would be willing to meet with us, NAMA and the council to get to the bottom of it, Ms Maher said. Linnane informed Ms Coleman on the phone that he had been in contact with the insurance company, and that the apartments were block insured. He also said that a risk assessor would call to her apartment soon to assess what damage was and wasnt covered for. He basically told Edel that her apartment would be repaired both inside and outside, and that she would also be covered to rent elsewhere while this repair work was taking place. We dont know what to believe though yet. We find it hard to trust him, Ms Maher told the Leinster Express. The residents are now in conact with Jennifer Molumby, Relationships Officer for NAMA, to try and arrange a meeting with all parties. Last Tuesday March 4, works were finally carried out to replace the roof which blew off one apartment block during the stormy weather. NAMA contracted this repair work, and it was completed without any engineers report to assess the extent of the damage to the roof and internal structure. Only a camouflage job was the term used by local elections candidate Willie Murphy to describe the work carried out. The work was only remedial, to keep the water out and protect the building from getting worse. The plywood underneath the roof is now completely rotten from being exposed. This has caused the roof to drop down, and made the ceilings collapse in some of the apartments, he told the Leinster Express. Mr Murphy said that a proper job would involve replacing all the damp plywood and plaster boards. NAMA sent no engineer to climb the roof and access the damage. An engineer needs to survey the whole situation. There was no engineers report ever done. This job was only to secure the building really, he said. Angela McEvoy, Senior Planner at Laois County Council, said that they were actively persuing the completion of the estate. We continue to actively pursue the completion of this estate through enforcement proceedings, she said. A father, whose body was dumped in a ditch on the remote lane where he lived, was probably beaten before he was shot according to evidence given in a murder trial before the Central Criminal Court yesterday (Thursday, April 7). State pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy gave evidence at the trial on Thursday of two men accused of the murder of Christy Daly (47), at Bog Lane, Kilbride, Clara, Co Offaly between December 29 2013 and January 7 2014. Co Leitrim native, Matthew Gralton (22), with an address at Mt Prospect in Co Roscommon, and Ross Allen (25), with addresses in Carrickmines, Co Dublin and Clara in Offaly, have pleaded not guilty to the murder. Professor Cassidy told prosecuting counsel Patrick Marrinan SC that her examination of the body showed that a blow to Mr Daly's mouth knocked out five of his upper front teeth and another fractured his nose. She said it was likely that these injuries, along with several lacerations and bruises to his face and the top of his head, were suffered before Mr Daly's attackers shot him several times in the legs and left his body in a nearby drain. Describing the scene, she said the body was in an upright sitting position in shallow water in the drain when she arrived on the afternoon of January 7, 2014. He was fully clothed and had "animal damage" to his face. Firefighters took his body from the drain and a local undertaker took it to Midlands Regional Hospital in Tullamore where she carried out a post mortem examination. She said she saw extensive bruising across his face, on top of his head, a split and swelling in his upper lip and bruising near his left ear. She said the injuries showed he had received several impacts to the face, including "one significant one to the nose and a significant one to the mouth which had knocked out several teeth". She said he would still have been conscious and able to walk despite these injuries and that he had defensive wounds to one of his hands. She added: "He is most likely to have received these injuries before being shot." She said the gunshot wounds finally incapacitated him, indicating that he was shot close to where his body was found. Describing eight bullet wounds, mostly to the legs, she said these had shattered bones and destroyed blood vessels. She discovered six gunshot wounds in his left leg and another that passed through the upper part of his left arm and grazed his chest. She concluded that the cause of death was gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma with hypothermia and coronary artery disease as contributing factors that would have hastened his death. Detective Sergeant Pat Cleary of Tullamore Garda Station told Mr Marrinan that he and a retired garda received an anonymous tip-off by text around the time Mr Daly went missing. He said he received the text shortly after midnight on December 30 and it read: "Go to Curragh Road Clara. Someone badly hurt please." The retired garda received the exact same message. Det Sgt Cleary alerted his colleagues to the message when he found out that Christy Daly had been missing since December 29 and that his caravan on Bog Lane had been burnt out. On the morning of January 7 he went to Bog Lane, and after a short search he found the body. As day four of the trial concluded matters are being discussed by the Judge and the barristers. As these are legal matters the discussions are being conducted in the absence of the jury. Leitrim Sinn Feins Comhairle Ceantair AGM due to take place on Thursday last week was postponed due to concerns from some party members. According to the party, The Comhairle Ceantair AGM has been postponed on foot of a number of requests for meetings from local party members in relation to the recent convention to replace Martin Kenny on the Council. There is no party investigation ongoing. The convention was held under the normal party rules. Caroline Gildea was selected at convention and ratified by the partys Ard Comhairle and is now in place and working away representing the people of her constituency. Deputy Martin Kenny said he understood the AGM had been postponed to address concerns regarding the selection convention. Kenny told the paper that the selection convention was run in accordance with party guidelines. He believes Cuige party officials for the province will meet with local Sinn Fein members in the next two weeks to sort out concerns and deal with the aftermath of the Leitrim convention. At that convention Caroline Gildea won the vote over Maureen Martin to sit on Leitrim County Council. The Sinn Fein TD added that the AGM will be rescheduled within a month. Meanwhile Deputy Kenny hopes to open his new constituency office in Ballinamore by the end of the month. He appeared on The Week in Politics on RTE One representing the party last Sunday discussing the formation of the new government. He told the paper Fianna Fail and Fine Gael both need to work together and adjust to the new reality that neither can govern without the consent and collaboration of the other. There has been a seismic shift in Irish politics and these parties need to get their heads around that reality. While they take their time the current crises in our health and housing sectors continues with no political accountability in place. He doesnt believe there will be another election this year. The lack of unity among the outsiders in this election has led to the opposition parties becoming the masters of their own downfall. Despite a long-standing agreement that a single candidate should lead the opposition, Mr Besigye and Mr Mbabazi ultimately failed to unite their campaigns under a single banner. Even beside the intimidation attempts and despite impressive rallies around the country by each of the main parties involved, the Ugandan electorate seems to be more disillusioned than ever. With three main candidates aged at 60, 67 and 72, the contenders for the presidency still represent the same generation which came to power in 1986. This might as well be an eternity, considering that 80% of Ugandans are under 30 years old, and so have only ever seen the same, familiar faces, both in power and running for the opposition. An awful lot of planning goes into those photo-ops you see every night on the telly during an election campaign. The party leaders have a specific message they want to get out. Today, Willie Rennie was at Gorgie City Farm in Edinburgh to talk about the importance of vocational training. Hes done a lot with animals this campaign. Remember those ultra cute therapets? He also got the seal of approval at Deep Sea World. What could possibly go wrong? Todays visit started so well: One down: Willie Rennie with a Guinea pig. Would you like to groom her? Yes. Yes he would. pic.twitter.com/V2MQ5iKM8B Philip Sim (@BBCPhilipSim) 8 April 2016 You might want to keep reading Philip Sims Twitter feed, cos the guy was clearly having the time of his life. Youll see the snake called Dougal and a bearded dragon called Ice. His delight when Willie started mucking out the pigs was palpable. You wouldnt believe just how much footage I have on my phone of pigs frustrating Willie Rennie https://t.co/bzfrmLScKH Philip Sim (@BBCPhilipSim) 8 April 2016 So, interview done, message of the day given, everybody headed off home. Then Philip and his team reviewed the footage of Willies interview. Well, it turns out David Cameron isnt the only party leader to feature in a story involving sex and pigs. Looking back over todays Willie Rennie i/v. We like to send a pictorial message about what were asking for. pic.twitter.com/oQETx3CBUw Philip Sim (@BBCPhilipSim) 8 April 2016 Buzzfeed just loved it, too and just about every news publication in Scotland and even some further afield, have carried the story. You just know that in 10 years time, this video will appear on Have I Got News for You? or one of these political highlights programmes. Its almost as good as the time party legend Sheila Ritchie talked about Michael Heseltines brylcream and blow-dry at a Conference in the 1980s. Except she didnt quite say dry. She said another 3 letter word. Needless to say, the point of the visit has been upstaged a bit by our porcine friends. Gorgie City Farm runs projects to help adults with additional support needs. Willie was there to talk about how the Liberal Democrats would improve vocational training. We know that there are some images you will never be able to un-see, but this is what Willie wanted you to take from his efforts: We know that formal education is not for everyone and we need to do more to ensure that everyone has the chance to learn in the way that works best for them. With 152,000 colleges course slashed on the SNPs watch, we need to ensure that alternative paths to vocational training are available for people who learn better outside of a classroom environment. Our penny for education plan would invest 108 million in colleges and restore funding that has been cut to the bone by the SNP. That would help ensure that people can get on the course they need to gain new skills. People who work, or parents who cannot study full time have been hit particularly hard by the loss of more flexible part-time places. This needs to change. SNP cuts and reforms have hammered morale in the further education sector. This is not only about increasing the number of apprenticeships we deliver in Scotland, but also working with industry, schools and colleges to boost the range of approved qualifications available to young people, and others who want to learn. As Buzzfeeds Jamie Ross said: The highs of the Willie Rennie pig video are now replaced by the cold realisation that the Holyrood campaign is all downhill from here. Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) April 8, 2016 Given that Steve Gilbert, formerly MP for St Austell and Newquay, has been seen helping with events like this, I offer hope that we might just top today, so dont despair just yet, Jamie. * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings A few years ago, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives had to resign effectively because hed taken a few taxi journeys that he shouldnt on parliamentary expenses. This was the result of the much stronger freedom of information rules in Scotland and was part of our own expenses scandal in 2005. If those are the standards which merit resignation, David Cameron should perhaps have been a little more careful over the statements he made earlier in the week over his personal financial dealings. He might have told us that he didnt have any shares now, but holding back the information that he had held shares in his fathers offshore trust for 13 years before selling them just before he became Prime Minister demonstrates a lack of candour. Why couldnt he just have been up front about it at the beginning of the week? We should expect more from our political leaders. Tim Farron agrees, telling the Mirror: The Prime Minister has for days denied that he had offshore funds but has been dragged to the truth. For ordinary taxpayers to have faith in the system they have to be able to have faith in their leaders. They deserve better than half truths and qualified statements. It might be an idea for the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to review the matter to make sure that Cameron always kept to the rules on registering these shares. At first glance, it looks as though he did. The rules for registering shareholdings are as follows: Category 7: Shareholdings THRESHOLD FOR REGISTRATION 51. Members must register, subject to the paragraphs below, any holdings which: i) amount to more than 15% of the issued share capital of that company, or more than 15% of a partnership; ii) are valued at more than 70,000.[46] REQUIREMENTS FOR REGISTRATION 52. Under this category Members must register: a) Shareholdings or share options which they hold, either by themselves or with or on behalf of their spouse, partner or dependent children. This includes any shares which are managed by a trust (other than a blind trust[47] or similar delegated management arrangement) and any holdings in sector-specific vehicles; b) Interests in LLPs or other partnerships. 53. Members should not register under this category: a) Holdings in collective investment vehicles such as unit trusts, investment companies with variable capital (ICVCs) and investment trusts; b) Assets held in blind trusts;[48] c) Pensions (except for property held for self-invested personal pensions). As he sold the shares for 31,500, a profit of around 19,000, their value was less than the registrable amount. It might be worth checking what the limit was all the way through his time as an MP just so we can be sure that that was always the case. It might also be worth reviewing those thresholds. Is it really ok that MPs are allowed to have shareholdings of more than double the average wage without telling us about them, but thats not relevant to Camerons immediate future. This episode has lowered my already subterranean opinion of the Prime Minister, but I think that Labour are over-egging the pudding by calling for his resignation at this stage, on the information we currently know. His lack of openness will undoubtedly diminish his public standing, though. Camerons familiarity with such offshore trusts gives us a new perspective on his reluctance to tackle such tax avoidance measures. Yesterday, Nick Thornsby highlighted a conversation between Cameron, Osborne and Danny Alexander on the subject. Vince Cable, in todays Guardian, goes into more detail, saying that Cameron chickened out of meaningful reform: Cable, whose department took the lead on the key proposal to establish a public register revealing the ultimate owners of UK-listed companies, says the prime minister faced considerable pushback on the plans. David Camerons view was a bit ambiguous, Cable says. He wanted to be leader of the pack in this transparency, tax thing; but I sensed at various points that when he saw what he had let himself in for, he started to get cold feet, and there was a certain amount of rowing back. Cameron gave a bold speech at the Davos summitof the worlds super-rich in January 2013 as the UK took up the rotating presidency of the G8 group of industrialised nations. He called for proper companies, proper taxes, proper rules. But Cable, who lost his Twickenham seat at last years general election, says it became harder to match warm words with action as tax havens, including those with historical links to the UK, organised a concerted campaign of resistance to proposals for more transparency. He describes how Cameron bowed to lobbying: Cable says Cameron began his transparency drive with the best of intentions, but after a meeting with a delegation of representatives from tax havens who came to London to lobby against the idea of a public register, the prime minister came away with his tail between his legs, and nothing happened. I guess its hardly surprising to find a Tory buckling to mild pressure when it comes to defending the rich. It is instinctive for them. Interestingly, Vince shares Jeremy Corbyns view that direct UK rule should be imposed on British overseas territories to ensure greater transparency: What you would have to do is impose direct rule, Cable says. You would take the executive authority out of the hands of the local government, and the island would be run through the governor. None of this does much for Camerons reputation. It certainly leaves a bad taste in your mouth but not, at this stage, enough to spit him out. What happens next will depend on whether we now know everything. Any more revelations after a clear the air interview as he had with Robert Peston last night would not look good. * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings Today is International Romani Day, a day to celebrate the culture and raise awareness of one of the most misunderstood groups within Europe. Romani people have faced severe persecution over the last century but are tragically often forgotten and that is why this day is important. Tragically, Romani people are still facing persecution and are being denied equal human rights within Europe. Our continent is buckling under the strain of the greatest humanitarian crisis it has faced since the last World War, tensions are running high in areas struggling to cope with an influx of men, women and children who have had to flee their homes to escape the destruction and tyranny of terrorist groups and dictators. Sadly, as these people reach the borders of states unable or unwilling to welcome the number of people who have arrived needing protection, human rights are often being forgotten and protection and fair treatment is not being given. The reports from groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of the mistreatment of refugees in the Balkans is harrowing. Reports say that refugees are being beaten, having their belongings taken and not being given adequate protection from the elements. This is happening in Europes backyard, in an area which has just emerged from a very dark period, which people were starkly reminded of through the recent sentence given to Radovan Karadzic. At the same time, reports show that Romani people are facing discrimination in employment, education and housing. This injustice must not be forgotten simply because another more urgent issue in the Balkans steals the spotlight. We need a compassionate approach to alleviate the issues which the refugee crisis has brought to different regions in Europe. This compassionate approach should also be adopted by nations and communities in their attitude towards Romani people. The need for the firm upholding of human rights needs to be trumpeted as we deal with the refugee crisis and day today we should all stop and remember that, critically, human rights extends to the Romani people, remember the suffering which this group has dealt with, and strongly tell each other that the Romani people do not deserve to be ostracised and they too should be granted the human rights and opportunities which most Europeans are given and which all people always deserve. * Tom Brake was the Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington from 1997 to 2019. With just under three months to go the EU referendum, the low turnout and overwhelming majority against the Ukraine-EU Association Treaty in a Dutch referendum is not a good omen. It is a good moment to take stock. The campaign is about to start, with the official designation of the Remain and Leave campaigns due soon. What lessons can the UK learn from the Dutch referendum experience? The good news first: the UK referendum really matters, whereas the Dutch one did not. The Ukraine-EU Association Treaty is important geopolitically but for the average Dutch voter, ratification will not change their daily lives. It allowed them a protest vote seemingly without consequence. Those that could bother to vote less than a third of voters, with many supporters staying at home in the hope that the required 30% threshold would be missed predictably took that opportunity with both hands. Here, the EU referendum will have a very real impact on peoples daily lives. That should focus minds but there is a risk: a referendum is rarely about the subject on the ballot paper. Only when the question is crystal clear and on a topic of relevance to the voters will the campaign focus on that. The Scottish referendum campaign was a good example of where that worked well. Everybody could relate to the question at hand and because it was such a momentous decision, people were extremely engaged in the debate. The Dutch referendum was the opposite. Even those who gathered the signatures to call the referendum said they could not care less about Ukraine. They wanted to send a signal about European overreach and Brussels democratic deficit. This is a big risk for the UK referendum, too. The EU rarely makes it into the top ten issues voters are concerned about, according to polls. The question of the benefits of EU membership to the UK is clear to those who have studied the issue but that is also the problem. How common rules make it easier to export products and services or to catch criminals is not easy to relate to nor easy to explain in a one-minute soundbite on the News at Six. That is why voters say they want to know the facts before making up their mind. They do not understand the debate yet but want to do so before they decide if they decide, that is. If you look at the top five questions on Google about the EU referendum, they include what is Brexit and what is the EU referendum. Yet facts in politics are a slippery business. There are two undisputed ones: there will be a referendum and it will decide the UKs EU membership. Other facts are varying shades of conjecture. The UK economy will probably be better off inside the EU, based on historical evidence and given the existing deep trading relations, particularly in services. The UK will probably be safer inside the EU, because it makes police and intelligence cooperation easier if you work within a common framework. The UK is probably more influential as part of the EU, the worlds largest trading block, than as a lone voice. That is also what our non-EU allies, like the US, are saying. Probablys do not get the heart pumping. As a result, it becomes about sentiment and trust. People will seek ways to relate the EU to them in unpredictable ways that is where immigration and the myths about remote Eurocrats and straight bananas come in. They will also think about who do they trust more. If someone you trust, like Boris Johnson or a former head of MI6, start passionately saying that things will be better outside the EU, you will start to doubt what the other side is saying. That is the biggest lesson from the Dutch referendum: a lacklustre campaign could turn those individual headwinds into a perfect storm for Remain. The Dutch government did not mount a major campaign in favour and activity among individual ministers and other political parties in favour varied widely. It meant the majority stayed at home, allowing all but the most passionate opponents the chance to make their mark. That is a major risk for the UK too. Britain Stronger In Europe will have to overcome the enthusiasm gap with the passionate Leavers to get the supportive majority to the polls. It will also have to find ways to better relate the campaign outcome to peoples daily lives to increase that majority. This is a tough challenge given decades of myth-making about how funny rules from Brussels affect ordinary people. With the stakes this high for the UK, no one can afford Dutch apathy and complacency come our referendum in June. * Henk van Klaveren is a public affairs consultant at and a former Liberal Democrat press officer. THE IRISH Refugee Council and the European Network Against Racism Ireland have criticised an article in the Limerick Post newspaper, which they say could give rise to incitement to hatred. The article centred on claims from one unidentified staff mem-ber in an unnamed direct provision centre, who claimed that staff have been subjected to physical attacks and mental abuse by individuals and gangs of radical Muslim men living in the centre. The article alleged that management at this centre are frightened to take any action because there are no security officers on the premises, and they are afraid that the radicals will be backed up by other asylum seekers who have cheated the direct provision system. There has also been criticism that the piece online was accompanied by a picture of a crowded boat carrying refugees across the Mediterranean to the safety of European shores. Doras Luimni earlier this week expressed strong concerns about the article views which have now been echoed by the Irish Refugee Council, and others, after the Post said they are standing by their story. Doras Luimn said they can confirm that no reports or allegations of extremism have been brought to the attention of the gardai in Limerick to date, and that they have now raised and reported the allegations made in the article to the authorities. The Irish Refugee Council said the such of words and phrases such as extremist, gangs, radical Muslim men, worrying level of extremism, bordering on hatred, cheaters, radical minded economic migrants, false stories, radical culprits appeared in the article. These can be clearly classified as inflammatory remarks which have the potential, if not the intent, to label asylum seekers and particularly Muslim men in an extremely negative light that can only generate fear, suspicion and hostility, it said in the statement. Sue Conlan, chief executive officer of the Irish Refugee Council, said: There was clearly no balance or attempt to give voice to any other actors beyond one individual and therefore no corroboration or counter to the sentiment expressed throughout the piece. The fact that the article was based upon the statements of a worker in a direct provision centre is not sufficient justification to mitigate the accusation that the Limerick Post could be accused of inciting racial hatred. After concerns were expressed by Doras Luimni, a spokesperson for the Limerick Post said: We abhor efforts by Doras Luimni to try to silence the dissenting voice of a vulnerable immigrant worker and their attempts to stifle editorial expression by the Limerick Post. We will spare no effort to defend our commercial and reputational interests in the face of an orchestrated social media campaign that is designed to stifle the very concept of freedom of the press. But Ms Conlan said that this accusation by the Limerick Post was misplaced. The Posts spokesperson said that before publishing the report, they interviewed the immigrant worker on two separate occasions, and also secured video and documentary evidence that the assaults occurred as stated and that they were reported to gardai at the time. We also have statements from asylum seekers in Limerick direct provision centres testifying to incidents of intimidation and expressing concern over increasing radicalisation among recent arrivals to the centres, they said. Ms Conlan said that the assertion of evidence held by the Post, still not disclosed, does not appear to substantiate the allegations of radicalisation or threats by Muslims and does not diminish the papers responsibility for casting doubt upon a very wide group of people, many of whom are survivors of the type of abuse that they seem to accuse asylum seekers of. Shane OCurry, director of the European Network Against Racism Ireland, said he is extremely concerned about the articles widespread use of uncorroborated statements from a single source to create and reinforce wide-sweeping generalisations about Muslims that are just not true. For example, the article reports a single source as saying, So many hardworking taxpayers, including myself, have been the victim of physical attacks and mental abuse by individuals and gangs of radical Muslim men. The statement would leave one to believe that this is a common occurrence in Ireland. The article also cites the same source as claiming that asylum seekers and human rights defenders are seeking more rights for asylum seekers than some full Irish citizens. Again this statement is plainly ludicrous, and yet is unchallenged, unverified against any authoritative source and uncorroborated, but is instead reported as fact. The overall effect of the article said Mr OCurry is to create an impression about Muslim asylum seekers and Muslims in general which resonates worryingly with European far-right discourses, that have been documented across Europe, about threats from Muslim hoards and gangs abusing our society and institutions, when the reality about Muslims in Ireland is the diametrical opposite. In fact, these far-right discourses are closely associated with a rise in physical attacks against Muslims across Europe. The Limerick Post needs to be mindful that it is not contributing to this. DEBATE surrounding the padlocked access to the Baggott Estate on Ballinacurra Road in Limerick city continues, as some residents have supported the gated entrance to the estate. In a recent Limerick Leader story, Ballinacurra Road residents expressed concern over the padlocking of one of four entrances to the Baggott Estate. According to Fine Gael Cllr Maria Byrne, five residents argued that the locking of the gates could prevent emergency services from accessing the estate in a timely manner. She said that she has been in contact with Limerick City and County Council about removing the gated entrance for health and safety reasons. However, Land Registry documents dating back to November 25, 1975 transferred over from the original indenture that was held by Catherine Baggott in 1938 show that the gated driveway is an access point for all outbound Ballinacurra Road residents to the rear of their property. Residents believe that the provision of these gates has prevented anti-social behaviour. However, some residents believe that the public have right-of-way through this pathway, which leads onto the Baggot Estate. Only outbound residents have keys to the gates. According to a spokesperson for the council, Limerick Fire Service were alerted of a tree fire on March 11 at the estate, but no fire was found upon investigation. On March 12, they were alerted of a camp fire caused by youths in the estate. The spokesperson said that gated entrance is never a problem as the padlocks can be cut in the event of an emergency. Cllr Maria Byrne said that all residents along the Ballinacurra Road should have keys and access to the Baggott Estate via the gated driveway. She added that the emergency services should also have keys to the gate. It is believed that the gate is being repaired, and upgraded to an electronically-locked gate, and that the emergency services will have fob controls, should they need to access. GARDAI remain concerned about the threat of further violent incidents in Askeaton arising from a feud involving a number of families in the town. Newcastle West district court was told this week that several members of a local family were involved in a violent feud which had resulted in a number of incidents in recent months. Sgt Jason Mitchell was objecting to an application by one man to have his bail conditions altered so that he could return to live with his wife and children in the town. He told Judge Mary Larkin that that man was charged with violent disorder in relation to an incident on Main Street last month. He is one of a number of people who have been ordered to stay out of Askeaton as part of their bail conditions. Sgt Mitchell added that all the members of the family that were involved in the feud live in close promimity to each other. Our fear is that if he returns to Askeaton, there will be further violent incidents, Sgt Mitchell said. He pointed out that the feud had got progressively more violent and it is our fear that someone will get seriously hurt. Inspector Paul Reidy also told the court that was the belief of gardai that if the man was allowed return to the town that it could lead to an igniting of the whole situation. Michael ODonnell, the mans solicitor, pointed out that his client had no previous convictions for assault or any other incidents of that nature. In his own evidence, the man pointed out that he was not involved in any feud in Askeaton. I have no problem with anyone in Askeaton and I am not fighting with anyone in Askeaton, he said. It was an isolated incident that happened and it shouldnt have happened, he admitted. After hearing the evidence, Judge Mary Larkin refused the application to alter his bail conditions. There have been a number of violent incidents in the town in recent weeks connected to a feud involving local families. The most recent of these occurred on March 11 when up to 25 people were involved in what was described by locals as a pitched battle in a green area near the Lismakeera estate. Many of those involved were armed with sticks and other makeshift weapons, eye-witnesses reported. Earlier that day, an incident occurred outside Newcastle West district court which is also believed to be connected to the feud. The recent escalation in violence between the families is understood to be linked to an incident late last year in which a woman sustained serious stab wounds. A criminal prosecution has been initiated in relation to that incident and the matter is currently before the courts. The recent upsurge in violence has prompted calls for the local garda station to be reopened on a full-time basis. Local councillor Kevin Sheahan said the people of Askeaton had every right to be policed like every other town in Ireland. I believe the evidence is there that we need a full time garda station open in Askeaton, he said. THE HOME of the Frank McCourt Museum Leamy House on Hartstonge Street has been put up for sale at the next Allsop auction in Dublin for a minimum guide price of 140,000. The property, which went on the market in recent years on the instructions of a bank, with a 325,000 price tag, is now for sale again for a fraction of that figure due to a number of infrastructural issues with the building. A spokesperson for Allsop said that since they announced the lots to feature in the auction on Friday last it has been the most popular enquiry to date. They said that the property which was formerly the school of the Pulitzer Prize winning Angelas Ashes author represents a good investment opportunity in Limerick city centre. The building has over 10,000 sq. ft of vacant space and it would be suitable for offices. Such demand for city centre office space in Limerick has grown in the past six months as can be seen from the sale of 17-19 Patrick Street prior to our last Allsop private auction which is encouraging to see. Although the building requires works in the vacant space, there is a current rental income of 23,500 per annum which provides a potential investor comfort in buying. Part of the Tudor Revival style building is let for storage to Holmes OMalley Sexton solicitors, yielding 10,800 per annum, while the McCourt museum contributes 100 per annum on an informal tenancy, which has been in operation for the past five years. Its understood that existing tenants wont be affected by the sale. Una Heaton, the artist who curates the museum, was not available to comment before going to print. It was formerly owned by Ms Heatons husband John. The property, which dates back to 1860, was purchased by his father Jack Heaton in 1956 three years after it ceased being a school. He opened a factory there producing mens suits, and employed over a hundred workers at one time. Over several floors, the museum houses many important artefacts relating to the life of the award-winning author, whose account of a miserable Catholic childhood in Limerick after moving from New York propelled him to literary stardom in his 60s. Among the items on display include a portion of his ashes, the manuscript of Tis, cuff-links given to the author from former US president George Bush, a collection of his rosary beads, his personal copy of Angelas Ashes which he read from in readings around the world, and the robes he wore when he was conferred with an honorary degree from the University of Limerick. The auction will take place on Thursday, April 28 next. It features a number of Limerick lots, mainly residential properties across the city and county. A vacant, first floor two-bed apartment in Steamboat Quay is for sale for 40,000, and four units in Thomond Student Village, Old Cratloe Road, have a reserve of 80,000 to 100,000. No 5 Market Place, High Street the home to Casa Nova restaurant has a reserve of 90,000. The lease expires in 2020, and it has a contractual rent of 13,200 per annum. In Kilmallock, an end of terrace two-bed townhouse on Lord Edward Street has a reserve of 35,000. The two-storey property has a communal courtyard to the rear. A three-bedroom semi-detached house in Kildimo has a reserve of 130,000. May 3, 2021, 2 AM This 1-centavo stamp is from a set of six stamps (Scott 1232-1237) issued in 1967 by Cuba to honor the National Ballet and the International Ballet Festival in Havana. By Donna Houseman In a recent letter to Linns, James Paton asks, Do we have to wait for the recalcitrant U.S. Congress to act before I can sell my interesting Cuban covers that were sent through the mails over 70 years ago? Paton wants to sell on the eBay Internet auction site a 1943 censored cover from Havana to the United States. The short answer is Yes. The embargo is still in effect, and eBay, like any other business, must abide by the embargo. That said, rather than determine which collectible items are embargoed and which are allowed, eBay implemented a blanket policy in 2013 that prohibits all such Cuban-origin items from being sold. In other words, they took the easy way out. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Keep up with us on Instagram The Embargo Act and the United States Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control guidelines ban importing into the United States Cuban stamps, coins, and other collectibles issued from 1962 onward; items issued prior to 1962 may be freely traded. U.S. sanctions against Cuba were first imposed in 1960. More legislation was passed in July 1963, and today six different statutes are in place to regulate trade with Cuba. Volume 2 of the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue includes an editors note preceding Scott 703-705, the first stamp issue of 1962, that states: Cuban goods have been embargoed by the United States since a Feb. 7, 1962 proclamation by President Kennedy, but according to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, used Cuban stamps can be imported and sold without limitation, and unused stamps may be imported for personal use, but not resold. Where mail between the United States and Cuba is concerned, as Michael Baadke reported in the April 4 Linns, the United States Postal Service began transporting mail to Cuba on March 17 for the first time since mail service was suspended in 1963. According to the USPS, mail service to Cuba is limited to First-Class Mail International items, First-Class Package International Service items, and Priority Mail International Flat Rate Envelopes and Small Flat Rate Priced Boxes. Priority Mail International parcel service is not available. Since the embargo was imposed in the 1960s, mail from the United States has been sent through a third-party country. Many Cuban natives living in the United States can attest that mail sent this route was slow at best and sometimes never arrived at its destination. Transporting mail to Cuba is one of several steps taken by the Obama administration to further engage and empower the Cuban people. Until Congress acts to lift the embargo, sanctions remain in effect, preventing U.S. citizens from legally importing or exporting any Cuban philatelic material issued after the 1962 embargo date. 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. This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. When Dr. Gunther von Hagens started using "plastination" in the 1970s to preserve human bodies, he likely did not anticipate the wild success of the Body Worlds exhibitions that stem from his creation. Body Worlds has since hosted millions of visitors to its exhibits, including six spin-offs. The offshoots include a version on vital organs and another featuring plastinated animal remains. The process replaces natural bodily fluids with polymers that harden to create odorless and dry "specimens." Frozen in place, plastinated remains in the exhibits are rigidly posed both for dramatic effect and to illustrate specific bodily features. Over 40 million museum visitors have encountered these exhibitions in more than 100 different locations worldwide. Even copycat exhibits have taken off, eschewing accredited museums in favor of places like the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. But Body Worlds though seemingly an entirely modern phenomenon only made possible with futuristic plastic technology emerges from a long tradition of popular exhibits featuring actual and simulated human remains. What continues to draw so many people to human body exhibitions even today? Early exhibits of human bodies For nearly as long as physicians and anatomists have attempted to understand the body, they have attempted to preserve, illustrate and present it. Cabinets of curiosities displayed in the homes of European nobility in the 16th century frequently included human skulls. As civic museums emerged in cities throughout Europe and the United States, some began to formally organize collections around anatomical questions. The Mutter Museum's Hyrtl Skull Collection is up for adoption until Dec. 31, 2013. (Image credit: Mutter Museum, via Youtube Medical museums were often more interested in pathologies abnormal medical conditions or disease. They also collected thousands of skulls and bones, attempting to address basic questions about race. Early on, medical museums were generally closed to the public, instead focusing on training medical students through hands-on experience with specimens. Almost reluctantly, they began opening their doors to the public. Once they did, they were surprised by the relatively large number of visitors curiously entering their galleries. Medical museums were not the sole institutions housing and displaying remains, however. Collections aimed more squarely at the general public often included such items as well. The Army Medical Museum, for instance, located along the National Mall, exhibited human remains between 1887 and the 1960s (living on as the National Museum of Health and Medicine). The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History built its own large body collections, especially during the early 20th century. Popular exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History exhibited human remains in New York City just steps from Central Park. Notable exhibits featuring human remains or innovative reproductions were also wildly popular at World's Fairs, including Chicago (1893), St. Louis (1904) and San Diego (1915), among many others. People crowded galleries even as these exhibits proved vexing to critics. Troubling transition from person to specimen In the quest to rapidly build collections, remains were sometimes collected under highly questionable ethical circumstances. Bodies were removed from graves and sold, gathered from hospitals near exhibitions reminiscent of human zoos, and rounded up haphazardly from battlefields. In the United States, the human body in the late 19th and early 20th century was racialized in almost every respect imaginable. Many people became obsessed with the supposed differentiations between Native Americans, African Americans and European Americans occasionally stretching claims into rigid hierarchies of humankind. The exhibitions dehumanized bodies by casting them as observable data points rather than actual human beings. Some exhibits blended medical science and racial science in a bizarrely inaccurate manner. Medical doctors supported eugenics groups organizing temporary exhibits comparing hair and skulls from different apes and nonwhite humans, underscoring popular notions about the supposedly primitive nature of those outside of Western civilization. To our modern eyes, these attempts are obviously stained by scientific racism. Eventually, the racialized science that had led to collecting thousands of skulls and other bones from people around the world came under increased scrutiny. The comparative study of race dominating many early displays of human remains was largely discredited. Indigenous activists, tired of seeing their ancestors viewed as "specimens, (opens in new tab)" also began pushing back against their display. Some exhibit planners began seeking other methods including more sophisticated models and exhibiting actual human remains became less prominent. By midcentury it was less common to display actual human remains in museum exhibits. The occasional Egyptian mummy notwithstanding, museum remains were largely relegated behind the scenes to bone rooms. Specimen exhibits fade, temporarily With largely unfounded concern, museum administrators, curators and other critics worried audiences would be disgusted when shown vivid details about human anatomy. Gradually, as medical illustrations became better and easier to reproduce in textbooks, the need for demonstrations with real "specimens" seemed to dissipate. Popular Science described a model from the 1939 World's Fair, an alternative to real human specimens. (Image credit: Popular Science, CC BY-NC) First displayed at a World's Fair in Chicago in 1933, see-through models of the human body became a favorite attraction at medical exhibits in years to come. Models replicated actual human body parts rather than displaying them in preserved form. Exhibits were sometimes animated with light shows and synchronized lectures. Later, in the 1960s, new transparent models were created for popular education. Eventually, some of the many transparent medical models wound up in science museums. Although popular, it remains unclear how effective the models were in either teaching visitors or inspiring them to learn more about the human body. Over the years, methods for teaching anatomy shifted. Many medical museums even closed permanently. Those that could not dispose of collections by destroying them donated or sold them. Human body exhibits generally faded from public consciousness. But after decades of declining visitor numbers, something surprising started happening at one of the nation's most important medical museums. The Mutter Museum's displays continued to draw heavily from its human remains collections even as similar institutions moved away from such exhibits. From the mid-1980s to 2007, the number of visitors entering the Mutter's galleries grew from roughly 5,000 visitors per year to more than 60,000. Today, the museum is the most visited small museum in Philadelphia, hosting over 130,000 visitors annually (opens in new tab). When Body Worlds began touring museums in the mid-1990s, it tapped into a curiosity in the U.S. that has probably always existed a fascination with death and the human body. Children at a Body Worlds exhibit in Los Angeles. (Image credit: Copyright: Gunther von Hagens, Institute for Plastination, Heidelberg, Germany, www.bodyworlds.com) Adding a gloss of scientization to the dead People are very often unsettled by seeing what were once living, breathing, human beings people with emotions and families turned into scientific specimens intended for public consumption. Despite whatever discomfort emerges, however, the curious appeal of medicalized body displays at public museums lingers, enough so to make them consistently appealing as fodder for popular exhibitions. Body Worlds states "health education" is its "primary goal," elaborating that the bodies in exhibits are posed to suggest that we as humans are "naturally fragile in a mechanized world." The exhibits are partially successful in achieving that mission. In tension with the message about human fragility, though, is the desire to preserve them by preventing their natural decay through technology. With public schools cutting health programs in classrooms around the United States, it stands to reason people might seek this kind of body knowledge elsewhere. Models are never quite as uniquely appealing as actual flesh and bone. But while charged emotional responses have the potential to heighten curiosity, they can also inhibit learning. While museum administrators voiced concern that visitors would be horrified viewing actual human bodies on exhibit, the public has instead proven to have an almost insatiable thirst for seeing scientized dead. In the face of this popularity, museums must fully consider the special implications and problems with these exhibitions when choosing to display human bodies. One basic concern relates to the exact origins of these bodies. Criticisms elicited an official response from von Hagens. Major ethical differences exist between exhibitions including human remains where permission has been granted in advance by the deceased or through descendants and museum displays revealing bodies of individuals offered no choice in the matter. Spiritually sacred objects and the remains of past people present unique issues which must be dealt with sensitively and on an individual basis. Cultural and historical context is important. Consulting with living ancestors is critical. Exhibitors also need to do more to put these displays into greater historical context for visitors. Without it, visitors might mistake artfully posed cadavers as art pieces, which they most assuredly are not. These are all issues we will likely be grappling with for years to come. If past history is suggestive of future trends, visitors will continue to be drawn to these exhibits as long as the human body remains mysterious and alluring. Samuel Redman, Assistant Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science. Cindy Miller began her 28 years with the company as a driver, and has held various positions including, most recently, Europe president UPS has promoted Cindy Miller to president of global freight forwarding. Miller, who began her UPS career as a driver in 1988, has held various positions in UPS all over the world in her 28 years with the company. Prior to her current position, she served as president of the UPS region in Europe. Under her leadership, UPS achieved record growth and service levels across the region. Miller also directed key expansions in the Healthcare and Retail/B2C sectors, including the rollout of UPS My Choice and the UPS Access Point network. In addition, Miller oversaw multiple acquisitions and the opening of new or expanded facilities across Europe, including France, Austria, Poland, and Germany. The air freight industry is central to the development of trade and the global economy, said Miller. With a senior management team of more than 1,200 combined years of experience, customers can rely on UPS to partner with them on their global logistics needs. Customers can also benefit from the tracking capabilities offered by UPS Flex Global View, and our world class brokerage services - tools that can help them expand with confidence into new markets globally. It has been almost seven years since her last show with St Mels Musical Society, but Janice Gibney is ready to step back into the spotlight as Morticia for the 2016 production of The Addams Family. I was just kind of chomping at the bit to get back on stage and get back performing, said Janice, daughter of society stalwarts June and Robert Belton. Referring to the social nature of the society, the mother-of-three said she jumped at the chance to get involved again, particularly when she heard The Addams Family being mentioned. I had listened to the music of the show, she told the Leader. I didnt know it before but when I heard that they were going to be doing The Addams Family I was listening to the songs which are really fantastic. People wont know them when they come to the show, but by the end of it theyll be walking out humming them. Theyre so catchy - its playing non-stop in the car with myself and the kids, its just on the go non-stop! And the show itself, its very funny. Admitting that shes nervous about her highly-anticipated return to the stage, Janice laughed; I was very rusty - Id only been singing in the car and the shower! But its good to have the nerves before you get on stage because they give you that adrenaline boost. Though this is her first show with St Mels since 2009, Janice, who has also previously been involved with Backstage Theatre Group and Backstage Youth Theatre, has never been far removed from the theatre, not least through her job in Marketing and Promotions with the Backstage Theatre. She has also taken starring roles in the theatres in-house production The Carnival at Glenaduff in 2011 and a Beezneez show Callaghans Place in 2009. However, the love for musicals is undeniably in her blood and its something that she has carried with her from her first performances in Cinderella and Aladdin and her work behind the scenes right up to her present role as Morticia, the Addams family matriarch. I was always kind of involved behind the scenes with both my parents. Dad was Stage Manager for a long time and hes still helping out backstage and my Mam has been the Chairperson for the last few years, so its a big family affair. Janice has also been recognised nationally for her talents, earning a nomination for the prestigious Association of Irish Musical Societies awards for Best Actress when she portrayed Charity Hope Valentine in Sweet Charity in 2007. Just three years earlier, Janice won the award for Best Comedienne at the annual AIMS ceremony, having brought Miss Hannigan to life in the 2004 production of Annie. Speaking now about her first leading lady role in several years, Morticia, Janice described her as a 1950s starlet, adding; Her love for her family is central to everything. She kind of comes across as having a very calm, collected, cool exterior. Paying tribute to the hard-working committee, Janice believes that the musicals remain popular because of the reputation of the group. Over the years, even if its something new that theyre doing or if its an old school show that some of the audience might not be in to, theres been this trust thats been built up over the years. People know that the society will deliver a quality and a standard so even if its not really their taste, theyll come along and trust that it will be a fantastic show. Janice is keen to highlight the talents of her co-stars and of course, Director Tim Landers, Musical Director Fintan Farrelly and Choreographer Emer OBrien. Theres laughs in it for everyone. Theres bits that the kids will be roaring laughing at and then the bits that will go over kids heads that the adults will be sniggering into their hands at, she added. Finally, complimenting the cast, crew and their families for the dedication they have shown to the show, Janice smiled: Its a family affair on and off the stage! The Addams Family will run at the Backstage Theatre, Longford from Friday, April 15 until Saturday, April 23. Local News, Business & Finance, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: April 08 2016 Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano and the Nassau 200 Executive Committee today announced plans to host a millennial networking forum. Mineola, NY - April 8th, 2016 - Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano and the Nassau 200 Executive Committee today announced plans to host a millennial networking forum at the Theodore Roosevelt Executive & Legislative Building, 1550 Franklin Avenue, in Mineola on Thursday, April 21st at 6:00 pm. Nassau 200 is a Millennial Think-Tank formed by County Executive Mangano to combat Long Island's brain drain. "My administration is committed to combatting the exodus of young people from Nassau County by creating jobs, fostering rental opportunities, and forging a strong bond between our young residents and their community," stated County Executive Mangano. County Executive Mangano formed the Nassau 200 Millennial Think-Tank by surveying hundreds of young residents born between 1979 and 1995. The Think-Tank is charged with advising the County Executive on issues of importance to their generation as well as hosting events and conducting studies. The Nassau 200 currently has three events planned for 2016the Nassau 200 Networking Event; the Nassau 200 How to Start a Business Panel in September; and the Nassau 200 Art Show in December. Residents born between the years of 1979 and 1995 are encouraged to attend the Nassau 200 Networking Event by getting tickets today. Click here for your tickets today. 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 We already knew about San Bernardino and Brooklyn, but according to court documents unsealed on Friday, Apples legal struggle with the FBI includes a case in Boston, too. The Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU was successful in getting the documents unsealed after filing a motion in court. The ACLU is undertaking a nationwide project to uncover information about All Writs Act warrants being issued to attempt to conscript Apple or Google to break into personal electronic devices. So far theyve found more than 60 cases in 20 states, stretching back to 2008. The ACLUs legal director, Matthew Segal, said in a statement: This is an important victory for open courts and open government. Vital issues about the security of our personal information should not be litigated behind closed doors. Yet, since at least 2008, that is exactly what was happening with the governments efforts to force technology companies to access their customers devices. We collected these cases and filed this motion because we believe that getting these issues right requires dealing with them openly. We filed our motion to unseal this case because we believe that the publics rights will not be respected if they are not litigated openly. Now that the government has agreed that this case should be unsealed, and now that a court has unsealed it, we hope that undue secrecy will not occur in the next case or in any other pending case. This was an important first step. Now that this basic information is publicly available, we will look closely at the documents to determine any potential next steps. The Boston case In the Boston case, Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler issued an order under the All Writs Act ( PDF) ordering Apple to assist breaking into an iPhone 6 Plus used by an alleged gang member accused of committing violent crimes in aid of racketeering. The warrant was issued February 1 and expired after 14 days, but its not clear that the FBI ever executed the warrant. The governments initial All Writs Act application in that case ( PDF) doesnt mention which version of iOS the locked device is running. But the iPhone 6 Plus shipped with iOS 8, so its pretty safe to assume its iOS 8 or iOS 9. The request points out that Apple has complied with search warrants issued under the All Writs Act in the past, and that Examining the iOS device without Apples assistance, if possible at all, would require significant resources and may harm the iOS device. The resulting order ( PDF) says that Apple has to provide reasonable technical assistance, [consisting] of, to the extend possible, extracting data from the device, copying the data from the device onto an external hard drive or other storage medium and/or providing the FBI with the suspect Personal Identification Number or Personal Unlock Code so that access can be gained to Target Telephone 1. But the order also clarifies that encrypted data is enough: To the extent that data on the device is encrypted, Apple may provide a copy of the encrypted data to law enforcement but Apple is not required to attempt to decrypt, or otherwise enable law enforcements attempts to access any encrypted data. Apples own documentation describing how law enforcement can request its assistance ( PDF) points out that since iOS 8 and iOS 9 decrypt all the data on the phone by default as soon as you set a passcode, Apple cant help: The files to be extracted are protected by an encryption key that is tied to the users passcode, which Apple does not possess. How is this different? In the two most public All Writs Act cases, the FBI withdrew its request in the San Bernardino case, claiming a third party sold them a tool to break into an iPhone 5c running iOS 9. In another case in Brooklyn, the government still wants Apples help extracting data from a meth dealers iPhone 5s running iOS 7. In the Brooklyn case, Apple does have a method to extract the data from the iOS 7 phone without needing the passcode. But Apple is resisting anyway on the grounds that the government doesnt need Apple for thisplenty of third-party security firms could handle the same taskand because Apples lawyers feel like these All Writs Act warrants are an overreach thats more about setting a legal precedent than getting into any single device. 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. Anne Hathaway and her husband Adam Shulman have welcomed their first baby together Actress Anne Hathaway and her husband Adam Shulman have welcomed their first baby together - and its a boy, a spokesperson for the couple has confirmed. Named Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman, the tot arrived on the morning of 24th March at a hospital in Los Angeles. So no silly diva-ish celebrity baby names (opens in new tab)here, then. We knew we could rely on Anne to go with a un-Hollywood choice, or, in other words, a lovely classic. Anne Hathaway and her husband Adam Shulman The couple took some time to enjoy the first few weeks with their new-born, before announcing his arrival to the world. The baby is extremely healthy and is surrounded by friends and family in L.A., a spokesperson for the couple told E! News. Anne and Adam are ecstatic to be parents. Anne Hathaway's happy baby bump Anne played her pregnancy like a pro, holding an intimate baby shower last month and making headlines in January when she posted a stunning bikini pic (opens in new tab)of herself on Instagram, while brilliantly shutting down the paparazzi. So, posting a bikini pic is a little out of character for me, she explained to her three million followers. But just now while I was at the beach I noticed I was being photographed. I figure if this kind of photo is going to be out in the world it should at least be an image that makes me happy (and be one that was taken with my consent. And with a filter :) Wishing you love, light and blessings for the year ahead! All this, and more, is why we love Anne Hathaway so. Huge congratulations to the new parents. Port Manatees growth as a cargo gateway continues, with the Florida Gulf port reporting a 36 percent year-over-year increase in containerized cargo handled in the first half of its fiscal year. During the six-month period from Oct. 1, 2015, through March 31, 2016, Port Manatee docks saw moves of 12,653 twenty-foot-equivalent container units (TEU), up from 9,321 TEUs in the comparable year-earlier fiscal half. Import TEUs led the way, increasing 40 percent, to 7,398 TEUs from 5,291 TEUs. The favorable results for the first half of the ports 2016 fiscal year come on the heels of a phenomenal 83 percent rise in TEUs handled in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2015, compared with the preceding fiscal year. With World Direct Shipping increasing imports of refrigerated produce in its weekly service from Mexico, as well as consistent inbound shipments by longtime tenant Fresh Del Monte Produce, Port Manatee is extending a positive trend in the container sector, said Carlos Buqueras, Port Manatees executive director. Furthermore, as we successfully advance our economy-energizing diversification strategy, we are seeing meaningful gains in overall tonnage moving through the port. In the six-month period from Oct. 1, 2015, through March 31, 2016, Port Manatee handled 3,310,873 tons of cargo, up 5.7 percent from 3,132,705 tons in the comparable year-earlier fiscal half. The increase was propelled by the handling of additional project cargos and substantial gains in the liquid bulk sector, including diesel, gasoline, ethanol and asphalt. The primary contributing factor was the fuel supply agreement inked in late 2015 with RaceTrac Petroleum Inc. Located Where Tampa Bay Meets the Gulf of Mexico, Port Manatee is the closest U.S. deepwater seaport to the expanding Panama Canal, with 10 40-foot-draft berths serving container, bulk, breakbulk, heavylift, project and general cargo customers. The port generates more than $2.3 billion in annual economic impact for the local community, while supporting more than 24,000 jobs, without levying ad-valorem taxes. EUROGATE can look back on a good financial year, 2015. Despite difficult market conditions the European terminal operators Group increased its net profit by 13.4 percent to EUR 73.5 million (prior year EUR 64.9 million). Container handling at the German EUROGATE locations grew faster than the market. In Bremerhaven, Wilhelmshaven and Hamburg EUROGATE 2015 hit with 8.2 million standard containers (TEU) 1.5 percent more boxes in order as 2014. The entire North Range ports recorded in the same period dropped by 1.6 percent. The total amount of the turned-up in the European group_container totaled 14.5 million TEU two percent on the previous year and corresponded to the market development: The total throughput of European ports 2015 was also increased by two percent rucklaufig1. Revenues of the EUROGATE Group rose by 4.5 percent to EUR 591.3 million (previous year: EUR 566 million). The operating result (EBIT) increased by 19 percent to EUR 91.1 million (previous year: EUR 76.5 million). Emanuel Schiffer, Chairman of the EUROGATE Group Management Board: "EUROGATE presented good business results that allow us to make the group in the coming years for the future. This result can not get over that fool our market conditions have become more difficult, however. Global economic power is attenuated. Therefore international fewer goods are exchanged, resulting, among other things, that the growth of global container throughput slows principle in seaports. We are currently in a mature market with high competition. The shipping companies respond with larger container ships with transport capacity> 18,000 TEU. For us as terminal operators are the challenges in coping with the resulting peak in ship handling. We need to offer our customers high productivities, thus the use of large container ships that sought by our customers result." EUROGATE: trend towards large container ships> 18,000 TEU The number of large container ships> 10,000 TEU, the German EUROGATE container terminal in 2015 anliefen in Bremerhaven, Wilhelmshaven and Hamburg, increased by almost 35 percent to a total of 618 attempts. One third of these vessels (201) already has transportation capacity> 18,000 TEU. Around 19 percent of these ships docked at Wilhelmshaven. Germany's only deepwater container terminal, the EUROGATE Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven, benefited from the ship sizes and increased its turnover to 426 751 TEU, 536.2 percent more than in the previous year (67 076 TEU). Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven increased together the envelope by 1.9 percent to 5.9 million TEUs (previous year: 5.8 million TEU) and was thus slightly above the market. The EUROGATE Container Terminal Hamburg increased slightly with an increase of 0.5% to 2.3 million TEUs. Trend towards large container vessels on Mediterranean routes The Italian container terminals developed positively overall, although the decline in container volumes at MCT Medcenter Container Terminal in Gioia Tauro, Calabria, the overall balance clouded. The Italian container terminal proposed around 2015 of 4.8 million TEU-NEN, 5.5 percent less than in 2014 (previous year: 5.1 million TEUs). The largest container terminal in the CONTSHIP ITALIA group had only completed in late summer 2015 a phase of restructuring, so that the handling balance was still negative end, 2015. With 2.5 million TEU terminal was 14.7 percent in Gioia Tauro on the previous year (2.9 million TEUs). After a successful restructuring, a positive development is expected for 2016 again. The trend towards the use of large containerships also relates to the Mediterranean routes. The Mediterranean terminals are also served by larger container ships. For this reason, the LSCT La Spezia Container Terminal, Liguria, where his envelope in 2015 increased by 7.6 per cent from 1.1 million TEU to 1.2 million TEU, of two gantry cranes with booms for clearance of ships with a width invested 23 rows of containers on deck and taken in the past year in operation. The LSCT La Spezia Container Terminal is the first and only Terminal, which operates container cranes of this size in Northern and Central Italy. Euro Gates Success Strategy: A strong network Euro Gates strategy for success lies in its network. Thanks to its existing network of eleven container terminals EUROGATE is able to offer its customers any time alternative location. Looking for new investment opportunities of this network is to be expanded. Thus, EUROGATE has participated in the public tender for the privatization of the container terminal Limassol, Cyprus. According to the carried out on February 25, 2016 publication of the Cypriot Ministry of Transport to the consortium EUROGATE International GmbH with its partners Inter Orient Navigation Company Ltd. and East Med Holdings SA qualifies as "Preferred Tenderer". In October 2015, the subsidiary EUROGATE International GmbH announced its 16.67% stake in the Contrail Logistica SA, headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil, known. Contrail provides transport solutions to the hinterland of Santos, Brazil's largest seaport. EUROGATE sees high synergy potential with the routes of its shipping customers who have in their timetables Santos as a port. Two ferries carrying more than 120 migrants returned to Turkey from the Greek island of Lesbos on Friday, in the second round of arrivals under an EU deal with Ankara to stem mass migration to Europe across the Aegean Sea. The accord, which came into force on Monday, aims to help end a chaotic influx into the European Union of migrants and refugees, most fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, after more than 1 million arrived last year. Around 325 people have now been sent back from the Greek islands under the accord, which the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) has condemned and rights advocates say may violate international law. They are to be sent to a camp near Turkey's border with Bulgaria, to which the UNHCR said it had yet to gain access. The first ferry on Friday carried a group of 44 Pakistani men, Turkey's interior ministry said. Around two dozen uniformed Turkish police officers lined the boarding plank after it docked in the Turkish town of Dikili, accompanied by two coast guard vessels. The second ferry, which arrived shortly after 12:30 p.m. (1030 GMT), carried 79 people, including migrants from Egypt, Afghanistan and Iraq, a Turkish official told Reuters. There were no Syrians on either boat, the official said, and the second group appeared to be almost all men, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene. No boats are expected over the weekend, Turkish officials said. RIGHTS PROTESTS Before the boat left Lesbos, at least two rights activists plunged into the water close by, dangling from the anchor chain and flashing the 'V' for victory sign in an attempt to prevent the vessel from sailing. They were plucked from the water by the Greek coastguard, while more activists stood at the gates of the port of Mytilene blowing whistles and banging on metal barriers. From Dikili, the migrants were to be sent to the border town of Kirklareli. UNHCR spokeswoman Selin Unal said the agency was still negotiating for access to the camp there. A first group of 202 migrants, most from Pakistan and Afghanistan, arrived in Turkey on Monday. Turkey's parliament approved overnight an agreement enabling Ankara to repatriate Pakistani migrants. Meanwhile, other migrants continued to reach the Greek islands. Greek authorities said 149 had arrived in the past 24 hours on Lesbos, Samos and Chios, up from 76 the previous day. Under the EU-Turkey agreement, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who enter Greece through irregular routes. In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward Ankara with more money, early visa-free travel for its citizens and progress in negotiations to join the bloc. By Dasha Afanasieva Always important, anything but simple, but often overlooked Dry dock pontoon deck preservation is often taken for granted. In the flow of ever changing priorities for dry docks, it often gets pushed aside and/or delayed. If neglected long enough and often enough between preservation cycles, the thickness of the pontoon deck steel plates can be compromised. Salt water with chloride contamination causes accelerated corrosion while impact and abrasion damage from heavy equipment also take their toll. For shipyards, the overall objective should be to provide a protective surface that will hold up over time, and that is easy to clean. Ease of cleaning can save a lot of cost each time after repeated dockings. All of that said; surface preparation is the key. Coatings: Preparation is Everything A clean sweep down of the intended surface areas should be done before the subcontractor arrives on site. Pressure washing at 3500 psi is the best way to remove chloride contamination, loose rust scale, and/or delaminated coatings. Weather can be an annoying problem, but if it interferes, it is better to call off work for the day than to have flash rust appear, or worse, coating delamination due to excess moisture. Shot blasting is one of the most cost effective methods of removing the old surface down to a near white metal condition. A 3-4 mil anchor profile is preferred. Sand blasting is another method of surface preparation, but the containment required for sand blasting the entire pontoon deck in most locales makes this approach too expensive. Nevertheless, sand blasting is ideal for reaching areas wing walls, and raised steel strips along the pontoon deck that can be difficult to otherwise reach. In each case, a temporary shed can be constructed using PVC pipes and plastic sheeting which moves along with the sand blaster inside. Hand tooling should be kept to a minimum it is labor intensive and expensive. If an anchor profile already exists on the steel from past surface preparation efforts, then UHP (ultra-high pressure) water blasting at 35,000-40,000 psi is a modern alternative. Designed to suck up debris and water from blasting, it also leaves the surface clean and dry. Chloride contamination needs to be removed to the level of 70 microsiemens of conductivity, even if it means more than one pressure washing. Otherwise, once the coating has been applied, galvanic corrosion cells will develop, causing delamination of the coating. Flash rust can be a problem for coating longevity, although a slight bloom can be tolerated by some coatings. Before the work day ends and moisture appears, a primer coat should be applied to seal the freshly blasted steel. Five Year Life Service A high build coating system is best for longevity, and the proper equipment will involve the use of a plural component, heated airless spray machine capable of handling Part A/Part B ratios as high as 10:1. The coating system to be employed should include a primer coat in addition to the top coat. Thats because the typical 10-15 mil coating system employed in the past is simply not sufficient. A 40 mil system is optimal, and extra millage may be required if pitting is severe. At least two days should be allowed for the coating system to cure; at least 24 hours for foot traffic, 48 hours for vehicle traffic and submergence, a five day cure. An anti-skid treatment on top of the final coat a 16-20 grit aluminum oxide or equivalent finishes the job. Calculating Costs: apples to apples The coating system itself is always the least expensive part of the pontoon deck preservation process. In fact, the coating applied will typically amount to only 20 percent of the overall job, with labor and equipment to prepare the surface and labor and equipment to apply the coating making up the rest. Full containment of the dry dock, if required in a given region for sand blasting, is very expensive and thus sand blasting should be avoided. Surface preparation is the most expensive part of the entire process due to the labor and equipment involved. However, if the shipyard can clear the pontoon deck completely before surface prep commencing, and avoid unscheduled dockings from interfering, costs can be kept to a minimum. The performance of the surface prep subcontractor is typically enhanced if he is also responsible for applying the coating system. Thats because, blame cannot be shifted to another party should something go wrong. The actual coating application, with proper equipment and coordination with the surface prep effort, can be the second lowest cost factor in the overall preservation process. Overcoat times between coats as specified by the manufacturer are critical for proper adhesion and curing. The fewer the number of coats required to meet the specified mil thickness, the less the labor costs that will be accumulated. For example, if it takes five coats to achieve 40 mils in one coating system, but only 2 coats to achieve 40 mils in another, labor will be much higher in the former. Ceramic epoxy coatings can be more expensive per gallon, but if they can be applied in two versus five coats, the total material and labor costs will likely come out lower. While dry dock availability is paramount, unscheduled dockings create a nightmare for cost effective accomplishment of the overall job. The goal should be 100 percent availability of the dry dock from start to finish of the job to experience maximum efficiencies in all areas of endeavor. Hence, coating should not be scheduled for this work unless there is a clear open window to get the job done. This is the absolute key to minimizing costs. And, as a general rule of thumb, pontoon deck preservation represents less than 10 percent of the cost of steel replacement. Finally, it is worth investing in a QC technician who can continuously monitor chloride contamination and anchor profile mil depth during surface prep, as well as monitor coating mil thickness during the application process. This technician can either be supplied by the shipyard or the subcontractor. Examining Coating Systems The typical two part epoxy system has been used for many years to preserve pontoon decks, and it is still in use today. However, the addition of ceramic particles, or ceramic particle loading, serves to enhance the mechanical properties of the coating far beyond a normal epoxy system. Mechanical properties of the coating system are extremely important. CeRam-Kote 54 SST Primer with CeRam-Kote SPG (Sprayable Grout) Top Coat, for example, is one coating system recommended for pontoon deck preservation. John Vitzthum, Dockmaster for BAE Ship Repair-San Diego, has been instrumental in its development. When compared to a typical epoxy coating, this system features ceramic particle loading, which provides 5 times the adhesion, 4 times the impact resistance, 10 times the abrasion resistance, flexibility and dialectric strength sufficient to virtually eliminate galvanic corrosion. It also has excellent chemical resistance, and low permeability due to the 60 percent ceramic particle content. Finally, it is ceramics that provide the lubricity of Teflon, thus making the deck easy to clean, once coated. CeRam-Kote SPG is a 100 percent solids, high build coating which can be applied up to thick. In fact, it has been used to build up the thickness of steel plates to meet minimum thickness requirements. Bob Heger, President of Heger Dry Dock Engineering, referring to the CeRam-Kote product, said in January, We recommend it to all of our customers. Recently, the CeRam Kote system was applied on a Vigor-Alaska floating dry dock. Dockmaster Greg Howe told Marine News, This coating system is holding up amazingly well. Warranty: as important as the coating itself The typical one year warranty offered for many coating jobs is insufficient. Insist on a multi-year warranty. Mil thickness is again very important as it has an impact on the warranty. Obviously, a 10-15 mil coating thickness is not going to hold up as well as a 40 mil thickness, which can yield a five year warranty, excluding extraordinary impact damage from heavy and/or sharp objects. The shipyard should therefore make arrangements at the outset for field repair of this kind of damage during the course of pontoon deck usage. All parties the shipyard dockmaster, coating manufacturer and surface preparation and coating contractor should a part of and signatory to the agreed to warranty. Whichever coating manufacturer is selected, their factory technical representative should be on site throughout the project to supervise as necessary to ensure surface prep and coating applications are done correctly. If any other subcontractors are involved, such as for deck blasting, debris removal, wash down, etc., they should be under the control and responsibility of the prep/coating subcontractor to ensure performance. Once again, a single subcontractor to do the entire job will ensure better results. The Authour Bill Kraus is a CeRam-Kote Tech Rep for Shipyards. Kraus holds degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy Contact him at [email protected] The new, expanded Panama Canal is set to open soon. Hapag-Lloyd is preparing for the event by optimizing its fleet. Here, we show you what these new ships will look like. The new Panama Canal will usher in a new era in shipping between South America and Europe. Starting soon, huge vessels of the post-Panamax class capable of carrying up to 14,000 20-foot standard containers (TEU) will be able to navigate this important trade route. Until now, the upper limit has been just a bit below 5,000 TEU. In light of these changes, already in April 2015, Hapag-Lloyd ordered five new vessels, which are supposed to be predominantly employed along South American routes . With a length of 333 meters, a beam of 48 meters and a capacity of 10,500 TEU, the vessels in the new Valparaiso Express class are tailor-made for the expanded locks and channels of the canal. The five new ships are currently being built in South Korea by Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries. In early March, the first steel cutting was performed in the shipyard. Going forward, the steel plates for the ship will be fitted and assembled into modules weighing up to 1,000 metric tons. Then, in a very brief period of time, the hulls will be welded together out of these prefabricated parts in the shipyards building docks. The finished ships will then be delivered between the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2017. Still, the ideal size of these ships is not the only competitive advantage Hapag-Lloyd plans to gain from them. One outstanding feature of the new vessels is their very high reefer capacity, as each of them has room for more than 2,100 of these temperature-controlled containers. We expect reefer exports from South America to increase, says Hapag-Lloyd Chief Operating Officer Anthony J. Firmin in underlining the importance of these special boxes. Products such as bananas, avocados, deep-frozen fish and grapes will fill the reefers on the journey from the west coast of South America to Europe. Going in the other direction will primarily be deep-frozen french fries, onions, potatoes, frozen vegetables and pharmaceutical products. The design and technology of the state-of-the-art newbuildings also promise cost advantages and improvements in operational efficiency. For example, the hull has been optimized for the special load and speed profiles in the South America trade. The 46,530-horsepower main engine is particularly fuel-efficient and boasts an emissions-reducing valve control. An innovative lashing and loading system guarantees greater flexibility when loading. Indeed, with these five new ships, Hapag-Lloyd may be able to expand its leading role in Latin American traffic. Whoever acts in the right way and uses their capacities optimally will have a big advantage, COO Firmin confidently states. MidEast VLCC rates fall nearly 30 Worldscale points this week; port congestion in Basra, China adding to market uncertainty. Freight rates for very large crude carriers (VLCCs) may drift lower next week on weaker sentiment among owners and reduced chartering demand ahead of the release of May's Middle East loading programme, brokers said on Friday. Rates plunged this week from a two-week high hit on April 1 on slower chartering activity that is expected to extend into next week. A rate of 59 on the Worldscale measure was already being offered for a Middle East cargo to Asia on Friday, a Singapore supertanker broker said on Friday. The was more than three Worldscale points lower than the Baltic route index on Thursday. Owners' attitudes were shaped by a raft of tankers seeking urgent employment after delivery from shipyards and vessel operators subchartering vessels at cheaper freight rates, brokers said. "The market is all sentiment driven. The main issues driving it down are newbuildings and charter relets," said a European supertanker broker on Friday. "Sentiment changed drastically this week. The market was up 30 Worldscale points last week and down 30 points this week," the broker said. "Chartering activity is very slow today. I think it will be a bit like this all next week. No one needs to rush to fix which is making the market a little depressed," the broker said. Charterers this week started to fix Middle East cargoes for loading in the last 10 days in April. "There should still be a bit of cargo left for next week. May's Middle East cargoes won't come out until the very end of next week or early the following week," the broker said. Port congestion in Basra and China was adding to the uncertainty about the market and how many tankers were available for charter. There are about 25 VLCCs available for charter next week but that could increase, adding to the negative sentiment, if they come free from congested Chinese ports, brokers said "There is a bit more cargo around, but the market is going to be pretty tough next week," the Singapore broker said. VLCC rates from the Middle East to Japan fell to about W62.50 on Thursday, down from W87.50 a week earlier. That is equivalent to a drop in daily earnings from $74,693 to $49,138, chartering data on the Reuters Eikon terminal showed. "Earnings have fallen but it's not a disaster for owners," the European broker said. Supertanker rates from West Africa to China dropped to W64 on Thursday, against about W82.50 last Thursday. Rates for an 80,000-dwt Aframax tanker from Southeast Asia to East Coast Australia were about W115.50 on Thursday, down from W125.25 on the same day last week as weak cargo demand outpaced vessel supply, brokers said. Clean tanker rates from Singapore to Japan were unchanged at around W148.50. Reporting by Keith Wallis Electromagnetic Geoservices ASA (EMGS) releases information on vessel activity and utilisation 4-5 working days after the close of each quarter. The Company defines vessel utilisation as the percentage of the vessel charter period spent on contracted or multi-client data acquisition. Downtime (technical or maritime) and standby activities is not included in the utilisation. Vessel utilisation for the first quarter 2016 came in at 55% compared with 76% for the first quarter in 2015. In the first quarter of 2016, the Company's vessels were allocated 29% to contract and 26% to multi-client projects. In the comparable quarter of 2015, the vessels were allocated 24% to contract work and 52% to multi-client projects. EMGS had two vessels in operation in the first quarter 2016. The Atlantic Guardian, was offhire for approximately 1.2 vessel months due to a planned yard stay, thus the Company recorded 4.8 vessel months in the quarter. In the first quarter 2015, the Company had three vessels in operation and recorded 12 vessel months. Vessel activity The BOA Thalassa started the announced contract work in India on 4 January 2016. The project was completed on 26 February. Following the contract work in India, the vessel commenced on a multi-client project west of India on 12 March. The project is estimated to be completed in April. The vessel's utilisation for the first quarter was 73%. The Atlantic Guardian was idle in January and offhire on a planned yard stay from 31 January until 5 March. The vessel commenced a multi-client project in the Hammerfest Basin on 10 March. The project continued throughout the quarter and is expected to be completed in the first part of May. The vessel's utilisation for the first quarter was 38%. The EM Leader has been laid up since 15 May 2015. Multi-client revenues in the first quarter The Company expects to record zero multi-client revenues in the first quarter 2016. EMGS will publish its first quarter 2016 financial results on Thursday 12 May 2016 at 07:30 CET. A presentation will be held at the Company's office address, in Dronning Mauds gate 15 in Oslo, and will be broadcasted live over the Internet, starting at 10:00 CET. To be prepared for any environment, the Marine Corps has created specialized courses its young men and women can attend to learn the skills they need to be successful in the various battlefields they are expected to fight. Marines in the Urban Leaders Course conducted a combat marksmanship range at Range 223A on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, March 31, 2016. The ULC run by 1st Marine Division Schools is a three-week course designed to teach small-unit leaders the skills and techniques they need to conduct urban operations. The first week is built around classes introducing them to the history of urban operations and stability operations within an urban environment and ending with a combat marksmanship range, said Staff Sgt. David Agundez, chief instructor of the ULC. Today we are training in static shoots, speed-reload, lateral movement and barricade drills, and doing stress shoots. As the training progressed, Marines rehearsed different firing positions using various barricades to simulate terrain and building features they may encounter. The course takes a crawl, walk, run approach, explained Agundez, an El Centro native. Students are taught the basic fundamentals and individual skills first and slowly build into buddy teams, fire teams and then squad-based movements and tactics. While the course is primarily geared toward the infantry job field, it keeps allocations open for non-infantry Marines that are often integrated into infantry units. Sgt. Jason Irons, sapper instructor with 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, Swansboro, North Carolina native, and student with the course, explained why this training allows him to better support the infantry units he may be attached to. My whole job is to get them past various obstacles, said Irons, Just because I breached a door, they cant just leave me behind. I have to stay with them and keep moving, so if I cant effectively move with them and know what they know and do what theyre doing, I can become a hindrance instead of an asset. While the Marines are learning new skills to make them more effective in combat, the course isnt strictly about making them better. The training also allows them to return to their battalions and share their newfound skills with their peers and subordinates. This type of training is for them, but it isnt about them, said Agundez. Its about the younger Marine that they help influence and teach. So we try and work off of getting rid of bad habits and teach them things that are only going to make them more proficient. Then they can transfer those skills over to their younger Marines. Taking a train the trainer approach helps disseminate these skills throughout the Marine Corps without the need to send each individual Marine to the formal course. As a sapper instructor I teach military operations on urban terrain, said Irons. Combat engineers focus on breaching in MOUT, but with this training I can teach them more about the shooting aspect of it. I have four combat deployments to Afghanistan and have gone through other MOUT courses before and Im still learning something new here every day. More Media So on Monday, the Treasury closed "one of the most insidious loopholes out there": corporate inversions, by which US firms merge their way into friendlier tax jurisdictions. President Obama, lawmakers and presidential candidates for both parties have clamored for action to end this alleged scourge and ensure multinational companies pay their "fair share" of taxes. Politically, it's an easy sell, but reality is much more nuanced. We wholeheartedly agree America's tax code is ripe for reform, and the spate of inversions is evidence of that. Yet the Treasury's latest measures strike us as a solution in search of a problem. Not only are inversions not the black hole most presume, but there is a creeping trend of the government "reinterpreting" existing law to select specific winners and losers-often without much warning-which can raise uncertainty. While this isn't enough to wallop the bull market and the new rules' unintended consequences shouldn't much knock the economy, investors should be aware all the same. A corporate inversion is when a US company merges with a smaller foreign firm and adopts its address to avoid paying domestic taxes on foreign earnings. Many do this instead of upping sticks and redomiciling abroad, which is usually a long, costly and painful process-mergers are a handy short-cut. Inversions aren't illegal, but politicians hate them since they love maximizing tax revenue. Hence the White House has been chipping away at inversions, in the name of "economic patriotism." In 2014, the Treasury started targeting several inversion tactics, like tinkering with how companies calculate their size, e.g., making their foreign targets look bigger. This made it more difficult for foreign companies to "stuff" their balance sheet so their shareholders own at least 20% of the new company, the minimum for an inversion (though tax benefits don't really kick in unless the foreign firm's shareholders own at least 40% of the new company). This crackdown continued in late 2015 as the Treasury posed several more obstacles to inversions. They made it more difficult for US companies to buy a firm in Country B and subsequently move to Country C, and they restricted inverted companies from shielding pre-existing foreign operations from American taxes. Yet these were mostly symbolic and barely curbed the practice. The Treasury's latest proposal has more teeth. For one, in measuring foreign firms' market cap to determine whether a merger qualifies the US firm for a foreign address, the rule will exclude stock foreign firms issued within the last three years to merge with American firms-making it a clampdown on so-called serial inverters. Unlike the prior tweaks, which didn't retroactively change the math, pretending firms are the same size they were three years ago limits the pool of inversion candidates-and killed a certain ginormous inversion deal between Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Allergan. The Treasury also put constraints on the practice known as "earnings stripping," which companies use to help lower their tax rates. Currently, all foreign-based multinationals (inverted or not) can make loans to their US subsidiaries. The interest payments on these loans can be deducted from taxable income, thereby allowing these companies to reduce their overall tax liability, like income subject to America's 35% corporate tax rate. This announcement elicited a much larger outcry, as its reach extends far beyond those pesky inverters. (More on this momentarily.) Contrary to what many politicians argue, corporate inversions aren't economic bogeymen bleeding Uncle Sam dry. Companies don't invert to avoid paying all taxes-they still pay US rates on profits booked domestically, just as they always did. Inverting simply lets them avoid US taxes on profits earned abroad-an atypical practice, with the US only one of three[i] developed countries to tax foreign earnings. While individual companies stand to reap significant tax windfalls through inversions, the aggregate impact on government coffers isn't terribly large. Though it is tough to estimate just how much inversions are costing the country, as there is no counterfactual, one group in 2014 put the number at about $20 billion over the next 10 years. That's $2 billion a year-sounds like a lot! But consider: in the current fiscal year through February 29, 2016, a period of four months, the US took in almost $600 billion in individual income taxes alone. Plus, foreign earnings are taxed only if brought back to the US. As a result, many US-based multinational firms never repatriate them, instead investing and saving abroad. To the extent they do so, inverting avoids a tax they weren't going to pay anyway. The evidence the country is missing out on huge sums of shielded taxes just isn't there. While some deride these firms for wanting to bring foreign earnings home tax-free, there is a pretty huge silver lining: Those earnings get invested here, when they otherwise wouldn't. In that way, inversions help raise business investment, despite widely held fear to the contrary. Killing inversions thus discourages businesses from investing here. The new "earnings stripping" rule does the same. For all the furor over the tax advantages of multinationals' loans to US subsidiaries, those lent funds are invested here-in equipment, facilities, software systems, R&D, you name it. And they just became more expensive for all multinational companies, while closer regulatory scrutiny adds to compliance costs. This is the very definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face, and some suggest curtailing this practice could also hit outright foreign-owned, non-inverted businesses, too. More broadly, the Treasury's moves discourage risk-taking. They are an example of what we call "government creep"-the rising trend of government agencies changing more and more rules, often without much oversight or public input. When Congress makes rules, it's a lengthy public process. Politicians debate, folks comment on the pros and cons, and actual implementation rolls out at a future date-all of which reduce the surprise power. When Congress delegates rule-writing to the Fed or Executive agencies, it's shadowier, but there is often a public comment period between the proposed and final rules-much as there was with the DoL's new standards for investment professionals working with retirement accounts. But the Treasury's move was different: an Executive agency making decisions behind closed doors, with no public comment and immediate implementation. Oh, and they're retroactive. If you're a business owner, and government agencies do this a lot, how can you plan? The merger that died this week was announced five months ago. Seeing rules change suddenly and retroactively raises uncertainty and makes firms less apt to take risk, as it becomes all but impossible to measure future reward. We aren't yet at a point where this kills business investment, but the Treasury's moves do set a precedent. If more agencies follow their lead and change the rules on a whim, uncertainty and risk-aversion could snowball. It's an if, but an if worth considering. Again, the Treasury's recent action doesn't pack a wallop that could threaten this economic expansion or bull market. Discouraging multinationals from investing here is a negative, but a minor one, and America has more than enough going for it to offset the tax headwinds. Dynamite human capital, free markets, strong property rights and geography make investing here worthwhile whether or not Uncle Sam reaches a bit deeper into businesses' pockets. But it could be sowing the seeds for something bigger down the line, and that's something we'd suggest investors bear in mind. The More Corrupt the State, the More Numerous the Laws By Nick Giambruno Today, Im going to share one of the most important things Ive learned traveling around the world: Theres a crucial difference between committing a real crime and breaking the law. Ive seen it firsthand in the Middle East as well as many other places. The difference is huge and few people understand it. While laws vary dramatically across countries, almost every country in the world universally considers real crimes immoral. A real crime involves harm or the threat of harm to person or property. Think murder, theft, or arson. Virtually every government prohibits real crimes. Most also prohibit a lot of other things When someone breaks the law, its often not a real crime at all. He may have merely violated a particular governments law without threatening or harming anyone or anything. Keep in mind that the idea of a victimless crime is an oxymoron. If there is no victim, there is no real crime. Insulting the Dear Leader in North Korea, being a woman whos driving a car in Saudi Arabia, or possessing certain plants in the U.S. government all violate laws. But none of these activities harm or threaten people or property. Theyre not real crimes. They simply violate the laws of certain governments. Of course, I am not suggesting that anyone break the law anywhere, even if it wouldnt harm people or property. As a practical matter, its foolhardy to violate any governments laws while youre within its reach. That is, unless you prefer the lifestyle of an outlaw or a martyr. It would be risky to disparage the Dear Leader while in North Korea, or to possess an unapproved plant in the U.S., and so forth. Distinguishing between real crimes (i.e., harming or threatening to harm people or property) and breaking the law is critical to your personal freedom. The next step is for you to minimize your exposure to arbitrary, make-believe crimes invented by your home government. You can do this by diversifying internationally. That means moving some of your savings abroad in the form of physical gold to a safe jurisdiction, owning real estate in another country, opening foreign bank/brokerage accounts, and obtaining a second passport, among other things. Taking these steps will significantly dilute the power bureaucrats in your home country have over you. This is what this publication is all about: maximizing your personal freedom and worldwide financial opportunities. The more laws, regulations, and edicts your home government subjects you to, the more important it is to diversify internationally. This problem is particularly obvious in the U.S., where every level of government is continually passing more lawsespecially the federal government. There are so many vague, overly broad federal laws criminalizing mundane activities that its impossible for anyone to be 100% compliant. Many people think felonies only consist of major crimes like robbery and murder. But that isnt true. An ever-expanding mountain of laws and regulations has criminalized even the most mundane activities. Its not as hard to commit a felony as you might think. Many victimless crimes are felonies. A study by civil liberty lawyer Harvey Silverglate found that the average American inadvertently commits three felonies a day. Today, there are thousands of federal crimes, and the number is constantly increasing. It brings to mind the words of the great Roman historian Tacitus: The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. Heres what Doug Casey says. Corruption can be defined as the taking of bribes of one type or another by officials in order to allow subjects to avoid taxes or regulations. Political corruption doesn't, therefore, occur in totally free markets simply because there's no taxation or regulation to avoid. Inevitably, and completely predictably, the more taxed and regulated a society is, the more necessarily corrupt it is. Today in the U.S., the government wont necessarily go after you if you break a law. After all, most everyone has technically broken some law. Instead, the government decides whom to go after and chooses which laws to enforce. A creative prosecutor can always find some crime to charge you with if he looks hard enough. This doesnt sound like the land of freedom and opportunity. It sounds like an out-of-control government. If you think its bad now, just wait until American politicians get even more financially desperate. Like most governments in financial trouble, we think the U.S. will keep choosing the easy optionmoney printing on a massive scale. This is a huge threat to your financial security. Politicians are playing with fire and inviting a currency catastrophe. The socio-political consequences are likely to be even more severe than the financial ones. This is a big reason why we think everyone should own some gold. Gold is the ultimate form of wealth insurance. It has preserved wealth through every kind of crisis imaginable. It will preserve wealth during the next crisis, too. But, if you want to be truly crisis-proof, there is much more you can do... Weve put together a comprehensive handbook explaining the other essential and easy-to-follow steps you can start taking today. Click here to download the PDF. Casey Research Archive 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. Crude Oil Price $85 Forecast By Christmas After a 50 percent rally in oil prices between February and March, crude has retreated a bit as of late. The upcoming OPEC-Russia meeting in Doha looms over the markets, but few expect the outcome to have any material impact on supply and demand. Global supply still exceeds demand, but there are solid signs that the overhang is finally starting to ease. Storage levels are high, but are expected to come down. Where does that leave us? With so many energy investors unsure of where the markets are heading, Oilprice.com decided to get in touch with Mike Rothman at Cornerstone Analytics - a macro energy research firm that has produces some of the most accurate data out there. Oil prices may be gyrating up and down, but Mr. Rothman provided some juicy clues for investors, highlighting some key near-term trends for crude oil. A few topics covered: "Missing" IEA oil barrels Why oil markets are tighter than people think What to expect from the OPEC-Russia meeting in Doha Why oil prices could spike Where investors should put their money Mr. Rothman's prediction for oil prices at the end of 2016 Oilprice.com: The IEA has been accused of overestimating global supplies. The WSJ says that somewhere around 800,000 barrels per day are unaccounted for, meaning they are not consumed nor have they ended up in storage. Are these "missing" barrels a big deal? Mike Rothman: The issue has not been one of the IEA over-estimating supply, but rather under-estimating demand. There are basically two ways to arrive at figures for global oil demand. The IEA methodology is built on an estimate of GDP and an assumed ratio of oil demand growth to GDP growth. For the emerging markets in particular, that methodology represents a leap of faith since there are >100 countries and close to real time measures for economic activity rank up there with seeing unicorns and leprechauns. Also, in countries where we have better and more timely data for demand and GDP (like the U.S.), we see that oil demand growth to GDP growth ratio fluctuate sharply. The other way to measure usage (which is what we do at Cornerstone Analytics) is to assess how much physical oil the global system is absorbing. It's called "apparent demand." It presumes global oil production data is close to the mark - which is the evident historical pattern - and that inventory changes in the OECD are the proxy for global storage changes. Basically non-OECD countries use oil on a hand-to-mouth basis with the primary exception really being China -- whose stockpiling has actually been smaller than generally believed. "Missing oil" is the gap that we see between econometrically estimated demand and apparent demand. Historically, bouts of "missing oil" are resolved by the IEA revising up its demand series. The underlying issue is generally an underestimation of oil consumption in the non-OECD countries. OP: Are oil markets actually much tighter than everyone thinks? MR: Yes, in the sense that storage is not as high as generally presumed and yes in the sense that OPEC's spare production capacity is much more limited than generally believed. But, to be realistic, because petroleum stocks in the OECD countries (which is the proxy for global stores) are high, there is no real concern in the market about availability, yet. We think this changes starting in the current quarter because we forecast global oil inventories will be drawn down contra-seasonally. OP: What is Saudi Arabia's position coming into the production freeze? Are they winning the oil war - or are they rather desperate at this moment in time? Data compiled by FGE energy consultancy suggests that Saudi Arabia is losing its leadership position in 9 out of 15 of its major markets . MR: Our sense is that Saudi Arabia put itself in a position whereby it will wait for global supply/demand to rebalance itself. Most market watchers don't really understand that back in 2014, the Saudi aim was about coercing a handful of OPEC countries to make production cuts to counter what was a collapse in the "financial demand" for oil. While Saudi Arabia has been burning through $12-$15 billion per month from its financial reserves to fund government spending through this period, it seems the policy is that the path to a much higher price (and higher revenue) will come about by allowing for a prolonged low price. OP: What can we realistically expect from the OPEC/non-OPEC meeting in Doha? MR: At most, countries may agree to freeze output, which may sound encouraging but in reality is little more than an agreement of the lowest common denominator since they are basically capacity constrained to begin with. To defend a price, OPEC would need to actively take barrels "out of the hands" of refiners - that is, a production cut, the current prospects for which lie somewhere between slim and none. OP: Do you expect oil to fall back below $30 if Doha turns out to be disappointing? MR: No, but that's partly because we think the oil balance will be transitioning into a deficit in 2Q and because many will come to realize that a production freeze is not a viable plan to cause the oil balance to tighten. OP: The oil industry is making massive cuts in investment. Should we be bracing ourselves for a price shock at some point in time? If yes when do you see this occurring? MR: You cannot cut CAPEX and reduce upstream activity and somehow think future production growth goes unaffected. We forecast non-OPEC supply to contract this year for the first time since 2008. That was a way-out-of-consensus call to make a year-ago when most pundits vigorously argued non-OPEC production would still expand even with the drop in oil prices. What we've communicated to our clients - and those we deal with directly in OPEC - is that the spike down in oil prices is basically setting up an eventual spike up. OP: Will bankruptcies in the U.S. shale industry do anything to balance the market? MR: We expect that it will feed into the contraction we forecast for U.S. output. We also see the credit availability issue as likely being a limiting factor moving forward, sort of like what we saw in 1986 and then again in 1999. OP: Where should investors look if they want to put money in the energy market? What types of companies will perform well over the next year? MR: Since energy equities basically trade as a proxy for the commodity, it's safe to say all boats rise when the tide comes in. The "beta" names typically include the Oil Services sector and E&Ps. The most leveraged play would be the commodity itself (or a vehicle like the USO). OP: Lenders to the oil and gas industry have been fairly lenient with companies. Do you believe that the banks will start to tighten the screws a bit more as the periodic credit redetermination period finishes up? MR: The old joke is that bankers are the guys who will lend you an umbrella and then ask to have it returned as soon as it starts to rain. Yes, we think lending will become much more highly scrutinized and financing less readily available. OP: Can oil break out from $40 per barrel anytime soon? MR: Sure. All it takes is one outage of consequence. More generally, though, we think oil breaches $40 during 2Q as physical evidence becomes available about inventories drawing down globally. OP: Where can you see oil heading over the next 3 months, 6 months and 1 year out? Our target is Brent crude at $85 by the end of 2016. OP: How do you see the U.S. presidential elections impact U.S. oil and gas policies? What could be the most radical change for oil and gas? Ask me after the election... OP: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us Mike. By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com 2016 Copyright OilPrice.com - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors. 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. A film crew from Japan was in Martinsville this week to film a celebrity in the world of science: a famous fossil kept at the Virginia Museum of Natural History (VMNH). The triceratops fossil discovered by Dr. John Happ in 1997 will be featured on the Japanese educational program "Here Comes Darwin" in August. The show runs on NHK, national public and educational network, similar to PBS, said Reina Endo. She is the film crews translator, coordinator and driver. "Here Comes Darwin" is a 30-minute program aired at 7:30 p.m. Sundays in Japan. The filming was under the direction of Kazuki Ueda, the Executive Producer for Nature and Science programs for NHK Enterprises. He was accompanied by Endo; cameraman Yuji Takata; and lights and audio director Hiroshki Nakayama. The crew spent two days at VMNH filming a world-famous triceratops fossil in the museums paleontology collection. The fossil provides "the first evidence of a face-to-face encounter between a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Triceratops, said Dr. John Happ, who discovered it in 1997. It has been at VMNH since 2013. Happ, of Harpers Ferry, is a professor emeritus at Shenandoah University. He was at the museum for the filming. The fossil shows "bite marks in the horn and frill from T-Rex that have healed, so the triceratops survived the encounter," Happ said. "It represents evidence that T-Rex was a predator because it kills live animals, except when the prey can escape (like this triceratops). It probably was also a scavenger." The crew had heard about this fossil, and they were determined to get it on their show, Endo said. "It shows the creature was alive (when attacked) but healed. There are a lot of T-Rex bites (in other fossils), but not with evidence of healing," she said. "This fossil is unique. Its famous," she added. However, the crew had no idea where to find it. "All the paleontologists I contacted didnt know where the fossil was," she said. "I knew Dr. Happ studied it." She called Shenandoah University, where he conducted his research and taught, but by now he is retired. A woman at the university said she did not know how to find Happ, but told Endo that he had family in the area. From Japan, Endo hit phone books from the Shenandoah area. She went down the list of Happs, calling to see if anyone knew him. They say seven is a lucky number, and it was the seventh Happ household Endo called where someone did know him and gave her his phone number, she said. That final piece last month allowed them to "finalize plans to come here." They spent two days at VMNH filming for one segment of one 30-minute show. The crew is spending 25 days filming outside Japan. They have been filming in China, Germany and Illinois, and now they are headed for Los Angeles and Washington state, Endo said. "Its really good that were getting a little bit of attention to the collections we have here," said Dr. Alex Hastings, assistant curator of paleontology at VMNH. With the program being shown and promoted in Japan, and with the Internet able to give it visibility online, its another way the museum can "get connected to the rest of the world to show what can be said for the fossils we have here. These little gems that we have in the museum deserve a chance to shine," Hastings said. DANVILLE A former Hargrave Military Academy student has been arrested in connection with a threat made against the school on social media that was originally linked to ISIS. The suspect has been charged with making a bomb threat against Hargrave. Charges against him stem back to December 2015. On Tuesday, Feb. 16, a message was sent via Facebook alluding to a threat against the all-boys preparatory school that would take place Feb. 19. Classes were cancelled and security on campus was increased as a result of the threat. Pittsylvania County sheriffs deputies and Virginia State Police troopers set up 24-hour barriers around schools entrance to monitor all activity. Hargrave also declared that weekend an open weekend, permitting cadets to leave campus; the remaining cadets at the school had restricted movement within the campuss grounds. Feb. 19 came and went, with no reported suspicious activity to or around the school. After talking with Pittsylvania County Sheriff Mike Taylor, Commonwealths Attorney Bryan Haskins, he and Taylor confirmed that the nature of the threat is criminal, Haskins said. Were going to identify the people who did this, Taylor said. You can rest assured of that. For more information, see Friday's Danville Register & Bee. A Martinsville man was arrested recently in connection with an investigation by the Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (SOVA ICAC). Major Eric Winn of the Henry County Sheriffs Office said in an email: "We received information from authorities in Bedford County regarding a wanted individual, Carlos Vasquez Del Cid, 33, of 1023 Askin Street, Martinsville. Del Cid was located in Henry County and taken into custody. He was transferred to the custody of Bedford County authorities. We arrested him for possession, reproduction, distribution, solicitation, and facilitation of child pornography; and use of communications systems to facilitate certain offenses involving children." A search warrant and related documents filed in Martinsville Circuit Court indicate that a search was conducted at 1023 Askin Street, Martinsville, in search of: "any device, computer, cell phone, electronic media device capable of storing, sending, receiving any digital files, digital images, and video files dealing with the exploitations of children under the age of 18. Any ledger that may contain passwords, account information, user names, or any other information used to document illegal activity." A search inventory indicates these items were seized: "3 assorted CDs/DVDs; 1 L.G. cell phone/media device; 1 Boost Mobile ZTE; 1 white older I phone; 1 Blk cell phone." An affidavit sworn to by Rodney Brisentine, a SOVA ICAC investigator, alleges the following: On March 7, Brisentine was made aware of a subject by the name of Carlos Delcid, who was attempting to contact 13-14-year-old females to have a relationship with them. On March 21, Brisentine, using an undercover account of a 14-year-old female, was contacted via Facebook Messenger by the user name of Carlos Delcid, a man 33 years old. "Delcid was made aware of my (Brisentines) personas age and did not break (off) communications. He mentioned after finding out my personas age, that he wanted to be my boyfriend," Brisentine stated in the affidavit. Between March 21 and March 28, during text message chats, Delcid at various times allegedly either sent explicit images of himself to Brisentines persona or requested explicit images of Brisentines persona. Delcid also allegedly proposed to have sex. During one conversation, Brisentine was able to get a "female Deputy within our office to call him from a recorded line. During the phone conversation it was reiterated, she was getting home from school, and waiting on mom to get home, and that she didnt have a license because she was only 14," Brisentine stated in the affidavit. Brisentine is a sworn law enforcement officer with the Bedford County Sheriffs Office assigned to SOVA ICAC. He has been a certified law enforcement officer for 11.5 years and has been assigned to SOVA ICAC since February 2012. Since being assigned to the task force, he has had more than 200 hours of training in the field of child exploitation. He has conducted multiple investigations, which led to arrests of suspects. Brisentine could not be reached on Thursday. According to online court records, Carlos Vasquez Del Cid is scheduled for arraignment in Bedford General District Court on April 20, with a preliminary hearing set for June 22. On March 22, 2016, the Trudeau Liberals unveiled the first budget of their tenure. From a glance, it appeared as though this was in fact a departure from the Harper era. The document, titled Growing the Middle Class featured everything from tax benefits to low and middle-income families, to an overhaul of EI, to increased First Nations spending and beyond. But is everything as it seems at Parliament Hill? Or do Trudeaus sunny ways come with a not-so-sunny catch? Reversing the Worst of the Harper Years The day following the budgets release, the document was summed up by The Globe and Mail: [Finance Minister] Bill Morneaus first budget opened the spending spigot after years of federal restraint At the heart of the inaugural budget is gamble that more progressive-minded economists are right: Directing billions toward the middle class and the less fortunate will ultimately lead to stronger economic growth To this effect, Trudeaus Liberals have unveiled a bevy of spending commitments ranging from minor pledges to well publicized, big ticket spending. One of those major commitments is the new Canada Child Benefit. As of July, the vast majority of Canadian families can expect larger child benefit cheques in the mail than they previously received. And unlike the current program, the government has said the Canada Child Benefit will be means-tested (the poorer you are, the more youll receive) and tax-free. According the governments figures, nine out of 10 families will see an increase in their payments, with the average annual increase being close to $2,300. Families with income under $30,000 will henceforth receive a maximum benefit of $6,400 per child under six and $5,400 per child between six and 17. The $4.5 billion cost for the program in the next year alone will be partially offset by the shelving of Harpers income-splitting proposal, as well as tax credits for childrens fitness and arts expenses. By replacing these boutique tax proposals, which in many cases went to wealthy families that didnt need them, the government has been able to simplify the system and make it more efficient. Strong parallels could be drawn with the Ontario Liberals, who have recently overhauled education funding in a similar fashion. Although, these cash payments do nothing to solve the lack of availability, and extortionate cost, of childcare in Canada. Another major commitment is an overhaul of the broken EI system in Canada. This comes after months of stubborn insistence from Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley, whose province is racked by high levels of unemployment. The federal government has responded by extending EI for five weeks in 12 regions facing acute unemployment problems. This includes energy-dependent parts of western and northern Canada, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Older workers were promised up to an additional 20 weeks of benefits, meaning a worker could conceivably collect up to 70 weeks of EI. While premiers have complained that parts of hard-hit Saskatchewan and even Edmonton were left out, the overhaul has generally been lauded as a good start. Starting in July, the threshold for the amount of hours a claimant has to have worked will also be lowered from its current level of 910 hours. Other notable commitments include $8.4 billion over five years for First Nations, $675 million over five years for CBC/Radio-Canada, the reopening of the nine Veterans Affairs offices closed under Harper and $3.4 billion over three years for public transit. In a word, the Trudeau government has promised to reverse the most egregious cuts made under the Harper regime. This should serve as a cause for celebration for all those who helped to oust the Conservatives from office in October. For many, this budget will serve as proof that Trudeau honestly intends to grow the economy from the heart outwards. But the question must be posed: how will these promises be afforded? And furthermore, is this an honest change of heart for the capitalists and their party the Liberals? Or is it simply a change of tactics? A New Global Turn? Investment over austerity have become the catchwords of the new Trudeau government. Sunny ways aside, investment over austerity is a simple acknowledgement of what his since become common knowledge to almost everyone. That is, that austerity and monetary stimulus have failed in their intended purpose of reviving the global economy since 2008-09. The strategists of global capital are now bending over backwards to uncover new solutions. But these new solutions are little more than repackaged caricatures of older ones. Austerity is being dismissed for the time being, and from its ashes comes a new mantra borrow and spend! Even the authoritative Economist magazine has been forced to alter its tone. From their February article Fighting the next recession: Unfamiliar ways forward : The growing constraints on monetary policy mean that fiscal fixes and structural reforms that work with the grain of stimulus polices are more urgent than ever. Big and long-running programmes of public capital spending would give private firms greater confidence about future demand and make a sustained recovery more likely Central banks have done their bit. Although more work from them will be vital. It is now time for governments to be bolder. (Our emphasis) These words could have been spoken by Trudeau himself! And this itself should come as no surprise. Committing the country to a program of public spending is what allowed the Liberals to outflank the NDP and form a majority government during the last election. Now they will be forced to put it to the test. The recent budget is only the first cautious step in this direction. Every serious economist is now waiting to see whether Trudeaus multi-billion dollar deficits will translate into sustained economic growth. Their question is the same: will it work? The Multi-Billion Dollar Question The Liberals campaigned on a program of deficit spending during 2015s federal election. Trudeau promised that this would be capped at $10 billion annually. He also repeated that the plan to balance the budget in four years was "very" cast in stone. But this was based on Harper's rosy projections for the economy, which proved to be fantastically wrong. The continued decline in the economy threw Trudeau's plan very quickly into disarray. With his back against a wall, Trudeau was offered a stark choice: either austerity or larger deficits. Afraid of provoking a reaction from his supporters, he chose the latter. The promises he made were then ditched as fast as they were conceived. What was a $10 billion projected deficit has quickly become a $29.4 billion one in the first year approximately triple the original cap. The government then intends to run another $29 billion in the second year, after which it will gradually be reduced to $14 billion by 2020-21. Taken as a whole, the government is intending to run five consecutive deficits at a total sum of $113 billion more than four times the $26.1 billion pledged on the campaign trail. This will take the existing federal debt load to a whopping $733 billion by the fifth and final year. All of the above figures are contingent on modest growth of the Canadian economy, and do not factor in the possibility of a China or Europe led crash. This has given Trudeau room to manoeuvre for the time being. With the extra cash, he has been able to temporarily reverse the worst features the Harper regime. But even the rich kid Trudeau is not so naive as to believe that money comes for free. As we've previously explained, borrowed money must be repaid with added interest to those who lent it. By 2020-21, interest payments on the federal debt will have grown by $9 billion to an incredible $40 billion annually. In other words, Trudeau cannot just dole out money willy-nilly, as he would be forced to claw back even greater amounts to repay creditors in the future. This would invite a backlash from Canadian workers, as they would inevitably be asked to foot the bill. That is where infrastructure spending comes in. The argument is that if spending is targeted at things that can increase productivity (such as the building of bridges or roads), it can stimulate economic growth and thus offset the cost of the increased debt. The Liberals argue that they will achieve just that. There is every reason to be skeptical, however. As weve noted in previous articles, only a small portion of the new cash will be directed at traditional infrastructure in the first place. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Even by the Liberals shoddy definition of infrastructure, this funding only amounts to $4 billion this year and $7.3 billion the next. That would amount to a measly two-tenths of GDP in the first year, and four-tenths in the second. As noted in The Globe and Mail , thats roughly in line with the multiplier effects from the previous Conservative governments infrastructure boost during the last recession. And even then, the Liberals themselves admit that they are unsure how much their new spending will grow the economy. In an annex to the budget, the following is stated: It should be noted that there is some uncertainty, and debate, surrounding the size of fiscal multipliers [how much new spending will grow the economy], In fact, Finance Minister Bill Morneau is reluctant to even label his plan as stimulus, opting instead for long-term growth. That is not because his plan isnt stimulus, it is but because he himself is unsure that it will work. With the Liberals own optimism as our guide, we can confidently say that it will not. Lessons of the Past As noted by Andrew Coyne in The National Post, the next two years will likely see the largest two-year increase in spending, outside of a recession, since 1972-1973. But that is not the only lesson one could draw from the early 1970s. It is important to note how deficits were not always viewed as they are today. In fact, from about the early 70s to the mid-90s, they were considered the rule and not the exception. In 1969, federal debt stood at a remarkably low 23 per cent of GDP (in 2015 it was at an also low 31 per cent). That changed when the debt spigots were thrown open by a man very familiar to the current prime minister his father! With Pierre Trudeau in power, that figure would reach 37.5 per cent by 1983-1984. Under him, the average deficit stood at 2.7 per cent of GDP. But that number was only second to the man that succeeded him Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Under Mulroney, the average deficit stood at 6.7 per cent of GDP. By the time the Progressive Conservatives left office in 1993, the federal debt as a whole had increased to record highs of above 60 per cent of GDP. But this debt binge could not last forever. In 1992, Standard & Poors downgraded its credit rating for Canada, alarmed at rising public debt levels. Moodys would follow by downgrading its credit rating in 1994. In a January 1995 editorial for The Wall Street Journal, Canada was even labeled an honorary member of the Third World. At this point, it became clear to the capitalists that the country was fast approaching a full-on debt crisis. Fearing further instability, clear demands were put on their cronies in office to rectify the situation via austerity. By this point in time, those cronies were the governing Jean Chretien and Paul Martin Liberals. What followed was the inevitable consequence of years of rising debt, and arguably the deepest austerity in Canadian history. It is often forgotten that the most vicious attacks against Canadian workers were not carried out by the Harper Conservatives, but by the Chretien and Martin Liberals. As noted by Brian Lee Crowley in The Globe and Mail: Paul Martins 1995 budget proposed cutting billions in spending while reducing federal government employment by almost a sixth. The absolute dollar amounts of Ottawas total spending fell by more than 7 per cent from 1995 to 1997, while program spending (excluding interest) fell by almost 10 per cent. It was this same approach that became known as the Chretien Consensus in reality a polite label for austerity. The Harper Conservatives only continued what Martin and Chretien had first started. If Trudeau can say he will run deficits, it is only because his predecessors have done the bulk of the dirty work for him. But the lesson remains the same: if Canadian history shows anything, its that borrowing money can only delay austerity. The longer the delay, the more painful the austerity. All Roads Lead to Austerity Finance Minister Bill Morneau is reaching even further into the past to sell his budget. As noted by Barrie McKenna in The Globe and Mail: Finance Minister Bill Morneau recalled the postwar glory days of infrastructure-building from the Trans-Canada Highway to the St. Lawrence Seaway as he rolled out the new spending spree. But as McKenna points out, its not clear that this plan comes anywhere close to matching the grandiose projects that reshaped Canadas physical and economic landscape in the decades after the Great Depression and the Second World War. And how could it be any other way? What Morneau forgets is that the postwar period witnessed the greatest economic boom in capitalisms history, which was itself a result of the Second World War. His government, by contrast, is presiding over the deepest crisis of capitalism in its entire history. Mr. Morneau, as well as the strategists watching him, will soon discover that building infrastructure doesnt travel as far as it did 70 years ago. This government has only slumps to look forward to. This puts the prime minister in a not-so-sunny position. Without any increase in growth, Trudeau will again be faced with the choice: either austerity or more debt. But even if Trudeau were to choose the latter, he could not do so forever. The bosses are not interested in a repeat of the 70s and 80s. They will forcibly apply the brakes the minute they feel things are getting out of control. They need only say austerity, and Trudeau will be ready with his reply of how deep? Trudeau senior may have had room to manoeuvre during his nearly 16 years of power but junior will not be so lucky. 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. 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Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns whatsoever about the way in which your data is being processed by emailing the Data Protection Manager at webmaster@marxist.com FullSizeRender-9.jpg Northampton restaurant workers at a press conference on wage theft at Edwards Church on Main Street, hosted by the Pioneer Valley Workers Center. (Laura Newberry) NORTHAMPTON -- After working in U.S. restaurants for 14 years, Lin Geng said he has never made minimum wage. He's now a sushi chef at a Northampton eatery, where he said he works 48 hours and makes, on average, $9.38 an hour. But that's still an improvement from his first U.S. job in New Jersey, he said, where he made about $4 an hour. "It's not only me. It's other people who I know, my friends, my coworkers at the restaurant -- most don't make minimum wage," he told attendees of a press conference hosted by the Pioneer Valley Workers Center at the Edwards Church in Northampton Thursday. "Besides that, we don't get overtime pay. We don't get sick days. We don't get vacation days. We don't have health insurance." Geng's story reflects findings in the workers center's study released in March -- authored by the center and the University of Massachusetts Amherst Labor Center -- that asserts many Northampton restaurant workers aren't paid a living wage. The press conference was a chance for Northampton restaurant employees to share their stories that helped flesh out the report. At the event, the workers center asked the city to pass a wage theft ordinance that would require employers to disclose outstanding wages owed, and to pay all wages due before receiving or renewing business licenses. Labor law violation is not a trend unique to Northampton or the Pioneer Valley, said Clare Hammonds, a researcher with the UMass Amherst Labor Center who worked on the report. "What has been unique here, is that this is a community with a plethora of locally owned businesses with a commitment to sustainability and ethically, locally grown food," Hammonds said at the press conference. "For this industry to reach its full potential, jobs and restaurants need to have that same kind of commitment to fair wages." The study details the working conditions at 85 Northampton restaurants, drawing from 235 worker surveys and 32 in-depth interviews with employees. The data was collected between March 2014 and March 2016. Hammonds noted that there was no way to collect a random sample of interviews, so the center opted for a "convenient sample" -- contacting people who had just left their jobs at restaurants, approaching workers in their uniforms and asking those already interviewed to bring their co-workers to the center. Bess Hepner, a Northampton server, Smith College student and intern at the workers center, was interviewed for the study. She spoke about one coworker -- a dishwasher and immigrant -- who makes $5.50 an hour. When she surveyed him, he said he didn't know what the minimum wage was. Hepner said her wages have been stolen, too. She said she makes tips but does not receive a paycheck. "When I talk to my boss about it, she says that's because that money goes to taxes on tips," she said. "But I know that's not true." She said many of her co-workers clock 12 hours a day, six days a week. "Northampton keeps a really good secret," she said. "Behind those kitchen doors, most of the workers are undocumented." The findings Wage theft occurs when a employers requires employees to work off the clock, steal tips and don't pay overtime, according to the workers center. Of those interviewed by the center, 78 percent said they were not paid a living wage, or the minimum income necessary to meet their basic needs. In Northampton, that's about $13 an hour. Nearly all of the workers surveyed -- 96 percent -- reported that they did not have access to paid sick and vacation days, while 94 percent did not receive health insurance from their employers. More than 40 percent of workers said their schedule changed frequently, which researchers said "can have significant impacts on workers' lives, particularly when it comes to meeting the responsibilities of children and families." The study said 94 percent of those surveyed didn't receive health and safety training from their employers, and more than half had been burned at work. About a third of Northampton food workers reported being verbally harassed on the job; 35 percent said it was because of their genders and another 30 percent reported that it was due to their race or immigration statuses. A quarter said they were sexually harassed at work. Pearl Silverman, an intern with the workers center, said that when she was 16 she worked at a Northampton restaurant, where she was sexually harassed by a coworker regularly. When she reported the problem to her boss, the repeated incidents were ignored. "I am sharing my story because 235 others shared theirs," she said. Local establishments that have broken labors were not named by employees or the workers center. But one Local Burger worker said he can say "nothing but nice things" about his employer. He said that to the best of his knowledge, the Main Street restaurant abides by all fair labor laws. He asked other Northampton eateries to meet these standards. Jocelyn Jones, former deputy chief of the Fair Labor Division of the state attorney general's office and a local labor lawyer, said that wage theft is "an incredibly systemic problem across the country and across Massachusetts." Jones said that wage theft doesn't only affect employees; it creates an uneven playing field for law-abiding businesses in town, she explained, who pay their taxes and their workers a living wage. She noted that the city of Boston denies city permits to restaurants that steal from workers after Mayor Marty Walsh issued an order protecting against wage theft in the fall of 2014. "If Boston can do it ... with its incredible amount of restaurants ... we can do that here," Jones said. LONGMEADOW Story telling is an ancient craft, and there are fundamentals that really haven't changed that must be met while writing a good story, says one of the presenters at Bay Path University's upcoming Writers' Day, April 16. "The writer must create a character that we are emotionally invested in. When the character faces a conflict, a part of us faces the conflict as well," said Jacqueline Sheehan of Florence, author of such books as "The Center of the World" and "Picture This." "Our values and sensibilities are played out along with the character. We recognize something in ourselves through the story." Writers' Day will feature talks on fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young adult writing, publishing and podcasting as a group of professionals share tips and discuss their own writing process. Presenters include middle-grade novelist Christina Cooper, Virginia writer Bunny Goodjohn, Sheehan, young adult author Dawn Metcalf and short story writer Lisa C. Taylor. New York City literary agent Elise Erickson will discuss her work and offer insights on the agent hunt. A limited number of one-on-one mini-meetings with her are available for those who register for her talk. Full information will be given upon registration. Writers' Day, which takes place every semester, draws a variety of participants from those who don't know how to begin their writing project, to those looking to get published to those who have been published. Each Writer's Day offers new stories, new topics and new opportunities. This is the 13th Writers' Day. IF YOU GO Event: 13th Writers' Day When: April 16 Where: Bay Path University, Longmeadow Cost: One workshop $45; two workshops, $85; three workshops, $115; four workshops, $145 For more information: By phone at (413) 565-1066 or online at baypath.edu/events-calendar/community-events/writers-day Writers' of all levels "will leave with tips, tools and new tactics to take and use in their writing or for getting published," said Briana Sitler, director of special programs at Bay Path University. "Each of our speakers will talk about their topic but will weave in personal experiences on what has worked for them, all of which can be taken and added to any one's 'toolbox.'" Check-in begins at 9 a.m. in D'Amour Hall. There are four session times and six presentation options. Session One from 9:30 to 10:45 a.m. will offer a presentation entitled "So You're Looking For An Agent?" Session Two from 11:05 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. offers a choice of "Image Gold Rush: Mining Photographs for Narratives" and "Audiobooks with ACX: Sounds Fantastic!" The topic of Session Three from 1 to 2:15 p.m. is "Novel 101," and Session Four from 2:35 to 3:50 p.m. offers "Why YA?" or "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Liars, Criminals, and Lovers: The World of the Story/Fiction 101." Coffee will be served in the morning; bring a lunch or visit a nearby restaurant. The cost for one workshop is $45; two workshops, $85; three workshops, $115; and four workshops, $145. Attendees can walk in but registering earlier helps the speakers to prepare better; a small group can be a different presentation from a large group as there is more time for questions and answers. Copies of the authors' books will be available for purchase and signing. "All writers can enhance their writing craft by learning from other writers. If you are a good writer, you are learning constantly," Sheehan said. "We live in an area that is rich with writers. An event like the annual Writers' Day at Bay Path University is an excellent way to take advantage of the wealth of local knowledge and experience." For more information, call (413) 565-1066 or visit baypath.edu/events-calendar/community-events/writers-day. Steve Wynn 2015 Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts, delivers the keynote address at Colliers International Annual Seminar at the Boston Convention Center, in Boston. (Elise Amendola / Associated Press file) Steve Wynn, the man behind plans to build a $2 billion casino resort north of Boston, has often talked about how his gambling palaces focus on the high end. He apparently took it a step further this week during a talk with investors. Seeking Alpha has a transcript, with the following quotes about the high-end spreading quickly through reports and social media: "But unlike Chanel and Louis Vuitton, we are able in our business to cater to all of the market by making our standard so high that everybody wants to in the building," Wynn said. "Or to put it in a more colloquial way, rich people only like being around rich people. Nobody likes being around poor people, especially poor people." Then he added, according to Boston.com: "So we try and make the place feel upscale for everyone. That is to say, we cater [to] the people who have discretion and judgment and give them a choice." Wynn is seeking to build his casino in Everett, which as Boston magazine notes, has a median household income of about $51,000. While the project was once called "Wynn Everett," the mogul is now referring to it as "Wynn Boston Harbor." It will also feature a $28 million Popeye sculpture. At a recent press conference to unveil a new model of the planned casino, Wynn spoke about his focus on the high end portion of the business, and noted that he's never been in a "monopoly market" for casinos. MGM is seeking to open a casino in Springfield, and a tribal casino could open in Taunton in 2017. "We thrive where there's a lot of activity because we take the top end of that. I could care less about Taunton," Wynn told reporters. As for Plainridge Park Casino, the lone slots parlor in Massachusetts that opened in June 2015, Wynn dismissively said, "Plainridge is a box of slots." Wynn has been warring with the city of Somerville over traffic and air quality concerns raised by Mayor Joe Curtatone. Wynn recently made peace with Boston Mayor Marty Walsh after a legal battle over the casino, which sits on a parcel close to some Boston-owned land. See a gallery of the model of Wynn Boston Harbor below. lackland.jpg The scene outside a shooting at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio the morning of April 8. (Bexar County Sheriff's Department) An airman shot his commander at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas this morning, according to multiple media reports citing anonymous sources. The Bexar County Sheriff's office tweeted at 9:50 a.m. that officers were responding to reports of a shooting at the base. Within half an hour deputies were on scene clearing buildings, authorities reported. Two people died in the shooting, the Sheriff's office said. CNN reported that the lockdown at the base has been lifted and the threat is over. Authorities have not formally released any details on the attack. But officials speaking on the condition of anonymity have said that a commander was shot by an airman, both of whom were found dead. CNN and the Associated Press both gave that description of the attack; the Associated Press described the shooting at a "apparent murder-suicide." The Air Force Times reported that an airman shot a commander earlier this morning, citing internal Pengaton communications. An unnamed federal official told the Associated Press that the shooting was not an act of terrorism. herlocker mug.jpg U.S. District Judge Mark Mastroianni sentenced 41-year-old Daniel Herlocker of Brattleboro, Vermont, to two years of probation for "acquiring and obtaining controlled substances by deception and subterfuge," federal prosecutors said. Herlocker was a nurse at Baystate Franklin Medical Center when he stole powerful painkillers from the Greenfield hospital, according to authorities. Herlocker was fired from the hospital and admitted to his crimes in a plea deal with federal prosecutors that spared him prison time. (Facebook) SPRINGFIELD A former Massachusetts nurse who stole painkillers from a Franklin County hospital was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Springfield. U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni sentenced 41-year-old Daniel Herlocker of Brattleboro, Vermont, to two years of probation, including three months of home confinement, for "acquiring and obtaining controlled substances by deception and subterfuge," federal prosecutors said. In fall 2014, Herlocker, then a nurse at Baystate Franklin Medical Center, stole pain medication from the Greenfield hospital's automated drug-dispensing machine, prosecutors said. Authorities say Herlocker diverted Dilaudid and morphine, both powerful painkillers, from cartridge units known as carpujects, which were stored in the drug-dispensing machine. He then used needles to syphon the drugs from the carpujects, replacing the medications with sterile saline solution, prosecutors said. Herlocker was fired as soon as hospital officials learned of his actions, according to Baystate Health spokesman Ben Craft. An exhaustive investigation determined that no patients were harmed by Herlocker's actions, Craft said. U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz, whose office prosecuted the case, said charges were brought against Herlocker as part of the federal government's response to the growing opioid crisis in Massachusetts and other New England states. "Theft of controlled substances by medical professionals not only puts patients at risk when they are deprived of their medication, but also fuels the pipeline of illegal prescription opioids," Ortiz said. bishop.photo.JPG Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, is shown speaking about a new major document from Pope Francis, titled "The Joy of Love". (Peter Goonan / The Republican) SPRINGFIELD -- Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski said Friday that a new major document released by Pope Francis brings the message that the church welcomes all - regardless of situations such as remarriage after divorce -- and reflects the stance: "Never cut anybody off." Rozanski, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, commented on the Pope's long-awaited apostolic exhortation titled "Amoris Laetitia" (The Joy of Love), while meeting with media representatives at the Holy Spirit Chapel behind St. Michael's Cathedral. Pope Francis did not specifically end a ban on giving Communion to remarried divorcees and did not change the church's stance against gay marriage. But the Pope did encourage priests to show "pastoral discernment" in the "complicated" situations of their parishioners, according to an excerpt. Rozanski said his preliminary review of the new document clearly showed that Pope Francis wants all to be welcomed into the church and to be shown a "pastoral heart" regardless of their situations that might be contrary to church teachings. "What Pope Francis is saying is: look at the individual, look at the situation he or she finds their self in, and approach that in a pastoral way," Rozanski said. "So, never cut anybody off. Jesus in the Gospel, never cut anybody off no matter what sin they had. Jesus approached he person and engaged the person." Pope Francis is a pastor at heart, Rozanski said. "He knows that life is not in neat little packages," Rozanski said. "He knows there are so many situations that people face. And what Pope Francis is saying let's approach each of these situations in a pastoral way." Regarding what local pastors may do in response to the Pope's document, Rozanski said for many, it affirms what they have been doing all along. Rozanski said the Pope's message also tells parishioners, "Don't cut yourself off from the church because the church is there for everyone." The Pope does allow for pastors to consider the "rights of individual conscience" in matters such as parishioners who have remarried after divorce and may wish communion, Rozanski said, not being specific. Today, were celebrating a new chapter in MWAs long and proud tradition of connecting people to Montanas special places that deserve protection. Were celebrating the states first-ever online, statewide trail guide http://hikewildmontana.org. Made possible by a generous grant from the Montana Office of Tourism, http://hikewildmontana.org is a one-stop, comprehensive tool for finding a trail in just about any given area across the state, east or west. Hikewildmontana.org allows users to: Discover trails recommended by local residents. Locate trails on an electronic map. Choose a perfect path based on distance and elevation gain. View waterfalls, badlands, ancient forests, big views, and other natural wonders. Review trail conditions added by recent hikers and add their own trip reports. Contribute their own trail descriptions. Find a great place near the trailhead to stay for the night or have breakfast, a burger, or a beer. I encourage you to read more about the guide or check out hikewildmontana.org now and see all the great hikes that await, either in your backyard or the next time you visit Montana. See you on the trail. Brian Sybert, MWA executive director Students, educators, and business professionals from around Montana and parts of Idaho learned more about geographic information systems (GIS) as Great Falls hosted this years 2016 Intermountain GIS Conference GIS: Expedition to Discovery http://magip.org/Intermountain2016 The conferences theme focused on the Lewis & Clark Expedition in Great Falls and around Montana. The three-day event served as an introduction to GIS education and training. Geographic Information Systems https://www.gislounge.com/what-is-gis/ use information, such as an address or point of location, which is translated into a map that allows the user to create and interact with the geographical data. By Keeley Van Middendorp Full Story: http://www.kpax.com/story/31668852/educators-look-to-future-of-gis-mapping-technology When Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) on Tuesday signed into law religious freedom legislation that gay rights groups and the states businesses called discriminatory, some awaited the inevitable push back from Silicon Valley companies. Jon Swartz, USA TODAY Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2016/04/06/tech-flexes-new-found-political-muscle-analysis/82675406/ *** Tester, Bullock Invite PayPal to Open up Shop in Montana http://www.matr.net/article-71090.html The Montana Code School announces Kelly Nash, a graduate from the Montana Code Schools inaugural cohort, its first Executive Director. Montana businesses such as Wisetail Works and Cedar Mountain Software have already taken advantage of the beginning talent pipeline of junior level computer programmers. Interested students can apply at the Montana Code School website: http://www.montanacodeschool.com. Full Story: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/04/prweb13308701.htm Not something we send out every day but this is important for Great Falls. The Sip and Dip is in a national challenge that has come down to TWO Montana bars. Our opponent: Club Moderne in Anaconda, MT. This is the second-annual Big Tap: Historic Bars Tournament, where 32 drinking establishments go against one another in a raucous, rousing, single-elimination format to become Americas Favorite Historic Bar. Please take a moment to go online and vote. Its simple. We KNOW the Sip and Dip is Americas Favorite and we KNOW that Anaconda will be a fierce opponent. Please go vote! Click here http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0014R9Jx94fb2jAOzKpJ_YfDjyQnD34C710RgWenm2i7RKj6kqTsXTRTLn7CpVYzQ41fIGkrXgm-XONbjMmi7o_qhuTrXxkvXpr3uZUsqTz1aB1gAAxD6CzbaGoLEKD-BfkTHDuBu6-09f5oqEKmCjd20cdfBSnZt1km3vQw0w55_Y=&c=&ch= Jolene Schalper [email protected] http://www.GFDevelopment.org 1-406-750-4481 Economic Growth, Diversification and High Wage Jobs Montanas first Accredited Economic Development Organization. We provide SBA 504 Real Advantage loans statewide. GFDA and High Plains Financial are Equal Opportunity Lenders. http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1101450799075&ca=83d9e501-1dc9-486e-96be-d1b311163409 Montana Community Finance Corporations (MCFC) Board Chairman, Dustin Barber, of Opportunity Bank of Montana in Bozeman, announced today the retirement of Linda Kindrick, Executive Director, effective April 30, 2016. "It has been a real blessing to serve this organization as well as the small businesses and lenders of the state of Montana for the past 11 years", said Linda Kindrick. "The opportunity has presented itself for me to retire and spend time with my family, near and far, and I am excited to take advantage of it. I know the organization remains in good hands with the current employees and board of directors while the search starts for a new Executive Director." According to Dustin, "Linda has been instrumental in the achievements of MCFC over the past decade. Her leadership, dedication and expertise have helped incubate small business success across our great state, which serves as a pillar in Montanas collective economic success. On behalf of the Board of Directors, we wish Linda the absolute best in her retirement and look forward to ushering her legacy into a new era of success at MCFC." MCFC is a Certified Development Company (CDC) licensed and regulated by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to deliver the 504 Loan Program in Montana. The 504 Loan Program offers businesses long term, low down payment and fixed rate financing to buy or construct their building or purchase their large equipment. SBA created this financing package to stimulate private sector investment in real estate and/or large equipment which increases productivity, creates new jobs, and increases the local tax base. MCFC works in partnership with lenders to provide the financing. During Lindas tenure, MCFC has obtained SBA approval on 142 loans to Montanas small businesses totaling $68,664,000. By partnering with lenders, these dollars have been leveraged and combined with borrower contributions and lender financing to support $190,027,018 in total project costs. Borrowers have used the funds to acquire buildings and equipment for their operations. According to data provided by the business owners, 746 new jobs have been created. Prior employment levels were reported at 2,016 for a total job impact of 2,762. Sherry ODonnell of MCFC will serve as Interim Executive Director while the Board searches for a new Executive Director. With Sherrys vast experience and extensive knowledge about MCFC and the SBA 504 Loan Program, the companys stability and continuity will continue to help businesses take the next step. To learn more about the 504 program, check out their website at http://www.mtcommunityfinance.org. For those interested in applying for the position, email your letter of interest and resume to [email protected] McDowell County sheriffs deputies need the publics help locating the person responsible for stealing $4,600 worth of equipment from the state. Doug Phillips, an employee of the N.C. Department of Transportation, reported Tuesday that someone broke into a storage trailer and his work truck while they were parked at a DOT storage area at 8000 U.S. 221 North. Taken were two sets of AND scales, two calibration weights, a Geiger counter, tool cases, a Dewalt power drill and batteries and a Milwaukee power drill. Pictured here are a set of scales, calibration weights, the Geiger counter and a measuring tool. The break-in and theft occurred sometime between 4 p.m. on Thursday, March 24 and 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 5. Anyone with information about the crime, suspect or whereabouts of the equipment is asked to call Detective Paul Alkire at the Sheriffs Office at 652-2237 or McDowell County Crimestoppers at 65-CRIME (652-7463). Now, you can also text your tips to Crimestoppers. Text MCDOWELLTIPS and your information to 274637 (CRIMES). With Crimestoppers, your identity remains anonymous, and you could receive a cash reward. 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. Colorado Springs Gone may be the days of waiting rooms and completing stacks of paperwork all for just new prescription eyeglasses. As many with poor vision have experienced, going to get your eyes tested can be a time consuming and arduous task. Though a startup company in Colorado is looking to change that perception by launching an on-demand eye exam service that comes to you, whether it be your home or office. Newly launched PUPIL, has taken the Optometrists office and fit it into a portable travel case which houses five or so devices that PUPIL claims are just as accurate as your eye doctors. After patients make an appointment via PUPILs website, a Certified ParaOptometric Technician arrives with said travel case in hand to oversee a 30 minute exam. Preformed by a technician- not an eye doctor- the data is then securely transmitted to a remote Optometrist who then prescribes new eyeglasses (if needed), or refers the patient to a local physician for further evaluation. The on-demand mobile vision exam is largely made possible by advancements in medical technology which are making devices smaller and smarter. Data collected by PUPIL is instantly transferred from devices to a secure network for doctor review anywhere in the world. With the majority of individuals not seeing their current eye doctor as advised, PUPIL hopes to expand the reach of Optometry by making simple vision screenings more accessible, and less dreadful. While PUPIL clearly states that their service is not a replacement for a comprehensive eye exam, technicians also capture images of the Retina and preform IntraOcular pressure tests to screen for ocular pathologysimilar to that in nature of an exam preformed by an Optometrist in-office. PUPIL states that these tests are conducted to better assess ocular and refractive eye health, though not intended to provide diagnosis of eye disease, or replace your eye care practitioner. A PUPIL eye exam will run $75 per patient (insurance not accepted) and spectacle prescriptions are typically written within 48 hours. Starting April 25th only patients in the Colorado Springs area will be able to make an appointment, however the company promises expansion in the coming months. PUPIL joins a list of innovative telemedicine companies aiming to better improve access to care without the hassle of a typical doctors office. For more information on PUPILs mobile eye exams, visit: http://www.pupil.vision/ by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, April 7, 2016 Omnicom Group is extending its TBWA\WorldHealth, brand which is absorbing two established Omnicom healthcare agenciesLLNS and Corbett. Sharon Callahan has been appointed CEO of the expanded entity but will continue to serve as Chief Client Officer of the Omnicom Health Group. A 30-year healthcare veteran, Callahan previously served as CEO of LLNS. She was also president of the Healthcare Businesswomens Association, the industrys largest professional organization, for two years, and sits on the boards of a number of healthcare related organizations, including the Coalition for Healthcare Communications. And Robin Shapiro, formerly president of Corbett, will serve as Group President, North America, of the new operation. TBWA\WorldHealth is the newest integrated global network within Omnicom Health Group, said Ed Wise CEO of OHG. Healthcare is transforming before our eyes, and itss ripe for an agency has a confident point of view about how to communicate around 21st century healthcare. Other holding companys feel the same way and have been aggressively expanding their healthcare brands. In recent weeks WPP has acquired two healthcare-focused agencies, including health and pharma media agency CMI. And in February WPPs Grey acquired healthcare app specialist The Lathe, which is being integrated into GreyHealth Group. And last November Publicis Groupe acquired PDI CSO which was added as a division of Publicis Healthcare, focusing on building customized, omnichannel healthcare sales, service, and clinical teams. According to a recent report from Deloitte, health spending is accelerating as the global economy recovers from prolonged recession, rising an average of 5.2% a year from 2014 to 2018 to $9.3 trillion. Whats exciting is that interest in health and wellness is also creating opportunities for communications in adjacent categories like food, beauty, technology, and retail, said John Wren, President and CEO, Omnicom Group. The formation of TBWA\WorldHealth creates new possibilities for us to serve more clients at the convergence of healthcare. The company asserts that the newly combined TBWA\WorldHealth offers clients significantly greater scale and resources. The agency will strengthen its presence in New York, while adding full-service offices in Chicago, San Francisco and Irvine, California to complement existing TBWA\WorldHealth offices in London, Paris, Hamburg, Istanbul and Mexico City. by Thom Forbes @tforbes, April 8, 2016 In a move thats being hailed by one analyst as unusual for its foresight, Victorias Secret is laying off 200 people and reorganizing into three business units Victorias Secret Lingerie, PINK and Victorias Secret Beauty while its at the top of its game. But another is less appreciative of the moves hailed by Leslie H. Wexner, chairman and CEO of parent L Brands. Coming off a record year, now is the best time to make improvements going from best to even better, says Wexner in a press release announcing the changes. We are making these changes to accelerate our growth and to strengthen the business for the long term by narrowing our focus and simplifying our operating model. Wexner assumed the duties of longtime CEO Sharen Jester Turney after she resigned unexpectedly in February. The heads of each of the new units will report directly to Wexner. Its a really forward-thinking perspective that we dont often see with retailers these days, Sonia Lapinsky, a director in the retail practice of consulting firm AlixPartners, tellsUSA Todays Hadley Malcolm. Victoria's Secret is doing well and this is the perfect time to be laser focused and make sure they continue to go win the strategic places theyre best at. Another analyst, however, indicates that the Victorias Secret brand is in danger of getting as overexposed as one of its famous models, as Lisa Fickenscher puts it for the New York Post. The 500-pound gorilla of the lingerie world, with its 1,118 stores across the U.S., has run out of room to grow and faces stiffer competition than in the past, the analyst said. Indeed, Credit Suisse retail analyst Christian Buss says theres less clarity about the company than at any time over the last three years, Fickenscher reports. Founded in 1977, Victorias Secret has long been the leader in the womens lingerie market, with $1.1 billion in revenues in 2015, Phil Wahba writes in Fortune. But as reported last month by Fortune, there is a lot of competition from up and coming brands, and even established brands like American Eagle Outfitters Aerie. L Brands says it will eliminate certain unspecified merchandise categories and focus resources on core merchandise where it sees the most potential. The company also says it will integrate the direct business as a primarily digital channel within the Victorias Secret and PINK businesses and put more focus on loyalty programs and brand-building engagement rather than traditional catalogs and offers. The rationale is that it is align[ing] with how customers engage with the brands. Which means, presumably, that the Internet is here to stay. In de-emphasizing the catalog, Victorias Secret is signaling that the glossy publication is no longer as effective a selling tool another example of the Internet eroding print institutions. Even so, Victorias Secret sales exceeded predictions last month, Nick Turner points out for Bloomberg. Victorias Secret same-store sales grew 2% in March as a decline in the beauty segment was offset by growth in PINK and lingerie. The company also said the shift of the Easter holiday into March this year from April last year hurt results, Joshua Jamerson reports in the Wall Street Journal. Analysts, on average, expected 1.4% growth in March, according to Consensus Metrix. Company wide, same-store sales rose 3% at L Brands, also the parent of Bath & Body Works and La Senza. Analysts, on average, had expected 1.52%. L Brands said total company sales increased 4.7% to $1.03 billion in March. The job cuts at the companys corporate offices in Columbus, Ohio, and New York City affect just a fraction of the 87,900 employees, the AP points out in its story. Wexner appears to be a bit less heartless. I am certain that these changes are necessary for our industry-leading brands to reach their significant potential nonetheless, decisions about people are the most difficult ones to make, and we are taking care to support associates who are being affected by these changes, he says in the statement. Meanwhile, in a footnote to yesterdays coverage of a Gucci ad being banned in the U.K. because the model appeared to be unhealthily thin, model Erin Heatherton recently told Time magazine's Motto site that she was told to lose weight while preparing for two Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows, which led her to struggle with her body image, Tracy Swartz reports in the Chicago Tribune. Reps for Victoria's Secret didn't respond to a Tribune request for comment, Swartz says. To no ones surprise, ad blocking, fraud, viewability and transparency issues took center stage on Tuesday at the Advertising AgeDigital Conference. Positioned as elephants in the room, these are threats the advertising industry is contending with in different ways. Theres an existential threat from every corner of our business, Lou Paskalis, Bank of America's SVP, enterprise media executive, told the audience. For me, the biggest threat is that weve lost the plot of what were supposed to be doing: delighting and inspiring. Regarding the "elephants," Paskalis thinks that ad fraud will eventually be solved, but ad blocking is a real canary in the coal mine for us. He said that getting better at storytelling is a key to this problem: No one ever said thank God, theres an ad on my mobile phone.' But weve seen people engrossed in content on their phones. Thats the business we have to get into. Ron Amram, Heineken's VP of media, is worried about everything: The elephant in the room for me is that consumers dont feel passionate about brands and their content anymore. We have to change how we serve up our advertising and our content. There's No Single Source of Truth The biggest issue for David Cohen, Magna Global's president, North America? We dont have a single source of truth in this business. Pick whatever it is planning, execution and measurement. There are single-point solutions and we have to stitch them together. The platforms, players and ad tech are complicated, Cohen said. Paskalis said breakdowns in trust and transparency issues over fees may be more of an issue for medium and smaller advertisers that dont know what questions to ask themselves: Do I trust my agency? Do I trust the operating model? Am I having the right conversations? Paskalis said he has a great relationship with his Publicis agencies. However, he's very concerned about transparency issues within the advertising industry at large. Heinekens Amram cited former Mediacom CEO Jon Mandels shot over the bow last year at an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) forum last year. Mandel cited widespread agency rebates and kickbacks that Amram said has changed the conversation: Youve seen a change in the way agencies talk about themselves. But the 4As [American Association of Advertising Agencies] and the ANA cant agree on what transparency is. Were not speaking the same language. That leads to trust issues. If there wasnt an issue, why are we acting the way were acting? The Agency/Client/Vendor Relationship: It's Personal Cohen made the trust issue simple by suggesting that marketers and agencies need to think about their relationships just like they think about their personal relationships: You and your spouse have to trust that youre not cheating on one another and spending money without their knowledge that [thinking] needs to permeate the business. Cohen said he feels fortunate that IPG, Magnas holding company, cleaned up its agency model a dozen years ago or so in reference to transparency around preferred provider relationships. Were one of the first to be open in our programmatic offerings. We dont take principal positions in that business. Once you have inventory on your books, you have an agenda to sell it. With respect to potential conflicts of interests -- how increasingly, media buyers are also the sellers -- Cohen said, it is absolutely possible to run a business on both sides of the equation if you have integrity and are open with clients. You may have an agency that has a content production offering thats part of the holding company. As long as my media planners arent co-opted and can make a fair choice about whats best for me, its okay, Paskalis said. What bothers him is if an agency says that advertisers have to buy some media from column B in a preferred relationship scenario. Amram agreed: If you have a preferred vendor relationship and I can walk away and see all the other vendors, that works for me. The concern is if the agency or vendor isnt upfront about preferred relationships. Viewability Is More Easily Solved Than Ad Fraud Cohen, Amram and Paskalis perceive viewability to be a different issue than ad fraud. Viewablity is did the consumer have an opportunity to view the ad?" said Paskalis. "And it has to be adjacent to content. To a large degree, viewablity is being solved via tools and services offered by Moat, Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify and others, Amram noted, citing the Media Ratings Councils terms and conditions as a basic floor. All three executives agreed that fraud isnt easily solved and its not going away. Were actually funding the success of the fraudsters, and theyre going to universities and recruiting mathematicians and promising them jobs," Paskalis said. "We have to work harder as clients and agencies to stop the fraud." Finally, as programmatic media buying becomes de rigueur, the myth is that machines rather than people will be doing all the media planning and buying. Cohen said there will be a migration to mobile, search, content and programmatic specialists, where most of the growth is at the agency level. He views this as a redistribution of resources rather than an all-out elimination of people. We call it programmanual, Cohen said. by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, April 8, 2016 Omnicom Media Group today took the wraps off of its new media agency network, which has been in the works since the firm won the bulk of Procter & Gambles estimated $2.6 billion North America media assignment back in December. P&G is the charter client -- although the new agency, dubbed Hearts & Science, is preparing to take on other clients, as well. The new shop, with a data-driven marketing focus, will be overseen by Scott Hagedorn, the former CEO of OMG media agency PHD and, for the last five years, the founder and CEO of Annalect, the groups data and analytics platform. Kathleen Brookbanks, COO at sibling media agency OMD, is shifting to H&S, where she will also serve as COO. The agency is housed in downtown New York City at 7 World Trade Center with an initial staff of 175. The staff count will ramp up to more than 300 by the third quarter. The agency said it was recruiting talent from companies across the technology, publishing and agency sectors. The agency is laying plans for additional offices to open shortly in Canada and Puerto Rico, followed by a number of outposts in markets outside North America in the second half of 2016. As with Annalect, where he led the effort to integrate data across multiple Omnicom network agencies, Hagedorn is credited with setting the vision for the new media shop, an enterprise that he describes as the nexus between marketing science and consumer connections ... As data-driven marketing and applied audience analytics in mass media have gone from a fringe to a core practice, the industry cant lose sight of contents role in creating connections between brands and consumers. Hagedorn added that the new agency is designed to protect the balance and leverage the connections between information and emotion, combining data-driven planning and buying practices with orchestrated content creation, delivery and optimization across all touch points. Daryl Simm, CEO OMG, who was the top media executive at P&G before joining Omnicom, noted that the group now has three distinct agency brands all focused on driving client business results. Theres the traditional behemoth, OMD, which he led the creation of back in the late 1990s; the communications planning expert PHD, and now the data-driven marketing focused H&S. All three agency networks, benefit from the full scale of OMGs buying, data and analytics resources, Simm said. by Josh Engroff , Op-Ed Contributor, April 8, 2016 Josh Engroff is taking the week off, but offers this (slightly updated) reposting of a previous commentary he wrote for Mobile Marketing Daily. It's timely, especially in light of next week's F8 conference, he notes. For any brand trying to tighten up its mobile game, the smartphone can be a brutal taskmaster. Poor user experiences -- non-responsive Web sites, inscrutable banners, lame apps -- are swiftly ignored, while superb experiences are richly, even disproportionately, rewarded. It was only 2010 that names like Uber, Snapchat and Pinterest were widely unfamiliar; now they are mainstream companies worth $50 billion, $16 B, and $11 B, respectively. And during that time, the smartphone has pulled countless hours of human attention -- and vast amounts of media, commerce and advertising -- into its orbit. We are an app-driven society: The average user spends 37 hours per month in apps, per Nielsen -- an increase of 63% in just two years. However, the total number of apps on the average phone (26) hasnt budged a bit. That extra time gets absorbed by the same total number of apps. Although there are 1.5 million apps in the iOS App store, the top 200 (or 0.01%), get 70% of total usage time. So while launching a mobile app has never been easier, getting anyone to notice has never been harder. The problem isnt access or tools or even quality; its distribution. For here, as with content, the network is everything. In mobile, the largest network effects can be found in social and over-the-top messaging, which together comprise six of the top 10 most globally used apps. The top four OTT messaging apps alone -- FB Messenger, WeChat, WhatsApp, Viber -- now have as many monthly active users as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram combined. As messaging apps become platforms in their own right, this is where meaningful engagements between brands and consumers will happen. This has been the case in China for two years already, where WeChat is the anchor platform with 549 million global active users generating $1.1 billion in revenue. In this example, messaging serves as the single point of entry into a multilayered commerce platform where (Chinese) users can order food, hail a taxi, pay bills, move money. Such consolidated convenience diminishes the need for users to download other stand-alone apps, as well as any brand rationale for developing such apps. Better to focus on ones WeChat integration instead. The major U.S. platforms have taken notice. Last year, Facebook announced Messenger for Business, which allows brands to have messenger IDs for the first time. After making an ecommerce purchase, consumers opt-in to receive customer support via Messenger, thereby eliminating the need for email and phone calls. Zulily and Everlane have been the first brands out of the gate. Twitter, for its part, eliminated the 140-character limit in Direct Messages (DMs), allowing @handles to chat directly without following each other. The most obvious thing this does is to open direct lines of real-time communication between brands and Twitter users. The convenience that all of this enables cannot be overstated. Many consumers, particularly younger ones, actively avoid email and phone as ways to get things done. As any 25-year-old will tell you, email is slow (and not real-time), and many millennials find the phone part of smartphone possibly its least interesting feature. Mobile messaging, on the other hand, can be both real-time and asynchronous, on a sliding scale of user-defined urgency. Standing in a long line at the car rental desk? High urgency. Status update regarding tomorrows grocery delivery? Lower urgency. As consumers come to expect real-time responsiveness from brands, legacy customer support systems that rely on rows of humans in call centers will feel the crush. This is where artificial intelligence steps in. Last August, Facebook announced M, a personal digital assistant that lives inside of Messenger and is powered by artificial intelligence thats trained and supervised by people. Facebook is not the first tech giant to enter the consumer AI space: Apple (Siri), Google (Google Now), and Microsoft (Cortana) are already there. But Facebooks focus on human-assisted AI is important for mastering the idiosyncrasies of personalized, real-time communication at scale. Another company leveraging human-assisted AI on behalf of brands is msg.ai, a startup whose software creates customized, 1:1 conversations at scale between brands and consumers. This includes personalized product recommendations, fielding questions about product availability, and providing assistance with purchases. The company is well-positioned to be the Buddy Media of its time, assisting brands in this new era of conversational commerce, just as Buddy did during the rise of Social 1.0. As ecommerce continues to take a larger part of overall retail, and mobile commerce becomes the majority of all ecommerce over the next couple years, we will see previously separate functions -- customer service, sales, CRM, advertising -- begin to collapse within single channels, such as messaging. Those brands that understand how to leverage the network effects of mobile, as well as transaction-optimized spaces like messaging, will be the ones we write about tomorrow. by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, April 8, 2016 With interest in yoga continuing to grow by flexible, well-balanced leaps and bounds, pioneering enthusiast publication Yoga Journal is launching a new series of events in a continental roadshow, the new Live Be Yoga Tour. The tour features two yoga ambassadors who won a contest hosted by the magazine. They will now be trekking across the U.S. and Canada for five months visiting scores of yoga classes and practitioners and documenting it online and in print. The Live Be Yoga Tour kicks off today in New York City, with YJ Live!, scheduled for April 8-11. Classes for all ability levels are lead by top instructors, including an exclusive Shanti Sweat Class with Gaia teachers Rodney and Colleen Saidman Yee, along with the ambassadors. Subsequent stops planned for the tour include Boston, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, culminating in another YJ Live event in Colorado. Highlights from the trip will include a visit to Eisenhower Elementary School in Flint, Michigan, where teachers have implemented yoga and mindfulness practices to help manage stress in the wake of the water crisis; a visit to Walter Reed Military Base, profiling the use of yoga therapy and the recovery process for wounded veterans; a visit to San Quentin Prison, the first correctional facility in the country to offer yoga; and a training session with the Seattle Mariners. New advertisers are signing up for YJs print and digital editions, and the publication is getting traction with its new paid online instructional videos, according to publisher Melissa Strome and editor-in-chief Carin Gorrell. The February-March issue of YJ includes ads for Titos Vodka (an entirely new category as well as a new client) and April-May features Ford as a new advertiser. In the second half of the year, Cottonelle toilet paper will appear as a new advertiser. YJ has signed up a number of new sponsors for the tour, including Lorissas Kitchen, a new product launch focused on healthy protein snacks, and Goodness Knows snack bars. Strome also noted the success of YJs paid content push, centering on a la carte instructional videos hosted at AimHealthU.com. According her, the videos allow viewers to practice with teachers they wouldnt necessarily have access to otherwise. Depending on the intensity and degree of interactivity with instructors, the online video courses range in price from around $40 to $250. Reiki is a form of complementary therapy relating to energy healing. Proponents say that it works with the energy fields around the body and involves the transfer of universal energy from the practitioners palms to the client. Some controversy surrounds Reiki, as clinical research has not proven its effectiveness. However, many people who receive Reiki claim to experience positive outcomes . In this article, we explain what Reiki treatment involves, its reported health benefits, and the medical opinions surrounding it. What is Reiki? Share on Pinterest Giselleflissak/Getty Images The word Reiki means mysterious atmosphere, miraculous sign. It comes from the Japanese words rei, meaning universal, and ki, meaning life energy. Reiki is a type of energy healing. According to practitioners, energy can stagnate in the body where there has been physical injury or even emotional pain. In time, these energy blocks can cause illness. Energy medicine aims to help the flow of energy and remove blocks in a similar way to acupuncture or acupressure. Reiki practitioners believe that improving the flow of energy around the body can enable relaxation, relieve pain, speed healing, and reduce other symptoms of illness. Mikao Usui developed Usui Reiki Ryoho, the most current form of Reiki, in 1922. However, people have practiced Reiki for about 2,500 years. People also refer to Reiki as palm healing or hands-on healing. What happens in a Reiki session? Practitioners will typically give Reiki treatment in a peaceful, private setting. However, the treatment can take place anywhere. During a session, the client will sit in a comfortable chair or lie on a table, fully clothed. The practitioner will then place their hands lightly on or over specific areas of the clients head, limbs, and torso. They will typically keep their hands in these positions for 310 minutes. If there is a particular injury, such as a burn, the practitioner will hold their hands just above the wound. Advocates state that while the practitioner holds their hands lightly on or over the body, an energy transfer takes place. During this time, the practitioner may report that their hands feel warm or are tingling. They will hold each hand position until they sense that the energy has stopped flowing. When the practitioner feels that the heat, or energy, in their hands has gone, they will remove their hands and place them over a different body area. Some Reiki techniques The techniques that Reiki involves have names such as: centering clearing beaming extracting harmful energies infusing smoothing and raking the aura Some Reiki practitioners will use crystals and chakra healing wands to enable healing or protect a home from negative energy. However, Annie Harrington, chair of the Reiki Federation of the United Kingdom, told Medical News Today: Reiki relies on no other instruments beyond the practitioner. We do not use crystals, powders, or wands as a general rule. However, one of the benefits of Reiki healing is distance healing, where Reiki is sent over several miles. Then, many practitioners will use crystals to assist with the energy vibrations. Sessions can last 4590 minutes. The number of sessions will vary, depending on what a client wishes to accomplish. Some clients prefer to have one session, while others have a series of sessions to work on a particular issue. Health benefits According to practitioners, Reiki channels universal energy known as ki, pronounced chi. This is the same energy involved in tai chi exercise. This energy supposedly permeates the body. Reiki experts point out that although this energy is not measurable with modern scientific techniques, many who tune into it can feel it. Reiki allegedly aids relaxation, assists in the bodys natural healing processes, and develops emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. However, no studies have conclusively shown this to be true. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that it may induce deep relaxation, help people cope with difficulties, relieve emotional stress, and improve overall well-being. Conditions that people have used Reiki to help treat include: cancer heart disease anxiety depression chronic pain infertility neurodegenerative disorders autism Crohns disease fatigue It is important to note that Reiki should never take the place of medical treatments. However, people living with certain health conditions may be interested in trying Reiki alongside their regular treatment. For instance, some people with cancer may find Reiki beneficial as it may help them relax. The gentle nature of Reiki therapy may have a soothing effect on patients who find that they become overwhelmed with invasive therapy, fear, and stress. Individuals report different experiences. Some say that the practitioners hands become hot, others report cooling hands, and some feel pulsating waves. The most common reports are of a release of stress and deep relaxation. Becoming a Reiki practitioner No prior training, education, or experience is necessary to enter the Reiki training or attunement process. In this process, the Reiki master reportedly transfers the attunement energy and healing techniques to the student. Reiki training varies, but most students learn about: the energies around the body how to work with healing energy the ethics of working with clients Preparation for attunement may include avoiding alcohol and caffeine for 13 days, meditation, focusing on nature, and releasing negative emotions. There are three levels of mastery. Those who reach Master level can teach others and can reportedly heal from a distance. Reikis healing power: What is the evidence? Although Reiki is growing in popularity, there is little evidence that it provides any clinical benefit. Practitioners claim that Reiki can enable relaxation, reduce pain, speed healing, and improve some symptoms. However, few research findings support any specific health benefits. Critics say that it flies in the face of our current understanding of the laws of nature. However, some limited studies have drawn links between Reiki and a reduction in feelings of pain and anxiety. Scientists note that high quality research into its effectiveness is lacking. According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health , no study has shown Reiki to have any health-related benefit. In 2015, a review of studies on Reiki and the treatment of anxiety and depression concluded that there was insufficient evidence to say whether or not Reiki is useful for people over 16 years of age with anxiety or depression or both. Of the few studies that the review assessed, most were of low quality, with small sample sizes, no peer review, or no control group, according to the authors. In contrast, a review article in the Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine found reasonably strong support for Reiki being more effective than a placebo in reducing pain and anxiety in people with chronic health conditions. However, the author of the review is a member of the Australiasian Usui Reiki Association, so bias is possible. More recently, Annie Harrington told MNT that the U.K. Reiki Federation currently has a large document cataloging many research trials. Regulatory issues: Time for a change? Regulatory authorities sometimes ask Reiki websites to change their information to conform with legal standards. Sites selling Reiki products may carry a legal disclaimer, stating that the products are not medical devices intended to diagnose, heal, or prevent disease. In the U.K., the Advertising Standards Agency has rejected claims that Reiki can heal a range of diseases on a number of occasions. Is Reiki harmful? Due to the non-contact nature of Reiki, this treatment is not harmful . However, Reiki could lead to harm if people with serious health issues opt for this therapy and other complementary therapies instead of rigorously tested modern medicine. A person using Reiki alongside other treatments is unlikely to encounter negative side effects. Where can I get Reiki? More than 800 hospitals in the United States currently offer Reiki services for patients. In the U.K, some medical providers, such as hospices, may have volunteers who provide it free of charge as part of palliative care. A private Reiki session can cost between $25 and $100. A persons insurance may not cover Reiki treatment. Anyone seeking a qualified, professional Reiki practitioner should be cautious, as few regulations govern this field. It can help to ask a practitioner about their training and experience. Reiki is not an alternative treatment for medical issues but a complementary therapy that may help support healing and increase a feeling of well-being for some people. It is always best to discuss any complementary therapies with a doctor before trying them. Insomnia has the power to significantly impact an individuals life; it can pounce on anyone at any time, often without obvious cause. New research published in Radiology delves into the neural basis of this mysterious condition and finds tantalizing clues nestled in the white matter of the brain. Share on Pinterest Changes in white matter could hold the key to understanding insomnia. Insomnia is characterized by a difficulty in falling asleep, staying asleep or both. The resultant lack of sleep causes deficits that leach into every facet of an insomniacs life. Energy levels, mood, health, relationships and performance at work can all take a substantial kick. According to the American Sleep Association, 1 in 3 adults will experience insomnia at some point in their life, and 1 in 10 will face chronic insomnia. Women tend to suffer from insomnia slightly more often than men, and it becomes more common as we age. Surface causes of chronic sleeplessness include stress, caffeine intake or medical conditions, such as stroke or an overactive thyroid. Other factors can include pain, anxiety and depression, but the underlying neuroscience of insomnia has proven difficult to pin down. The origins of insomnia in the brain Modern imaging techniques, such as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), provide an extra dimension to insomnia studies. They have allowed investigators to visualize insomnia-related metabolic changes in certain areas of the brain, such as the amygdala and thalamus. To date, however, results have been contradictory. A team of researchers, led by Dr. Guihua Jiang from Guangdong No. 2 Provincial Peoples Hospital in Guangzhou, China, decided to focus their investigation into insomnia on the white matter of the brain the pathways that send messages between brain regions. The team hoped to match abnormalities in white matter to features of insomnia; Shumei Li, part of the research team, explains the role of white matter in brief: White matter tracts are bundles of axons or long fibers of nerve cells that connect one part of the brain to another. If white matter tracts are impaired, communication between brain regions is disrupted. White matter makes up the bulk of deep brain tissue and is so-called as a result of its white coloration in comparison to the adjoining gray matter. This whiteness is caused by a fatty outer coating called the myelin sheath, which protects the nerves and allows them to conduct signals more quickly and efficiently. Initially, white matter was considered to be little more than a passive message carrier. However, it is now known to be involved in learning and information processing. Investigating white matter For the study, 23 individuals with insomnia were scanned and compared with 30 healthy controls. Before entering the MRI scanner, each completed a barrage of questionnaires, including the Insomnia Severity Index, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale and the Self-Rating Depression Scale. The participants received a specific type of MRI scan, referred to as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). DTI charts the movement of water along white matter tracts and allows researchers to pinpoint any weak spots. The data, manipulated using an advanced analysis technique called Tract-Based Spatial Statistics, yielded fascinating results. The brains of participants with insomnia showed a significant reduction in white matter integrity in sections of the right brain and the thalamus. In regard to the specific regions, Li says: These impaired white matter tracts are mainly involved in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness, cognitive function and sensorimotor function. While many individuals believe such aspects are solely driven by cognitive functioning, the team notes that some behavioral scientists have suggested the heart may also play a role in wisdom. Prof. Grossman and colleagues note that an increasingly popular notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers is that wise judgement is recognizing the limits of ones knowledge, being aware of the varied contexts of life and how they may unfold over time, acknowledge other peoples points of view, and search for reconciliation of opposing viewpoints. In general, wisdom is defined as possessing knowledge and experience and having good judgement. Lead researcher Prof. Igor Grossman, of the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and colleagues publish their findings in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart, Charles Dickens wrote in his novel Hard Times. But a new study suggests the heart could have a large influence on the wisdom of the head, after finding people with greater heart rate variability may have wiser judgement. To investigate this association further, the researchers enrolled 150 participants from the University of Western Sydney, Australia, who were an average age of 25. Participants were required to take part in a series of tasks, including a social reasoning task and an attributional judgement task. As part of these tasks, subjects were required to offer their opinion on social issues they felt strongly about, from both a first- and third-person perspective. The participants resting heart rates were measured during each task using an electrocardiogram (ECG). When asked about their opinions on social issues from a third-person perspective, participants with greater heart rate variation were found to reason in a wiser, less biased manner than those with lower heart rate variation. However, when asked to reflect about societal issues from a first-person perspective, no association between heart rate variation and wiser judgement was identified. The researchers define heart rate variability as the variation in the time interval between heartbeats. Explaining what their findings mean, Prof. Grossmann says: Our research shows that wise reasoning is not exclusively a function of the mind and cognitive ability. We found that people who have greater heart rate variability and who are able to think about social problems from a distanced viewpoint demonstrate a greater capacity for wise reasoning. Prof. Grossman says it was already known that individuals with greater heart rate variation tend to have better executive functioning, such as working memory, than those with lower heart rate variation. However, he points out that this does not necessarily mean people with greater heart rate variation are wiser; such individuals may have to reflect on issues from a third-person perspective in order to achieve wiser judgement. [] some people may use their cognitive skills to make unwise decisions. To channel their cognitive abilities for wiser judgment, people with greater heart rate variability first need to overcome their egocentric viewpoints, he says. Last September, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting low heart rate variability may affect the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). New research led by Professor Cathie Martin of the John Innes Centre has revealed how a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine produces compounds which may help to treat cancer and liver diseases. The Chinese skullcap, Scutellaria baicalensis - otherwise known in Chinese medicine as Huang-Qin - is traditionally used as a treatment for fever, liver and lung complaints. Previous research on cells cultured in the lab has shown that certain compounds called flavones, found in the roots of this plant, not only have beneficial anti-viral and anti-oxidant effects, but they can also kill human cancers while leaving healthy cells untouched. In live animal models, these flavones have also halted tumour growth, offering hope that they may one day lead to effective cancer treatments, or even cures. As a group of compounds, the flavones are relatively well understood. But the beneficial flavones found in Huang-Qin roots, such as wogonin and baicalin, are different: a missing - OH (hydroxyl) group in their chemical structure left scientists scratching their heads as to how they were made in the plant. Professor Cathie Martin, lead author of the paper published in Science Advances , explains: "Many flavones are synthesised using a compound called naringenin as a building block. But naringenin has this -OH group attached to it, and there is no known enzyme that will remove it to produce the flavones we find in Huang-Qin roots." Working in collaboration with Chinese scientists, Cathie and her team explored the possibility that Huang-Qin's root-specific flavones (RSFs) were made via a different biochemical pathway. Step-by-step, the scientists unravelled the mechanism involving new enzymes that make RSFs using a different building block called chrysin. "We believe that this biosynthetic pathway has evolved relatively recently in Scutellaria roots, diverging from the classical pathway that produces flavones in leaves and flowers, specifically to produce chrysin and its derived flavones," said Professor Martin. "Understanding the pathway should help us to produce these special flavones in large quantities, which will enable further research into their potential medicinal uses. It is wonderful to have collaborated with Chinese scientists on these traditional medicinal plants. Interest in traditional remedies has increased dramatically in China since Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015 for her work on artemisinin. It's exciting to consider that the plants which have been used as traditional Chinese remedies for thousands of years may lead to effective modern medicines." This publication is the first high-profile output from the Centre of Excellence for Plant and Microbial Sciences, established between the John Innes Centre and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2014. The research was funded by the BBSRC, CEPAMS and supported by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC). The shift to minimally invasive techniques has left fewer surgeons skilled and able to perform a traditional open cholecystectomy, a Journal of the American College of Surgeons study finds. While minimally invasive surgical techniques have made operations easier and recovery time faster, there is a downside: surgical residents today aren't acquiring certain operative skills, according to a new study appearing online on the Journal of the American College of Surgeons website in advance of print publication. Since laparoscopic cholecystectomy (surgical removal of the gallbladder) was first introduced 30 years ago, the number of open cholecystectomies performed by general surgery residents has declined significantly. "The average general surgery resident completing training in 2000 had performed 15.5 open cholecystectomies, versus 90 in the pre-laparoscopic era. This figure decreased to 12.6 by 2004," said lead study author Kenneth R. Sirinek, MD, PhD, FACS, professor and vice chairman of surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. "I fear that the next decade is going to be even worse." Each year, an estimated 700,000 cholecystectomies are performed to treat complications of gallstones (cholecystitis, biliary pancreatitis). Today, laparoscopic cholecystectomy is considered the gold standard for treating gallbladder disease, but in some complicated cases the traditional "open" approach is still required. Those situations may include gallbladder cancer and patients with cirrhosis. The growing trend has led researchers to ask: Are general surgery residents today getting enough clinical experience with open biliary procedures to possess the technical skills necessary to perform a traditional open cholecystectomy, either initially or as a conversion from the laparoscopic approach? Most open cholecystectomies begin as an elective or urgent laparoscopic cholecystectomy and are converted to an open procedure during the operation. The worst case scenario is that there will be a shortage of surgeons competent in this procedure in years to come. For this study, researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center assessed the overall impact of laparoscopy on their residency training program. They looked at the average number of open cholecystectomies performed by each chief general surgery resident over five years of clinical surgery. Researchers analyzed data from all patients who underwent a cholecystectomy at the University of Texas Health Science Center over three decades: 1981 - 1990, which they called the pre-laparoscopic era; 1991 - 2001, the first decade of laparoscopic cholecystectomy; and 2004 - 2013, the most recent decade of laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Researchers found that compared with the pre-laparoscopic decade, the number of patients undergoing an open cholecystectomy decreased 67 percent during the first decade of laparoscopic cholecystectomy, and by 92 percent for the most recent decade. The average number of open cholecystectomies performed per graduating chief general surgery resident dramatically decreased for both laparoscopic decades compared with the pre-laparoscopic decade (70.4 vs 22.4 vs 3.6 procedures). "Our residents are getting a minimum amount of exposure to the open procedure, so we are concerned about whether they will have enough technical experience to do an open cholecystectomy. In particular, we are concerned about surgeons who have to convert from laparoscopy to the open procedure during an operation, because those are probably the most technically demanding procedures," Dr. Sirinek said. "This is problematic because they will not have enough know-how to take on a very complicated patient with severe inflammation secondary to acute/gangrenous cholecystitis." Dr. Sirinek added that while there is no rule on what number of open cholecystectomies is required to make a surgeon competent with the procedure, senior general surgeons with an extensive open cholecystectomy experience possess a major technical edge with the open procedure compared to those with little open experience trained during the laparoscopic era. "Surgeons trained in the open cholecystectomy era alone are a dying breed," Dr. Sirinek said. "All of the instruments used laparoscopically do not substitute for an open procedure, where we have tactile feedback from our hands, and a lot of the surgical dissection is done with our hands." To make up for the technical deficit as a result of the small number of open cholecystectomies currently being done, study authors offer several recommendations. First, junior surgeons could spend time participating in the American College of Surgeons' Transition to Practice Fellowship. Participation in this Fellowship with senior surgeon mentoring would allow them to practice and perfect the technical skills needed to perform complicated open and laparoscopic biliary cases. Similar mentoring can also occur in the private practice of General Surgery with young general surgeons identifying an experienced, more senior surgeon to help intraoperatively when they encounter an unanticipated, more complicated biliary tract disease process. In addition, each general surgery residency program should build a video library of complicated open biliary procedures, Dr. Sirinek suggested. This way, residents could discuss instructional presentations with the faculty surgeons for additional technical input. Finally, a number of simulation models could also be used to help train novice learners in critical surgical techniques, but only a few early models are presently available. "These and other programs will help supplement a surgical resident's training program," Dr. Sirinek said. "They're such an important part of general surgery residents' training today." Advertisement Sylla said the victim - a woman - died at an Ebola treatment center in the city of Nzerekore, where a handful of other patients have been cared for in recent weeks following a spate of cases among a family near the border with Liberia. "There is just one confirmed case still receiving treatment at the center," he added.The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the new tolls and said it would look into links between the cases in Nzerekore and a woman who crossed the border from Guinea into Liberia, when it was briefly closed, before dying of the virus in Liberia's capital Monrovia.The victim's husband had died of Ebola in Guinea, after which she left the country with her children, the world health body said. One of her children has tested positive for the virus while two others are being monitored, along with her sister."Now the investigation is going to determine whether there is a link between those two flare-ups. It is understood that there is a person who was traveling from Guinea to Liberia who was tested positive," said WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic in Geneva.The WHO has said Ebola no longer constitutes an international emergency, but the announcement of new cases in west Africa has demonstrated the difficulty of managing the aftermath of the virus.Jasarevic said a vaccination campaign was well underway in the area of Guinea where the new cases were registered, while monitoring of those in contact with the dead woman in Liberia was also a priority."In Guinea, already 1,200 people have been vaccinated. Right now the work is ongoing in Liberia to monitor 90 so-far-identified contacts, and there is also a plan to vaccinate them," the WHO spokesman said.The Ebola epidemic was declared over in Guinea and Liberia months ago, though a significant number of deaths are believed to have gone unreported and 'flare-ups' relating to the persistence of the virus in survivors' bodies pose ongoing challenges."The WHO will hold a meeting this week with Liberian and Guinean authorities to work on cross-border surveillance," Jasarevic said.Source: AFP Advertisement The Draft Framework and First Steps for a Rare Disease Policy Prevention, diagnosis and screening Access to treatment Multidisciplinary care Research Access to information and support Evolving a suitable definition and classification of rare diseases for India. Identification, prevention and diagnostics - the need for antenatal and prenatal testing, newborn screening, timely diagnosis and early intervention. All these strategies are a must towards improving the quality of life for people with rare diseases and prevent early morbidity and complications. Treatment and care - a model of care, which includes primary care and specialist, care with access to genetic testing and sequencing for targeted therapies. Interdisciplinary care coordination and management for improved outcomes. Paramedical and palliative care support - basic centers with trained staff to provide simple services like giving injections, IV and infusions, changing tracheotomy tubes, etc. Orphan drugs and devices - an orphan drug act providing incentives for pharma and biotech companies to develop indigenous drugs, generic molecules and biosimilars for rare diseases. Medical devices will also be developed and manufactured at affordable rates. Dietary supplements will also receive similar concessions. Disease surveillance program - monitoring and documentation of incidence and prevalence of rare diseases in the state. Research - towards improving therapeutics for rare disease care. Health education - towards educating medical students and practicing clinicians in rare disease-related issues. Facilities and support systems - including a health insurance program for patients, access to inclusive education and caretaker aid (to provide relief for the family who may be the primary caregivers). http://rareadvocates.org/rare-disease-acts-of-2002/ http://www.eurordis.org/content/overview-national-rare-disease-policies http://rarediseases.org/ http://ordindia.org/ Rajasimha, H., Shirol, P., Ramamoorthy, P., Hegde, M., Barde, S., et al., (2014). Organization for rare diseases India (ORDI) - addressing the challenges and opportunities for the Indian rare diseases' community. Genetics Research, Cambridge Press (2014), vol. 96, e009.doi:10.1017/S0016672314000111 In the absence of a public policy and inaccessible public health care, patients and families with rare diseases are left to languish in the margins with high morbidity rates as diagnosis, treatment and drugs for most rare diseases are expensive (between 1 lakh to 3 crores per annum) and beyond the reach of the common citizen.As the classification implies, rare diseases involve difficulties in diagnosis, where the average time to diagnose a rare disease is around 7 years and depends on the availability of treatment, as many of the rare diseases do not have any definitive therapies, for example, Niemann-Pick Disease . Rare diseases also lack established clinical protocols for care and management and access to drugs, where orphan drugs used to treat rare diseases are often inaccessible and expensive.In India, many children with rare diseases do not live beyond the age of 5. Inaccessible treatment and expensive drugs take a financial toll on the families who are often wiped out economically by the presence of a rare disease.High morbidity rates and dismal quality of life presents a hopeless situation for patients and families. In the light of the above challenges, it is absolutely necessary for all states in India to enact a rare disease policy.It is also imperative in the near future to have a national policy of rare diseases similar to the US (Rare Diseases Act 2002 and Rare Diseases Orphan Product Development Act 2002) and European Union (EU Council Recommendation on a European action in the field of rare diseases in 2009, EU Regulation on Orphan Medicinal Products in 1999).Recognizing the challenges and the need for a health policy on rare diseases to attain the goal of universal healthcare for all, the Karnataka Vision Group for Biotechnology along with other state healthcare agencies supported the drafting of a framework for the state's first rare disease policy. Karnataka has significant research and innovation capabilities in biotechnology and genomic sciences to support the positive action for rare disease communities.The draft framework was jointly prepared in consultation with Dr. Meenakshi Bhat, Center for Human Genetics, Bangalore; Dr. G N Sanjeeva, Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, Bangalore; Dr. Shantaram Baliga, National Neonatal Foundation, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal; Prof. Anuranjan Anand, Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore and Harsha Rajasimha and Prasanna Shirol, Organization for Rare Diseases India. The draft was written by Prof. Vijay Chandru and Dr. Namitha Kumar, Center for Health Ecologies and Technology (CHET), Bangalore.The document was framed considering EU's recommendation on the action for rare diseases which includes the following strategies:The draft focuses on the following key points, which include:The draft framework is an inclusive document aimed at alleviating the suffering of rare disease patients and families in the state through government support and funding. Rare diseases must be brought into the mainframe of health policies if our respective states and the country have to achieve universal health care access. The burden of rare diseases is too high to ignore and has to be brought to the purview of healthcare policy makers and health financiers (government).The draft framework was submitted to the National Health Mission (Karnataka) on 1 March 2016 at the Blue Ribbon Art Exhibition and Film Festival for Rare Diseases organized by CHET. Following this event, the state health minister announced a budget for rare diseases in the state budget session this March.Source: Medindia Advertisement He also shows off a pair of keyboards on which he plays rock music in his free time. "I have a guitar, a flute, harmonica, keyboards. It helps me relax when I'm working hard on my project," Gavrylyuk explains.Diplomats cherish the Antarctic Treaty that has governed this continent since 1959. "It has lasted for over 50 years. It brings us all together for science and for peace," says Ray Arnaudo, who was formerly the US State Department's top official for Antarctica. "If you extended the boundaries of Antarctica by five degrees every couple of years, in 50 years you would have world peace," he says. "Some say I'm a dreamer."But when it comes to protecting the region, the Antarctic Treaty is prey to international politics beyond its icy shores. "Antarctica has traditionally been a place where people have been able to cooperate more than they would on other issues. However there is an outstanding list of to-dos," says Claire Christian, acting director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a grouping of environmental NGOs.Run by Britain until it was sold to Ukraine in 1996, Vernadsky Station was one of the research bases whose atmospheric readings revealed the hole in the ozone layer in the 1980s, Gavrylyuk says.Now the focus is on climate change. Antarctica's western peninsula has warmed by 3% on average over the past half-century, according to environmental groups. They hope the Antarctic Treaty's environmental commission, CCAMLR, can agree on measures to protect the continent."There are a lot of political obstacles," says Christian. "It's been very difficult, for example, for countries in CCAMLR to agree to marine protected areas."At Argentina's Almirante Brown Station, biologist Rocio Fayo and her 10 colleagues lead an isolated life. "There is no Internet connection here, so the group has a very strong bond," says Fayo, 31, standing under the gray skies of Paradise Bay outside the red wooden hut where the team sleeps. "We've been up the peak over there a few times. We climb up and slide back down fast on our bottoms in the snow. It's good fun."Fayo has spent the summer studying micro-algae. Another researcher has set up a camera for monitoring penguins in the bay. Conservationists fear the penguins are threatened by climate change and fishing. Campaigners complain that some countries are resisting conservation efforts by fellow CCAMLR members.Andrea Kavanagh, head of the penguin campaign of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a US non-government organization, says, "Russia and China want to be free to catch as much krill as possible near the Antarctic Peninsula, including right next to penguin colonies that have been in decline for the last three decades."Far away from their countries, on the bases, staff say Antarctic relations run smoothly, however. "There's this great international collaboration. Politics is set aside here more than in most places," says laboratory supervisor Carolyn Lipke, 35. She is getting ready for a break after spending her sixth year at Palmer Station, one of several US Antarctic bases.Among various research projects at her station, chemists are examining spongy invertebrates on the seabed that they think give off toxins with potentially cancer-fighting qualities. When they're not deep-sea diving for specimens or working in the lab, she says, the 40 or so staff here play cards, watch movies and hold open-mic talent shows.In winter, they can hike across the frozen sea to neighboring islands. A satellite Internet and phone link helps them keep in touch with loved ones. "That makes it easier to be here for long periods, and also for the scientists to communicate," Lipke says. "You can communicate with your family but you can also get a ton of work done."Source: AFP Please complete this form and we'll send you a personalised information that is requested You may use this for your own reference or forward it to your friends. Please use the information prudently. If you are not a medical doctor please remember to consult your healthcare provider as this information is not a substitute for professional advice. Following the March 24, 2016 indictment of seven Iranian hackers for attacks on U.S. financial institutions and on the Bowmen Avenue Dam near Rye Brook, New York, 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, former editor of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, published an article on Arabnews.com. In the article, "Iran's Cyber Crimes," he lamented the fact that the Iranian regime itself was not being held accountable for these attacks, which were carried out by hackers tied to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and also mentioned the 2012 Iranian cyber-attack on the Saudi Aramco oil company, claiming that it was an attempt to damage the Saudi economy. He also called for classifying such state-backed cyber-attacks as terrorism and prohibit them under international law. Following is his article, which was published March 28, 2016:[1] "If engineers at a dam in New York hadn't disconnected water gates from its electronic control center for maintenance work, a major disaster would have happened. On that day, hackers said to be belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard managed to hack the dam's electronic control center in order to unlock its gates and drown the area. "A court - which heard this case and other cyber-attacks targeting financial institutions - revealed dangerous plots to attack vital installations in the country. "Unfortunately, only the direct perpetrators were accused in these cases and no charges were framed against the Iranian regime, which should have been held responsible for those attacks. Threatening action against regimes involved in cyber-attacks, whether Iranian or any other, builds deterrence against similar attacks in the future. "However, this wasn't the only case of its kind. Other parts of the world have also come under similar attacks. The most dangerous was a similar group hacking the system of Saudi Aramco, which produces and exports the biggest quantity of oil in the world. Hackers tried to gain control of around 35,000 computers, which run the system. However the company quickly suspended most of its operations and regained control over the systems. "Cyber-attacks are regarded as aggression by one country against another although it has not been categorized as such by international organizations such as the United Nations - though many agree that it is tantamount to dangerous crimes. "American authorities have considered major cyber-attacks as terrorist operations and the U.S. federal grand jury accused the seven Iranian hackers of terrorism, the maximum charge which can be made against them. However, only the perpetrators stand charged and not those standing behind them. The hackers' cells usually work within a system linked to the Iranian security institution and it has several activities aimed at targeting vital institutions, like those related to oil, power, water and aviation, and even nuclear facilities, in countries, such as the U.S., which Iran considers hostile. "Targeting civil facilities to sabotage them and harm civilians are acts of terrorism, prohibited internationally even in times of war. One of the cell members, Hamid Firoozi, attained information about water levels and managed to open the gates. If they were not manually deactivated the area overlooking the dam could have been drowned. If the U.S. prosecution had considered those inside Iran responsible for these cyber-attacks, and not just the seven individuals, a mechanism would have evolved to fight cyber terrorism. "No information has been revealed about the Aramco incident, which took place in 2012. The damage was limited because the hackers targeted the company's administrative system and not the computers tied to oil production. Their aim was to hit Saudi Arabia's oil production and sabotage the company's facilities. The bigger aim was to hamper the Saudi economy. "Two years ago, a report was released on organized cyber-attacks being carried out by groups linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. These attacks targeted facilities in 16 countries, including American military zones. All these are terrorist activities planned by countries and not by independent terror cells or gangs. They should be categorized as per international law and their activities should be declared prohibited." Endnote: The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here. Muhammad Al-Dala'een, a 23-year-old medical student and the son of Jordanian MP Mazen Al-Dala'een, joined ISIS in July 2015[1] and carried out a suicide operation three months later in the city of Mosul, Iraq.[2] After learning that his son had become a member of ISIS, Mazen Al-Dala'een joined the fight against extremist ideologies and became active in preventing young Jordanians from joining ISIS and in returning those who have already joined. In an interview with a television channel associated with the Syrian opposition, he said that before his son's death, he had even asked ISIS-affiliated elements to kill his son so that he would not carry out a suicide operation.[3] It should be noted that Muhammad Al-Dala'een is not the first son of a Jordanian MP to join a terrorist organization. In January 2015 it was reported that the 25-year-old son of MP Falah Al-'Abadi, a dentist by training, had been killed in Aleppo, Syria while fighting in the ranks of Jabhat Al-Nusra.[4] In a December 16, 2015 interview with the online newspaper Arabi21, Mazen Al-Dala'een spoke of his son, of ISIS's recruitment methods, and of his activity to prevent young people from joining this organization in Syria and Iraq. He criticized the media for not taking an active role in fighting extremism, and called to eliminate the rhetoric of radical religious organizations. ISIS member Muhammad Al-Dala'een (above) and his father, Jordanian MP Mazen Al-Dala'een (Twitter.com/inbry19, December 6, 2015) The following are excerpts from the interview:[5] My Son Was No Extremist; He Even Opposed ISIS Q: "Let us start with Muhammad's story. How did he join ISIS?" A: "At the beginning, Muhammad was not an extremist. After the death last year of the Jordanian pilot Mu'adh Al-Kasasbeh [whom ISIS burned alive], Muhammad [even] carried his picture at a protest in Al-Karak Governorate, and condemned the barbaric murder. He would always talk to me about how [ISIS] is a terrorist organization with no connection to the religion. "However, when Muhammad travelled to the Ukraine, ISIS contacted him via his foreign wife, a recent convert to Islam. A group of people, including a resident of Azerbaijan, a Chechen woman, and a Tunisian man, convinced his wife that jihad was a duty and that they had to emigrate from the lands of unbelief to the lands of 'the Islamic caliphate,' taking advantage of her ignorance of Islam and persuading her that she would reach Paradise [if they did this]. She then convinced her husband [to adopt] this ideology, and thus they shared the same beliefs. "On the night that Muhammad and his wife travelled to Turkey, and from there on to Syria and Mosul, I visited their home in the Kharkiv area in Ukraine. Had I even the slightest suspicion that he intended to join ISIS, I would have delayed them at the airport and taken the necessary steps to stop him from joining this criminal organization. "I remember that Muhammad and I argued that night about ISIS, and two days later I was shocked [to discover] that he had joined the organization, travelling to Turkey and from there on to Syria and Mosul. [Later I was also shocked to discover] that he had carried out an attack, as they [ISIS] claim. Their claims might all be false, because I truly do not believe their stories, which could all be a deception. Even the claim that he detonated a car bomb could be false, since when people join such organizations, they fall completely under their control and lose [their own] free will. "I have heard stories from young Jordanians who returned from the ranks of this organization and said that ISIS members held a gun to their heads when they spoke to their families on the phone, forcing them to say that the caliphate state is the state of true and proper Islam. This is a truly criminal terrorist organization, which has deviated from the foundations of our Islamic shari'a. The principles they use deviate from all the laws of Allah." I Work To Prevent Extremism; Media And Society Must Take A More Active Role In Combatting It Q: "Have you seen the latest [ISIS] video featuring Muhammad titled 'Al-Walaa Wal-Baraa?" [6] A: "Yes, I have seen it - that was why they released it, because when I returned from the airport in Turkey, I was bringing back a young Jordanian woman from Al-Karak who had been recruited by ISIS, and that angered them. In fact, I managed to bring back two young women whom I intercepted there, not just that one - there is another young woman about whom no one is talking, in order to protect her family. In addition, I helped bring back a young Jordanian man from the Irbid area, after he fled from Syria to Turkey, and I coordinated [this matter] with the Jordanian Embassy in Ankara. [I did] all this in order to protect this generation, so that they are not led astray like my son was. "I tell you that the threats in the video will not dissuade me. This video appeared on the organization's websites nine weeks after [my son's] death, and its message was clearly aimed at me. It will not dissuade me, since I am [a member] of parliament, and since it is part of my national duty to raise awareness among the young people [regarding the dangers of ISIS]. "Therefore, I have initiated [some] lectures to raise the awareness of this generation, which could be led astray by this criminal organization, and I hope this initiative will continue at all the universities. I think my message has been fully delivered. "I also spoke in the media, but Jordanian media unfortunately operates by mobilizing momentarily for a specific cause [and then dropping it]. Our media should play a more active role in these difficult times, in order to distance this generation from extremist and terrorist thought. "Furthermore, we must not leave the religious discourse as it was in the past, but must take steps to generate constant dialogue on prayer, fasting, alms, etc. [to prevent ISIS from monopolizing the discourse on them]. We must [eliminate] this social disease - this cancer, I call it - and change the nature of religious discourse. We must [deal with the problem] on the ground and come up with a strategy. [At present,] when there is a problem, everyone raises an outcry for a day or two and then [forgets] about it. We must deal with this extremist ideology - which could infiltrate into every home because social media are found in every home and because there are no limits on them, and [therefore] anyone can be exposed to [the danger of] joining this organization." Q: "Did Muhammad's mother also see the 'Al-Walaa Wal-Baraa video?" A: "Yes, she saw it, and Allah helped her [to cope with it]. She is hurt and pained to this day. She still mourns him every day, [finding comfort] in writing [about him]." Social Media Are ISIS's Main Means Of Recruitment - And Via Them The Group Promises Rewards In Paradise Q: "You said that you had managed to rescue young men and women recruited by ISIS. How were they recruited?" A: "Social media play a central role in recruiting these young people, who visit the pages of the terrorist organization ISIS, which exploits social hardships - whether poverty or unemployment - in order to convince these young people that it will take care of them and provide for all their needs in life, including housing and money. [ISIS] specifically targets young people with certain religious tendencies, and shows them jihadi videos. It convinces them that they will reach Paradise, that their actions are in line with the shari'a, and that the jihad operations that they carry out will bring them the reward of the black-eyed virgins [in Paradise], and so on. This persuasion does not happen overnight; it takes many months, maybe four or five months, even a year, depending on the person and how inclined he is to accept the ideology that [ISIS] offers on social media. "One case I encountered was that of a 24-year-old medical student at the Islamic Studies University - he was an intellectual. ISIS targets educated and enlightened people such as doctors, engineers, and lawyers. It looks to these fields in order to show the world that its members are not just unemployed crooks, as others tend to think, but rather the opposite." Q: "Are ISIS sleeper cells recruiting in Jordan?" A: "This organization is not only in Jordan, it has sleeper cells around the world - in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, and Libya. They recruit using liaisons, who could be ISIS members in Jordan using assumed names on social media - as happened with the young woman recruited in Al-Karak. A short time after they join [the organization] via the liaisons, they swear an oath of fealty to the caliph [Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi], which... means mostly that they [the young people] are now committed to the organization and must carry out its orders - to the extent that they are distanced from their families and often even ordered to kill a relative." Q: "How do those who return from the ranks of the organization depict [it]?" A: "I heard the story of the young woman who returned from Turkey, and it was the complete opposite of the one to which the organization pretends. She said that the organization attaches no importance to the religion, regardless of what it presents in [its] jihadi videos. As soon as they enter Al-Raqqa [ISIS's Syrian stronghold], the young people are cut off from their families, and the organization controls all aspects of their lives, monitors their movements, and enrolls them in shari'a classes, because it is trying to brainwash them. Anyone who objects is sent on a suicide operation, she told me. "There is also the story of the family of the young man from Al-Salt, who went to Al-Raqqa and discovered that this group [ISIS] is indecent and is distant from Islam. He tried to leave, but the organization's members discovered it, and wanted to execute him, putting the orange jumpsuit on him. However, he begged the prison guards not to kill him, saying that he was an only child; he bribed them with $3,000, fled to Turkey, returned to Jordan, and is now in prison." There Are 3,000 Jordanians In ISIS And Other Groups Like It Q: "Have you any information on the number of Jordanians in the ranks of ISIS?" A: "There are no official numbers, but experts estimate that some 3,000 Jordanians are members of ISIS and [other] extremist organizations, and that some 420 have been killed. About 10 people from Al-Karak governorate have been killed, and the number of Jordanians who joined ISIS from the city of Al-Karak is over 50; most of them are in Syria." Given below is the text of the speech delivered by Tufail Ahmad, Director of the MEMRI South Asia Studies Project, on the occasion of the release of his book in New Delhi. The book, "Jihadist Threat to India - The Case for Islamic Reformation by an Indian Muslim," was released by Indian Minister of State for Home Shri Kiren Rijiju, at the event hosted by the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), New Delhi, on March 31, 2016. On the panel were (in photo above, right to left) former Indian Army commander Lt.-Gen. Ata Hasnain; former chief of India's external intelligence Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) Mr. Vikram Sood; Indian federal Minister of State for Home Affairs Shri Kiren Rijiju; former Indian Army chief and VIF director Gen. N.C. Vij; the author, Tufail Ahmad; and Mr. Sushant Sareen, the noted Pakistan affairs expert at the VIF. The following text is a slightly longer version of Tufail Ahmad's speech: "I am thankful to General N.C. Vij and the Vivekananda International Foundation for hosting this event, and especially Mr. Sushant Sareen for stepping in at the right moment to do this. I am indebted to Hon'ble Minister of State for Home Shri Kiren Rijiju for giving us his precious time to release my book. My thanks are due to Lt.-Gen. Ata Hasnain and Mr. Vikram Sood. Sirs, we benefit from your ideas as you speak from TV, Twitter or Facebook. "My book is a collection of research papers and articles, a resource book on the ideological aspect of jihadism, or its soft version called Islamism. India currently faces two types of jihadism: one is the Pakistani state-backed jihadist threat that we can deal with militarily; the other is the self-radicalization of Muslim youths in favour of the Islamic State (ISIS), which is more complex and its end will depend on how and when ISIS is defeated in Syria and Iraq. "At King's College London, I wrote a thesis on 'What Will Constitute the End of the War on Terror?' Sometimes wars end in a stalemate. For example, the Korean War did not have an outcome and threatens peace more than half a century later. Sometimes totally unrelated factors terminate wars decisively and quickly. For example, in Aceh, in Indonesia, militants abandoned jihad after the tsunami of December 2004. In 1947, our elders thought they could give away a piece of our territory (i.e. creating Pakistan) to buy lasting peace, but despite such a sacrifice, a certain type of Pakistan-backed jihadism continues to torment us, especially in Kashmir. "I believe that terrorists cannot take over our streets, our cities, our governments. So, what is a security threat? How many terrorists are a threat - 10, 50, 100, or 1,000? In a country of 1.25 billion Indians, what figure should worry us? On 26/11, a mere 10 Pakistani terrorists attacked Mumbai, damaging India-Pakistan relations. On 9/11, it took just 19 hijackers plus their supporters to create a long-term change in the course of the foreign policies of dozens of countries. Sometimes, a single beheading like that of Daniel Pearl can strike at a nation's global image - and in a multi-religious country like India, can cause communal tension. So, a security threat does not depend on numbers of terrorists; the threat is essentially rooted in the nature of terrorism itself. "So, what is the nature of the jihadi threat? Jihadi terrorism strikes at the roots of individual liberty, pluralism, women's rights, and free speech, which are the defining characteristics of the Indian Republic. This results from a certain movement of ideas that began from Mecca in the 7th century, as a result of which there are no Jews in Saudi Arabia, their original home; there are no Zoroastrians in Iran, originally their country; there are no Hindus in Multan, their home not long ago; there are no Hindus in Afghanistan; and there are no Sikhs in Lahore, originally a Sikh metropolis. And since India's independence, there are almost no (Hindu) Pandits in Kashmir. This is the nature of the jihadi threat that we face today. "Speaking of this threat, I am not speaking of the large masses of Muslims. I think over how ideas coalesce into ideologies and take over minds. For example, it takes just a single Islamic cleric to shut up an entire village of Muslims. So, at issue is not the vast majority of Muslims, but the single Islamic cleric and his set of ideas, his ideology that is consequential on a mass scale. Some argue that a fatwa (Islamic decree) is merely an Islamic opinion, but for the vast majority of devout Muslims, it is more effective than a court order; and as a promise to God, it impacts their lives. "But nowadays, it is fashionable to issue fatwas against Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. Last year, two fashionable fatwas were issued in India. It is easy to issue a fatwa against ISIS and Al-Qaeda but no Islamic cleric issues a fatwa against the theological principles that feed jihadism. A real fatwa against jihad would declare [the following]: a) Shias are Muslims; 2) Ahmadis are Muslims; c) Muslims will not be killed for apostasy; d) a Muslim woman can be head of state; e) the Prophet Muhammad can be criticized because he was a historic figure; and f) non-Muslims can be head of a Muslim nation. "Keep in mind: Jihadis fear democracy. So, democracy is the antidote to jihadism and Islamism. Absolutely no Muslim country today can match the vast educational and economic opportunities or religious and political liberties that Indian democracy offers to Muslims. The stronger the Indian democracy is, the more superior is our capability to fight jihadism. I think India must undertake some concrete steps: "1. India must enact a counter-radicalization law that addresses the radicalization of innocent Muslim youths by both militant groups and peaceful religious organizations. Keep in mind that Barelvi clerics do not differ theologically from the Charlie Hebdo attackers in Paris. "2. India must introduce FBI-style sting operations. Such a measure will: a) offer protection to intelligence agents and security officials; b) ensure that evidence collected by them is admissible before courts; and c) prevent cases like encounters or custodial deaths. "3. India should set up a website on which all religious organizations must upload a quarterly report on their sources of income and details about their leaders. Mosques, madrassas, khanqahs (monasteries) and dargahs (Sufi shrines) must register as NGOs and submit a report in view of Saudi and non-Saudi funding. They must obtain a PAN (permanent account number) card to ensure compliance. "4. India must stop endorsing the Sufis of the Barelvi School. It antagonizes rival sects like Deobandis. Jihadis came from the Sufi school in British colonial India as well. Sufis are no different from Charlie Hebdo jihadis. What Sufi opposes Triple Talaq [a Muslim man's ability to divorce his wife by repeating 'I divorce you' three times] or supports Muslim girls' equal share in parental property? What Sufi will say that a Muslim woman, or a Hindu, can be head of state? "5. The Indian government must take a firm position before the Supreme Court on the Common Civil Code (giving equal rights to Muslim women at par with Hindu women). It is sad that in the Indian states of Kerala and Gujarat, the High Court judges refer to the Koran in cases of Muslim issues. Judges can help Indian Muslims by citing the Constitution, not the Koran. "6. In India, police officers seem to be working for the political class, not for the people and the Constitution. (Hindu leader) Kamlesh Tiwari can be arrested under the National Security Act, while Islamic clerics of Bijnor taunt the Rule of Law by openly offering 51 lakh rupees rewards for anyone beheading Tiwari for blasphemy. Our policing encourages Islamists to think that they are above the law. There is an urgent need for police reforms, so that the law will work without religious favor. "7. The Muslim minority syndrome resides in Hindu-Muslim conflicts and quota politics (in jobs and educational institutions in the name of religion). Indian politicians nurse the Muslim siege mentality because it sustains 'counterfeit secularism.' To remove the siege mentality, India can make quota politics redundant, by adopting a policy of free books, free clothing, and free schooling for children of all BPL (Below Poverty Level) card holders, irrespective of religion and caste. "8. Since radicalization collides with the motifs of civilization, India must introduce three textbooks, from grades 1 through 12: one on Indian classics and classical Indian thinkers; the second, a primer on the ideals of the Indian Constitution; and the third, a primer containing good points from all religions. Education is a state subject, but it is doable. Teaching history counters radicalization. "9. The cause of Islamic reformation in India, as elsewhere, is difficult but not impossible to achieve through government measures. The Koran and Hadiths (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) are not going to change in the next century. So the fundamental question is: Is there a way to introduce change among Indian Muslims? I think the Indian state must undertake the following measures: "a. The Indian state must stop funding madrassas. Madrassas are not educational institutions. The very purpose of madrassas is to foster religious orthodoxies, not to educate children. Madrassas are movements of religious ideas. Madrassas are organized counter-liberty movements, and are incompatible with the 21st century's ideas of individual rights, free speech, and gender equality. The secular Indian state's funding of madrassas is unconstitutional. "b. Under the Right to Education Act, all children aged 6-14 must be in proper schools, not in madrassas. A proper school means this: Students must achieve the same educational outcomes in mathematics and other material sciences that students in mainstream schools achieve. Unfortunately, the Indian state has abdicated its role of educating our children. It has not only abdicated its responsibility, it has allowed its role to be taken over by madrassas. "c. Madrassas capture the Muslim child's mind during the critical ages of 6-14 - the ages when children are protected by law by the Right to Education Act. For this age group, madrassas should be allowed to teach the Koran and Hadiths outside the school hours of the day, or after age 14. By funding madrassas, the Indian state is funding Islam and its orthodoxies. "Counterfeit-secular Indian leaders defend madrassas in the name of religious freedom. But among all the fundamental rights, Article 25 of the Indian Constitution on the Right to Religion is the most inferior right, the weakest right. Article 25 carries two sub-clauses that make it an inferior right: '25 (1): [the Right to Religion is] Subject to public order, morality and health...' '25 (2) Nothing in this Article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the State from making any lawOC' "I am not saying that the Right to Religion does not exist. But, the Right to Religion is superseded by all other fundamental rights. Let me explain this: I have a fundamental right to eat, I have a fundamental right to drink and I have a fundamental right to breathe. But my fundamental right to breathe overrides my fundamental rights to eat and drink. The Supreme Court of India must grasp that the Right to Religion cannot be a fundamental right before 18 years. If you can't have sex before 18 years, if you can't vote before 18 years of age, you cannot have a fundamental right to religion before 18. "India's Hindu elite send their daughters to CBSE (excellent mainstream) schools and leave Muslim girls at the mercy of madrassas. You cannot walk away by arguing that change must come from within Muslims. This is not a valid argument, because throughout history, social change has come essentially from outside, through interaction with foreign ideas. By 2050, India will have the largest Muslim population, about 311 million. If we can ensure that Muslim children aged 6-14 go to schools, not madrassas, we can hope that at least 20% of Muslims will emerge as agents of social change in the next half a century. "For Islamic Reformation, let's ask this question: Is it possible that an entire generation of Muslim youths can abandon ideas inherited from clerics and their parents? History offers good lessons. In Germany and Italy, a generation of youths abandoned the beliefs of their parents about Nazism and Fascism. In India itself, an entire generation of Hindu youths abandoned their parents' beliefs about caste. Judaism and Christianity went through their own internal civil wars. Islam too is undergoing its internal war. "Jews and Christians have confined the Torah and the Bible to the personal sphere of life. In India itself, Hindus have abandoned Manusmriti [important and authoritative Hindu Law Book]. Islam is a young religion, and there is hope that the Koran's impact can be limited to mosques. "For Islamic Reformation to begin in India, it must begin with children aged 6-14. For Islamic Reformation to begin, I want the Indian government leaders to come and tell me: We do not promise Sufism and the 5% quota, but we will guarantee that your daughter [will learn] mathematics, economics, and physics from Grade 1 through 12. "Thank you." * Tufail Ahmad is Director of MEMRI's South Asia Studies Project. The following are some of this week's reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to [email protected] with "Membership" in the subject line.) Note to media and government: For a full copy of these reports, send an email with the title of the report in the subject line to [email protected]. Please include your name, title, and organization in your email. EXCLUSIVE: AQAP Organizes Event Memorializing Fighters Killed In U.S. Airstrikes In Yemen On April 1, 2016, Al-Athir, a media agency affiliated with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), posted a video featuring coverage of an event organized by the group to memorialize its fighter who had been killed in a U.S. air strike targeting a military base in the city of Al-Mukalla, Yemen on March 22, 2016. EXCLUSIVE: 'Apostates,' 'Crusaders,' 'Infidels,' And Western Political Institutions - ISIS's Enemies According To Its English-Language Magazine 'Dabiq' The first issue of Dabiq, the online English-language magazine of the Islamic State (ISIS), was released July 5, 2014, immediately following the declaration of its caliphate and of its leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as caliph. It included reports, articles, photo spreads, and news of the Islamic State. This issue of the magazine drew clear lines between the group's friends and foes, quoting from Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi's July 4 address, his first public speech as caliph, in which he delineated the two camps. As Western leaders and officials began to speak out increasingly against the Islamic State, these statements, and subsequent Western actions, are used by ISIS to fatten its list of enemies. In general, it sees anyone who does not adhere to, or at least support, its unique fundamentalist vision and implementation of Islam as an adversary. These adversaries are subdivided into groups of kuffar (infidels) - for example, Jews, Christians, and Shi'ites - while Sunni Muslims who disagree with ISIS fall either into that category or into the category of murtaddin (apostates) or, possibly, munafiqoon (hypocrites). EXCLUSIVE: A Look At ISIS's Recent Efforts To Broadcast Online Radio, Launch Radio App By: M. Khayat* Introduction The Islamic State's (ISIS) information apparatus is vast and based on well-coordinated and sustained efforts that are managed on the ground in ISIS-controlled areas. In cyberspace, ISIS leverages many platforms to deliver its message, including jihadi forums, blogs, social media platforms, and encrypted communication apps like Telegram, to name a few. In the last several months, despite concerted efforts to counter its propaganda, ISIS has intensified its online outreach efforts, launching several Android apps and simultaneously running a number of websites in order to stream its official radio network - Al-Bayan. These efforts underscore the role and importance that ISIS puts on these services, which are equally, if not more, important than the group's military efforts on the ground. EXCLUSIVE: The Islamic State: Although It Leads Global Unbelief, The U.S. Is An Enemy Like All Other Enemies Recently the Islamic State (hereafter ISIS) published an article in its official newsletter Al-Naba assailing the concept that the Muslims must prioritize war against the U.S.. The article, titled "Jihad Against America -Above All a Matter of Religious Law," explains to the organization's militants and supporters and to the broader Muslim public, that the war on the U.S. is subordinate to the organization's religious and theological outlook that the U.S. is one enemy out of a long series of enemies of Islam, tyrants who must be destroyed. The article is part of ISIS' polemic with competing Islamist streams, particularly Al-Qaeda, that essentially view the U.S. as Islam's primary enemy and therefore jihad's current main target. EXCLUSIVE: Editor Of 'Azan' Magazine Joins Islamic State, Says: 'ISIS Does Not Declare The Takfir Of The General Masses Of The Muslims'; 'I Call On All Our Readers To... Strive Forth Collectively To Free Al-Quds [Jerusalem]' According to a posting on social media, the editor of jihadi magazine "Azan" has joined the Islamic State (ISIS). The magazine, published in English in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, was thought to be connected to the Taliban forces. While the editor of the magazine was never identified, a post on Justpaste.it names him as Muhammad Qasim, which may be an assumed name. The magazine has not been published since the release of its sixth issue in August 2014. EXCLUSIVE: Pro-ISIS Australian Cleric Musa Cerantonio Active On Instagram Pro-ISIS cleric Musa Cerantonio is active on Instagram. Cerantonio also recently used a similar name on Twitter. The cleric used to be a high-profile fixture on social media, openly calling upon Muslims to wage jihad in Iraq and Syria, but his activity noticeably decreased after his July 2014 arrest in the Philippines, which saw him deported back to Australia. After his arrest, he adopted the name Qillawri, and also used more obscure social media platforms such as Paltalk. He mostly posts photos of himself on his Instagram account, posing in various spots around the world. Cerantonio has a private Instagram account, so users must request to follow him. At the time of this writing the cleric had 127 followers and was following 178 accounts, mainly of ISIS supporters as well as a few ISIS members. EXCLUSIVE: Islamic State In Al-Furat Province Launches Islamic Police Forensics Department On April 2, 2016, the information office for the Islamic State (ISIS) in Al-Furat province, Iraq, published a pictorial report depicting the launch of its "Islamic police forensics department." The report, which was also posted on the jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam, includes pictures of the equipment used by the department, its investigation of crimes by collecting, identifying, and comparing fingerprints, and more. ISIS Media Operative Calls On French Supporters To Participate In The Media Battle On April 5, 2016 the An-Nur Media Group, which publishes official Islamic State (ISIS) material in French on Twitter, tweeted two posters calling on their followers to participate in ISIS's media psychological warfare efforts. The messages also promoted the use of a French-language hashtag to aggregate ISIS content. Belgian Jabhat Al-Nusra Fighter Killed In US Drone Strike In Idlib On April 5, 2016, a French-speaking media activist in Syria reported that a Belgian Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN) fighter known as Abou Souleyman Al-Belgiki was killed in a US drone strike in Idlib. Pro-ISIS Media Group Praises Attacks On Paris And Brussels, Says London, Berlin, Rome May Be Next On April 4, 2016, Al-Wa'ad, a media production group which publishes pro-ISIS jihadi materials on social media platforms, released a video titled "Fight Them; Allah Will Punish Them By Your Hands" praising the attacks on Paris and Brussels and stating that London, Berlin or Rome could be the next target. ISIS Kirkuk Province Video Shows Two Iraqi Aircraft Being Shot Down On April 2, 2016, the information office of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Kirkuk province, Iraq, published a 6-minute video titled "They plot and plan, and Allah too plans" (a reference to Koran 8:30). The video, which was also posted on the jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam, praises the work of ISIS's anti-aircraft unit in Kirkuk, which it claims managed to recently shoot down two Iraqi recon aircraft in one day. This is likely a reference to the downing of two Iraqi army aircraft in the Kirkuk area on March 16, responsibility for which was claimed by the ISIS-affiliated 'Amaq news agency on the same day. ISIS Claims Responsibility For Assassinating Senior Security Officer In Saudi Arabia On April 5, 2016, the Islamic State (ISIS) in Najd, Saudi Arabia, released a statement claiming responsibility for the assassination of Colonel Kitab Majed Al-Hammadi a senior security officer. According to the statement, which was posted in leading ISIS-affiliated jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam, Al-Hammadi, who was the director of internal security in the Al-Quwayiyah region, was assassinated in Al-Dawadmi, east of the capital city of Riyadh. The statement also threatened to target Saudi soldiers and policemen who were described as "guardian of the Crusaders" and promised that they should expect more attacks. Jabhat Al-Nusra Eulogies Slain Spokesman, Vows To Continue Its Jihad On April 6, 2016, Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN) released a statement eulogizing Abu Firas Al-Suri, the group's spokesman, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike several days earlier. Al-Suri was killed along with an unknown number of other men, whom JN collectively described as a group of "our best brothers." Video Shows TIP Fighters Combating Shi'ite Militias, Syrian Army, Hizbullah In Northeast Syria On April 3, 2016, the Sawt Al-Isla ("Voice of Islam) media company, which is associated with the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) jihadi organization, published a 15-minute video titled "And There Is No Victory Except From Allah - 4." Report: Jihadi Terror Attacks Increasing In Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Following are excerpts from a Pakistani media report indicating that despite three military operations, the jihadi violence in Pakistan's tribal region is re-emerging: On January 20, Taliban militants killed 20 people at Bacha Khan University "'Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has become a safe haven for terrorists,' according to Awami National Party president Asfandyar Wali Khan. 'Until they take action against a mindset in the settled [non-tribal] areas, it is impossible to eradicate militancy,' he said in a statement, adding that the government was protecting the patrons of terrorism. According to Asfandyar Wali Khan, even some lawmakers and ministers [in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of which Peshawar is the capital] pay extortion money to terrorist organizations. The result, he says, is an increase in militant activities and the lowering of the police's morale." OAKLAND For 12 years the family of Sammy Sanjay waited for the day that would bring justice to their brother, son and husband. His accused killer, Larry Fuller Jr., was found guilty Wednesday in an Oakland courthouse. Fuller, 45, of Redwood City, was convicted of first-degree murder by the jury of eight women and four men. Crina Ionescu, the victims wife, wiped away tears after Judge Larry Goodman read the verdict. Im overwhelmed, she said outside the courtroom, but Im happy we got justice after 12 years. Prisheen Sanjay Krishna, 36, who went by Sammy Sanjay, stepped outside of his home in the Shadow Lakes area of Brentwood on Oct. 26, 2004, at 6:15 a.m. to smoke. He was shot four times in the head by Fuller the same man who he was set to testify against the next day in Alameda County Superior Court in Hayward on a grand theft case. Fuller had skipped out on a $2,700 car bill where Sanjay worked at RyNck Tires in Castro Valley in 2003. Three days after the murder, parole officers found handwritten directions to the Brentwood home, and detailed information about the couples cars. AJ Samy, Sanjays brother, was visiting the couple from Sydney, Australia, just two weeks before his brother was killed. Details about a rental car the family had rented were also in Fullers notes. Samy, who traveled from Australia for the three-week trial, said it was shocking to hear back in 2004 when he returned home that his brother had been killed. The family has since been in a lot of pain. Bal Krishna Samy, their father, also traveled to Oakland from Fiji to witness the trial. I lost my great son, said the father, getting emotional. We still miss him. Although Fuller was named initially in 2004, the case went cold for several years. Fuller wasnt arrested until January 2015, six years after the Alameda County Sheriffs Office took over the case from Contra Costa County, since Sanjay was an Alameda County witness, prosecutors said. Fuller was also found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The jury also affirmed the special allegations of killing a witness to a crime, discharging a gun and personal use of a gun. Fuller will be sentenced May 25. Contact Angela Ruggiero at 510-293-2469 and follow her at Twitter.com/aeruggie. SFO More than 60 years after he perished in a prisoner of war camp, U.S. Army Cpl. Robert Perry Graham is back home in the Bay Area. The San Francisco natives remains arrived at San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday night. Its a day that I always hoped for and my father, who passed away, always hoped for, said Grahams niece, Nicole Venturelli. Graham a member of Company A, 13th Engineer Combat Battalion, 7th Infantry Division was captured during the Battle of Chipyong-ni, the so-called Gettysburg of the Korean War, on Feb. 13, 1951. Three months later, he died at the Suan POW camp. He was 20. The corporals family was told he had been killed in action, but without a body there was no sense of closure. In 1993, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea turned over 31 boxes filled with the remains of U.S. servicemen. A joint task force identified a single leg bone as Grahams using DNA samples provided by two of his nephews, James George and Tony Graham. The family was told of the match in November. I was so happy and yet sad at the same time, recalled Venturelli, 51, of Redwood City. But it gave (us) a sense of closure, that we knew that he did, indeed, die in Korea. George flew to Hawaii, where his uncles remains were identified by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and escorted them home. He blinked back tears as he stood on the tarmac at SFO. To have closure for our family is very emotional, the 59-year-old Fairfield resident said. Its something that my aunts and uncles, and my mother, had always dreamed about having this closure. George said the return of Grahams remains was, particularly, significant for him as a retired U.S. Marine. Whether its my uncle or any service member, we always have a sense of pride in taking care of our own or bringing home our own, he said. Venturelli said she also felt a special connection to Graham because of the strong bond her father shared with him. He rarely spoke about him but he kept a box filled with their correspondence. I know how much my dad loved him, she said. A memorial service for Graham will take place 11 a.m. Friday at Duggans Serra Mortuary, 500 Westlake Ave., in Daly City. He will then be buried with full military honors at Holy Cross Cemetery, 1500 Mission Road in Colma. The public is invited to attend. While the family finally has the closure it has long sought, many others do not. Some 7,900 U.S. servicemen remain unaccounted for, said Bryan Carmody, a spokesman for the United Service Organizations, which coordinated the return of the corporals remains. To have this guy back is amazing, he said, But its just a reminder of all the others that are still out there. Contact Jason Green at 408-920-5006. Follow him at Twitter.com/JGreenMercNews. Georgia-Qatar sign two deals solidifying agriculture partnership Georgia and Qatar are deepening ties in the agricultural sector by signing two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) in the fields of veterinary health and livestock production, as well as economic, scientific and technical cooperation in agriculture.The two deals were signed by Georgias Agriculture Minister, Otar Danelia, and Qatars Minister of Municipality and Environment, Mohamed bin Abdullah al-Rumaihi, today in Doha. The Georgian official is on a visit to Qatars capital to meet a number of top officials.The first Memorandum aimed at exchanging information on veterinary health and animal production activities and to exchange information through an early warning system on changing epidemiological situations.The second MoU supported the import and export of food and agricultural products between the two countries. It also supported cooperation between scientific research centres and cooperation in the fields of veterinary, plant protection and measures to combat diseases, pests and weed control.Danelia and Abdullah al-Rumaihi both believed the deals would strengthen the existing bilateral ties in agricultural investment and livestock production, and both nations would benefit from them.Georgia and Qatar already enjoy fruitful cooperation through importing live animals.Meanwhile, Danelia also visited the Qatari Chamber of Commerce and Industries, where he met local business representatives. Danelia invited Qatari businessmen to visit Georgia and explore the trade and investment opportunities available.While at the Qatari Chamber of Commerce, Danelia met board member Mohamed Ahmed al-Obaidly. The meeting dealt with ways to strengthen economic and trade relations between the two countries business societies.The Georgian Minister welcomed Qatari investments and made a presentation on the key investment sectors such as transport, tourism, food security and agriculture, which constituted 10 percent of Georgias total Gross Domestic Product (GDP).Ahmed al-Obaidly stressed Qatari businessmen were keen to explore opportunities in the Georgias agriculture and real estate sectors, and in other areas. Deputy Foreign Minister Ioannis Amanatidis met today, Friday, 8 April 2016, with the European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos, on the margins of the international Geneva Conference on Preventing Violent Extremism The Way Forward, which took place at the UN Offices in Geneva. During the meeting, the two sides focused on the migration/refugee issue, while there was an in-depth discussion of the latest developments in the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement. The Bay City Times reports a swimathon and swim party are Friday to raise money for the Essexville-Hampton Public Schools' Garber High School pool. The "Save Garber's Pool" effort includes online fundraising. Superintendent Matthew Cortez says it could cost about $600,000 to fix pipes, the pool deck and the structure supporting the pool so it can be used past this year. He says it may cost as much as $1.8 million to completely revamp the 50-year-old pool to modern standards. Cortez says officials don't want to close the pool. He plans to present options to the school board in May that include closing it, fixing it up or converting it for another use. KNSD-TV says Denise Gunderson was sentenced Wednesday to seven years behind bars. She has previous felony convictions. Prosecutors say last year, Gunderson showed up at several San Diego County weddings, went into rooms and offices and stole valuables during the ceremonies. Authorities say Gunderson used the credit cards to make thousands of dollars in purchases at Costco, Walmart and other stores sometimes only minutes after the wedding vows were taken. Surveillance video caught Gunderson at several wedding locations and stores. She was arrested last December in Las Vegas and pleaded guilty in February to grand theft and identity theft. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and other organizations filed an administrative complaint with the Department of Homeland Security alleging that Border Patrol agents have been seizing immigrants' property before deporting them to Mexico, in some cases to cities where they didn't know anyone. It came the same day the ACLU of Southern California sued to demand deportation agents and immigration judges consider immigrants' ability to pay when setting bond to avoid jailing people solely because they are poor. Advocates contend that at least 100 immigrants are detained in the region each day despite being granted bond. The cases were filed separately and follow heated rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail about how the country should treat immigrants and which ones should be allowed to stay. Advocates in New Mexico said immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally were deported without their belongings in 26 cases and that the seizures put them in harm's way. In one instance, Border Patrol agents detained a 23-year-old man from Chihuahua, Mexico, on a road near Antelope Wells, New Mexico, and forced him to sign a form abandoning rights to his belongings, the complaint said. In another case, agents seized nearly $400 from a 23-year-old woman from Guerrero after detaining her near an international bridge in El Paso, Texas. The money, which was part of the woman's life savings, was never returned, advocates said. "They are really eroding the rule of law at the border," said Kristin Greer Love, an attorney with the ACLU of New Mexico. "They are putting people at great vulnerability. Some are fleeing dangerous situations and are seeking asylum in the U.S." The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Border Patrol, said it has a policy of safeguarding detainees' property and returning their belongings when they are deported. The agency will review the complaint, spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said in a statement. "Any allegation of missing property will be thoroughly investigated," she said. Christensen declined to comment on the lawsuit from the ACLU of Southern California. The group wants authorities to consider other kinds of bond or alternatives to detention so more immigrants can get out of jail. The ACLU noted that immigration bonds must be paid in full with cash and that the Justice Department has encouraged criminal courts to weigh defendants' ability to pay when setting bond. Advocates want immigration courts to do the same. The lawsuit cited the case of Honduran citizen Cesar Matias, who has been detained since 2012 despite having a $3,000 bond. Matias was taken into immigration custody after a drug conviction and is seeking asylum to avoid deportation to Honduras, where he previously was persecuted because he is gay, said Michael Kaufman, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. "The purpose of bond is to assure someone's appearance in court. It is not mean to be an unreachable condition that is basically another way of ordering someone's detention," Kaufman said. The ACLU is seeking class-action status in the lawsuit for immigrants held in the Los Angeles area, where authorities have bed space for nearly 3,000 detainees. The suit was filed against the Justice Department, which oversees the country's immigration courts, and the Department of Homeland Security. The Justice Department also declined to comment. The Stockton Record reports officers arrested 18-year-old Lonale Shaw for assault with a deadly weapon. Police say the fight Sunday evening began after the unidentified victim defecated on Shaw's lawn and he began chasing him with a large kitchen knife. They say the man fell and Shaw jumped on top of him and began stabbing him in the head. Police say Shaw dropped the knife during the struggle and the victim was able to grab it and stab him in the neck. Officers arrested Shaw and recovered the knife. He's being held on $250,000 bail. The movie opens in Indian theaters on Friday. It's a computer-generated remake of the 1967 animated film that was based on Rudyard Kipling's book. Censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalini justified the restriction by saying the 3D effects were scary as the animals seem to jump right at the audience. "It's up to parents to decide how much of these effects are suited for their children," Nihalani told reporters late Wednesday. The decision hasn't gone well with many. Bollywood producer Mukesh Bhatt said it was a shame on the country if a film like "The Jungle Book" was given the "U/A" certificate. The film will be released in the United States with a PG rating, meaning parental guidance is suggested because of some scary scenes. On Thursday, Bollywood actor Ayushmann Khurrana also found the movie's certification "unbelievable" and challenged the criteria behind it. "Maybe it is because of the 3D images of Bhageera and Sherkhan bouncing off the screen. These days kids are used to reading story books and watching Captain America, and after all these are animated films," the Press Trust of India quoted him as saying. Compared to Hollywood, movie norms in India are extremely strict. Censorship authorities often order filmmakers both Indian and foreign to chop scenes deemed offensive. Films with graphic content can be barred completely. Last year, India's film censor authorities ordered that kissing scenes in the James Bond movie, "Spectre," be shortened before it was released in the country. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate UPPER THUMB Ominous black spots on wind turbines in the Thumb have raised a few eyebrows. Huron County Building and Zoning Director Jeff Smith says residents have questioned what look like grease stains on six or seven turbines between Sebewaing and Owendale. It was disturbing to see that, Smith said, adding he drove through the area Monday. Seals on the turbine were coming out of bearing holders, Smith said, comparing it to a vehicle with a bad wheel bearing. He said hes not sure if the bearings on the turbines are faulty or defective. GE knew but did not tell us, Smith said of turbine manufacturer General Electric, adding he got an email from NextEra Energy stating a cleaning crew is coming. There are 32 turbines in Exelon Wind Generations Harvest 1 project in Oliver and Chandler townships. A 400-foot, 485,000-pound turbine that fell on Feb. 25 spilled 25 gallons of greases, oil and coolant, according to the DEQ (http://bit.ly/1TVboJD). The spill posed no imminent drinking water or environmental health threat, a DEQ official told the Tribune. Exelon says the fallen turbine held about 400 gallons of oil. The leaks arent limited to just Huron County. South of Minden City, some of DTE Energys 20 turbines are planted in organic farm fields. A landowner on Charleston Road who farms about 1,000 acres said in February the Environmental Protection Agency and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality arrived about six months back when oil was leaking from a turbines nacelle, which encases inner components and is where the rotor attaches, but that oil did not leak onto the field. Reports from the Coast Guards National Response Center for 2016 show a caller on Feb. 24 stated the turbine near Charleston Road was leaking oil onto the ground. The report shows an unknown amount of hydraulic oil and grease leaked. It didnt cause injury, damage or road or waterway closings, but an N appears in an entry for RELEASE_SECURED and the report states an environmental impact to vegetation. The report gives no description for remedial action and says the EPA was notified. Jennifer Wilt, lead communications specialist at DTE, says the utility currently has one turbine experiencing an oil leak. The cause is typically blade bearings, according to DTE. The utility has established a process for notifications, remediation and cleanup of oil leaks, Wilt said. Through our environmental management practice, we do not have any concerns for landowners or the general public as the result of an oil leak, Wilt said in an email. Turbines are designed to contain oil leaks within the tower itself. BAD AXE Welcome Home: 50 Years Later. A group of veterans gather at the Coffee Cup Plus every Thursday morning at 10 oclock. As they sip back on a hot cup of coffee, eat their hearty breakfasts and recall tours they once battled in, they plan for an ultimate memorial celebration the 2016 Memorial Day Parade and Services. The group of veterans also known as the Bad Axe/Huron County Parade Committee have been meeting every Thursday morning since November to plan this years festivities. The theme, Welcome Home: 50 Years Later, was an idea that was sparked to honor Vietnam veterans who werent welcomed home with open arms after spending years fighting and defending their country. During the discussion on Thursday, the committee appointed Tom Stahl as the master of ceremony for this years services. Each year, the committee changes what war veterans will be featured the Korean War and World War II were the last two selected. One major focus the group reviewed was volunteers and other items still needed for the parade. The committee is continuing to seek more volunteers, community groups, kids on bicycles, floats, old cars, military vehicles and pets to host the best parade possible. Any help at would be great during the parade especially, said Bad Axe Mayor Jim Hicks. We really want to see as many kids possible with their bikes dressed up in patriotic colors, added Dan Little. When I was a kid, every kid dressed up their bike. ... It would be nice to see that again. The two best decorated bikes will receive a brand new bike as a grand prize. Hicks added plaques will be given to the top three floats and a special prize for the best decorated float. We want to invite every veteran in the state of Michigan to be in the parade, Little said. Everybodys invited, Hicks echoed. The parade is scheduled to kick off at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 28, in the Franklin Inn parking lot. For any veteran who wishes to participate in this years parade, its suggested you arrive at the Franklin Inn around 8:30 a.m. the morning of. This is for the ones who died from Huron County, not just Bad Axe, Hicks said. Yeah, we want all vets from the county to come, Little added. Applications for float entries can still be picked up at the Bad Axe City Hall. The committee welcomes all ideas and help, so if youre interested, stop by the Coffee Cup Plus Thursday mornings at 10. For additional questions or to find out how you can get involved, call Hicks at 989-315-1590. HONOLULU Three men who were stranded on an uninhabited Pacific island for three days are safe, Thursday, after using palm fronds to spell the word "help" in the sand. A Navy P-8 Madfox 807 aircrew from Misawa Air Base in Japan was conducting a search pattern for the missing mariners when they spotted survivors holding lifejackets and their makeshift sign. This information was relayed back to search and rescue watchstanders in Guam and shared with the family. The survivors were then picked up and transferred by a local small boat to Pulap. Watchstanders at the Sector Guam Command Center received notification from a Chuuk search and rescue liaison at 11:07 a.m. Tuesday of the overdue skiff en route the island of Weno. Watchstanders issued an urgent marine information broadcast, coordinated the assistance of the Navy P-8 aircrew and vessels in the area of the skiff's last known location to assist in the search. AMVER vessels Brilliant Jupiter and Ten Yu Maru diverted and conducted a combined 17 hours and searched 178 miles of track-line. The Navy P-8 aircrew launched at 6 a.m. Thursday to assist in the search and located the men approximately two hours into their search. "Our combined efforts coupled with the willingness of many different resources to come together and help, led to the successful rescue of these three men in a very remote part of the Pacific," said Lt. William White, Sector Guam public affairs officer. AMVER, sponsored by the Coast Guard, is a computer-based voluntary global ship reporting system used worldwide by search and rescue authorities. With AMVER, rescue coordinators can identify participating ships in the area of distress and divert the vest-sited ship or ships to respond. Since March 28, watchstanders throughout the Coast Guard 14th District have coordinated rescue efforts in the Pacific for seven separate search and rescue cases of this nature, involving 10 AMVER vessels and six aircrews resulting in 15 lives saved. "The Coast Guard 14th District covers an area of responsibility more than 12.2 million square miles of land and sea, an area almost twice the size of Russia," said Jennifer Conklin, search and rescue mission coordinator at the Coast Guard Command Center Honolulu. "Oftentimes, we are thousands of miles away from those who need help and because of that our partnerships with the Navy, other search and rescue organizations, partner Pacific nations and AMVER are essential." As part of Pacific Partnership 2015, Coast Guard members conducted outreach in Chuuk and provided boating safety equipment such as lifejackets, radar reflectors and signaling mirrors. Almost 100 people mostly from Haiti who were rescued from an overcrowded boat off the Florida coast had no food or water for... Two years after whistleblower revelations of manipulated appointment times at the Veterans Medical Center in Phoenix led to findings that the problem was systemic across the Veterans Affairs Department, internal investigations into the matter are finally being released. The reports, documenting the manipulation of wait-times at VA facilities across 19 states, reveal that in at least seven facilities the dates were falsified per order of supervisors, according to an article in USA Today, which acquired the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. The 71 reports are now available for viewing on the department's website. The VA anticipates releasing another half dozen reports at least. It is also completing 30 site-specific investigations that it will release in the coming months, department spokesman James Hutton said. The reports finally identify VA hospitals and clinics where appointment data was manipulated. In particular, inspector general concluded appointment dates were manipulated in accordance with supervisor instructions in facilities in seven states, including Arkansas, California, Delaware, Illinois, New York, Texas and Vermont. The investigations were carried out in 2014 after whistleblowers went public with allegations of appointment gaming that resulted in veteran deaths at the Phoenix hospital. Altogether, 40 VA hospitals and clinics across the U.S. and Puerto Rico were found to be "zeroing out" wait times -- meaning they would adjust the dates to make it appear veterans were getting the appointment dates they desired rather than those that were available. The manipulation concealed the extent to which facilities were not keeping up with patient demand. In some instances confirmed by the IG agents, wait-times were manipulated as a result of poor training or instruction, though the net results were skewed appointment data in violation of VA procedure. The department, in anticipation of the reports' release, said last week that it's "important to note that OIG has not substantiated any case in which a [Veterans Health Administration] Senior Executive or other senior leader intentionally manipulated scheduling data." In about a third of the inspector general investigations, there was no evidence of manipulated appointment data, it said. Of those remaining, investigators substantiated 18 instances of intentional misuse of scheduling systems. Of those 18 cases, VA says, the Office of Accountability Review found individual misconduct warranting discipline in 12, resulting in 29 employees who were disciplined. VA did not offer a detailed accounting of the actions taken, saying only that they ranged from official admonishment to removal, including three employees who retired or resigned with disciplinary action pending. Rep. Jeff Miller, a Republican from Florida and chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, on Friday said the inspector general reports "document dysfunction on the part of both the Department of Veterans Affairs and its inspector general." Miller, who has been the most vocal among lawmakers in demanding VA reform and accountability, slammed the department for sitting on the reports for so long. "The fact that the IG only released these documents after public pressure from the media as well as Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate is proof that it still has much more to learn when it comes to providing the oversight VA needs and the transparency taxpayers deserve," he said. "Nevertheless, the reports outline a host of serious scheduling issues that masked wait times at VA facilities around the country." At the VA Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, inspectors found that both non-supervisory and supervisory employees manipulating appointment dates in the VA computer system to make it appear patient wait times were significantly lower than they were. Not only that, but some supervisors "displayed a lack of candor while making statements to [IG] special agents regarding their knowledge and/or participation in the manipulation of patient waiting times," the report states. Agents looking into the VA Medical Center in San Diego, California, found employees altering patients' desired appointment date times to show "zero-day wait times," and indicated the change was made on the instruction of a supervisor. The supervisor, not identified in the report, denied the allegation, though the report cites emails in which employees were told to zero out wait times if patients did not wish to change to an appointment. At the VA Medical Center in Wilmington, Delaware, agents found employees were "negotiating" with veterans for their appointment desired date instead of simply recording the date they wanted. If they agreed to the date that was also the best available they would be entered into the system and no wait time would be reflected. The IG found it was not uncommon for employees to negotiate desired dates with patients based on clinic availability. One supervisor told the IG that negotiated desired dates had to be based on clinic availability even if the date is not the one requested by the veteran. Another said there are times when a desired date is uncertain -- a "gray area" -- the IG report states. At the VA Medical Center at Audie L. Murphy VA Hospital, San Antonio, Texas, a supervisor acknowledged she "resolved scheduling errors" by changing a veteran's desired appointment date. She also said she may have told other employees to do the same thing, the report states. Inspectors to the VA Medical Center in Danville, Illinois, found an employee responding to a weekly list of patients with wait times greater than 14 or 30 days between desired and the actual appointment dates by going into the system and reducing the wait time to zero. "Nobody told her to do this; she just assumed that it should be done," the report states. "[She] felt if such changes were not made, there would be repercussions by management against those which she deemed to be on a black list." Another employee said she was told to make such changes but couldn't recall who gave her the order. A third worker identified a supervisor who told her that the desired and actual appointment dates must always match, but the supervisor denied giving such instructions, according to the report. A supervisor with the VA Medical Center in Hines, Illinois, admitted to the IG agent having employees encourage veterans to agree to alternate desired dates closer to those available. "While arguably practical," the IG wrote, "this violates VHA Scheduling Directive." At the Community Based Outpatient Clinic in Rochester, New York, the IG found workers and supervisors admitting to using the available date for the desired date. Supervisors "stated that they trained staff to use the first available date as the desired date because they misunderstood the correct procedure," the report states. The IG also noted that the workers they spoke with were emphatic that managers told them to be upfront with the IG agents and answer questions honestly. "Many of the employees voiced their opinion that there was no malicious intent by any employee to defraud or mislead anyone regarding wait times," the report states At the VA Outpatient Clinic in Harlingen, Texas, the report said agents found evidence that an employee "felt pressure from a [VA regional health care system] management official." And this led the worker, it says, to manipulate the appointment system to keep scheduling numbers within standard. "We also found evidence indicating that there had been inappropriate training years ago, which carried through into present-day work activities with regard to scheduling," the report states. Inspectors to the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont, said they substantiated that facility schedulers inappropriately entered a desired date to match the actual appointment date in order to obtain a zero-day wait time for both new and established patients. "It was largely corroborated that this manipulation was employed by schedulers at the instruction of a former and current supervisor of the [employees] and with the knowledge of the second-level supervisor," the report said. -- Bryant Jordan can be reached at bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bryantjordan. The 646-foot flattop that Japan lists as a destroyer and China calls a helicopter carrier will join training exercises in the South China Sea next week to send a "strong message" to Beijing on its sovereignty claims over disputed islands and reefs, an official said. The first deployment of Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Forces warship Ise outside of Japan's home islands will include a port stop at Subic Bay in the Philippines, where about 5,000 U.S. troops and 3,500 Filipino troops began the Balikatan 2016 live-fire exercises earlier this week that will continue through April 15. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, along with officials of Japan, Australia, Vietnam and other regional nations, was expected to stop in the Philippines next week to observe the Balikatan exercises ahead of his April 10-12 meetings in India to bolster military cooperation and sales. In a news conference earlier this week at Camp Aguinaldo, headquarters of the Philippines' Armed Forces, Lt. Gen. John A. Toolan, commander of U.S. Marine Forces, Pacific, said that there were "a couple of things he (Carter) is very interested in" -- an apparent reference to the first firing in the Philippines of the High Mobility Rocket System (HIMARS) made by Lockheed Martin Corp. The stepped-up ground, air and naval exercises by the U.S. and its allies in the region reflected the growing tensions brought on by China's aggressive actions and construction of artificial islands and airstrips in the South China Sea. Japan's maritime forces said that the Ise, which left port in Japan late last month, will also participate in the Komodo naval exercises with regional allies led by Indonesia later this month. In meetings with President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that China would not accept violations of its sovereignty in the South China Sea in the name of "freedom of navigation." Carter has frequently warned that China is "self-isolating" by its actions in the South China Sea. Last month, the secretary said that he was "re-assessing" the invitation for Chinese warships to attend the bi-annual RIMPAC, or Rim of the Pacific, naval exercises scheduled to begin in June off Hawaii because of its actions in the South China Sea. Last Sunday, the Japanese submarine Oyashio and two surface warships arrived at Subic Bay. It was the first port visit by a Japanese submarine to the Philippines in 15 years. The scheduled arrival in the Philippines of the Ise was "aimed at promoting friendly relations, but it also includes a strong message to keep China in check," a senior Japanese Defense Ministry official was quoted as saying by Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. The Ise can carry 11 SH-60J/K Seahawk anti-submarine helicopters but Japanese media have frequently noted that the Ise could easily be adapted to serve as a platform for U.S. Marine MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and the F-35B, the vertical takeoff and landing Marine version of the Joint Strike Fighter. Referring to the Balikatan exercises and the "freedom of navigation" naval exercises by the U.S. and its allies in the South China Sea, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that "a provocation so fear-mongering and untimely is likely to boomerang on the initiators," adding that military exercises should "promote regional peace, stability and development, instead of the contrary," according to Xinhua, China's state news agency. Hong also said that "Japan once illegally occupied China's islands in the South China Sea during World War II. We are on high alert against Japan's attempt to return to the South China Sea through military means." Under Japan's pacifist 1946 Constitution, which was drafted by the U.S., Japan's military was limited to "self-defense" but legislation passed last year with the backing of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe allowed Japan to participate with allies in "collective security." Critics charge that the Ise, which resembles U.S. amphibious assault ships carrying Ospreys and jump jets, was listed as a "destroyer" to get around the prohibitions on Japan's military participation in "offensive" operations. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. The much-awaited liberation of Mosul from ISIS stalled late last month almost as soon as bullets flew, when Iraqi government troops once again fled from the black-clad terrorist army, members of the broad coalition poised to retake the key city told FoxNews.com this week. The Iraqi army, which was heavily criticized for abandoning posts -- and weapons -- as ISIS moved in on Mosul in June 2014, had begun taking small villages on the outskirts after Baghdad announced the campaign March 24. But the liberation effort, which was to include Shia and Sunni militias, Kurds, Christians and Yazidis with U.S.-led coalition support, was quickly paused when the opposition struck back. "The Iraqi Army commenced an assault on ISIS strongholds around Mosul, but when ISIS fired back, the Iraqi Army ran away and the assaults ended," a western, Iraq-based security and defense specialist told FoxNews.com of last week's failed offensive. "So now they are regrouping and rethinking their next options." Iraqi officials claimed the operation came to a halt when they determined they needed reinforcements to hold onto the villages they took. Iraqi Army Maj. Gen. Najm Abdullah al-Jubbouri said ISIS fighters had dug a network of tunnels and had suicide bombers and truck bombs waiting for them. U.S. Army Maj. Jon-Paul Depreo, operations officer for the international coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, said some of the Iraqi army troops were unfamiliar with the territory, contributing to the decision to call off the campaign. "These [Iraqi army] forces aren't from that area necessarily, so they're learning the area," Depreo told reporters in Baghdad. In a dramatic announcement last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said "Operation Conquest" was Phase I of the retaking of Mosul and would involve capturing areas around Mosul to use as staging areas for future operations. The towns and villages targeted were all roughly 50 miles outside of Mosul. The Iraqi Army reportedly has around 4,500 troops lined up for the Mosul campaign, augmented by untold numbers of loccal militia and Kurdish forces. The army is equipped with U.S.-supplied Humvees and a top-of-the-line cache of artillery, anti-tank missiles, air craft, infantry weapons and ammunition. Pausing the effort is another humiliation for Baghdad, and the army the U.S. has spent years and billions of dollars training. The Iraqi Army came under harsh criticism two years ago following revelations that many fighters dropped their U.S.-issued weapons and fled their posts as ISIS approached Mosul, not only abandoning their posts but allowing their advanced weapons to fall into militant hands. Mosul, which once boasted a population of 2 million, has been the terrorist army's Iraqi headquarters since it was taken. ISIS is believed to be holding thousands of civilians in the city that could be used as human shields. In addition, thousands of Christian, Kurdish and Yazidi captives, including girls and women held as sex slaves, are believed to be held in the city. Yakhi Hamza, director of The 1st New Allied Expeditionary Force, a volunteer aid organization that includes Western and Allied Veterans and works with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, said the aborted Mosul campaign showed the Iraqi army still may not be ready for battle. "They retook some territory but fled shortly (afterward,) during the nighttime," he said. "There hasn't been progress so far." The Iraqi forces did reclaim three villages just outside Mosul from ISIS, ones situated on the perimeter of Makhmour, a medium-sized town between Mosul and the Kurdish capital of Erbil. But the prime initial target of Operation Conquest, the town of Qayyara, on the western bank of the Tigris River, remains under ISIS control. Hamza said the failed effort is a public relations coup for ISIS. "It negatively affects the whole process," he said. "ISIS uses these defeats for more propaganda and morale boost of their fighters. "Nobody is optimistic about the ability of the otherwise well -equipped and trained Iraqi Army to retake the city," he added. "Even if ISIS were pushed out of Mosul in the long run by the greater support from Peshmerga and [U.S.-led] Coalition, there is fear that they push the offensive towards Baghdad." No date has been set for when troops will try again, with sources telling FoxNews.com that it will more than likely be many months away and possibly not even this year. In the meantime, ISIS is sure to further dig in, planting more IEDs and booby traps and continuing to manufacture chemical weapons at the labs of Mosul University. Observers believe the next time Iraqi forces attempt to liberate Mosul, they will be backed by a heavy U.S. presence on the ground. Already, an undisclosed number of American troops are in the area to provide cover and logistical support. "Yes, additional U.S. assets are here to try and help, but still not in the numbers needed to be effective," said one Iraq-based American contractor. "Mosul will be a different nut than all the other cities to crack. I do not see how the Iraqi Forces are in any way ready to start a major offensive." Farther south, the Iraqi forces have been more successful. The Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi was liberated from ISIS late last year, and with the assistance of coalition airstrikes, it has been estimated that the Islamic terrorist group has lost over 40 percent of the land it once held in Iraq. The liberation of Ramadi came at a cost, as much of the city was demolished by the onslaught of Iraqi troops and by fleeing ISIS fighters. National and coalition forces are hoping toavoid the destruction of Mosul. For those trapped inside Mosul, hope for liberation has been put on hold. On Tuesday, some 18 civilians were executed by ISIS after being charged with "collaborating with the Baghdad government," a day after the group publically slaughtered 14 of its own fighters under similar accusations. "Everyone lost hope," said one Iraqi whose family is still stuck inside the city. "Knowing that something has started gives them something to live for." Those civilians may need to help whenever the next effort to retake Mosul begins, said Moen Al Kadimi, deputy of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMU), a local force which works with the Iraqi army. "The actual liberation should start from within, following coordination with locals and forces around the city to start the revolt," he said. "We are waiting for government support and re-arming so we can move forward toward Mosul." Updated at 12:53 PM EST A shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas has left two people dead in what was described as a murder-suicide. Multiple news organizations reported an airman shot his commander. The Bexar County Sherriffs Office on Friday morning confirmed the fatalities in a post on Twitter. "We have two dead at Lackland Air Force Base," it tweeted. "Deputies are still inside the building." The office had previously issued a statement indicating sheriffs were responding to reports of an active shooter at the installation, which is located outside San Antonio. "We have victims at Lackland Air Force Base, scene is still active," it tweeted. The initial reports of the shooting came around 8:30 a.m. local time, Fox News reported. Police found the bodies in the bases Medina Annex and cleared other nearby buildings, it reported. Authorities havent yet identified the deceased but have lifted the lockdown at the base. The Associated Press issued a news alert reporting that an "airman shot his commander in apparent murder-suicide." Joint Base San Antonio falls under the jurisdiction of the Air Forces 502nd Air Base Wing, Air Education and Training Command (AETC). The facility consists of the Armys Fort Sam Houston and the Air Forces Randolph Air Force Base and Lackland Air Force Base, which merged in 2010. -- Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BrendanMcGarry. Updated at 11:30 a.m. Eastern A shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas has left two people dead in what was reported as a murder-suicide. The Bexar County Sherriff's Office on Friday morning confirmed the fatalities in a post on Twitter. "We have two dead at Lackland Air Force Base," it tweeted. "Deputies are still inside the building." The office had previously issued a statement indicating sheriffs were responding to reports of an active shooter at the installation, which is located outside San Antonio. "We have victims at Lackland Air Force Base, scene is still active," it tweeted. The initial reports of the shooting came around 8:30 a.m. local time, Fox News reported. Police found the bodies in the base's Medina Annex and cleared other nearby buildings, it reported. Authorities haven't yet identified the deceased. Both Fox News and the Associated Press reported the incident as "an apparent murder-suicide." Joint Base San Antonio falls under the jurisdiction of the Air Force's 502nd Air Base Wing, Air Education and Training Command (AETC). The facility consists of the Army's Fort Sam Houston and the Air Force's Randolph Air Force Base and Lackland Air Force Base, which merged in 2010. -- Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BrendanMcGarry. -------- Original story A shooting at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas has left two people dead, law enforcement said. "We have two dead at Lackland Air Force Base," the Bexar County Sherriff's Office confirmed in a post on Twitter. "Deputies are still inside the building." The office had previously issued a statement indicating sheriffs were responding to reports of an active shooter at the installation, which is located San Antonio. "We have victims at Lackland Air Force Base, scene is still active," the office posted on its Twitter account. This story will be updated. -- Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BrendanMcGarry. 1:12pm: ESPNs Buster Olney reports that Loney secured an opt-out provision in his contract that allows him to take a Major League opportunity if it presents itself elsewhere (Twitter link). The Padres, though, do have right of first refusal, so theyll have a chance to put him on their own big league roster first if another club does offer a 25-man roster spot. APRIL 8, 8:00am: While theres no official word from the team yet, Loney himself announced that he has signed in San Diego late last night (Twitter link). APRIL 7: The Padres have agreed to a minor league pact with first baseman James Loney, according to Jon Heyman of MLB Network (Twitter link). Loney had, of course, been released recently by the Rays, who remain on the hook for his $8MM salary for the coming season less whatever he ends up earning in San Diego (or elsewhere), which almost certainly wont exceed the league minimum rate of pay. Loney, wholl turn 32 in a month, was displaced by several offseason acquisitions by Tampa Bay. Coming off of a strong platform year, he inked a three-year pact with the Rays before 2014. Things didnt go as hoped, however, as Loney took a step back in the first campaign and ended last year with a subpar .280/.322/.357 slash over just 388 plate appearances. Despite showing some potential early in his career, power has never been Loneys calling card. But at his best, he delivers a high average with solid on-base numbers while carrying a quality glove at first. Of course, advanced metrics soured on his work in the infield over the last two seasons. Its worth noting, too, that Loney carries fairly drastic platoon splits, and is best off avoiding opposing southpaws. For San Diego, Loney adds another piece to an organization that has struggled offensively out of the gates. Wil Myers figures to play every day at first, but could move to the outfield at times if the new addition becomes an option against righties. Of course, Brett Wallace occupies a similar role on the current roster, so Loney will have to earn an opportunity just to crack the majors. Mets right-hander Zack Wheeler, who is recovering from 2015 Tommy John surgery, will have a minor surgical procedure to remove an undissolved stitch that remains in his elbow, reports Adam Rubin of ESPN New York. The minor surgery will slow Wheelers recovery by about two weeks, Rubin notes, but it is not considered serious in nature. The lingering stitch was the lone issue that appeared on a recent MRI that Wheeler underwent as a checkup, and the test was otherwise super clean, per Rubins source. Wheelers target date for a big league return is July 1. Heres more from the division This Account has been suspended. Myanmar's first civilian-backed government in more than 50 years is pledging an open economy and has a raft of new business friendly laws on its side. But it remains unclear whether this will lead to an immediate surge in the volume of foreign investment that the economy desperately needs. The country represents an almost unrivalled investment opportunity for firms across the globe. The Asian Development Bank said this month that it expects real GDP to have increased 7.2 percent in the 2015-16 fiscal year, and projects 8.4pc for 2016-17. Across a host of sectors the scope for growth is immense. Pharmaceuticals, health, agriculture, real estate, infrastructure they are all going to be massive, said Edwin Vanderbruggen, a partner at law firm VDB Loi in Yangon. Its one of the only spots in the world where in certain sectors growth will jump by double digits every year. Increasingly, companies from Europe, the US and Japan are recognising Myanmar as a market you have to be in, said Winfried Wicklein, country director for the Asian Development Bank in Myanmar. Approved investment for the 2015-16 fiscal year hit US$9.4 billion, according to Myanmars Directorate of Investment and Company Administration the highest figure since 2010. Almost $4 billion of this was in the final month. The DICA numbers do not represent actual investment, but they remain a key benchmark for measuring foreign interest. After a strong finish to 2015-16, Myanmar has entered the new fiscal year boasting a so far smooth democratic transition, and has passed a series of new laws favourable to foreign investment. An amended mining law that could change the economics of that sector for foreign investors was passed in December. An Arbitration Law was enacted in January, meaning Myanmars courts now recognise arbitration decisions made in other countries. That same month the government passed a Condominium Law that allows foreigners to own up to 40pc of residential units in a block. A revised foreign investment law that would potentially reduce restrictions on foreign investments across many sectors will go before parliament this year, as will a new Companies Act. Officials at the Myanmar Investment Commission, of which DICA acts as secretary, think approved investments are most likely to increase in manufacturing, infrastructure, real estate, transportation and telecoms. But MIC secretary U Aung Naing Oo also projects annual investment approvals of around $6 billion a year until 2020. That suggests only a modest potential increase, not a sudden surge. People in the international business community are cautious about expecting a sharp rise in investment. Many foreign companies were undertaking projects in Myanmar whether exploring opportunities or actual investment well before the elections, said Martin Jancik, Myanmar country manager for Tractus Asia. A significant increase in foreign investment will rely on the new government focusing on attracting investment into specific sectors like infrastructure and agriculture, and will not happen overnight simply as a result of the transition, said Mr Jancik. Its more a function of business fundamentals, he said. The change in power is positive, but the previous government had already taken steps in laying groundwork for attracting foreign investors, for example, by passing investment friendly laws. Issuing new laws is less important than applying them in a transparent and predictable way, said Mr Vanderbruggen of VDB Loi, adding that no investor ever set up a car factory because of a new Companies Act. People come here for the market [opportunities] not because there are good laws, he said. Some of the new laws are steps in the right direction, but do not solve inherent issues. The Condominium Law, for example, allows foreign investors to buy units but it does not solve the issue that foreigners are prohibited from owning land. This has not stopped joint-venture residential projects aimed at overseas buyers, but will remain a source of uncertainty for foreign investors. The amended mining law lays the ground for equity and profit sharing agreements between foreign firms and the government. But even if the details yet to be announced of these agreements make new projects viable, it still takes foreign companies years not months to get permits, according to officials at foreign mining firms. The revised Myanmar Investment Law, which would combine the Foreign Investment Law and the Myanmar Citizens Investment Law into a single piece of legislation, is another step in the right direction. That would, in theory, allow any investor foreign or domestic to invest in any enterprise in any sector with the exception of just a few sensitive sectors, according to law firm Allen & Overy. But until that law and its accompanying regulations are passed, existing and more stringent regulations will remain in place. Investment in many activities still requires a joint-venture with a local firm, and others require both a joint venture and approval from the relevant ministry. Foreign firms and joint-ventures also face trading restrictions, although there have been signs of a change. Late last year the Ministry of Commerce allowed joint ventures to import chemical fertilisers, seeds, insecticides and hospital equipment. But this web of restrictions means that liberalisation in one area may have little material impact. An earlier removal of retail activities from a list of activities prohibited or restricted under the Foreign Investment Law did not bring an influx of investors despite great interest because separate import and trading restrictions still applied, said Chris Burkett, senior associate at Allen & Overy. In areas where foreign investment does not face additional restrictions, there remain a host of difficulties including sourcing adequate facilities, human resources, logistics, corruption and uncertainty over how projects will be taxed. For US firms, the Specially Designated Nationals list, which contains 38 individuals and 77 entities subject to US sanctions, also creates headaches. US companies have to undertake considerable due diligence to make sure they are not doing business with people or entities on the list. But there are other trends that bode well for outside investment. One is the extent to which the government has improved the way it tenders projects across infrastructure where there is huge scope for foreign firms to get involved. The government is at the origination of many projects across mining, infrastructure, oil and gas, said Mr Vanderbruggen, who has run several tenders for the government. But the tenders are often structured in such a way lacking a clear business case for example that international firms do not bid, he said. Some come with a very short deadline, which means that international firms are passed over because they request time to run a feasibility study, he added. But international investors want to bid for transparent international standard tenders, and on transparency at least the previous government made progress, said Mr Vanderbruggen. Andrew Lee, Myanmar country head for General Electric, is cautiously optimistic on the outlook for foreign investment. Weve submitted bids in tender processes for healthcare and power generation projects through our channel partner and developers or contractors these tenders were very transparent, he said. One example is the $300 million Myingyan power plant set to be one of the largest gas-fired independent power plants in Myanmar which used an international-standard bidding process under International Finance Corporation guidelines. The tender process took some time to work through, but Mr Lee hopes that tenders will become similar across many sectors, and increasingly in accordance with international standards. The country needs billions [of US dollars] to be spent on power plants, transmissions, substations, distribution, he said. Thats going to attract a lot of foreign investors, but the Myanmar government is also seeking to work with more international firms that follow these best practices. Mr Wicklein of the ADB noted that concessions for operating toll roads are also being competitively tendered. If the government was able to devote funds to hiring experts to help it build business cases and create a visible pipeline of projects across different sectors this would also raise foreign firms incentive to bid for tenders, added Mr Vanderbruggen. The prospect of 15 toll road projects is much more attractive to foreign firms than a stand-alone tender, he added. At the other end of the spectrum foreign investment can also take the form of foreign firms making equity investments in individual Myanmar firms. Institutional investors large entities like pension funds or investment banks are more eager than in the past to put money to work in Myanmar, said Daw Thiri Thant Mon, managing director at Sandanila, a Yangon-based investment advisory firm. But those investors also want to see companies that are sufficiently corporatised, she added. This means companies that hire professional managers and chief executives, have boards, publish results and are essentially run to the same standard as a public company. And until recently Myanmars firms have had no incentive to take such steps. They didnt have access to international investors anyway, she said. And local investors were groups of people they knew. She has found that many firms understand the need to change, although that change will still take time. I dont expect anything in this country to go quickly, she said. But then sometimes Im surprised by how fast things can move. A Chinese-led US$3 billion plan to build Myanmars largest oil refinery near the southern city of Dawei has raised questions about Chinas strategic intentions in launching apparently commercially unviable projects, while local groups have already signalled their opposition. Guangdong Zhenrong Energy Co, a Chinese state-controlled commodity trader, said the Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC) had signed its approval at a ceremony in Nay Pyi Taw on March 29 the last full day in office for U Thein Seins government. That day Guangdong Zhenrong also signed an agreement to take a 70 percent stake in the project consortium with military-linked Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited, state-owned Myanma Petrochemical Enterprise (MPE) and Yangon Engineering Group which is controlled by Htoo Group. The MIC confirmed it had signed its approval. The headline figure of $3 billion would put the project among the biggest single foreign investments for Myanmar and mark another step in Chinas One Belt One Road strategy of developing overseas markets through mega-infrastructure projects. It would also pit China against other Asian interests on the narrow strip of land between Thailand and the Andaman Sea. Thailand has long been in discussions to build a deep-sea port in Dawei as part of a special economic zone and Japan has also said it would invest. An official of what was the ministry of energy now merged by the new government with the ministry of electric power said the Chinese company had been aiming for this project for seven years. He said MPE, which runs Myanmars three small ageing refineries, had joined the project because of an MIC ruling in 2015 that foreign investments in petro-chemicals had to be joint ventures. Industry rivals who had considered but rejected a similar project told The Myanmar Times that the Chinese-led venture, which includes an oil terminal, did not make sense. Dawei does not make sense for a deep water port, said one industrialist who asked not to be named, having estimated it would cost some $1 billion to build because of problems of sandbars and dredging. The refinery is too small to be viable, his business partner added. The planned refinery would have an output of 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) more than the combined output of Myanmars existing refineries, but still not big enough to compete with refineries in Asia operating on slim margins but with an output of at least 600,000bpd. The industrialists and analysts also noted that China had meanwhile cancelled, or indefinitely postponed, plans to build a refinery in Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, that would have used oil coming through the pipeline that crosses Myanmar to the Indian Ocean off Rakhine State. As a result that pipeline is now little used, raising further questions about the sense of some of Chinas flagship projects in Myanmar. A Yangon-based lawyer, who asked not to be named, said the Myanmar government had been trying desperately to get a refinery despite most investors warning that, due to low prices and existing surplus in China and India, it might not be easy to make it profitable. He also noted that the deal had not been the result of a competitive tender. A project such as this requires a lot more permits and approvals such as environmental, land use, zoning [and] operating permits. So if a new government wanted to, it can stop the project from going further without too much difficulty. I am not saying they will, just that they could, he added. Analysts said Chinas main priority appeared to be its plans to build a special economic zone in Rakhines Kyaukphyu with its natural deep harbour and access to the oil and gas pipelines leading to Yunnan. They also expect China to drop the controversial Myitsone dam project, as it stands, in northern Kachin State. Apart from its location close to conflict zones and its deep unpopularity, some analysts have also questioned its economic viability. The Dawei project might only make sense, they said, if the refinery was bigger and had access to a pipeline cutting eastward across to the Gulf of Thailand to tap the Thai market and for onward shipment to southern China. Why was it approved? asked an investment analyst who requested anonymity, noting that it came on the last day of the outgoing military-backed government, suggesting that China had some favours to call in. Why such a big investment when the commodity market is on its knees, and projects are being shelved everywhere? Its a nonsensical investment at this stage, but China does not seem to be concerned about cycles, he added. A few analysts do see the project as feasible, however. BMI Research, part of Fitch Ratings Group, gave the plan a positive assessment. Although the exact timeline for the project is not available, we remain confident that the project will go ahead for the following reasons: The investment is aligned with the strategic interests of both China and Myanmar. The project would allow Guangdong Zhenrong to make inroads into a growing Myanmar market. It will help to alleviate Myanmars yawning fuels deficit, which domestic refinery output is not able to meet, BMI said. It said chronic under-utilisation of Myanmars three ageing refineries meant the country had to import to cover over 60pc of its annual fuel requirements. BMI estimated that consumption of refined products would rise from under the current 50,000bpd to 60,000bpd by 2020. President of KWR International Keith Rabin said Myanmar needs a deep sea port and the area is already closely linked to Thailand in terms of its local economy. Further, having a refinery in that location which promises to allow petroleum supply from the Middle East to offload and be refined and sent to Thailand as well as Myanmar and other markets makes conceptual sense and can promise benefits in terms of added value, employment and broader economic development though obviously it will not be easy, he said. Commercial or strategic sense aside, the project is likely to face strong local headwinds. Ko Thant Zin, coordinator of the Dawei Development Association, a civil society group, said the Chinese company had approached the local community four years ago and even took some residents to China. But they failed to get our welcome, he told The Myanmar Times. The refinery and port would involve moving villages and would pose environmental risks to communities depending on fishing and hopeful of developing tourism. Among the community there were strong protests against the project. They did not even let them know about the agreement and approved it within the last minutes of the government transition. It is very strange and cant be acceptable, Ko Thant Zin said. Daw Lae Lae Maw, the new chief minister of Tanintharyi who has worked as a doctor giving free health- care in remote villages, told The Irrawaddy that her priorities would be to develop agriculture and retrieve land confiscated by the former government and military-related holdings. She also said she would reassess investments in the Dawei seaport project. If it doesnt benefit the residents, we have no reason to accept it, she was quoted as saying. Additional reporting by Su Phyo Win, Aung Shin and Steve Gilmore Amid all the fuss about the banning of for-profit pandals in central Yangon, many people in the rest of the country are concentrating on what they consider to be the true and traditional essence of the water festival holiday. Not just in coastal Rakhine State but wherever they happen to live, Rakhine people conceive Thingyan as a boat-based festival. In the villages of Kyaukphyu township young men and women eagerly board the Phoo Sar Shin Yway Pwe (festival to meet your destiny). Girls and boys line up along opposite sides of the long boat and splash each other, while small children watch from a pavilion of coconut leaves. Everybody eats the traditional holiday snacks of phat htoke mont (rice flour pack with sugar and coconut), sagu, mont lone cho, mont lone yay paw and mont te. They all come, even the studious and obedient girls who always do what their parents say, said Ko Moe Myint, a Kyaukphyu man who now lives in Yangon. Decorously, the boys must first ask the pavilion authorities for permission to douse the girl of their choice. They ask the girl first, and if she agrees, then you can splash her, he said. No bad language or fighting is allowed, and a girl can leave any time she chooses. The pavilions charged only as much as they need to buy water, and anything left over goes to the monastery. At least, thats the way it was. Now, drugs are available, Ko Moe Myint said. Some villagers bring daggers and get drunk. There are fights, and the police have to get involved. Still, he says, its better than the raucous, reckless, drunken, noisy riot that Yangon makes of its festival. I miss the Rakhine Thingyan, said Ko Moe Myint. Elsewhere in Rakhine State, in Thandwe, you can see traditional contests around the longboat, the chaw tine tat pwe (race to climb the slippery bamboo) and Gaung Ohn Yike Pwe (pillow fight among people sitting on bamboo). Read more: Thingyan 2016 Special Feature! On the first day of Thingyan, A Kyo Nae, Thandwe people do not throw water, but cleanse their household images of Buddha, with the aid of thanakha ground by young women. In the evening, we go to our village pagoda for a service of cleansing. Then we split up into groups and cook snacks. We stay out late and all the villagers eat the snacks together. At midnight, we all play with water and throw soot at each other to welcome in Thingyan, said Mratt Kyaw Once the water wars begin in earnest, the loser is the first one to wipe his or her face. If the girls lose, they have to feed snacks to the boys. If the boys lose, the girls cover their faces with soot. Its all very innocent, he said. Every family donates snacks, and homes are full of food. On first day of the New Year, after the festival, the whole village donates to the elderly, cutting their nails, washing their hair and bathing them. I spent one Thingyan in Yangon, but everybody was drunk and dancing and shouting and fighting. Everybody wanted money. Now I go home for the holidays, said Mratt Kyaw Thu. In Mon State, the Thingyan festival is associated mostly with food, including the traditional htamin (rice) dish. Thingyan Rice must be cooled by the light of a candle. When the candle flame flickers out, the dish must be covered until the moment arrives. With the smell of candle-smoke still in the air, add onions and fry with dried fish or prawn, with sour mango on the side. Mi Yen Snaing from Thanbyuzayat township, Mon State, said the traditional recipe was designed to cool people down on hot summer days. For days before the holiday, village markets are packed with shoppers making donations for the elderly. Every home collects dried foods for donation for a week before the festival begins. Almost everybody goes to the monastery and you can see donated snacks everywhere, she said. The food is cooked in the hours before dawn, and the day begins with people strolling from house to house, sampling the various snacks. When I was studying in Thailand and couldnt get home. I tried to cook our Thingyan rice. Most of my friends didnt like it. Now I cook it with my Mon friends, who are all happy to eat it, she said A concept location, a bespoke beverage menu, industrial design features: it could be a description of nearly every new upscale bar in Yangon, and with few exceptions, a recipe for (expensive) disappointment. But The Basement, a new establishment in Lanmadaw township, pulls off the fancy fittings by not letting its attention to aesthetics overshadow flavours. As advertised, The Basement is located below street level: Diners descend through a pair of side-street doors flanked by a street mural. And while the subterranean space below isnt exactly cavernous, it manages to avoid feeling claustrophobic despite low-ceilings, with a wide-open floor-plan and bar-stool seating. Many of the industrial chic fittings exposed air ducts, granite wall siding, excellent ambient lighting are likewise well executed, creative but understated. So too with the cocktail menu. The Basement offers about 40 classic libations (K4500) as well as Signature Cocktails (K5000), and its clear the bar staff are invested in their flavours and combinations. They were keen to offer explanations, including advising which cocktails were suitable for men, and which for women (our mixed-gender group opted for the former). The Basement Gentleman (whisky, egg white, cinnamon stick), a rare warm-weather whisky cocktail, was balanced and smoky if inexplicably green and a bit light it made me wish the bartender had a slightly heavier hand, or perhaps was less conscientious about his measurements. Night was a more complete success: A mix of gin and orange juice spiked with cinnamon and star anise, it was crisp, refreshing, with just enough spice to perk up your pulse. Past a not-quite Caesar Salad (K4000) that scarcely bears mentioning, the fare was just as gratifying: well-conceived, diligently prepared, and thoroughly enjoyable. The strips of beef in our fajitas (K6000) came perfectly seared to medium-rare with a streak of chimichurri, though the tortillas had the stiff, papery texture of the rice-flour variety. One of my dining companions noted the dish, and particularly its potent orange salsa, was very similar to that once served at Cousins. Indeed, the head chef is an alumni of the (much-beloved, now-departed) Bogalay Zay Mex-American bar a heartening sign for many still mourning its loss. Grilled chicken (K7500) and butter fish (K8500) were also impeccably prepared, moist and tender, and were paired with some exceptional double-fried potato wedges that could be a real problem on their own. Dinosaur-sized pork ribs (K8500) likewise slid off the bone, though the barbeque sauce could have used a bit of smoky kick you cant have everything, and in Myanmar that includes a regular supply of ancho chillies. The Basement Bar can get very loud, even on a Sunday night, as concrete walls do little to dampen an enthusiastic DJ, and, of course, there are no windows to help sound escape. The underground space is also subject to some strange rules of liquid dynamics: from one corner of the dining area, we couldnt smell smoking gentlemen, but from another five feet away the fumes were asphyxiating. With inventive drinks, balanced flavours, and an attention to sharp execution, The Basement is a strong new entry into Yangons downtown nightlife. They may be trying, and trying hard, to capture a certain cool for a certain crowd, but so far The Basement is certainly succeeding to raise the bar. The Basement Bar 785 Mahabandoola Street (at 13th Street) Lanmadaw township, Yangon Phone: 01-229173 Restaurant Rating: 4/5 stars Food: 8 Drink: 7 Service: 9 Value: 7 X-factor: 8 A garment worker from the Han Jen Factory must be rehired and compensated, the Arbitration Council has ruled in a rare victory in a labourers favour. Worker Ko Ye Ko Tun was one of nearly 100 workers recently laid off by Han Jen Factory in Shwe Pyi Thars industrial zone, in his case because he allegedly came to work late. The Arbitration Council decided the firing violated regulations because Ye Ko Tun was not given a warning. The council also said the factory submitted forged documents during the hearing. Han Jen factorys HR manager U Khin Maung Win told The Myanmar Times yesterday that workers like Ko Ye Ko Tun were fired because they were late for work on as many as 19 different occasions. We cant accept the councils decision. So we will appeal this case at the central arbitration council. This was a one-sided decision, he said. Ko Kyaw Kyaw Myint, a former Han Jen employee and a union chair, accused the factory manager of taking out a personal grudge against workers involved in union activities. Since the beginning of the year, the factory has dropped around 100 workers including 34 union members, said Ko Kyaw Kyaw Myint. Ko Ye Ko Tun said while the Arbitration Council announced its decision on April 1, he has not been told when he can resume work. I only want my job back, he said. Authorities are continuing to crack down on sex-related products before Thingyan, though they said they will avoid birth control this year after raising the ire of rights groups and the Ministry of Health for pulling legitimate contraceptives last April. In the handful of cases carried out recently, officials have seized allegedly unregistered lotions, pills and other products aimed at prolonging intercourse and enabling more frequent sex. Brand names like Max Man, Green Viagra and Delay Spray have been confiscated before, with police arresting a 25-year-old man for selling those products and others around Valentines Day earlier this year. While the raids this year have seemingly focused on pulling unregistered products from the shelves, police have legitimised the crackdowns by arguing that they are preventing sexual violence. Police Captain Khin Maung Lwin said that using sexual arousal drugs could snowball into rape. Using these medicines could possibly help in committing a rape, he said. Even between couples, rape cases could occur with such medicines [with people] putting [them] in a drink during the festival. Pol Capt Win Tin, head of Kyauktada township police, has previously told The Myanmar Times that young girls unfamiliar with the effects of sex drugs are particularly at risk for having such drugs slipped in their beverages. A local health professional said the crackdown was misguided and stemmed from erroneous beliefs among police about the effects on women of the so-called aphrodisiacs. Were talking about something which [can be] put in a drink that would make you suddenly, out of nowhere, go out with anyone, said Dr Sid Naing. We have to keep telling them there isnt such a thing. While police have said they would also pull from the shelves sedatives that could be used to incapacitate potential victims, the seizure lists from police did not include such drugs, which also have legitimate medical purposes. This most recent round-up follows on a less targeted and more controversial move around Thingyan last year, when police pulled birth control and condoms from pharmacies. The National League for Democracy government withdrew charges against detained political prisoners and education activists as more than 80 people were released from the Insein prison this morning on the eighth day of the new government's term. Among those released included student activists detained during a violent police crackdown on education protests in Letpadan township, Bago Region in March, 2015. The international and local communities welcomed on the releasing of the civilian government, but also called for the NLD to make good on a pre-election pledge to release all political prisoners still behind bars in Myanmar. U Bo Kyi, joint secretary of Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (AAPP) told The Myanmar Times that some student leaders remain in prison while they await court dates in Yangon. "Other political prisoners' families are still waiting for their release. They will be hurt when other political prisoners remain in prison. The government should expend the amnesty to them as well," he said. Among those still detained include leaders of All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU) Kyaw Ko Ko, Nanda Sitt Aung, Min Thwe Thit, Lin Htet Naing (aka James) and Phyo Phyo Aung, who are still waiting for the relevant courts to withdraw charges. "The government needs to release the remaining 121 political prisoners who are in prison, as well as the 320 people who are facing trail," said U Bo Kyi. Prominent activist Ma Mee Mee was also released as part of today's amnesty, while ex-Lieutenant Nay Myo Zin and activists Naw Ohn Hla and Ko Tin Htut Paing were not, despite having some of the remaining charges against them dropped. Laura Haigh of Amnesty International called the release is a huge step forward for human rights in Myanmar, and a strong indication of the new governments commitment to ending the cycle of political arrest and repression in Myanmar. "We are now looking forward to the release of all other prisoners of conscience including those students who are facing charges in other courts. The new government must ensure that no prisoner of conscience is left behind," she said. The new administration must also look to how they can ensure support and rehabilitation for those released in todays amnesty and the many others before them who were unjustly imprisoned. The government says it intends to bypass the military-controlled National Defence and Security Council to free political prisoners and activists on trial for political offences as soon as possible. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi announced the amnesty in a statement issued in her new role as state counsellor following the governments first cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon. She said the release was a priority for the new administration of President U Htin Kyaw. The statement said the release would include student activists on trial for over a year for protesting against the National Education Law. U Zaw Htay, a spokesperson for the Presidents Office, told The Myanmar Times, As it said in the statement, this will be the new governments first action. No date was given for the planned amnesty. A government source close to the NLD leadership said that the process of releasing all political prisoners could be lengthy and difficult, and would be impossible before the 10-day Thingyan holiday, which begins on April 11. The NLD seems intent on bypassing possible obstruction by the military, which controls three key ministries, including Home Affairs that governs prisons. There was no immediate reaction to the announcement from the Tatmadaw. Some diplomats had been unsure that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would go so far as to release detainees still on trial. The statement specified that the release would take place under section 204(a) of the constitution, which gives the president the power to grant a pardon, and article 401(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which gives the president the authority to release prisoners at his or her discretion but stipulates that they can be returned to prison at any time to serve out the remainder of their sentence. For those arrested but not yet convicted, the NLD will use section 494 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which allows cases to be dropped even after a trial has begun. It specifically stated that it would not use section 204(b) of the constitution, which states that the president has the power to grant amnesty in accord with the recommendation of the National Defence and Security Council. The 11-member NDSC is controlled by the military, which appoints six of its members. U Ko Ni, a High Court lawyer and legal adviser to the NLD, said the government could proceed quickly with the release because it does not need to get approval from the NDSC. U Bo Kyi, secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which had lobbied for an amnesty, welcomed the priority given by the government to their release. He said he would keep updating his lists of political prisoners and those who are facing politically related charges. I would like to request people to inform us if they know someone who has been charged with political cases so that we can make lists to report to the government, he said. According to the AAPP, 121 political prisoners are incarcerated, 116 more are still facing trial and detained, and 298 people are facing trial but free on bail. Most political prisoners are student protesters. Some are related to ethnic armed groups ... as well as farmers, labour rights activists and some journalists, he said. Canada has agreed to restart a scholarship program for Myanmar students and increase cultural exchanges. Stephane Dion discussed the scholarship program with President U Htin Kyaw during a meeting in Nay Pyi Taw yesterday, a Presidents Office spokesperson said. Talks also focused on national reconciliation, joint initiatives on climate change and environmental conservation, and economic cooperation, U Zaw Htay said yesterday evening. The 30-minute meeting took place at the presidential palace. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi also attended in her capacity as minister for foreign affairs, together with Information Minister U Pe Myint. Concerning economic investments, the president said he will cooperate and accept investments that [are transparent]. He also said he will cooperate in cultural exchanges between the two countries, U Zaw Htay told reporters. Mr Dion also said Canada would provide assistance to areas still recovering from widespread flooding last year. On scholarships, Mr Dion promised to negotiate a restarting of a program that was halted in the late 1980s. The re-launching of the scholarship program is expected to be negotiated through diplomatic means, U Zaw Htay said. In a separate meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Mr Dion said Canada will help improve the capacity of Myanmars civil servants. Mr Dion is the third foreign minister to visit Nay Pyi Taw in as many days, after Chinas Wang Yi and Paolo Gentiloni of Italy. He was due to hold a press conference last night in Yangon. Translation by Zar Zar Soe Poor law enforcement and weak governance have been blamed for rapid deforestation in Myanmar over the past 25 years, during which time more than a quarter of forest cover has been lost. The Center for People and Forests (RECOFTC) and The Nature Conservancy said in a new assessment that Myanmars isolation for much of that time was also a factor, as it led to weak governance in natural resource extraction. A focus on revenue targets rather than productive capacity was cited as another reason for forest loss. Overharvesting and weak forest governance, agricultural expansion and shifting cultivation, forest conversion to plantation, and infrastructure development are drivers of deforestation, said U Barber Cho, a consultant on the project, said at a recent workshop in Yangon. He said that while total forest cover in Myanmar was almost 60 percent in 1990, it was down to less than 45pc in 2015. However, the figures mask a much larger drop in the loss of closed forest, in which the tree canopies form a continuous cover. Closed forest covered 45pc of Myanmar in 1990, compared to about 12pc for open cover. But by 2010, closed cover had dropped to 19pc, and open forest had risen to 27pc. In the five years to 2015, closed forest increased slightly, to about 22pc, while open forest declined to 21pc. The assessment, conducted between October 2015 and January 2016 by the RECOFTC Myanmar country program, provides an overview of the forestry sector in Myanmar and is aimed at helping the industry develop in a sustainable manner. A wide range of problems were identified. Ambiguity and contradictions in legal frameworks, including the definition of timber legality, and weak monitoring by government agencies facilitated illegal logging and undermined the sustainable harvest of timber. Decision making has been non-participatory a legacy of decades of authoritarian rule. The introduction of the log export ban in April 2014 had a small impact in terms of reducing illegal logging and encouraging investment in local processing facilities. However, the private sector is struggling due to the unpredictable supply of raw materials, poor infrastructure and lack of access to financial resources. Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry official U Myo Min said that over the past five years significant changes had been introduced to improve the sustainability of the timber industry. We banned log exports in April 2014 and we are producing less timber than the annual allowance cut rather than focusing on increasing revenue, said U Myo Min, who is director of the Natural Forest and Plantation Division in the Forest Department. Illegal timber production continued to be a problem though due to poverty, lack of business opportunities and weak law enforcement, he said. U Maung Maung Than, a project coordinator with RECOFTC Myanmar, said the report would be updated with suggestions from other stakeholders in the forestry sector on actions that could be taken to tackle problems in the sector. It would then present the report to the new government. The National League for Democracy government has merged the Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry with the Ministry of Mines to create a Ministry for Natural Resources and the Environment, which will be headed by U Ohn Win, an environmental expert. Thingyan festival is almost upon us and once more Myanmar is witnessing a descent into holiday madness not so much in terms of exuberant revelry, but in yet another outrageous move by local authorities that impacts on the rights of women. This year it is Mandalay that has broken the bounds of all reason or responsibility by threatening to imprison women who appear in outfits deemed too skimpy during water festival. Thankfully we have not seen a repeat of last years incredible decision by authorities in Yangon to force shopkeepers to remove contraceptives from their shelves in the naive belief that it would somehow stop people copulating during the high-spirited event. The only likely outcome from their actions was a rise in unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. The warning by Mandalay police as reported by the Democratic Voice of Burma last week said that wearing clothing beyond the limits of Burmese culture that can be an eyesore to the public who cherish and would like to uphold the Burmese culture could result in women being sentenced to up to four months in prison. The threat also included those deemed guilty of general public displays of drunkenness. But it did not focus on the very real and genuinely criminal issues of groping and other forms of sexual assaults that many women report having suffered at the hands of men during Thingyan. As is too often the case, authorities are promoting a culture of victim blaming. Womens Thingyan apparel or lack thereof has been a source of popular moral outrage among some in Myanmar for many years now, with authorities and media commentators regularly declaring skimpy outfits to be an assault on traditional values. As tends to be the case in most places the world over, the condemnation by elders of young peoples sartorial choices has gone largely unheeded. The trend for hotpants and mini-skirts during pandal parties does not seem to have abated. It would be easy to consider the prison threat to be the hyperbole of a self-righteous police chief, and something that is unlikely to ever occur in practice. But Mandalays police force has a shameful record of intolerance. It has drawn condemnation from local and international rights group for arbitrarily arresting and abusing gay and transgender people. DVB reported that Police Lieutenant Colonel Sein Htun announced that workshops would be held in the days leading up to Thingyan to educate women about what would be considered acceptable behaviour for would-be revellers. The idea of the police educating people to conform to particular ideas of sexual morality or behaviour is sinister and invidious. But its not the first time Mandalay authorities have promoted such action. In September last year, Human Rights Watch highlighted an incident in which Daw Tin Tin Mar, an MP from Chan Aye Tharzan township, asked the Mandalay Region government what kind of action was being taken against gay men who assume they are women and who have been acting inappropriately. The gender and sexual orientation stereotypes in that question were worrying and offensive. However, the response from regional minister U Myint Kyu was even more so. The existence of gay men who assume they are women is unacceptable and therefore we are constantly taking action to have the gays detained at police stations, educate them, then hand them back to their parents, he said. Clearly such actions by police construe a breach of human rights. Arresting women for inappropriate clothing as happens in a number of countries, such as where Sharia law is in force is also a breach of rights. Its not a route that Myanmar, which is still struggling to emerge from years of authoritarian oppression, should be going down. Wearing a short skirt is not a specific crime in Myanmar, whether society deems the wearer to be a woman or a man. Sexually assaulting someone is a crime. If the police are going to take it upon themselves to educate people on sexual behaviour, they should stick to preventing real crime and run workshops to educate men on why they must end Thingyan groping. Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL. 08.04.2016 LISTEN Sitting pretty as the crown and anchor of style, the Nigerian-American stylist Kanayo Ebi, opens up the tricky business aspect of the styling industry, and the challenges thereof. She is very smart and intelligent with her choice of words and her work has seen high-end celebrities such as Leona Lewis, Kate Winslet, Dawn Richards, the Simmons Sisters, Adrienne Bailon, Tiwa Savage and many others adorn her signature styling. With her PR Francisca Adjei, the Promising British-Ghanaian perched on the opposite corner of the sofa: simply means everything is to go in the right direction. Settling down with the celebrated stylist while talking us through the importance of style in the modern society Miss Kanayo Ebi said: Styling is important to the modern society because, it is pretty much a way of self-expression, so every individual is different and every individual has something unique to them, and to show that, is to show your individual sense of fashion and style. And the way that people interpret themselves in fashion and style is how you interpret it. Fashion is pretty much anything and everything, and the way that people present themselves give us the idea of the individualism thats around us. It is just good to stand yourself apart in style. As with each and every industry, there are bound to be different sort of impediments here and there in that she said: There are challenges, basically pretty much challenges people in the regular working industries face, which is like the economy effects which is when jobs, publications and certain artistes are not getting funding to do certain projects. It has a domino effects and it ends up affecting stylists as well. And also diversity and reach, by tapping into the various fashion industries around the world. Sometimes its challenging to be or stay afloat in the styling industry because, there are so much going on, and it moves so quickly. She further stated that It does get saturated quickly and there is a bit of segregation crossing over to different spheres of the industry. As to who she has got left on his list of celebrities to style she said: I still havent styled many people because there are still many people. I would like to work with Gwen Stefani, Kelis, Cindi Lauper and Rihanna, usually because I like her sense of style and freedom, so to speak. This is because I like to work with people who like to have fun and be adventurous with fashion. Miss Kanayo is ready to work with other African celebrities across the continent saying: I have styled Patoranking, so maybe Burna Boy, Tiwa Savage, and all those coming up from across Africa. She was able to squash the rumor mill about her switch from being a stylist to jeweler, in her confirmations she said: I am not switching, I am just broadening my horizon, so to speak. Because my first love is fashion in general, so anyway that I can contribute and just keep growing in fashion. I am open to it. I believe you cannot stay stagnant and I believe you have to keep moving or else things get redundant or het bored. And you cannot stifle your creativity. So for me, I love what I do and I love styling. By being generous enough and giving out industrial advice to the future generation of stylist to come she said: My top tip is really about being patient, persevering, being patient and productive and believing in what you have to offer that will differentiate you from the rest who are not stylists. Keep growing and not being stifled and learning, keep striving and pushing, never stay stagnant. The industry is competitive and there are so many people trying to copy or do what you are doing, or trying to do what you are trying to do. And because we are in a social media world where everything is easily accessible, as well and sometimes people would rather not pay for quality but quantity. So you have to make sure that you do your work and do it thoroughly. And be consistent so you can keep your loyal clients so they (clients) can deem you reliable. And finally, as to how expensive is she to work with, she said: I dont think I am that expensive, I think it depends on the individual to determine what is expensive to them, but I think I am pretty fair depending on the their budget. But I believe in giving yourself a standard as well, so people do not take you and your work for granted and cheap in that regard. Then again it still depends on what is expensive to the individual. Listening to Starbucks music as the backdrop while interviewing the crown and anchor of style was the order of the lunch. A UK- based Ghanaian preacher, Brian Amoateng has paid the surgical bills of veteran actor, William Addo. This comes barely a week after news went viral that the veteran actor was on the verge of losing his sight, if he is not able to raise Gh 5,000.00 (five thousand Ghana cedis) to have surgery. Readers are reminded that veteran actor William Addo, told Hitz FMs Daybreak Hitz on Wednesday that he is gradually losing his sight as a result of glaucoma and cataract. He further added in his interview that if immediate care was not sort, he would lose his sight. The veteran actors story made much news that the UK-based Ghanaian preacher offered to pay off the surgical bills for Mr. William Addo. Presenting the money on behalf of the preacher who could not make it to Ghana, Eyra Doe noted that it is the hope of Pastor Amoateng that the veteran actor will regain his sight after his surgery and get to live a normal life again. Receiving the money, the elated William Addo expressed gratitude to pastor Brian Amoateng and his foundation for their support. He prayed Gods blessings of restoration on the man of God. I am humbled and touched by this kind gesture. God richly bless you and I hope to meet you one of these days, he noted. In an interview with YEN.com.gh, Brian Amoateng who doubles as the founder of Brian Jones Amoateng foundation, he noted that he was touched by the news to help the veteran actor because he was one of his favourite actors he liked to watch while growing up. William Addo was one of my favorite actors when I was young so when I saw the story I told myself, if I cant help him, why dont I help and save him from going blind, he reiterated. As at the time of filing this report, YEN.com.gh had a chat with William Addo, who disclosed that the surgery was done late Thursday afternoon and he is doing well and hoping to have his sight restored after the plasters are taken off the eyes. Brian Amoateng is the founder of the Brian Jones foundation which is into supporting orphans, widows and the less privileged in Ghana. The foundation also pays fees for over 40 children in Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria. The foundation also offers scholarships. Washington (AFP) - The number of Islamic State group fighters in Libya has doubled to up to 6,000 in as little as a year, the head of US forces in Africa warned Thursday. Despite the vast increase the IS group is not likely to settle and seize swathes of territory inside Libya, as it has done in Syria and Iraq, said General David Rodriguez, head of the US Africa Command. According to the US intelligence community, about 4,000 to 6,000 IS fighters are now in the country, a number that has doubled in the last 12 to 18 months, Rodriguez said. The Islamic State group has exploited the turmoil in Libya since the overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi five years ago, raising fears that it is establishing a new stronghold on Europe's doorstep. But Rodriguez said it is significantly harder for IS extremists to grab large areas of Libya and then consolidate. "It's possible but right now I am not concerned about it," he said, citing "significantly different conditions" in Libya. Among them is the fact that the IS group does not "have the homegrown people that know as much about Libya like they did in Iraq and Syria," Rodriguez said. And the Libyan people "don't like external influences." The IS group last year seized control of Kadhafi's coastal hometown of Sirte and has been fighting to expand to other areas. Rodriguez said that Libyan militias "are contesting the growth of ISIS in several areas across Libya." "In the east, in Benghazi and Derna, they have fought back against the Islamic State and made it much tougher for them to operate." Libya has a new UN-backed unity government, which is being led by Fayez al-Sarraj, who arrived in the capital only a week ago. Libya has had two rival administrations in place since mid-2014 when a militia alliance overran Tripoli, setting up its own authority and forcing the internationally recognized parliament to flee to the country's east. Any possible international intervention against the IS group in Libya, Rodriguez said, "is going to be driven by their leadership and what they want us to do." Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Hailemariam Desalegn, is in Ghana for a 3-day state visit. Hailemariam arrived Thursday, 7th April, 2016 accompanied by his wife, Roman Tesfaye. Prime Minister Desalegn will hold talks with President John Mahama and visit the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre where he will sign a Cooperation Agreement between the Centre and Ethiopia. The visiting Prime Minister will also tour a cocoa processing company in Tema and visit Akosombo. As part of the 3-day visit, the Ethiopian Leader will lay a wreath at the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum and address a joint press conference with President Mahama. ASIEDU NKETIA ON AKUFO-ADDOS & NPPS CONNECTION TO THE FOILED MERCENARY TERRORISM IN GHANA Are you aware of the number of militants they [South Africans] had trained, what if they trained these militants in badges (sic), can we link the increase (sic) rate in arm (sic) robbery to this training offered by mercenaries, can we link the recent cases of contract killings to the training; are there young people in the country already trained by these men and what are they actually doing with the skills acquired. They [the NPP] invited the ex-police officers at the time they started making unnecessary noise over the Guantanamo Bay detainees to train their militants in weapon handling, so they are able to engage in violence on the blind side of Ghanaians and later blame it on President SOUTH AFRICAN EX-COPS SAGA: BNI CHARGES DANQUAH INSTITUTE DIRECTOR Ghanaweb, quoting Myjoyonline, has the following news for its wide readership: The Bureau of National Investigations has charged the Deputy Executive Director of pro-NPP think tank Danquah Institute with conspiracy to commit crime. Nana Attobrah Quaicoe was invited and interrogated by the BNI on Monday, April 4 on his role in bringing the three South African nationals to train the security detail of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Presidential Candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo and his running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia. Three South African ex-cops Major Chris Hazis (RTD), Warrant Officer Denver Dwayhe and Captain Mlungiseli Jokani were arrested for training private security personnel of the Flagbearer and his running mate. They were charged with conspiracy to commit crime and unlawful training but the state dropped the charge against them after detaining them for some days. They were deported on Tuesday, March 29. I am really surprisedI am really surprised, if they were interested in pursuing the matter to its logical conclusion I guess they should have made it possible for the guys (Ex cops) to be around for them to complete their investigation, Nana Attobrah added. There is a lingering fear and reservation on our part that this investigation may be botched from the beginning, at least on technical grounds. Of course, this is an important national security case with immense legal or constitutional implications which, we believe, should have been allowed the three deported South African mercenaries to enjoy some form of habeas corpus in a competent jurisdiction beyond the National Bureau of Investigations (BNI)s proof of authority. It is however likely that the BNI may have already debriefed the three South Africans as part of its deposition package, which it will use in case the case proceeds all the way to the Supreme Court. But, Attobrah is absolutely right to say the three should have been physically present as this case proceeds through those appropriate authorities tasked to handle national security matters. After all, we do not even know yet under what circumstances the BNI debriefed and deposed those three South Africans! We are addressing our concerns directly to any subtle or overt legal or constitutional requirement for observing audi alteram partem! In addition this means the three will likely be tried in absentia. From a laymans perspective, we are of the certain view that this case may run against some serious technical roadblocks. Unless of course this particular case, like many other cases before it and others running contemporaneously with it, is a purely political, rather than a legal or constitutional, matter. Yes, for these reasons and others yet to unravel in the coming days, we may have to agree, even if tentatively, with Attobrahs intelligent sentiment that the BNI may not actually be interested in pursuing this matter to its logical conclusion. Yet this is a serious matter that deserves all the attention it needs. Thus, we shall call upon the BNI to pursue this matter to its logical conclusion. LUCKY DUBE: POLITICAL GAMES How do you feel when you lie? Straight faced while people cry How do you feel when you promise something? That you know you'll never do; giving false hope to the people Giving false hope to the underprivileged; do you really sleep at night?... When you know you're living a lie; to you it is just a job; to the people it hurts to the bone Ooh political games that they play Do you really sleep at night? When you know you're living a lie You talking tough, you talking sincerely Giving false hope to the infected; giving false hope to the affected To you it is just a job; to the people it hurts to the bone Ooh political games that they play THE LYRICAL INTERSECTION OF BOB MARLEY AND SAM COOKE: A SERIOUS POLITICAL AND MORAL QUESTION FOR GHANAIANS This change also demands a critical mass for an effective strategy and tactics of revolutionary actuation which, alas, has remained latent for many a year. However, we do think Bob Marley had something close to the kind of revolution we are talking about here. It goes like this (Track: Revolution): It takes a revolution to make a solution; too much confusion, so much frustration I dont wanna live in the park; cant trust no shadows after dark So, my friend, I wish that you could see, like a bird in the free, the prisoners must be free Never make a politician grant you a favor; they will always want to control you forever Kill, cramp and paralyze all weak at conception Wipe them out of creationLet righteousness cover the earth like water cover the seaLightning, thunder, brimstone and fire Yes, the equally ever-sleeping masses whom Bob Marley aptly called prisoners must wake up and live by raining lightning, thunder, brimstone and fire on the corrupt leadership, a class for which we might appropriate Bob Marleys titular track Stiff-Necked Fools, of this unfortunate generation. On Wake Up and Live he sang: Wake up and live!...Rise ye mighty people, theres work to be done Rise from your sleepless slumberwere more than sand on the seashore Were more than numbers. Altogether now: Wake up and live, yall! But to attain that critical mass for that change which we desire Bob Marley somehow, thusly, cautioned the conscientized masses on Wake Up and Live to: Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy; dont bury your thoughts; put your vision to reality! At least going by the last lyrical bridge of Cookes song quoted in part in Part 3, we have Bob Marley essentially agreeing with this observation on the track Ambush in the Night (with our emphasis): So they [politicians] bribing with their guns, spare-parts and money, trying to belittle our integrity They say what we know is just what they teach us; and we are ignorant cause every time they can reach us through political strategy AND WHEN YOU GONNA GET SOME FOOD YOUR BROTHER GOT TO BE YOUR ENEMY Once again to attain that critical mass for revolutionary change, namely talking less but actualizing ones revolutionary intentions, which he also referred to on Wake Up and Live as dont bury your thoughts; put your vision to reality, we shall defer again to Bob Marleys Crisis which says in part (with our emphasis): They say the sun shines for all; but in some people world, it never shine at all They say love is stream that will find its course; I mean, some people think life is a dream So they making matters worse So much have been said, so little been doneThey [politicians] still killing the people And they having fun, and they are having their fun, having a lots of fun They just want to be the leader, in the house of the rising sun True, the privileged world of the corrupt politician does not shine in the world of the poor masses. But, if we may also add, the privileged world of the corrupt politician needs no love from the poor masses, as the richly lived and living experiences of the corrupt politician is not an academic question, much the same way we might ascribe life is a dream to the abject conditionalities of the poor masses. Indeed, the lifestyle of the corrupt politician is killing the people! In sum, as far as the poor masses are concerned life as a stream will never find its course until the corrupt politician is overthrown as Steele Pulses David Hines sings about on the track Tyrant. The other radical way to go about it is what Peter Tosh and Bob Marley called Get Up, Stand Up. The masses must ensure that the critical mass we have been advocating all this while prevents the corrupt politician from having fun killing the people, because he/she wants to become a leader of the people in the rising sun of his/her corruptible environment. Perhaps, and also more importantly, the strategic and tactical perimeter of the critical mass for revolutionary change should not be permitted to take on the novelistic complexity of Michael Crichtons international bestselling masterpiece, Rising Sun. For it is clear that Bob Marleys the rising sun on the other hand is totally devoid of any calculating pretensions to devious and murderous Machiavellianism! In the final analysis then, we can only hazard that the first of the dichotomous choice of Malcolm Xs the ballot or the bullet may not yet work to bring about the change we are postulating. Elsewhere, we have strongly argued against the bullet option but, if truth be told, circumstances are giving us no choice but a one-way choice to reconsider our earlier position and then following that, to shift the goalposts accordingly. Let us just add that the bullet of radical conscientization of the masses and of popular patriotic nationalism may hold the key to opening up a new society where commonsense, vigorous pursuit of comparative advantage, solidarity, uncompromising defense of the national interest, political truth, and outright rejection of our winner-takes-all schadenfreude duopoly prevail. This is a radical change in our intellectual profile which our readers should know about. Malcolm Xs the bullet may be the silver bullet and the magic wand! Yet we may have to learn not to destroy the poor in the process as we destroy the corrupt political class. The lips of the righteous teach many, but fools [corrupt politicians] die for want of wisdom, sang Bob Marley (courtesy of King Solomons Proverb 10:21) on Wisdom. Destruction of the poor is poverty (our emphasis). Yet again, Bob Marley assured us on So Much Things to Say that a likely windfall from social justice, equality and fairness, patriotism, truth, and exertion of spiritual fortitude against spiritual wickedness in high and low places accrues to society or community at large. Indeed, there exists a rich philosophical subtext of communitarian ethos in the lyrical superstructure of the song, So Much Things to Say. That is, society is more the better if and when its members join hands to resist corruption, anomie, social injustice, and other sociopolitical ills. Late rapper Tupac Shakur captured this concept of United We Stand, Divided We Fall when he, Ice-T, and Ice Cube collaborated on the track Last Wordz. In fine, Bob Marley used the metaphor of rain for windfall and of housetop for that communitarian ethos, which brings conscionable- and patriotic-thinking members of a given community together, to resist their common enemies, personal and non-personal enemies some of whom we have painstakingly mentioned throughout this three-part series on Ghanaian politicians. Here it goes: Oh, when the rain fall, fall, fall nowIt dont fall on ones housetop. Remember that: When the rain fall, it dont fall on one mans housetop And while we will not specifically recommend any kind of revolution to bring about the changes we all seek, we want Ghanaians to know that men and women who dare to institute and effect this radical change in the body politic have to know what their objectives arewell-defined goals and their systematic blueprints for effective and efficient execution, together with a set of measurable regime to accompany these suggestionsin order to avoid what Bob Marley described as Is a foolish dog bark at a flying bird (Track: Jah Live), adding the truth is an offence but not a sin. Now that the masses know that truth is an offence but not a sin the courageous amongst them can go ahead to provide the necessary critical mass required for overturning anomie and social decay and so on. In the end Bob Marley made it clear that revolutionary change required sacrifice which he briefly described as To give your more, to receive your less on the track Misty Morning. On the same track (Misty Morning) he warned those who were not ready to rise to the challenge: Dont jump in the water, if you cant swim. I said that life, sweet life, he also sang on Concrete Jungle, must be found somewhere. FELA KUTIS DEMO-CRAZY: THE POLITICAL DILEMMA CONFRONTING GHANA & AFRICA Particularly, the dictatorship of winner-takes-all duopolistic democracy (democratic capitalism) has totally failed Ghana (and across the geopolitical landscape of Africa). This kind of democracy Fela Kuti aptly called demo-crazy on the fabulous track Teacher Dont Teach Me Nonsense! Clearly, this novel idea of political expression, borrowed largely from America and other Western democracies, has abysmally failed the continent in general, and Ghana especially. Perhaps it is too early to draw this dismal conclusion since this strange political system is relatively new to post-colonial Africa. Part of this general failure has been the direct result of overly monetization of politics, mass illiteracy, ethnocentrism, organized crime, voter and election fraud (election malpractice), campaigns of lies which Lucky Dube sang about on political games, Bob Marley on Ambush in the Night and Burnin and Lootin, Steele Pulses David Hines on Bodyguard, Mutabaruka on The Peoples Court Our leading psychiatric politicians have successfully managed to use the medium of universal bribery as well as their devious Machiavellian charismatic authorities to subvert the moral authority of elective franchise by skewing it in their favor, exclusively for partisan political advantage. This canine pack of devious Machiavellian psychiatric politicians have made the vote blind to political and social realism, making our demo-crazy a great source of duopolistic acrimony, hatred, insults, schadenfreude politics, underdevelopmentWhere is the investigative camera of Ana Aremeyaw Ana to pump some sense into these politically oriented psychiatric proponents of demo-crazy? Failing that, we may have to re-arrange the lyrical contents of Bob Marleys Chant Down Babylon to fit our critique of these politically oriented psychiatric proponents of demo-crazy! OUR FINAL THOUGHTS It is sad the Akufo-Addo did not donate one of his eyes to that useful idiot, Adzakuma. Akufo-Addo even wears a pair of medicated glasses on top of his curious yet untried political eyes. Adzakuma would have been happier were he a salamander or a newt, both of which have the ability to regenerate eyes. But he is not; he is a human being. His case is indeed a sad one, and there should be a way to compensate him for the lost eye. What he may not, unfortunately, have known is that Akufo-Addo may never be the president of Ghana as he will be contesting other candidates for the presidency. This fact may have been lost on him anyway, for he should have known that these greedy and wicked politicians have their families ensconced abroad, away from any potential theater of war in Ghana in a post-election dispensation. Kennedy Agyapong, for instance, always comes up with a number of funny alibis for sneaking out of the country in post-election times in spite of all his pre-election foolhardy and fiery political outbursts. Even more importantly, anybody can win the 2016 general elections. Still Adzakumas experience should serve as a lesson to those Ghanaians, who mistakenly think they may have found safe havens in vigilante groups such as the Azorka Boys, Kandahar Boys, Bolga Bulldogs, and Invincible Forces, to reconsider their decisions. Nigerias Boko Haram and other homegrown terrorist cells started the same way. These ragtag vigilante groups must not be allowed to use violence to protect political turfs as violent gangs do elsewhere. In one sense therefore, Bolga Bulldogs, Kandahar Boys, Azorka Boys, and Invincible Forces are discrete units of antagonistic political gangs whose vigilante behavior can somewhat be likened to the turf wars of the Crips and the Bloods and the Mafia in the United States, although these political turf wars are mostly lazy questions of virtual reality or of political science-fiction, their behavior recalling the deadly vigilante exploits undertaken by some of the characters of Mario Puzos The Godfather and its gripping sequel, The Sicilian. There is no doubt in our minds that Ghanas duopolistic culture is gradually inching or gravitating towards a balkanization of political gangstarism if this encroachment of vigilante political gangstarism is not extirpated from the ever-sleeping paedomorphic body politic, Nkrumahs precious Ghana. In a related context Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom has also threatened to form his own vigilante group, the Sea Lions, so-called, to defend the interests of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP). He made the following well-deserved but controversial threat to boot: It is not because I am not capable of competing boot by bootBut some of us also know how to buy guns, bows and arrows. We know where poor, hungry and desperate people are who do not care what happens to them today If some people can raise an Azorka Army and others Bolga Bull Dogs, what happens if those of us who have disciplined ourselves so far decide to raise the Sea Lions for counter attack? What happens when the silent sufferers decide that enough is enough? Is this what the Minister of Interior was promoting when he said, violence begets violence? Why Sea Lions and not Seahorses? Does he want to become the next Pablo Escobar of Ghanaian politics? Even having said that, Dr. Nduoms is exactly what Bob Marley sang about in Ambush in the Night. CONCLUSION Indeed, the type of revolution we are advocating and hoping to see its effectuation carried out to its logical conclusion will make President Obamas sloganeering catchphrase Yes I Can pointedly unattractive to radical and progressive Nkrumahists. No wonder some observers see President Obamas pending legacy as a disappointing failure. The Republican opposition to President Obama is a disappointing failure as well, no doubt. It takes two to tango, so goes the cliche. Having said this, we shall largely leave the masses to decide on which type of revolution they find convincing and more appropriate for a better society than the one they have always known. REFERENCES Ghanaweb. God Saved Ghana From NPP MilitantsAsiedu Nketia. April 4, 2016. Ghanaweb. SA Ex-Cops Saga: BNI Charges Danquah Institute Director. April 5, 2016. Ghanaweb. Debate Me Not Easy Match Nana AddoNduom To Mahama. March 15, 2016. Ghanaweb. NPP, NDC Have No Monopoly Over ViolenceNduom warns. July 13, 2016. The Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) will soon announce a five-year strategic business plan that will, through direct AGRA intervention, double the income of 9 million small holder farmers in six African countries, including Ghana. The plan will also double the incomes of another 21 million more farm households through grantees, partners to policies and partnerships that increase productivity and access to market. At a stakeholder meeting held, Thursday, to brainstorm and ensure a perfect execution of the plan, Fadel Ndiame, head of the West Africa said AGRA will make use of an integrated approach to agriculture transformation in West Africa to achieve its objectives. This approach includes an adoption of improved technology by the farmers, access to inputs and markets and a great partnership with governments, donors and investors in the six countries where the project will be undertaken.. The other countries to benefit from this project are Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Burkina Faso. According to Ndiame, the new strategy will focus on three main agro-ecological zones that overlap with the targeted countries. The zones are Guinea Savanah zone, where Ghana's agriculture will prominently feature, East African Highland zones and Miombo woodlands zone. Why small holder farmers? Fadel Ndiame said the business plan will focus chiefly on staples and food crops grown largely by small holder farmers. He said the small holder farms employ the large chunk of the population in many of the countries in question and produce the heavily consumed food crops. The team leader in the Ghana Business plan, Kehinde Makinde, in his presentation named maize, rice, soyabean and cassava as the four main crops the plan will concentrate on when the project finally begins. The project will also pay close attention to four main themes that run through every agricultural enterprise- climate change, women, youth and nutrition. According to Makinde, the project will support "climate smart technologies and improved water management," provide support to women, farmers especially in their areas of interest and specialization and pay attention to the agricultural opportunities for the youth. The proposed budget for the project is $31 million over a period of five years with a business model including. seed supply, farmers awareness,fertilizers. The project will also make use of strong partnerships with governments, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, seed suppliers etc. NHIA TARGETS SEVERAL MILLIONS FROM BANKS FOR USE OF ITS ID CARD SYSTEM The National Health Insurance Authority is set to generate several millions of cedis from financial institutions for the use of its software platform to authenticate holders of its identification cards. ECA, AFRICAN LEADERS SLAM CORRUPTION REPORTS The fourth Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) African Governance Review report as argued that perception-based measures misrepresent realities in Africa and are misguiding policymakers and investors. PASSENGERS DODGE AIRLINES OVER VAT More passengers are opting to travel by road to major capitals in the country, as air fares remain elevated due to the imposition of a 17.5 percent VAT on domestic air transport in July 2015. SEX OR LOVE? WHAT REALLY ATTRACTS OLDER MEN TO GIRLS? A survey conducted by the Weekend Finder has revealed that the reasons that drive older men to express a pleasurable feeling and emotional attraction towards girls much younger than them range from mid marriage-life crisis to hardcore Casanova adventurism. DEADLY DIABETEES IN UNRELENTING MARCH The world is facing an unrelenting marchof diabetes which now affects nearly one in eleven adults, the WHO says. MAHAMA MUST GO TO SAVE GHANA KUFUOR Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has predicted doom for Ghana if President John Dramani Mahama and is ruling NDC win the November general election, warning that the country risks collapsing. HEADS ROLL AT EC The Acting Director of Public Affairs of the Electoral Commission, Christian Owusu Parry, has been relieved of his post. ABODAM PICKS NEW WIFE Rapper Kwaw Kese, real name Emmanuel Kwesi Botchwey, and his long-time girlfriend Doris Kyei Baffour got engaged Thursday. MCE HOT; ACCUSED OF EMBEZZLING ASSEMBLY FUNDS Municipal Chief Executive of Ashaiman Municipal Assembly in the Greater Accra Region, Mr Ibrahim Baidoo, has been accused spending funds of the Assembly on rented plush apartment for himself and a few management members. DONT BE OBJECTS OF VIOLENCE NDUOM ADVISES YOUTH Presidential hopeful of the PPP Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, has advised the youth against being used as objects of violence during election seasons. AMA BREAKS GROUND HOURS AFTER UNVELING MILLENIUM CITY SCHOOLS The Accra Metropolitan Assembly has cut the sod for the construction of three millennium city schools in the metropolis. PAUL AFOKO REJECTS RECONCILAITION TALKS The suspended national chairman of the NPP, Paul Afoko, has rejected claims that he was in reconciliation dialogue with the leadership of the party. AGAMBIRE DROPS CASE AGAINST MANASSEH Chairman of Agams Holdings, Roland Agambire, has served notice he is no longer interested in a legal battle against Journalist, Manasseh Azuri Awune. 08.04.2016 LISTEN Chairman of AGAMS Holdings, Roland Agambire, has served notice he is no longer interested in a legal battle against Journalist, Manasseh Azuri Awuni. He has consequently asked his lawyers to discontinue a year-old defamation suit against Joy News investigative Reporter. His lawyers filed the discontinuance application at the Accra High Court on Thursday to drop the 1m defamation case. Mr Agambire, whose AGAMS Holdings is the parent company of three business entities cited in the GYEEDA investigations sued Manasseh in June last year, for posting malicious and defamatory comments about him on social media site, Facebook. According to his Statement of Claim, the Joy FM investigative journalist attacked him on two separate occasions namely; February 10, and March 3, 2015, without any basis. In the first post which was published on February 10, he wrote that I am deeply hurt and worried. If companies belonging to Roland Agambire of RLG fame and Joseph Siaw Agyapong of Zoomlion fame are going to run GYEEDA (now YEA), then another scandal will soon emerge. These two groups of companies have been named in all major scandals in recent times: GYEEDA, SUBAH and SADA." "The most disturbing issue is that they are untouchable. They have not been prosecuted and they have not repaid the monies that were wrongly paid to them despite the recommendation of the committee. RLG paid only one quarter's installation. Zoomlion is yet to pay a pesewa. As we speak, the World Bank banned Zoomlion from bidding for contracts funded by the Bank. But in Ghana, they move from grace to grace on government contracts and the tax payer's money is not accounted for. I am very hurt and disturbed." it continued. The second post also read: Mahama may not be a thief. But if he supervises stealing, how should we call him? Or has Batidam not heard the Akan proverb? Maybe he should be reminded now that he is singing from a different hymn book: An elder who sits at home and allows children to eat python will not be left out when a roll call of python eaters is conducted." It continued, "What systems is he referring to? Roland Agambire or Joseph Siaw Agyapong, for instance, have been made more powerful than any minister of state. So if their companies are involved in corruption, which institutions, systems or persons are to lead the crusade against this corruption? Did Batidam not know of such systems when he was firing Mahama to act when the GYEEDA scandal first broke? And if President Mahama is not a judge, why does he keep assuring us that he is fighting corruption? Mr. Agambire said the claims were untrue and prayed the court to slap a sum of 1m on the anti-corruption crusader for the posts he described as being offensive and actuated by malice to tarnish his good image. Mr Agambire has however, asked the court to halt the case. Manasseh was doing his job and even if in the process, Roland got offended, it is still he Rolands belief that as brothers, the court is not where to thrash out their differences. He may be hurt but he does not intend to continue litigating, a close aide is reported to have said. Last month, the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General, confirmed all three of Mr Agambires companies, namely RLG, Asongtaba and Craftpro have fully paid up debts owed the state as per the recommendations of the GYEEDA Ministerial Impact Assessment Committee Report. The debt, totalling GH61, 135,981.27; with interest, was as a result of loans that were granted to the three companies for the provision of certain services under the Ghana Youth Enterprise and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA). Pressure on the Electoral Commission to make a full disclosure on its relationship with IT firm, Superlock Technologies Limited (STL), is set to take a dramatic turn as legal practitioner hints of court action to achieve that. Nana Obiri Boahen wants to end ECs silence on queries about the role of STL in the management of Ghanas electoral process. A group of people have approached me as a lawyer to take the matter up and therefore I am not even going to look at it from a political point but from the position of a lawyer. The EC has not made full disclosure to us, they are joking and we are going to drag them to court, Obiri Boahen told Accra-based Citi FM. The hullabaloo over STLs involvement in Ghanas elections was exhumed after the Minister of Interior, Prosper Bani, issued a statement that the IT firm transmitted tallied results for the EC. The Interior Ministter issued the statement in the wake of the arrest of three South African ex-police officers for unlawful training and other misdemeanours by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI). The three South Africans have since been deported. Mr Banis statement contradicts an earlier statement in 2012 by then EC Commissioner, Kwadwo Afari Gyan. The opposition NPP has been on the neck of the Commission, demanding an explanation of STLs actual role Ghanas electoral process since Mr Banis statement. However, the EC has remained silent a situation the NPP says will not work towards confidence in the elections coordinator. The impression should not be created that it is only the political parties which are prepared to wage this war of ensuring there is transparent and credible election, Obiri-Boahen said, adding some individuals are also doing it. Dr. Kwadwo Afari Djan said the EC has no working relationship with STL, but the Minister of Interior in a written statement disclosed that the EC has a working relationship with STL, he stressed. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected] This is what I call annual ritual in our educational sector where examination questions have to be leaked for students and pupils to solve before the fixed exam time. The issues when arisen is discussed in all media houses, homes, offices, churches and drinking centers but no one is ready to bear responsibility. My heart bleeds for this beautiful African country each time there is problem of this sort in our educational sector. WAEC, Teachers, Parents and many other stakeholders are responsible for shaping and reshaping the future of our generation but the trend has been averted. People are no longer afraid to compromise on the truth and the right thing. It is sad and we all have to bow our heads in shame. Because everyone is protecting his or her job, no one is ready to take blame. Why should a whole examination body that is in charge of evaluating students at the end of their study in the Basic and High Schools keep leaking questions and will quickly issue statements debunking the claim? Some Parents irresponsibly threaten and negotiate with teachers to assist their wards during their examination. And those teachers who have sold their conscience for peanuts have maintained their cheap popularity and go all the length to send materials to their students in exam halls. Some sections of teachers connive and condone with parents and Heads of schools to buy questions from sources and distribute to their students. What has happened to our conscience and our sense of responsibility? These students who have always known manna will come from heaven do nothing than to misbehave during their stay in schools. Students have given varied names to leaked papers depending on the school one finds him/herself. As a teacher, students see no value in what I preach and have been preaching. If the thing you are teaching is not the Baafa (name for leaked paper) then you may be killing their eardrum. Indiscipline has been on the ascendency and we all celebrate it. A student after the Social Studies paper on Tuesday, 5th April, 2016 was cursing and hissing a teacher who was stern on them. She said. As for (name withheld), he should pray I dont fail the Social Studies, I will look for his number and insult him I asked, did any of the many teachers hold your pen during the examination? These are the sort of students we are dealing with. Why then should the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service sit and watch as our schools are converted into what writings cannot describe? The recent slap of malpractice in the ongoing West African Examination Council papers should be condemned by all and WAEC as a body responsible for the exams need not debunk the claim and shift blames. This has stepped beyond the limit. This is bad and denting the image of the Ministry of Education and Ghana. These are children we are training to grow up and build this nation, a nation bleeding of corruption, sex scandals, murder, rape, robbery, graduate unemployment, magical pastors and what I see is students taking in already prepared materials on nation building to duplicate in exams hall. Parents watched their children to make those copies they call apor to the exams hall on effects of responsible parenthood. What sort of parents are we and the sort of children we are grooming? What is more indiscipline than students duplicating causes of indiscipline in schools? We all look on unconcerned despite the media discussions and public outcries. The issue dies within days and no one is held responsible. No one steps forward and pronounce taking roles in the malfeasance. If the body in charge of our examinations cannot take blame and will rather shudder and shift the blames to depot keepers and delivery vans, then I deemed WAEC as a failure to our system. I read on WAECs statement that, the materials being circulated were not leaked papers, they were rather a foreknowledge students had. I was tempted to look for the meaning of the two words, foreknowledge and leaked and I was amazed. Sometimes I find it difficult to think straight. Someone should just step forward and take the blame. We should live by examples. We should stop shifting blames and accept responsibility; our country will be rebuilt again and again. Long live Ghana, long live Ghana Education. Wisdom Bonuedi The writer is a Teacher. Email; [email protected] www.facebook.wisebonuedi.com Twitter; @WBonuedi Today, the African Union (AU) Commission and the European Commission held the 8th College-to-College meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was hosted by the African Union Commission, under the co-chairmanship of its Chairperson, Dr Nkosazana C. Dlamini Zuma and the Vice-President of the European Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini. On its part, the AU has developed a Fifty (50)-year Agenda known as 'Agenda 2063' and its First Ten (10)-Year Implementation Plan adopted at the Johannesburg Summit in June 2015 as a framework to accelerate the integration of the continent. Over the last twelve years, the European Union (EU) has grown from fifteen (15) to twenty-eight (28) Member States and has also taken steps towards greater integration through the creation of the Euro currency and the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty. As was the case on previous occasions, the College-to-College meeting was attended by the AU New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) Planning and Coordination Agency (NPCA) and was open to the African Regional Economic Communities (RECs)I, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the European Investment Bank (EIB). During the meeting, discussions touched upon the preparations of the next I AMU (Arab Maghreb Union); CEN-SAD (Communaute des Etats Sahelo-Sahariens); COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa); EAC (East African Community); ECCAS (Economic Community of Central African States); ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States); IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority for Development); SADC (Southern African Development Community) Africa-EU Summit, which is to take place in 2017 in Africa, and on cooperation between the two Commissions. Discussions were structured around the five (5) priority areas of the 2014-2017 Roadmap adopted at the Africa-EU Summit in Brussels, Belgium in 2014: (i) peace and security; (ii) democracy, good governance and human rights; (iii) human development; (iv) sustainable and inclusive development and growth and continental integration; (v) global and emerging issues. PEACE AND SECURITY 1. The Colleges reaffirmed their commitment to peace and security on both continents in conformity with the aims and principles of the United Nations Charter. 2. The Colleges underlined their commitment to continue to cooperate towards the operationalisation of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and the development of African capacities including in peace support operations (PSO) and the fight against terrorism. In particular, they welcomed the recent decision of the European Commission to contribute with EU funding to the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) against Boko Haram. The Colleges will also continue to cooperate in promoting the effective participation of women in peace building processes, peace negotiations, warning and response mechanisms, and pay particular attention to addressing the structural causes of gender inequality and marginalisation of women. 3. The Colleges reaffirmed the need to join efforts to mobilise other partners to ensure appropriate and sustainable financial support to peace and security in Africa, as well as to put in place efficient and sound management of this financial support. 4. Both institutions also noted the role of threat multipliers, such as climate change and associated extreme weather events and droughts, posing a major challenge on the need for development that may lead to situations of conflict and instability, and agreed to intensify collaboration in addressing such root causes. 5. In the face of the too many victims of terrorism on African soil and in Europe, the Colleges discussed how they could best contribute to combatting the scourge of terrorism and violent extremism, which pose a major threat to democracy, security and stability in both Africa and Europe. Within existing programmes, they agreed to pursue work jointly to enhance technical and operational capacities. 6. They welcomed the continued joint consultative meetings between the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) and the EU Political and Security Committee (PSC), which contribute to finding durable solutions to conflict and crisis situations in Africa, as well as enhancing conflict prevention, mediation and capacity building for peace and security, among others. 7. On South Sudan, they reiterated the need to fully implement the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of the South Sudan as a necessary step to end the civil war and put the country on a new path of peace, security and development. On Burundi, they expressed their deep concern over the prevailing political situation, as well as the insecurity and violence persisting in the country, and welcomed the swift launch of the inclusive inter-Burundian Dialogue facilitated by President Mkapa on behalf of the EAC, supported by the AU and the United Nations. On Somalia, they condemned the terrorist attacks perpetrated against the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali civilians in the country and called for concerted efforts by the international community to assist the Somali Government to achieve its 'Vision 2016'. On Mali, they also expressed their deep concern over the security situation in the country and called for effective implementation of the Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation to resolve the crisis in the northern part of the country as part of the overall effort to enhance peace and stability in the country. 8. The Colleges reaffirmed their determination to reject and fight against impunity, bearing in mind the need for justice, peace and stability, while also enhancing political dialogue on international criminal justice, including the issue of universal jurisdiction, in the agreed fora between them. They further endeavoured to taking all necessary measures to end all forms of violence against women, including sexual exploitation, trafficking and harmful traditional practices within their respective mandates. They further underscored the pertinence of strict zero tolerance policy on sexual abuse in all peacekeeping operations in the world and the importance that it is respected. DEMOCRACY, GOOD GOVERNANCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS 9. The Colleges agreed to pursue the operationalisation of the African Governance Architecture (AGA) and of a strong African Human Rights System that responds to the needs and aspirations of African citizens within the existing legal instruments in the area of democracy, good governance and human rights and to the fight against corruption in all its forms and manifestations, and agreed to strengthen joint efforts in that regard. 10. In particular, the Colleges agreed to continue to consolidate actions with 2016 as the year of Human Rights and further stressed the need to reduce gender inequality, end violence and discrimination in all its forms and manifestations against women and girls, to enable them to play their full role in political, economic and social development in line with the AU's specific focus on the rights of women in Africa. Strengthening dialogue with civil society and promoting their active role in those areas was reemphasised as essential. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 11. The Colleges reaffirmed their engagement to continue their cooperation to maximise the benefits of science, technology and innovation to address the challenges of eradicating poverty, addressing the root causes of illegal migration and promoting sustainable development and they welcomed the efforts of the EU towards the implementation of its EUR 1.9 billion Emergency Trust Fund in this regard as well as the launch of a dedicated programme to assist their dialogue on migration. 12. They welcomed the adoption of a Road Map by the Africa-EU High Level Policy Dialogue on science, technology and innovation, and the launch of a jointly funded and co-owned EU-Africa Partnership on Research and Innovation on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture. This initiative is in line with the agriculture and food systems' policy goals of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, as well as the relevant sectorial strategic frameworks namely the Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa 2024 (STISA-2014), the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the Malabo Declaration for Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Prosperity. 13. They welcomed the contributions from European and African countries to support the advocacy and implementation of the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA 16-25) based on better Education Management Information System (EMIS) allowing to measure the Teacher development and the effort made on Girls Education. They also welcomed the recent announcement of the launch of a call for proposals of the Intra-Africa Mobility Scheme to promote the mobility of students and staff and contribute to the harmonisation of higher education systems in Africa. 14. The Colleges underlined the importance of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) to ensure youth empowerment and employment by aligning TVET skills portability initiatives with ongoing work on harmonisation and quality assurance in higher education in Africa. SUSTAINABLE AND INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT, GROWTH AND CONTINENTAL INTEGRATION 15. The Colleges agreed that regional and continental integration is an engine for inclusive growth and sustainable development. In the framework of their support to the establishment of the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) in Africa, building on existing regional integration processes, they welcomed the progress in the Doha Development Agenda made at the 10th WTO ministerial conference in Nairobi and the strong commitment of all WTO members to advance negotiations on the remaining Doha issues including the interest of some to identify and discuss other issues for negotiations, as agreed in the WTO Nairobi Ministerial Declaration. They will also continue to work towards the implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement which will inter alia contribute to the objective of the CFTA. 16. In line with the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) framework and the Malabo Declaration, they reaffirmed their support regarding the ambition to triple intra-African trade in agricultural products by 2025 and to increase value-added exports to the EU. They will focus their support to CAADP Result Framework in order to reach the Malabo targets in the areas of productivity, Intra-Africa Trade and value Chain development, Climate change, Resilience and Sustainable Agriculture as well as promoting responsible private sector investment in African agriculture. They welcomed the joint report from the "Agriculture, Food Security and Food Safety" Contact Group. 17. The Colleges underlined their support to Africa's drive to achieve rapid and sustainable industrialisation to create decent jobs and eradicate poverty. Particular attention must be paid to ensure an active role of the youth and women in these processes. On infrastructure, they also agreed that the Programme for Infrastructure Development for Africa (PIDA) will continue to orient their strategic cooperation towards innovative solutions to facilitate and accelerate infrastructure delivery in Africa, with the aim to significantly contribute to the realisation of Agenda 2063. A number of major Pan-African infrastructure projects in the transport, energy, water, and information and communications technology sectors that could leverage large-scale investments across Africa were identified. The Colleges also welcomed the Joint Statement of the "Reference Group on Infrastructure" meeting held on 25 and 26 February 2016. 18. In particular, they restated that they will intensify efforts towards improving aviation and maritime safety and security. They will also continue their cooperation in the energy sector by addressing challenges related to access, sustainability and affordability of services, as well as in the water sector, by working on the strategic directions agreed to at the 2014 EU-Africa Summit to attain the Africa Water Vision by 2025, and in the ICT sector, the harmonisation and alignment of policies and regulatory frameworks, including cyber-security, safeguarding human rights and data protection. GLOBAL AND EMERGING ISSUES 19. The Colleges reiterated that the EU and Africa should tackle global problems jointly such as climate change, irregular migration, environmental issues, terrorism and transnational crime as well as illicit financial flows, and that their voices will have greater impact if they communicate complementary positions. 20. They welcomed the adoption of the African Union's Agenda 2063 and its Ten-Year Implementation Plan and the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and agreed to hold regular dialogue on their implementation, financing, monitoring, evaluation and reporting. They also agreed to cooperate with a view to adapting and improving statistical systems, sharing best practices and promoting cross-regional peer-learning. 21. They saluted the historic success of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (COP21) reached in December 2015 and agreed that all parties should now move to translate their intended nationally determined contributions into robust and sustainable national policies and measures. The Colleges are committed to support the implementation of contributions and look forward to cooperating on COP22 in November 2016 in Marrakesh, Morocco. 22. They reaffirmed their willingness to continue on-going efforts to combat land degradation and desertification and its impact on livelihoods and communities through programmes such as the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative. In addition, they will also continue to collaborate on multilateral environmental agreements including those on chemicals and desertification, as well as to cooperate towards implementing the adopted agreements as well as flagship programmes on Green and Blue Economy. They will make all efforts to ensure that women and men contribute to and benefit equally from climate change policies, financing and implementation at all levels. 23. Furthermore, joint efforts in the monitoring of Africa's environment, including through the use of Earth observation systems for capturing environmental indicators, were reiterated. They also emphasised their commitment to collaborate towards the implementation of the African Space Policy and Strategy adopted by the AU's Heads of State and Government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 31 January 2016. 24. They agreed to cooperate in the fight against wildlife trafficking and illegal exploitation and illegal trade in wild flora and fauna in Africa and in the implementation of the African Strategy on Combatting Illegal Exploitation and Illegal Trade in Wild Flora and Fauna in Africa. They took note of the recent adoption of an EU action plan against wildlife trafficking. ADMINISTRATIVE COOPERATION 25. In order to foster bilateral technical and administrative cooperation an administrative arrangement between the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS), on the one side, and the African Union Commission, on the other side, was signed. 08.04.2016 LISTEN The publication in your esteemed medium with the heading NDC USA Disowns Lawrence Appiah and his Friends of Mahama Group did not come as a surprise to we the executives and the entire membership of this noble group. This is not the first time. It would be recalled that before the inauguration of this group last year, some of the executives did everything to stop its formation. They forwarded a letter authored by Dr. Karl Arhin, the deputy Director of international relations of the party for a different purpose and presented it as if it was meant for Friends of JDM. Are we surprise that they are purporting to be speaking on the orders of NDC Accra? Initially, we decided to ignore the publication with the contempt it deserves. However, as a sign of respect for the general public (not to dignify the publication) we decided to give the general public the facts for them to make their own judgment. First of all, it is interesting that the author of the above publication recognized the fact that the flagbearer of the NDC which they represent as executives here in USA, is also the president of Ghana and not NDC alone. Except that one is fallaciously assuming that before one qualifies to be a friend of the president, s/he must seek the permission and approval of the party on whose ticket he won the election or must of necessity be a member of NDC. Again, if the author of this article has been observing president John Mahama closely, he would have noticed the humility and the respect the president commands across the political divides. Most Ghanaians are dying to relate, one way or the other to him. It is in line with these excellent characteristics of our president, that Ghanaians in the diaspora are willing to support the president's re-election bid without necessarily being members of NDC. This objective is being pursued in diverse ways. Besides the financial commitments members are making to support the president, they also expending their time to appear on all radio stations in both home and diaspora defending the president and his government's policies and programs. The diaspora media landscape which hitherto was occupied by NPP spokespersons has completely changed in favor of NDC. Curtesy Friends of JDM communication team. In relation to the 'advice' by the NDC USA secretariat to the effect that anybody who contributes money towards this laudable project does so at his or her own risk, the members of Friends of JDM are very grateful. However, if really they are politicians as they claimed, they would have come to the conclusion that politics, which is seeking the mandate of people to lead, itself is full of risk. Members of this group are fully aware that the risk of looking up to them (NDC USA executives) and not doing anything to support the president to continue his pragmatic Transforming Ghana, Changing Life agenda is more disastrous than the 'risk' they are warning against. Since we are in the era of advice, the members of this group would also humbly appeal to some of the NDC USA executives to prone their overgrown ego and rather seek to unite members of the great umbrella in this country. A leader need not know it all. But a good leader only has to be able to identify and harness the talents and capabilities of his or her followers. At this period when political activity is at its crescendo, members of NDC USA are rather waiting and calling on their leaders to be giving them directives, forming strong communication team and mobilizing support for the mother party back home. NDC USA executives should rather be occupying themselves with how to change the negative perception about this chapter in Accra. We all saw and read with envy the number of ministers and party bigwigs that attended the inauguration of a branch in UK. Can we boost of similar zeal when it comes to our activities here? Instead of rushing to meet and take pictures with party officials whenever they are in town, just to post on the social media, let us redirect our effort to position the chapter as a strategic powerhouse to Accra. After all, NDC USA is the biggest chapter yet it's the least when it comes supporting Accra. A lot of members are willing to support the course of the party but are looking and waiting for effective and efficient leadership. The tone and the timing of this publication, clearly pointed at only one purpose; to frustrate the fundraising scheduled for Saturday April 16, 2016. Once again, all indications show that you will fail as you failed during the inauguration last year. The party and government officials billed to attend this all important program will be arriving as early as Monday. We are therefore, by this rejoinder, again, officially inviting all of NDC USA executives, entire membership of NDC USA and well-wishers of Friends of John Dramani Mahama to our fundraising. President John Dramani Mahama has achieved a lot and we need him to continue for the next four years. We cannot fathom any good reason why anybody will want to kill a great venture except that we are against the president's re-election bid, at least not from NDC USA executives. We only hope that the author of this article has no personal bones to pick with the president. Long Live Friends of JDM Long Live President Mahama Long Live NDC Long Live Ghana Eye Zu, Eye Za Signed Justice Tettey +Friends of JDM USA. A thirty-five-year-old woman has been arrested by the Cape Coast police for allegedly killing her three-week-old grandchild and burying her in a shallow grave. The suspect, Grace Amoah also known as Esi Yeboada, said to be a petty trader was exposed by her 17-year-old daughter Joyce Amoah, a JHS two pupil who was the mother of the deceased. Grace was said to have killed the baby, gone for a shovel from a neighbour and secretly buried the body behind a public toilet at an outskirt of Akotokyer, a suburb of Cape Coast. Joyce Amoah told the police that her mother [Grace] started picking quarrels with her when she [Joyce] became pregnant. Her reason was that Joyce was still a pupil and was still in school. When she was delivered of the baby, her mother who was also nursing a baby asked her to give the grandchild to her for her to breastfeed her whilst she [Joyce] continued with her schooling. In the early hours of Tuesday April 5, 2016 Joyce claimed she couldn't find the whereabouts of the baby and asked her mum, whom she shares the same room with but she denied knowing the whereabouts of the baby. The case was reported to the police and Grace was subsequently arrested. After interrogation, she led the police to where the baby was buried and the body was exhumed. The body has since been deposited at the Cape Coast Hospital. Meanwhile, the Ghanaian Times newspaper reported in its Friday edition that Grace was arraigned before the Cape Coast Magistrate Court on Wednesday and was remanded in police custody until April 21, 2016. The newspaper reported that the prosecution told the court that Grace in her caution statement denied killing the grandchild but said she secretly buried the child after she discovered he was dead. Below are photos of the exhumed body Accra, Ghana Thursday April 7, 2016. Olime Health, a total healthcare company, today launched its brand new website to serve as an authoritative source of credible health information for all. The website was launched to mark World Health Day 2016, a day observed all over the world to take action on important health issues confronting the globe. In a statement released earlier, Management of Olime Health said "our new website - www.olimehealth.com , is a source where you can get advice and tips for the entire family. You can also join our Become a Healthier You Campaign to get alerts, reminders, and tips to hit your health goals. It is also easy to interact with our team of health professionals. We believe that olimehealth.com will help to encourage everyone to become healthier." The website spots a fresh professional look and loads fast on mobile devices. It has already started recording hundreds of views from early visitors. Prior to launching this website, Olime Health has used social media to promote healthy living and ran healthy lifestyle workshops for corporate organizations and faith groups. It is expected that this new website will further enhance the work of the company. The website content is produced entirely by the Olime Health team, who adhere to strict international professional standards in providing sound health information. Every health article published is carefully reviewed before publishing and shows the date of the next regular review. In an interview with Newaccra.com, the Team Lead of Olime Health, and author of 'Become a Healthier you', Irene Danquah, explained that "People have so many misconceptions about health. With our new website, we want to have a place where people of all age groups can come and crosscheck whatever they are unclear about. In the end, together we can all become healthier to live life to the longest and enjoy it to the fullest." About Olime Health Olime Health is a total health brand on a mission of enabling people to choose and live healthier. The company provides services in the areas of health promotion, consulting, research, and advocacy. The website is available online at www.olimehealth.com Accra, Ghana 8th April, 2016: Vivo Energy Ghana Limited, the company that distributes and markets Shell-branded products and services in Ghana, recently trained 137 of its oil specialists and lubricants technicians on efficient and effective lubricants handling during a capacity-building training session in Kumasi. The participants were split into Northern and Southern sector groups to discuss important topics such as lubricants technical knowledge, customer understanding, and health and safety. The programme also included role play sessions and efficient identification and handling of lubricants to enhance competence, among other activities. Facilitating the programme, Mr. Thomas Parker, the Retail Lubricants Category Manager for Vivo Energy Ghana, stressed the importance of the lubricants training as part of a wider capacity-building exercise. This training forms part of Vivo Energy Ghanas broader strategy to build the capacity of its front-line technical team at our retail service stations nationwide. It is expected that, knowledge gained by the participants will be disseminated among all forecourt attendants to transform them into an effective sales team. This will support our customers and help guarantee our successful lubricants growth in 2016 and beyond. Lubricants are essential to the long-term high performance and smooth running of a vehicle. It is for this reason that Vivo Energy Ghana offers a wide variety of high quality Shell lubricants to meet the needs of all types of vehicles, from private cars to commercial trucks. Shell lubricants are available at the forecourts of all Shell service stations, as well as in Star Oil service stations across the country. With the completion of this training, the oil specialists and lubricant technicians are now better-equipped to serve the various lubricant needs of their customers. Four Yemini nationals who were arrested in November last year at the Kotoka International Airport by the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI), have been charged with forgery. The four, Esmail Yahya Zey ad aka Evra Allerson, Gaafar Eissa Yahya Amer aka Ciro Carlos, Waleed Ahmed Yahya aka Debuchya Allard - all students - and Eissa Yahya Airier, a businessman were charged after they were hauled before an Accra circuit court for allegedly entering Ghana with fake French passports and concealing their real identities. The accused persons who were to transit in Ghana and continue to France and then to Istanbul in Turkey were arrested by the BNI on November 24, 2015, with different names in their French passports. They arrived at KIA on board Ethiopian Airline Flight ET 920. They reportedly concealed their Yemeni identities and feigned French nationalities in an attempt to beat security personnel at the Kotoka International Airport, Accra. While undergoing arrival procedures, Evra Allerson, Ciro Carlos and Debuchya were found with French passports with different names. A further search on them revealed that all the accused persons had Yemeni passports also. Their Yemeni passports proved that Allerson and Carlos had travelled several times to Djibouti in Africa before their trip to Ghana. It was established after questioning them that one Abdulai Mohammed in Yemen was the one who secured them the French passports and gave them a phone number to call a certain Mohammed in Ghana on arrival. It is not clear what their real motive of hiding their Yemeni identities was. However, speaking through an Arabic interpreter, the accused persons denied the offence. The four through their counsel, Dominic Owusu Sekyere, filed a submission of no case before an Accra Circuit Court when they appeared in court on March 9, 2016. Their lawyer argued that prosecution had failed to make a case against them after calling its witnesses. They have pleaded not guilty after being charged with forgery. Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com| AA| [email protected] Accra, Ghana 8th April, 2016: Vivo Energy Ghana Limited, the company that distributes and markets Shell-branded products and services in Ghana, in partnership with Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), a fast food restaurant chain that specialises in fried chicken, has opened its first drive-through outlet at its refurbished Tema Hospital Road Shell service station. The KFC outlet, which was officially opened by the Vivo Energy Executive Vice President for Supply and Marketing, Mr. David Mureithi, will offer customers finger-lickin foods, while trained Shell professionals offer them the best oil servicing at the renovated and world-class Shell lube bay. Speaking at the function, Mr. David Mureithi said that the refurbishment of the Tema Hospital Road Shell forms part of Vivo Energys growth and modernisation plan to provide a superior customer experience at its service stations. We will continue to invest in our business to meet world-class standards and ensure that our Shell service stations are accessible, clean, efficient, customer-friendly and designed to meet and exceed expectations, said Mr. Mureithi. On his part, the Managing Director of Vivo Energy Ghana, Mr. Ebenezer Faulkner, said that last year, Vivo Energy Ghana invested heavily in the business, opening 30 new Shell service stations across the country more than in any of the other countries in Africa where Vivo Energy operates. The reopening of the Tema Hospital Road Shell service station is a demonstration of our commitment to being innovative in enhancing our facilities and adapting our retail offer to reflect the needs of our cherished customers, he said. The Business Development Manager of KFC Ghana, Mr. Amit Dev Thapa, said that KFC is delighted to have partnered with Vivo Energy Ghana, allowing it to operate KFC outlets at Shell service stations in Ghana. This partnership will benefit customers, giving them more convenience, quality and choice. We have a great relationship with Vivo Energy Ghana and are looking forward to increasing our footprint in more Shell service stations nationwide, he said. In an interview with the press, the Tema Municipal Chief Executive, Honourable Isaac Ashai Odamtten, commended Vivo Energy Ghana for the facelift of its station which has helped to improve the Tema Municipality. He also praised Vivo Energy Ghana for its high operational standards and encouraged other Oil Marketing Companies to emulate its best practices. Meanwhile, three other Shell service stations have been inaugurated at Ofankor barrier, Adjiringanor and Trasacco to bring Shells quality products closer to motorists. 08.04.2016 LISTEN Quite lengthy, but it may be worth the time: The late Sarah Baartman (Sarah B.) was a South African of mainly Afrikaans origin who lived in the 19th Century. The history of Sarah B. is summed up usually as ''...the woman whose 'curvy body' was paraded 'nude' especially in UK's research classes and grossly exploited by 'white' slave masters around the time when South Africa was officially white dominated...'': Young Sarah, lured initially by a British doctor to UK/ Europe was turned into an 'EXHIBIT' displayed 'naked' to teeming and diverse audiences of slave masters; the intention was to WONDER at what to them was Sarahs 'extraordinary curves, genitals...etc'; after one team of slave masters got tired of viewing her after several exhibitions, she was passed on to another...and another...UP UNTIL Sarah is reported to have ended up in prostitution (having virtually lost any sense of worth and value for her body). Sarah later died, and in her memory a memorial center was opened for her back at her hometown in South Africa; it is believed that, even after her death, her vital remains(skeletal parts, brain, genitals) was still held ransom in Europe and put on display for years; some reports say, her remains was repatriated and buried in 2002. Sarah Baarton in many minds goes down as the 'study exhibit' used to examine African Womens sexuality. LESSON(S): My intention in sharing this tragic historic scene isnt to worsen our bright looking day, rather, I wish we EACH be challenged to EMPOWER, MOTIVATE &PROTECT each one of our own (in the community of life). Today, Sarah is NO MORE, but thousands are in her shoes!...millions are sharing Sarah's fate!...Aljazeera news April 2016 shared a story of over 70 young ladies who had been rescued by police after been trapped for close to 3years as SEX SLAVES in Lebanon!!! WHAT ARE U GOING TO DO ABT IT (now that YOU are here)? Lets rise with one voice for serious deliberate and coordinated Youth Missions. Starting from WHEREVER WE MAY BE with WHATEVA WE HAVE TODAY & NOW. I pray that the history of the late Sarah serves as a sign posts for you today. NativeDr, NII Rite-life Freelancer ( [email protected] , 0266 650 605) The Electoral Commission (EC)s contract with Superlock Technologies Limited (STL) does not include electronic transmission of voting results, Joy News has gathered. The Interior Minister in his 14 point press statement on March 28 stated that: STL is the company contracted by the Electoral Commission to transmit tallied election results, however, Joy News sources have disclosed that tallying of results was not part of ECs contract with the technology company. National Organizer of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kofi Adams described the Interior Minister's statement as unfortunate. Speaking in an interview with Joy News on March 29, Mr. Adams said the Minister goofed in his statement but added: "It is not in doubt the role [played] by STL in the 2012 elections. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the work they did," But, Joy News has revealed that contrary to what was claimed, STL was not contracted to perform the transmission of voting results at the following stages; (a) Manual delivery of the pink sheets from the polling station to the collation center. (b) Manual delivery of the aggregate table of the pink sheets results from the collation center to the district office. (c) Sending by fax of the aggregate results tables from the district office to the Big Room in Accra. However, the company which was contracted in 2012 supplied only the following services; (a) Supply of the registration kits and the software (b) Supply of a Data Center with Deduplication and database facilities (c) Supply of verification hardware and software and (d) Supply and maintenance of communication lines in some selected districts. Also, for the November polls, the same company has been contracted by the EC to perform only the below services; (i) Provide services (with EC teams) for assembling the registration kits (ii) Some software additional fields development (iii) Supply of consumables (iv) Supply and maintenance of communication lines for some selected districts But, what has been found is that the company has not performed the Data Center (DC) and Data Registration (DR) maintenance responsibilities - both key functions relevant to the November polls. With regards to collation of votes and others functions the EC has hinted they will have to be done electronically resulting in the Commission advertising for private companies to express interest. Joy News has disclosed officials of STL have, since the advert was placed, failed to tender in their bid to perform the work. In another development, the Commission has indicated it intends to reduce the number of voters at one polling stations at the November polls. According to the EC, this decision is meant to ensure that not more than 850 people will queue to vote at anyone polling station. So by this decision a polling station with more than 850 voters will be divided into two. The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has apprehended three people at the Ascension Senior High School in the Ashanti Region over examination malpractice and exam paper leakage. An English literature teacher and a candidate both from the same school were arrested for trying to sneak foreign materials containing solved questions to other candidates, Thursday, April 7. According to the Ashanti Regional Branch Controller for WAEC, Alex Bosompem, the headmaster, [Ekow Quashie] who happened to be around at the time of the incident also had questions of some yet-to-be-written papers on his mobile phone. The candidate led a [WAEC] depot keeper who caught her in the action to the female literature teacher. According to the girl, the female teacher gave her the answers to be given to the students in the examination hall, he indicated. The WAEC police in Ashanti region is also after the syndicate who provided exam papers to school authorities of Ascension Senior High School. Some questions of the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) leaked hours before the papers were taken. The papers include Physics practical, Social Studies, Integrated Science, and Oral English. WAEC in collaboration with the Criminal Investigations Department deployed a team to a school where there was a limited spread of the exam papers. WAEC also identified two schools in the Eastern Region for engaging in exam malpractice. According to Joy News sources, the contact and Online ID of the person who leaked the social studies paper has been found and handed over to the security officers. Joy News checks indicate that government has directed the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) to take over investigations into the leakage of exam papers, which was initially handled by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of Police. They were handed over to the WAEC police. They have been granted bail but this morning (Friday), they were interrogated by WAEC officials, station officer at the WAEC police, Chief Inspector Gladys Amenyo told Joy News. Meanwhile, the ranking member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, Prof Dominic Fobih, says parliament is disturbed at the perennial leakages of examination questions. He suggested, harsher measures in dealing with the menace. We will not be looking at the conventional recommendations that have been given all the timewe will take different measures and consider if WAEC should be left alone to do its own administration and supervision? he indicated. Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com| AA | [email protected] About fifty farmers in the Ashanti region have been trained in fish farming as a means to alternative livelihood in the face of unfavourable weather conditions affecting their production. This is part of an integrated farming program under the project dubbed Aquaponics-based food system by the Crops Research Institute. It combines fish rearing with crop production and other animal rearing with the aim of ensuring all-year-round food production to the smallholder farmer. The Aquaponics system involves the channeling of fish waste from ponds as a source of water supply for crop growth and development. This year for instance, dry weather conditions extended to March, which experts have predicted will affect food production. The AFS integration is such that the output of one system is the input of the other. In such a closed loop system, there is no waste. With this, every waste is ploughed back into the system, and that makes the AFS highly environmentally friendly. Farmers have often lost their production to the unpredicted nature of the weather, which sometimes compel them to quit. Shadrack Kwadwo Amponsah, Project coordinator, believes this integrated approach to agriculture is the sure way to achieving sustainable food security in Ghana. If a farmer is able to take a multidimensional approach it becomes easy for the farmer to rise from the shock should there be any lapses in the weather conditions. The fish pond technology is constructed with renewable materials on a raised surface unlike the existing dug systems. Construction materials for the columns (vertical stands) range from Borassus, locally referred to as mmaa kube to mahogany or any locally available tough wood Bamboo or neem tree branches can be used for the beams and fastened with nails, steel binding wire or locally available ropes. Clay mud can be used to reinforce the pond frame where available. Cushioning of the frame is done using empty paper cartons. This is to prevent any sharp object from piercing the polyethylene or tarpaulin sheet that would be used for lining the pond and also absorb any shock exerted by water in the pond. The pond of the dimension of 4m length by 3m width and 0.7m depth could take a little over 150 fingerlings of tilapia (20 g) to be fattened to a size of at least 200g within a period of 3-4 months. Kofi Asamoah, a fish farmer at Donaso in the Ejisu-Juabeng municipality explains they can save their money employing this system. With the old way, that is earthen ponds, it is very costly, to prepare the land, hire excavator, to construct the ponds but with this simple and locally manufactured materials here, the cost will be very low. So we find it very accommodative and good. At least it will reduce our cost.Mr. Asamoah has said. The project is sponsored by Brazilian Agricultural Research Cooperation being implemented by the CSIR-Crops Research Institute in collaboration with Embrapa Mid-North, CSIR-Animal Research Institute and Water Research Institute. Mr. Eric Asubonteng 08.04.2016 LISTEN Accra, 8th April, 2016 - AngloGold Ashanti (Ghana) Limited, is pleased to announce that Mr. Eric Asubonteng has been appointed the General Manager & Managing Director of the Obuasi Mine. Mr. Asubonteng has worked with AngloGold Ashanti since 2013. He rose through the ranks by dint of hard work and strong commitment to duty to reach his current position. He takes over from Mark Morcombe, former Senior Vice President and Managing Director of AGAG who leaves the company after several years of dedicated service to AGAG. Until this appointment, Mr. Asubonteng was Head of Operations and Corporate Affairs of the Companys Obuasi Mine and had full responsibility for managing the reputation of the company as head of Corporate Affairs. Mr. Asubonteng is a highly accomplished Finance Executive with 13 years experience in executive roles, both local and international, in both surface mining and underground operations. This has included financial management roles in the resources sector incorporating responsibility for financial and management accounting, financial management, supply chain, IT, business operations and restructuring, as well as operational management and corporate affairs. Mr. Asubonteng is a chartered accountant. He holds a first degree from the University of Ghana Business School, an MBA from the Manchester Business School, and currently pursuing a Mining Engineering certificate. Mr. David Noko, Executive Vice President Sustainability of AngloGold Ashanti said the company is pleased to have Mr. Asubonteng preside over the operations of the companys Obuasi Mine. We are convinced that given his very deep insights and experience in the extractive industry and Finance, we have in Mr. Asubonteng the right balance required to move the company to the next level, he said. Mr. Noko expressed gratitude to Mr. Morcombe for bringing to bear on the operations of the company sterling management and operational qualities resulting in the mines current positive outlook. Mr. Asubonteng expressed delight at the opportunity to serve the company in another capacity, saying he will work with the rest of the team at the Ghana and corporate level, as well as stakeholders at the local and national levels to realise the vision of the company. Vatican City, ACCRA, APRIL 8 - (dpa/GNA) - The Catholic Church cannot give up its dogmas but should be more understanding towards people, like divorcees, who lead lives that stray from its teachings, Pope Francis said in a key document Friday. The Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love in Latin) Apostolic Exhortation is supposed to wrap up a divisive debate on family issues that saw bishops engage in bitter rows during two summits, known as Synods, held at the Vatican in 2014 and 2015. "While clearly stating the Church's standing, [priests] are to avoid judgements that do not take into account the complexity of various situations" experienced by modern day Catholics, Francis said in the 261-page document. He acknowledged that "many people feel that the Church's message on marriage and the family does not clearly reflect the preaching and attitudes of Jesus," who "set forth a demanding ideal" but was always ready "to show compassion and closeness" towards sinners. One of the most contentious issues that the pope's document was due to tackle was the possible softening of a ban on remarried divorcees taking the Holy Communion. The ban is long-standing, often not respected, but still officially in force. The pontiff said: "The divorced who have entered a new union can find themselves in a variety of situations, which should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for a suitable personal or pastoral discernment." "The baptized who are divorced and civilly remarried need to be more fully integrated into Christian communities in the variety of ways possible, while avoiding any occasion of scandal" and "need to feel not as excommunicated members of the Church," he added. The wording backs the compromise solution approved by the bishops' 2015 Synod, allowing case-by-case procedures to determine whether remarried divorcees can take the communion, following a period of penance and guidance from their priest. Francis was less bold towards homosexuals. He said they need to be respected and spared from discrimination, but quoted Synod documents saying that "there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family." The pope pointed out that he was never going to reinvent the wheel of Catholic doctrine. "Neither the Synod nor this Exhortation could be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases. What is needed is simply a renewed encouragement to undertake a responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases," he said. In the exhortation, the pope confirmed the Vatican's traditional opposition to divorce and artificial contraception, and also listed poverty, migration, lack of welfare support, drug abuse, violence against women among the threats to stable family life. On abortion, he said: "So inalienable [is] the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother's womb, that no alleged right to one's own body can justify a decision to terminate that life." But he stressed that being pro-life also entails a "no" to euthanasia and the death penalty. The pope was remarkably candid about sex. "In no way, then, can we consider the erotic dimension of love simply as a permissible evil or a burden to be tolerated for the good of the family. Rather, it must be seen as a gift from God that enriches the relationship of the spouses," he said. He condemned "every form of sexual submission" and said he approved of sex education, as long as it "fosters a healthy sense of modesty," does not spread contraceptive propaganda and does not encourage adolescents "to toy with their bodies and their desires." Father Bernd Hagenkord, director of German Vatican Radio, told dpa that the exhortation was going to "open many doors," though it was open to different interpretations by Catholic communities around the world. "For the first time, a pope writes about sex, affection and eroticism without seeming to be embarrassed about it, instead coming across more as a loving grandfather. It's refreshing," said Hagenkord, who is a member of the Jesuit order like Francis. The pope is leading a church deeply divided on family issues. A progressive camp, led by German bishops, says it should adapt to modern lifestyles in order not to lose touch with the faithful; conservatives retort that sacrificing key family life principles would amount to a betrayal of the Gospel. GNA By Iddi Yire, GNA Accra, April 8, GNA - Dr Betty S. Annan, the Country Manager of Agribusiness Systems International (ASI), has called for the strengthening of regional markets in Africa to promote the continent's socio-economic growth. She said though the West African Sub-Region is endowed with a lot of water resources, such as rivers and lakes, access to water remain a challenge while agriculture continue to be predominantly rain fed. Dr Annan made the call in Accra during a panel discussion at a day's seminar organised by the China Europe International Business School Africa and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) on 'Managing Agribusiness in West Africa'. The seminar provided opportunities for both academics and practitioners to debate some of the theoretical and policy issues that are of relevance to agribusiness development in the sub-region. Dr Annan said: 'When we look at food imports, African spends approximately $ 35 billion annually; even with the rice sector alone, we spend about $ 3.5 billion. A country like Senegal has the potential to produce enough rice for the whole of Africa; but unfortunately it lacks the basic infrastructure for irrigation for dry season production.' She said Ghana produce rice in different varieties but the cost of production is very high; thus making the price of locally produced rice very un-competitive. Dr Annan said potentials exist for regional markets; however, cross border trade has over the years proved to be very difficult within Africa; than with the rest of the world. She said Ghana imports cattle, tomatoes and onions from neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso. She noted that the regional market has the potential to benefit Africa. Dr Annan said there is a huge potential, in cross border trading of fruits and vegetables within the sub Saharan Africa region. She said border restrictions on the movement of goods and services within the sub-region and the high cost of transportation are hampering trade and development. Professor Shashidhara Kolavalli, Senior Research Fellow, Development Strategy and Governance Division of the IFPRI, hailed Ghana for ensuring that food production always met the demands of the people. He said better technological innovation and more adoptive trials could get the agriculture industry growing in the country. Dr Julius Gatune Kariuki, Senior Research and Policy Advisor of the Africa Centre for Economic Transformation said African governments would promote the continent's economic growth by putting in place policies that encourage the growth of the agribusiness sector. He said the value chain enhancement of agribusiness produce is essential in promoting regional market trade in Africa and called for the promotion of large scale commercial farming in Africa. GNA Vatican City, ACCRA, APRIL 8 - (dpa/GNA) - Marriages should last until death and abortion is not permitted. What else does the Catholic Church teach on sex, marriage and the family? On homosexuality: According to the Catholic Church, a family includes a man and a woman. The Church does not recognize same-sex partnerships and calls on homosexuals to live a life of chastity. However, the final report of the 2015 Synod on the Family says homosexuals should be treated with respect. On marriage: Marriage is a sacrament and cannot be dissolved "... till death do us part." Only after the death of one partner is the other allowed to remarry. While divorce is not possible in the Church, a Church court can annul a marriage under certain circumstances. The bishops intend to be more open regarding the remarriage of divorcees in the future, judging each case on an individual basis. On sex: Sex before marriage is considered a sin. However, many Catholics acknowledge that real life might differ from Church teaching. Catholics are not allowed to use artificial contraceptives, such as condoms or the pill. On abortion: The Catholic Church rejects abortion in principle. However, it allows for medical interventions to protect the mother's life which might lead to the death of the unborn child as a "side effect." GNA 08.04.2016 LISTEN By Florence Afriyie-Mensah, GNA Kumasi, April 08, GNA - A Kumasi Circuit Court, presided over by Mrs. Mary Nsenkyire, has sentenced two robbers to 30 years imprisonment each, in hard labour. Osman Shahu and Ahmed Suala, alias 'Babs', attacked and inflicted deep knife wounds on the victim, a taxi driver, before fleeing with his car. They both pleaded guilty to the crime. Police Chief Inspector Felix Akowuah told the court that the incident happened on March 10, at about 1100 hours. The pair engaged the services of the victim, Kwadwo Boakye, to carry them in his taxi to Wurapong near Barekese. Mid-way through the journey they attacked him with a knife, inflicting deep cuts all over the body, battered and threw him out of the car. A passerby, who chanced upon the badly wounded driver went to his aid - rushed him to the Barekese Health Centre for treatment. The prosecution said a formal report was later made to the police and investigations led to the arrest of the convicts and recovery of the stolen car, six days after the crime. GNA Over the past few days, there has been a furore in the global community regarding reports on the Panama Papers, an enormous leak of more than 11 million documents which are said to date back up to four decades and are allegedly connected to a Panama law firm. According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), this firm has, in all that time and possibly longer, helped establish secret shell companies and offshore accounts for the rich and the powerful globally. On an even graver note, data from these documents show that that the firm worked with more than 14,000 banks, law firms, company incorporators and other middlemen to set up companies, foundations and trusts for customers. In a time such as this when the issue of curbing Illicit Financial Flows, brought on by practices such as tax evasion and the use of Tax Havens, is one of Africas priorities, the release of these Panama Papers is most welcome. The Panama Papers elaborately bring to light issues that the African Union (AU) / United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) High Level Panel (HLP) on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) from Africa vigorously underscored in the Findings in its Report released and endorsed by African Heads of State and Government in January 2015. Not least significant in these Findings were matters relating to Tax Havens and/or Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions and the lack of transparency with regard to the Beneficial Ownership of firms. The information released in the Panama Papers thus far strongly confirm the Findings in the HLP Report. More so, they confirm the existence of a network of offshore accounts and complex investment vehicles that drive tax avoidance and evasion. Until now warnings against such vehicles have been taken lightly. The staggering amount of illicit practices and the large number of global actors exposed by the Panama Papers demonstrate that Governments of Africa and the rest of the world cannot avoid firm action against the Tax Havens/Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions. The undeniable fact is that the Illicit Financial Flows which derive from tax evasion deserve our full attention both continentally and globally. As revealed within the Panama Papers, the fourth most used Tax Haven by this firm is an African country. Worse still, the reports show that this firm only knew the identities of the real owners of just 204 of 14,086 companies it had incorporated in this very country. Indeed, we must not rest under the illusion that the issue of Tax Havens does not directly affect Africa and the world at large. Several countries in the world including South Africa, Britain and France have vowed that any of their citizens mentioned in the Panama Papers will be investigated by the relevant agencies to ensure they comply with the laws regarding tax evasion. It is a decent start to the efforts required. Now all countries within and outside Africa must follow suit and begin their own investigations. These investigations should not only be limited to the findings in the Panama Papers but should go further to uncover other possible destinations of the proceeds from tax evasion. The exposures contained in the Panama Papers is a massive blow to financial secrecy, which must be encouraged. Specific efforts must continue to put political pressure on the countries that enable a high level of financial opacity or that have laws enabling banking secrecy and the registration of shell companies. This is extremely important to all countries. Otherwise harmful tax practices and high levels of opacity in financial transactions as exposed by the Panama Papers will continue to be a scourge that we find ourselves discovering only when there are people bold enough to expose them. As stressed in the AU/UNECA HLP Report on IFFs, the global community in all of its institutions, including parliaments must take all necessary steps to eliminate secrecy jurisdictions, introduce transparency in financial transfers and crack down on money laundering. Until all countries begin to work together to combat IFFs in all its forms, including by closing down Tax Havens and combating the lack of transparency of ownership and control of companies that can hold assets and open bank accounts, there will always be a cavernous opportunity for the exploitation of tax laws at all levels and in all countries for negative purposes.. The Panama firm in question, which all would hope to see receive the deserved justice if found guilty, has responded to the exposures by stating that nothing in the documents released suggests that it has been involved in any illegal practices. Sadly, this may very well be the case legally given the current incomplete global architecture for tackling IFFs, which should include binding international Treaties. We should not misconstrue the release of the Panama Papers as a time for celebration or an end in itself. To the contrary, it is rather a time for deep reflection and regret that we have allowed the practice to persist which is made possible among others by the existence of Tax Havens/Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions. Now is the time for the global community to act in a firm and comprehensive manner to end the Illicit Financial Flows and close down the Tax Havens/Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions which serve as the domicile of these Illicit Financial Flows. Kofi Adams 08.04.2016 LISTEN He is not a very bright young man. But this does not matter the least bit, because the National Youth Organizer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is smack among the ranks of a clinically obtuse hoodlum pack who may at best be described as mildly retarded. Mr. Kofi Adams, the former water-boy of the Rawlings Clan would have his Tamale audience of party faithful believe that the three-time Presidential Candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is not worth affording the leadership nod, because in 2007 then-lame-duck President John Agyekum-Kufuor did not personally back the presidential ambtions of Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (See Kufuor Didnt Support Akufo-Addo in 2007 Kofi Adams Kasapafmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/9/16). It is bitterly ironic that Mr. Adams would choose Tamale, of all places, the stronghold of President Kufuors two-time running-mate and two-term Vice-President of Ghana, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, late, to so morbidly and unconscionably insult the intelligence of the people of the Northern Region which, by the way, is also the home region of incumbent President John Dramani Mahama. What is quite instructive here is that in facilely presuming to play Akufo-Addo against former President Kufuor, Mr. Adams actually ends up impugning the integrity of perhaps the countrys best Fourth-Republican premier. Why, for instance, is Mr. Adams not questioning Mr. Kufuors flat refusal to endorse then-Vice-President Aliu Mahama, the formers able and loyal arch-lieutenant for the two terms that Mr. Kufuor served as President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana? If, as he clearly seems to have believed, President Kufuor thought highly enough of Alhaji Mahama to have made him his running-mate and two-time Vice-President, what prevented the former Popular-Front Partys parliamentary representative from Atwima-Nwabiagya from publicly endorsing Alhaji Mahama for the presidency in 2007? In other words, in the lead-up to Election 2008, President Kufuor had a far greater obligation to endorsing the presidential candidacy of Alhaji Mahama than he did Nana Akufo-Addo. At this juncture, it is not even relevant to delve into the issue of whom then-President Kufuors favorite electoral steed was. Even the Okro Analogy that Mr. Adams made does not hold water. The fact of the matter is that a dead okro or dry okro is far better preserved and thus of better use than fresh okro, a perishable vegetable that ought to be promptly cooked and consumed, and then almost as hurriedly evacuated from ones bowels and flushed down ones toilet bowl to be treated into manure. And, oh yes, the right terminology for the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress is Manure, one that is only good for preparing the way for a more creative and progressive leadership. And, by the way, has it also mnemonically not dawned on Mr. Adams that in 2008, the Rawlingses, his former paymasters, virulently portrayed the now-President Mahama, then the newly selected running-mate of then-Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills, as the most untrustworthy vice-presidential candidate material? *Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs Two people from the Ascension Senior High School in Kumasi, the Ashanti Region, have been arrested by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) over examination malpractices. The culprits, an English Literature teacher and a candidate were caught when the candidate tried to sneak foreign materials containing solved questions into the exam hall on Thursday. According to Joy News, the female candidate who led agents from the WAEC police depot to her literature teacher said, the solved question was given to her by the teacher to be passed on to her colleague candidates. According to the Chief Inspector of the WAEC police, Gladys Amenyo, the main suspect was nowhere to be found but the headmaster of the school has been asked to produce the culprit to assist in further investigations. She said the two had been handed over to the WAEC police, but were granted bail Friday morning after interrogation. She said the situation was disturbing and asked that WAEC looked for future plans to avert the recurrence of examination questions leakages. The ranking member for the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, Prof. Dominic Fobih, said the credentials and the integrity of examination results would be affected in the foreign and local front. Mr Fobih, suggested 'harsher measures' in curbing the periodic canker. He said, WAEC should be left alone to handle all administrative work without interference from national security and asked for proper supervision of printing, transmission and storage of the examination papers to avoid any further leakages. Click on this link to read more : Follow us on Twitter--> The Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, H.E. Mr. Hailemariam Desalegn and his wife, Tesfaye, accompanied by President John Dramani Mahama, have toured the Touton Cocoa Processing Company in Tema. The visit forms part of Mr. Desalegn's 3-day state visit to Ghana. The Touton Group, one of the world's largest cocoa processing companies, currently has the capacity to process 30,000 metric tonnes at its factory located at the Tema Free Zone enclave and was commissioned in April 2015. Follow us on Twitter--> On March 20, 2016 the people of Benin elected businessman, Mr. Patrice Talon, as the countrys new leader after second round of voting. Characteristic of the countrys democratic track record in elections, outgoing President, Yayi Boni, did not seek a third term and when his ruling party lost the election, its candidate, Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, graciously conceded defeat. As an indication of readiness for further progress, President Talon, even before he was sworn in, indicated that one of his priorities will be constitutional reforms that will bring more political and economic freedoms to the people. So this may be the right time, to present to him one of the critical areas that he has to focus his attention on enhancing and protecting the right of citizens to freely express themselves. The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) therefore presents highlights of incidents of free expression violations in the country over the past year which deserves President Talons attention. From January 2015 to March 2016, Benin has witnessed 11 reported cases of freedom of expression violations. These include violations of freedom of assembly rights, attacks on journalists and attempts on the lives of individuals for expressing their opinions. Prior to the presidential election on March 6, 2016, four (4) incidents of violations occurred. The Minister of Foreign Affairs asked the police to drive away a crew of journalists who requested an interview from him. Within the same period, a cleric was threatened for endorsing the then presidential candidate, Patrice Talon. Two opposition rallies were also banned. In 2015, the country witnessed seven (7) incidents of violations. Among these violations was the suspension of a newspaper by the regulatory body Haute Autorite de lAudiovisuel et de la Communication (HAAC). The newspapers suspension followed an article it had published criticising the then President, Yayi Boni, and a member of parliament which was deemed abusive by HAAC. In another incident, a foreman of a construction company physically attacked a television crew in their line of duty. In two other cases, police attacked and fired tear gas on demonstrators. Later the demonstrators went to a television station to share their story and were arrested by the police. Prior to that incident, a female military officer had intimidated and threatened a newspaper staff over an article published about her. In another incident, three journalists Ozias Sounouvou, Prevert Noutehou and Renaud Acakpo, of state-owned Office de Radiodiffusion et Television du Benin (ORTB) were banned from presenting news on set after Sounouvou criticised President Yayi for participating in a press freedom rally in France while he had failed to promote freedom of expression in Benin. Prior to the ban, Sounouvou had received several threatening phone-calls from unknown persons. Unfortunately majority of these violations were carried out by state actors with police and state officials being the main perpetrators. The MFWA therefore requests President Talon to prioritise improving the freedom of expression situation in the country to help consolidate Benins democratic gains by passing access to information law, decriminalising press offences and demonstrating zero tolerance for acts of impunity against journalists. The MFWA takes this opportunity to congratulate President Talon on his victory and to assure him and the people of Benin of the organisations commitment to support media development and professionalism in the country through our partner, lObservatoire de la Deontologie et de lEthique dans les Medias (ODEM), to help improve responsible journalism in the country. Flagbearer of the Peoples National Congress (PNC), Dr Edward Mahama has expressed reservations with President John Mahamas continuous poaching of PNC members into his government. They are poaching my members; the NDC has poached my members over the period. They poached my candidate for Walewale, a very good material, they made him Minister for the Northern region, they poached somebody who was youth organiser of the PNC and even our candidate in Saboba constituency, Dr Mahama complained in an interview with Class News Paa Kwesi Parker-Wilson. He [The President] should have discussed it with us [that] we want to include some of your members in our government he said. Asked if he had issues with the poaching of his party members by the President, Dr Mahama said: Yes because he has positions to distribute, and at this eleventh hour you are taking somebodys MP or parliamentary candidate, making him stand for you. Dr Mahama, who is having a fifth go at the presidency, however, said the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is guilty of same. By the way, NPP did the same thing, so, thats why I say the two parties, Ghanaians should dumped them and vote PNC and get a new direction in this country If NDC wants me to keep growing people that theyll come and poach, they should let me get into power and Ill give them more people to help them. If they dont have people in their party and they have to depend on me growing and training people, they should let me win, Dr Mahama said. The United Nations University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, a UN Agency that promotes efficient management of Africas natural resources has lauded the Public-Private Partnership PPP agreements in the agricultural sector. The current agreements according to the institute is making a positive impact economically, on farming communities especially. This follows the release of its maiden report aimed at improving development outcomes of PPPs in agriculture and the environment. Speaking with JOY BUSINESS after the launch, Consultant for the study Dr. Richard Bonsi said the country stands to benefit enormously if PPPs aimed at improving yields in the agric sector are prioritized. The 5-month study which sought to find out what outcomes exists from PPP arrangements in agriculture and the environment considered 7 domains for study. It explored the economic benefits derived by the communities and the partners in the PPP arrangement with respect to access to land by the farmers especially. It also inquired whether there are benefits with respect to environmental sustainability and also whether there are any benefits in the area of social inclusion and cohesion for the communities. Two domains according to the report were identified as most significant statistically thereby, making major impacts. These were the economic and technological domains. Some of the communities have improved enormously in the use of technology and have adopted some new equipment for their use Mr. Bonsi noted. A case in point under the technological domain is one community producing onions which has seen the project introduce a prototype storage facility for the farmers. The facility has according to the report helped the farmers in storing their onions thereby, increasing the lifespan of their onions. They are now able to sell their produce for a good price over a long period of time without having them go off. The economic domain has also been identified to have so far made a major impact in the area of job creation. More people in the community now have jobs and are earning some income from the PPPs arrangements within their communities. The food security domain is also doing pretty well according to the report. Out of the 7 domains, 2 are doing exceptionally well while the remaining 5 are yet to make the desired impact. Mr. Bonsi however indicated that the 5 other domains are showing signs they would eventually meet expectations. Under the Access to Land domain for instance, the onion farmers currently do not have any challenges. This is because owners of the land have now seen the viability of the project hence, are more willing to offer land for onion cultivation he added. The impact so far made by the Environmental Impact Domain was seen not to be that significant but we saw some visible signs. For instance, the Zoomlion Waste Collection Project has reportedly improved sanitation in some of the communities where the project is being carried. Residents in those communities spoken with expressed joy saying, they are now sure of the sanity of the food they buy from vendors in the community because there are now fewer house flies around. Gutters in the communities according to them are also not as choked as they used to be. Mr. Bonsi is hopeful the outcomes of the study would go a long way to help shape policy by better informing legislators in the enactment of the PPP Law currently before Parliament. He therefore called on parliament to expedite work on the enactment of the PPP law to help streamline PPP arrangements in the country. Project Coordinator Calvin Atewamba said the knowledge gab in respect of the challenges faced by the agriculture sector informed the decision to conduct the research. An empirical data on the performance of the current PPP arrangement he said could be the way out since it could assist policy makers in taking informed decisions. 08.04.2016 LISTEN It is perfectly within the right of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) or any other political party to refuse to participate in any radio or television program. In fact, all political parties or Ghanaians have the right to boycott media platforms without good reason. However the recent decision of the NPP to boycott political programs on Neat FM and Okay Fm raise important issues worthy of examination. It is significant that in the press release announcing the boycott, the NPP did not accuse the two stations of fabrication of information. The NPP also did not claim that the two stations have deliberately refused to give it the opportunity to state its side of the case. Indeed, all the NPP states is that it is unhappy with the two stations because their ace presenters Adakabre and Otikese have over a period allowed their platforms to be used to denigrate the party and its flag bearer. What can this mean? In very simple language, this can only mean that the NPP does not like issues which are discussed on the Platforms and perhaps how they are discussed. It also means that if the two stations will stop discussing issues which the NPP does not approve and which will not harm the image of its flag bearer, the party would end the boycott. In a situation where there have not been any ethical violations, the use of boycott as a means of getting a media house to do the wishes of an institution or person can only amount to intimidation and bullying. Since the confrontation between the NPP and the media houses broke out, Adakabre has alleged that Nana Akufo- Addo, the presidential candidate of the NPP abused him and that some supporters of Akufo- Addo threatened him with death. Honourable Titus Glover, NPP Member of Parliament has denied the allegation and said that Nana Akufo- Addo only refused to shake the hands of Adakabre and said that he disapproves of his attempt to use his platform to denigrate him. Under any custom refusing to shake anybodys hands would be seen as snubbing. Adakabre claims to have concrete evidence of the threats to his life and some sections of the public want to see it. Did NPP chaps really threaten to kill Adakabre for making the NPP look bad? Well, if this is proven it will amount to extraordinary intolerance on the part of political activists. It is also claimed that Adakabre campaigned for one of the opponents of Nana Akufo-Addo in the NPP primaries and that should explain his apparent dislike of Nana Akufo Addo. This is most interesting given the fact that Adakabre has always claimed to be CPP and the legitimate question is what was a CPP man doing in the presidential primaries of the NPP. In any case there were many journalists and presenters who either openly or clandestinely campaigned for Nana Akufo- Addo in the NPPs presidential campaign. Some or most of those journalists have also claimed to be CPP, PNC or some other contraption. Should their media platforms be treated the same way Okay and Neat FMS are being treated by the NPP? Finally, what are the issues which have been discussed on the political platforms of these two stations and why do they annoy the NPP and its leaders? Could it be issues related to the suspension of some leaders of the NPP including Mr Paul Afoko, the National Chairman? Are we being told that Paul Afoko, Sammy Crabbe and KwabenaAgyapong should not be given any space in the media? These are the issues! 08.04.2016 LISTEN There is an alleged conspiracy within authorities of the mining sector to crush small scale miners in the area who are doing their businesses legally; with an attempt to monopolize mining for one individual who is alleged to be an illegal miner, an investigative report has revealed. An investigation conducted by the media to dig into the real issues underlying the never ending Prestea mining saga has unearthed various revelations relating to the issue. It would be recalled that the security, allegedly sanctioned by the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources embarked on a raid on market women, businessmen, miners, and almost everyone in sight, resulting in the loss of property and cash to the tune of several millions of Ghana Cedis. This occasioned a media investigation into the matter, since there seemed to be an attempt to cover the real facts behind the action. The report revealed the following: That the mining site in question did not belong to the Okobeng Mine, whose interest is allegedly being pursued, but rather Isaac Thompson and Eric Amankrah, whose agreement (which was allegedly later breached) with Okobeng Mines and Nana Okobeng Amponsah granted Okobeng Mines access to mine in specific related area. It was also revealed that certain untagged security personnel (Police and Military) raided the Tumentu West Star Large Scale Mining concession, a portion that legally belongs to members of the Small Scale Miners Association on the 17th day of December, 2015, brutalizing and scandalizing concession owners, market women sellers and individuals, resulting in the loss of cash to the tune of GHC 934,545.00 belonging to market women and other workers, assorted things destroyed to the tune of GHC 93,454.50 , properties to the tune of GHC 353,700.00 belonging to one Mr. Kwabena Fosu, Chairman Musah, Kofi Asankomah and other people, all amounting to GHC 1,381,699.50 loss as a result of the security operation. It was also revealed that the concession area in question belongs to West Star Mining; which company granted portions of the concession to the community for small scale mining, of which the individual miners duly acquired all the legally needed licenses and documentations needed to legally mine in related area, as per the laws of Ghana. Particular reference is the specific site on which the security operation occurred; which area belongs to Abdul Hamid Yahaya Enterprise and Sambrey Enterprise, with Small Scale Mining License No: MC/SSMP/WR/1079 and MC/SSMP/WR/1073 respectively. It was also revealed that alleged serious illegal mining activities, allegedly spearheaded by Okobeng Mines are going on at mining site with coordinates 05 degrees 11minutes 15.3 seconds on Latitude, and 02 degrees 12 seconds 28.1 minutes on the longitude in the related mining area, which has resulted in the blockage of part of the Ankobra river in the area, making it impossible to use that portion of the river as a means of transportation. Serious investigations should be conducted by the sector ministry to uncover the individual responsible, whether he has legal right to mine, and the mode of activity. The Military in a report fingered three people, (of which Nana Okobeng was named first) as being at the forefront of illegal mining activities in related area, security agencies should look into that report for guidance (report to be attached). Is also revealed that there is an alleged conspiracy by certain stakeholders to through subtle means take the large scale concession from West Star Mining and give it to Okobeng Mines due to certain activities ongoing. The Small Scale Miners Association has appealed to the government to ensure justice on the issue. 08.04.2016 LISTEN A bus carrying 26 final year students of the Guakro Senior High School in Offuman in the Techiman north district was involved in an accident, Thursday. The accident occurred at about 7:30 am in an intersection between Offuman and Tuobodom. According to sources close to Joy News, the students were on their way to Tuobodom Senior High School, which serves as their exam center, to write their West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE). The injured students were rushed to the Holy Family Hospital in Techiman where they are receiving treatment. The driver of the vehicle, Kwadwo Yeboah, who is believed to be in his 30s suffered a broken arm and is also on admission. Speaking to Joy News Anass Sabit, a doctor of the hospital, Dr. Ernest Ameyaw said most of the injured students had been treated and discharged. No death was recorded. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brako-Powers | Email: [email protected] 08.04.2016 LISTEN A record number of countries are expected to sign the historic climate agreement adopted last December in Paris at a signing ceremony hosted by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 22 April. More than 130 countries have confirmed that they will sign the Paris Agreement on 22 April, the first day that the agreement will be open for signature. This would surpass the previous record of 119 signatures for an opening day signing for an international agreement, set by the Law of the Sea in Montego Bay in 1994. In addition, more countries have informally indicated that they will sign the agreement, with the numbers increasing rapidly each week. Over 60 Heads of State and Government will attend the ceremony, including French President Francois Hollande, demonstrating the continued high level of engagement by world leaders to accept and implement the Paris Agreement. The signing ceremony will mark the first step toward ensuring that the Paris Agreement enters into force as early as possible. The agreement will enter into force 30 days after at least 55 countries, accounting for 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, deposit their instruments of ratification or acceptance with the Secretary-General. The US and China, the worlds two largest greenhouse gas emitters, have already agreed to attend the UN signing ceremony. Commitments from the two nations that account for more than 40 percent of the worlds emissions make finalizing the Paris Agreement within our grasp. This is a big, big deal. A number of countries have also indicated that they will deposit their instruments of ratification immediately after signing the agreement on 22 April. The 22 April signing ceremony will also bring together leaders from civil society and the private sector to discuss efforts to boost financing for climate action and sustainable development, and to increase actions that would achieve the Paris Agreements goal of limiting average global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Paris was historic, the Secretary-General said. But its only the beginning. We must urgently accelerate our efforts to tackle climate change. I encourage all countries to sign the Paris Agreement on 22 April so we can turn aspirations into action. The ministry of education is working closely with the administration of the four polytechnics that missed out on the conversion to the technical universities to roll them onboard before the next academic year. According to presidential staffer and aspiring member of parliament (MP) for Ningo Prampram, Sam George, the requisite infrastructure and manpower are being put in place to endure they can also meet the criteria for conversion. Speaking on JOYNEWSs Joint Caucus program, Friday, Mr. George said the imbalances regarding the courses of study were also considered at the point of conversion. This was in reaction to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Professor Dominic Kuupole, calling for a change in the academic focus of polytechnics. According to Professor Kuupole the ongoing conversion of the polytechnics into technical universities will be fruitless unless this is done. More soon... Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim | Email: [email protected] 08.04.2016 LISTEN INTRODUCTION Suspended National Chairman and General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Paul Awentime Afoko and Kwabena Agyei Agyepong respectively are expected to be reinstated by the party anytime soon The party is also considering a return of the second National Vice-Chairman, Sammy Crabbe who is also on suspension The NPP, our source hinted, have come to a conclusion that it is only when the suspended national executives of the party return that the party can strategically position itself to win the upcoming general elections considering the large followers of the trio WHAT WE THINK THE REAL ISSUES ARE We hope this is not another NPPs and some mischievous journalists planted agitprop canard to bamboozle and hoodwink gullible readers into believing the party and its present leadership still have a streak of democratic liberalism in them. This is a party whose National Executive Committee (NEC) behaved in the unmistakable likeness of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, both of which the hypocritical capitalist kleptocrats within the NPP have consistently attacked, in the discharge of its responsibilities in suspending Afoko, Crabbe, and Agyepong. It appears Akufo-Addo and the NEC may have finally realized the political stupidity of their unpopular verdict against the trio and hence, the diplomatic volte-face, a last-ditch face-saving effort to reform the largely ethnocentric and undemocratic party. The NEC, a politburo of old-fashioned and anachronistic ethnocentric politicians who are obviously out of tune with inclusive democracy, decided to silence the trio because the corrupt atmosphere of political ephebiphobia which they had created to sustain their clannish hegemony over some purported enemies of Akufo-Addo within the party hierarchy would clash head-on with the candid and intelligent political vision which the trio represented. First of all, the ethnocentric politburo silenced Afoko, the first NPP National Chairman of Northern extraction, under the flimsiest of trumped-up excuses in order to reinforce the lowly station assigned to non-Akans in the party. Then, to neutralize popular backlash from the partys overt allegiance to political ethnocentrism in connection with the Afoko suspension, however, the politburo resorted to suspending the partys Akan General Secretary, Agyepong. Then followed the ominous suspension of Crabbe, possibly a Ga. And yet this is a party that prides itself on and preaches inclusive democracy, though its true political ideology is fundamentally one of Asante-Akyem duopolistic hegemony and dictatorship. The Kufuor-Asante faction and the Akyem-Akufo-Addo faction are all too clear, a fact that does not necessitate elaborative auctorial expenditure here. And talking about Crabbe being possibly of a Ga extraction, the strategic token allotment of Prof. Mike Ocquaye, a well-known fifth-columnist revisionist historian and a self-described Baptist pastor, and Ayikoi Otoo, a comedic legal Father Christmas for the NPP, both non-Akans and possibly all Gas, to prominent positions within the hierarchy of the ethnocentric party bespeaks the partys failed Affirmative Action policy propaganda. Not even Prof. Ocquaye and Otoo will deny this. That managed semblance of ethnic inclusiveness within the partisan ethnocentrism of the NPP constitutes a mere Machiavellian shadow in ethnic relations across the political landscape of the body politic. Yet, Ghanamma, a web portal, quotes Prof. Amoako Baah, the parochially celebrated intellectual Donald Trump of the NPP, pontificating about the Peoples National Convention (PNC) as follows: The problem of the Peoples National Convention (PNC) is that its leadership is northern-basedThe political science lecturer said the PNC does well in the north but not in the southern part of the country because its leadership is northern-basedDr. Amoako Baah said the PNC should find a way to make itself a national party instead of having its support base in one area of the country. He said the PNC must find a way to entice non-northerners to join their ranks, especially its leadership. Well said. Excellent advice! But Prof. Baah should also have directed this advice to the leadership of the NPP under the stewardship of Akufo-Addo. Ex-President Kufuor won more regions during his two terms only for Akufo-Addo to win just two regions, a dismal electoral performance which may have derived partly from the latters and Kennedy Agyapongs infamous rhetoric of political ethnocentrism. As a matter of fact, no one should tell us President Mahama stole the elections. No one did! President Mahama won the 2012 elections hands down! The Supreme Court hearing of electoral fraud in relation to the 2012 general elections was a complete waste of precious time and national resources. What is more, Akufo-Addos Yen Akanfuo and All-die-be-die and Kennedy Agyapongs anti-Ewe and anti-Ga rhetoric are memorably and indelibly etched into Ghanas political history and public psychology. It is however deeply regrettable that, politicians such as those two have refused to see the political arithmetic of ethnic diversity and numbers in calibrating electoral success. This is where Afoko and his Northern constituency come in, as well as those of Agyepongs and Crabbes. It is not as though we are giving special privilege to or promoting ethnicity over meritocracy. Our primary concern here is one in which the political arithmetic of ethnic inclusiveness gains on the moral strength of political meritocracy. This point we have harped on elsewhere in many essays. Namely, the thrust of our arguments is that the political arithmetic of ethnic diversity and the political economy of numbers feature prominently in the calibration of electoral success, two clear definitions of political realism. On the other hand, if the NPP can somehow capitalize on a renewed philosophy of ethnic diplomacy to rebrand its image and to neutralize the indelible tag of its being a party whose political ideology and partisan intellectual philosophy partly promote a dangerous dichotomy of internal ethnocentric duopoly, it will certainly help move it from its southern-based geopolitical ethnocentrism to an inclusive national party, with an appealing character of sympathetic solidarity. Notwithstanding the above, there is no question in our minds that Kennedy Agyapong has done more harm to the NPP brand and the partys political fortunes than Afoko, Agyepong and Crabbe combined. In fact, the political crimes which this trio is alleged to have committed did not merit the institutional heaviness of punishment meted out to them. Yet he remains tall and almost untouchable in the partys hierarchy. Impunity is probably the greatest return one could ever expect on excessive monetization of multiparty politics, and here we are pointing to Agyapongs direct financial contributions to his partys electioneering outlay, a factual given in the public arena. The fact is that the trio could simply not accede to the creeping democratic dictatorship of Akufo-Addo and his cabal of manipulating political gangsters, hence the unmeritorious sanction of the trio. When all is said and done, it is Akufo-Addos political capital that is at stake. And here we are referring to his reputational, rather than to his representative, political capital. At least in theory, a politician stands a better or greater chance of some electoral success at the polls if he or she can build a formidable political capital and manage to sustain it through electioneering roadblocks. It probably is certain the Yen Akanfuo and All-die-be-die politician and Bawamia, Dr. Pink Shit, a comical constitutional expert on You and I Were Not There, who also only knows how best to play second fiddle to the NPPs Julius Caesar Akufo-Addo, do not seem to understand this simple fact of political realism on account of their political and emotional immaturity. THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING Truth be told, right from the beginning we had a nagging hunch that the April 5, 2016 Ghanaweb publication NPP to Reinstate Afoko and Kwabena Agyapong could as well have been a journalistic and partisan fraud insidiously visited on the reading public by some undefined or shadowy corrupt elements. There is however another attractive possibility that the agitprop canard could also have been planted in the public domain by elements sympathetic to the trio. Still, no sooner had this questionable publication appeared in the public domain than Nana Akomea, the NPPs foremost intersexual Communications Director, moved to dismiss it out of hand. Here is what he wrote: The attention of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has been drawn to stories on one or two social media portals that the party intends to reinstate Mr. Paul Afoko and Mr. Kwabena Agyepong. At the last steering and National Executive Committee meetings, this issue did not come up at all for any discussion, much less a decision. Any such report on this matter is mere speculation. The phrase mere speculation does not necessarily represent a strong refutation of the contents of the publication already referred to, and as a matter of fact, it leaves some room for additional speculative corollaries as to the real intent of Akomeas facile diplomatic rebuttal. In our opinion, a stronger diplomatic phraseology such as outright lies in place of mere speculation could have done the trick. Akomea did not even ask the public to disregard the said publication. Nevertheless, both Akomeas unconvincing diplomatic overture and the said publication under review could have been strategically planted in the public domain, to take the pulse of the NPPs grassroots constituencies sympathetic to the camps of Akufo-Addo and his confidants and the trio. One is therefore at pains to know who is actually lying and who is actually telling the truth. Moreover, having an encounter in the form of intellectual flirtation with Ghanaian journalism and the lying escapades of the nations hawkish and vulturine partisan communicators, one certainly cannot ignore the fact that the proof of the pudding is truly in the eating. More information should be forthcoming to settle this matter unambiguously in the public domain. WHERE PAUL AFOKO STANDS IN THIS CONTROVERSIAL MATTER On the other hand Nana Yaw Osei, spokesperson for Afoko, says his boss wishes to state that he is not in any reconciliation talks with any person or group of persons either within the party or outside of it in respect of a so-called reinstatement. The National Chairman is assuring the general public especially party members that he is in the court of law to challenge what he considers being an illegalPlease, do not be swayed by stories whose value cannot go beyond negative propaganda purpose If this statement is indeed only true, then Akomeas can only be indeed true as well. We want to see how the drama of legal tussle unfolds as the days go by. The legal tussle has already come to a head as Ghanaweb and other web portals report on the continuing confrontation between Afoko and his partys detractors: Starr News Wilberforce Asare who was in court today reports that the lead lawyer for the NPP, Godfred Dame, sought to convince the judge hearing the case between the Party and Afoko to give an order to stop the embattled chairman from running media commentaries on the matter. The lawyer, according to Asare, also threatened to cite Afoko for contempt if he continues to prosecute his case in the media However, the presiding judge, Anthony Yeboah refused to comment on the matter after hearing Afokos lawyer, Safo Boabeng. FINAL THOUGHTS We cannot deny that we have any intimate empirical or forensic knowledge of or insights into the political arithmetic of Crabbes, Agyepongs and Afokos following, and whether this, if it actually exists in any measurable degree of numerical preponderance, can genuinely enhance Akufo-Addos political fortunes, including his political capital, is another matter. Granted, if indeed Afufo-Addo and his top advisors were any wiser they would give the following advice serious attention: The financial resources of the trio especially Mr. Afoko could be pull (sic) together to assist in financing an effective electioneering campaignTheir return,...,would foil any plans of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) to make capital gains of their situation during the electioneering campaign, especially, when they mount the platform in the strong holds of the NPP. Those who have claimed that Paul Afoko, Kwame Mpiani, Sammy Crabbe, Arthur Kennedy, Nyaho Tamakloe, Kwabena Agyapong, Charles Wereko-Brobbyare NDC moles planted in the NPP are yet to adduce any convincing evidence to back their allegation. It does not, however, appear to those rumor-mongers that Freddy Blay and Kennedy Agyapong, to mention but two, could actually be NDC moles planted in the NPP since they probably pose the greatest threat to the strategic and tactical interests of the NPP. This is what Bob Marley said on Who the Cap Fit: Man to man is so unjust, children Ya don't know who to trust Your worst enemy could be your best friend, and your best friend your worst enemy Some will eat and drink with you, then behind them su-su 'pon you Only your friend know your secrets, so only he could reveal it Some will hate you, pretend they love you now Then behind they try to eliminate you Hypocrites and parasites will come up and take a bite And if your night should turn to day, a lot of people would run away And who the stock fit let them wear it!... Who the (cap fit) let them (wear it)!... PETER TOSH ON BUILDING A BETTER NATION On the track Fools Die Peter Tosh sang: The lips of the righteous teaches many But fools die for want of wisdom Why do you fight each other?... Why do you kill your brother?... Then your reward will be the cemetery We got to build a better nation Or there will be no future for you, you and me On the track Wisdom Bob Marley sang something similar: The lips of the righteous teach many But fools die for want of wisdom The rich man wealth is in his city Do you hear, do you hear, can you understa-and?... REFERENCES Ghanaweb. NPP To Reinstate Afoko And Kwabena Agyepong. April 5, 2016. Ghanaweb. Afoko, Agyepong Wont Be ReinstatedNPP. April 6, 2016. Ghanaweb. NPP Seeks Court To Gag Afoko. General News. March 24, 2016. Accra, April 8, GNA - The Minister of Petroleum, Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, has told political science students of the University of Ghana, that political tolerance is an ideal principle necessary for strengthening Ghana's democracy ahead of the November polls. 'As we journey towards November 7, there is the tendency for political parties to drum home, their ideas, while at the same time crucifying the opinions and beliefs of their opponents,' he said. Mr Buah urged political leaders and functionaries to pontificate their political ideas and visions in an atmosphere of peace and mutual respect for national good and stability. The Minister was addressing a gathering during the Political Science Students' Association week celebration at the University of Ghana. The celebration was on the theme: 'Political tolerance; an ideal recipe for consolidating Ghana's democracy.' He noted that Ghana has earned respect among the comity of nations because of its democratic history and the country's respect for and commitment to the workings of the institutions of governance, borne out of democratic path. 'So the big question is 'why should we fight, why should we resort to the use of the gun if the ideology we send to the market is not patronised?' he asked, adding: 'This would only come about if we fail to recognise the key word 'tolerance' in our political discourse.' He said actors might disagree on issues, the mode of doing things and even on personalities and institutions used in executing programmes and projects in respect of Ghana's Democratic dispensations, but it is not a license to create a state of anarchy. 'Literally, once you do not accept other people's opinions, you equally do not have any moral right to demand acceptance of your beliefs from them,' he said. He said there is always a meeting point to resolve differences through political tolerance. He said: 'It would also afford us the opportunity to construct the roads and the bridges needed to convey our cocoa, the timber and food items from the villages to the ports and markets so as to alleviate the burden on our poor rural farmers without necessarily calling for reinforcement form the Ghana Armed Forces and other security agencies. 'Political Tolerance, as tested and proven, would always create the enabling environment for us to provide the requisite educational and health facilities for our people as well as to create the much needed employment avenues for the thousands of Ghanaian youth who come out of our universities and other training institutions every year, without necessarily calling for national reconciliation and reconstruction.' 'If we the politicians fail to dine at the table provided by tolerance, we put your future in danger; we cause a lot of pain and suffering to your mothers and younger siblings when the situation gets out of hand.' Mr Buah entreated students to shun the company of people who preach violence, adding: 'As we journey towards election 2016, my humble appeal to you is to exhibit peace and tolerance in all your deliberations, remember your future lies in a peaceful Ghana.' GNA By D.I. Laary Accra, April 8, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama and the visiting Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Haile Mariam Desalegn, on Friday toured the Cocoa Touton Processing Company factory at the Tema free zone enclave. The visit was part of activities aimed at highlighting Ghana's steady growth and development in the manufacturing sector of the economy. It is also to deepen Ghana-Ethiopia diplomatic ties and consolidates Ghana's position as the preferred destination for trade and investment on the continent, on account of a stable democracy, respect for the rule of law and an enabling business environment. The Touton Group is one of the world's largest traders in cocoa, coffee, vanilla, spices and a variety of natural ingredients, using a network of exporting subsidiaries. The company crowned its more than 40- year trade relations with Ghana, by investing in a multi-million Euro cocoa processing facility in the country last year, joining the list of the very few companies producing cocoa liquor for export. In Ghana, Cocoa Touton Processing Company currently produces 30, 000 tons of processed cocoa and exports to countries in Europe, USA and the Middle East with a turnover of $ 80 million. Welcoming the two leaders to the factory's premises, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Touton Group, Olivier Lieutard, emphasised the importance of both countries to the operations of the company. 'Besides trading in Ghana cocoa, Touton has also been trading with Ethiopia in coffee, over the past 10 years. Ghana and Ethiopia produce the most premium quality cocoa and coffee in the world,'' he pointed out. Mr Lieutard paid tributes to the Ghana and the Ghana Cocoa Board for their support and consistent supply of cocoa beans, which has helped Touton maintain operations at optimum capacity, since the facility was established. The company, he said, plans to increase its production capacity to 60,000 tonnes of beans from the current level in the next five years. It also intends to expand its product range to butter, cake and powder. With the increased capacity the company's investment would reach 50 million dollars and turnover would rise to 200 million dollars. During the period local purchases account for 85 million dollars, including cocoa, salaries, energy, transport and services. Mr Lieutard said the company is also involved in initiatives with the Ghanaian authorities to ensure a sustainable and environmental friendly cocoa supply chain and better livelihood for farmers. President Mahama said the operations of the factory is in line with government's agenda to add value to the country's agricultural produce, including cocoa rather than exporting the commodity in the raw state. Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Haile Mariam Desalegn said the factory is a good lesson for the African continent to help boost manufacturing and industrialisation. The Touton group took over an existing factory built in 2007 in April last year after an initial investment of $17 million and became Cocoa Touton Processing Company. It currently has 135 employees. GNA By George-Ramsey Benamba, GNA Prampram, April 8, GNA - Ghana stands the risk of closing down the only major cashew processing company in the country in the next few years. This is likely to happen if workable measures are not put in place to sustain the supply of raw cashew to the plant. The $35 million -dollar Brazilian private sector company that was constructed a couple of years ago with installed capacity of 35,000 metric tonnes is currently producing only 20 per cent of its capacity due mainly to inadequate supply of the commodity. Mr Tarciso Falcao, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Company made this known when Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Minister of Trade and Industry and Madam Irene Vida Gala, Brazilian Ambassador to Ghana paid a working visit to the company at Prampram in the Greater Accra Region. Among the delegation are technocrats from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Explaining the challenges of the company, Mr Falcao said la Cote D 'Ivoire, which is the highest producer of the commodity in the sub-region with 700,000 tonnes had stopped supplying the company with the nuts. This followed the neighbouring country's ban of export of the commodity. He said the company, with 541 workers, could increase the number if it receives adequate supply of cashew. The CEO said Ghana's raw cashew total production is negligible as it produces only 7,000 tonnes, which is the 10th of the production level of la Cote D 'Ivoire. He said the governments of Burkina Faso and Benin who are also major suppliers are bracing up to ban the export of the commodity to Ghana. Mr Falcao said although not officially stated anywhere, the banning of the export of the commodity in la Cote D' Ivoire was a ploy to cripple the processing plant for a possible relocation into that country. He however remained resolute that he would continue to work hard to ensure that his outfit receives adequate supplies to sustain the processing plant in Ghana. "If it finally becomes very difficult to acquire more raw materials, we will not mind importing from Brazil although it will be much more expensive." Dr Spio-Garbrah gave the assurance that government would do everything under its purview to ensure the survival of the cashew processing company. He said his outfit and other stakeholders in the cashew industry would in the next 60 days put in place measures that would make them sign memoranda of understanding to sustain the production of the commodity to become self-reliant. The Minister said it is unfair for the President and Ministers to woo investors into the country to face basic production challenges, hinting that it would be possible for Ghana to process 100 per cent of whatever it produces in the coming days. He said the stakeholders' collaboration would include providing credit schemes to growers, processors and to create a buffer stock that would be used to ensure constant supply of the commodity to processors. Dr Spio-Garbrah said discussions would also be held with Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo and other cashew producing companies to ensure frequent supply of raw materials. Supporting farmers to step up production is the surest way to constantly supply the commodity, he said. Madam Gala, Brazilian, appealed to government to put in place policies that would support fledging domestic industries to flourish, particularly in the competitive world. She said the cashew processing company and the Dabala rice farming projects are two major Brazilian private sector companies that are operating in the country and gave the assurance that they would be ready to engage Ghana in technical cooperation. GNA By Christabel Addo, GNA Accra, April 8, GNA - The Data Protection Commission (DPC), has organised a training workshop to create awareness and build the capacities of media practitioners on Data Protection in their work. The DPC is a statutory body established under the Data Protection Act (Act 843) of 2012, to protect the privacy, regulate personal data, process personal information and provide for the process to obtain, hold, use or disclose personal information and for other related issues bothering on the protection of personal data. It therefore aims at increasing the number of data protection responsiveness who collects and uses personal information such as the media, increase individuals' awareness of data protection rights, and empowers them to assert the rights. The training, which attracted editors, reporters, producers and some programme directors from the various media organisations, also provided a platform for the Commission to build a strategic partnership with the media as key stakeholders to ensure enhanced public education and the smooth enforcement of the Data Protection Act. Mrs Teki Akuetteh Falconer, Executive Secretary of the DPC, said a large amount of personal data generated in Ghana was kept in information systems that posed considerable challenges to the right to privacy. The trend, she said, continue to grow rapidly with sophisticated technology among other things making it necessary to address privacy concerns with data protection laws. According to her, Data Collectors are required to strictly observe the principles under the DPA that requires accountability, lawful data processing, specification of purpose, compatibility of further processing with the purpose of collection, quality of information, openness, data security safeguards and data subject participation, in their collection, use and storage of information. Mrs Falconer said the Act does not prevent press freedom, but rather places a high journalistic responsibility on practitioners, to prevent abuses of the right to privacy, though it exempted the media from most provisions in appropriate cases among other things. She urged media organisations to be responsible for ensuring that their processing procedures whether in-house or through a data processor has legal clarifications to ensure that personal data is processed in accordance with the data protection principles, to avoid the risk of facing prosecution or having to pay for huge compensation claims to individuals for the breech of their privacy. Mrs Falconer said for those reasons, organisations should choose data processors carefully and have in place effective means of monitoring, reviewing and auditing their processing. The DPC, she said would work closely with the Ghana Journalists Association, in the review of its Code of Ethics to make it more binding. Mr George Sarpong, the Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission, acknowledged that journalism thrives on data and the right to information, but journalists should be mindful of the total liability and be committed to stand to protect the privacy of individuals. He also cautioned the public to be mindful of volunteering information about themselves without asking questions or thinking about the consequences. Mr Sarpong explained that this is dangerous as criminals could easily use such information negatively to cause harm and damage to them using current sophisticated technological software and appliances to track their movements. He urged the media to get acquainted with the Act so that they could engage actively with the DPC in educating the public on their data protection rights and also ensure good corporate practices within their organisations. GNA 08.04.2016 LISTEN By Afedzi Abdullah, GNA Cape Coast, April 8, GNA - An teenager from Assin Bosomadwe in the Central Region has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment in hard labour by a Cape Coast Circuit Court for defiling a 15 year-old girl. The convict, Prince Dadzie, 18, pleaded guilty to the charge of defilement and was thus sentenced on his own plea. Prosecuting, Police Chief Inspector Charles Hevi, told the Court, presided over by Ms. Audrey Kocuvie-Tay, that the complainant, Kwame Arkoh, a farmer, and the victim's father, lived at Assin Bosomadwe. He said on Thursday March 30, while the victim was in her house, Dadzie sent his younger sister to call her for him. Chief Inspector Hevi said when the victim got to Dadzie's house, he held her hands tightly, took her into his room and locked the door. He said Dadzie pushed the victim on his bed, gagged her with a cloth and had sexual intercourse with her. According to the Prosecution, Dadzie gave the victim Gha5.00 to cool her temper after the act. She detected blood from her vagina on her way home and, therefore, reported her ordeal to her father who, subsequently, made a report to the Police, the Prosecutor said. GNA By Iddi Yire, GNA Accra, April 8, GNA - The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is going through financial difficulty; owing largely to dwindling sources of income, Mrs Salamatu Hussaini Suleiman, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs Peace and Security has said. She explained that ECOWAS relies mostly on its community levy, which is often not remitted or delayed; this had put the Commission under a lot of pressure and forced to re-prioritize its activities. Mrs Suleiman made the disclosure in Accra at the opening of a two-day tripartite meeting of the ECOWAS designated Training Centres of Excellence (TCEs). The meeting seeks to discuss the modalities for enhancing technical and operational cooperation between the ECOWAS Commission and the TCEs in the areas of training and research, taking into consideration the evolving peace and security situation in the region. 'Happily, the second window for funding of the African Peace and Security Architecture is being concluded and it is heartwarming to note that bottlenecks, which hinder successful implementation of the first phase are being eliminated,' she said. 'The support to the TCEs will now be at the regional level and not at the continental level as the funds will now be made available directly to ECOWAS and not through the African Union as was the case in the previous phase,' she added. Mrs Suleiman said it was their hope that the TCEs would be able to serve as research think-tanks for ECOWAS in the formulation of policies that would enhance peace and security within the region. 'Within the context of regional peace and security challenges characterised by maritime insecurity and terrorism ECOWAS is contributing to the fight against terrorism with the mobilisation of international support for the Multi-National Joint Task Force comprising Benin, Cameroun, Chad, Niger and Nigeria,' she stated. She said ECOWAS as part of its Counter-Terrorism Strategy and Implementation Plan, is also assisting Member States in their efforts to prevent and combat terrorism. 'So far over 300 law enforcement agents in ECOWAS Member States National and Regional levels have been trained,' she noted. The Commissioner said recent terrorist attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire reinforces the lessons learned from their deployment in the African Union Led International Support to Mali on the need to include Counter-Terrorism Warfare in the training of the Armed Forces in the region. 'In the light of unabated increase in armed conflicts and general insecurities across Africa and particularly in our sub-region, our status, recognition and reputation as ECOWAS-designated TCEs is being overtly and covertly assessed by all stakeholders and the good people of our various countries, to engage our overall institutional capacity, resilience and impact,' Major General Obed Boamah Akwa, the Commandant of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre said. 'Indeed these recurrent security challenges in Africa ranging from trafficking in hard drugs, human trafficking, uncontrolled migration, violent extremism, secessionist impulses, and unfinished political transitions in Libya and corruption all standard in the way of the much-touted African renaissance and the Africa rising narrative. 'As TCEs we have a role to play in addressing these challenges,' he added. GNA By Samira Larbie, GNA Accra, April 8, GNA - Airtel Ghana, the Smartphone Network has collaborated with three tertiary institutions to groom young talents through career fairs organised at University of Ghana, Ashesi University, and Ghana Telecom University campuses in Accra. According to Airtel Ghana, statement signed by Mr Richard Ahiagble, Head Corporate Communications and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said the fairs was an opportunity to engage, empower and prepare young talents for the world of work. The statement said more than 400 high performing students from the three universities through interactive one-on-one sessions, were equipped with technical and business skills for CV preparations and presentations on what employers look for in prospective employees. The statement said students also participated in competitions and simulations exercises that saw some of them winning mobile phone devices and data and voice packages from the Smartphone Network as well as an opportunity to intern with the company. It noted that at Ashesi University, students participated in speed interviews, elevator pitching, personal branding and the Best CV competitions. 'These competitions and simulations were organised to give the students a feel of the professional world and how to respond to the demands that come with it'. Students from the University of Ghana keenly participated in the Corporate Icon Competition where they were tested on CV writing and interviewing skills. During the session, the winner of last year's competition, Mr Dawud Yakubu, who is now a National Service Personnel and part of the Graduate Training programme with Airtel shared his experience with participants. Ms Tina Muparadzi, Human Resource Director at Airtel said 'At Airtel, we believe that everyone has the power of potential, an inherent ability to be the best they can be'. 'This is why we continue to provide opportunities for young people within our organisation. Our doors are always open to outstanding young people to intern with us, to grow and develop whilst still in school. 'In our experience, there are outstanding talents out there who crave for such opportunities to learn and grow. We are delighted to provide these young and talented students the opportunity to be exposed and developed for the world of work. 'These career fairs are an integral part of our programmes every year and we will continue to collaborate with the tertiary institutions in the country to bridge the gap between academia and industry,' she said. Airtel Ghana was recently named Best Organisation for Learning and Development at the HR Focus Awards 2015 in recognition of its commitment to providing the best environment for employees to thrive and excel. The company was also recently awarded at the CafA Africa 2015 for its Learning and Development programmes across Airtel's African operations. GNA By Samira Larbie, GNA Accra, April 8, GNA - Women in Law and Development, Africa (WiLDAF) has inaugurated two girls' empowerment clubs in the Kyinaso and Nkran Nkresi D/A Basic schools in the Central region. The project sponsored by Crossroads International seeks to empower the girls with knowledge on Children's rights, Domestic Violence, Gender Based Violence with focus on sexual abuses and consent. It also aims at facilitating adolescent sexual reproductive health, healthy relationship leadership skills to help fight against gender based violence in schools and their communities. A statement signed by Ms Abigail Edem Hunu, Project Coordinator of WiLDAF and copied to the Ghana News Agency said sexual abuse and violence in Ghanaian schools is increasing in prevalence, over the last couple of years abuses of children including defilement cases, child marriage have dominated the media. It said statistics from the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit shows that a total of 1,296 girls in the country were defiled, while 335 other women were raped in 2014. The statement said a report on sexual abuse among children in the country conducted by Plan Ghana, has revealed that out of 100 cases involving children, who had been molested, 53 cases actually occurred at school. It said there are numerous barriers for the prevention of Gender Based Violence, which include the cultural norms of not allowing children to speak out, the culture of silence combined with the issue of ignorance. Others include the lack of access to legal resources, the legacy of patriarchy and the perception that women and Girls are inferior beings cover these unlawful acts. It added that most Ghanaian communities think discussing sexual health, sexual relations and sexual violence is a private issue. It stated that young men and women reaching the age of maturity with little or no information on what constitutes healthy sexual relationships and human rights and legal resources leaves room for sexual abuse to occur with no repercussions for the perpetrators. It said this therefore makes it imperative to intensify efforts at ending these epidemics starting from schools to protect the rights of the Girl child. Crossroads International and Women in Law and Development in Africa- WiLDAF Ghana started the Girls Empowerment project in the country in 2013. The Girls Empowerment Club is focused on raising leaders for tomorrow. Empowering girls to become leaders in their community and in their home is vital for a successful nation. The statement said: 'The only way we can accomplish this is if we break the cycle of discrimination and abuse that occurs within many institutions in Ghana.' GNA By Kwamina Tandoh, GNA Accra, April 8, GNA - Worldreader Ghana, an American Literacy non-profit organisation, has said the reading habits and abilities of many pupils in deprived communities are steadily improving with access to electronic readers and books. At the Third Annual West Africa Digital Reading Summit, on the theme: 'Transforming Life's Together through Digital Reading', Worldreader Ghana announced that it was working in 52 schools and two community libraries in Ghana. The programme has impacted the lives of more than 12,968 active readers by providing 5,305 devices for their use. About 823,811 young adults, parents and teachers have read books on Worldreader Mobile and users are engaging in titles ranging from the Caine Prize award-winning short stories to healthy informational books and educational material. Mr David Risher, the President of Worldreader, said reading broadened the knowledge of people on the world and sharpened their thinking capacities and expressed hope that the low illiteracy statistics in Africa would become a thing of the past with efforts like theirs. He explained that his organisation had noticed that no one person had the recipe for starting a reading revolution in Africa or for improving literacy. Mr Elliot Agyare, the Chief Executive Officer of Smartline Publishers Limited, said reading was critical to a well functioning democracy so illiteracy should be considered as a public health issue. The summit brought together diverse group of innovators in Africa who make up the Digital Reading Eco-system. They include parents, publishers, school project managers, librarians, NGOs, private sector partners and government officials to collectively brainstorm in new ways and approaches to strengthen and improve the reading culture in Africa. GNA By Samira Larbie,GNA Accra , Apr 06, GNA - Airtel Ghana, through its Airtel Premier sub-brand and Airtel Rewardz, the biggest loyalty programme have announced a partnership with British Airways to reward customers with up to 15 per cent discounts on airfares effective 06 April 2016. The partnership, now in its second year, is designed to give Airtel Premier as well as gold and silver tier Airtel Rewardz customers, exclusive discounted offers on airfares to cater to their aviation needs and reward them for their loyalty. A statement issued in Accra by Mr Richard Ahiagble, Head of Corporate Communications and copied to the Ghana News Agency said the offer applies to tickets to any location within the United Kingdom, Europe and North America. Mr Frank Djan, Head of Customer Experience at Airtel said 'As the foremost sub-brand dedicated to serving the telecom and lifestyle needs of high value customers, we are delighted to partner with British Airways, one of the world's leading airlines, to offer Airtel Premier Customers to enrich their lives and cater to their travelling needs. To benefit, customers should simply send an email to [email protected] or call 303 and we will take care of the rest'. He continued 'At Airtel, we understand too well the need to go beyond providing telecom solutions to offering a complete suite of services that also meet the lifestyle needs of our cherished customers, which is why we remain the industry leader in providing exclusive offers, and reward schemes to delight our customers'. Mr Kevin Leung, the airline's Country Commercial Manager said 'British Airways is excited to partner with Airtel Premier for the second consecutive year to make available this exciting discount offer to all qualifying Airtel customers. Insights from last year's campaign clearly indicates that this offer resonates with customers and we are excited to cater to the travelling needs of Airtel customers'. In addition to the discounted fares, Airtel Premier customers also enjoy exclusive access to over 700 VIP airport lounges across the world via Priority Pass including the Adinkra Lounge - which offers free access to Airtel's Wi-Fi services and other exciting treats whilst they wait or transit through flights. Airtel continues to partner with several benefit partners across the world to bring a world of excitement to its customers. 'Tickets purchased under this exclusive offer within the campaign period are valid for a whole year. We know how exciting this is for Airtel Premier customers. For non Airtel customers, you have yet another reason to switch to the Smartphone Network'. It added GNA 08.04.2016 LISTEN By George-Ramsey Benamba, GNA Tema, April 8, GNA - Dr Ekow Spio-Garbrah, Minister of Trade and Industry, has given the assurance that government would continue to support indigenous Ghanaian enterprises to blossom if they were able to promote their products internally and beyond. He said the promotion of their products should include the local expertise used in coming out with the end products for replication in other sectors of the economy. Dr Spio-Garbrah gave the assurance when he paid a working visit to Reroy Cables Company as part of his familiarization tour of some indigenous Ghanaian enterprises in the country. Accompanied by officials from his Ministry, Dr Spio-Garbrah was conducted round all the stages of production at the premises of the company. The Trade Minister said although Ghanaian industries were producing a lot of goods, they hardly acquired the expertise that would enable them to specialize at all the stages of production. Production of brochures and booklets about their activities, the Minister said, would be an added value that would promote their products to people who hitherto had little knowledge in the process. He said his visit would not only offer him the opportunity to encourage managements of Ghanaian enterprises to step up production, but, also give him an insight to explain to investors and business partners outside the country on the strengths and weaknesses of the businesses. Mrs Kate Quartey-Papafio, Chief Executive Officer of the Company, said they were not only exporting their products, but do wholesale distribution to manufacturers and retailers. She mentioned Volta River Authority and Electricity Company of Ghana as some of their major clients. Dr Jacob Benjamin Quartey Papafio, founder of the company, commended Mr Spio-Garbrah for visiting their company. He said his visit would spur them on to step up production for both domestic and external markets. Reroy Cables Company which began about 20 years ago in Tema Industrial area now has subsidiaries in power, energy and metals in Ghana and some neighbouring countries. GNA Nigerias Former President and Co-Chair of the Commonwealth Africa Initiative (CAFI) Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former UN Scribe Dr. Kofi Anan, and Africa Regional Director for GLEEHD Foundation/Commonwealth Africa Initiative Africa Engagement Director Ambassador Dayo Israel, were among the Key Guest at the recently concluded Commonwealth Day Service and Commonwealth Africa Summit activities in London in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The Commonwealth Africa Summit is an annual event hosted as part of the activities to celebrate the Commonwealth Week in London and organised by the Commonwealth Africa Initiative and GLEEHD Foundation. This years Summit was supported by New Commonwealth Initiative, Heritage Bank Nigeria, Pan African Minerals Sierra Leone, Memorial Gate Trust, Royal Commonwealth Society, BEN television, Phoenix Newspaper, TVC News Africa, Joseftree Consult, Amandla Consulting, Stones and Stellars, The Times of Africa, CNBC Africa, Association of African Owned Enterprise in the UK, Business Council on Africa, PK Media UK, The Dream Center Nigeria and others. Other special guests at the weeklong activity included Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Phillip the Duke of Edinburgh; HRH Prince Andrew The Duke of York; HRH Prince Williams and HRH Kate Middleton; HRH Prince Harry; Co-Chair of the Commonwealth Africa Initiative Baroness Shreela Flather; Lisa Cameron MP; Speaker of the Parliament of Bangladesh Dr. Shirin Chaudhary; Prime Minister David Cameron; Baroness Scotland (New Commonwealth Secretary General); H.E Kamalesh Sharma (Outgoing Commonwealth Secretary General); Prime Minister of Malta Joseph Muscat; Executive Director of the Commonwealth Africa Initiative and Regional Director (Africa) for GLEEHD Foundation Mr Dayo Israel; CEO of Heritage Bank Mr Ifie Sekibo; CEO Pan African Minerals Mr Moseray Fadika; Nigerias Minister of Sport Mr Solomon Dalong; Former Governor of Ebonyi State Nigeria and Chairman Nigerias Senate Committee on Industry Senator Sam Egwu; Permanent Secretary Lagos State Ministry of Women Affairs Mrs Oduwole; CEO DSTV Sierra Leone Mr Adonis Abboud; CEO Sightsavers Dr. Caroline Harper; Chairman Danish UK Chambers of Commerce Mr Wheeler; CEO Challenges Worldwide Eoghan Mackie; Bishop John Francis; Pastor Andrew Adeleke, CEO BEN Television Mr Alistair Soyode and many more. The Commonwealth Africa Summit with the theme Shared Prosperity. Mutual Security was also attended by Mayors from across London; High Commissioners, Members of Parliament and a huge number of the African Diaspora Community leaders and citizens from across the Commonwealth.1 In His Keynote Speech during the opening plenary with the theme: Leveraging our shared Heritage What Africans can learn from their developed Commonwealth counterpart, President Obasanjo said I want to correct the impression that its only we (Africans) that can learn from other people and others dont have anything to learn from us. I believe that any good person can learn from any other person, from situations and all the things around you. There is a lot the west can learn from Africa. Highlighting some of the lessons from Africa, Obasanjo said In the Commonwealth, if the Africans had not put their act together and work as hard as they have done within the commonwealth, South African Apartheid regime might still be ongoing. How we did it, what did we do, others can learn from us. The Former President said Lets focus this conversation with what is right with Africa and What can we do with Africa. Africa is not an unmitigated failure, there are good things in Africa. Africa is the cradle of humanity. However, let nobody confuse you with this word globalisation, for me I dont take it, if Globalisation means you ask me to open my door and you close your door against me and you want to take everything in my own house to yourself then to hell with globalisation. We as Africans should remember that nobody will do anything for you unless you do it for yourself. In my part of the world, when you want to carry a load, you put a pad on your head and stand by your load, then they will see you need help and come to help you. We need to put our pad on our head as Africans and stand by our lead ready to carry, then they will help us. Our greatest asset is our people. Let us train and educate. I was talking to Kagame once and he said when I started school, I had no slate so I was writing on my thigh. Let us educate our people, Obasanjo added. In his remark, the Commonwealth Africs Initiative - Africa Engagement Director, Mr Dayo Israel said Africa has come of age and its not enough to belong to the Commonwealth, we must benefit from the Common wealth. There is a reward for being a Member of the EU Free trade agreement and what have you, we need to begin to push for better rewards for our Commonwealth Membership. We must be able to leverage on our shared heritage when it comes to Immigration, Trade, Youth Development and Security. We must make the commonwealth more relevant to the ordinary African people. On the other hand, Former UN Scribe Kofi Annan, not only praised the Queen for her "steadfast devotion" to the Commonwealth but also praised the organisation for its commitment to human development. According to him Commonwealth not only strengthened links between member countries, it offered practical support from election monitoring to promoting security co-operation. Speaking at the Commonwealth Day service held at Westminster Abbey he paid tribute to the monarch who, in her annual address to the family of nations, called on the Commonwealth's citizens to support those in need. Speaking about the family of nations' 2016 theme - An Inclusive Commonwealth - Mr Annan told the congregation: "This puts the people at its heart, at its centre and declares that plurality and diversity are the greatest strengths. It also means that we must constantly strive to ensure that no child, woman or a man is excluded or left behind. These are enduring principles which not only bind us together as citizens of the Commonwealth but are absolutely critical for our collective ambitions for our world. It has never been more important for the Commonwealth to stress the bonds of human compassion and solidarity that unite us across the divides of race and religion, gender and geography." Ellie Goulding, who sang at William and Kate's wedding reception, gave a pared down performance of the Sting hit Fields Of Gold at the Event. The Summit began with a Wreath laying ceremony at the Memorial gate where member states laid wreath in honour of the dead of the 2 World Wars. Commonwealth Africa Initiative Co-Chair Baroness Flather while speaking to the audience at the event which had in attendance the new Commonwealth Secretary General Baroness Scotland said through this activity, we are able to honour the Africans who fought in the 2 world wars, like the Nigerians who fought alongside the British in Burma. Dr. Caroline Harper while speaking at the Summit at the prestigious Tag Hotel in Victoria said We must leave no one behind in the Commonwealth and as the SDG says, we must reach the farthest behind first. The Queens annual Commonwealth Day message formed part of the events programme at Westminster Abbey and in it she wrote: Today, and in the year ahead, the theme An Inclusive Commonwealth is an inspiration for us all. Let us give it practical effect by supporting those in need and those who feel excluded in all walks of life. By doing so, we will continue to build a truly representative Commonwealth community. The weeklong activity also featured a one to one meeting with HRH Prince Andrew the Duke of York which was attended by CAFI Co-Chair Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, CAFI Africa Director Mr Dayo Israel and others. Delegates also joined the outgoing Commonwealth Secretary General H.E Kamalesh Sharma at the Commonwealth Young Leaders Award Ceremony at Marlborough House, the Secretariat of the Commonwealth. The London Summit is being followed by a series of activities in South Africa, Guyana, Namibia, Nigeria and the UK Houses of Parliament ahead of the 2017 Summit slated for 13th 15th March 2017 in London. Antananarivo (AFP) - Madagascar's presidency on Friday announced the resignation of Prime Minister Jean Ravelonarivo after weeks of political conflict, a claim swiftly denied by the head of government who said he planned to step down in the future. Ravelonarivo and President Hery Rajaonarimampianina have been in conflict over issues including the poor condition of the island's main roads and rising crime in the capital Antananarivo. Rajaonarimampianina won elections in 2013 but has been beset by opposition to his rule, with lawmakers trying to unseat him for alleged constitutional violations and incompetence. "The president has accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Jean Ravelonarivo," the presidency said in a statement that gave no reason for the move. "Until the formation of a new government, members of the outgoing government will oversee government affairs." However, hours later the prime minister insisted he had not stepped down. "I spoke with the president this morning about a resignation and I said that I would first speak to my family," Ravelonarivo told reporters in his office. "After that meeting, in my car, I heard the announcement of my resignation," he added. "Up to now I have not resigned. However, in the greater interests of the nation I will tender my resignation at a more opportune moment," he explained, without giving a date. Th Indian Ocean island nation of Madagascar has endured several years of turmoil after Marc Ravalomanana was ousted as president in a 2009 coup that led to the withdrawal of foreign investment and donor money. In 2013, a presidential election that was designed to resolve complex power struggles brought Rajaonarimampianina to power. Ravelonarivo took office as prime minister last year. Madagascar remains one of the world's poorest countries, heavily dependent on foreign aid, and any renewed political trouble could threaten development. The country off Africa's southeastern coast with a population of 23 million is famed for its unique wildlife, the result of evolution through geographical isolation. 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. IVA Struggling with debt? Compare your debt options and write off up to 80% of your unsecured debts from 80 per month Get Started for free What is an IVA? With an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) you can make affordable monthly payments towards a percentage of your debt for 5 years. At the end of the 5 year plan, your remaining debt will be completely written off. Benefits of an IVA Here is a list of the cost common advantages of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA): Affordability You will only be asked to pay back what you can afford, with allowances taken into account for food, bills, entertainment, travel, childcare and others. You may be sacrificing certain essential costs at the moment. With an IVA they are budgeted for so they will no longer be neglected No upfront costs When you set up an IVA, there are no upfront costs whatsoever. This means that you can put a debt solution in place today without spending a penny You have a finishing line Do you feel like there will be no end to your debt problems? With high interest costs and charges, the balances of your credit accounts may not reduce as you need them to. With an IVA you will become totally debt free at the completion of the IVA (usually 5 years). You can use this as an opportunity to change your financial life, for good Confidential Your IVA is not advertised in the London Gazette or local newspaper. It is your decision whether you would like to disclose it to other people or not No more contact from creditors When you are in an IVA, your creditors will no longer have the right to contact you or refer the debt on to debt collectors/bailiffs. This is a great benefit for most people as it will take away the stress caused by constant calls/texts/emails and home visits Stay in your house Unlike some debt solutions, an IVA will allow you to stay in your current home. This is even the case if the property has a mortgage or is owned outright Your pension An IVA does not have an impact on your pension. You will not have to surrender your pension or withdraw money from it to pay into your IVA Risks of an IVA Here is a list of the cost common disadvantages of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA): Equity Release If you own your property and it has value, you may be asked to release the equity in the property Credit Rating If you have a perfect credit rating, this will be damaged and you will not be allowed to take out more debt whilst in an arrangement You must keep up with repayments If you do not keep up with your monthly repayments, there is a risk you will be made bankrupt Who qualifies for an IVA? There is no office guidelines to who qualifies for an IVA. It is a legally binding, Government legislation designed to help all people. Generally speaking, insolvency practitioners (IP) will look at your situation if they think the IVA proposal they submit is beneficial to both yourself (the debtor) and your creditors. This often restricts people to a certain criteria which you will have to meet: Over 5000 worth of unsecured debt You must have 2 or more creditors of 2 or more lines of credit Must live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland Must be insolvent Must be willing to pay at least 70 per month into their IVA Must have some type or types of regular income What debts can I include in an IVA? You can include a wide range of unsecured debts within your IVA. These include: Credit card debt/credit cards Loans/loan debt Payday loans Council tax arrears HMRC debt Overpaid benefits Catalogues Gas and electricity arrears Overdrafts/overdraft debt Water arrears Income tax arrears Debts to friends and family Other unsecured debts Note: If you are a resident of Scotland, you will need to apply for a Scottish Trust Deed (legally binding). Speak to our advisors for Scottish Debt Advice. What debts cant be included in an IVA? Secured loans Your mortgage (if you still live in the house) Car finance (if you still have the car) Rent arrears for your current property Court fines/Police fines Hire purchase arrears (if you still have the product) Log book loans (if you still have the vehicle that the debts are secured on) Student loans Other secured debts What does I.V.A stand for? IVA stands for Individual Voluntary Arrangement. It is a formal way to consolidate your debts into one affordable monthly repayment, resulting in the debtor becoming debt free at the end of their payments. Can I apply for an IVA online? Use the IVA Calculator to check your eligibility Prepare your IVA proposal and apply for your IVA. When your IVA is accepted, your creditors can no longer contact you. Pay 60 low monthly payments. After 5 years, you are out of your IVA and completely debt free. Will an IVA affect my employment? In most occupations, your credit rating or credit scoring is not a factor and it may never have been checked in the past, it may also be likely that it is not checked in the future either. There is no law to tell you that you must advise your employer that you have entered an IVA or that you owe money. They will not be notified by your insolvency practitioner. If you wanted to keep it a private matter, in most cases this would be absolutely fine. With some roles such as financial advisors, solicitors or bank workers it may make up part of your contract to advise them of changes like this. In these situations we would advise to inform your employers of your intentions before you enter into any arrangements. This way there will be no nasty surprises for you later down the line. More often than not, we find that your employer would not be concerned by your IVA and that it would not affect your employment status. An IVA is a formal solution and could affect some employments, such as if you were a solicitor or accountant for example. We would always recommend that you receive approval from your employers that your job isnt affected before you sign up for anything. Will an IVA impact my partner? There are certain situations where you may not want to involve your partner at all in your IVA proposal due to personal reasons. Insolvency Practitioners are very aware of these circumstances and can operate solely via telephone and email and at your convenience, so rest assured that your matters can be kept completely private. If the debts which you are looking to place into your IVA are in joint names, then this would be different. Your IP would look to place all of your debts into an IVA, including joint debts therefore you would have to inform your partner of your plans. If your debts are solely yours, then there would be no negative impact on your partner, their credit score would remain unaffected and they would not be entered onto any registers or be tainted in any way. Will an IVA affect my credit score/credit file? Whilst you are in your arrangement, you will not be able to get any credit. An IVA will stay on your credit file for 6 years, so 12 months after a typical IVA. When this time has passed and your monthly payments have ended, you will be able to rebuild your credit rating. What proof will I need to apply for an IVA? Proof of ID Passport/driving license/birth certificate/utility bills/national insurance identification/credit agreement Bank statements 3 months bank statements with all transactions displayed Proof of income 3 months payslips/P60/proof of benefits How long does it take to set up an IVA? Your initial call will only last around 5-10 minutes. The IVA process will be explained to you and you will be told what further information you will need to provide to proceed with your IVA proposal. Once you have returned the required information, an IVA will usually take between 7-14 days to get into place. You will be protected from creditors within this time, your advisor will provide you with documentation via email. How long does an IVA last? Most IVAs will last for a length of five years. The i v a will remain on your credit file for a period of six years and is placed on the Insolvency Register for that period. You can work out what date it will be removed from your credit file, it will be six years from the start date of the IVA term. So if the IVA started on 1 January 2000, it should be removed from your credit file six years from that date, which would be 1 January 2006. When you apply for an individual voluntary arrangement your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) will tell you if you qualify for an IVA, how long it lasts, how much it costs and provide you with any other debt advice which you may need. How much will debt advice cost for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement? The advice cost for individual voluntary arrangements is free of charge. Your I.V.A company will tell you if you qualify for an IVA. They will talk to you about your different debts, provide you with free debt advice and check if your creditors are likely to approve your proposal for your IVA for debt. How does an IVA affect your life? By taking out an IVA you may affect your overall financial position. You will not be allowed to take out credit for 6 years. You will struggle to get a mortgage or remortgage your existing property. It also may affect any future increase in earnings or windfalls you may receive, as these will need to be paid to your insolvency practitioner. Your insolvency practitioner will take control of your debts for this period, they will deal with all of your creditors and this is legally binding. That means you will not be allowed to take out any more debts whilst in the IVA. Once the plan is completed, any debts which you accrue will be managed by yourself. Your ability to take out further debts in the future will not be impacted once the IVA has completed. What is the IVA protocol? The I.V.A protocol is a voluntary set of guidelines which your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) can sign up for which improves the efficiency of Individual Voluntary Arrangements. When you apply for debt advice, it is important that you understand the steps of the debt solution, so you can decide whether or not the solution is the best one for your circumstances. How do I know if creditors will accept my IVA? Generally speaking, most creditors will approve voluntary arrangements for unsecured debt. But some debts can not be included within one formal debt solution. Your Insolvency Practitioner will tell you how likely it is that your creditors will be willing to accept your proposal, based on the voting creditors. Can I pay in one lump sum? There are occasions when you may be eligible for a debt solution which is payable in a one off lump sum as a final settlement to your creditors. This is usually when the money is being gifted from some one else, or you have received inheritance or a windfall for example. With a one-off lump sum payment, the advice is usually the same as when you normally apply for an IVA. You wouldnt have to make regular payments into the solution, your IP can provide you with more advice on one off lump sum solutions for your debts. Your IP will provide you with more advice on the debt IVA and explain what is IVA to you. Who regulates the debt industry? At present the debt industry is not regulated. Some Insolvency Practitioners offices choose to sign up to the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA) or register with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). You can contact the IPA using the contact details or email address on their website. Your creditors do not regulate the debt industry and your creditors will not be able to impact any decisions which the IPA or FCA make. In our experience, the regulators will take assertive action on any advisers or businesses which do not comply with their strict codes of practice. To check if a person is regulated by the FCA, enter their name into the search box in the FCA website. Should I use a debt charity? There are thousands of companies which provide debt help in the UK. You may be looking for an alternative to a private company. You should know that charities usually pass their fee charging products to sister companies which charge fees and disbursements, just like private companies. So what you initially thought was a good option, on further analysis could be different to what you originally thought. Charities do have their part to play though. They can help you if you have a problem with your bank accounts, maintenance arrears, living costs, credit reference agencies, child support arrears, bankruptcy, assets, accountancy issues, mortgages, creditor issues, insurance providers, mobiles, your bank account, rates arrears, PAYE contributions or if you want to work out your expenditure. They can make sure that you speak to an adviser or supervisor and look at proposals to offer your lender. A petition has started with the possibility of a debate in parliament about how charities represent themselves and their services. Which charities help with debt? You can contact Money Advice Service, National Debtline, Step Change, Shelter or a combination of the three. Charities are particular useful for a low debt level under 1,000. If the debt is high (such as a debt value of 10,000 or more) you would usually seek an assessment from a professional adviser. If you do decide to use a charity to guide you, make sure you check their charity number and the registration number on their website to make sure you are content that their team can answer your questions in the right ways. A lot of clients of charities have a minimum debt level which does not meet the basis for an IVA, so you could always chat to a charity that is happy to act on your behalf for low debt levels. Although an I.V.A could be the answer to your debt problem, its important to understand the monthly payment so call us on our free phone number. Anyone customers can receive expert feedback on their rights from debt charities, if they cant help they will usually point you in the director of firms which help with IVAs. We are homeowners, will lenders see my proposal differently? In some cases yes. In the majority of cases, if you are a homeowner you will not need to remortgage or take out any additional finances that will effect your property. You will need to sign a additional restrictions which remove your ability to take out additional credit tied to your property, which is something that is restricted once you are in an i.v.a. There are exceptions to this, such as when you have a lot of equity in your property/properties. If you own half of a property and another party owns the other half, only your equity will be affected. If you are landlord and you are in a position of equity, your IP may review your trading position or business to make sure the figures in question are in order. This is usually the case if you have two or more properties, as sometimes the equity can be used to form a repayment to your creditors. But this usually depends on the amount of value built up in your properties. Banks and building societies will not change the terms of your mortgage as long as a contribution is still being made for the duration of your arrangement. Your mortgage payments will be added to your expenses and accounted for within your budget, as long as you can provide evidence that you can afford to continue to make payments into your mortgage for duration of the plan. LOOKING FOR HELP? 100% Confidential. Thousands Helped. No upfront fees business Eye 25% growth in Q1FY17; orderbook stands at Rs 38k cr: NBCC Most of the company's projects are in re-development segment, says Anoop Kumar Mittal, CMD of NBCC. The company won orders worth Rs 18,000 crore orders in FY16. business Tough-talking Port Talbot MP says a buyer must for Tata Steel While Stephen Kinnock remained hopeful that a reliable buyer for Tata Steel's UK assets will come along, he didn't think the UK government had done a decent enough job in trying to lift the steel business. you are here: April 08, 2016 U.S. Delivers 3,000 Tons Of Weapons And Ammo To Al-Qaeda & Co in Syria The United States via its Central Intelligence Agency is still delivering thousands of tons of additional weapons to al-Qaeda and others in Syria. The British military information service Janes found the transport solicitation for the shipment on the U.S. government website FedBizOps.gov. Janes writes: The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy's Military Sealift Command. Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba. ... The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks. The Janes author tweeted the full article (copy here). One ship with nearly one thousand tons of weapons and ammo left Constanta in Romania on December 5. The weapons are from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. It sailed to Agalar in Turkey which is a military pier and then to Aqaba in Jordan. Another ship with more than two-thousand tons of weapons and ammo left in late March, followed the same route and was last recorded on its way to Aqaba on April 4. We already knew that the "rebels" in Syria received plenty of weapons during the official ceasefire. We also know that these "rebels" regularly deliver half of their weapon hauls from Turkey and Jordan to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra): Hard-core Islamists in the Nusra Front have long outgunned the more secular, nationalist, Western-supported rebels. According to FSA officers, Nusra routinely harvests up to half the weapons supplied by the Friends of Syria, a collection of countries opposed to Assad, .. U.S. and Turkey supported "rebels" took part in the recent attack on Tal al-Eis against Syrian government forces which was launched with three suicide bombs by al-Qaeda in Syria. This was an indisputable breaking of the ceasefire agreement negotiated between Russia and the U.S. It is very likely that some of the weapons and ammunition the U.S. delivered in December were used in this attack. Millions of rifle, machine-gun and mortar shots, thousands of new light and heavy weapons and hundreds of new anti-tank missiles were delivered by the U.S.. Neither Turkey nor Jordan use such weapons of Soviet provenience. These weapons are going to Syria where, as has been reported for years by multiple independent sources, half of them go directly to al-Qaeda. From historic experience we can be sure that the consequence of this weaponizing of takfiris will be not only be the death of "brown people" in the Middle East, but also attacks on "western" people and interests. Skyscrapers falling in New York and hundreds of random people getting killed in Paris, Brussels, London and (likely soon) Berlin seem not enough to deter the politicians and "experts" that actively support this criminal war on Syria and its people. Posted by b on April 8, 2016 at 17:35 UTC | Permalink Comments This article is part of our Guide to Maximising Your Pension, helping investors build up the maximum possible pension pot and turn it into the maximum possible retirement income. Once a year this column urges investors to start investing their annual ISA allowance straight away and not wait for the last minute scramble in the final days of March. The time for action has come round again. This year the situation is admittedly less clear-cut, as the referendum on Britains membership of the EU is looming. It is likely that this will cause some, perhaps much, nervousness in the markets, although such fears may be overdone. The Scottish referendum had remarkably little impact, even when it looked as if there would be a vote for independence. Life will go on whatever the outcome. Any dips in share prices should be regarded as an opportunity, not a cause to panic. I was reassured in this view talking to David Smith, manager of the successful Henderson High Income Trust (HHI) this week. He has 90% of his assets in equities and only 10% in bonds, which provide stable income to balance the greater volatility associated with shares. He sees the run-up to the Brexit vote as an opportunity, arguing that shares in domestic UK companies have underperformed and are typically trading at a 10% discount to the market generally whereas they commanded a premium last year. Like me, he takes a bottom up approach, looking for promising companies that are at a significant discount to their peers and that should be able to grow their dividend. Last year, for example he increased his holding in Diageo (DGE), which is being turned round under new management, and added to existing holdings in Greene King (GNK) and Victrex (VCT). He believes that you can still find quality cyclical stocks at the right point in their cycle with stable earnings and a resilient business model. Victrex he still sees as an opportunity to benefit from investment-led growth. Its capital expenditure is tailing off but free cash flow is being increasingly generated by past capex. Big Yellow (BYG), the storage company, he believes will be driven by increased occupancy and rising rents for storage space. He mentions Pearson (PSON), which has already bounced off recent lows but which he believes has further to go. He believes that Astrazeneca (AZN) has some exciting drugs likely to come to market in the next three years, particularly in oncology which he says will be the growth driver in the sector. Astra offers a 4.5% yield and attractive gearing backed by strong cash flow. In contrast, he fears that the dividend at Glaxosmithkline (GSK) is unsustainable and is vulnerable to the arrival of a new chief executive. Immediately after our meeting on the last day of the old ISA year he bought High Street retailer Next (NXT). Now thats timing. I had intended to buy shares myself the following day with my new ISA allowance but, alas, the shares jumped more than 2% that morning, and added a similar amount the following day. I curse the missed opportunity but not to worry. As David Smith says, there are plenty of opportunities to buy undervalued shares on the London Stock Exchange. Get looking. Marks & Spencer: More & Same Once every 13 weeks this column records that Marks & Spencer (MKS) has reported higher food sales and declining clothing and homeware sales. The fact that this time margins have improved in clothing is a bonus but it is not the main issue. Offering higher quality for a little extra price is driving food. It used to be the hallmark of the clothing. The answer must be staring new chief executive Steve Rowe in the face. The question is whether he can achieve what has been beyond his predecessors. M&S isnt a bad investment. It could be a great one. However, I would like to see some evidence that Rowe is solving mission impossible before I would even think of buying the shares. Rodney Hobson is a long-term investor commenting on his own portfolio; his comments are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. Local hula group inspires global connections When the pandemic ushered everyone indoors, Moorpark resident and longtime dancer Lisa Rauschenberger decided to get people back outsidesocially distanced, of course. She began to hold weekly hula lessons at... Teens face high stakes in the Oval Office A press room befitting Americas commander in chief was set up inside the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Journalists and others gathered inside. Ladies and gentlemen, I need you all... Tigers soon to prowl in new enclosure The brand-new Bengal tiger exhibit at Americas Teaching Zoo at Moorpark College is nearly complete, and some other animals hangouts are getting a makeover, too. Mara Rodriguez, zoo development coordinator,... Nestled among the shade trees and quaint houses on Ohio Avenue at G Street stands a small piece of American history. Built in 1939, the house would later become home to George H.W. and Barbara Bush and their sons, George W., Jeb and Neil and their daughter Pauline. And as people know, both George Bushes would go on to become president of the United States. Now, the George W. Bush Childhood Home recalls the younger Bushs early days spent in Midland, while also serving as a time capsule. The Bush Childhood Home celebrates 10 years this month as an historical site as well as a reflection of the time. Not only is it here to give insight to the Bush family, but also to what life is like in Midland during the 1950s, executive director Paul St. Hilaire said. This is also the first home listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Monday is the 10th anniversary of the opening of the George W. Bush Childhood Home, and a public event is planned for this afternoon. With free tours, lapel pins souvenirs and complimentary books for children, St. Hilaire wants the celebration to remind Midlanders not to forget this piece of history in their own backyard. St. Hilaire, who has been executive director for eight years, has seen the museums outreach grow. Weve seen a lot of families come back repeatedly and Ive seen a tremendous benefit to area children, he said. The benefit is mostly through the Third Thursday Reading Program: Children come to the house for a reading with refreshments and a free copy of the featured book. Our reading program began five years ago and speaks to the Laura Bush Literacy Program. Its our way of honoring both first ladies, Laura and Barbara, who were keen on such programs, he said. Interest in the home has come from all over the world. The Bush childhood home has hosted guests and history and presidential enthusiasts from 83 foreign countries. Such visitors are a mix of people traveling through to those seeking out the home. We had one man fly out from Paris to Dallas. Then he drove to Midland to visit the home, St. Hilaire said. We periodically hear these stories and theyre very touching. He has also seen visitors from Russia, Myanmar and China as well as from all over the U.S. About 60,000 people have visited the home since it opened on April 11, 2006. Perhaps the most exciting visits, though, were from President George W. Bush. The former Midlander has been back to his old home three times. The three visits by the president in October 2008, 2010 and November 2014 were definite milestones in the homes history, St. Hilaire said. Two coincided with a new book and one was a fundraiser for Congressman Mike Conaway. When he first saw his room, he was clearly taken aback. Those were very special days for us. The Bushes lived there from 1951 to 1955, when they moved to a larger home on Sentinel Drive. The Ohio Avenue home then had three other owners until it was purchased by the nonprofit corporation, George W. Bush Childhood Home Inc., in 2001. A meticulous restoration project erased layers of years back to the homes original state. The home was built in 1939 at a cost of $4,700. The Bushes purchased it for $9,000 in 1951. St. Hilaire said that it took a half million dollars to restore the home. You can definitely see the variance there, he said with a laugh. With its original knotty pine interiors and period furniture, the childhood home feels like a step back in time. But St. Hilaire doesnt forget about the future. Our next step is to look into building a permanent exhibit gallery and have a state-of-the-art education center, he said. Plus, well be furnishing the remainder of the home with more period pieces. The museum is hosting 10th Anniversary Celebration, a ticketed event that honors the founding board members, on April 28 at the Horseshoe. The business casual event will feature dinner, a silent auction and music by the Josh Tatum Band. This is our way of honoring those founding board members and say thank you for taking that risk and chance and dedicated to following through, St. Hilaire said. But he said much of what is done at the Bush Childhood Home could not happen without the help of his volunteers. He has about 35 regular volunteers, and is always in need of others. He encourages Midlanders to consider joining the Bush Childhood Home team. Our people are very dedicated and invaluable to our operation. We can never thank them enough. And we always keep an eye out for more volunteers. We only require one three-hour shift a month, he said. And they can meet people from all around the world or special guests who drop by such as a former president or first lady. Dr. Rice Broocks has had a busy few months. His newest book, Man, Myth, Messiah: Answering Historys Greatest Question was released March 1 followed a month later by the film version of the book Gods Not Dead 2 that opened in theaters April 1. Amid the releases and film premieres, the author still visits churches and college campuses around the world to discuss his research and beliefs. Broocks brings his Gods Not Dead seminar, based on his previous book (and the film version) of the same name, to Mid-Cities Community Church. Midland Reporter-Telegram spoke with Broocks about his relationship with both science and God, his big screen appearance and meeting the Pope. MRT: Your last two books were about the marriage of science and religion. What were your intentions when writing them? Broocks: My primary goal is to help people understand the truth of the Christian faith. Theres been a rise in what is referred to as the new atheist. After 9/11 there was a rise in atheist writers like Richard Dawkins saying all religion is bad because of what happened. With that, there has also been the rise of the nones, which is a movement where millennials are not identifying with any religion. So there seemed to be a decline in young people going to church and saying they believe in God. Thats why I wrote the book about the challenges that young people or anyone face. My subject matter is based around that theme, and Ill talk about how science points to God, and Ill focus on how God has shown himself in history through Jesus. Plus, how the historical evidence points to the facts that he was crucified and raised from the dead. MRT: Could you describe your relationship with science? Broocks: I actually travel with a physicist who speaks with me at universities, and he likes the theology [Broocks has a masters degree in theology] more and I like science more. For 20 years Ive been seeking the evidence because I want to know. If people from science say that science points away from God, you have to explain that. Everybody has a philosophy and a worldview. Everyone has a different interpretation and you shouldn't be afraid of the explanation of those same facts. I know there are a lot of people that are sincere and might be afraid of science, but the common grounds we all have are the facts of it. MRT: Your research on both fronts must be quite extensive. Broocks: I just read all the time. For 30 years my target audience has been university students, so you had to stay caught up. When I go and speak, I encounter gotcha questions so you have to stay caught up. I wouldnt say the first book [Gods Not Dead] is scientific, but I want to make the science I use understandable. Im constantly speaking in a way that is understandable, Im sort of a middle man for the people who are really, really smart and the people who just dont know. My quest is always to try and talk to the 15-35-year old who thinks that these ideas have been disproven, and let them know that we believe evidence points toward God, not away from. MRT: How do you see the success youve had with the movie adaptations? Broocks: Im very surprised. Its funny, because my goal in this, and the joy I get from it, is to see the impact in the theaters. I actually met Pope Francis and handed him a Spanish version of the book. Just getting a chance to explain to him that this is for young people. The fact that the movie and the book have done pretty good, has given me a chance to explain why God is real. Not from a subjective standpoint but from an objective standpoint. I want people to have a larger discussion. Ive actually been in and out of Midland for years, and the friends Ive met from there have been great supporters. Midland is one of my favorite places because of the faith community. The reasons I keep going back there is because of my friendships. I want all denominations, and even skeptics, to come and talk about things. In this day and age people want to know whats true and whats right. They dont want to hold on to something because its what they inherited. They want it to be true. MRT: How much involvement did you have with the films? Broocks: I gave the ideas to the screenwriters. I basically laid out how to defend the existence of God. Im not a film guy, I just worked with the writers to give them ideas and challenges. Id say Im fairly involved, I know a lot of people liked it and some didnt. My books are certainly stand-alone. My books make a cameo in the movies, and Im actually in the second one, but if you blink youll miss. But Im not a movie guy, Im glad Im not doing that everyday. MRT: Whats next for you? Broocks: Im going around and doing these events in different countries. Im going to Italy soon, and Ill be doing an outreach program in Iceland. I just want to engage people with Christianity and Im trying to work with believers to help them understand how to better engage their friends. I also have an app called the God Test, which is a simple thing, and it asks you 10 different questions after you answer if you believe in God or not. Its becoming the largest global survey regarding the Christian faith and its helping us teach people not to argue. The first movie was showing a young Christian who had to prove his faith in front of a classroom, but in real life we want people to have a dialogue and to ask the right questions. Be prepared to give a right answer yourself. Theres nothing that makes me happier than to help someone better understand this approach. BRUSSELS (AP) A fugitive suspect in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks was arrested in Belgium on Friday, French police officials said, after a raid Belgian authorities said was linked to the deadly March 22 Brussels bombings. The suspect, Mohamed Abrini, is believed to be the mysterious "man in the hat" who escaped the double bombing at the Zaventem airport, according to one of the French officials. If true, that would mean Abrini had a key role in both attacks carried out by the Islamic State cell that left a total of 162 people dead 130 in Paris and 32 in Brussels. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity to offer details about the ongoing Belgian investigation, which has also involved French anti-terror police. Friday's arrest of at least two people came a day after Belgian authorities released photos and video of the airport suspect. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office confirmed "several arrests" but refused to provide more information. Five hours after the initial detentions, authorities were still carrying out a raid in the same Anderlecht area of Brussels. The government and top security officials gathered in a national security council meeting in the wake of Friday's detention to assess the consequences of the operation. Abrini was the last identified suspect still at large from the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris which killed 130 people, although his precise role has never been clear. He is a 31-year-old Belgian-Moroccan petty criminal believed to have traveled early last summer to Syria where his younger brother died in 2014 in the Islamic State group's notorious francophone brigade. He has not resurfaced since the emergence of surveillance video placing him in the convoy with the attackers headed to Paris. He had ties to Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who died in a police standoff on Nov. 18, and is a childhood friend of brothers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam. He went multiple times to Birmingham, England, last year, meeting with several men suspected of terrorist activity, a European security official has told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide details on the investigation. He said the meetings, including one later last summer, took place in several locations, including cafes and apartments. He was traveling with Salah Abdeslam, who is in jail in Belgium for involvement in the Paris attacks, in the convoy headed to Paris in the 36 hours leading up to the attacks. The man in the hat was with the two suicide bombers who killed 16 people at Brussels airport on March 22. A second arrest could also be linked to the Maelbeek subway bombing that killed another 16 people during rush hour that morning. On Thursday, authorities released photos and video of a man wearing a dark hat, leaving the airport on foot, walking to the nearby town of Zaventem and then into Brussels, where all traces of him were reportedly lost. The appeal for public assistance more than two weeks after the suicide bombings indicates that investigators were at a standstill. The arrest of Abrini was first reported by Belgian broadcaster VRT. DALLAS (AP) Military officials investigating an apparent murder-suicide that happened Friday on a U.S. air base in Texas are trying to determine whether the gunman was authorized to have a weapon on the base, where the possession of firearms is heavily restricted. The gunman was an airman who targeted his commander at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the shooting. The commander oversaw a base K-9 unit, the official said. A motive for the shooting and many other details were not released by authorities Friday. Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, who oversees Joint Base San Antonio, declined to identify the men, saying their families must first be notified. He also stressed the shooting was not an act of terrorism. Investigators from the Air Force and FBI are tracing two handguns found near the bodies of the two men inside a building that holds classrooms and offices. Military-issued and personal firearms are heavily restricted on the base and it's not clear whether the gunman was authorized to have a weapon, according to Dan Hawkins, a spokesman for the base. Weapons are used for training purposes and carried by base security personnel, Hawkins said, but personal firearms cannot be freely carried on the base. "Allowing everyone to carry personal firearms would make the job of our security professionals much more difficult," Hawkins said. He also said security officers must be notified if a personal weapon is being brought onto the installation and the firearm must be registered, in addition to other requirements. The restrictions apply not only to Lackland but also to Fort Sam Houston, the Randolph air base and another installation that comprise Joint Base San Antonio, which has more than 80,000 full-time personnel and is the home of Air Force basic training. The 2016 defense policy bill signed by President Barack Obama directed the Pentagon to set up a process by which commanders of U.S. military installations and certain other commanders at military reserve or recruiting centers can authorize a member of the armed forces to carry a firearm if "necessary as a personal- or force-protection measure." But Hawkins said that congressional legislation did not alter firearms policies already in place at Joint Base San Antonio, and neither did the Texas Legislature's decision last year to allow for the open-carry of handguns in the state. Friday's shooting, which the San Antonio Express-News reports caused officials to abruptly end a nearby military training parade with thousands of spectators, is the latest to occur at a military facility in Texas in the last several years. In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans' clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist, then killed himself. About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, who also killed himself. And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting. DALLAS (AP) An airman shot his commander in an apparent murder-suicide Friday at a U.S. Air Force base in San Antonio, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Two handguns were found near the bodies of the men, which were inside a building that's used for classrooms and offices, according to Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, who oversees Joint Base San Antonio. He stressed that the shooting was not an act of terrorism, and declined to identify the two, saying their families must be notified first. The Air Force's Office of Special Investigations is leading the investigation, and the FBI is assisting. The fatal shooting of the two is the latest to occur at a military facility in Texas in the last several years. In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans' clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist, then killed himself. About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, who also killed himself. And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting. Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland is the home of Air Force basic training. The Army's Fort Sam Houston and Air Force's Lackland and Randolph bases were combined during base realignment several years ago to become the military's largest joint base. M-Brain Buys Nordic Media Intelligence Firm Opoint Finnish competitive intelligence provider M-Brain has acquired media monitoring and analysis company Opoint, which has offices in Norway, Sweden and Estonia. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Opoint offers web monitoring and technology solutions for media intelligence services, delivered by 150 employees based in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Oslo and Tallinn. For the year 2015, company turnover was approximately EUR 11m. Eighteen months ago, M-Brain acquired marketing intelligence and advisory group Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA), and following the latest deal it will have operations in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Russia, France, Germany, UK, Canada, US, Brazil, China, Singapore and Malaysia. All Opoint employees will join M-Brain. Kim Nyberg (pictured), M-Brain CEO, comments: 'The acquisition supports our strategic goal to become market leader in our field in the Nordics and throughout the Baltics. Our aim is to further strengthen our position in the industry'. Web sites: www.m-brain.com and www.opoint.com . Tech Student Wins Goldwater Scholarship Michigan Tech undergraduate Peter Winegar, shown here in Cesky Krulov, Czech Republic, is the University's 10th winner of the Goldwater Scholarship. Winegar, currently studying abroad in Prague, is a third-year Chemistry major from Lino Lakes, Minnesota. A third-year chemistry major at Michigan Technological University won a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Peter Winegar is the 10th recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship in Techs history. Goldwater scholarshipsestablished by Congress to honor the late Arizona Senator and administered by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundationare based on academic merit, research experience and intent to pursue a career in science, engineering or mathematics. The purpose of the program is to provide a continuing source of highly-qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields. Will Cantrell, associate professor of physics and Michigan Techs representative for the program, calls the Goldwater Scholarship the pre-eminent award for undergraduates in STEM. Its an achievement simply to be nominated; receiving the scholarship is held up as an exemplar, he said. Tess Ahlborn, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Loredana Valenzano, assistant professor of chemistry wrote letters in support of Winegar's nomination. In her letter Ahlborn said she has no doubt Winegar is capable and motivated to complete just about anything that he sets out to do. Ahlborn is the primary faculty advisor of Michigan Techs Concrete Canoe team, in which Winegar leads the structural concrete mix design committee. As the team leader this year for the most important component of a concrete canoe, Peter was a natural with a kind and gentle demeanor, Ahlborn wrote. In the letter she called Winegar motivated, self guided, timely and dependable. Research, Teaching in his Future Winegar lists his career goal as earning a PhD in Chemistry, conducting research in physical chemistry and teaching at the university level. For an undergraduate, he is already well traveled. I spent a summer at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland) in a Polymers REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates), Winegar said. I worked in a polymer/chemistry lab on two projects; developing a virus detector from self assembled layers of polymers and testing the anti-corrosion properties of hyper-branched polymers. Last summer he participated in a National Science Foundation Summer Research Program at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Winegar is currently studying abroad in Prague, Czech Republic, and it's not the last time the Lino Lakes, Minnesota native will study in Europe. This summer hell be working at the Paul-Dude Institut in Berlin, Germany as part of the German Academic Exchange Services (DAAD) Research Internships in Science and Engineering (RISE) program. I think the project will be in applied physics, characterizing films of graphene and boron nitride, he said. At Michigan Tech Winegar again worked in computational chemistry in Valenzanos lab.My project has been to model the interaction between nanocars and a graphene surface. Instead of being scaled-down machines, nanocars are the equivalent of machines constructed from just a few hundred atoms. Theyve been experimentally made in a few labs around the world. In her letter, Valenzano wrote that Winegar's contribution to her research group was significant. "Peter produced and quantitatively analyzed a very valuable amount of new knowledge in this field ... this gave him the opportunity to complete his project by building the full nano car and assess the properties of the overall machinery with respect to its components." Winegar says hes honored to be recognized with the Goldwater Scholarship for the work Ive put towards undergraduate research and education. John Mateja, president of the Goldwater Foundation said that selecting the scholars and honorable mentions was no easy task. Out of the 1,150 nominations received for the 2016 competition, 252 scholars were named and 256 honorable mentions were awarded. In addition to Michigan Tech, students from six other Michigan schools were named Goldwater scholars: The University of Michigan, Michigan State, Central Michigan, Hope College, Kalamazoo College and Calvin College. The full list of Scholars and Honorable Mentions is available at https://goldwater.scholarsapply.org/2016-scholars/. 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. Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons and Dave Matthews Band are some of the biggest names in music, and all three acts have become touring staples for fans each summer, effortlessly filling stadiums and amphitheatres. With tours launching over the next few weeks, tickets to see each act may be at their most affordable prices. Below is a breakdown of each tour, with pricing information provided by ticket aggregator TiqIQ. (Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for DirecTV) Zac Brown Band | Blackout The Sun Tour | May 19-September 3 | Average Price: $164 Last summer, Zac Brown Band toured the U.S. extensively on one of the most popular tours of the year, the Jekyll + Hyde Tour. Impressively, the tour ranked on the 16th spot for Top North American Tours of 2015, according to a report from Pollstar. On May 19, the band will hit the road again for their Black Out The Sun Tour, which is slated to extend out until September 3. Zac Brown Band will bring along Drake White and The Big Fire for all dates, which will launch at the Xfinity Theatre in Hartford. As it stands, tickets to see Zac Brown Band are averaging $164. The band will play their priciest stop at CenturyLink Center in Omaha, where tickets are averaging $305, with the cheapest ticket up for grabs for $62. Mumford & Sons | An Arrow Through the Heartland Tour | April 3-June 17 | Average Price: $172 If you don't get a chance to catch British folk/rock group Mumford & Sons at one of the many festivals they're scheduled to appear at this summer, chances are good you'll be able to catch them on their upcoming "An Arrow Through the Heartland" trek. Although the tour stays true to its name and targets stops in the American South and Midwest, the band will also play a handful of dates off the course including a stop in upstate New York, as well as a stop in Queens. Tickets to see Mumford & Sons are averaging $172 across all of their dates. The band's most expensive show is scheduled for their April 15 stop at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, where tickets average $276, with the cheapest ticket going for $97. (Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Dave Matthews Band | 25th Anniversary Tour | May 7-September 4 | Average Price: $237 For years, Dave Matthews Band has been an annual live concert experience for fans across the country. Earlier this year, the band announced they'd be taking a break from the road in 2017 following their 25th anniversary tour run, and fans have not hesitated to get tickets to see the band play two full live sets each night of the tour. Tickets to see Dave Matthews Band are averaging $237 across all of their scheduled dates. The band is scheduled to play their priciest performance at Darling's Waterfront Pavilion in Bangor, Maine where tickets are averaging $556, with the cheapest ticket available for $97. The cheapest performance is on track to be the band's August 29 stop at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California, where tickets are averaging just $142, with the cheapest ticket priced at $111. DMB will officially close out the run with a bash on Labor Day weekend at George, Washington's The Gorge. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. 50 Cent's legacy, at this point in his career, can be summed up largely by two things: pranks and legal troubles. Now it appears both vices (if you consider them as such) have come back to hurt the famous New York rapper/businessman. It appears that the judge presiding over 50's bankruptcy case in Connecticut has banned all cellular devices from his courtroom during these proceedings. This decision seems to stem from the Queens rapper's behavior in court. On April 6th, 50 Cent, born Curtis James Jackson III, entered the court with his smartphone. The rapper then proceeded to take a picture of his lawyer whose pants had fallen down during the trial. The rapper posted the picture online with the caption, "So I go to court today and one of my lawyers walks in and his pants falls to his ankles. I said f*ck this I want out, this sh*t ain't gonna go right." This stunt comes after a series of boastful Instagram posts that seem to contradict 50's claims of bankruptcy. The rapper frequently posted pictures of himself surrounded by massive stacks of cash in an apparent attempt to quell criticisms about his financial standings. Gotta keep a cool little $tash and some Effen Vodka Happy Holidays. #EFFENVODKA #FRIGO #SMSAUDIO A photo posted by 50 Cent (@50cent) on Nov 26, 2015 at 12:00pm PST Although 50 has claimed that these photos are fake, and the money portrayed is not legal currency, many are wondering if his claims of bankruptcy actually hold true. In late February, documents purported to show that 50 Cent, in fact, has $64 million in assets and property, while last year, Forbes documented the rapper's wealth at a whopping $155 million. It is likely in 50's best interest to make a better attempt to illustrate his financial woes to the court. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Derek Vincent Smith, the electro-soul pioneer best known as Pretty Lights, is back with a free download of his latest track, "Only Yesterday." Additionally, the Colorado-based producer has launched a new Spotify playlist series called "The Hot Sh*t," which features cuts from Bonobo, DJ Shadow, A$AP Rocky, Run The Jewels, Nina Simone, Atmosphere and Ryan Hemsworth among others. "Only Yesterday" also features on the first edition of "The Hot Sh*t" playlist alongside a number of other Pretty Lights classics including "I Can See It In Your Face," "Something's Wrong," "Still Night," "A Million Tomorrows," "Let The World Hurry By" and "High School Art Class," as well as his remix of Daft Punk's "Solar Sailer." Smith also includes the ODESZA remix of A Color Map Of The Sun track "One Day They'll Know," and "Ethereal," his collaboration with Nosaj Thing and League of Legends. According to a statement, the producer will update the playlist every week with tracks from a variety of artists he's been digging, including releases from the Pretty Lights Music imprint. Check out the producer's curated picks here. "Only Yesterday" follows Smith's announcement to social media followers that he would be pursuing a new direction when releasing music, which, as Thump points out, led many to believe he was planning to step away from making music. Fortunately, the cryptic messages had nothing to do with a retirement but referred to releasing music outside the LP format. The uplifting ambient track marks Smith's first original production in three years, and picks up right where 2013's A Color Map Of The Sun left off. His signature hip-hop groove is back, but the soulful track relies more on vocal samples than on electronic beats. Download the new track here, and stream it below. "Only Yesterday" first appeared as the soundtrack to a Ryan Berena-directed recap video for last year's inaugural Pretty Lights camping festival alongside the announcement that Smith and his live band, Analog Future, would be returning to Telluride, Colorado, for round two this coming August. Check out that video below. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. If you and your ex just suffered a bitter breakup, it may be a good idea not to get drunk together, just sayin'. Despite the advice that should seem obvious, when Nick Jonas split with ex-girlfriend Olivia Culpo last year, they split a glass of bubbly, leading to some major "Champagne Problems." And on Friday (April 8), Jonas revisited those feelings with the release of his new single "Champagne Problems" off his forthcoming third studio album Last Year Was Complicated. The song is very on-trend both for the pop music landscape of 2016. Sonically, it blends together Jonas' smooth R&B edge with a mildly tropical house beat and the sort of rushing beat that can easily sway a massive crowd. The post-chorus drop is an effective tool to get people dancing, be it in their seats, at the club or at an upcoming Nick Jonas/Demi Lovato tour date. But despite the insatiable groove, there's a little something dark looming beneath the track's surface. The champagne problems aren't about getting too tipsy at the bar or being too damn rich, it's all about accidentally hooking up with an ex after agreeing to "talk over things." Oops! "How did our clothes end up on the floor? / Didn't we just break each other's hearts? / Didn't you have one foot out of the door? / Better to fall in love than lose / Wish I didn't have to choose," Jonas sings on the album's second verse. The song still is catchy enough so as to escape incredible details on the split between Jonas and Culpo, but at least we know there was some post-breakup sex. And seriously, it's a bad idea. But maybe the fallout is left for the album's third single. "Champagne Problems" is Nick Jonas' second song from his new album Last Year Was Complicated, which is due for release on June 10. This track follows the release of the Tove Lo-assisted single "Close." 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Someone should sue the President for ... CA Water Board logo View Photos Sacramento, CA Customers on three Mother Lode water utilities are being given a bit of a break by the State Water Board on their water savings mandates, still actively in place due to lingering drought conditions. Today, the Water Board posted new, slightly reduced conservation standards for urban water suppliers across the state, allowing more flexibility based on performance and current climate conditions, among other factors. The document indicates that Calaveras County Water Districts former standard of 16 percent compared to 2013 usage has been reduced to 13 percent, effective March 1 for reporting purposes. Tuolumne Utilities District and Groveland Community Services District, which both had been assigned a 24 percent standard, are now required to maintain 21 percent in water savings. The Water Board, now seeking input on potential modifications of its current emergency conservation regulation, will hold a workshop on the topic April 20 and is accepting public comments until noon on April 14. Reportedly, the effort may well result in a further easing of mandatory restrictions, especially in the northern half of the state, due to this past winters rainfall and current water storage levels in the states northernmost reservoirs as well in the Sierra snowpack. The Water Board is expected to issue a final decision May 3. Sacramento, CA In what is being touted as a bipartisan effort, some state lawmakers are working to eliminate the sales tax on feminine hygiene products. The bill by Assembly Republican Ling Ling Chang and Democrat Cristina Garcia would put an end to what they both refer to as the Tampon Tax. The lawmakers argue that it is unjust to tax products that are an essential item for an entire population of one gender. AB 1561 was introduced before the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee earlier this week. Lawmakers have until May 9th to take action on the matter. Five other states have already ended taxes on feminine hygiene products (Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Jersey). If approved, it would result in reduced state and local tax revenue. The U.S. Marshals are looking for a man accused of sexually assaulting two women in New York. A reward of up to $5,000 is being offered for information that leads to the arrest of Michael Hawkins, 29. Hawkins is accused of raping a woman who is mentally challenged and uses a wheelchair in Schenectady, New York, in June 2012. Investigators say the woman reported the crime the following day and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was formally charged with aggravated sex abuse in the first degree. Investigators say Hawkins remained undetected until November 2013, when he allegedly sexually assaulted the wife of a friend, who had invited Hawkins to his house in Rotterdam, New York, for a family gathering. In that case, Hawkins was charged with first-degree rape. Hawkins fled the area after the rapes, investigators say. He has personal ties in Florida, as well as New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Oregon and California. However they say his current whereabouts are unknown. The suspect's friends nicknamed him "Zombie Mike" due to his poor hygiene, investigators say, and they described him as someone who can hide anywhere, including wooded areas, and can survive off scraps. They say he has worked in the past with traveling carnival companies based in New Jersey and North Carolina, and he could be working and traveling with similar companies in Ohio, Tennessee, Puerto Rico and other places along the east coast. Hawkins is described as 5-feet-9 and weighing 160 pounds. He has brown hair and brown eyes. He has a 1 1/2 inch scar on his face, a burn mark scar on his right arm and a chest tattoo of the Grim Reaper. Friends say Hawkins is known to have a temper and abuse alcohol. Anyone with information about Hawkins is asked to call the U.S. Marshals Service Communications Center at 1-800-336-0102, or email: usms.wanted@usdoj.gov. Clermont Police say they are seeing a rise in burglaries. For the first quarter of 2016, police say there have been 44 car burglaries, a 22 percent increase from this time last year when they had 36. They say there's been a 75 percent increase in home burglaries, with 35 this year compared to 20 this same time last year. "This is not a trend that is left just to Clermont or just in our community, this is something that's a trend all the way across Central Florida, said Clermont Police Captain Michael McMaster. Kelly Lisciak, who works at Christian Brothers Automotive, says he was a victim of a vehicle burglary in Clermont after he left an old cell phone in his truck that was parked in his driveway. "They broke the window, took the cell phone, got away and fortunately for me I was able to replace the window myself, said Lisciak. Clermont police are urging residents to lock their doors and keep valuable items out of sight. Police suspect teenagers are behind the car burglaries, but no one has been arrested. Richard Rosario is now living with his wife and children in Orlando after his murder conviction was overturned in March. Rosario says he was in Central Florida when a 16-year-old was murdered in New York City. But despite his alibi, he ended up spending the last two decades in prison in New York. Spending time with his children is something Richard Rosario waited the last two decades to do. Just appreciating people and life in general, and Im just enjoying my time with my family and every moment is a great moment for me, said Rosario. Rosarios son, Richard Jr., was just one and his daughter Amanda was just three when he was in the process of moving his family from New York City to Central Florida back in the mid-90s. Thats when a couple of witnesses picked his face out of a lineup and identified him as the suspect in the homicide of George Collazo in New York. Rosario says he was staying with friends in Deltona when the crime happened, and more than a dozen people could testify to that. But the court never heard from those witnesses. When Rosario heard he was wanted for the crime in New York, he went there and turned himself in. He thought the misunderstanding would be cleared up quickly. It wasnt. I thought this would take a couple hours, and unfortunately it took 20 years, said Rosario. A new district attorney in New York took another look at the case when the DA took office just a few months ago. Just two weeks ago, a judge overturned Rosarios murder conviction. He was released from prison on March 23. I was innocent, so I never had any doubt, said Rosario. Rosario says hes now enjoying every single moment with his children, who spent most of their lives in Orlando while he was behind bars several states away. Being able to yell across the house, Dad, you have my headphones, did you take my charger? Just those little things Im like wow, I get to do that now, said Amanda Rosario, Richard Rosarios daughter. Rosario says he could get caught up in resentment for the time he had to serve. But instead, hes looking toward the future at the life he still has left to live. It took 20 years for this one day and this one day is greater than the 20 years I spent, so for me to stay looking back at what happened it wouldnt make any sense, said Rosario. Prosecutors have re-opened an investigation into the murder Rosario served time for. Rosario says he will be back in court in June, when he hopes prosecutors will drop the charges against him. Rosario says attorneys with the Exoneration Initiative have worked since 2004 to help reverse his conviction. Those attorneys also help him set up a GoFundMe website to raise money as he tries to start over and find a job now that hes out of prison. This Gofundme.com site is not managed by Bay News 9/News 13. For more information on how the site works and the rules visit http://www.gofundme.com/safety Volusia County firefighters battled a brush fire Thursday that burned more than 200 acres near Barberville, according to the Florida Forest Service. The fire burned in the area of State Road 40 and U.S. Highway 17, getting close to homes. S.R. 40 was closed while Volusia crews battled the fire. Multiple agencies responded to assist. Officials say the fire is 100 percent contained, but drivers are advised to avoid the area because of heavy smoke. Crews are working in the area this morning to monitor hot spots. There are concerns about additional brush fire threats because of dry, windy weather conditions today. Volusia County Fire Rescue also assisted Lake County firefighters with a brush fire in Eustis. Ill never marry a baritone! is the emphatic claim of a soprano in Incident at Burro Java: A Coffee Conflict to be presented by Plainview Symphony at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 15, and Saturday, April 16, in the Harral Auditorium on Wayland Baptist University campus. Director, composer and librettist Gary Belshaw, composer-in-residence for the Plainview Symphony and adjunct professor at Wayland Baptist University, has directed and performed his compositions all over the world. However, Incident at Burro Java is his first full-length opera. Im an old man and Ive got a lot of stories to tell, Belshaw said. The opera promises to be lively with orchestra and cast members on stage along with Wayland International Choir directed by Dr. Hyung Chae - about 70 people in all. The scenery simulates a coffee shop with delicious odors provided by The Broadway Brew. Love and higher education rivalry are at the center of the action. Baritone-tenor Chris Kirby plays Dr. Waldemaar, a recently retired director of opera. The youngest cast member is actually playing the oldest character, Belshaw said. Hes a baritone, but he loves the stretch into the upper baritone range. Lyric tenor Luke Van Meveren plays Connor, an all-but-dissertation (ABD) student at a fictitious graduate school. Bass-baritone Dr. Brian Kuhnert is Jack, a new graduate student; mezzo-soprano Dr. Cloyce Kuhnert is Dr. Greene, Dr. Waldemaars replacement at the university; lyric soprano Rebecca Ballinger is Cecilia, ABD, trying desperately to get out of school; and coloratura soprano Aimee Pineau, another ABD, is Joyce, a character that Belshaw describes as really excited. Belshaw created arias for all six characters and added the role of Joyce specifically for Peneau. The opera has been in process for about 1 1/2 years, and Belshaw said he has mixed emotions about finally seeing it staged. Its like waiting for a baby to be born. While Belshaw is more comfortable composing music than he is writing lyrics, he has had 55 years of inspiration for his writing. Ive been watching sit-coms all my life, he said. I know how to do comedy. Besides realistic coffee smells, The Brew will provide coffee samples and merchandise for sale before and after the show and during intermission. For more information, to buy tickets or for a chance to sponsor an opera character, go to www.pvsymphony.org. Interviews with cast members, scene synopses and music samples can be found on Facebook. Search Burro Java. Cast members and bios follow: As Joyce: Aimee Pineau, Texas Tech School of Music DMA candidate As Cecilia: Rebecca Ballinger, assistant professor of voice, Oklahoma Baptist University, B.M., Wayland Baptist University School of Music and Texas Tech University School of Music Ph.D. candidate As Dr. Greene: Dr. Cloyce Kuhnert, assistant professor of voice, School of Music, West Texas A&M University As Dr. Waldemaar: Chris Kirby, choir director, Estacado Middle School, Plainview As Connor: Luke VanMeveren, Texas Tech School of Music master's As Jack: Dr. Brian Kuhnert, assistant professor of voice, director of opera/musical theater, School of Music, Wayland Baptist University, alumnus Texas Tech University School of Music SAN MARCOS - Law enforcement officials from the State Park Police, Texas Game Wardens and San Marcos Police Department on Wednesday arrested two individuals in connection with defacing of the iconic Enchanted Rock. National media attention surrounding an image in a Facebook post showing two individuals standing near the vandalized Texas natural landmark helped lead state and local investigators to an arrest on several violations, including state jail felony graffiti and drug-related charges. The second year of implementation for the Texas Two Step process, which combines motor vehicle inspection and auto registration into a single windshield sticker, isnt going so smoothly. In fact, Hale County Tax Assessor-Collector Roland Nash says some frustrated customers who find out they can't renew their auto registration without first getting them inspected are verbally abusing his staff. Theres some days my girls would rather have not come to work, and I dont blame them, he said Thursday. Theyre taking out their anger on the messenger. In 2015, during the first year of implementation for the Two Steps/One Sticker program, Texas motorists whose auto registration came due before their inspection sticker expired were able to renew their license tags while stretching a few extra months out of their auto inspections. However, effective March 1, 2016, the auto registrations and inspections are now synchronized. Theres a Texas Two Step flyer inside the envelope with each auto registration notice explaining the entire process, Nash said, but most angry customers overlook those information sheets. The flyers explain that vehicles must pass inspection no earlier than 90 days before its registration expiration date. Once the auto is inspected, the owner will be issued a Vehicle Inspection Report. While the results of the inspection are entered into the state database, inspection reports should be presented along with the renewal in case the inspection cant be electronically verified. Although total inspection fees have not changed under the Texas Two Step process, the inspection station no longer collect the states $7.50 share of the $14.50 inspection fee. Instead, inspection stations charge $7 for most routine inspections with the remaining $7.50 collected when the registration is renewed. Some drivers were used to getting their inspection at one time of the year and the registration several months later, Nash said. That doesnt work anymore. The inspection has to be done within that 90-day window, or they have to do it again to renew their registration. In the past, an inspection may have been due in September or October with an auto registration up for renewal in March or April. Thats no longer the case. If they whet ahead and got an inspection last fall, they will have to get a another one within 90 days of their renewal this year, Nash said. Some disgruntled motorists have learned that during the transition period, they may end up getting two auto inspections in a single 12-month period. Some are even mad because they dont get an inspection sticker anymore, he adds. It upsets some people because they dont see that sticker anymore, even though they get an inspection certificate. They feel like theyre paying for something without getting an actual benefit. Some vehicle owners are traveling from Petersburg and Abernathy to the tax office just to be turned away because they dont have a valid inspection. We try to tell them that there are at least four inspection stations within a half-mile of our office, but most of the time they dont stop to listen. In their frustration, theyll slam the door on the way out. If theres a delay in listing an inspection in the state database, Nash said his staff will encounter a hard stop as they attempt to compete the registration process. Were locked out until its cleared up. Its hard for some of our customers to understand, but we cant compete the process until a valid inspection can be verified. Weve had customers become so upset that they had to sit down to regain their composure, and others have simply gotten out of control, Nash said. Ill be happy to set down and try to explain it to them, but its getting to a point that I may have to ask county commissioners to post a security officer over here until people get used to the new process. We have a lot of people who will calmly and respectively listen to an explanation of how the rules have changed, while the next customer might not be nice at all. Some customers just cant understanding that were not the ones making the rules and regulations. Were simply the ones who are trying to provide them a service. PANAMA CITY Rich and influential people around the globe have found themselves under siege since a major data leak revealed their ties to secretive financial accounts and shell companies in low-tax havens used to hide wealth. The uproar has brought down the prime minister of Iceland and raised questions about the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, and the circle of friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron became the latest politician ensnared when he acknowledged having profited from his fathers investments in an offshore tax haven before being elected. Yet few American names have cropped up in the Panama Papers, a trove of 11.5 million confidential records detailing such accounts. Thats because the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm at the center of the scandal doesnt like taking on American clients, one of its founders says. Ramon Fonseca, who started the firm with Jurgen Mossack, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that their law firm has only a handful of American clients, most of them members of Panamas burgeoning expat retirement community. Its not out of any anti-Americanism or fear of the Internal Revenue Service. My partner is German, and I lived in Europe, and our focus has always been the European and Latin American market, Fonseca said at his law office. He loves the U.S. a lot, and I do, too. My kids were educated there, Fonseca added. But as a policy we prefer not to have American clients. Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that first obtained the documents, said the records include copies of the passports of 200 Americans and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore companies have listed addresses in the U.S. Thats a tiny fraction of the more than 250,000 companies Mossack Fonseca has set up for clients in four decades of business. One reason for the dearth of American clients may be because such companies can be easily created in U.S. states such as Wyoming, Delaware and Nevada, attracting less attention than they might in Panama, a country with a reputation for shady financial deals and money laundering. Europe is also home to countries that provide banking secrecy that could provide haven from taxes, such as Luxembourg, Switzerland and Andorra. Many Panamanians point to those activities in wealthy countries and say they are angry over what they consider a double standard behind criticism of Panama. On Thursday, a European Union official threatened sanctions on Panama and other nations if they dont cooperate fully to fight money laundering and tax evasion. People are fed up with these outrages, said Pierre Moscovici, who heads financial affairs for the 28-nation EU. The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking. Panama is listed by the EU as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, and Moscovici urged the country to rethink its position in this regard. Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela has said his government will cooperate more and announced plans for an international committee of experts to recommend ways to boost transparency. But he also vows to defend his country against what he says are media attacks that unfairly stigmatize Panama. In Britain, the prime minister could become the next European politician to find himself under attack. After four days fending off headlines about his familys finances, he acknowledged Thursday that he and his wife, Samantha, sold shares worth 31,500 pounds (currently $44,300) in an offshore fund named Blairmore Holdings in January 2010 five months before Cameron became prime minister. They had paid 12,497 pounds for the shares in 1997. Camerons father, Ian Cameron, an affluent stockbroker who died in 2010, was a client of Mossack Fonseca. Theres no indication the offshore fund was set up to avoid taxes but the revelation reinforced the prime ministers image as a scion of wealth and undermined calls to boost transparency at a time many British overseas territories act as tax havens. Also on Thursday, an Argentine prosecutor asked a judge to authorize an investigation into President Mauricio Macris role in two offshore companies. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, denied having any links to offshore accounts and described the document leaks as part of a U.S.-led plot to weaken Russia even though his name doesnt appear in any of the leaked records. They are trying to destabilize us from within in order to make us more compliant, he said Thursday at a forum in St. Petersburg. The Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped coordinate reporting on the leak, said the documents indicate Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin acted as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists and, perhaps, the president himself. Fonseca said his firm creates about 20,000 shell companies annually but also rejects about 70 to 80 clients every year due to conflicts that arise during due diligence. Were not perfect and some surely escape by, he said. But so far the only crime that has been proven is the hack. Juan Zamorano reported this story in Panama City and AP writer Joshua Goodman reported from Bogota, Colombia. Good parade Editor: The OLeary and Meah families went to the St. Patricks Parade. It was very good. The two high schools (Maloney and Platt) were in the parade and only one other school, St. Joseph. St. Joseph had a float and cheerleaders. There should be more schools in the parade. Its good socialization and exercise for the children and parents. It would be great if there were more organizations in the parade. They would be larger and the children would enjoy it more. If a six year old can walk in the parade, I think many other participants should join in and march also. Bill OLooney, Meriden True pioneer Editor: Modern sporting rifles are based on the Armilite Rifle Platform. They have become poplar for home defense, hunting, competition and plinking, and are available in many calibers. Most owners were trained in the armed forces with this rifle so hence the popularity. We know there are misguided individuals who dislike guns. Then there are obsessed miscreants who hate guns. These people view any semi-automatic gun as a machine gun or most evil of all weapons an assault weapon. The first assault weapon probably was a fist, then it escalated to a club. Next came a knife. This went on until we came to the rifle. Assault according to Websters means violent attack. When does a weapon become an assault weapon? Only when the individual holding it uses it for criminal intent. Cars, pools, bats, knives and lately machetes fueled by drugs or alcohol kill more people than guns. We keep passing all these feel good laws. Example, a proposed Connecticut law says to show your pistol permit to a police officer when asked or does it say relinquish? How about instead of dealers sending millions of names of innocent people to the FBI, the FBI should send a list of prohibited people to the dealers. How many people are prosecuted failing a background check? The NRA is an organization of five million plus citizens bonded together for the preservation of the Second Amendment. They are all around you. Doctors, teachers, chefs, newspaper writers and working folks. Why pick on innocent, decent people? When you attack Mike Roberts, you have to answer to me. He has used his time, energy and resources for the benefit of others. Mike I know you can handle anything, but you are a true pioneer and American Patriot. S.C. Staszewski, Meriden Happy April Editor: Happy April Fools Day to you. Also, love your prank on Page 2 of the Friday, April 1, paper. Claudia Dunton, Wallingford Editors note: Todays Thought that day was: Dont believe everything you read on the Internet. Attributed to President Abraham Lincoln. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SAN ANTONIO City health inspectors observed moldy food, dirty utensils and grease accumulation at a number restaurants on this weeks dirty list, which includes 12 area eateries. To make the Express-News' list of dirtiest restaurants, an establishment must have 14 or more demerits during a random city inspection. Pik and Pak Food Mart at 1801 West Ave was cited for having moldy cucumbers, and the Sonic Drive-In at 1730 Horal, which had the highest number of demerits this week, was caught with mold growing on bread rolls. At Sonic, the inspector even stated several food items posed "a danger" for human consumption, and were "in gross contamination." Other violations found in this weeks reports include bees in the kitchen, dirty food contact surfaces and no soap at hand washing sinks. From S.A. hospitals and hotels to popular eateries, get all the highlights of this week's dirtiest restaurant list in the slideshow above see a full lineup below. The San Antonio Express-News examines hundreds of restaurant inspections each week conducted by the San Antonio Food and Environmental Health Services division to bring you the eateries with 14 or more demerits. The demerit system is based upon the number of violations found during a regular food establishment inspection. There are three categories of demerits and each are assigned a demerit score of 5, 4 or 3 points, according to the health division. Scores and demerits listed are only representative of the state of the restaurant at the time of inspection and are surveyed at random. rsalinas@mysa.com Here is the full list of establishments on this week's list, see slideshow for information from the reports: Long gone are the days of Radio Flyer red wagons, toddlers are now cruisin down the streets or sidewalks in their 64s. Though they may be tiny, toddlers are now getting by on their own set of four wheels thanks to places like Eddie Serranos Tot Rodz shop in Cotati, Calif. a custom car company on a miniature scale, producing pedal cars and strollers that are far from the Greco line. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The 17-year-old suspect arrested in the killing of University of Texas at Austin student Haruka Weiser told a high school newspaper in 2014 that he was beaten by a foster parent and bullied. Meechaiel Khlalil Criner, a homeless man, was booked into the Travis County Jail on a charge of murder, police said. Weiser's body was discovered Tuesday on campus. RELATED: Report: Video shows suspect pull out 'shiny rigid object,' follow Haruka Weiser on UT campus Social media users on Friday circulated an online copy of Dec. 17, 2014 edition of The Tiger Times the student newspaper at Texas High School in Texarkana that appears to have an interview with Criner. In the interview, Criner claims that he was bullied in elementary school by children who mocked his "thick, African-like accent." "I've been bullied almost my whole life," Criner told the newspaper. "In elementary school, I would come home crying almost every day. It was because of my accent, you see. People couldn't understand me." RELATED: Video shows 'person of interest' in 'brutal murder' of University of Texas at Austin student Criner claims he was placed in Child Protective Services for about six months while he was in elementary school, according to the newspaper. While in a foster home, Criner said, he was once locked in a bathroom and, in another instance, thrown to the ground by a foster parent, injuring his back. Julie Moody, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, confirmed in an email to mySA.com Friday that Criner is currently in the agency's care. Moody said Criner was on "runaway status for a time, but he was found and was placed at Lifeworks," an Austin nonprofit that offers counseling and housing for the homeless. Criner's case worker spoke with the 17-year-old this week, Moody said. The agency is unable to release other information regarding Criner, Moody said, but more information about Criner's time with the agency could come out in court. "This is a serious criminal matter so we're working very closely with law enforcement," Moody said. RELATED: San Antonio middle school girl suspended after being thrown to ground by officer Criner details why he and his siblings lived with his grandmother in Texarkana. "I came to live with my grandmother because my mother didn't want to be responsible for kids," Criner told the newspaper. "She did a lot of drinking. CPS had to transfer me and my four siblings. My grandmother offered to take care of me and my sisters." Calls to numbers listed for Criner's relatives in Texarkana were not immediately returned Friday. Citing his his run-ins with bullies and his time in foster care, Criner told the newspaper, "I like to stand up for people. I like to help others." "Every day, I feel people think I'm not capable of much," Criner said. "What I want to leave behind is my name. I want them to know who Meechaiel Criner is." Police said they were able to tie Criner to the slaying through a separate incident involving Criner and a backpack possibly belonging to Weiser on Monday. jfechter@mySA.com Twitter: @JFreports Bexar County deputies arrested a 22-year-old man on several drug and weapons charges after he was found with a large group of people recording a rap video on the South Side, according to a news release from the BCSO. Geoffrey Gomez was arrested on several charges, including a state jail felony charge of possession of a controlled substance less than 1 gram, a third-degree felony charge of possession of a prohibited firearm, Class A misdemeanor charges of possession of a controlled substance and unlawful carry of a weapon and a Class B misdemeanor charge of possession of marijuana less than two ounces, according to online court records. With belly dancers, gunslingers, reptile wranglers and rodeo entertainers, the allure of the Poteet Strawberry Festival transcends a basket of berries and a plate of fluffy shortcake. Dating back to 1948, this signature springtime affair has drawn crowds by the thousands to the dusty, small town of Poteet, Texas, thirty miles south of San Antonio. Theres finally a twinge of optimism about the future of public school education on the citys South Side. It was uplifting to see such a standing-room-only turnout at the inaugural South San Kids First town hall meeting to address the challenges facing the beleaguered South San Independent School District. Some 153 people from all walks of life attended the two-hour session on the Palo Alto community college campus. What was so amazing was that this happened on a weeknight when families, careers and school schedules place heavy demands on everyones schedules. Included in the mix were teachers, students, parents, school board members, state officials and business community representatives. And they were all on equal footing as the room broke out for brainstorming sessions. No one got to hog the microphone, no one was allowed to get on a soapbox. The meeting was run professionally. All ideas were respectfully delivered and cataloged to establish the building blocks for the change that is so desperately needed in this community. Kudos to City Councilman Rey Saldana, a graduate of South San High School, and his close group of friends from the area who saw a need to change the direction of the school district and chose to do something about it. The district has nowhere to go but up. It has seen five superintendents in the past five years. A few months ago, the Texas Education Agency appointed a conservator to help oversee the districts governance because of the boards failure to work with administration and its financial management problems. A second town hall meeting is scheduled for May 17 in a Palo Alto library meeting room. I hope the momentum grows. If each of those 153 attendees at the first meeting can get just one additional person interested in being an agent of change in the district, the effect could be phenomenal. Many of the school board races in this district are decided by a lot less then 153 votes, yet the outcomes vary little from one election to another. One highly politically charged faction goes out and another comes in. Its time to elect independent thinkers to the board who have the best interests of the students at heart and who can park their political agendas elsewhere. Many civic-minded young professionals who want change reside in the district. But who can blame them for not wanting to get involved in a highly dysfunctional school board whose shenanigans have become a statewide spectacle? Nobody working up a career ladder wants to be tainted by association with a runaway school board. South San ISD is in dire need of a cultural change its a message this newspaper has been pounding for decades. Nothing is going to change unless residents stand up to the political machines, break up the old voting patterns and bring in some fresh new faces. Regrettably, there are no term limits for school board members. I generally support incumbent candidates because of the expertise they acquire with long tenure, but this is one school board where longevity on the board is more of a liability than a plus. What is going on in South San should concern all of us, and we should all show our support for this fledgling group. The students attending South San ISD are the next generation of nurses, doctors, bank tellers, plumbers, electricians and teachers in our community. They deserve the best public school education they can get. School board politics should not be one of the obstacles that stands in their way. gpadilla@express-news.net It was refreshing this week to see the frequently divided U.S. Supreme Court rule unanimously on a political issue and one that involved Texas. The lawsuit was brought by Sue Evenwel of Titus County in Northeast Texas and Edward Pfenninger of Montgomery County, just north of Houston. But the suit was backed by conservative groups who feel big cities, which tend to be liberal and Democrat, are favored in the current system over less-populated areas that tend to be conservative and Republican. The plaintiffs argued that the current interpretation of one person, one vote is unfair because districts are drawn to have roughly equal overall populations. But big cities tend to have more immigrants, children and others who are ineligible to vote. As a result, the fewer actual voters in the big cities have more say in choosing representatives than the larger number of actual voters in rural districts. The lawsuit dealt only with state Senate districts, but had the Supreme Court found in favor of the plaintiffs, the principle would almost certainly have applied to other bodies. The balance of state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives would have significantly shifted toward Republicans. It says something about public perception of the current Supreme Court that serious observers speculated, especially before Justice Antonin Scalias death, that the decision might go the other way. It would have been widely seen as a blatantly partisan decision. In her majority opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg looks closely at the constitutional history of the issue. She notes that the framers of the Constitution took up what she calls a question analogous to the one at issue here: On what basis should congressional districts be allocated to States? The Constitution provides for each state to have two senators, but it allocates the number of seats in the House of Representatives according to each states total population. This despite the fact that the authors left up to the states the question of which members of the population would get to vote. Ginsburg quoted Alexander Hamilton in supporting counting the entire population, not just eligible voters: There can be no truer principle than this that every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government. If the plaintiffs scheme had been in place, neither women nor most men who owned no property would have counted toward awarding seats to states. It is likely, however, that slaves, who were considered more property than person, would still have been counted as three-fifths. Speaking of slaves, the issue came up again in the framing of the 14th Amendment, the post-Civil War amendment enshrining equal protection under the law. Section 2 of the amendment specifically provides that congressional seats will be apportioned according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. Northern Republicans, worried that former slaves would be disenfranchised, did insert language reducing representation if the vote is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States . But that provision was never enforced. Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens in 1865 introduced a separate amendment that would have allocated House seats to states according to their respective legal voters, and would have required a separate census of legal voters. But that amendment failed. Ginsburg notes that supporters used the same arguments as those presented by plaintiffs in the current case. Some who sided with the plaintiffs are celebrating the fact that while the Supreme Court unanimously decided not to overturn the system used in all 50 states, it did not say states couldnt draw districts based only on eligible voters, as the plaintiffs want. The fact is, the court simply decided not to address that question. A fair reading of Ginsburgs decision would not offer hope. Then theres the small matter of the Texas Constitution. It says each legislative district shall be apportioned by dividing the population of the State, as ascertained by the most recent United States census. Thats the entire population. This column first appeared as the Last Word on KLRNs Texas Week with Rick Casey. The program appears Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m. Forgive us, but with nearly three years left in Agriculture Commissioner Sid Millers term, we just might need to book our own trip to Oklahoma for a Jesus Shot. After all, The Jesus Shot is supposed to treat long-term pain, which is an apt description of what its like to watch Miller flail about in statewide office. Were not even halfway done with his term. Well skip the cupcakes and deep fryers, Millers junk foods of choice, and focus on this healthier fiasco: The Jesus Shot. Lets review: Shortly after Miller took office in 2015, he flew to Oklahoma City on the pretense of touring the Oklahoma National Stockyards and meeting with state officials to talk agriculture. He billed taxpayers $1,120, but as the Houston Chronicles Brian M. Rosenthal reported, Miller blew off a meeting he requested with the Oklahoma secretary of agriculture, and appears to have overhyped casual conversations he had with lawmakers there. He did, though, make an appointment with an Oklahoma doctor who offers The Jesus Shot. When Rosenthal requested Millers travel documents, Department of Agriculture officials initially failed to include information about the Oklahoma trip. A second request specifically about the Oklahoma trip eventually yielded the relevant documents. State officials said it was a mistake. Were skeptical, but these things can happen. But now we know its happened twice with the same excuse. In response to a February public records request, Millers office said there were no emails related to the Oklahoma trip. In fact, more than a dozen emails exist, Rosenthal reported. The emails undercut Millers previous description of the trip, showing he scheduled an appointment in Kingfisher, the only place to obtain The Jesus Shot. Miller, who has never said he received the shot, has since said he will repay the $1,120 taxpayers spent on this trip. The issue is small, but the principles are big. Lacking further explanation from Miller, the state should conduct an investigation into his trip. According to reports, the Swedish Medical Center in Denver has been sued by three former surgery patients who were among nearly 3,000 people who may have been exposed to a blood-borne pathogen. Hospital accused of negligence In the lawsuit, the suburban medical center is accused of negligence in its hiring and supervision of a surgical technologist who was caught in the midst of an attempt to switch an opiate with another substance during a patients surgery. The technician, Rocky Allen, was indicted by a federal grand jury last month for two felony charges: one count of consumer product tampering and one count of obtaining a controlled substance through deceit. During the proceedings it was discovered that Allen is a carrier for an unspecified blood-borne disease. his discovery prompted the hospital to notify approximately 2,900 patients who underwent surgery at the facility between August 2015 and February 2016. The hospital is recommending all notified patients be screened for HIV as well as Hepatitis B and C. Three of those patients initiated the court proceedings in pursuit of monetary damages for the emotional distress. While all three plaintiffs have tested negative, they will need to be screened for up to an additional six months to be sure they havent contracted the illness. Employee had history of drug abuse According to court documents, Allen had previously worked as a surgical technician at hospitals in Washington, Arizona, California, and with the U.S. Navy. He was court-martialed by the Navy and pled guilty to stealing fentanyl while deployed with a U.S. Army unit in Afghanistan. The lawsuit alleges that he had also been fired from numerous jobs in the past for drug-related offenses. Swedish Medical Center hired Allen in spite of his history of drug addiction and theft. Regardless of his previous offenses, Swedish granted him access to operating rooms and syringes containing narcotics like fentanyl. This placed patients at risk and put a drug addict in a tempting position which was not beneficial to his condition. Contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys are leaders in the area of medical malpractice litigation. We have extensive knowledge and resources in order to represent our clients efficiently and aggressively. We represent clients/victims all over the country. If you or a loved one have been injured due to medical malpractice, contact Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys immediately. We are available 24/7, nights and weekends. Editors Note: This content is made possible by Thomas J. Henry. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com. The Financial Times Gillian Tett needs to talk to experts on corporate taxation rather than take dictation from the likes of Apples Tim Cook. Her current column, A real-world solution to the tax repatriation ruckus, is unabashedly inaccurate and misleading. Massive Tett Error #1. Corporate cash for companies like Apple is not offshore. Tett: President Barack Obama proposed raising an additional $238bn in tax by imposing a one-off levy of 14 per cent on repatriated cash piles if they were used for infrastructure spending What the American economy needs is not on-off populist measures to ban tax inversions or repatriate overseas cash piles.the dismal status quo: a world of ever-growing offshore cash piles This is nonsense and means that the basic premise of the article is 100% off base. Corporate profits are booked in offshore entities. Tax books are not the same as accounting books or movement of cash. As top tax expert Lee Sheppard wrote in Tax Notes in 2013 (no online source): But for reporting companies subject to generally accepted accounting principles and U.S. worldwide taxation, lets stop talking about offshore earnings and bringing the money home. The earnings are merely booked offshore. The earnings are by and large not banked offshore. To the extent that the much-ballyhooed $2 trillion of deferred foreign earnings is classified as permanently reinvested in cash, most of that cash is sitting in U.S. banks, where it is propping up their capital. Apple, for instance, runs its offshore profits as an internal hedge fund out of Nevada. Massive Tett Error #2: Allowing companies to repatriate profits will lead to more investment and spending. Tett: So investors would do well to note that cash repatriation is a topic on which Mr Trump has also been articulate and unusually precise. Notably, under his tax plan American companies would pay a one-off discounted rate of 10 per cent if they bring their cash home and put it to work in America. Some of his advisers privately say this rate could be cut further to, say, 5 per cent if there was clear evidence of the cash being used to create jobs. Again, we have the misrepresentation about cash being overseas. But corporate claim that they would invest more in the US if they were allowed to book those offshore profits in the US is demonstrably false. Why? The US gave companies a repatriation holiday in 2004, after a bout of the very sort of whinging they are engaging in now. And what did they do? They increased dividends and executive pay. Its not that hard to get input from a tax pro to understand what the real issues are. But the Financial Times too often veers between top-notch reporting and analysis to using its brand to promote corporate pet issues. Sadly, Tett, who regularly writes incisive columns, is also too willing to sell out her personal brand to dubious causes like this one. Among state pension systems, North Carolinas has been one of the generally-better-run one, with it having comparatively modest underfunding (putting it in better shape than CalPERS and CalSTRS), and historically taking less risk, via having more allocated to fixed income and less to alternative strategies like private equity than its peers. However, the flip side is that North Carolina, thanks to the tender ministrations of the Fed pushing investors our of safe assets, North Carolina has been increasing its allocations to riskier strategies. North Carolina has a glaring weakness, which is a poor governance structure. It has only one trustee for the state pension system, its State Treasurer. Let us turn the microphone over to former North Carolina Chief Investment Officer Andrew Silton. As the lawyers like to say, res ipsa loquitur. From his website: Last month North Carolinas State Treasurer accepted positions as a director for Channel Advisor, a public company in the Raleigh area, and James River Capital, a fund-of-funds in Richmond, Virginia. Im not talking about ex-Treasurer Janet Cowell. She will be North Carolinas Treasurer for the next nine months. Among her many public duties, Treasurer Cowell is sole fiduciary of North Carolinas public pension plan. In my view, these private sector financial positions compromise her role as fiduciary for the pension plan and are a large step backward in the governance of its assets. In brief, heres the Treasurers case for accepting private sector opportunities while acting as sole fiduciary for the pension plan. First, theres precedent. In ethically challenged North Carolina, our governor and commerce commissioners also maintained private sector board positions after becoming public servants. Second and rather amazingly, the Treasurers private sector activities have the blessing of the State Ethics Commission. In other words, it has been done before, and it is ostensibly legal. While Treasurer Cowells private sector appointments may be legal, they are wrong. As sole fiduciary of the states pension plan, the Treasurer has a duty to act in the best interest of the beneficiaries, state employees, and taxpayers who ultimately bear the risk of the states pension plan. The standard of conduct is perhaps even higher than the conduct expected of her when she sits on the Council of State, Banking Commission, or Board of Public Instruction. Moreover, recusing herself from decisions that might involve a conflict is hardly a remedy. By accepting a board seat on public company and by advising a fund-of-fund company, the Treasurer has compromised her investment priorities. Let me underscore how bad the optics are. Cowell couldnt wait nine months to take these posts? That has the appearance that her new employers particularly valued her current political power and couldnt wait. The fund of fund role is particularly troubling. Fund of funds, even more so than other investors, find it incumbent to play nice with alternative investors, since their pitch is that they have great access to managers and special acumen in picking among them. And the wealthy individual investor who are important targets for the fund of fund business are not only in no position to assess the various funds in a fund of fund. They often value bragging rights, getting into funds that will give them bragging rights at the country club because they are well known, even better if they are perceived to be difficult to get into. Moreover, one of the reasons the public pension fund world is rife with scandals and lousy performance is fund managers use their political connections to push for special consideration, or have supposedly well informed insiders apply pressure by vouching for the caliber of the manager. Cowell is making herself more, not less, likely to be tainted by wearing multiple hats. Silton concludes: In 2014, the Treasurer commissioned a study to look at potential new fiduciary models for North Carolinas pension plan and identify other deficiencies in the management of the plan. While the Treasurer accepted and pushed for changes in staffing and employee compensation, she never acted on the new fiduciary models. In my last column for the News & Observer, I wrote about the Treasurers failure either to propose a board of trustees for pension investments or to beef up the sole fiduciary model.[3] By accepting private sector employment and not resigning as Treasurer, Treasurer Cowell has tipped the scales. North Carolina needs to have a board of trustees for its pension plan, since it cant count on its elected sole-fiduciary to devote her undivided attention to the investment requirements of the pension plan. If you have family, friends, or colleagues in North Carolina, or better yet have media contacts, I hope youll send them a link to this post and urge them to take it up with the press and their state representatives. Treasurer Cowell has already pushed the envelope in a very bad way. This can only set the stage for worse. Bill Barker By Laura Layden of the Naples Daily News Naples Daily News Publisher Bill Barker has been named one of two regional presidents for Gannett Co. Inc. in Florida. The announcement follows Gannett's purchase of Journal Media Group, which was headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Barker will oversee newspaper operations in the Florida Southwest division, while continuing his publisher duties in Naples. In his new role, Barker will be responsible for Naples, as well as three other markets in the state: Tallahassee, Pensacola and Fort Myers. He will be one of more than a half-dozen regional presidents in Gannett's East Group. "I feel blessed to work in this business. I feel especially blessed Gannett sees the value of what we're doing in Naples and what we were doing at Journal Media Group," said Barker, 52. Barker last served as a regional publisher for Journal Media Group overseeing operations at its newspapers in Naples and on Florida's Treasure Coast, as well as in Knoxville, Tennessee; Anderson, South Carolina; and Evansville, Indiana. Barker joined the Daily News in fall 2013 as a regional publisher and chief revenue officer after nearly a decade overseeing newspaper and media operations in the Tampa Bay area, including serving as publisher of the Tampa Tribune. In his new role, Barker said he expects his job to be "a lot of fun," and he looks forward to having the additional resources that come from being part of a larger operation, including access to more digital and mobile tools. Barker plans a tour to introduce himself to the employees at the new operations he'll oversee. He said his job won't change in Naples, where the Daily News works to make the community a better place to live, work and play and to help grow businesses. "We'll start our new journey Monday, and I think it will be a good one," Barker said. "I'm looking forward to learning from each other." In July 2014, Journal Communications Inc. of Milwaukee and the E.W. Scripps Co. of Cincinnati the parent company of the Naples Daily News announced a plan to merge their broadcast operations and spin off their newspapers into a new publicly traded company, which became the Journal Media Group. In October of last year, Gannett announced its plans to acquire Journal Media Group. Federal regulators approved the $280 million sale Thursday, clearing the way for Gannett to acquire the company's newspapers in 14 U.S. markets, including Naples. The deal closed Friday. With the acquisition, McLean, Virginia-based Gannett will operate USA TODAY and 107 dailies in 34 states and Guam, in addition to Newsquest in the United Kingdom, with its 150 local digital and print news brands. "Together we will grow our innovative products and best practices while providing added value to our consumers and advertisers, expanding the content offerings in our extensive portfolio and increasing the number of local markets we serve," Robert Dickey, Gannett's president and CEO, said in a statement. In a separate email to Journal Media Group employees, Dickey said: "Our combined company is financially strong, too, with more than $3 billion in revenue and a sound balance sheet. We will continue to build upon our financial strengths while making Gannett the employer of choice for top talent in our field." The closing of the transaction required approval from Journal Media Group shareholders, who will receive $12 per share in cash. Journal Media Group's common stock stopped trading after the close of the market Friday and will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Gannett will continue trading under the ticker symbol "GCI." SHARE Naples-based Allen Systems Group Inc. has quietly and swiftly emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The multimillion-dollar software company, known for short as ASG, has completed its financial restructuring, slashing its debt by more than 60 percent. It has emerged from bankruptcy with new capital and new owners. Its new owners are some of the largest institutional investors in the world, who were its senior secured lenders and now have a controlling interest in the company. The new owners include affiliates of KKR Credit Advisors, and GSO Capital Partners LP, the credit arm of Blackstone Group LP. "They are already starting to help us operate more efficiently, providing access to very large purchasing pools, giving us access to and helping us with relationships, with customers. So we are starting already to see the benefits of being part of that family," said Ernest Scheidemann, ASG's executive vice president and chief financial officer. ASG's exit from bankruptcy comes a little over two months after its Chapter 11 filing in Delaware, made in February. The filing followed the resignation of the company's founder, CEO and chairman, Arthur Allen Jr., who left the company in December. "He's not a shareholder any longer," Scheidemann said. The company has cut its debt from $666 million to $240 million. ASGs financial problems have festered since 2012. The company, with more than 1,100 employees and more than 70 offices worldwide, reports annual revenues of about $300 million. Providing cloud, content and systems solutions, it develops products that help large corporations run their IT departments, with more than 5,000 customers, including some of the worlds largest corporations, such as Coca-Cola, General Electric and Toyota. "Our emergence from Chapter 11 marks the start of a new beginning for our company. As a result of the financial restructuring, we now have a more serviceable level of debt and the capital to sustainably operate, invest in, and grow the business," said John DiDonato, ASG's restructuring officer and acting president, in a statement. As part of the restructuring, the company has a new board of directors. A search is underway for a new CEO to replace Allen. Several candidates have been interviewed already, with a hiring decision expected to be made within a few months. "I think we would want to see this happen as soon as possible," Scheidemann said. Throughout the Chapter 11 process, it was business as usual for ASG, he said. The company honored its commitments to its customers, suppliers and employees. "We are pretty excited about the future to tell you the truth and believe our customers are excited too," Scheidemann said. SHARE By June Fletcher of the Naples Daily News A new federal rule that will make it easier for those with a criminal record to rent private housing is stirring controversy among local housing experts. Noting that nearly 100 million adults, or nearly one-third of the population, have a criminal record of some sort including arrests that never led to convictions the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued guidance intended to prevent unjustified discrimination against them. Invoking the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental or financing of houses on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status or national origin, HUD pointed out that African-Americans and Hispanics are "arrested, convicted and incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their share of the general population." While people with criminal records aren't specifically protected under the act, landlords violate it if they use criminal history as a pretext to discriminate against blacks, Hispanics or other protected classes. Many housing advocates applauded this new attempt is to prevent discrimination. "The vast majority of people who are convicted are not convicted of violent crimes," said Chuck Elsesser, director of the Community Justice Project, a nonprofit law firm in Miami. "That's who this will impact." But landlords also can be held liable even if they had no intention to discriminate, HUD said, and this along with ambiguity over what sort of criminal history can be excluded is where critics say confusion arises. "Fair Housing is a great thing, but without clear boundaries it will be difficult to implement," said Rick Fioretti, president of the Naples Area Board of Realtors, and a landlord. "It will force companies to mandate policies that will be less discretionary with regard to applicants than they are today." HUD's new guidance sets out three tests to evaluate whether a landlord's criminal-history policy is discriminatory. One requires anyone challenging a landlord's policy or practice to prove statistically that it causes a disparate impact on one or more protected classes; in the absence of local or state data, national data can be used. A second test requires a landlord to prove that their policies are justified and nondiscriminatory, and not "hypothetical and speculative." Landlords may present evidence that their reasons for denying a tenant are based on resident safety and protecting property, which are among their basic responsibilities. But HUD said, "bald assertions based on generalizations or stereotypes that any individual with an arrest or conviction poses a greater risk than any individual without such a record does not satisfy this burden." The third test prohibits a housing provider from banning anyone with any conviction record, no matter when it occurred, what happened or what the convicted person has done since then. If the landlord has a policy that excludes only certain types of convictions, it still must prove that the conduct presents a risk to residents' safety or property. If the housing provider is successful in proving that, then it falls on the applicant to prove that the landlord should consider mitigating factors such as the facts surrounding the criminal activity, including his or her age when it occurred, evidence of rehabilitation efforts and maintaining a good tenant history. Since HUD's rule was issued Monday, landlords, housing and offender advocates and rental brokers and others have been debating what effect it will have on private rentals (HUD issued similar guidance for public housing last fall). Fioretti said the rules won't affect how he rents to tenants of the nine properties he owns. "Oftentimes people have done petty crimes, but it doesn't affect how they will perform as renters," he said. "I am looking at how well they've paid their rent and utilities in the past, not their moral character." He adds that he keeps an umbrella insurance policy on his properties that will protect him financially if he is sued because a tenant commits a crime on the premises. But he also criticized the new HUD rule as too ambiguous about what kind of criminal activity a landlord can use as a reason to turn down a tenant, since only drug manufacturing and distribution are specifically mentioned as allowable reasons for exclusion. He also said landlords aren't given enough specific direction about how to evaluate whether a person is a current threat given their age when the criminal activity occurred. "Is a rape 20 years ago OK? Four years ago?" he asked. But for Gail Colletta, HUD's new rule is welcome. Six years ago her 21-year-old bipolar son was arrested and convicted of downloading child pornography from the Internet. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail but was resentenced and released 1 years ago. Though he hasn't been in trouble since, and never had contact with a child, he had difficulty finding housing near his Florida home because he's a registered sex offender, his mother said. He's now living out of state. " 'Sorry, we don't rent to felons' we get that excuse all the time," said Colletta, who now heads a Lake Monroe, Florida-based advocacy group for sex offenders called the Florida Action Committee. But sex offenders are overwhelmingly one-time offenders, have a low recidivism rate, and in most cases aren't a danger to the community they're a "Romeo and Juliet" situation where one member of a couple is over 18, the other younger, she said. Harold Weeks, president of the NAACP of Collier County, also lauded HUD's new rule, saying "sometimes it's too easy to say no" to potential tenants. But he added that he hasn't gotten a single complaint from an ex-convict complaining about being discriminated against in rental housing in the decade he's headed the African-American advocacy group. As a landlord who's rented out a three-bedroom condo he bought in Madison Park in 2006, he has mixed feelings about renting it to someone with a criminal record, though no one with such a record has ever applied. "I certainly wouldn't want someone who's a repeat offender in my neighborhood," he said. While the HUD's new rules prohibit discrimination based on criminal history, they don't explicitly ban people from doing background checks. Such checks make landlords feel more confident about their tenants and are particularly important to property owners who live out-of-state or overseas, said Sandra Velez, a real estate agent with Premier Plus Realty in Naples who handles both rentals and sales. Some condo or homeowners associations also require one, she added. While she can educate landlords she represents about the new HUD rules, ultimately they must make the decision about who they want to rent to and why, she said. She expects the new rule will create situations that "will be very difficult and will cause a lot of problems." A search of homes for rent in Southwest Florida on Craigslist showed dozens of listings informing potential tenants that they need not to apply if they have a criminal record. One ad even showed the picture of an ex-felon who had been looking for a room in the region, and warned landlords not to rent to him. Meanwhile, a thirst for information about crime has driven a number of real estate websites and apps to publish crime indexes and breakdowns of criminal incidents in neighborhoods surrounding nearly every address in the country. Among the newest is Redzone, an Apple app put out by a Miami company, that aggregates crime data from public sources and allows users to "crowdsource" reports of crimes and to add comments and videos. Through its website Homedisclosure.com, California research company RealtyTrac is showing registered criminal offender data on particular properties, and not just in neighborhoods, so potential renters or buyers can decide whether they want to live there. But in what could be an alarming revelation for landlords trying to follow HUD's new rule, the data RealtyTrac has amassed show that there's a marked difference in home values, equity, price appreciation and foreclosure rates nationwide between homes in ZIP codes with a low density of offenders versus those with a higher rate. In Southwest Florida the disparity is particularly great in Lee County, said RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist. Average home values in the county are six times higher in the lowest-risk ZIP codes than they are in the highest-risk ones, while foreclosure rates are six times higher in the highest-risk ZIPs compared with the lowest-risk ones. On average, homes in areas with the lowest offender index also have 30 percent more equity, while those in the highest offender zones are 8 percent underwater. "The patterns are similar although not so stark in Collier County, but still strongly indicate that the density of registered criminal offenders is one important factor that impacts the value of a home and thereby the financial security of homeowners," he said. SHARE WASHINGTON Yes, the big Wisconsin story is Ted Cruz's crushing 13-point victory. And yes, it greatly improves his chances of denying Donald Trump a first-ballot convention victory, which may turn out to be Trump's only path to the nomination. Nonetheless, the most stunning result of Wisconsin is the solidity of Trump's core constituency. Fundamentalist Trumpism remains resistant to every cosmic disturbance. He managed to get a full 35 percent in a state in which: He was opposed by a very popular GOP governor (80 percent approval among Republicans) with a powerful state organization honed by winning three campaigns within four years (two gubernatorial, one recall). He was opposed by popular, local, well-informed radio talk-show hosts whose tough interviews left him in shambles. Tons of money was dumped into negative ads not just from the Cruz campaign and the pro-Cruz super PACs, but from two anti-Trump super PACs as well. And if that doesn't leave a candidate flattened, consider that Trump was coming off two weeks of grievous self-inflicted wounds and still got more than a third of the vote. Which definitively vindicated Trump's boast that if he ever went out in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York and shot someone (most likely because his Twitter went down he'd be apprehended in his pajamas), he wouldn't lose any voters. The question for Trump has always been how far he could reach beyond his solid core. His problem is that those who reject him are equally immovable. In Wisconsin, 58 percent of Republican voters said that the prospect of a Trump presidency left them concerned or even scared. Cruz scares a lot of people, too. But his fear number was 21 points lower. Moreover, 36 percent of Wisconsin Republicans, facing a general-election choice between Hillary Clinton and Trump, would either vote Clinton, go third party or stay home. Trump did not exactly advance his needed outreach with his reaction to the Wisconsin result: a nuclear strike on "Lyin' Ted," as "a puppet" and "a Trojan horse" illegally coordinating with his super PACs (evidence?) "who totally control him." Not quite the kind of thing that gets you from 35 percent to 50 percent. Not needed, say the Trumpites. If we come to Cleveland with a mere plurality of delegates, fairness demands that our man be nominated. This is nonsense. If you cannot command or cobble together a majority, you haven't earned the party leadership. John Kasich makes the opposite case. He's hanging on in case a deadlocked convention eventually turns to him, possessor of the best polling numbers against Clinton. After all, didn't Lincoln come to the 1860 convention trailing? Yes, and so what? The post-1968 reforms abolished the system whereby governors, bosses and other party pooh-bahs decided things. In the modern era, to reach down to the No. 3 candidate a distant third who loses 55 of 56 contests or to parachute in a party unicorn who never entered the race in the first place would be a radical affront to the democratic spirit of the contemporary nominating process. A parachute maneuver might be legal, but it would be perceived as illegitimate and, coming amid the most intense anti-establishment sentiment in memory, imprudent to the point of suicide. Yet even without this eventuality, party suicide is a very real possibility. The nominee will be either Trump or Cruz. How do they reconcile in the end? It's no longer business; it's personal. Cruz has essentially declared that he couldn't support someone who did what Trump did to Heidi Cruz. He might try to patch relations with some Trump supporters is Chris Christie's soul still for sale? but how many could he peel away? Remember: Wisconsin has just demonstrated Trump's unbreakable core. And if Trump loses out, a split is guaranteed. In Trump's mind, he is a winner. Always. If he loses, it can only be because he was cheated. He constantly contends that he's being treated unfairly. He is certain to declare any convention process that leaves him without the nomination irredeemably unfair. No need to go third party. A simple walkout with perhaps a thousand followers behind will doom the party in November. In a country where only 25 percent feel we're on the right track and where the leading Democrat cannot shake the challenge of a once-obscure dairy-state socialist, you'd think the Republicans cannot lose. You'd be underestimating how hard they are trying. A model shows what First Street in Fort Myers looked like around 1900 at the Southwest Florida Museum of History. Patrick Riley/Staff SHARE The skeleton of a saber-toothed cat (cast) at the Southwest Florida Museum of History. Patrick Riley/Staff A doctor's buggy is parked at the the Southwest Florida Museum of History. Patrick Riley/Staff A 1929 private Pullman rail car sits outside the Southwest Florida Museum of History. Patrick Riley/Staff By Patrick Riley of the Naples Daily News Imagine the following: You start your morning walking past a towering giant ground sloth and menacing saber-toothed cat. Then around lunchtime, you find yourself in the middle of the second Seminole War, caught between Billy Bowlegs' warriors and General William S. Harney's troops. As the afternoon rolls around, you are marching side-by-side with some of Florida's most influential civil rights activists before ending up in a luxurious 1920s-style private Pullman train car. What sounds like a synopsis from a time-travel movie is reality at the Southwest Florida Museum of History in Fort Myers. The expansive museum takes visitors on a self-guided, audio-aided tour from the times mammoths and mastodons roamed Florida through Fort Myers' earliest days as a military fort and beyond. On a recent April morning I decided to see for myself and travel through the area's rich history. After a volunteer gives me the low-down on how to use my audio device (which basically looks like one of those early-80s cell phones), I dive right into the fun, my first stop: the sea that covered Florida millions of years ago. "What you will not find in Southwest Florida are the fossil remains of the terrestrial dinosaurs that have become so famous throughout the world," my pre-recorded tour guide tells me. "During the reign of the dinosaurs Florida was covered by a shallow sea." But no less terrifying were the creatures that roamed those waters. Like the Basilosaurus, a predatory, serrated-toothed whale that grew to be 65 feet long and looked like a cross between an alligator and a shark. Speaking of sharks, then there was Megalodon. "This prehistoric shark was the dominant marine predator of its time," my electronic tour guide tells me. A precursor to today's great white, the Megalodon (which means "Big Tooth") grew to 50 feet in length and ruled the oceans for almost 30 million years. Its enormous teeth were 7.75 inches large. The thought alone of ever encountering one of those monstrosities makes me shudder. Time to move back on to land. As I move into the next, much dimmer, room, I am greeted by the soaring skeleton of a giant ground sloth (or technically a cast of its skeleton, but it still drives the point home, believe me). This colossal plant-eater called Florida home some 12,000 years ago and stood up to 17 foot tall, weighing 5 tons. In general, it seems everything was super-sized in those days. Take the Glyptodont for instance. This armadillo-like herbivore was the size of a small car. Next, I enter into the world of the Calusa Indians, one of Southwest Florida's earliest inhabitants. Beneath a thatched roofed shelter (Seminoles called them "Chickee") I find the Calusa's wide-array of self-made tools and gadgets. The mysterious but complex tribe was one of Florida's first developers if you will. "The Calusa were builders," my trusty audio tour guide tells me. "During their reign that lasted into the early 1700s they transformed the land of Southwest Florida by building hundreds of shell mounds, altering the waterways and constructing canal highways that connected the coasts." No rezoning was needed back then as far as I can tell, but what the Calusa did use were weapons. Like atlatls, a type of throwing stick used with spears called darts. This powerful contraption was even comparable to a Spanish gun. Unfortunately for the Calusa, their immune system was no match for the diseases brought to Florida by early Spanish explorers. "That within 200 years of their arrival would decimate the Calusa population," my tour guide tells me. "While no Calusa exist today, there is evidence of their migration to Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula." After learning about the Seminole Indians and their clashes with the U.S. government during the early- and mid-1800s, I find much to my delight a model replica of early Fort Myers on the other side of the hallway. "The escalation of the Seminole Wars beginning in 1817 led to the construction of American military outposts along the borders of the Everglades," my tour guide tells me. "Thus, begins the story of Fort Myers." The fort was built in 1850 but deactivated just eight years later when the Third Seminole War ended. United States soldiers then re-occupied the post during the civil war, making it the only federally occupied fort in peninsular Florida. When Union forces staged raids on the Florida cattle industry to disrupt the shipment of beef herds to the Confederate Army in Georgia, Confederate soldiers sought to put an end to the tactics by establishing "The Cattle Battalion." In February of 1865, some 275 members of "The Cattle Battalion" attacked Fort Myers. "Cannon and musket volley was traded, but the fort stood," my tour guide tells me. "And the Cattle Battalion, running low on ammunition, was forced to retreat." The skirmish marked the only battle of the civil war fought in the peninsula of Florida. From the war-filled beginnings of Fort Myers I move on into more peaceful and industrious times, passing a model of a saw mill and a replica of a Florida scrub cattle, once a mainstay for Florida's early cattlemen and "Cracker" (so-named because of the cracking sounds their whips made when they herded their cattle). "Post-civil war Florida became one of the largest suppliers of cattle," my narrator tells me. "And the lure of opportunity and adventure as well as land drew many to try their hand in this growing industry." I pass a wonderfully detailed and intricate model of First Street in Fort Myers ca. 1900, before moving on into the world of private and commercial fishing in Fort Myers. Here, an unwieldy shrimp scale and heavy iron harpoon heads sit next to bulky crab traps and fragile models of sail- and steamboats. Then as I round the corner I spy a bright red 1926 American LaFrance firetruck in a side room. On the side of the hood a sticker reads: "STILL RUNS AND PUMPS TODAY." But from the delightful sight of the old firetruck I move on to a much more serious exhibit: Civil Rights in the Sunshine State. The special exhibit chronicles Florida's civil rights movement, from Miami to Tallahassee and St. Petersburg to St. Augustine, and examines the history of racial segregation in Florida from the end of Reconstruction to the present. As I move past informational plaques and powerful black-and-white images, I am awed by the resilience and courage displayed by the movement's activists and leaders. Perhaps one of the most upsetting tidbits from the exhibit is that Florida, from the 1890s to 1930, had the highest per-capita lynching rate in the United States. "Many assaults were not backwoods hangings carried out by a handful of lawless men, but rather were large festival-like spectacles," the plaque reads. Following the sobering but nonetheless insightful Civil Rights exhibit, my tour takes me past old military garb and artifacts before I arrive at the last leg of my time-traveling adventure: the outside portion of the museum with its replica of a Florida "Cracker" house and a 1929 private Pullman rail car. I first visit the "Cracker" house, a tall wooden structure just a few steps from the museum entrance. A peek inside, reveals a plain but relatively homey room with a bed on one end and a dining room table on the other. Shelves affixed to the wooden walls carry lamps, buckets and jars. The early settlers' houses were elevated from the ground to protect from flooding and guard its inhabitants from insects and animals. The homes were built from sturdy cedar and southern yellow pine. "Both woods are resistant to termite infestation and rot," my tour guide informs me. "Southern yellow pine when cut is very wet with sap, but when it dries it becomes hard like concrete." The homes had generous front porches to shield against the summer heat and driving rains. The roof was made out of metal to reflect the sun and protect against falling debris from the common brushfires. The high ceiling kept the room cooler by allowing heat to rise away from the living quarters. Interestingly enough, "Cracker" houses had the kitchen in a separate building to protect the main house from excess heat and fire risks associated with cooking. Also not included in the main house was a bathroom. Instead, the settlers had an outhouse that was moved around periodically. From the simple but effective lifestyle of the "Cracker" I move on to the more extravagant: the private rail car. "Welcome aboard the Esperanza, a 1929 private Pullman rail car," my tour guide tells me after I climb into the spacious and luxurious car. "Rail cars like this were owned only by the wealthiest of Americans." And I can quickly see why. The thing is huge. Much bigger than I thought. The Esperanza originally cost $80,000, which wasn't exactly peanuts in 1929. "Additionally, annual expenses equal almost to the purchase price were needed to employ the staff, rail car maintenance and destination fees required to operated such a luxury item," the tour guide tells me. Typically, a car like this one had a room porter and a cook. (Yes, there is a kitchen.) As I pass through the mahogany hallway with its solid brass fixtures, I can't believe how roomy the car is. Past various staterooms I go until I end up at the dining room. The Esperanza, like many rail cars, came with its own china that was slide resistant. The car was cooled by "a modern air-conditioning system," my tour guide tells me. "In the front of the car was a block of ice, placed so that air was moved across it by fans and through the vent cooling the rail car," he says. And so, the walk through the Esperanza puts a worthy end to my little time-traveling trip. Peter Lapointe, 45, of Bonita Springs, and his family are also first-timers to the museum, which he says is "packed with a lot of really eclectic stuff." "From the Calusas up to the Civil Rights movement all in one small building, but it's a good treasure trove," he tells me. "There's something for everybody here, that's for sure." IF YOU GO Southwest Florida Museum of History When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday; Closed: Monday, Sunday Where: 2031 Jackson Street, Fort Myers Cost: Tickets $9.50 + tax for adults; seniors (55+) and AAA members receive $1 discount; students, including adult students with current ID: $5.00 + tax; children 4 and under are free. Information: 239-321-7430 or visit museumofhistory.org Special exhibits: Civil Rights in the Sunshine State Exhibit open until June 11 Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn attends a press conference to present the post-synodal apostolic exhortation ' Amoris Laetitia ' (The Joy of Love), at the Vatican, Friday, April 8, 2016. Pope Francis has insisted that individual conscience be the guiding principle for Catholics negotiating the complexities of sex, marriage and family life in a major document released Friday that repudiates the centrality of black and white rules for the faithful. In the 256-page document "The Joy of Love," released Friday, Francis makes no change in church doctrine. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) SHARE By Kristine Gill of the Naples Daily News When she went through her divorce a few years ago, Lhara Echeverria worried fellow parishioners at Saint John the Evangelist Catholic Church might shun her. What she found instead was reassurance during one of the loneliest times in her life. "So many people were so supportive inside and outside the church," she said. That makes the release of a document by Pope Francis which encourages churches around the world to be understanding toward divorcees and other groups of individuals a message more for those fearing rejection than a command from on high. In many ways, Echeverria said, Catholics have already adopted an accepting attitude over time. "It's not that people are not being welcoming or supportive," she said. "The message is for those going through a divorce who might need to get out for their own safety, their own sanity, that they don't need to fear rejection." The Amoris Laetitia ("Joy of Love" in Latin) Apostolic Exhortation, released Friday morning, is intended to wrap up a divisive debate on family issues that saw bishops engage in bitter rows during two summits, known as Synods, held at the Vatican in 2014 and 2015. "While clearly stating the Church's standing, (priests) are to avoid judgments that do not take into account the complexity of various situations" experienced by modern day Catholics, the pope said in the 261-page document. He acknowledged that "many people feel that the Church's message on marriage and the family does not clearly reflect the preaching and attitudes of Jesus," who "set forth a demanding ideal" but was always ready "to show compassion and closeness" toward sinners. Jim Towey, president of Ave Maria University, called the message Friday a sign that Pope Francis is in touch with the struggles of everyday people who face problems with their marriages or sexuality and are looking to the church in their time of need. "It's a call to mercy," he said. "A Christian faith without love, compassion and mercy is not Christian." Towey said he admired the way Pope Francis shared that message without redefining Church doctrine. "I love that he is still not condemning people, but reiterating what consistent church teaching has been," he said. One of the most contentious issues that the pope's document was due to tackle was the possible softening of a ban on remarried divorcees taking the Holy Communion. The ban is long-standing, often not respected, but still officially in force. The pontiff said: "The divorced who have entered a new union can find themselves in a variety of situations, which should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for a suitable personal or pastoral discernment. "The baptized who are divorced and civilly remarried need to be more fully integrated into Christian communities in the variety of ways possible, while avoiding any occasion of scandal" and "need to feel not as excommunicated members of the Church," he added. The Diocese of Venice in Florida released a statement Friday briefly explaining what the pope did in releasing the document but did not offer opinions on its content. "An Apostolic Exhortation is a type of communication from the pope which encourages the Church Faithful on how to live out their faith," the statement read. "It is not meant to redefine Church doctrine. It is considered lower in formal authority than a Papal Encyclical. Such exhortations are commonly issued following a Synod of Bishops which is convened to instruct on an aspect of Church Teaching, in this case the family." Following her divorce, Echeverria started a support group at her church for fellow divorcees. Since she began about a year ago, eight people have come to weekly meetings she holds, looking for help through a difficult time in their lives. "I've found that people who get divorced get away from the church, not because they aren't being welcomed, but because of our own misconceptions," she said. Suzan Gallucci has run a similar support group at St. Agnes Catholic Church for the past five years. She also works as a clinical mental health counselor, incorporating her Catholic teaching for those of the same faith. "If you can have reconciliation around your divorce that brings a tremendous amount of peace to your heart as a Catholic," she said. "Just to know that you aren't going to be ostracized is a wonderful feeling. The pope's message today is beautiful." The wording backs the compromise solution approved by the bishops' 2015 Synod, allowing case-by-case procedures to determine whether remarried divorcees can take the communion, following a period of penance and guidance from their priest. Francis was less bold toward homosexuals. He said they need to be respected and spared from discrimination, but quoted Synod documents saying that "there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family." The pope pointed out that he was never going to reinvent the wheel of Catholic doctrine. "Neither the Synod nor this Exhortation could be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases. What is needed is simply a renewed encouragement to undertake a responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases," he said. The pope was also remarkably candid about sex. "In no way, then, can we consider the erotic dimension of love simply as a permissible evil or a burden to be tolerated for the good of the family. Rather, it must be seen as a gift from God that enriches the relationship of the spouses," he said. Towey said he expect much discussion in the coming months and years about what the pope's statements will mean on a practical level. "He's just a very pastoral pope," Towey said. "He has a real understanding of how complex these issues are and what human weakness can do to a person if they're being condemned by others." Mary Ann Groves, the mother of Teresa Sievers, leaves a Lee County courtroom after a custody hearing regarding her grandchildren on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in downtown Fort Myers. (David Albers/Staff) By Jacob Carpenter of the Naples Daily News The two daughters of Mark and Teresa Sievers will temporarily remain in the custody of their maternal grandmother following a judge's ruling Friday. Florida Department of Children and Families officials moved Friday to appoint Mary Ann Groves, the mother of slain Bonita Springs Dr. Teresa Sievers, as the temporary custodian of the two Sievers children, ages 9 and 11. Their father, Mark, has been in jail since late February on a murder charge, accused of orchestrating his wife's killing in June 2015. The children have resided with Groves for about a month, and DCF officials wanted to formally extend the placement now that Groves has established residency in Estero, said Groves' lawyer, Christina O'Brien. "She thinks it's in the children's best interest and she's happy," O'Brien said of Groves. "She will do anything to take care of the children." Groves was living in Connecticut at the time of the homicide. Her new residence is several miles north of the Jarvis Road home in which the Sievers family lived. The children's placement will again come under review in mid-May at a hearing for temporary custody in domestic relations court. Both Groves and Mark Sievers' mother, Bonnie, have petitioned to receive temporary custody of the children. In her petition, Groves asks to gain custody indefinitely, or at least as long as Mark Sievers is incarcerated. Groves plans to continue home schooling the children, keeping in line with the education plan instituted before Teresa Sievers' death. "Enrolling the children in a public school at this time would be traumatic and harmful to the children," Groves stated in her petition. Efforts to reach Bonnie Sievers' lawyer failed Friday. Lee County sheriff's investigators believe Mark Sievers coordinated with his lifelong friend, Curtis "Wayne" Wright Jr., to plan the killing of his 40-year-old wife. Investigators said Wright and another man, Jimmy Rodgers, both of Missouri, traveled to the Sieverses' Bonita Springs home, where they bludgeoned Teresa Sievers to death. Mark Sievers was with his daughters in Connecticut at the time. Wright has pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge. In exchange for a prison sentence of 25 years, Wright has agreed to provide substantial cooperation with prosecutors. Mark Sievers' arrest came on the day that Wright formally entered his plea in open court, but the terms of the agreement have not been made public. The cases of Mark Sievers and Rodgers remain pending. Both have pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder charges. Water ripples from wind Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016 at the W.P. Franklin Lock and Dam in Alva, Fla. The mayors of Lee County's six municipalities convened at a joint emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss action items regarding freshwater releases from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee watershed. It's argued that the release of dark, nutrient-laden freshwater into the the watershed, damage Southwest Florida's economy and ecology. (Corey Perrine/Staff) By Bartholomew Sullivan, bartholomew.sullivan@tcpalm.com WASHINGTON U.S. Rep. Curt Clawson is working with House leaders to expedite repairs to the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee through a water bill expected to move through Congress this year. The Bonita Springs Republican said he is focused on his dike bill before another proposal he introduced last month to task the Interior Department with buying land south of the lake for water storage. The bill speeding up dike repairs likely won't decrease lake discharges, whereas the land purchase could. Clawson said his dike bill may not be necessary if the repairs are authorized in a large water bill the House and Senate are considering, formally called the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, or WRDA. "We're trying to ascertain that right now," Clawson said. Clawson said he met with Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster. Clawson wants the committee's support before asking for co-sponsors because securing them "tends to be a lot easier if they know that the leadership of the party and the leadership of the committee is on board." Success with his dike bill could help him pass his land-buy bill, which currently has no-cosponsors. He wants to keep them separate because, "with the land-buy bill, I can't make the case it's already been authorized." The two Florida members of the transportation subcommittee with jurisdiction over the proposal to expedite dike repairs were noncommittal about Clawson's bill this week. "Restoring the natural flow of water in the Everglades is critical to both our local ecosystem and our local economy," said U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, who serves on the Water Resources and Environment subcommittee that will be first to consider Clawson's bill. "The Florida delegation has historically worked together to advance Everglades restoration, and I look forward to reviewing Rep. Clawson's proposals with my bipartisan colleagues." U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Orlando, applauded Clawson's efforts, but said he hopes the Central Everglades Planning Project is included in the new water bill too. The $2 billion Everglades proposal is a series of engineering projects to collect and channel water into the central Everglades and reduce discharges east to the St. Lucie River and west to the Caloosahatchee River. "The freshwater discharge above the Everglades needs our attention," Webster said Friday. Of even greater interest is Clawson's bill seeking $500 million to buy land south of the lake, a heavy lift in an election year and for a Republican-run Congress leery of major, new spending for a project with limited national appeal. Clawson said his proposal to buy land in the Everglades Agriculture Area is "not vilifying sugar or any other industry. ... In all of these bills particularly in the land-buy bill we need them at the table. Villifying them does not help the situation." While not specifically endorsing either of Clawson's bills, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said: "Bottom line is: We need to send more water south into the Everglades and it needs to be clean. One way to do that is by getting the state to use Amendment 1 money to acquire more land south of the lake. We also need to complete work on the long-standing rehab of the Herbert Hoover Dike, and I have urged the Army Corps to dedicate additional funding to get those repairs done as soon as possible." FILE -- An 'Idle Speed, No Wake' sign for boats in Moorings Bay is pictured in Naples on Thursday, Dec. 24, 2015. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) By Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News A judge has rejected a last-ditch petition to force the city of Naples to reinstall boat speed zone signs in Moorings Bay. In a ruling this week, Collier Circuit Judge James Shenko found that boater Michael Crofton's lawsuit failed to meet any of the four tests for an emergency injunction, including showing that the lack of signs creates a safety hazard and that reinstalling the signs would be in the public interest. Crews took down the signs earlier this year after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission ordered them to be removed. FWC regulators said the signs were no longer legal because another judge had tossed out the city's boat speed zone law in 2014 after charter captains challenged a speed zone ticket on Naples Bay. Crofton, who had sought the emergency action pending a more permanent solution, said he and his allies would continue to work to restore speed zones in Moorings Bay. It wouldn't be in court, though, he said. "We're going to continue our efforts to prevail on the city to do the right thing by the citizens of Moorings Bay," Crofton said Friday. "We're certainly not going to give up." Shenko found that Crofton offered only speculation that the lack of signs would cause injury or death and found that forcing the city to reinstall signs the FWC has found to be illegal would not be in the public interest. The judge's ruling is the second setback for the push to get boat speed zone signs back up in Moorings Bay on an emergency basis. The FWC also has rejected the city of Naples' petition for emergency rule making to restore the boat speed zones. Still pending are city requests for permits to install boat speed zone signs near Moorings Bay bridges, near the Park Shore Marina and for a manatee protection speed zone in Moorings Bay. Crofton took it as a positive development that the judge's ruling cites the city's ability to adopt speed zones within 300 feet of the bay's blind corners, a step the City Council has not taken. He said Moorings Bay boaters want the council to take up the Moorings Bay blind corner issue in light of the judge's ruling. Voters elected three new council members and ousted former Mayor John Sorey since the council's last vote on the speed zones. Newly elected Mayor Bill Barnett, a councilman at the time of the last speed zone vote, said the city has vetted its options "pretty good." "I think we have a game plan and maybe it's best we stick with it," Barnett said. He said he was open, though, to talking more about speed zones at the bay's blind corners if that's a viable option: "We're not going to duck it, for sure." Shenko's ruling also points out that Crofton has other legal options that precluded him from issuing an emergency order. Those options include challenging the FWC's decision to revoke the city's speed zone permit in 2014 and challenging the agency's rejection of the city's emergency rule making petition earlier this year. Crofton said he does not plan on filing either challenge, saying instead that those challenges are up to the city to undertake. SHARE Naples Mayor Bill Barnett, center, is flanked by Council Member Michelle McLeod, left, and Former Council Member, Margaret "Dee" Sulick, as they overturn dirt during a ground breaking ceremony Thursday, April 7, 2016 on Central Avenue in Naples, Fla. Rick Johnson, owner of Rick Johnson Auto & Tire, protested the event along with other business-minded individuals, claiming the beautification project would deter customers from his business. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Former Council Member, Teresa Heitmann, left, speaks to Master Officer Tyrone Davis of the Naples Police Department, right, during a ground breaking ceremony Thursday, April 7, 2016 on Central Avenue in Naples, Fla. Rick Johnson, owner of Rick Johnson Auto & Tire, protested the event along with other business-minded individuals, claiming the beautification project would deter customers from his business. "It's all about personal greed and gain," Heitmann said to Davis. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Rick Johnson uses a megaphone to voice his opinion during a ground breaking ceremony Thursday, April 7, 2016 on Central Avenue in Naples, Fla. Rick Johnson, owner of Rick Johnson Auto & Tire, protested the event along with other business-minded individuals, claiming the beautification project would deter customers from his business. (Corey Perrine/Staff) By Joseph Cranney of the Naples Daily News A monthslong construction project in downtown Naples to redesign Central Avenue breaks ground Monday, as local business owners continue to argue the project will chase away customers and worsen traffic. The $4.3 million project from Eighth Street South to Goodlette-Frank Road will shut down parts of the avenue. The city is building roundabouts at Eighth and 10th streets, installing bike lanes and adding on-street parking. The project will reduce the stretch of the avenue to two traffic lanes. Business owners are worried that traffic issues will keep customers away, in addition to concerns about a lengthy construction process that will close parts of the avenue leading up to their storefronts. Rick Johnson, the tire shop owner, picketed a ceremonial groundbreaking held Thursday and spoke publicly about the avenue project at the City Council meeting Wednesday, when he reiterated his three demands for changes to the project and told the council, "This will be my next-to-last stand." The council voted 5-2, with Doug Finlay and Teresa Heitmann dissenting, to approve the final plans for the project in February. Central Avenue is said to be the first of several potential projects that would redesign downtown corridors to be more pedestrian and biker friendly. The construction on Central is designed to lead up to the entrance to Baker Park, the yet-to-be-built public park planned for the old landfill site at Riverside Circle. During the ceremony Thursday, as Mayor Bill Barnett and other members of the council stood with shovels and posed for a photo, Johnson stood across the street and shouted demands into a bullhorn. He says the city's plan will make it impossible for cars to turn into the garage of his business, which sits at the corner of Central and 10th. He's also concerned that, under the new design, drivers heading west on Central won't be able to make a left turn into his parking lot. "When you start limiting access to a business, you start losing customers because they get frustrated trying to get to your business," Johnson said. The council's decision to move forward with the avenue's redesign coincided with the recent approval of several large residential developments, like the Naples Square project on Third Avenue. The hope is for downtown to feel more like a place to live and less like a place where people drive their cars. But the council and the developers proposing their projects have also been accused of elitism. Rosie Johnson, Rick Johnson's wife, said the council's recent actions are putting pressure on low-income people living nearby in the River Park neighborhood. "I've seen it happen all over the place," said Rosie Johnson, who said she was born in Puerto Rico and lived in New York City. She held a picket sign Thursday that read, "City Council Against Minorities." She said the council "want to get rid of all undesirables." Finlay expressed a similar concern Wednesday. "They want that whole street redeveloped into something nice," Finlay said. "They don't want Rick Johnson there." Gregg Strakaluse, the city's streets and stormwater director, said the city or contractors have met with Johnson or visited his tire store at least five times last year and another three times this year. Engineers studied Johnson's parking lot and determined that even large trucks will be able to make a complete turn into Johnson's garage under the new plan, Strakaluse said. The avenue will be closed to general traffic from Eighth Street to U.S. 41 starting Monday. Strakaluse estimated the closing will last until the end of July. The avenue from U.S. 41 to 10th will be closed from May to September and from 10th to Goodlette-Frank Road from June to September, Strakaluse said. Barnett said he thinks the city "made every effort" to assuage concerns from property owners on Central. "We made great strides with the vast majority of them," Barnett said. Bill Ribble, from left, Howard Levitan, Donald Brown, Katy Errington, Jim Boesch, Nick Batos and Jim Wilson are all sworn in as district council members by Lee Circuit Judge Elisabeth Adams of the 20th Judicial Circuit Tuesday, March 17, 2015 at Estero High School's auditorium. Estero Village Council met for the first time since incorporating on Dec. 31, 2014. (Corey Perrine/Staff) By Patrick Riley and Maryann Batlle of the Naples Daily News The $79,277 a year to pay for Estero Village Council's new salary hikes will come from savings, according to the village. The council on Wednesday agreed in a 5-2 vote to raise its own pay from $6,000 to $16,946.88 a year, while the village mayor's annual salary would jump from $9,000 to $22,595.88. Depending on who you ask, the raises are either well-deserved or, according to one email, "obscene." Related: Estero council members vote for a raise for themselves "It's no wonder the average person is fed up with government," that reader wrote to the Daily News. The power to raise or lower village council salaries rests with the council, according to Estero's governing charter. Councilman Jim Wilson, who championed Wednesday's vote, said this raise will better compensate Estero's seven elected officials for the time commitment they make every week. "We're running all over the place," Wilson said. "I think the workload now is bigger than it was six months ago. "We're all working like dogs." It's been about a year since Estero's current council assumed its role as the governing body of the fledgling village in south Lee County. Since then, they have created a city from the ground up they hired a village manager, set up the first budget, devised the village center, opened a village hall, started a community development department and appointed planning and design boards. Councilors have taken extra roles and responsibilities away from the dais, too, Wilson said. Wilson said he serves the village between 20 to 25 hours every week and that his may be one of the lighter workloads. Other council members rack up "20, 30, 40 hours a week," he said. Mayor Nick Batos runs all the village's public meetings and leads negotiations between Estero and Lee County. He also acts as the village's Florida League of Cities voting delegate, is part of Lee County's Metropolitan Planning Organization and sits on the Lee County Mayor's Council. But Batos voted against the pay raise. He said the village lacked enough public feedback. At the time Estero formed, it promised voters "government-lite." Batos said he felt a "moral obligation" to keep the salaries the same until the council gathered more opinions from the community. "I felt a promise had been made and it was too early to change that," Batos said. "I just felt to bring this issue up after a year was too short." He had suggested the village poll residents on the issue before approving any raises, but the council declined to do so. Wilson said he felt Batos' proposed poll wouldn't have been able to tell the "overall story" of the issue. "He wanted to use some little electronic poll that's one step above 'What's your favorite color?' " Wilson said. The starting point for the compensation discussion was when council asked village staff in February to find out what councilors in other Lee municipalities were making, Wilson said. "We found that most of them were being paid significantly more than we were," he said. The lower pay compared to other cities coupled with the increasing workload was reason enough to warrant a pay bump, Wilson said. The pay hike puts Estero dead-even with Bonita Springs, but ahead of cities like Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel. In Fort Myers Beach, councilors make $14,000 annually and the mayor receives $16,800, according to Estero village documents. Fort Myers Beach incorporated in 1995 and three years later started to pay councilors $7,200 annually and its mayor $8,400 annually. Councilmembers in Sanibel work on a voluntary basis. In Bonita Springs, which incorporated in 1999, council members did not receive compensation until the spring of 2004. They now have the same salaries as Estero's councilors, who came around 15 years later. But Bonita Springs pays 100 percent of each councilor's single health coverage. A Bonita Springs councilor pays $70 a month if they add dependents. They can add vision or dental at their own expense. In November, Bonita Springs City Council voted 4 to 3 against a ballot referendum that could have resulted in a pay increase for council members. Estero's pay raise came in the form of an ordinance. The village charter allows Estero's council to approve an ordinance raising or lowering its own pay "at any time," but the salaries are adopted "the first day after the next regular municipal elections." In this case, the raises go into effect March 8, 2017. The seats for Batos, Vice Mayor Howard Levitan and Councilor Bill Ribble will be up for grabs that March. All other councilors are guaranteed to get the raise. Paying councilors more won't wipe out the village, according to Estero's budget. The village takes in about $11 million in revenue every year. The budgeted available savings for this fiscal year are about $3.04 million, according to an email from the village's Finance Director Lisa Pace. Estero is fortunate enough to have "significant reserves" and "budget surpluses" that will cover the new added yearly expense, said Batos. "It's a very small percentage of the expenses of the city," he said. "It's really a small number." With between 8 and 10 residents speaking at the first reading of the ordinance in mid-March, Wilson said most were testifying that the council was doing the right thing. "I don't feel embarrassed," he said. SHARE Kudos The Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida earned well-deserved praise this week from the Naples City Council as the museum marks its 15th year this coming Wednesday. From its humble beginning as a seventh-grade exhibit called "Out of the Ashes" at Golden Gate Middle School, the museum has grown to a fixed location that's taught tens of thousands of Southwest Florida students about the Holocaust and documented survivors' stories for historical reference. Beyond that, the museum "teaches the lessons of the Holocaust to inspire action against bigotry, violence and hatred," Naples Mayor Bill Barnett said, reading the city's laudatory resolution during this week's council meeting. According to museum officials, more than 145,000 students in grades K-12 and from universities across six counties have benefited from its educational programs. Special recognition also was given Jack and F.E. Nortman; they've loaned the museum an authentic World War II boxcar that has visited nearly 100 locations since 2008 as part of The Boxcar Project. Nearly 100,000 students and adults have experienced the exhibit so far, the city resolution states. The museum is at 4760 U.S. 41 North in a business center on the east side of the highway, just south of Pine Ridge Road. For information on its hours, admission fees, survivor stories, events, how to donate and much more, go to www.holocaustmuseumswfl.org. The museum will be closed for a special event on Wednesday, a day the city of Naples has proclaimed in honor of the Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida. Kicks Too much. Too soon. Just a year into service under a charter that said compensation would be $9,000 for mayor and $6,000 per council member, the Estero Village Council pulled a bait-and-switch on incorporation voters this week. The council voted 5-2 to raise the pay starting next year to about $16,950 per council member and $22,595 for mayor. Kudos to Mayor Nick Batos and council member Don Brown for voting no. The charter was rigorously put together and its provisions were known to those who chose to stand for election a year ago. If they thought the salary was too low, they had ample opportunity to speak up before the November 2014 incorporation ballot that voters supported, or when they campaigned weeks later. As candidates, they acknowledged there would be much time-consuming work in the first year. As elected leaders, now some are saying it's taking a lot of time. Unfortunately, voters who work, volunteer or otherwise are busy at times of council meetings can't gauge for themselves because the village hasn't provided online streaming or video recordings of its meetings as other governments do. The council's historic first meeting at Estero High School was recorded at a cost the Estero Council of Community Leaders initially underwrote. A representative told us the expense was about $1,350. With the money found under couch cushions to cover nearly $80,000 in council pay increases, that's a lot of meetings that could have been recorded for public benefit. Village leaders have said the move to the new Village Hall should make the recordings of meetings possible. A ribbon-cutting ceremony at their new Village Hall, 9401 Corkscrew Palms Circle, is at 9 a.m. Wednesday. There's hope residents can tune in to a council vote to reverse this week's decision. Kudos Civic servant Alan Ryker was awarded the 2016 Sam Noe Award this week by the Naples City Council. The award was established a decade ago to honor outstanding service by a volunteer to city boards. Ryker's service to the city spans about 15 years, including working on the Gordon River Greenway initiative, Community Redevelopment Agency Advisory Board, Community Services Advisory Board, Planning Advisory Board and more. Active as a cyclist and a longtime co-president of the Naples Pathways Coalition, Ryker helped lead the effort that paid off with the city receiving the Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community Award for 2015-18 from the League of American Bicyclists. SHARE Bonnie Michaels, Naples Collier Citizens for Sustainability Conservation land As rapid development is on the rise, it appears that initiating ideas to acquire conservation lands is imperative. Every green space is going quickly, which not only affects our quality of life but prevents water from flowing to our aquifers. Conservation Collier was a community planning initiative that resulted in funds for land acquisition but now future acquisition cycles have been suspended. Public policy by the governor, state legislators and Collier County Commission is unfavorable so that private funding seems the only alternative. Amendment 1 had a 75 percent favorable vote for government funding for land acquisition but the legislators put it into administration. Enter Bobbie Davenport, a passionate environmental activist who has volunteered for Sierra Club Calusa Group, Responsible Growth Management Coalition, Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida, Save our Creeks and the Agency for Bay Management, and who is taking action to protect and preserve our wildlife and sensitive lands. She has formed a nonprofit organization, Cypress Cove Conservancy, to begin a process of buying up land for preservation. The message of the organization on their website, www.CypressCoveConservancy.com, is simple "Together we can make a difference." They believe that if everyone gave as little as $25 to $100 per year, there would be dollars to buy land. It is time to revisit the course and pursue land purchases before it is too late. If you are concerned about the loss of green space, wildlife and our aquifers, you can participate in the initiative by donating and spreading the word, www.startsomegood.com/cypresscoveconservancy. The current project offers much for the community and the funding site is certainly worth a read. SHARE Elizabeth Thomas Joyoprayitno, Naples Historic push A recent letter to the editor about historic preservation was wholly inaccurate. First, Naples Historical Society's preservation initiative addresses, among many other things, the inefficiencies that exist in the local process for saving historic houses. Their proposal is trying to give the people who want to save these houses a better chance to save them. Let's not keep the barrier up if people are willing to invest in an old cottage themselves. Secondly, there is no "land-grab" proposed. That came out of thin air and has no relevance to the Society's project. Thirdly, pursuing broad visual integrity in the Naples Historic District is the essence of historic preservation, and this is happening around the nation and in many Florida communities, too. I am in favor of the Society's plan, and am a proud visitor to the Naples Historic District. SHARE By Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News The Cold Blob is under a lot of pressure these days. Until this week, the swath of North Atlantic water was chilling out south of Greenland and east of Newfoundland, about 2 degrees Celsius cooler at its core than average. No sweat. But then private meteorology firm AccuWeather made the blob the headline of its 2016 Atlantic hurricane season forecast: An ocean phenomenon relegated to densely worded scientific papers became a wild card in the annual guessing game about how fast the hurricanes will be flying this season. "We think that's one of the pieces of the puzzle we have to look at," AccuWeather hurricane expert Dan Kottlowski said. But don't expect the Cold Blob to be the marauding kind, overtaking everything in its path in those old sci-fi movies. Oceanographers at the University of South Florida and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say it would take years for the blob to make it to the tropics, and its path would be tortuous. By the time it got here, if it ever did, the Cold Blob would probably be a Not So Cold Blob anyway. "It's not coming this way," said USF oceanographer Frank Muller-Karger. Kottlowski, at AccuWeather, said he is not suggesting that the Cold Blob will pick up and move to the tropics this summer: "That will not happen." But, he said, if ocean currents peel off just some of the blob, the colder water could influence hurricane breeding conditions just enough to matter to a fledgling tropical storm. "The tropics are very sensitive to minute changes," he said. Colder water starves hurricanes of energy they need. Colder water also can help high pressure develop over the Atlantic and steer storms away from the U.S. or help blow them apart. It also is possible that the appearance of the Cold Blob could signal a slowing down, maybe even a reversal, of the pattern of warming waters tracked since 1995, Kottlowski said. Or it could be that the Cold Blob in the Atlantic will get upstaged by La Nina in the Pacific. Forecasters are predicting a transition this summer from an El Nino, which limited hurricane development, to a La Nina, marked by cooler water temperatures in the Pacific that mean less wind shear where hurricane develop. That could mean a flip from the past three below-normal hurricane seasons to an above-normal year in 2016. AccuWeather predicts 14 named storms this season, eight of them hurricanes, four of those major hurricanes and three making landfall in the U.S. Colorado State University hurricane forecasters are set to put out their annual forecast next week; NOAA's forecast comes out in May. Hurricane season officially starts June 1 and lasts through November. To embark on a 450,000 church restoration programme without resorting to parish fundraising is undoubtedly a brave and admirable venture. But conscious that parishioners are living in very difficult and challenging economic times and with high local unemployment, the costly project is a monumental undertaking that Tipperary Parish Priest Archdeacon Matthew McGrath is determined to shoulder to the best of his ability. To embark on a 450,000 church restoration programme without resorting to parish fundraising is undoubtedly a brave and admirable venture. But conscious that parishioners are living in very difficult and challenging economic times and with high local unemployment, the costly project is a monumental undertaking that Tipperary Parish Priest Archdeacon Matthew McGrath is determined to shoulder to the best of his ability. The big freeze of Winter 2010 caused severe damage to the Bell Tower of St Michaels Catholic Church and since then with each passing year causing even further deterioration, Archdeacon McGrath became increasingly aware that urgent action was needed to safeguard the historic building. Encouraged by an enthusiastic Parish Council, a plan of action was set up with the invaluable help of local chartered building surveyor, Gavin McCall, a parishioner with specialist knowledge in the repair and restoration of stonework in such protected structures. St. Michaels Church is a Listed Building, and as such, according to conservation principles, all repair work must not affect the character of the church. To draw up a detailed job specification for a task that involved a lot of specialist work, it was also necessary to employ a Structural Engineer and a Quantity Surveyor. Together with Project Manager, Gavin McCall they spent some weeks assessing the nature and extent of the work and preparing a tender document, which contained detailed specifications with regard to scaffolding, removal of defective stone, sourcing of replacement limestone, minute details on stone measurements, the raking and repointing to stone work up to the Louvre windows, the opening for inspection of the church roof adjacent to the south side of the Bell Tower, (it was felt that water ingress over the decades may have damaged some of the timbers). Also included was the repair of some damaged stone down at the gable of the funeral door entrance. The tender process attracted wide interest from contractors based in Dublin, Wexford, Clare, Carlow, Limerick, Tipperary and Scotland. Having examined the tenders in detail, the project team recommended a contractor with proven ability to carry out the specialist work at a contact price substantially lower than the others. Irish craftspeople As can be seen from our photographs, massive scaffolding was a priority for safety measures and this project was awarded to local contractor, Sean Curtin of Pallasgreen. The overall works of restoration went to Laing Traditional Masonry Group, with Mullingar man Neil ODwyer employed as Site Manager. The LTM Group, a Scottish based company have vast experience in conservation works on built heritage all over Britain, and on securing the 6-Month contract at St. Michaels Church, have set up an Irish subsidiary company here in Tipperary Town. During a recent visit to the site, LTM Managing Director Steven Laing spoke of his plans. Our vision is to continue our Scottish business model into Ireland using Irish craftspeople and management staff that have worked for the LTM Group on various projects throughout the UK over the last two years. Our commitment is to grow LTM Ireland using indigenous resources by employing local apprentices and putting them through our formal internal apprenticeship scheme he said. Close links Site Manager Neil ODwyer arrived in Tipp Town with vast experience in conservation work. Possessing a passion for such a career from a very young age, he is greatly appreciative of the hands-on approach afforded him during his years of apprenticeship. Born and reared in Mullingar, Neil has close family links with the Tipperary areas of Rossmore and Lorrha and is delighted to be back in the Premier County fronting the first LTM project in the Irish Republic. Prior to the recession hitting Irelands building industry, he was involved in conversation works at Dublins Christchurch Cathedral, St. Patricks Cathedral, St. Georges Church in Temple Street, as well as churches in Cork and various projects in Limerick City. When work began to slacken in his home country, Neil headed to Britain where he worked for four years around the historic city of York, restoring various churches and castles. Two years ago he joined the LTM Group, which has allowed him opportunities to work on several Category A Listed Buildings, one of the most famous being the Marischal College in the centre of Aberdeen City the second biggest granite building in the world. Work began on the restoration of St. Michaels on June 14. However, a short time into the project, Archdeacon McGraths worst fears were realised when in-depth inspection threw up further problems than first anticipated. In this case, the stonework around the church spire has shown extensive leakage, which will further shoot up costs. The Tipperary Parish Priest says that through savings made on parish collections over and above the cost of annual parish financial commitments most of this costly work can be paid by existing monies. While admirable, all parishioners will recognise in these straitened times that exhausting the parishs savings on this repair work will place it in a precarious position should any further emergencies arise. Most famous landmark The consecration of St. Michaels Parish Church, the first post-Famine architect-designed church in the diocese, took place on Thursday 14 November 1861. The architect responsible for the design of the church was James Joseph McCarthy (1817-82). McCarthy was born in Dublin in humble circumstances and was known as the Irish Pugin after the celebrated English designer and architect Augustus Welby Pugin (I812- 52). Pugin is remembered for this pioneering role in the Gothic Revival style; his work culminated in the interior design and Big Ben clock tower of the Palace of Westminister. He also designed many churches in Ireland and demanded the highest quality of workmanship from his craftsmen, particularly from the stonemasons. McCarthy would, in turn, create an exceptionally fine church in his design of St. Michaels. Just how fine a church we have in this parish is described in great detail in Dr. Denis Marnanes book The History of St. Michaels Church as he leads the reader through the history and significance of both the exterior and interiors aspects of the building. It is also a building described in I994 by the celebrated architectural historian Jeremy Williams, as one of the finest Puginian churches in Ireland. Stepping up to the plate St. Michaels Church has over its 151- year history been an important focus of devotion and place of prayer within the parish. Despite Archdeacon McGraths reluctance to make a public appeal, and given the historical and religious importance of St. Michaels Church, there is no doubt that parishioners in a position to do so, will gladly step up to the plate and subscribe to this worthy and urgent restoration project. Furthermore, there are many hundreds of Tipperary emigrants with fond memories of the church, who have done well overseas, and who perhaps could also play an active financial part by making a contribution to help retain this vital landmark in our hometown of Tipperary. (Rosaleen Ryan) Mayor of Carrick-on-Suir Kieran Bourke has resigned from Fianna Fail and announced he is to run as an independent candidate in the county council election in May. Mayor of Carrick-on-Suir Kieran Bourke has resigned from Fianna Fail and announced he is to run as an independent candidate in the county council election in May. The councillors dramatic decision brings to an end 80 years of the Bourke family representing Fianna Fail on Carrick Town Council. He said he had to leave Fianna Fail because the partys leadership in Dublin denied him a fair and democratic opportunity to seek a nomination to run as a FF candidate in the Carrick-on-Suir Municipal District of the new amalgamated Tipperary Co. Council. Fianna Fail despite its many faults had always been fair in allowing local democracy but under the current leadership local members were completely sidelined by a faceless and secret committee in Dublin. he claimed. Cllr Sylvia Cooney-Sheehan, who sits on both the Town and Co. Councils, was chosen as Carrick-on-Suirs only Fianna Fail candidate to contest the Carrick Municipal District race at the partys candidate selection convention in Cloneen on January 24. Cllr Bourke said he hadnt any problem with just one Carrick-on-Suir based FF candidate being selected to run. His problem was with the way the convention voting was set up. He said the FF leadership promised each party member would have one vote at candidate conventions but at the Cloneen convention only the 19 members from the two Carrick FF cumainn could vote for the Carrick candidate. It wasnt open to FF members from other parts of the municipal district to vote for the Carrick candidate. His cumann had just 6 members while the other candidates cumann had 13. The result was a guaranteed foregone conclusion in favour of another candidate and I refused to take part in a charade and so withdrew my candidacy. This was patently unfair and blatantly undemocratic and sends a clear message that the grassroots members are again being denied their voice and are being treated as mere sheep rather than the backbone of the entire party, he added. A Fianna Fail spokesman said Cllr Bourkes decision was deeply disappointing. The party decided there will be one FFF candidate in Carrick town. Over 100 conventions have been held throughout the country so far; with many of them being segmented on a district basis to ensure geographical balance. He, as a town councillor, was deemed to be a town candidate, as was fellow Clll Sylvia Cooney-Sheehan. It was decided to hold a vote among members in the town to decide the candidate. Unfortunately Cllr Bourke decided to withdraw his name before a vote could take place. Far from there being an undemocratic process, there was a clear understanding among candidates what procedures would be followed. A first group of Uzbek officers graduated from a pilot English language course on 24 March, which was launched last year for Uzbekistans defence ministry by the NATO Liaison Office in Central Asia. The graduation ceremony was hosted by the head of the defence ministrys Partnership for Peace Training Centre, Colonel Dusniyazov. It was attended by the NATO Liaison Officer for Central Asia, Rosaria Puglisi, and the defence attaches of some NATO countries. Thirteen middle-to-high-ranking serving officers received certificates attesting the level of English achieved during the six-month training programme. "Enhancing your English language skills allows you to take part in NATO partnership and cooperation activities, thus providing you with an opportunity of professional growth while better serving your country," the NATO Liaison Officer told graduating officers. The course was well received by the trainees. This is a helpful training," commented Lieutenant Colonel Rustam Tashmatov, who is already making use of his newly learned skills in interpreting for defence ministry staff. In line with the defence ministrys request for NATO to assist in improving military education, the pilot course will be extended for a second year. In the same spirit, on 23 March, Ms Puglisi presented a new batch of academic books to the NATO Multimedia Corner in the Armed Forces Academy. Set up in 2015, this is the first NATO Multimedia Corner established in a military higher educational institution of a partner country. Ebola biological weapons developed as early as 1970s Ebola is a GMO that was manufactured on purpose? (NaturalNews) It is only a matter of time before highly advanced biological weapons are unleashed upon humanity, if they haven't been already. Former Soviet scientist Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov says genetically modified (GM) bioweapons made from super-virulent disease strains are par for the course when it comes to advanced weapons systems, and the use of such bioweapons is an ever-present threat.Dr. Alibekov should know -- for years, he served as the First Deputy Director of the Biopreparat, which was the Soviet Union's biological weapons program. What many people might assume to be science fiction is more real than ever, he says, including programs that involve splicing foreign genes into viruses like smallpox in order to make them far more contagious and deadly than they would be otherwise.During a recent segment on PBS, Dr. Alibekov unpacked his native country's approach to developing biological weapons in the past, explaining how they were used as strategic warfare tools, despite the human cost. Though supposedly abandoned in the late 1980s, these weapons programs would not be that difficult to restart, he says, both in Russia and in the U.S."Biological weapons were considered strategic weapons," he stated. "The completely finished and accomplished biological weapons were as follows: smallpox biological weapon, then plague biological weapon, anthrax biological weapon, Venezuelan equine encephalitis biological weapon, tularemia biological weapon, brucellosis biological weapon, and some others."As far back as the 1970s, the Soviet Union was busy trying to develop a weaponized form of Ebola virus, which is chillingly relevant in light of today's world events. The idea that a supposed bat-borne virus, in this case, could be deliberately used by governments to target enemy nations or even enemies of the state is nothing new, maintains Dr. Alibekov"In the 70s and beginning of 80s the Soviet Union started developing new biological weapons--Marburg infection biological weapon, Ebola infection biological weapon, Machupo infection, [or] Bolivian hemorrhagic biological weapon, and some others," claimed Dr. Alibekov.Have these programs really ended? It depends on who you talk to. But the technology is there to produce a bounty of biological weapons in a snap, should the need arise. And research is still taking place to advance this technology and keep up in the arms race, which in this context refers to biological arms rather than traditional weaponry."The problem now is [that] practically all the countries in the world understand that biological weapons are a very serious threat," added Dr. Alibekov during his interview. "A lot of countries are trying to develop biological weapons, and for these countries, the Soviet Union was some kind of role model for developing these weapons, because [it] was able to develop one of the most powerful and sophisticated programs in the world."Corroborating the sordid history of Ebola in particular, Dr. Robert Strecker in his bookexplains how "AIDS-like viruses" were manufactured by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the early 1970s as biological weapons. Such viruses include what we have now been conditioned to accept as Ebola, the mystery disease that supposedly comes from bats."[Dr. Strecker] had confirmed the existence of an American Military-Medical-Industry that conducts biological weapons tests under the guise of administering vaccinations to control diseases and improve the health of 'black Africans overseas,'" wrote Dr. Cyril Broderick, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Liberia's College of Agriculture and Forestry, for Liberia's 'Three-alarm fire' Will anyone be held responsible? (NaturalNews) This is yet another example of how the federal bureaucracy has grown so big and so ubiquitous as to have become unanswerable to the general public and, sadly, Congress.As reported recently by the, the Environmental Protection Agency's top official in the Midwest was aware that the drinking water in Flint, Mich., was likely contaminated, but failed to bring that to the public's attention because she said her hands were tied.The official, Susan Hedman, did not reveal that there was a lack of corrosion controls in the city's water supply , and that probably put residents at risk for lead contamination.The paper noted futher:But, rather than moving with haste to verify concerns or make any corrective moves, federal officials instead opted to push the state agency to action, Hedman EPA's Region 5 administrator told the paper. Further, she said that she had sought a legal opinion about whether her agency could force the state entity to act, but that was not completed until November.State officials would not agree to apply corrosion controls until late July, the paper said. Further, the state DEQ did not admit until October that it had misapplied the federal Lead and Copper Rule regarding water quality oversight.Miguel Del Toral, an EPA water expert, had identified problems with the city's drinking water back in February. He confirmed his findings in April, and then circulated a memo internally in June, detailing the problem. However, Michigan officials only made the decision in October to alter Flint's source of drinking water from the corrosive Flint River back to the Detroit water system, thereported.Critic's of Hedman, however, have accused her of attempting to keep the Del Toral memo within her agency, and not taking it seriously enough.Thereported further:"At that point, you do not just have smoke, you have a three-alarm fire and should respond immediately," Edwards told the paper. He and members of the the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan have gotten their hands on scores of important documents related to the water crisis, via public records requests."There was no sense of urgency at any of the relevant agencies, with the obvious exception of Miguel Del Toral, and he was silenced and discredited," Edwards said.Some five months after being told about the lack of controls, a researcher at Hurley Medical Center in Flint began detecting high levels of lead in city children's blood work . It is known that lead poisoning can cause learning disabilities, and can even lead to seizures, coma and death at higher doses, the paper reported, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Hedman defended the EPA's handling of Flint's water crisis, as you might have expected, saying that her water quality personnel were continually attempting to convince the state agency of the need for corrosion controls, but without success. That, of course, does not explain why she refused to publicize the problem after it was confirmed to have existed.And of course, as in the past , it's a safe bet that no one from the federal government will be held responsible or expected to account for this. Going from bad to worse Not confident about the treatment (NaturalNews) It is a medical mystery that doctors and medical researchers simply cannot understand or figure out.For some reason, a 17-year-old British girl often bleeds from her eyes and ears, a condition that keeps her "always in the house" and, as you might expect, friendless and without much of a social life.As reported by the BBC, the girl, Marnie-Rae Harvey, has seen eye specialists, gynecologists, hematology experts, pediatricians and even neurologists, but none of them, thus far, has a clue about what is going on."It burns and then if it covers the pupils of my eye I can't see," she told the BBC's, adding that the mystery ailment also affects her nose, gums, fingernails, scalp and tongue.Miss Harvey says that the bleeding began when she started coughing up blood in March 2013, a symptom that is horrifying and worrying in and of itself. She said that this symptom continued for a couple more years, but then she awoke in the middle of the night in July 2015 with her face covered in the blood which was seeping from an eye.Her parents called an ambulance, but "the paramedics were just shocked because they've never seen it before," she said."When I got to the hospital they looked in my eye but everything was clear. They can bleed and it can cover my face with blood and in seconds it's just gone completely white back to normal," Miss Harvey added. "I had blood tests and they came back fine."Then, for two more weeks her eyes bled, every day."Then I was in the shop and both my eyes and ears started pouring and then we had to have an ambulance again," she toldMiss Harvey underwent a battery of tests and saw a number of specialists. Testing revealed that she had a weakened immune system, but nothing else was out of the ordinary. Hemolacria is a medical term for tears of blood , but it is a very rare condition. Causes of the phenomenon include injuries, clotting problems and disorders of the tear ducts and glands. Miss Harvey was tested and cleared for each of those conditions.As the bleeding continues, Miss Harvey has essentially had to put her life on hold. She said she was unable to meet requirements to attend college, so she has to miss out on a higher education too, at least for now. And she says that the condition has left her regularly light-headed and lacking energy. She says her arms, legs and bones ache."People just stare and I can only walk so far without being sick," she said. "I was at the hospital the other day and people were trying to take pictures and saying 'urgh' about my face and stuff."What's more, the problems have only worsened recently."The last 12 days it's been bleeding non-stop and everything's been bleeding at once," she said. "Normally it'll bleed for about five minutes then stop for an hour but it's been happening for half an hour and stopping for five minutes. I have to keep getting up in the night but I'm sick every day about five times."Help may be on the way, but it's too soon to know for sure. Also, there are concerns that the cure may be worse, in some ways, than the disease. Doctors have administered an injection called Prostap 3 to stop Miss Harvey's womb from working."I'll be bothered about it but first I want to get this sorted," she said.It will be mid-April before Miss Harvey and her doctors know if the injection has worked. So far, however, she's not optimistic."No, because the injection makes you go through menopause symptoms, I'm going through the symptoms like sweating and mood swings but I'm still bleeding," she said after she was asked if she thought the treatment was working.Next, she will see a skin specialist, but she's not confident that will bring about any new information either."When I'm due on [my period] that's when the bleeding gets worse. The gynaecologists say they'll carry on [testing]," she said. The shills at General Mills General Mills maintains GMOs are safe despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (NaturalNews) After years of public opposition, General Mills has finally caved and will start labeling all its products which contain GMOs The decision wasn't made out of the goodness of General Mills' heart, however. The company has a history of actively opposing GMO labeling . In the past, General Mills donated over $1.1 million to the campaign against Proposition 37 in California, and $695,000 against Proposition 92 in Oregon, both of which would have required the mandatory labeling of GM products The choice to label GM products by General Mills wasn't a choice at all. Instead, it was brought about by a new law set to go into effect in Vermont, which will require the labeling of all foods that contain GMOs.As Jeff Harmening, head of General Mills' U.S. retail operations, wrote in a letter posted on the company's website:"I have been eagerly awaiting a resolution of the GMO labeling debate in Washington and am disappointed that a national solution has still not been reached."As the discussions continue in Washington, one thing is very clear: Vermont state law requires us to start labeling certain grocery store food packages that contain GMO ingredients or face significant fines."We can't label our products for only one state without significantly driving up costs for our consumers and we simply will not do that."The result: consumers all over the U.S. will soon begin seeing words legislated by the state of Vermont on the labels of many of their favorite General Mills products."The announcement was a major victory for consumers, and a major blow to food producers who have taken great strides to deny Americans the basic right to know what is in their food. Approximately 90 percent of Americans are in favor of labeling GM ingredients.The fact that General Mills finally buckled to the will of the people does not absolve the company of its track record against GM labeling. As Mike Adams, the Health Ranger , explained:"Isn't it interesting that General Mills only decided to label GMOs after it was forced to by voters? This is yet another example of a powerful food corporation desperately trying to hide its ingredients from consumers and then only resorting to full transparency after it's facing massive fines for failing to do so. General Mills has no business ethics, and like every large food corporation, it has to be forced into compliance under the threat of financial punishment."It's easy to understand why General Mills has been vitriolically opposed to GM labeling when one considers the nature of their products.reports that General Mills' foods are "chock full of corn, soy, and sugars -- ingredients that are almost always genetically modified in the United States."Despite succumbing to defeat, Harmening maintains that GMOs are perfectly safe. "All sides of this debate, 20 years of research, and every major health and safety agency in the world agree that GMOs are not a health or safety concern," he wrote. "At the same time, we know that some consumers are interested in knowing which products contain GMO ingredients," he added.Of course, these remarks ignore the growing body of scientific literature that undermines the safety of GMO products, as documented byandThe announcement follows in the trail of Campbell Soup's decision in January to label GM products, and the Senate's rejection of Sen. Pat Roberts' Deny Americans the Right to Know Act (or DARK Act), which would have have outlawed state-level GMO labeling laws nationwide.Vermont's new law requiring the mandatory labeling of GM products will go into effect in July. Other states are flirting with similar bills; however, no national GMO labeling law has been set yet. Greenpeace seeking justice against biotech mafia (NaturalNews) In retaliation for its work in exposing the machinations of the biotechnology industry, the environmental group Greenpeace has been subject to illegal probing by the public relations firm representing the world's largest purveyor of chemicals and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) , a lawsuit claims.According to Greenpeace, Ketchum, which represents Monsanto, in concert with Dezenhall Resources, Dow Chemical and Sasol North America , used "unlawful means" to obtain confidential information about the environmental group in an attempt to impede its work of educating the public about the dangers of chemical herbicides like Roundup , as well as GMOs.The lawsuit, which was filed in the Federal District Court in Washington on November 29, 2010, alleges that the biotech cohort hired private investigators to surveil the activities of Greenpeace, a type of payback for Greenpeace's efforts to "expose environmental hazards and improve environmental conditions," which included raising awareness about GMOs and crop chemicals Beginning in 1998, Beckett Brown International (BBI), a private security firm that has since gone defunct, met with Ketchum and the others to brief them about its services, the suit alleges. The companies then tasked BBI with digging into the internal communications, financial reports and campaign plans of Greenpeace in order to derail them.Ketchum allegedly paid BBI a sum of $125,000 between October 1998 and January 2001, and Dezenhall paid the company more than $200,000 during this same time. Ketchum also created the Dow Global Trends Tracking Team, which kept a close eye on the activities of Greenpeace while also working on behalf of the business interests of Dow.A PR firm by the name of Fenton Communications, which works on behalf of groups like Greenpeace to raise awareness about environmental issues, may have also been targeted, the lawsuit alleges. Fenton helped develop a campaign raising awareness about issues related to the use of genetically-engineered seeds.The illegal activity by Ketchum and the others extended so far as to involve theft, the suit claims. Fenton claims that its Washington office was broken into on several occasions over a two-year period, during which several laptop computers were stolen. David Fenton, founder of Fenton Communications, also says that BBI employees were surveilling his home."It's a new low for the PR profession," he stated.The lawsuit seeks compensatory, statutory and punitive damages. Both Dow and Ketchum claimed at the time of its filing that they had not yet been officially served. Jackie Burton, director of corporate communications at Ketchum, toldin a 2010 email that the company had "not formally received the papers yet and, therefore, cannot speak to any of the specifics in the complaint.""We will review it thoroughly and address it in the appropriate venue," she added.Dow also declined to comment, stating that, "we are not in a position to immediately comment about the alleged activities of over a decade ago." Dezenhall and Sasol could not be reached for comment by those working on behalf of the plaintiffs.Greenpeace has since set up a special page that it's dubbed "Spygate," which contains a timeline of events as the lawsuit has progressed. The initial complaint was dismissed back in September 2011, and Greenpeace reportedly refiled the suit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia one month later.Judge Michael Rankin of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia agreed that Greenpeace's claims of trespass and misappropriation of trade secrets are valid, but dismissed four other claims. Greenpeace has since appealed the dismissal of those four counts."[D]efendants stole thousands of documents and conducted unlawful surveillance and theft of confidential information related to Greenpeace's campaigns to protect communities and the environment from extremely toxic chemicals like dioxin ," says Greenpeace. (NaturalNews) The Berlin Wall of vaccine injury denialism is about to crumble. Although every effort is being made by the vaccine establishment to crush and silence the truth about vaccine injuries -- including heavy-handed censorship of the "VAXXED" documentary -- the truth is thatThat fundamental scientific reality has been desperately -- and-- suppressed by the CDC and vaccine pushing propagandists whose pseudoscience dogma infects every powerful institution across a corrupt political regime steeped in medical totalitarianism.In 2014, a top CDC scientist named Dr. William Thompson confessed to taking part in a massive scientific cover-up to alter data that demonstrated a link between vaccines and autism. He not only went public with a statement of confession, he also spoke at length to Dr. Brian Hooker, now regarded as the key investigator in thephenomenon.What follows below is a partial transcript from a series of phone calls that took place between Dr. Brian Hooker and Dr. William Thompson in 2016. Here, you'll learn that the CDC is, yet unless Dr. Thompson is called to testify before Congress (or a federal judge), this secret will likely remain deliberately hidden from public view by a criminal CDC whose tactics of censorship, intimidation and deception more closely resemble a criminal mafia than an institution of science and reason.This transcript is sourced from an extraordinary book that I highly recommend, called Vaccine Whistleblower - Exposing Autism Research Fraud at the CDC by Esq. Kevin Barry and Dr. Boyd E Haley.From the book:Read the rest of this transcript (and transcripts from other recorded calls with Dr. William Thompson) in Vaccine Whistleblower - Exposing Autism Research Fraud at the CDC by Esq. Kevin Barry and Dr. Boyd E Haley. Amidst recent personnel moves, the industry also took pause to reflect upon and celebrate the life of a visionary scientific pioneer. On March 1, Iichiroh Ohhira, Ph.D., developer of world-renowned Dr. Ohhiras Probiotic Formulations (known as OM-X in Japan), passed away after a brief illness. He was 80 years old. This is extremely sad news for everyone at Essential Formulas. I had the privilege of working with Dr. Ohhira for many years and considered him not only a brilliant scientist but also a friend. He was a visionary in the field of microbiology and biochemistry, and his pioneering research developed the first clinically controlled natural fermentation process, thus setting the gold standard for probiotic supplementation worldwide," said Michael Schoor, CEO and president of Essential Formulas Inc. Dr. Ohhira was a true humanitarian who made it his lifes work to positively impact the health of millions of people, thus becoming a champion for a generation who were seeking naturally viable health alternatives." In 1974, Ohhira founded Bio Activity Research & Development Center in Okayama, Japan, later known as BioBank. Through his research, he discovered Enterococcus faecalis TH-10, a strain whose proteolytic power was 6.25 stronger than other lactic acid bacteria (LAB) known to science. This strain became the foundation of Ohhiras award-winning formulations. This discovery, along with his research in LAB earned Ohhira a series of prestigious awards. He received the Presidential Citation from Philippine Medical Association and was named a GUSI Peace Prize winner, often referred to as the Philippines version of the Nobel Peace Prize. Ohhira once stated, Each capsule is filled with our passion and hope for bringing health and long life to all 7 billion people on the earth. We make our product with not only proven scientific protocol, but tender care through the power of fermentation, inspired through natures blessings and the mighty lactic acid bacteria." Continuing to lead the company is CEO Masumi Ohhira; lead research scientist and Dr. Ohhiras protege, Dr. Muneaki Takahata, Ph.D., and his team of researchers; and Hiroaki Takahata, who oversees marketing operations in Japan and other regions. In reflecting on Ohhiras life and contributions, his colleagues express their gratitude to an exceptional man who gave everything to his company and his passion. According to his utmost wishes, the company will continue to pursue and expand the exciting adventure that he initiated in 1974. Click the following link for a full list of Ohhiras accomplishments. Aker BioMarine, a leading supplier of krill-derived products to the consumer health and wellness and animal nutrition markets, has hired two new employees at its company headquarters in Norway. Cilia Holmes Indahl, the company's new director of sustainability, will further develop and implement the company's sustainability strategy while working with key stakeholders and non-government organizations (NGOs) interested in krill and Antarctica. During the past few years, Indahl has held several positions dedicated to sustainable development and climate change in Norway and abroad. She holds masters degrees in sustainable development and international business. Katrin Berntsen, Aker BioMarine's new director of communications, will be responsible for managing and directing the company's internal and external communications. Passionate, creative and organized, Berntsen brings more than 15 years of experience specializing in messaging strategy, product launches, crisis communications and more. Prior to joining Aker BioMarine, she managed communications for Wilhelmsen Ships Service and Opera Software. She holds a masters degree in European politics and a bachelors degree in media. "At a time when sustainability should be considered a major component of a company's DNA, it is essential to have a director, like Cilia, who can successfully implement the best strategy possible for our business," stated Matts Johansen, CEO, Aker BioMarine. Equally important is a communications director, like Katrin, who has the ability to properly communicate key messages about our company inside and outside of our business. We look forward to having them both continue to push Aker BioMarine in a positive direction." Klockner Pentaplast, a global leader in rigid plastic film and packaging solutions, announced it has appointed Brent Jones as CFO and Peter Heinze as COO with immediate effect. Jones has broad experience as a financial executive with specific strengths in the chemical industry. Prior to joining Klockner Pentaplast, he served as interim CFO at Pall Corp., where he had advanced through several senior finance leadership roles of increasing responsibility in the areas of treasury, investor relations, financial planning and analysis and corporate development. Previously, Jones was managing director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He holds a degree in biochemistry and Asian studies from Dartmouth College as well as a law degree from Yale Law School. Markus Hoelzl, who served as Klockner Pentaplasts managing director and CFO for the past seven years, decided to step down from his positions, effective immediately. During his tenure, Klockner Pentaplasts group sales grew from 1.1 billion to 1.3 billion and EBITDA increased from 113 million to 217 million. In 2012, Hoelzl led the recapitalization process that enabled Klockner Pentaplasts acquisition by SVP. The board of Klockner Pentaplast thanks Hoelzl for his contribution and wishes him every success in the future. New COO Heinze will be responsible for leading Klockner Pentaplasts global operations, including supply chain, manufacturing, quality and procurement. His main focus will be on enhancing the customer experience by driving quality improvements, decreasing lead times and reducing costs. Heinze brings extensive experience in plastics, chemicals, and industrial companies and has a proven track record of driving innovation and improving operational performance in the areas of production, procurement, supply chain, quality and technology. In his last role, he was CEO of the Galley Division of Zodiac Aerospace Group, a world leader in aerospace equipment and systems for commercial aircraft. Heinze has a masters degree in materials from Delft University of Technology. In addition, he is certified as a Six Sigma Black Belt and speaks English, Dutch, German and French. Former CTO Marc Setzen assumed the newly created position of chief engineering officer. He will provide strategic direction on industry technology trends Klockner Pentaplast should follow. As a thought leader, he will represent the company externally as a technology expert. Commenting on the news, Wayne M. Hewett, the groups CEO, said: "Im confident that the organizational realignments announced today, along with the recent additions of Rick Widden, Bryan Koeppl and Sandra Martinez, strengthen our management team, to help us attain the customer centric and growth goals were aiming for." The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization or Unesco is tasked to protect and preserve 229 Unesco heritage sites worldwide. However, according to a recent report by WWF, 114 out of 229 of these heritage sites are at risk due to irresponsible industrial activities. Unesco considers the world's heritage sites as a legacy from the past generations so they aim to preserve these areas to the best of their abilities. The heritage sites at risk include Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in Peru. In the U.S., the Everglades National Park is in trouble too, according to the World Heritage List. According to the organization that these cultural and natural heritages are both "irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration." According to WWF's report titled "Protecting People through Nature," 50 percent of the list is at risk due to irresponsibly performed industrial activities. "When conducted at a large-scale in or surrounding protected areas, industrial activities can cause substantial, even permanent, damage to those sites, and can affect their ability to provide long-term support for local communities," it said. Activities such as mining and logging continue to threaten these sites. Marco Lambertini, WWF International director general, said: "This is staggering. We're trying to raise a flag here...We're not opposing development; we're opposing badly planned development," in an interview with Reuters. WWF said we should not take nature for granted as more than 11 million people depend on the heritage sites for food, water, shelter and medicine. Globally, more historical sites are at risk from the destruction caused by human beings. This alarming situation urged the WWF to plead the United Nations to declare world heritage sites as "no-go areas for oil and gas exploration, mines, unsustainable timber production and overfishing," according to a report. With the problem already recognized, what can we do to lessen the threat to these heritage sites? WWF said they are not against development and industrial activities but they condemn illegal and irresponsible practices. Heritage sites are instruments of sustainable development. The organization is also pushing for a responsible and sustainable economic developments and for enterprises to avoid "short-term revenue generation" that are harmful to the environment. Risk awareness is also very important so that the people, not just the industrial developers, are made aware of the conditions, threats and consequences of irresponsible activities near heritage sites. WWF presented a 5-point plan to further preserve the world heritage sites and now calls for the help of the United Nations to implement them. These plans include: 1. Valuation that is socially conscious 2. Investment decisions that focus on long-term value 3. Governance that is representative of all beneficiaries 4. Policy-making that is evidence-based and that is transparent 5. Regulations that is enforced and followed San Francisco homeowners got a surprise Thursday morning when they woke up to find a coyote lounging on their front lawn, one of a string of such sightings in the city. The coyote ran away as soon as animal control officers showed up in the Balboa Terrace neighborhood, the homeowners said. But it left behind a mess. Garbage cans were knocked over, and residents think the animal was looking for food. On April 4, a coyote was spotted on a San Francisco elementary playground. And in March, San Francisco residents held a meeting to complain about overly agressive coyotes. The chief of Chicagos Aviation Police, target of an overwhelming no-confidence vote by his own officers, announced his abrupt departure Friday, telling those officers that moving forward, they should always be positive, and not dwell on the negative. After repeated inquiries, the Emanuel administration insisted Chief Richard Edgeworth had not resigned, but rather had chosen to return to his previous post in the Chicago Fire Department. We commend Chief Edgeworth for his years of service and his steadfast dedication to safety and security for travelers and employees at both of Chicagos airports, Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans said in a statement. His leadership and commitment to emergency preparedness and training strengthened partnerships at the airlines and over 30 local, state, and federal agencies at OHare and Midway International Airports. Veteran officers in the OHare and Midway force argued it was that commitment to training which sparked a 96 percent no-confidence vote last year. The officers bristled at a department policy which forbade them to carry weapons, even though they were required to take mandatory weapons training and qualify on the weapons they were not allowed to use. Matt Brandon, secretary-treasurer of Service Employees Union Local 73, which represents the officers, called the relationship between his members and the outgoing chief contentious. The union was of the mind that aviation police officers needed to be armed in this day of high threat to airports, and the chief thought that they shouldnt be armed, he said. We wish him well in his new job. Brandon noted the officers were trained by the Chicago Police Department at the Police Academy and that that they had to re-qualify annually. Under Chief Edgeworth there was a TSA training that they were committed to taking and following that required that they run and hide until the threat level was over, Brandon said. We think that our officers are endangered, theyre uniformed, so any threat would recognize them immediately, and they would be the initial target. Thinking that they would have the opportunity to run and hide is just unimaginable. In his letter to officers, Edgeworth thanked them for welcoming him into the airport family. It has truly been an honor and privilege to serve, he said. As a team, we have demonstrated day-in and day-out why our Chicago Airport system is the best. Go to work every day with a smile on your face because you love what you are doing, Edgeworth said. It is OK to disagreeRespect everyones input and work towards a joint resolution. Never hold a grudge. Edgeworth asked the officers to welcome a new Managing Deputy Commissioner of Safety and Security, Lydia Beairsto. Last year in a high level dustup, one of those officers was briefly detained by Chicago Police, when he came to work with a holster attached to his belt. A Chicago Police lieutenant allegedly ordered that the aviation officer be stopped and questioned about whether he had a weapon. When he responded that he did not, the union said that the lieutenant ordered that the officers Department of Aviation vehicle be searched. No weapon was discovered. In an angry letter to then-superintendent Garry McCarthy, Brandon said airport officers had worked together with CPD officers, and have never been treated as common criminals. This breach of confidence in the men and women of the Aviation Police Department has severely damaged a working relationship, that has been established over years of cooperation between the two departments, Brandon said. After that incident last September, CPD spokesman Andrew Guglielmi said the Chicago officers had only done what they should do in any incident where a firearm is potentially involved. By law, CPD is the only policing authority at the airport that can be armed with a gun, he said. At the end of the day, an officer had a holster on him. We have an obligation to search for that gun, Guglielmi said. If it ends up in a secure area, were accountable for that. It was that incident which sparked the no-confidence vote, OHare officers charging that Edgeworth had failed to back to back them up. Brandon indicated that he has asked members of the city council to provide legislation which would allow the arming of the aviation officers. Aviation Department spokesman Owen Kilmer said there no plans to change that policy. As city-owned airports, the Chicago Police Department is the primary law enforcement agency at OHare and Midway International Airports, Kilmer said in an emailed statement. The Aviation Security Officers play an important, supplementary role in keeping OHare and Midway safe by overseeing access points throughout the airports. Thanks to the hard work of all the security officers who help keep OHare and Midway safe, and the current security structure in place, violent crime incidents at OHare and Midway are extremely lowensuring that the millions of passengers who fly through Chicago each year feel secure at the airports. Beairsto previously served as the Airport Security Manager for the Port Authority of New York, and as Director of Public Safety and Security for the Airports Council International-North America. Her Linked-In profile lists a Bachelor of Science degree from Lewis University in Romeoville, with a major concentration in Airport Administration. An ad released Thursday by Rep. Tammy Duckworth features an excerpt from an interview with Sen. Mark Kirk in which he says it is unlikely that the Senate will will move forward with confirmation hearings for President Barack Obamas Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. The ad centers around comments Kirk made on Big John Howells radio show last month. Knowing what you know about the political environment and the hyper-partisan world that you have to work in, do you ever think we will have any sort of hearings on Judge Merrick Garland, or is it a foregone conclusion that this is just kind of DOA, Howell asks at the beginning of the ad. In his response, Kirk cites the unified front of Republican Senators, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who staunchly oppose holding confirmation hearings for Garland. I think that given Mitchs view, I dont see his view changing too much, Kirk responded. You know, eventually we have an election and we will have a new president. The new president will obviously come forward with a nomination and thats all for the politics of a new time. The ad then flips to a video from NBC Chicago wherein Kirk says he certainly would support Trump if he won the Republican presidential nomination. The ads final title card asks, is it a surprise that the current president endorsed Duckworth for Senate? In any event, last month in Washington, Kirk became the first Republican senator to meet with Garland. He previously told his Republican colleagues to man up and cast a vote on the nominee. Obama later thanked Kirk for meeting with Garland. Republican Senator Kirk wants to have it both ways, but beyond the photo-op and poll-tested rhetoric this much is clear: the position of his party and his leader is that Donald Trump should pick the next Supreme Court justice instead of President Obama, Duckworth deputy campaign manager Matt McGrath said in a statement. Senator Kirk said it himself: Mitch McConnell wont allow hearings or a vote on the Garland nomination, and the next President will decide. The ads implication seems to be that, despite his meeting with Garland and his call for a vote, Kirk is accepting of Republicans holding out for the next president to make the SCOTUS nomination. Like most Illinoisans, Tammy Duckworth thinks this is unacceptable, and that President Obama should be allowed to carry out his constitutional duty, McGrath added. Loyal Republican Mark Kirk, on the other hand, is just fine with Donald Trump picking the next Supreme Court Justice. Kirks team reacted unfavorably to the campaign, calling Duckworth's tactics ineffective. "The Duckworth campaign's tactic of 'noun + verb + Trump' has been called misleading and a cheap shot, and we would add ineffective to that criticism, Kirk campaign manager Kevin Artl told Ward Room. The Illinois Senate race is now a statistical tie, with Senator Kirk demonstrating strong support from independent voters across Illinois while Rep. Duckworth struggles to justify out-of-touch national security positions like allowing 200,000 unsafely vetted Syrian refugees into the U.S." Last month, Rep. Tammy Duckworth launched her 112 Days of Trump campaign aimed at tying incumbent Sen. Mark Kirk to Republican presidential frontrunner. A separate ad released as part of the campaign's launch features Kirks aforementioned statements followed by a barrage of incendiary claims made by Trump. When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best, Trump said during the announcement of his campaign last June. Theyre bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists. But, Kirk publicly disavowed these statements and distanced himself from Trumps foreign policy in a conversation with John Gregory last June. In a typical Chicago way, to my Mexican-American friends, I would say, Donald Trump callate- shut up, Kirk said. The ad also features a clip of Trump denigrating Sen. John McCains military service last July. Hes not a war hero, Trump says. Hes a war hero because he was captured. I like people that werent captured, okay? Kirk quickly condemned these comments on Twitter last July. My friend [McCain] is a true #hero and a great American, Kirk said. The ad also features clips of Chicagos canceled Trump rally that erupted in violence earlier this month. In addition to this, it features clips of Trump questioning President Barack Obamas birth certificate. Trump and Kirk, the ads final title cards read. Making America Great? Kirk and Duckworth are slated to face-off in the Nov. 8 general election. The race is widely considered to be one of the nations most highly contested Senate races. A firefighter was injured Friday morning when a small fire broke out at U.S. Cellular Field, just hours before the Chicago White Soxs home opener. Fire crews were called to the South Side stadium just before 2:30 a.m. after a fire started in a first-floor storage room, officials said. By 3 a.m. the fire was contained by the sprinkler system. One firefighter was transported to Mercy Hospital and Medical Center to treat non-life threatening injuries, according to the Chicago White Sox's vice president of community relations Christine O'Reilly. Festivities for the team's home opener will not be impacted. "We're ready to open and ready for a ballgame today," O'Reilly said. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Gov. Bruce Rauner penned an article Wednesday calling on Illinois legislators to work together towards a bipartisan solution to the states budget issues. Illinois has been without a budget since July of last year. The impasse has been typified by an ongoing battle between Rauner and his Democratic counterparts over his pro-business Turnaround Agenda. Illinois lawmakers reconvened in Springfield this week following a March break, although there is no legislation on the docket slated for committee hearings related to the state's budget impasse. Rauner voiced a pressing need to begin negotiations immediately on a bipartisan, balanced budget that consists of reforms, cost reductions and revenue. We have all been disappointed in the lack of action on the crises facing our state, Rauner said. Now is the opportunity to put partisan differences aside and work together on solutions for the people of Illinois. He is now calling for meetings between the state's top legislative leaders- Republican Senate Minotiry Leader Christine Radogno, Republican House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, Democratic Senate President Tom Cullerton and Democratic Speaker of the House Mike Madigan- after claiming for weeks that such meetings would be unproductive. In Rauner's piece, he called on his colleagues to create a short-term plan for the issues facing the states higher education and social services. He also called for a long term plan to create a balanced budget coupled with reforms to grow the economy. Rauner also touched on House and Senate legislation dedicated to funding the Monetary Award Program. This legislation would help to alleviate the financial burden on beleaguered public colleges and universities. The lack of MAP funding for the Illinois' public colleges and universities has cost the state over $72 million, according to data provided by the schools. Last month, the Illinois Institute of Technology asked students to repay money they received during the fall semester. This week, Columbia University announced that they would not fund MAP grants for the 2016-17 school year. The governor also called for the consideration of bipartisan proposals to aid other beleaguered state public colleges and universities like Chicago State, Eastern Illinois, Western Illinois and Harper College. In addition to this, Rauner proposed using pension reform to fund vital services. These spending proposals arent empty promisies- they are linked to key government reforms that generate taxpayer savings; and they would provide universities, community colleges, students and providers the assurances they need to plan for the months ahead, Rauner said. But, Rauner insisted that continuing to pass spending bills that cant be funded gives false hope to Illinoisans and simply exacerbates the original problem. He also touched on the need to bolster state support for K-12 schools and to fix the funding formula. Although, Rauner admits that it will take time to bring together all the parties to negotiate a long-term, fair and equitable agreement, the governor alluded to a plan to increase funding for next year. Democratic state Sen. Andy Manar introduced a revamped proposal for the state's school funding formula. The plan would allow education funding to rely less on property taxes and would ensure that no school districts lose money. "Much of what we are proposing in our new bill are ideas and concepts the governor has traveled the state and has talked about extensively," Manar said at a news conference. Rauner's administration said it would review Manar's latest proposal. Rauner concluded his piece, admitting that the impasse has lasted long enough and that it will take bipartisan effort to create a balanced budget for the state. It certainly wont be easy, but lets be optimistic and persistent so that we can get this done- we owe it to the people we serve, Rauner said. Lets get to work. Two turkeys have crashed into windshields on different Connecticut highways on Friday. The most recent incident happened on Interstate 91 north, in the area of exit 47W in Enfield. The first incident today this morning on Interstate 84 East in Tolland, near exit 68. Neither driver was hurt. On Thursday, state police responded to a turkey strutting on Interstate 95 in Darien, which slowed down traffic on the southbound side of the highway. This is turkey breeding season, which typically starts in late March and early April, with toms gobbling and displaying for the hens. An adult male eastern wild turkey can grow to 48-inches and can weigh between 15 and 25 pounds, while a female turkey can reach 36 inches and 8 and 12 pounds, according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. They can fly several miles each day. State police have seized a date rape drug, methamphetamine and other drug paraphernalia after serving a search warrant on a vehicle they seized after a traffic stop on March 3. State troopers said they stopped the black SUV at 3:20 p.m. on Interstate 84 East because it was not in its lane. A trooper saw the driver get off the highway at exit 71 Willington and said it did not stop at the stop sign, so they stopped traffic it. Police identified the driver as Rhiannon Welch, 38, of Brunswick, Maine, and the passenger as Wesley St. Pierre, 34, of Kittery Point. Welch allowed troopers to search the SUV and they found drug paraphernalia and marijuana in the vehicle, as well as a large amount of suspected methamphetamine, police said. State Police K-9 "Captain" and his handler TFC Stankosky arrived at the scene, conducted a search and found around $2,200 in luggage suspected to be profits from narcotic sales. Police said they also found half an ounce of suspected methamphetamine in the vehicle, along with prescription medication, marijuana, paraphernalia and packaging materials. Police also found a locked safe in the vehicle and will be applying for a search warrant to open it. During processing, police found St. Pierre with a credit card that did not belong to him, police said. Both were held on $200,000 bonds and are due in Rockville District Court on March 7. St. Pierre was charged with possession of methamphetamine, possession with intent to sell methamphetamine, conspiracy to commit possession with Intent to sell, possession of less than 4 ounces of marijuana, failure to keep prescription in proper container, possession of drug paraphernalia and identity theft. Welch was charged with possession of methamphetamine, possession with intent to sell methamphetamine, conspiracy to commit possession with Intent to sell and possession of less than 4 ounces of marijuana. Police said they seized 1.25 ounces of methamphetamine, 15 vials of suspected GHB, which is a date rape drug; approximately one half liter of additional GHB; narcotics packaging material/narcotics paraphernalia and $100 in cash. Police said the Rockville States Attorney was made aware of the findings and additional charges will be added. The mayor of Hartford spoke to NBC Connecticut's Troubleshooters after the resignation of a school administrator over allegations he inappropriately texted a teenager. School officials said Eduardo Genao, the district's executive director for compliance, was forced to resign on Tuesday. Mayer Luke Bronin said these types of allegations will not be tolerated. "I am extraordinarily disappointed in anybody who worked in any capacity for the city of Hartford - especially for the Board of Education - who could be capable of undermining a child," Bronin told NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters. Bronin said he is still gathering details on the criminal police investigation that prompted Genao to abruptly resign. Last month, allegations surfaced that Genao had inappropriately texted an out-of-state 13-year-old he met in March at a Board of Education seminar at Bulkeley. "As soon as superintendent became aware she immediately took action to remove the person and the individual already under investigation by law enforcement," Bronin said. The mayor said he's grateful Dr. Aaron Lewis, a local literacy and children's advocate, reached out to both school administrators and police about the allegations. Lewis said he did not get the appropriate response from the superintendent's Chief of Staff and no response from Richard Wareing, the Board of Education chairman. "It's sad that the Board of Education-- their system is set up (so) they don't take parents seriously, teachers seriously and they don't take advocates seriously," Lewis told NBC Connecticut's Troubleshooters. The girl's mother told NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters that the conversations between the administrator and her daughter got out of control. Lewis said he was contacted by the child's mother from New York. She said the text messages started innocently enough but grew to be more concerning. "He was asking about high school and college she said," the mother told NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters in an exclusive interview. "We work so hard as parents to keep your children away, from even children their age exposed to things like this, much less for someone entrusted with the lives of children whose supposed to be advocating for children and this is what hes doing. And then disgusted with board of education. NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters reached out to Genao and his attorney for comment. Hartford Police said no charges have been filed but their investigation is on-going. As of now, Genao is still eligible to receive his retirement after resigning from his $176,000 salaried job. "We have no control over his retirement," a district spokesman said. "He is part of the teachers retirement system, which is controlled by the teachers retirement board." The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas was being transformed Thursday into a free medical clinic that will see more than 1,000 patients on Saturday. "We're turning the convention center into the world's largest doctor's office," said Nicole Lamoureaux, organizer with the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics. "We know we can see another thousand patients if we had 30 more providers." Dallas County has among the highest rates in the country of people without health insurance. "They, in spite of best efforts, truly want to pay for care and believe that is their own family value, but they can't afford it," explained Larry Robins, who has a clinic in Dallas and is chairman of the board of the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics. Robins' PediPlace clinic in Dallas sees primarily Medicare and uninsured patients. "The anxiety coming into the office if you're not insured, it's overwhelming," said Mickea Jackson, whose son, Elijah, goes to the clinic regularly to be treated for asthma and severe allergies. Elijah was among the estimated 29 percent of Dallas County residents without health insurance when he first moved to Dallas. Now, Jackson says her son is covered by Medicaid, but she knows the shame and struggle anyone coming to the free clinic faces. "Those are my neighbors. Those are the people that my son goes to school with. These are my family members," Jackson explained. "The pressure is overwhelming for them." Saturday's free clinic, called Dallas C.A.R.E (Communities are Responding Everyday), is meant to take away some of that pressure, so patients don't have to choose between seeing a doctor and paying a utility bill. "'Because there but by the grace of God go I,'" Lamoureaux pointed out. "Because at any point, our health could be taken away from us." The NAFC Free Clinic runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 9. Appointments are filled, but walk-ins are welcome. Doctors or nurses wishing to volunteer can go to www.2016dallascare.com. You can read more on the events Facebook page here. While many people are beginning to make beach plans, the kind of plans that rev up following Memorial Day Weekend, few probably guessed that their June trip to the ocean would involve a mermaid. And a beloved, plucky, thingamabob-collecting mermaid at that. It's Ariel we quite obviously refer to here, and her songs and stories are headed for a two-night run at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday, June 3 and Saturday, June 4. Are we talking about "The Little Mermaid", as in the ever-always-popular 1989 Disney movie? Yes, the animated classic will screen, but as a cinematic complement to a host of live performances happening concurrently with the film. Sara Bareilles will fill the shoes -- and, initially, tail -- of Ariel, while Rebel Wilson will take the inimitable role of Ursula. Darren Criss is the prince, Tituss Burgess is Sebastian, and Norm Lewis will star as King Triton. Who's Flounder? Why that's Joshua Colley, and John Stamos will play Sebastian's culinary nemesis, Chef Louis. With a starry bill like that, a sold-out show is expected. Or make that "shows," rather; Disney Concerts added the June 4 evening just hours after the June 4 performance was announced. Tickets go on sale for the Andrew Hewitt & Bill Silva Presents shows at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 10. Mr. Alan Mencken, the composer for the film, will make a cameo, and a full orchestra and choir will lend the royal, ocean-to-land fairy tale oomph. Will there be fireworks? This is the Hollywood Bowl, and this is a Disney film and presentation, so a sparkly sky show should be expected. Will there be a costume contest? Again, Hollywood Bowl and Disney? There shall be outlandish outfits galore. But what duo is willing to dress as Flotsam and Jetsam? Somebody please go the fashion distance for Ursula's hissing hench-eels. If seeing live performances of Disney's animated hits is your thing, stay tuned: "Frozen" makes its Hyperion Theatre debut in August at Disney California Adventure. The movie will not play alongside, do note, but actors will take on the roles of Anna, Elsa, and all their pals. Lava Mae, a bus that provides showers and other basic hygiene services for the homeless, will soon expand its route. Founder Doniece Sandoval launched the San Francisco nonprofit last summer. She currently brings the buses to various San Francisco locations Mondays through Saturdays. The vehicles are old diesel buses from MUNI that were donated. A rep for the company told Hoodline that Lava Mae will land at the DMV in San Francisco this weekend, where its services will be available from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. every Saturday. The new location will also see the debut of a new shower trailer with three shower heads that will be available for people to take showers. The young woman found dead and stuffed inside a suitcase discovered in downtown San Diego Wednesday is 21 years old, homicide investigators with the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) confirm. On Thursday, police said they had identified the victim of the grisly killing, though her name was being withheld until investigators could notify her family. The womans name will be released by the San Diego County Medical Examiners (ME) office. The young womans body was found inside a black suitcase just after 11 a.m. near the 1300 block of 7th Avenue and A Street downtown. Police said a man who lives in the area saw the suitcase on the ground and walked over to check it out. He looked at it, determined that it looked a little suspicious and thats when he called police, SDPD Lt. Ray Valentin said Wednesday. That man, a retired U.S. Navy service member named Phil, spoke with NBC 7 about the disturbing discovery. He preferred not to give his full name and was understandably shaken, still fighting to get the gruesome images out of his mind. Phil told NBC 7 there are a lot of homeless people in his neighborhood and he often sees them rummaging through trash cans in the area where he found the suitcase. Residents keep their trash cans there and when Phil first noticed the suitcase, he figured it had been left behind by a transient. I was taking out my trash, I saw the trash can down and I saw the suitcase there and it was close to our building. I was basically picking it up to get it out of the way, he said. Thats when I realized it was a lot more there than what I thought I was looking at." Phil knew something was terribly wrong when he spotted human hair peeking out of the zipper of the luggage.. I dropped [the suitcase] and looked down and saw hair, black hair coming out...because it was zipped up, but you could still see the hair, he said. Phil called authorities and SDPD detectives launched a homicide investigation. No details have yet been released on the womans cause or manner of death. At this point, the date of the womans death is also unclear. The MEs report has not been finalized. On Thursday, Phil told NBC 7 he was "still processing" the shocking ordeal. Basically, [Im] just replaying what happened. I was wondering what was going on? Who was she? What happened? Phil said. Theres no way you are ready for something like that; to see something like that. Phil said he feels terrible for the womans family. I feel so sorry for the parents, he lamented. No person deserves that type of ending. Thats going to be an image that I thats going to be on my mind for a while. You dont erase that. Its a person, he added, visibly upset. I have a mother, a sister, family friends that I love. No one deserves to be thrown out with the trash like that. Phil said hes heard of things like this happening in major cities but said that seeing something like this up close is different and more horrifying than he couldve ever imagined. Anyone with information on this case can call the SDPDS Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477. As of 3 p.m. Thursday, no arrests had been made in connection with this case. An inmate who escaped from a minimum-security facility in Southern California earlier this week has been captured north of San Diego County, officials confirmed. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDRC) said escaped inmate Bobby Gleason, 37, was taken into custody Thursday afternoon in Vista a community about 42 miles north of downtown San Diego. Public information officer Robert Kelsey, of the Sierra Conservation Center, told NBC 7 Gleason was arrested by CDRC officers at around 6:30 p.m. after a short foot pursuit. Kelsey said Gleason will be transferred back to Ventura County and referred for prosecution for the escape through the Ventura County District Attorneys Office. According to the CDRC, Gleason disappeared from the Ventura Conservation Camp #46 in Camarillo, California, Wednesday. Staffers discovered he was missing around 11:30 p.m. that night. Staffers searched the inmate dormitory area, surrounding buildings and the camp perimeter for Gleason, but he was nowhere to be found. They alerted local law enforcement agencies of the inmates escape, the CDRC said, and efforts were launched to find and apprehend Gleason. He was described as a white male, 5-foot-10 and 160 pounds, with a shaved head, blue eyes and a mustache and goatee. He was last seen wearing grey sweats/shorts and a white T-shirt. He was also described as having multiple tattoos on his neck, hands, arms, legs and torso. Officials said Gleason was committed to CDRC to serve nine years for crimes in San Diego County, including burglary as a second-time offender. Before his escape, he was scheduled to be released on Aug. 6, 2019. According to the CDRC, the Ventura Camp facility was originally built in 1989 to house approximately 110 co-ed wards. The camp closed in December 2012, but reopened two years later housing only male inmates. The facility is maintained by both the CDRC and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL Fire). All inmates at Ventura Camp are required to work and are paid for their labor, earning between $1.45 and $2.56 per day, depending on their skill level. Skilled inmates include mechanics, clerks, cooks, plumbers, welders, carpenters and electricians. Inmates can also work as fire crew, if they complete training at the Sierra Conservation Center led by both the CDRC and CAL Fire personnel. Inmates who work as part of the fire crew can earn up to $1 per hour. Money earned by the inmates at the camp is placed into a trust account for their use, according to the CDRC. Inmates can use their money to buy items at the camp canteen, send it home to their family or save it until theyre released to parole. Ventura Conservation Camp is located at 2800 Wright Road in Camarillo, which is about 154 miles north of Vista where Gleason was arrested. Officials said that of all offenders who have escaped since 1977 from a CDRC adult institution, camp or community-based program, 98.7 percent have ultimately been apprehended. If you're planning a trip on the newest cruises to Cuba, you might want to read the fine print. If you're Cuban-born and living in the United States, there are some major restrictions. Fathom Travel, Carnival Corporation's small ship line, will soon offer seven-day cruises to three cities in Cuba. Sounds alluring, doesn't it? Not everyone can hop aboard the cruises. There's a controversy brewing over a current Cuban law. "Cuba has decided that any Cuban, even if you have a passport with a visa to go back to Cuba, they will not let you come in on a cruise line and unfortunately, the American cruise line companies have accepted it," explained Wilfredo Allen, immigration attorney. Carnival Corp. and Fathom Travel were granted permission to operate the first cruises from the U.S. to Cuba, but there's an issue. They currently have to abide by a Cuban government law, which does not allow Cuban-born individuals living in the United States and elsewhere, to travel to the island by any sea vessel. "We have the same cruise lines, they travel to Turkey, they travel to Saudi Arabia, they travel to Qatar. What happens if Qatar or Dubai decide that no American of Jewish decent could disembark in Qatar? What happens if they decide an African-American born in South Africa during the Apartheid period could not disembark in South Africa? They would never accept it," Allen said. Many Cuban-Americans told NBC 6 they believe it's unfair. "I think that's a little bit of discrimination in a way because, I mean, I was born here so why do I have the opportunity of going and people that were born there can't go?" said Alexander Jaime, who was born in Miami to Cuban parents. Allen is open to travel with Cuba but disagrees with this policy. "Cruise lines that are coming out of Miami that literally have hundreds of Cuban-Americans working with them, all of a sudden have bowed down and accepted the rules that the Cuban government has issued," he said. A spokesperson for Carnival Corp. recognized the issue and released this statement saying, in part: "Cuba has a longstanding regulation that no Cuban-born individuals are allowed to travel from the U.S. to Cuba by ship. This regulation applies to all cruise lines, ferries and any form of shipping planning to travel to Cuba. We understand and empathize with the concerns being voiced and will continue to work the issue with Cuban officials. It is our hope and intention that we will be able to travel with everyone." The Carnival Fathom brand will start operating the first cruises from Miami to Cuba on May 1, 2016. by Dr. Ian Kupkee As the days grow longer and the temperatures rise, South Floridas free-roaming cats have just one thing on their minds. This is when our clinic starts fielding frantic phone calls and emails that begin along the lines of, So I found these kittens...what do I do? Before you take on the project of hand-rearing a litter of kittens, its wise to discuss some of the things you shouldnt do. The first decision you will need to make is whether or not you need to intervene at all. So before I get to the list of dos, lets go over some of the donts. Dont assume the kittens have been abandoned by their mother When we find a mewling, helpless litter on our property or in a public place, the urge to jump in and save them can be very powerful. However, its important to note that like their wild counterparts, free-roaming cats must forage and hunt for their food. As a matter of necessity, mother cats must leave their kittens alone for several hours at a time. If you come across a litter, and mom is nowhere is sight, observe the litter from a safe distance for about three hours. Since we are all busy, its a good idea to enlist the help of some friends, and do this in shifts. If the mother cat returns, leave the family in peace - for now. Youll want to check in on them periodically to ensure nothing happens to mom, but if there is a mother cat in the picture, it is wise to let her nurse them until they are weaned. This usually happens at about eight weeks of age. Dont intervene without a plan Kittens generally do not begin eating solid food until they are about six to seven weeks old. Until then, they must be bottle fed every three to four hours. And without putting too fine a point on it, the other end of each kitten must be cared for as well! A cotton ball moistened with warm water must be gently rubbed over each kittys nether region to activate the process of eliminating waste. Mama cats do this with their tongues, so it could be worse...but joking aside, hand-raising kittens is a lot of work. While it is not nearly as rigorous as caring for a newborn baby, some of the same rules apply. A strict feeding schedule must be followed, including throughout the night. Plans may have to change, schedules rearranged, and baby-sitters must be found if your plans are set in stone. Dont assume Somebody will take them off your hands In the magical land of money trees and lollipop forests, there lives an elusive creature of myth named Somebody. If you scoop up an abandoned litter thinking Somebody will take care of them, you may be in for a rude awakening. Shelters may be full, rescues may be maxed out, and while veterinarians are usually happy to help, our hospitals can be dangerous places for neonatal kittens. The same holds true for animal shelters. Both see sickness and disease on a daily basis, and the immune systems of bottle-feeding kittens are practically non-existent. Unless the facility has an isolation ward, and is staffed around the clock, they will probably not admit your foundling litter. While this may seem counterintuitive, the best place for a litter of neonatal kittens is anyplace but a shelter or a veterinary facility. By all means, hit them up for advice, resources and discounted care, but dont be surprised by no bottle babies policies. As my wife is fond of saying, A synonym for Somebody is You. Dont drop them off somewhere in the middle of the night! Forget about the fact that its inexcusably selfish and inconsiderate. Its also horribly inhumane! If youre thinking of leaving the litter on the big-hearted cat ladys porch, that nice big property in horse country, the parking lot of your local animal shelter, or the doorstep of your kindly neighborhood veterinarian, know this - the kittens you saved are likely to be dead by the time they are found. Between dehydration, hypothermia, hypoglycemia, and predation by wildlife, these little souls dont stand a chance. Because this is an act of animal cruelty, it is also illegal. Most veterinary hospitals - including ours - are tricked out with more hidden cameras than Fort Knox. If you think we wont turn the tapes over to the police, think again. You are not doing the right thing for these animals. You are killing them. Dont skimp on formula The only formula I personally recommend is Kitten Milk Replacer or KMR. The powdered version is a better value, and will give you greater flexibility if you need to experiment with consistencies. The cheap brands are cheap for a reason. As your kittens begin the weaning process, you will begin to thicken it with solid foods. So dont be alarmed by the rate at which your litter initially consumes formula. In a pinch (as defined by, nothing is open except the grocery store), you can use pasteurized goats milk, mixed with an equal part of water. NEVER use cows milk, or any grain or nut based milk product. Get them onto formula as soon as you can to optimize their chances of survival. Now for the do's! Do be patient Your kittens are confused and scared. The bottle isnt the same as Mommy. The milk probably tastes different. They may refuse the bottle at first, or have difficulty latching on. This usually doesnt last. Hunger is a powerful motivator, and kittens are remarkably resilient. That being said, if any of your charges seem listless, pale or cold, they need to see a veterinarian. You can check for dehydration by gently pulling the skin away from the body, then letting it go. If it snaps back immediately, your kitty is hydrated. If the skin leaves a tent, this too is a sign that its time to see the vet. Do be creative Just like human babies, each litter of kittens is different. You may have to thicken or thin the formula. The nursing sets sold at pet stores come with nipples of varying shapes and sizes. Theres a reason for this! If your kitties wont latch on, try a different one until you find the sweet spot. If they demand to be fed more than every four hours, try thickening the formula. Make sure enough formula is getting through the nipple, and cut a larger hole in the tip if necessary. Do keep them warm Warmth is essential to helping these wee ones survive. Keep them away from air conditioning vents, and make sure they always have plenty of small blankets or towels. Never use heating pads as these can cause life-threatening burns. An old-school hot water bottle is fine, as long as it is wrapped in towels. A safe and low-tech way to provide warmth is to make whats known as a rice sock. Place a cup and a half to two cups of dry white rice or beans in a clean sock. Tie off the end of the sock, microwave it for 45-60 seconds, and place it under the kittens bedding. We have saved many a critical neonate with our hospitals rice sock! Do ask for help Neighbors, friends, church groups, home-school groups, family members, older children - youd be surprised how many of these folks are willing to lend a hand. The hardest part about hand-raising kittens is the 24/7 part. But when its spread out amongst several groups or individuals, its actually rather fun! Caretakers are less likely to suffer from burnout if they know there is an end in sight. Additionally, the kittens enjoy the benefit of additional stimulation and socialization. Miami Dade Animal Services is currently seeking kitten cuddlers to help with their own kitten influx. This is a great way to help the community, as well as pick up the skills needed to care for any bottle babies that may cross your path in the future. MDAS can also provide the materials, formula and training you may need to raise a litter in your care. The Humane Society of Greater Miami is looking for foster parents to help care for the hundreds of orphaned baby kittens that are being abandoned in record numbers. The Humane Society will provide all food and supplies necessary to care for the kittens until they are old enough to be brought back to the shelter. The Feral Cat Coalition has a fantastic page on the specifics of feeding bottle babies, including feeding amounts, intervals, and troubleshooting tips. Click here to access the page directly. The Cat Network can also help with bottle rearing questions. Joining Cat network allows you to participate in their adoptions program, which can help you find homes for your kittens once they are weaned. Finally, the best way to ensure you never have to hand-raise kittens is to do your part to keep them from being born in the first place. Spay and neuter your pet cats. If you are feeding a stray, feral, or neighborhood cat, contact Miami Dade Animal Services or the Cat Network for information on low-cost or free spay/neuter programs for free-roaming cats. Project PetSnip provides free spays, neuters, and rabies vaccines for stray cats in Miami Dade County. These services are for stray and feral cats only. Pets are not eligible, and ear tipping is mandatory. Please contact them at (305) 387-0721 or petsnip@gmail.com for more information. An intact female cat will inevitably become six cats. In a year or less, that one little stray can turn into a colony of 30 - 40 cats! By preventing these births, we can make tremendous strides in reducing the number of unwanted cats both in our streets and in our shelters. To visit the NBC6.com "All About Animals" section, click here. --- Do you have a question for Dr. Kupkee? Dr. Kupkee is the lead practitioner at Sabal Chase Animal Clinic Do you have a question for Dr. Kupkee? Send him an email by clicking here. Click here for special deals and discounts exclusively for NBC 6 viewers. A man described by a Florida federal judge as the boss of a $100 million-plus "fraud factory'' that used thousands of stolen identities to illegally obtain income tax refunds was sentenced Thursday to nearly 20 years in prison. U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas imposed the sentence on Harlan "Money King'' Decoste, 27, who previously pleaded guilty to fraud, identity theft and other charges. Decoste had faced even more prison time, but Dimitrouleas gave him a slight break by using a somewhat lower tax-fraud loss estimate than the government. Still, the judge made clear Decoste got the longest prison sentence of the five men convicted in the case because he was in charge. "I think it was a fraud factory,'' Dimitrouleas said at a hearing Thursday. "He's the boss.'' Internal Revenue Service investigators say the group used a rented house in the quiet suburb of Miramar as the hub for 10 laptop computers used in an attempt to steal about $108 million between July 2011 and May 2013. The IRS estimated the men were able to fraudulently obtain at least $28.2 million in actual refunds using 29,000 separate stolen identities. The operation broke wide open after police responded to a May 2013 home invasion robbery at the house and found the computers, stacks of cash, closets filled with expensive shoes and jewelry, watches, bags of marijuana and other drugs, and dozens of prepaid debit cards and credit cards. Decoste attorney Barry Greff insisted the IRS fraud estimates were vastly overblown. He said even the loot and cash recovered at the house was meager compared to the government's loss figures in the tens of millions of dollars. "There's just no way,'' Greff said. "It is all based on speculation, conjecture and possibilities.'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Brooke Watson said investigators had not been able to trace all of the stolen money but officials said the operation was enormous by any measure. "This is one of the largest stolen identity tax refund fraud schemes prosecuted in the United States,'' said Kelly R. Jackson, special agent in charge of the IRS criminal investigation unit in South Florida. "These defendants perpetuated an elaborate scheme driven by insatiable greed and a blatant disregard for the integrity of the United States tax system.'' Watson said Decoste was arrested in 2015 on similar charges in the Atlanta area and appeared to brag in recorded jail phone calls there about his abilities to steal. "They don't call me the Money King for no reason,'' Decoste said on one recorded call in which he told another person details of using stolen identities on tax forms. Decoste also created a purported rap label called GroundUp111 as a cover for the fraud business, Watson said. Other defendants were listed as officers of the so-called company, which did not produce any music. Prosecutors are seizing the ill-gotten gains, including more than $174,000 in cash, the 10 computers, Rolex and other expensive watches and more than a dozen gold and diamond necklaces, chains and pendants. Most of the defendants also must pay as much as $28 million each in restitution to the government. New details have been revealed about a brawl at a packed South Beach restaurant. Two witnesses are stepping forward with their version of what led to a fight at the Miami Beach Whopper Bar. The victim said he was attacked because he's gay, but NBC 6 spoke exclusively with the witnesses who said the apparent victim was actually the aggressor. The South Beach Burger King beat-down has gotten a lot of attention online and across the country. Jordan Schaeffer said Monday he was attacked by a stranger because he's gay. "It was just a simple kiss with my boyfriend," Schaeffer said. But according to two independent witnesses, that's not what went down at all. The incident happened around 3 a.m. on March 14. "There was no kiss. This had nothing to do with being gay. This was not a hate crime," said one witness, who did not want to be identified. "No, there was no kiss. I assumed they had been fighting because Jordan was so angry," the second anonymous witness added. Before the fight, which was caught on video, one of the witnesses said Schaeffer was hostile toward everybody in the restaurant, and that he even got physical with him. "Jordan turned to me very aggressively, said some very angry things, shoved me -- not hard -- but was very angry," the witness said. Video of the fight appears to show Schaeffer leaving the bathroom and shoving somebody before the big fight happened. "The story was fabricated and it is all a lie," the witness added. The second witness also saw the NBC 6 story online and said he had to tell his version of what happened. "He got into it with the guy at Burger King, threatening him, making sexual slurs, and instigating, saying he was going to fight him as well," the witness said. Both witnesses are gay and said, if this was a hate crime, they would have been the first to tell police. "Never did I hear any expletives or derogatory terms related to his sexual identity. In fact, I think Jordan was the more violent of the two individuals," one of the witnesses said. "I would personally hate to see someone be criminalized for something I don't believe was actually true." The Miami Beach Police Department gave NBC 6 a statement saying: "As with any case, we will investigate all leads thoroughly. We encourage anyone with information to come forward and talk to detectives." NBC 6 also spoke with Schaeffer's attorney Thursday, who said he had no comment. Composer and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda has accepted one of the largest prizes given for the stage by celebrating immigrants, saying that his creation of the Broadway smash "Hamilton" was sparked by learning about Alexander Hamilton's overseas roots. Miranda, who on Thursday was awarded The Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, told of reading a biography of the first U.S. treasury secretary by Ron Chernow and learning that he was born and raised in what was then the West Indies. "I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. We just knew the rule was you're going to have to work twice as hard," Miranda, whose family came from Puerto Rico to New York City, said in his acceptance speech. "When I found that out about Hamilton, I said, 'I know this guy. I know this guy and he's not going to let me go.' And he didn't let me go for seven years." The prize, bestowed by Columbia University, was created to honor a new play or musical that explores the United States' past and deals with "great issues of our day." It comes with $100,000. This is the fourth year the prize has been given and the first time a musical has won. "We are all in awe," Edward M. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late senator, told Miranda. "You've made history come alive. And 'Hamilton' makes us all want to learn more about history." Before the ceremony, Miranda got a chance to see some of Columbia's Hamilton memorabilia, including his wedding band, enrollment papers and his final letter to his wife, Eliza, written on the morning of his fateful duel. He was also serenaded by the Young People's Chorus of New York City, performing songs from "West Side Story," a musical that inspired him to songwriting. The prize was established by Kennedy's sister, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, in consultation with playwright Tony Kushner. The year's recipient is announced every Feb. 22, the anniversary of the late senator's birth. "Hamilton" explores Hamilton's life and is told by a young African-American, Asian and Latino cast and with music that blends musical theater, rap and pop. The show has won a Grammy Award and awards from the Outer Critics Circle, the New York Drama Critics' Circle and the Drama Desk, and it is a likely candidate for Tony Awards this summer. The show's album became the highest-debuting cast recording on the Billboard Top 200 in over 50 years. Miranda said he hoped his work would inspire more: "History is so subjective. The teller of it determines it," said Miranda. "I'm excited to see what stories come out of this and what comes next." The arrest Friday of five men suspected of links to the Brussels bombings, including the last known fugitive in last year's Paris attacks, raised new questions about the extent of the Islamic State cell believed to have carried out the intertwined attacks that left 162 people dead in two countries. After weeks of speculation about a mysterious "man in the hat" who escaped the Brussels attacks while three suicide bombers blew themselves up, authorities were checking whether that man was indeed Mohamed Abrini, the last identified suspect at large from the Paris attacks until Friday. Another man arrested in a series of raids, identified as Osama K. by Belgian authorities, was linked to the Nov. 13 Paris attacks by French authorities on March 22, hours after the Belgium attacks. Abrini and Osama K. are now suspected of playing a role in the two biggest attacks carried out by the Islamic State group in Europe over the past year, killing 130 people in Paris and 32 in Brussels. French authorities renewed their call to arrest an armed and dangerous Abrini within hours of the Brussels attacks. "We are investigating if Abrini can be positively identified as the third person present during the attacks in Brussels National Airport, the so called 'man in the hat,'" said prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt. The man walked away from the airport attack, where two suicide bombers blew themselves up, killing 16. Authorities detained four other men on Friday, including Osama K., suspected of having contact with the suicide bomber who blew himself up in the Brussels subway the same morning, killing another 16. Osama K. was filmed by security cameras in the City 2 shopping mall when the bags were bought that were used by the suicide bombers who attacked the airport. Belgian prosecutors said Abrini's fingerprints and DNA were not only in a Renault Clio used in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, but also in an apartment in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels used by the Brussels bombers. Friday's detentions were a rare success for Belgian authorities, who have been accused for months of mishandling the investigation. Both the interior and justice ministers had offered to resign before the detentions. Despite multiple arrests, Brussels remains under the second-highest terror alert, meaning an attack is considered likely. Abrini's precise role in the Paris attacks has never been clear, nor his full link to the Brussels attacks. Abrini is a 31-year-old Belgian-Moroccan, known as a petty criminal before he was believed to have traveled last summer to Syria, where his younger brother died in 2014 in the Islamic State's notorious francophone brigade. Abrini went multiple times to Birmingham, England, last year, meeting with several men suspected of terrorist activity, a European security official has told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide details on the investigation. He said the meetings, including one later last summer, took place in several locations, including cafes and apartments. Abrini had not resurfaced since the emergence of surveillance video placing him in the convoy with the attackers headed to Paris. He had ties to Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who died in a police standoff on Nov. 18, and is a childhood friend of brothers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam, both suspects in the Paris attacks. Friday was three weeks to the day that authorities arrested in another Brussels neighborhood Salah Abdeslam, who had been on the run for four months. Abdeslam is awaiting extradition to France. The Philadelphia Water Department is requesting a rate hike of nearly 12 percent or about $8 on the average bill. But the request comes as the NBC10 Investigators have found evidence that many customers are already having trouble paying their current water bills. For some of the most delinquent accounts, water service is shut-off altogether. One such customer is Jimmy Withers of West Philadelphia. His home has been without running water for almost seven years, after he fell behind on his utility bills. Although he restored other utility services, hes never been able to restore his water service because his homes title is in the name of a deceased friend. To drink and bathe, he buys big jugs of bottled water at many times the cost of tap water. He says it feels like living in the Third World. RATE HIKE REQUEST The cost of water service may soon go higher. The Water Department says it needs the rate increase because of declining water use and increasing costs, related to aging infrastructure and increased regulation. The department has been holding public hearings about its request. DELINQUENT ACCOUNTS The NBC10 Investigators confirmed that many customers cant pay their current bills. Four out of every 10 water department accounts are already delinquent. Thats more than 227,000 customers. Law students and faculty working at Drexel Universitys Community Lawyering Clinic worry that too many of those delinquent accounts become long-term shut-offs, like Withers. Its astonishing that we live in Philadelphia, one of the major cities in the wealthiest country, the United States of America, and theres a sizable number of people who dont have running water in their homes, said Rachel Lopez, a Drexel University Assistant Professor of Law and leader of the Community Lawyering Clinic. WATER AFFORDABILITY PROGRAMS Lopezs team believes that cumbersome documentation requirements for one of the main water affordability programs are part of the problem. The Water Revenue Assistance Program or WRAP can require applicants to show evidence of all household expenses. The program is specifically aimed at delinquent customers, who make no more than 2.5 times the poverty level. But the city gave the NBC10 Investigators numbers showing that WRAP was helping fewer than 7,000 people, as of February. Sam Scavuzzo, a law student at Drexels Community Lawyering Clinic, believes the program should be assistant many more people. They think that these are deadbeats and what they are is people who just want to pay to get access to their water. And for some reason, bureaucratically, the Water Department hasnt moved on that position, said Scavuzzo. WRAP OVERHAUL The NBC10 Investigators took those concerns to Philadelphias Revenue Department which runs the water affordability programs but is separate from the Water Department itself, which requested the rate hike. Asked whether WRAP is helping enough people, Deputy Revenue Commissioner Michelle Bethel said there's "always a need to further reach out to people." Bethel admits WRAPs enrollment process has confused some customers and needs revision. She and her team are now overhauling WRAP. But the specific changes, and exactly how theyll impact customers, is still not clear. So what are those change going to look like? Well, that hasnt been determined just yet. That is still being worked on, replied Bethel. One decision has been made: WRAP income requirements wont change. So, WRAP applications may be streamlined, but about the same number of people will likely be eligible. And even if all goes according to plan, the city says those revisions to WRAP wouldnt be complete for about two years, until sometime in 2018. That is a year after the second phase of the water rate hike would take effect, if it is approved this summer. A 9-year-old boy was recovering Friday morning after police say he found a gun in his parents' South Philadelphia home and accidentally shot himself. Police were called to the house on 32nd Street near Dickinson, in the Grays Ferry neighborhood, just before 10 p.m., Chief Inspector Scott Small said. When they arrived, officers learned from family members that the boy found a gun in a front bedroom and accidentally shot himself in the left hand. His mother and other relatives had already taken him to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Police met the boy and his mother at Children's Hospital, Small said, and found that the boy was suffering a gunshot wound to his left ring finger. Small said that a preliminary investigation indicated that the loaded gun had been hidden behind a bed in the front bedroom of the house. The boy found it and was playing with it when it accidentally discharged, wounding him. He said police found blood on the bed near the gun and a bullet hole in the bedroom wall. No one else was injured in the shooting. The boy was expected to be OK. "This could've been a lot worse," Small said. "We're very fortunate." Small said the boy's accidental shooting should serve as a lesson to adults to store guns safely where children can't access them. "The fact that a 9-year-old boy was able to get hold of a loaded semiautomatic weapon just goes to show that there wasn't safety used at this house to keep the weapon out of the reach of the child," the chief said. "If anything, have the bullets and the weapon separate." Small said detectives were interviewing the boy's parents and other relatives who were in the house at the time. It was unclear whether any criminal charges would be filed. Protecting children, cracking down on heroin traffickers and expanding investigations and prosecutions around fracking and consumer scams were among the issues the Democratic candidates for Pennsylvania Attorney General said theyd take on if elected. Each candidate made their case in a live televised debate Thursday night. John Morganelli, Northampton County District Attorney, Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro and Stephen Zappala, Jr., the district attorney of Allegheny County, spent an hour answering questions in NBC10 and Telemundo62s Bala Cynwyd studios. NBC affiliates across the state carried the live matchup moderated by NBC10's Tracy Davidson and WPXI 11's Lisa Sylvester. The first question went to both Morganelli and Zappala asking whether they secretly orchestrated a plan to team up against Shapiro, who has not spent time a criminal attorney. Both candidates sharply denied a plan, but later took shots at Shapiros career. Morganelli suggested Shapiros history as a self-described "career politician," county commissioner and corporate attorney gave him no depth for prosecuting criminal cases. Shapiro rebuked the criticism saying his differing resume can expand the attorney generals office's focus beyond primarily criminal cases. No surprises came from the candidates during the hour-long debate. All said they supported legalizing medical marijuana, term limits for the office and none would keep the position of Solicitor General a new post created by embattled current attorney general Kathleen Kane. Bruce Castor, the former Montgomery County district attorney who chose not to prosecute comedian Bill Cosby a decade ago, is currently in the role. Each candidate was asked what their signature issue would be should they be elected. All said they seek to expand prosecutions in many areas, and each spent time speaking about one issue in-depth. Morganelli seeks to expand the offices role in combating the heroin crisis. Hes calling for increased prosecutions for drug dealers and the creation of a transnational task force to seek out and arrest international drug traffickers. The district attorney would also expand investigations into health care providers supplying prescription painkillers to patients. Painkillers are a major gateway to heroin addiction, research shows. Increasing fairness in the criminal justice system is a major initiative for commissioner Shapiro. Shapiro also took a shot at attorneys and judges embroiled in a porn email scandal thats unfolded under the past few months. Zappala cited his record on protecting child victims of abuse, whether physically or sexually, and said hed like to ensure the office is investigating and prosecuting those types of cases properly across the state. All three candidates called for increased gun control either through increased background checks or strengthening prosecution of straw purchasers when a person buys a gun intended for a third-party. Morganelli said, if elected, hed advocate for a law holding parents and caregivers of children and the mentally ill criminally and civilly liable if their dependents commit a crime with their gun. Fracking is an issue where Morganelli agreed with Shapiros plan to beef up the offices environmental crimes unit, start a task force on the issue and expand legislation regulating the fuel drilling industry. Zappala said hed put attorneys on the ground to inspect fracking procedures before and when they begin to ensure compliance of the laws. The candidates agreed that theyd like to expand prosecutions around consumer scams, especially schemes that target senior citizens. Thursdays debate is the only live, televised event ahead of Pennsylvanias April 26th primary. The winner will face the victor of the Republican Attorney General primary race between Montgomery County-based State Sen. John Rafferty Jr. (44th District) and former police officer and current Lackawanna County resident Joe Peters. THE ART OF MUSIC FESTIVAL ATTENDANCE... can be a bit of a high-wire act, of sorts, though an enjoyable one. You need to plan each step just so on the taut crossing, to make sure you reach your destination (or else face the net below). Likewise, planning is key at a mondo music extravaganza, one that spreads out over three doozy days and nights, with multiple acts performing. Have your tutu and tights on? And the harness around your waist? Then prepare to step out onto the wire -- or, in this case, gaze upon the the Outside Lands 2016 line-up, which was revealed on Tuesday, April 5. RADIOHEAD... leads the sonic charge at the top of the just-released bill, as does LCD Soundsystem. Lionel Richie will croon, too, perhaps visiting "All Night Long" and "Hello" for his legions of fans (fingers crossed). Lana del Rey will bring her languid-lovely balladry to the Golden Gate Park shindig, and Duran Duran will prove that the scene of a famous music festival is no "Ordinary World." Hoping Zedd will be on stage, too, at some point, and Grimes, and Sufjan Stevens, and Ryan Adams, and Beach House? Your hope is well-founded; all of these artists are on the plump-to-bursting roster. FRIDAY, AUG. 5 THROUGH SUNDAY, AUG. 7... are the big dates, dates that will require some pre-poring over before you and your pals decide who to see, and when, and so forth, and so on. But don't so forth/so on the food and drink scene, which is a major component of the eight-year-old San Francisco extravaganza; big-name chefs, and brewhouses, and wineries set up culinary camp, too. As do comedians and artists and a host of makers/performers/doers who sit outside the realm of music (though very much adjacent to its spirit). Are you ready to step onto the proverbial wire, with the goal of reaching the other side? Planning your Outside Lands weekend is the important first part. Step out, gingerly, right here. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz will hold a rally in San Diego Monday ahead of Californias June 7 primary. While the GOP nomination is usually decided well before the Golden State votes, Californias 172 delegates will play an important role to see if any candidate can reach the required 1,237 delegates to clinch the nomination without a contested convention. Cruz will appear at the Town and Country Resort at 500 Hotel Circle North from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Doors open at 5 p.m. Reservations for the rally are at capacity, organizers said, but people interested in attending can add their names to the waitlist. The Texas senator will be competing against businessman Donald Trump and Ohio Governor John Kasich for Californias plethora of delegates, which are allocated mostly by congressional district. According to the latest poll, from the Field Corporation of California, Trump leads Cruz by 7 percent, 39 percent to 32 percent. John Kasich has 18 percent support. In the heat of the presidential race, climate change has mostly received a cold shoulder from candidates. While as much as 70 percent of Americans believe climate change is real and that humans are contributing to it, according to a Monmouth University poll from January, the issue of global warming has rarely come up in stump speeches or during debates, especially on the Republican side. NBC has reached out to all the campaigns for information on their positions but has not heard back. The candidates, however, have outlined their positions in interviews and town hall events. Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have listed their plans for tackling the crisis on campaign websites. Clinton and Sanders have pledged to continue President Obamas climate agenda if elected to office, but the Republican candidates are far from on board. Heres a rundown of what each presidential candidate thinks of climate change: Bernie Sanders Sanders is one of the most vocal of all presidential candidates on climate change. On his campaign site, the senior Vermont senator outlines a complete policy platform on reducing carbon emissions, decreasing fossil fuel subsidies and revamping environmental policies regarding public health. He frequently discusses big oil companies on the campaign trail and argues their profits are costing the public. During a February rally in Minnesota, Sanders discussed how, unlike his Republican counterparts, he will not reject science. Climate change is real, climate change is caused by human activity, and climate change is already doing devastating harm in our country and all over the world, Sanders said. In an interview with the LA Times' editorial board, Sanders reiterated his comprehensive policy on global warming. "It is absolutely an international crisis, and the United States cant do it alone," he said. "But we can lead the world by example and by influence. I happen to believe, I was asked in one debate, whats the major foreign policy crisis that we face is it North Korea? And I said, climate change... We have got to be extremely aggressive in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel. I have comprehensive legislation that does that. It is the most comprehensive anti-climate change legislation in the history of the United States Senate. It calls for, among other things, a tax on carbon." Hillary Clinton Clinton also uses her campaign website to outline her environmental policy. Her goals include increasing the use of solar panels in the United States and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. At the Univision Democratic Presidential Debate, Clinton emphasized the importance of action and preventive measures on global warming. We do have to invest in resilience and mitigation while we are trying to make up for the fact that this is clearly man-made and man-aggregated, she said. At a rally in Iowa, Clinton responded to the views of her Republican counterparts who are skeptical of the science behind climate change urging them to "go talk to a scientist." She also noted her view that implementing environmental plans for renewable energy would benefit the economy. "There are millions of new jobs and businesses in moving from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy," she said. Clinton supports Obamas efforts to strengthen environmental regulation and sees it essential for Americans to recognize the severity of climate change, according to MSNBC. We have to actually convince more Americans that this is in their interest, she said to Annie Karni of Politico. You know, whatever it takes. I happen to think its a real threat. I think the science is pretty clear. Donald Trump The GOP front-runner has been asked questions on global warming in various interviews, but does not include climate change on his campaign's list of positions. In tweets between 2012 and early 2015, he called climate change a con job, a canard, a hoax, bulls---, and a concept created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive," according to MSNBC. Once he announced his candidacy, Trump somewhat softened his language. In September, he told MSNBCs Morning Joe in a phone interview that global warming may exist, but is not the biggest issue the U.S. faces. I consider climate change to be not one of our big problems, Trump said at the time. In another Morning Joe appearance in November 2015, Trump reiterated his view, but also noted the importance of protecting the environment. I want to make sure we have clean air and we have clean water, he said. Thats what my thing on climate change is. We want to have clean air to breathe and we want to have beautiful clean water. Thats very important to me. Most recently, however, in an interview with the Washington Post editorial board, Trump was asked point-blank whether he believed climate change existed. "I think theres a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change," he answered in March. "Im not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they dont know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now theyre using 'extreme weather' I guess more than any other phrase. I am not I know it hurts me with this room, and I know its probably a killer with this room but I am not a believer. Perhaps theres a minor effect, but Im not a big believer in man-made climate change." Ted Cruz Texas Sen. Cruz has been consistently at odds with widely accepted beliefs that global warming is real. A committee member of the Senate Science Subcommittee, the GOP candidate held a climate science hearing in December to discuss global warming with experts. In his opening statement, the senator said there is strong data and evidence that indicates global warming is not as bad as what global alarmists say it is. Facts matter, science matters, data matters, Cruz said. According to the satellite data, there has been no significant global warming for the past 18 years. The global warming alarmists dont like these data. At a New Hampshire speech in January, Cruz expressed his skepticism again, saying, Climate change is the perfect pseudo-scientific theory, because it can never ever be disproven. Cruz is the only candidate who considers himself a full-fledged skeptic, believing that data showing proof of climate change and global warming is in fact false. Cruz recognizes its good to be environmentally friendly but believes change should come from the private sector, not the government. John Kasich Kasich: I do believe we contribute to climate change. Watch live: https://t.co/jVsgxIyV1B #GOPDebate https://t.co/vErfkjzDw4 CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) March 11, 2016 According to public statements he's made, Ohio Gov. John Kasich believes humans do play a role in the changing climate. But he is against certain environmental policy changes, like alternative energy sources that may cost more or replace coal-based jobs. At the CNN GOP debate in March, Kasich was asked about his views on environmental policy and climate change. He said it is important to use and develop efficient forms of energy, like wind and solar, but at the same time maintain jobs. We want all the sources of energy, he said. We want to dig coal but we want to clean it when we burn it. At an Iowa town hall in October, Kasich affirmed his view that climate change does exist. But, like Trump, Kasich said he does not see global warming as priority. I just dont know enough about it, Kasich said. I dont know whats scientifically proven. I think there are things we can do to protect the environment. We should. But we shouldnt worship the environment. The 15-year-old boy shot and killed on a Metro platform in Northeast D.C. the day before Easter was honored Friday in an emotional "home-going" ceremony attended by his high school classmates. Davonte Washington's fellow junior ROTC cadets lifted the teenager's casket onto a horse-drawn carriage headed to a service at First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Landover, Maryland. Washington was respectful and kind, loved ones and teachers from Largo High School said less than two weeks after the ninth-grader was gunned down in a crime D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier called "senseless." "Your son was amazing. Your son was incredible. And your son was wonderful," Washington's English teacher, Anton Washington, said. "Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to teach your child." A 17-year-old boy Washington's family said was a stranger shot the 15-year-old March 26 in the Deanwood Metro station. The shooter, who police said was suspect Maurice Bellamy, approached Washington after asking why he was looking at him, witnesses told police. Washington was sitting with his mother and two younger sisters in a Plexiglass shelter on the Metro platform, waiting for a train, when a young man tapped on the glass, Victor Leonard, Washington's grandfather, said Washington's mother told him. The stranger asked Washington why he was looking at him and if he knew him from somewhere. Washington replied, "What?" The young man shot Washington twice in the chest and ran away, witnesses said. The teen was rushed to a hospital, where he died. "Of all the tragic things that we see when it comes to violence, nothing is more senseless than this case," the D.C. police chief said after the killing. "There's no reason for it. " Pastor Jay Cameron echoed the police chief's comments Friday at the funeral. "This makes no sense. He was not in the middle of those things that you would say, 'You know, perhaps that should have happened.' He was minding his business," he said. The pastor called for an end to violence among young people. "We say enough -- enough of our boys being killed, enough of our girls being killed, enough of the killing," Cameron said. Bellamy was identified as the suspect after police compared video surveillance footage from the Metro station to a database of juvenile offenders, court documents say. The 17-year-old boy, who was charged with second-degree murder, is due in court later this month. Washington's grandfather urged mourners to keep the boy's memory alive. "We will not let Davonte's name go in vain," he said. "I promise you." Georgetown University confirms it fell victim to a cyberattack last week, but the school said hackers were not able to get any university data, including student records. An email sent to the school community said the outage from the attack was a result of the firewall closing the network in order to protect the system and data. They said the issue was separate from computer problems at MedStar, a clinic partner with Georgetown. School information service technicians and outside consultants have tested the platforms and reviewed the infrastructure to make sure the system is still secure. All institutions are regularly targeted by cyberattacks, and Georgetown is no exception, the email said. We take these issues very seriously and are working to ensure our technology systems are as safe and strong as they can be. The email urged community members to be mindful about opening email attachments or clicking on links sent by strangers. A former high school quarterback pleaded guilty Friday to killing two of his friends by driving drunk and crashing his car after a house party. Samuel Ellis, of North Potomac, Maryland, pleaded guilty to two counts of vehicular manslaughter and faces as long as 20 years in prison. Ellis, 19, was remorseful as he answered a judge's questions in court Friday, Ramon Korionoff, spokesman for the Montgomery County state's attorney said. "It was a tragic incident that happened, and it certainly was reflected in what seemed to be the remorse of this young man coming forward and taking responsibility for his actions," he said. Prosecutors did not go easy on Ellis, Korionoff said. "This is very serious to us, and there were no favors given or any kind of plea bargain," he said. "It was a plea to the straight, top-line changes." On June 25, 2015, Ellis and three friends went to a party in North Potomac, where police believe they had been drinking. They piled into Ellis' car to head to another party, but police said that as Ellis sped along Dufief Mill Road, he lost control and slammed the car into trees before it flipped. Ellis apparently was driving so fast the car broke into pieces when it crashed, startling News4 video shows. His friends, Alexander Murk and Calvin Jia-Xing Li, both 18, were killed. Murk, Li and Ellis were all recent graduates of Wootton High School. A 16-year-old boy in the car suffered a serious spinal injury. Ellis was found to have a blood alcohol level of 0.07 to 0.09, well above the legal limit of 0.02 for Maryland drivers younger than 21, The Washington Post reported. He turned himself in to police in November, and was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide while under the influence of alcohol, two counts of manslaughter by motor vehicle and one count of causing life-threatening injury by motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. A high school principal in Montgomery County is warning parents about the dangers of hosting an underage drinking party. A graduate of a school nearby was indicted after a crash that killed two of his friends. News4s Mark Segraves reports. Prosecutors said that on the night of the party, Ellis and his friends had been drinking at the home of Kenneth Saltzman, a parent who was home at the time and aware alcohol was being served. Saltzman was cited and fined $5,000 for allowing teens to drink in his home, according to police. Ellis will be sentenced June 3. Prosecutors will ask a judge to sentence him to jail time but have not decided on how much, Korionoff said. His lawyer told News4: "Sam has accepted full responsibility and is very remorseful." Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed on Thursday three pieces of legislation he said would threaten public safety by weakening gun laws. One of the vetoed bills would have allowed people protected by a protective order to carry a hidden handgun without getting a permit. The governor vetoed identical bills Senate Bill 626 and House Bill 766. The bills would stop application and safety training requirements for individuals with concealed handgun permits who have secured protective orders. Senate Bill 626 encourages victims of domestic violence to introduce deadly weapons into an already dangerous situation, an approach that I believe could have significant negative public safety consequences, said McAuliffe in a veto statement for both bills. McAuliffe proposed amendments that would speed up the concealed handgun permit approval process for individuals who had given serious consideration to the risks and responsibilities of concealing a handgun and completed all necessary training requirements. However, the amendments were rejected. McAuliffe also vetoed a bill that would have narrowed the circumstances when a person could be charged for illegally pointing or brandishing a firearm. In order to receive a conviction under this law, prosecutors must prove that an individual not only brandished a weapon, but also knew or should have known that his or her conduct induced fear in the mind of another person. Making the change requested in this bill would create unintended consequences for prosecutors and law enforcement officers attempting to secure convictions for violators of this law, said McAuliffe in another veto statement for House Bill 560. This proposed modification would unnecessarily burden our public safety officials and potentially create a defense for individuals who recklessly handle firearms," he said. Bernie Sanders pointed to his childhood home on East 26th Street at a rally in Brooklyn on Friday, while Democratic rival Hillary Clinton looked for votes upstate, a little more than a week and a half before the New York presidential primary. "I spent the first 18 years of my life in apartment 2C, right here," Sanders said as he pointed to the Flatbush building. "I spent four years at James Madison High School up the street. I spent eight years at P.S. 497." Sanders reminisced about his childhood in the rent-controlled tenement building and said his experiences in the neighborhood influenced his economic policies. "Growing up here I learned a major lesson that I've ever learned in my life about economics," he said. "There are millions of Americans who struggle every day to take care of their families." Here's what else the presidential candidates have planned for Friday: Hillary Clinton rode the subway. She added the short meet-and-greet event Thursday, taking the 6 train from Manhattan to the south Bronx, where she shook hands and talked to potential voters. Democrats Sanders kicked off the day at Rockefeller Center for an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Sanders then headed to East 26th Street in Flatbush, where he and his family lived decades ago. His campaign has dubbed the stretch "Bernie's Block" for the rally. The Democratic contender also had a stop scheduled for 5 p.m. at WNYC Transmitter Park in Greenpoint. On Thursday, Sanders appeared on NBC's "Late Night With Seth Meyers," where he defended saying Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was not "qualified" for the nation's highest office. Sanders also took on Meyers' "Ya Burnt" segment. MSNBC is owned by NBCUniversal, of which NBC 4 New York is a subsidiary. Clinton held a jobs round-table in Buffalo at noon on Friday. Later on in the afternoon she was scheduled to be at a campaign-organizing event at the city's transportation museum. Top Tri-State News Photos Republicans John Kasich held a town hall at Sacred Heart University, a Roman Catholic school in Fairfield, Connecticut, at noon. The Ohio governor was also planning on holding a second town hall at Le Moyne College in Syracuse later in the day. Donald Trump was in New York City on Friday, but it was not clear if he had any campaign events planned. Ted Cruz, who was busy rolling matzo in Brooklyn Thursday evening, has no campaign events scheduled in the tri-state area. Ted Cruz rolls matzo at the Chabat Neshama Center in Brooklyn on Thursday, April 7. Casino developer Steve Wynn is under fire for comments he recently made about the less fortunate. According to CNBC, Wynn was addressing investors Wednesday night by comparing his company to a high-luxury brand that appeals to the wealthy. He went on to reportedly say, "Or to put it in a more colloquial way, rich people only like being around rich people. Nobody likes being around poor people, especially poor people." A spokesman for Wynn issued a statement Friday saying that, "Mr. Wynn's comment was made in the context of a discussion that the company creates luxurious resorts which have an aspirational appeal to a broad range of guests." Wynn made the comments in reference to the atmosphere he is seeking at his planned s$2 billion casino in Everett, Massachusetts, which he now refers to as "Wynn Boston Harbor." During an investors meeting, Wynn led into his comments about poor people by saying, "This company caters to the top-end of the gaming world. We're sort of a Chanel, Louis Vuitton to use the comparison the metaphor of the retail business. But unlike Chanel and Louis Vuitton, we are able in our business to cater to all of the market by making our standard so high that everybody wants to in the building." Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria defended Wynn's comments, saying that's just how he is and that you have to take what he says with a grain of salt. But DeMaria says he believes the casino will be welcoming to all. Wynn Boston Harbor is expected to open in 2018. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Friday he will attend a Vatican City conference on social, economic and environmental issues next week, making the symbolic overseas trip ahead of a pivotal New York primary against Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator has long been an admirer of Pope Francis on issues of wealth inequality and social justice and his presentation to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on April 15 will allow him to reach a larger audience of Catholic voters in New York four days before the primary. Sanders trails Clinton among delegates and the New York contest is an important step in the senator's ability to gain ground against the former secretary of state. "The moral imperative that (the pope) is bringing to this discussion is absolutely extraordinary and absolutely what the world needs. These are issues that I have been dealing with for years," Sanders said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "On economic issues, on issues of poverty and income and wealth inequality, the issues of making sure we address the needs of the poorest people of this planet, this is something that the pope and I are very much on the same page," Sanders said. It was not clear yet whether Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary, would meet with the pope during his trip. Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said "if the opportunity arises he would be delighted to meet with the pope" but Sanders has not received an official invitation from the Catholic leader. Attendees of the conference will include Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, along with Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, a member of the academy, and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to the United Nations on environmental and sustainability issues. Monsignor Sanchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the PASS, said he extended an invitation to Sanders because he seems to have a "real interest" in studying the papal documents issued by the pope. He did not issue invitations to the other presidential candidates. "I don't see the other candidates quoting the pope in their campaign. I don't know if the other candidates are interested in the documents of the pope," he said. A senior Vatican official told Bloomberg News that Sanders lobbied for the invitation and should not be injecting politics into the event. "Of course it can have a political effect but this is not our priority," said Sorondo. "The first thing is to study and discuss the doctrine of the church." Sachs, who has advised Sanders on foreign policy, said the invitation "reflects the very high resonance of the pope's messages on social justice and social inclusion with Bernie Sanders' messages on a fairer economy. He was excited, of course, to get the invitation." The meeting will mark the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus, a high-level teaching document which advocated for economic and social justice and environmental sustainability. Sanders will be speaking at the conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, an advisory group comparable to a think tank that the pope has appointed to guide him on a wide range of public policy issues. The Rev. Thomas Reese, an analyst with the National Catholic Reporter and author of "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church," said it was unusual for a U.S. presidential candidate to be invited to participate in such an event in the middle of a campaign. European politicians and experts attend frequently, in part because they can more easily travel to Rome, he said. But Reese cautioned that the invitation should not be interpreted in any way as an endorsement from the pope. "Certainly the last thing Pope Francis wants to do is get involved in American presidential politics. He's made clear that he doesn't even want to interfere in Italian politics," Reese said. A 19-year-old Massachusetts man was injured in a shooting Thursday evening in downtown Lowell, according to police. Lowell police say officers responded to 11 Central St., where they say they found the victim suffering from a gunshot wound. He was taken to Lowell General Hospital at first, and was then airlifted to a Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He's in serious but stable condition. Police say that people at the scene weren't cooperative and didn't provide much information; howevver, a vehicle has been located in connection with the case. Authorities say they don't think the shooting was a random act. Anyone with information is asked to come contact Lowell police or call the Crime Stoppers Tip Line at 978-459-TIPS (8477). Massachusetts has charged 25 people with human trafficking since a new law aimed at cracking down on pimps who exploit children and women went into effect a little more than four years ago. Attorney General Maura Healey on Thursday announced the indictments of five people in three human trafficking schemes. Healey said one of them used the powerful opiate fentanyl to coerce women into prostitution - supplying them with the drug in exchange for engaging in sex with men and then collecting all the money they received, at times requiring they meet a nightly quota. She said the traffickers prey on vulnerable women and profit from exploiting them. She said many women involved in sex trafficking were lured into the trade as teenagers and had personal struggles and little support early in their lives. She also targeted men who purchase sex, saying they drive the illicit trade. "This is not a victimless crime," she said. "This is not, to be clear, an issue of consulting sex between adults." The 2011 law - pushed by Healey's fellow Democrat and former Attorney General Martha Coakley and signed by then-Gov. Deval Patrick, also a Democrat - established the state crime of human trafficking for sexual servitude, punishable by at least five years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000 upon conviction. The law was designed to change the focus of police and prosecutors from targeting prostitutes to going after the men who pay for sex with them and the pimps who profit from the transactions. The law imposes a life sentence for anyone found guilty of trafficking children for sex or forced labor and includes a safe harbor provision allowing prosecutors to look at first-time offenders under 18 as victims rather than criminals. A company that traffics people for sexual servitude or forced labor services would face a $1 million fine. On Tuesday, Republican Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito announced the creation of a three-member Massachusetts State Police unit to investigate incidents of human trafficking involving juveniles. Polito said the unit will work with the Department of Children and Families, and also help local police departments on larger trafficking cases. Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders also said this week that social workers and other mandated reporters will begin alerting DCF about cases of suspected trafficking. She said the cases will be treated as child abuse and reported to the special state police unit and district attorney for investigation and prosecution. In the past, young people involved in the sex trade could be charged with prostitution instead of being treated as victims of abuse, Sudders said. Pointing to photos of fellow iron workers on his computer, Ulysses Charles said, "That's what gives me joy, that's what gives me pleasure." The Boston man says work and his grandchildren are his priorities now, but his priority used to be freedom. Charles spent 17 years behind bars for a string of rapes and robberies he did not commit. He was set free in 2001. A judge ruled prosecutors failed to disclose evidence during his trial that could have affected the jury's decision. Charles laughed bitterly, "You surprised or something? This is something like novel, its unique. But it goes on every day. It goes on every day, man." In a Joint Investigation with the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, necn found dozens of men and women in Massachusetts have had their criminal convictions reversed in the last 20 years - in part or entirely - because of what judges in the state's Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals court described as prosecutorial misconduct. "I would think that that's probably the tip of the iceberg," said Daniel Medwed. He is a professor at Northeastern University's School of Law and says misconduct ranges from prosecutors withholding evidence that could help the defense to badgering or threatening witnesses to improper remarks in closing arguments. "If prosecutors aren't playing fairly, they can take advantage of the public's faith in them and pervert the whole idea of the presumption of innocence," he said. NECIR reviewed more than 1,000 appeals where defendants alleged prosecutorial misconduct in their original cases: In about 12 percent of the cases, judges found cause to overturn the conviction; in 11 of the cases reviewed, the defendant was fully exonerated; in another 25 percent of the cases, judges criticized prosecutor's bad behavior, but found the lapses were not enough to affect the jury's decision; and 11 defendants were fully exonerated - proven innocent after spending years behind bars. "I don't think its a major issue," Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless said. "It happens. It's obviously something of great concern to myself and my colleagues as district attorneys. Our job is to ensure justice and make sure that the right thing is done." Capeless, who heads the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said he and his colleagues train their employees on an ongoing basis to guard against misconduct, but insists that when it does happen, it's often because of a mistake and not malice. "There are cases in which you do step over the line in the sense that you say the wrong thing, or say something the wrong way. That does happen," he said. "And a lot of times a prosecutor can sit down and know, and say, 'Did I say that?'" "I think any misconduct by a government official that has that much power - the power to take away somebody's freedom - I think it has to be punished," defense attorney Patty DeJuneas said. In fact, necn and NECIR could only find two public reprimands in the last 40 years and they came with no fine or punishment. Prosecutors with reversals have gone on to become DAs or judges - and critics worry convictions are the way to get ahead. "Even though every single DA's office in this Commonwealth would deny it, my belief is that every single office values this type of measurement," Medwed said. Added DeJuneas, "I know of prosecutors who have been found to have engaged in misconduct who have been promoted and who are in charge of training younger prosecutors. If anything, they're making it worse by giving incentives and by rewarding prosecutors who are winning convictions through misconduct." Capeless disagreed. "Doing justice, doing right. That's the important thing," he said. "Gaining convictions is not what we're about." Charles was fully exonerated after DNA evidence proved prosecutors had the wrong man. He won $4 million in civil suits and has put prison behind him. But he feels for men like James Rodwell. Speaking to us from the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord, Rodwell said, "The judge has my life in his hands right now." The Burlington man is waiting for a judge to rule on his seventh appeal. He's been behind bars for nearly 35 years, convicted of killing the son of a police captain. His lawyer said they now have proof that prosecutors failed to tell the jury their key witness was given favors for his testimony. It's an allegation Middlesex County prosecutors deny - but one Rodwell's father hopes will set him free. "How do you make up for 35 years of imprisonment?" asked Tom Rodwell, as he sat in a wheelchair outside one of the dozens of courtroom hearings he's gone to to support his son. "He doesn't look his age, but he's not that young." The elderly man then starts to cry and cannot regain his composure. When judges overturn convictions or indictments due to misconduct, they almost always leave out the prosecutor's name in their decison. In the 120 reversals necn and NECIR reviewed, prosecutors were only named seven times. That makes it difficult, defense attorneys say, to track prosecutors with a repeat history of misconduct. The labor-intensive agricultural practice of maple syrup production became a target for thieves in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, with crooks making off with more than 100 gallons of the valuable sweet stuff. "They made a mess," sighed Marvin Ryan of Craftsbury, as he looked at the sticky evidence of a brazen crime inside his sugarhouse. "Someone's getting some good syrup." Ryan makes maple syrup, by boiling down sap collected from more than 2,000 taps in his maple trees, and sells it in 40-gallon bulk barrels to a packing company. But earlier this week, likely on Sunday, burglars stole the contents of three of those containers, Ryan said. Vermont State Police out of the St. Johnsbury barracks investigated, but Ryan said he knows it will likely be awfully tough for police to ever figure out who stole his syrup. "I do this as kind of a hobby, but it ain't even a fun hobby when you lose that much syrup," Ryan told necn. The thieves apparently dumped the maple syrup from Ryan's barrels into their own tubs or buckets, leaving behind the mostly-empty drums, with a lot of syrup spilled all over the floor of Ryan's sugarhouse and on a chair. Two big reasons the thieves might have chosen to not steal Ryan's full drums? Each is marked with a number that would tip someone off to where they came from, and when the drums are full of syrup, they can weigh about 500 pounds. "That was basically our cream of our crop," said Paul Ryan, Marvin's brother and partner in the syrup business. The brothers estimated they lost well over 100 gallons of syrup, worth close to $3,000 to a bulk buyer. They speculated the thieves may try passing off the stolen syrup as their own and sell it. The Ryans said the lost money means they will not be able to invest as much in better equipment for the sugarhouse, and new spouts and sap lines for their maple trees. "Basically what we've got [for 2016's maple crop] now is just barely going to make the payments," Paul Ryan said. "We're not going to be able to advance into the future and buy new stuff." Paul Ryan said he hopes other maple producers closely watch their sugarhouses and any stored maple syrup, to avoid a sour end to Vermont's sweetest season. Anyone with information on the maple syrup theft is asked to call Sgt. Lyle Decker at the Vermont State Police barracks in St. Johnsbury, at (802) 748-3111. A research facility at the University of Vermont College of Medicine will play a key role in the testing of an eventual vaccine for Zika Virus, which is under development now. "It's important work," said Dr. Beth Kirkpatrick, the director of the Vaccine Testing Center at UVM. Kirkpatrick said she is optimistic scientists will unravel the mysteries of Zika, the mosquito-borne virus whose spread in Brazil was followed by an unprecedented jump in babies born with unusually small heads, and other serious health complications. "The neurologic complication in infants is frightening to everybody," Kirkpatrick said. UVM is collaborating with the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University to learn more about Zika's biology, the way it assaults the cells of developing fetuses, and how adults' bodies produce an immune response to it. Specifically in Burlington, the Vaccine Testing Center expects to eventually work with healthy human volunteers to study the safety and effectiveness of an NIH-developed vaccine for Zika. Wednesday, the Obama administration announced $589-million in federal money left over from the largely successful fight against Ebola will be put toward combating the threat from Zika. President Obama has requested about $1.9-billion in emergency money to fight Zika, but that request has stalled in the GOP-controlled Congress. Administration officials said additional money must be approved to manufacture vaccines, purchase diagnostic tests and undertake mosquito control throughout the rainy season in Central America and the Caribbean, among other activities. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said Wednesday that there are 672 confirmed Zika cases in the United States and in U.S. territories including Puerto Rico, a figure that includes 64 pregnant women. In addition to bites from Aedes mosquitoes, Zika can also be transmitted through sexual contact. It's estimated that 40-million people will travel between the U.S. and countries with Zika outbreaks. "It's going to be moving into the United States," Kirkpatrick said of Zika. "I think what we want to do is find out enough about it to control it, or prevent it before really large numbers of our own population are infected, along with other populations in the world." UVM immunologist Sean Diehl explained the Vermonters are on the case because they've been researching dengue fever since 2008, and are now in the final stages of testing a vaccine for that infection. The World Health Organization says approximately 390-million people per year are infected with dengue, which can kill 25,000 of them. "We are making progress," Diehl told necn, noting that last week, some members of the Vaccine Testing Center research team traveled to Bangladesh for testing of the dengue fever vaccine there. Since the viruses are genetically similar, Diehl said that may provide a critical leg up for a breakthrough with Zika. "It's very easy to come to work excited and energized every day and try to make a difference in this fight," Diehl said of the job he and his colleagues do, which he called "gratifying." However, the team cautions, their work is slow, by design. The safety and efficacy of vaccines is paramount, Kirkpatrick said, so vaccine development and testing can take years. She said since a lot of dengue research could be applied to understanding Zika, that may help shorten the time it takes to deliver a vaccine. Click here for more information on the Zika virus, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Waterford police officers will wear mourning bands on their badges in honor of 9-year-old Madeline Guarraia. Madeline, of East Lyme, died on Wednesday after a nearly 5 year battle with cancer. Last year, Madeline was sworn in as an honorary member of the Waterford Police Department. She would go out on patrol with officers around town, including a shift last month. "The Waterford Police Department would like to express their condolences to the family of Waterford Police Officer Madeline Guarraia, badge #8," the department posted on its Facebook page Thursday. "Her parents say that she carried her appointment very seriously, and we thoroughly enjoyed every time she was on duty with us." The heartbreaking post ends "Rest in Peace Madeline, we'll carry it from here." The Waterford Police Department would like to express their condolences to the family of Waterford Police Officer... Posted by Waterford Police Department on Thursday, April 7, 2016 (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Massachusetts prosecutors have violated defendants rights to a fair trial regularly and without punishment, even as wrongfully convicted victims of tainted prosecutions have spent years in prison before being freed, decades of court rulings show. The states Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court have reversed at least 120 criminal convictions since 1985 in part or entirely because of the prosecuting attorneys misconduct described in the judges rationale for the overturned verdicts. The New England Center for Investigative Reporting reviewed more than 1,000 rulings in which defendants alleged prosecutorial misconduct. In addition to the 120 reversals, judges criticized the prosecutions behavior in another 250 cases, but found the lapses not serious enough to affect the jurys decision, and upheld the convictions. At least 11 convicted defendants in the reviewed cases were ultimately exonerated. Added together, their time served for crimes they didnt commit totaled more than 100 years. Others were convicted again or pleaded guilty when facing retrial, sometimes to lesser charges with sentences reduced. Some prosecutors failed to turn over important evidence to defense attorneys or didnt disclose information bearing negatively on witness credibility, judges said. Others misrepresented evidence in their closing statements to the court. While the 120 reversals are only a small fraction of all convictions, they show the self-regulatory system meant to deal with lawyers ethical lapses is unusually protective of prosecutors. When courts throw out convictions citing prosecutorial misconduct, they rarely name wayward prosecutors or refer them for discipline. NECIR found no case in Massachusetts where a prosecutor was disbarred for professional misconduct since 1974, when the state Board of Bar Overseers was created to hear complaints against attorneys. Only two public reprimands for professional misconduct were found in that 42-year span, and they came without fines or other punishment. At least seven prosecutors whose behavior prompted courts to reverse convictions went on to higher posts. Some became judges and district attorneys. Prosecutors have more power than anyone, in many respects, over the lives of the average person, said Daniel Medwed, professor at the Northeastern University School of Law. But there is almost no accountability, no transparency, and the public isnt paying attention that is a very, very combustible concoction. Odyssey of Ulysses Charles Campo, a former Suffolk County assistant district attorney, successfully prosecuted Ulysses Charles for the rape and robbery of three women in Boston in 1984. Campos own notes discovered more than a decade later showed one victims description of her attacker didnt match Charles, Superior Court Justice Barbara Rouse found in a decision that resulted in Charles release from prison in 2001. The victim said she believed her attacker was circumcised. Charles is not. Medical records showed another victim told a doctor in the hospital shortly after the rapes that her attacker had an American accent, according to a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner in a later civil case filed by Charles against the City of Boston. At trial, Campo had entered into a stipulation that the victim told the doctor the attacker spoke with an accent that was non-American, Gertner wrote. Charles has a strong Caribbean accent. Rouses decision relied chiefly on new DNA evidence that excluded Charles as the rapist. But she also said Campos failure to disclose the victims circumcision description of the attacker was sufficient grounds in itself for a new trial. Prosecutors declined to re-try the case. After serving nearly two decades of an 80-year sentence, Charles was exonerated. He later was awarded $3.75 million in settlements of lawsuits against the city and the Commonwealth. No public reprimand of Campo could be found in the Board of Bar Overseers searchable records online. Asked about Campo, Constance Vecchione, the boards bar counsel, said she cant comment on matters outside public disciplinary cases. Campo, who is now in private practice, said he prosecuted this case fairly and did not misstate evidence or enter into a stipulation believing it to be false. The wording of the stipulation was agreed to by both sides and supported by the trial testimony, and it was never disputed that the assailant had a non-American accent, he said. Charles, 66, now lives in Roxbury. In an interview, he called the settlements small compensation for the time he lost in prison. He blamed Campo for the loss of his daughter, who killed herself while he was incarcerated. My daughter was never the same, she lost her (expletive) mind because I was in prison, and committed suicide over this piece of garbage, he said. Wayward but anonymous When judges toss convictions or indictments due to misconduct, they almost always omit the errant prosecutors name, as they did in all but seven of the 120 reversal decisions. That makes it difficult to identify those with a history of misconduct. Judges shield the identities because many have worked as prosecutors and they sympathize with their heavy workloads, and because they share a general cultural norm against snitching on colleagues, said Adam Gershowitz, a professor at William & Mary Law School in Virginia, who has argued for naming. Going back at least three decades, a handful of judges in Massachusetts have called their colleagues to task for not naming names. In a 1983 decision that reversed a first degree murder conviction because the prosecutors trial tactics were so egregious, Supreme Judicial Court Justice Ruth Abrams blasted her colleagues insistence on omitting his name: The prosecutors misconduct forces the friends and family of the victim to relive the trauma of the crime and again suffer the ordeal of a trial. The prosecutors misconduct penalizes the defendant, who again must undergo the fear and anxiety associated with a criminal trial. Why, then, is the prosecutor, whose conduct results in such consequences, not named in our opinion? NECIR identified four prosecutors whose actions prompted judges to toss convictions more than once. Only one was disciplined and is currently in private practice. The Supreme Judicial Court reversed the rape conviction of David Tucceri because the prosecutor, Middlesex County Assistant District Attorney J. William Codinha, failed to disclose a mugshot during the 1978 trial showing the defendant had a mustache at the time of the crime even though the victim said her attacker was clean-shaven. NECIR A search of the bar overseers public database turned up no Codinha reprimand. The Supreme Judicial Court said the prosecutor must have been, and certainly should have been, aware before trial that the photographs existed. The court did not name Codinha, whose name was found on Tucceri trial documents in a microfiche archive. The Supreme Judicial Court reversed another of his cases in 1983, this time for what one of the SJC judges described as egregious conduct, which included inflammatory statements that likened the murder victims body to charred meat. During the trial for murder and arson, Codinha commented on the defendants decision not to testify at the trial a Constitutional right that prosecutors are not supposed to question. Upon retrial, the defendant pleaded guilty and received a life sentence. Codinha, now in private practice, served in Middlesex for about six years, including as chief trial counsel in the prosecutors office. In 2013, Governor Deval Patrick appointed him to the Judicial Nominating Commission, which vets prospective judges. In a brief phone interview, Codinha said he didnt remember the two reversed cases, out of the many he prosecuted. He didnt respond to subsequent questions. Bogus confession Three prosecutions by Francis Bloom, a former assistant district attorney in Hampden County, resulted in convictions that were later reversed by the courts in cases that involved allegations of misconduct against him. In one of the cases, George Perrot was convicted for rape and armed robbery as part of two break-ins in Springfield in 1985, when he was 17 years old. In an unsuccessful appeal in 1995, judges upheld Perrots conviction but slammed Blooms behavior, saying he had forged a bogus post-conviction confession in Perrots name that implicated him in the rapes and robbery and had him pointing the finger at two close friends in another break-in. The aim was to coerce confessions from the friends, the judges said. The forged statement didnt come to light until after Perrots original trial, and wasnt used against him. But Perrots lawyer in the 1995 appeal, Kenneth Seiger, argued that his willingness to make up a confession cast a shadow over any evidence that Bloom used to get the conviction, including forensics and witness statements. The problem, he said in an interview, is that the jury never knew Bloom was capable of forging a confession. Wouldnt you want to know if you were on the jury? he asked. In January of this year, a judge granted Perrots fourth motion for a new trial on grounds that hair evidence and expert testimony in the case was discredited by newer science. He was released from prison, prompting an appeal by Hampden County prosecutors. Perrots mom, Beverly Garrant, said in an interview that the prosecution was an attack on my family too painful to describe almost 30 years for something he didnt do. Bloom also prosecuted Mark Schand, who was 21 when he was arrested in 1986. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder based largely on the testimony of eyewitnesses. Three of the key witnesses later recanted one on his deathbed saying they had identified Schand in a line-up in exchange for Blooms and police officers promises of lenient treatment in separate charges they were facing. Prosecutors are required to tell the court and jury when they have made such deals. In Schands trial, Bloom disclosed a promise to one witness of help with a prison placement. In later court proceedings, he testified he made no other promises. NECIR In 2013, a judge allowed Schand a new trial on the basis of new eyewitness testimony and a recantation by one witness. The Hampden County District Attorneys office dropped the charges against him, which resulted in his release, and denied any misconduct. Schand said his civil rights were violated in a lawsuit he filed last year, naming Hampden County and others. He alleged a system that rewarded criminal suspects for cooperating with prosecution authorities by providing false testimony and false identifications in exchange for leniency. Schand, who has spent more than half his life behind bars, said when he went to prison, his wife Mia was pregnant with their third child, who is now 28. I missed their entire lives, Schand said. Now Im a grandfather. After leaving prison in 2013, Schand said he had trouble finding a job because of a nearly three-decade gap in employment history and the sordid tale behind it. People are saying if you did 27 years you must have had some involvement I can understand that, he said. I said just Google the case. The Board of Bar Overseers issued a statement reprimanding Bloom in 1993, describing the forged confession as reprehensible and fraudulent. Eight years later, after his work as a prosecutor, the board publicly reprimanded him again for improper financial recordkeeping. Now in private practice, Bloom offers top notch representation for persons severely injured by the negligence of others, according to his website. Bloom declined to be interviewed about the prosecutions. I put it behind me a long time ago, he said. Jailhouse snitch James Rodwell hasnt been able to say that. Imprisoned for more than 30 years, he has asked Middlesex County Superior Court, in the latest of many such bids, to overturn his murder conviction, producing what he says is fresh evidence that prosecutors failed to disclose a testimony-for-favors deal. A key witness who allegedly received the deal, David Nagle, testified in court that Rodwell confessed to the crime while they were both in the same jail. Nagle, now deceased, was being held for armed robbery and had been a paid informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to court records. Middlesex prosecutors, who brought the case against Rodwell, have said over the years that Nagle received no compensation or favors in exchange for testifying against him. But an affidavit by Rodwells attorney, Veronica White, says Nagle told her in 2012, in a recorded interview just months before he died, that a letter he wrote to the district attorneys office speaking of my deal to testify in a murder case was a reference to the Rodwell trial. Her motion for a new trial says Nagle perjured himself. In arguments on Rodwells motion last month, White said police and prosecutors withheld mountains of exculpatory evidence. Assistant District Attorney Laura Kirshenbaum argued that Rodwells claims about Nagle can be easily dismissed, and there was no undisclosed exculpatory evidence in his case file, which the state said it lost. In the house where Rodwell grew up, the familys Christmas tree is still up in the hopes he can see it if hes released. He calls his parents nearly every day. He said he was anxious, as they expect a decision imminently on his appeal. The judge has my life in his hands right now, Rodwell said. The New England Center for Investigative Reporting is an independent, nonprofit investigative reporting newsroom based at Boston University and WGBH News. WGBH reporter Isaiah Thompson and NECIR interns Naomi LaChance, Bret Hauff, Jacqueline Roman, Amanda Lucidi and Tristan Cimini contributed reporting. Brooke Williams can be reached at brooke_williams@wgbh.org, or @reporterbrooke. Shawn Musgrave can be reached at shawn_musgrave@wgbh.org or @shawnmusgrave. This story was edited by Gary Putka, who can be reached at gputka@bu.edu. Online production by Musgrave. The Green Pastures Christian bookshop in Dereham has won a national award for providing boxes of Christian books to 21 local schools. The Green Pastures Christian bookshop in Dereham has won a national award for providing boxes of Christian books to 21 local schools. Norma's care home jigsaw challenge complete A resident at Norwich-based care home Corton House has completed an incredible 70 jigsaw puzzles in celebration of the homes 70th anniversary this year. Read more Norwich charity's appeal to support Palestinian students A Norwich educational charity, set up in memory of a Norwich Anglican priest, to support students from a Palestinian refugee camp, is inviting people to support its Christmas appeal to be launched on November 29. Read more Norfolk drug and alcohol charity pays tribute to its founder Andy Sexton, CEO of the Matthew Project, introduces a series of tributes from the charity to its founder, Peter Farley. Read more Cliff look alike at Cromer Church breakfast Cliff Richard tribute performer Will Chandler will be the speaker at a special Mens Breakfast at Cromer Parish Hall next month, and all men are welcome to come along. Read more Heartsease Lane Methodist church to close As part of a reorganisation of the Norwich Methodist Circuit, Heartsease Lane Methodist Church will be closing towards the end of the year. Read more Free Julian of Norwich reflection and prayer day The Friends of Julian of Norwich present a free Quiet Half-Day with Robert Fruehwirth, author and former Priest Director of the Julian Centre, on Saturday November 12, 10.30am-2pm. Read more What it means for us to repent Nigel Fox believes that now is the time for a tide of repentance, and shares his thoughts about what that actually means for our society. Read more Christmas card shop opens in Norwich church Thousands of Christmas cards from around 30 local Norfolk charities have gone on sale today (October 19) at the Original Norwich Charity Christmas Card Shop inside St Peter Mancroft church in Norwich city centre. Read more Revelation Christian Resource Centre and Cafe Revelation in Norwich is a Christian resource centre, offering a bookshop, a meeting place and a welcoming refuge for refreshment open to visitors of any faith or none. Read more Farewell as Yarmouth church leader moves on Captain Marie Burr, the Salvation Army leader in Great Yarmouth, has paid tribute to everyone at the church and charity after she left her post at the end of last month to move to a new role. Read more Norwich Cathedral chorister in BBC final Norwich Cathedral chorister Alice Platten has her sights set on being crowned BBC Young Chorister of the Year after reaching the final stages of the prestigious nationwide competition. Read more Norwich to hear pastor, Policeman and tramp tale Essex Baptist Pastor Dave McDowell has been a Policeman, fed orphans in India and lived under a boat as a tramp. He will tell his remarkable story at the October dinner of Norwich FGB on Wednesday October 26. Read more Pioneer UK leader speaks at Sheringham church Ness Wilson, national leader of the Pioneer network of churches, was the main speaker at a day of teaching and worship held at Lighthouse Community Church in Sheringham on 12 October, to be followed up by Word and Worship sessions at October half term. Read more Norwich event to give tips on bouncing forwards St Stephens in Norwich will be hosting an evening in October with Patrick Regan OBE, as he explores themes from his book Bouncing Forwards. Read more Youth for Christ lights a fire in north Breckland North Breckland Youth for Christ will be putting on a mini residential camp this year to coincide with Bonfire Night. Read more Delia Smith interviewed at Norwich church Top TV cook and well-known writer Delia Smith spoke about her faith at SOUL Churchs weekly Chapel gathering on October 11. Read more Children's Christian holiday club in Briston A half term childrens holiday bible club is taking place in Briston next week, and there is no charge to take part in the fun. Read more The decision by WhatsApp founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum to encrypt direct messages, group messages and voice calls drew a lot of attention to the Facebook subsidiarygiven the recent dispute between the FBI and Apple. Security experts described how the improved WhatsApp protected users privacy and where it fell short. Security writers called it the FBI's worst nightmare. And pundits talked about recent reports that the White House withdrew its support for legislation that would allow judges to order WhatsApp to decrypt customers messages. WhatsApp, like Apple, wants a defense against government orders and warrants to unlock and reveal customer information. There is only one defense to the order that the government will not contest: it is impossible. Until this announcement, WhatsApp could not tell the government that it is impossible to decrypt customers information. It could and has taken a moral position refusing to carry out the court order much like a journalist refusing a court order to reveal a source. That stance, however, resulted in the arrest of a Facebook executive after the company opposed a Brazilian courts order to turn over information about a customer who was the subject of a drug trafficking investigation. Politicians Are Wrong Politicians and government security agencies have created the illusion that strong encryption can be designed to be broken when the government has a really good reason. U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron (to name just a few) and most of their cabinet officials have called for technology companies to cooperate with governments to develop a solution to encryption. Resorting to extreme spin, Robert Hannigan head of the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K.s equivalent to the NSA, called for an end to the terrorists abuse of encryption. The politicians are wrong, and much of the controversy about encryption stems from their unfounded belief that encryption that protects information can at the same time be made available when a government wants to inspect it. Believing in a flawed encryption algorithm that only WhatsApp or Apple has a key to unlock is mathematically impossible and is the same as believing that gravity can occasionally be turned off when the government has a very good reason. Strong encryption algorithms generate complex keys that convert data into undecipherable apparently random 1s and 0s that would require many years of supercomputer time to break. An algorithm like this that strongly protects data cannot also have a single master decryption key held in the custody of the vendor or government because it creates unquantifiable security risks. If a key is deciphered, only a single session or data store will be compromised. But if the master key is compromised, all the data secured with the algorithm everywhere in the world will be compromised and can be decrypted. Encrypting Data at Rest and in Transit After WhatsApp customers update the application to the version that encrypts voice calls and messages using the Signal protocol from non-profit Open Whisper System, WhatsApp can refuse to comply with court orders with the defense that decryption is impossible. WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol to encrypt voice and messaging data in transit similar to how Google encrypts Gmail in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS). WhatsApp data at rest might not be encrypted, though. If the data comes to rest in an older iPhone, such as the 5c at the center of the FBI dispute, or an older Android smartphone that has exploitable flaws and also doesnt encrypt storage, someone in possession of the phone could read the stored data. Data stored on the most recent iPhones or Android phones, such as the Nexus 6p and Samsung S7, would be protected unless a zero-day flaw affecting these new models is discovered. WhatsApp messages may be encrypted in transit and at rest, but the metadata will remain subject to a court order or warrant. The telephone numbers of the people who sent the messages and made the calls, as well as what time the communication took place, are logged. Perhaps one reason governments are so adamant could be their history of cooperation with the telephone carriers who made court order compliance a profit center, charging the U.S. spy agencies and law enforcement agencies fees for turning over the information. The mobile carriers dont encrypt text messaging traffic between their customers phones and their MMSC servers. Note the unencrypted HTTP protocol used in the URLs of the three largest mobile carriers Multimedia Messaging Service Center (MMSC) servers: Verizon http://mms.vtext.com/servlets/mms AT&T http://mmsc.mobile.att.net T-Mobile http://mms.msg.eng.t-mobile.com/mms/wapenc The technology is entering the second phase of protecting user privacy. The first phase that is yet to be completed began with companies such as Google and Apple encrypting phones, messaging and storage. In this second phase, companies occupying smaller parts of the ecosystem, such as WhatsApp, can build on recent iPhone and Android device encryption innovations to complete comprehensive encryption. Using open source projects such as the Signal protocol written with community transparency, they can eliminate back doors and reduce zero-day exploits. Detailing a litany of blatant, widespread and systematic abuses, the FCC late yesterday announced its intention to fine wireless provider Total Call Mobile some $51 million for allegedly creating tens of thousands of phony Lifeline accounts that defrauded the Universal Service Fund of almost $10 million. The fine would be the largest ever levied against a Lifeline provider, according to the FCC. The Lifeline program, established in 1996, provides discounted and free landline and mobile phone service to low-income consumers. Derided as Obama phones, the program has been controversial and plagued by fraud. We reserve the strongest sanctions for those who defraud or abuse federal programs, said Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc. Any waste, fraud, or abuse in the Lifeline program diverts scarce funds from the consumers they are meant to serve and undermines the publics trust in the program and its stewardship. Here are some of the details of the alleged abuse, which the FCC press release says the company knew of as early as November 2013: During the fourth quarter of 2014, 99.8 percent of Total Calls enrollments nationwide involved overriding the third-party verification system designed to catch duplicate enrollments. Sales agents shared eligibility documents, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cards, in order to use the documents to conduct multiple enrollments. As early as May 2014, employees told Total Call management that they were aware of increasing instances of eligibility fraud, such as the repeated use of single SNAP cards with no name or other identifying information to enroll ineligible or duplicate consumers. Despite this, no meaningful changes to employee training or verification procedures were made. One sales agent used the identification from a stolen wallet to register 10 Lifeline cell phones in the name of the wallets owner without his/her permission. When that agent was arrested and charged with identity theft, he/she possessed not only the wallet but 12 additional Total Call-issued Lifeline cell phones. The FCC just recently voted by a 3-2 party-line majority to include subsidies for broadband Internet services in Lifeline. Expansion of the 20-year-old program to cover cell phones in 2008 attracted a host of service providers to service that segment of the market. It also spawned a number of nongovernmental websites, including Free Government Cell Phones, that are devoted to monitoring the program. That website published a story on March 31 with the headline: Fraud, fraud and more fraud: Hawaiian jury convicts president of free government cell phone company. It also has a summary of the programs history and the disputes that have swirled around it. Welcome regulars and passersby. Here are a few more recent buzzblog items. And, if youd like to receive Buzzblog via e-mail newsletter, heres where to sign up. You can follow me on Twitter here and on Google+ here. Champaign, IL (61820) Today A mix of clouds and sun with gusty winds. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 79F. Winds S at 20 to 30 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Low 62F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph. NOTICE: This Consumer Medicine Information (CMI) is intended for persons living in Australia. Modified Release tablets containing gliclazide (pronounced gli-cla-zide) Consumer Medicine Information What is in this leaflet This leaflet answers some common questions about DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. It does not contain all the available information Reading this leaflet does not take the place of talking to your doctor, pharmacist, or diabetes educator. All medicines have risks and benefits. Your doctor has weighed the risks of you taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR against the benefits they expect it will have for you. If you have any concerns about taking this medicine, ask your doctor, pharmacist, or diabetes educator. Keep this leaflet with the medicine. You may need to read it again. What DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is The name of your medicine is DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR contains the active ingredient 'gliclazide'. Gliclazide belongs to a group of medicines called sulphonylureas. The medicine releases the active ingredient gliclazide progressively over 24 hours. What DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is used for DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is used to control blood glucose (sugar) in patients with Type II diabetes mellitus. This type of diabetes is also known as non-insulin-dependent diabetes (NIDDM), or maturity-onset diabetes). Why DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is used for Type II diabetes mellitus DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is used when diet and exercise are not enough to control your blood glucose. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR can be used alone or together with insulin or other medicines for treating diabetes. How it works Glucose is used by the body as fuel, and all people have glucose circulating in their blood. In diabetes, levels of blood glucose are higher than is needed, which is also known as hyperglycaemia. If your blood glucose is not properly controlled, you may experience hypoglycaemia (low blood glucose) or hyperglycaemia (high blood glucose). High blood glucose can lead to serious problems with our heart, circulation and/or kidneys. It is very important to control high blood glucose whether or not you feel unwell. This really helps to avoid serious long-term health problems, which can involve the heart, eyes, circulation, and/or kidneys. A section at the end of this leaflet contains advice about recognising and treating hyperglycaemia. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is used when diet and exercise are not enough to control your blood glucose properly. It lowers blood glucose by increasing the amount of insulin (a hormone that controls blood glucose levels) produced by your pancreas. As with many medicines used for the treatment of diabetes, there is a possibility that blood glucose levels may become very low during treatment with DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. This is known as hypoglycaemia. A section at the end of this leaflet contains advice about recognising and treating hypoglycaemia. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is available only with a doctor's prescription. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is not addictive Ask your doctor if you have any questions about why DIAMICRON 60 mg MR has been prescribed for you. Before you take DIAMICRON 60 mg MR There are some people who should not take DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. Please read the lists below. If you think any of these situations apply to you, or you have any questions, please consult your doctor, pharmacist, or diabetes educator. Do not take DIAMICRON 60 mg MR if you are allergic to: gliclazide, or any of the other ingredients listed at the end of this leaflet. you have had an allergic reaction to any other sulphonylureas, or related medicines such as sulfa antibiotics or to thiazide diuretics (a type of "fluid" or "water" tablet). Symptoms of an allergic reaction to DIAMICRON 60 mg MR or to these medicines may include skin rash, itchiness or hives, shortness of breath, swelling of the face, lips or tongue, muscle pain or tenderness or joint pain. If you are not sure if you have an allergy to DIAMICRON 60 mg MR, check with your doctor. are pregnant or trying to become pregnant. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR may affect your developing baby if you take it during pregnancy. Insulin is more suitable for controlling blood glucose during pregnancy. Your doctor will usually replace DIAMICRON 60 mg MR with insulin while you are pregnant. are breastfeeding or plan to breast-feed. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is not recommended while you are breastfeeding. It is not known whether DIAMICRON 60 mg MR passes into breast milk. you have Type 1 diabetes mellitus (also known as insulin-dependent diabetes (IDDM), or juvenile-onset diabetes). you have unstable diabetes you have diabetic ketoacidosis (a problem which affects the acidity of your blood and can lead to coma - which is mainly associated with Type 1 diabetes). you have severe kidney disease you have severe liver disease you are taking an antibiotic medicine containing the active ingredient miconazole the expiry date (EXP) printed on the pack. If you take it after the expiry date has passed, it may not work as well. the packaging is torn or shows signs of tampering. If it is damaged, return it to your pharmacist for disposal. If you are not sure whether you should start taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR, talk to your doctor. For children Do not give DIAMICRON 60 mg MR to a child. There is no experience with the use of DIAMICRON 60 mg MR in children. For older people Elderly people can generally use DIAMICRON 60 mg MR safely. There are no special instructions for older people taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. Tell your doctor straight away if: you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant or are breast-feeding. Your doctor can discuss with you the risks and benefits involved. you are allergic to any of the ingredients listed at the end of this leaflet; to any other medicines; or to any other substances, such as foods, preservatives or dyes you have an intolerance to some sugars as DIAMICRON 60 mg MR contains lactose If you have a family history of or know you have the hereditary condition glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency (abnormality of red blood cells), lowering of the haemoglobin level and breakdown of red blood cells (haemolytic anaemia) can occur. you have had any of the following medical conditions: kidney disease liver disease a history of diabetic coma. adrenal, pituitary or thyroid problems heart failure you have any medical condition, or do anything, that may increase the risk of hyperglycaemia - for example: you are ill or feeling unwell (especially with fever or infection) you are injured you are having surgery. you are taking less DIAMICRON 60 mg MR than prescribed you are taking less exercise than normal you are eating more carbohydrate than normal. drinking alcoholic drinks. not eating regular meals. taking more exercise than usual. If you have not told your doctor, pharmacist or diabetes educator about any of the above, tell them before you start taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. Taking other medicines Tell your doctor, pharmacist or diabetes educator if you are taking any other medicines, including medicines you buy without a prescription from a pharmacy, supermarket or health food shop. Taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR may change the effect of some medicines, and some medicines may affect how well DIAMICRON 60 mg MR works. You may need different amounts of your medication or to take different medicines. Some medicines may lead to low blood glucose (hypoglycaemia) by increasing the blood-glucose-lowering effect of DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. These include: some medicines used to treat fungal or yeast infections (miconazole which is contraindicated) alcohol other medicines used to treat diabetes (such as biguanides and insulin) some medicines used to treat high blood pressure and other heart conditions (including angiotensin receptor blocker, beta-blockers) some medicines used to treat depression and other mental illness (MAOIs) some cholesterol-lowering medicines [clofibrate] some medicines used to treat arthritis, pain and inflammation (including high dose aspirin, ibuprofen, phenylbutazone) some antibiotics (chloramphenicol; tetracyclines; long-acting sulphonamides) some medicines used to treat acid reflux and stomach ulcers Some medicines may lead to high blood glucose levels (hyperglycaemia) by weakening the blood glucose-lowering effect of DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. These include: alcohol some medicines for epilepsy (danazol) some medicines used to treat depression and other mental illness (chlorpromazine) St John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum) preparations used to treat depression some hormones used in hormone replacement therapy and oral contraceptives (oestrogen, progesterone) some medicines for asthma (salbutamol, intravenous terbutaline). barbiturates, medicines used for sedation glucocorticoids Some medicines may lead to unstable blood glucose (low blood sugar and high blood sugar) when taken at the same time as DIAMICRON 60 mg MR, especially in elderly patients. These include: A class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR may change the effects of some other medicines. These include: some medicines used to prevent blood clots (warfarin) You may need different amounts of your medicine or you may need to take different medicines. Your doctor, pharmacist or diabetes educator can tell you what to do if you are taking any of these medicines. They also have a more complete list of medicines to be careful with or avoid while taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. Ask your doctor or pharmacist if you are not sure if you are taking any of these medicines. How to take DIAMICRON 60 mg MR Follow all directions given to you by your doctor, pharmacist, and diabetes educator carefully. They may differ from the information contained in this leaflet. If you do not understand the instructions on the box, ask your doctor or pharmacist for help. Your doctor will tell you how many tablets to take each day. They may increase or decrease the dose, depending on your blood glucose levels. When to take it Swallow the tablets with a glass of water. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR tablets can be broken in half. However they should not be crushed or chewed. Crushing or chewing the tablets may change the effectiveness of the tablet. It is important to take your DIAMICRON 60 mg MR at the same time each day - usually with breakfast. Taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR with food can help to minimise the risk of hypoglycaemia. Do not skip meals while taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. How long to take it Continue taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR for as long as your doctor recommends. Make sure you keep enough DIAMICRON 60 mg MR to last over weekends and holidays. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR will help control your diabetes but will not (cure) it. Therefore, you may have to take it for a long time. If you forget to take it If is almost time for your next dose, skip the dose you missed and take your next dose when you are meant to. Otherwise, take it as you remember (with food), then go back to taking your tablets as you would normally. Missed doses can cause high blood glucose (hyperglycaemia). If you are not sure whether to skip the dose, talk to your doctor or pharmacist. Do not take a double dose to make up for the dose you have missed. If you double a dose, this may cause low blood glucose (hypoglycaemia). If you take too much (overdose) Immediately telephone your doctor, Diabetes Australia or Poisons Information Centre (telephone in Australia: 13 11 26) for advice if you think that you or anyone else may have taken too much DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. Do this even if there are no signs of discomfort or poisoning. You may need urgent medical attention. If you take too much DIAMICRON 60 mg MR together with other medicines for diabetes or alcohol, you may experience symptoms of low blood glucose (hypoglycaemia). If not treated quickly, these symptoms may progress to loss of co-ordination, slurred speech, confusion, loss of consciousness and fitting. At the first signs of hypoglycaemia, raise your blood glucose quickly by following the instructions at the end of this leaflet. If you experience any of these symptoms, immediately get medical help. While you are taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR Things you must do If you become pregnant while you are taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR, tell your doctor. Tell all doctors, dentists, pharmacists and diabetes educators who are involved with your treatment that you are taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. If you are about to start taking any new medicines, tell you doctor and pharmacist that you are taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. Take DIAMICRON 60 mg MR exactly as your doctor has prescribed. Otherwise you may not get the full benefits from treatment. Make sure you check your blood glucose levels regularly. This is the best way to tell if your diabetes is being controlled properly. Your doctor or diabetes educator will show you how and when to do this. Make sure that you, your friends, family and work colleagues can recognise the symptoms of hypoglycaemia and hyperglycaemia and know how to treat them. Instructions at the end of this leaflet can help you with this. Visit your doctor regularly so that they can check on your progress. Carefully follow your doctor's and dietician's advice on diet, drinking alcohol and exercise. Tell your doctor immediately if you notice the return of any symptoms of hyperglycaemia that you had before starting DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. These may include lethargy or tiredness, headache, thirst, passing large amounts of urine and blurred vision. These may be signs that DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is no longer working, even though you may have been taking it successfully for some time. Things you must not do Do not give DIAMICRON 60 mg MR to anyone else, even if they have the same condition as you. Do not use DIAMICRON 60 mg MR to treat other complaints unless your doctor tells you to. Do not stop taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR, or change the dosage, without checking with your doctor. Do not skip meals while taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR. Things to be careful of If you drink alcohol while taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR, you may get flushing, headache, breathing difficulties, rapid heart beat, stomach pains or feel sick and vomit. Protect your skin when you are in the sun, especially between 10am and 3pm. Sulphonylureas (the group of medicines that DIAMICRON 60 mg MR belongs to) may cause your skin to be more sensitive to sunlight than it is normally. Exposure to sunlight may cause a skin rash, itching, redness, or a severe sunburn. If outdoors, wear protective clothing and use a 30+ sunscreen. If your skin does appear to be burning, tell your doctor immediately. Be careful driving or operating machinery until you know how DIAMICRON 60 mg MR affects you. Also, be especially careful not to let your blood glucose levels fall too low. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR may cause dizziness and drowsiness in some people. Low blood glucose levels may also slow your reaction time and affect your ability to drive or operate machinery. A section at the end of this leaflet contains advice about recognising and treating hypoglycaemia. Drinking alcohol can make this worse. If either of these occurs, do not drive, operate machinery or do anything else that could be dangerous. If you are travelling, it is a good idea to: wear some form of identification showing you have diabetes carry some form of sugar to treat hypoglycaemia if it occurs, for example, sugar sachets or jelly beans carry emergency food rations in case of a delay, for example, dried fruit, biscuits or muesli bars keep DIAMICRON 60 mg MR readily available If you become sick with a cold, fever or flu, it is very important to continue taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR, even if you fell unable to eat your normal meal. If you have trouble eating solid food, use sugar-sweetened drinks as a carbohydrate substitute or eat small amounts of bland food. Your diabetes educator or dietician can give you a list of foods to use for sick days. Side Effects If you do not feel well while you are taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR then tell your doctor, pharmacist, or diabetes educator as soon as possible. All medicines can have side effects. Most of the time they are not serious but sometimes they can be. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR helps most people with Type 2 diabetes, but it may sometimes have unwanted side effects. These can include: hyPOglycaemia and hyPERglycaemia. A section at the end of this leaflet contains advice about recognising and treating hyPOglycaemia and hyPERglycaemia runny or blocked nose, sneezing, facial pressure or pain, bronchitis, sore throat and discomfort when swallowing, upper respiratory infection, coughing back pain, arthralgia, arthrosis, high blood pressure,chest pain headache, unusual weakness viral infection, urinary tract infection dizziness stomach upset with symptoms like feeling sick, stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhoea or constipation decrease in the number of cells in the blood (e.g. platelets, red and white blood cells) which may cause paleness, prolonged bleeding, bruising, sore throat and fever have been reported. These symptoms usually vanish when the treatment is discontinued increase of some hepatic enzymes levels, and exceptionally a liver disease your vision may be affected for a short time especially at the start of treatment. This effect is due to changes in blood sugar levels Other side effects are usually mild when they occur. Do not be alarmed by this list of possible side effects. You may not experience any of them. However if you do, or if you notice anything else that is making you feel unwell, you should consult your doctor or pharmacist. Other uncommon side effects have been reported and you may wish to discuss this issue with your doctor, pharmacist, or diabetes educator. If any of the signs below occur stop taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR then tell your doctor immediately or go to the Accident and Emergency department at your nearest hospital: Skin rash, redness itching and/or hives, blisters, angioedema (rapid swelling of tissues such as eyelids, face, lips, mouth, tongue or throat that may result in breathing difficulty) have been reported. Rash may progress to widespread blistering or peeling of the skin and may be the first sign of rare life threatening conditions (e.g. Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS), toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) and severe hypersensitivity reactions (DRESS). Exceptionally, DRESS have been reported: initially as flu-like symptoms and a rash on the face then an extended rash with a high temperature. As for other sulphonylureas, the following adverse events have been observed: cases of severe changes in the number of blood cells and allergic inflammation of the wall of blood vessels, reduction in blood sodium (hyponatraemia), symptoms of liver impairment (e.g. jaundice) which in most cases disappeared after withdrawal of the sulfonylurea, but may lead to life-threatening liver failure in isolated cases. After taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR Storage Keep your tablets in the pack until it is time to take them. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR will not keep as well outside its blister packaging. Keep them in a cool dry place where the temperature stays below 30C. Do not store medicines in the bathroom or near a sink. Do not leave them in a car or on a windowsill. Heat and dampness can destroy some medicines. Keep DIAMICRON 60 mg MR tablets where children cannot reach them. A locked cupboard at least one-and-a-half metres above the ground is a good place to store medicines. Disposal If your doctor tells you to stop taking DIAMICRON 60 mg MR, or the tablets have passed their expiry date, return any leftover tablets to your pharmacist for disposal. Product description What it looks like DIAMICRON 60 mg MR tablets are white oblong tablets, scored, with "DIA 60" engraved on both faces. DIAMICRON 60 mg MR tablets come in a blister strip. Each box contains 60 tablets. Ingredients Each tablet of DIAMICRON 60 mg MR contains 60 mg of gliclazide as the active ingredient and a number of inactive ingredients. The inactive ingredients in DIAMICRON 60 mg MR tablets include lactose monohydrate, maltodextrin, hypromellose, magnesium stearate, colloidal anhydrous silica. The tablets are gluten free. Manufacturer/Distributor DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is a product discovered and developed by Servier Research International. It is distributed in Australia by: Servier Laboratories (Aust) Pty. Ltd. www. servier.com.au Level 4, Building 9, 588A Swan Street Burnley 3121 Victoria DIAMICRON 60 mg MR is registered on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. Australian Register Number: AUST R 154042 Recognising and treating hyPOglycaemia (very LOW blood sugar levels) Hypoglycaemia may occur during DIAMICRON 60 mg MR treatment. The first signs of hypoglycaemia are usually weakness, trembling or shaking, sweating, light headedness, dizziness, headache or lack of concentration, irritability, tearfulness, hunger, and/ or numbness around the lips and tongue. At the first signs of hypoglycaemia take some sugar to raise your blood sugar level quickly. Do this by eating 5 to 7 jelly beans, 3 teaspoons of sugar or honey, drinking half a can of non-diet soft drink, taking 2-3 glucose tablets or a tube of glucose gel. Then take some extra carbohydrates - such as plain biscuits, fruit or milk - unless you are within 10-15 minutes of your next meal. Taking this extra carbohydrate will help to prevent a second drop in your blood glucose level. If not treated quickly, hypoglycaemia symptoms may progress to loss of co-ordination, slurred speech, confusion, fits or loss of consciousness. If hypoglycaemia symptoms do not get better straight away after taking sugar then go to the Accident and Emergency department at your nearest hospital - if necessary by calling an ambulance. Contact your doctor or diabetes educator for advice if you are concerned about hypoglycaemia. The European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) previews some of the keynote lectures at the 26th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID). The globes most prominent infection specialists will be gathering at its annual congress in Amsterdam from 9 12 April 2016. One of the highlights will be the keynote lecture by Prof. Robert A. Bonomo from the Cleveland VA Medical Center and Case Western University School of Medicine, the recipient of this years prestigious ESCMID Excellence Award. He will talk about his work on Gram-negative beta-lactamases, which has been instrumental for the development of new therapies.Prof. Bonomo will elaborate on second and third-generation treatments such as avibactam and relebactam, which are effective against pathogens, while older compounds such as amoxicillin are no longer viable against certain Gram-negative bacteria. Antimicrobial strategies will once again be a major topic at this years ECCMID. Prof. Roy Kishony from the Israel Institute of Technology will outline how evolutionary biology could provide new insights. He has proposed, for instance, to alternate between different antibiotics so that bacteria are less likely to develop resistance. Meanwhile, Prof. Lance B. Price of George Washington University will examine how antibiotic use in animal food production contributes to antimicrobial resistance. Current and emerging tuberculosis drugs will be evaluated in a keynote lecture by Prof.Stewart Cole from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne he achieved international recognition for his leadership of the project to sequence the genome of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis. At the congress, his session will examine gene-sequencing data and discuss how genomics can help improve the next generation of treatments. The effects that the fungal microbiome, or mycobiome, has on human health will be presented by Prof. Mahmoud A. Ghannoum of the University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University. During his session he will make a proposal to conduct an all-inclusive characterization of the human microbiome to better understand the role it plays in human health. Similarly, Dr. Vincent B. Young from the University of Michigan will scrutinize the role of microbiota in transplantations. An entirely different perspective is provided by Hala Audi, who leads the team conducting Jim ONeills independent Review on Antimicrobial Resistance commissioned by the UK Government. She will be presenting an overview of nearly two years of international work by the Review which will publish its final recommendations this Summer. The ONeill group have called for establishing a new, global mechanism to reimburse the development of new antibiotics that meet specified unmet medical needs. Such a new system would offer lump sum payments some of US $1bn or more for breakthrough new antibiotics, linked to their value in combating antimicrobial resistance. This approach would help de-link a new products profitability from its sales volumes, while ensuring global access to new antibiotics and providing greater certainty about the commercial viability of products. It also complements conservation goals by eliminating the imperative for a drug company to sell new antibiotics in large quantities Prof. Winfried V. Kern, ECCMID Programme Director, commented: We have invited some renowned presenters for this years keynote sessions. I hope that the discussions, recommendations, and advice given at our congress will contribute to answering some of the most pressing questions in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology. Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today Full keynotes list: Antimicrobial resistance: an economics perspective, Hala Audi, London, United Kingdom Vancomycin resistance in Staphylococcus aureus: nothing is what it seems to be, Benjamin P. Howden, Melbourne, Australia Microbiota transplantation, Vincent B. Young, Ann Arbor, MI, United States New drugs for tuberculosis: from genome to patient, Stewart Cole, Lausanne, Switzerland How antibiotics for non-human use affect public health, Lance B. Price, Washington, DC, United States The fungal microbiome and human health, Mahmoud A. Ghannoum, Cleveland, OH, United States Systems vaccinology, Bali Pulendran, Atlanta, GA, United States Translating evolutionary biology findings into antibiotic stewardship strategies, Roy Kishony, Haifa, Israel Neglected parasitic diseases: overview and update, David Molyneux, Liverpool, United Kingdom The renaissance of the beta-lactamase inhibitors - Robert A. Bonomo,Cleveland VA Medical Center and Case Western University School of Medicine Lucideon, the international materials technology company, together with Knight Mechanical Testing, is hosting a webinar entitled Wear and Mechanical Testing of Hips and Knees - What the Standards Dont Tell You on the 28th April at 3PM (UK time) 10AM (EST). The webinar, which is being presented by Ramiro Ramirez, Prosthetic Knee Wear Test Engineer, Lucideon, and Kevin Knight, CEO, Knight Mechanical Testing (KMT), will discuss the standards and guidance offered for wear and mechanical testing of orthopaedic implants and what their limitations are. The presenters will draw on their own experiences in developing test methods for orthopedic devices where guidance is not clear or sufficient. Ramiro Ramirez said: The safety and performance of orthopedic devices is paramount for the patient, thus the goal of implant manufacturers is to make their products as robust as possible. Due to the complexity of these devices and the speed at which the industry is moving, the guidance and standards available do not always cover what is required." Lucideon partners with KMT for fatigue and mechanical testing services. Developing new test methods and internal standards is a common requirement for us. This can involve modifying waveforms to simulate different ranges of motion and loads, analyzing the coatings that are applied to the surface, or any other custom needs. Whether preparing the data for a product to be put on the market or testing new products in the design phase, this is a service that proves invaluable when current guidance and standards dont cover our clients needs. Lucideon provides dedicated testing for hip and knee orthopedic implants from its laboratories in the UK and USA. Lucideons laboratories are accredited to ISO 17025 and all aspects of ISO 14242 (hips) and ISO 14243 (knees) and equipped with the latest gold standard simulators. Lucideon entered into a Marketing and Commercial Collaboration Agreement with KMT in 2014 so that both companies could offer a complete portfolio of testing and analysis services to the orthopedic industry and access each others expertise. Lynchburg businesses and city officials are bracing for hundreds of visitors downtown when The Virginian, Norfolk & Westerns Class J 611 steam passenger locomotive, pulls into Kemper Street Station on Saturday afternoon. The train, coming from Spencer, North Carolina as part of a one-day excursion, is expected to arrive at the station at about noon and depart at 3 p.m. The city has created a small festival to celebrate the arrival of the train, and downtown restaurants and stores are planning discounts and specials for visitors expected to arrive by shuttle from the train station. We want everyone to have a good experience, Lynchburg city spokeswoman JoAnn Martin said Thursday, adding she hopes train riders have such a good time theyll decide to come back one day and maybe stay a little longer. Justin Rogers, general manager at The Depot Grille, said the downtown restaurant is running food specials and has increased inventory and weekend staffing in anticipation of a big turnout. Were definitely expecting a big crowd, Rogers said, adding the restaurants setting inside an old train station is expected to attract fans. The Virginian will carry about 900 passengers and crew combined. Plus, many are expected to be on site and along the route to see the National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark pull into the Kemper Street Station. There is really no way for us to tell how many will come to see the train, Martin said. We know it has brought a lot of public interest. The locomotive, 16 feet tall at the stack, had put in a total of 1.2 million miles when it retired in 1994. It was restored for excursion duties complete with a dome passenger car, giving riders a 180-degree panoramic view of passing scenery in 2014 and put back into service in May. Since news broke of its visit to the Hill City, Mark Brown with the North Carolina Transportation Museum said his office has had a huge volume of calls from fans trying to determine the route the train will take to and from North Carolina. To prepare for the expected crowd, Lynchburg will close Kemper station parking for anyone other than Amtraks morning riders, and will provide free shuttle service to and from downtown starting at 10:30 a.m. All downtown parking is free Saturday, and shuttles will run continuously throughout the day. GLTC transportation is free on all routes all day as well. Martin advises visitors to dress warmly temperatures are expected to be in the 40s on Saturday and, for those who want to be in the front row to see the train roll in, arrive early. For those who cant get to the station, Martin said the train will be visible from the Blackwater Creek Trail at Kemper Street Station. She and Brown both ask for patience. The train could be a little late so people just have to have patience, thats the nature of trains, Martin said. Brown said whenever the 611 travels, the route is lined with fans and photographers. He expects this weekends excursion to be no different because the train cars are as spectacular as the steam locomotive itself. People dont get on these trains to get to and from work or just to pass the time, Brown said. This is a chartered special occasion trip and the mood is grand on these trains. Its a lot of fun, he said. Its going to look like no train youve seen before. Familiar with the popularity of the trains, Brown advises those wanting to take photos to make sure they are on the safest ground possible before doing so, and said it is well worth it to get the photos. This is an impressive beast either moving or stable. Knowing what Lynchburg has planned for the passengers of the 611 only adds to the excitement, Brown said. A really big party thats really what we anticipate, he said. Thats going to be a really great time those three hours that we are spending in Lynchburg. Six current and former Virginia senators were found in contempt Thursday by a Richmond circuit court judge for refusing to surrender records in the latest challenge to legislative gerrymandering. Judge W. Reilly Marchant imposed a fine on each senator of $100 per day. However, the fine will be suspended until an appeals court perhaps the state Supreme Court decides the issue behind the senators refusal to produce the documents: Whether the lawmakers are protected by the Virginia Constitution from questioning in legal proceedings because it could divert attention from their public duties. A seventh senator, Richard H. Stuart, R-Stafford, said several hours later that he is complying with Marchants order, issued earlier this year, to turn over the records, sparing Stuart from a contempt decree. Marchants order was not unexpected and had been sought by lawyers for the senators. They want the states highest courts to determine whether the legislators official privilege, in this instance, would allow them to keep confidential their communications with staff, specifically the Division of Legislative Services. It is the bill-writing and research arm of the General Assembly. The order was issued by Marchant in the preliminaries to a September trial at which a redistricting reform organization, OneVirginia2021, will contest as illegal under the state constitution redistricting plans for the House of Delegates and the Senate. Separate challenges in federal court to legislative and congressional redistricting are pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Trial courts threw out congressional boundaries as racial gerrymandering but upheld House of Delegates lines. Both plans were drawn by Republicans. Lawyers for the senators told Marchant that Stuart was prepared to give up the documents but wanted assurances they would be kept confidential. Marchant said that could not be done in a public proceeding. Stuart said later he would comply. Marchant had set a deadline of April 2 for the senators to submit material requested by OneVirginia2021. House records are expected to be made available to the groups lawyers. Lawyers for OneVirginia2021 had sought fines of $200 per day for each senator. In addition to Stuart, the senators from whom OneVirginia2021 sought documents were Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax; George L. Barker, D-Fairfax; David W. Marsden, D-Fairfax, and John S. Edwards, D-Roanoke. The former senators are Charles J. Colgan, a Democrat from Prince William County and Ralph K. Smith, a Republican from Roanoke County. 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 HIS DEATH HURTS US ALL His death has left members of the Police Service in deep grief, with a colleague saying we are all hurting. The hope for a miracle which Benjamins family had prayed for quickly faded when hospital officials called his family early yesterday morning telling them his condition had worsened and urged them to head to the Intensive Care Unit where he had been warded. Benjamins common-law wife Cherry Ann Foster, 33, the mother of three of his five children, his brother, who is also a policeman, and his eldest son Arion, 21, and several officers were at his bedside when doctors pronounced him dead at 11.15 am. A policeman for 16 years, Benjamin, of Stewart Street Extension, Pleasantville, was last posted at Ste Madeleine Police Station and had previously been assigned to the Court and Process Unit at San Fernando Magistrates Court. He is originally from Malgretoute Road, Manahambre Road, Princes Town. Benjamin is the first police officer to be killed in the line of duty since the start of the year. At about 8.30 pm, on Monday, Benjamin and a policewoman had responded to a report of a robbery in progress at Chao Yong Supermarket on Naparima Mayaro Road, St Clements, near Allamby Street, in Ste Madeleine. As Benjamin sought to gain access to the back of the building through a rear exit door, one of the two bandits shot him in the head. The officer collapsed with his drawn service pistol still in his hand. It is believed a second loaded nine millimetre pistol, which he also had in his possession, was stolen by the bandits who fled the scene. The single bullet was lodged at the base of his neck and doctors told family members that surgery was not possible at the time as fragments of the bullet were scattered in the brain and irreversible damage had been done. He was placed in a medically induced coma. Since then distraught relatives had been taking turns at the officers bedside in their vigil of prayer for his recovery. Snr Supt Irwin Hackshaw, head of of the Southern Division, yesterday described Benjamin as a fearless and hardworking officer who was not afraid to go beyond the call of duty. He said he demonstrated that on Monday when he responded to robbery report. Hackshaw said the constable will be sadly missed by his peers and especially his colleagues in the Southern Division. He extended condolences to his bereaved family and said the Police Victim and Support Services has been counselling Benjamins colleagues, and that Community Police officers are working closely with the family. He assured the Police Service will continue to support the family in this time of grief and after. Retired Assistant Commissioner of Police Cecil Santana, of the Southern Division, also hailed Benjamin as a hard-working and dependable officer. Benjamin worked with him in the Witness Protection Programme from 2004 to 2007. Santana recalled he had also worked with Benjamins father who was also a police officer in the Criminal Investigations Department the 1980s in the CID. Benjamins father died this past January, he disclosed. The slain officers colleagues yesterday said Benjie, as they called him, always smiled and was easy to work with. We were getting problems to see Benjie at ICU. Only relatives were allowed (initially). Any time an officer dies in such a manner, it affects us all. It is really sad, one officer lamented. Benjamins colleagues knew his chances of survival were slim but were still not prepared for his death. Based on the extent of the injuries, we knew it (death) was coming. But it is still hard to accept that he is gone. Had he lived, he would have surely been in a vegetative state, another officer said. In a media release, TT Police Service Public Affairs Department yesterday said acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams had expressed sadness and sorrow over the passing of Benjamin (regimental number 14862). Benjamin was enlisted in the police service on March 1, 2000. The release further stated that police investigators continued to search for the two male suspects in the now fatal robbery. All was quiet at Benjamins home as no one was home at the time Newsday visited. Neighbours, however, praised him as a good cop. San Fernando Mayor Kazim Hosein also paid tribute to Benjamin saying his death is a great loss to the city and the Pleasantville community. He urged citizens to hold fast to the legacy of public service that defined PC Benjamins life. Hosein said he was personally inspired by the example of public service demonstrated by his family as PC Benjamin and his brother both followed in their fathers footsteps to serve our nation as police officers. He called on all citizens of Trinidad & Tobago to join together in honouring PC Benjamins life by actively seeking out opportunities to serve each other, to support the disadvantaged among us, and give greater opportunities for our youth. In this way we can all contribute to improving security and community life in our cities, towns and villages. An autopsy of Benjamins body is expected to be performed today at the Forensic Sciences Centre, St James. A high-powered team led by ASP Ramdeo and including Insp Gajadhar and officers of the Criminal Investigation Department and Southern Homicide Bureau have been appointed to investigate his shooting death. Cops death triggers new call for $1M Emotions ran high yesterday when news broke that Benjamin had succumbed to a gunshot wound to his head at the Intensive Care Unit of the San Fernando General Hospital. Benjamin, 44, was shot while responding to a report of a robbery at a supermarket at St Clements, San Fernando on Monday night. Police officers contacted Ramesar instructing him to demand the $1 million payout to the families of all officers killed in the line of duty since 2013. Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon has previously indicated that the former Peoples Partnership (PP) administration had not put the necessary policy in place to facilitate the payment but had said Government is reviewing the proposal. During the presentation of the 2013- 2014 budget, it was announced by then Minister of Finance Larry Howai that the PP government had made a decision to pay $1 million to the families of officers killed in the line of duty. Yesterday, Ramesar expressed his heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Benjamin on behalf of the PSWA executive and membership. However, he issued a clear warning to Government that if they did not issue a statement on the status of the $1 million compensation, the matter will be taken to court. The Police Service is really grieving over this loss, whilst we have not yet recovered from recent losses among our ranks of over five officers since 2013, Ramesar said. In fact, these recent losses have demonstrated that the policeman losing his life whilst on duty is not just talk, but the reality for the spouses and children of police officers. The Associations efforts to address the trauma and difficulties families face when a relative who is a police officer is killed on duty has led the executive to again appeal to Government to disclose its position on the $1 million compensation, Ramesar said. We did not find any comfort by the Government saying that they intend to make an amendment. The Association understands that it is clear that this is a constructive refusal to deal with the immediate issues and we are convinced that if there is any serious intention to provide the compensation, that the Government has the capacity to make the payment in the interim, he said. Yesterday, Dillon expressed condolences to Benjamins family on behalf of himself and the Government. Since 2013 six police officers were killed in the line of duty. Two other officers were also killed, but one was not on duty and the other was the victim of an accidental shooting by a colleague while on duty FITUN: No chance for review input FITUNs comments come two days after Imbert briefed NTAC on the state of the economy during its inaugural meeting at the Eric Williams Financial Complex in Port-of-Spain. In a statement, FITUN president Joseph Remy said the group was surprised to learn of Tuesdays meeting and it did not have sufficient time to make any input into the mid-term review. While FITUN hoped this was just a minor aberration, Remy said the Government should not advocate or implement any measures that will adversely affect ordinary citizens and the countrys working class. He identified the fuel subsidy as one such issue. Where is the Zika protocol for pregnant patients ? Gopeesingh was speaking to members of the media yesterday during a news conference at the Office of the Opposition, Charles Street, Port-of-Spain. With the Zika virus, 80 per cent of people infected would not show any symptoms. The Minister of Health has indicated that he has a protocol, but we are yet to see this protocol. What protocol is he speaking about? As we speak now there may be 17,000 women who are pregnant, thats the annual birth rate. In the first and second trimester, there would be thousands there and they need to be monitored in terms of their foetal growth to determine whether there is any evidence of microcephaly. After 14 weeks we should be able to determine this and monitor those who have no symptoms at all, Gopeesingh said. He suggested that health centres should set up systems whereby ultrasonographers could monitor the size of the babies heads as they developed. The multiple studies are showing a close association (with microcephaly), but it is very difficult to prove a causative factor. With medical science we can look at associated factors causing a particular disease and there is a strong correlation between Zika and microcephaly, he said. Asked about a womans choice of abortion if her unborn child was diagnosed with microcephaly, Gopeesingh drew reference from Barbados which has reviewed its abortion law. In Trinidad and Tobago, if anyone attempts to procure an abortion, she is guilty of a felony, so it is a crime. I think this needs a national referendum. This cannot be resolved by judges or a minister of a government, it has to be the people deciding on such an issue. Having to give birth to a child with microcephaly is a devastating experience. That child would have neurological deficiencies. The child may not be able to stand or walk, or speak or hear. The life of the mother or parents goes haywire when they would have to take care of that little one for the rest of their lives. This child would not be able to take care of himself or herself. 'He Had the Chance to Go in and Save the Children' (Newser) A Dallas woman accused of arranging for a hit man to kill a dentist who was dating her ex-boyfriend has been added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted fugitives list, the AP reports. Brenda Delgado, 33, is wanted for capital murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. The FBI has offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to her arrest. Delgado is charged in the September death of 35-year-old Dr. Kendra Hatcher, who was fatally shot in the parking garage of a Dallas apartment complex. Police have arrested the suspected gunman. Investigators say Delgado was jealous because Hatcher was dating her ex-boyfriend and had recently been introduced to his parents. (Read more Most Wanted stories.) (Newser) An English teacher from Maine who won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize last year has been accused of shoplifting a blouse worth $14.99, the AP reports. According to the Portland Press Herald, security personnel saw Nancie Atwell browsing through a Damariscotta store on March 28. The security officers say she removed the blouse from a hanger, rolled it up, and placed it in a bag she was carrying. Atwell says it was a misunderstandingshe returned another item and took the blouse in exchange. She's scheduled in court next month on a misdemeanor theft charge. Atwell is the founder of the Centre for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb, Maine. She was selected as the Global Teacher Prize winner from 1,300 applicants from 127 countries at a ceremony in Dubai with former President Bill Clinton in attendance. She said the money would go toward school improvements. (Read more shoplifting stories.) (Newser) Donald Trump can count on a vote from Rudy Giuliani, just not a formal endorsement. A rep for the former NYC mayor says Giuliani will vote for Trump in the state's April 19 primary, reports the Wall Street Journal, which adds, "Even without an official endorsement, Mr. Giulianis vote is a boost for Mr. Trump." More explicitly, Giuliani tells the New York Post: "I support Trump. I'm gonna vote for Trump." A longtime friend of Trump, per the Journal, Giuliani has been informally advising the billionaire's campaign. And in February, he told attendees at an Illinois fundraiser that they should vote for the candidate who "talks about how great they are." Giuliani tells the Post that he doesn't support all of Trump's positions, but is on board when it comes to the economy, immigration, and security. "Trump is a negotiator," he says. "Threatening to withdraw from NATO will get a better deal with NATO." (Read more New York stories.) (Newser) Michael Banks' engagement couldn't have gotten off to a rockier start. Police say the 27-year-old Fresno man illegally scaled the 600-foot Morro Rock off California's Central Coast after sunrise Thursday to propose to his girlfriend over the Facetime app. She said yes, but was upset that he'd climbed the rock at all, reports KSBY. Then, rather than return down the south side of the rock, Banks chose a steeper path down the eastern face and got stuck on a small chunk of rock. "He couldn't go any direction, on a sheer ledge, with his feet dangling 80 feet off the ground," a fire chief tells the AP. Locals heard him calling for help around 8:45am, and a helicopter soon arrived to rescue him. "It was a pretty amazing rescue on the part of the Fire Department," a Morro Bay State Park ranger tells the San Luis Obispo Tribune, noting the helicopters blades had to get close to the rock face to deliver a harness to Banks, who was back on the ground unscathed by 9:30am. He was issued a misdemeanor citation for trespassingthe fire chief says it's illegal to climb the rock "because it kills people"and was told he'd have to pay for the rescue, which likely cost thousands. But things only went downhill from there. Banks was "found to be under the influence and in possession of methamphetamine" and ended the happy day in San Luis Obispo County Jail, reports KFSN. (Another proposal with iffy judgment involved stopping cars in the middle of a highway.) (Newser) A convicted killer in Arkansas whose only ways out of prison were death or escape will be leaving by the former after attempting the latter. Christopher Wilson, a 41-year-old serving life without parole for beating a woman and her 8-month-old baby to death in 2002, was shot dead during an escape attempt Thursday, Arkansas Matters reports. He was shot by two guards, who will now be placed on administrative leave until the investigation is complete, at the Varner Unit in Lincoln County, KTHV reports. An Arkansas Department of Correction spokesman says the guards followed protocol, which is to issue a verbal warning to escapees and use deadly force only as a last resort. The spokesman says the investigation has been turned over to Arkansas State Police, and the ADC will also conduct an internal investigation. KATV reports that the last time an Arkansas inmate was shot and killed by corrections officers was in 1991. The most recent escape death happened in 2013 at the same unit Wilson tried to escape from. The inmate in that case was fatally injured after becoming stuck on a fence. (A dangerous patient is still on the loose after escaping from a psychiatric hospital in Washington state.) (Newser) Airline seats are getting smaller, Americans are getting biggerand the Senate has decided the issue is none of its business. A proposal from Sen. Charles Schumer to do something about ever-shrinking airline seats and legroom was rejected Thursday by a 54-to-42 vote, with almost every Republican in the chamber voting against it, the BBC reports. The amendment from Schumerwho complains that "it costs you an arm and a leg just to have room for your arms and legs"was attached to a broader aviation bill. It would have banned airlines from reducing seat size and the distance between rows for 30 days while the FAA worked on setting seat size and row spacing requirements for US airlines, reports CNNMoney. It would also have required airlines to post seat sizes on their websites. The amendment "would ensure that airlines can't keep chopping down on seat size and legroom until consumers are packed in like sardines in a can on every flight," said Schumer, who blamed airline lobbyists for the defeat. "Flying is not pleasant anymore. You're crammed in." The Washington Post notes that the width of the average economy seat has shrunk to 17 inches from 18.5 inches since the '70s, rows are now more than 4 inches closer together, and the proportion of Americans considered obese has soared to 35% over the same period. A similar amendment introduced in the House earlier this year was also shot down. (Read more airline seats stories.) (Newser) Authorities may be closing in on an alleged murderer who escaped from a Washington state psychiatric hospital: Officials say Anthony Garver's mom called 911 around 3:30pm Thursday after her son visited his parents' home near Spokane, reports NBC News. Garver fled before SWAT officers, K-9 units, and helicopters converged on the scene. They're now "trying to contain him in the area and see if we can locate him from where he left the house," an official says. However, police fear Garver may be armed. He was previously known to possess military-style weapons and explosives and may have a stash hidden in the area, officials tell the Spokesman-Review and Seattle Times. Court documents note Garver has threatened mass shootings, studied bombs and al-Qaeda training documents, and "aspired to emulate" the Oklahoma City bomber. "He's out there among us, so not just my safety and family's safety, but everybody's safety" is at risk, says the mother of the woman Garver is accused of killing. "He's very dangerous." Garver is actually no stranger to life on the run. After a stint in prison for weapons charges, he failed to show up for a work-release program in 2009, sparking a month-long manhunt. He was found hiding in the woods near Mount Spokane. He later escaped from a halfway house. On Wednesday, Garver and his roommatesince recapturedescaped from Western State Hospital through a locked window on which the bolts "were tampered with over several months," the hospital says in a statement. He then made it to Seattle, where authorities believe he bought a bus ticket to Spokane using the name John Anderson and money he was allowed to have at the hospital. (Read more escaped criminal stories.) (Newser) There's been plenty of talk of "revolution" on the campaign trail this year, and now Pope Francis wants to start his own regarding marriage, divorce, sex, and family life, issuing a major document Friday that addresses these issues while calling for one's conscience, rather than hard-and-fast rules, to serve as Catholics' guiding force, the AP reports. In his 256-page "Amoris Laetitia," or "Joy of Love," the pontiff doesn't make any major overhauls to church doctrine, but instead calls for less judgment and exhorts priests to embrace those who may appear to fall short of what the Gospel preaches, welcoming everyone from single parents and gay couples to unmarried couples living together into the fold, the New York Times reports. "A pastor cannot feel that it is enough to simply apply moral laws to those living in 'irregular' situations, as if they were stones to throw at people's lives," he writes. In the document that has the pope sounding "less like a pontiff than a marriage counselor," per the Washington Post, Francis calls for more empathy, a more "attentive" church, and a "new route back for divorced Catholics," the New York Times explains in excerpts from his appeal. He advocates for rejuvenating broken marriages and continued sex education, though he denounces the "narcissism" of terms like "protection" and "safe sex," which he says epitomize a "negative attitude towards the natural procreative finality of sexuality, as if an eventual child were an enemy to be protected against." He even talks about nurturing romance within marriage, including sharing a "morning kiss" and "household chores" togethereven throwing parties to "break the routine." Yet although he warns against anti-gay violence, one issue he doesn't sway on is gay marriage. "There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family," he writes. (How this new proclamation could affect families, per the New York Times.) (Newser) Bernie Sanders said Friday he will attend a Vatican City conference on social, economic, and environmental issues next week, making the symbolic overseas trip ahead of a pivotal New York primary against Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator has long been an admirer of Pope Francis on issues of wealth inequality and social justice and his presentation to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on April 15 will allow him to reach a larger audience of Catholic voters in New York four days before the primary. Sanders trails Clinton among delegates and the New York contest is an important step in the senator's ability to gain ground against the former secretary of state. It was not clear yet whether Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary, would meet with the pope during his trip. Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said "if the opportunity arises he would be delighted to meet with the pope" but Sanders has not received an official invitation from the Catholic leader. "The moral imperative that (the pope) is bringing to this discussion is absolutely extraordinary and absolutely what the world needs. These are issues that I have been dealing with for years," Sanders said in a phone interview with the AP. "On economic issues, on issues of poverty and income and wealth inequality, the issues of making sure we address the needs of the poorest people of this planet, this is something that the pope and I are very much on the same page." (The New York Times notes that Sanders differs with the pope on certain other issues, including gay rights.) Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the PASS, said he extended an invitation to Sanders because he seems to have a "real interest" in studying the papal documents issued by the pope. He did not issue invitations to the other presidential candidates. Attendees of the conference will include Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, along with Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, a member of the academy, and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to the United Nations on environmental and sustainability issues. (Read more Bernie Sanders stories.) (Newser) Mohamed Abrini, one of the suspects in the November Paris attacks (and said to be likely involved in last month's Brussels attacks) was arrested Friday in Brussels, unnamed sources tell Belgian broadcaster VRT, via Reutersand he's likely the mysterious "man in the hat" seen in surveillance video at the Brussels airport with two suicide bombers. The man in the hat was believed to have been carrying a bomb that malfunctioned and never went off, the Telegraph notes. The prosecutor's office wouldn't confirm it had Abrini in custody, but it did say "several arrests" had been made, per the AP, and VRT says a second name that's emerged is that of Osama Krayem, believed to have accompanied another suicide bomber on the metro on the day of the Brussels bombings. On Thursday, Belgian authorities issued a call to the public to look for a hooded jacket that the man in the hat eventually discards in the March 22 footage, which shows him leaving the Zaventem airport that morning wearing the jacket, then reappearing at a street intersection an hour or so later without it. Per Fox News, the last time Abrini had been spotted was on Nov. 11, two days before the Paris attacks, at a gas station near Paris with another suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam. The latter was arrested March 18 in Brussels and is now being held in a Bruges prison. Abrini has a bunch of convictions to his name in Belgium, including for robbery and violence. (There are apparently many more suspects in both attacks still on the loose.) (Newser) Police have arrested a 17-year-old homeless man in the murder of University of Texas student Haruka Weiser, found dead in a creek on campus on Tuesday. Meechaiel Criner, who is not a student at the school, was arrested Thursday and has been booked in Travis County Jail pending a murder charge, per NBC News. Authorities say the break in the case came after firefighters responded to a small fire that turned out to be a burning backpack, reports the American-Statesman. Police believe the backpack belonged to Weiser and contained some of her belongings. A witness and fire officials later identified the man seen walking a woman's bike around campus in a surveillance video as having appeared at the scene of the fire, police said at a press conference on Friday, per the AP. "We're going to bring justice to that family, and restore the sense of safety that this campus and this community has enjoyed," says Austin's police chief. Police have not commented on a motive. (Read more murder stories.) (Newser) A fatal shooting of two people at an Air Force base in Texas on Friday appears to be a murder-suicide, the AP reports. Two bodies were found inside a room of a building at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, says Bexar County Sheriff's Office spokesman James Keith. "It's over," he told Reuters, adding that it's believed the shooter is among the two dead and that sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement officers are continuing to search the building and nearby facilities out of "an abundance of caution." "There are still some rooms that are locked that we are still trying to gain entry into," Keith says, per the Air Force Times. The lockdown at Lackland and at nearby schools has been lifted. The Times says it obtained an internal report from the Pentagon that indicated the commanding officer of a training squadron at the base was shot by an airman, which an Air Force spokeswoman for the Pentagon couldn't confirm right away. On its official Facebook page, the base notes that "there are no indications that this was a terrorist attack." Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland is the home of Air Force basic training. The Army's Fort Sam Houston and Lackland Air Force Base were combined during base realignment several years ago to become the military's largest joint base. About 160 miles northeast of the joint base is Fort Hood, which in 2009 was the site of the deadliest shooting at a US military base, when 13 people were killed and 31 were injured. (Read more murder-suicide stories.) (Newser) The Keystone pipeline sprung a leak Saturday, and TransCanada was slightly off in its original estimate of how much oil spilled into Hutchinson County, South Dakotaby about 9,000% or so. CNN reports the oil company originally estimated that only about 187 gallons had spilled. On Thursday, it updated that estimate to about 16,800 gallons after excavating more than 100 feet of pipe, News 10 ABC reports. While TransCanada has yet to find the source of the leak, it says it's been "controlled" by shutting off a section of the pipeline. CNN quotes TransCanada as stating it hasn't "observed significant impacts to the environment" from the leak. The company claims the leak poses no threat to public health, UPI reports. The affected section of the Keystone pipeline will remain closed until early next week while workers search for the leak. While less oil will be entering the US market from Canada for the time being, analysts say consumers won't be affected as there is currently more than enough oil available. Last November, President Obama vetoed an extension of the Keystone pipeline known as Keystone XL at least partly due to environmental concerns. TransCanada is currently challenging that veto in federal court. CNN quotes the executive director of the Sierra Club as saying the current leak in South Dakota "is a stark reminder that it's not a question if a pipeline will malfunction, but rather a question of when." (Read more oil leak stories.) (Newser) One Louisiana city just made it legal for city employeeseven those driving city vehicles or operating heavy machineryto drink on the job. Kind of. The Shreveport Times reports Bossier City had a zero-tolerance policy for city workers on the job until mayor Lorenz Walker suddenly changed that policy Monday. Now employees tested for alcohol at work can have a BAC up to 0.04% without being immediately terminatedas they would have been under the old policy, according to KTAL. Walker says he changed the policy to protect city employees who had been drinking the night before or had used mouthwash or other products containing alcohol. More specifically though, Walker changed the policy to protect one particular employee, who had an accident while operating heavy machinery and a 0.02% BAC. The employee, who showed no signs of impairment, said he had been drinking the night before. When Walker changed the policy Monday, he made it retroactive to April 1. Because of that, the employee hasn't been fired. Walker admitted to not wanting to lose "a good employee" at a city council meeting Tuesday. Members of the city council and MADD Louisiana have spoken out against the policy change, and council president Don Williams is introducing an ordinance that, if approved, would revert Bossier City to its old zero-tolerance policy. "This is a pattern of the mayor," Williams tells the Times. "There have been several instances of alcohol-related incidents, and the mayor uses his policy the way he wants to interpret it." (Read more alcohol stories.) (Newser) The former Navy SEAL who says he fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden was arrested Friday on a drunken driving charge after police found him asleep in a car parked at a convenience store in his Montana hometown, the AP reports. Customers at the store in Butte called police to report a sleeping man behind the wheel of the running car around 2:30am, Butte-Silver Bow County Undersheriff George Skuletich said. The officer who responded woke the man up, identified him as Robert O'Neill, and noticed odd behavior. "He was confused. His actions were consistent with somebody who might be under the influence of something," Skuletich said. O'Neill denied drinking, gave different stories about where he had been, and at one point told the officers he had taken prescription medication to help him sleep, Skuletich said. O'Neill failed a field sobriety test and would not perform others. The officers brought him to jail, where he refused a test to determine his blood alcohol level. At that point, he was charged with driving under the influence, which is a misdemeanor, Skuletich said. Jail records show O'Neill was released at 4:26am after posting a $685 bond. It is O'Neill's first arrest. (Read more Robert O'Neill stories.) Microsoft Surface Phone: Microsoft's Next Flagship? Microsoft has plans to bring a surface phone just like their tablet-PCs early 2017. The phone will reportedly feature Windows 10. There could be around three variants and will reportedly be the "flagship". Microsoft although have mentioned that they're not currently focusing on phone division for this year, it's pretty evident that this will be a reality in 2017. Microsoft's windows 10 Mobile OS being developed day-by-day suggests that this is actually in-plans for the American Software giants. This might bring an end to average phones from the "Lumia" series since Microsoft have hammered more developments of mid-range Lumia devices. Although they did announce the 650 reportedly costing a whopping 15,000INR for a mediocre Snapdragon 212 and a 1GB ram. Microsoft will give developers more time to improve their apps and make it more interactive. This will also give OEM partners to position themselves for new hardware announcements etc. Microsoft also need to bounce back strongly to shock the smartphone market. The "Redstone 2" is what it'll be named. Microsoft's new hard ware to the smarphone space needs a better impact than their previous announcements which hardly excited the user-base. Microsoft is also encouraging its partners to get on board with Windows 10 Mobile compete with others. The Lumia line still is preferred devices in the Windows Phone market with around more than 90 percent. There won't be any new devices for this year from the American giant and might complete fade out Lumia sequels indefinitely. Microsoft are now more concentrated on getting their applications perfected to other operating systems Android and iOs. While this move is a bummer for all of us, Microsoft are for now not giving a damn about their own user base while this is for sure going to impact their future sales. Well, there's still lot of time for 2017! Uber agreed to pay at least $10 million to settle claims by California prosecutors that it deluded riders about the nature of its driver historical verification The settlement was signed Thursday in San Francisco, where Uber is located. According to LA Times Uber needs to pay $10 million within of 60 days, with the installment liable to be part equally between the two urban communities. Should it neglect to comply, the sum will naturally increment to $25 million. Uber did not admit wrongdoing, as is standard for such settlements, and said it already has made many changes prosecutors sought. San Francisco and Los Angeles prosecutors sued Uber in 2014, saying Uber's background checks were less strict to what taxi drivers go through since they did not implement fingerprint checks for past convictions. Instead, Uber's procedure relies on a name search of other criminal databases and motor vehicle department files going back seven years. Now Uber ceased claiming its background checks were "industry leading" when it settled a separate case brought by riders. Under that $28.5 million settlement reached in February, Uber also modified its "safe ride fee" as a "booking fee." Amid the case procedures a year ago, Gascon and lead prosecutor Jackie Lacey asserted Uber's methods, which incorporate the examination of area, government, and multi-state criminal foundation records, brought about the organization missing criminal records for 25 Uber candidates in San Francisco and Los Angeles. They said this was halfway down to Uber overlooking a database of around 30,000 enrolled sex offenders, furthermore in light of the fact that the checks just cover the previous seven years. "The result we achieved today goes well beyond its impact on Uber," San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said in a written statement. "It sends a clear message to all businesses, and to startups in particular, that in the quest to quickly obtain market share, laws designed to protect consumers cannot be ignored." The LA Times noted Thursdays settlement as relatively small and something of a coup for the company, which today is valued at $62.5 billion. "We're glad to put this case behind us and excited to redouble our efforts serving riders and drivers across the state of California," Uber said in a written statement. Uber Technologies Inc. is an American multinational online transportation network company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It develops, markets and operates the Uber mobile app, which allows consumers with smartphones to submit a trip request which is then routed to Uber drivers who use their own cars. NASA discovered eight more asteroids that may have Earth's name written on them. These eight objects were classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA) based on size and proximity to Earth. Having entered the planet's neighbourhood nudged by gravity of giant planets, they would be monitored for their threat. The eight orbiting bodies are part of the 72 Near Earth Objects that NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft spotted in its second year since December 2013. "By studying the distribution of lighter- and darker-colored material, NEOWISE data give us a better understanding of the origins of the NEOs, originating from either different parts of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or the icier comet populations," said James Bauer, the mission's deputy principal investigator. NASA studies Near Earth Objects (NEO) for various purposes but at least one of them changing course to crash into the planet is a grave concern. NEOWISE also helps NASA corroborate what its ground stations see. "NEOWISE discovers large, dark, near-Earth objects, complementing our network of ground-based telescopes operating at visible-light wavelengths. On average, these objects are many hundreds of meters across," said Amy Mainzer NEOWISE principal investigator. As to the question whether any of these eight objects could strike Earth, CNN reported that no big space rocks are headed the planet's way but small rocks like the Chelyabinsk meteor could streak past, undetected. Around 14,246 NEOs are known to exist with NEOWISE having spotted over 400 since December 2013. While there is no planned response in place to combat threatening asteroids, some ideas to save the planet include deflecting a small asteroid with engines and nuking a large one. Whether these methods can save the planet remains unknown. Internet tech giants Google also the acquirers of Android OS have removed a propaganda app created by Taliban militants over hate speech concerns. The App called "Pashto Afghan News - Alemara," that was initially accepted on the Play store, reportedly featured videos and statements from the group's main website. The app granted users to access the group's Pashto website, which is now part of a growing digital campaign by the Taliban to grow its audience. The company removed an app created by the Taliban from its Play Store on Saturday. The app was reportedly published to Google Play on April 1, 2016, a spokesperson said. "We don't allow apps that advocate against groups of people based on their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, or gender identity," a Google spokesperson said. A spokesperson for Google confirmed the app had been removed but, in a statement provided media, declined to comment further on the app in question."While we don't comment on specific apps, we can confirm that our policies are designed to provide a great experience for users and developers. That's why we remove apps from Google Play that violate those policies" it said. Google's developer policy for the Play Store prohibits apps that promote hate speech, violence and illegal activities. The app's existence was first reported organization that tracks online activities of majority or about all terrorist organizations. Taliban spokesperson however did confirm that the app which is coded to be displayed in Pashto version was created by the organization which reportedly displayed pictures and images along with other messages from the app. Google last year, implemented a review process for Android developers requiring that apps mandatorily had to go through an approval process before making their way to the Play Store. Though the review process depends on a team of human editors and not just algorithms apps are typically approved within a few hours due to high inflow of app allowance requests on the store (compared with Apple's App Store, which can take several days or weeks).So it is possible that some apps may silently sneak in to the play store. This is not the first time Google has removed an app for violating its policies. The company removed two about Gaza bombings in 2014. And last year the company removed several apps with Confederate flag imagery. The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574. New Delhi: Countering the Pakistan High Commissioners assertion that the visit by Pakistani JIT was not on reciprocity, India today said before the teams visit here, both sides had agreed that it would be on the basis of reciprocity. We have seen comments by the Pakistani High Commissioner on the visit of the JIT Team to investigate the terrorist attack on the Pathankot Air Base that have reference to reciprocity. MEA would like to clarify that on 26 March, 2016, before the visit of the JIT, the Indian High Commission formally conveyed to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry that the Terms of Reference are broadly agreed to with the proviso that these would be on the basis of reciprocity and followed in accordance with extant legal provisions. ( Also Read: Pakistan JIT claims India staged Pathankot terror attack, says Pak media report ) Subsequently, the JIT visited from March 27 to April 1, 2016, External Affairs Ministry Spokesman Vikas Swarup said. During a media interaction earlier, Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit said,The whole investigation is not about the question of reciprocity in my view. It is more about extending cooperation or our two countries cooperating with each other to get to the bottom of the incident. ( Also Read: PM gave clean chit to ISI, should apologise: Kejriwal ) Reacting to Basits remarks that the Indo-Pak peace process stands suspended, Swarup referred to the press conference of Pakistani Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nafees Zakaria in which he said,I have stated this many times that both countries are in contact with each other and it has been reiterated from both sides that modalities are being worked out. I will again state that negotiations are the best means to resolve the issues. I have read the statement of the Indian Foreign Secretary you are referring to and in that also there was indication that the talks would take place. He was asked about the status of Indo-Pak foreign secretary-level talks.( Also Read: Masood Azhar doesnt meet UN criteria to be banned as terrorist: China ) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: The US has warned its citizens against all non-essential travel to Pakistan given that the country continues to experience significant terrorist violence including sectarian attacks. Pakistan continues to experience significant terrorist violence, including sectarian attacks. Several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups continue to pose a danger to the US citizens throughout the country, the State Department said yesterday in a latest travel warning on Pakistan which replaces that of the one issue on August 28 last year. While the US Embassy in Islamabad and its Consulate in Karachi continue to provide consular services for all its citizens, the two diplomatic posts are often limited in the services they can provide due to the security environment. The Peshawar Consulate no longer offers consular services, and the one in Lahore remains temporarily suspended. Noting that sectarian violence remains a serious threat countrywide and the Pakistan government continues to enforce blasphemy laws, the State Department said religious minority communities have been victims of targeted killings and accusations of blasphemy. Observing that attacks include armed assaults against heavily guarded facilities, such as military installations and airports, the State Department said terrorists have also struck universities, schools, rallies, places of worship, and large marketplaces in several Pakistani cities. Since the beginning of 2016, a suicide bomber killed at least 15 people and injured 25 others outside a health centre in Quetta, Balochistan; gunmen attacked Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killing 22 people; and a suicide bomber at a park in Lahore killed more than 70 people and injured more than 340. The Pakistan government maintains heightened security measures, particularly in major cities, following attacks or in response to threats, the State Department said. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Los Angeles: Waits, who last appeared in Seven Psychopaths in 2012, has signed on to film the pilot of the supernatural show, which is a hero origin story set in Los Angeles, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He plays a priest named Cesar who runs a guerrilla humanitarian organisation with questionable legality from his church in the working-class neighbourhood of Boyle Heights. The pilot for the drama, which mixes magical realism with gritty vigilantism, will be directed by Me and Earl and the Dying Girl moviemaker Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. Forrest Goodluck, who played Leonardo DiCaprios son in The Revenant, will also star alongside Spanish actor Alex Gonzalez and relative newcomer Augusto Aguilera. Waits, 66, is best known for his long-running music career, which began in the 1970s, but he has dabbled in acting occasionally with roles in The Book of Eli, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Domino. Guwahati: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today offered prayers to Goddess Ma Kamakhya Devi at her historic temple atop Nilachal Hill here before resuming his poll campaign in Assam. Modi, who came here from Delhi last night, drove up to the base of the Kamakhya temple this morning and walked up the flight of steps to the shrine amid tight security to offer his prayers to the Goddess in the sanctum sanctorum where media was not allowed. The Prime Minister also performed puja on the occasion of the first day of Navratri at the Shakti Pith dedicated to Goddess Durga and her various incarnations, temple officials said. Coming out of the shrine, Modi, who visited the temple for the first time, went towards the waiting people and shook hands with them and left for his campaign for the second and final phase of elections on April 11 in 61 constituencies in middle and lower Assam. Modi is scheduled to address poll meetings at Roha, Rangia, Sorbhog and Guwahati today before returning to Delhi in the evening. The Prime Minister had also campaigned in the state for the first phase of voting on April 4. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: An ambitious climate action plan has been launched by the World Bank in order to help the developing countries gain 30 gigawatts of renewable energy. The plan also aims at bringing early warning systems to 100 million people and developing climate-smart agriculture investment plans for 40 nations. The World Bank officials released details of the Climate Change Action Plan and said the target for achieving this has been set for 2020. This comes two weeks before India and 100 other nations officially sign the Paris Agreement in New York on April 22. Following the Paris climate agreement, we must now take bold action to protect our planet for future generations, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said. We are moving urgently to help countries make major transitions to increase sources of renewable energy, decrease high-carbon energy sources, develop green transport systems, and build sustainable, livable cities for growing urban populations. Developing countries want our help to implement their national climate plans and well do all we can to help them, he said. To maximise impact, the World Bank Action Plan is focused on helping countries shape national policies and leverage private sector investment. International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, aims to expand its climate investments from the current USD 2.2 billion a year to a goal of USD 3.5 billion a year and lead on leveraging an additional USD 13 billion a year in private sector financing by 2020. Apart from its own financing, the World Bank also intends to mobilise USD 25 billion in commercial financing for clean energy over the next five years. The Bank Group will also continue to deepen its work to help countries to put a price on carbon pollution to create incentives for public and private sector decision makers to make the right climate choices, a statement said. This is a plan that primarily aims supporting countries that the Bank works with, to turn their ambitious commitments that they made in December in Paris, into a reality, John Roome, Banks Senior Director for Climate Change told reporters during a conference call. Its a plan that aims at swinging the pendulum away from investments in fossil fuels towards investment in clean energy and to put new resources to critical areas like green transport and climate smart agriculture, he said. Under the plan, the World Bank would be working on expanding universal access to early-warning systems in the case of disasters, for the goal to provide 100 million more people, in 15 developing countries, with access to these early-warning systems by the year 2020. (With PTI inputs) For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Ahmednagar: The row over the entry of women in Shani Shingnapur temple to offer prayers finally ended on Friday after women were allowed to enter the inner sanctum by the temple trust. Women activists, including Trupti Desai, had been trying to enter the famous Lord Shani temple in Maharashtra for months but were unsuccessful in doing so. Temple officials said that women will "neither be encouraged nor stopped" from entering, thus lifting a centuries-old ban. Earlier on Friday, 100 men defied the temple officials as they forcefully entered the inner sanctum. Reversing a centuries-old rule, the temple had earlier said neither men nor women would be allowed into the area having an idol placed on an outdoor platform. The new restrictions ignored a court ruling which had said that both men and women must have equal access to Hindu places of worship. In order to stop the women, the temple earlier on Friday barred the entry of male devotees into the inner sanctum, except the male priests. Desai was not allowed to enter the temple on April 4. She was detained by the police on earlier occasion as she came near to the temple. Once she had even vowed that she would enter the temple with ropes from a helicopter, however, local officials denied flying rights to her. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis supported the court order saying there is no place for discrimination in Hindu culture. "There is no place for discrimination in Hindu culture. We will implement the honourable high court's decision in true spirit," he had said. Sayaram Bankar, a trustee of Shani Shingnapur temple, said the trustees held a meeting today and decided to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees including men and women, in keeping with the high court directive. We will welcome (Bhoomata Brigade leader) Trupti Desai also if she comes for darshan, he said, referring to the campaign spearheaded by the outfit for breaking the tradition followed by the Lord Saturn shrine. Temple trust spokesman Haridas Gaywale also said, The trust has at the meeting decided there will not be any discrimination and today all parts of Shani temple are open for all. Desai welcomed the decision of Shani Shingnapur temple trustees to open gates of the sacred Chauthara for men and women devotees, and said it was a wise step on their part. Der se aye lekin durusta aye (It was late but in the end correct decision), she said reacting to the development that signalled a victory for her prolonged fight against gender discrimination at places of worship. We are happy that the temple trustees have taken a wise decision eventually, she told PTI. Desai said she and her group of activists would be soon leaving for Shani Singnapur to offer prayers at the temple. She hoped that trustees at Trimbakeshwar and Mahalaxmi temples in Nashik and Kolhapur respectively, too would take similar decision to end injustice against women devotees. (With PTI inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: A mother is in love with his son and wants to have his baby- howsoever the story may sound weird but is true and has been going viral. According to reports, British-born Kim West, 51 reunited with her son Ben Ford, 32, in January 2014 after 30 years when she gave up her boy for adoption. West, who grew up in Islington, London, became pregnant while studying in California and after giving birth to her son aged 19, gave him up for adoption. Now, the couple claim they are very much in love and are even trying for baby. It is important to note here that, Ford was already married and used to live in Michigan but he divorced his wife to be with her mother and have 'incredible and mind-blowing' sex. The couple claim that it is not incest but an example of 'Genetic Sexual Attraction. We are like peas in a pod and are meant to be together. I know people will say we're disgusting, that we should be able to control our feelings, but when you're hit by a love so consuming you are willing to give up everything for it, you have to fight for it. It's a once in a lifetime chance and something Ben and I are not willing to walk away from. Genetic sexual attraction is a phenomenon that occurs between adoptees and their long-lost parents. When both sides meet, the brain struggles to associate each other as family. Such pairs also deal up with the issue of captivation as they share similar physical features, likes and dislikes, which is coupled with complex feelings of intimacy. The issue was first raised by Barbara Gonyo in the Eighties, after she a wrote book called I'm His Mother, But He's Not My Son, which recounted her personal story of reuniting with the son she placed for adoption at 16. For all the Latest Viral News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: India is in talks with the US for possible procurement of about 100 latest drones - both armed and surveillance versions - worth USD 2 billion to bolster its arsenal keeping China and Pakistan in mind. The issue is likely to figure in the talks between the two sides as US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter visits India next week. Ahead of his visit, Carter this week said the US is keen to forge a closer and stronger military relationship with India and a whole bunch of things will be announced during his India trip to boost Indo-US strategic ties. Industry sources familiar with Indias interest and ongoing talks between the two governments, said India had requested for the latest Avenger drones, an unmanned combat air vehicle, and is mainly being sought with an eye on China. It has also sought Predator XP category which is a surveillance version for internal security issues and terrorist threats. According to industry sources, India is looking for about 100 drones worth USD 2 billion. Yes, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI) is aware of Indias interest in Predator-series Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), Vivek Lall, chief executive of the US and International Strategic Development of General Atomics, had said. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems produces Predator series of remotely piloted aircraft. Due to American export laws, the US government has to approve the export of a Predator-series RPA to India. Predator-series RPA could provide a world-class Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capability for India which would include both high-definition radar and Electro-optical/Infrared (EO/IR) coverage along Indias borders. Additionally, the RPA can perform humanitarian aid/disaster relief surveillance over both land and sea. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Ahmednagar: In a big victory to the campaign for gender equality, the famed Shani Shingnapur temple in Maharashtra today lifted the centuries-old ban on entry of women at the sanctum sanctorum, yielding to a high voltage crusade by activists and court directions. Soon after the temple trust announced the decision to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees to the core area of the shrine in Western Maharashtra, some women devotees entered the sacred spot and offered worship. Hours after the decision was announced, Bhumata Brigade leader Trupti Desai, who had led a sustained campaign over the issue, reached the Lord Saturn temple in Ahmednagar district and offered prayers. Before Desai reached the spot, two women activists, who earlier broke away from Bhumata Brigade, entered the sanctum sanctorum and offered prayers, pouring oil on the deity in a culmination of the three month-long agitation against gender bias at religious places. Significantly, removal of the gender barrier came on the auspicious occasion of Gudi Padwa, marking New Year by people across Maharashtra. Welcoming the decision, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said, discrimination on the basis of caste and gender should be eliminated from the minds of the people keeping with the modern times. Earlier in the day, around 250 men jumped barricades and forced their entry into the platform, saying it had been a long tradition for the devotees to offer worship at the shrine on the Gudi Padwa day. Sayaram Bankar, a trustee of the temple, said a meeting of the trustees decided to facilitate unrestricted entry to all devotees, including men and women, in keeping with the Bombay High Court directive. The High Court, had on April 1, held that it is the womens fundamental right to go into places of worship and the government is duty-bound to protect it. The debate over the issue escalated after a woman last year tried to enter and offer prayers at the Shani Shingnapur temple, in breach of the age-old practice of prohibiting entry of women. The agitation for womens entry gained momentum over the last few months, even as the temple authorities had later barred men also from entering the sanctum sanctorum. Terming the decision as a wise step, Desai told PTI Der se aye lekin durusta aye (It was late but in the end correct decision), she said reacting to the development that signalled a victory for her prolonged fight against gender discrimination at places of worship. She hoped that trustees at Trimbakeshwar and Mahalaxmi temples in Nashik and Kolhapur respectively, too, would take similar decision to end injustice against women devotees. This change (allowing women into the core area) was extremely important and is a really satisfying development. This sends a strong signal that women, like men, deserve all rightful benefits, she said. The Chief Minister said discrimination was never part of Indian culture or Sanatan Dharma but was introduced later. Though law will do away with such discrimination, mentality of society needs to be changed if we really have to progress. If we have to progress in this 21st century then it is important that we remove this concept of discrimination of caste and gender from the minds of the people completely. Sharing her husbands view, Amruta said, this is a symbol of change but the actual change will take place only when people will start changing their mindset towards women. After the agitation for womens entry gained momentum, the temple authorities had barred men also from entering the sanctum sanctorum. Today local men had brought sacred water of Godavari and Mulay rivers from Pravara Sangam, about 40km from Shani Shingnapur, and offered prayers. Puspak Kewadkar, one of the two women activists who stepped on the sacred platform for the first time, later said I am very happy. We poured oil and offered a garland to the deity in a traditional worship of Lord Shani. She said there was no attempt to prevent them from entering the inner area either from police or villagers. Kewadkar and another activist Priyanka Jagtap belonged to a breakaway faction of the Bhumata Brigade and had left the parent body alleging Desai was orchestrating her campaign to hog limelight for herself. However, there was some drama before they gained entry into the shrine. Some women gathered at the gate of the temple to prevent the entry of the activists, but police prevented any untoward incident by deploying around 400 police personnel, said Sanjay Jadhav, Additional SP. He said the women retreated from the spot after the police apprised them about the High Court directive. In a related development, eunuchs and transgenders have also demanded right to offer prayers at the temple. We will also go to Shani Shinganapur as it is our right to have darshan (of the deity there), said Kajol Guru, President of the Maharashtra Tritiypanthi Sanghatna, an outfit which fights for the rights of transgenders. Meanwhile, the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti condemned the decision of the temple trustees to allow women at the chauthara (sacred platform), saying it was a hasty and unfortunate one. Parag Gokhale, a functionary of the Samiti, in a statement here, blamed the State Government and administration for failure to protect age-old traditions of Hindu religion. The trustees succumbed to the pressure brought on by the Bhumata Brigade whose agitation was publicity driven, he alleged. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Va. Gov. McAuliffe vetoes bill that would have required schools to notify parents when sexually explicit materials were being taught (BigGovernment.news) Looks like Left-wing Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia is siding with secretive perversion over parental rights after vetoing a bill that would have required schools to notify parents when they are being presented sexually explicit materials. Its no wonder more and more Americans have had it with the ruling class. As reported by AMI Newswire, McAuliffe vetoed a measure known as the Beloved Bill, a measure that would have required local schools to notify parents about the use of instructional material containing sexually explicit content, and mandated that teachers provide alternative content if a parent objects to the original material. In his veto message, McAuliffe said the states board of education is already considering this issue in a broader and more complete context, and that the bills lack of flexibility would require the label of sexually explicit to apply to an artistic work based on a single scene, without further context. Why that is problematic to a governor who is also a parent is a head scratcher, considering that McAuliffe the father more than likely would have objected to having sexually explicit materials secretly force-fed to his kids. The legislation, sponsored by House Education Committee Chairman Steve Landes (R-Weyers Cave), passed the House of Delegates 98-0 (this includes all Democrats in the House of Delegates as well). The Senate approved the measure 22-17, indicating the chances of a veto override are uncertain. A two-thirds majority in each chamber is needed to override a gubernatorial veto. Landes said in a statement that giving parents the authority to control what their children see and read in school is an extension of what they already do in the home. Parents make decisions every day about what video games kids play, what movies they watch and what material they consume online, Landes said. They should have the same opportunity within the classroom. Family Foundation president Victoria Cobb called McAuliffes veto remarkable, adding that the governor has so little respect for parents who simply want to know and be free to make decisions about what their kids are being taught. The bill drew national attention, with free-speech advocates sending McAuliffe a letter in early March urging him the veto the measure. Were not sure when the perversion of minor children became free speech, either, but apparently it has. In that letter, the National Coalition for Free Speech said the Landes bill would prejudice educationally valuable content, and cited a number of works, including The Canterbury Tales, the Bible and most works by William Shakespeare as examples of material that could be banned in classrooms (fact: the Bible pretty much already is, as is any display of Christian belief, but for different reasons First Amendment much, national coalition?). The group lauded McAuliffes veto, saying in a statement that the selection of educational materials rightly belongs in the hands of Virginias professional educators. Actually, parents who are taxed to support public education and who elect citizens to school boards to represent their interests rightly have a role in this process, too; only an arrogant elitist would insist otherwise. The bills Beloved nickname stems from a Fairfax County parents effort to have Toni Morrisons Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of that name removed from the reading list of her sons AP English class. According to the American Library Association, Beloved is one of the 10 most-challenged books in the nation, in part owing to its depiction of a runaway slave named Sethe, who kills her 2-year-old daughter rather than see her condemned to a life of servitude on a Kentucky plantation. This was the third time in recent weeks that McAuliffe has vetoed bills on hot-button issues passed by the Republican-majority legislature in Virginia. He also vetoed a bill touted as protecting religious liberty and another that would have barred the state from giving funding to Planned Parenthood. Its apparent that, after a short tenure in office, that McAuliffe is every bit the radical Leftist his critics painted him to be prior to his election. But now, hes the problem of Virginians who are trying to cling to whats left of their heritage and American culture. Good luck with that; McAuliffe sure doesnt have your childrens best interests in mind. American Media Institute contributed to this report. BigGovernment.news is part of the USA Features Media network. Submit a correction >> Household finances are tricky for everyone, and the number-crunching is especially hard for families. But location also has a huge effect on families' costs and ability to meet them. A study from the Economic Policy Institute, for instance, found that the average costs of a two-parent, two-child family could vary by as much as $57,000 each year from the cheapest community it surveyed (Morristown, Tenn.) to the most expensive (Washington, D.C.). While child-rearing costs vary greatly by city, there are also significant differences from state to state. Some states offer higher incomes, whereas others keep key costs like food, housing and child care low. Some of the best states for families offer paid family leave, a crucial benefit that can help families fill the financial gaps in times of need. GOBankingRates looked at all of these factors to rank the states and determine which ones make raising a family financially feasible. Here are the 10 cheapest states to raise a family, where households face the lowest costs while earning higher incomes. It will probably come as no surprise that Connecticut is one of the top 10 most expensive states to raise a family. Coldwell Banker's annual Home Listing Report, which compares the average listing price for four-bedroom, two-bathroom homes across 2,700 US real-estate markets, found thata typical home in Westport costs an average of $1.06 million. So, if you're looking to flee the high prices of Connecticut, here are the 10 best states to raise a family on a budget: This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 Julie Bidwell Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Julie Bidwell Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 Julie Bidwell Show More Show Less 5 of 5 Sandwiched between Michael Kors and TUMI, COS is bringing its global brand to 283 Greenwich Ave. The store officially opened Friday at noon, marking the companys ninth location in the United States. The Greenwich store is also the brands first womenswear-only boutique in the country, with the other eight U.S. stores featuring apparel for men and children. COS, which is under the H&M Group, launched in 2007 on Regent Street in London and has grown to 165 stores across 30 countries. The brand officially came to the United States in October with a flagship store in Los Angeles. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The star of Say Yes to the Dress was there along with hundreds of wedding vendors who were hawking everything from carriage rides to honeymoons. But a man few would expect to find at the 31st Annual Connecticut Bridal Show was also there, working the floor. John G. Rowland, former governor, twice-convicted felon, was busy pitching fairy tale weddings to unsuspecting couples inside the cavernous convention center. While Rowland, 58, awaits a ruling on the appeal of his conviction for campaign fraud, he has been biding his time as a banquet salesman for a country club owned by a Waterbury auto dealer and crony, Hearst Connecticut Media has learned. Hi, this is John Rowland calling from Chippanee Country Club in Bristol, Rowland said in a phone message, obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media, to one couple who asked not to be identified. Rowland gave the couple a full court press of phone calls and emails, said a source familiar with the interaction. The pair met Rowland at the bridal show in January at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, a building he broke ground for in his former life as governor. Weve sent you some information and I just wanted to touch base and see if youre still looking, Rowland said in his voicemail. Weve just finished our renovations at the club and Id love to have you and your fiance come up for dinner or have your family come up for a drink and tour, any day or any weekend, whatever works. Weve got very flexible pricing as well. So its (phone number). And thats John Rowland at Chippanee Country Club in Bristol. Thank you. Rowland did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the clubs general manager or owner Fritz Blasius, a longtime Rowland confidante who operates Loehmann Blasius Chevrolet Cadillac in Rowlands native Waterbury. In 2015, Blasius bought the member-owned club, which had fallen on hard times and was in danger of closing. Free on bond while his appeal is pending, Rowland is facing 30 months in prison for getting paid under the table as a political consultant on the 2012 congressional campaign of fellow Republican Lisa Wilson-Foley. Its the second felony conviction for Rowland, who resigned as governor in 2004 and was incarcerated for 10 months for accepting bribes from state contractors. By many accounts, Rowland has racked up at least $500,000 in legal bills from his latest brush with the law. Thats led many politicians and lawyers in the state to wonder how Rowland, who was the youngest governor in Connecticut history and was once mentioned as a vice presidential candidate, can afford a gold-plated defense. He, like anybody else, has a right to make a living, said Ronald Schurin, an associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. If somebody thinks that John Rowland will be a good salesman for a place as a wedding venue, who are we to stand in the way? The hard sell The Connecticut Bridal Show Expo touts itself as the largest event of its kind on the East Coast. The cost of a 10-foot-by-10-foot booth started at $1,375. Jenks Productions Inc., the Connecticut-based company that puts on the show, did not respond to a request for comment. The event is a major showcase for formal wear shops, photographers, florists, caterers, limousine operators, stationary printers, DJs, banquet halls, jewelers, Botox clinics, beauty salons, dance instruction studios and even male Chippendale-style dancers. Several country clubs had a presence at the wedding expo, where the price of admission was $12 per person. True to his reputation as a retail politician, a persistent Rowland invited potential clients for free meals and drinks at the club. The message: be our guest. Dinner could be any Wednesday, Friday or Saturday or just come have champagne any day or time, Rowland wrote in an email to the same couple that was obtained by Hearst. Attached to the message was a menu. In 2014, a jury found Rowland guilty of conspiring with Wilson-Foley to hide his work on her 5th District campaign from the Federal Election Commission by receiving $35,000 in payments from a nursing home owned by the candidates husband, Brian Foley. Rowland is no stranger to lavish weddings. Eleven days after he was first elected as governor, Rowland married his high school sweetheart, Patricia Largay, at an inn on Block Island, R.I. It was the second marriage for both. Rowlands eldest daughter, Kirsten Rowland, moved up the date of her January 2015 wedding to before his original sentencing date. The judge who sentenced him then agreed to push back Rowlands date for reporting to prison so Rowland could attend his step-sons wedding. Political observers such as UConns Schurin, whose own son got married a year ago, say Rowlands wedding planner niche is unconventional. Thats American capitalism, Schurin said. neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy DANBURY States Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III on Friday refuted claims made in a lawsuit suggesting Redding police conspired to suppress the truth about the 2014 death of Gugsa Abraham Abe Dabela. Although the investigation is not yet complete, it has revealed no evidence of any conspiracy on the part of the Redding Police Department, Sedensky said in a statement. Dabela was found in his overturned car in April 2014 with a single gunshot wound to the head. The medical examiners office ruled the death a suicide. Dabelas family believes police failed to property investigate the case and that he likely was murdered. They also claim Dabelas civil rights were violated in earlier dealings with the department. The suit, filed by Dabelas father and his estate, names the town, Chief of Police Doug Fuchs, seven officers and Killer John Doe as the defendants. The lawsuit claims the defendants conspired to cover up a murder and sought to keep the killers identity unknown, and also violated Dabelas rights of due process and equal protection when he was applying for his gun permit three years ago. The family hired its own investigators, attorneys and specialists to review the circumstances of the case. The Connecticut NAACP launched an investigation last summer at the request of the family, but no conclusions have been released. We again express our sincere condolences to the family of Mr. Dabela on their loss, Sedensky said, but he firmly rejected the suggestion that police conduct was anything but professional. The Redding Police Department has cooperated fully with the Office of the States Attorney and the State Police throughout this investigation, as well as cooperating with the forensic expert retained by the Dabela family in 2014, Sedensky said. Sedensky said the investigation into Dabelas death continues. Anyone with any information concerning the case is asked to contact the Danbury States Attorneys Office at 203-207-8670. It's not too early to grab a calendar for 2017, especially one going toward such a worthy cause. Georgetown Volunteer Fire Company in Redding, Conn., came up with a unique way to raise money to buy boots for their firefighters. The GFD Boots Matter 2017 calendar features the department's volunteers in some situations not typical of a day's work fighting fires. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate REDDING When Hal Gourad realized that the Georgetown Volunteer Fire Department lacked the money to buy boots, he turned to an idea his wife had suggested years earlier a photo calendar. The pictures put department volunteers in humorous poses that reflect firefighting scenarios and stereotypes, including one firefighter climbing a tree to rescue a (stuffed) cat, others extinguishing a fire with a water gun and a third rescuing a police officer from a donut shop. We wanted to see what we could offer to be different than the hunks at FDNY, and the only thing we could offer is humor, said Gourad, the departments finance secretary. When he suggested the idea at a recent meeting, the rest of the department loved the idea, throwing out suggestions for possible scenarios. Nina Pomeroy, a professional photographer in Wilton, donated her services, and the entire calendar was photographed on April 1 and 2. The scenes are designed to correspond with the different months, including an appearance by Santa in Decembers picture. It happened really fast, he said. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The 2017 calendars cost $15 and can be bought online at www.gtownfire.org. Gourad hopes to raise $10,000 by May. Were having fun with it, but it is a serious cause, he said. The fire district covers big items, he said, but the department struggles to raise enough money to cover various expenses, including training to remain certified. He said the equipment is tightly regulated and needs to be replaced on a strict schedule, so the department cant delay purchases. Its there to protect your life, he said. Donations havent returned to what they were before the recession, Gourad said. Things are tight in general, so its always hard to get money, he said. We need constant community support. He said hes found that support in Georgetown in various ways, including businesses opening their doors to them for the shoot. The biggest challenge to the departments fundraising that people dont understand the full cost of firefighting or that the firefighters are all volunteers, Gourad said. Our time is free, but the stuff we have to buy is not, he said. Gourad wanted to share this message in the community, so he filmed one of the other lieutenants asking people outside of the Black Cat in Georgetown how much they think various pieces of fire equipment cost and then revealing the actual value. All the guesses were hundreds or thousands of dollars below the actual cost. The 90-second video had more than a million views in the first 24 hours and was shared more than 32,000 times in 48 hours. The department posted the video to its Facebook page around 8:30 a.m. Monday. Gourad said other departments around the country and in Canada have asked if they can use the video. Its incredible, he said. The support is amazing. kkoerting@newstimes.com; 203-731-3345; @kkoerting WINNIPEG, April 7, 2016 /CNW/ - Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. (MTS) will release its 2016 first-quarter results in a conference call with the financial community on Wednesday, May 11, 2016 at 5:30 p.m. ET. Participants will include Jay Forbes, Chief Executive Officer and Paul Cadieux, Chief Financial Officer. To participate, please dial toll-free 1-888-231-8191 or 647-427-7450. A replay will be available until May 18, 2016 by dialing 1-855-859-2056 and entering passcode 86945080. Investors, media and the public are invited to participate on a listen-only basis by logging in to the live audio webcast of the conference call at the Investors page of MTS' website at about.mts.ca/investors/ or by entering: http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1169427&s=1&k=B7C3AE211DBA4A276159A08D3347DC49. A replay of the conference call will be available on MTS' website for one year. About MTS At MTS, we're proud to be Manitoba's leading information and communications technology provider. We're dedicated to delivering a full suite of services for Manitobans Internet, Wireless, TV, Phone Service and Security Systems plus a full suite of Information Solutions, including Unified Cloud and Managed Services. You can count on MTS to make connecting your world easy. We're with you. We live where we work and actively give back to organizations that strengthen our communities. Through MTS Future First, we provide sponsorships, grants and scholarships, value-in-kind support and volunteer commitment in Manitoba. MTS Inc. is wholly owned by Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. (TSX: MBT). For more on MTS' products and services, visit mts.ca. For investor information, visit www.mts.ca/aboutus. SOURCE Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. For further information: Investors: Brenda McInnes, (204) 941-6205, [email protected]; Media: Patricia Katz, (204) 958-3230, [email protected] [April 07, 2016] Appier's Cross Screen User Behavior Report Reveals New Insights into Asia's 'Post-mobile' Consumer TAIPEI, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, artificial intelligence company Appier announced the release of its 2H 2015 Cross Screen User Behavior Report, which shows that not only is the use of 3 or more devices the norm among Asia's multi-device users, but that these connected Asians are living in a "post-mobile" world -- moving between smartphone, tablet, and desktop PC in complex and interconnected ways based on convenience, habit and preference. Over half (51%) of Asia's multi-device users interact with 3 or more devices, with places like Australia (78%), Taiwan (77%), Korea (70%) and Singapore (69%), showing an even stronger adoption rate. This trend is also picking up in the rest of the region, with nearly half in Malaysia, for instance, reporting the same. "Our study shows that the post-mobile world is a cross screen world. Asia's multi-device users are switching between screens throughout their day based on convenience, habit and preference, introducing unprecedented complexity for businesses looking to reach people online. As users embrace more devices, the message is clear: cross screen is no longer optional," said Chih-Han Yu, CEO and Co-founder of Appier. Mobile first doesn't mean mobile only Appier's report suggests that even in "mobile-first" Asia, it's too early to dismiss PC, which continues to be an important screen for the region's multi-device users. Though there are around 6 or more reachable smartphones for every PC, PCs generate over 50% as much usage as smartphones. Each individual PC is used nearly 4 times as much as each smartphone. Similarly, while there are about 17 reachable mobile phones for every tablet, an average tablet generates 20% to 30% more usage than a smartphone. Behaviors across screens are varied and complex In the post-mobile world, users mve between screens according to convenience, individual habit and preference. Accordingly, device usage varies on any given day based on a number of factors, from time of day, day of the week, gender and even market. Appier's report shows that on average, men are more active on both PCs and smartphones than women by 3% and 4%, respectively. However, on tablets, women are about 14% more active on average. The time of day also impacts usage. For example, PC and smartphone web usage tend to intersect during the day, with smartphones usage rising during lunch (12pm-2pm) and during the commute home (from 5pm). Tablet usage accelerates after 5pm. Finally, usage varies by day of week -- smartphone usage across the region varies through the week, from mid-week in Indonesia, to Mondays in Singapore and the weekend in Taiwan, whereas tablet usage rises on the weekend, indicating the latter is more of a leisure device. Average usage per PC varies across the region. In aspiring markets where PC is primarily used in the workplace, average usage per PC peaks on weekdays. In developed markets where many households own PCs, average usage per PC tends to rise on weekends. Different screens, different ads Users respond differently to ads across different screens. Nearly 7 in 10 of Asia's cross screen users interact somewhat or completely differently with ads across different screens, displaying different behavior or favoring different ad formats and subject matter. Of these cross screeners, just over half interact completely differently with ads across different screens -- a trend more pronounced in places like Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam. Clearly, one size does not fit all. These findings show that cross screen is no longer optional for businesses. Cross screen campaigns, which reach users across every screen that they use rather than targeting devices separately, perform 26% better than multi-device campaigns. About Appier's Cross Screen User Behavior Report The report is based on an analysis of Appier-run campaigns across 11 markets in Asia, from the second half of 2015. As part of this report we analysed over 850 billion campaign data points including ad requests, impression, clicks and conversions. The report can be found at: https://goo.gl/cIQeuz About Appier Appier is a technology company that makes it easy for businesses to use artificial intelligence to grow and succeed in a cross screen era. Appier is formed by a passionate team of computer scientists and engineers with experience in AI, data analysis, distributed systems, and marketing. Our colleagues come from Google, Intel, Yahoo, as well as renowned AI research groups in Harvard University and Stanford University. Headquartered in Taipei, Appier serves more than 500 global brands and agencies from offices in eleven markets across Asia, including Taipei, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Ho Chi Minh City, Manila, Hong Kong, Mumbai, New Delhi, Jakarta and Seoul. For more information please visit www.appier.com. For press enquiries, please contact: Appier Sana Rahman Tel: +65-6320-9759 Email: [email protected] The Hoffman Agency Lauren Lee Tel.: +852-2231-8116 Email: [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20160203/8521600740LOGO [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 08, 2016] ViewSonic Digitizer Module Enhances Advanced Virtual Teller Machine (VTM) Solutions for Banking Industry TAIPEI, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solution products, introduces new digitizer touch modules for Virtual Teller Machine (VTM) solutions. The modules, ranging from 5-inch to 21.5-inch, provide digital biometric signature capture capabilities with ViewSonic's exclusive battery-free V Pen, allowing the financial industry to implement authentic e-signature capture and recognition. Designed to provide the full array of supporting options customers are accustomed to at their local bank branch, VTM's are revolutionizing retail banking. "ViewSonic understands how to effectively implement VTM solutions in banking institutions, whether they are competing to provide more impressive and personalized services or looking for a solution to massively save on operating costs," said Bonny Cheng, President of the Global Product Group at ViewSonic. "We are dedicated to enhancing these digitizer modules to improve VTM solutions, to give the financial industry the right tools to achieve high efficiency and total satisfaction. Recently, we have successfully implemented our solutions with several tier one banks, including ICBC." VTM solutions provide support for cash transactions, fund transfers, account transactions, s well as digital biometric signature capturing. ViewSonic's pen modules can record biometric data for e-documentation, provide accurate e-signature storage, and secure encrypted digital signatures. Available with a full suite of SDKs and API, the solutions can be quickly deployed into any environment with features to give banks the ability to provide round-the-clock counter services without the limitations of traditional bank branches, in terms of time, location, and limited personnel. For banks, these solutions can drastically reduce operating costs and service time, increase customer turnover, and improve customer satisfaction. With an accuracy of 200 points per second (PPS) and 5,080 lines per inch (LPI), every detail is precisely captured and reproduced on the display. Featuring 2048 highly-sensitive pressure levels, the battery-free V Pen replicates traditional ink signatures with additional levels of security, only available to fully digitalized signatures. In addition, the digitizer touch modules are compatible with optical touch or projected capacitive touch, which allows for dual-touch functionality. With total VTM Solutions, banks can deliver enriched, flexible customer service, and can efficiently expand their presence, without increasing their costs. For more information of ViewSonic's pen display and Windows based pen tablet products, please visit http://www.viewsonic.com/us/pen-displays.html About ViewSonic Founded in California in 1987, ViewSonic is a world-leading visual solutions provider. As an innovator and visionary, ViewSonic keeps the world connected with a portfolio of professional level visual solutions that enhance the way we compute, collaborate, communicate and connect. Our products include LED monitors, interactive commercial displays, touch displays, projectors, thin client, zero client and smart displays. To find out more about ViewSonic, visit viewsonic.com. Trademark footnote: All corporate names and trademarks are the property of their respective companies.Copyright 2015 ViewSonic Corporation. All rights reserved. Media Contact: Kevin Chu ViewSonic Pen Display Division T: +1 909 444 8930 E: [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 08, 2016] A&B Groep Has Been Awarded by IBM for Outstanding Telecom Expense Management Performance AMSTERDAM, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A&B Groep: "We are proud to announce that A&B Groep received the IBM GTS Business Partner Leadership Award for outstanding networking leadership". (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160408/353047 ) For many years A&B Groep works closely together with IBM. In 2014 the partnership between both companies became even stronger due to the closer cooperation between A&B Groep and the IBM sales teams in the Benelux, United Kingdom and the Nordics. When working on mutual clients IBM and A&B Groep work closely together and act as one organization. By offering Telecom Expense Management solutions to international enterprises A&B Groep makes it possible to assist these valuable customers with their telecom management. In 2015 A&B Groep was already a nominee for the IBM Outstanding Commerce award. Last Monday A&B Groep officially received the 2016 award. Rudi Overmars [IM GTS Volume Sales & Channel Leader Global Technology Services] "IBM has decided to give A&B Groep the 2016 Services Business Partner Leadership Award. This is based on the fact that A&B Groep had a very interesting Telecom Expense Management [TEM] win in the Benelux in 2015 in a SO account and which resulted in considerable cost savings for customer. This approach from A&B Groep has high potential to be repeatable in 2016 and combined with the available deep TEM skills and the strong commercial drive to team with IBM sales teams and to perform marketing campaigns has led to this award." Jorg Wiedijk [Global Marketing Director A&B Groep] "We are very pleased with this award and with our strategic partnership with IBM. We have the same objective which is assisting our valuable customers with their company's challenges. Telecom Expense Management is complex. If we can help our customers with making it easier, we all benefit. This award underlines our partnership with IBM." Over A&B Groep: A&B Groep was founded in 1999 and is now firmly established as the leading global Telecom Expense Management auditing and benchmarking business on a global scale. A&B Groep actively supports clients by optimising their local and international communications estates; enabling cost reduction and visibility, control, security and reporting capability. More than 500 global companies have come to safely rely on us. Whether for fixed telephony, mobile services or data networks. A&B Groep Clients include IBM, Rabobank Group, AkzoNobel, DSV, Cargill, Delphi, Fluor, Flowserve. GTEM Solutions | your global technology solutions platform This SaaS and managed services TEM platform, centralises and produces a high level or granular view of the communications estate, as required. In combination with our services, GTEM Solutions provides financial and usage reporting, creating end-user awareness of areas that need to be addressed. GTEM Solutions is the most robust mobility management platform that spans across devices, users, applications, documents and expenses. We work with our clients to tailor the right solution for their business. You can also visit the website: http://www.ab-groep.eu [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 08, 2016] "Disgusting." -- Flux Electric Bike Calls Out Pedal Bike Riders SAN FRANCISCO, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In the heat of a funding push on Indiegogo, Flux Bike company released a video mocking pedal bike riders. Taking cues from outspoken presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign, the company claimed "your pedal bike doesn't win anymore" while showing footage of a man on an electric mountain bike proudly passing a spandex clad pedal bicycle rider up a hill. https://youtu.be/BvSbqmBymHw The company recently launched three electric bike models on Indiegogo, reaching their funding goal and selling out of early bird bikes in less than 14 hours. Flux has raised over $200,000 on Indiegogo i just 8 days, with 22 left in their campaign. Calling on consumers to "make your bicycle great again," Flux is rallying for more support, promising their bikes are the "greatest thing since mail order brides." Flux Bike Flux Bike is a British-American startup founded in 2014 by Pete Leaviss and Robert Rast. Flux aims to innovate the electric bike market and create a cleaner future. They have launched three high performance affordable models direct to consumers on Indiegogo. For more information, visit www.flux.bike/go. Photos: http://www.prlog.org/12548119 Press release distributed by PRLog To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/disgusting----flux-electric-bike-calls-out-pedal-bike-riders-300248471.html SOURCE Flux Bike [April 08, 2016] Quixey Gears Up to Accelerate its Go-To-Market Strategy in Mobile Search and Adds Silicon Valley Tech Veteran Mark Lazar to its Executive Team as CEO MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Quixey, the mobile search technology company, today announced the appointment of Silicon Valley tech veteran Mark Lazar to its executive team as chief executive officer. Lazar will work closely with Co-Founder Tomer Kagan, who will take on the role of chief strategy officer to evangelize Quixey's next generation mobile search technology. "Quixey has a unique vision and place in mobile search alongside big industry players like Google," said Lazar. "I'm excited to come on board to lead the global Quixey team and provide the right strategy and execution to bring this vision to life. This is a key point in Quixey's history as we prepare to take innovative products to market." While Kagan continues to focus on the company vision and technology advancement strategy, Lazar will bring extensive leadership, go-to-market expertise, and a proven track record in developing relationships with large customers. Quixey has recently enhanced its management team with industry leaders like Rajat Mukherjee, appointed as the new chief technolgy officer, and Maxine Manafy, VP of business development who recently joined the company from Yahoo. "At the end of last year, we released our ad product, and our partners have seen some great results implementing our technology into their campaigns," said Kagan. "But our technology advancements in the mobile space don't stop there. We have some releases in our pipeline, and I'm really excited to team up with Mark to drive the company forward, help us accelerate our growth and take a complex product to a complex market." Lazar brings extensive experience to the Quixey executive leadership team. Lazar has previously been CEO at over 10 companies, including Victrio, Tuvox, Talking Blocks, Pacific Edge Software, and LoopNet, which went public in 2006. Lazar also brings operating experience from various enterprise software companies in IT and web services management. Lazar has an M.B.A. and B.A. from Stanford University. About Quixey Quixey, the mobile search technology company, connects people to apps and apps to people. 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 Contact: Scott Samson VP, Communications Quixey 415-781-9005 [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160408/353164 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160408/353165LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/quixey-gears-up-to-accelerate-its-go-to-market-strategy-in-mobile-search-and-adds-silicon-valley-tech-veteran-mark-lazar-to-its-executive-team-as-ceo-300248573.html SOURCE Quixey [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadiq Abubakar, has said the members of the Boko Haram Islamic Sect have been surrendering to the mi... Abubakar said intelligence at the disposal of the military authorities revealed that so many of the Boko Haram members were trapped and were willing to stop the fight against the country.Abubakar made the comment while speaking with journalists on the 52 Anniversary of the Nigerian Air Force scheduled to take place in Bauchi, in Abuja on Friday.He said that the military authorities decided to create Operation Safe Corridor to deal with the intelligence that there was division among the insurgents and to deal with cases of those willing to stop the carnage against innocents Nigerians and the country.The Air Chief said that the military had made very high level of progress in the ongoing campaign against the insurgency.He said that the fight against the insurgency would soon be brought to en end with the progress made by the military against the insurgents.Abubakar said that the military had been able to stop the worrisome situation in 2014 when the members of the Boko Haram Sect would move in long convoys to carry out heinous acts against innocent citizens.He said, I am confident that we are at the tail end of the fight against the insurgency in the North East. Very soon the fight will soon come to an end.Looking at where we are coming from, we have done substantially well. With the support of the government and Nigerians, the situation is different from what was happening in 2014 when convoys of vehicles were moving from one place to the other killing innocent Nigerians.From intelligence, so many of those guys want to stop fighting, there are people among them who are trapped; there is intelligence that there is a division among the guys fighting.What we want to do is that if you want to stop fighting, if you want to stop the killing, you come out, we profile you, so many of them are surrendering. If you surrender, you are not armed, you are not carrying explosives, then the law will take its course. So Many people in very large numbers are surrendering. It is not too early to do soSo, we came up with the idea of safe corridor. If you want to come out, come out and then we profile you, keep you under watch before taking the next step. So many of them are surrendering in large numbers. We have seen that they are surrendering because they know that there is no escape.On the issue of the recent video purportedly released by the leader of the Boko Haram Sect, Abubakar Shekau, the Air Chief said that the Defence was studying it.He urged Nigerians to give the expected support to the security agencies in the fight against the Boko Haram saying that intelligence was crucial in the ongoing counter insurgency operation.On the activities of the Air Force under his leadership, Abubakar said that the service had trained 483 personnel in various foreign training centres of the world and another 366 locally in the last eight months. The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) has refuted a report making the rounds that one of its personnel was involved in a sh... The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) has refuted a report making the rounds that one of its personnel was involved in a shooting incident at a filling station in Lagos.The spokesperson of NSCDC, Mr Emmanuel Okeh, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that no officer of the corps was involved in the incident, which took place on Wednesday at the Forte Oil Filling Station in Festac Town.We received information from our Lagos State Command when we started seeing some online publications alleging that a female Civil Defence officer shot dead somebody in Lagos.But from our investigation, we discovered that there was a shady deal at a filling station, the Forte Oil Filling Station in Lagos, at 21 Avenue Festac Town where the Okada riders went to buy fuel.They discovered that the filling station operatives were not actually attending to motorists and okada people, rather they were dispensing mainly to black marketers with jerry cans, and other things".The okada riders themselves went to our office to lay the complaint".Our special task force then moved to the station to ensure that area was coordinated and effectively monitored.Okeh said that while the task force was in the process of carrying out its duty, some hoodlums, who were outside the filling station went on the rampage, which led to pandemonium and shooting ensued. Where corruption is involved, African leaders seem to be utterly beyond shock. Black folks in office often regard as normal business, th... Where corruption is involved, African leaders seem to be utterly beyond shock. Black folks in office often regard as normal business, the kind of infractions that draw alarm and apologetic resignations in other parts of the world.This is not meant to be a racist comment, but it is curious that the African sense of shock is mediated so often and so conveniently by other considerations, including politics, ethnicity, religion, and a certain lack of a feeling of shame: that measure of restraint that defines the idea of being human.Two major scandals in the international arena in the last week would seem to prove the point. The first is the leakage of troves of documents, now known as the Panama Papers, revealing how the rich, including world leaders, celebrities, public officials and business men, have over the years hidden away their wealth in tax havens with the help of a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca.While the consultants and the persons and companies involved have alleged that there is really nothing illegal in what they may have done, to the extent that tax avoidance is not a crime (it is the evasion that is a crime, although this looks like a matter of definition), there have been indications of money laundering and corrupt dealings involving public officials. The unfolding scandal has already resulted in the resignation of the Prime Minister of Iceland, and of an Austrian bank Chief, Michael Grahammer. Russian President Vladimir Putin also has questions to answer.But across Africa, and particularly in Nigeria, all the persons who have been mentioned in this global scandal have been totally indifferent. Governments across the world are already investigating their nationals mentioned in the scandal and here, civil society groups are also calling on the relevant authorities to do the same. But nobody should imagine that anyone involved, and currently holding public office, would feel tempted in any way to either own up or resign or lose an hour of sleep.As it is in Nigeria, so it is in the other African countries where persons have been fingered: South Africa Jacob Zumas nephew, Hulubuse Zuma; Kenya Deputy Chief Justice Kalpana Rawal; Nigeria: James Ibori, Bukola and Toyin Saraki; Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabilas twin sister, Jaynet Desiree Kabila Kyungu; Angola Petroleum Minister Botello de Vasconcelos; Ghana John Ado Kufuor, Kojo Annan; Morocco Mounir Majidi; Botswana: Ian Kirby; Egypt Alaa Mubarak; Sudan former President Ahmad Al-Mirghani; Cote dIvoire Jean Claude Ametchi; Senegal Mamadou PouyeWhereas it is possible to bet that in the affected Western nations, this massive leakage of data would be investigated and the list of casualties is bound to be long, it is also possible to bet that in our continent, there may be no investigations, or nothing substantial would come out of it. Why do our folks in Africa find it so easy to overlook impunity? And even sometimes celebrate it. The South African authorities have promised an investigation, yes, but who knows what that will bring?The Panama Papers leak proves one point: that the rich all over the world are the same they are greedy and they will rather cheat the system. They want to hide their wealth from the tax man and they will go to any length to do so. The global capitalist system is so skewed against the poor; he is permanently left with the short end of the stick. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer because the rich can hide their wealth in such filthy hideouts as the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and Panama, the most notorious offshore location, and by so doing avoid the payment of all forms of taxes. Suddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper, got the Panama documents from an anonymous whistle blower, who probably chose to be anonymous, having learnt from the travails of the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange.But thank God all the same for whistle-blowers, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) who have shown the rich that offshore financial secrecy is no longer fool-proof. Developing and underdeveloped countries are certainly worst hit by the hiding of funds away from national jurisdictions by the rich: most of it stolen money, or perhaps, illegally acquired wealth. The Panama leaks, like the Cayman Islands leak of 2013, is a reminder that in an increasingly global village, there may be no more hiding places for the rich. It holds them accountable to a globally sanctioned moral standard. The rich and the powerful dont like to be exposed. We know this to be a fact and the Nigerian names that have been mentioned can only reinforce what we already know: that the rich and the privileged in Nigeria will go to any length to amass, protect and hide their riches, at the expense of the sovereign. There is practically no difference between those who hide dirty money in overhead tanks and soak-aways and those who go all the way to Panama.Developing countries are handicapped in this kind of situation by institutional and moral deficits, but the relevant authorities in Nigeria must not sweep this under the carpet or be indifferent to the Panama revelations. Basic questions should be asked: has there been any wrong-doing? Is the money clean or dirty? And can the public officials and their agents involved legitimately hide money in offshore secret accounts? What business brought them the hidden wealth? Did they make necessary disclosures? And do they pay tax?This last point is the crux of the matter. The rich in Nigeria enjoy all the privileges of being rich and influential, but they hardly give back to society. We have, over the years, created a parasitic class of rich men and women who become important by having the right connections and by being in the right places at the right time. They occupy juicy public positions or they set up businesses through which they get generous import and tax waivers, or they get gifted with oil blocks and marginal fields or government assets sold off for nothing, and yet this same class oppresses the rest of society, and cleverly sends its amassed wealth offshore. They milk the country, they hardly pay back; the less vicious amongst them put up appearances of generosity, but it is sheer pretence: too many people playing smart at great cost to Nigeria. I am surprised that some of them even know a place called Panama, even if they have no idea where it is on the map.The Panama leak may end up as the graveyard of reputations: among the named, we have such international celebrities as Jackie Chan and the greatly talented Lionel Messi. But what will come out of it all from the African end? I still suspect nothing. And that takes me to the second scandal I alluded to earlier. It is the case of President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. This controversial President who has survived allegations of rape, corruption, domestic scandals and illicit business dealings has again just survived another corruption scandal that involved the South African Constitutional Court openly and expressly accusing him of violating the Constitution that he swore to uphold.President Zuma spent close to $20 million of public funds to upgrade his private residence. His fingers were caught in the cookie jar, and although he tried to bluff his way through, the Constitutional Court has put him on the spot by declaring boldly that he cannot use the peoples money to upgrade his personal residence. The court ruled that he will have to return the misapplied funds to the South African treasury.In saner climes, this would have been enough ground for impeachment. But Zuma survived. He has survived. The Big Six who run the African National Congress (ANC) and the partys members in parliament, who constitute the majority, rallied round Zuma, and they have refused to impeach him. He is leading the party of Nelson Mandela into a moral ditch, and the new reality is that he is still in office after having been told to his face by the Constitutional Court that he is a thief. Zuma took the peoples money and gave himself a swimming pool, a chicken run, an amphitheatre, a visitors centre, and a cattle kraal, all in the name of security upgrades to his country home. The truth is that political leaders in Africa dont see any difference between state and private wealth. When they are in charge, they exercise divine rights, the kind of divine rights associated with the monarchies of old. State wealth becomes theirs to be used by them and their cronies as they deem fit.The South African Constitutional Court deserves a pat on the back and Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng commendation for his courage. In South Africa, they have a judiciary that can tell the Executive the truth. We desperately need that kind of judiciary in Nigeria: a judiciary that can tell people in government that they can only use their positions to advance state interests as opposed to personal interests. A judiciary that is strong enough to tell a President that he is not the sovereign and that the country is bigger than the president and his cronies.If a random check were to be conducted, the transgression by President Jacob Zuma, using state funds to turn his Nkandla residence into a mini-paradise is something common and considered normal in Nigeria. Indeed, the house that is causing so much public discontent in South Africa looks like nothing considering the kind of palaces owned by low-ranking public officials in Nigeria. But public discontent is where the key lies. When the politicians disappoint the people, the people owe themselves a sacred duty not to disappoint themselves.Jacob Zuma may cling to power by the force of political patronage, but his presidency is diminished. With the many scandals around him, he has proven to be an unworthy inheritor of the Mandela legacy and it is only a question of time before his own legacy is properly defined and determined. He has apologised, and he says he will obey the court and make payments to the Treasury. But that is Africa for you. He may well get away with it all, the same way other African leaders have been getting away with criminality for decades.Our point: the biggest threat to growth and development in Africa is the contempt with which African leaders treat the people and the audacity with which they get away with their contempt and audacity. Earlier today, NigerianEye reported that the management of the University of Lagos asked the university students go ho... Earlier today, reported that the management of the University of Lagos asked the university students go home, following incessant nationwide fuel and power shortage.The students were given the ultimatum of 10:00 am this morning, Friday 8th of April 2016, to vacate the school premises.However the University of Lagos student union (ULSU) blasted the school authorities for giving them a very short notice to vacate the school hostels, and started a protest within the school premises.As at press time,gathered that the school gates were locked despite the school order, forcing the students to jump the school gates, while others also had to pass through a canal within the school to find their way out of the school premises.The story is still developing,will provide more details later Pope Francis will on Friday issue new guidelines on the Churchs approach to love, s.e.x and marriage in what is being billed as one of th... Pope Francis will on Friday issue new guidelines on the Churchs approach to love, s.e.x and marriage in what is being billed as one of the defining moments of his tenure.Is he gay-friendly and relaxed about divorce and cohabitation? Or is the pontiff a conservative who understands the need to sidestep issues that put the Church at odds with how many believers live in the 21st Century?The verdict on the 79-year-old Argentines legacy will in large part be framed by the contents of the document on the family that will be published on the stroke of noon.Officially referred to as an apostolic exhortation, the 200-page text is effectively a letter to the worlds 1.2 billion Roman Catholics that lays down revised foundations for Church teaching and pastoral practice on a host of issues related to family life.The hopes of Catholic radicals for significant changes to official doctrine were quashed during the 2014 and 2015 synods of bishops, the conclusions of which will inform without dictating the content of Franciss missive.But the document will also inevitably reflect the current pontiffs instinctive tendency to try to make the Church seem a more merciful, less judgemental body in relation to those faithful who find themselves in irregular situations.Influential German cardinal Walter Kasper has predicted that the exhortation will mark a turning of the page for the Church.Francis said , Who am I to judge?, early in his papacy when asked about how the Church should deal with gay believers who, some Catholic theologians now think, have no choice about their se.xuality.That comment and the radical language contained in an early draft of conclusions from the first synod on the family raised progressive hopes of a great leap forward in Catholic teaching on vexed questions such as whether divorced and civilly remarried believers should be allowed to take communion.But the strength of conservative opposition led by bishops from the developing world to a substantial relaxation of the Churchs model of what the ideal family looks like has made it unlikely that will happen.Francis, say those who know him best, is nothing if not a pragmatist and the last thing he wants on his watch is a schism over what he once called below the belt issues which he regards as having assumed far too much importance in the life of the Church.The exhortation, entitled Amoris Laetitia, is to be presented at the Vatican by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna who is seen as a moderniser and is himself the son of divorced parents.It will also be unveiled in dioceses around the world with local bishops having already been sent guidelines on how to explain the changes to their congregations.AFP Ex-Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Ekiti State, Dr Temitope Aluko has called on the Inspector-General of Police and t... Ex-Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Ekiti State, Dr Temitope Aluko has called on the Inspector-General of Police and to grant him protection, alleging threat to his life.Aluko, who addressed a press conference, yesterday in Lagos, accused Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State of plans to undermine his safety. He, however, called on the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister for Justice to fast-track the happenings of the 2014 governorship election in the state.His words: I have not fled the country and equally on bail from the agencies while snippets of issues ensuing from these statements are filtering into the ears of the actors/beneficiaries such that attack are now coming from all direction targeted at me.While the army council sacked their officers as a result of the investigation, it is unfortunate that the civilian actors/beneficiaries of the Ekitigate are not only walking the street freely, but also threatening my person and family.Describing the happenings of the 2014 governorship election as gross abuse of power executive power, illegality, harassment and intimidation, he said this is a call on the Attorney General of the Federation not to allow all these to be swept under the carpet in view of recent happening. The far reaching effect and implication on our electoral process and procedure are obvious.He dismissed the claims by a former speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Mr Dele Olugbemi, that he prostrated by governor Fayose describing it as blackmail.He said I never prostrated with Hon. Olugbemi anywhere.Olugbemi will do anything for Fayose after all, he is an appointee of Fayose.Please note that I understand Fayose and I understand the working system. I can tell you that Olugbemis press statement was composed directly by Fayose and delivered to Olugbemi though his media aide. -- Three students who climbed through a window at the Elmwood Park Memorial Middle/High School prompted an approximately two hour-long lockdown at the building Friday, authorities said. Two students told a teacher they spotted a male enter the school through a window around 12:30 p.m., according to police Chief Michael Foligno. Officials ordered the lockdown while police searched the facility, the chief said. Police checked security camera footage and discovered the reported intruder was actually three students who were using the window to go in and out of school without being seen by staff. There was no threat to students or staff, Foligno said. "There was a thorough investigation of the building, which included review of surveillance video, interviewing of witnesses, and a complete search of the building," Foligno added. Officers did not find any weapons, according to the chief. The students were not facing any criminal charges and would be addressed by school officials. Police said the lockdown was lifted around 2:20 p.m. Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @noahyc. Find NJ.com on Facebook. CAMDEN -- A city man was sentenced Friday to 74 years in prison for the 2013 kidnapping and shooting of a woman he had previously assaulted, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office said. Allan Mattocks, 34, was convicted in March of kidnapping and attempted murder, along with witness tampering, witness retaliation and other related charges. Investigators said Mattocks was facing charges for assaulting a Camden woman in his Boyd Street home on April 10, 2012. Just over a year later, on April 12, 2013, he kidnapped the 48-year-old victim and shot her in the head in an attempt to keep her from testifying against him. He then left the woman for dead in a vacant lot. She is still in a vegetative state, according to the CCPO. Mattocks will be required to serve 63 years in prison before he is eligible for parole. Andy Polhamus may be reached at apolhamus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ajpolhamus. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. From the stalking panthers to the towering giraffes to those playful monkeys, April 8 is National Zoo Lovers' day -- the day that we pay homage to those animals by supporting our local zoo. Some ideas on how to celebrate National Zoo Lovers' Day? First and foremost, you can usually volunteer to work for zoo. Several of them operate on a limited budget so they would be grateful for the local support. If you want a more restful day, many zoos usually have public eating spaces. Partake in a picnic on the green in plain view of your favorite animals. Feeling particularly enterprising? Start a public Facebook group or GoFundMe page to organize a fund-raiser for your local zoo. Of course, turning to social media is always a fun way to celebrate the day. If you partake in any activities on National Zoo Lovers Day, don't forget to use the #NationalZooLoversDay on all of your posts. While the forecast will be a tad on the chilly side, here's is a complete list of New Jersey zoos if you decide to venture out. Bergen County Zoo, Van Saun Park, 216 Forest Ave., Paramus Cape May County Zoo, 707 N. Route 9, Cape May Cohanzick Zoo, 181 East Commerce Street, Bridgeton Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, 241 Pleasant Plains Road, Basking Ridge Lakota Wolf Preserve, 89 Mt. Pleasant Road, Columbia Pequest Trout Hatchery, 605 Pequest Road, Oxford Popcorn Park Zoo, 1 Humane Way, Forked River Turtle Back Zoo, 560 Northfield Avenue, West Orange Six Flags / Safari Off Road Adventure, 1 Six Flags Boulevard, Jackson Space Farms Zoo & Museum, 218 County Route 519, Sussex Anthony Venutolo may be reached at avenutolo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @AnthonyVenutolo and Google+. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Orleans judge rules for indigent defendants, asks 'What kind of system do we want?' 'The People v. O.J. Simpson' provided insight into Johnnie Cochran -- and all of us 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. Maybe its just the American way: More commercial airline flights are arriving on time, and commercial carriers are losing fewer bags; yet more consumers are complaining about air travel. Traveler complaints jumped 34 percent last year, eclipsing figures recorded for more than a decade to reach the highest level since 2000. The leading cause of frustration is problem flights, including cancellations and delays, which is unchanged in 16 years. Hard to imagine that people would complain about cancellations and delays, which, although frustrating, are generally caused by weather patterns over which airlines have no control and abundant concerns about consumer safety. It was the fifth increase in complaints in six years. The good news is that more than 670 million people flew on U.S. carriers last year, so only a tiny slice bothered to complain to the government. Many more gripe directly to the airline. Frontier CEO Barry Biffle has said that his airline gets about 30 complaints for every one filed with the Transportation Department and it used to be a 90-to-1 ratio. More proof, we think, that airlines are trying to please their customers and doing so successfully. Complaints to the government topped 20,000 in 2000 but dropped sharply after the terror attacks of September 2001, which resulted in fewer people flying. Complaints didnt start rising again until 2004. Airline customers filed more than 15,000 complaints with the Transportation Department last year, up from about 11,000 in 2014. Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines, budget carriers that charge lots of fees and had poor on-time records, had the worst complaint rates. Theres still some truth in the old saying that you get what you pay for. Like the major carriers, the budget airlines have to make money to stay in business. Among the findings in this years report: On time: The percentage of flights that arrived on time rose to 79.9 percent last year from 76.2 percent in 2014. Lost bags: The rate of bags being lost, stolen or delayed bags dropped 10 percent in 2015. Getting bumped: Fewer passengers were bumped off oversold flights; the rate dropped by 17 percent last year. That doesnt count people who voluntarily gave up their seats for money or a travel voucher. Everything is getting better, but they are still unhappy about the same things, Dean Headley, a marketing professor at Wichita State and co-author of an annual report on airline quality, told the Associated Press. Headley, who co-authored the report with Brent Bowen, dean of the aviation school at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, thinks passengers resent the growth in extra fees for things like checked baggage and changing or canceling a reservation, and that makes them quicker to complain when something goes wrong with their trip. Clearly, you cant please all of the people all of the time, but airlines are working toward that goal. 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. To say second-year Thorneloe University theatre student Ben Dippel is excited to be playing the role of Hamlet in Kronborg Castle is an understatement. To say second-year Thorneloe University theatre student Ben Dippel is excited to be playing the role of Hamlet in Kronborg Castle is an understatement. Kronborg Castle is located in Helsingr (Elsinore), Denmark, and is the real-life castle where Shakespeare set his famous tragedy, Hamlet. Dippel is heading to Denmark later this month to take part in Shakespeare: The Next 400, a conference marking the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death on April 23, 1616. He'll be accompanied by seven other Thorneloe students and three faculty members. Dippel stars in a 20-minute adaptation of Hamlet as seen through the eyes of Ophelia, Hamlet's love interest. The Thorneloe students will also present All (swellthatend) Swell, a 20-minute adaptation of the (kind of) comedy, "All's Well That Ends Well." Honestly, it's such an incredible honour and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to play Hamlet as Shakespeare imagined him in Kronborg Castle in Elsinore, Dippel said. I just hope I do the performance justice and that all these people that have come to honour the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death at this conference enjoy it too. It's pretty nerve-wracking. Sudburians also have a chance to see what the students will be presenting in Denmark. The students will be performing both adaptations at the Laughing Buddha this weekend, at 2 p.m. April 10, to be precise. Admission is free. Thorneloe theatre professor Jenny Hazelton said she's pretty darn excited about the trip, too. When I was approached to be a part of the project, we essentially got free reign about which pieces we could choose, she said. My mind immediately went to "Hamlet." I was like that's so cliche, doing "Hamlet" in Hamlet's castle. How many times has that been done? But I was thinking about the students, to be able to have been a student performing "Hamlet" in Hamlet's castle. What a story, that is. I couldn't say no to doing that piece. Besides the conference, the students will take in some of the local sights, and of course, some theatre. Some of the students have never been out of Ontario, Hazelton said. I think it's a pretty incredible thing for them to experience, she said. In his first trip to Greater Sudbury as prime minister, Justin Trudeau announced funding for the Maley Drive extension, meaning the project the city has tried to finance for three decades will become a reality. In his first trip to Greater Sudbury as prime minister, Justin Trudeau announced funding for the Maley Drive extension, meaning the project the city has tried to finance for three decades will become a reality. I am pleased to announce that the Government of Canada will invest $26.7 million in the Sudbury Maley Drive extension project, Trudeau told a crowded atrium at Tom Davies Square on Thursday. My government is proud to invest in Sudbury, and the people who call it home. Flanked by city council, three federal MPs and Sudbury MPP Glenn Thibeault, Trudeau reminded the crowd his government has pledged $120 billion for infrastructure over the next 10 years. He said his government is backing Maley because that's what municipal leaders have picked as their priority. This important initiative will reduce traffic congestion, improve commuter safety and get people home on time, Trudeau said. And take ore trucks off Lasalle. Sudbury MP Paul Lefebvre said Trudeau has likely already visited the city more often than any other federal leader, but this visit was special. This is truly an historic day for Sudbury, Lefebvre said. Mayor Brian Bigger and Trudeau shared a light-hearted moment when the prime minister lowered the mayor's microphone as he took the podium "I'm much shorter than you," Bigger quipped. He thanked Trudeau for the funding, saying it will help economic growth as well as providing 780 jobs during construction. "This project is critical to the economy of Greater Sudbury," Bigger said. "(So) we're all very thrilled and honoured to host you here at Tom Davies Square." The mayor said city council is determined to make more investments in other projects. "We need to invest in our community to grow, he said. As a council, we're looking at other projects that will do just that, as well. So you'll be hearing from us in the near future on a number of other items. "This is just the beginning." Thibeault, who recently had major knee surgery, took to the stage in crutches. "This is what happens when you mess with security," he said, prompting Trudeau to reply, "Not my security. My guys are nice. Sunny ways, my friends." Thibeault said between the provincial and federal governments, infrastructure spending will create 110,000 jobs a year in Ontario in the next decade. "And as a lifelong resident of Sudbury, I know how important the Maley Drive extension is to our city," he said. "We've heard about this project for the last 30 years, and now finally, it's becoming a reality. I really can't wait to see the shovels in the ground on Maley Drive." In response to a question from the media, Trudeau said more funding could flow to the city for other projects. "I had an excellent conversation with the council today on issues from wastewater to roads to seniors housing and we're certainly going to continue to be a strong and active partner in the coming months and years to the community of Sudbury," he said. "It's not up to us to pick and choose what projects communities like Sudbury want and need. It's up to us to work in partnership with the province, with the municipality to fund the projects that you've prioritized." Trudeau hinted that support in some form could be announced soon related to the Ring of Fire. "We know that the Ring of Fire means good jobs, means continuing development of the North in ways that hopefully will build the kind of sustained partnerships with indigenous communities that have been too long absent from the economic growth landscape." He also responded to a question about the Panama Papers controversy, which has snared politicians from across the globe in a major tax avoidance scandal. "No I do not, Trudeau said, when asked if he had any investments linked to the scandal. I have been entirely and completely transparent about my and my family's finances. "Obviously the Panama Papers are highlighting some very real concerns that people around the world have about the fact extremely wealthy people have been very effective in avoiding paying their fair share of taxes. That's why, in this budget ... we allocated an extra $440 million to the Canada Revenue Agency to ensure they are empowered to go after tax avoidance and tax evasion. In a release after the news conference, the city said the total budgeted cost of Phase 1 of Maley is $80.1 million. The province announced its $26.7 million share in 2014. Based on the 2016 budget, the City has reserved $15.4 million for the project, to ensure its shovel-ready status, with money designated in future budget years to fund the remainder of the project. The Maley Drive Extension will be built in two phases. Phase 1 will connect LaSalle Boulevard West with Falconbridge Highway, while Phase 2 will extend the Maley Drive Extension to Elm Street West. Once construction has started, Phase 1 of the project is expected to take three years. An overview of the Maley Drive Extension project, including a profile and construction maps is available at www.greatersudbury.ca/maleydrive One of the bills put forward in January at Laurentian University's annual Model Parliament urged the Bank of Canada to add some diversity to who appears on the country's bank notes. One of the bills put forward in January at Laurentian University's annual Model Parliament urged the Bank of Canada to add some diversity to who appears on the country's bank notes.Last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced just that a new bank note featuring an iconic Canadian woman will be issued in late 2018.Canadians have been invited to nominate deserving woman, and so far more than 18,000 nominations have been made that includes notable names such as Emily Carr, Nellie McClung, Lucy Maud Montgomery and Mary Pickford.This week, a seven-member advisory council that will help draw up a short list was named, and Laurentian president Dominic Giroux is among their ranks. Morneau will make the ultimate decision on who will appear on the bank note.After the announcement, the first reactions were from the Laurentian students who were active in the Model Parliament, Giroux said.They were excited that only a few months after their own debate in the House of Commons, the president of their university was asked to be part of the selection process, and their voice had been heard.Other members of the panel are writer Gurjinder Basran, youth activist and founder of Aboriginal Youth Opportunities Michael Redhead Champagne, University of New Brunswick professor emerita Margaret Conrad, Universite de Quebec a Montreal sociology professor Francine Descarries, world champion hurdler Perdita Felicien and historian and author Merna Foster.Giroux said he's often asked to sit on national panels, and most of the time he has to decline these offers. But he said he felt it was important to accept this invitation.I'm very honoured, honestly, he said. The reason I was pleased to be considered for this role is that it is an outstanding opportunity to celebrate Canada's diversity and to celebrate the impact of women in this country.Until April 15, Canadians can submit nominations on the Bank of Canada's website The nominee can be any female Canadian by birth or naturalization, who has demonstrated outstanding leadership, achievement or distinction in any field, benefitting the people of Canada or in the service of Canada, Giroux said.They must have been deceased for at least 25 years, and they can't be a fictional character. For the past several months, a senior living in a Notre Dame Avenue apartment building has been fighting a frustrating battle with an age-old nemesis of humanity: mice. For the past several months, a senior living in a Notre Dame Avenue apartment building has been fighting a frustrating battle with an age-old nemesis of humanity: mice. Sue Godin said she's at her wits' end, after several failed attempts to eradicate the vermin have failed. She's called her landlord and the Sudbury and District Health Unit, but she said in a recent interview nothing has helped. "For eight months now I've been fighting with mice," Godin said. "It's gosh darn gross." Godin said she has found mice feces in drawers, under furniture, near her bed, and can hear them in the walls at night. Her landlord hired a pest control company, and the health unit sent an inspector, but the problem persists. "The traps aren't doing anything," she said. "They're in the walls and they're making nests." Godin said the problem started last year when a neighbour in a nearby apartment passed away. The neighbour was a hoarder, she said, and when her apartment was cleaned out by workers in Hazmat suits, the mice fled to nearby apartments. "That's where it all started when she died ... now they're all over the building." Because she has a dog, poison can't be used. And she's allergic to cats so that's not an option, either. While the traps laid by the pest control company has netted closed to a dozen mice, the problem continues, she said. "I opened up my kitchen drawer to grab a knife to butter my toast and there was poo all over," Godin said, of a recent incident. "How would you like to be laying in bed and hearing these mice on top chewing the ceiling? I can't take it anymore. "They have to be doing more than laying down traps that don't work. There's got to be something they can do." Burgess Hawkins, the manager of environmental Health with the Sudbury and District Health Unit, said complaints about mice and other vermin are fairly steady in the city. Since 2010, they've received an average of about 25 complaints a year. When they receive a call, an inspector is sent to investigate. The inspector tries to determine how serious the problem is by checking how much feces there is, and tries to determine how the mice are getting inside. "If we see that it's a serious issue, we'll normally get a hold of the landlord and see if we can get the problem fixed that way," he said. "If we can't, then we'll get hold of (the city's) bylaw department, because there is a bylaw on the books that says ... the landlord can't allow vermin." Usually the most effective solution is to call in a professional pest control company, which Godin said was done in this case, but hasn't worked. While not referring to Godin's case in particular, Hawkins said hoarding can cause a number of issues. "It's possible you will get mice, it's possible you will get cockroaches, it's possible you will get a lot of insects in general," he said. "It would really be site-specific because there are a whole bunch of variables." Normally traps are the best option, he said, and a lot of them. "And contrary to every cartoon you've seen, they don't like cheese," he said, adding that peanut butter and chocolate are far more effective. "Those will work well as an attractant for a snap-trap." The best strategy normally is to place several snap traps in several locations, and track where you're catching the mice. "That will help indicate where they're living or where they're coming into the apartment," Hawkins said. "If you have a serious infestation, if you put out six traps, on Day 1 you'll have six dead mice. By about Day 4 or Day 5, you should start noticing them in one area ... and so they're likely coming in from that area." While mice can breed and set up nests fairly quickly, Hawkins said the amount of food available to them and whether they have a warm and dry place to nest are major factors in how big the problem will get. "In my case, when we had mice, they got into a bag of flour," he said, adding they like dry goods as a food source. And there doesn't need to be a hole in a foundation for them to get inside something as simple as leaving your door open in summer while you're bringing in groceries can allow them to get inside. They carry disease in a couple of ways. One, they run through garbage, and then if they run through your food, it can contaminate everything. "Also, they poop (and urinate) wherever they are, like most animals. So if they're running through your food, they can drop little pellets." That can spread the hantavirus, which is sometimes present in mice urine and feces. The virus can cause fairly serious illness fever, fatigue and muscle aches and pains in humans. "It's an airborne pathogen, Hawkins said. The mouse (poops), and leaves its feces on the ground, which then dries out. You go to clean it up, and when you do, you create dust. So if the hantavirus is in that dust, then there is a chance if you breathe it in, you get the pneumonia associated with it." So they recommend anyone cleaning up vermin feces use a spray bottle with water and bleach to reduce dust and kill germs. Godin said she loves her apartment and her neighbours, and doesn't want to move. So she's considering more drastic steps. "If I have to go away for a couple of days, I want them to put down some poison, then pick up the carpet, wash my walls, and let me come back in," she said. "Something drastic has to be done." Vermin calls: Rodent/vermin complaints for the last few years in Greater Sudbury: 2010: 23 2011: 22 2012: 28 2013: 29 2014: 24 2015: 25 Have a mouse problem or questions about mouse infestations? The Sudbury and District Health Unit has info available here, while you can find a fact sheet from Health Canada here. Two Toronto-area men are facing trafficking charges after Greater Sudbury Police seized heroin and cocaine in a bust Thursday. Two Toronto-area men are facing trafficking charges after Greater Sudbury Police seized heroin and cocaine in a bust Thursday. The arrests were made by members of the force's drug and K9 units at the Greyhound Bus Terminal on Notre Dame Avenue in Sudbury. Police arrested two separate males from the Greater Toronto Area, police said in a release Friday. One man had 30 grams of what police believe to be heroin, with an estimated street value of $10,000. The second man had 473 grams of cocaine with an estimated street value of $47,300. Both males stand charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking in a controlled substance and will appear in court on (Friday), the release said. GSPS would like to take this opportunity to re-affirm our commitment to making our communities safer by targeting those individuals involved in bringing drugs into our community. EVANSTON, Ill. --- Sir Richard Blundell, the David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at University College London, and Janos Kollar, the Donner Professor of Science and Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, are the recipients of the prestigious 2016 Nemmers prizes in economics and mathematics, respectively. Northwestern University announced the recipients of the 2016 Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics and the 2016 Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics today. The prizes are awarded every other year in recognition of major contributions to new knowledge or the development of significant new modes of analysis. Blundell was selected for his important contributions to labor economics, public finance and applied econometrics. His research improves the foundations for economic policy and furthers our understanding of economic behavior, the selection committee noted. Kollar was selected for his fundamental contributions to algebraic geometry, including the minimal model program and its applications, the theory of rational connectedness and the study of real algebraic varieties. Richard Blundell and Janos Kollar are original thinkers in economics and mathematics, and it is an extraordinary privilege for Northwestern to recognize them for their significant contributions, Northwestern Provost Daniel Linzer said. We look forward to having them on campus, sharing their knowledge and interacting with the University community. In connection with the Nemmers awards, Blundell and Kollar will deliver public lectures and participate in other scholarly activities at Northwestern during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 academic years. Each prize carries a $200,000 stipend, among the largest monetary awards in the United States for outstanding achievements in economics and mathematics. This year marks the 12th time Northwestern has awarded the two prizes. Northwestern awards two other Nemmers prizes every other year, one in medical science and one in music. In February, Northwestern awarded the inaugural Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science to Dr. Huda Zoghbi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor at Baylor College of Medicine. The 2016 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition will be announced this spring. Sir Richard Blundell Blundells research covers the empirical microeconomic study of consumer, savings and labor supply behavior. He has developed micro-data based models for intertemporal decisions over labor supply, human capital and consumption. Blundell also has analyzed family labor supply behavior and the interaction between consumer and labor supply behavior, while developing new microeconometric tools for the study of dynamic panel data models and the nonparametric analysis of individual decisions. Since 1986, Blundell has been research director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which is highly influential in the economic policy debate in the United Kingdom. He also is director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy. Blundell is the recipient of many prestigious honors and awards including the Yrjo Jahnsson Prize (1995) for his work in microeconometrics and the analysis of labor supply, welfare reform and consumer behavior; the Econometric Society Frisch Prize Medal (2000) for the paper Estimating Labor Supply Responses Using Tax Reforms; the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize (2008) given to a high-level economist whose research combines both the theoretical and applied aspects of economics; the CES-Ifo Prize (2010); the Sandmo Prize (2011); the IZA Prize in Labor Economics (2012); and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Prize in Economics (2015). He has served as president of the European Economics Association, the Econometric Society, the Society of Labor Economics and, most recently, as president of the Royal Economic Society. Blundell is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the British Academy and the Institute of Actuaries and an honorary member of the American Economic Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Blundell has held visiting professorships at the University of British Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley. He was knighted in the 2014 Queens New Years Honours list for services to Economics and Social Science. A native of England, Blundell earned a B.Sc. from the University of Bristol in 1973 and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics in 1975. Before joining the faculty of the University College London in 1984, he was a lecturer in econometrics at the University of Manchester from 1975 to 1984. Janos Kollar Kollars specialty is algebraic geometry with additional interest in related questions in number theory, complex geometry and commutative algebra. He is well known for his contributions to the minimal model program for threefolds, for pioneering the notion of rational connectedness and for finding counterexamples to a conjecture of the late John Nash. In 1952, Nash conjectured a converse to a famous theorem he proved; Kollar was able to provide many three-dimensional counterexamples from an important new structure theory for a class of three-dimensional algebraic varieties. The recipient of numerous honors during his career, Kollar was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2005 and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1995. He became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) in 2012. Kollar received the 2006 Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra from the AMS, one of the highest distinctions in mathematics. He also was named a Presidential Young Investigator in 1988 and a Sloan Foundation Fellow in 1989. Kollar was a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in 2014 in Seoul. In 1996, he gave one of the plenary addresses at the European Mathematical Congress in Budapest. In 1990, Kollar was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Kyoto. Kollar is the author of more than 130 articles and five monographs in algebraic geometry. He serves as editor of several journals, including the Algebra and Number Theory and the Duke Mathematics Journal. A native of Hungary, Kollar began his studies at the Eotvos University in Budapest and later received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1984 with Teruhisa Matsusaka. He was a Junior Fellow at Harvard from 1984 to 1987 and a professor at the University of Utah before joining the Princeton faculty in 1999. Kollar currently is the associate chair of Princetons department of mathematics. Background on Nemmers prizes The four Nemmers prizes are made possible through bequests from the late Erwin Esser Nemmers, a former member of the Northwestern University faculty, and his brother, the late Frederic E. Nemmers, both of Milwaukee. Each prize is awarded every other year. Erwin Nemmers, who persuaded his brother to join him in making a substantial contribution to Northwestern, served as a member of the faculty of the Kellogg School of Management from 1957 until his retirement in 1986. He and Frederic Nemmers were principals in a Milwaukee-based, family-owned, church music publishing house. Their gifts, totaling $14 million, were designated by Erwin and Frederic Nemmers for the establishment of the Nemmers prizes and the establishment of four endowed professorships in the Kellogg School of Management. Consistent with the terms of the Nemmers bequests, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics (named in honor of the Nemmers father) and the Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics (named by Erwin in honor of his brother) are awarded for achievement and work of lasting significance in the respective disciplines. Previous Nemmers prize recipients in economics are Peter A. Diamond (1994), Thomas J. Sargent (1996), Robert J. Aumann (1998), Daniel L. McFadden (2000), Edward C. Prescott (2002), Ariel Rubinstein (2004), Lars Peter Hansen (2006), Paul R. Milgrom (2008), Elhanan Helpman (2010), Daron Acemoglu (2012) and Jean Tirole (2014). Previous Nemmers prize recipients in mathematics are Yuri I. Manin (1994), Joseph B. Keller (1996), John H. Conway (1998), Edward Witten (2000), Yakov G. Sinai (2002), Mikhael Gromov (2004), Robert P. Langlands (2006), Simon Donaldson (2008), Terence Chi-Shen Tao (2010), Ingrid Daubechies (2012) and Michael Hopkins (2014). The Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition (named in honor of the Nemmers grandfather) honors classical music composers with a unique creative voice and outstanding achievement in a body of work. The prize carries a $100,000 stipend. Previous Nemmers prize recipients in music are John Adams (2004), Oliver Knussen (2006), Kaija Saariaho (2008), John Luther Adams (2010), Aaron Jay Kernis (2012) and Esa-Pekka Salonen (2014). The Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science (named in honor of the Nemmers mother) is awarded to physician-scientists to recognize works of lasting significance in the field of medical science. The inaugural recipient is Dr. Huda Zoghbi (2016). iStock/Thinkstock(KENOSHA, Wis.) -- After an uphill battle involving protests and a petition, a Wisconsin school will allow transgender high school student Ash Whitaker to run for Prom King. Whitaker, a Junior at Tremper High School in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was initially told by school administrators that he had to run for Prom Queen because he was assigned female at birth. "I said my son is not a queen," Melissa Whitaker, Ash's mother told ABC News today. Whitaker described her son as, "fun, funky, and probably more wise than I wish for him to be." The precocious 16-year-old started a MoveOn.org petition gathering nearly 6,000 signatures of support, which he sent to his school. In the petition Ash writes, "I am trying to run for Prom King at my school, but am unable to due to my school's resistance and insistent discrimination against my transgender identity (FtM). In addition to this, I am unable to use the male restroom or receive respectful identification from said administration." After a series of student-organized protests, the decision was taken from the school level to the district level, according to Tanya Ruder, a spokesperson for the Kenosha Unified School District. "In order to meet the needs of all students while maintaining what has historically been done, any student who qualifies for Tremper High School prom court will be listed on the ballot under the gender for which they identify," Ruder said in a statement. Whitaker said she is pleased that her son can now run for Prom King, but added, "It's not enough. It was hard to be really happy because there is still the other issue." She said her son had been using the boys' restroom at school all year before he was suddenly told he could not. The school compromised by allowing him to use single-stalled restrooms at two far ends of the school, but none of the boys' restrooms in between. "He is a good student and a good person, being pulled out of class or threatened with disciplinary action because he has to use the bathroom," Whitaker added. The school district has not taken a position on the bathroom question. "At this time we do not have a policy in place for transgender students," Ruder said, adding that they are currently conducting research to reach a conclusion. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. VALPARAISO Police here are asking the publics help finding a man they say stole a cell phone from a local store. Valparaiso police on Friday released a surveillance photo taken March 29 at the Spring Mobile AT&T store at 150 S. Silhavy Road. Employees told police a man removed a gold Samsung Galaxy phone from a display case and fled from the store. Video surveillance recorded the man leaving the store. He is described as a white man, wearing a blue Notre Dame T-shirt and baseball cap. He had longer blonde hair and was wearing blue jeans with white gym shoes, according to Valparaiso police. Valparaiso police said the man has been identified as David Martin, 41, by police in South Bend, Elkhart, Goshen, Mishawaka and the Michiana Crime Stoppers. Police said Martin has committed many similar crimes in each of their jurisdiction. Martin currently has outstanding warrants. Valparaiso police believe Martin is homeless and are requesting assistance from the community in locating him. Anybody with information regarding his location is asked to call 911 and contact their local police department. Information can also be forwarded through TIP411 (847-411), enter keyword Valpo as the first word into the message field prior to sending message. Brooklyn's own Bernie Sanders spent the afternoon stumping in the borough of his youth, holding a rally in Midwood outside his childhood home and then delivering a speech in Greenpoint. Grace Rauh filed the following report. It was homecoming day for Bernie Sanders in Brooklyn. "There's pride that he's from Brooklyn, but I think he really represents all of us, all of us as a state and as a country and people who really feel that we all deserve a shot," said one Sanders supporter. Sanders held a rally on the street where he grew up. The crowd was filled with locals, including Tom Ingram, one of Sanders' classmates from James Madison High School. "Everybody knew Bernie because he was the star athlete," Ingram said. "He was on the track team. He was one of the fastest runners ever." Sanders is still running, but now for president. "I grew up in this community and I remember it very well. And I know that from this community and from all over this state and all over this country, there is a movement developing which says it is too late for establishment politics and establishment economics," he said. After Midwood, he stumped in Greenpoint along the waterfront. The day was not without controversy. Assemblyman Dov Hikind denounced Sanders' recent comments about the 2014 conflict between Israel and Gaza. In an interview with the Daily News, Sanders said he thought that more than 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza, but he did ask the interviewer if that sounded right. The actual number of civilian deaths, according to the UN, is around 1,500. "It's just absolutely outrageous," Hikind said. "It's literally a blood libel on the part of Bernie Sanders, and he owes us an apology." The Sanders campaign issued a statement in response to the earlier interview, emphasizing that Sanders had confused the number of injuries and the death toll. A spokesman said, "Bringing peace between Israel and the Palestinians will not be easy. It would help if candidates positions on this issue are not distorted." Sanders will be back in Brooklyn next week to face off against Hillary Clinton in a debate on Thursday night that will air on NY1. As New York gets ready for next week's Democratic Presidential Debate co-sponsored by NY1, we take a look at the venue where the showdown will be held. As Brooklyn Reporter Jeanine Ramirez reports, it's a site steeped in history. The hulls of ships were built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II and then launched right into the East River. The building is still here and will now add to its rich history this time as the site of next week's Democratic Presidential Debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. "I always think when we're planning an event, I think six months out for a live event is really the ideal amount of time," said Mary Lovci, the vice president of Global Events, the company that leases the building. Despite having less than two weeks to prepare for the debate, Lovci said she is confident the space will be ready. The venue, Duggal Greenhouse, is large, with a ground floor of nearly 30,000 square feet, and additional space on the mezzanine. It has hosted many top-of-the line events in its latest incarnation, from fashion shows featuring designers like Alexander Wang and Christian Dior, to corporate functions organized by companies from AOL to IBM. "We've also had the privilege of having several celebrities in to be able to do rehearsal space, like for Madonna and Beyonce before going on world tour," Lovci said. The 70-foot-high building takes its current name from Baldev Duggal; it's one of five buildings the entrepreneur has leased at the Navy Yard. Duggal, an 80-year-old immigrant from India, is the man behind Duggal Visual Solutions, the largest privately owned printing company in North America. The debate space was being used as a storage warehouse when he took it over in 2009. "There was asbestos in the building, a new floor needed to be poured," Lovci said. "We had to think about egress of the building, how people can use this space." The building finally opened as an events venue in 2013 after flooding from Hurricane Sandy set back renovations. It can safely hold 3,000 people, but it's not yet clear how many tickets will be distributed for the debate. The Duggal Greenhouse sits between the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges. NY Water Taxi will provide transportation directly to the site for next week's debate. Lil Yachty is fire. Astrud Gilberto and Hedi Slimane are sick. Playboi Carti is in this minutes rotation, right there alongside Chet Baker, Bad Company, Kanye and the Germs. Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a dope game, though maybe not as dope as Tom Clancys Rainbow Six: Siege. Stephane Ashpools pastel Pigalle cardigan is the latest score at retail that, and a bomber from Alyx and a ring from Saint Laurent. If, in the profoundly solipsistic age of social media, each of us is definable according to what we consume, then assemble the names and labels listed above and you have the makings of an algorithm whose endpoint is Luka Sabbat. Who is Luka? The question, which also happens to be his Twitter handle (@whoisluka), is unlikely to go unanswered for long. Among his roughly 184,000 Instagram and 64,000 Twitter followers, the 18-year-old New Yorker has already established himself as the coolest teenager on the Internet. That is what Complex magazine termed him last year soon after he appeared out of nowhere or, anyway, from that singular cohort of New Yorkers who line up on any given Thursday outside Supreme to become a social media phenomenon. Well feel the pinch in the restaurant, yes, absolutely, Mr. Arsenis said. But he said he hoped the citys financial crisis could be resolved before it starts to hurt tourist-dependent businesses like the Howard Johnson motel his family owns near the boardwalk. We cant be talking about this all through the summer, Mr. Arsenis said. If we dont have a good summer, youre going to see people closing up. Were running on fumes. The motel has already suffered from the reversal of the citys gambling fortunes, he said of the closing in 2014 of four of Atlantic Citys 12 casinos. About half of the motels 71 rooms would be rented on a weeknight before there were casinos in neighboring states, Mr. Arsenis said. Now, with casinos in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland drawing away customers, he said, he was lucky if 10 rooms were filled on a weeknight. The casinos had been the foundation of the citys tax base, but as their revenues plunged and some closed their doors, the value of the survivors also declined. Casino owners challenged the assessments of their properties and won judgments for significant rebates. Now Atlantic City owes the most successful of the casinos, the Borgata, more than $125 million. When the city failed to pay part of that debt, the Borgata received court approval to stop paying its tax bills, exacerbating the citys cash crunch. Some smaller business owners, including Mr. Arsenis, tried to help the city out by paying their property taxes a month early. But the gap between what Atlantic City takes in and what it owes is too wide to bridge without help from the state, city officials say. One of Mayor Bill de Blasios leading supporters in New Yorks Orthodox Jewish community surrendered in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday to begin a 15-day sentence for misdemeanor sexual abuse, after an appeals court rejected his request for a new trial, the district attorneys office said. The supporter, Ari Noe, 42, of Borough Park, Brooklyn, was sentenced nearly three years ago after being convicted of third-degree sexual abuse and attempted forcible touching. At trial, a woman testified he had touched her private parts without permission in an Upper West Side bar. The execution of his sentence had been delayed repeatedly while he appealed the verdict. Mr. Noe went to court on Thursday expecting another delay, but in a surprise move, a prosecutor handed him a decision from the appeals court denying his motion for a new trial. Mr. Noes lawyer, Abe George, asked the court for more time to allow his client to get his affairs in order. But Judge Melissa A. Crane said Mr. Noe had exhausted his appeals and ordered court officers to take him into custody right away. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, approached a Bronx subway turnstile on Thursday with the casualness of a regular commuter, MetroCard in hand. Moving, moving, someone called out, perhaps from her security detail, as she began to swipe the card. But by that point, all movement had stopped: The card would not comply. It would take Mrs. Clinton five swipes before the desired beep-click of success finally came. And with each swipe, she, like others before her, demonstrated the potential perils that await politicians in the subway. There are other routines of New York life that have the ability to similarly trip up politicians. Indeed, two of the remaining three Republican presidential candidates John Kasich and Donald J. Trump have been seen eating pizza with a knife and fork. (Frankly, it was very comfortable, Mr. Trump, a Queens native, said in response to local outcry after a campaign appearance in 2011 with Sarah Palin in which neither used their hands. I like not to eat the crust.) Even the citys mayor, Bill de Blasio, has tripped over the third rail of local pizza consumption. A judge in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit on Thursday that sought to impede a plan led by the billionaire Barry Diller to build a 2.4-acre park, known as Pier 55, that would extend over the Hudson River. The lawsuit, which was filed in June by the City Club of New York, a civic organization, had asked to halt the $130 million project until it underwent a new environmental review and had the approval of the New York State Legislature. The suit was against the Hudson River Park Trust and a Diller entity, and said that the park was the result of a process that lacked required levels of transparency and public scrutiny. But in her ruling on Thursday, Justice Joan B. Lobis of State Supreme Court in Manhattan rejected the complaint. Michael S. Gruen, the president of the City Club, called the decision disappointing and said the organization was weighing an appeal. This is not a license to proceed yet, he added, noting that the project still required the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers. (The states Environmental Conservation Department, which also had to give its permission, issued a permit for the project last month.) A New York City police sergeant has been cleared of claims he violated the civil rights of an emotionally disturbed man in a deadly 2009 shooting. A federal jury in Manhattan cleared Sgt. William Flores on Thursday in the death of Mauricio Jaquez in the Bronx. The Jaquez family had sued for unspecified damages. The jury was considering whether Sergeant Flores was liable for the last of five shots that struck Mr. Jaquez after his wife summoned the police in April 2009, saying he was having an emotional breakdown. Lawyers for Sergeant Flores said the final shot was necessary after Mr. Jaquez kept threatening officers with a knife despite having been hit by four gunshots and multiple rounds of stun gun shocks and rubber bullets. Yvette Fay Francis-McBarnette, a Jamaican-born medical pioneer in treating children with sickle cell anemia, died on March 28 in Alexandria, Va. She was 89. Her death was confirmed by her daughter Elayne Sara McBarnette. Dr. Francis, as she was known professionally, was a high achiever from the time she was a teenager, after immigrating with her parents to New York City from Jamaica. Raised in Harlem, she enrolled in Hunter College when she was 14, graduating with a bachelors degree in physics in three and a half years. Deemed too young for medical school or even a laboratory job, she earned a masters degree in chemistry from Columbia University instead. In 1946, when she was 19, she became the second black woman to enroll at the Yale School of Medicine. While directing a clinic at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, Dr. Francis was credited with successfully using antibiotics to treat children with sickle cell anemia 15 years before the effectiveness of those drugs was confirmed, in a 1993 article in The New England Journal of Medicine. Climate change and pollution. Computer models predicting the pace of climate change may be flawed, new research suggests. The models may overestimate the cooling power of clouds, which, if true, would make combating global warming more difficult. A different environmental problem is also in the news this week: light pollution. We examine its effects on nature. A compromise on history. Next month, more than 470,000 students will take the Advanced Placement exam in U.S. history. Revisions to the courses framework in 2014 became a divisive issue, with conservatives saying the guidelines reflected a left-wing bias. But recent changes appear to have reached an impressive middle ground, according to one historian. Test your knowledge of American history with this quiz. Business Disney underwent a surprise shake-up this week as Thomas O. Staggs, considered in line to be the next leader of the company, abruptly left. We look at what led to his departure. Who is Luka Sabbat? He may be the coolest teenager on the planet, one whose popularity on social media has made him an influencer for the fashion industry. Inside the ancient town hall of Siena, Italy, the walls hold a series of magnificent 14th-century frescoes showing the effects of good government and bad. One side depicts a prosperous city-state, where justice and tolerance prevail in the Tuscan countryside. The other is ruled by a horned, fanged figure, the streets deserted and scary. We saw our own version of this allegory with the two Americas this week one going backward, the other stepping into tomorrow. We saw a retreat to bigotry in states dooming themselves to decline. And in other states, we saw a way for people to get around a do-nothing Congress controlled by Know-Nothing throwbacks. First, the good. On Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed a bill that will eventually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, lifting the earnings of 2.3 million New Yorkers, and he authorized one of the strongest paid parental leave laws in the nation. On the same day, Gov. Jerry Brown of California put his signature to a $15 minimum wage plan in the most populous state. Then San Francisco became the first place in the United States to require businesses to provide paid leave for new parents. What had seemed impossible just a few years ago is now rolling through cities and states led by forward-looking politicians. Together, these changes amount to a revolution in the workplace, as one exultant activist put it. But lets not get too excited: The United States remains the only developed country in the world that does not mandate paid parental leave. In 2009, leaders of the Group of 20 nations, distressed by the global financial crisis, pledged to dismantle the tax havens that have allowed the worlds richest people to avoid paying taxes. The United States and European governments were equally concerned about banks being used by tax cheats and criminals in a shadowy international financial system. In response, most nations have taken significant steps to make it harder and riskier to hide money overseas. The leaders of 132 nations have agreed to adopt an information-sharing standard developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Of those, 96 are expected to start sharing banking information over the next couple of years through an automated system designed to allow the tax authorities of participating governments to see the overseas holdings of their citizens. But one major international financial hub has refused to sign on Panama. The recent leak of millions of documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in enabling shadowy overseas transactions, may change that. President Juan Carlos Varela of Panama announced Wednesday that his government will appoint a team of local and international experts to propose measures the country can take to strengthen the transparency of the financial and legal systems. A wholesale review of the legal and financial systems of a country that has enabled money laundering and tax evasion is certainly welcome. It is no coincidence that thousands of government officials and magnates from around the globe have turned to Panama for ways to hide their cash. But the government doesnt need a committee to recommend that it adhere to the international information sharing standard or to sign the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters. It was the rarest of news in the coal mining hollows of Appalachia: A once powerful executive, Donald Blankenship, was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety laws at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where 29 workers died in an explosion six years ago. The very idea that a dominant baron of the industry called King Coal could be brought to justice and put behind bars shook the region, where miners have long complained that they face dangerous and illegal working conditions that routinely result in no punishment. Mr. Blankenship, who served as chief executive of the Massey Energy Company, was not accused of causing the explosion, but his management methods, so notoriously focused on profitability, came under investigation after the disaster and led to his federal conviction on a misdemeanor charge in December in a Charleston courthouse. While Mr. Blankenship sought probation and maintained his innocence at sentencing, Judge Irene Berger delivered the maximum one-year sentence, citing your part in a dangerous conspiracy aimed at putting profitability of the company ahead of the safety of your employees. The mine disaster, Americas worst in modern times, was traced to flammable coal dust and gas that accumulated despite workers complaints to management. The mines history of thousands of violations was laid bare by investigators, with Mr. Blankenship maintaining that health and safety were uppermost concerns at the mine. Autopsies on the 29 victims told a different story of a hard work routine, with 71 percent showing signs of the incurable coal dust affliction called black lung far above the industry average of 3.2 percent. After a nine-month hiatus because of a rocket failure, the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, is to resume cargo deliveries for NASA on Friday. The latest haul of freight aboard one of the companys Falcon 9 rockets includes an inflatable module that is to be added to the International Space Station, a test of technology that could provide ample living space for astronauts on future deep-space journeys. Liftoff is scheduled for 4:43 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA Television will broadcast coverage on the web beginning at 3:30 p.m. Its really important to have a very regular supply chain, Kirk A. Shireman, NASAs manager for the space station program, said during a news conference on Thursday. A little over a year ago, the Milan-based fashion and design journalist JJ Martin launched LaDoubleJ.com an explosively colorful online shopping site that positions vintage clothes (Chanel, Saint Laurent, Missoni and loads more) alongside modern pieces. Martins goal was to breathe new life to old designs and, as many items are shot on glamorous Italian women in their homes in Milan to celebrate the creative people of her city in the process. Now, she debuts a pop-up installation, which will open its doors to the public on Monday timed to the Salone del Mobile furniture fair, in her office and showroom along Milans canals. The architect Luca Cipelletti, Martins friend and neighbor, has created an enormous flexible shelving system which theyve dubbed the Wunderwall, after the Renaissance Wunderkammer to show off La Double Js items. Set against prints from the historic Mantero fabric archive are vintage pieces Martin sells on the site, items from her La Double J Edition collaboration with Mantero, jewelry pieces from the Anna Piaggi archive, design objects from the WallpaperSTORE* and painted vessels from the artist Liselotte Watkins. If I thought I was a maximalist beforehand, Im definitely a maximalist now, Martin says, laughing. Its an instant happy pill. SEATTLE For Amazon, no country is more important to its global growth ambitions than India, the second-most-populous nation in the world behind China, where online shopping is in its infancy and growing explosively. But Amazons India plans just ran into a hitch. Late last month, the Indian government issued additional rules governing foreign ownership of e-commerce companies operating in the country. The government added regulations related to pricing and the sourcing of sales on sites that Amazon and several rivals appear to violate. What is more, the new policy was effective immediately, giving Amazon and others no time to comply. Theyve not given any timeline for enforcement, Satish Meena, an analyst at Forrester Research in India. Theres no proper instructions to companies about how to implement these things. Thats a very open-ended question the government has left. A trade group representing the Internet companies is considering sending a letter asking the Indian government for clarification or to delay enforcement of the rules until September. SAN FRANCISCO Uber will pay as much as $25 million to settle a civil lawsuit with the district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco over claims that the ride-hailing company misled people on its safety practices and the methods it used to screen drivers. The settlement, filed on Thursday in the United States District Court in the Northern District of California, requires Uber to pay $10 million to be split equally between the district attorneys of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The company also must reword the safety-related language around the fee that the company charges for each ride. Uber has to pay an additional $15 million if it does not comply with all the terms of the settlement within two years. They include continuing to work with Californias Division of Measurement Standards to measure customer fares using GPS technology. The settlement ends a long-running headache for Uber over whether it does enough to scrutinize the drivers on its service. The civil suit suggested that Uber overstated the safety measures it uses to screen drivers, since Uber drivers need only pass a background check carried out by a third-party service. MID-ATLANTIC Pennsylvania: Governor Issues Order Barring Gender Bias Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order Thursday barring state contractors and grant recipients from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Mr. Wolf, a Democrat, said he could not wait any longer for Republican lawmakers to move on legislation to ban such discrimination in employment, housing and public services. The move has the support of some of the states biggest businesses and advocacy groups. It comes amid a backlash over what Mr. Wolf has called a discriminatory law in North Carolina. The rules apply to entities that receive potentially tens of billions of dollars a year. (AP) WASHINGTON Visa Applications Reach Limit for Highly Skilled Workers Federal officials announced that the annual limit for applications for visas for highly skilled immigrants, known as H-1B visas, was reached on Thursday, less than a week after the application period opened on April 1. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal visa agency, said it received more than enough applications for the annual quotas of 65,000 new H-1B visas and 20,000 visas for students graduating with masters degrees or higher from American universities. It was the fourth year in a row that the yearly quota was reached within one week. The selection will now be made by a computer-run random lottery. Many American employers, especially those in technology, have clamored for Congress to increase the H-1B limits. But American tech workers have protested they were laid off from their jobs and replaced by less skilled H-1B visa holders. JULIA PRESTON Bullet Train to Nowhere : Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California endured for decades. Lincoln Heights a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California endured for decades. Then came the Mill fire Warehouse Moratorium: As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action MIDWEST Michigan: State Officials Sued Over Detroit Schools Condition The Detroit Public Schools board filed a class-action lawsuit against Gov. Rick Snyder and other state officials on Thursday over the deterioration of the citys schools. The suit seeks compensatory damages for all Detroit Public Schools children who have been subjected to constitutional violations since the states takeover of the schools in 1999. Detroits public school system faces $3.4 billion in debt and other obligations. (REUTERS) SOUTH Virginia: Man Jailed Since 1982 Is Cleared of Rape and Murder A man convicted of rape and murder more than three decades ago is innocent and should be released from prison, the state Supreme Court said Thursday. It granted a petition for a writ of actual innocence after DNA tests failed to identify his genetic profile in sperm at the crime scene. The man, Keith Harward, received a life sentence for the 1982 killing of Jesse Perron and the rape of his wife in Newport News. He will be released on Friday, said a lawyer with the Innocence Project who represented him. The order came a day after Attorney General Mark Herring said DNA evidence proves that Mr. Harward could not have committed the crimes. The evidence implicated Jerry L. Crotty, a sailor who was stationed in the area. He died in 2006 in prison while serving a sentence for abduction. (AP) But as Mr. Sanders fights to close the delegate gap, his comments sent a shudder through party officials aligned with Mrs. Clinton. In her campaigns planning, April was meant to be a relatively calm month in which to focus on raising money for a general election and honing a message to use against the eventual Republican nominee. Mr. Sanderss staying power and online fund-raising prowess have instead caused her campaign to spend heavily for advertising in expensive media markets. But an extended and increasingly toxic nomination fight, several advisers said, could deplete Mrs. Clinton of resources and leave scars that make it harder for her to unite his supporters behind her. Progressives are going to have to come together in November to defeat whatever crawls out of the G.O.P. circus in Cleveland, said Jess McIntosh, communications director at Emilys List, a group that works to elect women who support abortion rights and has endorsed Mrs. Clinton. There are a few attacks that make it harder to do that, and Bernie Sanders is going there. Supporters of Mr. Sanders dismissed the Clinton camps reaction to his remarks as hypocrisy and fake outrage. After all, Mrs. Clinton had attacked Barack Obamas experience during their contentious 2008 primary race. I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House, she said then. Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002. WASHINGTON Vulnerable Republican incumbents are increasingly raising fears about Guantanamo Bay detainees, following a campaign strategy used by Scott Brown before his surprise victory in a Massachusetts special election for a Senate seat six years ago. On Monday, Senator Mark S. Kirk of Illinois put forward a bill that would add Iran and Sudan to the list of troubled countries to which the military is not allowed to transfer Guantanamo detainees. He declared that allowing the transfer of these dangerous criminals to terror hot spots only makes it easier for them to rejoin in the fight against America. On Tuesday, Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire proposed a bill that would bar the transfer of any more Guantanamo detainees, regardless of the individual circumstances, to other countries until at least October 2017. She declared that the Obama administrations dangerous releases have allowed terrorists to return to the battlefield. Mr. Kirk and Ms. Ayotte both won their seats in the 2010 midterm elections as part of the Republicans sweeping wave of victories that year, but they are in danger of losing this fall because their states are leaning to the Democrats; Illinois and New Hampshire voted for President Obama in 2012. The campaign has now gotten to the point where how you win and where you win does matter and then protecting what you won and thats why Im involved in everything from whats happened to what will be happening, he said. Mr. Trump, a first-time candidate and full-time real-estate developer, has hit a series of snags in his campaign for the Republican nomination, many of them of his own making. As worried Republican donors and officials seek to thwart his ascent, Mr. Trump has resisted calls from allies to broaden his team to include a wider group of people with previous experience on presidential campaigns. He has no pollster on a staff that has remained small, and infighting has erupted repeatedly as several publications have run campaign-in-disarray stories. The private meeting with Mr. Lewandowski, Mr. Trump and the media-averse Mr. Manafort, at Trump Tower in Manhattan, was described as slightly contentious by someone briefed on the gathering who was not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Manafort urged Mr. Trump to focus on immediate tasks and to retool his approach, another person briefed on the meeting said. Within hours, Mr. Trump scrapped a Friday trip to California, which will not vote until June. But Mr. Manafort faces some daunting obstacles. In the two weeks since he joined a campaign driven by a candidate with a larger-than-life personality, Mr. Trump has lost the Wisconsin primary by double digits to Senator Ted Cruz. The better-organized Cruz campaign has been able to wrangle delegates from Mr. Trump in Louisiana. And with the Colorado Republican convention days away, the Trump campaign last weekend fired the aide overseeing efforts in the state. The Senate reauthorization bill, which would finance the F.A.A. through September 2017, also contains a number of provisions to help consumers, though far fewer than Democrats and consumer groups craved. For instance, the bill requires airlines to provide families with information about the availability of seats together at the time of booking, create a standard method for disclosing its fees on baggage and seat selection and to return baggage fees when luggage is lost or delayed. There is also a provision that would require an airline to make an automatic refund to passengers who did not receive benefits they paid for, like a preferred seat or early boarding. Passengers would also have a right to a review of whether airlines fairly attribute delays or cancellations to weather when there may be other factors involved. But a measure desperately sought by travelers groups one that would have forced airlines to stop the legroom shrink in seats and advertise current legroom on their websites went down, even after its author, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, gave an impassioned speech in its favor on the Senate floor and lobbied tall senators to support it. Moms with kids have a lot of trouble in these very narrow seats, he said, also mentioning the middle seat dilemma of being wedged between two large people. The industry opposed it, as did tall Republicans, and so the measure failed, 42 to 54. I dont think that we ought to be regulating people, said Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, who stands over six feet tall and was the subject of Mr. Schumers pleas. Though he added wistfully, I like how it would benefit me. Hundreds of Roma families in Kosovo, who were forced to live for more than a decade in squalid United Nations camps built on toxic wasteland that leached lead and poisoned their children, have long become accustomed to frustration and despair. Now the Roma, also known as Gypsies, may be close to receiving compensation and a public apology from the United Nations, which has not acknowledged any responsibility for the mass lead poisoning even as human rights groups and medical experts including the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency, repeatedly recommended immediate relocation of camp inhabitants. The camps were finally demolished in 2010, and the inhabitants were resettled elsewhere. In an opinion dated Feb. 26 but not issued until this week, a human rights advisory panel that is part of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, the peacekeeping operation known as Unmik, found that the mission had failed to protect the Roma families who had been moved into the camps after war broke out in 1998 between Serbia and ethnic Albanian separatists seeking an independent Kosovo. The panel, which was created in 2006 to examine civilian complaints about Unmik, also found that the mission had acted negligently in leaving the Roma in the camps for years, even as the inhabitants were getting ill, sometimes fatally, from their poisonous surroundings. It has not taken much time for Anne Pasternak, the socially progressive new director of the Brooklyn Museum, to register her influence there. A current exhibition, Agitprop!, which shows how artists have used their work to press for political change, was planned well before her arrival in September. But a recent dispute with local artists over a connection between the museum and a real estate conference persuaded Ms. Pasternak to open the show this week to new pieces inspired by the community debates. Visitors to Agitprop! wander past historical photographs, banners and ephemera documenting global political commentary, from a 1930 Soviet poster commemorating International Working Womens Day to an Ecuadorean artists piece urging resistance to government censorship. But they now also encounter the two recently added works. One, a video by the Illuminator collective, shows residents of the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn composing messages that were beamed at night onto the facades of buildings where tenants were said to be mistreated. The other, reflecting the perspective of housing activists in the area, encourages skepticism about zoning changes currently being championed by Mayor Bill de Blasio. It isnt an app built for billionaires, but for everyone interested in art, Mr. Resch said. This isnt a selling platform. Our aim is to provide access to the art market and democratize it and hopefully enlarge it. Magnus now has more than eight million gallery and auction prices compiled worldwide since 2013 by more than 200 of the apps preliminary trusted users. Mr. Resch declined to specify how many of these are primary market prices the first time a work has been sold and how many are secondary resales at auction, for which data is available at subscription websites like artnet.com and artprice.com. Mr. Resch said prices given by a gallery had to be corroborated by other trusted users before being added to the database. The app also includes an interactive map with information on gallery openings and shows, as well as museum exhibitions. To see whether Magnus works as advertised, Lisa Schiff, a New York art adviser, took a smartphone loaded with the app to the Matthew Marks and Marianne Boesky galleries in Chelsea this week. Mr. Marks was exhibiting vintage photographs by Ellsworth Kelly, Ms. Boesky new paintings by the Johannesburg artist Serge Alain Nitegeka, neither of which could be regarded as mainstream shows. Ms. Schiff said the app recognized and supplied current gallery prices and historic market data for all but one of the works she photographed (people often take photographs of artworks with phones in commercial galleries, and the practice is generally permitted, provided the image is for personal use.) Ms. Schiff, who has been an adviser for 15 years and who does not know Mr. Resch, described the app as a game changer, though she noted she could not find any data on private resales by dealers. Who could resist That Voice singing Those Songs? Not I. That voice, a mighty baritone that insists on its romantic authority, belongs to Paulo Szot, the Brazilian opera star who made his Broadway debut eight years ago, playing Emile De Becque in a revival of South Pacific opposite Kelli OHara. Those songs are the classic theatrical war horses The Impossible Dream (from Man of La Mancha), This Nearly Was Mine (South Pacific) and If Ever I Would Leave You (Camelot). As Mr. Szot delivered heroic performances of each on Wednesday evening at Feinsteins/54 Below, they worked their magic. Suddenly, the grand, courtly virility of the traditional leading man in musical theater was back in style. At one point, the women in ringside seats found themselves individually serenaded. Vocally, Mr. Szot (pronounced shot) gently pushed at the boundaries of operatic convention. The closest he came to breaching them successfully was during a swinging performance of Lover, Come Back to Me. But in the operatic rule book, martial declamation is the foundational style, and when Mr. Szot veered further into pop-jazz, he ran up against barriers. The streamlined samba and bossa nova arrangements of his musical director, Billy Stritch, leading a trio that included Tom Hubbard on bass and David Meade on drums, prompted him to stretch too far during a Brazilian medley. Mr. Szot is simply not a gently caressing bossa nova crooner. LOS ANGELES Over in Hollywood, the Donald Trump Walk of Fame straw poll was running 50-50 around noon on Thursday. One young man in a University of California, Santa Barbara, jacket took a selfie with his middle finger hanging over Mr. Trumps star an apparently popular pose while a little girl, on her mothers advice, scuffed it with her shoes. But a group of seven young tourists had themselves photographed in a smiling cluster around Hollywoods minimonument to Trump, so things looked about even. Since various news organizations reported that Mr. Trumps star had been repeatedly vandalized with purple paint, hostile graffiti and other marks of contempt, the marker has become almost as popular with the media as with the visiting crowds. On Thursday, a reporter and a camera operator from Sky News in Britain were recording reactions, pro and con. As usual, Mr. Trump occupies prime real estate. His star is in the 6800 block of Hollywood Boulevard, just east of a grand staircase leading into the Hollywood & Highland Center. In other words, hes right where the red carpet runs past those bleachers full of cheering fans on Academy Awards night. Hes certainly in good company, right next to Kevin Spacey and just west of Jerry Lewis. But on Thursday, those two were getting less attention than the phony plastic Oscars and the Scientology tracts stacked in nearby storefronts. Just two weeks after receiving the first uterus transplant in the United States, a patient at the Cleveland Clinic suddenly developed a serious complication last month, and on March 8 the transplant had to be removed. No details were given. On Friday, the clinic explained what went wrong: a common yeast infection. In a written statement, the clinic said, Preliminary results suggest that the complication was because of an infection caused by an organism that is commonly found in a womans reproductive system. The infection appears to have compromised the blood supply to the uterus, causing the need for its removal. The infection was caused by a fungus, a type of yeast called Candida albicans, two of the doctors who performed the surgery said in an interview. It is normally found in the vagina, living in balance with bacteria and other microbes. But illness or some medications can disrupt the balance, allowing for a problematic overgrowth of the yeasts. The surgeons said that since yeasts normally inhabit the genital tract, they could have come from either the donor or the recipient. The transplant included some vaginal tissue from the donor, as well as the uterus. He was on the way to the shower when the shouts began. Jonathan Rondon turned and ran out of the building with his girlfriend and their baby daughter. His mother ran out, too. There was smoke in the stairway, getting thicker. His sister scooped up her little dog from under her bed, grabbed her phone and joined them on DeKalb Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the dark night aglow with the flickering firelight of burning buildings. His brother ran toward the flames. He had been coming from the gym when he saw the orange glow up the block and the pulsing red lights of the first two fire engines that responded to what would quickly build to a six-alarm blaze. The fire last week spread to three low-slung railroad apartment buildings and caused damage to two others on the block, sending dozens of parents and children into the street. Among them stood the Rondon family. They all made it out: Jonathan Rondon, 22; his girlfriend, Dillinger Acosta, 22; their baby daughter, Esme, 1; his sister, Leslie, 19, and her dog, Princess; his brother, Franklyn, two days shy of 18; and their mother, Haydee, 41. Safe but shaken, the family stood outside its home of four years that Tuesday night and watched it burn. A Bronx woman who researched methods to kill her children on the Internet, tried to poison them and ultimately drowned her infant daughter and 4-year-old son in a bathtub was found guilty of manslaughter on Friday. The mother, Lisette Bamenga, 32, was convicted in a nonjury trial and will be sentenced on April 25. According to prosecutors, Ms. Bamenga killed her children after she learned that her husband, Trevor Noel, a New York City police officer, had fathered a child with someone else. Ms. Bamengas lawyer, Michael G. Dowd, argued in court that his client had bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis. To the Editor: Re How to Not Prescribe Antibiotics, by Craig R. Fox, Jeffrey A. Linder and Jason N. Doctor (Sunday Review, March 27): As an internist, I could not agree more that antibiotics are far too often prescribed when there is no solid medical indication to do so. Certainly physicians bear some of the responsibility for this, but so, too, do patients. None of us like to be sick. None of us have the time to be sick. But viral infections which cause colds as well as many cases of sinusitis and bronchitis are not treated with antibiotics but with rest, fluids, symptom management and time. There is no substitute for the latter. As much as I try to educate my patients about this, they often leave my office feeling as if I have done nothing for them. Or they call a day later, not appreciably better, requesting the antibiotic I had no reason to prescribe only 24 hours earlier. Or they complain to the risk management office that I mismanaged their care (as happened to me recently). Or they complete the patient satisfaction survey, which is now ubiquitous in medical care, with a thumbs down. Not that I am inordinately thin-skinned, but since my salary is linked to how well I do on these surveys, my treatment choices sometimes give me pause in a way that has nothing to do with medical judgment. To the Editor: Your April 1 Op-Ed article How to Hold a Country for Ransom, by Martin Guzman and Joseph E. Stiglitz, an adviser to the governments of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her husband, Nestor Kirchner, in Argentina, presented a deeply flawed and politicized history of the sovereign debt dispute between Argentina and its bondholders. The writers claim that a litigation victory for Argentinas creditors in 2012 will make future sovereign restructurings virtually impossible and that the only solution is global anti-creditor legislation. This is simply not true, and recent history is proof. Since 2012 multiple sovereigns have been able to effectively restructure their debt, and today the vast majority of bond contracts include collective action clauses that enable sovereigns to completely restructure their debt should they confront a future crisis. The writers have failed to learn the core lesson of the Argentina debt saga, which is that negotiations can quickly resolve most sovereign debt disputes. For years, cheered on by the likes of Mr. Stiglitz and Mr. Guzman, the administration of Mrs. Kirchner now the subject of numerous corruption investigations refused to negotiate with creditors, mocked the United States justice system and sabotaged the countrys own economy. It takes a bit of effort to take seriously Wednesdays Dutch referendum, in which voters rejected the European Unions trade and cooperation agreement with Ukraine. The turnout barely nudged past the 30 percent needed for the referendum to be legally valid; the vote was nonbinding; and the pact remains in force (it would take a unanimous vote by the 28 E.U. governments to suspend it). Still, the implications for relations with Ukraine and Russia and for the future of Europe cannot be dismissed.. Organizers of the referendum acknowledge that Ukraine was not the real issue and that the vote was a way to express broad discontent with the European Union. Even if the vote did not put the E.U.-Ukraine agreement in danger, President Vladimir Putin of Russia got a boost. It was Russias fierce opposition to the 2014 agreement that led Viktor Yanukovych, then president of Ukraine, to balk at signing it. That in turn led to mass protests in Kiev, Mr. Yanukovychs ouster and the rise of a Russian-backed rebellion in eastern Ukraine. The Dutch vote was thus a chilling signal to Kiev that European support for Ukraines westward course may not be strong or united. The vote was also another illustration of the anti-E.U. sentiments swelling across Europe in reaction to the refugee crisis and the economic crisis before it. The Netherlands has a history of euroskepticism Dutch voters, along with the French, torpedoed plans for an E.U. constitution in 2005, and the anti-E.U., anti-Muslim Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders has a strong following. The beginning of the end of the E.U., Mr. Wilders celebrated on Twitter after the results came in. Probably not, but the referendum should be recognized for what it is: an expression of discontent. SELTJARNARNES, Iceland ICELAND, population around 330,000, is the most peaceful country in the world. This is a country where violent crime is rare and blackmailers give receipts. We are not used to seeing ourselves grouped with the most corrupt governments in the world. Yet here we are, in the foreground of every article about the Panama Papers. This week our prime minister resigned, then appeared to un-resign only to resign again, after it came to light that his wife owned a shell company incorporated in a tax haven. He probably hoped the scandal would blow over like the one last year, when a leak revealed that another minister had an account on Ashley Madison, the website for people seeking affairs, with the username Icehot1. But the prime minister was not so lucky. Icelanders might forgive sexual experimentation, but ever since the devastating bank collapse in 2008, we have zero tolerance for shady financial dealings. For days now, thousands of protesters have filled the square outside the Parliament, calling for resignations and elections, hurling eggs at the building and, for a bit of Icelandic flair, the occasional salmon fillet. Theres no evidence that the prime ministers familys offshore investment (like those held by our finance minister, internal affairs minister and others) included stolen funds, or anything illegal like that. Thats not why people are angry. Theyre angry because we thought we had put news like this behind us. It has been only eight years since the economy collapsed and the country was nearly bankrupted. We were then forced to face uncomfortable truths about officials involvement in the failed banking sector, as well as about inattentive government watchdogs. Iceland may have been considered a nanny state, but the nanny was dipping into the sherry bottle hidden in the pantry. To the Editor: Your two-part series on United States military intervention in Libya, The Libya Gamble, twisted beyond all recognition the relative roles and responsibilities of President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Clinton, Smart Power and a Dictators Fall, front page, Feb. 28, and After Revolt, a New Libya With Very Little Time Left, front page, Feb. 29). That the articles would help Republicans attack Mrs. Clinton is to be expected, but supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, like Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, now say the articles revelations show that Mrs. Clinton is the lead agent of every war that were in and the kind of wars that have created more and more chaos (Mr. Sachs on Morning Joe, March 31). By contrast, your articles depict Mr. Obama as wary of the use of force. This is nonsense, closer to fiction than fact. First, the lead agent on Libya was President Obama, the commander in chief. Yes, at a climactic moment, Mrs. Clinton laid out the diplomatic landscape for the president, explaining that Britain and France were determined to act to prevent a slaughter of Libyan civilians and that the Arab League was even urging NATO bombing. Those were precise and professional judgments. Regarding the wisdom of airstrikes, compared with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., both of whom were strongly opposed, Mrs. Clinton was surely more supportive. But according to eyewitness accounts, her support was careful, measured and directly linked to the diplomatic need to support close allies who were fighting side by side with American troops in Afghanistan at the time. We asked readers to share the misconception that frustrates them the most on The New York Times Science Facebook page. People had an array of answers, a number of which we addressed earlier this week. Judging from all the likes it quickly accumulated far more than any other submission this was the standout in terms of mass frustration. Misconception: Its just a theory. Actually: Theories are neither hunches nor guesses. They are the crown jewels of science. One day, its Megyn Kelly who has a theory about why Donald J. Trump hates her. Another day, the newly released trailer for the next Star Wars movie inspires a million theories from fans about who Reys parents are. For SpaceX, the fifth time was the charm in the impressive feat of landing a rocket on a boat. On Friday, SpaceX more formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corporation of Hawthorne, Calif. launched a mission taking cargo for NASA to the International Space Station. While the capsule carrying 7,000 pounds of experiments, supplies and equipment continued to orbit, the booster stage of the Falcon 9 rocket turned around and headed back toward a floating platform off the coast of Florida. SpaceX had attempted this maneuver four times before. Each time the booster stage reached the platform only to tip over and explode. This time, the booster settled down on the boat, named Of Course I Still Love You, and remained upright, to loud cheers at SpaceXs California headquarters and chants of U.S.A.! U.S.A.! The federal Election Assistance Commission was formed after the disputed 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore and given an innocuous name and a seemingly inoffensive mission: to help state election officials make it easier to vote. In this ideologically riven election season, it turns out, that is not easy at all. The election commission is in federal court this month, essentially accused of trying to suppress voter turnout in this Novembers election. The Justice Department, its nominal legal counsel, has declined to defend it. Its case instead is being pleaded by one of the nations leading advocates of voting restrictions. The agencys chairman has disavowed its actions. The quarrel exemplifies how the mere act of voting has become enmeshed in volatile partisan politics. Seventeen states will impose new voting restrictions for Novembers presidential election. Many are the object of disputes between those who say they are rooting out voter fraud and those who say the real goal is to keep Democratic-leaning voters from casting ballots. The lawsuits origin is straightforward. The agencys executive director, Brian D. Newby, had been in his job less than three months in January when he unilaterally reversed a policy that the bodys commissioners, two Democrats and two Republicans, had endorsed since the agencys creation in 2002: that people registering to vote need offer no proof, beyond swearing an oath, that they are American citizens. And then, leaning into the camera: There. Is that cute enough for you? Hilde posted the video on Sunday. Within days it had become a sensation, with numerous news outlets writing or broadcasting stories about her. Her father, Matthew Lysiak, 38, said the family had been so inundated with calls that he shut off the phone. But later they began to make the rounds at news agencies. On Thursday, Hilde and her mother, Bridget Reddan, 38, appeared on Good Morning America. Later that day, Hilde and her family got an impromptu tour of the newsroom at The New York Times. Mr. Lysiak, a former crime reporter for The Daily News, said that his daughter was exposed to journalism through his work and that she was obsessed with reporting on vandalism in her neighborhood. In turn, she developed grass-roots sources in the area and gained peoples trust which is how she got the scoop about the death on Ninth Street. He said he and his wife were most proud of the way Hilde faced the criticism. Its one thing to get a great scoop, but youll find adversity all through your life like that, said Mr. Lysiak, who lightly edits her articles and helps edit the headlines. The family lived in Brooklyn before moving in 2014 to Selinsgrove, a Pennsylvania borough of about 5,800 people that is about 50 miles north of Harrisburg. Mr. Lysiak said that Hilde shadowed him on assignments in New York City. Hilde and her sister Isabel, 12, are home-schooled; their other sisters are 18 months and 4. Mr. Lysiak and Ms. Reddan said they gave their daughters the freedom to pursue their passions under the theory that when they are engaged, they learn. Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that he regretted drowning out the chants of black protesters at a rally in Philadelphia the day before, when he issued an aggressive defense of his administrations impact on black families. His reaction thrust a debate about the 1990s into the center of his wifes presidential campaign, one that has focused heavily on issues of race and criminal justice. I know those young people yesterday were just trying to get good television, Mr. Clinton said Friday of the Black Lives Matter protesters who had accused him and Hillary Clinton of supporting policies that devastated black communities. But that doesnt mean that I was most effective in answering it. His statement did not quiet a raging storm of criticism. Still, it was a remarkable reversal for Mr. Clinton, who occupies a singular role in his wifes campaign as a spouse and a popular former president who can sometimes make himself into a lightning rod. He has had to campaign for his wife in an era when signature policies of his administration have been repudiated both by Mrs. Clinton and her opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. None of those issues has been more central to the 2016 campaign than the 1994 crime bill, which created tougher penalties for nonviolent drug offenders, erected dozens of new prisons, banned certain types of assault weapons and sent 100,000 more police officers to American cities. WASHINGTON Donald J. Trump calls for a full repeal of Obamacare but says that everybodys got to be covered. Initially, he liked the mandate, a central feature of the Affordable Care Act that requires most Americans to have insurance or pay a penalty, but he backed off that position under fire from conservatives. He would allow people who purchase insurance on the individual market to take tax deductions for their premium payments. But aides acknowledge that this tax break would not be worth much to people whose income is so low they pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. For them, Trump aides say, there would be Medicaid, which the billionaire businessman says he would not cut but would turn into a block grant to state governments. This whipsaw of ideas is exasperating Republican experts on health care, who call his proposals an incoherent mishmash that could jeopardize coverage for millions of newly insured people. But for Mr. Trumps campaign, such criticism appears only to bolster the candidates outsider status. His chief policy adviser, Sam Clovis, said Mr. Trump was running against the political establishment in Washington and was therefore not relying on advice from traditional establishment Republican people. Instead, Mr. Clovis said in an interview, Mr. Trump is receiving advice on health care policy from at least half a dozen very prominent people, but he declined to name them. They are not ready to have their support of the Trump campaign known, Mr. Clovis said. WASHINGTON Dozens of Transportation Security Administration employees in recent years have been reassigned, demoted, investigated or fired for reporting lapses or misconduct by senior managers, charges that were later upheld by whistle-blower protection agencies, records show. Even as the T.S.A., under renewed scrutiny after the terrorist attacks in Belgium, works to assure the public that airports in the United States are safe, a review of federal records and interviews with current and former employees show the agency is troubled by internal problems. According to the Office of Special Counsel, 87 complaints were received last year from workers at the T.S.A. claiming retaliation, discrimination or other prohibited hiring practices, an increase from 64 in 2014. The cases were mostly about misconduct involving senior managers, and were not about airport screeners letting weapons through checkpoints. The Internal Revenue Service, a larger agency with nearly 90,000 employees, had just 26 complaints. The Office of Special Counsel also said that it had obtained corrective actions for seven T.S.A. employees in 2015 who claimed retaliation by the agency. Months later, when a girlfriend accused Mr. Harward of biting her during a fight, investigators zeroed in on Mr. Harward, even though he had a mustache at the time. The surviving victim never did identify Mr. Harward as her attacker, but a naval guard, after secretly undergoing hypnosis, described Mr. Harward as a sailor he saw entering a Navy shipyard in the early morning hours on the night of the crime, his clothes spattered with paint or blood. At trial, the only evidence that purported to tie Mr. Harward directly to the crime was offered by two experts in forensic dentistry, who said Mr. Harwards tooth pattern almost certainly matched the wounds they saw on photographs of the victim. One of those testifying was Dr. Lowell J. Levine, who was one of the countrys leading experts in forensic dentistry and was known for his riveting televised testimony in the 1979 trial of the serial killer Ted Bundy, tying his unusual dentition to victim wounds. Now the director of the New York State Police Medicolegal Investigation Unit, Mr. Levine has served as president of national certifying boards in forensic dentistry and forensic sciences more generally. I certainly feel upset and quite disturbed at the result in this case, Dr. Levine said in a statement on Friday. Considerable evidence, he said, had seemed to point toward a solid match, and he and the second expert had completely followed professional guidelines. This case should persuade all my colleagues to agree with the need for more scientific research and investigation of bite-mark identifications, he wrote. The second expert, Dr. Alvin Kagey of Virginia, who is now retired, declined to comment. Mr. Harward was initially convicted in a capital case, potentially leading to the death penalty, but was sentenced to life in prison. The conviction was overturned on a technical matter, but he was convicted again and sentenced to life in 1987. To a great extent, Mr. Grant is carrying out a promise to his beloved grandfather, who singled him out as a youngster as his heir to Wiradjuri culture. My grandfather was a Wiradjuri elder, he said, and was anxious to pass along the culture. But he was arrested after he called to me in Wiradjuri to come home from the park. Barray yanha, barray yanha, Come quickly, he called out. Mr. Grant was probably 8 or 9 years old the night a local policeman heard his grandfather, Wilfred Johnson, and locked him up. But he does not recall a sense of alarm. He was an elegant man, he said of Mr. Johnson. He was beautifully dressed, usually in a coat and hat. But he was black. So it wasnt the first time he had spent the night in jail. After the arrest, Mr. Johnson, who spoke seven languages, refused to speak Wiradjuri in public. He was a linguist with enormous respect for his own people and culture, said Mr. Grant, who speaks three languages himself: Italian, which he picked up while working at the sawmill, as well as English and Wiradjuri. But he told me, Things are different now. He would only speak his language in the bush. It was during those expeditions into the backcountry that Mr. Grant learned Wiradjuri, as well as tracking and hunting skills. He knows that a echidnas back feet turn inward, complicating tracking. He can describe how his grandfather made a lasso out of long grass to catch a stunned goanna, a type of lizard, for dinner, and he says a rope laid around a bush house will stop snakes from passing over the threshold. The Economist and Time have joined the list of foreign news websites currently blocked in mainland China. The sites appear to have been censored as a result of recently published cover articles in the magazines critical of the growing power of Chinas president, Xi Jinping. According to GreatFire.org, a website that tracks Internet and social media censorship in China, The Economists website and its cover article have been completely censored since April 2. The Economists mobile app, through which users can download the magazine and read its online articles, has also been censored. Several public accounts managed by The Economist on WeChat, a popular Chinese social media app, have also been suspended. However, the websites of the publications umbrella company, The Economist Group, and the groups consulting arm, The Economist Intelligence Unit, have not been blocked. BEIJING An unusual public spat between a Chinese ex-diplomat and the top editor of a well-known tabloid newspaper has set off debate on one of the papers favorite subjects: Beijings foreign policy. In a speech last week, Wu Jianmin, a former ambassador to France, said that the tabloid, Global Times, which is known for its hawkish views, often printed very extreme articles and suggested that its editor, Hu Xijin, was ignorant of global affairs. I was invited last year to a forum by Hu Xijin, who made a mess talking about the world, Mr. Wu said in the speech at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, according to a transcript published by ifeng.com, a Chinese news portal. He is the newspapers editor in chief and very knowledgeable, but he doesnt quite understand the situation, Mr. Wu added. On the night of Oct. 3, 2014, the teenage Joshua Wong stood on a platform high above a crowd of thousands in the heart of Hong Kong, urging them to continue pro-democracy demonstrations that had taken over major thoroughfares in the city and brought him international fame as the leader of a burgeoning student movement. That same day, about 70 miles to the north in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, five men, in a show of support for those protesters, unfurled a blue banner whose 13 Chinese characters read: Freedom Is Priceless! Support Hong Kongs Fight for Freedom. On Friday, as Mr. Wong, now 19, prepared to formally unveil a new political party in Hong Kong that will seek to win seats in the citys legislature in elections this year, the fate of some of those who held up the banner was decided in a Guangzhou courtroom. Two of them, Wang Mo, 43, and Xie Fengxia, 39, were sentenced to four and a half years in prison for incitement to subvert state power. THARRAWADDY, Myanmar A day after the Myanmar governments de facto new leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, announced that freeing political prisoners and student activists was her top priority, a judge on Friday ordered the release of 69 student protesters who had been jailed for more than a year without trial. During a court hearing packed with students and family members, Judge Chit Myint said prosecutors had decided to drop charges against all of the protesters except for three of their leaders. The court has decided to free you unconditionally, he announced to cheers and singing. The students, who were arrested in March 2015 for protesting a law restricting academic freedom, were the first wave of prisoners released after Ms. Aung San Suu Kyis announcement that she wanted to free political prisoners, students and activists in the coming days. She heads Myanmars government as state counselor, a post created for her this week. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was herself a political prisoner and spent 15 years under house arrest at the hands of the countrys former military government. She has long led the National League for Democracy, which swept elections in November, but she is barred from becoming president under the military-drafted Constitution. Thirteen North Koreans working at a North Korean government-run restaurant abroad defected together to South Korea this week, the Souths government said on Friday. They were the largest group of North Koreans to defect to the South together in recent years. A government-sent male manager and 12 female workers at a North Korean restaurant overseas arrived in the South on Thursday asking for political asylum, the Unification Ministry of the South said in a statement on Friday. The ministry did not disclose the whereabouts of the restaurant. The defectors were among tens of thousands of North Koreans working abroad at factories, construction sites, logging camps and restaurants in China, Russia, the Middle East and Africa to help their government earn badly needed foreign currency. After the United Nations imposed sanctions on North Korea in early March to punish it for its recent nuclear and long-range rocket tests, South Korea asked its citizens not to visit North Korean-run restaurants in China, Southeast Asia or elsewhere. CHIOS, Greece Hani Alkhalaf had just fallen asleep at an overcrowded detention camp for migrants on this Greek island when angry shouts jolted him awake. As he rose from the dingy floor, a barrage of stones rained down on the flimsy plastic container where he and 14 other asylum seekers, mostly Syrians like him, were sheltered. Panicked, the women and children ran into a corner and tried to shield themselves as a mob of Afghan migrants beat on the barricaded door, he recalled later. Tensions had been simmering for days between Afghans and Syrians in the camp, but by midnight last Friday, they had exploded into a riot. Afghans are angry because Syrians can get asylum in Europe, and they cant, said Mr. Alkhalaf, who left the Syrian capital, Damascus, to escape conflict, only to find himself facing violence after making a perilous journey to Europe. They are going to have to be deported to Turkey, so they are making trouble. MOSCOW Pilot error was the likely cause of the crash of a passenger jet in bad weather last month in southern Russia that killed all 62 people on board, a team of investigators said in a statement on Friday. The FlyDubai plane was climbing away from the airport in Rostov-on-Don after the pilots had aborted a second attempt to land because of the strong winds and swirling snow prevalent at the time. While at almost 3,000 feet, the plane began to descend rapidly, the statement said, and subsequent actions of the crew could not prevent the aircrafts collision with the ground. Weather conditions at the airport, while adverse, were no more severe than forecast, and equipment for dealing with the snow was in working order, the investigators found. After the arrest on March 18 of Salah Abdeslam, who is thought to be the sole survivor who directly participated in the shootings and bombings in Paris, Mr. Abrini became the most wanted man in connection with them. Image Mohamed Abrini is suspected of helping the Paris attackers. Credit... Belgian Federal Police The latest arrests again raised the question of how a suspect whose identity and appearance were known and circulated widely could manage to evade the Belgian authorities for months. Mr. Abrini, whose description was released by the Belgian authorities 10 days after the Paris attacks, appears to have spent at least a part of that time less than three miles from his home in the Molenbeek district of Brussels, like Mr. Abdeslam, who was arrested after four months on the run. A second and more worrying lesson from Fridays arrests was that yet more people surfaced who have not yet been in the official accounts but seem to be connected to the network of jihadis in Belgium and in France, a network whose full size is not known. Mr. Abrini, who grew up in Molenbeek with Mr. Abdeslam, was with the Paris assailants in the days and hours before the attacks. BRUSSELS He attended Catholic school and studied electrical engineering. His immigrant family valued education and discipline. His brother carries the Belgian flag as a national martial arts champion. But none of that stopped Najim Laachraoui from being drawn to the Islamic State, or from turning the technical skills that could have provided a bright future to building the bombs that, the authorities suspect, were used in the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels. Mr. Laachraoui wheeled his handiwork into Brussels Airport on March 22 and, at age 24, blew himself up along with 15 bystanders, the authorities concluded after finding his DNA. Another attacker exploded a bomb nearby, and a third man detonated explosives on a subway, killing 17. The authorities suspect that bomb had also been made by Mr. Laachraoui. Until that day, Mr. Laachraoui was an unseen yet central player and a crucial link between the cell that carried out the Paris attacks, organized by Abdelhamid Abbaoud, and the bombers in Brussels. ROME In a broad proclamation on family life, Pope Francis on Friday called for the Roman Catholic Church to be more welcoming and less judgmental, and he seemingly signaled a pastoral path for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive holy communion. The 256-page document known as an apostolic exhortation and titled Amoris Laetitia, Latin for The Joy of Love calls for priests to welcome single parents, gay people and unmarried straight couples who are living together. A pastor cannot feel that it is enough to simply apply moral laws to those living in irregular situations, as if they were stones to throw at peoples lives, he wrote. But Francis once again closed the door on same-sex marriage, saying it cannot be seen as the equivalent of heterosexual unions. Margareta Marza, a 28-year-old marketer in Stockholm, was reading a book on Thursday evening when she received my call. Until she told me, I had no idea who she was. And she didnt know who I was or which number, country or time zone I was calling from. But that was the fun part. To gin up interest in the country, a Swedish tourism agency created the Swedish Number, 46-771-793-336, a single phone line that connects international callers to randomly selected Swedish volunteers to chat about whatever is on their minds. When I called the number and was connected to Ms. Marza, she said she had been driven to participate out of curiosity and for the chance to have pleasant, serendipitous chats. BAGHDAD Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Friday, promising continuing American military and humanitarian aid in the fight against the Islamic State, and showing support for the countrys embattled prime minister, Haider al-Abadi. The visit came as Iraqi militias and military forces have been making notable progress on the battlefield against the Islamic State, including seizing parts of Hit, a city in Anbar Province, this week. But politically, Mr. Abadis government has been in crisis, undermined by fellow Shiite politicians, struggling to curb corruption and weakened by an economy gutted by low oil prices. Mr. Kerry, visiting Iraq for the first time in two years, made a point of praising Mr. Abadi, saying the prime minister had showed critical leadership despite grave difficulties. And Mr. Kerry called for sectarian and political unity behind the government, saying it was critical to rolling back the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL. It is important to have a unified and functioning government as soon as possible, so that these operations are not affected, Mr. Kerry said in a news conference. We call on the Iraqi political blocs to work together for the sake of their country and to keep Iraqs interests a priority over other personal and sectarian interests. BEIRUT, Lebanon A former minister in the Lebanese government convicted last year of terrorism-related charges was sentenced on Friday to 13 years in prison, Lebanons official National News Agency said. The arrest and trial of the former information minister, Michel Samaha, has transfixed Lebanon and shined a bright light on the deep fissures among its politicians, which have been deepened by five years of war in neighboring Syria. Lebanons weak government remains divided between allies of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and those who oppose him. Mr. Samaha is firmly in Mr. Assads camp, and his trial has prompted accusations of judicial meddling in a country with a long history of political violence. The Lebanese authorities arrested Mr. Samaha in 2012 and accused him of smuggling explosives into Lebanon from Syria for use in terrorist attacks. Named as an accomplice in the same suit was a high-ranking security official from Syria, Ali Mamlouk, who is close to Mr. Assad. Eliot Higgins, a blogger who founded Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website, said he had spoken to Mr. Dawes 24 hours before he vanished in Syria, and described his behavior as irrational and erratic. Mr. Higgins said he had first started speaking with Mr. Dawes during the Libya conflict, when Mr. Dawes had recorded footage of warfare. Mr. Higgins also said Mr. Dawes seemed obsessed with going to Syria. He sold everything he had, and went into debt and scrapped money for a ticket, Mr. Higgins said. The Committee to Protect Journalists, an advocacy group in New York, has not included Mr. Dawes in its list of roughly 25 journalists that are known to be missing in Syria, most of them presumed kidnapped or killed. At least six foreigners, including Mr. Tice, are among the missing. The other foreigners include three Spaniards, a Japanese, and a Briton, John Cantlie, a captive of the Islamic State militant group, who has been used in its propaganda videos. Mr. Cantlie was seized by the Islamic State along with James Foley, an American journalist who was last seen in Syria in November 2012 and was beheaded by the group in August 2014. Another American journalist held hostage by the Islamic State, Steven Sotloff, was beheaded the following month. Jason Stern, the committees senior research associate for the Middle East and North Africa, said Mr. Dawes was not included because we have no evidence that he went to Syria to report as a journalist. Mr. Stern also said Syria remained the most dangerous place for journalists, who are vulnerable to kidnapping for reasons that include ransom, reporting regarded as unfavorable and other political motives. The problem is aggravated, he said, by foreigners in Syria who describe themselves as journalists but are partisans. Weve seen a blurring of the lines between those working as journalists and those getting involved with fighting groups, he said. The more this gets blurred, the more dangerous it becomes for journalists. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in Moscow last month for meetings with President Vladimir V. Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, has been working with his Russian counterparts to try to find a political resolution to the war in Syria, even as the Pentagon has been conducting airstrikes against Islamist State targets on the ground there. While Russia is a backer of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Moscow has also come under pressure from United States officials to encourage Mr. Assad to release any Americans being held by Syrian authorities. With the news this week that professionals who invest your retirement money will soon have to do so with your best interests in mind, many people may go shopping for a stockbroker to help them manage their life savings. But anyone who does (or has already) ought to examine a working paper that three professors released last month. Heres some of what they found: Among brokers employed from 2005 to 2015, 7.28 percent had at least one disclosure in their industry records for a settled consumer complaint or worse. Many household-name firms have double the percentage of brokers with such marks. Oppenheimer tops the list at 19.6 percent. Five of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of brokers with disclosures are in Florida. To spot-check these figures, I looked up all 50 Oppenheimer brokers within 25 miles or so of Palm Beach. Seventeen of them or 34 percent had spotty records, and some had nine or 10 things to disclose. Then I called them all and tried to ask them how they would advise readers to evaluate their records. The company acknowledges that it has some work to do. Bob and Myrna Conrad, both 65, share a house with their son Wade, 41, his wife Dana, 42, and their grandson Bryce, 21. Isnt it crowded? Dont they cramp one anothers style? Actually, no. We just set some ground rules, and its been working great, said Wade Conrad, who has been living with his extended family since late 2013 in a NextGen multigenerational home, built by the Lennar Corporation, in Spanaway, Wash., near Tacoma. The Conrads are among a growing number of families who are seeking specially designed homes that can accommodate aging parents, grown children and even boomerang children under the same roof. The number of Americans living in multigenerational households defined, generally, as homes with more than one adult generation rose to 56.8 million in 2012, or about 18.1 percent of the total population, from 46.6 million, or 15.5 percent of the population in 2007, according to the latest data from Pew Research. By comparison, an estimated 28 million, or 12 percent, lived in such households in 1980. FRAUD using A.T.M. skimming devices is on the rise, new data show. Skimming involves stealing debit card numbers by putting an illegal card reading device on an A.T.M. Criminals use the devices in tandem with hidden cameras that record personal identification numbers entered onto the keypad. They then make duplicate cards using the information and drain cash from bank accounts. FICO Card Alert Service, which monitors activity at A.T.M.s for bank clients, is reporting a sixfold increase in the number of machines in the United States compromised by criminals in 2015, compared with 2014. The service is an arm of analytic software company FICO, best known for providing consumer credit scores. The FICO service, which monitors hundreds of thousands of A.T.M.s, first reported an increase in the fraud about a year ago. The company said it was contractually barred from disclosing the actual number of incidents, but noted that the number for all of 2015 was the highest the service had ever recorded. This month, a man was arrested in San Diego County, Calif., and charged with placing skimming devices on Wells Fargo A.T.M.s across the county. He was accused of using stolen data from nearly 4,900 cards to create counterfeit cards that were then used to steal nearly half a million dollars, much of which was sent overseas. HIGH DIVE By Jonathan Lee 321 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95. In October 1984 a bomb went off at the Grand Hotel in the English seaside town of Brighton, while Britains Conservative Party was gathered there for a conference. Planted by a member of the Irish Republican Army, the bomb was meant to kill Margaret Thatcher, Britains polarizing prime minister, but it murdered five others and seriously injured dozens more instead. This was a volatile time in Britain, and Northern Irelands turf battles often erupted in violence, but it was rare and uniquely terrifying for the Troubles to claim innocents on the mainland. Who was responsible? Who were the victims? How did people respond when this giant wedding cake of a building started to crumble? Jonathan Lee uses these questions as a springboard for his third novel (his first to be published in the United States), High Dive, a fictional account of the weeks leading up to the blast. For a novel about an attempted political assassination, High Dive is fairly light on politics. Lee touches on the turmoil in Northern Ireland, with stories of brutal British police officers and bloody riots. But this is no history lesson, nor is it a post-mortem assessment of Thatcherism and its discontents. Lees preoccupations are more personal. He spends much of the book in Brighton, inventing the lives and loves of a few hotel employees in the flurry before the conference. The heart of the story belongs to Philip Finch Moose to everyone but his mother and his 18-year-old daughter, Freya. Once revered as the best young sportsman Brightons ever seen, Moose used to slay the ladies with little more than a good-natured smile. But the lofty ambitions of this local god have since settled into the pudgy pinings of a middle-aged middle manager at the Grand. Abandoned by his wife, Moose has found something like contentment worrying over the needs of the hotels guests and his increasingly aloof daughter. Lately he has thrown himself into preparing for Thatchers visit, believing a flawless event will earn him a long-sought promotion. As for Freya, she recently graduated with some of the best marks in Brighton, but now spends her days in crushing boredom at the Grands reception desk, wondering whether to go to college, flee to Spain or simply find a boyfriend who doesnt twiddle your nipples like a radio dial. Lee is clearly sweet on the Finches, endowing them with the kind of endearing faults and emotional intuition that might seem precious in the hands of a less skilled writer. Freya is a teenager who feels more awkward than she looks. Moose wishes for her a whole blazing field of sunflowers and delicately tries to warn her of the way unfulfilled dreams can pile up like unopened post. Cribbing fatherhood lessons from a lifetime in customer service, he often broaches tricky subjects as questions, because there was a limit to how aggressive a statement could seem with a question mark at its end. Gordon-Reed, the Charles Warren professor of American legal history at Harvard Law School, comes at their task after years of inspecting Jeffersons closets. She became fascinated with Jefferson and his slaves while growing up as an African-American girl in East Texas. She went on to publish Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy in 1997, taking on the skeptics who had doubted a sexual relationship between the two, a book that looked all the more impressive after DNA testing later all but confirmed the case. Her follow-up masterpiece, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. One of those who encouraged the publication of her first Jefferson book was Onuf, then chairman of the history department at the University of Virginia, still known today as Mr. Jeffersons university for its founder. An accomplished scholar himself, Onuf has written or edited a half-dozen books on Jefferson and remains the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor emeritus at the university. At the heart of their study of Jeffersons life are the questions of freedom and slavery. Jeffersons earliest memory was being handed up to a slave on a pillow, and the last person who understood his words on his death bed was a slave who at his request adjusted his pillow before he slipped away. Slavery, Gordon-Reed and Onuf thus note, bounded his life from cradle to grave. For all his travels, he remained very much a product of Virginias plantation society the society that formed him and the place where he discovered what role he wanted to play in the world. Jefferson condemned slavery and understood its evil, yet profited from it. He considered himself a benevolent master, responsible for the well-being of the humans he held in bondage, but he did not release his slaves upon his death, as did his fellow Virginian George Washington, who stipulated that they would be freed upon his widows passing. Sally Hemings, the half sister of Jeffersons deceased wife, born of a liaison between master and slave, became his substitute for a wife, as one contemporary called her, and she and her children enjoyed better conditions than other slaves. But Jefferson was a product of his times, and his black progeny were never equated to his white daughters, although they, unlike his other slaves, were liberated in his will. Gordon-Reed and Onuf attach great importance to Monticello as the key to understanding Jeffersons contradictions and his own empire of the imagination. With the help of slaves, he built his residence atop a mountain, a location that made little sense for plantation life and yet afforded the escape he craved to write and think, and even to pretend he was not the partisan politician that of course he was. In 1957, de Groot, agnostic but prone to bouts of wild superstition, had hesitated before undertaking to retrieve his lost masterpiece. The police failed to find the thief; the painting never surfaced among the offerings of various shady dealers. Maybe it was better to keep the fake and forget about the swap? Family lore held the cursed painting responsible for 300 years of gout, rheumatism, heart failure, intermittent barrenness and stroke in his bloodline. Ever since Pieter de Groot bought it, in 1637, at an auction conducted by the Guild of St. Luke, no one whos owned it has lived past the age of 60. As it happens, in the six months that have elapsed from the theft of At the Edge of a Wood to the discovery that the painting left in its place was a counterfeit, things have been looking up for the de Groots. When the original hung over his and Rachels bed, Martys career as a patent attorney had, in his own estimation, stalled out. Once it was replaced by the fake, he was made partner by his firm, and Rachel, having emerged from a protracted depression in the wake of two miscarriages, began venturing out into Central Park with a pair of binoculars around her neck, trying to spot warblers or migrating chickadees Marty has no idea what. Youre not the first to imagine that a painting has supernatural powers, one auctioneer observes, mentioning The Picture of Dorian Gray in response to what becomes de Groots decades-long obsession. He may not be driven by the compulsive debauchery that disfigures Dorians portrait, but he is enslaved to a hidden work of art from whose thrall he cant free himself. De Groot embarks on a quest for what he thinks will be its or is it his? redemption. Having given up on regaining the original masterwork, de Groot hires a garrulous gumshoe to follow a trail of arty crumbs to the painter who forged it. And once he has the information he needs, de Groot makes a forgery of himself: Jake Alpert, so he can approach Ellie Shipley without letting her know who he really is. The name has a Dutch ring, he thinks. As though caught between a pair of opposing mirrors, the novels themes and images reflect forward and backward in time, its plot sprinkled with uncanny details, like the twinning of the orphans aid societies, that ultimately deliver the reader to an exhibition nicknamed Dutch Doppelgangers. New college graduates looking for their first full-time job have reason to be optimistic. After a string of dismal to lackluster years, the job outlook brightened considerably for the class of 2015. And despite uncertainty about the strength of the economy, recruiters, on-campus career specialists and economists remain generally upbeat about prospects for this years graduates. Michigan State Universitys Collegiate Employment Research Institute projects that hiring will be up 15 percent across all degree levels from last year, part of a stuttering rebound from the Great Recession and its aftermath, 2009 to 2013. Of course, applicants experiences will vary, perhaps significantly, depending on their field of study and position sought. When Benjamin Capitano moved into his dorm as a sophomore at the Kings College, a tiny liberal arts college in Manhattan, he realized hed been given a gift: a couch. So he listed his bed on Airbnb for $99. Ive always had a knack for hospitality, Mr. Capitano said. I got us sheets and the little mini soaps and basically set up my dorm like a hotel. At Columbia University, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania ($1,000 a night for a room for two during the popes Philadelphia visit), students have been using Airbnb to offset the cost of college. The listings tend to omit one fact: that the bed is in student housing. (Potential guests, be sure to check pictures for telltale dorm furniture, and reviews: Its in a dorm. I sort of felt creepy around all the kids, said one guest at the School of Visual Arts.) While most housing contracts prohibit rentals, lately colleges have been reviewing their policies to ensure they explicitly mention Airbnb. My boyfriend knew he was losing me, which is why he sent me a box of books. It was a strategic move. After experiencing a traumatic event, I had spent the previous year insulating myself from the world with books, and my boyfriend hoped he could reach me via the printed page. He hoped the stories would remind me of his taste and devotion. He thought if I were to read A Confederacy of Dunces and The Dharma Bums, the books that drew him back to literature, I might be drawn back to him. His books were not to my taste anyway, but it wouldnt have mattered if he had sent me books by Zadie Smith or Haruki Murakami, writers I loved. I was already gone, which shocked me, considering the abandon with which I had first come to him. We had fallen for each other a year earlier when I was a junior in high school. He was from my Ohio town but attended college in Minnesota. When he was home over winter break of his freshman year, I went to a party in his parents basement. While everyone else drank and watched cartoons, he and I sneaked up to his childhood bedroom, which was covered with band posters, trinkets from abroad and scratchy wool sweaters. We stayed up until 5 a.m., then said goodbye quickly. At Bob Evans later that morning, with my hair matted and eyeliner smudged, I told my friend Claire over a buttery biscuit that I was sure I would be seeing him again. The next night he and I played in the piles of snow in my backyard. I told him I was tough, and he made me roar into the winter air to prove it. On our third night, he had dinner with my family. He ordered chicken pasta and made my mother laugh. We spent most of the following three days entangled, usually on his basement couch, taking breaks for food and polite conversation with each others families. He listened to punk rock, drank Pabst Blue Ribbon and had an ex-girlfriend I felt deliciously superior to. We both cried when winter break ended. It was understood that we would not be in a relationship while he was back in Minnesota. There was too much distance. He needed his freedom. According to him, I needed mine, too. During his infrequent visits home, we would reunite. We got high in his backyard and jumped on his trampoline for hours, cannonballing ourselves into the protective netting. We dressed to attend a yoga class one day but ended up fooling around instead, undone by the sight of each other in stretch fabric. We also had big, messy fights during which I would threaten to call things off if he didnt offer to be my committed boyfriend, and he always said I could because he knew I wouldnt. And then, in October of my senior year, as our one-year anniversary approached, I was raped by the older brother of an acquaintance in an upstairs bedroom during a house party while my friends played beer pong three floors below. This guy and I had fooled around before, consensually, but we had never had sex. I had never wanted to, with him. I was surprised that I even had to say No. I was more surprised when he didnt listen. After I got home from the hospital, sore and exhausted from the night and the hours spent with the nurse and her kit, I knew I had to tell my boyfriend, but I couldnt muster the voice to explain. Instead, I sent him a text. He flew home that afternoon. He attempted to nurse me. He held my hand. He did his best. I had decided to kiss the guy who later raped me because my boyfriend and I were no longer entirely together, and we both knew that our uncommitted status had allowed my encounter to happen. I dont know if that weighed on him, but I imagine its hard in any case to be a man attempting to soothe a female rape survivor 24 hours after the event. He must have felt like the enemy. I didnt want him to feel that way. I craved normalcy. So I asked if we could sleep together that night, because for us to forgo sex when he was home from college would have been too abnormal, too indicative that something was wrong, and I didnt want to believe that anything could be wrong. Soon after, I discovered Alice Walkers The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart in the half-price bookstore near my school. That book was the first brick in the wall that I used to shut out my boyfriend. I repeated that title endlessly to myself, a mantra on the days I couldnt get out of bed or bring myself to call him. This is the way forward, I thought. Food tasted like rubber in my mouth. I couldnt laugh. Id been sleeping 16 hours a day, crying when I woke up and feeling hopeless about the days ahead. But suddenly all those things meant I was moving forward. Alice Walker showed me strong women with oil in their hair who knew how to love, as well as how to be hit. The people in my life couldnt look at me and tell me I would get better because there was little indication that I would. Walker showed me a world where I could heal. My boyfriend showed me frequent, sincere concern, for which I had little use. Concern for me was bountiful and cheap that year. He also showed me real love that I felt too broken to accept. I slowly began to back away from him in a reverse game of Mother, May I, placing a book between us with every step backward. He offered total commitment to me once in a Target parking lot as I was breaking up with him. It was March of my senior year, and I had, through the healing power of therapy and Margaret Atwood, become something like myself again. I thought he was a crutch. A new life was waiting for me just months away, on a college campus where nobody would know I had been raped, where I didnt have to sweat every time I went to my grocery store, terrified my rapist would round the corner. I wanted to leave the rape far behind, as if it were a physical object. I did not yet know that you couldnt shed rape like a cardigan, that it lives on inside of you, dark and slick and taking fresh forms just when you think you have exorcised it. I dont understand, he said in the Target parking lot that day. What did I do? You didnt do anything, I told him. He cried. He said he would be with me no matter how far apart we were. I felt the acute pain of losing someone I loved and the relief of being able to retreat further inside myself without his feathery fingers of adoration checking in. Of course, endings dont always stick. Nearly a year later, during the criminal trial of the man who raped me, I learned that my ex would be a witness for the defense, against his will. Part of their strategy was to imply I had cried rape because I had cheated on my boyfriend and wanted to be excused for it complicated lies to muddy a clear crime. My ex knew the truth. I didnt worry about what he would say, but I hated that he would have to say anything. I called to thank him for agreeing to testify, and hearing his voice felt like crawling into clean cotton sheets. You know Id do anything for you, he said. I did. Perhaps thats why I invited him back into my life at the start of that summer. At the trial, my rapist had been found not guilty, and I was cracking. I had spent two brutal days on the stand being pressed about my high school sex life and having my credibility questioned until, in the end, the jury apparently decided there was reasonable doubt. What happened in that bedroom was awful; the trial, for me, was almost worse. When it was over, my ex-boyfriend took me out to dinner. He was nervous about letting me in, worried I would hurt him again. I wanted to believe I wouldnt, but I knew he was leaving the country in two weeks, and I had developed a habit, one that started with him, of dating only people with built-in deadlines. Those two weeks passed with ugly fights, makeup sex and moments of real tenderness. We were sick of each other but we also loved each other. He slept in my bed, where my stack of books on the bedside table cast a skyline shadow across his face. I stayed up late while he slumbered, restlessly turning pages, willing him to disappear into the warm night air. Years ago, during the Iran-Iraq war, Iraqi warplanes dropped mustard gas and nerve agents on my battalion. I was completely burned, with blisters all over my body. I couldnt see anything for months (and since then Ive had over 50 operations on my eyes). My lungs were severely damaged; they functioned at only 45 percent. I also had a lot of emotional problems. I was angry all the time. I just wanted to be alone. It was hard because, even after I was married, I didnt know how to control this deep helplessness, fear and anger. I was taking a lot of medicine too for all my injuries and for my anger. I began to see a psychiatrist, but it wasnt helping much. So a doctor friend of mine in Tehran told me to try music as therapy. The idea made me nervous, because music wasnt fully O.K. at the time in Iran, especially for those of us who had fought in the war. We were supposed to be soldiers and defenders of the revolution, and music was seen as not being proper or serious enough. But I always loved music. We even hired a band for our wedding illegally. I was open to the doctors suggestion, but I wasnt sure how others would feel about it. There was a great teacher, Maestro Malek, who not only taught music classes but also had his own workshop where he made the santur, a traditional hammered dulcimer, and it was located near my fathers grocery store. The maestro also had a dairy farm next to his music store, which was where we bought the milk to sell at the grocery. One day when I was at his dairy to pick up the milk, the maestro asked me: Do you know why I have the best milk in town? Because the cows hear music every day. It makes the cows eat more and then produce more milk. It also makes them live longer! Maybe the doctor was right about the power of music, I thought, so I signed up to take classes. The maestros students were mostly young people I was the oldest in the class. And since my lungs were badly damaged, I coughed a lot. I worried that my constant coughing was bothering the other students. So I only went to one class. But that was enough to make me fall in love. I wanted to learn this instrument. Blood, guts and punk rock are the accent notes in Green Room, a new thriller that brings throwback niches the violent exploitation and siege films of the 1970s and the earnest, do-it-yourself hardcore punk bands of the 1980s into the present day. Think a mash-up of Straw Dogs and Our Band Could Be Your Life, pitting low-level suburban musicians against white-supremacist skinheads, all in tight quarters. This straight-ahead genre exercise is decidedly not tongue-in-cheek, said Jeremy Saulnier, the films writer and director, who combined his youthful interests in John Carpenter and the brash, underground rock of his local Washington scene into a movie that uses an esoteric music subculture for texture without romanticizing it. You fear that as you get older, your connections to your youth start to wane and disappear, Mr. Saulnier, 39, said recently in a Brooklyn cafe near his home. I didnt want to lose that perspective. So after the critical success of his self-financed second feature, Blue Ruin, which was well-received at Cannes in 2013, Mr. Saulnier fended off overtures from the big studios to instead make a scrappy independent movie set in a dying milieu the films fictional band shuns social media and aspires to release vinyl before nobody else did. (Green Room opens on Friday, April 15.) The brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, now in their mid-80s, have had a long career in Italian cinema. Midway through, they enjoyed a relatively brief period in the international spotlight, following the success of Padre Padrone (My Father, My Boss). The story of a brutalized Sardinian shepherd boy who breaks free of his fathers authoritarian control to become a scholarly linguist, Padre Padrone a 16-millimeter made-for-TV movie was the surprise winner of the Palme dOr at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. The Night of the Shooting Stars, a bittersweet evocation of wartime Italy, won a major prize at Cannes in 1982 and was named the best film of 1983 by the National Society of Film Critics. In 1985, Kaos (Chaos), an anthology of stories by Luigi Pirandello, was picked to close the New York Film Festival. All three, the Tavianis greatest hits, have been packaged together, as Blu-rays or DVDs, on The Taviani Brothers Collection, a new Cohen Media release. Like many Italian filmmakers of their generation, the Tavianis were formed by the neorealist cinema that emerged from the rubble of World War II. Their first films were documentaries; subsequent features alternately emulated or elaborated on the socially conscious no-frills naturalism that characterized the early work of Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti. We wanted to take the legacy of neorealism and add to it the grandeur of the spettacolo the panoramas of John Ford, the melodrama of Giottos frescoes, Vittorio Taviani told Stephen Harvey in a 1986 interview for The New York Times. Rossellini was a particular influence. As teenagers, the brothers had been inspired by his Paisan (1946); some three decades later, Rossellini, as president of the Cannes jury, was instrumental in securing the Palme dOr for Padre Padrone. Rossellinis campaign on behalf of two largely unknown filmmakers put him in conflict with festival officials who supported another Italian film, Ettore Scolas A Special Day. The acrimony was intense. According to Cari Beauchamp and Henri Behars history of Cannes, Hollywood on the Riviera, some blame the pressure on Rossellini for the fatal heart attack he sustained days after the festival. BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. In the 2002 comedy Barbershop, the most worrisome problem facing the shop owner Calvin Palmer (Ice Cube) is a duplicitous loan shark who wants to turn the neighborhood fixture into a strip club. Two years later, in Barbershop 2: Back in Business, Calvins biggest headache is competition from Nappy Cutz, a national franchise opening up across the street that, according to Calvins own clients, boasts honeys in bikinis serving wine to clients and live fish in the floor that customers can have fried, grilled or fondued. In Barbershop: The Next Cut, which opens this week, Calvins problems are considerably worse than just evil moneylenders and rival shops. Money is still tight; to make ends meet, hes sharing space and chairs with a beauty salon run by Angie (Regina Hall). But larger troubles are looming right outside the barbershops doors, on the streets of Chicagos South Side. Kids and cashiers are getting shot over trifles; in one darkly comic scene, the denizens of the shop try to one-up one another over whos been robbed most often. I wanted to do a movie about whats really going on in Chicago, Ice Cube explained. But how does one begin to make a funny movie about gun violence, a devastating problem in Chicago, which has experienced a sharp rise in shootings this year? The Barbershop franchise (two movies and a 2005 TV series) has occasionally glanced at serious subjects. When the shops elder, Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer), poked fun at Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. in the first film, black leaders, including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, called for a public apology from the studio MGM. But the franchise seemed an unlikely vehicle to address the topic of gun violence on Chicagos South Side even if the shops location is at ground zero of the conflict. To take on the challenge and revive the series after a 12-year hiatus a producer, Robert Teitel, turned to Malcolm D. Lee, the director of The Best Man, the 1999 ensemble movie, and its 2013 sequel, The Best Man Holiday. Both films had been box-office hits, and both required Mr. Lee to mesh comic moments with dramatic scenes revolving around topics like infidelity, work woes and cancer. If you look at the actors that I cast in Best Man, Terrence Howard, Harold Perrineau, theyre not comedic actors, he said. But theyre great actors who can embody a role and make it funny. When Glen Grays was inexplicably handcuffed and hauled off by the police in Brooklyn on March 17 while delivering the mail on his route in Crown Heights, the world soon learned a bit about him. At a news conference given by Eric L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, at which a video of the encounter was made public, Mr. Grayss mother explained that she had six sons and worried about all of them. In the days ahead, Mr. Grays spoke to reporters, telling them that he was, in fact, engaged to a New York City police officer, that he had worked hard all of his life, that he had never been arrested and that despite the indignities he had suffered at the hands of the four plainclothes police officers who were supposed to be in uniform he did not wish for them to be fired. Days after the video gained national attention, the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, said he had strong concerns about the actions taken by the officers. By then the Police Department had already begun an investigation by its Internal Affairs Bureau and the officers had been removed from their assignment with the Conditions Unit, a neighborhood-based troubleshooting division, and put back on patrol. Later, the supervising officer was stripped of his gun and badge and put on desk duty. Despite all that, the department did not reveal the names of the men involved or apprise the public of any history of complaints leveled against them. The officers names became known because of an accident report Mr. Grays obtained at the 71st Precinct station house, which identified them. After Mr. Grays was taken away by the police officers in an unmarked car, that vehicle had hit another in front of it. Secrecy is, in essence, protocol. It is required by a controversial law passed 40 years ago, Section 50-a of the states civil rights code, which protects officers personnel records from public view, enshrining the suppression of information around police misconduct as governance. TWENTY years ago, when New Yorkers asked me where I was from, all Id say is that I grew up in Britain. Mentioning that I was born in Bangladesh drew only more questions, and New Yorkers simply wanted confirmation of what was to them the distinctive cultural marker: my British accent. That accent was learned from imitating BBC News announcers on a cassette recorder. As a boy, I read about the destruction of millions of Jews and was gripped by fear: If white Europeans could do that to people who looked like them, imagine what they could do to me. So I adapted, hoping to make myself less alien to these people so ill at ease with difference. I grew up not so long ago in a Britain that spat at nonwhites, beat us and daubed swastikas on walls. Britain frightens its natives with the specter of a fifth column, and exhorts immigrants to integrate better and adopt British values. Do it and youll earn your stripes. But the promise is hollow, for Britain has no intention of keeping its side of the bargain. When Ella died in 1931 at 78, the Wendel fortune was to be divided among several charities. But before the estate could be dispersed, an astounding 2,303 people came forward purporting to be relatives. Cousins appeared from as far away as Czechoslovakia, and, according to The New York Herald Tribune of March 23, 1932, entire villages in Germany, most of whose inhabitants bear the name of Wendel came out of the woodwork to file claims. In one elaborate ruse, a Scottish house painter said he was the son of Mr. Wendel, producing a will that Mr. Wendel had supposedly scribbled on the back page of a book that bequeathed him the entire Wendel fortune. That claim not unique, for several children came forward was also thrown out and the painter was imprisoned for fraud. In the end, all but a handful were proven bogus and the Wendels vast estate was dismantled, with the bulk of the proceeds going to charity. The last parcel, on Union Square where the fashionable Coffee Shop now stands, was sold in 1950. Its hard for a dynasty to continue without heirs, and many of todays real estate families are working hard to insure they avoid the Wendels fate. Im pretty sure thats not going to happen to the Durst family, we do a very good job at reproducing, said Mr. Durst, who noted there are 24 members of the fourth generation of Dursts. The typical odds are that family businesses dont get past the third generation, and so far, weve beaten those odds, said William C. Rudin, the chief executive of the Rudin Management Company. The Rudins are into the fourth generation of their real estate dynasty, Mr. Rudins two children are active in the company with children of their own. We celebrated 100 years in 2005, and I think I have the team lined up to hopefully carry it forward for another 100 years. There are caterpillars crawling around the apartment of Jonathan Rockefeller. Theyre hungry, but they dont eat any houseplants or chew through the Hermes blankets. Rather, they are the caterpillars hatched by Eric Carle, the author and illustrator of the classic childrens book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. And then there are the plush caterpillar toys from The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, a puppet extravaganza produced and directed by Mr. Rockefeller and now playing at the 47th Street Theater in Midtown. These were designed for the production, said Mr. Rockefeller, 32, who also adapted the show from Caterpillar and other Carle books. He picked up a small stuffed caterpillar from a sofa in his den-like office in the East 57th Street apartment he shares with his husband, Wilson Rockefeller, 52, an art collector. We sell them by the bucketloads. Every child walks out of the show and wants a hungry caterpillar to take home. The work world of Mr. Rockefeller, who got into show business as the assistant to the director and screenwriter Baz Luhrmann, is full of whimsical creatures. But the apartment he moved into last year with his husband when they married in 2014, he took Mr. Rockefellers name, changing his from Worsley because it was a good name to take is as sophisticated as any in their polished neighborhood. The goal was to create a soothing and calming space, he said. Given the frenzy of getting to his present place in life, it seemed almost essential. Ms. Thurman purchased neighboring 8/9C, another three-bedroom, in 2006, paying $2.65 million, and commenced a top-to-bottom renovation that lasted nearly five years. She lived in a Greenwich Village townhouse in the meantime; she purchased that residence through a third party for $9.5 million in 2006 and sold it for $12 million in 2011. Image Uma Thurman Credit... Jerome Favre/European Pressphoto Agency Once back at the Gramercy apartment, and looking to add more space for her growing family, which includes two daughters and a son, she bought an adjacent one-bedroom, No. 8D, in 2012 for $1.55 million and combined it with the duplex. It was such a cozy place it really was home for us, Ms. Thurman said of the expanded duplex. But she decided to trade views of Gramercy Park for the East River. She paid $10 million in 2013 for a four-bedroom four-bath co-op with a library, at the River House on East 52nd Street. The seller was the romance novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford. Ms. Thurman moved most of her belongings to River House more than a year ago, though she did leave a sprinkling of furnishings and artwork behind, among them an unfinished metal dining table with midcentury chairs, her sons bunk bed and photographs of herself and her children. Most of the residence was staged by the designer Maeve Carr. The Gramercy apartment, which comes with a coveted key to the private park, retains many original 1910 architectural flourishes: moldings, herringbone oak floors, a wood-burning fireplace in the living room, a tin ceiling in the kitchen and 10-foot-high ceilings throughout. The gifted program was not a panacea. The researchers found that the districts specialized classes had little effect on the academic achievement of students who had been specifically identified as gifted, through I.Q. tests. They are not sure why. In Broward County, as in many other places, classes for the gifted use the same curriculum and textbook as other classes. Teachers in the classes for the gifted were required to have a special certification and were encouraged to supplement the curriculum. But the separate classes did produce enormous, positive effects for children who were high achievers but did not qualify based on the I.Q. test. A quirk in the rules helped these children: Broward requires that schools with even one child who tests above the I.Q. cutoff devote an entire classroom to gifted and high-achieving children. Since a school in Broward rarely had enough gifted children to fill a class, these classrooms were topped off with children from the same school who scored high on the districts standardized test. These high achievers, especially black and Hispanics, showed large increases in math and reading when placed in a class for the gifted, and these effects persisted. What is more, while many children in the gifted program gained enormously, Mr. Card and Ms. Giuliano found no negative effects for those who remained in regular classes. Yet all of these gains came at little financial cost. The enhanced classes were no more expensive than the standard ones. They were the same size as regular classes, and teachers in the classes for the gifted were paid no more than others. This story has twists, though. Despite these positive results, Broward County suspended its universal screening program in 2010 in a spate of budget cutting after the Great Recession. Racial and ethnic disparities re-emerged, as large as they were before the policy change. In 2012 the district reinstated a modified version of universal screening, but it has not achieved the same results. Using data from the Florida Department of Education, I calculate that 8 percent of white students in Broward County are classified as gifted. That is twice the rate for Hispanics and four times the rate for blacks, much higher ratios than under universal screening. One problem with the new screening program is that the previous nonverbal test, which psychologists say they believe to be culturally neutral, has been replaced with one that relies more on verbal ability. Another is that Broward parents and teachers can still influence whether children are selected. While school psychologists test students at no cost, parents can hire a private psychologist to test a child, at a cost of $1,000, and are allowed to pay for multiple tests, should a child not meet the I.Q. requirement on the first try. Mr. Card and Ms. Giuliano found evidence suggesting that private testing gives an advantage to upper-income families, who tend to be white. Many researchers worry that I.Q. tests are biased against low-income and nonwhite children, and some recommend a more holistic approach that includes teacher referrals. But referrals produce biases, too. Matthew McBee, a psychologist who edits The Journal of Advanced Academics, which focuses on gifted education, recently called referrals the elephant in the room, a largely unexamined source of racial and ethnic bias in the identification of gifted children. Connie Ann Kiteley was born January 14, 1953, and passed away on April 6, 2016. Born in Ontario, Canada, she married her first husband Roch Seguin, father of daughters Renee and Michelle, and led a successful daycare business from home. She eventually returned to business management school, which led to her four years of managing West Island Manor where she met Gary Kiteley, all while taking such good care of her daughters as a single mother. Connie met Gary in Montreal while Gary was visiting his mother in West Island Manor retirement home. They were married in Auburn and had a church wedding in Montreal in June 1991, the year Gary retired from Auburn University. They started K&K Aviation which conducted flight tests for pilot certificates. Connie did the scheduling and processed the files. Connie traveled with Gary on consulting trips and to attend meetings of the accrediting association in the U.S. and Canada. Gary and Connie bought a condo in Montreal so they could spend more time with Connie's children and grandchildren. Connie adored her two girls and cherished her three grandchildren, Jessica Domond, and Mason and William Lariviere. A very close family, she often traveled to Nebraska and Canada to spend time building memories. She was happiest being a grandmother and spoiled them all with love, affection and attention. Visitation will be Saturday, April 9, 2016, at 10:00 a.m. CDT at Jeffcoat-Trant Funeral Home in Opelika, with a memorial service immediately following at 11:00 a.m. CDT in the chapel. Jeffcoat-Trant Funeral Home is directing. www.jeffcoattrant.com Many of the bills proposed each year in the California Legislature are designed to fix lawmaking mistakes made in previous cycles. In that way, Senate Bill 1142 is no different patching pesky potholes and litigation landmines caused by the Americans with Disabilities Act, a well-intended piece of civil rights legislation that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. But unlike many other bills, SB1142, by state Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, is worth noting. Westerners once flocked to our great state with the intent of starting and running a business, profiting from the fruits of ones own labor, contributing to a bigger community and being handsomely rewarded for doing so. The landscape now is much different, riddled with legal traps and deterrents that hinder small businesses from becoming an integral part of a local economy. Heres why: First, someone visits a business not as a patron, but as a troll, looking for an opportunity to litigate. Often this someone has a law degree. He or she sees something something small, but, yes, a technical violation of the ADA. It could be square handrails instead of round ones or a bathroom mirror placed an inch too high. A business owner might think that, because he or she has a handrail or a lowered mirror, the business is in compliance, when, in fact, it is not. Most business want to comply it is in their best interests to serve all their customers, whether they have disabilities or not. But the construction-related standards under the ADA and the California Building Code are very specific. If a business is not strictly in compliance with either code, the business and the landlord are exposed to costly penalties. Whatever the violation, the visitor sues the business owner, seeking on average $5,000 to $10,000. Businesses are often forced to pay whatever is asked or risk being dragged through a lengthy and costly court case. Many of the businesses that have been sued have shut down because its simply too costly to stay in business and fight lawsuits because, where there is one, there are many. Lawyers will claim they are working in the public interest, but, in reality, these lawsuits damage the publics perception of people with disabilities that they are litigious and opportunistic. Attorneys rarely visit the business after a lawsuit has been settled to ensure improvements have been made they already got what they were after: a hefty settlement check. This is one of the most pervasive types of shakedown lawsuits in California lawsuits alleging violations of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and Californias comparable laws. California is home to about 40 percent of the nations ADA lawsuits. Despite prior reform efforts, lawsuits keep coming. SB1142 offers an alternative. This important legislation by Sen. Moorlach offers small-business owners a right to cure any identified noncompliance with the Construction-Related Accessibility Standards Compliance Act or the ADA within 120 days before any lawsuit can be filed. This is a great solution to rampant mistargeted and unfair litigation in our state, a way to protect small business owners and employees and an avenue to ensuring the needs of those with disabilities are met. Vince Passanisi owns Santa Fe Importers in Seal Beach. In what could be an important moment for his leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis is scheduled to issue a major document Friday regarding family issues. It is titled Amoris Laetitia, Latin for The Joy of Love. In the document, known as an apostolic exhortation, the pope could change church practice on thorny subjects like whether divorced Catholics who remarry without having obtained annulments can receive Holy Communion. He might address debates over same-sex relationships, cohabitation and polygamy, an issue in Africa. Or, he could sidestep such divisive topics and stick to broader philosophical statements. How long did this take? For the past two years, Francis has guided the church through a sweeping exercise of self-examination that some scholars have compared to the Second Vatican Council. Catholics around the world filled out detailed questionnaires about whether the church meets their families needs. Bishops and other church officials spent two tumultuous meetings at the Vatican, known as synods, debating and arguing. The broad topic was whether the Catholic Church should reposition itself, and how. Francis listened, prodded and sometimes steered the process, but he mostly kept his own counsel. Until now. Whats at stake? Having led Catholics into such delicate terrain, Francis has stirred hope and fear. Some religious conservatives warn he could destabilize the church and undermine Catholic doctrine. Some liberals, though, are hoping Francis will directly address same-sex marriage and contraception in a way that would make the church more responsive to todays realities. Im sure he knew he would touch some nerves, said John Thavis, a longtime Vatican analyst and the author of The Vatican Diaries. He may not have appreciated how much opposition there could be. But both sides might be disappointed. Some who study Francis predict the apostolic exhortation will be a broad statement on universal problems affecting families, like poverty, migration, domestic violence, health care, youth unemployment and the neglect of children and the elderly. Francis encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, released in June, was an enormous study in connecting the dots, and experts are expecting a similar sweep in Amoris Laetitia. This document is meant for Catholics all over the world, some of whom are in desperate straits because of poverty and war and other crises that make having a family life almost impossible, said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior analyst for the U.S. newspaper The National Catholic Reporter. This pope, his heart aches for these people who are so marginalized. Im sure this document will address that. So whats all the fuss about? Francis signaled early on that he wanted the church to re-examine its ministry to those who feel excluded, calling bishops to two synod meetings on the family, in 2014 and 2015. One of the major issues debated was the church policy that bars divorced Catholics who have remarried without seeking a church annulment of their first union from receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion, a centerpiece of Mass. (How strictly this ban is observed varies widely, depending on local priests and bishops; plenty of remarried Catholics receive Holy Communion regularly.) Getting an annulment requires appearances before a church tribunal and a fee, and it can take years. Francis streamlined the annulment process last year, but for many, it is still an insurmountable obstacle to full participation in the church. Some dioceses, especially in developing countries, do not have such tribunals, which require judges trained in the churchs canon law. At the synods, many bishops insisted that giving communion to divorced Catholics would undermine a core church doctrine that marriage is indissoluble. But other bishops were intent on finding a way to welcome back the divorced. The second synod ended by essentially allowing both sides to declare victory. However, the dispute reverberated among Catholic intellectuals in the United States, with conservatives warning of an intrachurch civil war. Now, everyone is looking to Francis to settle the matter. But he may sidestep it, some experts said, by reaffirming church teaching that marriage is permanent, while encouraging flexibility in pastoral practice toward the remarried. A guide that the Vatican sent to Catholic bishops before the release of Amoris Laetitia offered only hints like this: The popes concern is therefore to re-contextualize doctrine at the service of the pastoral mission of the church. M. Cathleen Kaveny, a professor at Boston College who focuses on the relationship between law, religion and morality, said she was expecting some sort of movement. If there is no shift at all, it would have been better had the whole discussion not been opened, she said. I think that people are looking to Francis to provide some way forward in these intractable personal situations. The last word? This type of document is a post-synodal apostolic exhortation. The first one to be issued in response to a synod of bishops was in 1967, by Pope Paul VI. Apostolic exhortations are not as authoritative as papal encyclicals, and they do not normally change church doctrine. But there is doctrine, and there is practice, and the popes instruction can influence how priests and bishops apply doctrine. This is Francis second apostolic exhortation. The first, Evangelii Gaudium, or The Joy of the Gospel, was released in 2013, Francis first year as pope, and it is considered his manifesto. In it, he proclaims that the church must be open and humble to peoples real needs, and not too rigidly fixed on doctrine. Many expect to see those themes echoed in the new document. The Francis effect? Francis is one of the worlds most popular and influential figures, with a public persona that blends humility with boldness. From the first moments of his papacy, Francis challenged the Vatican hierarchy and took strong stances on issues such as capitalism, poverty, migration and climate change. But Francis is also deeply pragmatic, particularly regarding internal church politics. Francis may want to be a bold reformer, but he knows the church can be pushed only so far, so quickly, especially given differing opinions among church leaders. He needs the worlds bishops to be unified behind him if he wants changes to filter to the parish level. Yet taking a middle-of-the-road approach is not without risks. Many Catholics eager for the church to change and in a tangible way look to him as their change agent. Doing too little may leave some supporters alienated, just as doing too much may anger conservative opponents. It is quite a balancing act. When can we read it? The document will be published at noon on Friday in Rome, or 6 a.m. in New York. The New York Times will highlight excerpts. Nestled in the neo-Georgian sanctuary of the Knickerbocker Club, one of New Yorks oldest and fustiest social establishments, a select group of Republican donors gathered late last month to take up an unexpected task: reconsidering Ted Cruz. Eager to defeat Donald Trump, they seemed willing to overlook a few things: Cruzs fiery attacks on Wall Street and special-interest billionaires, and his swipes at eminent party leaders and lawmakers. But one wealthy financial executive had a question: What did you mean when you attacked Trump for having New York values? I didnt mean to attack people in New York, Cruz, a senator from Texas, said, explaining that he had been criticizing the states policies, not its populace. I love New York. Of all the teeth-gritting alliances being forged over opposition to Trumps rampaging bid for the Republican presidential nomination, few are as unlikely as the emerging bond between Cruz and his partys elite donor establishment. Since Cruzs election to the Senate in 2012, many traditional Republican donors have spurned him, viewing him as a hopeless ideologue whose antics particularly his leading role in the 2013 government shutdown damaged the party in service of his ambitions. But in recent weeks, at small events from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to the Republican precincts of Newport Beach, they are learning to love Cruz. That was then, said Anthony H. Gioia, a Buffalo, N.Y., businessman and ambassador to Malta under President George W. Bush who expects to meet with Cruz in the coming weeks. And now is now. Bolstered by Cruzs overwhelming win in Wisconsin on Tuesday, his campaign is moving aggressively to take advantage of the thaw, reaching out to some of the partys most prominent donors to seek a hearing. Many though not all said they were now far more inclined to take the senators calls. Former backers of Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida have hosted fundraising events or meet-and-greets for Cruz, even while some privately concede that they have their doubts about his temperament. Lots of people are giving him a second look, said John A. Catsimatidis, a New York investor and grocery store magnate who attended the event at the Knickerbocker Club. People are scared of Donald Trump, thats why. Starting Friday in Las Vegas, Trusted Leadership, the chief super PAC supporting Cruz, will host a gathering intended to draw new donors to the group, until now financed by a handful of wealthy families. Not coincidentally, the event will be held at the Venetian, the casino hotel owned by the Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, perhaps the most sought-after contributor of all. Kellyanne Conway, president of Trusted Leadership, summed up how prominent donors view of the Cruz-Trump fight had evolved. Its not just, Would you rather be shot or poisoned? she said. Now its, This isnt so bad. Cruzs challenge is to broaden his reach in the world of midlevel Republican fundraisers those who can raise tens or hundreds or thousands of dollars for his campaign and among the elite group of billionaires who could write larger checks to the super PACs supporting him. But doubts remain. Catsimatidis, one of about 30 people who attended the event at the Knickerbocker Club, pronounced Cruz very, very smart, but he said he wondered why out of 100 people in the Senate, 99 dont like him. Cruz is not always good at asking for help, sometimes giving the impression that he could as easily do without it. Even in private, donors said, he can be prone to sanctimony, disinclined to adjust his television-ready populism. Allies view Cruzs uncompromising style as a virtue, but they concede it can make life difficult on the donor circuit. Asked what was the biggest worry of prospective supporters, Doug Deason, a major Cruz donor in Dallas, did not hesitate. I think his personality, mostly, Deason said, before defending him as likable to those who get to know him. A wider embrace by donors has also been hampered in some quarters by genuine political disagreement between more middle-of-the-road potential donors and Cruz, a professed conservative purist on economic and social issues. Andy Sabin, a former Bush supporter who runs a Long Island precious metals company, said that when a fundraiser from Cruzs campaign reached out recently, he insisted on one condition. I told him, For me to have any interest in Ted, I need him to accept that the earth has warmed, and that we can solve the problem and create plenty of jobs, Sabin recalled. Sabin said he was offered a spot on one of Cruzs policy advisory committees, but that when he still asked that Cruz publicly voice a belief in climate change, he never heard back. Even a signal in the right direction would have been enough for him, Sabin said. All he had to do was say, we think its an issue for the general election, and maybe put Ted on the phone, Sabin said, adding, I felt I was being hustled for a donation. Cruz has reported raising only a few thousand dollars from registered lobbyists a mainstay of fundraising for Rubio and Bush suggesting that Cruz is still a tough sell among those he continues to deride as the Washington cartel. Cruz has taken to making light of his detente with former critics and opponents, donors and otherwise. When Cruz appeared recently on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the late-night host took note of his patience in winning new friends. What you did is, you kind of held out until they found someone that they liked less than you, Kimmel said. There you go, Cruz replied. Listen, it is a powerful strategy. WASHINGTON Vulnerable Republican incumbents are increasingly raising fears about Guantanamo Bay detainees, following a campaign strategy used by Scott Brown before his surprise victory in a Massachusetts special election for a Senate seat six years ago. On Monday, Sen. Mark S. Kirk of Illinois put forward a bill that would add Iran and Sudan to the list of troubled countries to which the military is not allowed to transfer Guantanamo detainees. He declared that allowing the transfer of these dangerous criminals to terror hot spots only makes it easier for them to rejoin in the fight against America. On Tuesday, Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire proposed a bill that would bar the transfer of any more Guantanamo detainees, regardless of the individual circumstances, to other countries until at least October 2017. She declared that the Obama administrations dangerous releases have allowed terrorists to return to the battlefield. Kirk and Ayotte both won their seats in the 2010 midterm elections as part of the Republicans sweeping wave of victories that year, but they are in danger of losing this fall because their states are leaning to the Democrats; Illinois and New Hampshire voted for President Barack Obama in 2012. They and three other Republicans who face similar challenges are using Guantanamo as a major campaign theme, adding to a recent pattern that has prompted Obama to observe that his proposal to close the prison which he argues costs too much and fuels anti-U.S. sentiment is a hard case to make because its easy to demagogue the issue. But with control of the Senate at stake in this election, the success or failure of the Guantanamo strategy may carry consequences far beyond the fate of the prison. If a Democrat wins the presidential election, he or she will have a far easier time governing including filling Supreme Court vacancies if Democrats pick up at least four Senate seats and regain a majority. Another endangered Republican is Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a state that Obama carried in 2012. Last month, Johnson declared that every remaining detainee was among the worst of the worst and should be locked up forever. In February, he introduced a bill called the Terrorist Release Transparency Act. It would force the government essentially to make public, two weeks before any transfer, who is leaving and where he will go, a step that could complicate the ability to reach the diplomatic deals that make many of the transfers possible. And the campaign websites of Pennsylvanias Patrick J. Toomey and Ohios Rob Portman, the other two Republican senators running for re-election in states won by Obama, feature petitions against the presidents plan to close the prison and to move the remaining detainees to a prison on domestic soil. A page on Portmans website juxtaposes a black-and-white photograph of the prison with a colorful photograph of a farm and invites visitors to Stand with Rob against Closing Guantanamo Bay and bringing terrorists to America! The candidates hope that highlighting Guantanamo will not only spur more Republicans to vote but also appeal to independents and moderate Democrats. A nationwide poll in March by The New York Times and CBS News found that Republicans favored keeping the prison open by 74 to 19 percent. Independents favored keeping it open 48 to 39 percent. Thirty-eight percent of Democrats said it should stay open, while 52 percent wanted it closed. Still, the candidates proposals can lack policy nuance. For example, Kirks bill barring the military from sending detainees to Iran or Sudan appears to be unnecessary. Current law already bans the transfer of detainees to countries deemed to be state sponsors of terrorism, and Iran and Sudan are both on that list. And none of the 89 remaining detainees are from either of those countries. While Ayotte is warning about the risk that detainees transferred by the Obama administration will return to the battlefield, intelligence data shows that all but seven of the 118 former detainees who are confirmed to have engaged in terrorist activity after their release (out of 676 transfers as of the most recent report) left the prison under the Bush administration. Those transferred as a result of the more individualized Obama-era decision-making process have been far less likely to cause problems. And despite Johnsons claim that every detainee who remains in the prison is the worst of the worst, none of the 35 recommended for transfer, if security conditions can be met in the receiving country, are linked to any terrorist plot. Most of them are Yemenis who went to Afghanistan before the 2001 terrorist attacks and are accused only of training to help the Taliban fight the Northern Alliance. They are stranded because their home country has been too chaotic to repatriate them. The strategy of Republican Senate candidates running in Democratic-leaning states by striking a hard line on terrorism detainee issues traces to the Jan. 19, 2010, special election to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat left vacant by Edward M. Kennedys death. Brown had been expected to lose, but after the attempted destruction of a Detroit-bound plane on Dec. 25, 2009, by a terrorist who hid a bomb in his underwear, Brown pounded on the theme that the Obama administration should have sent the terrorist to Guantanamo rather than handling him in the criminal justice system. (It later emerged that FBI interrogators persuaded the terrorist to provide large amounts of intelligence, and a civilian court later sentenced him to life in prison.) A beach party with bonfires promises lots of drinks and wet T-shirt and oil wrestling contests. The event at Huntington State Beach is catching fire on social media, but theres only one problem: Its not going to be allowed. The planned party June 18 shows an estimated 15,000 people interested in the event, and about 4,300 people hitting the going button on the #Calilovebeachparty event page set up on Facebook and as word spreads of the beach party, some Huntington Beach locals are voicing opposition to such an event. With summer approaching quickly, the hyped-up beach party brings up a question: At what point do officials draw the line in the sand for a public gathering? Huntington State Beach Public Safety Superintendent Kevin Pearsall said events are allowed at State Parks, but must go through a permitting process. He said officials have to shut down up to two dozen illegal events each year anything from church gatherings to family reunions or 5k events that have water stations set up. Its all a process; you cant just show up at a building and have a party, he said. Theres a procedure. Theres just too much liability for events people arent permitted for. Its not so much the number of people showing up, but what they bring with them, Pearsall said. If they are setting up speakers, staging or large cabanas, barbecues, or catering service, for example, some of those items need permitting and fire marshal approval, as well as additional fees paid to the state. If theres loud music, thats something that is going to draw attention to us, he said. Were going to be aware of it and shut it down. And dont even think about bringing red cups filled with booze alcohol isnt allowed on the sand at any beach without a permit. And even if you get a permit, theres the cost of having a State Parks peace officer on hand to monitor the event. Pearsall said even large gatherings without those items should get a permit, which costs $40. Most of the time, if someone is having a small wedding or family reunion, thats what they pay, he said. If they add items such as tents or sound systems, then insurance is required. It depends on the type of event. On the day of the controversial beach party, Pearsall said staff will be on hand to make sure beach capacity isnt exceeded, and patrols will be out making sure no unsanctioned events are happening. Even if the organizer who did not respond for comments on this story applied for a permit, its not an appropriate event for State Parks, Pearsall said. Weve had no contact with anyone regarding this event, he said. This event is not sanctioned. That was welcomed news to Huntington Beach resident Andy McGinnis, who is opposed to the event happening. The description of it just seems outrageous, said McGinnis, a 28-year-old from Huntington Beach. The people who are going to be going to that; it seems like its going to be a younger, out-of-town crowd that will have no respect for the beach and the people living here. Pearsall said that theres been events like this in the past advertised online that simply dont come to fruition. It could be a kid who was messing around and got a bunch of people to like the event. This one seems to be getting steam because of social media, he said. The Facebook event promises the most epic party of the summer of the year perhaps of your whole life! Hope you got your bikini body ready!!! it reads. An event called Wet Electric at the same beach in 2013 caused controversy, and organizers were denied an alcohol permit in the days leading up to the event. Thousands of people showed up, and Huntington Beach city officials said staffing for the Wet Electric music festival cost the city $32,000 and turned out several arrests and hospital transports. California State Lifeguards reported that two people were taken to the hospital, one for a suspected drug overdose. During that event, state peace officers handed out 44 tickets for possession of alcohol and arrested three people on drug-related charges. The promoters changed the event in recent years, last year dubbing it the Sundown Music Festival and adding more alternative music. This year, when the event happens in September, more country and rock may be added, said Pearsall. Last year, about 9,000 people showed up. We didnt have any back lash from the city and the event went really well, he said. McGinnis noted that even the U.S. Open of Surfing which has a long-standing reputation for its party crowd doesnt advertise the kind of scene touted at the #Calilovebeachparty event. They should hold it in the desert instead, McGinnis said. Contact the writer: lconnelly@ocregister.com Was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) a civic reformer? No, the authoritarian political thinker and tutor for Britains absolute monarch Charles II was anything but. Hobbes is famous for telling us we must surrender almost all our rights to the ruler to prevent a war of all against all. Yet Californias new draft History-Social Science Curriculum Framework tells teachers, textbook writers and test-makers that Hobbes was a mere meek and mild reformer. The state Department of Education closed public comment on the draft framework at the end of February, and the Instructional Quality Commission will soon submit the new curriculum framework for approval to the state Board of Education. Before they do so, lets hope the commission fixes some of the more egregious errors, fills in gaps, and removes ideological propaganda. Lets look first at supposed facts. Why is Olaudah Equiano (d. 1797) listed in the framework as the author of an exemplary slavery narrative, when research has shown that Equiano was born in America, not Africa, and that much of his narrative is false? Why does the framework pretend that Homers Iliad and Odyssey provide us with valid historical information on life in the Mycenaean era of ancient Greece, when hundreds of years of Dark Ages separate Homer from Mycenaean times? What about the gaps? Why when much of the turmoil in the Middle East today is aligned along the Sunni-Shia split is there no explanation of that split? The framework is filled with present-minded paraphrases of the uplifting rhetoric of the Progressives of early 20th-century America, but where is the Progressives devotion to eugenics and their opposition to African Americans getting an academic education? Why is Progressivism portrayed only as compassion, love, and goo-goo reform? Where are the centralization, the Imperial Presidency, the cult of efficiency, and the rule of experts that are integral to progressivism? Why is the only explanation given of economic crises is the Keynesian one, which was discredited by the stagflation of the 1970s? Where is the Chicago School explanation (monetary contraction) that was espoused by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman? Where is the Austrian School explanation (overinvestment induced by banking rules) that was espoused by Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek? Alexis de Tocqueville is mentioned, but where are his insights into the importance to American civilization of voluntary associations and local governments? The New Deals federal spending during the Great Depression is mentioned, but where is the fact that such spending was concentrated not on areas of greatest recent economic decline, but rather on areas where the New Deal political coalition was in trouble? The New Deal programs of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) and National Recovery Administration (NRA) are mentioned, but where is their intentional purpose to create government-sponsored monopoly schemes for whole industries? These monopoly arrangements were designed to suppress competition, cut production, and fix prices. The NRA and AAA were consciously influenced by corporativism, the industrial policy involving official governmental sponsorship of industry cartels and labor unions found in fascist Italy. The internment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s is mentioned, without analysis, in one place, but not in other appropriate places, and no mention is made of the endorsement of that internment by Earl Warren, Eleanor Roosevelt and a host of bien-pesant intellectuals and policymakers. How about ideological propaganda? Why does the framework give any credence to the baseless ideological claims of Hindu nationalists that ancient Indo-European was an indigenous language of India, instead of saying only as scholars have concluded that Indo-European speakers came south into India from the outside? Why are students to be taught as fact the Marxist theory of informal empire, which says that free trade without conquest is basically the same as empire based on conquest? Why do whole sections of the framework read as if they are pamphlets written by anti-globalization street protesters? At times, the framework gives privileged status to globalization critics, with all their talk of class conflict, exploitation, proliferating slums, promoting an Americanizing consumer culture, and displacing local cultures with a single homogenizing global fashion. Not just tendentious ideological propaganda, but indigestible jargon as well. There is plenty of room for corrections and improvements in this curriculum framework. Bill Evers is a research fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution and was an assistant U.S secretary of Education, 2007-09. Pico Iyers latest book, The Art of Stillness, is a slim volume in which he writes about going nowhere, and in doing so, finding a place he most wants to be. Heaven is the place where you think of nowhere else, Iyer declares at one point early in this ruminative book that on Wednesday hell discuss as part of a Register Book Club sold-out author event. By going to that place Iyer calls Nowhere a retreat, a half hour of stolen quiet, a place of personal stillness the return home is more colorful, vibrant, inspiring, he concludes. Which led us to a random observation formed from a flurry of flipping through the pages of several other books that Iyer has written: As a travel writer, poking around disparate corners of the planet to see what he can see, Iyer has often exhibited a deep and abiding curiosity about the meaning of home. Check out these following passages not only for the beauty of his writing but for that restless quest for his own place in the world. As I drifted out of the theater where I had seen Rambo, an into the warm Indonesian night, only one line from the movie really stayed with me. The heros boss, Colonel Trautman, had been discussing the maverick naked ape with the heartless Washington bureaucrat Murdock. What you choose to call hell, he had said of his explosive charge, he calls home. However inadvertently, that sentence suggested many of the other ideas that first sent me East: that home has nothing to do with hearth, and everything to do with a state of mind; that one mans home may be his compatriots exile; that home is, finally, not the physical place, but the role and the self we choose to occupy. I went to Asia, then, not only to see Asia, but also to see America, from a different vantage point and with new eyes. I left one kind of home to find another: to discover what resided in me and where I resided most fully, and so to better appreciate in both senses of the word the home I had left. From Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-so-Far-East, Knopf, 1988 The first fleeting taste of Japan felt like the answer to some unspoken question. For through whatever curious affinities propel us towards people or places we have never met, I had always been powerfully drawn towards Japan. Ever since boyhood, I had only to glimpse a Hokusai print of peasants huddled under driving rain, or to enter the cold beauty of a Kawabata novel, to feel a shock of penetrating recognition. For years, the mere mention of an inn, or snow country, or even a prefecture, had sent a shiver through me, and a chill. And though I knew almost nothing about Japan and had never had the chance to study it, I felt mysteriously close to the place, and closest of all when I read its poems the rainy-nights lyrics of Japanese women, the clear-water haiku of itinerant Zen monks. From afar, Japan felt like an unacknowledged home. From The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto, Knopf, 1991 Ive grown up, too, with a keen sense of the blessings of being unaffiliated; it has meant that almost everywhere is new and strange to me (as I am new and strange to it), and nearly everywhere allows me to keep alive a sense of wonder and detachment. Besides, the foreigner is in the rare position of being able to enjoy the facilities of a place without paying the taxes, and can appreciate the virtues of anywhere without being wholly subject to its laws. My complexion (like my name) allows me to pass as a native in Cuba, or Peru, or Indonesia, and none of them, in any case, is more foreign to me than the England where I dont look like a native, the America where Im classified as an alien, and the India where I cant speak a word of any of the almost two hundred languages. Enabled, I hope, to live a little bit above parochialisms, I exult in the fact that I can see everywhere with a flexible eye; the very notion of home is foreign to me, as the state of foreignness is the closest thing I know to home. From The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home. Knopf, 2000 Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@ocregister.com HIT, Iraq As they advanced on the Islamic State-held town of Hit, Iraqi counterterrorism troops had to decide how to press the attack. If they stormed in with armor and airstrikes, they risked heavy casualties and might allow the militants to flee. Gen. Abdel Ghani al-Asadi, the commander of the elite troops, chose a different approach: Surround the strategic western town with a slow and methodical cordon, trapping the extremists inside. Its a tactic thats been used elsewhere to claw back Iraqi territory that was seized by the Islamic State group in 2014. While the decision may have been more time-consuming, allowing the militants in Hit to dig in, lay defenses and launch attacks that initially also trapped tens of thousands of civilians, Iraqi forces believe the approach is a key to making their territorial gains stick and reduce their casualties. Six counterterrorism battalions pushed up from the west last weekend to cut off Hits northern edge, zigzagging in the soft desert terrain and taking more than 12 hours to advance only a few miles. We dont want them to be able to flee, al-Asadi said, referring to the Islamic State fighters. We want them to stay inside so we can finish them. If the militants escaped, he said, they would probably return and infiltrate the town once his men had moved on to the next battle. Hit, in Anbar province west of the capital of Baghdad, sits along an Islamic State supply line that links Iraqi territory controlled by the extremist group with its base in Syria. Officials in the Iraqi military and the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State believe that by clearing the town, they can build on recent territorial gains in the vast province. That would move them closer to two major goals: isolating the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, and linking up government forces in the west and the north in preparation for an eventual push on Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city that also is held by the extremist group. As Iraqi forces closed in on Hit, al-Asadi said he ordered the towns main bridge over the Euphrates River destroyed by a coalition airstrike to slow the flight of Islamic State fighters. In the days that followed, dozens of boats Islamic State used were also destroyed by coalition bombs, the Pentagon said. In the initial stage of the operation last month, some Islamic State militants sought to knit themselves further into the civilian fabric of the town. Fighters vanished from Hits main streets, occupying abandoned houses or forcing their way into homes where civilians were still living, according to residents who evacuated. They began moving more and more into the narrow side streets and the civilian areas, one resident told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to protect the safety of relatives still trapped in Hit. Al-Asadi said his men were increasingly finding fighters from the Islamic State group posing as civilian refugees. One of the ways we can tell is you can see they shaved their beards very quickly, al-Asadi said, smiling. They have cuts from the razor on their faces. Because tens of thousands of civilians were still inside Hit when the operation began, only about 20 coalition airstrikes per week were launched to clear territory, Iraqi commanders said. By contrast, coalition jets conducted 20 airstrikes in a single day when Iraqi forces retook the northern town of Sinjar last year and more than 60 in the week it fell. But Sinjar was smaller than Hit, and almost all civilians had left. The trickle of civilians from Hit turned into a flood on Monday as a column of Humvees carrying elite Iraqi forces began rolling through agricultural neighborhoods and then into residential blocks. Thousands of civilians filled Hits northern main road, the only route left open. A half-dozen Humvees escorted the initial wave of evacuating civilians, with elderly people in wheelchairs loaded onto the back of the vehicles. Troops shouted for children to stay within the tire tracks of the big vehicles, and farm animals were prodded into that safe path as well. A day earlier, dozens of bombs that had been sown by militants along the road had been cleared by the troops. While civilians were being loaded into trucks to be taken to a camp, one of the bombs exploded with a plume of orange smoke along the path they had just traversed. Commanders said it had been triggered prematurely and no one was hurt. All the while, helicopter gunships circled above, firing into the town. The evacuation further slowed the military operation, with dozens of vehicles and troops having to be pulled back from the front to control the crowd of civilians. They come toward our forces. They know that if they flee toward Daesh, they will be shot, said Brig. Gen. Sami Khathan al-Aradi, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. Al-Aradi admitted that the evacuation had brought military activity to a near halt at times, but he noted that these are orders from his fellow commanders. The streets are narrow. You cant move the civilians to the side because of all the roadside bombs, he said. A 19-year-old named Athra, who asked that her last name not be used in order to protect relatives still in Islamic State-held territory, said she understood why the Iraqi forces were moving slowly and deliberately around Hit and not allowing the militants to escape. They dont want them to just return after the fighting is over, said Athra, who originally was from Ramadi and left Hit with her family when clashes broke out in the streets around her home. She explained that many Anbar residents believe the rise of Islamic State in Anbar province was facilitated by the large number of al-Qaida sympathizers who moved back in or remained in towns and villages after U.S. forces withdrew in 2011 following the war. We dont want the same thing to happen again, she said. Congratulations to PayPal on depriving the people of North Carolina of their freedom of religion. The state of North Carolina wants to grant people the right not to do business with certain people due to deeply held religious reasons and beliefs. And, because of those beliefs, PayPal is withholding setting up a business operation there that would employ more than 400 people. PayPal apparently believes the company is within its rights not to do business with people and businesses it disagrees with. But another business cant have the same right? Wow. Sure makes me happy I now refuse to let PayPal handle my business. And will someone tell me whats wrong with expecting a person with either male or female genitals to use a washroom for their own, still-current, gender? They used to say, If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its a duck. I guess a high school boy can decide he feels like hes a she and then go into the girls bathroom and locker room. Paul Herzbrun Laguna Niguel Short-term rental, terminal nuisance Re: A defender of property rights now a foe of short-term rentals [Opinion, April 3]: I have always been a fan of Steven Greenhut, agree with most of his positions and missed having him as a regular contributor to the Register, but on this issue he is way off-base. Even conservatism and the market approach has limits and can go too far. Being able to own a home in a good neighborhood is one of the ways the middle class has thrived and survived the ups and downs of the economy and why it has been the American Dream. Why should people have to move away to accommodate those turning their homes into businesses? We have planning commissions and building codes for a reason, and self-policing is not the answer, either. If it worked, we wouldnt need police departments. Surely a middle way can be found but it should protect neighborhood character, and those who want to make a quick profit from their homes should be the ones who move away they could buy a motel instead of disturbing their neighbors. Phyllis Ross Fountain Valley BEIRUT More than 300 workers have been abducted by the Islamic State terrorist militia from a cement factory near Damascus, Syrias state television reported on Thursday. The abduction was confirmed by managers of the factory located near the town of al-Dumeir northeast of Damascus, the broadcaster reported, citing an unnamed official at the Syrian Industry Ministry. The company informed the ministry that it has not been able so far to communicate with any of the abductees, the broadcaster quoted the official as saying. The television did not say when the alleged abductions occurred. Residents in the nearby area of Giraud saw Islamic State vehicles carrying nearly 125 workers and heading to the militant-held town of Tel Dkoh on the edge of the eastern Ghotta region, local official Nadeem Krizan told Syrias official news agency SANA. However, the official did not account for the other workers reportedly seized by Islamic State. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, earlier said that 150 to 250 workers had gone missing since Islamic State launched an attack on the factory on Tuesday. The Britain-based watchdog added that the attack on al-Dumeir has so far killed at least 20 Syrian soldiers and allied paramilitaries. Islamic States latest attacks near Damascus are seen as retaliation for the military setbacks suffered by the al-Qaida splinter group elsewhere in Syria. Last month, Syrian regime forces, backed by Russian warplanes, drove Islamic State from the ancient city of Palmyra that the militants had controlled for 10 months. On Sunday, Syrian forces recaptured the town of al-Qaraytain, about 100 kilometers southwest of Palmyra, from Islamic State. Islamic State and al-Qaidas Syria branch, al-Nusra Front, are excluded from a major cease-fire that has been in force in Syria since February. The U.S.-Russian-brokered truce is aimed at boosting indirect peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition. A new round of the U.N.-sponsored talks is expected to start in Geneva next week. U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said Thursday that he would open a dialogue with regional powers supporting different sides in the Syrian war ahead of the new talks, to find out if they support a political transition in Syria. We all know and (the Syrians) themselves know that unless there is not an international, plus a regional sort of understanding in a certain direction, they may find it difficult to come to an understanding themselves, de Mistura told reporters in Geneva. In the coming days, De Mistura plans to travel to Iran and Syria, and to meet Turkish and Saudi officials in Europe, ahead of the round of indirect peace talks that are now expected to start on Wednesday. The U.N. Syria envoy clarified that he has not asked to see President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus but plans to meet Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem. Syrias partial ceasefire is also aimed at letting relief aid into Syrian towns besieged by regime forces and rebels. U.N. envoy Jan Egeland said that the Syrian government has blocked deliveries of international aid to beleaguered areas in the past days, warning that the slowdown of humanitarian efforts can hurt the peace process. Government authorities denied passage to four convoys that would bring aid to some 300,000 people in cities besieged by the army, he said, adding that opposition fighters blocked one Red Crescent aid delivery. Im disappointed, I am disheartened of what we achieved over the last week, said Egeland, who chairs a task force of global and regional powers that are supposed to negotiate humanitarian access with the conflict parties. The medical charity group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has warned that the humanitarian situation remains critical in Syria. The catalogue of horror continues virtually unabated in many besieged areas, Bart Janssens, the MSF director of operations, said in a statement. Over the past two weeks in the besieged areas in the Damascus region a doctor has been shot dead by a sniper, two of the field hospitals we support have been bombed, besieged neighbourhoods continue to be shelled, and medical aid is still blocked or restricted. The leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm, Mossak Fonseca, have revealed the inner workings of how very wealthy individuals move their money around as discretely as possible. The data leak has provided journalists with a treasure trove of information regarding the entities involved in many of these structures and how various jurisdictions are used to maximize privacy. In many countries, government and former government leaders are now facing lurid accusations of money laundering, tax evasion and violation of disclosure requirements. The resignation of the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, after almost 10 percent of population massed in front of his offices, is perhaps the most colorful example of the impact of the so-called Panama Papers. Approximately 11 million documents going back four decades were taken from Mossak Fonseca, representing by sheer size the biggest leak ever even exceeding the Edward Snowden incident. The German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung initially received the documents from an unnamed source, and then involved a number of journalists and media outlets around the world to mine the records for useful information. The documents revealed how numerous people in political power or their relatives and associates were able to repeatedly make use of offshore companies to mask suspicious and potentially illicit cash flows. Among the individuals named in the Panama Papers are Russian President Vladimir Putin, numerous people associated with the hermit kingdom of North Korea, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron. One immediate effect of this data hack has been to reinvigorate the debate over the proper role of tax havens in the modern global economy. By tax havens, we typically mean jurisdictions usually small countries in sunnier parts of the world that allow companies to be formed that do not pay corporate tax. Often, they are used as part of larger transactions and structures involving companies and financial institutions in large onshore countries like the United States and Britain. Over 15,000 offshore companies are named in the Panama Papers, with many formed by leading global banks such as UBS and HSBC. Mossack Fonseca has vigorously defended its actions over the past 40 years, insisting that they have never been accused of any criminal wrongdoing, and that they report any suspicious activities to the proper authorities. The global insurance and banking industries make regular use of these offshore companies to facilitate legitimate transactions that do not involve tax avoidance or money laundering. However, the Panama Papers reignites the debate over whether there is still an unacceptably large amount of illicit activities occurring in these jurisdictions, several of which including the Isle of Man, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Jersey and Guernsey are remnants of the British Empire and still under the indirect influence of London. Previously, Cameron had been vocal in his desire to combat tax evasion and the bank secrecy laws and practices that facilitate this loss of important revenue. Unfortunately, his fathers previous use of offshore vehicles has drawn unwanted attention to the awkward question of whether the prime minister continues to benefit from these arrangements, even though they were legal and permissible at the time. London itself benefits in many ways from the flow of funds through these tax havens. For example, the citys ultra-expensive luxury property market frequently involves the use of offshore companies to acquire trophy properties at exorbitant prices. Approximately 2,800 companies were formed by Mossack Fonseca to acquire over 6,000 properties in Britain. The value of these properties has been estimated at approximately $10 billion. Although the more emotive stories being written about the Panama papers focus on illicit tax evasion, at the heart of these revelations are more fundamental questions about privacy. For as long as there have been taxes, there has been tax evasion and there is little sign that this will ever change. Regardless of the presence or absence of offshore companies in a persons daily life, the decision to misrepresent your earnings and assets is a personal one. The desire for privacy in ones personal affairs, provided that the tax man is not shortchanged in his regular collections, is not in and of itself a moral wrong. There are many completely legitimate reasons for wanting to structure a business or organize ones personal affairs in a way that makes use of the service as provided by law firms such as Mossack Fonseca. However, for senior government officials who siphon off large sums of money from their constituents and use labyrinthine structures to avoid being caught with their hands in the cookie jar, more must be done to hold these individuals accountable. The ultimate lesson of the Panama papers, therefore, may be more about the greed of global political elites rather than the greed of global economic elites. Orange County writer and attorney Timothy Spangler hosts The Bigger Picture with Timothy Spangler, Sundays, 10 p.m.-midnight on KRLA 870 AM. Twitter: @timothyspangler Were inching closer to the launch of 365 by Whole Foods Market, a new, lower-priced grocery store that the organics giant is betting will help pull it out of a rough patch. Whole Foods has been under siege lately as supermarkets and big-box stores are dedicating more shelf space to organic food, and often doing it at lower prices. With 365, they hope to fight back and broaden that kind of customer they cater to. The first 365 store is slated to open May 25 in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Another one will open later in Los Alamitos. The company has offered fresh details on what the new store will look like and how executives will set out to lower prices. Jeff Turnas, president of 365 by Whole Foods Markets, said in an interview that he and his team have looked and turned over every stone to find efficiencies. That includes, for example, trying to lay out stores in a way that reduces the time it takes for a worker to get from the stockroom to the shelves. And it means thinking carefully about how to create attractive merchandising and displays on the cheap. Were not putting as much capital into these stores as we would a traditional Whole Foods, Turnas said. Even the product assortment in these smaller format outposts is designed in part with an eye toward greater efficiency. Bottled water, for example, is a category in which 365 wont have a particularly deep selection, because it takes a lot of effort to stock and because 365 executives dont believe their customer demands it. And with a center-aisle grocery item like olive oil, Turnas said, they tried to narrow the offerings. Rather than 50 or 60 olive oils, were going to have 10, Turnas said. But theyre going to be well-represented from around the world and [different] price points. Its not surprising that Whole Foods would need to more tightly curate its selection in a 365 store: After all, these small-format locations are expected to be about 30,000 square feet, compared to the 40,000 to 50,000 square feet that co-chief executive John Mackey has called the sweet spot for a typical Whole Foods. But these examples suggest that 365 wont simply be a line-up of the cheapest organic goods. It will be an experiment in whether a more ruthless efficiency in curation and stocking can help bring down prices across the store. The new 365 stores hope to have much in common with their sister operation, including high-quality meat and seafood and a sprawling produce department. There are key differences, though, including an emphasis on prepared food bars that Turnas said will be a little more get-it-yourself, self-serve than those in a traditional Whole Foods. 365 is also building its stores around a program called Friends of 365, in which it will turn over a small section of its square footage to like-minded retailers to make shopping more of an experience. The Silver Lake store will include a 1,245-square-foot vegan fast-casual restaurant called Chloe and a 396-square-foot Allegro Coffee Company bar that will serve craft coffee and beer. There will also be a kiosk called TeaBot built by a company of the same name that allows shoppers to create customized tea blends that are served up hot to the user in less than 30 seconds. Speculation has been running wild about what kinds of retailers might be included in Friends of 365, after several news stories touted that executives were considering tattoo parlors. (The website for the Friends program includes a blurb that calls for applications from food, fashion and personal care brands, but also says Record shop? Tattoo parlor? Maybe!) Turnas said they dont currently have any plans for tattoo parlors at upcoming stores, but the example was simply meant to show how wide a net they want to cast with the Friends program. It seems applicants have gotten the message Turnas said theyve received video pitches or other inquiries from at least one tattoo parlor, more than one marijuana dispensary, and a pet grooming business. The thought process for choosing the Friends will vary from location to location. While they liked New York-based Chloe for the Silver Lake store, Turnas said theyd be looking differently at partners for an upcoming store in Portland. Theyre very territorial, so it didnt seem right to bring people from outside the Portland area, Turnas said. Frustrated by their lack of marriage prospects, a group of single men in the Turkish village of Uzumlu have taken to the streets in protest. The women of the remote village are apparently refusing to accept any marriage proposalz made by the men because they do not want to be trapped there forever. And the men think theyre being ridiculous. The last wedding in Uzumlu took place nine years ago, and since then the population of the village has dwindled from 400 to 233. According to mayor Mustafa Bashbilan, many women have chosen to move away from the village to cities like Istanbul and Ankara, but the men stayed behind to care for their inherited farm lands. He added that the lack of prospective wives has made the men unhappy, although they are economically well off. In the recent protests, 25 men aged between 25 and 45 marched through the village carrying banners, demanding that the women come to terms with village life. One banner appealed to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan for help. Erdogan has been severely criticised for opposing birth control and asking women to bear at least three children, but the protesting men promised to impregnate their wives with five children if the president intervened in the matter. While I wouldnt put it past the Turkish President to take the men of Uzumlu up on their offer, I think it will take more than that to stop the footloose women of the village! Sources: Daily Mail, Al Arabia Hurtigruten, a Norwegian cruise line that sails Scandinavia and the Arctic and is eying global expansion, has consolidated global PR with Hill+Knowlton Strategies as it grows. Anne Marit Bjrnflaten, senior VP of communication for the Oslo-based cruise line, said the company wanted a global partner and found a strong fit with H+K after previously working with several agencies in various markets. Gambit H+K in Oslo will head the account with H+K's offices around the world contributing in each market, including Europe, the US and Asia Pacific. Hurtigruten is building its cruise empire from its iconic Norwegian Coastal Express trip. In addition to expanding its Antarctic voyages, the company plans expanded service in the Amazon River and Brazilian rainforest, as well as added Canadian ports to its Arctic cruises. Switching insurance providers is turning into a national past-time, a broker told me last week. Everyone is looking for what they hope will be cheaper cover for their car, their home and contents, for life and health insurance. Switching insurance providers is turning into a national past-time, a broker told me last week. Everyone is looking for what they hope will be cheaper cover for their car, their home and contents, for life and health insurance. Money Express with Jill Kerby in association with Aviva. Read the column first every Tuesday in the Offaly Express What not everyone is doing however, is filling out their application properly, and some of them are finding out how costly that could be. This particular broker says hes seeing an increase in people who have been rejected by insurers on the grounds of non-disclosure, that is, for not being entirely frank about their claims history or pre-existing health conditions. Underwriters, they say, are getting tougher. Not only have their claims gone up significantly in the past year due to weather events, but the recession has caused an upsurge in burglaries and other theft claims. Throw in lower investment returns on the insurers own portfolios, and premiums are on the rise. On-line discount motor or home insurance brokers in particular are able to offer lower premiums because not only are the policy benefits pared down, but they usully require you to both select the policy and fill out the forms yourself. The person at the end of the phone or internet is not there to double-check your answers and job your memory about previous claims. Not every case of non-disclosure is intentional, I was told. For example, I have a client who lived in rented accommodation, had a burglary soon after they moved in they didnt have an alarm but made a successful claim on their contents-only policy. A couple of years later, they bought a house, had a burst pipe and made a claim. But this new claim was rejected after the insurer discovered they had a previous payout they hadnt declared, because they didnt think they had to. Not only that, but the insurer declined to renew their policy and no other company would take it either. I was able to convince their home insurer to change their mind, but only with a sizeable premium loading. Once upon a time, the insurer might have overlooked a case like this depending on the size of the claim but not now, says the broker. Being on the Irish Insurance Link register as having had a claim rejected for non-disclosure could affect future insurance applications as well, he added. It isnt just motor and home policies that require full disclosure. Others include: Life insurance All applicants must reveal if theyve ever been turned down for life cover, but also their own medical history (including medical investigations) and that of their immediate family, like parents and siblings who suffered various diseases, conditions and /or their cause of death. Depending on the cause of your death, not disclosing this information could result in the death benefit not being paid to dependents or beneficiaries. Income protection insurance: This pays all or part of your income up to retirement if needs be, in the event of illness or disability. But it too requires that the applicant not just reveal any existing medical condition and previous health claims, but also give an accurate disclosure of the type of job you do. Claiming to be an administrator when in fact youre a construction foreman, is always going to end in tears if you want income protection insurance. Health/Serious Insurance: You must reveal pre-existing medical conditions if you apply either for private health insurance or serious (also known as specific) illness policies, the latter of which pay tax-free lump sums in the event you suffer one of the listed illnesses or conditions. Premiums are not affected (due to our community rated system) but health insurance exclusion periods are typically up to five years in duration. This means that you cannot expect to claim benefits related to any treatment or services regarding a heart condition, for example, until the exclusion period ends. (In the case of maternity cover, you cant make a claim for the first 52 weeks in which you are an insured member.) A previous serious illness that you have survived does not discount you from getting a policy quotation, but that condition may not be covered or the premium is likely to be higher, say brokers. Not disclosing a previous serious illness is likely to result in any claim being rejected. Travel Insurance You have to be extra careful regarding travel insurance, say brokers, referring to how some policies are automatically issued as part of a some bank or credit card company accounts. If youve made a travel claim in the past, and now have a gift policy with your bank/credit card account, check with your bank or read the new policy carefully to ensure that previous claims will not prevent new ones being honoured on non-disclosure grounds. Independent brokers always want insurance customers to come to them rather than search the web for discount providers. I think theres a place for both, the latter if you are diligent about examining all the terms and conditions very carefully before you buy the policy. Since reading contracts extra carefully is something few of us ever do, using a good, experienced broker (and a fee based one for any investment related policies) might save you a great deal of money someday. Carlyle Cardinal Ireland (CCI), the Irish private equity fund established by The Carlyle Group and Cardinal Capital Group, has finalised the terms of its investment in Carroll Cuisine, backing a management buy-out of the company from Aryzta AG. Carlyle Cardinal Ireland (CCI), the Irish private equity fund established by The Carlyle Group and Cardinal Capital Group, has finalised the terms of its investment in Carroll Cuisine, backing a management buy-out of the company from Aryzta AG. The transaction, terms of which are not being released, is expected to close in the second quarter of 2015. Kieran Carolan, CEO, Carroll Cuisine, said, As the largest equity investment fund in the Irish market coupled with extensive experience working with branded food companies both within Ireland and internationally, CCI is the ideal partner to support the future growth of the business. Carroll Cuisine is now well placed to maintain our strong business momentum, and to further consolidate our position as the leading supplier of cooked meats and chilled ready meal meals in the country. Our focus will be on continuing new product development and innovation to support further expansion of the business. The companys existing management team CEO Kieran Carolan, COO John Comerford and Finance Director Fiona Delaney have acquired a shareholding in the business and will continue in their leadership roles. Jonathan Cosgrave, a Carlyle Director and John Dolan, a Cardinal Director, will join the board of Carroll Cuisine. Carroll Cuisine produces and distributes branded and private label pre-packed sliced cooked meats, deli hams, chilled ready meals and other chilled food products, supplying large grocery retailers and convenience stores across Ireland. The company employs 150 people in Tullamore. Carlyle Director Jonathan Cosgrave, said: Carroll Cuisine is a great example of the type of high quality business CCI seeks to invest in a proven company driven by a brand with a unique heritage and consumer appeal, and with a track record of growth and innovation. We are excited to partner with the management team and believe that CCIs investment will help the management team achieve their ambitions. Cardinal Director John Dolan, commented: The food sector is a core focus for our investment fund. We see this as a first step in building a larger company with a broader portfolio of chilled food businesses in Ireland. The combination of Carroll Cuisines leading market position and state-of-the-art production facilities in Tullamore provides a strong platform to expand and grow as the leading Irish chilled food supplier. Hilliard Lombard, Chief Executive of ARYZTA Europe and Asia Pacific, said: We are pleased to see how Carroll Cuisine flourished under our ownership. Considerable investment in the company over recent years has enabled the brand to expand its presence in existing and new markets, increasing sales in the process. We wish the team continued success. Mr. Lombard added: ARYZTAs programme of investment in Ireland continues. We are advancing our ARYZTA Food Solutions and ARYZTA Bakeries businesses from our 200 million centre of excellence in Grangecastle, with further growth developments anticipated this year. Equity for the investment will come from CCI, a 292 million Irish private equity fund focused on growth capital and buyout investment opportunities across Ireland, whose investors include the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and Enterprise Ireland. The fund has also made investments in the Kildare-based premium chocolate manufacturer Lily OBriens, General Secure Logistics Services (GSLS), an Irish cash management solutions provider, and Payzone, the largest provider of multi-channel consumer payments across Ireland. Norman Browne is organising an 80s and 90s themed night at Tullamore Rugby Club on February 14 in honour of his late mother, Aileen Browne. Norman Browne is organising an 80s and 90s themed night at Tullamore Rugby Club on February 14 in honour of his late mother, Aileen Browne. Originally from Dublin, but living in Tullamore for the last 12 years, Norman hopes to welcome a large crowd to the event on the night. Normans mother passed away suddenly in 2006 at the age of 56 following a short battle with a disease she didnt know she had. Aileens family subsequently found out on their mothers death certificate when it was revealed that she had in fact died of cardiac arrest as a result of sarcoidosis. The event is being organised in conjunction with The Irish Sarcoidosis Support Network (ISARC) at 9pm on Valentines night. DJ on the night will be midland radio veteran Barry Flynn from Clara, and the organisers are hoping the theme will attract a nostalgic crowd for a night of singing and dancing. Tickets, priced at 10, can be purchased at the door, or bought from Norman Browne at 086-1920920. Fancy dress is optional, but there will be a prize for the best dressed if you do make the effort. So, channel your inner Boy George and head over to Tullamore on February 14 for a terrific night for a great cause. Norman and his family have chosen this time of year because that particular weekend on February 15 marks the 9th anniversary of their mothers death. We hope that one day all our efforts will finally help to create more awareness of sarcoidosis, and hopefully a cure will be found, Norman told us this week. Sarcoidosis is an auto-immune disease, primarily affecting the heart and lungs, which causes an abnormal immune response, resulting in an excess build-up of white blood cells that leads to the formation of granulomas on the affected organ. Sarcoidosis can also affect the eyes, lymph-nodes, and skin. Sarcoidosis is a difficult disease to diagnose as the symptoms can be very similar to a number of other diseases, and there is no definitive test, although a chest x-ray and lung function test can highlight a problem. It can advance to a critical stage with the sufferer unaware until it is too late. The cause is as yet unknown, but sarcoidosis affects around 5,500 people in Ireland, five times as many people currently suffering from Cystic Fibrosis. In fact, Ireland has one of the highest instance rates of sarcoidosis in the world. There is no cure. Without knowing it, Aileen Browne was actually experiencing the symptoms now associated with sarcoidosis for a short time before her death, but after visiting the doctor, no chest x-ray was ordered. Her symptoms included: extreme fatigue, joint and muscle pain, weight loss, a persistent dry cough, loss of appetite, and occasional anxiety attacks. She became withdrawn, and her son explains that this was very much out of character for his vibrant mother: My mam was small in stature at a shade over 5ft, but she was big in personality and fun. My mother in her youth in Mayo was a champion Irish dancer, and I still recall her even in her early 50s, dancing across the kitchen floor with a 1-2-3 step, giving an almighty high kick at the end. On February 14, 2006, Aileens husband Pat phoned for an ambulance, and the paramedics rushed his wife to St. Jamess Hospital in Dublin. I can only imagine how hard it was for my father to phone for that ambulance that day, but it was the biggest expression of love he could give for his wife who had become so frail and weak, Norman said. Norman remembers the short time he spent in the hospital with his mother before she died. It was just myself, my dad and sister, and my then fiancee Joan (now wife). My mam died the very next day after suffering a heart attack. Ill never forget seeing the vacant look on my mams face as her bottom lip quivered when trying to take a tablet. I called for nurses and doctors, but she died just moments later, he added. Norman then had to phone his brothers, who were both working abroad in France and New Zealand. Telling my brother Gavin in Paris that mam had died was gut-wrenching. Norman had great difficulty tracking down his youngest brother David in New Zealand. He tried to contact him at backpackers places he may have been staying at, and eventually discovered he was on a bus to Queenstown. He found the place he was staying and asked them to get his brother to contact home as soon as he arrived. Norman couldnt tell David the news over the phone when he spoke to him, and instead told him to get home quickly because mam was not very well. When David arrived in Dublin airport, he asked my Dad and I to bring him straight to see mam, Norman recalled. We then told him that mam had died, and the three of us just burst into tears, he added. Telling him was the hardest thing Ive ever done. Months would pass before the Browne family had some answers, when their mothers death certificate stated that her cardiac arrest was caused by complications due to sarcoidosis. My mother never knew she had this disease, and it is only now that we can hopefully achieve something with ISARC to pay homage to the great example she set in bringing up her family, Norman said. I hope by holding this event and by holding events like The David Kelly Black Tie Ball, and The Marian Geraghty 10k/5k road race, we can help to create a better network of support for the thousands of people suffering with this under-researched illness in Ireland. For more information about sarcoidosis and ISARC, visit www.isarc.ie. To buy tickets for Normans 80s and 90s themed night, you can contact him on 086-1920920 or by email at normpsb77@yahoo.ie. Chairperson of ISARC, Mary Walters can also be contacted about this event and the charity itself on 087-0648070. Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly... At 4:16 p.m. afternoon shift Omaha Police Gang Unit Officers received information that the red Toyota Camry was located in the parking lot of Sols Jewelry and Loan at 3110 L St. The vehicle was unoccupied. Within a few minutes after Omaha Police Gang Unit Officers arrived at Sols, they observed two adult males exit the store and walk to the vehicle. One of the adult males, who was later identified as Lance McIntire (Date of Birth 12-15-71) entered into the drivers seat and locked the doors of the vehicle as Gang Officers approached the vehicle. The second male party, who was later identified as Gregory Day (Date of Birth 06-09-67), was detained by Omaha Police Gang Officers before he was able to enter the vehicle. Mr. McIntire refused to comply with loud verbal commands given by the officers to exit the vehicle. The officers attempted to break out the window of the vehicle to apprehend Mr. McIntire, but were unsuccessful. Additional Gang Officers arrived at the scene to assist in detaining the suspects. A total of five marked and unmarked Gang Unit vehicles attempted to block in the Camry. Two of the vehicles were equipped with red and blue emergency lights that were activated. A total of eight Gang Unit Officers had arrived on scene. The Gang Unit Officers were dressed in police tactical vests. The vests are clearly marked with the word Police and an Omaha Police Badge on the vest. Three witnesses, including Mr. Day were interviewed by the Officer-Involved Investigations Team detectives. During their interviews, they all stated that they clearly recognized the Gang Unit Officers as Police Officers. Omaha Police Gang Unit Officer Dale Thomas, along with his partner Officer Rob Wiley, was the last cruiser that arrived at Sols. Officer Thomas parked his marked cruiser facing in the direction of the Camry. The red and blue emergency lights on Officer Thomas cruiser were activated. Officer Thomas got out of his cruiser and walked to the rear of the cruiser to the open trunk. Officer Thomas was looking inside of the trunk for a glass breaking tool. Officer Thomas then walked from the rear of his cruiser around to the drivers side. Officer Thomas was positioned in a seven and a half foot gap between his cruiser and another Omaha Police Gang Unit cruiser when Mr. McIntire accelerated and drove the Camry directly towards him. In order to escape, Mr. McIntire drove the Camry in between the narrow gap between the Omaha Police Gang Unit cruisers. While doing so, the Camry collided with the sides of all three of the police vehicles, two of which were marked police vehicles with red and blue emergency lights activated. The collision caused the rear bumper of the Camry to be completely ripped off of the vehicle. Officer Thomas was directly in the path of the Camry. Officer Thomas was interviewed by an Officer-Involved Investigations Team detective. During the interview, Officer Thomas stated the he feared he was going to be run over. The investigation found that Officer Thomas did not intentionally put himself in harms way. In order to escape the gap between the cruisers, Officer Thomas retreated back to the rear of his cruiser while simultaneously shooting his handgun at Mr. McIntire. Officer Thomas discharged his duty weapon 16 times in less than five seconds at Mr. McIntire. The front hood and windshield of the Camry were struck by gunfire. Officer Thomas continued to shoot at the Camry, striking the drivers side of the vehicle as it passed by his position. Mr. McIntire was struck by the gunfire and was incapacitated. Mr. McIntires vehicle continued out of the parking lot in a half circle pattern out of control. The Camry veered off the west side of 31st Street and crashed into a retaining wall on the northwest corner of the intersection at 31st and L Streets. At 4:23 p.m. a citywide Help an Officer call was broadcast by Douglas County 911. At 4:24 p.m. Officers asked for a rescue squad to their location for a person who was shot. The Officers at the scene immediately provided first aid and began CPR on Mr. McIntire before the Omaha Fire Department Ambulance arrived. Mr. McIntire was transported to the Nebraska Medicine ER in critical condition. Mr. McIntire succumbed to his injuries at Nebraska Medicine ER. Mr. McIntires vehicle was struck thirteen times. A total of sixteen shell casings were recovered at the scene. Mr. McIntire sustained four gunshot wounds. Thomas duty weapon is a .40 caliber Glock. All casings located at the scene were .40 caliber. No other officers fired their weapon during this incident. No other citizens or officers were injured during this incident. This entire incident was captured on surveillance cameras and cruiser video cameras. There were a total of four video systems with seven different angles that recorded this incident. During a search of the Camry, detectives found a Browning .22 caliber semi-automatic handgun. The handgun was not loaded. The handgun was found inside of a bag located in the back seat of the vehicle along with some items of clothing. Detectives also found suspected methamphetamines inside of the vehicle with an estimated street value of $1,200.00. The suspected methamphetamine field tested positive. Mr. McIntire was a convicted felon with an extensive criminal history with over 255 entries dating back to 1986. Mr. McIntire had a felony warrant for possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver and misdemeanor warrants for driving during suspension and failure to pay child support. The Network for Public Education, a nonprofit education advocacy group co-founded by historian Diane Ravitch, is calling for a national "opt out" of high-stakes standardized testing, urging parents across the country to refuse to allow their children to participate in this spring's testing. In a video released on the network's website, Ravitch says families should opt out of state-mandated high-stakes testing in part because the scores provide "no useful information" about the abilities of individual students and are unfairly used to evaluate educators. She also notes that testing and test prep take up valuable class time that could be better put to use providing students with a full curriculum, including the arts. "Opt out is the only way you have to tell policymakers that they're heading in the wrong direction," Ravitch says in the video, aimed at parents. Ravitch has been the titular leader of the movement against corporate school reform since the publication of her 2010 book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," which explains why she had abandoned her support for No Child Left Behind and test-based school reform. From 1991 to 1993, she worked as assistant secretary in charge of research and improvement in the Education Department of President George H.W. Bush and served as counsel to then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander. She was a supporter of No Child Left Behind, the chief education initiative of President George W. Bush, until she researched its effects on schools and students and concluded that it led to a narrowing of curriculum, an obsession with test prep and demoralized teachers. What has become known as the "opt out" movement has been growing in various states for a few years, sparked by standardized test-based school reform that began under the administration of the younger Bush and gained steam under President Barack Obama. A growing number of parents are refusing to allow their children to take tests that they believe and that assessment experts say are being used in an improper manner to evaluate students and teachers. Last year, the opt-out movement was strongest in New York state, where about 20 percent of students refused to take the state's "accountability" test, but tens of thousands of students in other states did the same thing. In fact, the U.S. Education Department issued more than a dozen letters to states where opt-outs were reported, warning them of possible sanctions if at least 95 percent of all students are not tested. The 95 percent threshold is set in federal K-12 education law, first in No Child Left Behind and then in its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act. In New York, officials reacted to the opt-out movement by making the mandated tests shorter, removing time limits and temporarily saying that the scores won't be used to evaluate teachers for years. Betty Rosa, the newly elected chancellor of Board of Regents, the state's education policy-making body, said that if she had children who were of an age to take the state-mandated Common Core tests, she would keep them home on testing day. The Network for Public Education is a coalition of dozens of groups that advocate for public education. It recently issued a state report card that evaluated states on criteria seen as promoting a professional teaching force, equitable and sufficient funding, and equal opportunities for all students to succeed. The nonprofit National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, which fights the misuse of government-mandated standardized tests, says on its website that the average student takes 112 tests between kindergarten and 12th grade and that the assessments "are frequently used in ways that do not reflect the abilities of students of color, English language learners, children with disabilities, and low-income youth." Indeed, Yohuru Williams, Fairfield University professor and a board member of the Network for Public Education, has argued that annual high-stakes testing feeds racial determinism. He said in a statement: "Choosing to opt out is one way of fighting back against the tide of corporate education reform with its emphasis on high-stakes testing, which has had a traumatizing effect on young people. We have a moral responsibility to demand that the government attack the real source of inequality in American society, which is poverty, rather than promoting schemes that discourage rather than encourage social justice." Both FairTest and the United Opt Out National, a grass-roots organization affiliated with the network, have information on their websites about opting out. FairTest says that despite threats from policymakers, it knows of no school or district that has been sanctioned for testing opt-outs. *** Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog. BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) An Argentine prosecutor on Thursday asked for an investigation into President Mauricio Macris role in offshore companies, adding to the global fallout from a massive leak of documents from a Panama law firm. Federal prosecutor Federico Delgado made the request, according to a court document. Under Argentine law, such a request is the precursor to charges. Delgado argued that an investigation is necessary to see whether Macri maliciously omitted his role in two offshore companies in his annual tax declarations. Macri has said they were family businesses and he was a figurehead receiving no compensation. BERLIN (AP) The European Union has threatened to sanction countries that continue to refuse to cooperate fully to fight money laundering and tax evasion, after a leak of data showed that Panama remains a key destination for people who want to hide money. A leak of 11.5 million documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca showed that it had helped thousands of individuals and companies from around the world to set up shell companies and offshore accounts in low-tax havens. Because such accounts often hide the ultimate owner of the money, they are a favored tool to launder money, pay bribes or evade taxes. So far the scandal has brought down the leader of Iceland and raised questions about the dealings of the president of Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, famous actors and athletes and the circle of friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who some allege has profited indirectly from such accounts. People are fed up with these outrages, said Pierre Moscovici, who heads financial affairs for the 28-nation EU. He took to task countries such as Panama that facilitate secretive, low-tax accounts. The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking, he said. Speaking of countries like Panama, he said the EU has to be ready to hit them with appropriate sanctions if they refuse to change. Panama is listed by the EU as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, and Moscovici urged the country to rethink its position in this regard. The Central American countrys government said late Wednesday it is creating an international committee of experts to recommend ways to boost transparency in its offshore financial industry. President Juan Carlos Varela said the committees findings will be shared with other nations so joint action can be taken to boost transparency in legal and financial centers worldwide. But Varela defended Panama against what he called a media attack by wealthy nations that he says are ignoring their own deficiencies and unfairly stigmatizing Panama. Europe is also home to countries with a record of serving as tax havens and providing banking secrecy: Luxembourg, Switzerland and Andorra, among others. The United States has also become a haven, with several states, including Wyoming and Delaware, now popular places to open anonymous accounts that are cheap to maintain and pay little or no local tax. Since the first reports were published Sunday, prominent politicians, celebrities and businesspeople have seen their offshore business dealings dragged into the spotlight. On Thursday, the German newspaper that first obtained the Panama Papers said it wont publish all the files, arguing that not all are of public interest. Sueddeutsche Zeitung received the documents from an unidentified source more than a year ago and shared at least parts of them with dozens of other media outlets around the world. Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the complete set of 11.5 million documents wont be made available to the public or to law enforcement agencies. Thats because the SZ isnt the extended arm of prosecutors or the tax investigators. The Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped coordinate reporting on the leaks, also said it will not release personal data en masse but mine the information for details of public interest. It was not clear if the German paper had shared all the data with the consortium and other media outlets or signed an accord with them on what could be reported on. Authorities have legal powers to obtain such documents from those suspected of wrongdoing, and in many cases theres no public interest in revealing companies or individuals offshore business dealings, the Munich-based paper said. Responding to readers queries about the absence of prominent German or American politicians in the reports, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said such names havent yet been found in the documents. It said the documents include copies of the passports of 200 Americans, and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore companies listed addresses in the United States. One possible reason why comparatively few Americans appear in the documents could be that U.S. citizens have no reason to contact a law firm in Panama, the paper said. Thats because offshore companies can easily be created in U.S. states such as Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada. Convicted Lincoln banker Gilbert Lundstrom has appealed the 11-year prison sentence he was given last month after being found guilty of the fraud that sank TierOne Bank in 2010. Lawyers for the former TierOne chief executive said in court papers filed this week that they are appealing both the November conviction in a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Lincoln and the subsequent sentence. The notice of appeal is to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. The challenge is to the constitutionality of the sentence and the application of sentencing guidelines, according to the documents. No narrative is part of the appeal form that lawyers filed, but in previous filings they strenuously contested the guilty verdict and suggested that Lundstrom, 74, would be adequately punished with a much lesser sentence. Lundstrom was found guilty after testimony from two of his former lieutenants, James Laphen and Don Langford, who pleaded guilty in the case. Laphen last month was sentenced to 34 months in prison, Langford 21 months. Prosecutors said all three were part of a scheme to hide loan losses at TierOne, once the second-largest bank in the state with $3.3 billion of assets. In the end, the subterfuge was caught and regulators seized and shut TierOne as insolvent in 2010; investors lost everything. Langford and Laphen are scheduled to report to prison in June. Lundstrom was taken into custody immediately after being sentenced last month. Contact the writer: 402-444-3197, russell.hubbard@owh.com ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) President Vladimir Putin on Thursday denied having any links to offshore accounts and described the Panama Papers leaks scandal as part of a U.S.-led plot to weaken Russia. He denied any element of corruption. Putin also defended a cellist friend named as the alleged owner of an offshore company, describing him as a philanthropist who spent his own money to buy rare musical instruments for Russian state collections. Speaking at a media forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said Western news media publicized claims of his involvement in offshore businesses even though his name didnt feature in any of the millions of documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm this week. The still-unfolding disclosures of unseemly financial dealings have prompted denials from rich and powerful people in countries around the world. Putin described the allegations as part of a U.S.-led disinformation campaign aimed at weakening Russias government. They are trying to destabilize us from within in order to make us more compliant, he said. The U.S. is worried about Russias growing economic and military might, as demonstrated in its recent intervention in Syria, he said. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, based in Washington, said the documents it obtained indicated that Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin acted as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists and, perhaps, the president himself. The consortium said the documents show how complex offshore financial deals channeled as much as $2 billion to a network of people linked to the Russian president. Putin said Roldugin did nothing wrong. He said he was proud of the musician, who has worked to organize concerts, promote Russian culture abroad and effectively paid his own money for that. The more people like him we have, the better. HASTINGS, Neb. Central Community College-Hastings capped its 50th anniversary celebration on Wednesday with an afternoon tree-planting ceremony just southeast of the Platte Building near the center of campus. CCC-Hastings President Bill Hitesman welcomed the various guests for the ceremony, including Central Community College administrators from all three campuses, staff members from the Hastings Campus, administrators from the college administrative offices in Grand Island, retired CCC administrators and current members of both the CCC Board of Governors and the Central Community College Foundation Board of Directors. Hitesman noted that all have combined efforts to make Central Community College what it is today. There were also several representatives from the Hastings Area Chamber of Commerce. Hitesman cited Dick McFeely, who worked for many years as the assistant manager for the Grand Island Chamber of Commerce, as one of several people who promoted the idea of creating a community college to provide career and technical education to people living and working in Central Nebraska. At that time, there was only one location in the state the Nebraska Vocational Technical School in Milford. However, a number of Central Nebraska residents, including McFeely, the late Richard Good, who was president of the Grand Island Chamber of Commerce, the late Ken Wortman of Aurora and many others, believed that career and technical education needed to be more accessible for people in other parts of Nebraska, specifically those living in the Hastings and Grand Island regional area. Proponents of such a school believed a post-secondary education institution was especially needed by residents who already were working and would be considered place-bound because of their jobs and families. Central Nebraska residents voted to establish Central Nebraska Area Technical School on May 10, 1966, with classes for 196 students beginning on the Hastings campus in September. Central Community College-Hastings was able to open so quickly because it took over buildings and land that were once part of the Naval Ammunition Depot east of Hastings. A number of Naval Ammunition Depot buildings are still being used by CCC-Hastings today, although many have been renovated over the years. Today, the Hastings campus offers 28 career education programs in addition to providing courses in 17 areas for students who plan to complete two years at CCC before transferring to four-year colleges and universities to complete bachelors degrees. Central Community College President Greg Smith said that the college has always been focused on student learning and student success through its first 50 years, and predicted that it will retain that same focus for the next 50 years. Officials hailed the tree planting as being symbolic of planting the seed for success. The 50th anniversary celebration on the Hastings campus got an early start with free Starbucks coffee being served in the remodeled Hall Student Union snack bar, starting at 7 a.m. and continuing until 7 in the evening. As part of the 50th anniversary celebration, the Hastings Area of Chamber of Commerce held a Business Before Hours gathering at the Hall Student Union that culminated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the remodeled building. Following the tree-planting ceremony, many people went inside to enjoy food prepared by culinary arts students at CCC-Hastings. People also were given the opportunity to take 30-minute highlight tours of the campus. As part of CCCs 50th anniversary, special events also are scheduled for the campuses in Grand Island and Columbus, as well as in other locations throughout the 25-county area served by Central Community College. A total of 50 trees are scheduled to be planted, with plans calling for two trees to be planted in the community that serves as the county seat for each of the colleges 25 counties. The Grand Island campus is scheduled to have its celebration on Sept. 22, while the Columbus campus is scheduled for Nov. 2. Celebrations also are planned for the learning centers in Kearney, Lexington, Ord and Holdrege. Seventh Pay Commission: Employees to get only 14.27% hike in basic pay now BASIC Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa The 22nd BASIC Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change was held in New Delhi, India on and April 6th and 7th 2016. BASIC group consists following nations: Brazil, South Africa, India and China. The meeting was attended by Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Mr. Prakash Javadekar, Special Representative for Climate Change of China, Mr. Xie Zhenhua, Under Secretary-General for the Environment, Energy, Science and Technology, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, Ambassador Antonio Marcondes, and Chief Director, International Climate Change Relations and Negotiations of South Africa, Mr. Maesela Kekana. India has said that the BASIC group has played a proactive and constructive role in combating global climate change and in the international climate change negotiations, which led to the successful adoption of the Paris Agreement. Mr. Javadekar at the meeting: Addressing a joint press conference with Ministers of BASIC group, Minister of State of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar said that it is an opportune time for the BASIC group to renew its efforts in the post-Paris period, invigorating the steps taken domestically, as well as internationally to address climate change. Mr. Javadekar further added that, "I feel glad that the Paris Agreement recognises the imperatives of sustainable patterns of consumption and production, with developed countries taking the lead, and climate justice in strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty". He also emphasised that the BASIC group has been a strong advocate of the principle of 'Differentiation" and operationalisation of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) in the climate change regime. The Minister also highlighted that BASIC countries have started taking pre-2020 actions, more than what is expected and much beyond their capacity. Mr. Javadekar expressed the hope that the developed world will make an all-out effort to mobilise $ 100 billion, which was an essential feature of Paris agreement. #BASICPOWER Hope developed world will mobilize $100billion, which was an essential feature of #ParisAgreement pic.twitter.com/oP9BwsOsFD Prakash Javadekar (@PrakashJavdekar) April 7, 2016 Joint Statement: A Joint Statement was made at the end of the meeting. Here are some important points that were made in the statement. #BASICPOWER Video link of joint statement after conclusion of 22nd Basic Ministerial Meeting:https://t.co/hHv6refLSJ pic.twitter.com/zRmrTNWjqs Prakash Javadekar (@PrakashJavdekar) April 7, 2016 1. Ministers underlined that the Paris Agreement is meant to enhance the implementation of the Convention and is comprehensive, balanced and ambitious. It also reiterates the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR & RC). 2. Ministers underlined that the Paris Agreement recognises the imperatives of sustainable patterns of consumption and production, with developed countries taking the lead, and the importance of climate justice, in strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change. 3. Ministers commended the efforts by BASIC countries and other developing countries in tackling climate change, both pre- and post-2020, and emphasised that these represent far more ambitious efforts compared to their respective responsibilities and capabilities. 22nd BASIC Meeting - Discussing the way forward and how to implement the Paris Accord. pic.twitter.com/7Te58swq3S MoEF&CC (@moefcc) April 7, 2016 4. The BASIC countries look forward to signing the Paris Agreement on 22 April 2016 during the High-Level Signature Ceremony convened by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. 5. The Ministers reiterated that Parties' contributions, termed as 'Nationally Determined Contributions' (NDCs), are to be country driven and comprehensive. 6. The Ministers stressed the differentiated obligations in mitigation actions of developed and developing countries, as well as for the provision of support, and emphasised that developed countries should continue to take the lead. 7. They also recalled that the Paris Agreement specifically mentions that the time frame for peaking will be longer for developing countries. Ministers felt that proper anchoring of differentiation in contributions of developed and developing countries is a sound basis for ambitious actions. 8. Ministers also underscored the need for financial support to developing countries for effective implementation of their mitigation and adaptation actions through accelerating the work on the new Technology Framework and the Technology Mechanism including its assessment for a meaningful and tangible dissemination, transfer and deployment of technology from developed to developing countries. They also emphasised on the role of innovation and international cooperation in enhancing global actions. 9. Ministers welcomed the setting up of the Paris Committee, a new institutional mechanism for enhancing capacity building activities in developing countries, and urged developed countries to provide financial support for capacity building in developing countries. 10. Ministers identified means of implementation in the context of provision of finance, technology transfer and capacity building support as the most important enablers of action for developing countries. Ministers expressed their concern over the lack of adequate support in this respect and urged developed countries to honour their obligations under the Convention. 11. Ministers also urged developed countries to scale up their level of financial support with a complete road map to achieve the goal of jointly providing USD 100 billion per year by 2020. Reiterating the role of public finance, Ministers called upon developed countries to fulfil their pledges to the Green Climate Fund. 12. Ministers agreed to further strengthen the cooperation and solidarity among the BASIC countries. The next BASIC Ministerial meeting will be hosted by South Africa. Ambedkar's tallest statue to come up in Hyderabad India oi-IANS By Ians English Hyderabad, Apr 8: The tallest-ever statue of the Indian constitution's architect B.R. Ambedkar will be installed here, the Telangana government announced Friday. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao announced that he will lay the foundation stone for the 125-feet statue to mark 125th birth anniversary of Ambedkar on April 14. After chairing a meeting with his cabinet colleagues, senior officers and Dalit leaders, he said the statue will be unveiled on the same day next year. A committee headed by Deputy Chief Minister K. Srihari will identify suitable location in Hyderabad to install the statue. KCR, as the chief minister is popularly known, said the year-long celebrations to mark 125th birth anniversary will be organised on a grand scale. He directed officials to organise a programme every month. Every district will have special programmes. The TRS government will also launch distribution of three acres land among Dalits besides undertaking various programmes for their uplift. The decision by the Telangana government to install 125-feet statue comes few days after Andhra Pradesh made a similar announcement. Read More: PM Modi likely to launch portal with works of Ambedkar Chief Minister N. Chadrababu Naidu had announced in the state legislative assembly on March 29 that the statue will come up in Amaravati, the new state capital being developed in Guntur district near Vijayawada. Naidu also declared that a memorial park will be built with museum, a Buddhist meditation centre, a museum and a library to highlight the teachings of Ambedkar. He said the installation of statue and memorial park will be part of the government's plans to develop Amaravati as a tourist hub with its rich Buddhist legacy. IANS This Bengal election has become a bhadrolok vs chhotolok' contest Jyoti Basu's 102nd birth anniversary: Left needed him to match the Mamatas and Modis today Mamata Banerjee files nomination papers India oi-PTI Kolkata, Apr 8: Aiming to lead Trinamool Congress to power for a second successive tenure, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today filed her nomination papers for the assembly elections from prestigious Bhabanipur constituency in south Kolkata. Banerjee's nearest rival in the constituency Deepa Dasmunshi, Congress candidate and wife of ailing Congress leader Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, and BJP candidate Chandra Kumar Bose, nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, also filed their nominations for Bhabanipore. Accompanied by a large number of supporters, the West Bengal Chief Minister came in a rally from Hazra to Alipore where she submitted her papers at the District Election Office. TMC workers, who assembled there carrying party flags, shouted slogans in support of the party supremo causing a traffic jam for sometime. A large posse of policemen was posted in the area to maintain security and to control crowd. Deepa Dasmunshi and Chandra Kumar Bose were also accompanied by a large number of supporters of their respective parties as they came to file their papers at Alipore. WB Assembly polls: Modi attacks Mamata Banerjee Dasmunshi alleged that some TMC workers tried to provoke her supporters and said she requested the police to remove the TMC workers to avoid any untoward incident. At the gate of the building, Dasmunshi's supporters alleged that they were not allowed by police to go inside along with their leader. Lok Janshakti Party fielded transgender Bobby Halder from this high-profile constituency in the metropolis. Banerjee had won the Bhabanipur seat in an Assembly by-election in 2011 by a comfortable margin of 54,213 votes defeating Left Front candidate Nandini Mukhopadhyay. Polling in the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency is scheduled for April 30 in the fifth phase. PTI Defence exports key to get global perspective: MKU India oi-Oneindia By OneIndia Defence Bureau Bengaluru, April 08: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make in India push is slowly showing positive signs in the defence sector, with the private industry getting visible roles in design, development and manufacturing processes. At the just-concluded DefExpo in Goa, OneIndia interviewed Rajesh Gupta, Senior Sales Manager, Light Weight Armour Solutions, MKU Pvt Ltd, a Kanpur-based defence company, to get a pulse of the Make in India mission. Rajesh said with the thrust on Make in India, the change in the mindset of the government of the day is inspiring. "Export is an important factor in self reliance. You cannot sustain your business interest only on local competition. In defence, it is paramount to have a global perspective which will only come through exports," says Rajesh. MKU is probably among the largest defence exporter in India and their businesses have grown substantially in the last 10 years. He said with the Make in India push, the whole response system has changed, which he termed as a welcome change. "Even Indian missions abroad are now listening to us. We find them very reactive. He said events like the DefExpo held in Goa would help more technology to come to India. All we need to build is a better echo system around the defence sector within the country," Rajesh said. He said with an experience of over 25 years of manufacturing uncompromising protection solutions for the world military, MKU has today become a world leader in the segment. "We have around 400-plus employees across various centres, including in Germany and UAE. We are investing around Rs 500 crore for a new facility. Our R&D spend is around 6-8 per cent of the total sales turnover. If we can go to Mars, what's defence industry? Just that we should get an opportunity," he said. At DefExpo, MKU unveiled a new product named NICS -- Network-centric Integrated Combat System for Soldiers. Rajesh said NICS is MKU's answer to the ever-increasing NCW (Network-Centric Warfare) missions. "NICS is an integrated body armour embedded with a health monitoring system. It is light and helps the soldiers to remain connected to a multiple communication systems," he said. At DefExpo, MKU inked a MoU with Russian firm JSC Shvabe to manufacture electro-optical (EO) devices in India, with production facility in Kanpur. MKU said the JV is not focused only on manufacturing of EO devices but also to cater to the needs of Army. OneIndia News Gun salute for terrorists: Are we witnessing a 1990 like Kashmir India oi-Vicky New Delhi, April 8: Kashmir is witnessing a very dangerous precedent and the question to be asked is if the 1990s are returning. Yesterday following the encounter at Shopian in which two terrorists one of them a former cop were killed, two persons on a bike arrived at the funeral spot and gave a gun salute, before leaving the place. It may be recalled that in January a similar incident had taken place. When a terrorist was killed in Pulwama not only did thousands attend his funeral, but his colleagues were seen giving a gun salute too. Security forces in Kashmir are having a torrid time in dealing with the problem. In several encounters that the security forces have been involved in, they have not only had to face the bullets of the militants, but also stones from protestors. There is a great deal of support that has been building up especially for the Hizbul Mujahideen. Gunfight on in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama Yesterday's encounter at Shopian in which two terrorists were killed was another such instance of defiance and determination. The crowds had gathered in large number to attend the funeral of the militants and the police just stood there and watched helpless. The administration in the state has a lot to do regarding this issue. Such acts are an act of defiance and the intention is to agitate the security forces so that they open fire. In the 1990s there were some instances of firing in which civilians had lost their lives. If civilians die in police firing then it becomes a point for these terrorist organisations to drive against the Indian administration. Recruitment has increased: Over the past year, the recruitment into the Hizbul Mujahideen has increased. Intelligence Bureau officials say that at least 90 youth have been recruited into the Hizbul Mujahideen. What is worrisome is that out of the 90 there are a few who have left the police force to join the outfit. In the 1990s similar instances had been witnessed. At that time militants had raked up in a big way the hanging of Maqbool Bhat and this time around it is Afzal Guru. These hangings have been made into emotive points to tell the youth that India is indulging in judicial murders. From Kashmir to the JNU in Delhi, there are attempts made to portray these persons as martyrs. OneIndia News Revealed: How NIA officer Tenzil Ahmed's murder was planned India oi-Vicky Bijnor, April 8: The investigations being conducted into the murder of NIA officer, Tanzil Ahmed suggests that his relative had developed an animosity on a property related matter. Our investigations show that this could be the main cause for the murder, an police official from Uttar Pradesh informed. The UP police are now on the look out for one Muneer Ahmed who they suspect was one of the persons who killed the officer. Meanwhile it has been learnt that the officer's relative Rehan was upset since he did not get a share in a property in Delhi. Property dispute: Rehan who is the nephew of Tenzil Ahmed's brother in law was upset that he was not given a share in a property at Jamianagar in Delhi. This could have triggered off the incident, police sources say. The police suspect that Rehan may have called in Muneer Ahmed to help with the murder. Muneer according to the police may have readily agreed since it was the officer who had tipped off the police about his whereabouts a few years back. Muneer is said to have been involved in a murder at Bijnor. However after the officer tipped the cops about his location, he moved to Jamianagar. The police is also probing the role of Rehan's friend who was also detained yesterday. It is suspected that this friend may have provided details of the officer's location and other logistic details. OneIndia News Kerala: BJP confident of opening its account in May 16 polls India oi-PTI Thiruvananthapuram, April 8: After drawing a blank in successive assembly elections in Kerala, BJP on Thursday expressed confidence it would open its account in the May 16 assembly polls. Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (Independent charge), Rajiv Pratap Rudy, said BJP has reached the north and west and is moving east as well. The south would soon see emergence of the BJP and reap the benefits of development policies introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said. "When BJP was formed in 1980, we had only two MPs in Lok Sabha. That time no one thought we could ever form a government at the Centre. But today we have emerged as the single largest party with 282 seats. I can assure something similar is soon going to happen in Kerala," he said. Rudy, on a three-day campaign visit in Kerala, addressed NDA conventions in Thrissur, Malappuram and Palakkad. He said the party today has governments in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat and Goa. "None would ever have thought we would form a government in J&K. But it is a reality for all to see today," he said. Noting Kerala is highly educated and industrious, he said the state now needs to quickly adapt to changes the country is seeing under the NDA government. Rudy said the PM has launched several schemes for the benefit of common people, farmers, poor and vulnerable. These need to reach the last mile and the last person. "We have launched an application in Malayalam highlighting work done by our central government for welfare of the people and the state," the Minister said. Rudy also addressed the 'Mahabharatham Dharmarakshana Sangamam' at Kozhikode and said, "Our dharma teaches us to show compassion to all irrespective of caste, religion or status. We are for all religions and respect all religions." Noting that the NDA government would complete two years of its tenure next month, he said not a single BJP Minister at the centre has any charge of corruption against him. "We are matching people's aspirations with zero tolerance to corruption. Kerala will see the same if we are given the responsibility to serve the state," he said PTI In Tripura, liquor shops and bars to remain closed during Durga Puja, Diwali More Tripura Congress leaders quit over alliance with Left in Bengal India oi-IANS By Ians English Agartala, Apr 8: Hours after Tripura's Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Sudip Roy Barman resigned over his party's alliance with the Left Front in West Bengal, four other Congress leaders on Friday quit party positions on the issue. Tripura Congress' working president Ashish Saha, state Youth Congress president Sushanta Chowdhury, West Tripura Lok Sabha constituency Youth Congress President Viki Prasad and East Tripura Lok Sabha constituency Youth Congress chief Rantu Deb resigned from their party posts. They sent their resignation letters to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Tripura's CLP leader Sudip Roy Barman, who is also the opposition leader in the state assembly, on Thursday resigned from his post protesting his party's tie-up with the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) in the West Bengal assembly polls. "Congress' alliance with the Left parties in Bengal would be a far-reaching negative impact both in state and national level. Most Congressmen are upset over this unacceptable electoral tie-up," Saha, one of the 10 Congress legislators in the state assembly, told reporters. (Advantage over Pakistan lost due to PM Modi's 'flip-flop': Congress) "We would be the true anti-Left group in Left ruled Tripura," Saha added. Barman, who sent his resignation letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and also to Tripura assembly Speaker Ramendra Chandra Debnath on Thursday, had earlier sent a note to Sonia Gandhi in February arguing against the alliance with the Left Front in West Bengal, saying it will prove "harmful" to the Congress. Meanwhile, Tripura Congress president Birajit Sinha and some others party leaders said they would abide by the decision of the central leaders about the alliance with the Left parties. "We will abide by the decision of the central leadership taken over the issue. Congress leaders' resignation from their party posts are unfortunate," said Sinha, also a sitting MLA and former minister. Political circles said that some other Congress leaders close to Barman and Saha might quit their party posts on the same issue and would either form a new party or join the Trinamool Congress headed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. IANS NIA court issues arrest warrant against JeM chief Masood Azhar India oi-PTI Chandigarh/New Delhi, Apr 8: NIA today secured non-bailable arrest warrants against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf and two others for allegedly conspiring to carry out terror strike on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. A special NIA court based in Mohali issued the 'open-ended non-bailable warrant' against Azhar, his brother, main handlers Kashif Jaan and Shaid Latif for allegedly entering into a criminal conspiracy with JeM terrorists for carrying out a terror strike on the IAF base. The strategic base was attacked by terrorists of banned JeM during the intervening night of January one and two in which seven security personnel were killed. Four bodies of terrorists were recovered from the encounter site which lasted for nearly 80 hours. The special court issued the arrest warrant after weighing the evidence presented by NIA before it which included telephonic conversation between the terrorists and the Jaish handlers like Jaan and Latif. The video of Rauf, brother of Azhar, was also presented before the court. In the video which was uploaded on a website being hosted from Pakistan, Rauf had claimed responsibility for the attack and complimented his boys for it. India takes up Masood Azhar veto case with China The video has since been removed and the website has also gone off the cyber world. NIA has already sought voice samples of Azhar and three others from Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which came to India for carrying out a probe in the Pathankot terror probe. The non-bailable warrant will be sent to Interpol. India had built a strong case for proscribing Azhar as terrorist at the UN but the move was vetoed by China. An Interpol Red Corner notice is already pending against Azhar for being allegedly involved in the conspiracy behind attacks on Parliament and Jammu and Kashmir state assembly. Similarly an Interpol Red Corner Notice is pending against Rauf in connection with the IC-814 hijacking case of 1999. India has complained to Pakistan about the slow pace of probe in the Parliament attack case and Azhar being given a free hand to continue with his anti-India rhetoric. Islamabad has not heeded to India's demands to bring to book Azhar and other JeM top brass. In the meantime, NIA said that after posting the pictures of the four dead terrorists on its official website, more information was coming from across the world which included many people from Pakistan who were eager to share details pertaining to the slain militants. The four terrorists were identified as Nasir Hussain (Punjab province), Abu Bakar, (Gujranwala), Umar Farooq and Abdul Qayum (both from Sindh). PTI Jammu admin withdraws order allowing residents of more than 1 year to become voters NIT: BJP hits out at J&K Police India oi-PTI Jammu, Apr 9: Hitting out at Jammu and Kashmir Police, BJP tonight said FIR against non-local students of Srinagar NIT was "misconceived" and accused its personnel posted on the campus of executing "unprovoked" lathi-charge and tear-gas shelling on the students. "We strongly condemn the misconceived action of lodging FIR against non-local students of NIT, Srinagar," state BJP spokesperson Virender Gupta said in a statement. He alleged that policemen deployed on the campus "committed heinous crime by executing unprovoked lathi-charge and tear-gas shelling on the students, not sparing the girls and those in hostels, thus inflicting serious injuries on some of them". "What action has the state police, posted in the campus, initiated against the locals who raised anti-India, pro-Pak and pro-azadi slogans and who were threatening the non-locals, in particular the girls students?" he said and demanded a judicial inquiry into the whole episode. Gupta also criticised former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for his statement objecting to the deployment of central forces on the NIT campus. He accused Abdullah of playing "negative" politics. The statement shows his "insensitiveness" to the gravity of the situation, Gupta charged. NIT Srinagar unrest: Centre sends 2 member team In a counter to Abdullah's remarks that the Centre should stay away from the developments in Srinagar NIT, he said that NIT is a central institution, completely funded by the government of India, therefore, it is the ultimate responsibility of the HRD Ministry to ensure the smooth functioning of the institute. To restore the confidence of non-local students about their security and to defuse the situation prevailing, the decision of deployment of central forces inside the campus was a "wise step" on the part of the government, in particular looking at the conditions prevailing in the Valley, he said. PTI Officials should check misuse of caste certificates: Har govt India oi-PTI Chandigarh, April 8:The Haryana government has directed top district officials and Registrars of all state universities to ensure authenticity of caste certificates to check use of forged documents for securing employment. The state government today said it has circulated instructions issued by Department of Personnel and Training of the Government of India to streamline the procedure for verification of claim of candidates belonging to Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes(STs) and Other Backward Classes(OBCs) for the purpose of appointment to posts or services. The instructions have been issued to the authorities concerned for compliance in connection with issue of SC, ST and OBC certificate, a spokesperson of Haryana General Administration Department said. "District Magistrates, District Collectors and Deputy Commissioners have been asked to ensure at their own level the veracity of caste certificates so that unscrupulous non-Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes persons are prevented from securing jobs meant for SCs, STs and OBCs by producing false certificates," he said. Owing to difficulties faced by the candidates belonging to the reserved communities in securing employment due to delay in obtaining caste certificates, he said, instructions have been issued for providing provisional appointment to such reserved category candidates who are unable to obtain an appropriate caste certificate on time. It has also been directed that where an SC, ST and OBC candidate is unable to produce a certificate from any of the prescribed authority, he or she may be appointed provisionally on the basis of whatever prima-facie proof the candidate is able to produce in support of his or her claim, subject to furnishing the prescribed certificate within a reasonable time. "If there is genuine difficulty in his or her obtaining a certificate, the appointing authority should itself verity his or her claim through the District Magistrate concerned," the spokesperson said. He said in order to discourage unscrupulous activities, appropriate instructions should be issued for initiating disciplinary proceedings against the "errant officers" who default in timely verification of castes certificates or issue false certificates. PTI After the 'Jihad' comment, Patil now claims \"I never said it\" Yeddyurappa's appointment glorification of corruption: Cong India oi-PTI New Delhi, Apr 8: Congress today criticised BJP for appointing former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa to lead the party in Karnataka, calling it "glorification of corruption". "The appointment of Yeddyurappa as President of BJP in Karntaka is nothing but glorification of corruption as for the first time in the history of Karnataka politics, the man who was jailed for corruption charges as Chief Minister has been made PCC chief of a party," said AICC general secretary B K Hariprasad, who is a Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka. Karnataka is due to have elections in 2018. Yeddyurappa, the tallest Lingayat leader who was removed as Chief Minister on corruption charges and had floated his own party before the last Assembly elections, returns to the helm of affairs in the state which BJP is looking to wrest power back from Congress. Reacting to his appointment, Yeddyurappa said his priority would be to bring back BJP to power as people are "fed up" with the "corrupt" Congress government. PTI Akshay Kumar delayed at Heathrow airport! International oi-PTI London, Apr 8: Bollywood star Akshay Kumar was made to wait at Heathrow Airport as UK immigration officials checked the details of his Canadian passport. The 48-year-old flew into London from Mumbai for the shoot of his film 'Rustom' but had to wait an additional hour- and-a-half as the authorities checked the entry requirements to the UK for Canadian nationals yesterday. "It is being claimed that Akshay was 'detained', which is absolutely incorrect. It was just a delay for which immigration apologised and he went on with his day," a source close to the star told PTI. Kumar, who is a Canadian national, does not require a visa to travel to the UK for tourism and business purposes for up to 90 days. It is believed the UK authorities took longer to clarify this "fine-print", during which he was made to wait in the general waiting area at the airport. Kumar's team also denied media reports which claim the Punjab-born actor tried to assert his stardom to get any kind of special treatment or favours. They insist he willingly complied with the request of the authorities and was soon out of the airport and is now busy with his shoot in London. A Home Office spokesperson confirmed no problems were found with Kumar's documents. He said, "Border Force officers routinely carry out further checks on passengers to ensure they are satisfied that person has the documentation needed to enter the UK". A source who was present with the actor during the incident said the media had sensationalised a non-issue. She said, "We all know that no one can enter or even work in the UK without the right permit and there was no exception in the case of Akshay Kumar who travelled to the UK with all the correct documents. "However the immigration team at Heathrow Airport asked him to wait to double check a few details. Yes, the process took slightly longer than expected but you have to be patient with these things. The team were very sincere and profusely apologised to Akshay Kumar for the delay and inconvenience caused so not sure why the media are sensationalising this,' she said. "Akshay Kumar was not detained at Heathrow airport. He is already shooting for 'Rustom' in London. He was at immigration for barely two minutes. And he left the airport," a statement issued here by the actor's PR team said. PTI David Cameron adds feather to Panama's hat, admits having stake in offshore investment fund International oi-Pallavi Britain, April 8: After the Panama Papers leak, British Prime Minister -David Cameron-admitted that he did have a profitable stake in his father's offshore investment fund. However, that was sold for 30,000 pounds before he became Prime Minister. While more names stumbled out, Cameron's father Ian Cameron too was claimed to have a fund under the name of Blairmore Holdings. Downing Street, meanwhile, came to the rescue of the Prime Minister whose alleged stake in the Panama Papers had drawn media ire. Although it initially said that it was a private matter if the PM gained profit from off shore investments, but later came up with explanations that the PM did not reap the benefits currently. While the opposition criticized the revelations coming in after the Panama Papers leak, Cameron said that his father was wrongly written about as the company he had opened had nothing to do with tax evasion. Cameron told to a new channel,"I paid income tax on the dividends, but there was a profit on it but it was less than the capital gains tax allowance, so I didn't pay capital gains tax, but it was subject to all the UK taxes in all the normal ways. So I want to be as clear as I can about the past, about the present, about the future, because frankly, I don't have anything to hide." "I'm proud of my dad and what he did and the business he established and all the rest of it. I can't bear to see his name being dragged through the mud, as you can see, and for my own, I chose to take a different path from my father, grandfather and great-grandfather, who were all stockbrokers, and I've got nothing to hide in my arrangements and I'm very happy to answer questions about it." OneIndia News In touch with India on JeM chief issue: China International oi-PTI Beijing, Apr 8: China today said it was in "close communication" with India over its decision to block New Delhi's bid to have Pakistan-based terror group JeM chief Masood Azhar designated as terrorist by the UN. "China is opposed to all forms of terrorism and is willing to step up pragmatic cooperation with all countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters here. When asked about Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar's remarks that India has taken up Azhar's ban issue with China, Hong said, "on anti-terrorism we always act based on facts and in accordance with rules and regulations of UN to deal with the listing in the 1267 sanctions committee". "We always keep in close communication with all the countries including India on this issue," he said. Jaishankar this week said that India has taken up at a "fairly high level" with China the issue of Beijing blocking its bid to have Azhar designated as terrorist by the UN. Last week, China stopped UN sanctions committee from designating Azhar as terrorist, maintaining that the case "did not meet the requirements" of the Security Council. This is not the first time China has blocked India's bid to get Pakistan-based militant groups and leaders proscribed by the UN. India takes up Masood Azhar veto case with China The UN had banned the JeM in 2001 but India's efforts for slapping sanctions on Azhar after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack also did not fructify as China, that has veto powers, did not allow it apparently at the behest of Pakistan again. Last July, China had similarly halted India's move in the UN to take action against Pakistan for its release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, saying its stand was "based on facts and in the spirit of objectiveness and fairness" with Beijing again claiming at the time that it was in touch with New Delhi. PTI India in talks with US to buy about 100 latest drones International oi-PTI Washington, Apr 8: India is in talks with the US for possible procurement of about 100 latest drones - both armed and surveillance versions - worth USD 2 billion to bolster its arsenal keeping China and Pakistan in mind. The issue is likely to figure in the talks between the two sides as US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter visits India next week. Ahead of his visit, Carter this week said the US is keen to forge a "closer and stronger" military relationship with India and "a whole bunch of things" will be announced during his India trip to boost Indo-US strategic ties. Industry sources familiar with India's interest and ongoing talks between the two governments, said India had requested for the latest Avenger drones, an unmanned combat air vehicle, and is mainly being sought with an eye on China. It has also sought Predator XP category which is a surveillance version for internal security issues and terrorist threats. According to industry sources, India is looking for about 100 drones worth USD 2 billion. "Yes, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI) is aware of India's interest in Predator-series Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA)," Vivek Lall, chief executive of the US and International Strategic Development of General Atomics, had said. With eye on China, India seeks 100 armed drones from US General Atomics Aeronautical Systems produces Predator series of remotely piloted aircraft. Due to American export laws, the US government has to approve the export of a Predator-series RPA to India. Predator-series RPA could provide a world-class Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capability for India which would include both high-definition radar and Electro-optical/Infrared (EO/IR) coverage along India's borders. Additionally, the RPA can perform humanitarian aid/disaster relief surveillance over both land and sea. PTI The persecution of Hindus in Pakistan continues with a Hindu girl forcibly converted and married Pak main hurdle in achieving peace with Taliban: Afghan envoy International oi-PTI Islamabad, Apr 8: Pakistan's top diplomat Sartaj Aziz was left red-faced when the Afghanistan envoy here accused Islamabad of being the main hurdle in achieving peace with the Taliban and blamed the tensions in bilateral ties for the lack of progress in the long-stalled peace process. Afghan Ambassador Omar Zakhilwal, who shared the dais with Aziz at a panel discussion at the Jinnah Institute here, said it was important to build an environment of trust given the main hurdle to peace in the region was a trust-deficit with Pakistan, embarrassing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Adviser on Foreign Affairs. "It was important for both sides to talk to each other, and not at each other," he said at the discussion titled 'From Winter to Spring: Revisiting the Afghan Question'. He said there was a need for genuine and frank dialogue between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Without peace in Afghanistan, there could be no peace in Pakistan, Zakhilwal said and added that his mission in Islamabad was to change mindsets and improve perceptions. The Afghan envoy said Pakistan would always face roadblocks in its attempt to become a gateway to Central Asia, as would Afghanistan in its attempt to be a land-bridge to Central Asia, if peace continued to elude Afghanistan. Elements supporting violence in Afghanistan continued to use Pakistani territory, he warned. He said Pakistan too has paid a price for the regional conflict. Pakistan loses USD 70-80 billion annually due to instability in Afghanistan, he estimated. 10 Taliban militants killed in Afghanistan airstrike The Afghan envoy said it was important to leverage the people-to-people relationship for greater peace and stability given our common ancestry, faith, language and geography. In his remarks, Aziz said nobody can dictate terms to the Afghan government or the Afghan Taliban for reconciliation. He said the regional stakeholders should instead focus on facilitating an inclusive reconciliation process. "No one can dictate terms to either the Afghan government or the Afghan Taliban, nor can arbitrary timelines, deadlines or conditionalities be attached to the reconciliation process," Aziz said. He said the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) -- including Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the US -- would have to collectively decide how to deal with elements refusing to join the peace process. He said the QCG meeting has not been scheduled thus far. But reports said the group is likely to meet later this month. The four members have held multiple rounds of talks, which have so far failed to convince the Taliban to take part and talk peace with the Kabul government. Aziz said an exclusively military approach has not worked in Afghanistan and it was important to keep the reconciliation process on track and prevent attempts by spoilers to derail it. "Pakistan is committed to the idea that one of the key goals of the Afghan reconciliation process be reduction, and ultimate cessation, of violence," he said. PTI Steeling for a struggle: China workers face turmoil International oi-PTI Tangshan, Apr 8: Hundreds of laid-off steelworkers gathered outside their former employer's office this week to protest at losing their jobs, victims of a global glut. But the smokestacks nearby were not British; they are in China -- the very place blamed by European politicians for the plunging prices and excess capacity threatening the industry worldwide. As recriminations fly over the closure of the Port Talbot steelworks, the pain of redundancy is felt as keenly in the northern Chinese steel hub of Tangshan as it is in Wales. "I have a daughter," said one man, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. "I'm the main breadwinner in the family. What can I do in the future?" He was among 4,000 people who workers say face unemployment after state-owned steel firm Guofeng halted work at one of its hulking production zones last week, citing "uncontrollable factors". They are just the tip of the iceberg; major Chinese steel producers lost more than 100 billion yuan (USD 15.5 billion) last year, an industry association said yesterday, and Beijing has said it will shed 500,000 steel jobs in coming years. National production grew sevenfold from 2000 to 2014 as domestic demand boomed from massive infrastructure investment in swelling cities, and as the government ploughed billions of dollars into heavy industry to counter the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis. At the same time plants built by private investors expecting ever rising prices also went into operation. By 2014, China was producing some 820 million tonnes a year -- about half the world total and seven times more than the second biggest producer, Japan. But domestic demand peaked the same year as China's building boom began to wane and growth slowed, analysts say, causing commodity prices to plummet. World export prices for steel have fallen more than 70 percent from an all time high of USD 1,113 per tonne in July 2008 to just USD 321 last month, according to the website steelbenchmarker.com. China can now produce about 1.2 billion tonnes of steel each year, but local demand is around 700 million tonnes, and companies have looked to foreign markets to make up the deficit, primarily in Asia. "In 2015 China exported about 100 million tonnes of steel products," Cai Rang, chairman of the China Iron and Steel Research Institute Group told state media last month -- around twice as much as two years previously. The exports were "a relief for domestic capacity but a shock to the international market", he acknowledged. That shockwave played out when India's Tata Steel announced last month it was selling the loss-making Port Talbot steelworks, with the possible loss of 4,000 employee positions and many more indirectly, triggering doom-laden warnings of worse to come for Europe's steel industry. However, World Steel Association figures show that a tiny proportion -- about six million tonnes in 2014 -- of Chinese exports go to the EU, where some 100 million tonnes is traded between the bloc's countries. AFP 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. by Graham Pierrepoint As the shockwave of the data leak from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca continues to reverberate around the world with Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunlaugsson having stepped down from his post after he had been linked to an offshore investment following the data spill, and with several high profile entertainers and statespeople worldwide having had their tax-exempt investments made public for all to see it is clear that historys biggest leak of secret data will continue to offer revelations about who uses such offshore services, and what will happen to them when they are asked why. One such high profile figure involved in the fray, albeit indirectly, is UK Prime Minister David Cameron, whose father had been revealed to have invested money offshore and who has now come clean publicly to advise that he had shares in his fathers offshore trust fund based in Panama. Cameron asserted in an interview with ITV News that he had sold his shares in 2010 at a profit of GBP 19,000 - stating that he was keen to sell them ahead of his taking the role of Prime Minister in order to offer transparency. However, Camerons admission comes after days of conflicted messages from Downing Street representatives who had previously stated that the Cameron family did not benefit from such offshore schemes. However, the PM himself has now offered what he states to be the truth and the affair is not going down well with his fellow politicians. As the British media and a number of his rival MPs react to this latest twist in the Panama Papers scandal, there has been outcry from some media outlets that Cameron should resign as Prime Minister in light of his connection to the papers via his father and that he may not be considered the best figurehead for new governmental powers to curb tax evasion as a result. 2016 has so far been a trying year for the British leader, who has faced consternation from his own party over his stance on retaining the UK as part of the European Union, while the government has come under fire from the public for their proposed cuts to disability benefits. It seems that the Panama Papers saga is set to continue and while it is far too early to say whether or not David Cameron will become a casualty of the data leak much like Icelands Gunlaugsson it will be safe to bet that more revelations will be making themselves known about others named in the data in the days and weeks to come. Follow the latest media coverage about the Panama Papers here on One News Page. Our website uses cookies to improve your experience. Learn more General Information on Arkansas Sales Tax Virtually every type of business must obtain a State Sales Tax Number. If your business sells products on the internet, such as eBay, or through a storefront, and the item is shipped within the same state, sales tax must be collected from the buyer and the sales tax must be paid on the collected tax to the state. Depending on the type of business and the amount of revenue, the state sales tax collected must be paid either monthly or quarterly. Items shipped within state are taxable. Items shipped out of state are usually not subject to state sales tax if annual revenues are less than four million dollars. Purchases for Resale You are able to purchase items without paying state sales tax. When you buy an item for resale, you purchase the item without paying state sales tax. Items must be for resale or qualified business use. If you purchase an item from a wholesale organization, or even another retailer, and are reselling the item, in most situations, you will be exempt from paying state sales tax. Almost every wholesale company will require a sales tax number before selling an item or product for resale use. The same applies to opening most commercial resale accounts. Wholesale trade shows and merchandise marts usually require a state sales tax identification number in order to allow your business to participate. Online Application For fastest processing, please have the following ready to complete the online application for a State Sales Tax Number. Business Name, Address, & Phone Number Description of Business Responsible Party ( Usually Business Owner ) Information Payment Information Complete the Online Registration for a State Sales Tax Number by Clicking Here Endorphina to Attend next Week's i-Gaming Forum Published April 8, 2016 by Florin P Czech software company Endorphina will attend the 2016 i-Gaming Forum in Stockholm next week. Endorphina has attended most of the important European conferences in 2015 and the Czech company is ready to set another important milestone. By teaming up with i-Gaming Forum, it will attend the two sessions of roundtable discussions scheduled for the second week of April 2016. Its presence is expected to enhance the prominence of the event, while providing prospective participants with another reason to attend. Seven Years of Success for the i-Gaming Forum Industry experts and gambling companies ranging from established ones to startups have attended the i-Gaming Forum over the last seven years. The event provides them with great opportunities for networking and when so many brilliant minds come together, lucrative ideas are guaranteed to emerge. It was only natural for this event to appear on Endorphinas radar, as these guys have attended similar exhibitions all over the world. They participated in the immensely successful ICE Totally Gaming earlier this year and will host two sessions of discussions at the i-Gaming Forum 2016. With so many events on their calendar, it is increasingly difficult for Endorphina to choose one or the other. The fact that the April event is on their list of priorities, speaks volumes about the potential of this forum. A Convenient Way to Pick up New Skills Industry leaders get together at the i-Gaming Forum 2016 to share their insights on sensitive topics and for networking purposes. The event is also a godsend for those who want to sign lucrative partnerships and meet the ones who recently entered the industry. Endorphina is here for the same reasons and now that the Czech company has confirmed its presence at the Stockholm gathering, more are expected to tag along. As a leading B2B software provider, it powers some of the most successful operators in the gaming industry with reliable and diverse software. At least two people who are yet- to- be- identified were on Thursday burnt beyond recognition when a tanker conveying Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) spilt its content on Sawmill bridge Onipepeye area of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital city. Six vehicles, more than 10 motorcycles and many houses were destroyed on the Sawmill axis of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Ibadan when the incident occurred around 2pm. But for the timely intervention of the men of the State fire service, there would have been an explosion as the scene was close to a gas station around the Onipepeye area. Motorists and commuters scampered for safety when the driver coming from Lagos axis end of the expressway lost control just after the Sawmill bridge. In a bid to stabilise the vehicle, he was said to have tried to manoeuvre the vehicle but couldnt prevent the content from spilling on the highway. It was learnt a male and female were caught in the blow of fire as they attempted to escape, getting burnt beyond recognition. The identity and whereabouts of the driver of the tanker remained unknown at the time of filing the report. An eye witness, who identified himself simply as Mr. Abbey, said: It was the spillover of fuel from the fallen fuel tanker at the main road that catches fire from one pit under Onipepeye bridge, and before we could say anything, we heard a big exploding sound. It was so terrific, then there were thick flames everywhere and I think in the process where everyone was trying to get out of the scene that the two persons were so unlucky as the fire caught up with them. We called the fire service personnel to come and rescue the situation before the fire started but it took them more than 40 minutes before they arrived. By the time they got here, the fire had already burned two people till death. These people (the victims) were inside the car, trying to navigate their way to the main expressway. READ ALSO: Accident claims two lives on Lagos/Ibadan Expressway They should be coming from either Gbagi market or Gate axis we did not recognise any of them as you can see they are burnt beyond recognition with all their personal belongings also burned with them. Assistant Director, Oyo State Fire Service, Mr. Isiaka Adeleke, stated that his men raced to the scene of the incident immediately they received the call, confirming the tanker spilled its content spilt on the highway and leaving no fewer than six vehicles burnt. He said: We just heard that the tanker has fallen down and that petrol has spilt on the road, the driver of the Micra tried to manoeuvre the vehicle but was unlucky. The man and the woman jumped out of the vehicle but the fire later caught up with them. The incident led to a terrible traffic gridlock along the Iwo road end of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway while officials of the Oyo State Command of the Federal Road Safety Corps and the Red Cross were seen removing the remains of the two victims. A young lady was rescued by the police from the hands of men suspected to be ritualists, kidnappers or internet fraudsters otherwise known as Yahoo Boys who allegedly tried to abduct her in Asaba, Delta state capital. According to reports, the lady was coming from the popular Ogbegonogo market on Thursday, April 18, 2019, when she boarded a tricycle, popularly known as Keke. Two young men were said to have joined her from both sides, leaving her in the middle. The desperate Yahoo Boys met their Waterloo when their supposed victim signaled the Keke driver that she wanted to stop at a particular junction. The driver refused to stop thereby forcing her to raise alarm which attracted mobile policemen on patrol and sympathizers to chase after them. It was gathered that the suspected hoodlums hypnotized (charmed) their victim which made her temporarily lose her memory after she raised the alarm. Invest In Social Force & Get 50% Click HERE >> To Buy Cheap MTN & GLO Data Click HERE >> Justice Walter Onnoghen has filed an appeal against the ruling of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) that found him guilty of assets declaration offences and sacked him as the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). Recall that KanyiDaily reported that during the CCT ruling on Thursday, April 18, 2019, the tribunal chairman, Danladi Umar, ordered the immediate removal of Onnoghen from office as the CJN after he was guilty of false declaration of assets in breach of the provisions of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) for public officials. The Tribunal also stripped him of all offices earlier occupied, such as the Chairman of the National Judicial Council and also the chairmanship of the Federal Judicial Service Commission. According to a fresh report by The Nation, Onnoghen insisted that the tribunal lacked the jurisdiction to hear the charges and should have recused itself like he requested. The lower tribunal erred in law when it refused to recuse itself from the proceedings in view of the open declaration by the Chairman of the tribunal that he is only accountable to the President, who appointed him and nobody else, because he is not a judicial officer and thus, occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice, the notice read. Onnoghen also requested that the order to forfeit the monies found in the affected five bank accounts should be dismissed by the Court of Appeal. After the reading of the judgement on Thursday, Onnoghens lead counsel, Okon Efut, hinted that the CCTs decision will be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. We know that all is not over in this matter. The wheel of justice grinds slowly. It grinds slowly but surely. But this is not a matter that will end here. We shall avail ourselves of all the processes and the hierarchy of the judiciary, he said. He also described the judgement as unconstitutional, alleging that it was already decided when the tribunal ordered Onnoghens suspension without fair hearing in January. Matthias Knab, Opalesque: At the 5th Swiss Asset Management on April 7th 2016 in Pfffikon near Zurich, the best Swiss hedge funds were given awards following a rigorous rigorous assessment and evaluation process. The winners are: RAM (Lux) Long/Short European Equities Fund from RAM Active Investments has been awarded "Best Swiss Hedge Fund" in 2016 Old Mutual UK Dynamic Equity Fund from Old Mutual Global Investors is the best Swiss UCITS fund Multi Strategy SICAV - Pendulum from Notz, Stuck is the best Swiss Fund of Hedge Funds and HS...................... To view our full article Click here Reprinted from FAIR The Washington press corps has gone into one of its great feeding frenzies over Bernie Sanders' interview with New York Daily News. Sanders avoided specific answers to many of the questions posed, which the DC gang are convinced shows a lack of the knowledge necessary to be president. Among the frenzied were the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, The Atlantic's David Graham and Vanity Fair's Tina Nguyen, with CNN's Dylan Byers telling about it all. Having read the transcript of the interview, I would say that I certainly would have liked to see more specificity in Sanders' answers, but I'm an economist. And some of the complaints are just silly. When asked how he would break up the big banks, Sanders said he would leave that up to the banks. That's exactly the right answer. The government doesn't know the most efficient way to break up JP Morgan; JP Morgan does. If the point is to downsize the banks, the way to do it is to give them a size cap and let them figure out the best way to reconfigure themselves to get under it. The same applies to Sanders not knowing the specific statute for prosecuting banks for their actions in the housing bubble. Knowingly passing off fraudulent mortgages in a mortgage-backed security is fraud. Could the Justice Department prove this case against high-level bank executives? Who knows, but they obviously didn't try. And the fact that Sanders didn't know the specific statute -- who cares? How many people know the specific statute for someone who puts a bullet in someone's head? That's murder, and if a candidate for office doesn't know the exact title and specifics of her state murder statute, it hardly seems like a big issue. This fact can be found in the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of Ryan's budget (page 16, Table 2). The analysis shows Ryan's budget shrinking everything other than Social Security and Medicare and other healthcare programs to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2050. This is roughly the current size of the military budget, which Ryan has indicated he wants to increase. That leaves zero for everything else. There is a very interesting contrast in media coverage of House Speaker Paul Ryan. In Washington policy circles, Ryan is treated as a serious budget wonk. How many reporters have written about the fact this serious budget wonk has repeatedly proposed eliminating most of the federal government? This was not an offhand gaffe that Ryan made when caught in a bad moment; this was in his budgets that he pushed through as chair of the House Budget Committee. Included in everything else is the Justice Department, the National Park System, the State Department, the Department of Education, the Food and Drug Administration, Food Stamps, the National Institutes of Health and just about everything else that the government does. Just to be clear, CBO did this analysis under Ryan's supervision. He never indicated any displeasure with its assessment. In fact, he boasted about the fact that CBO showed his budget paying off the national debt. So there you have it. The DC press corps that goes nuts because Bernie Sanders doesn't know the name of the statute under which he would prosecute bank fraud thinks a guy who calls for eliminating most of the federal government is a great budget wonk. Reprinted from Empire Burlesque When I was 18, I worked for the Tennessee Department of Conservation at the Cedars of Lebanon State Park, a summer job where a few teenagers helped the park's permanent workers clean up the picnic areas and campgrounds and ball fields. I mostly helped two aging characters who'd gotten their sinecures through political patronage. Both were near retirement, and were seeing out their working years with some easy work in pleasant surroundings. They had a black boss they didn't much like -- a park ranger -- but they kept their racial sideswipes to a minimum, at least for those days. Both were men of profound and "sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions," as the saying goes. (Or rather, as the language of the new Jim Crow law in Mississippi goes.) They often held forth on weighty matters of faith and morals as we cruised the park in a truck, emptying trash cans and spending long (very long) breaks beside the big Cedar Park swimming pool, full to the brim of bikini-clad young women enjoying the fine Tennessee summer. Two expositions of their faith have long stood out in my memory. One was the story of a fallen woman, a prostitute, who in her despair and moral anguish had turned to the church of one of my stalwart Christian colleagues. He told of how one Sunday, she came into the church after the service had started: shyly, hesitantly, seemingly ashamed of herself as she took a seat in a back pew, still wearing the clothes of her previous night's labor: short skirt, tight top, platform heels. (He was particularly assiduous and copious in his description.) The startled congregation hardly knew what to make of her -- and she hurried out quickly at the service's end. But she kept returning, for the next few weeks, always in the same fashion: coming in late, furtively, still in her Saturday clothes, keeping to herself in the back, hurrying out lest she scandalize the faithful by her very presence. Obviously she was yearning for the Lord to pull her from her life of sin. But no one in the church approached her, no one emulated the Saviour with the woman taken in adultery and said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." And so, said my colleague, he took it upon himself to rectify the situation. Seeing how the story was tending, I found myself revising my perhaps too-hasty opinion of him. Perhaps, I thought, he was a man of broader, deeper character than I had hitherto surmised. Then he went on with his story. His solution to the appearance of the prostitute in the church house was not to welcome her, speak to her, tell her of God's grace and forgiveness. No, it was to step forth boldly before the congregation and declare that such a wanton creature should not darken the door of the Lord's house; she should be barred from coming back ever again. "We never saw that prostitute again." This was told in tones of quiet satisfaction, the tones of a man who had humbly but bravely done his duty. To say that I was gobsmacked is to riot in understatement. I had a hard time believing he had read the same Gospels that had been read to me -- and that I had of my own volition eagerly read -- since my earliest childhood. (This same colleague told another interesting -- albeit more secular -- story that has also stayed with me. In brief, it was how he had spent years in the service of the local political machine buying votes on election days: "Ten dollars each for whites, five dollars each for the niggers." He had worked his local district for decades like this. Oddly enough, the previous summer, I'd worked for another state agency, picking up trash on the highways, where another aged colleague told the same tale, although he worked a different district.) The theological disquisition of my other colleague in the state park was not quite so vivid, although it too stayed through almost 40 years since those halcyon days. One day, while making our rounds, the talk turned for some reason to interracial marriage. Of course, it goes without saying that these two Christian gentlemen considered such a thing as completely and utterly retrograde to their "sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions." There was not any question about it; anyone involved in such filth was bound for hell -- as was any nation that countenanced such evil. This was standard fare for that time and place, a sentiment I had heard expressed by most people around me since I was first able to discern the meaning of human speech. Given the ubiquity and all-pervasiveness of this sentiment, it's not likely that it alone would have a lodged in my mind for long a time. But what I found curious was how this stalwart's sincerely held convictions regarding the purity of marriage transcended ordinary notions of race altogether. To be sure, he strongly held forth that he didn't believe in marriage between "white people and Mexicans;" that was, again, de rigueur for our milieu. No, what struck me was that he went on in his religious-nationalist fervor: "I don't believe no white should marry no French, or Italian, or Russian, or English neither!" I think it was this last that impressed me most deeply. Not even the English were white enough for this good white Christian American! Even the English -- the very avatars of whiteness, who had carried their "white man's burden" to the four corners of the earth in the god-ordained crusade of Empire -- were not really white ... because they weren't American whites! Or, to be more specific, they were not Southern American white people, because doubtless this stalwart would have considered, say, Italian-Americans in New Jersey or Irish Catholics in Boston to be far less than white. (And don't even get him started on the Jews!) Many years later, I myself married one of these ungodly non-white people: an Englishwoman, no less! My colleague had long flown to mansions on high by that point, but I must admit he crossed my mind as my English bride and I plighted our troth in the ancient environs of Oxford. I was reminded of these long-gone co-workers by today's stories out of Mississippi: a state where I once worked in the piney swamps of Meridan, the city where they tried -- and freed -- the killers of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. These were the civil rights workers who'd gone down to Mississippi in the Sixties to ensure that everyone had the right to vote -- and the right to be served at businesses open to the public without being turned away because of someone's "sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions" that certain kinds of people were beyond the pale. Many people died and many more suffered to take us out of that pit of hate and despair. And by the time I was riding with the stalwarts -- 13 years after those murders -- their attitudes seemed quaint, outdated, broken vestiges of a vanished past. I laughed at them, and kept laughing for 40 years. But as that famous Southerner William Faulkner once said, the past is never dead; it's not even past. And so the good stalwart white Southern Christians of modern-day Mississippi have reassembled the dry bones of hatred and prejudice and made them walk again. A whole new army of Jim Crow zombies. Gabriel Zucman, the author of the 2015 book "The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens," estimates that $7.6 trillion is stashed in tax havens. This amounts to 8 percent of the world's personal financial wealth. The author believes that if all of this illegally hidden money were properly recorded and taxed, global tax revenues would grow by more than $200 billion a year. Interestingly, on April 3, 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, leaked massive documents known as "Panama Papers" which reveal the shadowy world of hidden offshore finances of presidents and prime ministers. The biggest leak of financial data in history exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world. The German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), which worked on the leaked documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said the data provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world's rich and famous: from politicians, FIFA officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes. According to The Guardian, the Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from the database of the world's fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. The massive leak of confidential documents from a Panamanian law firm has shown how some of the world's richest people hide assets to avoid paying taxes. Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt's former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davdegrees Gunnlaugsson. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has formed a high-level judicial commission to probe any financial wrongdoing, a day after three of his children were named in the 'Panama Papers' for owning offshore companies prompting demands for an enquiry by the opposition. Documents on the ICIJ website said Sharif's children - Mariam, Hasan and Hussain - "were owners or had the right to authorize transactions for several companies". Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif's relatives Samina Durrani and Ilyas Mehraj have also figured in the documents examined. Iceland's prime minister, Sigmundur Davdegrees Gunnlaugsson, became the first major casualty of the Panama Papers, stepping aside from his office amid mounting public outrage that his family had sheltered money offshore. A $2bn trail leads all the way to Vladimir Putin's best friend Sergei Roldugin who is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin told The Guardian that the media investigation into offshore accounts is motivated by "Putinphobia," and that he has not been implicated in any wrongdoing. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "it's obvious that the main target of such attacks is our president," and claimed that the publication was aimed at influencing Russia's stability and parliamentary elections scheduled for September. He suggested the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which co-ordinated the international investigation, has ties to the U.S. government. Family members of at least eight current or former members of China's Politburo Standing Committee, the country's main ruling body, have offshore companies arranged though Mossack Fonseca. They include President Xi's brother-in-law, who set up two British Virgin Islands companies in 2009. China's foreign ministry dismissed reports of the leaks from the Mossack Fonseca database as 'groundless accusations'. A Communist party censorship directive instructed news organizations to purge all reports, blogs, bulletin boards and comments relating to Panama Papers revelations. Twenty-three individuals who have had sanctions imposed on them for supporting the regimes in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, Iran and Syria have been clients of Mossack Fonseca. Their companies were harbored by the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other jurisdictions. Tax Havens Jill Lawless of the Associated Press says there's one part of the British Empire on which the sun still does not set: its tax havens. Britain's former world dominance has left it with a string of tiny territories scattered around the globe, and many of them have become hubs for hiding money. Despite growing political pressure, shutting down these and other tax havens may be easier said than done, Jill said. As Britain's colonies gained independence after World War II, London encouraged several small Caribbean islands to become tax havens as a means to self-sufficiency. As a result, many of the world's tax havens have British links, including overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. The Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey off the French coast, which are possessions of the British Crown, have been havens for the wealthy and their money for almost a century. More than half the 200,000 companies set up for clients by Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca in the leaked files are registered in the British Virgin Islands, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. According to the BBC two broad qualifications for being a tax haven are to have a low or zero rate of income tax and guarantee the rich a cloak of secrecy they would not receive in their own country. They have also been used to cover up criminal activity. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Iran and Russia join the global alliance to preserve Syria's Endangered Heritage Franklin Lamb Beirut The Islamic Republic of Iran announced this week that it is ready to take part in the restoration of archeological monuments damaged or destroyed by ISIS terrorists in Palmyra (Tadmor), which was named one of the six UN World Heritage Sites in Syria in 1980. The Head of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization, Masoud Soltanifar stressed his country's readiness to participate in the process of restoring and rehabilitating the archeological and cultural sites that were demolished by the terrorists in Syria, particularly those in Palmyra. The Iranian ISNA News Agency quoted Soltanifar as saying in a letter he sent this week to Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Irina Bokova that Iran is ready to join in conserving and restoring both movable and immovable endangered Syrian cultural heritage archeological sites because they are part of the global heritage of all of us. On March 27, Dr. Mammoun Abdel-Karim, Director General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) concurred and described a preliminary vision for a rehabilitation plan to restore the glory of Palmyra. Perhaps ironically, the Iranians want to restore, first among other damaged sites, the 2000 year old Arc de Triomphe which was erected to commemorate the victory of the Romans over Iran's ancestors after the Roman legions drove the Persian out. Iran's commitment letter added that "Given the Islamic Republic of Iran's responsibility with endangered Syrian cultural heritage, [Tehran's] Cultural Heritage organization stresses its readiness to protect, restore and repair cultural heritage in Syria, especially in Palmyra." The letter was addressed to UNESCO Director-General Irina Bukova and arrived a day after the head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation visiting Damascus announced that Tehran had "already started developing a program for the reconstruction" of Syria. Nearly simultaneously with this much welcomed Iranian initiative, on March 31, 2016 the Russians suddenly pledged to join other nations to preserve our shared global cultural heritage in Syria. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, Russia's envoy to the United Nations, sent a letter to the UN Security, asking that it be widely distributed, and pledged that Russia will combat named dealers and shippers who are alleged to be facilitating the trade of looted antiquities from ISIS-controlled territory in Syria. According to culture heritage lawyer Rick St. Hilaire, the communication caught the attention of cultural property watchers, the media, as well as the government of Turkey because of the strong language Russia's ambassador used. Wrote the Russian Ambassador to the UN Security Council: "Around 100,000 cultural objects of global importance, including 4,500 archaeological sites, nine of which are included in the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), are under the control of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq. The profit derived by the Islamists from the illicit trade in antiquities and archaeological treasures is estimated at US$ 150-200 million per year." As this observer has written more than once recently, there is little material or probative evidence supporting such a dramatically high and unverified Russian estimate of ISIS profits from looting and flogging Syria's and our cultural heritage. A more realistic number is around two million dollars per month, according to Syrian and UNESCO sources. However, Mr. Churkin does accurately claim that "individuals in possession of a written permit stamped by this 'department' are permitted by the Islamists to carry out excavations and to remove and transport excavated items." UNESCO, and the governments of Syria and the United States have expressed the same opinion. The Russians imply that their agents have been investigating what looters of Syrians antiquities do with them after excavations and offer specificity: "It has been observed that new offices for the purchase of antiquities have opened on the Turkish-Syrian border in the administrative district of Akcakale (640 km south-east of Ankara, Sanlurfa Province). Ismet Eren, the owner of an antique shop at 24 Karanfil Street in the town of Kilis, is involved in the illicit trade. Bulky goods are delivered by the Turkish transport companies Senocak Nakliyat, Devran Nakliyat, Karahan Nakliyat and Egemen Nakliyat. Smuggled artefacts (jewellery, coins, etc.) then arrive in the Turkish cities of Izmir, Mersin and Antalya, where representatives of international criminal groups produce fake documents on the origin (ed: provenance) of the antiquities." 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 Reader Supported News At 76, legendary investigative filmmaker John Pilger shows no sign of slowing down. Pilger, who started his career as a war correspondent in Vietnam, has been a strong critic of Western aggression and support for dictators, tyrants, and state-sponsored mass murder in the name of Western interests. Pilger's award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker began with "The Quiet Mutiny," set in Vietnam, and has continued with over 50 documentaries since then, including "Year Zero," which documents the bloody aftermath of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Pilger has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award. His documentaries have won many awards in Great Britain and around the world. In this extended interview, I spoke with John Pilger about his new film in progress on the impact of nuclear testing around the world, the massive nuclear buildup now taking place under the auspices of the Obama administration, and the ongoing and expanding policy of the U.S. to control and restrain China by any means necessary, which includes full nuclear dominance from air, sea, land, and space. Dennis Bernstein: It is always good to talk with you, John. We know that you're working on a film now about the potential of nuclear war in this century, as a result of a massive U.S. nuclear buildup in Asia to contain the Chinese. This is also an incredibly important film, in the context of the new potential for confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and the Ukraine. Talk about the film. John Pilger: Well, the film is really about the U.S., or rather the Obama administration's so-called "Pivot to Asia." That's the name of a policy that will see two-thirds of U.S. naval forces re-based to the Asia Pacific region by 2020. The reason for this is China. The U.S. sees in a risen China, an economically strong China, a new threat. There isn't a threat, in my opinion. China is a very big country, and last month, I think, was the U.S.'s biggest trading partner. It is the workshop of the world, and it has influence, in its own sphere. They've done nothing, until recently, to suggest that China has any interest, other than in continuing to improve its economic position. I say until recently, because China has made very significant defensive moves in response to an encirclement of China by the United States, by U.S. bases, warships, nuclear armed bombers, battle groups and so on, that extends all the way from Australia through the Pacific, up through Asia, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, across Eurasia, to Afghanistan and India. And this menacing, if you like, of China by hundreds of U.S. installations, military installations, many of them upgraded for example with the Aegis missile system, such as the new base that has just been built on Jeju Island, a Korean island, 400 kilometers from Shanghai ... This base, which will have ... DB: And the buildup of the base, I understand, is on a pristine bay, where the sea blossoms, and the creatures underneath thrive. They put this base in an extraordinary place of extreme beauty, despite seven or eight years of protests to try to resist it. Pilger: No. That's absolutely right. Well, I filmed there recently and your description is absolutely accurate. I mean Jeju Island, like Okinawa, the two of them are very similar in the resistance of the peoples to the drive to war, to a war with China, in that region. The people around Gangjeon Village, which is where this base has now been completed, have spent, as you say, up to 10 years protesting that the base should not be built. And this is an island that is listed by the United Nations, it's Heritage listed, it's pristine. It's an unusual -- considering its geographic position -- it's an unusual tropical island with extraordinary marine life. And all that in this part of Jeju Island has been swept aside for a base that, in effect, points missiles right at China. And the same thing is happening in Okinawa. Okinawa, which has suffered pretty much in silence as far as the rest of the world is concerned since the Second World War, is an occupied state of Japan. It's very different from the rest of Japan because the Okinawans are an indigenous people. But it has 32 American military installations on it. It's an island of fences. It's an island where people can't really go about their business without confronting a sign that says they are trespassing. It's an island where schools have to endure American helicopters and planes screaming overhead, constantly. It's almost as if the entire island and its people have been occupied and militarized all this time. But what's inspiring about Okinawa is the way people have resisted this, and the way that they have on Jeju. And they have resisted it quite successfully. They've elected a governor who is for the first time probably in post-war Japanese history has opposed a major issue that the Tokyo government has supported. But all of this activity has China in mind. It is about the new enemy, the new threat. It is manufacturing a threat. If you cast your mind back to the way the Iraq invasion was brought about, it was brought about largely with propaganda at first, where the media promoted the completely false notion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and that he was a threat. Well, now we see almost daily some kind of story that China is a threat. Many of these stories are now concentrating on the Spratly Islands, which are in the South China Sea, where China is building airstrips. And we've had many stories saying, rather hysterical stories saying, "Look, here's China being aggressive. This is the reason why China clearly is a threat." When in fact this is the truth being inverted. China is building these airstrips, and it's only begun to build them in the last few years, in response to the encirclement of China by the U.S. Now, in the film I'm making I've been to many of these places to talk to people, and I'm also relating it to the ... what happened in the Marshall Islands, what happened to Bikini when the U.S. tested its first nuclear weapons between 1946 and 1958 and have left those islands contaminated, many of the people mutated, people ill, people with thyroid cancer. The history of this so-called "Pivot to Asia," this move into the Pacific, really needs to be told. These days we're often denied this historical context; we're denied an understanding of the immediate past so we can make sense of the present. To understand this completely unnecessary and very dangerous campaign against China by the U.S., one has to go back to see what happened in the Marshall Islands. Of course, right in the Marshall Islands is a U.S. base on the Island of Kwajalein. It's called the Ronald Reagan Missile Test Site. And it's about Star Wars. It's about building some kind of U.S. space weaponry. But almost everything that this base does is also aimed at China. And much of this is not reported. Most people don't know about this. In the same way that as we head toward dangerous situations, I mentioned the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we are denied this critical knowledge. And that's why understanding what happened in the Marshall Islands, understanding what is happening now in Okinawa, on Jeju Island, in the South China Sea, where the news gives us these jargon words that are sheer propaganda " You have American admirals and generals forever saying, "We have the right to freedom of navigation." And what does that mean? Freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the East China Sea is the right of the United States to patrol the waters, the coastal waters of China. A right that the United States would never give the Chinese if it wanted to patrol the coastal waters of California. Reprinted from Other Words The Buckeye State may be the most progressive in the union when it comes to youth prison reform. You might not guess it from the Republican governor or GOP-dominated legislature, but Ohio is proving itself the most progressive state in the union when it comes to youth prison reform. The Buckeye State has shifted away from punishing kids who get ensnared in the juvenile justice system to rehabilitating them, and it's saved money doing so. "What we've done in the past is treat the children who are incarcerated like mini adults,"explained Linda Janes, the deputy director of Ohio's Department of Youth Services. "We know better now through research and through all kinds of evidence that that's a mistake. Children have to be treated like children." That conclusion is good for youth offenders and good for society. Guards in the Ohio juvenile system are now called "youth specialists," and school uniforms have replaced prison khakis. Offenders spend their days in a school setting and earn their high school diplomas. Boys spend their spare time raising vegetables in greenhouses and tilapia in large tanks. The vegetables are donated to food banks for the poor, while the boys use the fish to learn cooking skills. (No girls are incarcerated in Ohio. They're sent to "alternative venues," akin to halfway houses.) The move from punishment to rehabilitation came as a result of a 2004 lawsuit alleging that guards in the state's youth detention centers used excessive force. The state also faced accusations that it was failing to adequately train staff, educate incarcerated children, and provide enough health services. A federal judge oversaw the complete revamping of the state system. The result is a national model for youth rehabilitation. Where 1,800 children were incarcerated at the time of the lawsuit, there are now fewer than 500 locked up. Meanwhile, recidivism rates have declined steadily. This has been a boon for the state, for reformers, and for Ohio's taxpayers. The research and policy organization In the Public Interest estimates that rehabilitation costs much less than incarceration. In Ohio, the tab for keeping people behind bars tops $25,000 per prisoner annually. By contrast, community-based services for arrested teenagers cost just $1,000 a year, a bargain by comparison. So, in addition to other positive outcomes, the state can also point now to the $58 million it's saving on youth services. How did Ohio succeed? First, it put politics aside and invited a group of nationally recognized experts on juvenile prison reform to offer advice. Meanwhile, the federal judge who oversaw the process pushed both sides in the state legislature to work together and to keep progress on track. Second, both former Democratic governor Ted Strickland and his Republican successor John Kasich invested in community corrections, which is more effective at targeting at-risk youth. And they insisted that local authorities keep the offenders' families involved in the process. Third, the state hired psychologists and social workers, improved medical care, broadened career and technical opportunities, and did away with solitary confinement. Ohio's focus moved from prosecution and incarceration to rehabilitation and reform. Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121 "Rob Kall's Bottom Up is a revaluation of values, not the empty mouthing of the word 'democracy' that is so common, but the application of belief in popular wisdom to every aspect of life. Actually believing that the views of more people is better, means a new way of thinking about the world that is democratic, feminist, localist, populist, and radically richer than the elitist perspectives that are more common even in the parts of the world that shout the word 'democracy' the most. Here we come to understand both the power of small groups and the upsides to internet crowd sourcing, the potential of nonviolent movements and ways in which the past has not been what we supposed. Don't just read this book; get lots of people to read and talk about it." David Swanson, host, Talk Nation Radio, author of War No More: The Case for Abolition. Amidst reports of Donald Trump's meltdown, a significant news item went almost unreported: MSNBC noted that the number of FB1 agents working on the Hillary Clinton email kerfuffle is not "147" but "12." The initial exaggeration was further evidence of the massive effort to demean and discredit Clinton. These attacks should stop. Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy. If you have followed Hillary Clinton's career, you understand there have been few periods where there were not rumors of some sort of Clinton scandal; beginning, in 1992, with Whitewater and, most recently, Benghazi. In 1998, Clinton spoke of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her and Bill. There's continuing evidence of this conspiracy; although recently most of its energy has been directed towards President Obama -- for example, claiming he is a Muslim. Over the past seven years, there have been three distinct attacks on Hillary Clinton. Since the September 11, 2012, attack on a State Department outpost in Benghazi, Libya, Republicans have accused Clinton of malfeasance. This culminated in an 11-hour hearing before a House Select Committee. Clinton got positive reviews for her deportment and refuted all charges. Unfortunately, the protracted investigation dragged down her approval ratings and opened up an email controversy. The right-win conspiracy rumbles on. In February, during a Republican presidential debate, Florida Senator Marco Rubio accused Hillary Clinton of "lying" to the four families of victims of the Benghazi attack. However, the non-partisan website, Politifact concluded: "There simply is not enough concrete information in the public domain for Rubio or anyone to claim as fact that Clinton did or did not lie to the Benghazi families." Recently, the conspiracy has focused on Clinton's email. During the summer of 2014, the Benghazi investigation revealed that Secretary of State Clinton had handled some email outside the normal State Department system, on her own server. While this was not illegal, it was unusual and invited further investigation. Of course, this impacted Clinton's approval ratings. Many Republicans believe that Clinton will inevitably be indicted; as do some Bernie Sanders supporters, who hope this indictment will lead to his winning the Democratic presidential nomination. The indictment won't happen. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, and others, have concluded that it is unlikely Hillary Clinton will be indicted over her use of a private email server. Law professor Richard Lempert observed: "Based on what has been revealed so far, there is no reason to think that Clinton committed any crimes with respect to the use of her email server, including her handling of classified information." But the relentless onslaught of the right-wing conspiracy has taken a toll. Over the past seven years, Hillary Clinton's approval ratings have lost sixteen points -- from 56 percent to 40 percent. Now Clinton is being assaulted by the Sanders campaign. First there was the accusation that she's a tool of Wall Street because she has accepted donations from individuals who are in the financial sector. Now the Sanders campaign has accused her of being a tool of the fossil fuel industry. About fossil fuel money, Politifact noted: "In fact, people in the fossil fuel industry have given to both campaigns" Clinton's campaign has received $307,561 from people who work for oil and gas interests so far in the presidential race. Sanders has received nearly six times fewer dollars -- $53,760." On April 6th, Bernie Sanders said, "I don't believe that [Hillary Clinton] is qualified" to be President because she takes special-interest money. Last week, the Mother Jones' political correspondent, Kevin Drum wrote an important article about Hillary. He quoted another correspondent, Jill Abramson, who has covered Clinton for 20 years, who observed. "There are no instances I know of where Clinton was doing the bidding of a donor or benefactor." Drum concluded: "The truth is that regardless of how [Clinton] sometimes sounds, her record is pretty clear: Hillary Clinton really is fundamentally honest and trustworthy." On April 6th, Politifact updated it's "truth-o-meter" for statements made by each candidate. Bernie Sanders had a 50 percent rating for "true" or "mostly true;" Hillary Clinton had a 52 percent rating for "true" or "mostly true." Recently, Nate Silver of 538 pointed out it is extremely unlikely that Bernie Sanders will get the Democratic nomination: Sanders would have to carry the remaining contests by an average of 13 percentage points. Feeding off this, Paul Krugman called on the Sanders campaign to quite depicting Clinton negatively: "The Sanders campaign needs to stop feeding the right-wing disinformation machine. Engaging in innuendo suggesting, without evidence, that Clinton is corrupt is, at this point, basically campaigning on behalf of the RNC." That's the situation in a nutshell: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy. She's probably going to be the Democratic presidential nominee. The prospect of a historic Democratic landslide is in sight. The Sanders campaign must stop attacking her. Super Delegates will be picking the Democratic Party presidential nominee. (Image by DonkeyHotey) Details DMCA Crunching the numbers after the Wisconsin Democratic primary April 5, I made a startling discovery. Neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton can win the Democratic Party's nomination this year on pledged delegates alone. The convention will be a contested one, and the super-delegates will be making the final decision. Here are the facts. In the 21 contests coming up between now and June 14, 1,661 pledged delegates are still up for grabs. Currently, Hillary Clinton has accrued 1,302 pledged delegates, to Bernie Sanders' 1,088. Hillary has 474 super-delegates in her column, while Bernie has 32. (At this point, 208 other super-delegates have not taken sides.) A total of 2,383 delegates, pledged and super, are needed to win the nomination. I put together a spreadsheet, giving conservative percentage wins to each upcoming contest. I put Bernie winning Oregon, Guam, Virgin Islands and Montana with 60% of the vote, Sanders winning nine other states with 55% of the vote, tying Hillary in the delegate-rich states of New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico and New Mexico, and losing in Delaware (40%) and DC (45%). Average percentage for Sanders came to 53%. The bottom lines showed that, under this scenario, after all votes were cast, Bernie Sanders would have 1,969 pledged delegates. Adding his 32 super-delegates (so far) makes his total 2,001, not enough for the nomination. Hillary's numbers are interesting, both in the bottom line and in how they progress over time. At the conclusion of the voting, with my projections, she would end up with 2,082 pledged delegates, also not enough for the nomination on pledged delegates alone. But, surprisingly, her 474 pledged delegates, numerous though they are, would not get her to the magic number until after California, New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico and North Dakota vote on June 7. And being super-delegate votes, Hillary can't count them for real until they are actually voted at the convention. But then I tried other scenarios with my spreadsheet. What if our two candidates simply split all the upcoming votes 50-50? Bernie would end up with 1,919 pledged delegates, Hillary with 2,132, still not enough for either one to win the nomination outright. How about if the momentum suddenly shifted and Hillary started to win 60-40? She would have 2,298 pledged delegates to Bernie's 1,753, still not enough to win. And even in this very unlikely scenario, Hillary's super-delegates still would not put her over the top, on paper, until after the June 7 vote is in the history books. Although super-delegates make promises to candidates, they don't actually cast their votes until the convention. If going forward, as I very conservatively predict, Bernie racks up 14 solid wins, five ties in big delegate-rich states, and only two small losses, the pressure will be on. Given that situation, stepping back and looking at the overall dynamic, the 714 super-delegates who will be picking the Democratic Party nominee should consider several critical facts: 1. Hillary Clinton has earned a third of her pledged delegates (437) in the Deep South. Those delegates are essential for her nomination, but winning those states is totally irrelevant to winning the White House. None of those eight Deep South states (Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina) will vote to send ANY Democrat to the White House in November. 2. A full 75% of the vote differential that Hillary touts ("more people have voted for me") comes from those eight Deep South states. Of the 2,240,000 vote differential (down from a high of 2.6 million) 1,697,216 of them were Deep South votes. In the remaining states, the vote differential is down to about half a million, and closing fast (Bernie won 135,000 more votes than Hillary in Wisconsin). 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 Alon Ben-Meir Blog An open letter to President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas Political Chief Khaled Meshal, and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh Dear President Abbas, Mr. Meshal, and Prime Minister Haniyeh, I am writing this open letter to you because I believe that it's time for you to take a hard look at the dismal reality to which your people have been subjected for nearly seven decades, especially since 1967. It is time to reconsider your positions, muster the courage to change course, and give the Palestinians, young and old, the hope for a better and more promising future. Since President Abbas has for 10 years subscribed to peaceful coexistence by renouncing violence and recognizing Israel, let me first address Mr. Meshal and Mr. Haniyeh: Nearly all Palestinians want to live in peace with Israel because they know deep inside that they do not have another choice. Time and again they have lived through the terrifying consequences of violent confrontations with Israel, which are compounded with every new eruption of hostilities. You speak on behalf of your people, but do you really hear their cry, do you feel their pain, do you experience their living conditions, do you have a real sense of their despair? If you did, you would not have allowed a single Palestinian to suffer helplessly for another day. Sadly, you chose to preserve the status quo because it presumably legitimizes your grip on power while riding on the backs of ordinary Palestinians, whose simple dream is to live in peace and dignity that you deny because of your illusions and continued defiance of Israel. You have cynically perpetuated the Palestinian refugee problem by using them as pawns, making them believe that the day of salvation is near and that they will all return to their homes, knowing full well that that day will never come. You let them languish in refugee camps in the name of protecting their "right of return" while you enjoy the luxury and the comfort for which a multitude of Palestinians pay the price. You are robbing a fourth generation of young men and women of a promising future and productive life. Instead, you are preparing them to die for an elusive cause -- the inevitable demise of Israel -- when only death lurks in the shadows of their shattered dreams. It is time to abandon your pipe-dreams of destroying Israel and ponder over the plight of many thousands of Palestinian children who go to bed hungry and sick, only to wake up in the morning wondering why they must endure another day of hunger and destitution. You never hear their cries; they need roofs that don't leak, schools that teach rather than preach, health clinics that heal the wounds, wholesome food to nurture their frail bodies, clean water to quench their thirst, and a new horizon to rescue their fading hopes. You are under fire from your own constituents for failing to rebuild Gaza nearly two years since the last war with Israel in July 2014; schools and courts are often closed, medical facilities are shuttered, sewage runs through the streets, piles of garbage are everywhere, government employees are staying home, and political disagreements often lead to murder. The recent civil servant strike was not against Israel, and no Israeli flag was set on fire. 50,000 workers in Gaza went on strike because they cannot make ends meet due to your failure to pay them their hard-earned salaries since 2014, but you blame Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to cover your squandering of funds. I know this list is not complete. Please add to it in the comments and I'll update the article. Click here to vote in a poll on who is more qualified to be president. To sum it up, she's failed again and again at highly important decision points, repeatedly adding duplicity or dishonesty to the malodorous stew of a life she's cooked up. Some thoughts on Hillary's experience and what it informs us about her qualifications to be president. Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media. Check out his platform at RobKall.com He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com more detailed bio: Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet (more...) At the Indiegogo site for The Boys Who Said NO!, a film-in-progress directed by my old friend Judith Ehrlich, you can read producer Chris Jones' 1967 letter from his draft board in San Jose, warning him of the penalty for refusing to register with the Selective Service System. A week before, Jones had sent this note to the draft board: My non-cooperation by many will be considered traitorous. But I assure you all that it is the only course of action which I can conscientiously take. My beliefs are founded in a deep love for America, for the democracy it can be, for the lasting peace and prosperity for all people, and for the joys of little children which force me to say: Stop the war. End the draft. I refuse to register. With a glad heart, Christopher Jones I anticipate the film will live up to the inspiring clip they have posted for prospective donors, and hope that many others will join the folks who've already contributed nearly half the target amount in exchange for perks provided by the filmmakers and key characters such as Joan Baez, Daniel Ellsberg, and David Harris. The footage I've seen features a wonderful conversations between Harris, founder of the The Resistance and deeply committed to nonviolence, and SDS/Weather Underground veteran Mark Rudd, who now wishes he had chosen a similar path. I saw plenty of familiar faces interviewed and kept scanning the crowd scenes for more. No matter how we draft counselors came to the work, we all recognized a responsibility to disrupt the class and race biases that ran the system; and we all saw something sacred in these encounters with men who had been forced to interrogate their consciences, knowing that the choices they made could affect not only their own futures but the future of this country. I've written about this before; for example, in 2011, concerning an earlier film about the great Paul Goodman. As I put it then: We also often guided them through the twisting chambers of their own consciences. I wish I could convey the agony of self-examination experienced by young men torn between a love of country and a keen desire to avoid killing innocent peasants in their grass huts. I often think that our current wars would excite an altogether different response if we still had a draft. When we did, those eligible for service (and those who loved them) weren't merely required to form opinions; they were forced into choices that literally meant life or death. Some in my generation are seeing echoes of the sixties today, with many forms of activism on the rise: calls for racial justice, climate justice, gender justice, economic justice, and more, and a popular presidential candidate who protested the Vietnam War and applied for conscientious objector status. For me, there are two central differences distinguishing these times. The first is overwhelming: in the sixties, the specter of apocalypse that now looms over virtually all progressive movements was not what drove us. It's not that the threat of nuclear war wasn't terrifying, nor that the state-sanctioned racism and sexism we fought hadn't heaped horror upon horror. But the people I knew were motivated much more by a vision of social transformation than the urgent desire to stave off the unthinkable which is such a dominant force today. Possibility, and not merely prevention, colored our vision. The second was the way in which U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War created the conditions that propelled personal conscience to the forefront of awareness. When virtually every able-bodied young man had to confront the prospect of being made to kill Vietnamese, politics weren't happening "over there." They unfolded in the pit of the stomach, in sleepless nights wrestling with oneself, in acts of desperation. The draft was deeply unfair. If you couldn't pull strings, if you didn't have the resources to find a medical excuse, if no one led you through the process of applying for conscientious objector status--which often meant if you were black or brown, if you'd had a run-in with the police and were offered a choice between the Army and prison, if your English wasn't strong--you found yourself in boot camp and prayed that wouldn't lead to Southeast Asia. On a headlands trail the other day, I encountered a couple carrying a drone. They sent it out over the ocean to shoot video of birds, water, waves. But every time I see one of those devices, I think about the way the United States wages war now, via computerized weapons operated from thousands of miles away by individuals who may well feel so distanced from the blood they spill they might as well be playing video games. This is so different from my memories of a young man, his head in his hands, crying in anguish over the nightly news images of soldiers, guns raised, chasing old men, women, and children from their huts with prods from a bayonet. I know the filmmakers are keen to connect what happened fifty years ago to the calls to conscience confronting us today. I'm eager to see how this story plays out in The Boys Who Said NO! When I look at the list of interviewees and filmmakers, I am sure it will be thoughtful and deep and true, and I am sure that is needed. Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" sung live by Dione Taylor. ASEAN Organic Cosmetics Market to Grow at a CAGR of 9.5% from 2014 to 2020 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-as-29 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-as-29 www.futuremarketinsights.com This Future Market Insights report examines the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market for the period 2014 - 2020. The primary objective of the report is to offer product advancements and consumer behaviour embedded systems that have given rise to a futuristic technology: the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics, which is significantly transforming global businesses and enterprises.Organic cosmetics are derived from organically grown plants and herbs containing no chemical and pesticides. Organic cosmetics, is being perceived as an essential element of the beauty and personal care sector & plays a pivotal role in FMCG industry growth. Increasing demand for premium cosmetics supported by rising disposable income of consumers in emerging economies specifically in ASEAN is fuelling the growth of overall organic cosmetics market.The ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market report starts with an overview of global organic cosmetics market contribution to beauty and personal care market. Further, ASEAN organic cosmetics market has been segmented on the basis of product type, distribution channel & countries. In the next section, FMI covers the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market performance in terms of global organic cosmetics market value forecast, since this is detrimental to growth of the market. This section additionally includes FMIs analyses of the key trends, drivers and restraints from the supply, demand and economy side, which are influencing the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics Market. Impact analysis of key growth drivers and restraints, based on the weighted average model is included in the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics report to better equip and arm clients with crystal clear decision-making insights.The primary focus of the following sectionis to analyse the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market by adoption among ASEAN countries; the primary applications covered under the scope of the report are ASEAN Organic Cosmetics uptake among product type and ASEAN Organic Cosmetics uptake among distribution channel. Furthermore, the product type has been sub-segmented into Skin Care, Hair Care, Make Up, Fragrances, Toileteries, and Others.Request Free Report Sample@As highlighted earlier, ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market has been also segmented on the basis of distribution channel which includes sub-segments such as Departmental Stores, Franchise Outlet, Beauty Specialist Salon, Direct Sales, Chemist/ Pharmacies, Internet, and Others. The next section of the report highlights ASEAN Organic Cosmetics adoption by countries. It provides a market outlook for 20142018 and sets the forecast. This study discusses the key trends contributing to growth of the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market on a worldwide basis, as well as analyses the degree at which global drivers are influencing this market in each countries. Key regions assessed in this report include Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Phillipinesand Vietnam.All the above sections, by product type, by distribution channel or by countries, evaluate the present scenario and the growth prospects of the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market for the period 2014 - 2020. We have considered 2014 as the base year and provide data for the trailing 12 months.To calculate the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market size, we have considered revenue generated from the demand side/ supply side sales. The forecast presented here assesses the total revenue by Value across the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market. In order to offer an accurate forecast, we started by sizing the current market, which forms the basis of how the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market will develop in the future. Given the characteristics of the market, we triangulated the outcome of three different types of analyses, based on supply side, consumer spending and economic envelope. However, forecasting the market in terms of various segments and regions is more a matter of quantifying expectations and identifying opportunities rather than rationalising them after the forecast has been completed.In addition, it is imperative to note that in an ever-fluctuating global economy, we not only conduct forecasts in terms of CAGR, but also analyse on the basis of key parameters such as year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth to understand the predictability of the market and to identify the right opportunities across the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market.As previously highlighted, the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market is split into a number of sub segments. All the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics sub-segments in terms of product type and distribution channel are analysed in terms of Basis Point Share to understand individual segments relative contributions to market growth. This detailed level of information is important for the identification of various key trends of the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market.Request For TOC@Also, another key feature of this report is the analysis of all key ASEAN Organic cosmetics segments, sub-segments, countries adoption and verticals revenue forecast in terms of absolute dollar. This is traditionally overlooked while forecasting the market. However, absolute dollar opportunity is critical in assessing the level of opportunity that a provider can look to achieve, as well as to identify potential resources from a sales and delivery perspective in the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market.Furthermore, to understand key growth segments in terms of growth & adoption of ASEAN Organic Cosmetics in countries, Future Market Insights developed the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics Market Attractiveness Index. The resulting index should help providers identify real market opportunities.In the final section of the report, ASEAN Organic Cosmetics Competitive landscape is included to provide report audiences with a Dashboard view, based on categories of provider in the value chain, presence of organic cosmetics product portfolio and key differentiators. Key categories of providers covered in the report are international players. This section is primarily designed to provide clients with an objective & detailed comparative assessment of key providers specific to a market segment in the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics value chain. Report audiences can gain segment-specific vendor insights to identify and evaluate key competitors based on in-depth assessment of capabilities and success in the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics marketplace. Detailed profiles of the providers are also included in the scope of the report to evaluate their long-term and short-term strategies, key offerings and recent developments in the ASEAN Organic Cosmetics market. Key competitors covered are Korres Group, Groupe LOccitane, Weleda Inc.,L'Oreal Group and Estee Lauder Inc.Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) Market Volume Analysis, Segments, Value Share and Key Trends 2014-2020 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-238 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-238 www.futuremarketinsights.com Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2014 - 2020" report to their offering.Static random access memory (SRAM) is a type of semiconductor memory. It uses bistable latching circuitry for storing bits. It is static in nature i.e. the data bits are stored till the power is supplied. The SRAMs are comparatively more expensive than DRAMs, thus are mostly used in the applications where high efficiency and performance is needed. Some characteristics such as bandwidth, power efficiency make SRAMs ideal for the electronic appliances such as cell phones, digital cameras and electronics user interfaces. Some of the general uses of SRAMs are workstations, computers, routers and other peripheral equipments such as CPU (central processing unit) caches, CPU register files, router buffers and hard disk buffers, among others. Printers and LCD (liquid crystal display) screens also use SRAM to save the preview of the image printed or displayed.Request Free Report Sample@Emerging high performance network applications, increasing demand and applications of the embedded SRAMs, and increasing demand for faster cache memories are some of the factors responsible for the growth of SRAM market. Faster switching time, power efficiency and high endurance as compared to traditional RAM, effective replacement for the traditional memory technology and increasing application base are some of the driving factors for the SRAM market. However, its larger cell size (up to six transistors for a single bit) makes it impractical for applications requiring large memory. Further, high cost incurred in designing and low stability in harsh condition is some other challenges to the growth of SRAM market. Neural networks and flexible electronics are emerging opportunities in SRAM market. The market for cellular RAM is increasing at growing rapidly and use and application of SRAM in cellular devices is expected to boost the market in coming time. Flash memory market can be replaced by SRAMs in upcoming years and players have opportunity in this filed.Static random access memory is segmented on the basis of type of flip-flop used, transistor type, features, functions, product types, applications and geography. Binary SRAM and ternary SRAM are the two broad segments of the SRAM market on the basis of flip-flop type. On the basis of transistor type the SRAM market is segmented into bipolar junction transistor and MOSFET (metaloxide semiconductor field-effect transistor).on the basis of features the SRAM market is segmented into ZBT (zero bus turnaround) SRAM, syncBurst SRAM, DDR (double data rate) SRAM and quad data rate SRAM. SRAM market is segmented on the basis of products into, asynchronous SRAM, PSRAM (pseudo SRAM), nVSRAM (non volatile SRAM) and others. On the basis of end-use application SRAM market is segmented into communication industry, computer /IT sector, consumer electronics industry and automotive sector, among others. China, Taiwan, Singapore, India and Malaysia are some of the countries holding huge potential for SRAM market.Visit For TOC@Some of the key vendors in static random access memory (SRAM) are Micron Technology, Inc., Integrated Silicon Solution, Inc., Powerchip Technology Corporation, Integrated Device Technology, Inc. Cypress Semiconductor, Everspin Technologies, Inc., Intel Corporation, Sony Corporation, Samsung Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics N.V., GSI Technology and Integrated Device Technology, Inc among others.Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Advances in Protein/Antibody Engineering Market Growth, Trends, Absolute Opportunity and Value Chain 2014-2020 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-214 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-214 www.futuremarketinsights.com Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Advances in Protein/Antibody Engineering Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2014 - 2020" report to their offering.Antibodies and Proteins developed with new and advantageous functions and properties are known as engineering of protein and antibody. Protein engineering in specific can be defined as a process of developing valuable proteins and modification of antibodies to increase similarity or specificity is called as antibody engineering.Antibody and protein engineering are used in applications such as, inflammatory disorders new therapeutic for treatment of diseases, protein purification, diagnostic and autoimmune. There are two approaches used for designing new antibodies and proteins which are directed evolution and the second is rational designing.Request Free Report Sample@Antibodies occupied a huge market share of approximately around USD 30 billion in 2014 and the market shows huge signs of growth for the next five years. The market for antibody engineering is changing quickly due to novel technologies. Moreover, protein engineering offers flexibility in engineering and designing new and desirable antibodies is expected to be the major factor driving the growth of the market. In future the market has huge opportunities from rising prevalence of diseases such as cancer and increasing health care concerns.Beryllium, ProSci Incorporated, Precision Antibody, Fusion Antibodies, BioXcell, GenTarget Inc, Imagin AB, covalab, and IBL international are some of the major players participating in the market.This research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically-supported and industry-validated market data and projections with a suitable set of assumptions and methodology.Visit For TOC@Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Biologics Market size in terms of volume and value 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1249 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1249 www.futuremarketinsights.com Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Biologics Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2016-2026" report to their offering.Biologics are drugs in the form of genetically engineered proteins, derived from human genes. As per the US FDA, biologics can be composed of sugars, proteins, or nucleic acids or complex combinations of these substances, or may be living entities such as cells and tissues. The biologic drugs are derived from a variety of natural sources such as humans, animals, or microorganisms and consist of products, such as vaccines, blood and blood components, allergenics, somatic cells, gene therapy, tissues, and recombinant therapeutic proteins. Advanced biotechnology techniques and complex processes are used to manufacture biologics. They are at the forefront of biomedical research.Biologics Market: Drivers and RestraintsDrivers for the biologics market include big brand name drugs losing patent extensions, growing incidence of chronic diseases and their diagnoses across the globe, increased availability of advanced diagnostics, rising government initiatives in healthcare and growing technological advancements in research and development across the globe by big drug makers to sustain competition and invest in incremental innovation. Other factors increasing the demand for biologic drugs include rising regulatory convergence and better access to healthcare for all nations.Restraints for the market include difficulty in manufacturing, as the drugs are highly complex in nature. They must be processed under tightly controlled conditions/controls, maintained throughout the production process. This type of atmosphere and quality control procedures are not easily available in less developed nations. Environmental contamination needs to be eliminated from the manufacturing process. Further, biologics are extremely susceptible to light, heat conditions, and need extremely good refrigeration processes, which is not available uniformly throughout the world.Request free sample Report:Biologics Market: SegmentationBiologics Market can be segmented into these following ways:Segmentation by product typeVaccinesBlood and Blood ProductsAllergenic extractsHuman Cells and TissuesProteinsGene TherapiesCellular TherapiesXenotransplantation ProductsSegmentation by applicationRheumatoid arthritisAnemiaCancerDiabetesOthersSegmentation by source materialHumansAvian Cell CultureYeastBacteriaInsects Cell CultureTransgenicsBiologics Market: OverviewBiologics market is at risk over the forthcoming years due to leading biologic drugs expected to lose exclusivity over the next seven years. The patented biologic drugs are expected to be replaced by biosimilar drugs. Competition is expected to be limited in the market as the drugs are expected to be formed using various types of innovative technologies. Increasing geriatric population, early onset of ageing, increasing awareness for technologically advanced medical procedures and drugs, higher spending power, and rising incidence of chronic diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. are expected to drive the market growth of biologic drugs.Biologics Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, biologic drug market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Request for TOC:In terms of geography, North America and Europe dominate the market, followed by Asia-Pacific. However, rising technological advancement in healthcare and systematic drug review process will drive the markets over North America, Japan and other regions. Europe currently dominates the biosimilars market driven by technically advanced healthcare infrastructure and high patient awareness & regulatory harmonization. Increasing funding for development of biologics available through public-private partnerships, availability of high-quality research infrastructure and innovative strategies developed by drug makers to restrict entry of new players are factors expected to contribute to market growth of biologics over the forecast period. Emerging markets include Eastern European countries followed by countries in Eastern Africa. Rising disease incidences in these countries is expected to prove favorable for the growth of the biologics market.Biologics Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in biologics market are Unilife Corporation, Retractable Technologies, Inc., Smiths Medicals, Becton, Dickinson & Company, Smiths Medical, Terumo Corporation, Pfizer Inc. (AC. Hospira), Roche Diagnostics, AstraZeneca, Bayer AG, Genzyme, GSK Biologicals, Lundbeck, Novartis AG, and Merck KGaA.Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Biosimilars And Follow-On Biologics Market size and Key Trends in terms of volume and value 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1250 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1250 www.futuremarketinsights.com Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Biosimilars And Follow-On Biologics Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2016-2026" report to their offering.Biosimilars is defined as a type of biological product that is similar to another drug, which has already been licensed (approved) by the US FDA or European Medicines Agency. Due to their high degree of similarity with the biological reference product, they have no clinically evidenced and meaningful differences from the reference product in terms of quality, safety or efficacy. These drugs are also coined as follow-on biologics and are mostly derived from biological sources such as bacterium and yeast. The constitution of the biosimilar drugs can be either small molecules such as human insulin or erythropoietin, or complex molecules such as monoclonal antibodies. Biosimilars are increasing gaining prominence given the loss of exclusivity of big branded drugs. In Europe, biosimilars can be marketed through independent applicant following expiry of patent and market exclusivity periods of the reference product. A good example for this is Pfizer acquisition of Hospira, to gain access to the latters attractive biosimilars portfolio. Regulatory harmonization, naming and labelling, innovative licensure norms and route to market for the biosimilar drugs are issues expected to gain attention and traction from big drug makers in the forthcoming years.Biosimilars and Follow-on Biologics Market: Drivers and RestraintsDrivers for the biosimilars market include big brand name drugs losing patent extensions, cuts in healthcare costs across nations, forming of incentivized pricing policies by companies in order to access high growth pharmerging markets and good development in pharmacovigilance procedures across the globe. Other factors increasing the demand for biosimilar drugs include rising disease incidences across the globe and better access to healthcare for all nations.Restraints for the market include constraints in developing and registering biosimilar drugs and the complexity in the manufacturing processes. The drugs are difficult to verify and have to undergo complex regulations. Further, the drugs are different from each other due to variability in raw material and in the manufacturing process, which is expected to deter the future development of biosimilar drugs. There are also risks in having an increase in the versions of an identical biosimilar drug.Request free sample Report:Biosimilars and Follow-on Biologics Market: SegmentationBiosimilars and Follow-on Biologics Market can be segmented into these following ways:Segmentation by product classepoetins;filgrastims;insulins;growth hormones;alfa interferons;monoclonal antibodies;beta interferons;follitropins;low-molecular-weight heparins (LMWH).Segmentation by applicationRheumatoid arthritisAnemiaCancerDiabetesOthersSegmentation by regionsBiosimilars and Follow-on Biologics Market: OverviewBiosimilar market is expected to gain prominence over the forthcoming years due to leading biologic drugs expected to lose exclusivity over the next seven years. Further, biosimilar drugs, once formed, are expected to generate cost savings for the patient population. Competition is expected to be limited in the market as the drugs are expected to be formed using various types of innovative technologies. Biosimilars may generate smaller savings for drug makers because of their complexity as well as regulatory challenges of getting FDA approvals.Biosimilars and Follow-on Biologics Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, biosimilar drug market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Request for TOC:In terms of geography, Europe dominates the market, followed by Asia-Pacific. However, rising technological advancement in healthcare and systematic drug review process will drive the markets over North America, Japan and other regions. Europe dominates the biosimilars market driven by technically advanced healthcare infrastructure and high patient awareness & regulatory harmonization. Increasing funding for development of biosimilar drugs, availability of high-quality research infrastructure and strategies developed by drug makers to restrict entry of new players. Emerging markets include Eastern European countries followed by countries in Eastern Africa. Rising disease incidences in these countries is expected to prove favorable for the growth of the biosimilar drug market.Biosimilars and Follow-on Biologics Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in biosimilar market are Pfizer Inc. (AC. Hospira), Sandoz International GmbH, , Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Dr. Reddys Laboratories, Biocon Limited, Mylan, Inc. , Amgen, Celltrion Inc., Roche Diagnostics, and Merck KGaA.Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: HostForLIFE.eu Launches Magento 2.0.4 Hosting http://hostforlife.eu/ http://hosting.asp.net/hosting/hostingprovider/details/953 European Recommended Windows and ASP.NET Spotlight Hosting Partner in Europe, HostForLIFE.eu, has announced the availability of new hosting plans that are optimized for the latest update of the Magento 2.0.4 hosting technology.HostForLIFE.eu supports Magento 2.0.4 hosting on their latest Windows Server and this service is available to all their new and existing customers. Magento package has been updated to version 2.0.4. Magento is an Open Source ecommerce web application launched on March 31, 2008. 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Besides this award, they have also won several awards from reputable organizations in the hosting industry and the detail can be found on their official website.12-14 Mansion House PlaceLondon, EC4N 8BJUnited Kingdom Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Market Sees Rising Preference for Contract Manufacturing and Biologics Transparency Market Research http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1690 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/active-pharmaceutical-ingredients.html Active pharmaceutical ingredients, also called APIs, are the medically active parts of any medication. Any medicine is essentially made of two components: the API, which produces the desired effect in the body, and the excipient, which is the inactive or inert substance in a drug that acts as a carrier or medium for the API.Get Free Sample Research Report:According to a market intelligence report published by Transparency Market Research, the global APIs market will expand at a healthy 6.3% CAGR over the period between 2015 and 2023. If the projection comes true, the market will rise from a valuation of US$12.9 bn in 2014 to US$21.9 bn by 2023.The rising demand for effective APIs for the global threat that is cancer and several other chronic diseases, and the increased preference to outsourcing API production are some of the notable trends in the global API market currently.Contract Manufacturing of APIs Becomes More PreferableOn the basis of type of API manufacturer, the global API market can be segmented into two chief categories: captive or in-house API manufacturers and contract API manufacturers. Captive API manufacturing refers to the practice of in-house production of active pharmaceutical ingredients by pharmaceutical firms. Contract manufacturing, on the other hand, refers to the practice of outsourcing production work to contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs).In 2014, the segment of captive API manufacturing held the largest share in the global active pharmaceutical ingredient market. However, the trend of outsourcing API production has gained momentum in the past few years and the segment of contract API manufacturing is expected to be the fastest growing segment of the market in the coming years. High production costs, production aimed at niche product categories, soaring costs of R&D activities, and rising pressures of pricing on finished products are some of the major factors prompting drug manufacturers to outsource API production. Significant reduction in the final cost of products and improved quality of APIs owing to the availability of advanced manufacturing technologies and innovative production processes in regions such as India and China are also promoting the rising preference for contract API production.Biological APIs to See Highest Growth in Future YearsOn the basis of API type, the market can be segmented into biological APIs and synthetic chemical APIs. Currently, the segment of synthetic chemical APIs holds the largest share in the market, thanks to the huge surge in demand for highly potent and stable APIs developed with the help of innovative methods of API synthesis. However, large pharmaceutical companies are increasingly shifting their focus to the segment of biological APIs. Owing to this, the segment of biological APIs is projected to exhibit growth at the fastest pace over the coming years.Protein-based therapeutics, which include antibodies, enzymes, proteins, and peptides, have provided a significant boost to the demand for biological APIs in the market. Apart from current blockbusters such as Herceptin and Humira, several other biologics such as alirocumab (Sanofi), dupilumab (Sanofi/Regeron), secukinumab (Novartis), mepolizumab (GSK), and brodalumab (Amgen) are also expected to enter several regional segments across the globe soon.Full Research Report on Global Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Market:Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 The Nautical Institute Recognises ChartCo's DPA Training course www.chartco.com CHARTCOS DESIGNATED PERSON ASHORE (DPA) TRAINING COURSE -AWARDED RECOGNITION BY THE NAUTICAL INSTITUTEWe are delighted to announce that our Designated Person Ashore (DPA) training course was recently awarded Recognition by the Nautical Institute as part of its Continuous Professional Development scheme. The Nautical Institute, which serves as an international representative body for maritime professionals, provides a wide range of services to the industry and its membership, including representation at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).Recognitiondemonstrates that the Designated Person Ashore training course meets the high professional standards set by the Nautical Institute. Recognition by the Nautical Institute verifies that processes, procedures, methods and techniques to deliver the training are approved and in line with the internationally accepted requirements for DPA training.The aim of our Designated Person Ashore course is to fulfil the requirements of IMO MSC MEPC7/Circ. 6, raising awareness of current themes in safety and environmental compliance whilst also promoting the sharing of industry best practice. Delegates will be updated on the issues that organisations have with ISM Code Compliance by ChartCo Trainers, providing ample opportunity to engage with practitioners. At the end of the course delegates will have the enhanced underpinning knowledge needed to make objective decisions about their Safety Management Systems.The course is a highly interactive three day programme, designed for current DPAs and those who may deputise for the DPA. It is also highly relevant for those within the company management structure who need to fully understand the role and responsibilities of the DPA, and their safety and organisational compliance with the ISM Code.ChartCo Training offers a range of maritime training solutions which assist owners and operators to achieve safe, secure and compliant maritime operations. Many of the courses can be tailored to suit specific customer requirements, and can be delivered at a suitable place and time. The range of courses on offer include flag approved statutory courses, as well as a suite of awareness courses covering safety, security, environmental, navigational and port state control topics.NOTES TO EDITORSChartCo, part of the Kelvin Hughes Group, is the worlds largest distributor of navigational data, charts, publications, digital products, training and consulting.ChartCo Training is a highly experienced provider of training for the Maritime industry. The service is designed to assist owners and managers with safety and security. All of our trainers are experts in their respective fields with a combined experience of over 100 years.Please visitfor further information about ChartCo Limited.For press enquiries please contact Pamela Paria, Marketing Manager on +44 (0)1992 805428.ChartCo, part of the Kelvin Hughes group, is the worlds longest established and largest distributor of navigational data, nautical charts, marine technical publications and digital products. ChartCo has played a key role in the servicing of the shipping industry to navigate safely over the past two centuries. It has unrivalled stock, global coverage and a reputation for looking after its customers. ChartCo also provides the worlds market leading software package, PassageManager, which assists with full voyage compliance, allowing the user to manage all ChartCo services and data in one application. PassageManager has the ability to produce a comprehensive, customisable passage plan which follows industry best practice and satisfies IMO guidelines. ChartCo has stock of physical products in several strategic locations worldwide. Our network of approved sub-distributors and agents extend ChartCo's reach to all the world's principal ports. We supply l products, services and data to more than 11,000 ships worldwide.ChartCo LimitedUnit 4, Voltage, Mollioson Avenue, Enfield EN3 7XQ, UK Tungsten Market : Forecast, Supply, Demand Value Chain, Drivers and Restraints (2016 to 2022) http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/10013 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/contact-us.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Tungsten, also known as Wolfram, is a greyish-white metal having lustrous appearance with a good corrosion resistance properties. Tungsten is widely used in its alloy form because pure tungsten is expensive and even difficult for machining. Its alloy consists of nickel, iron or copper added in tungsten. Tungsten is also available in powder form known as tungsten powder and tungsten carbide powder and its size ranges from 0.40 microns to 17.50 microns and is used in end mills, circuit board drills and nozzles. Fine tungsten carbide powders are used for inserts and cutting tools, whereas ultra-coarse and medium powders are used for wear and die parts, road construction bids. Global tungsten market is anticipated to grow by a decent single digit CAGR in coming future. The global tungsten market has its consumptions in the sector of steel alloys, mill products, cemented carbide, and chemicals. China is a dominant supplier of tungsten having the maximum market share in the global tungsten market in terms of consumption as well as supply.Growing end use industries such as automotive industries and increase in the demand of wear resistant materials is anticipated to boost the market of cemented carbide and ultimately will drive the global tungsten market. Tungsten has its application in electronic and electrical components such as electron emitters, lead-in wires and electrical contacts and these industries are forecasted to grow, leading to the increase in global tungsten market. The ability of tungsten to withstand arcing and resistant to corrosion makes it suitable to be used in voltage regulators, though demand of these application is minor but it still contributes in the global tungsten market.Interested in report: Please follow the below links to meet your requirements;Request for the Report Brochure:The global tungsten market can get hampered due to the recent economic slowdown in China, as China has the largest market share in mining of tungsten. Tungsten use is forecasted to decline in the lighting application due to the introduction of fluorescent and LED bulbs that has replaced the incandescent bulbs.On the basis of forms available, global tungsten market can be segmented as follows:-RibbonsSheetsFoilsStripsWireRodTubeOn the basis of end use, global tungsten market can be segmented as follows:-Hard metalsChemicalsMill productsSteelsOthersThe global tungsten market can be divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa. The Asia Pacific region is dominating the global tungsten market, China continues to be the leader in the supply and consumption of tungsten in the global tungsten market because of its vast tungsten reserves and support of the Chinese government to the tungsten product industries. India will represent a modest growth rate in global tungsten market due to its expanding manufacturing sectors. North America will contribute in the growing global tungsten market with the increasing construction spending in the region. Latin America will witness an above average growth in the global tungsten market by its rising durable goods sector. The expanding automobile industry in Europe makes it a valuable market in global tungsten market. The Middle East and Africa is at a nascent stage in tungsten market, but is having a bright future prospects in global tungsten market.For more info:Some of the manufacturers of tungsten and its alloys are, Buffalo Tungsten Inc., Mahavir Metal Corporation., Federal Carbide Company., H Cross Company., T&D Material Manufacturing., Global Tungsten & Powders Corp., Midwest Tungsten Service.The report covers exhaustive analysis on:Tungsten Market SegmentsTungsten Market DynamicsHistorical Actual Market Size, 2012 - 2014Tungsten Market Size & Forecast 2015 to 2025Supply & Demand Value ChainTungsten Market Current Trends/Issues/ChallengesCompetition & Companies involvedTechnologyValue ChainTungsten Market Drivers and RestraintsRegional analysis for Tungsten Market includesNorth AmericaLatin AmericaEuropeAsia Pacific & JapanThe Middle East and AfricaReport Highlights:Shifting Industry dynamicsIn-depth market segmentationHistorical, current and projected industry size Recent industry trendsKey Competition landscapeStrategies of key players and product offeringsPotential and niche segments/regions exhibiting promising growthA neutral perspective towards market performanceAbout UsPersistence 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, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesUSA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Ferrochromium Market http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/10046 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/contact-us.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Ferrochromium, also known as Ferrochrome, is an alloy of iron and chromium containing 50 to 70% of chromium. It is produced by electric arc melting of chromium ore and chromite. Ferrochromium is consumed extensively in the manufacturing of steel to achieve the qualities such as corrosion resistance, tensile strength, heat resistance and yield strength. The global ferrochromium market is anticipated to be in deficit to cater the increasing global steel market in near future. Ferrochromium is mostly produced in India, China, South Africa and Kazakhstan because of large chromite resources found in these countries. The global ferrochromium market is witnessing a modest single digit CAGR growth up till now and is expected to continue in future.Ferrochromium is having its maximum share of consumption in steel industry and due to the ever increasing construction and demand of steel the global ferrochromium market is forecasted to flourish. In order to get a continuous supply of raw material for ferrochrome, China has established its operations in the countries like Turkey, South Africa, Philippines and Zimbabwe which would boost the global ferrochromium market in future. Due to the favourable conditions like lower electricity price and lower labour cost in upcoming markets like China, the production cost reduces comparatively. This will boost the production of ferrochrome to suffice its increasing demand and will contribute in global ferrochromium market.The global ferrochromium market can get hampered because of the increase in the export tax and fixed export quotas imposed by South Africa on chrome ore, owing to the concern of losing ferrochromium market to China. South Africa is having a significant market share in global ferrochromium market but there are concerns of power supply and higher production cost which would lead to the closure of small competitors and is estimated to slowdown the global ferrochromium market.Based on the carbon percentage, the global ferrochromium market is segmented as -Extra low carbon ferrochromium powderLow carbon ferrochromium powderHigh carbon ferrochromium powderExtra high carbon ferrochromium powderBased in the available form, the global ferrochromium market is segmented as Ferrochromium slagFerrochromium powderBased on the application, the global ferrochromium market is segmented as Ball bearing steelsAcid resistant steelsCast ironsPowder metallurgyOthers (civil engineering, refractory materials)The global ferrochromium market can be divided into five regions, namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific is having the maximum market share in global ferrochromium market, China and India are the countries having an excellent steel market, so these countries are significant in the consumption of ferrochrome. China is expanding its capacity to import chrome ore for the production of ferrochrome from the countries like South Africa, Turkey, Zimbabwe. Middle East and Africa are also marking a significant growth in the global ferrochromium market, Especially South Africa is having plenty of chromite resources for the production of ferrochrome. Europe is an emerging market in the field of ferrochrome and is anticipated to have a considerable market in future due to the flourishing automobile sector in the region. North America and Latin America is at a nascent stage in the global ferrochromium market.Interested in report: Please follow the below links to meet your requirements;Request for the Report Brochure:Some of the key players in global ferrochromium market are, Nava Bharat Ventures Limited, VISA STEEL, Balasore Alloys Limited, Aarti Steels Ltd, SR Group, Vyankatesh Metals & Alloys Pvt. LtdFor more info:The report covers exhaustive analysis on:Ferrochromium Market SegmentsFerrochromium Market DynamicsHistorical Actual Market Size, 2012 - 2014Ferrochromium Market Size & Forecast 2015 to 2025Supply & Demand Value ChainFerrochromium Market Current Trends/Issues/ChallengesCompetition & Companies involvedTechnologyValue ChainFerrochromium Market Drivers and RestraintsRegional analysis for Ferrochromium Market includesNorth AmericaLatin AmericaEuropeAsia Pacific & JapanThe Middle East and AfricaReport Highlights:Shifting Industry dynamicsIn-depth market segmentationHistorical, current and projected industry size Recent industry trendsKey Competition landscapeStrategies of key players and product offeringsPotential and niche segments/regions exhibiting promising growthA neutral perspective towards market performanceAbout UsPersistence 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, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesUSA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Damages have been awarded in a civil suit revolving around the sexual assault of one student by another that occurred in 2010 at a local high school. The assault occurred on Oct. 19, 2010, at H.H. Dow High. The perpetrator, Anthony Michael Haveman, who was 16 at the time, was charged as an adult and sentenced to between five years, 11 months and 15 years in prison. He is housed at the Ionia Correctional Facility. The victim in the case, who was 14 at the time of the assault, filed suit in December 2014 in the Midland County Circuit Court, represented by attorney Jan Jeffrey Rubinstein of Bingham Farms. Named in the suit were H.H. Dow High, school officials Lee Meitler, Ted Davis, Dirk Deboer, Matt Samocki and Pam Kastl, as well as Havemans adoptive mother, Kristy Haveman of Midland. The case was overseen by Midland County Circuit Court Judge Michael J. Beale, who granted a summary disposition to the school and school officials a year ago. In May 2015, the plaintiff filed for an entry of default judgment against Kristy Haveman and the matter proceeded to a bench trial. Beale recently filed an opinion and order regarding damages. The opinion states during the trial, the plaintiffs mother testified about the victims life after the assault. She went from an outgoing, straight-A student to suffering anxiety and other problems. Therapy was discontinued due to problems with financial assistance, and collection actions have been taken against the victims family. Haveman testified as well. She said she was aware of her sons prior sexual assault conviction, and she had informed Midland Public Schools. She wanted to allow her son to drop out of school, and testified the Department of Human Services would not allow it, the opinion states. Beale awarded $1,500,000 in damages; however, he found Havemans comparative fault to be low, and adjusted the award to $15,000. The court does not see any significant culpability on the part of Ms. Haveman, Beale wrote, adding she had tried to move her son out of the schools but was prevented by the DHS. The suit states on the day the assault occurred, Anthony Haveman stayed in and around his classroom after the class had concluded, though other students and faculty had left the area. Haveman then encountered the victim, and lured her to a small room while pretending to need directions. He had attended the school for less than a week at the time after being released from juvenile detention due to charges in connection with a previous sexual assault. When Haveman got the victim alone, he assaulted her, sexually abused her and tried to rape her, the suit states. They account for nearly 40% of Pennsylvania Small Businesses Research has shown that womenowned businesses tend to be less financed than men-owned businesses, but in 2022 we are continuing to see an increase of women starting businesses all on their own, while also outperforming those owned and run by men.... WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- The militarys ability to accomplish its missions -- whether executing todays fight or training for future ones -- is dependent on electricity that powers installations. The Army and Air Force have identified energy resilience as a critical objective, advancing the capability for their systems, installations, and personnel to respond to and recover from unexpected disruptions. The Air Force recently established its Office of Energy Assurance, which will develop an integrated facility energy portfolio. The Armys Energy Initiatives Task Force was established in September 2011, and became an enduring organization, the Office of Energy Initiatives, in October 2014. The OEI serves as the central management office for implementing large-scale renewable and alternative energy projects, while leveraging private sector financing. Now, both offices will share support staff, business processes and best practices. The services formalized this partnership April 6 during a ceremony at the Pentagon. The memorandum of agreement, signed by Katherine Hammack, the assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment; and Miranda Ballentine, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment, and energy, shows the importance both services place on clean, reliable and affordable energy. Hammack stressed this partnership was vital for the Defense Department and would continue to push the Armys energy goals. The Departments of the Army and the Air Force share a common commitment to securing our installations with energy that is clean, reliable and affordable, Hammack said. I am pleased that through this agreement, we can share lessons learned and leverage the relationships we have developed with government, industry and utilities for the benefit of both our services. While the establishment of the Air Force OEA cemented the Air Forces focus on energy resiliency and strategic energy agility, Ballentine said this partnership would advance that capability. This Army-Air Force partnership will accelerate our goal of providing mission assurance through energy assurance," Ballentine said. "The Air Force, Army and Navy fight the fight together; we are one joint force, and our jointness is what makes us formidable around the world. Installation energy projects are another area where a joint-approach and strong collaboration can help us do more, faster. Lt. Gen. John Cooper, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for logistics, engineering and force protection, also signed the memo and said the Air Force is a globally networked force with critical missions and operations that are reliant on access to energy to accomplish the mission. We execute almost all our missions from our air bases, so building partnerships like this will ensure our resources and approaches are focused on mission assurance and resiliency, he said. Lt. Gen. David Halverson, the Army assistant chief of staff for installation management, also signed the memo on behalf of the Army. "This agreement is a framework for collaboration between the Army and the Air Force on policies, procedures and partnerships that support our energy missions," Halverson said. "We are excited to work with the Air Force in this effort. This partnership will identify and expand potential renewable energy opportunities across Army and Air Force installations." According to the memo, the partnership provides a framework for cooperation and support in the development of renewable energy projects, establishes the expectations and requirements of each service, and demonstrates both services focus on achieving energy assurance. SASEBO, Japan (NNS) -- Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Bremerton (SSN 698) arrived at Fleet Activities Sasebo for a visit, April 6, as part of its deployment to the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. This visit strengthens the already positive alliance between the U.S. and Japan through the crew's interaction with the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. It also demonstrates the U.S. Navy's commitment to regional stability and maritime security in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. "My crew is excited to visit Sasebo," said Cmdr. Wes Bringham, commanding officer. "Our partnership with Japan is very important to security in the Western Pacific and this port visit provides us a great opportunity to learn about our ally's culture and history. Bremerton first visited Sasebo in March 1986 and my crew is proud to continue the long tradition of partnership between Japan and the U.S." Bremerton is capable of executing anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "It takes a well-trained and motivated crew of top-notch Sailors to maintain America's longest-serving submarine in her top warfighting condition," said Command Master Chief Wade Jacobson, chief of the boat. Measuring more than 360 feet long and weighing more than 6,000 tons when submerged, Bremerton is one of the stealthiest submarines in the world. Homeported in Pearl Harbor, Bremerton's crew looks forward to representing the U.S. Navy as they continue their Indo-Asia-Pacific deployment. As the UH-60 Black Hawk prepared for final approach at the Camp Casey helipad, 15th Sgt. Major of the Army Daniel Dailey pressed his intercom button and let out a wistful groan, followed by a comment to no one in particular. This is where I lived, he said, this was my home. It was the first time Dailey had seen Camp Casey and the nearby city of Dongducheon since being assigned there as a staff sergeant in 1996. Though 20 years have passed and the area surrounding the camp has significantly changed from a town full of single-story shops and dwellings to that of high-rise apartments, Dailey recounts stories from his time on Casey with the vivid detail of a man confronted by a flood of strong memories. During his tour in Korea, Dailey was a section leader in 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment. His duties as an infantryman at the time meant he rarely got the opportunity to leave the base; receiving only one weekend pass to Seoul during his 12-month assignment. Its a place that made us strong and ready because we trained every single day, he said. Daileys battalion commander at the time was then-Lt. Col. Vincent Brooks, the current commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific, who calls the late 90s in Korea one of the greatest experiences of his career. His current boss, Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley served just miles away at Camp Greaves at the time as commander of 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment. Dailey credits the intense focus on readiness for contributing to the success of the leaders who have served here. I got the skills to be a great noncommissioned officer here because I was focused, he said. Here (in Korea) youre laser focused because you know whats happening just north of you. Soldiers who have missions that are focused work harder. Regardless of changes in landscape since he last set foot on the peninsula, the emphasis on readiness in Korea and throughout the Army, said Dailey, has not changed. Its always been about standards, its always been about discipline and being ready, he said. As he met with Soldiers throughout his tour, Dailey repeatedly brought up a readiness theme that has become the Armys top priority in the past few months. The looming downsizing of the force, coupled with unstable regions throughout the world have the Armys top leaders concerned about their available unit strengths. Dailey said the number one challenge facing the Army today was deployability, citing that about 100 thousand Soldiers across the force are un-deployable. What are we here for as Soldiers? Dailey rhetorically asked a group at a town hall meeting on Camp Casey. To fight and win our nations wars. Every Soldiers got to be ready to fight. Among his initiatives to increase readiness is the Armys new select, train, educate, promote system that forces NCOs to attend and pass their commensurate level of education before they pin on the next higher grade. Its a program that has caused some concern in Korea as Soldiers worry that they wont be able to attend schools while serving in Korea. Despite local concerns over the program, Dailey said that a driving force behind the decision was a cancellation rate of 50 percent for NCO education courses in 2015 throughout the Army that meant some Soldiers were keeping others from attending courses by tying up seats that went unused. He pointed out to a group of Camp Casey Soldiers that under the old system, some Soldiers could pin on sergeant first class in spite of only having passed the Armys basic leader course, the Armys initiation for junior NCOs. Raise your hands if you want your kids led by a senior NCO whos only been to BLC, Dailey said. Dailey said that Soldiers who are doing what they should do to get ahead shouldnt be concerned about changes on the horizon for the Army, saying that the upside to a smaller force will make the Army more efficient. He cited better training opportunities for future Soldiers who must do their jobs in combat more efficiently. Ultimately, Dailey said that the things that made him successful, 20 years ago during his time in Korea and ever since then still apply to Soldiers hoping to get ahead today. When I made a decision to stay in the Army, I committed to doing the best I can with everything I do, he said. I can assure you this is a place of opportunity because a young poor kid from Pennsylvania can become the Sergeant Major of the Army if he wanted it bad enough. Banks asked to promote SMEs through credit solutions "I would stress the financial industry to break-out of the tendency of lending to conventionally profitable and relatively safer sectors, and move towards promoting SMEs through prudent banking solutions, he said in his keynote address on '"Engaging the SMEs to Stabilise Economy," at the 6th SME Conference at a local hotel in Karachi. Muktadir said banks need to shift from traditional banking approach towards SMEs by developing and implementing appropriate credit evaluation techniques, used globally, such as credit scoring, cash flow and program-based lending. He said SMEs would greatly benefit the financial institutions themselves as SMEs will grow into larger corporations, resulting in increased business opportunities for them. "Banks need to remember that their industry is only as strong as the underlying economy," he emphasised. The SBP Deputy Governor said there exists strong evidence that SMEs expansion boosts employment more than large firm growth due to the fact that SMEs are normally more labour intensive. "In Pakistan, the SME sector contributes 30 percent towards the country's GDP, employs more than 70 percent of the non-agricultural workforce, accounts for 35 percent of the value added in the manufacturing industry and generates 25 percent in the export earnings. The sector has huge potential in generating employment and alleviation of poverty in the country," he added. Muktadir said the Credit Guarantee Scheme for Small and Rural Enterprises launched by the State Bank has been highly successful as over 64 percent of the guarantee limits allocated to banks have been utilised by them. He said in collaboration with IFC, SBP is assisting banks in their capacity building efforts, focusing on the areas of Strategy Formulation, Product Development, Risk Management, HR Development and Marketing Area. End. With the release of the VII episode of the ultra-famous and successful movie franchise "Star Wars," there has been a lot of question longtime fans have for the director of the film, J.J. Abrams. Questions linger about the characters and the scenes in "Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens" that includes as to why one of the most important and pivotal character in the film, Ben Solo, went to the dark side. Ben Solo, the son of "Star Wars" hero and heroine, Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa as seen in the film, was under the order of First Order Supreme Leader Snoke. Fans of "Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens" have questions as to how and why this happened. Now that the Blu-Ray copy of "Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens" has been released, another film came with the Blu-Ray copy and this is a feature-length documentary "Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey." On this documentary, Ben Solo a.k.a. Kylo Ren actor Adam Driver revealed why Ben Solo went to the dark side. According to Adam Driver,it all fell down to the neglect he felt from his parents and that maybe he was not given the love he thought he deserved in "Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens." "If you really imagine the stakes of him in his youth, having all these special powers and having your parents kind of be absent during that process on their own agendas, equally as selfish," Adam Driver stated. "He's lost in the world that he was raised in, and feels that he was kind of abandoned by the people that he's closest with. He's angry because of that, I think, and he has a huge grudge on his shoulders." It was also said that Kylo Ren, formerly known as Ben Solo, was under the training eye of his Uncle, Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi when he turned to the dark side in "Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens." Kylo Ren must have been phenomenally ignored throughout his life. One of the oddest rumors the British Royal family has been dragged into involves Prince Charles, Camilla Parker-Bowles and an alleged secret child they shared during their younger age and when Prince Charles was still married to the late Princess Diana. Now, news has it that this alleged secret child, which is Australian government executive named Simone Dorante-Day, wants to get a DNA test to prove that he is one of the British Royals. If there is any truth to this, the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, better watch out because if Simone Dorante-Day can prove that he is a royal, he will be second in line to the throne rather than her husband, Prince William. According to Simone Dorante-Day, his adoptive grandparent, Winifred and Ernest Day, who worked in one of the Royal households, revealed that their child Karen and her husband David adopted him when he was only 18-months old. And for the longest time his adoptive grandmother, Winifred Day, told him that he was Camilla and Charles son. As to why the Day's did not come forward with the truth about Simone Dorante-Day's identity, they claimed they were afraid for the safety of Simone Dorante-Day from all the public scrutiny. Simon Dorante-Day has gotten death threats and has been publicly ridiculed with his claims. Yet, despite that, he is certain that he can prove that he is the long lost hidden son of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles. He also claims that he has no wants to the throne if ever he is confirmed being a royal. He said he only wants to meet his brothers, Prince William and Prince Harry as well as the British reigning monarch Queen Elizabeth II, who, according to him, is his real biological grandmother. As for Kate Middleton, she could give less a care about this issue as there is no proof yet to these claims. More so, it is more likely that this is just false claims. Prince William will still more likely be the second line in throne and Kate Middleton will still be the future queen. Annual Common Core state tests began Tuesday, with a significant number of students across districts deciding to opt-out, and worse, some of them also boycotting the exams. At this rate, students who choose not to participate in state tests ares surely going to increase. New York City officials said the number of students opting-out from taking the exams this year will be higher than that of last year, reports New York Daily News. Last year, more than 400,000 students took the exams, but more than 7,900 students boycotted it. The number was also higher across the state last year, with about 20% of students deciding to skip the tests altogether. "City numbers look like they may be higher this year, and they are definitely broader," said NYC Opt Out Spokeswoman Megan Devir. She added that many students from different areas such as the Bronx, Brownsville and Harlem, as well as some parts of Brooklyn have already opted out. Meanwhile, a huge number of parents in the North County area did not let their children take the English Language Arts (ELA) state tests, reports the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. One Saranac Lake parent, Lori Moranie, said that among her reasons for not allowing her children to take the tests are questions as to what Pearson, the test vendor, intends to do with the data it collects. "There is no definitive answer that anybody could give me on what was going to happen with the information they have on our children, and they have a lot of information on our kids," said Mouranie. "Nobody seemed to know what was going to happen." State Education Commission MaryEllen Elia, who assumed the role after the state exams last year, said the state has "much work to do" in increasing the number of students taking the exams, reports the Poughkeepsie Journal. Elia hopes that the changes that the state enacted, as well as her own tour promoting them, would help in the effort. With Math state tests scheduled to start next week, only time will tell if these boycott numbers will rise. What do you think about this issue? Share in the comments below! Most schools in the U.S. start school very early during the day. But nine months ago, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey instructed the state's Department of Education to study the benefits of a later school start time for students. A month ago, the New Jersey Department of Education held a meeting that included major education groups, parents and health experts to discuss the benefits of a later school start time. "Soon after, it sent out a three-page survey to district superintendents and principals to get feedback to questions on how starting the school day later would affect sports, extracurricular activities, students' after-school jobs, school bus schedules, parents' child care arrangements and other considerations," Courier-Post reports. There's many benefits to getting more sleep... Here's your #PistonsFIT Tip presented by @HenryFordNews. pic.twitter.com/evhKAlDqY5 Detroit Pistons (@DetroitPistons) April 4, 2016 Many schools start at 7:30 a.m., which means that many students have to wake up as early as 5 a.m. to avoid getting late for school. When they get home, they have to finish their homework and study for tomorrow's exams. This schedule can be very stressful for growing children. For these reasons, many health experts recommend a later school start time for students -- not earlier than 8:30 a.m. -- so that they can get more rest and sleep. Here are some of the benefits of a later school start time. 1. It Can Prevent Weight Gain Getting an adequate amount of sleep means having less time to eat and crave for food. Many people eat more food in order to feel happier and have more energy during the day, which could have been provided by getting an adequate amount of sleep. 2. Sharper Mind One of the best benefits of a later school start time is that it can help the students perform better at school. "Science shows that people who sleep for seven hours exhibit significantly more brain activity than those who don't," Dr. Daniel Amen told Men's Health. 3. Better Mood Kids might not be too moody and grumpy if they have a later school start time. Inadequate sleep can increase a person's level of stress and irritability while adequate sleep brightens up a person's mood, Healthy Sleep explains. The head of counseling at Brunel University revealed there are a lot of students asking for help to address mental health issues. Ruth Caleb, the lead counselor, said the numbers of pupils seeking for psychological assistance are getting bigger and bigger that they can't even handle. Some Universities Fail To Help According to The Guardian, Imperial College London and University of York have been addressing the increasing volume of students seeking for advice and guidance. Unfortunately, some of the universities fail to give their support and don't even have counseling services. In fact, there's an instance when a student is requesting for a counseling appointment but, she was not accommodated. There was no counselor available in their school for a whole semester. Hence, no one was available to help her. This just makes the students feel more miserable for having nobody to help them. Counseling services in some schools are now hard to obtain because of the increasing numbers of students who need help while the facility stays to be low funded. Urging Reform There are some counselors and therapists around but, they are not enough to face every student that has mental health issues. The Courier reported Northern Iowa student body, President Katie Evans, is trying to do her best to address the mental health issues in their university. Along with her other student leaders have their way in the Capitol to ask for help and additional funding for counseling services. Aside from that, they are also asking for educational support and needs to give proper awareness about mental health issues. "Students at the college level are facing a lot of new challenges and new people and new housing, etc.," Evans said. Katie also added that she believes that students who have mental health issues are having a hard time to ask for help and counseling in time when they needed it the most. Although the 2012 school shootings of elementary students and teachers in Newtown Middle School destroyed lives, it also helped improve school security around the town. A piece of evidence that shows this new and improved school security is the arrest of a science teacher who carried a gun at Newtown Middle School. The middle school science teacher, 46-year-old Jason M. Adams, was first detained by school security personnel when someone in the school noticed that Adams was carrying a gun. He was then arrested and charged with illegal possession of a weapon on school grounds by the Newtown Police Department, The Washington Post reports. He has been released, but is required to attend a court hearing on April 20. "Both the Newtown Public School system and the Newtown Police Department took immediate steps to address the matter," the school system stated via The Washington Post. "Both agencies have been working closely together to investigate the incident and are taking precautions to ensure the continued safety of our students, staff and community members." The science teacher has not responded to the media about his arrest. Adams has a valid state gun permit, but he is not allowed to bring it to school. Newtown Middle School has placed the science teacher on administrative leave and under investigation. After the 2012 school shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., school security personnel with firearms have been assigned to every school building. Many of these security officers assigned in schools are former policemen. "This close working relationship between the school system and law enforcement personnel is essential in resolving incidents of this nature," police reportedly said. More security upgrades are being planned and implemented in order to prevent more school shootings. Officials have recommended that schools should have classrooms that can be locked from the inside; improve the mental health care system; stricter rules on carrying guns; and proper training for school personnel on how to respond to such emergencies, The New York Times reports. Being far away from one's children is always hard. However, sometimes, parents have to suck it up and part ways at some point. It is true that for parents their children are the world to them, no matter how short being apart from their kids are it will always seem like it is forever. Now, the famous British Royal couple, Kate Middleton and Prince William, has a lot of royal duties and one of this is to travel to some far off place. Recently, the Kensington Palace just announced that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton, will be travelling to India and Bhutan. In the press release by Kensington Palace, the royal couple will be travelling for seven days and they will be the only one to travel. In other words, they will leave there young kids back in London. This, according to numerous sources, will be the longest time Prince William and Kate Middleton will be away from Prince George, 2, and Princess Charlotte, 11 months. According to insiders, Kate Middleton and Prince William entrusted the royal toddlers to people they trust. The royal toddlers will be watched and taken care of by their nanny, Maria. Moreover, Kate Middleton's very own mother, Carole Middleton, will be there to help. They will be in contact everyday with the travelling royal couple. "They will keep in touch with Skype, and I'm sure Maria will do a diary for them while they are away with pictures and photos, any moments they might have missed. She will know that while they are away, the parents need extra reassurance," said Sarah Dixon, a maternity nurse who knows friends of the royal couple. Kate Middleton and Prince William will be touring the cities of India and Bhutan for seven days as part of their royal duties. After the trip, the Royal couple will be back soon in London for their family and kids. Two teen actors in a school production accidentally had their necks slit when a prop used in a pivotal scene in their "Sweeney Todd" play turned out to be a sharp razor. The high school students from St. Kentigern College in New Zealand were brought to the hospital Wednesday for their injuries, but they were later discharged after treatment. TVNZ reports that the show for the following night has been cancelled due to the incident, but the school head, Stephen Cole, is convinced no one is to be blamed for the accident. "It was an unfortunate isolated incident which we're of course very disturbed about," Cole said. He cited that the students and drama teachers have been using the prop since rehearsals in January. The razor was wrapped in "duct tape, foam and silver paper" to keep it blunt yet authentic. Cole acknowledged that parents had some concerns about the school mounting "Sweeney Todd," which is a tale of a barber turned serial killer from the 1840s. The 2007 movie adaptation with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter depicted the death scenes violently. Below is a video of the throat-slitting scenes from the movie version: CNN reports that the police and WorkSafe New Zealand are conducting its investigation of the school, but Cole believes they did not violate any health or safety standards. A police spokesperson revealed no foul play was involved. "It's not a criminal inquiry. In this instance the play is not the reality," he said per NZ Herald. The audience was not aware that they were watching real blood gushing from the teens' necks during the performance and only got wind of the accident later. The families of the boys are getting support from the school, while the rest of the students participating in the play are also being offered counseling, per Fairfax New Zealand Limited. Listen to the headmaster talk about what really happened to the "Sweeney Todd" school play in the audio interview below: A nine-year-old reporter named Hilde Kate Lysiak reported a homicide from Pennsylvania on Saturday. However, the story sparked a parenting debate of whether a young girl should be allowed to report news about the murder story. Hilde posted the story on her website, Orange Street News, after confirming the story with the police department and gathering information from neighbors. The young girl was also the first to report the incident even before any professional media outlet. Unfortunately, her story was bombarded with comments from her Facebook and YouTube pages claiming that her age is too young to be covering murder stories. Hilde addressed her critics and parenting debate spectators by uploading another video stating that while she is only nine years old, she is a reporter first, according to Parent Herald. Hilde's story sparked a widespread parenting debate on whether it was appropriate for the young girl to be covering a violent death. The majority of people online responded by saying that parents know their children best which means they would also know what they can and cannot handle. Several parenting experts claimed that people should not be one to dictate how parents should raise other people's children. Beth Engelman from Chicago, who is the co-founder of parenting website Mommy on a Shoestring said that while she would have been freaked out to hear about murder from a person at that age, she believes that the young girl could handle the details. Daryn Kagan, a former CNN anchor also admired Hilde's parents for doing a great job in providing a channel for their daughter's interests and passions, CNN reported. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with Hilde's parents on letting her pursue her dreams of becoming a reporter. Some concerned citizens in the parenting debate, believe that Hilde is indeed too young to be reporting on a murder story. "The child can't possibly understand the total implications of a story this magnitude," according to Louise Sattler, a psychologist and co-founder of 411voices.com. Sattler reiterated that safety should have been prioritized as the story could have put the child and family in jeopardy. Pamela Wechsler, a local state and federal prosecutor for 17 years explained that stories of homicide impact a person without even realizing it at the time. She goes on to explain that these stories change how a person sees the world and how they interact with other people. Do you think it is appropriate for a 9-year old to cover a murder story? Share your parenting debate thoughts in the comments below. A Texas school's dismissal policy, which bans parents from walking their kids home from school, is causing an outrage. The principal of the Bear Branch Elementary School in Magnolia is threatening that moms and dads will be arrested if they don't comply. The elementary school has advised parents that they should either let the students take the bus, or wait in their car on the assigned pickup line. If they walk their child in the campus grounds, authorities could arrest them for trespassing and the parents could be filed with criminal charges, Fox 26 reports. Parents Rally Against Dismissal Policy Some parents have moved their children in other schools as a result of the changes and insist that the principal, Holly Ray, is in the wrong. "Mrs. Ray's policy is implying that a parent doesn't have the ability or capability to decide what is safest for her children and that the school district does," a dad, Frank Young, said. Their house is near the school, but he has transferred his children when the dismissal rule was adopted as it was an inconvenience. Other parents argue that the ban is "ridiculous" as the pickup line fills up with cars during dismissal, per KPRC 2 News. Since the elementary school schedules dismissal times separately for all its 639 students, the waiting time at the pickup line takes hours. The school sits by a five-lane highway traffic, which is why separate dismissal times are in place to ease crowding during that time. However, the parents say that's not what's happening. Some parents arrive as early as 2 p.m. to wait even as the first dismissal begins at 2:30 p.m. On the other hand, bus rides have several stops, so it takes a longer time for the kids to arrive home. Hence, the other parents prefer walking their kids from school. Texas School Responds On Arrest Threats In response to the issue, which has elicited media interest because of the arrest threats, Magnolia Independent School District defended the school's policy in a letter addressed to parents Wednesday. It cited that there have been no arrests made and violators were only sent letters to remind them of the dismissal process. The school also said that the process has been working since fall's school opening. It reiterated that those who prefer to walk home will be dismissed last, which is at 3:50 p.m. or when the car pickup line has cleared. What's your say on this policy? Do you side with the parents or the school? 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 Former The 100 actor and current lead of Starzs American Gods adaptation, Ricky Whittle, has spoken out about what he deemed an abusive work experience on the set of The CW show. During an interview with AfterBuzz TV, Whittle shared his disappointment with showrunner Jason Rothenbergs treatment of his character and what he believed was a very intentional and personal sidelining while acting on the series. Although Whittle has only recently publicly vocalized his issues, his mother came out over Twitter about the suspected bullying. He had also made two attempts to break away from the show. Whittle attributes Warner Bros. Peter Roth and CW President Mark Pedowitz as the reason why he eventually stayed before making an actual exit this season. According to Whittle, his role was systematically diminished by Rothenberg, particularly during the current season. While he was originally scheduled to depart the series at the end of season 3, his character Lincoln was killed off during the March 31 episode. This is the one character who can protect everyone, Whittle said. Hes supposed to be this warrior. Hes supposed to be the link who couldve helped on all these missions and then he got thrown in a cell and we kinda came back to him for about 30 seconds in each episode. At one point in the interview, Whittle noted that his role became so minimal that he returned home to Los Angeles for six weeks instead of staying on location in Vancouver. [Rothenberg] chose to belittle me and neglect my character and myself. I often had questions and emails were ignored and things like that. It was ridiculous, Whittle continued. Whittle then went on to describe how he believed Rothenberg abused his position as showrunner to make my job untenable. What he did was disgusting, and he should be ashamed, Whittle said. A lot was made of what my mom said all over Twitter, but everything she said was true. He was professionally bullying me, cutting out all the storylines I was supposed to be doing, cutting linescutting everything outtrying to make my character and myself as insignificant as possible to the point that it was starting to get me down. The American Gods star attributed the support of his cast as a major aid in helping him get through shooting. Fortunately, I was surrounded by an incredible cast and we looked out for each other, Whittle said. Whittle did state that on several occasions he was asked to drive to Santa Monica to sit down with Rothenberg, who was allegedly almost never on set, to work out the issues. This isnt the first time Jason Rothenberg has come under fire for his showrunning on The 100. Prior to this season, fans had voiced concerns about how the series was handling race, and most recently, the show sparked massive backlash over its choice to use the bury your gays trope to kill off its lesbian character, Lexa (Alcyia Debnam-Carey). CNNMoney's Jose Pagliery discusses cyber weapons dealer Zerodium, which sells hacking tactics to governments and corporations. Pagliery says that "when there are bugs in software, bugs in products, normally if you find them you tell the company so that they could fix it. In fact in the last few years companies like Microsoft, Google and others, have adopted these things called 'bug bounties' where they're willing to pay you so that you tell them the flaws in their products and they could fix it. This turns this entire model on its head. Because what we're dealing with is a company that's willing to pay you to find out what's wrong but to keep it secret so that it can weaponize that and hand that to a company or a government. And from there we have no transparency." Zerodium's business is extremely controversial, because it is selling "zero-days," the golden gun of the cyber world. These are rare, powerful hacks that exploit never-before-seen vulnerabilities. They get their name from the notion that tech companies have had "zero days" to fix them. "This is a weapon," said Zuk Avraham, founder of cybersecurity firm Zimperium. "It takes one man to write an exploit these days -- one man willing to sell his soul to the devil." "The recent story between the FBI and Apple shows the most interesting aspect of the zero-day business, which is the need for government agencies to get access to unpatched flaws to properly conduct investigations and save lives," he wrote. And Zerodium isn't the only company selling zero-days to the highest bidder. Experts who closely watch the zero-day market say this business is also conducted by government contractors, like weapons maker Lockheed Martin, consultants at the RAND Corporation and the Florida-based Harris Corporation, which makes a police phone-tracking tool called the Stingray. Selling zero-days on the open market can make the Internet and gadgets less safe to use, experts tell CNNMoney. Non-profit Mozilla says it has rewarded researchers for spotting 260 bugs in the past two years, paying around $3,000 on average. But compare that to Zerodium, which openly advertises it will pay up to $30,000 for a Firefox hack. Dixon-Thayer said there's now direct pressure on tech companies everywhere to raise their bug bounty prices -- making computer security even more expensive. 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. I gave this presentation on popular religiosity and its importance for Latin American Catholics during the Second Diocesan Encuentro of the Diocese of Savannah which took place on January 29th and 30th. The first day, about fifty attended (mostly priests) and Father David Garcia from San Antonio gave a very insightful presentation. The second day, over 250 lay leaders from the whole diocese gathered. It was a magnificent event! Heres my presentation which I gave to a group of priests: Historically, the transmission of the faith in Latin America has not been primarily through the presence of clergy. Priests have been very scarce, so the faith has been passed on mostly through what is experienced at home and through popular religiosity, the traditional public acts of religion such as processions. In Latin America you do not always use a catechism to evangelize, but it happens naturally through the way children are raised in society. Children participate in popular religious acts and they learn by participating in activities such as Live Stations of the Cross or by dressing up as their favorite saint. In the Joy of the Gospel, Francis writes, these acts of popular religiosity have an active evangelizing power which we must not underestimate. To do so, would be to fail to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. Instead we are called to promote and strengthen it. I know of a parish in the United States where the Mexican community showed up at the church on December 12th ready to celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe and the priest sent them home. It was not on the schedule, he did not understand, so he sent them home and the priest went back to the rectory. For the Mexican community this was incomprehensible. This is like a group of Americans denied a Thanksgiving dinner while living abroad. Wherever Americans go, Thanksgiving will be celebrated. Likewise with these popular expressions of faith since they are part of what you do. We must be aware that many of these cultural practices are so ingrained in people, so we have to be attentive. Once, a man showed up after Mass with roses, he came up to me and asked, where is Our Lady of Guadalupe? He did not ask do you have one? This was a very insightful encounter. The man expected Our Lady of Guadalupe would be in the church, there was no other possibility. Hispanics from various countries come to the United States and they are mixed together into an artificial community. They bring their own distinct traditions and practices. The vast majority in our diocese are Mexican, so we lean heavy towards traditional Mexican practices like Posadas, Guadalupe, Candelaria etc. We cater to Mexican sensitivities. Within Mexico there are different practices and traditions, so we need to ask and to listen. At the same time, we have to be sensitive to the reality that not everyone is Mexican, yet realizing that the vast majority are Mexican, especially in the more rural areas of the diocese. The larger cities have more mixed communities with Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Panamanians, etc. We have to be culturally sensitive to these differences. It is important to ask non-Mexican communities how we can celebrate their traditional feasts. An equivalent to consider would be this: imagine immigrants abroad are invited to an English Mass, so people from England, Scotland, New Zealand, United States, and South Africa arrive, and they are encouraged to do their cultural thing together. The only thing in common is the language they speak and perhaps the faith they share. At times, parish leadership in Hispanic communities will not be from Mexico, but the majority of the faithful are Mexican. As priests, we must be attentive to this. Your leaders may not understand or know well the needs of the general community. It is important to ask: How do you celebrate? What do you eat? We should not provide what we think they need, but what they know that they need. Do not assume, but ask. Oftentimes in the United States, there is a push to celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe as Our Lady of the Americas, which is fine. Yet, there is a danger to de-mexicanize the celebration to the point that the Mexican community (who are the majority) feels out of place. Mexico has particular ways of celebrating her feast day, so I always encourage priests to celebrate the feast as the Mexicans do. Imagine living abroad, and a group of Americans are told that this year for Thanksgiving, pork rather than turkey will be served. We would happily eat the pork, but Thanksgiving is not Thanksgiving without turkey. We have to be mindful that some traditions have the same name, but are different practices. For example, in the Philippines the Misa de Gallo is a Mass celebrated early in the morning for nine days before Christmas, what in Puerto Rico is called the Misa de Aguinaldos. The Misa de Gallo in most Latin American countries is Christmas midnight Mass. We must ask and be attentive to these traditions: have people tell you. Listen, think about it, and you decide what to do. Colombians celebrate a novena before Christmas, the Mexicans the Posadas, and Puerto Ricans have parrandas. As a priest, you cannot go to every single thing, but it is important to attend one evening with each different group. Each national group will want to do its own tradition: the Colombians will not mix with the Mexicans, not because they dislike each other, but because they have different traditions. These traditions cannot be dismissed. For example, you cannot just have a simple Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe because you will lose an enormous opportunity to evangelize. People show up to these traditional celebrations, even those who never come to Mass. If they feel welcome, they will come back. We must take advantage of opportunities around traditional celebrations to get people in the door. Give out information or booklets with parish information, have tables of parish ministries, etc. Things can get messy at these celebrations, you have to be patient, but it is always worth doing these larger celebrations. It is a great way to reach people who are distant, to evangelize, and to strengthen the faith. These celebrations are also moving, especially live Stations of the Cross. They allow you to enter into what is happening. At a Posada, you truly feel that you are walking with Mary and Joseph, you feel the rejection, you become part of the action, especially if a real donkey is involved. Popular religiosity has a way of making moments of salvation history present here and now. Second generation of immigrants tend to shy away from expressions of popular religiosity as they distance themselves from religion in general. Some of the new generation have no idea why they do these things. There is a need to catechize and teach the faith. Popular religiosity is effective in transmitting the faith ideally in a context where the faith is not being challenged. When the faith is challenged, the faithful may not be able to express what they believe even though they have great faith. Today in Latin America people are more educated than 25 years ago, remote areas are not as remote, and Protestants and Mormons are present. Popular religiosity is beautiful and must continue since it can transmit the faith in a way that no theological treatise or catechism can transmit, but we must provide catechetical substance. Popular religiosity is not just an entry way to the faith, but is essential. Pictures: Justin Niederkorn, all rights reserved, used with permission. Taken during the Second Diocesan Encuentro of the Diocese of Savannah, Sacred Heart Parish, Warner Robins, Georgia Patna: Police in Patna on Monday resorted to lathi-charge on Jeevika (Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project) workers in which more than two dozen people were injured. As reported, hundreds of Jeevika workers had gathered at the Income Tax roundabout to press for their demands. However, things got out of hand in a hurry when the protestors ambushed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and the leader of the opposition in the state Assembly Nand Kishore Yadav who just happened to be passing by in his vehicle. {gallery}newsimages2015/apr/041315{/gallery}Sensing threat on the life of Yadav, police jumped into action and showered batons on the protestors to disperse them. Several people were hurt in the incident; many had to be rushed to the hospitals for injuries. Police also arrested over a dozen people for disturbing peace and vandalizing properties and passing-by vehicles. The incident caused a massive traffic jam between Patna Women's College on Bailey Road and Exhibition Road forcing many to take alternate routes to reach their destinations. New Delhi: After months of political maneuvering and strategizing, the six members of the so-called Janata Parivar merged into one party in an attempt to stop the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from growing its influence in Bihar and elsewhere. The merger of the Janata Dal U, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Samajwadi Party (SP), Janata Dal (S), Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), and Samajwadi Janata Party-Rashtriya (SJP-R) was announced following a meeting of the party leaders at the residence of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was also declared the President of the yet to be named new party, in New Delhi on Wednesday. {gallery}newsimages2015/apr/041515{/gallery}JD-U's Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav, and K. C. Tyagi; RJD's Lalu Prasad Yadav, JD-s' H. D. Deve Gowda, and other leaders were present at the meeting. SJP-R's Kamal Morarka and INLD's Om Prakash Chautala, however, could not attend the meeting as the latter remains incarcerated in Delhi's Tihar Jail for his earlier conviction in the employment scheme. Though the name and electoral symbol of the new party is yet to be decided, all parties agreed on the leadership of Mulayam Singh Yadav who would be the President of the new entity designed to stop the saffron party from winning elections in Bihar, UP, and other states. Talking to the reporters, Sharad Yadav said that a six-member committee comprising himself, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Deve Gowda, Chautala, and Morarka had been formed to decide on the name and symbol of the party. The merger is expected to give the new party a bigger voice in the Lok Sabha with a total strength of 15 members. In Rajya Sabha, it will have a combined strength of 30. Calling the merger 'historic', Mulayam wasted no time in launching a full frontal assault on the BJP saying despite an absolute majority, the NDA government failed to do anything for the country. "This is the first government at the Center that has not sought opinion of the opposition on any matter. This is not a good sign but we are now in a position to oppose it even more vigorously to hold it accountable for its misdeeds," the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister said. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is considered to be the mastermind behind the 'Janata Parivar' merger following his party's embarrassing defeat in the 2014 Parliamentary elections, said that there was a consensus on the proposed merger from the very get go but things like these do take time to take shape. The RJD chief, on the other hand, said that the new party would 'puncture' the wheels of the BJP come next state or national election. Patna: With the Nitish government busy forging alliance with former political adversaries to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the next Assembly polls, the education at Patna University has all but collapsed as the teaching faculty under the banner of PU Employees' Association on Thursday threatened to go on an indefinite strike if their demands were not met immediately. Sitting on a day-long dharna at the PU office, teachers and principals of various colleges demanded immediate removal of Vice Chancellor Dr. Y. C. Simahadri for failing to fulfill his responsibilities and indulging more in politics than administration of the university. "Vice Chancellor Simahadri, instead of showing empathy with the teachers, non-teaching staff, and the students, has chosen to The protesting teaching staff also accused the Vice Chancellor of ignoring the demands of the university's non-teaching staff who have been on an indefinite strike for more than ten days now to press for their demands. With both teaching and non-teaching staff now staying away from the day-to-day functioning of the university, the students of Patna University have the most to lose as many of the graduate exams have already been postponed indefinitely Speaking at the dharna, Patna College Principal Nawal Kishore Chowdhary said that it was incumbent upon the Vice Chancellor to address all the issues of both the teaching and non-teaching staff and to restore normalcy in the campus as earliest as possible. "The Vice Chancellor should stop being so stubborn and agree to the demands of the aggrieved groups. It appears we need to protest against those who put a person like Simahadri in the Vice Chancellor's chair," Chowdhary said. Iranian political prisoner released from Evin after protests 04/08/16 Source: Radio Zamaneh Iranian political prisoner Saeed Razavi Faqih was released from Evin Prison on Wednesday April 6, 2016. Razavi Faqih had been on a hunger strike over the lack of adequate medical treatment given to him in prison. Saeed Razavi Faqih before (left) and after prison The Zeytoon website had earlier reported that the political prisoner had also sewn his lips together to protest the unjustified extension of his prison sentence. Razavi Faqih was arrested in Karaj for what the Fars News Agency described as a "seditious speech" in Hamadan. He was charged with "assembly and collusion aimed at disturbing national security" and sentenced to one year in jail. He completed his one year in March of 2015 but was then sentenced to another three and a half years in jail for "insulting the leader and the Assembly of Experts and propaganda against the regime". Disqualification of Elected Female Reformist MP Sparks Heated Debate in Iran 04/08/16 Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran Two weeks have passed since Minoo Khaleghis election to Parliament in Irans recent elections was nullified without an explanation by the Guardian Council, the body charged with vetting candidates. Minoo Khaleghi Read related coverage by Arman daily Some conservative pundits have speculated that the young female reformist from the city of Isfahan was disqualified because photos emerged of her shaking hands with a man during a trip abroad. Others have described the allegation as a weak rumor. This matter should have been left to Parliament to investigate, the prominent conservative MP Ali Motahhari told the press on April 3, 2016, according to the semi-official Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA). The accusations laid against her are not strong. If she did shake a mans hand abroad, its not going to be easy to prove and besides, its not wrong to shake an unrelated mans hand with gloves on, he added. Touching a member of the opposite sex who is not a relative is illegal in Iran. The Interior Ministry has meanwhile claimed ignorance as to why the Guardian Council, which arbitrarily disqualified thousands of candidates from running in the February 26, 2016 elections, decided to reject Khaleghis victory. We know nothing at all about the reason for this nullification... but in our view, Parliament should be deciding these matters, not the Council of Guardians, said Mohammad Hossein Moghimi, the head of the Interior Ministrys Elections Headquarters, on March 28, 2016, according to the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA). Our legal understanding of the invalidation of the votes for Isfahans third [top] elected representative is different from the Council of Guardians... You need to ask our friends there as to why she was disqualified, said Interior Ministry Spokesman Hosseinali Amiri on March 28, 2016, according to the state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN). According to a report published on April 4, 2016 in the reformist Vaghaye Ettefaghieh newspaper, Khaleghi was the victim of a smear campaign by the husband of one of Khaleghis competitors. The husband, a city official, allegedly spent substantial money on his wifes election bid and committed widespread campaign violations after it became clear that his wife would not receive enough votes to win against Khaleghi. An unnamed relative of Khaleghi was meanwhile quoted saying that the Guardian Council was handed personal and private photos that could have only been obtained by hacking her phone. When Minoo went to the Council of Guardians, she was shown an old photo of a woman with a blurry face wearing sun glasses, said the relative. She told them it wasnt her in the photo. The relative was implying that the photos either showed Khaleghi in non-Islamic attire, or shaking the hand of a man who is not her relative. But Khaleghi rejected the newspapers report a day after it was published for being far from the truth through a post on her Instagram account, and promised to take legal action against the Guardian Council. Invalidating the votes cast for one candidate after announcing the final results for a constituency certainly begs for legal investigation, she said. Khaleghi has not received an official reason for her disqualification. There has been every kind of rumor and immoral talk surrounding me, said Khaleghi on March 23, 2016 in a statement. These actions are all aimed at questioning my reputation as a Muslim and as such are punishable according to Sharia law. Ali Nekooie, the chairman of the reformist factions campaign in Isfahan, also claimed in an interview with ILNA published on April 1, 2016 that another candidate had tried to sabotage Khaleghi. The reformist forces know that [Minoo Khaleghi], the third winner in Isfahans elections, is blameless and innocent despite all the cynical rumor-mongering, he said. Even if she committed a minor offense, the people of Isfahan do not deserve to see their votes invalidated. Isfahans reformist faction also described the disqualification as a rare and unacceptable decision by the Council of Guardians and criticized the government for not taking action to restore Khaleghis election in a letter to President Hassan Rouhani on April 1, 2016. Khaleghis disqualification could turn out to be one of the most bitter and unfortunate developments in the history of parliamentary elections in the Islamic Republic, said female reformist political activist Azar Mansouri on her Telegram page on March 27, 2016. After being vetted by the Guardian Council, Khaleghi became one of 14 female candidates elected to Parliament in the first round of Irans February 26, 2016 elections. The city of Isfahan has five representatives in Parliament. Khaleghi received the third highest number of votes. After she was disqualified, some officials said her replacement could be voted in during an interim election occurring two years from now. But on March 23, 2016, Isfahans Governor General Rasool Zargarpour had proposed handing over Khaleghis seat to Alireza Ajodani, the candidate with the sixth highest number of votes. Ajodani, like Khaleghi, was on the list of candidates supported by the reformist camp. It therefore appears that the conservative Guardian Council is not only blocking a female reformist candidate from taking a seat in Parliament-its actually refusing to accept any reformist as her replacement. The spokesman for the Election Monitoring Central Headquarters has said that the fate of [Isfahans] remaining representative would be determined in the interim elections, said Isfahans reformist faction in its letter to Rouhani on April 1, 2016. But there are objections because based on current procedures, the seat should go to the candidate with the next highest votes, continued the letter. Ignoring this creates the impression of partisan purges, he said. Kerry Calls On Iran To Help End Wars In Yemen, Syria 04/08/16 Source: RFE/RL Iranian President Hassan Rohani advocated "moderation" and "interaction" with Iran's neighbors in an address on April 7. (source: Iranian President Hassan Rohani advocated "moderation" and "interaction" with Iran's neighbors in an address on April 7.(source: Islamic Republic News Agency U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has urged Iran to use its influence to help end the wars in Yemen and Syria rather than pursue "destabilizing" activities in the region. At a news conference in Bahrain as he visited U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf on April 7, Kerry condemned "the destabilizing actions of Iran, which the United States takes very seriously." He noted that the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, last week seized a cache of weapons which the U.S. Navy said Iran was shipping to Huthi rebels in Yemen to help in their war against the government. "We call on Iran to constructively join in the efforts to make peace and to help us to resolve Syria. Rather than to continue to send weapons to Huthis, join in the effort...to make peace and to work toward a cessation of hostilities," Kerry said. While visiting with Iran's fierce rivals in the Gulf, Kerry defended Tehran's nuclear accord with world powers and the lifting of economic sanctions under the accord, which is giving a boost to Iran's economy. But he stressed that the United States and its Arab allies "remain united in our opposition to Iran's missile activities." The United States has imposed a series of sanctions on Iran over its ballistic-missile tests and has urged the United Nations Security Council to also sanction Iran. That has prompted strenuous objections from Tehran, which says such sanctions undermine the economic relief it is entitled to under the nuclear accord after having curbed its nuclear development activities. Kerry on April 7 said for the first time the United States is open to a "new arrangement" with Iran for peacefully resolving disputes over the missile tests, AP reported. Without elaborating, Kerry said the United States and its allies have told Iran that they are "prepared to work on a new arrangement to find a peaceful solution to these issues." But he said Iran first had to "make it clear to everybody that they are prepared to cease these kinds of activities that raise questions about credibility and questions about intentions." In an address on state television on April 7, Rohani said: "We are in favor of a policy of moderation...Iran is not a threat to any country...Tehran wants interaction with the world, with its neighboring countries. "With moderation we can reach our goals faster...To progress, we need to have interaction with the world," he continued. But Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, whose government accuses Iran of stoking protests among the kingdom's Shi'ites demanding an end to Sunni minority rule, echoed Kerry's call for more cooperation from Tehran. Iran's "interventions through proxies in several parts of our region [are] continuing unabated," he said. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir called for a complete halt to Iranian support for the Huthi rebels in Yemen. "If Iran continues its aggressive policy," he said, "it will be difficult to deal with Iran." Tehran argues that it is Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies that are sowing instability in the region with their air strikes supporting the government in Yemen and their financial backing for opposition forces in Syria. The war in Yemen is at a critical junction, like the Syrian war, where a serious effort at forging peace sponsored by the United Nations is under way. Yemen's warring parties have agreed to observe a UN-brokered cease-fire starting at midnight April 10, and peace negotiations are due to start in Kuwait on April 18. As in Syria, the war has had a devastating impact on the people of Yemen. The United Nations says around 6,300 people have been killed in the war. cartoon by Latuff The bombardment of Yemen by a Saudi-led Arab coalition has taken a particularly devastating toll. Human Rights Watch said on April 7 that bombs supplied by the United States were used in coalition air strikes on a market in Yemen that killed at least 97 civilians, including children, last month. Kerry declined to comment on that accusation. In Syria, Iran and the Gulf Arab states are also on opposing sides of the war. Iran has been a principle backer of President Bashar al-Assad's regime while the Arab states have supported rebel groups seeking to oust Assad. That five-year war has killed more than 270,000 people and pushed nearly 5 million into exile. The United States has been trying to galvanize support behind UN-sponsored peace talks that are set to resume on April 13 in Geneva. As in past efforts at Syrian peace, Kerry said the main obstacle is deciding Assad's future. Rebel groups want Assad to step down during a political transition leading to elections. But Assad -- backed by Iran and Russia -- insists on at least sharing power until the elections, when voters will decide on his fate and a new government. "The discussion about transition is the key test of the seriousness of the Assad regime, of Russia and Iran" about peace in Syria, Kerry said. With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP Copyright (c) 2016 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org Iran hopes for lasting peace between Baku, Yerevan over Karabakh 04/08/16 Source: Press TV Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (L), Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov (C) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shake hands in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Thursday, April 7, 2016. (photo by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (L), Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov (C) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shake hands in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Thursday, April 7, 2016.(photo by Islamic Republic News Agency Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has expressed hope that the ceasefire agreed recently between Azerbaijan and Armenia would last to help end clashes in the disputed region of Karabakh. We hope that the ceasefire would be lasting, Zarif told reporters after his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Thursday. He added that Iranian officials have held meetings with Azeri and Armenian authorities to exchange views on recent hostilities in the Caucasus region. The new spate of clashes, involving heavy artillery and rockets, broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh on April 1. At least 75 people have been killed after four days of fighting. The two sides agreed to the ceasefire on April 5 but continue to accuse each other of violating the truce. Also on Thursday, the Iranian foreign minister met and held talks with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, during which they discussed bilateral ties as well as regional issues. The Islamic Republic of Iran pursues a policy of expanding ties with Azerbaijan and other neighbors, Zarif told Aliyev. Zarif also called for further promotion of Tehran-Baku ties in different sectors, including banking, energy and anti-terrorism cooperation. Azeri President Ilham Aliyev (L) and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif prior to their meeting in Baku on April 7, 2016 (photo by Azeri President Ilham Aliyev (L) and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif prior to their meeting in Baku on April 7, 2016(photo by Islamic Republic News Agency The Azeri president, for his part, urged closer economic relations with Iran and emphasized the need for joint Tehran-Baku cooperation in the battle against terror. He also described the trilateral meeting held on Thursday between Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia in Baku as significant, saying it would open a new chapter in Azerbaijans ties with the two countries. The Iranian foreign minister attended trilateral talks with his Azeri and Russian counterparts on Thursday to discuss different issues, including bilateral relations. Norway to launch Iran's first FLNG plan 04/08/16 Source: Press TV Iran says it is working on a plan with a Norwegian company to build a floating facility to liquefy natural gas in the Persian Gulf. Ali Kardor, the vice president for finance and investment affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), has been quoted by the media as saying that the project - technically referred to as FLNG - will be used to support Iran's exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe and the Far East. Kardor added that the Norwegian company - which he did not name - will send a ship that will specialize for the same type of project to Iran's ports in the Persian Gulf by March 2017. Iran previously pursued three key LNG projects - Iran LNG, Pars LNG and Persian LNG. However, they were abandoned over the past few years as technicalities emerged - mostly those pertaining to US-led sanctions against investments in Iran's energy projects. NIOC chief Rokneddin Javadi said last October that LNG has returned to Iran's energy agenda, stressing that the country has devised serious plans to launch its first liquefaction project by April 2018. The country is already working on a plan to pipe natural gas to Oman and use the liquefaction facilities of the Persian Gulf sultanate to export LNG to overseas markets. Based on an early agreement that Iran signed with Oman in 2013, Iran will pipe a daily of 28 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas to Oman through a sub-sea pipeline. Some of the gas thus transferred will be turned into LNG in the country's Qalhat LNG plant for Iran to use as per its export plans. The best 2-in-1 laptop 2022: our picks of the best convertible laptops These are the best 2-in-1 laptops you can buy right now Apples Mac Pro is aging fast, especially with screaming fast Windows desktops being announced in recent weeks. Introduced in 2013, the Mac Pro was a top-of-the-line desktop at that time. It looked exquisite in its sleek cylindrical design, and it sported new features like Thunderbolt 2 ports, plus the latest CPUs, GPUs and NVMe storage. More importantly, it was a signal that Apple had not abandoned the professional computing market. The latest Mac Pro was a relief to those clamoring for an upgrade from an older version of the computer, which last received a face-lift in 2010. But the Mac Pro is again falling behind the competition, with powerful new workstations from Lenovo, Dell and HP carrying superior technology. The PC companies are waging an active campaign to tempt Mac Pro users, many of them creative professionals, to move over to Windows PCs with better CPUs, GPUs, and memory. The new Windows desktops are targeted at video editing, professional applications and the creation of virtual reality content for headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Among the powerful new Windows machines are HPs new Z Workstations. Starting at US $4,363, the Z Workstations announced this week can be configured with Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 chips, which have up to 22 cores. Two Nvidia Quadro M6000 GPUs in an SLI (scalable link interface) configuration can provide super-fast graphics performance. The desktop supports DDR4 memory, and there are multiple slots for SATA, SAS (serial-attached SCSI) and NVMe (non-volatile memory) SSD storage. New Dell Precision workstations, announced last week, can also support the latest 22-core Xeon E5-2600 v4 chips, based on the Broadwell architecture and also introduced last week. By comparison, the Mac Pro which starts at $2,999 supports up to 12-core Intel Xeon E5 chips based on the older Ivy Bridge microarchitecture, which started shipping in the third quarter of 2013. The desktop has older AMD FirePro GPU models and DDR3 memory. The Thunderbolt 2 ports are also outdated, and Thunderbolt 3 is two times faster, with its 40Gbps data transfer rate. The Mac Pro is still a fast machine, but creative professionals want the latest and greatest hardware, said Bob ODonnell, principal analyst at Technalysis Research. I compare it more to a low-end workstation, ODonnell said. The desktop is adequate for engineering applications and video editing, but faster computers will allow creative professionals to dabble in VR, ODonnell said. VR is a niche but emerging market, and workstations will need more horsepower for visual computing, ODonnell said. Apple hasnt indicated it is focused on VR, which still has an uncertain future. But earlier this month, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said Rift headset support would come to Macs if Apple ever releases a good computer to handle the stereoscopic content. VR headsets require top-line CPUs and GPUs in desktops. Apple has more than VR to consider if it wants to retain Mac Pro users. Apple may enter the fast-growing car market, and computer-aided automobile design will happen on workstations like Mac Pro, ODonnell said. ODonnell also suggested Apple could opt to merge Mac Pro with the iMac. Its not an unprecedented idea; Apple in 2010 killed its Xserve product line and provided a guide for users to transition to the Mac Pro or Mac Mini. But patience has its virtues. If Apple hangs on before upgrading Mac Pro, some breakthrough technologies could put the desktop leagues ahead of its Windows rivals. Intel is developing super-fast Optane memory SSD products, which will come to high-end gaming desktops and workstations later this year. Intel claims that Optane, which is based on a technology called 3D Xpoint, is 1,000 times faster and durable than NAND flash storage. Faster GPUs are en route as well. Apple has shown an affinity for graphics processors from AMD, which plans to release GPUs based on its Polaris architecture later this year. AMDs rival Nvidia this week introduced a new GPU called Tesla P100, based on its new Pascal architecture and targeted at high-performance computing. Nvidia could also release Quadro GPUs, based on Pascal, for workstations later this year. Apple could upgrade the Mac Pro if only to show evidence of its technological superiority over Windows rivals. Theres no mantra like good enough computing for high-end desktops like the Mac Pro, ODonnell said. Its about maintaining relevance, ODonnell said. If you want to be one of the first to experience 5G mobile performance, get ready to bundle up. South Korean carrier KT has said it wants to launch the first 5G network at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. On Thursday, KT announced a successful trial of one potential 5G technology in the mountain resort region. The carrier tested a system from NEC that uses super-high frequencies to transmit data at speeds as high as 3.2Gbps (bits per second). Though the companies didnt mention the Olympic Games, and theres no guarantee the technology will be part of the 5G standard, its no coincidence the trial took place high in the Taebaek Mountains. KT used NECs iPasolink EX ultra-compact microwave system instead of fiber for links between LTE base stations. Its well suited to the mountains, because laying fiber in steep terrain is hard. NECs system is so small and light that its relatively easy to deploy, the companies said. The microwave system transmits data on frequencies between 70GHz and 80GHz, a band that doesnt lose as much of its signal going through the atmosphere as others do, according to NEC. The iPasolink also uses 256QAM, a form of encoding that lets it send more data. High frequencies are expected to play a big part in 5G. There are wide swaths of little-used spectrum in so-called millimeter-wave bands that mobile networks have never used. Researchers are now starting to crack the technical issues that stood in the way. While the KT-NEC trial used straight-line connections between base stations, researchers are working on ways for mobile devices to reach the nearest small cell using millimeter waves. Those techniques may lead to faster connections for users of eventual 5G networks. Vendors and carriers looking to 5G are considering bands around 28GHz, 39GHz, 60GHz and other millimeter-wave frequencies. Current cellular networks operate below 6GHz. The final 5G standard, and the bands that 5G networks can use, are expected to be locked down by 2020. Microsoft is joining Google in the quest to remove Adobe Flash from the web. When the Windows 10 Anniversary Update hits this summer, Edge will be able to automatically pause content not central to the webpage. Google introduced the same feature last June in partnership with Adobe. Similar to Chrome, Edges new Flash-halting feature wont affect auto-playing videos that are part of a sites content. Instead, the feature will look at disabling flash video and animations in advertisements and other non-essential content. To re-enable it, all you have to do is click on the paused content. Microsoft says a key reason for the new feature is to save on battery life. Flash animations and videos can take a good bite out of your battery thanks to the demands it takes on memory and the CPU. But Microsoft also sees what pretty much every critic of the web sees: Flash had its day, but users are better off with HTML 5-based video now. Users experience improved battery life when sites use efficient web standards, lowering both memory and CPU demandsWe will continue to work within the W3C to ensure standards unblock all developers to fully transition away from Flash, Microsoft said in a blog post. Why this matters: Better power management in Edge doesnt matter as much on a regular PC, but its critical on tablets and laptops using battery power. Reducing Flash usage will also help Edges performance. Thats something desktops will find helpful since websites laden with unnecessary Flash content should run a little more smoothly. Now if only Edge would get other modern features, like tab syncing across devices. As if summoned by the Bat-Signal, U.S. Senator Al Franken is seeking answers on Oculus privacy policies after some users expressed concerns. Gizmodo rounded up some of those concerns last week, noting that Oculus Rifts privacy policy allows the company to gather information on users locations, physical movements, and interactions with games and services. The policy notes that Oculus may use that information for marketing and promotional purposes. This appears to have prompted an inquiry from Franken, who on Thursday sent and published a letter to Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe. In that letter, Franken asks whether Oculus services require the collection of location data, physical movement data, and communication among Oculus users, and he asks whether Oculus shares this information with third parties for anything other than the provision of services. Franken also asks whether Oculus sells aggregate user data, and what sort of safeguards the company uses to keep user data secure. Oculus creation of an immersive virtual reality experience is an exciting development, but it remains important to understand the extent to which Oculus may be collecting Americans personal information, including sensitive location data, and sharing that information with third parties, Franken wrote. Adam Patrick Murray Franken has a long history of sending these types of letters to technology companies, including Apple, Google, Uber, and Samsung. But these companies arent obligated to respond, and even when they do, their answers arent always particularly insightful. Franken has also tried to introduce location privacy bills several times throughout his tenure, but hasnt succeeded at passing them into law. Why this matters: Privacy was a major concern for Oculus fans when Facebook acquired the VR firm in 2014, so its understandable that theyd be hypersensitive about the Rifts terms of service. Now that the Rift is a real product, its reasonable to expect a plain-English explanation of what Oculus will do with all the data its able to collect. Oculus has basically responded already Although Oculus has not yet answered Frankens letter, the company has responded directly to the VR community, so it seems likely that Franken will get a similar response. In a statement to UploadVR earlier this week, Oculus said it is thinking about privacy every step of the way, adding that it collects user data to check device stability, address technical issues, and improve the experience overall. As for advertising, Oculus said it is relying on Facebook for some infrastructure elements, but is not sharing information with the social networking giant, at least for now. We dont have advertising yet and Facebook is not using Oculus data for advertisingthough these are things we may consider in the future, the company said. The story of a woman sentenced to seven years in prison after she stole from wedding venues in San Diego County isnt over yet she still faces prosecution in Riverside County for charges of theft there. Denise Gunderson, 50, dubbed the Bridal Bandit by San Diego-area media outlets, pleaded guilty to grand theft and two counts of identity theft in February in San Diego County. She was sentenced Wednesday, April 6. She had stolen credit cards and IDs from wedding guests there and used them to make purchases. Investigators believe that Gunderson also stole credit cards and IDs from wedding venues in Riverside County. Though no court date has been set in Riverside County for Gunderson, Riverside County District Attorneys office spokesman John Hall said the office is getting ready to prosecute. Our case is still active and, as of right now, we will move forward with our prosecution, Hall wrote in an email Wednesday. In Riverside County, Gunderson faces four burglary charges and seven identity theft charges. An arrest warrant declaration authored by Sheriffs Investigator Rich Holder said Gunderson was identified as a suspect after two victims one a wedding coordinator and another a wedding guest reported that they had had their personal identification and credit cards stolen in late September at Churon Winery in the Temecula Valley Wine Country. One of the women had left her purse at an office in the winery and later discovered her wallet had been taken. Cards within that wallet were then used to make two separate purchases at a Temecula Albertsons, one for $514.09 and another for $477.36. The other woman reported that her personal credit cards had been stolen from one of Churons rooms as she and her husband went to retrieve their luggage. The cards in that case had been used at the Temecula Albertsons, Temecula Target and in two locations in San Diego County. The combined cost of the charges was in excess of $950, according to the warrant. Holder reviewed surveillance footage from the stores and compared it to footage taken at Churon, identifying Gunderson as a suspect. As the investigation continued, Gunderson was suspected in similar thefts. At some point during his investigation, Holder spoke with Detective Lisa Jenkins of the San Diego County Sheriffs Department and learned that Gunderson was linked to at least four thefts at weddings in San Diego County. Holder learned of four more victims who had such items as credit cards, check books, wallets and money stolen at a wedding venue at 5700 Clubhouse Drive in the unincorporated area of Riverside in July 2014. Holder then investigated a theft from September 2014, where four other victims had their credit cards stolen from their purses and wallets at a Bridal Suite at Europa Village in the Temecula Valley Wine Country. The purchases made collectively on those cards was in excess of $950. Gunderson was also identified as a possible suspect. According to court records, Gunderson has a long history theft-related convictions between San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. She served time in state prison for convictions ranging from receiving stolen property to grand theft auto. She admitted three of those priors when she accepted a plea deal in February, said San Diego County District Attorneys Office spokeswoman Tanya Sierra. Contact the writer: 951-368-9693, agroves@pressenterprise.com or @AlexDGroves on Twitter. The next set of openings by Aldi will be mostly in Los Angeles and Orange counties, but one store in San Bernardino will among the April 21 unveilings. The extreme discounter, which made its California debut two weeks ago in the Inland Empire, will open its next 10 stores on that date. One will be at 4020 Highland Ave. in San Bernardino. The California store openings mark the beginning of Aldis march West. To date, Aldi has revealed 27 of its 45 California locations planned for this year. Aldi executive Gordon Nesbit said the chain has not revealed where its scouting other locations. Theres at least another dozen stores were pursuing, said Nesbit. Aldi said it expects more stores to open in the Los Angeles area and the Inland Empire. The German-born Aldi, which has family ties to Trader Joes, operates 1,500 stores in 32 U.S. states. The chain, with its U.S. headquarters is in Batavia, Ill., sells private label copycats of the 1,500 most popular groceries. When the first eight stores opened last month, thousands of bargain hunters made a grab for everything from raw chicken drumsticks to frozen pizzas to dog kennels. Stores from Palm Springs to Lake Elsinore stocked knockoffs of labels such as Heineken beer, cereals from General Mills and Pop-Tarts. Contact the writer: business@pressenterprise.com The U.S. Department of Justices attempt to pressure Apple into unlocking an iPhone once used by one of the two people responsible for the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino was all about setting a precedent, not getting evidence and the departments actions in New York prove it, Apple Inc. officials said Friday. Earlier in the day, the Department of Justice sent a short letter to U.S. District Court Judge Margo Brodie, saying it will not modify its request to get Apples help in a Brooklyn case. The government does not intend to modify its March 7, 2016, application, the brief letter from Robert L. Capers, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, reads in part. The governments application is not moot and the government continues to require Apples assistance in accessing the data that it is authorized to search by warrant. The letter comes almost two weeks after the department declared that it didnt need Apples help in the San Bernardino case after all, having found another way into an iPhone 5C issued to Syed Rizwan Farook by the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, which employed him as a health inspector. In February, U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled that Apple could not be forced to assist government investigators against its will and said Congress ought to be the ones to take up the issue. The Brooklyn phone in question is an older model iPhone used by a methamphetamine dealer who pleaded guilty in October. As in the aborted attempt with the phone in the San Bernardino case, the federal government is relying on the 1789 All Writs Act, which gives the courts the power to order third parties to technically assist authorities. The Department of Justice appealed the ruling in March. Apple attorneys, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were disappointed in the departments decision to go forward with the case in New York, in a phone call with reporters. And, they said, the DOJs decision to continue pressuring Apple to help out with what they described as a routine law enforcement matter leading up to a May sentencing hearing, underscores that the federal government mostly wanted to set a precedent in San Bernardino so that technology providers could be forced to unlock encrypted devices. Although the department got into Farooks phone with a tool provided by a third-party source rumored to be an Israeli cybersecurity firm, FBI director James Comey has said the tool wont work on more recent versions of Apples iPhone, which include encryption technology in their hardware. Apple attorneys said Friday that they do not intend to sue to get the Department of Justice to say how they unlocked Farooks phone, as theyre confident that the technique will have a short shelf life, as older iPhones are replaced with more sophisticated models. Federal officials have not said what, if anything, they ended up getting off of Farooks work phone. He and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, destroyed two personal phones before the Dec. 2 attack at the Inland Regional Center, in which they killed 14 and wounded 22. RELATED Senate bill draft would prohibit unbreakable encryption Tool used on iPhone does not work on all devices FBI debates sharing iPhone hacking details with Apple FBI breaks into Farooks iPhone A peaceful afternoon of kite flying last weekend turned dreadful for the Preston family when 8-year-old William ran after a kite and was bitten on his calf by a rattlesnake near their Lake Mathews-area home. His father, Bill Preston, immediately called 911. An ambulance whisked William to the Kaiser Permanente Riverside Medical Center, where he was given several vials of antivenom. When that hospital ran out, he was taken to Loma Linda University Childrens Hospital. Four days later, William was still hospitalized and unable to walk. Preston said Thursday that he and his wife are waiting anxiously for their son to recover. Its a horrible thing, not anything you want to see happen to your child, Preston said. I wish it would have bitten me instead. The same springtime warmth that beckons Inland residents outdoors triggers rattlesnakes to rise out of hibernation and flock to warm spots not just on hills, along trails and in backwoods, but also on driveways, roads and sidewalks. BOB PRATTE: Love of outdoors trumps fear of rattlesnakes Authorities urge outdoor enthusiasts to be aware of their surroundings, keep their pets safety in mind, and be mindful that rattlesnakes will be more prevalent until about October. About 800 people in California are bitten by snakes every year, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, mostly between the months of April and October when snakes and humans are most active outdoors. http://cdn.thinglink.me/jse/embed.js About 25 percent of bites are dry, meaning no venom was ejected. Only about one or two bites per year in California are fatal, said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Andrew Hughan. Those who survive a poisonous bite are in for a painful and possibly expensive experience. William Preston is the second child bitten by a rattlesnake and treated by Riverside County firefighter/paramedics this year. The first incident was March 27 in Lake Elsinore. William told his father that he didnt hear a rattle before he was bitten Sunday. But if a snake sees a person getting too close, it will usually rattle. The rattling will increase the more agitated it is. Theyre not predators, Hughan said. Its a defense mechanism. Rattlesnakes can strike within a range of about half their length typically about 2 feet. Hughan recommends keeping about 10 feet from any snake you encounter. Riverside County Department of Animal Services shelter chief Kim McWhorter said the majority of people bitten were trying to mess with the snakes in some way. The best thing really is just to leave them alone, McWhorter said. If the snake becomes a public safety issue then people should call us. DOGS AT RISK Often times, dogs are more susceptible than people to snakebites, said veterinarian Amy Carr of Murrietas California Veterinary Specialists. During one snake season, the clinic treated more than 150 dogs. Carr said dogs are most at risk when they are off-leash in dry areas like river beds. The most common place we see dogs bit is on the muzzle, Carr said. Theyre sticking their noses into things and investigating when they get bit. Thats why its a really good idea to keep them on-leash. RELATED: Trail safety for you and your dog If a dog gets bitten, Carr said to limit its mobility and not apply a tourniquet. Take it to a veterinarian as soon as possible, Carr said. The process to keep a dog alive after it suffers a snake bite is both complicated and expensive. The antivenom for the most common rattlesnake in Riverside County costs about $800 per vile, and most dogs require two vials. Another type of rattlesnake thats more rare in Riverside County ejects a venom that attacks dogs and humans neurosystems. The antivenom for that costs about $4,000 per vial. RELATED: Protect your pup from snakes with vaccine, classes STAY ON THE LOOKOUT California Poison Control System Executive Director Stuart Heard said in the past three years, the number of snakebites reported to the organization has significantly decreased. Since snakebites are reported to the California Poison Control System only when antivenom is needed, the decrease could be chalked up to more hospitals being well-stocked, Heard said. It also could be because people are being more cautious when hiking during snake season. Hughan said the risk of getting bitten by a snake shouldnt deter people from enjoying the outdoors in the spring and summer months, but should prompt people to be cautious. Just remember that you are in their habitat, and take the basic precautions if youre out and about, Hughan said. http://cdn.thinglink.me/jse/embed.js Contact the writer: 951-368-9284, atadayon@pressenterprise.com, @PE_alitadayon The Aldi supermarket chain, a sort of Teutonic Trader Joes, is coming to Temecula. The chain, which has been opening stores all over Southern California in recent months, is eyeing land on the southern edge of Rancho California Road, a parcel about 500 feet west of the Moraga Road intersection, according to a city notice. The citys Planning Commission is scheduled to take up the plans for the 18,500-square foot structure at its regular meeting on April 20. The commission meets at 6 p.m. in the Civic Centers council chambers, 41000 Main St. RELATED POLL: Are you excited to shop at the Aldi stores? Aldi stores enter Inland retail battle Aldi ready for Southern California debut Thousands converge on Aldi hiring event California voters will cast ballots June 7 to help decide who wins the Democratic presidential nomination. But a tiny handful will have an even bigger say. More than 700 of the 4,765 delegates to Julys Democratic National Convention are not obligated through primaries and caucuses to vote for a specific candidate. Called superdelegates by the media, these unpledged delegates 70 of them from California could tilt the scales toward former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders if the race is tight heading into the convention in Philadelphia. Superdelegates include Democratic governors, Democrats in Congress and Democratic National Committee members. So far, Clinton has a commanding lead among superdelegates, having secured the support of 469 of them compared to 31 for Sanders, according to The Associated Press. In terms of pledged delegates Clinton has a 250-delegate lead after the Wisconsin primary Tuesday, April 5. But when superdelegates are factored in, the gap between Clinton and Sanders grows to 688 delegates, AP reported. Superdelegates make up about 15 percent of the total number of convention delegates, with 2,383 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. Clinton is favored to become the nominee. Locally, the Inland Empires four congressional Democrats enjoy superdelegate status. And with one undecided exception, theyre backing Clinton. But those are the only superdelegates living in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, according to Chris Robles, chairman of the San Bernardino County Democratic Party. Both counties are home to 4 million people, and while the Inland Empire is more conservative than the rest of California, Democrats have won several competitive races in the region since 2012. Superdelegates include Democratic National Committee members. According to a roster of Californias 33 DNC members provided by Robles, 16 members live in Los Angeles County, with five from Sacramento County and two from San Francisco County. Superdelegates came about in the 1980s because Democratic Party leaders believed conventions had produced weak presidential candidates, said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. Party leaders and elected officials, they thought, would give more weight to experience and electability than would rank-and-file voters, Pitney said. Republicans did not substantially change their process because they were on a hot streak, having won five of six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988. Republicans have their own version of superdelegates, who are the heads of each state GOP and two Republican National Committee members allocated to each state. But compared to Democrats, they make up a smaller percentage 7 percent of the GOPs overall delegates, and they are required on the first ballot to vote for the presidential candidate who won the popular vote in their states primary. THEYRE WITH HER The Inland Empires congressional delegation includes four Democrats Pete Aguilar of Redlands, Raul Ruiz of Palm Desert, Mark Takano of Riverside and Norma Torres of Pomona. Democrat Judy Chu of Pasadena also represents a portion of Upland. Aguilar, Chu, Ruiz and Takano are in Clintons corner. I support Hillary Clinton for president because she has proven that she is committed to creating opportunity for all Americans. No other candidate has her experience, skills, and ability to get things done, Ruiz said in a statement released through his campaign consultant. Takano frequently retweets Clinton on Twitter. And Aguilar and Ruiz helped host a Clinton fundraiser in Virginia in December. All three have gotten in-person help from Clintons husband, former President Bill Clinton. At a UC Irvine rally in 2012, Bill Clinton shared the stage with Ruiz and Takano as he endorsed them. The ex-president also rallied support for Aguilar during a 2014 event in Ventura. In an emailed statement, Takano, who represents Riverside, Perris, Jurupa Valley and Moreno Valley, said his support for Hillary Clinton is based exclusively on my belief that she would make an exceptional commander in chief. Secretary Clinton is the best-qualified presidential candidate in recent history. Torres is undecided about who shell back as a superdelegate, a spokeswoman said. Both of Californias U.S. senators, Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, back Clinton. In a recent TV interview, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who also is a superdelegate, said: Im not supporting anybody at this point. CALLING FOR BERNIE Sanders supporters are lobbying superdelegates to switch sides. Jess Durfee, a superdelegate and DNC member from San Diego, said superdelegates have gotten phone calls and emails from Sanders backers, with one superdelegates phone ringing at 2 a.m. Durfee, 57, said Clinton reached out to superdelegates as soon as she announced her candidacy, sending personalized letters to DNC members. The Sanders campaign did not respond to a request for comment. But Joey Aszterbaum, a 40-year-old Sanders supporter from Hemet, said superdelegates supporting Clinton should switch allegiance now because (Sanders) stands for what the Democratic Party really stands for. Aszterbaum, who is running to be a Sanders delegate in Ruizs congressional district, said Sanders represents a broader coalition of voters than Clinton and that by nominating her, the Democratic Party risks alienating young, engaged progressives. Durfee is supporting Clinton. But if Sanders pulls ahead of Clinton before the convention, Durfee said hell vote for Sanders. Nineteen of 33 DNC members from California are chosen by 350 members of the state partys executive board to serve four-year terms. The number of elected DNC members will soon grow to 20, but Durfee said its not easy to get one of those spots. A lot of San Diegans ran before I did. Its just hard to break through, said Durfee, who has repeatedly visited the Inland Empire in his official capacity. When youre looking at a state with 38 million people and only 20 people are elected to the Democratic National Committee, its going to take some real heavy lifting to get to that point. Durfees job doesnt just involve going to the national convention every four years. DNC members are expected to pay their own way as they travel frequently to attend various functions. Durfee estimates he spends about $4,000 a year on DNC-related travel. So far, the GOP has resisted going in the direction of Democratic-style superdelegates. But if outsider Donald Trump wins the GOP nomination and loses the general election in a landslide, expect Republicans to talk more seriously about the process, Pitney, the Claremont professor, added. Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@pressenterprise.com Clouds may have obscured Thursday mornings sun, but the Valencia Room at the National Orange Show Events Center in San Bernardino filled with illumination as the Shine-a-Light on Child Abuse Awards Breakfast opened its doors to a standing-room-only crowd. Childrens Network of San Bernardino County hosted its 18th annual event to honor those committed to improving life for foster youth and abused children. Twenty-one heroes were awarded for their commitment to the safety and well-being of the most vulnerable of the population. Former San Bernardino County Supervisor Gary Ovitt, who received the 2016 Childrens Network Lifetime Advocate Award, quoted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when he said, Lifes most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others? Ovitt, who is also a lifetime advocate, educator and policymaker, added he was so proud of the vision we all have serving children from cradle to career. Other honorees included Landeros Furniture, business; Beth Gill, Children and Family Services; Maria Flores, Children and Family Services; Rochford Foundation, community-based provider; Revolution Youth Advocates, organization; Dianne Wolkenhauer, Department of Behavioral Health; Bernadette Beltran, Department of Public Health; Olga Valdez, education, San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools; Valerio Mejia, education, San Bernardino City Unified School District; Bob and Laura Breitel, foster parents; Aaron Conley, law enforcement, San Bernardino County deputy sheriff; Karen Schmauss, legal, deputy district attorney; Ana Lee, legal, deputy public defender; Michael A. Markel, legal, Office of the County County Counsel; Iris Robertson, legal, victim advocate, Bureau of Victim Services; Linda McDonald, medical; Lynda Scherer, probation; Chris and Amy Hernandez, volunteer; San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department polygraph detail; and the San Bernardino County Human Services Warehouse Distribution Center staff. Scholarships also were presented by Childrens Fund to foster youth who have struggled to overcome and achieve obstacles. The 10 young adults had written their emotional stories so the advocates could learn what a difference Childrens Network made in their lives. Scholarships went to Rudy, Rivian, Renee, Masood, Yadira, Syrena, Vennessa, Jessie, Valerie and Melissa. San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon thanked the gathering of more than 600 for taking care of the victims. At the end of the program, when the tots from the Mill Center Head Start State Preschool sang This Little Light of Mine, the group of children had adults dabbing at their eyes. San Bernardino City school board President Margaret Hill said she was happy to be at the gathering to see the difference we are making in these kids lives. Contact the writer: michel.nolan@langnews.com President Barack Obama predicted that obstruction of his Supreme Court nominee by Senate Republicans would lead to Democrats blocking future Republican judicial appointments, a tit-for-tat that would precipitate a governing crisis and diminished public faith in the legal system. During remarks at the University of Chicagos law school on Thursday, Obama gamed out his dispute with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. If McConnell refuses to consider Garland and waits for a hypothetical Republican president to make an appointment next year, Obama said, he would face an ugly political battle with Democrats. The notion that Democrats will say, Oh well just go along with that, that is inconceivable, Obama said in a question and answer session with students at the law school. So now Democrats say whats good for the goose is good for the gander, well wait four more years to see if a Democrat is elected president. In a future battle, McConnell could be forced to end filibusters of Supreme Court candidates, as Democrats did for nominees to lower courts when they controlled the Senate. When the Senate and White House are controlled by different parties, Obama said, replacing Supreme Court justices would become impossible. Subject of Contention There is a growing attitude inside of the Senate that every nomination, no matter how well qualified the judge is, is a subject of contention, Obama said. Garland is one example, he said. It is perfectly acceptable for Republicans to decide, even though Merrick Garland is highly qualified, even though hes indisputably a good and fair judge, not to vote for him, Obama said. Whats not acceptable is not giving him a vote, not giving him a hearing, not meeting with him. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has vowed not to allow a hearing or a vote on Garland, currently the chief judge on the federal Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit. Instead, McConnell says the next president should fill the vacancy. Pivotal Seat Obama may try to make Republicans bleed at the ballot box over their refusal to consider Garland, but he is unlikely to do enough political damage to break their resistance to a confirmation vote before the November election. So far, the administrations efforts have had little effect. While at least 16 Republican senators have said they will meet with Garland as a courtesy, only two Republican senators now support a confirmation hearing for him: Mark Kirk of Illinois and Susan Collins of Maine. Two other Republican senators who previously supported a hearing, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, reversed themselves last week under pressure from conservative groups. Im sure hell gloss over the fact that the decision about filling this pivotal seat could impact our country for decades, that it could dramatically affect our most cherished constitutional rights like those contained in the First and Second Amendments, McConnell said on the Senate floor on Thursday ahead of Obamas remarks. Im sure hell continue to demand that Washington spend its time fighting on one issue where we dont agree rather than working together on issues where we do. Senators Tweet Kirk on Thursday a picture of a hand-written note Obama sent him after he met with Garland. Kirks position upholds the institutional values of the Senate and helps preserve the bipartisan ideals of an independent judiciary, Obama wrote. In fairness, Democrats are not blameless on this, Obama said of the conflict over judicial appointments. If you talk to Republicans, theyll often point to the Bork nomination as where this all started. The Senate rejected President Ronald Reagans nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987 on a 42-58 vote, after a notoriously contentious debate. Two Terms Obama said that the stalemate over Garland threatens to leave the court with just eight justices for potentially at least two Supreme Court terms, if the Senate doesnt immediately confirm his successors nominee next year. We are going to see the kinds of sharp partisan polarization that have come to characterize our electoral politics seeping entirely into our judicial system, Obama said. The courts will become just an extension of our legislators. The struggle over Garlands nomination threatens to drag on through the campaign season and could tie incumbent Republican senators more closely to their party and its political ballast. Public perceptions of the Republican Party have plummeted, with 60 percent of Americans holding an unfavorable view of it, according to the most recent Bloomberg poll. That is the partys lowest standing in the polls seven-year history. By comparison, 49 percent held a negative view of Republicans at the same point in the 2012 election cycle. To contact the reporters on this story: Mike Dorning in Washington at mdorning@bloomberg.net, Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Alex Wayne, Bill Faries A man accused of setting fire to his Corona home and then filing fraudulent insurance claims amounting to more than $1 million was arrested Thursday, April 7, in San Francisco, Corona city officials say. Constantine Petrovics 4,500-square-foot home in the 2600 block of Garretson Avenue went up in flames in August 2012. Four years later, Petrovic is charged with setting the house on fire and causing more than $1 million in damage to the property, according to Riverside County Superior Court documents. The home didnt entirely burn to the ground, but it sustained extensive damage, fire officials say. A firefighter who responded to the blaze received treatment briefly for heat exhaustion. During the time between the fire and his arrest, Corona Fire Investigator Diedre Locati said officials were working with the Riverside County District Attorneys Office to solidify a case against the 63-year-old. The case was made stronger by his insurance claims once they were complete. Court records say he filed at least one claim on Jan. 5, 2013, but Locati said Petrovic kept amending the claim. He kept remembering things, she said. A phone number for Petrovic or the name of an attorney representing him could not be located Friday. He was being held in the San Francisco area on $1 million bail. The arrest declaration for Petrovic written by Locati and filed March 23 in Riverside County Superior Court details why investigators think he was behind the fire: The telltale sign of a purposely set fire was that it was started in three places two bedrooms and the family room which doesnt happen often in natural fires. Investigators also found evidence of a staged burglary at the home. Drawers were emptied, but nothing appeared to be missing, And a television, camera and lighter fluid were placed neatly at the rear exterior door, but not taken. There was also no sign of forced entry, which would have been expected because all exterior doors were locked except for the master bedroom doors. Petrovics homeowners insurance policy was also sitting out on a counter in the home office area. Based on my experience, this is not a normal occurrence in an accidental fire, Locati wrote. Individuals do not normally have their insurance policies readily available. Also, some of the claims listing damaged items were false. Investigators think those false claims amounted to about $117,000. In addition to inconsistencies in interviews with Petrovic, he had several past insurance claims like arson, water damage and personal injury that the insurance industry had labeled as suspicious. Petrovic unsuccessfully tried to sell his house three times between 2009 and the fire. The most recent attempt was in May 2012. Corona Fire Marshal Cindi Schmitz said in a phone interview Friday that Petrovic moved to San Francisco sometime in the fall after the fire. Locati said in the same interview that he would be transported to Riverside County before his arraignment hearing was set. Henry Hafliger, who served on both the San Jacinto City Council and school board, has died. He was 83. A dairyman by trade, Hafliger succumbed to congestive heart failure Wednesday, April 6. He served 17 years on the San Jacinto Unified School District board and four years on the City Council. Hafliger was elected to the school board in 1971 and the City Council in 1990. He became mayor in 1992 and held the position until he resigned from the council in March 1995. Jim Conner, who also served on the school board and City Council, said Hafliger was the first person to welcome him when he moved to San Jacinito in 1978. Hafliger got Conner involved with groups such as the YMCA and Rotary Club. He was pushing me into leadership positions, Conner said. He was always looking out for me. The guy really was a leader. Conner said Hafliger may have donated more hours of service to San Jacinto than anyone else. He really will be missed by the community, Conner said. Hafliger moved a dairy his parents started to San Jacinto in 1966. He took his cows to Texas in 1987 and opened a dairy in New Mexico in 1993, before moving back to the San Jacinto Valley in 2005. He just loved this valley and the people in it, his widow, Dorothy, said Thursday. Hafliger was a founder and chairman of the board of Valley Merchants Bank and was involved with the founding of the Western Science Center. He was a leader of a 1999 recall campaign that ousted two members from the San Jacinto City Council. Hafliger at one time bought and restored the citys first fire truck, a 1929 American LaFrance Cosmopolitan model, which was a popular site in community parades. Hafliger Park, near Hewitt Street and Park Avenue, was dedicated in 2010. Hafliger is survived by Dorothy, his wife of 63 years. They had six children, 26 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren. Services are scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 12, at St. Johns Lutheran Church in Hemet. Contact the writer: 951-368-9086 or cshultz@pressenterprise.com A chemistry lab mishap irritated the eyes of nine UC Riverside students, city fire officials say. The accident happened about 7:20 p.m. Thursday, April 7, and caused mild irritation that firefighters treated by flushing the students eyes with water, said Battalion Chief Jeff DeLaurie. They were beginning to do their class experiments, DeLaurie said. What they think happened: One of the hot plates was (mistakenly) turned on. And the chemical they were using reacted to the heatreleasing some fumes. That wasnt part of the plan. None of the students required a trip to the hospital. Firefighters learned that the chemical involved in the incident was ethyl bromoacetate. The result of the inadvertent heating was similar to releasing tear gas. The first chemical weapon to be used to control civil unrest was ethyl bromoacetate, according to a World Health Organization document entitled Effects on Health of Chemical Weapons. The highly irritant vapour was intended to temporarily disable mobs. Proposition 47 was passed in November 2014 with the intent of refocusing Californias criminal justice system away from an overreliance on incarceration and toward rehabilitation. Toward this end, the measure reclassified a handful of petty theft and drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. One practical result of this shift was to reduce the number of prison and jail inmates at the state and county levels, respectively, in order to help free up money that could be used to implement the treatment and reentry goals of Prop. 47. According to a March report by the Public Policy Institute of California, Prop. 47 has clearly driven a reduction in local jail population. Unfortunately, a key component of Prop. 47 the reinvestment of state correctional savings in behavioral health treatments and other prevention programs has not yet been realized. This prevention component remains to be sorted out at the state level, as Gov. Jerry Brown has significantly underestimated savings from the measure that are supposed to be allocated toward such programs. Whereas the governor has budgeted $29.3 million for the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Fund, the Legislative Analysts Office has indicated the appropriate figure is closer to $100 million. With respect to the jail population, the Inland Empire has clearly seen adjustments in the composition of the incarcerated population. According to reporting by the Press-Enterprise, there are now actually empty jail beds in San Bernardino County. This isnt the case in Riverside County, which has 2,000 fewer beds than its neighbor county, despite having a similar population, and has dealt with jail crowding for the past couple of decades. The jail population crunch in Riverside County has been somewhat eased due to a drop in bookings as a result of Prop. 47, which consequently helps curb the need to release more inmates early. Additionally, the county has been working with California Forward, a nonpartisan government reform organization, to better determine how to work with its finite jail space. An ongoing challenge throughout the region, however, is sorting out how to effectively implement Prop. 47. There are certainly many discussions that need to be had from how jail space ought to be utilized to deciding what types of treatment and prevention efforts are needed, and whether the necessary money will be there. It is important that the state not shortchange local governments and leave them without the resources needed to refocus their criminal justice systems. PASADENA A defense attorney in San Bernardino Countys Colonies corruption case and an assistant U.S. attorney battled it out in federal court Thursday over whether the government should destroy documents seized during a search of defendant Jeff Burums home and office in 2011. Although federal charges were never filed against Burum and three other defendants in the case, the FBI turned over what it seized two computer discs and hard copy documents to prosecutors from the San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office and state Attorney Generals Office for use in the pending 5-year criminal case. The two offices are jointly prosecuting the case. Burums attorney, Stephen G. Larson, has been challenging the FBIs handling of its September 2011 search of Burums Rancho Cucamonga home and office, arguing that the search warrants were stale and overly broad, in part because investigators were searching for evidence related to alleged crimes that occurred more than five years prior to the warrants being served. In addition, investigators failed to conduct an appropriate review of the materials it seized to root out what evidence fell within the scope of the search warrants and what didnt, according to Larson. This is the most stale search warrant I have ever encountered in my career, Larson said Thursday, addressing a panel of three Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges: A. Wallace Tashima, Barry G. Silverman and Susan P. Graber. The government, Larson argues, did not abide by a federal court order to destroy copies of any electronic or hard copy documents it seized during the search that were not relevant to the investigation including personal notes and birthday, Valentines Day and anniversary cards. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Widman told the panel of judges Thursday that the factual disputes in the matter did not rise to the level of an evidentiary hearing, even though judges Tashima and Silverman asked why electronic and hard copy documents seized during the search and were not relevant to the investigation were not deleted or destroyed, as previously ordered. Widman said the government was still holding onto the electronic data and hard copy documents in case prosecutors in the state criminal case need them. Theyre still potentially relevant to a pending state court case, Widman said. In a motion filed in response to Larsons appeal to the Ninth Circuit, Widman said the government retained the evidence at the request of the San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office. The government also heeded the DAs request not to delete or destroy any of its evidence since San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Michael A. Smith, who is presiding over the criminal case, had yet to rule on the matter. FBI Agent Jonathan Zeitlin, Larson said, turned everything over to prosecutors with the DAs and state Attorney Generals offices, which are jointly prosecuting the criminal case. They went in and just grabbed everything, Larson said. (Zeitlin) then took all that stuff and he dumped it on the state authorities. This is an FBI agent out of control. While Larson acknowledged law enforcement agencies have the right to share information, they cannot violate a federal court order to return or destroy evidence. What you cant do is be a stalking horse for other law enforcement agencies, Larson said. At minimum, Larson said there should be an evidentiary hearing before U.S. District Court Judge S. James Otero, who previously rejected a motion by Larson to void the 2011 FBI search of Burums home and office on constitutional and evidentiary grounds. Burum, a wealthy Rancho Cucamonga developer, and three former top county officials former county Supervisor Paul Biane, former Assistant Assessor Jim Erwin, and Mark Kirk, former chief of staff for erstwhile county Supervisor Gary Ovitt stand accused of conspiring to fix, in exchange for bribes, a $102 million settlement in November 2006 paid out by the county to Burums investor group, Colonies Partners LP. The settlement in question resolved a nearly 5-year legal battle over who was responsible for flood control improvements at Colonies 434-acre residential and commercial development in Upland, Colonies at San Antonio and Colonies Crossroads, respectively. All four defendants deny any wrongdoing. They were indicted by a grand jury in May 2011, and the trial has been repeatedly delayed by motions and appeals that have gone all the way to the state Supreme Court. DA spokesman Christopher Lee declined to comment Thursday. It has long been the policy of the DAs Office not to comment on its pending cases. Larsons motion before Judge Smith is pending the Ninth Circuit Courts ruling, given the matter applies to federal search warrants. Graber and Silverman questioned Widman as to why the government cannot just delete or destroy copies of any electronic data or documents seized in 2011 that are not relevant to the case while holding onto what is relevant. Widman said any irrelevant documents or data is mixed in with all the other evidence, and the government feels it would be irresponsible to sift through it all and delete or destroy any data or documents. He said a judge at the state level should decide the best course of action. Larson, however, said the matter should be resolved at the federal level. A federal court needs to resolve this issue, said Larson. It is federal judges that need to take control of this issue. The Ninth Circuit is expected to file its opinion within 30 to 45 days. As the Republican candidates for president start to focus on what could be a pivotal June 7 primary in California, a prominent Inland GOP lawmaker is throwing his support behind one of the contenders. Republican Assembly Leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley endorsed Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the governors campaign announced Friday, April 8. John Kasichs proven record of supporting job creation, balancing budgets and bringing people together around solutions that lift everyone is exactly what Californians deserve from their leaders, Mayes, who represents parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said in a campaign news release. Kasich is running against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and billionaire entrepreneur Donald Trump for the GOP nomination. The governor is trailing Cruz and Trump in recent polls and he has only won his home state of Ohio. While its mathematically impossible for Kasich to gain the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination, Kasich, who is touted by supporters as having the best chance to appeal to a broad range of voters and defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in November, hopes he can emerge as the nominee out of a brokered Republican National Convention in July. Expect more GOP attention on California in the weeks leading up to the primary. Most of the states 172 convention delegates are awarded, three at a time, to the winner of each of Californias 53 congressional districts. If Trump does well, he could get 1,237 delegates and secure the nomination outright. Otherwise, he risks losing the nomination in a brokered convention. Mayes, who was elected to the 42nd Assembly District in 2014, was chosen to lead the Assemblys 28 GOP members just 10 months into his term. Since that time, he has become known for his focus on fighting poverty and his willingness to work with and praise Democrats in the Legislature. Two employees of UPS Inc. were arrested this week after police say they were caught breaking into packages at a distribution center on Spruce Street in northern Riverside. Jermaine Paul Calhoun, 25, of Ontario, and Conalway Royals III, 25, of Riverside were caught on surveillance video opening delivery boxes and taking items from them Tuesday, April 5, Riverside police said in a news release. Employees also reported seeing the men break into boxes Monday, Lt. Christian Dinco. However, police say no items were removed from the facility. Having a package held at a distribution center is a common recommendation authorities say its safer than having one left on a front porch where thieves can pick it up before you do. Riverside police say that they believe this weeks theft was an isolated incident and arent changing their recommendation. Police rarely receive reports of mail delivery employees breaking into packages, Dinco said, but they frequently receive reports of packages being stolen off of doorsteps. Its still by far safer to have your packages shipped (to a distribution center), Dinco said. When you talk about the amount of door step theft out there, not necessarily in Riverside, but in Southern California, theres a large amount of opportunity and sometimes people make bad choices. Calhoun and Royals were detained by staff at the UPS Customer Center at 1391 Spruce St. before police were called. They were booked into jail Tuesday on suspicion of felony embezzlement and released on bail later that day, jail records show. Managers at the facility would not comment on the incident. Dinco said the location is a distribution center for packages being shipped to the area, and also has an area for customers to send and receive packages. Contact the writer: 951-368-9284, atadayon@pressenterprise.com. @PE_alitadayon In case you missed it, polls released this week are giving us a clearer picture of Inland voters preferences in the presidential race. Results from the nonpartisan Field Poll show billionaire businessman Donald Trump leading Texas Sen. Ted Cruz 45 percent to 23 percent among likely voters in Other Southern California, which the poll defines as nine counties outside of Los Angeles County. Statewide, Trump leads Cruz 39 percent to 32 percent. There wasnt a regional breakdown in the Field Poll for the Democratic presidential nomination. But Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has made up a lot of ground on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who now leads Sanders among likely voters 47 percent to 41 percent. She led Sanders 73 percent to 10 percent in February 2015. A SurveyUSA poll of California registered voters conducted in late March and early April found Cruz leading Trump 43 percent to 30 percent in the Inland Empire among Republicans, with Trump holding an 8 percentage point edge over Cruz statewide. The poll had Clinton leading Sanders 65 percent to 27 percent among Democrats in the IE and 53 to 39 percent in California overall. POLITICS: Trump holds lead over Cruz in California primary The June 7 primary is looming as potentially crucial in the race for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations, especially for the GOP candidates. California has 172 GOP delegates up for grabs, and Trumps performance in the Golden State could determine whether or not he gets the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination outright and avoid a brokered Republican National Convention that could result in another nominee. All but 13 of the Republican delegates are awarded by Californias 53 congressional districts. Win a district and a candidate gets its three delegates, meaning the GOP campaign for California could be waged district-by-district. Cruz is holding rallies Monday, April 11 in Irvine and San Diego. A suspect was still at large on Thursday, April 7, after a report of a possible burglary in Lake Elsinore prompted the arrival of sheriffs deputies and locked down a middle school. The report of a possible burglary at a vacant business in the 18800 block of Grand Avenue came in about 1:15 p.m., said Riverside County sheriffs Deputy Mike Vasquez. Vasquez said deputies arrived to the area in search of the possible burglar. By 1:41 p.m., the nearby Lakeland Village School was locked down as a precautionary measure. The school was reopened about 25 minutes later because the suspect no longer appeared to be in the area, he said. The sheriffs spokesman said about 2:25 p.m. that officials were still trying to locate a suspect. Contact the writer: 951-368-9693 or agroves@pressenterprise.com Why in the world did Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric pick the most expensive, disruptive route for a gas pipeline between its northern and southern pipelines into Southern California? That question jumps off the pages of a California Public Utilities Commission administrative judges decision to deny the companies rate increase request to make customers pay for their proposed North-South pipeline. The project would have built a 65-mile-long, pressurized natural gas pipeline between Adelanto and Moreno Valley. It would cut through wilderness in the San Bernardino National Forest, tear up San Bernardinos nicest neighborhood and dig a trench through rural Reche Canyon between Colton and Moreno Valley. Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer issued his proposed ruling this week. Bemesderfer found there are less expensive, less disruptive alternatives to accomplish the pipelines purported goal: to ensure enough natural gas is available to Southern California customers in the event of a major disaster. ENVIRONMENT: Judge proposes rejecting Southern California gas pipeline In a proposed decision issued late Wednesday, the judge who works for the Public Utilities Commission found two alternatives would cost $100 million to almost $200 million less than the $621 million North-South pipeline designed by SoCalGas and SDG&E. And an Arizona pipeline proposal wouldnt cost California ratepayers a cent, because it would all be built out-of-state, the judge said. I have to admit, I am completely stumped by the companies choice. Its always more expensive to dig a major trench (this one is for a 36-inch pipeline) through existing neighborhoods, said Mark Persico, community development director for San Bernardino, where historic Valencia Avenue would have been trenched for the project. The proposed ruling came after a series of hearings and briefs by parties on both sides. The parties will be allowed to comment on the judges proposal before it goes to the Public Utilities Commission. The PUC commissioner assigned to the project, Mike Florio, said he agrees completely with the judges decision. I reviewed the party testimony as it came in, and I felt the same way and was happy the judge agreed with me, said Florio, an attorney who worked with consumer advocates The Utility Reform Network for 30 years. Florio will present the proposed decision to fellow PUC commissioners. It will be the first time they review the project, he said. If a majority of the commissioners agreed with the decision, the project is dead. But at this point, it doesnt look like SoCalGas and SDG&E will give up on the unpopular plan. In a prepared statement, SoCalGas said: We continue to believe that the proposed North/South Project would provide substantial benefits to our customers and the region. Spokeswoman Kristine Lloyd said the companies route would offer more access to gas storage and supplies. Lloyd said the company will provide a written response to the judges proposed ruling by April 25. The earliest the Public Utilities Commission can vote on it is May 12. The judges decision was welcomed by San Bernardino leaders and people who live in the country club neighborhood along the embattled citys Valencia Avenue and had spoken out at a public hearing on the project last fall. The judge reached the same conclusion the city did, that the project was not well thought-out, Persico said. And the alternatives are safer, cheaper and less environmentally damaging. Tim Prince, a lawyer who lives in the neighborhood, said he believes administrative decisions are seldom overturned so its unlikely the project will be built. I think its either dead or (the companies) will pursue one of the alternatives thats less costly, he said, adding, It just didnt make sense why youd want to go through residential neighborhoods, which does nothing but increase the costs. Scott Beard, another resident, said he is glad the judge recognized that the project would cause a lot of disruption for a community that would not benefit from it. Its the right decision, frankly, for our community, Beard said. In addition to the administrative review, the North-South Project has been undergoing environmental review. Scores of comments opposing the project were received. If the judges decision stands, the process will end and the wasteful, destructive project will be dropped, bringing environmental justice to the communities in the path of the North-South pipeline. RELATED POLL: Should the Southern California gas pipeline be approved? CASSIE MacDUFF: Public comments on controversial pipeline project disappear CASSIE MacDUFF: Lots of non-answers at hearing on proposed pipeline Contact the writer: 951-368-9470 or cmacduff@pressenterprise.com California can no longer afford the failed experiment of mass incarceration. When the voters approved measures like Proposition 36, which amended three strikes laws, and Prop. 47, which reduced penalties for petty theft and drug crimes, they were sending a clear message to Sacramento that trudging on with the same old policies was no longer acceptable. Yet, with $10.6 billion in proposed spending on the states corrections system, the most ever and equal to $70,000 per prisoner per year, California government seems set to continue overspending on prisons that mostly fail to correct those who enter them, while underinvesting in alternatives. The current legislative session has mostly mirrored others in recent years, in that lawmakers have shown little interest in curbing spending on corrections or figuring out how better to allocate the states finite resources on preventing crime and keeping former inmates from returning to prison. If theres anything California legislators need to get right this session, its ensuring the savings from a reduced prison population, thanks to Prop. 47, are properly allocated to the Safe Neighborhood and Schools Fund, which Prop. 47 created to invest those savings in things like drug treatment, mental health programs and other crime prevention efforts. Unfortunately, Gov. Jerry Brown, curiously, has estimated savings of less than $30 million, well below the $100 million projected by the independent Legislative Analysts Office. We find that the administration likely underestimates the savings and overestimates the costs resulting from Prop. 47, the LAO reported in February. For example, we estimate that the actual level of prison savings due to Prop. 47 could be $83 million higher compared to the administrations estimate. Getting the math correct is important because, without crime prevention programs adequately funded, it simply makes it harder for state and local governments to actually implement the wishes of the electorate. Keeping people out of state prisons for petty offenses is only part of the package with Prop. 47, while making sure they stay out, or never enter in the first place, is just as important. Whether lawmakers adequately contemplate this remains to be seen, but they will be faced with another, costly feature of the criminal justice system: a new contract with the union for the states prison guards, who, arguably, have benefited the most from overreliance on incarceration. The proposed contract with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which represents Bargaining Unit 6, calls for a 9 percent pay raise through July 2018. According to analysis by the LAO, this would add roughly $600 million in spending commitments by 2018-19. Of course, theres no evidence that California prison guard pay at present isnt competitive after all, state prison guards routinely earn $100,000, with overtime and it would be counterproductive for such a giveaway to be entertained at a time of overall fiscal constraints. Whether there is any political will to reject the contract is another matter. After all, the CCPOA has long been one of the most influential unions in the state, contributing vast sums to politicians for decades and aggressively pushing a pro-incarceration agenda. Throwing more money at prison guards isnt what is needed. Investing in alternatives to incarceration and evidence-based crime-prevention programming is a far greater need than taking care of a politically potent public-employee union. Perhaps state lawmakers need to be reminded that the criminal justice system is supposed to advance the interests of justice, not fatten the pocketbooks of those who work within it. To date, Sacramento lawmakers have shown an inability to understand this, to the detriment of a coherent, well-functioning criminal justice system that emphasizes the salaries of public employees, instead of results. UPDATE (Friday, April 8 10:19 a.m.): More details added. An airman shot his commander in an apparent murder-suicide Friday at a U.S. Air Force base in San Antonio, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasnt authorized to publicly discuss the shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Two handguns were found near the bodies of the men, which were inside a building thats used for classrooms and offices, according to Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, who oversees Joint Base San Antonio. He stressed that the shooting was not an act of terrorism, and declined to identify the two, saying their families must be notified first. The Air Forces Office of Special Investigations is leading the investigation, and the FBI is assisting. The fatal shooting of the two is the latest to occur at a military facility in Texas in the last several years. In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist, then killed himself. About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, who also killed himself. And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting. Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland is the home of Air Force basic training. The Armys Fort Sam Houston and Air Forces Lackland and Randolph bases were combined during base realignment several years ago to become the militarys largest joint base. This story is developing. Check back for updates. A second traveler has returned to San Bernardino County with the Zika virus, yet even as the number of confirmed cases slowly climbs in California, an infectious disease specialist said Thursday the state may never see the kind of epidemic taking place elsewhere in the Americas. Another San Bernardino County resident has tested positive for Zika after being infected with the virus while traveling outside the U.S., San Bernardino County Department of Public Health spokeswoman Claudia Doyle said Thursday, April 7. The newest San Bernardino case marks the second Inland resident to be confirmed to have the Zika virus, a disease whose symptoms show up in only 20 to 25 percent of infected people. At least 31 people in California are confirmed to have been infected with the virus recently. The number of cases in the U.S. has grown to 346, while another 354 have Zika in U.S. territories. Nearly 70 of those are pregnant women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Zika, which has exploded in the Americas since May, was a subject of a World Health Day talk, Emerging Infections & Their Global Impact, at Loma Linda University Loma Linda Universitys Randall Visitor Center Thursday night. While predicting how strongly Zika might take hold in this country is tough, Dr. Michael Ing, Chief of Infectious Disease at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial VA Medical Center, said following the talk that dengue fever failed to become a serious problem after breaking out in Florida and Mexico. That gives us hope that this will not become a big outbreak in California, he said. Even if there are selected outbreaks, its not going to be here 10 years. Itll just come, and itll move on. On March 25, the California Department of Public Health reported the first case of Zika virus being transmitted in the state. The disease was passed on to a woman through sex with a man whod traveled to a country with active Zika, not by mosquitoes, according to the public health department. San Bernardino County reported its first confirmed case of Zika on March 11. That case involved a woman who returned from South America in January. The residents who have tested positive live in Colton and Rancho Cucamonga, Doyle said. San Bernardino Countys health department did not provide any other information about the latest case, such as gender or age. Riverside County has not had any confirmed Zika cases, health department spokesman Jose Arballo said Thursday. An estimate of worldwide Zika cases is not available from the CDC, spokeswoman Candice Hoffman said Thursday. The World Health Organization has said 4 million people could expected be infected by the end of 2016. During a question-and-answer panel discussion at Thursday nights talk, infectious disease specialist Dr. Ingrid Blomquist of Loma Linda University Medical Center cautioned a young audience member who said she understood theres a growing hysteria about Zika in the media and younger populations. Zika is a recent arrival in the Americas, likely from French Polynesia. But in the 1950s and 60s, rubella caused significant neonatal problems and abnormalities among babies even though 82 percent of American women were immune to rubella, Blomquist said. I think there is reason for great caution, especially among women of child-bearing age, she added. http://cdn.thinglink.me/jse/embed.js Earlier this year, Australia was gripped and saddened by the story of Marco Bulmer-Rizzi, a 32-year-old British man whose husband David Bulmer-Rizzi, 38, died in a freak accident while the pair were in visiting South Australia on their honeymoon. Although the pair were legally married in the UK, their marriage was not recognised in SA and therefore Marco was not considered Davids next-of-kin, meaning Marco had to clear all hospital and funeral arrangements with Davids father. In a new interview with BuzzFeed News, hes now revealed that airport officials in Hong Kong confiscated Davids ashes because again he wasnt considered to be Davids next-of-kin. I was taken to one side and she said, Whats in this box? She wanted to open the box. And I said, These are human remains. Its my husband. My husband died while we were in Australia. She just looked at me and said, I need to take this away.' Bulmer-Rizzi says he had a meltdown when they were gone: I felt like I was losing him again. The ashes were eventually returned to him and he continued on his journey, but hes speaking out now to highlight the lack of support systems in place for LGBT spouses. Despite contacting the British consulate in Melbourne for advice and help, he received nothing. They just had no idea how to go about helping him, and passed him off by saying they were waiting for advice from London. They should have given me a next-of-kin letter, just something so that if I had issues with the hospital, in terms of making final decisions, I could have just said, Im Davids next-of-kin and this letter confirms that. The Foreign Office has now closed the loophole that prevented Brits from getting UK-style death certificates, but Marco is calling on them to introduce a number of services to better assist LGBT people who find themselves in similar circumstances. Source: BuzzFeed News. Photo: Supplied. Bruce Springsteen has canceled his Greensboro, North Carolina, show scheduled for Sunday in response to the recently passed "bathroom law" in the state. The newly enacted law requires individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificate, among other restrictions. In a statement on his website, Springsteen said that "the law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace. No other group of North Carolinians faces such a burden." He continued: "To my mind, it's an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress. Right now, there are many groups, businesses, and individuals in North Carolina working to oppose and overcome these negative developments. Taking all of this into account, I feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters. "As a result, and with deepest apologies to our dedicated fans in Greensboro, we have canceled our show scheduled for Sunday, April 10th. Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry -- which is happening as I write -- is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards." About 15,000 tickets will be refunded. Springsteen will play the Bryce Jordan Center in State College on April 18. Fifty years of marriage is known as the gold anniversary. But for one Gettysburg couple, their 62 years of marriage was celebrated by golden arches. Donald and Joan Hinks were the surprise guests of honor the morning of April 8 at the McDonalds at 1090 York Road in Gettysburg. The couple has come to the restaurant for breakfast nearly every day for many years. When franchise owner Emmett Patterson heard that the couple had just celebrated 62 years of marriage, he decided his store would help them celebrate. "I told them, 'we need to do something special,'" Patterson said. "I've been here for two years, and they've been coming in every day," said manager Judy Unkart. "It depends on how busy we are, but if we see them pull up, we like to have their food ready for them when they come in the door." Their regular order: a sausage biscuit sandwich, and scrambled eggs with a biscuit on the side. "They're very detailed," Unkart said. "Two jellies. A salt, a pepper, and a senior Coke." Another friend, Gail A. Furford, first met the Hinks at the McDonalds. She is a local author, and after meeting the Hinks, they arranged for her books to be sold at their store. "They're wonderful people," Furford said. "I'm amazed they're not retired yet. They love their work so much. They're the sweetest couple I've ever met." Joan said that at their age, they "don't go out all that much," but they did mark their anniversary this year with a dinner and celebration at their church. "We love having them in every day," Unkart said. "They brighten our morning." Cobble Creek Smoothie Cafe Amanda James has taken over as a location partner at Cobble Creek Smoothie Cafe in Harrisburg. (Sue Gleiter, PennLive) Cobble Creek Smoothie Cafe in Harrisburg is on the move. The shop at 709 N. Second St. has started franchsing, and recently brought on board a location partner, Amanda James, who arrived in March to oversee the shop. In addition, Cobble Creek's owners, Jason Jean and Bob Burns, will open a second shop this summer in Lancaster County. The 1,900-square-foot Cobble Creek will be located at 555 Greenfield Road in East Lampeter Township. "We're moving and grooving," Jean said. Last year, the partners opened the Cobble Creek beach theme smoothie shop, blending fresh smoothies and selling wraps and sandwiches. Smoothies are made from fresh ingredients with no artificial ingredients or syrups. Turning Cobble Creek into a national brand was always at the forefront of Jean and Burns' business plan. They hope to open 10 shops by the end of this year. Already, they are looking at properties in Lewisburg and State College and are vetting a location partner in Clarion. In addition, they are in contract negotiations to open a shop in Woodland Hills, California. In the meantime, the Harrisburg shop temporarily closed during the transition and will host a grand opening on April 11. James' role as location partner is similar to an owner operator. James previously owned a business, Couture Creativity in Carlisle, and said she is looking forward to the fast-paced atmosphere at Cobble Creek. Cobble Creek offers delivery in the city as well as curbside pickup. A new program called "From Me 2 U" allows customers to pay-it-forward. The shop also has expanded its menu since opening last year, and offers panini sandwiches including a BLT, Cubano and pulled pork. Cobble Creek is open 11 a.m.- 7 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Phone is 717-216-5165. Vatican Families Copies of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation ' Amoris Laetitia ' (The Joy of Love) document are on display prior to the start of a press conference, at the Vatican, Friday, April 8, 2016. Pope Francis has insisted that individual conscience be the guiding principle for Catholics negotiating the complexities of sex, marriage and family life in a major document released Friday that repudiates the centrality of black and white rules for the faithful. In the 256-page document "The Joy of Love," released Friday, Francis makes no change in church doctrine. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) (Andrew Medichini) From divorce and sexuality, to contraception, same-sex unions and the authority of the church, Pope Francis on Friday issued his apostolic exhortation "Amoris Laetitia," - in English, "The Joy of Love." The nine-chapter, 263-page document, which runs 263 pages in English, offers a response from the pontiff to the key points out of two recent synods of bishops and questionnaires received from parishes worldwide with regards to family life and the ever increasing challenges from modern life. Francis, who is widely seen as a reformer, made no change to church doctrine but put the onus on the church's hierarchy to adapt to the challenges of modern life at the local level. Here are some of the key points of the pontiff's discourse, followed by quick perspective: On same-sex marriage: Francis reiterates the church's strong opposition to the redefinition of marriage and repeats its teaching on showing compassion and consideration to gay people. Francis writes that the Church needs to be "humble and realistic, acknowledging that at times the way we present our Christian beliefs and treat other people has helped contribute to today's problematic situation." He adds that the Church has often allowed its "exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation" to overshadow "the unitive meaning" of marriage, which is its call to grow in love and its ideal of mutual assistance. "We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while 'every sign of unjust discrimination' is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence. "Such families should be given respectful pastoral guidance, so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God's will in their lives." Reaction: "No one must feel condemned, no one is scorned. In this climate of welcome, the discourse on the Christian vision of marriage and the family becomes an invitation, an encouragement, to the joy of love in which we can believe and which excludes no-one, truly and sincerely no-one." - Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, at a Vatican press conference. Reaction: "Doors remain open rather than closed and those of us working to welcome LGBT people into the Church will be wanting to run with those...I think it's encouraging us along the path." - Martin Prendergast, campaigner for LGBT rights in the Catholic community To LGBT friends: Pope says "before all else" you are respected, and inveighs against violence against you--a huge challenge to Africa, e.g. James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) April 8, 2016 #AmorisLaetitia welcomes you back to the church. Pope Francis welcomes you back to the church. Christ welcomes you back to his church. James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) April 8, 2016 Communion and the divorced: Francis last year called upon the members of his church to embrace and stop maligning divorced Catholics couples. But he does not, in "Amoris Laetitia, address the topic directly. Rather, the pontiff makes a general statement about those in "irregular" situations or non-traditional families, like single mothers. These individuals deserve "understanding, comfort and acceptance." The church, he adds, needs to stop applying moral laws, as if they were "stones to throw at a person's life." "Amoris Laetitia," a nine-chapter, 263-page document, runs 263 pages in English and offers a response from the pontiff to the key points out of two recent synods of bishops and questionnaires received from parishes worldwide. This photo was taken at the Easter vigil service, in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Saturday, March 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) "Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin - which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such - a person can be living in God's grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church's help to this end." He makes his key statement in a footnote: "In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, 'I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord's mercy' ...I would also point out that the Eucharist 'is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.'" Reaction: "We must now expect continued, protracted, and perhaps acrimonious debate about how this principle is to be applied in the cases under consideration." - Vatican commentator the Rev. Mark Drew. Reaction: "The exhortation is sure to generate much discussion in the secular media, but instead of viewing it through their particular lens, I strongly suggest that you read the document itself to know what our Holy Father is really saying." - Cardinal Donald Weurl, Archbishop of Washington Respect for the LGBT community: While Francis reiterates the church's position that "there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family," he reaffirms "before all else" that the homosexual person needs to be "respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, and 'every sign of unjust discrimination' is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression or violence." Francis calls on his clergy to give families with LGBT members "respectful pastoral guidance, so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God's will in their lives. " Francis adds that it was "unacceptable" that local Churches be subjected to pressure in this matter and that international bodies should make financial aid to poor countries dependent on the introduction of laws to establish 'marriage' between persons of the same sex. Reaction: #AmorisLaetitia 251 is forceful in condemning the mistaken idea of "gay marriage": no way similar or even remotely analogous to marriage. Fr. Matthew, LC (@FrMatthewLC) April 8, 2016 Children and sex and sexuality: It is not easy to approach the issue of sex education, Francis writes, in an age when sexuality tends to be "trivialized and impoverished." Seen within the framework of an education for love, for mutual self-giving, the language of sexuality would not be sadly impoverished but illuminated and enriched, he adds. "Young people need to realize that they are bombarded by messages that are not beneficial for their growth towards maturity. They should be helped to recognize and to seek out positive influences, while shunning the things that cripple their capacity for love. We also have to realize that "a new and more appropriate language" is needed "in introducing children and adolescents to the topic of sexuality" "The important thing is to teach them sensitivity to different expressions of love, mutual concern and care, loving respect and deeply meaningful communication. All of these prepare them for an integral and generous gift of self that will be expressed, following a public commitment, in the gift of their bodies. Sexual union in marriage will thus appear as a sign of an all-inclusive commitment, enriched by everything that has preceded it." Contraception and abortion: Francis refers to the "horrendous contradiction" of a life being "rejected and destroyed" within a family. "Let us pause to think of the great value of that embryo from the moment of conception." "So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother's womb, that no alleged right to one's own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the "property" of another human being. The family protects human life in all its stages, including its last. Consequently, "those who work in healthcare facilities are reminded of the moral duty of conscientious objection. Similarly, the Church not only feels the urgency to assert the right to a natural death, without aggressive treatment and euthanasia", but likewise "firmly rejects the death penalty." Francis encouraged Catholics to lobby on behalf of adoption: "It is important to insist that legislation help facilitate the adoption process, above all in the case of unwanted children, in order to prevent their abortion or abandonment." Reaction: "Francis made a single reference to the church-sanctioned family planning method of abstaining from sex during a woman's fertile times. He said only that such practices are to be 'promoted' -- not that other methods are forbidden -- and he insisted on the need for children to receive sex education, albeit without focusing on 'safe sex.' " - The Associated Press Military Base-Shooting Two Bexar County Sheriff's Deputies, left, stand outside a building near the scene of a shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Friday, April 8, 2016, in San Antonio. (John Davenport/The San Antonio Express-News via AP) DALLAS (AP) -- An airman shot his commander in an apparent murder-suicide Friday at a U.S. Air Force base in San Antonio, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Two handguns were found near the bodies of the men, which were inside a building that's used for classrooms and offices, according to Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, who oversees Joint Base San Antonio. He stressed that the shooting was not an act of terrorism, and declined to identify the two, saying their families must be notified first. The Air Force's Office of Special Investigations is leading the investigation, and the FBI is assisting. The fatal shooting of the two is the latest to occur at a military facility in Texas in the last several years. In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans' clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist, then killed himself. About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, who also killed himself. And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting. Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland is the home of Air Force basic training. The Army's Fort Sam Houston and Air Force's Lackland and Randolph bases were combined during base realignment several years ago to become the military's largest joint base. DEM 2016 Bill Clinton Former President Bill Clinton speaks during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Thursday, April 7, 2016, in Philadelphia. Bill Clinton was interrupted by people in the crowd holding signs reading "Clinton crime bill destroyed our communities" and "Welfare reform increased poverty." (Ed Hille/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) P (Ed Hille) Protester Rosco Farmer is corralled in the back of the auditorium by civil affairs officers near the end of former President Bill Clinton rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Thursday, April 7, 2016, in Philadelphia. Bill Clinton was interrupted by people in the crowd holding signs reading "Clinton crime bill destroyed our communities" and "Welfare reform increased poverty." (Ed Hille/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Former President Bill Clinton engaged in a heated exchange on Thursday with protesters upset about welfare reform and gun violence laws passed when he was in office 20 years ago. Addressing supporters at a Hillary Clinton presidential rally in Philadelphia, Bill Clinton was interrupted by people in the crowd holding signs reading "Clinton crime bill destroyed our communities" and "Welfare reform increased poverty." As first lady, Hillary Clinton said in a 1996 speech about the crime bill, "They are often the kinds of kids that are called super-predators." Some blacks have found the term "super-predators" offensive and have tried to hold her accountable during her presidential campaign. She was interrupted at a rally in Charleston, South Carolina, in February by an activist who wanted her to apologize for her remarks. Critics of the 1994 anti-crime bill have tied it to mass incarceration disproportionately affecting blacks. Bill Clinton said he talked at the time to black groups, which endorsed the legislation, and he said the bill led to a decrease in crime and murders due to gun violence. "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," Bill Clinton told the crowd. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn't. You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. Tell the truth." Clinton, a Democrat, said that the majority of people serving disparate sentences for crack cocaine are in state prisons and jails. He said that President Barack Obama, also a Democrat, is working to release federal prisoners serving unfairly lengthy sentences. "Who do you think those lives were that mattered?" Clinton asked the protesters. "Whose lives were saved that mattered? Hillary didn't vote for that bill, because she wasn't in the Senate." Hillary Clinton is battling Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination. Their contest, with accusations of lying, hustling for money and failed leadership, has taken a decidedly negative turn, and they recently have exchanged a series of barbs over qualifications for the presidency. An unsuccessful 2014 Democrat candidate for Congress in the 11th District has appealed the dismissal of his election-related lawsuit against a former Hazleton police chief and an unnamed officer. Andrew Ostrowski Wednesday filed notice he was appealing the decision of U.S. Middle District Senior Judge A. Richard Caputo in Scranton Monday. When he dismissed the suit on March 7, the judge gave the suspended Susquehanna Township lawyer 30 days to file an amended complaint that named the previously unnamed officer. Failure to file an amended complaint would result in the case being closed, Caputo wrote. Ostrowski had claimed the unnamed officer unlawfully seized a nominating petition containing 67 signatures for Ostrowski that was being circulated by a woman on Alter Street in Hazleton. Ostrowski was seeking the ongressional seat currently held by former Republican Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta. He filed an amended complaint accusing then-police Chief Frank V. DeAndrea of making defaming remarks intended to damage Ostrowski's candidacy during a news conference held in reaction to the lawsuit. One of DeAndrea's comments was he found it "oddly convenient" that neither the officer nor the woman circulating the petition were named in the suit. He also said the incident had not been reported to police. Andy Ostrowski In dismissing the suit, Caputo adopted the recommendation of Magistrate Judge Joseph F. Saporito and rejected Ostrowski's objections to it. Ostrowski is unable to practice law in Pennsylvania because the state Supreme Court has not reinstated him since suspended him in 2010 for a year and a day for mishandling a client's case. He is representing himself in the appeal and has requested permission to proceed as a pauper. Strites' Orchard Early blossoms followed by this current cold snap are threatening stone fruit crops in Pennsylvania and across the northeastern U.S. 04/18/2013 Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com (Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.) Kenny Bowman walks down a row of apple trees on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, at Bowman Orchards in Clifton Park, N.Y. Apple farmers worry the late-season Arctic blast in the East could take a big bite from their budding crops. The unseasonably cold air moved into Northeast and mid-Atlantic states this week shortly after a warm spell sped up bud growth on apple trees. (Cindy Schultz/The Albany Times Union via AP) The cold wave that could bring an inch or more of snow to Pennsylvania Saturday means trouble for fruit farmers in the state and across the Northeast. AccuWeather.com says the combination of a mild winter, temperatures that reached into the 70s in some spots in March and a recent bout of freezing temperatures have damaged or is threatening to damage fruit crops from New York to Maryland. "We expect significant losses, 90-100 percent of peaches and plums, now at full bloom," Chris Harner, of Harner Farms in State College, told AccuWeather. "Apples are farther behind [in central Pennsylvania] but are entering sensitive stages where we can have damage or loss," Harner said. Jake Samascott, whose family grows about 100 acres of apples on their farm south of Albany, N.Y., told The Associated Press that his orchard could lose 90 percent of its apple crop because of temperatures that dipped to 10 degrees and below. Ben Wenk of Three Springs Fruit Farm in Adams County was worried the farm could lose half its early varieties of apples, such as Honeycrisp and Gala, according to AP. Wenk also is worried about his peaches, blueberries and strawberries. Kenny Bowman holds an apple tree bud on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, at Bowman Orchards in Clifton Park, N.Y. Apple farmers worry the late-season Arctic blast in the East could take a big bite from their budding crops. The unseasonably cold air moved into Northeast and mid-Atlantic states this week shortly after a warm spell sped up bud growth on apple trees. (Cindy Schultz/The Albany Times Union via AP) "We have at least one more cold night by the end of the weekend, early next week, if forecasts hold, to get through," Wenk said. "And of course there's not a whole lot we can do about it." Most at risk are stone fruit - plums, peaches, apricots and cherries. The trees that produce those types of fruit bloomed earlier than usual this year, coaxed out by March's warm temperatures, but the blossoms are vulnerable to the cold, Penn State horticulture educator Timothy Elkner told the Allentown Morning Call. Dwight Mickey of Shatzer Orchards told the Chambersburg Public Opinion earlier in the week that he is very worried about the potential for damage to tender buds on fruit trees such as sweet cherries, apricots, plums and even the area's famed Chambersburg peaches. "One night of freezing temperatures is one thing, but prolonged cold is really what does (the buds) in," he said. Some apple farmers try to mitigate damage by employing windmill-like machines to direct warmer air at the trees, but they are still left playing a waiting game. "It's almost too early to tell, but I still feel we have a crop," said Dwight Baugher of Baugher's Orchards & Farm in Westminster, Md., according to the Associated Press. He said his apple crop "got smacked pretty good" with overnight temperatures in the mid to low 20s this week. Damage will vary from farm to farm depending on varieties, how low local temperatures dropped and how far along the buds were. Losses can even vary around a single farm, with trees in colder valleys affected while trees on a hillside escape harm. It is as big a mystery today as it was 24 years ago. Why was a Lock Haven farmer, in Harrisburg to attend a meeting, shot in a Susquehanna Township motel late on March 25, 1992? No one was ever charged with shooting Richard Ramm. Investigators, six years later, identified a suspect, only to learn the man had died. The motive for the shooting remains unknown. "I don't think the world wants me to know what happened," his widow Karen Aucker said this week. When the investigation was still active, she called township police once a week, always hoping for new information. About 18 months after the shooting she complied with a police request to take a lie detector test, which she passed, she said. Township police have closed the case but Chief Robert Martin said it would be reopened if relevant information is discovered. "I have very little doubt someone else knows something," said retired township Detective Jim Heilig, one of the investigators. Ramm, who with his father operated a 450-acre farm on a large island in the Susquehanna River just downstream from Lock Haven, checked into the motel on North Front Street because supplies he ordered were not ready after he left his meeting. He was found the following day in the bathtub. He'd been shot in the head, but was still alive. His condition improved at Polyclinic Hospital, and he was eventually transferred to Williamsport Hospital for rehabilitation. He died April 26, while still in rehab, of an aneurysm. The Lycoming County coroner ruled the death a homicide, the result of complications from the shooting. Aucker said she tried unsuccessfully to glean information from her husband. She could tell he recognized her but he did not speak her name until the day he died, she said. Heilig recalls after the shooting that police "beat the path up there" to the Lock Haven-Renovo area and spoke to everyone they could find who knew Ramm even casually. Through their investigation, they came up with a group of three individuals who Heilig described as somewhat troublemakers. A break in the case did not come until years later, when an individual provided the name of a person who might have some information, he said. That person was tracked down in Oklahoma, where he had moved because he feared he was going to be targeted next, Heilig said. From him they learned the man who drove the shooter from Clinton County to Harrisburg was living in Brownsville, Texas, he said. With the help of the Texas Rangers, Heilig said they found the man destitute, sickly and bed-ridden. The Texan told investigators he was asked to drive the shooter, who he claimed was involved in cocaine dealing, to Harrisburg, the detective said. He described driving him to the motel, watching him go to the second floor and hearing gunshots, Heilig said. When the shooter returned to the car he jumped in through the window and gave directions to get out of there, the detective said he was told. Ramm was in his underwear when he opened the door, so investigators believe he might have known the shooter, Heilig said. Because a casing was found outside the door, it was determined Ramm was shot as he opened the door and again just inside the room, he said. Ramm got himself into the bathtub where he was found, Heilig said. He kept trying to turn on the water as emergency medical personnel were trying to treat him, his widow said she was told. The suspect eventually was tracked to the Renovo area, Heilig said. In 1998, police went looking for him, only to learn he had died a month earlier from a drug overdose. There were rumors the shooting was drug related but Heilig said there was no indication Ramm was involved in such activity. Aucker agrees. Knowing police identified the shooter brought closure, said Aucker, a retired Jersey Shore Area High School teacher said. Heilig would not reveal any names, including that of the man suspected of doing the shooting, because he was never charged. Update: The store is closed Friday morning An unidentified robbery suspect was rushed to York Hospital after a state police trooper shot him in the chest at a Walmart in Shrewsbury Township Thursday night, according to police. The state police York barracks received a 911 call from an employee of the Walmart at 698 Shrewsbury Commons Ave., who said a suspect with a weapon just robbed the store pharmacy, state police trooper Robert Hicks said via email. A trooper who was in the area responded immediately, and after he entered the store, he found the suspect holding a shotgun just inside the doorway, Hicks said. The trooper told the suspect to drop his weapon, but he raised it instead, according to Hicks. The trooper was able to push the muzzle of the shotgun away as both he and the suspect fired a shot, Hicks said. The suspect's shot missed and hit a wall, he said. The trooper's round hit the suspect in the chest, Hicks said. The suspect was responsive at the scene, and was taken to York hospital. Hicks said he did not immediately know the suspect's condition. No additional information was immediately available. An investigation continues. St. Mary's gets win No. 300, Felten sets 8-man kicking record What could have been a game to overlook was a milestone night for Gaylord St. Mary's in its final home game of the regular season. Health secretary Jeremy Hunts plans to bring as many 400 doctors from India to the UK are an admission of failure of its recruitment policies, says the BMA. GP publication, Pulse, revealed yesterday that health education bosses had signed a memorandum of understanding with Apollo Hospitals a major hospital chain in India, which would involve the mutual exchange of clinical staff. Pulse understood this could involve the transfer of up to 400 GPs to England. The move, reported the publication, came after its announcement that Hunt was behind on his pledge to increase the GP workforce by 5,000 by 2020. Responding to the news, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Associations General Practitioners Committee, said: Doctors from overseas have always provided a valuable contribution to this countrys health system, especially as they undergo a rigorous assessment process to ensure they have the right skills for the NHS. However, it is clearly an admission of failure that the government seems to have launched a new recruitment scheme overseas to plug what is clearly a widening gap in the number of homegrown GPs in our workforce. Dr Nagpaul added that ministers should launch an urgent support package for general practice. The Governments pledge to recruit 5,000 extra GPs by 2020 is clearly collapsing into chaos, he said. Doctors from outside the EU would not be parachuted into the NHS, said Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners. We welcome any expressions of interest from doctors outside of the EU wanting to work in the NHS but they would first have to undergo GP specialty training, and pass our rigorous entrance assessment. Any suggestions that they will simply be parachuted in to practise in the UK is grossly misleading. In late March, Pulse revealed that health education chiefs were floundering to deliver Hunts promise of 5,000 new doctors. It estimated if current trends continued, just 2,100 new GPs will be delivered by 2020 as a best-case scenario. There are looming storm clouds that could knock even this optimistic projection off course, it said. It does not factor in the harm done by the junior doctor contract dispute and any further damage to GP morale. It also assumes that more UK-trained GPs can be attracted from abroad an unlikely prospect. The publication added that the 10-point plan to train new GPs and attract returners was likely to bring in just a few hundred extra GPs. The government has ruled out further talks with the British Medical Association and says it has no choice but to continue with the imposition of a new contract. This means that the first all-out strike by junior doctors in the history of the NHS is likely to go ahead on the 26th and 27th of April. These strikes are planned to include A&E and intensive care, which have so far not been part of the industrial action. Dr Johann Malawana, the BMAs junior doctors leader, has called future action wholly avoidable if the government is willing to get back around the negotiating table. But government sources have reportedly told the BBC that the BMA has blown its chance of this happening through its unwillingness to compromise. In a statement, the department of health said: This escalation of industrial action by the BMA is both desperate and irresponsible and will inevitably put patients in harms way. If the BMA had agreed to negotiate on Saturday pay, as they promised to do through ACAS in November, wed have a negotiated agreement by now instead, we had no choice but to proceed with proposals recommended and supported by NHS leaders. The fresh sparks between the two sides follow the fourth walk-out by junior doctors this year, which took place for 48 hours starting on Wednesday. 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 SCOTT Enduro Cup presented by Vittoria California Enduro Series Big Mountain Enduro Series Whistler Enduros The Whistler Bike Park has played host to several rounds of the North American Enduro Tour, and will now become home to the series.Anyone looking to qualify for the Enduro World Series in 2017 will have the North American Enduro Tour races at the top of their list.Long a feeder circuit for athletes priming for the Enduro World Series, five of the six NAET races have now been named among the first official Enduro World Series qualifier events. Points from these races will count toward securing a spot in the premier international race series for the sport.NAET has always been about presenting some of the best racing in North America and now the series will have the recognition it truly deserves as a stepping stone to the most elite international race circuit in all-mountain riding, says Darren Kinnaird, Crankworx Events Incorporated general manager.Now in its sixth season, NAET was recently assumed by CEI, which is best known for its gravity mountain bike festival. CEI will continue to develop NAET as a showcase for North American riding, pulling in races from the top series on the continent and high-caliber standalone events.This year, the tour includes two races from Whistler, the Whistler Spring Classic Enduro and the Whistler Fall Classic Enduro ; two SCOTT Enduro Cup presented by Vittoria races, Angel Fire and Sun Valley ; a race from the California Enduro Series , the Kamikaze Bike Games Enduro at Mammoth Mountain; and the team behind Big Mountain Enduro Series will host the series finale in Mascota, Mexico.The venture to Mexico marks the first step outside the United States for NAET. Just two hours inland from the popular vacation destination Puerto Vallarta, Mascota has one of the most active riding communities in Mexico and is surrounded by 10,000-foot peaks and pine forests known for their technical riding.By contrast, Mammoth Mountain Bike Park provides the backdrop for one of the more well-developed race experiences as part of the longstanding Kamikaze tradition. The Kamikaze is a downhill race dating back the 80s, and the Kamikaze Bike Games are now in the fourth season of celebrating the tradition.Mammoth has a long rich history of MTB racing, and from our original roots of high speed downhills, the Kamikaze, to the current popular enduros, we are very excited to become part of the North American Enduro Tour this coming summer, said Bill Cockroft, Senior Vice President, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area.A staple in NAET race circuit, the Sun Valley stop of the SCOTT Enduro Cup presented by Vittoria takes racers back to the Ride Sun Valley Festival in Idaho for a two-day Super-Enduro filled with music, activities, beer, demos and plenty of shenanigans. And the second SCOTT race, Angel Fire, will introduce athletes to New Mexicos Angel Fire Bike Park , one of the largest lift-accessed mountains in North America where riders drop in at 10,667 feet for 2,000 feet of Southern Rockies altitude adjustment.Finally, in Whistler, racers will christen two brand new races in a notoriously technical, root-riddled rainforest where enduro racing is thriving. The Whistler Spring Classic Enduro and Whistler Fall Classic Enduro bring NAET to an area where new enduro races, and even series are multiplying to make use of the endless supply of new trails in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor and Whistler Mountain Bike Park NAET strives to provide the best experience possible for junior and amateur athletes in hopes of increasing the talent pool of North American all-mountain riders. It is a platform for the best riding, and the top all-mountain brands on the continent.NAET 2016 OFFICAL RACE CALENDAR:May 28, 29 Whistler, BCJune 11, 12 Angel Fire, NM *June 25, 26 Sun Valley, Idaho *Sept 10, 11 Whistler, BC *Sept 17, 18 Mammoth, CA *November (TBD) Mascota, Mexico*Information on registration, pricing and race categories can all be found on the NAET website. In order to collect points to qualify for the Enduro World Series, racers will need to obtain an EMBA licence.NAET includes races from:The SCOTT Enduro Cup presented by Vittoria is expanding the series to four stops by adding Angel Fire, NM (June 11-12) to the 2016 schedule. The remaining three stops include Moab, Utah (May 7), Sun Valley, Idaho (June 25-26*) and a final stop in Park City, Utah (TBA).The seven-stop Califormia Enduro Series draws riders together at Fontana Enduro (April 10, Battle Born Enduro (May 14), Toro Enduro (May 28 ), EnduroFest at China Peak (June 25 ), Ashland Mountain Challenge (July 16 ), Northstar Enduro (August 27-28 ), and the Kamikaze Bike Games Enduro (September 15-18 ).The six-stop Big Mountain Enduro Series includes events in Santa Fe, NM (May 22), Keystone, CO (July 9-10), Aspen Snowmass, CO (July 30-31), Steamboat, CO (August 20-21), Crested Butte, CO (September 2-4) and Mascota, Mexico (TBD).The Whistler Enduro Spring Classic (May 28-29) and Whistler Enduro Fall Classic (September 10-11) are brand new races to the NAET scene. Born out of Whistlers Great Outdoors Fest Enduro, GO Enduro, both events will feature some of the same trails as the notorious SRAM Canadian Open Enduro presented by Specialized, winner of the 2014 Pinkbike Game Changer Award. WPT National Tour Returns To Spain and Portugal with Multi-Venue Events April 08, 2016 Jason Glatzer Editor In partnership with the Multi-Venue Series (MVS), the World Poker Tour (WPT) announced its return to the Iberian Peninsula with a series of WPT National Tour main events hosted simultaneously at three different venues. Each set of events features a 750 buy-in and allow players to compete at three different venues in Spain and Portugal before roughly seven percent of the field will compete at a single location. The first WPT National Tour Iberia in Season XIV begins May 12-15 at Gran Casino Madrid, Casino Espinho, and Casino Barcelona. Surviving players, who will already be in the money, will then compete in Madrid to play on May 21-22 until a winner is declared. Casino Gran Madrid Deputy Director Paula Arriaga expressed the casino's excitement about hosting the first Grand Final of the WPT National Tour Iberia. "We are delighted that Casino Gran Madrid has been selected to host the first Grand Final of the MVS Presents: WPT National Iberia Main Event," Arriaga shared when WPT announced the poker festival. "We are proud to work closely with three strong partners in the WPT, Multi-Venue Series, and BRAVO on this exciting project." The multi-venue poker festival will be returning a few months later with a similar structure with players once again competing at the same three casinos from Oct. 13-16 before grouping together to complete the tournament in Espinho from Oct. 22-23. A third-edition of the WPT National Tour Iberia is planned to take place in January with this time the final destination taking place in Barcelona. Hemance Blum, Head of WPT Europe, expressed the high hopes the poker tour has with its partnership with MVS and its return to Spain and Portugal. "The introduction of the MVS Presents: WPT National Iberia Main Event is a testament to the World Poker Tour's constant evolution, and the innovative partnerships the WPT has secured worldwide," Blum explained. "We have already experienced great success in Spain with both the WPT Main and National Tours, and we look forward to our first-ever event in Portugal as we bond together these two emerging markets to generate a massive prize pool for our players." Understandably MVS is also thrilled about partnering with WPT with Neil Barrett, Managing Director at LivingItLovingIt, the inventor of the MVS, explaining why an event at multiple locations is more optimal for players when compared to taking place at a single venue. "We have listened to the needs of poker players for live events and the constant feedback received was that players have to choose their events carefully to manage their bankrolls," Barrett commented in the WPT announcement of the three events. "This format allows the players to select the nearest casino to them for the early stages of the tournament, reducing travel costs, and then move to the final host casino only when they are well into the money, which will cover the cost. Its a tricky tournament to manage operationally, but the combination of BRAVOs technical capabilities and WPTs expert tournament direction makes this historic, groundbreaking event possible." Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+! Officer Tim Jones has left the ICU and moved to a rehab facility. (Photo: Park Forest PD) The Park Forest (IL) Police Department posted on its Facebook page Wednesday an encouraging update on the condition of Officer Timothy Jones, who was severely wounded investigating a break-in last month: Officer Timothy Jones, who was critically wounded in the line-of-duty on Saturday, March 19, 2016 after suffering gunshot wounds while attempting to take a suspect into custody, has been released from the Intensive Care Unit of Advocate Christ Medical Center and has been transported to a rehabilitation center at an undisclosed location. Officer Jones is not on life support, and his condition has stabilized to allow transport to this new facility. He is minimally conscious, and while he has a very long road to recovery and his long-term prognosis is uncertain, the steps he has taken in less than three weeks after suffering such a devastating injury give cause for hope, and also demonstrate the strength and will with which he is fighting. The Park Forest Police Department would like to thank the professional medical staff of Advocate Christ Medical Center for the excellent care of Tim while he was with them, the numerous law enforcement and other public safety agencies that have given support during this time, as well as the incredible outpouring of support from the community. Your continued prayers, concern, and support are greatly appreciated. The photograph of Tim accompanying this post was taken in the fall of 2015, just as his career in law enforcement was beginning. In a short time, his work in uniform demonstrated enthusiasm, integrity, charisma, concern, and compassion. He is now demonstrating fight, strength and resiliency. We will continue to stand by Tim and his family through this journey, and will share updates as we are able, in coordination with the privacy naturally requested by the family. Thank you again, to everyone who has offered concern and well-wishes, in whatever form it has taken. Related: Video: Illinois Officer Critically Wounded Investigating Break-In A convicted cop-killing militant who went to jail for gunning down two NYPD officers on a Queens street in 1981, has died, officials said Monday. Abdul Majid, 65, who was serving a 25-years-to-life sentence at the upstate Five Points Correctional Facility, died in a hospital over the weekend, according to a correction department spokesman, reports the New York Daily News. A spokesman for the Onondaga County Medical Examiner's office said Majid died of natural causes acute cholecystitis, which is an inflammation of the gall bladder. Majid, who went by the name Anthony Laborde before landing in prison and converting to Islam, was convicted with an accomplice for the murder of Officer John Scarangella and the attempted murder of Officer Richard Rainey. The two officers stopped a white van in St. Albans, Queens, at 10:30 a.m.in April 1981 to question the two men inside about a series of local burglaries. Majid and Black Liberation Army partner James Dixon-York emerged from the van with guns blazing, emptying their 15-shot, 9mm pistols at the officers. Scarangella died after the attack. Rainey survived, but was forced to quit the department. He died last year. Dixon-York died in prison in 2009. Majid was scheduled for a parole hearing next month. Two high-ranking NYPD officials have been stripped of their guns and badges Thursday morning amid an FBI probe of suspected corruption in the department, reports the New York Post. Deputy NYPD Inspector James Grant, commander of the Upper East Side's 19th Precinct, and Deputy Housing Chief Michael Harrington were placed on modified duty and transferred, Police Commissioner William Bratton announced. "This is not a particularly good day for the department," Bratton said at a press conference. The action against Grant was taken hours after The Post reported that he allegedly accepted diamonds and cash from one of the businessmen at the center of the federal probe. Meanwhile, Brooklyn South Deputy Chief Eric Rodriguez and Deputy Chief David Colon have also been transferred, though not stripped of their guns and badges, police said. A high-ranking source told The Post: "I'm disappointed. It's a distraction and it takes away from all the good work that we've done." Bratton said he met with Diego Rodriguez, the assistant director of the FBI, and his team at police headquarters on Thursday morning to discuss the probe. "The NYPD initiated an investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau at the end of 2013," he said in the statement. Asked why it took this long to place the high-ranking cops on modified duty, he said: "All of you are very familiar with these investigations. They take time." Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print New York is a critical state for both frontrunner Hillary Clinton and for Bernie Sanders, fresh from an important win in Wisconsin. The candidates focus this weekend will be very different: While Clinton will be campaigning Upstate, Sanders will be in the New York City area. The Democratic Primary is held on April 19. Ahead of the primary, a Democratic debate will air on CNN on Thursday, April 14. Clinton told CNNs Chris Cuomo Wednesday, I think I know the state a lot better. On Thursday she told reporters, Im going to trust the voters of New York who know me and have voted for me three times, twice for Senate and once in the presidential primary. Sanders meanwhile said from Philadelphia that, If Secretary Clinton thinks that I just come from the small state of Vermont, we are not used to this, well, we will get used to it fast. We are not going to get beaten up. Sanders will be visiting the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Flatbush and Greenpoint on Friday, and on Saturday host a community conversation in Harlem with African-American leaders to discuss his plans to fix a broken criminal justice system, improve relations between police officers and communities of color and take on a rigged economy disproportionately harming minority neighborhoods. Sanders schedule is as follows: Friday, April 8 Doors open at 1 p.m. A Future to Believe In Flatbush Rally with Special Guest Mark Ruffalo, 1525 East 26th Street, Brooklyn Information for the public: This event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are strongly encouraged. Admission is first come, first served. Crowd entrance located at Avenue P and East 26th St. For security reasons, please do not bring bags and limit what you bring to small, personal items like keys and cell phones. Weapons, sharp objects, chairs, and signs or banners on sticks will not be allowed through security. Parking is not available on-site, public transportation is encouraged. Doors open at 3 p.m. A Future to Believe In Greenpoint Rally with Special Guest Susan Sarandon, WNYC Transmitter Park, Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn Information for the public: This event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are strongly encouraged. Admission is first come, first served. Crowd entrance located via Greenpoint Ave. For security reasons, please do not bring bags and limit what you bring to small, personal items like keys and cell phones. Weapons, sharp objects, chairs, and signs or banners on sticks will not be allowed through security. Parking is not available on-site, public transportation is encouraged. Sanders meeting in Harlem with African-American leaders, a Community Conversation with Sen. Bernie Sanders, will take place Saturday, April 9th at the Apollo Theater and is by invitation only. The Clinton campaign announced that on Friday, Hillary Clinton will visit western New York to host a discussion on creating jobs and raising incomes in Buffalo, as well as grassroots organizing events in Buffalo and Rochester, ahead of the April 19th Democratic primary. Hillary Clintons long record of tackling complex problems and delivering results has helped expand economic opportunity upstate for New York families and communities. As Senator, she brought people together to help develop the University of Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinfomatics and Life Sciences and expand the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, supporting thousands of jobs in the Buffalo area and driving the citys development as a center of cutting-edge research. Last week in Syracuse, Clinton unveiled her plan for a $10 billion investment in regionally based Make It in America partnerships. The plan builds on her efforts supporting upstate manufacturers as New Yorks Senator to make America the first choice for manufacturing production. Clintons schedule is as follows: Friday, April 8th Growing Jobs and Raising Incomes Conversation WHERE: The Jacobs Institute, Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, 875 Ellicott Street, Buffalo EVENT START: 12:00 PM ET DOORS OPEN: 11:00 AM ET Buffalo Organizing Event with Hillary Clinton WHERE: Buffalo Transportation Pierce Arrow Museum, 263 Michigan Ave, Buffalo EVENT START: 2:00 PM ET DOORS OPEN: 12:00 PM ET Rochester Organizing Event with Hillary Clinton WHERE: Samuel J Stabins Physical Education Complex, Monroe Community College, 1000 East Henrietta Road, Rochester EVENT START: 6:00 PM ET DOORS OPEN: 4:00 PM ET Tracking 8 polls from 5 pollsters, Huffington Post shows Hillary Clinton leading with 53.4 to Bernie Sanders 43 percent. Sanders campaign manager, Jeff Weaver said on Wednesday that, Obviously, the math is importantBut I think too many people are discounting the sort of dynamism in a political campaign and what it means, for instance, if Hillary Clinton were to lose New York in terms of her credibility as a front-runner whos going to represent the Democratic Party in November. I think it would shake a lot of peoples confidence. He pointed out that before his lopsided win, Sanders had been trailing in Wisconsin polls as well, which is no doubt why Clinton is emphasizing her New York connections. One aspect of the campaign muddying the waters in New York is the requirement that voters register well in advance for one party or another the deadline being October 9, 2015. There are those who want to vote Democratic because of Bernie Sanders but remain registered Republicans because their change did not go through for one reason or another, or because they did not act in time. So, adding an element of pathos to a frantic contest, the outcome could be determined more by logistics and human error some of it not their own than by whom the voters want or dont want on April 19. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Fake historian David Barton, who has a largely worthless degree from Oral Roberts University, is busy again conflating the Constitution, which makes no mention of God, Bible, Ten Commandments, or Jesus, with the Bible, which is full of references to those things. The Constitution gives us rights, a list of things you CAN do. The Bible limits rights with the big list of Top 10 Do Nots The Ten Commandments. According to Barton, speaking on his radio program Wednesday, how the presidential candidates look at the Bible will tell you how theyre going to look at the Constitution. Take a listen courtesy of Right Wing Watch: If your religious faith is such that it doesnt connect you to God, youre not going to be good for the country. How they look at the Bible will tell you how theyre going to look at the Constitution. Im not saying the Bible and the Constitution are the same thing, but Im saying you have the same view toward authority, you have the same view toward there are absolutes, there are standards that should be followed and must be followed. The fervency with which someone follows their religious faith, a biblical faith, is nearly always a direct indicator of how well they will follow the Constitution. If they dont respect the Bible, they wont respect other firm, fixed documents like the Constitution, so we, as citizens, ought to engage in that type of personal religious test for our president. This is about as stupid a thing as we have ever heard Barton say, and he has said a lot of stupid things. There is no comparison between the two documents, or how one approaches the two documents. One was written by people for people the whole We the People thing that is missing from the Bible, which purports to be the a record of the will of God. The Constitution requires the use of reason, highly valued by Enlightenment thinkers like the Founding Fathers. The Bible requires faith, or belief that something, as Kierkegaard said, is true despite its absurdity. A person is perfectly capable of accepting and following the Constitution because it is not something you believe in or not, in the same way that science is not something you believe in or not. In the Constitution, political power derives from the will of the people. We call that democracy. In the Bible, power (political and otherwise) derives from God, or at least from people who pretend to speak for God, be they kings or, worse, priests. Jefferson warned what happens under priestly rule, and the First Amendment of the Constitution was designed to save Americans that fate. Sadly, the under-educated and dishonest Barton is wildly influential in Religious Right and even Republican circles, and what he says further reinforces the entirely false assumption that the Constitution and the Bible have something to do with each other. A simple reading of both would disabuse any rational reader from thinking so, but sadly, there seems to be a real lack of rationality among both Republicans and Religious Right figures, who prefer what they want to be true over what actually is true. 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. MANTORVILLE On Saturday, Environmental Minnesota will be leading a bus tour of factory farms in the southeast region. Co-sponsors are the Dodge County Concerned Citizens and Socially Responsible Agriculture Project. The focus is to connect city and rural advocates, look at factory farm's potential impact on the environment and local communities and explore the ethical implications of industrial animal agriculture, said Pete Suechting, Clean Water Organizer for Environmental Minnesota, a statewide environmental group. "We want this to be a day of education," Suechting said. So far, about 27 people from both the Twin Cities and Dodge County are gathering for the tours that will start in Mantorville. Discussions will be hosted by Sonja Trom-Eayrs, founder and executive director of Dodge County Concerned Citizens; Chris Peterson, Regional Associate with Socially Responsible Agriculture Project; Christine Coughlin, state director for the Humane Society of the United States, Minnesota Chapter; Brian Wolff, Professor of Conservation Biology at Normandale Community College; and Suechting. ADVERTISEMENT Suechting said the people taking in part of the tours are not against agriculture, farmers or the use of feedlots. They oppose industrial-scale factory farms, confinement and large operations that could produce an "inconceivable amount of manure." "We're not against animal agriculture," Suechting said. "We're saying if you're going to produce these many hogs, then you must be responsible with the amount of waste that is produced, and find the right balance in ratio of animals to land." Suechting said the group wants to build a coalition that can push for change, and focus attention on factory farms. Hair, and the the politics associated with it, will be the theme of Rochester Civic Theatre's Women on Wednesdays series. "Politics of Beauty, Part I: Black Hair - Still Tangled in Politics" will be held 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 13, at Rochester Civic Theatre. This discussion will explore the black female experience with hair and how it is tied to issues of race, politics, history and pride. Anthropologist and writer Nicole Nfonoyim-Hara will moderate the discussion, Nfonoyim-Hara was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City. Her writing and research grapples with issues of migration, diasporas, cities, identity formation and politics and culture. In 2008, she was awarded a Fulbright research grant to create a visual ethnography with African migrant men in Madrid, Spain. She received her bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College and holds a master's degree from the University of Oxford. She currently lives in Rochester. The event is open to the public. ADVERTISEMENT Women on Wednesdays is held at Rochester Civic Theatre's lobby. Complimentary appetizers from Salad Brothers and our cash bar starting at 5 p.m. with the presentation and discussion following from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is free but reservations are required to attend. To make a reservation, send an email to info@rochestercivictheatre.org or 507-282-8481 by Monday, April 11. For more information, contact Rochester Civic Theatre Executive Director Gregory Stavrou at 507-226-4807 or gstavrou@rochestercivictheatre.org. Yes, at the GEC voting center at the Westin. Yes, at one of the satellite voting centers open on Saturdays. No; I'm voting on Nov. 8. No; I'm not voting in the general election. Vote View Results In his bizarre sit-down with the editors of the New York Daily News Jamie Kirchick provides an entertaining retrospective in Is Bernie Sanders your stoner college roommate? (with full audio) GE was about the only company Bernie Sanders was able to identify as committing the malefactions that drive him onward. The editors had asked Sanders to name a company exemplifying corporate greed at its worst. According to Sanders, GE is destroying the moral fabric of America. I would say that GE can be cited as a good example of crony capitalism. You wont be hearing anything about that from Senator Sanders. Crony capitalism is a station on the way to Sanders socialism. GE chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt talked back to Sanders in the Washington Post. Ive quit checking the Post because of its paywall, but the Post publicist sent us the full text of Immelts column by email. I especially enjoyed the Vermont angle to Immelts column; Immelt has certainly got a good story to tell and some talented writers in his stable to help him tell it. GE has been in business for 124 years, Immelt writes, and weve never been a big hit with socialists. We create wealth and jobs, instead of just calling for them in speeches. Ill drink to that. He continues: We take risks, invest, innovate and produce in ways that today sustain 125,000 U.S. jobs. Good point. Most of us would like a GE plant in town. This isnt bad either: Our communities are proud of our company. Our pride, history and hard work are real the moral fabric of America. Good point. And then Immelt comes to the Vermont angle. Take this, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders: The senator has never bothered to stop by our aviation plant in Rutland, Vt. Weve been investing heavily (some $100 million in recent years), hiring and turning out some of the worlds finest jet-engine components in Vermont since the 1950s. The plant employs more than 1,000 people who are very good at what they do. Its a picture of first-rate jobs with high wages, advanced manufacturing in a vital industry how things look when American workers are competing and winning and Vermonts junior senator is always welcome to come by for a tour. Elsewhere in Vermont, GE Healthcare employs more than 340 men and women in South Burlington. Yearly, GE does about $40 million worth of business with dozens of suppliers of parts and services across Vermont. Nationwide, we have 200 GE plants, including 15 that were built in the past five years all with the aim of making GE the worlds premier industrial company. Immelts Vermont examples shouldnt just embarrass Senator Sanders, assuming Sanders is capable of embarrassment. They support Immelts larger points regarding GE. Immelt returns to the theme of the moral fabric in his conclusion: Its easy to make hollow campaign promises and take cheap shots in speeches and during editorial board sessions, but U.S. companies have to deliver for their employees, customers and shareholders every day. GE operates in the real world. Were in the business of building real things and generating real growth for a nation that needs it now more than ever. Im proud of all that we do, and how it all figures into the moral fabric of America is so plain to me. I declare Immelt the winner of this particular argument by knockout. Did you know that the Romanian hacker Guccifer was extradited to the United States under federal indictment and that he appeared in court in Virginia yesterday for a detention hearing? I didnt until I read the latest FOX News report by Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne. In fact, Guccifer was indicted in June 2014. The FBI press release is posted here. The press release announcing his extradition and initial appearance in court this past Friday is here. The nine-count indictment is accessible online here. If Herridge and Browne are on the scene, the mind-boggling Clinton email scandal cant be far behind: The extradition of Romanian hacker Guccifer to the U.S. at a critical point in the FBIs criminal investigation of Hillary Clintons email use is not a coincidence, according to an intelligence source close to the case. One of the notches on Guccifers cyber-crime belt was allegedly accessing the email account of Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, one of Clintons most prolific advice-givers when she was secretary of state. It was through that hack that Clintons use of a personal account clintonemail.com first came to light. Former law enforcement and cyber security experts said the hacker, whose real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, could now that hes in the U.S. help the FBI make the case that Clintons email server was compromised by a third party, one that did not have the formal backing and resources of a foreign intelligence service such as that of Russia, China or Iran. Because of the proximity to Sidney Blumenthal and the activity involving Hillarys emails, [the timing] seems to be something beyond curious, said Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBIs Criminal Investigative Division from 2012-2014. Herridge and Browne report that a spokesman for the FBIs Washington Field Office had no comment on the extradition, the timing, and any potential intersection with the Clinton email probe. And then there is this: Cybersecurity and terrorism expert Morgan Wright told Fox News, My question is, why now why just these cases, and why was it so important to bring him [to the U.S.]? I go back to whats in common, and thats the exposure. The Romanian government told Fox News that the request to extradite Lazar came from the FBI, but when Fox News asked when the process began, a government spokesperson said they were not authorized to comment further. Romanian media have reported the request came on or about Dec. 29, 2015. That would have been shortly after the intelligence communitys identification of emails beyond top secret on Clintons personal server, which became public in mid-January. The Herridge and Browne report is necessarily speculative, intensely interesting and worth a look in its entirety. John and I have written about the report issued by something called the Trustee Committee on Woodrow Wilsons Legacy at Princeton. The committee was formed in response to the occupation of the Princeton presidents office by black students demanding, among other things, that Wilsons name be purged from prominent Princeton institutions named after the former president. Based on recommendations in the report, Princeton refused to purge Wilson, choosing instead to make a few small concessions to the protesters. A distinguished Princeton alumnus offers these thoughts about his alma maters Wilson saga: 1. The Invasion, Occupation, and Agreement. Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber and Princetons Board of Trustees selected the Committee in November 2015 after a group of student protesters invaded and occupied Mr. Eisgrubers office and refused to leave until he agreed to demands that Princeton eliminate Woodrow Wilsons name, develop race-based affinity housing, implement cultural competency training, and grant amnesty to the protesters. Mr. Eisgruber reached an agreement with the protesters about their demands after 32 hours. It does not seem to have occurred to him or anyone else in his administration or the Board of Trustees that there was anything wrong with the invasion and occupation of Mr. Eisgrubers office. As a result, Mr. Eisgruber and the protesters, known as the Black Justice League, have set a clear precedent: those who disagree with Princetons practices can initiate action by the President, the administration, and the Trustees if they take over the presidents office and present the president with a list of grievances. Will Mr. Eisgruber condone the same kind of action taken by other groups? For example, Princetons faculty is almost entirely made up of leftists. If conservative students take over Mr. Eisgrubers office and demand more balance on the faculty, will Mr. Eisgruber grant amnesty for the student takeover and then ask the Trustees to designate a committee to study the question and issue a report? 2. The Report. The Committees Report is just over 12 page in length. It mentions the word diversity and inclusion or similar words like diverse and inclusive more than 80 times. Its as if the Committee concluded that it could show its good faith by invoking magical references to diversity and inclusion as much as possible. The Report also reflects the fact that those who issued it believe the readers are not very bright. The Report contains not a single word about the Black Justice Leagues demand for cultural competency training and the other demands. Rather, it focuses entirely on Mr. Wilsons legacy and then makes obvious references to racism of the past and calls on the university to be honest and forthcoming about history, as if there has been some massive conspiracy to portray Woodrow Wilson as an angelic figure in all aspects of his life. The Report describes its membership and the work of the committee. It notes that Woodrow Wilson made some efforts to make Princeton more inclusive and diverse and that he opposed admitting black students to Princeton. (Page 4). The Report also summarizes his eight-year presidency in two paragraphs and notes in passing that he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. The Report then discusses Mr. Wilsons namesake, the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs and other uses of Mr. Wilsons name by the university. The Report notes that the undergraduate student body is nearly 55% American minorities and international students, of whom 7.6% are African American. (Page 7.) Despite these numbers, the Report says that much remains to be done to address[] bias, discrimination, and harassment, among other things. (Page 7). The Report then lists its recommendations: (1) a renewed and expanded commitment to diversity and inclusion at Princeton (page 8); (2) a subcommittee of the Board of Trustees that will focus on diversity and inclusion; (3) efforts to increase diversity at the graduate student level (page 9); (4) a modification of Princetons informal motto from Princeton in the nations service and the Service of All Nations to Princeton in the nations service and the service of humanity (pages 9-10); (5) various education and transparency initiatives (page 10); and (6) a concerted effort to diversify campus artwork and iconography. (Pages 10-11). 3. Hiring a diversity dean. The day after the Report issued, Princeton announced the creation of a new position, dean of diversity and inclusion, and the corresponding decision to hire a diversity professional from Washington University in St. Louis. Is the timing of this announcement a coincidence? 4. A strange outcome. The Report and the hiring of a diversity dean are not likely to change anything at Princeton. The university will remain what it has been for a long time: an institution that endorses a collective leftist groupthink that tolerates little dissent from leftist orthodoxy; repeats phrases like diversity and inclusion as much as possible; engages in racial preferences in admissions; creates special programs and campus centers for previously excluded groups; proudly populates its faculty with Marxists, radical feminists, leftists, and other counter-cultural and anti-American thinkers; and fancies itself as a bastion of right-thinking that is, left-thinking morally superior intellectuals. If implemented, the Reports six recommendations will accomplish nothing meaningful. There may be an effort to attract more minority graduate students, but why stop there? The fact that nearly 55% majority of the undergraduates are minority and international students masks the fact that only 7.6% of undergraduates are African American. (Report at page 7). The United States Census Bureau reports that 13.2% of Americans are African American, and this suggests that Princetons undergraduate population has a significant underrepresentation of African Americans. Does the university plan to do anything about this underrepresentation or even acknowledge the point? Nothing in the Report mentions this issue. Instead, the recommended creation of new committees and programs, the display of more diverse artwork, and a modified motto suggest that the university will commit itself to largely meaningless symbolic gestures that will somehow appease the Black Justice League and not offend too many alumni. The new motto, Princeton in the nations service and the service of humanity, is particularly odd. What does changing nations to humanity accomplish? The answer is: nothing. In fact, most people will ignore the new motto, as they should. Finally, if the goal was at it appears to appease the Black Justice League without offending too many alumni it remains unclear whether the Report and its recommendations will accomplish anything. The Black Justice League condemned the Report as filled with largely meaningless platitudes, which it is. It also accuses Princeton of a seemingly intractable investment in white supremacy and its vestiges and says that in comparison to Harvard, Princeton offers only shallow words and hollow promises. The Black Justice League does not say whether it will again invade President Eisgrubers office or take other action. As for the alumni body as a whole, Princeton need not be concerned. The Report will change nothing among the alumni body. Conservative alumni will recognize the Report as another attempt by the university to demonstrate its commitment to political correctness and leftism. A few will write letters of protest and the administration will ignore them. Other alumni will remain indifferent; a few will eagerly cheer Mr. Eisgruber and the Trustees; and many will donate a lot of money, for sentimental reasons or because they hope that big donations will help their children or grandchildren gain admission. On balance, then, Princetons reaction is yet another sorry episode in the continued leftist drift of the university as a whole. I agree with every point made by the Princeton alum. The secretary general of the Madagascar Presidency, Ralala Roger, said countrys government led by Prime Minister Jean Ravelonarivo resigned on Friday. Resignation of the government was accepted by Madagascars President Henry Rajaonarimampianina, Roger said. He added that those who resigned would continue to perform state duties until the appointment of the new members of the government. Indiscretion from the followers of the outgoing prime minister said that he was forced by the president to resign. On Wednesday the Prime minister still said that he would not resign. Report says months ago, rumours on the stalemate between the president and the prime minister already spread out in Madagascar. Mr. Ravelonarivo, a general, was appointed as the 18th Madagascars prime minister to replace Kolo Roger on January 17, 2015. (Xinhua/NAN) China has warned that the forthcoming G20 Summit it is hosting would be about economy and not political issues like territorial disputes. Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, on Friday in Beijing stated this ahead of the countrys biggest diplomatic event of the year. He said the summit, expected to be held in early September in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, would gather major world leaders together like Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama. Speaking to reporters after meeting his German counterpart, Wang Yi said China wanted to make proposals at the G20 about global economic growth. We hope that the G7 can be like the G20 and concentrate on economic and development topics countries of the world are the most focused on. If certain countries, because of political aims, insert concrete issues like problems left over from history or disputes over territory or sovereignty into the G20, not only will this not benefit the issues resolution, it could impact upon the regional situation and stability and is inadvisable, he said. China has rattled nerves around the region with its increasingly assertive moves over territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas. China disputes ownership with Japan of a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea. China claims most of the resource-rich South China Sea amid rival claims by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. (Xinhua/NAN) Embattled Senate President Bukola Saraki on Friday said he would not yield to growing calls from Nigerians that he should step down amid growing corruption scandals. Mr. Saraki said those calling for his resignation were being sponsored by politicians who had always opposed his leadership since he emerged Senate President last June, He added that his detractors were trying to circumvent the countrys judicial system. Mr. Saraki was responding to a story published by PREMIUM TIMES earlier today, in which the Transition Monitoring Group lend its voice to a growing call for the Senate Presidents ouster. In a text message sent to our reporter by his Special Adviser on Media, Yusuph Olaniyonu, Mr. Saraki said he was not contemplating resignation. Theres a case in the Tribunal and a resultant appeal at the Court of Appeal, the statement said. The underlining philosophy of our legal system is that an accused person is presumed innocent until found guilty. Those who are contemplating calls for resignation want to circumvent the judicial system. They are obviously being sponsored by some politicians. The Senate President is not contemplating any resignation. He will surely have his day in court. Since Mr. Saraki was arraigned by the Code of Conduct Tribunal and the PREMIUM TIMES expose about his secret offshore assets in tax havens, the calls for him to step down have continued to mount. On Thursday, several activists and other Nigerians openly called on the Senate President to resign. They were joined today by the TMG. PREMIUM TIMES had reported on Monday that Mr. Saraki failed to disclose four assets found to be in his wifes name offshore, in violation of Nigerias code of conduct law. That revelation came to light following the leak of a trove of internal data from the Panama-based offshore-provider, Mossack Fonseca, obtained by the German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung, and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with PREMIUM TIMES and over 100 other media partners in 82 countries. In his response to that publication, Mr. Saraki said the controversial assets belonged to the estate of his wifes rich and famous family, and that the law did not mandate him to declare such a category of assets. But PREMIUM TIMES later found that the assets neither belong to Toyin, his wife, nor to her familys estate. They are clearly Mr. Sarakis. According to the new documents retrieved by PREMIUM TIMES from the massive Mossack Fonseca database, the assets in Toyins name are actually held in trust for Mr. Saraki, Nigerias third most powerful official. Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has raised the alarm over President Mohammadu Buharis scheduled trip to China. Mr. Fayose said the president was visiting the Asian country borrow $2 billion as part of the N1.84 trillion programmed to be borrowed to finance the 2016 Budget, describing the move as an attempt to mortgage the future of Nigeria and its people. The governor, who said the 2016 budget was not a reflection of the present economic reality in the country, added, By the time they borrow N1.84 trillion to fund their N6.06 billion budget; I wonder how Nigeria will survive in 2017 when the Federal Government will be servicing debt with about 50 percent of its budget. In a release issued on Friday by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said; In elementary economics, you dont propose to spend more when your income reduces and I still cant understand this Buharinomics in which Nigeria is going to spend N6.06 billion with crude oil bench mark of $38 per barrel when the country budget was N4.5 trillion in 2015 when crude oil bench mark was $53 per barrel. He said since the President claimed to have recovered and still recovering trillions of Naira looted from the treasury and over N3 trillion saved from the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the 2016 budget should be funded with the recovered fund. The governor said he was alerting Nigerians of the danger in the federal governments plan to fund the 2016 budget with loan, adding that: Tomorrow, it will be said of me that I did not keep silent when Nigeria was being mortgaged to unnecessary debt. He warned that with the proposed N1.84 trillion borrowing, $2 billion of which President Buhari is already going to borrow in China, the nation may soon be going the way of Greece because Nigeria will be borrowing N5 billion per day for the next 365 days. If your income was N200, 000 per month last year and your expenditure was N195, 000 per month; does it make any economic sense for you to propose to spend N300, 000 per month this year that your income has reduced to N120, 000? Only President Buhari can explain to Nigerians what manner of Economic theory encourages borrowing of N1.84 trillion to fund a N6 trillion budget. As for me, it is nothing but a voodoo economic theory and Nigerians must take note that the income that should accrue to them in five years time is about to be spent in one year by the Buharis APC government, the governor said. The management of the University of Lagos on Thursday ordered the immediate closure of the institution following students protests over epileptic power supply and poor water supply. In a circular issued Thursday, the school said the closure was also due to the difficulties faced by the large number of students living off campus to attend classes as a result of the lingering fuel crisis. Senate noted that the problem of poor municipal service is a national issue that the governments at both state and federal level are addressing, the circular stated. Scores of students on Thursday blocked the major road leading into the university, including access to the schools Senate building and the Assembly Hall where Rahman Bello, the Vice Chancellor, was attending an event. Few hours later, armed police officers arrived the school, stopped vehicular entrance through the gate, and dispersed the angry students. In the circular on Thursday, the university management said it was suspending all academic activities on campus to forestall further breakdown of law and order. The management also ordered the students to vacate their halls of residence immediately. A decision to re-open for normal academic activities will be made as soon as municipal services improve, the circular said. All members of the University community are enjoined to go about their normal activities as adequate security measures have been put in place. Call for the resignation of Nigerias Senate president, Bukola Saraki, is gathering steam after #PanamaPapers exposed his secret offshore assets shortly after his false assets declaration trial began at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. The Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of over 400 civic organisations working for the entrenchment of democracy and good governance in Nigeria, has added its voice to the growing calls for the embattled Senate president to step down from office. The group said the revelations by the #PanamaPapers and the prosecution team are too lurid for Nigerians to ignore, adding that Mr. Saraki had lost all moral grounds to continue to occupy such office in the land. The TMG said the details contained in the evidence tendered by the prosecution against Mr. Saraki were startling. It said the only option for the politician is to follow in the footsteps of Icelandic Prime Minister who stepped aside on Wednesday after the #PanamaPapers revealed his offshore business interests. The call is coming barely a day after other public affairs analysts and citizens expressed their outrage over the same developments and called for the impeachment of Mr. Saraki from office. In a statement by Ibrahim Zikirullahi, the groups chairman, TMG said the funds allegedly pilfered or diverted by Mr. Saraki could have gone into developmental causes in Kwara State. TMG has been keeping a close watch on the trial of Senate president, Dr. Bukola Saraki at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT). To say the least, the lurid details that have emerged so far about how monies belonging to the people of Kwara State were either pilfered or diverted to Sarakis personal accounts, remind all well-meaning citizens about the urgent need to stamp out elite corruption. In just two days of trial, the dirty secrets that have emerged are startling. Before the very eyes of the people of Kwara and by extension Nigeria, we are seeing how the criminal alliance between Saraki and his current minion in the Kwara State Government House resulted in the continued payment of Sarakis salary as governor, four clear years after he ceased to occupy office as governor. As if what has been coming out of the CCT is just a tip of the iceberg, Sarakis name again showed up prominently on the infamous global list of tax dodgers and those hiding suspicious assets in offshore havens as revealed in the leaked Panama Papers. It stands in stark contrast that while the Prime Minister of Iceland who was mentioned in the Panama leaks has since resigned, Saraki and his fellow primitive accumulators in the Senate are waiting for the Nigerian people to forget and move on. These looted monies are the funds that would have paid the salaries of teachers, doctors and other workers in the state. These are the funds that should have built schools, hospitals, roads and provide education for the children of the ordinary man and woman in Kwara State. While it is tragic that Saraki and his co-travelers have shortchanged the people of Kwara, and set them back in their quest for good governance, the bigger tragedy is the criminal silence in the Senate, Mr. Zikirullahi said. The group therefore commended the anti-graft agencies responsible for the arraignment of Mr. Saraki. TMG commends the resolve shown by the institutions prosecuting the Saraki case. In the face of blackmail, intimidation and other forms of rigmarole aimed at derailing the trial, the relevant agencies have diligently stayed the course. Specifically, we commend the CCT chair to refusing to succumb to the raft of inane technicalities employed by the defense to frustrate the cause of justice. TMG also commends the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for the meticulous investigations that have unearthed these crimes against the people of Kwara, the TMG chairman added. Mr. Sarakis spokesman, Yusuph Olaniyonu, declined to comment for this story. The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, CACOL, an anti-corruption group, has called on the Nigerian government to commence immediate investigations into the gruesome revelations contained in the #PanamaPapers offshore assets series published by PREMIUM TIMES. The group also said the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, should resign from office and surrender himself to federal authorities for prosecution. In a statement signed by Debo Adeniran, CACOL s executive chairman, the group said the governments indifference to the scandal was worrisome and repugnant. The Nigerian governments attitude to the gruesome revelations from the Panama Papers leaks becomes worrisome and repugnant, as the attitude is apparently lackadaisical and indifferent, Mr. Adeniran said. Mr. Adeniran lamented that the Nigerian governments failure was unacceptable because several other world leaders caught in the same scandal have been turning in their resignation letters. When in other places, heads of the mighty have rolled over the Panama papers leaks, (notably in Iceland where the Prime Minister was forced to resign from office following protests by Icelanders) the Nigerian governments reaction or better put inaction and insensitivity over the Panama papers is unacceptable and reprehensible, the group said. Mr. Adeniran warned that any failure by the Muhammadu Buhari administration to immediately address the situation will not augur well for the much-touted anti corruption drive of his administration. With such a lackadaisical or indifferent attitude on the part of government toward global issues like the Panama Papers leak especially when so-called leaders from Nigeria are mentioned in the scam, the celebrated anti-corruption drive of the government and the anti-corruption poise of the present regime may as well just be described as a ruse. Mr. Adeniran, therefore, demanded that the federal government should launch a far-reaching investigation into the scandal and bring all those found culpable to book. Consequently, the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, CACOL is demanding that a special attention should be paid by the Federal government and the anti-corruption agencies to the revelations from the leaks with a goal of acting on them and with the view of verifying the facts; carrying out investigations, probing, prosecuting and recovering all the loots stolen from our Commonwealth that are hidden in the tax havens and offshore companies. Additionally, those found culpable must be punished accordingly no matter how highly placed or influential they are in the society. Those specifically mentioned; Gen. Theophilus Danjuma (Rtd), Dr. Bukola Saraki, Mr. James Ibori, Senator David Mark must be invited by the anti-corruption agencies; interrogated and prosecuted if enough evidence and facts confirm their involvement in the global scam revealed in the Panama Papers. Mr. Adeniran said Mr. Saraki has disgraced the country and must resign from office, failure of which Nigerians should rally their lawmakers to commence impeachment proceedings against him. Dr. Bukola Saraki, the sitting Senate President and Chairman of the National Assembly with all his baggage of corruption charges is, once again, topping the charts in the Panama Papers. This is totally disgraceful and very tarnishing for the image of the country and calls for drastic action of government and good people of Nigeria. Saraki, who is currently facing trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) on a thirteen-count charge, on the bases of corruption and false assets declaration is reported to have continued receiving salaries even after leaving office as Governor in Kwara state and used state funds to pay for private properties. With the addition of the Panama Papers indictment to his multi-coloured coat of corruption, it is time for Nigerians to call for Saraki to step down as Senate President and as Chairman of the National Assembly pending when he has successfully cleared his name and clean the smears all over him. If he fails to resign, Nigerians must rally and mandate their representatives in their various constituencies to commence his impeachment process of based on moral and ethical grounds. Nigeria cannot be respected among the comity of nations if the Head of the Law Making Body, the third in hierarchy in the leadership of the country oscillates between being a corruption criminal suspect in the criminal suspects box at the Code of Conduct Tribunal and as the Chairman of the National Assembly and while also ranking very high amongst those mentioned in the gruesome global scams activities revealed in the Panama Papers leaks. The Nigerian Government must seek and ensure that James Ibori, after serving his term in the UK prison is repatriated to Nigeria to answer for the charges against previously and his involvement in the Panama Papers scam. The Nigeria Police have affirmed that over 13,000 personnel would be deployed for the FCT area council elections. This was disclosed Thursday by Danta Walima, the representative to the commissioner of police, FCT, at a briefing of election observers and party agents at the merit house Abuja. We are very prepared, we have everything we need to curb any form of crisis, Mr. Walima said. Over 13,000 police officials are to be deployed within the FCT. The commissioner is also inviting men of conventional police and mobile police force from neighbouring states so as to ensure adequate security during and after the election. There will be enough manpower and escorts at the collation centers and at the 2000 polling units in the FCT, he said. Mr. Walima advised the public to call the following numbers in case of any incident. 08061581938 07057337653 08032003913 08028940883 Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a policeman and wounded a Civil Defense personnel early Friday, the police said. PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the gunmen, who were returning from a robbery operation along Abakaliki-Enugu expressway, started shooting sporadically and as a result killed a policeman and wounded several others. The Commandant of Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, Ebonyi State Command, Jibril Shyabu, who explained that his wounded staff, a driver, was already at the Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki, receiving treatment, described the incident as unfortunate and ugly. According to him, the incident has brought about the need for effective synergy among security agencies in the state and assured the members of the public of adequate protection by the security agencies in the state. He said his staff sustained both hand and leg injuries resulting from gunshot wounds as he was about to be taken into the theatre for emergency operation to remove the bullets inside his body. A source who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said that the hoodlums operated on motorcycles and killed the officer at the Mobil Filling Station of the express road. The situation affected vehicular movements across the capital city as heavily armed police officers cordoned the roads especially the Abakaliki end of the federal highway. They thoroughly searched vehicles and motorcycles which they impounded and stuffed them into big operational vans. The State Commissioner of Police, Peace Ibekwe-Abdallah, confirmed the incident noting that the investigation into the matter has commenced. She said: The command is preparing a release on the matter and would make it available to the press soon. 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 WASHINGTON The cost of mailing a letter is going down. Beginning Sunday, the price of a first-class stamp drops 2 cents, to 47 cents. The reduction is the result of an expiring surcharge that had been put in place in January 2014 to help the beleaguered Postal Service recoup $4.6 billion in losses dating back to the Great Recession. Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan said in a statement that the forced rate reduction would exacerbate Postal Service losses. The agency estimated that it would lose $2 billion in annual revenue as a result. Commercial and other postage rates also are declining. In its latest financial report, the agency reported a $307 million profit between October and December of 2015, due in part to increases in holiday shipping. But postal officials said at the time that without favorable interest rate changes and the postal surcharge, they would have had a net loss of approximately $700 million in the first quarter. An independent agency, the Postal Service does not use taxpayer money for its operations. But under federal law, it cant raise prices more than the rate of inflation without approval from the Postal Regulatory Commission. The service is still seeking relief from a congressional mandate to pre-fund retiree health benefits, something that neither the government nor private companies are required to do, as well as greater flexibility in setting rates. To properly compete for customers and continue to meet Americas evolving mailing and shipping needs, the Postal Service needs the financial capability to invest in the future, Brennan said. We continue to seek legislative reforms to put the Postal Service back on a sustainable financial path, and pricing is an important component. SEOUL, South Korea A middle-aged man is walking through a quiet Seoul neighborhood when he suddenly stops. He lights a cigarette, cupping his hands to shield the flame from the winter wind, and takes a deep draw, remembering how things used to be. Hes a former policeman, a broad-shouldered man with a growling voice and a crushing handshake. Back where he came from, he says, he was someone who mattered. In North Korea, people were afraid of me, he says. He says it wistfully, almost sadly, like a boy talking about a dog he once had. They knew I could just drag them away. That fear meant respect, and bribes, in the North Korean town where he lived, a place where the electricity rarely worked and the Internet was only a rumor. It meant he could buy a TV, and that he had food even as those around him went hungry. It meant that when he grew exhausted by the relentless poverty and oppression around him, and when relatives abroad offered to advance him the money to escape, he had connections to a good smuggler. Just over a year ago, that smuggler showed him where to slip across a river and into China, on his way to South Korea. His new home is one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nations in the world. It has a thriving democracy and a per-capita income at least 12 times larger than the Norths. Seoul is a city of infinite shopping choices, glass-fronted office towers and armies of exquisitely dressed businesspeople. He used to dream of the easy life hed have here. And what does he think now? Sometimes, when my work is too hard, I think about my job as a policeman, says the man, who spoke on condition his name not be used, fearing for the safety of relatives who still live in the North. I didnt have problems with money back then. I ate what I wanted to eat. He pauses, thinking about his decision to leave: There are times when I regret it a lot. Every year, thousands of North Koreans risk imprisonment, or worse, to leave their homeland, many hoping to eventually reach the South. Instead, they often find themselves lost in a nation where they thought theyd feel at home, struggling with depression, discrimination, joblessness and their own lingering pride in the repressive nation they left behind. Surveys have shown that up to one-third would return home if they could. Take the former policeman, an increasingly bitter day laborer who now supports his family hauling bags of cement through the sprawling apartment blocks constantly under construction around Seoul. His hands are rougher than sandpaper now. His fingernails are warped. He sleeps most nights in a dormitory near his latest construction site, just outside the city, only occasionally visiting his wife and the rest of his family, who live in a middle-class Seoul neighborhood. I knew that South Korea was a capitalist country, that it was very rich. I thought that if I can just get there, I can work less but earn a lot of money, he says. He grimaces when he thinks of his naivete. More than 27,000 North Koreans exiles live in the South, most arriving since a brutal famine tore at the country in the mid-1990s. Government control foundered amid widespread starvation, and security loosened along the border with China. While security has again tightened, nearly 1,300 refugees reached South Korea last year, according to statistics compiled by the Seoul government. For most, the journey required bribing border guards, life underground in China for months or years, and weeks of travel through still more countries. They left behind one of the most isolated nations in the world, where the ruling family has been worshipped now for three generations, and only a minuscule elite are allowed to make international phone calls. It has no free press or political opposition. While the famine is over, the country remains very poor, with hunger and malnutrition serious problems. Its a country where jobs are assigned by the government, but where most families now survive by selling everything from rice to car parts in an ever-growing network of markets. Most North Korean refugees come from collective farms or hardscrabble towns near the Chinese border. Few have more than a high school education. Tens of thousands of North Koreans are believed to live underground in China. Some stay permanently, while others slip back into the North after earning extra money. For many, though, the lure of a wealthy, Korean-speaking nation is strong, even if refugees expectations of the South are often shaped less by reality and more by the bootlegged southern soap operas that are wildly popular in the North. Those who go find themselves living in one of the most brutally competitive countries in the world, where education is worshipped, toddlers are offered exam-prep classes and a drive for perfection has produced one of the worlds highest rates of plastic surgery. Life in South Korea is competitive, Hong Yong-pyo, South Koreas minister of unification, said in a recent speech to a group of defectors. For you to succeed in this competition, you need to push yourself on your own. But that can be very difficult. Despite government programs that include an immersive three-month program, along with assistance in getting apartments and jobs, the exiles are immediately marked by their accents and their confusion over everything from checking accounts to job applications. Many are noticeably shorter than southerners because of malnutrition, a serious issue in a country that sees height as a measure of attractiveness and success. When it comes to finding work, they have none of the school or hometown connections that are often key here to getting hired, and many South Koreans dismiss them as lazy and difficult. When they do get jobs, seemingly simple things - such as knowing they need to arrive at work on time - can leave them flummoxed, their pride badly battered. It has happened so many times: They show up for work for one or two days, then get into a fight with their colleagues and quit, says Ahn Kyung-su, a Seoul-based researcher who has spent years working with exiles. As a result, they remain far less educated than most South Koreans and have far higher rates of unemployment. Their most common profession is unskilled laborer. Even success doesnt make life easy. Gae-yoon Lee, who was raised on a collective farm, left North Korea in 2010 with only a high school diploma. Six years later, shes a published poet who often writes about her childhood and the famine, and is midway through a degree in Korean literature at one of Seouls top universities. A quiet woman with a stylish purse and braces on her teeth, she finds herself intimidated by southerners intense focus on success. Even between friends, people are always competing here, says Lee, 30. It can be really stressful to live here. With an accent that still gives her away as an outsider, she sometimes resorts to pretending she doesnt belong at all. There are times when Im too afraid to be tagged as a North Korean, she says. So when Im talking to South Koreans, sometimes Ill use a few English words that I remember so that people think that Im a foreigner just learning to speak Korean. At that moment, I really want to be a foreigner. During the first few months after he got to the South, the former policeman thought he might become a cop again, or maybe join the army. But hes too old to be a police recruit, and he says the army turned him down. Since then, hes tumbled from one job to the next: He trained to be a welder but quit because he wasnt earning enough. He worked in a food-processing factory for a time but says his bosses refused to give him a raise. It was because Im from North Korea, he grumbles. Since then, there have been stints with at least two construction companies. The pay is bearable, about $100 a day, more than he made in the North, but his expenses are dramatically higher. Rent, food, subways, clothing - all are far more expensive here. Plus, hes not just supporting his immediate family anymore. Hes also channeling cash through underground brokers to relatives still across the border. Money, he says at one point. Money is the problem. Hes hardened since he first reached Seoul. He looks at people suspiciously, goes silent around strangers and often wonders if hes being discriminated against. He insists, though, that pity is the last thing he wants. Whatever you do, dont pray for me, he says. 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. LAUSANNE, Switzerland, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Debiopharm will be present at ECCMID in Amsterdam to share new data supporting the clinical development of its first in class Staphylococcus-selective antibiotic Debio 1450 Debiopharm International SA (Debiopharm), part of Debiopharm Group, a Swiss-based global biopharmaceutical company, today announced three communications on the investigational compound Debio 1450 at ECCMID 2016 in Amsterdam. Not only do these non-clinical data demonstrate the very high potency of Debio 1450 on numerous clinical isolates, but they also indicate that this compound may have an attractive therapeutic potential in hard-to-treat staphylococcal bone and joint infections. "We are very pleased to present this new set of evidence which further illustrates the unique potency of our compound on clinically relevant Staphylococcus strains as well as supports our efforts to broaden the scope of our clinical development," said Dr Nigel McCracken, Vice President, Translational Medicine, Debiopharm International SA. "Osteomyelitis is a huge unmet medical need and these new findings continue to provide strong evidence for the potential clinical utility of our compound in this area where innovative therapeutic options are desperately needed." ECCMID 2016 Abstracts Title Date and Time No. Efficacy of the FabI inhibitor Debio 1450 in the treatment of Staphylococcus aureus-induced osteomyelitis Mon, Apr 11, Oral in an experimental rat model 4:00 pm, Hall H session Activity of the novel Fabl inhibitor Debio 1452 against Mon, Apr 11, P1334 intracellular forms of susceptible and resistant S. 12.30 pm aureus: comparison with linezolid, vancomycin and daptomycin. Activity of Debio 1452 against Staphylococcus spp. Mon, Apr 11, P1333 collected in 2013/2014 12.30 pm About Debio 1450 Debio 1450 is a prodrug of Debio 1452 benefiting from both oral and IV formulations. It is a highly potent, staphylococci-specific antibiotic with a very low propensity to emergence of resistance. This first-in-class FabI inhibitor, active on all staphylococcus-resistant strains tested to date (MRSA, VISA, VRSA, LRSA), entered into Phase II ABSSSI in May 2015 and is perfectly suited to tackle several additional hard-to-treat Staphylococci-related infections. About Debiopharm International SA Debiopharm Group is a Swiss-based global biopharmaceutical group of four companies active in drug development, GMP manufacturing of proprietary drugs, diagnostics and investment management. Debiopharm International SA is focused on the development of prescription drugs that target unmet medical needs. The company in-licenses and develops promising drug candidates. The products are commercialized by pharmaceutical out-licensing partners to give access to the largest number of patients worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.debiopharm.com We are on Twitter. Follow us @DebiopharmNews at http://twitter.com/DebiopharmNews Debiopharm International SA Contact Christelle Tur Communication Coordinator christelle.tur@debiopharm.com Tel: +41(0)21-321-01-11 Additional Media Contacts In London Maitland Chiara Valsangiacomo cvalsangiacomo@maitland.co.uk Tel: +44(0)20-7379-5151 Russo Partners, LLC Lena Evans Assistant Vice President lena.evans@russopartnersllc.com Tel: +1-212-845-4262 SOURCE Debiopharm Group DUBLIN, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Carbon Nanotubes Market by Type and by Application - Global Forecast to 2020" report to their offering. The global carbon nanotubes market is estimated to reach USD 5.64 Billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 20.1% between 2015 and 2020. Unmatched mechanical and transport properties are the key reasons for the surging demand of carbon nanotubes. Single walled and multi walled types of carbon nanotubes are considered in the report. Multi walled is the currently the dominant type in the carbon nanotubes market and is projected to grow at a higher CAGR between 2015 and 2020 than single walled carbon nanotubes. Decreasing prices and improved technical know-how among the end users are the major reasons responsible for the increasing demand of single walled carbon nanotubes. In countries such as India, China, and Brazil, improved acceptance for usage from the end users plays a key role in the rising demand for carbon nanotubes. Price and availability of raw materials and production process are the key factors for carbon nanotubes manufacturers for determining the cost structure of their products. The major restraints for the carbon nanotubes market is their high price and the high technical know needed for the usage in the end products. The manufacturing processes for carbon nanotubes are highly technical and involve hazardous processes such as Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). Companies such as CNano Technology Ltd (U.S.), Nanocyl S.A. (Belgium), Showa Denko K.K. (Japan), and Hanwha Chemical Co. Ltd (Korea), among others are the leading companies having a strong foothold in the global market. These companies are expected to account for a significant market share in the coming future. Entering into related industries and targeting new markets will enable the carbon nanotubes manufacturers to have a diversified business portfolio and increase revenue generation, which will help overcome the effects of a volatile economy. Other major manufacturers are Arkema S.A. (France), Arry International Group LTD. (China), Carbon Solutions Inc. (U.S.), Cheap Tubes Inc. (U.S.), CNT Company LTD. (Korea), Continental Carbon Company (U.S.), Hyperion Catalysis international Inc. (U.S.), KLEAN CARBON Inc. (Canada), Kumho Petrochemical Company LTD. (South Korea), Nano-C Inc (U.S.), NanoIntegris inc. (U.S.), NanoLab, Inc. (U.S.), Nanoshel LLC (U.S.), Nanothinx S.A. (Greece), SouthWest NanoTechnologies Inc. (U.S.), Thomas Swan & Co. Ltd. (U.K.), and Toray Industries, Inc. (Japan), among others. Scope of the Report: On the basis of type: - Single-walled - Multi-walled On the basis of application: - Electronics & Semiconductors - Chemical & Polymers - Batteries & Capacitors - Energy - Medical - Composites - Aerospace & Defense - Others For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/gnbzv9/carbon_nanotubes 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 MATTERSBURG, Austria, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The telco and technology top-executive recently joined the fast growing MVNO/E solution provider and will head the global sales & business development teams. Austria based I-New Unified Mobile Solution, multiple awarded as 'Best global MVNO/E Solution Provider' announces the appointment of Jacob Barlebo as Head of Business Development. In this role, Barlebo will take over the global responsibility for managing I-New's worldwide business development and marketing activities. Jacob spent the majority of his career developing and running international B2B sales within telco & technology companies such as Oracle, Genesys, NetIQ, CDRator, Tweakker and others. Prior to taking up his new position at I-New, Barlebo has headed up and developed global sales at a market leading BSS provider in the MVNO/E business. Peter Nussbaumer, CEO of I-New Unified Mobile Solutions, comments: "We warmly welcome Jacob Barlebo at I-New's senior management team. He carries broad experience within the mobile communication industry at top-executive level and has served several key clients globally with recent projects in Africa, Australia, Europe and Latin America. He will play a master role in continuing our global success story and in amplifying our position as top industry player in providing best in class MVNO/E solutions to the global market." Jacob Barlebo adds: "The company has made a tremendous development over the past few years and has become one of the fastest growing, most respected and highly values partners in the vibrant MVNO/E-industry. The company's product and service portfolio is ahead of competition - multiple awarded as best in class - and their growth strategy is extremely successful. I'm really looking forward to this exciting opportunity, together with my global colleagues." Download full press release at http://www.i-new.com/company/News Contact: I-New Unified Mobile Solutions AG Global Marketing & Corporate Communication Herbert Reinisch +43(680)1241210 marketing@i-new.com http://www.i-new.com SOURCE I-New Unified Mobile Solutions AG DUBLIN, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Liquid Applied Membranes Market - by Type (Elastomeric, Bituminous, and Cementitious), by End-Use Industry (Residential Construction, Commercial Construction, and Public Infrastructure) and by Region - Global Forecast To 2020" report to their offering. The global liquid applied membranes market size, in terms of value, is projected to reach USD 11,244.0 Million by 2020, at a CAGR of 7.2% between 2015 and 2020 Growing construction industry of the Asia-Pacific region, rising demand of energy efficient buildings, and continuous expansion and merger & acquisition activities undertaken by companies are the key factors driving the growth of the global liquid applied membranes market. Acrylic membranes and polyurethane membranes are the two most common elastomeric membranes used globally. Elastomeric membranes are projected to be the fastest-growing type of liquid applied membranes between 2015 and 2020. The high growth is due to growing manufacturers and end-users preference toward high quality liquid applied membranes in commercial building industry due to their low installation costs, low labor requirement, and exceptional heat-resistant and waterproofing properties. Currently, Asia-Pacific is the largest market for liquid applied membranes, accounting for more than one-third of the global market size, by volume, in 2014. Among all the countries, China dominated the liquid applied membranes market in 2014, closely followed by the U.S. Although India has emerged as one of the key markets for liquid applied membranes, the market is still relatively unexplored and is expected to show high growth in near future. With growing population and urbanization the need for residential, commercial and industrial buildings will increase, which will drive the consumption of liquid applied membranes in the country. Though the liquid applied membranes market is growing at a significant growth rate, few factors hinder the growth of the market globally. High application cost of elastomeric membranes and slow growth of construction sector in Europe are some of restraints which are hindering the growth of liquid applied membranes market. BASF SE (Germany), Carlisle Companies Inc. (U.S.), Henry Company LLC (U.S), John Manville (U.S.), Kemper System Inc. (U.S.), Pidilite Industries Ltd. (India), Saint Gobain (France), Sika AG (Switzerland), Soprema Group (France), The Dow Chemical Company (U.S.), and W.R Grace and Company (U.S)., are some of the dominant market players in the global liquid applied membranes market. The diverse product portfolio and strategically positioned R&D centers, continuous adoption of development strategies, and technological advancements are the few factors that are responsible for strengthening the market position of these companies in the market. These companies have been adopting various organic and inorganic growth strategies such as expansion, merger & acquisition, partnership, new product launch & product development to enhance their current market share. Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Premium Insights 5 Market Overview 6 Industry Trends 7 Liquid Applied Membrane Market, By Type 8 Liquid Applied Membrane Market, By End-Use 9 Introduction 10 Competitive Landscape 11 Company Profiles Base SE Carlisle Companies Inc. Henry Company LLC Johns Manville Corporation Kemper System Inc. Pidilite Industries Saint Gobain Sika AG Soprema Group W.R. Grace & Co For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lpk3nf/liquid_applied 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, April 7, 2016 /PRNewsiwre/ -- Transformation of Healthcare Aided by Digitization Availability of information is one of the major challenges that exists in healthcare system due to lack of technology infrastructure and connectivity. With a distributed network architecture, information is scattered across several repositories, however it fails to integrate these repositories to provide valuable insights in critical situations. This generates the need for a connected architecture which could seamlessly communicate among distributed data sources and provide real-time information when required. The present applications in healthcare sector are focused towards providing specific solutions. The diverse devices used for the purpose are of different architecture and design. Thus it lacks the capability to interconnect with each other for effective information sharing. Interoperability of devices will enable medical professionals to access critical information from any place using any kind of devices such as desktop, mobile or tablet, thereby improving flexibility. In addition, infrastructure cost for deployment of separate information system and devices for communication incurs huge cost for the organizations. This hinders adoption of advanced system among small and medium health organizations. The Internet of things (IoT) is a concept that has emerged from a vision of an always connected world. Seamless connectivity between devices anywhere, anytime, in any condition is the goal behind the concept of IoT. This research service explores the impact of Internet of Things in Healthcare sector. The report also highlights the key enabling technologies and their convergence prospect to envision the future connected healthcare systems and applications. In brief, this research service provides the following: A brief snapshot of Connected Healthcare System Drivers of Connected Health and challenges in its adoption Technology Value Chain Key Enabling Technologies and the industry participants facilitating the concept of Connected Health Key application areas and some emerging Connected Health applications Roadmap of the enabling technologies and applications Research Scope Availability of information is one of the major challenges that exists in healthcare system due to lack of technology infrastructure and connectivity. With a distributed network architecture, information is scattered across several repositories, however it fails to integrate these repositories to provide valuable insights in critical situations. This generates the need for a connected architecture which could seamlessly communicate among distributed data sources and provide real-time information when required. The present applications in healthcare sector are focused towards providing specific solutions. The diverse devices used for the purpose are of different architecture and design. Thus it lacks the capability to interconnect with each other for effective information sharing. Interoperability of devices will enable medical professionals to access critical information from any place using any kind of devices such as desktop, mobile or tablet, thereby improving flexibility. In addition, infrastructure cost for deployment of separate information system and devices for communication incurs huge cost for the organizations. This hinders adoption of advanced system among small and medium health organizations. The Internet of things (IoT) is a concept that has emerged from a vision of an always connected world. Seamless connectivity between devices anywhere, anytime, in any condition is the goal behind the concept of IoT. This research service explores the impact of Internet of Things in Healthcare sector. The report also highlights the key enabling technologies and their convergence prospect to envision the future connected healthcare systems and applications. In brief, this research service provides the following: - A brief snapshot of Connected Healthcare System - Drivers of Connected Health and challenges in its adoption - Technology Value Chain - Key Enabling Technologies and the industry participants facilitating the concept of Connected Health - Key application areas and some emerging Connected Health applications - Roadmap of the enabling technologies and applications Research Methodology Step 1: To provide a thorough analysis of each topic, Technical Insights' analysts perform a review of patents to become familiar with the major developers and commercial participants and their processes. Step 2: Building on the patent search, the analysts review recent funding deals within the technology domain to get an insight into the activity in the domain from a funding perspective. Step 3: The analysts then create a detailed questionnaire with content created to address the research objectives of the study, which functions as a guide during the interview process. While the analysts use structured questionnaires to guarantee coverage of all the desired issues, they also conduct interviews in a conversational style. This approach results in a more thorough exchange of views with the respondents, and offers greater insight into the relevant issues than more structured interviews may provide. Step 4: The analysts conduct primary research with key industry participants, technology developers, investors to obtain the required content. Interviews are completed with sources located throughout the world. Our analysts contact the major commercial participants to find out about the advantages and disadvantages of processes and the drivers and challenges behind technologies and applications. Our analysts talk to the principal developers, researchers, engineers, business developers, analysts, strategic planners, and marketing experts, among other professionals. Step 5: The project management and research team reviews and analyzes the research data that are gathered and adds its recommendations to the draft of the final study. Having conducted both published studies and custom proprietary research covering many types of new and emerging technology activities as well as worldwide industry analysis, the management and research team adds its perspective and experience to provide an accurate, timely analysis. The analysts then prepare written final research content for each project and sometimes present key findings in analyst briefings to clients. Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03558373-summary/view-report.html About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. http://www.reportlinker.com __________________________ Contact Clare: [email protected] US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 SOURCE Reportlinker Related Links http://www.reportlinker.com BEIJING, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Dehaier Medical Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: DHRM) ("Dehaier" or the "Company"), which develops, markets and sells medical devices and wearable sleep respiratory products in China and international markets, today announced its selected preliminary, unaudited results for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015. For the year ended December 31, 2015, Dehaier expects to report revenues from the continuing operation of approximately $1.32 million, representing a year-over-year decrease of approximately 67.6%.This decrease in revenue was mainly due to weak sales both in our sleep respiratory business and in our traditional medical devices business. Dehaier expects gross loss from the continuing operation of approximately $58K, compared to gross profit of $1.1 million in 2014. The Company expects gross margin to be approximately negative 4.4%, decreased from positive 27% for the year ended December 31, 2014. This gross loss was attributable to the substantially lower revenues, which exceeded even the lower fixed costs allocated to the continued business lines. Due to such decreased revenues, fixed costs constituted a proportionately larger percentage of revenues. For the year ended December 31, 2015, Dehaier expects to realize an operating loss of around $18.57 million, compared to operating loss of $2.36 million for the year ended December 31, 2014. This was mainly due to the gross loss combined with higher than expected: 1) SG&A expenses which was mainly due to more resources invested on market expansion for sleep respiratory business; 2) R&D expenses in upgrading the sleep respiratory software, hardware and in cardiopulmonary resuscitation ("CPR") instruments; 3) provision for doubtful accounts, which resulted from some uncollectable accounts receivable in product quality guarantees and maintenance deposits and the loss of non-refundable prepayments to the suppliers when we determined to decrease purchases of raw materials for which we had already made deposits; 4) impairment of long-lived assets, which was mainly due to expenses incurred by the first batch of sleep respiratory products used by hospitals for free testing and 5) asset losses for disposal which was mainly due to the losses from disposal of devices that did not meet our quality control standards. These factors were particularly significant in the last half of 2015. As a result of the foregoing, Dehaier expects net loss from continuing operations of approximately $18.11 million in 2015. In order to deal with the increasingly challenging markets and new competitors, the Company discontinued some traditional medical device business lines in 2015 and Dehaier expects net loss from discontinuing operations of approximately $18.38 million in 2015. Based on the estimated full-year revenues, the company anticipates net loss attributable to Dehaier from both continuing and discontinuing operations to be approximately $35.96 million, or fully diluted loss per share of $6.13, compared to net income of $1 million, or $0.18 per diluted share a year ago. This substantial loss resulted from gross loss and negative leverage, combined with higher than expected operating costs off of a weak revenue base. As we determined to discontinue several parts of our business in the second half of the year, our losses for the full year accelerated compared to the first half of the year. Mr. Ping Chen, Dehaier's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "During 2015, we continued to strategically reduce our sales of traditional medical equipment, and to complete our shift to medical products and service based on mobile internet technology." "Specifically, we continued scaling down and discontinuing, as appropriate, the unprofitable medical device businesses, including assembly and sales of mobile C-arm X-ray machines, anesthesia machines, Oxygen generator, the first generation ventilator, monitoring devices, general medical products and telemedicine products. Accordingly, the Company wrote down the carrying value of the assets associated with the discontinued product lines and besides sleep respiratory business and hospital wireless solutions, the Company plans to maintain only a few profitable traditional medical device businesses, such as sales of its patented products including medical air compressors and CPR instruments, the second generation ventilator, color Doppler imaging machine, laryngoscope, and common products. "Our corporate and business restructuring plan aims to concentrate the Company's resources to develop its mobile health business, including wearable sleep respiratory business and to focus more on its major businesses. We believe these changes are crucial to improve our competitiveness over the longer term. By restructuring our Company to reduce our reliance on our less profitable medical devices assembly and distribution businesses, we will be more able to leverage our resources to develop smart health products and services, which we see as the future of our Company," concluded Mr. Chen. The Company expects to announce its final fiscal year financial and operating results by the end of April 2016 and will provide additional information and comments. All figures in this release remain subject to the completion of normal year-end accounting procedures and adjustments, which could result in changes to these preliminary results. About Dehaier Medical Systems Ltd. Dehaier Medical develops, markets and sells medical products, including medical devices and wearable sleep respiratory products in China and international markets. The company develops and assembles its self-branded medical devices and sleep respiratory products from third-party components. The company also distributes products designed and manufactured by other companies, including medical devices from HEYER (Germany) and Timesco (UK). Dehaier Medical's technology is based on six patents and eleven software copyrights. More information may be found at http://www.dehaier.com.cn. Forward-looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements that are other than statements of historical facts. These statements are subject to uncertainties and risks including, but not limited to, product and service demand and acceptance, fulfillment of bids and contracts, changes in technology, economic conditions, the impact of competition and pricing, government regulation, and other risks contained in reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All such forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, and whether made by or on behalf of the company, are expressly qualified by the cautionary statements and any other cautionary statements which may accompany the forward-looking statements. In addition, the company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. SOURCE Dehaier Medical Systems Ltd. Related Links http://www.dehaier.com.cn TSX: G NYSE: GG (All amounts in $Cdn unless stated otherwise) VANCOUVER, April 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - GOLDCORP INC. (TSX: G, NYSE: GG) (the "Company") announces that it has entered into an agreement with Probe Metals Inc. ("Probe Metals"), pursuant to which the Company has agreed to subscribe for 4,400,000 common shares (the "Probe Metals Shares") in the capital of Probe Metals at a price of $0.66 per share for an aggregate subscription price of $2,904,000 (the "Private Placement"). The 4,400,000 Probe Metals Shares represent approximately 12.6% of the current issued and outstanding Probe Metals Shares. The acquisition of the Probe Metals Shares is conditional on the closing of the acquisition of Adventure Gold Inc. by Probe Metals (the "Transaction"). The Probe Metals Shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "PRB", and the Probe Metals Shares will be issued from treasury pursuant to a private placement. Goldcorp currently owns 6,177,846 Probe Metals Shares (17.7% of the current issued and outstanding Probe Metals Shares) and has the right to acquire ownership of 4,400,000 Probe Metals Shares pursuant to the Private Placement, which will result in ownership of an aggregate of 10,577,846 Probe Metals Shares, representing approximately 30.3% of the current issued and outstanding Probe Metals Shares. Following completion of the Private Placement and the Transaction, Goldcorp will own an aggregate of 10,577,846 Probe Metals Shares, representing approximately 15% of the issued and outstanding Probe Metals Shares. The Probe Metals Shares are being acquired for investment purposes. Goldcorp will evaluate its investment in Probe Metals from time to time and may, based on such evaluation of market conditions and other circumstances, increase or decrease shareholdings as circumstances require. This news release is being issued in accordance with National Instrument 62-103 The Early Warning System and Related Take-Over Bid and Insider Reporting Issues. An early warning report respecting the Private Placement will be filed on System for Electronic Document Analysis and Review at www.sedar.com under Probe Metals' issuer profile. In order to obtain a copy of the early warning report, please contact Randall Chatwin, Assistant General Counsel at telephone number: 604-696-3000. Goldcorp's head office is located at Suite 3400 666 Burrard St. Vancouver, BC, V6C 2X8. About Goldcorp Goldcorp is a leading gold producer focused on responsible mining practices with safe, low-cost production throughout the Americas. A portfolio of long-lived, high-quality assets positions Goldcorp to deliver long-term value. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements", within the meaning of Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, Section 21E of the United States Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forward-looking information" under the provisions of applicable Canadian securities legislation, concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Goldcorp. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the future price of gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc, the estimation of Mineral Reserves (as defined above) and Mineral Resources (as defined above), the realization of Mineral Reserve estimates, the timing and amount of estimated future production, costs of production, targeted cost reductions, capital expenditures, free cash flow, costs and timing of the development of new deposits, success of exploration activities, permitting time lines, hedging practices, currency exchange rate fluctuations, requirements for additional capital, government regulation of mining operations, environmental risks, unanticipated reclamation expenses, timing and possible outcome of pending litigation, title disputes or claims and limitations on insurance coverage. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connotation thereof. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of factors that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performances or achievements of Goldcorp to be materially different from future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Such statements and information are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies and the environment in which Goldcorp will operate in the future, including the price of gold and other by-product metals, anticipated costs and ability to achieve goals. Certain important factors that could cause actual results, performances or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include, among others, gold and other by-product metals price volatility, discrepancies between actual and estimated production, mineral reserves and mineral resources and metallurgical recoveries, mining operational and development risks, litigation risks, regulatory restrictions (including environmental regulatory restrictions and liability), changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls or regulations and/or change in the administration of laws, policies and practices, expropriation or nationalization of property and political or economic developments in Canada, the United States and other jurisdictions in which the Company does or may carry on business in the future, delays, suspension and technical challenges associated with capital projects, higher prices for fuel, steel, power, labour and other consumables, currency fluctuations, the speculative nature of gold exploration, the global economic climate, dilution, share price volatility, competition, loss of key employees, additional funding requirements and defective title to mineral claims or property. Although Goldcorp believes its expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions and has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Goldcorp to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: risks related to international operations including economic and political instability in foreign jurisdictions in which Goldcorp operates; risks related to current global financial conditions; risks related to joint venture operations; actual results of current exploration activities; actual results of current reclamation activities; environmental risks; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; future prices of gold and other by-product metals; possible variations in ore reserves, grade or recovery rates; failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; risks related to the integration of acquisitions; accidents, labour disputes; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities and other risks of the mining industry, as well as those factors discussed in the section entitled "Description of the Business Risk Factors" in Goldcorp's most recent annual information form available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. Although Goldcorp has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, accordingly, are subject to change after such date. Except as otherwise indicated by Goldcorp, these statements do not reflect the potential impact of any non-recurring or other special items or of any dispositions, monetizations, mergers, acquisitions, other business combinations or other transactions that may be announced or that may occur after the date hereof. Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans and allowing investors and others to get a better understanding of the Company's operating environment. Goldcorp does not intend or undertake to publicly update any forward-looking statements that are included in this document, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. SOURCE Goldcorp Inc. ARLINGTON, Va. and CHICAGO, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Bloomberg BNA and Baker & McKenzie today announced the details of the 6th Annual Bloomberg BNA and Baker & McKenzie Global Transfer Pricing Conference: Washington, DC, in association with the Tax Management Education Institute, which is being held June 8-9 at the National Press Club. The conference features government and corporate officials who will share essential insights into the rapidly-evolving transfer pricing landscape. Registration and additional information for this must-attend event is available at http://www.bna.com/2016-global-transfer-pricing-washington-dc. "As countries make progress on their respective implementations of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Action Plan, corporations need to stay abreast of the latest developments that will impact their strategies, operations and bottom line," said Molly Moses, Managing Editor, Transfer Pricing for Bloomberg BNA Tax & Accounting. "We are excited to continue our global series that brings together distinguished national government officials, delegates from multilateral organizations, and industry experts to offer insights and intelligence into this timely issue that profoundly impacts multinational corporations." "With recent proposed changes to the Transfer Pricing Guidelines and an environment of increased accountability, transfer pricing is an increasingly complex issue for multinational companies," noted Mary Bennett, Chair of Baker & McKenzie's Global Tax Policy Practice. "We are pleased to partner with Bloomberg BNA to provide corporate taxpayers the latest perspectives and insight as they address global pricing policies and transfer pricing risks." The conference will feature sessions on country-by-country reporting, intangibles, attribution of profits to permanent establishments, dispute resolution and pending transfer pricing court cases, customs and a variety of other critical topics. Confirmed speakers include: Chris Bello , Chief of Branch 6, Office of Associate Chief Counsel (International), Internal Revenue Service , Chief of Branch 6, Office of Associate Chief Counsel (International), Internal Revenue Service Hareesh Dhawale , Director, Advance Pricing and Mutual Agreement Program, Internal Revenue Service , Director, Advance Pricing and Mutual Agreement Program, Internal Revenue Service Brian Jenn , Attorney Advisor, Office of Tax Policy, U.S. Department of the Treasury , Attorney Advisor, Office of Tax Policy, U.S. Department of the Treasury John Magee , Partner, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP , Partner, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP Carlos Perez-Gomez, Head of Transfer Pricing Unit, Mexican Tax Administration Service Sharon Porter , Director, Treaty and Transfer Pricing Operations Practice Area, Internal Revenue Service , Director, Treaty and Transfer Pricing Operations Practice Area, Internal Revenue Service Catherine Schultz , Vice President of Tax Policy, National Foreign Trade Council , Vice President of Tax Policy, National Foreign Trade Council Robert Stack , Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs, U.S. Department of the Treasury , Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs, U.S. Department of the Treasury Mike Williams , Director, Business and International Tax, HM Treasury About Bloomberg BNA Bloomberg BNA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bloomberg, is a leading source of legal, regulatory, and business information for professionals. Its network of more than 2,500 reporters, correspondents, and leading practitioners delivers expert analysis, news, practice tools, and guidance the information that matters most to professionals. Bloomberg BNA's authoritative coverage spans a full range of legal practice areas, including tax & accounting, labor & employment, intellectual property, banking & securities, employee benefits, health care, privacy & data security, human resources, and environment, health & safety. About Baker & McKenzie Founded in 1949, Baker & McKenzie is one of the world's largest law firms, advising many of the world's most dynamic and successful business organizations through our 12,000 staff in 77 offices in 47 countries. The Firm is known for its global perspective, deep understanding of the local language and culture of business, uncompromising commitment to excellence, and world-class fluency in its client service. Baker & McKenzie's Global Transfer Pricing practice includes over 200 lawyers and economists who deliver innovative and commercially pragmatic advice and assistance in design, implementation and defense across markets. (www.bakermckenzie.com) About Tax Management Educational Institute Tax Management Educational Institute (TMEI) is an independent educational organization founded by Tax Management, Inc., a subsidiary of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. TMEI is devoted solely to the conduct of responsible, professional seminars and conferences of the highest quality dedicated to issues of tax policy and practice, and to the funding of related scholarly endeavors. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120110/DC33627LOGO SOURCE Bloomberg BNA; Baker & McKenzie Related Links http://www.bna.com PHOENIX, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of their ongoing commitment to community service, Hastings & Hastings offers their crucial post-accident survival guide to help accident victims protect their rights following a car accident. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160407/352650LOGO Hastings & Hastings notes, the number one priority for any individual following an automobile accident should be their health and wellbeing. If they are not fully able, they should not take any of the following steps. Rather, they should wait for help and stay safe. If individuals are safe and able, they should first move their vehicle to the side of the road if it is still operational and safe. Remaining in traffic creates a hazardous situation. As soon as they are able, individuals should call 911. It is important to involve the authorities regardless of the severity of the accident. Policy reports and proper documentation play an important role in legal proceedings. Hastings & Hastings advises against "being the nice guy," and attempting to resolve the accident without police involvement. It is further advisable to photograph the scene of the accident if it is safe to do so. Hastings & Hastings notes that wide shots of the entire accident scene and close shots of the damage and other details are both important. If there are witnesses, it is wise to get statements and receive contact information. The more evidence accident victims have supporting their interpretation of events, the better. Finally, it is important to seek medical attention even if an accident victim does not believe they have sustained a major injury. Often, accident related injuries take hours or even days to present themselves. It is also important to have proper documentation of all health related matters. "The two most important things to do following an accident are to protect your health and your rights. The best thing you can do is to contact an attorney who is experienced in accident related matters as soon as possible. They can be your guide through these difficult times," said David Hastings, the founder of Hastings & Hastings. About Hastings & Hastings Hastings & Hastings is an Arizona consumer law firm. We are an experienced trial law firm that represents personal injury and wrongful death victims at a Discount Fee. Contact Information Kristy Guell (480) 706-1100 [email protected] http://hastingsandhastings.com This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE Hastings & Hastings Related Links http://hastingsandhastings.com Also speaking at the ceremony, Mr. Christopher Eve, President Director of PT UBM Pameran Niaga Indonesia, the organizer of the event stated, "CPhI South East Asia provides the perfect opportunity for members of the global pharmaceutical industry to interact with their counterparts in the ASEAN region discuss new business opportunities. The event covers every aspect of pharmaceutical development, from ingredients to manufacturing machinery, packaging and drug delivery to outsourcing services. In addition, this year we have added Health Ingredients, which focusses on the growing cross-over between pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals and functional foods." Running in parallel with the three-day exhibition is an extensive program of events including an Innovation Gallery, the Exhibitor Showcases, business matching and the Hi South East Asia Seminar. The Innovation Gallery highlights innovative pharmaceutical products including those that were selected for the CPhI Worldwide Pharma Awards. The Exhibitor Showcase is a series of seminars where leading companies present the very latest products and research results, as well as discussing key trends and issues in the industry. Meanwhile, more than 350 pre-scheduled meetings in the Business Matching Program allow industry professionals to discuss their particular needs and capabilities with the aim of creating new business opportunities. Finally, the Hi South East Asia Seminar on health ingredients is being held in cooperation with the International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST), and features a line-up of prominent speakers in this field of functional foods and nurtaceuticals. Two new exhibitions have been added to CPhI South East Asia this year; ICSE (International Contract Services Expo) and Hi (Health ingredients) South East Asia. ICSE focuses on outsourcing and contract services for the pharmaceutical industry, while Hi South East Asia is an exhibition of functional and nutraceutical ingredients. With a total exhibition area of 10,000 square metres, CPhI South East Asia 2016 brings together some 260 companies from 25 countries, with national and group pavilions from Korea, China, India, as well as the Mensa Group. The three-day event is expected to attract over 6,000 professionals working in the fields of pharmaceuticals, functional food and nutraceuticals. Commenting on the holding of CPhI South East Asia 2016, Mr. Eve said "It is my sincere hope that with ICSE and Hi South East Asia, as well as all the other elements in this event, CPhI South East Asia 2016 can contribute to the further development of the pharmaceutical industry and related sectors such as functional foods of Indonesia and the wider ASEAN region." UBM Asia PT UBM Pameran Niaga Indonesia is part of UBM Asia. Owned by UBM plc listed on the London Stock Exchange, UBM Asia operates in 18 market sectors with headquarters in Hong Kong and subsidiary companies across Asia, including UBM China in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Beijing. We have over 200 media products in three categories: trade fairs, print and online products. As Asia's leading exhibition organizer and the biggest commercial organizer in the two fastest growing markets in Asia: China and India, we stage the leading events of their kinds across Asia. Our 150 events, 24 publications and 18 vertical portals serve 1,000,000 plus quality exhibitors, visitors, conference delegates, advertisers and subscribers from all over the world with high value face-to-face business-matching events, quality and instant news on market and industry trends and round-the-clock online trading networks and sourcing platforms. We have 1,000 staff in 21 major cities across Asia, stretching from Japan to Turkey. We deliver high value to our partners and customers through our: 25-year track record of operating large-scale international exhibitions, conferences and major publications in Asia . of operating large-scale international exhibitions, conferences and major publications in . pioneering industry-specific vertical portals that provide year-round business matching and quality information. that provide year-round business matching and quality information. highly professional management team with years of practical experience in the exhibition industry. with years of practical experience in the exhibition industry. strong global network with wholly-owned subsidiary companies in major cities including Hong Kong , Beijing , Shanghai , Hangzhou , Guangzhou , Chengdu , Shenzhen , Taipei , Tokyo , Seoul , Singapore , Bangkok , Kuala Lumpur , Jakarta , Mumbai , New Delhi , Bangalore , Chennai and Istanbul in Asia, New York and San Francisco in the USA . Our Mission: create real business for customers We value the business needs of our customers. All our products are designed to bridge the needs of buyers and sellers. We are committed to building high-quality and enduring products. For further information please contact: Maria Lioe Event Director PT UBM Pameran Niaga Indonesia T : +62 21 2930 5959 F : +62 21 2930 5960 E: [email protected] Kunti Roostapati Inke Maris & Associates T: +62 21 828 1250 F: +62 21 835 1369 E: [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160407/352611 SOURCE CPhI South East Asia LOS ANGELES, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The disclosure of documents of the Mossack Fonseca law firm has broad implications for law firms, according to Henry Kupperman, General Counsel of Applied Facts, a leading international investigative and compliance consulting firm. "The Panama papers shed new light on the role of lawyers in establishing and facilitating off-shore companies. While such companies can serve legitimate purposes, these new disclosures demonstrate how money is laundered and how, in some cases, lawyers may unwittingly help structure an improper transaction," Kupperman notes. "We expect this will put new pressure on lawyers involved in structuring off-shore companies to properly vet their clients and know who is behind the transaction and how they will benefit. Moreover, we expect that the banks that deal with such lawyers are going to require that their lawyers properly vet their clients." Yesterday, for instance, the UK bank regulators asked 20 financial institutions to identify if they have ties to Mossack Fonseca. "We expect U.S. bank regulators to make similar requests of U.S. banks and that ultimately banks will require law firms to properly vet their clients." This will be furthered enhanced as the U.S. Treasury Department announced this week new regulations requiring financial institutions to know the beneficial owners of their business entity clients. Kupperman cautions, "While many lawyers may have long term relationships with banks to which they steer their clients, going forward we don't expect banks to find those relationships sufficient to accept a customer absent proper client vetting by the law firm." Mr. Kupperman, is a former litigator and now General Counsel of Applied Facts, a leading international investigations firm that specializing in money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act investigations. Previously, he served on occasion as Special Outside Counsel to the California Superintendent of Banks. Mr. Kupperman can be reached at Applied Facts, located at 901 Corporate Center Drive, Monterey Park, CA 91754, Tel. No. (213) 892-8700. SOURCE Applied Facts NEW YORK, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- LodgIQ, a start-up dedicated to providing advanced revenue optimization technologies to the travel industry, today announced Fabian Bartnick will be joining as vice president of Asia Pacific, effective May 1st. Bartnick's primary focus will be to expand the company's presence and business in Asia-Pacific countries. Bartnick comes to LodgIQ with over a decade of experience spanning across four continents in both hotels as well as revenue management software. Most recently, Bartnick served as corporate director of revenue generation at Tune Hotels Group overlooking all revenue generating departments whilst building their pricing and data analytics infrastructure and playing a major role in implementing their global technology platform. Previously, he held various roles for IDeaS developing and growing the consulting business in South East Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe whilst supporting and shaping some of the analytical products on offer. "As a global company, we recognize the importance of local insight and expertise. Fabian has a proven track record across international markets and shares our vision of delivering a superior solution based on innovation, technology and design," said Ravneet Bhandari, CEO of LodgIQ. "I'm thrilled to be leading LodgIQ's Asian presence and to be a part of such an innovative team," said Bartnick. "LodgIQ's blend of a great user experience and advanced analytics is a true game changer and ideal for this high-growth market regardless what kind of hotel you are." Bartnick will be based in Singapore and will work closely with Bhandari and the executive team. For more information, visit www.LodgIQ.com ABOUT LODGIQ LodgIQ is a start-up dedicated to providing advanced revenue optimization technologies to the travel industry. Their breakthrough next-generation revenue optimization platform, LodgIQ RM, was developed by seasoned travel executives and Silicon Valley technologists. Built around a multi-source big data eco-system, LodgIQ RM combines sophisticated machine learning with an intuitive and powerful user interface to deliver advanced recommendations and actionable analytics. The platform is designed to think, learn and morph with each user's unique clickstream enabling the user to make optimal revenue decisions. LodgIQ has headquarters in New York City, and maintains offices in Silicon Valley and Bangalore. Media contact: North 6th Agency (for LodgIQ) 212-334-9753, [email protected] SOURCE LodgIQ Related Links http://www.LodgIQ.com BASEL, Switzerland, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Syngenta announced today that Caroline Luscombe, Head Human Resources, will be leaving at the end of June to take up a similar role in another company. Caroline joined Syngenta in 2010 from GE Capital and became a member of the Syngenta Executive Committee in 2012. John Ramsay, Syngenta CEO, said: "I should like to thank Caroline for her strong leadership of the Human Resources function and for her many contributions to the Company as a whole over the last six years. On behalf of the Executive Committee, I wish her every success in her new role." A successor to Caroline will be announced in due course. About Syngenta Syngenta is a leading agriculture company helping to improve global food security by enabling millions of farmers to make better use of available resources. Through world class science and innovative crop solutions, our 28,000 people in over 90 countries are working to transform how crops are grown. We are committed to rescuing land from degradation, enhancing biodiversity and revitalizing rural communities. To learn more visit www.syngenta.com and www.goodgrowthplan.com. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Syngenta. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This document contains forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as 'expect', 'would', 'will', 'potential', 'plans', 'prospects', 'estimated', 'aiming', 'on track' and similar expressions. Such statements may be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these statements. We refer you to Syngenta's publicly available filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for information about these and other risks and uncertainties. Syngenta assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other factors. This document does not constitute, or form part of, any offer or invitation to sell or issue, or any solicitation of any offer, to purchase or subscribe for any ordinary shares in Syngenta AG, or Syngenta ADSs, nor shall it form the basis of, or be relied on in connection with, any contract there for. Syngenta International AG Media Office CH-4002 Basel Switzerland Tel: +41 61 323 2323 Fax: +41 61 323 2424 www.syngenta.com Media contacts: Leandro Conti Switzerland +41 61 323 2323 Paul Minehart USA +1 202 737 8913 Analyst/Investor contacts: Jennifer Gough Switzerland +41 61 323 5059 USA +1 202 737 6521 Bastien Musy Switzerland +41 61 323 1910 USA +1 202 737 6520 SOURCE Syngenta International AG Related Links http://www.syngenta.com SHANGHAI, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hosted by UBM China & CPhI China, the world's largest pharmaceutical APIs expo, and co-organized by Shanghai's Pudong Financial Services Association of Science and Technology, Nextgen2016 will convene on April 12-13 in Ballroom 3F of the New World Shanghai Hotel. With the accelerating human medicinal reform in our country, generic drugs policy changes heavily. The inaccuracy original evaluation criteria, the overflow examination and approval document number, some even producing fake medicines is the true situation here. More than 4,800 pharmaceutical companies, nearly 114,000 kinds of chemical generics, was approaching the most cruel death final exam. How to transform the policy environment and the fierce competition to grasp the initiative in the pattern? So far more than 50 companies and 80 delegates have registered to attend the conference, such as Changzhou Siyao Pharm, Livzon, Ninhua Group, Sanofi, AUPA, Nuokang Biopharma, Merro Pharmaceutical, BEILU Pharmaceutical, Wanhua, Shenzhen Zhijun Pharmaceutical, Eisai, Novartis and Pfizer. >> View Speakers list As the sole sponsor, Colorcon will bring the two main products, "Film Coating" and "Polymers for Controlled Release" to the conference. As the world leader in the development, supply and technical support of formulated film coating systems, modified release technologies, and functional excipients for the pharmaceutical industry, Their best-in-class products and technologies are complemented by the extensive application data and value-added services to support all phases of solid oral dose design and development. Focusing on market issues and technology development has earned Colorcon an international reputation as a pharmaceutical supplier of choice. That reputation is based on the superior product quality, unparalleled technical support, and extensive regulatory assistance they provide, and last for more than 20 years. The most famous product for Colorcon is Printing Inks, Opacode Monogramming Ink is world noticed, and become the most widely used product in the film coating market. >> To learn more >> Download Conference Document >> Download Conference Agenda >> Register Now Contact: Miss Ju +86-21-6157-3922 [email protected] SOURCE UBM China Related Links http://www.nextgen-china.com/ In this new era of the organization's 45-year history, and with the mission to promote "more content and better connectivity," OTI's objectives include: encouraging regulatory authorities in the region to adopt best practices, defending freedom of speech, improving access and connectivity for the region's people and encouraging the development of compelling new content for distribution across various platforms. "Communications are undergoing an impressive and constant evolution. OTI's transformation is driven by the need to respond to a world that is constantly changing due to technological convergence, and the challenges and opportunities that it brings," said Emilio Azcarraga Jean, President of OTI, during his presentation. "The new OTI, together with its members, will defend freedom of expression as one of its fundamental objectives." Azcarraga Jean also commented on the importance of OTI member companies that bring together an audience of nearly 500 million people and revenue of more than USD $127 billion. The event featured presidents and senior executives from OTI member companies and the region's leading media and telecommunications conglomerates, including America TV, AT&T, Canal 13, Canal Uno TV, Caracol, Grupo Bandeirantes, Grupo Clarin, Grupo Imagen Multimedia, Grupo PRISA, izzi Telecom, Latina, Medcom, Mega, Multimedios, Radiorama, RCN, Red Uno, Sipse, Sky, TCS, Teleamazonas, Telemundo, Teletica, Televicentro, Televisa, TV Azteca, TVN, Unitel, Univision and Venevision. Additionally, OTI announced their support for the Organization of American States' (OAS) campaign "More rights for more people." This collaboration with the OAS is one of the first pan-regional efforts demonstrating OTI's commitment to promoting human rights, particularly among vulnerable groups, including disabled people, those of African descent and women, among others. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro said, "Freedom of expression is one of the most important human rights to build and strengthen our democracies." Almagro also stressed that the OAS will be a strategic partner with OTI in strengthening democracy and increasing access to human rights for all people. Freedom of speech, a significant issue for the region's media and telecommunications companies and their respective audiences, was also an important theme in the discussions. Jorge Carlos Rendo, President of Grupo Clarin, spoke about Argentina and the relationship that should exist between government and media. Faced with adversity, Rendo stated that Grupo Clarin's commitment to democracy and its role as an independent news outlet allowed it to resist authoritarianism. He said that as a media company, its interest is to inform, create and distribute content. Meanwhile, Rob Gallagher, director of research and analysis at Ovum, shared his perspective on the challenges that content and telecommunications companies face as a result of new and innovative services provided through the Internet. Gallagher stated that users will use a greater variety of devices to consume content, and consumption will continue to increase. The event's keynote speaker was Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive officer of WPP, the world's largest communications services group, who spoke about the challenges content and telecommunications companies currently face to connect audiences with advertising messages, given the changing technological landscape. In the case of Latin America, despite the difficulties that the region's economies have faced, Sorrell stated that he is still a believer in the power of Latin America and its significant influence in shaping the communication industry's growth. As part of its activities in 2016, OTI could participate in the IV Communications Forum, an initiative of the Spanish Government that would take place during the XXV Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government in Cartagena, Colombia. With these actions OTI strengthens its position as the leading international organization for the content and telecommunications industry in the Ibero-American region, committed to developing an inclusive and fair social agenda. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160408/353113 SOURCE Organizacion de Telecomunicaciones de Iberoamerica (OTI) WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana, April 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- After 13 years of supplying the US Department of Defense, Imaginestics, LLC, creator of the VizSeek visual search software, is taking its unique technology to the manufacturing sector. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160407/352940LOGO VizSeek, known as visual search software, allows manufacturers and distributors to find prints, drawings, images and 3D models stored in a secure database using an image or even a hand sketch, just as text is used to search for words in a typical search. "There are many applications," said company co-founder Jamie Tan, who received his Ph.D. in Physics from MIT. "For example, sometimes an engineer just needs to find a print or an engineering model, and rather than spend hours trying to find it by name, you can simply upload an image of the part. VizSeek will find the print in your database, or at least narrow the search so you can quickly find it," he said. "This type of search creates speed-to-market for design re-use, meaning you can start an engineering design based on an existing part rather than starting from scratch," Tan continued. "Our clients report this can cut the part design time from days to hours." "In the aftermarket, VizSeek helps suppliers find replacement parts quickly, using just a photo or drawing of the part, which helps people overcome language and terminology barriers to find an exact match," he said. In addition to industrial parts, the visual search software has proven highly effective in using a photo to find ceramic tiles and fabrics. These are items that have distinctive patterns and colors, yet can be very difficult to describe. Imaginestics, LLC is based in the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, Indiana. The company recently began introducing its visual search software to manufacturers and quickly reached agreements with clients in the US and China. German, Korean and Japanese companies have also expressed interest and Imaginestics is preparing for significant growth in 2016. More information is at www.imaginestics.com or www.vizseek.com This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE VizSeek Related Links https://www.vizseek.com NEW YORK, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against PTC Therapeutics, Inc. ("PTC Therapeutics" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: PTCT) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, District of New Jersey, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased PTC Therapeutics securities between May 6, 2014 and February 23, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act"). If you are a shareholder who purchased PTC Therapeutics securities during the Class Period, you have until May 2, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased. PTC Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of orally administered, small molecule therapeutics targeting an area of RNA biology the Company refers to as post-transcriptional control. The Company's lead product is "Translarna," which is an oral, protein restoration therapy for the treatment of nonsense mutation Duchenne muscular dystrophy ("nmDMD"). The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: (1) that the Company's New Drug Application ('NDA") for Translarna that it submitted to the FDA was not sufficiently complete to permit a substantive review of the application; (2) that, as such, the application would not be reviewed nor approved by the FDA; (3) that the impending non-approval of the NDA would have a negative material impact on the Company's operations and prospects; and (4) that, as a result of the foregoing Defendants' statements about PTC Therapeutics' business, operations, and prospects, were false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis. On February 23, 2016, the Company issued a press release entitled "PTC Receives Refuse to File Letter from FDA for TranslarnaTM (ataluren)." Therein, the Company stated that it received a Refuse to File letter from the United States Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") regarding the Company's NDA for Translarna because "the application was not sufficiently complete to permit a substantive review." On this news, shares of PTC Therapeutics fell $17.42 per share, or more than 61%, to close at $10.84 per share on February 23, 2016, on unusually heavy trading volume. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP [email protected] SOURCE Pomerantz LLP Related Links http://www.pomerantzlaw.com NEW YORK, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, a leading national securities law firm, reminds investors in G. Willi Food-International Ltd. ("G. Willi" or the "Company") (NASDAQ:WILC) of the April 29, 2016 deadline to seek the role of lead plaintiff in a federal securities class action lawsuit filed against the Company and certain officers. The lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of all those who purchased G. Willi securities between April 30, 2014 and February 18, 2016 (the "Class Period"). The case, Boller et al v. G. Willi-Food International Ltd. et al, No. 1:16-cv-01528 was filed on February 29, 2016, and has been assigned to Judge Colleen McMahon. The lawsuit focuses on whether the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws by failing to disclose that certain company executives, including Defendant Gregory Gurtovoy, may have been involved in fraud and money laundering. Specifically, on February 17, 2016, an article published in the publication Calcalis reported that the Company's offices had been raided by Israeli authorities. Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Defendant Gurtovoy had been arrested and questioned by Israeli authorities on charges of fraud and money laundering. After the announcement, Cigna's share price fell from a closing price of $4.17 per share on February 17, 2016 to a closing price of $3.95per share on February 18, 2016 a $0.22 or a 5.3% drop. Then, on February 18, 2016, G. Willi revealed in a press release that the Company, its directors and executives as well as its parents companies were being investigated by Israeli authorities for violations of Israeli securities laws and criminal offenses. After the announcement, G. Willi's share price fell from a closing price of $3.95 per share on February 18, 2016 to a closing price of $3.75 per share on February 19, 2016 a $0.20 or a 5.1% drop. Request more information now by clicking here: www.faruqilaw.com/WILC . There is no cost or obligation to you. Take Action If you invested in G. Willi stock or options between April 30, 2014 and February 18, 2016 and would like to discuss your legal rights, visit www.faruqilaw.com/WILC. You can also contact us by calling Richard Gonnello toll free at 877-247-4292 or at 212-983-9330 or by sending an e-mail to [email protected]. Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP also encourages anyone with information regarding G. Willi's conduct to contact the firm, including whistleblowers, former employees, shareholders and others. The court-appointed lead plaintiff is the investor with the largest financial interest in the relief sought by the class that is adequate and typical of class members who directs and oversees the litigation on behalf of the putative class. Any member of the putative class may move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff through counsel of their choice, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision of whether or not to serve as a lead plaintiff. Attorney Advertising. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP (www.faruqilaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your particular case. All communications will be treated in a confidential manner. FARUQI & FARUQI, LLP 685 Third Avenue, 26th Floor New York, NY 10017 Attn: Richard Gonnello, Esq. [email protected] Telephone: (877) 247-4292 or (212) 983-9330 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prn/20120119/MM38856LOGO SOURCE Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP Related Links http://www.faruqilaw.com NEW YORK, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Alpessence, a Swiss skin care leader, aspires to achieve the extraordinary in skin care with a range of high quality moisturizers, serums, cleansers, toners and masks infused with diamonds, pearls, caviar, rose stem cells, and other luxurious ingredients. These extravagant active ingredients possess a unique anti-aging effect and work to regenerate and repair organs damaged by stress, various toxins we are exposed to in our daily lives and improve immune functions. Providing a breakthrough in skin care product absorption, Alpessence delivers the latest high-tech, anti-aging treatments to the US - regenerating and repairing skin on a whole other level. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160407/352759 Within the beauty industry, three waves have been ensued in the attempt to create beneficial skincare products. In early years, there was a craving for better ingredients to ensure high quality visible results, which led to the first wave efficacy of ingredient. The first wave receives criticism for using countless preservatives and additives and risky chemicals, which do little to actually benefit our skin, and may even harm our health in long terms. This resulted in the second wave purity consisting of organic brands and cosmetic-pharmaceutical brands that intended to enhance the health and beauty of the skin with more nourishing natural ingredient and less chemical additives. Due to the discovery that much of our skin care products are wasted since most of the products just stay on the surface, the third new wave infusion is notable for the breakthrough in skin care product absorption. Alpessence is considered a major player in this new wave in the beauty industry. To ensure optimal efficacy of its skin care, Alpessence scientists embarked on a fervent quest to uncover the secret of how nutrients absorbed deeply into the outer layers of the epidermis instead of remaining only on the surface. Alpessence has innovated 'Infusion-plus' formula, an unprecedented combination of luxurious and unique anti-aging and moisturizing ingredients that can help to maximize the absorption of skin care active ingredients. With the method working in four dimensions, Alpessence guarantees better and more rapid results of the skin care products, making them reliable and beneficial to any anti-aging regimen. "At Alpessence, infusion matters," states Dr. Scott Shone from Alpessence laboratory. "We believe the efficacy of skin care depends on how specific active ingredients work and work together. Our team has been able to innovate a formula to help maximize the absorption of specific skin care active ingredients, which plays a significant role in treatment and overall maintenance of the skin." The collection currently debuts eight anti-aging products, aiding a variety of skin care concerns such as dark spots and dull skin, lifting and firming, pores and wrinkles, anti-oxidant protection, and dry skin. As the signature product and most awarded bestseller of Alpessence, the caviar serum boosts the skin's absorption capability, allowing skin to receive the full benefits of caviar serum and other nutrients you apply afterwards. The gel cleanser is another much-loved product, formulated with real diamond powders, Rose stem cells, and Alpessence's exclusive natural plant extracts to deeply cleanse and hydrate your skin. All skincare products are non-irritating and are domestically-sourced and made in Switzerland. Alpessence successfully distributes its premium skin products to 14 countries across the globe, with a mission to provide consumers with quality products and the results to match. The brand takes high measures to ensure both its ingredients and absorption effect play equally significant roles in its skin care products. Over the past year, Alpessence became one of the most beloved Swiss skincare brands in New York. Although Alpessence is a premium brand with many rare and luxurious skincare ingredients, the price is relatively reasonable compared to other Swiss brands, La Prairie and Valmont, in the market. Alpessence products range in price from $99 to $149. Products are available at http://www.alpessence.com/. About Alpessence Alpessence is a Swiss-based and formed luxury skin care brand, now available in 14 countries. All skincare products are domestically-sourced and made in Switzerland. Providing luxury elements from gems to unique aging-fighting ingredients, this brand offers a range of high quality products including moisturizers, serums, cleansers, toners and masks. Infused with diamonds, pearls, caviar, rose stem cells, and other luxurious ingredients, this brand provides a breakthrough in skin care product absorption. With visible results, Alpessence brings the latest Swiss high-tech, anti-aging treatments to regenerate and repair the skin, with no added harmful fragrance, dyes or ingredients that can harm the health and function of your skin. Media Contact: Andrew Matthews Beautiful Planning Marketing & PR: Fashion, Beauty & Lifestyle Division (877) 841-7244 Email SOURCE Alpessence Related Links http://www.alpessence.com NEW YORK, April 7, 2016 /PRNewsiwre/ -- Biomass conversion to energy paves way for a less carbon intensive future In a world which is continuously aspiring for greener alternatives to replace conventional fossil fuels, biomass to bioenergy technologies offer an optimal solution by producing energy and simultaneously reducing waste. The current study discusses the global scenario with respect to biomass to bioenergy technologies and provides a technology overview of the different types of bioenergy technologies available. Challenges and drivers for the industry have also been discussed in the study. Various industrial and academic players and their activities have been discussed. Opportunity Strategic Evaluation has been used to evaluate the status of various technologies in the market. Research Scope Globally, there is an increased interest in solutions enabling biomass-to-bioenergy conversion to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and to look for greener alternatives. The current research service discusses biomass-to-bioenergy technologies and delves in detail on the status of the technologies and their future. The research service offers insights primarily on the following: - Various products from biomass-to-bioenergy conversion - Key innovators - Region wise technology adoption - Funding agencies Opportunities for Biomass Financing Community Funding - Besides the conventional funding system via the government or financial institutions, Germany has shown that local communities are able to contribute to the growth of bioenergy in the country via swarm financing or crowd funding. - Besides increasing the share of renewable energy, more employment opportunities are created at the local level because the operation is run by the cooperative union. Securitization Activities Securitization activities, where assets are transformed into tradable investment products, can be considered as a potential method to increase the viability of biomass projects. However, this will require a more robust financial ecosystem, such as the involvement of rating agencies. Establishment of Green Bonds Green bonds are typically corporate bonds issued for projects with environmental benefits. The past two years has witnessed an increase in global fund-raising through green bonds, where the market has almost tripled in size between 2013 and 2014, with around $ billion issued in 2014. Green investments are especially attractive in Islamic finance, which calls for money to be used for the protection and preservation of society. Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03558376-summary/view-report.html About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. http://www.reportlinker.com __________________________ Contact Clare: [email protected] US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 SOURCE Reportlinker Related Links http://www.reportlinker.com WASHINGTON, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau: POPULAR DEMAND Profile America Friday, April 8th. On this date 103 years ago, the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, establishing direct popular election of senators. Previously, members of the Senate were elected by each state's legislature. As the voting franchise expanded after the Civil War and into the Progressive Era, growing sentiment held that senators ought to be popularly elected in the same manner as representatives. Because of such developments, at least 29 states by 1913 were nominating senators on a popular basis for the legislatures to approve. In the elections of 2014, just 42 percent of citizens cast their ballots, the lowest percentage in at least 36 years. In the 2012 presidential election, not quite 62 percent voted. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov. Sources: Amendment and ratification/accessed 2/1/2016: http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_Am17.html Background/accessed 2/1/2016: http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment17/amendment.html Voting/Table A-1: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications/historical/index.html Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotion of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at (look for "Audio" in the "Library" pull-down menu). Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110428/DC91889LOGO SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau Related Links http://www.census.gov NEW HAVEN, Conn., April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Wood Creek Capital Management, LLC (Wood Creek) and leading independent tower company, Wireless Infrastructure Group (WIG or the Company) today announce a significant investment from 3i Infrastructure plc (3i Infrastructure). 3i Infrastructure's investment of close to 75m capitalises the Company at approximately 300m and sees 3i Infrastructure acquire a significant minority stake, joining Wood Creek Capital Management and the management team as shareholders. The investment is part of a strategy to substantially scale up the Company. The transaction represents validation of the value built by Wood Creek and Management since Wood Creek's acquisition of a majority holding in the company in December 2012. Completion of the transaction is conditional only upon receiving clearance from the European Commission under EU Merger Regulations which is anticipated by the end of June 2016. Jon Rotolo, CEO Wood Creek Capital Management "Wood Creek is excited by the opportunities this transaction brings to WIG as we look to scale our holdings in wireless infrastructure assets in the UK and internationally. This also validates the excellent work done by Management and Wood Creek to build a world class infrastructure platform." Matt Sandoval, Managing Director Wood Creek Capital Management "WIG is a unique platform in the European independent tower sector. We look forward to continuing to work alongside management as well as 3i Infrastructure to support the Company as it builds new infrastructure and plays a leading role in sector M&A across Europe. We are very pleased with the momentum at WIG and with our new partnership with 3i Infrastructure." Scott Coates, CEO of Wireless infrastructure Group: "We are delighted to welcome 3i Infrastructure as a financial partner at a key moment in the Company's development. Bringing an established European infrastructure investor on board alongside our existing North American partner provides us with the financial capabilities needed to scale up our business through investment in up to 1 billion of new infrastructure. This will transform our ability to support our customers as they extend network coverage in rural areas and improve capacity in urban centres." "3i infrastructure will provide us with additional long term capital and a partner to enable us to scale up our UK infrastructure footprint and also expand our presence in Western Europe. Independent infrastructure companies like WIG provide a conduit for long term infrastructure investors to support the telecoms industry as it takes on the challenges of expanding the quality and reach of connectivity." ""This is an exciting time for the European independent tower sector and with only approximately 25% of the region's communication towers independently operated there is a huge opportunity ahead." Ben Loomes, Managing Partner and Co-head of Infrastructure, 3i Investments plc: "We are delighted to be backing an industry leading platform at a pivotal time for the European independent tower sector. We have been impressed by the Company's focus on high quality shared infrastructure and its experienced management team. We look forward to supporting the Company's plans to expand its infrastructure base both here in the UK and elsewhere in Europe." Notes to Editors Wireless Infrastructure Group WIG is an independent communications infrastructure provider head-quartered in Bellshill, Scotland. The Company builds and operates communication towers (masts) in rural and suburban areas together with fibre based networks to improve mobile coverage in large buildings and on city streets. The Company is fully independent of any network operator and invests in shareable infrastructure that is made available to all networks on an open and non-discriminatory basis. Following its launch in 2006, WIG has invested in over 2,000 shared communications towers and other wireless infrastructure across the UK and its higher quality infrastructure enables industry leading levels of mobile and other wireless connectivity. The Company has also expanded recently into the Netherlands and Ireland. In January 2016 the Company announced plans to invest a further 1 billion in UK infrastructure and has an active investment programme targeting: new towers in rural areas (where over 50% of investments have been made to date) new infrastructure to enable better connectivity on the UK's rail network small cells to improve mobile coverage in buildings and on city streets WIG is also targeting expansion in the UK and Europe through the acquisition and upgrade of communication towers owned by mobile operators. As an independent provider, WIG invests in infrastructure to support sharing by all mobile operators as well as over 100 other different wireless networks. WIG's communication towers are on average over 50% taller than those owned by mobile operators and are shared by more networks leading to better connectivity. International consultancy EY recently highlighted that across Europe and North America, independently operated towers support on average more than twice as many network customers as towers owned by mobile operators. Independent tower operators also attract new sources of investment into the telecoms sector and promote competition to build infrastructure. Over 60% of communication towers globally and over 80% in the US are now independently operated. Only approximately 25% of European towers are independently operated - increasing the role of independent infrastructure can play a vital part in improving mobile connectivity. 3i Infrastructure 3i Infrastructure plc is a Jersey-incorporated, closed-ended investment company, listed on the London Stock Exchange and regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commission. The Company is a long-term investor in infrastructure businesses and assets. The Company's market focus is on economic infrastructure, primary PPP and low-risk energy projects in developed economies, principally in Europe, investing in operating businesses and projects which generate long-term yield and capital growth. 3i Investments plc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of 3i Group plc, is authorised and regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority and acts as Investment Adviser to 3i Infrastructure plc. Wood Creek Capital Management Headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut, Wood Creek Capital Management is a SEC-registered investment advisor founded in 2005 with holdings in tangible and intangible asset-based businesses. Wood Creek is an affiliate of Babson Capital Management LLC. SOURCE Wood Creek Capital Management, LLC HERZOGENAURACH, Germany, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As a leading innovator with a large number of technologies to make mobility more economical, environmentally-friendly and safe, Schaeffler is also working on new mobility solutions. With the bio hybrid, the automotive and industrial supplier is now debuting an innovative micro-mobility concept. Mobility in transition Irrespective of whether with a car, train, airplane or bicycle, the volume of traffic in urban centers continues to increase and is changing the ways in which people get around. At the same time, the desire for emission-free, clean mobility is leading to a political rethink and is giving rise to new, individual mobility solutions in urban centers. On this basis, Schaeffler analyzed areas of application and future requirements for individual forms of mobility according to its holistic strategy concept "mobility for tomorrow." The result is the bio hybrid from Schaeffler. "All-electric mobility will not be sufficient to guarantee sustainable, energy-efficient mobility for tomorrow in the passenger car sector," says Prof. Peter Gutzmer, deputy CEO and chief technology officer at Schaeffler AG. "The bio hybrid shows how Schaeffler envisions a solution for urban mobility. It is similar to a bicycle, but without the disadvantages of weather protection and stowage space." Thanks to the pedelec (from pedal electric cycle) drive system with a restriction of 15.5 MPH*, the bio hybrid can be operated without a driver's license and can also be used on cycle tracks, adds Gutzmer. A micro-mobility concept from Schaeffler: The bio hybrid in detail The Schaeffler bio hybrid combines the advantages of stability and weather protection with the energy consumption and space utilization of a pedelec. Thanks to the electrically assisted drive system (up to 15.5 MPH) with a minimum range of 30 miles**, the driver can travel in a sporty and comfortable manner. The new vehicle platform with two front and rear wheels provides increased safety and driving stability. The bio hybrid can also be easily driven on cycle tracks due its compact dimensions: 6 ft. 11 in. long, 4 ft. 11 in. high, 33.5 in. wide and a track width of 33.5 in. The electric reverse gear also enables maneuvering without any problems. In combination with its portable battery system, variable luggage compartment and automatic gearshift system, this 1+1 seater (2 seats) can be integrated into the existing infrastructure and day-to-day life. The extravagant design underlines the lifestyle character and matches the innovative roof construction, which can be easily stowed under the seat by means of an intelligent swing mechanism. With the weather protection retracted, the bio hybrid is transformed into a stylish cabriolet and allows the driver to enjoy the fresh air. With its integrated smart phone connection, the driver has access to a large number of apps as well as information for example, about the weather and traffic at any time. "Important prerequisites with regard to infrastructure must be fulfilled before this type of individual mobility can become established on the market," said Gutzmer. "Metropolitan areas and major cities must continue to change and they will. Cities such as London, Paris and Singapore are already investing hundreds of millions in the development of cycle tracks. High-speed cycle tracks will enable extension stages of the micro-mobile with higher speeds. There are already discussions in Germany about opening cycle tracks with a legal speed limit of 25 MPH. All these developments mean that our concept has great potential to change urban mobility." * 250-750 watts nominal power (according to national legal requirements) ** Range according to current simulations: 30-60 miles About Schaeffler The Schaeffler Group is one of the world's leading integrated automotive and industrial suppliers. The company stands for the highest quality, outstanding technology, and strong innovative ability. The Schaeffler Group makes a decisive contribution to "mobility for tomorrow" with high-precision components and systems in engine, transmission, and chassis applications as well as rolling and plain bearing solutions for a large number of industrial applications. The technology company generated sales of approximately 13.2 billion euros in 2015. With around 84,000 employees worldwide, Schaeffler is one of Europe's largest technology companies in family ownership. It has a worldwide network of manufacturing locations, research and development facilities and sales companies at approximately 170 locations in 50 countries. SOURCE Schaeffler New Delhi, April 6 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and his wife to join the investigation in a disproportionate assets case registered against him by the CBI. Justice Pratibha Rani also directed the agency that it cannot arrest Virbhadra Singh or his wife Pratibha Singh in connection with the disproportionate assets case without the court's permission. The court's order came after Singh and his wife said they were willing to join investigation if they can be assured that they will not be arrested during the investigation process. "They will not be arrested without permission of the court," the court said even as the CBI sought to remove the protection against their arrest given by the Himachal Pradesh High Court, contending that the order was hampering investigation. Additional Solicitor General P.S. Patwalia told the court: "We should be allowed to have free hand in the investigation. We are not going to behave unreasonably." "There can't be any informal drawing room investigation. I want him to join the investigation which is meaningful and not to be dictated by them," the ASG added. Senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Ram Jethmalani, appearing for Singh and his wife respectively, told the court that their clients were willing to coorporate in the investigation but they must be protected from arrest. Sibal on behalf of Singh told the court: "I have been an MLA for 55 years, never lost any election. I have three palaces with me. I have 2,000 acres of forest land and I have been prosecuted for just six crore rupees. If we (Virbhadra Singh and his wife) are protected from arrest, we are ready to join the investigation." Ram Jethmalani told the court that Virbhadhra Singh is sitting chief minister and his "dignity should be preserved". The Himachal Pradesh High Court had, through an interim order on October 1, 2015, restrained the CBI from arresting or interrogating Virbhadra Singh or filing a charge sheet against him in the Rs.6 crore disproportionate assets case. The Himachal High Court was hearing Virbhadra's plea seeking quashing of an FIR lodged against him by the CBI. The Supreme Court in November last year transferred the disproportionate assets case against Virbhadra from the Himachal High Court to the Delhi High Court, saying the transfer was necessary "to protect the judiciary from embarrassment". The apex court, however, did not pass any order to modify the Himachal High Court order which restrained the CBI from arresting Singh in the case. Virbhadra Singh had moved the Himachal Pradesh High Court following CBI searches at his residences in Delhi and Shimla on September 26 last year which, he contended, were mala fide and out of political vendetta. The case was registered on September 23 last year under the Prevention of Corruption Act against the chief minister, his wife Pratibha Singh, Life Insurance Corporation agent Anand Chauhan and associate Chunni Lal. The case was registered after a preliminary inquiry that allegedly found that Virbhadra Singh, as union minister during 2009-2012, accumulated assets worth Rs.6.03 crore in his name and in the name of his family members, which were disproportionate to his known sources of income. New Delhi, April 6 : Women motorists and cars ferrying school students in uniform will be exempt during the second phase of the odd-even traffic scheme starting on April 15, it was announced on Wednesday. Delhi's Transport Minister Gopal Rai said security concerns were the main reason behind the government's decision to exempt women from the fortnight-long scheme. "As per people's wishes, the chief minister has decided that women will remain exempt in the second phase of the odd-even scheme. Security is the main reason behind this decision," Rai told the media. Vehicles carrying school children in uniform will also be exempt. "During the first phase of the odd-even scheme (January 1-15), schools were closed. This time they are open. We don't want children to suffer at all. So the vehicles carrying school children in uniform will also be exempt from the odd-even restrictions," Rai said. According to the odd-even formula, vehicles with odd registration numbers will be allowed to ply on odd dates and those with even registration numbers on even dates. The aim is to cut drastically the number of vehicles on Delhi's otherwise normally choked roads in a bid to curb air pollution. The traffic curbs won't be applicable on Sundays. The minister said those who were exempt in the first phase will enjoy the benefit now too -- central government ministers and VVIPs besides CNG vehicles. Bikers are also likely to be allowed to ply during the upcoming odd-even phase. The final notification detailing all the exemptions will be issued on Friday. The first phase of the odd-even scheme turned out to be hugely popular in the capital. New Delhi, April 7 : The peace process between India and Pakistan has been "suspended" and there are no talks scheduled between the two countries, Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit said here on Thursday. "There is no meeting scheduled as of now. I think at present the peace process is suspended," Basit told reporters at a function here. He was speaking in the background of the January 2 Pathankot terror attack by Pakistani terrorists of the Jaish-e-Mohamed, which killed seven Indian security forces. The attack has stalled the resumption of dialogue between the two sides. New Delhi, April 7 : Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar on Thursday said that every state has right to conduct experiments, like Delhi's odd-even scheme, to find out solutions to support environment. "States can do experiments like odd-even to support the environment but an IIT reports yesterday (Wednesday) said that it was not much impactful," Javadekar told media on the sidelines of 22nd BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) Ministerial Meeting on climate change here. The fortnight-long second phase of Delhi government's odd-even traffic scheme will start on April 15. CNG operated vehicles, central government ministers and VVIPs, women motorists and cars ferrying school students in uniform will be exempt during it. The first phase of the odd-even scheme in January this year had turned out to be hugely popular. New Delhi, April 7 : Pakistan on Thursday said the dialogue process with India had been suspended and there was no question of allowing an NIA team to visit Islamabad to probe the Pathankot terror attack. Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit also said that the arrest of an alleged Indian spy, Kulbushan Jadhav, proved Islamabad's allegations that New Delhi was causing unrest in Balochistan. Asked at the Foreign Correspondents Club about a meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two countries, Basit said: "There is no meeting scheduled for now. I think at present the peace process is suspended. "India is not ready as yet," Basit said, but quickly added that "we can only resolve issues through dialogue". This is the first official word from Pakistan about the latest breakdown in the now-on-now-off peace process with India. After a team of Pakistani officials visited Pathankot to probe Indian charges that Pakistani terrorists were to blame for the January 2 attack, New Delhi had expected Islamabad to allow a National Investigation Agency (NIA) team to visit that country to take the investigation forward. Basit ruled out the possibility. "The investigation (into the Pathankot attack) is not about reciprocity," he said. Earlier, reading out a prepared statement, Basit referred to the arrest of alleged Indian spy Jadhav in Balochistan last month and said that it "irrefutably corroborates what Pakistan has been saying all along". "We are aware of all those who seek to create unrest in Pakistan and destabilise the country. They are bound to fail." He said Pakistan had arrested scores of terror operatives with "foreign linkages" over the past month. "The presence of such elements is quite disturbing, to say the least." He also spoke on Jammu and Kashmir, saying it was "the root cause of mutual distrust and other bilateral issues". "And attempts to put it on backburner will be counter-productive," he added. "The resolution of (the) Jammu and Kashmir (dispute) should be fair and just." New Delhi, April 7 : Terming as "unprovoked action" the baton-charge by police on students of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar, the BJP on Thursday said police should change its behaviour towards young students. "Police should change the way it deals with young students. You cannot use brutal force against students, especially when there is no provocation from the other side," party spokesman Shrikant Sharma told IANS. Asked if he feels the same about Hyderabad University, Sharma said he felt the same for students of every university across the country, but that "the two cases are different". "In Hyderabad University, there was some provocation by students, but in NIT, police resorted to lathi-charge without provocation. Action should be taken against officials responsible for police action at NIT," he said. Responding to the opposition allegation that university students were being targeted ever since the BJP came to power, Sharma said "the frustrated opposition is doing politics in the name of students". Tension gripped the NIT Srinagar after some students clashed with police on Tuesday. According to police, a group of non-local students marched to the gates of the institute shouting slogans. A senior police officer advised them not to go out of the campus as that could result in a law and order problem, but the students did not listen. Police resorted to a baton-charge to disperse the students, in which seven of them sustained minor injuries. Ranchi, April 7 : The Jharkhand government on Thursday announced the much awaited domicile policy that enables any person living in the state for the last 30 years to enjoy benefits as a permanent resident. The state cabinet approved the Domicile Policy on Thursday. According to the new domicile policy, any person living in Jharkhand for the past 30 years will be known as Jharkhandi. Youth under the domicile policy will get preference in the third and fourth grade employment categories. Under the policy, local languages will be included in the Jharkhand Public Service Commission. The Domicile Policy was a long standing demand of the people of the state. In 2001, when the BJP government of Babulal Marandi came out with the domicile cut-off date as 1932, large-scale pro- and anti-domicile protests were witnessed. The Jharkhand High Court had struck down the then domicile policy. New Delhi, April 7 : India on Thursday said the visit of the Pakistani joint investigation team (JIT) probing the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase was on a reciprocity basis after Pakistani High Commissioner Abdul Basit claimed to the contrary. "We have seen comments by the Pakistani high commissioner on the visit of the JIT team to investigate the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase that have reference to reciprocity," the external affairs ministry said in a statement. "The ministry would like to clarify that on March 26, 2016, before the visit of the JIT, the Indian high commission formally conveyed to the Pakistani foreign ministry that the terms of reference 'are broadly agreed to with the proviso that these would be on the basis of reciprocity and followed in accordance with extant legal provisions'," it said. "Subsequently, the JIT visited from March 27 to April 1, 2016." After a team of Pakistani officials visited Pathankot to probe Indian charges that Pakistani terrorists were to blame for the terror attack, New Delhi had expected Islamabad to allow a National Investigation Agency (NIA) team to visit that country to take the investigation forward. But, addressing a press conference here, Basit ruled out the possibility. "The investigation is not about reciprocity," he said. Asked at the Foreign Correspondents Club about a meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two countries, Basit said: "There is no meeting scheduled for now. I think at present the peace process is suspended." In this connection, the external affairs ministry, in its statement, referred to the response of the Pakistan foreign ministry spokesman to a question in his press conference on Thursday in which he said: "Your question implies whether the foreign secretary level talks will take place or not. I have stated this many times that both countries are in contact with each other and it has been reiterated from both sides that modalities are being worked out. "I will again state that negotiations are the best means to resolve the issues. I have read the statement of the Indian foreign secretary you are referring to and in that also there was indication that the talks would take place." Foreign secretary-level talks between the two countries scheduled for the middle of January this year, were derailed following the January 2 cross-border attack on the Pathankot Indian Air Force base in which seven Indian security personnel were killed. The Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for the attack in which the six attackers were also reportedly killed. United Nations, April 8 : The UN special envoy for Syria expected intra-Syrian talks to resume on April 13 in Geneva in a bid to seek a political solution to the Syria crisis, a UN spokesman said here. Envoy Staffan de Mistura on Thursday "wanted to ensure that the talks will start a political process leading to a real political transition", Xinhua quoted Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, as saying. The newly announced date for the resumption of the Syria talks is four days behind the original schedule. The second round of Syrian peace talks was originally slated for April 9. In the coming days, de Mistura plans to travel to Damascus and Tehran, and also to meet with Turkish, Saudi and other officials, before returning to Geneva in the middle of next week, Haq said. While in Syria, he expects to meet the foreign minister and deputy foreign minister, Haq said. "The special envoy added that the proceedings in Geneva are expected once more to start with proximity talks," Haq said. The first round of intra-Syrian peace talks in Geneva wrapped up on March 24 with a paper of 12 points of commonalities being delivered to both sides for further consideration by de Mistura. The UN said a more positive atmosphere at the March round was helped by a cease-fire in Syria, which was declared on February 27 and remains broadly in place, despite multiple reported violations. More than 270,000 people have been reportedly killed in Syria and millions have fled their homes since the conflict broke out in March 2011. Paris, April 8 : Migration and terrorism were the hot topics of discussion at the 18th Franco-German summit in Metz, France where President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met to boost bilateral ties. As floods of migrants to Europe are challenging economic and political stability on the continent, Hollande and Merkel on Thursday stressed that "only a European solution will provide an effective and sustainable response", Xinhua reported. "Our two countries act together so that the necessary decisions are taken in full respect of European values and international law," they said in a joint statement. Both leaders urged for rapid implementation of decisions already taken to halt the migrant influx, such as the EU-Turkey deal. They also pushed for protecting external borders, establishing a common asylum policy, and bolstering cooperation with the migrants' countries of origin to address war and poverty there. Speaking about the Syrian and Libyan crises where terrorist cells are flourishing due to a political vacuum and fragile security, Hollande and Merkel pledged to step-up cooperation to fight insurgents in these politically unstable countries. They also reiterated calls to back the government unity in Libya with the hope it can ensure stability and eradicate fighters and to continue diplomatic efforts to end the crisis in Damascus. Terrorism risks at home also dominated their discussions. They stressed that European countries where the terror alert remains high have to rapidly implement tools to track terrorists and arrest them. In this context, both the sides vowed to enhance the exchange of information and raise systematic controls at external borders via technological means. Adding to that, the two leaders vowed to fight terrorism financing by adopting "new ambitious legislation", mainly to reinforce and harmonise different financial security units of European countries. During the summit, Hollande and Merkel also recalled their common commitment "to contribute to an ambitious and global policy of climate protection." Besides, they discussed improving economic, social and cultural cooperation, according to the statement. Lucknow, April 8 : Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has effected a reshuffle in the party, changing responsibilities of many senior leaders. After reviewing the organisational matters in Lucknow on Thursday, work of some party coordinators was changed, a leader told IANS on Friday. More changes are in the offing, he informed. Dinesh Chandra has been assigned additional work of Devipatan and Gorakhpur zones while Lalji Verma, so far taking care of party interests in Gorakhpur, was moved out. Mayawati is on a ten-day visit to the state capital, and is likely to continue assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the party's organisation. Emerging as the principle challenge to the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) in the run up to the assembly, to be held early next year, the BSP is working aggressively to "set its house in order and tighten the loose nuts and bolts before getting down to brass tacks", a close aide to the former chief minister said. New Delhi : Embark on a poetic journey where love and friendship gain new identities. There's also a unique literary experience that combines poems, short stories and plays in a single book. Then, a woman's journey in a world where time and history are fluid while she stays young; and finally, a search for treasure dictated by traveller Marco Polo. Check out the weekend book fare that IANS offers. 1. Book: All the Answers I Shall Ever Get; Poet: Tanya Mendonsa; Publisher: Harper Collins; Pages: 149; Price: Rs. 350 Love and friendship are probably the two eternal themes for exploration in poetic world and Tanya Mendonsa's second collection of poems revolve around these two themes that take readers to a world seen anew with a lyricism that never ceases to astonish and delight. A collection of passionate longing and profound loss, Mendonsa's directness and simplicity are reflected in the poems which are intimate, terrifying, uplifting and ultimately liberating. 2. Book: the Dark Side of Light; Poet: Sanil Sachar; Publisher: Rupa; Pages: 268; Price: Rs. 350 A vignette of romance, comedy, murder, mystery and much more, Sanil Sachar's second book is a unique literary experience for readers with its combination of short stories, poems and plays. The book drifts readers away into a different world, with its rhythm of poetry, alluring art of story telling and realism of theatre to create an enriching and vivid experience. 3. Book: Once Upon a Time; Author: Ashok Srinivasan; Publisher: Harper Collins; Pages: 167; Price: Rs. 499 Born in an old-fashioned joint family, Brinda has a detailed memory of things that happened before her death. She is brutalised, gang-raped and arrested without any charges being filed. But in a world where time and history are as fluid as her memory, she stays radiantly young while those around her decay and age. Ashok Srinivasan's debut novel is a fairy tale with some of the harshest cruelties of our time. 4. Book: The Prisoner's Gold; Author: Chris Kuzneski; Publisher: Hachette; Pages: 370; Price: Rs. 399 What if Marco Polo's travel story is not complete? What if his greatest adventure is yet to be discovered? Guided by a journal believed to have been dictated by Marco Polo himself, a group sets out in search of his final legacy gathered during the traveller's lifetime of exploration. But the road to treasure is not easy. As every ancient clue brings the group closer to the truth, each new step puts them in increasing danger. Will they succeed? Read on to find out! Canberra, April 8 : Australia's environment minister on Friday said bleaching in the world-famous Great Barrier Reef is "major and significant", after renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough said climate change has put the attraction in "grave danger". Greg Hunt, head of the government's environment portfolio, said current bleaching affecting the reef, which occurs when water temperature rises above comfortable level, was "still unfolding" and could cause further damage to the coral. The minister's comments come as a result of a briefing from the Reef 2050 Independent Expert Panel, which revealed severe bleaching of the reef between the towns of Cape York and Cooktown. Bleaching can stunt the recovery of, and sometimes kill, many varieties of coral. "The event is still unfolding and the full extent and severity of bleaching may take several weeks to manifest," Hunt told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Friday. "If major disturbances such as bleaching events occur more regularly, this will affect the reef's ability to recover." Renowned nature documenter and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough also shared concerns for the future of the natural wonder. In a documentary to be aired by the ABC this weekend, he said humans need to do more to protect the reef from "the consequences of our own behaviour", Xinhua reported. "The twin perils brought by climate change, an increase in the temperature of the ocean and in its acidity threaten its very existence," Attenborough said. "Do we really care so little about the Earth on which we live that we don't wish to protect one of its greatest wonders from the consequences of our behaviour?" Despite growing fears of the reef's future, John Gunn from the Australian Institute of Marine Science said the reef had actually experienced widespread coral growth in its southern parts. "In the south, we've seen an almost doubling in the amount of coral that we last saw in 2012," Gunn said. "From a really low base, it's the worst conditions for the reef previously but it has rebounded quite excitingly," he said. "The centre of the reef has rebounded as well." The Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Kolkata, April 8 : India's steel exports fell 32 percent while imports rose 20.2 percent in fiscal 2015-16 compared to the previous year, according to provisional data released by the government. "Export of total finished steel was down by 32 percent in 2015-16 at 3.80 million tonnes compared to the last year. Import of total finished steel at 11.20 million tonnes in 2015-16 saw a growth of 20.2 percent compared to the last year," said a report by the Joint Plant Committee. The committee is the only institution in the country to have been empowered by the steel ministry to collect data on the Indian iron and steel industry. The report said exports in March 2016 at 0.35 million tonnes declined by 32.4 percent compared to the same month last year but grew 17.1 percent compared to February 2016. Imports in March 2016 at 0.994 mt increased by 18.2 percent compared to March 2015 and by 9.1 percent compared to February 2016. India was a net importer of total finished steel in 2015-16, the report said. Production for sale of total finished steel at 91.12 million tonnes registered a decline of 1.1 percent in 2015-16 compared to the previous year. India's consumption of finished steel at 80.27 million tonnes saw a growth of 4.3 percent in 2015-16 compared to the previous year. "Such growth was mostly led by imports which accounted for 14 percent of total steel consumed by the country during the year, given that production for sale was down by 1.1 percent during this period," the report said. London, April 8 : An Irish man has been jailed after tagging himself in a photo on social networking website Facebook that showed him taking part in a riot, a media report said. Robert Darragh, 21, kept his face covered so that he could not be identified in the CCTV footage. However, investigators looking through photos on social media sites from the riots found Darragh being tagged in a photo showing him participating in a riot during a clash between nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland in July 2015, belfastlive.co.uk reported. After his arrest, Darragh told the police that he had been drinking heavily and could not remember throwing anything at police. Belfast Crown Court sentenced Darragh to two years in jail. He will spend half his sentence in prison and the remainder on licence when he is released from custody. At least 29 police officers were injured in the riot that took place during the Loyalist marching season last year. Police lines were pelted with masonery, bricks, bottles and other items, with one officer almost losing an ear. Srinagar, April 8 : Non-local students of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) here on Friday tried to take out a march, demanding action against policemen who assaulted them, but police disallowed them. A senior police officer told IANS here, "Some non-local students of NIT tried to take out a protest march today, which was disallowed by the police without using any force." "The protesting students were told they could not be allowed to take their protest to the road outside the college." After speaking to the police officials deployed there, the students dispersed and went back to the campus, the police officer said. Friday being the Navratra holiday, there was no class work at the NIT. The state government has ordered a magisterial probe into the student unrest and the incidents that occurred at the campus on March 31 and April 4. The protesting students said they want action to be taken against the policemen who assaulted their fellow students on April 4. Vatican City, April 8 : Pope Francis will make public the conclusions of his two Synods on the family in a document eagerly awaited by 1.3 billion Roman Catholics. It will detail the Pope's views about family life, marriage, contraception and bringing up children. Many hope it will open the way for the church to offer communion to the divorced and civilly remarried, something conservatives have resisted, BBC reported. The document is the culmination of three years' work by the Pope. The Pope sent a questionnaire to families across the world asking them about their hopes and their fears. Then he brought bishops and cardinals together for two Synods in Rome, at which he encouraged them to debate and even to disagree over issues that divide the church in many countries. Thedse range from offering communion for the divorced and remarried, contraception and the treatment of Catholics who are gay. The lengthy document will show exactly where Pope Francis stands -- with some already describing it as a Papal bombshell -- as he steps into the minefield of Catholic teaching on the family. While conservatives do not want him to change doctrine, liberals hope he will tell the church to show a more merciful attitude to those whose families do not conform to the current Catholic ideal. Some in the church have called for measures which allow a priest or a bishop to decide privately, on a case-by-case basis, if a Catholic who has divorced and remarried can be fully readmitted and receive communion. While progressives such as the influential Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany support this policy, conservatives maintain it would devalue the principle of marriage being indissoluble, established by Jesus. At the conclusion of the Synod last year, Pope Francis castigated church leaders whom he accused of burying their heads in the sand over the issue, arguing that their adherence to rigid doctrine was over-riding their concern for the suffering of families. The papal document is also expected to call for better marriage preparation while repeating the Synod's view that homosexual unions cannot be on par with heterosexual marriage. Nay Pyi Taw, April 8 : The newly-installed democratic government in Myanmar on Friday freed hundreds of people as part of a nationwide release of prisoners ahead of Thingyan, the Burmese New Year Water Festival. Families and activists gathered outside the gates of Insein Prison, near Yangon, to greet those who were freed on Friday, Efe news agency reported. As the released detainees left the prison gates, they were welcomed with hugs, tears and flowers. Friday's release of some 4,000 prisoners includes about 450 political prisoners, State Counsellor and National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi said in a statement on Thursday. According to the Democratic Voice of Burma broadcaster, about 100 prisoners left Insein Prison on Friday, another 30 were released in Mandalay; the same number in Taungoo; 29 in Sittwe; and 17 more in Tharrawaddy. However, it was not clear how many of those released were political prisoners. Each year, before Thingyan -- which starts next week and runs for several days -- authorities release prisoners, including those whose sentences are due to finish during the holiday period. Among those released on Friday was 61-year-old activist Thet Wai, who was detained for an illegal solo protest, and was warmly greeted outside the prison by activists who gave him flowers. Wai was due to be released on April 19. Speaking to his supporters, Wai demanded the new government press ahead with releasing all political prisoners. In Suu Kyi's statement on Thursday evening, she explained the government puts a high priority on releasing all political prisoners and detained activists "as soon as possible," the Irrawaddy news site reported. Myanmar has jailed about 100 dissidents, while around 400 activists are awaiting or are in the midst of a trial, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Ranchi, April 8 : The opposition parties in Jharkhand and a partner of the ruling BJP are finding fault with the domicile policy announced by the state government on Thursday. "It's not in the interests of the people. Our party has always regarded land record holders as Moolvasi of the state. We are consulting legal experts. If needed, we will move court," Stephen Marandi of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) told reporters here. According to the much awaited policy, any person living in the state for the last 30 years will enjoy the benefits of being a permanent resident. There are other ways of being a 'Jharkhandi' - such as a person born in the state who has passed his class 10 schooling in Jharkhand and a person or their ancestor having figured in the land records. The ruling BJP said the policy will help youths of the state to get government jobs. "The policy has been announced after 15 years of the formation of the state. It's a balanced policy and will enable the youths of the state to get government jobs," Pradeep Sinha, Jharkhand BJP spokesperson, told IANS. Sinha said the objections raised by the opposition parties was pure "politics" and nothing more. Former Chief Minister and Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik (JVM-P) president Baulal Marandi said the policy had been announced in "haste". "This will not benefit people of the state. We always advocate for recruitment policy. The state government should reserve all seats of the government jobs for the people of the state," said Baulal Marandi. The All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU), BJP's alliance partner in the state, also found fault with the policy. "How can we equalize two things - the previous land records and anyone who has passed class 10 will enjoy benefits of domicile," said Deo Sharan Bhagat, senior leader of AJSU. Bhagat said the policy was "not perfect" and must undergo several amendments. New Delhi, April 8 : Parliament will meet from April 25 to May 13 for a new session owing to prorogation of the two houses last month during the inter-session period. A Lok Sabha press release said the eighth session of sixteenth Lok Sabha will commence on April 25. "Subject to exigencies of government business, the session is likely to conclude on May 13," the release said. Rajya Sabha officials said that they had information of the house meeting from April 25 to May 13. A separate parliament session had been necessitated after President Pranab Mukherjee prorogued the two houses following the central government deciding to go for an ordinance to facilitate government expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India for Uttarakhand after the state was placed under the President's Rule last month. The session will would transact the remaining agenda of budget session that started on February 23. The first half of session had concluded on March 16 and the parliament was to meet for the second half of budget session from April 25 to May 13. New Delhi, April 8 : Was Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit speaking at variance with the official line on relations with India when he said that the bilateral "peace process is suspended", or was it said deliberately with the permission of Islamabad? According to former envoys, Basit's statements are another example of Pakistan's "double-dealing", with one suggesting that Islamabad should "recall him for spoiling bilateral relations." Both Prabhu Dayal, who has served in the Indian consulate of Karachi and recently released a book "Karachi Halwa", and Rajiv Dogra, India's former consul general in Karachi, say that the current impasse in relations and Basit's statements show that ties with Pakistan are not moving forward. G. Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner to Pakistan, was more direct. "There are two categories of Pakistani diplomats, one reporting to the foreign office, and the other beholden to the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence). I regard Basit as belonging to the second category," Parthasarathy told IANS. "Pakistan is not at all sincere about peace. Its game-plan has been to talk peace with us, while at the same time doing everything possible to pursue a proxy war with India and to hurt us in whichever manner possible," Dayal, who was India's Consul General in New York before retiring in 2013, told IANS. "I am not at all surprised that Pakistanis have back-tracked on the peace talks, and they are not likely to become serious or sincere in this regard at any time in the near future," he said. On Thursday Basit, speaking at an event here, said that the peace process between India and Pakistan were "suspended" and that the National Investigation Agency team from India could not go to Pakistan to probe the Pathankot attack. "The Pakistan ambassador says whatever the foreign ministry tells him to. He will not say anything on his own; he represents the government of Pakistan and he cannot be saying anything at variance with their position," said Dayal, adding that Pakistan's policy has "always been double-faced, and this is another example of it". Dogra termed Basit's statement that the peace process has been suspended as "perhaps the most undiplomatic statement that I have ever heard a diplomat make". "You can say that negotiations are suspended, the talks are suspended; but to say that the peace process is suspended means that you are declaring war," Dogra said. "So, should such a high commissioner be taken seriously?" he added. He wondered whether the Pakistan High Commissioner and the government in Islamabad were playing good cop, bad cop. "He (Basit) keeps provoking India, and Islamabad plays a calming effect, tries to temper it down - whether by design or error," he Dogra said. "And while Islamabad was giving the officialese (that India and Pakistan are in talks on holding talks), the high commissioner was giving his sentiments - maybe at the behest of someone or the other," he added. To Basit saying that a NIA would not be allowed, the former diplomat said: "The high commissioner is so authoritatively saying there is no reciprocity, it can only mean that from the Pakistan side there was no confirmation of the conditions put in our letter (India's letter on allowing the Pakistan Joint Investigation Team)." Asked where he saw the bilateral relations headed, Dogra, who has also served as India's Permanent Representative at the UN. said: "I don't think relations are headed on an upward swing. Unfortunately, the signals from Islamabad, and more particularly from the high commissioner in Delhi, are negative." He said the latest developments are a "signal that its (Pakistan's) intentions are not exactly peace-like." The problem, he said, was that "every time India tries to open the door, Pakistan slams it shut." On Basit, the envoy said: "If Pakistan feels its high commissioner has stepped out of line and given a statement contrary to Pakistan's official stand, should it not reprimand him for spoiling relations, and even call him back." (Ranjana Narayan can be contacted at ranjana.n@iansin) Narayangarh (West Bengal), April 8 : Attacking Left Front spearhead CPI-M in this red citadel, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday charged the Marxists with joining the BJP in harassing her Trinamool Congress leaders by using central agencies like ED and CBI. Referring to the opposition campaign centred around the Saradha chit fund scandal as also the Narada sting footage that purportedly showed a number of Trinamool leaders taking money in return for doling out favours to a fictitious company, Banerjee said: "They are saying Saradha to Narada. But Saradha was formed during your (Communist Party of India-Marxist led Left Front) tenure. "They're calling Trinamool corrupt. What audacity! People will make you hold your tongue. None from my party has taken money. "This is a joint game of the CPI-M and the Bharatiya Janata Party. They are harassing us by using the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and the ED (Enforcement Directorate). That's because we are a good party." Following the Supreme Court directive, the CBI and ED are probing the Saradha scam. Narayangarh in West Midnapore district is the assembly constituency of state CPI-M secretary and leader of the opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra, who is seeking re-election from there. Coming down heavily on Mishra, she accused him of presiding over human carnages in areas like Netai in the district. "So many killings had taken place in one district. And they now preach about peace," she told the election rally. Ridiculing Mishra, who was health minister during the Left Front regime, she said: "He had not set up facilities for providing health services even in his constituency." Banerjee promised the audience that she would hold her first rally at Narayangarh if they defeated Mishra. Referring to CPI-M politburo member Mohammed Salim's speech at Labhpur in Birbhum district where he had warned that the Left Front will take account of all "murderers and executioners" who ran amok during the Trinamool regime after it comes to power, she said: "They are so shameless they are talking about revenge again. People will not allow you." Banerjee asked the CPI-M why it had given up its ideology to forge an alliance with the Congress. "You are fighting each other in Kerala, but embracing each other in Bengal." Hyderabad, April 8 : The tallest-ever statue of the Indian constitution's architect B.R. Ambedkar will be installed here, the Telangana government announced Friday. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao announced that he will lay the foundation stone for the 125-feet statue to mark 125th birth anniversary of Ambedkar on April 14. After chairing a meeting with his cabinet colleagues, senior officers and Dalit leaders, he said the statue will be unveiled on the same day next year. A committee headed by Deputy Chief Minister K. Srihari will identify suitable location in Hyderabad to install the statue. KCR, as the chief minister is popularly known, said the year-long celebrations to mark 125th birth anniversary will be organised on a grand scale. He directed officials to organise a programme every month. Every district will have special programmes. The TRS government will also launch distribution of three acres land among Dalits besides undertaking various programmes for their uplift. The decision by the Telangana government to install 125-feet statue comes few days after Andhra Pradesh made a similar announcement. Chief Minister N. Chadrababu Naidu had announced in the state legislative assembly on March 29 that the statue will come up in Amaravati, the new state capital being developed in Guntur district near Vijayawada. Naidu also declared that a memorial park will be built with museum, a Buddhist meditation centre, a museum and a library to highlight the teachings of Ambedkar. He said the installation of statue and memorial park will be part of the government's plans to develop Amaravati as a tourist hub with its rich Buddhist legacy. Vatican City, April 8 : Pope Francis has called for the Catholic church to revamp its response to modern family life, striking a delicate balance between a more accepting tone towards gay people and the defence of traditional church teachings on issues such as abortion. In a landmark papal document entitled Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love), Francis outlined his vision for the church on family issues, urging priests to respond to their communities without mercilessly enforcing church rules: "Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs," he wrote. The apostolic exhortation concludes a two-year consultation that saw bishops twice gather in Rome to debate issues affecting the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, writes the Guardian. In comments likely to be welcomed by some LGBT organisations, Francis urged the church to "reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while 'every sign of unjust discrimination' is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence." But the pope stopped short of pushing for a change in church doctrine. "De facto or same-sex unions, for example, may not simply be equated with marriage," he said. "Such families should be given respectful pastoral guidance, so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God's will in their lives," wrote the pontiff. The church defines same-sex relationships as "intrinsically disordered", although this phrase was absent from the exhortation. Following lengthy debate about the role in the church for remarried divorcees, who are not allowed to take holy communion, Francis did not call for the rules to be changed but said such parishioners must be made to feel part of the church. "[They] should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for a suitable personal and pastoral discernment," he said. Divorce was described as an "evil" that priests should help Catholics avoid, while being understanding towards those whose marriages have broken down. Cardinal Christoph SchAnborn, the archbishop of Vienna, said that some Catholics would be disappointed that the pope had not provided a new set of rules to govern the church's response on the matter. The cardinal, who is viewed as a progressive within the Vatican hierarchy, said the pope's response demonstrated progress was being made on church teachings and the document would provide material for further discussion. SchAnborn said the document showed something had changed in the church discourse. "Pope Francis speaks about families with a clarity that is not easy to find in the magisterial documents on the church," he said. He was joined at the Holy See by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the synod of bishops, who praised the pope's intervention: "In an era of global crisis in which families often suffer, the exhortation takes a positive look at the beauty of married love and the family." In the document, reflecting the hands-on approach seen throughout Francis' three-year papacy, the pope emphasised the need for priests to reach out to members of their communities and present the church as a "field hospital". The broader document saw Francis recognise the Catholic church's waning appeal to young people, urging churchmen to present a more appealing view of marriage. "I think of Saint Valentine's Day; in some countries, commercial interests are quicker to see the potential of this celebration than are we in the church," he wrote during a section on marriage preparation. The pontiff also dedicated two pages to "the erotic dimension of love" within marriage, promoting a positive vision of sexuality. "[This] must be seen as a gift from God that enriches the relationship of the spouses," he said. Formal sex education in schools, however, was decried as promoting narcissism through its discussion of safe sex. "Such expressions convey a negative attitude towards the natural procreative finality of sexuality, as if an eventual child were an enemy to be protected against," wrote Francis, asserting the church's opposition to contraception. In discussing reproduction, the pope voiced the Vatican's opposition to abortion in all circumstances: "No alleged right to one's own body can justify a decision to terminate that life." The pope also showed no opening towards fertility treatment, describing creation as something which "must be received as a gift" and suggested infertile couples adopt. Although the apostolic exhortation continues church rules that have remained in place for generations, the document also contains hints of the perceptiveness that has made the pope a popular figure globally. "Much hurt and many problems result when we stop looking at one another," he wrote, listing a string of common complains of family members feeling invisible or uncared for. Childish behaviour was another problem the pontiff saw afflicting marriages. "Only in their forties do some people achieve a maturity that should have come at the end of adolescence," he remarked, writes the Guardian. The 79-year-old pontiff also explored the way technology affects relationships, such as when people stay on their mobile phones during meal times. He saw the fast pace of the online world impacting people's approach to relationships: "They believe, along the lines of social networks, that love can be connected or disconnected at the whim of the consumer, and the relationship quickly 'blocked'." Cairo, April 8 : Egypt and Saudi Arabia agreed on Friday to establish a land bridge to connect the two countries, visiting King Salman Bin Abdel-Aziz said. "The land bridge will be named after King Salman," Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said. The bridge will constitute a historical leap in connecting Asia and Africa and will raise the mutual trade exchange between the two continents to unprecedented levels, King Salman said. The bridge will create job opportunities for the whole region, he added. The Saudi leader is paying his first visit to Egypt since his inauguration as king in early 2015. "King Salman's visit to Egypt is meant to bolster ties and strategic partnership between the two countries in a manner that helps face regional threats and crises," said the Egyptian president. The two countries are capable of maintaining the security of the Arab region at this critical phase, al-Sisi said. He said coordination between the two countries was necessary to solve the Yemeni, Libyan, Syrian and Palestinian issues. "The visit aims to open new horizons for joint action and boost bonds between the two countries," al-Sisi added. Earlier, President al-Sisi has granted the Saudi king, who arrived on Thursday in Cairo for a five-day visit, the Collar of the Nile, Egypt's highest state honor. The two sides have signed eight agreements, six MoUs and three cooperation programmes that covered fields including education, health, housing, agriculture, electricity and marine transportation. Egypt and Saudi Arabia also agreed on setting up a King Salman University in the North Sinai city of Tour. Saudi Arabia has been the key backer of al-Sisi since the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 after mass protests against his one-year rule. It has pumped billions of dollars to help and invest into Egypt's battered economy. New Delhi, April 8 : Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on Friday said Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's statement on not allowing an NIA team to visit Islamabad was wrong and won't help improve bilateral relations. "We reject the high commissioner's statement. What he has said is wrong. It will not help improve relations between the two countries," the minister of state for home told reporters here. Basit on Thursday said bilateral talks between India and Pakistan were "suspended" and that there was no question of allowing a National Investigation Agency team to visit Islamabad for the probe into the January 2 attack at the Pathankot airbase in Punjab. Asked about a meeting between the two foreign secretaries, Basit had said: "There is no meeting scheduled for now. I think at present the peace process is suspended. "India is not ready as yet," Basit had said, but quickly added that "we can only resolve issues through dialogue". "The investigation (into the Pathankot attack) is not about reciprocity," he had said. New Delhi, April 8 : The VHP on Friday said the Narendra Modi government's flip-flop over its policy towards Pakistan had confused the masses and demanded a white paper on its policies on terrorism and the neighbouring country. "When Narendra Modi took over as prime minister, the country hoped it will end terrorism by tightening noose around Pakistan's neck, but its flip-flop has created confusion in the people's minds," Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) joint general secretary Surendra Jain said here in a statement here. "Now, it seems that India has been put in the dock," he added. Jain asked the government to clarify its stand on terrorism and Pakistan's role in it. "The VHP demands that the government issue a white paper on terrorism and Pakistan so that the people's confusion on these issue is cleared. The government should also clarify its policies on these issues," Jain said. He said it was one of the major demands of the Bharatiya Janata Party when it was in opposition at the Centre. "Time has come for the BJP to come clear before the country with its pledge to end the menace of terrorism," Jain said. Bhubaneswar, April 8 : While the proposed $12 billion project of South Korean steel major Posco in Odisha is yet to see the light of the day after a decade, South Korean Ambassador to India Cho Hyun on Friday said the country wants to invest in other sectors in India. "Last month, I met a number of our businessmen during a summit in South Korea. I encouraged them to invest in India," said the Korean ambassador after holding a meeting with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here. "Discussed investments & trade opportunities in #Odisha with Korean Ambassador Mr. Cho Hyun," tweeted Patnaik after the meet. However, the Posco project did not figure in the meeting, said a state government official. "It is up to the company (Posco) whether it wants to set up its project or not. Korea has many other things to offer and not just Posco. We should not only focus on Posco here," the envoy told reporters. The steel project, billed as the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in India, is facing several legal hurdles and local opposition since it signed an MoU with the state government in 2005. The hope of Posco to set up the steel project faded away after the central government introduced the amended Mines and Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act 2015 mandating that the company has to participate in the bidding process to get raw material to feed the proposed steel plant at Jagatsinghpur. The statement of the South Korean envoy came at a time when the steel major told the National Green Tribunal that it would not be able to establish the proposed $12 billion steel plant in Odisha by 2017. Its lawyer informed the tribunal that it has not been able to obtain forest and other clearances while its environmental clearance is valid until July 2017. New Delhi, April 8 : A number of academicians, writers, students and activists on Friday vowed at the Pratirodh forum here to keep resistance alive till there was complete freedom to think and speak freely. Among those who expressed their views were writers Krishna Sobti and Kancha Iliah, historian Harbans Mukhia, lawyer Vrinda Grover, social activist Gauhar Raza, journalists Siddharth Varadrajan and Shoma Chaudhury, and student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar, Shehla Rashid, Omar Khalid (all Jawaharlal Nehru University), Richa Singh from Allahabad University, Dontha Prashanth from Hyderabad University and Rakesh Shukla from Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. The speakers expressed concern over rising intolerance in the society, the suppression of dissent by the government and the increasing attempts at the saffronisation of education and educational institutions. "Dalits and other underprivileged students cannot go to Cambridge and Oxford. But they can go to Jawaharlal Nehru University and Hyderabad University, and we are producing intellectuals here," said Dalit writer Ilaiah. Veteran journalist Varadrajan expressed concern over editors becoming opportunist and consequently certain important issues not finding a place a place in the media. "Many significant issues which need to be discussed are either relegated to inside pages or just do not appear in the media. And those journalists who try to raise these issues are pressurised in many ways," he said. JNU Student Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and vice president Rashid dwelt on changing definitions of nationalism and constitution's architect B.R. Ambedkar's relevance in today's politics and social structures. "If we want to challenge the politics of suppression and Hindu nationalism, we will have to move on the path of (Mahatma) Gandhi and Ambedkar and we would have to be on the same page," Kanhaiya said. Rashid rued that Ambedkar was reduced to a mere Dalit icon though he was a "greater scholar than most savarnas of his time". She also questioned the changing definition of nationalism and its relevance. "There has to be justice before jai," Rashid said. Other student leaders including Richa Singh and Rakesh Shukla too called for keeping the resistance alive till "the mind was without fear". Latest updates on Gandhi Jayanti 2019 New Delhi : Vatican City, April 8 (AKI) Pope Francis on Friday told Catholic families to turn to God in time of trouble - the same day he published new guidelines on family life. "The word of God is a source of comfort for every family that experiences difficulty or suffering," Francis tweeted from his nine-language @Pontifex acccount, which has over 22 million followers. Earlier on Friday, his landmark document 'On Love in the Family' urged a more compassionate approach, saying priests should exercise careful discernment over "wounded families" and to be merciful rather than judgemental. The document was eagerly awaited by the world's 1.3bn Catholics. It concludes a three-year consultation that saw bishops twice gather in Rome to debate hot issues like the Church's approaches to divorcees, gay people, abortion, contraception and sex education. It does not change Catholic doctrine but opens the way for bishops in each country to interpret doctrine to suit their own culture on issues such as communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. New Delhi, April 9 : Arunachal Chief Minister Kalikho Pul on Friday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an one-time development package for the northeastern state, especially for areas of the border with China. In his first visit to the capital after taking over as chief minister, Pul also met union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani, Power Minister Piyush Goyal, and Minister of State for Development of the Northeastern Region (DoNER) Jitendera Singh. "Chief Minister Kalikho Pul called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence today and appealed for a one-time special package to boost the economy and compensate for years of under-development in the state," said a statement from the chief minister's office in Itanagar. It said Pul contended that the request for one-time grant must not be considered on economic costs of development involved, but on confidence building initiatives that must be taken with respect to Arunachal as a strategic border state. Modi agreed to provide the central government's full support and resources for development of Arunachal Pradesh, saying the country's strength lay in these border areas. In his meeting with Rajnath Singh, Pul said that there was an alarming trend of migration of border population to urban centres, which was resulting in unclaimed and unoccupied areas, making the border prone to incursions. He said it was a major cause of concern and that steps needed to be taken to ensure that these border communities continue to inhabit their lands. Pul also raised concern over absence of basic facilities for troop patrolling up to last border point that continue to hinder effective patrolling of the border areas. "He (Pul) therefore appealed for facilities in border areas that included foot suspension bridges, culverts and log bridges, hutments, water supply, health assistance, basic education, power, telecommunication and media reach, CC steps for use by both villagers and defence personnel," said the statement. Pul said though the economic costs of provisioning for these facilities might appear high, but considering the distance and hard terrain where raw materials have to be carried on head load, it needed to be understood that the strategic benefits far outweigh these costs. In his meeting with Irani, Pul cited the poor education scenario of the state and how several government schools and colleges lacked sufficient infrastructure and all-weather buildings. Irani assured to give backup and full support to the state government's endeavour. In his meeting with Goyal, Pul mentioned his government's thrust to develop small hydro power projects as a dependable source of power for administrative centres across the state. He said that the state has so far identified 89 projects in border areas with an aim to provide power to unelectrified administrative circles down to circle headquarters in off-grid system. These projects with total installed capacity of 37.28 MW and a total cost of Rs.715.74 crore would be harnessed from nearby rivers, rivulets, and streams in an eco-friendly manner, he said. Goyal assured Pul all support, noting that Prime Minister Modi has accorded special consideration for Arunachal and all the northeastern states. In his meeting with Jitendra Singh, Pul expressed satisfaction at the cooperation and support offered to his government by the DoNER ministry in implementation of various developmental works in the state. Singh brought to the notice of Pul that there were certain pending projects in Arunachal Pradesh which required to be taken up on an urgent basis. "In this regard, he particularly mentioned the construction of airport at Itanagar which, he said, had got unduly delayed because of the issues related to identification of site and land acquisition," a ministry statement said. Pul became the chief minister in February after a controversial political turmoil in which Congress' Nabam Tuki was overthrown. New Delhi, April 9 : The first meeting of the recently-formed Bank Board Bureau (BBB) met on Friday at the RBI headquarters in Mumbai and discussed issues of non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, as well as strategies for recapitalising banks. Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, who attended the meeting along with RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, told reporters here that filling up of vacancies of directors and non-executive chairmen was also discussed at the meeting. "Second, how to better recognise the stressed assets and if there are some hurdles, then how to solve them was discussed," he said. "How that (recapitalising banks) will happen, how the government and RBI will work with banks' boards was discussed. "Then, what the role of consolidation will be and how much capital it will require from the government also came up, and strategies around it also figured in the discussions," he added. Besides Bureau chairman, former comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) Vinod Rai, members -- ICICI Bank's former joint managing director H.N. Sinor, Bank of Baroda's former CMD Anil K Khandelwal, rating agency Crisil's ex-chief Rupa Kudwa and ex-officio members Ameising Luikham, secretary, department of Public enterprises, and R.Gandhi, deputy governor, RBI - were also present. Taking the first step towards a holding company structure for state-run banks, the government, in August last, announced the setting up of the BBB to recommend appointment of directors in PSBs and advise on ways of raising funds and dealing with stressed assets. The quantum of exposure of Indian scheduled banks in terms of gross non-productive assets, re-cast loans and write-offs was Rs.9.5 lakh crore as of September last year. Brussels, April 9 : The European Union (EU) announced on Friday that it has delayed its June summit by a few days to avoid clashing with the June 23 British referendum on continued EU membership. "The June meeting of the European Council is confirmed for June 28-29," Xinhua quoted Preben Aamann, a spokesman of European Council President Donald Tusk, as saying. Leaders of the 28-member EU initially planned to begin a regular two-day meeting on June 23, the same day the Brexit vote was set to happen in Britain. Brussels, April 9 : Mohamed Abrini, suspected of involvement in the November 2015 attacks in Paris, was arrested Friday by the Belgian police, reported Belgian broadcaster RTBF. Abrini is also thought to be the "man in the hat" who was caught on surveillance cameras at Zaventem Airport on the morning of the Brussels attacks little over two weeks ago, Xinhua quoted the local media as saying. Abrini was wanted for complicity in preparing the attacks in Paris. His DNA was found in an apartment in the Brussels' district of Schaerbeek, from which suicide bombers left to carry out the March 22 twin attacks. According to RTBF, a second person was also arrested. It could be Osama K., the person seen with suicide bomber Khalid El Bakraoui at the Brussels metro station Petillon, shortly before El Bakraoui set off an explosion at Maelbeek metro station. Osama K. is also thought to be the second person who bought at City 2 shopping centre the suitcases used in the attacks, RTBF added. However, the Belgian federal prosecutor confirmed only two arrests, without specifying their names, Belgian daily L'Avenir reported. Dual Belgian-Moroccan national Abrini had been filmed at a gas station in Paris two days before the November 13 bombings, along with Salah Abdeslam. Since Abdeslam's arrest, Abrini has become one of the most wanted suspects linked to the terrorist attacks in Paris. The November 13 attacks in Paris killed 130 people. The March 22 Brussels attacks claimed the lives of 32 people. Overseas buyers were the driving force behind the mortgage market in October, Legal & General Mortgage Club research shows. L&Gs SmartrCriteria tool, which helps advisers determine which lenders would consider a particular mortgage applicant, shows that mortgages for applicants with visas was the highest searched term among advisers in October. Searches for expats not in UK remained on the list of top 10 search terms among advisers. Kevin Roberts, director, Legal & General Mortgage Club, said: Demand from consumers to buy property in the UK shows no signs of slowing and its clear that the Stamp Duty holiday continues to drive activity. Where previous Stamp Duty exemptions focused on first-time buyers, the most recent changes are also incentivising those looking to move to the UK, as well as older homeowners who want to downsize. Our SmartrCriteria data shows that both groups are clearly seeking to take advantage of the savings before its too late. There is an opportunity for advisers to support both groups of buyers. Lending criteria is changing every day and borrowers face a longer mortgage journey as the market continues to adapt to unprecedented demand. Advisers will be key in helping these borrowers and others to cut through the noise and find the best product for their particular circumstances. Overseas buyers are looking to get their purchase in before the overseas stamp duty surcharge of 2% comes into force in April next year. The stamp duty holiday is also due to end on March 31st 2020. With a firm dedication to Americas future, the Wise Company is excited to announce details about their bi-annual scholarship program. With a firm dedication to Americas future, the Wise Company is excited to announce details about their bi-annual scholarship program. The Wise Company, known for providing survival readiness and long-term food/water solutions at affordable pricing, will award three students a total of $3,000 this spring. Wise Company has a deep affinity for supporting education," said Aaron Jackson, Wise Company President and CEO. "Higher education can be an essential springboard to building productive lives, but unfortunately, college expenses also can be a significant burden. Wise is proud to be able to recognize and financially assist deserving students who provide thought and unique perspective with respect to preparedness. In order to qualify, applicants should be legal U.S. residents and enrolled as a full-time student at an accredited university within the United States. Applicants also need to carry a cumulative GPA of 3.5 and be able to provide at least one letter of recommendation. The program is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Applicants will be asked to submit a 600800-word essay, along with their written application, that answers this prompt: What social impact would a major failure of the aging U.S. power grid have on our country? What can the average American do to better prepare for such a potential catastrophe? Applications should be submitted via email to martin(at)wisecompanyus(dot)com and should be received no later than June 1, 2016. Essays will be judged on originality and creativity, emotional impact, and relevance to the topic. Winners are expected to be announced around July 1, 2016. Prize levels are as follows: First prize: $1,500 Second prize: $1,000 Third prize: $500 For more information, full terms, and conditions, please visit: http://www.wisefoodstorage.com/scholarship. About Wise Company Wise Company, based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, is a leading provider of high-quality, long-term food kits, emergency food kits, dehydrated or freeze-dried food items for camping, long-term-storage or emergency purposes. Many of the companys prepared foods can last for up to 25 years and Wise Companys products have been featured on a number of television channels, including FOX News, The Weather Channel, National Geographic Channel, The History Channel, and American Heroes Channel (formerly the Military Channel). For more information, please visit http://www.wisefoodstorage.com. "It's not enough to provide great products. Businesses must also have a great strategy to market their products, developing a strong digital brand that translates across all platforms." Dannet Botkin, Designs Group Consulting President Designs Group Consulting (DGC) has officially launched in Hot Springs Village. The marketing consulting firm provides a "full range of services with an added advantage, a partnership," stated Dannet Botkin, DGC President and Founder. According to a study by Google and Neilson, most people spend more than 15 hours a week researching websites on mobile phones. In contrast, an estimated 91 percent of small business websites are not optimized for mobile searching (Aptera). DGC's custom website design services give smaller businesses an opportunity to reach mobile users. Other services include developing a strategy for social media management and branded marketing materials. "It's not enough to provide great products," said Botkin. "Businesses must also have a great strategy to market their products, developing a strong digital brand that translates across all platforms." DGC offers clients the opportunity to do what they know and love, run their businesses. Botkin said. Our success is tied to our clients' success. For more information about Designs Group Consulting, go to http://www.DesignsGroupConsulting.com or call Dannet Botkin at 501-209-2806. About Designs Group Consulting Designs Group Consulting (DGC), based in Hot Springs Village, offers hands-on, full-service marketing solutions for smaller businesses. The firm focuses on strategic planning, production and implementation of marketing options including advertising and media development, social media, website development and logo and materials design. About Dannet Botkin, President Designs Group Consulting With more than 23 years in sales, marketing and operations, Botkin puts her experience to work for her clients. During her tenure as Hot Springs Village Marketing Director (2011-2015), Botkin opened the HSV Visitor Center, updated and unified the communitys brand, and created professional marketing materials, websites and advertising as part of an overall marketing plan. She also implemented a customer relationship management system and coordinated marketing functions, sponsorship development, resources and volunteers. She has worked for national and international businesses to analyze operations, streamlining and upgrading technology, creating and implementing marketing, sales and public relations strategies while reducing overhead, increasing profits and restructuring staff and organization as necessary. A resident home owner in Hot Springs Village, Botkin currently serves as a Board Director for the community's Chamber of Commerces Chamber of Commerce. Shelley Simpson The Distinguished Woman in Logistics award was established to promote the achievements of women employed in the North American transportation industry. Simpson received the award today during the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) 2016 Capital Ideas Conference and Exhibition in San Antonio, Texas. The award is co-sponsored by TMW and Truckstop.com. Simpson was chosen among three finalists for the second annual award. The other finalists included Elizabeth Fretheim, director, Logistics Sustainability at Walmart and Liz Lasater, CEO of Red Arrow Logistics. Simpson is the executive vice president, chief marketing officer and president of Integrated Capacity Solutions and Truckload for J.B. Hunt. Her accomplishments include increasing revenue for J.B. Hunt from $4.5 billion to $6.2 billion over five years and leading her business unit to a nearly billion-dollar entity through strategic guidance and innovative ideas. The business unit is now among the top five of 3rd party logistics companies in the trucking industry. Simpson holds several board positions and is involved with Women in Supply Chain Excellence at the University of Arkansas, her alma mater. Choosing the winner among these three finalists was not an easy decision, said Ellen Voie, president and CEO of Women In Trucking. Shelley is very deserving of this award. Increasing revenue by nearly $2 billion over a five-year period shows she is a mover and knows how to get things done. She is well-respected not only as a woman in logistics, but also as a mentor to many women. The Distinguished Woman in Logistics award was established to promote the achievements of women employed in the North American transportation industry. It highlights the vital roles of women in the dynamic and influential field of commercial transportation and logistics. About Women In Trucking Women In Trucking Association, Inc. is a nonprofit association established to encourage the employment of women in the trucking industry, promote their accomplishments and minimize obstacles faced by women working in the trucking industry. Membership is not limited to women, as 17 percent of its members are men who support the mission. Women In Trucking is supported by its members and the generosity of Gold Level Partners: Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems, Daimler Trucks North America, BMO Transportation Finance, Great Dane Trailers, J.B. Hunt Transport, Ryder System, Inc., U.S. Xpress, and Walmart. Follow WIT on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. For more information, visit http://www.womenintrucking.org/. About TMW TMW is a leading transportation software provider to brokerage and 3PL organizations, commercial and private fleets. Founded in 1983, TMW has focused on providing enterprise software to the transportation industry, including asset-based and non-asset-based operations as well as heavy-duty vehicle service centers. With offices in Cleveland, Dallas, Indianapolis, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Raleigh, and Vancouver, the company serves over 2,000 customers, including many of the largest, most sophisticated and complex transportation service companies in North America. TMW is a Trimble Company and part of the international Transportation and Logistics Division. About Truckstop.com Truckstop.com is the one-stop connection between carriers, brokers, and shippers. Founded in 1995 as the first freight-matching marketplace to hit the Web, Truckstop.com has grown to provide load planning and optimization, transportation management, telematics, rate benchmarking, and powerful negotiation tools. Truckstop Pro, Truckstop.coms most recent and most advanced software subscription, offers users a real-time load board and enhanced transportation partner search and qualification. Across North America, Truckstop.com is recognized as a leading resource for transportation data and trends and also serves as the largest credit reporting entity in the transportation industry. Circa Blue Fest is a three-day bluegrass festival featuring some of the most prominent artists in bluegrass today. Circa Blue announces they will present and host the inaugural Circa Blue Fest from May 6-8, 2016. Circa Blue Fest is a three-day bluegrass festival featuring some of the most prominent artists in bluegrass today. This years line-up includes: Blue Highway, Trinity River Band, Jim Hurst, Circa Blue, Lonesome Highway among other talent. The festival is held at the beautiful 40-acre Moose Acres in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Situated in the Eastern Panhandle, bluegrass enthusiasts from Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland and Pennsylvania are among expected attendance. A rain or shine event, the venue features a stage covered by a 400-seat pavilion, surrounded by shaded seating. Rough camping and bathhouses will be available. A family-friendly event, kids can participate in activities like a selfie booth and marshmallow roasting. Award-winning BBQ, instrument & songwriting workshops and camping sites will be available during performances. Ongoing updates and information can be found at CircaBlueFest.com, Facebook, Twitter or email contact(at)circabluefest(dot)com. The event is a collaborative effort with the community, and benefits The Child Safe Center-CAC- "Promoting a Collaborative Response to Child Abuse." The Festival is sponsored by: Martinsburg-Berkeley County Convention & Visitors Bureau, Jefferson Distributing, Child Safe Center, National Media Services Inc., Seven Bends Media, Tri-County Rental, New Belgium Brewing, Cloud 9 Creative, Circa Blue, Tractor Supply Company, Heart Roots Music, The Bluegrass Jamboree, Smallwood and Small Insurance and Platinum PR. We look forward to continuing to work with the Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital Board throughout the placement process and also in achieving their long term strategic goals and initiatives, said Neil Todhunter Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital is pleased to announce that Margie Molitor, FACHE has accepted the position of Interim CEO beginning June 6, 2016. Molitor is coming to Hot Springs Memorial Hospital from Big Horn County Hospital District in Basin, Wyoming where she is their current interim CEO. Molitor began her career as a registered nurse, and was a chief nursing officer for 14 years followed by 10-plus years in CEO work. She earned her nursing degree from South Dakota State University, and worked for Banner Health for 24 years, all of it in small hospitals in South Dakota, Utah, Nebraska and Wyoming. Molitor, who is accredited as a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, went to work for HealthTechS3 in 2014 and has held several interim CEO assignments in the last several years. Molitor was brought in by HealthTechS3, which contracts with the hospital. She expects to be on the job through the recruitment process for a new permanent CEO. Im excited to be here, she said. Weve got people here who really want to do a good job for the community. Molitor said HealthTechS3 assigns its interim CEOs to be active managers and not just hold down the fort during a transition. Were expected not just to manage, but to improve, she said. Molitor said shell focus on ensuring efficiency of operations and good customer service, and also assist the board with the ongoing CEO recruitment process. As for her own style, she said, I believe in a culture of accountability, and doing things the way they should be done. Robin A. Roling, outgoing CEO notes, I have had the good fortune of working with Margie in a variety of settings over the past six years or so. I know she has many skills and talents that will serve our community and hospital well as we move forward. We are fortunate to have her on board! Neil Todhunter, President of HealthTechS3, added, We look forward to continuing to work with the Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital Board throughout the placement process and also in achieving their long term strategic goals and initiatives." HealthTech has already been advertising the permanent position, and the hospital board is expected to begin reviewing resumes in the next few months. The hiring process will include site visits and board interviews with the top candidates. While HealthTechS3 reaches out to attract candidates, Molitor stressed, The selection will be the boards decision. About Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital: Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital is a 25 bed Critical Access Hospital located in Thermopolis, Wyoming. Its mission is to work collaboratively with the community, patient population and other providers to achieve excellence in health care for the community its serves. About HealthTechS3: HealthTechS3 is a 45 year old, award-winning healthcare consulting and strategic hospital services firm based in Brentwood, Tennessee with clients across the United States. It is dedicated to the goal of improving performance, achieving compliance, reducing costs and ultimately improving patient care for its client hospitals. The Cynosure Group is pleased to announce that Keith Taylor has joined the firm as a Managing Director. Mr. Taylor comes to Cynosure from The Carlyle Group in Washington, DC, where he was a Managing Director, having spent nine years with Carlyles Global Financial Services Fund Group, helping manage two private equity funds. While at Carlyle, he was responsible for a number of the firms most successful financial services investments and led the firms sourcing of investments in the asset management and wealth advisory industries. Before joining Carlyle, Mr. Taylor was an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, working in Goldmans Financial Institutions Group, and he worked in a similar capacity for JPMorgan Chase and J.P. Morgan. At Cynosure, Mr. Taylor will be responsible for sourcing and managing direct private equity investments across a wide range of industries. In addition, he will be an integral part of helping the firm develop a separate wealth advisory capacity for ultra high net worth clients, bringing his experience as an investor in that industry to the establishment of a new line of business. Cynosure will benefit from Keiths unique blend of industry knowledge and executive management experience in both the private equity and wealth advisory business lines, which will both broaden and deepen the services we can offer our investment clients, said Randal Quarles, Managing Partner of The Cynosure Group. Mr. Taylor serves as a Director of Brand Group Holdings, Inc., Avalon Advisors and Conifer Securities. He received an M.B.A. from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.S. in Accounting from Washington and Lee University. About The Cynosure Group The Cynosure Group is a Salt Lake City based company offering long-term equity investments in private companies across a range of industries. The company offers a direct investment platform to source, evaluate, and manage direct private equity investments. Cynosure has expertise in financial services, industrials, healthcare, natural resources, consumer/retail and technology and provides comprehensive wealth management services to high net worth families, foundations and other organizations in the intermountain west. Web: http://cynosureinvestments.com Balfours Yearbook Yearbook has remained the gold standard for publications of this type since its inception. Balfour, a leading publisher of student yearbooks, today released the 30th anniversary edition of the Yearbook Yearbook, a showcase of outstanding achievement in yearbook design, writing and photography. Featuring exceptional student work from their schools 2015 publications, the 368-page volume includes more than 800 examples of exceptional yearbook covers, theme development, design and photography. The Yearbook Yearbook features yearbooks from across the country and overseas. The included work was selected by a panel of judges including scholastic journalism professionals and award-winning yearbook advisers. Work from fewer than 200 of more than 2,000 yearbooks submitted for consideration is included in the 2016 Yearbook Yearbook. In 1987, Taylor Publishing - now Balfour Yearbooks - pioneered the concept of a compendium of the best yearbook theme, design and photography of the year. The 30th edition remains true to the first editions objective: to recognize outstanding achievement in all areas of yearbook work; to highlight, in one volume, the best examples of the years yearbook design and writing. Balfours Yearbook Yearbook has remained the gold standard for publications of this type since its inception. Were delighted to honor these talented staffs work. The publication has been copied, but never duplicated, said Mike Cobb, Director of Marketing for Balfour. While the function and tradition of yearbooks remain much as they have for the past 30 years, the quality of the design and content has not. The publications featured in this years edition of the Yearbook Yearbook arent your parents yearbooks each is an example of remarkable design and photography. The featured work serves as a source of inspiration for yearbook staffs around the world. Long recognized as a leader in educational and design resources for yearbook staffs, Balfour remains committed to the recognition of yearbook staffs work in producing one-of-a-kind publications that are meaningful to their respective schools, students and communities. Learn more about Balfours Yearbook Yearbook here: http://www.balfour.com/educators/yearbook-advisers/education-resources. About Balfour Yearbooks Balfour Yearbooks is a brand of American Achievement Corporation. American Achievement provides products that forever mark the special moments of peoples lives. As the parent company of brands such as ArtCarved, Balfour, Keepsake and Taylor Publishing, American Achievements legacy is based upon the delivery of exceptional, innovative products including class rings, yearbooks, graduation products, achievement publications and affinity jewelry through in-school and retail distribution. American Achievements products are available through a variety of channels, including direct sales to students in high schools and colleges, national jewelry retailers, independent jewelry stores and mass merchandisers. For more information, visit http://www.balfour.com. For the second year in a row, the Aesthetic Surgery Center is proud to announce that Dr. Anurag Agarwal has been recognized as one of Castle Connolly's Top Doctors in Florida. This recognition confirms that patients and doctors alike view Dr. Agarwal as one of the best surgeons in his field. Due to his expertise and skill in facial plastic surgery, it is no surprise that Dr. Agarwal has received this prestigious award once again. Castle Connolly's Top Doctors list is a prestigious honor that doctors receive after nomination by peers in their field. Doctors are asked who they believe is the best physician in their region. The research team of Castle Connolly then examines the qualifications, education, and experience of those nominated in order to select the very best doctors within each community. The research team noted that not only was Dr. Agarwal one of the most popular doctors within his local community, he was also considered one of the best within the entire state. The honor of being on Castle Connolly's Top Doctors list for two years in a row is just one of the many professional honors that Dr. Agarwal has received. Known for his ability to combine fast recovery times with excellent results and optimal patient satisfaction, Dr. Agarwal has served as the President of the Florida Society of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and routinely serves as a guest board examiner for the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. The doctor has been featured as a facial plastic surgery expert on several news outlets, including ABC and FOX. In 2013, Dr. Agarwal was featured in the Gulfshore Business magazine's list of the top 40 business leaders under the age of 40. Dr. Agarwals strong background in educational excellence was another factor considered in Castle Connollys selection process. In 1999, Dr. Agarwal received his Doctorate of Medicine at the MCP-Hahnemann School of Medicine, where he gained membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. He later spent several years receiving extensive training in his specialty of head and neck surgery. When he first became a board certified facial plastic surgeon in 2007, the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery recognized him for his scholastic excellence during his board examinations. Dr. Agarwal later went on to become the owner and medical director of the Aesthetic Surgery Center. Being featured on Castle Connolly's Top Doctors list is a great honor because it indicates that both patients and doctors throughout Florida are impressed by Dr. Agarwal's work at the Aesthetic Surgery Center. He specializes in endoscopic facelift surgery, rhinoplasty, blepharoplasty, lip enhancement, fat transfer to the face, hair replacement, facial injectables, and skin cancer reconstruction to the face. Dr. Agarwal has also developed his signature procedure, The UpLiftTM Facelift, for tightening and lifting the upper neck and jawline. By maintaining his high standards of excellence while discovering new methods for procedures, Dr. Anurag Agarwal has managed to gain this distinguished recognition from Castle Connolly for the second consecutive year in a row. Contact Info: Dr. Anurag Agarwal 11181 Health Park Blvd #1115 Naples, FL 34110 http://www.aestheticsurgerycenter.com/ Sheet masks are a hot trend in the beauty industry right now, and more and more shoppers are heading to their department stores to find them With green living becoming increasingly more mainstream, retailers must now meet the demands of eco-concious consumers. This month, BioRepublic Skincare the first ever line of environmentally-friendly sheet masks launches at select Bloomingdales stores on the east and west coasts, as well as online via Bloomingdales.com. The brand can be found at the 59th Street flagship and Soho stores in New York; Boca Raton, FL; Ala Moana, HI; Short Hills, NJ and Lenox Square, GA locations, as well as at San Francisco Centre, Sherman Oaks, Newport Beach and Beverly Center in California. The renowned retailer will carry the brands full assortment of individual sheet masks; On the Glow and Mini Glow Kits; Lost Baggage 10 Mask Set; No More Years 8 Mask Set and Aloe, Green Tea, Cucumber and Pomegrante 10 Mask Sets. With an evergrowing presence in beauty boutiques and luxury spas nationwide, Bloomingdales marks BioRepublic Skincares first venture into a mass retailer. Sheet masks are a hot trend in the beauty industry right now, and more and more shoppers are heading to their department stores to find them, says Paolo Mentonelli, Co-Founder of BioRepublic Skincare. We are honored to enter into this partnership with Bloomingdales and bring our masks to their clientele the everyday consumer who wants a little luxury in their life. As the first brand to bring eco-friendly sheet masks to the market, BioRepublic Skincare offers a 15 minute rejuvenating facial treatment that ensures optimal delivery of vital nutrients and moisture to the skin. Not only is each mask packed with half a bottle of nourishing serum, but all are free of parabens, phthalates and other harsh chemicals. Additionally, all masks are made from biodegradable and recyclable materials and formulated with natural bamboo fibers and most recently, biocellulose materials, which can be found in BioRepublic Skincares newest launches, No More Years and Lost Baggage. About BioRepublic Skincare After a decade of traveling across every corner of the globe, experiencing culinary and health rituals of various cultures, and learning about natural remedies, longtime friends Justin Hong and Paolo Mentonelli decided to team up to create a new brand of skincare products that value function over form, combining the best natural remedies with exciting innovations they discovered during their journeys. Founded in 2014, Atlanta-based BioRepublic Skincare has clear mandates for their products: develop functional products inspired by rituals from around the world, use only the highest quality natural ingredients, never test on animals, and absolutely no parabens, sulfates, pthalates, or any other harmful chemicals. BioRepublic SkinCare strives to make their products accessible to all while giving back to the world at every opportunity. For more information please visit http://www.biorepublic.com. Decorated Wall Hanging Egypt, early 20th century Cotton Newark Museum Purchase, 1929 29.1470 Most Islamic art exhibitions focus on works from the Middle East, North Africa or South Asia, but this exhibition includes a much larger scope. Bringing together both historic and contemporary objects from its diverse collectionsAsian, African, American and the decorative arts of Europethe Newark Museums winter 2016 feature exhibition showcases the history and breadth of Islamic art. More than 100 works on display in Wondrous Worlds: Art & Islam Through Time & Place reflect aspects of faith, culture and everyday life of Muslims across the world and throughout the ages. The exhibition runs through May 15, 2016. The exhibition features works in nearly all media, including carpets, costumes, jewelry, ceramics, glassware, metalworks, prints, paintings and photographs. Contemporary works from artists such as Rachid Koraichi and Victor Ekpuk, and modern day calligraphy by Hassan Massoudy will be shown with pieces dating back to the 9th-century. Highlights range from dazzling lustrewares of Iran and Spain to delicate prayer rugs from Turkey and India, as well as Harem #1 from the bi-national Moroccan-American photographer Lalla Essaydi and a majestic pair of early-20th-century Egyptian applique tent hangingsmeasuring 10 feet high and 6 feet widethat were acquired in Egypt in 1929 by John Cotton Dana, the Newark Museums founding director and museum education pioneer. John Cotton Dana focused on making relevant connections between objects and peoples lives, while providing inspiration to artists, artisans and makers across disciplines, said Steven Kern, Museum Director and CEO. Through this exhibition, our audiences will gain a more nuanced understanding and appreciation for Islamic art along with other multi-cultural art forms they may encounter in the future. The exhibition opens with a world map populated with select items that demonstrate the intercontinental reach of the Dar al-Islam or Islamic Worldtouching all continents except Antarctica. Most Islamic art exhibitions focus on works from the Middle East, North Africa or South Asia, but this exhibition includes a much larger scope. We showcase works from Southeast Asia, the Americas as well as East and West Africa, said Dr. Katherine Anne Paul, Curator of the Arts of Asia and lead curator of the exhibition. Kimberli Gant, Arts of Global Africa Mellon Foundation Curatorial Fellow, an assistant curator on the exhibition, as well as curators from other departments all have worked together to expand the scope of the project geographically and materially. Wondrous Worlds opens with an introduction to the Five Pillars of IslamDeclaration of Faith, Daily Prayers, Charity, Fasting for Ramadan and the Haj Pilgrimageto provide context and a distinctive view into the function, artistry and cultural histories of the objects. The exhibition then expands upon five themes: InternationalismsThen and Now, highlights the long history of inter-continental trade and the role that the Hajj pilgrimage plays in promoting international interconnections. The trade of Turkish textiles to Morocco, English and Dutch textiles inspired by Indonesian prints that were exported to Africa, as well as a ceramics traded between China, Iran and Turkey are featured in this section. Quran, Calligraphy and Book Arts delves into the power of the written word, not only through the Quran but also through histories and poetry written in diverse scripts representing different languages including Arabic, Farsi, Nsibidi, Turkish, and Urdu. Hospitality: Fasting, Feasting and Fun, celebrates the domesticated arts. A mise-en-scene installation of a Moroccan feast will showcase a Rabat carpet, leather cushions, wooden screen and metal table settings. Glorious ceramics, paintings and musical instruments from other regions will also be highlighted. Architecture and Its Offspring, glories in architectural legacies displayed in carpets, printed textiles, furniture, tile-works, and historic and contemporary photographs of India and Morocco. Body Beautiful: Costumes, Fashion and Faith positions silk, velvet and sequined costumes and textiles alongside fabulous jewelry fashioned from diamonds, pearls, emeralds, jade, gold and silver. The exhibition is supported in part by the Coby Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the NJ Council on the Humanities. Special thanks to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation for support of curatorial and conservation activities related to the exhibition. This exhibition was made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. For additional information, follow the Museum on Facebook at facebook.com/newark.museum or Twitter at twitter.com/newarkmuseum; or by visiting http://www.newarkmuseum.org. # Celiac Disease Foundation Patient Engagement Celiac Disease Network In 2016, Celiac Disease Foundation (CDF) continues to push researchers to investigate what is most important to patients when it comes to celiac disease potential treatments and cures. An award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is helping this effort. The PCORI Eugene Washington Engagement Award allows CDF to train patients and caregivers to become more involved in research in ways that will impact the treatment of their disease, by creating a national network of advocates trained in patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR), known as the Patient Engagement Celiac Disease Network (PECDN). While patients and caregivers are eager to participate in research, many feel unprepared when working with researchers. Researcher expectations and usage of medical lingo can be intimidating. The goal of the PECDN is to break down those barriers by training patients and caregivers to feel confident, prepared, and ready to engage in PCOR. The intent of this training is to provide the knowledge and tools needed to be active partners in PCOR, not to merely fill a traditional, passive patient or study subject role. The goals of the PECDN, in conjunction with iCureCeliac and other PCORI-funded CDF projects, are timely and critical in equipping patients with tools to propel celiac disease research toward a cure, says Marilyn G. Geller, Celiac Disease Foundation Chief Executive Officer. The PEDCN is part of a comprehensive effort by CDF to meet the public health challenge of increasing the diagnosis of and improving treatments for celiac disease and other gluten-related disorders, while working towards a cure. PECDN advocates are also encouraged to share their research ideas online through MOSAIC, a crowdsourcing software platform to develop research studies with input from patients and their families, disease advocates, researchers, and healthcare providers, hosted by UCSF. This project was selected for Engagement Award funding not only for its commitment to engaging patients and other stakeholders, but also for its potential to increase the usefulness and trustworthiness of the information we produce and facilitate its dissemination and uptake, said Jean Slutsky, PCORIs Chief Engagement and Dissemination Officer. We look forward to following the projects progress and working with Celiac Disease Foundation to share the results. The PECDN will kick off with a pilot workshop at Celiac Disease Foundations National Conference on April 30, 2016 at the Pasadena Convention Center in California. PECDN participants will receive a stipend upon workshop completion. Participants will evaluate the training program and become the first cohort of PECDN advocates, so that lessons learned may inform the additional workshops planned throughout the country in 2016 and 2017. Patients and caregivers are encouraged to apply by April 15th to be a PECDN pilot workshop participant. For more information contact info(at)celiac(dot)org. About Celiac Disease Foundation Celiac Disease Foundation (CDF) was established as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in 1990 to improve the quality of life for all individuals impacted by celiac disease and other gluten-related disorders. Affecting 1% of the worlds population and with a prevalence doubling every 15 years, celiac disease is both a serious genetic autoimmune disorder and a growing public health challenge. Despite a simple blood screening test, only one in six celiac disease sufferers is diagnosed, leaving millions at risk for long-term health complications including Type 1 diabetes, thyroid, liver and heart disease, and intestinal cancers. CDF leads the fight to increase the rate of diagnosis, to improve treatments, and to find a cure. Learn more about Celiac Disease Foundation at celiac.org. About PCORI The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is an independent, nonprofit organization authorized by Congress in 2010. Its mission is to fund research that will provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to continually seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work. HRMS Solutions | Epicor HCM Business Partner Strong partnerships are built on setting and achieving mutual expectations and HRMS demonstrated a level of commitment over the past year that speaks to their organizational values and execution capabilities. HRMS Solutions, Inc. (HRMS) has been named Gold Partner in the 2015 Epicor Americas Channel Partner Awards. Recipients were selected by Epicor Software Corporation, a global provider of industry-specific enterprise software to promote business growth, based on exceptional performance in customer growth, satisfaction, overall dedication, total sales and commitment to Epicor solutions. Mike Maiorino, CEO and Founder for HRMS stated, We are honored and happy to once again be recognized with the Gold Partner designation. We have been an Epicor HCM business partner since 2005 and this recognition is evidence to the continued success of our partnership and validation that Epicor has taken notice of HRMSs commitment to the business needs of our clients and prospects. "This recognition from Epicor highlights our ability to offer the services and expertise our customers require to realize the full value of their HR technology investment and to solve their unique human capital management challenges, said Maiorino. We are excited to continue to strengthen our relationship with Epicor as we meet the HR technology needs of our customers with a complete end-to-end HRIS software solution and exceptional service." As a premier HR, payroll and talent management solutions implementation firm, our success is based on our ability to exceed customer expectations through extraordinary service. The proof of our success is evident in the fact that over the past twelve months, the number of Epicor HCM customers we serve has increased by 27.7 percent and the number of customer re-engagements after implementation has increased by over 11 percent. We are proud to honor our 2015 channel partner award recipients for their exceptional work and dedication to Epicor solutions and customers, said John Matterson, Sr. Director, Channel, Epicor. Strong partnerships are built on setting and achieving mutual expectations and HRMS demonstrated a level of commitment over the past year that speaks to their organizational values and execution capabilities. The 2015 Epicor Americas Channel Partner Awards were presented at a special luncheon for partners at the annual Epicor Ignite sales conference held in Boca Raton, Fla. Epicor Channel Partner Program Epicor provides a solid foundation for our Channel Partners who are committed to excellence and customer satisfaction. The Epicor Channel Partner Program, part of the Epicor Partner Network, is our comprehensive sales, marketing, and support program that offers our Channel Partners significant opportunities to grow their businesses with award winning products, training, and support in a highly competitive, dynamic marketplace. About HRMS Solutions, Inc. HRMS Solutions is a selective group of professionals offering a better buying and implementation experience for HR, payroll and talent management solutions. Founded in 2003, HRMS has enabled hundreds of mid-market companies throughout the U.S. and Canada to better manage, empower and optimize their workforce with leading cloud or on-premise HCM solutions. HRMS mission is to serve as a trusted advisor to prospects and clients seeking new solutions to their human capital challenges. Our promise of integrity, objectivity and credibility ensures the absolute best experience when purchasing and implementing HR technology solutions. More information on HRMS solutions and services can be found at http://www.hrmssolutions.com. # # # Epicor and the Epicor logo are trademarks of Epicor Software Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. Other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners. The product and service offerings depicted in this document are produced by HRMS Solutions and/or Epicor Software Corporation. I've really been impressed with Wpromote and I'm excited to be joining the team as an Advisory Board Member, said Renwick Wpromote, the nations leading digital marketing agency, announced in early April the appointment of former Head of Industry, Health Services at Google and current Head of Sales at Lyft, Gyre Renwick, to be the newest Advisory Board Member at Wpromote. This announcement dovetails with the 2016 opening of a Wpromote office in San Francisco, where Renwick is located. Renwick, a thirteen-year Google veteran and sales expert, joins Wpromote to bring years of experience in driving digital marketing innovation. His talent for creating growth and strategizing at high levels, especially in enterprise and mid-market, will be especially applicable to Wpromotes book of clients. Renwick will help Wpromote provide even more impactful offerings and business solutions. I've really been impressed with Wpromote and I'm excited to be joining the team as an Advisory Board Member, said Renwick. I'm looking forward to helping Wpromote continue its path of exponential growth and expansion while delivering world class strategies for our customers. In his role at Google, Renwick focused on providing strategy and support to top Healthcare partners across all of Google Products globally. This success with products, collaborators, and teams will now be applied to Wpromote and help elevate Wpromotes services nationally and globally, improving the flow and efficiency of sales teams, growing key accounts, and streamlining major projects. As a 13-year veteran of Google, Gyres experience and insight into the needs and opportunities of Googles advertisers is unmatched, and were incredibly excited to bring him on as a board member, said Michael Mothner, Wpromote Founder & CEO. Formalizing this relationship and taking it to a new level will allow us to collaborate fully on a wide range of projects and really deliver exceptional quality to our clients. Renwick has worked with Wpromote in the past on shared, key clients such as Zenni Optical and Elements Behavioral Health, and will continue to do so in his new role as Advisory Board Member. His leadership in the San Francisco area will aid Wpromote with expansion into the Bay Area, as well as Silicon Valley, as the company establishes its third office by the end of Q2, 2016. About Wpromote Founded in 2001 by Michael Mothner, Wpromote is an award-winning online marketing firm headquartered in El Segundo, California with nearly 200 employees and expanding rapidly. Named one of the Best Places to Work in the US by Ad Age two years running, Wpromote has helped hundreds of clients from startups to Fortune 500 companies grow their businesses online with end-to-end digital solutions. Through integrated search, mobile, and social marketing, the firm has propelled Toyota, Bayer HealthCare, Verizon, Sungard, Z Gallerie, Wienerschnitzel, Shutterstock, J.D. Power, TUMI, and Billabong into dominating the online Commerce space. With unmatched experience in multi-channel, content-centric campaigns and unrivaled dedication to clients results, Wpromote helps companies big and small act and move like large enterprises. For more information, visit http://www.Wpromote.com. About Gyre Renwick Renwick is an accomplished sales and marketing management professional with recognized success in strongly impacting the growth of the sales team at Google, from a startup environment to serving a global advertiser base today. He has expertise in increasing revenue, penetrating new markets, and building brand visibility by leveraging Internet marketing and social media. Renwick is keenly attuned to key business drivers, market signals, and market trends. Financial innovation and legislation are intersecting once again - about to leave an indelible mark on Americas economy. This time, as the modern SDIRA makes tax-deferred micro alternative investing possible, the stars are aligning for retail investors. Dara Albright Media announces the availability of a new white paper titled, "The Renaissance of the Retail Investor and its Monumental Impact on Marketplace Lending, Equities Crowdfunding, and the U.S. Retirement System." The white paper - which was written in collaboration with fellow crowdfinance industry pioneers: James A. Jones and Kim Wales - addresses the legislative changes being promulgated during the most prolific era for FinTech, and how, in confluence, these two dynamics have begun galvanizing retail investors - leading to seismic shifts in capital markets demographics and Americas retirement system. This is the first in a series of white papers that will illustrate the magnitude of tax-deferred micro alternative investing and how it will transform financial services, empower crowdfinance, inspire a new generation of alternative products, and most significantly, thwart a looming national retirement crisis while shrinking Americas harrowing wealth gap. Key themes highlighted in the white paper include: The correlation between the tax-deferred investing opportunity gap and Americas escalating wealth disparity; How traditional equity and credit markets have been failing the investing public; How traditional retirement vehicles have been failing the investing public; The growing importance of alternative assets to an investors portfolio; The most recent legislation aimed at democratizing access to alternative investment products; The consequences of a class-based investing system and the constitutionality of the accredited investor rule; How to protect investors while simultaneously expanding their investing freedoms; Groundbreaking investment products, technologies and platforms emerging to support tax-deferred retail alternative investing; How FinTech will thwart a looming retirement crisis and allow P2P and equities crowdfunding to scale; How the marriage between a game-changing hi-tech retirement vehicle and a new generation of retail alternatives will transform financial services in much the same way that the 401k and mutual fund products did 35 years ago when they came together and, in unison, ballooned into trillion dollar industries. A hard copy of the white paper will be available exclusively at LendIt 2016, the worlds largest conference connecting the global online lending community being held on April 11-12 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis. LendIt participants will be able to obtain a copy of the white paper by visiting IRA Services exhibit booth #806 where they will also have the opportunity to test drive ISCP, the industrys first scalable, bank-grade secure, cloud-based retirement investment solution for the next-generation of P2P and Crowdfunding investing. The white paper will be available electronically following the conclusion of the conference. To obtain a digital copy, please email info(at)daraalbright(dot)com. About Dara Albright Media Since 2011, Dara Albright Media has been helping set the direction of the crowdfinance industry through leading-edge industry articles, white papers as well as acclaimed conferences and webinars that introduce crowd-centric alternative asset classes such as crowdfunding and P2P lending to the financial community. Additional information can be found at http://www.daraalbright.com. La Granja Hammocks Miami La Granja has opened yet another location at 11735 SW 147 Avenue, Miami, FL 33196 to better serve aficionados of their delicious Latin American cuisine with roots from Peru. With already over 40 locations in South Florida, La Granja continues to provide satisfied customers with their specialties, like Pollo a la Brasa, or Peruvian Rotisserie Chicken, and ceviche, a seafood dish popular in the coastal regions of Latin America. La Granja Restaurants use their own unique recipe for preparing their delicious and flavorful Pollo a la Brasa. Their menu offers the whole, half or quarter chicken combined with rice and beans, or boneless chicken breast with rice and beans, or chicken wings with fries. Ceviche is a traditional Peruvian dish comprised of a mixed assortment of fish, which can include squid, octopus, scallops, clams, shrimp, accompanied by sweet potato and Peruvian corn. La Granja serves two different recipes of ceviche as entrees on their menu: Ceviche Mixto, a mixed seafood dish where the raw seafood is "cooked" using only the juice from lemons and limes; and Ceviche de Pescado, which uses any type of whitefish, shrimp or other shellfish, spices and vegetables. La Granja Restaurants prepare their food with fresh, healthy ingredients, all at an affordable price. Its a great place to bring the family, or to pick up a meal to eat at home. All meals are prepared fresh and are very affordable. La Granja also supports the South Florida community by partnering with grassroots youth organizations like ASPIRA, honoring veterans, and offering scholarships to Florida residents of Hispanic and Latino descent to Palm Beach Community College. For further information, please contact: La Granja Corporate Office 3907 NW 49th Street Tamarac, Fl 33309 Phone: (954) 968-7988 info(at)lagranjarestaurants(dot)com http://lagranjarestaurants.com/ Anne Roberts with Healthy Vending Machine I know the ill effects of toxins and chemicals in our food. They don't belong where our kids are educated or where we work and play. Longstanding health expert and entrepreneur Anne Reynolds Robertson is saying no to junk food and has launched a healthy vending business in the greater Austin market as a distributor of Vend Naturals Healthy Vending program (http://www.vendnatural.com). Inspired by the opportunity to bring healthy snacks and beverages to schools, community centers and hospitals in the area, Anne now operates healthy vending machines in area middle schools and will soon add machines in a private school, youth center and a university. Vend Naturals Healthy Vending Program offers local distributor partners with machines, products, such as smoothies, soymilk, fruit, vegetables, granola bars, baked chips and natural sodas, and service, all customized to meet the needs of the local market. With my passion and experience in understanding the effects of toxins and chemicals in our food, healthy vending appealed to me as a way to further impact our community in a positive way, said Robertson. As an entrepreneur with a strong orientation on health and wellness, I am so pleased to be in a business where my values align with my work. Vend Naturals program allowed me to do just that. Anne Reynolds Robertson currently operates machines in Hill Country Middle School (Eanes School District), where all four of her children graduated, and will be installing new machines at St. Stephens Episcopal School, West Austin Youth Association and Huston Tillotson University. Today at Hill Middle School, kids are snacking on veggie straws, pretzel crisps, pistachios, popcorn and orange juice instead of chips, candy bars and soda. Robertson, a mother of four, first became inspired to learn about the connection between food and health when she moved into a new house with her husband and young children where several members of the previous family had passed away. With cancer on both sides of her family and a strong curiosity to understand the connection between toxins and health, Robertson began engaging with organizations aimed at educating the public about the risk of toxins and chemical exposures on health. This work has become a driving force in her life and today, in addition to operating her growing healthy vending business, she serves on the boards of the Sustainable Food Center (http://www.sustainablefoodcenter.org), Health Code (http://www.healthcode.org), Mt. Sinais Children Environmental Health Center (http://www.cehcenter.org), My Safety Nest (http://www.mysafetynest.org) and the Chemical Footprint Project (http://www.chemicalfootprint.org). Speaking about the addition of Robertson to the Vend Natural Healthy Vending family, CEO William H. Carpenter, Jr. said, Anne is passionate about health and truly understands how what we eat and drink affects our health. You combine her dedication to raising awareness about these issues with her strong acumen as a businesswoman, and you have a terrific distributor/partner for our company. We support Anne in any way we can, said Carpenter. Vend Natural (http://www.vendnatural.com), the oldest healthy vending company in the industry, specializes in providing colleges, universities, municipalities, schools, hospitals and businesses with healthier snacks and drinks to combat skyrocketing rates of obesity for both adults and teenagers. Vend Naturals array of healthy snacks and drinks are available in their state-of-the-art dual-zone machines that carry both snacks and chilled drinks. The high-tech and brightly colored Vend Natural machines carry a wide selection of both refrigerated drinks and ambient temperature snacks such as all natural chips and popcorn, low fat health bars, natural coconut water and more. The product assortment also includes a full range of gluten-free, sugar free, high protein and lower fat products as well an assortment of fresh fruits, yogurt, organic fruit smoothies, cottage cheese and hummus. About Vend Natural Vend Natural, which today operated machines coast to coast, is Americas oldest and fastest-growing healthy snacking company and is based in Annapolis, Maryland. The company was inspired by the vision of helping to transform eating patterns by providing healthy snacking alternatives in convenient vending locations across America. Specializing in placements in schools, hospitals and businesses, the companys commitment to growth is based on selecting sound locations, highly motivated distributors who share the vision for a healthier America and attracting, retaining and delighting customers who discover healthier products at exceptional values.For more information, visit http://www.vendnatural.com. Baltimore's Columbus Center We are thrilled with the new space and proud to be part of the Columbus Centers culture of multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation, says PathSensors President Ted Olsen. PathSensors, Inc., a leading biotechnology and environmental testing company, has relocated to the Columbus Center in Baltimores Inner Harbor. The company now occupies over 4,000 square feet of laboratory, office, and manufacturing space. The new facilities represent a space increase of more than double over the University of Maryland BioPark, where the company was previously located. The Columbus Center, located at 701 East Pratt Street in Baltimore, houses the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET) and Harbor Launch, a business incubator for biotech and environmental startup companies. Recently, the Columbus Center hosted the Social, Health, and Sustainability Innovation Conferences as part of Baltimores Light City festival. We are thrilled with the new space and proud to be part of the Columbus Centers culture of multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation, says PathSensors President Ted Olsen. IMETs Director Russell Hill is enthusiastic about PathSensors' move into the Columbus Center: Ive followed the growth and excellent progress of PathSensors over the past few years and am delighted to have them nearby. We expect to establish productive scientific collaborations with this impressive company. About the Columbus Center The Columbus Center is a teaching and research facility of the University System of Maryland (USM) located on Baltimores Inner Harbor with faculty, staff, and students from four (4) USM institutions; they are (1) University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), (2) University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), (3) University of Maryland, Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and (4) Towson University (TU). Leading technology companies, such as PathSensors, Inc., also lease space in the building, which provides opportunities for public-private collaboration between these companies and universities. The Columbus Center is home to the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET), a joint USM research institute capitalizing on the research, training and technology transfer capabilities of UMB, UMBC and UMCES, its partner institutions. IMET includes an incubator program, Harbor Launch, which provides space for young companies working to promote the development of products and services with a focus on the environment and human health. Towson Universitys Center for STEM Excellence Program and UMBCs Institute of Fluorescence are also located at the Columbus Center. The Columbus Center provides an environment for fostering a community of collaboration between universities and industry in biotechnology and related fields. About PathSensors, Inc. PathSensors Inc., a biotech company headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland has developed and commercialized MIT-LL technology enabling the highly reliable identification of airborne and liquid-based pathogens. PathSensors currently offers the Zephyr and BioFlash systems to provide the rapid and highly reliable identification of airborne, liquid and surface-based pathogens. Government organizations and industry currently use these systems for monitoring, detection and identification of pathogens in biosecurity, mail screening, food processing, agriculture and environmental testing. PathSensors is privately held. For more information, please visit http://www.PathSensors.com, call 443.557.6150 or email info(at)PathSensors.com. We are excited for the release of the first of many templates relating to medical device design. Cognition Corporation (http://www.cognition.us), a software company specializing in medical device compliance and commercialization, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, announced today the release of the first of many program templates in a new series targeted at assisting small to medium medical device manufacturers to comply with FDA and ISO regulations. Cognition will first release the PHA Exercise template, influenced by BS EN ISO 14971:2012 and IEC 62366:2008, to assist companies in completing the PHA (Preliminary Hazard Analysis) Exercise process. The template uses Cognitions legacy product, Cockpit, as the underlying engine to perform the PHA exercise with ease. It guides program teams through the process of completing the PHA Exercise defined in two widely used standards for medical device compliance: ISO 14971 and IEX 62366. The final product is a completed PHA table that can be included in regulatory submissions and stored in the established quality management system. We are excited for the release of the first of many templates relating to medical device design, said David Cronin, CEO of Cognition Corporation. These templates are meant for small to medium sized businesses who wish to easily maintain compliance while confidently decreasing the time it takes to complete a submission. In addition to the template, Cognition has released a white paper detailing them and the benefits of implementing them. Download the complimentary paper here to see how these new templates can help you. The next template pack Cognition will release is for Design Controls (21 CFR 820.30) and will guide medical device companies through best practices recommended by FDA for compliance within the United States. The latest paper really captures the reason why we decided to create these templates. Creating a product can be complicated and stressful. Maintaining compliance while designing the product just adds to that, said Mr. Cronin. Our goal is to help companies lessen some of the stress and complication by guiding them through the process in an easy to follow, user friendly manner. About Cognition Corporation Cognition Corporation, headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, has been offering solutions for medical device compliance and commercialization for more than ten years. Cognitions Cockpit Platform provides the framework for the extensive set of compliance templates they offer. These templates along with professional services give companies a jump-start to reduce time to market. ### we are confident that this important research will help to improve student achievement and support teachers in their valuable work Istation reports that The Morgridge International Reading Center (MIRC) at the University of Central Florida will extend its research partnership with Istation Reading for the 20162017 school year. The partnership will continue to support a statewide reading performance study among Florida students in grades pre-K through 5. New for this year, the project will also include free and unlimited access to Istation's Reading en Espanol program. This program can be implemented in different English Learner models, including English Development, Dual Language and Bilingual Education. Paired with Istation Reading, the Spanish assessments help teachers and administrators better understand and compare individual students language and literacy skills. We are honored to work with the educators in Florida and the talented team at University of Central Floridas MIRC. Together, our goal is to improve literacy outcomes for students, said Richard H. Collins, Istation Chairman and CEO. Istations computer-delivered educational technology includes computer-adaptive assessments, highly interactive and engaging computer-based intervention curriculum, immediate online reports, home usage with Istation Home, and a complete library of Web-based training videos and teaching resources. Throughout the year, Istation will also provide free professional development seminars and webinars at various locations for participating teachers and administrators. Participation by districts and schools in the MIRC-Istation project is voluntary and open to all Florida public school students in grades pre-K through 5 and state-assessed Florida charter school students up to a maximum of 600,000 students. No identifying student information will be provided to MIRC, and all data analyses will be performed without identifying information from participating students, schools or districts. I am excited about continuing our research with Istation in Florida. With the large number of students enrolled in the program, we are confident that this important research will help to improve student achievement and support teachers in their valuable work, said Dr. Sandra Robinson, Executive Director of the Morgridge International Reading Center and the Toni Jennings Exceptional Education Institute at the University of Central Florida. The study began in the 2014-2015 school year. To sign up to participate, visit http://www.istation.com/UCF or call 866-883-7323 and select option 6. For more information about MIRC UCF and this project, visit http://www.education.ucf.edu/mirc or contact Dr. Laurie Campbell at MIRCIstation(at)ucf(dot)edu or 407-882-6472. About The Morgridge International Reading Center The Morgridge International Reading Center at the University of Central Florida, in partnership with universities and organizations throughout the world, is dedicated to advancing disciplinary literacy through communication, collaboration, learning and research. A dynamic complex for the free exchange of ideas and information to improve literacy acquisition and instruction, the Center coordinates national and global efforts through collaboration among authors, practitioners and research scholars, leading to the implementation of action-based programs formulated on evidence-based research and focused on teaching all students to read well. Through research, the Center establishes linkage between theory and practice, creating a synergy that unfolds worldwide in enriched learning environments. Additional information on the Morgridge International Reading Center may be found at http://www.education.ucf.edu/mirc. About Americas Partnership University The University of Central Florida, the nations second-largest university with more than 63,000 students, has grown in size, quality, diversity and reputation in its first 50 years. Today, the university offers more than 200 degree programs at its main campus in Orlando and more than a dozen other locations. UCF is an economic engine attracting and supporting industries vital to the regions future while providing students with real-world experiences that help them succeed after graduation. For more information, visit http://today.ucf.edu. About Istation Istation is an award-winning comprehensive e-learning program used by more than four million students across the world. Known for its accurate assessments, engaging curriculum and trusted teacher tools, Istation helps students in prekindergarten through 12th grade achieve academic growth. Istations computer-adaptive assessments (known as ISIP) immediately place students on personalized instructional paths unique to their needs. An animated, game-like interface effectively engages students so that they dont even know theyre being evaluated. Along with its highly interactive digital curriculum, Istation provides teachers with access to thousands of lessons perfect for instructing small groups or an entire class. Comprehensive progress reports are also immediately available for educators, administrators and parents. Istation offers its ISIP assessment in Early Reading, Advanced Reading, Reading en Espanol and Math. Istation instruction is available in Reading, Reading en Espanol and Math. Students can also use their Istation subscriptions at home. Since its founding in 1998, Dallas-based Istation has seen tremendous growth. The companys animated program is now helping students in 44 states and four countries learn and grow. The social significance and messages in this work are both timely and incredibly relevant for individuals residing in Indiana and around the globe. The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra (ICO) will present Peacemakers, a commissioned, comprehensive work by ICO Composer-in-Residence James Aikman, on April 15, 2016, at 7:30 pm at the Howard L. Schrott Center for the Arts on the campus of Butler University. A signature project of Indianas Bicentennial Commission, Peacemakers has deep ties to Indiana. Both ICO Composer-in-Residence, James Aikman and ICO Music Director and Principal Conductor Matthew Kraemer are Indiana natives, and audio-visual elements of the world premiere include historic peacemaker moments in Indiana history. The multi-movement work recognizes nine peacemakers of the 20th century in a work for chamber orchestra with chorus, soloists, narration, and audio-video projections. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Yitzak Rabin, Anwar Sadat, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter are celebrated in this culturally inclusive project. Aikman, who composed and created the concept of Peacemakers, said he was inspired to perpetuate the legacies of individuals who fought for peace around the world in the 20th century. Each of the peacemakers was committed to advancing peace and human dignity and their lives serve as inspiring models for a world still seeking peace, Aikman said. A collaborative experience integrating the talents of renowned solo artists and performers, Peacemakers brings together the artistry of the ICO with the musical talents of solo artists Rob Dixon, jazz saxophone; Kathryn Krasovec, mezzo-soprano; and Dan Tepfer, 2007 American Pianists Association Cole Porter Jazz Fellow. Tenors Steven Stolen and George Shirley will narrate. The Indianapolis Childrens Choir and Encore Vocal Arts will perform the chorus parts. An accompanying video including footage of Peacemaker Robert F. Kennedys historic remarks in Indianapolis on the evening of Martin Luther Kings assassination is produced by Mike Halerz. The creative process in premiering a new work is exciting and we feel very blessed to have the support of community advocates who believe in the power of music to influence the community for the common good, ICO Executive Director Elaine Eckhart said. The social significance and messages in this work are both timely and incredibly relevant for individuals residing in Indiana and around the globe. The ICO is partnering with the Peace Learning Center and the Desmond Tutu Center to present pre- and post-concert discussions to broaden community impact and address issues of peaceful conflict resolution in the community. Presented as part of Butler ArtsFest 2016, https://butlerartsfest.com/, Peacemakers is made possible, in part, with support from the Indiana Arts Commission and the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation. Adult tickets are $30, student tickets are $12 and group discounts are available. Tickets may be purchased by calling the ICO at (317) 940-9607 or visiting http://www.icomusic.org. This activity is a signature project of the Indiana Bicentennial Commission, and is made possible, in part, with support from the Indiana Arts Commission and the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation. About the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra: The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras ongoing mission is to advance and promote music composed for the small orchestra through professional concert performances and education programs. Tune in to WFYI, 90.1 FM each Monday evening at 10:00 p.m. and Sunday evenings at 9 p.m. to hear the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra Broadcast featuring excerpts of live ICO concerts. Filling a much-needed role in the community, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra also provides accompaniment to many area arts and educational organizations. The ICO offers a variety of educational programs, including the FUNtastic Classics and in-school Artist Residencies. Intimate concert experiences, classic repertoire, and original programming are all part of the ICO experience. For more information about the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and its 31st Intimate, Classic, Original season, visit icomusic.org, call (317) 940-9607, email info(at)icomusic(dot)org, or visit us on Facebook and Twitter. #### The ICOs 31st Season is sponsored by Sheraton Indianapolis City Centre Hotel. Additional support is provided by the Arts Council of Indianapolis, the City of Indianapolis, and the Indiana Arts Commission. We are very excited to leverage Franco Signor's expertise in the area of compliance reporting," said Mike Mobar, President and CEO of Tropics Software Technologies. Two of the workers' compensation industry's most innovative companies have joined forces to provide a premium client experience for Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Extension Act (MMSEA) reporting services. Both Franco Signor and Tropics Software Technologies have lengthy histories serving the workers' compensation industry. By combining their years of experience and knowledge, they plan to deliver an unparalleled user experience for their shared customers. This new partnership promises to deliver improved efficiencies in a number of significant ways. Moving forward, Franco Signor's proprietary MMSEA module will be completely integrated into Tropics' workers' compensation claims system. The integration of Franco Signor's industry-leading reporting solutions with Tropics' market-leading workers' compensation core system will offer Tropics' customer base of 23 workers' compensation insurers the ability to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Extension Act compliance responsibilities. "We are very excited to leverage Franco Signor's expertise in the area of compliance reporting," said Mike Mobar, President and CEO of Tropics Software Technologies. "Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP reporting can be an arduous and potentially expensive area for workers' compensation organizations. Our seamless integration with Franco Signor's solutions will provide our clients with the reassurance that this important aspect of their business is being handled in an effective manner, by compliance reporting experts." Franco Signor's CEO, John Williams, added, "Tropics Software Technologies continues to deliver superior software solutions and unmatched client satisfaction. We are proud to partner with a firm with their experience and reputation in the workers' compensation space. Our industry-leading MMSEA Reporting platform will help Tropics clients successfully complete MMSEA reporting, while also allowing for customized and comprehensive Medicare Secondary Payer Compliance management of claims involving Medicare beneficiaries." About Tropics Software Technologies: Tropics Software Technologies is a national software company specializing in workers' compensation systems. They provide integrated, web-enabled policy, claims, and billing systems. Tropics offers a comprehensive set of configurable modules, based on a common foundation of automated work and document management, which boosts business efficiency. The multi-carrier, multi-state, web-based policy, claims, and billing software can be configured for any type of workers' compensation organization. With over 21 years of experience deploying software exclusively to workers' comp organizations, 23 clients in production, and a 100% success rate for new implementations, Tropics Software is the market leader for core systems in the workers' compensation industry. Contact: Trae Jones Director of Sales & Marketing Tropics Software Technologies, Inc. 7349 Merchant Court Sarasota, FL 34240 941-955-1234 x4322 (Office) 804-651-5435 (Cell) About Franco Signor: Franco Signor is the nation's recognized leader in Medicare Secondary Payer Compliance and the largest provider of Medicare Reporting Services in the United States. Additionally, they offer Medicare Set-Aside Services, Conditional Payment Resolution Services, and Mandatory Insurance Reporting Services. Contact: Virginia L Johnson, MBA, CMSP Vice President, Business Development Franco Signor LLC Wildewood Professional Park 3647 Cortez Road West, Suite 100 Bradenton, FL 34210 716-877-4677 x160 (Office) 704-842-1106 (Cell) 888-370-7030 (Fax) An American Institutes for Research (AIR) study of the efficacy of using online course material to recover Algebra I credit after failing the course found that students using this method had lower pass rates and lower scores on an end-of-course assessment than students assigned to a traditional face-to-face classroom. The study is the first major examination of the effects on student achievement of what has come to be called online credit recovery, a popular strategy often promoted as more engaging and interactive than face-to-face classes and one that offers greater opportunities for individualized feedback and pacing. A total of 1,224 ninth-graders in the Chicago Public Schools who failed second semester Algebra I enrolled in summer school in 2011 or 2012 to make up the course and were randomly assigned by lottery to online or face-to-face instruction. The study focused on Algebra I because more students fail that course than any other, and those who fail Algebra I are particularly unlikely to graduate. In Chicago, for example, roughly one-third of ninth graders fail one or both semesters of the course. Only 15 percent of students who failed both semesters of Algebra I in ninth grade during the 2005-06 school year graduated in four years. For some of the most highly at-risk and generally low-achieving students, the study provides some important cautions about online credit recovery, said Jessica Heppen, a managing researcher at AIR and the studys lead author. While many online credit recovery programs are touted for their effectiveness, the evidence for different types of models, particularly those in wide use, is lacking. The Back on Track study, funded through a grant by the U.S. Department of Educations Institute of Education Sciences, was conducted by AIR and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. The study results will be presented in a series of briefs, two of which are being published today. Participating AIR researchers also will discuss aspects of their work at a symposium on Saturday, April 9, at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association in Washington, D.C. A longer article on the study will soon appear in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. Online credit recovery offerings ranging from virtual labs that have almost no teacher input to models that blend virtual lessons with one-on-one tutoring have grown increasingly popular. Recent studies have show that credit recovery ranks among the fastest growing areas of K-12 online education, and school districts use online courses for this purpose more than any other. The AIR study focused on 17 Chicago schools offering 76 credit recovery classes, split evenly between online and face-to-face delivery. Both classes met daily for about four hours per day for three to four weeks, meeting the 60-hour requirement for a full-semester course. Class size, student characteristics, and prior achievement levels were the same for all the students enrolled. The online courses employed a widely used packaged curriculum that came with web-based course software and an online teacher who communicated individually with students. Students in these sections also had an in-class mentor, as strongly encouraged by this and other online course providers. Among the studys findings: Thirty-one percent of students in the online course earned an A, B or C grade in comparison with 53 percent in the face-to-face course. Students in the online course scored lower on an end-of-course assessment using items that appeared previously on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, answering 38 percent correctly, in comparison with 40 percent in the face-to-face course. In all, 71 percent of study participants in the two types of courses recovered credit, but online students had a significantly lower credit recovery rate66 percent in comparison with 76 percent of students in the more traditional classroom. Students in the online credit recovery class considered the course to be significantly more difficult and grading expectations less clear than did students in the face-to-face course. Online students also reported significantly lower enjoyment of and confidence in mathematics. The one experience that was reportedly more positive for the online students was their comfort with computers. There were no differences between the two groups in terms of their likelihood to earn credit in subsequent mathematics classes or to be on track for graduation at the end of the second year of high school. Besides a brief summarizing the studys findings, an additional Back on Track Study paper released examines in-class mentors role in online credit recovery. Papers in the Back on Track study can be found at http://www.air.org. About AIR Established in 1946, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., the American Institutes for Research (AIR) is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization that conducts behavioral and social science research and delivers technical assistance both domestically and internationally in the areas of health, education and workforce productivity. For more information, visit http://www.air.org. Join the African TMT, Finance and Investment Leaders International investment into African telecoms and technology has been increasing rapidly and several billion-dollar-plus valuation African businesses are emerging in telecom infrastructure, digital media and services Leading investors, operators and advisers active in the African telecom, media and technology (TMT) sectors are meeting in London for TMT Finance & Investment Africa 2016 on June 14, as investment activity accelerates across the continent. International capital investment into African telecoms and technology has been increasing rapidly over the past 18 months, and growth targets are being achieved with several billion-dollar-plus valuation African businesses emerging in telecom infrastructure, digital media and services, said Dominic Lowndes, Managing Director, TMT Finance, the global investment news provider. The range and quality of new opportunities is also expanding as Africas telecom and tech sectors mature and that is attracting a wider range of blue chip investors and financing. The number of new investments, mergers and acquisitions that we are reporting on in African telecoms, media and tech also keeps growing, commented Lowndes. Mobile tower operators, broadband and IT service providers, datacentre and infrastructure owners, e-commerce and mobile payment businesses are proving particularly successful and attracting investment. Over 200 industry and finance executives, including African telecom CEOs, private equity investors and leading international bankers and advisers, are meeting in London to discuss the latest opportunities for growth and investment at the seventh annual TMT Finance & Investment Africa 2016 conference. Over 60 companies will be announced as speakers. The first round included Millicom, IHS Towers, Avanti Communications, Helios Towers Africa, Standard Bank, UBS, Citigroup, IFC, the World Bank, TransferTo, Bima, Dentons, Hardiman Telecommunication and Icolo. Key session themes for the 2016 event include: Africa Telecom Leadership Who will lead the next wave of growth? TMT M&A - How will consolidation and convergence shape the African market? Mobile Towers - Infrastructure investment and Sharing Broadband Leadership Investing in next generation networks for Africa Raising Finance for Africa TMT How to access debt and equity capital Private Equity Africa How are opportunities and investments developing? Mobile Money and M-Commerce Who is leading the mobile payment revolution? Digital Africa Who is leading investment into Africas Digital Economy Frontier Markets and Emerging Risk What are the risks and how to protect investment Connecting Rural Communities What investment is most needed and where? TMT Finance & Investment Africa is a senior executive networking event bringing together key telecom, media and technology industry decision makers, investors, financiers and advisers. The 2016 programme features 20 sessions with no media to ensure confidentiality. For more information, go to: http://www.tmtfinance.com/africa TMT Finance provides exclusive news and events for senior executives active in telecom, media, technology investment activity globally. Speakers for OCT-A Evening Meeting We are looking forward to hosting this exciting event, as part of the RCO Annual Congress week. We have an impressive Faculty and the meeting offers delegates a fantastic opportunity to learn from experts in the field. Haag-Streit UK (HS-UK), the leading manufacturer and distributor of gold-standard optometry and ophthalmic equipment, is delighted to confirm that it will be hosting an OCT-Angiography Evening Meeting on Monday 23rd May 2016. The meeting will be held at Austin Court in Birmingham, following the first day of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCO) Annual Congress. It will commence at 18.00 and end at 21.00. This free event is aimed at Consultant Ophthalmologists, particularly those specialising in medical retina. The expert Faculty includes the following key speakers; Professor Adnan Tufail, Professor of Ophthalmology, Moorfields Eye Hospital Catherine Egan, Consultant Ophthalmologist, Moorfields Eye Hospital Clare Bailey, Consultant Ophthalmologist, Bristol Eye Hospital Serge Pierrache, Optometrist and Director of International Sales, Optovue. This meeting is designed to highlight the clinical applications of OCT-A, with case studies addressing a variety of conditions including; diabetic retinopathy, AMD and BRVO. Speakers will also cover the development of OCT-A technology, a comparison with existing dye-based angiography techniques and the very latest in OCT-A analytics and quantification. Registration for the event is free. There will be a finger buffet and drinks reception following the lectures, where delegates will have the opportunity to network with their peers. Grant Duncan, HS-UK Clinical Training Manager, said, We are looking forward to hosting this exciting event, as part of the RCO Annual Congress week. We have an impressive Faculty and the meeting offers delegates a fantastic opportunity to learn from experts in the field. To book a free place, please contact Grant Duncan on 07791 276121 or email gduncan(at)haag-streit-uk(dot)com. Under Armour Founder and CEO Kevin Plank, in collaboration with his alma mater and Founding University Partner the University of Maryland, announced Javazen as the winner of the 2016 Cupids Cup Competition. The annual event, now in its 11th year, was held on campus at the University of Maryland in College Park. Javazen founders Eric Golman, Aaron Wallach, and Ryan Schueler took home the grand prize, which includes a cash prize of $75,000, in-kind services and guidance from top business leaders, and the prestigious Cupids Cup title. Javazen also received an additional $5,000 for winning the Audience Choice Award, which was selected by text voting from audience members. The annual competition is inspired by Planks first entrepreneurial venture, selling roses on campus while a student at the University of Maryland. Cupids Cup strives to encourage interest in student entrepreneurship, open to undergraduate and graduate-level students at accredited colleges and universities as well as recent graduates of these institutions. Joining Plank on the judges panel were Dan Gilbert, Founder & Chairman of Quicken Loans, Owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Founder & Chairman of Rock Ventures; Wes Moore, Author of The Other Wes Moore, Founder & CEO of BridgeEdU, and host of Beyond Belief on the Oprah Winfrey Network; and Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post and author of The Sleep Revolution. The $20,000 second place prize was awarded to Laura DAsaro and her company Six Foods, a startup that aims to normalize insect foods. The original $10,000 Best Entrepreneur Award was split into two $5,000 awards to recognize both Plova and MyBestBox for their passion and entrepreneurial spirit. Rounding out the field of finalists were: Headbands of Hope of North Carolina State University, a company selling fashionable headbands and giving one additional headband for every purchase to a girl undergoing chemotherapy; and Wolf & Shepherd of University of Notre Dame, designing dress shoes to perform like running shoes by integrating foam technology into the heart of each sole. For more information about the competition, please visit http://www.cupidscup.com About Under Armour Under Armour (NYSE: UA), the originator of performance footwear, apparel and equipment, revolutionized how athletes across the world dress. Designed to make all athletes better, the brand's innovative products are sold worldwide to athletes at all levels. The Under Armour Connected Fitness platform powers the worlds largest digital health and fitness community through a suite of applications: UA Record, MapMyFitness, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal. The Under Armour global headquarters is in Baltimore, Maryland. For further information, please visit the Company's website at http://www.uabiz.com. About Plank Industries Plank Industries is a privately-held company with diversified holdings in commercial real estate, hospitality, food and beverage, venture capital and thoroughbred horseracing, all under the Sagamore group of brands. The company is based in Baltimore, MD, USA. Under the leadership of Tom Geddes, CEO, Plank Industries serves as the family office and investment arm of Kevin A. Plank, founder, Chairman and CEO of Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE:UA). About Plank Foundation for Entrepreneurship The Plank Foundation for Entrepreneurship (PFE) is a non-profit subsidiary of Plank Industries dedicated to fostering the American spirit of entrepreneurship in a new generation. The signature platform of PFE is Cupids Cup, a nationwide competition with a ten-year history of identifying and supporting extraordinary young entrepreneurs. PFE also supports entrepreneurship through nonprofit programs and events in Baltimore, particularly at City Garage (http://www.citygarage.vc). The Dean of the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education,, Maurizio Trevisan, MD, with New York Bone and Joint Specialists Co-Founders Leon E. Popovitz, MD, and Michael Y. Mizhiritsky, MD. "It's the American dream that anyone from any socioeconomic background has the opportunity to become a doctor or anything that they dream of." New York Bone & Joint Specialists hosted an event, sponsored by Lenox Hill Radiology, for medical professionals. The event was a networking night conducted to bring awareness to the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education at the City College of New York. The event was Thursday, 7th of April at the Vaucluse NYC, 100E 63rd Street, New York City from 6 to 8 pm. The event consisted of networking for the medical professionals, along with a silent auction and drinks and hors d'oeuvres on the side. Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education is known to many as the founding medical institution of the City College and is geared to provide the most outstanding teaching, learning and research. The institution works to provide outstanding education to underprivileged students so that these students may practice their medical knowledge to underprivileged areas and people. This way, areas that lack medical professionals can be helped by people who can understand the lack of medical professionals in their area. The students of Sophie Davis are encouraged to enroll right after high school, and in their time at the institution, they are driven to become the best in the field of medicine. Being highly motivated and driven students, Sophie Davis believes they can provide the many underprivileged areas in the country with superior quality health care. With the networking event, the New York Bone & Joint Specialists aim was for medical professionals to become aware of, and begin to support, the programs of Sophie Davis. The night event was made possible thanks to the founders of New York Bone and Joint Specialists, Leon E. Popovitz, MD, and Michael Y. Mizhiritsky, MD, who are both graduates of the premier school of Sophie Davis. Born in Ukraine, Dr. Popovitz and his family immigrated to the US when he was a child while Dr. Mizhiritsky was born in Russia and immigrated to the US when he was 11. Dr. Popovitz lived and grew up in Queens, NY, with very modest means and was then accepted to the Sophie Davis School when he was 17. Dr. Mizhiritsky lived in the Bronx. The two doctors then developed a lifelong friendship that sustained even after their time at the Sophie Davis School. Their friendship then evolved to the co-founding of New York Bone & Joint Specialists. For the two doctors, the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education has been their stepping stone in achieving everything they are today. For that, they want to give back what the Sophie Davis School has given them, by helping the school achieve its goal of helping young people in realizing their potential in the medical industry. Leon E. Popovitz, MD, and his family emigrated from Russia. Sophie Davis gave him his career. He gave them back a $100,000 scholarship fund. Sophie Davis students who are recipients of Dr. Popovitz's scholarship fund were in attendance. "It's the American dream that anyone from any socioeconomic background has the opportunity to become a doctor or anything that they dream of," Dr. Popovitz said. In the ever-changing world of energy, its essential to expand our knowledge about the rapidly growing role that natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) will play in the energy supply mix of the future RedVector, the leader in eLearning and workforce training solutions for the architecture, engineering, construction, industrial and facility management industries, has announced a new liquefied natural gas training series to address the growing market. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has emerged as the worlds fastest growing energy segment. In fact, Goldman Sachs noted that global trade in LNG could exceed $120 billion, making LNG the second most valuable commodity after oil. In the ever-changing world of energy, its essential to expand our knowledge about the rapidly growing role that natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) will play in the energy supply mix of the future, said Bobby Person, RedVector Product Director. The RedVector LNG online training series is made up of 11 mobile-ready courses and was developed by the subject matter expert who wrote the book on LNG, Susan L. Sakmar, a University of Houston Law Center expert on global gas markets. Courses cover everything from the global LNG supply and the role of shale gas to LNG safety and environmental sustainability. RedVectors New Liquefied Natural Gas Training Course Series Includes: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Natural Gas & LNG in the 21st Century Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Evolution of LNG Markets & Primary Demand Regions Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): The LNG Value Chain Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Global LNG Supply Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Global LNG Demand & Emerging Demand Markets Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Globalization of LNG Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Safety & Environmental Sustainability of LNG Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Global LNG Projects & Players Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): The Role of Shale Gas in the Golden Age of Gas Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): The Impact of Shale Gas on Global Gas Markets Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Emerging Issues in the LNG Industry About RedVector RedVector sets the standard for excellence in online continuing education and training for the architecture, engineering, construction (AEC), industrial and facility management industries and holds nearly 100 state and national accreditations. RedVector offers individual courses as well as large-scale corporate training solutions featuring customizable and easily accessible online universities with a full range of tracking and reporting features. With an online library exceeding 2,250 courses authored by more than 100 subject matter experts, RedVector serves professionals and organizations in all 50 states. The recipient of numerous community honors and industry awards, RedVector was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. For more information, call 1-866-546-1212 or visit http://www.RedVector.com. A leader in the Southwest Florida home market for 25 years, London Bay was named Americas Best Builder by Builder Magazine in 2008 Smith and Van Dien are critically important members of our business development and strategic planning team. - Mark Wilson, president of London Bay Homes. London Bay Homes announced the promotions of Sabra Smith to vice president of human resources and Lisa Van Dien to general council/vice president for the company. Smith and Van Dien are critically important members of our business development and strategic planning team, said Mark Wilson, president and CEO of London Bay Homes. Their significant experience and knowledge in their respective fields are invaluable strengths. We look forward to their leadership in our future growth. Smith joined London Bay Homes in 2014 and has more than 20 years of human resources experience in Southwest Florida. A certified Senior Professional in Human Resources, Smith earned a bachelors in human resources from Eckerd College and previously served under Gov. Jeb Bush as appointed chair of the Early Learning Coalition of Southwest Florida. She has also served as chairman of Junior Achievement of Southwest Florida and the Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce. Smith is a graduate of Leadership Lee County, Leadership Bonita, and Leadership Florida. A Florida Bar board certified real estate attorney and member of The Florida Bar since 1996, Van Dien has practiced law in Naples for more than 20 years. She has also served on the 20th Circuit Judicial Nominating Committee and the Florida Bars Real Estate Board Certification Committee. Van Dien has held leadership positions with the Collier County Bar Association, Junior Achievement of Southwest Florida, Leadership Florida, and the Naples Area Board of Realtors Legal Resources Committee. She is also a founding member of the Golisano Childrens Museum of Naples, where she served on the board for more than 10 years. A leader in the Southwest Florida home market for 25 years, London Bay was named Americas Best Builder by Builder magazine in 2008. The company builds new luxury custom homes priced from $1 million to more than $10 million in many of the regions most exclusive neighborhoods and communities. The company also builds private residences on individual homesites in the Sarasota Keys and along the Gulf of Mexico. For more information about London Bay Homes and its commitment to Private Label Living, call 239-592-1400 or visit http://www.LondonBay.com. COFES 2016 What we havent done is even conceive of the tools we need for co-evolution of complex things. Thats what we will explore at COFES 2016. Cyon Research Corporation today welcomes attendees to the opening of the 17th annual Congress on the Future of Engineering Software (COFES). COFES runs from April 7-10 and is held at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort. Widely recognized as a think-tank event, COFES gathers vendors, users, press, and analysts to discuss the most important issues facing both customers and providers of design and engineering technologies. The three-day event provides a relaxed and informal atmosphere designed to foster thoughtful conversation. Key to the success of COFES is its briefings and roundtable discussions, where participants explore trends and technologies of engineering software that will drive future innovation. The theme for COFES 2016 is The Move to Co-Evolution. For the past 16 years, COFES has provided an ideal environment for busy engineers and business leaders to lift their heads from the daily grind and consider their work in a broader context. This year COFES explores the nature of the tools needed to re-imagine design in the context of the 21st century. Weve created great tools for the design of physical products and electronics and decent tools for the design of software, explained said Brad Holtz, president and CEO of Cyon Research Corporation. What we havent done is even conceive of the tools we need for co-evolution of complex things. Thats what we will explore at COFES 2016. Fridays keynote speaker is Andrew Hessel, futurist and catalyst in biological technologies. In his keynote Virus Engineering and Beyond, Hessel will discuss the programming of living things. He believes that we are now advancing from reading genetic code to writing it. This means that we can design tools specific for living organisms and prototype the processes to bring these designs into the real world. Hessels work extends CAD and 3D printing into biology, a vast design space that is largely unexplored. Hessel says that cells are the ultimate 3D printers; they can be programmed to produce millions of compounds, including medicines, foods, or fuelsor used as ink in 3D printers. Saturdays first keynote is Tom Crumm, a brilliant scenario planner. In his keynote Thinking about Long-Term Impacts of Big Decisions, Crumm will explore those decisions, their impacts, and the dual roles of strategic planning and scenario planning. Crumms book, Whats Good for General Motors (a COFES book club selection) focuses on key strategic decisions and how they shaped the auto industry and the economy. In the book, Crumm explores the implications of those decisions and the impact they have had, now 100 years later. The second keynote on Saturday is Mark Anderson, publisher of the SNS Global Report on Technology and the Economy. In his keynote, What to Expect for the Next Year, Anderson will share his ten predictions for the coming year, along with some impactful trends hes tracking. Each year he hosts an annual predictions dinner, and he has a success rate of 94.7% accuracy. This years COFES will also feature findings of the simulation summit ASSESS: The Analysis, Simulation, and Systems Engineering Software Summit, held in Potomac, Maryland on January 20-22, 2016. ASSESS is a working congress, set up to educate, guide and influence software strategies for multidisciplinary simulation and design exploration. Three ASSESS sessions will also be held during COFES: an ACCESS Initiative Advisory Committee meeting, a Special Session for reporting the findings from ASSESS 2016 and an ASSESS roundtable discussion. Also starting today is the seventh annual Design and Sustainability (DaS) Symposium, a unique gathering of leaders within the COFES community who represent diverse industry sectors with strategic interest in software. The goal of the DaS Symposium is to bring sustainability to the forefront of the conversation among software developers and to look for opportunities and issues that may be best served by the industry as a whole, rather than by individual players within the industry. Leaders of the DaS symposium hope to inspire, raise awareness, build relationships and seek sustainable synergies. The bulk of the DaS Symposium will take place on Thursday, April 7 from 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM PDT, followed by discussions as part of the general COFES program. To view the full agenda of COFES 2016, please visit: http://cofes.com/Program.aspx About COFES Now in its 17th year, COFES is the annual, invitation-only event for the design and engineering software industry. Widely recognized as a think-tank event, COFES gathers design and engineering software leaders (vendors, users, press, and analysts) together to discuss the role engineering technology will play in the future survival and success of business. COFES is renowned for hosting leading keynote visionaries that provide a new perspective to the future of the industry. COFES is a Cyon Research event. cofes.com About Cyon Research Cyon Research Corporation is a think-tank providing key information, research, analysis, and consulting to its clients worldwide. COFES (c) is Cyon Research's primary event. cyonresearch.com Media Contact: Becca Wells +1-301-365-9085 becca(dot)wells(at)cyonresearch.com The role of forensic science in putting criminals behind bars will be the subject of the Third Annual Womens Philanthropy Council Lecture at Husson University's Gracie Theatre on Thursday, April 14. The growing, alarming, and unprecedented increase in heroin and methamphetamine distribution in Maine is affecting both our rural and urban communities. This year, the Third Annual Womens Philanthropy Council Lecture at Husson University will be featuring a presentation by two distinguished criminal investigators. On Thursday, April 14, 2016 at the Gracie Theatre, Jason Pease, a special agent with the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, and his sister-in-law Maria Pease, a chemist with the State Health and Environmental Testing Lab, will be talking about the role of forensic science in putting criminals behind bars. A reception kicks off the event at 5:30 p.m. and is followed by their presentation at 6:00 p.m. While the movies and television often portray undercover work as both fast-paced and exciting, in the real world, criminal investigations often require long hours, painstaking attention to detail and the meticulous application of scientific principles as part of gathering evidence, said Jason. The dedicated men and women of law enforcement who understand science play a vital and important role in bringing criminals to justice. Both Jason and Maria are involved in helping to eliminate the scourge of illegal drugs in our community. As part of this presentation, the Peases will talk about the roles they have played in the arrests and convictions of meth and heroin dealers. Methamphetamines and heroin continue to be a significant problem in Maine. According to Maine Drug Enforcement Agency Director Roy McKinney, his agency conducted 50 percent more heroin investigations in the first 11 month of 2015 than it conducted during the entirety of the previous year. In addition, methamphetamine arrests from 2010 2014 more than doubled from 30 to 63. The growing, alarming, and unprecedented increase in heroin and methamphetamine distribution in Maine is affecting both our rural and urban communities, said Lynda Rohman, director of planned giving and Husson University Womens Philanthropy Council liaison. Many of the programs at our university are dedicated to improving the health of our rural communities. Helping young people understand the depth of the drug problem and the actions being taken to combat it are part of our educational mission. If we can inspire just one young person to help in the effort to eradicate drugs from our community, this lecture will have made a difference. If you are interested in attending this upcoming presentation, please contact Amanda Cummings in Husson Universitys Office of Alumni Relations at 207-941-7875, cummingsa(at)husson.edu or visit Husson.edu/AlumniEvents.com. The event is free and open to the public. The Womans Philanthropy Council (WPC) is a vital part of Husson Universitys engagement efforts. By bringing together talented groups of community leaders, alumni and friends of the university, the Womans Philanthropy Council, inspires women and others to share their time, talent and resources with Husson for the benefit of our society and future generations. The Council is engaged in the pursuit of academic excellence through efforts to strengthen womens roles in philanthropy, professional networking, and career development. To date, the WPC has created the Quality Enhancement Fund, the Scholar Enhancement Fund and the Student Scholarship Fund. Each of these funds is designed to enhance educational opportunities at Husson University. For more than 100 years, Husson University has prepared future leaders to handle the challenges of tomorrow through high quality undergraduate and graduate degrees. With a commitment to delivering affordable classroom, online and experiential learning opportunities, Husson University has come to represent superior value in higher education. Our Bangor campus and off-campus satellite education centers in Southern Maine, Wells and Northern Maine provide advanced knowledge in business; health and education; pharmacy studies; science and humanities; as well as communication. In addition, Husson University has a robust adult learning program. For more information about educational opportunities that can lead to personal and professional success, visit Husson.edu. Dawn Shannon's Intuition Salon & Spa I really enjoy volunteering our time and services to help promote the film industry here in the Tampa Bay area. Dawn Shannons Intuition Salon & Spa will be donating their services for the fifth year in a row to the Sunscreen Film Festival being held April 28th through May 1st in St. Petersburg, Florida. Each year, Dawn Shannon provides hair and makeup for the celebrities attending the festival as well as models who add an air of Hollywood flair to the event. This year is no exception with Shannon joining together with Marina, the owner of ARTpool, a local vintage fashion store, who will be donating the outfits for the models. Dawn Shannon has been supporting the Sunscreen Film Festival as a celebrity hair stylist for several years and has worked with a variety of artists. Occasionally, celebrities can have challenging personalities and Dawn always works well with them, said Tony Armer, Founder of the Sunscreen Film Festival. Having worked with celebrities such as Kelly Preston, George Takei, Justin Hayward and others on photo shoots, magazine covers, videos, personal appearances and award winning documentaries, Dawn Shannon loves to share her beauty expertise. This is one of my favorite things to do! I love working with celebrities and film festivals, said Shannon. Film is like fashionthey are both visual, both have motion...and I just can't imagine what films would be like without costume designers and professional, artistic hair and make-up people. Besides, I really enjoy volunteering our time and services to help promote the film industry here in the Tampa Bay area." Since opening her first Intuition Salon & Spa in Clearwater, Shannon has been an active member of the Tampa Bay community and her business has continued to expand with a second location in St. Petersburg. This expansion resulted in a nomination for a Momentum Award in 2015 and spurred the launched of a new website for her business. To learn more about Dawn Shannon and Intuition Salon & Spa, please visit http://intuitionsalonandspa.com/about-us/ About Dawn Shannon: With over 23 years of experience, Dawn Shannon has worked with local and national celebrity clients around the country and founded Intuition Salon & Spa to create a friendlier high-end salon environment, where every client can experience the Intuition Magic. Requiring that every artist working in her salons continue their advanced training in color, cut and style, ensures the quality Dawn demands at Intuition while maintaining a relaxing, professional and fun salon experience. Specializing in organic color and color correction, Dawn Shannons Intuition Salon & Spa has two locations in the Tampa Bay area. For more information, visit http://intuitionsalonandspa.com/ About Sunscreen Film Festival: The Sunscreen Film Festival is organized and presented by the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Film Society Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charity dedicated to education, economic development, informing the public about the art of visual storytelling, enhancing opportunities for local filmmakers to develop their craft and art, and increasing the publics awareness and support of local filmmaking as a cultural and economic asset. For more information, visit http://www.sunscreenfilmfestival.com/ Pool Troopers - pool cleaning professionals "It's been very exciting to be a part of Pool Troopers for so many years and watching the company grow has been sensational." - Gary Crayton III Pool Troopers is excited to celebrate its 64th anniversary, marking over 6 decades of dedicated swimming pool and spa service. Based in the Greater Tampa Bay area, they have grown to service all of Florida and have expanded to Texas. In 2017, Pool Troopers will be expanding into Nevada and Arizona with their pool cleaning service, chemical service and pool repair. "It's been very exciting to be a part of Pool Troopers for so many years and watching the company grow has been sensational. It's great to see that our hard work and culture of providing clients freedom has been so well received, giving us the opportunity to grow our business and serve our clients nationally," said Gary Crayton III, the company's owner. Crayton has been with Pool Troopers since 1988 and has worked to develop the brand based on a Family First Culture and the highest standards in the pool service industry. Pool Troopers' unique approach to expansion is supported by their strong corporate culture. Expansion has come from within, all without franchising our business. Growth has come entirely from the staff we invest in, enabling our employees to continuously move up the ladder. The practice of promoting from within is part of our Family First Culture. We believe in providing freedom to employees as well as clients, says Dave Hahmann the company President who has been in charge of operations since 2006. Its a big reason I joined the team and has been the basis of the company's success over the past 64 years. We look forward to continuing our expansion plans through promotion from within. Pool Troopers has been so successful in Florida that they decided to expand their services to Texas. Their service areas in Texas include, but are not limited to Carrollton, Dallas, Flower Mound, Grapevine, Houston, Missouri City, Plano, Southlake and Sugar Land. "In a very warm market like Houston, TX, the weather necessitates a properly functioning pool or spa year round. This is why we've taken the local approach from Florida and transitioned it to Houston. We place employees in the market, they become residents of the community, they are invested in providing their local clients the freedom of a carefree pool to enjoy during the swim season," said Crayton. We have our clients backs when it comes to pool service and you can scratch it off the to-do list permanently when you hire Pool Troopers. Over 6 decades of excellent service and professionalism has enabled success in such expansion markets like Houston. Within Houston, Pool Troopers covers some of the most prestigious areas such as Pearland and River Oaks, with service areas ranging from Richmond to Jersey Village and from Uptown to Katy. No more cloudy pool water when you have Pool Troopers. About Pool Troopers: Pool Troopers, America's Backyard Heroes, is the national brand of Bay Area Pool Service, Home of the Pool Troopers, and was created several years ago to serve clients outside the Tampa Bay area. Pool Troopers prides itself on providing clients freedom to enjoy their pools, professionalism through training and great service in all aspects of pool maintenance and repair. Their commitment to helping pool and spa owners relax and enjoy their leisure time is carried out by the knowledgeable and courteous technicians they invest in. For more information, please visit http://www.pooltroopers.com. About Deliver Media Deliver Media is a full service marketing agency helping national franchises with local marketing solutions. Deliver Media provides data-driven direct mail programs, SEO, SEM, video and social media management services specifically scaled for multi-unit businesses. Deliver Media has the experience and knowledge to develop a custom made media campaign that is cost efficient and effective. Deliver Media was voted Best Place to Work in Tampa Bay in 2014 by the Tampa Bay Business Journals Best Places to Work Awards. For more information visit: http://www.delivermedia.com Thomas Reynolds, M.D., F.A.C.P. Thomas Reynolds, M.D., F.A.C.P. and staff expresses their excitement over expanding the practice in the West Covina area. In order to provide better coverage in the San Gabriel Valley area, The Oncology Institute of Hope and Innovation will be moving its Covina location on April 1, 2016 to West Covina. The new office will be located at 1135 S. Sunset Ave., Suite 301 in West Covina located next to the Citrus Valley Medical Center. The cancer center is equipped with state-of-the-art medical equipment plus all of the top-notch care already offered in all of their locations. Chemotherapy will now be administered in the office which will make it more convenient for patients and their families. The Oncology Institute will accept all insurances including Medicare, Medi-cal, PPOs and HMOs. Thomas Reynolds, M.D., F.A.C.P. and staff expresses their excitement over expanding the practice in the West Covina area. For appointments, please call (626) 283-5183. About The Oncology Institute: The Oncology Institute of Hope and Innovation is committed to providing superior, compassionate and state-of-the-art medical care. Offering programs to help patients and families cope with the challenges that are brought on by cancer and strive to optimize their quality of life, comprehensive and realistic treatment goals are tailored to every person's unique needs and decided upon in partnership with the patients and their families. Dedicated to excel in cancer prevention, diagnosis and education through our exceptional team of physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, medical assistants and office staff, The Oncology Institute of Hope and Innovation has 13 Southern California locations in the cities of Anaheim, Downey, Glendale, Long Beach, Lynwood, Los Angeles, Montebello, San Pedro, Santa Ana, Torrance, Upland, West Covina and Whittier. For more information please visit theoncologyinstitute.com High-Rise Window Cleaning in Manhattan What can be more romantic than hanging on a rope from skyscraper in New York City? Past News Releases RSS 2015 Awards and Citations Received Total Window Service bagged the 2015 Super Service Award from Angies for providing an outstanding residential window cleaning services. Reviewers on yelp.com had positively rated them with 5 stars. Praises were bestowed by grateful customers and they were described as thorough, cooperative, quiet, polite, reliable, courteous and excellent in every way. One other thing that is commendable is the way they show transparency on their website. The website is very informative. It provides some FAQ's on how to minimize window cleaning expenses. Now, this is what I call humanity in business. Window cleaning or window washing is what people resort to when they are not capable of cleaning the windows, such as windows of tall structures, on their own. Sometimes, they are too busy to do it like most American household owners. There are many issues associated with the trade. The first one is that it is one of the most hazardous occupations in the world. This job poses several risks including but not limited to slipping on water or soap and falling from heights. Whats funny is that despite being perilous, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) stated that window cleaning did not make it onto the list of the top 100 most dangerous occupations. Moreover, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA made a report compilation, which lists 88 window cleaning accidents over a 15-year period, 62 of which resulted in fatalities. (http://www.healthday.com) We all know that it is not feasible anymore but you know what, New Yorkers are in for a treat. There exists a window cleaning service company, which takes pride not only of its health and safety precautions, but also on being environmentally conscious and responsible in its cleaning methods. Behold the Total Window Service. Total Window Service: The Total Solution Total Window Service has been servicing New York for over a decade. This prestigious company provides residential and commercial window cleaning, glass restoration and window tinting. In terms of safety, their window cleaners for commercial buildings are experts in doing rope access techniques, aerial lifts, suspended scaffolds, etc. You dont have to worry about your window cleaner falling down a high rise building below while he does his job. In addition, their residential window cleaning service is an epitome of professionalism, neatness, punctuality and good etiquette. They are patient and meticulous enough to ensure your window is spotless that you will feel like you are looking into a mirror. Total Window Services company mission is to create the perfect service, which can help their customers improve comfort and safety while minimizing energy expenses. In this regard, they are proud to be a certified Solar Gard Window Film dealer. Solar Gard Window Film is beneficial to both residential and commercial areas because of the following reasons: 1. Lower heating and cooling costs, resulting to a lower electricity bill 2. Lesser energy consumption 3. Higher comfort level because you will be protected from solar heat and glare 4. Shards of broken glass are held together. 5. Gives people and properties enough protection from UV rays. 6. Enhances the curb appeal and privacy of your residence or office 7. Offers peace of mind since the film acts as defense against intruders. You can get a high quality film, which is covered with a limited lifetime warranty. In this era where environmental problems are a global phenomenon, Total Window Service extends its efforts in providing a greener and less polluted environment for New York by providing green cleaning services. Corporate Social Responsibility One salient feature of their window film is the ability to reduce the risk of skin cancer because it blocks 99% of harmful UV rays. Skin cancer is often disregarded as a minor thing. According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, more people have been diagnosed with skin cancer over the past thirty years. About 90 percent of non-melanoma skin cancers are caused by being exposed to damaging ultraviolet rays from the sun. The organization also stated that in the United States, Americans spend an estimated $8.1 billion to treat skin cancer. These statistics are a manifestation that we should not be indifferent towards skin cancer; hence, it is a good idea that Total Window Service wants to increase skin cancer awareness. Part of the companys Corporate Social Responsibility is to donate 1% from every window film project cost to The Skin Cancer Foundation. As a customer, arent you glad that your patronage will also benefit a worthwhile cause? Areas Served Total Window Service caters to all five boroughs of New York City namely Manhattan, Staten Island, Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. It also provides service in Long Island and if there are larger projects requested by their clients, the companys workers can travel up to 2 hours. Nobody wants to have a horrible sight of dirty windows. Numerous window cleaning services are available, but if you want to get the most out of your money, then I strongly recommend that you contact Total Window Service immediately to book an appointment or simply get a quote. I know definitely that you will never regret getting their window cleaning services. 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. Yes, the Bologna Childrens Book Fair is primarily about rights, but that isnt the only reason people attendthere are also printers, nonprofits, cultural organizations, and authors and illustrators hoping for their big break, among others. PW spoke to five people whose business at the fair isnt just about buying and selling childrens book rights between countries. Laura Watkinson, translator Im here to reconnect with people, says Amsterdam-based translator Watkinson. Ive had back-to-back meetings with authors and publishing houses. Theres just a lot of energy here. Watkinson has translated numerous childrens books and comics into English from the Dutch, German, and Italian, including The Dog That Nino Didnt Have by Edward van de Vendel, illustrated by Anton Van Hertbruggen (Eerdmans, 2015); Tonke Dragts A Letter for the King (Scholastic/Fickling, 2015); and Simon Schwartzs First Man: Reimagining Matthew Henson (Lerner/Graphic Universe, 2015). A show like Bologna, Watkinson says, puts the Dutch publishers she often works with in one convenient place. This year, Watkinson even ran into Anna Woltz, the author of a novel she had recently translated: A Hundred Hours of Night (Scholastic/Levine, May), set in New York City during Hurricane Sandy. And the fair also offers Watkinson a chance to check in with her fellow translators: Were quite a tight-knit network, really. Christopher Cheng, Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators We come to Bologna every second year, says Sydney-based Cheng, a children book author and co-chair of the SCBWIs International Advisory Board. The goal is to promote our authors and illustrators. There are a lot of themamong its many chapters, the organization has more than 24,000 members worldwide, Cheng notes. Its going really well. One of the regular highlights at the SCBWI stand is a full slate of (sometimes rowdy) dueling illustrator events, which this year featured the likes of Mike Curato, Kelly Light, and Paul O. Zelinsky, among many others. And because sometimes it does come back to rights, at this years fair the SCBWI debuted a new downloadable catalogue featuring dozens of books from its members with rights available in various territories. Weve had a couple people picked up already, says Cheng. At the fair, the SCBWI was also highlighting the recently announced winner of its SCBWI Bologna Illustration Award, which went to Chinese-born and U.S-based artist Rongyuan Ma for a piece called Daughter of the Dragon. Hala Shrouf, Tamer Institute for Community Education The Tamer Institute for Community Education is a nonprofit organization based in Ramallah, Palestine, established in 1989 to bring educational aid to and provide advocacy for children during and after the First Intifada. It was created in response to the need of alternative ways of teaching after the closing of the schools, says Shrouf, coordinator for Tamers publishing unit, which was founded in 1993. Initially, the unit published local authors and artists before expanding to translate books from several languages into Arabic, including English, French, Norwegian, Swedish, and German. To date, it has published more than 150 titles, mostly picture books with some books for older readers as well. The goal: Helping people to learn, and to empower children and young adults. We have been coming to Bologna for a few years, says Shrouf. We come to the book fair to make contacts, attend meetings and sessions, talk about childrens literature, and to learn from others. We believe literature is an important way to give children a good life and space [of their own]. Eric Leone, Kizi Lab Inc. Kizi Lab Inc., a three-year-old Taiwanese company founded by Sanko Lan, was at the Bologna Book Fair for the first time, with a booth set up in the Bologna Digital Hall, which was new to the fair this year. Kizi Lab is the maker of the Kizipad, a tablet for children ages three to seven that comes preloaded with educational apps, games, ebooks, and songs; it also features controls to let parents track what their kids are interested in and how they are progressing. Currently, the device is only available in Taiwan. This is our first international fair, says Leone, foreign language editor for the company. Its been a good networking opportunity, and next time well know even better what we need to prepare. According to Leone, Kizi Lab came to Bologna for two main reasons: Were looking to expand internationally, he says, with China and the U.S. likely being the first markets the company would move into, and were looking to collaborate. We want to be able to provide both universal content [for the device], as well as local content for each country. Were working on English content and a cloud-based system, which should help us expand. Natasha Harding, Advocate Art Several illustration agencies are at Bologna each year, attracting attention from editors in town, as well as the throngs of established and prospective illustrators toting their portfolios around the halls. Were here to meet with publishers and artists, says senior agent Harding. Its been quite busy. Advocate Art represents some 150 artists, and the team will next head to London, where the agency is based, for that citys book fair right after Bologna. Asked about what publishers seem to be looking for this year, Harding notes an increased interest in maps, crediting books from Quartos Wide Eyed Editions as a possible source for the attention; The 50 States published in the U.S. last fall, and a language-focused book with maps and charts, The Hello Atlas, arrives in October 2016, illustrated by Kenard Pak. For her part, Harding has been pleased with the fair this year. We moved stands, which can sometimes be a negative, but its been quite good. We have a nice collection of artists to follow up with after the show. Anderson Cooper kicked off the 2016 Public Library Association conference by going back to the place where his standout reporting made him a household name: New Orleans. In the opening moments of his talk, Cooper took thanked librarians for the 2006 annual conference that the American Library Association held in New Orleans, the first conference to return to the battered city after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. "In New Orleans, Cooper said, that's something they haven't forgotten. The Librarians coming back." In a packed auditorium, Coopers wide-ranging conversation with Public Libraries' Brendan Dowling, centered mostly on the book he co-wrote with his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt: The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss (HarperCollins). The book was officially published this week. Cooper said that he had always fantasized that his father, writer Wyatt Cooper, who died when he was only ten years old, had left a letter for him. "As I grew older, at every life event, I wished for that letter," he said. This desire to leave nothing unsaid was the impetus for The Rainbow Comes and Goes. The book, a series of emails between mother and son, began on Vanderbilt's first birthday and last for a year. It was the most important year of his life, Cooper said, changing what he knew about himself. Cooper went on to regale the crowd with frank stories from his mother's "epic life," including her experiences during her notorious 1934 custody trial, her many well-known lovers, as well as her tremendous successes and tragedies, including the suicide of Carter, Cooper's older bother. He reminisced about his own unique childhood, including modeling at 11, and trips to Studio 54 with his mother and Michael Jackson. While writing the book illustrated for Cooper how different he and his mother are (she's comfortable in chaos, he craves order and stability) it also pointed out their striking similarity. "We both have this relentless drive to keep going," he said. His mother lived her life as though she was a bird on a tight rope, whereas he saw himself as a shark, always needing to move ahead to breathe. The Public Library Association conference runs from April 5 to 9, in Denver, Colo., with some some 8,000 librarians, publishers, expected to attend. DETROIT (TNS) -- Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said Wednesday it will lay off about 1,300 workers at a Detroit-area plant as it cuts back on production of its poor-selling Chrysler 200 midsize sedan amid growing U.S. demand for crossovers and SUVs. The automaker told the United Auto Workers union, its workers and the state of Michigan that it is eliminating a shift of workers at the Sterling Heights plant starting July 5. Another 120 workers will be laid off at the nearby Sterling stamping plant. The layoffs come as the U.S. automotive industry is in the middle of five consecutive years of record sales. It is the first large-scale U.S. job cut by the automaker since it emerged from bankruptcy in 2009. FCA has added about 11,000 hourly workers in the U.S. since 2011 and has reported monthly sales gains for 72 consecutive months. The Sterling Heights plant is widely expected to gain production of the next-generation Ram 1500 pickup, which is currently made at a different Detroit-area plant, in Warren. But the transition, if it happens, isn't likely to occur for about 18 months or more. Until then, the remaining 1,900 workers will continue to work sporadically. The plant has been shut down for the majority of the year. When Ken Williams is laid to rest today, our community will say goodbye to one of its longest serving mayors. Friends and colleagues say, the Carbon Cliff leader who died Monday at age 60 was also one of the best. Denny Jacobs, former state senator, went a step further last October for a story about Mr. Williams retirement after 30 years as village president. He was the best mayor in the Quad-Cities, said Mr. Jacobs, the former East Moline mayor who knows a bit about leading a city. To me, he has no peer. Mayor Williams fingerprints are everywhere in this town of about 2,100. His love for the village in which he was born and raised was always evident, even when the decisions he made while serving it were controversial. Even after retiring as mayor, Mr. Williams asked to stay on as budget officer. It was an offer new President Bill Hintz said he couldnt refuse. He wrote in Letters from Readers Thursday that the man who had recruited him to take over the job had more knowledge of municipal government than most will ever have. He also had the resume. In addition to being mayor, he spent 30 years with the U.S. Postal Service, taught at area schools, served on the Bi-State Commission, the Carbon Cliff/Barstow School Board, the Illinois Tax Increment Association board, and he attended countless seminars. In his younger day, Mr. Williams played Beauregard the Werewolf for the Acri Creature Feature during the 1970s and as a correspondent for the Moline Dispatch. He has said his interest in government grew from his reporting days. In 1976, the village board asked him to be Bicentennial Commissioner. He also used what he learned while covering villages which were putting in sewer systems to help his hometown do the same. That led to his run for council and then for mayor. He would lose the mayors spot for a short time while the city fought over a race track development which was never built. He would run successfully as a write-in in 1993 and didnt surrender the mayors office until he chose to do so last fall citing health issues and to spend more time with the family of children he has fostered and adopted. While he was shaping lives at home, he was pushing to make his village home rule, introducing environmentally friendly practices and growing Carbon Cliffs tax base. Along the way, he willingly shared what he learned. Silvis city administrator Jim Grafton said last October, Were going to miss him. Ive called on him many times for comments or suggestions or ideas. Like everyone who practices politics aggressively, he made enemies. But he also made fierce friends. Mayor Hintz could have been speaking for any of them, when he wrote, The compassion, knowledge and experience that passed with him can never be replaced. He was unique among many I have known. Our condolences to his family and friends. DAVENPORT Given the time local business leaders spend away from home to do their jobs or community service made it fitting that family members accepted Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame honors on behalf of two honorees Thursday. Donna VanDuyne, the wife of laureate Paul VanDuyne, and Todd Bittner, the son of fellow laureate R. Richard Bittner, stood in for two of the honorees out of town and unable to attend Thursday's event at JA World, at 116 W. 2nd St., Davenport. Mr. Bittner, a trustee at The Bechtel Trusts, was described by JA board and executive committee member Lance Heuer as a "well-respected Quad City attorney who specialized in banking, nonprofit, tax and probate law and business-related litigation." Mr. Bittner also was noted for his civic and educational board posts, "as well as his unwavering philanthropic principles," Mr. Heuer said. Mr. VanDuyne, president of KJWW Engineering Consultants, "has overseen dramatic growth of the company in terms of employees, offices and project sizes," Mr. Heuer said. Mr. VanDuyne and Mr. Bittner were among four honorees named to this year's Quad Cities Business Hall of Fame, lifiting the total number of laureates to 58 since it began in 1990. Other honorees attending the event were Sherry A. Miller, senior project manager at Bridgestone Bandag, who was honored as an outstanding Junior Achievement volunteer; and Andrew Sallee, owner of Tri-State Siding and Windows, Inc., who was named as the top young entrepreneur. The announcement coincided with Junior Achievement Day proclaimed by 58 cities throughout JA of the Heartlands 24-county territory. This year also is JA of the Heartland's 60th anniversary. Mrs. VanDuyne said her husband would have loved to be at the event, but she was proud to accept in his honor. She chuckled that he did all of the work and she got the credit. Barbara VenHorst, JA of the Heartland president and emcee, said she's a big believer that, without a supportive family, these business leaders couldn't have accomplished what they have done. She agreed it seemed fitting that family members stood in for the laureates. The laureates will be formally honored at a Quad Cities Business Hall of Fame dinner June 16 at Jumers Casino and Hotel in Rock Island. The event will include a reception, dinner, and induction ceremony. The Sedona Group will sponsor the event. Tickets are $125 each or a table of 10 for $1,000. For tickets, contact Katie Langel at 309-277-3911 or katie.langel@ja.org. For more details, visit jaheartland.org. JA of the Heartland expects to serve more than 56,000 students its 24-county territory this year, Ms. VenHorst said. "This makes us 21st out of 113 JA areas, based in the number of students we serve, and our 30 percent market share ranks us seventh in the United States," she said. "That puts us on par with areas such as Washington, D.C., and Seattle. "For 60 years, this dedicated network of community partners has delivered financial literacy, word-readiness and entrepreneurship programs to more than 1.2 million students," Ms. VenHorst said. "They learn that, because of the United States' free-enterprise system, they can do and be whatever they want." DAVENPORT A Milan gun maker has delayed its planned move to Davenport until 2018. Lewis Machine and Tool announced plans in October 2013 to build and equip a 60,000-square-foot facility on an undeveloped parcel at 4055 Kimmel Drive in Southwest Davenport's Industrial Park. Under agreements with Davenport and Iowa, LMT is to receive at least $1.14 million in financial incentives to make the move. Susanne Knutsen, lead economic development coordinator for Davenport, said the delay is because the land LMT wants to build on was tied up in a bankruptcy. "That has been resolved," she said. In 2013, LMT owner Karl Lewis requested and received city and state economic incentives to move his Milan operations. In February of this year, Mr. Lewis asked the Iowa Economic Development Authority to extend the Oct. 31, 2016, deadline for completing the project and his receipt of the incentives. "Due to unforeseen circumstances involving the previous landowner going through a bankruptcy, the entire project was delayed for two years," Mr. Lewis wrote. "If our request for extension is accepted, it would make the adjusted project completion date Oct. 31, 2018. "With this date, we are confident we can meet the expectations for project completion established in the original contract." The IEDA approved the extension in March, IEDA spokeswoman Tina Hoffman said Thursday. Scott County records indicate the Kimmel Drive property had been owned by Progressive Resources LLC, of Milan, since March 14, 2006. The IEDA states the project includes LMT buying 15 acres. The company plans to bring at least 163 employees from Milan to Davenport. To qualify for the IEDA incentives, LMT must pay $17.20 an hour for roughly a third (55) of those jobs. Other incentives include a 10-year tax exemption from the city of Davenport estimated at $590,380. Iowa also will provide $550,000 in direct financial assistance, including a $275,000 forgivable state loan, along with a five-year, $275,000 zero percent interest loan. There also is a sales tax refund estimated at $75,000 and another $40,000 for a job training program through Eastern Iowa Community College, Ms. Knutsen said. Davenport Ald. Ray Ambrose, 4th Ward a proponent of bringing businesses to the Iowa side of the Quad-Cities said LMT's move will benefit the entire area. "Davenport is the economic engine of the Quad-Cities," he said. "We have economic development tools that we can use to be pro business. "The state economy is strong, and we're very fortunate," Ald. Ambrose said. "The important part is we keep it in the Quad-Cities. People are not going to have to move and uproot themselves." LMT owner Karl Lewis did not return calls for comment. Today is Friday, April 8, the 99th day of 2016. There are 267 days left in the year. 1866 150 years ago: Levi Wolf is opening a fine lot of dry goods, at his old stand. 1891 125 years ago: Nicholas Rothwell, an employee at Donaldsons Saw Factory, had his left arm badly lacerated below the elbow yesterday while drawing a saw between some rollers. 1916 100 years ago: A store will be built at 1712, 1714 and 1716 Third Ave., Rock Island, by the McCarthy Improvement Company. 1941 75 years ago: An order was entered in Rock Island County Circuit Court today by Judge Nels Larson authorizing the sale of all of the remaining assets of the Fifth Avenue Trust & Savings bank, the commercial savings bank, Moline, and the Farmers State Bank of Reynolds. 1966 50 years ago: An Alleman High School homemaking class party, which made Christmas a little brighter for Rock Island area youths in Vietnam, has won second prize in Seventeen Magazines third annual homemaking Party of the Year contest. By writing to local clergymen and contacting students via the schools public address system, the 22 home economics students acquired names of all Alleman grads stationed in Vietnam. 1991 25 years ago: Happy Joes Pizza and Ice Cream Parlors is buying a vacant building in the Village of East Davenport, but corporate officers arent sure just what theyll do with it after they sign on the dotted line. U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas imposed the sentence on Harlan "Money King" Decoste, 27, who previously pleaded guilty to fraud, identity theft and other charges. Decoste had faced even more prison time, but Dimitrouleas gave him a slight break by using a somewhat lower tax-fraud loss estimate than the government. Still, the judge made clear Decoste got the longest prison sentence of the five men convicted in the case because he was in charge. "I think it was a fraud factory," Dimitrouleas said at a hearing Thursday. "He's the boss." Internal Revenue Service investigators say the group used a rented house in the quiet suburb of Miramar as the hub for 10 laptop computers used in an attempt to steal about $108 million between July 2011 and May 2013. The IRS estimated the men were able to fraudulently obtain at least $28.2 million in actual refunds using 29,000 separate stolen identities. The operation broke wide open after police responded to a May 2013 home invasion robbery at the house and found the computers, stacks of cash, closets filled with expensive shoes and jewelry, watches, bags of marijuana and other drugs, and dozens of prepaid debit cards and credit cards. Decoste attorney Barry Greff insisted the IRS fraud estimates were vastly overblown. He said even the loot and cash recovered at the house was meager compared to the government's loss figures in the tens of millions of dollars. "There's just no way," Greff said. "It is all based on speculation, conjecture and possibilities." Assistant U.S. Attorney Brooke Watson said investigators had not been able to trace all of the stolen money but officials said the operation was enormous by any measure. "This is one of the largest stolen identity tax refund fraud schemes prosecuted in the United States," said Kelly R. Jackson, special agent in charge of the IRS criminal investigation unit in South Florida. "These defendants perpetuated an elaborate scheme driven by insatiable greed and a blatant disregard for the integrity of the United States tax system." Watson said Decoste was arrested in 2015 on similar charges in the Atlanta area and appeared to brag in recorded jail phone calls there about his abilities to steal. "They don't call me the Money King for no reason," Decoste said on one recorded call in which he told another person details of using stolen identities on tax forms. Decoste also created a purported rap label called GroundUp111 as a cover for the fraud business, Watson said. Other defendants were listed as officers of the so-called company, which did not produce any music. Prosecutors are seizing the ill-gotten gains, including more than $174,000 in cash, the 10 computers, Rolex and other expensive watches and more than a dozen gold and diamond necklaces, chains and pendants. Most of the defendants also must pay as much as $28 million each in restitution to the government. The Virginia Supreme Court granted Keith Allen Harward's petition for a writ of actual innocence after new DNA tests failed to identify Harward's genetic profile in sperm left at the crime scene. Harward will be released from the Nottoway Correctional Center on Friday, said Olga Akselrod, an attorney with the New York-based Innocence Project, which took on the man's case. The Supreme Court's swift action on his case speaks to "how incredibly powerful the evidence of his innocence is," she said. Harward has been serving a life sentence 1982 killing of Jesse Perron and the rape of his wife in Newport News, where Harward's ship, the USS Carl Vinson, was docked at the time. Harward's case hinged primarily on the testimony of two experts, who said his teeth matched marks left on the woman's leg. Harward's attorneys say the man's case is a prime example of unreliability of bite-mark evidence, which is still allowed in courts today. Harward is the 25th wrongful conviction or indictment based on bite-mark evidence since 2000, said Chris Fabricant, the Innocence Project's director of strategic litigation. "How many more Mr. Harwards do we have to have before we stop admitting bite-mark evidence in trials?" Fabricant said. "It almost cost him his life and it cost him 33 years in prison," he said. Harward was initially charged with capital murder, but was ultimately not sentenced to death. The high court's order came a day after Attorney General Mark Herring said DNA evidence proves that Harward couldn't have committed the crimes. The evidence implicated another sailor on the USS Carl Vinson, Jerry L. Crotty. Crotty died in an Ohio prison in June 2006, where he was serving a sentence for abduction, Herring said. Roy Lasris, who represented Harward during his trial in the late 1980s, said he hopes that the state provides the man with the social support, educational training and compensation he will need to try to start a life outside prison walls. "He's coming into a different world. Thirty-three years later, I can't even imagine. It just saddens me," Lasris said. Herring's office said in addition to throwing out his conviction, the state has also removed Harward's name from the state's sex-offender registry. Herring said he's glad Harward will soon be reunited with his family. "It's just heartbreaking to think that more than half of his life was spent behind bars when he didn't belong there," he said in a statement. "The Commonwealth can't give him back those years, but we can say that we got it wrong, that we're sorry, and that we're working to make it right." Body cameras have become the solution of the day for stomping out discriminatory behavior against minorities by police officers. Cameras provide a neutral record of events, so we have a better idea what happened during an encounter. Some research even suggests that the presence of body cameras steeply reduce the use of force by officers and the number of citizens complaints. But that raises a question: Whats to limit this type of solution only to police officers? Its a slippery slope to an Orwellian future, where Big Brother could be watching all of us -- for our own good, of course. Consider health care, another interaction which produces potentially life-or-death outcomes. In general, African-Americans and other people of color receive inferior medical treatment, leading to higher death rates. David Williams, a professor of public health at Harvard, who has researched this issue writes that blacks and other minorities receive fewer diagnostic tests, fewer treatments and overall poorer-quality care -- even after adjusting for variations in insurance, facilities, and seriousness of illness. Leaving aside patient outcomes, there are also highly credible accusations that medical staff have groped and sexually abused sedated patients. Body cameras on doctors and nurses might well prevent such incidents, or provide evidence if they did occur. If the doctors office is off-limits, what about the classroom? U.S. Department of Education data shows that black students are suspended or expelled at rates three times higher than whites, even though no studies examining the relationship between race, behavior and suspension have proven that black students misbehave more often. Currently, parents who insist their children are innocent or are being excessively punished for minor offenses have no evidence. Make teachers wear body cameras, and parents would see and hear exactly what the teacher heard and saw. An overreaction? Keep in mind, a growing body of evidence shows that school punishments do long-term damage Students who are expelled or suspended are less likely to graduate, and more likely to end up involved with the criminal justice system. Perhaps even our politicians should be required, by law, to wear body cameras at all campaign and fundraising events while theyre in, or running for, office. If that sounds unnecessary, recall that it was only because of a surreptitious recording that voters found out that 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney thinks there are 47 percent of Americans who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. But this isnt partisan. Personally, Id welcome video or audio of what Hillary Clinton has to say to the people paying $353,000 to sit next to her and George Clooney at an upcoming fundraising dinner. Sure, the officials, professionals or politicians could simply turn off their cameras but that break in the recording log will be interpreted as evidence that the person was hiding something, and probably up to no good. A recent article in an American Bar Association magazine summed up the legal landscape: The battle for workplace privacy is over; privacy lost. Employers have a right to monitor employees (provided the employees are aware of it) to measure productivity, prevent theft, promote workplace safety and so on. Advances in digital technology that vastly reduced the cost of cameras just accelerated this trend. Mass monitoring has begun where the need is critical (e.g., police stops) but also where the workers are least able to resist (sanitation workers, truck drivers, Amazon warehouse employees, and so on). Higher-paid professionals mistakenly assume increased workplace surveillance will be confined to the hoi polloi. In reality, given the technology is available (and improving), all it may take is a high-profile incident or two. Imagine something analogous to the police shooting an unarmed person happening in a school or hospital, and how quickly that could trigger for demands for wider personal surveillance like body cameras. Already the ubiquity of smartphones has made ad hoc recording by employers, customers or colleagues almost effortless. The NSA or iPhone hackers arent the greatest threat to our privacy. Instead, it may be ourselves -- as we are tempted to trade our privacy for the benefits of reduced discrimination, improved productivity and reduced corruption. Indeed, the world outlined above might be safer, more efficient and more honest. But its not a world Id want to live in. At 74 years old, this is the first time I have ever written into the paper; however it is also the first time my family and my home have been in the path of a tornado. First of all, I want to give a BIG thank you to all of the first responders: police, volunteer firefighters, the American Red Cross, etc. The day following the tornado, our township supervisor, Gene Denhardt, and his crew worked very hard to get my and all of my neighbors yards cleaned up from downed trees and debris. Thank you all so much! I dont know what all of us would have done without your excellent help. Following into the weekend, there were constantly people from churches, businesses, and the community who wanted to do whatever they could to help. Wildwood Baptist Church provided multiple meals and showers, Zion Lutheran Church brought food and hosted the Lutheran Early Response Team on Saturday, and my granddaughter and her co-workers from First Trust & Savings Bank walked through the neighborhood with food and water for both victims of the storm and volunteers. Im sure there were many more organizations that I didnt hear about offering assistance, so I thank them as well. My husband and I were very blessed. We had a large oak tree fall on the corner of our house, but five of our neighbors completely lost their homes. Please keep them in your prayers. Once again, thank you so much to everyone for all of your help and support! Judy Creen, and the neighborhood of Evergreen Village 2Day FMs Ellie Angel-Mobbs has lived with Endometriosis since 2006, only last month she was rushed to hospital and ended up in intensive care. This weekend its Ellies End Endo Run. She is part of the Australian Running Festival Saturday in Canberra and after being in hospital again Ellie told us she can only run 10kms but will give it a red hot go!!!. Ellie is raising some dollars to help find a cure and those millions of women Worldwide who suffer in silence with Endometriosis. If you want to chip in a couple of bucks, you can here. Last year Radio Today featured Ellie and her journey with Stage 4 Endometriosis & Adenomyosis, you can read it here. Good luck Saturday Ellie! Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here. OK Investigators seek detention of new defendant in Bolotnaya case MOSCOW, April 8 (RAPSI) Investigators have filed a motion with the Basmanny District Court in Moscow seeking detention of a new defendant in the Bolotnaya Square riot case, the courts spokesperson Yunona Tsareva told RAPSI on Friday. Maxim Panfilov was arrested on Thursday and charged with participation in mass riots and use of violence against a law enforcement officer. The march on Yakimanka Street and the rally on Bolotnaya Square in May 2012, both authorized by the officials, resulted in mass riots and clashes with the police. Dozens of people were injured, over 400 protesters were detained. The riot organizers, Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozzhayev, were sentenced to 4.5 years in prison. Other participants received prison terms from suspended sentences to four years. Several defendants were pardoned; one is undergoing compulsory mental treatment. The convicts supporters believe that the riots were provoked by police. Student accused of killing prominent Russian journalist put in detention ST. PETERSBURG, April 8 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov) The Oktyabrsky District Court in St. Petersburg has ordered the detention of the 21-year old student Sergey Kosyrev, who stands charged with murder of prominent Russian journalist, Dmitry Tsilikin, for two months, RAPSI correspondent reported from the courtroom on Friday. The hearing was held behind closed doors because of investigatory privilege. According to investigators, on March 27, Kosyrev visited the journalist with whom he had befriended online. The student killed Tsilikin during a quarrel, stole his laptop and mobile phone and fled the scene. Kosyrev was arrested on April 7 after investigators had examined Tsilikins conversations on one of social networks. The body of the 54-year old journalist was found in his apartment on the night of March 31. According to preliminary findings, he died from multiple knife wounds. Dmitriy Tsilikin was an editor of Culture and society section in the Chas Pik (Peak Hour) newspaper. He was also an author and host of multiple TV- and radio-shows, his works were published in numerous newspapers and magazines. Package of antiterrorist bills submitted to Russian parliament MOSCOW, April 7 (RAPSI) Irina Yarovaya, head of the State Duma's Security and Anti-Corruption Committee, told journalists on Thursday that she had submitted to Russias lower house of parliament a package of antiterrorist bills. The bills propose additional ways of fight against terrorist and extremist threats as well as toughen punishment for terrorism and extremism, according to Yarovaya. The legislation would define new elements of crimes including failure to report of a terrorist nature crime and aiding and abetting extremism. Criminal punishment of up to 20 years in prison would be introduced for accessory in hostage taking and organization of illegal armed groups, Yarovaya said. As we see a surge in inflation globally, it is now critical that everyone is aware of the implications this will have along every step of the insurance and reinsurance value chain. The Dutch referendum on April 6 was not only about a trade accord between the EU and Ukraine. It was also about Europe's future. In the first referendum of its kind, Dutch voters on April 6 rejected a far-reaching EU trade and political accord with Ukraine. Roughly 64 percent of voters opposed the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, while 36 percent supported it, according to preliminary results. As if that were not bad enough for the Dutch government, the turnout was over 30 percent, the minimum required to make the referendum valid. Even though the result is nonbinding, the reality is that neither Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte nor the EU can ignore it. This is because the outcome is a vote against European integration. It is a fillip for Euroskeptics across the bloc. It will give a big boost to Brexit supporters, who want Britain to leave the EU when the UK votes in its own referendum in June. And it is a very welcome present for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who seeks a weakened and divided EU. Viewed from outside, the EU, which is already split over the refugee crisis and nowhere near out of the woods with regard to the eurozone crisis, is fragmenting instead of integrating. The Dutch vote has a particular significance. The Netherlands was one of the founding members of the original EU. The country was also staunchly Atlanticist and a bastion of liberal values. But in recent years, it has spawned anti-immigrant and anti-EU movements that, combined, reject their country's outlook on Europe. In a referendum in 2005, the Dutch rejected the proposed EU constitution, which was supposed to make the bloc's institutions more efficient. The poll signaled the beginning of an inexorable shift in the attitudes of the Dutch public. Geert Wilders, the leader of the Euroskeptic Party for Freedom, was quick to capitalize on the latest referendum's outcome. "[This is] the beginning of the end of the EU," he tweeted. "I hope that later, both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, other countries will follow," he said earlier. Euroskeptic movements abroad such as the UK's Brexit camp and France's far-right National Front were cock-a-hoop over the Dutch result. Dutch EU supporters had been caught in a bind over whether to abstain or vote. By turning out as they did, they validated the poll. But then again, had the pro-EU camp run a strong, confident, and inspiring campaign, it might have turned the tables. The Dutch government is now in no position to ask the country's parliament to ratify the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, making the Netherlands the only one of the 28 member states not to have done so. Rutte said he would have to consult with the parliament and his European colleagues "step by step," without giving any details. As for the Dutch parliament, which has been stung by the results, it cannot propose raising the 30 percent turnout threshold required to make similar polls valid in the future, nor can it raise the number of signatures from the 300,000 needed under Dutch law to call for such a referendum. To do either would play into the hands of the Euroskeptics. Because the EU needs unanimity to ratify the agreement with Ukraine, the bloc is now burdened with finding an opt-out clause for the Dutch until Rutte decides what is feasible. The worst outcome is to ignore that 27 other countries have ratified the accord. This would be extremely damaging for the pro-reform movement in Ukraine, which needs this agreement to strengthen its position back home at a time when the country's oligarchs, including the presidential administration, keep imposing obstacles to fundamental reforms, particularly in the judiciary. Further east, Putin can take solace from the results. A weakened EU is exactly what the Russian president wants. It gives him more opportunities to tap into Euroskeptic movements, some of which identify with Putin's brand of conservatism, nationalism, and patriotism. A fractured union also gives Putin more opportunities to play off the member states against each other. Above all, an enfeebled and divided EU weakens the transatlantic relationship. What more could Russia ask for after the Dutch referendum? Summary: The idea that Russia and China are going to become close allies fails to account for the constraints and geopolitical imperatives of both countries. Neither can be content in a situation where the U.S. has untrammeled power in the world. But that does not change the geography that makes the interests of Beijing and Moscow so different. In this case, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. The United States is the world's dominant power, and is without peer. But Russia and China are arguably the next two most significant world powers on the list. Russia's economy may be in shambles, and it is in the process of updating its military and rearming for 21st century conflict - but even so, Moscow boasts a formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons and just demonstrated in Syria how effective a limited deployment of Russian troops can be. China now has the second largest GDP in the world, and convulsions in the Chinese economy have global ramifications, as the crisis of the exporters has demonstrated. U.S. relations with Russia and China have become tense in recent years. The American "reset" of relations with Russia froze with the Ukrainian revolution of February 2014. The U.S.-China relationship is less hostile: there has been ostensible progress on economic issues, on isolating North Korea and levying sanctions against Pyongyang, and even on issues related to climate change. But China's saber rattling in the South China Sea is a challenge for America's Asian allies and a nuisance to the U.S. Nor can the U.S. be comfortable with Chinese President Xi Jinping's moves to affirm his status as Chinese dictator. On the surface, it would make sense for China and Russia to marry their fortunes together. An alliance would create exactly the type of Eurasian force that U.S. policy is designed to thwart. But here, geopolitics asserts itself. Areas of Increased Cooperation That Russia and China might seek to increase cooperation to the point of becoming allies is not a red herring argument. On both a macro and a micro level, relations between Russia and China are arguably better today than they have been at any point since World War II. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Sino-Russian relations have improved markedly. The 1991 Sino-Soviet Border Agreement settled many territorial disputes between the two countries - the last of these disputes was addressed in a 2004 agreement that dealt with the eastern section of the border. In 2001, China and Russia signed a Treaty of Friendship, a 20-year agreement that not only provides the basis for peaceful relations, but also has been interpreted as an implicit defense pact. The countries' ties have accelerated in recent years in three areas: energy, finance and infrastructure/technology. Russia and China flirted with energy cooperation in the past, but in 2013 the two sides signed a number of deals, including a $270 billion oil deal and a joint venture between Rosneft and China National Petroleum Corporation that constituted Russia's first attempt to break into China's gasoline market. Overall, according to the Bank of Russia, Chinese foreign direct investment into Russia increased by a factor of five from 2009 to 2014. The 2008 financial crisis hit Russia hard and would turn out to be a harbinger for more serious problems to come. Russia once bragged it could survive if oil prices dipped as low as $70 a barrel, which now seems like wishful thinking. The recent March "rally" in oil prices to $40 then just made a catastrophic situation a little easier to swallow. Meanwhile, Moscow's underestimation of the crisis in Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions tacked on after Russia formalized its rule of Crimea drove Russia to look east more than it had in the past. In May 2014, Putin signed a bevy of agreements, though many of these have not moved forward at the anticipated pace. More important for Russia is financing - and this also has picked up. Just last month, Gazprom secured a $2.17 billion loan from the Bank of China, and according to the Bank of Russia, new Chinese loans to the non-financial sector and households in Russia in 2014 totaled $11.6 billion - almost four times as much as Russia's next biggest lender. On the more mundane level of diplomacy, Russia and China also have seen some of their interests converge. Both have reacted negatively toward recent North Korean nuclear provocations and even signed on to U.S. sanctions against North Korea. But both also see a strong U.S. presence in South Korea, which can be expected to increase over the next decade, as a threat. China is still not quite sure what to do about Russia's Ukraine problem. On the one hand, China has affirmed Ukraine's sovereignty. On the other hand, China does not want to condone the Ukrainian revolution for fear of implicitly lending legitimacy to separatists in places like Taiwan or Tibet. But by and large, China and Russia find themselves, if not on the same side of many issues, pleasantly indifferent to the other's position. Geographic Realities Despite these converging interests, geography and history keep China and Russia from becoming meaningful allies, or enemies for that matter. China and Russia have the sixth-longest international border in the world at roughly 4,209 km (2,615 miles). But that figure is misleading, as is simply looking at the border on a flat map. Russia's major population centers are in the west - the view from Moscow looks out across the North European Plain, not towards the Urals. The bulk of China's population lives on the coast and drops precipitously west of the line marking 15 inches of annual rainfall. China can be seen as a very densely populated island, surrounded on one side by ocean and on the other side by vast buffer regions of mountains and deserts. Much has been made of China potentially slowly taking over Siberia through demographics. It's unclear how many Chinese people live in Siberia but even if immigration increased wildly, Siberia is far from China's core - Beijing has a hard enough time managing its northwestern Xinjiang territory. China has never in its long history dominated Siberia, and there's no reason to expect it to begin to now. European sanctions against Russia are set to expire on July 31, barring a unanimous vote to extend them the next time EU heads of state meet. Russia has developed several ways to influence Europeans. Over the long term, Moscow has chosen economic diplomacy, while also supporting any movement that seeks to unravel European integration and disrupt Transatlantic links. This support covers all kinds of actions: from funding European far-right parties, to supporting roundtables focused on issues of national self-determination, to fostering dialogue on national spiritual awakening -- especially in those countries where Russia can involve the Orthodox Church in the debate. These measures are of little help in the short run -- they are not designed to round up citizen support to press governments to lift EU sanctions in July. The only way Russia can change the European perception of its actions is through, well, the actions themselves. And we can see Moscow starting to change tack. The first positive reports in the Western mainstream media about Russian operations in Syria came after the liberation of Palmyra. Before that happened, on March 24 U.S. Secretary John Kerry met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow to discuss Syria and Ukraine. The meeting validated the idea that Russia's involvement in the two conflicts has in fact been linked from the very beginning. The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh now presents Moscow with its latest opportunity to create a better image for Russia in the eyes of the Europeans - again, through its actions. The Kremlin used its intervention in Syria to bolster the perception of a strong Russia - and a weakened United States - and that perception, it hoped, would change the dynamics in Eastern Europe. This was the greater value-added to the genuine interest that Moscow had in Syria itself. Moscow intervened after the anti-Assad coalition failed to take hold and the Islamic State had risen to prominence. Syrian President Bashar al Assad was certainly preferable to the thought of an Islamic State that could reach Damascus, but the United States was unable to reverse its earlier posture that Assad must go. In a way, Washington needed to allow Russia's show of defying American wishes. Putin took the chance, and in so doing he put Ukraine back on the negotiation table. Russia's recent withdrawal from Syria had much to do with events on Russian borders. Putin needed approach talks about Ukraine from a position of strength, considering Russian interests in keeping Ukraine out of Western military alliances on one hand, and unfreezing economic relations with the European Union on the other. Seeing Palmyra liberated, and issuing the public announcement just days after the meeting between Lavrov and Kerry, plays as a splendid PR exercise. But it's still far too little to impress the Europeans. Enter Nagorno-Karabakh. The Caucasus appear to most Americans as a faraway place, even if their strategic position is well understood, considering that this is where Russian interests meet up against those of Iran and Turkey. For Europeans, the Caucasus are much closer. Azerbaijan is a key country that the European Union is courting for energy resources, while Armenia is said to be the oldest Christian polity. Nagorno-Karabakh's is a frozen conflict that every so often thaws -- but it hasn't broken into full-fledged war since the 1988-1994 conflict ended. If it did, such a conflict could draw in Russia, Turkey, Iran, and ultimately, Europe and the United States - so the topic is quite sensitive. This is why the way Russia handles the story is in turn shaping how the European public perceives it. On April 5, a cease-fire agreement had been reached between Armenian and Azerbaijani military chiefs after they met in Moscow. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Yerevan on April 7 and to Baku on April 8.Lavrov was in Baku on April 6 and was set to meet his Armenian counterpart in Moscow on April 8. All this indicates a clever play on behalf of Russia, balancing its diplomacy between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and building on its newfound peacekeeper image. Moscow is trying to show it can be responsible. Putin understands that governments can't change their minds without the support of their publics. If European publics see Russia more as a peacemaker and less as an aggressor, pressure on European governments to take a softer line will increase. There is little to nothing that the Russian game in the Caucasus actually changes, and as such, Moscow's maneuvering on Nagorno-Karabakh entails little risk. Restructuring Europe's perception of Russia, on the other hand, is important. This is yet another step towards convincing the Europeans that Russia doesn't deserve sanctions: a political switch out of a geopolitical problem. 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Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source! By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/07/2016 ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. nearing its starting to affect its longtime host Ryan Seacrest emotionally.Seacrest has served as the host of since the show debuted back in 2002. Now, almost 15 years later, the franchise is coming to an end and its live grand finale is set to air Thursday night from 8-10PM ET/PT on Fox."It's surreal," Seacrest told People less than 24 hours before he bids farewell from the Dolby Theatre.That's when Seacrest received a goodbye note from a crew member he's worked with since the start of ."It's starting to sink in," the host admitted. "But I don't think it will really hit me until I say, 'Goodnight, America,' that one last time."Just a few weeks earlier, Seacrest celebrated Idol's end with the whole crew of approximately 300 people."I took them out as a thank you," Seacrest told People. "It was great."But Seacrest is not ready to let go completely. He's apparently going to find some small way to take Idol home with him."I have plans to raid our storage garage for some signs and mementos," confessed the radio show host, TV producer and suit designer. "I want things I can keep in my basement forever."Season 15's finale of tonight will crown Trent Harmon or La'Porsha Renae the winner and also feature performances from all former winners and many standout contestants. There will likely be some surprises throughout the night as well. , We're sorry, this article is not currently available Home prices had been steadily rising and individuals trying to buy homes had been bemoaning the trend. When it comes to the nation's biggest year-over-year growth in sales prices, already-costly New York and California did not get top spot but instead other Western states dominated the list. Home prices in the Washington state soared to the top of the list for February as the cost of purchasing a single-family home that month reached 12.4 percent year over year. The statistical data ranked states by its property price index, which was based on selling values. Nationally, the values of single-family homes increased 6.8 percent year over year from 2015 to 2016. The home prices in Washington was followed by an annual 10.5 percent increase in Colorado, 10.2 percent hike in Florida, and 9.3 percent rise in Oregon. In particular, the Western states were enjoying an overflow from costly Silicon Valley market, which had sent tech companies and their employees on the lookout for lower priced hubs, according to a feature from Limerick Leader. Nevada, which had suffered from the foreclosure crisis, saw prices jump by 8.6 percent and Idaho, better known for its crops than its stable housing market, experienced an 8.4 percent price acceleration. Another surprise was South Carolina's spot which was not far behind with 8.2 percent. Las Vegas real estate broker Bryan Kyle stated that the state's market was ground zero for the downturn as homes went down to over half of their worth at the height of the market. He said that over the past years, Las Vegas values had begun jumping back up. However, they were still nowhere near peak values. The broker did expect them to return anytime soon. The home price rise could be attributed to individuals who lost their properties in the crisis and are now looking to buy a new home, according to a feature from Realtor.com. Renting a house has its limitations and more often than not, you always need to seek for your landlord's permission before doing anything. While this means that you have little to no control over the design and overall look of your rental home, you can still personalize your home without ruining your chances of getting your security deposit back. Trulia notes that while such may be the case with renting an apartment, there are certain ways to give your kitchen a makeover. Here three cheap, easy ways to personalize a rental kitchen: 1. Add Baskets and Other Colorful Accessories If you are stuck with a plain, dull looking kitchen, then adding some colorful accessories may help do the trick. Doing so will help add color to the kitchen and may even help liven up the mood every time you arrive from work. Try to add chairs with bold colors or patterns in order to add some definition to your kitchen. You may, of course, try your luck and ask the landlord for permission to paint the walls with a different shade. As previously reported on Realty Today, painting the walls with a different color without asking for your landlord's permission may cost you your security deposit later on. 2. Improve the Lighting It might not seem like a huge change, but improving the lighting in your kitchen can help set the mood. Of course, you cannot drill holes to add more light to the room, but you can get some under-cabinet adhesive lightings, which are $5 each, to brighten up a space. 3. Add Wallpapers to Outdated Appliances The aforementioned publication notes that outdated appliances may look newer and fresher at the same time with the use of peel-and-stick wallpapers. Be careful though that the product does not leave any sticky residue behind or this may be taken out of your security deposit. Travelers who are fond of the "sharing economy" accommodation now have an alternative to Airbnb, and a more luxurious one at that. Oasis Collections is an "Airbnb-style home company" that offers travelers access to private members' clubs and gyms as well as luxury homes. According to Evening Standard, the Oasis Collections website currently lists 57 London luxury properties and will add 300 more. The company was the brainchild of CEO and co-founder Parker Stanberry. He started the business in Buenos Aires back in 2009 and has now brought it to London as it is reportedly one of the most sought-after destinations of wealthy travelers. Stanberry recognizes the growing demand for shared accommodation, which launched Airbnb to fame. On the official website of Oasis Collections, one can choose from home rentals from various parts of the world such as Barcelona, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Cartagena, Florianopolis, London, Los Angeles, Mexico, Miami, New York, Paris, Punta del Este, Rio de Janeiro, Sau Paolo and Trancoso. What sets Oasis Collections apart from Airbnb is it offers exclusive perks that are more similar to hotels. This is probably the reason for the tagline "Home Meets Hotel" on the website. The exclusive perks include members club access, health and spa benefits, discounts at the famous spots in the area and more. Stanberry actually said that travelers can ask for such extras in advance. Stanberry also said that a representative from the company will welcome you when you arrive even if it's in the wee hours of the morning. Evening Standard reports that among the users of the service is reality star Kylie Jenner. She reportedly booked a penthouse in Manhattan with her boyfriend Tyga during the New York Fashion Week. The property cost $1,295 a month. At 3:20 p.m., exactly a week since the first bomb went off outside the Stade de France, a group from the French Program in the Department of Romance Languages gathered outside the University of Georgia Chapel to lay flowers and pay respects to the victims of the attacks. The Delta Upsilon chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of Georgia hosted their annual 5K Color Run Feb. 27. This is the first of two spring philanthropic events KKG hosts in order to raise money for Books for Keeps, the sororitys philanthropy. FILE - In this Aug. 19, 2015 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds up a copy of his 1987 book, "Trump: The Art of the Deal" during his campaign town hall event at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H. Trump's first book was a memoir/manifesto dedicated to a life of big-time negotiating. Hillary Rodham Clinton debuted with a call for community involvement in raising the young with "It Takes A Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us." Trump agreed to a six-figure contract for "The Art of the Deal." For "It Takes a Village," then-first lady Clinton accepted no advance and donated most of the royalties to charity. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm, File) SHARE By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) Donald J. Trump's first book was a memoir/manifesto dedicated to a life of big-time negotiating. Hillary Clinton debuted with a call for community involvement in raising the young. Trump was a brash star in New York real estate who agreed to a six-figure contract for "Trump: The Art of the Deal." For "It Takes a Village," then-first lady Clinton accepted no advance and donated most of the royalties to charity. Both books were best-sellers that attracted some controversy and helped lead to future releases. But from their opening sentences, "The Art of the Deal" and "It Takes a Village" signaled sharply contrasting styles and backgrounds for this year's top presidential contenders. "I don't do it for the money," Trump announced. "I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form." "Children are not rugged individualists," Clinton declared. "They depend on the adults they know and on thousands more who make decisions every day that affect their well-being." Trump's proliferating brand includes more than a dozen business and policy books, most recently last fall's "Crippled America." But the signature work of the Republican front-runner remains "The Art of the Deal," which, ironically, wasn't his idea. Published in 1987, "The Art of the Deal" was initiated by S.I. Newhouse of Conde Nast, which then owned Random House. Newhouse was anxious for a hit that could tap the readership of Lee Iacocca's best-selling "Iacocca: An Autobiography" and believed Trump a strong candidate. Trump agreed to a six-figure deal, according to "The Art of the Deal" editor Peter Osnos. "Donald Trump ... loved the idea of a book that would tell his story and make a big splash," says Osnos, now editor at large for the Perseus Books Group imprint he founded, PublicAffairs. Clinton thought of "It Takes a Village" soon after the 1994 midterm elections, when Republicans captured both the House of Representatives and the Senate and the first lady was blamed in part for her failed effort to overhaul the health care system. In her million-selling memoir "Living History," published in 2003, Clinton noted that the election was "helpful" to her because it sharpened her "focus on positive ways to respond to right-wing diatribes." She had written a Newsweek article critical of Republicans who wanted to place poor children in orphanages and she was ready to take on a more "ambitious" project. For her publisher, Clinton chose Simon & Schuster. Her editor was Rebecca Saletan, who called the book a "labor of love" for the first lady, "something she worked really hard at." Both Clinton and Trump would face questions about their involvement in their books. After Trump said during a debate last fall that he "wrote 'The Art of the Deal,'" co-author Tony Schwartz tweeted, "I wrote The Art of the Deal. Donald Trump read it." Osnos believes the truth is somewhere in between, describing the editorial process as one for which the "gears ran smoothly." For "It Takes a Village," the announced plan was for Georgetown University journalism professor Barbara Feinman to write the book, based on interviews with Clinton. But Feinman got angry when her name did not appear on the acknowledgements page Clinton didn't cite any individual, explaining that she feared omitting someone leading to lasting questions about the book's authorship. Saletan recalls that numerous people assisted, but Clinton wrote the book, working on drafts on yellow legal pads. "She had editorial help, from me and others, and experts to consult in various fields, but there is no question that she wrote it," says Saletan, now vice president and editorial director of Riverhead Books. Trump has mentioned "The Art of the Deal" countless times on the campaign trail and boasts that it is the best-selling business book of all time a claim that's been widely disputed. It did spend just under a year on The New York Times' nonfiction best-seller list and helped establish him as a national celebrity. His presidential candidacy has revived interest in the book, which currently ranks in the top 200 on Amazon.com. "It Takes a Village" spent several months on the Times' list in 1996 even as conservatives such as Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas countered that "it takes a family" to raise a child and Clinton's promotional tour was sidetracked by questions over her involvement in the Whitewater and White House travel office controversies (neither of which resulted in any charges against her). In "Living History," she remembered arriving for a planned speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College, and learning that Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr had issued a subpoena for her to appear at a grand jury looking into the "Travelgate" scandal. Clinton testified in Washington the following week. "I was out in the hallway during one of three breaks when a juror walked over and asked if I would sign his copy of 'It Takes a Village,'" wrote Clinton, adding that she agreed to do so after her attorney, standing next to her, signaled his approval. "I later learned that after an investigation into this 'incident,' the juror was dismissed from the panel." SHARE By Stephen Hudak And Arelis R. Hernandez, Orlando Sentinel (Mct) ORLANDO, Fla. - Until recently, Florida black bears were mostly a source of awe and amusement to their suburban neighbors. Sure, bear complaints were rising. The big lugs made repeated appearances in areas throughout Seminole County and other Central Florida communities, all of which made for fun Facebook posts and interesting coffee talk. But no one had experienced a life-threatening injury because of a bear, and state wildlife experts regularly assured uneasy callers that the beasts would leave them alone if they just followed a few common-sense rules such as locking down their garbage. All of that changed Dec. 2, when Susan Chalfant, a 54-year-old resident of Wingfield North near Wekiwa Springs State Park was mauled while walking her two small dogs on English Ivy Court. A spokeswoman for Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission called it the most serious documented bear attack in Florida history. Since the attack, residents of neighborhoods where bears roam frequently have been expressing frustration and fear at their repeated encounters with the beasts, and some question whether the state agency is doing enough to protect them. So does state Sen. David Simmons. Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, whose district includes the area where the most bear complaints in Florida have been lodged during the past five years, said it's time for wildlife officials to reassess the state's bear-management strategies. He pointed out that neighborhoods reporting human-bear conflicts are long-established residential communities and not new developments. "It's not a case of humans encroaching on bears anymore," he said. "It's now a case of bears encroaching on humans." Nick Wiley, executive director of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, defended his agency's response as "pretty aggressive" but added that he's open to taking a different approach. "It all connects back to bears seeing people as a source of food," Wiley said in an interview. "They love an easy meal. "We are very aggressive, honestly, in euthanizing a bear. If it's lost its fear of people, not showing avoidance behavior, we're going to have to take it. We don't like doing that, but human safety comes first. People come first." In the wake of the attack, the agency plans to hire more wildlife contractors to trap and relocate bears or catch and kill them. The state has contracts with 15 trappers in Florida, including just four in the northeast region, which includes Seminole, Orange, Lake and Volusia counties. Just what other changes the agency might make remains unclear because, Wiley said, "we haven't digested things enough (since the mauling) to know what that might be at this point, but we're always looking for ways to do better." Meanwhile, he said, state wildlife officers will continue to stress human behavioral changes. "We're asking people to be our partner in this," Wiley said. "Are you willing to make a few sacrifices? Are you willing to have a bearproof garbage can? Keep your garbage locked up? Keep your pet food inside? Are you willing to do a few things to help make sure that a bear doesn't get in trouble or cause problems for you?" People living in "bear central," though, are losing their patience. Some say they have made all the adjustments recommended by Wiley _ with little to show for it. "I don't know what the answer is," said Barbara Savino, 65, who has called the agency's bear hotline more than half a dozen times since 2009. "But I'm fearful about going outside. I don't like living like that." She said friends and family called to check on her after news of the bear attack broke. "They wanted to make sure it wasn't me," she said. "It could have been." Last month, just before bed, Savino stepped outside her home with her Maltese-Shih Tzu, Lola, to find four bears _ a mama and three cubs _ standing in the yard. They apparently had been raiding a neighbor's trash. Her garbage was tucked in the garage. It was near midnight. Even so, Savino let off four blasts from an air horn that a state biologist had recommended she carry to scare off nosy bears. One of the cubs scurried up a tree, but mama and the others were unmoved by the shrill noise, which brought neighbors outside. The bears just stared at her. Eventually, she said, they wandered off, walking slowly past a neighbor and his son, who were standing in the yard. She has considered cutting down oaks and an orange tree because they might attract bears. She did not replace a bird feeder that bears destroyed. "I'm sorry I feel this way, but I want them gone," said Savino, who has lived on a Longwood cul-de-sac for nearly 25 years. "Take the bears and do whatever you need to do." Inga Bateman has considered it a privilege to live among the black bears that roam near her Longwood-area home _ even if it has meant making a few life adjustments. She doesn't leave pet or bird food out. She got rid of her blueberry bushes. She planted thorny rose bushes to keep the mammals at a safe distance. Bateman loved telling friends the story about the bear that ate her children's stocking stuffers _ chocolate Santas _ one Christmas Eve when she accidentally left her van door open. But after two frightening encounters with an aggressive bear in her Sweetwater Oaks subdivision in June and November, Bateman said her carefree attitude toward her furry neighbors has sharpened. A bear charged Bateman twice while walking her dogs. In the most recent incident, she fought to shut her door as the bear tried to get inside her home. She hit it on the nose with the door handle. After she closed the door, the bear started pounding on windows but eventually walked away. The paw prints are still on her plantation windows. Bateman had to be hospitalized from the fright. She had called 911, and deputies had forwarded the call to FWC, records show. But no one came. "I want them to take it more seriously," said Bateman, 56, who received a visit from FWC only after a woman was injured. "They talk to you like you're an idiot. We've lived here for 25 years; I haven't had any problems before, and I know what it's like to live in bear country." Five months earlier, Bateman was walking her dogs when a large bear crouched low and charged toward her and her husband, Skip. She knew running was not an option. So she did what state wildlife experts recommend: She raised her arms and became loud. But that did nothing to scare the beast. For 15 minutes, Bateman said, the bear held them hostage, circling them, growling, snapping at their ankles and lunging at their two small dogs _ one of which slipped out of its leashand ran home. "I reached for my dog and came face to face" with the bear, Bateman said. "It wouldn't let us move, and my son had to come out with the car, turn on the bright lights and inch between the bear and us." Despite those close encounters, though, Bateman agrees with many others who blame humans for causing bad bear behavior. Several residents who contacted the Orlando Sentinel in the wake of the mauling blamed people who deliberately or unwittingly ignore bearproofing advice. A woman on English Ivy Court, where the attack occurred, was chastised earlier this year for putting out trays of food for bears and foxes. Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon of Florida, was sympathetic to the injured woman but worried the attack would create a public hysteria about bears. He urged the public to keep the incident in perspective. He said dogs seriously injure hundreds of people in Florida every year. Wiley and other experts suspect the rapid uptick in complaints is directly related to an increase in the black bear population. Wiley, who began working at the wildlife agency in 1988 and rose through the ranks to chief in 2009, said the state's bear population was once "really in trouble" but has rebounded through conservation efforts to "more natural levels," which helps explain the sudden spike in conflict reports. The agency, which estimates the state bear population at more than 3,000 animals, will embark on a new bear survey next year because experts expect it's larger now. "That population is exploding," said University of Florida wildlife professor Bill Giuliano, who was part of a biological-review group that helped persuade Wiley's agency to remove the black bear from the state's threatened list. His assessment is based on a spike in the number of bears killed on Florida roadways and in the number of bear-conflict complaints. Some neighborhoods experiencing problems now, Wiley explained, were built "on the edge of bear country, right in the middle of bear habitat" while the bear population was recovering. "I think in those places where we have lots of bears, every year they get in more and more trouble," he said. "As populations increase, both bear and human, we're going to see human-bear problems increase. Our challenge is to stay in step." Florida's struggle with bears is not unique, said John Beecham, a research biologist who specializes in human-bear conflicts. Wildlife biologists from New Jersey to Colorado, he said, have reported a jump in black bear complaints, including reports that the large animals wander during daylight hours in parks where children play and along walking paths to schools. New Jersey is considering a law that would require the use of bear-resistant trash cans in "bear" neighborhoods and impose fines up to $1,000 for those who carelessly attract the animals. Bear hunting, which is not permitted in Florida, also is part of the management strategy in New Jersey, where hunters killed 287 bears in 2012. Georgia has allowed hunting since the 1970s, limiting hunters to two harvested bears per season. But they said hunting has had a marginal effect on the state's growing black-bear population. The answer to Central Florida's human-bear problem may be more complicated after the injuries to the Seminole County woman. "I think we need to be looking for creative solutions on how to deal with these neighborhood bear situations," FWC's Wiley said. "Asking about bear hunts I don't think is the right question here." shudak@tribune.com or 407-650-6361. arehernandez@tribune.com or 407-420-5471. ___ (c)2013 The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.) Visit The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.) at www.OrlandoSentinel.com Distributed by MCT Information Services SHARE By Nathan Solis of the Redding Record Searchlight A number of Mountain Gate residents may see a change in who provides their fire service later this year. The Shasta Local Agency Formation Commission on Thursday gave the go-ahead for staff to ask the county to approve the change that will affect 322 acres south of Union School Road into the Mountain Gate Community Services District. Residents currently receive fire protection services from the Shasta County Fire and Shasta Lake Fire Protection District. If the change is approved, they will be served from the Mountain Gate Fire District. George Williamson, LAFCO executive officer, will file with the State Board of Equalization and expects a response in the coming months. Meanwhile, LAFCO commissioners discussed buying new computer software, but they hit a snag. Turns out software companies don't accept checks. Commissioners cancelled a debit card about nine months ago, which they agreed on Thursday might have been shortsighted. Staff declined to say why the card was canceled. The license for Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Office Suite would cost about a few thousand dollars, said Williamson, who offered to purchase the software with his own company credit card, which he uses for his contract work. He would bill the agency at a later date. Commissioners also approved a fiscal budget that projects a remaining balance of $24,000 in the next two fiscal years. Commissioners expect to put that money toward its various reports and influence of sphere reviews, which includes fire protection districts, cemeteries, municipal services and resource conservation. In 2014, the agency had to complete about 50 mandatory studies and reviews. The schedule on Wednesday laid out the next several years of studies and reviews for the agency, which commissioners hope to space out so they do not repeat the same mistake. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Stephanie Bridgett, Shasta County Chief Deputy District Attorney addresses the audience at the Red Lion Hotel Thursday for the Human Exploitation and Trafficking Institute's Northern California State Regional Summit on Human Trafficking. SHARE By Sean Longoria of the Redding Record Searchlight Laurie entered the world of human trafficking just four years ago at age 14, she said before a group of 100 at the Red Lion Hotel on Thursday. She spent two years being trafficked in her hometown of Las Vegas and other areas. At 16, law enforcement caught her in the city of Weed and she's since entered survivor programs and seen her life improve. Laurie, now 18, is preparing to graduate high school, something she was told by her trafficker wouldn't be possible, she said. "I'm doing really good right now," she said. Laurie was one of six trafficking survivors to testify during a daylong information summit on human trafficking held by a recently formed group aimed at combatting sexual exploitation of children. "What's the best way for us to not only respond to human trafficking, how do we effectively provide effective services for victims and how to prevent it in the first place?" said Nancy O'Malley, Alameda County District Attorney and founder of the Human Exploitation and Trafficking (HEAT) Institute, which organized the summit. "What we're doing is we're hearing from people in various communities about where the gaps lay, where the challenges lay and what they know about human trafficking." Part of that work will include quantifying the problem beyond available data, which is limited and doesn't accurately portray the child trafficking problem, according to the HEAT Institute. California saw 18 percent of the more than 5,000 cases of human trafficking reported nationwide in 2014. "We don't really have good numbers but we're trying to gather them," O'Malley said. The Shasta County District Attorney's Office just last month secured life sentences for a Redding pair convicted of multiple sex-trafficking, pimping, kidnapping and pandering charges. It was the first successful prosecution of a human-trafficking case for Shasta County, Chief Deputy District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett said, but it's not an isolated incident. "Human trafficking, sex trafficking, exploitation, it's out there," she said. "We're seeing it here in the North State." The Shasta County District Attorney's Office saw about 500 victims of sexual assault last year, which resulted in 136 cases, Bridgett said. Some of those cases are connected to human trafficking, which offers law enforcement a way in to combat the problem. Redding Police Officer Elizabeth Harris, who investigates sexual assault cases, said many victims don't come to law enforcement. Resources are also stretched too thin for police and prosecutors to take human trafficking head-on, Harris and other officials said. "We don't have a task force in Shasta County. We have one or two prosecutors and a few officers," said Deputy District Attorney Sarah Murphy, who prosecuted the recent sex trafficking case. Representatives from local groups that have formed in recent years to help identify and combat trafficking problems in the North State also testified before the panel, which included O'Malley and a broad base of statewide leaders from the areas of child welfare, education, criminal justice, health and the nonprofit sector. One of those groups, the Northern California Anti-Trafficking Coalition, is working with the city of Redding to regulate massage parlors. Group co-founder Matt Moseley said some of the businesses operate as illegal fronts to sex-trafficking. Another co-founder of the group, Lance Jacobs, said the solution doesn't rest with one agency but will take cooperation among different interests. "Our community is understanding that it happens and our community is saying 'not in our town,'" he said. The panel also featured testimony from officials in housing and education. Housing resources, education and training for those who might encounter survivors of trafficking aren't up to desired levels, officials said. Thursday's summit was the seventh of eight such events held statewide. Rural County Representatives of California sponsored Redding's summit to allow for the North State's rural counties to be included in this overall discussion, said Justin Caporusso, director of public affairs for the organization. The final summit will be held later this month in the Bay Area, O'Malley said. "From all of these hearings, we will prepare a report that we'll submit to the policy makers in this state to try to create effective policy, rather than knee-jerk reaction," O'Malley said. Go to heatwatch.org for more information on the HEAT Institute. SHARE Steve Smith, Record Searchlight Publisher and CRO It's official. The Record Searchlight is now part of the USA TODAY NETWORK. We are proud to be one of more than 100 local markets across the U.S., plus USA TODAY now owned by the Gannett Company, which closed its deal April 8 with the Journal Media Group to acquire the Record Searchlight and its sister newspapers. This transaction opens up a bright future for the Record Searchlight and for Shasta County as we join more than 3,800 journalists who comprise the USA TODAY NETWORK. Combined, we are one of the largest, most geographically diverse local content providers in the United States. Gannett will operate USA TODAY and 107 dailies in 34 states and Guam, in addition to Newsquest in the U.K. with its 150 digital and print news brands. The USA TODAY NETWORK is a digital-first, innovative and integrated organization committed to strong and sustainable community journalism. In addition to operating the powerhouse national newspaper USA TODAY, the company has won hundreds of national awards and with the Journal Media Group properties, has won 66 Pulitzer Prizes. The multi-platform news network informs and engages more than 100 million people monthly through its diverse portfolio of digital, mobile and publishing products. With this transaction, we are now part of the largest local-to-national news network in the country, and our new owners understand that all national news begins as local news. That means stronger connections between our local community and the national stage, backed by a far-reaching network of talented, professional journalists. Bob Dickey, president and chief executive officer of Gannett, last year explained the next-generation USA TODAY NETWORK to employees this way: That means we operate as one focused organization where local stories feed national news, and national news connects with local relevance. All presented with the integrity, clarity and focus only we possess. This network will allow us to share content seamlessly across the country, as well as help advertisers reach customers locally and nationally as digital technology helps them expand their consumer base. For the local readers, that means expanded access to news from other parts of the country. As Dickey said: Uniting our national and local brands into a powerful, singular network will connect our nation and neighborhoods in profound ways. While this is an exciting change for us, our commitment to serve our market remains unchanged as we join the USA TODAY NETWORK and evolve into an exciting future. The Record Searchlight has served the North State since 1938, and we are now the most trusted source of breaking and in-depth news. Our award-winning journalists take the daily pulse of our changing community, bring to light the people who make a difference, and show us how we, as a community, can help shape our future and create a better place to live. Fine examples are the recent coverage on the Blue Print for Public Safety and the public forums with expert speakers for improving services and addressing homelessness and mental illness. We report on what's happening outdoors, the political power plays, and major events that shape our landscape and your ability to enjoy it. In a time where we have unlimited access to news information, 59 percent of Redding adults choose the Record Searchlight. Our products and services continue to deliver the largest, most desirable audience in Shasta County. We are very excited about this new venture. Thank you for allowing us to serve you. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at steve.smith@redding.com Ryan Gilley, Engineer Technician, uses a laser to scan a helicopter bracket on March 16, 2016 in Edgewood, Md. The scan is the first step in replicating the part using 3-D printing's additive manufacturing technique. Engineers at U.S. Army RDECOM's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center are using 3-D printing technologies to make rapid prototypes (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun/TNS) SHARE By Ian Duncan, The Baltimore Sun BALTIMORE Say youre a soldier sent on a mission into hostile territory. Youd like to have a drone to keep an eye out for ambushes. Maybe theres one on hand, but its not quite right for the job. Or maybe theres nothing available at all. Researchers at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland want to help, and they think 3-D printing is the answer. By giving soldiers kits of electronic parts, and equipping bases with the printers, they envision a future in which troops in the field could build their own drones in a matter of hours. Its already possible to print a drone in a day. Eric Spero, an engineer at the Army Research Laboratory, said the approach would enable units in the field to adapt on the go. Going from nothing to a flying vehicle within 24 hours is pretty amazing, Spero said. The 3-D-printed drone is just one example of how the emerging manufacturing technology is letting commanders rethink how they equip troops. Officials hope that printing gear will give front-line fighters more say in the equipment they carry, make it easier and far cheaper to repair aging vehicles, and minimize the impact when enemies cut supply lines. And by enabling the military to make what it needs in-house, the technology also has the potential to reshape the relationship between defense contractors and the government. Navy Capt. Frank Futcher, who is working to make 3-D printing widely available to sailors, foresees systems deployed on ships around the world, churning out parts on demand. Its transformative, he said. We need to stay ahead of the curve and figure out how were going to implement this as quickly as possible. The technology can cut both ways. While there is interest across the military in the potential for printing, its adoption by Americas enemies and rivals could present major challenges. Retired Marine Col. T.X. Hammes, a researcher at the National Defense University, said the combination of 3-D printing and other technologies, such as cheap cellphones and more powerful explosives, could cut into the advantage offered by fighter jets or submarines that cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. All of these things are coming together very, very quickly, and that changes power structures, Hammes said. In a recent paper, Hammes said a 3-D printing plant could cheaply churn out tens of thousands of drones a day, which could be used as flying bombs guided by cellphones to strike U.S. aircraft sitting on runways. The printers would not only build the drones, but make it much easier to manufacture a key component used in improvised explosive devices. It shifts the power, he said. How do you protect every airfield in the world? The ability to print objects in three dimensions more properly called additive manufacturing has been around since the 1980s. But patents have expired in recent years, unleashing a wave of innovation. Commercial printers, available for a few hundred dollars each, squirt hot plastic layer by layer to build up an object. Think of it as building a loaf of bread one slice at a time, said Brad Ruprecht, a technician at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground. In a space once used to teach soldiers how to maintain vehicles, Ruprecht oversees a collection of large and much more sophisticated 3-D printers. In one room, theres a machine that works like an inkjet printer. It can print in several shapes and materials at once. It uses ultraviolet light to turn liquids solid, forming layers much thinner than a human hair. Last month, its printing head moved back and forth as a gas-mask emerged beneath. A machine nearby used lasers to turn powdered nylon into strong bars of solid plastic. Motors whined as mirrors fluttered backward and forward to guide the laser melting the plastic. A roller pushed a fresh layer of powder over the top, before the laser made another pass. Elsewhere, a pair of machines shot laser beams into a pool of plastic goo, turning liquid into solid parts for a model vehicle. The engineers at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center have had access to the printers for decades, but branch chief Rick Moore said demand for the quick turnaround jobs for which the machines are suited has boomed in recent years. After 9/11, things changed and we had our hands in a lot of different projects, he said. The Edgewood team used 3-D printing to help build a system to destroy a stockpile of chemical weapons in Syria, to make a prototype kit for detecting bomb-making materials that is now being used in the field, and to design a gadget for reading medical test results. The Navy has also been exploring the possibilities. Futcher said mobile labs are deployed on three ships, getting sailors used to the idea of designing their own parts. In one case, the Navy printed molds for metal filters to go on torpedo tubes. Before 3-D printing, they had been cannibalizing parts from decommissioned submarines. Currently, the use of 3-D printing is limited mostly to the design phase of a new product or making spare parts. The printers in some cases are still slower than traditional manufacturing methods, the size of parts is limited by the size of the printer and the layering means the finished product can have weaknesses. The Air Force has shown that some parts of a rocket engine can be printed. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University are testing whether they perform as well as the components currently in use. Weve got a little bit of figuring out to do, said Peter Zeender, a researcher at Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering. (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) Defense industry analysts said 3-D printing is still a ways off from upending how the military shops. But contractors are thinking through the implications. Military officials and business leaders plan to meet this spring to figure out how the military would buy data to print urgently needed parts. Mark Vitale, a consultant at Deloitte, which is to be involved in the session, described the underlying concept as lets replace inventory with information. (END OPTIONAL TRIM) The technology is growing more sophisticated. One approach that has Ruprecht and Moore excited would be much faster and essentially do away with the layers; another uses robotic arms to make much bigger parts. Engineers are looking at how 3-D printing can be used to make finished products. Scott Thompson, an aerospace and defense expert at the consulting firm PwC, said the military will likely be able to design and build small systems on its own, but wont be able to cut contractors out completely. When it comes to major weapons systems, they still need the major contractors engineering talent, he said. Jason Phillips, a Navy engineer, recently designed and built a six-legged robot for a 3-D printathon, going from an initial design to finished prototype in just over a month. More than 90 percent of the foot-long bot was printed, he said, including moving parts and gears. The creature attracted interest at the event. Phillips wants to continue work on the project, which he figures could be useful to Navy SEALs operating in hazardous environments. The best benefit of additive manufacturing is being able to test stuff, Phillips said. You have a lot more freedom in what youre able to build. (EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE) Speros team at Aberdeen Proving Ground has been selected to demonstrate its 3-D printed drones at an exercise next year. He said that showing their ideas to a wider audience should give team members a sense of how much interest there is among soldiers in having custom-built tools for specific missions. Thats very practical feedback were expecting, he said. David Sheffler, a researcher at the University of Virginia, is also working with the Army on printing drone parts. In 2014, his team demonstrated that it could print a drone that could be launched by hand and replicate the abilities of the RQ-11 Raven used by the Army. Were able to print these things at a ridiculously reduced cost, Sheffler said. The Raven system costs $173,000, according to the Air Force. Sheffler says his drone cost only $2,500 and can be put together in about 36 hours. During most of that time, Sheffler said, he can be sleeping, drinking coffee and watching TV as the printer does it job. The next step is to give the drone the ability to take off vertically; to be fully autonomous, so it can fly itself around the battlefield even if its connection to the GPS system is cut off; and to carry out precise landings on the back of a Humvee, for example. Sheffler says 3-D printing remains a long way from the manufacturing techniques now used to make planes. And in a video released by the university, his prototype crashed on launch several times. But he can always make another one without spending too much money; they are cheap enough to be considered almost disposable. You lose one of ours, you dont care, Sheffler said. 2016 The Baltimore Sun Visit The Baltimore Sun at www.baltimoresun.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Jenny Espino/Record Searchlight Redding Police Chief Robert Paoletti shows on a whiteboard what a sobering center looks like. The chief spoke to a group interested in establishing the facility. SHARE By Jenny Espino of the Redding Record Searchlight The talked-about idea for a sobering center began to sound like more than wishful thinking after the leaders of two local nonprofits said they would be willing to operate the facility and a third offered to partner with others. Empire Recovery Center and Hill Country Community Clinic pitched their ideas Thursday during a round-table discussion that Redding Mayor Missy McArthur called to gauge service providers' interest in establishing the facility. Hill Country has an elaborate plan to establish a mental and wellness center. Executive Director Lynn Dorrah, in announcing the Center for Hope proposal, said the clinic could incorporate a sobering center on an interim basis. Meanwhile, Marjeanne Stone, the executive director for Empire Recovery, said she was prepared to design a program and even had staff in mind to run the facility. The Good News Rescue Mission, too, was interested in the concept, though Executive Director Jonathan Anderson did not see his agency being the lead. "Everybody is on board and wants to see this concept become a reality," McArthur said after the one-hour talk at Redding City Hall with about 20 representatives for hospitals, clinics, government agencies and other nonprofits. "I think there are a few glitches where's the funding going to come from? That's always No. 1, and what will it look like." McArthur invited as her special guest April LaFrance, the Redding businesswoman who with the citizen group Safe City Project first proposed the sobering center to the community in November 2014. Interest in the idea was renewed last fall after Leon Evans talked to the community about the groundbreaking mental and substance abuse services he delivers at the Restoration Center in San Antonio. McArthur and LaFrance will be in Texas this spring to see first-hand how the Restoration Center operates. The sobering center in Redding likely would start with 10 beds. Police Chief Robert Paoletti sees three people per day getting dropped off at the center by his officers. Paoletti, an enthusiastic supporter of the sobering center, said the facility would be a "huge" resource for his department and the community. Stockton, where the chief worked prior to Redding, had a sobering center. That center has since closed. But he said it helped free up officers' time from the lengthy booking process. The chief spoke of the connection between property crime and drugs and the need to get people connected to treatment programs as an investment in crime prevention. Redding police officers made 979 arrests for public intoxication without resisting arrest in 2014. "One thousand people equates to 150 people," Paoletti said, accounting for repeat offenders. "If we touch 10 percent, that's 15 people" we can subtract. Shasta County Executive Officer Larry Lees also endorsed the sobering center and urged moving forward while mindful funding has to be identified. "I'm studied out. I want to do something," he said. Sobering centers are usually run by two paid employees one who does the intake and the other who has emergency medical technician certification. Volunteers also play a key role. Facilities have separate quarters for men and women, each furnished with mattresses. They have laundry facilities, showers and a kitchen. Also, some have a couch with a television where those on stimulants can come off their highs. But as noted by the round-table, the most important piece is the resource desk that connects people to treatment programs. "My concern is we have a service right now that is underutilized. I have nine licensed beds. Right now I have no one in detox," Stone told the group. "That is underutilization for a very vital service." Stone said the building next to Empire Recovery is for lease. She is familiar with it and it is equipped with a bathroom, shower and a room that can be turned into a kitchen. One of the challenges she faces is that Empire Recovery is sometimes not seen as a possible alternative for detox. McArthur envisions the sobering center being run by a nonprofit. Nonprofit leaders say any organization taking on the task will need long-term funding commitments to give it stability. Redding officials have agreed to provide up to $375,000 in seed money for the sobering center. The funds would come from the sale of the former police station on California Street. City Manager Kurt Starman on Thursday said downtown contractor Jamie Lynn, who has expressed interest in buying the property, is midway through a 90-day due diligence process. He said the city provided him a key to the building and he has been in there numerous for inspections. Completion is expected mid-May. "The sobering center will be most functional if it is co-located with mental health," Dorrah said. "We're good at mental health. We know what we are doing. We have strong staff." SHARE For all the hand-wringing about the evenly split U.S. Supreme Court, the justices on Monday made clear they have no intention of messing with a basic democratic tenet that people matter whether they're eligible to vote or not, whether they're citizens or not. For the time being, that is. For decades, states have apportioned legislative districts more or less equally based on population, not voters or eligible voters. That one-person, one-vote notion is especially important in California and other states where there are large numbers of residents who are not citizens and are younger than 18. But by an 8-0 margin, with one seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia's death, the justices upheld the common method of using population to draw legislative and local districts. They rejected a suit brought by two rural Texas voters, who claimed their votes were diluted because Texas included noncitizens in their districts. If the conservatives had won, democracy as it has been practiced for decades in the United States would have suffered. Voters in urban districts, the core of Democratic support, would have been spread into suburban and rural districts, leaving noncitizen immigrants with little representation, and likely helping Republicans win more legislative seats. Changing the system also poses practical concerns, among them that the U.S. Census, on which reapportionment is based, does not count voting-age citizens. "Nor is it possible to accurately obtain a count of voting age citizens by inquiring about citizenship status as part of the Census count," former Census directors said in a friend of the court brief. The case would not have applied to congressional districts, at least not directly. In most states, however, legislatures draw congressional district boundary lines. So long as Republicans control legislatures in most states as they currently do, Republicans likely will retain their majorities in Congress. The decision in Evenwel v. Abbott, authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was narrow. The justices put off the more basic question of whether states have the power to "draw districts to equalize voter-eligible population rather than total population." One justice, Clarence Thomas, wrote in a concurring opinion that nothing bars states from apportioning districts based on voters, instead of population. Were Scalia alive, the five Republican-appointed justices might have formed a majority to rule in Texas' favor. That is yet another reason why Scalia's replacement matters whether it's President Barack Obama's selection, Merrick Garland, or the next president's nominee and why the 2016 election is pivotal. The Sacramento Bee SHARE In response to a letter to the editor on why Redding lacks low-income housing, there is only one solution and it doesn't matter how many do-gooders are willing to spend other people's money to fix the problem. The real problem is government interference. I'd like to know where the family is of the lady who became homeless? Why would her family put a burden on her that would jeopardize her livelihood? If you do-gooders really want to help, then offer a roof, three hots and a cot to a homeless person. Government is the reason why good people are struggling to survive. The do-gooders want to spend others' money through government edict. That will only compound the problem. The only solution is good-paying jobs. Except, with the current loosely called leaders in Washington, D.C., it's a forlorn hope. Those self-anointed fat cats who live very high at the public trough have forced industry, corporations and companies with the high-paying jobs to foreign countries with the world's highest taxes. Under President Obama's leadership, many billionaires and hundreds of millionaires have been made in foreign countries, while sacrificing America's livelihood. Why are our jobs going to foreign countries, one may ask? It's to force government dependency on the masses and create an almighty "nanny" state. California is the liberal bellwether to save the day. Just look around. Big brother will ensure the lowly commoners control every aspect of our lives from that slap on the butt to the shovel of dirt in the face. In the interim, until the high-paying jobs are back, all you do-gooders should invite a homeless person into your home until the day our nanny government returns the jobs to American workers. It would be a real test of your resolve. Those who don't want to work on the real problem, but instead complain about the symptom using someone else's money, you are the hurdle. Our major problem is liberalism. Get rid of liberalism, re-instate responsibility, accountability, self-sufficiency and quit the nanny government. There are so many pretenders out there who are fraudulently sucking funds from the public trough that it has jeopardized our future generations. Remember, all you liberals wanting to spend others' money to satisfy your wants, if you aren't part of the solution, you are a part of the problem. Bill Head lives in Shasta Lake. Chicago is short on affluent millennials compared with other major cities. Zillow ranks Chicago 24th based on the percentage of those 36 years of age or younger who have a household income of $350,000 or more. (Getty Images/Vetta) The pages of the Wall Street Journal, Business Insider and Trump magazine can't stop complaining about the two things tearing our country apart: taxes and Millennials. With good reason, tooApril rearing its ugly head like a groundhog decked out in Zara means that Tax Day is rapidly approaching. And, like your typical Millennial, it's three days late. Though the job market continues to improve, zillions of young Americans remain underemployed or knee-deep in career-defining unpaid internships. Given the current generation's hardships, here are some suggestions for 2015 tax breaks that could give Millennials a leg up on their inevitable bankruptcy. Advertisement Parents' cellphone bill If anyone can claim you as a dependent on their family plan, they're free to deduct the cost of your mooching in spite of the fact that you can easily afford the Now Network. Rollover minutes carry over into next year's return. Advertisement Tidal refund Now that "The Life of Pablo" is available on Spotify, you're free to unsubscribe from Tidal. Use this deduction to write down the cost of the accidental one month auto-renewal you forgot to turn off. Time spent on Bernie Sanders Cool, he won Wisconsin, but come on. You're entitled to a full deduction for the time, energy and enthusiasm you spent on your first cute major political campaign before the heartbreaking inevitability of blind optimism. Consider using refunded time to vote in midterm elections, which you won't. Wedding hashtags Is your love as iconic as that of Brangelina, Kimye or SarahBroderickParker? Probably not, but that doesn't mean you can't write off expenses from the embarrassing amount of effort put into developing the perfect hashtag for tagging pictures of alcoholic cousins dancing to "The Alligator" in celebration of the union of Mike Palmer and Diana Palowski. #palpal Brunch Deduct the full cost of Monday's decreased productivity brought on by 12 hours' worth of Sunday mimosas and chilaquiles at Au Cheval. Advertisement Baby Boomer credit They won't give you any, but try to keep a smile on your face as you fund the Social Security and Medicare programs they plan to fully deplete. Uber conversation refund If any portion of the conversation with your Uber driver was spent on what it's like to drive for Uber, if they enjoy driving for Uber or if Uber is better than Lyft, then deduct the full cost of the rideshare. Please note: This deduction can only be used 1,000 times, or the number of times you've had this conversation in a single month, whichever is greater. Unclaimed Groupon credit Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. > Itemize and write off up to 10 of the most expensive Groupons you thought were a good deal at the time but knew you'd never use, like the Mediterranean small plate pedicure, laser hair addition and tickets to Mumford & Sons. Advertisement 'Living on your own' technology tax Even though they didn't grow up wasting their time on cellphones and computersand they're happy to remind you as suchsomeone's got to help Mom remember her Facebook password! Write off any chance of a pleasant Thanksgiving with the knowledge you'll be walking your dad through the steps to get his iPad connected to the grocery store Wi-Fi. Student loan forgiveness Just kidding! Greg Ott performs with The Second City Touring Company and improvises in Trigger Happy at The Annoyance Theatre. Follow his Instagram @gregott. Read more from The Second City (@TheSecondCity) at secondcity.com/network. From left, Caleb Johnson, Constantine Maroulis, Chris Daughtry and James Durbin perform during the "American Idol" finale at the Dolby Theatre on April 7. (Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images) Grammy-winning singer-turned-actress Jennifer Hudson and Season 9 winner Lee DeWyze were among the former "American Idol" contestants who said goodbye to the show in Thursday's series finale. Hudson, who placed seventh in the third season of the Fox singing competition, sang "Remember the Music" while DeWyze, who hails from Mount Prospect, was part of a tribute to David Bowie. Advertisement RELATED: MOST READ ENTERTAINMENT NEWS THIS HOUR Hudson, 34, and DeWyze, 30, also took to social media to fete the show, which has aired 15 seasons since 2002. Here's how former Chicago-area "Idol" contestants bid farewell. Advertisement After Hudson's turn on "Idol" in 2004, the South Sider won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her work on the 2006 film "Dreamgirls." She plays Shug Avery in the Broadway revival of "The Color Purple." She performed solo and with Fantasia Barrino and LaToya London for the finale. DeWyze, Phillip Phillips, David Cook, Kris Allen and Nick Fradiani performed the Bowie tribute Thursday. DeWyze released his album "Oil and Water" in February. Season 10 finalist Haley Reinhart, of Wheeling, said she did not attend Thursday's finale because she had a concert. Her single, "Better," is out Friday. @sam12418 @AmericanIdol They asked me to, but I'm playin a show in Denver tonight! Made sure I went last night & had a reunion w my season! Haley Reinhart (@HaleyReinhart) April 7, 2016 Paris Bennett, from Rockford, placed fifth on the fifth season in 2006. Farewell American Idol we'll miss you! Paris Bennett (@ParisBennett) April 8, 2016 Chicago church worker Manny Torres, who hails from Michigan, made it into the top 14 of this final "Idol" season. This #IdolFinale is going down in history. I'm loving this! Manny Torres (@mannytorres) April 8, 2016 Kayla Mickelsen, of Geneva, was a contestant on the 15th season. RELATED STORIES: 'American Idol' goes out with a stunning upset; let's not overpraise the corpse Advertisement You may scoff at 'American Idol' now, but it changed pop culture forever Check it out, dawg: 'American Idol's' most memorable catchphrases Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 126 Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4." Read the review. (Pixar / AP) Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 101 Soft Science extends that legacy on its third album, Maps (Test Pattern), and adds its own twists. The soft, almost cooed vocals of singer Katie Haley bring a pop veneer. Read the review. (Test Pattern) Only a handful of overseas acquisitions by Indian firms have survived the bloodbath, says Bhupesh Bhandari. The big news is that Tata Steel will on Monday start the sale of its troubled UK business, which is a large chunk of the capacity that came its way when it acquired Corus for $13 billion in 2007. Once the sale happens, curtains will come down on another high-profile overseas acquisition by an Indian company. Last month, Gautam Thapars Crompton Greaves got rid of its ailing international power business. Havells exited Sylvania in December. And Dr Reddys Laboratories wrote down its investment in Betapharm over two years which caused it to report a loss in 2008-09, its silver-jubilee year. These Indian companies had hoped overseas buyouts would implant them on the world stage - that has clearly not happened. In the mid-2000s, it was fashionable amongst Indian businessmen to acquire at least a company or two abroad. Manufacturing in the West had gone into decline, thanks to China, and Indians thought they would be able to turn things around with their frugal management skills. But the downturn that followed put paid to all their plans. Only a handful of those acquisitions have survived the bloodbath. For a brief moment though, Indians did manage to become the rescuers of many a troubled enterprise, the saviours of peoples jobs. In 2004, when Crompton Greaves acquired the Pauwels Group for 28 million in Belgium, and saved thousands of jobs, a public reception was held for Mr Thapar at Mechelen where one of its factories were located. On a balmy afternoon, Jo Haazen, the foremost exponent of the carillon (a musical instrument composed of at least 23 cup-shaped bells and played from a baton keyboard using fists and feet) in the world, played the Indian national anthem at the main square of this town halfway between Antwerp and Brussels. The ceremony had left Mr Thapar, who likes to stay away from the limelight, stumped. The Sylvania case is curious. Havells acquired it for around 225 million in 2007 through a leveraged buyout. Havells raised 80 million of debt on its own balance sheet (which it soon repaid by placing 11 per cent equity with Warburg Pincus) and another 120 million on Sylvanias to bankroll the acquisition. Then Europe went into a crisis. Sylvania slipped into losses and came close to defaulting on payments to the banks. To keep the show going, Havells was advised to pump large sums of money into the company. There was even a suggestion to sell it for Euro 1 and cut the losses. Instead, Havells decided to turn it around through some serious cost cutting. The rolls were downsized by 40 per cent, unviable factories were shut down and distribution was streamlined. The restructuring cost Havells around 30 million but it helped turn around Sylvania by 2010-11. After that, its profits grew steadily. Events after that showed that Havells was keen to fortify Sylvania. In 2011, it initiated arbitration against Osram (owned by Siemens, it held the rights for Sylvania in North America) for licensing the brand to manufacturers in China for television and household appliances. Havells demanded royalty because China was its territory. In 2012, there was a settlement between the two: Havells gave up its demand for royalty and got 36 million in compensation, and henceforth the licensing would be through it. In India, Sylvania had some resonance because there had been a brand called Sylvania Laxman in the market, though it had got marginalised over the years. Anticipating that the owner of this brand could create trouble if it were to launch Sylvania in the country, Havells did a settlement with the promoters of Sylvania & Laxman by paying them Rs 1 crore. But that was not to be, and Havells sold Sylvania to Shanghai Feilo Acoustics, a Chinese company, for Rs 1,340 crore (Rs 13.4 billion). It made some money in the deal, though not a windfall. Many were baffled by the decision but the stock market was elated: the Havells share price shot up after the announcement came. The reasons for the sale are not hard to find. Sylvania made traditional lighting products, whereas the market had moved on to LED lights. So there was a capability gap which would have taken a large investment to bridge. That would have been worthwhile if Europe, Sylvanias main market, was growing at a fast clip. But Europe has been subdued and there is no indication of improvement. The investment didnt make sense, Havells felt, and thus exited the company it had so passionately rescued from disaster not so long ago. Unlike others who singed their fingers abroad, Havells to me seems to be in the mood for inorganic growth: it knows how to do a leveraged buyout, it knows how to cut costs and turn around a loss-making company, and now it also has a war chest ready. It was a serious contender for Crompton Greaves consumer appliances business till Mr Thapar decided to sell to Advent and Temasek. My hunch is that the money it has got from the Sylvania deal Havells will plough into another acquisition - soon. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters 'The Pakistani game plan in making its envoy in India perform the last rites of a fledgling peace process is madness with a method,' says Rajeev Sharma. IMAGE: 'The Modi government has covered its face with mud by its flawed approach of trying to drive bilateral diplomacy with a difficult neighbour like Pakistan like event management.' Pakistani envoy Abdul Basit's unexpected assertion on April 7 that the peace process with India is 'suspended' is a death blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's bold, though faulty, initiative to strike peace with an intransigent neighbour like Pakistan. It reveals how gullible, and even presumptuous, Modi has been in even thinking that the Pakistani leopard will change its spots. The fact that Pakistan has chosen its high commissioner in India, rather than its foreign office, to read out the death warrant of Modi's peace initiative is suggestive of Pakistan's India strategy in the clever chess game that Islamabad has been playing with New Delhi for the last 100 days or so. By choosing its envoy in India to deal a body blow to Modi's peace initiative, Islamabad wants India to take the extreme step of recalling its envoy in Pakistan and expel the Pakistani envoy in India. After all, an envoy's job is to foster good relations between the host country and the sending country. But Basit has acted to the contrary, perhaps the only foreign envoy to India after similar shenanigans by Sun Yuxi, the Chinese ambassador to India, who said almost a decade ago that the whole of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China. Obviously, Basit was doing his masters' bidding in Islamabad. Here is an unusual case of an ambassador who is telling his host country to go climb a wall as no good will come of the peace initiatives. This is a conduct unlike an ambassador, but then folks calm down as he is not his own speech writer. The Pakistani game plan in making its envoy in India perform the last rites of a fledgling peace process is madness with a method. By doing so, Pakistan is actually inciting India to take the extreme step of expelling the Pakistani envoy in India and recalling its envoy in Pakistan so that it can further lampoon the Modi government for acting in extremes. By doing so, the Modi government will be walking into the Pakistani trap and make itself vulnerable to the charge that it has no Pakistan policy and the only Pakistan policy the Modi government can talk of is of extreme swings of the pendulum. Basit has driven two more nails in the coffin of Modi's peace efforts by saying one, that there will be no reciprocity in the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team visiting the Pathankot airbase, thus ruling out the possibility of an Indian JIT visiting Pakistan as a reciprocal measure; and two, deliberately mentioning the Kulbhushan Jadhav episode, the alleged Indian spy who was arrested by the Pakistani authorities last month. The fast-paced developments of April 7 are a pointer to Pakistan's strategy. Here are the five takeaways: First, it shows that Pakistan has cocked a snook at India and dared the Modi government to hit back. The Indian response by way of a namby-pamby statement issued by the ministry of external affairs is obviously far too inadequate. Second, Pakistan is basking in the reflected glory of China which recently blocked India's efforts at the UN to ban terrorist Masood Azhar. Clearly, Pakistan and China have synergised their diplomatic position and outwitted the Modi government. Three, by referring to the Jadhav case, Pakistan may well be preparing its case for hauling India over the coals before the UN in the foreseeable future. Four, the all-powerful Pakistan army has wrested control of Pakistan's India policy and hardened its stand. Five, by harping on the centrality of the Kashmir dispute, Pakistan has countered India's uni-focal strategy of focusing only on the terror issue. At the end of it all, it is the Modi government which has covered its face with mud by its flawed approach of trying to drive bilateral diplomacy with a difficult neighbour like Pakistan like event management. The biggest lesson that Modi and his team of advisors must learn from this episode is that international diplomacy can't be run by optics alone and there is no alternative to substantive a result-oriented dialogue process which has to be dealt at the level of the foreign office. The harsh truth for Modi is that his bold Pakistan policy has crashed shortly after take off. Rajeev Sharma is an independent journalist and strategic analyst who tweets @Kishkindha Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption in the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for over Rs 3,600 crore. In the ruling, which overtured a previous court order of 2014 that had given Orsi reprieve in connection with the corruption angle, former CEO of Finmeccanica's helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, Bruno Spagnolini, was also handed a four-year prison term by the court on Thursday. The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively, it said. The ruling has come as a severe blow to the Italian company which had just managed to leave the corruption saga behind that marred its image across the world. Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials told PTI that the firm "has changed completely". "The company has undergone deep changes and it has changed completely from the time when the allegations came up first. Finmeccanica is a different company now," an official said. "Finmeccanica since then has changed its top management and its organisation." The official added that Italian judicial system is made of three appeals and the trial is against two former executives. The lawyers of both the accused have said that they will go in for an appeal. The Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate are still probing the case in India in which former Indian Air Force chief S P Tyagi and his cousins are alleged to be the beneficiaries. The ED has booked Tyagi, his family members, European nationals -- Carlo Gerosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschke, four firms -- Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland and Chandigarh-based IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, two companies based in Mauritius and Tunisia, few other firms and unknown persons as per CBI's criminal complaint. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday offered prayers to Goddess Ma Kamakhya Devi at her historic temple atop Nilachal Hill in Guwahati before resuming his poll campaign in Assam. Modi, who came to Guwahati from Delhi on Thursday night, drove up to the base of the Kamakhya temple this morning and walked up the flight of steps to the shrine amid tight security to offer his prayers to the Goddess in the sanctum sanctorum where media was not allowed. The prime minister also performed puja on the occasion of the first day of Navratri at the Shakti Pith dedicated to Goddess Durga and her various incarnations, temple officials said. Coming out of the shrine, Modi, who visited the temple for the first time, went towards the waiting people and shook hands with them and left for his campaign for the second and final phase of elections on April 11 in 61 constituencies in middle and lower Assam. Modi is scheduled to address poll meetings at Roha, Rangia, Sorbhog and Guwahati on Friday before returning to Delhi in the evening. The prime minister had also campaigned in the state for the first phase of voting on April 4. A 51-year-old Uber cab driver was murdered allegedly by two juvenile passengers who dumped his body at an open field in west Delhi's Mundka area, the police said on Friday. The incident took place Wednesday afternoon and came to light on Thursday morning, when the local residents in Mundka spotted a cab parked on a road for hours and informed the police. Soon, the driver's body with bullet wounds, was found in a field nearby. The victim was identified as Kuldeep Thakur who owned the car and had turned it into a cab affiliated to two aggregator services including Uber. His family was informed about the incident immediately, a senior police official said. Kuldeep's family told the police that he had left home on Wednesday for work but did not return. The police approached the cab aggregator service and obtained details of the cab bookings. During investigation, it emerged that Kuldeep's cab was last booked by a youth from south-west Delhi's Najafgarh for Hiran Kudna village, the official said. The police soon zeroed in on one of the accused teenagers and during interrogation he confessed to his crime, also disclosing the name of his accomplice. "Both accused juveniles have been apprehended," DCP (West) Pushpendra Kumar said. During interrogation, the accused said they had hired Kuldeep's cab on Wednesday afternoon. During the journey they entered into a heated argument with him, when suddenly one of them pulled out a gun and shot at him. The teenagers, both 17-year-old, then dumped his body in the open field and fled. Kuldeep, a native of Himachal Pradesh, lived here with his wife and three children. He was the sole breadwinner of the family and his eldest daughter marriage is on the cards, Kuldeep's nephew Jograj said. He said, Kuldeep had worked as driver for years and purchased his own car earlier this year. His family left for Himachal Pradesh on Friday for the last rites. The victim's relatives have alleged that Uber showed no cooperation in the initial phase of the investigation and did not support the family at all, a charge denied by the latter. The relatives also alleged that Uber had "deleted" Kuldeep's name and other details from its database. Uber in a statement said, "Our thoughts are with the family of our driver-partner, the victim of this mindless violence. We have pro-actively shared details with the police to assist them with their investigation." Halloween events, fall festivals pack October in Abilene, Big Country From family-friendly to frightful, there are plenty of opportunities to don the costumes and scare up some treats. The headlines about the 'Panama Papers,' the gigantic trove of offshore records that surfaced this week, were all about the famous names connected to secret financial accounts: Russia's Vladimir Putin, Syria's Bashar Assad, Saudi Arabia's King Salman and more. But most weren't surprising. You didn't really expect the world's autocrats to keep their money at home, where it could be seized by whoever came next, did you? (And in some cases, the accounts were held by family members or friends in Putin's case, an old classmate, a cellist with $2 billion.) What was more striking was the scale: almost 215,000 offshore shell companies, more than 14,000 clients, more than 11 million documents and uncounted billions of dollars. That and the fact that moving secret foreign money isn't confined to steamy tax havens like Panama. Some money in the accounts ended up in the United States, in real estate and other assets from Miami to Las Vegas. The firms that transferred the funds included major European banks headquartered in Switzerland, Luxembourg and London. And most of the shell companies formed by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca were set up in the British Virgin Islands, a possession of Britain. 'What that law firm did is just one step in a chain of corruption services,' said Sarah Chayes, a former U.S. adviser in Afghanistan who now works on global efforts to combat corruption. 'And the next level outward includes people in the United States lawyers, real estate brokers, other agents.' Indeed, Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota have all passed laws making it easier to set up shell companies and harder to identify the real owners. Bankers say that has actually prompted a flow of foreign assets from traditional tax havens such as Zurich and Bermuda to places like Reno and Sioux Falls. 'How perverse that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,' Swiss lawyer Peter Cotorceanu wrote in legal journal cited by Bloomberg News. Some people think that's good news. High-end real estate brokers from New York to Beverly Hills have seen a flood of buyers from Russia, China and the Middle East. 'Wouldn't it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?' Michael Bloomberg said in 2013, when he was mayor of New York. But the long-term picture is far less sunny. At least some of that money is undoubtedly the product of corruption in other countries. And corruption is drivers of instability and terrorism, including the Islamic State group. 'Corruption is a radicalizer because it destroys faith in legitimate authority,' Secretary of State John F. Kerry said in a speech earlier this year. 'No one knows that better than violent extremist groups, who regularly use corruption as a recruitment tool.' Corruption also robs poorer countries of money for economic development. One respected research group, Global Financial Integrity, estimates that corruption costs developing countries more than all the foreign aid and investment they receive. Nobody's suggesting that corruption can be eliminated. But there are at least two things the United States can do to make it harder for foreign investors to conceal the proceeds from corruption. One European countries have already begun: Establish a 'beneficial ownership registry' of the true owners of shell companies. In most countries, the registry is designed to be easily accessible to any government agency investigating a violation of the law; in Britain, it's intended to be open to the public. A second, less ambitious reform: Require lawyers, real estate brokers and registered investment agents to follow the 'know your customer' regulations that apply to U.S. banks. Thanks to energetic lobbying, those industries are exempt from the federal requirement to report dubious inflows of foreign money. The Obama administration will have a chance to work on both of those ideas soon; British Prime Minister David Cameron is holding a global summit on corruption next month. Cameron has a personal stake in a successful outcome. His late father, Ian Cameron, ran an offshore investment fund to help wealthy British clients avoid paying taxes in Britain. His name turned up in the Panama Papers, too. Email Doyle McManus, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, at doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com Advertisement - Continue Reading Below This just in... A writer in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong has been locked up for five days by police for criticizing China's first lady, his lawyer said on Friday. Writer Tian You was taken from his home to the Longxin police station in Shenzhen, close to the internal immigration border with Hong Kong, and prevented from seeing a lawyer, his lawyer Mei Chunlai wrote via social media. "I went to the police station today, but they refused to allow me to visit him," Mei wrote. "According to my enquiries, this has something to do with 'spreading rumors online.'" Tian had allegedly written an unfavorable comparison between Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Zhou dynasty empress Wu Zetian (624 - 705), according to Mei's tweet, which was quoted by the overseas news website Boxun. The case has been handed over to Shenzhen's Longgang district police department for further discussion, Mei wrote. Contacted by RFA on Friday, Mei said Tian You is currently being held on a five-day administrative sentence, which can be handed down by a police committee without need for a trial. "It seems he is being held for five days," Mei said. "His family told me that it was for five days." But he said he has yet to see any legal documents showing the charges against his client. "I have yet to see any formal notification, so it's hard to say how things will go," he said. Crackdown on public expression An officer who answered the phone at the Longxin police station declined to comment on Tian's case, but didn't deny he was being held. "I don't know about this ... It's not convenient for me to answer your questions," the officer said. "If you are related to him, you can come here with some ID and we will be able to tell you more." Guangdong-based rights lawyer Lin Qilei said the detention showed the current human rights situation in China. "It looks as if he was detained and locked up for five days for saying something stupid," Lin said. "This just shows how bad things have gotten in China right now." "There is a crackdown on all forms of public expression, including online opinion," Lin said. "It's terrible, much worse than it was before." Tian has penned a number of novels including Underground, Overground: Men Compete for Power, Sex and Money, The Unfortunate Man, and The Rules, according to his page on Baidu's online encyclopedia. 'No stranger to official wrath' He is no stranger to official wrath, having had his microblog account shut down after he tweeted about the March 2014 Kunming railway station knife attacks, saying that oppressive "stability maintenance" policies were to blame for the violent backlash. Guangzhou-based writer Xu Lin said the order to detain Tian needn't have come from the highest levels of government in Beijing. "The lower-ranking officials could be be taking these measures against somebody who comments on a national leader's wife as a way of currying favor with those above them," Xu said. "We have no idea what [Peng Liyuan] actually thinks about this herself." Others detained, disappeared Tian wouldn't be the first in the media and publishing industry to run afoul of China's president. Last month, Chinese journalist Jia Jia, whose name had been linked to the publication of an open letter calling for Xi Jinping's resignation, disappeared en route to Hong Kong where he was scheduled to speak at a university in the city, according to his friends and media reports. He was later released after denying any connection to the letter. And last November, political cartoonist Jiang Yefei was repatriated from Thailand after he drew cartoons ridiculing Xi. And five Hong Kong booksellers were detained or "disappeared" in opaque circumstances after they planned a book that claimed to reveal details of Xi's early love life. Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Hai Nan for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie. Family members greet students freed from prison after a court dropped charges against them for participating in a March 2015 protest that turned violent in Tharrawaddy district, central Myanmar's Bago region, April 8, 2016. A Myanmar court on Friday freed 69 detained students in keeping with a pledge by State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi the previous day that releasing the detainees was an urgent priority of the new government. Most of those let go during the first round of releases were students who had been jailed for more than a year while awaiting trial for participating in a protest against national education policy in March 2015 in the central Myanmar town of Letpadan in Tharrawaddy district. The initially peaceful demonstration had turned violent when students were beaten by police, resulting in the arrests of nearly 130 students and their supporters. Tharrawaddy township judge Chit Myint said prosecutors decided to drop charges against all 72 detained activists, except for three of their leaders. The trioPhyo Phyo Aung, Min Thway Thit and Nanda Sitt Aungare awaiting dismissals of similar charges by other courts in the commercial capital Yangon. Mie Mie, an activist and prominent member of the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society Group, also was released. Some students and our colleagues remain in jail, said Min Thway Thit. We are not happy enough as we still have to try to win their freedom. We will try together with our people to have no political prisoners in jails. About 12 other student prisoners must wait until their next scheduled hearing to find out whether they too will be freed, Agence France-Presse reported. A freed student greets a family member in Tharrawaddy, central Myanmar's Bago region, April 8, 2016. RFA Another pardon President Htin Kyaw is arranging another pardon for more than 100 people serving sentences for political crimes in honor of the Buddhist New Year holiday Thingyan, which begins Monday, according to Zaw Htay, spokesman for the Presidents Office of which Aung San Suu Kyi is minister, Reuters reported. Aung San Suu Kyi issued a statement on Friday, saying that officials must scrutinize the cases of jailed political prisoners and activists before releasing them. Meanwhile, the government will ask the state prosecutor to drop charges against those still on trial, it said. Nearly 350 political prisoners remain in jail or on bail while they await trials. Aung San Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest, and several current lawmakers from the National League of Democracy (NLD) party, which she chairs, have served time behind bars. Though she cannot become president because of a constitutional provision barring anyone with foreign-born relatives from holding the nations top office, Aung San Suu Kyi has vowed to rule Myanmar from a position above the president. Two activists sentenced While most of the detained students gained their freedom, two other activists each received a two-year sentence from a court Mandalays Chanayethazan township on Friday for their connections to an armed rebel group that has been engaged in hostilities with the national army. Muslim interfaith activists Zaw Zaw Latt and Pwint Phyu Latt were charged with associating with an unlawful organization because of their links to the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the military branch of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) political group that has clashed with the Myanmar army in the northern part of the country. We were sentenced because we went to the KIA area and helped refugees, Zaw Zaw Latt told RFAs Myanmar Service. The Unlawful Associations Act under which they were sentenced should be abolished because it was issued by the former British rulers of what was then known as Burma during the colonial era, he said. We have been sentenced because we met with the KIA, he said. During the previous governments term, the MPC [Myanmar Peace Center] met with armed ethnic groups that it could charge for connection with these groups. Even the [MPC] minister had the right to see these groups, so why didnt other people who were with these ministers get arrested? The government-affiliated MPC in Yangon has facilitated peace talks between Myanmars government and various ethnic rebel groups. Zaw Zaw Latt and Pwint Phyu Latt had been arrested for posting photos on social media of a visit to Indias Mizoram state in 2014 and a charity trip to Kachin state, according to the online journal The Irrawaddy. One photo showed Zaw Zaw Latt with a rifle as he met with some KIA members during a visit to a displaced peoples camp in the region in 2013, the report said. The two, along with another colleague, Zaw Win Bo, were sentenced earlier to two years in prison in February under Myanmars immigration act, it said. The pair will not submit an appeal, Pwint Phyu Latt told The Irrawaddy, because they believe that the NLD-led government will soon abolish the Unlawful Associations Act. The KIO/KIA did not sign a nationwide peace agreement that the previous government inked with eight armed ethnic groups to end decades of civil wars in the country. Reported by Kyaw Zaw Win and Set Paing Toe for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. At least ten Tibetan government workers were detained by authorities on Friday in northwestern Chinas Gansu province when they protested the loss of their jobs amid allegations of corruption in the hiring of replacements, sources in the region and in exile said. The protesters were taken into custody after gathering on April 8 in front of government offices in Machu (in Chinese, Maqu) county in the Kanlho (Gannan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, a native of the area now living in exile told RFAs Tibetan Service. They had asked for a review of the decision to lay them off from their jobs, RFAs source said, citing contacts in Machu and speaking on condition of anonymity. But instead of replying to their request, the authorities took them away to a jail or detention center in Machu, the source said. Those who were detained had held low-level posts for at least three to four years in various government departments including the department of forestry, RFAs source said. After they had worked hard in those departments during that time, the Machu county government issued an order ending their employment on the excuse that they lacked the right qualifications for their jobs, the source said. 'Backdoor connections' Some of the workers hired to replace them had come from outside the county, though, and had backdoor connections to influential county officials, while others had received only an elementary school education, he said. Some candidates were also hired who had paid others to sit for examinations in their place, he added. Separately, a Tibetan source in Machu confirmed the group had been detained, adding that a banner held by the fired workers during their protest had called for their jobs to be protected for the common good. They emphasized that they had not been involved in any political activities and had only worked in the public interest, he said. But shortly after launching their protest, the Tibetan workers were detained and taken away, RFAs exile source said. For now, the names and actual number of those detained are still not known, and no one knows where they are being held, he said. Reported by Lobe Socktsang and Lhuboom for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney. U.S. air strikes have killed at least 17 people in eastern Afghanistan. U.S. military spokesman Commander Fernando Estrella said on April 7 that U.S. warplanes conducted two air strikes in Paktika Province, near the Pakistani border. Paktika's provincial police chief, Zorawar Zahid, said those killed were militants. But another local official said those killed were civilians, including a tribal elder. "I am from the area where the incident happened and I can say there were all civilians," said Nimatullah Baburi, a deputy provincial council chief. Another council member, Fazal Rahman Katawazai, confirmed the strikes had left civilian casualties, but said he did not know how many. U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan have increased in recent months, especially on the militant strongholds along the eastern border with Pakistan. Based on reporting by Reuters and dpa An arson attack has destroyed the office of a Ukrainian judge presiding over the case of two Russian nationals charged with fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine's chief military prosecutor Anatoliy Matios said the attack on the Kyiv office of Judge Mykola Didyk was carried out around 3 a.m. on April 8. Matios said Didyks office was destroyed but added that legal documents related to the case of the two Russian nationals were not damaged. Matios said the attack was "an attempt to frighten" Didyk. Didyk is the presiding judge in the cases of Aleksandr Aleksandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, Russian nationals who were arrested in Ukraines eastern Luhansk region in May last year and charged with fighting alongside Russian-backed separatists. Aleksandrov's lawyer, Yuriy Hrabovskiy, was found murdered in Ukraine last month. Ukrainian authorities arrested two people in connection with the killing. Aleksandrov and Yerofeyev first admitted in a video that they were on active duty with the Russian military when they were captured, but later retracted that. Moscow contends the two men were not serving in the country's armed forces when they were detained by Ukrainian forces. Based on reporting by 112.Ukraine and Mediazona Imprisoned Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova has won a UN press award for "her outstanding contribution to press freedom in difficult circumstances." Ismayilova, an investigative journalist and RFE/RL contributor, was selected to receive the 2016 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. "Khadija Ismayilova highly deserves the prize and I am happy to see that her courage and professionalism are recognized," said Ljiljana Zurovac, president of the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2016 Jury. The $25,000 prize is named in honor of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper, El Espectador, in Bogota on December 17, 1986. Ismayilova is currently in prison on embezzlement and tax-evasion charges widely believed to be retribution for her reports on corruption involving senior government officials. KYIV -- Ukrainian officials said vile Russian missile strikes on civilian energy sites have caused power outages nationwide, leaving more than a million households without electricity, while Russian authorities ordered residents to leave Kherson "immediately" ahead of an expected effort by Kyivs forces to retake the crucial southern city. Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, Russian protests, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram on October 22 that Russia carried out a "massive attack" on Ukraine overnight and that "the aggressor continues to terrorize our country." "At night, the enemy launched a massive attack: 36 rockets, most of which were shot down...These are vile strikes on critical objects. Typical tactics of terrorists," he wrote. "The world can and must stop this terror." Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Zelenskiys office, said Ukrainian air defense forces had shot down 18 of the missiles. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a number of missiles had been shot down on the approach to the capital. "Several rockets flying toward Kyiv were shot down in the region by air defense forces. Thanks to our defenders!" Klitschko said. There was no immediate word on deaths related to the missile attacks, but officials said several people had been injured. It was not possible to verify the reports on either side. In the face of continued Russian strikes, Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba again urged Ukraine's Western allies to speed up the delivery of modern air defense systems. "We intercepted some, others hit the targets. Air defense saves lives. In [Western] capitals, there should not be a single minute of delay in the decision regarding air defense systems for Ukraine," Kuleba said. Local officials said power stations were hit in the regions of Odesa, Kirovohrad, and Lutsk, while other regions reported problems with electricity. "Another rocket attack from terrorists who are fighting against civilian infrastructure and people," the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on the Telegram app. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a government meeting that from October 10 to October 20, Russian strikes damaged more than 400 facilities in 16 regions of Ukraine, including dozens of energy facilities. "The Russian Army has identified our energy sector as one of the key targets for its attacks," Shmyhal said on October 21. "Russian propagandists and officials speak openly about the purpose of all these attacks: Ukraine, according to them, should be left without water, without light, without heat," he said. Meanwhile, Russian-appointed authorities in the occupied and illegally seized southern Kherson region on October 22 ordered the estimated 60,000 residents of the region's eponymous main city to leave "immediately" in the face of Kyiv's advancing counteroffensive. "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 Dnieper River," the region's Russia-backed authorities said on social media. Russina-installed officials are moving people out of the strategic city in what they are calling an evacuation but which Ukrainian officials label as deportations. The order came in spite of a claim by Russia's Defense Ministry on October 22 that its forces had prevented an attempt by Ukraine to break through its line of control in Kherson. "All attacks were repulsed, the enemy was pushed back to their initial positions," the Defense Ministry said, adding that Ukraine's offensive was launched toward the settlements of Piatykhatky, Suhanove, Sablukivka and Bezvodne, on the west side of the Dnieper River. The ministry's statement said Russian forces had also repelled attacks in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. Kherson city, which had a prewar population of 280,000, is one of the first urban areas occupied by Russia at the start of the invasion. Zelenskiys office said 88 settlements in the southern Kherson region and 551 settlements in the northeastern Kharkiv region have been de-occupied, while the Ukrainian forces' counteroffensive in the Kherson region moves ahead. Ukraine is trying to drive Russian forces in Kherson back east across the Dnieper. Russian soldiers on the western bank, where the city of Kherson is located, are reportedly close to being cut off from supply lines and reinforcements. Natalya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraines southern operational command, said the Ukrainian military struck the Antonivskiy Bridge over the Dnieper in the city of Kherson during an overnight curfew Russia-installed officials put in place to avoid civilian casualties. We do not attack civilians and settlements," Humenyuk told Ukrainian television. Ukrainian strikes made the Antonivskiy Bridge inoperable, prompting Russian authorities to set up ferry crossings and pontoon bridges to relocate civilians and transport supplies. Russia has sent in thousands of recently mobilized troops to reinforce the defense of Kherson, the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said on October 21. Zelenskiy again on October 21 urged the West to warn Russia not to blow up a dam at the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant on the Dnieper River as this could flood settlements toward Kherson. Zelenskiy said Russian forces had planted explosives inside the dam, which holds back an enormous reservoir, and were planning to blow it up. "Now everyone in the world must act powerfully and quickly to prevent a new Russian terrorist attack. Destroying the dam would mean a large-scale disaster," he said in his nightly address. With reporting by Reuters, AFP, AP, and the BBC Seitqazy Mataev, the head of the Kazakh Journalists Union and chairman of the National Press Club, has been admitted to hospital. Mataev, who was charged with embezzlement and tax evasion, has been under house arrest since February. Health officials at the Cardiology Center in Almaty told RFE/RL that Mataev was admitted with dangerously high blood pressure on April 7. Mataev was detained by police on February 22. A court in Almaty ordered him to stay under house arrest until his trial. Kazakhstan's Anticorruption Agency said that Mataev could face up to 12 years in jail if convicted on charges of embezzlement and tax evasion. Mataev has said he is innocent. Rights organizations have said Mataev was being prosecuted on trumped-up charges in response to his work as head of the journalists' union. An Iranian delegation will travel next week to Saudi Arabia to discuss arrangements for the hajj pilgrimage, in the first dialogue between the rival powers since Riyadh cut off relations with Tehran. The Saudis severed ties with Iran on January 3 after its missions in Tehran and Mashhad were set on fire by mobs outraged by the kingdom's execution of a prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric. A major spike in tensions also was caused by the death of thousands of pilgrims in a stampede at last year's hajj, including 464 Iranians. The head of Iran's hajj organization, Said Ohadi, revealed the plans to send a negotiating team to Riyadh to state media late on April 6. This year's pilgrimage to the Saudi city of Mecca, which all Muslims are expected to perform at least once in their lifetime, will occur in September. Ohadi said the two sides hope to sign an agreement for sending Iranian pilgrims, as in previous years. He said the talks will also address last year's stampede, which Iran blamed on Saudi mismanagement. So far, the Riyadh government has taken no action to compensate the families of Iranian victims, he said. Based on reporting by AP and AFP A man detained by Russian authorities in July for allegedly trying to join the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Syria has been identified as an ethnic Armenian from Kazakhstan. Officials at Russia's North Caucasus Regional Military Court told RFE/RL on April 8 that 24-year-old Vazgen Zargarian from Almaty was currently in a pretrial detention center in the city of Rostov-on-Don. Zargarian has been charged with the intention of joining the extremist group and preparing to take part in terrorism-related activities abroad. Investigators said Zargarian tried at least twice to join up with IS militants in Syria through the Turkish border. Central Asian states have said that hundreds of their citizens have joined IS extremists and other militant groups in Syria and Iraq. The majority of ethnic Armenians are Christians. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi made no request for new U.S. troops to help fight Islamic State (IS) militants. On a visit to Baghdad on April 8, Kerry told reporters at the U.S. Embassy that he wanted to reiterate the support of the U.S. president and vice president for Abadi, who is struggling with a political crisis, a collapsing economy, and the war against IS. He said he made clear to Abadi that it is important to have political stability in Iraq so that military operations are not affected. Kerry met earlier with Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and other senior Iraqi officials. Kerry's trip coincides with military advances. Iraqi forces say they entered the strategically important IS-held town of Hit on April 7. The Pentagon is considering establishing more small military outposts to provide artillery support and other aid to Iraqi forces readying an assault on Mosul, IS's stronghold in the country. Based on reporting by AP and Reuters BRUSSELS -- NATO has announced it will hold a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at the ambassadorial level at NATO headquarters in Brussels in the next two weeks. In a statement on April 8, the Western military alliance said the NATO-Russia Council will discuss "the crisis in and around Ukraine and the need to fully implement the Minsk agreements." "We will discuss military activities, with particular focus on transparency and risk reduction," it said, adding that Afghanistan and regional threats were also on the agenda. NATO suspended all practical cooperation with Russia in April 2014 due to Russia's action in Ukraine, including the annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014. Since then the NATO-Russia Council has only met once, in June 2014. Despite the strained ties, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a few times in recent years. With reporting by Rikard Jozwiak in Brussels Moscow has indicated it is considering freeing four imprisoned Ukrainians, including filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who were convicted by Russian courts on charges related to Russia's forcible annexation of Crimea and derided by critics as politically motivated. The Russian Justice Ministry said in a statement on April 8 that it had asked the Federal Penitentiary Service to prepare documents for the transfer of the four men back to Ukraine following a March 10 request from Kyiv. However, the ministry said any final decision to hand over Sentsov, Hennadiy Afanasyev, Oleksandr Kolchenko, and Yuriy Soloshenko would be made by Russian courts. The four are among at least 12 Ukrainians in Russian jails on convictions condemned by the Ukrainian and Western governments and some international rights groups. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko earlier this year indicated he would consider exchanging two Russians captured in eastern Ukraine for some of the Ukrainians being held in Russia. Dubbed the "Crimean terrorists" by the Russian media, Sentsov, Afanasyev, and Kolchenko were arrested soon after Russia's March 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula. Russian prosecutors accused Sentsov and Kolchenko -- a left-wing activist -- of plotting sabotage and terrorist attacks around Crimea. They built their case largely on testimony from Afanasyev, another activist, although he has recanted and said he was tortured into testifying against the two. A court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don convicted Sentsov and Kolchenko in August and sentenced them to 20 and 10 years in prison, respectively. Afanasyev was sentenced to seven years in prison. Soloshenko was convicted in October by a Moscow court of espionage. Russia's main security agency insisted he was trying to buy secret components for an air-defense missile system used in both Russia and Ukraine. Sentsov, whose 2011 film Gamer garnered international acclaim, is among the highest-profile prisoners being held in Russia, and his case drew protests from the European Union and many European filmmakers. Sentsov told the Russian court that a "trial by occupiers cannot, by definition, be fair." Russia is also holding Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko, who was sentenced by a Russian court last month to more than 20 years in prison after finding her complicit in the deaths of two Russian journalists covering fighting in eastern Ukraine in June 2014. Savchenko, who is regarded by Ukrainians as a symbol of defiance against Russian aggression, has refused to recognize the validity of her detention and reportedly has launched a dry hunger strike in prison. In a Facebook post on April 8, one of Savchenko's defense lawyers, Ilya Novikov, said after visiting her in prison that her health was beginning to worsen, and that a prison official had warned they would consider force-feeding her. Novikov also said Savchenko's prison cell was being monitored round-the-clock by video cameras, and that she had stopped using the shower or the washroom in order, he said, "not to give the meathead media any reason to speculate." A UN resolution refusing to recognize Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine passed overwhelmingly, and Kyiv and NATO accuse Russia of continuing to arm and back -- including with troops -- armed pro-Moscow separatists holding swaths of eastern Ukraine. With reporting by Interfax The head of Russia's renowned Hermitage art museum has submitted a proposal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to get involved in the restoration of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. Mikhail Piotrovsky told state news agency TASS that the plan was worked out with the Russian Academy of Sciences. He said Russian efforts could be part of an international restoration plan that he discussed with the director of UNESCO, the United Nations' cultural organization. "I think that's a nice opportunity to do something that military conflicts don't always achieve -- namely, to offer everyone to work together," the St. Petersburg musuem director said. "This will be a fair trial test for international solidarity." Syrian troops with the support of Russian air strikes regained control of Palmyra from the Islamic State (IS) militant group last month. IS blew up some of the archaeological site's most prominent monuments and executed a well-known archaeological expert who defended the site on the ruins after it seized control of the city last year. Piotrovsky said he would not try to "re-create" the monuments that were destroyed, but rather would "revive" or "rehabilitate" them using any fragments of the original stones that remain at the site. "If we can return them to their original places, then they should be returned, and nothing more than that will be done," he said. "Palmyra is to become a monument that people can adore, a monument to the tragic page that has been entered in its history, and a monument to the museum experts who died there," he said. With reporting by AP and TASS Serbia has accused Croatia of obstructing its negotiations on European Union membership and said it would not submit to blackmail by its neighbor. Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said his government was "stunned by Croatia's decision not to support Serbia's European path." His statement on April 8 comes after Croatian officials in Brussels refused to give their assent to Serbia opening talks on a new chapter or policy area in the negotiations. "Serbia will not allow itself to be blackmailed, humiliated, or disrespected by anyone," Vucic said in a statement. "Serbia will never be anyone's punching bag." A row has been brewing since Croatia said this week that Serbia must change its law on prosecuting crimes committed during the 1990s Balkan wars as a condition for completing its EU membership negotiations. Croatia says it is unacceptable for Serbia to claim jurisdiction for war crimes committed on the entire territory of the former Yugoslavia. Croatia fought a 1991-95 war against Belgrade-backed Serbian rebels to forge its independence from Yugoslavia. Based on reporting by Reuters KREMLIN, Virginia -- Yosif Stalin stood before his Kremlin home on a windswept afternoon this spring, his weathered hands gripping his walker. "I still own it," he said of the white, two-story house off a lonely country road. It's no coincidence that this octogenarian was named after one of the 20th century's bloodiest dictators, but it's just half of his name. His full name is Yosif Stalin Kim Roane, and he was the first child of African-American parents ever born in the Soviet Union. "Didn't nobody pay that no mind," Roane said of his notorious namesake in a recent interview with RFE/RL. "They mostly called me Joe." Roane, 84, is among the few living offspring of African-Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s to seek a better life in the nascent communist state. Most of these voyagers were driven by political convictions or economic hardship amid the Great Depression and pernicious racism in the United States, including the segregationist Jim Crow laws of the American South. That Roane was born in an empire run from the Kremlin and grew up in this tiny Virginia hamlet of the same name is a coincidence that inspired the title of a recent documentary, Kremlin To Kremlin, aimed at preserving the record of his family's remarkable journey for future generations. The film, produced by local historians, tells the story of Roane's father, Joseph J. Roane, a member of a team of African-American agronomists recruited to bring their expertise to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, most notably to improve cotton production in the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. The elder Roane, who died in 1995, is widely credited with helping develop a successful hybrid of American and local cotton capable of growing more quickly in Uzbekistan. To this day the commodity is virtually synonymous with the Central Asian country, whose autocratic post-Soviet president, Islam Karimov, has faced searing criticism from rights groups for forcing workers -- including children -- to harvest the crops. "Of course Uzbeks knew cotton growing, but these new types of cotton dealt big changes in the industry," Bekjon Toshmuhammedov, a biology professor from Uzbekistan, tells RFE/RL's Uzbek Service. "As far as I know, Uzbeks still grow the types of cotton created by the Americans." 'Celebrity' Treatment Raised in a well-to-do African-American family in Kremlin, Joseph J. Roane studied agronomy in college. After graduating, he was recruited to come to the Soviet Union by Oliver Golden, a black cotton specialist from Mississippi who would ultimately give up his U.S. citizenship and remain a Soviet national until his death in 1940. Golden had been a student of the renowned African-American agricultural scientist and inventor George Washington Carver, who helped select the team of agronomists. Soviet authorities had seized on the plight of black Americans as an antipode to what they promoted as their new classless society free from racism. Indeed, many of the dozens of African-Americans who relocated to the Soviet Union praised the way they were treated there, even as more and more Soviet citizens were being targeted in the snowballing Stalinist purges. These travelers came in various groups. In addition to the agronomists recruited by Golden, one group that was brought over to make a Soviet propaganda film about the evils of racism included the influential Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. The film never materialized, though Hughes traveled through the Soviet Union and met Golden and the elder Roane in Uzbekistan. "Then you have some political trainees from the 1920s who were very attracted to this country that professed a nonracial society and actually treated them in a hospitable way that was totally unheard of in the United States," Joy Gleason Carew, author of Blacks, Reds, And Russians: Sojourners In Search Of The Soviet Promise, tells RFE/RL. "It's amazing when you think about these people willing to leave home, and country, and language, culture for what they hoped would be a better life," adds Carew, an associate professor at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky. Both Golden and his wife, a Polish-Jewish American named Bertha Beliak, were committed communists. But the elder Roane said later that he "hardly knew where the Soviet Union was when Golden came to my college to speak" and that that he didn't know "exactly what a communist was." Roane told Golden's granddaughter, Russian journalist and television personality Yelena Khanga, that he signed on with Golden because the Soviet foreign-trade agency hiring the workers "was offering better pay for a month than a lot of people would make in a year in the Depression." "Secondly, I was young and I wanted to see the world. I thought this might be the only chance I'd ever get," Khanga quotes him as saying in her 1992 book about growing up as a black Russian-American. Roane and his new bride, Sadie, decided to make a honeymoon out of the trip. The group of agriculture specialists arrived in Leningrad in November 1931 after a four-week journey and then traveled to Uzbekistan, where they found ramshackle housing and infrastructure. But they received better wages and accommodations than the locals. "The Soviets did make extra overtures to them to make sure they were a little more comfortably housed than the average Uzbek," Carew says. This hospitality was evident when Sadie Roane gave birth to Yosif in Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent, on December 4, 1931. "She had at least five nurses to help her take care of me," Yosif says. "She had all kinds of help, as if she was a celebrity." Much of what Yosif recounts about the Roanes' life in Soviet Uzbekistan is based on hearsay because of his young age at the time. But he says that he remembers meeting other prominent African-Americans who visited the country. These include the famed performer and civil-rights activist Paul Robeson, who came under withering criticism at home for his vocal admiration for Stalin and the Soviet state. "Paul Robeson carried me around on his shoulders," Yosif says. 'You Don't Know You're Black?' Yosif Roane's sometimes diffuse recollections narrow to a laser-like focus when he discusses certain anecdotes from his childhood, like exploring nature in Uzbekistan and creeping around Red Army barracks in the Soviet republic. He's less mobile these days, his walker compensating for a bad right leg. During a recent interview, Yosif shuffled into the room wearing a brown tweed jacket, a white tie, and a black shirt with gray stripes that matched his thinning hair and neat mustache and soul patch. He erupts in laughter after telling about a time he saw a man from Africa on a bus he boarded with his family in Tashkent. "I said: 'Mama, Mama, look! Look at that black man!' And everybody on the bus cracked up. I was almost as black as he was. And everybody said, 'You mean to tell me you don't know you're black?'" Yosif says. Like many other black Americans who came to the Soviet Union during this period, Yosif's father said that he experienced less racism there than back home. He told Khanga that the only incident he could recall was when two white Americans hurled racial slurs at him in a Moscow barbershop and were thrown out after the barbers learned what they had said. The elder Roane extended his contract to work in the Soviet Union in 1934 and was sent to Soviet Georgia to work at a tomato cannery. The family remained for another three years before Soviet authorities delivered an ultimatum to the group of African-American agronomists: Give up their U.S. citizenship and stay, or leave the country. This turning point came in the fateful year of 1937, at the height of Stalin's Great Terror. This campaign is estimated to have resulted in more than 1 million killings by the Soviet state amid an atmosphere of rising paranoia. According to Khanga, it nearly ensnared her grandfather and Joseph Roane's recruiter, Oliver Golden. She writes that Golden learned that the Soviet secret police had come in the middle of the night to arrest him while he was away on vacation in southwestern Russia. When he returned home, Khanga writes, he went to the local secret service office and asked to be arrested "if you think I'm an enemy of the people." "Comrade Golden, don't get so upset. We've already fulfilled the plan of arrests for your area. Go home and work in peace," she quotes the police official as responding. According to Yosif, the increasingly perilous political situation in the Soviet Union played no role in his father's decision to bring his family back home. He says Joseph Roane's mother was ill. "He wanted to come back here quickly to get to see what he could do for my grandmother," he says. "My father loved his mama." Speaking to Khanga, Yosif's father portrayed his return as bittersweet. "In just a few years -- you'd be surprised -- you could forget what segregation was like," she quotes him as saying. "When Golden spoke at my college, I didn't believe him when he said there was no segregation in the Soviet Union. Why should I? But it proved to be absolutely true." 'Nobody Called Me Stalin' Yosif was not the first child of an African-American to be born in the Soviet Union. In the late 1920s, a few years before Yosif's birth, Golden fathered a son named Ollava who went on to become a ballet dancer and choreographer and died in the Russian city of Vladimir in 2013, at age 87. But based on open sources and research published by Carew, he was the first whose parents were both African-Americans. "I'm the first black American born in the Soviet Union," Yosif says emphatically. Almost all of the children born to these African-American expatriates in the 1920s and 1930s had Soviet mothers and were Americans only on their father's side. "They all practically stayed in the Soviet Union," says New York-based filmmaker Yelena Demikovsky, who has interviewed numerous descendants of these African-Americans for her film Black Russians: The Red Experience, which is in postproduction. Yosif, however, returned with his family to Kremlin, Virginia, at age 5 and settled in the clapboard home that he still owns. On a recent visit to the house through rolling fields of green spring wheat, a rusty windmill -- once a sign of the Roane family's self-sufficiency and affluence -- creaked and whined as it twirled. Yosif's father became a widely respected local educator, teaching at A.T. Johnson High School in the nearby town of Montross, one of the first high schools for African-American students in the area. The school, which opened the same year that the Roane family returned from the Soviet Union, was turned into a museum under the direction of Marian Ashton. She co-produced the documentary Kremlin To Kremlin along with Jon Bachman of Stratford Hall, a museum that is part of the Virginia Historical Society. "My passion for sharing this...is to introduce and engage the minds of all persons, especially the youth," Ashton says. "Hopefully they notice that these are ordinary people who just happened to have done some extraordinary things." The schoolhouse museum that Ashton runs features a small exhibit space that includes artifacts from Joseph Roane's life, including a fur hat and vest that he brought back from Uzbekistan. Sitting amid the relics of his father's life, Yosif says that he did not speak English -- only Russian -- when he returned with his family from the Soviet Union. "When my mother and father didn't want me to know what they were talking about, they spoke English," he says. Nearly eight decades later, Yosif knows only a few words of Russian. Greeting a reporter at the museum, he says, "Idi syuda" -- or "come here" -- with a decent Russian accent. He rattles off the word for dog -- "sobaka" -- and kitty-cats -- "kiski" -- and adds that he once had a dog named Tuzik, a Russian analogue to popular English-language canine names like Fido or Rover. After serving in the U.S. Navy, Yosif followed in his father's footsteps and became a teacher, had a family, and ran a barbershop as well. As for his name, Yosif says: "Nobody called me Stalin. In fact, a lot of people don't know, even right now, don't know nothing about Stalin. It didn't matter. It's just a name." He seemed unclear precisely why the Uzbek doctors added Kim to his birth certificate as well. The name, in fact, is a Russian acronym for the Young Communist International, the youth branch of the Communist International. It was among the newfangled names that became popular during Soviet times, many of which were based on Bolshevik leaders and buzz phrases. Less clear are the origins of the name of his town in Virginia. According to Khanga, the elder Roane's hometown nearly prevented him from renewing his American papers at the newly opened U.S. Embassy in Moscow after the establishment of U.S.-Soviet diplomatic ties in 1933. She writes that a low-level U.S. diplomat initially refused to believe that he hailed from a town called Kremlin and grudgingly signed off on the paperwork after cables with Washington confirmed his story. An authoritative history of the county in which Kremlin is located -- titled Westmoreland County, Virginia 1653-1983 -- sheds little light. "Besides being the citadel of Russian government, Kremlin is a suburb of Paris," the book notes. "How the name came to be applied to a place in Westmoreland is unknown." ON MY MIND After more than two years of focusing almost exclusively on foreign conflicts, is Vladimir Putin now turning his attention to domestic affairs? A recent editorial in Vedomosti and a commentary by political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya in Slon.ru each suggest this is the case. The creation of a new National Guard -- an elite paramilitary force that answers to Putin alone -- seems to illustrate the trend. So does the accompanying reorganization of the Interior Ministry. So does legislation introduced in the State Duma that would increase the penalties for extremism -- an offense that tends to be interpreted broadly in Russia. And so do moves that were less attention-grabbing -- like the creation of a Fatherland History Foundation to popularize history and Putin's move to place the Russia's Federal Archives under direct presidential control. The economy is in recession. Social protests are on the rise. The euphoria from Putin's military exploits is fading. And parliamentary elections are just months away. The Kremlin needs a new story line, a new movie, a new plot. But given that Putin has staked so much legitimacy reviving Russia's great power status, I have a hard time seeing him turning inward at this point -- even if it is to focus on domestic "enemies." IN THE NEWS In his first public comments on the Panama Papers, Vladimir Putin stuck with tried-and-true talking points, calling the reports a Western plot to destabilize Russia. An arson attack has destroyed the office of a judge in Kyiv who was hearing the case of two Russian citizens charged with fighting alongside separatists in the Donbas. Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko is on the third day of her dry hunger strike. Her attorney claims she is not receiving medical attention. A new bill has been introduced in the State Duma that would toughen penalties for terrorism and extremism. The Kremlin has announced that Putin's annual call-in program is scheduled for April 14. Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin says a war between Russia and Ukraine would last no more than four days. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Russia's new National Guard, which reports directly to Putin, will begin working even before the State Duma passes a law creating it. Hey, why wait? A Russian diplomat says soldiers from the 14th Army who are due to leave Moldova can only do so by going through Ukraine. And a court in the Saratov Oblast has dismissed a lawsuit calling for Putin to be removed from office for being an "enemy of the people." WHAT I'M READING Putin's Homecoming Writing in Slon.ru, political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya argues that Vladimir Putin is turning his attention to domestic politics after years of focusing on foreign affairs. An editorial in Vedomosti makes a similar argument. (Meduza has an English translation here). Mythbusters Contrary to one of the Kremlin's favorite talking points, the historical record shows that the West did not want the Soviet Union to break up. Aleksei Portansky, a professor of international relations at the Higher School of Economics and the Institute of International Economics and World Relations, makes the case in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The Panama Papers -- The Gift That Keeps On Giving Writing in The Moscow Times, Maxim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute and the editor at large of the Russian daily Vedomosti, shows how the Panama Papers reveal two value systems. Also in The Moscow Times, journalist and author Oliver Bullough calls out Russia's Offshore Bandits. Taking Kleptocrats To Court A new report by Alan Riley for the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, Ukraine Vs. Russia And The Kleptocrats, looks at Ukraine's legal options to recover assets lost due to corruption during ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's rule and from the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory. The Stakes In Ukraine In a piece in Intersection Magazine, Alexander Clarkson of King's College London shows how Ukraine's European integration benefits Russia. And a new Chatham House report by John Lough and Iryna Solonenko asks: Can Ukraine achieve a reform breakthrough? How are Crimeans faring two years after Russia's forceful annexation? Snob.ru talks to the locals. And courtesy of Bloomberg, meet the ex-con who now has a thriving banking business in Crimea. The Rise Of Illiberal States The U.S. National Endowment for Democracy has released a new edited volume, Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge To Democracy. The book looks at the soft-power competition between democratic states and the "big five" authoritarian regimes: China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia. It includes contributions from Anne Applebaum, Lilia Shevtsova, Peter Pomerantsev, and others. Here's a blurb from the publisher, the Johns Hopkins University Press: "Over the past decade, illiberal powers have become emboldened and gained influence within the global arena. Leading authoritarian countries -- including China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela -- have developed new tools and strategies to contain the spread of democracy and challenge the liberal international political order. Meanwhile, the advanced democracies have retreated, failing to respond to the threat posed by the authoritarians." Navalny Trolls Putin On his blog, Aleksei Navalny parses Putin's first public comments on the Panama Papers: The Master Class of Lies. Brexit Meets Dutch Referendum The Telegraph is reporting that the European Parliament is investigating subsidies allegedly funneled to Dutch referendum campaigners by a Brussels think tank linked to Nigel Farage, after he admitted arranging financing for the newspaper advert that helped gather enough signatures to force the April 6 vote. The Stakes In Karabakh Thomas de Waal, everybody's go-to guy on the South Caucasus, warns in The New York Times that the international community needs to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict "before it explodes." "A new all-out Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the stuff of nightmares. Given the sophisticated weaponry both sides now possess, tens of thousands of young men would most likely lose their lives. Russia and Turkey, already at loggerheads and with military obligations to Armenia and Azerbaijan, respectively, could be sucked into a proxy war. Fighting in the area would also destabilize Georgia, Iran, and the Russian North Caucasus. Oil and gas pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea could be threatened, too." And The Creepiest Story Of The Day Is A piece by Kevin Rothrock at Global Voices: The Russian Art Of Meta-Stalking. "The next time you ride the subway in St. Petersburg, watch out for 21-year-old photographer Egor Tsvetkov. He recently unveiled a new project called 'YOUR FACE IS BIG DATA,' which he created by semisecretly photographing passengers seated across from him on the citys metro, without asking their permission." Read on, and be creeped out. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has urged Iran to use its influence to help end the wars in Yemen and Syria rather than pursue "destabilizing" activities in the region. At a news conference in Bahrain as he visited U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf on April 7, Kerry condemned "the destabilizing actions of Iran, which the United States takes very seriously." He noted that the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, last week seized a cache of weapons which the U.S. Navy said Iran was shipping to Huthi rebels in Yemen to help in their war against the government. "We call on Iran to constructively join in the efforts to make peace and to help us to resolve Syria. Rather than to continue to send weapons to Huthis, join in the effort...to make peace and to work toward a cessation of hostilities," Kerry said. While visiting with Iran's fierce rivals in the Gulf, Kerry defended Tehran's nuclear accord with world powers and the lifting of economic sanctions under the accord, which is giving a boost to Iran's economy. But he stressed that the United States and its Arab allies "remain united in our opposition to Iran's missile activities." The United States has imposed a series of sanctions on Iran over its ballistic-missile tests and has urged the United Nations Security Council to also sanction Iran. That has prompted strenuous objections from Tehran, which says such sanctions undermine the economic relief it is entitled to under the nuclear accord after having curbed its nuclear development activities. Kerry on April 7 said for the first time the United States is open to a "new arrangement" with Iran for peacefully resolving disputes over the missile tests, AP reported. Without elaborating, Kerry said the United States and its allies have told Iran that they are "prepared to work on a new arrangement to find a peaceful solution to these issues." But he said Iran first had to "make it clear to everybody that they are prepared to cease these kinds of activities that raise questions about credibility and questions about intentions." In an address on state television on April 7, Rohani said: "We are in favor of a policy of moderation...Iran is not a threat to any country...Tehran wants interaction with the world, with its neighboring countries. "With moderation we can reach our goals faster...To progress, we need to have interaction with the world," he continued. But Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, whose government accuses Iran of stoking protests among the kingdom's Shi'ites demanding an end to Sunni minority rule, echoed Kerry's call for more cooperation from Tehran. Iran's "interventions through proxies in several parts of our region [are] continuing unabated," he said. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir called for a complete halt to Iranian support for the Huthi rebels in Yemen. "If Iran continues its aggressive policy," he said, "it will be difficult to deal with Iran." Tehran argues that it is Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies that are sowing instability in the region with their air strikes supporting the government in Yemen and their financial backing for opposition forces in Syria. The war in Yemen is at a critical junction, like the Syrian war, where a serious effort at forging peace sponsored by the United Nations is under way. Yemen's warring parties have agreed to observe a UN-brokered cease-fire starting at midnight April 10, and peace negotiations are due to start in Kuwait on April 18. As in Syria, the war has had a devastating impact on the people of Yemen. The United Nations says around 6,300 people have been killed in the war. The bombardment of Yemen by a Saudi-led Arab coalition has taken a particularly devastating toll. Human Rights Watch said on April 7 that bombs supplied by the United States were used in coalition air strikes on a market in Yemen that killed at least 97 civilians, including children, last month. Kerry declined to comment on that accusation. In Syria, Iran and the Gulf Arab states are also on opposing sides of the war. Iran has been a principle backer of President Bashar al-Assad's regime while the Arab states have supported rebel groups seeking to oust Assad. That five-year war has killed more than 270,000 people and pushed nearly 5 million into exile. The United States has been trying to galvanize support behind UN-sponsored peace talks that are set to resume on April 13 in Geneva. As in past efforts at Syrian peace, Kerry said the main obstacle is deciding Assad's future. Rebel groups want Assad to step down during a political transition leading to elections. But Assad -- backed by Iran and Russia -- insists on at least sharing power until the elections, when voters will decide on his fate and a new government. "The discussion about transition is the key test of the seriousness of the Assad regime, of Russia and Iran" about peace in Syria, Kerry said. With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP An Army veteran charged with killing SunTrust executive Brian E. Szabo smashed up a store in Savannah, Ga., last summer in a sudden violent outburst that involved shattering a display case and stealing cigarettes and beer before stripping naked in front of police. Nigel E. Walker, 26, charged with fatally stabbing Szabo inside the victims Richmond home early Saturday, went on a brief rampage Aug. 2 inside a store after he could not produce identification to buy alcohol, according to a police report of the incident obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The on-duty clerk told police that Walker grabbed an energy drink display case and threw it to the ground, scattering drinks across the floor. Walker then walked behind the counter and grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter before leaving, taking the beer he had tried to purchase with him, the report says. A customer told police she saw Walker become violent, prompting her to get out of the store for fear that Walker may have a gun, the report said. The customer said she then saw Walker take off his clothes in the parking lot. When Savannah police officer Ronald Reagin arrived, he found Walker in the parking lot stripped down to his underwear, with his clothing lying near a vehicle in the lot. Mr. Walker then removed his underwear and began walking towards me completely naked, the officer said in his report. Reagin placed Walker into custody, putting him into the back of his police cruiser. The officer said he tried speaking with Walker, but he was disorderly and possibly under the influence of a mind-altering substance. He was belligerent and would not comply with my attempts to speak reasonably with him, wrote Reagin, adding that his interaction with Walker was recorded on the officers body camera. The officer searched Walkers vehicle and found a 9 mm Glock 19 pistol with a single bullet but no magazine. The store clerk took the officer inside to show him the overturned display case, with energy drinks broken and liquid spilled onto the floor. In addition, the stores cash register had been broken from the counter, the report says. The officer charged Walker with disorderly conduct, shoplifting, criminal trespass and public indecency. He was convicted Oct. 1 of the disorderly conduct charge, but prosecutors withdrew the other counts against him. It could not immediately be determined what punishment Walker received and whether he was ordered to undergo mental health counseling. An attorney who represented Walker in that case did not respond to a call for comment. According to court papers, Walker moved to Virginia soon after the Savannah incident and initially lived in a residence in the 1400 block of Grove Avenue in Richmond. At some point later, he became a guest at the Szabo family home in the 100 block of Westmoreland Avenue and was living there when he allegedly attacked Brian Szabo about 2:30 a.m. Saturday. A family friend and co-worker, who declined to be identified, said Walker was a friend of the family who got to know them through one of Szabos daughters. Savannah resident Franklin Fletcher said his wife, Mary, had adopted Walker, and the couple raised him from about eighth grade through the end of high school. He was surprised to learn of Walkers arrest in Richmond. Nigel was a veteran, Fletcher said. I think he did three back-to-back tours over in Afghanistan. His wife declined to talk about Walkers background or the charges now pending against her adopted son. I have no idea what happened, she said. I dont know whats going on about the case, and I do not want to talk about it. Richmond police charged Walker with first-degree murder and using a knife in the commission of a felony. Police said Szabos slaying stemmed from an argument with Walker, but they declined to elaborate. Szabo died of a sharp-force injury to his neck, according to the state medical examiner. Walker, a native of New Orleans, had no job or family ties here, and his only source of income is a mental disability stipend of $1,400 a month, according to Richmond court records. Szabo, 55, was a 26-year employee of SunTrust Bank and its predecessor, Crestar, and most recently served as SunTrusts executive vice president of corporate risk. He also was a board member of the Richmond Symphony. Brian traveled and spent time with family and lifelong friends in Atlanta and Richmond, his obituary says. His pride and joy were his children. He often went to work early so he could attend and help coach their activities. His love, hopes and dreams for them were first and foremost in his life. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10:30 a.m. today at St. Edward the Confessor Catholic Church at 2700 Dolfield Road in Chesterfield County. The death of Brian Szabo is a senseless and terrible tragedy. The Szabo family requests privacy and respect as it mourns the loss of a wonderful husband, father and man, family spokesman Mark Hubbard said. The investigation into Mr. Szabos death is a criminal matter, and the family is assisting police and prosecutors. Questions about the case should be directed to the appropriate authorities. Last year, Virginia lawmakers killed half of all the bills rejected in the General Assembly by unrecorded voice votes. Newspapers and good-government groups objected to the secrecy, pointing out that the public had a right to know how legislators being paid with public funds to enact public policy were voting in public bodies. Legislators were not exactly chastened. This year two-thirds of all the bills that died were killed with unrecorded votes. Most of that furtive behavior occurred in the House of Delegates. But the state Senate does not deserve any laurels not after Majority Leader Tommy Norments petty campaign against press access. Lawmakers reticence to conduct public business in the light of day is inexcusable. It is also incomprehensible: The Assembly has gerrymandered legislative districts so thoroughly that this past November, every single one of the 128 incumbents who sought re-election won. In August 1941, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill met for two days on the USS Augusta off Argentia, Newfoundland. It was the first of their frequent World War II meetings and marked the beginning of Americas defense alliance with Europe that has lasted more than half a century. Now a leading Republican presidential candidate proposes scrapping NATO, the alliance with Europe that grew out of the war and eventually won the Cold War. The charge is that Europe is now rich enough to pay for its own defense and that stationing thousands of American forces there is unnecessary and a drain on the U.S. economy. This argument is not new; after the Cold War ended in 1990, critics claimed that NATO was not needed to defend Europe. How important is European security to the United States in 2016? The answer is contingent on two key factors: (1) Europes willingness to continue progress toward unity within the European Union (EU); and (2) The EUs ability to forge a unified foreign policy, and defense policies that are consistent with U.S. strategic objectives in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. European unity. By any measure, Western Europe made remarkable strides toward economic integration during the 40 years, 1950-1990, that encompassed the Cold War years. This was a period when NATO was locked in armed confrontation with Moscow over supremacy in Europe. After Germany was reunited in 1990 and the Warsaw Pact collapsed, NATO offered membership to Poland, Hungary and other former Soviet satellites. Post-Cold War years also saw progress toward European political union. German and French leaders initiated the process in the 1990s, and it gained support in Western Europe. Although Britain was skeptical of stronger political ties with the continent, it too joined. East European states qualified for membership early in the new century, Finally, after 50 years, the ideal of an integrated Europe, supported by the United States, had become reality. In 1999 the process was significantly enhanced by introduction of the euro as Europes common currency. Britain, however, decided to keep its own pound sterling. Today, Europe needs to decide whether to hold together in the EU or return to competing national states. U.S. strategic interests. For 50 years, from 1947 when the Marshall Plan was proposed by President Truman, Americas top security interest was protecting Western Europe against the military and ideological threat of the Soviet Union. Large U.S. forces were deployed in West Germany and other states. The North Atlantic Pact, founded in 1949 by 12 members that included Canada and the U.S., formed NATO in the 1950s and built an integrated defense organization that now comprises 28 members, from eastern and western Europe, and includes Turkey, a non-European country. Even though the Soviet threat to Europe ended in 1990, it was replaced by a diminished Russia whose current leader, Vladimir Putin, hopes to restore Russias influence in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Now a new security threat of ISIS terrorism haunts Europes capitals. Still, critics have a point when they say Europeans arent pulling their weight in providing security against both the Russians and terrorists. Even though Germany and most NATO members increased defense budgets for the coming years, only four currently meet the 2 percent of GDP target set by NATO: the U.S., Britain, France and Poland. In the U.S., defense spending exceeds 3 percent of GDP; but this country has worldwide commitments that other NATO states do not. From a strategic standpoint, Europe remains a vital national interest of the United States. A crucial test will come June 23 when British voters decide whether Britain should withdraw from the EU. If their answer is no, we can hope that Europe will stay together and meet the threats posed by Russia and ISIS. But if Britain decides to withdraw from the EU, the U.S. will need to re-evaluate its options and perhaps downgrade Europe as a vital national interest. The reality is that, without Britains participation, the EU will become a more insular Europe and will be a less cooperative partner for the United States. It was 15 minutes after midnight when the bombs began to fall. The people on the ground never had a chance. Before it was over, 334 Superfortress B-29s had dropped 2,000 tons of incendiaries on the wooden frame houses below. Fanned by high winds, the resultant conflagration became what some historians have dubbed the worst firestorm of all time. Sixteen square miles in and around Tokyo were incinerated. A million men, women and children were injured. The low-end estimate of the death toll puts it at 80,000. This was in March of 1945. Five months later, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. All that carnage came in the context of a morally unambiguous conflict often described as the good war. But the hell that fell on Tokyo is a reminder that, while it is sometimes necessary, war is never good. No, war is often little more than a choice between terrible things. In countries like ours that pride themselves on their moral authority, we sometimes allow ourselves to forget that, binding war with legalities and rules designed to leave conscience clean and allow us to do what is repulsive, but required. But the taut and compelling new movie Eye in the Sky refuses to allow us to forget. In it, Helen Mirren is a British colonel directing a drone strike by Aaron Paul, a Nevada-based pilot, against terrorists in Kenya, in consultation with a facial recognition team in Hawaii, and with the advice and consent of government and military officials in London, Washington and elsewhere. Mirrens colonel and Pauls pilot have electronic eyes on a house where terrorists are gearing up for a suicide bombing likely to consume dozens of lives. They can put a missile through the roof and end the threat immediately. But theres a little girl selling bread just outside and the blast that ends the threat will likely end her as well. What to do? Once upon a time, one man had his hand on the trigger and had to decide in a split-second. But now, with drones able to rain remote control death, a dozen hands in a dozen places are all on that same trigger, and in the movie, the split second swells to encompass a debate among military and government officials over whether law and morality can countenance killing this child. Maybe the answer is obvious to you. Maybe, with icy Spock logic, you note that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. But this is not a math problem. No, this is you, choosing death for a little girl. It is in the name of a greater good, to be sure. But still, death for a little girl. How difficult do you imagine it was for the men commanding those B-29s to drop fire on Tokyo? Yes, they were professionals punishing an aggressor nation. But they were also human beings, so is it fanciful to suppose that maybe some of them felt some tug of conscience as the bomb bay doors opened? And if so, how much more difficult would it have been to look right at the innocent and yet push the button anyway? Last year, The New York Times reported that this country had carried out more than 400 drone strikes since 2004. Some bad people died in these attacks. But so did an American aid worker in Pakistan, wedding-goers in Yemen and hospital patients in Afghanistan. In fact, according to multiple reports, the vast majority of those killed have been innocents unconnected to terrorism. If you are outraged, fine. But dont miss the bigger outrage: namely, that this is what war is and always has been. Its just that in the drone era, its harder to fool ourselves than it once was; we are forced to see the child standing there about to die and we have time to debate the morality of it. But thats all thats new. Because she has always been standing there. And she always will be. A consortium of local firms quietly approached the city late last week with a pitch to partner in the overhaul of Richmond Public Schools. The move comes months after city officials told the district Richmond lacked the near-term debt capacity to tackle the latest iteration of plans for right-sizing the districts outdated infrastructure, years in the making. School administration officials on Thursday confirmed the existence of an offer but would not detail the proposed public-private collaboration. I just received it, said Tommy Kranz, an assistant superintendent for support services for the district. Were just beginning our review. School Board members reached Thursday said they were hesitant to comment on a plan they had not seen. I obviously dont know what the proposal contains, said Board Chairman Jeff M. Bourne, 3rd District, but were looking at all options and any means necessary to address our critical infrastructure issues. Kimberly Gray, 2nd District, likewise welcomed any possible path forward on the tens of millions of dollars in school construction projects thrust into uncertainty due to budget constraints and in the backdrop of a politically charged environment. All told, the overhaul as envisioned would cost $563 million. Folks are coming at us from all directions because theyre hearing about our facilities issues, she said. This (proposal) wouldnt tie up the localitys debt, it could provide us with some flexibility; were at a critical point. We have to do something. The need for increased investment in Richmond Public Schools has driven debate among a crowded field of mayoral hopefuls in a year that also will see all City Council and School Board positions up for election. Clearly we cant afford to wait and we should be pursuing all options when it comes to funding, said Councilman Jonathan T. Baliles, 1st District. But any unsolicited pitch for city business demands scrutiny, he said. The administration (of Mayor Dwight C. Jones) is not used to vetting and digging into plans and this needs it, Baliles said. Well need to vet the details. Tammy D. Hawley, press secretary for Jones, pointed to Jones recent creation of a Multi-Year Schools Funding Plan Evaluation Team in response to questions about the proposal. As part of the work of the team, it will include the exploration of potential public-private partnerships, Hawley wrote in an email. The mayor previously had floated the idea of holding a voter referendum on boosting taxes to fund the schools increasing operating and capital needs. He proposed relatively flat funding for the district heading into the next fiscal year, leaving the city School Board with an $18 million gap between the $293 million plan theyve approved, and what they will get unless members of City Council vote to change Jones spending plan. The mayor ultimately could veto any proposed amendments, but he has not chosen to do so since taking office in 2009. Councilman Parker C. Agelasto, 5th District, likened being positioned between the mayor and School Board to brokering peace during the Cold War. Its like the schools and the mayor are the USA and the USSR ... and were caught in the middle, Agelasto said. Its a very difficult position. He had not yet seen the proposal. If the plan meets the standards established for Virginias Public-Private Education and Infrastructure Act, city officials must solicit competitive proposals for at least 45 days, said L. Preston Bryant Jr., a former Lynchburg delegate who now is a senior vice president at McGuireWoods Consulting who co-authored the acts enabling legislation. The measure, enacted in 2002, was envisioned as a way to leverage private dollars in the vein of existing public-private partnerships already used to stretch limited resources for transportation projects. Between 175 and 200 projects in Virginia have been completed under the PPEA, Bryant estimated, for everything from parking decks and schools to police stations. The financial aspects of the proposal submitted to city and school officials will not initially be subject to open record laws, Bryant said. If the city moves forward to solicit bids the conceptual details of the plan will be available for review but all estimates of construction costs would be withheld during the competitive process. Once a project is selected that information would be subject to disclosure. When we put together the guidelines, we feared that people would say, Youve got a bunch of rich buddies who got a sweetheart deal, made it the backroom, that sort of thing, Bryant said. We tried to anticipate that people would be suspect of that process and so we built in more robust public engagement requirements than you have in the traditional procurement process. Most initial proposals are unsolicited, he said, but the likelihood is that school officials would have been working in concert with interested companies. Unsolicited does not mean unexpected, Bryant said. Before a team of architects and engineers spends a lot of time on a proposal like this, it likely would have spent a lengthy period of time several months communicating with the local government. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. Credit scores are complicated, so the process of improving them can look different for everyone. Get some helpful tips here, along with more business and economy news in case you missed it. Botetourt Education Abroad targets middle school-aged children. While not school related, it is partnered with three Read Mountain Middle School teachers Angie Myers, Joyce Mandeville and Tracey White. BEA has also partnered with EF Tours to put on the trips. The first will come this summer in the form of a trip to Europe. While there, they will visit London, Paris, Florence, Rome, Pompeii and Capri. On Monday, April 18, an initial meeting at Orchard Hills Church for a 2017 trip to Germany, Switzerland and Italy, including a trip to a concentration camp, will be held. The meeting takes place at 7 p.m. If you cannot make the meeting, contact Angie Myers at botetourtcountyeuropetrip16@gmail or 874-8226. Travel makes it easier for kids to be open and stresses diversity," Mandeville said. White echoed that sentiment: Travel can make a world of difference to kids and their outlook. People can sign up and make monthly payments for the 2017 summer trip. The other trip is already closed for the summer of 2016. I am very passionate about this. This is an opportunity that cannot be replicated unless you go there, Myers said. Tour guides make these trips meaningful for the kids." She encourages anyone of middle school age interested in travel and their parents to come to the meeting on April 18. Mandeville added: "We will do fundraisers. We will be selling plants on Mothers Day and we are going to have a paint night at Daleville Church of the Brethren. We hope to go every year, Myers said. It is important to take as many young people as possible. COVID-19 drove a dramatic increase in the number of women who died from pregnancy or childbirth complications in the U.S. last year, a crisis that has disproportionately claimed Black and Hispanic women as victims. A government report released Wednesday lays out grim trends across the country for expectant mothers and their newborn babies. It finds that pregnancy-related deaths have spiked nearly 80 percent since 2018, with COVID-19 being a factor in a quarter of the 1,178 deaths reported last year. The percentage of preterm and low birthweight babies also went up last year, after holding steady for years. And more pregnant or postpartum women are reporting symptoms of depression. A Virginia teacher was one of two recognized with a prestigious McGlothlin Award for Teaching Excellence on Thursday. Alice Watson, an elementary school music teacher in Campbell County, won the award in the elementary category, according to an announcement from Blue Ridge PBS, which administers the annual contest. Stephanie Miller, a high school math teacher in Tennessee won in the secondary category. At a ceremony at Radford University, Watson and Miller each received checks for $25,000, some of which is dedicated to international travel designed to enrich their teaching experience. Four other teachers from the Roanoke and New River valleys were finalists for the award and received $1,000 each: Kelly Linkenhoker, a teacher at Prices Fork Elementary School in Montgomery County Kelly Steele, a teacher a New London Academy in Bedford County Erika Hackworth, a teacher at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Roanoke Lynn Williams, a teacher at Giles High School in Giles County The McGlothlin Award for Teaching Excellence is given annually by the McGlothlin Foundation to two teachers who live in selected portions of Virginia, Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky. This is the 17th year the award has been given. LYNCHBURG Businesses and city officials are bracing for hundreds of visitors to Lynchburg when The Virginian, Norfolk & Westerns Class J 611 steam passenger locomotive, pulls into Kemper Street Station on Saturday afternoon. The train, coming from Spencer, North Carolina, as part of a one-day excursion, is expected to arrive at the station at about noon and depart at 3 p.m. The city has created a small festival to celebrate the arrival of the train, and downtown restaurants and stores are planning discounts and specials for visitors expected to arrive by shuttle from the train station. We want everyone to have a good experience, Lynchburg city spokeswoman JoAnn Martin said Thursday, adding she hopes train riders have such a good time theyll decide to come back one day and maybe stay a little longer. Justin Rogers, general manager at The Depot Grille, said the downtown restaurant is running food specials and has increased inventory and weekend staffing in anticipation of a big turnout. Were definitely expecting a big crowd, Rogers said, adding the restaurants setting inside an old train station is expected to attract fans. The Virginian will carry about 900 passengers and crew combined. In addition, many people are expected to be on site and along the route to see the National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark pull into the Kemper Street Station. There is really no way for us to tell how many will come to see the train, Martin said. We know it has brought a lot of public interest. The locomotive, 16 feet tall at the stack, had put in a total of 1.2 million miles when it retired in 1994. It was restored for excursion duties complete with a dome passenger car, giving riders a 180-degree panoramic view of passing scenery in 2014 and put back into service in May. Since news broke of its visit to the Hill City, Mark Brown with the North Carolina Transportation Museum said his office has had a huge volume of calls from fans trying to determine the route the train will take to and from North Carolina. To prepare for the expected crowd, Lynchburg will close Kemper station parking for anyone other than Amtraks morning riders, and will provide free shuttle service to and from downtown starting at 10:30 a.m. All downtown parking is free Saturday, and shuttles will run continuously throughout the day. GLTC transportation is free on all routes all day as well. Martin advises visitors to dress warmly temperatures are expected to be in the 40s on Saturday and, for those who want to be in the front row to see the train roll in, arrive early. For those who cant get to the station, Martin said, the train will be visible from the Blackwater Creek Trail at Kemper Street Station. She and Brown both ask for patience. The train could be a little late so people just have to have patience thats the nature of trains, Martin said. Brown said whenever the 611 travels, the route is lined with fans and photographers. He expects this weekends excursion to be no different because the train cars are as spectacular as the steam locomotive itself. People dont get on these trains to get to and from work or just to pass the time, Brown said. This is a chartered special occasion trip, and the mood is grand on these trains. Its a lot of fun, he said. Its going to look like no train youve seen before. Familiar with the popularity of the trains, Brown advises those wanting to take photos to make sure they are on the safest ground possible before doing so, and said it is well worth it to get the photos. This is an impressive beast either moving or stable. Knowing what Lynchburg has planned for the passengers of the 611 only adds to the excitement, Brown said. A really big party thats really what we anticipate, he said. Thats going to be a really great time those three hours that we are spending in Lynchburg. A NEW panel aimed at overseeing protests has been officially launched. Police and crime commissioner Dr Alan Billings set up the Independent Policing Protests Advisory Panel to work with South Yorkshire Police in planning protests and marches. It follows a series of 21 demonstrations by far-right and other groups over the past four years, many of them connected to the Rotherham grooming scandal. The panel will be chaired by Andrew Lockley, chairman of the Independent Ethics Panel, who will be supported by Abdul Khayum, Chair of the Minority Communities Panel, Sahir Ali and Renata Atkins, both members of the Minority Communities Panel, Michael Lewis and Linda Christon, both Independent Ethics Panel members, and Cllr Saghir Alam, Rotherham Borough Councils Cabinet Member for Corporate Services. The Panel will convene to provide advice to South Yorkshire Police when a group indicates it will be protesting on any issue within South Yorkshire. Members will support the Force by offering comment on proposals for handling the event and work with them in advance of any protest, as well as being in attendance to observe on the day and helping to learn lessons from the event and make recommendations for managing future protests. Dr Billings said: The members that have been appointed represent a cross-section of our communities from across South Yorkshire and I expect them to be able to bring knowledge and expertise to make recommendations regardless of the objective of the planned protests. Indian gold coins will be soon available at India Post 08 april 2016 News MMTC, the Indian government agency handling marketing of the first such national coins, is likely to enter into an agreement with India Post shortly for the purpose. The Indian gold coins may soon be available across the country. While Indian Overseas Bank has started distributing these coins through limited branches, talks are on with the State Bank of India, UCO bank and ICICI Bank to sell these coins that carry Ashoka Chakra on one side and Gandhiji's logo on the other side. MMTC's initiative comes at a time when gold prices increased 16.2% in the first three months of the year, the biggest quarterly rise since 1986. "The coins were being initially minted at the government mint in Mumbai. Now the Kolkata mint has also started producing these coins," an official said. The coins are available in 5 gm and 10 gm options, along with a 20 gm bar. The 24-carat coins and bar come with 999 purity. The government has also allowed MMTC to use the gold that is being deposited under the Gold Monetisation Scheme, mostly from temples, for minting the Indian Gold Coins. Aruna Gaitonde, Editor in Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough&Polished The Cabinet office is slated to release the Japan consumer confidence index for March at 1:00 am ET Friday. The index is seen at 40.5, compared to 40.1 in February. Ahead of the data, the yen held steady against its major rivals. As of 12:55 am ET, the yen was trading at 123.62 against the euro, 153.06 against the pound, 113.69 against the Swiss franc and 108.77 against the U.S. dollar. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Forex News UNICEF sends tons of medical aid to Sana'a again SANA'A, April 08 (Saba) - A plane of UNICEF loaded with five tons of medical aid arrived on Thursday in Sana'a International Airport. UNICEF spokesman in Yemen Mohammad al-Asadi said that the aid shipments contain five tons and a half of vaccines for children to contributing the National polio immunization campaign slated for April 10th. On Tuesday, two planes of UNICEF loaded with 7.532 tons of vaccines for children and over 37 tons of medical assistance and supplies. HA/BA Saba Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Whatsapp Whatsapp Telegram Telegram Email Email Print Print [08/April/2016] Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ... By SA Commercial Prop News The Hout Bay Residents' Association will apply for a court interdict to stop construction on the Chapman's Peak toll plaza in Cape Town, according to a report on Wednesday. The Cape Times reported that the association's attorneys informed the provincial government, SA National Parks and toll road concessionaire Entilini of this legal action through a letter on Tuesday. So far, construction has been restricted to the road reserve of Chapman's Peak drive, but on Thursday building is to take place in the Table Mountain National Park, which forms a part of the Cape Floral region World Heritage Site. The residents' group believes it is unlawful to build in a national park without Parliament de-proclaiming the affected portion of land. The attorneys told Entilini and authorities it would save them money to halt construction in the meantime. Legal papers would be filed by Monday. Folks, the truth is simple enough. All this talk from some of our leaders about the negligence of others, God, the truth and justice sounds all so hollow. We say this for the simple reason that we have a government that is telling everyone to be honest, talks about justice and mentions God ever so frequently when we know very well that little has been done to address the issues of collusion and corrupt practices in the public service that are hurting our poor people. This corruption is screaming at us to be fixed. Now. Please. Ironically, these very same people have been calling others negligent, dishonest among other very colourful words. Okay so they might have a point but seriously. The nerve! Lets not try and remove the speck on another persons eye when there is log there that needs to bulldozed out so they could at least see clearly. Indeed, when we stop to observe some of the latest comments thrown back and forth by our leaders, its hard not to say that maybe there is a method in thy madness. Maybe there is a deliberate ploy to sidetrack and divert the attention so far away from the fact that public servants had colluded to defraud public funds, to the tune of millions. In this country today, we have some real problems. There is no doubt about that. Our foreign debt has skyrocketed through the roof to the point where we should be really concerned. The major banks and some of our biggest funders have been warning us for years. How long more will we continue to ignore them? Our economy is struggling. Exports figures are shoddy, tourism number look very worrying and the agriculture sector doesnt exactly give us much hope either. And yet it just baffles the mind that no effort is being made whatsoever to try and recover let alone hold public officials to account for the abuse of power and positions we are well aware of. Such abuse has cost this country millions. In one instance, more than half a million tala was spent on a lousy office that now its there useless. This is money that could have been used to pay for medical supplies, more doctors, better teachers and help some of those poor families who basically live on the streets to make a tala or two to get by. If we talk about honesty, isnt it time that this ridiculous decision to spend that much money be dealt with? Wouldnt that be justice? And if we continue to ignore it, who is negligent then? Ladies and gentlemen, were talking about unbridled abuse identified in the Chief Auditor and Controllers report that have since been confirmed by the Officers of Parliament Committee. Documentary evidences have been presented to prove that public servants had indeed colluded to defraud public funds. What more do they want? Perhaps they need a message from heaven? Keep in mind that these are just some of the many issues raised by the O.P.C and the Chief Auditor in relation to the performance of some government bodies. How could Parliament ignore these things? We repeat, we have a government that continues to blame the world for our problems to the point where the blame game has become so ridiculous. But why has it not stopped to consider the impact of these instances of wrongdoing and abuse on our finances? Perhaps now is the time our Parliament and government make a serious effort to address these pestering snags staring at us unblinkingly in the face. Ladies and gentlemen, these cannot be ignored. Its impossible. Have a wonderful weekend Samoa, God bless! Dear Editor, Re: Just fix the basic needs at the airport That is so narrow minded, faithless and stupidest thing to say. Its always those who have no sense of pride and no sense of grateful for whats given and done to support our ailing economy. It is typical of a Fiapoko to open his mouth and spit out garbage unnecessarily. In order for Samoa to move forward is to flow along with the world in technologies and economically. The airport is money well spent and it will help the country grow. I can almost guarantee that you are the first to admit that you are from Samoa when Palagi start admiring and praising Samoa for its airport. Give Samoa a chance and stop beating the hand that feeds you. I am an overseas Samoan but I am very proud of my island nation. Stop complaining and contribute to the betterment of Samoa by doing something productive for yourself and give Samoa the praise it deserves. Bruin The story of a young Samoan woman claiming to be carrying the marks of Jesus Christs suffering is making news around the world. Tessa Wong of the BBC writes: A Samoan womans claims that she has stigmata has gripped the Pacific Island nation in recent weeks. Toaipuapuaga Opapo, 23, says bleeding wounds appeared on her body while she was at church on Good Friday. Her story, widely covered in the largely Christian country, has triggered a national debate on the truth of her claims. Stigmata is a phenomenon where believers say they have crucifixion marks or bleeding similar to that of Christs. Ms Opapo claimed the wounds appeared on her palms, feet, forehead and her side while she was performing as Jesus Christ in a church play re-enacting the crucifixion last month. Footage of her at the church broadcast on television shows what appears to be blood running down her arms, and later emerging from her side. In a subsequent television interview with TV1 Samoa, she claimed to be spontaneously bleeding while on camera. The station could not independently verify her claim. Im just another human being but my body has been used as a reminder because God knows that the faith of his servants are dying, she said in the interview, also claiming she had a sickness for the past three years which caused her to have visions. Her story has been greeted with both scepticism and joy in Samoa. Some, including the countrys Catholic Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailelel Malielagaoi, have called it a miracle. He was quoted in the Samoa Observer newspaper as saying: We should be happy about these events... if it happens to someone, it means they are holy. Others, however, have accused her of manufacturing a hoax. Still cant get my head over this. Those (are) inflicted wounds. She needs medical attention (and) counselling! said one commenter on TV1 Samoas Facebook page. Divide across faiths One reason for the split in opinion may be because many Samoans are Protestant Christians, while stigmata has been a mostly Catholic phenomenon. Ms Opapo is a Protestant. Merita Huch, a news editor with TV1 Samoa, told the BBC: This is a huge thing, its dividing the whole country across the faiths. The Catholic Church has since been taking care of her, they have held a Mass for her. There have been villages who have invited her as they want to meet and touch her. But there are other churches who are warning people not to believe it, saying it is the work of the devil... Some people say she was possessed by an old boyfriends spirit. Repeated phone calls for comment by the BBC to Ms Opapos church, the Congregational Christian Church in Samoa (CCCS), were rejected. Religious studies Professor Paul Morris told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the case could be a response to the tremendous pressure the CCCS - the largest in Samoa - has been under from other churches in recent decades. Another possible explanation for the case was psycho-somatic, that intensity of identification... where a young woman or man identify with Jesus to an extreme degree, he was quoted as saying. The participants at the 4th Pacific Womens Parliamentary Partnership (P.W.P.P) Forum ended three-days of discussions with a celebration at the Hotel Tanoa Tusitala on Thursday night. The Forum which saw over 60 women Parliamentarians from around the region gather in Samoa was hailed by Munokoa Poto Williams of New Zealand as the best Forum in terms of attendance. Its been one of the best attended forums and that is probably partly because most of us wanted to be here to celebrate Samoa with their recent elections and the great results that the temporary special measures have provided, she said. We here in Samoa are also celebrating the fact that your temporary special measures have meant that you have increased your parliamentary representation of women to 10%. Samoa also has the added bonus of something that we are really proud of on your behalf which is having a woman deputy prime minister. The women empowered one another while finding ways to address major issues faced in their respective countries. So with all of the politics out of the way, the women mingled, laughed and danced the night away. The Archbishop of the Catholic Church in Samoa, Alapati Lui Mataeliga, has cautioned Samoans against drawing conclusions in the case of a young woman who claims to be carrying the marks of Jesus Christs suffering. Speaking about 23-year-old mother, Toaipuapuaga Opapo, whose story has become the talking point for the nation, the Archbishop says people should take their time to reflect and find the true meaning of the event. We know from the history of the church that its normally Catholics who have this, Archbishop Mataeliga told Talamua Media. Personally, to have something like this happen to a young Samoan lady whose parents belong to the E.F.K.S, to me that is a blessing. It tells us that God doesnt differentiate between people. He is a God for everyone and he chooses whoever he wants to use to send us a message. And God often chooses the lowly, the weak and humble, he said. If you observer this young lady carefully, she is very humble. She is someone who carries herself with so much humility. Archbishop Mataeliga added that such cases are not new in the Catholic Church. And with Toa being a member of the E.F.K.S, the Catholic Church has only become involved to offer support. They came to me and we decided to have a thanksgiving service, he said about last Fridays mass. We wanted to thank God for the blessing and the message. This is why the Catholic Church became involved it is well known that Toa and her parents belong to the E.F.K.S church. They are waiting for their General meeting in May where they will raise the issue. But from the Catholic Churchs perspective, its more or less to support and offer our prayers. Asked about people criticizing Toa, the Archbishop said this is disappointing. People are free choose but I think its important to take our time, hear her out and not be quick to judge her. So even in the Catholic Church, we are not rushing into anything Ive spoken with her father and he said they are waiting for their Annual General meeting and so were happy to offer prayers and wait. Lets try and work out what God is telling us. Im not pointing the finger at anybody in particular but to me the miracle in all this is a mans heart, whether they receive it or reject it. If we receive it, there must be a change in our lives. So its not about pointing the finger and judging, its about hearing out what the message really is for us. The Archbishop was also asked if they plan to confirm Toas stigmata through the Catholic Churchs procedures. The Catholic church cannot make a decision because its happening in the E.F.K.S church I respect that church and I leave it up to their free will. Should the E.F.K.S church consent we can send it to the Vatican to assess they are used to these sorts of things. Part of the examination will include Scientific tests and having someone to play the role of the devils advocate to try and disprove the claim. The Archbishop added that it is a long process that takes time. In the meantime, he again cautions people about rushing to conclusions. As the Bible says, we need to discern the spirits, he said. The reality of life is that people will always look to draw conclusions and make comparisons but like I said we need to take it slow and listen deeply because there might be other messages behind what has happened, whether it has to do with the government, church, individuals or families. We can easily use this to point the finger to a certain group of people, for example we can say that this are happening because of the government, we can also say these things have happened because of the church but we cannot be quick to draw a conclusion until we continue to observe the circumstances and what is happening. He concluded: At the end of the day, we rely on the grace of God. It will never leave us and its not something we can buy with money. It is free. Whatever circumstances and natural disasters occur, the grace of our Lord remains, it will not be taken away. The leader for a team of firefighters who got dangerously close to the blazing fuel tank at the Matautu wharf on Monday has downplayed widespread praises for their bravery. Approached by the Weekend Observer for a comment, Commander of Operations, Aleaga Fuafiva, said they were merely carrying out the work they exist to do. All the glory belongs to God, he said. He is the one who kept Samoa safe. In saying that, I dont consider myself a hero, I am just a servant who was doing what Im supposed to do. But many members of the public disagree. They have heaped praises on the work of Mr. Fuafiva and his team, heralding their efforts and commending their bravery. Some have gone as far as to call on the government to honour the work of the firemen with a special bravery award. And its easy to see why. Armed with equipment and hoses that could easily be described as inadequate, Mr. Fuafiva and his team ran towards the burning tanks while everyone else fled for their lives. Reflecting on Mondays events Mr. Fuafiva said they did not have time to think about their safety. We had a job to do and we knew there was no one else there but us and if we didnt step up, the lives of members of the public would have been at risk, he said. Having been a fireman for 25 years, Mr. Fuafiva said Mondays blaze was the most difficult one he has encountered. It was hard for us to get any closer because it was very hot, he said. I was afraid, I was worried but I cant be distracted from what I was doing because the life of the people and the life of my boys depends on me. Mr. Fuafiva disagrees with suggestions that the fire was not a danger to the public. Of course lives were at risk. We also had properties to protect including the governments properties. There were so many people that could have been affected. According to Mr. Fuafiva, when they arrived at the site, they tried to protect the other two tanks. He confirmed that it took a while to put out the fire because they did not have foam right away. In those kinds of situations, you just have to do what you can and work with what you have. Mr. Fuafiva acknowledged the support from P.P.S Company, their colleagues from the airport who shared their foam supply and everyone who contributed. I thank God that we were able to put out the fire within four hours, he said. To say that I wasnt scared would be a lie. But I thank God that we have been spared. The 45-year-old has been a firefighter all his life. He first joined in 1992 and over the years, he said that while there are always challenges, they go out of their way to protect Samoa and the properties. Looking ahead, he agrees with claims that Mondays fire was a wake up call. From the Fire Services perspective, he said there is a need for more training on how to address these particular types of incidents. He also believes they could do with better equipment. On Monday, we did our best. To me personally, there is nothing to be boastful about but as a country, we need to thank God for his protection. Mr. Fuafiva hails from the villages of Matautu Falealili and Papauta. He is married with five children. Think a minuteJames Macie was a child born outside of marriage. Tragically this marked him for the rest of his life as a second-class citizen in Englands 18th century society. Even though his biological father was Duke of Northumberland, James was never allowed to hold his fathers title. James mother tried to have his rightful honor in society restored, but the British government refused. Consequently, James was denied the rights of most ordinary citizens. He could not enter Parliament, hold a public office, or get a job in civil service. He could not even join the Army or the Navy. Shortly after James graduated from Pembroke College, he ambitiously started a career in science. The results of his many advanced experiments were published, and James became a highly respected scientist. Yet, while other scientists were recognized by the British government with knighthoods, James was denied that honor simply because of his birth. James never married, knowing that his country would also reject his children because of him. However, he still gave to others a great inheritance. When James died in 1829 he was a very rich man. But instead of giving his wealth to his own nation, he left all of his money to the United States. He disinherited England as it had disinherited him. In his will, James instructed that his money be used to start an institution that would continue to discover and spread knowledge for humankind. His only condition was that it would carry on his family name which was taken away from him at birth. The name he adopted later in life: Smithson. And today the Smithsonian Institution is the worlds largest museum and research complex. It has 19 museums, 9 research centers, and more than 140 affiliate museums around the world, sharing with millions of people its cultural, historical, and scientific knowledge. James used his rejection to give him direction to where he could invest his time, talents and treasures to make the world a better place. Just because you have felt rejected, it does not mean your life has no important purpose. On the contrary, if you sincerely ask your Maker to take charge of your heart and choices, Jesus, who will never reject you, will show you His great plan and purpose for your lifeone day at a time. Just think a minute News / International by Staff Reporter Two Hitmen who were planning to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have been detained, according to reports.At least two people - one of whom is believed to be a North Korean defector, and at least one Chinese national - were arrested near Tumen River at the border with China, it is claimed.The suspects were allegedly planning to kill the dictator in Hoeryong in North Hamgyong Province, it has been reported.An unnamed source in North Korea told Asia Press said he heard the 'terrorists' had not crossed the river from China.North Korean guards went to China to arrest them and the suspects were taken to the State Security Department, the source claimed. The guards were reportedly given rewards for their work.However, the founder of Asia Press said the story was probably just a rumour spread by the state to to garner support for the Korean Workers' Party before the 7th Congress.The 7th Congress of North Korea's Workers' Party in early May will be the first in 36 years and the first under leader Kim Jong Un.He is expected to announce major policy directives and personnel changes. News / Local by Thupeyo Muleya THE country's envoy to South Africa, Isaac Moyo, says the government is worried about repeated kidnappings of Zimbabweans visiting that country by syndicates operating between Musina and Johannesburg. Moyo said at the weekend that the country was continually engaging the host government over the issue."We would like to see an end to the kidnappings of Zimbabweans and we'll continue to engage the relevant authorities in South Africa to achieve this end. At home we need to make people aware of the dangers of taking certain types of transport at Musina," he said."We're encouraged by the efforts of relevant South African authorities to bring the criminal syndicates to justice. More robust security interventions will of course bring quicker results and are very necessary in the circumstances".The ambassador said despite the arrest of some kidnapping syndicates, more cases of a similar nature were being reported. He said the consulate was dealing with cases where people were kidnapped for ransom while others were robbed of valuables.In a separate interview, the Consul General to South Africa, Batiraishe Mukonoweshuro, urged Zimbabweans to always use public transport especially conventional buses when travelling to the neighbouring country."We want to urge our people to desist from hitch hiking as they risk being robbed by these criminals who are very cunning. We're working with the police in both Limpopo and Gauteng provinces to ensure that perpetrators of such crimes are brought to book," he said.Last year South African police arrested 10 people in connection with the kidnapping of Zimbabwean travellers.Four of the suspects; Charles Cecil Brewer, 36, his wife Petition Sicelo Madida, 30, Jaheni Luphahla, 28, and Phathumuzi Sibanda, 27, appeared in court for allegedly killing two Zimbabwean women, raping three others and kidnapping 28 fellow countrymen in the neighbouring country.The offences were committed between May 30 and July 11, 2015.The case was initially tried at Thembisa Magistrate Court where the quartet has appeared more than four times seeking bail which was denied. Brewer and his associates are expected to stand trial at the North Gauteng High Court today.Some of the people who were arrested on similar charges include Wisani Sithole, Godknows Dube, Bongani Ngwenya, Sibusiso Ndlovu, Malvin Ndaba and Nkosinathi Ncube.The syndicate operates from Total and Engen filling stations and a house in Musina. New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/08/2016 -- Janitorial services, also known as cleaning services, are generally used to keep workplaces free from unsightly dirt and provide a clean and germ-free environment. Cleaning is one of the most commonly outsourced services in various facilities such as educational buildings, corporate buildings, hotels, hospitals, retail outlets, and commercial and residential buildings. Janitorial services include both indoor and outdoor cleaning services, which include cleaning, trash pickup, floor polishing, and window washing. The global janitorial services market is primarily segmented into two categories: residential and commercial. The residential market consists of maid services, window, carpet, window and other services. The commercial cleaning segment primarily focuses on window cleaning, vacuuming, floor care, and related services.Among the two segments, the commercial segment accounts for a relatively larger share of the janitorial services market. Janitorial service is a highly labor intensive market and growth of the market largely depends on growth of the real estate market.Due to its dependence on the real estate market, the janitorial services market suffered a downturn during the economic recession post-2008. The market also suffered a decline due to collapse of various mortgage obligations. Many government entities and industrial companies make a long-term contract to clean facilities, such trends help in the growth of global janitorial services market. Interested in report: Please follow the below the links to meet your requirements; Request for the Report Brochure: http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3926 Many companies outsource their building maintenance and cleaning services, in order to reduce the cost .Through outsourcing, the janitorial services industry creates many employments. Introduction of latest janitorial equipment in the market provides a competitive edge to the janitorial service industry. Such new cleaning equipment provides better janitorial service and this also helps in the growth of janitorial services market. Some of the major global companies such as ABM Industries and ServiceMaster offer various janitorial services. They together hold more than 35% share of the global janitorial services market. Introduction of new technologies and solutions to clean properties efficiently and safely and process improvements are expected to boost growth of the global janitorial services market during the forecast period. Request TOC (table of content), Figures and Tables of the Report: http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3926 Asia Pacific is one of the prominent markets for janitorial services. Rising economy and escalating construction of commercial and non-commercial buildings in the region further increase demand for janitorial services. China and India are the two major countries in Asia Pacific, which hold the highest share of the janitorial services market. In North America, the U.S. holds the largest market share and is expected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period. The global janitorial services market is expected to grow at a single-digit growth rate during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020. For more Info: http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/contact-us.asp Some of the major companies operating in the global janitorial market areABM Industries, CleanNet USA, Jani-King Internationa,ServiceMaster, Anago Cleaning Systems, Chem-Dry, Jan-Pro International, Aramark,Stanley Steemer, BONUS Building Care, Coverall, Pritchard Industries, Red Coats, UGL Unicco Services, Sodexo, and Vanguard Cleaning Systems. Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/persistence-market-research-&-consulting 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.